Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the Old Vault. This episode originally
Speaker 1: aired on June four, nineteen, and it was called The
Speaker 1: Soap Dragon. This was about the monsters that we make
Speaker 1: in our sewers out of fats, oils, grease, and wet wipes,
Speaker 1: all the things you should not put down your drain,
Speaker 1: you should not flush, and yet people do a k
Speaker 1: a fat Bergs. This was the episode I believe that
Speaker 1: gave us fatburg Cop so uh, one of our favorite
Speaker 1: recurring characters on the show. So so yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and I thought maybe
Speaker 1: we should start off with a little don't do what
Speaker 1: Donnie Don't does? All right, tell you tell us about
Speaker 1: Donnie Don't. Okay, so let's let's let's see what Donnie
Speaker 1: Don't is doing and see if maybe we should don't
Speaker 1: do what he does? Uh, try and spot the don't.
Speaker 1: So Donnie Don't is he's cooking up a big old
Speaker 1: mess of French fries in his deep friar, and he
Speaker 1: eats all the fries while watching RoboCop three, and then
Speaker 1: it's time to clean up. So first of all, he
Speaker 1: realizes he is greasy all over from eating this big
Speaker 1: batch of fries, so he gives himself a good wipe
Speaker 1: down with some wet wipes, and then he flushes them
Speaker 1: down the toilet. Now it's time to get rid of
Speaker 1: the gallon of duck fat that he used to cook
Speaker 1: his fries. So what does he do? He pours it
Speaker 1: straight down the drain in the bathtub. Now, I think
Speaker 1: most of us can easily I don't know about all
Speaker 1: of us, because somebody's obviously doing what Donnie Don't does,
Speaker 1: but I think most of us can easily spot the
Speaker 1: Donnie don'ts here. He's made several errors, but now I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty common knowledge that you are not supposed
Speaker 1: to flush wet wipes and other non toilet page products
Speaker 1: down the toilet, and you're definitely not supposed to pour
Speaker 1: fat down the drain. Yeah, I mean there's some other
Speaker 1: things that he's doing to potentially criticize. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know how how often he's eating French
Speaker 1: fries that have been fried in duck fat. Like, if
Speaker 1: he's doing that too often, that's probably not great for
Speaker 1: his health. But you know, once in a while, why not, right, Um,
Speaker 1: RoboCop three, I have no problem with that. It may
Speaker 1: not be the strongest of the RoboCop movies, but it's
Speaker 1: uh it has like cyber Ninjes in it. That's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. But yeah, it's the it's the wet wipes
Speaker 1: and then pouring that grease down the drain. And it's
Speaker 1: the pouring of the grease down the drain. I often
Speaker 1: forget that. That is a key rule. Oh do you
Speaker 1: do you break this one? No? I I just I'm
Speaker 1: generally not in a position to break it because we
Speaker 1: just don't. We don't cook with with fat uh much
Speaker 1: anymore at all anymore. And uh, and then as far
Speaker 1: as wet wipes go, like I know, not to put
Speaker 1: wet wipes down though, really no oils in your house,
Speaker 1: no salad dressing, no like, no olive oil or anything.
Speaker 1: But not duck fat. Oh well, I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: other like non animal fats are still like fats and oils.
Speaker 1: But I guess what I'm thinking, Like I I remember,
Speaker 1: so I shouldn't have said just duck fat. I mean
Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to pour oil or lipids of
Speaker 1: any time down a drain but but but specifically like
Speaker 1: the you know, like a big fry vat kind of
Speaker 1: drainage situation. Like I I remember seeing jars of of
Speaker 1: of fat and oil like underneath the sink. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: growing up, because like that was, you know, the appropriate
Speaker 1: thing to do. That's a grandma's house kind of thing,
Speaker 1: like the big old mason jar of bacon grease under
Speaker 1: the sink. And then of course when whenever we go,
Speaker 1: if you go to um a fast food restaurant or
Speaker 1: even a restaurant in general, you're gonna find that big
Speaker 1: grease trap outside. Like sometimes it's a little bit hidden,
Speaker 1: but sometimes there's no place to hide it. It's just
Speaker 1: right up front. It's just there in the parking lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember one of my jobs that I worked at
Speaker 1: when I is in college. Every morning when i'd go
Speaker 1: into it, I'd have to park in the parking lot
Speaker 1: of a restaurant that was like next to where I worked,
Speaker 1: and I parked right next to their big it was
Speaker 1: like a Burger and Fry's place and the heart next
Speaker 1: to their big grease grease depository. Uh. And it just
Speaker 1: looked like the saddest robot from some Star Wars spinoff,
Speaker 1: like Lithuanian Star Wars has our Ford, uh, you know
Speaker 1: D seven And it's this big black thing with with
Speaker 1: like this dripping, sad, grease tears stained head. But of
Speaker 1: course that's this restaurant usage, and we can I think
Speaker 1: we can all understand that. I mean, there's certain rules
Speaker 1: and regulations there they're following, and they're also producing just
Speaker 1: a ton of this, uh, this material. I wonder if
Speaker 1: like the problem with a household situation is either you're
Speaker 1: creating so little that you don't think about it, so
Speaker 1: it's like death by thousand cuts right right, or you know,
Speaker 1: when you do produce a more sizeable amount doing you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of frying scenario like you do, suddenly have
Speaker 1: this this huge mess to clean up. And it's easy
Speaker 1: to just convince yourself, I'm just gonna do the easy thing.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go and put it down the sink
Speaker 1: and next time I'll do better. Right, Who's gonna know,
Speaker 1: But maybe we should step back and ask a question.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like RoboCop is going to show
Speaker 1: the house, right, right, So that's what they do in
Speaker 1: RoboCop too, right. They reprogram him so instead of fighting crime,
Speaker 1: he goes out and he he pursues uh, minor infraction,
Speaker 1: minor and littering and stuff like that and people using
Speaker 1: swear words. Uh. So we should ask this question of
Speaker 1: wait a minute, why are you not supposed to do
Speaker 1: these things? Why are you not supposed to pour oil
Speaker 1: and fat and grease down the drain? Well, one reason
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to do this has to do with
Speaker 1: the way sewers work. Sewers are, I say, with no hesitation,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest human inventions. And if you doubt this,
Speaker 1: listen to our invention episodes on the toilet, or listen
Speaker 1: to uh we did an episode of stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind out, the miasma theory of disease. And in
Speaker 1: all of these we talk about how you know, properly
Speaker 1: maintained sanitary sewer facilities are are not not just there
Speaker 1: to make our homes and our streets more pleasant, like
Speaker 1: they play a crucial role in protecting public health and
Speaker 1: preventing outbreaks of diseases, especially fecal oral route diseases which
Speaker 1: are as gross as they sound, diseases like cholera. UH.
Speaker 1: Sewers work when everything flows smoothly to its destination point
Speaker 1: at a treatment facility, and they're one of the best
Speaker 1: innovations in the history of civilization. I say that no
Speaker 1: qualifications at all. But sometimes things get in the way,
Speaker 1: like tree roots can intrude on sewer pipes and block flow.
Speaker 1: We live here in Atlanta where there are a lot
Speaker 1: of trees and a lot of a lot of old
Speaker 1: large trees and places that are intersecting with sewer pipes,
Speaker 1: and so this we know about this happening a lot. UH.
Speaker 1: And of course they can cause turbulence and this can
Speaker 1: lead to build up. Or we can have old, decaying
Speaker 1: sewer mains that crack and do similar stuff. And sometimes
Speaker 1: blockages in these sewer sewer pipes occur from the inside out.
Speaker 1: One of the most all inspiring things that can block
Speaker 1: a sewer is what we're going to be talking about today.
Speaker 1: It's something that has in recent years come to be
Speaker 1: known as a fat berg. According to an article I
Speaker 1: was reading by Kelly oaks and new scientists from earlier
Speaker 1: this year. Uh. This term was apparently coined in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, but it became widely popular after news
Speaker 1: reports about a huge fatberg in and what it refers
Speaker 1: to is a giant, solidified mass of stuff based on
Speaker 1: fats and oils that just states in the heart of
Speaker 1: a sewer system, feeding on things like wet wipes and
Speaker 1: floss and other trash, but especially on fats and the
Speaker 1: byproducts of fats, like cooking oils, you know, uh, grease
Speaker 1: from cooking animals, all that stuff that people wash down
Speaker 1: the drain when they just either dump out oils they
Speaker 1: cook with or just when they wash their dishes and
Speaker 1: the oils that are already on the dishes come come
Speaker 1: off and go down the down the tubes. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: understand that they're like the wet wives, the floss, all
Speaker 1: that can can sort of serve as a substrate. Right.
Speaker 1: It was like a scaffolding on which this, uh, this
Speaker 1: new mass will form. Yeah, and we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: it forms in a little bit. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about the terminology because while fat bergs has really
Speaker 1: caught on with the public, this is like what I
Speaker 1: think The reason that there have been so many articles
Speaker 1: in recent years about fat bergs is just because of
Speaker 1: the term fat bergs, Like there was now this beautiful,
Speaker 1: attractive terminology for it, whereas previously, especially in the US,
Speaker 1: I think they were referred to primarily with the acronym
Speaker 1: fogs for fat oil and grease or frogs for fat
Speaker 1: roots as in tree roots and oil and grease. But
Speaker 1: have a really missing opportunity there to dug to dub
Speaker 1: them for instead of frogs, same letters, but it would
Speaker 1: have scratched more of a chudditch, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think maybe would have resonated a little more. Maybe not
Speaker 1: as much as fat bergs ultimately did, but I mean
Speaker 1: attack of the forges where the forges, I feel like
Speaker 1: that could have resonated with with the public. If there
Speaker 1: is not already a movie about one of these things
Speaker 1: becoming sentient, there will be soon. But one particularly massive
Speaker 1: fat burg that we might linger on for a bit
Speaker 1: has been covered extensively, especially in the British press. This
Speaker 1: was the White Chapel Burg. It was removed in Tween
Speaker 1: and it was a mass blocking the sewer under the
Speaker 1: under White Chapel Road in East London. I think this
Speaker 1: was Jack the Rippers neighborhood. Yeah, I think that adds
Speaker 1: to the appeal of the white Chapel Fatburg. And it
Speaker 1: sounds even more sinister exactly. And the burg itself, in
Speaker 1: a way, was sort of a white chapel. It's like this, uh,
Speaker 1: this unholy things, sort of a gray off white color.
Speaker 1: And so it was about two hundred and fifty meter
Speaker 1: ars long or about eight hundred and twenty feet, and
Speaker 1: it weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons. And
Speaker 1: this monster was so magnificent that a piece of it
Speaker 1: was broken off and displayed in a special exhibit in
Speaker 1: the Museum of London. And I came across a gorgeous,
Speaker 1: absolutely haunting description of this sewage fatburg fragment by Sam
Speaker 1: Knight in The New Yorker. And this, this description of
Speaker 1: the Fatburg was so moving that I have to quote
Speaker 1: from it. Are you ready, Robert? The piece of Fatburg
Speaker 1: was slightly smaller than a loaf of bread and looked
Speaker 1: like it might have come from the moon. It was
Speaker 1: putty colored and marked everywhere with geological looking indentations, including
Speaker 1: a cluster of fingerprints from when it was removed from
Speaker 1: a sewer. In East London last October and lifted through
Speaker 1: a manhole. On the surface, there was also a dark
Speaker 1: fragment from an autumn leaf which must have slipped down
Speaker 1: the drains into its mall. Emerging through the congealed cow
Speaker 1: alsified fat was the purple and orange perforated edge of
Speaker 1: a double decker chocolate bar wrapper. Every detail of the
Speaker 1: hideous object was starkly visible because it was resting on
Speaker 1: a bed of black granules under a spotlight in a
Speaker 1: glass box at the Museum of London at the opening
Speaker 1: of its new exhibition Fat Bird. I stared at it
Speaker 1: for a while, and while I did so, a tiny
Speaker 1: dark speck on the Fat Bird became animate and started
Speaker 1: to move. A fly the size of a pinhead flew
Speaker 1: up and battered against the glass. That's pretty great because
Speaker 1: he capture us this sense of it almost being alive
Speaker 1: and uh, and and also this this haunting feeling that
Speaker 1: it is like our sins. Uh, may you know, manifested
Speaker 1: into a physical form, Like here is all your recklessness
Speaker 1: and your you're you're willing and stuff to flush inappropriate
Speaker 1: things down the toilet. Well, here it is altogether, uh,
Speaker 1: to confront you to point it's grotesque finger at Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope this description of the fatburg it's nominated for
Speaker 1: like a Pulitzer Prize. That's uh, it's powerful stuff. But
Speaker 1: the seen white chapelberg that mentioned a minute ago was
Speaker 1: by no means the only fatburg. Fat Burgs form all
Speaker 1: the time in cities all around the world due to
Speaker 1: people flushing and washing fats and other inappropriate stuff down
Speaker 1: the drain. According to Night's article, it's estimated that London
Speaker 1: alone has at least five large fat bergs at any
Speaker 1: given time, So sometimes you know, they go down there
Speaker 1: to fight them, but they're they're always new ones forming.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about size. They can become so huge.
Speaker 1: Let me restate what I said a minute ago. This
Speaker 1: white Chapel beast was two hundred and fifty meters long,
Speaker 1: which is approximately the length of the Hindenburg, and it
Speaker 1: weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons or heavier
Speaker 1: by about a third than the biggest ever soarra pod dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Of course, it makes sense because they were talking about
Speaker 1: a massive sewage system. We're talking about massive consumption, a
Speaker 1: massive population, and therefore the clog the thing is going
Speaker 1: to be massive as well, well, yeah, and also you
Speaker 1: want to consider the particulars of the London sewer system,
Speaker 1: because this is where a lot of these stories come from.
Speaker 1: The London sewer system. You know, it's it's got Victorian elements,
Speaker 1: and it was the sewer system built over a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, uh, you know, back in Victorian times, as
Speaker 1: a response to the great stink you know that we've
Speaker 1: talked about on on this show before, where the you know,
Speaker 1: sewage being discharged into the Thames. One year in the
Speaker 1: believe it is the eighteen fifties or sixties, sometime in
Speaker 1: the middle of the nineteenth century, it got so foul
Speaker 1: and it stanks so bad that Parliament was just you know,
Speaker 1: about to puke in their uh, in their deliberation chambers.
Speaker 1: And so they eventually did something about it, and that
Speaker 1: was to get this sewage system, uh, not only because
Speaker 1: of the smell, but also because it was a you know,
Speaker 1: the sewage system that they had in place of the time,
Speaker 1: which consisted of more like open sewers in the streets
Speaker 1: and stuff draining into the Thames which then people would
Speaker 1: drink out of. It was just leading to the collar
Speaker 1: out breaks and terrible public health conditions and these horrible stinks.
Speaker 1: So they created this massive sewer system under the ground
Speaker 1: in order to take away all of the waste water
Speaker 1: and discharge it away from the city. So you've got
Speaker 1: these like in some cases very large, like old, elaborate
Speaker 1: and some sometimes kind of beautiful brick built sewage channels
Speaker 1: and you know, access tunnels and all this. Uh so,
Speaker 1: so you've got old facilities. But you might be wondering. Okay,
Speaker 1: so one of these giant beasts, You've you've got a
Speaker 1: hindenburg of fat and sewage and waste stuck in the sewer, blocking,
Speaker 1: blocking things, preventing them from flowing. What do you do
Speaker 1: about it? Well, that's the question. We're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back we will answer it. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we're talking about fat bergs. How do
Speaker 1: you fight them. You've got one of these giant concrete
Speaker 1: fat conglomerations made out of wet wipes and and dental
Speaker 1: floss and old you know, wrappers of food and bits
Speaker 1: of plastic, and of course all of these fats and
Speaker 1: oils and grease and sewage and waste. It just makes
Speaker 1: this huge mass that blocks up the sewers. What do
Speaker 1: you do about it? Well, you literally have sewer workers
Speaker 1: that go down to break it up and remove it.
Speaker 1: The city sewer workers in London are known as flushers,
Speaker 1: and they have to fight these wicked villains. They have
Speaker 1: to go down and confront the ball rog in person.
Speaker 1: And in Night's article in The New Yorker, he he
Speaker 1: talks about the process of breaking up the White Chapel mass. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, he says, they've got to wear protection,
Speaker 1: and they've got to have a breathing apparatus because this
Speaker 1: thing is in a way alive. It's got a lot
Speaker 1: of uh life feeding on it, and as a result,
Speaker 1: it can let out sudden explosion of gas like hydrogen sulfide,
Speaker 1: which of course smells like rotten eggs and is the
Speaker 1: It's a common gas released as a byproduct of decaying
Speaker 1: organic matter, but it also releases methane, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: can just blast out carbon monoxide, which can be deadly.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're outfitting your D and D Adventure
Speaker 1: the flusher class to go down into this dungeon and
Speaker 1: fight the monster. What weapons do you want to equip
Speaker 1: them with? We'll probably not fire. Fire would seems like
Speaker 1: a bad idea. Oh yeah, that's uh. And and unfortunately
Speaker 1: they are not a magic using class, so they don't
Speaker 1: have any spells available to them. I don't know. Is
Speaker 1: that a thing in D and D there's some classes
Speaker 1: who can't do spells, right? Uh? Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: seems like there are a lot of classes that have
Speaker 1: some sort of magical abilities, especially as they level up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this sounds more like like fighter um uh
Speaker 1: material right here. You need somebody to go down and
Speaker 1: physically fight this physical threat and remove it. These are paladins.
Speaker 1: I'll allow it. I'll allow it. I mean, paladins have
Speaker 1: some some you know that they have holy powers, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these powers are about like, you know,
Speaker 1: increasing their physical prowess. Right, Okay, certainly I don't know
Speaker 1: my stuff. Sorry, Okay, we'll say their paladins anyway. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the Mighty Flusher's weapons include the bomb hose. That's the
Speaker 1: term bomb hose, which is just like a high pressure
Speaker 1: water jet that should be able to cut through blockages.
Speaker 1: It's like a cutting jet. But apparently, according to Night's article,
Speaker 1: even this didn't work all that well on the hardened
Speaker 1: mass of the White Chapelberg, and so later on these
Speaker 1: these warriors had to use more old fashioned implements like
Speaker 1: pick axes, shovels, and he says in one case even
Speaker 1: us Saul. When pieces were removed and kept for the
Speaker 1: London Museum exhibit, one expert who handled them described the
Speaker 1: fatberg chunks as sort of hard but light feeling like
Speaker 1: pumice stone. I think that was interesting. Yeah, but even
Speaker 1: the smaller one so so that one's gigantic, But even
Speaker 1: the smaller ones are still huge in disgusting ways. I've
Speaker 1: on a brilliantly funny article with a great title on
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura by Jessica lee Hester from January of this year,
Speaker 1: is called seven big Things. They're smaller than this fatburg,
Speaker 1: and it refers to another British fatburg, one found in
Speaker 1: a sewer beneath the town in beneath the town in Devon,
Speaker 1: and according to the water utility in that area, it
Speaker 1: was the largest fatberg that they had come across in
Speaker 1: that area. It was about two ten feet or about
Speaker 1: sixty five ms uh. And so so what are the
Speaker 1: things she lists as smaller than this fatberg, at least
Speaker 1: in terms of dimensions. I don't think they had weight
Speaker 1: on it at the time she was writing. Um, so
Speaker 1: smaller in terms of length was the above water surface
Speaker 1: height of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, the tallest
Speaker 1: known Ginko tree in the world, the Christ the Redeemer statue,
Speaker 1: and Rio de Jannaro, the Coney's Island or the Coney
Speaker 1: Islands Wonder Wheel, uh, the Statue of Liberty, the Roman Colosseum,
Speaker 1: and Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square all smaller than this Fatburg,
Speaker 1: which is not even the largest Fatburg by a long shot.
Speaker 1: And she also pointed out something in in her article
Speaker 1: that was just an interesting phrasing of things that it's
Speaker 1: sort of echo thoughts I'd been having as I was
Speaker 1: reading about Fatburg's in in Hester's words quote, the chunky
Speaker 1: gunky sewer cloggers are murky mirrors into the behaviors of
Speaker 1: people above ground because they hold all the stuff we
Speaker 1: flush and try to forget about, including cooking, grease, napkins, floss,
Speaker 1: minstrel products which don't belong in the pipes in the
Speaker 1: first place. So it's this idea of like these are
Speaker 1: sort of the the places of all the things that
Speaker 1: we want to just get out of our lives. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, the purging of convenience all becomes this mass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again it kind of it confronts us once more.
Speaker 1: The horror is even greater because it is all it
Speaker 1: is a it's it's congealed into this this massive form.
Speaker 1: And I think maybe that is part of like the
Speaker 1: psychological reason why people can't look away, Like why was
Speaker 1: there a museum exhibit about these things where everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to go see them? It's this fascinating, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: almost kind of freudy and feeling kind of thing, like
Speaker 1: the suppressed part of our culture and civilization. It's what's
Speaker 1: shoved down and covered up and not looked at, almost
Speaker 1: out of a sense of shame, and it becomes this stuff.
Speaker 1: And and a lot of our modern life is about
Speaker 1: distancing ourselves from the reality of our waste, from the
Speaker 1: reality of our dead things of this nature. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's it definitely speaks to us on that level. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we should turn to the question of how, like
Speaker 1: how do simple bits of cooking oil and other fat
Speaker 1: turn into these mighty slumbering beasts, the monsters of the
Speaker 1: dungeon because it could seem almost magical right that it's
Speaker 1: it's it's like this thing has become alive down there.
Speaker 1: It is like one of these uh you know, they're
Speaker 1: multiple uh uh you know, I think horror properties where
Speaker 1: some sort of garbage monster come is alive, and it
Speaker 1: basically fulfills the same purpose we're talking about here, to
Speaker 1: confront us and to uh, you know, to to show
Speaker 1: us the horrors of our of of of our you know,
Speaker 1: disposable society. But but there's a very but the process
Speaker 1: is happening here is not magical. It is you know,
Speaker 1: we can we can we can look at what is
Speaker 1: happening chemically. Yeah. Uh so obviously there's one extremely simple
Speaker 1: way that there are multiple ways here, but there's one
Speaker 1: extremely simple way that fat can end up blocking sewer pipes,
Speaker 1: and that's by congealing. Like if you ever cooked bacon,
Speaker 1: cooked bacon in a pan, what happens, Well, the white
Speaker 1: solid fat in the bacon in the animal flesh renders.
Speaker 1: It turns into a fluid that runs around in the
Speaker 1: pan like water, and it flows, so you can pour
Speaker 1: it out, et cetera. You can pour it down the drain.
Speaker 1: But that's only because it's hot. If you take that
Speaker 1: bacon grease and you leave it out at room temperature,
Speaker 1: you put it in the fridge, we all know what happens, right,
Speaker 1: It turns into a kind of waxy solid and this
Speaker 1: is large, right. Yeah, I guess the cure process of
Speaker 1: bacon doesn't change that. Yeah. So it's pork fat either way. Uh.
Speaker 1: And now not all fats can geal into solids or
Speaker 1: semi solids at room temperature, but plenty do. So if
Speaker 1: you melt this fat and then pour it down the
Speaker 1: sink into cold pipes and wash it away, the cooling
Speaker 1: fat forms a solid or semi solid mass that can
Speaker 1: build up. It can coat surfaces and so forth, and
Speaker 1: can of course block sewer pipes. So that that that's
Speaker 1: like the simple version. That's just one way fat can
Speaker 1: clog up your sewers. That one reason you don't want
Speaker 1: to put it down there, right, And I think we
Speaker 1: can all grasp that even if if you've ever washed
Speaker 1: dishes before, you can get a sense of how, how
Speaker 1: what's happening exactly. But this is actually not the main
Speaker 1: piece of chemistry contributing to fat bergs. The truth is
Speaker 1: actually weirder. Often the fats that we wash down the
Speaker 1: drain essentially become soap. The chemical process is known as
Speaker 1: saponification uh. This word comes from the Latin sapo, meaning
Speaker 1: so And once a mass of fat gets washed down
Speaker 1: the drain, it chemically breaks down into fatty acids, and
Speaker 1: these fatty acids undergo a chemical reaction in the alkaline
Speaker 1: environment of the sewer, combining with other elements and compounds,
Speaker 1: often calcium, to form this calcified soap like deposit. And
Speaker 1: of course, as we all know, soap can be pretty solid,
Speaker 1: like you you don't want to get whacked with a
Speaker 1: bar of soap in the bottom of sock. But it
Speaker 1: gets even worse because calcified fat bergs build up a
Speaker 1: real kind of rigidity. Like the workers who have to
Speaker 1: cut them out sometimes compare them to concrete by the
Speaker 1: time you have to go in and break them up. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't know exactly what leads to all that.
Speaker 1: It might be this forming of a solid mass and
Speaker 1: then like the sort of compacting of time, you know,
Speaker 1: thing of pressure just forcing it together. But the soap
Speaker 1: like masses tend to form around solid pieces of trash
Speaker 1: that get flushed down the toilet. So that's the other
Speaker 1: major component we mentioned earlier. Like wet wipes are by
Speaker 1: far the worst defender here. This is in all the
Speaker 1: British press about this is just saying like, don't wash
Speaker 1: fats and oils down the drain and don't flush wet wipes.
Speaker 1: Don't flush wet wipes. Wet wipes are like the most
Speaker 1: hated thing but the sewer workers. And that's of course
Speaker 1: because you know, they're not designed industrially the way like
Speaker 1: toilet paper is, which is made to break up when
Speaker 1: it's in this aqueous environment. The wet wipes tend to
Speaker 1: not break up. They stick together and they form a
Speaker 1: sort of binding or substrate for this nightmare soap of
Speaker 1: the deep on its way to becoming a berg. I mean,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of the of the science stories
Speaker 1: we've covered about uh creating artificial Say years we have
Speaker 1: some sort of a scaffolding on which you're gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna build up like the you know, the collagen and
Speaker 1: create this artificial piece of flesh. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: that process taking place in a foul sewer. But imagine
Speaker 1: that process is taking place where stuff just keeps flowing
Speaker 1: into it, so it just keeps getting more solid material
Speaker 1: like wet wipes and more like binding soap like fat
Speaker 1: structure until it becomes an ear the size of the Hindenburg.
Speaker 1: Another contributor to the fat bergs in the London sewers,
Speaker 1: and not just the London sewers in other places, but
Speaker 1: especially in London sewers is old rough brick surfaces. I'm
Speaker 1: not positive, but I think the mechanism here is that
Speaker 1: rough surfaces create more friction with the flowing water, and
Speaker 1: this causes turbulence. Instead of flowing smoothly the water or
Speaker 1: the you know, the sewage, it gets sort of churned
Speaker 1: up and this interrupts the smooth flow and it gives
Speaker 1: uh and and so it causes build up of solid matter.
Speaker 1: But also I think the rough surfaces just sort of
Speaker 1: give the wet wipes and other trash little crags to
Speaker 1: catch on, and then of course once they catch on,
Speaker 1: other things can catch onto them, and it just builds
Speaker 1: up from there. Yeah. And and also so these soap
Speaker 1: like masses are not water soluble, meaning they're not dissolved
Speaker 1: by water, so they're not gonna over time just like
Speaker 1: break up and wash away with the flow of the
Speaker 1: sewer water. They just sit there and they build up
Speaker 1: and they grow too mescent with new waste and trash
Speaker 1: and layers of soapy solids made out of fat, until
Speaker 1: somebody finally goes down there to slay the dragon. And
Speaker 1: as we discussed, of course the battles of the flushers,
Speaker 1: you have to you physically break these things up and
Speaker 1: remove them. Yeah, again with things like pick axes and saws,
Speaker 1: because it is almost like concrete, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just this big, you know, gross sewer jelly that you
Speaker 1: just need to sort of, you know, flush a little
Speaker 1: bit more, you know, just spray with water and you
Speaker 1: know you'll get it done. A plunger is not going
Speaker 1: to do it. Now. In some cases, I do think
Speaker 1: these like water jet hoses can be used to cut
Speaker 1: it up. They just, at least in the one case
Speaker 1: I was reading about, they weren't quite doing the job
Speaker 1: and they had to resort to the old ways. Also,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to do a little side note on
Speaker 1: sepontification because what's happening here in the sewers is not
Speaker 1: exactly the same as but it's somewhat analogous to, uh,
Speaker 1: something that I'm very interested in that occasionally happens to
Speaker 1: human bodies in certain burial conditions. Robert, have you been
Speaker 1: to the Mooder Museum in Philadelphia. I haven't. I've never
Speaker 1: visited Philly. Yeah, I haven't been, but I've wanted to
Speaker 1: for a long time. So they've got an exhibit, or
Speaker 1: I don't know about an exhibit. They've got a thing
Speaker 1: at the Modern Museum that is a human body. It's
Speaker 1: known as the Soap Lady. And do you know the
Speaker 1: soap Lady. No, but I'm already horrified because I know
Speaker 1: enough about the mood Museum to know that a soap
Speaker 1: lady there is going to be a site to behold.
Speaker 1: I think they've got a soap lady and a soap man.
Speaker 1: I've primarily read about the soap Lady, so those two
Speaker 1: should mean exactly. So. It was originally believed that she
Speaker 1: was a woman who had lived in Philadelphia in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century and had died of yellow fever sometime in
Speaker 1: the seventeen nineties. But in nineteen eighty six they did
Speaker 1: some X rays of the body of the Soap Lady
Speaker 1: and this revealed that she was wearing clothes with like
Speaker 1: buttons and pins that weren't manufactured in the US until
Speaker 1: around the eighteen thirties, So it's now believed that she
Speaker 1: must have died later than was originally believed, but whenever
Speaker 1: she died. In eighteen seventy five, her body was exhumed
Speaker 1: from a local cemetery, and it was discovered that the
Speaker 1: corpse was encased almost entirely in a solid soap like substance,
Speaker 1: and that she was essentially a soap mummy. If you
Speaker 1: look at pictures of her, she looks like a mummy.
Speaker 1: She looks like some of these uh, like you know,
Speaker 1: sort of dried mummified, preserved corpses that you might find
Speaker 1: in the case of some of like the Andean mummies.
Speaker 1: Um except that she has except that, like her features
Speaker 1: are less defined, and she's got a bunch of extra
Speaker 1: stuff around the outside of her body, like almost like
Speaker 1: she's encased in some kind of concrete or something, but
Speaker 1: it's not concrete. This substance in reality is something kind
Speaker 1: of like soap. It's not exactly so, but it's something
Speaker 1: known as adipus here, also sometimes referred to as corpse
Speaker 1: wax or grave wax. Now, I do think I remember
Speaker 1: reading about this like years and years past and some
Speaker 1: you know texts on decomposition. Uh yeah, there there's some
Speaker 1: interesting stories about the role of grave wax in uh in. Like, so,
Speaker 1: one thing that corpse wax does when it forms around
Speaker 1: a body is that it can help preserve some of
Speaker 1: the elements within um. And this like keeps corpses from
Speaker 1: decaying like they would normally. And so the formation of
Speaker 1: adapas here, I do believe, is it's chemically considered a
Speaker 1: form of suppontification, like what's happening with the fat bergs
Speaker 1: and the sewers. Adapas are is this waxy substance that
Speaker 1: sometimes forms around dead bodies since they decay, particularly in
Speaker 1: certain kinds of burial conditions. And these environments tend to
Speaker 1: be alkaline, you know, like the the opposite of acidic.
Speaker 1: They tend to be anaerobic, meaning without access to air,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be warm and moist, which are
Speaker 1: just you know that generally sounds like the kind of
Speaker 1: environments you don't want to bury bodies. But you know,
Speaker 1: some soil is like that. And and and I'm guessing
Speaker 1: at least some of these are gonna gonna match up
Speaker 1: with with sewer scenarios. And we've talked before about some
Speaker 1: of the the organisms that can grow in a sewer
Speaker 1: environment that really thrive in a in a like a
Speaker 1: low oxygen environment. Yeah, exactly, So freshly formed adipas here
Speaker 1: can be kind of soft and waxy, but older adipas
Speaker 1: here can more closely resemble something like concrete. I was
Speaker 1: reading a Live Science article about this by Wynn Perry,
Speaker 1: and the author quotes an anthropologist from North Carolina State
Speaker 1: University named Anne Ross, and she says, quote, a lot
Speaker 1: of people say it's greasy. I always think of it
Speaker 1: like a thick cottage cheese consistency, because it's kind of lumpy. Also,
Speaker 1: so maybe not the grave wax of the grave soap,
Speaker 1: but the grave cottage cheese, cottage cheese of the dead,
Speaker 1: the corpse cheese. Alright, well, on that grotesque note, let's
Speaker 1: one more break, and when we come back, we have
Speaker 1: some other fatburg facts to roll through, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll talk to us a little bit about about
Speaker 1: the sewer monster movies at the end of the episode. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, Okay, so quite clearly, uh, these things you
Speaker 1: don't want fat Bergs in your sewers, and yet they
Speaker 1: form in sewers under cities all over the world. It's
Speaker 1: happening all the time because of this combination of like
Speaker 1: stuff that people shouldn't flush and fats and oils going
Speaker 1: down the drain, which I guess both variations of the
Speaker 1: same thing. You know, stuff that you shouldn't put down
Speaker 1: the drain is going down the drain. Uh. And in
Speaker 1: the article I mentioned earlier in New Scientist Kelly Oaks
Speaker 1: refers to a University College Dublin professor named Tom Curran
Speaker 1: who is who works in this field, and he says
Speaker 1: that the major factors contributing to a sort of recent
Speaker 1: increase in fatburg incidents in London are of course like
Speaker 1: a larger populations in cities, so it's just more people
Speaker 1: washing more stuff down rains. Aging sewers contribute a lot.
Speaker 1: One factor is more dining out at restaurants, because it
Speaker 1: appears that restaurants are responsible for a huge amount of
Speaker 1: the fats and oils that go down the drain. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, I would have thought it would be more
Speaker 1: regulated with the restaurants. Apparently it's Uh. In the UK,
Speaker 1: at least it is not as regulated as some people
Speaker 1: think it should be or I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: changed recently. In the articles I was reading from the
Speaker 1: past couple of years, it's I think there's a problem
Speaker 1: with like last lack of specificity in regulations, Like there
Speaker 1: are regulations that say restaurants aren't supposed to wash anything
Speaker 1: down the drain that would be harmful to the sewer system,
Speaker 1: but like it doesn't specifically say don't wash fats and
Speaker 1: oils down the drain, okay, And then the other big
Speaker 1: thing is, of course trashally goes down the drain. But
Speaker 1: there's you know, as we've already said, there's like one
Speaker 1: huge culprit here that's like of the problem, and it's
Speaker 1: wet wipes. It just seems like that one would be
Speaker 1: an easier one to knock. It seems like that would
Speaker 1: be something we could solve. Is like, if you use
Speaker 1: a wet white no matter what you used it for,
Speaker 1: no matter how defoul it is, just put it in
Speaker 1: a garbage can. Like maybe maybe it's easier because you
Speaker 1: go to something you know, you travel to, you know,
Speaker 1: to certain parts of the world where the sewer system
Speaker 1: can't even handle toilet paper, and you get used to
Speaker 1: it you know, like at first it may seem a
Speaker 1: little weird, like, oh, you know, I must wipe and
Speaker 1: then put the toilet paper into a receptacle. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it runs against what you've been doing, but you get
Speaker 1: used to it and it becomes the new normal. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that was the thing. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you travel. Um, it just depends on the on
Speaker 1: the sewage system. And yes, some just can't handle the paper. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's it's asking even less I
Speaker 1: feel to say, look, just you have a wet wipe.
Speaker 1: I know you just used it on some disgusting part
Speaker 1: of like a two year old body, but you know
Speaker 1: you just put in the garbage. Apparently, so I was
Speaker 1: reading in the same article that you know, there are
Speaker 1: there are things that have proved effective, and it's essentially
Speaker 1: regulating the stuff we're talking about. It's like regulating what
Speaker 1: restaurants can put down the drain and putting grease traps
Speaker 1: in place and all that, but then also doing like
Speaker 1: public education campaigns to get people to not put anything
Speaker 1: in the toilet other than human waste and toilet paper,
Speaker 1: and that this has been effective and like doubling already.
Speaker 1: But it's it hasn't been effective enough everywhere, And I
Speaker 1: wonder if the problem is that, I mean, I would
Speaker 1: hope that in a campaign against Fatburg, somebody has created,
Speaker 1: with practical effects and costuming, an anthropomorphic fat Burg creature,
Speaker 1: you know, or even like a you know, like thinking
Speaker 1: about when I know we both love good like paranormal
Speaker 1: cops ploitation films from years past, like Maniac Cop and
Speaker 1: so forth. And there was that cool trailer from what
Speaker 1: was it, melt Cop or something. Yeah, like they could
Speaker 1: make Fatburg cop and so Fatburg copy. Is this like
Speaker 1: anthropomorphic Fatberg in a police uniform that it comes to
Speaker 1: your apartment or your restaurant and chastises you for your
Speaker 1: destructive ways. Fatberg Cop versus Flukeman the next big crossover hit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, or they're they're buddy It's a buddy cop.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Wait, this is making Fatberg's the hero as
Speaker 1: you're doing it backwards, one of the fat Burg in
Speaker 1: the same way that the Fatburg confronts us Fatburg becomes
Speaker 1: the hero, like he's a cop made out of Fatberg,
Speaker 1: raising consciousness about the need to destroy his own kind. Well,
Speaker 1: no he's not, you know, he's like Uh, he didn't
Speaker 1: want to be in fatberg form. You know. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe he was previously human. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe he took on human consciousness. Maybe it's kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, a swamp things swampman kind of a scenario.
Speaker 1: Why don't they look? But I mean, it can be
Speaker 1: hard to get people to behave you know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's just usually pretty easy to get away with flushing
Speaker 1: and draining things you shouldn't because who's going to catch you?
Speaker 1: Something that is momentarily your problem is now just gone,
Speaker 1: it's purged, and it becomes instead like a small part
Speaker 1: of a big problem that is everybody's problem. It's not
Speaker 1: your problem right now, right. And of course this, I
Speaker 1: mean there's so many other things, uh, in the world
Speaker 1: that can fall into this category. This is the tragedy
Speaker 1: of the commons. I mean, it's you know, people have
Speaker 1: shared common resources that they all need. The biggest one
Speaker 1: probably is like the natural environment. It's you know, supposed
Speaker 1: to be something that is of common access to everyone,
Speaker 1: but in fact there are individual actors who over exploit
Speaker 1: and foul and cause damage to this common resource resource
Speaker 1: that should be shared by everybody. Because it's momentarily convenient
Speaker 1: for them and they can get away with it. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most crucial flaws in human psychology that
Speaker 1: we exploit common resources this way and in that way.
Speaker 1: I do think we should think about sewers as a
Speaker 1: type of commons, just like we would think about like
Speaker 1: the oceans, the rivers, the air, the environment. Sewers are
Speaker 1: a common shared resource among all the people who use them,
Speaker 1: and should be treated as such, even though it's definitely
Speaker 1: that kind of thing where we don't want to think
Speaker 1: about it and we try not to think about it
Speaker 1: unless it's broken. Right. Well, Apparently, when the London Museum
Speaker 1: was running this Fatburg exhibit, it had a plaque on
Speaker 1: the wall that read as follows the size and foulness
Speaker 1: of fat bergs makes them impossible to ignore and reminds
Speaker 1: us of our failings that they do. It seems like
Speaker 1: something that should be inscribed over like the I don't know,
Speaker 1: over over the door of like a Puritan church from
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds. But I should also point out I
Speaker 1: was reading that. Uh, at the same museum exhibit they
Speaker 1: sold something called fat burg fudge. I guess this was
Speaker 1: in the museum cafe, they'd have to have something like
Speaker 1: in the cafe or the gift shot to line up
Speaker 1: with it. Literally a sweet treat modeled on a fatburg
Speaker 1: brick with raisins to represent flies. You know we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: You know that, of course London isn't the only city
Speaker 1: to have to deal with this. Obviously, there are other
Speaker 1: large metropolitan area uh that that are plagued by fat burgs.
Speaker 1: And I was reading ant Geo article titled huge Blobs
Speaker 1: of Fat and Trash or Filling the World Sewers by
Speaker 1: Erica Inglehop, and this was a really nice article as well,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. The lead UH said that, you know,
Speaker 1: in one part of the city, someone flushes a wet wipe,
Speaker 1: and another part of the city someone flushes some oil.
Speaker 1: When those two meet, a baby fat burg is born.
Speaker 1: So I I applaud the the writing in this article.
Speaker 1: But angle Hop points out that in New York City,
Speaker 1: according to the city's two thousand sixteen State of the
Speaker 1: Sewers Report, Greece causes seventy one of sewer backups in
Speaker 1: the city. Uh. And then and and as a and
Speaker 1: as a result, New York City spends eighteen million spent
Speaker 1: eighteen million dollars over a five year period fighting fatburgs.
Speaker 1: But even in smaller U. S cities you can see, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the local government having to blow like half
Speaker 1: a million dollars a year to battle these build ups.
Speaker 1: And uh. Another interesting thing that ingle Hop pointed out though,
Speaker 1: was that, um, there was a particular River Thames project
Speaker 1: with argent Energy uh to potentially harvest fat burgs and
Speaker 1: turn them into renewable fuel. And this is pretty sensible
Speaker 1: if you think about it. I mean, all that oil
Speaker 1: going down the drains, uh, you know, it should be
Speaker 1: going somewhere else, such as in the case of restaurants,
Speaker 1: into grease traps um which are and and sometimes grease
Speaker 1: traps are are pilfered for this very reason because their
Speaker 1: contents are valuable in a sense. Uh and and and
Speaker 1: there are also parts of the world where you know,
Speaker 1: essentially sewer oil is is reclaimed and sort of sold
Speaker 1: on the black market, you know, kind like sewer oil.
Speaker 1: But I think this has been done with some of
Speaker 1: the British fat bergs. I don't think all of them,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not sure, but yeah, I think at some
Speaker 1: point some of them have become biofuel. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it seems like a logical alternative to the typical
Speaker 1: fates for a fat burg which are I mean it
Speaker 1: if you except for the rare pieces that go to
Speaker 1: the museum to become art, uh you know, other stuff,
Speaker 1: it's either being hauled off to a landfill or it's
Speaker 1: broken up so as to better diffuse into the sewer system. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, to whatever extent you could. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: you want to prevent the fat bird to begin with.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have to toil with it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, even if you get to the point where
Speaker 1: you could send a robot down to battle the fat birds,
Speaker 1: it's you still gotta you know, haul it up uh
Speaker 1: and all, and then potentially hauled off to a landfill.
Speaker 1: But if it could be turned into fuel, if it
Speaker 1: could you know, uh, power the Deloreans the future, then
Speaker 1: that sounds like the way to go. Well. I do
Speaker 1: think it is a good idea to turn these things
Speaker 1: as long as they are still being made into fuel.
Speaker 1: But don't don't get distracted by that as like an
Speaker 1: excuse to Okay, so it's not so bad if we
Speaker 1: keep making them because they turn into fuel, right, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, because again, the stewer systems are not made
Speaker 1: for fat birds. Like if you I guess, if you
Speaker 1: reach the situation where you're like, look, we refuse to learn,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna stop rushing oil and wet wipes, then okay,
Speaker 1: you could conceivably imagine a scenario where the sewer systems
Speaker 1: have to be redesigned in order to um, you know,
Speaker 1: sequester fat bergs for harvesting. But they're not built like that,
Speaker 1: and they're probably not going to be rebuilt like that,
Speaker 1: and it's ultimately an easier prospect to just change how
Speaker 1: we're handling the things that we're sending down into the sewer.
Speaker 1: This is going to become some crack pop political parties
Speaker 1: energy platform, and they're saying all this talk about you know,
Speaker 1: green energy. What you do is you pour oil down
Speaker 1: the drain all day, our energy problems are solved. I'm
Speaker 1: not super up on British politics. Is there a fat
Speaker 1: bird party? Yet? I know that the new parties get
Speaker 1: get formed here and there. Um, I can't heard about it,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure. I mean, like all issues, especially issues
Speaker 1: in fact that have to do with people exploiting or
Speaker 1: ruining the commons for everybody. These issues often do get
Speaker 1: like politically polarized because it's advantageous for somebody to do that.
Speaker 1: And this is why we need fat bird cop out
Speaker 1: there on the beat, in the in the you know,
Speaker 1: at least in the eyes of the public, in the messaging, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, confronting us, chastising us far aways, um and
Speaker 1: and and but I mean, I mean that's seriously because
Speaker 1: I think, like, for my part, like one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that the other reasons that fat birds are so captivating, uh,
Speaker 1: in addition to all the grotesque photos and footage that
Speaker 1: shows up. I saw one article is like a video
Speaker 1: based article online that the title was something along the
Speaker 1: lines of the moment when a rat crawls out of
Speaker 1: the fat bird, and that was apparently the footage of
Speaker 1: the like a live rat swarming out of fat bird. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, so we can't look away from the grotesque
Speaker 1: nature of them. But then also you the sewers are
Speaker 1: this unique location where there have been a number of
Speaker 1: notable films over the years that populate the sewers with monsters,
Speaker 1: be it you know, Chud's or or you know or
Speaker 1: or or Cannibals is in the Bridge ash film Raw Meat, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that was a subway system, but still an
Speaker 1: environment stuff in Ghostbusters too, I think, yeah, the river
Speaker 1: of slime flowing out of New York City, that's a
Speaker 1: big one for me. But also definitely the Blob at
Speaker 1: least remake kind of lot of like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: under I think there was like these sewer system Shenanigan's
Speaker 1: there with the blob, you know, ripping through the sewer
Speaker 1: and attacking people. Yeah, and it definitely came up through
Speaker 1: the drains. So it's I feel like the fat Berg
Speaker 1: reminds us of these monstrosities as well, except there they're
Speaker 1: not fantasy, they're real, uh you know, they just don't
Speaker 1: actually assault us, try to digestue well. I feel like
Speaker 1: some of these, especially Ghostbusters too. Yeah, it does bring
Speaker 1: in some of that same metaphor stuff we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier about you know, like it it's all the
Speaker 1: bad things we don't want to think about and all
Speaker 1: the negative energies that that is what was feeding the
Speaker 1: slime and Ghostbusters too, right, it was like Prince Vigo
Speaker 1: and just New Yorkers being jerk. That's kind of weird
Speaker 1: for a sequel to a movie in which an e
Speaker 1: P A representative was a villain. But there you go.
Speaker 1: It's a different time. Ghostbusters a bravely pro littering movie.
Speaker 1: Al Right, Well, there you have it. A fat Bergs
Speaker 1: for you. Now. Obviously, if anyone out there has direct
Speaker 1: experience with fat Bergs or any other strange monstrosities in
Speaker 1: our sewer systems, let us know. I feel like, just
Speaker 1: thinking about the sheer number of listeners and just all
Speaker 1: the you know, the diverse backgrounds that you all have,
Speaker 1: somebody out there has had to have battled the fat bird.
Speaker 1: We've got a first hand flusher in the audience. I
Speaker 1: know it. Yeah, it's just a matter of getting you
Speaker 1: to write in and tell us about it. Uh So,
Speaker 1: you know, if so, do right in and tell us
Speaker 1: about it. And also just if there's some sort of
Speaker 1: sewer monster movie that we've failed to reference, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: hit us up on that as well. We're always happy
Speaker 1: to cha out about movies. And hey, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're an artist, maybe you can create uh an image
Speaker 1: of fat bird cop because I feel like you'd be
Speaker 1: not only amusing us and amusing other listeners, you would
Speaker 1: potentially be um, uh you know, saving the world by
Speaker 1: introducing this character. In the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 1: check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find them all. You'll also find out
Speaker 1: links to social media accounts as well as link to
Speaker 1: our t shirt store. But ultimately the best thing you
Speaker 1: can do to support the show is to just make
Speaker 1: sure you you rate and review us wherever you have
Speaker 1: the power to do so. Wherever you get this podcast
Speaker 1: huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Tari Harrison.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: directly with feedback about this episode or any other, to
Speaker 1: tell us about your battles for the fat Berg, to
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, to suggest a guest,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. B