99% Invisible - 526- Orange Alternative

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

In the 1980s a Polish anti-communist group called the Orange Alternative used cute images of a mythical creature with a tiny pointed hat to spread its anti-authoritarian message. That innocent symbol of an impish dwarf amplified a powerful political message to the world, which ultimately contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. This approach is being used in creative and clever ways today by people protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Orange Alternative

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In the months following the invasion of Ukraine, this one piece of graffiti started popping up on walls and cities across Russia. Eight asterisks written out, all in a row. Eight asterisks instead of phrase no war. In Russian it's eight letters. Alexander Arhipova is a Russian anthropologist. She's been documenting different forms of

protest happening inside Russia. Today, Russians can face years in prison if they're caught speaking out against the war. In Russia, you cannot say war. It's forbidden. It's absolutely forbidden. And so people are using symbols like the asterisks instead. It's called language, which people are trying to hide their messages in some innocent form to pretend that they're saying some innocent things, but in reality they're not. And those innocent-looking codes are evolving fast. Take, for example, the image of a fish that started to appear across Russia. That's reporter Sophie Kodner. Back in September, a woman in Russia wrote out the Russian word for no in chalk in the

street. But then, instead of writing out the Russian word for war, Boigne, she wrote just the first and last letters of the Russian word, with asterix in between. Russian authorities had caught on to the asterix thing by this point, so the woman was detained by police and tried in court. At the hearing, she told the judge that the asterix didn't represent the letters in the word war, but rather another word that spelled almost exactly the same way. She told to the judge that it means not no war, it means Niet Voble, and Voble, it's a special type of fish.

The judge asked her why she wrote it. She said, I hate, I just hate fish. I can stand the smell of fish. I hate fish. The judge let her go. And because there was kind of a funny excuse, the story was picked up by the media and spread around the country. And after that, there is a lot of jokes and graffiti with a symbol of fish. And now the image of fish, the picture of fish, image of fish, the picture of fish means no war. As the restrictions on language and demonstrations in Russia have gotten more and more draconian, the dissent has gotten more and more outrageous. We are coming to the very strange paradox. The situation became much more terrible and the signs of protest became funny and funny.

That's why, in the very dark moments, the level of humor, political humor is going up and up. This kind of cunning protest art makes for a good story. It shows how creative and resilient people can be in the face of political repression. But it can be hard to gauge its real world impact. Painting a fish on the side of a wall probably isn't going to bring down the regime. But there is an example from Soviet history of a time when art and humor actually made a massive difference in the trajectory of a different country.

Poland. In the 1980s, a Polish anti-communist group called the Orange Alternative also used a seemingly random symbol to spread its message, a mythical creature with a tiny pointed hat. And that innocent image amplified a powerful political message to the world, which ultimately contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. Right. Mayan? Mayan? Not Joseh? The orange alternative was started by a man named Voldemort Fretrick, or Mayer, as he's

called. Mayer is an artist with an eccentric reputation. I was in Europe this past summer, and so I decided to pay him a visit. This is my friend. Hello. So nice to meet you. Thank you so much for having us. Myer lives with his partner, Agni Aschka,

and their dogs, and a cabin in the Polish countryside. I'm there in August, and yellow flowers shoot up from the ground. We're close to a river, and everywhere smells damp and fresh. Meyers in his late 60s. He has long white hair that's parted on the side and sits loosely on his shoulders. He speaks slowly, even in Polish, and his canvases are all over the cabin, filled with brightly colored abstract shapes. You paint with oil? And I'll use this acrylic. Okay, I'm going to bake bread now. Agni Aschka puts a loaf of bread in the oven.

She's making soup for dinner, with mushroom she foraged earlier on the day. I interviewed Meyer and Agni Aschka 2, with Agni Aschka translating for Meyer as closely as possible. A w latach 80. No to ja byłem tak jak większość ludzi przeciwodnił zawolnością. So, w 1980'u, to było tak, że dużo z Polskami,

i było zaśfriedem. Popierałem w sposób bezględny pokój. of the polls and he was for freedom. He was a strong supporter of peace. And I looked like a hippie. At the time Poland was one of many Eastern European countries aligned with the Communist Soviet Union, which was in the throes of an economic crisis. We were on the stress of poverty, the stress, you know, I remember very well when I was, you know, a child. I mean, I had to wait six hours to buy bread. It was not.

This was normal. In the early 1980s, Poland's government raised the price of food and other goods, but they didn't increase wages to match those price hikes. And so people couldn't afford their basic needs. It is the quintessential factor that people must remember, is that before it turned into any kind of serious movement, it was just people wanting milk. Lisa Romainenko is a Polish-American sociologist.

She's written about the tactics of the orange alternative. And then of all the things the communist regime should have never done, they cut the vodka supply. And they really sent the movement in a frenzy. A labor movement took off. Under the name Solidarity. It was led by shipyard workers and it was the first independent labor union in a Soviet block country. And millions of Polish people supported it. People were having a backlash. They didn't necessarily want democracy, but they just wanted food, they wanted freedom,

they wanted to be able to dress, they wanted expression of the arts. And you know, once you take away vodka and children's food there was nothing to live for so people became very very powerful very courageous on and always on the streets But the communist regime responded swiftly placing the whole country under martial law in But the Communist regime responded swiftly, placing the whole country under martial law in 1981. The armed forces now rule in Poland, with martial law and the threat of execution for those who break it. At home, the media became heavily censored.

Curfews were put into place, and everyday movement was restricted. And during this time, under martial law, people would leave graffiti with messages supporting solidarity on walls around Poland, including in the city of Rotswaff, where Meyer lived. In most of the graffiti in Poland at the time it was written, it was just written slogans. But there were different graffiti preachers with communism. So for example, away with the communism, we attack solidarnovalds,

or solidarity in struggle, we'll win. But these slogans wouldn't last very long. And then as soon as they were written, the authorities would come with a fresh bucket of paint and just cover them up, so you would have all these paint spots on lower. Myer grew fascinated with these paint spots. He was an undergraduate art history student at the time, and he was really into surrealism,

which is all about using your irrational, unconscious mind, liberating yourself from the boundaries of reality. And some of those spots were very interesting from the artistic point of view. i zamiast w zamiastu. I zamiastu, które są bardzo wciąż w tym artystycznym pointe. I to, że się zastanawiam, że trzeba zrobić zrozumień z mięsztą. I to, że oni się znam i nie wiem, co się może zrobić z nich artystycznym. Więc to, że oni się znam, co się znam, co się znam. Więc to, że oni się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co się znam, co sięwyczaj, i z powrotem w publicznym. Wspóźnie, że to był wysok, i po prostu pójdę na wiołkę z górą w górę. Wspóźnie, zbyt na szkodzie, zainteresowali na szkodzie.

Wspóźnie, że po prostu pójdę na wiołkę w górę w kastium. Mamy zainteresowali na wiołkę w kastium. I chyba w ręku miał ojre, że przypominam butelkę piwa. I wciąż stąd był wśródiosenie biednie w biecie. I wtedy powstało miło, że trzeba kraszolutki malować na tych plama. I nie miał to w porządku, że to jest właśnie, co to będzie to zgrzymać na tych zgrzymi.

Somier zaczęli odpłynąć z dźwięk z południcą z południcą z południcą. Znaczył w biecie, że piosenie z południcą z południcą. decided to paint a stick figure dwarf with a little pointed hat. Instead of the beer, he put a flower in its hand. Tell me more about why a dwarf. I think that's why you saw me in front of my head. I'm the picture of what he told you because he was high, because he woke up, because he saw this real image of this dwarf with the, and to all of you know, with the bottle in his hand, that's a feeling he had.

It was a feeling. It's not making an conscious effort to make it a certain way. It's just following your gods. In Polish, the word for this dwarf elf, known like mythical creature, is crasnellutic, and they are a big part of Polish folklore, especially children's tales. They're less like the dwarves from the Lord of the Rings, and more like the barwars, like little spirits who live in your house and cause mischief. So for example, we have sayings, the ruby with a crossnalutki, you know,

little dwarves did it. For example, somebody, you know, did something wrong and he says, it's not me. Oh no, it's a little dwarves did it, you know. And then we have this, so may a stationary cross-nolute, we are the dwarves. Can you sing it? You don't want me to. Okay, I'll sing for you just the first line. May a stationary cross-nolute key, hapsa-sa, hapsa-sa, Okay, that's an additional instrumental. So Mayeron, some of his artist friends friends started painting dwarves on walls all around

Vrotzwaff. They had to be careful because the city was still under martial law, so they would do it secretly at night. And the result was a surreal stack of images painted over each other. First you had the original solidarity slogan, then a layer of paint that the authorities had used to cover up that message. And then those blockages of fresh paint became the perfect canvas for Meyer and his friends to paint a jolly little dwarf. The orange alternative painted hundreds of these dwarves in cities across Poland and the

silly images resonated with Polish people in part because they broke through the monotony of martial law. Because nothing was appearing during the martial law and there was sudden something would appear that is new that was already a great idea by itself. After about a year and a half of martial law, the Polish government had regained some control over the country. Thousands of solidarity activists had been arrested and many remained in jail. Meanwhile outside of Poland, international pressure was mounting. Sanctions put in place by the United States were hurting the Polish economy.

And in July of 1983, martial law was officially lifted. I actually got on a plane with my father. Two days after martial law was lifted and experienced Poland as close to having lived through the hell as any, you know, future scholar could have been. Lisa Romainant go again.

I had my own personal soldier with a gun pointed at me and following me the day I arrived in Warsaw, so although I was a teenager, you know, just to be able to see what the aftermath of what the worst of the times the people were living under. Even though martial law had been lifted, political repression went on. And so anti-communist groups continued to organize underground. The Solidarity Labor Movement was allied closely with the Catholic Church and had the support of the Pope. Which was a problem for myer and his artist friends. They supported Solidarity, but they also wanted to distance themselves from the Catholic Church.

Being artists, they said, well, we have to be in between Vatican Yellow and Communist Red, and the color we must focus on is the blend of the Yellow and the Red, which is orange. And so, the orange alternative was born. And so, the orange alternative was born. The artists and the orange alternative were anti-thoreterian and advocates for free expression. They published a satirical, political magazine and began staging ridiculous demonstrations that they called happenings. They took the dwarf graffiti, which by then had popped up all over Poland, and brought it to life in the real world. Everybody put on an orange, an orange elf hat, and an orange scarf, and pranced and danced through the streets like there was no tomorrow. Since they couldn't advocate for their own rights, they would stage skits and

sing songs that advocated for the rights of the cross-noludic. I mean, when you looked at the videos and the footage from back in those days, and you see, you know, tanks rolling through the streets like you saw in Tiananmen Square and rather than a guy holding his like, you know, supermarket bags, you see people donning orange caps and orange capes, large, large groups of orange elves. So wherever those tanks were going, they had to keep stopping because these elves were just dancing. And it just cracked people up at a time when they really needed it.

Spontaneous laughter was so hard to come by, and that these artists and performers were trying so hard to get people to laugh. But the Orange Alternative provided more than just comic relief. They also started handing out basic goods that were in short supply and Poland. At their happenings, they would give out things like toilet paper and tampons. They had boxes and boxes of sanitary protection. They really had their finger on the poles of what the people really wanted. So if you showed up at a happening, you were going to walk away with something that was really crucial for your family's safety. And they were brilliant in that way.

The police didn't treat the orange alternative lightly. There were many arrests. But the cops also didn't really know what to make of these artists and costumes, handing out tampons. Once after Maya was arrested, he was sitting in the back of a police car. And you heard the officer up front call for backup. Like, hey, there are a bunch of dwarfs running around down here. So the other guy responded, are you drunk? What dwarfs?

Basically, the police also started talking about them as of dwarfs, you know, not men dressed as dwarfs, but as dwarfs. And that's what made it really, you know, even more interesting. It made a joke of the police and showed everyone just how absurd the situation they were living in had become. In the realistic situations, you know, people running around after dwarfs, you know, and I mean, come on. That's just so surrealistic. People even policemen, they understand they participate in something completely goofy.

And it was even absurd to your typical communist. So the soldiers were laughing, the tank drivers were laughing, and even Moscow had to be like chocolate. And what I like about the Oriental alternative is that it's very peaceful because the force meets vacuum. If you're the force meets another force, you have a conflict. But if the force meets vacuum, the force dissipates. And that's what Orange Alternative is for me.

By 1988, Poland was alive with revolution. The Solidarity Labor Movement was holding mass demonstrations, and the Orange Alternatives happening grew huge. They spread the cities across Poland, including Warsaw and Lotes. Thousands of people would gather to chant dwarves, dwarves, dwarves. The war of the people, the war of the people, the war of the people.

By bringing the militia to the point of ridicule, basically people started losing fear of militia. And that allowed the people to free them to do things in the streets that they wanted to do and to, for example, come to happenings with their own ideas, you know, they stopped being afraid. So it broke the fear. You cannot be afraid of things that are ridiculous and funny

unless you're a politician. No, you're very afraid. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and was percolating in Poland, a sense that Polish people had their own identity separate from the Soviet Union, and the cross-nalytic played a role. They were these distinctly Polish characters from Polish fairy tales. And an orange alternative understood that it was between Polish people in the military, Polish leaders of the communist government, Polish artists, Polish steel workers. This was a conversation between us that we had to have. And as that Polish identity was growing stronger, the end of communism was getting closer and

closer. But the late 1980s, people all over central and Eastern Europe were taking to the streets and demanding freedom and democratic reforms. The Soviet Union was losing its grip on the people. Poland today came one step closer to becoming the first East-Block country not led by communists in more than 40 years. President Yerazelski, for me... In 1989 facing pressure from the public, Poland's government agreed to hold parliamentary

elections. When the votes were counted, leaders of the Solidarity Labor Movement won out over the communists. Communism fell in Poland, and it led to a domino effect that ended up taking down the entire Soviet Union. It's hard to say exactly how important the artists of the Orangeal Turned of War to Poland peacefully winning its independence. But Lisa gives them a lot of credit. I would attribute the successes of the entire revolution and the entire lack of bloodshed, which could have been much worse than it was, to the amazing brilliance of Mayer and the Arngel alternative. With any type of resistance or non-conformity, it's easy to dismiss it as silly and trivial.

Joy Numeira is a historian who studies Russia in Eastern Europe. Or, on the other hand, it's easy to lionize it as bold, as consequential, as bringing down the regime one little figure at a time. And I think the truth is very much somewhere in between. Joy recently wrote about a protest movement happening in Russia now, which some people have compared to the orange alternative. It's called the Little Picketers. The first time I came across the Little Picketers was actually in a photo in a Polish newspaper, and the author of that article made the comparison to orange alternative.

Oh, like this looks a little bit like those dwarfs from Frotswap in the 80s. The little picketers are small clay figurines about the size of the palm of your hand that are placed throughout Russian cities. They're cute and silly and colorful. In Russian it's called modinky piquet, which means little protest. So yeah, they are miniature protesters. Some of them hold peace signs or Ukrainian flags or anti-war messages.

One of them is pictured holding a fish. It's easy for anyone to get some clay and make a little picketter and then discreetly drop it off in a public space without anyone else noticing. They usually get thrown away pretty quickly by Russian authorities, but before that happens, a photo is taken and submitted to an Instagram account. Joy likes the little picketers in part because of how different they look from the imagery coming out of the regime.

The most prominent pro-war symbol in Russia right now is the Z. You'll see these big aggressive Z's break-painted on tanks and cars. They look intimidating and warlike. And the little picketers just feel like the opposite, which is in itself subversive. This idea of trying to create something in contrast to the dominant reality around you,

which can seem hegemonic and overwhelming, trying to create little strange things that are at odds with that dominant reality and that point to some kind of other possibilities or other ideas or other ways of acting or being in the world other than what the state wants you to do and think. I spoke to the creator of the little picketers who will keep anonymous for safety reasons. He said he sometimes hears criticism that Russians aren't doing enough to protest the war. And that's a position of a critic Russian people. You're just viewers. You didn't do anything.

Why don't you go out on the streets and demonstrate, of course, yeah, a great idea. He worries that even talking about the war inside his own home could get him arrested and thrown in jail. I feel very paranoid and started to hearing voices behind the walls of my neighbors. And that was the paranoid which I shared with very, very huge amount of different, of all Russians, I think. You know that your neighbors can call to police anytime. It's very, very scary thing. But despite this constant fear and anxiety, he still feels compelled to do something.

He thinks a lot of Russians do, which is why he created the little picketers. For Russian people, I think it's a training machine mostly. The feel yourself, feel your muscle of protest. To therapy yourself, yeah, I did it, it's not important, but it's important. It's important because it's not so important. It's daily routine. In another way protest is to feel who are you? Can you do this? It's fun and that's funny because again, I do this small thing. Of course I can The little picketers are one of a number of ways that some people inside Russia are using

play and humor to express their dissent against a very serious brutal war, a war that's already killed tens of thousands. If nothing else, these small actions offer self-preservation, like a way to save your own soul. And you never know, sometimes a silly little symbol catches on. Sovicotner goes hunting for dwarfs after this. So we are back with reporter Soficodner. Thank you for bringing in that story, Sofic. I really loved it.

Thanks for signing off on my trip to Poland. Anytime. I mean, it sounded delightful. How did you enjoy it? Poland was super interesting. As you know, I went to the Polish countryside and interviewed Meyer at his cabin, which was really beautiful and peaceful. But I also went to the city of Rotswaff, that's where Meyer lived and where the orange alternative came to be.

And I was really excited to find that a big thing tourists do there is go hunting for cross Noludik. So what does hunting for cross Noludic mean? Like what it would is door hunting in tail. So let me set the scene. Wordswaff has this big medieval market square in the middle of its old town. It's surrounded by these tall sort of pastel colored buildings that have amazingly detailed moldings. There's actually a spiral motif, like a swirl on a lot of the buildings that I'm obsessed with. It sounds beautiful, really charming. Yes, it was very, very charming. But anyway, Vrotsov also has these little bronze statues all over town.

They're the statues of Crasneludic dwarves with tiny pointed shoes, pointed hats. They sort of look like garden gnomes, but all bronze. And there are hundreds of them, something like 450 of them. Oh, wow. Yeah, they basically have their own world within Frotswaff. And Taurus run around, try to spot them all. I actually hopped on a free dwarf tour while I was there with a local guide.

So, welcome to Frotswaff, everybody. And as I have said, first of all, we'll take a little walk around this square to see some of those statues that will be like the first part of the tour and as you can see we saw tons of dwarves on the store they're all posed in different ways like there's one smiling and holding a sunflower I personally love this one sleeping next to a little bronze seller door this is usually referred to as the entrance to the dwarf underworld because you can see like the entrance going down.

And some of them are harder to find than others. Some of them are like moving. There are for example dwarves in lots of trams, in lots of boats, in public transport. Many of them are indoors. For example, in a moment we are going to pass post office. There is a dwarf in the post office. Little further there is KF2 restaurant. Inside of the restaurant there is a dwarf eating hot wings, for example, right? That one's sitting on a little bronze KFC bucket. And a lot of the crafts and analytics are advertisements like that. They advertise for local businesses.

Like there's one outside of bank that's using a little bronze ATM. There's one eating ice cream, outside an ice cream shop. Another one is drinking vodka, outside a bar. Those businesses, they actually pay a lot of money to have those doors, because this is like their advertisement. So, if you'd like to have such a door, for example, like your podcast, to open an office in Vrottov, you'd like to have a door at your door. Yeah?

99 PI, cross the literally. I'm all for it. It would be a reason enough to open up an office in Poland. That would be amazing. Some a little Polish studio. Oh, I love it. Yeah. So for the most part, everyone I met in Vroza was a huge fan of the dwarf statues.

People love them except Meyer. Meyer hates them. I think I can guess why, but tell me, what is he hate the cross-niluvic around the town? So the first cross-niluvic statue was put up in 2001, and that one was explicitly in homage to the orange alternative. It's on a pedestal in the middle of a street where a lot of the orange alternative happenings went down, but since then, as more and more dwarf statues have gone up, they've basically become a marketing play for the town at large. And the history is kind of backseat.

Do the dwarves around town, do they work to reinforce this revolutionary history, or is it really just marketing at this point, is it all been obscured by other uses of the dwarf? Yeah, I would not say that they reinforce the history in any way. Okay. I think the people who lived through the Revolution in Poland remember the orange alternative for the most part, but other than that, it's not really common knowledge anymore. It's not like something that's being taught in schools in Poland. I mean, it's not super surprising, because like 60s revolutionary stuff in this country

isn't really taught in schools that much, but it is kind of disappointing, especially since those symbols are everywhere. Right. And what really bothers Meyer about it is that the city of Rotswap itself started using a cross-noludic drawing in their marketing materials, like as a logo. And it looked a lot like Meyer's original cross-noludic graffiti. So to him, it was a copyright issue, a plagiarism issue. He actually sued the city a few years back, anyone. So they don't use that cross-niludic logo anymore. Wow. OK, so he has a personal stake in this and then overusing or misappropriating that logo,

like even to the point of plagiarism. That's interesting. Yeah, and I really liked my tour guides take on the whole thing. Let's say that this, you know, the legal suit, the lawsuit he filed. This is one more happening on his behalf, right? Because he was creating funny, happening sexual life. And this is also maybe like the last time he was trying to kind of, you know, make people question this whole story, whether it's like, okay,

to use a symbol of anti-communist era for marketing, right? So this is just another big happening, a big metacommentary by the Orange alternative. I like that interpretation, that's pretty fun. Exactly. Well, thank you, Sophie. This is so much fun. I just enjoyed the story, and it was like, Thanks, Roman.

99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Sophie Cotner, edited by Emmett Fitzgerald, original music director, sound Swan Rihau, with additional music by Jenny Conley Driesos, John Newfeld, and Nate Query. Sound mix by Martin Gonzales, fact checking by Graham Haysha. Delaney Hall is their senior editor, Kurt Colstead is our digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Barupé, Vivian Leigh, Christopher Johnson, Jason Dillion, Lashemadon, Jacob Maldonado Medina, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. Special thanks this week to Harry Tarpe, Martha Golonka, Agneska Griez, Megan Zirez, Carly Olson,

and the Orange Alternative Foundation. 99% invisible is part of the Stitcher and Serious Exam podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building and beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussion about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI or on Instagram, Reddit and TikTok too. You can find links to other

stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org. And so people are using symbols like the asterisks, the asterisks instead. And so people are using symbols like the asterisks, like the asterisks, like the asterisks, like the asterisks, like the asterisks, like the asterisks, you're gonna have to come back, I can't read those ends, I'm gonna write.