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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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.