Episode 85: Avery Fisher Hall
.ass file - download the video off of YouTube and play with your media player of choice
Corrections (please!) to
haitch dubya ei zed you you dubya
at
the google mail service
JUSTIN: Zencastr is going, we're good.
JUSTIN: "Pre-flight check has ended."
NOVA: [laughs]
NOVA: "Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,
NOVA: "uh, this is...
NOVA: "your fucking..."
NOVA: [laughs] "...podcast about...
NOVA: "...a concert hall?"
JUSTIN: Yes.
JUSTIN: H-hello and welcome, to Well There's Your Problem.
JUSTIN: It's a podcast about engineering disasters.
JUSTIN: With slides.
JUSTIN: Um, I'm Justin Roczniak, I'm the person who is talking right now.
JUSTIN: My pronouns are "he" and "him". O-okay, go.
NOVA: I am [November Kelly], I'm the person who's talking now,
NOVA: my pronouns are "she" and "her".
NOVA: Liam.
LIAM: [lethargic] Yaay Liam. Hi.
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
LIAM: I'm Liam Anderson.
LIAM: Hi.
NOVA: "Hi, I-I'm the colony of bacteria piloting Liam Anderson."
LIAM: I... [laughs]
LIAM: I-I'm the corpse of Liam Anderson. Yes, I am sick.
LIAM: Uh...
LIAM: My pronouns are "he", "him".
LIAM: I'm gonna spend most of this episode on mute,
LIAM: simply so you don't hear me sniffle every 30 seconds.
NOVA: Nice.
LIAM: Uh, I know people love their sniffles, but, uh...
LIAM: Yeah, I'm not gonna do that to you,
LIAM: I'm not gonna [November Kelly] your asses.
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: And we have a guest! Hello, guest!
JUSTIN: We--we have a guest.
KATE: Hello!
KATE: I'm Kate Wagner.
KATE: I...
JUSTIN: Yup.
KATE: An architecture critic.
KATE: My pro--
KATE: My pronouns are "she", "her".
JUSTIN: A-and you--you know a lot about architectural acoustics.
LIAM: Why is that, Kate?
LIAM: Tell us, t--tell us.
KATE: Yeah, I went to grad school.
LIAM: Ooh.
JUSTIN: Ow.
LIAM: Rookie mistake.
JUSTIN and NOVA: [laugh]
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: I dropped out of grad school.
KATE: I know, so true about grad school.
KATE: I was very close to doing that.
KATE: But I finished,
KATE: and I wrote my thesis on concert halls from mid-century,
KATE: uh...
KATE: so yeah, I know a lot about this subject...
NOVA: O-of which, this is one.
KATE: ...This is, this, this concert hall...
KATE: changed everything, in architectural acoustics, uh...
KATE: [laughs]
LIAM: I, I assume for the better, right?
KATE: I mean, that's like, kind of an understatement, it was--
KATE: Yes, for the better, I would say, like,
KATE: this was kind of like the Pruitt-Igoe,
KATE: or I guess, not even really like the, like--like,
KATE: you know what I mean? Like, this is like the thing that, like,
KATE: initiated an entire discourse...
KATE: that changed the field, that happened around the same time,
KATE: and Modernism was like, a subject in that field.
KATE: Even though like, with Pruitt-Igoe for example,
KATE: uh, like, there were factors involved,
KATE: that, for the failure that...
KATE: almost none of them were architectural actually...
KATE: faults like,
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: public funding, and racism,
KATE: and all kinds of things, but,
KATE: Avery Fisher Hall, Philharmonic Hall, David Geffen Hall...
KATE: you know, whatever it's called now, and...
JUSTIN: T-the hall we're looking at.
NOVA: H-have...
NOVA: Have fewer names!
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Just pick one.
NOVA: You sho--you shouldn't be allowed to like,
LIAM: (?) pick one.
NOVA: bribe an, uh, philharmonic, by being like,
NOVA: "Here's $50 million, put my name on the fucking thing."
KATE: Yeah, the thing is, is that like,
KATE: what we're talking about now, is, uh,
KATE: Philharmonic Hall, the first iteration of,
KATE: uh, of Avery Fisher Hall, which...
KATE: Which I note as "Avery Fisher Hall" because that's its name...
KATE: They changed the name right when I was in the middle of grad school, so,
KATE: very annoying, 'cause...
KATE: was writing a thesis, but, uh, like...
KATE: This is kind of like a Theseus' Ship situation, now, at this point.
KATE: 'Cause this hall has just been completely gutted,
KATE: and now it's being gutted for a third time.
KATE: ...This is like a cursed, truly a cursed project.
KATE: Uh, though hopefully...
KATE: The actual--Actually, the signs now point to it's going to be good, again,
KATE: which, it were--good for the first time, because...
KATE: the acoustic stuff that they're doing is...
KATE: like, what they should... should do.
KATE: Uh, 'cause we have, like, the science and stuff, now.
KATE: But anyways, like, I guess we should start from the beginning.
JUSTIN: Finally, 60 years later.
JUSTIN: Well, first--
KATE: It's really a nightmare, yeah, so...
KATE: Yes, go ahead.
JUSTIN: But, first, we have to do...
JUSTIN: The God Damn News.
♪[news jingle]♪
JUSTIN: Ok--okay, um...
JUSTIN: Uh, what y--
NOVA: It's The God Damn News.
JUSTIN: It's The God Damn News.
LIAM: God Damn News.
JUSTIN: Washington Metro fucked up again.
NOVA: Oh no.
LIAM: This train derailed three times, apparently?
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: It... yes. Uh...
KATE: What?
JUSTIN: Last week, the Blue line, um,
JUSTIN: there's a train between, I think, Rosslyn and...
JUSTIN: Arlington Ce--Cemetery,
JUSTIN: uh, derailed three times, the third time it didn't manage to re-rail itself,
JUSTIN: um...
JUSTIN: You know, which is a, a, definitely...
NOVA: It's the little train that could, and then could, and then couldn't.
JUSTIN: And then cou--and then couldn't.
LIAM: And then couldn't, and then really couldn't.
JUSTIN: So right now, Metro has every single...
JUSTIN: 7000-series train, um...
JUSTIN: out of service,
JUSTIN: because of axle defects that led to this derailment,
JUSTIN: as I understood it this morning,
JUSTIN: although I think there was just a press release saying it might have been something else,
JUSTIN: um...
JUSTIN: And that means, um, today,
JUSTIN: Monday,
JUSTIN: October 18th,
JUSTIN: The Metro has the capability to run...
JUSTIN: exactly 40 trains, all day.
NOVA: I-is that a lot? Is that a lot? That sounds like a lot.
LIAM: Oh no.
JUSTIN: We--
LIAM: You know, [Nova], I see how you would think that, but no.
NOVA: Bear in mind, the Glasgow Subway is the smallest,
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: tiny little model train thing in the world, so.
LIAM: True.
JUSTIN: ...They're running like, 30 minute headways today.
LIAM: ...Fuck.
KATE: Uh...
LIAM: ...That sucks... [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Is this the Red line? Is this the Red line?
NOVA and LIAM: The Blue line.
JUSTIN: The Blue line.
JUSTIN: Well, I think it's every line.
KATE: Oh, wow, for once it is not the Red line. [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]
LIAM: Red line, just so hot right now.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Get it? Because it catches on fire all the fucking time.
KATE: [laughs]
NOVA: That's why it's the "Red line".
JUSTIN: I-I--
LIAM: Yeah, the red is for flames.
JUSTIN: I'm constantly impressed by how badly...
JUSTIN: Metro can fuck something up, just--
LIAM: Dude, every day, it feels like.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: I-I used to, like, wish we had like, a big Metro-like system here in Philly,
JUSTIN: you know, 'cause it goes more places, and now I'm like, "No."
NOVA: Yeah, and you don't wish that anymore.
LIAM: No. Well.
JUSTIN: No, I don't wish that anymore.
JUSTIN: I wish--I'm glad we have the--a subway that works. [laughs]
LIAM: ...I just saw a New York Times article,
LIAM: that a woman was sexually assaulted on an L-train!
LIAM: And there were at least eight, uh...
LIAM: passengers in the car, and none of them did anything.
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
LIAM: So, your friendly reminder to intervene in that shit!
NOVA: Mm.
LIAM: It's gonna be fine.
LIAM: Worst case scenario, you get a stab wound.
NOVA: [snorts]
NOVA: Y-yeah, that's fine.
LIAM: Yeah, yeah.
NOVA: ...I'm not sure that's the approach I would take,
NOVA: when trying to like, exhort people to intervene and stuff, but yes.
LIAM: Yes. Don't--don't--
NOVA: W-worst case scenario, you die, but still.
LIAM: Don't be a good (?)
LIAM: Yeah, it's worth it, it's worth it to die.
LIAM: Be an adult.
NOVA: Yeah.
NOVA: Die with honor.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: Yeah, exactly.
NOVA: This has--this has been the "Die With Honor" podcast.
LIAM: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: And now we will all commit seppuku.
KATE: Nice.
NOVA: [laughs] That's right.
JUSTIN: Speaking of dying with honor...
KATE: [laughs]
♪[news jingle]♪
NOVA: God, that's so loud.
LIAM: Yeah, I know.
JUSTIN: Uh, Colin Powell, died of Covid.
LIAM: Sort of.
JUSTIN: Died with Covid. Yeah. [laughs]
LIAM: Yeah, he had cancer. We should point that out.
JUSTIN: He did have cancer.
NOVA: He was also 87 years old.
LIAM: Yeah. He was fully vaccinated, but there's been a lot of, like,
JUSTIN: I thought he was 84.
LIAM: "Oh, he was fully vaccinated" takes, it's like...
LIAM: Yes, but he also had cancer. Uh...
NOVA: Yeah.
LIAM: He was a war criminal who, uh...
NOVA: Many times, many times.
LIAM: (?)
NOVA: From, from Vietnam to Iraq, all the way through to Iraq again.
LIAM: Yeah.
LIAM: Yeah. We can only hope to have a,
LIAM: a record as horrific and bloody as Colin Powell.
NOVA: Guy who did the cover-up of the Mỹ Lai massacre.
JUSTIN: Yeah--
LIAM: Did he? I actually didn't know that.
JUSTIN: He's like, uh--
NOVA: Yeah! Yeah, yeah. That's how he, like, made his bones.
LIAM: Oh, okay.
NOVA: That was, like, his big deal in Vietnam,
NOVA: was he, uh, he helped cover that shit up.
JUSTIN: What's he--
KATE: Big oof.
NOVA: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: What's the equivalent of like, uh,
JUSTIN: throwing a coin into the,
JUSTIN: into the fountain in Rome,
JUSTIN: for like, doing war crimes in Iraq?
[laughter]
JUSTIN: To ensure you'll return to do more war crimes?
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
NOVA: Yeah.
NOVA: And I mean, like, again, the--the sanest person,
NOVA: in, in the Bush administration during the lead up to,
NOVA: uh, the war in Iraq too,
NOVA: which of course, did not stop him from going to the UN with a little fake vial of anthrax,
NOVA: to lie about it, so.
NOVA: Clearly his conscience didn't trouble him that much.
NOVA: And it killed... [mumbles]
NOVA: What? Like 2 million people?
JUSTIN: Eeeh, you know, what's 2 million people between friends?
LIAM: Yeah.
NOVA: Yeah, that's right.
LIAM: Don't worry, it's only human life.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: Anyway, rest in peace, bitch.
JUSTIN: Yep.
KATE: [laughs]
LIAM: I like "rest in peace, bitch", that...
NOVA: I was gonna say "rest in piss", but then I--
NOVA: I, like, stumbled, and I said the nice thing instead.
LIAM: Oh, well.
LIAM: Look at you.
NOVA: I know, I know, I'm really disappointed in myself.
LIAM: We are, we are a good-hearted pod--podcast.
NOVA: That's right.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Pordcast!
LIAM: I'm sick.
NOVA: Gotta, gotta, sort of, uh, a storied legacy of public service, uh,
NOVA: you know, which also included things like, uh, invading Panama, um--
[dog barking]
KATE: Winston!
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Oooh, Winston. Hello, Winston.
KATE: Sorry.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Win--Winston doesn't like the idea of invading... Panama.
[dog barks]
LIAM: No, Winston...
NOVA: Nor should he.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Good boy, good boy.
KATE: Yeah, he doesn't.
KATE: Win--Winston!
NOVA: Well.
JUSTIN: Um.
KATE: Gotta, gotta shut up.
KATE: Otherwise you're gonna get on the other room.
NOVA: Hate--Hate to see it. Hate to see,
NOVA: uh, I hate to see Colin Powell die.
NOVA: But, you know.
LIAM: Do you though?
NOVA: No, no, not really.
NOVA: The thing is, though--
LIAM: (?) [laughs]
NOVA: I thought, I thought, I thought that like, Kissinger would go first,
NOVA: but then I also thought--
LIAM: No, Kissinger never goes first, that was your first mistake.
NOVA: That, that's the thing.
KATE: No.
NOVA: Yeah, that's the, that's the other thing, right,
KATE: No.
NOVA: because Kissinger is never gonna die,
NOVA: I figured if you just do enough evil shit in the service of the State Department,
NOVA: you--it like, insulates all of your vital organs from your many diseases,
NOVA: and you just don't die, so clearly,
LIAM: (?)
NOVA: Colin Powell should've started like, a third or fourth war.
LIAM: I mean, you're already, you're already playing with house money, right? Like...
KATE: [laughs] My God.
JUSTIN: Kissinger has just...
JUSTIN: did, did enough war crimes that he's gonna sorta evolve into a war crimes Mentat from Dune?
LIAM: Yeah, yeah.
NOVA: Exactly, exactly.
NOVA: Colin Powell is never gonna become the front of a sandworm, now.
KATE: [laughs]
LIAM: No.
NOVA: And that's, that's, that's a shame.
LIAM: That's, that's a shame.
LIAM: It's a, you know,
LIAM: it's a smirch on his legacy.
NOVA: Mmhm, mmhm.
LIAM: Which as we know, was previously untainted.
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: And good.
NOVA: That's right, that's right.
JUSTIN: Anyway, that was,
JUSTIN: The God Damn News.
♪[news jingle]♪
JUSTIN: O-okay.
JUSTIN: ...We're gonna start with a question, as usual.
LIAM: Oh god.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: "What is acoustics?"
NOVA: It's a thing that you use in Winamp,
NOVA: which, incidentally, thank you for the huge hit of nostalgia there.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: "Really whips the llama's ass!"
NOVA: "Downloading Winamp skins at 3AM, what you doin?"
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: No, I'm--I'm not doing Socratic method today, I'm actually throwing this to Kate. [laughs]
LIAM: Kate, our fearless leader!
KATE: "What is acoustics?" Uh...
NOVA: It's when the waves, the sound waves.
KATE: Yes.
KATE: Acoustics is the science of sounds.
KATE: Uh, it's the...
KATE: It includes a number of fields including physics,
KATE: like, physical acoustics which is, you know,
KATE: sound waves, that kind of thing,
KATE: how sound works.
KATE: Uh, like in the abstract, like,
KATE: mathematically, that kind of thing.
KATE: Includes like,
KATE: all kinds of fields like, geophysics, which is basically mostly used for drilling for oil,
KATE: uh, bioacoustics, which is used for, like,
KATE: hearing bats talk and stuff, it's very cool,
KATE: one of the cooler fields in acoustics...
KATE: Uh, see, these are all very hard sciences, right?
KATE: Uh, and then we've got architectural acoustics, which...
KATE: is a science in the same way that architecture is a science.
KATE: Which is to say it's not.
JUSTIN and LIAM: [laugh]
KATE: There is science behind architectural acoustics,
KATE: and there's engineering, you could be an acoustical engineer, uh, and,
KATE: that means also doing things like making speakers,
KATE: which I used to do, at a company,
KATE: where I was an intern, back in the day,
KATE: and, um, like,
KATE: making recordings, like all kinds of... applied acoustics, is what we would say.
KATE: But, like, architectural acoustics is funny, because,
KATE: to give you an example of where the science is,
KATE: um...
KATE: ...We still need a supercomputer at Rensselaer,
KATE: to model how sound,
KATE: to model visually, sound as a wave, in a room,
KATE: in a simple cube, actually,
KATE: uh, to, to do that, that visual modeling.
KATE: So, if anyone tells you that, like, "we can model, and we will know what our room will sound like before it's built,"
KATE: they're lying.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: The truth of the matter is, is that,
KATE: We can make very educated guesses about how sound...
KATE: ...a room will sound.
KATE: Uh, and like, the more complex the room, the less predictable it is.
KATE: This is the case with like, the (?) for example,
KATE: which is very famous, very expensive,
KATE: and is a really, really weird room,
KATE: because they put so much diffusion in there, to break up sound, that like,
KATE: certain things just sound weird in there.
KATE: Uh, whether or not people will like it,
KATE: you know, 50 years from now, we'll have to see.
KATE: Sometimes people like a hall when it opens,
KATE: and think it's crap 50 years from now.
KATE: It takes about 50 years for a hall's reputation to, uh,
KATE: to really be solidified.
KATE: But sometimes,
KATE: uh, there's, there's always been these stories of,
KATE: of people trusting the science too much,
KATE: uh, and...
KATE: to the point where...
KATE: bad things happen.
KATE: And to be fair, like, the science has come a long way,
KATE: but most of that science isn't "modeling" so much as it is "measurement";
KATE: We've become really good at...
KATE: taking microphones and speakers into concert halls and being able to measure...
KATE: ...and like, to some extent, model,
KATE: how sound works in a space.
KATE: However...
KATE: ...for this reason, when...
KATE: ...acousticians do a really big concert hall project, for example,
KATE: they'll do things like, build like...
KATE: ...a 1-to-4 scale model or something, like,
KATE: a scale model that is like the size of a small room,
KATE: with like--
KATE: and then they'll run measurements in that model;
KATE: that's like, one of the safest ways to model how a room will sound,
KATE: because, the truth of the matter is is that the computer modeling,
KATE: and things like that, it just isn't there.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Uh, and it won't be there probably for, uh...
KATE: several years. So...
KATE: We can visually model existing rooms, and we're really good at measuring them, and...
KATE: ...we've really come a long way in understanding how sound works in rooms;
KATE: not only, like, architecturally,
KATE: but like, you know, things like, um, like,
KATE: psychocoustically, uh...
KATE: Like how, things like--
NOVA: Yeah, "psychoacoustically" is when you play the scary, like, knife noises from the movie.
JUSTIN: Mm.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: You just play the Psycho soundtrack in full blast...
KATE: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
KATE: But, like, the role that like, the ear, the human ear plays in acoustics,
KATE: uh, and... their--but and also the auditory nerve.
KATE: So, it's a really interesting, it's a really interesting field, but like, a lot of...
KATE: a lot of science, a lot of, uh, or like a lot of applied science, like,
KATE: you know, architectural acoustics is kinda mostly design, um,
KATE: and the "science" bit of it is, there's engineering,
KATE: and it's like, very serious engineering, like, I don't wanna, like, give the impression that it's not,
KATE: but, the...
KATE: But it's not "engineering" in the way that like, people, like,
KATE: engineer, like, jet engines or something. Like,
KATE: there's a lot of...
KATE: There's a lot of things that are...
KATE: difficult to predict and model and measure.
KATE: Uh, and so...
KATE: The truth of the matter is, is that we still won't know what a room will sound like until that room is built,
KATE: and there's still--which is why the field relies so heavily on precedent.
KATE: Um, things that have worked,
KATE: like, will continue to work.
KATE: Which is why, for the last, like, 10 years, like, every concert hall,
KATE: major concert hall that's been built, has been built sort of in the style of like, Walt Disney Concert Hall by...
KATE: ...by Frank Gehry in 2003.
KATE: It was finished in 2003; it's really a 90s concert hall.
KATE: Um, but, uh,
KATE: it's really that, that vineyard-style hall, because we know that works, it produces like,
KATE: really nice architecture, it's like, a satisfying, like, acoustic environment...
KATE: Um...
KATE: People feel, like, enveloped by the sound, like...
KATE: We've been studying how vineyard hall works--
KATE: vineyard-style halls or semi-vineyard-style halls work since the 60s, and so we can produce...
KATE: relatively, um,
KATE: accurately, like, a hall that will sound good.
KATE: But when you start to experi--see, this is like, the,
KATE: this is the Catch-22, right, like,
KATE: when you want to experiment, you wanna do something different,
KATE: you com--it comes with the risk of things going wrong.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Um, and,
KATE: so, but,
KATE: but, like, this brings us to, to Philharmonic Hall, like,
KATE: Philharmonic Hall, was, like, a massive, embarrassing failure for the,
KATE: for the science of acoustics, like,
KATE: it's probably its biggest failure in the history of its...
KATE: of its time since--it's not an, it's not an old field; acoustics...
KATE: Like, there have been, like,
KATE: things like, you know, like, organ...
KATE: Organ builders and stuff, in like medieval ages or whatever, but like,
KATE: the actual science of architectural acoustics...
KATE: didn't exist until the beginning of the 20th century,
KATE: with the, um, with the work of...
KATE: Harvard physicist, uh, Wallace Sabine,
KATE: and Wallace Sabine's a really interesting guy, because he...
KATE: basically was like a...
KATE: like, an adjunct professor who, like, got assigned, like,
KATE: the shittiest room imaginable, to like, do a lecture in,
KATE: and he was like, so ups--he was so pissed at this room, which was like, an art gallery in Harvard.
KATE: Was so shitty,
KATE: that like, he decided to invent an entirely new field of science,
KATE: to fix it.
NOVA: I mean, that's the best possible reason to do that.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: That's fucking dope.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: Yeah.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: ...His working conditions were bad, and so he was like,
KATE: "You know what, we gotta figure this out."
KATE: So he went across the street to like, the church, some church,
KATE: and brought back a bunch of cushions from the pews,
KATE: and he would like, basically take like, this crude measurements of like,
KATE: what would happen, like, whenever he added a new cushion to the...
KATE: ...like, delay, or the, the reverberation of the, of the sound,
KATE: ...of an impulse, which in this case was...
KATE: him blowing through a tube,
KATE: uh, or him blowing through an organ pipe.
KATE: Um...
KATE: And so, it's so funny because like, he just like, created...
KATE: the math behind what's known as like, the...
KATE: the reverberation equation or the Sabine equation,
KATE: reverberation time, and by doing that, by quantifying... that,
KATE: he was able to--he basically found the,
KATE: the beginning of architectural acoustics; but it's because his room sucked.
KATE: Like, he was really just like--
KATE: if his labor conditions were better,
KATE: this wouldn't have--someone else would've done it.
KATE: And it wouldn't have been as good of a story.
KATE: But, anyways, Philharmonic Hall...
KATE: really fascinating, uh... let's get to it, uh, so...
KATE: This is a great story, because it has--it also touch--
KATE: touches on like...
KATE: all the other bad things that were happening with modernism, and like, urban renewal, and,
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: all that.
JUSTIN: Well, I thought a, I thought a fun place to start would be, you know, sorta,
JUSTIN: some of the, some of the history of architectural acoustics before...
JUSTIN: before there was any science behind it.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, just this, this famous, uh,
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: Or the, this quote here from, uh, Charles Garnier,
JUSTIN: who did, you know, the Paris Opera,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: he said, "I gave myself pains to master this bizarre science of acoustics,
JUSTIN: "but nowhere did I find a positive rule to guide me,
JUSTIN: "on the contrary, nothing but contradictory statements.
JUSTIN: "I must explain that I adapted no principle, that my plan has been based on no theory,
JUSTIN: "and I leave success or failure to chance alone.
NOVA: Hell yes, dude.
JUSTIN: "Like an acr--" [laughs]
LIAM: [laughs]
KATE: That's--
JUSTIN: "Like an acrobat who closes his eyes and clings to the ropes of an ascending balloon."
KATE: Ride or die.
NOVA: Fuck around, and apparently, find out.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Fuck.
JUSTIN: And, and that's, that's the uh, that's the theory behind the uh,
KATE: So true.
JUSTIN: the main auditorium at the Paris Opera.
JUSTIN: Um, is very (?)
NOVA: "People seem to like it, I guess."
LIAM: Yeah.
JUSTIN: (?), F-"Fuck it, we'll do it live." [laughs]
NOVA: Mm.
LIAM: I like that.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I appreciate that.
KATE: Yeah, yeah. Truly.
KATE: It's funny because--Opera is interesting,
KATE: because opera houses were shaped architecturally more by like, social strata,
KATE: than they were acoustics.
KATE: Like, it was all about like, the rich people being seen, and like,
KATE: the poors not being seen.
KATE: So, that had, like, architectural consequences.
KATE: Uh, and that--that's always been the case throughout the history of performing arts spaces.
KATE: Like, for example, like, before, before--
KATE: ...When like, for example, in classical music, and, was...
KATE: Only a figment of the aristocracy,
KATE: uh, and you had, like, court composers and all of this, like, music rooms were...
KATE: designed for like, small pe--small numbers of people, and like,
KATE: uh, were really like social institutions more than they were places for like, this,
KATE: they had to sound good,
KATE: and up until, like, the 19th century, when people listen to classical music,
KATE: they were also just like, walking around, like talking,
KATE: fucking off, basically, faffing about,
KATE: And like, the, the idea of the like the silent reverent concert hall...
KATE: is like actually a really bourgeois idea that came from...
KATE: listening practices in the 19th century,
KATE: when the public concert became a thing,
KATE: and like, you had...
KATE: ...like, the emergence of like, the bourgeoise, and bourgeois culture,
KATE: and so, like, the bourgeoise had to do--
KATE: were often finding things...
KATE: that made them look like they were, like...
KATE: ...like, aristocratic, and so, things like stratified seating...
KATE: in public concert halls, based on concert ticket prices,
KATE: um, things like, uh, the...
KATE: ...the obsession with silence,
KATE: and, like, with like, this kind of like, etiquette of the concert hall, which like,
KATE: actual... aristocrats, like, never really cared about.
KATE: Uh, it's actually just like, bourgeois people and their obsession with quiet.
KATE: Uh, and, yeah. It's a really--all of like,
KATE: what we know about, like, classical music concert-going culture was basically invented by like,
KATE: upper middle-class people in the 19th century.
KATE: And so, because of this, like,
KATE: because of all these different social factors,
KATE: concert hall design, uh, was really kind of based on...
KATE: the current architectural practices of the time, which were neoclassical in style,
KATE: uh, so like, temple-like buildings,
KATE: um, like, for example, the Musikverein in Vienna,
KATE: uh, or any kind of 19th century concert hall--the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
KATE: These are all very neoclassical,
KATE: uh, high, uh, romantic era,
KATE: neoclassical buildings.
KATE: And they...
KATE: ...just so happened, actually, that the...
KATE: The combined taste for things that look like temples,
KATE: and the current taste for--like, a bunch of, like, overdone,
KATE: weepy architectural ornament from like, all different periods of like the neo--of like, the classical era,
KATE: uh, mostly Greek, but some Roman,
KATE: and also, like, the predilection for stratified seating,
KATE: uh, so that rich people could show off,
KATE: and also, the current practices of building ventilation,
KATE: which required clerestory windows at the highest...
KATE: level of the concert hall so they can, like, let out all, like, the farts and smoke and stuff,
KATE: all of these things combined,
KATE: accidentally made a really fucking good concert hall, actually.
KATE: Uh, like the shoe--19th century shoebox-style concert halls are some of the best in the world,
KATE: and they basically did it, not because of like, the science of architectural acoustics, which didn't exist yet,
KATE: but because of a combination--this combination of like, social factors,
KATE: architectural factors,
KATE: uh, like, and engineering factors, uh, like, you know--
NOVA: So, so what you're saying is,
NOVA: so, so, the like--
NOVA: sort of, 19th century class system is scientifically the best way to organize a concert hall by accident?
LIAM: Yes.
JUSTIN: Yeah... [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: Exactly. That was exactly kind of how it happened.
KATE: Uh, but the--it's funny 'cause like, the actual--
KATE: the ventilation stuff, because they didn't yet--they had gas lamps at the time,
KATE: that was actually very important too in why, um,
KATE: concert halls, uh, sound so well.
KATE: It's, uh, it's, it's really fascinating to me, um.
KATE: Because, like, if they didn't have those...
KATE: that--that ventilation at the top, that--
KATE: like, they have a bunch of basically empty space above the highest-seated listener,
KATE: that, like, led--that allowed like...
KATE: because the heat from the chandeliers was really hot, so no one would want to sit up there,
KATE: uh, like, you had to, like, have these windows that you could open to ventilate the space,
KATE: and they had to be...
KATE: certifiably big enough to do that,
KATE: what it ended up doing was creating like, this,
KATE: like, what we call "warmth" in a concert hall.
KATE: Because you have space above the highest-seated listener, it creates spaciousness.
KATE: ...The sensation of being enveloped in sound.
KATE: Um, like, which we usually, like, in lay--like,
KATE: "warmth" is actually has more to do with like, bass response,
KATE: but like, it is...
KATE: ...as like, a vibe, I guess, less than like, a technical term;
KATE: that spaciousness is what makes those concert halls so great, because it's just actually the right amount of people in the hall,
KATE: the right amount of spaciousness,
KATE: the right... use of materials in a way that... makes it, like, reverberant,
KATE: and like, really like, lovely but not, like, too wet,
KATE: not too echo-y.
KATE: Uh, so, it's actually really fascinating to me personally,
KATE: how like, a bunch of shit just came together in a way that really works.
KATE: I think it's a really great metaphor for the field as a whole.
NOVA: Asking, asking if my concert hall is creepy or wet.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Mm.
KATE: Yeah, so true.
KATE: So true about "wet", not a great word.
KATE: But like, it is, like, as opposed to "dry", which is like, not reverberant at all.
JUSTIN: Wet.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: S-sound is very--
NOVA: [laughs] "Our concert hall is too wet," yes.
JUSTIN: It was very moist.
NOVA: Ooooh.
LIAM: Ben Shapiro's wife.
KATE: No.
NOVA: "Yeah, this concert hall is just dripping."
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Well, I'm pointy as hell.
KATE: It is dripping.
NOVA: Hey, Justin, how'd y--how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
JUSTIN: How'd--how do you get to Carneg--
LIAM: Practice.
JUSTIN: Oh.
LIAM: One day, we'll play Carnegie Hall, and they'll boo us offstage.
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
NOVA: Yeah, we'll do the Boston Molasses Flood at Carnegie Hall.
LIAM: "So, uh, Yankees suck, right?" As I'm being pelted with cans.
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: They're probably more into like, some kinda other...
JUSTIN: ...would you go up there and do a shittalk squash, or something.
NOVA: Mmh, yeah.
KATE: [laughs]
NOVA: "Yo, you've heard about racquet ball?"
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I say "Columbia is the seventh best school in the Ivy League," 10,000 times until I'm...
LIAM: escorted offstage, with one of those giant hooks.
[laughter]
KATE: That's funny.
LIAM: Thank you. Thank you.
KATE: Alright.
JUSTIN: This is--
LIAM: I'm dying.
NOVA: Yeah, try, try not to, try not to go out like Colin Powell.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: This is sorta, this is sorta where our story starts, right.
JUSTIN: Um,
JUSTIN: you know, it's old-fashioned, big auditorium, good acoustics,
JUSTIN: is the home of the New York City Philharmonic,
JUSTIN: um, Philharmonic Orchestra,
JUSTIN: and the 50s, everyone was like, "That is (?) old-fashioned thing,
JUSTIN: "let's," uh, and this owner wanted to redevelop it, so they didn't renew the lease of the Philharmonic, right?
NOVA: Mm.
NOVA: What is a Philharmonic, anyway?
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: It's just a symphony.
LIAM: (?), they love harmony.
KATE: Orchestra.
JUSTIN: Orchestra.
NOVA: Mm.
NOVA: It's an orchestra that loves harmony, okay, got you.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: So, it--Carnegie Hall actually, like, acoustically speaking, is not that great,
KATE: uh, basically like, at the--like--
KATE: Sabine actually, was a really great acoustician,
KATE: even though he was the first acoustician.
KATE: And he knew, for ex--he worked, for example, on Boston Symphony Hall, which is one of the greatest symphony halls ever.
KATE: And he--'cause he understood, like, not completely, but like,
KATE: to some extent, like,
KATE: the role--
KATE: like, designing... like, a shoebox-style hall,
KATE: was really, like, a good idea,
KATE: um, and like, he, he was like, very intent on,
KATE: trying to figure out, like, why, and--but he knew, based on precedent,
KATE: that, that that style of hall worked.
KATE: Uh, but, at the same time, like,
KATE: Sabine went off, got drafted into World War I and got shot and died and like--at like, the age of 30.
NOVA: Oh man.
JUSTIN: Oh. Well.
KATE: So, like, the world of acoustics changed, like, quite a bit, after that, yeah.
KATE: So, uh, he was like, kind of like,
KATE: a bit of a, a hero, uh, in, in acoustics, because he was actually just right about acoustics,
KATE: before... Uh, but anyway, so like, the people took his science,
KATE: and decided to like, apply it in kind of like, the, like, the first early crude ways.
KATE: Um,
KATE: and so, like, again, like, you have a mod--
KATE: this is again, a social change you have...
KATE: differences in like, the concert-going public,
KATE: more and more people, not just bourgeois people could--were going to concerts...
KATE: at the beginning of the 20th century, and so you had to just...
KATE: the things like sightlines become way, way more important than for ex--
KATE: and selling tickets,
KATE: than like, um,
KATE: acoustics or whatever, and then also like, changes in architecture,
KATE: the Beaux-Arts style was more conducive to like, an auditorium of the size,
KATE: anyway, it's the same pattern that happens over and over again.
KATE: But the truth is is that the New York Philharmonic had like, kinda outgrown...
KATE: Carnegie Hall,
KATE: um,
KATE: and,
KATE: they wanted something new, and,
KATE: just so happens that like, urban renewal was happening... [laughs]
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: And...
KATE: they could just, "Yeah, let's go into the..."
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: So this is, this is a fun one.
JUSTIN: 'Cause we're looking at the, uh--
NOVA: Oh God, what did they bulldoze.
JUSTIN: The failure, you know, the best-laid plans of Federal Housing legislation happened here.
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: You know, in 1937, there was the Wagner-Steagall Act,
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: right, provides federal, uh, subsidies to housing authorities,
JUSTIN: to replace substandard housing with new public housing,
JUSTIN: you know, there's a specific stipulation in there,
JUSTIN: that you replace it one-for-one,
JUSTIN: you can't actually build more housing than existed there before,
JUSTIN: you gotta demolish to build,
JUSTIN: because they thought it would, uh...
JUSTIN: ...adversely affect the housing market,
JUSTIN: if, uh,
JUSTIN: you build lots of new public housing, right.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, in the--
NOVA: Yeah, for the better.
JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly, for the better, obviously, but,
JUSTIN: you know, that, we're--
JUSTIN: you know, this is, this is built with the sympath--
LIAM: We're a profoundly dumb country.
JUSTIN: this legislation has lots of sympathies for landlords, you know. Uh...
JUSTIN: Um, and then, what, what exactly is "substandard housing"...
JUSTIN: That's left as an exercise to the housing authority.
JUSTIN: Um, now, this is,
JUSTIN: this power is expanded in 1949 with Taft-Ellender-Wagner,
JUSTIN: right, this provides cities with a whole big pot of cash for something called "slum clearance" under, uh,
JUSTIN: under Title I, right, which basically,
JUSTIN: to fund any project, that replaces "substandard housing" with anything, right.
NOVA: Like, a concert hall.
JUSTIN: Like a concert hall.
JUSTIN: Could be a park.
JUSTIN: Could even be middle-income or even luxury housing.
JUSTIN: There's another... There's Title III of that same Act,
JUSTIN: authorized a bunch of funding for public housing, but a lot of planners and politicians had,
JUSTIN: you know, other ideas, right.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: And, one of those guys was, of course Robert Moses.
NOVA: Friend of the show.
JUSTIN: Um--
JUSTIN: Friend of the show, Robert Moses.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Uh, he won't come on, for some reason. I don't know. [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: (?) Zoom his corpse, we'll be like, "Robert,
LIAM: "tel--tell me about the bridges."
JUSTIN: Doing a Cadaver Synod but with, uh,
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: on a pod--in podcast form.
NOVA: It's about time.
NOVA: He had it coming.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: So he's famous for, you know, the roads and the highways and the bridges,
JUSTIN: he was also chairman to the mayor's committee on slum clearance,
JUSTIN: and used this Title I funds,
JUSTIN: extensively for all kinds of things which were not low-income housing, right.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, a lot of times, they would just go in,
JUSTIN: you'd condemn houses and tenements,
JUSTIN: you demolish them,
JUSTIN: then you hand off the land to private developers to build modern,
JUSTIN: you know, apartment towers, right.
JUSTIN: And, determining what was a "slum" was highly racialized
JUSTIN: and the program was just an engine of mass displacement and infliction of misery, right.
NOVA: Hmm.
JUSTIN: And, in the early 50s, when this program was really in full swing,
JUSTIN: Moses was struck by a series of coincidences, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Fordham University wanted a new campus,
JUSTIN: Metropolitan Opera, thought it had inadequate facilities--
[ice cream truck noises]
NOVA: Literally have a fucking ice cream truck driving down outside my window...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: I don't know if my microphone is gonna pick up that up, but if so,
NOVA: please enjoy!
JUSTIN: ...I'm getting a little bit of ice cream truck, yeah.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Ooh, I would (?) over some ice cream right now.
LIAM: It wouldn't help me, but--yeah.
JUSTIN: So yeah, the... the Metropolitan Opera had... inadequate facilities, the Philharmonic was...
JUSTIN: being kicked out of... Carnegie Hall, which they kinda wanted to leave anyway,
JUSTIN: uh, and the cogs started turning in Moses' head and he realized,
JUSTIN: the solution here,
JUSTIN: was to build an incredible new cultural center with facilities for the opera,
JUSTIN: the Philharmonic, a new Fordham campus, and other cultural facilities, right.
JUSTIN: Including, the, uh, LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts,
JUSTIN: uh, relocated Juilliard School,
JUSTIN: uh, new home for the New York Ballet, and a whole bunch of other cultural accoutrement, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: And um,
JUSTIN: also,
JUSTIN: 4,400 apartments.
JUSTIN: And 400 of those apartments would actually be low-income. Incredible, right.
NOVA: I mean... God, it's fucking--
NOVA: It's so grim that it's like...
NOVA: better than today's.
JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]
JUSTIN: Well, well, well, well, well hold on a second.
JUSTIN: Um,
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Now, this plan was set in motion in 1957, it was, uh,
JUSTIN: gonna be located in a neighborhood called San Juan Hill, right.
JUSTIN: Uh, John D. Rockefeller III,
JUSTIN: started fundraising for the whole shebang, and soon it was cleared, the Lincoln Center was happening.
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Here it is in 1924-ish, San Juan Hill, which also was,
JUSTIN: was also known as Lincoln Square at the time;
JUSTIN: the people who lived there called it "San Juan Hill",
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: but, Lincoln Square was the official name of the neighborhood.
NOVA: ...Out of curiosity, what was the sort of like, uh, demographic of San Juan Hill?
JUSTIN: I'm glad you asked! It was, uh,
JUSTIN: New York City's most heavily-populated African-American community.
LIAM: 'Course it fucking was(?).
JUSTIN: Also a lot of Carribean-Americans there, right.
LIAM: Aah.
JUSTIN: Um,
LIAM: It's crazy how this always seems to happen along racial lines.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Surely just a coincidence.
KATE: [laughs]
NOVA: Just a bunch of weird coincidences.
LIAM: Just a bunch of weird coincidences.
JUSTIN: You can see, uh, you can see,
JUSTIN: you got Columbus Circle down here,
JUSTIN: here's Central Park,
JUSTIN: you got the New York Central West Side Yards over here,
JUSTIN: this is now, a bunch of Trump Towers,
JUSTIN: um,
NOVA: Great.
JUSTIN: although, I think they take the--they took the "Trump" name off most of them.
JUSTIN: Right here, this area that's been pre-highlighted in red,
JUSTIN: this is where the Lincoln Center was gonna go.
JUSTIN: But in addition to that, they demolished several blocks down here for Fordham,
JUSTIN: they demolished some stuff over here, for housing,
JUSTIN: I think all the way up... to here,
JUSTIN: was various other crap, right.
NOVA: [snorts]
JUSTIN: So they, they took out a lot.
JUSTIN: And so, the city just condemns this whole neighborhood,
JUSTIN: with the exception of one building,
JUSTIN: which they decided to purchase for well above market price.
LIAM: That's funny how that works, too.
JUSTIN: Because it was owned by Robert F. Kennedy.
LIAM: ...Ooh, okay.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: LMAO, I didn't actually know about that part.
JUSTIN: I was--
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: So, now, for the cultural center and the 4,400 apartments,
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: 7,700 people and 800 businesses were displaced.
JUSTIN: Um, most of them wound up moving to Harlem,
JUSTIN: but they did have the right to compete over the 400 low-income apartments.
NOVA: Oh, I'm sure that was conducted in a perfectly, like, sort of, orderly way.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah, I don't think, I don't think anyone really moved back into the project area, there's no point.
JUSTIN: You know, especially, since not only were you displaced,
JUSTIN: but the place you worked was displaced.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: So yeah, this is, uh, this is your standard urban renewal here. [laughs]
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: Well, it's renewed.
KATE: Yep.
JUSTIN: It's renewed.
KATE: Okay, can I also add, like, one little thing,
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: is which is that,
KATE: there's also like, a Cold War element to this,
KATE: where there was, like, lots of internal talks amongst, like, Rockefeller and donors,
KATE: about like, creating like, a palace for music, to show, like, to Soviet Union,
KATE: that America was really good and cared about the arts.
KATE: And it's very funny to me that like, they did this by, like,
KATE: displacing, like, the working class.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Which, like, I'm sure the Soviet Union would have taken notice of.
JUSTIN: Of course.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Well, it was interesting 'cause we're actually, like--
KATE: Just an L, all the way around.
JUSTIN: It's big L.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: The "L" stands for "Lincoln".
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: So there were big, you know, they,
JUSTIN: they demolished all these tenements, right,
JUSTIN: there's big, big protest about this, actually,
JUSTIN: you see folks protesting here,
JUSTIN: uh, holding signs like, "shelter before culture",
JUSTIN: you know, "humane progress means decent relocation",
JUSTIN: uh, you know, "$47.50 a room, progress for whom?"
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: That's an interesting one.
NOVA: And grammatical, too.
JUSTIN: Yes.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, they...
JUSTIN: ...a bunch of groups filed lawsuits to get the project stopped,
JUSTIN: you know, and, uh, these are treated with contempt and, you know, thrown out--
JUSTIN: Title I slum clearance means you can do anything, right,
JUSTIN: um, and they start construction on what was to be called, um,
JUSTIN: Philharmonic Hall, right.
JUSTIN: Um, and,
JUSTIN: being an auditorium, it required some special considerations during construction.
JUSTIN: Uh, they had a special architect,
JUSTIN: uh, Max Abramovitz, right,
JUSTIN: and a special consultant firm that did acoustics.
JUSTIN: Bolt Beranek and Newman.
JUSTIN: Um,
JUSTIN: which apparently is now part of Raytheon.
NOVA: Huh.
LIAM: Everything eventually is just(?) part of Raytheon.
JUSTIN: Um, they--
KATE: Yeah, funny how that works.
JUSTIN: They have the second oldest extant domain name,
JUSTIN: bbn.com, registered April 24th, 1985.
NOVA: Huh.
LIAM: Thank you, thank you Rocz. [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yes. It's a fun fact.
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: That actually is a fun fact.
KATE: There's a lot of fun facts about Bolt Beranek and... yeah.
LIAM: I don't think it's a fun fact when it comes back to Raytheon.
KATE: So--
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: ...What I said, that there's...
KATE: So Bolt Beranek and Newman was, uh, one of the first modern acoustics firms.
KATE: Um, and they, so...
KATE: it's funny, the reason wh--they got in--first of all, they got into the internet really early,
KATE: um, and second of all, like,
KATE: they also, the reason why they became Raytheon is because,
KATE: basically, Bolt Beranek and Newman finance their, like, high-culture stuff, for,
KATE: uh, acoustics, by also doing acoustical work...
KATE: such as like, you know, measurements for--developing measurement centers for noise,
KATE: like, working with aircrafts, all kinds of other things that was--
KATE: that helped fund the war machine,
NOVA: Mm, lots of (?) stuff.
KATE: uh, and make it, make it more efficient.
KATE: This...
KATE: This was a...
KATE: Very much, like, General Dynamics vibes, you know what I mean.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: But like, the cultural stuff they did,
KATE: was almost like, kind of on the side, but it was like, the, um,
KATE: it was the...
KATE: big project of Leo Beranek, who was the second "B" in "BBN".
KATE: Bolt and Newman were more into the other stuff.
KATE: Anyways, but,
KATE: before, like, all of the Cold War--
KATE: yeah, I guess, like, there's always a Cold War angle--
KATE: but, Leo Beranek is kind of, is a fascinating guy.
KATE: Um, he died like, my second year of grad school, so I never got to talk to him, which, truly devastating,
KATE: uh, but he's basically considered the father of...
KATE: like, modernist acoustics, one would say, but he was also a great historian of concert halls.
KATE: And he's, he was very intent on,
KATE: uh, and my own work in, in acoustics as an academic follows in this tradition,
KATE: pretty much almost exactly.
KATE: He's very big on going around the world and cataloging,
KATE: uh, and measuring, and understanding different concert halls.
KATE: His first, uh, book, Music, Acoustics, and Architecture was published in 1962,
KATE: and it basically features like, about like, a hundred concert halls, um,
KATE: that, uh, like, he went around and did, like,
KATE: acoustics measurements in, and studied, and like, provides like, the plans and sections, and like, the history, it's actually--
KATE: all of his books are really lovely.
KATE: Um, he did--there's three, there's three editions of, of this book. Um,
KATE: and, uh, the last one I think was published in like, 2004, but like, don't quote me on that,
KATE: but they're all really good.
KATE: Uh, very important in my own research,
KATE: very important in the history of architectural acoustics,
KATE: 'cause, kind of, without Leo Beranek, like, we wouldn't have...
KATE: nearly as much of the history of the field,
KATE: um, and, he...
KATE: But because he, he went around and studied why concert halls worked, or why he thought they worked, uh,
KATE: like, I remind you again that like, the science of acoustics, like,
KATE: this is before the age of the computer,
KATE: this is like, when we were basically using, like,
KATE: field recording equipment to do, to measurements where you would fire out a shotgun in a hall,
KATE: and, or like, pop a balloon, and like, have a s--
NOVA: [laughs] What?
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, you would fire a shotgun...
KATE: off in a hall, and like, and like, measure the, like,
KATE: recorded--or measure the amount of time it took to, for the sound to dissipate.
KATE: This is how they did--
NOVA: That rules. Why don't you still do that!?
JUSTIN: I--
JUSTIN: I did not know that Frank Furness was the first acoustician in his office.
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
KATE: ...The reason is, the... [laughs]
KATE: The reason is, because we're not allowed to travel with pistols anymore.
NOVA: Ooh.
KATE: Uh...
KATE: also, we developed more complex, like, standard,
KATE: uh, tests, for, for measuring reverberation time more accurately.
KATE: But--this was kind of like, a crude operation.
KATE: And yet, because of like,
KATE: ...what was considered at the time to be like, modern, modern science,
KATE: um, like, Beranek really thought he knew everything about concert halls,
KATE: and he thought he knew...
KATE: what makes a really good concert hall.
KATE: Uh, some of his--
KATE: but the thing is like, he didn't know everything.
KATE: Um, not even nearly.
KATE: Uh, so it's really, it's really, he truly...
KATE: I mean, he devised basically this comprehensive(?) plan,
KATE: believing that, like,
KATE: his careful scientific calibrations and whatnot would produce a great concert hall worthy of like,
KATE: Lincoln Center's ambitious project.
KATE: It was really kind of a surgical top-down approach...
KATE: that's really no different from like, technocratic planning,
KATE: uh, Moses employed with... with some clearance.
KATE: Um,
KATE: but it was un--yeah, it's very interesting,
KATE: that, like--
KATE: basically, Beranek and his colleagues,
KATE: who at the time were Russell Johnson and Theodore Schultz and B.G. Watters,
KATE: all of whom became successful, independent acousticians of--in their own right,
KATE: um,
KATE: they believe that careful placement of certain architectural and technical elements,
KATE: based on, like, the latest concepts in acoustics could help mitigate...
KATE: the acoustical problems in the modern concert hall.
KATE: Um, the thing is, is the Philharmonic Society...
KATE: really wanted to have a concert hall that sounded like a 19th century shoebox, but,
KATE: they wanted it within the modernist architectural sensibility,
KATE: of, uh,
KATE: ...like, the architecture, of Max Abramovitz,
KATE: uh, and, of course, like,
KATE: again, more integration stuff with, like, modern urban planning.
KATE: So, Beranek originally conceived Philharmonic Hall to take on...
KATE: the shoebox-shape of its inspiration, which was Boston Symphony Hall,
KATE: but he had to fit the shape into a, like, a modernist building,
KATE: uh,
KATE: and this ended up contributing to its downfall;
KATE: first of all, like, it was known at the time,
KATE: thanks to the work of Beranek himself,
KATE: that the success of the 19th century shoebox hall,
KATE: was partially attributable to the very decorative architectural embellishments, which acted...
KATE: like, to diffuse sound, and break it up,
KATE: in the way that was like, satisfying, and created,
KATE: uh, ambiance, and warmth, and whatever.
KATE: However, like, Beranek himself laments,
KATE: in his reflection on Philharmonic Hall, after one year of its use,
KATE: "Contemporary architectural taste tends towards simplicity...
KATE: "and deliberately avoids the elaborative decorative elements...
KATE: "that provide multiple diffusing surfaces in the older halls.
KATE: "The extensive 'contouring' of the older halls...
KATE: "also acted to break up any large, flat surfaces that might create echoes."
KATE: In addition,
KATE: the 19th century shoebox halls had, like, high ceilings to provide a suitably long reverberation time,
KATE: meaning it sounds spacious and nice.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: However, Philharmonic Hall which was,
KATE: you know, Max Abramovitz, being a modernist building, kept a really low stratified profile...
KATE: that was not tall enough to provide this necessary ceiling height, like I talked about before.
NOVA: Yeah, should've been more bourgeois.
KATE: And so, this is, like, the biggest problem.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Should've been more bourgeois, yeah!
KATE: Sho--totally gotta be more, more bougie.
KATE: ...They should've used gas lamps and then, they would have had to ventilate the space,
KATE: and then they would have had the necessary ceiling height, but alas, we have electricity now.
NOVA: Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: Girlboss.
JUSTIN: Yes.
KATE: ...Girlboss, exactly.
KATE: So, Beranek had to basically mitigate these problems with a variety of solutions,
KATE: some of which were like, increasingly crackpot.
KATE: Uh, including--so, they tried, first of all, to do like, a reflecting array of overhead ceiling panels,
KATE: which... I think you can see in the pictures,
JUSTIN: Oh, I got that later on in the slides, yeah.
KATE: Uh, in order to send what they call "early"--
KATE: what they call, like, "early reflections" to the center of the main floor.
KATE: But unfortunately, the gaps between these panels, because they had to be pretty and modernist,
KATE: would be--were too wide, and therefore their ability to actually reflect sound was really diminished.
KATE: Uh, and there was also, like, they had this weird stage wall that featured,
KATE: "an acoustically transparent slated structure,"
KATE: that aimed to hide unsightly ventilation outlets, again,
KATE: modernism, it's air conditioned.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Behind which, was a reflective wall.
KATE: All of these were solutions to the problems with the architectural concept,
KATE: rather than, like, Beranek and his colleagues' original intent for a good concert hall.
KATE: And, these corrections were not enough, for the hall was like, a massive failure, despite--
KATE: and despite attempts at improvement,
KATE: it was ultimately gutted and replaced with Avery Fisher Hall, in 1976.
KATE: Uh, see, okay, but the thing is, is that like the greed of developers,
KATE: and elites who wanted to gain, like, monetary, cultural capital at the expense of...
KATE: you know, 14 blocks where people lived and worked,
KATE: combined with, like, an absolutely dogmatic architectural and urbanist programming...
KATE: that allowed for no flexibility for even like,
KATE: the actual program of what it was supposed to be doing...
KATE: um, definitely would kinda seal Philharmonic Hall's fate.
KATE: Uh...
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Oh yeah. This is like, really funny.
KATE: Okay, we get to the funniest part,
KATE: actually, which, like, is called the "seat dip effect incident".
LIAM: Oh no.
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
KATE: Uh, so,
KATE: yeah.
KATE: Yeah, so, the elite... sponsors...
LIAM: Did someone say "dip"!?
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: That's right, we're getting dipped.
KATE: The elite sponsors of Philharmonic Hall...
KATE: wanted to maximize seat count, in order to maximize the amount of profit for concert,
KATE: because again,
KATE: this is like, capitalist bullshit.
JUSTIN: ...Hold on, Kate, you're getting ahead of me here, 'cause I got a whole slide on this too. [laughs]
KATE: This being an elite, luxury hall, it--
KATE: Oh, okay okay, okay, I'll stop, I'll stop.
JUSTIN: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. [laughs]
JUSTIN: So,
JUSTIN: I mean,
JUSTIN: you know, uh, Beranek, you know, had done a number of auditorium projects, right...
JUSTIN: ...I looked over some of the,
JUSTIN: ...just some of the Philharmonic archives, I saw like, the, uh,
JUSTIN: the, the whatsit, like,
JUSTIN: ...it came up with 18 properties of an auditorium after the big survey you mentioned,
JUSTIN: some of them seem to be quantitative, some of them were qualitative, I,
JUSTIN: I had some difficulty figuring them out; I, I don't know what I'm talking about.
JUSTIN: No, but they were very--
LIAM: Attaboy.
NOVA: ...You were stuck with Charles Garnier, uh, just being like,
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly.
NOVA: "Yeah, you know, whatever feels right."
JUSTIN: Um,
LIAM: Stay loose, you know?
NOVA: Mmhm, yeah.
JUSTIN: but there were,
JUSTIN: there were some issues...
JUSTIN: with, uh, with the, um, with the...
JUSTIN: ...with the actual putting together of the building, right,
JUSTIN: which is why we need to return to...
JUSTIN: the slide I had the last time Kate was on,
JUSTIN: way back in episode 4...
NOVA: Been a while. It's been a minute.
LIAM: Been a while.
JUSTIN: How the building is designed and built.
LIAM: A guy takes a poop in the field.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: Things go downhill from there.
JUSTIN: So, you know, we got the client,
JUSTIN: in this case, it's a committee of people, right,
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: who want the building,
JUSTIN: and they tell the architect, in this case...
JUSTIN: Max Abramovitz, like,
JUSTIN: okay, here's, here's a building, this is what we want,
JUSTIN: this is, this is our idea, and then,
JUSTIN: the architect says, "what the hell are these guys thinking,"
JUSTIN: as you go about turning their vague idea into a workable building,
JUSTIN: with some back and forth here,
JUSTIN: the architect sends their drawing to the engineers,
JUSTIN: in this case, including an acoustics guy,
JUSTIN: you know, once again, these engineers go through the architect' drawings set and says,
JUSTIN: "what the hell, what the hell are these people doing,"
JUSTIN: they start fighting with each other and the architect about what goes where, what's practical,
JUSTIN: there's more back and forth here, the HVAC guy routes a duct straight through an I-beam,
NOVA: [snorts]
LIAM: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: There's conflicts with the plumbing, right, so on and so forth, right.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: But eventually, eventually they finished fighting with each other,
JUSTIN: and, you know, someone puts a PE stamp on there, right,
JUSTIN: which means someone is criminally liable if something goes wrong,
JUSTIN: you know, there's different stamps,
JUSTIN: you know, in Jersey it's a crimper,
JUSTIN: um, and these are sent out for permitting, the drawings are sent on for permitting,
JUSTIN: and the inspectors are not engineers,
JUSTIN: in a lot of places, the stamp is there, nothing goes wrong, we get to the next step quickly,
JUSTIN: the contractors take the drawing and say,
JUSTIN: "fucking hell, these chucklefucks,"
LIAM: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: and, and they, they send the drawings out to some contract--
JUSTIN: or subcontractors, who look at those drawings and say,
JUSTIN: "what the fuck," and "Jesus H. Christ," right,
JUSTIN: they make modifications to drawing, send back shop drawing, showing what they can build and what they intend to build,
JUSTIN: architects and engineers sign off or say, "no, you dumb idiot, you have to do it this way,"
JUSTIN: there's more back and forth here,
JUSTIN: and then, you know, you have the labor who's actually building the damn building...
JUSTIN: and they're constantly complaining about all the boneheaded decisions made above them,
JUSTIN: and of course they know the most about building,
JUSTIN: but they're least able to make design changes since you gotta go way up the chain of command, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: The architect comes back and does the as-built drawings, which I've complained about previously,
JUSTIN: uh, and the clients' been meddling the whole time in this,
JUSTIN: the architects are trying to herd all these cats the whole time, right,
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: and uh,
JUSTIN: you know, so...
JUSTIN: In sum--in summary, it's a goddamn miracle anything gets built.
JUSTIN: And government contracting is even worse.
JUSTIN: Now, in these case, we're doing,
JUSTIN: quasi-government contracting, right,
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: So for the Lincoln Center, rather than being one guy...
JUSTIN: who wanted the building, there's a building committee, right.
JUSTIN: which was composed of all kinds of stakeholders in the projects,
JUSTIN: you had a real estate guy, you had a guy from the Philharmonic Orchestra,
JUSTIN: you had an opera guy, you had politicians,
JUSTIN: and they may or may not know anything about buildings or auditoriums.
JUSTIN: And the building committee was subject to its own whims and desires, and so,
JUSTIN: Abramovitz, tried to coordinate everything through his office.
JUSTIN: Um...
NOVA: Did this work?
JUSTIN: No.
NOVA: Well.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: ...I think one thing which was a big mistake, 'cause they published the design in the New York Times,
LIAM: Oh, God, why?
JUSTIN: before they build the building.
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
NOVA: Yeah, and they get--all of the people who read the New York Times gets to have an opinion.
JUSTIN: And it, it was published as a 2,400-seat auditorium, which was, shockingly,
JUSTIN: less than the 2,760-seat Carnegie Hall, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: So, a bunch of newspapers, especially the New York Herald Tribune, right,
JUSTIN: which is, um,
JUSTIN: the newspaper Marx wrote for, um,
JUSTIN: decided--
NOVA: Yep. Also appears in, uh, Breathless.
JUSTIN: Yes.
JUSTIN: They decided to take on the cause of making the auditorium bigger.
JUSTIN: Um, and the building committee listened,
JUSTIN: and told Abramovitz to cram some more seats in.
JUSTIN: And it got bigger.
NOVA: Yeah, just, just put them in there, just put them in there.
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: ...Just put them in there.
JUSTIN: It got to 2,738 seats, and it got fatter and wider.
NOVA: Same.
JUSTIN: And it got long--[laughs]
LIAM: Yeah, mood.
NOVA: Same.
LIAM: Yeah. [laughs]
LIAM: I'm a, I'm a grower, not a shower, but.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: And, uh, Beranek said, listen,
JUSTIN: this is gonna fuck up the acoustics.
JUSTIN: And that got as far as Abramovitz' office, and,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: didn't get... to the building committee.
JUSTIN: He wasn't able to raise his objections,
JUSTIN: to the people who made the decisions.
KATE: Yep, yep.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Yea, it was truly... [laughs]
KATE: this is like, see, like, acoustics is like, one of those things it's like, oh, it's not (?) engineered,
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: Even in like, con--except for in concert halls, but even in concert halls, it happens,
KATE: it's like, so funny to me.
KATE: But,
KATE: any--anyway, it's like, it's, it's great--
NOVA: Listen, you don't go to a concert hall to hear music good.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Well, they did--they did a couple other changes without really...
JUSTIN: consulting, uh, Beranek here, right, which is, um,
JUSTIN: the, uh, acoustic clouds were made narrower,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: You can see in this chart down here.
KATE: Yep.
JUSTIN: Which, um,
JUSTIN: resulted in, uh,
JUSTIN: according to modeling, um,
JUSTIN: the original proposed ones would, uh,
JUSTIN: you know, we'd have a better,
JUSTIN: we'd have better bass in the auditorium with the original ones versus the new ones,
JUSTIN: you can sorta see in this chart, I'm...
JUSTIN: ...again, I'm a dumb idiot, here,
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: I don't know why. [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, yeah.
JUSTIN: They really--
KATE: Bad.
JUSTIN: They really messed with these, um,
JUSTIN: they wound up doing a safety alteration to them,
JUSTIN: because they were supposed to be individually adjustable, right,
JUSTIN: um, but someone said, that's unsafe, what if there's an earthquake, they'll...
JUSTIN: they'll whack into each other.
JUSTIN: So they were all welded together.
JUSTIN: Um... [laughs]
NOVA: Make it more rigid! Yes!
JUSTIN: So you couldn't really adjust them individually anymore.
NOVA: Now we're talking.
JUSTIN: I don't, I don't know if, I don't know if, if there were...
LIAM: Congratulations [Nova], this must be...
NOVA: I'm having a great time.
LIAM: a festival day for you, yes.
NOVA: Yeah, yeah, it's a red letter day.
JUSTIN: The, uh--
LIAM: There we go, that's the phrase I wanted.
LIAM: Again, I'm, I'm on the cusp of death, so.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: There's, there's a picture of, uh, the acoustic clouds on the next slide,
JUSTIN: so we can see what we're talking about.
LIAM: Take me now, Lord.
JUSTIN: Um--yeah.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Um, then the contractor who did the welding misread the shop drawings, and, um,
LIAM: [laughs] Oh good!
NOVA: Nice.
JUSTIN: Yeah, and--and welded them together,
JUSTIN: uh, six feet too low, or just the front row, yeah.
LIAM: Owww.
NOVA: Oh, y--you wanted a concert hall? What I've delivered you is a perfectly welded solid cube.
NOVA: [laughs] It's like a, it's like a cavity magnetron you have to feed a Philharmonic into...
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: I think some acoustic services in the building,
JUSTIN: were value-engineered out.
NOVA: Nice.
JUSTIN: Like panels on the walls,
LIAM: Good, good.
JUSTIN: and these were replaced by painting the wall blue.
LIAM: Ow--mm...
LIAM: Value hack!
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
NOVA: This one weird trick.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: There--there was some major value engineering going on here, it seems...
LIAM: Nothing says, "Suck it, Soviet Union!" like value engineering.
KATE: Yeah.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: I think, I think the, uh, the slope of the balcony is also increased... [laughs]
KATE: So true about that.
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, yeah.
KATE: For better--for better sightlines.
KATE: Yeah, it's really great, actually, so like,
KATE: it's so funny, um,
KATE: yeah, let me, let me find, like,
KATE: this, okay, so here's... here's what happened, here's what happened,
KATE: too, okay, we, now we get into like, the seat dip thing.
KATE: Uh,
KATE: they had...
KATE: because like, this was like, an elite and luxury hall,
KATE: it was demanded that the seats are both spacious and comfortable as well.
KATE: Think Cadillac, not a Prius, here.
NOVA: Mm.
LIAM: Right.
KATE: Uh, and so, they also like, removed side wall ornament, and increased seating capacity,
KATE: which had to be done without lengthening the hall,
KATE: so to conform to its sleek architectural profile,
KATE: and so, like,
KATE: this also made the hall, like, pro--like, prone to a, a weird kind of echo, and like,
KATE: there was a lower--it was like, extremely absorbant.
KATE: Uh, and so there was like, it was basically like, not reverberant,
KATE: so like, there was a weird echo,
KATE: there was like, little echo, a little reverberation,
KATE: but what was there was weird.
KATE: Uh...
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: and...
NOVA: Yeah, we've had "wet", now we have "creepy".
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Mm.
KATE: Yeah, but there's other things, like,
KATE: even... even though, like,
KATE: it was like, a total screw-up,
KATE: uh, and again, just because they weren't allowed to change anything in the profile of the hall,
KATE: uh, but at the same time, like,
KATE: a lot of the techniques--this is where we get to the "butt" part.
KATE: Like, as you can see, like, this was a disaster.
KATE: Like, on the opening night, like, musicians couldn't hear themselves,
KATE: like, it became very clear, very...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: ...and Beranek, he just like, kept... fiddling with it.
KATE: Like, kept adding things, kept changing it, 'cause it was all just--
KATE: like, all they needed to do was raise the ceiling and make the hall narrower.
KATE: And like, they couldn't do that.
LIAM: Ah yes, the Kanye approach.
KATE: And so, all that he did was just like mak--
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: He tried everything. He tried everything.
KATE: And then, he just threw thing after thing after thing at it and it became very clear before the opening night...
KATE: that like, oh shit, you know? Like.
JUSTIN: Oh fuck. [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: And then, the opening night was like, a disaster.
KATE: The, the hall was like,
KATE: unlistenable.
KATE: It was so bad that they just--they couldn't even last for a few years before they were like,
KATE: we have to just gut the whole thing, it's a complete lost job.
KATE: Like, I mean, this was like,
KATE: basically, like, what they said was that like, the science of acoustics is not there yet.
KATE: It just isn't.
KATE: But that's one part of the problem, is that like,
KATE: they didn't know exactly quite how to fix these things,
KATE: because like, they still didn't quite understand...
KATE: ...why things work to begin with; they had basic, like,
KATE: crude knowledge of it, based on like,
KATE: what the technology was available at the time.
KATE: But like, it's--in a lot of ways, though, like,
KATE: Beranek and his colleagues were really victims of,
KATE: of a broader problem, which is that like,
KATE: people wanted--they wanted this to make money,
KATE: they wanted it to look a certain way,
KATE: to increase rent and real estate values, 'cause you have this big architect involved,
KATE: like, they were really kind of victims of,
KATE: of capitalism, even though, like,
KATE: you know, they've got a lot of money from it...
KATE: ...and this really ran Beranek himself out of acoustics.
KATE: Uh, and he, like,
KATE: he spent all of his time, basically being on the payroll,
KATE: doing his, like, weird acoustic surveys, and...
KATE: helping with research, but he never design--
KATE: he designed a couple more concert halls, I think, but he,
KATE: this was like, he, like, was disgraced, basically.
KATE: And it kind of like, wasn't his fault.
KATE: And yeah, at the same time, like,
KATE: this is a--this is the "butt" part.
KATE: Many of the techniques they employed in the construction of...
KATE: Philharmonic Hall were really new.
KATE: Uh, and like, without... experimentation, like, the field would never ever move forward,
KATE: we would just have shoebox halls forever,
KATE: Um, and,
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: the thing is, is like, they had really massive impacts on Beranek's colleagues, like...
KATE: Schultz and Russell, who would both go on to form their own acoustics firms.
KATE: After a schism that we won't talk about.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Uh, the, but the concept of like, an overhead canopy as a reflector,
KATE: uh, and, the, like, in the later,
KATE: another attempted fix, employment of retractable curtains on stage,
KATE: to make the hall more flexible for use as a theater for speaking events,
KATE: would stay with like, Russell Johnson, who,
KATE: became like, highly involved in the development of, like,
KATE: both a. massive canopies, and b. adjustable acoustics throughout his entire career,
KATE: which I think is very fascinating.
KATE: If I went back to school,
KATE: I would definitely like, that would be--my research would be on Russell Johnson.
KATE: Uh, but, anyways.
KATE: Uh...
JUSTIN: Yeah...
JUSTIN: Opening night.
JUSTIN: They had done, you know, months of tuning,
JUSTIN: unsuccessfully in this theater,
JUSTIN: and then finally, the moment of truth arrived,
JUSTIN: Sunday, September 23rd, 1962, right.
JUSTIN: And no one could be fully sure how the auditorium sounded until there was an audience in there.
KATE: Yes.
KATE: Yep.
JUSTIN: And uh... as Kate said, it was bad.
JUSTIN: Really, really bad.
KATE: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: Uh, the journalist panned the hall,
JUSTIN: but the real kicker was that the conductors agreed: it's shit.
JUSTIN: Um...
JUSTIN: Now, Leonard Bernstein said, uh,
JUSTIN: or, this is from meeting minutes from, uh...
JUSTIN: uh, the, uh,
JUSTIN: ...the Philharmonic Orchestra,
JUSTIN: "Mr. Bernstein said that as he listens in the auditorium
JUSTIN: "the hall has an uninteresting sound,
JUSTIN: "except for the horns and clarinets.
JUSTIN: "At no time does he feel he is surrounded by music.
JUSTIN: "He said the general effect is like hearing music written on a blackboard--
JUSTIN: "a tableau effort.
LIAM: Ooh.
JUSTIN: "He said there's no presence or warmth." Right.
JUSTIN: Um...
KATE: Mm.
JUSTIN: You know, he said there's uninteresting sound,
JUSTIN: in without a sense of being surrounded by sound,
JUSTIN: there's a lack of strength in low-pitch instruments between "A" and "E",
JUSTIN: better in the higher seats than in the stalls,
JUSTIN: domination of horns and woodwinds, edgy high frequencies, like they were amplified,
JUSTIN: dependence on musicians on risers or in certain positions on stage,
JUSTIN: it's not acceptable,
JUSTIN: and disappointed--it's impossible to speak to the musicians without strain,
JUSTIN: you know, no better than in Carnegie Hall. Right.
LIAM: Damn, dude.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: That's raw.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: RIP.
JUSTIN: It's bad.
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: Bad, folks.
JUSTIN: ...So they tried tweaks--
KATE: And yet...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: lots of tweaks.
JUSTIN: Lots of tweaks.
KATE: and, the thing is,
KATE: here's the thing about, about, about acoustics.
KATE: This is like, truly,
KATE: there's like,
KATE: a fundamental rule of acoustics I learned in grad school, which is like,
KATE: first of all, avoid the bad.
KATE: Second, design the good.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: And like, honestly, if you can't avoid the bad to begin with,
KATE: it's in like, what we call, like, the DNA of the hall.
KATE: There's nothing you can do,
KATE: nothing you can add,
KATE: that's going to...
KATE: fix it in a way that gutting it isn't.
KATE: Uh, and so, like,
KATE: it's really kind of a high-stakes thing,
KATE: and it's almost, it's so--
KATE: like, there's nothing, no surface level thing that they could do to this hall,
KATE: that was going to fix all of the problems in it.
KATE: They basically had to...
KATE: like, gut it.
KATE: Uh,
KATE: and yet, at the same time, like--
KATE: and I'll talk about the renovation,
KATE: I think we get to Avery Fisher Hall in a little bit--
KATE: uh, but, at the same time, like,
KATE: uh, the thing is is that, like, the...
KATE: for example, um,
KATE: like, this...
KATE: this hall also did something that was very important.
KATE: Like, extremely important for the development of acoustics at mid-century.
KATE: It combined a shoebox hall,
KATE: uh, with like, rear--the rear,
KATE: rear walls were splayed like a fan-shaped hall,
KATE: uh, and he really wa--
KATE: So, Theodore Schultz, who was like, another acoustician,
KATE: uh, whose halls in the 1980s, like, including, um,
KATE: like, the halls in Baltimore and Toronto, for example.
KATE: Like, they, they really, he really...
KATE: was obsessed with this idea, that like, you can--
KATE: the fan was the most economical concert hall,
KATE: but it sounded like shit.
KATE: Uh, and the shoebox hall was the best sounding concert hall,
KATE: and he, like, truly believed that there was some way to reconcile these differences.
KATE: And this, this reconciliation with economy and acoustics,
KATE: is what would, would dominate the, um,
KATE: development of concert hall,
KATE: uh,
KATE: ...of concert halls like... in the 60s and 70s,
KATE: which is the period that I studied.
KATE: Uh, and, it was fascinating because, like,
KATE: they really did a bunch of weird shit with the form of concert halls, like,
KATE: we've like, it was like, the most experimental age in the entire history of the field,
KATE: and we came away with like, some really fascinating and great knowledge about it,
KATE: um, that was necessary for concert halls to be better.
KATE: And the thing is, is like,
KATE: yeah, there's like...
KATE: ...When I was at, like, covering cycling at the Vuelta,
KATE: there's like a line, like, that...
KATE: Roglic, the Slovenian cyclist who won the... Vuelta said to press, after he, like,
KATE: won a stage by like, doing some like, mental shit,
KATE: was like, he was like, "Yeah, no risk, no glory."
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: And it's truly, that's truly like the, the thing about acoustics, is like,
KATE: "No risk, no glory."
KATE: But man, sometimes if you take the risk,
KATE: you truly do not get the glory.
KATE: Uh, but, it's... fascinating to me, like...
KATE: ...like, this, this...
KATE: ...so many things were learned from the failures of Philharmonic Hall,
KATE: that it actually, just by being a huge piece of shit,
KATE: improved the field massively,
KATE: and improved the field's understanding of problems massively.
KATE: because, like, Beranek, while he was figuring it out, right... while he was like, doing his best,
KATE: still managed to like, get a lot of information and data about like,
KATE: what things were and weren't working,
KATE: and all that stuff would prove to become useful in the future of the field.
KATE: So, uh, and... it avoided them for like, making, um,
KATE: making the same mistakes, essentially.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Um,
KATE: but, yeah... It was a real, it was a real shitshow. So,
KATE: what happens, after, right.
KATE: Basically the Orchestra and the people involved,
KATE: said, like, "God, we really--this is unusable," and they just like, fired everyone involved, uh,
KATE: which, to be fair, okay.
KATE: But then it became clear, and there's a really great New Yorker article about this--
KATE: go ahead.
JUSTIN: One thing I thought was kinda funny is that, when they--
JUSTIN: you know, Beranek suggested some solutions and they eventually, you know...
JUSTIN: they fired... Beranek,
JUSTIN: um, the building committee retains some outside experts to make recommendations,
JUSTIN: and this, uh, this committee of, this expert committee,
JUSTIN: became known as the Acoustical Panel.
NOVA and LIAM: [laugh]
KATE: Yes, which is funny.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: (?) Heinrich Keilholz is like the, the main, the main guy on this,
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: and he decided, you know, the way to go is to just, um,
JUSTIN: cover everything in wood, right.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: Yeah, be more trad about it.
JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly.
KATE: There are truly some harebrained schemes.
JUSTIN: ...It was very much a--
KATE: See, that wasn't gonna work either.
JUSTIN: He seemed to have a, a very much, uh, retvrn attitude here; he wanted to...
JUSTIN: uh, replace the clouds up here with a low wood ceiling, he wanted to...
JUSTIN: you know... he was like, if we put enough acoustical wooden panels in here, it's gonna replicate,
JUSTIN: you know, the quality of an old-fashioned music hall,
JUSTIN: you know, which he attributed to the fact there's like, you know, the balcony supports the boxes statue niches.
JUSTIN: Um,
JUSTIN: you know... he's doing retvrn to tradition. [laughs]
KATE: It's true... that is true in how it worked.
KATE: And that's kinda what ended up happening.
KATE: Okay, so this, this gets us into like, who they hired.
KATE: They hired this guy, named Cyril Harris.
KATE: Um,
KATE: so while both Beranek and Newman were like, kind of like the high modernist guys,
KATE: Cyril Harris is like a little more conservative.
KATE: Uh, and his work actually, like, before becoming an acoustician, he did several,
KATE: he did dozens of shoebox...
KATE: ...what I call a "neo-shoebox" hall,
KATE: all across the country; he did one in Utah, he did one in Washington state,
KATE: he did one, like--I mean, he did them everywhere.
KATE: He, he did the Kennedy Center, like,
KATE: this was like, his bag.
KATE: Uh, but he was hired to fix Philharmonic Hall on the advice of this pan--the acoustics panel,
KATE: and...
KATE: ...the acoustics panel, wasn't--despite being, like,
KATE: you know, pseudo-trads, or whatever, like, they weren't wrong.
KATE: Uh, like,
KATE: the statues and the niches and all the neoclassical ornament,
KATE: does, like, fix a lot of problems with diffusion and, like...
KATE: things like basing the hall off of like, the precedence of the past,
KATE: would have fixed the problems, and in fact,
KATE: this reconciliation with modernism that had to happen,
KATE: is still what's going on in the current renovation today.
KATE: Um, because they... they know exactly what they have to do,
KATE: to fix the hall,
KATE: and yet they still have to make it innovative and interesting.
KATE: And so... in the 70s,
KATE: uh, when, um,
KATE: Cyril Harris got a hold of the hall,
KATE: he was already doing work, uh...
KATE: on other projects and... knew that like, there was a way to do ornament...
KATE: that was...
KATE: you know, like, in architecture we have the style called New Formalism.
KATE: Which, technically speaking, Max Abramovitz is, uh, architecture for,
KATE: uh, the Lincoln Center was a New Formalist project, like, it was...
KATE: a modernist building based on neoclassical proportions,
KATE: uh, with like, neoclassical formal elements but not... ornamental elements.
KATE: And so...
KATE: ...like, basically, Cyril Harris is recreating that inside the concert hall.
KATE: Uh, and he became very good at it, and he...
KATE: but the thing is, is he still ran into the same problem.
KATE: Which is that, the people who ran Lincoln Center,
KATE: wanted--the fundamental problem was--okay, so first of all, like,
KATE: what he had to do was,
KATE: because, like--I don't know if you guys saw in the slide, but--because...
KATE: ...Philharmonic Hall had this very weird,
KATE: curves, like, weird fan-like section,
KATE: or fan-like plan, and like weird milk bottle-looking section,
KATE: he basically, like--the first thing he had to do was like, okay, like, this just has to be a square.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Like, this has to be a cube, we're not gonna get around, like,
KATE: this just has to be a square,
KATE: it has to be a shoebox.
KATE: Uh, right.
KATE: And that actually fixed a lot of the problems, honestly.
KATE: But, again we run into the perpetual problem...
KATE: that continues to this very day,
KATE: when it comes to... with regards to like,
KATE: acoustic remediation and, and redevelopment of concert halls.
KATE: Which is that, acoustics is fundamentally antithetical...
KATE: to selling a lot of tickets.
KATE: It just is.
KATE: The more seats you have, the shittier your hall is gonna sound; there's literally, like, a golden...
KATE: like, ratio of seats to square footage that you should have.
KATE: And like, basically anything with more than like, 2,000 seats, and even 2,000 is like, a little high,
KATE: anything more than 2,000 seats, period,
KATE: like, is gonna, like... you're starting to fall off the cliff there, of the bell curve.
KATE: Uh, and, the thing is, is that...
KATE: Cyril Harris knew, and this is like... the bugbear of his entire career, his entire life,
KATE: was spent trying to mitigate, like,
KATE: the contradictions of capitalism and acoustics.
KATE: And he knew that what had to happen...
KATE: was that the hall needed to be narrower,
KATE: and there had to be fewer seats, fewer balconies, and a taller ceiling;
KATE: like I said, the classic shoebox formula.
KATE: And, like, they wouldn't let him do that.
KATE: So, like, what he produced was a hall that sounded better,
KATE: but because there still had to be so many damn seats,
KATE: like, and the hall had to be sufficiently wide enough to accommodate those seats...
KATE: it still sounded like a dog.
KATE: It sounded like a listenable dog, but it was a dog all the same.
KATE: And so like, again, a cursed project. And so,
KATE: ever since like, the 1980s, when like neoclassical, uh...
KATE: postmodernism came back into style, there have been talks about redoing Avery Fisher Hall.
KATE: And it's still funny how continually cursed this is.
KATE: Like, when I was in high--when I was in, uh, graduate school, for example,
KATE: there were rumors that like,
KATE: Thomas Heatherwick was gonna get involved.
KATE: And everyone was like, "Oh fuck," like, "here we go again," like... [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: The worst possible guy,
KATE: to like, get involved in any kind of civic project that is like, notoriously cursed.
KATE: The guy who did the Vessel.
KATE: Like...
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
KATE: yeah.
NOVA: "What if the concert hall makes you want to kill yourself?"
KATE: So, yeah, like...
LIAM: Yeah. [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly, the thing is, is--
JUSTIN: ...One thing I'd like to say--
LIAM: The cost(?) is $10, just to get in, regardless of how much the show actually costs.
JUSTIN: A-After--One thing I like is that after the, um,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: After the... the first renovation,
JUSTIN: um, and the sound still wasn't that great,
JUSTIN: the New York Philharmonic Orchestra started to, uh,
JUSTIN: or the members of it started to refer to it as A Very Fishy Hall.
NOVA: [snorts]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: That's cute.
JUSTIN: Yes.
KATE: That's cute.
KATE: So, shall we get on to what they're planning to do to it now?
JUSTIN: Oh yeah. I mean, I think this was,
JUSTIN: so this was renovated again in '92, I think, just a little bit,
JUSTIN: but it, again, didn't work.
JUSTIN: Um,
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: No.
JUSTIN: And then, uh, one thing which I thought was an interesting fun fact,
JUSTIN: is that the organ from the original hall,
JUSTIN: was, uh,
JUSTIN: sold to the Crystal Cathedral.
NOVA: Hmm.
LIAM: Oow.
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: And they mashed it into another organ to make a big Frankenorgan.
LIAM: Well, that is...
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: That's something else, man... I like it? I think?
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I'm a deeply diseased man. But literally--[laughs]
KATE: This is truly like--
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: deeply, this is a deeply diseased project, like.
KATE: Truly, like, a stupid project.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: Like, yeah, yeah--
LIAM: Thanks, Kate, that makes me feel good.
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: Appreciate it, bud.
KATE: Yo.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yo, what.
KATE: It's like,
KATE: the thing is, is like, okay.
KATE: Yeah, they try to do some--again, more remediations in 1992...
KATE: when we had like, more information,
KATE: but again, the budget on that was pretty small,
KATE: so there weren't that many changes made,
KATE: and it still didn't fix the fundamental problem...
KATE: which is that,
KATE: LOL the hall is the wrong shape.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yep.
KATE: Like... [laughs]
KATE: So, okay,
KATE: now, now,
KATE: after all this,
KATE: after all this all--after all of this,
KATE: now they're like,
KATE: now the architects of--first of all, they call these guys Diamond and Schmitt,
KATE: uh, and like, there's other acoustician guy's name I forgot,
KATE: uh, but like, who works usually with Diamond and Schmitt, uh.
JUSTIN: Is it... uh,
JUSTIN: Is it Paul Scarborough?
JUSTIN: Or Joshua Decks(?)?
KATE: Yes, Paul Scarborough.
JUSTIN: Okay.
KATE: No.
KATE: Paul Scarborough, who is like, a...
KATE: you know,
KATE: an acoustician, he's...
KATE: I won't get in, I won't, like, the...
KATE: Everyone in acoustics has worked at everywhere else.
KATE: Scarborough started his own firm, I think in the 80s.
KATE: Uh, but anyways, he's kinda like, a minor character in acoustics,
KATE: but it's good as shit that they hired him.
KATE: Because like, he's like, kind of like,
KATE: acoustically conservative, but...
KATE: that's what you need in a project like this, which is like,
KATE: finally, we actually need a little bit of conservatism in here.
KATE: Uh, like,
KATE: so, what they're planning on doing,
KATE: is actually what should have been done all along.
KATE: They're removing balconies,
KATE: thank Christ,
KATE: so you have that spaciousness above the highest-seated listener,
KATE: they're narrowing the walls,
KATE: they're doing--they're fixing the concert hall.
KATE: And you know what, and you know what?
KATE: There will be less seats.
KATE: Oh my God, there will be fewer seats,
KATE: in Avery Fisher Hall.
KATE: This is the truest--this is like, the longest time coming victory...
KATE: for like, the entirety of our jaded field,
KATE: like, ever.
KATE: Uh, Diamond and Schmitt is really known for doing kind of like,
KATE: what we call "modified shoebox hall".
KATE: Uh, which is like... a shoebox but like,
KATE: kind of like, slightly different in form... in other ways.
KATE: And so like, they, uh,
KATE: like, did, like, a project in 2015 in Montreal, that is like...
KATE: considered pretty good, but again, like, they also...
KATE: they're kind of like, the, like--
KATE: Scarborough and, like,
KATE: uh, Diamond Schmitt, who often work together,
KATE: are kind of like the Cyril Harrises of this generation of acousticians.
KATE: Uh, these are the kind of projects that they work on, and they're still, like,
KATE: having to deal with the bugbear of having a hall that is like,
KATE: classically-oriented in terms of like, acoustics, and like, architecture,
KATE: but have to also be modern but also who has to, like, make money,
KATE: so like, this is like, his cross to bear now.
KATE: Poor Paul Scarborough.
KATE: Uh, and he's a good acoustician in my opinion.
KATE: Uh, he's definitely capable,
KATE: it's definitely glad that they didn't just hire the priciest guy,
KATE: they're doing the cool model thing where they build a big...
KATE: square, uh--big scale model and like,
KATE: doing measurements inside, which always also makes takes related(?) pictures.
KATE: Uh, and so,
KATE: that's like, a really solid way to...
KATE: kind of like, guess how a concert hall is going to sound.
KATE: Um,
KATE: so like, actually, after all these years,
KATE: all these years, and like, billions of dollars, literally billions...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: ...you're not even counting for inflation,
KATE: like, finally Avery Fisher Hall, now David Geffen Hall,
KATE: having dodged...
KATE: the bullet of Thomas Heatherwick,
KATE: will now finally be unfucked.
JUSTIN: Hopefully.
KATE: Jesus Christ.
NOVA: Inshallah.
JUSTIN: Inshallah.
JUSTIN: This is like--
KATE: Inshallah.
JUSTIN: This is like a $550 million renovation, I think.
JUSTIN: To finally make the thing work.
[beer can snap]
KATE: Yeah, they gotta do a lot of stuff.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: They're basically gutting it, and redoing it,
KATE: the pictures I've seen look really nice, actually.
KATE: Uh, it looks like, honestly like, a pretty tastefully done project,
KATE: they're doing some nice cool modern...
KATE: diffusive surfaces, to get like, what you usually get off of like, dripping ornament,
KATE: Um,
KATE: yeah, it's, it's gonna be a nice project,
KATE: and I think it's gonna sound--
KATE: no matter what they do, it will probably sound better than what...
KATE: was previously happening.
KATE: Um,
KATE: but yeah, so.
KATE: That's...
KATE: That is the end of the long story of Philharmonic Hall, hopefully...
KATE: ...my goal is that, someone will send me out there to review it when it's done,
KATE: because, God, I really need closure on this.
KATE and JUSTIN: [laugh]
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: Like, please...
KATE: please, I wrote my master's thesis on this,
KATE: like, I had to like, dug in like, the archives of like,
KATE: acousticians,
KATE: I, like,
KATE: you know, made models, I did all the stuff, like, I--
KATE: this is like, this is like, my white whale as an academic, is like,
KATE: this... era of acoustics, which is like the worst ever era of acoustics.
KATE: Because like, failures are really fascinating to me,
KATE: things that suck are really fascinating to me,
KATE: that's why I, like, do McMansion Hell,
KATE: like,
KATE: ugly architecture is like my favorite kind,
KATE: I think, like,
KATE: yeah. And this, this had all of it. This had everything.
KATE: This had like, the failures of modernism, the failures of urban renewal,
KATE: had, like, the failures of like, scientific hubris,
KATE: it had, like, the fundamental...
KATE: conflict between "things that sound good" and "things that make money",
KATE: I mean,
KATE: it's like a wet dream of like--
KATE: it's like this... fascinating, like,
KATE: political, social, architectural, cultural phenomenon,
KATE: that...
KATE: like, really touches everything that, like, I love to learn about and love to write about.
KATE: And so, like,
KATE: for there to finally be justice for Philharmonic Hall would be great.
KATE: But also if it sucks again,
KATE: that will be top lol and I would never stop laughing and I would like,
JUSTIN: That would be very funny.
KATE: literally be like, that picture of Jeb.
KATE: That is, like, the meme.
KATE: Like,
KATE: just like,
KATE: yeah, like,
KATE: I will just like, my hands will be up and I'll be, like,
KATE: cackling like a little gremlin, 'cause it's like, yeah, this is like, what you ge--
KATE: this is...
KATE: If this project is fucked one more time,
KATE: Then that is just fundamental proof,
KATE: that the ghost of all those people that they displaced back in the 50s,
KATE: are truly haunting that space.
NOVA: [snorts]
JUSTIN: The conduct--the conductor has to turn around to the audience,
JUSTIN: and say, "please clap".
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: Jeb Memorial Concert Hall.
KATE: And the clapping is like, all fucked up because the acoustics are bad.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: Incredible.
JUSTIN: Alright.
JUSTIN: Well, what did we learn today?
NOVA: Acoustics...
LIAM: Don't displace poor people.
JUSTIN: Yes.
NOVA: Acoustics is still guesswork.
LIAM: Or black people, or both.
NOVA: And you should only use guesswork, at any time.
LIAM: Yes.
JUSTIN: Mm.
NOVA: Fire off a shotgun in there.
KATE: ...Don't displace poor people...
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Yeah, get--bring back the shotgun,
NOVA: Mm-mm.
JUSTIN: Bring back the shotgun.
KATE: like,
KATE: yeah, it's very...
KATE: acoustics are...
KATE: Okay, acousticians are really weird people.
KATE: Uh, obviously.
KATE: And like, when I was in graduate school, this,
KATE: this acoustician named Larry Kirkegaard came to visit us, uh,
KATE: he's like an old man now,
KATE: and he brought, uh, like a sla--like a little, like, marble sample,
KATE: like a marble countertop sample, and like, uh,
KATE: and a metal spoon,
KATE: and he made us, like, use, like, a, um,
KATE: like a special type of microphone, a parabolic microphone,
KATE: um, which is like, basically like, a little satellite dish,
KATE: with like, a microphone in it,
KATE: uh, and he would walk around,
KATE: like tapping the spoon on the marble,
KATE: and if you listened in the headphones of the parabolic microphone,
KATE: you could hear, like, the reflections come back, like,
KATE: [hisses]
KATE: It was like,
KATE: and I was like,
KATE: "these people are freaks, but they're my freaks," like.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: Uh...
KATE: I had a lot of fun doing architectural acoustics,
KATE: uh, and it was always, like, my back up plan, that if I somehow got like,
KATE: canceled, or whatever,
KATE: I could like, have,
KATE: go and like, retire into the world of...
KATE: doing spreadsheets for reverberation time, for a living.
KATE: Though, I'd have to probably refresh on my, uh, my skills here, after all these years.
KATE: But as... as a historian, I think,
KATE: I think acoustics is a fascinating subject and...
KATE: if I had to go back to school, which I probably won't,
KATE: I'd probably go, uh, study(?) history and get a PhD...
LIAM: Don't do it, Kate!
KATE: in the history of science, and...
KATE: continue this work, which is like...
KATE: ...if you can't tell, like, I actually...
KATE: ...I really love that stuff, like.
KATE: I think it's...
KATE: I'm...
KATE: It's, it was like, my first love, ever,
KATE: uh, as like, an architecture critic and...
KATE: uh, as like, an academic, and--which I'm not anymore, I'm like all kinds of things now, but,
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: I think the main point here, is like,
KATE: this is what you get when you displace poor people,
KATE: this is what you get when, like,
KATE: the Rockefellers try to do Cold War stuff and end up, like, taking massive Ls,
KATE: all around,
KATE: this is what you get when you try to fit,
KATE: uh, 19th century concert hall into a 20th century building that refuses to budge,
KATE: this is what you get when you think that, like,
KATE: science solves everything, which it doesn't,
KATE: uh,
KATE: yeah.
KATE: It has everything.
KATE: So good.
JUSTIN: My real question is, what is the Soviet equivalent of this?
KATE: Poor Leo Beranek.
JUSTIN: There's always a Soviet equivalent, there's gotta be--
NOVA: Mm.
NOVA: Oh, must be.
KATE: The thing is--
NOVA: The Soviet equivalent of this is made entirely out of, like, reinforced concrete,
KATE: I don't actually know.
LIAM: Yeah.
NOVA: weighs 1,500 tons...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: ...Yeah, the, it's...
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: ...it makes the uh, the People's Palace look like a shoebox.
NOVA: Oh yeah.
JUSTIN: It has a rocket on it, for some reason. Or afterburners.
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: Well, the thing about the Soviets, is that they reuse...
KATE: For them, like, it was very important to, like,
KATE: reuse the, uh, Gilded Age concert halls of, um...
KATE: ...of the Russian aristocracy,
KATE: and, like, make them palaces of the people,
KATE: than it was, to like, reclaim them, and like,
KATE: stake their claim there,
KATE: than it was to build new concert halls, which of course they did,
KATE: but, uh,
KATE: I actually don't know that much about Soviet concert halls because there's not a lot of, uh,
KATE: academic information on it published in anything other than Russian,
JUSTIN: Ah.
KATE: uh, which is actually why I was learning Russian at some point,
KATE: because I wanted to, like,
KATE: figure that out.
KATE: Uh...
KATE: I know a little bit more about, like, Yugoslavian concert halls,
KATE: uh, which,
KATE: which are kinda more like you were describing. [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Uh, they were like, big concrete modernist slabs.
KATE: Ditto Venezuela,
KATE: uh, and South America in general;
KATE: actually, South American concert hall, uh,
KATE: architectures are usually fascinating but we don't have time to go into that.
KATE: But, uh,
KATE: the comparison that I make, actually, is one to social democracy,
KATE: uh, for example, so, like, at the same time that all this was happening, like,
KATE: the Berlin Philharmonie was built.
KATE: And the Berlin Philharmonie was like, the...
KATE: ...equally as important as Philharmonic Hall in shaping the history of acoustics.
KATE: It's like, I think, probably the most...
KATE: influential concert hall of the 20th century.
KATE: But it was very different; like, it was built entirely with public funds,
KATE: it didn't displace anyone because Berlin had been bombed to shit...
KATE: and what they built on, it was like an empty field that was bombed to shit,
JUSTIN: [snorts] [laughs]
NOVA: Yea--you're welcome.
KATE: Uh, and so like, they didn't displace anyone, that was the war.
JUSTIN: Yeah... [laughs]
KATE: Uh...
KATE: They let their acoustician, Lothar Cremer,
KATE: uh, go basically absolutely ham and do like,
KATE: this weird vineyard-style thing; no one knew how it's gonna turn out,
KATE: and in fact, people didn't really like it at first,
KATE: but now it's considered to be one of the greatest concert halls of all time.
KATE: Uh, and every new concert hall is basically like a stepchild of,
KATE: of the Berlin Philharmonie; it's my favorite concert hall on earth.
KATE: Uh, and Hans Scharoun was the architect, and he was kind of, uh,
KATE: he was--he had very, like, social democratic views about...
KATE: how it should have been...
KATE: done, like it should've been an open plaza, open to the people, like,
KATE: it should, like...
KATE: ...the democracy of the concert hall was all in that, like,
KATE: everyone had great sightlines and great acoustics, like,
KATE: it was not separated by a hierarchy.
KATE: The only hierarchy in the Berlin Phil is... the cost of tickets.
KATE: But architecturally speaking,
KATE: everyone gets a good seat,
KATE: especially if you're a student, then the cost of tickets doesn't matter.
JUSTIN: Wow.
KATE: But,
LIAM: That's fucking rad.
KATE: yeah, so, this was a very different way of thinking...
KATE: than like, the--
KATE: uh, I mean, it's imperfect, from like, a political perspective,
KATE: and kind of like, idealistic,
KATE: but it was definitely an improvement over, like, the capitalist,
KATE: the pure capitalist, not social democratic,
KATE: not, not even--and I'm talking like, Euro social democracy,
KATE: I'm not even talking, like, old-school Rosa Luxembourg social democracy.
KATE: I'm talking like, basic, like, post-war welfare state shit.
KATE: And so--but it's much better, for example, than...
KATE: like, the American capitalist,
KATE: like, way of doing things, which is how we ended up in the Philharmonic Hall mess.
KATE: Uh, which were, like, seat prices, and like, seating, and selling tickets...
KATE: matter way more than anything else.
KATE: And so, on the one hand, you got--but you still, on both hands,
KATE: got concert halls that, like, improve the science of concert halls,
KATE: and--but it took actually quite a long time for them to understand...
KATE: why Philharmonic Hall--or why the Berlin Philharmonie worked.
KATE: It took them about like, 10 or 15 years of, uh--
KATE: and it was actually a New Zeal--a guy from New Zealand,
KATE: named Harold Marshall, who figured out that it had to do...
KATE: ...the terrace balcony send up, like, sending, like,
KATE: early--what they call "early lateral reflections",
KATE: which are... reflections... that, um,
KATE: provide clarity to sound,
KATE: So it's like, why if, if you have really strong early lateral reflections,
KATE: you have, uh, basically you can understand what's going on... in the music.
KATE: Uh, and then everything that comes--the late reflections,
KATE: uh, are what give the space its spaciousness, and so like,
KATE: uh, the volume of the space, combined with the terraces, like,
KATE: provided like, a really nice acoustics profile that...
KATE: kind of sent early lateral reflections...
KATE: to everyone, instead of just, like, to,
KATE: to people sat in, like, more favorable places.
KATE: Um...
KATE: and there's always still bad seats in every hall.
KATE: Ironically, the bad seats in the Berlin Phil...
KATE: are the ones that are now taken by rich people.
KATE: Because, they're like, the private boxes. [laughs]
JUSTIN: A-ha! [laughs]
NOVA: Good!
JUSTIN: Good.
KATE: Those are the worst seats in the hall.
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: Good.
KATE: ...So.
JUSTIN: Based acoustics.
KATE: Alright, I think that's it.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: That's--I think that's it, but that gives you...
KATE: an example of like, what other people did that was really good.
KATE: I stan.
JUSTIN: I...
JUSTIN: I definitely, I definitely,
JUSTIN: enjoy the theory of "build it now, figure out how it works 15 years later."
NOVA: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I like that they have a cure time of, like, 50 years.
LIAM: (?) [laughs]
NOVA: Yeah... meanwhile, meanwhile,
NOVA: the medieval masons building cathedrals are like,
NOVA: "Wow, 50 years? That's real fast."
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Well, well most things like, universally(?) have terrible acoustics.
NOVA: Also true.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: 'Cause they need another 500 years!
KATE: Well, they must have (?) for a different type of music.
JUSTIN: Well, this is true.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: Alright.
JUSTIN: Alright.
KATE: I think that's it.
JUSTIN: Well, we have a segment on this podcast called,
KATE: I gotta go to Slovenia now.
JUSTIN: Safety Third.
JUSTIN: Hold on, I'll make this quick.
♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪
JUSTIN: "Hello Justin, [Nova], yay Liam, and potential guest."
JUSTIN: That's, that's Kate.
NOVA: Lots of (?)
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Hello guest. Or... whatever.
LIAM: Hi Kate, and...
LIAM: hi, listener.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "I leave my name redacted and write to you today with my experience...
JUSTIN: "in narrowly becoming chunky marinara.
JUSTIN: "I worked for a company that installs and repairs ATMs,
JUSTIN: "along with safes and other various bank-related goodies.
JUSTIN: "Our company does tend to keep safety in mind,
JUSTIN: "and allows us to take safety into our own hands.
JUSTIN: "hence why I wear a bullet-resistant vest,
JUSTIN: "and carry the pride of Austria with me every day."
NOVA: Nice.
JUSTIN: Nice.
JUSTIN: "That being said, my CEO has a tendency to agreeing to...
JUSTIN: "some of the stupidest requests from banks that I have ever heard.
JUSTIN: "In this instance, a bank had built a new branch,
JUSTIN: "and had us moving everything between the two locations.
JUSTIN: "This eventually came down to moving the safety deposit boxes.
JUSTIN: "These are normally installed via crane as the bank vault is being built,
JUSTIN: "as even some of the smaller ones can weigh around 1,800 kilograms, that's 4,000 pounds.
JUSTIN: "These were not smaller ones, and weighed easily over 2,000 kilograms.
JUSTIN: "Given that they had already finished construction of the second bank,
JUSTIN: "the luxury of a crane was unavailable.
JUSTIN: "My manager rented some equipment...
JUSTIN: "that would allow us to get one safety deposit box off the others,
JUSTIN: "as they're stacked like bunk beds.
JUSTIN: "The equipment is designed to slip its arm in...
JUSTIN: "and elevate whatever the arms are under.
JUSTIN: "This equipment, which is shaped like a stick figure,"
JUSTIN: I assume it's one of those manual lift things, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: "was obviously never intended for the purpose we were applying it to.
JUSTIN: "I noted this upon reading the weight guide,
JUSTIN: "which was capped at 600 kilograms.
NOVA: [laughs] Oh boy...
JUSTIN: "My boss muttered, 'it's probably fine,' before cranking the device up.
JUSTIN: "We watched the steel spine bend like a strand of licorice,
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "all while the safety deposit box barely moved.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "Being(?) probably not fine, we pull the lifter out, and began brainstorming.
JUSTIN: "We eventually settled on the Jenga tower method.
JUSTIN: "See attached images."
NOVA: Oh no.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "We built the tower, and then used pry bars and good old-fashioned elbow grease...
JUSTIN: "to move the box onto the tower.
JUSTIN: "We then use carjacks to elevate one side at the time,
JUSTIN: "before pulling out the plank...
JUSTIN: "out of place,
JUSTIN: "and then carefully and slowly lowering the box at an angle."
NOVA: This is the most dangerous shit I've ever heard... [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "During this process, I ended up near the far wall of the vault,
JUSTIN: "which is comprised of lots of concrete and steel plating.
JUSTIN: "This put me in a position where if the box slipped,
JUSTIN: "it would pin me against the practically immovable wall."
NOVA: I... would simply not be in that position.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "Knowing the potential crushing hazard we worked slowly,
JUSTIN: "taking at least an hour and a half to get down to the ground,
JUSTIN: "where we could load it up and cart it up on a pallet jack.
JUSTIN: "I didn't notice at the time, but I'm happy my coworker documented the entire event.
JUSTIN: "If something had happened,
JUSTIN: "he could've delivered the video to my family to explain why...
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "my remains came packaged in a Campbell's Tomato Soup can."
LIAM: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: "Yeah, w-why does your camera film with a LiveLeak logo on the top left?"
LIAM: "Oooh, it is chunky marinara..."
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "Luckily, no bad events transpired,
JUSTIN: "though I doubt I will ever agree to such a task ever again.
JUSTIN: "And thankfully, I'm (?) still around to be able to listen to your podcast,
JUSTIN: "so thank you for what you do.
LIAM: You're welcome.
JUSTIN: "Cheers, [name redacted]."
LIAM: Thanks, [name redacted]!
JUSTIN: Yes, thank you, [name redacted].
♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪
JUSTIN: Alright our next episode is on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster--
LIAM: No it isn't!
NOVA: No it's not, no it's not.
[crosstalk]
NOVA: It's on the Boston Molasses.
LIAM: Molassacre.
NOVA: Flood.
JUSTIN: I don't believe you.
NOVA: Molassacre.
LIAM: Yeah.
LIAM: I gave you the book and everything, motherfucker.
JUSTIN: Aight, alright.
JUSTIN: Plugs! Commercials, before we go, please.
LIAM: [Nova], go! Then Liam.
NOVA: Uh, Trashfuture, Kill James Bond!, podcasts, listen to them, with your ears.
LIAM: I...
LIAM: Lions Led by Donkeys, and my new Philly sports podcast,
LIAM: uh, Ten Thousand Losses.
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
LIAM: Go read McMansionhell.
LIAM: Kate! Plug your thing.
LIAM: Kate.
KATE: Oh yeah. Go read mcmansionhell.com.
LIAM: There we go.
JUSTIN: Yes.
KATE: A blog, about ugly houses, that I also run.
LIAM: Also subscribe to her cycling newsletter.
KATE: Uh, yes. And...
KATE: Yes, derailleur.net, like the part of the bike.
KATE: Uh, it's very cool.
KATE: Uh, if you like cycling--even if you don't,
KATE: it's like, I don't know, sports story time.
KATE: Uh, I have to go to Slovenia now, actually, so.
JUSTIN: Oh, okay. Next...
LIAM: Bye Kate! [laughs]
JUSTIN: ...Next Tuesday, Kate and I are on Guest Crit,
JUSTIN: which is archi--an architecture criticism stream,
JUSTIN: which is, uh... run by the folks at Failed Architecture,
JUSTIN: Kevin and Michael, who we had on the podcast previously,
JUSTIN: it's gonna be a good time, we're gonna talk about trains,
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: so, yeah, uh, listen to that, we will put a link in the description there.
JUSTIN: Um, I think that's next Tuesday, the 26th of October,
JUSTIN: um, at 7PM Eastern Standard Time, I think?
JUSTIN: Alright.
LIAM: Bye everybody.
NOVA: Bye.
JUSTIN: Alright, that's it.
LIAM: I'm gonna do fucking lay down.
JUSTIN: Alright.
JUSTIN: "Pre-flight check has ended."
NOVA: [laughs]
NOVA: "Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,
NOVA: "uh, this is...
NOVA: "your fucking..."
NOVA: [laughs] "...podcast about...
NOVA: "...a concert hall?"
JUSTIN: Yes.
JUSTIN: H-hello and welcome, to Well There's Your Problem.
JUSTIN: It's a podcast about engineering disasters.
JUSTIN: With slides.
JUSTIN: Um, I'm Justin Roczniak, I'm the person who is talking right now.
JUSTIN: My pronouns are "he" and "him". O-okay, go.
NOVA: I am [November Kelly], I'm the person who's talking now,
NOVA: my pronouns are "she" and "her".
NOVA: Liam.
LIAM: [lethargic] Yaay Liam. Hi.
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
LIAM: I'm Liam Anderson.
LIAM: Hi.
NOVA: "Hi, I-I'm the colony of bacteria piloting Liam Anderson."
LIAM: I... [laughs]
LIAM: I-I'm the corpse of Liam Anderson. Yes, I am sick.
LIAM: Uh...
LIAM: My pronouns are "he", "him".
LIAM: I'm gonna spend most of this episode on mute,
LIAM: simply so you don't hear me sniffle every 30 seconds.
NOVA: Nice.
LIAM: Uh, I know people love their sniffles, but, uh...
LIAM: Yeah, I'm not gonna do that to you,
LIAM: I'm not gonna [November Kelly] your asses.
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: And we have a guest! Hello, guest!
JUSTIN: We--we have a guest.
KATE: Hello!
KATE: I'm Kate Wagner.
KATE: I...
JUSTIN: Yup.
KATE: An architecture critic.
KATE: My pro--
KATE: My pronouns are "she", "her".
JUSTIN: A-and you--you know a lot about architectural acoustics.
LIAM: Why is that, Kate?
LIAM: Tell us, t--tell us.
KATE: Yeah, I went to grad school.
LIAM: Ooh.
JUSTIN: Ow.
LIAM: Rookie mistake.
JUSTIN and NOVA: [laugh]
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: I dropped out of grad school.
KATE: I know, so true about grad school.
KATE: I was very close to doing that.
KATE: But I finished,
KATE: and I wrote my thesis on concert halls from mid-century,
KATE: uh...
KATE: so yeah, I know a lot about this subject...
NOVA: O-of which, this is one.
KATE: ...This is, this, this concert hall...
KATE: changed everything, in architectural acoustics, uh...
KATE: [laughs]
LIAM: I, I assume for the better, right?
KATE: I mean, that's like, kind of an understatement, it was--
KATE: Yes, for the better, I would say, like,
KATE: this was kind of like the Pruitt-Igoe,
KATE: or I guess, not even really like the, like--like,
KATE: you know what I mean? Like, this is like the thing that, like,
KATE: initiated an entire discourse...
KATE: that changed the field, that happened around the same time,
KATE: and Modernism was like, a subject in that field.
KATE: Even though like, with Pruitt-Igoe for example,
KATE: uh, like, there were factors involved,
KATE: that, for the failure that...
KATE: almost none of them were architectural actually...
KATE: faults like,
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: public funding, and racism,
KATE: and all kinds of things, but,
KATE: Avery Fisher Hall, Philharmonic Hall, David Geffen Hall...
KATE: you know, whatever it's called now, and...
JUSTIN: T-the hall we're looking at.
NOVA: H-have...
NOVA: Have fewer names!
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Just pick one.
NOVA: You sho--you shouldn't be allowed to like,
LIAM: (?) pick one.
NOVA: bribe an, uh, philharmonic, by being like,
NOVA: "Here's $50 million, put my name on the fucking thing."
KATE: Yeah, the thing is, is that like,
KATE: what we're talking about now, is, uh,
KATE: Philharmonic Hall, the first iteration of,
KATE: uh, of Avery Fisher Hall, which...
KATE: Which I note as "Avery Fisher Hall" because that's its name...
KATE: They changed the name right when I was in the middle of grad school, so,
KATE: very annoying, 'cause...
KATE: was writing a thesis, but, uh, like...
KATE: This is kind of like a Theseus' Ship situation, now, at this point.
KATE: 'Cause this hall has just been completely gutted,
KATE: and now it's being gutted for a third time.
KATE: ...This is like a cursed, truly a cursed project.
KATE: Uh, though hopefully...
KATE: The actual--Actually, the signs now point to it's going to be good, again,
KATE: which, it were--good for the first time, because...
KATE: the acoustic stuff that they're doing is...
KATE: like, what they should... should do.
KATE: Uh, 'cause we have, like, the science and stuff, now.
KATE: But anyways, like, I guess we should start from the beginning.
JUSTIN: Finally, 60 years later.
JUSTIN: Well, first--
KATE: It's really a nightmare, yeah, so...
KATE: Yes, go ahead.
JUSTIN: But, first, we have to do...
JUSTIN: The God Damn News.
♪[news jingle]♪
JUSTIN: Ok--okay, um...
JUSTIN: Uh, what y--
NOVA: It's The God Damn News.
JUSTIN: It's The God Damn News.
LIAM: God Damn News.
JUSTIN: Washington Metro fucked up again.
NOVA: Oh no.
LIAM: This train derailed three times, apparently?
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: It... yes. Uh...
KATE: What?
JUSTIN: Last week, the Blue line, um,
JUSTIN: there's a train between, I think, Rosslyn and...
JUSTIN: Arlington Ce--Cemetery,
JUSTIN: uh, derailed three times, the third time it didn't manage to re-rail itself,
JUSTIN: um...
JUSTIN: You know, which is a, a, definitely...
NOVA: It's the little train that could, and then could, and then couldn't.
JUSTIN: And then cou--and then couldn't.
LIAM: And then couldn't, and then really couldn't.
JUSTIN: So right now, Metro has every single...
JUSTIN: 7000-series train, um...
JUSTIN: out of service,
JUSTIN: because of axle defects that led to this derailment,
JUSTIN: as I understood it this morning,
JUSTIN: although I think there was just a press release saying it might have been something else,
JUSTIN: um...
JUSTIN: And that means, um, today,
JUSTIN: Monday,
JUSTIN: October 18th,
JUSTIN: The Metro has the capability to run...
JUSTIN: exactly 40 trains, all day.
NOVA: I-is that a lot? Is that a lot? That sounds like a lot.
LIAM: Oh no.
JUSTIN: We--
LIAM: You know, [Nova], I see how you would think that, but no.
NOVA: Bear in mind, the Glasgow Subway is the smallest,
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: tiny little model train thing in the world, so.
LIAM: True.
JUSTIN: ...They're running like, 30 minute headways today.
LIAM: ...Fuck.
KATE: Uh...
LIAM: ...That sucks... [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Is this the Red line? Is this the Red line?
NOVA and LIAM: The Blue line.
JUSTIN: The Blue line.
JUSTIN: Well, I think it's every line.
KATE: Oh, wow, for once it is not the Red line. [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]
LIAM: Red line, just so hot right now.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Get it? Because it catches on fire all the fucking time.
KATE: [laughs]
NOVA: That's why it's the "Red line".
JUSTIN: I-I--
LIAM: Yeah, the red is for flames.
JUSTIN: I'm constantly impressed by how badly...
JUSTIN: Metro can fuck something up, just--
LIAM: Dude, every day, it feels like.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: I-I used to, like, wish we had like, a big Metro-like system here in Philly,
JUSTIN: you know, 'cause it goes more places, and now I'm like, "No."
NOVA: Yeah, and you don't wish that anymore.
LIAM: No. Well.
JUSTIN: No, I don't wish that anymore.
JUSTIN: I wish--I'm glad we have the--a subway that works. [laughs]
LIAM: ...I just saw a New York Times article,
LIAM: that a woman was sexually assaulted on an L-train!
LIAM: And there were at least eight, uh...
LIAM: passengers in the car, and none of them did anything.
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
LIAM: So, your friendly reminder to intervene in that shit!
NOVA: Mm.
LIAM: It's gonna be fine.
LIAM: Worst case scenario, you get a stab wound.
NOVA: [snorts]
NOVA: Y-yeah, that's fine.
LIAM: Yeah, yeah.
NOVA: ...I'm not sure that's the approach I would take,
NOVA: when trying to like, exhort people to intervene and stuff, but yes.
LIAM: Yes. Don't--don't--
NOVA: W-worst case scenario, you die, but still.
LIAM: Don't be a good (?)
LIAM: Yeah, it's worth it, it's worth it to die.
LIAM: Be an adult.
NOVA: Yeah.
NOVA: Die with honor.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: Yeah, exactly.
NOVA: This has--this has been the "Die With Honor" podcast.
LIAM: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: And now we will all commit seppuku.
KATE: Nice.
NOVA: [laughs] That's right.
JUSTIN: Speaking of dying with honor...
KATE: [laughs]
♪[news jingle]♪
NOVA: God, that's so loud.
LIAM: Yeah, I know.
JUSTIN: Uh, Colin Powell, died of Covid.
LIAM: Sort of.
JUSTIN: Died with Covid. Yeah. [laughs]
LIAM: Yeah, he had cancer. We should point that out.
JUSTIN: He did have cancer.
NOVA: He was also 87 years old.
LIAM: Yeah. He was fully vaccinated, but there's been a lot of, like,
JUSTIN: I thought he was 84.
LIAM: "Oh, he was fully vaccinated" takes, it's like...
LIAM: Yes, but he also had cancer. Uh...
NOVA: Yeah.
LIAM: He was a war criminal who, uh...
NOVA: Many times, many times.
LIAM: (?)
NOVA: From, from Vietnam to Iraq, all the way through to Iraq again.
LIAM: Yeah.
LIAM: Yeah. We can only hope to have a,
LIAM: a record as horrific and bloody as Colin Powell.
NOVA: Guy who did the cover-up of the Mỹ Lai massacre.
JUSTIN: Yeah--
LIAM: Did he? I actually didn't know that.
JUSTIN: He's like, uh--
NOVA: Yeah! Yeah, yeah. That's how he, like, made his bones.
LIAM: Oh, okay.
NOVA: That was, like, his big deal in Vietnam,
NOVA: was he, uh, he helped cover that shit up.
JUSTIN: What's he--
KATE: Big oof.
NOVA: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: What's the equivalent of like, uh,
JUSTIN: throwing a coin into the,
JUSTIN: into the fountain in Rome,
JUSTIN: for like, doing war crimes in Iraq?
[laughter]
JUSTIN: To ensure you'll return to do more war crimes?
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
NOVA: Yeah.
NOVA: And I mean, like, again, the--the sanest person,
NOVA: in, in the Bush administration during the lead up to,
NOVA: uh, the war in Iraq too,
NOVA: which of course, did not stop him from going to the UN with a little fake vial of anthrax,
NOVA: to lie about it, so.
NOVA: Clearly his conscience didn't trouble him that much.
NOVA: And it killed... [mumbles]
NOVA: What? Like 2 million people?
JUSTIN: Eeeh, you know, what's 2 million people between friends?
LIAM: Yeah.
NOVA: Yeah, that's right.
LIAM: Don't worry, it's only human life.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: Anyway, rest in peace, bitch.
JUSTIN: Yep.
KATE: [laughs]
LIAM: I like "rest in peace, bitch", that...
NOVA: I was gonna say "rest in piss", but then I--
NOVA: I, like, stumbled, and I said the nice thing instead.
LIAM: Oh, well.
LIAM: Look at you.
NOVA: I know, I know, I'm really disappointed in myself.
LIAM: We are, we are a good-hearted pod--podcast.
NOVA: That's right.
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Pordcast!
LIAM: I'm sick.
NOVA: Gotta, gotta, sort of, uh, a storied legacy of public service, uh,
NOVA: you know, which also included things like, uh, invading Panama, um--
[dog barking]
KATE: Winston!
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Oooh, Winston. Hello, Winston.
KATE: Sorry.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Win--Winston doesn't like the idea of invading... Panama.
[dog barks]
LIAM: No, Winston...
NOVA: Nor should he.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Good boy, good boy.
KATE: Yeah, he doesn't.
KATE: Win--Winston!
NOVA: Well.
JUSTIN: Um.
KATE: Gotta, gotta shut up.
KATE: Otherwise you're gonna get on the other room.
NOVA: Hate--Hate to see it. Hate to see,
NOVA: uh, I hate to see Colin Powell die.
NOVA: But, you know.
LIAM: Do you though?
NOVA: No, no, not really.
NOVA: The thing is, though--
LIAM: (?) [laughs]
NOVA: I thought, I thought, I thought that like, Kissinger would go first,
NOVA: but then I also thought--
LIAM: No, Kissinger never goes first, that was your first mistake.
NOVA: That, that's the thing.
KATE: No.
NOVA: Yeah, that's the, that's the other thing, right,
KATE: No.
NOVA: because Kissinger is never gonna die,
NOVA: I figured if you just do enough evil shit in the service of the State Department,
NOVA: you--it like, insulates all of your vital organs from your many diseases,
NOVA: and you just don't die, so clearly,
LIAM: (?)
NOVA: Colin Powell should've started like, a third or fourth war.
LIAM: I mean, you're already, you're already playing with house money, right? Like...
KATE: [laughs] My God.
JUSTIN: Kissinger has just...
JUSTIN: did, did enough war crimes that he's gonna sorta evolve into a war crimes Mentat from Dune?
LIAM: Yeah, yeah.
NOVA: Exactly, exactly.
NOVA: Colin Powell is never gonna become the front of a sandworm, now.
KATE: [laughs]
LIAM: No.
NOVA: And that's, that's, that's a shame.
LIAM: That's, that's a shame.
LIAM: It's a, you know,
LIAM: it's a smirch on his legacy.
NOVA: Mmhm, mmhm.
LIAM: Which as we know, was previously untainted.
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: And good.
NOVA: That's right, that's right.
JUSTIN: Anyway, that was,
JUSTIN: The God Damn News.
♪[news jingle]♪
JUSTIN: O-okay.
JUSTIN: ...We're gonna start with a question, as usual.
LIAM: Oh god.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: "What is acoustics?"
NOVA: It's a thing that you use in Winamp,
NOVA: which, incidentally, thank you for the huge hit of nostalgia there.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: "Really whips the llama's ass!"
NOVA: "Downloading Winamp skins at 3AM, what you doin?"
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: No, I'm--I'm not doing Socratic method today, I'm actually throwing this to Kate. [laughs]
LIAM: Kate, our fearless leader!
KATE: "What is acoustics?" Uh...
NOVA: It's when the waves, the sound waves.
KATE: Yes.
KATE: Acoustics is the science of sounds.
KATE: Uh, it's the...
KATE: It includes a number of fields including physics,
KATE: like, physical acoustics which is, you know,
KATE: sound waves, that kind of thing,
KATE: how sound works.
KATE: Uh, like in the abstract, like,
KATE: mathematically, that kind of thing.
KATE: Includes like,
KATE: all kinds of fields like, geophysics, which is basically mostly used for drilling for oil,
KATE: uh, bioacoustics, which is used for, like,
KATE: hearing bats talk and stuff, it's very cool,
KATE: one of the cooler fields in acoustics...
KATE: Uh, see, these are all very hard sciences, right?
KATE: Uh, and then we've got architectural acoustics, which...
KATE: is a science in the same way that architecture is a science.
KATE: Which is to say it's not.
JUSTIN and LIAM: [laugh]
KATE: There is science behind architectural acoustics,
KATE: and there's engineering, you could be an acoustical engineer, uh, and,
KATE: that means also doing things like making speakers,
KATE: which I used to do, at a company,
KATE: where I was an intern, back in the day,
KATE: and, um, like,
KATE: making recordings, like all kinds of... applied acoustics, is what we would say.
KATE: But, like, architectural acoustics is funny, because,
KATE: to give you an example of where the science is,
KATE: um...
KATE: ...We still need a supercomputer at Rensselaer,
KATE: to model how sound,
KATE: to model visually, sound as a wave, in a room,
KATE: in a simple cube, actually,
KATE: uh, to, to do that, that visual modeling.
KATE: So, if anyone tells you that, like, "we can model, and we will know what our room will sound like before it's built,"
KATE: they're lying.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: The truth of the matter is, is that,
KATE: We can make very educated guesses about how sound...
KATE: ...a room will sound.
KATE: Uh, and like, the more complex the room, the less predictable it is.
KATE: This is the case with like, the (?) for example,
KATE: which is very famous, very expensive,
KATE: and is a really, really weird room,
KATE: because they put so much diffusion in there, to break up sound, that like,
KATE: certain things just sound weird in there.
KATE: Uh, whether or not people will like it,
KATE: you know, 50 years from now, we'll have to see.
KATE: Sometimes people like a hall when it opens,
KATE: and think it's crap 50 years from now.
KATE: It takes about 50 years for a hall's reputation to, uh,
KATE: to really be solidified.
KATE: But sometimes,
KATE: uh, there's, there's always been these stories of,
KATE: of people trusting the science too much,
KATE: uh, and...
KATE: to the point where...
KATE: bad things happen.
KATE: And to be fair, like, the science has come a long way,
KATE: but most of that science isn't "modeling" so much as it is "measurement";
KATE: We've become really good at...
KATE: taking microphones and speakers into concert halls and being able to measure...
KATE: ...and like, to some extent, model,
KATE: how sound works in a space.
KATE: However...
KATE: ...for this reason, when...
KATE: ...acousticians do a really big concert hall project, for example,
KATE: they'll do things like, build like...
KATE: ...a 1-to-4 scale model or something, like,
KATE: a scale model that is like the size of a small room,
KATE: with like--
KATE: and then they'll run measurements in that model;
KATE: that's like, one of the safest ways to model how a room will sound,
KATE: because, the truth of the matter is is that the computer modeling,
KATE: and things like that, it just isn't there.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Uh, and it won't be there probably for, uh...
KATE: several years. So...
KATE: We can visually model existing rooms, and we're really good at measuring them, and...
KATE: ...we've really come a long way in understanding how sound works in rooms;
KATE: not only, like, architecturally,
KATE: but like, you know, things like, um, like,
KATE: psychocoustically, uh...
KATE: Like how, things like--
NOVA: Yeah, "psychoacoustically" is when you play the scary, like, knife noises from the movie.
JUSTIN: Mm.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: You just play the Psycho soundtrack in full blast...
KATE: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
KATE: But, like, the role that like, the ear, the human ear plays in acoustics,
KATE: uh, and... their--but and also the auditory nerve.
KATE: So, it's a really interesting, it's a really interesting field, but like, a lot of...
KATE: a lot of science, a lot of, uh, or like a lot of applied science, like,
KATE: you know, architectural acoustics is kinda mostly design, um,
KATE: and the "science" bit of it is, there's engineering,
KATE: and it's like, very serious engineering, like, I don't wanna, like, give the impression that it's not,
KATE: but, the...
KATE: But it's not "engineering" in the way that like, people, like,
KATE: engineer, like, jet engines or something. Like,
KATE: there's a lot of...
KATE: There's a lot of things that are...
KATE: difficult to predict and model and measure.
KATE: Uh, and so...
KATE: The truth of the matter is, is that we still won't know what a room will sound like until that room is built,
KATE: and there's still--which is why the field relies so heavily on precedent.
KATE: Um, things that have worked,
KATE: like, will continue to work.
KATE: Which is why, for the last, like, 10 years, like, every concert hall,
KATE: major concert hall that's been built, has been built sort of in the style of like, Walt Disney Concert Hall by...
KATE: ...by Frank Gehry in 2003.
KATE: It was finished in 2003; it's really a 90s concert hall.
KATE: Um, but, uh,
KATE: it's really that, that vineyard-style hall, because we know that works, it produces like,
KATE: really nice architecture, it's like, a satisfying, like, acoustic environment...
KATE: Um...
KATE: People feel, like, enveloped by the sound, like...
KATE: We've been studying how vineyard hall works--
KATE: vineyard-style halls or semi-vineyard-style halls work since the 60s, and so we can produce...
KATE: relatively, um,
KATE: accurately, like, a hall that will sound good.
KATE: But when you start to experi--see, this is like, the,
KATE: this is the Catch-22, right, like,
KATE: when you want to experiment, you wanna do something different,
KATE: you com--it comes with the risk of things going wrong.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Um, and,
KATE: so, but,
KATE: but, like, this brings us to, to Philharmonic Hall, like,
KATE: Philharmonic Hall, was, like, a massive, embarrassing failure for the,
KATE: for the science of acoustics, like,
KATE: it's probably its biggest failure in the history of its...
KATE: of its time since--it's not an, it's not an old field; acoustics...
KATE: Like, there have been, like,
KATE: things like, you know, like, organ...
KATE: Organ builders and stuff, in like medieval ages or whatever, but like,
KATE: the actual science of architectural acoustics...
KATE: didn't exist until the beginning of the 20th century,
KATE: with the, um, with the work of...
KATE: Harvard physicist, uh, Wallace Sabine,
KATE: and Wallace Sabine's a really interesting guy, because he...
KATE: basically was like a...
KATE: like, an adjunct professor who, like, got assigned, like,
KATE: the shittiest room imaginable, to like, do a lecture in,
KATE: and he was like, so ups--he was so pissed at this room, which was like, an art gallery in Harvard.
KATE: Was so shitty,
KATE: that like, he decided to invent an entirely new field of science,
KATE: to fix it.
NOVA: I mean, that's the best possible reason to do that.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: That's fucking dope.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: Yeah.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: ...His working conditions were bad, and so he was like,
KATE: "You know what, we gotta figure this out."
KATE: So he went across the street to like, the church, some church,
KATE: and brought back a bunch of cushions from the pews,
KATE: and he would like, basically take like, this crude measurements of like,
KATE: what would happen, like, whenever he added a new cushion to the...
KATE: ...like, delay, or the, the reverberation of the, of the sound,
KATE: ...of an impulse, which in this case was...
KATE: him blowing through a tube,
KATE: uh, or him blowing through an organ pipe.
KATE: Um...
KATE: And so, it's so funny because like, he just like, created...
KATE: the math behind what's known as like, the...
KATE: the reverberation equation or the Sabine equation,
KATE: reverberation time, and by doing that, by quantifying... that,
KATE: he was able to--he basically found the,
KATE: the beginning of architectural acoustics; but it's because his room sucked.
KATE: Like, he was really just like--
KATE: if his labor conditions were better,
KATE: this wouldn't have--someone else would've done it.
KATE: And it wouldn't have been as good of a story.
KATE: But, anyways, Philharmonic Hall...
KATE: really fascinating, uh... let's get to it, uh, so...
KATE: This is a great story, because it has--it also touch--
KATE: touches on like...
KATE: all the other bad things that were happening with modernism, and like, urban renewal, and,
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: all that.
JUSTIN: Well, I thought a, I thought a fun place to start would be, you know, sorta,
JUSTIN: some of the, some of the history of architectural acoustics before...
JUSTIN: before there was any science behind it.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, just this, this famous, uh,
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: Or the, this quote here from, uh, Charles Garnier,
JUSTIN: who did, you know, the Paris Opera,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: he said, "I gave myself pains to master this bizarre science of acoustics,
JUSTIN: "but nowhere did I find a positive rule to guide me,
JUSTIN: "on the contrary, nothing but contradictory statements.
JUSTIN: "I must explain that I adapted no principle, that my plan has been based on no theory,
JUSTIN: "and I leave success or failure to chance alone.
NOVA: Hell yes, dude.
JUSTIN: "Like an acr--" [laughs]
LIAM: [laughs]
KATE: That's--
JUSTIN: "Like an acrobat who closes his eyes and clings to the ropes of an ascending balloon."
KATE: Ride or die.
NOVA: Fuck around, and apparently, find out.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Fuck.
JUSTIN: And, and that's, that's the uh, that's the theory behind the uh,
KATE: So true.
JUSTIN: the main auditorium at the Paris Opera.
JUSTIN: Um, is very (?)
NOVA: "People seem to like it, I guess."
LIAM: Yeah.
JUSTIN: (?), F-"Fuck it, we'll do it live." [laughs]
NOVA: Mm.
LIAM: I like that.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I appreciate that.
KATE: Yeah, yeah. Truly.
KATE: It's funny because--Opera is interesting,
KATE: because opera houses were shaped architecturally more by like, social strata,
KATE: than they were acoustics.
KATE: Like, it was all about like, the rich people being seen, and like,
KATE: the poors not being seen.
KATE: So, that had, like, architectural consequences.
KATE: Uh, and that--that's always been the case throughout the history of performing arts spaces.
KATE: Like, for example, like, before, before--
KATE: ...When like, for example, in classical music, and, was...
KATE: Only a figment of the aristocracy,
KATE: uh, and you had, like, court composers and all of this, like, music rooms were...
KATE: designed for like, small pe--small numbers of people, and like,
KATE: uh, were really like social institutions more than they were places for like, this,
KATE: they had to sound good,
KATE: and up until, like, the 19th century, when people listen to classical music,
KATE: they were also just like, walking around, like talking,
KATE: fucking off, basically, faffing about,
KATE: And like, the, the idea of the like the silent reverent concert hall...
KATE: is like actually a really bourgeois idea that came from...
KATE: listening practices in the 19th century,
KATE: when the public concert became a thing,
KATE: and like, you had...
KATE: ...like, the emergence of like, the bourgeoise, and bourgeois culture,
KATE: and so, like, the bourgeoise had to do--
KATE: were often finding things...
KATE: that made them look like they were, like...
KATE: ...like, aristocratic, and so, things like stratified seating...
KATE: in public concert halls, based on concert ticket prices,
KATE: um, things like, uh, the...
KATE: ...the obsession with silence,
KATE: and, like, with like, this kind of like, etiquette of the concert hall, which like,
KATE: actual... aristocrats, like, never really cared about.
KATE: Uh, it's actually just like, bourgeois people and their obsession with quiet.
KATE: Uh, and, yeah. It's a really--all of like,
KATE: what we know about, like, classical music concert-going culture was basically invented by like,
KATE: upper middle-class people in the 19th century.
KATE: And so, because of this, like,
KATE: because of all these different social factors,
KATE: concert hall design, uh, was really kind of based on...
KATE: the current architectural practices of the time, which were neoclassical in style,
KATE: uh, so like, temple-like buildings,
KATE: um, like, for example, the Musikverein in Vienna,
KATE: uh, or any kind of 19th century concert hall--the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
KATE: These are all very neoclassical,
KATE: uh, high, uh, romantic era,
KATE: neoclassical buildings.
KATE: And they...
KATE: ...just so happened, actually, that the...
KATE: The combined taste for things that look like temples,
KATE: and the current taste for--like, a bunch of, like, overdone,
KATE: weepy architectural ornament from like, all different periods of like the neo--of like, the classical era,
KATE: uh, mostly Greek, but some Roman,
KATE: and also, like, the predilection for stratified seating,
KATE: uh, so that rich people could show off,
KATE: and also, the current practices of building ventilation,
KATE: which required clerestory windows at the highest...
KATE: level of the concert hall so they can, like, let out all, like, the farts and smoke and stuff,
KATE: all of these things combined,
KATE: accidentally made a really fucking good concert hall, actually.
KATE: Uh, like the shoe--19th century shoebox-style concert halls are some of the best in the world,
KATE: and they basically did it, not because of like, the science of architectural acoustics, which didn't exist yet,
KATE: but because of a combination--this combination of like, social factors,
KATE: architectural factors,
KATE: uh, like, and engineering factors, uh, like, you know--
NOVA: So, so what you're saying is,
NOVA: so, so, the like--
NOVA: sort of, 19th century class system is scientifically the best way to organize a concert hall by accident?
LIAM: Yes.
JUSTIN: Yeah... [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: Exactly. That was exactly kind of how it happened.
KATE: Uh, but the--it's funny 'cause like, the actual--
KATE: the ventilation stuff, because they didn't yet--they had gas lamps at the time,
KATE: that was actually very important too in why, um,
KATE: concert halls, uh, sound so well.
KATE: It's, uh, it's, it's really fascinating to me, um.
KATE: Because, like, if they didn't have those...
KATE: that--that ventilation at the top, that--
KATE: like, they have a bunch of basically empty space above the highest-seated listener,
KATE: that, like, led--that allowed like...
KATE: because the heat from the chandeliers was really hot, so no one would want to sit up there,
KATE: uh, like, you had to, like, have these windows that you could open to ventilate the space,
KATE: and they had to be...
KATE: certifiably big enough to do that,
KATE: what it ended up doing was creating like, this,
KATE: like, what we call "warmth" in a concert hall.
KATE: Because you have space above the highest-seated listener, it creates spaciousness.
KATE: ...The sensation of being enveloped in sound.
KATE: Um, like, which we usually, like, in lay--like,
KATE: "warmth" is actually has more to do with like, bass response,
KATE: but like, it is...
KATE: ...as like, a vibe, I guess, less than like, a technical term;
KATE: that spaciousness is what makes those concert halls so great, because it's just actually the right amount of people in the hall,
KATE: the right amount of spaciousness,
KATE: the right... use of materials in a way that... makes it, like, reverberant,
KATE: and like, really like, lovely but not, like, too wet,
KATE: not too echo-y.
KATE: Uh, so, it's actually really fascinating to me personally,
KATE: how like, a bunch of shit just came together in a way that really works.
KATE: I think it's a really great metaphor for the field as a whole.
NOVA: Asking, asking if my concert hall is creepy or wet.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Mm.
KATE: Yeah, so true.
KATE: So true about "wet", not a great word.
KATE: But like, it is, like, as opposed to "dry", which is like, not reverberant at all.
JUSTIN: Wet.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: S-sound is very--
NOVA: [laughs] "Our concert hall is too wet," yes.
JUSTIN: It was very moist.
NOVA: Ooooh.
LIAM: Ben Shapiro's wife.
KATE: No.
NOVA: "Yeah, this concert hall is just dripping."
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Well, I'm pointy as hell.
KATE: It is dripping.
NOVA: Hey, Justin, how'd y--how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
JUSTIN: How'd--how do you get to Carneg--
LIAM: Practice.
JUSTIN: Oh.
LIAM: One day, we'll play Carnegie Hall, and they'll boo us offstage.
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
NOVA: Yeah, we'll do the Boston Molasses Flood at Carnegie Hall.
LIAM: "So, uh, Yankees suck, right?" As I'm being pelted with cans.
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: They're probably more into like, some kinda other...
JUSTIN: ...would you go up there and do a shittalk squash, or something.
NOVA: Mmh, yeah.
KATE: [laughs]
NOVA: "Yo, you've heard about racquet ball?"
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I say "Columbia is the seventh best school in the Ivy League," 10,000 times until I'm...
LIAM: escorted offstage, with one of those giant hooks.
[laughter]
KATE: That's funny.
LIAM: Thank you. Thank you.
KATE: Alright.
JUSTIN: This is--
LIAM: I'm dying.
NOVA: Yeah, try, try not to, try not to go out like Colin Powell.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: This is sorta, this is sorta where our story starts, right.
JUSTIN: Um,
JUSTIN: you know, it's old-fashioned, big auditorium, good acoustics,
JUSTIN: is the home of the New York City Philharmonic,
JUSTIN: um, Philharmonic Orchestra,
JUSTIN: and the 50s, everyone was like, "That is (?) old-fashioned thing,
JUSTIN: "let's," uh, and this owner wanted to redevelop it, so they didn't renew the lease of the Philharmonic, right?
NOVA: Mm.
NOVA: What is a Philharmonic, anyway?
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: It's just a symphony.
LIAM: (?), they love harmony.
KATE: Orchestra.
JUSTIN: Orchestra.
NOVA: Mm.
NOVA: It's an orchestra that loves harmony, okay, got you.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: So, it--Carnegie Hall actually, like, acoustically speaking, is not that great,
KATE: uh, basically like, at the--like--
KATE: Sabine actually, was a really great acoustician,
KATE: even though he was the first acoustician.
KATE: And he knew, for ex--he worked, for example, on Boston Symphony Hall, which is one of the greatest symphony halls ever.
KATE: And he--'cause he understood, like, not completely, but like,
KATE: to some extent, like,
KATE: the role--
KATE: like, designing... like, a shoebox-style hall,
KATE: was really, like, a good idea,
KATE: um, and like, he, he was like, very intent on,
KATE: trying to figure out, like, why, and--but he knew, based on precedent,
KATE: that, that that style of hall worked.
KATE: Uh, but, at the same time, like,
KATE: Sabine went off, got drafted into World War I and got shot and died and like--at like, the age of 30.
NOVA: Oh man.
JUSTIN: Oh. Well.
KATE: So, like, the world of acoustics changed, like, quite a bit, after that, yeah.
KATE: So, uh, he was like, kind of like,
KATE: a bit of a, a hero, uh, in, in acoustics, because he was actually just right about acoustics,
KATE: before... Uh, but anyway, so like, the people took his science,
KATE: and decided to like, apply it in kind of like, the, like, the first early crude ways.
KATE: Um,
KATE: and so, like, again, like, you have a mod--
KATE: this is again, a social change you have...
KATE: differences in like, the concert-going public,
KATE: more and more people, not just bourgeois people could--were going to concerts...
KATE: at the beginning of the 20th century, and so you had to just...
KATE: the things like sightlines become way, way more important than for ex--
KATE: and selling tickets,
KATE: than like, um,
KATE: acoustics or whatever, and then also like, changes in architecture,
KATE: the Beaux-Arts style was more conducive to like, an auditorium of the size,
KATE: anyway, it's the same pattern that happens over and over again.
KATE: But the truth is is that the New York Philharmonic had like, kinda outgrown...
KATE: Carnegie Hall,
KATE: um,
KATE: and,
KATE: they wanted something new, and,
KATE: just so happens that like, urban renewal was happening... [laughs]
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: And...
KATE: they could just, "Yeah, let's go into the..."
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: So this is, this is a fun one.
JUSTIN: 'Cause we're looking at the, uh--
NOVA: Oh God, what did they bulldoze.
JUSTIN: The failure, you know, the best-laid plans of Federal Housing legislation happened here.
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: You know, in 1937, there was the Wagner-Steagall Act,
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: right, provides federal, uh, subsidies to housing authorities,
JUSTIN: to replace substandard housing with new public housing,
JUSTIN: you know, there's a specific stipulation in there,
JUSTIN: that you replace it one-for-one,
JUSTIN: you can't actually build more housing than existed there before,
JUSTIN: you gotta demolish to build,
JUSTIN: because they thought it would, uh...
JUSTIN: ...adversely affect the housing market,
JUSTIN: if, uh,
JUSTIN: you build lots of new public housing, right.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, in the--
NOVA: Yeah, for the better.
JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly, for the better, obviously, but,
JUSTIN: you know, that, we're--
JUSTIN: you know, this is, this is built with the sympath--
LIAM: We're a profoundly dumb country.
JUSTIN: this legislation has lots of sympathies for landlords, you know. Uh...
JUSTIN: Um, and then, what, what exactly is "substandard housing"...
JUSTIN: That's left as an exercise to the housing authority.
JUSTIN: Um, now, this is,
JUSTIN: this power is expanded in 1949 with Taft-Ellender-Wagner,
JUSTIN: right, this provides cities with a whole big pot of cash for something called "slum clearance" under, uh,
JUSTIN: under Title I, right, which basically,
JUSTIN: to fund any project, that replaces "substandard housing" with anything, right.
NOVA: Like, a concert hall.
JUSTIN: Like a concert hall.
JUSTIN: Could be a park.
JUSTIN: Could even be middle-income or even luxury housing.
JUSTIN: There's another... There's Title III of that same Act,
JUSTIN: authorized a bunch of funding for public housing, but a lot of planners and politicians had,
JUSTIN: you know, other ideas, right.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: And, one of those guys was, of course Robert Moses.
NOVA: Friend of the show.
JUSTIN: Um--
JUSTIN: Friend of the show, Robert Moses.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Uh, he won't come on, for some reason. I don't know. [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: (?) Zoom his corpse, we'll be like, "Robert,
LIAM: "tel--tell me about the bridges."
JUSTIN: Doing a Cadaver Synod but with, uh,
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: on a pod--in podcast form.
NOVA: It's about time.
NOVA: He had it coming.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: So he's famous for, you know, the roads and the highways and the bridges,
JUSTIN: he was also chairman to the mayor's committee on slum clearance,
JUSTIN: and used this Title I funds,
JUSTIN: extensively for all kinds of things which were not low-income housing, right.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, a lot of times, they would just go in,
JUSTIN: you'd condemn houses and tenements,
JUSTIN: you demolish them,
JUSTIN: then you hand off the land to private developers to build modern,
JUSTIN: you know, apartment towers, right.
JUSTIN: And, determining what was a "slum" was highly racialized
JUSTIN: and the program was just an engine of mass displacement and infliction of misery, right.
NOVA: Hmm.
JUSTIN: And, in the early 50s, when this program was really in full swing,
JUSTIN: Moses was struck by a series of coincidences, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Fordham University wanted a new campus,
JUSTIN: Metropolitan Opera, thought it had inadequate facilities--
[ice cream truck noises]
NOVA: Literally have a fucking ice cream truck driving down outside my window...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: I don't know if my microphone is gonna pick up that up, but if so,
NOVA: please enjoy!
JUSTIN: ...I'm getting a little bit of ice cream truck, yeah.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Ooh, I would (?) over some ice cream right now.
LIAM: It wouldn't help me, but--yeah.
JUSTIN: So yeah, the... the Metropolitan Opera had... inadequate facilities, the Philharmonic was...
JUSTIN: being kicked out of... Carnegie Hall, which they kinda wanted to leave anyway,
JUSTIN: uh, and the cogs started turning in Moses' head and he realized,
JUSTIN: the solution here,
JUSTIN: was to build an incredible new cultural center with facilities for the opera,
JUSTIN: the Philharmonic, a new Fordham campus, and other cultural facilities, right.
JUSTIN: Including, the, uh, LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts,
JUSTIN: uh, relocated Juilliard School,
JUSTIN: uh, new home for the New York Ballet, and a whole bunch of other cultural accoutrement, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: And um,
JUSTIN: also,
JUSTIN: 4,400 apartments.
JUSTIN: And 400 of those apartments would actually be low-income. Incredible, right.
NOVA: I mean... God, it's fucking--
NOVA: It's so grim that it's like...
NOVA: better than today's.
JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]
JUSTIN: Well, well, well, well, well hold on a second.
JUSTIN: Um,
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Now, this plan was set in motion in 1957, it was, uh,
JUSTIN: gonna be located in a neighborhood called San Juan Hill, right.
JUSTIN: Uh, John D. Rockefeller III,
JUSTIN: started fundraising for the whole shebang, and soon it was cleared, the Lincoln Center was happening.
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Here it is in 1924-ish, San Juan Hill, which also was,
JUSTIN: was also known as Lincoln Square at the time;
JUSTIN: the people who lived there called it "San Juan Hill",
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: but, Lincoln Square was the official name of the neighborhood.
NOVA: ...Out of curiosity, what was the sort of like, uh, demographic of San Juan Hill?
JUSTIN: I'm glad you asked! It was, uh,
JUSTIN: New York City's most heavily-populated African-American community.
LIAM: 'Course it fucking was(?).
JUSTIN: Also a lot of Carribean-Americans there, right.
LIAM: Aah.
JUSTIN: Um,
LIAM: It's crazy how this always seems to happen along racial lines.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Surely just a coincidence.
KATE: [laughs]
NOVA: Just a bunch of weird coincidences.
LIAM: Just a bunch of weird coincidences.
JUSTIN: You can see, uh, you can see,
JUSTIN: you got Columbus Circle down here,
JUSTIN: here's Central Park,
JUSTIN: you got the New York Central West Side Yards over here,
JUSTIN: this is now, a bunch of Trump Towers,
JUSTIN: um,
NOVA: Great.
JUSTIN: although, I think they take the--they took the "Trump" name off most of them.
JUSTIN: Right here, this area that's been pre-highlighted in red,
JUSTIN: this is where the Lincoln Center was gonna go.
JUSTIN: But in addition to that, they demolished several blocks down here for Fordham,
JUSTIN: they demolished some stuff over here, for housing,
JUSTIN: I think all the way up... to here,
JUSTIN: was various other crap, right.
NOVA: [snorts]
JUSTIN: So they, they took out a lot.
JUSTIN: And so, the city just condemns this whole neighborhood,
JUSTIN: with the exception of one building,
JUSTIN: which they decided to purchase for well above market price.
LIAM: That's funny how that works, too.
JUSTIN: Because it was owned by Robert F. Kennedy.
LIAM: ...Ooh, okay.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: LMAO, I didn't actually know about that part.
JUSTIN: I was--
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: So, now, for the cultural center and the 4,400 apartments,
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: 7,700 people and 800 businesses were displaced.
JUSTIN: Um, most of them wound up moving to Harlem,
JUSTIN: but they did have the right to compete over the 400 low-income apartments.
NOVA: Oh, I'm sure that was conducted in a perfectly, like, sort of, orderly way.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah, I don't think, I don't think anyone really moved back into the project area, there's no point.
JUSTIN: You know, especially, since not only were you displaced,
JUSTIN: but the place you worked was displaced.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: So yeah, this is, uh, this is your standard urban renewal here. [laughs]
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: Well, it's renewed.
KATE: Yep.
JUSTIN: It's renewed.
KATE: Okay, can I also add, like, one little thing,
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: is which is that,
KATE: there's also like, a Cold War element to this,
KATE: where there was, like, lots of internal talks amongst, like, Rockefeller and donors,
KATE: about like, creating like, a palace for music, to show, like, to Soviet Union,
KATE: that America was really good and cared about the arts.
KATE: And it's very funny to me that like, they did this by, like,
KATE: displacing, like, the working class.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Which, like, I'm sure the Soviet Union would have taken notice of.
JUSTIN: Of course.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Well, it was interesting 'cause we're actually, like--
KATE: Just an L, all the way around.
JUSTIN: It's big L.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: The "L" stands for "Lincoln".
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: So there were big, you know, they,
JUSTIN: they demolished all these tenements, right,
JUSTIN: there's big, big protest about this, actually,
JUSTIN: you see folks protesting here,
JUSTIN: uh, holding signs like, "shelter before culture",
JUSTIN: you know, "humane progress means decent relocation",
JUSTIN: uh, you know, "$47.50 a room, progress for whom?"
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: That's an interesting one.
NOVA: And grammatical, too.
JUSTIN: Yes.
JUSTIN: Um, you know, they...
JUSTIN: ...a bunch of groups filed lawsuits to get the project stopped,
JUSTIN: you know, and, uh, these are treated with contempt and, you know, thrown out--
JUSTIN: Title I slum clearance means you can do anything, right,
JUSTIN: um, and they start construction on what was to be called, um,
JUSTIN: Philharmonic Hall, right.
JUSTIN: Um, and,
JUSTIN: being an auditorium, it required some special considerations during construction.
JUSTIN: Uh, they had a special architect,
JUSTIN: uh, Max Abramovitz, right,
JUSTIN: and a special consultant firm that did acoustics.
JUSTIN: Bolt Beranek and Newman.
JUSTIN: Um,
JUSTIN: which apparently is now part of Raytheon.
NOVA: Huh.
LIAM: Everything eventually is just(?) part of Raytheon.
JUSTIN: Um, they--
KATE: Yeah, funny how that works.
JUSTIN: They have the second oldest extant domain name,
JUSTIN: bbn.com, registered April 24th, 1985.
NOVA: Huh.
LIAM: Thank you, thank you Rocz. [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yes. It's a fun fact.
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: That actually is a fun fact.
KATE: There's a lot of fun facts about Bolt Beranek and... yeah.
LIAM: I don't think it's a fun fact when it comes back to Raytheon.
KATE: So--
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: ...What I said, that there's...
KATE: So Bolt Beranek and Newman was, uh, one of the first modern acoustics firms.
KATE: Um, and they, so...
KATE: it's funny, the reason wh--they got in--first of all, they got into the internet really early,
KATE: um, and second of all, like,
KATE: they also, the reason why they became Raytheon is because,
KATE: basically, Bolt Beranek and Newman finance their, like, high-culture stuff, for,
KATE: uh, acoustics, by also doing acoustical work...
KATE: such as like, you know, measurements for--developing measurement centers for noise,
KATE: like, working with aircrafts, all kinds of other things that was--
KATE: that helped fund the war machine,
NOVA: Mm, lots of (?) stuff.
KATE: uh, and make it, make it more efficient.
KATE: This...
KATE: This was a...
KATE: Very much, like, General Dynamics vibes, you know what I mean.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: But like, the cultural stuff they did,
KATE: was almost like, kind of on the side, but it was like, the, um,
KATE: it was the...
KATE: big project of Leo Beranek, who was the second "B" in "BBN".
KATE: Bolt and Newman were more into the other stuff.
KATE: Anyways, but,
KATE: before, like, all of the Cold War--
KATE: yeah, I guess, like, there's always a Cold War angle--
KATE: but, Leo Beranek is kind of, is a fascinating guy.
KATE: Um, he died like, my second year of grad school, so I never got to talk to him, which, truly devastating,
KATE: uh, but he's basically considered the father of...
KATE: like, modernist acoustics, one would say, but he was also a great historian of concert halls.
KATE: And he's, he was very intent on,
KATE: uh, and my own work in, in acoustics as an academic follows in this tradition,
KATE: pretty much almost exactly.
KATE: He's very big on going around the world and cataloging,
KATE: uh, and measuring, and understanding different concert halls.
KATE: His first, uh, book, Music, Acoustics, and Architecture was published in 1962,
KATE: and it basically features like, about like, a hundred concert halls, um,
KATE: that, uh, like, he went around and did, like,
KATE: acoustics measurements in, and studied, and like, provides like, the plans and sections, and like, the history, it's actually--
KATE: all of his books are really lovely.
KATE: Um, he did--there's three, there's three editions of, of this book. Um,
KATE: and, uh, the last one I think was published in like, 2004, but like, don't quote me on that,
KATE: but they're all really good.
KATE: Uh, very important in my own research,
KATE: very important in the history of architectural acoustics,
KATE: 'cause, kind of, without Leo Beranek, like, we wouldn't have...
KATE: nearly as much of the history of the field,
KATE: um, and, he...
KATE: But because he, he went around and studied why concert halls worked, or why he thought they worked, uh,
KATE: like, I remind you again that like, the science of acoustics, like,
KATE: this is before the age of the computer,
KATE: this is like, when we were basically using, like,
KATE: field recording equipment to do, to measurements where you would fire out a shotgun in a hall,
KATE: and, or like, pop a balloon, and like, have a s--
NOVA: [laughs] What?
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, you would fire a shotgun...
KATE: off in a hall, and like, and like, measure the, like,
KATE: recorded--or measure the amount of time it took to, for the sound to dissipate.
KATE: This is how they did--
NOVA: That rules. Why don't you still do that!?
JUSTIN: I--
JUSTIN: I did not know that Frank Furness was the first acoustician in his office.
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
KATE: ...The reason is, the... [laughs]
KATE: The reason is, because we're not allowed to travel with pistols anymore.
NOVA: Ooh.
KATE: Uh...
KATE: also, we developed more complex, like, standard,
KATE: uh, tests, for, for measuring reverberation time more accurately.
KATE: But--this was kind of like, a crude operation.
KATE: And yet, because of like,
KATE: ...what was considered at the time to be like, modern, modern science,
KATE: um, like, Beranek really thought he knew everything about concert halls,
KATE: and he thought he knew...
KATE: what makes a really good concert hall.
KATE: Uh, some of his--
KATE: but the thing is like, he didn't know everything.
KATE: Um, not even nearly.
KATE: Uh, so it's really, it's really, he truly...
KATE: I mean, he devised basically this comprehensive(?) plan,
KATE: believing that, like,
KATE: his careful scientific calibrations and whatnot would produce a great concert hall worthy of like,
KATE: Lincoln Center's ambitious project.
KATE: It was really kind of a surgical top-down approach...
KATE: that's really no different from like, technocratic planning,
KATE: uh, Moses employed with... with some clearance.
KATE: Um,
KATE: but it was un--yeah, it's very interesting,
KATE: that, like--
KATE: basically, Beranek and his colleagues,
KATE: who at the time were Russell Johnson and Theodore Schultz and B.G. Watters,
KATE: all of whom became successful, independent acousticians of--in their own right,
KATE: um,
KATE: they believe that careful placement of certain architectural and technical elements,
KATE: based on, like, the latest concepts in acoustics could help mitigate...
KATE: the acoustical problems in the modern concert hall.
KATE: Um, the thing is, is the Philharmonic Society...
KATE: really wanted to have a concert hall that sounded like a 19th century shoebox, but,
KATE: they wanted it within the modernist architectural sensibility,
KATE: of, uh,
KATE: ...like, the architecture, of Max Abramovitz,
KATE: uh, and, of course, like,
KATE: again, more integration stuff with, like, modern urban planning.
KATE: So, Beranek originally conceived Philharmonic Hall to take on...
KATE: the shoebox-shape of its inspiration, which was Boston Symphony Hall,
KATE: but he had to fit the shape into a, like, a modernist building,
KATE: uh,
KATE: and this ended up contributing to its downfall;
KATE: first of all, like, it was known at the time,
KATE: thanks to the work of Beranek himself,
KATE: that the success of the 19th century shoebox hall,
KATE: was partially attributable to the very decorative architectural embellishments, which acted...
KATE: like, to diffuse sound, and break it up,
KATE: in the way that was like, satisfying, and created,
KATE: uh, ambiance, and warmth, and whatever.
KATE: However, like, Beranek himself laments,
KATE: in his reflection on Philharmonic Hall, after one year of its use,
KATE: "Contemporary architectural taste tends towards simplicity...
KATE: "and deliberately avoids the elaborative decorative elements...
KATE: "that provide multiple diffusing surfaces in the older halls.
KATE: "The extensive 'contouring' of the older halls...
KATE: "also acted to break up any large, flat surfaces that might create echoes."
KATE: In addition,
KATE: the 19th century shoebox halls had, like, high ceilings to provide a suitably long reverberation time,
KATE: meaning it sounds spacious and nice.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: However, Philharmonic Hall which was,
KATE: you know, Max Abramovitz, being a modernist building, kept a really low stratified profile...
KATE: that was not tall enough to provide this necessary ceiling height, like I talked about before.
NOVA: Yeah, should've been more bourgeois.
KATE: And so, this is, like, the biggest problem.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Should've been more bourgeois, yeah!
KATE: Sho--totally gotta be more, more bougie.
KATE: ...They should've used gas lamps and then, they would have had to ventilate the space,
KATE: and then they would have had the necessary ceiling height, but alas, we have electricity now.
NOVA: Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: Girlboss.
JUSTIN: Yes.
KATE: ...Girlboss, exactly.
KATE: So, Beranek had to basically mitigate these problems with a variety of solutions,
KATE: some of which were like, increasingly crackpot.
KATE: Uh, including--so, they tried, first of all, to do like, a reflecting array of overhead ceiling panels,
KATE: which... I think you can see in the pictures,
JUSTIN: Oh, I got that later on in the slides, yeah.
KATE: Uh, in order to send what they call "early"--
KATE: what they call, like, "early reflections" to the center of the main floor.
KATE: But unfortunately, the gaps between these panels, because they had to be pretty and modernist,
KATE: would be--were too wide, and therefore their ability to actually reflect sound was really diminished.
KATE: Uh, and there was also, like, they had this weird stage wall that featured,
KATE: "an acoustically transparent slated structure,"
KATE: that aimed to hide unsightly ventilation outlets, again,
KATE: modernism, it's air conditioned.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Behind which, was a reflective wall.
KATE: All of these were solutions to the problems with the architectural concept,
KATE: rather than, like, Beranek and his colleagues' original intent for a good concert hall.
KATE: And, these corrections were not enough, for the hall was like, a massive failure, despite--
KATE: and despite attempts at improvement,
KATE: it was ultimately gutted and replaced with Avery Fisher Hall, in 1976.
KATE: Uh, see, okay, but the thing is, is that like the greed of developers,
KATE: and elites who wanted to gain, like, monetary, cultural capital at the expense of...
KATE: you know, 14 blocks where people lived and worked,
KATE: combined with, like, an absolutely dogmatic architectural and urbanist programming...
KATE: that allowed for no flexibility for even like,
KATE: the actual program of what it was supposed to be doing...
KATE: um, definitely would kinda seal Philharmonic Hall's fate.
KATE: Uh...
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Oh yeah. This is like, really funny.
KATE: Okay, we get to the funniest part,
KATE: actually, which, like, is called the "seat dip effect incident".
LIAM: Oh no.
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
KATE: Uh, so,
KATE: yeah.
KATE: Yeah, so, the elite... sponsors...
LIAM: Did someone say "dip"!?
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: That's right, we're getting dipped.
KATE: The elite sponsors of Philharmonic Hall...
KATE: wanted to maximize seat count, in order to maximize the amount of profit for concert,
KATE: because again,
KATE: this is like, capitalist bullshit.
JUSTIN: ...Hold on, Kate, you're getting ahead of me here, 'cause I got a whole slide on this too. [laughs]
KATE: This being an elite, luxury hall, it--
KATE: Oh, okay okay, okay, I'll stop, I'll stop.
JUSTIN: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. [laughs]
JUSTIN: So,
JUSTIN: I mean,
JUSTIN: you know, uh, Beranek, you know, had done a number of auditorium projects, right...
JUSTIN: ...I looked over some of the,
JUSTIN: ...just some of the Philharmonic archives, I saw like, the, uh,
JUSTIN: the, the whatsit, like,
JUSTIN: ...it came up with 18 properties of an auditorium after the big survey you mentioned,
JUSTIN: some of them seem to be quantitative, some of them were qualitative, I,
JUSTIN: I had some difficulty figuring them out; I, I don't know what I'm talking about.
JUSTIN: No, but they were very--
LIAM: Attaboy.
NOVA: ...You were stuck with Charles Garnier, uh, just being like,
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly.
NOVA: "Yeah, you know, whatever feels right."
JUSTIN: Um,
LIAM: Stay loose, you know?
NOVA: Mmhm, yeah.
JUSTIN: but there were,
JUSTIN: there were some issues...
JUSTIN: with, uh, with the, um, with the...
JUSTIN: ...with the actual putting together of the building, right,
JUSTIN: which is why we need to return to...
JUSTIN: the slide I had the last time Kate was on,
JUSTIN: way back in episode 4...
NOVA: Been a while. It's been a minute.
LIAM: Been a while.
JUSTIN: How the building is designed and built.
LIAM: A guy takes a poop in the field.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
LIAM: Things go downhill from there.
JUSTIN: So, you know, we got the client,
JUSTIN: in this case, it's a committee of people, right,
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: who want the building,
JUSTIN: and they tell the architect, in this case...
JUSTIN: Max Abramovitz, like,
JUSTIN: okay, here's, here's a building, this is what we want,
JUSTIN: this is, this is our idea, and then,
JUSTIN: the architect says, "what the hell are these guys thinking,"
JUSTIN: as you go about turning their vague idea into a workable building,
JUSTIN: with some back and forth here,
JUSTIN: the architect sends their drawing to the engineers,
JUSTIN: in this case, including an acoustics guy,
JUSTIN: you know, once again, these engineers go through the architect' drawings set and says,
JUSTIN: "what the hell, what the hell are these people doing,"
JUSTIN: they start fighting with each other and the architect about what goes where, what's practical,
JUSTIN: there's more back and forth here, the HVAC guy routes a duct straight through an I-beam,
NOVA: [snorts]
LIAM: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: There's conflicts with the plumbing, right, so on and so forth, right.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: But eventually, eventually they finished fighting with each other,
JUSTIN: and, you know, someone puts a PE stamp on there, right,
JUSTIN: which means someone is criminally liable if something goes wrong,
JUSTIN: you know, there's different stamps,
JUSTIN: you know, in Jersey it's a crimper,
JUSTIN: um, and these are sent out for permitting, the drawings are sent on for permitting,
JUSTIN: and the inspectors are not engineers,
JUSTIN: in a lot of places, the stamp is there, nothing goes wrong, we get to the next step quickly,
JUSTIN: the contractors take the drawing and say,
JUSTIN: "fucking hell, these chucklefucks,"
LIAM: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: and, and they, they send the drawings out to some contract--
JUSTIN: or subcontractors, who look at those drawings and say,
JUSTIN: "what the fuck," and "Jesus H. Christ," right,
JUSTIN: they make modifications to drawing, send back shop drawing, showing what they can build and what they intend to build,
JUSTIN: architects and engineers sign off or say, "no, you dumb idiot, you have to do it this way,"
JUSTIN: there's more back and forth here,
JUSTIN: and then, you know, you have the labor who's actually building the damn building...
JUSTIN: and they're constantly complaining about all the boneheaded decisions made above them,
JUSTIN: and of course they know the most about building,
JUSTIN: but they're least able to make design changes since you gotta go way up the chain of command, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: The architect comes back and does the as-built drawings, which I've complained about previously,
JUSTIN: uh, and the clients' been meddling the whole time in this,
JUSTIN: the architects are trying to herd all these cats the whole time, right,
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: and uh,
JUSTIN: you know, so...
JUSTIN: In sum--in summary, it's a goddamn miracle anything gets built.
JUSTIN: And government contracting is even worse.
JUSTIN: Now, in these case, we're doing,
JUSTIN: quasi-government contracting, right,
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: So for the Lincoln Center, rather than being one guy...
JUSTIN: who wanted the building, there's a building committee, right.
JUSTIN: which was composed of all kinds of stakeholders in the projects,
JUSTIN: you had a real estate guy, you had a guy from the Philharmonic Orchestra,
JUSTIN: you had an opera guy, you had politicians,
JUSTIN: and they may or may not know anything about buildings or auditoriums.
JUSTIN: And the building committee was subject to its own whims and desires, and so,
JUSTIN: Abramovitz, tried to coordinate everything through his office.
JUSTIN: Um...
NOVA: Did this work?
JUSTIN: No.
NOVA: Well.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: ...I think one thing which was a big mistake, 'cause they published the design in the New York Times,
LIAM: Oh, God, why?
JUSTIN: before they build the building.
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
NOVA: Yeah, and they get--all of the people who read the New York Times gets to have an opinion.
JUSTIN: And it, it was published as a 2,400-seat auditorium, which was, shockingly,
JUSTIN: less than the 2,760-seat Carnegie Hall, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: So, a bunch of newspapers, especially the New York Herald Tribune, right,
JUSTIN: which is, um,
JUSTIN: the newspaper Marx wrote for, um,
JUSTIN: decided--
NOVA: Yep. Also appears in, uh, Breathless.
JUSTIN: Yes.
JUSTIN: They decided to take on the cause of making the auditorium bigger.
JUSTIN: Um, and the building committee listened,
JUSTIN: and told Abramovitz to cram some more seats in.
JUSTIN: And it got bigger.
NOVA: Yeah, just, just put them in there, just put them in there.
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: ...Just put them in there.
JUSTIN: It got to 2,738 seats, and it got fatter and wider.
NOVA: Same.
JUSTIN: And it got long--[laughs]
LIAM: Yeah, mood.
NOVA: Same.
LIAM: Yeah. [laughs]
LIAM: I'm a, I'm a grower, not a shower, but.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
JUSTIN: And, uh, Beranek said, listen,
JUSTIN: this is gonna fuck up the acoustics.
JUSTIN: And that got as far as Abramovitz' office, and,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: didn't get... to the building committee.
JUSTIN: He wasn't able to raise his objections,
JUSTIN: to the people who made the decisions.
KATE: Yep, yep.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Yea, it was truly... [laughs]
KATE: this is like, see, like, acoustics is like, one of those things it's like, oh, it's not (?) engineered,
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: Even in like, con--except for in concert halls, but even in concert halls, it happens,
KATE: it's like, so funny to me.
KATE: But,
KATE: any--anyway, it's like, it's, it's great--
NOVA: Listen, you don't go to a concert hall to hear music good.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Well, they did--they did a couple other changes without really...
JUSTIN: consulting, uh, Beranek here, right, which is, um,
JUSTIN: the, uh, acoustic clouds were made narrower,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: You can see in this chart down here.
KATE: Yep.
JUSTIN: Which, um,
JUSTIN: resulted in, uh,
JUSTIN: according to modeling, um,
JUSTIN: the original proposed ones would, uh,
JUSTIN: you know, we'd have a better,
JUSTIN: we'd have better bass in the auditorium with the original ones versus the new ones,
JUSTIN: you can sorta see in this chart, I'm...
JUSTIN: ...again, I'm a dumb idiot, here,
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: I don't know why. [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, yeah.
JUSTIN: They really--
KATE: Bad.
JUSTIN: They really messed with these, um,
JUSTIN: they wound up doing a safety alteration to them,
JUSTIN: because they were supposed to be individually adjustable, right,
JUSTIN: um, but someone said, that's unsafe, what if there's an earthquake, they'll...
JUSTIN: they'll whack into each other.
JUSTIN: So they were all welded together.
JUSTIN: Um... [laughs]
NOVA: Make it more rigid! Yes!
JUSTIN: So you couldn't really adjust them individually anymore.
NOVA: Now we're talking.
JUSTIN: I don't, I don't know if, I don't know if, if there were...
LIAM: Congratulations [Nova], this must be...
NOVA: I'm having a great time.
LIAM: a festival day for you, yes.
NOVA: Yeah, yeah, it's a red letter day.
JUSTIN: The, uh--
LIAM: There we go, that's the phrase I wanted.
LIAM: Again, I'm, I'm on the cusp of death, so.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: There's, there's a picture of, uh, the acoustic clouds on the next slide,
JUSTIN: so we can see what we're talking about.
LIAM: Take me now, Lord.
JUSTIN: Um--yeah.
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Um, then the contractor who did the welding misread the shop drawings, and, um,
LIAM: [laughs] Oh good!
NOVA: Nice.
JUSTIN: Yeah, and--and welded them together,
JUSTIN: uh, six feet too low, or just the front row, yeah.
LIAM: Owww.
NOVA: Oh, y--you wanted a concert hall? What I've delivered you is a perfectly welded solid cube.
NOVA: [laughs] It's like a, it's like a cavity magnetron you have to feed a Philharmonic into...
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: I think some acoustic services in the building,
JUSTIN: were value-engineered out.
NOVA: Nice.
JUSTIN: Like panels on the walls,
LIAM: Good, good.
JUSTIN: and these were replaced by painting the wall blue.
LIAM: Ow--mm...
LIAM: Value hack!
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yeah.
NOVA: This one weird trick.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: There--there was some major value engineering going on here, it seems...
LIAM: Nothing says, "Suck it, Soviet Union!" like value engineering.
KATE: Yeah.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: I think, I think the, uh, the slope of the balcony is also increased... [laughs]
KATE: So true about that.
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, yeah.
KATE: For better--for better sightlines.
KATE: Yeah, it's really great, actually, so like,
KATE: it's so funny, um,
KATE: yeah, let me, let me find, like,
KATE: this, okay, so here's... here's what happened, here's what happened,
KATE: too, okay, we, now we get into like, the seat dip thing.
KATE: Uh,
KATE: they had...
KATE: because like, this was like, an elite and luxury hall,
KATE: it was demanded that the seats are both spacious and comfortable as well.
KATE: Think Cadillac, not a Prius, here.
NOVA: Mm.
LIAM: Right.
KATE: Uh, and so, they also like, removed side wall ornament, and increased seating capacity,
KATE: which had to be done without lengthening the hall,
KATE: so to conform to its sleek architectural profile,
KATE: and so, like,
KATE: this also made the hall, like, pro--like, prone to a, a weird kind of echo, and like,
KATE: there was a lower--it was like, extremely absorbant.
KATE: Uh, and so there was like, it was basically like, not reverberant,
KATE: so like, there was a weird echo,
KATE: there was like, little echo, a little reverberation,
KATE: but what was there was weird.
KATE: Uh...
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: and...
NOVA: Yeah, we've had "wet", now we have "creepy".
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: Mm.
KATE: Yeah, but there's other things, like,
KATE: even... even though, like,
KATE: it was like, a total screw-up,
KATE: uh, and again, just because they weren't allowed to change anything in the profile of the hall,
KATE: uh, but at the same time, like,
KATE: a lot of the techniques--this is where we get to the "butt" part.
KATE: Like, as you can see, like, this was a disaster.
KATE: Like, on the opening night, like, musicians couldn't hear themselves,
KATE: like, it became very clear, very...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: ...and Beranek, he just like, kept... fiddling with it.
KATE: Like, kept adding things, kept changing it, 'cause it was all just--
KATE: like, all they needed to do was raise the ceiling and make the hall narrower.
KATE: And like, they couldn't do that.
LIAM: Ah yes, the Kanye approach.
KATE: And so, all that he did was just like mak--
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: He tried everything. He tried everything.
KATE: And then, he just threw thing after thing after thing at it and it became very clear before the opening night...
KATE: that like, oh shit, you know? Like.
JUSTIN: Oh fuck. [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: And then, the opening night was like, a disaster.
KATE: The, the hall was like,
KATE: unlistenable.
KATE: It was so bad that they just--they couldn't even last for a few years before they were like,
KATE: we have to just gut the whole thing, it's a complete lost job.
KATE: Like, I mean, this was like,
KATE: basically, like, what they said was that like, the science of acoustics is not there yet.
KATE: It just isn't.
KATE: But that's one part of the problem, is that like,
KATE: they didn't know exactly quite how to fix these things,
KATE: because like, they still didn't quite understand...
KATE: ...why things work to begin with; they had basic, like,
KATE: crude knowledge of it, based on like,
KATE: what the technology was available at the time.
KATE: But like, it's--in a lot of ways, though, like,
KATE: Beranek and his colleagues were really victims of,
KATE: of a broader problem, which is that like,
KATE: people wanted--they wanted this to make money,
KATE: they wanted it to look a certain way,
KATE: to increase rent and real estate values, 'cause you have this big architect involved,
KATE: like, they were really kind of victims of,
KATE: of capitalism, even though, like,
KATE: you know, they've got a lot of money from it...
KATE: ...and this really ran Beranek himself out of acoustics.
KATE: Uh, and he, like,
KATE: he spent all of his time, basically being on the payroll,
KATE: doing his, like, weird acoustic surveys, and...
KATE: helping with research, but he never design--
KATE: he designed a couple more concert halls, I think, but he,
KATE: this was like, he, like, was disgraced, basically.
KATE: And it kind of like, wasn't his fault.
KATE: And yeah, at the same time, like,
KATE: this is a--this is the "butt" part.
KATE: Many of the techniques they employed in the construction of...
KATE: Philharmonic Hall were really new.
KATE: Uh, and like, without... experimentation, like, the field would never ever move forward,
KATE: we would just have shoebox halls forever,
KATE: Um, and,
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: the thing is, is like, they had really massive impacts on Beranek's colleagues, like...
KATE: Schultz and Russell, who would both go on to form their own acoustics firms.
KATE: After a schism that we won't talk about.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Uh, the, but the concept of like, an overhead canopy as a reflector,
KATE: uh, and, the, like, in the later,
KATE: another attempted fix, employment of retractable curtains on stage,
KATE: to make the hall more flexible for use as a theater for speaking events,
KATE: would stay with like, Russell Johnson, who,
KATE: became like, highly involved in the development of, like,
KATE: both a. massive canopies, and b. adjustable acoustics throughout his entire career,
KATE: which I think is very fascinating.
KATE: If I went back to school,
KATE: I would definitely like, that would be--my research would be on Russell Johnson.
KATE: Uh, but, anyways.
KATE: Uh...
JUSTIN: Yeah...
JUSTIN: Opening night.
JUSTIN: They had done, you know, months of tuning,
JUSTIN: unsuccessfully in this theater,
JUSTIN: and then finally, the moment of truth arrived,
JUSTIN: Sunday, September 23rd, 1962, right.
JUSTIN: And no one could be fully sure how the auditorium sounded until there was an audience in there.
KATE: Yes.
KATE: Yep.
JUSTIN: And uh... as Kate said, it was bad.
JUSTIN: Really, really bad.
KATE: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: Uh, the journalist panned the hall,
JUSTIN: but the real kicker was that the conductors agreed: it's shit.
JUSTIN: Um...
JUSTIN: Now, Leonard Bernstein said, uh,
JUSTIN: or, this is from meeting minutes from, uh...
JUSTIN: uh, the, uh,
JUSTIN: ...the Philharmonic Orchestra,
JUSTIN: "Mr. Bernstein said that as he listens in the auditorium
JUSTIN: "the hall has an uninteresting sound,
JUSTIN: "except for the horns and clarinets.
JUSTIN: "At no time does he feel he is surrounded by music.
JUSTIN: "He said the general effect is like hearing music written on a blackboard--
JUSTIN: "a tableau effort.
LIAM: Ooh.
JUSTIN: "He said there's no presence or warmth." Right.
JUSTIN: Um...
KATE: Mm.
JUSTIN: You know, he said there's uninteresting sound,
JUSTIN: in without a sense of being surrounded by sound,
JUSTIN: there's a lack of strength in low-pitch instruments between "A" and "E",
JUSTIN: better in the higher seats than in the stalls,
JUSTIN: domination of horns and woodwinds, edgy high frequencies, like they were amplified,
JUSTIN: dependence on musicians on risers or in certain positions on stage,
JUSTIN: it's not acceptable,
JUSTIN: and disappointed--it's impossible to speak to the musicians without strain,
JUSTIN: you know, no better than in Carnegie Hall. Right.
LIAM: Damn, dude.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
LIAM: That's raw.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: RIP.
JUSTIN: It's bad.
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: Bad, folks.
JUSTIN: ...So they tried tweaks--
KATE: And yet...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: lots of tweaks.
JUSTIN: Lots of tweaks.
KATE: and, the thing is,
KATE: here's the thing about, about, about acoustics.
KATE: This is like, truly,
KATE: there's like,
KATE: a fundamental rule of acoustics I learned in grad school, which is like,
KATE: first of all, avoid the bad.
KATE: Second, design the good.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: And like, honestly, if you can't avoid the bad to begin with,
KATE: it's in like, what we call, like, the DNA of the hall.
KATE: There's nothing you can do,
KATE: nothing you can add,
KATE: that's going to...
KATE: fix it in a way that gutting it isn't.
KATE: Uh, and so, like,
KATE: it's really kind of a high-stakes thing,
KATE: and it's almost, it's so--
KATE: like, there's nothing, no surface level thing that they could do to this hall,
KATE: that was going to fix all of the problems in it.
KATE: They basically had to...
KATE: like, gut it.
KATE: Uh,
KATE: and yet, at the same time, like--
KATE: and I'll talk about the renovation,
KATE: I think we get to Avery Fisher Hall in a little bit--
KATE: uh, but, at the same time, like,
KATE: uh, the thing is is that, like, the...
KATE: for example, um,
KATE: like, this...
KATE: this hall also did something that was very important.
KATE: Like, extremely important for the development of acoustics at mid-century.
KATE: It combined a shoebox hall,
KATE: uh, with like, rear--the rear,
KATE: rear walls were splayed like a fan-shaped hall,
KATE: uh, and he really wa--
KATE: So, Theodore Schultz, who was like, another acoustician,
KATE: uh, whose halls in the 1980s, like, including, um,
KATE: like, the halls in Baltimore and Toronto, for example.
KATE: Like, they, they really, he really...
KATE: was obsessed with this idea, that like, you can--
KATE: the fan was the most economical concert hall,
KATE: but it sounded like shit.
KATE: Uh, and the shoebox hall was the best sounding concert hall,
KATE: and he, like, truly believed that there was some way to reconcile these differences.
KATE: And this, this reconciliation with economy and acoustics,
KATE: is what would, would dominate the, um,
KATE: development of concert hall,
KATE: uh,
KATE: ...of concert halls like... in the 60s and 70s,
KATE: which is the period that I studied.
KATE: Uh, and, it was fascinating because, like,
KATE: they really did a bunch of weird shit with the form of concert halls, like,
KATE: we've like, it was like, the most experimental age in the entire history of the field,
KATE: and we came away with like, some really fascinating and great knowledge about it,
KATE: um, that was necessary for concert halls to be better.
KATE: And the thing is, is like,
KATE: yeah, there's like...
KATE: ...When I was at, like, covering cycling at the Vuelta,
KATE: there's like a line, like, that...
KATE: Roglic, the Slovenian cyclist who won the... Vuelta said to press, after he, like,
KATE: won a stage by like, doing some like, mental shit,
KATE: was like, he was like, "Yeah, no risk, no glory."
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: And it's truly, that's truly like the, the thing about acoustics, is like,
KATE: "No risk, no glory."
KATE: But man, sometimes if you take the risk,
KATE: you truly do not get the glory.
KATE: Uh, but, it's... fascinating to me, like...
KATE: ...like, this, this...
KATE: ...so many things were learned from the failures of Philharmonic Hall,
KATE: that it actually, just by being a huge piece of shit,
KATE: improved the field massively,
KATE: and improved the field's understanding of problems massively.
KATE: because, like, Beranek, while he was figuring it out, right... while he was like, doing his best,
KATE: still managed to like, get a lot of information and data about like,
KATE: what things were and weren't working,
KATE: and all that stuff would prove to become useful in the future of the field.
KATE: So, uh, and... it avoided them for like, making, um,
KATE: making the same mistakes, essentially.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Um,
KATE: but, yeah... It was a real, it was a real shitshow. So,
KATE: what happens, after, right.
KATE: Basically the Orchestra and the people involved,
KATE: said, like, "God, we really--this is unusable," and they just like, fired everyone involved, uh,
KATE: which, to be fair, okay.
KATE: But then it became clear, and there's a really great New Yorker article about this--
KATE: go ahead.
JUSTIN: One thing I thought was kinda funny is that, when they--
JUSTIN: you know, Beranek suggested some solutions and they eventually, you know...
JUSTIN: they fired... Beranek,
JUSTIN: um, the building committee retains some outside experts to make recommendations,
JUSTIN: and this, uh, this committee of, this expert committee,
JUSTIN: became known as the Acoustical Panel.
NOVA and LIAM: [laugh]
KATE: Yes, which is funny.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: (?) Heinrich Keilholz is like the, the main, the main guy on this,
KATE: Yes.
JUSTIN: and he decided, you know, the way to go is to just, um,
JUSTIN: cover everything in wood, right.
NOVA: Mm.
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: Yeah, be more trad about it.
JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly.
KATE: There are truly some harebrained schemes.
JUSTIN: ...It was very much a--
KATE: See, that wasn't gonna work either.
JUSTIN: He seemed to have a, a very much, uh, retvrn attitude here; he wanted to...
JUSTIN: uh, replace the clouds up here with a low wood ceiling, he wanted to...
JUSTIN: you know... he was like, if we put enough acoustical wooden panels in here, it's gonna replicate,
JUSTIN: you know, the quality of an old-fashioned music hall,
JUSTIN: you know, which he attributed to the fact there's like, you know, the balcony supports the boxes statue niches.
JUSTIN: Um,
JUSTIN: you know... he's doing retvrn to tradition. [laughs]
KATE: It's true... that is true in how it worked.
KATE: And that's kinda what ended up happening.
KATE: Okay, so this, this gets us into like, who they hired.
KATE: They hired this guy, named Cyril Harris.
KATE: Um,
KATE: so while both Beranek and Newman were like, kind of like the high modernist guys,
KATE: Cyril Harris is like a little more conservative.
KATE: Uh, and his work actually, like, before becoming an acoustician, he did several,
KATE: he did dozens of shoebox...
KATE: ...what I call a "neo-shoebox" hall,
KATE: all across the country; he did one in Utah, he did one in Washington state,
KATE: he did one, like--I mean, he did them everywhere.
KATE: He, he did the Kennedy Center, like,
KATE: this was like, his bag.
KATE: Uh, but he was hired to fix Philharmonic Hall on the advice of this pan--the acoustics panel,
KATE: and...
KATE: ...the acoustics panel, wasn't--despite being, like,
KATE: you know, pseudo-trads, or whatever, like, they weren't wrong.
KATE: Uh, like,
KATE: the statues and the niches and all the neoclassical ornament,
KATE: does, like, fix a lot of problems with diffusion and, like...
KATE: things like basing the hall off of like, the precedence of the past,
KATE: would have fixed the problems, and in fact,
KATE: this reconciliation with modernism that had to happen,
KATE: is still what's going on in the current renovation today.
KATE: Um, because they... they know exactly what they have to do,
KATE: to fix the hall,
KATE: and yet they still have to make it innovative and interesting.
KATE: And so... in the 70s,
KATE: uh, when, um,
KATE: Cyril Harris got a hold of the hall,
KATE: he was already doing work, uh...
KATE: on other projects and... knew that like, there was a way to do ornament...
KATE: that was...
KATE: you know, like, in architecture we have the style called New Formalism.
KATE: Which, technically speaking, Max Abramovitz is, uh, architecture for,
KATE: uh, the Lincoln Center was a New Formalist project, like, it was...
KATE: a modernist building based on neoclassical proportions,
KATE: uh, with like, neoclassical formal elements but not... ornamental elements.
KATE: And so...
KATE: ...like, basically, Cyril Harris is recreating that inside the concert hall.
KATE: Uh, and he became very good at it, and he...
KATE: but the thing is, is he still ran into the same problem.
KATE: Which is that, the people who ran Lincoln Center,
KATE: wanted--the fundamental problem was--okay, so first of all, like,
KATE: what he had to do was,
KATE: because, like--I don't know if you guys saw in the slide, but--because...
KATE: ...Philharmonic Hall had this very weird,
KATE: curves, like, weird fan-like section,
KATE: or fan-like plan, and like weird milk bottle-looking section,
KATE: he basically, like--the first thing he had to do was like, okay, like, this just has to be a square.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Like, this has to be a cube, we're not gonna get around, like,
KATE: this just has to be a square,
KATE: it has to be a shoebox.
KATE: Uh, right.
KATE: And that actually fixed a lot of the problems, honestly.
KATE: But, again we run into the perpetual problem...
KATE: that continues to this very day,
KATE: when it comes to... with regards to like,
KATE: acoustic remediation and, and redevelopment of concert halls.
KATE: Which is that, acoustics is fundamentally antithetical...
KATE: to selling a lot of tickets.
KATE: It just is.
KATE: The more seats you have, the shittier your hall is gonna sound; there's literally, like, a golden...
KATE: like, ratio of seats to square footage that you should have.
KATE: And like, basically anything with more than like, 2,000 seats, and even 2,000 is like, a little high,
KATE: anything more than 2,000 seats, period,
KATE: like, is gonna, like... you're starting to fall off the cliff there, of the bell curve.
KATE: Uh, and, the thing is, is that...
KATE: Cyril Harris knew, and this is like... the bugbear of his entire career, his entire life,
KATE: was spent trying to mitigate, like,
KATE: the contradictions of capitalism and acoustics.
KATE: And he knew that what had to happen...
KATE: was that the hall needed to be narrower,
KATE: and there had to be fewer seats, fewer balconies, and a taller ceiling;
KATE: like I said, the classic shoebox formula.
KATE: And, like, they wouldn't let him do that.
KATE: So, like, what he produced was a hall that sounded better,
KATE: but because there still had to be so many damn seats,
KATE: like, and the hall had to be sufficiently wide enough to accommodate those seats...
KATE: it still sounded like a dog.
KATE: It sounded like a listenable dog, but it was a dog all the same.
KATE: And so like, again, a cursed project. And so,
KATE: ever since like, the 1980s, when like neoclassical, uh...
KATE: postmodernism came back into style, there have been talks about redoing Avery Fisher Hall.
KATE: And it's still funny how continually cursed this is.
KATE: Like, when I was in high--when I was in, uh, graduate school, for example,
KATE: there were rumors that like,
KATE: Thomas Heatherwick was gonna get involved.
KATE: And everyone was like, "Oh fuck," like, "here we go again," like... [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: The worst possible guy,
KATE: to like, get involved in any kind of civic project that is like, notoriously cursed.
KATE: The guy who did the Vessel.
KATE: Like...
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
KATE: yeah.
NOVA: "What if the concert hall makes you want to kill yourself?"
KATE: So, yeah, like...
LIAM: Yeah. [laughs]
KATE: Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly, the thing is, is--
JUSTIN: ...One thing I'd like to say--
LIAM: The cost(?) is $10, just to get in, regardless of how much the show actually costs.
JUSTIN: A-After--One thing I like is that after the, um,
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: After the... the first renovation,
JUSTIN: um, and the sound still wasn't that great,
JUSTIN: the New York Philharmonic Orchestra started to, uh,
JUSTIN: or the members of it started to refer to it as A Very Fishy Hall.
NOVA: [snorts]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: That's cute.
JUSTIN: Yes.
KATE: That's cute.
KATE: So, shall we get on to what they're planning to do to it now?
JUSTIN: Oh yeah. I mean, I think this was,
JUSTIN: so this was renovated again in '92, I think, just a little bit,
JUSTIN: but it, again, didn't work.
JUSTIN: Um,
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: No.
JUSTIN: And then, uh, one thing which I thought was an interesting fun fact,
JUSTIN: is that the organ from the original hall,
JUSTIN: was, uh,
JUSTIN: sold to the Crystal Cathedral.
NOVA: Hmm.
LIAM: Oow.
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: And they mashed it into another organ to make a big Frankenorgan.
LIAM: Well, that is...
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: That's something else, man... I like it? I think?
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I'm a deeply diseased man. But literally--[laughs]
KATE: This is truly like--
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: deeply, this is a deeply diseased project, like.
KATE: Truly, like, a stupid project.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: Like, yeah, yeah--
LIAM: Thanks, Kate, that makes me feel good.
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: Appreciate it, bud.
KATE: Yo.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yo, what.
KATE: It's like,
KATE: the thing is, is like, okay.
KATE: Yeah, they try to do some--again, more remediations in 1992...
KATE: when we had like, more information,
KATE: but again, the budget on that was pretty small,
KATE: so there weren't that many changes made,
KATE: and it still didn't fix the fundamental problem...
KATE: which is that,
KATE: LOL the hall is the wrong shape.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: Yep.
KATE: Like... [laughs]
KATE: So, okay,
KATE: now, now,
KATE: after all this,
KATE: after all this all--after all of this,
KATE: now they're like,
KATE: now the architects of--first of all, they call these guys Diamond and Schmitt,
KATE: uh, and like, there's other acoustician guy's name I forgot,
KATE: uh, but like, who works usually with Diamond and Schmitt, uh.
JUSTIN: Is it... uh,
JUSTIN: Is it Paul Scarborough?
JUSTIN: Or Joshua Decks(?)?
KATE: Yes, Paul Scarborough.
JUSTIN: Okay.
KATE: No.
KATE: Paul Scarborough, who is like, a...
KATE: you know,
KATE: an acoustician, he's...
KATE: I won't get in, I won't, like, the...
KATE: Everyone in acoustics has worked at everywhere else.
KATE: Scarborough started his own firm, I think in the 80s.
KATE: Uh, but anyways, he's kinda like, a minor character in acoustics,
KATE: but it's good as shit that they hired him.
KATE: Because like, he's like, kind of like,
KATE: acoustically conservative, but...
KATE: that's what you need in a project like this, which is like,
KATE: finally, we actually need a little bit of conservatism in here.
KATE: Uh, like,
KATE: so, what they're planning on doing,
KATE: is actually what should have been done all along.
KATE: They're removing balconies,
KATE: thank Christ,
KATE: so you have that spaciousness above the highest-seated listener,
KATE: they're narrowing the walls,
KATE: they're doing--they're fixing the concert hall.
KATE: And you know what, and you know what?
KATE: There will be less seats.
KATE: Oh my God, there will be fewer seats,
KATE: in Avery Fisher Hall.
KATE: This is the truest--this is like, the longest time coming victory...
KATE: for like, the entirety of our jaded field,
KATE: like, ever.
KATE: Uh, Diamond and Schmitt is really known for doing kind of like,
KATE: what we call "modified shoebox hall".
KATE: Uh, which is like... a shoebox but like,
KATE: kind of like, slightly different in form... in other ways.
KATE: And so like, they, uh,
KATE: like, did, like, a project in 2015 in Montreal, that is like...
KATE: considered pretty good, but again, like, they also...
KATE: they're kind of like, the, like--
KATE: Scarborough and, like,
KATE: uh, Diamond Schmitt, who often work together,
KATE: are kind of like the Cyril Harrises of this generation of acousticians.
KATE: Uh, these are the kind of projects that they work on, and they're still, like,
KATE: having to deal with the bugbear of having a hall that is like,
KATE: classically-oriented in terms of like, acoustics, and like, architecture,
KATE: but have to also be modern but also who has to, like, make money,
KATE: so like, this is like, his cross to bear now.
KATE: Poor Paul Scarborough.
KATE: Uh, and he's a good acoustician in my opinion.
KATE: Uh, he's definitely capable,
KATE: it's definitely glad that they didn't just hire the priciest guy,
KATE: they're doing the cool model thing where they build a big...
KATE: square, uh--big scale model and like,
KATE: doing measurements inside, which always also makes takes related(?) pictures.
KATE: Uh, and so,
KATE: that's like, a really solid way to...
KATE: kind of like, guess how a concert hall is going to sound.
KATE: Um,
KATE: so like, actually, after all these years,
KATE: all these years, and like, billions of dollars, literally billions...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: ...you're not even counting for inflation,
KATE: like, finally Avery Fisher Hall, now David Geffen Hall,
KATE: having dodged...
KATE: the bullet of Thomas Heatherwick,
KATE: will now finally be unfucked.
JUSTIN: Hopefully.
KATE: Jesus Christ.
NOVA: Inshallah.
JUSTIN: Inshallah.
JUSTIN: This is like--
KATE: Inshallah.
JUSTIN: This is like a $550 million renovation, I think.
JUSTIN: To finally make the thing work.
[beer can snap]
KATE: Yeah, they gotta do a lot of stuff.
JUSTIN: Oh yeah.
KATE: They're basically gutting it, and redoing it,
KATE: the pictures I've seen look really nice, actually.
KATE: Uh, it looks like, honestly like, a pretty tastefully done project,
KATE: they're doing some nice cool modern...
KATE: diffusive surfaces, to get like, what you usually get off of like, dripping ornament,
KATE: Um,
KATE: yeah, it's, it's gonna be a nice project,
KATE: and I think it's gonna sound--
KATE: no matter what they do, it will probably sound better than what...
KATE: was previously happening.
KATE: Um,
KATE: but yeah, so.
KATE: That's...
KATE: That is the end of the long story of Philharmonic Hall, hopefully...
KATE: ...my goal is that, someone will send me out there to review it when it's done,
KATE: because, God, I really need closure on this.
KATE and JUSTIN: [laugh]
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: Like, please...
KATE: please, I wrote my master's thesis on this,
KATE: like, I had to like, dug in like, the archives of like,
KATE: acousticians,
KATE: I, like,
KATE: you know, made models, I did all the stuff, like, I--
KATE: this is like, this is like, my white whale as an academic, is like,
KATE: this... era of acoustics, which is like the worst ever era of acoustics.
KATE: Because like, failures are really fascinating to me,
KATE: things that suck are really fascinating to me,
KATE: that's why I, like, do McMansion Hell,
KATE: like,
KATE: ugly architecture is like my favorite kind,
KATE: I think, like,
KATE: yeah. And this, this had all of it. This had everything.
KATE: This had like, the failures of modernism, the failures of urban renewal,
KATE: had, like, the failures of like, scientific hubris,
KATE: it had, like, the fundamental...
KATE: conflict between "things that sound good" and "things that make money",
KATE: I mean,
KATE: it's like a wet dream of like--
KATE: it's like this... fascinating, like,
KATE: political, social, architectural, cultural phenomenon,
KATE: that...
KATE: like, really touches everything that, like, I love to learn about and love to write about.
KATE: And so, like,
KATE: for there to finally be justice for Philharmonic Hall would be great.
KATE: But also if it sucks again,
KATE: that will be top lol and I would never stop laughing and I would like,
JUSTIN: That would be very funny.
KATE: literally be like, that picture of Jeb.
KATE: That is, like, the meme.
KATE: Like,
KATE: just like,
KATE: yeah, like,
KATE: I will just like, my hands will be up and I'll be, like,
KATE: cackling like a little gremlin, 'cause it's like, yeah, this is like, what you ge--
KATE: this is...
KATE: If this project is fucked one more time,
KATE: Then that is just fundamental proof,
KATE: that the ghost of all those people that they displaced back in the 50s,
KATE: are truly haunting that space.
NOVA: [snorts]
JUSTIN: The conduct--the conductor has to turn around to the audience,
JUSTIN: and say, "please clap".
NOVA and JUSTIN: [laugh]
KATE: Yes.
NOVA: Jeb Memorial Concert Hall.
KATE: And the clapping is like, all fucked up because the acoustics are bad.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: Incredible.
JUSTIN: Alright.
JUSTIN: Well, what did we learn today?
NOVA: Acoustics...
LIAM: Don't displace poor people.
JUSTIN: Yes.
NOVA: Acoustics is still guesswork.
LIAM: Or black people, or both.
NOVA: And you should only use guesswork, at any time.
LIAM: Yes.
JUSTIN: Mm.
NOVA: Fire off a shotgun in there.
KATE: ...Don't displace poor people...
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: Yeah, get--bring back the shotgun,
NOVA: Mm-mm.
JUSTIN: Bring back the shotgun.
KATE: like,
KATE: yeah, it's very...
KATE: acoustics are...
KATE: Okay, acousticians are really weird people.
KATE: Uh, obviously.
KATE: And like, when I was in graduate school, this,
KATE: this acoustician named Larry Kirkegaard came to visit us, uh,
KATE: he's like an old man now,
KATE: and he brought, uh, like a sla--like a little, like, marble sample,
KATE: like a marble countertop sample, and like, uh,
KATE: and a metal spoon,
KATE: and he made us, like, use, like, a, um,
KATE: like a special type of microphone, a parabolic microphone,
KATE: um, which is like, basically like, a little satellite dish,
KATE: with like, a microphone in it,
KATE: uh, and he would walk around,
KATE: like tapping the spoon on the marble,
KATE: and if you listened in the headphones of the parabolic microphone,
KATE: you could hear, like, the reflections come back, like,
KATE: [hisses]
KATE: It was like,
KATE: and I was like,
KATE: "these people are freaks, but they're my freaks," like.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: Uh...
KATE: I had a lot of fun doing architectural acoustics,
KATE: uh, and it was always, like, my back up plan, that if I somehow got like,
KATE: canceled, or whatever,
KATE: I could like, have,
KATE: go and like, retire into the world of...
KATE: doing spreadsheets for reverberation time, for a living.
KATE: Though, I'd have to probably refresh on my, uh, my skills here, after all these years.
KATE: But as... as a historian, I think,
KATE: I think acoustics is a fascinating subject and...
KATE: if I had to go back to school, which I probably won't,
KATE: I'd probably go, uh, study(?) history and get a PhD...
LIAM: Don't do it, Kate!
KATE: in the history of science, and...
KATE: continue this work, which is like...
KATE: ...if you can't tell, like, I actually...
KATE: ...I really love that stuff, like.
KATE: I think it's...
KATE: I'm...
KATE: It's, it was like, my first love, ever,
KATE: uh, as like, an architecture critic and...
KATE: uh, as like, an academic, and--which I'm not anymore, I'm like all kinds of things now, but,
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: I think the main point here, is like,
KATE: this is what you get when you displace poor people,
KATE: this is what you get when, like,
KATE: the Rockefellers try to do Cold War stuff and end up, like, taking massive Ls,
KATE: all around,
KATE: this is what you get when you try to fit,
KATE: uh, 19th century concert hall into a 20th century building that refuses to budge,
KATE: this is what you get when you think that, like,
KATE: science solves everything, which it doesn't,
KATE: uh,
KATE: yeah.
KATE: It has everything.
KATE: So good.
JUSTIN: My real question is, what is the Soviet equivalent of this?
KATE: Poor Leo Beranek.
JUSTIN: There's always a Soviet equivalent, there's gotta be--
NOVA: Mm.
NOVA: Oh, must be.
KATE: The thing is--
NOVA: The Soviet equivalent of this is made entirely out of, like, reinforced concrete,
KATE: I don't actually know.
LIAM: Yeah.
NOVA: weighs 1,500 tons...
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: ...Yeah, the, it's...
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: ...it makes the uh, the People's Palace look like a shoebox.
NOVA: Oh yeah.
JUSTIN: It has a rocket on it, for some reason. Or afterburners.
NOVA: [laughs]
KATE: Well, the thing about the Soviets, is that they reuse...
KATE: For them, like, it was very important to, like,
KATE: reuse the, uh, Gilded Age concert halls of, um...
KATE: ...of the Russian aristocracy,
KATE: and, like, make them palaces of the people,
KATE: than it was, to like, reclaim them, and like,
KATE: stake their claim there,
KATE: than it was to build new concert halls, which of course they did,
KATE: but, uh,
KATE: I actually don't know that much about Soviet concert halls because there's not a lot of, uh,
KATE: academic information on it published in anything other than Russian,
JUSTIN: Ah.
KATE: uh, which is actually why I was learning Russian at some point,
KATE: because I wanted to, like,
KATE: figure that out.
KATE: Uh...
KATE: I know a little bit more about, like, Yugoslavian concert halls,
KATE: uh, which,
KATE: which are kinda more like you were describing. [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: Uh, they were like, big concrete modernist slabs.
KATE: Ditto Venezuela,
KATE: uh, and South America in general;
KATE: actually, South American concert hall, uh,
KATE: architectures are usually fascinating but we don't have time to go into that.
KATE: But, uh,
KATE: the comparison that I make, actually, is one to social democracy,
KATE: uh, for example, so, like, at the same time that all this was happening, like,
KATE: the Berlin Philharmonie was built.
KATE: And the Berlin Philharmonie was like, the...
KATE: ...equally as important as Philharmonic Hall in shaping the history of acoustics.
KATE: It's like, I think, probably the most...
KATE: influential concert hall of the 20th century.
KATE: But it was very different; like, it was built entirely with public funds,
KATE: it didn't displace anyone because Berlin had been bombed to shit...
KATE: and what they built on, it was like an empty field that was bombed to shit,
JUSTIN: [snorts] [laughs]
NOVA: Yea--you're welcome.
KATE: Uh, and so like, they didn't displace anyone, that was the war.
JUSTIN: Yeah... [laughs]
KATE: Uh...
KATE: They let their acoustician, Lothar Cremer,
KATE: uh, go basically absolutely ham and do like,
KATE: this weird vineyard-style thing; no one knew how it's gonna turn out,
KATE: and in fact, people didn't really like it at first,
KATE: but now it's considered to be one of the greatest concert halls of all time.
KATE: Uh, and every new concert hall is basically like a stepchild of,
KATE: of the Berlin Philharmonie; it's my favorite concert hall on earth.
KATE: Uh, and Hans Scharoun was the architect, and he was kind of, uh,
KATE: he was--he had very, like, social democratic views about...
KATE: how it should have been...
KATE: done, like it should've been an open plaza, open to the people, like,
KATE: it should, like...
KATE: ...the democracy of the concert hall was all in that, like,
KATE: everyone had great sightlines and great acoustics, like,
KATE: it was not separated by a hierarchy.
KATE: The only hierarchy in the Berlin Phil is... the cost of tickets.
KATE: But architecturally speaking,
KATE: everyone gets a good seat,
KATE: especially if you're a student, then the cost of tickets doesn't matter.
JUSTIN: Wow.
KATE: But,
LIAM: That's fucking rad.
KATE: yeah, so, this was a very different way of thinking...
KATE: than like, the--
KATE: uh, I mean, it's imperfect, from like, a political perspective,
KATE: and kind of like, idealistic,
KATE: but it was definitely an improvement over, like, the capitalist,
KATE: the pure capitalist, not social democratic,
KATE: not, not even--and I'm talking like, Euro social democracy,
KATE: I'm not even talking, like, old-school Rosa Luxembourg social democracy.
KATE: I'm talking like, basic, like, post-war welfare state shit.
KATE: And so--but it's much better, for example, than...
KATE: like, the American capitalist,
KATE: like, way of doing things, which is how we ended up in the Philharmonic Hall mess.
KATE: Uh, which were, like, seat prices, and like, seating, and selling tickets...
KATE: matter way more than anything else.
KATE: And so, on the one hand, you got--but you still, on both hands,
KATE: got concert halls that, like, improve the science of concert halls,
KATE: and--but it took actually quite a long time for them to understand...
KATE: why Philharmonic Hall--or why the Berlin Philharmonie worked.
KATE: It took them about like, 10 or 15 years of, uh--
KATE: and it was actually a New Zeal--a guy from New Zealand,
KATE: named Harold Marshall, who figured out that it had to do...
KATE: ...the terrace balcony send up, like, sending, like,
KATE: early--what they call "early lateral reflections",
KATE: which are... reflections... that, um,
KATE: provide clarity to sound,
KATE: So it's like, why if, if you have really strong early lateral reflections,
KATE: you have, uh, basically you can understand what's going on... in the music.
KATE: Uh, and then everything that comes--the late reflections,
KATE: uh, are what give the space its spaciousness, and so like,
KATE: uh, the volume of the space, combined with the terraces, like,
KATE: provided like, a really nice acoustics profile that...
KATE: kind of sent early lateral reflections...
KATE: to everyone, instead of just, like, to,
KATE: to people sat in, like, more favorable places.
KATE: Um...
KATE: and there's always still bad seats in every hall.
KATE: Ironically, the bad seats in the Berlin Phil...
KATE: are the ones that are now taken by rich people.
KATE: Because, they're like, the private boxes. [laughs]
JUSTIN: A-ha! [laughs]
NOVA: Good!
JUSTIN: Good.
KATE: Those are the worst seats in the hall.
KATE: Yeah.
LIAM: Good.
KATE: ...So.
JUSTIN: Based acoustics.
KATE: Alright, I think that's it.
JUSTIN: Yeah.
KATE: That's--I think that's it, but that gives you...
KATE: an example of like, what other people did that was really good.
KATE: I stan.
JUSTIN: I...
JUSTIN: I definitely, I definitely,
JUSTIN: enjoy the theory of "build it now, figure out how it works 15 years later."
NOVA: Mmhm.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
LIAM: I like that they have a cure time of, like, 50 years.
LIAM: (?) [laughs]
NOVA: Yeah... meanwhile, meanwhile,
NOVA: the medieval masons building cathedrals are like,
NOVA: "Wow, 50 years? That's real fast."
JUSTIN: [laughs]
KATE: [laughs]
KATE: Yeah.
JUSTIN: Well, well most things like, universally(?) have terrible acoustics.
NOVA: Also true.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: 'Cause they need another 500 years!
KATE: Well, they must have (?) for a different type of music.
JUSTIN: Well, this is true.
KATE: Yeah.
KATE: Alright.
JUSTIN: Alright.
KATE: I think that's it.
JUSTIN: Well, we have a segment on this podcast called,
KATE: I gotta go to Slovenia now.
JUSTIN: Safety Third.
JUSTIN: Hold on, I'll make this quick.
♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪
JUSTIN: "Hello Justin, [Nova], yay Liam, and potential guest."
JUSTIN: That's, that's Kate.
NOVA: Lots of (?)
JUSTIN: Yes.
LIAM: Hello guest. Or... whatever.
LIAM: Hi Kate, and...
LIAM: hi, listener.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "I leave my name redacted and write to you today with my experience...
JUSTIN: "in narrowly becoming chunky marinara.
JUSTIN: "I worked for a company that installs and repairs ATMs,
JUSTIN: "along with safes and other various bank-related goodies.
JUSTIN: "Our company does tend to keep safety in mind,
JUSTIN: "and allows us to take safety into our own hands.
JUSTIN: "hence why I wear a bullet-resistant vest,
JUSTIN: "and carry the pride of Austria with me every day."
NOVA: Nice.
JUSTIN: Nice.
JUSTIN: "That being said, my CEO has a tendency to agreeing to...
JUSTIN: "some of the stupidest requests from banks that I have ever heard.
JUSTIN: "In this instance, a bank had built a new branch,
JUSTIN: "and had us moving everything between the two locations.
JUSTIN: "This eventually came down to moving the safety deposit boxes.
JUSTIN: "These are normally installed via crane as the bank vault is being built,
JUSTIN: "as even some of the smaller ones can weigh around 1,800 kilograms, that's 4,000 pounds.
JUSTIN: "These were not smaller ones, and weighed easily over 2,000 kilograms.
JUSTIN: "Given that they had already finished construction of the second bank,
JUSTIN: "the luxury of a crane was unavailable.
JUSTIN: "My manager rented some equipment...
JUSTIN: "that would allow us to get one safety deposit box off the others,
JUSTIN: "as they're stacked like bunk beds.
JUSTIN: "The equipment is designed to slip its arm in...
JUSTIN: "and elevate whatever the arms are under.
JUSTIN: "This equipment, which is shaped like a stick figure,"
JUSTIN: I assume it's one of those manual lift things, right.
NOVA: Mm.
JUSTIN: "was obviously never intended for the purpose we were applying it to.
JUSTIN: "I noted this upon reading the weight guide,
JUSTIN: "which was capped at 600 kilograms.
NOVA: [laughs] Oh boy...
JUSTIN: "My boss muttered, 'it's probably fine,' before cranking the device up.
JUSTIN: "We watched the steel spine bend like a strand of licorice,
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "all while the safety deposit box barely moved.
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "Being(?) probably not fine, we pull the lifter out, and began brainstorming.
JUSTIN: "We eventually settled on the Jenga tower method.
JUSTIN: "See attached images."
NOVA: Oh no.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "We built the tower, and then used pry bars and good old-fashioned elbow grease...
JUSTIN: "to move the box onto the tower.
JUSTIN: "We then use carjacks to elevate one side at the time,
JUSTIN: "before pulling out the plank...
JUSTIN: "out of place,
JUSTIN: "and then carefully and slowly lowering the box at an angle."
NOVA: This is the most dangerous shit I've ever heard... [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "During this process, I ended up near the far wall of the vault,
JUSTIN: "which is comprised of lots of concrete and steel plating.
JUSTIN: "This put me in a position where if the box slipped,
JUSTIN: "it would pin me against the practically immovable wall."
NOVA: I... would simply not be in that position.
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "Knowing the potential crushing hazard we worked slowly,
JUSTIN: "taking at least an hour and a half to get down to the ground,
JUSTIN: "where we could load it up and cart it up on a pallet jack.
JUSTIN: "I didn't notice at the time, but I'm happy my coworker documented the entire event.
JUSTIN: "If something had happened,
JUSTIN: "he could've delivered the video to my family to explain why...
LIAM: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "my remains came packaged in a Campbell's Tomato Soup can."
LIAM: [laughs]
NOVA: [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
NOVA: "Yeah, w-why does your camera film with a LiveLeak logo on the top left?"
LIAM: "Oooh, it is chunky marinara..."
KATE: [laughs]
JUSTIN: [laughs]
JUSTIN: "Luckily, no bad events transpired,
JUSTIN: "though I doubt I will ever agree to such a task ever again.
JUSTIN: "And thankfully, I'm (?) still around to be able to listen to your podcast,
JUSTIN: "so thank you for what you do.
LIAM: You're welcome.
JUSTIN: "Cheers, [name redacted]."
LIAM: Thanks, [name redacted]!
JUSTIN: Yes, thank you, [name redacted].
♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪
JUSTIN: Alright our next episode is on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster--
LIAM: No it isn't!
NOVA: No it's not, no it's not.
[crosstalk]
NOVA: It's on the Boston Molasses.
LIAM: Molassacre.
NOVA: Flood.
JUSTIN: I don't believe you.
NOVA: Molassacre.
LIAM: Yeah.
LIAM: I gave you the book and everything, motherfucker.
JUSTIN: Aight, alright.
JUSTIN: Plugs! Commercials, before we go, please.
LIAM: [Nova], go! Then Liam.
NOVA: Uh, Trashfuture, Kill James Bond!, podcasts, listen to them, with your ears.
LIAM: I...
LIAM: Lions Led by Donkeys, and my new Philly sports podcast,
LIAM: uh, Ten Thousand Losses.
JUSTIN: Oh boy.
LIAM: Go read McMansionhell.
LIAM: Kate! Plug your thing.
LIAM: Kate.
KATE: Oh yeah. Go read mcmansionhell.com.
LIAM: There we go.
JUSTIN: Yes.
KATE: A blog, about ugly houses, that I also run.
LIAM: Also subscribe to her cycling newsletter.
KATE: Uh, yes. And...
KATE: Yes, derailleur.net, like the part of the bike.
KATE: Uh, it's very cool.
KATE: Uh, if you like cycling--even if you don't,
KATE: it's like, I don't know, sports story time.
KATE: Uh, I have to go to Slovenia now, actually, so.
JUSTIN: Oh, okay. Next...
LIAM: Bye Kate! [laughs]
JUSTIN: ...Next Tuesday, Kate and I are on Guest Crit,
JUSTIN: which is archi--an architecture criticism stream,
JUSTIN: which is, uh... run by the folks at Failed Architecture,
JUSTIN: Kevin and Michael, who we had on the podcast previously,
JUSTIN: it's gonna be a good time, we're gonna talk about trains,
JUSTIN: um,
JUSTIN: so, yeah, uh, listen to that, we will put a link in the description there.
JUSTIN: Um, I think that's next Tuesday, the 26th of October,
JUSTIN: um, at 7PM Eastern Standard Time, I think?
JUSTIN: Alright.
LIAM: Bye everybody.
NOVA: Bye.
JUSTIN: Alright, that's it.
LIAM: I'm gonna do fucking lay down.
JUSTIN: Alright.
Labels: 85, architecture, avery fisher hall, transcriptions
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home