For centuries the Holy Grail has been a metaphor for ultimate achievement. The quest for the Holy Grail is likewise considered a metaphor for an unobtainable goal.
However, the Holy Grail might be more than a metaphor. It might really exist and you can go see it yourself.
Learn more about the Holy Grail, what it is, and what it isn’t, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Let’s say you have a brand new country. You want to take it out of a spin and make some new laws. What is the first thing you do? Maybe ratify a treaty? Perhaps something about the economy.
Well, if you were the United States back in 1789, you didn’t do anything nearly that exciting.
Learn more about the very first law in the United States on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Of all the world’s co-principalities, there is one which stands out due to its sheer size. This enormous co-principality dominates all other co-principalities in every measure: land area, population, and GDP.
Every other co-principality could fit inside this co-principality with room to space.
Learn more about the nation of Andorra, the world’s largest co-principality, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
At some point in the future, a phone call will be placed by the private secretary of the Queen to the British Prime Minister. In this call, he will utter the phrase “London Bridge is down”, which will set off a preplanned series of events following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
As it has been over 65 years that the monarchy has changed hands in the United Kingdom, it will be something that most people in the commonwealth have never experienced.
The oil industry is in the midst of one of the worst busts on record. The price of oil is a third less than it was in January, and for every dollar the price drops, Texas stands to lose $85 million a year in economic impact. We travel to Midland and Odessa to talk to people who work in and around the oil fields about how they are weathering the collapse in the market.
For about a century, architects and developers have dreamed of the promise of factory-based construction — after all, if Henry Ford revolutionized the auto industry with assembly lines, why shouldn’t we be able to make buildings in factories, too? But, in North America at least, almost every attempt to revolutionize this industry has failed. But now, thanks to innovations in design, materials, and machinery — and a green wave taking over the industry — factory-based construction could be an idea whose time has finally come.
In this episode:
[0:01 - 3:11] We take a fun trip back in time to Expo 67 and explore why the influential prefabricated concrete building Habitat 67 was just too ahead of its time.
[3:35 - 8:26] Northeastern University architecture professor Ivan Rupnik relays the history of factory-based construction, including Operation Breakthrough, the U.S.’s initiative to out-build the Soviet Union during the Cold War
[8:46 - 16:28] Sidewalk Labs Director of Product Design for Buildings Karim Khalifa and Associate Director of Building Innovations Lily Huang describe how Sidewalk Labs is developing an architectural kit of parts to allow architects to build with quality, speed, and sustainability
[16:43 - 22:30] Architect and author Susan Jones shares her experiences building her own prefabricated mass timber house and working on the committee to change international building code for mass timber
To see images and videos of topics discussed in this episode, read the link-rich transcript on our Sidewalk Talk Medium page.
City of the Future is hosted by Eric Jaffe and Vanessa Quirk, and produced by Benjamen Walker and Andrew Callaway. Mix is by Zach Mcnees. Art is by Tim Kau. Our music is composed by Adaam James Levin-Areddy of Lost Amsterdam. Special thanks to Ivan Rupnik, Karim Khalifa, Lily Huang, and Susan Jones.
I’m sure everyone has heard of such famous places as the Great Pyramids, the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal.
Besides all being famous landmarks, they have something else in common. They are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
What is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and how does a site become one?
Learn more about the UNESCO World Heritage Site program on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Rob explores the revolutionary Geto Boys single ‘Mind Playing Tricks On Me’ by highlighting how it expresses raw vulnerability through its lyrics and its legacy in hip-hop to the present day.
This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music.
In October 1984, nine members of the Pintupi Tribe in Western Australia met some long lost relatives they hadn’t seen in years.
The significance of this event is that those nine people, two women with four boys and three girls, were the last aboriginal people in Australia to have contact with the outside world.
Up until 1984, they had lived their lives the same as their ancestors had for tens of thousands of years.
At the start of the Cold War, Levi’s jeans represented everything communist governments were trying to stamp out. But Levi’s kept finding their way behind the Iron Curtain, especially into East Germany. There, people could see what they were missing just over the wall that separated them from the West. East German officials started to worry: Could a pair of pants bring down the government?
