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