9B: Episode 6: We used to build Cathedrals

In this episode of 9B, we discuss the cultures that used to build cathedrals and now build mini malls. What happened? Could we even imagine what it would look like to build now, knowing that it wouldn't be complete for 150 years in the future?

This business and BS is hashed over a beer, a bourbon, and a Boulevardier cocktail by our three bombastic, bloviating blokes in Bryan, TX — the 9B’s.

Work with us  Fidelis Creative Agency 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

9B. All right, so for those who may not know, this is the 9B podcast, which is beer and bourbon and a boulevardier. Uh by and what it really is is these three drinks plus business talk BS from from three bloviating bombastic bros in Bryan, Texas. So that is the 9B. Today's topic is we used to build cathedrals, and it comes on the heels of a conversation I was having with you, TK, about uh the idea of grand, ambitious projects that are so big that they exceed any one man's lifetime and are in service to higher ideals than just functional utility. And we were thinking and talking about when was the last time America built something like that? We've done that in the past, and there are other cultures on the planet today, and we're going to get into that, um, who are continuing these multi-century pro uh projects. But what does that say about us? Like, as America, that we don't, that our vision has fallen so so drastically that now we can only hope for one more strip center in Houston.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Mm-hmm. One of the the things that makes this difficult to talk about is because is is the Americans as a whole, all people. We're not interested in cathedrals. But I do think that there is an American man, a person, a human. There's there is somebody out there, man or a woman. They know they have ideals. They I think there's people out there who have vision for these kinds of things. Again, I'm speaking quite hopeful there. I don't see it in our everyday, but I think there's people out there that would to would have an eye for it, who would love to see it. You see, uh, every time I talk to a uh landscape designers or architects, those those folks actually are like constantly pushing towards we want better, we want better, we want better. But they're consternated by the practicalities of how cheap and fast a styrofoam building can go up. And we need buildings and we need to keep moving, and our cities are ever expanding. We have a nation that started 250 years ago. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I was just checking my math historians. We're a young we're a young nation, you know? Yeah. Cathedrals take so many generations. So really we're like what five generations, six six generations when you do the math on it, in to this experiment of America?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Yeah, it it depends on how you define generation. But if you um typically ten generations, probably in terms of generational cohorts.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Yeah. Yeah. Not like that's not much. There's the um there's that line about uh Americans can have no they don't have an understanding of how old Europe is. Right. But Europeans don't have an understanding of how big America is. I think that's what we're struggling with.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Aaron Powell The the closest thing that we could use to approximate what our American cathedrals might be are like our ballparks, maybe. Or stadiums, yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Well, I that's interesting you bring up stadiums because I have a little bit of a contrarian view to what's being peddled here to my left. All right. All right. Let's hear it. You mentioned that we're in Bryan, Texas. Yes. And I think there's something, you know, here in our particular little corner of the state, Bryan College Station in Aguiland, it's interesting we have one of the great cathedrals to American college football in Kyle Field. But just a few blocks away at the corner of Magel and Church, we have an incredible major Catholic church at St. Mary's Catholic Center. That is that was just completed, I think, uh two years ago, and it was under construction for about two years. It is it is an absolute gem, and it stands in the in the best tradition of of Catholic Christian art. It's exactly what you're what you're speaking to. Okay. So there's some something's going right here in there, or there's something interesting going on here in this little corner of Texas.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

And I I can appreciate your point and appreciate the beauty of that building while pointing out it only took two years to complete.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

I don't know if that's a marvel of modern engineering or if that's a what would a multi-generation cathedral build look like if that can be constructed in two years. If that can be constructed in two years, what could we do over the next 120?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah. Yeah, that's a fair point. So I'll frame it a little bit. So China just last month opened a new massive, it is the tallest bridge in the world. I don't know if you guys saw this. Um China can actually build a 10-story structure in one day right now. Um and so the question about elegance versus the expedience, vulgarity of modern engineering versus the two centuries to construct something like the Parthenon that stands today, or how about this new Spanish cathedral that is supposed to open to the public in 2026 and in Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia? So let's unpack these a little bit, just so our viewers get a sense of what the Sagrada Familia is. Okay, it's in Barcelona, Spain. It is the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world, designed by the Catalan Catalan architect Antonio Antonio Gaudi. In 2005, his work on Sagrada Familia was added to an existing UNESCO World Heritage Site. On March 19, 1918, construction of the Sagrada Familia began under Francisco de Vilar. In 1883, when Villarre resigned, Gaudi took over as chief architect and transformed the project with his architectural and engineering style. Okay. It survives the Spanish Civil War. Uh there were anarchists who set fire to a crypt in 1936 and broke their way into the workshop, partially destroying Galdi's original plans. They have now used computer-aided design programs and numerical controls and have enabled a faster progress on construction. It passed the midpoint in 2010. In 2014, it was anticipated that the building would be completed by 2026. Uh, and then the COVID-19 pandemic delayed things in March 2024. Anyway, it's progressing. It may be 2026. Um, and that will be the first stage of completion. There's still some more that they're going to continue to build on to get to the full complex.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

But to TK's point, there's that acceleration of construction at the end of the period. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

That's right. Um and it will, Paul Goldberg described it as the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages. And we're seeing it finalized in our lifetime, which is pretty cool. Um though sometimes described as a cathedral, the basilica is not the cathedral church of the Archdiocese of Barcelona. That title belongs to a different cathedral. And then when you think about like another historical building, like the Parthenon, it was built in the 5th century BC. In thanksgiving to the Greek victory over the Persian invaders during the Greco-Persian War. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon also survived, served as the city treasury. It can construction started in 447 BC. Um in the final decade of the 6th century, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Sixth century AD.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

AD. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Yeah, that adds up.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yes. That's right. After the Ottoman conquest in the mid-15th century, it became a mosque. In the Marian War, a Venetian bomb landed on the Parthenon, which the Ottomans had used as a munitions dump during the 1687 siege of the Acropolis. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon. From 1800 to 1803, the seventh Earl of Elgin controversially removed many of the surviving sculptures and sent them to England. The idea that a nation would invest centuries into a grand project as an act of worship to God is sort of unimaginable today, right? Like if the United States at the 250-year mark said we are going to embark on a 300-year project, so double the lifespan of the United States in this massive building of worship to a God, right? I I don't even know. I don't even know.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Well we can't we can't conceive of a project like that because we're a society that has cratering birth rates. We we can't even conceive as a society of what it means to pass on something to future generations. And there's so much challenges to trying to think that way.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

What is the unifying thing that we would worship?

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yeah. The Almighty Dollar? Also, right. Okay, but I will also say, like, back to our conversation about like the the speed by which we produce stuff. I I can't even conceive of what would take 300 years. What would that look like? What even is that? The only thing that kind of starts to get there a little bit is we're gonna colonize Mars. That's the only thing I thought about that.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

I thought about Elon Musk's project to he's our world's biggest launch us into interstellar existence. He's our he's our galaxy brain at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

One of the few people who thinks about world building. Not as not as a game theory, but as actual world building.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

And how long is that out in his estimation? Our lifetime or the next generation? That's not even that far out.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Let me finish with this. The Chinese built an enormous and expansive suspension bridge, and it opened last month, the world's tallest bridge, completed in less than four years because China builds big and fast, and we hope safely. The Huazang Bridge, Grand Canyon Bridge, located in China's Guizhou project, is the world's tallest, new tallest bridge, opening in September 2025. This steel truss suspension bridge spans the Baipan River at a height of approximately 2,051 feet in the air. And was built to significantly reduce travel time across the canyon from two hours to two minutes. So it used to take two hours to get across this canyon. Now it's two minutes. So China built a fast, amazing solution. That's what they built. It's a solution. If it's in worship or exaltation of anything, it is to Chinese efficiency in industrial building. It's a monument to their engineering and construction prowess, which is significant, but it isn't a gorgeous bridge. It's a feat of engineering. So my questions as I pose them, um oh, by the way, uh while more recent structures often grab headlines, many iconic American buildings are timeless in their ability to inspire all. For example, the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, designed by Bertram Goodhue, was completed in 1932, is frequently mentioned as an architectural masterpiece. Its Art Deco tower and ornate interior are a testament to durable classical beauty, but that was 1932. So we're coming in on a century ago. The Twin Towers were special. Okay? Here are a few other sort of notable structures in the U.S. I don't know that the man on the street in Tucson would be able to identify these as iconic structures. The Spiral, which is New York City's newest uh skyscraper completed in 2023. It's notable for its series of spiraling terraces and hanging gardens that wind their way up the building. The Legend Tower in Oklahoma City is proposed, and it's supposed to be the l the tallest uh skyscraper in the United States if it is completed by 2030. I don't know. So it's gonna be this one gigantic building in Oklahoma, which is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Um there's a joke in there about a giant middle finger, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:22

There is.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Okay. I don't know what the joke is.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Uh there's the T3 in Minneapolis was completed in 2016. It was the largest modern mass timber building in the United States. Again, I don't think anybody in Tucson is thinking about it. So I would say there might be one other exception besides Elon today. The line that is being built in Saudi Arabia. Have you guys seen renderings of this? Yeah. The line, if it may be their version of a cathedral to the house of Saud and commerce and the Middle East and Islamic culture. But have you seen any renderings of this? It is a massive mirrored long vertical that is supposed to be a housed city between this these two things that just runs for miles through a desert.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, they're like digging out this trench and gonna Okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

What about Mount Rushmore?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

The monument.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

And what about the what's the status of crazy horse? The crazy horse um I don't know. It's going crazy, man. That's been that's been going on for for decades now. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

I'd put the the Chrysler building as like a people know about that globally.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

So, but what about America? Why aren't we doing anything like this? Is this a lack of imagination? Is it a lack of ambition? Is it a lack of funding? We're part of the richest society that has ever existed on the planet.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Well, one line of thought would say it's a signal of our decline, right? Because the British Empire in the 18th century said, we're so energetic, we're so virile, we're gonna go out and explore the entire world. We're gonna go find Australia, discover Australia and New Zealand that we didn't know were there. We're gonna, you know, plant colonies all over the globe. The United States, we're gonna, we're gonna change the face of the globe. We're gonna cut a canal through Panama because uh we can do that. And the Chinese are basically, they're just following that same playbook. They're saying we are the energetic, virile, strong country of finale. Yeah. And that's their that's their play. That's that's really why they're doing that. It's it's a it's a public relations, foreign relations type of uh play.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Last question. Do we simply not have a national identity? Uh we do not. Do we not have any divine enchantment? We do not. Yeah, I'd say Do we have anything that requires true honoring or exaltation that would exceed our lifespans? Golly.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

I mean look at look at how controversial the phrase make America great again is. Like we can't do that.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Whatever you think of anything. Whether you agree with it or not, it why is that yeah, you might ask, why is that controversial? Or what does it say about a culture that thinks that that's a controversial phrase?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Aaron Ross Powell Whatever whatever your site is, it doesn't matter. It does just on the face of it show we can't rally. We're not a rallying country that the last time we rallied. We are split.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Aftermath of 9-11, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

I mean that was a pretty short-lived rally. It was. I thought you were gonna say World War II was the last time.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

I'm trying to think the last time that I remember there was some sort of like put aside all of our particularities and let's everybody pitch us to the middle. COVID, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Was like the first few weeks of COVID, right? Like 15 days. Shutter in your house alone. And we're gonna celebrate the was the first responders and the and the doctors and the nurses. They're gonna dance in the hospitals for us.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Was so inspired by all those. It was really related actors saying we're in this together, singing we are the world. Goosebumps, as they lounge in their multimillion dollar mansions.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

So maybe it's maybe it's the rising generation. Like maybe we have more hope that the rising generation will uh embark on these kinds of enterprises.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

The thing in both your examples of when ral when America rallies are both centered around war.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

When our back is against the wall, that's when we find.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

But that's not that's all reactive. That's not a there's not a proactive stance here.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

But that's also been true since the beginning of our nation. That's that's who we are. We are those that broke away.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Now, I guess a I guess another perspective on some of the the data that you've been throwing out there might be, okay, China is going and building the the biggest uh high the tallest bridge in the world, but the United States is putting its energy into doing like AI. The next frontier is is is is digital, it's artificial intelligence, and that's where the United States is putting its energy, and that's and that's proper. Is that is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

I hope not. Man.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

That's where our world has moved, and so we're we're on the cutting edge.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Gross.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

I don't know. I do remember um was it was it Rabbi Daniel Lappin who says um it's a strange thing that in America we have the Statue of Liberty in New York, and I propose that we actually have a statue of responsibility on the West Coast that sits in a harbor. Because we're a nation of that emphasizes the liberty and the individualization without the toggle and the balancing of a nation that has responsibilities that come from that freedom. And so if you were to build something like another statue of liberty on the West Coast, that would be a big national undertaking that would be in honor of something worthy. What a statue of responsibility, even what would that what would that look like? Probably some sort of some beam, a beam on the back of shoulders.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Yeah. Maybe a mother holding a child.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yep. Oh. And a beam. Double. A mother and a beam. Okay, I think that's where we cut it.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Hey, I want I want to propose that if we're gonna rally around a thing, I think that our whole globe ought to rally around figuring out what exactly is beneath the Egyptian pyramids. We got no answers on that.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

And I still want to know. And there were scans that there's something going on. Yeah. If somebody out there knows, hit us in the comments. You don't know about this? And so we conclude the podcast. 9B.