Actually, this has happened a few times! Join us as we talk through the times when planes and buildings collided in New York City! We are NOT talking about 9/11 because Taylor was there and she's just not interested in talking about it! In 2006 Yankees pitcher Cory Lidel crashed into an apartment building. In the 70s New York Airways had helicopter service from the Pan Am building to JFK that ended in disaster. And, in the 1940s two buildings, including the Empire State Building, were hit by WWII planes. Tune in to learn more! TW: Please note this episode references dying by su*cide. #NYC
Actually, this has happened a few times! Join us as we talk through the times when planes and buildings collided in New York City! We are NOT talking about 9/11 because Taylor was there and she's just not interested in talking about it! In 2006 Yankees pitcher Cory Lidel crashed into an apartment building. In the 70s New York Airways had helicopter service from the Pan Am building to JFK that ended in disaster. And, in the 1940s two buildings, including the Empire State Building, were hit by WWII planes. Tune in to learn more!
#NYC
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2023/10/how-an-elevator-attendant-survived-a-1-000-ft-fall-down-the-empire-state-building-759670
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Welcome to doomed to fail podcast, hosted by Taylor Faris
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of the state of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, case number ba zero nine six. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: Boom. Taylor, we are back recording. How are you?
>> Taylor: Good. How are you?
>> Farz: Good. Have you recovered from the weekend scare?
>> Taylor: Yes. Yes.
>> Farz: That's what, four days ago. Four or five days will do.
>> Taylor: Yep. All good.
>> Farz: Do you want to tell us what the name of the show is?
>> Taylor: Yes. Hello. Welcome to doomed to fail. We are the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week, every week. Today's Wednesday. I am Taylor, joined by Faris.
>> Farz: I'm farce.
>> Taylor: Hello.
>> Farz: hello. So you kind of. You kind of teed us up already that you're going to be talking about 911.
>> Taylor: I'm absolutely not talking about 911. I just wanted to say, let's never do 911.
>> Farz: I don't. Here's. Okay, I'm, I'll say this like I find any. So I think we're far. Well, me. So we're different, right? Because you were there and so you experienced it in like an emote. Like, you experienced it differently than people across the country experienced it, because, like, you saw it. And there's elements to 911 that I think I could keep kind of scratching the surface of because, like, we know the big picture of it, but there's, like, probably, like, individual stories within it that, like, you don't know. And what are you saying is not worth knowing?
>> Taylor: I don't want to know them. You can learn them. You can teach them to other people. I listened to the last podcast, one, which was really a long time ago, but they had.
>> Farz: That one's rough. That one's rough. That one's.
>> Taylor: That one's, like, calls and shit that I had not heard, and I'm not. Okay. so, yeah, just let's not do that. Okay.
>> Farz: That was the, That was the one of the few last podcast episodes where I had to. I never went back to a lot. Most of them the Oklahoma City one. By comparison, I think I've listened to that probably the entire series, like, 20 times. Because when they do their, like, redneck accents, it's m like the funniest thing in the world.
>> Taylor: the Jonestown one gave me nightmares. That was a lot.
>> Farz: Yeah. I also don't like going back to that one.
>> Taylor: Yeah, those are ones they played like.
Taylor: Four other times that planes have hit buildings in New York City
Anyways, but I did want to tell you something related, similar stories I have four other stories of times that planes hit buildings in New York City.
>> Farz: Oh, yeah. I love this. Yeah, let's hear it.
>> Taylor: Cool. So, therefore, we'll go backwards from today, and we will start with October 11, 2006. Do you remember this one? Like, is this 911? No, this is, They're all accidents. this is when New York Yankees pitcher Corey Liddell, little Liddell crashed into an apartment building on the upper east side.
>> Farz: Oh, that sucks.
>> Taylor: So if you're looking at New York City like a map, it goes north, south, whatever. The east side is on the right. the upper east side goes against the East river, and then across the east river is like Brooklyn and Queens. New Jersey's on the other side. Just to think about what New York City looks like. another thing I know that we were just talking about how going to an island would be very dangerous. Another thing that I think is very dangerous is if a rich person is like, why don't you come with me in this little plane that I own? I'd been a pilot for, like, 100 hours.
>> Farz: You're only saying that because JFK junior, he, like, ruined small planes for us.
>> Taylor: No, I'm saying that, like, it happens all the fucking time. And that's what happened here, and it happens a lot.
>> Farz: I'll stand corrected, then.
>> Taylor: I mean, do it to your own peril, but I'm not doing it. so, Corey Liddell was 34 years old. he was a pitcher for the New York Yankees. He had spent some of his time in the minor leagues. Oh, also, what did I mention about, too, though? Oh, yeah. So he spent some time in the minor leagues. he's. I don't know. I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but it sounds like he was kind of a jerk. it took him a while to get into the MLB because, in 1994, there was a major league baseball strike, and he was one of the strikebreakers and went in and played. Anyway, on May 8, 1997, he finally joined the, MLB and joined the New York Mets. He's going to between 1997 and 2006. I don't know how common this is, but he plays for, like, a bajillion teams. He plays for the Oakland Days, the Toronto Blue Jayson Reds, just, And more. Is that common?
>> Farz: I bet, because salary caps are really, really weird with, like, baseball. MLB is like, really, it's like a whole science around it, and I have no idea how it works.
>> Taylor: Totally.
>> Farz: But it's like, like the Yankees somehow are able to sign 15 players each with salaries of $200 million a year and it's still under their salary cap, like, they must be doing some weird trading stuff. It has to play into, like, that part of it. That's not normal for most professional leagues, though.
>> Taylor: Yeah. when Corey was traded to the Yankees, he was traded from the Phillies, who's also on the Phillies. And he said, quote, of the Phillies. He said, quote, on the days I'm pitching, it's almost a coin flip as to know if the guys behind me are going to be there to play 100%. So basically blaming it and everybody else when they do poorly, he's like, it's not my fault. Everybody else.
>> Farz: By the way, Taylor, like, that is actually not that uncommon. Like, the. The star receiver always blames a quarterback. And the quarter.
>> Taylor: Oh, no, totally. I'm just giving examples of time. Like, kind of an asshole. later, when he was on the Yankees, in the last game that he played, he said, we got matched up with a team that I think was a little more ready to play than we were, which made the manager really, really mad at him. And he had to go on the sports radio to apologize, and then he got in a fight with the sports radio hosts. So, like, so that's.
>> Farz: That could be a reason why you get trained a lot, because.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: Like, if you're. If you're. If you're someone who, like. Or is that disruptive, then, yeah. Your manager wants to get rid of you.
>> Taylor: Exactly. So I think that's kind of his attitude. he was married. He had a son born in 2000, so his son was only six, at this time. But now, it is October 11, 2006. I am in grad school. I think Juan and I just started dating. So it was a very exciting time to be in New York City. and Corey wants to fly to California, where he has a house. I actually think that he's from, like, I think it said that he's from, like, riverside. Like, we're, like, really close to here or at West Covina, really close to where I am. so he wants to fly his small plane to California like he's fucking Amelia Earhart and can't just buy a plane ticket.
>> Farz: I mean, it would be fun to have your own plane, Taylor. Let's be honest. You know, that'll be cool.
>> Taylor: Shit, no, because I know I would.
>> Farz: Die on it, but if you're flying it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, why would I. No, I want to be in a plane that my friend Ben is flying because he was in the military and now he flies for a major airline.
>> Farz: Yeah, that's fair. I'd rather fly with Ben, too. I don't even know you, Ben, but I think I probably would rather fly with you than fly myself.
>> Taylor: Yeah. the plane that he owns is a Sirius Cirr us Sr 20. It was a teeny little thing.
Taylor: Plane was flying from Teterboro airport to Dallas
he's leaving Teterboro airport, which is in New Jersey, and he's going to go to Nashville that night, then to Dallas, then get home in California. he is not alone on the plane. He's with his, flight instructor, Tyler Stenger. I think that he was not qualified to fly totally by himself across the country like this. He's not a millionaire. So they left Teterboro, they circled the statue of liberty, then they went up the east river. So if you go up the east river, you have to turn around around Roosevelt island, which is kind of in the middle of the east river. And, when they made that turn, it has to be a u turn and you have to be approved to make that turn. You have to have radio contact with, like air control. But, it sounds like he didn't. He was flying pretty low at 700ft and he's on visual cues, which I feel like I learned a lot when I was like, when Kobe Bryant died and we were like reading about that where like the pilot was off radar, on visual cues, we were like, use the, use the radar.
>> Farz: No, taylor, he wasn't on. No, hold on. That situation was different. He was supposed to be on, so he was on radar, but he wasn't rated for pure instrument flying. And was he trying to do it? Okay, are we seeing the same thing?
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: Okay. I'm misunderstanding. I'm sorry.
>> Taylor: So that, so they're, they're on visual cues. And at 02:42 p.m. m, he hit the 30th floor of the Bel Air building on 524 East 72nd street. So it's an apartment building. a woman named Ilana Ben hurry was home and it was her apartment that he hit, like, directly. she suffered burns and shrapnel and her housekeeper was there and helped her escape. So she actually, no one in the building was killed and no one on the ground was killed, which is flew into her. That's.
>> Farz: Can you imagine? You're like, just because someone just, like, crashed a plane into me. Like, that's.
>> Taylor: And 911 just happened five years ago.
>> Farz: How freaky. Okay.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah. And it's like a big brick building, which I think was probably part of the reason that it didn't cause more damage to, like, the building itself, you know, because, like, one of those old, like, pre war buildings. obviously, Corey and Tyler both died, when. When the plane crashed, they didn't know, like, what was happening. And there was, like, a little bit of, like, the FBI was obviously alerted. President Bush was alerted. but they pretty quickly realized that it wasn't like, an attacker or anything. It was just a dude. And he had, made a poor u turn and did that. So, it was not deemed a national security issue. no flights from JFK or Laguardia were halted. just also to say there's, like, JFK and LaGuardia are in Queens, Newark airport is in New Jersey, and Teterboro is a little bit further out in New Jersey. They're all kind of far away from the city, obviously. Corey's family tried to sue the makers of the SR 20 and say it was their fault, but the court threw it out. They were like, no, I don't. It was a pilot's fault. But, you know, they don't know who the pilot was. There's no way to tell. But it's either Cory or Tyler who was a pilot.
>> Farz: So I, I. My guilty pleasure, like, at nights, is watching mayday or, seconds to disaster, which is, like. Or airplane disaster, which is like, all these, like, really highly produced, like, 40 minutes long shows about, like, crazy airplane disasters. Because it's just like, I don't know why I find it so fascinating. I think it's because, like, the things that go wrong are things that nobody would ever think would go wrong, and then they go wrong.
>> Taylor: We talked about that so many times. You know, it's like, all little tiny things and, like, how also, like, they learn from each thing and all of that. But, like, I. In this case, it just sounds like they just, like, made a shitty turn and they didn't have, enough space.
>> Farz: Yeah. Which, like, where I was going with that was like, why don't you just fly higher?
>> Taylor: Like.
>> Farz: Like, you. Like, you could go higher than whatever you could assume is in front of you. Just fly higher. Like, I don't get it.
>> Taylor: Like, I know. I feel like maybe you're not allowed.
>> Farz: To fly to someone's apartment. It wasn't like you. Fluently. No, I know the Chrysler building.
>> Taylor: Like, no, I know. I understand. I don't know the answer. I do know that the rules are going to be changed after this. And you can't fly in visual cues only on the east river. Thank you. You have to be more contact. Also there's bridges. I don't know. There's so many things you can hit if you're flying that low. so that happened 2006, then 2001, 911. We're not talking about it then. The sixties and seventies.
Taylor: This story reminds me of the hubris of the Concorde
So these involve helicopters. And there's one story that has to do with a building, but there's a bunch of other crashes that happen along helicopters. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about those two. This story kind of reminds me of like, the hubris of the Concorde. Like, some things are just. They take the time they take and you don't push it, you know?
>> Farz: Are you talking about like, literally the hubris of the Concorde? Is there? Or is that like a reference to like a play?
>> Taylor: Oh, like literally, like the hubris being like, we need to get here as fast as possible and like, break the sound barrier.
>> Farz: I mean, yeah, but,
>> Taylor: Yeah, all right, well, you know, ended in disaster. We've talked about this and then we were like, just take your seven hour flight to London.
>> Farz: No, but it didn't end disaster because it was a conch. Ended disaster because there was shrapnel on the tarmac after the previous plane. I watched a lot of these shows, Taylor.
>> Taylor: No, no, but the Concord didn't keep going after that.
>> Farz: Well, they didn't keep going after that. Not because of that accident. Didn't keep going after that because it was already a super expensive program for British Airways to, maintain. And they were really only doing it for the prestige that it was. It was running at a loss and it was just a pure business calculus thing.
>> Taylor: Okay, I'm yawning at your mansplaining.
>> Farz: Do you want me to send you the airway disaster?
>> Taylor: We literally talked this. When I talked about the Hindenburg, we were like, you should just like, take a ship or you should just like take a long fight. There's no reason to push it and do something dangerous because the conquerors crashed before anyway.
>> Farz: I don't think that's true.
>> Taylor: It did. It crashed on the Runway before.
>> Farz: I know it crashed once and then they shelved the program.
>> Taylor: But it all, I think it happened before.
>> Farz: Are you. Are you googling?
>> Taylor: I guess I have to now.
>> Farz: I mean, I'm totally fine being fact checked, but I do remember after watching a thousand of these shows that crashed twice. Oh, it did. All right, fine. How do you like woman's planning?
>> Taylor: To me, I like it because woman splaining involves looking stuff up and just telling you the truth.
>> Farz: No, if you say something with enough confidence, it sounds true.
>> Taylor: That's exactly what mansplaining is. Congratulations. You just mansplained mansplaining to me.
>> Farz: Double whammy.
>> Taylor: All right, fine.
>> Farz: We'll move on.
People in New York take helicopters regularly to the airport
>> Taylor: Anyway, some things take the time that they take, is my point. it's kind of hard to get to the airport in New York City. So it's like $100 cab ride, and it's only after I rode all the ways down to get to the airport, it's not that hard. It's just like, the airports aren't, like, in the city, which makes sense because they shouldn't be. So, like, it's a $100 cab ride. There's a bus from Queens, but you have to take the subway really far to get there to get to LaGuardia. I once told my uncle Dale the directions vaguely, and he missed his flight, didn't make it. And it's just like, not easy, especially before you had iPhone. there's a train to JFK, then the JFK airtrain. Actually, last time we went, we went to Newark, and it was pretty easy. You take the Amtrak in from Newark. and anyway, I also was reading this. I finished reading this book, and I feel like you sent me something. This is a really weird, deep dig, but you sent me something in January about, like, goals for the year, and someone's goal was to finish reading the power broker. Do you remember that?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: Anyway, this is the power broker. This book is so big that when I opened it today to find the page that I wanted to find, I found a leaf that I'd been pressing because I pressed flowers inside of it. That's how big this book is. But, in the power broker, they talk about how Robert Moses, who built all of the highways in New York City, and to the detriment of lots of communities, but he wanted people to use the highways. So he had an opportunity to build, like, a really easy train that went to the airport. And he didn't do it because he liked people who'd be in cars. And I was mad when I read that. Yeah. What was a wasted opportunity I spent on freaking caps. But anyway, it's the 1970s, and there is a company called New York Airways, and they are a helicopter company. they offer a shuttle service between Manhattan and local airports. New York Airways operated from 1949 to 1979 out of LaGuardia. They were one of the first. They were doing like a passenger helicopter thing. So it was like a nice helicopter. There was like a flight attendant and it can take you places, like, really, really quickly. And it went all over the New York City area, especially hopping between airports, which I think people still obviously use helicopters a lot in New York. There's plenty of helicopter ports. I worked at the hedge fund. My boss, one time, he spoke at Princeton, I think, and he took a helicopter and took like, ten minutes to get there or something like, ridiculous.
>> Farz: Wait, so wait, this is normal? So people in New York take helicopters regularly to the airport.
>> Taylor: Rich people do.
>> Farz: so there's like a taxi that, like, you can just.
>> Taylor: So that's what this was. It was expensive, but it was like they would do, like, in the late seventies, they were doing like, 24, flights a day from Manhattan to the airport. And I'll tell you about that in a second. Like, what that sound, what that was like. but they would land on a helipad in the seven days on top of the Pan Am building, which is now the Metlife building in the middle of New York. So it would land on top of the building, and then take you to the airport. So a few non building related crashes. In 1963, a helicopter crashed after takeoff from Idlewild. So JFK used to be called idlewild. so off from JFK airport and six people died. in 1969, they were running late. So a pilot at the airport in the helicopter decided to take off from not the place that he was supposed to take off from. And, they got stuck and they got pushed in a jet stream from a big plane that was going off the way it was supposed to, and that caused the helicopter to crash. three people of the 14 people on board died in that accident. They, took a. They had been flying from the Pan Am building in the middle of Manhattan to JFK, pretty regularly. And they took a break for about ten years. I don't know exactly why. That's probably a really big reason why, but they resumed doing it in 1977. And actually, I know this is also pre, 911, like, security and shit, and you just had a piece of paper and they would let you on an airplane, but you could. And this, like, my initial point with the hubris part is like, just take the train or take a cab, you know, like, whatever, but you don't have to do this. But this sounds fucking amazing. You could get to the Metlife building in the middle of Manhattan 40 minutes before your flight left from JFK. That's how fast it was. It took ten minutes to get there. So you could check it at the Metlife building, get on the helicopter. Ten minutes to JFK and get on your plane, dude.
>> Farz: I think that's why Kobe did the helicopter thing, because he just skip traffic.
>> Taylor: Well, yeah.
>> Farz: Wanted to go because he didn't live in LA. I don't think he lived, like, somewhere outside of LA. And so he would just catch a helicopter from his house to Staples.
>> Taylor: I read something that, like, reading about Kobe, how, like, he. One time he went to someone's house for Thanksgiving and he took a helicopter there and he realized he forgot, like, fucking pumpkin pie. So he helicoptered back home. Got it. And then went back to the person's house.
>> Farz: Taylor, how awesome would being that rich be?
>> Taylor: I mean, it's just like. I can't even comprehend that it's wild.
>> Farz: Wild one day.
>> Taylor: So. But it was like. So, like, I guess to clarify, like, it wasn't, like, cheap. Like, everybody couldn't do it, but enough people were doing it. You know, taking this commuter helicopter over there. So in 1977, this is the building one. The helicopter was on the roof of the Pan am building when the landing gear broke. And it was like, just like, sitting there. Like, helicopter. Helicopters also, they're so fucking scary because there's no, like, gliding, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So the landing gear broke and it tipped over, but the propellers were going. Five people on the roof were killed by propeller blades. And one person on the ground was killed by a propeller blade.
>> Farz: Wait, so was it stationary?
Do you always die when a helicopter crashes? Is it just like
Like, it was already sitting. They turned the blades on. The skid broke?
>> Taylor: Yeah. And it tipped over?
>> Farz: Yeah. That's freaky.
>> Taylor: And people were just, like, blendered on the roof. And then one guy on the ground got hit by a helicopter blade.
>> Farz: Jeez.
>> Taylor: Which is a wild way to go. So no one said the building was hurt, but after that, they didn't do it again. They never. They never went from the Pan am building, which again.
>> Farz: Why. Why was the Pan am building a problem?
>> Taylor: I think that the. I think it was just too dangerous to do the whole thing.
>> Farz: Oh, they just stopped operations?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Of that part of it. Of, like, because the helicopter pads in Manhattan are at, like, the bottom. They're, like, downtown, like, to the side. You know, they're not in the middle of the city, you know, for the most part.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: Like, they're like, you. You can. You could probably pay to grab a helicopter from, like, downtown New York, but, like, maybe super rich people in hospitals have, like, helicopters on their roofs, but, like, not every. Not. It's not like a passenger thing. and then finally, on April 18, 1979. So two years later, a helicopter from american or from New York Airways was departing from Newark airport. there was a crash when the blades failed while they were taking off and the helicopter plummeted back to the ground. three people died, 13 were injured, and that was the last day of New York Airways.
>> Farz: Do you, like, always die when a helicopter crashes?
>> Taylor: Is it just like, not everyone died in this one? That one was. They weren't very high. It doesn't sound like, but I feel.
>> Farz: It just sounds like you hear a lot more about people dying in helicopters than you hear about dying in, like, plane crashes.
>> Taylor: It seems harder to survive because, like.
>> Farz: Just drop straight down. Yeah, I guess that's true.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So that was that. That's the end of New York Airways and their helicopters. going further back, on May 20, 1946, a US air Force Beechcraft c 45 Expedia expediter, which is, you know, like a world war two era plane, crashed into 40 Wall street downtown. It was headed for Newark. and again, like, we want the airport to be far away from the city, you know, so they were heading it, but they headed through Manhattan, which, to your point, fly higher. Yeah, you know, like, under the rules. But, they hit the 58th floor at 810 pm, which was nice because nobody was there. and five people on the plane died. This, was the incident, even though the last incident, I'll tell you, also had to do with fog. But this was the incident that caused them to make the rules that you cannot fly over New York City in heavy fog, which totally makes sense.
>> Farz: Again, so many of these things, you're like, why did nobody just say that?
>> Taylor: And so this.
Taylor: Casefile is a podcast about true crime stories
I have another story, just like, incidentally. So listening to Casefile, do you ever listen to that?
>> Farz: No. Never got into that.
>> Taylor: So, the most recent episode on Casefile was about a boat called the bluebell. And there's, like, a murder. It's a true crime story, all the things. But one thing that they brought up that I thought was really interesting is this was a blue bell incident, was in 1961, and a little girl survived and they found her, like, floating in the ocean. When she was floating in the ocean, she had on, a. Like, was on a life jacket and the life jacket was white because up until that time, life jackets were white. And then they were like, we barely saw her because the water is white when it, like, breaks. So that's when they changed life jackets to being orange.
>> Farz: It's like, duh.
>> Taylor: So, like, after. After it, you're like, well, dub, we want to see something bright orange and not white, which could be a color that you see on waves all the time, but, like, it has to happen before we, like, do things that are obvious in so many cases, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: I don't know why. Okay, my last story for you is from July 28, 1945, when a B 52 Mitchell bomber crashed into the Empire State building.
>> Farz: I remember this one.
>> Taylor: I used to go to the dentist in the empire State buildings, which.
>> Farz: I thought was living in New York has to be so wild. Like, you're so close to so much. Just crazy history.
>> Taylor: And I used to go to the, My therapist was across the street from the empire State building, and I used to walk from work. No, I'd go to work. I'd take the train to her office, and then I would leave, and I'd walk past empire State Building and then go meet friends, like, on, the east side, like, every Tuesday or whatever. And one time I was walking past empire state building, and I just missed by, like, three minutes someone jumping off of it and landing on the sidewalk.
>> Farz: Are you kidding?
>> Taylor: I was like. I told my therapist, I was like, I would have had to turn on my heel and go back to therapy and be like, excuse me. Let me back in.
>> Farz: Was that, like, a common thing?
>> Taylor: I don't think so. I mean, it happens. I don't know how often it happens, but definitely it happened that day. And there's plenty of stories of people doing it, but I was very grateful to have missed.
>> Farz: I can't. I can't imagine, like, a worse. Oh, God. So horrible.
>> Taylor: No, no.
>> Farz: it's like, also, like, also, fuck that person that did that, because, like, you destroyed the lives in, like, every dream a person would have who witnesses that for the next, like, 25 years.
>> Taylor: I mean, I'm very grateful.
>> Farz: Like, I would literally see that in my mind every time I close my eyes for next, like, 20 years.
>> Taylor: Have you ever seen, another Empire State building story? The picture of Evelyn McHale, which is called the most beautiful suicide?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: So I'm just on wikipedia real fast, but Evelyn McHale was 23 years old when she jumped off the Empire State Building, in 1947, and she landed on a car, and she looks like she is sleeping, and the car roof is completely crushed in the, I don't know if you've ever seen it.
>> Farz: Wow.
>> Taylor: It's pretty incredible. But, like, it's.
>> Farz: It looks like she's laying in, like, a satin bed.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it looks like that. It perfectly wraps around her, and then, like, they. When they lifted her up. Like, obviously, her bones were just, like, all destroyed, you know, like, so crazy. Yeah, wild. So, yeah, people do it wild.
>> Farz: which, actually, Taylor, that, now I'm remembering that is the reason why don't listen to the 911 episode is because they have video or they have audio recordings of people being like, is that paper coming out of there? No, it's a filing cabinet. And then you can hear the gas. Like, that's a person. And then they realize, and it's like, dude, like, you don't want to be around that. You don't want to witness that. So anybody who tries to kill themselves by throwing themselves off a building, like, do it somewhere different.
>> Taylor: Like, I mean, it's just traumatizing for don't do it. But, like, if you don't do it, get help. All the things.
>> Farz: Don't do it where you, like, destroy other people's lives.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I'm very, very grateful that I did not see that man fall off there.
B 52 bomber crashed into Empire State Building on Saturday; 14 people killed
But anyway, we're on the Empire State building. it's World War two. A b 52 bomber, is being flown by a yemenite veteran. He's 27 years old. His name is Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith. And so the b 52 bomber is like, a heavy world war two looking bomber. I was like, the Enola gay was a b 29. I'm sure there's tons of reasons why, but just picture the world War two plane. it was very, very foggy. It was Saturday, so another very foggy day. And then again, I used to work on the 38th floor of a building, and there were days where it was so foggy, we couldn't see the street, you know? And they're gonna hit the Empire State Building on the 79th floor. So if it's foggy, the people in the building also, like, that plane would come out of nowhere, you know, so scary. Like, you see nothing. You're, like, literally in the cloud, even when you're in the building. just, like, hoping someone doesn't run into you again.
>> Farz: That's one of the obvious. Fly higher.
>> Taylor: also, like, flying cars were never gonna happen.
>> Farz: Can you imagine?
>> Taylor: It's so fucking dangerous.
>> Farz: Like, also, like, the Jetsons who wants to eat a pill for dinner? Like, they lied to us about everything.
>> Taylor: No, no. Dumb. They're never gonna. Never gonna work. People crash all the time on the ground. You don't need to add, like, another dimension to it. Anyway, so he got disoriented. Like, obviously, he didn't. Wasn't able to see clearly, and he was going low and in this case, this actually maybe is a point when you're flying in the fog. I do think this happened in the Kobe thing, too, where you're trying to get under it or over it or like, whatever. You know, you're, like, trying to find a spot where you can see. And so he went, He ended up going down a little bit, and he made a wrong turn. He almost hit the Chrysler building. Turned, and then he hit the empire State Building on the 79th floor at 09:40 a.m. m. one of the engines fell off, like, in final destination and hit the roof of a building a block away and burned an apartment. But no one died from that particular thing. The upper engine fell down an elevator shaft, as like, and they found it at the bottom. 14 people ended up being killed. So three people who were on the plane. So there's Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith. there is, another person, one of the people who was there. I read two conflicting stories. but his name was Albert Perna. He was a Navy machinist. He was ejected from the plane and his body was either found at the bottom of an elevator shaft or on a building across the street, depending on who you believe. But poor Albert had hitched a ride on this flight to get home to see his parents because his parents had just found out that his brother had died in the South Pacific. Awful.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Poor fucking parents. eleven people in the building were killed. They were working. It was Saturday, but they were working for the war relief services and the National Catholic Welfare Council. So it's like, people doing, like, charity work, trying to help people because they're in the middle of fucking world war two. and they were the offices that were, like, crashed by the plane. it did cause a fire, but, like, the way that the building was built, the fire didn't spread and didn't hurt the building structurally, structurally. So the building didn't. Nothing else happened. So one woman. This is the last bit of this. This woman, Betty Lou Oliver, she was an elevator operator. So, as you know, in the past, someone had to, like, do the elevator for you. So Betty Lou was the elevator operator. When the plane crashed into the building, she was on the 80th floor and she got burned. And, like, flashes of lights, and she was burned. And the people on the 80th floor, like, rescue workers were coming to her. They took her out of the elevator. They took her down a few flights to the 75th floor, put her on a new elevator to get her some help. She's on the elevator by herself, and it goes into free fall from the 75th floor. There's no breaks. All of the cables are completely broken. She survives. She's in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest elevator free fall survival.
>> Farz: Did she jump?
>> Taylor: No, she was injured, she was burned. She told, She told. Well, I think she was. Okay, listen to this.
>> Farz: No, but at the very end, I think if you jump.
>> Taylor: No, no, no, I know, but listen. She said, quote, I started yelling and pounding on the floor. I was going down so fast that it had to hang on to the size of the elevator to keep from floating. So she was kind of in the air, but so she was cushioned by, like, the air pocket that it made by going down so fast. And that's what saved her. I mean, saved her. She broke her pelvis, she broke her back, and she broke her neck. But she lived me bad. so she ended up dying in her seventies, and she stopped talking about it. She had a couple interviews and she was like, I don't want this to be my legacy. I'm not gonna talk about anymore.
Brakes on elevators in skyscrapers apparently broke this week
But, she still is in the Guinness Book of World Records. for that terrifying world record, there's a cute picture of her on crutches that I'll share again.
>> Farz: Brakes on elevators in skyscrapers. Why did it take until this moment to realize we might need that?
>> Taylor: I think they broke. I think that the word breaks, but they broke in this case, but. Sorry, Otis, I think the first elevator probably didn't take it back.
>> Farz: Otis, it's your fault.
The floors that were destroyed in the crash were bought by Armand Hammer
>> Taylor: The last thing that I will mention is just incidentally, so everyone and Paris a building was able to go back to work on Monday. Like, didn't. Unless you died, you know, the rest of the building worked by Monday. the floors that were destroyed in the crash were bought by Armand Hammer, who's Armie Hammer's great grandfather, so he could do his dirty business there. And that should be a whole story because I looked up his Wikipedia page, and there's a lot of.
>> Farz: What does dirty business mean? Is it like p. Diddy stuff or.
>> Taylor: No, it's like, in cahoots with Russia stuff. Ah.
>> Farz: got it.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Other nerdy.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I mean, I don't know all the details, but it sounds kind of wild. But he bought those floors for cheap and set up business in there. for that. And that's it. Those are the two times in the 1940s, one time in the 1970s, and two times in the two thousands when planes crashed into buildings.
>> Farz: So several things. Okay, first off things back then, were built different.
>> Taylor: I agree. I do think that like, the brick, the Empire State Building, have you been in it?
>> Farz: No, probably not.
>> Taylor: It's, it feels heavy. Does that even make sense? It feels heavy in the way that like, where we used to work in La felt heavy.
>> Farz: No, I know. I think when I mentioned, like, we, talked at one point about like, going to the Capitol and like, different places in DC, and you're like, this doesn't feel like it was built by contractors that I have access to hire. You know what I mean?
>> Taylor: Right. Lowest bidder guys and all. Yes, exactly.
>> Farz: So, because I also am reflecting on stories about like kamikaze pilots during World War Two and the distinction between, ironclad ships and how we call what we call ironclad was like, hey, like, they weren't meant to be easily destroyable and that's what they call them, Iron clan. And how, kamikaze plots, like flying a plane into a ship would not sink a ship. Like it would, it would, it would hurt people, probably kill some in it and they could continue fighting, like that afternoon after some patchwork and so.
>> Taylor: Right, yeah.
>> Farz: They were just built different.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
Taylor: I see helicopters all the time that look like military ones
>> Farz: But then the other thing it made me think of with your helicopter was two things. One was on this Friday, this, or like this past Friday, I was driving downtown and I don't live near a military base. I know you do, but like, I don't see shit like that regularly. And I was in rush hour traffic in downtown Austin and you could just hear the chopping of wind because it's so guttural. Like, there's one time I went to a firing range and it was in the basement and was like just surrounded by a foundation. And every time someone fired a shot off, you had earmuffs on. So you didn't totally hear the complete sound of the gunshot. Your body. Yeah, you felt it. And I was, I was, driving downtown, I saw these five choppers overhead doing a loop over the highway and then like kind of making their way around. It was like obviously a military thing and I thought it was really, really cool.
>> Taylor: And, yeah, I see those all the time.
>> Farz: And my favorite storyteller, im going to finish with this. So I was, when I was in law school in Miami, I was living on a 32nd floor of a building in downtown Miami. And this was maybe like a week before the correspondence dinner in 2010, I want to say somewhere around there, hi, Flo. And in the middle of the night I heard that same kind of reverberation. And I went on my balcony, and there were these crazy looking helicopters that were flying right past my balcony to a building that's higher up than my building. And men were falling down from it and, like, coming down on a rope onto the roof. And then another, they would climb back up, and then another copy of Chopper would come, and they would do this. They would do this routine over and over. And you can tell when you're looking, like, a weird operation because you're like, this is the crazy looking helicopter. And I have no idea if it's related. It was like, a week or so later that Obama said that we killed bin Laden and it was a helicopter operation. I was like, do they, like, practicing for bin Laden's killing, like, on that building? I don't know.
>> Taylor: Maybe.
>> Farz: Maybe it was really weird, because in the middle of downtown Miami, why would you have. Yeah, there's something when you look at and you're just like. Like, this isn't normal. Yeah, that was definitely not normal.
>> Taylor: Totally.
>> Farz: They weren't like. They weren't like helicopters you see on tv. These were, like, weird looking. Like, I don't know.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I see them all the time that have, like, two sets of blades. You know? They're definitely military ones. You can tell. It's not like the, like the traffic helicopter, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're fun.
>> Farz: Anyways, fun stories, Taylor. Those really fun. I'm on this most beautiful suicide Wikipedia page. In the saddest part is reading your suicide note where it says, at the very end, her suicide note said, tell my father I have too many of my mother mother's tendencies. So, like, it's like, you know that dad just berated that mom in front of her.
>> Taylor: Mm
>> Farz: And the mom was like, you're just like me. And she's like, I don't need to be, you know, like, you just know that, like, it was just some horrible childhood abuse going on there.
>> Taylor: Poor thing. That's terrible. Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: Just don't kill yourself. Everything's fucking. Everything's temporary.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah. Anyways, cool, well, thank you for listening. I will see you all next week. You can find us at Doom. To Philip, Pod, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. That's our website, that's our email, doomdofilipodmail.com.
>> Farz: Please do those things.
>> Taylor: Let us know.
>> Farz: Let us know.
>> Taylor: Do you have thoughts? Do you have ideas?
>> Farz: I think we're getting better at this.
>> Taylor: I mean, we've been doing it for a very, very long time. Which is wild. And I'm very proud of us.
>> Farz: I'd be prouder if we could make money doing this. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. well, I. It's about to be sweater time, so I can start wearing my sweater with our faces on it. To soccer games. That's my one way to personally advertise.
>> Farz: I'll drink from our mug tomorrow.
>> Taylor: here. I did suggest. I think I sent you this. That putting like, little flyers with QR codes around Austin and coffee shops. You should do that.
>> Farz: So I was going to do with my yoga studio. I should just do it.
>> Taylor: Do it.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: Do it, do it, do it, do it.
>> Farz: Where do you. Hold on. We can talk about this offline.
>> Taylor: I can make you one. I can make you.
>> Farz: Let's wrap it. Then we can discuss it.
Robinson: I was wrong about QR codes. I think they're here to stay
>> Taylor: Yeah. I was totally wrong about QR codes. I said, these are dumb. No one's going to use them, and people use them all the time. I apologize to you, mister QR. Who invented QR codes?
>> Farz: I kind of still think they're dumb, Robinson.
>> Taylor: But I. But I. But I put them on. Like, I feel like I made one for work to take you to, like, a Google Doc that says a bunch of stuff that you could just have up on your phone and, like, show someone. We're gonna. You're gonna put them on all cafes in Austin? I don't know. I think that they're here to stay. Like the Internet.
>> Farz: You think the Internet's here to stay?
>> Taylor: Not indefinitely, but probably through our lifetimes.
>> Farz: Probably. Probably. Sweet. Anything else to wrap on?
>> Taylor: That's it. Thank you so much.
>> Farz: Wait, we'll go to rap and.