Flightless Bird: Attics & Basements

I'm David Farrier, in New, Zealand, accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Something I still marvel at here is the scale of America. For example, back in New, Zealand, we've got about 5 million people, compared with America's 333 million people. And most of those 333 million Americans live in one of the 142 million homes that have been built here. Back in New, Zealand, there are just under 2 million houses.

Home is where the heart is, and my heart is anywhere you are.

Home is where the heart is, sang Elvis. But of course you also find other things in the American home besides vital internal organs. You can find bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, lounges, patios, an assortment of rooms that we spend a great deal of our lives in. But I've discovered that there are places in the American home that you do not find in the New Zealand home. Two of them specifically.

Flightless, flightless, flightless bird touchdown in America, I'm a flightless bird touchdown in America.

We have a special guest.

Hi, Dex. Did it cross your mind, because, well, first of all, I just want to applaud how good you are at this.

Oh, thank you.

Truly, again, every time I hear you write, regardless,

You can come at me. Okay. I've developed a thick skin doing this podcast.

Well, no, it's nothing, it's a compliment. We're at Attics and Basements, and then I wonder, did it cross your mind to split those up so you could have two different episodes of Attics and Basements, because we're really potentially running out of differences now.

No, we're not.

Believe me, no.

There are so many. I have a Google sheet of topics, and it is screwing up my experience of America, because I'm just out trying to enjoy my life, and just constantly it's like, oh God, this is a topic, and suddenly I'm fumbling for recording gear and trying to capture moments. Once you unlock your view of the world like this, it just gets out of control.

It's like when you're in the Groundlings or UCB, and you're in sketch classes, and then the world just becomes a potential sketch. That's how you're moving through the world.

Yeah, well, I was watching a movie. I was enjoying a comedy, and suddenly I'm watching these Americans with red cups at a frat party, and I'm like, oh God, red cups, and then I'm like, oh no, that's a thing, and they decide this is a fraternity story.

Beer pong.

Beer pong. What is it? It unlocks everything.

You've never played beer pong?

Never. Let's play. No, never drank from a red cup.

I don't believe that claim that you can't possibly make it to 40.. It's true. Back to the Groundlings thing, yeah, I remember, this is how bad it got. A waitress handed Bree and I a pen to sign the bill, and it was a Valtrex pen that the doctor had given, presumably her, which is a medication for herpes. Amazing.

After the race.

We've got a sketch. Then what's the next thing that comes out? What's the next pen? Yeah, it's so perfect. Unveils some other secret about the person.

I can see your concern about mixing the two topics together. We've just done a second DMV episode. we're going to do in part three as well. But this one, it just really felt like it has to be together. Attics and basements, up and down, you know?

I think you made the right call. It did occur to me that you could have potentially tried to milk it for two episodes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Do you know what's funny? I can't really hear... I can't really hear...

Monica's being aggressively rocked by Dex. I am on a roller coaster.

I might have a seizure.

I can't wait to see...

It's my dream for you to have a seizure while I'm around, too.

Oh, my God.

It's a fantasy. Yeah, I just want to see what happens.

No, he doesn't. He's not going to care.

He's going to watch. He's going to rubberneck.

No, I'll kick you off the road to wherever you are, you know?

Yeah, right, and throw an egg at my head, like you did to Roosevelt. Yeah. He's mean to people sometimes.

Well, he's a bit of a rascal. I know. Like Wabi-Wab. I know. That's why they two are so wealthy.

They're cut from the same cloth.

Imagine those two in a hotel room when they're together on the road.

Oh, you don't want to know. Yeah.

Do we get cut from the same cloth as racist?

I haven't even thought about the term.

I learned something that was racist. Oh boy. Or not racist, but a word that is based in slavery, which I had never heard. And I actually found it interesting. There's so many words that we don't know.

Right.

Cakewalk.

That's a cakewalk. That's what you'd say is easy, right?

Uh-huh. Like at fairs and stuff, you can do the cakewalk and win a cake.

No. I don't know that. No. Don't?

No. I don't know.

What are you talking about? Oh my God.

Write it down. Top up.

I'm writing it down. Cakewalk.

Although you're not allowed to call it that.

No, we're not. Well, you are. We'll talk about the origin. But no, at fairs and stuff, you can do the cakewalk where you go in a circle and there's numbers on the ground. And when the music stops or something like that, if you're on number 13,, you get the 13th cake.

Are you in an Amish community?

It was at a fundraiser for Calvin's preschool. Yeah.

It's common. So it's like musical chairs? But with cake.

But with cake. Musical chairs. You replace the chairs with cake.

Yes. So people will bring cake. It's really fun. Okay.

So I'm going to go to the Iowa State Fair this year. Maybe they'll have for the show, obviously, not for fun, for the show, they'll have a cakewalk?

Probably.

Great.

Okay. But cakewalk, a contest in which black people would perform a stylized walk in pairs. Typically judged by a plantation owner, the winner would receive some type of cake.

Holy shit.

But do you know musical chairs is anti-Semitic?

Well, it might be. Yeah. Is that a joke? This is real. You're lying.

I know.

I know. You made it a lie. I trust you.

Out of all of you, I trust you the most, Dax. What? And so that's really-.

I quickly exposed myself as lying. What in the world is that about?

The tallest, whitest man in the room?

I have been accused of. ... It's because I went to the best college.

I am going to poke a hole, because David acts so liberal all the time, and he aligns with that, and you do hold patriarchal ideals.

Oh no, I openly admit that. It annoys Roosevelt. Sometimes Roosevelt will tell me a fact, and then she'll- No, no. Roosevelt's one of my best friends. Roosevelt is objectively one of the smartest people I know, and she'll tell me a fact about something.

Sure, sure, sure.

And when you did Price is Right, you thought it was a PA, and it was really like the producer, because it was a woman.

So I've got problems.

Are you going to work on it?

All the time. Okay. If I see a female now, I don't assume they're assistant, I think maybe they could be the executive producer.

Could be the president.

Now, where were we? Oh, attics and basements. And I would like to point out that I just realized this earlier, we are in an attic. What a place to be. And I guess my whole premise of this episode is that this space we're in right now would never exist in New Zealand.

But, but David, I've been to New Zealand and I've seen certainly many of the roofs have the pitch to accommodate an attic. It's just empty space up there.

It's empty and it's dusty. And I address this in the documentary. Should we get into this?

Can we talk about basements really quick? Yeah.

Yeah.

In Michigan, nearly every house has a basement.

Right. Yeah. Same with Georgia.

But I feel bad for you, David, that you don't know the pleasures of a basement. Because a basement is the area that your parents didn't really give a fuck about. You could get away with murder down there.

That's where you partied.

You could build forts.

So what were you up to down there? What would you get up to down in your Michigan basement?

Oh, throwing shit, bow and arrow. My brother and I put four mattresses out and we had a big time wrestling ring in our basement on. Tara. And the boys would come over and they'd have to wrestle in this ring. My mother wouldn't have allowed that in the living room or anywhere else.

No, it's like free space where you can just be a child and just go crazy.

And in a climate where it's often hostile to go outside, it's really nice to have this area where you're allowed to really get wild. Yeah, finger blast. I lost my virginity in my basement of my Milford house.

Oh, wow. Yeah. A lot of virginities have been lost in basements.

It's a great place to lose your virginity.

Are you losing more virginities in a basement or an attic?

Oh, basement.

Basement?

Attic's very exposed. You're up high. If there's windows in their basement, you've got some opportunity to be hidden.

So sort of filthiness is happening in basements. It's like physically a bit filthy and also...

It's also where grown-up sons live when they still live with their parents.

Yes, and grown-up daughters too.

But mainly sons.

And daughters too, because women too are...

Are really shitty.

...are fallible, just like men.

But mainly just the sons, is mainly what I've heard.

If you could pick having an attic or a basement in your house, what would you want?

Basement. Basement. Really? Clearly, yeah.

Okay.

It's not even a question. In fact, most in the South and Midwest, basements are normally finished, or at least half finished. Was yours?

Our houses got nice when they became finished, but the wrestling ring was just cement floor and steel poles.

So would your parents clamber over and yell down into the basement, what are you kids doing down there? Is it that kind of thing?

I think they too enjoyed the reprieve from responsibility. It's like an unspoken agreement. You're going to go down there and you're going to get wild, and I don't want to hear about it. But I would say, and I don't know what your doc exposed you to, but attics far less common than basements.

Exactly. And they're very rarely finished. This is so rare where we are right now that this is a finished attic.

Yeah. I'd like to invite you into our attic in the main house.

Oh, I'd love that.

Because that too is big like this and voluminous, but it's just got some plywood on the ground and we put clothes and shit up there. It's a storage.

It's not. chairs and the toilet and everything else. Okay. See, that's more of a New Zealand attic. is that unfinished.

Christmas vacation. Clark goes up there. You got to walk on the beams.

Exactly. Exactly. That's the New Zealand experience. Plus, in America, you've got these amazing staircases that just come down and you're suddenly climbing up. Oh yeah.

Yeah. It's the New Zealand way.

How do you even store stuff up there if you have to climb up the ladder? That's hard.

That's the point. It's really difficult.

So you just ignore the whole thing. mostly. Yeah.

It's basically. it's empty space that we're not using.

Very wasteful. Shocking. It's super wasteful. Because you guys are conscientious people.

We are. Well, I'm starting to wonder now. Are we as conscientious as we think we are?

I didn't even think about this, but this all could be a really good foundation for you returning to New Zealand and announcing a candidacy. With a platform that you're like, look, I have gone over every single detail. Most of it we should skip, but I do come to you with six that are worth keeping from the US.

That's when you've become 100% American, is when you go back to your country and say- Exactly. And say, I know how to make this better.

That's right.

Americanize the shit out of this place.

And what an ironic twist, though, that the colonizers would get colonized.

Yeah. This is- I mean, it takes the whole act of this whole series in a very different direction, quite intense.

Well, if you become a despot at the end of this, that could be incredible.

Wow.

Well, no, I do feel like I've missed out on a lot in my life because I haven't had these spaces to exist in. If you want to get away from your parents, you jump on a bike and you ride down the street or go to a park or into the forest or something. Yes. Get into the woods. You get into the woods.

Yeah. We did both. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the woods is where you would deal with flammables.

Oh, you set stuff on fire. Yeah.

You wrestle in the basement, but if it was time to light some shit on fire, you need to get out in the woods.

100%. Yeah. Slingshots and all that.

Yeah. And girls are shitty too.

Listen, our species is defined by our mastery of fire.

I don't think you are mastering it in the woods.

Oh, you'd be shocked. You should see me with a can of WD-40..

Okay, let's hit the dock.

Okay. Before I go on this journey down into the basement and up into the attic, I want to clear something up. Episode 43, Eggs, was incredibly controversial. My premise was that Americans kept their eggs in the fridge, while most other countries, like New Zealand, stored them at room temperature, in the pantry or on a shelf.

Other parts of the world, they don't refrigerate eggs either. It's not uncommon to go to another country, not only see the eggs in the center of the aisle, right, where you would never find them here in the US like that.

The response to that episode, the anger, was quick and brutal. Flightless Bird was interesting at first, but has quickly become saturated by what seems to me to be very senseless topics, raged SpaceTrash08 over on Reddit. Even more distressing is that I discovered I'd also attracted the wrath of my fellow New Zealanders, my fellow Kiwis, my fellow flightless birds, who emailed me saying I was wrong, that New Zealanders kept their eggs in the fridge as well. I was ready to quit the show, to go and hide in a basement or maybe an attic. Instead, I chose to hide in a movie theatre, sliding into a seat to watch a horror film called Evil Dead Rise.

Because we have roofs and we have space underneath the roofs that people sometimes put boxes up in, but it's not like in the movies, where there's another level to the house. Very seldom seen. Mostly people have got, if they've got an attic space, a hole in a room somewhere that you can like clamber up into if you have a ladder, but even when you get up there, it's not like an American attic. I was always envious of American attics in movies because they look so elaborate, but in New Zealand it's just spiderwebs and insulation.

There you have it. In New Zealand, there's space in the roof, but it's barely accessible and contains nothing more than spiderwebs and insulation. What, then, of basements? Would you say we have basements in New Zealand or we don't have basements?

No basements. I can't think of a single house. I know that's got a basement.

We have downstairs, like a lower floor, it's often like called a rumpus room or something, but I wouldn't call it a basement. Basement and attic are American words from the movies, I don't think that we use them.

Ah, I don't know anyone who has a basement, but I'm sure they exist.

No, I mean, have you ever been in someone's basement in New? Zealand?

No, people don't really go underground, do they?

New Zealanders do not go underground, at least as far as basements are concerned, because we don't have them. And according to all the New Zealanders I talk to, we don't have attics either, at least not in the American sense of the word. So, on with this basements and attics episode, secure in the knowledge that in New Zealand we do not have basements and attics like you have here in America.

I would also observe that it comes about through the processes and materials of construction. Until the 20th century, you didn't have too many options, so most buildings tended to have timber-framed roofs, timber planking for the ceiling of the highest level, and basically you were presented with this space under the pitched roof. If you ran out of space below, this was a kind of overflow space.

He says. the first thing to note about this overflow space is that it helps to regulate the temperature in the rest of the home.

It has this kind of insulating capacity, so in hot climates it makes things a little bit cooler to have this airspace separation between the interior of the house, let's say, and the underside of the roof, and of course that's where it's going to absorb the most heat. In a cold climate, the ceiling of the interior of the house would tend to hold the heat in so that it wouldn't go up underneath the roof and more easily dissipate.

The other thing that fascinates me about the American attic is how you pull a little rope and these collapsible stairs suddenly unfurl in front of you like a magical stairway to the heavens. With this in mind, Stephen tells me how America's collapsible ladder came to be.

In the Gulf Coast area of the United States, particularly in Louisiana, there's a certain house type called a creel cottage, and the porch, instead of being attached to the front of the house, actually sits within the body of the house. From the side, it would look like a triangular roof within a rectangular habitable space beneath it, but then you would extract one end of that rectangle and that would be the open porch. In these creel cottages, access to the attic was often from the porch on a ladder or a very, very steep stair. Typically those spaces would be used for storage, but also because they tended to be very small houses where members of the family, especially the young boys, would sleep in the attic. So that was a precursor to then the later collapsible ladders.

So it seems. the idea of living in the attic came about out of necessity. Small houses, too many kids. As time went on, the spaces got fancier and more habitable. And post-war housing boom, things like the collapsible ladder appeared.

Basements are common in particularly the colder parts of the country, because again they serve to insulate the interior of the house. And so in places with a very cold climate, like much of the middle western United States or northeastern United States, I think a basement is pretty much a necessity if you're going to be living on the ground floor.

So, like attics, basements have to do with keeping the rest of the house warm. So in places that do have basements, are they primarily there for storage space or something to do with heat regulation?

I would assume that they serve really that double purpose, providing insulation for the interior of the house, but then also making it possible to store things in the basement. With improvement in heating technology and cooling technology, like attics, they're often kind of used as habitable space.

Would you rather live in an attic or a basement, personally?

I guess in a basement. I think of attics as being too hot, but of course, since I don't live in a cold climate, I don't have to worry about the opposite of feeling like the basement is too cold.

Stephen tells me that not everyone likes a basement, including famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who, over the course of his life, designed over a thousand buildings. But many of his houses did not have basements. Because while he was a fan of buildings, he was not a fan of their subterranean element, the basement. Oh no, quite the opposite.

In the early part of his career, his houses from the first decades of the 20th century, he still had to elevate the main living floor above the ground. So he often had basically an entire floor. that kind of doubled the square footage of the house, but were not terribly usable.

Later in his career, Frank Lloyd Wright developed a system of building a concrete slab on the ground, threading a network of water or steam pipes through the slab, so it could be heated during the winter. It's a system called radiant heating, which is how he got around his hatred of basements. Not that the people who live in his houses necessarily love his solution today.

I've visited some of Wright's houses from the 1950s, in which the owners have this radiant heating system. The problem now is that they're extremely expensive to operate. And so these poor people were living in their beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright houses. They would kind of retreat into one room during the winter because the house was freezing, but it was too expensive to try and heat the entire house. So you do encounter some practical problems and economic problems if you try to eliminate the basement in places where you need it.

As I wrapped up my conversation with Stephen, I was curious what an influential architect had against the basement. What crime had the basement committed? What had a basement ever done to him?

I don't know if that question has ever been asked, why he had this animosity. Maybe he had some bad childhood memory of some monster in the basement.

It's not a bad theory, because we all know basements are really scary. Even me, who grew up with zero basements in my life, I know that basements are scary. I've seen The Conjuring. I know what can happen in an American basement.

Who's ever done that, I'm going to lock you in now!

That was the sound of Lorraine Warren falling down the basement stairs. And things don't go well for her down there, because, as well as being an excellent place to store pickles, the American basement is also where they store ghosts.

Hey, want to play hide and clap?

The scariest horrors I can think of all have. basement scenes. The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, they've all got basements. Maybe Frank Lloyd Wright was onto something. Maybe he was simply trying to protect his fellow Americans.

Well, I think what makes that distinction is whether it's finished or not.

Right, unfinished basements are scary. So what is a finished basement? Is it like a normal room, but it's underground?

You would put insulation over the cement.

So there's no concrete?

None exposed.

Okay.

Yeah, and then you would frame that and then you put drywall over it, and then you could probably put actual ductwork for heating and cooling and all that.

What about the fact there's no windows? It's so scary, because there's always a light. So you put the little light on with the pull down thing and it goes. Yeah, and then the light blows out and suddenly it's completely dark. That's scary.

All right. So I'm just now getting the idea that you could have done attics as an episode, then unfinished basements as an episode, and then finished basements as an episode.

Because finished basements have windows often.

They generally have some window down there that you can crawl out of, that you're supposed to be able to crawl out of. And then I'm going to throw another wrench into your whole thing. Do you know of the walkout basement?

No.

I think it's state to state how you can categorize this.

Yeah.

But in Michigan, let's say, you had a 3,000 square foot ranch. Okay. And then underneath of that, you had a full basement. So that's another 3,000 square feet. Huge.

That's what my parents have. But we call it a walk-in.

Oh, really? A walk-in basement?

Yeah.

Interesting.

I know. That is weird. But maybe which is why we have windows, because it is on the hill, so it's not underground necessarily.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or some parts of it are.

So then there's weird rules about that, right? So three of the four walls have to be subterranean for it to be considered.

A basement.

Yeah, even, I think, a walkout. I don't know. It gets tricky. But you'll see, quite often, you'll see, the back portion has got windows and doors, and then the side now has the slope of the ground. So you might have like a couple windows at the back of the basement.

I mean, when does a basement become not a basement? You know, when is a basement just another room? How much do you have to expose?

Well, I do think that the walk-in or walk-out basement challenge is that exact premise. Is it a basement at this point?

Maybe that is a separate episode.

Well, no.

Yeah. This should be a 12-parter.

I'm so bad at physics and chemistry and most of the sciences that I am confused. So I'm thinking about my parents' basement. It's definitely underground. You walk in on the ground floor. Go down the steps.

Tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip.

And it's big. There's a room on the right, full room.

Like a living room.

Well, that's more... You know, sometimes when I'm home and we record...

Yeah, the enormous pantry-type storage room.

Yes, kind of a storage pantry, but it's finished. It has carpet and normal walls. And then you go out of there, then there's a huge living room-type space. Playroom. Playroom, living, French doors.

Virginity losing...

Windows, TV.

Mm-hmm.

And then another huge room. And it's an office. It's another huge room. Then another huge area. that's just storage.

Oh, so many different uses for this underground lair.

And there's a bathroom.

I want to add, you have to hide the mechanical systems of the house somewhere. Yeah. Meaning the enormous furnace. Yeah. Maybe the water softener.

Yeah, it's funny.

It's so hot and they're working in a very cramped space with all this stuff. So yeah, very cumbersome.

I've got one thing to address quickly. The stairs to the basement. I also associate them as being scary because they're usually wooden and monster hands can come out from between the gaps and grab your ankles as you go down to the basement. That's true. All basement stairs are those wooden things, right?

Yes, sealed if it's finished.

I've never seen one. Can you take me to one of these places?

You've been in my basement.

Is that a basement?

Yes, where the theater room is.

Is that a basement? Yes. I thought that was part of the house. Is that underground? Yes.

Did you think you were going up when you went down?

I thought we'd gone to like ground level. I thought I was up coming in.

No, because you enter on the ground.

Oh, my God. I was underground.

You do have split level houses too, though.

Yeah, we don't have one, but sure.

In the Midwest.

What the fuck is that?

You don't enter on the ground. You have stairs going up. Yeah, but the basement is half underground. Maybe a little further down, but...

If you can imagine...

Oh, my brain hurts.

On a tri-level house, you have basically three different levels, but the middle level is splitting the difference between the two. So it's not three stories. Like our house on Terra, where the wrestling match was, you walked in a ground floor, but then you'd walk down only half a set of stairs to go to the basement. I'm sorry, the lower, like the family room. And then you'd go up half a set of stairs to go up to the bedrooms.

Oh, that's a split level. You call it tri?

Tri-level. Wow. We call it a walk-in basement.

Are your roof heights differing in each place, or are they the same height of the roof?

They are. If you're looking at the outside of the house, it's like an L, or a shoe. The woman with all the kids, the shoe. Okay.

She had a tri-level shoe. What did your house look like?

I feel like it's house on the prairie.

It was just...

Was it a ranch?

No, it wasn't. I just lived in one story. It was one story houses, and I had my tunnel out the back. I didn't live in... That was a little house, and I had my tunnel.

But it was a ranch.

In America, we call those ranches. We call one-story houses ranches.

A ranch is a huge property. We have horses, and hay, and a barn.

That is also a ranch. What the fuck? But we call one-story homes ranches here.

Yeah. But a ranch can have a basement, just to further confuse you. My guess is your reality is a bit like when I've experienced mushrooms, because you're not positive who you're talking to.

No, no.

Generally, right? Because of your facial... Yeah. So you're talking to what seems like a stranger, but they're very familiar with you. And then they're using terms like ranch, but you're picturing horses and...

Yeah. And barns.

What a wild ride you're on.

I find life here very confusing. I'm coping, but it gets stressful. I'm tired at the end of the day. I think it's because I'm so fucking stressed from all this shit.

But I think that's what makes you an artist, is you don't really know what's going on. And so you have a point of view that is... From all these other boring points of view that are anchored into reality.

Yeah, fine line between art and crazy. That's what they say.

Imperceptible.

Einstein said that.

Okay, should we... Okay, I've got part two.

Einstein didn't say that.

So far, I've learned that both basements and attics are important when it comes to making a home cozy in winter or cool in summer. And that Americans have also made sure both those spaces are both practical and habitable. Sometimes perhaps too habitable.

When Davis Wallman got to his Green Lake home, he noticed some lights on.

I don't immediately freak out, but I'm like, this is not ordinary.

He didn't think too much of it until a strange noise startled him.

I am kind of jolted out of bed. I hear rummaging around up above me, which I know is the attic.

Davis immediately called 911.. Then a woman, a complete stranger, opened the door and was face to face with him.

There are countless stories of Americans finding people living in their attics, or in their basements. One family discovered someone had been living in their attic for years without them ever knowing. Assuming the late night pitter patter was a raccoon or possum. And here's the thing about these spaces. They're so contradictory.

Stop! Come on, Peter!

Up there, he finds himself trapped with something much, much worse. Then there's the terrifying 1987 Flowers in the Attic, where four kids are held hostage in the attic by their mum. The one truth they have yet to face...

Mama?

Flowers in the attic. And let's turn to the humble basement, a space where you store pickles and take safety from a passing tornado. But it's also where Stephen King's monsters live.

But, Bill, if you'll come with me, you'll float too.

Georgie.

With this in mind, I wanted to explore the habitable side of basements and attics more, and what they really mean to America.

My name's Giorgio. I'm an architect and a filmmaker, and I guess an attic and basement aficionado.

After studying architecture at Rice University, Giorgio Angelini helped open a boutique architecture firm which went on to design the likes of the White Oak Music Hall in Houston, which has won multiple design awards. Giorgio also makes documentaries. Owned A Tale of Two Americas, looks at discrimination in the American housing market, and Feels Good Man, explores the Pepe, the Frog meme, and how a happy frog got warped into a symbol of hate and division. And he also loves attics and basements. He's invited me over to his house to share some thoughts over a bowl of pasta.

We'll leave it to Americans to squeeze every square foot out of a home.

Giorgio leans in towards me, resting his elbows on the table.

But what specifically relates to your premise here, which I think is very interesting, is that it's not so much that America has more attics and basements, it's that we identify with attics and basements much more profoundly than other cultures, for a set of reasons that are uniquely American. So come with me on this ride. So America was founded by deeply paranoid, pathologically so, people. They were scared of Catholics. They were scared of Native Americans.

I've been into a few basements and attics since I've been in America. And I recently clocked one aspect that sets them apart from the other rooms in the house. And I think it's also the fact you've only got one entrance and one exit. It's terrifying to me.

I had not thought of that, but that is very true. I mean, yeah, if you think about it just in terms of film, think about Buffalo Bill.

What is scarier for you, an attic or a basement?

Probably a basement, because the basement I grew up with, when you went down to the basement, it was unfinished. You saw under the house. So it represented a very powerful metaphor about seeing the underside of the womb, domestic womb. You're seeing the dirty underbelly.

Giorgio is getting very poetic over his pastor. His thoughts driven by his conflicting feelings about both attics and basements. For instance, when he was a kid, he remembers trying to create a haunted house in his basement. Motivated by a storyline in the Cosby show, only to be so disappointed when his basement was too small. Then there's his childhood memories from the attic.

My mom is an artist. And on my fifth birthday, my birthday is kind of around Halloween. She created a Halloween themed birthday for me and she created a haunted house in the attic. She, bless her heart, doesn't always follow the normal social cues, but she thought it would be really fun to put her head on a platter and greet the kids as they came up the stairs into the dark, hot, weird, damp attic. She's an artist.

Terrifying.

Completely terrifying. So these four or five year old kids come up and my mom's there at the top of the stairs, like, so I still have friends to this day who are like, my first memory is of your mom scaring the ever-living shit out of me. So therein lies basically America's relationship with these spaces. It's, it's rooted in terror.

But for Giorgio, his emotions are not just rooted in terror. Because, as I said, these spaces are contradictory somehow.

Yeah, my relationship with my attic was profound and significant in several gestational moments in my life. So, as a five year old, that birthday party and the head on a plate. And then, when I was 13,, it was also the space in which I got my first handjob. It's Houston and an attic. So it's very hot, but you're horny and you're a teen and you're trying to find these secret spaces away from your parents in order to kind of have some privacy and experience special new things with your friends.

What I love about this conversation is that Giorgio's wife, Maggie, very talented interior designer, is also sitting at the table with us. It's the first time she's heard this story. She's stifling laughter and also rolling her eyes.

And so I did what any horny teen would do in a situation where it's hot and muggy and you're looking for privacy. So I pulled a blanket up over us, because, of course,

It was a cue.

It was a very clear cue for what was to come, which was, oh wow, I didn't even mean to say that. It didn't come, just to be clear. It was subpar. There was a lot of raw skin. afterwards, I'll put it that way.

Being from New Zealand, I started to wonder what seminal life experiences I'd missed out on due to New Zealand's lack of attics and basements. There was no Cosby Show inspired haunted house in the basement for me and there was no handjob in the attic. My God, there were no handjobs anywhere. My entire life, I'd assume that was something to do with me. But maybe the absence of an attic was to blame for my lack of early sexual experiences.

I mean, in a real estate obsessed climate, as such as America, I think these quote unquote bonus spaces are always in high demand. I mean, I think all this is so deeply intertwined with America's other export, which is just culture building. We built these spaces into our media so well, like the idea of the man cave in the basement, to build out the tiki bar in the basement. So these are always the spaces of debauchery or anxiety. There are always places where things shouldn't be happening.

It's either your mum's head on a plate or a little handjob under a hot blanket.

Right, or the fellas having a card game and cutting it up.

I asked to see Giorgio's attic, but his newborn is sleeping and he doesn't want my lanky frame clambering around up there making noises at 10pm. So I say goodnight to Giorgio and go out into the night. As I drove home, a thought kept creeping into my head. A memory. I'd been thinking about those eggs sitting on the countertop in Evil Dead.

People don't really go underground, do they?

And so I decided to call Rosabelle back. There was unfinished business. Unresolved trauma. Because, while I don't have memories of my mother's head on the plate in an attic, I did remember what I'd done to Rosabelle while she had sat doing her nails in our old lounge. Do you remember that time that I cracked the egg on your head?

I'll never forget. I'll never forget what you did to me.

When I did that to you, what did you feel at the time?

I felt that you were really attacking me. It was a very confusing emotional experience. Because we have quite a caring, loving friendship most of the time. And then you cornered me and cracked an egg on my head.

You were angry, weren't you?

Yeah, I was angry, but then I was really sad. And I, um, like I went and had a shower and I cried in the shower. Oh, did you?

My God, did you cry?

Oh, Rosabelle!

You cracked an egg on my head!

It struck me how we all have such different experiences of things. I thought I'd done a funny joke, but the impact of the egg on Rosabelle's head had had an emotional impact, too. I had no idea that you cried. That's amazing. I'm so sorry.

Oh, that's all right. It's just a confusing swell of emotions for a young woman with an egg on her head.

I realised that while looking into the American attic in the American basement, I'd also looked inside one of my oldest friendships. And like the attic and basement, they can be a complicated, paradoxical space. Places of safety, but also places of mystery and terror. Especially when you've just smashed an egg over a friend's head. But we must explore our relationships like we explore the attic and basement.

Really beautiful.

I was trying to channel this American life, you know?

You nailed it. I will be expecting a call from Ira Glass with some litigation.

Did you actually feel guilty?

I...

He stands by the bit.

Look how big he's smiling right now.

Look, he's a rascal.

It's conflicting.

I want to talk about rascals. Okay.

This week, rascals.

We have two rascals in the room.

Yes.

To a point. It does cross into completely socially irresponsible and...

Bullying.

...bullying and ugly.

It's a paradox for me. Because I find the fact Roswell cried both sad and funny. And maybe that's not normal. I don't know. But it was...

She laughed a little bit. She just wanted you to not feel horrible. When we did our second DMV trip, I cried too. Well, I didn't really cry, but internal. Because David was mean to me.

What did he do?

I said that I regretted bringing her with me. Okay. Briefly.

Okay.

And you know how that would make me feel, knowing me.

Yeah, I don't know why you regretted it.

It ruined everything.

Okay, so...

No, I didn't. No, I didn't.

What did you do, Monica? Everyone's taking some personal responsibility. Yeah. Is there anything you think maybe you did?

You're on thin ice, even just the way you said that. I accidentally, for two seconds, pulled out the wrong insurance card.

Okay.

And then she was like, this is wrong or not it. And so there was a flood of panic for the both of us. And then immediately I said, oh, here it is. Okay. That's what I did.

And the car was so dusty.

No, that was the first time.

Didn't work.

That was the first time.

And you can't really be resentful that someone didn't supply you with the perfect shit you needed. That seems a little out there. But I want to defend you. on the rascality. Oh, okay.

You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

On Rosabelle's head. How many people in this world do you think would have liked that?

In hindsight, I think not many would like an egg on their head.

Zero. Nobody.

I didn't realize that if you crack an egg on your head, the gun gets everywhere and the shells. And it was a real trauma for her because she had to wash her hair and stuff. Good for the hair. Also, I think if someone cracked an egg on my head, I think I'd find it funny.

I think you have to select your audience a little better. I think you failed at knowing your audience here.

I did.

I think if you find someone who's a sibling, like who grew up with a close sibling, or you just fucked with each other all the time, you do learn to just think it's funny. Yeah. I notice this a lot with only children versus where there's like four kids. Four kids, they'll laugh at themselves nonstop. You just get practiced at it.

Yeah. And I had a brother and we'd always tussle, you know, and that got... Oh, Monica, you look so sad. I do? You look so, so sad.

I was just thinking about her.

Yeah. I mean, I do feel bad for Rosabelle. And I did say sorry, although Rosabelle now accuses me of that, I didn't actually apologize properly, which is a whole other issue. So there'll be another episode about that.

You should do some kind of prank apology, where you break more eggs on her head. Because sometimes jokes don't work the first time, but, like through the fifth or sixth time, all of a sudden...

She says the tears are welling face to face. A whole like...

Talk about the unexpected in your apology.

Talk about maniacal. I mean, that's the end of it.

I have it. You need to drill a tiniest hole ever in an egg, and then roll up a scroll that has a very beautiful apology written in it, and then shove it inside the egg, and then put a little toothpaste over that hole, so she can't see it.

And do you let the stuff drain out, so at least it's not getting on her head?

That's a great idea. If we could make this a little less... Yeah, get all the gunk out, but still smash an egg on her head, that's empty.

Yeah. Well, how do you boil the egg?

Well, no, you can't get the message. How are you going to get the message in there? Although you could probably put it in and then cook it.

I think you could. Hot boiled egg on the head.

That's going to be just as messy in her hair. Exactly. You don't want that. And so stinky.

You should probably do a poached egg, since you're from New Zealand, and put some salad under her chin. Yes.

Wait, listen, stop. I want to say... Stop, everyone, stop. Shut up. What's so sad about what you did to her, and she said it, but I want to reiterate, she felt very safe with you, and you made that go away in that moment.

I think she still feels safe with David. We'd have to call her.

She might, but it's shock. The rug's being pulled out. Yeah. The rug's being pulled out.

How could this person?

The rules have changed. And she's like, what's going to happen next? If he did that, what else is he going to do? If this, then what else? This is great.

He's like a two by four over the head. I thought that would be funny.

Right.

A chair. Haven't you always want to break a chair over someone's head, like a big time wrestler in the basement? That would be so exciting. Can I add one thing about the doc, that we kind of got into a chicken or an egg thing, which I found interesting. And I can't believe, Monica, you and I left out.

Oh, Feels Good Man. Feels Good Man is so good.

Yeah, he's incredible. But it's a chicken or an egg thing. I don't know that horror movies have informed. our relationship with the basement as much as every little kid with a basement relates to the terror of the basement, because there wasn't a light switch, right? You got to go down there dark, and no one's been down there.

Hard to know, though.

Well, I was terrified of the basement long before I'd ever seen a horror film.

But what about Home Alone? Yeah, the furnaces.

I was afraid way before Home Alone. I had a fear of a basement before I even saw any real media.

It's like the fear of what's under your bed or in the wardrobe. Is it just this unknown space where you can't see? It's basically where monsters can hide. And maybe you have that from the second you're like conscious.

We can't just be programmed, not like the dark, right?

We innately do not like the dark, because we innately are low on the food chain before our harnessing of fire, which we were bragging about a minute ago.

Thankfully, men came around.

I remember like needing something out of the basement as a kid and like stand atop of the steps and like, I'm gonna run down. Yes, sprinting. And as you're coming back to your staircase and you're running, you're certain you're being chased. That might also be why we have such an emotional attachment to it, is it is a place that you're very afraid of for some significant portion of your childhood. And then you learn to love it.

It's a rite of passage. In a way, it's a triumph.

Yeah, and when you're down there and you actually feel good, you're remembering you've conquered that fear. It's a feather in your cap.

That's poetic, too.

You know, I'm sitting up here. Everyone got poetic. I mean, I become worried because I'm sitting up here with three Americans and you've all had this coming of age, sort of victory over these scary spaces. I've never had that.

Nor the handjob.

Nor the handjobs in an attic or a basement. There's been no blankets. It's like, how backwards am I from... You know what I mean?

Yes, yes.

And then also, do you have the term man cave in America? Yeah, I feel that's kind of tied in with the basement. You know, the cave, it's like this area. It's like you get rid of the ball and chain and down you go into your basement. There's all those funny ideas.

A lot of bars in the Midwest. Like where I'm from, that basement was a bar.

Right.

Really?

Oh, oh, oh, finished. Everyone had a bar. Yes. If you had a finished basement, generally that's where the dad built his bar.

Yeah, a lot of people, yeah.

I feel like this was a good topic, right? Attics and basements.

It was.

I think we've knocked this out of the park.

It was a beautiful walk through childhood. Can we talk about that handjob a little bit? I feel like people will be a little confused that we don't address the fact that that was too many people in a room for a handjob.

Oh, I said this to him. I was like, did you feel awkward with, like all these other kids around? The blanket is all that he needed.

Right. He felt very safe.

Well, that, like movie theaters, kids would do that all the time. And technically everyone's around. If it's dark and you got a blanket.

But there's like noise, there's movement as well. The blanket would be moving.

The movie's on, though. They're watching Twister. It's loud.

Twister is loud. They're remaking Twister at the moment. Maybe when the new Twister comes out, I could go and have that experience. I could get a handjob in an attic.

So this was the Rascal episode.

Brought to you by Little Rascals, Entering Paris, the new animated film by Pixar Studios.

And if Rosabelle is listening to this, I do offer a heartfelt apology to you, Rosabelle, for cracking the egg in your head. And I won't do that again.

Rosabelle, I see you. And I'm sorry that you have David in your life.

Don't team up with her. Don't team up with Rosabelle. That's not how this works.

Yeah, I used to be against Rosabelle because I was jealous.

Oh, you're jealous.

Yeah. And then now I've definitely come around and Rosabelle and I are...

Yep, that's right.

We're on the same team. All right. Love, everyone.

That was fun. Thanks, guys.

Love you, guys. Bye.