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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalk reporting. And before

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Speaker 1: the holidays, we recorded an episode on a few of

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Speaker 1: the great underground cities of the world, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of folks have written in since then suggesting other city

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Speaker 1: we knew that would happen, cities that we had missed

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Speaker 1: um but one in particular was actually already on our

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Speaker 1: list for a full length episode about underground world of London.

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Speaker 1: And London, of course has many potential underground stories, but

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Speaker 1: the one that we're going to be covering today stems

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Speaker 1: from a popular listener suggestion in its own right, and

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Speaker 1: that is the Great Stink. And you might be wondering

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Speaker 1: if that is a metaphor for something, and we're here

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Speaker 1: to tell you no, it is not. It actually refers

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Speaker 1: to a particularly warm Victoria in summer when the stench

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Speaker 1: of London sewage filled Thames got very, very bad. So

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Speaker 1: this podcast is about a bad smell. So the stink, though,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to just talk about it.

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Speaker 1: If that was all it was, people remembered it being

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Speaker 1: a particularly stinky summer. Some pretty major changes came because

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Speaker 1: it just got that bad. Um. Some radical improvements to

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Speaker 1: an outdated sewer network, some public health improvements, um. And

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Speaker 1: it also helped change the face of nineteenth century London

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Speaker 1: and put into place systems that actually last to this day,

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Speaker 1: something I found particularly remarkable about this story. But first

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Speaker 1: let's just be frank. Yes, the waste issue in nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century London had a lot of components, industrial chemicals, lie

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Speaker 1: from the city's many laundries, butchered animals, all things that

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Speaker 1: make for a stinky river with no fish and no birds.

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Speaker 1: But the big issue was human waste. So before we

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Speaker 1: get to the great stink and and talk about how

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Speaker 1: that came about, we really have to discuss how people

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Speaker 1: handled their business, should we say, leading up to the

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Speaker 1: Victorian era and during that era. So according to Smithsonian's

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Speaker 1: Past Imperfect blog, London has actually had a sewage system

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Speaker 1: since Roman times, and it was added to of course,

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Speaker 1: it was expanded during the medieval period, but pretty hephazardly.

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Speaker 1: The sewers were built and presided over by different districts

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Speaker 1: in the city, so there was no uniformity between them.

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Speaker 1: There was certainly no grand plan. There was no map

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Speaker 1: even of like your city's entire sewer system. More seweries

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Speaker 1: were added on in the seventeenth century, but this network

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Speaker 1: is haphazard as it was wasn't even meant for waste

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Speaker 1: in the first place. It was it was for storms

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Speaker 1: who were runoff, even though we have to assume due

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Speaker 1: to the medieval habit of dumping your chamber pot out

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Speaker 1: the window or into the gutter, or simply going outside

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Speaker 1: probably ensured there was some waste in the sewer system,

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Speaker 1: but that was not its intention. It was for runoff,

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Speaker 1: and of course that rain water could safely enter the

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Speaker 1: urban tributaries of the Thames, which side note here to

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Speaker 1: a lot of those are now called the lost Rivers

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Speaker 1: according to the Council for British Archaeology, because they're not

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Speaker 1: rivers anymore. They're not tributaries of the Thames. There underground

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Speaker 1: covered sewers that lead to it. So okay, you're probably wondering, though,

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Speaker 1: what actually happened to Londoner's waist. If it didn't hit

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Speaker 1: the sewers well, most made it into suspits which were

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Speaker 1: hidden under or behind homes, and these suspits they'd be

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Speaker 1: filled gradually with the contents of chamber pots. So when

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Speaker 1: your suspit was full, you'd simply hire a night soil

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Speaker 1: man who would come out with a cart and load

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Speaker 1: up the contents to be used north of the city

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Speaker 1: as an agricultural fertilizer. But it's easy to see why

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Speaker 1: this system eventually went wrong. Yeah, for one thing, cesspits.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not the it's not a modern system

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Speaker 1: like you might have um now if you weren't connected

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Speaker 1: to the sewer network. They leaked sometimes and they would

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Speaker 1: send raw waste into the ground water and eventually mix

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Speaker 1: in with the Thames, which was where Londoners drew their

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Speaker 1: water from. So that's problem number one. But the big

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Speaker 1: problem came with the city growing too much, too fast

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Speaker 1: right again. According to the Council for British Archaeology, London's

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Speaker 1: population exploded from not even one million people in eighteen

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Speaker 1: o one to nearly three million in eighteen sixty one.

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Speaker 1: Outlined villages were absorbed by the city, farmland or green

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Speaker 1: space was built up and packed with new residents, and

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Speaker 1: all the problems of overcrowding, including unsafe housing, pollution, over

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Speaker 1: full cemeteries, all those things just became worse, and even

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Speaker 1: well before that eighteen sixty one population figure, there are

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Speaker 1: already more than two hundred thousand cesspits in London by

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Speaker 1: eighteen ten, so certainly getting to the point where too

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Speaker 1: many suspits too empty to cart out of town to

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Speaker 1: use as fertilizer in a safe way, not like a

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Speaker 1: gross dumping ground sort of way, no pun intended. Um.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, clearly, clearly things were getting out of hand.

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Speaker 1: And around the same time that the suspit count was

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Speaker 1: starting to creep beyond two hundred thousand and the population

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Speaker 1: was still steadily climbing, London sewage system had another major blow,

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Speaker 1: and that was the adoption of the flushing toilet and

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Speaker 1: UH last summer, just as a side note to to

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Speaker 1: this um information about the flushing toilet UM, I read

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Speaker 1: Lucy Worsley's book about the history of the home last summer.

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Speaker 1: It's called If Walls Could Talk, and it's filled with

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Speaker 1: all sorts of interesting details about the rooms of the

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Speaker 1: modern home UM. But one of the most interesting facts

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Speaker 1: in that bathroom section was that the flushing toilet was

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Speaker 1: not a recent invention. I mean, you're you're probably thinking, okay,

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Speaker 1: this is we're talking about the early nineteenth century, right now,

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Speaker 1: that sounds about when you would imagine the flushing toilet

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Speaker 1: to have been invented. Britain's first flushing toilet that really

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Speaker 1: came about in Elizabethan time. That was really surprising to me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was actually invented by a man named Sir John

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Speaker 1: Harrington and installed in his home and in one of

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth's palaces. But these cistern connected chamber pots had some

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Speaker 1: design flaws and didn't really catch on. Some of the

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Speaker 1: problems were stink producing d pipes, daily water priming, lots

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Speaker 1: of water use, and leaks, and they were only occasionally

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Speaker 1: installed because of that, always in fine homes, and most

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Speaker 1: folks continued the portable chamber pot system instead. But by

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Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century, redesigns plus the right PR power

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Speaker 1: behind the right PR guys promoting these things made the

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Speaker 1: flushing toilet or water closet whichever way you want to

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Speaker 1: refer to it finally take off. And unfortunately though, the

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Speaker 1: waste disposal method of water closet, which is obviously very

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Speaker 1: water intensive, didn't mesh well with the suspit set up.

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Speaker 1: There was just too much stuff there. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: we don't need to go into the grizzly details here,

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Speaker 1: but you can imagine. I mean, if you have a

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Speaker 1: system that's set up for mostly solid waste, suddenly it's

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Speaker 1: um not so solid anymore. It's not going to work

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Speaker 1: very well as night soil and as something that is

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Speaker 1: portable anymore. It's just sewage. It's just gross, and there's

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Speaker 1: way too much of it in London. So people began

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Speaker 1: to connect their drains to the city sewer system, the

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Speaker 1: same sewer system that was meant for storm water and

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Speaker 1: that drained into the Thames. So by eighteen fifteen it

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Speaker 1: was permissible to do so. By eighteen forty eight it

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Speaker 1: was mandatory you had to connect your drains. The Metropolitan

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Speaker 1: Commission of Sewers even ordered that all the suspits be closed,

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Speaker 1: so there wasn't another option. So of course there were

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Speaker 1: some problems with this. Uh. For one thing, a hard

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Speaker 1: rain mean that your storm sewer connected drains now backed

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Speaker 1: up with raw sewage into your home, which is really

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Speaker 1: terrible and I don't want to talk about them anymore.

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Speaker 1: But the bigger problem was that all of those old

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Speaker 1: sewer systems did drain into the Thames where Londoners, as

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Speaker 1: we keep on saying driving this point home got their

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Speaker 1: water from. According to the Smithsonian, by the eighteen forties

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Speaker 1: the Thames saw more than one fifty million tons of

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Speaker 1: waste jumped into it. So problems, problems to say the least. Unfortunately, though,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't until the eighteen fifties that people really began

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Speaker 1: to understand germ theory and that diseases like cholera were

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Speaker 1: contracted through contaminated water. And I think you and Katie

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Speaker 1: covered kind of a related topic to this, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: one very closely related the story of Dr John Snow

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Speaker 1: and his ghost map, and um, it just had to

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Speaker 1: do with the cholera outbreaks that London experienced in the

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds and in his attempts to discover what was

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Speaker 1: really behind him. I mean, just to give you some

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Speaker 1: figures here, These are serious outbreaks of disease. The first

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Speaker 1: major outbreak was in eighteen eighty two one people died

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Speaker 1: in Great Britain. Uh, the next outbreak in eighteen forty

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Speaker 1: eight and nine, fifty four thousand died. And in the

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Speaker 1: third outbreak in eighteen fifty three and four, again thirty

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Speaker 1: one thousand people died in Great Britain. Many of them Londoners,

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Speaker 1: and Snow made his discovery his his discovery that cholera

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Speaker 1: was something that could be um transported through water, and

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Speaker 1: that you could drink water that looked perfectly clean and

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Speaker 1: and catch this this disease from it. Uh. It seems

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Speaker 1: pretty obvious to us now, but it ran completely contrary

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Speaker 1: to the popular scientific thought of the time, yea, so

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Speaker 1: much so that it took Snow years to convince the

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Speaker 1: piers that cholera was contracted through water. Instead, most people

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Speaker 1: believe that diseases were spread through bad air or miasma.

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Speaker 1: So a disease filled swum didn't necessarily need clearly separated

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Speaker 1: sewage and water systems, It just needed better air. Kind

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Speaker 1: of ventilation system in there would protect you from contracting

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Speaker 1: cholera even if you were drinking this gross Thames water um.

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Speaker 1: So this incorrect belief, though ironically, made the idea of

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Speaker 1: an updated, really super connected throughout London sewer system a

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Speaker 1: little bit dangerous sounding, because if you think about it

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Speaker 1: from that perspective, drains bad air spreading. Could your homes

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Speaker 1: drains be allowing bad air and from the other part

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Speaker 1: of the city, from other parts of the cities of

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Speaker 1: Lucy Worsley again even talks about people keeping plugs on

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Speaker 1: their drains at all times so that nothing would come

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Speaker 1: give them cholera from it. The belief in my asthma, though,

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Speaker 1: which lasted long after snows debunking of it, unfortunately, it

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Speaker 1: makes the eventual Great Stink seem all the more significant

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Speaker 1: and probably all the more terrifying for people. Right. It

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Speaker 1: was eighteen fifty eight in London, and London had experienced

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Speaker 1: its hottest summer on record. The stench of the Thames

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Speaker 1: became completely unbearable. For those who were by the river,

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Speaker 1: it was practically suffocating. The best accounts of the stink

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Speaker 1: come from Members of Parliament who were holed up riverside,

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Speaker 1: and according to the Council for British Archaeology on June seven,

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Speaker 1: one MP complained quote, it was a notorious fact that

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Speaker 1: honorable gentlemen sitting in the committee rooms and in the

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Speaker 1: library were utterly unable to remain there in consequence of

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Speaker 1: the stench which arose from the river. Eleven days later,

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Speaker 1: the Times of London reported that quote A few members

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Speaker 1: bent on investigating the matter to its very depth. I

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Speaker 1: like that it's eleven day Right rights point ventured into

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Speaker 1: the library, but they were instantaneously even to retreat, each

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Speaker 1: man with a handkerchief to his nose, and most famously,

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Speaker 1: the MP's attempted to block the smell by soaking the

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Speaker 1: curtains and chloride of lime, but that didn't even help

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Speaker 1: a bit. Now it was it was out of the

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Speaker 1: league of chloride of lime and um. Interestingly, there had

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Speaker 1: been a body established to handle the sewer problems. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't like people were just ignoring this issue. Year after years,

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Speaker 1: the population grew and things got worse and worse. The

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Speaker 1: Metropolitan Board of Works had been set up, but unfortunately

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Speaker 1: nobody had bothered to see that. The Board of Works

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Speaker 1: had funding to complete massive public works projects like building

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Speaker 1: a new sewer system. But now with the members of

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Speaker 1: Parliament suffocating in their chambers and graphing handkerchiefs to their

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Speaker 1: noses and soaking their curtains and lime, things got fast

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Speaker 1: tracked prioritized. So by July eight a bill passed granting

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Speaker 1: the Board of Works power to barrow and levy money

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Speaker 1: for an updated sewer system. So they were finally and

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Speaker 1: moving into the future. Yes, Over the next seven years,

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Speaker 1: the Board of Works and Chief engineer Joseph basil Jet

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Speaker 1: developed a system that totally the waste of London outside

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Speaker 1: of town and away from the river that ran through

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Speaker 1: the city's heart. As a testament to its design, much

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Speaker 1: of that system is still used today. Yeah, a point

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Speaker 1: we we made earlier. That's one of the more impressive

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Speaker 1: aspects of this story. According to Port Cities London, basil

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Speaker 1: Jet's plan did run contrary to a lot of the

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Speaker 1: ideas of the day. Are a lot of the possible

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Speaker 1: solutions for for this issue, which at the time ran

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Speaker 1: more towards still used still building a sewer system, but

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Speaker 1: instead of pumping it outside of town towards the river,

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Speaker 1: pumping it outside of town and still using it as

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Speaker 1: fertilizer kind of in the old night soil way. But

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Speaker 1: basil Jet realized that this was an inefficient idea. There

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Speaker 1: were just too many people in the city, there was

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Speaker 1: too much sewage, and the agricultural areas were of course

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Speaker 1: getting further and further away as the city grew. So

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Speaker 1: his idea was to continue dumping the sewage into the Thames,

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Speaker 1: but to do so away from the city, uh downstream

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Speaker 1: from where people in London at least got their water.

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Speaker 1: The first major part of his plan involved intercepting sewers,

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Speaker 1: and these ran along both sides of the river, connecting

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Speaker 1: to the old sewers that once drained right into the river,

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Speaker 1: and from there the intercepting sewers carried their contents east

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Speaker 1: by gravity to one of two pumping stations, one on

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Speaker 1: either side, and these raised the sewage to outfall sewers

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Speaker 1: that would then carry the contents off to reservoirs. At

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Speaker 1: high tide, the outfalls would be emptied into the Thames

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Speaker 1: down river of London. So the outfall sewers and the

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Speaker 1: reservoirs were just huge. The reservoirs are a little again

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Speaker 1: kind of horrifying to think about, but the outfall sewers

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Speaker 1: just of you some numbers on these. The northern outfall

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Speaker 1: sewer was more than four miles long, the southern outfall

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Speaker 1: sewer ran almost entirely underground. And uh, these are still

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Speaker 1: considered impressive engineering feats. Even even if they were built today,

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Speaker 1: they would still be in that league. Um Basil Jett

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Speaker 1: was also able to accomplish a lot of this this work,

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Speaker 1: uh in a very tucked away, sort of out of

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Speaker 1: sight manner. You know, these weren't just all sewers running

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Speaker 1: in clear sight. And the way he was able to

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Speaker 1: do that was by building embankments along the Marshy River

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Speaker 1: banks of the Thames, and that's probably the most visible

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Speaker 1: reminder of his work. You don't see a lot of sewers,

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Speaker 1: of course, but uh, the park like embankments in London,

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Speaker 1: UH meant that central streets didn't have to be torn up,

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Speaker 1: buildings didn't have to be torn up to build these

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Speaker 1: massive sewer pipes. It reclaimed land that was was not

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Speaker 1: being used, and it also hid new parts of the

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Speaker 1: London Underground the Metropolitan Railway at the time. You know,

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Speaker 1: if you're tearing all this up and laying pipes in

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Speaker 1: lay a tube station in as well. So according to Worsley,

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Speaker 1: basil Jets work resulted in more than one thousand miles

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Speaker 1: of sewer. It also used about three D eighteen million bricks,

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Speaker 1: and it allowed for the widespread adoption of the flushing

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Speaker 1: toilet just as an aside. The eighteen fifty one Great

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Speaker 1: Exhibition also helped with that too. Though many people got

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Speaker 1: out to the exhibition to try to flush a toilet

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Speaker 1: for the first time, they just you know, while they

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Speaker 1: were out seeing the other marvels at the Great Exhibition.

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Speaker 1: The facilities happened to include flushing toilets, and they got

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Speaker 1: to try them for the first time see how one

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Speaker 1: of them works, since probably not too many people were

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Speaker 1: going to Elizabeth's old old palace. Uh. One of the

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Speaker 1: starkest signs though, I mean, those are impressive numbers, of course,

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Speaker 1: But one of the starkest signs of basil Jets success

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Speaker 1: was London's fourth and final major color outbreak, which took

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Speaker 1: place in eighteen sixty six. It was mostly limited to

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Speaker 1: the east end of London, which was the one part

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Speaker 1: of town that hadn't yet been hooked up to the

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Speaker 1: new sewer system, so clearly John Snow's ideas about how

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Speaker 1: colors spread bore out with that, and also basil Jet's

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Speaker 1: ideas about santation um. Still, though on that subject, sewage

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Speaker 1: was still, of course flowing directly into the towns just

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Speaker 1: east of London. There was still no sewage treatment in place, um,

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Speaker 1: something that's a little striking to to consider, and things

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Speaker 1: got bad pretty pretty quickly. I mean, why wouldn't they

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Speaker 1: Near the outfalls, mud banks of sewage started to pile up. Um.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes there would be so much waste being discharged into

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Speaker 1: the river that waiting for high tide to just whisk

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Speaker 1: it all away didn't really work anymore. And um, the

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Speaker 1: every thing would come back up river. So that problem

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Speaker 1: didn't go unnoticed forever, though obviously by the eighteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: a terrible accident is what finally put it on the map.

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Speaker 1: A pleasure steamer called the Princess Alice was hit by

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Speaker 1: a coal ship and broken in half. The wreck occurred

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Speaker 1: near Beckton, which was one of the sewage reservoir sites,

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Speaker 1: and though few people died in the accident, six fifty

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Speaker 1: died overall, most by drowning in caustic sewage water and sludge.

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Speaker 1: In seven treatment plants began filtering out sledge from liquid.

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Speaker 1: The liquids still went into the river, while the sludge

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Speaker 1: was trudged out to see on special ships where it

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Speaker 1: was dumped at a spot called the Black Deep. And

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Speaker 1: this fact, maybe this takes the cake, is the most surprising.

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Speaker 1: This went on until yeah, that is startling. Um now

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Speaker 1: it is just in case you're interested in how things

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Speaker 1: played out since then. Now about half of it is burned.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about London specifically, half is burned half has

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Speaker 1: turned into agricultural fertilizer pellets. Uh, kind of going back

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Speaker 1: to the old night soil tradition. Also interesting to the

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Speaker 1: like Beckton and the other the other spots are still

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Speaker 1: major waste processing areas, so these their tradition of that

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Speaker 1: has has continued into the twenty one century. Um. So understandably,

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Speaker 1: this is a pretty wild story and it was certainly

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Speaker 1: a strange one to research, with all sorts of weird

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Speaker 1: things I came across, like mentions of mythical sewer pigs

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Speaker 1: and queen rats. Um. But one of the strangest aspects

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Speaker 1: and I just couldn't go without bringing it up here

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Speaker 1: at the end, were the lives of so called tash

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Speaker 1: ers and uh. The Smithsonian piece we mentioned a few

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Speaker 1: times by Mike Dash covered the life of these sewer hunters,

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Speaker 1: who were documented by Henry Mayhew Man who wrote some

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Speaker 1: vignettes on Victoria in London Life. But they were basically

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Speaker 1: guys who would go into the sewers illegally and search

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Speaker 1: out useful items that may have gotten lost them. Um.

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Speaker 1: It could be anything from a piece of rope to

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Speaker 1: something like a treasure, you know, lost piece of silverware

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Speaker 1: coins that have been dropped on the street and then

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Speaker 1: swept into the gutter. And uh, they were able to

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Speaker 1: make a pretty decent working class living doing this, as

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Speaker 1: terrible as it may sound, Yeah, well, older toshers would

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Speaker 1: know the invisible crannies where things tended to accumulate, and

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Speaker 1: teams would even sometimes enter with hooks and hoes to

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Speaker 1: unearth their fine. So they probably came up with a

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Speaker 1: good bit of stuff. He knew where to look. There

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Speaker 1: were dangers too, though, as you might imagine, flooded storm sewers,

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Speaker 1: high tide torrents from legit sewage workers opening up sluices,

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Speaker 1: and maybe most horrifying of all, at least according to

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Speaker 1: Mayhew's Tasha Interviews, hordes of rats that would attack you

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Speaker 1: and us you were in a group, So again, I

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Speaker 1: don't want to talk about that one anymore. One final note, though,

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Speaker 1: the Great Stink got a little nod this past summer

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Speaker 1: when the Lindon Dungeon added a nose statue to the

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Speaker 1: Millennium Bridge that's the pedestrian bridge that crosses the towns,

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Speaker 1: to commemorate the summer of the Stinky River, and of course,

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Speaker 1: to promote its own exhibit on the subject that I

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Speaker 1: looked up some pictures of it. It is very strange.

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Speaker 1: I hope it's not just photoshop. Quite a quite a

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Speaker 1: strange site. Yeah, it's kind of funny, and I mean

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Speaker 1: just talking about toilet history in general is and kind

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Speaker 1: of has a humorous aspect to it. But it's not

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Speaker 1: to belittle at all the significance of the impact of

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Speaker 1: this event on public health. Yeah, and I think that's

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Speaker 1: what makes this a fascinating topic. I do feel a

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Speaker 1: little bit like I'm in third grade and we're talking

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Speaker 1: toilet Yeah. But but yeah, the cholera, the sanitation and um,

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Speaker 1: the sanitation reforms of Victorian London have always kind of

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Speaker 1: fascinated me. So I hadn't learned too much about this

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Speaker 1: aspect of it, I think. Um, I've I've read more

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Speaker 1: about the housing tenements, slums, um, the masma and the

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Speaker 1: air all of that. Um, so it was neat to

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Speaker 1: to back some of that up with this below ground

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Speaker 1: aspect of the story. So hopefully people got something out

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Speaker 1: of it as well, and we're able to make it

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Speaker 1: pass some of the more unsavory I hope you don't

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Speaker 1: listen during lunch story. Yes, yes, agreed. For this week's

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Speaker 1: Listener Mail segment, we have a few postcards to share.

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Speaker 1: The first one is from listener Amanda, and she says,

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Speaker 1: Sarah Dablina, this postcard comes to you from Punta Kana,

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Speaker 1: Although a very tourist driven place, I'm excited to tell

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Speaker 1: you that there's a shipwreck right off its coast. I

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Speaker 1: know how fascinated you guys are. The ship it's self

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Speaker 1: was called the Astraun I hope I'm saying that correctly,

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Speaker 1: and it was bringing corn to Cuba in nine eight

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Speaker 1: until a bad storm broke it apart. I was able

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Speaker 1: to see its pieces from a helicopter tour. Yep, it's

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Speaker 1: still there. Thank you for that, Amanda. It's a very

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Speaker 1: pretty pretty pictures on the front which we were there. Um.

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Speaker 1: We also got a postcard from listener Audrey, who sent

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Speaker 1: another beautiful winter more wintry sort of postcard from Patagonia,

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Speaker 1: and she even said that today I listened to your

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Speaker 1: podcast in the strangest and coolest place I've ever been,

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Speaker 1: on top of a glacier in Patagonia, so that's really neat.

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Speaker 1: Another cool, more old fashioned postcard. I actually think it

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Speaker 1: might be an antique postcard, uh that we got from

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Speaker 1: Shanti and it's just a nice little horse. A guy

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Speaker 1: had fun pictures for the desk. We also got some books,

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Speaker 1: didn't we We did. I guess my admission of paying

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Speaker 1: two dollars and fifty cents for Amazon book moved several listeners,

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Speaker 1: which we really appreciate. But we came back from the

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Speaker 1: holidays and had several boxes lined up with book contributions

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Speaker 1: from people, which is so kind of you, guys. Michael

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Speaker 1: sent us a book on Lafayette, which I thought was

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Speaker 1: was pretty cool. I mean, of course it was sent

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Speaker 1: before our episode on on our double Agent spy who

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Speaker 1: worked for Lafayette aired, but more to read on him.

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Speaker 1: And then also our listener Hillary, who you guys know

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Speaker 1: for sending postcards from her travels around the world, she

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Speaker 1: sent us a book on her favorite violinist, Mon Powell,

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Speaker 1: plus some CDs that we really look forward to listening

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Speaker 1: to those. Unfortunately, though, Sarah, I think we're going to

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Speaker 1: have to listen to those c d s separately, or

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Speaker 1: we'll have to have some sort of listening party on

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Speaker 1: our own time. Yea, because I am going to be

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Speaker 1: leaving how stuff works to take another opportunity, which I'm

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Speaker 1: really excited about. It's something I've been looking forward to

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Speaker 1: for a while, so I'm happy to be able to

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Speaker 1: do that, but very sad to be leaving house to

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Speaker 1: works and discovery and and you in this podcast. That's

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Speaker 1: probably the saddest part of all, because I've really enjoyed

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Speaker 1: getting to know you. First of all, it's probably been

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Speaker 1: the best part of working on this podcast. We worked

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Speaker 1: together before, but didn't really know each other that well, so,

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Speaker 1: you know, getting that friendship and out of it and

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Speaker 1: just being able to learn so much about history over

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Speaker 1: the past couple of years has been amazing. And I am,

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Speaker 1: of course so happy for you and really excited for you,

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Speaker 1: but I will miss you so much. And yes, I mean,

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Speaker 1: of course the best thing is, um having gotten to

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Speaker 1: make friends with you over the past few years we've

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Speaker 1: been posting together, UM, But also, I mean, really from

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Speaker 1: day one, I have been in awe of your ability

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Speaker 1: to pick out the most obscure, interesting topics, And sometimes

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Speaker 1: you tell me what you're gonna be researching, and I

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Speaker 1: just wonder where on earth you here about that. I'll

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00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 1: never tell you, know, Deblina must have secret stores. You

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00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:08,640
Speaker 1: guys um, but it's been so amazing getting to work

431
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 1: with you and you just exposing me to so many

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00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: of those stories too than well likewise, I mean I've

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00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:17,239
Speaker 1: learned so much from working with you. I know, this

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00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: is like turning into a love fest that Seriously, you're

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00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:24,360
Speaker 1: smart and you you really carry this podcast. So it's

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00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: been a pleasure to to learn from you and work

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00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:30,360
Speaker 1: with you. Can miss you, Debilina. I will miss you too,

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00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 1: but luckily we still live in the same town, so

439
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 1: we do not as much as we'll miss I mean,

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00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: I'll definitely miss the fans. See what we can cook

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00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:40,239
Speaker 1: up together. Yeah, we'll see what we can cook up.

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00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 1: So um, it's still um. You know, I'm sure the

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00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: podcast will be continuing in some form. Stay tuned, you know,

444
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: things are in the works. So um look social media

445
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,160
Speaker 1: listening in. There will be updates. We'll catch you guys

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00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: up to what's going to go down. Until then, I

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00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:01,159
Speaker 1: just want to say go bye to all listeners of

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00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: this podcast. I have so enjoyed getting to know all

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00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 1: of you as well over the last couple of years,

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00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:09,120
Speaker 1: and there are so many I mean, obviously we'll get

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00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: a lot of critiques, which is you expect from doing

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00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:13,639
Speaker 1: this sort of thing anyway. But we also just to

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00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: get so many kind notes from people. It's really moving

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00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 1: and I'm starting to get choked up now, so I

455
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:23,400
Speaker 1: better stop along those lines. But just to hear from

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00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:25,760
Speaker 1: people who listen to this podcast all over the world

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00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: and the different ways that they use it in their lives. Um,

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00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: It's it's been all inspiring and humbling all at the

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00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:37,400
Speaker 1: same time. UM So I guess that's it. Just thank

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00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: you to all of you for listening, and uh, you know,

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00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: maybe I'll get the chance to talk to you again

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00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 1: in the future and I'll second that too, So bye

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00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: bye guys. Um and don't forget to check out all

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00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: the great content we have on our site and look

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00:27:53,760 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: it up at www. Dot how stuff works dot com

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00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

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Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com. M