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Geodesic Domes: The Wave of the Future That Wasn't · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm British Josh.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's American Chuck, and there's neutral Swizzerland Jerry, which, by
0:19
Speaker 1: the way, now we're saying Swizzerland Switzerland. I just decided
0:23
Speaker 1: because it's close to the end of the year and
0:25
Speaker 1: I'm about to die of exhaustion. I love it. Uh.
0:28
Speaker 1: On the Friendly Fire Movie podcast, Ben Harrison, you know Ben,
0:31
Speaker 1: he says, uh, Nazis, Yeah, the Nazis. That's like kind
0:35
Speaker 1: of like a throwback. It's like the greatest generation way
0:38
Speaker 1: of saying yeah. And I know he does it as
0:40
Speaker 1: an affectation, but now I got it from him, and
0:43
Speaker 1: he got it from god knows where his great grandpa Nazi. Yeah,
0:49
Speaker 1: that's a pretty great way to because there's a lot
0:51
Speaker 1: of occasion to say the word Nazi a lot. Hell,
0:56
Speaker 1: you mentioned this, uh, And why did you say you
0:58
Speaker 1: were British? Because I say geodesic and you say geodesic
1:06
Speaker 1: and we just looked it up, which I mean, that's
1:08
Speaker 1: like the first time in years the lady said geodesic
1:12
Speaker 1: and I was like, yes, or in America geodesic and
1:15
Speaker 1: I said, we're both right, but then she didn't say
1:17
Speaker 1: though it was British, it could be like whatever South African.
1:21
Speaker 1: I guess, well africannor is not English. Well, yeah, you
1:26
Speaker 1: know what I mean. We're so far off course already.
1:31
Speaker 1: Jerry's just got Roman coming through her nose. She thought
1:33
Speaker 1: that was so funny. Um, thanks for the last, Jerry. Well,
1:38
Speaker 1: we are talking about geodesic desik. Maybe we should just
1:41
Speaker 1: say that every time, saying both. I'm sure people would
1:44
Speaker 1: love that. I'm gonna say geodesic because that's what I've
1:47
Speaker 1: always said. Okay, great, I'm gonna say geodesic. That's fine. Um,
1:51
Speaker 1: we're talking about domes, geodesic domes and um. If you
1:56
Speaker 1: have ever seen a weird contraption of a circular house,
2:01
Speaker 1: a ball house, you might call it a sphere house.
2:05
Speaker 1: You've seen a geodesic, don't. If you've ever been to
2:08
Speaker 1: Epcot um i went when he was a kid, you've
2:11
Speaker 1: seen a geodesic don't. They're all over the place. Do
2:15
Speaker 1: you all right? Do you like these as like people's
2:18
Speaker 1: houses in a neighborhood or wherever? No? I don't either,
2:23
Speaker 1: But I don't. I mean, I'm not gonna yuck. Anybody's yeah,
2:25
Speaker 1: you know what I'm so. I mean, when reading and researching,
2:28
Speaker 1: like they're cool and there are a lot of great advantages,
2:31
Speaker 1: then that will go over. But I just don't care
2:34
Speaker 1: for them. Aesthetically. I don't either. And actually, if you
2:38
Speaker 1: if you um read a quote from Buckminster Fuller, the
2:42
Speaker 1: guy who actually didn't invent you deseic domes, we'll get
2:44
Speaker 1: in all that. Anyway. He said, one of the reasons
2:46
Speaker 1: they never took off is because they're weird looking. They
2:50
Speaker 1: just are and and well, I'm not gonna say that.
2:54
Speaker 1: I really tell me later, Okay, Yeah, I just don't
2:58
Speaker 1: care for him. You know. It's like I'm a crap usman,
3:02
Speaker 1: California craftsman, bungalow type guy, which is about the opposite
3:06
Speaker 1: of a geodesic that it's pretty angular for sure, And
3:10
Speaker 1: the geodesic dome is angular. Everybody put your laptops away,
3:15
Speaker 1: geometry nerds, but it's not rectangular, and a craftsman is
3:19
Speaker 1: definitely rectangular. Like you can even make a case the
3:22
Speaker 1: roof is not a triangle. It's a rectangle on its side.
3:25
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I just made that case. How's it going? Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: pretty good? I also, and although I probably will never
3:33
Speaker 1: live in one, I do love a modern, uh like
3:37
Speaker 1: a mid century modern. I love it, but I just
3:41
Speaker 1: it's not really like ultimately where I would want to
3:44
Speaker 1: live for the rest of my life. Well, okay, so
3:47
Speaker 1: I don't want to feel like I'm like in Finland
3:49
Speaker 1: in the winter or something like that. That's not I'm
3:53
Speaker 1: talking mid century American actually built for a family, and
3:57
Speaker 1: like the mid fifties early sixties. I love it. The
4:00
Speaker 1: has all little cool details and built ins in the
4:02
Speaker 1: wall that doesn't even really need to be there. You
4:04
Speaker 1: can see right through it because it's like wood spindles,
4:07
Speaker 1: and that's what I like, not ultra motern, mid century
4:11
Speaker 1: moter yeah, okay, mid center, Yeah, that's what we call it.
4:13
Speaker 1: But you still you don't think you could live in
4:15
Speaker 1: one of those, because I traft we had to get
4:18
Speaker 1: all new stuff. Like if we started over, like if
4:22
Speaker 1: our if our god for a bit of our house
4:23
Speaker 1: burned down and we lost everything, I could start over
4:27
Speaker 1: like that, But like the stuff that we have doesn't fit,
4:30
Speaker 1: Like you know understood, Grandma's antique bar doesn't really go
4:34
Speaker 1: in that setting. I've seen that bar and that thing
4:36
Speaker 1: is classic. Thank you you could put it anywhere. Grandma
4:40
Speaker 1: was a bit of a booze hound. Huh. Well, they
4:41
Speaker 1: didn't use as a bar. They had like humble figurines
4:44
Speaker 1: and stuff. And I saw it. It was funny. When
4:46
Speaker 1: I first saw it, I was like, oh God, I
4:49
Speaker 1: don't really want that, and like they're giving it to us,
4:51
Speaker 1: And then we turned it to a bar and it
4:52
Speaker 1: was like, it's amazing, what dirty liquor bottles you can
4:55
Speaker 1: really dress up a humble figuring cabinet. So clearly we're
5:00
Speaker 1: talking again about geodesic domes. And there was a period
5:03
Speaker 1: in time check where you could go into some neighborhoods
5:05
Speaker 1: around the country and you could find well to do
5:09
Speaker 1: hippie types, environmental types back to Earth's Um living in
5:16
Speaker 1: these geodesic domes. And it's not like they were living
5:18
Speaker 1: in a tent. It was their house had plumbing and
5:21
Speaker 1: heating and electricity and all this stuff. It's just that
5:24
Speaker 1: it was a dome. Yeah. There was one near where
5:26
Speaker 1: I grew up actually, and we would pass it going
5:28
Speaker 1: to elementary school and it was always just sort of like, yeah,
5:31
Speaker 1: there's those weirdos that built the weird house. Isn't it interesting? Though?
5:35
Speaker 1: Like that had some impact on who you are today.
5:39
Speaker 1: But how minute to how small, but seeing that every
5:41
Speaker 1: every day or every week day, that had to have
5:44
Speaker 1: some impact on you. Yeah, and there's was also one
5:47
Speaker 1: of those. Uh it was also partially underground even so
5:50
Speaker 1: there was an ex but then that was sort of
5:53
Speaker 1: built into a hill and so they were full on.
5:56
Speaker 1: They had a lot of hippie credit. Yeah, they were
5:58
Speaker 1: going to it and looking back, they were probably super
5:59
Speaker 1: cool people. Probably they were wearing berkin stocks way before
6:03
Speaker 1: anybody else is wearing berkin stocks. So let's talk a
6:07
Speaker 1: little bit about the first geodesic dome, a little geodesic history. Okay,
6:11
Speaker 1: all right, you you have to go way back, way
6:14
Speaker 1: way back to and not only do we have to
6:19
Speaker 1: go back, we have to go to Germany. Jenda, Germany.
6:23
Speaker 1: I don't know where that is. I don't either, but
6:25
Speaker 1: there is a very famous optics company called zeissure Um
6:30
Speaker 1: and Seiss wanted to build a planetarium on top of
6:34
Speaker 1: one of their factories or factory at Jenna, Germany, and
6:37
Speaker 1: they said, uh, please build this a planetarium. Walter Bowers
6:41
Speaker 1: Field where if if you didn't know if he was
6:44
Speaker 1: German or not, just listen to his name felt even
6:48
Speaker 1: more German. And he said, sure, let me think about
6:51
Speaker 1: this and I'll see what I can come up with.
6:53
Speaker 1: And he came up with what was widely pointed to
6:56
Speaker 1: as the world's first geodesic dome. Yeah, and it was
6:59
Speaker 1: a good It was a good idea for this project,
7:01
Speaker 1: in particular because they needed it to be light, because
7:04
Speaker 1: it had to go on top of a roof. Um,
7:07
Speaker 1: they needed to hold a lot of people. And obviously
7:10
Speaker 1: because it was a planetarium that that interior roundness was
7:15
Speaker 1: kind of key. Be weird to have a square planetarium,
7:19
Speaker 1: it would, you know, especially if you're like I didn't
7:22
Speaker 1: know Venus could take a corner like that. I didn't
7:24
Speaker 1: know he could do that. Uh, so that's what he did,
7:27
Speaker 1: and um, it was it really worked well. It did
7:31
Speaker 1: house a lot of people. I mean not house, but
7:33
Speaker 1: you know it could hold a lot of people. Uh,
7:36
Speaker 1: it can withstand storms and this is these are some
7:38
Speaker 1: of the factors that make them h not only popular,
7:44
Speaker 1: but like a good idea depending on where you are.
7:48
Speaker 1: It was like, if you're in Antarctica, they have them
7:51
Speaker 1: there and that it's perfect for that kind of weather. Yeah,
7:54
Speaker 1: there was a period in time of which we'll see
7:55
Speaker 1: in a second, where geodesic don't were like the house
7:58
Speaker 1: of the future. It was a very very good idea
8:01
Speaker 1: that never took off because everybody said, no, we think
8:04
Speaker 1: those are kind of weird, we don't feel comfortable with that,
8:07
Speaker 1: and pretty much so um uh. Bowersfeld's planetarium actually kicked
8:12
Speaker 1: off a planetarium craze. It was apparently the first planetarium
8:16
Speaker 1: on Earth, which I would make the case that you
8:18
Speaker 1: can just say the first planetarium in the universe that um.
8:22
Speaker 1: But because there were people who started to build planetariums
8:27
Speaker 1: as a result of this, gudesic domes kind of became
8:30
Speaker 1: a thing. But it wasn't until a guy named Richard
8:32
Speaker 1: Buckminster Fuller of Carbondale, Illinois, very big deal, came along
8:37
Speaker 1: and actually patented the geodesic dome that they really became
8:41
Speaker 1: that house of the future thing that I was talking about. Yeah,
8:43
Speaker 1: and he was an engineer and a sort of a
8:46
Speaker 1: visionary thinker, one of the great Americans. I think, Um,
8:51
Speaker 1: we could do a show on him altogether, I think.
8:53
Speaker 1: But his whole jam was like, well, first of all,
8:58
Speaker 1: he saw the inherent like good points to the um
9:01
Speaker 1: and we'll get into all those but first and foremost,
9:03
Speaker 1: you can you can have a huge volume of space
9:06
Speaker 1: with very little materials, very lightweight materials, and it's still
9:09
Speaker 1: be super strong, which is awesome. But so because of this,
9:15
Speaker 1: he thought like he had a higher goal in mind,
9:18
Speaker 1: which was like the housing in the future. Like they
9:20
Speaker 1: don't cost that much money, they can hold you know,
9:23
Speaker 1: people safely, and like this is how we should think
9:26
Speaker 1: about housing. Right. You could you could build it off
9:29
Speaker 1: side at a factory and deliver it by helicopter. Was
9:32
Speaker 1: that light kind of put it together about like a
9:34
Speaker 1: kid yep, And like you're saying it required because it
9:37
Speaker 1: could withstand more weight. Uh, it required less building materials,
9:42
Speaker 1: which meant it was lower cost um And supposedly you
9:48
Speaker 1: could put these things like a good kit together in
9:50
Speaker 1: a day if you were really cruising along at a
9:53
Speaker 1: good clip. Sure, so had some some high grade sixties
9:58
Speaker 1: speed give it all. Yeah, um man, you got me
10:05
Speaker 1: with that one. So so this just became plainly obvious
10:09
Speaker 1: that this is going to be the house of the future.
10:11
Speaker 1: There's um One of the other things about it is
10:14
Speaker 1: there is no other building structure that has a larger
10:19
Speaker 1: volume of space with the least amount of surface area. Yeah,
10:24
Speaker 1: and he got this idea through looking at nature. Uh.
10:27
Speaker 1: He very famously looked at things like crystals and seed
10:31
Speaker 1: pods and things like that and thought, like, you know nature,
10:35
Speaker 1: And a lot of people do this in design. They
10:37
Speaker 1: look to nature because nature has sort of proven to
10:39
Speaker 1: get it right usually over the years. Yeah. Like if
10:41
Speaker 1: you look at an eggshell, you're like, this thing shouldn't
10:44
Speaker 1: withstand anything, and yet it does. And it's a very
10:47
Speaker 1: curious thing. But it sure looks like it could slip
10:50
Speaker 1: out of a chicken's butt with ease, which is kind
10:53
Speaker 1: of what it does. Like, what if it was square,
10:55
Speaker 1: it slips out of the cloaca. That's true. So um,
11:00
Speaker 1: Bucky Fuller, as he's known, he apparently I don't know
11:04
Speaker 1: if he wasn't aware of Bowersfeld's design or something. Did
11:08
Speaker 1: you get that impression? I don't. I couldn't tell if
11:09
Speaker 1: this was nefarious. He seemed like a good guy, so
11:12
Speaker 1: I don't think he like stole this idea, but he
11:14
Speaker 1: was able to secure a patent. He did. And there's
11:17
Speaker 1: a really great Time article if you can find it's
11:19
Speaker 1: called di Maxian. American maxim was a word that was
11:23
Speaker 1: associated with him. Um, he he just made up words
11:26
Speaker 1: a lot, but he it tells it. It's from N. Four.
11:30
Speaker 1: It says that he was trying to figure out a
11:32
Speaker 1: geometry of energy, and he was using spheres as a
11:35
Speaker 1: model of energy. No idea, but he was putting spheres together.
11:40
Speaker 1: And his his idea was that when you put spheres together,
11:43
Speaker 1: they would just make a larger and larger sphere. But
11:46
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. If he took a central sphere
11:49
Speaker 1: and put other spheres around it and pushed it together,
11:52
Speaker 1: and what he found was that it started to make
11:54
Speaker 1: squares and triangles rather than a larger sphere. And he
11:59
Speaker 1: figured out that what he had just come up with
12:01
Speaker 1: was actually a very smart structure. That you could take
12:03
Speaker 1: those squares and divide those into triangles, and you could
12:06
Speaker 1: take the triangles and divide the triangles into even smaller triangles,
12:09
Speaker 1: and if you kind of curve the edges of the
12:12
Speaker 1: triangles inward towards some imaginary center inside the sphere and
12:17
Speaker 1: actually create a sphere. And technically it's a polyhedron, and
12:21
Speaker 1: most geodesic domes are a cosahedrons, which, if you play
12:26
Speaker 1: dungeons and Dragons, is just a twenty sided die. But
12:29
Speaker 1: the more you cut the sides into smaller and smaller triangles,
12:34
Speaker 1: the more the closer to an actual perfect sphere you
12:37
Speaker 1: you get. And that's a geodesic sphere. And if you
12:41
Speaker 1: cut it in half, or cut a portion of it
12:44
Speaker 1: and just use one half of it, that's a geodesic dome. Yeah,
12:47
Speaker 1: which is what you see like, Uh, it's not fully
12:51
Speaker 1: round because it has to be flat and sit on
12:54
Speaker 1: something right. Well, actually, um, the Spaceship Earth geodesic dome
12:58
Speaker 1: is a full sphere. But that is pretty rare. Uh.
13:01
Speaker 1: And I thought it was interesting too, um that they
13:04
Speaker 1: said that if you were just designing something on paper,
13:08
Speaker 1: you could just design bigger and bigger and it would
13:10
Speaker 1: just get stronger and stronger. But in reality, um, that's
13:15
Speaker 1: really not the case. Like when when rubber meets the road,
13:18
Speaker 1: they're really there's really only so big you can kind
13:20
Speaker 1: of get. Yeah, because I had no idea about this,
13:23
Speaker 1: you know, it's roughly familiar with geodesic domes. I didn't
13:25
Speaker 1: know any details. But one thing that I was surprised
13:28
Speaker 1: to find is that the triangles are not all the
13:31
Speaker 1: same size. They have to be adjusted to make this
13:35
Speaker 1: shape to make this circle or the sphere. So, um,
13:39
Speaker 1: if you're putting together one of these things, as we'll see,
13:42
Speaker 1: you have to be like, oh, this struck goes here,
13:45
Speaker 1: not here, and I actually put it here up on
13:47
Speaker 1: the top, and now I have to go take the
13:49
Speaker 1: whole thing apart again. And yeah, the less complex, the
13:52
Speaker 1: better impracticality. But yeah, you can really mess with it
13:55
Speaker 1: to make it virtually a perfect sphere out of triangles. Uh. Yeah,
14:00
Speaker 1: you mentioned a minute ago that and I think people
14:03
Speaker 1: that pay attention, we're probably like, oh, Josh is so
14:06
Speaker 1: funny or what did he just say? Did Buck Minister Fuller? Uh?
14:10
Speaker 1: Makeup words? He did, because he made up another word
14:14
Speaker 1: when it comes to these domes, Uh, tin segrity, which
14:19
Speaker 1: is not a good word, it's not He mixed two
14:23
Speaker 1: words together at tensional and integrity. Uh. And so that's
14:27
Speaker 1: the relationship between the tension and compression, and that really
14:31
Speaker 1: kind of describes how these things fit together and why
14:34
Speaker 1: they end up being super strong, even though when you
14:37
Speaker 1: look at it, you're like, man, I could blow that
14:39
Speaker 1: thing over, right. So let's let's say your break and
14:41
Speaker 1: then we'll get into like the actual dynamics going on. Okay,
14:44
Speaker 1: and geometry. Yes, yes, alright, Chuck, I promised it's time
15:18
Speaker 1: to talk to geometry. How did you do in geometry?
15:21
Speaker 1: I failed the first time aced to the second time.
15:24
Speaker 1: I'm actually really glad that I failed it because when
15:27
Speaker 1: I was forced to take it again by the man.
15:29
Speaker 1: And this is high school, right, yeah, um, I it clicked.
15:33
Speaker 1: And I've never understood any field of math like I
15:37
Speaker 1: understood geometry. I don't quite remember it now, but like
15:40
Speaker 1: I understood geometry like I was. Pythagoras is like brother,
15:44
Speaker 1: I kind of I wasn't quite at that level. But
15:46
Speaker 1: I feel like because I'm I have long sort of
15:49
Speaker 1: poo poo the maths. Yeah, but you've that right, well yeah,
15:53
Speaker 1: but I mean just for my my pea brain like
15:56
Speaker 1: understanding it. I understood geometry more than all the other maths.
16:00
Speaker 1: And uh I did okay in it for a for
16:02
Speaker 1: an English nerd. Yeah, you know, good enough, because it's
16:06
Speaker 1: completely different than anything else. I feel like in the
16:09
Speaker 1: geometry does seem like its own thing for very much, like, yeah,
16:12
Speaker 1: there's numbers and sigma makes an appearance and stuff like that,
16:15
Speaker 1: but it definitely seems to be It's different than algebra.
16:18
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that buddy shout out to Miss carn
16:21
Speaker 1: Read In high school. Oh, I wish I could remember
16:23
Speaker 1: my geometry teacher that when it clicked with she was great.
16:26
Speaker 1: She was one of those teachers that's like I was
16:28
Speaker 1: seventy years old. From the time that she was twenty
16:31
Speaker 1: eight till the time she was seventy, she was great,
16:34
Speaker 1: and then she turned back into twenty eight. Yeah. She
16:37
Speaker 1: remember she had this polka dot It's funny the things
16:39
Speaker 1: that you remember. She had this polka dot shirt where
16:42
Speaker 1: all the polka dots were collected at the bottom, and
16:45
Speaker 1: she said that it used to be all over, but
16:46
Speaker 1: she hung it up to dry. That was her big joke.
16:51
Speaker 1: She's like, welcome in my class. It's the only joke
16:53
Speaker 1: of the year. Let's get busy. Yeah, I bet you
16:55
Speaker 1: there's one person out there who had Miss carn and
16:57
Speaker 1: knows that shirt. Yeah. I hope it's a great joke,
17:00
Speaker 1: Miss carn Um. Okay, so we're talking geometry, right, Yeah.
17:05
Speaker 1: Do you remember our bridges episode. Remember we talked about
17:09
Speaker 1: bridge trusses, the bridges that are made up of triangular shapes,
17:13
Speaker 1: and we said, like those things are extraordinarily strong because
17:17
Speaker 1: their triangles. Same thing here can't beat them. A geodesic
17:21
Speaker 1: dome or sphere is a sphere made up of triangles,
17:25
Speaker 1: and if you actually take the triangular shape and build
17:29
Speaker 1: one in reality, it is one of the strongest shapes
17:33
Speaker 1: you can um create because wherever you press on it,
17:37
Speaker 1: it transfers that pressure that forced to the rest of
17:41
Speaker 1: the shape. So it distributes that kind of weight or
17:45
Speaker 1: pressure force or whatever you want to lay on on it.
17:48
Speaker 1: It distributes it evenly. And if you put another triangle
17:51
Speaker 1: together with one triangle, it sends it to the other
17:54
Speaker 1: triangle too, And so the more triangles you add, the
17:57
Speaker 1: more a force is distributed throughout. And that's basically it.
18:02
Speaker 1: That's why it's so strong. Like what you were saying,
18:04
Speaker 1: like you look at it and you're like, I could
18:05
Speaker 1: blow that over. You might be able to push it
18:08
Speaker 1: over and make it roll away if it's a sphere,
18:11
Speaker 1: but you you probably could not break it. Yeah, And
18:15
Speaker 1: when you look at like if you're inside one of these,
18:17
Speaker 1: it's usually covered with like wood or drywall or something,
18:20
Speaker 1: so it's not as evident, but on the outside you
18:23
Speaker 1: generally can still see this frame of triangles all fitting
18:27
Speaker 1: together beautifully to make something super super strong. Yes, and
18:32
Speaker 1: apparently the strongest version of a geodesic dome or sphere
18:39
Speaker 1: um is one that's actually made not just out of triangles,
18:42
Speaker 1: but out of pyramids. If you look at if you
18:45
Speaker 1: look at the Epcot Spaceship Earth Geodesic sphere, it's actually pyramids.
18:52
Speaker 1: All the triangles are actually Yeah, that is that's it.
18:56
Speaker 1: That's the money geodesic dome. Yeah, and that one, since
19:00
Speaker 1: we're on that is interesting and that uh one of
19:03
Speaker 1: the downfalls and we'll go over more later, but one
19:06
Speaker 1: of the downfalls of geodesic domes is sometimes rain doesn't
19:09
Speaker 1: treat them well. But the one at Epcot was just like,
19:14
Speaker 1: we're not even gonna pretend that we want to repel
19:17
Speaker 1: the rain. They have little grooves that actually collect the
19:19
Speaker 1: rain and that send it to one of those uh
19:22
Speaker 1: little corny lagoons. I love those, I know, I love
19:25
Speaker 1: everything about Epcot. I haven't been since I was in
19:28
Speaker 1: seventh grade. I mean, did they update it or is
19:31
Speaker 1: it still very much like the World of Tomorrow today?
19:35
Speaker 1: You know they've updated it. I mean the whole thing
19:37
Speaker 1: is still like that. Yeah, but there's like newer stuff,
19:41
Speaker 1: Like there's a really cool um ride an immersive ride
19:46
Speaker 1: called Soaring, where like you get lifted up and you're
19:50
Speaker 1: in front of this huge, giant curved movie screen and
19:53
Speaker 1: you're like, so soaring through this like the world, like
19:57
Speaker 1: a world tour. It's really neat, And did they move
20:00
Speaker 1: your little thing around so you feel like you're you
20:02
Speaker 1: definitely feel like you're soaring through there. Yeah, that's like
20:05
Speaker 1: the when they debuted that Back to the Future ride
20:07
Speaker 1: years ago. Was it like that. Yeah, you sit in
20:09
Speaker 1: the DeLorean and it's on hydraulics and it's like moving
20:12
Speaker 1: all around, but it's a movie screen in front of Yeah,
20:15
Speaker 1: and you're and you're going through. But it's it's amazing
20:17
Speaker 1: how like accurate they can sync that up to where
20:19
Speaker 1: you really feel like, like I remember that was at
20:21
Speaker 1: one point where the car was on the edge of
20:24
Speaker 1: a cliff and it was sort of teetering and it
20:26
Speaker 1: got really quiet, and then it teetered over and then
20:29
Speaker 1: it the car just stopped moving and he felt like
20:32
Speaker 1: you were falling just because it stopped moving. And if
20:35
Speaker 1: you like turned around and look backwards, you're like everyone's
20:37
Speaker 1: freaking out and you're just sitting in a car doing nothing,
20:41
Speaker 1: but everybody's going it was so great. I loved it.
20:44
Speaker 1: So we were saying, like this this thing pops up
20:47
Speaker 1: all over nature. Yeah, the geodesic dome did. This Time
20:51
Speaker 1: magazine put article put it really beautifully that, Um, it
20:56
Speaker 1: was like Buckminster Fuller had discovered a signature of God,
21:00
Speaker 1: who has made scared quotes because God ended the whole thing.
21:06
Speaker 1: Since it is such like a an efficient structure that
21:09
Speaker 1: can support a lot of weight, you do see it
21:11
Speaker 1: in things like eggs Cornia testicle, which I'm like, sure, really,
21:17
Speaker 1: I guess so I couldn't find that anywhere else, and
21:20
Speaker 1: I definitely typed testical geodesic dome into Google and it
21:25
Speaker 1: didn't really come back with anything. But this nineteen four
21:28
Speaker 1: Time article says it. So it's so well, the dome
21:31
Speaker 1: period is a pretty strong structure. Um. The Romans were
21:35
Speaker 1: building really big, strong domes a long long time ago,
21:40
Speaker 1: but they don't stay strong for long. That's sort of
21:42
Speaker 1: one of the problems with the dome just a regular dome,
21:45
Speaker 1: is that you need a lot of super heavy supporting
21:48
Speaker 1: materials and walls to keep it up, and over time
21:51
Speaker 1: they wear out. But uh, what Fuller did was took
21:55
Speaker 1: that sort of same principle and applied this geometry to
21:58
Speaker 1: it and triangles that the Romans you know, didn't think of,
22:03
Speaker 1: and the rest is history, I guess. Yeah. What what
22:07
Speaker 1: he found was that when you put these fears together,
22:09
Speaker 1: you you created what he called the vector equilibrium, the
22:13
Speaker 1: outward force of the thing that's trying to collapse it.
22:17
Speaker 1: You know, like if you if you could press down
22:19
Speaker 1: on the roof of the house, it would collapse outward
22:22
Speaker 1: to the sides. The same thing wants to happen to
22:25
Speaker 1: geodesic dome. But in a geodesic dome, that pressure outward
22:31
Speaker 1: from the force of gravity is actually equal to the
22:34
Speaker 1: force that's being distributed around it, the circumferential force, And
22:42
Speaker 1: since they're equal and equal measures, they cancel each other out.
22:47
Speaker 1: So it's just like the thing is gravity free. Yeah,
22:51
Speaker 1: I mean you see, you definitely see why he was
22:54
Speaker 1: like this is the house of the future. Because they
22:56
Speaker 1: were cheap, they were strong, they were a lightweight, and
23:00
Speaker 1: you know they distribute, uh, like heat just blows around
23:04
Speaker 1: them because around they're really efficient to heat and cool.
23:08
Speaker 1: There are a lot of really great advantages to them. Yeah,
23:10
Speaker 1: and so when he I can't remember when he made
23:13
Speaker 1: his first one, I think it was at a World's fair.
23:18
Speaker 1: Was that the Montreal was at the first one. No,
23:20
Speaker 1: Montreal was sixty seven. This one would have been in Moscow. Um,
23:26
Speaker 1: well that's when he got his patent. Yeah, I guess
23:28
Speaker 1: this would have been before the right around the same time.
23:32
Speaker 1: But in Yeah, I guess the first one must have
23:36
Speaker 1: been Ford, the Ford plant. Yeah, the Ford Motor Company
23:39
Speaker 1: wanted covering um and he said, well, I think this
23:44
Speaker 1: is the trick and he and he built it. He
23:47
Speaker 1: was like, I can, and this is what Ford wants
23:49
Speaker 1: to hear or any company. He was like, it'll be
23:51
Speaker 1: better and cheaper, and I'll get it done faster than
23:55
Speaker 1: any of these other schmucks. And so bear in mind
23:58
Speaker 1: that when when Ford called him from Dearborn, Michigan, that
24:02
Speaker 1: they no one had ever come up with this before.
24:05
Speaker 1: They thought since they wanted to enclose their courtyard, the
24:08
Speaker 1: central courtyard and rotunda that they'd built, um, that it
24:12
Speaker 1: was gonna have to be a traditional dome with buttresses
24:15
Speaker 1: and supports and like heavy walls and all. That The
24:18
Speaker 1: problem was because the court was so far across. I
24:21
Speaker 1: think it was more than thirty meters ninety ft across. Um.
24:26
Speaker 1: Anything that they built would probably collapse the walls of
24:29
Speaker 1: this very sturdy rotunda building. So they had a problem.
24:33
Speaker 1: And when they called buck Mr Fuller, I don't know
24:36
Speaker 1: how who got in touch with who. Um, it was
24:38
Speaker 1: pretty brazen for him to say, what what you said?
24:42
Speaker 1: He said that he can get this done below cost,
24:45
Speaker 1: in time, it's gonna be super light. And he proved
24:48
Speaker 1: the world wrong, his doubters wrong, at least when he
24:52
Speaker 1: built the first geodesic dome over and it was pretty awesome. Also,
24:57
Speaker 1: we didn't mention he was a freshman, a freshman college dropout. Um,
25:01
Speaker 1: so he's self taught and he just came along and
25:04
Speaker 1: showed the world of engineering basically a brand new type
25:08
Speaker 1: of structure and incredibly elegantly efficient type of structure. He
25:14
Speaker 1: just showed the world it could be done. Yeah, some
25:16
Speaker 1: people are just born with like a certain kind of brain.
25:19
Speaker 1: That's why he deserves his own episode for sure. So
25:22
Speaker 1: the forward, uh dumb was was great for a while
25:27
Speaker 1: until nine two when it was leaking and they said, hey,
25:30
Speaker 1: this thing is leaking, we need to do some repair work.
25:34
Speaker 1: So they were doing that and they were waterproofing and
25:36
Speaker 1: weatherproofing the panels and they were using a waterproof see
25:39
Speaker 1: through transparent waterproof sealer. But to make it easier to spray,
25:43
Speaker 1: they heated it up, which makes sense, but unfortunately those
25:47
Speaker 1: vapors ignited from a propane heater. This thing caught on fire,
25:51
Speaker 1: and I get the idea that it was like the
25:56
Speaker 1: whole thing was done in like an hour. Yeah, because
25:59
Speaker 1: they sealed a lot of it with the waterproofing, the
26:02
Speaker 1: highly flammable waterproofing stuff. So when a little bit called
26:05
Speaker 1: it was vapors caught, the whole dome caught fire. And
26:08
Speaker 1: it was made of like aluminum in plastic, so it
26:11
Speaker 1: just went up like a match. And they were decorating
26:14
Speaker 1: for the Christmas fantasy exhibit below in the courtyard. All
26:18
Speaker 1: that stuff caught on fire. It burned, the whole roof
26:21
Speaker 1: tunded down. Imagine there's nothing more flammable than Christmas decorations
26:26
Speaker 1: in the early night a chance. Yeah, it was really sad.
26:30
Speaker 1: Everyone got out of there, which is good, but by
26:32
Speaker 1: the time the fire department got there, it was too late.
26:34
Speaker 1: It was toast fifty ft flames like I can't imagine
26:37
Speaker 1: what that scene looked like, and it burned the whole
26:40
Speaker 1: building down. Like this was actually a tourist attraction. And
26:45
Speaker 1: do you imagine going to Dearborn, Michigan to see the Yes,
26:48
Speaker 1: that's what people did. I think it's seen like eighteen
26:51
Speaker 1: million visitors in like it's twenty or thirty years of operation.
26:54
Speaker 1: And this this waterproofing fixed burned the whole thing down
26:59
Speaker 1: at Christmas time. So this I love how this article
27:03
Speaker 1: kind of brushes over it says no matter buck Mr
27:06
Speaker 1: Fuller's geodesic dome had shown that it could be done. Yeah,
27:10
Speaker 1: it bears a little more digging in that for sure,
27:14
Speaker 1: but it is true like he had shown the world
27:17
Speaker 1: there's this thing, and we should start making them because
27:19
Speaker 1: they are efficient, cheap, affordable and highly transportable. And apparently
27:25
Speaker 1: next the next people to call was the military because
27:28
Speaker 1: they wanted to start using them as like antarctic basis
27:31
Speaker 1: or to cover radar dishes, that kind of thing. Yeah,
27:35
Speaker 1: he very famously too in nineteen sixty seven, at now
27:39
Speaker 1: was this the World's Fair? There's this a different thing.
27:41
Speaker 1: They just didn't call it World's fair, right. The Universal
27:44
Speaker 1: Exposition in Montreal UH in sixty seven very famously had
27:48
Speaker 1: a two ft tall dome uh and he was he
27:52
Speaker 1: was really trying to push the limits of what you
27:54
Speaker 1: could do. Like he he dreamed of enclosing part of
27:57
Speaker 1: Manhattan and a dome and ing, we could give you
28:00
Speaker 1: clean air and climate control and it'll pay for itself
28:04
Speaker 1: over time because you won't have to use snowplows and
28:07
Speaker 1: all these other like things that cost money. It seems ghastly,
28:10
Speaker 1: almost like a burnse In type of of idea. Well
28:14
Speaker 1: it would, I mean there would definitely be a certain
28:17
Speaker 1: class of people that lived in that thing. Yeah, but
28:19
Speaker 1: it's done. If he'd be like, we'll do it overall
28:21
Speaker 1: of you know queens, right, Well, yeah, it was lower.
28:24
Speaker 1: It was twenty second to sixty two I think from
28:27
Speaker 1: river to river in Manhattan. Wow, it was. It was
28:30
Speaker 1: gonna be huge. And he did say it could pay
28:32
Speaker 1: for itself just from snow removal, not having to snow removal,
28:35
Speaker 1: but imagine not having precipitation ever. It's just it's it's wrong,
28:40
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with that. But it really captures the
28:43
Speaker 1: can do engineering spirit of of mid century America for sure. Yeah.
28:49
Speaker 1: I mean, you can do a cool experiment with like
28:51
Speaker 1: a biosphere type of thing, but you don't want Manhattan
28:54
Speaker 1: covered by a dome, you know, all the all the smells,
28:57
Speaker 1: maybe t Peeka or something like that. And that's one
29:00
Speaker 1: of the problems, is all the smells apparently, like did
29:03
Speaker 1: they just fill up that dome? There's nothing to stop it, right, Yeah,
29:06
Speaker 1: the sewer gas accumulating at the top and eventually exploding. Yeah,
29:10
Speaker 1: no good the ghostbusters running around shooting off pro tom
29:13
Speaker 1: packs inside that thing. No good man, it's been a
29:16
Speaker 1: while since a g B ref. Should we take a break,
29:20
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back, chuck. Alright, So the
29:51
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies come along. He's been doing a sing
29:53
Speaker 1: in the fifties, and this is when the uh, the
29:57
Speaker 1: counterculture and the anti mainstream sort of vibe was hitting,
30:01
Speaker 1: and so it was sort of prime sort of primed
30:04
Speaker 1: for these things to come into fashion. And they did,
30:06
Speaker 1: just for regular old houses. Yeah, they didn't sweep the nation, no,
30:11
Speaker 1: but you know, there were enough people looking for ways
30:15
Speaker 1: to very blatantly thumb their nose that they established look
30:18
Speaker 1: at my round house basically, yeah, and and and again,
30:21
Speaker 1: like it really does. It does provide a lot of
30:25
Speaker 1: um benefits that other ones don't. Right, So, like because
30:28
Speaker 1: it's a it's a sphere, and it's basically one big room. Well, yes,
30:34
Speaker 1: but you can build rooms inside of you can't UM.
30:37
Speaker 1: But the heat in the um, the air distribution is
30:43
Speaker 1: really efficient, so it's very cheap to heat and cool.
30:46
Speaker 1: I think that the average number that people are reported
30:49
Speaker 1: was about a thirty savings in um energy cost. That
30:54
Speaker 1: sounds totally made up, it does, but I saw as
30:57
Speaker 1: high as fifty, and it seems like the world said, no,
30:59
Speaker 1: we'll go a third UM. And so you've got heating
31:04
Speaker 1: and cooling efficiencies, like you were saying, because it's a round,
31:08
Speaker 1: it's not trying to stop wind like cool wind, hot
31:11
Speaker 1: wind when it runs into your house. If it's a
31:15
Speaker 1: rectangular house craftsman, mid century modern, who cares it runs
31:20
Speaker 1: into it and it's going to transfer heat or cold
31:23
Speaker 1: into your house? Yeah, in my case right through my windows,
31:26
Speaker 1: and okay, yeah, it's a great, great example. The thing
31:29
Speaker 1: is is you don't want that heat or that cool
31:31
Speaker 1: in there usually, so you're gonna have to spend a
31:33
Speaker 1: lot of money to artificially pump it out right through
31:37
Speaker 1: a c um with with a geodesic dome. The the
31:42
Speaker 1: wind kind of just moves around it. It's super aerodynamic,
31:46
Speaker 1: so it's not just running into this flat surface and
31:48
Speaker 1: trying to go through. It's just like, yeah, excuse me,
31:50
Speaker 1: I'll just go around. Yeah, and that's why they're great
31:52
Speaker 1: in Antarctica. Um, they can withstand whatever kind of weather
31:57
Speaker 1: they throw they Antarctica A and I have seen some
32:02
Speaker 1: of these at the beach. Um. Again, they're not like
32:06
Speaker 1: the coolest looking beach house, but you see him, you know,
32:10
Speaker 1: you'll see like quaint old beach house, cape cod geodesic
32:14
Speaker 1: dome and then like mcmanchin and I imagine they do
32:18
Speaker 1: very well at the beach. Yeah, because after a hurricane,
32:21
Speaker 1: if a hurricane is bad enough, you see empty lot,
32:24
Speaker 1: empty lot, dome, empty lot, and apparently that's that's it's anecdotal,
32:29
Speaker 1: but that's the been reported that geodesec domes can make
32:32
Speaker 1: it through substantial hurricanes when the rest of the houses
32:35
Speaker 1: around it did not. Yeah, it makes sense. Um. Some
32:38
Speaker 1: of the disadvantages is like we're joking about the smell,
32:42
Speaker 1: but it's really true smell and sound. If you've just
32:45
Speaker 1: got a big globe that you're inside, are really going
32:49
Speaker 1: to move around. Uh, there's not a ton of privacy,
32:52
Speaker 1: even though you can build out sort of like living
32:54
Speaker 1: in aloft, you know, you can build out rooms, but
32:56
Speaker 1: if your rooms don't have a ceiling, although I guess
32:59
Speaker 1: you could do that too, you could, but then you're like, well,
33:02
Speaker 1: you know, like why I'm I even in a exactly
33:05
Speaker 1: uh light as well. Um, that's a big one. Yeah,
33:10
Speaker 1: you know, like the little light on your router that's
33:12
Speaker 1: like really bright at night. Imagine that just being distributed
33:16
Speaker 1: throughout your entire house. Yeah. No, good, No, that's not
33:19
Speaker 1: a good one. Plus, I mean, if you look at
33:21
Speaker 1: any piece of furniture that's ever been created in the
33:25
Speaker 1: history of humanity, it's all meant for rectangular structures. Yeah,
33:29
Speaker 1: unless it's some sort of custom piece for a geodesic tone,
33:31
Speaker 1: which is very expensive. Yeah, you have to get all
33:34
Speaker 1: this stuff made yourself. And the same goes true for uh,
33:37
Speaker 1: Like the construction world is set up for square uh,
33:41
Speaker 1: so fixtures and and plumbing and pipes and all that
33:45
Speaker 1: stuff has to be sort of uh and contractors get
33:48
Speaker 1: scared away from these sayings, Oh yeah, they won't come
33:50
Speaker 1: near it. Yeah unless you're just a specialist. Sure, and
33:54
Speaker 1: you're probably like the highest paid contractor in the world
33:57
Speaker 1: who works like once a year. Yes, um, but those
34:01
Speaker 1: same disadvantages are also advantages, right, Like you have a
34:04
Speaker 1: lot more floor space. Yeah, but sometimes it's wasted. It
34:09
Speaker 1: can be like if you've got a a big long couch,
34:13
Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of space behind it that's just
34:15
Speaker 1: sitting there a little, a little semi circle behind you.
34:18
Speaker 1: That's why a lot of and I think this is
34:20
Speaker 1: the reason why I'm not super hip on geodesic Jones
34:22
Speaker 1: is um. A lot of the stuff is just kind
34:26
Speaker 1: of out in the center of the room right right,
34:28
Speaker 1: and it looks adrift or un anchored. That's a good
34:31
Speaker 1: thing about a wall or a corner or something like that.
34:32
Speaker 1: It provides a visual anchor to your stuff. No one
34:37
Speaker 1: can sneak up on you. No, that's maybe that's why
34:40
Speaker 1: I don't like it. I'm like, what's what's behind me?
34:42
Speaker 1: Do you like your back against the wall in a restaurant? No?
34:45
Speaker 1: I don't care about that, man, do you? Yeah? Really,
34:48
Speaker 1: you're afraid you're gonna get what? Are you a gangster
34:50
Speaker 1: or something? Now? I don't think I'm gonna get whacked.
34:52
Speaker 1: It's just I just feel exposed. And Emily is very sweet.
34:56
Speaker 1: She's usually like, go ahead and take the seat, but
34:59
Speaker 1: lately she's been like no, that's mine. Oh yeah, nothing, man,
35:03
Speaker 1: it's just the time we're living in. She's doing it.
35:08
Speaker 1: So do you sit there and like turn around every
35:10
Speaker 1: time somebody comes in the waiter comes in and a
35:12
Speaker 1: punch of my chain around and punch of don't touch
35:14
Speaker 1: my stuff. Uh. Rain, We talked about rain. Um, it
35:19
Speaker 1: can be problematic. H And it says in here that
35:21
Speaker 1: flat roofs are the best. What they mean are flat
35:25
Speaker 1: roofs at an angle because the truly flat roof it's
35:29
Speaker 1: not good. Frank Lloyd Wright did a bunch of those,
35:31
Speaker 1: and they were his. His houses were could be very problematic.
35:36
Speaker 1: He had the very famous exchange. I can't remember the
35:39
Speaker 1: the person, but it was some very very wealthy, sort
35:43
Speaker 1: of noteworthy person. Frank Lloyd Wright built in a house
35:46
Speaker 1: and he called and complained and said, the waters is
35:49
Speaker 1: now dripping onto my desk, and supposedly Frankloyd Wright said,
35:53
Speaker 1: moved the desk. And that sounds like frankly right, Yeah
35:56
Speaker 1: for sure. I don't know if that's a true story,
35:58
Speaker 1: but true. Um, so with with the with a shingle roof,
36:03
Speaker 1: even with the flat roof, like a flat roof is
36:06
Speaker 1: not moving water, but it's probably not coming down. There's
36:10
Speaker 1: not as many places for it to come down with
36:12
Speaker 1: a geodesic dome. Every place where your struts, the sides
36:18
Speaker 1: of the triangle come together at an angle at the nodes,
36:22
Speaker 1: there is a point where water can get in and
36:25
Speaker 1: actually can get in along where one triangle goes into another.
36:29
Speaker 1: There's a lot of places for water to penetrate the
36:33
Speaker 1: geodesic dome. It's a water nightmare from what I can tell. Well,
36:37
Speaker 1: let's put together from a lot of little panels. Yeah,
36:40
Speaker 1: so let's let's just really briefly say that. So one
36:42
Speaker 1: of the things, one of the reasons why people were
36:44
Speaker 1: crazy for geodesic domes is you could put them together,
36:48
Speaker 1: like we said in a day. Yeah, you can get
36:50
Speaker 1: a color coded kit. You still can, and there are
36:53
Speaker 1: companies out there that will send them to you, and
36:55
Speaker 1: you can get your friends, get some good sixties speed
36:58
Speaker 1: in the case of beer or two, and build your
37:02
Speaker 1: house in a couple of days and not sleep the
37:04
Speaker 1: entire time. Um. So, when you when you put these
37:07
Speaker 1: things together, you're you're building the structure and then you're
37:12
Speaker 1: coding the structure. It can be one kid I saw
37:15
Speaker 1: as a greenhouse, it's a really great greenhouse. If you've
37:19
Speaker 1: ever been on a jungle gym that was built after
37:21
Speaker 1: the sixties, those dome ones geodesic don't um. But what
37:26
Speaker 1: the structure can be made from, like a hollow tubing,
37:30
Speaker 1: ply or um, two by fours, whatever, it can be, wood,
37:33
Speaker 1: it can be whatever. And then usually the outside the
37:37
Speaker 1: triangles that fill in over the structure concrete or plastic
37:40
Speaker 1: or plywood or something like that. Then you want to
37:43
Speaker 1: coat it. But all those different seals or those different seams,
37:48
Speaker 1: they're all just water heaven um, which is again a
37:53
Speaker 1: big problem. We probably problem number one practically speaking. Yeah,
37:57
Speaker 1: it's interesting now that I think about it. It's sort
37:59
Speaker 1: of how tent design has gone over the years. Tints
38:03
Speaker 1: used to be just like camping tents, just like triangles,
38:08
Speaker 1: like a pup tent, and then the big dome tents
38:11
Speaker 1: came into fashion, and then I think the secret was
38:14
Speaker 1: to try and make dome tents with his few seems
38:17
Speaker 1: as possible because that's where your water gets in, and
38:21
Speaker 1: a few poles too, Yeah, just a couple of and
38:25
Speaker 1: then maybe and then you got you got your tent.
38:30
Speaker 1: You could be a tent designer. I did I want
38:33
Speaker 1: to go ahead and trademark what I just said. Okay,
38:36
Speaker 1: should we talk about some famous domes. I think we
38:38
Speaker 1: should because that's always the best part. There's the Expo
38:41
Speaker 1: six s one that, by the way, burned as well.
38:45
Speaker 1: Now the structure stayed. They turned it into a biosphere
38:48
Speaker 1: in the nineties. I believe so Brendan Fraser lists in
38:51
Speaker 1: there and Stephen Baldwin sure man alive that's where he's been. Uh.
39:00
Speaker 1: There is the in these to me, like if you
39:03
Speaker 1: look up the how do you pronounce the one in Japan,
39:06
Speaker 1: the Fukuoka Yahoo Oko Dome was at the full name
39:12
Speaker 1: Yahoo Oku with an exclamation point because Yahoo is the
39:15
Speaker 1: sponsor rights. Yeah, so that is a baseball stadium. But
39:20
Speaker 1: when you look at these like I don't like, to me,
39:24
Speaker 1: I think of Epcot. When you look at this baseball stadium,
39:27
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel I mean, it is a geodesic dome,
39:30
Speaker 1: but it just doesn't feel like that kind of futuristic
39:33
Speaker 1: like highly paneled triangular thing. Well, what's cool about it
39:37
Speaker 1: is the dome part actually retracts in like twenty minutes.
39:42
Speaker 1: And the reason to retracts so quickly is because it's
39:44
Speaker 1: so lightweight comparatively speaking, yeah, so it's pretty sweet. There's
39:49
Speaker 1: Thema Dome, yeah, which is a wood dome that just
39:53
Speaker 1: does not sound sturdy to me. Yeah, what was it? Oh?
39:58
Speaker 1: Our Skyscrapers episode? Was that that new Wood skyscraper somewhere? Uh?
40:03
Speaker 1: Why do I want to say, like Nebraska? I thought
40:05
Speaker 1: that was Japan too? Oh was it? I think? So
40:08
Speaker 1: it's one of the two. Right, it's easy to get
40:11
Speaker 1: him confused. Osaka Nebraska. They sound alike. Uh. The Tacoma
40:17
Speaker 1: Dome is where the Sonics used to play. They're like
40:20
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant gonna love this. Oh man, so sad. Uh.
40:26
Speaker 1: I wonder when a team leaves. I've always wondered if
40:30
Speaker 1: they just because I know, like when the Browns left
40:33
Speaker 1: and became the Ravens. You know, my stepfather was like
40:36
Speaker 1: they were just dead to me. Wait what Yeah, that's
40:39
Speaker 1: where the Ravens came from. They were the Cleveland Browns
40:41
Speaker 1: where the Browns. The Browns aren't playing still, no, no, no,
40:44
Speaker 1: they they the Browns had no There were no Browns
40:47
Speaker 1: for years, and then they came back and said, we'll
40:50
Speaker 1: give you a team again, Cleveland, and you can be
40:51
Speaker 1: the Browns again. But he art model literally famously packed
40:55
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night, like their footage
40:57
Speaker 1: of eighteen wheeler trucks at like two a um like
41:01
Speaker 1: hauling stuff. You don't want to leave Cleveland, esk Lebron.
41:04
Speaker 1: But they were dead to him after that, And I
41:06
Speaker 1: always wonder, like, if the Falcons left Atlanta and went
41:08
Speaker 1: to Birmingham, they'd still be the same guys. I would
41:13
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be like, no, screw that team. No, That's
41:16
Speaker 1: definitely how I went with. Yeah, they were Sattle was
41:20
Speaker 1: not very happy about that. They were not. Supposedly they're
41:23
Speaker 1: going to get another team. One of the Microsoft founders,
41:26
Speaker 1: I guess was in the act is talking about bringing them.
41:30
Speaker 1: Somebody from Microsoft is going to bring a team. They're saying,
41:34
Speaker 1: what was it, Paul Allen? I don't think so. He
41:37
Speaker 1: just passed away though, right, Maybe it was Paul Allen.
41:41
Speaker 1: I mean he owned the Sonics, I think, but he
41:44
Speaker 1: was from Microsoft. I'm just getting all confused now. No,
41:47
Speaker 1: I think Paul Allen was Bill Gates partner. He died. Yeah,
41:50
Speaker 1: I think he died kind of in the last like
41:52
Speaker 1: six months. Well, maybe Seattle is not getting a basketball team,
41:56
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Okay, where did they go oh Oklahoma City? Right? Yeah, Oh,
42:01
Speaker 1: it's so confusing everyone for two half sports guys like us,
42:05
Speaker 1: you don't even make a full sports guy. Who's your
42:07
Speaker 1: team this season? Well? I always read for the Hawks,
42:10
Speaker 1: but it's just there a waste land. It's pretty bag.
42:13
Speaker 1: So I don't even care. Who do Shrewder play for? Now?
42:19
Speaker 1: Does he? Oh? I thought it was a different Western team,
42:22
Speaker 1: you like Lebron in l A. Sure we should have
42:25
Speaker 1: a sports show called the Worst Sports Show on the
42:27
Speaker 1: Web kind of. This is a trailer for it. Uh
42:32
Speaker 1: what about the Eden project? That? That one's pretty cool?
42:34
Speaker 1: And aren't there two of these? And there one in
42:36
Speaker 1: China as well? I think they're going to open one
42:39
Speaker 1: in China. I think there's a third one they're opening,
42:41
Speaker 1: but the one that the original ones in corn Cornwall,
42:44
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, canal cornhole in in the u K. God
42:49
Speaker 1: knows how you pronounce that. I guarantee it's not Cornwall's
42:53
Speaker 1: probably Cornwall maybe. Um, this one's really cool though. This
42:57
Speaker 1: is one where you look it up and you're like,
42:59
Speaker 1: this is what you should be doing. And within geodesic dome,
43:02
Speaker 1: like uh experimentation, they build a diome or biome That's
43:07
Speaker 1: one of the points of a geodesic dome is you
43:09
Speaker 1: can create a different climate inside a larger climate. It's
43:14
Speaker 1: a bubble. You're creating a climate bubble. That's what the
43:16
Speaker 1: Eden Project did at least, and they have two of them.
43:19
Speaker 1: They've got a tropical biome and then a smaller Mediterranean
43:22
Speaker 1: biomes and they're just beautiful, lots of amazing plants and
43:26
Speaker 1: waterfalls and just great stuff. Apparently it's a wonderful tourist attraction.
43:30
Speaker 1: I would go. I think there's also a witchcraft museum
43:34
Speaker 1: in Cornwall that I want to go to. Let's do it, man,
43:37
Speaker 1: all right, we're going road trip. We gotta do a
43:40
Speaker 1: UK tour again. Yeah, that was awesome, and then we'll
43:43
Speaker 1: detour off to Cornwall. Maybe do a show there. How
43:45
Speaker 1: many people are there Cornwall? Let us know if we
43:48
Speaker 1: should do a show there. Let's do a live show
43:49
Speaker 1: inside the tropical biome. That'd be cool. I wonder if
43:52
Speaker 1: we could set that up. We could also do in
43:54
Speaker 1: a upcut too well, do well do a geodesic dome tour?
43:59
Speaker 1: Can we do one inside of the castle and the
44:01
Speaker 1: magic can ask? You have connections there? Right? Yeah? Friend
44:05
Speaker 1: Brandon that's right. Who built my site, the Josh clarkway
44:08
Speaker 1: dot com. I know I'm gonna have to get in
44:10
Speaker 1: touch with him as my kid gets older. I have
44:12
Speaker 1: to finally drag Emily down there. He will happily help
44:15
Speaker 1: you out. Here's a great guy. He help brother. Oh
44:17
Speaker 1: and by the way, I'm glad you brought that up.
44:20
Speaker 1: Congratulations to Brandon and Katie on the birth of their
44:24
Speaker 1: first ever child. Wo Yes, Cooper born into Disney Royalty. Yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: pretty much, it's pretty great. Congrats dudes. I wonder if
44:31
Speaker 1: Cooper is going to go up and just be like,
44:33
Speaker 1: yeah and take care to leave it. I go like
44:34
Speaker 1: twice a week. Right, this is euro Disney. I wish
44:37
Speaker 1: it Disney. Uh. Well, that is Spaceship Earth, of course,
44:41
Speaker 1: is the one we're talking about there that we mentioned.
44:44
Speaker 1: A hundred and eighty feet tall silver geosphere very much
44:49
Speaker 1: the central sort of shining star of Epcot. That's why
44:52
Speaker 1: everybody thinks of with Epcot on every shirt, well not
44:55
Speaker 1: every shirt. But did you know that God as an acronym? Chuck?
45:02
Speaker 1: I did, but I remembered that from when I was
45:05
Speaker 1: a kid, but I can't remember now. What is it?
45:07
Speaker 1: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and the name of the
45:12
Speaker 1: geodesic dome is actually called Spaceship Earth and it was
45:16
Speaker 1: directly influenced by Bucky Fuller. Um. Walt Disney was a
45:20
Speaker 1: big futurist. That's why there's like tomorrow Land and all
45:22
Speaker 1: that stuff, and why there's upcotton in general. Um. But
45:26
Speaker 1: not only did he inspire Spaceship Earth. The name Spaceship
45:30
Speaker 1: Earth comes from a Bucky Fuller essay kind of a
45:33
Speaker 1: novella called an Operating Manual for a Spaceship Earth. You
45:39
Speaker 1: can find the PDF for free on the web and
45:42
Speaker 1: get a pretty good idea of Bucky Fuller's whole jam.
45:46
Speaker 1: You know what I heard. I heard that that very
45:49
Speaker 1: famous Walt Disney signature is not his signature and believe
45:53
Speaker 1: that a cartoonist designer came up with that. It's too perfect.
45:57
Speaker 1: I could totally see that. I'm not I'm not affected
46:01
Speaker 1: by that. I'm okay with it. Oh really, he's not
46:04
Speaker 1: just a big fraud now in your mind. Basically I
46:08
Speaker 1: let him off the hook. Uh. If you want to
46:10
Speaker 1: know more about g desic domes, go make friends with
46:13
Speaker 1: a hippie. And since I said that, it's time for
46:15
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call one of our new young fans.
46:21
Speaker 1: Got a very sweet email from Veronica. Hey, guys, I'm Veronica,
46:25
Speaker 1: fifteen years old and I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana. I just
46:28
Speaker 1: heard about Sarah, the thirteen year old super fan. Who's yeah,
46:33
Speaker 1: Sarah's she's Miss carn Um, and I too, am a
46:37
Speaker 1: super fan. I started listening when I was nine or
46:39
Speaker 1: ten with my mom every once in a while. Then
46:41
Speaker 1: I got an iPod and started listening to you regularly
46:43
Speaker 1: when I was eleven. I love listening to the show
46:46
Speaker 1: when I'm getting ready in the morning and I'm going
46:48
Speaker 1: to school. We're going to sleep before bed. Every time
46:51
Speaker 1: you guys do a tour announcement, I always hope you're
46:53
Speaker 1: gonna say somewhere close, like within two hours of Indianapolis.
46:57
Speaker 1: But I don't think that has ever happened. Dude, Cleveland
46:59
Speaker 1: is not that far from Indianapolis. I took a break
47:02
Speaker 1: from podcast for about two months, but I missed listening
47:04
Speaker 1: to them, so I came back and now and back
47:06
Speaker 1: regularly again. I just want to stop in and say hi.
47:10
Speaker 1: If I'm lucky, I'll make it to the podcast, but
47:12
Speaker 1: I don't expect it. Just keep being you, guys, because
47:15
Speaker 1: I love to learn about the four different types of
47:17
Speaker 1: cat hair, the fact that cinnamon is a type of
47:20
Speaker 1: tree bark, perfume is made from whale vomit, and eurosol
47:24
Speaker 1: is what makes poison ivy so itchy. Wow, my mom
47:27
Speaker 1: really likes your beard, Chuck, and she hopes that someone
47:29
Speaker 1: gives you some beard lights for Christmas. Oh. I saw those.
47:32
Speaker 1: If you don't know what they are, they're just little
47:34
Speaker 1: ornaments that you hang in your beard. Have you seen them?
47:36
Speaker 1: And they light up super festive? Do you want some? Okay,
47:40
Speaker 1: I cut most of my beard off. I just noticed
47:42
Speaker 1: that it looks very trim. This is sort of like
47:44
Speaker 1: the old days. Looks nice. Uh. And that is she
47:47
Speaker 1: put a sign to Veronica, which is adorable. Thank Veronica,
47:50
Speaker 1: so Veronica. I think we should. We were trying to
47:53
Speaker 1: hit the major cities we've never been to. Eventually, I
47:56
Speaker 1: think we might want to put Indianapolis on the list
47:58
Speaker 1: for nine oh boy and uh and give Indiana some love.
48:04
Speaker 1: This year, we were like, I don't know, Salt Lake City, Phoenix,
48:07
Speaker 1: and they were great. It's true. Well, to be honest,
48:11
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City came out for us. They email us
48:15
Speaker 1: there like, yes, please come. We got such an overwhelming
48:17
Speaker 1: response that we're like, how could we say no? So
48:21
Speaker 1: we should go to Indianapolis. I told her, if we do,
48:22
Speaker 1: then we'll put her in mom on the guest lists.
48:24
Speaker 1: Very nice, dumb, they're settled. We could We could go
48:28
Speaker 1: to a show there where the cults play. Is it
48:31
Speaker 1: the Colts? What do they play? Soccer? Yeah, but they
48:34
Speaker 1: came from Baltimore. It then became the Ravens. It's just
48:36
Speaker 1: so weird. Everyone's moving all over the place. Who's the
48:39
Speaker 1: great leader of um the Pacers? Now Victor Um the
48:44
Speaker 1: great leader? Yeah, great leader? Kim John Victor another coach? No, no,
48:51
Speaker 1: he's like the captain. But yeah, he's a player. I
48:53
Speaker 1: don't know, Ron artest fixer. Now Victor Borgia, Yes, Victor
48:59
Speaker 1: Borgia is now anyway, we're going to list him to
49:02
Speaker 1: once I remember his last name, because he's a Victoria player.
49:05
Speaker 1: If you want to know, well, I already said that
49:07
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us, you
49:10
Speaker 1: can go to stuff you Should Know dot com and
49:12
Speaker 1: you will find all of our social links there. I
49:14
Speaker 1: don't know if I said it or not already, but
49:16
Speaker 1: I got a website too, it's called the Josh Clark
49:18
Speaker 1: Way dot com, and you can always send us an
49:21
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
49:29
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
49:31
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com.