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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Flightless Bird: Attics & Basements

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Armchair Umbrella

Tv & Film, Music, Comedy

4.668.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier realizes that New Zealand doesn’t have attics or basements, so sets out to discover why so many of America’s 333 million homes do. David talks to Stephen Fox, an architectural historian and a lecturer at the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, who explains the practical reasons for these spaces, as well as why they’ve turned into habitable spaces. David then talks to filmmaker and architect Giorgio Angelini about what these spaces mean culturally to Americans, as paradoxically a place of safety and warmth but also of mystery and horror. The two of them discuss various formative experiences to be found in the attic, before David turns back to the egg episode, attempting to get closure with his best friend Rosabel following an incident where he cracked an egg over her head.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm David Ferrier in New Zealand,

0:02.3

and accidentally marooned in America,

0:04.5

and I wanna figure out what makes this country tick.

0:07.3

Something I still marvel at here

0:09.2

is the scale of America.

0:11.6

For example, back in New Zealand,

0:13.1

we've got about five million people

0:15.6

compared with America's 333 million people.

0:20.1

And most of those 333 million Americans

0:23.3

live in one of the 142 million homes

0:26.5

that have been built here.

0:28.3

Back in New Zealand,

0:29.4

there are just under two million houses.

0:32.7

Ah yes, the humble house, the home,

0:36.3

the place where we eat, sleep,

0:38.4

go to the bathroom, clip our toenails,

0:40.9

raise families, watch TV, and listen to podcasts.

0:45.0

Home is where the heart is,

0:48.7

and my heart is anywhere you are.

0:53.6

Home is where the heart is, saying Elvis.

0:56.5

But of course, you also find other things

0:58.6

in the American home,

...

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