Mini-Stories: Volume 20

Summary

99% Invisible: Mini-Stories Volume 20 – A Deep Dive into Design in Daily Life

Released January 7, 2025 | Host: Roman Mars

In the 20th edition of Mini-Stories, Roman Mars explores the intricate and often unnoticed elements of design that shape our daily lives. This episode delves into the history and impact of the snooze button, the unique neon aesthetic of Cold War-era Warsaw, innovative fire safety designs in Japan, and the experimental Smell o Vision technology in cinema. Through engaging storytelling and expert insights, Mars uncovers the subtle yet profound ways design influences our experiences.

---

The Evolution of the Snooze Button

The episode opens with Roman Mars reflecting on the ubiquitous yet often maligned snooze button. He humorously describes his own household’s chaotic morning routine, highlighting the universal struggle with waking up:

Roman Mars [00:00]: "What does it mean to be rich? Maybe it's less about reaching a magic number and more about discovering the magic in life."

Mars traces the snooze button's origins back to ancient and industrial methods of waking, such as Plato's water-based alarm and massive factory whistles during the Industrial Revolution. He emphasizes the pivotal moment in 1956 when GE Telechron introduced the first alarm clock with a snooze button:

Roman Mars [03:44]: "A tap on my head will let you snooze longer. My face lights up to my day."

The discussion highlights how the nine-minute snooze became standardized due to manufacturing constraints, despite people’s subconscious desire to delay waking multiple times. Mars critiques the snooze button's effectiveness, suggesting it often leads to fragmented sleep rather than a restful start to the day.

---

Neonization: Warsaw’s Bright Response to Dark Times

Transitioning from personal routines to urban design, Mars and guest Kelly Prime explore the transformation of Warsaw during the Cold War through state-sponsored neon signage. Kelly Prime introduces the concept:

Kelly Prime [06:16]: "I want to tell you a story about a different neon aesthetic. It's one that was created in the Eastern Bloc right in the middle of the Cold War."

In the mid-1950s, Warsaw's communist government initiated Neonization, a program aimed at uplifting public morale by illuminating the city with cohesive and modern neon signs. David Hill, director of the Neon Museum in Warsaw, explains the intention behind the project:

David Hill [08:08]: "This will placate the public. This will bamboozle them. This will make people happy again."

Unlike the chaotic neon landscapes of American cities, Warsaw’s neon signs were meticulously designed and centrally approved, creating a harmonious and unified aesthetic. Kelly Prime showcases examples of these signs, including expansive floral designs for a flower shop and iconic symbols like the pink mermaid for the public library.

Kelly Prime [11:22]: "They look like someone has been doodling, but on an entire building with neon."

Despite their initial success in beautifying the city, the effectiveness of Neonization in fostering genuine happiness under communism is debated. By the early 1980s, economic and political tensions led to the decline of neon signs, culminating in the Great Recycling Scheme of 1989, which saw the destruction of most of Warsaw’s neon legacy.

Kelly Prime [16:35]: "People were paid to go out into the city, find the neon signs, and destroy them."

However, a resurgence of interest in recent decades has led to a renaissance of neon in Warsaw, blending historical designs with modern interpretations to attract both locals and tourists.

---

Fire Department Access Stickers in Japan

In a segment with Kurt Kohlstedt, the discussion shifts to a subtle yet crucial design element in Japanese architecture: red triangular stickers indicating fire department access points. Kurt recounts his discovery in Tokyo:

Kurt Kohlstedt [22:08]: "These are red triangle, the tip pointing down, and it's centered right in the middle of every window that I see."

These stickers, known as fire department access stickers, play a vital role in emergency preparedness. They inform firefighters of window locations that can be easily opened or shattered in case of an emergency, serving as designated meeting points for rescue operations.

Kurt Kohlstedt [24:10]: "It's a meeting point."

Roman Mars connects this discovery to his earlier experiences with similar safety features, highlighting the universal importance of thoughtful design in public safety.

---

Smell o Vision: When Movies Engaged More Senses

The episode concludes with Gillian Jacobs presenting the fascinating yet flawed experiment of Smell o Vision in cinema. She narrates the story of the 1960 film Scent of Mystery, which attempted to revolutionize the movie-going experience by incorporating synchronized scents:

Gillian Jacobs [32:14]: "Smell o Vision was going to be different because it was the first time the scents were going to be intentionally embedded into the production of the film."

Developed by Mike Todd Jr., Smell o Vision utilized a device called the smell brain to release specific scents in sync with the film's scenes. Despite the innovative idea, the technology faced numerous challenges:

Joan [35:00]: "Some of the smells were too strong. Sometimes the smells came late, sometimes you couldn't smell anything at all."

The high costs and technical difficulties led to the film’s failure, tarnishing the concept as an impractical gimmick. However, Jacobs notes that the legacy of Smell o Vision lives on through later attempts to integrate scents into media, such as scratch-and-sniff cards in films like Polyester and innovations in video games.

Gillian Jacobs [36:58]: "It seems like people will never let go of the stream of smelling their media content."

---

Conclusion

Mini-Stories Volume 20 masterfully illustrates how design transcends aesthetics, embedding itself into the fabric of our daily experiences and societal structures. From the personal inconvenience of a snooze button to the grand urban planning of Warsaw’s neonization, the episode underscores the profound impact design has on behavior, safety, and cultural identity. Roman Mars and his guests invite listeners to appreciate the hidden elements that shape their environments, reminding us that design is indeed everywhere—often working silently behind the scenes.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Roman Mars [03:44]: "A tap on my head will let you snooze longer. My face lights up to my day."

• Kelly Prime [06:16]: "I want to tell you a story about a different neon aesthetic. It's one that was created in the Eastern Bloc right in the middle of the Cold War."

• David Hill [08:08]: "This will placate the public. This will bamboozle them. This will make people happy again."

• Kurt Kohlstedt [22:08]: "These are red triangle, the tip pointing down, and it's centered right in the middle of every window that I see."

• Gillian Jacobs [32:14]: "Smell o Vision was going to be different because it was the first time the scents were going to be intentionally embedded into the production of the film."

---

Credits:

Produced by Jason De Leon, Kelly Prime, Kurt Kohlstedt, Gillian Jacobs, and Vivian Leigh. Edited by Christopher Johnson and Nina Patak. Mixed by Martine Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real and George Langford. Executive Producer: Kathy Chu. Senior Editor: Delaney Hall.

For more information and to explore past episodes, visit 99pi.org.

Transcript

[Roman Mars]

What does it mean to be rich? Maybe it's less about reaching a magic number and more about discovering the magic in life.

[Gillian Jacobs]

At Edward Jones, our dedicated financial advisors.

[Roman Mars]

Are the people you can count on for financial strategies that help support a life you love. Because the key to being rich is knowing what counts. Learn more about our comprehensive approach to [e-mail] FindYourRich Edward Jones Member, SIPC this is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Happy New Year, beautiful nerds. It is now the impossibly futuristic sounding 2025, and we are ringing in the new year with our 20th edition of Mini stories, featuring tales about Cold War neon signs, Japanese fire escapes, the marvels of smell o vision. But first, we must wake up from our holiday slumber. Brace yourselves. I live in a house with seven other people. I'm going to let that sink in for a second. That is a lot of humans under one roof with a lot of different schedules, which means a lot of alarms going off anywhere from 6am to, I don't know, 10am there's the one that's like. But it goes for like an hour because it doesn't actually wake anyone up. And then the the one that really, really gets me is the duck. Now, everyone has their own way of waking up. Personally, I don't really need an alarm because the fear, dread and obligation of middle age keeps my consciousness right at the edge of alert at all times. But in my house this morning, chorus of quacks and bird songs exist because almost everyone set alarms early, often much earlier than they actually need to get up. And that's because they are building in time to abuse the worst feature of their alarm, a feature so cursed and diabolical it defeats the very purpose of any alarm. I'm talking, of course, about the snooze button. The snooze button is a bad solution to a conundrum that's existed for millennia. People need to sleep, but they also have things to do. In ancient Greece, Plato jolted himself out of bed with a system where a set amount of water slowly dripped into an airtight pot until the pressure was so high it would let out a piercing sound, kind of like a teapot. And during the Industrial Revolution, some towns had gigantic whistles which summoned workers to the factory. Around the same time, a whole job existed for people who would go around knocking on doors and windows to wake people up. But once the alarm clock entered the household with sounds like this and this, a backlash was inevitable. It was only a matter of time. You can Sleep soundly depending upon the snooze alarm clock. The GE Telechron. It wakes you each morning and then lets you snooze. Continues to wake you just as you choose. In 1956, GE invented the world's first alarm clock with a snooze button on top of the clock. There was a big old fat bar labeled snooze. That's S N o O Z. And it could not be missed. One smack of the clock and presto. You just bought yourself a little more sleep. Year after year, I stay right by your bed.

[Kelly Prime]

I waken you promptly.

[Roman Mars]

A tap on my head will let you snooze longer. My face lights up to my day. All my life I'm so easy to so visit your General Electric star. The first snooze alarm clocks were built to let you snooze for 10 to 15 minutes. But mass production required some standardization. In the 1950s, a double digit snooze was too complicated to program into the gears of a clock at scale. So GE cut as close as they could with nine minutes. A nine minute snooze was the choice. After millennia of trying to get ourselves out of bed at a certain time, the snooze alarm dared to ask, do you really have to get up right now? And across the country, people more or less said, no, I don't. The clock was a major hit. And as technology improved, a few competitors ended up offering alternatives to the nine minute snooze, like the West Clock's drows alarm clock.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Let's see now. Do I want 5 minutes more sleep or 10?

[Roman Mars]

5? The west clock's alarm clock gave people the option of snoozing two different amounts of time, depending on if you hit the drowse button on the left side or the right side.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Gee, I could use 10 minutes this time.

[David Hill]

Man, you just can't oversleep with this new west clock.

[Roman Mars]

But the drowse button didn't have that sweet, sweet simplicity. Nobody wants to wake up and think about how much longer they want to sleep. People just want to sleep more. And the snooze button gave us that. Or at least that's what we thought. Despite the fact that many of our phones are still factory preset to snooze for nine minutes today. We all know deep down that the snooze button doesn't really give us meaningful sleep. And it also doesn't let us rise. Instead, it catches us at our weakest moment when we are least capable of making decisions. When it's Far easier to slap a button than to put two feet on the ground. In the end, the key to waking up might just rest in not giving yourself any other options. And the key to more sleep. Well, let me know when someone figures that out. I'm here with 99pi editor Kelly prime for a rare appearance on Mic. So, Kelly, what do you have for me today?

[Kelly Prime]

Hi, Roman. So I want you to imagine this very classic Americana neon scene.

[Roman Mars]

Okay?

[Kelly Prime]

So, like, if you imagine pictures of Broadway or vintage Las Vegas, like the street just lit up with signs sort of competing for your attention. Can you picture that?

[Roman Mars]

Absolutely, I can picture that.

[Kelly Prime]

Okay, great. Because that's not what I'm talking about.

[Roman Mars]

Okay. Okay, well, I'll erase that from my mind.

[Kelly Prime]

Okay, that's the neon that you and I are probably more familiar with. But I want to tell you a story about a different neon aesthetic. It's one that was created in the Eastern Bloc right in the middle of the Cold War. And they basically took that flashy, commercial Americana style of neon and they twisted it to make this new socialist style that's completely unique to this specific place at this specific moment of history.

[Roman Mars]

Huh. Okay, tell me more about it.

[Kelly Prime]

So the story starts in the mid-50s, about a decade into communism in the Eastern Bloc. At this point, people were starting to push back to rebel. And so Soviet leaders got together and they were like, we have to work out a plan to quell some of this political unrest. And their plan was basically neon. It was called Neonization. It was the state sponsored program.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, I'm in. Tell me more.

[Kelly Prime]

Okay. Neonization was a government program meant to put push the idea of a brighter future.

[Roman Mars]

Since this is your first time recording with me, I will allow you that one once. But another one of those and I'm pulling the plug.

[Kelly Prime]

We'll see.

[Roman Mars]

Okay.

[Kelly Prime]

The concept was like, okay, things are bleak. We get that. But.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Shh.

[Kelly Prime]

Don't even worry about it.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Shh.

[Kelly Prime]

Look at these lights.

[David Hill]

So what they decided to do was change the landscape, turn things around, brighten up everything.

[Kelly Prime]

That's David Hill. He's the director of the Neon Museum in Warsaw, which is dedicated to documenting and preserving Cold War era neon signs.

[David Hill]

The proponents certainly argued this will placate the public. This will bamboozle them. This will make people happy again.

[Roman Mars]

So rather than provide things, you know, substantive things in their lives to actually make people happy, they just decided to put lights in front of them.

[Kelly Prime]

Exactly. Yeah. Great use of resources.

[Roman Mars]

Okay. Okay. And so why neon specifically? Why not. Not murals or, you know, I don't know anything else.

[Kelly Prime]

So the thing is that Eastern Europe actually had a history with neon. And this was especially true of Warsaw. So before World War II, Warsaw had been just like another modern European capital with everything that entailed, including bright shiny lights.

[David Hill]

It was a shimmering pearl. It was very famous for its neon signs from 1926 onwards. So it had this connection to neon.

[Kelly Prime]

But the war just basically destroyed all of them. As you can imagine, these very delicate glass tubes would not fare well in all the bombings that happened. But even though they were gone, people in Warsaw still had a really positive association with them. It really represented modernity and just generally prosperity, like before things were destroyed. So the socialist government knew that, and they figured they could sort of leverage that association to foster goodwill towards the current regime.

[Roman Mars]

So the communist government came up with this plan to neonize the city to make everyone happy. So what's step one in this process? Like, how do they start?

[Kelly Prime]

So one of the first things the government did was to hire some of the best artists in the nation. And like, some of these people actually were already talented neon artists and electricians. But many of them weren't. Like, these were groundbreaking visual artists who were used to working on paper and canvas. They didn't necessarily have any pre existing experience working with neon. So the only thing that was really limiting their imagination was the bounds of the material.

[David Hill]

They would just have a piece of cardboard and just draw lines all over it and then later realize, well, that's not really possible. We can't make that. It's too zigzaggy or, you know, whatever the restrictions were.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so given that, given that their imagination is sort of wild and is unfettered by the constraints of neon, but there are actual physical constraints of building something in neon, what exactly did the artists end up making?

[Kelly Prime]

I'm so glad you asked because I've been very into these since I discovered them. And I think the best way to go about it is just to show you some examples. So the first one I'm about to ask you to look at was made to decorate a flower shop. So just describe what you're seeing here.

[Roman Mars]

So I'm seeing very bright neon, and it's a green kind of vine, lots of flowers of a couple of different colors. And the flower petals, like, they're not uniform. They're like. They're kind of. They're kind of scribbly.

[Kelly Prime]

Exactly. They're like scribbly. It looks like a sketch pad, like someone has been doodling, but on an entire building with neon.

[David Hill]

This was designed by a graphic artist, Zofia Kostecka, now Koschupska. So she created this as a young graphic designer for a pavilion that sold, basically carnations and roses. Nothing fancy there, except the building was covered in butterflies and flowers and grass. It was enormous. It went on for meters. We're talking 20, 30 meters.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, yeah. So these are big.

[Kelly Prime]

They're huge. These are huge. Okay, so they're not like a Budweiser sign hanging in the window of a bar.

[Roman Mars]

They are not that 20, 30 meters. That's 100ft of squiggly flowers. That's amazing.

[Kelly Prime]

It's crazy. Yeah. So the next one I want to show you is actually at the. But it is one of my favorites. It's a pink mermaid, and she's holding up a sword and shield, which is like the mermaid with the sword and shield is the symbol of the city of Warsaw. And she's hovering over an open book.

[David Hill]

Wherever you saw this beautiful pink mermaid sitting on an open book, she would denote your public library. So Biblioteca publicena. Wonderful. So you would see this symbol all over the place in Warsaw.

[Roman Mars]

That's so cool. This thing is beautiful. It's hard to imagine neon over municipal buildings.

[Kelly Prime]

Exactly.

[Roman Mars]

I was in Socrates New York, like, literally yesterday, and there was a pink neon framing of this old industrial bridge. And I was just, like, mesmerized by that thing. And just like, that sort of juxtaposition of neon and, you know, just like kind of pretty mundane municipal design. And decay was, like, lovely. It was a revelation to me. I loved it.

[Kelly Prime]

Yeah. I want more of that. And that was, like, very much the thing here. Like, very much the thing. So by the late 60s, Warsaw had hundreds of thousands of these signs across the city. Wow. But what's really striking to me is the fact that. That all of these neon signs had this cohesiveness to them. You know, if you cast your mind to that, again, American scene of a street covered in neon, what you're gonna see is a big sort of mishmash of color. But in Poland, that was not at all the case.

[David Hill]

We're looking at something as a. As a very well thought out, coherent project. And I think that delivered a slightly different aesthetic, a different feeling, as if, my God, the city. This city is a city of neon. It's a city of light. And it all seems to work together. It all seems to be harmonious.

[Kelly Prime]

And a big reason for that is the fact that this neonization process was run by the state. There was actually a central body that Commissioned and signed off on every single sign.

[Roman Mars]

You'd think they'd have better things to do.

[Kelly Prime]

Yeah, no, I guess not. And all these signs were specifically designed to complement each other, so no one piece was approved unless it fit into the style of the whole.

[David Hill]

You can see how seriously the authorities took this in that eventually the chief city architect's title was abolished, and it became the chief city graphic designer. So there was less importance on architecture and more placed on neonization and the urban aesthetic, the design.

[Roman Mars]

So after all this neonization, Warsaw is covered in neon. But did their ultimate goal actually bear fruit? I mean, did. Were people actually, you know, happier? You know, did they convince the people of Poland that everything was okay?

[Kelly Prime]

Well, first of all, it's hard to say how people in Poland felt about neonization in general. Certainly the signs were really beautiful, and it's easy to appreciate their beauty. But it's also safe to say that this tricked exactly no one into thinking that, you know, life under communism was really great. Yeah. By the early 80s, things had, in fact gotten so bad that the socialist government instituted martial law. And that really took a toll on Warsaw's neons.

[David Hill]

These neon signs were switched off. The authorities said, well, you don't need them. You know, you're under house arrest. Why would you want to go out in the evening? So they were basically switched off. And they were really the first rather obvious victims of this new political revolution that brought in democracy.

[Kelly Prime]

And what happened next, you probably know, communism in the eastern bloc didn't last. In 1989, Poland's communist state was officially replaced by a new democratic government. And when that happened, that was really the end for Warsaw's neons.

[David Hill]

The new democratic Polish government Looked at the symbols from this period of occupation as they saw it, and neon was the obvious target. And so they set about destroying as many neon signs as they could in what they called the great recycling scheme, rather quaintly. And we lost so many. So many neons.

[Roman Mars]

Wow. The great recycling scheme is quite a euphemism.

[Kelly Prime]

Yeah. People were paid to go out into the city, Find the neon signs, and destroy them.

[Roman Mars]

So are any of the original signs left up? I mean, those pictures you showed me, are those contemporary, or were all the signs destroyed?

[Kelly Prime]

So those pictures I showed you are contemporary. Those are photos of some of the few signs that did manage to survive all this time. But most of Warsaw's neons Were either broken or taken down. And eventually the remnants of neonization Just kind of faded into the backdrop of the city Rather than being what they once were, which is, you know, a focal point of it. But I will say that in the last 20 or so years, there has been renewed interest among the residents of Warsaw in those signs and their history.

[David Hill]

I do have some, you know, some really good news, and that is that Warsaw is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. Neonization has returned.

[Kelly Prime]

Today, people come from around the world to see what's left of Warsaw's neons. And David says that there are now new neon signs all over Warsaw, and some of them are directly referencing the work of Poland's great neon artists.

[David Hill]

You see these fantastic places that young people hang out and you look and you think, I've seen that before. That's a neon design by Jan Mocharski, you know, this famous neonizer and Polish poster artist. And there it is on the streets of Warsaw, reinvented for the modern age, reinvented for the young people.

[Roman Mars]

Well, thank you, Kelly.

[Kelly Prime]

Thanks, Roman.

[Roman Mars]

And if you'd like to see some examples of these Polish neon signs, we'll have some pictures on the website. Coming up, our digital director, Kurt Kohlstedt figures out how to escape from a burning building in Japan. News you can use. And our pal Gillian Jacobs talks to us about movies you can smell. That's after the break. Foreign Introducing Lumen, the world's first handheld metabolic coach. Your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into fuel that keeps you going. Lumen is a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. If you're into fitness the way I am, the Lumen gives you insight into how you can be most effective with your workouts and your eating and encourages you to stay in the zones you want to stay in for your goals. If I didn't have this thing, I have no idea if I was in like fat or carb burning mode. This really helps you out. So if you want to keep the weight off for good this year, go to Lumen Me Invisible to get 15% off your Lumen. That's L U M E N main invisible for 15% off your purchase. Thank you Lumen for sponsoring this episode. Arkle believes in delightful design for every home. And thanks to their online only model, they have some really delightful prices too. Arko's team of designers are all about finding the perfect balance between style, quality and price. Their curated collection features a variety of styles including mid century modern, coastal, industrial, Scandi and Boho, making furniture shopping easy. And they are committed to creating well crafted pieces that are built to last and look great. I've had The Seno extendable 12 person dining table in my house for like, I don't know, 10 years I'm sure and it is the MVP of the House. Joy works at it every day and then for big dinners we clear it off, we put on a fancy runner, we put on flowers and candles and then we gather everyone around and we just love this thing. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com 99 and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com 99 for $50 off your first purchase of$100 or more. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place, all on your terms. You can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or [e-mail] Invisible now introducing Design Intelligence from Squarespace. Combining two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential, Design Intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. I personally found that Squarespace is a way to have a website with all the bells and whistles without knowing how to make a bell or a whistle. It's that easy. Go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch squarespace.com invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. We are back with Digital Director Curt Kohlsted. Kurt, what do you have for us?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, so I wanted to tell you about this small design element that I first encountered in Tokyo. I was walking around and I started to notice these red stickers that were shaped like perfect equilateral triangles and stuck to the windows of a bunch of different buildings. Here's a picture to show you what I'm talking about.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so let's see. Yes, it's a red triangle, the tip pointing down, and it's centered right in the middle of every window that I see. Like it doesn't seem accidental or put on by the people, you know, haphazardly on the inside.

[Kelly Prime]

Right.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

There's a certain consistency to it. There's like one upside down red triangle every couple of windows. And then, you know, once I noticed them, I started to see these stickers everywhere. Not just in Tokyo, but then later in Osaka and Kobe and Kyoto.

[Roman Mars]

You know, now that I've seen these pictures, I have to admit I didn't see these when I was in Japan. So what's up with all these stickers?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

So they're called fire department access stickers, and you shouldn't feel too bad about missing them. It really helped that I had one smack dab in the middle of my first hotel room window in Tokyo. So I did some research and I found out that in an emergency, the red triangles indicate to firefighters where to lean their ladders. And then on the inside, they have explanatory text that tells people in the building where they should go and expect to find rescue.

[Roman Mars]

Do the triangles indicate that the windows are somehow different or that they're just the gathering point of rescuer meeting rescuee?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, yeah. So I looked into that, and some of what I read indicated that these windows could be opened more easily, like either by firefighters from the outside or people from the inside. And one account indicated that they might be built out of more breakable glass too, so that, like, you can shatter them in an emergency. And then I noticed under my window in my hotel room that there was this metal stick which clearly wasn't there to open the window. And. And I got to wondering, like, is that so that I can smash the window? And I confess, I did not test the theory, and so I cannot confirm if that's why the stick was there.

[Roman Mars]

Well, well, regardless of whether these arrows are indicators of any structural or physical difference about these windows, this is a place where you can go to get out of the building in an emergency.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, exactly. It's a meeting point.

[Roman Mars]

I guess I'm just kind of surprised that I missed these stickers. Like, are they only on certain kinds of buildings or are they just all kind of high up?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Well, yeah, you're on the right track there. Height is the key determinant, because if you think about it, like, smaller buildings, including houses that only have a story or two, obviously wouldn't need these at all. And on taller buildings, they'd only be needed within a certain height range, because, of course, if a window is too high to be reached by a firefighter ladder, it would be dark to encourage people to congregate there.

[Roman Mars]

Frankly, I see there's only a narrow band. Where these are functional, they have to be high enough that you wouldn't just get out by yourself on the first floor or second floor, but low enough that it'd be possible for a firefighter's ladder to reach you.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, exactly. And from the regulation accounts that I was reading, of course, in translation and secondary sources, it appears that it's about 100ft where these things cap out.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so that's the reason why I missed them, because it's within 20ft to 100ft, totally.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

And they're really. I mean, quite small. So unless you're looking for them, they're easy to miss too. Right. And, you know, this actually all kind of led me back to this little journey of discovery that I took when we first met, which was over a decade ago now, if you can believe it.

[Roman Mars]

I mean, I can't believe it. It's been a while. I can't imagine. I can't imagine the show before you. So it's. It's one of those things. So what. What did it remind you of, though?

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Um, well, we had this lunch together in Oakland, and we were walking around, and you pointed out this little black box next to a building entrance, and then another and another and so on. And they all had these little red reflective stripes.

[Roman Mars]

And those are, of course, Knox boxes, which we've talked about a couple of times. And if you don't remember those episodes or didn't read the book that Kurt and I co authored, those contain a set of keys for the building. And then all those nox boxes are. Are held by firefighters. So if there is a crisis, they can open up this box, therefore have all the keys to the building, and they can get in and out more easily.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah, exactly. And so you were there for me 10 years ago, drawing my attention to something and then filling in the backstory. So this is me returning the favor.

[Roman Mars]

Well, that was fun, Kurt. Thank you so much.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

Yeah.

[Roman Mars]

Thank you, Robert. Up next is actor and frequent 99pi contributor Gillian Jacobs. Hey, Gillian. Welcome back.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Thanks so much for having me, Roman.

[Roman Mars]

It's great to have you back. So what do you have for us today?

[Gillian Jacobs]

Well, I wanted to talk about a very particular and peculiar movie. Roman, have you ever seen the film Scent of Mystery?

[Roman Mars]

No, but I like the way you say scent of Mystery.

[Gillian Jacobs]

I feel like it can only be said like that.

[Roman Mars]

So tell me more about Scent of Mystery.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Well, no judgment for never having heard of it, because it's a very obscure movie from 1960, but as you may be able to Deduce it is a mystery film about a mysterious woman in danger. It has Peter Lorre, wine barrels, Spain.

[Roman Mars]

Bad Spanish, Senor Povor, young lady in.

[Kurt Kohlstedt]

A big hat, mucho sombrero dande.

[Gillian Jacobs]

The reason I want to talk to you about it today is because my friend Joan saw it when it first came out in theaters and is still talking about it because of something unique about Scent of Mystery. So what do you remember about that day and about the movie?

[Joan]

Okay, so much about the movie. I think we got popcorn because, you know, this was a big event for us to go downtown.

[Gillian Jacobs]

So back in 1960, when Scent of Mystery first premiered, Joan was a kid living in Chicago. And it turns out she and her siblings were part of a very small group of moviegoers who got to see it exhibited in its full intended experience, which was demonstrated by this one scene in particular.

[Joan]

So all of a sudden, as I'm sitting there, this the main character who some chase thing is going on, and the main character all of a sudden goes into a flower market and this gush of sweet smell comes in our face and neither of us can breathe. And of course, I had to rush over and get away from the smell.

[Roman Mars]

A gush of sweet smell. I'm not sure what word in that phrase I find the most objectionable. What kind of smell are we talking about here?

[Gillian Jacobs]

So as it turns out, what Joan was expecting, experiencing in that movie theater was Smell o Vision. Roman, what do you know about Smell o Vision?

[Roman Mars]

I mean, not much other than the name. I'm sure it has something to do with the technology that allows you to smell a movie as you're watching it, but I didn't think there was much more to it than that.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Oh, Roman, buckle up. It was the brainchild of American film producer Mike Todd Jr. And Mike Todd Jr. Was the son of, you guessed it, Mike Todd Sr. Who was a hugely successful theatrical impresario and husband of Elizabeth Taylor.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, okay. Wow.

[Gillian Jacobs]

So Mike Todd Sr. Was this big ideas guy who loved gimmicks and doing things on a grand scale. Like his hit Oscar winning film, around the world in 80 days. It was chock full of cameos and stars and as you could guess, shot around the world. But then Mike Todd Sr. Tragically died in a plane crash in 1958, leaving his son, Mike Jr. To run his production company when he was only 28 years old. And Mike Todd Jr. Wanted to continue his father's legacy of spectacle. And in this moment of uncertainty, he remembered this technology that his father was in, intrigued by and had actually considered implementing in around the world in 80 days this thing called smell brain.

[Roman Mars]

That needs some work.

[Gillian Jacobs]

I know. So smell brain was this device invented by an Austrian osmologist named Hans Lab. And it was essentially a conveyor belt full of vials containing smell cues. And when prompted, the smell brain would pump the scent cue to each seat in the theater individually using a series of tubes.

[Roman Mars]

So it was like this synced smell experience, matching what was on the screen.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Exactly. Mike Todd Jr. Remembered the smell brain and lob and thought, okay, I'm gonna invest all of my money and the resources from my dad's production company because what moviegoers really want is to smell the movies. And this is with no market testing to support it, Just the firm belief people would be so excited by the idea of sniffing stuff while watching a movie that they would rush to theaters.

[Roman Mars]

Well, history is made by dreamers, so go for it.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Absolutely. So Mike Todd, he's a marketing guy, so he decides to rebrand Smell Brain with a more attention grabbing name, Smell O Vision. And he decided the way to debut this Smell O Vision technology was to produce and self finance the first and only film made with the smell cues in mind during production. Scent of Mystery.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, yeah. The title is extremely on the nose. Oh, sorry, I actually didn't mean that. Okay, okay. So what was different about the film Scent of Mystery from other films? Like, how did it showcase the Smell O Vision technology?

[Gillian Jacobs]

Oh, so deploying scents in the movie watching experience actually goes as far back as the silent era. So maybe a theater would show a film that had a scene at the rose bowl and the theater owner would put a cotton ball soaked with rose oil in front of a fan to enhance that experience for the audience.

[Roman Mars]

So some audiences got to experience the smell of movies before they even heard them.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Yes, but in those pre Smell O Vision experiences, the smell cues were created by the theater owners and not necessarily how the filmmaker intended the movie to be experienced. Smell O Vision and Scent of Mystery were going to be different because it was the first time the scents were going to be intentionally embedded into the production of the film, and the smells would be critical to the plot.

[Roman Mars]

So how does a smell driven plot even work?

[Gillian Jacobs]

Okay, so like I mentioned before, there is a mysterious woman character, and everyone's trying to figure out who this mysterious woman is. And every time you see this mysterious woman, you would smell her perfume. So the smell of the perfume was pumped into the audience and then that smell is key to figuring out her identity.

[Kelly Prime]

And you thought there might have been.

[Roman Mars]

One Other una outra.

[David Hill]

She buy perfume.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Scent of Mystery.

[Roman Mars]

Magnifico. Irresistible scene.

[Gillian Jacobs]

In that scene that you just heard, you would actually smell the perfume that you saw on screen. But dear listeners, you're just gonna have to use your imagination. Sorry. So Mike Dodd Jr. Was so convinced that Smell O Vision was going to revolutionize cinema that he marketed it as a seismic advancement. Ads for the movie read. First they moved, then they talked. Now they smell anyway, to really try and get butts in the seats. Mike Todd Jr. Convinced his stepmother, Elizabeth Taylor, to appear as the aforementioned mysterious woman. And Eddie Fisher, who was Elizabeth Taylor's then husband, even contributed the title track to the film, which actually did really well.

[Roman Mars]

A strange excitement in the air. Her fragrant perfume lingers there. Why does the lady always wear the scent of mystery? I've never. So I'm guessing since you mentioned that the Scent of Mystery was the first and only Smell O Vision film, the technology behind Smell O Vision was not a raging success.

[Gillian Jacobs]

No, not at all. Sadly, no. According to audiences at the time, including my friend Joan, the technologies didn't really work all that great.

[Joan]

I think I spent the entire time going, I don't smell anything. I don't smell. Do I smell anything? I don't smell anything. And we thought the whole thing was kind of a bust.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Some of the smells were too strong. Sometimes the smells came late, Sometimes you couldn't smell anything at all. And it cost a ton of money to install. So there were only three theaters in the United States running it in full Smell O Vision. So the film flopped and lost a ton of money. They later tried to recoup some of their losses by re releasing the film under the title Holiday in Spain sans Smell O Vision. I tried to watch it for journalism, but it was not good. The film Scent of Mystery and the name Smell O Vision became a joke in Hollywood. Just another goofy gimmick that didn't work.

[Roman Mars]

In hindsight, that seems inevitable, but I imagine in the moment that still felt sad to. You know, everyone likes innovation to move things forward.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Absolutely. And to that point, you know, even though Smell O Vision died, the idea of it lived on in different forms. In 1981, John Waters directed a film called Polyester. For that he produced Scratch and Sniff Odorama cards. And you would get a cue on screen when to, you know, scratch your smell cue, which allowed you to do the Smell O Vision in a more low tech way. Spy Kids 4 Father of children Roman, have you watched Spy Kids 4?

[Roman Mars]

I don't know about 4, but I've certainly seen a couple of them.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Okay, well, you missed out because Spy Kids 4 did their own scratch and sniff cards called Aromascope. Uh, and recently, companies like Ismell and O Phone have tried to introduce smells into computing mobile phones. And the latest and greatest is Smells for video games. And it seems like people will never let go of the stream of smelling their media content.

[Roman Mars]

You know, I've been through different iterations of this where, like, you know, 3D has come and gone in different waves. And I just feel like mostly it's like we've come to the idealized form big screen. You know, a bunch of people in a dark movie theater looking at it. Like, to me, that doesn't really need to be improved very much, but. Are you craving more, Gillian?

[Gillian Jacobs]

I'm not craving smells, I'll say that.

[Roman Mars]

Fair enough. Thank you so much.

[Gillian Jacobs]

Thank you.

[Roman Mars]

99% Invisible was produced this week by Jason De Leon, Kelly Prime, Kurt Kohlstedt, Gillian Jacobs and Vivian Leigh, edited by Christopher Johnson and Nina Patak, mix by Martine Gonzalez, music by Swan Real and George Langford. Kathy Chu is our executive producer. Delaney hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriella Gladney, Lashma Dawn, Jacob Medina Gleason, Joe Rosenberg, and me, roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. 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 now find us on the social media site. Bluesky is definitely the one to join. We are having some fun there. You can also connect with 5,000 other 99 PI fans on our Discord server where we talk about the power broker architecture, all kinds of fun stuff. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of [e-mail].