Radiolab - Radiolab Presents: 99% Invisible

Roman Mars loves to spotlight the seams and joints that make up the world around us. He's the host of an irresistible podcast called 99% Invisible--a series of tiny radio stories that provoke enormous questions. Roman joins Jad and Robert to play a few favorites, and to chat about the hidden language of design that shapes our lives--from sound effects to stuff that’s more ... concrete.

Duration: 25m
Broadcast on: 12 Dec 2011
Audio Format: other

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC and NPR Hello, hello, San Francisco. Hey, I'm Jad, I'm Rod and I'm Robert Crobert This is Radio Lab, the podcast, and today on the podcast, you know, we consider it our professional duty to try and bring you things that are interesting and that make you see the world in a different way and sometimes that's an idea or a story today. Are we going to listen to these things and comment on them? Are we going to let them assume? We're going to listen in real time. Okay. Today, it's a guy. Hey, Jad, it's Robert here too. Hey, Robert. His name is Roman Mars. He is a radio story making guy and we think what he's doing is inspiring. It has kind of a rhythm and musicality that you don't normally find in radio or podcast storytelling. So we wanted you to know about if you don't already. He makes a podcast called 99% Invisible. We asked him to come into the studio and present some of his work. So what is 99% Invisible? It's a tiny radio program about design and architecture and all the thought that goes into the things that people don't think about. You know, it could be just about buildings, but the way that I was interested in it is that if you take a look carefully at the entire built world, you know, and the key word here is built. It's the key. Yeah. I mean, I have that's my sort of strict. I have one strict line. And that is that it's about, you know, human thought and invention. Like stuff we make. Exactly. And the goal of the show, it's worked on me. I don't know if it's worked on, you know, anybody else, but is to notice more things. And if you can find stories and every little tiny thing and recognize that every corner, every seam, every curve was a point of decision by a really deliberate and probably very smart person, you can recognize a story in every little thing. Well, let's just let's jump in. Let's listen to three of these pieces. Yeah. And then we'll just ask you questions. Yeah, sounds great. So what are we going to start with? This one is called sounds of the artificial world about sound design of gadgets. All right. Without all the beeps, without sonic feedback, all of your modern conveniences would be very hard to use. I mean, try using your telephone without the beeps. And it's really confusing. You're lost immediately. Did I get it? No, I didn't get it. The numbers there, but I didn't hear it. I used to get it physically with the rotary. S for sound. This whole world is artificial. When I started, I was working with this guy at the advanced product group at Apple and he had a case for a Walkman, I think, and he opened it up and he closed it and you heard it click.

And he said somebody worked really hard to make that click sound that way. That was an acoustical element on a mechanical device. Well, there aren't a lot of moving parts and mechanical bits in today's devices, but Jim McKee still has to make them sound right. My name is Jim McKee and I have a company called Earwax Productions. We do sound for film, radio, internet, and product sound design. Quite simply, a product sound designer looks at a product and thinks what kind of sound should this thing make when it does a particular thing. So typically, what I do is I create a bunch of button sounds. These are would-be buttons for a Yahoo widget. Say, okay, you guys tell me which ones are the closest and then you end up with what, 38 sounds here. I love that. I could listen to that all day. In fact, let's hear it again. Oh, yeah. The best sounds are not completely synthesized. They come from the everyday world. My top drawer, my dresser drawer at home, over the years, I've been collecting all these little things. I would like, oh, a cool marble and I would leave it there. Oh, cool. This is a little tiny Chinese ceramic bowl or some kind of funky clip. I realized that all these things are very kind of intimate to me, very close to me, but they make sounds. The one cool one was dropping a small marble into this china bowl and it has a dynamic to it, which everybody's familiar with. It bounces, but then it bounces. That's the marble sped up and compressed and EQ'd and who knows what? All sorts of things. Actually, the funniest one, the one that everybody loved and it seems to have stuck more or less across the board is the sound of a vice grip opening up because it's got the click in the spring and for some reason, it really works and people like the way it sounds. I think you can hear almost the same sound when you plug in your iPhone. If they get powered, you know that. Oh, no, when you turn it on.

Transcription truncated.