Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today I thought maybe we should
Speaker 1: start off with a little don't do what Donnie Don't does?
Speaker 1: All right, tell us about Donnie Don't. Okay, So let's, uh,
Speaker 1: let's let's see what Donnie Don't is doing and see
Speaker 1: if maybe we should don't do what he does. Uh,
Speaker 1: try and spot the don't. So Donnie Don't is He's
Speaker 1: cooking up a big old mess of French fries in
Speaker 1: his deep friar, and he eats all the fries while
Speaker 1: watching RoboCop three, And then it's time to clean up.
Speaker 1: So first of all, he realizes he is greasy all
Speaker 1: over from eating this big batch of fries, so he
Speaker 1: gives himself a good wipe down with some wet wipes,
Speaker 1: and then he flushes them down the toilet. Now it's
Speaker 1: time to get rid of the gallon of duck fat
Speaker 1: that he used to cook his fries. So what does
Speaker 1: he do? He pours it straight down the drain in
Speaker 1: the bathtub. Now I think most of us can easily.
Speaker 1: I don't know about all of us, because somebody's obviously
Speaker 1: doing what Donnie Don't does. But I think most of
Speaker 1: us can easily spot the Donnie don'ts here. He's made
Speaker 1: several errors, but now I think it's pretty common knowledge
Speaker 1: that you are not supposed to flush wet wipes and
Speaker 1: other non toilet paper products down the toilet, and you're
Speaker 1: definitely not supposed to pour fat down the drain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's some other things that he's doing you
Speaker 1: could potentially criticize. I mean, I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: how how often he's eating French fries that have been
Speaker 1: fried in duck fat. Like, if he's doing that too often,
Speaker 1: that's probably not great for his health. But you know,
Speaker 1: once in a while, why not, right? Um? RoboCop three,
Speaker 1: I have no problem with that. It may not be
Speaker 1: the strongest in the RoboCop movies, but it's uh it
Speaker 1: has like cyber Ninja is in it. That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's the it's the wet wipes and then
Speaker 1: pouring that grease down the drain, and it's the pour
Speaker 1: of the grease down the drain. I often forget that
Speaker 1: that is a key rule. Oh do you do you
Speaker 1: break this one? No? I I just am generally not
Speaker 1: in a position to break it because we just don't.
Speaker 1: We don't cook with with fat uh much anymore at
Speaker 1: all anymore. And uh. And then as far as wet
Speaker 1: wives go, like I I know, not to put wet
Speaker 1: wipes down though, really no oils in your house, no
Speaker 1: salad dressing, no, like no olive oil or anything. But
Speaker 1: not duck fat. Oh well, I mean, of course, other
Speaker 1: 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 to 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 growing up,
Speaker 1: because like that was, you know, the appropriate thing to do.
Speaker 1: That's the grandma's house kind of thing, like the big
Speaker 1: old mason jar of bacon grease under the sink. And
Speaker 1: then of course when whenever we go, if you go
Speaker 1: to um fast food restaurant, or even a restaurant in general,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find that big grease trap outside. Like sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a little bit hidden, but sometimes there's no place
Speaker 1: to hide it. Um, and it's just right up front.
Speaker 1: It's just there in the parking lot. Yeah. I remember
Speaker 1: one of my jobs that I worked at when I
Speaker 1: was in college. Every morning when i'd go into it,
Speaker 1: I'd have to park in the parking lot of a
Speaker 1: restaurant that was like next to where I worked, and
Speaker 1: I parked right next to their big it was like
Speaker 1: a burger and fries place and the heart next to
Speaker 1: their big grease grease depository. Uh. And it just looked
Speaker 1: like the saddest robot from some Star Wars spinoff, like
Speaker 1: Lithuanian Star Wars has our four, uh you know D seven,
Speaker 1: And it's this big black thing with with like this
Speaker 1: dripping sad, grease tears stained head. But of course that's
Speaker 1: this restaurant usage, and we can I think we can
Speaker 1: all understand that. I mean, there's certain rules and regulations
Speaker 1: there they're following, and they're also producing just a ton
Speaker 1: of the this uh, this material. I wonder if, like
Speaker 1: the problem with a household situation is either you're creating
Speaker 1: so little that you don't think about it, so it's
Speaker 1: like death by thousand cuts, right, or when you do
Speaker 1: produce a more sizeable amount, doing you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of frying scenario like you just suddenly have this this
Speaker 1: huge mess to clean up, and it's easy to just
Speaker 1: convince yourself, I'm just gonna do the easy thing. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go and put it down the sink and
Speaker 1: next time I'll do better. Right, who's gonna know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but maybe we should step back and ask a question.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like RoboCop is gonna show at
Speaker 1: your 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. One reason you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to do this has to do with the
Speaker 1: 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 we did an episode of stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind about the miasma theory of disease. And
Speaker 1: in all of these we talk about how you know
Speaker 1: properly maintained sanitary sewer facilities are are not not just
Speaker 1: there to make our homes and our streets more pleasant,
Speaker 1: like they play a crucial role in protecting public health
Speaker 1: and preventing outbreaks of diseases, especially fecal oral route diseases
Speaker 1: which 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 you 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 Oakes 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 fatburg in and what it refers
Speaker 1: to is a giant, solidified mass of stuff based on
Speaker 1: fat 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 they're like the wet wipes, the floss,
Speaker 1: all of that can can sort of serve as a substrate. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like a scaffolding on which this, uh, this new
Speaker 1: mass will form. Yeah, and we'll talk about how it
Speaker 1: forms in a little bit. But I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about the terminology because while fat bergs has really caught
Speaker 1: on with the public, this is like what I think
Speaker 1: the reason that there have been so many articles in
Speaker 1: recent years about fat bergs is just because of the
Speaker 1: term fat bergs, Like there was now this beautiful, attractive
Speaker 1: terminology for it, whereas previously, especially in the US, I
Speaker 1: think they were referred to primarily with the acronym fogs
Speaker 1: for fat oil and grease or frogs for fat roots
Speaker 1: as in tree roots and oil and grease. But they
Speaker 1: have really miss an 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 birds ultimately did, but I mean
Speaker 1: attack of the Forgs be where the Forgs. I feel
Speaker 1: like that could have resonated with with the public. If
Speaker 1: there is not already a movie about one of these
Speaker 1: things becoming sentient, there will be soon. But one particularly
Speaker 1: massive fat burg that we might linger on for a
Speaker 1: bit has been covered extensively, especially in the British press.
Speaker 1: This was the White Chapel Berg. It was removed in
Speaker 1: TV and it was a mass blocking the sewer under
Speaker 1: the under White Chapel Road in East London. I think
Speaker 1: this was Jack the Rippers neighborhood totally. I think that
Speaker 1: adds to the appeal of the White Chapel fatburg, and
Speaker 1: it sounds even more sinister exactly. And the berg itself
Speaker 1: in a way was sort of a white chapel. It's
Speaker 1: like this, uh, this unholy things, sort of a gray
Speaker 1: off white color. And so it was about two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty meters long or about eight hundred and twenty feet,
Speaker 1: and it weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons.
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 indentation, 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 man hole. On the surface, there was also a
Speaker 1: dark fragment from an autumn leaf which must have slipped
Speaker 1: down the drains into its mall. Emerging through the congealed,
Speaker 1: calcified 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 Burg. 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 you know, all
Speaker 1: your recklessness and your you're willingness to to flush inappropriate
Speaker 1: things down the toilet. Well, here it is altogether, uh,
Speaker 1: to confront you and to point it's grotesque finger at you. 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 chappelberg that mentioned a minute ago was
Speaker 1: by no means the only fat burg. Fat Bergs form
Speaker 1: all the time in cities all around the world due
Speaker 1: to people flushing and washing fats and other inappropriate stuff
Speaker 1: down the drain. According to Night's article, it's estimated that
Speaker 1: London alone has at least five large fat bergs at
Speaker 1: any given time. So sometimes you know, they go down
Speaker 1: there to fight them, but they're they're always new ones forming.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about side. Is 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 Hindenburgh, and it
Speaker 1: weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons, or heavier
Speaker 1: by about a third than the biggest ever Sora pod dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Of course, it makes sense because we're talking about a
Speaker 1: massive sewage system. We're talking about massive consumption, a massive population,
Speaker 1: and therefore the clog the thing is going to be
Speaker 1: massive as well. Well. Yeah, and also you want to
Speaker 1: consider the particulars of the London sewer system, because this
Speaker 1: is where a lot of these stories come from. The
Speaker 1: London sewer system. You know, it's it's got Victorian elements,
Speaker 1: and it was a 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's the eighteen fifties or sixties, sometimes in the
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century, it got so foul and
Speaker 1: 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 you know,
Speaker 1: the sewage system that they had in place at the time,
Speaker 1: which consisted of more like open sewers in the streets
Speaker 1: and stuff draining into the Thames, which uh then people
Speaker 1: would drink out of. It was just leading to the
Speaker 1: cholera outbreaks 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 b east, You've you've got
Speaker 1: a hindenburg of fat and sewage and waste stuck in
Speaker 1: the sewer blocking blocking things, preventing them from flowing. What
Speaker 1: do you do about it? Well, that's the question. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and when we come back
Speaker 1: we will answer it. Thank thank Okay, we're back. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about fat bergs. How do you fight them?
Speaker 1: You got one of these giant concrete fat conglomerations made
Speaker 1: out of wet wipes and and dental floss and old
Speaker 1: you know, wrappers of food and bits of plastic, and
Speaker 1: of course all of these fats and oils and grease
Speaker 1: and sewage and waste. It just makes this huge mass
Speaker 1: that blocks up the sewers. What do you do about it? Well,
Speaker 1: you literally have sewer workers that go down to break
Speaker 1: it up and remove it. The city sewer workers in
Speaker 1: London are known as flush errs, and they have to
Speaker 1: fight these wicked villains. They have to go down and
Speaker 1: confront the ball rog in person. And in Night's article
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker, he talks about the process of
Speaker 1: breaking up the White Chapel mass. So first of all,
Speaker 1: he says, they've got to wear protection and they've got
Speaker 1: to have a breathing apparatus because this thing is in
Speaker 1: a way alive. It's got a lot of uh life
Speaker 1: feeding on it, and as a result, it can let
Speaker 1: out sudden explosions of gas like hydrogen sulfide, which of
Speaker 1: course smells like rotten eggs and is the It's a
Speaker 1: common gas released as a byproduct of decaying organic matter,
Speaker 1: but it also releases methane, and sometimes it can just
Speaker 1: blast out carbon monoxide, which can be deadly. So let's
Speaker 1: say you're outfitting your D and D Adventure the Flusher
Speaker 1: class to go down into this dungeon and fight the monster.
Speaker 1: What weapons do you want to equip them with? Well,
Speaker 1: probably not fire. Fire would seem like a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's uh. And and unfortunately they are not
Speaker 1: a magic using class, so they don't have any spells
Speaker 1: available to them. I don't know. Is that a thing
Speaker 1: in D and D. There's some classes who can't do spells, right? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it seems like there are a lot of
Speaker 1: classes that have some sort of magical abilities, especially as
Speaker 1: they level up. Yeah, this sounds more like like fighter
Speaker 1: uh uh material right here, You need some fighty to
Speaker 1: go down and physically fight this physical threat and remove it.
Speaker 1: These are paladins. I'll allow it. I'll allow it. I
Speaker 1: mean paladins have some some you know that they have
Speaker 1: holy powers, etcetera. But a lot of those holy powers
Speaker 1: are about, like, you know, increasing their physical prowess. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: certainly I don't know my stuff. Okay, we'll say they're paladins. Anyway.
Speaker 1: So the Mighty Flusher's weapons include the bomb hose. That's
Speaker 1: the term bomb hose, which is just like a high
Speaker 1: pressure 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: as Saul, when pieces were removed and kept for the
Speaker 1: London Museum exhibit it, one expert who handled them described
Speaker 1: the Fatberg chunks as sort of hard but light, feeling
Speaker 1: like pumice stone. I think that was interesting. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: even the smaller one so so that one's gigantic, But
Speaker 1: even the smaller ones are still huge in disgusting ways.
Speaker 1: I found a brilliantly funny article with a great title
Speaker 1: on Atlas Obscura by Jessica Lee Hester from January of
Speaker 1: this year is called seven Big Things. They're smaller than
Speaker 1: this fatberg, and it refers to another British fatburg, one
Speaker 1: found in a sewer beneath the town in beneath the
Speaker 1: town in Devon, and according to the water utility in
Speaker 1: that area, it was the largest fatburg that they had
Speaker 1: come across in that area. It was about two and
Speaker 1: ten feet or about sixty five meters uh. And so,
Speaker 1: so what are the things she lists as smaller than
Speaker 1: this fatberg? At least in terms of dimensions. I don't
Speaker 1: think they had weight on it at the time she
Speaker 1: was writing. Um. So smaller in terms of length was
Speaker 1: the above water surface height of the iceberg that sunk
Speaker 1: the Titan Annic, the tallest known Ginko tree in the world,
Speaker 1: the Christ the Redeemer statue, and Rio de Jannaro, the
Speaker 1: Coney's Island or the Coney Islands Wonder Wheel, uh, the
Speaker 1: Statue of Liberty, the Roman Colosseum, and Nelson's column in
Speaker 1: Trafalgar Square all smaller than this fatburg, which is not
Speaker 1: even the largest fatburg by a long shot. And she
Speaker 1: also pointed out something in in her article that was
Speaker 1: just an interesting phrasing of things that it's sort of
Speaker 1: echo thoughts I'd been having as I was reading about
Speaker 1: Fatburg's in in Hester's words quote, the chunky, gunky sewer
Speaker 1: cloggers are murky mirrors into the behaviors of people above
Speaker 1: ground because they hold all the stuff we flush and
Speaker 1: try to forget about, including cooking, grease, napkins, floss, minstrel
Speaker 1: products which don't belong in the pipes in the first place.
Speaker 1: So it's this idea of like these are sort of
Speaker 1: the the places of all the things that we want
Speaker 1: to just get out of our lives. It's, you know,
Speaker 1: the purging of convenience all becomes this mass yea. And
Speaker 1: again it kind of it confronts us once more. The
Speaker 1: horror is even greater because it is all it is
Speaker 1: a it's it's congealed into this this massive form. And
Speaker 1: I think maybe that is part of the 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 a lot of our modern life is about distantcing
Speaker 1: ourselves from the reality of our waste, from the reality
Speaker 1: 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 turn
Speaker 1: into these mighty slumbering beasts, the monsters of the dungeon,
Speaker 1: because it could seem almost magical right that it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like this thing has become alive down there. It
Speaker 1: is like one of these uh you know, there are
Speaker 1: multiple uh uh you know, I think horror properties where
Speaker 1: some sort of garbage monster comes alive, uh 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: hand like water, and it flows, so you can pour
Speaker 1: it out, etcetera. 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 curing 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: mean piece of chemistry contributing to fat bergs. The truth
Speaker 1: is actually weirder. Often the fats that we wash down
Speaker 1: the drain essentially become soap. The chemical process is known
Speaker 1: as saponification u. This word comes from the Latin sapo,
Speaker 1: meaning soap, And once a mass of fat gets washed
Speaker 1: down the drain, it chemically breaks down into fatty acids,
Speaker 1: and these fatty acids undergo a chemical reaction in the
Speaker 1: alkaline 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: think 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 offender here. This is in you know,
Speaker 1: all the British press about this is just saying like,
Speaker 1: don't wash fats and oils down the drain and don't
Speaker 1: flush wet wipes. Don't flush wet wipes. Wet wipes are
Speaker 1: like the the most hated thing but the sewer workers.
Speaker 1: And that's of course because you know, they're not designed
Speaker 1: industrially the way like toilet paper is, which is made
Speaker 1: to break up when it's in this aqueous environment. The
Speaker 1: wet wipes tend to not break up. They stick together
Speaker 1: and they form a sort of binding or substrate for
Speaker 1: this nightmare soap of the deep on its way to
Speaker 1: becoming a berg. I mean it makes me think of
Speaker 1: the of the science choice we've covered about uh creating
Speaker 1: artificial say years we have some sort of a scaffolding
Speaker 1: on which you're gonna you're gonna build up like the
Speaker 1: you know, the collagen and create this artificial piece of flesh.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that process taking place in a
Speaker 1: foul sewer, but imagine that process is taking place where
Speaker 1: stuff just keeps flowing into it, so it just keeps
Speaker 1: getting more solid material like wet wipes and more like
Speaker 1: binding soap like fat structure, until it becomes an ear
Speaker 1: the size of the Hindenburg. Another contributor to the fat
Speaker 1: bergs in the London sewers, and not just the London
Speaker 1: sewers in other places, but especially in London sewers is old,
Speaker 1: rough brick surfaces. I'm not positive, but I think the
Speaker 1: mechanism here is that rough surfaces create more friction with
Speaker 1: the flowing water, and this causes turbulence. Instead of flowing
Speaker 1: smoothly the water or the you know, the sewage, it
Speaker 1: gets sort of churned up, and this interrupts the smooth
Speaker 1: flow and it gives uh and and so it causes
Speaker 1: build up of solid matter. But also I think the
Speaker 1: rough surfaces just sort of give the wet wipes and
Speaker 1: other trash little crags to catch on, and then of
Speaker 1: course once they catch on, other things can catch onto them,
Speaker 1: and it just builds up from there. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: also so these soap like masses are not water soluble,
Speaker 1: meaning they're not dissolved by water, so they're not gonna
Speaker 1: over time just like break up and wash away with
Speaker 1: the flow of the sewer water. They just sit there
Speaker 1: and they build up and they grow too, mescent with
Speaker 1: new waste and trash and layers of soapy solids made
Speaker 1: out of fat, until somebody finally goes down there to
Speaker 1: slay the dragon. And as we discussed, of course the
Speaker 1: battles of the flushers, you have to you physically break
Speaker 1: these things up and remove them. Yeah, again with things
Speaker 1: like pick axes and saws, because it is almost like concrete,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just this big, you know, gross
Speaker 1: sewer jelly that you just need to sort of you know,
Speaker 1: flush a little bit more, you know, just spray with
Speaker 1: water and you know you'll get it done. A plunger
Speaker 1: is not going to do it. Now. In some cases,
Speaker 1: I do think these like water jet hoses can be
Speaker 1: used to cut it up. They just, at least in
Speaker 1: the one case I was reading about, they weren't quite
Speaker 1: doing the job and they had to resort to the
Speaker 1: old ways. Also, I just wanted to do a little
Speaker 1: side note on suppontification because what's happening here in the
Speaker 1: sewers is not exactly the same as but it's somewhat
Speaker 1: analogous to, uh, something that I'm very interested in that
Speaker 1: occasionally happens to human bodies in certain burial conditions. Robert,
Speaker 1: have you been to the Mooder Museum in Philadelphia. I haven't.
Speaker 1: I've never visited h Philly. Yeah, I haven't been, but
Speaker 1: I've wanted to for a long time. So they've got
Speaker 1: an exhibit, or I don't know about an exhibit. They've
Speaker 1: got a thing at the Modern Museum that is a
Speaker 1: human body. It's known as the soap Lady. And do
Speaker 1: you know the soap Lady? No, but I'm already horrified
Speaker 1: because I know enough about the mood Museum to know
Speaker 1: that a soap Lady there is going to be a
Speaker 1: site to behold. I think they've got a soap lady
Speaker 1: and a soap man. I've primarily read about the soap lady,
Speaker 1: so those two should mean yeah, exactly. So. It was
Speaker 1: originally believed that she was a woman who lived in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia in the eighteenth century and had died of yellow
Speaker 1: fever sometime in the seventeen nineties. But in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six they did some X rays of the body of
Speaker 1: the Soap Lady, and this revealed that she was wearing
Speaker 1: clothes with like buttons and pins that weren't manufactured in
Speaker 1: the US until around the eighteen thirties. So it's now
Speaker 1: believed that she must have died later than was originally believed.
Speaker 1: But whenever she died. In eighteen seventy five, her body
Speaker 1: was exhumed from a local cemetery and it was discovered
Speaker 1: that the corpse was encased almost entirely in a solid
Speaker 1: soap like substance, and that she was essentially a soap mummy.
Speaker 1: If you look at pictures of her, she looks like
Speaker 1: a mummy. She looks like some of these uh like uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of dried, mummified, preserved corpses that you
Speaker 1: might find in the case of some of like the
Speaker 1: Andean mummies, um, except that she has except that, like
Speaker 1: her features are less defined, and she's got a bunch
Speaker 1: of extra stuff around the outside of her body, like
Speaker 1: almost like she's encased in some kind of concrete or something,
Speaker 1: but it's not concrete. This substance in reality is something
Speaker 1: kind of like soap. It's not exactly so, but it's
Speaker 1: something known as adipus here, also sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: corpse wax or grave wax. Now, I do think I
Speaker 1: remember reading about this like years and years past, and
Speaker 1: some you know, texts on decomposition. Uh yeah, there there's
Speaker 1: some interesting stories about the role of grave wax in
Speaker 1: uh in. Like, so, one thing that corpse wax does
Speaker 1: when it forms around a body is that it can
Speaker 1: help preserve some of the elements within um. And this
Speaker 1: like keeps corpses from decaying like they would normally. So
Speaker 1: the formation of adapass here, I do believe is it's
Speaker 1: chemically considered a form of suppontification, like what's happening with
Speaker 1: the fat bergs and the sewers. Adapas are is this
Speaker 1: waxy substance that sometimes forms around dead bodies since they decay,
Speaker 1: particularly in certain kinds of burial conditions. And these environments
Speaker 1: tend to be alkaline, you know, like the the opposite
Speaker 1: of acidic. They tend to be anaerobic, meaning without access
Speaker 1: to air, and they tend to be warm and moist,
Speaker 1: which are just you know that generally sounds like the
Speaker 1: kind of environments you don't want to bury bodies. But
Speaker 1: you know, some soil is like that. And and and
Speaker 1: I'm guessing at least some of these are gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna match up with with sewer scenarios. I know we've
Speaker 1: talked before about some of the the organisms that can
Speaker 1: grow in a sewer environment that really thrive in a
Speaker 1: in a like a low oxygen environment. Yeah, exactly. So,
Speaker 1: freshly formed adipas here can be kind of soft and waxy,
Speaker 1: but older adipac here can more closely resemble something like concrete.
Speaker 1: I was reading a Life science article about this by
Speaker 1: Wynd Perry, and the author quotes an anthropologist from North
Speaker 1: Carolina State University named Anne Ross, and she says, quote,
Speaker 1: a lot of people say it's greasy. I always think
Speaker 1: bit like a thick cottage cheese consistency because it's kind
Speaker 1: of lumpy also, so maybe not the grave wax or
Speaker 1: the grave soap, but the grave cottage cheese, cottage cheese
Speaker 1: of the dead, the corpse cheese. Alright, well, on that
Speaker 1: grotesque note, let's take one more break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we have some other fat burg facts to
Speaker 1: roll through, and uh, you know, maybe we'll talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about about the sewer monster movies
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode. Thank, alright, we're back. Okay.
Speaker 1: So quite clearly these things you don't want fat bergs
Speaker 1: in your sewers, and yet they form in sewers under
Speaker 1: cities all over the world. It's happening all the time
Speaker 1: because of this combination of like stuff that people shouldn't
Speaker 1: flush and fats and oils going down the drain, which
Speaker 1: I guess both variations of the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: stuff that you shouldn't put down the drain is going
Speaker 1: down the drain. Uh. And in the article I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier in New Scientist, Kelly Oaks refers to a University
Speaker 1: College Dublin professor named Tom Curran who is who works
Speaker 1: in this field, and he says that the major factors
Speaker 1: contributing to a sort of recent increase in fatberg incidents
Speaker 1: in London are of course like a larger populations in cities,
Speaker 1: So it's just more people washing more stuff down drains.
Speaker 1: Aging sewers contribute a lot. One factor is more dining
Speaker 1: out at restaurants, because it appears that restaurants are responsible
Speaker 1: for a huge amount of the fats and oils that
Speaker 1: go down the drain. You know, you know, I would
Speaker 1: have thought it would be more regulated with the restaurants.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's uh in the UK at least it is
Speaker 1: not as regulated as some people think it should be,
Speaker 1: or I don't know if that's changed recently. In the
Speaker 1: articles I was reading from the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: it's I think there's a problem with like last lack
Speaker 1: of specificity in regulations, Like there are regulations that say
Speaker 1: restaurants aren't supposed to wash anything down the drain that
Speaker 1: would be harmful to the sewer system, but like it
Speaker 1: doesn't specifically say don't wash fats and oils down the drain, okay,
Speaker 1: And then the other big thing is of course trash
Speaker 1: that goes down the drain. But there's you know, as
Speaker 1: we've already said, there's like one huge culprit here that's
Speaker 1: like of the problem, and it's wet wipes. It just
Speaker 1: seems like that one would be an easier one to knock.
Speaker 1: It seems like that would be something we could solve.
Speaker 1: Is like, if you use a wet wipe, no matter
Speaker 1: what you used it for, no matter how befoul it is,
Speaker 1: just put it in a garbage can. Like maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it's easier because you go to some you know, you
Speaker 1: travel to you know, to certain you know parts of
Speaker 1: the world where the sewer system can't even handle toilet paper,
Speaker 1: and you get used to it. You know, like at
Speaker 1: first it may seem a little weird, like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I must wipe and then put the toilet paper into
Speaker 1: a receptacle. Uh, you know, it runs against what you've
Speaker 1: been doing. But you get used to it and it
Speaker 1: becomes the new normal. I didn't even know that was
Speaker 1: the thing. Oh yeah, I mean you travel, uh, and
Speaker 1: it just depends on the on the sewage system, and yes,
Speaker 1: some just can't handle the paper. Um, so you know
Speaker 1: it's it's it's asking even less I feel to say, look,
Speaker 1: just you have a wet wipe. I know you just
Speaker 1: used it on some disgusting part of like a two
Speaker 1: year old body, but you know, you just put in
Speaker 1: the garbage apparently, so I was reading in the same
Speaker 1: article that you know, there are there are things that
Speaker 1: have proved effective, and it's essentially regulating the stuff we're
Speaker 1: talking about. It's like regulating what restaurants can put down
Speaker 1: the drain and putting grease traps in place and all that,
Speaker 1: but then also doing like public education campaigns to get
Speaker 1: people to not put anything in the toilet other than
Speaker 1: human waste and toilet paper, and that this has been
Speaker 1: effective and like Dublin already, but it's it hasn't been
Speaker 1: effective enough everywhere. And I wonder if the problem is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would hope that in a campaign against Fatburg,
Speaker 1: somebody has created, with practical effects and costuming, an anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: fat Burg creature, you know, or even like a know,
Speaker 1: like thinking about when I know we both love good
Speaker 1: like paranormal copsploitation films from years past, like Maniac Cop
Speaker 1: and so forth, and there was that cool trailer from
Speaker 1: what was it melt Cop or something, Yeah, like they
Speaker 1: could make Fatburg cop, and so Fatberg Cop is this like,
Speaker 1: you know, anthropomorphic Fatburg in a police uniform that it
Speaker 1: comes to your apartment or your restaurant and chastises you
Speaker 1: for your destructive ways. Fatburg Cop versus Flukeman the next
Speaker 1: big crossover hit. Oh yeah, or they're they're buddy it's
Speaker 1: a buddy cop. Yeah. Wait, this is making Fatburg's the hero.
Speaker 1: You're doing it backwards. Well know, 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 Fatburg,
Speaker 1: raising consciousness about the need to destroy his own kind. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, he's like, uh, he didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in Fatburg form. You know. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe he was previously human. I don't know, maybe he
Speaker 1: just took on human consciousness. Maybe it's kind of a
Speaker 1: you know, a swamp things swamp man of kind of
Speaker 1: a scenario. Yeah, why don't they look? But I mean,
Speaker 1: it can be hard to get people to behave you know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's just usually pretty easy to get away
Speaker 1: with flushing and draining things you shouldn't because who's going
Speaker 1: to catch you? Something that is momentarily your problem is
Speaker 1: now just gone. It's purged, and it becomes instead like
Speaker 1: a small part of a big problem that is everybody's problem.
Speaker 1: It's not your problem right now, right And of course
Speaker 1: this I mean, there's so many other things in the
Speaker 1: world that can fall into this category. This is the
Speaker 1: tragedy of the commons. I mean, it's you know, people
Speaker 1: have shared common resources that they all need. The biggest
Speaker 1: one probably is like the natural environment. It's you know,
Speaker 1: supposed to be something that is of common access to everyone,
Speaker 1: but in fact there are individual actors who overexploit and
Speaker 1: foul and cause damage to this common resource resource that
Speaker 1: should be shared by everybody because it's momentarily convenient for
Speaker 1: them and they can get away with it. It's one
Speaker 1: of the most crucial flaws in human psychology that we
Speaker 1: exploit common resources this way and in that way. I
Speaker 1: do think we should think about sewers as a type
Speaker 1: of commons, just like we would think about like the oceans,
Speaker 1: the rivers, the air, the environment. Sewers are a common
Speaker 1: shared resource among all the people who use them and
Speaker 1: should be treated as such, even though it's definitely that
Speaker 1: kind of thing where we don't want to think about
Speaker 1: it and we try not to think about it unless
Speaker 1: it's broken right. Well, apparently, when the London Museum was
Speaker 1: running this Fatburg exhibit, it had a plaque on the
Speaker 1: wall that read as follows the size and foulness of
Speaker 1: fat Bergs makes them impossible to ignore and reminds us
Speaker 1: of our failings that they do. It seems like something
Speaker 1: 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. They'd have to have some thing like
Speaker 1: the cafe or the gift shop to line up with it. Literally,
Speaker 1: a sweet treat modeled on a fat Burg brick with
Speaker 1: raisins to represent flies. You know we mentioned earlier. You
Speaker 1: know that, of course, London isn't the only city to
Speaker 1: have to deal with this, obviously, there are other large
Speaker 1: metropolitan areas that that are plagued by fatberg's. And I
Speaker 1: was reading a net Geo article titled huge Blobs of
Speaker 1: Fat and Trash or Filling the World Sewers by Erica
Speaker 1: 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 se sewer backups in the city. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then and and as a and as a result,
Speaker 1: New York City spends eighteen million and spent eighteen million
Speaker 1: dollars over a five year period fighting fat burgs. But
Speaker 1: 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. Uh, such as in the case of
Speaker 1: restaurants into grease traps um, which are and and sometimes
Speaker 1: grease traps are are pilfered for this very reason because
Speaker 1: their contents are valuable in a sense. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: and 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 birds. 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, if
Speaker 1: it except for the rare pieces that go to the
Speaker 1: museum to become art, uh you know, other stuff, it's
Speaker 1: either being hauled off to a landfill or it's broken
Speaker 1: 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 burg to begin with.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have to 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 distry acted by that as like
Speaker 1: an excuse to Okay, so it's not so bad if
Speaker 1: we keep making them because they turn into fuel, right right,
Speaker 1: I mean, because again, the sewer systems are not made
Speaker 1: for fat bergs. 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 flushing 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 Fatburg
Speaker 1: party yet? I know that the new parties get get
Speaker 1: formed in there. I can't heard about it, but I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, like all issues, especially issues in fact that
Speaker 1: have to do with people exploiting or ruining the commons
Speaker 1: for everybody, these issues often do get like politically polarized
Speaker 1: because it's advantageous for somebody to do that. And this
Speaker 1: is why we need Fatburg cop out there on the beat,
Speaker 1: in the in the you know, at least in the
Speaker 1: eyes of the public, in the messaging, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: confronting us, chastising us far aways, um and and I
Speaker 1: but 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: like a live rat swarming out of fat burg Um.
Speaker 1: You know. So we can't look away from the grotesque
Speaker 1: nature of them. But then also the sewers are this
Speaker 1: unique location where there have been a number of notable
Speaker 1: 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 in the British film Raw Meat, well,
Speaker 1: I guess that was a subway system but still underground environment.
Speaker 1: And Ghostbusters too, I think, yeah, the river of slime
Speaker 1: flowing out of New York City, that's a big one
Speaker 1: for me. But also definitely the Blob at least remake
Speaker 1: had a lot of like, uh, you know, under I
Speaker 1: think there was like the sewer system shenanigans there with
Speaker 1: the blob, you know, ripping through the sewer and attacking people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it definitely came up through the drains. So it's
Speaker 1: I feel like the fat Berg reminds us of these
Speaker 1: monstrosities as well. Except there they're not fantasy, they're real. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they just don't actually assault us and try
Speaker 1: to digest us. Well, I feel like some of these,
Speaker 1: especially Ghostbusters too. Yeah, it does bring in some of
Speaker 1: that same metaphor stuff we were talking about earlier about
Speaker 1: you know, like it it's all the bad things we
Speaker 1: don't want to think about and all the negative energy
Speaker 1: is that that is what was feeding the slime and
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters too, right, it was like Prince Vigo and just
Speaker 1: New Yorkers being jerks. That's kind of weird for a
Speaker 1: sequel to a movie in which an e p A
Speaker 1: representative was a villain. Yeah, but there you go. It
Speaker 1: was 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 birg.
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 at 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 you'll find them all. You also find out
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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 the other. To
Speaker 1: tell us about your battles for the fatburg, to suggest
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