Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast - Ep 630 - Buildings (feat. Michael P. Murphy)

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Support the D.A.W.G.Z. @ patreon.com/MSsecretpod Get Michael's Book 'Our World in Ten Buildings' Now https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Our-World-in-Ten-Buildings/Michael-Murphy/9781668056554 Go See Matt Live @ mattmccusker.com/dates Go See Shane Live @ shanemgillis.com Go See Lemaire Lee Live @ https://lemairelee.fun/ Go See Shawn Gardini Live if you want  @  https://www.shawngardini.com/live yo0o0o0. Hope you all had a good weekend. Got a little Monday bonus for you. Matt took to the podez to chat with Author Michael P. Murphy. Check out his books!! We hope you all have a good week. Please enjoy. God Bless. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wow, Wow, Wes. All right, we're here. Michael P. Murphy. What's going on, man? Hey, man. Great to be here. Dude, it was, you know, again, I'll be honest. I have a booking service.

They just go, and I'm pretty bad in terms of, like, researching anything. They just go, like, hey, here's the book. I go, sounds great. Sounds awesome. The book is called Our World and Ten Buildings. Yeah, that's right. Ten buildings. So you're in this guy, I was doing a little, I did a little research.

Okay. So you have like an architectural origin story. I do. It's a little bit that this book is about as well. It's pretty charged. You were saying your father was sick. Yeah. You went to the hospital and you're like, dude, this place, why does this place look so fucking horrible? Is that about it? This is like those are the two parts. Yeah, I got two kind of awakenings I had. Yeah. That's a bad way to frame. I shouldn't say that. You were just like this doesn't look like a place to get healthy. No, it's true. I went, you know, like I think a lot of people went to the hospital as you everyone will go for those like moments of great. joy and your kids are born and terror when your family's sick. And I'm sitting around. It was a, it was actually like the holidays. It was Christmas. And the whole family had to be there because he was getting surgery. It's a place emptied out. And there's like no one in there except us. And he's like, this is the worst place. I could imagine spending the holidays. And I'm looking around. I was a young architecture student. I'm looking around. I'm like, where is the architect? Where are the design

elements in this place? This place is terrible. Yeah. You know? And so I think it kind of I cracked my head up and said, you know, maybe one day I could design a hospital or something like that. So you were already in architecture. You're studying architecture before that. I had been in architecture school for one semester. Oh, so you were pretty new. I was pretty new. I didn't know a damn thing. Did you talk to anyone in there about architecture during the thing or were you just kind of just chilling? You know, I was there was this moment where they told him he had to walk around. He's like, oh, get your steps in. And so they're walking around. the hallway with no windows, rooms on either side, the nursing station in the middle,

and he was very, very diligent doing what the doctors told him. So he was walking around and I'm just like, this is the most abysmal experience, you know. Yeah. And it's this great famous cancer institution in New York City. Yeah. That's supposed to be one of the greatest ones. And it is for research, but the experience was pretty bleak, you know. Yeah. Hospitals are really pretty brutal in there. And it's like, I get it. You know, you're trying to You got to build all the cool life-saving machines. You can't really be thinking about nice windows and natural light. So your thing is like you can.

You can have both, basically. Yeah, I think the question, I think the question emerged like, why is it? Why is it that we can't have both? You know, it's interesting when you think about hospitality spaces are designed completely around your experience. Yeah. You know, what the comfort of the chair is, what the smell of the room is, what the light setting is. It's all around making people feel like vibe and comfort.

Yeah. Interest and vibe of the hospital sucks. Yes. It's not a good vibe. And hospitals, which they share the same root word. True. Are completely different, completely on the other spectrum. It's all about the kind of institution and it's sanitary and cleanable spaces.

And you can understand there's a lot of liability around screwing it up. Yeah. Do you think that's from like, I would imagine hospitals were invented for soldiers initially. So I think it's probably just like mercenary mindset where it's like, you know, you That's, they always were like, give them the worst possible shit. We'll put their legs back on and send them back out. I just think it just everyone was like, yeah, that's just what they look like. And no one ever even thought about it.

It's a very good, yeah, it's a very good point. You know, the history of hospitals, like originally hospitals actually were converted, uh, religious spaces, you know, so like before, let's say the 18th century, they just put the sick in, in the church in the kind of large rooms and put beds in there. You could hear, you know, the only healing power is the power of God, you know, the word of God. So the priest stands at the front, delivers the sermon, and, you know, that's your pathway to heaven. Really?

That was the first hospital. So those are the first medical spaces are like really converted, you know, religious spaces, basically. Okay. They're taking in this sick. And then around, let's say, the turn of the 18th century, kind of modern hospital starts to emerge as a place where the state is putting the ill. in the sick. Yeah. In the 19th century, 1850s is really when you see what we know today as the

modern hospital realm. Oh, they're pretty new. Kind of new and you're right that like it's this confluence of military and kind of state investment. So I did this research eventually to look into why was it so bad. You know, well, how can a place provide like the best care and actually potentially extend my father's life actually provide really good care good research good surgery and have such a you know a poor experience in terms of like the comfort level there you know why the two so disconnected so i looked into this history there's an interesting historical relationship where the florence nightingale who from the 1850s uh kind of emerged as like the first medical medical medical hospital i don't want to say medical hospital designer but she really she built

this thing she wrote this book called a no on hospitals and notes on nursing. She had a nurse? She was a nurse. She sort of set up the first kind of nursing. She's an incredible innovator. I always thought she was like a character from like a Dickens novel. That's a real person.

I mean, it's a very real person. That's like the ultimate nurse name. Yeah, yeah. Nightingale. My name is Nurse Florence Nightingale. She's amazing. She went to the, then it was a Crimean War. And all these, all these soldiers were dying because they were in these what's called

bell tents and they were dying of disease. And she said, need to bring, we need to, she learned that through the design of this new kind of military hospital that was brought in, that patients were actually living longer. Yeah. They were being pulled off the ground, that they weren't getting sick, that there was airflow in the facility, and she realized that the hospital had this big impact on saving their life. And so she developed rules for how to design hospitals and use those rules that kind of changed hospital design around the world. Dang. So do you ever hear about the guy who discovered germs? Similar thing.

the guy who was like you should wash your hands after you like like you know package away a dead body and you have to deliver child you should wash your hands that guy was told he was like other doctors were like shut the fuck up dude there's nothing on our there's not like invisible bugs on our hands and that guy i forget his name but he actually uh he was the one who like pretty much founded germ theory and he died in like a sane asylum because all the other doctors were like shut up oh i didn't know we don't hear about that like we're doctors we're gentlemen we're clean we can touch anything it's not going to make us dirty. Yeah, there was this study where, similar to that,

where it was doctors' ties that were getting germs on them. Really? Infecting other patients as they were walking through different wards. What? So this whole idea of sanitary clothing and other things, you know. But those same ideas are really, really fascinating. You know, it was the same idea around. Similewis.

Sorry, that's the guy. Oh, yeah. That guy. Good guy. Good guy. Horrible fate for him. He just tried. to be like, guys, we should wash her hands after touching dead bodies.

We shouldn't deliver babies right after. And they're like, shut up. Yeah, yeah. All that stuff was changing how we think about not just what medicine is, but how we live in the world, how the cities change. Yeah. Well, it is, you know, it's, it's a, it is tricky because you're in the hospital and it's like, yo, let's make this place look awesome. And the doctors are like, they've been up for 35 hours straight.

And they're like, shut, shut off. They're pretty grumpy, honestly. Doctors are pretty grumpy. You've worked with a lot of them, I guess. Yeah, I ended up working with a bunch of amazing doctors. They eat like crap too. They have terrible diets, for real. That's funny you say that.

That is some truth. It's 100% true. Doctors have the worst diets out of anybody. Well, they're not as bad as construction workers, but they fall for health food fads a lot. We'll drink like 10 Coke zeros and be like, I'm completely healthy. Got to stay up. It's those shifts. Yeah.

It's kind of fucked. Yeah. It's not good. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I met this doctor right at that same time and he was thinking about, his name's Paul Farmer. He was this incredible doctor. And he was trying to build hospitals around the world for some of the poorest people and basically saying, this is terrible. We deserve better medical care, but also better spaces. Yeah. And he invited me to work with him and actually ended up designing a hospital with him. And that's how I got started my first project. Where was this at? The hospital's in Rwanda. Dang. East Africa, yeah. Building that resume. You get ready. Let's start. They're like, we need an architect

who works in Rwanda. Yeah. Well, so I'll get back to that. It's kind of fascinating. How did you, how did you get into Harvard architectural schools? You were in English, you were an English literature major. Yeah, I was. How do you, how do you, how do you do you do that? You join like some intramural sports. How did you polish your resume to get up into? Yeah, I had, I, you know, I definitely was not destined to being architect, you know what I mean? I thought I wanted to be a journalist. Maybe a future podcast. Hey.

You know, but. This, this path is, you got to study hard. I wanted to, I was trying to write a book. Actually, this book I often say is the thing I've been trying to do for 30 years. So I'm glad it's out. But, uh, that's cool. I, uh, I studied literature and I went and worked in publishing, like for a book agent, actually after school, which I did not love.

And then I went to try to be a journalist. And so I was working abroad. Someone told me to get your, to do that, you got to go get your, get your, get your, get your, get your, get your, get your, get your stringer or something and go to some foreign place. I went to South Africa. Okay. Had studied in school and went back there. I knew some people there and I was trying to figure it out. And while I was there, not being very successful, I would say, I got, I called my father and my mother on my father's birthday.

How old were you? I was 20. I went there when I was 24. So you're a 24-year-old in South Africa trying to be a journalist. That's a crazy plan. Yeah, it's like terrible. Like, why isn't this working? I'm down to South Africa.

I'm on the beat right now. I know. Shouldn't I, shouldn't something great happen to me? That is pretty sick, though. So you were down, sorry, you were down there and what happened? I clearly met with some great advisors who told me, first, study English literature, one of the least employable professions. Actually, it's funny, this is a segue,

But when I did eventually go to architecture school in 2006, in 2008, the financial crisis happens. I was a realtor. Oh, you were a realtor? I was a 19-year-old realtor in Philadelphia. So, yeah, I've suffered similar deaths at backs. Well, there's this article that New York Times comes out and says, Architects have finally replaced English literature graduates as the least employable profession. And then you switched to that?

Well, I was in architecture. Oh, fuck, you just switched. Oh, because it was 2008. Yeah, 2008. All the every architect was, we share a similar arc. I've, yeah,

so failing up, as they say. So you switch. So, yeah, so what was, how did you switch? I still don't understand.

You're, you're an English literature major and you were just like, you know what? Oh, because you were down there in South Africa. I was down there trying to write. And then I call my dad and my dad, uh,

didn't my mom answer the phone. And she said, uh, listen, your dad's in the hospital. Oh, he's sick. He's got,

They found cancer in his stomach. He was feeling uncomfortable. They opened him up and they closed him up. And they said, she said, get home. He has three weeks to live. Oh, God. And so we had that terrible call. And the next day, I jumped on a plane.

I came back home. It was winter. I'm from Poughkeepsie, New York. Chile. Chile, well, you know, upstate, North of New York City. And I came home and, you know, what do you do in that situation? I had this whole plan. bad plan, as you articulated.

That wasn't working so well. So I kind of abandoned that. I said, well, I'm just going to sit here and figure out what to do with the family. And well, backstories, my dad had always worked on our family home. Every weekend, he was like tinkering. He was painting. He was like stripping paint on repainting this old historic home that they had bought for kind of a cheap deal and tried to fix it themselves. Usually great for a marriage.

Yeah, yeah. Project. Yeah, exactly. Now that makes a woman happier. His dad on the ladder for seven hours on a Saturday. You know, we always heard that question, you know, with his like headphones. You got a little transistor radio playing the, you know, Yankees game or whatever. That's actually kind of nice.

So, but he was always trying to finish it, never, you know, kind of the job that never ends. And I said, well, what if I asked him? I said, you know, I'm going to keep myself busy. What if I try to finish what you've been doing? You know, so it's a good idea. So, you know, I started digging into the house. I started, it was winter. So I started working inside.

there was this old addict that had never been restored. I started working up there. So three weeks passed, he's still alive. Six weeks, he's still alive. He's responding to the drugs. He's still going to work. You know, a couple months passed, and he's like, I'm going to join you on this. So he comes home from work every day.

We're working on it together. Yeah. It's like this really restorative experience. A year and a half pass, he's still alive, and we finished restoring the house. That's awesome. It's amazing. And I went outside with him at this one moment. You know, he's always, at the end of day,

He always poured a drink. It always had like a CC in Coke. I don't know who drinks Canadian club and Coke for your listeners, you know, some old rye. That was old school drink. And sipping the drink, we're standing outside summertime. And he goes, working on the house with you to save my life. It healed me, he said.

That's really nice. And so that was a powerful experience. You know, I said like, is that true? Could it have happened, you know? But in that moment, I was like, okay, I think there's something bigger here. I should be an architect. I should actually go stuff.

this. So that was the big moment for me. So you gave up farting around with the literature. Until now. Picked up some fucking tools like a man. You found your calling. I was grinding, grinding it out on the floor. Yeah. So what was what would happen with the cancer? Yeah. So he, you know, he went through remission. He had hair on his head. He was feeling good. We finished the house. But stage four cancer. Sure. is a bitch. It came back into my first semester. I told this story, we're in the hospital together. So I went, then I went to archa school. Then I'm back in the hospital just with a little knowledge. You know, I went into, I went to the Harvard Graduate School design and I get, you know,

overwhelmed with all the famous architects. This is how you'd be a famous architect. These are all the great people you should follow and all this star studded, you know, attention. And, uh, I'm going to this hospital. No one's talking about hospitals in the school. They're talking about museums. They're talking about these things. Sure. And I'm like, where are these? these guys in the hospital. Yeah. You know, because my father's now suffering again. All these people are the people, the nurses,

they're working in these terrible conditions. And like, where is that brilliance that we see and all these things I just studied for the first semester and why aren't they here? So it was kind of like a real kind of whiplash experience to go from having this powerful experience of my father where we kind of restored this thing together and he became restored and extended his life.

And then to go to the place where he was facing human and death again and see the lack of those thoughts in that experience. I think it really shook me a little bit. You know, I talk about it in the book at the end, but six months later, he did eventually, yeah, he did eventually die. But it was, not to kill the ending of the book, but he was very intentional about that, that choice. He had now had these thoughts and he said, I'm going to choose where to go.

Yeah. So he like picked, he'd never, you know, this guy never left, Poughkeepsie New York, basically. He went abroad once to Barbados, this country where his friend, his friend had a house invited him. He got a passport once for one trip. I mean, kind of the best place to go. If I'm being honest. Barbados is nice.

You know, but, you know, Caribbean is nice, but he hadn't traveled at all, really. And he went down there and he had this great experience there. And he said, I don't want to die in that house. He didn't tell me all this. I found this out later. So he went to his friend's house in Barbados. He brought his four best friend, couple friends. And he designed that end of life experience.

It would be very intentional. You know, and I chose his last room, as I say in the book, that like end of life, being able to design that last experience. Yeah. Where he was looking at the horizon where he was like in this beautiful environment or he was calm and comforted. His friends were around him and he like went out. Yeah.

It went out like a king. Yeah, pretty ideal, honestly. And so I think all those things in my first year of architecture school really, it just shook me, you know, say like, okay, we're doing this. Something's wrong in the way we're studying and working. That makes sense. I was trying to figure out how it is kind of a, it's a, you know, it was kind of a bit of like an oxymoron to be like, we're bringing architecture to hospital. So you never hear about it. It's like we're going to, you know, there's some rich guy with a ton of money.

We're going to paint frescoes on a ceiling and give them big. You know, you know what I mean? Like it's, you rarely hear about you. Exactly. My beautiful heart. You really never hear about it. That actually does make sense of how you kind of connected that to be like, let's, let's make this, you know, like your dad had a nice experience.

How do you make that, how do you make a hospital where, you know, most people are just going to sit in a hospital? How do you make that at least somewhat give like a sliver of that experience to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it asks this question in myself, which is why do we suffer through? these anesthetic experiences. You know, why do we allow ourselves to be in conditions which are so poorly designed

and have no say in what they are? I mean, we live our lives, 90% of our lives are inside of buildings. Yeah, people are going to say because they don't have any money. That's why. So my house sucks. Yeah. But in a way in this book, I didn't want to say, okay, only great architecture of the famous houses we see in the architectural record.

I actually wanted to say, actually there's ways in which like my dad did in his last room that we in each of our apartments or house everyone and listening, you know, you all actually are designers of your home. For sure. You're changing things. You're buying furniture. You're changing the layout of things. You're putting in mementos of your family, talismanic things that are from your history or memory.

And you're making them your own, you know. And there's a real beauty to that actually in the spaces that we're given. We adapt them and design them and accommodate them to what makes us feel at ease and comfortable. Yeah. No, that is pretty cool. So then you, so is that how you kind of got into, I guess your focus in architecture. We were like, all right, let's work on making plays. I remember the first time I was in a children's hospital.

Children's hospitals kind of do this. Yes, that's a good point. Yeah. They were like, I walked in. I remember it was like, you know, if you have kids, you've ever been to a children's hospital. It's like, it's a really gut wrenching experience. But then you're seeing like kids who are like really, really sick and you're like, all right, let me stop being a baby, whatever.

But I remember like for real, almost crying being like, this is. so nice that they've put all of this thought into like making these places the philadelphia's children's hospital chop is like really really nice the way they've set it up and they you could tell they really designed it in a way to make you know kids feel more comfortable and not like they're in such a serious like a serious scary place yeah um no it's a really good point in in a children's hospital because no one's going on a children's hospital for for great things no it's like bleak We, our second kid when they're when she was just a little baby had um they thought she had meningitis she had such a super high fever that they it wasn't one of them's like bacterial i think

it goes like to the brain yeah but they like we just have to be sure they'd give her like a spinal tap and she was a tiny little thing i'm you know i'm like a wreck but i remember just really especially in moments like that you're like it's really nice we can all come together you know and actually collectively design a place for everybody that you know because that is it's just like a brutal, you know. It's a brutal experience. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like at the bare minimum, I've been in these children's hospitals and they're like, you know, they're putting like Snoopy characters on the wall or something. Or they have some play area. They're at least trying to think about what the kids experience is going to be, you know. They had Gatorade in the waiting

room. And I was like, guys, come here. It's lemon line. It was really good. I was like, this is so nice to have this. Gatorade. Free Gatorade. It's cold Gatorade. It was awesome. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's a good point. How do you get into the mindset of those who are experiencing that. Yeah. Is that question. And in hospitals, we're often, there's a lot of times where we've lost that. We're like, this thing has to be a high performance machine, which is, we're grateful. Yeah. It's a high performance machine and it's doing incredible, life-changing work. So I don't want to discount that. Yeah. But it's also a place where people work every day. Yeah. Nurses are working there and they're grinding it out and they're doing hard hours and doctors are working and they're trying to

like muscle through the hard work of this. And is that the kind of workplace that you'd want to be? You know, it's not Facebook's office offices, you know, it's not like, there's not like, you know, free lunch everywhere. You know, they're not thinking about that total experience of what it is to take care of the workers and labor there as well as the people that are in there all the time. Yeah, there's no artistry, basically, in the whole setup. So some of that can change, you know, but I think it's, it is about understanding the confluence and trying to say, you know, hospitals are other places where we face great joy and great fear. Yeah. And we got to take care of the people that are in that environment. So how have you, so going back to the Rwanda thing, you're down there, that was like your first project?

I mean, it's a crazy story because, you know, I'm in this, I'm in this moment of like existential crisis where I'm like, what am I studying this thing for? Yeah. And I'm not going to be one of these architects. And my dad, my dad's dying. I'm going home every weekend, driving back from Boston to Poughkeepsie trying to be with him. Yeah. And I don't know if you've ever been with someone at the end of their life. I mean, he was just.

muscling through like every sports program he could watch. You know, like he was watching golf. He's watching football. He's just like the whole day. He's just watching TV. I was, I was dispatched. One of my dad's buddies had pancreatic cancer.

And he was really just like wasting away. And so my dad would like send us over there. Like, oh, because we would make him like weed coconut oil like edible stuff. And he'd be like, go over there. Hang out, man.

Go like hang out. Spent some time with the guy. And I remember he would just sit in his underwear and just watch Westerns. So I would just chill with them for like a couple hours every now and again. I just watch just watch Westerns with him. But he was a pretty funny guy. I mean, I remember it was just I would wait for the commercial break. And I try to get something potent in there.

Dad, keep. I love his day live. I love you. Yeah, love you, dad. Okay. Commercial's over. You know, like, you know, pretty bleak. See the robots on like Fox football Sunday.

Yeah. All right, let's be quiet. Yeah, so I had a different experience of my first year. And then I met this doctor, you know, this Dr. Paul Farmer. And he was like, look, we're building hospitals in Haiti and in Rwanda and we're working with all these communities. And who funds that? That's the question.

How do you get the money to like kind of do stuff like that? He was very interesting guy. His organization, Partners in Health is an Incredible entity. You know, and he was grinding it out, raising money from philanthropists. He had a lot of money from there was a lot of money funding the programs from PEPFAR, actually, from what was that? Which was the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief. Oh, good.

There you go. Pretty good. That's actually impressive. Actually, George Bush put that together. It's one of one of his crowning achievements. Yeah. They funded all this money into AIDS treatment, especially in in sub-Saharan Africa, but not just solely there.

And that had a lot of money pumped into programs that were radically reducing affection rates and also helped some fund infrastructure. So he was raising money in different ways. Anyway, long story short, he was partnered with the government of Rwanda and they were building after they had had a genocide 10 years earlier. They were investing in architecture and infrastructure while the rest of the world was paralyzed after the crisis. Oh, yeah.

And they were building hospitals, and he raised a little money to build a new hospital. They asked him to build a new hospital. He's like, we got to do a new hospital. Would you ever come and do this with us? What year were you in? This is 2007. I went to Rwanda to work with him.

What year were you in terms of studies? Like, what was your... So I had one awesome year under my belt. you're a freshman. That's pretty cool, though. That's awesome. You got to, like, no shoulder bag on and no experience.

Yeah. No firm experience. And, um, but, you know, they had done it before. You know, they had done stuff before. I was like, look, I have no experience. He goes, actually, we want that because, you know, if you've done it a hundred times, now you're bringing all that baggage. We actually have, we've done it before.

We've done it in our way. And we need you to come in and assist us. So it wasn't like I'm coming in as the architect. It was I'm going to come in. and work with y'all that's cool yeah to like see if we can improve basically or just add to what you're already doing and so i moved you know i left school after my second year and uh and moved to rwanda to be with his team and try to work on this new hospital called the bataro hospital yeah and uh and that's where we tested all these ideas where i learned about the history of you know florence

angelo is where i asked questions like why are why our hospital's making people sicker instead of healthier so i got really into uh airflow yeah i saw i saw that from your ted talk that was kind of cool how can buildings breathe better basically how to get get the air i didn't even even thought about that because i just assumed like in my house like during winter time if i don't open a window i'm like this is just like old air yeah that's right it is you know you're just the same no it's true i mean we learned this in uh during covid yeah true you know it was about airflow yeah We're not getting enough air management. You know, once we sealed all of our, this is the other lesson I learned.

Once in 1950s where basically everything became air conditioned and there's lots of good benefits to air conditioning. Certainly in Austin where it's 100 degrees. We need some AC. Oh, yeah. I love AC. You know, but it also means that the air inside often is not recycled enough to clean it. Yeah.

I never even thought. So it's, so in the hospital, you would think like a central aired house would have like a duck that pulls air in from the outside just to give you some fresh air. That's right. Yeah. It doesn't, right? No, they do. I mean, they have big mechanical systems in hospitals.

And it's for particularly sick patients, they go in what's called a negative pressure room where they're pulling air out constantly. Yeah. So those folks in a modern hospital who are have tuberculosis or COVID or a disease, which is infecting the air, they would be put into, let's say, a negative pressure room. place like Rwanda, they didn't have negative pressure rooms. So it's the hallway as patients were coming in very sick and infecting other patients. And it's the medical space that was contaminating those patients. Oh, yeah. And so we had to think really kind of back to the origins of architecture and say, okay, if we don't have the money for big air conditioning units or big mechanical systems, can we design the building so you get enough natural ventilation that reduces the overall infection

rates radically? And there was like a metric. I remember you're saying. like you can measure how many times the air is completely recycled in a building. Or basically like fresh air coming in, old air out. Yeah, they call it air changes per hour. Yeah. And, you know, typically a normal room might get like two to three air changes per hour. But in like a negative pressure room, you're getting a few more. And during COVID, you want to get like eight air changes per hour.

Yeah. So you're kind of like, it's the same thing with TB. You know, you want to get a lot more. And so we said, okay, I went back to Nightingale's strategies and she had ideas. about a window placement and size. She had ideas about how big the floor plate or the kind of plan or the room could be. And all of those things are this relationship, which create air management, airflow. And if we introduce that back into this modern hospital in Rwanda, could we actually reduce infection rates and create not only a comfortable space, a beautiful space on this hilltop

that looks at this incredible view. I will say, I checked out your portfolio. I was trying to dig up at least one stinker. Really nice, dude. I was like, damn, it was the, what was it that? Not Masso, uh, AMA. Amma. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuff looked crazy, man.

Thanks, bro. Really, for real. I was, I was just, I was like, there's got to be one in here. You're like, what the hell is it? I was like, damn, this shit is awesome. We don't put the, uh, stinkers on the, on the website. So what was the tech level in the hospital in Rwanda? You're talking like you had just open windows where there's a breeze just coming through,

right? Pretty low tech, you know, but there's simple. simple metrics size of windows size of room and then this is key high ceilings what we call the upper room yeah where the airflow's up and then we there's this great kentucky company outside of louisville called big ass fans you're this group it's awesome sounds enough that sounds awesome and we found them and they create these huge ceiling fans so i wrote to big ass fans i said would you guys ever think about donating helping us put these big ceiling fans in these open wards uh and they were like on board. That's awesome. So we had this big ass fans. Shout out to big ass fans. Shout out to big ass fans.

And it's hilarious too because all these t-shirts, all these dudes, construction workers wearing big ass fan t-shirts, like no idea what this meant. It's hilarious. That's really funny. So we had this big airflow kind of goes slow, but because they're big, they get a lot of air flow. We have one in the Austin Airport. That's just like a massive metal fan. I might be a big ass fan. That might be a big ass fan. Yeah, yeah. I'll have to look when I'm walking through there because it gets air up, a lot of air up. but it doesn't, you don't have the speed that creates a lot of, let's say, it cools you down, actually. So it gets the room up, it gets the air up into the upper room, and then up there we had UVGI lights, ultraviolet germicidal radiation lights, and it cleans the air up there.

Yeah. And then it moves out. So just the simple strategies actually created enough air changes per hour that we needed without having to bring in big mechanical systems. That's awesome. And it kind of changed the way I think about buildings. I started to say, buildings have to breathe. Yeah. They allow us to breathe.

You know, they're actually working with us, actually. So our ability to breathe clean air is predicated on the spaces we're in, actually. And because we spend most of our lives in these spaces. And that's a critical measure of our health and our comfort and our ability to live. Yeah. And why is it that the buildings are not? Why aren't we thinking about buildings as this, like a series of lungs or a filter of the outside to the inside more than just the spaces that we're in and we're forced to. Yeah, keep it cold and keep it cool and all that stuff.

Yeah. So that was interesting. That is pretty. I really do. I think it goes back to just like, you know, medieval peasant mentality where it's like, all right, we're going to build. If we build stuff for the general population, it's just, let's just build it. It's not going to help you anyway. It's not going to be good for you.

But just shut up and just deal with it. because I think that's why like hospitals really do suck so bad. There's some of that truth. Yeah. It's like the bare minimum. Well, it's almost just unthinkable. It'll be like, let's make this nice because everyone's like, shut up. Yeah. Be glad you have anything at all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's that inequality of space, that kind of indignity of environments that we live in, that we don't deserve spaces that not just treat us correctly or treat us well, but also inspire us or give us a sense of awe. I mean, I think, you know, if you go back, back to the, you know, to the kind of medieval period, you have a great distinction, right? You have maybe terrible environments that you live in in homes,

or something like that. Yeah, they just like butcher animals and throw them right outside. There you go. You have terrible spaces which are not cleanly and maybe not inspiring. And then you go to the cathedral. Yeah. And the cathedral is like one of the most awe-inspiring things you've ever seen. Yeah.

And so they were using architecture and its greatest ability to like inspire awe, to remind us that like, you know, there's these greater powers that are above us that you should be inspired by and they give you a kind of purpose. So in a way, every day the public is going in between the conditions of the ordinary and the conditions of the inspiring at some moments in their life. Like, I'm sure each of us has an architectural memory that they could tell a story about. It's one of the reason I wrote this book. It's like, you know, what is that moment where you said, oh, that was a badass experience I had? You know, no, that. was for me. What was it? You probably actually know this. The egg in Albany. Oh yeah, the egg.

I performed in the egg. And I'll be honest, that's, that was awesome. Yeah, what was it about the egg? It's just fucking cool. I was in an egg. I don't know. It was in like a circular, a completely circular building. There, you Josh, please pull up a picture of the egg in Albany. It was, uh, yeah. Also, are you familiar with Albany? Yeah. Because then they have those like government buildings. It looks like evil. Yeah. They have those like, it's like brutalist, I guess. You have those like, very like you like come over whatever highway that or whatever road that is and you see this like egg shape building looming in the distance that thing that big concrete satellite dish looking thing but then there's those buildings to the left corner yeah it almost looks like they at nighttime

they stick up and it looks like the evil empire out of star where it's and honestly too i don't i don't think anyone well people probably know but they're like federal buildings yeah that i don't i couldn't really get an answer from people like what's actually in them they're like i don't know yeah it's like state It's like state office buildings. Yeah. And the clearance, you need like, not military clearance. When you pull in, it's like very, very restrictive. Like who can go in there?

You need all these credentials. So, yeah, that was the picture right there, Josh. Memorable, right? Yeah, that one stuck with me. I just remember pulling up being like, why did they do this? It looks terrible. The egg was cool. The buildings behind it were like scary, like literally scary looking.

Yeah. And they're so different than the structures around them, which like this historic 19th century buildings. Yeah. Yeah. That period of time in the 60s with urban renewal dollars was a big moment of like big heroic visionary and kind of sometimes like really miss the mark. Yeah. Well, so are you, uh, Josh, you pull up the guild house in Philadelphia?

Are you familiar with the guild house? I'd show me the guild house. Yeah, so I know the guild house. Yes. Of course, the ugliest architecture. It's the ugliest building. And this is what I didn't realize. Yeah.

That was designed purposely. Someone made this play. I said pass it every day. The Guildhouse, it's actually kind of irritated me. That place, it's on, I don't know, like, Aeth and Springard somewhere. But that was designed by an architect, which I get the idea was like, let's not like clash with the existing neighborhood. Let's give it something that like we kind of fit in. But that was for basically low income senior citizens.

And he was like, let's just like purposely make this thing look almost like kind of like run down. And then he had a big satellite dish on the top of it. They had to remove. Yeah, yeah. Because that was like an insider joke. like these guys are just sitting there for the rest of their life watching TV all day in the shitty building and then they took this satellite dish off yeah that was that was also in the 60s as well as Robert Venturi yeah what the hell what was up that guy yeah Robert Venturi and Denise Scott

Brown uh Philadelphia architects real uh I actually write about them a little bit in the book you know they they really champion this what became postmodernism and using kind of signs and symbols in architecture to signal a kind of language so that you read he actually defended the guildhouse as as ugly architecture, you know, that you would read the ugly and it could be ordinary and okay. I mean, this guy's got to knock it off. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just give them nice rooms and some ceiling. Like, these are low income guys in Philadelphia trying you know, finish their years out. It's a very kind of populous thing, but it's also, you know, it's sort of, there's so many Venture Scott Brown's structures that really miss the mark and are kind

of hideous architecture. And they, but they're kind of obsessed with the ordinary. Yeah. way like they they were obsessed with Las Vegas they went to Las Vegas and created an entire theory around the buildings on the strip yeah there were just boxes with big signs okay you know and they were saying you know there's something about this we should think about as like a vernacular American architecture where we care about the sign but we don't care about what's behind the sign I don't fully agree with that I don't even know what they're talking about I feel like the is that the old strip in Vegas the old strip yeah so isn't that like the flamingo they have like pink but was he i don't even understand that it looks insane you go to vegas it does not look ordinary

whatsoever no now they now now emblematic you know emblematic of like little mini venice or a little mini yeah you know new york city or whatever was the old strip that plane what year was this this this was the 60s it was just a big neon sign oh okay yeah yeah so what the hell okay so yeah and i still don't get what he's talking about i think what they were saying it's like cool Yeah, that, you know, we're attracted to the symbol and the sign and the eat here and come in here. But once you get inside, it can be like every other building. Okay. And that's why we should focus on the language, if you want to use it, or the symbol that wraps the building and not care so much about the experience inside.

And of course, like flies in the face of a lot of other architectural theorists who would say, like, the things should be interrelated. Yeah. But it was an interesting and provocative theory, which definitely changed, you know, change. you know, change the way that architects started to focus on what it looks like from the outside. I mean, here's the thing. And again, I don't, I've never studied architecture. But if I had a guess if I was going, all right, what would I, if I'm like a 75 year old dude who's lived in Philly my whole life and now I'm in a low income housing, just give the guy like a slightly higher ceiling. Like this is high ceilings. This is nice. Totally. Hitting them with the high concepts.

And especially being like it's shitty on purpose. Shitty on purpose. Come on man. When I read that, I was like, What the fuck. It's very patronizing. It is. It's very shitty. It's very mean to be like, these guys, give them something shitty. We'll put a big satellite dish on the top.

Yeah, I also felt like they never, you know, I critique it a little bit in the book, which is to say like, you know, there's also a reason why you have these big signs in Vegas at the time. It's because you're trying to capture the most capital. You're trying to get the people to buy what they have. You want the louder and louder sign. So there's an economic driver behind that investment that has nothing to do with the experience. experience one has and the desire one has to like be in a space for a long period of time. Casinos are freaked out because it's like they're purposely designed to be disorienting. Completely.

Kind of just leave you just like, don't leave me. You literally can't figure out how to get out of there. Yeah, they're labyrinthine. Yeah. No clocks. Pumping in air. So you stay awake.

Yeah. Oh, do they do that? Totally. Oh, God. It's terrible. Terrible. Well, okay. So, okay.

So in architect school, this is one of my prepared questions. At what point in architect school do they teach you how to effectively blame everything on the contractors. It's lesson number one. Yeah, yeah. It is nice. It's a nice thing to be able to do. Well, trust me, when you work with the contractors,

they're blaming everything on the architecture. I know. I know. It's literally vice versa. It's like this, it is actually constructed as this completely adverse relationship from the beginning. Yeah. You have the big ideas and they're getting everything done.

Well, they're looking at your, they're looking at the plans going on, this is bullshit. We made some changes because you can't even do this. They don't know what it's like. And I've seen it a million times. Yeah, that's what was so interesting about working in, you know, working in Rwanda because they didn't have, we didn't have an architect per se.

I was, I was working with the team, but they had a builder. This guy, Bruce and his A. And he had these shops where he was making every piece of furniture, making window details, making, they're making coffins for the hospital. I mean, making everything. They had metal shop and wood shop. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. like you're actually working interrelated with the builder.

We're going to build it together. We're going to design it together. We're going to test it together. Yeah. And so there was that that relationship, that adverse relationship never, I didn't learn through that. Right.

I learned how to like work directly in relationship with those who were going to make it because we could make it right on site, which is sort of something you don't have access to here where everything is imported. Yeah. You know, and that was a really unique experience. Yeah.

That is kind of cool. But there is this moment where you say, okay, architects have this position on high and we create the great idea ideas and then everyone else has to yeah surrender to that and I think that kind of again patronizing position is completely it recreates the idea that only some get access to architecture and architects and that we all have to live and suffer through these terrible spaces in our lives instead of trying to figure out how to how to

solve and fix the things I was I was reading I've been reading this guy's trying to read his book it's it's really hard to read but he it's called after virtue it's a like a real dense Philist philosophical book by Alastair McIntyre and he was talking about his part of his thing was like we need to go back to like engaging in practices for the sake of the practice rather than the external reward which is like a nice thing to think about and uh but then he was like talking about like okay he had to find what a practice was a architecture is a practice and like what about bricklaying he's like not a practice. He's like that's just part of art that's a part of architecture. It was kind of it was kind of a snobby take. He was like there's nothing to be had internally by being a good bricklayer. Just a subset of the practice of architecture. Oh yeah, I don't agree with that at all. Yeah, so he caught a lot of flack for it, honestly. Pretty, kind of a snobby take. Yeah, it is.

I think one of the things I learned is it's, you know, people ask, oh, how do you define one of more beautiful building is the versus another? And I say, you know, if you can tell a story about the building, if you can communicate like why it is the way it is. And often I can be through how it's made. So the craft of making, you know, the building. I've worked with these stone masons who, you know, we work together on making the this really beautiful stone wall out of this volcanic rock.

Very nice. In the, you know, in the ground. And it's like, oh, this is about, they made every single edge of every single rock. It was handcrafted. Yeah. And I'm like, you can see the thousands of hours and the lot, all the handstone cutting that was going on inside.

And you can see this incredible thing they created that, which will stand the test of time. And in that is the story for generations. I made that stone wall. Yeah. Like my great, great grandfather was a stone mason from Ireland, came up to the Hudson Valley. That's why we were there.

came to build these estates that were made out of these like river stones, you know, had this Irish stone, you know, masonry. Usually breathable stone too. There you. Breathable stone. Very breathable stones. Yeah, I, that's a thing. It is a funny thing to say because I think stone masonry is almost like a very, it's all

kind of an art. You have to like take the stone, know how to actually cut them and where to place them and how to call, you know, put the, they're not like all the same color. It's not like a, it's not like a store. I mean, you see it's in like, especially in Japan where there's such a reverence for the tradition of craft, you know, woodworking and masonry and everything. And we've lost a lot of that. Yeah. But I think reverting to that, having that pride in what's made, back to my own experience working on my own home, like having to sand and work on every piece of wood. And, you know,

you get really intimate with the material and the making of a room or a floor. And it reminds you that lots of hands have touched this thing over time. Lots of people have worked on this to keep it alive. and there's a sort of reverence to being part of that long relay race of people creating spaces that protect us. That is nice, man. Especially I used to paint houses and just changing the color of a room

would make me so happy when I would finally finish the last coat and look at it and be like, it was such a joy. I'd be like, this is such a nice, it was just a nice feeling. Yeah, having that kind of finished thing, you can imagine it taking on new life.

Yeah. Now, let me ask you this. That being, said as an architect, do you ever find yourself when meeting a contractor for the first time genuinely wondering like what hell hold of this illiterate freak crawl out of? You don't have to answer that. This is a funny question. So I mean, I actually, I mean, I will say I have a lot of, I have a lot of reverence for people who make things, you know, because it's, it's not easy. There you are. It's not easy.

It's one of, I would, I would say, uh, because a lot of my family did construction growing up and it's like it's one of the I sort of got it's one of the hardest it's I think it's one of the most fun jobs is you're different places all the time like I really love that part of it but then it's like it's hard work it like kind of destroys your body over time yeah depending on what you're doing um and then you have to go collect you have to go chase your money down so like you're actually working and then there's a whole other part of the job where you have to go like like hey pay me for that thing I did people are like yeah you're at risk yeah yeah not you know I think what's fascinating about being a builder or contractors you can kind of see the whole system you take on all this risk

you're trying to budget a future thing that may go over budget you know uh you're assembling all sorts of teams of labor yeah you know you're trying to bring in folks people you trust people who don't know and get this thing done on you know your future proofing i hope it'll take this long i hope the weather will yeah you know allow me to do it you're also managing like like honestly like when i would do construction a huge, I would not all, but a sizable portion of the workforce would be like ex-convicts. Sure. Not yet convict. You're dealing with a, you're dealing with a fucking pretty big content.

You're organizing a pretty rough version, you know, rough squad usually. And it's like it's, you know, it's definitely a different beast altogether. It's good work, hard work. It is. Yeah, I always worked. I worked mostly in food service. But every weekend. It's the same exact thing.

Every weekend grinding out like the amount of vegetable, amount of food. peppers I cut and onions I cut you know preparing for this at this place I worked all through high school you know it's like I get it like you know but you at the end of a day you know you crack a beer you look at what you did you see the next day and you're really proud of it and that kind of is a really powerful thing and when the architect is I think put move removed from that process and on a perch yeah you know build this vision I think it's a complete disconnect into like the world around us and why matters it's the people that make it that actually matter. Yeah. No, I agree. It is, you know. So when you, so you gave the TED Talk.

Your TED Talk was like, it was a huge TED Talk. Am I, is that? Oh, you know, it was a while ago. It was a while ago. We got, you know, it did well. It did well, that you also gave Ted talk in the golden age of TED Talks. That was what I'm saying. I used to remember. Like, if someone gave a TED talk, like, you know, what was that? Like 13 years ago, maybe you did or 12? I did it. Yeah, like in 15. So like 11 years ago. That was the golden age. That was, was that before TEDx? Because they watered down the sauce a little bit. I think it was like simultaneous, but it wasn't, uh, TEDx was starting to happen then. Tedx was starting.

Don't quote me totally. But it was like, it was, there was some TEDx happening like around then. But there was, you still did a 13 minute talk where I think they've now have like a six minute talk or something. Okay. What was it like given to TED talk? I always wanted, I don't know anyone who's given one. So I'm always curious what that experience is like. I mean, I kept, I always described it as like.

like high school theater. You know, it was like when I did plays in high school. You know, and he had to like remember all the words. And I was like, it was closest thing to theater or, you know, we had a little training. So you were able to do. Yeah, you know, I put the presentation together. I'm working with this coach.

Chee Pearlman, she's amazing. And working through the story. And she would always, you know, architecture is, we always talk about buildings, yada, yada, yada. Like we just talked about the guild hole. and like you get a little highfalutin. But she was always bringing back down a narrative. It was really meaningful for me to say,

okay, people are gonna respond to a story of, actually, your dad got sick and this building changed them or like other people, that's what people care about. Yeah. And I hadn't seen architects really describe buildings in a narrative way that would reach people. And so working on it with her and then memorizing it and then like, you know, I was like doing jogs

and like saying it out loud and all this stuff like that, like freaking people out around. on me. I remember I was like in the treadmill in the basement of the hotel and like this crazy moment like in front of me is because Ted attracted all these people right. So in front of me is Al Gore on the treadmill running. And next to me is Chelsea Clinton on the treadmill running. I don't know if they really want to see each other but there was a big mirror where you can sort of all see each other and I'm like running between Chelsea Clinton and Al Gore speaking the TED talk out loud, Do you know freaking everybody out?

And what did they? What did Gore and Clinton? Do they even look at you or they just? Oh, and they didn't look at each other either because I think it was. Yeah, a little bit of, they had a little history, a little history there.

But that's the kind of, that's that weird ecosystem. Who was putting on harder work? Who was putting in harder work on the treadmill? Good question. I don't, you know, Clinton or Gore. I think it was me.

I was doing the hardest way. Honestly, yeah, you're fucking crushing. I would have definitely pace matched Clinton and Gore. If I was between them. You're like seven, eight. Incline. Yeah, for sure. You know me.

Eight. 30 seconds back down to four. Yeah, so I mean, that was interesting, but it was, I would say, you know, after it was finished, I got a lot of really interesting, great feedback. And people wrote to me these cold emails that were like, I want to tell you the story of my house that I worked on with my dad.

Or I want to tell the story of the school I went to that was like really weird and why was it that way? And I started getting all these like everyday reflections on the architecture and the buildings that matter to people. And I think it was from that TED Talk experience and the response that it got from being about stories. Right.

That I was like, I have to write a book that actually gets people to tell their stories. You know, that's why I wrote this book, which was to say, let me tell you about architecture in our world, not the architecture you should go to, not the 10 buildings you should go to in your lifetime and your bucket list. It's not what this book is.

This book is like, why do hospitals matter? Why do houses matter? Why do prisons matter? Yeah. Why does it workplace? matter like how do we build a language that we understand and evaluate the spaces that we're foisted into so that we can start reflecting back and you send me those i want to hear those stories i want to hear from your readers and your listeners like hey man i had this crazy experience in this

building it changed my life or i had this terrible experience it changed my life and that's where as an architect that you gained the most knowledge actually yeah yeah i was i was just talking to my friend before i came here about cubicles and how like i think they're a thing in the past now i didn't realize that it's more now like the open floor concept yeah the cubicles is like a pretty dastardly designed i write about the cubicle in the book do you really yeah there's a book there's a chapter on the workplace on our on i start with the factory yeah but then there was this guy at uh at this furniture company named herman miller which famous furniture company in michigan it's got named propsed and he designed the modern office cubicle did he really yeah and it was like this vision of like

creating all these systems that could be plug and played and grow and involved and in the modern workplace. It's kind of a visionary system idea. And later in his life, he complained, you know, he said, look, my big idea of this of the cubicle has been, has been destroyed. What was his original idea? Well, is that you could create like a good enough workplace that could adapt and change and evolve with the needs of the company. And yeah. And there's some, there's some beauty into that. There's a beauty into creating this adaptable system that's better than the average. Yeah. But what happened is, of course, it created this kind of the office space scenario, you know, the sort of banal, the horrible, the sitting in a basement, the living in a cubicle kind

of environment. And so you have both maybe the aspiration of it and also the use of it. Well, that was, Adam Smith had a quote about factories in general. He's like, dude, if we can give everyone just one mindless task all day, every day, they'll fly off into these like heightened flights of fancy and they'll come up with like the next great thing and it was just like no they kind of just stare at the wall that is funny when yeah i mean it's a cool idea in concept but it's like yeah it's not not the case yeah it's use and it's when it was deployed you know create a lot of terrible conditions that people then fought against you know yeah but then the open work plan is also not great either people get into their headphones into their zoom calls and yeah and you're like you almost want the

walls and i thought about that too it's like i might want to retreat to the walls with the cubicle you put me at a table with like four people yeah there's like you're like you're like an imperfect, you try to figure out how to work well together and also have heads down work. And that we haven't fully figured out. I mean, the full Zoom office work is not a great environment. We have no socialization. Yeah. We have no way to be together in person.

Yeah, what? I've talked to people who do kind of like more office stuff. And there's been a lot of people after COVID. They're like, I can't wait to go back to the office. Totally. I actually want to go back. It sounds cool to be like, nice. I can chill in my house and sweatpants.

But then you do that every day. And like, I think there is like the community. commute is there's a soul-crushing aspect of the commute. But then there's also like shutting your laptop and now you're just in your house and you're like, all right. Yeah. Just me again. Still here.

Yeah, it's just me. Yeah, still here. I'm gonna do, my wife and I call them Freedom Rides. We're like, I'm gonna go to the grocery store and do a Freedom Ride. Yeah, just drive back outside the house. Go buy some strawberries. With LinkedIn, or not LinkedIn, with Ted, the TED talk, when you did that, did you take like beta blockers?

or did you just kind of raw dog it? I just did it. Raw dog, yeah. I get a lot of people are talking about beta blockers. Like you got to take them like, I don't know, man. No, I've never, no, I've never taken that. But I'm interested. Tell me why.

Tell me why. They say like it's like the public speaking kind of like, it's like the cure all. Oh, is that right? They say it doesn't allow your heart rate to rise basically. So like you, you like, they say you like can't actually experience the physical symptoms of anxiety. Again, I've never tried. I should have taken a bunch today. It's true.

Sure, yeah, three coffees might not be. Three coffees. Yeah, no, I didn't do anything like that. But I did, you know, I did practice a lot. Like theater, you know, it's like felt ready. But you're ready to go. I'll tell you, man, there was this, there was one dude who they called it, you get a step on the red circle.

This one guy went out there, had a, had a talk to give, and he just went blank. He just went blank. And everyone in the crowd was just like, is this an act? And then he sat down. Everyone stood up and clapped. and they stood up, he tried to do it again, blank. It was such a bomb. Fuck.

Yes, it was hard to watch. That is tough. Yeah, yeah. I do like the guys who go, like, they banned my TED Talk. Here's my band. I kind of like the renegade TED Talkers. Like, they banned my shit. So when you gave the TED Talk, did you get, like, flooded with, like, I guess, like, DMs and stuff?

When I'm trying to ask is, like, what did the babes respond to the TED Talk? I mean, I got a lot of good response. I mean, it was mostly, like, people my mom's age, you know, who were like, okay, here we go. Like, you know, I've got this, you know, my son needs a job or like, you know, I've got this house, you know, like we're working on my garage, you know, that kind of thing. Nothing intriguing. Yeah. So do you jump in from TED Talks?

Do you like LinkedIn? I kind of said it too early, but do you like LinkedIn? Like, what are your thoughts on LinkedIn? You know, I, I don't, I hadn't used a lot of social media, to be honest with that. Right, right, right. Years. But when I kind of went back on it recently as I was doing some new work and, you know, obviously it's a good way to connect, but also I'm trying to like, you know,

stay, keep my eyes off the phone. Get off of it. Like not be too consumed by. I was watching, you know, like all of us, like tracking things and seeing people respond and the like button. Well, LinkedIn's weird because you get like, you get endorsements. So you say like these are my skills and then you're, you know, friends or whoever. You're like, yeah, he's actually great at strategic planning.

Yeah, I haven't done any of that stuff because a lot of the work that I'm getting is from relationships, you know, people I meet or like, I have this crazy idea. I want to build this weird thing. Like, how do I do that? Yeah. And so instead of applying for jobs or answering RFPs, I'm talking to folks to be like, how do I do this crazy impossible project and try to work with them and figure that out, you know. Yeah, I had a, uh, my LinkedIn profile during, I guess I had completely given up

on like a standard career path. So I had a shirtless pick on LinkedIn. Nice. It's kind of nice. Yeah, I had written my own skill sets in and they were like kind of graphic sexual hacks that I was trying to get people to indoors. I think they might control for that now.

Yeah, my LinkedIn was crazy. Maybe this should be my next, should I do that? Bro, go shirtless. You be, that's the power. That's for real. Shirtless LinkedIn's a power move. Josh, I have a clip I want to show you. This is an architectural question.

Can you pull that up? I saw this guy on it. He was talking about something. specifically he did with his house. I kind of want to see your thoughts on this as an architect. You bet. Let me see here. Also, while Josh gets that, I noticed on one of the, I guess,

organizations you're connected to, there's a thing called the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of Diane Fossi Gorilla Fund. It's a good name. It really rolls off the tongue. What is that? That sounds completely unhinged. What is the Ellen DeGeneres campus of Diane Fossi Gorilla Fund? Yeah, so this was a...

Is that a real thing? It's basically, yeah, I worked on this. You worked on the Ellen DeGeneres, Diane Rossi Grillo Fund, Center of Care and in Trouble. Yeah, no, it's the, it's this, it's a center for the study and care of guerrilla scientists in northern Rwanda. Okay. Basically, like, where the remaining mountain gorillas live are in this incredible part of the country. And people go there from all over the world to see the mountain gorillas. and you trek up and you, you know, oh, here we go.

No, no. You go with these gorillas, you track them. It's an incredible experience. And so Diane Fosse, which, I don't know if you ever saw guerrillas in the mist when you were growing up. Oh, really? Did you ever see a movie? I didn't see it, but I know of it. So that's a movie about Diane Fossi.

Diane Fossi in the 60s moved to Rwanda, what was, you know, then was also Rwanda, sorry, was still Rwanda. Yeah. And studied the guerrillas and brought a lot of attention to them. And so her, the, and she was. was killed up there by poachers. Dang. And so this foundation that was set up in her honor continued for 50 years.

And then they reached out to my team to see if we could help build a new campus for them. That's pretty cool. And I started working on it with them. And the first donor came in. Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen DeGeneres who cares about animals and was like, I'll give the lead gift. Actually, her wife, Portia gave the lead gift in her honor before Ellen knew. So it was sort of this thing, but the naming rights came with the project.

That's pretty cool. So, but it's what was this was this prior to her getting kind of skewered by the media for being nasty to her staff? It was, uh, that was what was one of the weaker cancellations I saw? Yeah, yeah. She was like she's mean. Mean. Yeah. I've been on her staff. I've been on Ellen side the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she's a tight ship. Yeah. It was, yeah. And she donated to the fucking donated to the guillifont, dude. People were on her ass. It was right at that same time. Was it really? Yeah, yeah. This was sort of her exit plan. You know, she was sort of leaving the show. Yeah. She was putting some into philanthropy. She was, you know, funding animal philanthropy.

And, uh, also power move. I have a staff of cry babies. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to give $40 million dollars as a guerrillas, dude, shut up. I don't even care about you guys. Doing the guerrilla fun. It's definitely an attempted cancellation. Yeah, but she survived it, I think. I think she's fine. You know, she's doing all right. I thought it was weak.

I thought being, you can't, like the, I don't know. I thought that was such a reach to be like, well, she's mean. Yeah. Okay, dude. You're getting into meanness. Yeah. Like boss. We're all, yeah.

We're all, none of us stand a chance here. You're like, you've never been mean before. Bossy pants. Can you, this is, this is the architectural question I had. I actually had me thinking. Oh, yeah. starts to expand. It does.

And at one point, your trap house, you got in the whole house, and put 15 stoves in the house. Absolutely. My vision was huge. I would love to see pictures of this, by the way. Yeah, yeah.

My vision was huge. Okay. 15 stoves, four pots each, six cookers, 11 people cooking at once. It was a whole... It was a whole operation. It was a whole operation.

Definitely an operation. Now, I know you're not an engineer. It sounds like a fire hazard. Is that even feasible? Is that even possible to have, because I'm trying to figure out if he's capping. Is that possible to have, what do you say, six stoves? 15 stoves.

15, so, excuse me. Is it possible to even do that in terms of like pulling the, in, I will guess, he was in St. Pete's, Florida in, let's say, either a rohom or a standalone house. Is that what he was in? I think so. I mean, if he was saying he was in an impoverished neighborhood in St. Pete's, Florida,

I don't think you could even put 16 stoves. I'm not trying to knock the man's trap, but it's like, is that possible? I mean, I guess you did it. If you had to design a trap, how would you,

how would you go about putting the 16 stoves with 11 cookers? I do, first I do all, I'll do 18 stoves. You're doing 18. So you think it's feasible. for him to have a standard house. You know, if you have a vision.

True. If you have a big, huge vision, that's what I always say. You know, you can find a way. Because people are trying to say he's camping. So I was like, I don't know, it sounds kind of like cap, but I figured I'd ask an expert. I'm glad you asked me. Yeah. Do you think he could act, genuinely, do you think he could have put 16?

I just am worried about the fire hazard. But, you know, for sure. Does he have 16 hoods? You know, what's the deal? Doubtful. What's his airflow strategy in there? They're cooking crack. I don't know if you put the context.

They're cooking cracks. So the airflow should be good. It should be very nice. I didn't know. You know, I always love to see it turned up white boy, but I didn't know. I was like, this guy might be full of shit. Yeah. Thank you.

Well, hey, so the book's great. Before you go, we always have our premium subscribers. They write into question. Would you mind reading it? And then we can discuss the question. Sure. Totally. It's just random.

It's just my own trap. Do you read the? Okay. We're talking about the trap. It's not a trap. It's just they sent us questions. The producers select you grab literally at random. This is the premium subscriber question.

I'm a 47-year-old married cis-het male. My wife is 52. And for the better half of her life was a strict lesbian gold star. Good question. We met around the time she was going through menopause. We were working together at Price Warehouse Cooper, one of the big four accounting firms. We started on the same team as professional equals.

Mind you, we've been working together for five years. and she first struck me as being incredibly mask, which is fine for me. I have great respect for mask ladies, especially how they grind in their workplace, but can still have a good time. That's a nice reflection. It is.

Yeah. I think that was actually Joe from Minneapolis. I'd forgot to put that in there. I've seen it time and time again. But a few years into our professional acquaintance, she underwent something of a transformation from mask to mature femme. Something I learned later was due to a shift

in her hormonal profile due to menopause, which I, of course, mentioned, earlier. It was around this time that I started developing feelings for her, desiring to be more than just professional teammates. And so I asked her to coffee. One thing led to another and now we're married. My second, her third, but obviously first with a man. I'm the only man she's ever been with and she's always filled the role of the more masculine-leaning partner out of all her lesbian relationships. This is something we've done. This is good. I get the architectural substance to this. Oh, it's random. It's random. It's random.

They don't know who the guest is going to be. Of course. You want me to finish this? Please. Okay. Thank. This is this something we've dealt with in couples counseling for most of a year, getting something of a resolution.

Basically, I had to step up and be more assertive, which I learned how to do after taking several online courses. I'm excited about the like internet search that's going to happen after this. Yeah. Long story short, things are going really well until just the other night we were arguing about which movie to watch.

And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, my wife struck me a stiff backhand across a side of the side of the of my face. I just stood in shock, covering my cheek that was warm from the slap. I cried, and then she cried. That's very nice. We hugged as she apologized profusely, telling me how domestic violence is statistically higher in the lesbian scene, highest actually out of all other pairing types. Oh, interesting. I wonder where the data's from. I guess my question is, do I forgive her and move on, or is this kind of an assault unforgivable? That's a question. That's a good question. What do you think of that?

I think it's unforgivable, man. I mean, I would meet her where she is, honestly, but I don't know. I'm curious what kind of space they were in. Were they on the couch? Like, was the home toxic? Was it a toxic home? I don't know. I mean, I don't know.

They were in counseling, so it seems like they had help. It's a good question. I have to really think about it. I mean, they're, you know, they're up there in terms of professionals. They're 50, 50, 40. So it was his third, her fourth. Is that what it was? Her fourth?

The marriage? I don't know. They've been there before. second and third. Second and third, yeah. So I actually have heard that it is statistically higher in the lesbian community. Domestic violence is the highest in terms of lesbian community. Is that right?

That I've heard. That I don't know. I don't know either, but I've heard that. We can verify that. Thanks for letting me read that. I said, I'm back to the theater of the TED Talk. Given a script. True.

So no, no advice for him. I mean, I think, you know, he should follow his heart as he has. I say forgive, honestly. You know, we all get into difficult positions. True. I say forgive. It's actually bisexual women is what AI says. Have the highest.

AI knows. Okay. Yeah. Well, sorry to end on a sour note. No, I mean. I just have to do. They're the premium subscribers. They get this to make questions.

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm happy to give them advice, you know. Hopefully they're listening. Maybe you know, maybe what they should do. They should think about the kind of setting of their house, you know. True. Maybe they need a new couch or something. Maybe they need 15 stoves or something like that.

Of the trap house. Hey, thank you so much. That was a blast. Hey, thank you. Thank you. And one more time, The book, Our World and Ten Buildings. Yeah, the books are World and Ten Buildings.

It's how architecture defines who we are and how we live. And I hope you pick it up. It's about everyday spaces. It's not about the 10 buildings you want to visit. It's about how the spaces around you might improve our lives a little bit better, a little bit more. And I hope you like it. And thank you for having me in the show. Thank you.

Appreciate you. Watch new episodes of Matt and Shane's secret podcast on Spotify. Do it.