Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I Guess what Will? What's that Mango? So I heard
Speaker 1: this fact yesterday that a lot of buildings in New
Speaker 1: York lie about how tall they are. The buildings are
Speaker 1: lying about how tall they are. Well, maybe it's the builders,
Speaker 1: but they exaggerate about their buildings. So you know how
Speaker 1: guys have this reputation for lying about their height. Right
Speaker 1: of course, so in New York City builders will lie
Speaker 1: about how tall their buildings are to attract a certain clientele,
Speaker 1: which is weird to me, and people just buy it.
Speaker 1: I guess they do because the way they trick people
Speaker 1: is with the elevators. Unless you're gonna count each and
Speaker 1: every floor, the only way you're going to interact with
Speaker 1: all the floors is through the buttons on the elevators. Right,
Speaker 1: Some of this tends to be innocent. Some builders skipped
Speaker 1: the thirteenth floor because they're superstitious, so you get someone
Speaker 1: talking about like a fifteen story building when it's only
Speaker 1: fourteen stories. But other builders love the grandeur. The first
Speaker 1: example that comes up when you google this phenomena is
Speaker 1: Trump Tower, though the owner and his family supposed to
Speaker 1: live on the sixty six through floor. The building is
Speaker 1: actually ten floors shorter than that. It's only fifty eight stories.
Speaker 1: You know. I feel like I've seen this in other
Speaker 1: places to like when you walk past first class in
Speaker 1: a plane and you're like, those are rows one through four,
Speaker 1: and then you go back to where we're trying to
Speaker 1: sit and it's immediately like the tent throw. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's so weird. But I'm curious in terms of the buildings,
Speaker 1: like how do they hide the ten floors? It's very similar.
Speaker 1: So the building has a huge, beautiful atrium with the
Speaker 1: tall ceiling, but the elevators start counting from floors thirty
Speaker 1: instead of twenty, which is the actual height. Trump Tower
Speaker 1: also does this where it's supposed to be ninety floors,
Speaker 1: but if you stand at the top, it's only seventy
Speaker 1: two stories high. It's like really common phenomena. And the
Speaker 1: way the buildings trick you is through the elevators. You know.
Speaker 1: Elevators are an interesting topic, and I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about here, from why it's so awkward
Speaker 1: to ride an elevator with strangers, to whether the closed
Speaker 1: door button actually does anything to most hortantly why are
Speaker 1: all elevators named otis? This has always puzzled me. So
Speaker 1: we've got a lot to cover. Let's dive in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend Mangesh Ticketer and on the other side of that
Speaker 1: soundproof glass dress like a lift operator from the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and he's adjusting his desk chair up and down. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really impressive. He's actually hinted that he was looking
Speaker 1: forward to this and he has really lived up to
Speaker 1: the challenge here. That's our good pal and producer. Loll lull.
Speaker 1: You are looking good. So Mango, what is our first
Speaker 1: stop on this elevator tour? So actually, before we kick off,
Speaker 1: I've got a little bit of house key thing to
Speaker 1: tie up. In our last episode on Nine Comic Book Heroes,
Speaker 1: we talked about this terrible character, the Red Bee, and
Speaker 1: his secret weapon, this ridiculous train being named Michael who
Speaker 1: you know, if you'll remember, he'd keep him in his
Speaker 1: belt then unleash him on villains. But one of our
Speaker 1: listeners on Twitter, Charles Poor, pointed out that male bees
Speaker 1: don't sting. That's a very good point. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: only makes Michael seem more useless. It's true. That just
Speaker 1: makes it that much better though. So thank you so much, Charles.
Speaker 1: If you d m me your address, I'll send you
Speaker 1: a small package of honey as a thank you. But
Speaker 1: back to elevators, and I want to go back to
Speaker 1: a time when elevators were a little more dangerous. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I know modern elevators started to take shape. I guess
Speaker 1: it was, you know, as early as the eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1: But were they around long before that? Like when exactly
Speaker 1: was the first elevator made. So it kind of depends
Speaker 1: on your definition. But if you take just the basic
Speaker 1: concept of an elevator, like a machine that can lift
Speaker 1: things vertically, then you're probably talking about a few thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. For instance, it's possible that the Egyptians used
Speaker 1: vertical lifts to build their pyramids, but that's still speculation.
Speaker 1: Like the first recorded use of vertical lift that comes
Speaker 1: from the third century b C. And this is when
Speaker 1: the mathematician our communities built a platform that could be
Speaker 1: hoisted up and down using ropes and pulleys. Now, these
Speaker 1: early lifts obviously didn't run on electricity. Instead, they were
Speaker 1: powered by people, animals, in some cases even water. They
Speaker 1: also weren't used as people movers. Instead, the hoists were
Speaker 1: mostly used to lift building materials or water jugs. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until a few centuries later that primitive elevators
Speaker 1: were finally used to transport living creatures. This was in
Speaker 1: the first century CE, when Roman gladiators and wild animals
Speaker 1: would ride the lifts from the lower levels up to
Speaker 1: the floor of the colisseum. Right, So even then, most
Speaker 1: people probably wouldn't have trusted their lives to an elevator,
Speaker 1: I would assume at least at that point. And they
Speaker 1: were considered safe enough though for enslaved combatants and lions
Speaker 1: or whatever. But the average citizen would have probably chosen
Speaker 1: the stairs still, definitely, and and there was just still
Speaker 1: too much room for error when you had, you know,
Speaker 1: people or donkeys pulling the ropes. People didn't really start
Speaker 1: using elevators by choice until more reliable systems were developed.
Speaker 1: For instance, in UH seventeen forty three, King Louis the
Speaker 1: fifteenth had one of the earliest passenger elevators installed in
Speaker 1: the palace at Versailles. He was a ladies man and
Speaker 1: the private elevator was an easy way for his mistress
Speaker 1: to visit him in secret, and he referred to it
Speaker 1: as a flying chair. Basically, all you have to do
Speaker 1: to operate it was to pull a cord connected to
Speaker 1: a police system and from their gravity and a series
Speaker 1: of counterweights would do the rest. Pretty clever, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1: And and in the early eighteen hundred, steam actually gets incorporated,
Speaker 1: and this ends up being super helpful because steam powered
Speaker 1: lifts were able to move much heavier loads. You're thinking
Speaker 1: about things like cold or lumber and steel um and
Speaker 1: suddenly this could all be raised hundreds of feet in
Speaker 1: a matter of seconds. This new capacity led to major
Speaker 1: booms and construction and mining and and it's actually a
Speaker 1: big part of what made the Industrial revolution so transformative.
Speaker 1: But steam powered elevator still had one major flaw. They
Speaker 1: were really dangerous, like super dangerous, and and if a
Speaker 1: rope snap, the lift would just plummet. And unfortunately, that
Speaker 1: happened pretty often all through the first half of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, right And it's around that halfway point that
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, an inventor named elisha Otis enters the picture.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that name earlier, and he got into the
Speaker 1: elevator game in eighteen fifty two while working on a
Speaker 1: project for a company that made bed frames. So the
Speaker 1: client needed a way to move heavy manufacturing equipment to
Speaker 1: the second floor of its factory. There was only one problem, though,
Speaker 1: and that was that the equipment they were moving was
Speaker 1: so heavy that the lifting cables couldn't bear the weight
Speaker 1: for all that long. So there was this constant risk
Speaker 1: that the cables were going to snap, and if that happened,
Speaker 1: there would be nothing to stop the elevator from plunging
Speaker 1: straight to the ground floor. So Otis's solution to the
Speaker 1: problem was to develop the world's first safety device for elevators.
Speaker 1: It was basically like a brake system that functioned as
Speaker 1: a fail safe for the lift. So if the cable
Speaker 1: should break, the loss of tension would trigger the release
Speaker 1: of these levers on either side of the elevator car,
Speaker 1: and then these levers would lock and do these series
Speaker 1: of grooves that were along the vertical rails of the elevator,
Speaker 1: and that would sort of arrest the fall and and
Speaker 1: lock the car in place. So it's pretty innovative. That's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. So so I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: I have this straight. Like, the vertical rails were already
Speaker 1: part of the elevator design, right, Like, they just didn't
Speaker 1: have that like locking system built into them until Otis
Speaker 1: came along. Yeah, that's right. I mean all of the
Speaker 1: elevators of the era were braced on either side by
Speaker 1: these vertical rails that helped keep the car steady as
Speaker 1: it was going up or down. And so those rails
Speaker 1: were completely smooth, though, so if a cable broke, the
Speaker 1: car would just slide right down the rails and free fall,
Speaker 1: which would obviously be dangerous and terrifying. And so Otis's
Speaker 1: breakthrough was to carve grooves into the rails and create
Speaker 1: kind of a saw toothed ratchet system that would act
Speaker 1: as these brakes. Industrial companies recognized the merits of the
Speaker 1: new breaking system right away, and Otis quickly set to
Speaker 1: work on, you know, filing orders for freight elevators. But
Speaker 1: the public was still unconvinced. Was understandably because it is,
Speaker 1: you know, such a different invention and everything, but most
Speaker 1: people viewed elevators as these death traps, and they were
Speaker 1: unlikely to be swayed from this opinion by these confusing
Speaker 1: diagrams they were singing and all these technical explanations. So
Speaker 1: in order to really trust such a system, people would
Speaker 1: need to see it for themselves. And so at the
Speaker 1: World's Fair in eighteen fifty four, Elisha Otis allowed them
Speaker 1: to do just that. So you're saying that, like fair
Speaker 1: goers were actually willing to get into these elevators and
Speaker 1: test the brake systems. No, still not at this point.
Speaker 1: But Otis thought about that, I mean, he anticipated that,
Speaker 1: and so he arranged a stunt that would instead put
Speaker 1: only one person's life on the line, and that, of course,
Speaker 1: was his own. And so here's what happened. That You're
Speaker 1: at the Crystal Palace Exposition Hall, and Otis constructed this
Speaker 1: fifty foot wooden elevator. Then, with some help from none
Speaker 1: other than P. T. Barnum himself, Otis gathered this crowd
Speaker 1: and promised them this death defying stunt unlike any they
Speaker 1: had ever seen. So the crowd is, you know, hyped
Speaker 1: up and everything. And Otis then dramatically rides the elevator
Speaker 1: to the very top, where he then ordered an axe
Speaker 1: wielding assistant to cut the rope that held up the elevator.
Speaker 1: The onlookers were stunned and sort of braced themselves for
Speaker 1: this tragic scene, but thankfully it never came. And that's because,
Speaker 1: you know, of course, to their surprise and great relief,
Speaker 1: the platform dropped just a few inches and then came
Speaker 1: to a complete stop. The crowd was blown away by this,
Speaker 1: but they were also skeptical of how reliable the system
Speaker 1: really was. And you know, they thought, maybe Otis just
Speaker 1: got insanely lucky, and there was no guarantee that the
Speaker 1: brakes would work a second time. So Otis performed the
Speaker 1: stunt again and again and again. Every hour of the
Speaker 1: day that the fair was open. He performed this stunt,
Speaker 1: and in this way, little by little, one crowd at
Speaker 1: a time, him Otis won over the public and convinced
Speaker 1: them that elevators were at long last safe to ride.
Speaker 1: That is such an amazing stunt, Like, it's such an
Speaker 1: amazing pr thing that all you're basically doing is riding
Speaker 1: an elevator. Pretty amazing. But you know, I'm guessing this
Speaker 1: was a turning point for Otis, Like I read that
Speaker 1: the first passenger elevator to use his brake system was
Speaker 1: installed in New York in eighteen fifty seven, so it
Speaker 1: was still about three years after the fair. But but
Speaker 1: then the floodgates really open, and within sixteen years more
Speaker 1: than two thousand passenger elevators were operating all across the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was definitely a snowball effect to all of this.
Speaker 1: And you know, sadly Otis actually didn't live long enough
Speaker 1: to see just how widely embraced his invention became. He
Speaker 1: passed away in eighteen sixty one, just a few years
Speaker 1: after his first elevator was installed in New York. But
Speaker 1: his sons did carry on the family business, along with others,
Speaker 1: and and and they worked to make improvements on that
Speaker 1: original design, including the switch to hydraulic power and eventually,
Speaker 1: of course, to electricity. Now, all of this innovation helps
Speaker 1: secure the elevator's place as one of the most highly
Speaker 1: traffic transport systems in the world. And that's not an exaggeration.
Speaker 1: According to the l A Times, the world's elevators now
Speaker 1: move the equivalent of the Earth's population every seventy two hours.
Speaker 1: If you think about that, every three days, over seven
Speaker 1: and a half billion people take a ride on an elevator.
Speaker 1: That is not something I'd even comprehended. That's pretty remarkable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really crazy. And it's especially true of
Speaker 1: Otis elevators, which are still going strong today. For example,
Speaker 1: the elevators in the Eiffel Tower road to selevators, so
Speaker 1: are the ones in the Empire, State Building, the White House,
Speaker 1: the Vatican, the Kremlin. I mean, the list goes on
Speaker 1: and on, and the company is now one of the
Speaker 1: two largest elevator manufacturers in the world. And that's why
Speaker 1: if you step into an elevator today, the chances are
Speaker 1: you will find that Otis name inscribed on the walls there,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot more sense than all the elevator
Speaker 1: is in the world being nicknamed Otis. But uh I,
Speaker 1: I think we should talk some more about the rapid
Speaker 1: growth phase that elevators went through near the turn of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. You actually mentioned that there are a
Speaker 1: couple thousands spread across the country by the early eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: but the majority of those were still being used in
Speaker 1: industrial settings, and and you'd find the safety elevators in
Speaker 1: in coal mines or construction sites, but it was still
Speaker 1: pretty rare to see one in an office building or
Speaker 1: apartment complex. Yeah, the average person didn't come into contact
Speaker 1: with elevators all that often. And that finally starts to
Speaker 1: change in the eighteen seventies, though, is business owners begin
Speaker 1: adding elevators to their office buildings and and that's really
Speaker 1: what launched the invention into its next phase, where you
Speaker 1: start to see all the architectural and cultural impacts that
Speaker 1: elevators have had. Yeah, I mean, it's wild to think
Speaker 1: about how different the cities we know would look if
Speaker 1: it weren't for elevators, Like, no skyscrapers, high rise apartments,
Speaker 1: like all the buildings would just be a few stories tall.
Speaker 1: It's funny when you look back and realized that higher
Speaker 1: floors would you know, they used to be the least
Speaker 1: desirable spaces in a building. Like today we connect higher
Speaker 1: floors with a sense of luxury. They're more private, farther
Speaker 1: removed from the noise of the streets, you know, not
Speaker 1: to mention those birds eye view of the skyline. But
Speaker 1: before elevators made them more accessible, those top floors were
Speaker 1: seen as inconvenient like In fact, they were typically set
Speaker 1: aside for either low rent tenants or like the in
Speaker 1: house janitor, So how many stairs you had to climb
Speaker 1: to get to your apartment was really kind of a
Speaker 1: status signifier, like the fewer obviously the better, exactly, and
Speaker 1: and and so when elevators came along, not only did
Speaker 1: those higher floors get much more appealing and much more valuable,
Speaker 1: they also got much higher. So thanks to the advent
Speaker 1: of steel frame construction, and of course thanks to elevators,
Speaker 1: buildings could suddenly be built much taller than before. This
Speaker 1: basically meant that anyone who owned a building no longer
Speaker 1: need to fight for new land to develop on, like
Speaker 1: that's something that's always in short supply and cities. Instead
Speaker 1: they can simply build upwards new offices, hotel rooms, retail
Speaker 1: space like there's nothing but air above. So in a way,
Speaker 1: elevators literally shaped the cities we know today. I actually
Speaker 1: found this great quote from this guy named Patrick Karajat,
Speaker 1: and he's the founder of the Elevator Museum in New York.
Speaker 1: And according to him quote, if we didn't have elevators,
Speaker 1: we would have a megalopolis, one continuous city stretching from
Speaker 1: Philadelphia to Boston, because everything would be five or six
Speaker 1: stories tall. It's interesting to think about as this choice
Speaker 1: between a sprawling, horizontal city or is more densely clustered,
Speaker 1: vertical one. And it reminds me this cool Boston Globe
Speaker 1: article that talked about a kind of invisible war between
Speaker 1: elevators and cars that's been going on for the past
Speaker 1: century or so. So the ideas that you have these
Speaker 1: two new technologies that we're basically pushing us in two
Speaker 1: different directions. On the one side, you had cars, which
Speaker 1: allowed people to travel horizontally, and the other you had elevators,
Speaker 1: which of course move people vertically. And city planners had
Speaker 1: to choose which of these new technologies they were going
Speaker 1: to get behind, which you know, which one they were
Speaker 1: going to focus on developing their cities around. And if
Speaker 1: you looked up an American city during the last hundred years,
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious you know which one they picked, definitely.
Speaker 1: But it's not like cars were left by the wayside
Speaker 1: or any thing. Like elevators may have won the battle
Speaker 1: to shape cities, but cars are still the you know,
Speaker 1: transportation of choice, and suburbs where the sprawl is is
Speaker 1: much less of an issue. Yeah, I guess in the
Speaker 1: end it's it's sort of been a draw in that
Speaker 1: sense between those two. But all right, so We've seen
Speaker 1: how elevators have evolved over the years, and I feel
Speaker 1: like we should check out a few things about them
Speaker 1: that have actually stayed the same. Before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius and we're talking about the eccentricities of elevator etiquette. Right, Magoes,
Speaker 1: we talked about the elevator's effect on our architecture and
Speaker 1: daily routines. Now let's talk about how elevators affected the
Speaker 1: people who rode them, Because when you think about it,
Speaker 1: passenger elevators really created a new kind of social situation,
Speaker 1: like one that's strangely intimate yet impersonal at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's always a little bit weird to be in an
Speaker 1: elevator full of people, or even more weird to be
Speaker 1: with one person. But you know, this new dynamic raised
Speaker 1: all kinds of questions about what was proper behavior when
Speaker 1: riding an elevator. The one hot debate, for example, was
Speaker 1: whether a man should remove his hat while riding in
Speaker 1: an elevator with a woman. You know, I'm sure you
Speaker 1: think about this all the time and really worried about, like,
Speaker 1: should he take his hat off as he would in
Speaker 1: a restaurant or leave it on as he would, you know,
Speaker 1: on a train or a bus. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: lot to think about. I don't think I even realize
Speaker 1: you're supposed to leave your hat on on a bus,
Speaker 1: but yeah, leave it on. But it's interesting because restaurants
Speaker 1: and busses are both examples of public spaces, right, So
Speaker 1: for elevators, it was really more about whether they were
Speaker 1: a mode of transportation or just another room in the building,
Speaker 1: albeit a moving room. So it's kind of a tough
Speaker 1: call because both descriptions are technically a fit for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true, and I think that was really what through people,
Speaker 1: Like the elevator was a mode of transportation inside a building,
Speaker 1: So which set of rules do you follow now? Unlike
Speaker 1: riding a bus, riding an elevator brought unclear expectations for
Speaker 1: social interaction, Like even if you don't know the other passengers,
Speaker 1: you know that they live or work in the same
Speaker 1: building as you, and so there's this sense that you
Speaker 1: should at least acknowledge that in some way, whether by
Speaker 1: nodding or smiling or making small talk or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: But we never want to be the person to make
Speaker 1: that call, right, like everyone wants to wait for the
Speaker 1: other person to make the first move in those situations,
Speaker 1: so it always creates this I don't know, like anxiety
Speaker 1: or tension or something. No, I don't know. I usually
Speaker 1: just go ahead and get in and get everybody a
Speaker 1: hub and just get that out of the way exactly.
Speaker 1: And it feels like, now, more than a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years after their invention, we still haven't gotten over
Speaker 1: those feelings of of discomfort. It's like, despite all the
Speaker 1: advances in elevator design, the one thing we can't seem
Speaker 1: to resolve is is this inherent awkwardness of taking this
Speaker 1: short ride with other strangers. So I am curious if
Speaker 1: you know what causes that, like, like what makes it
Speaker 1: feel so awkward? Yeah, I was definitely curious about this.
Speaker 1: This was actually one of the first things we were
Speaker 1: looking into this week, and it turns out there are
Speaker 1: a few reasons. So one deals with something that international
Speaker 1: tourists here a lot, which is that we Americans love
Speaker 1: our personal space. So typically we like to keep at
Speaker 1: least in arm's length of distance between us and other people,
Speaker 1: and the elevator is one of the rare places where
Speaker 1: that's not always possible, and so that's you know, what
Speaker 1: brings on some of that awkwardness. Now, the other thing
Speaker 1: that was is a bit more universal, and that's that
Speaker 1: most of us are at least a little bit anxious
Speaker 1: of being trapped in a steel box, which may sound obvious,
Speaker 1: and and not only that you're dangling from the roof
Speaker 1: by by this cable. And that's despite the fact that
Speaker 1: elevators are actually super safe. In fact, they are one
Speaker 1: of the safest ways to travel period. So for example,
Speaker 1: about people die taking the stairs each year, which is
Speaker 1: just a really bizarre fact. But according to Consumer Watch,
Speaker 1: there are only about twenty seven elevator related deaths per
Speaker 1: year worldwide. Not gonna be honest, I wouldn't even know
Speaker 1: it was it was that much. And considering that elevators
Speaker 1: make roughly eighteen billion trips each year according to the
Speaker 1: l A Times, that works out to an exceptionally low
Speaker 1: fatality rate. It's about a point zero zero zero zero
Speaker 1: zero zero one five per trip. So you know, the
Speaker 1: awkwardness you feel in an elevator is very real, but
Speaker 1: the sense of danger not so much. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that definitely tracts with what I learned this week about
Speaker 1: the origin of elevator music. So I I always assumed
Speaker 1: that the music was there to calm people's nerves and
Speaker 1: make them less worried about going, you know, something going wrong.
Speaker 1: But according to elevator historians, of which there are actually
Speaker 1: a great many, I found out this week elevator music
Speaker 1: was really invented to help alleviate boredom and to fill
Speaker 1: that awkward silence that comes from riding a lift with strangers.
Speaker 1: I do kind of like the awkward silence. Was just assume, like,
Speaker 1: of course people will choose that over small talk with
Speaker 1: a stranger, you know, I know, and I guess building
Speaker 1: owners were like, we know, you aren't going to talk
Speaker 1: to each other. So here's some music to fill that
Speaker 1: void where where I guess the human interaction is supposed
Speaker 1: to go. It's too bad it doesn't doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: I mean reality, there is no escaping the awkward, or
Speaker 1: at least not until you hit the closed door button
Speaker 1: really quickly when you see a stranger coming, just to
Speaker 1: avoid the whole situation entirely. So here's the thing I
Speaker 1: learned about that. You know, it turns out that closing
Speaker 1: the elevator door on a stranger doesn't really work, and
Speaker 1: that's because the closed door button and most American elevators
Speaker 1: is ineffective. It actually, I guess, sort of makes sense.
Speaker 1: I always suspected that was the case. But is this
Speaker 1: by design or did the buttons just malfunction a lot,
Speaker 1: or like, what what's happening? It is by design, so
Speaker 1: the reason why is pretty interesting. Apparently, when the Americans
Speaker 1: with Disabilities Act was first passed, it included a list
Speaker 1: of requirements for elevators, and these are things like raised buttons,
Speaker 1: braille signs, and another requirement was that elevator doors had
Speaker 1: to remain open for at least three seconds, and that
Speaker 1: way someone with the disability would have enough time to
Speaker 1: get inside before the doors closed. Some manufacturers complied with
Speaker 1: the law by ensuring that the closed door buttons don't
Speaker 1: cut that time short, but others just want to step
Speaker 1: further and deactivated the button entirely just to cover their bases. Still,
Speaker 1: there are some exceptions to this. New York City has
Speaker 1: a law that requires that all elevators have to have
Speaker 1: a working closed door button, but the buttons are on
Speaker 1: a delay, so it kind of defeats the purpose. And
Speaker 1: of course other countries have their own laws about closed
Speaker 1: door buttons, so like all the ones in England are
Speaker 1: fully functional. For instance, it makes you wonder why our
Speaker 1: elevators even have these if they're all deactivated, Well why
Speaker 1: why bother with having them? Anyway, I think part of
Speaker 1: it is like a placebo effect, like how a button
Speaker 1: to mass just makes us feel a little bit more
Speaker 1: in control of the situation, especially where when we're in
Speaker 1: a rush or like, you know whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: elevators aren't the only place that we see this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So according to mental floss, uh and this
Speaker 1: is what they wrote, quote, buttons place that city crosswalks
Speaker 1: are often disabled, and the thermostats and many office buildings
Speaker 1: are rigged so that the temperatures can't be altered even
Speaker 1: if the numbers appeared to change. And it's a little annoying,
Speaker 1: but I can also, you know, see the logic. They're like,
Speaker 1: people can be pretty impatient and having this button to
Speaker 1: push does help pass the time, I guess, even if
Speaker 1: it's not actually doing anything. Yeah, I mean, who doesn't
Speaker 1: like pushing buttons? Well, there's at least one other good
Speaker 1: thing about elevator rides that I did want to mention,
Speaker 1: and strangely enough, it stems from that social awkwardness that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. But before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take one last quick break. Welcome back to part
Speaker 1: time Genius. So okay, well, so, so you piqued my
Speaker 1: interest before the break, and you've got to tell me
Speaker 1: what's the upside to an awkward encounter in an elevator. Well,
Speaker 1: in a word, the upside is serendipity. I mean that
Speaker 1: the nature of the experience encourages these these sort of
Speaker 1: chance developments, and sometimes they turn out to be really
Speaker 1: good ones. And you never quite know what will happen
Speaker 1: in an elevator. And so by being squeezed into this
Speaker 1: small space with a stranger, even for a brief moment,
Speaker 1: we're forced to think about and respond to somebody else's existence,
Speaker 1: and that's something we don't have to do very often
Speaker 1: outside of the elevator. Is that true, because it feels
Speaker 1: like I interact with strangers in public spaces all the time,
Speaker 1: like if I go to a restaurant or if I'm
Speaker 1: in a checkoutline. Well, that's true, but in those cases,
Speaker 1: the interactions are are pretty predetermined. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: like you know that you'll be interacting with a waiter
Speaker 1: or a cashier or whoever it may be, and you
Speaker 1: know what to expect when you do, Like you'll talk
Speaker 1: about food options or how much something caused. But apart
Speaker 1: from small, intentional encounters like that, most of us are
Speaker 1: actually pretty isolated in public spaces. You know, we're we're
Speaker 1: either in our cars or at our desk, or maybe
Speaker 1: you're out and about and you know, and you see people,
Speaker 1: but our eyes are sort of glued to our phone
Speaker 1: screens and all of that acts as a barrier between
Speaker 1: us and these unprescribed interactions. But in an elevator, all
Speaker 1: bets are off, Like you never know who's going to
Speaker 1: step in that box with you or what they might
Speaker 1: say or do when they're in there. And so that's
Speaker 1: a good thing, I mean, at least in theory that
Speaker 1: that uncertainty is probably where a good deal of the
Speaker 1: awkwardness stems from. But it's also the catalyst for some
Speaker 1: lucky breaks. So think about how many romantic comedies you've
Speaker 1: seen where somebody stumbles into their soul made in an elevator,
Speaker 1: or how many success stories started with an elevator pitch
Speaker 1: to a CEO who couldn't get away because it right
Speaker 1: there in this box with you, and it's called elevator exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, if that still doesn't convince you that
Speaker 1: the potential awkwardness is worth it, take it from science.
Speaker 1: So researchers have long looked to elevators for insight into
Speaker 1: all kinds of social behavior, like how smiling improves our
Speaker 1: willingness to stand near strangers, or how standing in the
Speaker 1: back is a power play because it lets you observe
Speaker 1: all the other passengers. So elevators or this fertile environment
Speaker 1: for experimentation, and that's exactly because they force us out
Speaker 1: of our comfort zones. That's really interesting. I have thought
Speaker 1: about like elevator experiments and like you know, the one
Speaker 1: where you're facing the opposite way or whatever, but I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that there's such a smart place to like,
Speaker 1: you know, investigate interactions. It does make me think, though,
Speaker 1: like you know, they're these new fangled elevators that with
Speaker 1: these new inventions, and and it makes you wonder about
Speaker 1: how society will interact after that. And why do you
Speaker 1: say that, Well, I don't know if you well, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've seen these. Actually there's this thing called destination dispatch,
Speaker 1: and it's basically a way to group together passengers who
Speaker 1: have similar destinations. It's not like the current system where
Speaker 1: you step into an elevator and then request the floor
Speaker 1: you want from inside the elevator. Instead, you select the
Speaker 1: floor outside from this touchscreen in the lobby, and then
Speaker 1: you're directed to an elevator car that's headed in your direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like we've seen these, you know, and and
Speaker 1: a lot of the sort of newer, fancier office buildings
Speaker 1: in New York these days. Yeah, cut Conny NaSTA is
Speaker 1: one example. But you know, the system is obviously meant
Speaker 1: to cut down on wasted time and energy, but from
Speaker 1: what you've been saying, like it sounds like it might
Speaker 1: cut down on that serendipity as well. If everyone is
Speaker 1: bound for the same floor, it's it's a lot less
Speaker 1: likely that a mail room clerk has that opportunity to
Speaker 1: bump into the executive who who you know, might implement
Speaker 1: or be influenced by their idea. I mean that is
Speaker 1: kind of a bummer, unless, of course, you're someone who
Speaker 1: is just tired of being accosted by mail clerks. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a big problem these days, Mega, But
Speaker 1: I don't want to give the impression that the elevator's
Speaker 1: best days are behind, and in fact, there are some
Speaker 1: new advancements that I'm actually looking forward to checking out myself,
Speaker 1: which feels strange to say about elevators, but but it's true.
Speaker 1: So just to think about some examples here. You know,
Speaker 1: a company in Germany has been working on a new
Speaker 1: kind of elevator that moves up and down the rails
Speaker 1: using this magnetic levitation system instead of cables. And so
Speaker 1: not only would this improve efficiency by allowing multiple cars
Speaker 1: to operate in the same shaft, since you know, they
Speaker 1: no longer need their own cables, it would also greatly
Speaker 1: reduce the amount of energy it takes to run them.
Speaker 1: And if none of that is a hook enough for you,
Speaker 1: consider this. A traditional elevator can only move up and
Speaker 1: down along the axis of its cable, but a mag
Speaker 1: lev elevator isn't restricted by cables, which means it can
Speaker 1: also move horizontally as well as vertically. So you could
Speaker 1: build this complete loop inside of building and even have
Speaker 1: elevators moved between shafts in order to find like the
Speaker 1: fastest route to where they needed to be that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: So it's basically like real world wonkovators. Yeah, pretty much,
Speaker 1: And it might still be a while before we can
Speaker 1: travel like Willy Wonka, but scientists are hard at work
Speaker 1: on it. I'm pretty sure of this. Well, I'm definitely
Speaker 1: looking forward to that one. But before we head out,
Speaker 1: why don't we do the fact off? So, did you
Speaker 1: know it's illegal to p and an elevator in Singapore?
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume it's illegal to pe in an
Speaker 1: elevator in in Singapore. Yeah, okay, well you're you're pretty smart,
Speaker 1: I know, but everybody might not know that. But there's
Speaker 1: more to it. So elevators there come equipped with a
Speaker 1: urine detection device, so they're taking this to another level.
Speaker 1: So no pun intended there. So if you do p,
Speaker 1: it sets off an alarm and the doors slam shut
Speaker 1: and then you just have to wait there and shame
Speaker 1: until the police arrive to ticket you. I've got to
Speaker 1: be honest, like, I know they go overboard with a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but I do actually kind of find
Speaker 1: this amazing. I really hope they come up with a
Speaker 1: contraption to do that at their pools too, Like all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it's like in all the water drains
Speaker 1: out and then you're just standing there speaking of bathrooms.
Speaker 1: Did you know that Japan is actually considering putting toilets
Speaker 1: and running water in their elevators. While that sounds like
Speaker 1: an unnecessary luxury, there's actually a reason for it. The
Speaker 1: country has a ton of earthquakes and when that happens,
Speaker 1: the elevators just get stuck. So it's to offer a
Speaker 1: little bit of relief and dignity and those like hours
Speaker 1: that you might be stuck in an elevator. That actually,
Speaker 1: when you first said it, it was confusing, But you
Speaker 1: know what, that that actually does make a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: and that's that's thoughtful to do that, all right. So
Speaker 1: here's one I I love. So during the French Resistance,
Speaker 1: the French severed the cables to the Eiffel Tower elevator
Speaker 1: so that Hitler wouldn't take a photo op at the
Speaker 1: top of it. Apparently the idea of climbing over stairs
Speaker 1: was just enough to keep him away. That's crazy. Do
Speaker 1: you know. There's a subculture of elevator enthusiasts and it
Speaker 1: is really really sweet. It's often people on the autism
Speaker 1: spectrum and they bond over their love of elevators. So
Speaker 1: they filmed the buttons. They capture how the motor sound
Speaker 1: and were They document their rides on pretty normal elevators
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's near rated and sometimes it isn't. But
Speaker 1: Slate did an article on this and the author wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: while I've never found my journeys in real life elevators
Speaker 1: to be particularly therapeutic, I find these videos very soothing.
Speaker 1: I could see that. That's pretty neat. All right, So
Speaker 1: you've heard of the Burj Khalifa. You know that's a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty stories, like eight hundred and thirty meters tall.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that's the first time I've ever measured
Speaker 1: something in meters, but I've ever had to convert that.
Speaker 1: So what We'll let Charles or one of the listeners
Speaker 1: waigh in and give us that fact. So all right,
Speaker 1: so get this. Apparently it's so tall that you can
Speaker 1: watch the same sunset or sun rise in the same day,
Speaker 1: like you watch it from the ground, and then you
Speaker 1: take their super fast elevator to the top of the
Speaker 1: building and you can actually catch it again. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that is unbelievable. Do you remember when we went to
Speaker 1: go see that eclipse in Nashville. Yeah, of course. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking like I wasn't that interested in the phenomena,
Speaker 1: and then I saw it. It It was so beautiful, and
Speaker 1: I like immediately wanted jet forward and see it again.
Speaker 1: You know, like I feel like that that kind of
Speaker 1: has that same feel. Oh, totally. That's a great fact.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you today's trophy, you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: take it. I feel like it's been a little while,
Speaker 1: so this this feel is really good. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks to all of our listeners out there for tuning in.
Speaker 1: We know how hard it is to be stuck in
Speaker 1: your home, so thank you for inviting us in with you.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it for today's Part Time Genius for myself, Mango,
Speaker 1: Gabe and Lull. Take care. We'll be back soon with
Speaker 1: another episode. Part Time Genius is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite show.