Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Attics & Basements

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier realizes that New Zealand doesn’t have attics or basements, so sets out to discover why so many of America’s 333 million homes do. David talks to Stephen Fox, an architectural historian and a lecturer at the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, who explains the practical reasons for these spaces, as well as why they’ve turned into habitable spaces. David then talks to filmmaker and architect Giorgio Angelini about what these spaces mean culturally to Americans, as paradoxically a place of safety and warmth but also of mystery and horror. The two of them discuss various formative experiences to be found in the attic, before David turns back to the egg episode, attempting to get closure with his best friend Rosabel following an incident where he cracked an egg over her head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Something I still marvel at here is the scale of America. For example, back in New Zealand we've got about 5 million people, compared with America's 333 million people. And most of those 333 million Americans live in one of the 142 million homes that have been built here. Back in New Zealand, there are just under 2 million houses. Ah yes, the humble house, the home, the place where we eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, clip our toenails, raise families, watch TV, and listen to podcasts. Home is where the heart is, and my heart is anywhere you are.

Home is where the heart is, sang Elvis. But of course, you also find other things in the American home besides vital internal organs. You can find bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, lounges, patios, an assortment of rooms that we spend a great deal of our lives in. But I've discovered that there are places in the American home that you do not find in the New Zealand home. Two of them specifically. One exists above, and the other below. One gets very hot, the other gets very cold. And it's to these mysterious places that Flightless Bird turns to today. So find that flashlight and get ready to clamber either up or down, because this is the Attics and Basements episode. I'm a flightless, flightless, flightless bird touchdown in America.

I'm a flightless bird touchdown in America. We have a special guest. Hi, Dex. Did it cross your mind? Because, well, first of all, I just want to applaud how good you are at this. Truly. Thank you. Again, every applaud how good you are at this. Truly. Thank you. Again, every time I hear you write.

Regardless. Boy, how do I say this? You can come at me. Okay. I've developed a thick skin doing this podcast. Well, no, it's a compliment. We're at Attics and Basements. And then I wonder, did it cross your mind to split those up so you could have two different episodes?

I did think that. Because we're really potentially running out of differences, no? No, we're not. Believe me. I have a Google sheet of topics and it is screwing up my experience of America because I'm just out trying to enjoy my life. And just constantly it's like oh god this is a topic and suddenly i'm like fumbling for recording gear and trying to capture moments it's this once you unlock your view of the world like this it just gets out of control it's like

when you're in the groundlings or ucb and you're in sketch classes and then the world just becomes a potential sketch that's how you're moving through the world. Yeah, well, I was watching a movie. I was enjoying a comedy, and suddenly I'm watching these Americans with red cups at a frat party. And I'm like, oh, God, red cups. And then I'm like, oh, no, that's a thing. And then it's like, this is a fraternity story. Beer pong. Beer pong. What is it?

So it just unlocks everything. You've never played beer pong? Never. Let's play. Never drank from a red cup. I don't believe that claim. You can't possibly make it to 40. It's play. Never drank from a red cup. I don't believe that claim that you can't possibly make it to 40. It's true. Back to the groundlings thing.

Yeah, I remember this is how bad it got. A waitress handed Bree and I a pen to sign the bill. And it was a Valtrex pen that the doctor had given, presumably her, which is a medication for herpes. Amazing. And immediately you're just like, okay, we go off to the race we've got a sketch then what's the next thing what's the next head yeah yeah it's so prevails some other secret about the person i can see your concern about mixing the two topics together we've just done a second dmv episode we're going to do in part three as well but But this one, it just really felt like it has to be together. Addicts in Basements, up and down.

You know? I think you made the right call. It did occur to me that you could have potentially tried to milk it for two episodes. Yeah, absolutely. Do you know what's funny? I can't really hear. Oh, bleh. I can't really hear.

Monica's being aggressively rocked by Dex I'm on a roller coaster I might have a seizure It's my dream for you to have a seizure While I'm around you It's a fantasy No he doesn't He's not going to care

He's just going to watch I'll kick you off the road And throw an egg at my head like you did a Roosevelt. He's mean to people sometimes. Well, he's a bit of a rascal, like Wabiwab. That's why they two are so wealthy. They're cut from the same cloth. Imagine those two in a hotel room when they're together on the road.

You don't want to know. Do we think cut from the same cloth is racist? I haven't even thought about the term. I learned something that was racist. Oh, boy. Or not racist, but a word that is based in slavery, which I had never heard. And I actually found it interesting. There's so many words that we don't know.

I'm going to read it. Okay. This one is cakewalk. Right. Cakewalk. That's a cakewalk. That's what you'd say is easy right uh-huh like at fairs and stuff you can do the cakewalk and win a cake no i don't know that no don't no what are you talking about oh

my god write it down topic i'm writing it down cakewalk so you're not allowed to call no we're not well you are we'll talk about the origin but no at fairs and stuff, you can do the cake walk where you go in a circle and there's numbers on the ground and when the music stops or something like that, if you're on number 13, you get the 13th cake. Do you know what I mean? I witnessed

one on Saturday. Oh my god. See, it's that common. Were you in an Amish community? It was at a fundraiser for Calvin's preschool. So it's that common. Just don't say that. Were you in an Amish community? It was at a fundraiser for Calvin's preschool. Yeah, it's common. So it's like musical chairs, but with cake. But with cake.

You replace the chairs with cake. Yes, so people will bring cake. It's really fun, but okay. I'm going to go to the Iowa State Fair this year. Maybe they'll have for the show, obviously, not for fun, for the show. They'll have a cakewalk? Probably. Great.

For the show, obviously, not for fun, for the show. They'll have a cakewalk? Probably. Great. Okay, but cakewalk, a contest in which black people would perform a stylized walk in pairs. Typically judged by a plantation owner, the winner would receive some type of cake. Holy shit. But do you know musical chairs is anti-Semitic?

Well, it might be. This is real. You're lying. I am lying. I don't like this. I know. I know. You made it a lie. This is real. You're lying. I am lying. I don't like this. I know. I know. You made it a lie. I trust you.

Out of all of you, I trust you the most, Dax. What? And so that's really, really put off. I quickly exposed myself as lying. What in the world is that about? Just the tallest, whitest man in the room? I have been accused of. It's because I went Just the tallest, whitest man in the room? I have been accused to have. It's because I went to the bus, Colin.

I am going to poke a hole because David acts so liberal all the time. And he aligns with that. And you do hold patriarchal ideals. Oh, no, I openly admit that. It annoys Roosevelt. Sometimes Roosevelt will tell me a fact. Do you have a girlfriend that i've missed out on no no rosabelle's one of my best friends rosabelle is objectively one of the

smartest people i know and she'll tell me a fact about something and sometimes i won't believe it but if a man comes along and says the same thing i'll clock my brain doing it it will go oh yeah that sounds correct sure sure sure and when you did Right, you thought it was a PA and it was really like the producer. Yeah. Because it was a woman. Yeah. So I've got problems. Are you going to work on it?

All the time. Okay. If I see a female now, I don't assume they're assistant. I think maybe they could be the executive producer. Could be the president. Now, where were we? Oh, attics and basements. And I would like to point out that I just realized this earlier.

We are in an attic. What a place to be. And I guess my whole premise of this episode is that this space we're in right now would never exist in New Zealand. To have this place above a main room that is utilized. There's a shower in here. There's a toilet. There's Rob sitting over there, sitting on chairs.

This is crazy. But David, I've been to New Zealand and I've seen certainly many of the roofs have the pitch to accommodate an attic. It's just empty space up there. It's empty, and it's dusty. And I addressed this in the documentary. Should we get into this? Can we talk about basements really quick? Yeah.

Please. Yeah. In Michigan, nearly every house has a basement. Right. Yep. Same with Georgia. yeah please yeah in michigan nearly every house has a basement right yeah same with georgia but i feel bad for you david that you don't know the pleasures of a basement because a basement is the area that your parents didn't really give a fuck about you could get away with murder down there that's where you partied you could so what were you up to down there what would you get up to down in your michigan basement shit um bow and arrow uh with my brother and i put four

mattresses out and we had a big time wrestling ring in our basement on tara and the boys would come over and they'd have to wrestle yeah this ring my mother wouldn't have allowed that in the living room or anywhere else so it's like free space where you can just be a child and just go crazy and in a climate where it's often hostile to go outside, it's really nice to have this area where you're allowed to really get wild. Yeah, finger blast. I lost my virginity in my basement of my Milford house.

Oh, wow, yeah. A lot of virginities have been lost in basements. It's a great place to lose your virginity. Are you losing more virginities in a basement or an attic? Oh, basement. Basement? Attic's very exposed you're up high if there's windows in their basement you've got some yeah opportunity to be hidden so sort of

filthiness is happening in basements it's like physically a bit filthy and also it's also where grown-up sons live when they still live with their parents yes and grown-up daughters mainly sons yeah because women too are fallible just like men. Mainly just the sons is mainly what I've heard. If you could pick having an attic

or a basement in your house, what would you want? Basement. Really? Clearly, yeah. Okay. It's not even a question.

In fact, most in the South and Midwest, basements are normally finished or at least half finished was yours as our houses got nicer they became finished but the way the wrestling ring was this cement floor and steel poles so would your parents clamber over and like yell down into the basement what

are you kids doing down there is it that kind of thing i think they too enjoyed the reprieve from responsibility it's like an unspoken agreement like Like you're going to go down there and you're going to get wild. And I don't want to hear about it. But I would say, and I don't know what your doc exposed you to, but attics far less common than basements. And they're very rarely finished. This is so rare where we are right now that this is a finished attic. Yeah.

I'd like to invite you into our attic in the main house. Oh, I'd love that. I'd love that. Because that, too, is big like this and voluminous, but it's just got some plywood on the ground and we put clothes and shit up there. It's a storage. It's not chairs and a toilet and everything else. See, that's more of a New Zealand attic is that unfinished. But you've still got paneling down.

a New Zealand attic is that like unfinished but you still you got paneling down like in New Zealand if I was going to the attic if I wasn't down in my little tunnel that dad had dug for me I'd be up in an attic you're literally walking on the main beams Christmas vacation Clark goes up there you got to walk on the on the beach exactly that's the New Zealand experience plus in America you've got these amazing staircases that just come down and you're suddenly climbing up oh yeah in new zealand there's a little hole in the corner of a room you've got to go and find a ladder you get your ladder up there and then yeah scruffle and suddenly you're climbing up this tiny little hole like that's the new zealand experience yeah it's the new zealand way how do you even store stuff up there if you have to climb up the ladder that's hard that's the point it's really difficult so

you just ignore the whole thing mostly yeah it's just it's basically it's empty space that we're not using very wasteful shocking because you guys are super conscientious people we are well i'm starting to wonder now are we as conscientious as we think we are you know i didn't even think about this but this all could be a really good foundation for you returning to new zealand and announcing a Canada seat with a platform that you're like, look, I have gone over every single detail. Most of it, we should skip. But I do come to you with six that are worth keeping from the US. That's when you've become 100% American is when you go back to your country and say,

exactly. And say, I know how. Make this better. That's right. Americanize the shit out of this place. And what an ironic twist, though, that the colonizers would get colonized. Yeah, this is. I mean, it takes the whole arc of this whole series in a very different direction. Like, quite intense. Well, if you become a despot at the end of this, that could be incredible. Wow.

One, I do feel like I've missed out on a lot in my life because I haven't had these spaces to exist in. If you want to get away from your parents, you jump on a bike and you ride down the street or go to a park or into the forest or something. Yes. Get into the woods. You get into the woods. You go into the woods. Yeah. We did both.

Yeah. Now, the woods is where you would deal with flammables. Oh, you see stuff on fire yeah you wrestle in the basement but if you want if it was time to light some shit on fire you need to get out in the woods 100 yeah yeah slingshots and all that yeah and girls are shitty too listen i our our species is defined by our mastery of fire. I don't think you were mastering it in the woods. Oh, you'd be shocked.

You should see me with a can of WD-40. Okay, let's hit the dock. Okay. Before I go on this journey down into the basement and up into the attic, I want to clear something up. Episode 43, Eggs, was incredibly controversial. My premise was that Americans kept their eggs in the fridge while most other countries like New Zealand stored them at room temperature in the pantry or on a shelf. Other parts of the world, they don't refrigerate eggs

either. It's not uncommon to go to another country, not only see the eggs in the center of the aisle, right, where you would never find them here in the US like that. The response to that episode, the anger was quick and brutal. Flightless Bird was interesting at first, but has quickly become saturated by what seems to me to be very senseless topics, raged SpaceTrash08 over on Reddit. Even more distressing is that I discovered I'd also attracted the wrath of my fellow New Zealanders, my fellow Kiwis, my fellow flightless birds, who emailed me saying I was wrong, that New Zealanders kept their eggs in the fridge as well. I was ready to quit the show, to go and hide in a basement or maybe an attic.

Instead, I chose to hide in a movie theatre, sliding into a seat to watch a horror film called Evil Dead Rise. And it was in Evil Dead Rise that I found something else besides escapism and horror. I found vindication. I found vindication, because there's a scene at the beginning where a demonically possessed woman enters the kitchen in her New York apartment and slams a pan down on her gas-powered stove. Pan at the ready, the demon then grabs a bunch of eggs that are sitting on the kitchen counter next to her, cracking them into the pan, shells and all. Did you hear what I just said? The woman is in her New York apartment, and she grabbed the eggs from a large bowl on the kitchen bench. Not from the fridge,

the eggs were being stored at room temperature in a large bowl on the bench. And this was in New York. Those eggs should have been in the fridge. But I'll tell you why they weren't. It's because the latest Evil Dead movie was shot in New Zealand, where we don't keep our eggs in the fridge. Someone writing the scripts, or maybe someone in the props department, they forgot this scene was meant to be in America. Vindicated that my premise was correct, eggs in New Zealand are kept on the bench and eggs in America are kept in the fridge, I chose to keep on with Flightless Bird to explore things about America that I don't understand. Which brings us to today's topic,

attics and basements, which we don't have in New Zealand. And I'm not going to get egg on my face for this premise. So I picked up the phone and dialed New Zealand, country code 64, to check this wasn't all just in my head. Hi Hayden, how are you? I'm good, thank you. I just had a question for you for Flight of the Spirit. Uh-oh.

Are you recording me right now? Absolutely. Are you really? Of course. You have to disclose that. I don't know what New Zealand law, are you under New Zealand law or American law right now? I was going to disclose it.

You hadn't given me a chance. Okay. Do we have attics in New Zealand? I don't think we have attics in like the American sense. We're like, you go up to them in a kid's movie and open a book and get transported to another dimension filled with monsters or anything like that. I just think we have roof cavities.

Because we have roofs and we have space underneath the roofs that people sometimes put boxes up in, but it's not like in the movies where there's another level to the house. Very seldom seen. Mostly people have got, if they've got an attic space, a hole in a room somewhere that you can like clamber up into if you have a ladder. But even when you get up there, it's not like an American attic.

I was always envious of American attics in movies because they look so elaborate. But in New Zealand, it's just spider webs and insulation. There you have it. In New Zealand, the space in the roof, but it's barely accessible and contains nothing more than spiderwebs and insulation. What then of basements? Would you say we have basements in New Zealand, or we don't have basements? No basements. I can't think of a single house I know that's got a basement. We have downstairs, like a lower floor, it's often called a rumpus room or something, but I wouldn't call it a basement.

Basement and attic are American words from the movies. I don't think that we use them. Ah, I don't know anyone who has a basement, but I'm sure they exist. No, I mean, have you ever been in someone's basement in New Zealand? No, people don't really go underground, do they? New Zealanders do not go underground, at least as far as basements are concerned, because we don't have them. And according to all the New Zealanders I talk to, we don't have attics either, at least not in the American sense of the word.

So, on with this basements and attics episode, secure in the knowledge that in New Zealand, we do not have basements and attics like you have here in America. It's almost like New Zealand never got the memo that you could create a habitat in the roof, or a functional storage space under the ground. Of course the question I now have is why so many of America's 333 million homes do have attics and basements. How did this come to be? So I got in contact with Stephen Fox, an architectural historian and lecturer at the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, Texas. Stephen Fox knows a thing or two about architecture and how houses work. And he knows that when it comes to attics, they're basically just a side effect of the way in which we build houses.

I would also observe that it comes about through the processes and materials of construction. Until the 20th century, you didn't have too many options. So most buildings tended to have timber-framed roofs, timber planking for the ceiling of the highest level. timber planking for the ceiling of the highest level. And basically you were presented with this space under the pitched roof. If you ran out of space below, this was a kind of overflow space. He says the first thing to note about this overflow space is that it helps to regulate the temperature in the rest of the home. It has this kind of insulating capacity. So in hot climates, it makes things a little bit cooler to have this airspace separation between the interior of the house,

let's say, and the underside of the roof. And of course, that's where it's going to absorb the most heat. In a cold climate, the ceiling of the interior of the house would tend to hold the heat in so that it wouldn't go up underneath the roof and more easily dissipate. The other thing that fascinates me about the American attic is how you pull a little rope and these collapsible stairs suddenly unfurl in front of you like a magical stairway to the heavens. With this in mind, Stephen tells me how America's collapsible ladder came to be. In the Gulf Coast area of the United States, particularly in Louisiana, there's a certain house type called the Creole cottage. And the porch,

instead of being attached to the front of the house, actually sits within the body of the house. From the side, it would look like a triangular roof within a rectangular habitable space beneath it. But then you would extract one end of that rectangle, and that would be the open porch. And in these creole cottages, access to the attic was often from the porch on a ladder or a very, very steep stair. Typically, those spaces would be used for storage, but also because they tended to be very small houses where members of the family, and especially the young boys, would sleep in the attic. So that was a precursor to then the later collapsible ladders. So it seems the idea of living in the attic came about out of necessity.

Small houses, too many kids. As time went on, the spaces got fancier and more habitable. And post-war housing boom, things like the collapsible ladder appeared. Of course, in New Zealand, you'd never find anyone sleeping in the attic, unless they were a hostage, and that's a crime. And that takes us to basements, the opposite of the attic. Basements are common in particularly the colder parts of the country because again, they serve to insulate the interior of the house. And so in places with a very cold climate,

like much of the middle Western United States or Northeastern United States, I think a basement is pretty much a necessity if you're going to be living on the ground floor. So like attics, basements have to do with keeping the rest of the house warm. So in places that do have basements, are they primarily there for storage space or something to do with heat regulation? I would assume that they serve really that double purpose, providing insulation for the interior of the house, but then also making it possible to store things in the basement. With improvement in heating technology and cooling technology, like attics, they're often kind of used as habitable space.

Would you rather live in an attic or a basement, personally? Would you rather live in an attic or a basement, personally? I guess in a basement. I think of attics as being too hot, but of course, since I don't live in a cold climate, I don't have to worry about the opposite of feeling like the basement is too cold. Stephen tells me that not everyone likes a basement, including famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who over the course of his life designed over a thousand buildings. But many of his houses did not have basements.

Because while he was a fan of buildings, he was not a fan of their subterranean element, the basement. Oh no, quite the opposite. In the early part of his career, his houses from the first decades of the 20th century, he still had to elevate the main living floor above the ground. So he often had basically an entire floor that kind of doubled the square footage of the house, but were not terribly usable. Later in his career, Frank Lloyd Wright developed a system of building a concrete slab on the ground, threading a network of water or steam pipes through the slab, so it could be heated during the winter. It's a system called radiant heating, which is how he got around his

hatred of basements. Not that the people who live in his houses necessarily love his solution today. houses necessarily love his solution today. I've visited some of Wright's houses from the 1950s in which the owners have this radiant heating system. The problem now is that they're extremely expensive to operate. And so these poor people were living in their beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright houses. They would kind of retreat into one room during the winter because the house was freezing, but it was too expensive to try and heat the entire house. So you do encounter some practical problems and economic problems if you try to eliminate the basement in places where you need it. As I wrapped up my conversation with Stephen, I was curious what an influential architect had

against the basement. What crime had the basement committed? What had a basement ever done to him? I don't know if that question has ever been asked, why he had this animosity. Maybe he had some bad childhood memory of some monster in the basement. It's not a bad theory, because we all know basements are really scary. Even me, who grew up with zero basements in my life, I know that basements are scary. I've seen The Conjuring. I know what can happen in an American basement. That was the sound of Lorraine Warren falling down the basement stairs.

And things don't go well for her down there because as well as being an excellent place to store pickles, the American basement is also where they store ghosts. the scariest horrors i can think of all have basement scenes the exorcist nightmare on elm street psycho silence of the lambs they've all got basements maybe frank lloyd wright was onto something maybe he was simply trying to protect his fellow americans that's actually something interesting dax because you were saying you were having sex in basements and it was a fun place, which is true. But then they're also terrifying. Basements are scary, right? Well, I think what makes that distinction is whether it's finished or not.

Right, unfinished basements are scary. So what is a finished basement? Is it like a normal room, but it's underground? You would put insulation over the cement. So there's no concrete. None exposed. Okay. Yeah. And then you would frame that and then you put drywall over it. Then you could probably put actual duct work for heating and cooling and all that.

What about the fact there's no windows? It's so scary because there's always a light. So you put the little light on with the pull down thing and it goes. Yeah. And then the light blows out and suddenly it's completely dark that's scary all right so i'm just now getting the idea that you could have done addicts as an episode then unfinished basements as an episode and then finished basements as an episode finished basements have windows often they generally have some window down there that you can crawl out of that you're supposed to be able to crawl out of

and then i'm gonna throw another wrench into your whole thing. Do you know of the walkout basement? No. I think it's state to state how you can categorize this. But in Michigan, let's say you had a 3,000 square foot ranch. And then underneath of that, you had a full basement. So that's another 3,000 square feet. Huge. You could never list the house as being 6,000 square feet

because you cannot count basement as square footage unless, imagine that house is built on a little hill and in the back where it slopes down, you have some door walls on the basement. So you do have one side of the basement that is exposed. That is now a walkout basement and now you can count that square footage. That's what my parents have. But we call it a walk-in. Oh, really? A walk-in basement? Yeah. Interesting. I know. That's what my parents have. But we call it a walk-in. Oh, really? A walk-in basement?

Yeah. Interesting. I know. That is weird. But maybe which is why we have windows because it is on the hills so it's not underground necessarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or some parts of it are. And there's weird rules about that, right? So three of the four walls have to be subterranean for it to be considered a basement yeah even i think a walk i don't know it gets tricky but you'll see quite often you'll see the back portion is got windows and doors and then the side now has the slope of the ground so you might have like a couple windows at the back of the basement yeah i mean when does a basement become not a basement?

You know, when is a basement just another room? How much do you have to expose? Well, I do think that the walk-in or walk-out basement challenges that. Is it a basement at this point? Maybe that is a separate episode. Well, no. Yeah. It should be a 12-parter.

Because I'm so bad at physics and chemistry and most of the sciences that I am confused. I'm thinking about my parents' basements. Definitely underground. You walk in on the ground floor. Go down the stairs. Tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip. And it's big. There's a room on the right.

Full room. Like a living room. Well, that's more. You know sometimes when I'm home and we record. Yeah, the enormous pantry type. Yeah, it's kind of a storage pantry, but it's finished. It has carpet and normal walls. And then you go out of there.

Then there's a huge like living room. Playroom. Playroom, living, French doors. Virginity losing. Windows, TV. And then another huge room. And it's an office. It then another huge room and it's an office it's another huge room then another huge area that's just storage that's not finished so many different uses for this underground lab and there's a bathroom i want to add you have to hide the mechanical systems of

the house somewhere yeah meaning the enormous, maybe the water softener. All this stuff has to be hidden somewhere. So it's either going to be hidden in your attic or it's going to be hidden in your basement. And it's a lot easier in your basement. When you have the men or women show up to HVAC to fix your attic, you're half expecting one of them to pass while they're up there. Yeah. It's funny. It's so hot and they're working in a very cramped space with all this stuff.

So yeah, very cumbersome. I've got one thing to address quickly. The stairs to the basement. I also associate them as being scary because they're usually wooden and monster hands can come out from between the gaps and grab your ankles as you go down to the basement. That's true. All basement stairs are those wooden things, right? In America, you'd never find like sealed stairs. Yes, sealed, if it's finished.

I've never seen one. Can you take me to one of these places? You've been in my basement. Is that a basement? Yes, where the theater room is. Is that a basement? Yes. I thought that was part of the house. Is that underground? Yes. Did you think you were going up when you went down? I thought we'd gone to like ground level. I thought that was part of the house. Is that underground? Yes. Did you think you were going up when you went down? I thought we'd gone to like ground level. I thought I was up coming in. No, because you enter on the ground. Oh my God. I was underground.

You do have split level houses too, though. Yeah, we don't have one. Jesus Christ. Try level. In the Midwest. What the fuck is that? Split level, though, you don't enter on the ground. You have stairs going up.

Yeah, but the basement is half underground. Maybe a little further down, but. If you can imagine. Oh, my brain hurts. On a tri-level house, you have basically three different levels. But the middle level is splitting the difference between the two. So it's not three stories. Like our house on Terra, where the wrestling match was,

you walked in a ground floor, but then you'd walk down only half a set of stairs to go to the basement. I'm sorry, the lower, like the family room. And then you'd go up half a set of stairs to go up to the bedrooms. So truly it was two stories above the living room, but then you had the kitchen on this trial

yeah yeah you call it try try level wow so you're calling a walk-in basement your roof height's differing in each place are they the same height of the roof they are if you're looking at the outside of the house it's like an l or a shoe the woman with the all the kids the shoe okay she had a tri-level shoe what did your house look like i feel like it's house on the prairie it was just was it a ranch no it wasn't i just lived in one story always one story houses and i had my tunnel out the back i didn't live and that was a little house and i had my tunnel that was it but it was a ranch in america we call those ranches we call one story ranches when you it's a ranch is a huge property. We have horses and hay and a barn.

That is also a ranch. What the fuck? But we call one-story homes ranches here. Yeah. But a ranch can have a basement, just to further confuse you. My guess is your reality is a bit like when I've experienced mushrooms. Because you're not positive who you're talking to. No.

Generally, right? Because of your facial. Yeah. So you're talking to what seems like because of your face yeah so you're talking to what seems like a stranger but they're very familiar with you and then they're using terms like ranch but you're picturing horses horses yeah and bands what a wild ride you're on i find life here very confusing yeah well i'm coping but it gets stressful i'm tired at the end of the day and i think it's because i'm so fucking stressed from all this shit. But I think that's what makes you an artist is you don't really know what's going on.

And so you have a point of view that is unique from all these other boring points of view that are anchored into reality. Yeah, fine line between art and crazy. That's what they say. Oh, imperceptible. Einstein said that. Okay, should we? Okay, I've got part two. Einstein didn't say that.

So far, I've learned that both basements and attics are important when it comes to making a home cozy in winter or cool in summer. And that Americans have also made sure both those spaces are both practical and habitable. Sometimes, perhaps too habitable. When Davis Wallman got to his Green Lake home, he noticed some lights on. I don't immediately freak out, but I'm like, this is not ordinary. He didn't think too much of it until a strange noise startled him.

I am kind of jolted out of bed. I hear rummaging around above me, which I know is the attic. Davis immediately called 911. Then a woman, a complete stranger, opened the door and was face-to-face with him. There are countless stories of Americans finding people living in their attics or in their basements. One family discovered someone had been living in their attic for years without them ever

knowing, assuming the late-night pitter-patter was a raccoon or possum. And here's the thing about these spaces. They're so contradictory. On one hand, the attic is a welcoming, warm space. But at the same time, it's a place of utter terror. There's that scene in Monica's favourite rom-com Hereditary, where Peter runs up into the attic in terror, the collapsible stairs slamming closed behind him. Up there he finds himself trapped with something much much worse. Then there's the terrifying 1987 Flowers in the Attic where four kids are held hostage in the attic by their mum. One truth they have yet to face. My God. Is the terror no one could imagine.

Mama? No! Flowers in the attic. And let's turn to the humble basement. A space where you store pickles and take safety from a passing tornado. But it's also where Stephen King's monsters live. But Bill, if you'll come with me, we'll float too.

With this in mind, I wanted to explore the habitable side of basements and attics more, and what they really mean to America. My name's Giorgio. I'm an architect and a filmmaker, and I guess an attic and basement aficionado. they really mean to America. After studying architecture at Rice University, Giorgio Angelini helped open a boutique architecture firm which went on to design the likes of the White Oak Music Hall in Houston, which has won multiple design awards. Giorgio also makes documentaries. Owned, A Tale of Two Americas looks at discrimination in the American housing market, and Feels Good Man explores the Pepe the Frog meme, and how a happy frog got warped into a symbol of hate and division.

And he also loves attics and basements. He's invited me over to his house to share some thoughts over a bowl of pasta. Well, leave it to Americans to squeeze every square foot out of a home. Giorgio leans in towards me, resting his elbows on the table. But what specifically relates to your premise here, which I think is very interesting, is that it's not so much that America has more attics in basements. It's that we identify with addicts in basements much more profoundly than other cultures for a set of reasons that are uniquely American. So come with me on this ride. So America was founded by deeply paranoid, pathologically so, people. They were scared of Catholics. They were scared of Native Americans.

They were scared of goblins. They were scared of witches. They were scared of everything. And so they were therefore like distrustful of things and also had a kind of fantastical way of thinking. And so certainly in film, which I think is where a lot of this culture gets built, America kind of,

and someone I'm sure will call me out for this, but as far as I understand, America really cornered the market on horror. And so these dark recesses of the American home, the places of domesticity that we all grew up in, the attic and the basement, are also the biggest source of anxiety there. They become the keepers of all of this collective paranoia that Americans possess. And so therefore, all of our fears get dumped into these dark, hot, or cold, damp, strange places. I've been into a few basements and attics since I've been in America. And I recently clocked one aspect that sets them apart from the other rooms in the house. And I think it's also the fact you've only got one entrance and one exit. It's terrifying to

me. I had not thought of that, but that is very true. I mean, yeah, if you think about it just in terms of film, think about Buffalo Bill. What is scarier for you, an attic or a basement? Probably a basement because the basement I grew up with, when you went down to the basement, it was unfinished. You saw under the house. So it represented a very powerful metaphor about seeing the underside of the womb, domestic womb. You're seeing the dirty underbelly. Giorgio is getting very poetic over his pastor.

His thoughts driven by his conflicting feelings about both attics and basements. For instance, when he was a kid, he remembers trying to create a haunted house in his basement, motivated by a storyline in the Cosby show, only to be so disappointed when his basement was too small. Then there's his childhood memories from the attic. My mom is an artist. And then my fifth birthday, my birthday is kind of around Halloween. She created a Halloween themed birthday for me and she created a haunted house in the attic. She, bless her heart, doesn't always follow the normal social cues, but she thought it would be really fun to put her head on a platter and greet the kids as they came up the stairs into the dark, hot, weird, damp attic. came up the stairs into the dark, hot, weird, damp attic. She's an artist. She's very creative. And so she like put herself underneath the table. She cut a hole in the table. She would tablecloth around the table and then poked her head out through and put it through. I'm terrifying, completely terrified. So these four, five-year-old kids come up and my mom's there at the top

of the stairs. So I still have friends to this day who are like my first memory is of your mom scaring the ever-living shit out of me so therein lies basically the america's relationship with these spaces it's it's rooted in terror but for georgio his emotions are not just rooted in terror because as I said these spaces are contradictory somehow yeah my relationship with my attic was profound and significant in several gestational moments in my life so as a five-year-old that birthday party and the head on a plate and then when I was 13 it was also the space in which I got my first handjob. It's Houston in an attic, so it's very hot.

But you're horny and you're a teen and you're trying to find these secret spaces away from your parents in order to kind of have some privacy and experience special new things with your friends. And so I begged my mom to let me clear out the attic and build basically like my own little bachelor pad for a 13-year-old upstairs. So we're watching Twister. It's hot, very hot, sweaty. But nonetheless, teens being as horny as they are, it's a group of us, maybe six, seven, eight

of the coolest kids in middle school. I'm sitting next to Megan and it had been communicated to me that there was some interest and perhaps experiencing each other on a deeper level. What I love about this conversation is that Giorgio's wife Maggie, a very talented interior designer, is also sitting at the table with us. It's the first time she's heard this story. She's stifling laughter and also rolling her eyes. And so I did what any horny teen would do in a situation where it's hot and muggy and you're looking for privacy. So I pulled a blanket up over us because of course, what could this blanket possibly be used for in such a situation? It was a cue.

It was a very clear cue for what was to come, which was, oh, wow. I didn't even mean to say that. It didn't come just to be clear. It was subpar. There was a lot of raw skin afterwards. I'll put it that way. Being from New Zealand, I started to wonder what seminal life experiences I'd missed out on due to New Zealand's lack of attics and basements. There was no Cosby show-inspired haunted house in the basement for me me and there was no handjob in the attic.

My god, there were no handjobs anywhere. My entire life I'd assumed that was something to do with me. But maybe the absence of an attic was to blame for my lack of early sexual experiences. If you're looking to buy a home in America, is an attic or a basement a plus, or do you just not care about those spaces? I mean, in a real estate-obsessed climate such as America, I think these quote-unquote bonus spaces are always in high demand. I mean, I think all this is so deeply intertwined with America's other export, which is just culture building, we built these spaces into our media so well, like the idea of the man cave in the basement, you know, to build out the tiki bar in the basement, you know, so these are always the spaces of debauchery or anxiety. They're always spaces where things shouldn't be happening. If your mum's head on a plate or a little handjob under a hot blanket.

Right. Or the fellas having a card game and cutting it up. I asked to see Giorgio's attic, but his newborn is sleeping and he doesn't want my lanky frame clambering around up there making noises at 10pm. So I say goodnight to Giorgio and go out into the night. As I drove home, a thought kept creeping into my head. A memory. I'd been thinking about those eggs sitting on the countertop in Evil Dead. New York eggs that should have been in the fridge. I thought of that demon-possessed woman cracking those eggs into the frying pan. And with that flooded back the memory of me once cracking an egg

over the head of my best friend, Rosabelle. When I told Monica about this during the eggs episode, she was horrified on Rosabelle's behalf. The second I did it, I realized that wasn't funny to her because she was just set to go out. Well, Rosabelle was one of the New Zealanders I'd called to check my attics and basements theory at the start of this episode. People don't really go underground, do they? And so I decided to call Rosabelle back.

There was unfinished business, unresolved trauma. Because while I don't have memories of my mother's head on the plate in an attic, I did remember what I'd done to Rosabelle while she'd sat doing her nails in our old lounge. Do you remember that time that I cracked the egg on your head? I'll never forget. I'll never forget what you did to me. When I did that to you, what did you feel at the time? I felt that you were really attacking me. It was a very confusing emotional experience because we have quite a caring, loving friendship most of the time. And then you cornered me and cracked an egg on my head. You were angry,

weren't you? Yeah, I was angry, but then I was really sad, and I, um, like I went and had a shower, and I cried in the shower. Oh, did you? Oh my god, did you cry? Oh, Rosabelle. Of course, you cracked an egg on my head. It struck me how we all have such different experiences of things. I thought I'd done a funny joke, but the impact of the egg on Rosabelle's head had had an emotional impact too. I had no idea that you cried. That's amazing. I'm so sorry. I feel actually quite bad when you said that just now. Oh, that's all right. It's just a confusing swirl of emotions for a young woman with an egg on her head. I realised that while looking into the American attic and the American basement,

I'd also looked inside one of my oldest friendships. And like the attic and basement, they can be a complicated, paradoxical space. Places of safety, but also places of mystery and terror. Especially when you've just smashed an egg over a friend's head. But we must explore our relationships like we explore the attic and basement. Because the more time we spend there, maybe the less scary they'll become. I will be expecting a call from Ira Glass with some litigation. Did you actually feel guilty? I, no, I wasn't. He stands by the bit. Look how big he's smiling right now.

He looks, he's a rascal. This is conflicting. I want to talk about rascals. Okay. Let's do it. This week, rascals. We have two rascals in the room. Hmm.

And rascality is very fun. Yes. To a point. It does cross into completely socially irresponsible and. Bullying. Bullying and ugly. It's a paradox for me because I find the fact Rosevelle cried both sad and funny. And maybe that's not normal.

I don't know. But Rosevelle found it a bit funny as well in hindsight. She laughed a little bit. No, she just wanted you to not feel horrible. When we did our second DMV trip, I cried too. Well, I didn't really cry, but internal. Because David was mean to me. What did he do?

I said that I regretted bringing her with me. Okay. Briefly. Okay. And you know how that would make me feel, knowing me. Yeah, I don't know why you regretted it. You ruined everything. Okay, so.

No, I didn't. No, I didn't. No, I didn't. What did you do, Monica? Everyone's taking some personal responsibility for anything you think maybe you did. You're on thin ice even just the way you said that. I accidentally,

for two seconds, pulled out the wrong insurance card. Okay. And then she was like, this out the wrong insurance card. Okay. And then she was like, this is wrong or not it. And so there was a flood of panic for the both of us. And then immediately I said, oh, here it is. Okay.

That's what I did. And the car was so dusty. No, that was the first time. It didn't work. That was the first time. You can't really be resentful that someone didn't supply you with the perfect shit you needed. Thank you. That seems a little out there.

But I want to defend you on the rascality front. Oh, okay. Which is, yeah, that one didn't go well. That one was regrettable. But, you know, if we think of what the definition of funny is, which is the unexpected happens. That's the crux of comedy. And like a chef who's going to make a million dishes, some of them are going to suck. You're experimenting. And overall, you've got to evaluate the cumulative effect of David Ferrier on people's lives. And it's going to be ultimately really positive and fun and rascally. But yeah, he's

going to fuck up sometimes. But that's the business you're in. You're delivering the unexpected. And if you're in the 90% of the time, it's really nice. And no one is truly injured or anything when you fuck up. You have to have a certain appetite for the unfortunate times when the rascality backfires. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. On Roosevelt's head.

How many people in this world do you think would have liked that? In hindsight, I think not many would like an egg on their head. Nobody. I didn't realize that if you crack an egg on your head, the gun gets everywhere and the shells. It was a real trauma for her because she had to wash her hair and stuff. Good for the hair. Also, I think if someone cracked an egg on my head i think i'd find it funny i think you have to select your audience a little better i think you you failed at knowing your audience here i did i think if you find someone who's a sibling like who grew up with

a close sibling or you just fucked with each other all the time you do learn to just think it's funny yeah i notice this a lot with only children versus where there's like four kids four kids they'll laugh at themselves non-stop you just get practiced at it yeah and i had a brother and we'd always tussle you know and that got oh monica you look so sad i do oh my god so so sad i was just i was just thinking about her yeah i mean i do feel bad for roswell and I did say sorry. Although Rosevelle now accuses me of that I didn't actually apologize properly. Which is a whole other issue.

So there'll be another episode about that. You should do some kind of prank apology. Where you break morax on her head. Because sometimes jokes don't work the first time. But like through the fifth or sixth time all of a sudden. Just as the tears are welling face to face. A whole like. Because talk about the unexpected.

Yeah. In your apology. Talk about maniacal. I mean, that's the end of it. A whole bucket of eggs falls on her head. I haven't. You need to drill a tiniest hole ever in an egg. And then roll up a scroll that has a very beautiful apology written in it.

And then shove it inside the egg. And then put a little toothpaste over that hole so she can't see it and you let the stuff drain out so at least it's not getting on her head that's a great idea if we could we could make this a little less yeah get all the gunk out but still smash an egg on her head that's empty yeah well how do you get the message how are you gonna get the message in there although you could probably put it in and then cook it i think you could have put it in and then cook it. I think you could. Hard-boiled egg on the egg.

But that's going to be just as messy in her hair. Exactly. You don't want that. And so stinky. You should probably do a poached egg since you're from New Zealand and put some salad under her chin. Soft-boiled. Yes. Wait, listen, stop.

I want to say. Stop, everyone, stop. Shut up. What's so sad about what you did to her? And she said it,. I want to say. Stop it. Stop it. Everyone stop. Shut up. What's so sad about what you did to her? And she said it, but I want to reiterate. She felt very safe with you. And you made that go away. Instantly.

In that moment. Rob's nodding. He agrees. Yeah, and that is. I think she still feels safe with David. We'd have to call her. She might, but it's shock. The rug's being pulled out. Yeah. The rug's being pulled out.

The rug's being pulled out. How could this person? The rules have changed. Exactly. And she's like, what's going to happen next? If he did that, what else is he going to do? If this, then what else? This isn't great.

He's like a two by four over the head. I thought that would be funny. Right. A chair. Have you always wanted to break a chair over someone's head like a big time wrestler in the basement? Can I add one thing about the doc that we kind of got into a chicken or an egg thing which i found interesting and i can't believe monica you and i left out the most significant part of a basement is the first part of your life you're fucking terrified of the basement so what's interesting

is like he kind of painted it well a just i with him. And I want to say I loved his documentary about the frog. Feels Good Man. Feels Good Man is so good. Yeah, he's incredible. But it's a chicken or an egg thing. I don't know that horror movies have informed our relationship with the basement as much as every little kid with a basement relates to the terror of the basement. Because there wasn't a light switch, right? You got to go down there dark.

And no one's been down there. There wasn't a light switch, right? You got to go down there dark and no one's been down there. So it actually, I think, reignites the original fear as opposed to introduces the fear. Hard to know though. Well, I was terrified of the basement long before I'd ever seen a horror film. But what about Home Alone? Yeah, the furnaces. Yeah.

I was afraid way before Home Alone. I had a fear of a basement before I even saw any real media. It's like the fear of what's under your bed or in the wardrobe. Is it just this unknown space where you can't see? It's basically where monsters can hide. And maybe you have that from the second you're like conscious.

We can't just be programmed not like the dark, right? We innately do not like the dark because we innately are low predator yeah on the food chain that's true before our our harnessing of fire which we were bragging about a minute ago till men safely men their fire play i remember like needing something out of the basement as a kid and like standing at the top of the steps and like i'm gonna run down and and as you're coming back to your staircase and you're running you're

falling certain you're being chased that might also be why we have such an emotional attachment to it is it is a place that you're very afraid of for some significant portion of your childhood and then you learn to love it it represents a fear you've overcome it's a rite of passage in a way it's a triumph yeah and when you're down there and you actually feel good you're remembering you've conquered that fear that's it's a feather in your cap you know i'm sitting up here i mean i i become worried because i'm sitting up here with three americans and you've all had this coming of age sort of victory over these scary spaces i've never had that so it's like a hand job nor the hand jobs in an attic or a basement there's been no blankets it's like how backwards am i from

you know what i mean yes yes and then also do you have the term man cave in america yeah i feel that's kind of tied in with the basement you know the cave it's like this area it's like you get rid of the ball and chain and down you go into your basement. There's all those funny ideas. I also think of preppers. They all keep all their prepping food in the basement. There's all that prepper kind of culture. A lot of bars in the Midwest.

Like where I'm from, that basement was a bar. Right. Really? Oh, oh, oh, finished. Everyone had a bar. Yes. If you had a finished basement, generally that's where the dad built his bar. Yeah, a lot of people. Yeah. Huh. i feel like this was a good topic right attics and basements it was

i think we've knocked this out of the park it was a beautiful walk through childhood can we talk about that i feel like people will be a little confused that we don't address the fact that was too many people in a room for a hand job oh i said this to him i was like did you feel awkward with like all these other kids around and he was like the blanket is all that he needed right he felt very safe well that like movie theaters kids would do that all the time and technically everyone's around if it's dark and you got a blanket but there's like noise that this movement yeah the blanket would be. The movie's on though, they're watching Twister, it's loud. Twister is loud.

They're remaking Twister at the moment. Maybe when the new Twister comes out, I could go and have that experience. I could get a head job in an attic. So this was the Rascal episode. Brought to you by Little Rascals Entering Paris, the new animated film by Pixar Studios. the new animated film by Pixar Studios. And if Rosabelle is listening to this, I do offer a heartfelt apology to you, Rosabelle,

for cracking the egg in your head, and I won't do that again. Rosabelle, I see you, and I'm sorry that you have David in your life. Don't team up with her. Don't team up with Rosabelle. That's not how this works. Yeah, I used to be against Rosabelle because I was jealous. Oh, you were jealous. Yeah, and then now how this works. Yeah, I used to be against Rosabelle because I was jealous. Oh, you were jealous. Yeah.

And then now I've definitely come around and Rosabelle and I are. Yep, that's right. We're on the same team. All right. Love everyone. That was fun. Thanks, guys. Love you guys.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.