SYSK Selects: How Igloos Work

Dec 15, 2018

Igloos were traditionally used by Inuit Indians as temporary shelter while on hunting and fishing trips. In this episode, Josh and Chuck look at the design of igloos, from their impressive heat-catching properties to their ingenious construction. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

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now available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts all right everybody it's Chuck here it's Saturday you know what that means it's time for a stuff you should know select episode curated by me this one's about igloos how much fun right for March 29 2011 and now this one should be landing here in the winter as well so you can go out and build an igloo yourself that's what I say but be safe while you're doing it there's a fun episode I remember enjoying this one quite quite a lot

so I hope you guys like it

welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworks.com

hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W Chuck Bryant hello sir and makes this stuff you should know right it's right unless I'm in the wrong place your little under the weather still aren't you just too sick as I was when we recorded fainting goats yes not not 10 minutes ago yes so Chuck hasn't been sick all week no it'll probably just be a couple days it'll clear up you have a robust immune system for a man of your age

remember when you were actually sick for weeks and weeks yeah I can hear one yeah and I think like 18 podcasts were screwed up because I was just I could not get better that you that's those are the unhealthy day so you lead a much healthier lifestyle much much healthier yeah you're not we don't need to check you in to the sanitarium like we had to back in the day I'm okay now I'm not I've gotten over my consumption hopefully you will very soon I haven't the all faith that you will right so Chuck while we're waiting for you to recuperate

wait I have I want to talk to you about technology okay specifically some of the oldest technology known to man clothes clothing is technology yeah so I'm think so but it is Chuck probably more than anything else the thing that defines humanity is our desire and our ceaseless striving to become more than more than human so to take ourselves out of the rat race of evolution the

crapshoot of genetics yeah and I basically take hold of our biological Destiny right yeah we sort of did that with clothing many many many years ago yes so that that's what we do we use technology to do that and clothing was one of the earliest ones because we are a subtropical species humans are yeah we're not supposed to live in really cold places right but we do we've managed to migrate from you know somewhere near the equator where we can run around without clothes yeah to yeah that's what they call the sexy eat

a Pockets right um to some colder climes thanks to close along the way we figured out that we could use Hammers and or use stones for Hammers and other tools sure and we figured out that we could build our own shelters make things warm on the inside right So eventually over the years we figure out and closed heating systems and then now thanks to all this we have swedes right and Volvo's em Volvo's thanks to the swedes so the

LG Volvo's are a direct result of the technology of clothes wow in a weird way you're exactly right but somewhere along the line there was a branch of that linear development of thought and talent of Technology all the way to enclose shelters that house Suites where somebody figured out that you can make an enclosed shelter out of blocks of hard pack snow and we know those today as igloos yes and

know what the Inuit call the igloo igloos eggless yeah this is a trick question that's a good that's a great that was a good question though because the the yeah it's an Inuit word for what I believe it means snow house so the Inuits are just among like the most pragmatic speakers on the planet is very cut and dry yeah they call their snow houses igloos right that just makes better sense yeah we're talking about the Canadian Tundra Josh and they you know TPS and castles and other things that were being

belts were all well and good if you're in Europe or if you are in a warmer climate let's say like the Florida Panhandle right you don't have to take 250 feet of ice the Quarry Stone exactly but if you're on the Canadian Tundra those aren't really good options so snow hard pack snow became the masonry if you will for the Inuits right let's go ahead and get to this Eskimo thing yeah yeah Eskimo and Inuit are one in the same there are two different terms for the same group of people

well yes these people who inhabit areas spanning from Siberia to Alaska Canada Greenland a thirty-five hundred mile range right yeah which makes them the most widely spread Aboriginal group on the planet yeah an Aboriginal for those of you don't know doesn't just refer to the Aborigines in Australia it's any any any any unevenness indigenous the first people in that region yes would be

yes okay that was the one to get pushed around by the Europeans exactly Aboriginal yes and if you want to insult an Inuit you just go ahead and call them an Eskimo yeah apparently it's a derogatory term because it was a term that the white man gave I think it was another tribe was it yeah but it was an outside group I was just figure it's the - Hannah yeah so it was another group named them Eskimos which was thought to mean Eaters of raw meat or raw blood

purrs what I've heard is well blubber but then they later thought that Eskimo meant to net snowshoes to build snowshoes and linguists can't prove it although that's kind of what they think but in the glory that is language things can go from their original meaning to a popular meaning and it's old meaning is meaningless yeah it's only what people think or use right right which is how Allah is a word that's right law so we're going to refer them

refer to them as Nu it because that's the that's the way to do it we don't want to alienate anybody know especially the Inuit because they are tough people yeah and they have survived for many many many years in conditions that don't seem to be survivable especially way back in the day but they made it through right and they're thriving actually to we'll get to that in a second yeah I was surprised to see that but Chuck a couple of other facts about these the Inuit which means the people right

so they call their snow houses igloos they call themselves The People right it's just it's very spare I could have been a good anyone anything I think so to keep things simple fall down goat

yeah so they don't they have never really established a formal system of government it's the family is generally the the center of the community yeah the class system males are the figureheads yet no class system is pretty cool and basically if you're a boy you're a hunter yeah if you're a girl you marry a hunter and hopefully produce more boy Hunters because the everyone's equally responsible for

coming up with food yeah and I imagine every family is that's what that means every family is equally responsible for contributing to the food in the community yeah so the more boy Hunters the better so fascinating group yeah and they have never lived in igloos as permanent shelters huh well yeah and it's important that you mentioned hunting because clearly if you are living on the Arctic tundra there's one thing that you're probably not going to have and that is a vegetable garden so they are very carnivorous

as a people they do a lot of hunting they did a lot of hunting of seals yes which is probably they were called blubbery what blubbery readers and where there are seals is going to be a lot of ice sea ice yeah which leads to another peculiar trait of the Inuit peculiar meaning unique or specific yes kayak angst remember we talked about that in the webcast like a long time ago remember that and everything was cut off

off in the middle of it and like it was Guy Kawasaki day oh yeah and I wrote a blog post on it saying like as I was saying before I was cut off and kayak angst is this it's a condition specific only to the Inuit where an Inuit males to where you become afraid of going out to hunt seals in a kayak usually following an episode where you've been up for several days the sun very rarely sets because it's

time is the only time you when you can hunt seal really okay so you have a loss of sense of time you're completely without any Landmark or reference point it's all just Horizon and sea ice right so your without openings and no bearings no sense of time and you doze off and wake up and you have no idea how long you've been asleep how far you've drifted and you may be out there drifting for the rest of your life and you finally do find land again you make your way back to your community

tea and you become terrified at the thought of getting back in a kayak again acrylic angst wow yeah specific only to the Inuit I don't remember that at all that's so weird well you should read my blog post I usually have an inkling but that one doesn't ring true for me so the Inuit did not live in igloos Josh as you said that is not true people might think that Inuit tribes has had igloos all over the place and that was her house they were really hunting shelters yeah it's like a hunting camp

like Robin Williams fishing camping insomnia yeah he wanted me to know because of no sleep and to your son yeah well Al Pacino was yeah that's right yeah that was Christopher Nolan you know yeah he's just amazing yeah although you had Inception problems right it was really just Ellen Page yeah get her out of the moving you're okay it wasn't even her necessarily although I'm not a big fan of hers I think she's a she's a good actress and everything but you know I'll never forget

Hereford you know but it was more her character like clearly her character was put in afterward because the producers were like or the studio execs were like wait what is going on so they wrote in Ellen Page's character to explain everything to everybody at each step so that you can keep up with this really dense movie yeah good you love giving me wound up about that Linda see the word Inception around Josh

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all right where were we then you would stay we're hunting camps like we said yeah and they're still around today and they are booming it not igloos actually they're they're not quite as common yeah but it did a study who assist the human rights program in Canada and Canada Department of Canadian Heritage said that there could be as many as 68 thousand four hundred Inuit and

Canada by 2017 and in 1996 are only forty-one thousand and change so yeah they're booming is a people pretty cool so they're thriving igloos are were never permanent shelters or structures forum and they had kayak angst one other thing to Eskimo kisses yeah what's the deal there so you know it's like rubbing the tip of your nose it's cute it is it's not entirely accurate though I'm sure it's but they did kiss with their noses

yeah but it was you would put your note your nostrils to the face usually around like the cheeks right below the eyes the you would put your nose to a loved one's face like that and inhale deeply and that was that's the real eskimo kiss or Inuit kiss interesting and it yeah they had it wrong though you know I had it right the French yeah they figure it out and everyone was like oh yeah this is the way to kiss you forget that no stuff all right so let's talk

about igloos for a second okay they're built out of blocks of ice they are not built out of the kind of snow that you probably have in your front yard in Ohio in the wintertime it depends on how wet it was a although under snow my cousin-in-law Alex Schreiber Ohio State University student built an igloo last winter he and his buddies nice check this thing out dude

nice right wow I should post this I'm going to go you have to post this what is it it's like 7 feet tall at least oh it's huge and it's like really well-constructed he's sitting on top of it yeah and it's not caving in if I built an igloo out you know it wouldn't last very long pretty cool though that is a backyard no hiyo to yeah it's grade A leafless trees everywhere yeah yeah he and his buddies you know clearly had enough boredom in time to build this it's very cool so Alex schriver huh yeah awesome

is he listening right now I hope so yeah he listens okay and I told I get my heads up yeah we have to post that he's gonna write back and say don't mention the igloo don't they always yeah so Chuck even though like say a Hunting Expedition went out and or even a single Hunter went out and built an igloo that that it wasn't just the single Igloo every single time sometimes they lived in them for longer periods sometimes more people lived in a group and they would actually

actually create compounds out of igloos by you know melding them together yeah creating walkways breezeways to pretty cool and there were some that basically Igloo cities that came about where you I think they would have liked halls for banquets and feasts and like balls and stuff like Inuit balls held in well an igloo a big large Igloo pretty cool though I didn't know this I had no idea I always picture just the single and also thought

lived in them so this was this one I was because we're like the totem poles we should probably also while we're just like busting things left and right Chilly Willy helpful little penguin from the he was so cute I went and watched when to refresh my memory Chilly Willy the dingdong he's very cute he wasn't I I thought he would be mischievous or I remember him being mischievous like Woody Woodpecker right who was a jerk right no Chilly Willy was a very helpful cute sweet little baby penguin uh and his little igloo

the typically glue that you think of a dome with like a rounded entryway pretty much dead on yeah but it looks like your your cousin they don't come y'all cousin-in-law it looks like he knows he knows what he's doing yeah Alex yeah Matthew no I said nephew oh sorry yeah there's no penguins in Alaska either so that's the other problem as well Chilly Willy was not accurate right but cute nonetheless no but the igloo he built was accurate that's right yeah and Josh since we're talking to

this here's here's what a a naive person might say why in the world if you're freezing cold out in Alaska would you build a room out of ice and snow to sit in yeah how warm could that be it would take somebody pretty naive to say something like that though you know how warm it could be up to 40 degrees warmer than it is outside of the igloo buddy yes and why Chuck where are these furnaces coming from well your body for one yeah human body is a pretty good furnace yep and

when you cut down the windchill you're going to take a big bite out of the cold you put a couple of warm Inuit bodies in there and imagine these are Big tough dudes anyway they're probably just like exude warmth that alittle you know radiate out and insulate the igloo will insulate that heat in right it traps the heat yeah so I mean if you're talking negative 40 degrees that's really cold but if you could bring that up to zero yeah that's still cold but it ain't like negative 40

which is the same in celsius and fahrenheit oh yeah yeah good point so the the snow is an insulator right yeah it cuts down on the on the Wind ya of the melting that's the other thing too yeah when when you build an igloo and don't worry we're about to give you step-by-step instructions on how to build an egg like we should get Alex on the horn yeah really bro at the very least you can verify right that's right when you build an igloo

you the sun when it does come out or if it's out the whole time especially during the day it'll heat up enough possibly to melt some refreeze it night which is what you want melt refreeze and you your body heat also May melt it from the inside out some and then when you go out to hunt it will refreeze every time more likely is probably the more likely scenario so this thawing and freezing and thawing and freezing basically turns the igloo into this

really strong and insulated structure yeah and bada boom bada bing you got yourself an insulated place to fish yes for at least a bunk down while you're fishing yes

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so Josh are we at the point where we tell people how to build an igloo I don't think we can delay it any longer oh we can okay you mentioned that Igloo igloos are kind of out of fashion with the Inuit these days yeah not as common but they are becoming increasingly common at a ski resorts apparently yeah if you are such a ski junkie uh-huh and that you want to just basically wake up roll out of bed

put on your skis and start skiing immediately yeah they have igloos usually on the slopes that you can rent Igloo Villages that you can run an igloo overnight or for as long as you stay there wow pretty sweet huh or if you're you know feeling squirrelly you can build one yourself treat it is that a Segway it is if you if you've done it before like your cousin-in-law it could take as little as an hour if you don't know what you're doing it could take six or more yeah I'm

to ask Alex actually how long it took because the first pictures are at night so it clearly took them longer than a few hours yes like it when I saw that someone could build one an hour I don't know about that I don't believe that I'm pretty sure if you were raised as an Inuit Na and you were I don't know in your 20s I'll bet you could build an igloo in an hour yeah maybe so yeah it looks like Alex and his buddies used a tub like a shallow plastic tub to pack the snow down into that's smart inform the blocks yeah so

we're going to teach you how to do it requires a snow shovel which looks an awful lot like a drywall or not a snow shovel it does require snow shovel but it's no saw yes which looks an awful lot like a drywall saw indeed and basically you want to go find some ice like you were saying you normally wouldn't find ice or snow that's just Fallen it's going to work for an igloo yeah you want to find where - hard-packed like this more solid the

yes no right and what do you want to do with that snow Chuck well you want to use your little saw you want to cut large blocks I guess you can vary the size but they recommend in the complete Wilderness Training Guy they recommend three feet long 15 inches high 8 inches deep right so once you got your blocks you want to start building you know put your foundation in a circle and start building up that Foundation working your way up as you go decreasing in size as you go and you also have

shape it at a slant obviously or you're just going to have a ice block tower and not a domed roof correct yeah yeah you you want to shape it at a slightly you said but you also want to make the blocks decrease in size as you get bigger decrease and overlap see you did some some brickwork and that's sort of the same principle there I never built anything that was tall enough that I had to really build it back to stagger it and when I did it was like

the pre-made Castle Rock Wall oh yeah that's designed it setback right right so it didn't require any thought but yes if you if you kind of have something that's technically at a slight incline it will provide structure if you can get it to connect right as a dome like Buckminster Fuller's geodesic them exactly very super strong structure so as you're building this and you start to make the Dome part it should support itself if you've done it right but you can always use sticks on the in

to support it temporarily until you get the Dome complete and then it's all pressing against each other yeah and then how do you finish it off with it with the top well you want to take a chunk of ice your what you're going to have is this perfect Dome with some variation of a perfect dome right and there's going to be a central hole in the top right yeah like a little chimney yes but you actually want to plug this one that's right this is one chimney you want to plug and you take you cut another block that's

to be bigger than the hole and you want to shape it so that it basically fits this this hole that's left over which should be something like an octagon maybe roughly yeah the last shape and you want to fit in there perfectly you want to cut it shape it put it in there so it's in there perfectly packed in there yeah because this is your load bearing Keystone basically yes as long as that things intact everything else should be fine right you lose that you're in a lot of trouble

right and then after that you're ready to start insulating it filling in the cracks you want to shovel snow on top of everything and the loose snow that is what you want now you want to work with it yeah and you're going to use some insulated gloves on your hands or else you're going to lose your hands to gangrene and a few days frostbite sure and you fill in the cracks with the snow you just kind of smooth it over with your hands yeah so that the snow packs into the cracks and all of a sudden this

separate block pattern is lost and you have a basically a smooth Dome yes is what you're going for right yeah and at the end it's a lot harder to try and build a door into your thing it's easier just to build the Dome and then cut your door out guess after it's finished as a good point it's and a lot of people a true Aficionado of the igloo would build a little L-shaped entryway tunnel yes it's that will cut down on the Wind coming in even more yeah because the wind has to turn a corner that's right

you cut that hole and whatever shape you want whether key shape or a lot of people use like a tent shape in a frame yeah and you then you cover it with blocks you make like an entryway shelter basically and then like you said you might want to put it as an l and then you dig a hole into the snow so that you can get into it but basically your kind of crawling into the the entry way it looked like yeah right and then after that you get

side and there's a very vital step that you might not think of yes and that is drilling air holes yes because once you've packed it full of loose snow and it's it's basically mortared and you the thing melts and thaws and freezes and thaws and freezes and becomes even more of a solid structure if you don't have air holes you'll suffocate and die yes especially if you do something like bring a camp stove or a Coleman lantern or that kind of thing

yeah in there we don't want to see that happen no and I don't even know that we should recommend bringing a stove at all yeah which this article says you can as long as you have enough air holes for ventilation that's a build it for fun and just keep the noxious fumes out of it yeah all together yeah I should say that this article also specifically says that it is in no way shape or form a meant to be a comprehensive guide to building an igloo it's the basic yeah there are some good how to photos though

if you want to check it out for ya some really good illustrations right uh as HowStuffWorks is lousy with all right so I guess that's it for igloos they are everything we thought they were and more yeah you know a lot of times you think oh I betcha that it's just our interpretation that you see in the movies all these things but they really do look just like that and they're built just like that and not a lot of surprises here know which is kind of reassuring in a lot of this makes me feel good yeah so I guess if

want to catch up on your Chilly Willy we won't blame you I found plenty on YouTube he's adorable more butter more butter more syrup more syrup I don't remember that one that's a good one no it's a park a commercial now are you sure yeah that's it okay well check out Chilly Willy and be sure to go on to howstuffworks.com and type in Igloo igl oh oh and is going to bring up a pretty cool step by step Illustrated guide to building your own igloo

Sans camp stove with air holes it's right I think did I say handy search bar you just did okay well then it's time for a listener mail yeah this isn't so much a male this is something I want to mention a long time ago and kind of forgot remember the LifeStraw podcast yes you'll do a quick recap of what a LifeStraw is yeah so LifeStraw is a portable device for purifying water and it's cheap it's easy to hang on to it

for up to a year and if you are in a place that's infested with guinea worm you still need to drink water but you don't want guinea worm LifeStraw helps and I think the wrote Aryans are big into getting them all over the world they are and so is Steven Niemann and Steven wrote on her Facebook wall after the LifeStraw podcast that he was pretty blown away by this thing any thoughts pretty cool invention and that he and his company the result of this podcast their company is going to donate a minimum

mm um of 6,000 life straws this year in 2011 nice 6,000 not bad huh yeah and I asked him if he minded as mentioning this he said not at all his company is 11th Hour search in Alexandria Virginia it's a very small Staffing firm so it's not like he been some huge company that's doing this right and he said his wife works in Haiti for the US and that's where he is right now and if he still is a little while ago and they like the podcast on Haitian Voodoo and so

good on you brother donate and 6,000 miles Charles that is awesome yes so we just want to recognize more than awesome I mean that's very cool It's gotta be worth a t-shirt I would say so Steven you got to see me hurt not his email but it feels right in yeah right in send us your email Stephen in your T-shirt size sorry it took so long did I mention this I got lost in the shuffle well good going chuck if you are saving the world we want to know how because we want to send you a t-shirt if you're saving the world in a verifiable and

rational manner in a dramatic fashion yeah you can go onto our Facebook page facebook.com slash stuff you should know you can tweet to us s Ys K podcast and you can send us an email stuff podcast at howstuffworks.com for more on this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com want more HowStuffWorks check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage

the future of business will be powered by Next Generation networks Ai and machine learning cloud and Edge Computing all require reliable connectivity where and when you need it T-Mobile for business has invested nearly Thirty billion dollars to build the only Nationwide 5G Network it also reaches farther than just high density neighborhoods and goes into the communities for businesses actually operate a 5G capable device is required and coverage isn't available in some areas some uses may require a certain plan or feature go to T-Mobile for business.com to learn more