99% Invisible - 445- The Clinch

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

After Producer Katie Mingle's mom wrote a romance novel, Katie set out to understand the romance genre and its classic covers. There was a lot to unpack. The Clinch ...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Quignote our episode today is really fun and joyful, but it does include talk about sex and mentions of sexual violence, so use discretion. When producer Katie Mingle's mom, Pam Mingle, retired from a long career as a fifth grade teacher, she started writing books. First, she published a time travel novel for young adults. Then, she wrote a Jane Austen spin-off novel, and eventually, she decided to write a romance. My mom, a huge Jane Austen fan, took a page from her favorite author and set her first romance during the Regency period in England, so around 1812. The plot involves two people who start out as
Starting point is 00:00:46 friends, Cass and Adam, and get engaged because Adam needs a reason not to marry someone that his family wants him to marry. Cass and Adam aren't in love and they don't necessarily plan on actually getting married. But then... They start to fall for each other and of course there are many many obstacles in their path which they have to overcome. That is of course my mom. I'm Pam Mangel. I am the writer of six published books, four of which are romances. In 2015 a small publisher called Entangled bought my mom's first romance manuscript. They decided on the title of False Proposal, and eventually they also came up with a cover design for the book, which they showed my mom.
Starting point is 00:01:36 I believe they sent me, yes, they sent me an email that had the cover attached and said, it isn't just a beautiful cover? And we love it. And we hope that you will. Well, what did you think when he thought it? I thought it was lushly romantic, I guess, is what you could say. I think I was a little startled by the, you know, the bending backwards and the very sort of dramatic pose. I didn't necessarily expect that, but I thought it was beautiful, and I loved the colors.
Starting point is 00:02:15 The cover of the book is a deep, purply blue background, and it probably features an image of a man and a woman dressed in ballroom clothing. The man is clutching the woman's thigh, kind of pulling her leg up toward his hip and leaning her backwards, almost like he's laying her onto a bed. Their eyes are closed and their mouths are almost touching.
Starting point is 00:02:34 The first time I saw this cover, I guess I was a little embarrassed. Like, I knew my mom had written her romance. I'd even read the manuscript, but I didn't realize it was going to have a cover like this. And what do you remember my reaction being? Well, I was... we were in the car somewhere. Your dad was driving, and I was relating a story
Starting point is 00:02:58 of a friend of mine who had just said to me, wow, that book looks like a real bodice ripper. And generally romance writers don't like to have their books called bodice rippers. It just has all these connotations that romance writers don't like. One of which is sort of rape, you know. And I was relating this conversation to you and your dad. And then you said, I don't remember exactly what you said, but it was something like,
Starting point is 00:03:28 well, why do you have covers like that if you don't want people to think that? Ooh, okay, I don't remember saying that exact thing, but here's what I was thinking about the cover. I thought it was corny, and it didn't do justice to the strong writing and complicated characters inside the book. And also, yeah, I thought the dynamic, the dominant man, the submissive woman, was old-fashioned and kind of heteronormative.
Starting point is 00:03:57 I don't recall exactly what I said that day in the car, but I do remember registering that I'd hurt my mom's feelings. I remember just going completely quiet and not even responding to what you said because it really upset me. I'm sorry. I forgave you long ago for that. My mom may have forgiven me, but I still hadn't sorted it out. Like, was her cover and others like it, sending out signals that I just didn't like, or speaking a language I didn't speak? It all made me want to understand these covers better,
Starting point is 00:04:34 where they came from, and why my reaction to them was so negative. I think a good place to start with all of this might be what even is romance. Hi, my name is Sarah McLean and I'm a romance novelist. Someone told me I should talk to Sarah McLean about romance covers and the history of the genre more generally. That's why I reached out to her and And I swear I only learned after the fact that she had written a romance novel based on a 99% invisible episode.
Starting point is 00:05:11 I've been listening to 99% invisible forever, like forever. It was the perfect security episode. Episode 160, it's about lockpicking and designing an unpickable lock. When Sarah heard it, she had an idea for the heroine of her next novel. I was like, oh my God, she's gonna be a lock pick. I sort of put together this whole plan of like how this lady lock pick would pick an unpickable lock because of you.
Starting point is 00:05:39 Anyway, Sarah says that the genre people called romance, the one my mom was writing in, it's always had a basic pact with the reader. I'm going to take you on this wild ride and there will be massive highs and massive lows, but at the end, they live happily ever after. The happily ever after were H.E.A., if you want to sound in the know, has always been a distinguishing feature of the genre. And by this definition alone, you could argue that someone like Jane Austen was basically a romance novelist, and some people do. But Sarah believes the modern era of romance really started in the 1970s, with a woman named Kathleen Woodowiss. And she described herself as a midwestern housewife. She lived with a husband who read adventure novels. And she would read the adventure novels that came into
Starting point is 00:06:32 the house with him. And at one point she said, well, I don't understand why none of these have a woman as the adventurer at the center of the stories. So Kathleen Woodewis sat down and wrote one. It was called the Flame in the Flower and it was a romantic adventure story with a female protagonist and it had something else, something that would become another distinguishing feature of the genre. She has sex on page and real sex. She has like sex and achieves orgasm on page in like long form. I mean Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy could never. But the flame in the flower was also deeply problematic. In the flame in the flower, the hero rapes the heroin four times in the first 100 pages of the book.
Starting point is 00:07:19 And the heroin in her own POV, her own point of view, names it rape, calls him a rapist, loaves him for the act, punishes him for the act, and Granted by the end, Marries him and lives happily ever after with him, which is problematic in 2021, but it wasn't 2021. in 2021, but it wasn't 2021. It was 1972 and whatever was happening in that book, it didn't keep people from buying it. It sold 2.3 million copies and it's first few years on the market.
Starting point is 00:07:57 Publishers were like, wait a second, women buy books. The floodgates were open and a lot of books similar to the flame and the flower hit the market. That is, historical romantic adventure stories that often included sexual violence. There was a lot of non-consensual ripping of bodices in those early books, hence the term bodice river, which obviously the genre continues to be saddled with to this day. bodice river, which obviously the genre continues to be saddled with to this day. But Sarah says even though there was rape in these books, they can't be completely dismissed and they aren't even necessarily anti-feminist. One thing about romance that's been true from the very beginning of the genre is that
Starting point is 00:08:38 the women are always the heroes of their own stories. The heroines take action and claim their happiness. These books were the only place where women could see themselves and see the trauma that women in the world often have to deal with on the page and then also see themselves in triumph and in hope and in happiness and love. Like these are powerful, subversive ideas. Subversive ideas packaged with over the top sexy covers.
Starting point is 00:09:12 As the 70s rolled into the 80s, you really see the classic romance cover come into being, you know, the ones, like my mom's cover, but even sexier. A man and a woman, his abs glistening, her hair blowing in the wind, they're locked in a passionate embrace. The eighties were the heyday of the half-nude painted men, women with their bodices sort of half-off and gravity-defying hair.
Starting point is 00:09:40 This type of cover became so ubiquitous in the romance genre that it got a name, the clinch. Clinch is an interesting word. It can mean to secure something like they clinch the deal, but the second definition comes from boxing. You know that thing that boxers do when they hug each other? That's called clenching. It's basically to keep your opponent from hurting you.
Starting point is 00:10:02 Fletters clinch, and on romance covers, lovers also clinch. In the 1980s, no one was doing a more epic clinch on her covers than the author Joanna Lindsay. She was the biggest name in romance during this time. In 1985, Joanna Lindsay published a romance called Tender is the Storm, and the cover is really a sight to behold. It's by an illustrator named Robert McGonness, and it's a painted image of a man and a woman
Starting point is 00:10:32 in a clinch. They're outside in some sort of desert landscape, and the man is 100% naked. He's fully nude, and like backed into some sort of sagebrush or something. The man's nether parts are conveniently hidden by the woman who's collapsed against his body in a full swoon. Like she's completely limp and literally appears to be unconscious. She's just lost to him. I mean, just ravished by him.
Starting point is 00:11:06 The man on this cover looks kind of like Clark Kent with short, wavy dark hair, but Joanna Lindsay would soon introduce the world to a blonde model who would become forever and ever, till death to them part, married to the genre of romance. So Fabio was on most of Joanna Lindsay's covers during this time period. I mean, he was on many other covers too, but he was the hallmark of a Joanna Lindsay cover. You know, he was a big guy, and he was a very nice and gentle person. This is an illustrator named Max Ginsburg, who worked with Fabio a few times in his career. The way he covers were made back in the 80s was that models like Fabio would pose for a photo shoot and then an illustrator like Max would render that photo
Starting point is 00:11:51 into a painting, adding a new background like a beach or a meadow. But Max was there in the photo shoots too. I was sitting there like the director in the movie. You know, hold the girl a little more firmly or a little more tenderly or whatever, you know. And we have a procedure a little bit like Norman Rockwell had where you would trace the images from the photographs. And then once you did that, then you would start to paint. Max says he
Starting point is 00:12:24 never understood why Fabio became such a big thing. I thought that actually, honestly, he was much of an actor. You know, he didn't know exactly how to project themselves. It's just a big overpower looking guy. But for some reason, he made it big. In some ways though, in being a rather unimodative brute, Fabio was getting his role exactly right.
Starting point is 00:12:52 If you read the books of the 70s and early 80s, heroes are impenetrable. They are blank slates of just kind of intense masculine pride and arrogance, and they lack a capacity for emotion and for feeling and they're ciphers. In any case, Fabio and other hyper-masculine men in passionate embraces with their leading ladies were plastered all over romance covers in the 1980s. And wrapping the books in these covers, really it did two things in my opinion. One, it said, this is the book you're getting, right? You're going to get a woman who is, you know, in touch with her sexual identity and in touch with
Starting point is 00:13:43 her pleasure and the center of the story, and she's going to triumph at the end, and you'll be able to read this and explore safely your own fantasies. And also the cover said, men keep out. This isn't for you, which both increased the likelihood that women would buy these books and also increased the level of disdain that society started to have for these books. Because if they're for women, then surely they can't have value. You can hear the contempt that the larger culture had
Starting point is 00:14:20 for romance in this episode of Nightline from the 1980s. The segment is one part news about the success of the genre and one part unsolicited lecture. These products have about as much to do with classical literature as Big Macs have to do with three-star French cooking. But of course not everybody likes which sophisticated food. So if William Faulkner or Arnaest Hemingway gives you a heartburn, then these birds could just be your mate. Here's Brad for Nightline and Washington. When we return, we'll talk live with two women who make their living off romance novels
Starting point is 00:14:56 and understandably think there's more to the John Wilden titillating trash. And later, I'll look at some of the historic accomplishments this week aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. Oh, yikes. Through the years, people like Ted Coppill and his correspondent, and God, I guess, maybe me, have found lots of reasons to look down on romance. Romance is formulating, predictable, badly written. The genre is very used to being judged on the whole. Julia Quinn, who wrote Bridgerton,
Starting point is 00:15:32 one of the things that she says a lot, and I think is really valuable, is other genres get judged on the very best of their writing, and romance gets judged on the very worst of it. Often, romance gets dinged for so many unfair things that I think are almost entirely related to patriarchy. Did I not respond well to romance and romance covers because of straight-up sexism? I mean, that feels possible. I'm not dismissing it. But I think also, maybe through most of my life growing up as a queer person, I just didn't see myself in those clinches. And I wasn't
Starting point is 00:16:14 the only one who didn't. It was usually, why couples on the cover? This is Nicole Perkins. She writes about pop culture, hosts a podcast called This is Good for You, and is a long-time reader of romance. Even though as a young black person in the 1980s, she also didn't see herself in the covers. And what I would do is I would stay away from blonde people. If there were blonde people on the cover, I did not pick those up.
Starting point is 00:16:44 So I picked up, I would pick up the covers with dark-haired white people, because I would pretend that they were black and just very fair-skinned. In 1974, a writer named Anne Shockley put out a lesbian interracial romance called Loving Her. But you'd have had a hard time finding it in any mainstream bookstores. her, but you'd have had a hard time finding it in any mainstream bookstores. And then in 1980, a black editor at Down in Vivian Stevens published a few black heterosexual romances. But by and large, the genre was white and straight, and the early black romances tended to be a little more chased.
Starting point is 00:17:20 Yeah, if I recall correctly, sex seemed to be more alluded to because I remember that was also part of my frustration with the early black romances that I read. You know, I was a pre-team and then an adolescent, so I wanted to get stuff. But then came the author Beverly Jenkins. She was definitely a big deal. Beverly Jenkins is black and she writes deeply researched historical romances featuring black characters. And while her sex scenes in those early books weren't extremely explicit, they weren't completely hidden behind a closed door either. She also gave the world the first truly steamy clinch cover featuring black characters,
Starting point is 00:18:03 and she kept going, book after after book with black people in passionate embraces on the covers. To see those covers, I mean obviously at the time people were still, you know, kind of teasing women for reading romances and things like that, but it was still also a point of pride to be able to showcase a book with black people in these kind of very intimate, expressive embraces that were clearly indicating there's some physical intimacy here and somebody is going to be, you know, kissed along their spine at some point. Over the next couple of decades, romance would continue to change with the times. Rape scenes disappeared almost entirely.
Starting point is 00:18:51 The women in the books got more assertive, and the men got in touch with their emotions. And although the industry would remain predominantly white and straight, it's not nearly as white and as straight as before, which means the clinch cover has been claimed by more and more kinds of people. I'm thinking about cat Sebastian's books. Cat Sebastian's romances are often about queer characters and feature those characters in very classic looking clinches on the cover. There's something so awesome about seeing the clench, but queer, right? Yes.
Starting point is 00:19:32 This is our time for the clench to be owned by everyone, because there's no doubt that obviously the clench is exclusionary for, was exclusionary for many, many years. The style of the clinch covers has changed too. The images aren't rendered into paintings anymore. They're photographs. I'll be it. Photographs that have been worked over in Photoshop. Abs have never had more definition. Covers aren't all clinches anymore either.
Starting point is 00:20:01 There are lots of variations. Like now you might just have a single figure on the cover, like a man in a kiln with a shirt off, or a woman in a dress throwing you a sultry glance over her shoulder. There are lots of kinds of covers, probably because there are so many kinds of romances. There are Scottish Highlander romances and Amish romances. There are thrillers and vampires and shape shifters. And Romance readers are plowing through these books as fast as publishers can get them on the shelves.
Starting point is 00:20:33 Romance readers are voracious. And we read on average 10 to 12 books a month. Notice the universal we in that sentence. That's because Romance readers and writers really are kind of a big community that goes to conferences and meetups and has a surprising amount of kinship. And, you know, also a bit of infighting and controversy, but a kinship nonetheless with a shared language, some of which is coded in the covers themselves. If you show me or any romance reader, a series of covers they'll be able to tell you like that's a paranormal, that's a medieval, that's a Regency, that's a contemporary rom-com.
Starting point is 00:21:11 Nicole Perkins is particularly good at this game. Okay, so when I see a bear chested man, like maybe his face isn't even in the shot, it's just torso. I know that it's going to be a fairly steamy romance. And if it's like a blue background, the hero is some kind of law enforcement or a military person or something like that. And then the green background or a yellow background or like kind of a goldish, then I know there's probably gonna be some sort of paranormal element to it.
Starting point is 00:21:50 Like maybe he's some kind of werewolf or were tiger. And that's just some of the signaling for paranormal and contemporary romances. For historicals, Nicole says, it can be a little trickier to figure out where you're getting. But I have found that, again, it's not full proof, but I have found that if there is, like, if the cover is lavender or a lot of purple
Starting point is 00:22:13 or some very deep blues, then there's going to be some explicit sex or, you know, something that's really kind of steamy. Well, it's funny, you should say that because my mom's first romance novel actually has a purpley blue cover. When I think about what a book cover is supposed to do, it feels like generally the answer is like get people like me to pick it up and maybe buy it. But I had this realization talking to Nicole and Sarah. The covers aren't necessarily
Starting point is 00:22:52 trying to appeal to me, Katie Mingle, and outsider to the genre. I feel like part of what you're saying is that like romance covers, they're not trying to get me to read them exactly. They're trying to get all the people who are already in this genre to sort of choose this particular one. Yes. The cover doesn't have to say like, hey, what's in here is also smart and feminist and thoughtful. Because romance readers already know that. say, like, hey, what's in here is also smart and feminist and thoughtful. Because romance readers already know that. It just has to say, you love most of the other books that have covers like this, so try this one too.
Starting point is 00:23:35 But the target audience for romance covers might be changing. In the last decade, illustrated covers have become more prevalent. Okay, so not to be confused with those classic covers that were paintings of real people, and in illustrated cover the figures are much more cartoonish and abstract, like something you'd see in a graphic novel. The vibe is more cute than sexy, and they've become more and more popular. For example, a book like Be Trade by Emily Henry.
Starting point is 00:24:07 Be Trade's cover features an illustration of a man and woman, but they're not in a clench. In fact, they're just kind of sitting on different sides of the cover. In between them and big white lettering is the title of the book. It really looks like it could be any other piece of contemporary fiction. It, you know, sat on the New York Times list. It's a straight up romance novel, but it really lingered on those lists because the cover doesn't look like a romance novel cover at all.
Starting point is 00:24:35 You know, this is a way to get romance in front of the eyes of people who might not ever walk into the romance section. Sarah says that a lot of in-lead booksellers don't carry romance at all. And in more mainstream bookstores, the romance section is usually hidden way in the back. In mine in Brooklyn, the romance section is in the literal furthest place from the door.
Starting point is 00:24:57 Illustrated covers are an attempt to sort of trojan horse romance novels into the general fiction section. And win Win over readers who would maybe be a little bit embarrassed to buy a book with a clinch cover Well, maybe people like you would be more willing to pick up a romance novel if it didn't have a clinch on the cover She's calling you out mingle. I feel so bad that I was one of Don't worry about it. I really do. Like now, I'm just like, what was wrong with me? The thing is maybe illustrated covers
Starting point is 00:25:32 can bring new people like me into the genre, but the people already there, they are not necessarily thrilled about this new direction. All of that coding that the classic romance cover does to tell romance diehards what they're getting, it's kind of lost in the illustrated covers. It's getting a bit difficult to figure out, is this women's fiction? Is this adult romance? Is this YA? This is the romance writer and reader Alyssa Cole. Alyssa has written several romances featuring black, queer, and other marginalized characters. Beyond sending out a quick
Starting point is 00:26:10 signal to readers about what's inside the book, Alyssa believes one of the romance covers most important functions is to say, hey you, person who has not always been depicted in romantic stories, loves for you too. So she likes the covers where you can clearly make out people's features. Sometimes in the illustrated ones, you can't. You know, a lot of these covers have illustrations with no faces. My main thing is I'm fine with doing an illustrated cover,
Starting point is 00:26:40 but you absolutely have to be able to tell that the book is about people of color. Alyssa Cole doesn't want to lose clench covers. She just wants them to become even more inclusive. I love clench covers. I love covers where people look like they're in love, which is what romance novels are about. Look, I know that I started out this journey saying clinch covers were corny and old fashioned. And to be honest, I still see some of that in those images.
Starting point is 00:27:12 But I see the covers, particularly the clinch covers, in a new way now, too. I see them as a type of marketing, yeah. But also, as almost a flag. A flag for a club in which membership has long been associated with a certain amount of shame, shame about desire and sex, and also shame about pleasure, because as we all well know, we are supposed to feel guilty about reading things for pleasure. Again, the one and only panmingle.
Starting point is 00:27:46 Romance was so joyful. When I began reading it, I just got this sense of joyousness that I had never experienced really in other kinds of fiction. Certainly moments of that, but not to the degree of a romance. Still, even my romance writing mom used to feel a sense of guilt about reading romance. I kept telling myself you shouldn't keep reading these books. I don't know why I don't really know why or understand why I would feel that way. I guess because maybe I was just, I went through this period of just reading a lot of them.
Starting point is 00:28:22 And then I would quit for a while and then I would go back every time I would go back because I missed it, I missed feeling those great feelings that I got from reading romance. Now when I look at my mom's cover, that classic clinch pose, it feels different. It feels like a flag boldly planted, like keep making fun of us patriarchy, but we are out here enjoying ourselves. This story was produced by Katie Mingle and edited by Emmett Fitzgerald. When we come back, we'll hear from someone who has been in many a clinch cover photo shoot
Starting point is 00:29:11 on how to get complete strangers to clinch like they mean it. After this. So I'm back with producer Katie Mingle and there was one person that you couldn't fit into the story, but you wanted to tell us about her. Yeah, so she's actually the kind of person that just needs her own episode. Her name is Chris Noble and she's an art director at a publisher called Kensington. And that means that she's basically the person who designs book covers. And not just romance covers, but she's done a lot of romance covers over the years. When I came out of art school, I wanted to go into the biggest design studio and design
Starting point is 00:30:01 packaging, but I'm like Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola, you know? And so unlike books, every story to me is different. Every character brings something out of me that challenges me. But the art director job is also a hard one because you really have to please everyone. Everybody marketing publicity, sales, the editors, the publishers, the therapists of the publishers, the therapists of the author,
Starting point is 00:30:26 the dog of the author, and that one friend they have who's a graphic designer. And I'm sure every single one of those has their own opinion about what they want. Yeah, and basically like most of the time they want something that someone else already has. They show me samples of books that are already out and they go, I like this cover. I wanted to look like this. And I'm like, but your book is coming out two years from now. It's going to already look old. So what I do is I give them what they want. I design what I think they want. And then I go out and I do my thing.
Starting point is 00:31:00 Some books I lose out on and I'm like, okay, I might be wrong. And sales is right. Or or you know marketing is right And then there's some that I'm very adamant about and I'm like no trust me people are gonna come to this Yeah, and this is something we don't really talk about in the main story and I have my own experience with this But do authors usually get a say on what their covers look like at all? I think essentially that depends on how famous of an author you are. So how famous were you, Roman? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:31:30 I was famous enough. I think they definitely were trying to appeal to me, but it was very clear in the contract language that it was their decision, not mine. Right. In the end, I think publishers generally get the final word. But they also don't want to make their authors unhappy. I mean, it is their book, it's their baby. We don't just snatch it out their arms and go running. But yeah, appeasing authors can be a lot of work.
Starting point is 00:31:58 There was a woman, an author, who I worked on her book cover, and everybody loved it, including her. but she took it to her psychic. Oh, no. And the psychic said that this wasn't right for her because this color was, I mean, and to the point that the psychic was like sending me messages. And the author would not budge because her psychic said, no matter what sales marketing publicity the editor the publisher said she was adamant that she did not want that cover and I changed the cover and the book became very successful. So I always worried about whether or not it was me or the psychic that actually designed the book right and made it work. It was her.
Starting point is 00:32:41 Yeah, it was probably her. I'll call that a ball for her. Yeah, I was probably hair. I'll call that a ball for her. So over the years, Chris Noble has been in a lot of photo sheets for clinch covers. And she's full of interesting info, as you can imagine. Like this. The male models tend not to be as tall as the female models. So we have to put this dude who's supposed to be like this big punky cowboy on a box.
Starting point is 00:33:12 Why is that? Yeah, I mean, of course I asked that also. And basically it's because the men tend to do sports catalogs. Whereas the women tend to be kind of regular like fashion. Runway models. They're selected for being tall and can wear clothes like on Runway. And the men just have to be built. They're short and stocky and muscular.
Starting point is 00:33:38 So we want the big muscle chest because that's what the ladies are looking for. I got it. So my favorite anecdote of Chris is it was about this one particular shoot that she did for a clinch cover. One specific time like you know we got these male and female models and they were very timid with each other you know they didn't want to touch. This was a contemporary, very hot. This was during the time of 50 shades of gray, so the content was very hot and sexy.
Starting point is 00:34:13 They were acting like they were giving the church hug. Like this and I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna have to really go in. Well, I never really thought about it, but the models have most likely strangers when they come in. Yeah, they are. And I think sometimes they know what kind of shoot they're going to do, and sometimes they don't even know that.
Starting point is 00:34:32 Oh my God. Yeah. And that was the situation with this couple that Chris just mentioned. They didn't feel comfortable with each other at all. The photographer, I tend to work with, he was really good at setting mood. So his scene would turn down the lights. We would get a lot of people off the set, put on the right kind of music.
Starting point is 00:34:52 We got some R&B, we got some old motel, you know. And so, about an hour in, they started to really started to relax. So we set up, you know, a bedroom scene, and so there's a bed, and they're laying on the bed and we're shooting above. So we're looking down on them and they're like laying on the bed and we're getting that shot with their bodies and tangles our hair. It's like, you know, all of the place body ended the shoot. I could not stop them. Like it had gotten that high. This is between you and I and the other people who are listening.
Starting point is 00:35:23 I had to we the photographer and I would go and okay, that's it. It's a wrap. It's a wrap and they would like I mean going in. Between you and I and the rest of the people who are listening. Yeah you're right she really kind of needed her own episode. Truly like someone give her a podcast. Well, thank you, Katie. That was so interesting. The whole episode, I just absolutely loved it. I love that it comes from you and your mom too. That's the greatest part of it all. Well, thanks, Roman. 99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Katie Minkle edited by Emmett Fitzgerald, mixed
Starting point is 00:36:23 by Amida Kanatra, music by a director of sound Sean Rihau. Our senior producer is Delaney Hall, Kurt Colstead is the digital director, the rest of the team includes Vivian Leigh, Joe Rosenberg, Christopher Johnson, Lashemma Dawn, Chris Baroube, Sophia Klatsrand, and Vivian Stevens. If you'd like to know more about Katie's mom's books or read Sarah McLean's romance about lockpicking inspired by an episode of this very show, or listen to the incredibly charming podcasts that Nicole Perkins has hosted or or browse through Prince of Mexicans, Briggs Classic Vintage Clinch cover paintings. Well, we'll tell you how
Starting point is 00:37:08 to do all of that at 9ipey.org. We are a part of the Stitcher and Serious XM podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find the show and join the discussions about the show on Facebook. You can Beautiful, Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join the discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars in the show at 99PI Ork. We're on Instagram and Reddit too. You can find 444 old but still amazingly relevant episodes
Starting point is 00:37:37 of this show and other shows I love from Stitcher on our website. It's 99pi.org. I think Stitcher knows they bought us. Like it was in the New York Times and everything. Here we go. Da da, da da, da da, da da, da da, da da, da da, da da, da da, da da, da, da, da, da, Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,

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