Privately Owned Public Open Spaces, or POPOS, are these little gardens, terraces, plazas, and seating areas that are private property, but are mandated for public use. City planners require developers to add these little “parks” to their buildings to make downtown more pleasant (or even just tolerable). Some are out in the open and used regularly by downtown office workers, and some are hidden away and don’t really serve the community all that well. They pop up in the most densely populated parts of the city, where large public parks are few and far between. Whereas the physical aspect of POPOS are pretty well established by the city planners, the social aspects of what constitutes a “public” space are harder to define. Blaine Merker, from the badass design activist group Rebar, showed superstar producer Stephanie Foo around a few of San Francisco’s POPOS to find out just how public these open spaces really are.

Almost everything in modern life is designed to waste energy. The biggest culprit is how we get to and from work. Our houses are too far from our job, so we have to drive a lot. All those cars on the road cause traffic jams that waste fuel. Then there are the traffic lights, toll booths, and other obstacles that waste the inertia you build up while driving. It’s all possible because the whole system evolved on a false premise that petroleum is cheap and plentiful and will be that way forever. The awesome Lisa Margonelli, author of Oil on The Brain and a fellow at the New America Foundation, talks us through the design of a world that completely disregards the perils of oil consumption and how new designs are meant to make us all more content with the mess we’ve made.

I’m sorry, but if you don’t love maps, I don’t think we can be friends anymore. Maps are amazing. They are art and story. A representation of where we are and where we wish we could be. They’ve always had a power over me. 

Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City, a new atlas of San Francisco maps, explores the poetry, beauty and arbitrary nature of maps to the fullest. The assembled cartographers, researchers, writers and artists have rendered twenty-two maps that tell strange and surprising stories about the Bay Area. Each point of fact and odd juxtaposition presents just one of the infinite possible visions of the city.

Ben Pease and Shizue Seigel were the main cartographers for Infinite City. They just released The Walker’s Map of San Francisco that I can’t wait to get my hands on.

Above is the “Death and Beauty” map I reference in the episode, and below is one of the more talked about maps in the atlas: Monarchs and Queens. This map pinpoints the queer public spaces in the city along with drawings of all the butterfly species that call San Francisco home (at least seasonally).

Everyone knows it when they see it. The classic “castle with turrets” periodic table is a beautiful and concise icon that contains a great deal of amazing information, if you only know how to read it. And even if you don’t know anything about the table, it’s still easy to admire and get lost in.

Author of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean, talks us through the design of the table that hung in the front of your science class for years, but you probably never really understood.

Even though I only deal with the classic table (which I still like the best), Sam Kean points out that there are hundreds of variations that are fun to look at.

And if infographic success is measured by the number of parodies and spoofs, then the periodic table is king.

I asked Sam Kean which was his favorite table parody and he pointed me toward this Periodic Table of Swearing by Modern Toss. It’s particularly great because the swear words share properties and build off one another as you go down each column. That shows great commitment to both the original table and creative vulgarity.