Okay Frank, back it up, here coming, go to room, go to room. Frank just got himself a new Kia EV2. He loves everything about the car. How it looks, how it drives, its class-leading range, and its highly impressive spec.
In fact, the only thing Frank can get used to is how much bigger it feels than it actually is. Discover the EV2 for yourself at your nearest Kia dealer, Kia. Movement that inspires. This isn't quite 99% invisible, but I am one of the Mars.
A couple months ago, as you probably know, we released our first book, The 99% Invisible City. It became a New York Times bestseller, and it makes a great gift. I'm contractually obligated to say that. But one of the things that happens when you are promoting a book is that you get interviewed a lot.
And one of those people that interviewed me is probably my favorite interviewer, Jesse Thorne of the NPR show Bullseye, and he's also the head of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. This interview was really fun and actually got surprisingly personal, and I thought it would be interesting for fans of 9% Invisible. So here it is. This is me on Bullseye with Jesse Thorne.
It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne. My first guest this week is Roman Mars. Roman hosts the podcast 99% Invisible.
It's a show about the little-known stories behind everyday design and architecture. Things like prefab homes, trashcan design, those little ramps you see on sidewalk corners. How and why did stuff like this come to be? Now, after the show's been around for just over 10 years, Roman is exploring those same themes in a book.
The 99% Invisible City is a beautifully illustrated look at how cities work and why they work the way they do. Roman is also the founder of the podcast network Radiotopia. He's worked in podcasts and radio for decades. I've known him for nearly as long.
He actually came up with a name for this show, Bullseye. He sent it to me in an email. List of ideas. Unsolicited, by the way.
Anyway, I'm really excited to talk with Roman about his new book, so let's get right into it. My conversation with the great Roman Mars. Roman Mars, welcome to Bullseye. It's nice to talk to you.
Oh, it's so good to be here. Thank you so much. So congratulations, Roman, on finally utilizing a visual medium for your design and architecture podcast. Well, you know, it's a long time coming.
It's a big leap, but we finally did it, yes. Originally, it was kind of like made to order. It was in part driven by the desire of the AIA, an architecture trade group, to have an architecture show. And I wonder whether you would have done a show on that subject had someone not suggested that it might be cool, and what you were worried about, about trying to do audio about design.
I mean, I think I already had the interest in architecture, but I don't know if I would have necessarily jumped on it as a subject had someone not requested it. But what I always knew was I liked the idea of doing it on the radio because I knew that I and other people had real biases when it came to the image of buildings, the way buildings looked. And I was really interested in the problem-solving and design aspect of buildings, and I thought that actually on the radio, it actually made you understand the story of a building before you had the visual image, and that could make you love or appreciate a building in a different way. And I always thought that was our secret strength, actually, as a show.
Well, let's talk about buildings for a second. The show covers much, much, much more than buildings. But what is an example of a building that, if someone looked at it, they might not appreciate it in the way that they might appreciate it if they knew its story? Well, you know, one of the first buildings I ever really appreciated in this way was when I was in Chicago.
I was working at WBZ, and I took the architecture boat tour that the Chicago Architecture Foundation gives. So you go on this big boat, and a docent tells you stories about the buildings as you go along the river. And there's this one building in the Montgomery Ward Complex, that's the headquarter building, and it's a really basic, rectangular building. It has these big, concrete corners on it.
And I pass it all the time. I never cared for this building. I thought it was boring, modernism, really ugly. And then the docent told the story of the fact that the reason why it has these big, concrete support columns on the corners was because the Montgomery Ward Company at the time prided itself on this egalitarian hierarchy, and they didn't want their vice presidents fighting over who got the corner office.
And so they made a building that eliminated any possibility of a corner office at all. And it just kind of made me love it. And, you know, before, I thought of it as nothing ho-hum kind of building. And then I noticed, oh, there's real genius, even in the architecture that I don't appreciate.
It's interesting. Architecture and design are fields that, like any other specialized field, they're prone to specialization of knowledge and intense connoisseurship and, you know, professional knowledge and stuff that Joe Blow off the street might not get. They're also, at least theoretically, specifically created to be accessible, to be used. And that's kind of an interesting tension to me.
Like, I think of all the buildings on college campuses that the students all hate. Mostly, but not exclusively made of giant blocks of concrete. It's true. I think that's what I love the most about it.
And I think that the show takes into account the fact that this is the art and design that we live in. And it makes us feel a certain way. And we actually preference that when we present architecture. Like, we're not just the academic list of isms of modernism and ruralism.
You know, I like to pay attention to how these buildings make us feel. And that is part of the story. And it really is accessible because you feel it, regardless of whether or not you know anything about architecture. You feel this sort of sense of, like, wonder.
There's a reason why when you go to Washington, D.C., you kind of feel the federal government. You feel this sort of glory in this stuff. And they were onto something when they did that. And you kind of feel the heaviness of ruralism.
And then maybe I can tell you a little bit of the story of it to make you change your mind a little bit, to get beyond your initial visceral reaction to it. But that initial visceral reaction is totally valid and is part of the design and is worth talking about. I love the unintended and unintended consequences of someone's intent when they design something. And that weirdness that you might feel for some crappy concrete building that you have on campus.
The Mud Library at Oberlin is a brutalist, like, masterpiece. And everyone complained about it when I was there. Like, everyone thought it was oppressive and horrible. And it kind of is.
But it's also glorious, too. And I just, I didn't know enough to appreciate how it was glorious. The car is beautiful. Where did you end up going for it?
This exclusive place that Dallas Connections with? They have more cars for more viewerships than anywhere else. You have to put me in touch. What's it called?
It's Dune DL. Where? Dune DL? There's an accent on the E.
Do you mean? Yes, I got it on Dune DL cars. Lift, please. You're going past Kimmage?
Oh, Kimmage. No. Dune DL cars. You couldn't possibly go anywhere else.
It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne. My guest is Roman Mars. He's the founder of the Radiotopia Podcast Network.
He's also the host of the show 99% Invisible. I've listened to the show since, not to brag, but the first episode. But I've listened to the show forever. I remember very early on in the show's run having a conversation with you about it.
And you telling me that one of your guiding principles for the show was no stories about people, just stories about stuff. And I have to say, you know, all these, you know, a decade or so in, you have done a pretty good job of sticking to that. I mean, sometimes you have to tell the stories of people to tell the stories of stuff. But it's never like meet the man behind the Golden Gate Bridge.
It's this person did this interesting thing that created the Golden Gate Bridge. Why did you leave aside the number one easiest technique for feature journalism, which is this is the life story of the person behind the thing that you know? Yeah, we do it occasionally. And I do like humans to show up in the story.
And I do think that the story of the stuff is the story of humans and our values and the things we care about. But there's just something more fun about making a story about bigger ideas than a person and their feelings and not pulling everything down to some personal story. You know, like when you're watching a biopic and then there's that moment in the biopic, which is so on the nose as to why the person did a thing that, you know, they did later. And it's so just, it's painful.
Like it's cliche. It's hard to watch. And I just wanted to always make it about the idea. And there's great characters in there.
Like, you know, the Curb Cuts episode, you know, wouldn't happen without Ed Roberts. And Ed Roberts is a real character. But it's about things that are not just him, but about all these things around him. And I just think that's a more fun story to tell.
Tell me a little bit. We haven't even given an example of a 99% invisible story. So let's take that Curb Cuts episode. What was the design that that episode was about?
It was really about those little tiny four-inch ramps that make it so that a sidewalk doesn't come to a cliff, you know, when it reaches the street and makes it so that it's accessible to people in wheelchairs, but also makes it more pleasant for all kinds of people who don't want to like, who have a hard time stepping up or for people who are pushing a stroller or any type of mobility that's different from a completely healthy young person. And it's about those and about the fact that they really do symbolize this movement that Ed Roberts was a huge part of. He was the first quadriplegic to be accepted to UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley, you know, grudgingly sort of made accommodations for him. And he always pushed for it and pushed for other people.
And these Curb Cuts became the symbol of making a more accessible world, which led to the ADA and all kinds of progression and all kinds of progressive advancements in terms of people with different abilities. I don't think it ever would have occurred to me that sidewalks existed without Curb Cuts. And it feels like a big part of the show and a big part of the book is revealing the iceberg under the surface of the water behind things that you might not have considered like Curb Cuts. You know, you might just walk up them your whole life and it never occurred to you that they made sidewalks without them.
It probably wouldn't have to me. And there's this whole story underneath there. Yeah. I mean, that's what the name is.
99% visible. It's that the physical object is just 1% of the story in the history behind that thing. And what I love about it is in the 10 years we've done the show and with the book and as it's been introduced to new people is that there are these stories everywhere and they're really gratifying when you find them in the most mundane things. Like you notice them for the first time, even though you pass them all the time and you notice this richness there.
And then you begin to, you know, have a little bit more fanciful, interesting day because, you know, there must be more stories of this other stuff and maybe we'll look that up or maybe there's something like about that in the book. And that's the part I love about it. It's really fun to give people the sort of permission and a little bit of a prompt and a guide to help them find stories and delight right outside their door. You've always been a guy, in my experience, who really loves learning about something.
And I think all the time of this origin story you told me about how you became a public radio person, which, you know, I mean, I guess 99% invisible is no longer technically a public radio program, but certainly remains deeply rooted in public radio spirit for sure. And it was basically, you were getting a PhD in genetics studying corn and you're listening to Talk of the Nation when the great Ray Suarez was the host of that show. And you thought, well, I don't think I could do what Ray Suarez does, but I could probably be the guy that looks it up and puts it on a piece of paper and hands it to him. That's exactly what I thought.
I didn't know what that job was, but I was like, somebody reads the books and helps him be so good on the air. And I would be really good at that job. That's what I felt like I could do. So that's what I went to pursue.
So what was the thing that made you feel like you could be good at that job, but that you didn't want to be a professional scientist that you were, you know, you almost, you were very close to getting your PhD. I mean, you were 21 or some dude he has her age, but you were very close to getting your PhD at the time. So what led you to think I would be better at that than at being a scientist or job that also involves looking stuff up a lot? Well, I think to be a scientist, and I didn't know this because I was very good at studying science, but I didn't have the experience of being an actual scientist.
And there's a real difference in the type of, I don't know, it's like ego, but I don't mean that in any pejorative sense, that you're driven by the thing you want to discover so much. Like you want to be the person that does it. You want to devote all this time. And I just was like, well, I just kind of want to know things.
And it's a whole lot easier just to read about things other people discover if you just want to know things. And because I kind of knew I was wired that way, and I was a very poor bench scientist, like in terms of like pipetting things into tubes, I was extremely lazy. And all those sort of things together, I realized that I just really liked the pursuit of knowledge, and I thought that graduate school was just going to be a continuation of being in college, which is what I really wanted to do. And so I just thought that this job of being a radio producer was kind of like being in college forever.
And it turned out it kind of was. I write papers every week. I study things. You know, it's kind of just undergrad.
I just never left Oberlin. I'm very grateful for the help that I have making this show. Kevin's on the line right now, so I wanted to, my producer, so I wanted to make sure I said that out loud. You and I share the experience of having, and it's an unusual experience of having made a public radio show by ourselves.
I made the show by myself for many years, and you made Invisible Inc by yourself, and for a long time you made 99% Invisible Inc by yourself as well. Although, you know, you had people contributing in there in the early days. What did you learn from having to go on the air once a week by yourself without anyone to check if what you were doing was good, and without anyone to see how they were reacting to it? I mean, that's one of the specific radio things.
It's such a vacuum. What did you learn from generating that much stuff that regularly? I mean, I think you've learned a couple of things, and they're kind of almost the opposite things, which is like, you learn to have a certain amount of self-discipline and to listen to yourself and listen to your work to the point where you're so done with it that you're sure it's good enough. And then you also learn, if it isn't great or isn't perfect, it's okay.
It ain't that big a deal. There's a new thing out. You have to put some out next week, and it'll be fine. And I think that those two things helped me as a podcaster because I think one of the issues with podcasting in general is people get into it, and they love it, and they love to be producing stuff, and love to be talking and connecting with people and all kinds of other things.
But they didn't have that time where they had to discipline themselves in terms of the radio clock and how to fit stuff into time and how to not waste your audience's time. And I think that the work kind of suffers because of that. And so I'm glad I had a period of time where I was a meticulous self-editor because it may be better today. But I'm pretty loose when it comes to that stuff.
My team, 13 people work on the show now, including me, and they work in different capacities. But they'll pick out little things to pull out or to change or to have me retake something, and I'm just like, that's fine. I don't know why you're complaining. And I think that's what I'm doing for 20 years, and they're still in that stage where you have to do it perfectly.
They'll get to where I am. I think that is such an essential and underrated lesson, though. And it's like such a classic drama of a gifted child lesson to have to learn. Like, I see it with my kids right now, and I certainly, it's something that I can relate to, which is, you know, for much of my life, certainly my childhood and adolescence, my only solution to my perfectionism was just not to try and do anything.
And I think that one of the reasons that, you know, stage performance and going on the radio once a week was appealing to me was that you have to do it. And when it's done, it's done. You can't work. about whether it was you know you gotta work on the next one totally i think it's i think it's important lesson i think it's really good i remember i was you know i know a lot of people on public radio because of how i came up and so i was once you know like uh visiting hyy in philadelphia and watching terry gross do her show live and she kind of puts it together live you know there's some stuff that's recorded and i'm sitting back with her director roberta she's training the new director and we're just chit-chatting and stuff and i'm like do you have to uh pay attention here and she's like he's got he's doing a good job besides it's not brain surgery it's radio if you mess up you'll be fine and i just remembered so much heart in that because it's totally true like we're like i want it to be good i have a contract my audience to make something valuable to them and not waste their time and then beyond that you know like the story of the show is something that is a 10-year story it's not it's never encapsulated until one episode and so you just have to kind of let some of that go you know we'll still maintain like a quality that you're proud of and i think we do that each week but it's good to let some of it go when you go to a new city in times when traveling to new cities is possible or advisable what is the first place you go or the first thing you look for the first thing you ask about i mean what i think is fun now is if i'm if i'm feeling in the mood for it and it takes a specific move because i kind of let people know if i'm gonna go someplace if i'm if i'm doing this the best way and people know i'm coming to top of this building or something like that and that's sort of like that's the privilege of having like a show about design architecture as people like give you secret tours to things you know i i like to walk a lot and so i look for places where i can walk um and experience the city that way but each city is really you know really different and so it's kind of hard to generalize but i you know i do museum but like i like a good tiny museum like a weird specific tiny museum it's like a museum called moto in mexico city uh last summer which is the museum of everyday objects my spanish isn't strong my memory is objeto del objeto um something along those lines and uh man i'm so great yeah i love it i you know the postal museum in dc like you can go to all these service dog yep there's nothing like it this is a taxidermy dog that wears a vest covered in postal medals postal museum heavy with postal medals like poor dog they had to give him a new vest because he had too many medals on the first vest but he rode postal trains and postal inspectors and postal employees would give him medals at each post office he went to yeah it's a great great story like i like a good if there's a chance for taxidermy at a museum like all that especially weird taxidermy well i mean i also think that there are places that reveal themselves more easily than others like you know you lived in chicago i visited chicago a number of times i've taken that architectural tour that you described but i think you would be hard-pressed to walk around downtown chicago and not appreciate it it's totally it is beautiful like it's spectacularly beautiful whereas i live here in los angeles and you know los angeles is every bit the great city chicago is uh but you know there's a i'm not gonna lie there's a lot of ugly in la and a lot of the best stuff in la somebody's got to tell you about because it's a whole hassle to get there yeah and that's why like either either i talk to someone who's like a friend or i let people know who don't know me but know me through the show and you need a guide for most cities like you're totally right like chicago lays itself out for you like it is there to be appreciated you know like they and they focus on that but la is a place where you are told about a place that takes 45 minutes to drive there and it's like a or whatever and um and food is a good way to sort of get you in a lot of directions which is another way i like to navigate a city to see food and that's a great way to experience it i do i do like those cities where somebody you know has to be your guide they're just kind of harder for sure but they're worth it what are some things when you are walking around in open california where you live and you see that you might your eyes might not have landed on and appreciated before you did this show oh yeah well the show really opened my eyes in lots of ways so i love sidewalk stamps often the construction company who laid the sidewalk if they did a building and then they tore up whatever sidewalk there was there was sidewalk and they laid another one down and often put an imprint of the company on the sidewalk and those are all over the bay area and you can even see what the evolution of a company there's one like a schnor pavement and then there's a schnor and sons and then schnor brothers and you can see the evolution of like okay bringing the kid into the business and then dad retires and if you walk around berkeley streets you can see these stamps and they have so much history in them i think it's really amazing i love the different like easement markers that are like these little tiny embedded plaques that are like uh this space is not dedicated or something like that which are basically markers because the part of the sidewalk is often owned by the person owns the building not by the city but they're giving permission for the sidewalk to be there in order to sort of avoid adverse possession meaning that the city just takes over because they've had it for so long they have to put these markers around to say well no i own this property i'm gonna let you use it for now but i own it and i love that kind of weird like a legal strangely bureaucratic information layer on the on the city and i think that those things because they're so mundane and because they have this legalese language i think they're easy to not appreciate or not really think about but i i think about all the stuff that came forward and the cool kind of story there and i kind of like it's awkward bureaucraticness and i don't think i ever would have found beauty in that before the show there's one of the sidewalk stamps outside my house that's relatively old for los angeles living in a relatively old neighborhood for la and it's dated 1923 and maybe 50 100 feet past that sidewalk stamp the road ends there is in fact not a sidewalk it's just a narrow concrete road and turns into dirt and whenever i see that 1923 i think that is almost 100 years that they have not finished this road like 97 years ago they were like yeah we're about three quarters done and they just bailed there's a story there i don't know what it is but there's definitely a story there we'll finish up with roman mars in just a bit after the break we'll talk about how the covet 19 pandemic has affected the design of cities and which of those changes might become permanent the car is beautiful where did you end up going for it this exclusive place it has connections with they have more cars or more dealerships on anywhere else you have to put me in touch what's it called it's dunedial where dunedial there's an accent on the e do you mean yes i got on dunedial cars lift please you can't pass kimage oh kimage no don't deal cars you couldn't possibly go anywhere else welcome back to bullseye i'm jesse forn my guest is roman mars he's the host and creator of the design podcast 99 invisible he just released a new book based on that podcast it's called the 99 invisible city it's available now let's get back into our conversation so one of the stories about design that's often investigated on 99 invisible is the tension between the world as it is designed by designers and the world as it is used by users you know the classic example being a park with paths concrete pavers or whatever and then all the corners have diagonal dirt paths through the grass because people don't want to make 90 degree turns to take diagonal routes and i feel like living in a pandemic we are seeing design as it is practiced flourishing around us simply because it was something that was not planned for yeah and something we don't have enough understanding of necessarily to make perfect plans about um what do you see around you in terms of design that is a response to the pandemic well i mean that's what i love most about cities is i think that the city is this ongoing conversation between top-down design and bottom-up intervention and that's where all the stories come from and by the fact you boil down the show is kind of what the show is about in the end and so desire pass is a perfect example of that and what i noticed you know like in response to the pandemic was what i first noticed how quickly everything happens like that the tape on the floor and the plexiglass and all that stuff like went up so fast and i was sort of bowled over by the ingenuity of everyone uh fixing plexiglass to to like counters in ways and like you know having like a 2x4 and an eye hook and then a string and then plexiglass hanging and then it being bolted i just was sort of amazed how quickly all that stuff came up and you know some of it's super kludgy and some of it's you know not very fun to navigate but um i mean one of the things that i noticed about the pandemic was how it's illustrating how ad hoc and haphazard the evolution of the city is and it's always been this way it's just like we're seeing it in real time as we're dealing with the pandemic and that is super fascinating the parts that they can take on on their own and then there's a whole response during the summer with all the protests and you know like plywood coming up and then how people kind of respond to like especially in oakland you know like they're trying to like express solidarity and they're like you know please don't smash this because i have this oscar grant poster up you know or something like that and or george floyd mural and there's that response where people are trying to express themselves and you know say like oh we're part of this too and we're expressing our support and that conversation is what makes the city interesting and that's the stuff i'd like to look at and what will be interesting to see is what stays you know like i've noticed that the tape on the floor has turned into design decals where they have little footprints and have a little statement on them that say you know social distancing six feet or something like that whereas it used to just be blue painter's tape or something and you know maybe that stuff will stick maybe it won't maybe the sidewalk cafes will look in the parklets and all that stuff that people are experiencing will say you know it's hard to say this is very personal to you because you lost your father to covid very recently yeah i did yeah and i saw that one of your first reactions to it publicly was upset over the system yeah and not you know not necessarily the system in the you know rage against the machine sense but that if if someone had been at the wheel doing some designing and thinking systemically that maybe your father would still be alive yeah i was it was one of the big like almost overriding emotions like when it came to him and his sickness and death one of the things i felt a ton of was just how unnecessary his illness was because it was a thing that the federal government you know just didn't take on and this became a political thing and you know he he died unnecessarily for dumb politics because somebody couldn't get out of their way enough to just like to care about the citizenry and um this is what governments are for you know this is and i'm a believer in government so like i live on the opposite spectrum of so many things when it comes to donald trump but one of them with him and a lot of his republican compatriots is that i believe in government i believe that government is a representation of the things we do that we can't do alone and that we work together to create a better world together and we do that and we call that government and that's not something to be ashamed of or to be dismissed or something that needs to be made so small as to be non-existent and this is the time when we need it because an individual's response like there's nothing that my father could do like he caught covid in the hospital like he was undergoing another procedure for um he had some vascular disease like he was not a healthy man so that made him susceptible to covid but um you know he he did the things that you're supposed to do at least i hope in terms of uh you know keeping him safe um from coronavirus but he caught it anyway uh because there's a health system in ohio is overwhelmed with covid cases and that there being one of covid cases is something that we could have stopped and it makes me mad that we didn't stop it it makes me sad that we didn't stop it it's a tragedy that we didn't stop it and we're still not stopping it we're still like having fights about politics of masks and staying home uh when there's real things at stake here and they seem abstract to people but they're not abstract you know there's a quarter million people have died and this requires some thinking it requires us thinking about the whole because the little parts of these sacrifices and little parts of things we have to do you know like is i understand that they don't seem that important because you live your life a certain way and you're healthy in a certain way but the totality of these choices they have to be thought of as a design system and and if they're not the response is the result is um people like my father die you know i'm i was really uncomfortable with the single day that i i put that on twitter and like 70 000 people like shared it like that or something like that i was really overwhelmed by being the center of people's emotions for that day that's not a place i love to be but i do think it's important for people to share those experiences yeah well thank you for taking this time and thanks for your great work i've i've loved your show for so long and i've been i love the book and i'm very grateful to consider you a friend so thanks roman um thank you so much i'm so grateful i mean i should let people know that like you telling people to listen to the show and i'm invisible was one of the first ways we got an audience so i'm grateful for you well you helped invent this job and yet do people know that that i named bullseye yeah you named it roman mars it was great to talk to you about your great book and your great show thanks for coming on bullseye always my pleasure thanks for having me roman mars the 99% invisible city is available to buy now you can get it from your local bookshop or on the 99% invisible website that's the end of another episode of bullseye bullseye is created from the homes of me and the staff of maximum fun in and around greater los angeles california where you know they say red tape prevents you from building homes here in los angeles but they sure are building one right across from my living room so you know sorry if you've heard it the show is produced by speaking into microphones our producer is kevin ferguson jesus and jordan cowling are our associate producers we also get some help from casey o'brien and kristen bennett our interstitial music is by dan wally also known as djw our theme song is by the go team thanks very much to them into their label memphis industries for letting us use it if you want to hear the latest about what we are up to you can keep up with the show on twitter at bullseye on facebook at facebook.com slash bullseye with jesse thorne and on youtube just search for bullseye with jesse thorne post all of our interviews there i think that's about it just remember all great radio hosts have a signature sign-off bullseye with jesse thorne is a production of maximum fun.org and is distributed by npr that was me talking with my friend jesse thorne you should really listen to bullseye his interview with david letterman this year is like in my top five favorite podcast episodes of the year we will be back with me hosting our annual mini stories next week take care radio radio