February 17, 2024 • 50 mins
Sometimes a good idea doesn’t pan out in real life. Take Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome: It requires less energy to heat and cool, it’s cheap, and it’s durable enough to withstand a hurricane – but it’s also godawful ugly and that was its undoing. Learn more with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Chuck here in twenty twenty three, but I'm
gonna hop us all in the wayback machine and take
us back to December twenty eighteen to listen to our
episode on geodesic domes, because this ties into the live
show that we did last year all about the biosphere
to project. The geodesic dome figured in very prominently in
(00:24):
that project. We talk all about Buckminster Fuller in this episode,
who also figured into that live podcast. And check it
out now. If you're into architecture or just cool things,
listen to Geodesic Domes colon the Wave of the Future that.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Wasn't Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm British Josh, there's
American Chuck, and there's neutral Swisserland Jerry, which, by the way,
now we're saying Swisserland, Switzerland just decided because it's close
to the end of the year and I'm about to
die of exhaustion.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
On the Friendly Fire Movie podcast, Ben Harrison, you know Ben,
he says, Nazzis.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Yeah, Nazis. That's like kind of like a throwback.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
That's like the greatest generation.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Why I'm saying yeah, And I know he does it
as an affectation, sure, but now I got it from him,
and he got it from God elsewhere, his great grandpa
maybe nazzis.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, that's a pretty great.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Way to see because there's a lot of occasion to
say the word Nazi.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Sure a lot.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Hell you mentioned this, uh and why did you say
you were British?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Because I chuck say geodesic and you.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Say geodesic and we just looked it.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Up, which I mean, that's like the first time in.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Years the lady said geodesic and I was like, yes,
I'm right, or in America geodesic and I said, we're bout.
But then she didn't say though it was British, it
could be like whatever South African.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Oh, I guess, like, well africanor's not English.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Well, yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
We're so far off course already. Jerry's just got Ramen
coming through her nose. She thought that was so funny.
Thanks for the laugh, Jerry. Well, we are talking about
geodesic desk. Maybe we should just say that every time
say them both.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
I'm sure people would love that.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I'm going to say geodesic because that's what I've always said.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Okay, great, I'm gonna say geodesic.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
That's fine. We're talking about domes, geodesic domes. And if
you have ever seen a weird contraption of a circular house,
a ball house, you might call it a sphere house,
you've seen a geodesic dome. If you've ever been to Epcot,
sure you was a kid, you've seen a geodesic dome.
(02:57):
They're all over the place.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Do you all right?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Do you like these as like people's houses in a
neighborhood or wherever.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
No, I don't either, But I don't. I mean, I'm
not gonna yuck anybody's yung.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I'm you know what I mean when reading and researching
and like, they're cool and there are a lot of
great advantages. Right then that will go over, But uh,
I just don't care for them right Aesthetically.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I don't either. And actually, if you if you read
a quote from Buckminster Fuller, the guy who actually didn't
invent geodesic domes, we'll get into all that anyway. He said,
one of the reasons they never took off is because
they're weird looking.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Yeah, they just are, and and well I'm not going
to say that.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I really tell me later.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Okay, Yeah, I just don't care for him. You know.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's like, I'm a craftsman, California craftsman bungalow type guy,
which is about the opposite of a geodesic dome.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
It's pretty angular, for sure. Yeah, And the geodesic dome
is angular. Everybody put your laptops away, geometry nerds, but
it's not rectangular, and a craftsman is definitely rectangular. Like,
you can even make a case the roof is not
a triangle. It's a rectangle on its side. I just
made that case. How's it going?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Pretty good.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I also, and although I probably will never live in one,
I do love a modern, like a mid century modern.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
That's my thing.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But I just it's not really like ultimately where I
would want to live for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Well, okay, so I don't want to feel like I'm
like in Finland in the winter or something like that.
That's not I'm talking mid century American actually built for
a family in like the mid fifties, early sixties. I
love it that has all little cool details and built
ins in a wall that doesn't even really need to
be there. You can see right through it because it's
like wood spindles and stuff. That's what I like.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Not ultra modern. Mid century modern yeah okay.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Mid center. Yeah that's what we call it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
But you still you don't think you could live in
one of those. I me, craftsman guy.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
We'd have to get all new stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Like if we started over, like I if our god
forbid of our house burned down and we lost everything,
I could start over like that. But like the stuff
that we have doesn't fit. Like you know understood, Grandma's
antique bar doesn't really go in that setting.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I've seen that bar, and that thing is classic.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
You could put it anywhere. Grandma was a bit of
a boozehound. Huh.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, they didn't use as a bar. They had like
humble figurines and stuff. Wow, And I saw it.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
It was funny.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
When I first sawt I was like, oh god, I
don't really want that, and like they're giving it to us,
And then we turned it to a bar and it
was like, it's amazing what thirty liquor bottles will do.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I can really dress up a Yeah, humble figurine cabinet.
So clearly we're talking again about geodesic domes. And there
was a period in time check where you could go
into some neighborhoods around the country and you could find
well to do hippie types, environmental types, back to earthers
living in the geodesic domes. And it's not like they
(06:01):
were living in a tent. It was their house. Yeah,
had plumbing and heating and electricity and all this stuff.
It's just that it was a dome.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
There was one near where I grew up actually, and
we would pass it going to elementary school and it
was always just sort of like, yeah, there's those weirdos
that built the weird house.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Isn't it interesting though, Like that had some impact on
who you are today. Yeah, how minute or howse small,
but seeing that every day or every weekday, that had
to have some impact on you.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, And there's was also one of those.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It was also partially underground even so that was an
exposed dome, but then that was sort of built into
a hill, and so they were full on.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
They had a lot of hippie cred.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, they were going toward it, and looking back, they
were probably super cool people.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Probably they were wearing birkenstocks way before anybody else was
wearing birkenstocks. So let's talk a little bit about the
first geodesic dome, little geodesic history.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Okay, okay, all.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Right, you have to go way back, way way back
to nineteen six. And not only do we have to
go back, we have to go to Germany, Jena, Germany.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
I don't know where that is.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I don't either, but there is a very famous optics
company called Seiss, I do know that. Sure, and Seiss
wanted to build a planetarium on top of one of
their factories, their factory at Jena, Germany, and they said,
please build this a planetarium. Walter Bauersfield, where if you
didn't know if he was German or not, just listen
(07:29):
to his name, Feld felt even more German. Yeah, and
he said, sure, let me think about this and I'll
see what I can come up with. And he came
up with what's what's widely pointed to as the world's
first geodesic dome.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, and it was a good It was a good
idea for this project, in particular because they needed it
to be light, because it had to go on top
of a roof they needed to hold a lot of people,
and obviously because it was a planetarium that that interior
roundness was kind of key. Would be weird to have
a square planetarium, it would, you know.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Especially if you're like I didn't know Venus could take
a corner like that.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I didn't know he could do that, right, So that's
what he did, and it was it really worked well.
It did house a lot of people. I mean not
how's but you know, it could hold a lot of people.
It can withstand storms, and this is these are some
of the factors that make them not only popular but
(08:29):
like a good idea. Depending on where you are. It
was like, if you're in Antarctica, they have them there
and that it's perfect for that kind of weather.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, there was a period in time which we'll see
in a second, where geodesic don't were like the house
of the future. It was a very very good idea
that never took off because everybody said, no, we think
those are kind of weird.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I don't feel comfortable with that pretty much.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So Bowersfeld's planetarium actually kicked off a planetarium craze. It
was apparently the first planetarium on Earth, which I would
make the case you can just say the first planetarium
in the universe, then probably so. But because there were
people who started to build planetariums as a result of this,
(09:12):
judiesic domes kind of became a thing.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah, But it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Until a guy named Richard Buckminster Fuller of Carbondale, Illinois.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Very big deal, came along.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And actually patented the geodesic dome that they really became
that house of the future thing that I was talking about.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and he was an engineer and a sort of
a visionary thinker, one of the great Americans. I think
we could do a show on him altogether.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
I think agreed.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
But his whole jam was like, well, first of all,
he saw the inherent like good points to these and
we'll get into all those, but first and foremost, you
can you can have a huge volume of space with
very little materials, very lightweight materials, and it'd still be
super strong, right, which is awesome. So because of this,
(09:58):
he thought like he had a higher goal in mine,
which was like the housing in the future. Like they
don't cost that much money, they can hold you know,
people safely, and like this is how we should think
about housing.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
You could you could build it off site at a
factory and deliver it by helicopter.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
It was that light kind of put it together but
like a kid yep.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
And like you were saying, it required because it could
withstand more weight, it required less building materials, which meant
it was lower cost. And supposedly you could put these
things like a good kit together in a day if
you were really cruising along at a good clip.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Sure, so you had some high grade sixty speed give.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It all your Yeah, man, you got me with that one.
So so this just became plainly obvious that this is
going to be the house of the future. There's one
of the other things about it is there is no
other buildings structure that has a larger volume of space
(11:04):
with the least amount of surface area.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
And he got this idea through looking at nature. He
very famously looked at things like crystals and seed pods
and things like that and thought, like, you know nature,
and a lot of people do this in design. They
look to nature because nature has sort of proven to
get it right usually over the years.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, Like if you look at an eggshell, you're like,
this thing shouldn't withstand anything, and yet it does, and
it's a very curious thing.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
But it sure looks like it could slip out of
a chicken's butt with.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Ease, right, which is kind of what it does. Like
what if it was square, it slips out of the cloaca.
It's true. So Bucky Fuller, as he's known, he apparently
I don't know if he wasn't aware of Bowersfeld's design
or something. Did you get that impression?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I couldn't tell if this was nefarious. He seemed like
a good guy, so I don't think he like stole
this idea, but he was able to secure a patent.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
He did. And there's a really great Time article if
you can find it. It's called Dimaxian American. Dimaxim was
a word that was associated with him. He just made
up words a lot, but it tells it. It's from
nineteen sixty four. It says that he was trying to
figure out a geometry of energy, and he was using
spheres as a model of energy. No idea, but he
(12:22):
was putting spheres together. And his idea was that when
you put spheres together, they would just make a larger
and larger sphere. But that's not what happened. He took
a central sphere and put other spheres around it and
pushed it together. And what he found was that it
started to make squares and triangles rather than a larger sphere.
And he figured out that what he had just come
(12:44):
up with was actually a very smart structure. That you
could take those squares and divide those into triangles. You
could take the triangles and divide the triangles into even
smaller triangles. And if you kind of curve the edges
of the triangles inward towards some imaginary center inside the sphere,
you actually create a sphere. And technically it's a polyhedron.
(13:05):
And most geodesic domes are acostahedrons, which, if you play
Dungeons and Dragons, is just a twenty sided die.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
But the more you cut the sides into smaller and
smaller triangles, the more the closer to an actual perfect
sphere you get. And that's a geodesic sphere. And if
you cut it in half, or cut a portion of it, yeah,
and just use one half of it, that's a geodesic dome.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yeah, which is what you see like.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It's not fully round because it has to be flat
and sit on something right.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Well, actually, the Spaceship Earth geodesic dome God is a
full sphere, but that is pretty rare.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
And I thought it was interesting too that they said
that if you were just designing something on paper, you
could just design bigger and bigger and it would just
get stronger and stronger. But in reality that's really not
the case, like when when rubber meets the road, they're
really there's really only so big you can kind of get.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yeah, because I had no idea about this, you know,
I'm roughly familiar with geo dusic domes. I didn't know
any details. But one thing that I was surprised to
find is that the triangles are not all the same size. Yeah,
they have to be adjusted to make this shape, to
make this circle or the sphere. So if you're putting
together one of these things, as we'll see, you have
(14:26):
to be like, oh, this strut goes here, not here,
And I actually put it here up on the top,
and now I have to go take the whole thing
apart again. Yeah, the less complex, the better impracticality. But yeah,
you can really mess with it to make it virtually
a perfect sphere out of triangles.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, and you mentioned a minute ago that and I
think people that pay attention were probably like, oh, Josh,
is so funny or what did he just say?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Did Buck Minister Fuller make up words? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
He did, because he made up another word when it
comes to these domes, uh, insegrity.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Which is not a good word, it's.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Not He mixed two words together, intentional and integrity.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And so that's the relationship between the tension and compression,
and that really kind of describes how these things fit
together and why they end up being super strong, even
though when you look at it, you're like, man, I
could blow that thing over.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Right, So let's let's take your break and then we'll
get into like the actual dynamics going on.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Okay, and geometry?
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yes promise, yes, all right, I promised. It's time to
(16:02):
talk to geometry.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
How'd you do in geometry?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I failed the first time ast of the second time.
I'm actually really glad that I failed it because when
I was forced to take it again by the man.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
And this is high school, right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I it clicked. And I've never understood any field of
math like I understood geometry. I don't quite remember it now,
but like I understood geometry like I was Pythagoras is
like brother.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I kind of I wasn't quite at that level, but
I feel like because I'm I have long sort of
poo pooed the maths. Yeah, but you've that right, well yeah,
but I mean just for my pea brain like understanding it.
I understood geometry more than all the other maths, right,
and I did okay in it for an English nerd.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah, you know, good enough.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
It is completely different than anything else. I feel like in.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
That geometry does seem like its own thing for very
much at time, Like, yeah, there's numbers and sigma makes
an appearance and stuff like that, but it definitely seems
to be It's different than algebra. I'll tell you that. Buddy.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Shout out to Miss karn Ridana High School.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Oh, I wish I could remember my geometry teacher that
when it clicked.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
With she was great. She was one of those teachers
that's like was seventy years old. From the time that
she was twenty eight till the time she was seventy,
she was.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Great and then she turned back into twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah she uh. I remember she had this polka dot.
It's funny the things that you remember. She had this
polka dot shirt where all the polka dots were collected
at the bottom, and she said that it used to
be all over, but she hung it up to dry.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
That was her big joke, great joke.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
She's like, welcome to my class. It's the only joke
of the year. Let's get busy.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Yeah. I bet you there's one person out there who
had Miss Karn and knows that shirt.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah. I hope it's a great joke, Miss Carn. Okay,
so we're talking geometry, right, Yeah. Do you remember our
bridges episode? Yeah, remember we talked about bridge trusses, the
bridges that are made up of triangular shapes, and we said, like,
those things are extraordinarily wrong because they're triangles.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Yeah, man, triangles, same thing here, can't beat them.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
A geodesic dome or sphere is a sphere made up
of triangles. And if you actually take the triangular shape
and build one in reality, it is one of the
strongest shapes you can create because wherever you press on it,
it transfers that pressure that force to the rest of
(18:24):
the shape. So it distributes that kind of a weight
or pressure or force or whatever you want to lay
on on it. It distributes it evenly, and if you
put another triangle together with one triangle, it sends it
to the other triangle too, And so the more triangles
you add, the more a force is distributed throughout it.
And that's why that's why it's so strong. Like what
(18:47):
you were saying, like you look at it and you're like,
I could blow that over. You might be able to
push it over and make it roll away if it's
a sphere, but you you probably could not break it.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, And when you look at like, if you're inside
one of these, it's usually covered with like wood or
drywall or something, so it's not as evident, but on
the outside you generally can still see this frame of
triangles all fitting together beautifully to make something super super strong.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yes, And apparently the strongest version of a geodesic dome
or sphere is one that's actually made not just out
of triangles, but out of pyramids. If you look at
if you look at the Epcot Spaceship Earth Geodesic Sphere,
it's actually pyramids. All the triangles are actually Yeah, that
(19:39):
is that's it. That's the money geodesic dome.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, And that one, since we're on that is interesting
in that one of the downfalls and we'll go over
more later, but one of the downfalls of geodesic domes
is sometimes rain doesn't treat them well. Yeah, but the
one at Epcot was just like, we're not even going
to pretend that we want to repel the rain. They
have little grooves that actually collect the rain and that
(20:04):
send it to one of those little corny lagoons.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I love those, I know, I love everything about Epcot.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
I haven't been since I was in seventh grade.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I mean, did they update it or is it still
very much like the World of Tomorrow today?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
You know they've updated it. I mean the whole thing
is still like that. Yeah, but there's like newer stuff,
Like there's a really cool ride, an immersive ride called Soaring,
where like you get lifted up and you're in front
of this huge, giant curved movie screen and you're like
soaring through this like the world, like a world tour.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It's really neat, And did they move your little thing
around so you feel like you're.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
You definitely feel like you're soaring through there.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, that's like the when they debuted that Back to
the Future ride years ago.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Was it like that?
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
You sit in the Dolorean. It's on hydraulics and it's
like moving all around.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
But it's a movie screen in front of you.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, and you're and you're going through.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
But it's amazing how accurate they can sync that up
to where you really feel like, like I remember that
was at one point where the car was on the
edge of a cliff and it was sort of teetering
and it got really quiet, and then it teetered over
and then the car just stopped moving and he felt
like you were falling.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
Wow, just because it stopped moving.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
And if you like turned around and looked backwards, you're
like everyone's freaking out and you're just sitting in a
car doing nothing.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
But everybody's going Oh.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
It was so great. I loved it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
So we were saying, like this this thing pops up
all over nature. Yeah, the geodesic dome did this. Time
Magazine put article put it really beautifully that it was
like Buckminster Fuller had discovered a signature of God, whoa
just made scare quotes because around godred.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
The whole thing.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Since it is such like an efficient structure that can
support a lot of weight, you do see it in
things like eggs cornea the testicle, which I'm like, sure, really,
I guess so I couldn't find that anywhere else, and
I definitely typed testicle geodesic dome into Google and it
didn't really come back with anything. But this nineteen sixty
(22:12):
four Time article says it.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So it's so well, the dome period is a pretty
strong structure. The Romans were building really big, strong domes
a long long time ago, but they don't stay strong
for long. That's sort of one of the problems with
a dome, just a regular dome, is that you need
a lot of super heavy supporting materials and walls to
(22:34):
keep it up, and over time they wear out. But
what Fuller did was took that sort of same principle
and applied this geometry to it and these triangles that
the Romans didn't.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Think of, and the rest is history. I guess.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah. What he found was that when you put these
fears together, you created what he called a vector equilibrium,
the outward force of the thing that's trying to collapse.
You know, like if you if you could press down
on the roof of the house, it would collapse outward
to the sides. Yes, same thing wants to happen to
geodesic dome. But in a geodesic dome, that pressure outward
(23:14):
from the force of gravity is actually equal to the
force that's being distributed around it, the circumferential force, and
since they're equal measures, they cancel each other out. Yeah,
so it's just like the thing is gravity free.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I mean, you see, you definitely see why he was like,
this is the house of the future because they were cheap,
they were strong, there were lightweight, and you know, they
distribute like heat just blows around them because around they're
really efficient to heat and cool.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
There are a lot of really great advantages to them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
And so when he I can't remember when he made
his first one, I think it was at a World's fair.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Was that the Montreal was that the first one?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
No, Montreal was sixty seven. This one would have been
in Moscow fifty four.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Well, that's when he got his patent.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, I guess this would have been before the right
around the same time, but in fifty nine. Yeah, I
guess the first one must have been Ford, the Ford plant.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Yeah, the Ford Motor Company wanted covering.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And he said, well, I think this is the trick
and he built it, he was like, I can, and
this is what Ford wants to hear or any company.
He was like, it'll be better and cheaper, and I'll
get it done faster than any of these other schmucks.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And so bear in mind that when Ford called them
from Dearborn, Michigan, that they no one had ever come
up with this before. They thought, since they wanted to
enclose their courtyard, the central courtyard and just rotunda that
they'd built, that it was going to have to be
a traditional dome with buttresses and supports and like heavy
(25:00):
walls and all that. The problem was because the coreover
was so far across I think it was more than
thirty meters ninety feet across. Anything that they built would
probably collapse the walls of this very sturdy rotunda building.
So they had a problem. And when they called Buckminster Fuller,
I don't know how who got in touch with who.
(25:22):
It was pretty brazen for him to say what you said.
He said that he can get this done below cost
in time, it's going to be super light. And he
proved the world wrong, his doubters wrong, at least when
he built the first geodesic dome over it and it
was pretty awesome. Also, we didn't mention he was a freshman,
(25:42):
a freshman college dropout, so he's self taught and he
just came along and showed the world of engineering basically
a brand new type of structure, an incredibly elegantly efficient
type of structure. He just showed the world it could
be done.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
People are just born with like a certain kind of brain.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
That's why he deserves his own episode first.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, So the Ford Dome was great for a while
until nineteen sixty two when it was leaking and they said, hey,
this thing's leaking, we need to do some repair work.
So they were doing that, and they were waterproofing and
weatherproofing the panels, and they were using a waterproof see
through transparent waterproof sealer. But to make it easier to spray,
(26:27):
they heated it up, which makes sense. But unfortunately those
vapors ignited from a propane heater. This thing caught on fire.
And I get the idea that it was like the
whole thing was done in like an hour.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah, because they sealed a lot of it with the waterproofing,
the highly flammable waterproofing stuff. So when a little bit
caught those vapors caught the whole dome. Yea caught fire
and it was made of like aluminium in plastic, so
it just went up like a match. Yeah, and they
were decorating for the Christmas Fantasy Exhibit low in the courtyard.
All that stuff caught on fire. Man, it burned the
(27:04):
whole rotunda down.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Imagine building.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
There's nothing more flammable than Christmas decorations in the early noies.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Not a chance. Yeah, it was really sad.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Everyone got out of there, which is good, but by
the time the fire department got there, it.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Was too late.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
It was toast.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
So again he foot flames Like I can't imagine what
that scene looked like.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
And it burned the whole building down. Oh yeah, Like
this was actually a tourist attraction. And do you imagine
going to Dearborn, Michigan.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
To see the fod Dome.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yes, that's what people did. I think it had seen
like eighteen million visitors in like it's twenty or thirty
years of operation and this, this waterproofing fixed burned the
whole thing down at Christmas time. So this I love
how this article kind of brushes over it says no
matter buck mister Fuller's geodesic dome had shown that it
could be done.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Yeah, it bears a little more digging in that for.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Sure, but it is true like he had shown the
world there's this thing, and we should start making them
because they are efficient, cheap, affordable and highly transportable. And
apparently next the next people that call was the military
because they wanted to start using them as like anarctic
bases or to cover radar dishes, that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Yeah, he very famously too in nineteen sixty seven. At no, was.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
This the World's Fair versus a different thing? No, they
just didn't call it World's Fair, right. The Universal Exposition
in Montreal in sixty seven very famously had a two
hundred foot tall dome, and he was he was really
trying to push the limits of what you could do,
Like he dreamed of enclosing part of Manhattan in a dome. Yeah,
(28:42):
and saying we could give you clean air and climate control.
Then it'll pay for itself over time because you won't
have to use snowplows and all these other things that
cost money.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
It seems ghastly, almost like a burnsyan type of idea.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well it would, I mean definitely be a certain class
of people that lived in that thing.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, but I doubt if he'd be like, we'll do
it over all of you know. Queen's right.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Well, yeah it was lower. It was twenty second to
sixty second. I think from river to river in Manhattan.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Wow, it was.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
It was going to be huge. And he did say
it could pay for itself just from snow removal, not
having to do snow removal. But imagine not having precipitation ever.
It's just it's it's wrong. There's something wrong with that.
But it really captures the can do engineering spirit of
mid century America for sure.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I mean you can do a cool experiment with like
a biosphere type of thing. You don't want Manhattan covered
by a dome, n you know all the smells maybe
Topeka or something like that. And that's one of the
problems is all the smells. Apparently did they just fill
up that dome. There's nothing to stop it.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Right, Yeah, the sewer gas accumulating at the top and
eventually exploding. Yeah, no good the Ghostbusters run around shooting
off proton packs inside that thing.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
No good, Man's in a while. Since a gb ref,
should we take a break all right, we'll be right.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Back, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
So the sixties and seventies come along. He's been doing
a thing in the fifties, and this is when the
counterculture and the anti mainstream sort of vibe was hitting,
and so it was sort of prime. It was sort
of primed for these things to come into fashion. And
they did just for regular old houses. Yeah, they didn't
sweep the nation, but you know.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
There were enough people looking for ways to very blatantly
thumb their nose that the established look.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
At my round house basically.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, and again like it really does. It does provide
a lot of benefits that other ones don't, right, So,
like because it's a it's a sphere and it's basically
one big room.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, well yes, but you can build rooms inside of it.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
You can't sure. But the heat in the the air
distribution is really efficient, so it's very cheap to heat
and cool. I think that the average number that people
reported was about thirty percent savings in energy costs.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
That sounds totally made.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Up, it does, but I saw as high as fifty.
And it seems like the world said, no, we'll go
with thirty. Sure, we'll go at the lower And so
you've got heating and cooling efficiencies, like you were saying,
because it's round, it's not trying to stop wind like
cool wind, hot wind when it runs into your house.
If it's a rectangular house craftsman, mid century modern, who
(32:02):
cares it runs into it and it's going to transfer
heat or cold into your house?
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Yeah, in my case, right through my windows.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And okay, yeah, it's a great, great example. The thing
is is you don't want that heat or that cool
in there usually, so you're gonna have to spend a
lot of money to artificially pump it out right. Yeah,
through ac with a geodesic dome, the wind kind of
just moves around it. It's super aerodynamic, so it's not
(32:30):
just running into this flat surface and trying to go through.
It's just like, excuse me, I'll just go around.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Yeah, And that's why they're great in Antarctica. They can
withstand whatever kind of weather they throw. They Antarctica. They
and I have seen some of these at the beach. Again,
they're not like the coolest looking beach house, but you
see them, you know, you'll see like quaint old beach
(32:56):
house cape cod geodesic dome. Yeah, and then like mcmhanson,
and I imagine they do very well at the beach.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, because after a hurricane, if a hurricane is bad enough,
you see empty lot, empty lot, geodesic dome, empty lot,
And apparently that's it's anecdotal, but that's the been reported
that geodesic domes can make it through substantial hurricanes when
the rest of the houses around it did not.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Some of the disadvantages is like we're joking about the smell,
but it's really true smell and sound. If you've just
got a big globe that you're inside, are really going
to move around. There's not a ton of privacy. Even
though you can build out sort of like living in
a loft. You know, you can build out rooms, but
if your rooms don't have a ceiling, although I guess
(33:42):
you could do that.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Too, you could, but then you're like, well, you know.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Like why am I even in a right exactly? Light
as well, that's a big one.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yeah, you know, like the little light on your router
that's like really bright at night. Imagine that just being
dist did throughout your entire house. Yeah, no, good, No,
that's not a good one. Plus, I mean, if you
look at any piece of furniture that's ever been created
in the history of humanity. It's all meant for rectangular structures.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah, unless it's some sort of custom piece for a
geodesic dome, which is very expensive. Yeah, you have to
get all this stuff made yourself. And the same goes
true for like the construction world is set up for
square right, So fixtures and plumbing and pipes and all
that stuff has to be sort of and contractors get
scared away from.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Me saying, oh, yeah, they won't come near it.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, unless you're just a specialist.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Sure, and you're probably like the highest paid contractor in
the world, yes, who works like once a year. Yes,
but those same disadvantages are also advantages, right, Like you
have a lot more floor.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Space, yeah, but sometimes it's wasted.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It can be like if you've got a big long couch,
you've got a bunch of space behind it that's just
sitting there, a little a little semicircle behind you.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's why a lot of and I think this is
the reason why I'm not super hip on gidsigtomes is
a lot of the stuff is just kind of out
in the center of the room, right, right, And it
looks adrift or unanchored. That's a good thing about a
wall or a corner or something like that. It provides
a visual anchor to your stuff.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
No one can sneak up on you.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
No, it's maybe that's why I don't like it. I'm like,
what's what's behind me?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Do you like your back against the wall in a restaurant?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
No?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I don't care about that.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Oh man, do you Yeah?
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Really you're afraid you're gonna eat?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
What?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Are you a gangster or something?
Speaker 4 (35:34):
No? I don't think I'm gonna get whacked.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
It's just, uh, I just feel exposed. And Emily is
very sweet. She's usually like, go ahead and take the seat,
but lately she's been like, no, that's mine.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, wow, what'd you do?
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Man, it's just the time we're living in she's doing it.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
So do you sit there and like turn around every
time somebody comes in.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
The waiter comes in and I punch him, turn around
and punch him. Don't touch my stuff? Uh.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Rain, We talked about rain. It can be problematic. Yeah,
And it says in here that flat roofs are the best.
What they mean are flat roofs at an angle right
because a truly flat roof, it's not good. Frank Lloyd
Wright did a bunch of those, and they were his
houses were could be very problematic. He had the very
(36:20):
famous exchange. I can't remember the person, but it was
some very very wealthy, sort of noteworthy person. Frank Loyd
Wright built him a house and he called and complained
and said, the water is now dripping onto my desk,
And supposedly Frank Loyd Wright said move the desk.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And that sounds like frankly right. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
I don't know if that's a true story, but I love.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
You it's true. Yeah, yeah, So with with the with
the shingle roof, even with the flat roof, like a
flat roof is not moving water, but it's probably not
coming down. There's not as many places for it to
come down. With a geodesic dome. Every place where your struts,
the sides of the triangle come together at an angle
(37:04):
at the nodes, there is a point where water can
get in, and actually you can get in along where
one triangle goes into another. There's a lot of places
for water to penetrate the geodesic dome. It's a water
nightmare from what I can tell.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Well, let's put together from a lot of little panels.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah, so let's just really briefly say that. So one
of the things, one of the reasons why people were
crazy for geodesic domes is you could put them together.
Like we said in.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
A day, Yeah, you can get a color coded kit.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
You still can, and there are companies out there that
will send them to you, and you can get your friends,
get some good sixty speed.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
In a case of beer or two, and build your
house in.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
A couple of days and not sleep the entire time.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
So when you put these things together, you're building the structure,
and then you're coating the structure. It can be one
kit I saw as a greenhouse. It's a really great greenhouse.
I bet if you've ever been on a jungle gym
that was built after the sixties, those dome ones geodesic dome.
But what the structure can be made from a hollow tubing,
(38:14):
ply or two by fours, whatever, it can be wood,
it can be whatever. And then usually the outside the
triangles that fill in over the structure of concrete or
plastic or plywood or something like that. And then you
want to coat it but all those different seals or
those different seams, they're all just water heaven. Yeah, which
(38:36):
is again a big problem, well probably problem number one
practically speaking.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, it's interesting now that I think about it. It's
sort of how tent design has gone over the years.
Tints used to be just like camping tents, just like triangles,
like a pup tent, and then the big dome tints
came into fashion, and then I think the secret was
to try and make dome tents with his you seems
(39:01):
as possible, Yeah, because that's where your water gets in.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, and his few poles too, Yeah, just a couple
and then maybe and then there you got. You got
your tent.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
You could be a tent designer.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
I did. I want to go ahead and trademark what
I just said.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Okay, should we talk about some famous domes. I think
we should, because that's always the best part.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
There's the Expo sixty seven to one that, by the way,
burned as well. Oh really, now the structure stayed. They
turned it into a biosphere in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
I brought no so Brendan Fraser listen there.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
And Paul sure and Stephen Baldwin sure Man alive that's.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Where he's been. Uh.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
There is the in these to me, like if you
look up the how do you pronounce the one in Japan.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
The Fukuoka Yahoo Oko Dome. I was that the full
name yahoo Oku with an exclamation point because Yahoo.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Is at the sponsor an rights. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
So that is a baseball stadium. But when you look
at these like I don't like to me, I think
of Epcot. When you look at this baseball stadium, it
doesn't feel I mean, it is a geodesic dome, but
it just doesn't feel like that kind of futuristic like
highly paneled triangular thing.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Well, what's cool about it is the dome part actually retracts, Yeah,
retractable in like twenty minutes. And the reason to retracts
so quickly is because it's so lightweight comparatively speaking.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, so it's pretty sweet. There's the Doma Dome, yeah,
which is.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
A wood dome that just does not sound sturdy to me.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah. What was it?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Oh our Skyscraper's episode? That was that new Wood skyscraper somewhere?
Why do I want to say, like Nebraska? I thought
that was Japan too, Oh was it?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
I think?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
So it's one of the two.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Right, It's easy to get him confused.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
The Sokka, Nebraska, they sound alike Tacoma Dome is where
the Sonics used to play.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
They're like, Kevin Durant is gonna love.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
This, oh man, so sad uh. I wonder when a
team leaves. I've always wondered if they just because I know,
like when the Browns left and became the Ravens. You know,
my stepfather was like, they were just dead to me.
Wait what Yeah, that's where the Ravens came from. They
were the Cleveland Browns.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Where the Browns aren't playing still.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
No, no, no, they they the Browns had no there
were no Browns for years, and then they came back
and said, we'll give you a team again, Cleveland, and
you can be the Browns again.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
But he Art Modell literally famously packed up in the
middle of the night, like their footage of eighteen wheeler
trucks wow at like two am, like hauling stuff.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Yeah, you don't want to leave Cleveland, ask Lebron.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
But they were dead to him after that. And I
always wonder, like if the Falcons left Atlanta and went
to Birmingham, they'd still be the same guys. I would
I wouldn't be like, no, screw that team.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
No, that's that's definitely how I went with the SuperSonics
for sure. Yeah, Seattle was not very happy about that.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
They were not.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I don't Supposedly they're going to get another team one
of the Microsoft founders. I Guesssniak is talking about bringing them.
Bring Really, somebody from Microsoft is going to bring a team.
They're saying, what was.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
It Paul Allen?
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I don't think so he just passed away though, right,
Maybe it was Paul Allen. I mean he owned the Sonics,
I think, but he was from Microsoft. I'm just getting
all confused now. No, I think was Bill Gates partner
he died. Yeah, I think he died kind of in
the last like six months.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Oh well, maybe Seattle's not getting a basketball team.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
I'm not sure. Okay, where did they go? Oh? Oklahoma City?
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Right?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, it's so confusing everyone for two half sports guys
like us, we don't even make a full sports guy.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Who's your team this season?
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Well?
Speaker 1 (42:53):
I always root for the Hawks, but it's just they're
a wasteland. It's pretty big, so I don't even care.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah, who does Shrewder play?
Speaker 4 (42:59):
For now Olama does he?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
I thought it was a different Western team, you like
Lebron in La.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Sure, we should have a sports show called the Worst
Sports Show on the Web kind of.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
This is a trailer for it.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
What about the Eden Project? That one's pretty cool? And
aren't there two of these? And there one in China
as well?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
I think they're going to open one in China. I
think there's a third one they're opening. But the one
that the original ones in corn Cornwall, I'm sorry, canal.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
Cornhole in the UK.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
God knows how you pronounce that. I guarantee it's not Cornwall.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
Probably Cornwall. Maybe this one's really cool though.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
This is one where you look it up and you're like,
this is what you should be doing right with In
geodesic dome like experimentation.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
They build a diome or biome. Yeah, that's one of
the points of a geodesic dome is you can create
a different climate inside a larger climate. It's a bubble.
You're creating a climate bubble. Yeah, that's what the Eden
Project did at least, and they have two of them.
They've got a tropical biome and then a smaller Mediterranean biome.
So cool and they're just beautiful, lots of amazing plants
(44:09):
and waterfalls and just great stuff. Apparently it's a wonderful
tourist attraction. I would go, I totally. I think there's
also a witchcraft museum in Cornwall that I want to
go to. Let's do it, man, all right, we're going
road trip. Yeah, we got to do a UK tour again.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Yeah, that was awesome, and.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Then we'll detour off to Cornwall.
Speaker 4 (44:28):
Maybe do a show there. How many people are there Cornwall?
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Let us know if we should do a show there.
Speaker 4 (44:32):
Let's do a live show inside the Tropical Biome.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
That'd be cool.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
I wonder if we could set that up.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
We could also do an a upcot too. We'll we'll
do a geodesic dome tour.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Can we do one inside of the castle and the magic?
Speaker 3 (44:45):
And you can ask?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
You have connections there? Right?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Friend Brandon, that's right who built my site, the Josh
Clarkway dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
I know I'm gonna have to get in touch with
him as my kid gets older. I have to finally
drag Emily down there.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
He will happily help you out. He's a great guy.
He helped my brother out. Oh and by the way.
I'm glad you brought that up. Congratulations to Brandon and
Katie on the birth of their first ever child.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Oh wow, yes, Cooper born into Disney Royalty.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah, pretty much. That's pretty great. Congrats dudes.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
I wonder if Cooper's gonna go up and just be like, yeah,
take care to leave it. I go like twice a week.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Right, this is euro Disney. I wish it was euro Disney.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Well, that is Spaceship Earth, of course, is the one
we're talking about there that we mentioned. One hundred and
eighty feet tall silver geosphere very much the central sort
of shining star of EPCOT.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
That's what everybody thinks of with EPCOT.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Yep every shirt, well not every shirt, but.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Did you know that EPCOT is an acronym, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I did, but I remembered that from when I was
a kid, but I can't remember now.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. That's right, And the name
of the geodesic dome is actually called Spaceship Earth and
it was direct influenced by Bucky Fuller. Walt Disney was
a big futurist. That's why there's like tomorrow Land and
all that stuff. Yeah, and why there's upcott in general.
But not only did he inspire Spaceship Earth. The name
(46:13):
Spaceship Earth comes from a Bucky Fuller essay kind of
a novella called an Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. You
can find the pdf for free on the web and
get a pretty good idea of Bucky Fuller's whole jam.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
You know what I heard.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I heard that that very famous Walt Disney signature is
not his signature, and I believe that a cartoonist designer
came up with that.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
It's too perfect. I could totally see that. Yeah, I'm
not I'm not affected by that. I'm okay with it.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Oh really, he's not just a big fraud now in
your mind.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Basically, I let him off the hook. If you want
to know more about geodesic domes, go make friends with
a hippie. And since I said that it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
I'm gonna call one of our new young fans. Got
a very sweet email from Veronica. Hey, guys, I'm Veronica,
fifteen years old and I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana. I just
heard about Sarah, the thirteen year old superfan who's like
fifteen out yeah, Sarah's she's Miss carn and I too,
am a super fan. I started listening when I was
(47:22):
nine or ten with my mom every once in a while.
Then I got an iPod and started listening to regularly
when I was eleven. I love listening to the show
when I'm getting ready in the morning and I'm going
to school or going to sleep before bed. Every time
you guys do a tour announcement, I always hope you're
going to say somewhere close, like within two hours of Indianapolis.
But I don't think that has ever happened.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Dude, Cleveland is not that far from Indianapolis.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
I took a break from podcasts for about two months,
but I missed listening to them, so I came back
and now I'm back regularly again.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
I just want to stop in and say hi.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
If I'm lucky, I'll make it to the podcast, but
I don't expect it. Just keep being you, guys, because
I loved to learn about the four different types of
cat hair, the fact that cinnamon is a type of
tree bark, perfume is made from whale vomit, and eurosoul
is what makes poison. I'd be so itchy Wow, my
mom really likes your beard, Chuck, and she hopes that
someone gives you some beard.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Lights for Christmas.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
Oh. I saw those.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
If you don't know what they are, they are just
little ornaments that you hang in your beard.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Have you seen them?
Speaker 4 (48:20):
And they light up SuperFestive?
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Do you want some?
Speaker 4 (48:22):
No? Okay, I cut most of my beard.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
I just noticed that it looks very trim.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
This is sort of like the old days. Looks nice
and that is. She put a sign to Veronica, which
is adorable. Thank you, Veronica, so Veronica. I think we should.
We're trying to hit the major cities we've never been to. Eventually,
I think we might want to put Indianapolis on the
list for twenty nineteen. Oh boy, and give Indiana some love.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Okay, fine.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
This year we were like, I don't know, Salt Lake City, Phoenix,
and they were great.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
It's true. Well, to be honest, Salt Lake City came
out for us.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
Time.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
They email us, They're like, yes, pa, can. We got
such an overwhelming response that we're like, how can we
say no?
Speaker 1 (49:04):
So we should go to Indianapolis. I told her if
we do, then we'll put her and mom on.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
The guest list.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
That's very nice.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Yeah, okay, they have a domina settled. They could we
could go to a show there where the Colts play.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
We could Is it the Colts? What do they play? Soccer?
Speaker 4 (49:17):
Yeah? But they came from Baltimore, who then became the Ravens.
It's just so weird. Everyone's moving all over the place.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Who's the great leader of the Pacers? Now?
Speaker 4 (49:26):
Victor the great leader? Yeah, great leader?
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Kim Jong Victor.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Another coach?
Speaker 3 (49:34):
No, no, he's like their captain. But yeah, he's a player.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
I don't know. Run our test or right now.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Victor Borgia, Yes, Victor Borgia is now anyway, we're going
to list him to once I remember his last name,
because he's a Victor Victoria player. If you want to know, well,
I already said that. If you want to get in
touch with us, you can go to stuffishouando dot com
and you will find all of our social links there
and you can always send us an email all to
stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, Chuck here in twenty twenty three, but I'm
gonna hop us all in the wayback machine and take
us back to December twenty eighteen to listen to our
episode on geodesic domes, because this ties into the live
show that we did last year all about the biosphere
to project. The geodesic dome figured in very prominently in
(00:24):
that project. We talk all about Buckminster Fuller in this episode,
who also figured into that live podcast. And check it
out now. If you're into architecture or just cool things,
listen to Geodesic Domes colon the Wave of the Future that.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Wasn't Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm British Josh, there's
American Chuck, and there's neutral Swisserland Jerry, which, by the way,
now we're saying Swisserland, Switzerland just decided because it's close
to the end of the year and I'm about to
die of exhaustion.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
On the Friendly Fire Movie podcast, Ben Harrison, you know Ben,
he says, Nazzis.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Yeah, Nazis. That's like kind of like a throwback.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
That's like the greatest generation.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Why I'm saying yeah, And I know he does it
as an affectation, sure, but now I got it from him,
and he got it from God elsewhere, his great grandpa
maybe nazzis.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, that's a pretty great.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Way to see because there's a lot of occasion to
say the word Nazi.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Sure a lot.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Hell you mentioned this, uh and why did you say
you were British?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Because I chuck say geodesic and you.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Say geodesic and we just looked it.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Up, which I mean, that's like the first time in.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Years the lady said geodesic and I was like, yes,
I'm right, or in America geodesic and I said, we're bout.
But then she didn't say though it was British, it
could be like whatever South African.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Oh, I guess, like, well africanor's not English.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Well, yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
We're so far off course already. Jerry's just got Ramen
coming through her nose. She thought that was so funny.
Thanks for the laugh, Jerry. Well, we are talking about
geodesic desk. Maybe we should just say that every time
say them both.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
I'm sure people would love that.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I'm going to say geodesic because that's what I've always said.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Okay, great, I'm gonna say geodesic.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
That's fine. We're talking about domes, geodesic domes. And if
you have ever seen a weird contraption of a circular house,
a ball house, you might call it a sphere house,
you've seen a geodesic dome. If you've ever been to Epcot,
sure you was a kid, you've seen a geodesic dome.
(02:57):
They're all over the place.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Do you all right?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Do you like these as like people's houses in a
neighborhood or wherever.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
No, I don't either, But I don't. I mean, I'm
not gonna yuck anybody's yung.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I'm you know what I mean when reading and researching
and like, they're cool and there are a lot of
great advantages. Right then that will go over, But uh,
I just don't care for them right Aesthetically.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I don't either. And actually, if you if you read
a quote from Buckminster Fuller, the guy who actually didn't
invent geodesic domes, we'll get into all that anyway. He said,
one of the reasons they never took off is because
they're weird looking.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Yeah, they just are, and and well I'm not going
to say that.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I really tell me later.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Okay, Yeah, I just don't care for him. You know.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's like, I'm a craftsman, California craftsman bungalow type guy,
which is about the opposite of a geodesic dome.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
It's pretty angular, for sure. Yeah, And the geodesic dome
is angular. Everybody put your laptops away, geometry nerds, but
it's not rectangular, and a craftsman is definitely rectangular. Like,
you can even make a case the roof is not
a triangle. It's a rectangle on its side. I just
made that case. How's it going?
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Pretty good.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I also, and although I probably will never live in one,
I do love a modern, like a mid century modern.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
That's my thing.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But I just it's not really like ultimately where I
would want to live for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Well, okay, so I don't want to feel like I'm
like in Finland in the winter or something like that.
That's not I'm talking mid century American actually built for
a family in like the mid fifties, early sixties. I
love it that has all little cool details and built
ins in a wall that doesn't even really need to
be there. You can see right through it because it's
like wood spindles and stuff. That's what I like.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Not ultra modern. Mid century modern yeah okay.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Mid center. Yeah that's what we call it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
But you still you don't think you could live in
one of those. I me, craftsman guy.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
We'd have to get all new stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Like if we started over, like I if our god
forbid of our house burned down and we lost everything,
I could start over like that. But like the stuff
that we have doesn't fit. Like you know understood, Grandma's
antique bar doesn't really go in that setting.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I've seen that bar, and that thing is classic.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
You could put it anywhere. Grandma was a bit of
a boozehound. Huh.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, they didn't use as a bar. They had like
humble figurines and stuff. Wow, And I saw it.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
It was funny.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
When I first sawt I was like, oh god, I
don't really want that, and like they're giving it to us,
And then we turned it to a bar and it
was like, it's amazing what thirty liquor bottles will do.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I can really dress up a Yeah, humble figurine cabinet.
So clearly we're talking again about geodesic domes. And there
was a period in time check where you could go
into some neighborhoods around the country and you could find
well to do hippie types, environmental types, back to earthers
living in the geodesic domes. And it's not like they
(06:01):
were living in a tent. It was their house. Yeah,
had plumbing and heating and electricity and all this stuff.
It's just that it was a dome.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
There was one near where I grew up actually, and
we would pass it going to elementary school and it
was always just sort of like, yeah, there's those weirdos
that built the weird house.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Isn't it interesting though, Like that had some impact on
who you are today. Yeah, how minute or howse small,
but seeing that every day or every weekday, that had
to have some impact on you.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah, And there's was also one of those.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
It was also partially underground even so that was an
exposed dome, but then that was sort of built into
a hill, and so they were full on.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
They had a lot of hippie cred.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, they were going toward it, and looking back, they
were probably super cool people.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Probably they were wearing birkenstocks way before anybody else was
wearing birkenstocks. So let's talk a little bit about the
first geodesic dome, little geodesic history.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Okay, okay, all.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Right, you have to go way back, way way back
to nineteen six. And not only do we have to
go back, we have to go to Germany, Jena, Germany.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
I don't know where that is.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I don't either, but there is a very famous optics
company called Seiss, I do know that. Sure, and Seiss
wanted to build a planetarium on top of one of
their factories, their factory at Jena, Germany, and they said,
please build this a planetarium. Walter Bauersfield, where if you
didn't know if he was German or not, just listen
(07:29):
to his name, Feld felt even more German. Yeah, and
he said, sure, let me think about this and I'll
see what I can come up with. And he came
up with what's what's widely pointed to as the world's
first geodesic dome.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, and it was a good It was a good
idea for this project, in particular because they needed it
to be light, because it had to go on top
of a roof they needed to hold a lot of people,
and obviously because it was a planetarium that that interior
roundness was kind of key. Would be weird to have
a square planetarium, it would, you know.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Especially if you're like I didn't know Venus could take
a corner like that.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I didn't know he could do that, right, So that's
what he did, and it was it really worked well.
It did house a lot of people. I mean not
how's but you know, it could hold a lot of people.
It can withstand storms, and this is these are some
of the factors that make them not only popular but
(08:29):
like a good idea. Depending on where you are. It
was like, if you're in Antarctica, they have them there
and that it's perfect for that kind of weather.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Yeah, there was a period in time which we'll see
in a second, where geodesic don't were like the house
of the future. It was a very very good idea
that never took off because everybody said, no, we think
those are kind of weird.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I don't feel comfortable with that pretty much.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So Bowersfeld's planetarium actually kicked off a planetarium craze. It
was apparently the first planetarium on Earth, which I would
make the case you can just say the first planetarium
in the universe, then probably so. But because there were
people who started to build planetariums as a result of this,
(09:12):
judiesic domes kind of became a thing.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah, But it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Until a guy named Richard Buckminster Fuller of Carbondale, Illinois.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Very big deal, came along.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And actually patented the geodesic dome that they really became
that house of the future thing that I was talking about.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and he was an engineer and a sort of
a visionary thinker, one of the great Americans. I think
we could do a show on him altogether.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
I think agreed.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
But his whole jam was like, well, first of all,
he saw the inherent like good points to these and
we'll get into all those, but first and foremost, you
can you can have a huge volume of space with
very little materials, very lightweight materials, and it'd still be
super strong, right, which is awesome. So because of this,
(09:58):
he thought like he had a higher goal in mine,
which was like the housing in the future. Like they
don't cost that much money, they can hold you know,
people safely, and like this is how we should think
about housing.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
You could you could build it off site at a
factory and deliver it by helicopter.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
It was that light kind of put it together but
like a kid yep.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
And like you were saying, it required because it could
withstand more weight, it required less building materials, which meant
it was lower cost. And supposedly you could put these
things like a good kit together in a day if
you were really cruising along at a good clip.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Sure, so you had some high grade sixty speed give.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It all your Yeah, man, you got me with that one.
So so this just became plainly obvious that this is
going to be the house of the future. There's one
of the other things about it is there is no
other buildings structure that has a larger volume of space
(11:04):
with the least amount of surface area.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
And he got this idea through looking at nature. He
very famously looked at things like crystals and seed pods
and things like that and thought, like, you know nature,
and a lot of people do this in design. They
look to nature because nature has sort of proven to
get it right usually over the years.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, Like if you look at an eggshell, you're like,
this thing shouldn't withstand anything, and yet it does, and
it's a very curious thing.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
But it sure looks like it could slip out of
a chicken's butt with.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Ease, right, which is kind of what it does. Like
what if it was square, it slips out of the cloaca.
It's true. So Bucky Fuller, as he's known, he apparently
I don't know if he wasn't aware of Bowersfeld's design
or something. Did you get that impression?
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I couldn't tell if this was nefarious. He seemed like
a good guy, so I don't think he like stole
this idea, but he was able to secure a patent.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
He did. And there's a really great Time article if
you can find it. It's called Dimaxian American. Dimaxim was
a word that was associated with him. He just made
up words a lot, but it tells it. It's from
nineteen sixty four. It says that he was trying to
figure out a geometry of energy, and he was using
spheres as a model of energy. No idea, but he
(12:22):
was putting spheres together. And his idea was that when
you put spheres together, they would just make a larger
and larger sphere. But that's not what happened. He took
a central sphere and put other spheres around it and
pushed it together. And what he found was that it
started to make squares and triangles rather than a larger sphere.
And he figured out that what he had just come
(12:44):
up with was actually a very smart structure. That you
could take those squares and divide those into triangles. You
could take the triangles and divide the triangles into even
smaller triangles. And if you kind of curve the edges
of the triangles inward towards some imaginary center inside the sphere,
you actually create a sphere. And technically it's a polyhedron.
(13:05):
And most geodesic domes are acostahedrons, which, if you play
Dungeons and Dragons, is just a twenty sided die.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
But the more you cut the sides into smaller and
smaller triangles, the more the closer to an actual perfect
sphere you get. And that's a geodesic sphere. And if
you cut it in half, or cut a portion of it, yeah,
and just use one half of it, that's a geodesic dome.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yeah, which is what you see like.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It's not fully round because it has to be flat
and sit on something right.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Well, actually, the Spaceship Earth geodesic dome God is a
full sphere, but that is pretty rare.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
And I thought it was interesting too that they said
that if you were just designing something on paper, you
could just design bigger and bigger and it would just
get stronger and stronger. But in reality that's really not
the case, like when when rubber meets the road, they're
really there's really only so big you can kind of get.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yeah, because I had no idea about this, you know,
I'm roughly familiar with geo dusic domes. I didn't know
any details. But one thing that I was surprised to
find is that the triangles are not all the same size. Yeah,
they have to be adjusted to make this shape, to
make this circle or the sphere. So if you're putting
together one of these things, as we'll see, you have
(14:26):
to be like, oh, this strut goes here, not here,
And I actually put it here up on the top,
and now I have to go take the whole thing
apart again. Yeah, the less complex, the better impracticality. But yeah,
you can really mess with it to make it virtually
a perfect sphere out of triangles.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, and you mentioned a minute ago that and I
think people that pay attention were probably like, oh, Josh,
is so funny or what did he just say?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Did Buck Minister Fuller make up words? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
He did, because he made up another word when it
comes to these domes, uh, insegrity.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Which is not a good word, it's.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Not He mixed two words together, intentional and integrity.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And so that's the relationship between the tension and compression,
and that really kind of describes how these things fit
together and why they end up being super strong, even
though when you look at it, you're like, man, I
could blow that thing over.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Right, So let's let's take your break and then we'll
get into like the actual dynamics going on.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Okay, and geometry?
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Yes promise, yes, all right, I promised. It's time to
(16:02):
talk to geometry.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
How'd you do in geometry?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I failed the first time ast of the second time.
I'm actually really glad that I failed it because when
I was forced to take it again by the man.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
And this is high school, right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I it clicked. And I've never understood any field of
math like I understood geometry. I don't quite remember it now,
but like I understood geometry like I was Pythagoras is
like brother.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
I kind of I wasn't quite at that level, but
I feel like because I'm I have long sort of
poo pooed the maths. Yeah, but you've that right, well yeah,
but I mean just for my pea brain like understanding it.
I understood geometry more than all the other maths, right,
and I did okay in it for an English nerd.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Yeah, you know, good enough.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
It is completely different than anything else. I feel like in.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
That geometry does seem like its own thing for very
much at time, Like, yeah, there's numbers and sigma makes
an appearance and stuff like that, but it definitely seems
to be It's different than algebra. I'll tell you that. Buddy.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Shout out to Miss karn Ridana High School.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Oh, I wish I could remember my geometry teacher that
when it clicked.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
With she was great. She was one of those teachers
that's like was seventy years old. From the time that
she was twenty eight till the time she was seventy,
she was.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Great and then she turned back into twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah she uh. I remember she had this polka dot.
It's funny the things that you remember. She had this
polka dot shirt where all the polka dots were collected
at the bottom, and she said that it used to
be all over, but she hung it up to dry.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
That was her big joke, great joke.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
She's like, welcome to my class. It's the only joke
of the year. Let's get busy.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Yeah. I bet you there's one person out there who
had Miss Karn and knows that shirt.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah. I hope it's a great joke, Miss Carn. Okay,
so we're talking geometry, right, Yeah. Do you remember our
bridges episode? Yeah, remember we talked about bridge trusses, the
bridges that are made up of triangular shapes, and we said, like,
those things are extraordinarily wrong because they're triangles.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Yeah, man, triangles, same thing here, can't beat them.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
A geodesic dome or sphere is a sphere made up
of triangles. And if you actually take the triangular shape
and build one in reality, it is one of the
strongest shapes you can create because wherever you press on it,
it transfers that pressure that force to the rest of
(18:24):
the shape. So it distributes that kind of a weight
or pressure or force or whatever you want to lay
on on it. It distributes it evenly, and if you
put another triangle together with one triangle, it sends it
to the other triangle too, And so the more triangles
you add, the more a force is distributed throughout it.
And that's why that's why it's so strong. Like what
(18:47):
you were saying, like you look at it and you're like,
I could blow that over. You might be able to
push it over and make it roll away if it's
a sphere, but you you probably could not break it.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, And when you look at like, if you're inside
one of these, it's usually covered with like wood or
drywall or something, so it's not as evident, but on
the outside you generally can still see this frame of
triangles all fitting together beautifully to make something super super strong.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yes, And apparently the strongest version of a geodesic dome
or sphere is one that's actually made not just out
of triangles, but out of pyramids. If you look at
if you look at the Epcot Spaceship Earth Geodesic Sphere,
it's actually pyramids. All the triangles are actually Yeah, that
(19:39):
is that's it. That's the money geodesic dome.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, And that one, since we're on that is interesting
in that one of the downfalls and we'll go over
more later, but one of the downfalls of geodesic domes
is sometimes rain doesn't treat them well. Yeah, but the
one at Epcot was just like, we're not even going
to pretend that we want to repel the rain. They
have little grooves that actually collect the rain and that
(20:04):
send it to one of those little corny lagoons.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I love those, I know, I love everything about Epcot.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
I haven't been since I was in seventh grade.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I mean, did they update it or is it still
very much like the World of Tomorrow today?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
You know they've updated it. I mean the whole thing
is still like that. Yeah, but there's like newer stuff,
Like there's a really cool ride, an immersive ride called Soaring,
where like you get lifted up and you're in front
of this huge, giant curved movie screen and you're like
soaring through this like the world, like a world tour.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It's really neat, And did they move your little thing
around so you feel like you're.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
You definitely feel like you're soaring through there.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, that's like the when they debuted that Back to
the Future ride years ago.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Was it like that?
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
You sit in the Dolorean. It's on hydraulics and it's
like moving all around.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
But it's a movie screen in front of you.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, and you're and you're going through.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
But it's amazing how accurate they can sync that up
to where you really feel like, like I remember that
was at one point where the car was on the
edge of a cliff and it was sort of teetering
and it got really quiet, and then it teetered over
and then the car just stopped moving and he felt
like you were falling.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
Wow, just because it stopped moving.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
And if you like turned around and looked backwards, you're
like everyone's freaking out and you're just sitting in a
car doing nothing.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
But everybody's going Oh.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
It was so great. I loved it.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
So we were saying, like this this thing pops up
all over nature. Yeah, the geodesic dome did this. Time
Magazine put article put it really beautifully that it was
like Buckminster Fuller had discovered a signature of God, whoa
just made scare quotes because around godred.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
The whole thing.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Since it is such like an efficient structure that can
support a lot of weight, you do see it in
things like eggs cornea the testicle, which I'm like, sure, really,
I guess so I couldn't find that anywhere else, and
I definitely typed testicle geodesic dome into Google and it
didn't really come back with anything. But this nineteen sixty
(22:12):
four Time article says it.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So it's so well, the dome period is a pretty
strong structure. The Romans were building really big, strong domes
a long long time ago, but they don't stay strong
for long. That's sort of one of the problems with
a dome, just a regular dome, is that you need
a lot of super heavy supporting materials and walls to
(22:34):
keep it up, and over time they wear out. But
what Fuller did was took that sort of same principle
and applied this geometry to it and these triangles that
the Romans didn't.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Think of, and the rest is history. I guess.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah. What he found was that when you put these
fears together, you created what he called a vector equilibrium,
the outward force of the thing that's trying to collapse.
You know, like if you if you could press down
on the roof of the house, it would collapse outward
to the sides. Yes, same thing wants to happen to
geodesic dome. But in a geodesic dome, that pressure outward
(23:14):
from the force of gravity is actually equal to the
force that's being distributed around it, the circumferential force, and
since they're equal measures, they cancel each other out. Yeah,
so it's just like the thing is gravity free.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I mean, you see, you definitely see why he was like,
this is the house of the future because they were cheap,
they were strong, there were lightweight, and you know, they
distribute like heat just blows around them because around they're
really efficient to heat and cool.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
There are a lot of really great advantages to them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
And so when he I can't remember when he made
his first one, I think it was at a World's fair.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Was that the Montreal was that the first one?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
No, Montreal was sixty seven. This one would have been
in Moscow fifty four.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Well, that's when he got his patent.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, I guess this would have been before the right
around the same time, but in fifty nine. Yeah, I
guess the first one must have been Ford, the Ford plant.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Yeah, the Ford Motor Company wanted covering.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And he said, well, I think this is the trick
and he built it, he was like, I can, and
this is what Ford wants to hear or any company.
He was like, it'll be better and cheaper, and I'll
get it done faster than any of these other schmucks.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And so bear in mind that when Ford called them
from Dearborn, Michigan, that they no one had ever come
up with this before. They thought, since they wanted to
enclose their courtyard, the central courtyard and just rotunda that
they'd built, that it was going to have to be
a traditional dome with buttresses and supports and like heavy
(25:00):
walls and all that. The problem was because the coreover
was so far across I think it was more than
thirty meters ninety feet across. Anything that they built would
probably collapse the walls of this very sturdy rotunda building.
So they had a problem. And when they called Buckminster Fuller,
I don't know how who got in touch with who.
(25:22):
It was pretty brazen for him to say what you said.
He said that he can get this done below cost
in time, it's going to be super light. And he
proved the world wrong, his doubters wrong, at least when
he built the first geodesic dome over it and it
was pretty awesome. Also, we didn't mention he was a freshman,
(25:42):
a freshman college dropout, so he's self taught and he
just came along and showed the world of engineering basically
a brand new type of structure, an incredibly elegantly efficient
type of structure. He just showed the world it could
be done.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
People are just born with like a certain kind of brain.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
That's why he deserves his own episode first.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, So the Ford Dome was great for a while
until nineteen sixty two when it was leaking and they said, hey,
this thing's leaking, we need to do some repair work.
So they were doing that, and they were waterproofing and
weatherproofing the panels, and they were using a waterproof see
through transparent waterproof sealer. But to make it easier to spray,
(26:27):
they heated it up, which makes sense. But unfortunately those
vapors ignited from a propane heater. This thing caught on fire.
And I get the idea that it was like the
whole thing was done in like an hour.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah, because they sealed a lot of it with the waterproofing,
the highly flammable waterproofing stuff. So when a little bit
caught those vapors caught the whole dome. Yea caught fire
and it was made of like aluminium in plastic, so
it just went up like a match. Yeah, and they
were decorating for the Christmas Fantasy Exhibit low in the courtyard.
All that stuff caught on fire. Man, it burned the
(27:04):
whole rotunda down.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Imagine building.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
There's nothing more flammable than Christmas decorations in the early noies.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
Not a chance. Yeah, it was really sad.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Everyone got out of there, which is good, but by
the time the fire department got there, it.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Was too late.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
It was toast.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
So again he foot flames Like I can't imagine what
that scene looked like.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
And it burned the whole building down. Oh yeah, Like
this was actually a tourist attraction. And do you imagine
going to Dearborn, Michigan.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
To see the fod Dome.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yes, that's what people did. I think it had seen
like eighteen million visitors in like it's twenty or thirty
years of operation and this, this waterproofing fixed burned the
whole thing down at Christmas time. So this I love
how this article kind of brushes over it says no
matter buck mister Fuller's geodesic dome had shown that it
could be done.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Yeah, it bears a little more digging in that for.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Sure, but it is true like he had shown the
world there's this thing, and we should start making them
because they are efficient, cheap, affordable and highly transportable. And
apparently next the next people that call was the military
because they wanted to start using them as like anarctic
bases or to cover radar dishes, that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Yeah, he very famously too in nineteen sixty seven. At no, was.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
This the World's Fair versus a different thing? No, they
just didn't call it World's Fair, right. The Universal Exposition
in Montreal in sixty seven very famously had a two
hundred foot tall dome, and he was he was really
trying to push the limits of what you could do,
Like he dreamed of enclosing part of Manhattan in a dome. Yeah,
(28:42):
and saying we could give you clean air and climate control.
Then it'll pay for itself over time because you won't
have to use snowplows and all these other things that
cost money.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
It seems ghastly, almost like a burnsyan type of idea.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well it would, I mean definitely be a certain class
of people that lived in that thing.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, but I doubt if he'd be like, we'll do
it over all of you know. Queen's right.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Well, yeah it was lower. It was twenty second to
sixty second. I think from river to river in Manhattan.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Wow, it was.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
It was going to be huge. And he did say
it could pay for itself just from snow removal, not
having to do snow removal. But imagine not having precipitation ever.
It's just it's it's wrong. There's something wrong with that.
But it really captures the can do engineering spirit of
mid century America for sure.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I mean you can do a cool experiment with like
a biosphere type of thing. You don't want Manhattan covered
by a dome, n you know all the smells maybe
Topeka or something like that. And that's one of the
problems is all the smells. Apparently did they just fill
up that dome. There's nothing to stop it.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Right, Yeah, the sewer gas accumulating at the top and
eventually exploding. Yeah, no good the Ghostbusters run around shooting
off proton packs inside that thing.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
No good, Man's in a while. Since a gb ref,
should we take a break all right, we'll be right.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Back, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
So the sixties and seventies come along. He's been doing
a thing in the fifties, and this is when the
counterculture and the anti mainstream sort of vibe was hitting,
and so it was sort of prime. It was sort
of primed for these things to come into fashion. And
they did just for regular old houses. Yeah, they didn't
sweep the nation, but you know.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
There were enough people looking for ways to very blatantly
thumb their nose that the established look.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
At my round house basically.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, and again like it really does. It does provide
a lot of benefits that other ones don't, right, So,
like because it's a it's a sphere and it's basically
one big room.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, well yes, but you can build rooms inside of it.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
You can't sure. But the heat in the the air
distribution is really efficient, so it's very cheap to heat
and cool. I think that the average number that people
reported was about thirty percent savings in energy costs.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
That sounds totally made.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Up, it does, but I saw as high as fifty.
And it seems like the world said, no, we'll go
with thirty. Sure, we'll go at the lower And so
you've got heating and cooling efficiencies, like you were saying,
because it's round, it's not trying to stop wind like
cool wind, hot wind when it runs into your house.
If it's a rectangular house craftsman, mid century modern, who
(32:02):
cares it runs into it and it's going to transfer
heat or cold into your house?
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Yeah, in my case, right through my windows.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And okay, yeah, it's a great, great example. The thing
is is you don't want that heat or that cool
in there usually, so you're gonna have to spend a
lot of money to artificially pump it out right. Yeah,
through ac with a geodesic dome, the wind kind of
just moves around it. It's super aerodynamic, so it's not
(32:30):
just running into this flat surface and trying to go through.
It's just like, excuse me, I'll just go around.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Yeah, And that's why they're great in Antarctica. They can
withstand whatever kind of weather they throw. They Antarctica. They
and I have seen some of these at the beach. Again,
they're not like the coolest looking beach house, but you
see them, you know, you'll see like quaint old beach
(32:56):
house cape cod geodesic dome. Yeah, and then like mcmhanson,
and I imagine they do very well at the beach.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, because after a hurricane, if a hurricane is bad enough,
you see empty lot, empty lot, geodesic dome, empty lot,
And apparently that's it's anecdotal, but that's the been reported
that geodesic domes can make it through substantial hurricanes when
the rest of the houses around it did not.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Some of the disadvantages is like we're joking about the smell,
but it's really true smell and sound. If you've just
got a big globe that you're inside, are really going
to move around. There's not a ton of privacy. Even
though you can build out sort of like living in
a loft. You know, you can build out rooms, but
if your rooms don't have a ceiling, although I guess
(33:42):
you could do that.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Too, you could, but then you're like, well, you know.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Like why am I even in a right exactly? Light
as well, that's a big one.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yeah, you know, like the little light on your router
that's like really bright at night. Imagine that just being
dist did throughout your entire house. Yeah, no, good, No,
that's not a good one. Plus, I mean, if you
look at any piece of furniture that's ever been created
in the history of humanity. It's all meant for rectangular structures.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah, unless it's some sort of custom piece for a
geodesic dome, which is very expensive. Yeah, you have to
get all this stuff made yourself. And the same goes
true for like the construction world is set up for
square right, So fixtures and plumbing and pipes and all
that stuff has to be sort of and contractors get
scared away from.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Me saying, oh, yeah, they won't come near it.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, unless you're just a specialist.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Sure, and you're probably like the highest paid contractor in
the world, yes, who works like once a year. Yes,
but those same disadvantages are also advantages, right, Like you
have a lot more floor.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Space, yeah, but sometimes it's wasted.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
It can be like if you've got a big long couch,
you've got a bunch of space behind it that's just
sitting there, a little a little semicircle behind you.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's why a lot of and I think this is
the reason why I'm not super hip on gidsigtomes is
a lot of the stuff is just kind of out
in the center of the room, right, right, And it
looks adrift or unanchored. That's a good thing about a
wall or a corner or something like that. It provides
a visual anchor to your stuff.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
No one can sneak up on you.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
No, it's maybe that's why I don't like it. I'm like,
what's what's behind me?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Do you like your back against the wall in a restaurant?
Speaker 2 (35:28):
No?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I don't care about that.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Oh man, do you Yeah?
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Really you're afraid you're gonna eat?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
What?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Are you a gangster or something?
Speaker 4 (35:34):
No? I don't think I'm gonna get whacked.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
It's just, uh, I just feel exposed. And Emily is
very sweet. She's usually like, go ahead and take the seat,
but lately she's been like, no, that's mine.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, wow, what'd you do?
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Man, it's just the time we're living in she's doing it.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
So do you sit there and like turn around every
time somebody comes in.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
The waiter comes in and I punch him, turn around
and punch him. Don't touch my stuff? Uh.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Rain, We talked about rain. It can be problematic. Yeah,
And it says in here that flat roofs are the best.
What they mean are flat roofs at an angle right
because a truly flat roof, it's not good. Frank Lloyd
Wright did a bunch of those, and they were his
houses were could be very problematic. He had the very
(36:20):
famous exchange. I can't remember the person, but it was
some very very wealthy, sort of noteworthy person. Frank Loyd
Wright built him a house and he called and complained
and said, the water is now dripping onto my desk,
And supposedly Frank Loyd Wright said move the desk.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And that sounds like frankly right. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
I don't know if that's a true story, but I love.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
You it's true. Yeah, yeah, So with with the with
the shingle roof, even with the flat roof, like a
flat roof is not moving water, but it's probably not
coming down. There's not as many places for it to
come down. With a geodesic dome. Every place where your struts,
the sides of the triangle come together at an angle
(37:04):
at the nodes, there is a point where water can
get in, and actually you can get in along where
one triangle goes into another. There's a lot of places
for water to penetrate the geodesic dome. It's a water
nightmare from what I can tell.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Well, let's put together from a lot of little panels.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Yeah, so let's just really briefly say that. So one
of the things, one of the reasons why people were
crazy for geodesic domes is you could put them together.
Like we said in.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
A day, Yeah, you can get a color coded kit.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
You still can, and there are companies out there that
will send them to you, and you can get your friends,
get some good sixty speed.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
In a case of beer or two, and build your
house in.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
A couple of days and not sleep the entire time.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
So when you put these things together, you're building the structure,
and then you're coating the structure. It can be one
kit I saw as a greenhouse. It's a really great greenhouse.
I bet if you've ever been on a jungle gym
that was built after the sixties, those dome ones geodesic dome.
But what the structure can be made from a hollow tubing,
(38:14):
ply or two by fours, whatever, it can be wood,
it can be whatever. And then usually the outside the
triangles that fill in over the structure of concrete or
plastic or plywood or something like that. And then you
want to coat it but all those different seals or
those different seams, they're all just water heaven. Yeah, which
(38:36):
is again a big problem, well probably problem number one
practically speaking.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, it's interesting now that I think about it. It's
sort of how tent design has gone over the years.
Tints used to be just like camping tents, just like triangles,
like a pup tent, and then the big dome tints
came into fashion, and then I think the secret was
to try and make dome tents with his you seems
(39:01):
as possible, Yeah, because that's where your water gets in.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Yeah, and his few poles too, Yeah, just a couple
and then maybe and then there you got. You got
your tent.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
You could be a tent designer.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
I did. I want to go ahead and trademark what
I just said.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Okay, should we talk about some famous domes. I think
we should, because that's always the best part.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
There's the Expo sixty seven to one that, by the way,
burned as well. Oh really, now the structure stayed. They
turned it into a biosphere in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
I brought no so Brendan Fraser listen there.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
And Paul sure and Stephen Baldwin sure Man alive that's.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Where he's been. Uh.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
There is the in these to me, like if you
look up the how do you pronounce the one in Japan.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
The Fukuoka Yahoo Oko Dome. I was that the full
name yahoo Oku with an exclamation point because Yahoo.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Is at the sponsor an rights. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
So that is a baseball stadium. But when you look
at these like I don't like to me, I think
of Epcot. When you look at this baseball stadium, it
doesn't feel I mean, it is a geodesic dome, but
it just doesn't feel like that kind of futuristic like
highly paneled triangular thing.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Well, what's cool about it is the dome part actually retracts, Yeah,
retractable in like twenty minutes. And the reason to retracts
so quickly is because it's so lightweight comparatively speaking.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, so it's pretty sweet. There's the Doma Dome, yeah,
which is.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
A wood dome that just does not sound sturdy to me.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah. What was it?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Oh our Skyscraper's episode? That was that new Wood skyscraper somewhere?
Why do I want to say, like Nebraska? I thought
that was Japan too, Oh was it?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
I think?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
So it's one of the two.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Right, It's easy to get him confused.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
The Sokka, Nebraska, they sound alike Tacoma Dome is where
the Sonics used to play.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
They're like, Kevin Durant is gonna love.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
This, oh man, so sad uh. I wonder when a
team leaves. I've always wondered if they just because I know,
like when the Browns left and became the Ravens. You know,
my stepfather was like, they were just dead to me.
Wait what Yeah, that's where the Ravens came from. They
were the Cleveland Browns.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Where the Browns aren't playing still.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
No, no, no, they they the Browns had no there
were no Browns for years, and then they came back
and said, we'll give you a team again, Cleveland, and
you can be the Browns again.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
But he Art Modell literally famously packed up in the
middle of the night, like their footage of eighteen wheeler
trucks wow at like two am, like hauling stuff.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Yeah, you don't want to leave Cleveland, ask Lebron.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
But they were dead to him after that. And I
always wonder, like if the Falcons left Atlanta and went
to Birmingham, they'd still be the same guys. I would
I wouldn't be like, no, screw that team.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
No, that's that's definitely how I went with the SuperSonics
for sure. Yeah, Seattle was not very happy about that.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
They were not.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I don't Supposedly they're going to get another team one
of the Microsoft founders. I Guesssniak is talking about bringing them.
Bring Really, somebody from Microsoft is going to bring a team.
They're saying, what was.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
It Paul Allen?
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I don't think so he just passed away though, right,
Maybe it was Paul Allen. I mean he owned the Sonics,
I think, but he was from Microsoft. I'm just getting
all confused now. No, I think was Bill Gates partner
he died. Yeah, I think he died kind of in
the last like six months.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Oh well, maybe Seattle's not getting a basketball team.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
I'm not sure. Okay, where did they go? Oh? Oklahoma City?
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Right?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yeah, it's so confusing everyone for two half sports guys
like us, we don't even make a full sports guy.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Who's your team this season?
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Well?
Speaker 1 (42:53):
I always root for the Hawks, but it's just they're
a wasteland. It's pretty big, so I don't even care.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah, who does Shrewder play?
Speaker 4 (42:59):
For now Olama does he?
Speaker 3 (43:03):
I thought it was a different Western team, you like
Lebron in La.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Sure, we should have a sports show called the Worst
Sports Show on the Web kind of.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
This is a trailer for it.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
What about the Eden Project? That one's pretty cool? And
aren't there two of these? And there one in China
as well?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
I think they're going to open one in China. I
think there's a third one they're opening. But the one
that the original ones in corn Cornwall, I'm sorry, canal.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
Cornhole in the UK.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
God knows how you pronounce that. I guarantee it's not Cornwall.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
Probably Cornwall. Maybe this one's really cool though.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
This is one where you look it up and you're like,
this is what you should be doing right with In
geodesic dome like experimentation.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
They build a diome or biome. Yeah, that's one of
the points of a geodesic dome is you can create
a different climate inside a larger climate. It's a bubble.
You're creating a climate bubble. Yeah, that's what the Eden
Project did at least, and they have two of them.
They've got a tropical biome and then a smaller Mediterranean biome.
So cool and they're just beautiful, lots of amazing plants
(44:09):
and waterfalls and just great stuff. Apparently it's a wonderful
tourist attraction. I would go, I totally. I think there's
also a witchcraft museum in Cornwall that I want to
go to. Let's do it, man, all right, we're going
road trip. Yeah, we got to do a UK tour again.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Yeah, that was awesome, and.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Then we'll detour off to Cornwall.
Speaker 4 (44:28):
Maybe do a show there. How many people are there Cornwall?
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Let us know if we should do a show there.
Speaker 4 (44:32):
Let's do a live show inside the Tropical Biome.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
That'd be cool.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
I wonder if we could set that up.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
We could also do an a upcot too. We'll we'll
do a geodesic dome tour.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Can we do one inside of the castle and the magic?
Speaker 3 (44:45):
And you can ask?
Speaker 4 (44:47):
You have connections there? Right?
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Friend Brandon, that's right who built my site, the Josh
Clarkway dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
I know I'm gonna have to get in touch with
him as my kid gets older. I have to finally
drag Emily down there.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
He will happily help you out. He's a great guy.
He helped my brother out. Oh and by the way.
I'm glad you brought that up. Congratulations to Brandon and
Katie on the birth of their first ever child.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Oh wow, yes, Cooper born into Disney Royalty.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah, pretty much. That's pretty great. Congrats dudes.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
I wonder if Cooper's gonna go up and just be like, yeah,
take care to leave it. I go like twice a week.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Right, this is euro Disney. I wish it was euro Disney.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Well, that is Spaceship Earth, of course, is the one
we're talking about there that we mentioned. One hundred and
eighty feet tall silver geosphere very much the central sort
of shining star of EPCOT.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
That's what everybody thinks of with EPCOT.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Yep every shirt, well not every shirt, but.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Did you know that EPCOT is an acronym, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I did, but I remembered that from when I was
a kid, but I can't remember now.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. That's right, And the name
of the geodesic dome is actually called Spaceship Earth and
it was direct influenced by Bucky Fuller. Walt Disney was
a big futurist. That's why there's like tomorrow Land and
all that stuff. Yeah, and why there's upcott in general.
But not only did he inspire Spaceship Earth. The name
(46:13):
Spaceship Earth comes from a Bucky Fuller essay kind of
a novella called an Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. You
can find the pdf for free on the web and
get a pretty good idea of Bucky Fuller's whole jam.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
You know what I heard.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I heard that that very famous Walt Disney signature is
not his signature, and I believe that a cartoonist designer
came up with that.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
It's too perfect. I could totally see that. Yeah, I'm
not I'm not affected by that. I'm okay with it.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Oh really, he's not just a big fraud now in
your mind.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Basically, I let him off the hook. If you want
to know more about geodesic domes, go make friends with
a hippie. And since I said that it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
I'm gonna call one of our new young fans. Got
a very sweet email from Veronica. Hey, guys, I'm Veronica,
fifteen years old and I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana. I just
heard about Sarah, the thirteen year old superfan who's like
fifteen out yeah, Sarah's she's Miss carn and I too,
am a super fan. I started listening when I was
(47:22):
nine or ten with my mom every once in a while.
Then I got an iPod and started listening to regularly
when I was eleven. I love listening to the show
when I'm getting ready in the morning and I'm going
to school or going to sleep before bed. Every time
you guys do a tour announcement, I always hope you're
going to say somewhere close, like within two hours of Indianapolis.
But I don't think that has ever happened.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
Dude, Cleveland is not that far from Indianapolis.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
I took a break from podcasts for about two months,
but I missed listening to them, so I came back
and now I'm back regularly again.
Speaker 4 (47:51):
I just want to stop in and say hi.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
If I'm lucky, I'll make it to the podcast, but
I don't expect it. Just keep being you, guys, because
I loved to learn about the four different types of
cat hair, the fact that cinnamon is a type of
tree bark, perfume is made from whale vomit, and eurosoul
is what makes poison. I'd be so itchy Wow, my
mom really likes your beard, Chuck, and she hopes that
someone gives you some beard.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Lights for Christmas.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
Oh. I saw those.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
If you don't know what they are, they are just
little ornaments that you hang in your beard.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
Have you seen them?
Speaker 4 (48:20):
And they light up SuperFestive?
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Do you want some?
Speaker 4 (48:22):
No? Okay, I cut most of my beard.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
I just noticed that it looks very trim.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
This is sort of like the old days. Looks nice
and that is. She put a sign to Veronica, which
is adorable. Thank you, Veronica, so Veronica. I think we should.
We're trying to hit the major cities we've never been to. Eventually,
I think we might want to put Indianapolis on the
list for twenty nineteen. Oh boy, and give Indiana some love.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
Okay, fine.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
This year we were like, I don't know, Salt Lake City, Phoenix,
and they were great.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
It's true. Well, to be honest, Salt Lake City came
out for us.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
Time.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
They email us, They're like, yes, pa, can. We got
such an overwhelming response that we're like, how can we
say no?
Speaker 1 (49:04):
So we should go to Indianapolis. I told her if
we do, then we'll put her and mom on.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
The guest list.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
That's very nice.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Yeah, okay, they have a domina settled. They could we
could go to a show there where the Colts play.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
We could Is it the Colts? What do they play? Soccer?
Speaker 4 (49:17):
Yeah? But they came from Baltimore, who then became the Ravens.
It's just so weird. Everyone's moving all over the place.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Who's the great leader of the Pacers? Now?
Speaker 4 (49:26):
Victor the great leader? Yeah, great leader?
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Kim Jong Victor.
Speaker 4 (49:33):
Another coach?
Speaker 3 (49:34):
No, no, he's like their captain. But yeah, he's a player.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
I don't know. Run our test or right now.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
Victor Borgia, Yes, Victor Borgia is now anyway, we're going
to list him to once I remember his last name,
because he's a Victor Victoria player. If you want to know, well,
I already said that. If you want to get in
touch with us, you can go to stuffishouando dot com
and you will find all of our social links there
and you can always send us an email all to
stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyAboutRSSPopular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.