Ep 630 - Buildings (feat. Michael P. Murphy)

- All right, we're here, Michael P. Murphy.

What's going on, man? - 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

that is gonna, "Hey, here's the book, I go." Sounds great. (laughs) Sounds awesome. The book is called "Our World in 10 Buildings." - Yeah, that's good.

- 10 Buildings. - So you're, in this guy, I was doing a little, I did a little research, okay. - So you have a, you have like an architectural, an origin story.

- I do. It's a little bit, but this book is about as well. - It's pretty charged, you were saying your father was sick. You went to the hospital and you were like,

“dude, this place, why is this place look so fucking horrible?”

(laughs) - Is that about it?

- This is like, those are the two parts, yeah,

I got two kind of awakenings I had. - Yeah, well, that's a bad way to frame, I shouldn't say. You were just like, this doesn't look like a place to get healthier. - No, it's true.

I went, you know, like I think a lot of people went to the hospital as you, everyone will go. - So it was like moments of great joy in your kids are born and terror when your family's sick. And yeah, I'm sitting around, it was actually like

the holidays, Christmas, and the whole family had to be there 'cause he was getting surgery. He'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 cracked my head of and said, you know, maybe one day I could design a hospital or something like that. - That's, so you were already an architecture. You were studying architecture before that.

I had been in architecture school for one semester. Oh, so you were pretty, I was pretty know. (laughing) - I didn't know a damn thing. - Did you talk to anyone in there about architecture

“during the thing or are 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 diligent doing with 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 is this great famous cancer institution in New York City, that supposed to be one of the greatest ones. And it is for research, but the experience was pretty bleak, you know? - Yeah, hospitals are pretty, pretty brutal in there. And it's like, I get it, you know,

you're trying to get a 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't, you can have both. - Basically.

- Yeah, I think the question, I think either question immerse 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. - Interesting. - vibe of the hospital sucks. - Yes, not a good vibe. - And hospitals, 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, 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, that's, they always were like,

give them the worst possible shit. We'll put the 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 point, you know, the history of hospitals like originally hospitals actually were converted religious spaces, you know. So like before, let's say the 18th century, they've just put the sick in, in the church,

in the kind of large rooms and put beds in there. And 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.

- And in the 19th century, 1850s is really when you see what we know today is 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, how can a place provide like the best care and actually potentially extend my father's life? I actually provide really good care, good research, good surgery.

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, from the 1850s, kind of heard emerged as like the first medical hospital. I don't wanna say, met a hospital designer, but she really, she built this thing. She wrote this book called Notes on Hospitals

and Notes on Nursing. - Well, she had nurse. - She was a nurse. She sort of set up the first kind of nursing when she's this incredible innovator.

And I mean, 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, I know.

- Yeah, I know, yeah. - My name is Florence Nightingale. - She's amazing. She went to the, then it was a Crimean War. And all these soldiers were dying

'cause they were in these little bell tents and they were dying of disease. And she said, "We need to bring, "we need to, she learned that through the design "of this new kind of military hospital

"that was brought in, the patients were actually living longer. "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 change hospital design around the world.

“- Dang, so do you hear about the guy who discovered germs?”

Similar thing.

The guy who was like, "You can show off your hands

"so after you like, you know, "package away a dead body "and you have to deliver a child "and 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 art. There's not like invisible bugs on our hands. And that guy, I forget his name, but he actually, he was the one who like,

pretty much founded germ theory. He died in like a sandicile because all the other doctors were like shut up. We don't hear about that. They were doctors, we're gentlemen, we're clean.

We can touch anything, it's not gonna make us dirty. - Yeah, there was this study where similar to that, where it was doctors ties that were getting germs on them and really affecting other patients as they were walking through different wards.

And so what? So this whole idea of sanitary clothing and others, you know. But those same ideas are really, really fascinating. You know, it was the similar idea around. It's a similar way, so that's all right, that's the guy.

- Oh yeah. - That guy. - Good guy. - Good guy. - Poor dude.

- Poorable fate for him. He just tried to be like, "Guys, we should wash your hands "and wash your hands with that body." We shouldn't deliver babies right after him. They're like, "Shut up."

- Yeah, yeah. All that stuff was changing. How we think about not just when medicine is, but how we live in the world, how the city's changed. - Yeah.

Well, it is, you know, it's tricky because you're in the hospital and it's like, "Yo, let's make this place look awesome." The doctors are like, "They've been up for 35 hours." - Sure. - They're like, "Shut up."

- It's pretty grumpy, honestly. Doctors are pretty grumpy. You've worked with a lot of them, I guess. - Yeah.

- I am just working with a bunch of amazing doctors.

- Yeah. - Eight, 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, so that's a lot. - Well, they're like 10 coke zeroes and be like completely healthy.

- You gotta stay up. It's those shifts. - Yeah. - It's kind of fucked. - Yeah, it's not good.

- Yeah. - So, 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 kind of designing a hospital with him

“and that's how I got started my first project.”

- Where was this at? - The hospitals in Rwanda. - Dang. - He staffed her. - Building that resume.

- Yeah. - He got started. - Just starting. They're like, "We need an architect to work in Rwanda." - Yeah.

- So, I'll get back to that. - 'Cause that's got fascinating. How did you get into Harvard architectural schools? You were an English, you were an English literature major. - I was.

- How do you, how do you do that? - You joined like some intermereal sports. - How did you polish your resume to get up into? - I had, you know, I definitely was not destined to be an architect, you know what I mean?

I thought I wanted to be a journalist. - Yeah. - Maybe a future podcast. - Yeah. - But this, this, this path is, you got to study hard.

(laughing) - I wanted to, I was trying to write a book. I actually, this book, I often say is the thing I've been trying to do for 30 years. So, I agree with it's out, but that's cool.

- I studied literature and I went and worked and published it 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, I was working abroad. I had someone told me to get your, to, to do that,

you got to go get your, get your articles, be a stringer or something and go to some form place. I went to South Africa. - Okay. - I had studied in school and went back there.

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. (laughing) - Yeah, it's a crazy place. - It's a crazy place.

- It's like terrible. - Why isn't his working? - South Africa, I'm on the beat right now. (laughing) - I know.

“- Shouldn't I, shouldn't something great happen to me?”

(laughing) - 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, I should just find, this is a segue, but you know, when I did eventually go to architecture school in 2006, in 2008, the financial crisis happens, and I was a realtor.

- Oh, you were realtor? - I was a 19-year-old realtor in Philadelphia. - So yeah, I've suffered similar deaths at max. - Well, there's this article that New York Times comes out says, "Architects have finally replaced

English literature graduates as the least employable profession." - And then you switch to that? - Well, I was in architecture school. - Oh, fuck you just switched. - Oh, that was 2008, 2008.

- Yeah, 2008, 'cause all the every architect was - We share similar archive, yeah. - So failing up, as they say. (laughing) - So yeah, so what was, how did you switch?

I still don't understand, you're an English literature major and you were just like, you know what? - Oh, 'cause you were down there, in South Africa. - I was down there trying to write and then I call my dad, and my dad did my mom answer the phone

and she said, "Listen, your dad's in the hospital." - Oh, yeah. - He's sick, he's got, they found cancer in his stomach. He had this, 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 planet came back home.

It was winter from Pekipsi, New York. - Chili. - Chili. - Well, you know, upstate north of New York City.

“And I came home and what are you doing that situation?”

I had this whole plan, bad plan as you articulated. (laughing) That wasn't working so well, so I kind of abandoned that and I said, "Well, I'm just gonna sit here "and figure 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, stripping paint on, repainting this old historic home that they had bought for kind of a cheap deal and tried to fix it themselves.

- You're usually great for a marriage. - Yeah, yeah. (laughing) - Projection, I was just saying. (laughing)

- I'll go next moment. - Why is Dad on the ladder for seven hours on a Saturday? You know, we was going to have that question, you know? With his headphones, he got a little transistor radio playing the Yankees game or whatever.

- That's actually kind of nice. - So, but he was always trying to finish it and 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, I said it was 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 attic that never been restored.

I started working up there. So, three weeks past, 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 past.

And he's like, I'm going to join you on this week. Come on from work every day. We're working on it together. It's like this really restorative experience. A year and a half past, he's still alive.

And we finished restoring the house. - That's awesome. - It's amazing. And I went outside with him at the, this one moment, he always, at the end of the day, it always poured drank.

He said, like a CC in Coke, I don't know who drinks. Canadian club in Coke. - For your listener, you know, you some old dry old school drink. And sipping the drink, we're staying outside summertime. And he goes, "We're working on the house with you.

Say my life, it healed me," he said. - That's really nice.

- And so, that was a powerful experience.

And I said, like, is that true? Because it had 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 study this. So that was the big moment for me.

- So you gave up, farting around with the literature. Until now, picked up something fucking tools like a man. You found your car. And it was grinding, grinding it out on the floor. - Yeah.

- So what was what happened with the cancer? - Yes, so he went through remission, he had hair on his head, he was feeling good, it was under the house. But stage four cancer, sure, is a bitch. It came back into my first semester,

I told this sort of we're in the hospital together. So I went, then I went to our school, then. - That's when you're in. - I'm back in the hospital, just with a little knowledge. - No, I went into Harvard Graduate School design

and I get overwhelmed with all the famous architects, how you'd be a famous architect.

“These are all the great people you should follow.”

And all this starts, studied, you know, attention.

in the school, they're talking about museums, they're talking about these things.

“- Sure, I'm like, where are these guys in the hospital?”

- Yeah. - You know, because my father's now suffering again, all these people are people, the nurses, they're working in this 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 a kind of like a real, you 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 imminent death again and see the lack of those thoughts. - Yeah. - 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 a book, but he was very intentional about that choice. And now had had these thoughts and he said, I'm gonna choose where to go.

So he like picked, he'd never,

this guy never left. Pekips in New York basically. He went abroad once to Barbados, this country where his friend friend had a house invited him. He got a passport once from one trip.

- I mean, kind of the best place to go. - If I'm being honest. - Or Vittas is nice. You know, but you know, Caribbean is nice, but he had traveled it all really.

And he went down there and he had this great experience there and he said, I don't wanna 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 said in the book that end of life being able to design that last experience. - Yeah.

- Where I was looking at the horizon where he was like in this beautiful environment where he was calm and then comforted. His friends were around him and he like went out. - Yeah.

- So it's pretty neat. - Went out like a king. - Yeah. - Pretty neat.

“And so I think all those things in my first year”

were architecture school really. It just shook me, you know, say like okay, we're doing this something's wrong. - Yeah. - You've studied in and work in the book.

- 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 hospitals. You never hear about it.

It's like we're gonna, you know, there's some rich guy with the ton of money. We're gonna paint frescoes on a ceiling and bigger one. You know, you know, like it's rarely hear about things. - Exactly.

- That's on the wall. - Yeah.

- You really never hear about it.

And 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 gonna sit in a hospital. How do you make that at least somewhat, give like a sliver of that experience to... - Yeah. - Yeah, and I think, I think,

I think it, it asked this question in myself, which is why do we suffer through these anaesthetic 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 gonna say

“because I don't want to make 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 this 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, that everyone in listening, you know, all actually, our designers of your home,

for changing things or buying furniture, or changing the layout of things, you're putting in mementos of your family, talismanic things that are from your history, 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 filleties and comfort them. - Yeah, you know.

- No, that is pretty cool. So then you, so is that how you kind of got into, I guess you're focused in architecture where you're 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. - They were like, I walked in, I remember, it was like, you know, if you have kids, if you've ever been to a children's hospital,

it's like, it's a, it's a really gut-wrenching experience, but then you're seeing like kids who are like, really, really sick and 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 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, scary place. - Yeah. - That's a really good point in a children's hospital

'cause no one's going to a children's hospital for great things. - No, it's like bleak, you know. - Our second kid, when she was just a little baby,

such a super high fever that they,

it wasn't, one of them's like bacteria, I think it goes like to the brain, but they, like we just have to be sure, they'd give her like a spinal tap, and she was a tiny little thing.

And 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, 'cause 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, there's some things where they have some play area. They're at least trying to think about

what the kids experience, they had, you know, they had Gatorade in the waiting room. - Now it's like, guys, come here, it's a lot of the lives, you're really good at that, I was like, it's so nice to have this.

- It's Gatorade, for Gatorade. - It's cold Gatorade, it was awesome.

“- Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a good point.”

And so 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. - That's a high performance machine,

and it's doing incredible, you know, life-changing work.

So I don't wanna discount that. - Yeah. - But, it's also a place where people work every day. - Yeah. - And 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 wanna be, you know, it's not, it's not Facebook's office offices, you know, it's not like, there's not like 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 set up. - So some of that can change, you know,

but I think it is about understanding the confluence and trying to say, you know, hospitals on the places where we face great joy and great fear, and we gotta 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 moment of like existential crisis, where I'm like, what am I studying this thing for? - Yeah. - And I'm not gonna be one of these architects in my dad,

and I'm like, dad's dying, I'm going home every weekend, driving back from Boston to Piccay, trying to be with him. - Yeah. - And I don't know if you've ever been with someone at the end of the, I mean, who's just muscleing through like,

every sports program he can watch, you know, like he's watching golf, he's watching football, he's just like the whole day, he's watching TV. - I was dispatch, one of my dad's buddies had a pancreatic cancer, and he was really just like wasting away.

And so my dad would like send us over there, like, oh, 'cause we would make him like weed coconut oil, like a edible stuff, and he'd go with the hangout man, go like hangouts, spend some time with the guy, and he ever 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, just watch just sit there. - Just watch Westerns with him, but he was, he was a pretty funny guy.

- I mean, I remember his, I went for the commercial break, and then I try to get some potent in there. - Dad, keep him stay alive, I love you, yeah, love you dad. - Okay, commercials out there, you know. - You know, it was pretty bleak, you know,

Robots on like Fox football Sunday, yeah, it's like all right, let's be quiet. - So I had a different experience of my first year, and then I met this doctor, you know, this doctor, Paul Farmer, and he was like, look, we build in hospitals,

and Haiti, and in Rwanda, and we're working with all these communities, and who funds that?

“That's why, that's like, why should I get the money”

to like kind of do stuff like that? - He was very interesting guy,

his organization, Partners in Health is incredible entity.

You know, and he was grinding it out, raising money from philanthropists, he's got hit a lot of money from, there was a lot of money funding the programs from Petfar, actually, which was the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief?

- Oh. - It's pretty good. - That's actually the question. - I actually George Bush put that together. It's one of one of his crowning achievements.

You know, he funded all this money into AIDS treatment, especially in in 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 gotta do a new hospital. "Would you ever come and do this with us?" - What year were you as? - This is 2007, I went to Rwanda to work with him.

- What year were you in terms of studies? I was like, "What was your?" - So I had one awesome year under my belt. (laughing) - That's what you pull out.

- That's awesome. You got to, like, no shelter bag on and no experience. - No experience, yeah. No firm experience, and, but, you know, they had done it before.

I was like, "Look, I have no experience "because 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 a architect, it was, I'm gonna come 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 moved to Rwanda to be with his team and try to work on this new hospital, called the Bittaro Hospital.

- Yeah. - And that's where we test out all these ideas. Where I learned about the history of, you know, Florence Saint Goes, where I asked questions like,

“why are our hospitals making people sicker instead of healthier?”

So I got really into air flow. - Yeah, so I saw that from your TED talk, that was kind of cool. - How can buildings breathe better? - Basically how to get the air,

I didn't remember what you thought about that, 'cause I, I just assumed, like in my house, like during wintertime, if I don't open a window, I'm like, is it just like, old air? - Yeah, that's right.

- It is, it's just the same old air. - No, it's true. - I mean, we learned this in, 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, we're basically everything

became air conditioned. There's lots of good benefits of air conditioning, certainly in Austin, where it's 100 degrees, when you simply say. - I love AC.

- You know, but it also means that the air inside, often is not recycled enough to clean it. - Yeah, I don't even, so that it's, so in the hospital, you would think, like, a central air at house would have like a duct

that pulls air in from the outside, just 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 disease, which is, in fact, in the air, they would be put into, let's say, a negative pressure room, but in a place like Rwanda, well, they didn't have negative pressure rooms.

- Yeah. - And so it's the hallways, patients were coming in very sick and infecting other patients, and it's the medical space, it 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,”

you can measure how many times the air is completely recycled in the building or basically like fresh air coming in and old air out. - Yeah, they call it air changes per hour. 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 wanted 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 night and gale strategies and she had ideas about 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, air flow. 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

this incredible view. - I will say the,

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, it was the, it was the, Matt, not Massa, Amma.

- Amma, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - Suffolk, it's crazy, man, thanks for. - Really, really, I was, I was just, I was like, there's gotta be one in here. He's like, what the hell is it?

I was like, damn, this shit is awesome. - We don't put the stinkers on the other side. (laughing)

“- 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 metrics. Size of windows, size of room, and then this is key. High ceilings what we call the upper room.

- Yeah. - Where the air flows up. And then we, this is great Kentucky company. That's a little bit called big ass fans. You know, this group, it's awesome. - Sounds enough, that sounds awesome.

(laughing) - And we found them and they've created these huge ceilings fans. So I wrote to big ass fans. I said, would you guys ever think about donating, helping us put these big ceilings fans

in these open wards, 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.

(laughing) - And the hilarious too, 'cause all these t-shirts, all these dudes, construction workers, wearing big ass fan t-shirts, like no idea what this man is hilarious.

- That's really funny. - So we had this big air flow kind of go slow, but because of the big, they get a lot of air flows. - We have one in the awesome airport, that's just like, - Totally massive metal fans.

- That might be a big ass fan, yeah, yeah. - I'll have to look when it's all 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, cools you down.

So it gets the room up, we get to the air up into the upper room, and then up there we had UV GI lights, ultraviolet, germosidal radiation lights, it cleans the air up there. - Yeah. - And then it moves out.

So just a 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 gonna build stuff for the general population, but it's just, let's just build it, be happy to have it. It's not gonna help you in any way.

It's not gonna be good for you. But just shut up and just deal with it.

“'Cause that's, I think that's why, like,”

hospitals really do suck so bad. - It's some of that truth, yeah. - It's like the bare minimum. - Well, it's almost just on thinkable to be like, let's make this nice 'cause everyone's like shut up.

- Yeah.

- Be glad you have anything at all.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's that inequality of space. They kind of indignity of environments that we live in, that we don't deserve, yeah, 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 to the medieval period, you have a great distinction right, you have maybe terrible environments that you live in in homes or hobbles or something like that.

- Yeah, there's just like butcher animals throw them right outside. There you go, you have terrible spaces that are not clean, cleanly, and maybe not inspiring. And then you go to the cathedral.

- Yeah. - And the cathedral is like rather the most awe-inspiring things you've ever seen. - Yeah. - And so they were using architecture

and it's greatest ability to inspire awe to remind us of like, you know, those are these greater powers

“that are above us that you should be inspired by”

and I give you kind of purpose.

So in a way, everyday, the public is going in between the conditions of the ordinary and the conditions of the inspiring. - Yeah. - Some moments in their life.

I'm sure each of us has an architectural memory that they could tell a story about. It's one of the reasons I wrote this book. It's like, you know, what is that moment where you said, oh, that was about us.

- Yeah. - Experience I had, or? - You know what I was from me? - You probably actually know this. The egg in Albany.

- Oh, yeah, the egg. - I performed in the egg. And I'll be honest, that was awesome. - Yeah, what was it about the egg then? - It's just fucking cool, I was in an egg.

I don't know, I was just, I was in like a circular, a completely circular building. They're, you're Josh, please pull the picture of the egg in Albany. It was also, are you familiar with Albany?

- Yeah. - 'Cause then they have those like government buildings. It looks like evil. - Yeah. - They have those like breads like brutalist, I guess.

They have those like very, like you, you like come over, whatever highway that wrote, 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 a-- - They, at nighttime, they stick up. And it looks like the evil empire, I'm sorry.

“- And it honestly do, I don't think anyone,”

people probably know, but they're like federal buildings. - Yeah. - That I couldn't really get an answer from people, like what's actually in them, I don't know. - Yeah, it's a state office building.

- 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, you're like, why did they do this? - It looks terrible.

(laughing) - 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 is a 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 on the floor.

- Yeah, well, so are you, Josh, you pull up the guild house and fill it up, you're familiar with the guild house? - So, show me the guild house. - The guild house? - Yeah, so I know the guild house.

- Yeah, of course, the ugly historic architecture, yeah. - Oh, yes, it's the ugliest building. This is what, I didn't realize that that was designed, purposely. Someone made this, well, I said pass it every day, the guild house,

it's actually kind of irritated me.

But that was designed by an architect,

“which I get the idea was like, let's not 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, 'cause 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 also in the 60s as well. - That was Robert Venturi.

- We have what the hell, what was Robert Venturi? - Venturi and Denis Scott Brown, Philadelphia Architects. Real, I actually write about them a little bit in the book. They really championed 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 guild house as ugly architecture, that you would read the ugly in it could be ordinary and okay. - I mean, this guy's got a knock it off. - I mean, this is a nice room to see.

- These are low-income guys and Philadelphia trying to finish their years out in here. - It's a very kind of populist thing,

but it's also, you know, there's so many Venturi Scott Brown

structures that really miss the mark and are kind of hideous architecture.

“But they're kind of obsessed with the ordinary.”

- Yeah. - Like 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 there was saying, you know, there's something about this, we should think about it 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 old strip in Vegas? - The old strip, yeah. - There's not like the flamingo, they're like pink,

but I don't even understand, it looks insane, you go to Vegas, it does not look ordinary whatsoever. - No, now they're now emblematic, emblematic of like a little mini Venice or a little mini, you know, New York City or whatever.

- Was the old strip that plain? - What year was this? - This was the 60s. - Oh, so it was just a big neon sign. - Oh, okay.

- Yeah. - So what the hell, okay? So what? - Yeah, and I still don't get what you're talking about. - I think what they were saying is 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,”

do you want to use it or the symbol that wraps the building and not cares so much about the experience inside. And of course, flies in the face of a lot of other architectural theorists who say like the things should be interrelated.

- Yeah. - But it was an interesting and provocative theory which definitely changed, you know, changed the way that architects started to focus on what it looks like from the outside.

- I mean, here's the thing and I don't ever

study an 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 living in Philly, my whole life, and now I'm in a low income housing,

just give the guy like a slightly higher sealer. - You're gonna fuck this up. - High ceiling, 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, "Fuck 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, open 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 and 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 signs. So there's an economic driver behind that investment that has nothing to do with the experience one has. And the desire one has to be in a space for a long period of time. - 'Cause he knows they're freaked out,

'cause it's like they're purposely designed to be disoriented, but kind of just leave you just like that. - I don't mean, you literally can't figure out how to get out of there. - Yeah, the elaborate thing.

- Yeah, no clocks pumping in air, so you stay awake, yeah. - Oh, do they do that? - Totally. - Oh, God, that's terrible. - Terrible.

- Well, okay, so, okay, so in architects, well, this is one of my favorite questions. At one point in architects school, do they teach you how to effectively blame everything on the contractors during this?

(laughing) - It's the, it's less than number one. - Yeah, yeah. (laughing) - It is nice, it's a nice thing to be able to do.

- Well, trust me, when you're working with the contractors, they're blaming everything on the architect too. - 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 you're on bullshit.

We made some changes, 'cause you can't even do this. They don't know what it's like and if I've seen it a million times. - Yeah, that's what was so interesting about working in, you know, working in Rwanda

to per se. 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, had metal shop of which shop and I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, you're actually working into related with the builder. We're gonna build it together.

We're gonna design it together. We're gonna test it together. - Yeah. - And so there was that relationship that average relationship

never, I didn't learn through that.

- Right. - I learned how to like work directly in relationship with those who are gonna make it 'cause we could make it right on site, which is sort of something you don't have access to here where everything is imported.

- Yeah. - And that was a really unique experience, you know. - That's kind of cool. - But there is this moment where you say, okay, architects have this position on high

and we create the great ideas and then everyone else has to. - Yeah.

“- After 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. - Yeah. - And we all have to live and suffer through these terrible spaces in our lives.

Instead of trying to figure out how to solve and fix the things. - I was reading, I've been reading this guy's, trying to read his book, it's really hard to read, but he, it's going after virtue. It's like a real dense philosophical book

by Alster McIntyre and he was talking to 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. - But it's like a nice thing to think about. And, but then he was like talking about like,

okay, he had to find what a practice was. So he was like architectures of practice and like we're about bricklaying, he's like not a practice. He's like, 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, you're 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 flags for it honestly.

- Pretty. - I think I have a snobby take. - Yeah, it is.

“I think one of the things I learned is it's act,”

people ask how do you define one of more beautiful building is the versus another? And I say, if you can tell a story about the building, if you can communicate like why it is the way it is. And often, that can be through how it's made.

So the craft of making the building, I've worked with these stone maces to, you know, we worked together and making this really beautiful stone wall out of the... - Salt can have rock.

- It's all kind of rock. - Very nice. And it's like, oh, this is about, they made every single edge of every single rock. It was handcrafted.

- Yeah. - And like you can see the thousands of hours and all the hand stone cutting that was going on inside.

And you can see this incredible thing

they created 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 mace

and from Ireland came to the Hudson Valley. That's why we were there. He came to build these estates that were made out of these river stones. You know, I had this, I was stone, you know,

- Usually breathable stone, too. - Yeah, breathable stone. - Very breathable stone. - Yeah, I, that's the thing. It's, it is a funny thing to say

“because I think stone mace and there is almost like a very,”

it's all, it is kind of an art. You have to like take the stone, know how to actually cut them and where to play something, how to cut, you know, they're not like all the same colors. - Yeah, like a stone mace store.

- I mean, you see isn't like a special in Japan where there's such a reverence for the tradition of craft, woodworking and mace and reen, 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. - Yeah. - 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 I just changing the color of a room

will make me so happy when I'd finally finished

a last coat and look at it and be like, it's just 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, I can imagine it taking on new life.

- Yeah. - Now let me ask you this. That being said as an architect, 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. (laughing) You left the answer, this is a funny question. So, I mean, I actually have, I mean,

I will say, I have a lot of reverence people make things, you know. - 'Cause it's not, there you are, it's not easy. - It's one of, I would say, 'cause a lot of my family did deconstruction growing up and it's like, it's one of the hardest,

it's, I think it's one of the most fun jobs as 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,

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, "Hey, pay me for that thing I did," people are like, "Yeah."

- Yeah, you're at risk, yeah, not, you know,

“I think what's fascinating about being a builder”

or a contractor, as 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. You're assembling all sorts of teams of labor. - Yeah.

- You know, you're trying to bring in folks, people you trust, people you don't know, and get this thing done on, you know, your future proving. I hope it'll take this long, I hope the weather will, yeah, you know, allowing them to do it.

- You're also managing, 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, Convicts. - You're dealing with a fucking free to be content. - You're organizing a pretty rough version, you know, rough squad, usually, and it's like, it's, you know, it's, it's definitely a different beast, all together.

- It's a good work, hard work. - It is.

- It always works, I worked in mostly in food service,

but every day. - Same thing. - Just say exactly that. - Every weekend, grinding out, like, you amount of vetched amount of peppers, I cut onions, I cut, you know, prepping 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, 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, remove from that process and on a perch, 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 I shouldn't matter.

- Yeah, and 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, we got, you know, we did well. - We did well. - But that, you also gave a TED Talk in the golden age of TED Talks. That was a good time.

- Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I used to, like, if someone gave a TED Talk,

“like, you know, what was that, like 13 years ago, maybe you did?”

- I did it, yeah, in like, in 15. So, like, that was 11 years ago. - That was the golden age. - That was, was that before TEDx? 'Cause they watered down the sauce a little bit.

- I think it was like simultaneous, but it wasn't, TEDx was starting to happen then. - TEDx started, don't quote me totally, but it was like, there was some TEDx happening around then. But there was, you still did a 13 minute talk

where I think they have, like, a six minute talk or something. - Okay. - What was it like, given TED Talk?

I always wanted, I don't know anyone who's given one.

So I'm always like... - Oh, like, curious. Well, that experience is like... - I mean, I kept, I always described it as, like, high school theater, you know.

It was like when I did place in high school. You know, I had to, like, remember all the words and I was like, it was closest thing to theater. - So you had a little training. - So you were able to do...

- Yeah, you know, I put the presentation together. I'm working with this coach, cheap pro men. She's amazing. And working through the story. And she would always, you know, architectures,

we always talk about buildings, yada, yada, yada. Like we just talked about the guilt hole. And like, you get a little high-falutin. But she was always bringing it back down in narrative. - Yeah.

- It's really meaningful for me to say, okay, people are gonna respond to the story of, actually, you die got sick in this building change

“and we're 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 like 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 me. I remember I was like in the treadmill and the basement of the hotel and like, this is crazy moment.

Like, in front of me is, 'cause 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.

(laughing) - I'm gonna try that running. You know, 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, you know, freaking everybody out of here. - And what did they, what did they, what did they go or in Clinton, did they even look at you or did they just shoot?

- And they didn't look at each other either 'cause I think it was a little bit-- - Yeah, a little bit of 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? - The question, I don't know, you know. - I think it was me, I was doing that. - Honestly, yeah, you're fucking crushing him. (laughing)

- I would have definitely paced matched Clinton or if I was between them. - You're like seven. - Incline, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know me, eight, 30 seconds, back down for. (laughing)

- 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 wanna tell you the story of my house

and I worked on with my dad or I wanted to tell you the story, the school I went to that was really weird

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 I got from being about stories. - Right. - That 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 in your bucket list, it's not what this book is, this book is like,

why the hospitals matter, why the houses matter, why the prisons matter, why does it work place 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 this, I wanna hear those stories, I wanna hear from your readers, your listeners, like, hey man, I had this crazy experience in this building, it changed my life, I had this terrible experience,

it changed my life and that's where, as an architect, I gained the most knowledge, actually.

- Yeah, yeah, I was just talking my friend

before I came here about cubicles and how, like, I think they're a thing of the past now, I didn't realize that it's more now, like the open floor concept. - Yeah.

- The cubicles is like a pretty dasterly design. - I write about the cubicles in the book. - Yeah, there's a chapter on the workplace on, I start with the factory, but then there was this guy at the furniture company, the Herman Miller,

which famous furniture company in Michigan,

“it's kind of imprompt 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 evolve in the modern workplace, it's kind of a visionary system idea.

And later in his life, he complained, he said like my big idea of the cubicle 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. - Yeah. - And 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. - Yeah.

- You know what I'm saying? - But all the horrible sitting in a basement, 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. - They're the wall. - That is funny. - Yeah, it means a cool idea in concept,

but it's like, yeah, it's not the case. - Yeah, it's use and when it was deployed, create a lot of terrible conditions that people then fought against. So then the open work plan is also not great either.

People get into their headphones into their Zoom calls and you're like, "Yeah, almost want the walls." - I thought about that too. It's like, I might want to retreat to the walls

and give it a go. - You put me at a table with like four people. - Yeah, there's like an imperfect, you try to figure out how to work well together. - Yeah.

- 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 that are like, I can't wait to go back to the office.

- Absolutely. - I actually want to go back. It is 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 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, just me again.

(laughing) - It's still here, it's just me. - Yeah, it's still here. - My wife and I call them Freedom Rides. We're like, I'm gonna go to the grocery store

and do a Freedom Rides. - Yeah, just try and get that side of the house. - So, strawberries. - With LinkedIn, they're not LinkedIn. With Ted, the Ted talk.

When you did that, did you take like beta blockers or did you just kind of roll dog it? - I just did it. - Yeah, I got a lot of people who taught me a beta blocker.

Like you got to take them and like, I don't know man, I don't know.

- No, I've never taken that, but I'm interested.

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 like, they say you can't actually experience the physical symptoms of anxiety. Again, I've never tried it out. - Should've taken a bunch to that. - The true?

- Sure, yeah, three coffers might not be that big. (laughing) Yeah, no, I didn't do anything like that, but I did practice a lot. Like theater, it felt ready, but you're ready to go.

- I'll tell you man, there was this one dude who they called the, you get a step on the red circle. This one guy went out there, had a talk to give and he just went blank. He just went blank.

- Oh. - And everyone in the crowd was just like, "Is this an act?" Then he sat down, everyone stood up and clapped

He was such a bomb. - Fuck.

- Yes, it was hard to watch.

- That is tough. - I do like the guys who go like, "They banned my TED Talk. Here's my, I kind of like the Renegade TED Talkers. Like they banned my shit."

So, when you gave the TED Talk, did you get like flood it with like, I guess like DMs and stuff? Like I'm trying to ask is like, what did the babes respond to the TED Talk?

(laughing) - I mean, I got a lot of good response. I mean, it was mostly like, people in my mom's age, who were like, "Okay, here we go." (laughing)

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, like what are your thoughts on LinkedIn?”

- You know, I don't, I hadn't used a lot of social media to be honest with you. - Right, right. - Right, right. - Years, but way kind of went back on it

recently as I was doing some new work. And 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 there, get off 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 'cause you get like, you get endorsements, so you say like these are my skills. And then you're, you know, friends who ever like, yeah.

- Yeah. - You actually greatest 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'm gonna build this weird thing like, how do I do that? - Yeah. - And so instead of applying for jobs or answering RPs, I'm talking to folks to be like, how do I do this crazy

impossible project and talk with them and figure that out, you know? - Yeah, I had 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 my head written my own skill sets in and they were like kind of graphic, sexual accident. I was trying to keep moving doors.

(laughing)

“I think they might control for that now.”

- Yeah, my LinkedIn was crazy. - Maybe I 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. - That's okay.

- Josh, can you, I have a clip I want to show you. This is an architectural question. Can you pull that up? I saw this guy, he was talking about something specifically he did with his house.

I kind of want to see your thoughts on this as an architect, but let me see here, is it sure? - Also, while Josh gets that, I noticed on one of the, I guess organizations are connected to, there's a thing called the Ellen DeGeneres,

campus of Diane Fossi, Gorilla Fund. - It's a good name, it's really rolls off the tongue. - What is that? Can you, it sounds completely unhanged. - What is the Ellen DeGeneres' campus of Diane Fossi,

Gorilla Fund? - Yeah, so this was a real thing. It's basically, yeah, I worked on this. - You worked on the Ellen DeGeneres, Diane Fossi, - Diane Fossi, Gorilla Fund, center of care and trouble.

Yeah, no, it's this, it's a center for the study and care of Gorilla scientists in Northern Rwanda.

“- Okay, basically like, where the remaining”

a mountain gorilla's 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, here we go, we go with these gorillas, you track them, it's an incredible experience. And so Diane Fossi, which obviously,

or so Gorillas and the miss when you're growing up, - Oh, really, did you say movie? - I didn't see it, but I know of it. - So that's a movie about Diane Fossi, and the '60s moved to Rwanda,

then was also Rwanda's, what's still Rwanda? And studied the gorillas and brought a lot of attention to them. And she was killed up there by poachers. 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 Jenner and Jenner is who cares about animals and it was like, I'll give the lead gift,

actually her wife, Porsche, gave the lead gift in her honor before Ellen knew. So it was sort of this thing, but naming rights came with the project. - That's pretty cool.

- But it was this prior to her getting kind of skewered by the media for being nasty to her staff. - It was one of the weaker cancellations I saw. - She was like, she's mean, mean. - Yeah.

- I've been on Ellen's staff. - I've been on Ellen's side the whole time. - Yeah. - I mean, she was the tight ship. - Yeah, it was too.

- And she donated it. - She donated it. - Yeah, it was fun. - People were on her ass. - It was right at that same time.

- Was it really? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, this was sort of her exit plan. She was sort of leaving the show. - Yeah. - She was putting some into philanthropy.

And also power move, I have a staff of cry babies.

“I'm like, I want to give $40 million a gorilla's dude shut up.”

I want to be care about you. (laughing) - Doing the gorilla fund. - Definitely an attempt to cancelation, yeah. But she survived it, I think.

And 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, boss, boss, boss.

- Yeah, we're all, none of a standard chance.

- You know, like, you've never been mean before.

- Bossy pants. - Yeah, you, this is the architectural question I had. I actually had me thinking. - Mm-hmm. - Dr. Sixth man, then does.

And at one point, you had a trap house. You needed a good at the whole house. And put 15 stoves in the house. - Absolutely. - My vision was huge.

- I would say 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... - All right, so the whole operation. - It was a whole operation. - Definitely an operation. Now, I know you're not an engineer,

but it's like a fire hazard. - Is that even feasible? Is that even possible to have?

“'Cause I'm trying to figure out if he's capping.”

Is that possible to have? What do you say six stoves? - 15 stoves. - 15 stoves, excuse me. Is it possible to even do that?

In terms of like pulling the, in a, I will guess, he was in St. Pete's Florida. And let's say either a row home or a standalone house. - Is that what he was in?

- I think so. I mean, if he was, he was saying he was in a 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, if you had to design a trap, how would you go about putting the 16 stoves? - I'd do eight, first I'd do all the 18 stoves. - It's great. (laughing)

- So you think it's feasible? - I mean, I guess it's a standard house. - You know, if you have a vision. - Sure, you have a big huge vision.

- Yes, I always say, you know, you can find a way.

- 'Cause people are trying to say he's cappin'. So I was like, I don't know, sounds kinda like capp, but I figured I'd ask an expert. - Some guy to ask me. - Yeah.

- Do you think you could act genuinely? Do you think you could have put some things? - I just am worried about the fire hazard. - But in sure. - 'Cause he's got, does he have 16 hoods?

- You know, what's the deal? Does he have it? - What's his airflow, strategy? - Should be good there. - I don't know if you put the context.

They're cooking cracks, and the airflow should be good. - It should be very nice. (laughing) - 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. - I'm letting you know. - Well, hey, so the books great, before you go, we always have our premium subscribers.

“They write into question, would you mind reading it?”

And then we get to discuss the questions. - Sure. - Totally. - Is it just my own trap? - You read the, okay. - Who are going with the trap?

It's not a trap, it's just, they set the questions, the producers select, you grab literally at random. (laughing) - This is the premium subscriber question. I'm a 47 year old married cis-hett mail.

My wife is 52, and for the better half of her life was a strict lesbian gold star. Good question. We met, we met her at the time, she was going through menopause.

We were working together at Priceware, a scooper. 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. - She's got, yeah. I was actually Joe from Minneapolis, I'd rather put that in there. I've seen it time and time again,

but a few years into our professional quaint, she ended up went something of a transformation from mask to mature femme. Something I learned later was due to a shift in our 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 in this. (laughing)

- Oh, it's random, it's random. - It's random. - They don't know the guest is gonna be, of course. You want me to finish this? - Please, yeah.

- Okay, thank you. This is something we've dealt with in couples counseling from us here 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, it's gonna happen after this, yeah. So long story short, things are going really well

until just the other night we were arguing about

My wife struck me, a stiff backhand across the side

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 issue, apologize profusely.

Telling me how domestic violence is statistically higher in the lesbian scene. High is to actually out of all other pairing types. Interesting. I wonder where the dad is 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? (laughing) - I think it's unforgivable, man.

“I mean, I would meet her where she is, honestly,”

but I'm curious what kind of space they were in with it on the couch, was the home toxic? Was it a toxic home? - I don't know. I mean, I don't know, they're in counseling,

so she looked at that help, but... - It's a good question. I have to think about it. - I mean, they're up there in terms of professionals. They're 50, 50, 40.

- Oh, is his third, her fourth, is that what it was?

- Her fourth. - The marriage? - I don't know what it was in her fourth. - The second, third. - Yeah.

- So, I actually have heard that it is statistically higher in the lesbian, domestic violence is the highest in terms of the lesbian community. - Was that right? - That's what I heard.

- Dad, I don't know. - I don't know either, but I've heard that. - You know, you can bear about that. - Thanks for letting me read that. - I come back to the theater of the TED Talk,

you know, given a script, you know. 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, I say forgive. - We don't get into difficult positions. - True.

- I say forgive. - It's actually bisexual women is what he says. - I have the highest. - And I know. - Okay.

- Well, sorry to end on a sour note. - No, I mean, I just happened to there. - I didn't even subscribe or as they get this to make less. - I'm sure, I'm happy to give them advice, you know. Hopefully they're listening.

- Maybe they, you know, maybe what they should do. They should think about the kind of setting of their house, you know. - True. - Maybe they need new couch or something. Maybe they need 15 stoves or something like that.

- If they sell the trap house. (laughing) - Wait, thank you so much, that was a blast. - Hey, thank you, thank you. - And one more time, the book.

- The world in 10 buildings. - Yeah, the books are world in 10 buildings. - Beautiful. - It's how our architecture defines who we are and how we live. And I hope to 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 with me.

- Thank you, appreciate it.

“- Watch new episodes of Matt and Shane Secret Podcast on Spotify.”

- Do it.