people have created and discovered so
much freaking amazing stuff that we
hardly even notice anymore I like
somebody was once like Utz dude check
this out at the skyscraper let's build
this and then another guy was like yo we
could totally make this it's called a
car it's a driving thing that'll go
backwards and forwards what I want to
know is why do we even think that we
could do those things in the first place
[Music]
so yeah humans are pretty presumptuous a
lot of this cocky kind of attitude can
be traced back to the European
Renaissance actually and it could be
argued that the entire Renaissance dated
back to a cranky little Florentine
architect named Filippo Brunelleschi
Brunelleschi was born in 1377 just a
couple of decades after the Black Death
finished up killing pretty much
everybody in Europe for nearly a century
Brunelleschi's hometown of Florence had
been working on a cathedral the santa
maria del fiore and they had a problem
the original architect of the santa
maria del fiore because they started it
a century ago was expectedly
dead by this point unfortunately he had
not left behind plans on how to finish
the massive dome that he had said was
going to be a part of the design of this
church basically until then every
Cathedral in Europe had been built with
the help of flying buttresses one of my
favorite phrases in the entire English
language but flying buttresses were
totally off limits within the city of
Florence I'm not entirely sure why but
I'm sure there was a good reason and so
nobody knew how to finish the santa
maria del fiore knot because nobody knew
because the technology literally have
not been invented yet the committee in
charge of building this Cathedral I had
an awesome idea they said we're gonna
have a contest and the person who
submits the design that seems the least
whack is going to get the prestigious
title of head builder and we're gonna
build that guy's dome but Brunelleschi
had been burned before on one of these
artsy design contests and he was like
you know what I'm not gonna win this
thing with design I'm gonna win it with
science so Brunelleschi and his buddy
the sculptor Donatello went to Rome to
study the Pantheon which over a thousand
years after its construction was still
the world's largest unreinforced con
Crete dome and it still is so those two
together measured the hell out of the
Pantheon Brunelleschi went back to
Florence did some calculations and then
he walked up in front the committee and
he said here's what I'm gonna do i'ma
build two domes one inside the other
held together by these strong as hell
stone chains like barrel hoops the two
nested domes are gonna support each
other and it's gonna blow you damn minds
however I'm not gonna tell you how to do
it until you make me head builder
because I don't trust any of your ass
faces the committee wasn't thrilled to
be spoken to in this manner and they
kicked Brunelleschi out calling him an
ass and a babbler and for a while he was
a very unpopular guy in florence but
thing is the committee wasn't getting
any good ideas about how to actually
build the dome so eventually they caved
and gave him the job I had totally
worked
Brunelleschi and his team finished the
double dome in about 16 years which is
like lightning speed for the Middle Ages
not only was the design for the dome
totally innovative he also created a
bunch of innovative techniques for
actually building the dome for instance
Brunelleschi created the first modern
sky crane which allowed them to lift
bricks up and place them with incredible
precision he also created the world's
first reverse gear which nowadays you
can find on your bicycle or in your
automatic transmission he also
introduced like safety practices which
was totally unheard of back then I mean
if a worker fell and died on the floor
of the Cathedral no big deal but he made
all of his workers wear harnesses while
they were working
he also watered down their wine so they
wouldn't get totally hammered on the job
taking the wine away completely was
apparently not an option as a result
only three people died during the
construction of pruna less Keys dome
which by middle-age standards pretty
frickin awesome
usually people back then were like have
you gotta make an omelet you gotta have
to break a few bodies on the floor of
the Cathedral and while I was doing all
that on the side he was doing a little
painting and discovered a little thing
called linear perspective so filippo
brunelleschi
not a super nice guy but i think that he
may have convinced the entire western
world that there's nothing that the
human mind can't figure out if you want
to know more about Filippo Brunelleschi
and his dome you can look in the
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