Rock Paper Scissors Bus

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

Roman Mars:
Rock paper scissors is an elegant game dating back a couple thousand years. It hasn’t always been rock, paper, or scissors, but the principles were always the same. Conflicting items in opposition, thrown by hand, simultaneously, with a zero-sum outcome. You win, you lose, you draw. It’s so simple and straightforward that anyone can understand it and play it, which is why it has spread everywhere in the world.

Roman Mars:
The only non-intuitive aspect is the fact that paper beats rock, which defies our lived experience with both papers and rocks. But I am not here to nitpick. For as long as rock paper scissors has existed, it’s been useful as a peaceful way to settle disputes. It’s not as random as a coin toss, because you’re playing against another human. It has enough randomness to feel fair, but enough skill to feel satisfying, which leads us to one of the most high-stakes game of rock paper scissors I’ve ever heard of, reported by our own Joe Rosenberg originally for the brilliant, brilliant show Snap Judgment. Here’s Joe Rosenberg.

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Joe Rosenberg:
So our story is going to start with this guy.

Jonathan Rendell:
Good Lord. I’m practically making love to this microphone now.

Joe Rosenberg:
His name is Jonathan Rendell.

Jonathan Rendell:
I’m a deputy chairman of Christie’s in America, who spent a lot of his time in the late ’80s, early ’90s selling material to Japan.

Joe Rosenberg:
Material meaning art.

Jonathan Rendell:
And in the mid-90s to the mid-2000s, going back to Japan to get everything back that I’d sold to them 10 years before. The extraordinary thing was you’d go to a trunk room, which looks like that last scene in the “Raiders Of The Lost Ark,” those things in boxes going on forever. And open a box, and in the box would be a work of art or several works of art, and you would pick the object up, and you’d look on the back of it and you would find your handwriting from 10 years ago.

Joe Rosenberg:
That’s so surreal. It really is like kind of this weird ebb and flow of prestige between people, and so long as you’re the middleman, you’ll be alright in the end.

Jonathan Rendell:
Yeah, absolutely. The beauty of the bubble market.

Joe Rosenberg:
But, of course, Christie’s did not have this wonderful pie all to itself.

Jonathan Rendell:
It’s a market that is really a duopoly between two auction house giants. There’s Christie’s and then there’s the other place.

Joe Rosenberg:
You mean Sotheby’s?

Jonathan Rendell:
Yeah.

Joe Rosenberg:
It’s like saying “my opponent” instead of–

Jonathan Rendell:
That’s actually how one normally refers to it, “the other place.” So it’s sort of a friendly-ish rivalry. I wouldn’t say it was entirely friendly.

Joe Rosenberg:
In Sotheby’s and Christie’s, you see, there was one collection they both had their eyes on.

Jonathan Rendell:
The Maspro Denkoh Corporate Collection was a jewel in the crown. It had everything that one wanted to sell at that precise moment. You know, the Cezanne, the Picasso, the van Gogh, they’re trophy names.

Joe Rosenberg:
And, most importantly…

Jonathan Rendell:
It was $20 million worth of business.

Joe Rosenberg:
There was just one problem. Mr. Hashiyama, the CEO who had founded the collection, he was really chummy with Sotheby’s. They’d known him for years. If Christie’s wanted that $20 million worth of business, they were going to have to win him over.

Kanae Ishibashi:
It was very, very hard job for me – Mr. Hashiyama.

Joe Rosenberg:
This is Kanae Ishibashi. She worked at Christie’s Tokyo office alongside Jonathan. Just think of her as the client whisperer. She’d been paying visits to Mr. Hashiyama since almost her first day on the job, but he’d been proving tricky.

Kanae Ishibashi:
He really doesn’t sort of talk about business. We talked about art and music and his great passion for dinosaurs. We could spend hours laughing. So he told me that when his company was listed in a stock market, which was a very, very important incident, he chose the insurance company by throwing dice.

Kanae Ishibashi:
Yes, so when I heard that story, I was… I found it really funny. And he’s bit sort of eccentric and all that, but we couldn’t really read where his mind was.

Joe Rosenberg:
First of all, over how many years were you doing this?

Kanae Ishibashi:
I think we’d spent six years.

Joe Rosenberg:
Six years?!

Kanae Ishibashi:
Yeah, meeting with Mr. Hashiyama before the auction.

Joe Rosenberg:
That’s incredible. And meanwhile though, you’re not the only person meeting with him, I would take it?

Kanae Ishibashi:
No, no, no, no. Sotheby’s, they were there all the time.

Joe Rosenberg:
And after both houses had finally given their big presentations on why Mr. Hashiyama should choose them and not “the other place”…

Jonathan Rendell:
He came back with this extraordinary request.

Kanae Ishibashi:
I received a call from Mr. Hashiyama in the office, and he said in order to determine which auction house to handle collection, I would like both of you, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, to play the game rock paper scissors.

Joe Rosenberg:
Yes. You heard her right.

VOICEOVER:
[ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS. SHOOT.]

Joe Rosenberg:
Mr. Hashiyama wanted the two biggest auction houses in the world to play a $20 million game of Rochambeau.

Jonathan Rendell:
I think there was a moment of silence and surprise, and then “what?!”

Kanae Ishibashi:
That’s it. I didn’t really reply back to him. I couldn’t really answer him, like, “why are you doing this?” And “we can’t really do that.” I couldn’t believe it.

Jonathan Rendell:
We didn’t know what to do. But it was very clear that it was a very serious request from the client. And so when a client asks you to do something, you just get on and do it.

Joe Rosenberg:
Here’s how it would work. Each side, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, would have the weekend to come up with their choice of “weapon.” Then, on Monday morning, they would meet at the Maspro Denkoh offices in Tokyo, and there they would duel.

Jonathan Rendell:
This was one game. And Kanae’s job was to write down one word on a piece of paper, and that word had to be either rock, or paper, or scissors. So we started compulsively playing rock paper scissors, trying to work out how do we win this? Is there some secret to this? How bad are you going to feel? How idiotic are you going to look in front of your colleagues when you’ve lost a collection for a child’s game?

Kanae Ishibashi:
I don’t really remember those three days. I mean, I was under enormous pressure to think what would be the best strategy. But my struggle was always that I knew that there is no strategy because it’s just a pure chance. So constantly, whenever I had some moment on the train or walking in streets, I suddenly sort of thought about rock paper scissors. I had to contemplate between choices. I think it’s paper. No, no, no, I think it’s rock. Then I said no, no, no, no. I shouldn’t do it, because there is no answer. There is no answer. Let’s stop. But then, even though I tried not to think about it, I couldn’t really forget about rock paper scissors from my mind.

Joe Rosenberg:
Do you think Mr. Hashiyama… do you think he was just sitting back, rubbing his hands together mischievously?

Kanae Ishibashi:
I don’t know. I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Joe Rosenberg:
And meanwhile, of course, she was getting all kinds of advice.

Jonathan Rendell:
Every time I walked past Kanae, I was constantly like, why don’t we go with rock? You know, it’s the strong thing.

Joe Rosenberg:
And then there was this guy.

Nick Maclean:
My name is Nick Maclean.

Joe Rosenberg:
Her boss at the Christie’s offices in New York.

Nick Maclean:
Where we ran the Impressionist and Modern Art department.

Joe Rosenberg:
Did you have an opinion about which to choose?

Nick Maclean:
No, but obviously the first thing I did when I got home, I was telling my wife about this and my daughters.

Flora Maclean:
I’m Flora.

Alice Maclean:
I’m Alice.

Joe Rosenberg:
They were 11 then. They’re 20 now. And the fun fact about them is…

Flora Maclean:
We are twins.

Joe Rosenberg:
Are you identical twins?

Alice Maclean:
Yeah.

Flora Maclean:
Very identical.

Nick Maclean:
One’s left-handed, one’s right-handed.

Flora Maclean:
Mirror twins.

Alice Maclean:
And we were in the kitchen of our home in New York, and he was saying, “I’ve got a bit of an issue. Sotheby’s is going to get this deal.” We’re like, “Oh, yeah, we hate Sotheby’s.”

Nick Maclean:
And they came back to me quite promptly and said, “Dad, everybody knows you start with scissors.”

Alice Maclean:
Yeah, scissors is the pretty standard move.

Nick Maclean:
So I said, “Well, how does that work?” And they said, “Well, most people like the idea of going with rock.”

Alice Maclean:
But because they were super clever Sotheby’s, we’re like, “Oh, they’re going to bluff.”

Joe Rosenberg:
So Sotheby’s would choose paper.

Nick Maclean:
“But you then double bluff by going scissors, and scissors cuts paper.” And I said, “All right, that sounds good.” I said, “What if they go scissors?” They said, “You go scissors again.”

Alice Maclean:
Because that’s what I’d do.

Flora Maclean:
Yeah. You just stick with scissors and see what happens.

Joe Rosenberg:
At which point, Nick called up Kanae.

Kanae Ishibashi:
And he said, “Kanae, scissors. I think scissors is the thing.”

Jonathan Rendell:
And at that point we get into the Theater of the Absurd. We’re about to do this massive piece of business, and we’re listening to the advice of 11-year-olds.

Joe Rosenberg:
Would you have been willing to go with Alice and Flora’s choice regardless of what it would’ve been? Would that have struck you as like a…

Jonathan Rendell:
At least I’d have had someone else to blame if it was wrong.

Kanae Ishibashi:
But I wouldn’t feel with my gut that scissors are the best choice. Or rather, I would say I reached the point where the situation got beyond my capacity. I think I didn’t quite sleep a few days, but on that Sunday evening, I slept for a few hours. And then suddenly my husband came up in my dream. He said, “Kanae,” and he told me what choice I should come up with.

Kanae Ishibashi:
Then I woke up, and I saw the window, and the sky was beginning to light up. I didn’t look at the time, but I felt really sort of refreshed. Somehow my husband’s voice really struck me, and I didn’t even think about right or wrong. But I felt that it was a choice for me and I would go for it.

Jonathan Rendell:
So Monday morning, the car comes to pick me up with her in it, and we start driving off towards the Maspro Denkoh office.

Joe Rosenberg:
And did she tell you what she decided?

Jonathan Rendell:
No.

Joe Rosenberg:
She didn’t?

Jonathan Rendell:
No. She was keeping her cards very close to her chest.

Joe Rosenberg:
Did you prod her like, “Oh, come on, Kanae, just tell me?”

Jonathan Rendell:
Yeah, of course. But you try and get a secret out of her. She won’t tell you.

Joe Rosenberg:
At that point, would you have…

Jonathan Rendell:
Happily got out of the car and walked away? Yes.

Joe Rosenberg:
Why would you want to walk away though? I feel like the tension might be unbearable, but how could you possibly not want to be there in that room?

Jonathan Rendell:
Yeah, but it might be like watching a kitten being steamrollered as well, because if the pressure was big on me, it was absolutely massive on her. So she had prepared herself and was sort of entering a semi-Zen state.

Jonathan Rendell:
So we arrive. We’re shown to a waiting room, then the two people from Sotheby’s arrive.

Joe Rosenberg:
Do you recognize the two people from Sotheby’s?

Jonathan Rendell:
Yeah, I knew who they were. But it’s hardly the moment for, “Hi, how are you?” More sort of a grunt. So we sit one side of the table. They sit on the other side of the table, and there are two accountants and a fax machine.

Joe Rosenberg:
And somewhere on the other side of the fax machine, Mr. Hashiyama himself, waiting for the results.

Jonathan Rendell:
And we’re told to write down the word.

Joe Rosenberg:
And Jonathan actually looked at me, and beneath the table, he showed me rock with his hand, and his eyes were very sharp, and he nodded to me once. I think he nodded to make sure that it was a good decision.

Joe Rosenberg:
And she’s just saying nothing, so…

Jonathan Rendell:
Nothing, nothing. And she goes ahead and writes down a word.

Joe Rosenberg:
Can you see what word she wrote?

Jonathan Rendell:
It’s in Kanji. I don’t read Japanese. But looking at the face of the accountant holding the piece of paper, you could tell nothing. He was totally inscrutable. He looks at it for what was probably 30 seconds, and your heart’s in your mouth.

Kanae Ishibashi:
And then the Maspro person opened the envelope, and he said, “Sotheby’s, paper. Christie’s, scissors.”

Jonathan Rendell:
And then they look at Kanae and say, “You won.” And it was like a huge weight had gone off her shoulders.

Kanae Ishibashi:
But after we went outside of the building, then we screamed.

Jonathan Rendell:
Saved by Kanae. Completely saved by Kanae.

Joe Rosenberg:
Would you be deputy chairman of Christie’s if you had gone for rock?

Jonathan Rendell:
No, I suspect I might still be there, but I probably wouldn’t be quite where I am now.

Joe Rosenberg:
Really? It really would’ve had that kind of effect.

Jonathan Rendell:
It would’ve been a… it’s a huge career block. You just lost a great big deal.

Alice Maclean:
Obviously he should’ve come to us first.

Flora Maclean:
You never go paper. Paper just sounds that it’s not going to win.

Alice Maclean:
It’s a weak move.

Joe Rosenberg:
Wait, why not paper? Because the other person’s going to stick with scissors?

Alice Maclean:
It’s just a weak move.

Joe Rosenberg:
Whether Mr. Hashiyama himself would agree with that, we don’t know. But Kanae would meet him again at the art auction in New York.

Kanae Ishibashi:
And normally, clients, they demand the very best restaurants in New York. But he said, “Well, I would have a steak.” So we went to the real sort of New York steak steakhouse, having clam chowder and steak, together. And it was a very simple dinner, but it was very nice.

Joe Rosenberg:
Did he ever talk about rock paper scissors again? Or did you ever bring it up?

Kanae Ishibashi:
No, he never brought it up and I didn’t talk about it. But two years later, Mr. Hashiyama passed away, and that was the last time I saw him.

Joe Rosenberg:
Today, Kanae Ishibashi has quit the auction business entirely. She now runs a music school with her husband in Tokyo. And as for Nick’s twin daughters, Alice and Flora, shortly after the art auction, Time Magazine ran a section called “Quotes of the Week”.

Nick Maclean:
The Pope was there, Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think the president, and Alice Maclean.

Flora Maclean:
She has it framed.

Alice Maclean:
Yeah, it’s framed in the house.

Joe Rosenberg:
What was her quote?

Nick Maclean:
“Everybody knows you go scissors.”

Roman Mars:
This story was first reported by Carol Vogel at the New York Times and Joe Rosenberg first produced it for “Snap Judgment,” a show that I love, love, love. We have a link to Snap and the original Times article on our website.

Roman Mars:
Coming up after the break, in the Marvel movie Shang-Chi, there’s an epic fight on a runaway bus careening down the hills of San Francisco. It is a great scene that we will make even better when we have an SF Muni bus driver tell you how that would really go down. After this.

[BREAK]

Roman Mars:
I am extremely grateful that podcasting is as popular as it is. I get to have this career talking to you. It’s the best. But with the rise of podcasting comes an unexpected side effect, the sudden appearance of characters in movies and TV that are podcasters. They’re usually played for laughs as one-dimensional parities. I really don’t care. I find it fun. I’m totally into it.

Roman Mars:
That show “Only Murders in the Building,” it is great. It is so funny. Not one second of it resembles actual podcasting, but I do not care at all. It is a delightful show, but there’s one thing that does stick out to me when a podcaster is shown on screen, that bugs me just a little bit, and it is this. They never know how to hold a microphone.

Roman Mars:
In the real world. If you’re recording anything, you generally have to be in a quiet place and you have to put the mic right next to the sound. When you mic your voice, the mic is right next to your face. Fictional podcasters usually have bad mics and they’re pointed in random directions, far away from the source of sound. Plus they often record narration in noisy environments, like when they’re driving a car. It’s just ridiculous. And when the mic is in the wrong place on screen, it’s kind of all I can see. I’m not so much of a grumpy pedant that it ruins anything for me, but it’s just where my mind goes. I watch movies from the perspective of a podcaster.

Roman Mars:
I assume this is true for almost any profession. Be it a police officer or a doctor, or a city bus driver, which leads me to one of my favorite things to ever happen on Twitter. A couple months ago, San Francisco Muni bus driver Mack Allen tweeted one of the all-time great Twitter threads, dissecting the thrilling runaway bus fight scene in Marvel’s Shang-Chi. To begin with, I should say that Mack loves this whole action sequence. But like all movies, they took some liberties when it came to accurately depicting the operation of a San Francisco Muni bus. So I asked him to come on the show to talk to me about it.

Roman Mars:
So the action in the scene really starts when Shang-Chi is surrounded by bad guys trying to grab his magical necklace. And he summons all of his power, and he punches one of them in the chest. And the bad guy flies back like 10 feet. And what do you write about this shot?

Mack Allen:
This is the moment, as a bus operator, I pop my parking brake and open the doors. Once you have a fight on the bus, you don’t want the bus to be moving and you want people to be able to get off.

Roman Mars:
This is bus operator Mack Allen talking me through some of the highlights of his Twitter thread.

Mack Allen:
Then we see somebody is recording a video of the fight.

CLIP FROM SHANG CHI BUS FIGHT SCENE
[YO, WHAT UP, Y’ALL? IT’S YOUR BOY CLIFF COMING AT YOU LIVE ON THE BUS. I ACTUALLY DID TAKE A LITTLE BIT OF MARTIAL ARTS AS A YOUTH. SO I’M GOING TO TRY AND GRADE THIS FIGHT AS WE’RE GOING.]

Mack Allen:
It’s my opinion that this would definitely happen for sure. As soon as there’s a fight on the bus, people are going to be taking video. Then the action ratchets up another level when the main antagonist in the fight reveals his energy sword arm, a character named Razor Fist. And he literally is cutting through the floor of the bus. As a bus operator, I’m looking at this and I see that he’s got non-slip boots that look like they’re really excellent for working on a bus. So that’s my comment on Razor Fist is good shoes for a fight. And he actually cuts through the floor of the bus and cuts through the air hose that feeds the air brakes for the bus.

Mack Allen:
Then we get to see my hero of the scene, the bus operator, maybe a little bit of a bumbling antihero. Michael-Anthony Taylor, who is wearing earphones, is pushing on the pedal of the brake, the treadle, and the bus will not stop. He actually takes out his earphones and throws him away. And this is where I start to hold the bus operator responsible for everything that goes wrong from here on out.

Roman Mars:
So one, he shouldn’t be wearing headphones?

Mack Allen:
Yeah, no. That’s not allowed at Muni. We’re not allowed to have any personal electronic devices on our person in any way. And we’re certainly not allowed to muffle sounds that we might need to hear.

Roman Mars:
And you mentioned that the brake pedal is called a treadle. I’d never heard that term before.

Mack Allen:
Yeah. There’s a bunch of weird sort of inherited terms. I think some of them actually come from the early days of railroads. Our schedules are called paddles and the brake is called a treadle. They are different than the hydraulic brakes in a car. The emergency function of it fails-safe in a very important way that we as bus operators have to be aware of all the time, because if that fail-safe engages when we aren’t ready for it, it could be very dangerous.

Mack Allen:
So air brakes actually have a fail-safe called the spring brake, which is a physical lever that will engage into the brakes to stop the wheels from turning. And that spring brake is held open, not engaging on the wheel, by air pressure. So we use air pressure to engage the regular brake, the service brake that actually we use to slow the bus and stop the bus in normal service. And that is engaged by adding air pressure to the service brake. The spring brake is held open by that same air pressure. So if you lose air pressure, then the spring brake, which a physical spring, pushes on it, will engage the brakes. We really don’t want that to happen normally while the bus is in motion, because it will violently and immediately stop the bus. It’s not something that comes on slowly. It comes on at once. And so we actually have an audible and visual warning for low air pressure that alerts us before this spring brake is actually going to engage.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s air pressure in the system that makes the normal way we think of as brake work work, by uses pressure. It makes brake pads go against wheels and then it slows down. But if the pressure is cut, if little Razor Arm cuts through the hose, then it releases all the air from the system. And then this spring brake system activates, and then it’s physically impossible for the wheels to move at that point. The bus just stops. It’s dead and it doesn’t move.

Mack Allen:
Yeah. That bus is not moving.

Roman Mars:
And it doesn’t matter if you’re at the very peak of California pointing down, it’s not going anywhere.

Mack Allen:
That’s right. And that’s a perfect place to resume the thread because that’s where we find ourselves on the 1 California. And actually, this is an excellent point about the scene is that the bus that they’re using for the 1 California is a diesel hybrid articulated motor coach. And the actual 1 California is a trolley coach. It uses trolley poles to draw electricity from the overhead wires. And we never see any overhead wires in Shang-Chi. I think because the overhead wires would legitimately be a very dangerous thing to try and film around, if you’re doing stunt driving. Trolley coaches everywhere are offended that they’ve been sidelined this way. I love trolley coaches, but I don’t drive them.

Roman Mars:
You mentioned that it was articulating, which means that it’s one of those buses that has two sections of the bus and a little accordion thing between them so that it can be a very long bus and still navigate normal-sized streets.

Mack Allen:
In bus operator parlance, we call those arctics, which is just short for articulated. A lot of people like to call them bendybuses. My kids call them bendybuses. They’re called accordion buses. And some people also call them slinky buses.

Roman Mars:
Oh, they’re all delightful, whatever their name. So the scene goes on and your commentary continues. And there are parts where you lay a little more blame on the bus driver for not wearing a seatbelt and such. And you heap some unexpected praise on how well Awkwafina can operate the bus and also use the little lever that opens the front and back doors, which I learned from you is a pretty tricky thing to do. And it’s all really fun to talk about what is realistic and what isn’t, but you are very clear through all of this that it is done out of love. Like this is a great scene that you really enjoy.

Mack Allen:
Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s phenomenal. I enjoyed every moment of it. And I love that the bus is a hero in the movie. It really is a hero in the movie, and buses really are heroes of the city. So I was extremely pleased. And we didn’t mention any of the fight choreography or anything like that, but it’s incredible, throughout the entire scene is incredibly enjoyable. I loved it.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. It’s so good. It’s so good. Whenever there’s a viral thread, there’s this joke that people are supposed to plug their SoundCloud at the end, but you use that space to encourage people to thank their bus operator. Can you describe why you did that and what that means to you?

Mack Allen:
Yeah. As a bus operator, it’s actually sometimes kind of lonely. A lot of times, you’re not really aware of whether people are even aware that a person is doing this work to serve the system. So receiving just a simple thank you actually feels like a little boost. You feel a little bit better in your day as that happens. And I moved to the Bay Area 21 years ago, in Oakland, and riding AC Transit. An AC Transit operator actually taught me as a 17-year-old kid, when you get off the bus, say “thank you operator.” And I’ve kept this habit ever since. And now as a Muni operator myself, I’m now trying to make it a habit to thank the passengers for riding Muni. But I do think it really sort of… It makes you feel more human in the operator seat when somebody recognizes that you’re providing that service. And so I think “thank you operator” should be the last thing you do as you get off a bus.

Roman Mars:
You can follow Mack Allen @that_mc on Twitter, where you can find this whole hilarious thread and so many more daily insights from the perspective of an SF Muni bus driver. Thank you, operator.

———

CREDITS

Roman Mars:
99% Invisible was produced this week by Joe Rosenberg, music by Swan Real. Delaney Hall is the Executive Producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our Digital Director. The rest of the team includes Vivian Le, Chris Berube, Christopher Johnson, Emmett FitzGerald, Lasha Madan, Jayson De Leon, Martín Gonzalez, Sofia Klatzker, and me, Roman Mars. Special thanks this week to Glynn Washington and Pat Mesiti-Miller at Snap Judgment. And Mack Allen from SF Muni.

Roman Mars:
We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM 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 @romanmars and the show @99piorg. We’re on Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.

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Roman Mars:
Coming up this year from 99% Invisible and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a new four-part podcast series called “The Future Of…” I like to say the dot-dot-dots. We’ll be exploring how changes in the way we live, learn, work, and play may shape our health and wellbeing in years to come. Our first episode is all about the future of the office. It turns out people have been going back and forth about what makes a healthy and productive office since there have been offices.

Allison Arieff:
Just to give one example-

Roman Mars:
This is design writer and friend of the show, Allison Arieff.

Allison Arieff:
Facebook, when they were first emerging as a company, they bought the old Sun Microsystems building in Menlo Park and doubled the amount of people in the same office space. Of course, they didn’t pitch it that way. They said, “Oh my God, this is so amazing. We have all this collaborative collisions and spontaneous interactions because everyone’s in here.” And then they hired Frank Gehry to design this giant warehouse next to Sun Microsystems. And to me, that building looks exactly like the rows of desks, of like little telephone banks that secretaries had in the 1950s, but it was supposed to be so radical and so amazing that everybody was on the same floor and they were all going to be so innovative. But it’s like so retrograde. So I think there’s always this tension between a narrative and reality about what the office is achieving.

Roman Mars:
The 20th century was full of misbegotten fads and productivity innovations that continue to this day, even when the whole notion of what it means to be in an office has shifted during the pandemic. This special episode is part of a four part series we created exploring the future of health and wellbeing, imagining what the world might look like in the next 15 years. Each episode examines what we’ve done in the past and what we do today to create a healthier, more equitable future.

Roman Mars:
“The Future of…” from 99% Invisible and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We’ll be releasing these throughout the year. The first episode on offices premieres next week. To not miss a single episode, all you have to do is keep listening to 99% Invisible.