The Building Culture Podcast

#48 Mike Hathorne: The Great Housing Reversal - It's not a housing shortage, but a mismatch.

May 05, 2026

Mike Hathorne spent 30 years in real estate and development trying to understand why the industry keeps building the wrong thing. His answer is in his book, The Great Housing Reversal.It's not a housing shortage. It's a housing mismatch. 64% of American households are one or two people. Over half the housing stock has three or more bedrooms. Mike walks through the three simultaneous trends reshaping who needs a home in America, why the development industry hasn't caught up, and wh...

#47 Apollo Workspace: There's a Better Way to Work

April 10, 2026

This episode is a personal one. I sat down with Sarah — my wife, my partner in all of this — to talk about Apollo Workspace: what it is, why we’re building it, and what it means within our larger project, Townsend, in downtown Edmond.We met in the Peace Corps in Uganda, got married after a five-week engagement, and moved to the middle of Oklahoma so I could learn structural masonry from a master mason. Building Culture started around the same time as our marriage, and a decade later, we’re bu...

#46 Jan Sramek: California Forever - Building the Next Great American City

January 13, 2026

In this episode, I sit down with Jan Sramek, Founder and CEO of California Forever, to talk about one of the most ambitious development efforts in the country: they're building the next great American city. Chapters0:00 — Why This Conversation Matters02:05 — Meeting Jan and the Origins of California Forever06:45 — Growing Up in the Czech Republic and Coming to America12:10 — What California Forever Is Actually Trying to Build17:55 — The Housing Crisis and Why Incremental Fixes Aren’t Enou...