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