Stewart Brand

So he used five pages as a way to figure out the gap and measure to that, and then it worked again.

Another time he had to solder something in his radio, but he didn't have any solder on board.

So he took apart a bunch of...

Tiny extra bulbs that he had where there was solder inside of where it hooked up to the filament.

And he carefully melted all those together.

And then he had enough solder to fix the radio.

That's the kind of improvisation it's often called for.

I do, or have done.

We have a 64-foot tugboat that we're finally moving off of, and it's for sale.

If your listeners want to get it.

No, the tugboat, she's a blue water boat.

She's been to Alaska and so on.

But the way we refitted her both as a home and as a working tugboat is that we can cruise around the Bay Area in safety.

This is a wooden boat that was built in 1912.

And you can imagine that there's an enormous amount of maintenance.

I can tell you that if she was in such bad shape when we got her in 1982 that

The guy we paid $8,000 to to get the boat couldn't believe he got away with that much money because he was in terrible shape.

But we brought her back up to a pretty cheery condition.

But, you know, wooden boats are basically made out of celery.

Wood is a wonderfully adaptable medium, but it is, as we know, especially in buildings, water wants to turn it into something that isn't wood and something that doesn't keep leaks away.