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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Wow, wow, Wes.

• 0:02Matt McCusker?

  All right, we're here. Michael P. Murphy. What's going on, man?

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hey, man. Great to be here.

• 0:05Matt McCusker?

  Dude, it was, uh, you know, again, I'll be honest. I have a booking service. They just go, and I'm pretty bad in terms of like researching anything. They just go like, hey, here's the book. I go, sounds great. Sounds awesome. The book is called Our World in Ten Buildings.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right. Ten Buildings.

• 0:21Matt McCusker?

  So you're, and this guy, I was doing a little, I did a little research.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 0:25Matt McCusker?

  So I, you have like an, you have like an architectural origin story.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I do. It's a little bit, but this book is about as well.

• 0:33Matt McCusker?

  It's pretty charged. You were saying your father was sick.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:36Matt McCusker?

  You went to the hospital and you're like, dude, this place, why is this place look so fucking horrible? Is that, is that about it?

• 0:42Speaker 00

  This is like, those are the two parts. Yeah, I got two, two kind of awakenings I had.

• 0:47Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. That's a bad way to frame it. I shouldn't say that. You were just like, this doesn't look like a place to get healthy in.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  No, it's true. I went, you know, like I think a lot of people went to the hospital as you, everyone will go. For those like moments of great joy when your kids are born and terror when your family's sick and I'm sitting around, it was, uh, it was actually like the holidays, it's Christmas. And the whole family had to be there because he was getting surgery. It's a place emptied out. And, uh, 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.

• 1:28Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  You know, and so I think it kind of cracked my head up and said, you know, maybe one day I could design a hospital or something like that.

• 1:34Matt McCusker?

  That's, so you were already in architecture. You were studying architecture before that?

• 1:38Speaker 00

  I had been in architecture school for one semester.

• 1:41Matt McCusker?

  Oh, so you're, you were pretty new.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  I was pretty new. I didn't know a damn thing.

• 1:46Matt McCusker?

  Did you talk to anyone in there about architecture during the thing or were you just kind of just chilling?

• 1:51Speaker 00

  You know, I was, there was this moment where they told him he had to walk around. He was like, oh, get your steps in. And so they're walking around, uh, the hallway with no windows, rooms on either side.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  The nursing station in the middle and he was, you know, very, very diligent doing what the doctors told him. So he was walking around and I'm just like, this is the most abysmal experience, you know?

• 2:14Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  And yet it's this great, famous cancer institution in New York City.

• 2:18Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  That's supposed to be one of the greatest ones and is for research, but the experience was pretty bleak, you know?

• 2:25Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, hospitals are, they're pretty, they're pretty brutal in there. And it's like, I get it, you know, you're trying to, you gotta build all the cool lifesaving machines. You can't really be thinking about nice windows and natural light. So your thing is like, you can, you can have both, basically.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the question, I think the question emerged like, why is it? Why is it that we can't have both? You know, it's interesting when you think about hospitality spaces are designed completely around your experience.

• 2:51Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  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 and interest and

• 3:01Matt McCusker?

  Vibe of the hospital sucks.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:03Matt McCusker?

  It's not a good vibe.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  And hospitals, which they share the same root word.

• 3:08Matt McCusker?

  True.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Are completely different, completely on the other spectrum. It's all about the kind of institution and it's sanitary and cleanable spaces. And you can understand there's a lot of liability around screwing it up.

• 3:20Matt McCusker?

  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 their legs back on and send them back out. I just think it just, everyone was like, yeah, that's just what they look like and no one ever even thought about it.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  It's a very good, yeah, it's a very good point. You know, the history of hospitals, like originally hospitals actually were,

• 3:45Speaker 00

  converted, uh, religious spaces, you know, so like before, let's say the 18th century, they just put the sick in, in the church, in the kind of large rooms and put beds in there. And you could hear, you know, the only healing power is the power of God, you know, the word, the word of God. So the priest stands at the front, delivers the sermon and, and you know, that's your pathway to, to heaven.

• 4:10Matt McCusker?

  Really? That was the first hospital?

• 4:11Speaker 00

  So those are the first medical spaces are like really, uh, converted, you know, religious spaces, basically.

• 4:18Matt McCusker?

  Okay.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Uh, they're taking in the 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 and the sick.

• 4:30Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  You know, in the 19th century, 1850s is really when you see what we know today as the modern hospital realm.

• 4:36Matt McCusker?

  Oh, they're pretty new.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Kind of new. And you're right that like, it's this confluence of, uh, military and, and kind of state investment. So I did this research eventually to look into why was it so bad? You know, why, how can a place, uh, provide like the best care? And actually, I actually potentially extend my father's life, actually provide really good care, good research, good surgery, and have such a, you know, a poor experience in terms of like the comfort level there, you know? Why are the two so disconnected? So I looked into this history. There's an interesting historical

• 5:14Speaker 00

  relationship where Florence Nightingale, who from the 1850s, uh, kind of emerged as like the first medical, medical hospital. I don't want to say medical hospital designer, but she really, she built this thing, she wrote this book called Notes on Hospitals and Notes on Nursing.

• 5:29Matt McCusker?

  Was she a nurse?

• 5:30Speaker 00

  She was a nurse. She sort of set up the first kind of nursing, she's this incredible innovator and

• 5:36Matt McCusker?

  I always thought she was like a character from like a Dickens novel. That's a real person.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  I mean, it's a very real person.

• 5:41Matt McCusker?

  That's like the ultimate nurse name. My name is Nurse Florence Nightingale.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  She's amazing. She went to the, then it was the Crimean War. And, uh, all these, all these, uh, soldiers were dying because they were in these what's called bell tents and they were dying of disease. And, and she said, we need to bring, we need to, uh, she learned that, uh, through the design of this new kind of military hospital that was brought in, uh, that patients were actually living longer. That 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 to kind of change hospital design around the world.

• 6:20Matt McCusker?

  Dang. So did you ever hear about the guy who discovered germs? Similar thing. The guy who was like, you should wash your hands after you like, like, you know, package away a dead body and you have to deliver child. You should wash your hands. That guy was told, he was like, other doctors were like, shut the fuck up, dude. There's nothing on our, there's not like invisible bugs on our hands. And that guy, I forget his name, but he actually, uh, he was the one who like pretty much founded germ theory and he died in like a sane asylum. Cause all the other doctors were like, shut up.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  Oh, I didn't know.

• 6:50Matt McCusker?

  We don't hear about that. They're like, we're doctors, we're gentlemen, we're clean. We can touch anything. It's not gonna make us dirty.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was this study where, uh, similar to that, where it was doctors ties that were getting germs on them.

• 7:02Matt McCusker?

  Really?

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Infecting other patients as they were walking through different wards. And so

• 7:06Matt McCusker?

  What?

• 7:06Speaker 00

  So the, so this whole idea of sanitary clothing and other things, you know? But those same ideas are really, really fascinating. You know, it was the similar idea around

• 7:15Matt McCusker?

  Semmelweis. That's, sorry, that's the guy.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:18Matt McCusker?

  That guy. Good guy.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Good guy.

• 7:20Matt McCusker?

  Horrible, horrible fate for him. He just tried to be like, guys, we should wash our hands after touching dead bodies. We shouldn't deliver babies right after. And they're like, shut up.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. All that stuff was changing how we think about, uh, not just what medicine is, but how we, how we live in the world, how the cities change.

• 7:36Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. Well, it is, you know, it's, it's a, it is tricky because you're in the hospital and it's like, yo, let's make this place look awesome. And the doctors are like, they've been up for 35 hours straight and they're like, shut, shut up. They're pretty grumpy, honestly. Doctors are pretty grumpy. You've worked with a lot of them, I guess.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:55Matt McCusker?

  Designed stuff like hospitals.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  I am working with a bunch of amazing doctors.

• 7:58Matt McCusker?

  They eat like crap too. They have terrible diets for real.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  That's funny you say that. That is some truth.

• 8:04Matt McCusker?

  It's a hundred percent true. Doctors have the worst diets out of anybody. Well, they're not as bad as construction workers, but they fall for health food fads a lot. They'll drink like 10 Coke Zeros and be like, I'm completely healthy.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Got to stay up. It's those shifts.

• 8:17Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Long shifts.

• 8:18Matt McCusker?

  It's kind of fucked. Yeah. It's not, it's not good.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:21Matt McCusker?

  So.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  You know, I met this doctor right at that same time and he was thinking about, his name's Paul Farmer. He was this incredible doctor. And he was trying to build hospitals around the world for some of the poorest people. And basically saying, this is terrible. We deserve better medical care, but also better spaces.

• 8:38Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  And he invited me to work with him, uh, and actually ended up designing a hospital with him. And that's how I got started my first project.

• 8:46Matt McCusker?

  Where was this at?

• 8:47Speaker 00

  The hospital's in Rwanda.

• 8:48Matt McCusker?

  Dang.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  East Africa, yeah.

• 8:50Matt McCusker?

  Building that resume.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  They're like, we need an architect who works in

• 8:56Matt McCusker?

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• 9:32Matt McCusker?

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• 10:22Matt McCusker?

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• 10:32Speaker 00

  Rwanda.

• 10:33Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. Well, so I'll get back to that. Is that, it's kind of fascinating. How did you, how did you get into Harvard architectural schools? You were in English, you were an English literature major.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  I was.

• 10:43Matt McCusker?

  How, how do you, how do you do that? You join like some intramural sports or like, how did you, how did you polish your resume to get up into?

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had, I, you know, I, I definitely was not destined to be an architect. You know what I mean? I, I thought I wanted to be a journalist, maybe a future podcast, you know, but.

• 10:59Matt McCusker?

  This, this, this path is, you gotta study hard.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  I wanted to, I was trying to write a book. Actually, this book I often say is the thing I've been trying to do for 30 years. So I'm glad it's out, but.

• 11:10Matt McCusker?

  That's cool.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  I, I studied literature and I went and worked in publishing, like for a book agent, actually after school, which I did not love. And then I went to try to be a journalist. And so I, I was working abroad and someone told me to, to get your, to, to do that, you gotta go get, get your, get your articles, be a stringer or something and go to some foreign place. I went to South Africa. Okay. I had, had studied in school and went back there. I knew some people there and I was trying to figure it out. And while I was there, not being very successful, I would say, I got, I called my father and my mother on my father's birthday.

• 11:48Matt McCusker?

  How old were you?

• 11:49Speaker 00

  I was 20, I went there when I was 24.

• 11:52Matt McCusker?

  So you're a 24 year old in South Africa trying to be a journalist? That's a crazy plan.

• 11:59Matt McCusker?

  Like, why isn't this working? I'm down in South Africa. I'm on the beat right now.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  I know. Shouldn't I, shouldn't something great happen to me?

• 12:08Matt McCusker?

  That is pretty sick though. So you were down, sorry, you were down there and what, what happened?

• 12:12Speaker 00

  I clearly met with some great advisors who told me first, study English literature, one of the least employable professions. Actually, it's funny, this is a segue, but you know, when I did eventually go to architecture school in 2006, in 2008, the financial crisis happens and.

• 12:27Matt McCusker?

  I was a realtor.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Oh, you're a realtor?

• 12:28Matt McCusker?

  I was a 19 year old realtor in Philadelphia. So yeah, I've, I've suffered similar setbacks.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Well, there's this, there's this article that New York Times comes out and says, architects have finally replaced English literature graduates as the least employable profession.

• 12:45Matt McCusker?

  And then you switched to that?

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Well, I was in architecture.

• 12:48Matt McCusker?

  Oh, fuck, you just switched. Oh, cause it was 2008.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, 2008. Cause every architect was.

• 12:53Matt McCusker?

  We share a similar arc. I've, I've, yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  So failing up, as they say.

• 13:00Matt McCusker?

  So you switch, so yeah. So what was, how did you switch? I still don't understand. You're, you're an English literature major and you were just like, you know what? Oh, cause you were down there in South Africa.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  I was down there trying to write and then I called my dad and my dad, my mom answered the phone and she said,

• 13:18Speaker 00

  listen, your dad's in the hospital. 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.

• 13:31Matt McCusker?

  Oh, God.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  And so we had that terrible call and the next day I jumped on a plane. I came back home. It was winter. I'm from Poughkeepsie, New York.

• 13:41Matt McCusker?

  Chile.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  Chile, well, you know, upstate, north of New York city. And I came home and I, you know, what do you do in that situation? I had this whole plan, bad plan, as you articulated, that wasn't working so well. So I kind of abandoned that. And I said, well, I'm just going to sit here and figure out what to do with the family. And well, backstory is my dad had always worked on our family home. Every weekend he was like tinkering, he was painting, he was like stripping, stripping paint and repainting this old historic home that they had bought for kind of a cheap deal and tried to fix it themselves.

• 14:12Matt McCusker?

  Usually great for a marriage.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:16Matt McCusker?

  Project.

• 14:18Matt McCusker?

  How that makes a woman happier.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  Dad on the ladder for seven hours on a Saturday. You know, we always heard that question, you know, with his like headphones. You get a little transistor radio playing the, you know, Yankees game or whatever.

• 14:29Matt McCusker?

  That's actually kind of nice.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  So, but he was always trying to finish it, never, you know, kind of a job that never ends. And I said, well, what if, I asked him, I said, you know, I'm going to keep myself busy. What if I try to finish what you've been doing? You know, so it's a good idea. So, you know, I started digging into the house. I started, it was winter. So I started working inside. There was this old attic that had never been restored. I started working up there. So three weeks passed, he's still alive. Six weeks, he's still alive. He's responding to the drugs. He's still going to work.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  You know, a couple of months passed and he's like, I'm going to join you on this. So he comes home from work every day. We're working on it together. It's like this really restorative experience. A year and a half passed. He's still alive and we finished restoring the house.

• 15:12Matt McCusker?

  That's awesome.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  It's amazing. And I went outside with him at the, this one moment, you know, he's always, at the end of the day, it always poured drink. He always had like a CC and Coke. I don't know who drinks Canadian club and Coke for your listeners, you know, he has some old rye. Old school drink and sipping the drink, we're standing outside summertime and he goes, working on the house with you saved my life. It healed me, he said.

• 15:37Matt McCusker?

  That's really nice.

• 15:37Speaker 00

  And so that was a powerful experience. You know, I said, like, is that true? Could it have happened? You know, but in that moment I was like, okay, I think there's something bigger here. I should be an architect. I should, I should go study this. I understand why. That was the big moment for me.

• 15:51Matt McCusker?

  So you gave up farting around with the literature?

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Until now.

• 15:55Matt McCusker?

  Picked up some fucking tools like a man.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  I was grinding, grinding it out on the floor. Yeah.

• 16:04Matt McCusker?

  So what was, what would happen with the cancer?

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. So he, you know, he went through remission. He had hair on his head. He was feeling good. We finished the house. But stage four cancer.

• 16:17Matt McCusker?

  Sure.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Is a bitch. It came back into my first semester. I told the story. We're in the hospital together. So I went, then I went to architecture school.

• 16:24Matt McCusker?

  That's when you're.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  Then I'm back in the hospital, just with a little knowledge, you know, I went into, I went to Harvard Graduate School of Design and I get, you know, 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 star studded.

• 16:39Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  You know, attention and I'm go to this hospital. No one's talking about hospitals in the school. They're talking about museums. They're talking about these things.

• 16:47Matt McCusker?

  Sure.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  And I'm like, where are these guys in the hospital?

• 16:49Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  You know, because my father's now suffering again. All these people are still people, the nurses or they're working in this terrible conditions. And like, where is that brilliance that we see in 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 kind of whiplash experience to go from having this powerful experience with 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 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.

• 17:31Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  He did eventually die, but it was, not to kill the ending of the book, but he was very intentional about that, that choice. He now had had these thoughts and he said, I'm gonna choose where to go.

• 17:47Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  So he like picked, uh, he'd never, you know, this guy never left Poughkeepsie, New York, basically. He went abroad once to Barbados, this country where his friend, his friend had a house invited him. He got a passport once for one trip.

• 18:01Matt McCusker?

  I mean, kind of the best place to go, if I'm being honest.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Barbados is nice, you know, but Caribbean is nice, but he hadn't traveled at all, really. And he went down there and he had this great experience there. And he said, I don't want to die in that house. He didn't tell me all this. I found this out later. So he went to his friend's house in Barbados. He brought his four best friend, couple of friends. And he, uh, and he designed that end of life experience to be very intentional, you know? And I chose his last room, as I say in the book, that like end of life, being able to design that last experience.

• 18:33Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Uh, where he was looking at the horizon, where he was like in this beautiful environment, where he was calm and comforted. His friends were around him and he like went out.

• 18:44Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, it's just pretty.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Went out like a king.

• 18:46Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, pretty ideal, honestly.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  And so I think all those things in my first year of architecture school really, it just, it just shook me, you know, say like, okay, we're doing this. Something's wrong in the way we're studying and working.

• 18:58Matt McCusker?

  That makes sense. I was trying to figure out how, cause 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 a ton of money. We're gonna paint frescoes on a ceiling and give them bigger, you know, you know what I mean? Like it's, you rarely hear about it.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Paint this on the wall.

• 19:20Matt McCusker?

  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?

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think it asked this question in myself, which is why do we suffer through these anesthetic experiences? You know, why do we allow ourselves to be in conditions which are so poorly designed?

• 19:53Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  And have no say in what they are. I mean, we live our lives, 90% of our lives are inside of buildings.

• 19:57Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, people are gonna say, cause they don't have any money. That's why. So my house sucks.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, but in a way, in this book, I didn't want to say, okay, only great architecture, this famous houses we see in the, you know, 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 houses, everyone in listening, you know, you all, actually are designers of your home. You're changing things, you're buying furniture, you're changing the layout of things, you're putting in mementos of your family, talismanic things that are from your history, memory, and you're making them your own, you know? And, and there's a real beauty to that, actually, in the spaces that we're given, we adapt them and design them and accommodate them to what makes us feel at ease and comfortable.

• 20:41Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. No, that is pretty cool. So then you, so is that how you kind of got into, I guess, your focus in architecture where you're like, all right, let's work on making places? I remember the first time I was in a children's hospital, children's hospitals kind of do this.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Yes, that's a good point. Yeah.

• 20:56Matt McCusker?

  They were like, I walked in, I remember it was like, you know, if you have kids, you've ever been to a children's hospital, it's like, it's a, it's, it's a really gut wrenching experience. But then you're seeing like kids who are like really, really sick and you're like, all right, let me stop being a baby, whatever. But I remember like for real, almost crying, being like, this is so nice.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:14Matt McCusker?

  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, like a serious scary place.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, that's a really good point in, in a children's hospital, cause no one's going to a children's hospital for, for great things.

• 21:38Matt McCusker?

  No.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  It's like bleak, you know?

• 21:40Matt McCusker?

  Our second kid, when they're, when she was just a little baby had, um, they thought she had meningitis. She had such a super high fever that they, it wasn't, one of them's like bacterial, I think it goes like to the brain.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:52Matt McCusker?

  But they like, we just have to be sure. They had to 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, and actually collectively design a place for everybody that, you know, cause that is, it's just like a brutal, you know?

• 22:10Speaker 00

  It's a brutal experience.

• 22:11Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they're like, at the bare minimum, I've been in these children's hospitals and they're like, you know, they're putting like Snoopy characters on the wall or something. Or they have some play area or they're at least trying to think about what the kids' experience is gonna be, you know?

• 22:24Matt McCusker?

  They had Gatorade in the waiting room and I was like, guys, come here, it's letting me live. It's really good. I was like, this is so nice to have this.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Free Gatorade.

• 22:33Matt McCusker?

  It's called Gatorade. It was awesome.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's a good point. It's how do you get into the mindset of those who are experiencing that?

• 22:40Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  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.

• 22:49Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  It's a high performance machine and it's doing incredible, you know, life-changing work. So I don't want to discount that.

• 22:55Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  But it's also a place where people work every day.

• 22:59Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  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 in, you know? It's not, it's not Facebook's office, offices, you know, it's not like, uh, there's not like, you know, free lunch everywhere, you know? They're not thinking about that total experience of what it is to take care of the workers and labor there as well as the people that are in there all the time.

• 23:22Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, there's no artistry basically in the whole setup.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  So some of that can change, you know, but I, I think it's, it is about understanding the confluence and trying to say, you know, hospitals are the places where we face great joy and great fear.

• 23:34Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And we gotta take care of the people that are in that environment.

• 23:37Matt McCusker?

  So how have you, so going back to the Rwanda thing, you're down there, that was like your first project?

• 23:44Speaker 00

  I mean, it's a crazy story because, you know, I'm in this, I'm in this moment of like existential crisis where I'm like, what am I studying this thing for?

• 23:53Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  And I'm not gonna be one of these architects and my dad, my dad's dying. I'm going home every weekend, driving back from Boston to Poughkeepsie, trying to be with him.

• 24:02Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  And I don't know if you've ever been with someone at the end of their, I mean, who's just muscling through like every sports program he could watch, you know? Like he's watching golf, he's watching football, he's just like the whole day, he's just watching TV.

• 24:15Matt McCusker?

  I, I was, I was dispatched, one of my dad's buddies had pancreatic cancer and he was really just like wasting away. And so my dad would like send us over there, like, oh, cause we would make them like weed coconut oil, like edible stuff. And he'd be like, go over, hang out, man, go like hang out, spend some time with the guy. And he, I remember he would just sit in his underwear and just watch westerns. So I would just chill with him for like a couple of hours every now and again.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  Just sit there.

• 24:38Matt McCusker?

  Just watch westerns with him, but he was, he was a pretty funny guy.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I remember I would wait for the commercial break and I'd try to get something potent in there. Dad, stay alive. I love you. Yeah, love you, dad. Okay.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Pretty bleak.

• 24:53Matt McCusker?

  See the robots on like Fox Football Sunday? Yeah. All right, let's be quiet.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I had a different experience my first year. And then I met this doctor, you know, this Dr. Paul Farmer, and he was like, look, we're building hospitals in Haiti and in Rwanda. And we're working with all these communities and.

• 25:10Matt McCusker?

  Who funds that? That's my, that's the question. How do you get the money to like kind of do stuff like that?

• 25:15Speaker 00

  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, he had a lot of money from, there was a lot of money funding the programs from PEPFAR, actually, from.

• 25:28Matt McCusker?

  What's that?

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Which was the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

• 25:33Matt McCusker?

  Oh, good.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  There you go. Pretty good, huh?

• 25:35Matt McCusker?

  That's actually impressive.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Actually, George Bush put that together. It's one of, one of his crowning achievements, you know?

• 25:41Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Funded all this money into AIDS, uh, treatment, especially 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 infection 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 the, 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.

• 26:12Matt McCusker?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  And they were building hospitals and, uh, he raised a little money to build a new hospital. They asked him to build a new hospital. He's like, we gotta do new, we gotta do a new hospital. Would you ever come and do this with us?

• 26:24Matt McCusker?

  What year were you in?

• 26:25Speaker 00

  This is 2007. I went to Rwanda to work with him and.

• 26:28Matt McCusker?

  What year were you in in terms of studies? Like what was your?

• 26:31Speaker 00

  So I had one awesome year under my belt.

• 26:36Matt McCusker?

  That's pretty cool though. That's awesome. You got to.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Like no.

• 26:39Matt McCusker?

  Shoulder bag on and.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  No experience, yeah. No firm experience. And, um, but you know, they had done it before, you know, they had done stuff before. I was like, look, I have no experience. He goes, actually, we want that because, you know, if you've done it a hundred times, now you're bringing all that baggage. We actually have, we've done it before. We've done it in our way and we need you to come in and assist us. So it wasn't like, I'm coming in as the architect. It was, I'm gonna come and work with y'all.

• 27:05Matt McCusker?

  That's cool. Yeah.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  To like, see if we can improve basically, or just add to what you're already doing. And so I moved, you know, I, I left school after my second year and, uh, and moved to Rwanda to be with his team and try to work on this new hospital called the Bitaro Hospital.

• 27:21Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  And, uh, And that's where we tested all these ideas, where I learned about the history of Florence Sangioles, where I asked questions like, why are hospitals making people sicker instead of healthier? So I got really into airflow.

• 27:34Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, I saw that from your TED Talk. That was kind of cool.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  How can buildings breathe better?

• 27:38Matt McCusker?

  Basically, how to get the air. I didn't even thought about that because I just assumed like in my house, like during winter time, if I don't open a window, I'm like, this is just like old air.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 27:49Matt McCusker?

  It is. It's the same old air recycling.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  We learned this during COVID.

• 27:54Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, true.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  You know, it was about airflow.

• 27:57Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  We're not getting enough air management. You know, once we sealed all of our, this is the other lesson I learned. Once in the 1950s, where basically everything became air conditioned, and there's lots of good benefits to air conditioning, certainly here in Austin where it's 100 degrees, we need some AC.

• 28:12Matt McCusker?

  Oh, yeah, I love AC.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  You know, but it also means that the air inside often is not recycled enough to clean it.

• 28:20Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, I never even thought, so it's, so in the hospital, you would think like a central aired house would have like a duct that pulls air in from the outside just to give you some fresh air.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 28:31Matt McCusker?

  But it doesn't, right?

• 28:32Speaker 00

  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. So those folks in a modern hospital who are, have tuberculosis or COVID or a disease which is infecting the air, they would be put into, let's say, a negative pressure room. But in a place like Rwanda, they didn't have negative pressure rooms. So it's the hallways, patients were coming in very sick and infecting other patients. And it's the medical space that was contaminating those patients.

• 29:07Matt McCusker?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  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?

• 29:24Matt McCusker?

  And there was like a metric, I remember you were saying, like you can measure how many times the air is completely recycled in a building, or basically like fresh air coming in, old air out.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, they call it air changes per hour.

• 29:34Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 00

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

• 30:19Speaker 00

  that looks at this incredible view?

• 30:21Matt McCusker?

  I will say, I checked out your portfolio. I was trying to dig up at least one stinker. Really nice, dude. I was like, damn, it was, what was it? Not Massa, Amma.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Amma, yeah.

• 30:32Matt McCusker?

  Amma.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:33Matt McCusker?

  Stuff looked crazy, man.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Thanks, bro.

• 30:35Matt McCusker?

  Really, for real. I was, I was just, I was like, there's got to be one in here. You're like, what the hell? I was like, damn, this shit is awesome.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  We don't put the stinkers on the website.

• 30:45Matt McCusker?

  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?

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Pretty low tech, you know, but there's simple, simple metrics, size of windows, size of room. And then, this is key, high ceilings, what we call the upper room.

• 31:01Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Where the airflow is up. And then we, there's this great Kentucky company outside Louisville called Big Ass Fans. You know this group?

• 31:09Matt McCusker?

  It's awesome. Sounds enough. That sounds awesome.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  And we found them and they create these huge ceiling fans. So I wrote to Big Ass Fans, I said, would you guys ever think about donating, helping us put these big ceiling fans in these open wards? And they were like, on board.

• 31:25Matt McCusker?

  That's awesome.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  So we had this big ass fans.

• 31:28Matt McCusker?

  Shout out to Big Ass Fans.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Shout out to Big Ass Fans. And it's hilarious too, because you have all these T-shirts, all these dudes, construction workers wearing Big Ass Fan T-shirts, like no idea what this meant. It's hilarious.

• 31:39Matt McCusker?

  That's really funny.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  So we had this big airflow, kind of goes slow, but because they're big, they get a lot of airflow.

• 31:44Matt McCusker?

  We have one in the Austin Airport. That's just like a massive metal fan.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  I might be a big ass fan.

• 31:49Matt McCusker?

  That might be a big ass fan?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll have to look when I'm walking through there because it gets air up, a lot of air up, but it doesn't, you don't have the speed that creates a lot of,

• 31:59Speaker 00

  let's say, it cools you down, actually. So it gets the room up, it gets the air up into the upper room. And then up there, we had UV GI lights, ultraviolet germicidal radiation lights, and it cleans the air up there.

• 32:10Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  And then it moves out. So just those simple strategies actually created enough air changes per hour that we needed, without having to bring in big mechanical systems.

• 32:22Matt McCusker?

  That's awesome.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  And it kind of changed the way I think about buildings. I started to say, you know, buildings have to breathe.

• 32:29Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  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.

• 32:48Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  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 be in?

• 33:00Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, keep it cold and keep it cool and all that stuff.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that was interesting.

• 33:04Matt McCusker?

  That is pretty, I really do. I think it goes back to just like, you know, medieval peasant mentality where it's like, all right, we're going to build, if we build stuff for the general population, it's just, let's just build it, be happy you have it. It's not going to help you anyways, not going to be good for you. But just shut up and just deal with it. Because I think that's why, like hospitals really do suck so bad.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  There's some of that truth, yeah. It's like the bare minimum.

• 33:28Matt McCusker?

  Well, it's almost just unthinkable. It'll be like, let's, let's make this nice because everyone's like, shut up.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:32Matt McCusker?

  Be glad you have anything at all.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:34Matt McCusker?

  We could.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  And there's that inequality of space, that kind of indignity of environments that we live in, that we don't deserve.

• 33:42Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  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, you know, to the kind of medieval period, you have a great distinction, right? You have maybe terrible environments that you live in in homes, hovels or something like that.

• 34:01Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, they just like butcher animals and throw them right outside.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  There you go. You have terrible spaces that are not cleanly and maybe not inspiring. And then you go to the cathedral.

• 34:10Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  And the cathedral is like one of the most awe inspiring things you've ever seen.

• 34:14Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  And so they were using architecture and its greatest ability to like inspire awe, to remind us that like, you know, there's these greater powers that are above us that you should be inspired by and that give you a kind of purpose. So in a way, every day, the public is going in between the conditions of the ordinary and the conditions of the inspiring at some moments in their life. Like, I'm sure each of us has an architectural memory that they could tell a story about. It's one of the reasons I wrote this book. It's like, you know, what is that moment where you said, oh, that was a badass?

• 34:49Matt McCusker?

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• 35:28Speaker 00

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• 35:32Speaker 00

  Nice.

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• 35:33Matt McCusker?

  I love Quince. I'll be, I'll be honest, they sent me the stuff and I, their boxers, they use like cotton, like regular materials, not a lot of polyesters, natural fibers. I'm a big fan.

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• 36:09Matt McCusker?

  It's pretty crazy.

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• 36:35Speaker 00

  Experience I had or?

• 36:36Matt McCusker?

  You know what it was for me?

• 36:37Speaker 00

  What was it?

• 36:38Matt McCusker?

  You probably actually know this, the Egg in Albany.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, the Egg.

• 36:41Matt McCusker?

  I performed in the Egg. And I'll be honest, that was awesome.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, what was it about the Egg that?

• 36:46Matt McCusker?

  It's just fucking cool. I was in an egg. I don't know. It was just, I was in like a circular, completely circular building. Dude, Josh, please pull up a picture of the Egg in Albany. It was, also, are you familiar with Albany?

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:56Matt McCusker?

  Because then they have those like government buildings. It looks like evil.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:00Matt McCusker?

  They have those like, it's like brutalist, I guess. They have those like very, like, you like come over whatever highway that, whatever road that is, and you see this like egg shaped building looming in the distance, that thing, that big concrete satellite dish looking thing. But then there's those buildings to the left corner.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it almost looks like.

• 37:18Matt McCusker?

  They, at nighttime, they stick up and it looks like the evil empire out of Star Wars. And honestly too, I don't, I don't think anyone, well, people probably know, but they're like federal buildings.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:27Matt McCusker?

  That I don't, I couldn't really get an answer from people, like what's actually in them? They're like, I don't know.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like state office buildings.

• 37:33Matt McCusker?

  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.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Memorable, right?

• 37:45Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, that one stuck with me. I just remember pulling up, being like, why did they do this? It looks terrible. The Egg was cool. The buildings behind it were like scary, like literally scary looking.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they're so different than the, the structures around them, which are these historic 19th century buildings.

• 38:01Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, that period of time in the, in the, 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.

• 38:11Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, well, so do you, are you, uh, Josh, you pull up the Guild House in Philadelphia? Are you familiar with the Guild House?

• 38:17Speaker 00

  I'd show me the Guild House. Yeah, so I know the Guild House. Yes, of course, the ugliest architecture.

• 38:22Matt McCusker?

  It's the ugliest building. And this is what, I didn't realize that that was designed purposely. Someone made this place. I said, pass it every day. The Guild House, it's actually kind of irritated me. That place, it's on, I don't know, like 8th and Spring Garden somewhere. But that was designed by an architect, which I, I get the idea was like, let's not like clash with the existing neighborhood. Let's give it something that like we kind of fit in. But that was for basically low income senior citizens. And he was like, let's just like purposely make this thing look almost like, kind of like rundown. And then he had a big satellite dish on the top of it. They had to remove. Yeah, yeah. 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 the satellite dish off.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was.

• 39:06Matt McCusker?

  That was also in the sixties as well.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  As Robert Venturi.

• 39:09Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, what the hell?

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, uh, Philadelphia architects, real.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  I actually write about them a little bit in the book, you know, they, they really champion this, what became post-modernism. 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, as ugly architecture, you know, that you would read the ugly and it could be ordinary and okay.

• 39:38Matt McCusker?

  I mean, this guy's gotta knock it off.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean.

• 39:40Matt McCusker?

  Just give them nice rooms and some ceiling. Like this, these are low income guys in Philadelphia trying to, you know, finish their years out.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  It's a very kind of populist thing, but it's also, you know, it's sort of, there's so many Venturi Scott Brown structures that really miss the mark. And are kind of hideous architecture. And they, but they're kind of obsessed with the ordinary.

• 39:59Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Like they, they, they were obsessed with Las Vegas. They went to Las Vegas and created an entire theory around, uh, the buildings on the strip. There were just boxes with big signs.

• 40:11Matt McCusker?

  Okay.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  You know, and they were saying, you know, there's something about this, which we should think about as like a vernacular, American architecture where we care about the sign, but we don't care about what's behind the sign. I don't fully agree with that.

• 40:23Matt McCusker?

  I don't even know what they're talking about. I feel like the, is that the old strip in Vegas?

• 40:27Speaker 00

  The old strip, yeah.

• 40:28Matt McCusker?

  Isn't that like the flamingo? They have like pink, but was he, I don't even understand that. It looks insane. You go to Vegas, it does not look ordinary whatsoever.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  No, now they're now.

• 40:35Matt McCusker?

  Now it looks crazy.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  You know, emblematic of like little mini Venice or a little mini, uh,

• 40:40Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  You know, New York City or whatever.

• 40:41Matt McCusker?

  Was the old strip that plain? What year was this?

• 40:45Speaker 00

  This was the sixties.

• 40:46Matt McCusker?

  Oh, so it was just a big neon sign. Oh, okay.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:51Matt McCusker?

  So what the hell? Okay. So what? Yeah, and I. I still don't get what he's talking about.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  I think what they were saying is like.

• 40:57Matt McCusker?

  Signs are cool.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  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.

• 41:06Matt McCusker?

  Okay.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  And, um,

• 41:07Matt McCusker?

  That's why I put the big.

• 41:08Speaker 00

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

• 41:22Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  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.

• 41:33Matt McCusker?

  I mean, here's the thing, and I, again, I don't, I've never studied architecture, but if I had to guess, if I was going, all right, what would I, if I'm like a 75 year old dude who's lived in Philly my whole life, and now I'm in a low income housing. Just give the guy like a slightly higher ceiling. Fuck, this is high ceilings. This is nice.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 41:49Matt McCusker?

  Hitting them with the high concepts, cra- and especially being like, it's shitty on purpose.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Shitty on purpose.

• 41:54Matt McCusker?

  Come on, man. I, when I read that, I was like, what the fuck?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  It's very patronizing.

• 41:58Matt McCusker?

  It is. It's very shitty. It's very, it's very mean to be like, these guys, give them something shitty. Open a big satellite dish on the top.

• 42:05Speaker 00

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

• 42:31Matt McCusker?

  Casinos are freaked out because it's like they're purposely designed to be disorienting.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Completely.

• 42:35Matt McCusker?

  Kind of just leave you just like, don't leave me. You literally can't figure out how to get out of there.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, the labyrinth theme.

• 42:40Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, no clocks.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Pumping in air so you stay awake. Yeah.

• 42:44Matt McCusker?

  Oh, do they do that?

• 42:45Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 42:46Matt McCusker?

  Oh, God. It's terrible. Terrible. Well, okay, so. Okay, so in architect school, this is, this is one of my prepared questions. At what point in architect school do they teach you how to effectively blame everything on the contractors?

• 43:02Speaker 00

  It's the first, is lesson number one.

• 43:04Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:07Matt McCusker?

  It is nice. It's a nice thing to be able to do.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Well, trust me, when you work with the contractors, they're blaming everything on the architect.

• 43:12Matt McCusker?

  I know, I know. It's, it's literally vice versa.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  It's like this, it is actually constructed as this completely adverse relationship from the beginning.

• 43:20Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  You have the big ideas and they're getting everything done.

• 43:23Matt McCusker?

  Well, they're looking at your, they're looking at the plans going, this is bullshit. We made some changes. Cause this, you can't even do this. They don't know what it's like. And if I've, I've seen it a million times.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what was so interesting about working in, you know, working in Rwanda, because they didn't have, they didn't, we didn't have an architect per se. I was, I was working with the team, but they had a builder, this guy Bruce Nizet. 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.

• 43:52Matt McCusker?

  Damn.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Had metal shop and wood shop and, and I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like you're actually working interrelated with the builder. We're gonna build it together. We're gonna design it together. We're gonna test it together.

• 44:02Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  And so there was that, that relationship, that adverse relationship never, I didn't learn through that.

• 44:07Matt McCusker?

  Right.

• 44:07Speaker 00

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

• 44:16Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  You know, and that was a really unique experience, you know?

• 44:19Matt McCusker?

  That is kind of cool.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  But there is this moment where you say, okay, architects who have this position on high. And we create the great ideas and then everyone else has to

• 44:28Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  surrender to that. And I think that kind of, again, patronizing position is completely, it recreates the idea that only some get access to architecture and architects. And we all have to live and suffer through these terrible spaces in our lives, instead of trying to figure out how to, how to solve and fix the things.

• 44:44Matt McCusker?

  I was, I was reading, uh, I've been reading this guy's, trying to read his book. It's, it's really hard to read, but he, uh, it's called After Virtue. It's a, like a real dense philosophical book by Alastair McIntyre. And he was talking about his, part of his thing was like, we need to go back to like engaging in practices for the sake of the practice, rather than the external reward. Which is like a nice thing to think about. And, uh, but then he was like talking about like, okay, he had to define what a practice was. So he was, he's like, architecture is a practice. And like, what about bricklaying? He's like, not a practice. He's like, that's just part of, that's just 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.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I don't agree with that at all.

• 45:27Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, so he caught a lot of flack for it, honestly. Pretty.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  I think.

• 45:30Matt McCusker?

  Kind of a snobby take.

• 45:31Speaker 00

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

• 45:58Matt McCusker?

  Very nice.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  In the, you know, in the ground. And it's like, oh, this is about, they made every single edge of every single rock. It was handcrafted.

• 46:06Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  And I'm like, you can see the thousands of hours and the lot, 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.

• 46:19Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Like my great, great grandfather was a stonemason from Ireland, came up to the Hudson Valley. That's why we were there. He came to build these estates, um, that were made out of these like river stones, you know, had this Irish stone, you know, masonry.

• 46:34Matt McCusker?

  Usually breathable stone too.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  There you go, breathable stone.

• 46:36Matt McCusker?

  Very breathable stones. Yeah, I, I, that's the thing. It's, it is a funny thing to say, because I think stonemasons, there is almost like a very, it's, it is kind of an art. You have to like take the stone, know how to actually cut them and where to place them and how to cut, you know, put the, they, they're, they're not like all the same color. It's not like a, it's me in the store.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  I mean, you see this in like, especially in Japan, where there's such a reverence for the tradition of craft, you know, wood, woodworking and, and masonry and everything. And, and we've lost a lot of that.

• 47:02Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  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.

• 47:21Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Lots of people have worked on this to keep it alive. And, um, there's a sort of reverence, uh, to being part of that long relay race of people creating spaces that protect us.

• 47:32Matt McCusker?

  That is nice, man. Especially I used to, I used to paint houses and I, just changing the color of a room would make me so happy. When I would finally finish the last coat and look at it and be like, uh, it's just, it was such a joy. I'd be like, this is such a nice, it was just a nice feeling.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, having that kind of finished thing, you can imagine it taking on new life.

• 47:50Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. Now, let me ask you this. That being said, as an architect, do you ever find yourself when meeting a contractor for the first time, genuinely wondering like, what hellhole did this illiterate freak crawl out of?

• 48:04Matt McCusker?

  You don't have to answer that. This is a funny question. So.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I, I actually have, I mean, I will say, I have a lot of, I have a lot of reverence for people who make things, you know? Cause it's, it's not.

• 48:15Matt McCusker?

  No, they're, they are.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  It's not easy.

• 48:17Matt McCusker?

  It's, it's one of, I would, I would say, uh, cause a lot of my family did construction growing up and it's like, it's one of, I sort of got it's one of the hardest, it's, I think it's one of the most fun jobs is you're in different places all the time. Like, I really love that part of it, but then it's like, it's hard work. It, it like kind of destroys your body over time, depending on what you're doing. And then you have to go collect, you have to go chase your money down. So like you're actually working and then there's a whole other part of the job where you have to go like, like, hey, pay me for that thing I did. People are like, eh.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're at risk.

• 48:48Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I, you know, I think what's fascinating about being a builder or contractor is you can kind of see the whole system. You take on all this risk. You're trying to budget a future thing that may go over budget, you know? Uh, you're assembling all sorts of teams of labor.

• 49:03Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  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 proofing. I hope it'll take this long. I hope the weather will.

• 49:13Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  You know, allow me to do it.

• 49:15Matt McCusker?

  You're also managing like, like honestly, if you like, when I would do construction, a huge, I would not all, but a, a sizable portion of the workforce would be like ex-convicts.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:28Matt McCusker?

  Not yet convict. You know, you're dealing with, you're dealing with a fucking.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Soon to be.

• 49:32Matt McCusker?

  You're, you're organizing a pretty rough version, you know, rough squad usually. And it's like, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's definitely a different beast altogether.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  It's good work, hard work.

• 49:41Matt McCusker?

  It is.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. I always worked, I worked mostly in food service, but every.

• 49:44Matt McCusker?

  Same thing. It's the same exact thing.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Every weekend grinding out like the amount of veg, amount of peppers I cut and onions I cut, you know, and prepping for this, uh, at this place I worked all through high school, you know, it's like, I, I get it. Like, you know, but you, at the end of the day, you know, you crack a beer, you look at what you did, you see the next day and you're really proud of it. And that kind of is a really powerful thing. And when the architect is, I think, put, move, removed from that process and on a perch.

• 50:11Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  You know, build this vision. I think it's a complete disconnect into like the world around us and why it matters. It's the people that make it that actually matter.

• 50:19Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. No, I, 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?

• 50:27Speaker 00

  Oh, you know?

• 50:28Matt McCusker?

  It was a while ago.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  It was a while ago. We got, we got, you know?

• 50:31Matt McCusker?

  It did well.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  It did well.

• 50:32Matt McCusker?

  But that, you also gave Ted, a TED Talk in the golden age of TED Talks.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  That was a good time.

• 50:37Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I, I used to remember like if someone gave a TED Talk, like, you know, what was that? Like 13 years ago? Maybe you did or 12?

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Did it? Yeah. Like in 15. So like.

• 50:46Matt McCusker?

  That was.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  11 years ago.

• 50:47Matt McCusker?

  That was the golden age. That was, was that before TEDx? Cause they watered down the sauce a little bit.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  I think it was like simultaneous, but it wasn't, uh, TEDx was starting to happen then.

• 50:57Matt McCusker?

  TEDx was starting.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Don't quote me totally, but it was like, it was, there was some TEDx happening like around then, but there was, you still did a 13 minute talk where I think they've now have like a six minute talk or something.

• 51:08Matt McCusker?

  Okay. What, what was it? What was it like giving a TED Talk? I always wanted, I don't know anyone who's given one. So I'm always like curious what that experience is like.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I kept, I always described it as like, uh, high school theater, you know? It was like when I did plays in high school, you know? And you had to like remember all the words and, uh, I was like, it was closest thing to theater or.

• 51:31Matt McCusker?

  So you had a little training. So you were able to do.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, I put the presentation together. I'm working with this coach, uh, Chi Perlman. She's amazing. And, uh, working through the story and she would always, you know, architecture is, we always talk about buildings, yada, yada, yada. Like we just talked about the Guildhall. And like you get a little highfalutin', but she was always bringing back down a narrative. It was really meaningful for me to say, okay, people are going to respond to the story of, actually what, your dad got sick and this building changed. I'm like, other people, that's, that's what people care about.

• 52:02Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  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 in the basement of the hotel and like, this crazy moment, like in front of me is, cause Ted attracted all these people, right? So, uh, in front of me is Al Gore on the treadmill, running, right? And next to me is Chelsea Clinton. The treadmill running. You know, I don't know if they really want to see each other, but there was a big mirror where you could 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.

• 52:48Matt McCusker?

  And what did they, what did, what did Gore and Clinton, did they even look at you or they just?

• 52:52Speaker 00

  Nope. And they didn't look at each other either. Cause I think it was, uh, you know, they had a little history, a little history there. But that's the kind of, that's that weird ecosystem.

• 53:00Matt McCusker?

  Who was putting on harder work? Who was putting in harder work on the treadmill?

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Good question. I don't, you know, I don't know.

• 53:04Matt McCusker?

  Clinton or Gore?

• 53:04Speaker 00

  I think it was me. I was doing the hardest work.

• 53:06Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, you're fucking crushing. I would have definitely pace matched Clinton and Gore. If I was between them.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  You're like seven, eight.

• 53:13Matt McCusker?

  Incline. Yeah. Incline. Oh yeah. For sure. You know me. Eight, 30 seconds back down to four.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I mean, that was hard. It was interesting, but it was, uh, I would say, you know, after it was finished, I got a lot of really interesting, I mean, great feedback and people, people wrote to me, these cold emails that were like, I want to tell you the story of my house that I worked on with my dad, or I want to tell you the story of the school I went to that was like really weird and why was it that way? Or, and I started getting all these like everyday reflections on the architecture and the buildings that mattered to people. And I think it was from that TED Talk experience and the response that it got for being about stories.

• 53:52Matt McCusker?

  Right.

• 53:52Speaker 00

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

• 54:14Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  Why does a workplace matter? Like, how do we build a language that we understand and evaluate the spaces that we're foisted into? So that we can start reflecting back and you send me those, I want to hear those stories. I want to hear from your readers and your listeners like, hey man, I had this crazy experience in this building. It changed my life, or I had this terrible experience. It changed my life. And that's where as an architect, like you gain the most knowledge, actually.

• 54:37Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. Yeah. I, I was, I was just talking to my friend before I came here about it, 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.

• 54:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:47Matt McCusker?

  But the cubicles is like a pretty dastardly design.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  I write about the cubicle in the book.

• 54:51Matt McCusker?

  Do you really?

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's a book, uh, there's a chapter on the workplace on our, on, I start with the factory.

• 54:56Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  But then there was this guy at, uh, at this furniture company named Herman Miller, which is a famous furniture company in Michigan. His guy named Probst, and he designed the modern office cubicle.

• 55:06Matt McCusker?

  Did he really?

• 55:07Speaker 00

  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, you know, he said, look, my big idea of this, of the cubicle has been, has been destroyed.

• 55:25Matt McCusker?

  What was his original idea?

• 55:26Speaker 00

  Well, it was that you could create like a good enough workplace that could adapt and change and evolve with the, the needs of the company and.

• 55:35Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  And there's some, there's some beauty into that. There's a, there's a beauty into creating this adaptable system that's better than the average.

• 55:43Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  But what happened is of course it created this kind of the office space scenario, you know, the sort of banal, the horrible, the sitting in a basement, the living in a cubicle kind of environment. And, and so you have both maybe the aspiration of it and also the use of it.

• 55:59Matt McCusker?

  Well, that, that was, uh, 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.

• 56:17Matt McCusker?

  That is funny when, yeah. I mean, it's a cool idea and concept, but it's like, yeah, it's not, not the case.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's use and it's when it was deployed, you know, create a lot of terrible conditions that people then fought against, you know?

• 56:28Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  But then the open work plan is also not great either. People get into their headphones and do their Zoom calls and.

• 56:33Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  And you're like.

• 56:34Matt McCusker?

  You almost want the walls. And I thought about that too. It's like, I might want to retreat to the walls of the cubicle. If you put me at a table with like four people and.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's like an imperfect, you're trying to figure out how to work well together.

• 56:44Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  And also have heads down work and that we haven't fully figured out. I mean, the full Zoom office, office work is not a great environment. We have no socialization.

• 56:53Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  We have no way to be together in person.

• 56:56Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. What? It's, I've talked to people who, uh, do kind of like more office stuff. And there's been a lot of people after COVID, they're like, I can't wait to go back to the office. Like I actually want to go back. It is, sounds cool to be like, nice. I can chill in my house in sweatpants, but then you do that every day. And like, I think there is like the commute is, there's a soul crushing aspect to 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.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:19Matt McCusker?

  Just me again.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Still here.

• 57:21Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. It's just me.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. Still here. I'm gonna do, we, my wife and I call them freedom rides. We're like, I'm gonna go to the, I'm gonna go to the grocery store and do a freedom ride.

• 57:29Matt McCusker?

  Yeah. Just drive.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Go buy some strawberries.

• 57:33Matt McCusker?

  With LinkedIn, or not LinkedIn, with, um, with TED, the TED Talk, when you did that, did you take like beta blockers or did you just kind of raw dog it?

• 57:44Speaker 00

  I just, I just did it. Yeah.

• 57:45Matt McCusker?

  Raw dogged it. Yeah. I get a lot, a lot of people are talking about beta blockers. Like you gotta take them. I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  No, I've never, no, I've never taken that, but I'm interested. Tell me why. Tell me.

• 57:54Matt McCusker?

  They say like, it's like the public speaking, kind of like, it's like the cure all.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  Oh, is that right?

• 57:58Matt McCusker?

  They say it doesn't allow your heart rate to rise basically. So like you, you like, they say you like can't actually experience the physical symptoms of anxiety. Again, I've never tried it.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  I should have taken a bunch today.

• 58:10Matt McCusker?

  It's true. Sure. Yeah. Three coffees might not be.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  Three coffees. Yeah. No, I didn't do anything like that, but I did, you know, I did practice a lot, like theater, you know? So I felt ready, but.

• 58:22Matt McCusker?

  You're ready to go.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  I'll tell you, man, there was this, uh, there was one dude who they called, you get to step on the red circle. This one guy went out there, had a, had a talk to give and he just went blank. He just went blank. And everyone in the crowd was just like, is this an act? And then he sat down, everyone stood up and clapped and they stood up. He tried to do it again, blank. It was such a bomb.

• 58:44Matt McCusker?

  Fuck.

• 58:44Speaker 00

  Yes. It was hard to watch.

• 58:46Matt McCusker?

  That is tough.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:47Matt McCusker?

  I do like the guys who go like, they banned my TED Talk. Here's my band. I, I kind of like the renegade TED Talkers. Like they banned my shit. The, so when you gave the TED Talk, did you get like flooded with like, I guess like DMs and stuff? Like what I'm trying to ask is like, what did the babe, did the babes respond to the TED Talk?

• 59:06Speaker 00

  I mean, I got a lot of good, I mean, it was mostly like people my mom's age, you know, who were like.

• 59:13Matt McCusker?

  Okay. Here we go.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  You know, I've got this, you know, my son needs a job or like, you know, I've got this house, you know, like we're working on my garage, you know, that kind of thing.

• 59:23Matt McCusker?

  Nothing intriguing.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:25Matt McCusker?

  So do you, jumping from Ted Talks, do you like LinkedIn? I kind of said it too early, but do you like LinkedIn? Like, what are your thoughts on LinkedIn?

• 59:35Speaker 00

  You know, I, I don't, I hadn't used a lot of social media, to be honest with you.

• 59:39Matt McCusker?

  Right, right, right.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Years, but when I 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.

• 59:52Matt McCusker?

  Get off of it, yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Like not be too consumed by, I was watching, you know, like all of us, like tracking things and seeing what people respond and the like button and.

• 1:00:01Matt McCusker?

  Well, LinkedIn's weird because you get like, you get endorsements. So you, you say like, these are my skills. And then you're, you know, your friends or whoever, you're like, yeah, he's actually great at strategic planning.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  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 are like, I have this crazy idea. I want to build this weird thing. Like, how do I do that? You know?

• 1:00:21Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  And so instead of applying for jobs or answering RFPs, I'm talking to folks to be like, how do I do this crazy, impossible project? And try to work with them and figure that out, you know?

• 1:00:34Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, I had a, my LinkedIn profile during, I guess I had completely given up on like a standard career path. So I had a shirtless pic on LinkedIn.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 1:00:44Matt McCusker?

  It's kind of nice, yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  A lot of good responses.

• 1:00:45Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, I had, I had written my own skill sets in and they were like kind of graphic sexual hacks that I was trying to get people to endorse. I think they might control for that now. Yeah, my LinkedIn was crazy. Josh.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  Should be my next, should I do that?

• 1:00:58Matt McCusker?

  Bro, go shirtless. You'd be, that's the power, that's for real. Shirtless LinkedIn's a power move. 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 on it. He was talking about something specifically he did with his house. I kind of want to see your thoughts on this as an architect.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  You bet.

• 1:01:15Matt McCusker?

  Let me see here.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  Is he shirtless?

• 1:01:17Matt McCusker?

  Also, while Josh gets that, I noticed on one of the, one of the, I guess organizations you're connected to, there's a thing called the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  It's a good name. It really rolls off the tongue.

• 1:01:30Matt McCusker?

  What is that? Can you, that sounds completely unhinged. What is the, what is the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund?

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this was a.

• 1:01:40Matt McCusker?

  Is that a real thing?

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  It's basically, yeah. I worked on this.

• 1:01:45Matt McCusker?

  You worked on the Ellen DeGeneres Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund?

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  Gorilla Fund, Center of Care and Trouble. Yeah, no, it's the, it's this, it's a center for the study and care of gorilla scientists in northern Rwanda.

• 1:01:59Matt McCusker?

  Okay.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  Basically like where the remaining mountain gorillas live are in this incredible part of the country. And people go there from all over the world to see the mountain gorillas. And you trek up and you, you know, oh, here we go. And if you go with these gorillas, you track them. It's an incredible experience. And so Diane Fossey, which I don't know if you've ever saw Gorillas in the Mist when you were growing up.

• 1:02:22Matt McCusker?

  Oh, really?

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Did you ever see that movie?

• 1:02:24Matt McCusker?

  I didn't see it, but I know of it.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  So that's a movie about Diane Fossey. Diane Fossey in the sixties moved to Rwanda, what was, you know, then was also Rwanda, sorry, was still Rwanda.

• 1:02:33Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  And studied the gorillas and brought a lot of attention to them. And so her, and she was killed up there by poachers.

• 1:02:40Matt McCusker?

  Damn.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  And so this foundation that was set up in her honor continued for 50 years. And then they reached out to, to my team to see if we could help build a new campus for them.

• 1:02:52Matt McCusker?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  And I started working on it with them. And, and the first donor came in.

• 1:02:57Matt McCusker?

  Ellen DeGeneres.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  Ellen DeGeneres, who cares about animals and was like, I'll give the, you know, lead gift. Actually, her, her wife, Portia, gave the lead gift in her honor before Ellen knew. So it was sort of this thing, but you know, the naming rights came with the project.

• 1:03:11Matt McCusker?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  So, but it's a.

• 1:03:13Matt McCusker?

  What was this, was this prior to her getting kind of skewered by the media for being nasty to her staff?

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  It was a.

• 1:03:19Matt McCusker?

  That was, that was one of the weaker cancellations I saw. She was like, she's mean.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  Mean, yeah.

• 1:03:24Matt McCusker?

  I've been on Ellen's.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  On her staff.

• 1:03:25Matt McCusker?

  I've been on Ellen's side the whole time.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean.

• 1:03:27Matt McCusker?

  She runs a tight ship.

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, yeah. And she had a lot of success.

• 1:03:30Matt McCusker?

  Fucking she donated to the Gorilla Fund, dude. People were on her ass.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  It was right at that same time.

• 1:03:34Matt McCusker?

  Was it really?

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was sort of her exit plan. You know, she was sort of leaving the show.

• 1:03:38Matt McCusker?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  She was putting some into philanthropy. She was, you know, funding animal philanthropy. And.

• 1:03:44Matt McCusker?

  Also, power move. I have a staff of crybabies. I'm like, I want to give $40 million to gorillas, dude. Shut up. I don't even care about you guys. Doing the gorilla fund.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  Definitely an attempted cancellation. Yeah, but she survived it, I think. And.

• 1:03:58Matt McCusker?

  I think she's fine.

• 1:03:59Speaker 00

  You know, she's doing all right.

• 1:04:00Matt McCusker?

  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. So, okay, dude, you're.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  Getting into meanness and like boss, boss behavior.

• 1:04:10Matt McCusker?

  Yeah, we're all, none of us stand a chance here.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Like, you've never been mean before.

• 1:04:13Matt McCusker?

  Fossey pants. Can you, this is, this is the architectural question I had. I actually had me thinking.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  Starts to expand.

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  It does.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  And at one point, you have a trap house. You go to the whole house and put 15 stoves in the house.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Absolutely. My vision was huge.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  I would love to see pictures of this, by the way.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. My, my vision was huge.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

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

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  It was an operation. It was a whole operation.

• 1:04:50Matt McCusker?

  Definitely an operation. Now, I know you're not an engineer, but.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Sounds like a fire hazard.

• 1:04:56Matt McCusker?

  Is that even feasible? Is that even possible to have? Because I'm trying to figure out if he's capping. Is that possible to have, what'd he say, six stoves?

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  15 stoves.

• 1:05:07Matt McCusker?

  15 stoves, excuse me. Is it possible to even do that? In terms of like pulling, in a, I would guess, he was in St. Pete's, Florida, in, let's say, either a roh home or standalone house, standalone house.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  Is that what he was in?

• 1:05:21Matt McCusker?

  I think so. I mean, if, if he was, he was saying he was in an impoverished neighborhood in St. Pete's, Florida. I don't think you could even put 16 stoves. I'm not trying to knock the man's trap, but it's like, is that possible?

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  I mean, I guess.

• 1:05:34Matt McCusker?

  If you had to design a trap, how would you, how would you go about putting the 16 stoves with 11 cookers?

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  I'd do eight, first of all, I'd do 18 stoves.

• 1:05:46Matt McCusker?

  So you think it's feasible?

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  I mean, I guess.

• 1:05:48Matt McCusker?

  In a standard house?

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  You know, if you have a vision, if you have a big, huge vision, that's what I always say, you know, you can find a way.

• 1:05:54Matt McCusker?

  Because people are trying to say he's capping. So I was like, I don't know, it sounds kind of like cap, but I figured I'd ask an expert.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  I'm glad you asked me. Yeah.

• 1:06:02Matt McCusker?

  Do you think he could act genuinely, do you think he could have put 16 stoves?

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  Worried about the fire hazard. But, you know, he's got, does he have 16 hoods? You know, what's the deal? Does he have?

• 1:06:11Matt McCusker?

  Doubtful.

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  What's his airflow strategy in there?

• 1:06:13Matt McCusker?

  Should be good. They're cooking crack. I don't know if you put the context, but they're cooking crack. So the airflow should be good.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  It should be very nice.

• 1:06:21Matt McCusker?

  I didn't know. You know, I always love to see a turned up white boy, but I didn't know. I was like, this guy might be full of shit.

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you for letting me know.

• 1:06:28Matt McCusker?

  Well, hey, so the book's great. Before you go, we always have our premium subscribers. They write in a question. Would you mind reading it? And then we can discuss the question?

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Sure, totally.

• 1:06:37Matt McCusker?

  It's just random.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  This is my own trap? Can you read the, okay.

• 1:06:40Matt McCusker?

  We're talking about the trap. It's not a trap. It's just, they sent us questions and producers select, you grab literally at random.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  This is the premium subscriber question. I'm a 47 year old, married, cis het male. My wife is 52. And for the better half of her life was a strict lesbian. Gold star. Good question. We met, we met her at the time she was going through menopause. We were working together at Price Warehouse, Cooper, one of the big four accounting firms. We started on the same team as professional equals. Mind you, we've been working together for five years and she first struck me as being incredibly mask, which is fine for me. I have great respect for mask ladies, especially how they grind in their workplace, but can still have a good time. That's a nice reflection.

• 1:07:29Matt McCusker?

  It is.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Matt McCusker?

  This guy, yeah, I think that was actually Joe from Minneapolis. I forgot to put that in there.

• 1:07:34Speaker 00

  I've seen it time and time again, but a few years into our professional acquaintance, she underwent something of a transformation from mask to mature femme. Something I learned later was due to a shift in her hormonal profile due to menopause, which I of course mentioned earlier. It was around this time that I started developing feelings for her, desiring to be more than just professional teammates. And so I asked her to coffee. One thing led to another and now we're married. My second, her third, but obviously first with a man. I'm the only man she's ever been with and she's always filled the role of the more masculine leaning partner out of all her lesbian relationships. This is something we've, this is, this is good. I get the architectural substance in this.

• 1:08:14Matt McCusker?

  Well, it's random. It's random. They don't know who the guest is going to be.

• 1:08:17Speaker 00

  Of course. You want me to finish this?

• 1:08:20Matt McCusker?

  Please, yeah.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Okay, thank. This is, this is something we've dealt with in couples counseling for almost a year, getting something of a resolution. Basically, I had to step up and be more assertive, which I learned how to do after taking several online courses. I'm excited about the like internet search that's going to happen after this. Yes. Long story short, things are going really well until just the other night, we were arguing about which movie to watch. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, my wife struck me a stiff backhand across 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 as she apologized profusely, telling me how domestic violence is statistically higher in the lesbian scene, highest actually out of all other pairing types. Interesting. Wonder where the data is from. I guess my

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  question is, do I forgive her and move on? Or is this kind of an assault of unforgivable?

• 1:09:09Matt McCusker?

  That's a question.

• 1:09:10Speaker 00

  That's a good question. What do you think of that?

• 1:09:16Matt McCusker?

  I think it's unforgivable, man. I mean, I would, I would meet her where she is, honestly, but I don't know.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  I'm curious what kind of space they were in. Were they on the couch? Like, was the home toxic? Was it a toxic home?

• 1:09:27Matt McCusker?

  I don't know. I mean, I don't know. They're in, they're in counseling. So.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Matt McCusker?

  Seems like they had help, but.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  It's a good question. I'll have to think about it.

• 1:09:35Matt McCusker?

  I mean, they're, they're, you know, they're up there in terms of professionals. They're 50, 50, 40 something.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  Well, it's his third, her fourth. Is that what it was? Her fourth?

• 1:09:44Matt McCusker?

  The marriage? I don't know.

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  They've been there before.

• 1:09:46Matt McCusker?

  Second and third?

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Second and third, yeah.

• 1:09:47Matt McCusker?

  So that, I actually have heard that it is statistically higher in the lesbian community. Domestic violence is the highest in terms in lesbian community.

• 1:09:55Speaker 00

  Is that right?

• 1:09:55Matt McCusker?

  That's what I've heard.

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  That I don't know.

• 1:09:57Matt McCusker?

  I don't know either, but I've heard that. We can verify that.

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  Thanks for letting me read that. I'm back to the theater of the Ted Talks, given a script.

• 1:10:10Matt McCusker?

  So no, no advice for him?

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I think, you know, he should follow his heart as he has.

• 1:10:15Matt McCusker?

  I say forgive, honestly.

• 1:10:16Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:10:17Matt McCusker?

  I say forgive.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  We all get into difficult positions.

• 1:10:19Matt McCusker?

  True. I say forgive.

• 1:10:20Speaker 05

  It's actually bisexual women is what AI says.

• 1:10:23Matt McCusker?

  Have the highest.

• 1:10:24Speaker 00

  AI knows.

• 1:10:26Matt McCusker?

  Okay.

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Matt McCusker?

  Well, sorry to end on a sour note.

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  No, I mean.

• 1:10:30Matt McCusker?

  I just have to do, they're the premium subscribers. They get to submit questions.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure. I'm happy to, I'm happy to give them advice, you know? Hopefully they're listening. Maybe, you know, maybe what they should do, they should think about the kind of setting of their house, you know?

• 1:10:43Matt McCusker?

  True.

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  Maybe they need a new couch or something. Maybe they need 15 stoves or something like that.

• 1:10:48Matt McCusker?

  Set up the trap house. Well, hey, thank you so much. That was a blast.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  Hey, thank you. Thank you.

• 1:10:55Matt McCusker?

  And one more time, the book, Our World in 10 Buildings.

• 1:10:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, the book's Our World in 10 Buildings.

• 1:10:59Matt McCusker?

  Beautiful.

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

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

• 1:11:14Matt McCusker?

  Thank you. Appreciate you. Watch new episodes of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Spotify. Do it.

• 1:11:22Speaker 06

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