99% Invisible - 427- Mini-Stories: Volume 11

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

In this set of short stories, 99% Invisible producers talked with host Roman Mars about everything from the Fresh Air Movement to the lost Lenin in Antarctica. Mini-Stories: Volume 11

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. This is part 3 of the 2020-2021 mini-story episodes, where I interview the staff about their favorite little stories from the bill world that don't quite fill out an entire episode for whatever reason, but are great at 99 PI stories nonetheless. We have music games with Sean Raeow, lost statues with Joe Rosenberg and overactive heaters with Delaney Hall. Stay with us. Hey D, what do you have for us today? So today I want to talk with you about old radiators and have you ever lived with an old radiator? I have. Where we met, like, I don't know, 15 years ago in Chicago, when we worked together at the

station there, I lived in at least one apartment that had a radiator, which was, yeah, it was a confounding device. Yeah, I mean, they are notorious for being loud, you know, like clanking a lot. loud, you know, like clanking a lot. And also just for being too hot. Yeah, blisteringly hot. Right, right. So I don't know if you've ever wondered why that is. But I recently, I recently learned that there is a reason for it. And it's actually related not to this current pandemic we're all living through, but to the flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919. Well, I've heard a little bit about this, but I don't know the full story, so I'm excited that you're bringing this to us. Yeah, yeah.

So, first of all, I learned about this history in an article in Bloomberg City Lab. It was reported by Patrick Sisson. And it was kind of through that article that I found, Dan Hallahan. So he grew up in the heating industry. His dad worked for this plumbing and heating wholesale are in Manhattan. And now his family runs a website called HeadingHelp.com. He wrote a book called The Lost Art of Steam Heat.

I mean, basically he's just really into heating, specifically steam heating. It throws such a lovely radiant glow on you. It's like being on the beach. And it's just a wonderful way to heat. And the dogs are always sleeping in front of it. And the cattle pop up on top of it. People will dry their hats and gloves on top of it. It's just a, feels like home.

So he can go on and on waxing poetically about steamy for a long time. I love it. And he got, he got really interested in the history of steam heating in the US. And he said that as he started doing this research, he was looking at these primary source documents, like these old technical manuals. And he kept coming across references to the fresh air movement. I'm on board with the fresh air movement. I'd follow Terry Gross into the gates of hell. I think we're all part of the fresh air movement. Yes. But this is a different

fresh air movement. Well, that's too bad. Well, to work on the other one. This one, not with Terry Gross, was a health crusade. It started right after the Civil War. And proponents of the fresh air movement basically thought that stale, uncirculated air was bad, like very bad for your health. They called it vitiated air, which means spoiled air. And they thought that spoiled air was everywhere. Like we were just steeping in it.

People didn't bathe regularly. There was an unventilated stove that would be in the place. So they just said it's dirty air, and it's coming off your body, and it's coming out of your mouth, and you're smoking, and all these things are going on in a sealed apartment that doesn't have good circulation to begin with. So that caught everybody's attention because it wasn't the killing people. And so this was pre-jermeterry, right?

Yeah, it was. Yeah. They have a concept, the mechanism of why unventilated air might be making them sick? They didn't really, at this point, they were just sort of starting to realize that something was up. Yeah. at this point, they were just sort of starting to realize that something was up. And one of the main proponents of the Fresh Air Movement was a guy named Lewis Leeds. He had been an inspector for the Union Army Field Hospitals. And he got really interested in this idea of Vitiated Air. He was convinced that something about

it was making people ill. And he actually teamed up with Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's cabin. Yeah, and they created this traveling road show. They would basically go across the country and give lectures with these magic lantern type slides. She got like mom and dad sitting in the parlor and in crows the baby in a long gown and the baby the baby spun it and the baby crows into these vapors that are coming out of the man and they're done in reds so you see comes out of his mouth and it goes to the floor and

the baby crows into this cloud and the next slide the baby just kind of topples over and dies. Wow that's an extreme form of scared straight. Yeah. As you can imagine, it was pretty effective. They really caught the attention of lots of people. And I was really struck by when Dan was describing these lantern slides that they would show, it really actually reminded me of the coronavirus diagrams you'll see where there's like two people talking to each other and they're sort of spuing red and blue virus droplets all over each other. Yeah, yeah, no that that's scarred me. That in the 90s reports from like 2020, they which are the black lights on hotel rooms of all the organic splatter all over hotel room. I'm scarred for life for that.

So these were sort of like the 19th century version of that. And they were part of what helped the fresh air movement really take hold. So it gets very popular. And it gets so popular that building designers actually started adapting their buildings to bring in more fresh air. The tenements suddenly, you know, as they come into their own, have to have their shafts and you have to have more windows and you can't have these hobbles.

You know, like you see in the gangs in New York, that sort of thing. So things got better, but then, you know, it took a crisis like this managed flu to really kick it into high gear. What's going on is around this time, and the 19 teens, there are these two things that are happening concurrently.

And one is the flu pandemic, which, of course, was a devastating global pandemic that was killing hundreds of thousands of people. And then, at the same time, steam heating is really getting going. So steam heating systems are being installed in buildings across the country. And health officials at the time were starting

to push this idea that people needed to keep their windows open even in the winter. And they needed to do that to increase ventilation and minimize flu spread. And if people were going to be keeping their windows open through the winter, they needed like some pretty oversized radiators. And they was saying that because of the first year movement, we have to start designing systems big enough that they can heat the building on the coldest day of the year with the wind blowing and the windows on. Okay, so this is what radiators like even today can be so overpowering because they need to be that hot for the windows to be open.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And many of those radiator systems were so sturdy and so well built that they are still in use today. Yeah, the one that was in my apartment was certainly put into the 1920s. Yeah. And the kind of interesting thing is that once the pandemic was over, people began to wonder, why do we have the windows open,

oh that was because of the flu but that's that's gone you know more than 10 years, close the window so they close the window and now they're stifling because it's so hot, ask anybody those who have been having an apartment you know now it is. And so all of those you know stifling people started insisting that something be done about this stifling people started insisting that something be done about this. And what ended up happening is that basically a whole industry arose to retrofit those big overpowering radiators. So companies began to develop the radiator covers. And other people would paint their radiators with this special paint. But if you use something called a bronzing paint, specifically an aluminum bronzing paint, which has flakes of metal in it,

that will reduce the radiators ability to radiate by 20%. So just by painting the radiators silver with this special paint, you're downsizing it. And this is why radiators are all silver for the most part. Wow, I knew the idea that was why they were silver. I mean, they were very often so far. Yeah, yeah, they are. It also must be made worse by the fact that the building around it is becoming more

thermally efficient. Like buildings, you know, trap more heat in than they used to, and that must make it even worse. Yeah. Yeah. Compared to, you know, the 19 teens buildings now are basically like hermetically sealed. In some office buildings, you cannot open the windows. It's not designed that way.

It's not an option. And so, as you can imagine, that has become an issue with our current pandemic. You need a lot of air coming in. You need a lot of air coming in. You need fresh air. So and many of these high-end modern buildings can't do that. And then Windows don't open. So this is where we're faced right now. What do we do with that? I have been wondering if this current pandemic would shift us back a little bit more towards open-air buildings because the need for fresh air and space

seems as necessary as it was in the 19 teens. Right, yeah. I think there's two forces kind of pulling in opposite directions. One is that knowledge that we have now very vividly that buildings need to be ventilated. And then also this continuing pressure to make the more energy efficient because of climate change.

So it'll be interesting to watch what happens. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that struck me as we were doing a bunch of episodes in the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdown is how many things that we're trying today to slow this pandemic down, like masks and quarantine and open windows, they're so old. They were the same techniques that were, they were people were doing a hundred years ago. I know, I know, I know, it sort of feels like the vaccine, that is this, you is this monumental achievement of modern science. Yeah, especially these vaccines.

Yeah, these vaccines, but everything else we're working with is like a really old technology. Just like stay away from each other, cover your faces, open the windows. That's what we've got. That was senior Producer Delaney Hall. To read Patrick's Sissence Full Story of STEAM heating and its connection to the history of the 1918 Flu Pandemic,

visit Bloomberg City Lab and to learn more about Dan Hollahan, visit heatinghelp.com. help.com. All right. So I'm here with producer Joe Rosenberg. Hey, Roman. How's it going? I'm good. I'm good.

So what is the many that you have for us today? Well, so what I've got for you here is a kind of mini sequel. Okay. Because if you passed your memory back, not actually too all that long ago, you will recall 99PI produced a story about monuments to Lenin. Right, right. Julia Barton to this right for us. It's kind of about what happened to all those Lenin monuments in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 91. As our listeners probably know, and probably know, even if they didn't hear that episode, after the Soviet Union collapsed, a great many of those statues of Lenin, busts of Lenin,

and really all sorts of monuments to Lenin were toppled. They were torn down or pulverized or even like... Stammatically. Yeah. tossed into the black sea and consigned to various other sad fates. Yeah. And I think what the story was centered on, and what was interesting to me is that there are some still standing in Russia that the ones that weren't destroyed,

that were put in these Soviet nostalgia parks alongside statues of other former communist leaders. It was a way of dealing with this history without completely destroying it. Yeah, exactly. They kind of almost like bracketed it off. They just kind of met a frame around it. And so everyone was able to look at it and you could just project what you wanted onto

it in this kind of safer space or something. That is the main thing that most people know about these old Lenin monuments, which is that most of them are gone or defunct in one way or another. But I am here to tell you that there is one monument to Lenin that not only lives on, but I think it's safe to say it will not be toppled anytime soon. It is arguably, arguably the most secure Lenin in the world.

Okay. So why is that? Why is this one survived? And we'll probably survive amongst all the others that have been toppled. Well to answer that, first of all, let me ask you, have you ever heard of something called a pull of inaccessibility? No, I haven't. It sounds a little ominous.

What is the pull of inaccessibility? So a pull of inaccessibility, it's both ominous and not. It is the geographical term that indicates the location on a given landmass that is further from the coastline than any other spot on that landmass. So every continent and every island has its own pole of inaccessibility or POI. So for example, North America's POI

is on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It's 1,030 miles from the nearest coastline. Asia has a POI in the desert of Western China. It's about 1,500 miles from the coast. But even something like the island of Great Britain has its own pole of inaccessibility. According to the British Ordnance Survey, it is near church flat farm in the county of Derbyshire

and is a mere 70 miles from the coast. It's not that inaccessible. No, I think you could knock that one out pretty easily if you wanted to. But anyway, the reason I bring this all up is because way back in 1958, a team of scientists from the Soviet Union became the first people to ever reach the southern pole of inaccessibility. And so this is the POI for Antarctica. Is it actually the South Pole or not?

No. So the South Pole is closer to the coast because if you think about it, like there's that like big chunk taken out of like one side of Antarctica. It's a little lopsided, right? It's got that chunk taken out of it. And so the South Pole is actually much closer to that coastline than the pole of inaccessibility, which true to its name for these Russian scientists was really hard to get to. It's like really inaccessible. Oh yeah, like it was. So by definition,

further inland than the geographic South Pole, plus, you know, it's Antarctica. So, you know, it was already also on the higher and colder part of the continent. And then the further you are from the shoreline, the colder it tends to get. So, you know, we met to the South Pole in 1911, but when the Soviets finally got to the Southern Pole of an accessibility, that took them another half century to reach. I mean, I guess it has not, doesn't have a lot of symbolic virtue and it seems like a horrible place. So why would you bother? They weren't really in a rush to get there. And apparently they weren't in a rush to stay there either because once this team of Soviet scientists got there, they tried to set up this

meteorological research station, but it was like insanely cold. The average temperature was something like negative 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Average. Oh my God. Yeah. That's horrible. So right. So like just after like 12 days, they were like screw this. And they left. Yeah, smart. Good call. Yeah. Excellent call. But before they return to civilization, they left behind a bust of Lenin. Of course. It's just the Soviet thing to do. And so here, let me show you a photo of what it looked like. Wow, there it is. There's Lenin, a bust of Lenin, right on the top of,

a kind of like a pedestal of some kind. What is that? So that is actually the chimney of the research station, and which they dragged all the way there, like a pedestal of some kind, what is that? So that is actually the chimney of the research station and which they've dragged all the way there, thinking probably that they'd use it for longer than 12 days. But now it serves this function of making sure Lenin is as lofty and dignified as possible as he gazes out over the white expanse.

I mean, despite this start surrounding, so I mean, this look like just a classic Lenin bust, like generic Lenin bust. Oh, yeah, totally the furrowed brow, the jutting chin. It's almost like at the last second before they left, they just grabbed a spare Lenin off the shelf and just kind of took it with them. So I confess, yeah, it's not much to look at,

but I kind of think of it as like the gargoyle on the top of a cathedral, because like after they left, it was never intended to be seen by anyone. Right, like the gargoyle has a function, but the people on the ground can't see gargoyles. They're meant for the designer of the church and maybe for God and that's it.

Right, exactly. Or in the case of this Lenin, pleasing to the materialist, forces him, Marxist, the Leninism. It sounds like I'm joking, but they even oriented it so that it would forever face towards Moscow. So are these pictures you're showing me from when it was erected or did people come afterward to check it out? How inaccessible is the land

at the pole of inaccessibility? He's pretty inaccessible. These photos are the originals. There was a brief spurt of visits by pole of inaccessibility standards in the 1960s. The Soviets went back super briefly in 64, then in 65 an American research team dropped by, climbed up the pedestal

and swiveled the bust so that Lenin faced towards Washington DC. At which point, learning of the American antics, the Soviets came back down one last time and swiveled him back towards Moscow. I mean, this is an aspect of the Cold War that I can totally get behind. Oh, yeah, I mean, if the whole Cold War was just like somehow like dueling pranks for the sake of like national pride, that would be

a much better. After that little back and forth, after that little duel, for many, many decades, there was nothing. The Southern POI went kind of forgotten and unvisited, which means that all through the rest of the Cold War and Paris-Stroica and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, as all the other statues and busts of Lenin were being toppled all over the world. This one lonely Lenin just sat there untouched by the forces of history. So it wasn't toppled by people marking the fate of planning on the P.O.I.

So this is where the story takes a turn because when people finally returned to the area in the mid 2000s, the official position of the P.O.I. Had actually changed in the intervening years due to like updated calculations. So the new focus was on being the first to go to these new coordinates and nav that record. And checking up on Lenin to see if he was still kicking just it just wasn't a priority. But nevertheless, there was at least one person who continued to believe that Lenin was still there at the old P.O.I. and could be found. There's no way I was ending on the Let Good. So one way or other, I was crawling to the pole of an accessibility. I was always going that.

So who is that? So that is Henry Cooxon. And today he runs an adventure travel outfit called Cooxon Adventures. But back in 2006, he was not a professional adventure. He was just kind of a random dude who along with two other friends, Rupert Longsden and Roy Sweet, just kind of got obsessed with finding this bust of Lenin at the southern pole of an accessibility. Oh yeah, none of us had a clue. I had my two. We didn't know where the North South, we didn't

know where the penguins were North or South. We didn't know the polar bears we knew nothing about these areas. Please, I was like the right man for the job. Yeah, but I actually do firmly believe in beginner's luck. Like you don't know, you're not supposed to do certain things. So you just do them and then you kind of get away with them. Everyone else they consulted with basically said, why even bother at this point? Because even if you get there, you're not going to find anything.

They just looked at us and said, Lenin is going to be buried under the snow. Huge structures have been buried over the decades. So a small little statue that no one's been to in 40, 50 years without doubt it's not going to be that. Oh, wow. So so they could be right on it right there, but Lenin could be so buried they would not actually find it. Correct. So they hired a fourth person, a veteran Antarctic explorer named Paul Landry to help supervise their team. But there was still this complication because even though great

parts of the Antarctic ice sheet are you know, calving away due to climate change, the middle of the continent, the snow is still just accumulating and then compacts down into ice. And at the pole of inaccessibility, one of the things that makes it a challenging place to go is that the ice there is, I believe, 13,000 feet deep. But nevertheless, just by the odds, they decided to go look for a linen. And so they went down to Antarctica. They used kites to help pull themselves in their supplies across the ice. That's cool. Yeah, and I will skip over the details of the journey itself.

You know, insert your standard extremes of Antarctica statistics here. But I will just say that to reach the suspected location of the Russian station took them 46 days. Holy moly, oh my god. The whole way there was just pure horizon. And almost entirely flat featureless landscape. And after this monotonous journey, they had to contend with the possibility that when they got to the coordinates, Lenin would be so buried in the snow that all they would see was more flat featureless landscape.

We had only seen white, you know, white snow and sky on our own cells and tent for the last 50 odd days. And we reached the said coordinates. We are absolutely exhausted with freezing cold, and we can see nothing. So, you know, we agreed to keep on pushing. And after a few minutes, I see this tiny little black dot on the horizon. A few more minutes, and this little black dot starts to grow into something more substantial, and then suddenly you can make out, you know, the outline of a man. And there was this silence, we put down our kites, and we just walked, we walked in silence up to this statute, and there. And there was there was let it.

Wow, I cannot believe they found them. They did. He wasn't buried under the snow, at least not yet. And I have to say, I just love this part of the story because here's a photo of what Lenin looked like when they did find him. Wow. So it's really just the top of the chimney

that's left and the bust. I mean, that he's just barely hanging on. It's been reduced to a kind of, I don't know, what do you call it, like a plinth? I don't know. Yeah. To give you a sense of scale, the snow had been accumulating obviously

in the previous 48 years, but it hadn't quite made it all the way up. The original chimney of the Russian station was maybe let's say 30 feet high, and now only about six to seven feet were left. Making the Lenin at that pole of inaccessibility a tad more accessible. Yeah, you can reach up and touch it, yeah. Which is exactly what they did. The really bizarre thing was, you know, we're expecting this to be a bronze or something, you know, a steel, and it was made of some sort of weird yellow plastic

compound, which is very light. You could you could pick him up. Did you pick him up? We did pick him up, yeah. Did they make him face towards London or something? Yeah, so of course I asked Henry precisely that and he said no. They left him facing towards Moscow, but not before goofing around just a bit. He might have been dressed up a little bit. Nothing too reverent. We put a hat on him and some goggles and pictures of us all, group, hubble around him and everything else. I think he's left with his pride intact. I'm glad they left his pride intact, but it sounds like he's not going to last for that much

longer because if the ice has accumulated around 20 feet in the 50 years and there's only about six feet left. It seems like Lenin will be gone in another decade or so. Could you remind me when his expedition was? Yeah, so Henry's expedition was December of 2006 is when they started. They found Lenin in January of 2007. So it's already like, you know, 13, 14 years. And so do people know if Lenin is still there? Is it almost up for Lenin? So of course, that's the big question, right? And as it turns out, the Russian station has been visited at least two more times since then. And of course, each set of visitors took the obligatory photo posing next to Lenin.

So here's a photo of an Norwegian team that got there just one year later in 2008. Oh, so yeah, he's already lost a foot at least, you know, maybe maybe two or three feet. The bottom of the top of the plinth right where the bus starts is just about chest height on most of these guys. I'd say it shaved off. Let's go with a foot. I think a foot. Okay. But even more recent data, much more recent data, is from this photo taken by a solo Australian

adventure who went, basically, you went yesterday. This photo was taken in December of 2019. And this one, it looks like a, like, maybe two foot off the ground. He's sitting in this photo, but if he stood up, he would be taller than that. Above it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My tall. Yeah. Yeah. I will say, however, that I do, I do think that this like kind of drab cookie cutter Lenin with its standard issue, define expression.

Is the perfect statue for this situation? Like, you know, because like he never looks worried. Like even as the ice encroaches, he, he seems to just be saying, like, you know, because like he never looks worried, like even as the ice encroaches, he seems to just be saying, like, you know, bring it on. Yeah, he's definitely is facing this fate with a sort of admirable stoicism. But like, but his fate is coming no matter what. I mean, like, if I were to gas or like it, it did about another foot in a, or two feet in a year. I mean, you're talking five years max before he's gone for good. Is there any notion that, you know, you should save

him? I mean, it's just a blast to see bust of Lenin. They just like take him or what do you think will happen? Well, for starters, it would be a treaty violation. To take him. To take him. Yeah. Antarctica is under the joint jurisdiction of take him. That's true. Yeah. Antarctica is under the joint jurisdiction of the signatories of the Antarctic treaty. And in 2012, the signatories approved a list of historic sites and monuments to be preserved.

And there's a lot actually there for like 86 monuments on the list. 86 monuments on Antarctica. Let me just tell you, there's a surprising number of plaques in Antarctica. plaques which no one reads. Right exactly. But you know, I think this time, 99 PI can forgive our listeners if they haven't read the Antarctica plaques. But coming in at number four was the bust of Lenin at the Southern pole of inaccessibility. Oh, so this is one of the historic monuments that has to be preserved? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And if it's number four on the list, it's funny. You can see them.

This one is listed by Denmark, and this one is listed by the US. And I think this is either the first or second one listed by Russia. It's like the bust of Lenin stays. So if you tried to move it, Putin would have you killed. Of course. But I personally think there's an even more important reason not to move it, which is, well, actually, let me ask you from an artistic or even philosophical perspective, would you, Roman, want to see it saved and return to civilization or left to the elements. Oh, left to the elements. No, no question. It should be buried. That's like part of the art

project. Is it being buried as far as I'm concerned? Yeah, and I have to totally agree with this. The whole thing that makes, it gives it poetic appeal is that he is at least most of the time going unseen by anyone. He almost would like kind of reach his platonic ideal unseen by anyone. He almost would like kind of reach his platonic ideal by being rendered completely inaccessible and completely unseeable. And you know, another person who feels this way is Henry Cooxon. He said he considered taking it for a moment. It was a very fleeting thought of putting him in our pub and bringing him home. So yes, there's a huge temptation to take it, of putting him in our pile, and bringing him home. So yes, yes, there's a huge temptation to take it. But no, I think he should remain where he was put. I think if you could get there and his sort of the snow sort of halfway up his face or something, that would be cool.

Like only his bald head, his slap sticking out before that too is consumed by the snow. Yeah, his final, you know, that finalp, and then he's disappeared into a silent icy grave, you know, that would be poetic. Well, thank you, Joe. This is a really amazing story. I love it. Thank you so much, Roman. This one was a pleasure. I'll play some music games with Sean Rial. We're going to compose a song together after this. All right, so I'm here with our composer, Sean Rial, who has a mini story for us, and

you always have a music related mini story for us every year. Mm-hmm. So that's the cases here too. Yep, it is, yeah, very much so. I love talking about music. So what do you have? So today we're going to talk about music games and specifically like music composing games, which is a term, an umbrella term I kind of came up with.

I couldn't really find something that really, to really put all these things together, but I swear it feels related. So, okay, so, you know, so these are music games, but not like rhythm games, which I think is what a lot of people think of if you hear the term music game, like rock band or pop it or, you know,

the clapping games that you play on the playground. Right, right. Did you ever play those games, Roman? Rock band for sure. Like I have a rock band set in my house. I still like, I love rock band. Yeah. There's a lot of fun. What about the clapping games? I don't know if I know any clapping games off the top of my head. I know the mainly from, there was this amazing sound recordist and sort of audio anthropologist named Tony Schwartz. He was also an ad man in the in the 60s and he recorded lots of kids games like he was a New Yorker and he basically was a Gora Fobak and he basically stuck to his block. But he recorded all these clapping and kids games that were amazing and there's a

Kitchensisters piece about Tony Schwartz, which is like stunning. And one of my favorite pieces of radio. And so I have some different record albums of Tony Schwartz recording clapping kids games and rhyming games and stuff like that. And I think that stuff is really amazing. But I've never done that myself. Yeah, yeah.

I was never really like a clapping game kid at all either. but I also, it's also because I just don't really like rhythm games. Like you would think that maybe that wouldn't be the case in time a musician, but... Yeah, and a drummer most specifically. Yes, but like I just don't, you know, and I think this is why music composing games really appeal to me is because, so what's different about a music composing game is that there are like rules around it, you know, keep it sounding like music or, you know, or like whatever the game determines is music. But the whole idea behind them is that you get something different every single time you play. Okay. You know, and there are lots of different examples of how people

construct ways of basically generating songs and generating different kinds of song experiences from a set of rules. Cool. And some of these examples are a little less maybe historically significant than others, but this is my personal museum we're about to step into. These are my favorites. Okay. Well, let's hear what's the first one? There are like a few games. I kind of feel like they're in the same vein, like kind of through the 1600s, the 1800s. And some of them are done with dice, a composer might like lay out like a certain number of notes or maybe write like a few different like melody variations. And then they kind of like write them on sheets of paper, maybe or like a sign, different melody variations and then they kind of write

a monsheets of paper maybe or an assigned numbers to them and then you roll some dice and then you note it based on what numbers you roll. And so basically you're making a song through chance. You may have even written sections of music, but how one goes into the other and how the song starts ends is like, is all based on just like the chance of the dice. And, you know, it's the kind of thing that you could use maybe as like a writing prompt to like, to, you know, to be like, oh, I'm, I'm totally stuck right now. Well, I'll just like, well, I like these notes. I guess maybe I'll just like see if I can like just like leave it up to God.

And I really like that because it sounds like a good way to maybe just like get yourself out of your own way. When you're like, you know, when you're working on something and I, you know, as someone who has like deadlines for music, like I've never tried doing that, but I'm very interested in seeing how that could play out. It seems that the success of this game is contingent upon the little melodies that you assign. They have to be good in themselves and combine well in a random fashion, which is in and of itself its own difficult task. Yeah, you really have to be like a composer already to play a game like this.

Like, you know, it's like you have to have parameters already set, you know, that also like is dependent on like rules you learn based on what you consider to be music. Right. Okay, so next stop in the museum of my favorite music games, Okay, so next stop in the museum of my favorite music games, we've got a little program, computer program called Microsoft Songsmith. Have you ever heard of Microsoft Songsmith? I have not. I mean, it sounds vaguely familiar, but I've never used it. No.

I'm going to let Microsoft Songsmith have the first word here. This is a little Songsmith commercial where they explain how it works. Okay. You're writing music? When did you learn how to write music? You sing into a microphone while the drummer plays along. And then when songsmith makes the music, you're on your way to a song.

Now SongSmith comes up with a music that matches your voice. You sing into a microphone while the drummer plays along. And then when SongSmith makes the music, you're on your way to a song. You can choose the style, you can set the mood, and the chords will match what you sing, you can change the music as much as you like, so it really is your thing. So basically, you can sing anything that's vaguely melodic into Song Smith and it will generate music around that. Wow, that's something else.

And this is from the mid-2000s. Like all the promotional material I find about Song Smith is like, it's a great sketch tool for musicians. And it's like, it feels like they're tool for musicians. And it's like, you know, it's for like, like, it feels like they're trying to market to like serious songwriters. And I mean, you know, to be fair, I think that's like entirely valid.

Like I think if someone wanted to use it that way, they totally could, you know, because generally people do write music within a certain set of rules and parameters. As much as we want to think that we all do things that are completely unique and like, and stuff, it's like, there's a certain amount of just like, we're within a scale. We're within a certain Western tradition. That does make sense, yeah.

But there is something about songs, but we We're like the sound of the instruments and everything it says so silly that it's really like provided a lot of great opportunities for wonderful joke songs and my favorite thing that someone's ever done with Songsmith and actually there are a lot of these on YouTube. You can find videos of people who have taken isolated vocal tracks from hit songs and put them into song Smith. So I'm gonna play one of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song.

I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan of the song. I'm a big fan on that song. Very different take. Oh my goodness. That's hilarious.

What a novel use of that technology. That's a really fun thing to do. Yeah, I think it's genius. It really like, it really feeds my soul. These like, these songsmith covers. I think that like music is the language of the soul. But I think that humor is also like a huge part of the language of the soul And so yeah, I think you know, I I consider this to be valid art personally

Totally, I do too, you know like it's just a different form I mean it has its limitations, but it's it's lovely and brings joy and makes you think about the original song and the art of that song even designing the algorithm that creates the song is in art form. And that's so cool. So the next stop on the tour, this also kind of gets into some territory that it's going to, it kind of feels less like a game, but it feels really related to songsmith and to this whole idea of having a set of rules and you know, and generating songs for entertainment out of it. And it's also like another one of my favorite things

ever. So I'm just going to read this, I'm going to read a bit of this how stuff works article like pretty much word for word real quick. So researchers from the University of Toronto trained a recurrent neural network, a type of complex artificial intelligence, to write a song inspired by an image of a Christmas tree. They taught the AI to compose tunes by feeding it 100 hours of online music. They also gave the program thousands of images with captions so that it could link specific words to visual patterns. Then create the lyrics and music when provided a picture. Sanja Fiddler, one of the folks who worked on it, says, instead of buying a karaoke machine with a

certain track on it, you can create your own karaoke at home by throwing in some interesting photos and inviting the machine to generate music for you. I think it has endless possibilities. Now I'm going to play you some of the song that this artificial intelligence wrote. Okay, so here's the photo that they fed into the computer. It's a photograph of a Christmas tree. It's lit, has presents around it. It's the bottom half of a Christmas tree, very classically done with red and green and gold ornaments. Very, very fancy. And here's the song. I swear to Christmas Eve, I hope that it's on to 6. That's a little ominous.

I can hear the music coming from the hall. A fairytale. Oh, I can hear the music coming from the hall. A fairytale. Oh, I can hear the music coming from the hall. A fairytale. A rhythmistry. There it is.

A rhythmistry. There it is. A rhythmistry. There it is. A rhythmistry. There it is. There it is. There it is.

There it is. There it is. There it is. There it is. There it is. There it is. There it is. There it is. Oh, that is amazing, like, eerie and cool and odd. It reminds me of, like, you know, kind of like a kid might write before they have, like, internalized all of these, like, ideas of, like, what is good and bad songwriting, or something like that, which is ironic,

because, like, this is coming from is coming from an AI that has been fed so much conventional music. It just makes me think, I want this AI to stay exactly as it is forever. Whatever iPhone app is going to come from this kind of technology, I feel it's going to be less interesting than if you just take the code as it is and slap it in our hands right now. Let's start giving it pictures. So funny. Okay, so what's your final one? Okay, so the final thing I thought we'd play a little game of our own.

Oh, cool. That's exciting. Okay. Yeah, so I made a music game for us to play that I composed music for. So basically this is like a this is like a 99 PI song music game. And okay, how does it work? So I've composed six rhythm parts and six like sort of lead instrument piano parts. And we're going to roll dice to determine what order they are played in. Oh, it's so good. Okay. Okay. Do I need two six-sided dice or a word? Two six-sided dice, yeah. Two six-sided dice. Okay, hold on. All right. So first take one of the dice and roll for the tempo.

Three. Okay, so three is 80, which is in my opinion, the best tempo for this song. So good work, Roman. You're all you're already great at this game. With your two dice, designate one die for rhythm and one for lead. So if you have to roll them in separate places or something, you know, they're very different. Oh, good, good. Okay, one for where that sense I did. The last one was the tempo one. I'll do the tempo one is rhythm and the other one probably. Okay. Okay, the tempo one is four and the leader is a one.

four, and the leader is a one. Okay, four and one. We're off to a very dramatic start. Okay, and so now we're gonna do that seven more times. Okay, same order, five and three, five and five and five oh six and six how very conventional Two and four oh six and six again One and two One and two. Four and five.

You just wrote a song, Roman. That's so excited. I didn't know I had it in me. Let's see how it sounds. Okay. I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, Oh, it was so good. That was a false ending. That was my one and two. The one that went down to that. Yeah, that's so funny.

Oh, it turned out so well. So I rolled this a couple of times with Courtney, my partner yesterday. And we, um, I mean, that's something that I thought was great. Was the false ending? Like that's the kind of stuff mean, that's something that I thought was great was the false ending. Like, that's the kind of stuff I've done that I really like and I think it's like great for a laugh and makes it feel like a game. Oh, I love it. It's so much fun. Thank you for, you know, helping me write a song this afternoon. Thank you for writing a song with me, Roman. Oh, it's my pleasure. I never knew how talented I really was. I always knew how talented I really was. I always knew.

At the beginning of 2021, 99% of visible is Katie Mingle, Kurt Colstad, Delaney Hall, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sean Rihall, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Lay, Sophia Klatsker, Chris Marubey, Abby Madon, Christopher Johnson, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7K, LWN San Francisco, and produced on Radio Row, In Beautiful, Downtown, Oakland, California. We are a part of Radio Topia from PRX, a collective of the best most innovative shows in all of podcasting.

Discover, listen, and support them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show in joint discussion about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars in the show at 99PI org, or on Instagram and write it too. We'll be returning to our normal reported stories next week. But if you like these mini stories and you haven't heard them all over the years, I think this is episode 11 at this point. You can find them all at 99PI.org. Radio til the end. From PRX.

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