99% Invisible

They'd certainly read The Klansman. It was flying off the shelves that year, a novel about heroic men hidden beneath bedsheets out to save white virtue from black barbarians.

So, so Damon, this is a perfect example. He's actually wrote a book about this in the past year.

And we were talking about how it had to be a podcast. It was about listening, shifting from analog to digital culture. How would you represent that through sound?

And in a way that people could understand. It wouldn't be too technical and wouldn't be too, you know, sort of intellectualized. But how do, how does he convey how lives are changing through these technological shifts?

They're sort of based on the book, but it's really departed from the book and become its own engine. It's called Ways of Hearing.

In 1969, a book was published. Barbara Seaman, who was a journalist at the time, wrote The Doctor's Case Against the Pill, which documented what she and others believed was really kind of egregious treatment by drug companies and physicians and the FDA, the failure to kind of acknowledge these serious risks around the pill.

That's Luis Castaneda. He's the author of Spectacular Mexico, Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics.

What is very striking, almost shocking perhaps, is that the fact that of course Lance Wyman is very much unproven as a designer. He's very young, he hasn't had much time to do much yet. And yet somehow he is given this very high degree of responsibility as part of the design campaign.

It's not that unusual for people not born in Mexico, for artists and people in the culture and the arts to be involved with these kinds of state-sponsored campaigns. It's not entirely unprecedented, but it's still a very unique situation, especially given the fact that this is a very, very significant project.

Alcides Gigia once said in his book, only three people in the history of the Maracan silenced that crowd. Frank Sinatra, Pope John Paul II and me.

A banner across 4th Avenue advertised that weekend's opening at Frank Brink's Theater. They were doing the Thornton Wilder play, Our Town.

And eventually the Little Theater resumed its production of Our Town, too.

Because that kind of togetherness is basically what Thornton Wilder's play is about.

Special thanks this week to Bob Johnstone, who wrote the books Switching to Solar and Haskell Whirlin.

Special thanks this week to Bob Johnstone, who wrote the books Switching to Solar and Haskell Whirlin.

And as I was reading this defining work on this process of containerization called The Box by a guy named Mark Levinson, who's in the series,

I ended up talking all this over in a conversation with Tim Wong, a Berkeley-educated lawyer and local polymath who published The Container Guide, a wonderful little book on the shipping industry disguised as a dockside companion to spotting boxes.

It lists all the businesses that ply the waters, anchors, chains and deck fitting, barging, boating services, boilers and water treatment. It's not the kind of book you see much anymore. It's spiral bound with lots of tabs.

It's a book that's meant to be used. And paging through it, you really see the variety of businesses who ply the waters and supply the ships.

Kevin's new book is called Brat Pack America. It's super fun, especially for anyone who grew up on those movies where places like Shermer, Illinois, Hill Valley, Lagoon Docks, Sherwood, Ohio, were characters in and of themselves.

That is James Ward, author of Adventures in Stationery, A Journey Through Your Pencil Case.

So James knows a lot about ballpoint pens, which we might casually refer to as BIROs or BICs.

But if you want to read about seed bullets for gorilla gardening or a rave review of the Atlas Obscura book, you have to go to 99pi.org.

When it goes bad, you look bad.

According to John Dewan, the author of The Fielding Bible, it can help win about three extra games a year, which is significant.

In a 1972 essay called Housing as a Verb, Turner made the case that housing ought not be a static unit that is packaged and just handed over to people.