Katie Mingle’s Right to Roam

Roman Mars:
There is a reason why I’m sharing my favorite Katie Mingle story with you. And if you absolutely can’t wait to find out that reason, skip ahead twenty-five minutes or so. But it would be cooler if we just took this walk together. Go on, rambler. Say it with me…

This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.

Roman Mars:
When producer Katie Mingle’s dad retired, he began walking. A lot.

Katie Mingle:
He’d always been a walker, but with all the new time on his hands, his walking took on a “Forrest Gump-ian” fervor. He started doing these really long, multi-day treks through the countryside. And even though he’s American, he mostly preferred to walk in the UK. In fact, over the course of several years, he walked the entire length of Great Britain. And on one of these many trips in 2003…

Jim Mingle:
I was walking through these beautiful rolling hills and wooded area and there were just literally hundreds and hundreds of pheasants and grouse along this trail and you’d walk along them. They would fly up in the air.

Katie Mingle:
That’s my dad, Jim Mingle.

Jim Mingle:
I walked and walked, and it got later and later and I realized I couldn’t get back to my B&B where I was staying. So I decided I would hitchhike back.

Katie Mingle:
Hitchhiking is dangerous, dad, but go on…

Jim Mingle:
I stuck out my thumb and up pulled this jeep. I hopped in and there was this guy sitting there all dressed in a sort of traditional tweed outfit with a funny cap, and there was a shotgun on the rack in the back which you never ever saw in Britain. And we got to talking and he said he was a gamekeeper for Madonna and Guy Ritchie.

Katie Mingle:
My dad had been walking through Madonna’s private estate when he was picked up by her gamekeeper.

Roman Mars:
Which is a thing a lot of wealthy landowners have in England – a person who manages the hunting activity on their land.

Katie Mingle:
Right. So this gamekeeper drove him back to the village where he was staying and dropped him off and no, his story doesn’t end with him meeting Madonna. I wish it did, too.

Jim Mingle:
I ask about Madonna – how this gamekeeper liked working for her – and he said he loved his job and he thought Madonna was just wonderful.

Katie Mingle:
“What’s your favorite Madonna song, dad?”

Jim Mingle:
“I have no idea! I just like the idea of Madonna. I’m not very good at remembering those kinds of things.”

Katie Mingle:
Now that we’ve established that Madonna is wonderful, and my dad can’t name a single one of her songs, you might be asking yourself, as I was — “Dad, what were you doing in Madonna’s backyard?”

Jim Mingle:
I was walking most of the time across private property. I was walking from one field to the next, climbing over a fence or going through a gate and going on. And this was– this was permitted.

Katie Mingle:
It’s true, my dad walked the length of Great Britain, and was on private property a lot of the time. Which is different, obviously, than the way we do things in the US. If you wanted to walk across this country, you’d have to do it on a combination of public trails and roads; and you certainly couldn’t cut across Madonna’s property.

Roman Mars:
This right in Britain, to walk through private land, is known colloquially as “the right to roam” and the movement to win this right was started in the 1930s by a rebellious group of young people dressed in army surplus shorts and hiking boots, carrying canvas rucksacks and canteens. They called themselves “ramblers.”

Roly Smith:
“Rambler” is one of those quaint old English words. I don’t know where it came from really but it means walking or hiking in the countryside.

Katie Mingle:
This is Roly Smith, a rambler/journalist who says his rambling forefathers and mothers were toiling away in the factories of 1930s’ Manchester.

Roly Smith:
Manchester was a very grimy town, and a very dirty, smoky, horrible environment. A product really of the Industrial Revolution.

Katie Mingle:
Outside Manchester was one of the most beautiful parts of England, an area known as the Peak District.

Roly Smith:
So if you can imagine, factory workers in Manchester and Sheffield could actually see these inviting moors from their homes and their workplaces and they weren’t allowed to walk on them.

Roman Mars:
It hadn’t always been this way, for hundreds of years an idea of “the Commons” had existed in England.

Ken Ilgunas:
So the Commons, they were an integral part of medieval life for the ordinary villager in England.

Katie Mingle:
That’s Ken Ilgunas, author of “This Land is Your Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back.”

Ken Ilgunas:
All the land, it was owned by either a King or a Lord; but the peasants had very substantial and real rights on these common lands.

Roman Mars:
In this feudal system, Kings and Lords controlled all the land, and the manor grew enough food to support itself and its tenants.

Katie Mingle:
The peasants lived on the land, sometimes without written leases, but with assumed rights to use it in exchange for various types of service.

Ken Ilgunas:
They could graze their cattle, they could cut lumber, they could draw water, they could collect peat, they could use it for a whole bunch of purposes.

Katie Mingle:
All of that began to change in the 1400s when wool prices rose across Europe. Landowners wanted in on the profits and in order to graze sheep more efficiently, they needed to fence off pastures.

Ken Ilgunas:
And that’s when we began to see a period of enclosure.

Roman Mars:
Landowners cleared entire villages of people, making them homeless, and put up little stone walls and hedges to mark the boundaries of their property. In a county called Warwickshire, 61 villages were wiped out before the year 1500.

Katie Mingle:
Over the years, Parliament created more and more laws to keep people from using what was once common land. It all ramped up in the 1700s.

Ken Ilgunas:
There was nearly 4,000 acts of Parliament between 1760 and 1870. That’s a sixth of England that went from common lands to enclosed private property; destroying people’s livelihoods and way of life.

Katie Mingle:
People were so desperate to continue hunting on this once-common land that they came at night and covered their faces in soot for extra camouflage. They became known as “the blacks” and in 1723 Parliament passed the Black Act.

Ken: So this Black Act, it created 50 offences that were punishable by death for people who were accessing this land.

Katie Mingle:
Eventually the death penalty for trespassing was done away with, but the land remained closed to the vast majority of people.

Roman Mars:
In the 1800s, Britain industrialized and people found themselves indoors all day, and unable to find places for recreation.

Katie Mingle:
England did not have a national park system at this time, and the trails that people could access were extremely limited. Still, the people longed to be in the hills. They walked where they could, and trespassed where they couldn’t. They climbed over fences and tried to stay hidden from the gamekeepers. And all over England, so-called rambling clubs started to form.

Ken Ilgunas:
The Forest Ramblers Club, the Midlands Institute of Ramblers, the Manchester Rambling Club. There were tons of these walking groups in the late 1800s and early 1900s forming to fight for access and walking rights. They oftentimes had socialist sensibilities, but at the heart, there was a love for walking and a belief that it was their right.

Roman Mars:
Access was no longer a matter of survival as it had been in the days when enclosure began. It was about recreation, and getting away from the polluted industrial cities.

Katie Mingle:
Which brings us back to polluted, industrial 1930s Manchester, and a rambling club called the British Workers Sports Federation.

Roly Smith:
The British Workers Sports Federation.

Katie Mingle:
In this group was a charismatic rambler named Benny Rothman-

Roly Smith:
A stocky little character with a very broad grin and great sense of humor and a man of the highest principles. But he was exceptionally short. He was about five-foot-nothing, as we say.

Katie Mingle:
Roly got to know Benny later in life.

Roly Smith:
He was a man who I very much looked up to, although he was very short.

Katie Mingle:
So, one day back in 1932, a few people from Benny’s group tried to take a walk in the hills near Manchester, in that beautiful mountainous area near the city called the Peak District.

Roly Smith:
And they were chased off by a group of gamekeepers, and when they got back to their camp, Benny Rothmann and others said, “You know, if there was enough of us they couldn’t stop us.”

Katie Mingle:
So Benny and the other ramblers came up with an idea, let’s get a huge group together and walk onto this mountain called Kinder Scout-

Ken Ilgunas:
Which was the biggest mountain in this Peak District. It was called the Forbidden Mountain. And this area, this was guarded by a whole bunch of gamekeepers. These were intimidating men. I mean they would use telescopes to identify trespassers from afar. They carried these big sticks or clubs that they would sometimes use on trespassers.

Katie Mingle:
The British Workers Sports Federation did not keep their plans to trespass a secret. They gave an interview to the local paper saying, we feel we cannot any longer submit to being deprived of the beauties of the countryside for the convenience of the landowners. Wherever we claim we have a just right to go we shall trespass en masse and Sunday will be the opening of our campaign.

Roman Mars:
Not everyone was on board. More conservative rambling groups in the area wrote editorials denouncing their plan, saying it would hurt the cause for expanded access to the countryside. One editorial argued that trespassing was fine, but it should be done alone or with just one or two people — quietly, neatly, and successfully.

Katie Mingle:
The police were well aware of the plans to trespass at Kinder Scout and Benny Rothman’s role in all of it. And on the day of the event, they tried to serve him with an injunction to keep him from going.

Ken Ilgunas:
The police knew he was coming and he arrived by bicycle. And they all expected him to come by train, so they were kind of hanging out at the train station.

Katie Mingle:
Rothman makes it to the trespass and finds about 400 other people are there, too. Mostly young people, below the age of 21, a lot of men, but some women too.

Ken Ilgunas:
They’re wearing old army tops, and multi-colored sweaters, and khaki shorts, and worn work boots. This is kind of the standard hiking garb of the day and for whatever reason, they carry these enormous rucksacks. They’re considered like the thing to do at the time.

Roly Smith:
They quite often wore berets on their heads. So it was a very, very motley crew.

Roman Mars:
This motley crew of hikers gathered with their berets and rucksacks at the base of the mountain, and Benny Rothman gave a speech about taking back the rights they lost during the enclosure acts of the 17 and 18 hundreds. And he emphasized that the trespass on Kinder Scout was meant to be peaceful. And with that, the group set off up the mountain.

Roly Smith:
The other thing they did was sing. They quite often sang when they went out rambling they were singing songs like “The Internationale” and that sort of thing. And that, of course, showed their political leanings, as well.

Roman Mars:
[Ahem] Communist.

Katie Mingle:
The ramblers were in a good mood as they hiked. They sang and talked. There were some police behind them, keeping an eye on things, and huffing to keep up with the pace of the young walkers.

Roman Mars:
At one point a group of gamekeepers approached them wagging their sticks, and a small scuffle ensued.

Ken Ilgunas:
One gamekeeper kind of rolls over and kind of hurts his ankle, that’s the extent of the scuffle.

Katie Mingle:
Eventually, the ramblers made their way back to the bottom. The trespass had been a success. They’d openly walked on Kinder Scout, and no one had been able to stop them. And it probably all would have ended right there, with nothing much gained or lost on either side, if the police hadn’t decided to make some arrests.

Ken Ilgunas:
Rothman and five other ringleaders, they’re arrested.

Roman Mars:
At this time, trespassing wasn’t even an arrestable offense, so the police came up with another charge.

Ken Ilgunas:
Incitement to Riotous Assembly

Katie Mingle:
One rambler got off, but the rest were convicted.

Ken Ilgunas:
And they’re given prison sentences from two to six months.

Roly Smith:
But when the sentences were handed down by the judge, that actually united the ramblers’ cause and they all thought this was terrible. You know, just for walking on the moors, people being sent to prison.

Katie Mingle:
Suddenly there was a huge amount of awareness in the general public about walking rights.

Ken Ilgunas:
This was like a national news item at the time.

Katie Mingle:
And people were sympathetic.

Ken Ilgunas:
And it would set in motion changes that would transform how England thinks about private property.

Roly Smith:
It’s been described as one of the most successful acts of civil disobedience ever in the history of this country.

Roman Mars:
The whole thing is even memorialized in song. There was a guy on the trespass named Jimmy Miller, he eventually became a pretty well-known folk singer in England, and changed his name to Ewan MacColl.

Roly Smith:
And Ewan wrote the song based on the mass trespass called “The Manchester Rambler.”

Katie Mingle:
“Do you know the words?”

Roly Smith:
“You’re not going to ask me to sing it are you?”

Katie Mingle:
“I actually– Yeah. I actually really want you to sing it.”

Roly Smith:
“I can sing the chorus, but I think you should get a recording. Really.”

(sings) I’m a Rambler, I’m a Rambler, from Manchester way, I get all my pleasure the hard moorland way. I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I have my freedom on Sunday.

[RECORDING OF “THE MANCHESTER RAMBLER” PLAYS]

Roly Smith:
It is the anthem for the trespasser in this country and it’ll be played at my funeral.

[RECORDING OF “THE MANCHESTER RAMBLER” CONTINUES]

Roman Mars:
After the trespass, the rambling groups continued to push for expanded access. There were more trespasses and in 1951 when Britain opened its first national park, it was in the Peak District where the Kinder Scout trespass took place. This was no accident; years of negotiations between the ramblers and the landowners and legislators in that area had paved the way.

Katie Mingle:
But it wasn’t until the year 2000, that the ramblers got what they always wanted; an act of parliament that opened up huge swaths of the country where people could roam free.

Ken Ilgunas:
The Countryside and Rights of Way Act — that opened up mountains, moors, heaths, downs…Those are just kind of fancy English words for unimproved grasslands.

Roly Smith:
And now we do have the right to roam in open country which is what those lads in 1932 were fighting for.

Roman Mars:
The 2000 act opened up about 7% of land in England and 21% in Wales on which you are free to roam, meaning you don’t even have to stay on a trail, you can truly just wander around. And 7% may not sound like a lot, but between that and other designated trails, where there are more restrictions, you can now pretty easily walk across England, just like Katie’s dad did.

Katie Mingle:
A small footnote — the year after my dad rambled across Madonna’s property, she actually sued to keep people from wandering around out there. The government ended up allowing her to close off a lot of her estate but did keep some small amount of it open to ramblers.

Roman Mars:
Madonna wasn’t the only person with concerns about ramblers. When the Countryside and Rights of Way Act passed, a lot of landowners feared the worst.

Ken Ilgunas:
You know, everyone was worried about people sniffing glue out on the countryside, and people being mowed down by tractors, and wildly fornicating… This was all in the newspapers. People really worried, but none of that stuff turned out to be true.

Katie Mingle:
In addition to Britain, a bunch of other European countries also have “partial” right to roam systems. Meaning some, but not all, private property is accessible to walkers. But then there are countries where the right is even further expanded.

Ken Ilgunas:
Norway, Finland, Sweden– Sweden has this thing called “Alla Monserrat” which means “every man’s right.” This means you walk over cow pasture, this means you can walk through the woods, this means you can access virtually the whole countryside.

Katie Mingle:
In the United States, we have a system of National and State Parks, but we don’t have any rights to wander through private property. In some places, you might even get shot for doing it.

Roman Mars:
The idea of opening up private land to the public seems almost unamerican, but this wasn’t always the case.

Ken Ilgunas:
Yeah, this is kind of like a forgotten chapter of American history. Americans who were unenslaved, we had the right to roam from the colonial days up until the Civil War.

Roman Mars:
In the early days of this country, it was common practice to hunt and fish on private land if it wasn’t enclosed by a fence. In fact, the Pennsylvania Delegation to the Constitution even tried to get this enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Ken Ilgunas:
That’s how important this was to early Americans.

Roman Mars:
Nearly a century later, in an 1862 essay entitled “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau wrote that he feared that one day “Walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds.”

Katie Mingle:
This day may have come even sooner than Thoreau feared. Ken Ilgunas says our concept of private property began to change just a few years later, after the Civil War, partly because of the end of slavery.

Ken Ilgunas:
One perfect example of this is in 1865. It’s the Louisiana Legislature and after the war, they passed this resolution. They acknowledge the end of the war and they also do something else. They criminalize trespassing. Now, why would they do that right after the Civil War?

Roman Mars:
I think I know why.

Ken Ilgunas:
They did that because now you had a whole bunch of free and independent Black people.

Roman Mars:
There were other reasons, as well. As Native Americans were forced onto reservations, land grants to the railroads and the Homestead Act of 1862 turned great swaths of public land to private ownership. And then came barbed wire.

Ken Ilgunas:
Fences became a lot cheaper, so you could put fences up for livestock. So suddenly a whole bunch more of the country is enclosed. You have a diversified economy, so people are no longer relying on the land for hunting and fishing and gathering as much as they used to. So when people start chipping away at access rights, you don’t have an impassioned group of proponents fighting to maintain their access rights.

Katie Mingle:
But Ken Ilgunas thinks we should be fighting for recreational access in this country where a lot of our public land is concentrated in places that are hard for most people to get to.

Ken Ilgunas:
For instance, Alaska has 329 million acres of public land. That’s 41% of all public land. You look at the five states with the highest percentages of the public land — that’s Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming. All of this land is in states where there aren’t that many people.

Katie Mingle:
Ilgunas believes a right to roam system could help connect all these disparate pieces of public land and give us a sense of ownership.

Ken Ilgunas:
I think if we bring in a system like the right to roam… you know, we’re still going to look at the land as if it’s someone’s, but I think we’ll also begin to look at it as if it’s sort of ours.

Katie Mingle:
And, for what it’s worth, my dad agrees. He says there’s something really special about being able to walk wherever you want.

Jim Mingle:
I thought the whole concept of being able to walk respectfully across private land was extraordinary. And it was something that just doesn’t exist here. We have a lot of public land where you can walk in the U.S. but this seemed very different. There were so many routes and trails to choose from. It felt like the whole country was open to you.

Roman Mars:
These days if you ramble across the open grasslands of England or Wales, you’ll see the remnants of enclosure – the stone walls and fences. And you’ll also see the things meant to help you get past these barriers — the “styles” which are step ladders to help you get over fences, the so-called kissing gates which are v-shaped openings that people can walk through but livestock cannot. Because the fences aren’t there to stop you anymore – you just hop over and continue on your way.

[MUSIC]

Roman Mars:
Katie talks about where she’s roaming to after 7 years of being with 99pi, after this.

[BREAK]

Roman Mars:
So I’m back with Katie Mingle, and one of the things that is really significant about you, in addition to you being like just the person that I adore, is that when I hired you, it was the first moment that the show became like a real show. Like I was really nervous because there was a grown woman, like a professional adult, who was leaving a job somewhere to come across the country to work on this show which heretofore had been basically kind of a glorified project.

Katie Mingle:
Right.

Roman Mars:
And so, do you remember what you were thinking as you were traveling out to come? And then it was just like me and Sam, and Avery was the intern at the time. And what you were thinking?

Katie Mingle:
Oh, man. I mean, I was so excited because I think I already knew that the show would become something even bigger than what it was at the time. Although, like, I don’t think I could have quite imagined what it’s grown into. I remember my dad being kind of like, what is this little…. podcast? Like what? Like is this actually a good career choice for you? But, you know… but it was so exciting and I was nervous because I didn’t necessarily feel like I had to produce stories in the way that I would need to for the show. And I just didn’t totally know if I could do it. Um, I had done a handful of my own stories, for sure. And then– but like most of what I had done was produced Re:Sound, which, you know, because you also produced Re:Sound. But like, I was kind of like curating other people’s documentaries and like kind of designing these sound collages that went in between each piece. And so it wasn’t a ton of like making my own work. And so that was going to be new and I thought I could do it, but I wasn’t positive. So yeah, I was nervous and excited for sure.

Roman Mars:
So the big news for you is you are leaving the show after 7 years. But what acts as a salve to my heart is where you’re going, because it’s really well suited to all the skills you developed doing “According to Need.” So where are you going to go work?

Katie Mingle:
Yeah, so I’m going to work with Serial Productions, which is the company that makes “Serial” along with other podcasts in more recent years. Like, they did “S-Town,” most recently they did the “Improvement Association,” “Nice White Parents” is a Serial Production. They were recently acquired by “The New York Times,” but the show remains very close with “This American Life” and sort of shares staff back and forth. But yeah, I’m so excited and nervous in a lot of the same ways I was nervous to come work for you. It’s just, like, it’s a new thing and I hope I can do it and I think I can. But yeah.

Roman Mars:
I know you can. And it just seems like a really good fit for what you’re interested in right now and all the things that you get to do and I’m so excited for you. It feels so right.

Katie Mingle:
Thanks, Roman.

Roman Mars:
I don’t even know, like, if this means you’re going to do “Serial,” like original season 4 or 5 or if you’re going to do something brand new. And I don’t even know if you know-.

Katie Mingle:
I don’t.

Roman Mars:
I don’t know if you can tell me who the killer is before it starts — because I could do really well in a betting pool if that happened or what… I just don’t know. But I think it’s pretty exciting.

Katie Mingle:
Yeah. Um, I don’t really know what I’m going to be working on. I think they have a few kind of leads on stories that need someone to go out and see if there’s really anything there. So it’s just, like, do some initial reporting on like spend a couple of months just like chasing leads. So I get the feeling it’ll be something like that. But I have actually no idea what they’ve got. And I think they try to keep that stuff pretty secret. Um, but yeah, I’m so excited. And Julie Snyder, who gosh… what is her actual title over there, President? Uh…

Roman Mars:
She runs the show.

Katie Mingle:
She runs the show, yeah. And she, you know, was a long-time editor at “This American Life,” but she was such a great kind of cheerleader of “According to Need.” I called her at the very beginning of the project and asked if I could ask some questions about… basically about how they made “Serial” season 3 because I always felt like season 3 — which is the one about the criminal justice system in Cleveland and the sort of municipal court system there and all these like criminal cases that were going through that system — I always felt like maybe that was the closest kind of model that I could imagine for “According to Need.” Just that it would be a story about a system… about a very large thing that probably didn’t have like a single narrative over all the episodes. It was probably going to be like several stories that hopefully, like, helped you understand this big landscape. And so, yeah, Julie was just so generous, kind of letting me ask questions about how they made that. And then occasionally, like throughout the process, we would check-in. And so I’m so excited to work with her. She seems like a great, great boss. Not as good as you, I’m sure but like…

Roman Mars:
Of course, (laughter). Goes without saying…

Katie Mingle:
But yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say. I’m just like, excited and so kind of humbled by it.

Roman Mars:
Yeah, well, I think it’s great. And once you get a taste for doing that long-form thing for a couple of years, like, I don’t think you really could go back to doing like a bunch of pieces for us. Like one of the things that happened during the period of time where you were with “According to Need” working on it, you spent two years going out, talking to people, building relationships, doing that sort of stuff that reporters do. And we definitely would strive to accommodate, like doing that again and doing that with more spinoffs of 99pi. But there’s just something about going to the team that is just so excellent at that in particular, like really hones in on that, and learning from them, which I just think it’s so exciting, so I am unbelievably pleased for you and I can’t wait to hear what you make. As sad as I am to see you go and not see you at the meetings… you can still show up in the meetings and be on the slack if you want to.

Katie Mingle:
I’m really going to miss our Slack. I feel like especially in the last year when we haven’t gotten to see each other, the Slack is just like… yeah, I think Avery used to say that it was her favorite social media, and it’s like I basically feel that way too.

Roman Mars:
Totally. Head and shoulders my favorite social media, honestly. So before you head off to “Serial” and do your long-form investigative piece, is there anything that you want to, you know, talk about in terms of your time here or talk to the audience about or anything that you want to reflect on?

Katie Mingle:
I think it’s hard to imagine any other show where the audience felt like such a community that was sort of in on it with us. Like our audience has been just a nice group to make work for, you know, and a group of people that, like, gets in touch to tell us what a good job we’re doing or how much they liked something. I just– I don’t know of another… well, I guess I haven’t worked on many other shows, but, like, it feels kind of unique to us.

Roman Mars:
I’ve worked on other shows and I think there’s something special about it. I think there’s something like… there’s a way in which they take in and interpret the stories that we tell and bring it into their lives in a way that I’ve never experienced on another show.

Katie Mingle: Yeah, but that’s felt so nice. And the show for me has just been such a great place to get to kind of find my own voice and like play and try new things. And I feel like we’ve done such a great range and or I’ve gotten to do a great range of these kind of smaller, like joyful stories — sort of like “The Right to Roam” — and then and then these like bigger, sprawling, like epics — like the couple episodes I did on the Bijlmermeer, the housing development in Amsterdam, and then obviously like “According to Need.” But it’s been such a great place to figure out who I am as a producer. And I think that’s always changing or I think it kind of should always be changing. But, yeah, I just, like, loved my time here and loved creating work for our audience in particular.

Roman Mars:
Yeah, it’s really… I think it’s very special. And I can’t imagine the show without you in a lot of ways. Um, I mean, we… you just gave so much heart to what we did and so much rigor to what we did, and even though, like I think you’re innate interest in architecture was pretty well… but you always, you know, bring characters and bring, you know, story and stakes and stuff. And I think it raised all of our game so much. And then like this development of doing “According to Need” as this really compelling and character-driven look at a system, it was just like groundbreaking and beautiful. I’ve always wanted to create a place for, you know, people to do their best work and feel comfortable and feel supported. And that involves, you know, moving on. So I think this is a bittersweet moment, but a really good moment. And so I’m really, really happy for you. And we will figure it out without you, but we definitely will suffer from your absence. So take care.

Katie Mingle:
Okay, bye.

Roman Mars:
Bye.
———
Roman Mars:
99% Invisible was produced this week by Katie Mingle. “The Right to Roam” episode was originally broadcast in June 2018. Mixed by Sharif Youssef. Music by our director of sound, Sean Real. Delaney Hall is the executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Christopher Johnson, Emmett FitzGerald, Joe Rosenberg, Vivien Le, Chris Berube, Lasha Madan, Sofia Klatzker and me, Roman Mars. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north in beautiful uptown Oakland, California.

You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook, you can tweet at me @romanmars and the show @99piorg. We’re on Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find other shows I love from Stitcher as well as every past episode of this program, including “According to Need,” Katie Mingle’s magnum opus. If you happen to have skipped it just because you’re like, oh, this isn’t regular 99pi, you should listen to it because it really is amazing. You can find it at 99pi.org.