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Two Designers Walk Into a Bar · Evergreen Podcasts

Cat Posters with Paul Hennessey (Classic)

·44 min·2 clips
Elliot describes a 1957 Marchal poster where a giant black cat drives a red convertible in Paris.
The break starts with drinks. Elliot and Todd tee up the rerun as a classic while joking about taking five, getting pizza, and leaving listeners to sort out their own refreshments. Then the dog pipes up, which somehow fits the cat mood perfectly. Paul joins the table, and the episode settles into cat posters as actual objects: designed things with styles, uses, and oddly specific backstories. Puss in Boots carries a lot of the conversation. Paul and the hosts compare versions tied to a yarn company and Czech air travel over Prague, with the talk staying pleasingly concrete: a mid-century skyline, a leaping Puss in Boots, and a little pantomime mythology all explain why the images still have snap. Then things get weirder. Paul brings up Ravi Zupa, carefully spelling the name, as proof that people still like cats doing strange, exaggerated things. The bar-room rhythm does the work. One host wants the design context, another wants the cool cat picture, and Paul keeps tugging them back toward history and taste. Social media arrives near the end. Did cat videos create demand for cat posters, or just pour lighter fluid on something people already loved? The group leaves it at common sense: people liked cats already, and online sharing made that louder and faster. Paul gets the last wink, Todd still gets stuck buying drinks, and the closing cat's-meow groan lands exactly where this show likes to live: informed, silly, and just nerdy enough.

As heard by us

Cat posters become a lively tour through design history and the pull of internet cat culture.

Cat posters are the hook, but the episode really works as a small tour of design taste: mid-century travel art, pantomime fantasy, yarn-company ephemera, and the internet's habit of celebrating cats in odd and delightful forms.

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Why you'd press play

You’re here for cats, posters, and a design chat that keeps turning left.

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