Born Under the Caul

We'll get into sort of the etymology of it later, but yeah, if you're unfamiliar with these, where we'll get we'll give you a sort of primer on what a birth call is. We'll talk about the etymology of them, and we'll also get into the superstitions around them, which are interesting for for thousands of years, humans have had superstitions about what birth calls do in almost every culture. Yeah, I mean you might on the surface of things mistaken for like like a cape and cowl and think that

the child is born batman or something about it. Right. In fact, I posted uh an image from a nine article that we researched for this for this particular episode, and I put it on our Facebook page. And it basically looks like like their version of what a birth call looks like. It is like a little kid going out as a ghost for Halloween. Like they drew like a baby with like it looks just like a sheet

over their head. Yeah, like if you made a ghost cough tumb out of you know, embryonic membrane, that's what there you go. So, so that was a little bit of a peek ahead of what we're gonna get into. So so you're you're probably listening and going, alright, guys, what is it? Tell me what a birth call is if you're unfamiliar with it. Basically, it is when a baby is born and a piece of the amniotic sac is still attached to the newborn's head or face when

it's born. Looks kind of like a filmy membrane. In some cases, some people have described it as looking like a glass helmet. Uh. And Um, Basically, what happens is, either during just station or the birthing process, part of the amniotics act that we're all born within breaks away and is attached to your head. Uh. And so you're wondering,

why haven't I heard of these before? Well, that's probably because one in every eighty thousand babies is born with one and they're usually either because of c sections or Another thing that I read that I wasn't able to back up with any sources was that um mothers who give birth in the water tend to have a birth call babies or or babies that are born on call, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Yeah, I was. I was not familiar with this at all, just because

they don't. I don't think anyone in my immediate family has dealt with this. Uh and any and I say, dealt with it like it's for the most part, it's not a serious issue. It's more of a curiosity of all the things that can occur with a birth. The birth call is is pretty mundane. Yeah, And in fact, there you know, in a lot of cases people talk about it as being a very wonderful thing, that it's sort of awe inspiring for a baby like born with this.

When I first went into it, and that there are a lot of superstitions, I thought, whether they're all going to be weird and kind of dark. It's like most of them are kind of beneficial or neither here nor there. Yeah, it depends they're all interesting on the color of the birth call, which we'll get to later. But uh yeah, So just to clarify, you know, if you're thinking about having kids, or or you're a pregnant woman right now listening to the show, you may be worrying about birth

calls all of a sudden, don't. Uh. The only thing that happens with them is that they can potentially interfere with an infants respiration when you know, when it's firstborn, just because you know, they've got this filmy membrane over the face. It's like landing in a parachute, in a parachute landing on top of you. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, And so a doctor basically quickly removes this, and you

know you can keep it. Most modern patients, I don't think do, but we'll talk about all the superstitions around and keeping it and all the various things you could do with it. Um. But yeah, they're they're totally natural, but they're rare, these kinds of births. Before we get into sort of the biology science behind, I do want to add a disclaimer, which is that I am a man and I have read about this stuff, but I don't have any firsthand experience with it. I've never given

birth to a baby. My wife has never had a baby, and I've never been in the delivery room when a baby is born. So talking about amniotic sacks and all the things that it does in the fluid within it. You know this book learning right here people, Yeah, yeah, that's same here. So and certainly, as always, we would love to hear from anyone who has direct experience with this, uh,

with this topic. If you were born with an un call, or if you know anybody who was, or if you have a child that was born uh with a call over them and then let us know about it. Yeah, definitely. I think maybe it was earlier this year there was a baby born in California I think that was born on call and the photos of it went viral. I mean they were all over Facebook and tutter within hours

of this baby being born. Uh So, Okay, what's an amniotic sacksom if you're saying that's what I said, because I was like, birth call, Okay, it's an amniotic schact. And then I went, wait, I don't really know what that is either. Although I spent you know, a good part of the origin of my life and one. Uh. It's an opaque bubble that covers all babies within a womb after conception, and it fills up with a fluid

as the baby grows within. And this fluid is sort of you know, it's amniotic fluid, which we've we've all heard of before, but it also includes a little bit of the baby's urine. Is what happens is the baby sort of drinks in the amniotic fluid, uh and then peas it back out into this bag. So it's a p bag filled with amniotic fluid as well. It's it's a mixture. It's not all p uh, and it's good for us though. It has all kinds of benefits for

us while we're being born. And the first thing that made me think of sci fi was, as as we tend to do on this show was remember that movie The Abyss, Yes, where they had where they had the breathable, pink ambionic fluid us to be able to dive at

hyper exactly. Yeah. And I think there's some line in the movie like, well, you breathe this way for the first nine months of your life or whatever, so you're you know, you're just swimming around in this bag of liquid but you're able to breathe within it, and you also have the umbilical cord as well. Um, but yeah, it helps with all kinds of things. It helps develop our digestion system, the actual act of drinking it and passing it. Uh, there's some help with respiratory track secretions

that come out. Uh. There's also the idea that amniotic fluid. You know, it's it's not just like sitting there in a bag. It's constantly produced and renewed. So the baby swallows it, it passes it back out, and then it also emits some of it through the umbilical cord as well. So okay, from what I read, uh, there are two sections of these amniotic sacks. One is called the fore waters, and that's of course the part that's in front of the baby's head, and the hind waters are the part

that's behind the baby's head. Uh. And you know, again like there's a lot of benefits to these sacks. The fluid helps the lungs to develop. It also provides lubrication. So you know, um, whenever we hear the terminology, you know, my water broke or breaking water or whatever, what's actually breaking is the amniotic sack and the amniotic fluid rushing forth. So it provides lubrication for the baby during pregnancy, which kind of allows it to move around inside of this thing.

But it also provides lubrication to facilitate the birth. Okay, so it's kind of like a slipping slide and that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I I don't know why we haven't invented like some kind of toy for children that you know, brings us all back to that magical time when we're inside our mother's sphere. You climb inside off you just fill it with olive oil. I don't know, but uh um. So yeah, there's a lot of biological reasons for the

amniotic sacs. So again I want to, you know, encourage you all to or rather discourage you from thinking that this is a bad thing if it comes out on your baby when it's born. It's also a shock absorber. So you remember that science project that you did in high school. I did this at least, where like you're giving an egg and you have to have to drop it off the top of a building without it breaking.

I think that this is sort of nature's version of that, right, So the amniotic sack absorbs the shock from just the mother's daily movements, so that we're not you know, hurt while we're while we're inside. Uh. And there's some talk that it might protect against infection as well, though I

was reading some sources that said that that's not totally verified. Um, I'd be curious if anybody else out there has information about this, if if there's some hard sources that we could look to about how the amniotic sack and amniotic fluid may protect us from infection while we're while we're still you know, within our mothers during pregnancy. But yeah, but like you said that, the rupturing of this sack is generally the that's the the start starter pistol for

the praction, Yeah, exactly. And and another so my understanding as well is that if this hasn't happened for a woman who is pregnant and is due, then sometimes doctors will manually rupture the sack. They actually showed this little device, this like prong kind of thing that they used to do it, and the ideas that it's supposed to either start or speed up labor, you know, begetting the whole process going. There's it's referred to as artificial rupture of

membranes or a r M for short. Arm uh. Some of the stuff that we read about for this episode about birth calls came from a really interesting site by a midwife whose name is Rachel Reid, and she does a very thorough examination of birth calls, how they work, and sort of the history behind them. She's had experience with them. In fact, there's a there's a photo on this blog post of her friend, I think her name was Holly maybe giving birth to a child in a

birth call. Okay, and we'll be fue to link to that on the landing page for this episode is stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah, And the reason why I mentioned it is that Rachel Reid recommends that women who are pregnant and think that they might want an artificial rupture of membranes, that they should be fully

informed of the risks of this beforehand. And so we're talking about birth calls today, we're not talking about artificial rupture of membranes, but you know, that's something you might want to look into if if it's a concern of yours. So, okay, now we know what an amniotic sac is, we know what this film is. That's on top of the baby's head when they have a birth call and they're born. But where these where to name like birth call come from. Yeah, when we get into the etymology of it um, we

see various terms for it um. Some cups called being born with a veil, land scanned water cap, lucky cat, silly hood, that's my favorite one. Oh wait, no, the next one is my favorite one, silly how or lucky cape, child's little net virgins shift. And then there's little shirt. It's just a little shirt. You're just born with this little amniotic shirt. And I think these names tend to underlie the you know, the the the the harmless nature

of the birth call. You would not be calling it the silly the silly hood if there was any real danger to it um. Apparently on the the the British TV show called The Midwife, which takes place in the nineteen fifties, apparently they referred to them as mermaid babies on there, and apparently is a name that was thrown around back in the day as well, which ties into

some of the nautical superstitions that will discuss. Yeah, and and one of my favorite expressions, which you could only get from Scotland is Uh, a baby with a birth call was road in his mother's sark tail. Oh wow, I can't even I don't even understand that. Nope, but it sounds filthy. I'll take it. Uh. The actual etymology is that it comes from the Latin word put jalitium. I'm not a Latin scholar, but that's how it looks

to me, which means head helmet. So again, I'm getting back to this idea that it looks kind of like a glass helmet, like a little a little motorcycle helmet. That's maybe that's what they should call it now, it's a lucky lucky motorcycle helmet. There's another idea out there that the word itself um is something of a synonym for amnion. Okay, so call, in addition, could mean a net, the web of a spider, the base of a wig, a woman's cap um, in any of several anatomical investing layers.

So while it's rare, obviously, they've been happening for long enough and often enough that we've been able to come up with dozens of nicknames for them. This is not like an abnormality that you know, is just unheard of.

And then there's an even more rare and sense of this where you know, a birth call is when you're born with the with the the part of the sack on your head, but you can actually be born what's called an uncalled birth, which sounds like I'm saying on call as if like you know, you're you're being called into the off from the hospital. It's E N C

A U L birth. Uh. And these are again even more rare, but it's when you when a baby emerges fully inside of the amnio, comes out once or at least it might be piers but it's still more or less intact around exactly. Yeah. And the idea here is I believe that this happens in premature births a lot because again, like because the water itself hasn't broken, the

baby is born a little early. And uh, there's like I mentioned earlier, there's c sections and and babies that are born in the water too, so so the actual you know, process of birth thing doesn't have the opportunity to rupture that sack. And again, like the birth call, it's not dangerous to be born this way. In fact, here's a little here's a little fun note for you. Uh, celebrity Jessica Alba, her second child was born on call. Uh and uh apparently this was something that was talked

about in celebrity magazines at the time. Uh. She and her husband named their daughter Haven because they said she was born in her little safe haven. That's I suppose it's better than calling her a little shirt. I'm surprised we haven't seen any and maybe we have, and people can tell us about them. Any fictional characters, fantastic characters who are born in on call and remain on call, like like impossibly, the call grows with them and they

remains like a boy in a bubble kind of thing. Yeah, like a cross between boy and a bubble and a guild navigator, you know. Yeah, yeah, Well, I'm also I thought you were going to go in a different different direction with it is that, you know, it seems to be, as we're about to get into with the superstitions, it seems to be this sort of common trope of the

chosen One. It seems like would be the perfect thing to add to it, right, Like Harry Potter was born with a birth call and it was shaped like lightning. Oh yeah, I mean there are in some accounts some accounts say that Julius Caesar was born, you know, in addition to of course being born by sincerean section. Charles Dickens I was supposedly born little birth call or I can't recall it. I can't recall if he was born

on call or nearly with a birth call. But well, the one this is where I first heard about this is Alan Moore, who many of you know as a famous comic book writer. He's known for writing Watchman, Swamp Thing, be for Vendetta, Leave of Extraordinary Gentleman. There's hundreds of things that he's written. He's also a novelist. Uh. He did a performance art piece I believe it was in like the late nineties about birth. It was a piece called the Birth Call, and it was about a lot

of things. But it starts off with his mother dying and he finds that she's kept her birth call her whole life. Uh. And that's where I first heard about it. I had never, you know, known that this was even a thing until I heard this Alan Moore piece before. And I'll try to provide, Like I believe that they recorded it as a c D and it used to be available, but I don't think you can buy it anymore, but there might be a link out there somewhere. I'll try to try to link to so people can hear

this piece. Uh. And and it was actually adapted into a comic book later on as well, which I brought in and we can take a look at. But for the most part, it doesn't really show birth calls in any kind of way. It's just Alan Moore's poetic interpretation of the superstitions that we're about to go on. Okay, well, hopefully we can we can find something about that and link to it on the landing, that would be excellent.

Uh So, before we get Toto the superstitions, I just want to cite this one particular source that was great for this, and it's it's old. Uh. It's by this guy named T. R. Forbes, and he wrote it in nineteen fifty three in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. But me and is it a thorough examination of all of the superstitions. This is like pages of just every possible superstition about birth calls that he was able to find,

very well backed up. The article is called the Social History of the Call c A U L And Uh it's pretty readily available online. I found it, uh I believe it was in like a medical database, and I downloaded a PDF of it right away, so I think anybody can access it. Yeah, and I also found some interesting ones in the Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore and the Occult Sciences of the World by Coral Land Daniels and

Sam stevens Now. In both of these, I do have to admit that we did not find as many Asian and African cultural examples as we would applied. So that's another call out to listeners. It's like, if you if you know some good takes on the birth call in uh in an Asian or African culture or any or any culture that we don't cover here, we would love to hear about it. Yeah. I have to admit like

that these sources were fairly eurocentric. I think there's a couple that are in South America maybe, but for the most part, it's, you know, as would be expected from an academic in the nineteen fifties, it's fairly eurocenter. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we will dive into some of these superstitions and if we have time, we'll do a little listener mail. All right, we're back, So let's dive into these superstitions. Okay, Like

I said, they're often believed to be something special. There's a general understanding of it being considered to be something that represents good luck when you're born with a call. The first you know quote we'll work with here is that the beneficent effect of the call was sometimes regarded as extending to the offspring of the original owner. But according to the superstition of the Middle Ages and later, this effect would be lost if the call were in

a way or sold outside of the family. So in this instance, this is sort of along the lines of I think what Alan Moore was probably referencing in his piece was that people would keep one of these and then they would pass it down from generation to generation. So like if your grandmother had been born with a call, you would at some point inherit the call and subsequently

inherit the good luck of it. Okay uh. There was an idea that Roman midwives used to steal these from babies that were born and sell them to lawyers because lawyers believed that they had one of these, it would help them win a case and generally these who are you know, they're not wearing them on their heads, so I don't want to know. But there are some I don't know, not in that particular example, but there's some

weird stuff people did with these. So for instance, like, uh, some cultures would take them and grind them down in a powder that you would consume, and they thought that I would cure malaria. Okay, well that's that's believable. You do see in in various cultures degrees of cannibalism, cannibalistic medicine and yeah, uh, in Croatia, in one region of Croatia, Uh, there was a historical superstition of placing a call under a dying person's bed because the idea was that it

would help make their passing go either. Again, it's it's a protective element, and it worked for the newborn baby, then perhaps it will help the dying individual as well. And some people I believe that More talks about this in his in his piece. But uh, some people would go and bury them in field sort of outside of

where the baby was born. And the idea was that if it was buried in the field that you could you know, it would give luck to this person's life as they grew up within that area, you know, they're it's always close by. There's one note that said that coal miners carried them off to carried them with them to ward off fires. So there's an interesting thing here, the idea that birth calls are sort of elemental in their nature, and there's a sort of water or affect

to them, right, they ward off fires. And as we'll we'll get into as well. They they they were also believed to make their bearers immune to drowning for the rest of their lives. And thus the mermaids hood example, Yeah, exactly, and and in fact midwives, you know, when they weren't stealing them and selling to the lawyers, other midwives would drive them out and sell them to sailors. And the idea was that this was a talisman that a sailor would keep with them that would, you know, prevent them

from drowning if they fell off the ship. There's another history, at least within Forbes study, that there are many instances in many different cultures of birth calls being used in so called love potions. Um. In fact, there there's a sort of you know, if you've listened to our episode on grimoire. There's a historical text called Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy That sounds like a great album. Uh, but the idea was that, uh, the whole approachan formula was the

dust of a dove's heart. That's a new one. I've never seen that one. It seems like it would be difficult to get, but I don't know. Maybe there's a particular way to catching doves I'm unfamiliar with. You would also need to get the rope from with which a man was hanged. Nice use of crossroads death. You can see that employed the tongue of a viper. And then this is how they referred to a birth call the cloak with which infants are wrapped when they are born.

So I mean, if it's common enough that you know, in this medieval grimoire on potion making, it would be referenced as such, you know, one and eighty thousand, Maybe isn't as small rare of an occasion as well, and it's standing out in people's memory and becoming a part of the folklore, so it resonates. Then there's one more here that I thought was particularly interesting, and I'm just going to read a direct quote from Forbes on this

one to to give you the maximum effect. In Denmark, it was thought that if a woman crept under a full call stretched on sticks, she would have a painless labor, but as a penalty, her sons would become werewolves and her daughters would become nighthags. So that's a that's an interesting mix of mythology and superstition there um. So yeah,

I think that might come up later as well. But there's also seems to be like a just an ongoing thing about horse birth calls, uh, and like the various effects that they have and things that they can be used for. Yeah, I do want to point out in culinary circles you'll sometimes see call, particularly like pork call used, but it's not actual birth call. It's actually part of like an intestinal lining or something. Ok Uh. Here's there

a few others that I ran across. In El Salvador, a child born with a call will be the victim of restless spirits until the nurse boils the call on the ninth day and the child drinks the broth. So this is the consumption aspect. Yeah, and also one of the rare kind of negative call uh myths. Out there.

In Guiana, a child's call can be stored away in a pantry or closet to bring good luck to the house, and then another one from Ghana to up to prevent a baby seeing ghosts, tie a red string around its neck and hang it to a bag containing the call of another baby of the opposite sex. That's great, Uh. I like the idea that that that you know, a baby seeing goes just so often, and you know that's that's what's wrong with the baby. That you've got to go fish out one of these bird calls and use

it tied around its neck. Here a couple of them. Scotland. Uh. In Scotland, the call was called the virgin's vest or the fortunate hood, and was the object of veneration. If you threw it away, sickness or death would come for the child and the young mother would be taken away by the fairy folk. And the only way to recover it is the husband would have to watch the years yearly writing uh and if I am, if I'm understanding

is correctly. This is a Scottish tradition in border towns involves running around on horses and throw the wedding gown after the woman as her is her wraith rides past. Now, well that's what happens when your roade in your mother's stark tail. Yes, uh, and I would I would love to hear from some Scotts on mult with the folklore.

Maybe they can clarify some of this. It definitely seemed to me and maybe this is why we found the research to be so eurocentric that Great Britain in general seemed to be where the wealth of superstition and mythology surrounding birth calls came from. Yeah, but but again it does make me wonder, like how you know, I think I probably I'm imagining a lot of the stuff elsewhere in the world is gonna be very similar. Probably, but there there's there's probably some some wild stuff out there too.

The Scots also believed that a crisp call meant meant good health. But if you were born with a moist, flabby one more than that could that could be bad. That seems very odd to me because wouldn't use again, not a woman I've never given birth, but I would assume that they're all moist and then what they do, and you know they're filled with fluid. I I would think it would be the opposite if you've had a crisp call when you're born. So I'm not sure about

that one. That one sounds a little a little suspect. Well, it's interesting, you know, like you said, there aren't a whole lot of examples of bad calls or bad luck surrounding them, other than you know, like some some of the things like if you throw it away or you know,

you do something wrong with this good luck charm. But there there was a a book from fifteen fifty nine that was called Day Miraculous Nature a So I'm assuming that's The Miracles of Nature, uh, that basically had a whole section about different colors of calls and the effects that they would have. One passage from this book said of the helmets of children newly born, or of the thin and soft call, where with the faces covered as with a wizard, or covering when they come first into

the world. So the idea here was that you know that they're again talking about the glass helmet, the helmet of children kind of thing. But if this helmet was black, uh, then it was basically predicting that they would have this child would have accidents or misfortune throughout their life they

might be haunted by evil spirits. And the only way that they could get rid of this is again coming back to the consumption thing, they had to break the call up, put it into a drink, and uh, you know, essentially then only then that the call would no longer be able to hurt the child. Well, I could see where if you were born with a dark call, you would kind of look like, um, like a baby cobra commander.

You know, yeah, it looked I saw some pictures and and it did look a little uh um, like something out of a science fiction movie, not something that would happen in nature. Uh. There this I did not see pictures of, although you know, given the circumstances, I wouldn't be surprised if it appeared such. But there was an idea that if the call was read, or if in particular it clings to the crown of the head, so it's specifically on the crown, the child would be expected

to eventually achieve great success. So I'm not sure where that comes from, but maybe the the idea is that it's like a little baby crown or something. Uh. And then there is there was actually a whole kind of I guess occult mythology surrounding the practice of foretelling the future by looking at a baby's call inspecting it. And I'm not sure if I'm going to pronounce this right, but I believe it's iineomancy something like that. So one

of your your less understood manage. Yeah, this is like an elective at Hogwarts ieomancy, like you don't have to take it to graduate. Uh. And then if it was white, which again I'm not quite sure how that would happen, that would bring good fortune. Um, but if you are born with just like a pure white call, that seems suspect as well. All right, so they have at birth calls. You know, we're doing pretty uh pretty well on time. Right now, let's call the robot over here and do

a little listener mail. Carney. A lot of people were confused last time when we when we let them know that that Arnie had become Carney. Yeah, it's I mean, it was confusing for Carney. It was confusing for it was confusing for me. But you know, it's a new age. Hey. We received us some some cool feedback from a number of you about our episode on Old Buckminster Fuller, including uh, listener Hugh wrote in on Facebook and has sent us sent us some photographs that he actually took of Buckminster

in real life. Those are pretty cool. We also heard from listener Beverly. Beverly rode in and said, I just finished listening to the Bucky Fuller episode. When he said that his lectures were ten hours long, I could believe it. He was the speaker at my high school graduation in nineteen seventy one. I can't tell you what he talked about, but I can Yeah, my Anian speakers in my graduations have been the It's true that it's not really a al Gore was a speaker at my undergraduate graduation, and

that was right when he was running for president. I don't remember a thing about it. It's not a time when most of us have have patients for oldman talking at us. But she continues, says, I can't tell you what he talked about, but I can't tell you that it was hot, and he talked on and on to the point that people in the audience walked out until he was done. I don't believe he had any impact on the length of his speech. Yeah, that sounds about

right for him. We also heard from uh Tatiana, Tadiana wrote in and said, northern California is lousy with geodesic domes. I once had the experience of house sitting for a friend who lived in one. After that, I went to live in a very well built wooden yurt with walls that slanted outward. I noticed the difference in the way

the two spaces affected me. Both were small structures. The dome curved in around me and felt claustrophobic, while the yurt, with its outslanting walls and cone shaped stealing, felt like the perfect shape for a human habitation. Huh, birth call birth call is ark a texture there you synchronicity too, widest at arm level, and completely comfortable in that subtle sense in which structures affect our psychology. Both types of

structures impose insurmountable challenges. Where a generic furniture is concerned, the only solution is to build custom couverard sinks, bed frames, and storage. I build a lemon shaped bed platform into the curving parameter of my yurt, and the various angles for sitting helped bring versatility to the tiny space. I lived there alone for free, and those were some of my most creative days, I drew, played sacks and wrote songs. I believe that housing is a human right in our

society needs to embrace innovation and housing solutions. While Bucky championed the promise of technological advances, modern pioneers are building beautiful, durable, efficient, and low cost structures out of all natural materials, using various combinations of clay, dug straight out of the ground, straw, gravel, and some would that can usually be locally sourced. Well, given what we read about Bucky, I wouldn't be surprised if he would agree with you as housing being a

human right. I mean, I don't think he outright said that, but that seemed to be you know, remember, he had this goal of changing humanity for the better, and he saw it as his purpose to do so by affecting basically how we live, like the structures within which we live. So it would make sense to me that he would sort of lean towards that philosophy as well, especially since we found out that so many of those domes were theorized to be used for you know, shelters for during

wartime or natural disasters. Yeah, am I remembering this correctly? Or in Napoleon Dynamite the film does uh does a Dynamite live in a Judesic Dome? I don't think so. It's been a long time since I've seen that. I thought he lived in like maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but now I'm thinking he lived in like a collection of trailers connected together. I don't know, but it definitely wasn't like a traditional style home. I might have a

confused with another another film. All right, well, here's one more. This is from listener Andrew. I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but basically, we u we were We're curious if Dimaxion was copyrighted, and so Andrew looked into it and he said during the episode, you wondered whether the name Taxon was copyrighted, and also spoke about copyright and patents regarding the Judesic Dome and that the first people

to get the copyright office gets rights. Um. I hate to gnetpick, but as someone who teaches intellectual property law, I think it's important to use these terms correctly because misuse just perpetrates the fairly widespread confusion and misunderstanding about the purposes of various forms of intellectual property and how they work. First, if there is any exclusive lot right to the use of the word dymaxion, it would be found under trademark law. Single words and short phrases are

not protected by copyright or patent law. Additionally, at least in the U S, a trademark must be continually in continuous use in association with the sale of goods or services to maintain trademark rights. If a trademark owner ceases to use a trade mark in commerce, he will quickly lose any rights to keep others from amusing the mark. The Trademark Office at the United States Patent and Trademark

Office issues trademark registrations. Although registration is not necessarily for protection, the first person to use a trademark in association with particular goods or services claims the exclusive right to use that trademark. Copyright protects creative expressive works, but does not protect the ideas contained within those works. Things like books, drawings, photographs, audio, and or visual works are protected by copyright in most countries,

including the US. One receives copyright protection once a work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Registration is optional, but useful for enforcing one's copyright copyright rights. Back when Bucky was doing his thing, registration was generally required for protection, but copyright has never protected ideas or inventions, whether registered or not. All of Bucky's books are still protected by copyright, which lasts for as long as the author's life plus

seventy five years. And of course I believe that in this an area where you continue to see varying able will push back from major copyright holders. Well, this definitely seems like an instance where this is his bread and butter, and he's certainly knows it better than we do. I would just add, from my experience in the past with dealing with issues surrounding copyright and fair use and things like that, that I would just say I'm not a lawyer,

and that that's what I was always taught. I'm not a lawyer, So you should consult one if you really want to know the answer to these things. It sounds like he might be a lawyer. He said he works with U copyright and fair use. Well, he he teaches intellectual property law. Okay, even better, yeah, yeah, he continues. He says, as you noted, Bucky had a number of patents. Patents are very different from trademarks and copyrights in a

number of respects. Patents protect human made inventions, including things like machines, compositions of matter, or processes. Whereas trademarks and copyrights do not depend on registration status, patent rights are completely dependent on registration. One has no patent rights unless until one successfully registers one invention with the Patent Office. While filing and receiving a patent, registration is necessary for patent protection. An invention must be new for it to

be granted patent protection. In other words, if someone invents and sells their invention but doesn't seek a patent for it, then another person cannot take that invention and patentent. No patent would be granted because it is not new. I don't know the details of Buckey's doodesic dome patent or what similar technology existed at the time, but it is likely that Bucky's invention was different enough from any existing

technology to warrant a patent. If the guidesic dome is described in the patent was not new, then Bucky would not have been allowed to get a patent for it under the rules at the time. When Bucky filed the patent, it would not have mattered if Bucky filed before another inventor. If the other inventor invented the guidesic dome as described in the patent before Bucky did, then Bucky would have been barred from receiving a patent on it, no matter

when he filed his application. The US now has a first file system, but it is still true that an invention must be new or novel for the inventor to get a patent, with some very limited grace period situations. Yeah, and if I remember correctly, I believe the person who was claiming that they had invented it before him was German. Maybe definitely, I think. Finally, Andy adds on another Bucky related note. Back in the eighties, I knew someone who

lived in a geodesic dome. He lived alone, and I don't think he had the privacy noise issues that you talked about. I also don't remember him complaining about it being leaky. Maybe the construction design and or materials had improved over the years. I love your podcast, Keep up

the great work. Yeah, that's certainly possible as well. The notes during that episode that we were reading from about the leakage within the geodesic dome were from around the time when Bucky himself was building them, So I suppose it's possible that there's some more modern ones out there that are using different textiles or something make them less leaky. Yeah, yeah, I know. Certainly. If anyone else out there has has experience with the gudesic domes and life with in a

judifent dome, we would love to hear from you. And thanks for our listeners who wrote in with those varying details about domes and Bucky and patents. Yeah. So, if you have information about that, or you have some stuff for us about birth calls, maybe a superstition from your family, or maybe a story about your family member or yourself being born with one or born being born in the

amniotics at itself, let us know about it. You can write to us on Facebook or Twitter or tumbler where we're Blow the Mind on all of those platforms, Yes, and be sure to head on over to steppable your mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we'll find all the blog posts, all the podcast episodes, videos and links out of those social media accounts, and you can always reach us via email at blow the mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and

thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com