The Hindenburg Disaster

Hard to believe we haven't covered this one yet, but here we are. Why did the Hindenburg crash and burn? We still don't really know. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:37Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:47Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. This is one of those ones, Chuck, that I'm really surprised we haven't done already.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And actually, boy, talk about a segue. This is about the transatlantic voyage of the Hindenburg. But before we get into that quickly, we want to remind everybody, or maybe if you're hearing this for the first time, about the Stuff at Sea voyage that we are going on in partnership with Virgin Voyages. We're taking to the great seas, right?

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  We are, not the skies, the seas. And we are actually headlining a very special voyage called Stuff at Sea. And it's us doing our thing, including a live podcast on board. And then some of our other colleagues too, including the Stuff They Don't Want You to Know guys, are going to be doing their thing too on this. I think it's a five night voyage.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  That's right. October 2 through 7, from New York City to Bermuda. Like I said, this is through Virgin, so that means it is a kid-free luxury experience. And there's also going to be interactive sessions. There are going to be meet and greets. There are going to be themed activations. Whoa, I wonder what that is.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  I also saw it described as a culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. I don't think anything else needs to be said besides that.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you get it, folks. If you want to come hang out on a very large boat with us in the middle of the ocean and hear us do our live podcast along with other things, then this is going to be your only chance to ever do that.

• 3:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, very nice. You can go to virginvoyages.com/stuff. And that's in October. Cool. I don't know that this was the best episode to put that in, but we did what we did, you know?

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Well, it's not like it's the Titanic episode.

• 3:47Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's a great, great, yeah, that's a good point. That would have been-

• 3:50Speaker 03

  That would be bad. Because we're taking to the skies now.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Talking about what happened on May 6, 1937, when the Hindenburg dirigible-

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Crashed, burst into flames over Lake Hurst, New Jersey. And I am also surprised we haven't covered this. This is, you know, I didn't really know much about it. I knew the Hindenburg crash and I'd seen the footage and heard the stuff, the commentary. But I was like, yeah, man, they built that thing and they tried it out and it crashed. I didn't know that they had successfully flown this stuff a bunch. And that there were even worse airship disasters than this. This is just the most well-known for reasons we'll get into.

• 4:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was pretty shocking to see and it was really well documented. But yeah, I think, including me.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Never mind, there it is.

• 4:39Josh Clark?

  What?

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Those are the reasons.

• 4:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. But including me though, Chuck, I thought it was the maiden voyage too. I didn't realize it was just part of a larger thing either. And I think the Hindenburg itself had already been on a three-day publicity tour and a round trip to Buenos Aires and back from Germany before the unfortunate incident happened in New Jersey.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it had flown a bunch.

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So let's talk about this because the Hindenburg was known as an airship, which was also known as a dirigible, which you mentioned a second ago. And there's actually specific criteria to be a dirigible and the Hindenburg just checked all the boxes.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  That's right. Dirigible means it is powered, so it's not just floating around up there like a hot air balloon. But hot air balloons and dirigibles are the same things as far as being lifted by what's known as LTA gas, lighter-than-air gas. In this case, in this case, we're talking hydrogen, but also helium was almost used and now it's pretty much exclusively used.

• 5:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  And then it means it's steerable as well. So you can, you can tell it to go in a certain direction, tell it by way of working the rudder and powering those engines and it'll go in that direction.

• 6:02Josh Clark?

  All you have to do is shout, "Dirigible, go there." And it goes there.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't know that it was actually an ad, it can be an adjective as well.

• 6:11Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. For steerable, dirigible and steerable. So like this car is highly dirigible because it's got great responsiveness.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, just try using that word like that, though, and see if you don't get pushback.

• 6:23Josh Clark?

  I would think there'd have to be an auto journalist who's used it here, there, because they're just so sick of using the same, the same terms, you know?

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, like Car and Driver Magazine, like the snooty writers?

• 6:32Josh Clark?

  Yes, exactly. So there's three forms that dirigibles come in, Chuck, and it basically all has to do with how the structure, the blimp part, is well structured, I guess.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  The B word?

• 6:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I know you're not really supposed to say that, but it's true. I mean, I think it's pretty accessible to say blimp, you know?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, we got, you know, the Eastlake Golf Tournament is right near my house. And so when we're hanging out at the house during the tournament, oftentimes that Goodyear blimp is directly over my home. It's very cool to see.

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  Didn't you say you're trying to angle for a, a ride in the Goodyear blimp and that your in-laws have ridden in the Goodyear blimp at our Akron show?

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have never done that. You know, obviously Akron is the home of, of Goodyear and, and I think the blimp still. And my father-in-law, Steve, has at one point rode in that Goodyear blimp, but I have never done it. So if anyone can take me up and you, I mean, you're invited, you know?

• 7:33Josh Clark?

  Oh, sure, sure. I assume that.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  If you're interested.

• 7:36Josh Clark?

  I don't know if I am or not. My dad went on a hot air balloon ride and I was like, I'm not getting in that thing.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, after reading this, I mean, it's a different deal now, but it definitely gives pause.

• 7:48Josh Clark?

  Right. So let's get back to what the balloon-like envelope, AKA the blimp part,

• 7:56Josh Clark?

  how that describes what type of dirigibles there are. There's three of them, right?

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's non-rigid, semi-rigid, and rigid. Non-rigid is more like a hot air balloon. That means there's no structure on the inside and it's just the pressure of that gas keeping everything puffed out.

• 8:12Josh Clark?

  Yes. And hot air balloons are what make New Mexico's license plate so nice.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Agreed.

• 8:18Josh Clark?

  Semi-rigid is kind of like non-rigid, except there's like a keel. There's like a structure for the keel, the, the part that runs along the bottom of the envelope, right?

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  So there is some structure to essentially the bottom, but then I guess it flops over. So it's basically like a chef's hat, like the Swedish chef's hat.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:37Josh Clark?

  But it flies.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:39Josh Clark?

  And then rigid is the last one. There's like a skeleton like frame, usually of a really light, but strong material, maybe aluminum. You sent a YouTube of colorized photos of the Hindenburg, the interior in particular. And they said that, that its skeleton was made of duralumin. Have you ever heard of that before?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  I had never heard of it, so of course I had to look it up. I'm sure you did too. That's an aluminum copper alloy, right? That's as strong as soft steel, whatever that is.

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't know what that is either, but if it's not exactly what it sounds like, then somebody messed up naming it.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  It's a lot lighter than soft steel, obviously. And in the case of the Hindenburg, and I learned this all from that YouTube video, it's pretty cool to see those pictures as well.

• 9:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  There are 15, as they described them, Ferris wheel like rings that gave this thing the shape. And between those rings, and this is something I didn't know, there were 16 separate balloons between those rings. And that whole thing was covered with Goodyear latex and then a cotton like canvas fabric outer shell.

• 9:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so the outer skin, the envelope was not what the, the gas was filled in. Like it was in these basically bladders inside the envelope, right?

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:59Josh Clark?

  How many were there? Like 14, I guess then?

• 10:02Speaker 03

  I think 16 balloons. We also should mention that, that cotton canvas fabric was coated with a protective coating because that'll come into play.

• 10:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it kept the sun off essentially so that the sun wouldn't heat the gas inside. And so that the UV rays wouldn't break it down into useless. I don't know what you'd break hydrogen down into, I guess ions?

• 10:23Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 10:24Josh Clark?

  So the other thing about the rigid one, and I had no idea about this either, is that the, the passengers and crew usually are inside that envelope, inside the blimp. And if you look at the Hindenburg, there's like a little, you know, what's called the gondola attached to the bottom of it. And that seems to be, I think, the cockpit where if you were a passenger and you were hanging out in the Hindenburg, you were inside that blimp. I had no idea about that, did you?

• 10:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did because like where else would they be? Because I mean, once you find out that there are like 25 cabins and a bar and a restaurant and all that stuff, it's obviously not going to fit. I mean, you know, you could hang out there. In fact, I think they encouraged the passengers to hang out in those two, that double decked area because that's where all the windows were.

• 11:13Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  But I also learned that from watching the trailer to the Hindenburg movie when it showed a lot of action inside that, um, that shell.

• 11:23Josh Clark?

  Okay, gotcha. So I just thought that the gondola was just that dwarfed by the, um, the blimp itself and that it held all that stuff. I had no idea they were inside the blimp. I find that much more claustrophobic.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And, um, I could see how you would think that because once you get a little bit, and we'll talk about the size of this thing, but you need not only look at pictures of the Hindenburg flying over New York City to see how gargantuan this thing was.

• 11:55Josh Clark?

  It was enormous. So that Goodyear blimp, it depends on which one you're talking about. I've seen that the Hindenburg was more than 800 feet long, almost as long as the Titanic.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, what, how does it compare to the 747? Where is that?

• 12:09Josh Clark?

  I think it's like three times as long as a 747 and twice as tall.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Seriously, like go look up, just type in like Hindenburg over New York City and it's, the scale is really kind of, it drives at home for sure.

• 12:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was really, it's really impressive. One of the other things I saw too is that it had a gas capacity, so of the hydrogen it held of 7,62,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas. And to put that in perspective, that's the gas equivalent of 7,62,001 cubic foot bags of topsoil that you get at the garden center. That's how much hydrogen gas it held.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  It's a lot of gas and you know, of course, that's what keeps it aloft. Uh, as far as those engines, it had four diesel engines. And, uh, it moved pretty quick. I mean, as far as travel of the day, uh, it could get across the Atlantic in two days.

• 13:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Uh, the fastest ocean liner trip took five. And it's still, uh, it had the sister ship, the LZ 130. They're, they're still the two largest aircrafts to ever take flight off the ground.

• 13:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So this was a pretty impressive, um, ship for anybody to see. But it also was not like the first of its kind. It was the, the point that they had reached in the development of dirigibles up to that point, which had really been kind of going for almost a hundred years at that point. I think it was in 1850 when the whole dirigible craze kicked off in Paris, thanks to our friend Pierre Julien.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right. Uh, there was, the, the first one I think was in 1850, like you said. Uh, the next one, and that seemed more like a little like, hey, everybody, check this thing out. Um, in 1852, you got the first full-size one. Uh, thanks. It was really the French and Germans leading this charge. Um, it was a French engineer named Jules Henri Giffard. A hundred and forty-three feet, pretty big.

• 14:09Josh Clark?

  Sure. Can't sneeze at that. He also, um, traveled seventeen miles around in, uh, his first flight of his airship, uh, which is again, nothing to sneeze at. He was puttering around at six miles an hour.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Literally around, right?

• 14:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. In circles, essentially. The first few airships just basically traveled in circles. The next one is 1884. This was considered the first round trip flight. I'm not sure what Giffard was doing, but the French Army Corps of Engineers, like 30 years later, took their dirigible in a round trip flight, again, a circle. This one was just four to five miles and it had a nine horsepower motor. And that is the same size motor of a really good push mower, lawnmower.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you know, you're up there in the sky, so you're, you don't have to give it a lot to get it going. And again, they're not going very fast, six to 10 miles an hour. All of these so far have been non-rigid. By the way, the first rigid one came in 1899, courtesy of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. That's where that word and eventual band name would come from.

• 15:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah, Zeppelin basically became the leader in developing, designing and developing airship sterigibles at a time when it was like, this is the new thing. Like, if you wanted to get from one continent to another, you took a luxury liner. Like you said, they were kind of slow. Zeppelins could go way faster. And it was like, the, the promise of, of airship travel was just limitless at this time when Zeppelin came along.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And as far as the band, I can't remember who said it. This is off the dome, but somebody said something about them going over, they would go over like a lead Zeppelin.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Obviously, that's a two contradict tree terms.

• 16:03Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  And that's what they meant. They're being sort of cheeky. And of course, you know, it was, the Hindenburg was on the cover of their first record of their debut album.

• 16:11Josh Clark?

  One other thing I looked up, the LZ in any of the Zeppelins. So like, the first rigid airship was called LZ1. And you mentioned-

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Not for lead.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  No, I thought probably it was.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:24Josh Clark?

  But it's Luftschiff, or airship, in German. So, Airship Zeppelin I was the first rigid airship. The sister ship of the Hindenburg was LZ130.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 16:38Josh Clark?

  So, yes, I, I think as a rule of thumb, anytime you're taking advantage of a new technology that carries you away from Earth, or carries you along Earth at really fast speeds, do not go in any models that are still in the single digits. That's just a good rule of thumb, I think.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  All right, so if the new plane comes out and it's the, oh, I don't know, Air Max 7?

• 17:04Josh Clark?

  Just wait until they get to 10. They're gonna get there fast because those next three are not gonna stay around very long.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  You're right. That's good advice. So 1910 was the first commercial passenger flight. This baby went, I think it carried 23 people plus nine crew on a sightseeing loop.

• 17:23Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  But it crashed. No casualties.

• 17:27Josh Clark?

  No, get this. So this was LZ 7, still single digits.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:32Josh Clark?

  Ran out of fuel, was blown off course, and it had engine trouble. And it crashed into some trees. But the fact that nobody died is pretty, well, happy, I guess.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. 18 years later, we got our first transatlantic flight. And this is what they were gunning for. This thing went from Germany to where the Hindenburg would go, Lake Hurst, New Jersey. It's sort of suburban Philadelphia, like East of Philly.

• 17:58Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  111 hours and 44 minutes. But this is what they were, you know, they were looking for, you know, the next wave of like taking people. It wasn't just like wowzer stuff or, hey, like, we tried it once. They were like really trying to compete with ocean liner travel.

• 18:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I say we take a break and we come back and get into that a little more. How about that?

• 18:20Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be right back.

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• 18:48Josh Clark?

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• 19:44Speaker 03

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• 19:47Josh Clark?

  Sure.

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  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly, it's usually a new rug.

• 19:58Josh Clark?

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• 20:50Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so like you were saying before the break, the Zeppelin development had gotten to the point where it's like we can get across the Atlantic, we can get down to South America anytime we want.

• 21:03Josh Clark?

  Like, no problem. We've reached that point. Let's just start creating dirigibles that are meant for transatlantic travel. Like, let's really put a dent in the ocean liner industry. We're just gonna create a new travel industry. And that's what they said about doing. So the Hindenburg LZ 129 was the part of this larger planned fleet of specifically transatlantic luxury zeppelins that were going to essentially change the world and make it much smaller.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. It was, you know, it was luxury in the sense that it was an airship that catered to rich people. If you look at the pictures, it looks nice, but it's it's still not like anything you would get onboard like the Titanic or anything like that, just because it was an airship. So they couldn't, you know, there are obvious weight limitations and size limitations, like the cabins were really, really small. But they, you know, they were, they were good, good looking enough for the, for the crowd that they were catering to, which is really rich people, because I think it costs like, in today dollars, like $10,000 compared to about half that for an ocean liner, transatlantic ocean liner voyage.

• 22:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, those are one way, too. Not like our voyage in October, which is round trip.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  That's right. They're bringing this back, right?

• 22:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 22:30Josh Clark?

  They're just gonna leave us stranded in Bermuda?

• 22:32Speaker 03

  I mean, they could drop us in Atlanta on the way home, I would think.

• 22:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's a great idea. That's a wonderful idea. Chuck will ask.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 22:40Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, I mean, there, it was expensive, but it was also very new, right? So you can imagine, I mean, luxury ocean liners have been doing this for a very long time. By the time they reached that, that cost of about $5,000 for a luxury liner. So you can imagine that, like, the Zeppelin Company had their eye on bringing costs down eventually so that more people could afford it.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:01Josh Clark?

  But in the meantime, to start, I mean, that's kind of what you do. You attract everyone's attention by getting the richest, most famous, most powerful people to come fly on your friendly skies. And then newspapers write about it like, oh, my gosh, did you see Mrs. Astor 800 feet up, hanging from the outside of the Hindenburg? It was amazing. You could see right up her dress. That's what, that's what newspapers want to write about, you know? And so that's what they were doing.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, and today, Mrs. Esther's equivalent, I guess, is Katy Perry.

• 23:33Josh Clark?

  That's exactly right, Chuck.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  What a time to live in.

• 23:37Josh Clark?

  That was amazing.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  So I mentioned hydrogen and helium as the LTA, lighter than air gases used to power anything like this. And they had a real decision to make early on with the, the Hindenburg, like what to use. And the original design was hydrogen. But then they said, there was a crash of, in 1930 of the British airship R101, it was out of the single digits.

• 24:02Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Still crashed, survived impact, but everybody died in the hydrogen fire because hydrogen turns out super flammable. So Hugo Eckner said, you know what? Let's go to helium. It's way more stable. It's a little bit heavier, so we're going to have to design a larger envelope so we can keep that same payload. But then there was a US helium embargo and we, the United States was the only maker and seller of helium at the time. And so they said, all right, you know what? Let's go back to hydrogen and let's just cross our fingers.

• 24:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was a helium act of 1925 that I never heard of that the US is like, this is a natural resource that we really need, so we're just going to keep it all to ourselves.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  We did a podcast on that at some point, right?

• 24:50Speaker 03

  On helium.

• 24:51Josh Clark?

  No, we definitely talked about it because there was a shortage and it was all, everybody was really worried about it going away. And then all of a sudden, we found a huge new vein of it in the United States and now there's no problem with helium anymore. Stuff like that makes me feel like, well, you're definitely in a simulation sometimes. You know?

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:09Josh Clark?

  It happens a lot. Like people are like, oh, we're hitting peak oil or, you know, like we're going to run out of helium and all this horrible stuff's going to happen. And then nothing happens. Like something comes along and just completely does away with that randomly.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:23Josh Clark?

  At any rate, that was not the case for the designers of the Hindenburg. They had to go with hydrogen, like you said. And because they had made that envelope so much bigger to accommodate the more helium that they were going to need, they were going to now have to fill the whole thing with hydrogen. So they added a bunch more passenger cabins to basically, well, make more money, but also to, to make it heavier so that it would do all the same things it would have had it been helium.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it wouldn't float away.

• 25:50Josh Clark?

  Pretty much.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Uh, we went over some of the sizes. I think we should probably mention the cruising speed was 76 miles an hour with a topper of 84 miles per hour.

• 26:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Uh, in total, you've got about 40 flight crew, 10 to 12 stewards and cooks, as we'll learn, there was a bartender as well.

• 26:12Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  Uh, and then 50 passengers in 36 and then up to 72, I guess because they built those extra cabins, right?

• 26:20Josh Clark?

  Right, right. And that was 1937 season. And I think 1936 was the only complete season in the Hindenburg service. Um, one other thing that I was trying to get to the bottom of that was surprisingly hard to find was its cruising altitude.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:35Josh Clark?

  Apparently it's usual cruising altitude or normal cruising altitude was like 650 feet or about 200 meters.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Man, that's impressive.

• 26:43Josh Clark?

  It is impressive, but they would usually fly lower to basically fly under clouds rather than through or over them. So, uh, yeah, I mean, these things, I saw somebody say like, these are, they were flying at the height of like, you know, the tallest trees in, in the world. Like it wasn't that high up that they were flying.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, also, and I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but you want people to see this thing if they're trying to drum up business.

• 27:09Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  And again, those pictures over in New York City, that thing is pretty low.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  It is like, like kind of concerningly low, actually.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So Chuck, just a little more about what it looked like inside and what it was, you know, like aboard the Hindenburg. Remember, these were luxury, like state of the art luxury accommodations in the mid 1930s. But they also had to adjust for weight and stuff like that, like you were saying. It seemed like there was formica everywhere. Like it looked like the walls were made of formica even.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally a lot of formica, but that that jived a little bit with sort of the Ardecco look that seemed like it ran throughout.

• 27:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. They dressed for dinner, like you would think. There was an aluminum piano made specifically because a baby grand would just be too heavy.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:59Josh Clark?

  And they had, of course, incredible meals in this incredibly cramped dining room.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:05Josh Clark?

  And then there was a smoking room, which at first I'm like, well, of course there's a smoking room. It's the 30s. And then I was like, hydrogen dirigible. That is actually pretty remarkable.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it had a double airlock. Apparently there was one lighter, so they didn't trust people to, you know, just to bring their own lighter. So there was one lighter that would light everyone's cigarettes, I guess, or whatever else they were smoking. Pipes, I imagine, cigars, blunts, who knows?

• 28:32Speaker 03

  The bartender was, I can't remember the guy's name, but they talked about him in the YouTube video and he seemed to be a pretty popular guy. And there's one story of a famous passenger who created a drink, or I guess rather his wife did. British author Leslie Schotteris, who created the Saint.

• 28:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Franchise. His wife Pauline was aboard and apparently they ran out of gin.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Like probably pretty fast. A lot of gin based drinks back then.

• 29:02Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  So she created a martini made from kishpaser, which I looked up, which is like a, some sort of a cherry thing?

• 29:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's like a cherry brandy. It's really good.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Oh, you've had it?

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Remember when I was like, super into making cocktails?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I've used like, uh, the cherry, uh, like the Luxardo liqueur and stuff. Is it sort of like that?

• 29:26Josh Clark?

  No, it's much lighter and not, it's not nearly as syrupy and heavy. It's more of a spirit than like a syrup. You know what I mean?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, because the, yeah, Luxardo is a, is a liqueur, but the other one is a, like a legit ninety proof, you know, kind of thing.

• 29:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, where you're like, whoo. But it's, it is very good and it's, it's like a cherry flavor. So she used that instead of gin. And apparently the, I don't, did the bartender die? Because like supposedly the rest of the ingredients are lost to history.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  I mean, I guess Pauline must have died or else she could have just probably told everybody, by the way, like after this tragedy settles, I created a whiz bang of a drink up there.

• 30:08Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Remind me to tell you about the Hindenburg cocktail I came up with. But I saw somebody surmise that the other ingredients were probably driver mousse, which would make it a martini, grenadine, and not like rose's grenadine, but like the real pomegranate syrup and a lemon peel.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, that sounds nice.

• 30:28Josh Clark?

  Sure. I'll try that.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  So, uh, what else? They had that piano. Oh, the cabins had running hot and cold water. Uh, they had a little fold down desk, but they, they were small. Um, the, the crew cabins were, uh, just like you would expect a crew cabin to be very small. It looked like those beds were a couple of feet wide.

• 30:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And there were bunk beds too.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:51Josh Clark?

  So, um, with the art deco ladder, no less too. Pretty, it was kind of cool looking. I'm not a huge fan of the 1930s aesthetic.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Ooh, I love it.

• 31:00Josh Clark?

  I liked the, uh, ladders for the bunk beds.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  I'm big into deco. Maybe you can get one of those off of eBay or something.

• 31:07Josh Clark?

  Oh, man.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  Like a Hindenburg ladder?

• 31:10Josh Clark?

  It's probably dead or gone up in flames, I would guess.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Well, some of that stuff survived. It's in a museum.

• 31:17Josh Clark?

  True.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  So you couldn't buy it, but maybe we could, you know, bust it out.

• 31:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, if we could break into the Smithsonian.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Get that ladder for you.

• 31:26Josh Clark?

  Um, just pass everything else by and go straight for the Hindenburg ladder.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  That's it. That's all you want.

• 31:31Josh Clark?

  And I'd be like, I'd get it home and be like, I don't even have bunk beds.

• 31:36Josh Clark?

  Um, so this is all getting lots of press, like this is a big deal. Remember the Hindenburg was part of a planned transatlantic fleet. So this is, this is big news. One thing that a lot of people forget is that the Nazis were in charge of Germany at the time. The Hindenburg was a German ship. It was a civilian ship, but it still had big fat swastikas on its tail fins. Uh, and I, as everyone knows, the Hindenburg went up in flames. I think it's no coincidence that its tail went up in flames first. Because why wouldn't it?

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Right. That's a good point. I didn't think about that, actually.

• 32:12Josh Clark?

  So the Nazis were like, hey, we're trying to get everybody to like us, to psych them out. And, uh, let's send the Hindenburg on a three day publicity tour around Europe, essentially. That was its maiden voyage in March of 1936.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, they did, uh, a lot of these little propaganda flights. Um, and apparently the, the, the one that lifted off on May 6th, uh, had some engine trouble. But they had had to, um, skip endurance tests because of one of those propaganda flights, right?

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. They were like, it'll be fine. They apparently think that they would have found the engine troubles. But the, the Hindenburg made its first passage to America in May of 1936, which is confusing. Because it was May of 1937 when it had its last, um, its last voyage to America. So almost exactly a year later, in between its first trip to America and its last trip to America. Um, yeah, it, it got me all throughout researching this.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 33:15Josh Clark?

  Wait, what? How are these people alive? And then.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, they completed 34 flights in 1936, which included some of those propaganda flights, one of which, very famously, at the 1936 Olympic Games there in Berlin. And then, you know, round trip flights to America, and then the one to Brazil that you mentioned. And they had, you know, they were catering, like you mentioned, the Astros, you know, Nelson Rockefeller, the head of Eastern Airlines, TWA, Pan Am. Like, I think they were kind of rubbing it in the face of all these early airlines, right? Saying, "Come fly on this super slow, but kind of awesome thing."

• 33:52Josh Clark?

  I wonder also if they were like, "Hey, don't you guys want to start your own airship division? We'll sell you the airships," you know?

• 33:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I bet.

• 33:59Josh Clark?

  It could have also been a little of both.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I bet you're right.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

  That Millionaires Flight you mentioned, Eddie Rickenbacker was also on that. And he's the American flying ace from World War I who took down the Red Baron.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right.

• 34:11Josh Clark?

  So I'm sure it was a tad awkward around the other German military Nazi leaders who were on that Millionaires Flight, too.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, this guy.

• 34:21Josh Clark?

  So that was 1936. It was a triumphant year for the Hindenburg. And it had six more successful flights in 1937, when it started. I say we take a break and come back again, and things just start to go poorly for the Hindenburg. How about that?

• 34:38Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 34:54Speaker 03

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• 35:07Josh Clark?

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• 35:31Josh Clark?

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• 36:03Josh Clark?

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• 37:02Speaker 03

  All right. I was confused by the May stuff as well because here we are in May again, one year after the first commercial passage in 36.

• 37:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  All those successful flights later, the seventh one of the new year, on May 3rd, 1937, Captain Max Prus was at the helm and it lifted off there in Frankfurt, headed toward Lakehurst. There's a naval airbase there, by the way, which is why they kept going to suburban New Jersey.

• 37:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is kind of shocking. They were letting the Nazis land blimps at a naval airbase in New Jersey.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, this was still, I mean, this is just before they probably would have said no, right?

• 37:40Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, they, they got all the way there. They flew, and that's sort of the cruel tragedy of this is, or one of them is. You know, if there were any nerves, they're like landing in New Jersey. And they're like, this is great. We made it, everybody. We're all sort of drunk. We put out our last cigars. It was a, it was a storm. There was a storm happening. So they sort of delayed the landing. They flew out over the ocean for a few more hours. I imagine everyone got even more liquored up. And then finally around 7:00 PM, they descended in high winds from about 500 feet down, down, down to a little under 300 feet. And they actually dropped those mooring ropes, which turned out, spoiler alert, could have caused this whole thing.

• 38:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  And they secured those ropes at 7:25. They secured those ropes to the ground with their winch system. And in less than 30 seconds, it was all over.

• 38:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But the, the ropes, bear this in mind, the ropes had been dropped and touching the ground for at least four minutes by this time. Right?

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:44Josh Clark?

  So, uh, yes, it took, I think I saw 34 seconds from the time when the flames erupted to the time when the entire thing was destroyed and crashed on the ground. It went that fast. Like I said, the stern, the tail of it caught fire first. And it, the flames just kind of blew through the, the envelope and came out the nose. And what's just mind boggling is that as it landed on the ground, because it was a light skeleton, but not something you would want to land on you. And in fact, one of the ground crew died from the skeleton landing on him.

• 39:21Josh Clark?

  People, once they hit the ground, people were running out of the flames and survived. They were running for their lives and they actually made it, which is crazy.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, we'll go ahead and go over the numbers. Two thirds of the people basically survived. There were 97 people on board, total 36 passengers, 61 crew. And only 36 people perished, 13 passengers and 22 crew. And then the one ground crew person that you were talking about. And very famously, it was, um, it was called live by Chicago radio reporter named Herb Morrison.

• 39:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  And I think we should either, I'll either read it, well, I'll read it, but hopefully we can replace it with the real thing. Like surely this is like within the like public domain, right?

• 40:09Josh Clark?

  I saw uncertain according to the Library of Congress.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  All right, well, shall I do it then?

• 40:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, do it. Can you do a great Herb Morrison impression though?

• 40:19Speaker 03

  I'll do my best.

• 40:20Josh Clark?

  Wait, can you do it as Jim Morrison?

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Maybe I should do it as Sammy Davis Jr. Just to give it some, uh, some light.

• 40:27Josh Clark?

  I would love to hear that if you're okay with it.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  No, no, I can't do that. That would be even that this, uh, decades later, it would be disrespectful, I think.

• 40:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess that hasn't been a hundred years.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  No. All right. So here we go. Uh, this was Herb Morrison's call and this is what was played and literally played in movie theater newsreels like the next day. So it's all over the place. It's fire and it's crashing. It's burning, bursting into flames and it's falling on the mooring mast. This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh, it's crashing. Oh, four or 500 feet into the sky and it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke and there's flames now and the frame is crashing to the ground. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here. I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage and everybody can hardly breathe and talk. Honest, I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it.

• 41:22Josh Clark?

  That was excellent. Um, if you listen to Herb Morrison actually doing this, he's in between a lot of these sentences is like, oh, oh.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:32Josh Clark?

  He is just completely overwhelmed. It happens immediately. The moment he sees those flames, he's just completely overwhelmed. Uh, go listen to Herb Morrison calling that, um, because it's just, it's quite stirring and he's the one who gave us that, that phrase, oh, the humanity.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, apparently that's where that comes from. Uh, I did, I just kind of wanted to do a straight reading. I didn't want to do all the moaning.

• 41:55Josh Clark?

  No, no, I mean, no one expected you to do that.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't want to arouse anybody.

• 42:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. You've always got your eye like three steps ahead, man.

• 42:04Speaker 03

  I, I hope so, but yeah, oh, the humanity that had never been said before. Is that true?

• 42:09Josh Clark?

  Uh, I don't know. I don't know if it had been said, but certainly Herb Morrison was the one who popularized it. It seems to me like everything that he said was just pouring out of him without thinking.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:20Josh Clark?

  So I would guess that it was just off the cuff for him.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  Man, it's amazing. So again, only 36 of the 97 people aboard perished. Immediately, there were about 1,500 US Navy personnel there that were, you know, all of a sudden doing not much of a search, but just rescue attempts. And like I said, it was all over the news the next morning. It was on movie theater newsreels. Within hours, both American and German investigators were there. And immediately, theories started coming out kind of left and right.

• 42:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So this is the 30s. Everybody's already starting to get wise to what the Nazis are like. There's also communists running around, maybe even old school anarchists who like to throw bombs. So the idea that it was an act of sabotage was bandied about very quickly.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:12Josh Clark?

  One of the first people who had their eyes set on them was a guy named Joseph Spe. Have you, did you see his, um, his professional name?

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Uh, oh, no, I didn't. I saw he was an acrobat, but what was his name?

• 43:26Josh Clark?

  He was also an actor. He appears in Marathon Man. Apparently, he's the guy who dies in the car crash that starts everything off.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 43:33Josh Clark?

  His professional name as an acrobat was Ben Dova.

• 43:39Josh Clark?

  I'm not kidding.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. That's amazing.

• 43:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So he, um, I'm just gonna call him Bendover from here on out.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Sounds like a Bart Simpson call into Most Aver.

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  It totally does. He, um, was deemed suspicious by one of the stewards, a German steward aboard the Hindenburg. And apparently, the German steward told the authorities who are investigating this that he found Joseph Spe, Bendova, uh, quote, unsympathetic to airship travel. Like, he wasn't, he wasn't just overjoyed or blown away by it, apparently, which is spoken like a true everyday fascist POS, if you think about it.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. But he might also have been like, I'm Bendova. You think, like, you should see what I've seen.

• 44:26Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Well, that was one of the other things, too, that when he was being investigated, they were like, he's also an acrobat. He could probably climb around inside his skeleton and plant a bomb. So apparently they found zero evidence to that of like supporting him being a bomber whatsoever.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have not seen the film from 1975 with, uh, uh, what's the guy's name? George C. Scott and, uh, and Anne Bancroft, among others. But it seemed from the trailer that they fully like just fictionalized and that it was, it was a bomb and it was sabotage and that was, that was the movie.

• 45:02Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? I didn't know that. That's lame.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what it looked like to me. And apparently it was a $15 million movie at the time, which was a lot of dough in 1975 for a movie.

• 45:11Josh Clark?

  Sure. What was going on with blimps and just disaster stuff in the seventies? Cause there was also that movie, Black Sunday.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was just the, the peak. It was peak disaster film. So they were, they were looking at all angles.

• 45:23Josh Clark?

  I got you. I should have guessed that. The, there were other people who were considered for sabotage, anti Nazis. Sure. There was one that, that said the Zeppelin Company and/or the Nazi Party blew up the ship for insurance money.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was one.

• 45:40Josh Clark?

  It was, I think it was covered for $15 million and according to West Egg, that's about $355 million today.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 45:47Josh Clark?

  Do not think the Nazi Party would not have considered doing that.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a good point. Um, yeah, bombs being fired at from below, from above. Uh, the one thing they do know for sure is that the hydrogen was what like caused it to go up in flames in like 30 seconds. Like there is no controversy about that. How that happened is still, um, not like for sure known. Uh, witnesses said that as the ship approached, uh, it appeared to be glowing. Before the fire even started.

• 46:18Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  And so at the time scientists heard that and they were like, oh, okay. Well, it gathered an electrostatic charge because of the storms that were going on. Uh, and then there was probably like a hydrogen leak and that's what ignited the whole thing.

• 46:32Josh Clark?

  Right. Um, the thing is, is like that electrostatic charge, if, if had like sparked, it would have had to have sparked exactly where that hydrogen leak was and across an 800 foot dirigible, the chances of the spark and the leak happening at the exact same spot are pretty low, right?

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I agree.

• 46:51Josh Clark?

  So there's other theories that are, that, that tried it basically, basically everyone agrees there was, it was, there was a electrostatic charge. Somehow the electrostatic charge sparked. Somehow that spark set off the hydrogen explosion. Almost everyone agrees on that, but within that you can, you still have a lot of room to maneuver around and figure out, you know, what exactly led to this disaster. And what's amazing is that we still don't know today.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there've been a lot of books written about it over the year. There's, uh, there was one in 1962 called Who Destroyed the Hindenburg?

• 47:26Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  By A A Hurling. And, uh, they blamed a, a ground rigger named Eric Spell, who was actually on the crew. He was in, inside the blimp.

• 47:38Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  And apparently blew it up to appease or to please his communist girlfriend. But I don't know if he survived or not, but that, that doesn't make sense. And I don't think there was any evidence at all about that.

• 47:47Josh Clark?

  No, and now that I see Michael Mooney, uh, he wrote a book called The Hindenburg and that movie was based on the Hindenburg and he basically used that theory. So that's why they would have made it like a, a bombing.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, he must've been the character in the movie that I saw that was running around, um, up to no good.

• 48:05Josh Clark?

  Ben Dova is a character in that movie, but he's, he goes by, I think, Joseph Spiel, I think.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  Oh, this is a missed opportunity.

• 48:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, for sure.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:14Josh Clark?

  Uh, there's also a theory about incendiary paint, which is basically a scientist from NASA named Addison Bain, who his career is based on creating hydrogen fuel propulsion systems, right? Using hydrogen as fuel.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, so he's pro hydrogen.

• 48:30Josh Clark?

  Very much so. He had an idea that no, the hydrogen was, that was secondary. That what really ignited first and then eventually ignited the hydrogen was this coating on the outer shell of the envelope, which we talked about that kept the sun's rays off. Um, and that that ignited. And he really went to town on this. Apparently he had a television special and had to really work at getting an actual piece of salvaged, um, envelope from the Hindenburg. He burned it on TV, but he really had to bend over, he had to bend over backwards to, to get this thing to light.

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  So essentially his own demonstration proved to critics like that's, that, that theory's not, doesn't hold hydrogen.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was debunked. Boy, you were just flying all over the place with these jokes and double entendres. Very impressive.

• 49:23Josh Clark?

  Thanks. I appreciate you noticing.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  Uh, the giant capacitor theory, there was, uh, just like five years ago, there's a Caltech professor named Konstantinos Giopoulos, not sure where he was from. Uh, but he offered a different take on the ignition source. Uh, I think there was a PBS show, Hindenburg, colon, the new evidence. And here was the deal, there was, you know, that outer skin that we were talking about, but that skin wasn't directly wrapped on the frame. It had these little wooden spacers, like hundreds, I would imagine thousands of these things, uh, spacing it out so it didn't actually touch the frame. And his proposal was that when the ship dropped those ropes that we talked about and I said to put a pin in it. That the space between the ship's skin collected a lot of positive electrostatic

• 50:09Speaker 03

  charge during that storm, so that the area between the skin and the metal frame collected electrons when the ropes hit the ground and it turned it into just a big, basically a giant bomb, a big energy storing capacitor that was dotted with these little capacitors, like ignition points essentially.

• 50:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's, so that's what he, his, that's what we were saying, that the ignition point, the spark and the hydrogen leak, being at the same spot was very unlikely. And what Giappas basically said was like, no, all those spacers became capacitors themselves. And they were all storing all this energy, negative on the frame, positive on the skin. And all it took was one spark for all of them to start sparking. And if you have hundreds, or like you said, thousands of little capacitors sparking at once, it's going to blow up a hydrogen dirigible and it's going to do it pretty fast. And I said that there was four minutes in between the time when they dropped the moor

• 51:10Josh Clark?

  and cables to the ground and the time the Hindenburg blew up. And in this, in one of the tests that Giappas ran for Nova for this program, he basically ran essentially the same situation that the Hindenburg would have gone through under his theory, and it took four minutes for it to build up enough of a charge for the capacitor to spark.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  So, yeah, this sounds pretty good.

• 51:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I like this one a lot, too.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's the most recent one. I guess the others have been debunked, so, you know, I'm bandwagoning, admittedly.

• 51:43Josh Clark?

  For sure. So, one of the things that a lot of people aren't aware of is that the Hindenburg, when it went up, not only did it immediately put an end to the idea of transatlantic airship flights, or airships in general, aside from Goodyear who braved on.

• 52:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:01Josh Clark?

  It put the kibosh on hydrogen as a fuel. That's why people like Addison Bain in the 90s were coming up with these, these things trying to defend hydrogen. They're saying, no, it's safe, it's safe. And people are like, did you see the Hindenburg? You're, you're a fool. And apparently it is safe in some ways compared to like gasoline.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there are new airships happening and there's, you know, there's people working with hydrogen again. So it's like enough time has passed to where they're looking into this kind of thing again. I think the Pathfinder 1, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is the sort of brainchild behind that one.

• 52:38Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  That thing is 400 and feet long, eight feet long.

• 52:42Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  And I think is still like, none of these things are commercialized yet. They're like still in testing phases and development phases.

• 52:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they all run on helium, not hydrogen, too.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, hydrogen's being used for other things, but yeah, they're still, I don't think they could ever use hydrogen again for something like this.

• 53:02Josh Clark?

  We've talked about the Hindenburg before. It must have been on like one of the videos we did because I remember a saying that none of the people who jumped, no, none of the people who didn't jump died.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 53:20Josh Clark?

  That it was only the people who jumped from the Hindenburg who died. That's not true. That is a urban legend and we kept it going, but this was 15 years ago. So come on, give us a break.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah. If you want to see parts of it, I told you, you know, some is in the Smithsonian. Some of the pieces of the ship, some of the luxury stuff, you know, kind of like the Titanic survived. The National Postal Museum has some stuff. Obviously, the Air and Space Museum has some stuff. And that's where you can see it. Just keep your eyes, keep, keep, keep your eyes off that ladder.

• 53:54Josh Clark?

  That's, that's for Josh. Thanks, man. I appreciate you looking out for me like that. Since Chuck is looking out for me with Smithsonian artifacts, that means obviously it's time for listener mail, guys.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  This is just a really nice email from Michael in Columbus, Ohio. Hey, guys, just want to give you thanks for being one of the most consistent aspects of my world for almost two decades. I started listening when I was 10 years old and I On and off, of course, at first, but in the last couple of years, I've been listening to new episodes every week. Such a gift you've given and are still giving to this world, sharing your stories, perspectives and jokes and rants and spectacles with us. I truly hope you too, and Jerry, and all the people who help behind the scenes are able to recognize the benefit and impact of having consistent worldly discourse, being able to turn on a podcast and learn about landing on the moon, or the wonders of the world, or anything in history really inspired the learning in me and continues to spark my curiosity every week.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Josh, Chuck, and team, you guys rock. Thanks from a 27-year-old kid trying to figure out this world. Hope remains alive, and that is Michael in Columbus.

• 55:01Josh Clark?

  Man alive, that was really great. Thanks a lot, Michael.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, that inspires us.

• 55:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm inspired to go another 18 years, Chuck.

• 55:09Speaker 03

  I hope I live that long.

• 55:12Josh Clark?

  You better, man.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  Well, I plan on it.

• 55:15Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, if you want to be like Michael and send us just a really gee whiz, that's super nice email, we love those, love them. You can send it off to [email protected].

• 55:32Speaker 05

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 55:47Josh Clark?

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• 56:42Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.