January 31, 2023 • 35 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with Roman Mars, host of the podcast "99% Invisible" about design, podcasting and life in the created world. Plus, they discuss the 2020 book “The 99% Invisible City” by Mars and his co-author Kurt Kohlstedt.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I have an interview
for you this week that I conducted with none other
than Roman Mars, the podcast host and author, host of
(00:27):
the percent Invisible podcast and co author of the book
The Invisible City. So it was it was a real
treat to set down virtually with Roman Mars here and
discuss UH invisible, both the podcast and the book, UM
The Invisible City, UH, discussing podcasting in general, UM design
(00:50):
in general. It's a fun chat and I hope you
enjoy it as much as I did. Hi, Roman, welcome
to the show. Oh thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate it. I wanna start by by stating the
obvious that a lot of our listeners and stuffable in
your Mind don't really need an introduction or even a
reintroduction to you and your show. But for anyone out
(01:12):
there who isn't aware what is invisible and what does
the title mean? No apresent in Visible is about all
the thought that goes into things most people don't think about.
The idea is that you know, even these big things
like buildings, um that you know, they may be massive,
but the story behind them is still invisible. And that's
(01:33):
where it comes from. I was when I first started.
It sort of started as a show about architecture and design,
and it still is. I think design is still its mandate,
but our vision of what is designed is quite broad.
It's sort of any human made thing is designed. And
so when I first started, I gathered this collection of
(01:55):
different types of designers, product designer, an architect, a landscape
designer and asked them, like, what is the unifying theme
to what you do? And I was going to try
to name the show what that was, but I didn't
want to use the word design for some reason. I
just wanted to avoid it and make something more um,
poetic and evocative and um. They came to the conclusion
(02:16):
that if they're doing their jobs right, their job is
not visible, and so that's what the show became. I
think I heard the show for the first time on
Radio Lab and I had to look at them. This
would have been back in Yeah. Yeah, they did us
a real service by introducing us to a lot of people.
I mean, um, Jad and the folks were working on
(02:39):
Radio Lab at the time. Um, we we kind of
came up together in the public radio trenches and so
um that was just about the time when we started
running the shows, and so um, I think there was
a little bit of backslapping, a friendly you know, helping
out a brother in arms, that scenario. But they did
this a real good service. I've entered business to their audience.
(03:02):
Radio Lab always impressed me with its exceptional audio production,
its sound design, A show that had a particular vision
for I think how sound design could be used to
help explain a topic. And I tend to think of
invisible as existing, you know, within on the same shelf
and the similar category of podcast or radio show. So
I was wondering, like, what what is your philosophy on
(03:26):
invisible sound design? Well, you know, it varies. I mean
what I like, like I like things to be radiophonic,
which to me means if you were to read a
transcript of the show, you wouldn't fully get what the
show is trying to convey, you know, like there has
(03:46):
to be the audio element, the sound of someone's voice,
the sound of someone's passion, you know, and then the
music and you know, like in a little bit of
the ambient and field tape. You don't tell a different
story than just the words being said it. You know,
we we just do it to serve the story. You
know that you can definitely overdo it. You can sort
(04:06):
of call a lot of attention to sound design. I
think we sort of pitch it the way I personally
like it. Like I like a good amount of music.
I like switching voices, you know, like I like, you know,
I talk, another person talks to other person talks. It
keeps the ear interested. I think there's some sort of
there's ways that when you're conveying information, UM, varying that
(04:28):
so that the ear doesn't get bored and then you
sort of your mind drifts off is really important. But
we also kind of play it by ear like there
isn't like a huge, um, I don't know, just like
a standard operating procedure or a certain mandate that we
when it comes to sound design. We we are really talented,
you know, um composer and Swan Real and engineer and
(04:49):
Martin Gonzalez and you know, they just make it beautiful
and uh and it just feels good to me. It
was always the show I always wanted in terms of
the way it's sound and have changes your trends in
the podcasting industry affected the way you approach things at all.
I don't know about the changes in podcasting. I mean
you to say that, I mean, I like the show
(05:12):
the way it is because I think it serves the
way the show is. Um. That is not to say
that I don't love things that aren't produced to our extent.
Like my my favorite podcasts are two people talking, you know,
like and there's something really lovely about that. Um. And
so to me, there's just always like there are these
different trends or you know, just like buckets of a
(05:34):
podcast that do different things and do them well and um,
and I think they all can co exist kind of nicely.
I mean. The main thing that happened with my show
is that it was really designed for radio, Like I
made it for public radio. Um. The original episodes are
four minutes long because they fit into a slot that
would go into morning edition. And and then I was
(05:57):
just like, well, I guess I'll put this out as
a podcast as whatever might as well. And so we did.
And then you know, and I say we there was
no weed it was doesn't mean at this point, for
many many many years it was just me and so UM.
And then when it started to find a life as
a podcast, UM, it was like, well, let's just keep
(06:18):
in that, like, let's make that a little bit longer
because I don't have to make it for minutes when
it becomes a podcast, and then it gets it just
grows and grows and grows, and eventually, uh, you know,
a switch flipped where the primary audience was the podcast audience,
which didn't have to adhere to some to sometime a
radio clock, um, and I was cutting a version for
(06:40):
the radio um, and and then it sort of was
off to the races and the sort of now every
story is what it is, um. And so in a way,
podcasting liberated me from what is the constraint of like
every type of broadcast journalists, which is like you're basically
either cutting to fit a time or feeling to make
(07:02):
a time. It's like a huge part of your job
as a producer. And I don't really do that anymore
based on some sort of artificial constraint. I still do
that based off of h my taste, Like I still
like things to be tight and you know, be purposeful
in their length. So in that sense, podcasting really really
(07:23):
changed and made it so like now the average show
is it's like thirty minutes long. It's like ten times longer.
Like it's really it's really something. Um, but this show
has kind of had its own trajectory um that I
don't know if it really follows the institutes of of
podcasting in general, but but I'm sure I'm influenced by
(07:44):
it some way. Anytime I listened to the show or
and engage with invisible content, I felt like I leave
it with my eyes just a little more open to
the design around me. Do you ever feel like, or
or hope that you're initiating listeners into sort of a
different understanding of world. Oh for sure. I mean that's
the ultimate goal. And and I know that it's effective
(08:06):
because it's been effective with me. Like, you know, I
studied lots of things to get to where I am.
I've been a journalist now for for twenty years, but
before that, I was working on in PhD and genetics.
I studied a lot of things. Um, I didn't have
a real specific knowledge of of design or architecture. I
(08:28):
was just a person who would like go on the
architecture door if I was in a city. You know,
and so I've always approached it as a journalist and
as a fan, and I've noticed that the show has
changed me over the years of making it, Like, as
I've told these stories about all the thought that goes
(08:49):
into things that most people pass by without noticing, I've
felt myself becoming more sort of keenly aware of the
world and how it functions, and actually kind of keenly
aware of how well we're taken care of in the
world in a certain way, Like it's turned me into
a more optimistic person to do this show, because you know,
(09:13):
a lot of people put a lot of care into
things so you don't die, like pretty consistently, or so
that you can operate smoothly in this world. And we
bump against the things that are poorly designed, and we
notice those we don't notice the visible things that are
so well designed that they pass our notice. And so
(09:35):
it has changed the way I view the world making
the show, and what I've heard from people has changed
the way that they look at the world. And that's
super satisfying because I think it's like it really does
improve your outlook of the world to think about the
design of things and you've been doing the show long
enough that you have listeners out there who have grown
up with the show, right, Yeah, we have someone who,
(09:58):
um who works the show now, Jacob Multa Medina and
her stepfather, you know, had her listen to the show
as a kid, you know, Like I think it's like
junior higher high school. So yeah, it's absurd. Yeah, a
lot of people have grown up with it, and it's uh,
it's it's pretty satisfying to have them. But when they
(10:19):
show up in there in their twenties, I'm blown away
by that. So now I guess on the other end
of the spectrum, you you still have people coming to
the podcast who are new to it. You've covered so
many design topics over the years. Um, I wonder what
your recommendation is for people who are new to it. Like,
I know, on your website, a visible dot Orgue, you
(10:41):
have a nice explore section that allows you to sort
of check out areas by topic, but in general, like,
do you tend to steer people towards the beginning, towards
the most recent or particular foundational episode, never the beginning?
Like I feel like when people tell me that they've
gone back and listen to all of them I'm like, well,
maybe I should take those down because I don't know
(11:03):
if it's worth it. UM, But I think that I
mostly say to listen to the most recent one. I mean,
the thing about an ongoing series is that no one
episode can um sort of encapsulate what you do. What
you do with an ongoing series is you're telling this
story over time, and it's like this weird regression plot
(11:25):
where it's like, here's a episode kind of like this,
and here's an episode kind of like this, and then
you draw a line through that regression plot and that
is the thesis of your show. And so no one point,
you know, like really exemplifies that, you know, especially you know,
especially when you know as makers, you're like, wow, that's
like it's about an eight percent of what I wanted
to be or you know whatever. And so mostly I
(11:49):
tell people to listen to the latest one. And you know,
we have a few classics, like there's this one called
Structural Integrity that want a lot of awards. That I
think is a is a good episode about you know,
a building almost falling down, and you know that's always exciting.
And what I don't want people to do is UM
in the beginning. I think it's fine to go search
(12:10):
through things that you know you're interested in and go
listen to them. But almost the point of the show
is that we're daring you without boring the subject is.
And what we're trying to do is, you know, is
the production is sort of creating this delta between how
boring an idea is and how we're going to present
it to make it so that you really, really truly
(12:31):
care about it. Um And so don't read the description
and go NA, that's not for me. Like, try if
you read the description and God ask not for me,
try just one of those and see if I can
convince you that this is interesting and applies to you
in some way. That's that's the main thing I want
from people when they try to show up. Thank thank
(13:00):
Now I'm a little late to the party here, but
I recently picked up a copy of the book Invisible
City that you co authored with Kirk Colstead, and it's Yeah,
it's a thoroughly enjoyable and insightful read, you know, highlighting
the details of the modern world and get going and
matching over what with what you just said, there were
you know, there were certainly sections of it that I
(13:20):
knew that I was going to be into into anything
dealing would say like underground infrastructure, and like the whole
section on infrastructure disguised as buildings and so forth. But yeah,
there's so much in it where suddenly there'll be a
section of the of the book that is dealing with
something that I completely take for granted sometimes every day,
and it's ultimately a fascinating and eliminating topic, like like
(13:44):
traffic circles for example. I mean that's the goal, is
that we sort of like, um, we could lure you
in with some things that you might be interested and
and then uh, and then we sort of lure you
into trying to pay attention to other things. And the
book was really interest to make because I've been making
audio for so long. Um, and you know, I think
(14:06):
I feel like I was approached about making a book,
like episode five of the podcast. There was this sort
of sense that books are the inevitable, like I don't know,
prize or something like, I didn't understand that. I just
I really wanted to make a podcast, um, and so,
but it took us for a long time to do it.
One of the reasons was, you know, the partnership and
(14:28):
making it with with Kirk coolest that it was required
that you know, he worked on it and be excited
about it. Um. And then the other was like, I'm
really into design, like in a real sense. And and
to me, it's like the show is designed to be
a podcast, and trying to you know, creating some kind
of deprecated, you know, transcription version of it was it
(14:51):
had no interest to me. But there was a certain
point where the volume of the things that we covered
audio is not really useful for like scrubbing through and
like it's cential, but it's not like, oh, I remember
this thing about curb cuts. What's the name of that episode?
And where do I find it? And what is it?
And do I have twenty minutes to listen to it?
(15:11):
And and stuff. And there was just a point where
all the stuff that we had covered in this sort
of territory we've staked out of our view of the
world wasn't being served by linear audio anymore. And a
book was kind of like felt like it was natural
and necessary and good and so um. So that's that's
(15:33):
what the book became. And so and it has a
lot of stuff that's from the show in it, but
also a lot of like new stuff that we can't
cover because you know, like as much as I enjoy
the perversity of um covering a lot of visual stuff
in an audio medium, UM to highlight the story nous
of it versus the aesthetics of things, UM, there's some
things that are just impossible to cover. And and things
(15:54):
like roundabouts where you try to describe the magic roundabout
which is like circles and circles and circles, and it's
like you can kind of get it, but I don't
know if you can really visualize it until um, you know,
you get some some pictures of it. Yeah. Yeah, that
that was definitely a part of in the book where
I was very thankful for the illustration, and I think
plenty of other places where you know, you're talking about
(16:15):
something and you can look at the illustration. Oh yeah,
that one that that's what they're talking about. I've seen
that thing, that particular star shape or or or whatever
the case may be, exactly exactly. It does require a
little bit of a little bit of help. Yeah, So
it's interesting that it sounded like it was kind of,
I don't want to say, a daunting task, but like
(16:36):
a task it was usually daunting. Its horrible. Yeah, it's
like it's really really hard. There's like, there's the scene
that I heard as we were making um the book
that was that the takeoff of the teach a man
to fish kind of thing, Teach the men of fish
and then yeah, give him an officially eats for a day,
(16:56):
teach the man official for a lifetime. Um, it's uh,
give a person a book they'll read for a week,
Teach a person to write a book, they'll never enjoy
anything for the rest of their last So it's really
really hard. Um. Yeah, But I mean like Curbly brought
it all together, I mean in terms of like the
writing and the kind of um organizing and project managing.
(17:20):
Like he really threw himself into it in a way
that it never would happened because one of the problems
with a really long deadline that a book gives you,
you know, like a yearlong deadline. Um, it has its
own problems. But when you have a weekly deadline of
a show at the same time, it's it's always possible
to occupy yourself with the immediate deadline and put off
(17:40):
the big deadline. And uh so anyway, it was really hard.
So well, I can said the the finished product is excellent,
and you you covered u this already. But the I
guess when one initially hears about a podcast becoming a book,
it's easy to think, well, okay, this is, like you said, this,
it's just some thing that that had to happen. This
(18:01):
is like the inevitable sort of cashier or the inevitable
even evolution of the thing. But but yeah, this this
doesn't feel forced at all. It's very absorbable and also
very just visually stylish. Thank you. I was really obviously
interested in the in the visuals of it, and and
our publisher was to they, you know, because I was
just like, you do understand that like designing, people listen
(18:22):
to our show and if the book is ugly, they
will never forgive you. And they sort of connected us
with Patrick Vale, who is the illustrator who worked on
you know, um hundreds of different illustrations both big and small,
to demonstrate what was going on, but also just to
kind of set the tone of it. You know. The
feel of it is is both kind of like precise,
(18:44):
but also it has a little bit of an abstraction
to it in in some instances, and I think it's
a beautiful object. And you're always trying to figure out
what to do when you create anything, or are you
creating something like a femoral and immediate or you're creating
like a permanent and beautiful object. And there's a balance
of that when it comes to audio all the time,
because you you could fuss over it endlessly to make
(19:06):
it a beautiful object, and you know, it's kind of
fleeting and ephemeral no matter what you do. Um, But
when you put all the effort into a book, it
is like it's incumbent. I think to make it. I
don't know, something's somewhat precious because of all these just
resources going into it, you know. Um. But I'm happy
(19:27):
with it, even though it had a a little bit
of an issue to figure out of of being you know,
kind of fish more foul like. It isn't really a
coffee table book. It is a book of stories. They
don't have to be read altogether in a row, but
they build on each other when they are read in
a row, and you kind of have to serve lots
(19:47):
of different audiences simultaneously. And again, this was something that
like Kurt and I had just endless meetings about just
the structure of the thing um, independent of the writing,
um to make it all work. So anyway, I'm glad
you liked it. I'm going on about it. Oh no, no,
this is all fascinating. Yeah. I have the physical version here,
and there's a digital version. But there is also an audiobook, right, yeah,
(20:08):
yeah there is? What was what was that like? Then?
Turning it back into I was horrible. It's like, I mean,
like I've been doing voice over you know, and narration
for for twenty some years at this point, reading an
audiobook is the hardest version of that, I think. And
even though and this is my own you know, like
(20:29):
style in our own writing, so you know, I know
the material better, but even that was exhausting. I was
realizing how little I talk in a row, even when
I record narration or to do interviews that Like, I
was like, oh great, I'll does knock out a couple
of hours reading or whatever, you know, every few days.
But I was exhausted by it. It was so hard.
(20:51):
And when and when any author and I know a
fair number of authors now that um you know, asked
me about you know, narrating work, I'm just like unless
you really want to like just avoid it. It's really
it's really hard. But you know, the publishers and and
and I know the audience. Um, they're used to the
(21:12):
sound of my voice. I think if for some of
them gives a certain amount of comfort. And UM, it
seemed important that it. It bade me to read it.
So I'm glad with the product. I'm glad we did it. Um.
I'm I'm also glad that we appended an episode of
the show UM at the end of the audio book,
just because part of me felt like, if you went
(21:35):
away thinking that me reading this book is the show,
you don't have a full concept with the show is.
And so I wanted to make sure that was present there.
And so, uh, I think it's a nice thing to have.
And I think if if somebody's like, oh I really
love it's not in visible, I want to listen to
eleven hours of it in a row. UM. It does
serve that. Um. But it was it was extremely hard.
(21:59):
I couldn't believe how hard it was. I was so
self conscious about it that, um, you know, we had
an independent um you know company kind of cut it together,
like who worked for the publisher and I would pre
edit it because I would mess up so much that
I would I would. I would send like an edited
version for them to go edit again, because I was
(22:20):
just like, I'm not this bad at this Normally I
should be. Anyway, I didn't want anyone to hear it.
Thank thank so. The title The Invisible City, Uh just
just leave open the possibility for future volumes dealing with
(22:42):
different rays of topics. Yeah, that was the idea in fact,
when we went out and pitched it. Originally, I pitched
it as kind of a set of books like, you know,
maybe one about cities, maybe one and about sort of
um roads and you know, by ways and highways type
(23:03):
of thing, and and then about sort of vernacular architecture
and specific to places. Um. We ended up sort of
like making the city one, like incorporate a lot of
that stuff already. Like as soon as we went out
with that, people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why don't
you just get one book instead of like plan your trilogy,
and um, they were totally right. But you know, this
(23:26):
goes back to the you know, the original name to
begin with is like I was making a show about design,
I wanted it to have this name. Not amercent invisible,
but I thought it was so evocative that I could
do a season about science. I could do a season
about something else. Um, there's so many things that you know,
(23:47):
in terms of explainatory journalism, that need to be explained better,
and most of them are pretty invisible to most of us.
So it kind of applies to a lot of things.
And so I could totally see, you know, a series
of books in different ways, or a kid's book version
or something. Yeah, I'm I'm open to it, but it
honestly hasn't the internal drive is hasn't quite like rebuilt
(24:10):
to like I said, like, oh my god, I really
want to go through that again. Now, the book deals
a lot with the space where design exists between kind
of I guess government and law on one side, and
user desire and experience on the other. You've you've alluded
to to one half of this earlier, talking about how
how safer the world feels with a lot of the
(24:32):
designs we have in place. UM, I know we can't
really place a value judgment on design itself, but does
design seemed to largely have a trajectory toward user safety
and happiness? I would say so, I mean design, design
is about functionality, and and it just sort of depends
(24:53):
on what master it is serving at a certain moment
as to whether or not it is serving uh, one
type of audience versus another type of audience or user rather.
And so you know, you could say some of those
things in the real world they work at cross purposes. So,
(25:14):
I mean, we just did a little segment of an
episode that Delaney hal did on the show about this
idea of strodes, which is like a portmanteau between streets
and roads. And the idea here is that a road
is a conveyance to get someone from one place together
as quickly as possible. A street is a place that
you occupy and live and their stores on it and
porkbenches and things like that. And when something is truly
(25:38):
a road, like a highway to get from one place together,
it works well. When something is truly a street and
um it is for um loitering and hanging out and
to being in places. Um it works well when things
are strodes, when they're designed to go through quickly, but
they have all these people in the way and um
stores that people are coming in and out of and
(25:59):
stuff like that. Then they work poorly and they tend
to be really dangerous. So you could say, well, it
was designed poorly, or you know, it's it's sort of
a little bit semantic, or like how you place the
emphasis of it. You know, I would say that that's
the the tyranny of thoughtless design creates a strode versus
(26:19):
somebody really try to make it this way on purpose,
you know, And so we do end up with things
at the end which are poorly designed, that are dangerous,
that that do not make the world a better place.
Um they are probably created from a constraint from this
type of constituency applying it in this way and then
another one to this way, and it creates this sort
(26:41):
of Frankenstein, which is a poorly designed thing. And that
is a you know, a version of cultural and you
know product evolution that is a result of you know,
people putting all their two cents and to create something
that is not very functional for most people. But I
do believe that when you do think of safety and
(27:02):
care in minds, that we do a good job of
creating those things in the end and actually anticipating things
that you may not anticipate and hopefully never have to
anticipate when you encounter them in the real world. You know,
like that that they're the safety things in place that
hopefully just make the world a better place, make you safer,
but hopefully you never have to consider whether or not
(27:25):
a signpost it's a breakaway post, or whether or not
trees along the side of the road, you know, like
you know they're there to make you feel crowded so
that therefore you do not go very fast. You know,
they're meant to add some agitation to you. Roundabouts, um,
like you mentioned our perfect example. I mean, one of
(27:45):
the reasons why roundabouts are so safe is because they
feel so awful when you enter into one. You have
to be really aware and being aware and making the
built environment um break you out of your you know,
like maybe your sort of road zomblification you know is
a good thing for your safety, um, but it might
(28:07):
not feel like a good thing when you go through it.
But somebody thought about that for you. And so for
the most part, I would say we endeavor to make
things safer, but there are definitely some gaps, and mostly
it's when a bunch of people are not coming on
the same page of what the design brief really is. Yeah.
And of course in the in the book you you
(28:27):
talked about some designs such as those intended to keep
unhomed people from laying on park benches that sort of yea, yeah,
there's lots of hostile design, and again it's serving somebody's purpose,
Like somebody is putting it there on purpose because they're
trying to um commit a kind of social change and
social pressure UM and influence through the bill world. Now,
(28:53):
the thing is that as privileged people, they're kind of
doing that for you. You know, they're doing it for
your benefit it you know, to the detriment of people
who have less. And the important part about that influence
is recognizing, um, do you really want that? You know,
like if somebody's making this decision for you, and if
if you don't know about it, then obviously you can't
(29:15):
sort of like you have any commentary. So our first
job is to make people aware of what these spikes
and these different sort of like hostile architecture you know,
like UM interventions are, And then the second step is
to go like, well is that a result you want?
And uh, do you want to like interact with your
(29:35):
study to change it? You know, it's it's it's the
second part of of that um discussion. You're a stroud
example reminded me of of partlets, which are also discussed
in the book. By the time the book came out,
and and certainly by the time of my reading it,
like everyone, I think, especially in urban areas, that heard
of partlets due to their role in the pandemic. But this, Yeah,
(29:57):
there's also an area that's between different ideas of what
the street or the road is used for. Yeah, a
parklet is a really interesting thing. There's a sort of
movement here UM called parking Day I'm in the Bay Area,
which sort of pioneered this idea of like, well, instead
of um, you know, putting a coin in a meter
to uh, you know, rent a space for a car,
(30:19):
why don't we put coins in the meter and like
lay down some sod and put on put some um
chairs down. And and it's something I've covered for I mean,
I've heart like twenty something here, twenty years at this point, um.
And then it really came to pass when all of
a sudden, we're in COVID. We wanted to be together,
but we needed space away from each other and space outside.
(30:41):
And you know when it comes to roads. You know,
for millennia, they have been these little multimodal use cases
like they you know, the people walked on them, people
rode bikes on them, people rode horses on them, vendors
set up in the middle of them. And then over
time we just decided that oh there for cars. You know,
you know, no one us blogs on them, and you
you can cross here and here, and if you crossed
(31:04):
anywhere in between, you're breaking the law. And and that
was where our values lied when it came to the
design of cities. You know, it's not where I would
place my personal values, but but that's you know, we
collectively kind of thought that that was a good case.
And then COVID comes along, and all of a sudden,
the value of that space changed and we wanted it back,
(31:27):
like as pedestrians and people and people um drinking coffee
and so, you know, we decided to bump out these
spaces that were used for cars so that we could
be outside and enjoy things. And it was kind of
fascinating because you know, the book came out right at
the kind of beginning of COVID, and it was an
interesting time to think about the design of cities. When
(31:52):
this um you know, outside influence made us rethink, you know,
how our cities should be designed very rapidly, you know,
and and and and thoroughly. You know, Like because one
of the things that happens when you're thinking about design
or thinking about your city is there's a there's kind
of a solipsistic kind of the way we enter the
(32:13):
world is the way things are and should be, and
we don't really think about the continuum we are on
when it comes to how cities are designed and should
be designed. Um. And so when you have a rapid
kind of jolt to the system and there's a reassessment
of space and the value of space in different ways, um,
(32:34):
it's a good time to think about, Hey, you know,
what maybe we do think about roads is belonging to cars.
But like if you look at this book or look
through history, you will realize that roads weren't about cars.
They were it's a pretty recent phenomenon that we thought
that that's what they should be. And maybe it's worth
reassessing these things. And I think if there's any sort
(32:55):
of thesis of the to the book or to the show,
it's that the built world and the things we design
are a window into our values as as humans, and
they always shift and change based on those values. And
when you have this moment of crisis when it comes
to the pandemic, it really did change our value of
(33:18):
what a city was for and who it was for,
and what was worth giving up and what wasn't worth
giving up. And um, you know, as horrible as the
situation was, it was fascinating to sort of figure out
those reassessments and realignments. And it it's still like, I
(33:40):
think some of the stuff that we figured out during
that period of time, Um, we'll still linger with us
for for a long time. And maybe that we completely
subsumed in different types of you know, normal life quote
unquote normal life will return different ways. But I do
think that there's like a sense that, yeah, these spaces
like we kind of want them back and we're never
going to relent and we're gonna give him back again. Um,
(34:03):
And and it's a it's a it was fascinating to
watch happened as we were talking about the books so much,
and also to see the results of it today. Al Right, Well,
the podcast is of course Invisible. The book is The
Invisible City. Roman Mars, Thanks for taking time out of
your day to chat with me. Oh, it was my pleasure.
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the show too,
(34:24):
so it's a real honor to be on. Thank you
all right, Thanks again to Roman Mars taking time out
of his busy day to chat with me. Here again,
the podcast is Invisible, and you can find Invisible anywhere
you get your podcasts, obviously, and the book is The
(34:45):
Invisible City, which is available in all formats. Like I
said in the interview, I've got the hard version here,
the physical copy, and it's just it's it's really nice,
really nice design in this so I highly recommend it.
As always, I want to remind you that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is a science podcast with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail,
on Wednesday's we do a short form artifact or monster
(35:07):
fact episode, and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and
just talk about a weird film. Thanks as always to J. J.
Pass Way for producing the show, and if you want
to get in touch with us, you can email us
at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
(35:31):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the
iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I have an interview
for you this week that I conducted with none other
than Roman Mars, the podcast host and author, host of
(00:27):
the percent Invisible podcast and co author of the book
The Invisible City. So it was it was a real
treat to set down virtually with Roman Mars here and
discuss UH invisible, both the podcast and the book, UM
The Invisible City, UH, discussing podcasting in general, UM design
(00:50):
in general. It's a fun chat and I hope you
enjoy it as much as I did. Hi, Roman, welcome
to the show. Oh thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate it. I wanna start by by stating the
obvious that a lot of our listeners and stuffable in
your Mind don't really need an introduction or even a
reintroduction to you and your show. But for anyone out
(01:12):
there who isn't aware what is invisible and what does
the title mean? No apresent in Visible is about all
the thought that goes into things most people don't think about.
The idea is that you know, even these big things
like buildings, um that you know, they may be massive,
but the story behind them is still invisible. And that's
(01:33):
where it comes from. I was when I first started.
It sort of started as a show about architecture and design,
and it still is. I think design is still its mandate,
but our vision of what is designed is quite broad.
It's sort of any human made thing is designed. And
so when I first started, I gathered this collection of
(01:55):
different types of designers, product designer, an architect, a landscape
designer and asked them, like, what is the unifying theme
to what you do? And I was going to try
to name the show what that was, but I didn't
want to use the word design for some reason. I
just wanted to avoid it and make something more um,
poetic and evocative and um. They came to the conclusion
(02:16):
that if they're doing their jobs right, their job is
not visible, and so that's what the show became. I
think I heard the show for the first time on
Radio Lab and I had to look at them. This
would have been back in Yeah. Yeah, they did us
a real service by introducing us to a lot of people.
I mean, um, Jad and the folks were working on
(02:39):
Radio Lab at the time. Um, we we kind of
came up together in the public radio trenches and so
um that was just about the time when we started
running the shows, and so um, I think there was
a little bit of backslapping, a friendly you know, helping
out a brother in arms, that scenario. But they did
this a real good service. I've entered business to their audience.
(03:02):
Radio Lab always impressed me with its exceptional audio production,
its sound design, A show that had a particular vision
for I think how sound design could be used to
help explain a topic. And I tend to think of
invisible as existing, you know, within on the same shelf
and the similar category of podcast or radio show. So
I was wondering, like, what what is your philosophy on
(03:26):
invisible sound design? Well, you know, it varies. I mean
what I like, like I like things to be radiophonic,
which to me means if you were to read a
transcript of the show, you wouldn't fully get what the
show is trying to convey, you know, like there has
(03:46):
to be the audio element, the sound of someone's voice,
the sound of someone's passion, you know, and then the
music and you know, like in a little bit of
the ambient and field tape. You don't tell a different
story than just the words being said it. You know,
we we just do it to serve the story. You
know that you can definitely overdo it. You can sort
(04:06):
of call a lot of attention to sound design. I
think we sort of pitch it the way I personally
like it. Like I like a good amount of music.
I like switching voices, you know, like I like, you know,
I talk, another person talks to other person talks. It
keeps the ear interested. I think there's some sort of
there's ways that when you're conveying information, UM, varying that
(04:28):
so that the ear doesn't get bored and then you
sort of your mind drifts off is really important. But
we also kind of play it by ear like there
isn't like a huge, um, I don't know, just like
a standard operating procedure or a certain mandate that we
when it comes to sound design. We we are really talented,
you know, um composer and Swan Real and engineer and
(04:49):
Martin Gonzalez and you know, they just make it beautiful
and uh and it just feels good to me. It
was always the show I always wanted in terms of
the way it's sound and have changes your trends in
the podcasting industry affected the way you approach things at all.
I don't know about the changes in podcasting. I mean
you to say that, I mean, I like the show
(05:12):
the way it is because I think it serves the
way the show is. Um. That is not to say
that I don't love things that aren't produced to our extent.
Like my my favorite podcasts are two people talking, you know,
like and there's something really lovely about that. Um. And
so to me, there's just always like there are these
different trends or you know, just like buckets of a
(05:34):
podcast that do different things and do them well and um,
and I think they all can co exist kind of nicely.
I mean. The main thing that happened with my show
is that it was really designed for radio, Like I
made it for public radio. Um. The original episodes are
four minutes long because they fit into a slot that
would go into morning edition. And and then I was
(05:57):
just like, well, I guess I'll put this out as
a podcast as whatever might as well. And so we did.
And then you know, and I say we there was
no weed it was doesn't mean at this point, for
many many many years it was just me and so UM.
And then when it started to find a life as
a podcast, UM, it was like, well, let's just keep
(06:18):
in that, like, let's make that a little bit longer
because I don't have to make it for minutes when
it becomes a podcast, and then it gets it just
grows and grows and grows, and eventually, uh, you know,
a switch flipped where the primary audience was the podcast audience,
which didn't have to adhere to some to sometime a
radio clock, um, and I was cutting a version for
(06:40):
the radio um, and and then it sort of was
off to the races and the sort of now every
story is what it is, um. And so in a way,
podcasting liberated me from what is the constraint of like
every type of broadcast journalists, which is like you're basically
either cutting to fit a time or feeling to make
(07:02):
a time. It's like a huge part of your job
as a producer. And I don't really do that anymore
based on some sort of artificial constraint. I still do
that based off of h my taste, Like I still
like things to be tight and you know, be purposeful
in their length. So in that sense, podcasting really really
(07:23):
changed and made it so like now the average show
is it's like thirty minutes long. It's like ten times longer.
Like it's really it's really something. Um, but this show
has kind of had its own trajectory um that I
don't know if it really follows the institutes of of
podcasting in general, but but I'm sure I'm influenced by
(07:44):
it some way. Anytime I listened to the show or
and engage with invisible content, I felt like I leave
it with my eyes just a little more open to
the design around me. Do you ever feel like, or
or hope that you're initiating listeners into sort of a
different understanding of world. Oh for sure. I mean that's
the ultimate goal. And and I know that it's effective
(08:06):
because it's been effective with me. Like, you know, I
studied lots of things to get to where I am.
I've been a journalist now for for twenty years, but
before that, I was working on in PhD and genetics.
I studied a lot of things. Um, I didn't have
a real specific knowledge of of design or architecture. I
(08:28):
was just a person who would like go on the
architecture door if I was in a city. You know,
and so I've always approached it as a journalist and
as a fan, and I've noticed that the show has
changed me over the years of making it, Like, as
I've told these stories about all the thought that goes
(08:49):
into things that most people pass by without noticing, I've
felt myself becoming more sort of keenly aware of the
world and how it functions, and actually kind of keenly
aware of how well we're taken care of in the
world in a certain way, Like it's turned me into
a more optimistic person to do this show, because you know,
(09:13):
a lot of people put a lot of care into
things so you don't die, like pretty consistently, or so
that you can operate smoothly in this world. And we
bump against the things that are poorly designed, and we
notice those we don't notice the visible things that are
so well designed that they pass our notice. And so
(09:35):
it has changed the way I view the world making
the show, and what I've heard from people has changed
the way that they look at the world. And that's
super satisfying because I think it's like it really does
improve your outlook of the world to think about the
design of things and you've been doing the show long
enough that you have listeners out there who have grown
up with the show, right, Yeah, we have someone who,
(09:58):
um who works the show now, Jacob Multa Medina and
her stepfather, you know, had her listen to the show
as a kid, you know, Like I think it's like
junior higher high school. So yeah, it's absurd. Yeah, a
lot of people have grown up with it, and it's uh,
it's it's pretty satisfying to have them. But when they
(10:19):
show up in there in their twenties, I'm blown away
by that. So now I guess on the other end
of the spectrum, you you still have people coming to
the podcast who are new to it. You've covered so
many design topics over the years. Um, I wonder what
your recommendation is for people who are new to it. Like,
I know, on your website, a visible dot Orgue, you
(10:41):
have a nice explore section that allows you to sort
of check out areas by topic, but in general, like,
do you tend to steer people towards the beginning, towards
the most recent or particular foundational episode, never the beginning?
Like I feel like when people tell me that they've
gone back and listen to all of them I'm like, well,
maybe I should take those down because I don't know
(11:03):
if it's worth it. UM, But I think that I
mostly say to listen to the most recent one. I mean,
the thing about an ongoing series is that no one
episode can um sort of encapsulate what you do. What
you do with an ongoing series is you're telling this
story over time, and it's like this weird regression plot
(11:25):
where it's like, here's a episode kind of like this,
and here's an episode kind of like this, and then
you draw a line through that regression plot and that
is the thesis of your show. And so no one point,
you know, like really exemplifies that, you know, especially you know,
especially when you know as makers, you're like, wow, that's
like it's about an eight percent of what I wanted
to be or you know whatever. And so mostly I
(11:49):
tell people to listen to the latest one. And you know,
we have a few classics, like there's this one called
Structural Integrity that want a lot of awards. That I
think is a is a good episode about you know,
a building almost falling down, and you know that's always exciting.
And what I don't want people to do is UM
in the beginning. I think it's fine to go search
(12:10):
through things that you know you're interested in and go
listen to them. But almost the point of the show
is that we're daring you without boring the subject is.
And what we're trying to do is, you know, is
the production is sort of creating this delta between how
boring an idea is and how we're going to present
it to make it so that you really, really truly
(12:31):
care about it. Um And so don't read the description
and go NA, that's not for me. Like, try if
you read the description and God ask not for me,
try just one of those and see if I can
convince you that this is interesting and applies to you
in some way. That's that's the main thing I want
from people when they try to show up. Thank thank
(13:00):
Now I'm a little late to the party here, but
I recently picked up a copy of the book Invisible
City that you co authored with Kirk Colstead, and it's Yeah,
it's a thoroughly enjoyable and insightful read, you know, highlighting
the details of the modern world and get going and
matching over what with what you just said, there were
you know, there were certainly sections of it that I
(13:20):
knew that I was going to be into into anything
dealing would say like underground infrastructure, and like the whole
section on infrastructure disguised as buildings and so forth. But yeah,
there's so much in it where suddenly there'll be a
section of the of the book that is dealing with
something that I completely take for granted sometimes every day,
and it's ultimately a fascinating and eliminating topic, like like
(13:44):
traffic circles for example. I mean that's the goal, is
that we sort of like, um, we could lure you
in with some things that you might be interested and
and then uh, and then we sort of lure you
into trying to pay attention to other things. And the
book was really interest to make because I've been making
audio for so long. Um, and you know, I think
(14:06):
I feel like I was approached about making a book,
like episode five of the podcast. There was this sort
of sense that books are the inevitable, like I don't know,
prize or something like, I didn't understand that. I just
I really wanted to make a podcast, um, and so,
but it took us for a long time to do it.
One of the reasons was, you know, the partnership and
(14:28):
making it with with Kirk coolest that it was required
that you know, he worked on it and be excited
about it. Um. And then the other was like, I'm
really into design, like in a real sense. And and
to me, it's like the show is designed to be
a podcast, and trying to you know, creating some kind
of deprecated, you know, transcription version of it was it
(14:51):
had no interest to me. But there was a certain
point where the volume of the things that we covered
audio is not really useful for like scrubbing through and
like it's cential, but it's not like, oh, I remember
this thing about curb cuts. What's the name of that episode?
And where do I find it? And what is it?
And do I have twenty minutes to listen to it?
(15:11):
And and stuff. And there was just a point where
all the stuff that we had covered in this sort
of territory we've staked out of our view of the
world wasn't being served by linear audio anymore. And a
book was kind of like felt like it was natural
and necessary and good and so um. So that's that's
(15:33):
what the book became. And so and it has a
lot of stuff that's from the show in it, but
also a lot of like new stuff that we can't
cover because you know, like as much as I enjoy
the perversity of um covering a lot of visual stuff
in an audio medium, UM to highlight the story nous
of it versus the aesthetics of things, UM, there's some
things that are just impossible to cover. And and things
(15:54):
like roundabouts where you try to describe the magic roundabout
which is like circles and circles and circles, and it's
like you can kind of get it, but I don't
know if you can really visualize it until um, you know,
you get some some pictures of it. Yeah. Yeah, that
that was definitely a part of in the book where
I was very thankful for the illustration, and I think
plenty of other places where you know, you're talking about
(16:15):
something and you can look at the illustration. Oh yeah,
that one that that's what they're talking about. I've seen
that thing, that particular star shape or or or whatever
the case may be, exactly exactly. It does require a
little bit of a little bit of help. Yeah, So
it's interesting that it sounded like it was kind of,
I don't want to say, a daunting task, but like
(16:36):
a task it was usually daunting. Its horrible. Yeah, it's
like it's really really hard. There's like, there's the scene
that I heard as we were making um the book
that was that the takeoff of the teach a man
to fish kind of thing, Teach the men of fish
and then yeah, give him an officially eats for a day,
(16:56):
teach the man official for a lifetime. Um, it's uh,
give a person a book they'll read for a week,
Teach a person to write a book, they'll never enjoy
anything for the rest of their last So it's really
really hard. Um. Yeah, But I mean like Curbly brought
it all together, I mean in terms of like the
writing and the kind of um organizing and project managing.
(17:20):
Like he really threw himself into it in a way
that it never would happened because one of the problems
with a really long deadline that a book gives you,
you know, like a yearlong deadline. Um, it has its
own problems. But when you have a weekly deadline of
a show at the same time, it's it's always possible
to occupy yourself with the immediate deadline and put off
(17:40):
the big deadline. And uh so anyway, it was really hard.
So well, I can said the the finished product is excellent,
and you you covered u this already. But the I
guess when one initially hears about a podcast becoming a book,
it's easy to think, well, okay, this is, like you said, this,
it's just some thing that that had to happen. This
(18:01):
is like the inevitable sort of cashier or the inevitable
even evolution of the thing. But but yeah, this this
doesn't feel forced at all. It's very absorbable and also
very just visually stylish. Thank you. I was really obviously
interested in the in the visuals of it, and and
our publisher was to they, you know, because I was
just like, you do understand that like designing, people listen
(18:22):
to our show and if the book is ugly, they
will never forgive you. And they sort of connected us
with Patrick Vale, who is the illustrator who worked on
you know, um hundreds of different illustrations both big and small,
to demonstrate what was going on, but also just to
kind of set the tone of it. You know. The
feel of it is is both kind of like precise,
(18:44):
but also it has a little bit of an abstraction
to it in in some instances, and I think it's
a beautiful object. And you're always trying to figure out
what to do when you create anything, or are you
creating something like a femoral and immediate or you're creating
like a permanent and beautiful object. And there's a balance
of that when it comes to audio all the time,
because you you could fuss over it endlessly to make
(19:06):
it a beautiful object, and you know, it's kind of
fleeting and ephemeral no matter what you do. Um, But
when you put all the effort into a book, it
is like it's incumbent. I think to make it. I
don't know, something's somewhat precious because of all these just
resources going into it, you know. Um. But I'm happy
(19:27):
with it, even though it had a a little bit
of an issue to figure out of of being you know,
kind of fish more foul like. It isn't really a
coffee table book. It is a book of stories. They
don't have to be read altogether in a row, but
they build on each other when they are read in
a row, and you kind of have to serve lots
(19:47):
of different audiences simultaneously. And again, this was something that
like Kurt and I had just endless meetings about just
the structure of the thing um, independent of the writing,
um to make it all work. So anyway, I'm glad
you liked it. I'm going on about it. Oh no, no,
this is all fascinating. Yeah. I have the physical version here,
and there's a digital version. But there is also an audiobook, right, yeah,
(20:08):
yeah there is? What was what was that like? Then?
Turning it back into I was horrible. It's like, I mean,
like I've been doing voice over you know, and narration
for for twenty some years at this point, reading an
audiobook is the hardest version of that, I think. And
even though and this is my own you know, like
(20:29):
style in our own writing, so you know, I know
the material better, but even that was exhausting. I was
realizing how little I talk in a row, even when
I record narration or to do interviews that Like, I
was like, oh great, I'll does knock out a couple
of hours reading or whatever, you know, every few days.
But I was exhausted by it. It was so hard.
(20:51):
And when and when any author and I know a
fair number of authors now that um you know, asked
me about you know, narrating work, I'm just like unless
you really want to like just avoid it. It's really
it's really hard. But you know, the publishers and and
and I know the audience. Um, they're used to the
(21:12):
sound of my voice. I think if for some of
them gives a certain amount of comfort. And UM, it
seemed important that it. It bade me to read it.
So I'm glad with the product. I'm glad we did it. Um.
I'm I'm also glad that we appended an episode of
the show UM at the end of the audio book,
just because part of me felt like, if you went
(21:35):
away thinking that me reading this book is the show,
you don't have a full concept with the show is.
And so I wanted to make sure that was present there.
And so, uh, I think it's a nice thing to have.
And I think if if somebody's like, oh I really
love it's not in visible, I want to listen to
eleven hours of it in a row. UM. It does
serve that. Um. But it was it was extremely hard.
(21:59):
I couldn't believe how hard it was. I was so
self conscious about it that, um, you know, we had
an independent um you know company kind of cut it together,
like who worked for the publisher and I would pre
edit it because I would mess up so much that
I would I would. I would send like an edited
version for them to go edit again, because I was
(22:20):
just like, I'm not this bad at this Normally I
should be. Anyway, I didn't want anyone to hear it.
Thank thank so. The title The Invisible City, Uh just
just leave open the possibility for future volumes dealing with
(22:42):
different rays of topics. Yeah, that was the idea in fact,
when we went out and pitched it. Originally, I pitched
it as kind of a set of books like, you know,
maybe one about cities, maybe one and about sort of
um roads and you know, by ways and highways type
(23:03):
of thing, and and then about sort of vernacular architecture
and specific to places. Um. We ended up sort of
like making the city one, like incorporate a lot of
that stuff already. Like as soon as we went out
with that, people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why don't
you just get one book instead of like plan your trilogy,
and um, they were totally right. But you know, this
(23:26):
goes back to the you know, the original name to
begin with is like I was making a show about design,
I wanted it to have this name. Not amercent invisible,
but I thought it was so evocative that I could
do a season about science. I could do a season
about something else. Um, there's so many things that you know,
(23:47):
in terms of explainatory journalism, that need to be explained better,
and most of them are pretty invisible to most of us.
So it kind of applies to a lot of things.
And so I could totally see, you know, a series
of books in different ways, or a kid's book version
or something. Yeah, I'm I'm open to it, but it
honestly hasn't the internal drive is hasn't quite like rebuilt
(24:10):
to like I said, like, oh my god, I really
want to go through that again. Now, the book deals
a lot with the space where design exists between kind
of I guess government and law on one side, and
user desire and experience on the other. You've you've alluded
to to one half of this earlier, talking about how
how safer the world feels with a lot of the
(24:32):
designs we have in place. UM, I know we can't
really place a value judgment on design itself, but does
design seemed to largely have a trajectory toward user safety
and happiness? I would say so, I mean design, design
is about functionality, and and it just sort of depends
(24:53):
on what master it is serving at a certain moment
as to whether or not it is serving uh, one
type of audience versus another type of audience or user rather.
And so you know, you could say some of those
things in the real world they work at cross purposes. So,
(25:14):
I mean, we just did a little segment of an
episode that Delaney hal did on the show about this
idea of strodes, which is like a portmanteau between streets
and roads. And the idea here is that a road
is a conveyance to get someone from one place together
as quickly as possible. A street is a place that
you occupy and live and their stores on it and
porkbenches and things like that. And when something is truly
(25:38):
a road, like a highway to get from one place together,
it works well. When something is truly a street and
um it is for um loitering and hanging out and
to being in places. Um it works well when things
are strodes, when they're designed to go through quickly, but
they have all these people in the way and um
stores that people are coming in and out of and
(25:59):
stuff like that. Then they work poorly and they tend
to be really dangerous. So you could say, well, it
was designed poorly, or you know, it's it's sort of
a little bit semantic, or like how you place the
emphasis of it. You know, I would say that that's
the the tyranny of thoughtless design creates a strode versus
(26:19):
somebody really try to make it this way on purpose,
you know, And so we do end up with things
at the end which are poorly designed, that are dangerous,
that that do not make the world a better place.
Um they are probably created from a constraint from this
type of constituency applying it in this way and then
another one to this way, and it creates this sort
(26:41):
of Frankenstein, which is a poorly designed thing. And that
is a you know, a version of cultural and you
know product evolution that is a result of you know,
people putting all their two cents and to create something
that is not very functional for most people. But I
do believe that when you do think of safety and
(27:02):
care in minds, that we do a good job of
creating those things in the end and actually anticipating things
that you may not anticipate and hopefully never have to
anticipate when you encounter them in the real world. You know,
like that that they're the safety things in place that
hopefully just make the world a better place, make you safer,
but hopefully you never have to consider whether or not
(27:25):
a signpost it's a breakaway post, or whether or not
trees along the side of the road, you know, like
you know they're there to make you feel crowded so
that therefore you do not go very fast. You know,
they're meant to add some agitation to you. Roundabouts, um,
like you mentioned our perfect example. I mean, one of
(27:45):
the reasons why roundabouts are so safe is because they
feel so awful when you enter into one. You have
to be really aware and being aware and making the
built environment um break you out of your you know,
like maybe your sort of road zomblification you know is
a good thing for your safety, um, but it might
(28:07):
not feel like a good thing when you go through it.
But somebody thought about that for you. And so for
the most part, I would say we endeavor to make
things safer, but there are definitely some gaps, and mostly
it's when a bunch of people are not coming on
the same page of what the design brief really is. Yeah.
And of course in the in the book you you
(28:27):
talked about some designs such as those intended to keep
unhomed people from laying on park benches that sort of yea, yeah,
there's lots of hostile design, and again it's serving somebody's purpose,
Like somebody is putting it there on purpose because they're
trying to um commit a kind of social change and
social pressure UM and influence through the bill world. Now,
(28:53):
the thing is that as privileged people, they're kind of
doing that for you. You know, they're doing it for
your benefit it you know, to the detriment of people
who have less. And the important part about that influence
is recognizing, um, do you really want that? You know,
like if somebody's making this decision for you, and if
if you don't know about it, then obviously you can't
(29:15):
sort of like you have any commentary. So our first
job is to make people aware of what these spikes
and these different sort of like hostile architecture you know,
like UM interventions are, And then the second step is
to go like, well is that a result you want?
And uh, do you want to like interact with your
(29:35):
study to change it? You know, it's it's it's the
second part of of that um discussion. You're a stroud
example reminded me of of partlets, which are also discussed
in the book. By the time the book came out,
and and certainly by the time of my reading it,
like everyone, I think, especially in urban areas, that heard
of partlets due to their role in the pandemic. But this, Yeah,
(29:57):
there's also an area that's between different ideas of what
the street or the road is used for. Yeah, a
parklet is a really interesting thing. There's a sort of
movement here UM called parking Day I'm in the Bay Area,
which sort of pioneered this idea of like, well, instead
of um, you know, putting a coin in a meter
to uh, you know, rent a space for a car,
(30:19):
why don't we put coins in the meter and like
lay down some sod and put on put some um
chairs down. And and it's something I've covered for I mean,
I've heart like twenty something here, twenty years at this point, um.
And then it really came to pass when all of
a sudden, we're in COVID. We wanted to be together,
but we needed space away from each other and space outside.
(30:41):
And you know when it comes to roads. You know,
for millennia, they have been these little multimodal use cases
like they you know, the people walked on them, people
rode bikes on them, people rode horses on them, vendors
set up in the middle of them. And then over
time we just decided that oh there for cars. You know,
you know, no one us blogs on them, and you
you can cross here and here, and if you crossed
(31:04):
anywhere in between, you're breaking the law. And and that
was where our values lied when it came to the
design of cities. You know, it's not where I would
place my personal values, but but that's you know, we
collectively kind of thought that that was a good case.
And then COVID comes along, and all of a sudden,
the value of that space changed and we wanted it back,
(31:27):
like as pedestrians and people and people um drinking coffee
and so, you know, we decided to bump out these
spaces that were used for cars so that we could
be outside and enjoy things. And it was kind of
fascinating because you know, the book came out right at
the kind of beginning of COVID, and it was an
interesting time to think about the design of cities. When
(31:52):
this um you know, outside influence made us rethink, you know,
how our cities should be designed very rapidly, you know,
and and and and thoroughly. You know, Like because one
of the things that happens when you're thinking about design
or thinking about your city is there's a there's kind
of a solipsistic kind of the way we enter the
(32:13):
world is the way things are and should be, and
we don't really think about the continuum we are on
when it comes to how cities are designed and should
be designed. Um. And so when you have a rapid
kind of jolt to the system and there's a reassessment
of space and the value of space in different ways, um,
(32:34):
it's a good time to think about, Hey, you know,
what maybe we do think about roads is belonging to cars.
But like if you look at this book or look
through history, you will realize that roads weren't about cars.
They were it's a pretty recent phenomenon that we thought
that that's what they should be. And maybe it's worth
reassessing these things. And I think if there's any sort
(32:55):
of thesis of the to the book or to the show,
it's that the built world and the things we design
are a window into our values as as humans, and
they always shift and change based on those values. And
when you have this moment of crisis when it comes
to the pandemic, it really did change our value of
(33:18):
what a city was for and who it was for,
and what was worth giving up and what wasn't worth
giving up. And um, you know, as horrible as the
situation was, it was fascinating to sort of figure out
those reassessments and realignments. And it it's still like, I
(33:40):
think some of the stuff that we figured out during
that period of time, Um, we'll still linger with us
for for a long time. And maybe that we completely
subsumed in different types of you know, normal life quote
unquote normal life will return different ways. But I do
think that there's like a sense that, yeah, these spaces
like we kind of want them back and we're never
going to relent and we're gonna give him back again. Um,
(34:03):
And and it's a it's a it was fascinating to
watch happened as we were talking about the books so much,
and also to see the results of it today. Al Right, Well,
the podcast is of course Invisible. The book is The
Invisible City. Roman Mars, Thanks for taking time out of
your day to chat with me. Oh, it was my pleasure.
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the show too,
(34:24):
so it's a real honor to be on. Thank you
all right, Thanks again to Roman Mars taking time out
of his busy day to chat with me. Here again,
the podcast is Invisible, and you can find Invisible anywhere
you get your podcasts, obviously, and the book is The
(34:45):
Invisible City, which is available in all formats. Like I
said in the interview, I've got the hard version here,
the physical copy, and it's just it's it's really nice,
really nice design in this so I highly recommend it.
As always, I want to remind you that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is a science podcast with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail,
on Wednesday's we do a short form artifact or monster
(35:07):
fact episode, and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and
just talk about a weird film. Thanks as always to J. J.
Pass Way for producing the show, and if you want
to get in touch with us, you can email us
at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
(35:31):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the
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