Stuff You Should Know - Leave Brutalism Alone!

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

The most reviled, hated, despised, no-good, low down, dirty rotten architectural style of all time is actually just the most misunderstood. Learn about this unfairly treated architectural movement and why it’s awesome. Learn to love brutalism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You have a conversation based on that melody and those chord changes. So it's kind of like giving someone a topic and say, okay, talk about this. Listen to the new season of Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh.

There's Chuck. Ben's here sitting in for Jerry, which we're all very happy about. Frankly, that's our preference Ben's here sitting in for Jerry, which we're all very happy about. Frankly, that's our preference. And this is stuff you, I'm kidding. And this is stuff you should know. Yeah, it's been a while since you bagged on Jerry

for no reason. I know things have felt weird. Now I just reset them again. I'm excited about this one. This is another, if you're listening at home, we would really encourage you to try and follow along by looking up some photographs. Yes.

Of some of the things we mentioned because obviously we're talking about a design style of architecture. Yeah. And those are always better when you can see some of this stuff and do so safely. Yeah, because it's really difficult to describe a building in any really good terms, you know?

Or any way that you're just like, Oh, I don't even need to see the picture of it. I totally got what you're saying. But we still try. We definitely still try. And probably of all the architecture there is, brutalist might be the easiest to describe without looking at it. Maybe. True. But then when you look at brutalist things,

there's so much variety within that category. Yeah, yeah. And if you hadn't guessed by now, we're talking about brutalism. If you didn't pick up from that exchange we just had, or the title of this episode, and brutalist architecture, even if you don't know what it is,

you have almost certainly witnessed it, maybe even been inside a brutalist building because they're very often public buildings, as we'll see. And brutalism is probably the most reviled, misunderstood, hated architecture of all time. It's just so easy to hate it. And so many people hate it for so many different, sometimes really weird reasons.

But there also seems to be a renaissance in appreciating brutalism, which is arriving just in time because brutalist buildings are in really grave danger being torn down and erased from architectural history all over the world. Yeah, absolutely. I learned a cool thing today, which I never knew before.

And I thought about this when I was in Mexico City, which has a lot of great brutalist architecture, yeah, including, I mean, that airport's gotta be brutalist, right? Yeah, as a matter of fact, it's gotta be. I think it is, I didn't see that, it didn't come up in my research, but yes, Mexico City has a ton of fact, it's gotta be. I think it is. I didn't see that. It didn't come up in my research, but yes, Mexico City has a ton of good brutalism.

But when I was there, I noticed some things and I was like, and I saw a couple like sort of echoed sort of pyramid style brutalism. And I was like, wait a minute. I was like, these look like ancient Mayan temples. And if you look up like an ancient Mayan temple or it goes visit one, like it wait a minute, these look like ancient Mayan temples. And if you look up like an ancient Mayan temple or it goes visit one, it's a totally brutalist thing. But I learned that apparently originally these temples were very ornate.

I saw, I can't remember where I got this, but I said they were as ornate as any neoclassical edifice in Europe, but they've been stripped down over the years from war and looting and just time and they became brutalist in the end. Weird, that's fantastic and totally surprising. Yeah, so they weren't originally built that way,

but when you look at a mine temple compared to some of these other office buildings, I'm like, you say this was, came around in like England in the 1950s and I say it came around long before that. So you hit upon something though that like these, these Mayan temples are brutalists now, but they weren't before because they've been stripped of their decoration or whatever.

That is brutalism. It's a type of architecture that from its outset, from the creation of the building, from design onward, it's meant to not have ornamentation. It's the skeleton of the building is the building. That's what brutalism is, or at least in part. Yeah. And if you've ever, and like we said, we'll get into some of the variety within the style. But if you've ever seen a like a huge concrete, unfinished sort of concrete looking government building with the same little tiny windows and it just looks like this blocky monolith. That is brutalism staring you in the face.

Yeah. If you look at a building and suddenly Stalin just comes into your head, you're looking at a brutalist building almost certainly. Yeah. Or if you wonder what evil villains layer that is, it's probably a brutalist building. Right, exactly. I also had a brutalist epiphany in Mexico City recently.

When we were down there, we went to one of the museums and they were having a brutalism exhibit. And it completely reversed my feelings about brutalism. I walked into that exhibit hating brutalism and I walked out really appreciating it. And it turns out I didn't actually hate brutalism all this time. I hate ugly buildings, ugly, thoughtless, dumb, boring buildings. And that is not, brutalism is not synonymous with that. It's gotten a bad name over the years. And part of it is even the name itself, brutalism. A lot of people think that the whole term was coined

to describe like how the building makes you feel when you look at it. It's brutal, it's sharp, it's mercil's, it's merciless, has zero compassion, it's dehumanizing. That's not what the term brutalism means at all. It actually refers to a type of concrete that the French architect and designer, the Corbusier introduced, called Beton Brut. Yeah, Beton Brut, I think the exact English translation is gross cement. Exactly. But they call it raw concrete. Yeah, exactly. Which is to say just a raw, unfinished, poured concrete.

There are a lot of houses in our surrounding neighborhoods in Atlanta now that are being built sort of in this style. are being built sort of in this style, these huge big concrete blocky houses that are, I think sort of a mishmash. It definitely echoes brutalism, but most of them still have a polished sort of concrete look to them. And that is not true, true brutalism. No, and there's a lot of overlap

between modernism and brutalism. They both were going on at the same time. And some people say that brutalism emerged out of modernism. There's a big old, that's a hornessness that we're not gonna get into. But just using exposed, unfinished concrete is not in and of itself a brutalist building. There's other elements as well that come into it.

Yeah, but I think an interesting thing is brutalism isn't, I mean, you know, and you see it, but it's something that I saw this, I think it was a New York Times article that said it has always sort of lacked a really clear, well-articulated set of principles. I saw that, I didn't agree with that. I thought it was very articulated.

Oh, well, I think the, I think what it means more is there's so much variety within those principles. You can't say it's just this because depending on what region you are in the world, the brutalist architecture is gonna look different, whether it's, you know, Soviet Russia or post-war London or in Brazil, in Latin America, brutalism grew out of the modernist tradition.

So stuff there looks quite a bit different than it does in other parts of the world. It does. I think that they all share in common a core set of principles that is brutalism. That's what I disagree with. I know that there's differences in all that. I just, I just, I didn't agree with that statement that the New York Times got it wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm with them.

I'm down. The paper record. Well, let's talk about where this came from, huh? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it came out of the post-war architectural rebuilding of so many cities around the world that were completely destroyed into rubble. And in particular, this one couple,

Peter and Alison Smithson in England saw bombed out London. And instead of seeing a big bombed out mess where like, oh, we have to rebuild it more ornate and grander than before, they saw an opportunity and were inspired and said, why don't we start using this rubble and build some sort of unfinished looking places? Yeah. So it's almost like they visually speaking, they used the rubble as the material to build the new buildings. And they didn't actually use that, but visually speaking, they did that. And it was, like you said, an acceptance

of the current reality rather than a return to a previous reality, which is radical in and of itself. But that was the, essentially the Smithsons are credited with establishing brutalism as a architectural movement. establishing brutalism as a architectural movement. Very frequently, a critic named Rainer Banham is credited with coining the term brutalism. That's wrong. He popularized it in a review of the Smithson's work.

The Smithsons used it a couple of years before Banham did. And a couple of years before that, a Swedish architect named Hans Asplend used it to describe a home that he designed in Uppsala called Via Goth in 1949. So at least as far back as 1949, the term brutalism was being used. But you kind of dug up and you had said at the outset,

evidence that brutalism was around before that term was ever used, right? Yeah, I mean, I think clearly they were inspired by stuff that came before them, maybe by mine temples and things like that, but no one was calling it brutalist, obviously, until then. And I don't think it was like a bona fide, a bona fide architectural movement until the post-war, you know, sort of rebuilding. Right. And post-war, because of all the rebuilding that was going on, brutalism was widely adopted across Europe, not just in the West, but also in the Eastern Bloc, because World War II

just ravaged that continent. And so a lot of countries had a lot of cities that needed to be rebuilt largely, and not just in Europe and Japan, particularly in Okinawa, supposedly 10 to 20% of the buildings that were around before World War II were still around after. As much as 90% of the buildings were destroyed. So they had a lot of rebuilding to do. And it just so happened at the time,

brutalism was this new kind of up and coming, frankly, beloved style of architecture. So it happened to be in the right place at the right time to become adopted around the world because all this rebuilding was going on. But the timing isn't the full explanation of the whole thing, is it?

Is it? No, no, it's not because it was also a time where in the sort of the 50s through the 70s, where the European nations that had colonized the world, that stuff started sort of going back the other way. And these countries were even either given their country back or they were flourishing. So in Latin America, all of a sudden, there was sort of a new prosperity going on. In Africa, some of them were gaining independence. And so it all timed out with brutalism.

So that's why you'll see like brutalism in Africa and brutalism in Latin America and brutalism in Japan. It's really interesting. The thing is though, is we said that modernism was in full swing at the same time So you could say well, why didn't they just choose modernism instead? And you know a lot of them did a lot of modernist buildings were built in these same cities around the same time But the reason brutalism truly became so ubiquitous around the world is because it was cheap It was really cheap to make a brutalist building

because they were essentially poured or slab concrete. There was no adornment to them. They were, as we'll see, brutalism takes a single unit very often, like the smallest unit, like a, say an apartment, and then re-does it over and over and over again. So there's a standardization of the process of the materials. So it just was, it was around at the time, and it was a very cheap alternative to other

much more ornate types of buildings, like modernist buildings at the time. So that was one reason why it was so widely adopted. Yeah. And with that repeating thing, I mean, it can even just be like, well, like that airport in Mexico City with the circles. Or what was the one, the French guy, like his very, the habitat? The unité d'habitation.

Look up these names. If you look at that, that's another great example of these, I guess, I guess they're windows. What are they? Yeah, I think they're balconies or like patios. Okay. It's hard to tell from like a distance, but it's just this repeated thing.

And that's, there's obviously a building efficiency when you're not adorning things and we're kind of repeating the same design feature over and over and over. Also, this is a time post-war where people really started moving to the cities a lot more, especially in the eastern block. It's cheap. It was a cheap way to house tons of people. As far as the US goes, that's when the federal government really beefed up and said, all right, we're going to be, we're going to take some steroids here and see what happens. And so all of a sudden you had a much larger bureaucracy and these, they needed, you know, there were more people, more employees and say, need these big federal government buildings.

So you'll see a lot of some of the best brutalist architecture in American cities. Could be like the city library library like here in Atlanta or like the the IRS building or something like these big government buildings also one of the reasons brutalism was such a great idea for government buildings is because they're so stable and they're so Just yeah immovable and so they the designers were like well It's gonna remind people that the government is stable and you don't have to worry because the government's in control, just look at the buildings

that they operate out of. Yeah, DC has a lot of brutalist stuff, right? Yes, it's a brutalist town. If you wanna acquaint yourself with brutalist architecture, just walk around DC and look at the federal buildings. They are brutalists through and through. Should we take a break? Buddy, I say we take a break.

Yeah. All right. Cause we need to go to Washington DC and apologize. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart, and we're back with a new season of my podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more trailblazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who changed the world. Angkor Jane about creating a billion-dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic

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Listen and subscribe to Table For Two on the iHeart Radio app, app and podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay Chuck, I didn't understand. Why do we have to apologize to DC? I don't know. It sounded like you were saying, I know you appreciate brutalism now, but it sounded like you didn't have much love for the DC style of brutalism.

No, it's not that. I've always appreciated DC because it's just so weird architecturally. Isn't it that nothing can be taller than the Washington Monument? That's why there's no skyscrapers in DC? I think I've heard that. The monument or the Capitol building, one of the two.

So yeah, it's a very low slung city, but that also is ready made for brutalist design too, because they're often like low, wide, hulking forms as well. Yeah, you're never gonna see a brutalist tower. That's not true. There are some brutalist towers, but they're very rare. Very, very rare. Well, yeah, I mean, I've seen some skinny-ish apartment buildings and things, but I guess, I don't know, I'm thinking in terms of like, skyscrapers. Do they have those?

Well, the skyscrapers that we think of when we think of the cities today, those kind of came along and replaced brutalism and starting around the 80s. Yeah, so no, you wouldn't have seen that as brutalist because it just wasn't brutalist. So it's not all concrete all the time. It's obviously a very big part that unfinished concrete of brutalism, but you might see a little brick in there every now and then.

Probably not gonna be like some super colorful thing. You'll probably see some steel, obviously some glass. I have seen, you know, and especially in Brazil and Latin America out of the modernist movement, incorporating wood. And I'm a big fan of like combining like cement and wood and natural things like that, natural elements with unnatural elements.

Well, that's the new thing that's brand spanking new. They call it organic brutalism, which is combining like a brutalist space with like organic touches to it. Yeah. Yeah, you'd love that. So even though it's, I don't even know if you can say that it's not all concrete all the time.

I think one of the basis of brutalism is that it's gotta be concrete, right? Or are you saying like other people have experimented with other stuff and still consider brutalist? No, no, no, I just mean like that every square inch of the place isn't concrete. But that features very, very prominently. Oh yeah, that's the base.

Yeah, one of the things the things about these reinforced concrete buildings is because they were using just unfinished concrete or unadorned concrete, they figured out interesting ways to kind of play with the concrete so that every building didn't look exactly alike. So you'll often see like vertical ripples going down long, tall columns. That's a type of concrete

They'll be like aggregate like maybe pebbles that are on the surface of the concrete There's all sorts of stuff they did but if at the end of the day It's all reinforced concrete and there's not like drywall over it. There's not Like a nice paint job over it. There's no decorations or any kind of Like woodwork or anything like that. It's just, right, the building itself, the point of brutalism is the building itself is allowed to stand on its own. And I saw somewhere that somebody said that if modernism is meant to be honest,

then brutalism is brutally honest. Like what you see is what you get with the building. Oh, I like that. I do too. then brutalism is brutally honest. Like what you see is what you get with the building. Oh, I like that. I do too. They, like you said, there's a sense of permanence to a brutalist building. And I think that's another reason why government buildings like them. Cause like you mentioned,

they just sort of convey this thing of like, I know you hate paying your taxes, but look at this IRS building, it's not going anywhere. It sends a message. It says TS. There's some other like basic parts of the brutalist concept Chuck, like that the building's said to be angular,

geometric, sculptural, blocky, top heavy. The windows are very frequently deep set. They're called fortress-like. I don't know if you mentioned that one before, but it pops up almost everywhere when you're talking about what brutalism is. Fortress-like seems to be like a very, like just a common description. And then we talked about them being self-repeating, right?

Yeah, yeah. And that was, you know, the big reason why, because the efficiencies and the costs. Right. So sometimes some brutalist buildings will take like the single unit, like say, it's an apartment building, and they will take the, they'll design the one apartment building, and they just repeat it over and over and over again. And then the next row over and over and over again. And by combining these modular units together, they, it forms the building just through repetition. And so some people call it a fractal

as far as architectural movements go, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And you know, I, I appreciate it a lot. And I always have, but I, I get why people don't like a lot of these buildings. And I think that maybe like you previous to Mexico City, only had in the brain like sort of one thing, which is, God, that ugly building downtown

that I have to go to get my driver's license or something. Exactly. And to expose yourself to more, and we're gonna talk about some famous buildings, but brutalism had a sort of a pre-hatred going on before it even became a thing. The people that were, I believe it was Le Corbusier's, how do you pronounce this building again? The Unité d'Apétation, I think.

That's right. If my high school French can hold that. He designed this thing for working class families to house a lot of people, which was the whole idea. But no one wanted to live there. None of those people wanted to live there. So the intelligentsia of Marseille was like, you know, they appreciated that architecture, and they're who moved in. Right. They said, so do. I also think it's interesting that they have been used in a lot of as the one here that I sent you in Georgia that is so cool looking and of all places noon in Georgia. Yeah. Was used as a belief in Ant-Man

and the Wasp as the evil villains layer from the outside. And clockwork orange and like just this association with evil villains or the bad guys or the communist Soviet block. It just sort of always had this reputation of like, you should probably hate this architecture. Also dystopian too. Like if you ever watch a movie or look at artwork set in a dystopia, if you look at the buildings, they are almost always brutalist in some way, should perform often

very frankly brutalist, right? And it kind of makes sense because a lot of times dystopian settings are, well, they're set in the future or maybe they're post-apocalyptic. And it makes sense that if any kind of buildings are gonna survive, a brutalist building would survive far into the future or would survive an apocalypse. So it makes sense intuitively, but also I think brutalism gets used in that because it's so associated with things like dehumanization,

depersonalization, that the scales that they're built on are inhuman scales. And that's ironic because again, most of the brutalist buildings that were ever built were meant to be public buildings where you bring a lot of people together to do things like enjoy a ballet or a show or performance or to live together as a community in like a tower or something like that. And yet the irony of it is that they're viewed as

inhuman, dehumanizing rather than humanizing, which is I think what they were after, but it just over time it just became associated with the opposite of that. Yeah, for sure. And you know, if you have an evil villain in your movie, you're not gonna put them in a quaint cottage. Well, maybe if they're on vacation and it's like a rental. One of my favorite examples of brutalism as a bad guy's place is in Karate Kid 3, which I watched it when it came out. And I clearly hadn't watched it since because I'd forgotten all about it And we watched it on vacation last year and it is

One of the most wonderfully awful movies I've ever seen one of those bad movies It's a lot of fun to watch. Is that the one with Hillary Swank? No, no, that is I think the next karate kid Karate kid three was the third of the You know Daniel and mr. Miyagi tale. Oh, wow. Okay. Where he battled the bad guy, Terry Silver, who was, I think he was a Vietnam buddy of, what's his name? I can't remember from the first credit card. Oh, the Sensei from the first one? Sure.

Yeah, yeah. So, Terry Silver's place is the ultimate brutalist bad guy layer, and it is the Ennis House in Los Angeles that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Is that the Hill House? I don't know. I mean, it's called the Ennis House. I've got to look that up because I've been at some Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Los Angeles and they're pretty awesome. Yeah, I mean, he definitely was not known as a brutalist architect, but there are a handful of his designs. And if you look at Innis House, it is like, like super brutalist. And then when I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I saw the West Hope house in Tulsa, Frank Lloyd Wright. Also, I think if not purely brutalist, fairly brutalist. And then like you look at the Guggenheim,

the Guggenheim is sort of brutalist as well. Right. I don't know if you could call it, if you're a brutalist purist, a purist. Geez. If you would count the Guggenheim, cause it's the concrete is much more smooth, but it's not not brutalist, you know? Geez. If you would count the Guggenheim, because it's the concrete is much more smooth, but it's not not brutalist, you know?

No. And I was mistaken. It's not Hill House. It's the house on Haunted Hill is what that NS house stood in for. But it is super brutalist. And it's funny because you had mentioned that the Mayan architecture seems brutalist now, but it wasn't originally. It very much echoes

some sort of Meso American architecture, almost like a mishmash of it. Yeah, for sure. But it's, you know, this is sort of what I was getting at. Like all of these reasons that people hate brutalism is why we are losing so many great brutalist buildings in the world. It's not a hard sell to tear these things down a lot of times in a city. No, and I have to say one other thing.

The hatred of brutalism also is sometimes associated, depending on your political beliefs, it's associated with the welfare state because so many were built as public housing. And so if you are, say, right-leaning or probably very far to the right, you hate brutalism for that very reason. And it also is no coincidence that the era of brutalism ended abruptly at 1980, which is the time when Reagan and Thatcher came to power. And the welfare state was like, no, no more welfare state or we're going to cut it so thoroughly that we're certainly not going to invest in and Thatcher came to power. And the welfare state was like, nope, no more welfare state,

or we're gonna cut it so thoroughly that we're certainly not going to invest in any brutalist architecture any longer. And it became associated not just with totalitarian governments of the Eastern Bloc here in the United States. It also became associated on the right with welfare and the right doesn't really like welfare very much so they don't like brutalist architecture. Isn't that interesting?

Yeah, super. Like they were looked at as blights a lot of times. Well, they became that way too and that's a that's another reason why that they're under such attack. They show their age pretty pretty poorly, right? Yeah over the years because they're not adorned because they have that rough concrete finish, water damage can happen a lot, decay can be really more evident. I think that Paul Rudolph, he's a,

and when you say famous, brutalist architect, you gotta be in the know to kind of know these names. Right. It's not like a Frank Lloyd Wright, but Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York was torn down. If you look this thing up, it is amazing looking. Yeah, I became a fan of Paul Rudolph's just researching this. I'd never heard of him before, but he was good.

That building is unbelievable, but they tore it down and it wasn't just because like, oh, look at this big blocky thing. But apparently it leaked from day one. There was constant mold. There were always water issues. They were having to close courtrooms and move them around. And they just, you know, did a cost study. And it was like retrofitting and making this thing a workable government center isn't even feasible.

So they tore it down. So I had a hard time getting to the bottom of this because I saw plenty of places that it was torn down. I also saw that it was going to be torn down, but they decided to do a retrofit or a rehab of it instead and that the update, the refresh of it was so faithless to the original that it's no longer a brutalist building. I saw it described as disfigured.

Interesting. Yeah, but either way, Paul Rudolph seems to be, I think Arch Mag called him the unluckiest architect ever. Arch Mag? Is it Arch or Arch? Is it Arch-a-chetcher? Well, why don't you just call it ARC Mag then? Why you have to add the H and make me look stupid

in front of everybody? I'm with you. I think it's kind of an awkward name. Well, anyway, arc slash arch mag, call them the unluckiest architech around because so many of Paul Rudolph's buildings are just being torn down left and right. And I don't even know that it's a distinct dislike of Paul Rudolph's work.

I think it's just people are tearing brutalist buildings down and has happened to be being torn down at a faster rate than other architects, brutalist buildings. And I know we're going to get email from someone who works at that magazine. It's like Chuck, don't know what he's talking about. We call it Arc Mag. Exactly. Josh was call it Arch Mag. Right, exactly. Josh was right. Arch Mag.

Other buildings architect named Bertrand Goldberg designed the Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago that was torn down. It was gorgeous. Yeah. How are you going to look at that and be like, that's an ugly building. It was a elevated clover made of concrete. It was gorgeous for sure. And at the very least, even if you don't think these buildings are gorgeous, I get that. But they're admirable for sure. Like, they're amazing achievements for sure. I just don't think that they're ugly across the board. I think there's plenty of amazing, brutalist buildings out there.

Oh, totally. Um, it also doesn't help that, uh, and I think you found stuff from Jessica Stewart and my modern met and big O'Neal Beskos, great name and Arca magazine. That's a lot easier. Uh, that they both talked about the fact that these are basically, um, that they can be kind of a symbol of human abandonment, as what they said in Arkham magazine. And if it starts to decay, it's got these big open bare concrete walls. So like, obviously, vandalism is just going to be, it's a perfect canvas for something like that. And I think Jessica Stewart's the one that said they, you know, they basically

symbolized urban decay at one point and economic hardship. Right, yeah, that failure of the welfare state. And because they show their neglect so readily because they're unadorned, because they're exposed concrete, they stood as symbols of like, yeah, look how, look how what a bad idea welfare is. Like it's just like this building is like a symbol of that.

And by the way, I've been pronouncing it airsa magazine. Oh. Is that not right? All right, I think we should take a break. We're gonna call these magazines up and get the record set straight and then we'll be right back after this. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart and we're back with a new season of my podcast.

This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more trail blazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson, about the geniuses who changed the world. Angkor Jain about creating a billion dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabricant about the authenticity in the world of food writing.

Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the best shows of the year, according to Apple, Amazon, and Time, is back for another round. We have more insightful conversations between myself, Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney about his life and career. We had a big bearer of a man, who was called Mal Evans, who was our loadie, and he was coming back on the plane.

And he said, will you pass the salt and pepper? And I miss her. And I said, what? So I did that one. This season we're diving deep into some of McCartney's most beloved songs. Yesterday, Band on the Run, Hey Jude, and McCartney's favourite song in his entire catalogue, Here, There and everywhere. Listen to season two of McCartney, A Life in Lyrics on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. In the last season of Table for Two, we had some good times at the table, enjoying lunch with some of the best guests you could possibly ask for. People like George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Scarlett Johansson, and the beautiful Sarah Jessica Parker to name a few. Table for two is a bit different from other interview shows.

We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal, maybe a glass of rosé, and the stories start flowing. It is intimate, revealing, and often hilarious. We're back for a second season and the guests are going to be just as incredible. We'll be breaking bread with Colin Joest, Michael Mann, Devine Joy Randolph, just to name a few. And this time around, we're going even deeper and we'll have something new for you each week. We'll talk about the big breaks, heartbreaks, and of course, food. So I hope you'll pull up a chair and join us for the latest season. Listen and subscribe to Table for Two on the iHeart Radio app,

app and podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, I'm glad you said Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center was in Goshen, New York because I definitely would have said, gosh, and no joke. And just want to say one more thing about that. It had, it was made of three buildings. It had 87 roofs. Just wrap your head around that for a second. Wonder why it leaked. Right, exactly. But that's just wonderful. Look up some of Paul Rudolph's work

and you're gonna be like, this is super 70s awesomeness. Like that guy was talented. Yeah, totally. I think a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright stuff leaked though, as well. Yeah, he was very famous for like some guy he designed a house for. Said the roof is leaking on my desk and Frank Lloyd Wright stuff leaked though, as well. Yeah, he was very famous for like some guy he designed a house for.

So the roof is leaking on my desk and Frank Lloyd Wright said, move the desk. And if you ask me, these guys get way too much of a pass. Like because part of architecture is to make a building that doesn't leak too, in addition to making it awesome. It's got a function as a place to live in or work in. Exactly. Well, when we were in Mexico City, we went with our two friends, Mitch and Patrick,

who are architects and designers. And I was explaining that to them too. And they're like, yeah, it's absolutely true. I was expecting pushback or whatever. They're like, no, no. Like people do give famous architects way too much of a pass, especially former legendary ones. Hopefully I didn't just get Mitch and Patrick in trouble.

I don't think so. Okay. They're out of the club now. Right. So if you're, as far as brutalism coming back, it is coming back in certain ways. They're definitely, even if you don't have like a, let's say you have like a modern house,

or even not a modern house, you can decorate your interior in a little more brutal-ish style. And, you know, sometimes just a touch or two of that kind of thing can really give you what you're looking for. I'm not a big fan of that. Our House of Works office used to be, I guess, new brutalist interior design. It kind of took the boxes. I was never comfortable there. used to be, I guess, new Brutalist interior design. It kinda checked the boxes. I was never comfortable there. Now, I mean, isn't every office that's got concrete walls and exposed air ducts and Edison bulbs, they're all sort of new Brutalist, right?

Kind of, yeah. And also it seems like little geometric pattern copper knickknacks on shelves that float that don't really serve that much of a purpose. They're just decorative. I don't like that either. We had that great mural though, really warm that that that plays up. It did. I wonder what happened to that because we're not in that building anymore, but surely they preserved the mural. And that question table where the heck is that thing? I don't know.

Oh my lord. In space, I think. Yeah. Here, though, in the 2020s, brutalism as an actual architectural style is making a bit of a comeback. Yeah. Like I said, I've seen quite a few houses in the neighboring neighborhoods that are, some are just sort of like, you know, hi, we're a blocky house.

So that's more modern, but there are a couple that are true brutalist, like concrete layers, it looks like. There was a triumphant brutalist refurbishment here in Atlanta back in 2018. The Central Atlanta Library in downtown was designed by Marcel Brewer, amazing building. But apparently that was the last work that Brewer completed before he died. I guess some of the design and some of the actual construction didn't quite jibe and some of his

original intentions were covered up. There was an elevator that had to be centrally placed that just screwed things up quite a bit And then they came along and they added more lights. They refurbished the place. They got rid of that central elevator They opened it up. There was a there's like a zigzagging staircase. That's amazing That's now much more prominent and in doing so they actually made the building So they actually made the building closer to Marcel Brewer's original intentions with his design than it was when it was built when Marcel Brewer was still alive. So like that's an example of like the ideal of what's being done with brutalist buildings. The opposite end is that they're being torn down because people vote them as like the ugliest building of all time. Right. Should we, should we rattle off some of these famous ones?

Yes. Well, architecture architect wise, is it Louis or Louis? I never know. I think Louis, but. Louis Kahn, KAHN, is usually the first name you'll hear if people are kind of throwing the brutalist architect name around. Yeah. And I mean, like you can make a pretty good case that brutalism, I don't know if it's

because the buildings were meant to take center stage or whatever, but there aren't, it's just not household names compared to other other movements. You know what I mean? Lewis Kahn is definitely far and away the most famous, but I saw that he's technically not even a brutalist. He just used brutalist elements. There are some like we talked about Paul Rudolph, Vigenza Slay, Richter, Marcel Brewer. There's a lot of other really great, I think, Erno Goldfinger. People you just have never heard of. These are just random names. that sounds like that a writer made up. No, they're actually legit architects.

They just aren't, like this movement didn't have like star power like some of the other movements did. Yeah, and like we said, like Frank Lloyd Wright had done a thing or two, but he's not known for that. I.M. Pay has dabbled in it in New York City, if you see Kip's Bay Plaza by I.M. Pei has dabbled in it in New York City, if you see Kip's Bay Plaza by I.M. Pei, very much brutalists, but that's not how his name was made. No, no, but there are ones that are like,

nope, I'm brutalists through and through. The Smithsons obviously were brutalists because they founded the movement. And one of the things they completed was Robin Hood Gardens, which was a housing estate from 1972. And it was, it's okay. This is as brutal as brutalism gets. It is.

And part of it was demolished, just part of it, right? And it was actually acquired, three stories of the building were acquired by the Victorian Albert Museum to preserve it because it's such a fine example of brutalist architecture. Even though to me it's kind of ugly. But London, because this was the epicenter of the brutalist movement, the creation of it, it has a lot of good examples of really good brutalist buildings, what Prince Charles

has to say about them notwithstanding. Yeah, King Charles, but he was Prince when he said that the Royal National Theatre of London was a, quote, clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting. I think it's cool looking. I like it. Yeah, I was going to say it's hilarious, but he's a madman for saying that. I think he just came up with a clever quip and was gonna use it at all costs because anyone who looks at the Royal National Theater, it isn't like that's an amazing building is wrong. I'm sorry, wrong.

Yeah, it was also at the time Princess Charles is best stab at it, telling a joke. Well, he was apparently well known for being a mean critic in the media about architecture in particular. I didn't realize that, but that was like one of his greatest hits from what I can tell. But the thing about the Royal National Theater, it had really great horizontal and vertical lines that were harmonious, which can be unusual for a brutalist building.

But even more unusual, it fit the site that it sits on. It's not imposed like every other brutalist building of all time. If there's ever been a brutalist building that fit the site, that Royal National Theater is it. Yeah, for sure. For my money, if you want to have your socks knocked off by a blocky architectural gym, then you should go to Montreal and look at Sapty's Habitat 67. It was built for the 1967 World's Fair there in Montreal, and it is super cool looking.

It looks like something a child might build out of building blocks. I've got one. The Peace Center in Hiroshima. I really feel like every American should go there. It's amazing. The Japanese in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed by nuclear bombs, their response was to build this peace center

to preserve what happened for generations to come so that it never happened again. They turned peacenik rather than retributive or vengeance. It's a pretty amazing response if you think about it. And so it's a pretty amazing center. And Kenzo Tange, who was a student of Le Corbusier, started it in 1950. And it's just a long rectangular structure that seems to be kind of floating on the horizon. It's just a really amazing place, really amazing museum.

It just has a, it gets you in ways that like I'd never been gotten before. Just five years after the bomb was dropped too. So that like, how heavy was that still in the air, you know? Yeah. And I mean, in Hiroshima, like it's, I mean, it's a part of the town. Oh, sure. They preserved a bank that was just completely wasted,

but the frame was still there. It's preserved. They build a fence around it and the blocks are still where they landed after the bomb was dropped. Like they didn't touch it after that. They just cordoned it off and now it's part of this, the museum parts of the city, entire parts of the city have become part of this living outdoor museum.

It's just amazing. Japan, it's gotta happen for me one day. Yes, it does. Seriously, go to Hiroshima. It's really something. It's also a really cool town, too, in addition to the whole museum segment of it. Right. If you go to Tunisia in Tunis, the Hotel du Lac, and if you look at the, if you look at that building and you say, man, if you chopped off the back of that thing,

that would be a sand crawler that the jaw was wrote around in in Star Wars. Then you would probably not be surprised to know that, and supposedly inspired George Lucas. I say it had to have been because when you look at that building, it looks just like that thing, that inverted pyramid, 416 rooms over 10 floors. It's really something, and inverted pyramids are sort of a brutalist thing as well But it's a great example. Yeah, and I mean it was open in 73 and he was there shooting in the like years later

So it was definitely there in Tunis while he was there. So I buy that Totally one of the most famous brutalist buildings in the United States If not the world is the Geisel Library at UC San Diego. It was originally called the Central Library, but Ted Geisel, Dr. Seuss' widow, Audrey, donated $20 million and the university said, let's just rename it in honor of you and Ted. Well, she said $10 million and they kept the name and she was like 15. Right. And then she said, what do I got to do to get our name on the

front of that thing? Right. This, this building is amazing. I mean, and this is again, as an example of how like, just sort of the variety that you can find in a brutalist building, when you look at this compared to the Robin Hood Gardens building in London. Right. Yeah, this one really prominently makes use of glass, which can be rare for a brutalist building.

Super cool. And yet when you look at it, you're like, that is a brutalist building. It's just an amazing, beautiful brutalist building. Yeah, I love it. Can't wait to go back to Mexico City and see some of that stuff. For sure.

Also, I would strongly advise anyone not to make a drinking game out of how often we say brutalist in this episode, cause we said it a lot. They already have drinking games. I saw all that stuff on Reddit. I know, but don't do this one because you would die. Someone said, I counted how many times you got said like in the like episode and I was like, well, yeah.

It was kind of the name of the episode. How many times did we say like in the like episode. And I was like, well, yeah. It was kind of the name of the episode. How many times did we say llama in the llama episode? Right. Well, plus we had our additional likes because we talk like regular people. One other thing too, Chuck. If you want to see cool, post-apocalyptic, brutalist architecture used

really adeptly in illustration. Go check out Eternal Dystopia's YouTube videos. Did I send you that one called Research Center? It's like drone music, but the video is like just this, it's like a dystopian, brutalist building kind of set in the haze and sometimes it's raining. I'll send it to you again. It's really amazing. But the drone music alone is pretty cool. So check that out.

You're here to the drone lately. I am because it's not distracting. It helps me focus, you know? I like it. Well, Chuck said he likes it, which means everybody that it's time for a listener mail. Yeah, oh boy, it's another correction, but Josh, this one is on me. Okay, now you're talking.

I think the first one may have been on us, but in the nuclear Boy Scout episode we said the USS Enterprise was a nuclear submarine. Yeah, it's in fact an aircraft carrier. But the big one was when we had our sort of brief debate about military discharge and I was just wrong, wrong, wrong, because I thought if you just served all your time, then they just called it leaving the military. Yeah, you just stopped showing up one day. You just stopped showing up. Or you call it retirement or whatever.

I didn't think it was. I thought any time you left before your time was up was the only time it was called the discharge. Not so. We heard from a lot of our current service members and veterans, but this one's from Scott Oliver. He said, guys, what Chuck said was not correct. Any way you leave the service is some form of discharge.

And then he goes over, this was the most detailed one, so we're gonna read these discharges. You got the honorable discharge. It's the highest level, given to those who complete their service and are discharged or are discharged early for no fault of their own Like a medical issue That's when you want to shoot for sure General discharge lower level, but given to those who have like a minor misconduct or a performance issue

I was gonna hazard a comical guess on what that might be, but I'm not going to. Okay. There's other than honorable or the OTH, that's a negative level. So now you've crossed the Rubicon. Okay. And you're not good anymore. And as given to people who have serious misconduct or violations of regulations, then there are two more.

You've got the bad conduct discharge or the BCD. This is actually punitive. And that is if you're convicted by a court marshal for something like desertion or assault or theft. And then, you know, we've got last, don't you? Yeah. Dishonorable. And that is a punishment for a serious offense

by committing a felony. Sorry for being pedantic guys. You weren't at all Scott, but as a veteran I find myself particularly attuned to erroneous statements about military matters. Sure and that's every veteran Scott So you're in good company and we heard from a lot of service members and all apologies For screwing that up sometimes when I say things off the dome without researching quite often in fact I'm dead wrong. Man, well you really owned it Chuck, like somebody with an honorable discharge. Oh, thank you. That was Scott?

Scott Oliver. Thanks a lot Scott, you weren't pedantic at all Chuck's right? That was very nicely put and we appreciate being schooled. And also Chuck, thank you for selecting one where you were wrong and not me. Yeah, I guess we were military schooled. If you want to get in touch with us like Scott did and school us and do it nicely, we love that kind of thing. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Buenas, mis amores. This is Vico Ortiz, host of Dave my Aualita First each week, myself alongside our resident abuelita Liliana Montenegro, Esa soy yo! Play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics in this fun, flirty, and hilarious game show. Let's see if cheese bus will fly, or if these singles will be sent back to the dating apps.

Listen to Dave my Aualita First on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, Here's the Thing. I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers and so many other fascinating people like Jazz bassist Christian McBride. Jazz is based on improvisation, but there's very much a form to it. You have a conversation based on that melody and those chord changes. So it's kind of like giving someone a topic

and say, okay, talk about this. Listen to the new season of Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio App Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to level up your marketing and business knowledge, look no further than the Marketing School Podcast hosted by Neil Patel and yours truly Eric Sue. It is the number one marketing podcast on Apple and number 15 on business in the United States. Now, if you want wanna listen to interesting conversations with operators that have been there, done that,

also with other interesting guests, then listen to Marketing School every weekday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.