I remember when I first stumbled across Joe Lstiburek. I was a remodeler in Nashville, Tenn., looking to up my game. Because I studied biology in college, I thought becoming a building science nerd was a natural.

What first attracted me to building science was Joe’s “Top Ten Dumb Things to do in The South.” I was specifically interested in vented attics, unvented crawlspaces, and vinyl wallpaper.

I was thankful for the “Dr. Joe” moniker because I could sidestep the pronunciation of his last name, but eventually I came up against it. Fortunately, no one else knew how to pronounce it either.

Eventually I was lucky enough to become friends with Dr. Joe, so I got the proper pronunciation — Stee-brik — straight from the horse’s mouth.

All of that changed last week at the 17th annual Westford Symposium on Building Science (aka Building Science Summer Camp). Joe announced that his niece from Eastern Europe was visiting, and could solve the pronunciation puzzle once and for all.

———–Listen now!—————-

Dr Joe: “Apparently for 58 years I have been getting it wrong, and all of those hotel clerks at the Holiday Inn at two in the morning have been getting it right!”

One slightly-used T-shirt for sale:

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