Hey, everybody, Chuck here in twenty twenty three, but I'm gonna hop us all in the wayback machine and take us back to December twenty eighteen to listen to our episode on geodesic domes, because this ties into the live show that we did last year all about the biosphere to project. The geodesic dome figured in very prominently in that project. We talk all about Buckminster Fuller in this episode, who also figured into that live podcast. And check it
out now. If you're into architecture or just cool things, listen to Geodesic Domes colon the Wave of the Future that.
Wasn't Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm British Josh, there's American Chuck, and there's neutral Swisserland Jerry, which, by the way, now we're saying Swisserland, Switzerland just decided because it's close to the end of the year and I'm about to die of exhaustion.
I love it.
On the Friendly Fire Movie podcast, Ben Harrison, you know Ben, he says, Nazzis.
Yeah, Nazis. That's like kind of like a throwback.
That's like the greatest generation.
Why I'm saying yeah, And I know he does it as an affectation, sure, but now I got it from him, and he got it from God elsewhere, his great grandpa maybe nazzis.
Yeah, that's a pretty great.
Way to see because there's a lot of occasion to say the word Nazi.
Sure a lot.
Hell you mentioned this, uh and why did you say you were British?
Because I chuck 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, I'm right, or in America geodesic and I said, we're bout. But then she didn't say though it was British, it could be like whatever South African.
Oh, I guess, like, well africanor's not English.
Well, yeah, you know what I mean.
We're so far off course already. Jerry's just got Ramen coming through her nose. She thought that was so funny. Thanks for the laugh, Jerry. Well, we are talking about geodesic desk. Maybe we should just say that every time say them both.
I'm sure people would love that.
I'm going to say geodesic because that's what I've always said.
Okay, great, I'm gonna say geodesic.
That's fine. We're talking about domes, geodesic domes. And 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 dome. If you've ever been to Epcot, sure you was a kid, you've seen a geodesic dome. 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 yung.
I'm you know what I mean when reading and researching and like, they're cool and there are a lot of great advantages. Right then that will go over, But uh, I just don't care for them right Aesthetically.
I don't either. And actually, if you if you read a quote from Buckminster Fuller, the guy who actually didn't invent geodesic domes, we'll get into all that anyway. He said, one of the reasons they never took off is because they're weird looking.
Yeah, they just are, and and well I'm not going to say that.
I really tell me later.
Okay, Yeah, I just don't care for him. You know.
It's like, I'm a craftsman, California craftsman bungalow type guy, which is about the opposite of a geodesic dome.
It's pretty angular, for sure. Yeah, 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. 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, like a mid century modern.
That's my thing.
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 in like the mid fifties, early sixties. I love it that has all little cool details and built ins in a wall that doesn't even really need to be there. You can see right through it because it's like wood spindles and stuff. That's what I like.
Yeah, me too.
Not ultra modern. Mid century modern 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. I me, craftsman guy.
We'd have to get all new stuff.
Like if we started over, like I if our god forbid 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 boozehound. Huh.
Well, they didn't use as a bar. They had like humble figurines and stuff. Wow, And I saw it.
It was funny.
When I first sawt 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 thirty liquor bottles will do.
I can really dress up a Yeah, humble figurine 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 earthers living in the geodesic domes. And it's not like they were living in a tent. It was their house. Yeah, 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. Yeah, how minute or howse small, but seeing that every day or every weekday, that had to have some impact on you.
Yeah, And there's was also one of those.
It was also partially underground even so that was an exposed dome, but then that was sort of built into a hill, and so they were full on.
They had a lot of hippie cred.
Yeah, they were going toward it, and looking back, they were probably super cool people.
Probably they were wearing birkenstocks way before anybody else was wearing birkenstocks. So let's talk a little bit about the first geodesic dome, little geodesic history.
Okay, okay, all.
Right, you have to go way back, way way back to nineteen six. And not only do we have to go back, we have to go to Germany, Jena, Germany.
I don't know where that is.
I don't either, but there is a very famous optics company called Seiss, I do know that. Sure, and Seiss wanted to build a planetarium on top of one of their factories, their factory at Jena, Germany, and they said, please build this a planetarium. Walter Bauersfield, where if you didn't know if he was German or not, just listen to his name, Feld felt even more German. Yeah, 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's what's 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 they needed to hold a lot of people, and obviously because it was a planetarium that that interior roundness was kind of key. Would 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, right, So that's what he did, and it was it really worked well. It did house a lot of people. I mean not how's but you know, it could hold a lot of people. It can withstand storms, and this is these are some of the factors that make them 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 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.
I don't feel comfortable with that pretty much.
So Bowersfeld's planetarium actually kicked off a planetarium craze. It was apparently the first planetarium on Earth, which I would make the case you can just say the first planetarium in the universe, then probably so. But because there were people who started to build planetariums as a result of this, judiesic domes kind of became a thing.
Yeah, 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 we could do a show on him altogether.
I think agreed.
But his whole jam was like, well, first of all, he saw the inherent like good points to these 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'd still be super strong, right, which is awesome. So because of this, he thought like he had a higher goal in mine,
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 site at a factory and deliver it by helicopter.
It was that light kind of put it together but like a kid yep.
And like you were saying, it required because it could withstand more weight, it required less building materials, which meant it was lower cost. 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 you had some high grade sixty speed give.
It all your Yeah, 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 one of the other things about it is there is no other buildings 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. 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, right, which is kind of what it does. Like what if it was square, it slips out of the cloaca. It's true. So 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 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. It's called Dimaxian American. Dimaxim was a word that was associated with him. He just made up words a lot, but it tells it. It's from nineteen sixty 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 idea was that when you put spheres together, they would just make a larger
and larger sphere. But that's not what happened. 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. 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, you actually create a sphere. And technically it's a polyhedron. And most geodesic domes are acostahedrons, which, if you play Dungeons and Dragons, is just a twenty sided die.
Yeah.
But the more you cut the sides into smaller and smaller triangles, the more the closer to an actual perfect sphere you get. And that's a geodesic sphere. And if you cut it in half, or cut a portion of it, yeah, and just use one half of it, that's a geodesic dome.
Yeah, which is what you see like.
It's not fully round because it has to be flat and sit on something right.
Well, actually, the Spaceship Earth geodesic dome God is a full sphere, but that is pretty rare.
And I thought it was interesting too 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 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, I'm roughly familiar with geo dusic 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. Yeah, they have to be adjusted to make this shape, to
make this circle or the sphere. So if you're putting together one of these things, as we'll see, you have to be like, oh, this strut 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. 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.
Yeah, and you mentioned a minute ago that and I think people that pay attention were probably like, oh, Josh, is so funny or what did he just say?
Did Buck Minister Fuller make up words? Yeah?
He did, because he made up another word when it comes to these domes, uh, insegrity.
Which is not a good word, it's.
Not He mixed two words together, intentional 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 take your break and then we'll get into like the actual dynamics going on.
Okay, and geometry?
Yes promise, yes, all right, I promised. It's time to talk to geometry.
How'd you do in geometry?
I failed the first time ast of 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, yeah.
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 pooed the maths. Yeah, but you've that right, well yeah, but I mean just for my pea brain like understanding it. I understood geometry more than all the other maths, right, and I did okay in it for an English nerd.
Yeah, you know, good enough.
It is completely different than anything else. I feel like in.
That geometry does seem like its own thing for very much at time, 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 karn Ridana 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 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 uh. I 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, great joke.
She's like, welcome to 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 Karn and knows that shirt.
Yeah. I hope it's a great joke, Miss Carn. Okay, so we're talking geometry, right, Yeah. Do you remember our bridges episode? Yeah, remember we talked about bridge trusses, the bridges that are made up of triangular shapes, and we said, like, those things are extraordinarily wrong because they're triangles.
Yeah, man, 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 create because wherever you press on it, it transfers that pressure that force to the rest of the shape. So it distributes that kind of a weight or pressure or 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 it. And that's why 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 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 in that 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. Yeah, but the one at Epcot was just like, we're not even going to 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 little corny lagoons.
I love those, I know, I love everything about Epcot.
I haven't been since I was in seventh grade.
It's great.
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 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 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 Dolorean. It's on hydraulics and it's like moving all around.
But it's a movie screen in front of you.
Yeah, and you're and you're going through.
But it's amazing how 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 the car just stopped moving and he felt like you were falling.
Wow, just because it stopped moving.
And if you like turned around and looked backwards, you're like everyone's freaking out and you're just sitting in a car doing nothing.
But everybody's going Oh.
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 it was like Buckminster Fuller had discovered a signature of God, whoa just made scare quotes because around godred.
The whole thing.
Since it is such like an efficient structure that can support a lot of weight, you do see it in things like eggs cornea the testicle, which I'm like, sure, really, I guess so I couldn't find that anywhere else, and I definitely typed testicle geodesic dome into Google and it didn't really come back with anything. But this nineteen sixty four Time article says it.
So it's so well, the dome period is a pretty strong structure. 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 a 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 what Fuller did was took that sort of same principle and applied this geometry to it and these triangles that the Romans didn't.
Think of, and the rest is history. I guess.
Yeah. What he found was that when you put these fears together, you created what he called a vector equilibrium, the outward force of the thing that's trying to collapse. You know, like if you if you could press down on the roof of the house, it would collapse outward to the sides. Yes, 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 measures, they cancel each other out. Yeah, 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, there were lightweight, and you know, they distribute 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 that the first one?
No, Montreal was sixty seven. This one would have been in Moscow fifty four.
Well, that's when he got his patent.
Yeah, I guess this would have been before the right around the same time, but in fifty nine. Yeah, I guess the first one must have been Ford, the Ford plant.
Yeah, the Ford Motor Company wanted covering.
And he said, well, I think this is the trick 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 Ford called them 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 just rotunda that they'd built, that it was going to have to be a traditional dome with buttresses and supports and like heavy walls and all that. The problem was because the coreover was so far across I think it was more than
thirty meters ninety feet across. Anything that they built would probably collapse the walls of this very sturdy rotunda building. So they had a problem. And when they called Buckminster Fuller, I don't know how who got in touch with who. It was pretty brazen for him to say what you said. He said that he can get this done below cost in time, it's going to be super light. And he proved the world wrong, his doubters wrong, at least when he built the first geodesic dome over it and it
was pretty awesome. Also, we didn't mention he was a freshman, a freshman college dropout, so he's self taught and he just came along and showed the world of engineering basically a brand new type of structure, an incredibly elegantly efficient type of structure. He just showed the world it could be done.
People are just born with like a certain kind of brain.
That's why he deserves his own episode first.
Yeah, So the Ford Dome was great for a while until nineteen sixty two when it was leaking and they said, hey, this thing's 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 caught those vapors caught the whole dome. Yea caught fire and it was made of like aluminium in plastic, so it just went up like a match. Yeah, and they were decorating for the Christmas Fantasy Exhibit low in the courtyard. All that stuff caught on fire. Man, it burned the whole rotunda down.
Imagine building.
There's nothing more flammable than Christmas decorations in the early noies.
Not 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.
So again he foot flames Like I can't imagine what that scene looked like.
And it burned the whole building down. Oh yeah, Like this was actually a tourist attraction. And do you imagine going to Dearborn, Michigan.
To see the fod Dome.
Yes, that's what people did. I think it had 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 mister 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 that call was the military because they wanted to start using them as like anarctic bases or to cover radar dishes, that kind of thing.
Yeah, he very famously too in nineteen sixty seven. At no, was.
This the World's Fair versus a different thing? No, they just didn't call it World's Fair, right. The Universal Exposition in Montreal in sixty seven very famously had a two hundred foot tall dome, and he was he was really trying to push the limits of what you could do, Like he dreamed of enclosing part of Manhattan in a dome. Yeah, and saying we could give you clean air and climate control.
Then it'll pay for itself over time because you won't have to use snowplows and all these other things that cost money.
It seems ghastly, almost like a burnsyan type of idea.
Well it would, I mean definitely be a certain class of people that lived in that thing.
Yeah, but I doubt if he'd be like, we'll do it over all of you know. Queen's right.
Well, yeah it was lower. It was twenty second to sixty second. I think from river to river in Manhattan.
Wow, it was.
It was going to be huge. And he did say it could pay for itself just from snow removal, not having to do 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 mid century America for sure.
Yeah.
I mean you can do a cool experiment with like a biosphere type of thing. You don't want Manhattan covered by a dome, n you know all the smells maybe Topeka or something like that. And that's one of the problems is all the smells. Apparently 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 run around shooting off proton packs inside that thing.
No good, Man's in a while. Since a gb ref, should we take a break all right, we'll be right.
Back, all right.
So the sixties and seventies come along. He's been doing a thing in the fifties, and this is when the counterculture and the anti mainstream sort of vibe was hitting, and so it was sort of prime. It was 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, but you know.
There were enough people looking for ways to very blatantly thumb their nose that the established look.
At my round house basically.
Yeah, and again like it really does. It does provide a lot of benefits that other ones don't, right, So, like because it's a it's a sphere and it's basically one big room.
Yeah, well yes, but you can build rooms inside of it.
You can't sure. But the heat in the the air distribution is really efficient, so it's very cheap to heat and cool. I think that the average number that people reported was about thirty percent savings in energy costs.
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 with thirty. Sure, we'll go at the lower And so you've got heating and cooling efficiencies, like you were saying, because it's 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. Yeah, through ac with a geodesic dome, 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, excuse me, I'll just go around.
Yeah, And that's why they're great in Antarctica. They can withstand whatever kind of weather they throw. They Antarctica. They and I have seen some of these at the beach. Again, they're not like the coolest looking beach house, but you see them, you know, you'll see like quaint old beach house cape cod geodesic dome. Yeah, and then like mcmhanson, 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, geodesic dome, empty lot, And apparently that's it's anecdotal, but that's the been reported that geodesic domes can make it through substantial hurricanes when the rest of the houses around it did not.
Yeah, it makes sense.
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. There's not a ton of privacy. Even though you can build out sort of like living in a loft. 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 am I even in a right exactly? Light as well, 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 dist did 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 dome, which is very expensive. Yeah, you have to get all this stuff made yourself. And the same goes true for like the construction world is set up for square right, So fixtures and plumbing and pipes and all that stuff has to be sort of and contractors get scared away from.
Me saying, 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, yes, who works like once a year. Yes, 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 big long couch, you've got a bunch of space behind it that's just sitting there, a little a little semicircle behind you.
That's why a lot of and I think this is the reason why I'm not super hip on gidsigtomes is a lot of the stuff is just kind of out in the center of the room, right, right, And it looks adrift or unanchored. 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, it'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.
Oh man, do you Yeah?
Really you're afraid you're gonna eat?
What?
Are you a gangster or something?
No? I don't think I'm gonna get whacked.
It's just, uh, 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, yeah, wow, what'd you do?
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 I punch him, turn around and punch him. Don't touch my stuff? Uh.
Rain, We talked about rain. It can be problematic. Yeah, And it says in here that flat roofs are the best. What they mean are flat roofs at an angle right because a truly flat roof, it's not good. Frank Lloyd Wright did a bunch of those, and they were his houses were could be very problematic. He had the very famous exchange. I can't remember the person, but it was
some very very wealthy, sort of noteworthy person. Frank Loyd Wright built him a house and he called and complained and said, the water is now dripping onto my desk, And supposedly Frank Loyd Wright said move the desk.
And that sounds like frankly right. Yeah, for sure.
I don't know if that's a true story, but I love.
You it's true. Yeah, yeah, So with with the with the 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 you 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 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 sixty speed.
In a case of beer or two, and build your house in.
A couple of days and not sleep the entire time.
That's right.
So when you put these things together, you're building the structure, and then you're coating the structure. It can be one kit I saw as a greenhouse. It's a really great greenhouse. I bet if you've ever been on a jungle gym that was built after the sixties, those dome ones geodesic dome. But what the structure can be made from a hollow tubing, ply or 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 of concrete or plastic or plywood or something like that. And then you want to coat it but all those different seals or those different seams, they're all just water heaven. Yeah, which is again a big problem, well 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 tints came into fashion, and then I think the secret was to try and make dome tents with his you seems as possible, Yeah, because that's where your water gets in.
Yeah, and his few poles too, Yeah, just a couple and then maybe and then there 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 sixty seven to one that, by the way, burned as well. Oh really, now the structure stayed. They turned it into a biosphere in the nineties.
I brought no so Brendan Fraser listen there.
And Paul sure 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. I was that the full name yahoo Oku with an exclamation point because Yahoo.
Is at the sponsor an 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, Yeah, retractable 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 the Doma Dome, yeah, which is.
A wood dome that just does not sound sturdy to me.
Yeah. What was it?
Oh our Skyscraper's episode? That was that new Wood skyscraper somewhere? 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.
The Sokka, Nebraska, they sound alike Tacoma Dome is where the Sonics used to play.
They're like, Kevin Durant is 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 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.
Gotcha.
But he Art Modell literally famously packed up in the middle of the night, like their footage of eighteen wheeler trucks wow at like two am, like hauling stuff.
Yeah, you don't want to leave Cleveland, ask 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 that's definitely how I went with the SuperSonics for sure. Yeah, Seattle was not very happy about that.
They were not.
I don't Supposedly they're going to get another team one of the Microsoft founders. I Guesssniak is talking about bringing them. Bring Really, 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 was Bill Gates partner he died. Yeah, I think he died kind of in the last like six months.
Oh well, maybe Seattle's not getting a basketball team.
I'm not sure. Okay, where did they go? Oh? Oklahoma City?
Right?
Yeah, it's so confusing everyone for two half sports guys like us, we don't even make a full sports guy.
Who's your team this season?
Well?
I always root for the Hawks, but it's just they're a wasteland. It's pretty big, so I don't even care.
Yeah, who does Shrewder play?
For now Olama does he?
I thought it was a different Western team, you like Lebron in La.
Sure, we should have a sports show called the Worst Sports Show on the Web kind of.
This is a trailer for it.
What about the Eden Project? 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 the UK.
God knows how you pronounce that. I guarantee it's not Cornwall.
Probably Cornwall. Maybe 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 right with In geodesic dome like experimentation.
They build a diome or biome. Yeah, 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. Yeah, 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 biome. So cool 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 totally. 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. Yeah, we got to 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 an a upcot too. We'll we'll do a geodesic dome tour.
Can we do one inside of the castle and the magic?
And you 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. He's a great guy. He helped my brother out. 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.
Oh wow, yes, Cooper born into Disney Royalty.
Yeah, pretty much. That's pretty great. Congrats dudes.
I wonder if Cooper's gonna go up and just be like, yeah, take care to leave it. I go like twice a week.
Right, this is euro Disney. I wish it was euro Disney.
Well, that is Spaceship Earth, of course, is the one we're talking about there that we mentioned. One hundred and eighty feet tall silver geosphere very much the central sort of shining star of EPCOT.
That's what everybody thinks of with EPCOT.
Yep every shirt, well not every shirt, but.
Did you know that EPCOT is 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. That's right, And the name of the geodesic dome is actually called Spaceship Earth and it was direct influenced by Bucky Fuller. Walt Disney was a big futurist. That's why there's like tomorrow Land and all that stuff. Yeah, and why there's upcott in general. 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 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 I believe that a cartoonist designer came up with that.
It's too perfect. I could totally see that. Yeah, 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. If you want to know more about geodesic 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 superfan who's like fifteen out yeah, Sarah's she's Miss carn 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 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 or going to sleep before bed. Every time you guys do a tour announcement, I always hope you're going to 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 podcasts for about two months, but I missed listening to them, so I came back and now I'm 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 loved 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 eurosoul is what makes poison. I'd be 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 are just little ornaments that you hang in your beard.
Have you seen them?
And they light up SuperFestive?
Do you want some?
No? Okay, I cut most of my beard.
I just noticed that it looks very trim.
This is sort of like the old days. Looks nice and that is. She put a sign to Veronica, which is adorable. Thank you, Veronica, so Veronica. I think we should. We're trying to hit the major cities we've never been to. Eventually, I think we might want to put Indianapolis on the list for twenty nineteen. Oh boy, and give Indiana some love.
Okay, fine.
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.
Time.
They email us, They're like, yes, pa, can. We got such an overwhelming response that we're like, how can we say no?
So we should go to Indianapolis. I told her if we do, then we'll put her and mom on.
The guest list.
That's very nice.
Yeah, okay, they have a domina settled. They could we could go to a show there where the Colts play.
We could Is it the Colts? What do they play? Soccer?
Yeah? But they came from Baltimore, who then became the Ravens. It's just so weird. Everyone's moving all over the place.
Who's the great leader of the Pacers? Now?
Victor the great leader? Yeah, great leader?
Kim Jong Victor.
Another coach?
No, no, he's like their captain. But yeah, he's a player.
I don't know. Run our test or right 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 Victor 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 stuffishouando dot com and you will find all of our social links there and you can always send us an email all to stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
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