Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 368: A Rarely Accessed Source of Joy | Roman Mars

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

Today’s episode is about finding joy, pleasure, interest, and even gratitude in a surprising source: everyday objects and infrastructure.  Our guest Roman Mars is the host and creator of 99% Invisible, a radio show and podcast about design and architecture. It is one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Roman is also a bestselling author; he recently co-authored The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design. Roman talks to us about how he got interested in design, how the name “99% Invisible” came to be, his new book about the under-observed aspects of the built world, the importance of reading plaques and utility markers, design as coercion, and a shared love of 90s punk rock. Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install Full Show notes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/roman-mars-368 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello today. It's an episode about finding joy, pleasure, interest, even gratitude in a surprising source every day objects and infrastructure.

This is an episode, if I'm honest, that I didn't think initially was an obvious fit for this show, but one of our producers, the Estimable DJ Kashmir, made the case that actually this would work really well, and I'm glad I listened to him because it did. My guest is Roman Mars, who's the host and creator of 99% Invisible, which is a radio show and a podcast about design and architecture. You've probably heard

of it. It's one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Roman is also a best-selling author. He recently co-authored the 99% Invisible City, a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design. In this conversation, we talk about how Roman got interested in design by examining the delta between how boring things seem and how interesting they actually are, how the name 99% invisible came to be. We talk about Roman's new book about the underserved aspects of the built world.

We talk about the importance of reading plaques and utility markers, design as coercion, and our shared love of obscure 90s punk and Indy Rock. All right, here we go now with Roman Mars. Nice to meet you, Roman. It's nice to meet you. Thanks for much for having me. Congratulations on the new book. No, thanks.

I appreciate it. I'm just curious, how did you get interested in the subject of design? I mean, really it started. I was a radio reporter. I like, I love the way people talk on the radio, so I've reported and worked on every type of public radio style show that's ever existed, and like the history of the medium. And design came because I was also interested in architecture, and I was working at a radio station called K-A-L-W in San Francisco and the American Institute of Architects came to them with an idea of like, hey, would it be cool if we did like a architecture minute about a building in San Francisco and a general manager, Matt Martin,

and said, what do you think about this? I'd create a lot of shows for public radio. I was this sort of in the news department there at the time. And I said, I would love to figure something like that out. But I always wanted to expand it to kind of mundane city details like design in a broad sense, not just buildings. And everyone is kind of on board for it. And then I started making it. What is interesting to you about this thing that we all habitually overlook? You know, I just like the story behind things. I always have it's just sort of like the way that I get interested is the delta between how boring a thing seems and how interesting it really is is like where I love to live and I remember the first idea was curb cuts, the sort of ramp

that goes from the street to the sidewalk so that somebody with different mobility can get up there without having to step up. And I was so curious about it, but I wasn't necessarily curious about it as a phenomenon, like as a disability rights phenomenon, although it's a huge part of that, and we write about that in the book. I was kind of interested in like, what is the steepness of the angle and is that regulated? Like, I was just sort of curious about every type of thing that somebody put a lot of thought in that most people don't think about it all. And why you have to make those decisions and all that sort of stuff that was like, I just thought I could spend forever on that as a subject, and that's why I centered on it, even though I have an interest in kind of everything. When you're like a reporter, or you make a show,

one of the things that you're often trying to do is you're trying to make a focus that's narrow enough so that the show has meaning to people. They can grab onto it, but broad enough so that you can really talk about whatever you want to. And so that's the secret to making a good show, make you interested in it for doing it for years. And this just seemed like that space where I could just live for years, and it turned out to be true. I think by now it might be obvious, but can you explain the title of the show? Yeah. So 99% invisible was a name came up in a committee I was like gathering a bunch of like designers of different types of landscape architects, traditional architect, structural engineer, logo designer, product designer. And I was like, what is a thing

that you all do that you could describe your job without using word design? because I was just trying to avoid the word design. I don't know why I just had to like an allergy to it in the title. And the idea was floated that if we do our job, it's mostly invisible. If we do our jobs right. And so the idea of 99% invisible, and it also comes from a quote from Buckminster Fuller about the 99% invisible activity that shapes the world.

I was really fascinated by the fact that good design is made to be invisible. You're made to just use it without noticing it. And bad design is the thing you bang your head up against and you get really angry about bad design. But the good design like goes without you notice it. And I wanted something where people could focus on the good design in their lives and realize how much of the built world is designed well for them and not just the stuff that irritates them.

I haven't spent much time thinking about this, but as you're talking, I feel like two comps come to mind. One is organizational design. If you've got a good hierarchical structure at work and everybody's roles are clear and then people might not notice it particularly, but the organization may thrive. Similarly, I'm thinking about like like you, I write books and I spend so much time thinking about the structure of the book. And nobody pays any attention to that. They're like, I think about it like a house sometimes. There nobody pays any attention to that. It's like I think about

it like a house sometimes. There's so much that goes into a house, the structure, but everybody just looking at the paint. And you know, so the paint in the book world is, you know, just the words you pick or some aspect of an anecdote. Anyways, is that all lanced for you? Absolutely. It reminds me of putting the other book itself. So Kurt Coles said, is my co-author on the book? And the amount of spreadsheet work he did, organizing past stories and future stories and things like thoughts he had and putting them in together to make a flow of the book

that I think is felt, but is not necessarily observed, is astounding how much work goes into that. And I think that that stuff is a fundamental truth about design and good design, is that it is not there to be noticed, but it is extremely important nonetheless. And so you might think that your organizational mind, putting your books together, is a waste of exercise because nobody notices it.

I think that people notice it without actually internalizing it and it makes all the difference in the world. But every once in a while, that gets you about 80 or 85% of the way there, but that 10 or 15% where it is actually stymian you and actually causing you grief, you should let it go. And that's a key to happiness when you creating anything. Is that a theme in an organizational idea only gets you so far and the rest of it is the messy noise of life and you should allow for that. You know, like if you ever like making a radio show with a theme, you know that you'll have a set of stories and I'll I'm slot in really, really nicely and there's that last one and

it's just painful to put it in like it doesn't fit at all and I'm a big believer in if you just tell it well it's fine that it doesn't fit and that's how most of life is. Okay so I thought you were going to say oh that one that doesn't fit just let it go like put it in the garbage you're saying no just do it and hell loud for serendipity. I think you can go either way honestly that's part of the messiness because like sometimes it's perfectly acceptable to just let it go completely and keep your theme really tight. But also just allow for the fact that if you have different things and you thought of them together, you can make a pivot, you can have people draw connections that are not spoken.

There's all kinds of reasons to have things that are slightly discordant that play off against each other and harmonize in interesting ways. I'm a big believer in that too, that if you create the right space for people inside of a show, they bring a lot to it, and you don't necessarily have to do all the work. So tell me about the new book. Well, it's called the 99% Invisible City, and it's a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design. And the joke conceit of it is like, where you're going to a city? Here's the field guy to that city.

It's like the field guy to every city. And it's a collection of stories about kind of the under observed aspects of the belt world. Like instead of the prettiest skyscraper, or the most engineered bridge, it's about the maintenance covers and the traffic lights and the stripes on streets and the street graffiti. It's a guide to the story behind those things and the design of those things.

I want to go pretty deep on this, but just to put a frame on it, our audience here is interested in meditation, mindfulness, getting happier even if they don't meditate. And so what do you see as the connection there between your work and human flourishing? I think it's really profound because of the way it affected my life. I don't think I'm a wired to be a particularly optimistic person, but in the production of the show over time, recognizing that there was a designer who put care and thought into everyday things that we take for granted. I feel like I'm in the warm embrace of people who are very smart and who are anticipating my needs before I know I have them. And that in of itself like has really changed me, like it has rewired me

to be appreciative of things. So for example, like, we talk about infrastructure a lot because I love the concept of infrastructure. I love the fact that there are these engineering feats and massive things that no one of us could do, even not even one company could do, like, it takes a government, it takes a people to do. And I love these actions, you know, like sewage systems and tunnels and these amazing things that we build when we decide that we're going to get together and make a thing. But if I'm driving and I run across one and it's being built, I get really irritated like everybody else does. And after doing this for so long, part of me is like, okay, so these things that you love, they have to be built sometime. So maybe you should just chill the hell out and let them happen. And that's sort of the big things.

And then the little things are just like, wow, if you notice them, you go, let this done really well. And there's something about that that's really, really satisfying when you notice that the button that you push to get across the street triggers the light in a satisfying way instead of the placebo ones

that don't trigger the light to change. And I think the secondary one is just that I think the world is made better through rich stories and storytelling. And if you're paying attention to the information layer that's sitting on the built world, you can find stories everywhere, and it just makes life more fun. It just gives you something to talk about, to think about, to think about the people that came before you to know that you're on this continuum that the city is constantly changing

and that you have an effect on it. Are some of the cross-light buttons, Pussybos? Really? Yeah, sure. I mean, it's been demonstrated, I think, a few times, that a few of them are Pussybos, yes. That's diabolical. Who would take the time to build it with no purpose?

I think that they maybe weren't always and then they don't work and then people don't bother to change the thing anymore. Yeah. That would be my guess. Or somebody's just really nasty out there. But interesting, just getting back to you and how this changed this had on you. So it sounds to me like maybe you had a bit of a fretful view of the universe and then this kind of puts you in more of like a gratitude mode.

Exactly. I think before this, I was defined by the things I didn't like, by the things I didn't participate in. I mean, some things I were. So like, punk rock, go something I gravitated to and loved. And I loved the anger of it. And I loved the feeling of belonging in that. But a lot of it is also a rejection of every other part of society in ways that was valuable to me. It formed myself in ways that I actually appreciate.

However, the embrace of things and especially something that not many other people love. I guess it's almost kind of similar thing because the underground of music and loving a maintenance cover is not all that different. You know, like you like the band that I'm telling other people like and liking the maintenance cover that no one recognizes is great, because it might be a little bit of the same impulse, but it was just became more expansive, you know, that it was about care and about passion. And there was somebody who thought about this, and really it occupied all their time

and their job for like a couple of weeks to make something functional that nobody notices. And I just love that. I'm truly moved by it. Yeah, because then you can start looking at the universe or the, at humanity or the world that humans have built as in some ways, like knit together by caring people who are holding you up in ways that are 99% invisible. Absolutely. And that's really how I see things now. Like I do see the failures and I do see that cities are also a collection

of bad decisions. But I find recognizing those and recognizing that those are not necessarily in an inevitability that you can enter into the world and notice that the city is this changing evolving thing that you have a stake in and you have agency to change it for the better. Also sort of gives me a great degree of comfort. Just going to punk rock for a second so because that was an obsession of mine. I mean starting at age 15 and to this day, you know, I'm nearly 50. So that's a long time. Being interested in underground rock, alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, whatever you want to call it. But I may be a little less fretful. I mean, I'm anxious, but I'm not at morose, I don't know. So I mean, maybe I was drawn to,

you know, the replacements in the minimum and you were drawn to the Smiths and the Cure. Would that be a no, no. I actually kind of like all those bands a lot, but I really gravitated towards a group of DC punk bands for like minor threat and Fugazi later on, but like minor threat and writes a spring and jaw box and and Fugazi in particular, I liked the thoughtfulness of that as a scene and I never gravitated towards punk nihilism. I was always like dead Kennedys, like I was angry because I felt so much. And the screw it all sort of like UK punk nihilism was never my thing. But the American sort of like activism form of punk rock was really meaningful to me.

Random fact, I made a directed a music video for job ox in 1992 when I was a film student at NYU. Which one? Yeah, it was for a song they did called Cut Off. Yeah. I made it for 150 bucks on a super eight camera and you can see it on YouTube. It's very bad. I mean, to me, like so, you know, Cut Off is on novelty. It was one of my favorite albums of all time. I know that song, I could sing it for you. Dropbox reformed, I guess it's now been two years ago or something like this, and I actually traveled. Like I flew to Boston, I flew to LA to see them play again, because I just love that band so much.

We shot parts of it in my parents' basement and then other parts at nightclubs in Boston and Rhode Island. I am so excited by this. You have no idea how much you've touched my heart today. Two early 90s Indy Rock nerds getting together. It's great. I'll say that during the pandemic, I have actually found myself like going on YouTube and just watching poorly made documentaries of 80s and 90s, you know, indie rock bands. I don't know why. It's like comfort food. It makes sense to me. I mean, that was my gathering place for sure. It was was punk rock shows. And so that being a calling makes a ton of sense.

I want to get back to the subject at hand because there's so much to ask you about here, but you brought up community at such an important factor in human psychology. Is there a community aspect to this noticing that you're exhorting us to do? I think so. I didn't really put the thesis of the show front and center when I made it originally. It's like the audience found it in the work.

And I think that there is a community of people noticing and who care about the built world. But also that I think there's a community of people who like little details and have found each other online. I feel like design awareness is at an all time high in the sense that people argue over the fonts on movie posters and they've found each other online. I think that you combine those people who are the kind of detail obsessive with the urbanist who's really thinking about equity and availability of resources in a city and you combine all that together,

you really do form a community of people who are thinking about where they are in thoughtful ways. And I started calling them beautiful nerds. I mean, the formation of the show is even sort of community oriented. It was like the first public radio show to do a big Kickstarter campaign that funded it. And it was a surprise to a lot of the people

in the public radio system that you could go to the audience directly and it could fund a show like mine. And so there's always been a community aspect to its both creation and the discussion of the topics. And I've always enjoyed that. It's a huge part of what we do. So there's community in the kind of nerding out about a specific, an obsession, as you called it before, not dissimilar to

nerding out about early 90s DC punk music. But there's also, it just calls back to something you said earlier, somewhat abstract, but clearly meaningful feeling of community, you've derived from feel like there's a whole mostly invisible world of other human beings who've designed the world for you so that you're not bumping your head. Exactly. And I think designers are a certain type of worker or person that I find particularly interesting.

It's a kind of art with a purpose. And viewing humanity through the lens of the things we build is something that I just enjoy. I like the story of people, but I kind of like it in this sort of sideways way. I like using these objects as a lens to tell the stories of people and our values. And the whole book and the show,

the podcast in general, is about examining those values through what we make and build and what we decide is important. And you can often be uplifted by those decisions and you can often be disappointed by those decisions, but the act of noticing still makes me feel better. This act active noticing that you've described, I mean, that seems to be the biggest overlap in the Venn diagram between your work and my work. And when I say my work, I'm basically stealing everything from a guy known as the Buddha.

So it's not really my work, but... Well, still from the best. Yes, right. Just aim high if you're gonna be a thief. But so the active noticing, you know, you describe it as it feeling better than walking around and not knowing what the priorities are of the people who created this landscape. But there's also just sort of a waking up from the dream of the sleepwalking that most of us are doing most of the time.

That is at least the Buddha would argue and I would plus one him on this, it's better than the alternative the waking up is. Yeah. And what I like about it and the things that we do is that it's pretty easy to do. Like, there's a information layer on the bill world that is literal words that you just can read. Like plaques you can read, street signs you can read, sidewalk stamps, you can read utility markings you can read. And so like, I would say that the first step towards this kind of mindfulness is not anything that requires a lot of education or even knowing my show or knowing any of those things. It's just read, like take a walk for five minutes and just read everything that is in front of you as words. And you'll find a ton there.

Just in that, we have a mantra on the show that's always read the plaque. And I'm a big believer in reading plaques. Not because plaques are true. They're often not. They're often more a story of who wrote them than what they're written about. But they're a good starting off point to show what are the values of the moment and time and the place that you are in. And I find that to be really fascinating. So I think that's the first sort of exercise in becoming more of a 99% visible thinker is just

like read everything that's available to you. Much more of my conversation with Roman Mars right after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell,

where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans. A lot of them.

It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Britney. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. What else would you read other than plaques? Utility markers are really interesting to me.

So you probably never noticed them because one of the things about our brains is mundane things that don't change. Our brain filters them out. There's 11 million piece of stimuli that's coming at you all the time. Your brain is doing you a service by blocking most of them out and only noticing the change, because the change is usually the tiger that's about to eat you. One of the ones that I really like are utility markings.

If you look down anywhere, any kind of populated place at all, like the town city, whatever, you'll notice these spray-painting markings on the street, and they are the guide to all the pipes and conduits and tubes that are below this surface. And so if there's a construction project that's going to happen or has happened, the utility companies will send people out, they'll use old plans and also like some detecting devices, like metal detectors, To mark off, if there's a telecommunication line or a sewage line or electricity line and they'll spray paint them on the surface and they use a different color coatings, red is for electricity, oranges for telecommunications, and they'll put an arrow in their direction and if you know how to read them,

you can have x-ray vision, which is the coolest thing in the world. That's like one I just kind of love. And in of itself, that's a way to decode the world, which gives me some pleasure. But it also is hinges on this story, like there's a tragedy that predated this. So like there was a construction project in Culver City

on Venice Boulevard and some unwitting construction worker cut through a petroleum pipeline. It caused a huge explosion. This was in 1976 and killed a number of people. And this sort of like codified this idea of like we're going to color code it, we're going to spread it across. Other countries took it on. And so these things that seem kind of basic, they almost always have some kind of dramatic origin story to like push us into action. And I'm sort of fascinated by those stories as well. But if nothing else, if you don't know the story, it's just fun to have like a decoder ring for the world. Like it just makes everything kind of delightful in my opinion. I was thinking about the word delight and it just makes everything kind of delightful in my opinion.

I was thinking about the word delight, and it just brings the world alive. I've spent 0% of my life thinking about this until this conversation. And now I'm intrigued. And it's actually reminding me of a story. I had a great uncle, Jack, and he had a candy store in Jersey City at one point and there were some guys out

front drilling, Jack hammering in the street doing something and try to get below there to do something. I don't know. And Jack thought it was going to be bad for business. So he took a piece of chalk and whistled at the guys. He walked down the street and drew a circle and said, actually, you need to drill a here. And they did it.

That's enterprise. Yes. That's the very kind way to put it. So now that we're on kind of on the how to tip here, I'd love to know more like what are the other things you recommend. I mean, just look down. I think that a lot of the brain space of architecture is taken up by the tallest buildings and the beautiful things.

And I think the surface level, the street level, is really fascinating. And, you know, like, I have a real problem with asking people questions or interacting with people in the world. I basically created a job for myself that forced me to talk to people, which is almost universal to almost every reporter I know, is like in normal life, if they don't have a reason to engage and talk to people, they never do.

And so they have a job that forces them to do it, and I'm exactly the same way. But under the sort of guise of doing the show, even if I'm not actively reporting the show or recording it or doing something, I find that the way I take in a city, the way I interact with people, when I'm interrogating it in this way, brings it out and brings me out of my shell and gets people to talk about a thing that is meaningful to them too if they know some kind of history or something and even if you don't find the actual story behind things. It's good to get you engaged and therefore talking to people and it's a little of a neutral thing. You send around an object to you, you know, or play asking about their feelings or anything like that. So you're sort of like starting with something that's easy and I like that. So if you're in a city and you're interacting with a local just to ask about you know the building or when it was built how it was built who built it and for what reason? Yeah that type of thing if there's a person like in sort of some kind of authority where you

think they might have the answer to it but the other thing is like you know I spent a lot of time growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, and the streets are kind of money-brown. The aggregate that makes up the concrete on the asphalt is kind of brownish. And I think it's because of historically-counsel Mississippi. You know, there's lots of reasons I can make up for it. But one of the things I thought was really funny is I'll go to someone in Memphis and I'll say, well, the streets kind of brownish and they'll go, the streets are brown. They know what I'm saying. And it just starts that

conversation. So they don't have to have like knowledge or they don't have to be teaching you anything. It's just something to engage with. I kind of found that over time I've needed to engage with the world to get the most out of it, to get the most out of myself. And you can kind of do that no matter if you're a journalist or not, really. Yeah, no, I mean, we are all thirsting, especially now for human connection. And I think as we start to reengage, I'm guessing, but I think there's gonna be a big wave

of social anxiety and just learning, maybe having this as a little back pocket tool to as a way to start conversations with people could nerd. Yeah, I agree. I also think that, you know, in my neighborhood, I live in Berkeley, California. And for the past year, there have been more pedestrians in my neighborhood than I've ever seen before. And they're already kind of engaged with the world and seeing things in a new way, or seeing a house that they've never seen before. And they're already kind of engaged with the world and seeing things in a new way, or seeing a house that they've never seen before.

Like a car is the most horrible way to take in the built world as far as I'm concerned. It's really just a conveyance. You can use it like, you know, if you're exploring the, the blue highways of America, or something like that, it has some use there, but for the most part, it's pretty bad at it. But as a pedestrian, it's great.

And I think that a lot of people are forced to be pedestrians because it was the only way to get out. And so I think there's a potential for a great deal, more engagement with your immediate environment over the past year than there has been before. Because people have been trapped inside. It could be a great tool for getting out there. I definitely have a lot of social anxiety

about what's gonna to happen next. And I'll probably just rely on my same thing. Like I can get into this host mode and start asking people questions and I can usually escape by okay. Can we do what you're describing? I mean, this book is called 99% Invisible City. But what if I moved out of New York City and live in the suburbs and or maybe given the trajectory of my life I'm gonna end up in the country. Are all of these skills

applicable elsewhere? Absolutely. In fact the city sort of moniker is not really critical to the book itself. It starts with sort of unnoticed things and tries to explain them that those things you're supposed to notice. And it kind of zooms out to like the architecture level, the sort of geographic level, so like sort of seeing the world the way you'd see it from the window seat of a plane, you know, it talks about synonympics,

you know, the animals that thrive with humans, and now we've learned to interact with them, in parks and places, so it really applies to the boat world in general. I think city was just kind of like somewhat of an organizing principle, but it's really any place. Sin in throats. Those are like domesticated animals or animals that are thriving because we're here and they can eat our food. The latter, like so the raccoons, the pigeons, the rats, the things that have thrived in cities with us that have sort of selected themselves to do well where we are. I'm setting myself a challenge right now publicly to get the word synventh rope into my next book because that's a cool word.

I recommend it. Synventh ropes are fascinating. People love them. Like what I love about synventh ropes in particular is that there's a weird dance between them and us in terms of like when it comes to like raccoons, for example, they just thrive. You know, they have these creepy little hands. They can open up things. You know, they can get into our food. They're pretty cute, you know, but you know, they have some danger to them. And then there's things like squirrels, which you may seem like an unavailability when it comes to parks, but squirrels were deliberately introduced by people who wanted more nature inside of our cities and they failed numerous times until the design of parks with Frigic Law homestead, with the central park providing the types of trees that squirrels could thrive with. It really took park design to catch up to allow squirrels to be in our cities.

And they were, I mean, like, they were a dates, like, you can, I don't know them off the top of my head, but we've listed them in the book. But it's like, we're like 1863. The first squirrel was introduced in a park in Philadelphia and people wrote about it in the paper. And now we just think of squirrels as being a thing that it's just a part of the natural part of urban life. And even that was an act of design that we still live with today.

I mean, the squirrels in New York City will mess you up if you get to close them. They will cut you. But there were stories of like in the paper when squirrels were introduced, there would just be an article written of people gathering around a tree to watch three squirrels and a tree. And it was an event. It was like something spectacular in nature that brought to a city, and people marveled in it. I often think that if we weren't so used to squirrels, we would just look at squirrels and go, those things are amazing. And they're stunning. They're a little creatures, so they're just delightful. They are delightful. I may be familiarity breeding contempt or at least breeding, you know, blindness.

In difference, yeah, for sure. Having moved to the suburbs recently, there's so much delight I derived from, you know, hearing foxes howl at night or actually they don't howl, they like shriek or, you know, I, there are deer that eat breakfast in our lawn every day and that's just like amazing to me. I don't know if those count as synonthropes, but it's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think they do. They sort of occupy the interstitial spaces.

The synonthrope in my neighborhood that I am most driven treat by is there are these wild turkeys that just dominate the streets and the traffic just stops for them. They walk across, they're super aggressive. They do not care about your movement or time and they're kind of the mascots of the city and I find them pretty remarkable. In your experience what are the aspects of

the built world that are most overlooked? Just the general notion that the built world is a collection of choices instead of inevitabilities. So I think about this a lot when COVID happened and I was thinking about the city streets. So roads have been around for millennia and only in the past 100 years did we decide oh roads are for cars. We really just like went all in on roads being for cars. And before that, they were for pedestrians,

they were for horses, they were for trolley cars, they were for vending, you know, they were for bicycles, and they were just a multimodal connecting point. And then we found cars and found they were too dangerous to exist with other things. And rather than limit their ability, we decided that we were just going to clear the path and make them faster and easier for cars. And then COVID happens and then some reason, like a priority change, and we needed more outside space to interact with each other and be safe. And so people were beginning to take over roads by making it available for pedestrians just to walk and they close roads down, except for bigger main arteries, or close them off so people could have their sidewalk cafes because they couldn't eat inside.

And all of a sudden the need of individual people and pedestrians outweigh the need of cars. And what I think that most people overlook is the fact that the dominance of cars and roads was not ordained by anybody. This is not a thing that we just have to accept. This was part of a continuum that we are part of and people made a choice at one point and we can make another choice now. And I think that the evolving nature of the organism of the city is the thing that people overlook the most. Is that you enter into the world as the sort of solipsistic, narcissistic being, and you think this is the world I enter

into is the world as it is or should be. And I think it's really important to recognize that it was changing before you got there. It's going to change after you got there. And therefore, you can change it, you can modify it, and you can recognize those choices and make your own choices. And that sort of mix of what creates a city from the different influences of people and that it is, the city has always been this conversation between top down design and bottom up intervention and recognizing that it is an aesthetic thing.

It's probably the thing that people overlook the most in the grandest sense is that they don't recognize how much it can change and should change because our values change and therefore the cities would change to reflect those. I remember back when I lived on 59th and 9th in New York City and would be laying in bed, you know, musing before asleep and looking out at all the light blinking lights and everything and thinking, you know, not 50, 60, 70 years ago, this was the scene for mad

men we're playing out. And so yeah, I feel like there's an absolutizing to the ego that can happen. This is the world, because I'm here. But it's so many lives, and so much change has happened right here. Never mind the fact that they're indigenous people before we built any of this stuff. Absolutely. And I actually do find that comfortable. Like I find not being the center of my own world comfortable.

I like being a biological entity in a biological world. I like being a pelagic life form that just floats on the ocean. Sometimes I have moments where I affect it and some moments I can just exist with it. I dig that. I like that change and think that it's important. There's moments where you can roll up your sleeves and be a part of it, and there's old moments where you can't affect it, and you just like, you let it go. It's important to let it go.

I'm so struck by, again, to invoke the Venn diagram, how much overlap there is between this quite specific area of focus and the contemplative, meditative tradition that I come out of, you know, be so many of the things you're talking about, letting it go, taking yourself out of the center of things, training the muscle of gratitude and joy, seeing change. These are all like the central tenets of Buddhism. It's interesting to have you draw that connection. I don't know if I've always sort of been aware of it being there, but I do think that when people connect to the show, they're connecting to those values a lot of the time. Like it isn't that they have a particular fascination with, I don't know, whatever it is.

I'm talking about doorknobs or whatever. It's that they have a connection to existing in this space where you are focusing on those things and you're not necessarily the center of it, but your experience of it is. So like there's a part of it that runs counter to this that I think is pretty fascinating too, which is like what we invite people to do on the show is to place real value in the way they take in the world. So if like a building, you can be told it's important, but it makes you feel bad or you're told that it's ugly,

but you find it beautiful. Like we put a lot of credence in the individual reaction of what people feel about a place. And that is so much part of its story as well. So like even though we cover buildings and architecture, I don't talk to a lot of architects. I often talk to the people that the building affects. And so that's also a part of this. And I think it's generally the philosophy of it, not just sort of like removing your ego, but also centering it at some points and recognizing that it has a

value. And also offsetting one of the great things about one of my favorite books that sort of inspired the show in general is called The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. It was released under the title The Psychology of Everyday Things because there was no public conception of the word design. And one of the things that he gives you this ability

to forgive yourself is like, if you have lived in this house for 20 years and you still need to look up which knob affects, which burner, that is not your fault. That is the designer's fault. You know, you're not dumb. And so jumping from that idea of this is not your fault, your opinion does matter, that you are in a sea of things that are changing

and having a light touch and jumping between them is I think the way that I've chosen to live my life It's like this is where I matter. This is where my opinion really matters This is where it doesn't this is where I'm part of something This is where I'm not part of something and this is where a decision was made for me that I disagree with This is where a decision was made for me that and benefits me in such ways that I feel great gratitude It's all of those things, observing all of those states simultaneously is a sort of 99%

invisible way of being, I think. Would it be correct to say, kind of, situated you? Grounded you in some way? I think so, because I mean, you kind of like project your best self into the person that's analyzing these things and then you try to be that self. You know what I mean? So like the host of the show, Roman Mars is me,

but it's like a heightened version of me. It's not a character, but it's a choice. It's a choice to be aware. And I don't read every plaque in my everyday life. I don't ask insightful questions all the time. I don't sound as good as I sound because 10 people have worked on a script that have written it for me.

These are all things that I aspire to be. And so in a way, there's an aspirational aspect to the show, even if you're not the host of the show. There's that mindfulness. Is a thing that you also, it's great to achieve, but you have to forgive yourself if you don't. You know what I mean? Like sometimes you just have to get stuff done. And that's fair too.

You know, like, but it orients me. Yeah, I'm thinking about my wife comparing the version of me that shows up in this show to, like, how I am at dinner. I never want her to discuss that publicly. It's totally fair. I'm totally good. I would forgive you if the delta between your table self and your book self. Thank you.

Thank you. Absolution. You have brought something up a couple of times that I haven't really given you the opportunity to expand up, but I think it's incredibly important. And it is another aspect in the overlap between my world and yours, and that is ethics. You didn't use that word, you used values or equity,

and I would imagine that if we were taking a walk with a 99% invisible view of the world, we might notice that in some neighborhoods, wow, they don't have pharmacies here, or the infrastructure seems not to be as well tended to, et cetera, et cetera. Is that a focus for you? It is. And it actually sort of centers the last section of the book that we call urbanism. And it really is about that conversation that I was talking about, about how the design is intended and the top down design and the bottom up intervention.

There's some that are really obvious. For example, I don't know if in a city there's like, there's been a surge in the past couple decades of spikes on the ground so that people can't sleep outside. It's like they're often called anti-homeless spikes. There's always an aspect of coercion in design where a good design is kind to sort of narrow your choices so that they're simple and easy. And so there's coercion in our cities as well. And a lot of those are pretty hostile to groups of people that other groups of people find undesirable and homeless is a big one or just

general vagrancy or loitering. So like, you know, so there's homeless bikes and you'll see those and they look like spikes in their angry and you know what they are when you see them. But there's also things like that are more subtle, like they'll be like little decorative knobs on ledges that people can't sit down because they don't want that to happen. Or armrests on benches. So armrests are useful if you want to rest your arms, but they also keep you from lying down on benches. And I think you've probably felt this. You might not felt this in a park because you might not be a person who likes necessarily to lie down in a park. But like, I think

you've felt it in an airport. If like you've had a long way over or you're staying overnight in an airport or whatever it is, they have these, you know, the seats are really rigid. Like, you can't lie down on them. And they're there to stop you from taking up too much space. And they really do modify your behavior and you might feel it in that moment, but you wouldn't feel it in a park

because you're not necessarily someone who'd sleep in a park. But it's trying to affect the people that are. And so when you go through a city, it's really interesting to notice those moments of coercion because a lot of these decisions are made for you. And some of those things you might agree with or you might like in London, there's a thing called a Camden bench. And it's this sort of bench that is meant to do all these types of things. It's kind of this big lumpy piece of concrete. And it sort of slopes in a way that you can kind of sit on it,

but you can't lie down on it. It doesn't have surfaces that escape order can grind on it. It has these little recesses where you can put your purse or handbag behind your legs so that somebody can't come in and snatch it from you. It has no crevices so that somebody could hide drugs or any illicit substances. It's like this big anti-object that's meant to stop all these types of behaviors. Those behaviors, you may totally agree. I don't like drugs at all.

I don't use them. I don't enjoy them. I don't like drugs, Ellen. I don't want that to be an issue. I don't want them, I don't enjoy them. I don't like drug-selling, I don't want, you know, that to be an issue, I don't want people stealing purses, but you can still have an opinion about this object and how those are manifest into this thing that is a meant to just course people how fervently you wanna enforce something

is really representational of our values as well. And often we chose to enforce them on people that, you know, that we should have some empathy for. And I think that's the way to take in the city as well. So interesting. So you can view the built world as, you know, depending on who you are, you can view it as you're being held in this previously invisible way by beneficent ancestors and designers, and you can see how for some people, the built world is a physical manifestation of classism, racism, whatever. Absolutely. And that is a lot of the project of the show as well,

is to make us aware of those choices, and when those choices are made for a certain group of people against another group of people and notice them and do your best to, you know, if they don't represent you, to try to change them. And the type of gorilla interventions that we talk about in the book often have to do with those types of things like people like deciding that they're gonna put foam over the spikes or they're going to make things that are other interventions on top of the interventions to make things a little bit better like there's a guy in LA who put up a An exit sign to the five freeway. He hung over

An overbast and put it up. He studied the signs. He made a perfect replica of a California highway sign, put it up just so he would be able to see his exit. And then it was so good that the city, they just kept it up. And so you could be, these types of interventions can be really extreme like that, which are actually dangerous and probably should absolutely not be attempted. But they could be minor things like putting out a trash can somewhere that you see trash, putting up in Oakland, somebody put up a Buddha on a little triangle- like untended sort of triangle created by three streets coming together.

And it was a place that collected trash and was neglected. And as soon as you put a Buddha there, there was a kind of mindfulness of this space. And it became slowly, if people started bringing in other things, and there were lots of booties there. And there was like a little house for booties. And that's also a form of coercion. You know, like I find it to be a very nice and pleasant form of coercion. But it definitely is.

And those types of interventions are fascinating to me because I do think that they represent so much of our ethics and our values. Well, this interview for me has been a delight before I go out, if I could push you to shamelessly plug the book, the podcast and anything else you're doing for people who want to learn more about you and your work. Sure, this show is called 99% Invisible.

You can get it wherever you listen to podcasts. And. This show is called 99% Invisible. You can get it wherever you listen to podcasts. And the book is called The 99% Invisible City. A field guide to the hidden world of everyday design. And it's co-authored by Kurt Colestet who works on the show. You can find us online at 9iNiPi.org. You can find me at Roman Mars in the show at 9iNiPi.org on Twitter. And you can find us on Instagram and Facebook and all those things too. Well, great job with this. Keep up the great work. It's pleasure to meet you. Go Discord record.

I'm pleasure to meet you too. I'm going to take... So that was before Zach Perrocus was the drummer. Adam Wade was the drummer drain novelty. So that's probably who you filmed. But I actually think Adam Wade was gone by the time they toured and shot that video because I believe Zach was in the band at that time as the new drummer. So I text with Zach all the time. You do? He has a stair-scary shop in Brooklyn with his wife and he's a huge fan of the show and we met through like him being a fan of the show and me talking about how much I like

jaw-box. So I'm going to definitely tell him that. Please. Please. I tell to you. He was probably at my tell him that. I- Please. I'm gonna tell you. He was probably at my parents house with the rest of the band. That is so hilarious to me. I can't believe it.

I wish I just do a show about that. That's the thing that you didn't pursue enough is our DC hardcore days. But anyway. Thank you so much. Thank you to Roman Mars once again, really enjoyed meeting him. I do before we go want to zoom in on the part of the interview where Roman talked about paying close attention

to the city. Paying close attention can be difficult, especially in our constantly distracted world, but it does illuminate the ways we care for one another as Roman described. And paying attention is, as you may already know, the basis of mindfulness practice. If you want to practice paying close attention, I recommend the basics course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by Joseph Goldstein, one of my favorite teachers, one of my favorite human beings, my personal teacher. In the course, he introduces you to the Essentials of Meditation in a series of guided interviews

with yours truly, paired with guided meditations. All designed to help you develop your practice. You can try the basics for free when you download the 10% happier app, wherever you get your apps. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere, Kim Baikamam, Maria Wartell and Jen Point. We get our audio engineering by the good folks over at ultraviolet audio. I also want to say we got special help on this particular episode from Candice Middle Con.

And as always, a big shout out to my friends from ABC News, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan will see you all on Wednesday for the next episode. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com-survey. at Wondery.com slash survey.