Doomed to Fail

Ep 74 - Get Your 'Blood's Worth': The Great Fire of London

Episode Summary

Travel back to 1666 London with us! Houses are made of wood and dangerously close together. The summer was intensely dry, and a gale-force wind was coming in from the East. It's the night of September 2, and a baker on Pudding Lane forgot to put out his oven. The bell was rung, but a series of non-decisions by politicians and the rush to evacuate let the fire burn down 5/6th of the city. We're getting started with fire disasters - join us!

Episode Notes

Travel back to 1666 London with us! Houses are made of wood and dangerously close together. The summer was intensely dry, and a gale-force wind was coming in from the East. It's the night of September 2, and a baker on Pudding Lane forgot to put out his oven.

The bell was rung, but a series of non-decisions by politicians and the rush to evacuate let the fire burn down 5/6th of the city.

We're getting started with fire disasters - join us! 

Sources:

Samuel Pepys | Royal Museums Greenwich

🎧 The Great Fire of London - History Hit

The Great Fire of London: Rats, Disease, and Uncontrolled Fires Tormenting the English in 1666 by Kelly Mass, Doug Greene | 2940175354493 | Audiobook (Digital) | Barnes & Noble®

Episode Transcription

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

 

[Music] in a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow

Americans ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your

and we are back and firmly in 2024 far hello has it been the best 24

for you been the best just the best I am very excited about this year it is going

to be a presidential year which is always fun exciting yeah because

politics is entertainment and we like that I know we like that

serious topics are now subject to sound bites and Tik Tok Clips that's actually pretty good I know cool so welcome to

Doom to fail I'm fars joined here by Taylor and we are a podcast about the ever evolving topic of what to cover on

a day-to-day basis although it generally has has a tragic concept to it or a forlorn element to it or something along

those lines so you know as we iterate just let us know if anything's resonating at all anything at all is

resonating we'll take it whatever you got sounds good sounds good so I covered

the lovely and toxic Sultan sea earlier this week we are moving on to a topic

that Taylor has chosen which I do not know at all so I'll kick it over to you Taylor awesome so I said water is our is

our through line and I'm definitely going to be drinking water as my my themed drink during this one um because

I want to talk about fire and a historical fire um there's a bunch of

big ones but this one I'm not gonna make you guess because I just feel like there's a lot of historical fires and I don't know do you know any Chicago and

San Francisco okay neither of those it's in Europe um it is the Great Fire of London in 166 6 Taylor can I give you

another through line yeah so with a suany episode if the San Francisco Fire

hadn't happened then they probably would have blocked it up and the suany never would have existed because there was a

dredge they needed to dig out the canal and they couldn't get it because the

whole city was burning down my God I can't wait for the water wars it's going to be real great well fun mad Maxi

around here yeah yeah yeah um fun so have you ever watched this is f me have

you watched Tacoma FD it's on it's on HBO and it's going to be on Netflix soon no it's great it is by the Broken Lizard

guys who do like Beerfest and Super Troopers yeah um and they're amazing and I just wanted to shout that out because I really love it so I've been learning a

lot about been watching the sperman show watched it we've watched the whole thing twice it's just really really funny so

um shout out to that show but today I'm going to talk about the Great Fire of London it destroyed five six of London

so most most of it it's a big big swath big swath um so

first let's talk about firefighting and fire dependent societies so we are so lucky that we don't have to

have an open flame constantly in our homes like most of the world for history

like you had candles and you had fire and it was just so dangerous and there was so much fire around like I have a gas stove and matches just in case

there's an emergency but like I don't have a fire constantly as soon as it gets dark outside I don't need to like

light 100 candles you know I've been lighting candles this week because I

like them that's different than like needing them you know true but also

remember the zapo guy died in that like shed lighting candles and drinking vodka wait the zapo guy's

dead yeah like the guy who had like started

hard my point still is but we're not dependent oh my God you're right he did die yeah

isn't that horrible he died in a shed yeah was like like the Hamptons he was

in a house fire in New London Connecticut nobody knew who he was because he was burned to a crisp but he

became trapped in a pool shed during the fire oh my God my my table standand is

moving it looks like your chair is going down um isn't that awful so yeah Fire's

continues to be very dangerous if you're not careful he was 47 years old can you imagine being like a billionaire 47

years old like God yeah absolutely horrible so yeah so Fire's still super

super dangerous um also it's really dark and so there's like another book that a

book that I have called The Invention of murder that I've read part of and it starts off talking about like Victorian

England but like as soon as it got dark it was dark people would like get lost

in the streets all the time you know like you couldn't see anything in a lot of these places like as soon as it was dark so you had to have candles

constantly and like the street lamps were fires all those things yeah I mean

um so even now my my mom was talking about we're all getting this Instagram ad for

a fire blanket to like put over your stove if it catches on fire to like kick it go out because like we don't even know how to use our fire extinguishers

like we should remember how to use those but um for most of History everything could have caught on fire and people as

cities began to build obviously people living closer and closer and there's a way more chance that everything's going to go up in Flames um and then also

water this is like our through line water is really heavy it's hard to get water places like even when they have

those big forest fires you can't just like dous it with water it just like doesn't happen and I did look up because

I wasn't sure what it was that um you know how planes drop that like pink

stuff on forest fires that's actually a chemical called f Che pH F chech it's a

fertilizer based liquid and It Coats the vegetation in a fire resistant layer that's not to put out the fire that's to

stop the fire from going any further and there's also like yeah and there's also like a ton of stuff that like you know

some things are controlled Burns and some things need to be um you know set

on fire to be able to like have the land grow and all those things but uh it's really hard to put out like a huge fire

is part of the point and they can just put a wildly small amount of water on it at a time yeah you don't put a you don't

put a fire out you exhaust its ability to keep firing exactly exactly so let's

talk about how we've done that like around history so I have a little bit of like a history of firefighting um in

ancient Rome there were volunteers who would use um they would watch out for

fires so like in all these stories like before communication systems you know someone would like ring a bell and be

like there's a fire over here and people would like come and like try to help so they started doing that in ancient Rome obviously they did it before um in

medieval Europe there was um fire brigades which are also mostly volunteers and they used like buckets of

water there was some like spraying devices that they had but they had to like fill carts with water and like get it to the fire you

know um do you know and then also this is when around the Medieval Times is

they started to do hook and ladders have you heard like a hook and ladder company for like a fire thing no but I can

assume it's a ladder that has a hook on it that you can like settle on things right that's what I thought it was but it's actually not so like a ladder

obviously a ladder but the hooks are for pulling buildings down around the fire

so as soon as like a house catches on fire the hook is made to pull the houses around it down so the fire cannot spread

like you were saying oh interesting yeah wait so if my neighbor's house caught

fire they would destroy my house yes it seems a little harsh it sucks but like

you'd have to because house is so close together you know that's why you got to move to exos

where no nothing is close to anything yeah yeah I mean especially like I'll

tell you a a little bit about how the houses looked like in 1666 but they were just like unbelievably close together um

there were also like bucket Bri brigades I'm sure you've heard of that where you like pass a bucket down and do that I

mean it takes forever but it's still like it happens um formal fire departments started to come in like late

um late 1600s because of this the first fire department in the United States was founded in Boston in

1678 u in the 19th century you know the steam powered fire engines were really helpful and then obviously now you have

like your gigantic fire truck can carry hook up to the sewer system and do all those

things right I don't think that's sewer water that they not the sewer system but

like you know like the that's it's the same thing like the that's what it's called it's called the sewer system the

the water the sewers the sewer is full of [ __ ] they're not taking water out of

hydrants and then pouring connected to like the city water it's like the city water but it's the same company as SE

Taylor are you under the impression that when you turn on like a fosta in your house that is also connected to your septic tank no it's just that I think

it's all the kind of the same thing Taylor's Googling it's in fire hydrant I think

it's like the same thing the very worst it's like gray water it's just it's regular

drinking water but it comes from the whole system of water like the SE system isn't separate from the water system

it's the same group that does it let's let's carry on okay I don't care um

anyway we be stuck on this topic for like way too long um so another thing

that came out of this is actually the invention of fire Insurance um the first

insurance company in London was the fire office that was established in 1680 and it is the um origin of moderate

Insurance cuz they didn't really have that before this um but then they started to like do that and they would do things obviously that like is super

[ __ ] up like houses that were insured would have like a little Mark on them so that firefighters were prioritize those

houses over other houses it's still [ __ ] up like insurance is like such a scam like if something goes wrong they

will never pay or take forever to pay but yeah God forbid you don't make it I

mean now that I've ever missed a pay but like no I would assume if I missed a payment they would Raise Hell about it yeah totally totally um I mean we had a

guy come when we had a leak in our roof and he gave us a good quote but you know it was a pain in the ass wait with your

insurance company so you called the insurance company and then they they sent

somebody yeah get your own quote they're going to send someone cheap no no no no no they sent a guy to look at it and

then they sent us money to pay for it however we wanted to oh fun okay well yeah which I do um so anyway so we're in

London so that's kind of like the history of firefighting it's obviously hard and as the cities are being built it's getting harder um in 1666 in London

it is the restoration period King Charles II has just been crowned he's a new king and right before this Oliver

Cromwell had been um in charge of of England but he wasn't a king and he had been in charge of killing Charles not in

charge one of the people who had signed the death order over Charles the first so all the stuff that I don't know but it's tense and people think that like

the cromwellian are going to come back and like fight for power so it's still like tense politically they're also just

out of a the plague so the plague killed a [ __ ] ton of people and it's still

around some people claim that the fire is the thing that stopped it for good because it burned down and it killed a

bunch of rats obviously um but people it was already kind of waning down and

people were starting to recover from it but that had been like obviously super traumatic a ton of people had died

you know um England was in the middle of two Wars they were fighting the French because they were always fighting the

French and also the Dutch so there was like that going on um and London itself

was growing so fast it was one of it was like the fastest growing city in the world um there were different parts like

Westminster wasn't officially a part of London but it like became a part of London it was a lot of sprawl going out

there was still the Roman wall around a lot of it cuz the Romans left in 400 but the wall was still there crazy yeah and

like remember how do you remember how they left and then English didn't know how to fix anything so everything just kind of

collapsed because they like didn't know how to do the how to fix Aqueduct they didn't know how to maintain the wall they didn't know how to do anything else

so they just kind of like collapsed into the Middle Ages geez because Romans left

so um but London is huge so there's anywhere between like 250 and 450,000

people in the city which is pretty major um and there's also a ton of people that are in and out of the city during the

day to like trade and and and do things so it's very very busy there are pipes

that run water through the city um but there's not like a modern like pipe system um the houses have a lot of

they're made out of wood have a lot of thatched roofs and this is when like they rebuild it a lot in stone but it

start off being you know made of wood and they're also growing in a way that like have you ever seen a picture of an

old house that has like a smaller first floor than the second or third floors oh yeah yeah you know what I mean yeah did

we did we like just talk about that about there was a house you showed me like an old house and it been in

someone's family for like a thousand years and the bottom was like just narrow little thing and the top was like this big

old I don't remember but I maybe I just looked at the houses for myself I don't

know yeah but like you know but you can picture it and so like what that meant was so they were trying to like get more space obviously so they would build up

and they would build out out so in the middle of the roads the houses were getting closer and closer where you

could like shake your neighbor's hand through your bedroom window over the that's kind of fun I would like to live there um but it's not fun because it's

gross and really dark why is it gross you know like because there's poop everywhere because

it's 1666 and's like you know because there's poop everywhere and there's also

like U so there's no you know there's no sewer system there's no way to get the poop out the poop everywhere it smells

bad obviously history smells terrible and um it's really really crowded and there's no fresh air you know because

there's no fresh air you can barely see the sky when you're on the street in the middle of the day yeah not great I always wonder how

people back then were intimate cuz like it sounds

disgusting like it is like you have a UTI constantly it' be so

gross yeah yeah I don't like yeah all bad yeah no totally no one was

taking showers I mean that's not part of the story but yeah but it was like very crowded in in most of the city um so the

houses are getting closer and closer they're all made of wood it's also the summer of 1666 was very very dry um it

was like the driest summer on record so everything is dry in this whole city and then also it's really windy so on this

is the beginning of September 1666 on September 1st the king's brother is in

the Anglo Dutch War off at Sea and he's going to get into a battle like with the Dutch and it's so windy they both both

sides just leave they can't even fight like they're just like it was just so windy like the boats were going crazy

like all this huge storm on the sea so that wind from September 1st is moving

towards London and it gets there around 1:00 a.m. on September 2nd

1666 got it got it so the fire began in the beginning of in the middle of the

night um and it ravaged the city for like four to five days it started in a

bakery owned by a man named Thomas farer on pudding Lane which is adorable that's where all the Bakers were oh my God

that's so cute I know um and it was probably someone forgetting to put up

the fire which happened all the time so this is like the Swiss Cheese model that we talk about of like things that have

to go wrong so like it's really [ __ ] dry this wind is like a huge wind that

they haven't seen in a really long time and someone in the bakery forgets to turn off the

oven yeah and so there starts to be the fire starts in the bakery of of uh

Thomas's house and so he obviously lives on the top floor and so him and his family go to the top floor and they

escape to their neighbors house via that top window that's really close to each other oh but their maid is afraid of

heights and she won't go and she's the first person to die in The Great Fire of London which is very yeah um

so right now the thing to do would have been to grab the hooks and pull down the

houses around the bakery you know like that would be the answer and then it would stop burning and they do that all

the time in London there's fires all the time you know our hous is that flimsily

Bel built that you could just poke it with a stick well they're like I think so it's like wood I don't think they're

pokeing with a stick I think you're like hooking on to the top and like pulling it down their group of people I think

okay because when I was in Ireland I was like amazed at like the build quality of things everything there was like 7,000

years old and you look at it and it's like still standing and it is it looks impenetrable so I guess you have to like

weaken it and like structurally before you can do any of that stuff yeah I'm sure there's like other things that they did but like they the hook was to pull

it down and that was like like you said earlier that's like the way to stop the fire is stop give it nowhere to go yeah

and that way you that way you can stop it and we did that all the time but the problem is that in this part of London

and in most of London most of the houses were rentals so the person who owned the house didn't live in it they rented it

to someone else so when the Lord mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth who was a guy in

charge of London he was called to make a decision and he said it's not that bad

just let it burn out don't tear down any of the houses because we can't find the owners cuz the owners aren't physically

there it's just people who are renting the houses so to save the

properties allegedly he's like let's just leave it and he goes back to bed

it's like 1 in the morning he leaves and so everybody else is just like watching this fire happen and they can't do

anything about it because they're not allowed to tear down the houses that they would usually do so the city did

have some fire breaks which were like places where there was that space between it but they weren't enough to

contain contain this fire there was also a [ __ ] ton of flammable stuff in the city they had just um they're coming in

and out of Wars all the time so there's like storehouses of gunpowder all over you know and things that are like Prim

to explode in different places not good no um

so there's also a lot of like books and papers and things that are like really highly flammable everything's made out

of um out of out of wood um we know a lot about this from a man named Samuel

peeps he was a noble man who knew the king and he wrote a journal and so his

journals you can like read now it goes like his dayto day and he watched it happen from across the temps and he was

like why aren't they pulling things down like this is getting bigger and bigger I can see this happening so he went to the

king cuz he knew the king and he told the king you have to start turning these buildings down and the King said yes and

like over overrode the mayor so they were finally able to start pulling things down um your question are we just

going to like gloss over the fact that the the mayor of London's name was Bloodworth pretty that's a pretty cool

name like it sounds like he brushes his teeth with battle axes I know I think

actually he's kind of lame um unfortunately so he doesn't live up to his name because he could have like been

a hero and he definitely is not the hero in this story you're looking out for like a few land owners instead of like

the entire city which is his job yeah 100% so people start fleeing because

like this part of the city is very obviously on the official death toll of the Great Fire of London is six which I do not

believe there's no way that only six people died yeah because they're not counting orphans M ex like yeah yeah

they're not counting the poor people and they couldn't count the poor people they didn't have a list you know what I mean like I feel like they probably had like

a rudimentary list of people for tax purposes but like there's no way only six people died because people also

start to like they could potentially have been cremated because this fire in the center was so hot and and there's

like a piece of pottery that they that um was found like in the center of it like year like you know later by like

archaeologists and like that piece is was heated up to like 2,000 degrees like crazy people could have just disappeared

you know and I'm sure they did because so and people would do things

like they would move their things a mile away so I'd be like I'm going to bring myself stuff over to your house fars and then the fire would get to your house

and we'd be like [ __ ] and we like move our stuff again so people were like moving their things and they were really focused and like saving their property

and their like their physical things rather than putting out the fire like a lot of people were so there were also then carts and boats that were upping

their prices to bring people out of the city so like being like you know where usually would cost like you know 30 like

30 30 bucks for an Uber now it's $6,000 adjusted to our our our time so like gez

people are really taking advantage of of other people and there's a big Jam at all the gates of the city because some

carts are trying to get in to get in on this good deal and everyone else was trying to get out so there's a lot of

like that where I'm sure people died in that like Melee you know like panicking and then getting out um so and of course

also there was looting you know people were like you know stealing stuff from houses like as they burned down there

were also there's also I'm sure a ton of human stuff like assault and panic and

like things that you know no one wrote down because they died so I'm sure there's like a lot more people that died

um at one point all of the book sellers moved their books to the Crypt in St Paul's Cathedral because it was made of

stone and they were like we'll move all of our books into this Crypt so that they'll they'll be safe but the ceiling

the roof was wood and the wooden roof caught on fire collapsed into the cathedral into the Crypt and all the

books went on fire so it was just like a fireball of all the paper yeah so all

that's happening the Royal extin exchange is gone that's like the bank um and then of course people start to be

like what happened how did this happen whose fault is this and of course they start

blaming Bloodworth yes uh no immigrants oh of course I'm not gonna blame

Bloodworth we're gonna name ji um so they are like in the middle of

it which I totally understand I have been in the middle of a terrorist attack and you don't know what's going on you

know and but people were like is this a terrorist attack they had actually just

burned some Dutch cities so they're like is this revenge for the cities that we just burned during this war that we're

in um it like sparked a huge obviously like fear of the other they were saying

that like the baker where it started he was Dutch he wasn't you know but that rumor started like immediately they were

blaming other people and then another thing that would happen is like obviously it's still super super windy so Sparks and Ash and stuff would fly to

different parts of the city so you see fires starting all over the city in different places and it looks like

potentially there could be like an arsonist you know like someone bombing different parts of the city and that's

really [ __ ] scary that people start thinking that that's happening I love that back then it was the the terrorist

angle was just like they're a slightly different version of like white white than we are

like like what is the actual difference that you guys are fighting over Dutch and in the British both have terrible

food terrible climates like like what is it and also like also Catholics it could

have been Catholics who were doing it at this point they hate Catholics but that goes back and forth you know over and over again but all of that is happening

and this is like a a huge thing um also everyone is really tired it's been like

three days you can't take a nap in the middle of this you know so like they're not making good decisions they're not

prioritizing getting rid of the fire um eventually uh Bloodworth is like you know what I'm going to go take a nap

I'll be back and he just leaves and they don't see him until after it's over yeah good so would I I'd be like [ __ ] this I'm out he just like he [ __ ] out there

you can have this city which is now basically just an ash pile exactly the king actually he rode around on his

horse giving people money to get people out which is noble right I feel like that's pretty

cool that's pretty cool so he was like you know those people who were like jacking up their prices he was like fine I'll pay you just get these people out

of here you know so they were get trying to get people out but eventually the

fire did stop and it stopped because the wind dropped the wind dropped and they used gunpowder that was stored in the

Tower of London to create those huge fire breaks they had to demolish a lot of like the out outside of it so that it

would stop So eventually after like five days it did stop um after it was over um

it destroyed like I said 56 of the city approximately 87 churches 13,200 houses

a bunch of other buildings and um so London had had

you know like 400,000 people potentially kind of going in and out of it and around the whole city um but in it ended

up with being about 70,000 people left homeless and having to go into like refugee camps around the

city which is way too many houses to burn down for only six people to have died yeah I would agree with that and

they probably there's a bunch of people that probably killed each other in the refugee camps as exactly as you would do

there's so much of that going on that we just like don't know about um so people really like wanted to blame something

you know they were like whose fault is this you know there's all of the things that you know it was it was chance but

it like it being chance is really scary and that's I think again what we talk about with the Swiss Cheese model like

just a [ __ ] chance that all these things went wrong yeah so they were

like is this the apocalypse you know we just had a plague we're all we're in

these wars you know we had a drought like what like is this is this are we being punished for something so people

were trying to find like if if is God punishing us is it something I did is it something we did as a people should we

stop being in these wars should we stop doing all these things so people were really like obviously everyone was

really really really traumatized and they didn't do anything about it there's no like mental health care but like

Samuel peeps the guy who wrote the um the journal about it him and his wife like they didn't sleep for years they

would wake up with like terrifying nightmares and I'm sure he just wrote it down I'm sure so many people had that

you know because they never talk about PTSD I mean it is it is terrifying I I I

accidentally set fire to my house like I

didn't know what was H I basically put on the stove and forgot about it and then I caught the reflection of like

Flames like not just like a like a it's so different like a candle wick versus

like a fire is just yeah so I mean your body goes into I gotta do something

anything it has to be it is terrifying I mean again I was in that experience I literally picked up hot oil with my be

like flaming oil with my bare hands to get rid of the fire because I was like that scared and like my hands were

burned to a crisp for like weeks and weeks after that but oh my God that's so scary yeah and then like that times a

million like imagine just like watching Austin burn down you're like what am I supposed to yeah I I would also leave

town like yeah totally don't be people do not be a hero take it from me I'm telling you never try to be the hero

always Escape oh we've talked about that so many times yeah just run curl into a ball out of there throw throw the

vulnerable at the problem and then get out of the situation well don't do that but you should run um there's a man named Robert Hubert

who is you know how we' also talked about how people always confess to crime that they didn't do yeah like just to

like for attention so Robert hbert was a man he was Dutch he said that he did it

that he started it and he like went to the Bakers like where the baker Bakery was and he was like I did it here and

the baker signed off on that guy's execution and he was executed for it but he didn't do it it was an

accident if he just wants peace let him go to hell he he wanted it he's you know he's in the history book so you know um

after the fire they wanted to rebuild obviously as fast as possible there's an

architect um sir CHR Christopher Ren he over oversaw the rebuilding um he wanted

a lot of things to be built out of stone instead of wood obviously that helped prevent future large scale fires he

actually had a new plan and like immediately people had new plans like even while it was burning down people

were going to the king with like a new plan for the city you know like they were like they were already people wanted to be the architect of the New

London even as it was still burning um Christopher Ren had a plan um to

rebuild it like a little bit more like have more wide wider streets like boulevards things like that um but

people just wanted to get back to to their life so they just rebuilt on their old plots and a lot of the way London is now is the way that it was then like

they like kept the small lanes and all of that um Ren did redo St Paul's Cathedral which is beautiful and that is

still there um and then in um when they were building Washington DC they used

Ren's plans so Washington DC is what he had thought London should be like like those like big boulevards and like

streets and stuff cool um also London gets destroyed again during World War II

so it's not it's a pretty big Target yeah um it's always it's always getting

destroyed um today there is a monument um it is a big um pillar in the middle

of London um to as a monument to the fire it used to say on it um burning of

this Protestant City began and carried out by the treachery and the malice of the poish faction meaning the Catholics

did it that used to say that on the monument but they chiseled it out in the 1800s because then England went back

Catholic because they had no proof yeah and they obviously had obviously was not the Catholics who did it it's probably

the probably the bigger thing is there was no proof that that happened yeah so that's been chilled out but the monument

is still there um and London is is basically you know built on the same roads and and alleys and plan that it

was before then um they just rebuilt on top of it and they rebuilt it pretty fast within like four years it was like

up and running again um but it was obviously a devastating a devastating

fire and I'm sure a lot more people than SE died and most of London was completely

flattened so I have two thoughts okay I forgot the first one

already perfect so I have one thought let me get to it before I forget so your

story reminded me when you kept talking about chance how that's kind of how

every major thing happens is this convergence of of issues it reminded me

of something I was reading about the um Fukushima nuclear plant because as part

of Designing these things and part of like figuring out like how to like mitigation against disaster they look at

actuaries who put together tables and

like in fukushima's example like basically for that to have happened it would have to have a convergence of

events that would not be projected to happen over 10,000 years or whatever it

was because it would have to have a this magnitude earthquake that would trigger

this kind of a tsunami at this depth to trigger this large of a wave at this all

that had to kind of come together and they're like guys we like this is 10,000 year problem this is not a today problem

like let's just move on with building this nuclear power plant and the same story here it's like it had all these things that were kind of improbable to

happen and kind of come together ended up coming together and I remember the second thing the second thing was I was

reading while you were talking that Bloodworth if he were to tell them to

tear those houses down he would have been personally liable to the owners for

repaying to rebuild those houses unless he got the um instruction from the King

to tear them down so he might not have been a villain but he didn't go to the king and ask he went back to

sleep Peep had to go to the king and ask so someone else had to go to the king tell the king this has to be taken down

and then he took them down but also then like what is his job if he can't do it anyway right Bloodworth I was trying to stick up for you but you kind of [ __ ]

it up there yeah I don't know um that's nice of you but I don't think I don't think

so I think yeah yeah um wild

times yeah wild times in Old Mary London which I've actually I've been to I've

flown through Gatwick and heo but I've actually never explored London that's great I I I went there for two weeks in

grad school um I lived there I lived in a hotel and I took some classes and it was really fun oh my God we had such a

good time um and I my sister my brother and I went there one time as well it's great it's very

lovely yeah it'll go on the list um sweet Taylor well thank you for sharing

is there anything we want to talk through I have one more listener mail

from my friend Agnes and she um said she

which she remembers from seventh grade science about the ozone layer because we talked about that remember yeah um it

was the cfc's the chloro floro carbons chlorocarbons that were in aerosols and

in Styrofoam plates and things like do you are you old enough to remember when like McDonald's everything was wrapped in styrofoam yes it was like

particularly bad styrofoam and then that was those in the aerosols so once they took that out and made the aerosols work

differently the ozone layer kind of fixed itself and it's almost SP normal good so styrofoam was the problem mostly

mostly the aerosols which is so funny because you're like it's people like making their hair really big in the

80s right right which I love that would could potentially be the thing that ends us why the [ __ ] not why not um

interesting okay well thanks for writing in yeah thank dness and anyone else any thoughts or ideas that you have any um

alternate theories on what caused the Great Fire of London any great fires you want to hear about let me know I'm GNA

we're going to do a bunch of disasters this year I'm super excited about um I have two weeks off of work at the moment

so I'm going to just be painting my house and reading books in my ears and

hopefully getting a couple a couple week's prepped so I'm excited to do that that is fun that is fun I'm excited for

you um awesome well we are kicking off 2024 with a bang or a fire and we'll

see where the rest of the year takes us I'm you know what I was thinking Taylor I was like I was just reflecting on the fact like so much crazy stuff happened

this year or I guess last year 2023 I was thinking about the Titan sub and I was like you know at the start of the

year nobody even knew what this was or I remember think to myself like wait you

can you can just pay money to go down it it it was a whole thing was so new and

now was just like accepted fact I'm like what is going to happen next year like what is what what crazy [ __ ] are we in

for yeah that was you're right fingers crossed that it's not the

end of the world hopefully yellow soon doesn't erupt but [ __ ] who knows what kind of have you seen the videos this

week of all the waves in California going like over the peers no I've seen like a bunch of videos I

don't know how like how prevalent it is but of like people standing on the like different peers like next to the ocean

and the waves are just like coming up and they have to like run from them that's shocking because the peers

like I'm thinking about like the Santa Monica or Malibu or Santa Barbara like those peers are huge like they're like

yeah it's not those it's like the smaller I don't know but let me look this up

California weaves so you know something's coming probably yeah what crazy thing is it

going to be when it's like you know yeah we could never predicted that um more

Monster waves will collide with California coasts yeah massive dangerous

waves hit California coast this week 20 foot tall some as high as 25

feet with expectations being some as high as 40 are going to impact the

area as high as a telephone pole which yeah I mean that's as tall as those

peers are in Malibu yeah that's real scary I always I'm nervous about those

beautiful beach houses I'm like I don't know you're so close to the ocean it's

it can kill you in a minute it's worth it yeah doing a heartbeat um sweet well if you have any

predictions for next year what the crazy news is I'm going to play a bit of Bingo

and say I don't know it's all so it's so predictable right like it's hurricane

fires like it's all it's it happens every year like I don't know there's no being good this also reminded me of like

one of the saddest things is listening to podcasts from early like the end of October um

20 what was it 2016 when Trump was first elected because everyone's like really

excited and then like the next one they're like sad Le like some of the ones I listen to you know that they're like woohoo and then they're like so

how's yeah yeah it's going to be it's G to be a wild wild one I do want to shout out I

do want to shout out hero of the week I'm going to do this I'm gonna add this segment here of the week Gypsy Rose

released from prison thank God I have no idea why she was ever even sent to prison like we should all just give her

like a GoFundMe account and just every month deposit money into her GoFundMe because that I can't like I was I was

just reading about how one of the surgeries I totally forgot about was her having her Sal salvation glands

removed so she she literally can't salvate like crazy the abuse she

suffered is like unbelievable and we in prison for it no

I'm happy I'm happy for her and she I think she's on social media now like good for

her yeah if you want to talk to us Gypsy give us a shout we'll do an interview for you can definitely be on the show

definitely be on the show change our lives so would absolutely be change ha