SPEAKER_18: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel dot com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all in one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything. Your products, content you create and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace dot com slash invisible for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In the summer of 2002, Tatiana Kim took her first trip abroad. She was going to Onsone, South Korea, which is a city that's about a half an hour drive outside of Seoul. I was visiting Onsone to spend the summer break with my grandparents.
SPEAKER_04: They had recently moved into a very special apartment complex.
SPEAKER_18: That's Tatiana by the way.
SPEAKER_04: Even though on the surface it seemed like any other building, there were these little details that stuck out to me. The halls and elevators were a little wider and had handrails all the way across for people to hold on to. And for some reason, there was also a Red Cross office right on the premises.
SPEAKER_18: But the most distinctive feature about this complex was the people who lived there.
SPEAKER_04: There were about a thousand residents who were all elderly. And even though everybody was of Korean descent, they all spoke Russian. Sometimes I'd meet other teenagers who were visiting their grandparents. But just like me, none of them spoke any Korean, only Russian. In the kitchens, our grandmothers would cook us both, Panchan and Borsh.
SPEAKER_18: And that's because every person in this complex came here from the same place, an island off the coast of Russia called Sakhalin.
SPEAKER_04: In Russian, the complex is called Sakhalin Village. But in Korean, this settlement has a different name, Gohangmalil, meaning Hometown Village. Gohangmalil was constructed specifically as a settlement for people like my grandparents, ethnic Koreans who would return to the country after being trapped for decades on Sakhalin. Separated from their homeland and abandoned in the midst of huge geopolitical events,
SPEAKER_18: tens of thousands of Koreans spent nearly 50 years stranded behind the Iron Curtain, waiting for a chance to return home.
SPEAKER_04: I grew up on Sakhalin. It's a long, skinny island off the Russian coast, just north of Japan. In fact, it's so close to Japan that when you stand on the southern tip of the island, you can actually pick up a Japanese cell signal. Winters can get very cold and snowy there. Even in the summer months, the average temperature doesn't usually get above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently, Sakhalin used to be the home of a Tsarist penal colony, and Anton Chekhov once described it as hell.
SPEAKER_18: I swear, he was wrong though. It's a beautiful place to live.
SPEAKER_04: I'll take your word over Chekhov's.
SPEAKER_18: When I started traveling to other countries, the first question people usually ask is, where are you from?
SPEAKER_04: When I answer from Russia, I get puzzled looks. You don't look Russian, they usually say, but there are a lot of Koreans in Sakhalin, and we've been there for a long time.
SPEAKER_18: Throughout its history, control of Sakhalin has passed back and forth between two powerful empires, Russia and Japan. Around the turn of the 20th century, Russia and Japan were fighting a war over territory in East Asia.
SPEAKER_04: And by 1905, Russia had lost.
SPEAKER_02: So not only lost, but completely decimated. This is Jae-Hyung Park, assistant professor at the Education University of Hong Kong.
SPEAKER_04: He says that under the terms of Russia's laws, Korea came under Japanese control. And Russia was forced to give up some of its territory, which included the southern half of Sakhalin.
SPEAKER_18: After the war, Sakhalin was split at the 50th parallel and given to Japan.
SPEAKER_02: At that time, people used to call a country by parallel, like a cake. Although the environment was frigid, Sakhalin was valuable because it was rich with natural resources like coal, timber, and fish.
SPEAKER_18: But Japan needed to bring in cheap labor to extract those resources.
SPEAKER_04: Which is how Koreans ended up on Sakhalin.
SPEAKER_18: At this point, the economy of Korea was severely weakened, and there were hardly any jobs left in the country. There was, however, plenty of work for those who were willing to travel north to the Japanese-controlled half of Sakhalin and brave the harsh conditions of the island. When Japan entered World War II, the government needed the raw materials to fuel their military.
SPEAKER_04: And with Japanese men drafted into combat, more and more Koreans were forced to work in the timber yards and coal mines on the island as conscripted workers.
SPEAKER_08: This is my grandmother on my mother's side, Chon Samsun.
SPEAKER_04: She is 89 years old and lived through this time. She says that working in the mines was incredibly dangerous, but the Korean workers weren't even seen as real people. So even if they died, they wouldn't be properly buried.
SPEAKER_08: She's saying these were the places where workers were sent to, and a lot of people died.
SPEAKER_04: So, Korean migrants ended up on a remote island working in harsh conditions on behalf of the Japanese Empire.
SPEAKER_18: That is, until August 15, 1945. It was a huge occasion marked all over the world, and in Korea, the end of the Second World War was celebrated as Liberation Day, the moment when 35 years of Japanese colonial rule finally came to an end.
SPEAKER_00: Japanese oppression against which they had never ceased to fight.
SPEAKER_18: Towards the end of the war, Soviet forces invaded the southern half of Sakhalin, and as part of the Japanese surrender, the entire island became the territory of the USSR. This meant that all the Japanese and Korean people who were living there needed to return to their home countries because they were now on foreign soil. In Sakhalin alone, there were 400,000 Japanese citizens who needed to be repatriated.
SPEAKER_04: And because many Koreans were brought to Sakhalin by the Japanese government, they expected to return with them. Many waited at the port alongside the Japanese nationals as the boats began arriving in Sakhalin to take people home. And then Japanese were taken to Japan, but not Koreans.
SPEAKER_04: This is Chang-Joo Song, senior lecturer in Korean and Asian studies at the University of Auckland. He says that Koreans on Sakhalin were left behind.
SPEAKER_18: That's because when Japan surrendered, it was forced to give up many of its colonies, including Korea.
SPEAKER_10: Legally, until then, Koreans were Japanese citizens because Korea was a direct part of the Japanese empire.
SPEAKER_18: This complicated the status of Koreans on the island because they weren't Japanese citizens anymore. But they also didn't have a functional Korean government yet to help them get back home.
SPEAKER_04: So an estimated 23,500 Koreans were trapped on Sakhalin and had no way of returning.
SPEAKER_10: So all these Koreans, no one claimed and no one paid attention. They were all desperate.
SPEAKER_18: Koreans in Sakhalin waited. And even after the North and South Korean governments were established in 1948, it just made repatriation more complicated. Because now there were two different Korean countries. South Korea was closely affiliated with the capitalist U.S., while the North stayed aligned with the communist Soviet Union.
SPEAKER_04: The USSR actually did allow for the repatriation of Sakhalin Koreans, but only to their ally nation, North Korea. And there was one enormous problem with that.
SPEAKER_18: These conscript workers were mostly from southern province, Busan and Chola province.
SPEAKER_02: So they are being repatriated to North Korea, which is not their homeland actually. And the truth is, the Soviet Union had no reason to help Sakhalin Koreans return to their home country.
SPEAKER_04: With hundreds of thousands of Japanese workers now gone, the USSR was reliant on Korean labor to continue developing the island. Soviet Union always need people to develop, to maintain certain level of production of foods and fishery and mining, a building railway and so on.
SPEAKER_04: Someone had to be there to work in the mines, cut the timber and fish for food. Why allow Koreans to leave when they were a valuable workforce?
SPEAKER_18: The first generation of Koreans on Sakhalin had a difficult time adjusting to life under the USSR. They didn't speak the Russian language, and many had never even seen Westerners before.
SPEAKER_04: A new reality under the Soviet Union was absolutely foreign to them. What made things harder was that most people had come to the island as temporary workers. So parents, siblings, and sometimes spouses and children were left in Korea.
SPEAKER_08: They were not able to go to the island. This is my grandmother again.
SPEAKER_04: She is saying that my grandfather was one of those people who had to leave everything behind when he came to Sakhalin. He was a very good man.
SPEAKER_08: He was a very good man. She says my grandfather didn't want to go to Sakhalin.
SPEAKER_04: But he was conscripted to work for a couple of years. He had left behind a sweetheart who was waiting for him back in Korea. But by the time the war ended, there was no way to return home. They lost all the hope.
SPEAKER_10: And they were in despair because they suddenly realized they cannot go home. They lost any motivation to work. They said, we drank and we sang. And the songs they were singing, that I want to go to my homeland and that kind of, you know, they were really in despair for a while.
SPEAKER_04: This song, Come Back to Busanport, was really popular among Sakhalin Koreans. It's about missing loved ones who have been separated from Korea.
SPEAKER_18: By the 1950s, it was clear that this problem of repatriation was not going to be solved anytime soon. The Korean War and the Cold War both made it impossible to negotiate a diplomatic return. The South Korean government was busy rebuilding its country, and the Soviet government needed the labor. So the USSR started allowing Sakhalin Koreans to apply for Soviet citizenship.
SPEAKER_04: But many people outright refused. In their eyes, citizenship meant commitment to the Soviet Union.
SPEAKER_06: This is Yuliya Din, senior researcher of the Sakhalin Regional Museum, speaking to me in Russian.
SPEAKER_04: She says that in the eyes of these Koreans, adopting Soviet citizenship meant that you were given up on the dream of one day returning home. Yuliya is also Sakhalin Korean.
SPEAKER_04: And she says to this day her mother and aunt are not Russian citizens. They don't have a passport, just a residence permit for stateless citizens. This created a lot of challenges for people. Every time they wanted to leave their town for any reason, they had to ask permission from the local police station. Things like visiting family or going to a funeral in a different part of Sakhalin were more difficult.
SPEAKER_06: Yuliya says that stateless citizens had problems everywhere that others don't have.
SPEAKER_04: The reality of the situation was that returning home was impossible.
SPEAKER_18: The Soviet Union was not going to allow them to leave, and Korea and Japan were not coming to rescue them.
SPEAKER_04: So if politics could not change, Sakhalin Koreans would have to. They needed to adapt if they wanted to build a better future for themselves and for the next generation. They learned Russian and sent their children to Soviet schools. Koreans integrated more, and in the process, Korean culture on Sakhalin started becoming its own unique identity. You can tell that Sakhalin Koreans' culture, even first-generation culture by then, it was a mixture of Korean culture,
SPEAKER_10: Japanese culture, and Russian culture layered in their language life, in their food.
SPEAKER_04: You can even see this blending of culture in the way my grandmother communicates. She is saying that when she speaks, sometimes Japanese comes out, sometimes Russian or Korean.
SPEAKER_04: Growing up, I saw this hybrid culture all around me. For the New Year celebration, we would make Russian dumplings with kimchi mixed in it. And every year, when we honored our ancestors who passed away, our soba would have incense and a bottle of Russian vodka on it. As far back as I can remember, being ethnically Korean in Russia was something to be proud of.
SPEAKER_18: Since the end of World War II, there was essentially no communication between the USSR and South Korea. There were no phone calls and no mail service between separated family members, so many people weren't sure if their loved ones were even still alive. Most people behind the Iron Curtain could only rely on their memories of the poor and rural country they had left behind, and many even believed that South Koreans were worse off than in the North.
SPEAKER_04: Which was actually true for a little while, but from the 1960s onward, the South Korean government became rapidly recovering from the devastation of war. By the 1980s, South Korea was flourishing, and one event in particular gave Sakhalin Koreans a glimpse of just how far their country had come. The 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. The 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.
SPEAKER_15:
SPEAKER_10: 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. Everyone watched, and that was a time when Korean diaspora in Soviet Union, they felt extremely proud.
SPEAKER_04: This is my dad. He was 32 years old at the time and was watching the Seoul Olympics with his family. He says that everyone in Sakhalin watched. The house was full of elderly Koreans sitting in front of the television.
SPEAKER_04: He says that everyone kept talking about how developed Korea had become and how much progress it made. During the competitions, the older people were acting like kids again, cheering like children.
SPEAKER_18: Seeing South Korea as a developed nation and watching Soviet and Korean athletes competing alongside one another gave people hope that it would be possible to go back soon. The world was changing, new political ties were forming, and technology was evolving.
SPEAKER_04: All of these things led to a line of communication finally opening up between Sakhalin Koreans and their home country, which happened for the first time in the year 1990, surprisingly on national public television.
SPEAKER_04: This is from a KBS live broadcast called Reunions of Separated Families for Sakhalin Koreans. The goal of the special was to reunite Korean families who had been torn apart by war and geopolitical drama. South Korea and the Soviet Union arranged a video conference call where separated families were finally able to speak again over video link. In many cases, people were learning that their relatives were still alive on national television.
SPEAKER_04: In this clip, a Sakhalin Korean man is seeing his mother for the first time in 45 years.
SPEAKER_04: He keeps saying mom, mom while she cries uncontrollably.
SPEAKER_04: He says my dad again, he says that no one was indifferent, everybody was crying.
SPEAKER_05: His mother, May Babushka, was there watching too. She knew many of the people who participated in this broadcast.
SPEAKER_04: She would cry and she would say I know her. And then she would tell him what their names were and what she remembered about them.
SPEAKER_18: When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Koreans on Sakhalin finally had an opening to return home. Some went immediately. Returns mostly took place through visiting programs assisted by humanitarian organizations or by religious groups.
SPEAKER_04: But Yulia Din from the Sakhalin Regional Museum says that the early years of return were incredibly rocky. She says it was a nightmare. People who really wanted to leave mostly had to either use their own money or rely on relatives in South Korea. There was no governmental support to help people resettle at that time.
SPEAKER_06: There were people who wanted to leave Sakhalin just for the sake of living. For them, returning to Korea was the end goal.
SPEAKER_04: Many older Sakhalin Koreans had been waiting for so long to repatriate that they were willing to move back at any cost. Some sold everything they had. Others left their spouses if they refused to go with them.
SPEAKER_18: For many who returned in those early years, it was not the reunion they dreamed of for five decades. South Korea had changed completely and now they were strangers in a new country. What should have felt familiar was foreign to them.
SPEAKER_06: Yulia says that because many of the people repatriating were older, their relatives had already died.
SPEAKER_04: And at this late stage of life, it was difficult to start over again.
SPEAKER_06: It was just an irrational desire to return.
SPEAKER_02: This concept of homeland is a very tricky one. At the beginning, homeland is a nice place, but later on, homeland can become a hell.
SPEAKER_18: Regardless of the difficulties, the goal of successful repatriation never went away. Throughout the 1990s, the new Russian government was much more open to letting people leave the country. The Korean and Japanese governments also started to acknowledge the existence of Sakhalin Koreans and wanted to do something to correct past injustices.
SPEAKER_04: In order to make amends for its part in using forced labor, the government of Japan earmarked 3.2 billion yen to pay for the transit, housing, and financial assistance of Sakhalin Koreans. The South Korean government provided land to build housing on.
SPEAKER_02: It was a joint venture between Russia and Japan, and then the Korean government worked together. It's an incredible diplomatic achievement for Russia, Japan, and Korea, because these three countries cannot talk to each other. They have so many past issues. They agreed to do this, and then they came through. So it's a big achievement.
SPEAKER_18: This international cooperation allowed people from Sakhalin to move to a number of housing complexes and nursing homes across South Korea. And in the year 2000, a formal repatriation program was established. The first and only settlement constructed specifically for Sakhalin Koreans was built in South Korea.
SPEAKER_04: It was Gohangmal, or Hometown Village, the very same community that I visited my grandparents at in Ansan.
SPEAKER_18: This complex was meant to address the problems associated with repatriation. Residents didn't just get free housing, but a support system to navigate a new country. More than a thousand elderly Sakhalin Koreans received a small apartment, along with a modest pension, since most of the residents had retired or couldn't work.
SPEAKER_04: There was good healthcare available and friendly staff. They also had access to the Korean and Japanese Red Cross on site, who helped residents get anything they might need for their new homes.
SPEAKER_18: Today, the community comprises eight different apartment buildings and houses more than 700 people. There's a lounge for playing mahjong and lado, which is like the Russian version of bingo, and a room for playing table tennis. There's even a local choir and a karaoke room, all just for former Sakhalin Koreans.
SPEAKER_04: Residents have basically everything they would ever need without having to leave this small Russian-Korean community.
SPEAKER_08: My grandma says that Koh Hang-Maeil is quite livable, and she took a liking to it.
SPEAKER_04: She can talk to her grandchildren whenever she wants, and she can travel back to Russia once a year.
SPEAKER_18: But having a comfortable life is a big change, and idle hands are difficult to get used to.
SPEAKER_04: In the Soviet Union and Russia, older Koreans fought to survive. Many people from this generation, like my grandmother, never learned how to just enjoy life. And with all of this time and no grandchildren around to take care of, it wasn't an easy feeling.
SPEAKER_06: I have a dream that I will never forget. I will always be happy. Yulaidin's grandfather repatriated to South Korea in the early 2000s.
SPEAKER_04: And she says she thinks about something her grandfather said to her. When she asked him how he liked Korea, he told her that there was nothing to do there except for one thing. To stare out of the window and wait until you die.
SPEAKER_18: But the biggest criticism with the repatriation program was that it was only available to a select few who qualified. Those who were born before August 15, 1945.
SPEAKER_04: The program was only open to what they call the first generation of Sakhalin Koreans. These were the people who had been born prior to the end of World War II. This generation would be allowed to return to Korea and would be financially supported, but only if they were willing to leave behind their families that they had built on Sakhalin.
SPEAKER_18: So in attempting to reunify separated families in Korea, the repatriation program ended up causing even more family separations.
SPEAKER_10: I mean, ideally, yeah, you just allow your whole family to come. However, imagine that you have already three generations, you know, the first generation, second generation, third generation. So Tatiana, you are third generation? Yep. Depending on the age when they were born, even second generation, already they lost quite a bit of Korean language. And in South Korea, it would be a foreign country.
SPEAKER_02: So this is the tragedy of the diaspora, right? Here's Jehyeong Park again.
SPEAKER_02: When they leave Sakhalin and go back to Korea, now their homeland has become Sakhalin. And then that takes some years for them to process, you know. Oh God, it was not the land, you know. Actually, it was the people that I was attached to. And then my people now in Sakhalin, my homeland is now, my home is in Sakhalin now. In 2020, new legislation was passed that expanded the eligibility requirements for Sakhalin Koreans to repatriate.
SPEAKER_18: Now, the first generation are allowed to bring one direct descendant and that person's spouse. But for a lot of younger Sakhalin Koreans, it's less about returning to an ancestral homeland than it is a practicality. For them, there are both opportunities and obligations waiting in South Korea. My mom actually moved to Gohangmael to care for my grandmother just last year.
SPEAKER_04: She is grateful for the chance to come to South Korea. They don't need to worry about rent on their apartment and she gets good health care there. But for Sakhalin Koreans my mom's age, moving there is a completely different experience.
SPEAKER_04: My mom says that deep in her bones she is a Russian. In Russia, she feels like a fish in the pond. But in Korea, it's a little difficult. Even though she speaks the language, she still has trouble communicating with native Koreans, especially the younger ones.
SPEAKER_18: Despite all the assistance that the South Korean and Japanese governments have provided, or the legislation that has been passed, or housing complexes that were built, it simply isn't enough. Repatriation came 50 years too late. Much of the first generation who yearned to return to South Korea died long before the program started. And the people who did live to see their homeland again were too old to make the most of it.
SPEAKER_04: Jae Hyun Park says that the word where Gohangmael gets its name from is a powerful word in Korean. The literal translation is hometown, but it's a much bigger, more meaningful word than that. Gohang is a concept, it's a homeland concept in Korean.
SPEAKER_02: It's like very much how you say, it's an emotional one, right? Yeah, it's an emotional one. It's not attached necessarily to the concept of the nation. It's a land concept that is like a particular town or village that they are born. People wanted to go back to the same particles, you know, in the land, the same earth, the same plants, trees around them. And that's where they believed that they were rooted.
SPEAKER_04: There is a monument in Sakhalin at the port in Korsakov. It's a tall, metal statue that looks like an abstract pair of sails pointing towards the sea. This monument is dedicated to the tens of thousands of forgotten Koreans who never got a chance to go home. I visited back in February. Starting in, since I messed up the first recording. I'm at the Korsakov port. Korsakov is a small town, I see small houses. There is a plaque of course. I translated some of it from Russian. To those who haven't got to meet their motherland. August 1945, in Korsakov port there were 2000 of our peers who were forced to... I actually moved from Russia to the US a few months ago and wanted to visit the monument before I left. In a way, it made me feel closer to this story. Even though I was leaving the country by choice, it wasn't clear when I'd be able to return home to Sakhalin. My dad actually drove me to the monument, and on the way back we started talking about the 1988 Seoul Olympics and what it must have been like to see his homeland on television. He made a very important distinction that I hadn't really thought about before. I had insinuated that Korea was his homeland, but my dad corrected me.
SPEAKER_05: He said that the Soviet Union is his homeland.
SPEAKER_04: Korea is his motherland. Motherland is the place that you are connected to by your ancestors. And even though he feels Korean, it will never feel like home.
SPEAKER_09: This is from a home video of my babushka.
SPEAKER_04: My grandmother from my father's side. It was her birthday back in the year 2000. She is standing and singing at her dining room table, which is full of Russian and Korean food. Friends and relatives of both Korean and Russian descent are sitting together, drinking vodka, maybe a little too much vodka.
SPEAKER_04: She passed away in 2020, and I wish that I could have talked to her for this story. I will always remember how easily she moved between three languages – Korean, Russian and Japanese. She mixed them up and made her own unique words and phrases.
SPEAKER_07: Babushka decided to remain on Sakhalin, even though she was given the chance to leave.
SPEAKER_04: I am so grateful that she stayed, because she was a huge influence on my life. So much of me came from her. The history of Koreans in Sakhalin is a sad one. But it's not only about loss. I want to believe that it's also about the creation of something entirely new. A new mixed culture, new perspectives, new families, new lives. Even though Korea, Japan and Russia all had difficult political relationships with one another, Babushka brought the best parts of each identity together. She embraced them all to make something wonderful and different exactly where she was.
SPEAKER_09: This story was produced by Tatiana Kim and Vivien Le, edited by Emmet Fitzgerald.
SPEAKER_18: Coming up, we wrap up The Future Of. Every day, displaced families struggle to meet basic needs, like providing meals and clean water for their children. For many, the last few years have been the hardest. The global repercussions of war in Ukraine leading to steep rises in the cost of basic commodities like food and fuel, combined with the climate crisis and COVID-19, formed a triple threat. Because of the commitment of their compassionate donors, UN HDR sends relief supplies and deploys its highly trained staff anywhere in the world at any given time. UNHCR is able to deploy within 72 hours of a large-scale emergency and jumpstart relief and protection assistance. Help deliver urgent aid. Your support can provide life-saving care and hope for a better future. Donate to USA for UNHCR by visiting unrefugees.org slash donation. The International Rescue Committee works in more than 40 countries to serve people whose lives have been upended by conflict and disaster. Over 110 million people are displaced around the world, and the IRC urgently needs your help to meet this unprecedented need. The IRC aims to respond within 72 hours after an emergency strikes, and they stay as long as they are needed. Some of the IRC's most important work is addressing the inequalities facing women and girls, ensuring safety from harm, improving health outcomes, increasing access to education, improving economic well-being, and ensuring women and girls have the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. Generous people around the world give to the IRC to help families affected by humanitarian crises with emergency supplies. Your generous donation will give the IRC steady, reliable support, allowing them to continue their ongoing humanitarian efforts, even as they respond to emergencies. Donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild. Donate now and help refugee families in need. If you want to give your body the nutrients it craves and the energy it needs, there's Kachava. It's a plant-based super blend made up of super foods, greens, proteins, omegas, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and probiotics. In other words, it's all your daily nutrients in a glass. Some folks choose to take it as the foundation of a healthy breakfast or lunch, while others lean on it as a delicious protein-packed snack to curb cravings and reduce grazing. If you're in a hurry, you can just add two scoops of Kachava super blend to ice water or your favorite milk or milk alternative, and just get going. But I personally like to blend it with greens and fruit and ice. You know, treat yourself nice. Take a minute and treat yourself right. You'll get all the stuff that you need and feel great. Kachava is offering 10% off for a limited time. Just go to kachava dot com slash invisible spelled K-A-C-H-A-V-A and get 10% off your first order. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com slash invisible. Kachava dot com slash invisible. Chances are you're listening to 99% invisible on your phone, probably while you're on the go. Think of all that you do on your phone the moment you leave your front door, whether it's looking up directions, scrolling social media or listening to your favorite podcast. It requires an amazing network. That's why you should switch to T-Mobile. T-Mobile covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone else and helps keep you connected with 5G from the driveway to the highway and the miles in between. Because your phone should just work where you are. It's your lifeline to pretty much everything you didn't bring with you. So next time you head out, whether you're taking a trip or going to work or just running errands, remember T-Mobile has got you covered. Find out more at T-Mobile dot com slash network and switch to the network that covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone else. Coverage is not available in some areas. See 5G details at T-Mobile dot com. Over the last several months, we produced a series of episodes called The Future of dot dot dot. With the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we've been exploring how changes the way we live, learn, work and play may shape our health and well-being in years to come. The project was conceived at the very start of the covid pandemic. So even though the futures that we were looking at went well beyond that immediate health crisis, we use that drastic shakeup in our lives and routines to really look at our accepted status quo with fresh eyes. Our first episode was all about the future of the office. It turned out that people have been going back and forth about what makes a healthy and productive office since there have been offices. So, you know, 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.
SPEAKER_12: 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 the doubled in size 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.
SPEAKER_18: The next episode was all about the future of broadband, which has become an essential utility in the modern world. But a last mile problem and a consortium of private Internet service providers are keeping it from reaching all the people who need it.
SPEAKER_13: The goal of for-profit companies will always be to make money, which is why a lot of people still believe that quality Internet access for everyone means eventually treating broadband as a right, not just a commodity. And that requires intervention by people who are accountable to votes and not just dollars.
SPEAKER_18: Then we looked at the future of public health data and how an interconnected global population requires more modern approaches to the gathering and sharing of information critical to our survival. There are just so many examples of how our covid data was unstandardized or incomplete.
SPEAKER_03: Like, did you know that a lot of our local health departments are still at the mercy of fax machines? And finally, we looked at the future of environmental law and conservation with the rise of the environmental personhood movement.
SPEAKER_18: Rights of nature is pretty much what it sounds like.
SPEAKER_17: The idea that you could treat nature like a person legally.
SPEAKER_18: Each story will entertain you and get you thinking about the future that we're all about to share. All episodes are out now to scroll through or search the 99 percent invisible feed for the future of and listen. Thanks to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for their support. Ninety nine percent invisible was produced this week by Tatiana Kim and Vivian Lay, edited by Emmett Fitzgerald. Fact checking by Graham Hacha mix and tech production by Martin Gonzalez, music by our director of sound, Swan Real translation by our very own 99 PI intern, Sarah Bake. You came just in the naked time. Special thanks this week to E. Soon Young, Park Sun Oak, E. Soon Din, Ha Soon Yi, Kim Yoon Cheol, Kim Okie, and of course, to Tatiana Babushka, Moon Ha Ok. Ninety nine percent invisible executive producer is Delaney Hall. Kirk Colisett is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Christopher Johnson, Lajima Dawn, Sophia Klatsker, Jason De Leon, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. 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 find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99 PI org or on Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99 PI at 99 PI dot org.
SPEAKER_09: Oh, she's got a job.
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SPEAKER_11: Whether in person or remote, open communication with your doctor is key to managing any condition, including heart failure.
SPEAKER_17: How have you been feeling? I'm OK.
SPEAKER_11: Both are great options to continue having open conversations with your doctor about how you're feeling. I've had less energy. And when you speak openly with your doctor, they're better equipped to help. Visit heartfailuretalks.com to learn more.
