WEBVTT - The Dreams of R. Buckminster Fuller 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.360 Works dot com. Hey you're welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:15.960 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. Hey I'm Christian Seger, 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:19.240 and in this episode we're gonna talk about the work 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:23.599 of our Buckminster Fuller. Yeah, this guy was a real visionary, 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:28.440 primarily influential between the nineteen thirties and fifties. You may 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:30.880 have heard of him as a maybe an engineer or 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:33.760 a designer, or sometimes as an architect. He really wasn't 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.560 any of those things. Technically, he didn't have the training necessarily. 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:43.120 But what he was was a major symbol for counterculture 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:46.240 and influencing people to be creative. I think that's fair 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.239 to say. Yeah, yeah, as we researched him, and this 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:51.880 was a guy that I didn't know a lot about. 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:56.400 I mean, I grew up seeing the diodestic Dome. You 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:58.880 know some of the edific doum houses near where I lived. 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.560 Oh yeah, I didn't know that. Well there was one. 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:04.280 I say that as if there was a whole there, 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:05.759 but there was one up on the hill and there 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.560 where where my my parents lived. I always tried to 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.640 imagine what's going on, and yeah, yeah, well I think 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.440 I must have heard of him the first time when 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:17.160 I went to Epcot Center, because I believe that the 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:20.520 what do they call it Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:23.800 is is a geodesic sphere. I believe it's based on 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:26.200 the principles. I don't think that Fuller was involved in 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.800 constructing it, but but yeah, but certainly the gudesic dome, 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.400 the guidestic sphere serves as a symbol for him. It's 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.880 this uh uh, the inspiration of what can be done 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:42.319 with engineering and ingenuity. Yeah, and and I think that's 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.640 very very stuff to blow your mind in terms of 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:49.560 how much this show has covered retro futurist kind of 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:56.279 aesthetics or engineering principles, ideas imagination in the past. Yeah, yeah, totally. 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.240 I mean, and so much of what's appealing about Fuller 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:01.920 is that he the audacity of some of his ideas, 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.120 Like some of the other visionaries that we've we've touched 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.160 on the show before and we'll touch on in the future. 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.040 You know, he really he really thought outside the box. 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:11.880 To use a very cliche term, he didn't he didn't 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.840 have all the filters that that that a lot of 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.000 us have been trying to envision what we can do 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:22.160 with technology and what the future could consist of. Yeah, 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:25.600 and my take on this, So I went into this 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.280 episode being a fan of our Buck Muster Fuller being 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.480 very excited about, in particular the Cloud nine ideas which 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.960 we'll talk about, which are basically flying cities. Um and 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.000 I had even written about him for How Stuff Works 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.840 before and then really doing a deep dive into the 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:44.040 research about him, and in particular there's an article uh 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:46.000 in The New Yorker that came out in two thousand 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.360 eight that's called the di Maxian Man, and it's by 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:51.919 a woman named Elizabeth Colbert. Uh not Colbert. I believe 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:55.480 it's Colbert because it's got okay, but um uh, it 0:02:56.000 --> 0:03:00.120 really highlighted his life beyond just the you know, the 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.160 the big ideas that this guy came up with, and 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.280 I think that of him now more along the lines 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.840 of this generation of men who were big thinkers, but 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:13.560 we're also sort of con artists in a way. Joe 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:15.680 is not going to be delighted to know Joe. Yeah, 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:18.120 for those of you who know are our third host, 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.600 Joe is a a big buck Mr. Fuller fan has 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:25.080 also written about him. But but I'm gonna try to 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.519 convince him. Hopefully he'll listen to this and I'll change 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:30.760 his mind. So why don't we start just talking about that. 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:34.040 I'm gonna call him Bucky Buckminster. I think is gonna 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:36.000 be a little bit too much, and Mr Fuller seems 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.320 formal for where we're at, So let's call him Bucky. 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:41.200 That's what his friends and family called him. Uh. He 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:45.640 was born on July twelve in Milton, Massachusetts, which I'm 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.560 familiar with from the Boston area. Uh. And he died 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.960 on July one, in nine three in l a um. 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:56.160 He this is like right out of the gate like this, 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:59.320 This story of him as a little kid, I think 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.080 perfectly streets what kind of a human being he grew 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:05.320 up into. So he was nearsighted as a child, so 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:07.920 was I. I stared wearing glasses when I was five, 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:12.360 but it wasn't until he was actually fitted with glasses, 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.640 like his parents convinced him, Hey, you need glasses. He 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:20.400 didn't believe that the world wasn't blurry. He thought the 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:22.800 whole world was blurry because that's how he saw it. 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:25.640 So I know I presented that as a double negative. 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:28.800 So he thought the world was blurry, and when they 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.240 said to him, no, you have something wrong with your eyes, 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.839 he didn't believe them until somebody actually put glasses on 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:37.800 his head and he realized, Oh, this is how I'm 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:40.640 supposed to see the world. And I think that's a 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:45.960 perfect metaphor for this guy's life as it goes on. Basically, 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:48.440 I mean, I see some of that in my my 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:52.360 own toddler. To say that he's gonna, you know, grow 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.880 up to be such an iconic figure, but I wouldn't 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.360 be surper. But there's a stubbornness at times to to 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:00.719 a kid. You know, they think they know how the 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:04.160 world works, and they don't. They don't accept the counter 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.800 argument that you present them with. But but maybe that's 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.800 part of a Fuller's vibe. And why I resonate so 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.720 much is because he kept that that kind of childish 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.840 vision and assuredness. Yeah, yeah, I think you might be right. 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:21.839 Well here's another thing. Tell me if your son does 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:26.559 this yet? Okay, okay buck. Mr Fuller constantly collected throughout 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.440 his entire life scrap books of his letters, articles, everything 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.880 as a record of his life. This included receipts for 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:38.640 everything like dry cleaning, bills and we have all of 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:40.960 this today. He actually referred to it later on as 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:45.400 the Dymaxion Chronophile. He loved coming up with weird names 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:47.919 for things. Now that sounds a lot more impressive until 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.960 you realize it has like laundry receipts in it. Yeah, yeah, 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:54.600 so is um is your son keeping a Dymaxian chronofile. 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:56.680 He has a box of rocks. He comes home every 0:05:56.720 --> 0:05:58.839 day with like six different rocks in his pockets. So 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.480 sort of an early early stage. Well, I could see 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:04.720 them keeping that in an archive someday, and that's what 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:08.160 they did with with Fuller. Actually, uh, it weighs forty 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:11.280 five tons this guy's archives. So I used to work 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.960 in an academic library and work a lot with archivists 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:17.600 and special collections, and forty five tons is a lot. 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:21.640 That's a lot of material. It's the largest personal archive 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:24.920 that's currently at Stanford University. So I mean, I think 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.720 it's basically everything this guy ever wrote down to paper 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.039 he thought was going to be important in some way 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:34.000 and kept a copy of it um And and it's, uh, 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:36.600 it's just kind of fascinating, Like I think about other 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.479 figures throughout history who even at a young age, were 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:43.240 convinced that whatever they had was going to be so 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:45.839 important that one day mankind was going to need to 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.320 go look back upon these papers, you know, even when 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.480 you're a child. Theodore Roosevelt was a guy like this, 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.000 kept kept a log of pretty much everything he did. Um. 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:58.080 And that also, I think there's a certain amount of 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.080 narcissism that comes into play there, I would think, so, 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.640 I mean, and yeah, we definitely see that with with Fuller, 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.359 and that he's from a from an early point keeping 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.400 keeping a file, a holy document of what he is 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.800 setting out with a chief. Yeah. Yeah, so you know, 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.600 that's that's the basics of what we have of him 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:18.640 as a child. But like many people and his family, 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:23.520 mostly men, Uh, he went to Harvard University. Unfortunately, halfway 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.120 through his freshman year, he took his tuition money and 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.080 he took it out of the bank and he said, 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:35.320 I'm going to use this to entertain chorus girls in Manhattan. Uh. 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:39.280 Story goes that Harvard wasn't pleased about this. He was expelled. 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.200 A year later, they reinstated him, and then he got 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:45.520 thrown out again. We don't know why. Maybe it was 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.680 chorus girls again who knows. But the gist of it 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.520 is that Bucking never graduated from any college. He doesn't 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:56.360 have a degree in engineering. He um, he really you know, 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.160 from what it sounds like, he was a book learning man, 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:03.080 you know, um, which is which is fine, but I think, 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:06.040 like when you see some of the large scale projects 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:10.160 he was hired for later on based on his hotspa, 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.960 it makes you, it makes you wonder. Um. So anyway, 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:17.920 so after this whole Harvard thing collapsed for him, he 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:20.880 went on, he took a meatpacking job, then he joined 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:23.040 the Navy. When he was in the Navy, this is 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:25.680 when he really started his whole like invention kick, right. 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.360 So he uh, he invented this device to rescue pilots 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.040 that had like you know, crashed at sea. And um, 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.200 what what ended up happening was this device often just 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:38.000 flipped them upside down and dunked them head first into 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:40.360 the water and held them under water. Right. Well you 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.160 know it it expedites the process, but it's just not 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:45.199 in the way, not the way I think the Navy 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:50.360 was looking at. Um. And then you know, after World 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.520 War rather during World War One, he got married and 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:55.880 he started a business with his wife's father, His wife's 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:57.640 father was an architect, and so I think that this 0:08:57.720 --> 0:08:59.600 is where he you know, picked up a lot of 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:01.320 his nol but that the two of them started this 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:05.520 business together where they manufactured books out of wood shavings. 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:07.880 And I was trying to imagine what this even meant. 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:11.320 It's it's one thing to read that as a sentence 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:13.800 in an article. I don't know what does that mean. 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.520 They took the wood shavings and they they like pulped 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:19.960 them down. I guess it certainly makes me think of 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:25.720 sort of you know, homemade paper craft nowadays. But well, 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.640 it's hard to imagine. But the company went almost bankrupt 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:34.520 and uh then somebody bought it from the two of them. 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:39.240 In so at this point, this is this is an 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:43.880 interesting point in Buckey's life. Uh, and by different accounts 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:48.640 from what I read, Uh, it's acknowledged differently. Even stories 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.240 say that, like their interviews with his daughter saying this 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.040 what I'm about to tell you is is probably fictional. Basically, 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:58.320 he comes to a crossroads in his life. Oh yeah, 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:03.920 oh yeah, literally, like he his daughter was born. Um, 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:06.679 he claimed that at the time he became really depressed 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:08.440 because he didn't have a job. He couldn't provide for 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:11.240 his family. So he he was on a walk, and 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.880 he was walking alongside Lake Michigan, and he had suicidal thoughts. 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:18.440 And so some versions of this story say that he 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:22.400 claims suddenly he was suspended several feet above the air, 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:25.640 above the ground rather in the air, and saw light 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.360 and he heard a voice say, you do not have 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:32.720 the right to eliminate yourself. And then it said you 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:37.959 do not belong to you, You belong to the universe. Uh. 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.080 And so I presumably he was set back down and 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:45.680 he had this epiphany that this was a sign that 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:49.480 he should start a lifelong experiment uh, where basically he 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:53.480 should figure out how one person himself could benefit all 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.480 of humanity, could change all of humanity for the better. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:58.920 And this is where he really started hitting the books, right, 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:03.520 hanging out in library, he's compiling notes and really trying 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.680 to figure out how he can transform the world. Right. Yeah, 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.400 and here again, so he's keeping like documentation of all 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:12.480 of this stuff. Right. So, rather than you get a 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:15.040 job and support his family, he goes to the library. 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.680 He refers to himself in the third person as guinea 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.720 pig b presumably be is Bucky uh and he starts 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.880 writing this booklet that he called The for d Timelock. 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:30.439 Uh and uh. From what I understood, it's apparently quite 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.560 hard to read. It's it's a the reviews rather of 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.880 it where that it was you know, the pros was dense, 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.839 it was it barely made any sense. But essentially it's 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:45.840 a diet tribe about how we were failing at that 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.160 time in how we constructed modern homes and how we 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:53.360 were basically like real estate and construction. Um. And he 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:55.320 felt like this was this was how he was going 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.720 to impact human He was going to change production basically 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:03.079 of home life. And this comes along at a at 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.800 a at a key point too, because we're seeing in 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.680 this industrialized world, we're seeing these uh, these sort of 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.240 cookie cutter designs roll out in the world around us, 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:14.880 but we're also seeing futuristic visions of what's possible showing 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:18.719 up in our our science fiction and advertising and uh 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.200 and and and Bucky's ideas kind of serve as a 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:23.520 as a bridge to that. Yeah, I think that's important 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:25.640 to remember is that, like there were a lot of 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:29.600 people at that time who were having amazing imaginative ideas 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.679 really that you know, I think that um formed what 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:35.680 we think of today as sort of our science fiction 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:40.360 fantasy uh conventions, I guess, right, like the aesthetics behind that. 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:45.920 And Fuller, Bucky rather sort of thought of himself not 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:48.840 you know, he wasn't in the fictional space. He saw 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:50.920 this as no, that this is how we're going to 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.160 change the real world, no matter how unrealistic it was 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:56.840 or even as we'll find out later that he came 0:12:56.920 --> 0:12:59.040 up with ideas for things that hadn't been invented yet. 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:01.640 So his excuse for why he couldn't construct things was, well, 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.640 the materials aren't here. Yeah, sorry, this doesn't actually exist, 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:06.520 so I can't make it yet. Yeah. I mean he was, 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.160 like a lot of people at the time, riding that 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.520 wave of technological optimism where it seemed that all these 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.800 things would definitely come to fruition and uh and so 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:21.720 he's just sort of dreaming, dreaming ahead of that wave crashing. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.560 So i'd like before we get into the first of 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.959 his his large, uh you know, scale inventions, here's a 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.160 couple other notes about him, just so we've we've got 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.439 a framework of Buck Mr Fuller as a man. Uh So, 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.520 later on in his life, after he gained some notoriety. 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:42.080 He was an academic uh and reportedly he could lecture 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:45.600 for ten hours at a time. UH, and that if 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:48.160 you had class with him, they lasted from nine am 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.079 until five pm. And this was not like the kind 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:53.880 of like a seminar where you broke out in a 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.480 group sessions and you were interacting with your classmates. Fuller 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.000 spoke the entire time. He basically just shared at people 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:04.200 for eight to ten hours at a time. But he 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.920 was very charismatics. I presumably this is it's not as 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:10.760 dreary attend it's as much as ten hour lecture. I 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.520 get the impression that people weren't falling asleep, that it 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:17.800 was a spectacle to behold. Um. Of course, he believed 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.520 all the world's problems could be solved by technology. That's 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.960 basically the philosophy behind a lot of what he saw. Yeah, 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:29.000 he also proposed a clear dome be constructed over Manhattan, 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:33.280 a tetra head drawn suburb in San Francisco Bay, and 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.240 he patented a scheme for an underwater city. So he's 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:38.840 really thinking about I guess, like what we would call 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.600 today urban studies, right like he was, he was thinking 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:46.960 about cities as microcosms of people and how we could 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.120 put them elsewhere, whether that be the sky, underwater. I 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:53.840 don't know why Manhattan would need a dome, but I 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:55.800 think this is something that's caught on in fiction because 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:57.360 I feel like I've seen it in a lot of 0:14:57.360 --> 0:14:59.640 other Yeah, it definitely shows up in Futurama. There's a 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.920 really at some point the city of New York is 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:06.680 uh is covered in a dome. I don't recall exactly why, 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:10.000 but but it does happen. Yeah, maybe like acid rain 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:11.760 or something like that, although I don't know that that 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:15.280 was what his thinking was. Um, here's another interesting thing 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.360 about him. So, while he did believe that technology was 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.040 the you know, saving grace for all of humanity, he 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:23.880 didn't believe in evolution. What he actually thought were that 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.800 human beings had come from another part of the universe, 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.600 like another planet, uh, totally as we are right now, 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.440 and populated the planet Earth like somebody dropped us off here. Uh. 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:38.560 He also thought that dolphins were descendants from these like 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:41.240 proto humans that came to Earth and that they had 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:45.840 like become seafaring proto humans and eventually turned into dolphins. 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:48.080 I bet he. I wonder if you ever met up 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:52.920 with John C. Lily. They definitely lived at the same time. Yeah, 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.240 and you were telling me about Lily earlier, So I 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:57.720 think that, Um, he sounds like somebody who should definitely 0:15:57.760 --> 0:15:59.600 talk about on the show, which I think we should 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.280 do a full episode on literally at some point, because 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.160 he's a fascinating dude and we've only we've only really 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:09.120 touched on some of his uh crazier ideas here on 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:10.920 the show in the past, and there's a lot more 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.040 to him than that. Well, well, we'll save that for 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.680 another episode. But here's the last thing I'll give you 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.880 on Bucky. This is one of my favorites before we 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.920 get into the diet Dymaxian inventions that he had. Okay, Um, 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.000 for many years, Bucky had a very specific diet and 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:29.680 there are only a few things he would eat and 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:35.840 they consisted of prunes, tea, steak, and jello. Those were 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:41.200 like his four food groups. Prunes, tea, steak, and jello. Wow. Well, 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:44.640 I I think you'd have to put a lot of 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:49.000 different things into that jello to really make that diet work. 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:52.000 But I'm trying to imagine. I know that there's a 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.000 recipe and I may be taking us off track here, 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:56.080 But isn't there something like where you there's like a 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:59.320 mold of jello where you embed other food products inside 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.000 the jello, like and suspended animation. Yeah, like a little 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:04.720 bits of fruit. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, But in his case, 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:07.879 it would just be like prunes and and steak, like 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.280 yeah yeah, he just had this one thing that he 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:15.160 would eat every day. Yeah yeah, yeah. I mean, because 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:17.719 he was very utilitarian, you want to make it as 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:24.359 simple as possible. Okay, So with this gives you an 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.760 idea of what kind of a person Fuller was he. 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:28.840 Like I said earlier, he liked to make up words 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:31.560 of his own. So this leads us to his favorite 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:33.600 word that he made up. But he didn't make it up, actually, 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:36.960 but it was made up maxian. Uh. There was a 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.040 consultant who was working to sell model homes and they 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:42.480 came up with it. And it's a mash of three 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.200 words that they thought sounded exciting at the time, dynamic 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:53.400 maximum and ion is good is good marketing maxion? Yeah yeah, 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.800 I'd buy that. But it's perfect for Fuller, right, because 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:58.520 so so many of these ideas are are about the 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.000 marketing of the dream, not so much about the realization 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.600 of it. Yeah, I think if he were alive today, 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.160 he would very much be like the kind of mad 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.200 men that would that would work in advertising or marketing 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.800 or just do a lot of Ted talks. May definitely 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:15.199 he would be a Ted talker for sure, You're right. 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.960 Uh so. So he took this word dymaxie and he 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:20.679 just applied it to a lot of his you know, 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:24.520 invention ideas. Um. The first one was the Dymaxion vehicle. 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:28.000 So this was a car that had three wheels, there 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:30.359 were two in the front, one in the back, and 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.359 instead of a rear view mirror, it had a periscope. 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:36.919 I tried imagining how that would work. So you're you 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:38.960 would like, what, lean over and put your eye in 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:41.679 the periscope to see behind you? I guess so. But 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:43.879 of course it's that's not really two different from what 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:48.040 we have now with the rear view video, right. Oh, yeah, 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:50.880 that's true. That's true. Yeah, I've never driven a car 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.760 with one of those before, but yeah, it works, you know, 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.240 ultimately not too different from a periscope. So I'm gonna 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:58.920 give him, I'm gonna give a break pass on that. Well, 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.800 apparently this car was really good for for like, you know, 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.120 odd parking maneuvers. So if you're the kind of person 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.040 who has trouble parallel parking, I think the Dymaxian vehicle 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:10.679 was for you, and it was apparently very good at 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:16.879 degree turns. Uh. But it caused a lot of controversy 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:18.680 when it was first introduced. The very first time you 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.600 put it out on the road in nine three, there 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:24.479 was so much hype and people were so surprised by 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:26.720 seeing it on the road that it caused gridlock. That 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:29.520 people just weren't driving because they were up staring at 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.560 this thing. Yeah, I can definitely understand. I mean I 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.480 I I feel like when I see a vehicle that's 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.919 particularly futuristic driving around town here in Atlanta, and it 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:40.240 throws me off for a minute and I almost wrecked 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:43.960 the car. Yeah. In fact, there's somebody near the office here. 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:45.640 I see him coming in and out of the Whole 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.800 Foods parking lot in some sort I don't even know 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:50.240 what you call them these days, but it has to 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:52.080 two wheels in the front and one in the back. 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:57.520 Really it's kind of vehicle. Oh, now I'm curious. You 0:19:57.560 --> 0:19:59.200 know who we should ask about this? As the car 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:03.080 stuff guys, would I wonder, Yeah, yeah, I I even 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:06.560 considered asking them if they had already covered the Dymaxine vehicle. 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:08.120 I'm not sure if they have or not, but I'm 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:12.240 sure Scott's heard of it before. Um So, Fuller basically 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:14.959 envisioned that this vehicle would go beyond the three wheel 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:17.080 model that he had built. He wanted it to fly. 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.120 He wanted basically, he wanted everything he made to fly. 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:22.480 That was kind of his thing. Um. But he he 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:24.000 thought it would be kind of like a duck the 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:26.159 way that it would take off, uh, And that it 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:28.399 would also be built in such a way so that 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:30.040 like when it was on land, it could travel on 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.560 the roughest roads, but then when there was terrain that 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:35.240 you couldn't necessarily get over with you know, the three 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:37.480 wheels on on the Dymaxine vehicle, it would just take 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:42.440 off and fly over the stuff. Um he. So here's 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:46.120 what happened with the Dymaxine vehicle. They built one prototype 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:48.359 and as this one that caused the grid block. I 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:52.320 believe three months after it was released, it crashed. The 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:57.800 driver was killed, the one of the passengers was seriously injured. 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:01.520 But later on and they determined. I believe it was 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.320 at like a World's Fair that this happened or something 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:08.040 similar to that, like one of these big exhibitions of technology. Uh, 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:11.440 they determined another car was found responsible for the accident, 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.400 and they only produced two more of these, and then 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.560 the whole thing was just put on hold because you know, 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:21.440 it's just it was again like many of his ideas, 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:23.359 it was a it was a cool idea, but it 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.440 wasn't exactly practical or functional. Yeah, as a as an 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:30.080 inspiration and as an argument, it totally works because it's 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:33.199 it's Bucky saying, Hey, why does a car have to 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:36.880 be this? Let's think outside of the timeline so far. 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.959