99% Invisible - 471- Mini-Stories : Volume 12

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

It's that time of year again! When 99pi producers and friends of the show join Roman to tell shorter stories, many of which have been sitting on our idea shelves, just waiting for this moment. Our first set of minis delves into the surprisingly controversial logo of a major sports league; a wild goose chase into erroneous statistics; the largely forgotten arts competitions of the Olympic Games; and a Modernist penguin pool that is beloved by preservationists but not so adored by actual penguins. And this is the first batch of our turn-of-the-year mini-stories. Tune back in for more minis at the beginning of 2022!Mini-Stories: Volume 12

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's the end of 2021, if you can believe it. And that means it's time for our annual mini-stories episodes. Mini-stories are joyful little stories that come up in our research for another episode, or maybe there are just some fun things someone told us about that we found really interesting, but they didn't quite warrant a full episode in many months of hard reporting. They're great 99pi stories nonetheless. I love them because I get to interview my colleagues and get told great stories all day. Sometimes I know a little bit about what each producer is going to talk about, but sometimes

I know nothing, which is very fun. This year, in addition to the staff that you know and love, we have some stories from special guests. Some friends of the show will stop by. This week we have stories of controversial sports logos, copious amounts of geese poop, odd Olympic events, and modernist penguins. I mean, come on, that's a list of stories right there. Stay with us. So I'm here with producer Chris Brube, hey Chris.

Hey Roman. So what do you have for us? So Roman, it is the Chris Brube, Hey Chris. Hey, Roman. So what do you have for us? So Roman, it is the most wonderful time of the year. It is NBA basketball season. Isn't that like eight months out of the year? It is, but that doesn't mean it's the majority of the year and also the most wonderful time of the year in my opinion. Roman, we've talked about branding and logos on the show before.

And today, I want to talk to you about a logo that is overlooked. Sometimes it is the NBA logo. So it's the logo for the entire league. Take a look. I've sent it over. Tell me what you see. OK, so it is the NBA logo. I have seen it.

I think many other people have seen. It is blue and red. And it has the sort of silhouette of a basketball player. He's kind of like in action, has a ball in his hand, it says NBA below it. If you have ever seen an NBA logo, this is the one you've probably seen. So, Roman, the NBA logo, it's elegant, it's also pretty simple, right? It's kind of generic. It's just a person playing basketball. Like nobody's going to want to wear that on a t-shirt or a hat, right? Okay. Okay.

Would you be surprised to know this logo is the topic of hot debate among basketball fans? Well, I would be surprised. Yeah, it seems very anodine, very basic. Buckle up, Roman. I have a story for you. So, I called up the sports journalist in Morgan Campbell. We started talking about League Logos and he told me they fall under two categories. You either have a shield.

When you look at Major League Soccer, the NFL, the NHL, they all have different versions of the shield. The shield, it's just like a shield with some letters on it, it's pretty not offensive. The second category of League Logo is the silhouette of a player. So the first league to go with the silhouette was Major League Baseball. They hired a design firm named Sangren and Murtha, and a man named Jerry Dior, made the logo. And Morgan pointed this out to me, there's actually a really serious problem with this

logo. Major League Baseball has a you know, a silhouette and red white and blue, of course, of a guy who is either about to hit a baseball that's out of the strike zone, high, because it's headed for his shoulder, or it's about to get hit by a pitch and go take first base. Once he pointed that out, I was like, oh yeah, there's no way he's hitting that ball. That's way too high. That's way high. Yeah. So despite the ball being a little too high, this was a very popular logo when it launched in 1968. And around the same time, the NBA was looking to get its own logo. So a designer named Alan Siegel makes up this silhouette of a man dribbling a basketball. But there's

one big difference with this logo. This is not a generic silhouette. It's a real guy. The NBA logo, it's understood that this silhouette is from a still picture of Jerry West. Like all of these leagues, their logo is not connected to a specific player. Whereas the NBA people know, especially older people and people with long memories know that that's Jerry West. So, but how can you really tell? Like the baseball one is just like, there's like a kind of a triangle for a nose, and there's

some more distinct features to the NBA logo, but how can you really tell that's an individual person in that picture? So I had the same question. I mean, it's just a silhouette, like how can you tell it's a specific person? And then I saw the reference photo. So I had the same question. I mean, it's just a silhouette. Like, how can you tell it's a specific person? And then I saw the reference photo. So Roman, here you go. I've sent you the NBA logo and a reference photo of Jerry West. Take a look.

Oh, yeah. That's him, right? That's it. That's the picture. It's pretty undeniably him. It's like the ears are his. It's his haircut in silhouettes. Yeah.

Even how his foot is positioned is exactly the reference photo. Like, there's no denying this is Jerry West in the Silhouette. I ease. So unlike you, I am not a big basketball fan. So can you tell me about Jerry West? So Jerry West was one of the greatest basketball players

of the 60s. He's this legend from the LA Lakers. At the time, it makes a lot of sense that they chose him as the logo. But here's the thing, the NBA has never acknowledged that it's him. I mean, probably for good reason, like for legal reasons, yeah.

Yeah, I assume they don't want to pay Jerry West Royaltees or admit that they based it on a real guy, so they've actually never admitted that it's him, but every basketball fan knows that it's him. Like Jerry West gets approached on the street by children who are like, you're the NBA logo. His nickname is the logo now.

Even though he's not officially the logo, no one claims him officially has the logo, but he's called the logo. Exactly. And there's some things about this that are a little bit complicated about Jerry West being the logo, but he's called the logo. Exactly. And there's some things about this that are a little bit complicated about Jerry West being the logo. So the first issue is that Jerry West played in the 1960s,

that is a very, very different era of basketball. Yeah, well, what it looks like is like a snapshot of freeze frame of the game, the way people use to play it for athletes who are as big and as fast as they are now. So Morgan's point is this is not the silhouette of a modern NBA player. Like, even the posture of the silhouette looks kind of wrong for a modern NBA player. Like, in the 60s, there was no three-point line. Like, it was just a totally different game. So, in that way, it's not very modern.

I mean, I just could argue that, you know, it's really hard to come up with a generic logo that's modern, so, you know, maybe having an old picture and preserving basketball history in some way, you know, there's something logical about it, you know? Yeah, it's like, maybe you could argue it's a way to preserve the history of the sports to acknowledge a different era.

This brings us to the second problem, which is a little bit awkward. It's that Jerry West is white. And at the time, most of the NBA players were white. And today, about three quarters of the players in the NBA are black. So a few NBA players have actually brought this up as an issue. They're saying, well, most of the NBA players stay are black. We're being represented by a logo of a white person. Like, what kind of a message does this sound, right? Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah. Then there's the third problem, which is that Jerry West really hates this. He hates that he is the logo. What? Why? So I tried reaching out to Jerry West for this story. He didn't want to talk to me.

Like, he clearly doesn't like talking about this thing anymore That has dominated the last 50 years of his life But he did talk about it on ESPN a couple of years ago. I wish that Had never gotten out that logo And I've said it more than once and you know, it's flattering if that's me and I know it is me But it is flattering and but if I were the NBA I would be embarrassed about I really would because I don't know I just as a I don't like to do anything to call attention myself and when people say that that's just not who I am Period and if they would want to change it I wish they would

In many ways I wish they would want to change it, I wish they would. In many ways, I wish they would. Oh, wow. So he wants them to change it. I mean, you really hear some pathos in his voice there. That's really interesting. So is his wish ever going to come true? Are they going to make that happen? So probably not.

And here's a big part of the reason. Nobody can agree what players should replace Jerry West on the logo. If you're going to stick with the silhouette type logo, there is no consensus choice. The one thing basketball fans do better than anyone on this planet is just argue over stuff. Just argue over stuff is LeBron better than Jordan. The Steph Curry deserve to be considered alongside LeBron and Jordan in magic. So imagine the moment you say we're taking Jerry West off of the logo

and looking for a new player to put on the logo. Like NBA, fandom, NBA, Twitter, all of them would implode within 10 minutes. I mean, I guess you could do Michael Jordan because that's the closest you have to a consensus choice. But he already has this iconic silhouette that is used to sell sneakers. So that feels like it's a nonstarter.

I mean, you could do a generic silhouette, but the problem with that is it kind of feels like the horse is out of the barn, like that would make people really upset. Like, basically any choice would make a lot of people really angry. That makes sense to me that that's just the way people argue these days. I mean, did Jerry West have some kind of suggestion? So he's joked about it. He suggested it should be the commissioner of basketball, Adam Silver, which means it would

be a person in a suit. And that's, I mean, like, that's a terrible choice. I don't want to suggest that Jerry West is wrong here, but Jerry West is wrong here. It should not be Adam Silver, the commissioner of basketball. I agree with you. But recently, one player has kind of emerged as a fan favorite to become the new logo,

it's Kobe Bryant. So Bryant died in a helicopter crash last year at the age of 41, and soon after he died, this petition appeared online to make him the logo about three million people have signed it at this point. Bryant's widow is on board, lots of NBA players support the idea. However, yeah, no, I think I know what this however is about. Yeah, his however is about.

Yeah, his legacy is complicated. You might remember Kobe Bryant was accused of sexual assault in 2003 and the charges were dropped, but he was sued in civil court and he settled out of court and issued a public apology. So, I mean, there's certainly no perfect candidate, but Kobe Bryant would make a lot of people mad if he was the choice for the NBA logo. For sure. So, I guess the other option is they could, you know, just have the shield style one like the

NFL over the NHL. I mean, other leagues do that. Why not do that? Yeah, I actually mentioned this idea to Morgan and he was like, no way. Let's not do that. And his reason is something that's cool about the NBA is that you do get to see players' personalities. And so, I mean, the difference between the NBA and the NFL is that the NBA, like you can see

the players' bodies, you can see their faces, you can see their facial expressions, and the sport itself allows for a lot of individual expression, whereas that, all that stuff is one impossible to see in the NFL, because players helmets and two because of the rules like any type of individual expression in spontaneity is frowned upon. That's taunting. How dare you feel good about having made a plate? Roman, do you know what some people call the NFL? No.

The no fun league because players are not allowed to really show their personality. But the NBA, it's like they wear outfits before the games. They are allowed to taunt each other. They're like, it's just really fun. That's a big draw of the sport for me. But I think I could make the opposite case that if it is a league full of personalities, that you don't want another personality on the logo

to mess with the personalities that are on the court, you know? Baro Man, the shield is so boring. Have you seen it? Have you seen the NFL logo? You know what I have it, and I think it's probably a testament to the fact that it, you know, isn't quite as salient as this one. Totally, and it's something that comes up on our show a lot is the idea that there's kind of no such thing as a generic design, right? Because when you're trying to make something very unspecific and uncontroversial, you're still making choices, right? Like you're still communicating something.

So yeah, there's even bias in that notion to make something generic and it always comes through and it just is one of the reasons why Design is always so fascinating. Well, I am certainly much more fascinated by the NBA logo than I was before this started. So thank you for giving me a new way to look at it. Thanks again to Morgan Campbell, who spoke to us. You can find his writing at the CBC and in the New York Times. And he has a show on YouTube called Bring It In, which I like a lot. I would strongly recommend checking it out. Cool. All right. Thanks Chris.

Thanks, Robin. I'm talking with popular science writer Mary Roach, author of such books as Stiff, Gulp, and Packing from Mars. Her most recent is the best seller called Fuzz. When nature breaks the law, it's all about the unpredictable and fraught interactions between humans and wildlife. And it's so much fun, it's so engaging. And like all of your other books, it's full of footnotes, which I particularly love.

Can you tell me how you use footnotes, why you use footnotes, and what do they do for you in the text? Yeah, they're not normal footnotes, Roman. They're not footnotes the way intelligence scholarly people use footnotes. They're just moments where I have this material that I found and I love it very much and it cracks me up. But I can't find a way to shoehorn it in. It's too long to set it off with parentheses or m dashes. It's too much, it just derails the flow,

however much flow I ever have. So I insist on keeping it in and I put it in a footnote. And my editor, I think initially she didn't realize what the worse, she was going to put them at the end of the chapter. I'm like, no, no, no, it's not that kind of footnote. I think she she didn't realize what the worst she was going to put them at the end of the chapter I'm like no no no it's not that kind of footnote I think she like most people was just skipping them But anyway, she agreed that we could put them on the page and they're just It's just material that is hilarious or bizarre or just It's just me being self-indulgent and wanting that material in there even though it doesn't really fit.

And I personally love them because they are like a window into your mind, which is a mind I enjoy spending time with. They're definitely that. The footnotes are really like kind of an analog to how we do many stories at the end of the year. They're just joyful little aside that don't constitute a book or a chapter, even a paragraph in the main text, you know? They're just kind of like their own thing. And so I was hoping that in our mini stories episode,

you could share with me one or two of your favorite footnotes from the book and the context for how they both maybe fit in or didn't fit into the main part of the text of us. I would love to. Okay. This one has to do with Canada Geese and and I was originally going to have a Canada goose chapter.

I was going to learn to be an egg addler. We don't need to get into right here, but egg addling, it isn't done very much anymore. I couldn't get trained as an egg addler. I know you said you didn't want to get into it, but could you just quickly tell me what an egg addler is? Yeah, sure. If you take an egg and you a goose egg say and you shake it or you coat it in oil, there's another way to do it. It kills the little embryo inside. So people who want to get rid of Canada geese in a humane way will practice egg addling. They'll shake the egg,

but you have to be sure that it's not far enough along that the embryo is considered more goose than embryo. So it's kind of goose abortion in a way. And people have done a lot of work looking at, you know, if the egg floats, it means there's more air than goose. So it's okay to add it. So, you know, it's, but it's a lot of work because of the bucket of the water and floating the, all the eggs to make sure it's, it's, but it's a lot of work because of the bucket of the water and floating the, all the eggs to make sure it's, it's a humane killing. And also the geese come at you pretty angrily. You have to carry an umbrella and open up the umbrella at them to scare them away. So you kind of look like, is there a Batman character?

The penguin, yeah, sure. The penguin, yeah. So you, and I, that appealed to me that whole scenario with the umbrella and the bucket in the eggs, but it couldn't find anyone to train me. So the whole chapter is gone, the Canada, but I, you know, I have trouble letting go of the Canada geese. So I have a part of the book where I'm talking to someone at the Vatican about, you know, about, you know, do we have the right to destroy animals? And for what reason? Like, at what, can you call certain animals a pest and then ethically kill them? It's this conversation with this poor guy, the pontifical academy for life, who doesn't really understand why he's having to have this conversation. Anyway, we're talking about Canada geese. And I'm saying,

you know, what is their crime? They crap. That's it. That's the only thing. They're not, they're not harming anyone. They're not posing a danger. They crap on lawns. So in golf courses. And so, you know, maybe we should get rid of golf courses and not geese. Anyways, this whole conversation with this poor guy. But I want it. Here's the footnote, because I'm saying, what is their crime? They crap a lot, Canada geese crap a lot. And then here's the footnote. Okay.

But not as heavily as the internet would have you believe. Goosebusters has them extruding three to four pounds a day. The geese police superintendent at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. claims 2-3 pounds a day per goose. A Boston City Councilor, quote, as much as 3 pounds per day. The Canada Goose fecal smear campaign appears to have hit its zenith in New Jersey's Montclair local newspaper. Quote, an adult Canada goose can weigh up to 20 pounds and defecates more than twice its weight daily. That would be 40 pounds a day coming out of a single goose.

That is how much a horse makes. The reporter cited the USDA, a contact at their National Wildlife Research Center, Public Affairs Office, steered me to the USDA Geese Ducks and Coots Fact sheet, which gives a daily total of 1.5 pounds. The author of the USDA Fact sheet got his information from a Virginia Tech University Cooperative Extension Goose Fact sheet. That fact sheet says studies have shown, but does not cite any studies. A Google Scholar search brings up just one researcher,

B.A. Mani, who actually went out and weighed some turds. Mani's finding the average total wet weight of a Canada goose's daily droppings is just a third of a pound. So where did Virginia Tech get the 1.5 pound per day figure? The author did not reply to multiple emails and so it remains a mystery. Poundage aside, the Canada Ghost is a frequent crapper, 28 times a day on average, manny found. In related research, a Canadian team reports that, quote, sleeping geese sometimes produce small piles of droppings. You're doing God's work Mary. So do you want to set up the second footnote from Files that you have for us?

So the other footnote I want to share is kind of related in that it's another instance where I'm trying to get to the bottom of something and they won't call me back. They won't write to me. You know, it's dealing with public affairs people and publicity people and that constant struggle to get people who understandably don't want to talk to me. I get a lot. Okay, this has to do with around the time of World War II. There were a number of around the time of World War II. There were a number of poisons that the National Defense Research Committee, they were working with the Wildlife Research Laboratory. They were looking for new rat poisons, and they were trying out some of the poisons that the government had experimented with for human warfare. One of them was ricein. But the code name for ricein was compound w. And so I'm familiar with compound w as a wart remover. And I was curious whether the compound w people knew

that this was a code name for ricein, whether that mattered to them, whether possibly it was an in joke. Anyway, I had a lot of questions for these folks at CompoundW. And here's the footnote. Did the makers of the Wart Removal Product CompoundW realize this when they named their product? I don't know because prestige brands, which owns CompoundW, doesn't return calls. And their online media query form is a dead end and they are not on Twitter. But while we're on the topic of inappropriate names, let's consider prestige brands.

Because here are some more of their prestige brands. Fleet Enemas, Nix for Lice, Bino for Flaxlints, Yuri Stat, Nostrilla, Deacon, Nostrilla decadstant, Nostrilla decadgestant, summer's eve douche, boil ease, effordant denture cleaner, and budros butt paste. Those are all prestige brands.

That's my favorite footnote. I'll probably find products that do their job well. They probably do their quite procedurally. It's kind of like if Mary Roach owned a product company, a corporate product company, that's what it would sell. I mean, I have a real affinity for these people even though they won't get back to me. Well, maybe next time they will. Yeah. So thank you so much for giving us a guide through your footnotes. And if you want to read, you know, the accompanying text that encircles these footnotes, the book fuzz is so great.

I enjoyed every minute reading it. So thank you so much for writing it and for coming on the show. Thanks so much, Roman. I always enjoy it. The Olympic games seem almost timeless, going back to ancient Greece. So it can be easy to forget that the modern games as we know them today were only launched just over a century ago. Croakholz did this here with some lesser known modern Olympic history from when the games

were still being shaped into the international event we know today. That's right. And to get things started, Roman, I'm going to have you read the first stanza of a poem. It's titled ode to sport and it was written in 1912 16 years after the first modern Olympic Games. Okay, here we go. Oh Sport pleasure of the gods essence of life. You appeared suddenly in the midst of the gray clearing Which rives with the drudgery of modern existence, like the radiant messenger of a past age when mankind still smiled, and the glimmer of

dawn lit up the mountain tops and flux of light dotted the ground in the gloomy forests. Well done, that was excellent. So other than them having a really dim view of the modern condition, what is that poem about? Well, see, it's not just any poem. It's an Olympic poem. And I don't mean that it's a poem about the Olympics. I mean, it literally won an Olympic gold medal for literature. Okay, okay. I mean, I don't know about every sport in the Olympics, but I'm pretty short of literature is not one

that I'm familiar with at all. Yeah, you're right. And nobody is today for the most part. But for decades, the Olympic Games actually did include competitions that fell under these five main artistic categories, and one of those was literature. And so because I only think of them as sporting events and the Catalan's and Pentathlon's, how did literature find its way into the Olympics?

Well, it started with this person who was broadly credited with watching the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, and he was this French aristocrat who advocated for and then ultimately organized the International Olympic Committee, which is still around today. So he's at the forefront of Olympics in general, and that committee decided to host the very first modern international Olympics in 1896. And they chose Athens as the host city, which was of course a nod to the ancient Greek Olympics. So the first modern games in Athens, they did both feature like sports and arts like that? Well, not quite yet. The very first set of games was basically what you'd expect.

It had sports like swimming and weightlifting and fencing. But then after we'd had a couple of good successful games, also dirt around sports, Kubrita sprung this idea on the IOC in 1906. He basically was like, here we go. Why don't we also add these arts categories I've been thinking about? And those were architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. Architecture. Now we're cooking our cats here. Okay, keep going. And so these architects and other artists participating in this new quote, pan-tathlon of the muses, and quote, were supposed to be amateurs, much like their counterparts competing on the sports side. It all seems like a pretty big departure from what I think of as the ancient Olympics were

those always centered around sports too? I mean, they were for the most part, but there were some ancient Olympic competitions for music or singing or even what's called heralding, which I gather just involve announcing things really loudly. I don't know. And so Cooper Ten kind of referred to that in his arguments for including the arts and the modern Olympics. And he wrote quote, in the high times of Olympia, the fine arts were combined harmoniously with the Olympic Games to create their glory. This is to become reality once again." But and I find this part strange for some reason, all of these artistic entries were also supposed to be related to sports.

I mean, the poem you had me read at the top was like that. It was about sports. I mean, I don't know if like, if you were judging all poems equally, if one about sports would necessarily win the gold medal, but when it comes to poems in the Olympics during this era, they had to be about sports. Correct. Yeah, exactly. So it was kind of limiting.

And so in the realm of architecture, for example, contenders submitted stuff like athletic stadiums and sporting complexes and playing fields and swimming pools and even ski jumps. And some of those pieces were published during the Olympics, like that's where they kind of first appeared, but others were actually built structures like out in the world.

So they were judging actual built structures. It's not just like how did you bring your building to Athens? Like how did you bring your building to Athens? Like, how did that work? Right. So in those cases, whether or not the thing was built, they relied on renderings. But there were exceptions. So in the 1928 games in Amsterdam, there was this Dutch architect who won the gold medal

for the stadium that was being used in those Olympics. Talk about a home field advantage. Right, I mean, it does seem like it being there, maybe could skew the judges a little bit. But the crazy thing is, by this time, there were a lot of submissions. That year, though, and there were over 1,000 works of art submitted in all these different categories.

Wow. It's kind of amazing to me that there was a period of time where there were that many submissions and it was that big a part of the games, but no one knows about this period of time. I mean, the Olympics history. Right. Like, I didn't either. I mean, you know, I went to architecture school. You'd think that they would teach you about the architectural Olympics.

But no, they kind of faded from memory. But for a long time, they were really a big deal. And the IOC even got to the point of adding new subcategories within the arts, like orchestra and dramatic works, even town planning. Yeah, all right. And so these creative competitions grew popular. And one side effect was that they started to naturally draw in people who were more like aspiring professionals and even veteran creatives. And some of these participating artists were even selling their artworks during the games.

Well, that seems to be somewhat in the violation of the spirit of the games, you know, just to use it as a showcase for selling your work, it's like a big gallery show. Right. If the act of being in the games turns you from an amateur to a professional, then that makes things kind of complicated. It does. And really this idea of amateurism was something that the IOC was pushing more and more

as time went on and we were getting into the 1940s. So the arts became this natural target, right? Like it was the obvious thing that was like not being quite as amateur as everybody thought it would be. And frankly, you know, this amateur focus to begin with was a bit of a stretch for the arts. And that architect who won the award for building that Olympic stadium, like obviously he wasn't an amateur.

Right. Yeah. You couldn't oppose the Olympic Games in the amateur stadium, you know, like with amateur adherence to building guidelines for it. Right, right. Just like a rough sketch of an idea, you know, it's still fine. And there were other problems too. Like some artists didn't want to participate because they might lose and that could damage

their reputation. And then, you know, as you mentioned before, it's like this sports focus was pretty limiting. And so eventually, after the London Games in 48, the IOC just discontinued the arts competitions all together. And now there's this thing called the Cultural Olympiad, which is separate, but really like the main events and the medals are four sports. I mean, that is stunning to me that it lasted until 1948. So that means that there's like a stretch of like 30 years or more where there were these artistic metal winners, like,

are there anybody that I would know of in that cohort? You know, most of them aren't famous people for better or for worse. Like, the ones I actually find most interesting are these like, like, ways in which they kind of like pushed the idea of the Olympics or like, things that like set unusual records. So, for example, there was this Olympian in 1912 who won a medal for swimming while he also won a medal for sculpture. Like, to me, that's really cool. Like that's like, wow, that's really the liberal arts of competition, right? You can like win an art in sports.

And then there was this winner in the arts who was 73 years old when he won. You know, we think of Olympic contenders being pretty young, but it's like in the arts, really any age can apply. And then there's Kubran himself who won a gold medal in an arts category in the 1912 Paris Olympics. Wait a second I mean he helped jumpstart the Olympics like sort of the founder of the modern Olympics and then he competed in the Olympics. Yes, yes he did. And he won his award for literature or more specifically poetry.

Did he write that poem at the top that you made me read? That's the one Cooper-Tan submitted it under a pseudonym and he won the gold. Well, I'm sure there's nothing fishy going on there. No, not at all, not at all. And you know, I mean, there is this possibility that he submitted it because he wanted to make sure all the art categories were represented,

you know, the first year that the arts were included. But obviously, I can't help but wonder if he was secretly harboring a second motive. I mean, he put a lot into pitching these arts competitions. So, you know, maybe, just maybe, he knew he really couldn't compete on the sports side, but, you know, he wanted his shot at the gold. If there was a podcast Olympics and I'd get a gold medal, I would

totally into it. Right. You could found it and then submit your work to it and be the best. Love it. Oh, I really do love it. Well, that's so great. I want to bring this back. I would love to see what Michael Phelps could do when it comes to designing a stadium. And right now it would be so awesome. Or how well he can sculpt. I mean, I don't know. Like the possibilities are endless.

Well, I love imagining an Olympics like that. Thanks, Kurt. Coming up, Modernism and Penguins collide after this. Okay, Delaney Hall, what is your mini story for this year? Well, for months there's been this story that's been kicking around in our pitch meetings and it is about the Penguin Pool at the London Zoo. Okay. And when the pool was originally built in 1934, it was this groundbreaking work of engineering.

But there is also a lot of drama over the pool, which is now empty, and big questions about what to do with it. I love the idea of drama about a penguin pool. So, what is so special about this pool? Well, I will get to that, but first, if you will allow me a brief digression into zoo history. I will always allow you all digressions.

This empire was built on digressions. This empire was built on digressions. Okay, well here is the digressions. So modern zoos, let's start there. Modern zoos date back to the mid 19th century. And one of the first was actually the London Zoo. It was established in 1828. And that was a time when the natural sciences were blossoming. So classification and taxonomy were all the rage. And you can see that reflected in zoo design of the time. So that's kind of where you get the idea of the cat house and the monkey house and the reptile house. So as soon as they started dividing animals taxonomically, then they started to put them in different houses. And that's still like you still see that in zoos today. Like as soon as you walk

in to the zoo, like the monkey house is there. Right. But the thing about zoos back then is that even though there was this growing appreciation for the natural world, zoos were basically still, you know, jails for animals. Animals were kept tightly chained in small cages. The lifespan of the typical zoo animal was quite short. I mean, you can imagine that that's not a way any animal should live. Was there a point when that started to get a little bit better? What would they start to do to change that? Yeah. By the mid-20th century, there are a couple big things happening in Zoo Design. One is the decline of cages with bars. So, Zoo Designers are starting to make exhibits that are instead surrounded by moats of water. They're less explicitly cage-like.

And then, on the other hand, there's this other trend happening, which is towards modernist zoo design. And, you know, here, we love modernism and all, but I can imagine the clash of modernism and, you know, zoo design, having some problems. Yes, absolutely. I mean, we love modernism. I don't know that animals love modernism. You know, like, not super comfortable for the animals.

Fair enough. So these modernist exhibits have concrete cubes and blocky sculptural elements. And there is an argument being made in favor of these new environments. You know, zoo designers say they're clean. They're easily hosed down. They're very sterile. But as we'll see, they're not always the friendliest spaces for animals. And that is where we get back to the famous penguin pool. So here's a picture of the pool for you to check out.

Okay. So this is a, there's basically a pool area created. There's a people observing from like, I don't know, the second level. And then there is this sort of double helix of ramps kind of curving around each other. As a set of shapes, it's actually pretty beautiful. Yeah, it is, it is like zoo exhibit as art. but it does not look like a habitat. But it was very popular when it first opened. So here's an old video clip of a reporter visiting the enclosure back in the 30s. So it's left right, left right, round the pool and up the plank. You see the penguins walking up and down the spirals and swimming in the shallow pool below them.

And the concept was fairly clever. Like, penguins could march up and around the ramps. It gave them some room to wander, and it also brought them up to eye level with the spectators. Yeah. So who designed this, this particular pool? The designer was an architect named Bertold Lubikin, but a lot of the credit also goes to Ove Arab. Oh yeah yeah yeah he's that I mean this is like the company Arab, the structural engineering company, is behind

tons of amazing structures including the Sydney Opera House. Yeah lots of things. Yeah exactly and part of Arab's reputation came from projects like the pool. He was behind the pool's iconic, reinforced concrete ramps. And the engineering firm, Keir, that Arab worked for when he built the ramps, still holds them up many decades later as an example of their groundbreaking work. So here's one of their promotional videos. In this case, it was expertise in concrete that led to

care engineer of Arup developing the groundbreaking torsion-reinforced concrete system that allows the interlocking spiral ramps to float in space. So it's pretty look at. The ramps are amazing. It's sort of an engineering feat. The pool is still there, but you'd mentioned that it's empty. Like, that doesn't hold penguins anymore. So why did that happen?

Well, this is where the controversy comes in. And where we start to see the limits of building exhibits that are more about design than about creating a livable habitat for animals. So what happened is that, kind of surprisingly, for 50 years or so, penguins lived in the pool area with few problems. We don't know if they liked living there, but they were relatively healthy. Then eventually, zookeepers started noticing a problem, which was that penguins were getting infections, specifically something called bumblefoot. Oh, no.

What's bumblefoot? It sounds both like kind of cutesy and terrifying at the same time. No, it sounds like a disease that would just happen in penguins. It actually afflicts various animals, but... Well, it would happen in the potter versus something like that. Yes. So it is a kind of bacterial infection, and it seems like what happened is that a few decades ago, the pool was renovated.

And during that process, the zoo swapped out the original rubber pool side paving for concrete. And they also added these quartz granules to make the surface less slippery. Less slippery for penguins? Why do penguins need to be less slippery? They live on ice. I don't understand that at all. Not all penguins. Not all penguins.

Oh, okay. I guess they don't, but still. Like, so effectively, they're walking on this really rough surface that's scratching up their feet and then leads to infection. Yes, exactly. So the changes in the material led to wounded feet, which I think led to the infections. But it's also a little more complicated than that

because a guy named John Allen, who worked on restoring the pool, he's spoken about this and he says that the original birds selected for the pool were an Antarctic species that generally huddles together. And then when those penguins were swapped out for species that prefers to burrow, the habitat just wasn't as well suited for them. So it seems like it was related to the redesign, but also to the changing of the species, and some combination of how the species interacted with the built environment. Okay, so this guy John Allen, he wasn't convinced that it was just the concrete causing the

problem. Right, right. So that it was just the concrete causing the problem. Right. Right. So that's part of the tension. There's this question of who's to blame for the pool failing the penguins. The other big debate is what to do with the pool now because it has just been sitting there completely empty. Right.

Well, presumably you just replace it with a penguin pool that actually works. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You would think so. I mean, even the architect's own daughter, Sasha, has suggested they can just quote, blow it to smithereens and move on. She says the pool has outlived his usefulness. But I can already see what's coming down the pike here because this thing is this engineering feat. It's more of an architectural issue than a penguin issue. So I take it. There's some preservation. It's out there that want to keep it. Yeah. Some preservationists really want to save it. It is a historical landmark. One, especially vocal London

newspaper editor wrote that tearing the place down would be a quote, active cultural vandalism. And he called Sasha's statement about blowing up her father's pool quote, patricidal. That's pretty dramatic. Okay, well, I guess that's what newspaper editors and opinion column is gonna have to do for the earn their keep, but it is kind of amazing when you boil it down That this is this is all over a pool for penguins

Mm-hmm, and so where do the London Zeus penguins live now? Well the penguins have been moved to a new penguin beach and the beach is indicative of The latest trends in zoo design, which is, you know, they're trying to more faithfully recreate the actual native habitats of the animals who live there. So in the case of the beach, that's a South American beach landscape with lots of plants and water. The water is deep enough for diving. There's sand that the penguins can can grow in, which is an important part of their mating ritual.

And then there's rocks for the penguins, you know, little feet to walk on, instead of concrete with quartz granules. So it mimics the places these penguins actually live in the wild. Here's one of the zookeepers. The previous pool that we used to keep the penguins in beforehand was, okay, but it didn't have all the new, wizzy kind of exhibit penguin-friendly adaptations we've got into this pond. Say for instance, the old pool,

you used to see the penguins swimming around. I mean, it sounds like they actually kind of settled on an interesting compromise, which is they have a penguin habitat that actually functions have a penguin habitat that is actually functions as a penguin habitat. And if they want to keep those ramps around, just to look at them, you know, more power to them. I don't think it's their place.

They can decide what to do with it or not, I suppose. It's true. You can put little stuffed penguins all around it and show how it used to work or something. Little animatronic penguins. Yeah, or it's's just a diorama. Yeah, they could go full, like, New York Natural History Museum with those weird, totally. I remember.

Yeah, but it has less to do with natural history and more to do with engineering history. And then there's a little architectural lesson as soon as you enter the zoo. Which is not what most kids will expect or enjoy. But we will. Yeah, we'll like it. Just concrete, no animals. Well, thank you, Tulaney. That's a we will. We'll like it. Just come through.

No animals. Well, thank you, Delaney. That's just a fascinating place. I had no idea. Yeah, of course. Thanks so much, Roman. As always, there's lots of images and videos of the pool at our website, it's 99pi.org.

99% of visible was produced this week by Chris Perube, Kurt Colstad and Delaney Hall, Mixing Tech Production by Amida Ganatra, Music by our director of Sound, Swan Riau, The Resident Team, Is Vivian Le, Emmett Fitzgerald, Lashemba Dawn, Christopher Johnson, Joe Rosenberg, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. Special thanks to my old officemate Mary Rochew, I wish I still got lunch with every day. You should read all of her books, she's the best. We are a part of this Ditcher and Sirius XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building, being beautiful. Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join

discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars on the show at 99PI org. Want Instagram and write it too. You can find links to other stitch or shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org. That is a wrap for us for 2021. We'll be back with a new episode of Minis in 2022. Remember it'll all be okay in the end. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. Stitcher, it's your sex home.