“The whole house blew out the back door of the test chamber. It was literally in a pile in a field.”
Planet Money · Money & Markets · November 2026
Context
Rochman recalls the lab's first demonstration in 2010, when two houses faced simulated hurricane winds. The house built to standard code blew apart while the fortified one survived.
Transcript
It is.
…standard code and one was built with extra fortifications. They then programmed the giant wall of fans to reproduce the wind patterns of a hurricane. And when they turned it on, something unexpected happened to the unfortified house. You can actually still see this in a video they took at the time.
The whole house blew out the back door of the test chamber. It was literally in a pile, you know, like in a field in the pile.
Julie and the IBHS scientists hadn't expected the house to completely blow away, but they still were able. learn how small differences in construction could lead to vastly different outcomes. The house that survived, it had been built with fortifications that cost less than 5% more than the house…
Antitrust law is at the center of all things property casualty insurance. And all meetings start with what I call the antitrust invocation, where, you know, before anybody says anything, there's a lawyer or somebody acting as the antitrust counsel from outside. They will specifically say at the…
no, no, the floor is lava. Yes,
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