SPEAKER_02: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel dot com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all in one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything. Your products, content you create and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace dot com slash invisible for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.
SPEAKER_02: A few months ago, I got an intriguing email from the Clinton Foundation. It said that former President Bill Clinton had read the book I co-authored with Kirk Colstead, the 99% invisible city, and he really enjoyed it and wanted to interview me for his podcast. I was gobsmacked by all this, and I don't think it really sunk in what was happening until I was face to face with President Clinton on a zoom where we talked for two hours about cities, design and my favorite park in North Little Rock, Arkansas, that my grandma used to bring me to as a kid. It's called the Old Mill. That little tidbit didn't make it into the final episode, but we had a great conversation and it was really fun. And so this week, while I happen to be in New York for the Clinton Global Initiative hosting conversations about cities and inclusive design, I thought I'd play this episode that Clinton and I recorded together for his show. Why am I telling you this? So here I am being interviewed by President Bill Clinton.
SPEAKER_05: One of the most important non-political political books I've read in the last decade or more is The Social Conquest of Earth by the great biologist E.O. Wilson, who passed away last year at the age of 92. In it, Wilson argues that the most successful species that have ever inhabited our planet are ants, termites, bees and people, because they, out of all those species that have ever existed, have been able to repeatedly avoid opportunities to destroy themselves or be destroyed by others. And the one thing they all have in common is that they all have very high levels of cooperation. But of all species, Wilson says humans are the greatest cooperators because their consciousness enables them to evolve and advance and their conscience pulls them back from self-destructive behavior before it's too late. So why am I telling you this? Because in an age that seems so dominated by conflict, it's important that we step back and remind ourselves of our amazing capacity to work together. There's perhaps no greater example of that than the modern city. From the smallest details to the large-scale infrastructure, every piece of the city was thought about, designed and built by someone to make one large living thing we could all inhabit together. When it all works well, it enables our society to work well, too. My guest today spends his career chronicling these bits of human ingenuity that we so often take for granted. Things like the utility codes, the curb cuts, the traffic signals and much more. Roman Mars is the host of the 99% Invisible podcast and co-author of the 99% Invisible City. His work challenges all of us to look up, look around and think about the how and the why of design. Roman, thanks so much for being here.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my pleasure, Mr. President. Thank you so much. And thanks for writing that book. It's really, really good.
SPEAKER_05: I had so much fun with it.
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it. My colleague, Kirk Colestead, and I put it together as we were doing the show and it was probably one of the hardest things that we've ever done. But it was really gratifying in the end. I appreciate you reading it.
SPEAKER_05: Was there one specific thing that kind of got you started on this whole idea of 99% Invisible and how you came to focus on it?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I was in radio for a long time. I just love the way explaining things on the radio. I love the way people talk on public radio in particular. And I also was just a person who went on architecture tours. And so I have no specific training. I was trained to be a scientist, actually. And there was one building that was the Chicago Architecture Foundation has a boat tour in Chicago that talks about the architecture. It's amazing. Like, I recommend it to everybody. I've been on it like five or six times. Like, I really do love it. And they told this story of the Montgomery Ward complex that's along the river. Montgomery Ward is, you know, kind of long gone as a company. There's this one, the headquarters building was this kind of generic rectangular modernist building. But it had these four concrete posts on the corner. And I'd pass this building all the time. I'd never cared much for it. And then the architecture, the curator on the boat, the docent, said that, well, the reason why that building is the way it is, is that the Montgomery Ward Company sort of prided itself on its egalitarian hierarchy. And they wanted to build their headquarters so that there were no VPs fighting over who got the corner office. And so they made a building with no possibility of a corner office at all. And I just love that story. It made me love this building that I thought was boring. It made no impression on me, but then it made me love it. And then I realized, well, if you can tell a story like that, that's independent of the aesthetics and the sort of like image of the building, then I could tell stories about architecture on the radio. And that's where I sort of got the idea that we could do this. All the thought that goes into things that most people don't think about is really tantalizing to the brain. They go, oh, yeah, I guess I have always noticed that. And then it begins to build on something and then they begin to read plaques and they notice the sidewalk markings of like what the utility lines are underneath the street. And it makes the world just a little bit more delightful once you begin to sort of key into those those little markers. I want to talk a little bit about radio as a medium and I'll come back to what you said.
SPEAKER_05: But I remember in 1982, after I had lost in the Reagan landslide in 1980 and become the youngest ex-governor in the history of America, and I was thinking about running again and this all the polls show that I had a chance to win, but we had never had a governor elected, defeated and elected again. And I read a book by a New York media guy named Tony Schwartz. He had this theory that if done well, radio would be more compelling than television because it had more power over the imagination. Yeah. And I'll never forget how I talked to him, I bet for two hours about it one night. And for the next several years, I invested a lot of time, money and effort in radio communications and trying to imagine what would trigger an open mind.
SPEAKER_05: He also said, you know, if you if somebody has been against you on the other side of something, it's harder for them to look at you than it is to listen to you. So he said, you know, if somebody just kind of comes along, they talk and I say I'm halfway decent, you know, and you're not losing face by listening, even if you've been calling them names for years.
SPEAKER_02: I love that. Tony Schwartz is super fascinating as a human. I'm so like envious that you got to meet him. I love the sound of people's voices. I'm sort of hook, line, sinker, like for radio all the time. There's people talk about having radio voices and I love all voices. I love the tone of people's voices. I love what it conveys. There's just something about storytelling in this way that has always sort of made my brain light up. I don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_05: You've done all these episodes about things that we've all seen but not seen. Things that are obscure or at least rare, like the only street light with green on the top instead of the bottom in Syracuse. But of all the things you've written about, and I again, if for any of our listeners who've not listened to your podcasts or read your book about the 99% invisible world, what are two or three of your favorite stories, insights, things that you just were interested in and you got involved in them and it surprised you what you learned?
SPEAKER_02: Well, one of the first things I did a story about that I thought about a lot were actually municipal and city and state flags. I really love flags. I really love graphic design. And I worked in Chicago at a radio station there called WBEZ. And when you're in Chicago, all of a sudden you notice that there's the flag of Chicago because it is everywhere. And if you really go to almost any other city, you never see the flag of a city as much as you see the city of Chicago flag. And I didn't even know cities had flags before I moved to Chicago. And then I began to sort of look at them and realize that basically every city over 50,000 people has a flag. They're just not really well designed. They're kind of an afterthought and no one notices them. And so I began to really think about the design of flags and what you can do with them. And that was the one that really sort of like kind of took off. I even did a TED talk about city flags at a certain point. And it was a really kind of crazy moment where, you know, TED conference starts all these extremely important people like yourself presenting. I'm about to do my little flag talk. And I felt so sort of silly, but it really resonated with people because my contention was, was that the reason why Chicago's flag was so used was because it was so beautiful and so well done. And if people don't know it, it has a white field. It has two horizontal blue stripes and four six pointed red stars across the center. And you will see it like on cops uniforms. You will see it on municipal buildings. But you also see it on like punk rockers tattoos, like everyone has claimed it. And it wasn't just that, you know, people love Chicago who live there and therefore love the flag. I also think that people loved Chicago more because the flag was so cool. And the power of that type of graphic design to unify people for like somebody who represented the city to use it for someone protesting the city to use it. These municipal symbols that weren't owned by anyone that were owned by all of us was really like inspiring to me. And so then I think other ones, you know, like I think that, you know, the, one of the first stories I ever did was about the Transamerica pyramid. I'm located in the Bay area. I see it every day out my window. It is very striking. And one of the things that I had learned, which was kind of like the impetus for the whole show was that the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects truly opposed this building when it was built.
SPEAKER_02: They thought it was, it was sort of the height of modernism. So like the pyramid to make the pyramid shape, the top 200 feet of the building is kind of empty glass. Like it has no real purpose and modernism is all about, you know, like unadorned, like functional forms, like no extra anything. And it was like offensive to modernists that there would be this like 200 feet of air that did nothing except for a complete shape of a pyramid. And they opposed it and they talked very poorly about it. But, you know, like in the sort of many decades since it had become, you know, this thing that everyone loved and it's identified with San Francisco. It wasn't so much like whether or not the building was beautiful or ugly or worked or didn't work or violated this principle, whatever. What I'm interested in is what are the values of the things that we build and what does it say about us and how does it change over time the effect of things? It's the human activity that centers around these objects. That is really what the show is about in my interest.
SPEAKER_05: I've read some interesting fiction actually about San Francisco more than 100 years ago and about the earthquake and what happened during the earthquake, what happened after the earthquake. Is there anything that stands out to you about how after the earthquake building standards or neighborhood organizations were changed in a way that made life at least somewhat more secure?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, you know, the founding of most cities can be pretty haphazard. You know, they begin, people plot out land. There usually isn't a grand design or grand plan. And then disasters like the Chicago fire and the 1906 earthquake give people a chance to like really start with a plan now that they've seen that the city is there and is robust and there's a need for it. You know, cities like Chicago and Paris who went through like really strong, sort of heavy-handed design have a certain style. And what I think is interesting about cities is when you have these moments of evolution and what we grab onto and what we build off of them really reflects the moment in time. And then you sort of go from there. And when I was, I mean, not to sort of equate these disasters necessarily, but like I was really struck. The book came out right when the beginning of COVID shutdown started and all of a sudden this sort of like ingenuity of like the built space, like sort of cropped up overnight so that people could still function. So they're like plexiglass, like showed up in front of Bodega cash registers and like little markings on the floor to tell us where to stand and sidewalks became places for us to sit and congregate when they used to just be the domain or even into the roads. That used to just be the domain of roads. Like no one took away a road from anybody, but like all of a sudden you could form a cafe and people accepted that. And the thing that I love about thinking about cities is that when you're in them, there's a habit of thinking these, this thing is the way it is. It was this way when I was born into this world and noticed it and it's very hard to change, but they've always been these evolving entities that reflected our values. And I like noticing that because I think that that's important to considering change in a place. Like if you don't think a thing is fixed and it is a way that it's supposed to be, then all of a sudden the possibilities of what you can do with a road opens up. Because like roads started for like millennia, they were like multi-purpose, multimodal, like people walked across them, vendors would sit on them, cars would be on them, horses would be on them, trolley lines would be on them. And all of a sudden for about a hundred years, we just gave away roads to just cars. Cars meant roads. And then we went through this period of crisis with COVID where all of a sudden we were like, well, maybe a car isn't the most important thing in this spot right now. Maybe a cafe sitting area is the most important thing. And it kind of dislodges us to think about the possibilities that these built structures that seem so permanent and so fixed are really malleable reflections of our values. And they can always be re-examined and they can always have input and change because of them. And those moments of crisis kind of shock us into thinking of how we can change something for the better when for most of our lives, most of our existence, these seem like completely intractable, implacable, unchangeable forces because they're hard physical surfaces. But they really can change. And that's what I find inspiring about thinking about those moments in our history and what we can make and do. We'll be right back.
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SPEAKER_05: One of the things that interests me is that shows the malleability of cities, but also the importance of basic functions being modified and improved is how cities respond to things that they hadn't imagined happening. For example, Steven Johnson's book, The Ghost Map, is about the discovery of the real cause of the cholera outbreak in London. And it led to a total rework of how the water came to the city and how it was purified. One of the things that I was hoping would come when I was going through your book, I was hoping would come out of it, is that people would copy things that worked that they hadn't thought about and adapt it to their own culture, taste, and environment.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Well, it does happen. So there's like a, the book is sort of laid out, you know, where we sort of get granular and then we get like bigger and bigger views, you know, from, of the world. And it ends with this section on urbanism that is all about the conversation between sort of top down forces who shaped the world and bottom up forces that affect the city. And that conversation that happens between, you know, people who give like urban interventions or design solutions like you mentioned, like local ones. And then like, I think of really like mindful government or bigger entity, like notices those things, takes those ideas, adapts them. Because there's certain types of things that we have built our society on that only government can do, you know, bridges and highways. And those are amazing things. I think I take sort of almost spiritual solace in these things. Like I look at the Golden Gate Bridge and I just think it is the greatest structure that was ever created. And it represents all these people getting together to do a thing where a bunch of people recognize, you know, it'd be really good for all these people over here to be able to get to this side over here. And then we're going to spend, you know, like 10 years making that happen and also create something like gorgeous in the process. And that collective enterprise is government and it's meaningful to me. But there are things that are great to do in a place, in a moment, solve a problem, affect a change that is just as sort of inspiring and powerful. And I love those things. I mean, some of them are like, you know, there can be interventions. Like there was a sort of a prankster basically like who noticed on, he drove in LA, he noticed you always missed an exit on the 5 because it wasn't labeled properly. And so like he literally made a fake highway sign, went up at 6am with his friends, made it as real as possible, bolted it up and had this sign that was there to like mark an exit that he thought was undermarked. So he would always miss it. And it was so convincing that it stayed up for like a decade because nobody noticed it was a fake. And it was this, like, I do not recommend anyone doing this. It was super dangerous. But the point is, is like, there's always these little moments to improve and do something to make the world better that are worth sort of working on. And they don't have to be something like the Golden Gate Bridge. They don't have to be an entire sewer system that requires buy in from every community down the line and, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. Like you really can affect change in these smaller areas to just make a little bit better, like little pocket parks, little like, you know, seed bombs or something that people like in an empty lot, they'll take flowering plants and just like throw them in and just like make something. That's what makes the city. First, I agree with that. I got several things I want to ask you, but I would like to start with design and aid of public safety.
SPEAKER_05: The very first specific example, I believe, in your book, if my memory serves, is about steel poles that are really two poles where you you have to build something that will either hold a building up or hold a sign up or hold of whatever up. And you have to dig down deep. So you have to have a long sturdy pole to hold the weight. But instead, safety designers actually made them double poles and they bolted them together somewhere near ground level with screws that guaranteed or bolts enough flexibility so that if a car ran into them or something else hard hit them, they would actually break.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So how did that come about? How did engineers think about that? How many people had to die before they figured it out? Well, I'm sure way too many. But you know, breakaway posts, you're talking about a pole that is an environment like right next to where cars are speeding past.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it has to do two different jobs simultaneously. It has to be robust enough to hold up this heavy thing that is the sign or the wires. And it has to just do the complete opposite thing. Like it has to completely try to get out of the way as fast and easily as possible if somebody runs into it. So yeah, you're right. They have these connector plates and breakaway bolts. Sometimes even those connector plates are angled so that if you hit them at the right angle, not only does the pole like fall over, it kind of like vaults over the vehicle and doesn't hit it at all. And then, you know, like if you need to replace it, the base post is still there. It hasn't been damaged. You just bolt on a new one. And then you also have that aspect of safety, like you can return to normal faster. I do not know how many people had to run into a post for this to change or all the people that were involved. I mean, I'm sure that there were hundreds of different engineers involved, but they're like, it is one of those invisible design elements that is that you would never notice. Like unless you're really paying attention to posts and you notice the throw breakaway plate, it is not there to be honored or paid attention to. It is actually not even there to be used, hopefully. It is there just in case to make the world a little bit better place, a little bit safer place. And what I like to do in the show and in the book is have people notice those things so that they are aware of all the design decisions that are made around them to make their life a little bit better. Because it is really easy to not see these things and really think that you're on your own in the world, but you're not, you know, there's a bunch of people that thought about a problem that you've never even thought about and solved it before you even had to encounter it. And it makes the world more clearly reflect that we are like interconnected group of people that are trying to create a place where we can all live and thrive.
SPEAKER_02: And those breakaway bolts are a great example of this. Like most people never notice them. Most people never encountered them. They are everywhere and they're just there just in case so that you're safer, that you're more important than the sign is. And I love those examples. I find those examples like super inspiring and those design solutions are everywhere if you just know how to look for them. It's fascinating. I was going to ask you about another sort of related thing to me.
SPEAKER_05: To me, it's related. And that's how design happens in the first place. And why some people in some societies thought about things that others didn't, even if they had common levels of income and capacity. About half my lifetime ago, I don't know, 35, 40 years ago, a woman that I knew well when we were very young, and she came from a town even smaller than Hope, Arkansas, in my native state, went to New York, became interested in the origins of humanity, and went to Africa to study with the Lakies, with Richard Laiki. And she wrote a book called The Hominid Game. And then it was about all the people that were digging up our ancestors' history. And she got very interested in the design of prehistoric civilizations.
SPEAKER_05: So she did another book, which I went back while I was getting ready for this, and I looked at it again. I had looked at it in so many years. It's called The Sand Dollar and the Slide Rule. Her name was Delta Willis. And this book is about how patterns of nature are reflected in human construction and have always been.
SPEAKER_05: So I thought I would ask you about that. How much do you believe, in general, that a lot of the things we do basically evolved from what we perceived to be happening in nature? Well, I don't know if I have a good answer for this.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's a stupid question.
SPEAKER_05: No, I don't think it's a stupid question at all. It's hard to answer because I'm sure the stew of things that gives us thought and solutions has to be what's around us.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing spontaneously generates. And so what I find kind of inspiring about humanity is when we go beyond our empirical senses to study and evolve. I think that when we're looking for ideas, you should always look for nature to like how it was solved, how it was solved well, and try to harness it. And then go crazy on like everything else that you could possibly do that has nothing to do with nature. But I do find that like one of the things that is most inspiring, I find a lot of good design is the cyclical, non-extractive part of nature. The sustainable, you know, like that's what we mean by sustainable. It's like kind of behaves like the earth is sustainable. And that I hope people always stick to when it comes to like designing things. They should mimic an ecosystem. And an ecosystem is a really perfectly balanced thing. And cities that work well function as ecosystems. I mean they have to have these tall, like firm, big structures that sort of form the basis of things, you know, so that we can gather in big places and they have anchors. And then we have like slightly more ephemeral bits of architecture that serve our needs for periods of time when a mode of transportation is in fashion and then changes. Those have to be more flexible, have to be torn down. But those bones are really important. You know, like when I think about a city I love, I love Pittsburgh as a city. I mean one of the things that sustained it as a place was that, you know, Carnegie like built all these palaces to things. And when the city was gutted because of the decline in the steel industry, those things were still there. Those civic institutions were still there so that art could come in and technology could come in. But those bones were there that were like the trees in a forest. And that sort of conceiving of the built environment as a complex ecosystem and mimicking nature in these ways, it really behooves us because it makes it more resilient for when there is change. But you have to think of the long game when you're creating these things. And so I think there's tons of inspiration to come from nature and openness and the sort of like the way that all these different pieces interact. And highly designed systems sometimes can be super efficient. But when there's a flaw, there's a real problem. Like one of my examples is like, you know, like an iPhone. This is a marvelous thing that I love. I love to use it. I love to mess with it. It is the way I play most music or listen to people's voices. But when that thing doesn't work, it's called bricking. It's bricked. There's no way into it. There's nothing to do with it. You have to take it to someone to fix it. Like I grew up listening. There was a reel to reel in my household. If something broke on that reel to reel, you have a little bit of a chance to do something about it. It is like open design. It is like allows you to do stuff to it. And I like those open systems and nature is more mimics those open systems. The same thing is true of your car, you know.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly. I grew up in the car business indirectly. My stepfather had a little Buick dealership in the town of where I was born, which had 6000 people. And I remember there was a fire in a dealership of Henry J. Kizers. Old Kizers. About 30 miles away. And he took, I don't know, six or seven of them and had them repair them as best he could in his own garage with his mechanics. And the prize was we got to keep one of the Henry J's all cut down and hollowed out. But I drove it in high school and it had hydraulic brakes. So whenever there was the slightest gash in the air tube, they maintained the pressure. I'd have to go downshift it in the first degree and run up the first gear and run up on the curb.
SPEAKER_05: But the point is, you know, I felt one with that car because I felt like I could fix it.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Just like if I had to change the oil myself, I could do that. If I had to change the tires, I could do that. I could figure out how to make the engine work again. And I think that, I think for all the wonders of technology, I wish we wouldn't be taken so far from being able to do things with our own two hands and mind. Because I think it, at least for me, it made me more aware of the design of the car.
SPEAKER_05: The internal design, the mechanics. And, you know, I think about that. But the point is, I think that when I read your book, I kept thinking about, you know, we Americans and maybe people all over the world,
SPEAKER_05: and maybe because of the social media or polarization or whatever, are losing the ability to think large and small. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: You know, we just want to give us something we can digest in six seconds or eight and say we think this or the other thing.
SPEAKER_05: And the beauty of your book to me was you had these apparently small things that made a big difference because they were part of a whole that would be visible if we were looking. That's right.
SPEAKER_02: So what have you concluded about that?
SPEAKER_05: As a species, are we losing the predisposition to look, to be aware? Well, I mean, I think that not being aware of all things all the time is like a brain coping mechanism.
SPEAKER_02: We have like 11 million stimuli that are coming at us at all times. So the things that don't change, we don't notice them, it's forgivable. You know what I mean? Like our brains are meant to filter some of that stuff out. I agree with that. We're meant to pay attention to the change, you know? And so there's no problem with people not noticing things. I do think that what I like about these examples of ants and us and why we're resilient is because there are those people and things and entities that do think long term, that solve problems, that are not really just altruistic. They're not just doing it completely selflessly. We're trying to create this thing together. And it requires thought and design and differentiation. Like as much as I like the idea of you fixing your own brake, you know, when you were a kid in your car, it kind of was like there's also a beauty in other people doing it better and you just kind of like trusting in that. And that becomes like how we build a society. And so the world is made up of it has to be an ecosystem of things we know and control and there's like individual like agency and liberty and things like this. And then you have to like fall into the warm embrace of a designed world that people have thought of and their expertise is present and maybe you don't understand it. And hopefully we're engaged enough in a civic society that you trust those things. And I think that that's super inspiring. Like I love the things that we create together collectively and cities are inspiring like machines that are just super efficient. They you know, like if we're talking about your own carbon footprint, living in a city is better living on your own in these ways. And there's all these things that I think that if you take the time to notice the small details of how your life is made better by somebody thinking through a problem that you probably don't even know you need to have solved. But also just like then go just look at the Brooklyn Bridge. I can just go like, wow, that thing is amazing. I mean, like when so like in the 89 earthquake out here in the Bay Area, a part of the Bay Bridge collapsed and then they they rebuilt the eastern span. And it was about to open when I when I lived here. I didn't live here during 89, but I lived here after. So when the new span was opening up, they were going to have a big day, kind of like when the opening Brooklyn Bridge, people got to walk across it, you know, like celebrate it. And there was all these sort of problems they need to fix with the eastern span. And so they didn't have that day where everyone walks across the bitch. And I think that was a huge missed opportunity of this like collective, like enjoyment of these things that we can make together when a structural engineer who knows way more than you about the tensile strength of steel and, you know, like a city planner and a government body and the willing taxpayers that put money into this. And we should all just walk across this thing and marvel. And it's like amazing thing, you know, like we now can get from that side to that side, you know, like, you know, millions of times a day. And I love that.
SPEAKER_05: First of all, you got ahead of me in a positive way, but I was going to acknowledge that I was so grateful I didn't have to be a mechanic. And that also that I think being able to trust people in small and direct ways and in ways that you understand, which is if you notice more, like the things in your book, it's easy to do.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it might lay the foundation of restoring some trust in a larger sense and being able to forget things is very important.
SPEAKER_02: And I think knowing the design of the world, like helps you in that way. Not that you need to know how to do it or need to know how it works, but you need to know someone thought about it. You know, it's not like being a parent, you know, like, like you don't need your kid to know all this I've done for you all the time. That's the water they swim in is that you love them and take care of them, you know. And so them not recognizing the water isn't a fault on their part. They shouldn't recognize the water. They should just like swim in it. And a well-designed world that is about care and mutual benefit and all that sort of stuff is like that and super. I mean, it's why I do the things I do. And you can't read this book of yours about all these genius little things and some of the things that don't work without believing that we actually are highly interdependent.
SPEAKER_05: We need each other and we're all better off if we just keep trying to get better and device. And sometimes the answer is not a mega solution that affects the whole world. Sometimes it's a low-cost high-impact act of genius that can echo across national borders even. Totally. But that's what I got out of reading your book. I thought, you know, this. Oh, that's so heartening because that's what I feel when we do these stories that it really is an optimistic view to sort of examine these things and realize our interdependence.
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I'm so I'm so pleased because we don't we don't often like talk about it directly. Like we hope you get it through the gestalt of the of the show in the book. And so well, given the political polarization in the world in America, it's probably better that you don't talk about it directly.
SPEAKER_05: People come to it almost by osmosis. I think that more and more this idea of us being dependent on each other and that a world in which we're completely on our own that some people like love to imagine for themselves politically is a terrible world that we don't want at all.
SPEAKER_02: And that these physical manifestations of us working together in the form of cities in the form of roads, you know, people should recognize how much they depend on each other, even when they feel like they're completely alone. And it all requires like an idea that we have design systems and expertise and a faith in those systems and that no one person has to do everything that only works because we all work together on it. And the built world is all is all that no one person can build a building. No company can build a bridge. It takes a government, you know, and the government is our is the manifestation of our collective care for each other. And I don't think there's anything to shy away from. I think that's something to to celebrate, to exalt in. And it manifests, like you said, in the biggest things and it manifests in the smallest things like little tiny things and little regulations. And there's all types of silly, dumb side effects of regulations of people having good thoughts about things that have bad effects. I mean, like we have a whole section on like weird architectural features that have to do with taxes. You know, like there was always a time where they're trying to figure out how to tax people, you know, for governments to run and basically monarchies to run at this point. So they would tax like this. How many bricks you had in your house? They would tax how many windows you had in your house. And so then people would board up windows and they would tax how many bricks you had. So people made bigger bricks, you know, like and then they would tax like in Paris, they tax like how high your roof was, you know, like how many stories you had. And so but they decided that it wasn't taxed past a certain line, which created that mansard roof, that sort of mansard roof for the dormer, which is like the Paris roof that that's created because of taxes. I mean, like and it's like a dumb side effect of trying to solve a problem. And then in the end you made this beautiful roof line that we think of as quintessentially, you know, like Parisian, you know. And so like it's not that we don't make mistakes when we collectively decide to solve problems and there's top down things and ways to get around it. That's what the world is made of is that sort of conversation between well-intentioned things and well-intentioned things that work, well-intentioned things that fail, dumb things that we find ways to work around because people are great at avoiding taxes. We'll do it like they find all kinds of ways and you can date the period of taxation of a building because of the size of the brick in England. Like that's a that's an amazing thing to like notice and recognize and realize that that was part folly and also part just good story that made something like interesting happen. And it's not that we collectively figure stuff out. We don't. We're a mess. And but that all that stuff is what makes design and that's why it's fun to look at because it's all just stories in the end. And it's a fascinating world if you just know to look at it.
SPEAKER_05: More after this.
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SPEAKER_05: If you were the czar of the infrastructure bill that had just passed the Congress, that is, you've had this kind of money.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Based on your now many years of experience, looking at all these systems and all these things that worked to help a lot of people or that created some problems, what do you think the priorities should be on what we should be doing now?
SPEAKER_02: First of all, the natural lifespan of concrete is, you know, like about 100 years. It just so happens that we're entering into this era where all those beautiful things that WPA built are about to reach their natural lifespan. And they require just maintenance. Like, I think that one of the ways that design reporting or design thinking gets things wrong is that you can come up with some great solution and solve a problem, and then it's done. But that's not how the world works. The world is much more mundane, and it has much more to do with maintenance than solutions, necessarily. And so the first thing I would do is assess all the things that we have. We have these reinforced concrete structures that have rebar that are rusting and things falling apart. And we should just do what I would consider to be, or what most people would consider to be the boring work of just making the things that we have last another 100 years. I know that's not super exciting, but I feel like that we should begin to, like, instead of just the genius problem solvers and solutions of great little design innovations,
SPEAKER_02: we should start recognizing that maintenance is the reason why we're here. Maintenance isn't care of the things we have, because the greenest building is a building that's already built. And so recognizing that, that we just have to spend money on things and make them last longer. And the other part of it that I would spend on it is I would do kind of the WPA thing of, like, going, this thing that we're making is not only going to be functional and important, it's going to be beautiful. And you're going to be proud to be an American when you see it and not shy away from it because, I don't know, because it seems like a boondoggle or it seems, like, too expensive or something, just, like, really lean into, you know what, we make those things because we do them together, and that's what America is, that we are an idea. And that, to me, is, like, how I would present it as much as make it. Yeah, that's how I would do it.
SPEAKER_05: Before we go, first of all, thank you for that. I think, I believe that most people, in spite of all this polarization and fighting and name-calling in the world today, if you scratch nearly any of us deep enough, there's still a person down there somewhere. You know, and we have basic human instincts. And I think the one thing about, you know, reading your book and seeing all these zillion things that you notice, I think people do notice more than they know or even are aware of,
SPEAKER_05: but there's so much that they don't know and they're so busy they have to worry about how they're going to, you know, bring in.
SPEAKER_05: And you help them to understand that. And so I think that what you said is right. I think anything that increases our self-confidence and our self-awareness will increase our willingness to cooperate. And increase our ability to begin with the end in mind. I find that this is social infrastructure, I guess, but it's like all these things that you talk about, the things that were done well and things that weren't. Most everybody that built whatever they were building, they tried to do a good job of what they did. That's the conclusion I reached. And sometimes they were right and sometimes they were wrong.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, once in a while you have a thing like this Miami deal where the parking decks weren't maintained, all that. And I think your maintenance argument is very good, maybe just because I've reached the age where it's all maintenance now. I think maintenance is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But you have given all your listeners and your readers a great gift.
SPEAKER_05: Thank you, Mr. President.
SPEAKER_02: Because I honestly believe that knowing things builds confidence and you have to have a certain amount of self-confidence
SPEAKER_05: before you can entertain trust and cooperation. We need more social capital in America. And ironically, we might be able to best build it through physical capital.
SPEAKER_02: I agree. I agree that it's easy to rally around something that's a big physical object because you know it was made sincerely. And that's a great thing to recognize. It's one of the great things like infrastructure bills are like the ones that get passed, right? And it's because people recognize that building things together is what makes us a human.
SPEAKER_03: And it's valuable not only to people who need other things like to improve their income or their access to healthcare or whatever, it helps them move around for it.
SPEAKER_05: But it's valuable for people who need to succeed at what they're doing now, who are aspirational and who are working. And I feel good about it. I hope I get to see you when I'm out in California. I would love that. Let me know.
SPEAKER_02: I'd love to have a visit. I have some zany friends out there that we would love to have you at dinner.
SPEAKER_05: They could grill you instead of me. Well, it's a deal. You got a deal. I'll pay for the meal if you'll be grilled.
SPEAKER_02: That sounds delightful. OK. Thank you so much. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05: Why am I telling you this is a production of I Heart Radio, the Clinton Foundation and at will medium. Our executive producers are Craig Monasian and Will Monadi. Our production team includes Jameson, Kinsufas, Tom Galton, Sarah Horowitz and Jake Young with production support from Liz Raftery and Josh Farnam. Original music by what white special thanks to John Sykes, John Davidson, on Hell, Arrhenia, Corey Gansley, Kevin Thurme, Oscar Flores and all our dedicated staff and partners at the Clinton Foundation.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you to President Clinton for having me on and for taking such genuine interest in the 99 percent invisible city by me and Kirk Holstead. If you dug this conversation, I really recommend you listen and subscribe to why am I telling you this? This man knows how to have a conversation. And if you're looking for one particular to dove into the episode called How Architecture Can Save Lives featuring Michael Murphy, who's a hero of mine. I want a cracker jack. Get on it. Ninety nine percent invisible is Kirk Colstead, Delaney Hall, Swan Rial, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lay, Chris Berube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Martine Gonzalez, Joe Rosenberg, Jason De Leon, Lasha Madon, Jacob Maldonado Medina, Sophia Klatsker and me, Roman Mars. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99 Pi org run Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99 Pi and 99 Pi dot org.
SPEAKER_01: This is Roman Mars reporting from a very quiet ballroom on the second floor of midtown. You're listening to a Stitcher podcast from Sirius XL.
SPEAKER_04: Viva la grande con asientos para tus hijos y los amigos de tus hijos en la primera Grand Highlander.
