Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 532 - We’re Being Artists Here About this episode This week, Georgia covers Shakespeare being performed at the Broadmoor asylum and Karen tells the story of the Wisconsin Butter Fire.
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Transcript 13,118 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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2:21 Karen Kilgariff? Hello and welcome.
2:23 Georgia Hardstark? To my favorite murder.
2:24 Karen Kilgariff? That's Georgia Hardstark.
2:25 Georgia Hardstark? That's Karen Kilgariff. Happy birthday.
2:28 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you so much. Oh, my God. Thank you. And thank you for buying me all of these things.
2:33 Georgia Hardstark? I did all of this.
2:34 Karen Kilgariff? It's incredible. Georgia got here at 6:00 a.m. And she had three rolls of Scotch tape and a dream.
2:41 Georgia Hardstark? These are from my garden, of course, from my greenhouse.
2:45 Karen Kilgariff? Incredible.
2:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
2:46 Karen Kilgariff? Peonies or ranunculus?
2:48 Georgia Hardstark? Peonies, and they're Martha Stewart flavor.
2:51 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, the best flavor there is. I actually love these flowers so much. Yes.
2:56 Georgia Hardstark? Did you guys know that, that you brought them?
2:58 Karen Kilgariff? Craig and I may or may not have discussed peonies.
3:02 Georgia Hardstark? Love it.
3:02 Karen Kilgariff? Very classy, very classy. Actually, we should thank our set decorator.
3:07 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
3:08 Karen Kilgariff? Cory.
3:08 Georgia Hardstark? Cory.
3:09 Karen Kilgariff? Cory Nixon. He's a PC. He's not a set decorator.
3:11 Georgia Hardstark? No, but he does this.
3:13 Karen Kilgariff? But he's been forced to become one.
3:14 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, and he dresses so well. We're like, you look like you know how to put things together.
3:17 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
3:18 Georgia Hardstark? It's your birthday. I totally got you a present, and it's so cool, and you're gonna love it, and it didn't get sent in time.
3:25 Karen Kilgariff? Yep, absolutely.
3:27 Georgia Hardstark? Should I have just shown you a photo? No, I'll give it to you next week.
3:30 Karen Kilgariff? So, listen, I've now done this
3:32 Georgia Hardstark? Just cute.
3:33 Karen Kilgariff? 56 times, and I couldn't care if it was a contest and I won money at the end. And I mean, I don't mean that in the like, this, when I walked in here, it truly brought me joy. Also, our producer, Molly Smith, is at the helm.
3:48 Georgia Hardstark? Of course.
3:48 Karen Kilgariff? Knowing how much I care about rose gold, what it does for me emotionally. But this is as good as it gets for me.
3:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
3:55 Karen Kilgariff? Because I think after a while, you're like, I don't know.
3:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, yeah, especially when she like passed the milestone birthdays and get into the like, wow, birthdays.
4:06 Karen Kilgariff? I wonder if it's like, not to stolen valor from the kids who had like high school ripped away from them, but having my 50th birthday during COVID, and you had your 40th during COVID?
4:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
4:20 Karen Kilgariff? There was a thing where I was like, well, I either I'm gonna be really upset about this or just never care again.
4:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
4:25 Karen Kilgariff? And I picked B.
4:26 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
4:27 Karen Kilgariff? Which I recommend in life.
4:28 Georgia Hardstark? I feel like, cause I had my 40th birthday during COVID and cried on the day a lot.
4:33 Karen Kilgariff? Did you?
4:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. It was like early in COVID for both of us.
4:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
4:36 Georgia Hardstark? That I am like obligated to celebrate every birthday since that I have in Freedom Town more than I would, you know what I mean?
4:46 Karen Kilgariff? That's a
4:47 Georgia Hardstark? Normally.
4:47 Karen Kilgariff? That's a way more positive kind of end result.
4:50 Georgia Hardstark? Like I didn't get the blowout 40th that I probably would not have fucking thrown anyways.
4:55 Karen Kilgariff? But you can always cry about things you didn't get.
4:57 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
4:57 Karen Kilgariff? No matter.
4:58 Georgia Hardstark? So like, so 46 has to be a big blowout. Go to fucking Italy for it.
5:02 Karen Kilgariff? Hell, yes. Why not? Also, 40 is a different birthday, too, because that is a bit of a turning point.
5:08 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
5:09 Karen Kilgariff? And to not get to have anybody like just shower you with love on that day sucks.
5:13 Georgia Hardstark? It reminds me of all the kids in school who had summer birthdays.
5:17 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
5:17 Georgia Hardstark? Who just never got the cupcakes or the happy birthdays or whatever.
5:21 Karen Kilgariff? All lumped together?
5:22 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, Christmas birthdays, New Year's birthday.
5:25 Karen Kilgariff? A May birthday, everyone stoked the year's over.
5:28 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
5:28 Karen Kilgariff? Everyone's like, it's spring.
5:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
5:30 Karen Kilgariff? It's a new season. It's a big advantage to have a May birthday.
5:34 Georgia Hardstark? Well, happy birthday.
5:35 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you.
5:35 Georgia Hardstark? I'll give you a present next week.
5:37 Karen Kilgariff? You don't have to.
5:38 Georgia Hardstark? I want to, though. It's just like a cute little thing that I saw and I was like, that's for Karen.
5:41 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
5:42 Georgia Hardstark? You know, not like, what am I gonna get her? It was like, that's for Karen.
5:45 Karen Kilgariff? You sat down with a big pencil?
5:47 Georgia Hardstark? What am I gonna do?
5:48 Karen Kilgariff? This is, and then you start crying like it's your 40th birthday in COVID.
5:51 Georgia Hardstark? Right. How am I gonna top last year? Oh, I found something, social media videos that just showed up in my algorithm that I didn't know existed, that is going to be my new personality completely.
6:09 Georgia Hardstark? Sword yoga.
6:13 Karen Kilgariff? That is so dangerous.
6:15 Georgia Hardstark? No, it's not. I'll tell you why. Okay. It's this company called Weapon Up. This is not an ad. I just found them and I'm obsessed now. So her name's Sabina, the woman who started it. It's like tai chi meets yo, like vinyasa yoga meets like synchronized fencing. But they have practice swords, so like they're not sharp or anything like that.
6:33 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, okay.
6:34 Georgia Hardstark? But that's, I've been waiting for my next, you know, I've done the fucking performer. I've done hula hooping and now.
6:42 Karen Kilgariff? You've been waiting for sword yoga?
6:43 Georgia Hardstark? Sword yoga. Sword yoga.
6:48 Karen Kilgariff? Now you pronounce that sword?
6:49 Georgia Hardstark? I love the, I love, I can't help it. It's like a, it's a stim. It's a stim.
6:54 Karen Kilgariff? When do you ever get the opportunity to just, where you're like, no, sorry, this is my workout class I have to get, even if it's a practice sword.
7:02 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
7:02 Karen Kilgariff? Sword, sword.
7:04 Georgia Hardstark? It's, I, I'll let you know, I'm gonna do a class. I'm gonna fucking do it. I'm buying a practice sword. It's like I'm vegan. It's like all I'm gonna talk about.
7:11 Karen Kilgariff? Do you remember the story I told you where I used to take my old dog, George, to the dog park at 6 a.m.?
7:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, and you met someone there.
7:17 Karen Kilgariff? I didn't meet him. I was on this end of the park. On the other, the end of the park, I looked down, there's a guy dressed like a ninja with a real sword. And I was like, so I'm further away from my car in a straight line than he is to me. How are we going to do this?
7:32 Georgia Hardstark? I'm gonna run at you.
7:33 Karen Kilgariff? And then I just slowly walked back to my car and he never stopped sorting, sworting.
7:37 Georgia Hardstark? I wonder where he is now. That, ladies and gentlemen, is.
7:41 Karen Kilgariff? Tom Cruise.
7:41 Georgia Hardstark? There you go.
7:42 Karen Kilgariff? That's all we needed. Well, I, I actually had a video for you.
7:47 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
7:47 Karen Kilgariff? I think you're gonna like this.
7:49 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
7:49 Karen Kilgariff? Cause I was blown away at the information that I got from this.
7:53 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
7:54 Speaker 05 Nancy Drew went public domain in January and nobody is talking about what that actually means. The version of Nancy Drew that most of us grew up with, the 1959 version, is not the original version. The publishers rewrote her, making her more polite, less careful and less impulsive. In the 1930s version, she slams doors, talks back, drives into thunderstorms and climbs into the back of moving vans to steal evidence from criminals. She's 16 years old and she's completely unhinged, but in the best way. And as of January 2026, that original text is free. It's public domain, so I annotated it. The link is in my bio.
8:39 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
8:40 Speaker 05 It's $10. And it comes with a evidence log, a suspect tracker and a playlist.
8:47 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. People are so clever.
8:51 Karen Kilgariff? Here's what I love. She's like, I need people to know. Like when she, that first half of the video had me already where I was like, what? I never knew that.
8:59 Georgia Hardstark? About Nancy Drew? No.
9:00 Karen Kilgariff? But now she's making like a book club where for 10 bucks, you can join this thing of like original Nancy Drew.
9:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:06 Karen Kilgariff? Book club storyline. I'm like.
9:08 Georgia Hardstark? We're gonna all read it.
9:09 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
9:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:10 Karen Kilgariff? I feel like that's something our listeners would be like, I would love to do that.
9:14 Georgia Hardstark? OG Nancy Drew. She wears pants.
9:17 Karen Kilgariff? Can you believe she's so rude as to ask a question?
9:20 Georgia Hardstark? And she has a sword.
9:22 Karen Kilgariff? Nancy Drew with the sword.
9:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:24 Karen Kilgariff? I'm totally doing this.
9:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, for sure.
9:26 Karen Kilgariff? Her handle is the incurable nerd society.
9:28 Georgia Hardstark? Amazing.
9:29 Karen Kilgariff? So perfect. So go on there. That was from TikTok, but it's probably also on Instagram.
9:34 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, that's our new book club book that we never speak of again.
9:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, you don't have to get me anything for my birthday, but if you would please join the 1930s badass Nancy Drew book club.
9:43 Georgia Hardstark? Hell, yeah.
9:43 Karen Kilgariff? That'd be fun.
9:44 Georgia Hardstark? I love it.
9:45 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I just wanted to recommend really quick.
9:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
9:47 Karen Kilgariff? There's a TV show on Apple.
9:50 Georgia Hardstark? One, two, Widows Bay.
9:53 Georgia Hardstark? Three, Widows Bay.
9:55 Karen Kilgariff? Widows Bay.
9:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yep, I have it written down right here.
9:57 Karen Kilgariff? My brain literally was like, Widows Bay, say it, say it fast.
10:01 Georgia Hardstark? It's beautiful, beautiful Matthew Reese.
10:03 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
10:04 Georgia Hardstark? It's like a Stephen King, like haunted.
10:07 Karen Kilgariff? Comedy.
10:08 Georgia Hardstark? Comedy island that's seen in the first episode in the historical society.
10:13 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
10:14 Georgia Hardstark? Museum. Fucking brilliant.
10:16 Karen Kilgariff? Now, do you know, this is my favorite detail. So the person that created that show is Katie Dippold.
10:22 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
10:22 Karen Kilgariff? And she's the person that went totally viral and did go viral every year on Halloween because she has that tweet with a picture of herself dressed as the Babadook. And she was like, when you find out it's more of an adult drinks party than a costume party. And she went to a Halloween party dressed fully like the Babadook with like crazy pale white face and a hat.
10:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
10:41 Karen Kilgariff? And she's just sitting there while all these normally dressed people.
10:44 Georgia Hardstark? Excuse me, have a party on November 1st or October 30th if you're not wanting people to dress up.
10:50 Karen Kilgariff? I mean.
10:50 Georgia Hardstark? You know?
10:51 Karen Kilgariff? It's very mean. Where it's like, you know, the holiday, we're gonna take it apart. And then Katie Dippold, as I was watching that show and literally laughing out loud, I was like, who the fuck made this? And then when I looked it up, it was like, amazing.
11:03 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it's so good.
11:04 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, definitely watch it.
11:05 Georgia Hardstark? It's really clever and fun.
11:06 Karen Kilgariff? It's so good. Okay.
11:08 Georgia Hardstark? I love that. We both had that. One, two, three. Exactly right media. We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. Here's some highlights.
11:16 Karen Kilgariff? So many great podcasts on this network, but Brief Recession, one of the greats. And this week, Michael and Melissa are tackling truly cursed legal headlines. They will be discussing the recent Haunto virus outbreaks. But also, there's a case of a Secret Service agent who was arrested for fondling himself in a hotel hallway. So they're gonna talk about that a little bit.
11:37 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
11:38 Karen Kilgariff? Also, the bizarre twists in the JP Morgan sex hoax lawsuit.
11:42 Georgia Hardstark? I want to know more. That's really interesting.
11:44 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, what's going on?
11:45 Georgia Hardstark? Everything is, it's not the right timeline. Oops, we skipped to a different.
11:49 Karen Kilgariff? Let's bump it back, Nancy Drew.
11:51 Georgia Hardstark? Fucking timeline.
11:52 Karen Kilgariff? Come on.
11:53 Georgia Hardstark? And on Buried Bones, Paul and Kate head to Tacoma, Washington. Oh, man, that place in 1947, after the murder of a mother and daughter, sparks an investigation to a lesser known serial killer. And that reminds me, I started reading Murder Land again, just because it was so good.
12:09 Karen Kilgariff? Did I tell you that I had to stop? When I was reading it, I was by myself and I had to stop because it was freaking me out so bad. It was freaking me out.
12:17 Georgia Hardstark? I never thought of Tacoma as a haunted, scary place until I read Murder Land.
12:21 Karen Kilgariff? Also, Paul Holes and Kate Winkler-Dawson were just in these very seats yesterday.
12:25 Georgia Hardstark? I can feel it.
12:26 Karen Kilgariff? Because they came here to record some shows together.
12:29 Georgia Hardstark? Love it.
12:29 Karen Kilgariff? And those videos will be up soon.
12:32 Georgia Hardstark? On Netflix.
12:33 Karen Kilgariff? So great. Okay, then, over on the runaway hit, Trust Me, Lola and Megan, welcome back from the Netflix doc of the same name, Trust Me. Their guest, Gnomes by Slyne, for part two of their conversation about the cult being raided by the FBI, learning Christine was the informant, and escaping Samuel Bateman's control. So if you've watched Trust Me, the documentary on Netflix, our podcast, Trust Me, is a cult podcast that happens to have the same name. Just watch that.
13:02 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
13:02 Karen Kilgariff? Because some things in common.
13:04 Georgia Hardstark? And there's a new MFM Animated out now on YouTube. This time, Nick Terry animates the busybody deer from episode 64, where we discover that the eyes watching us in the woods belong not to a predator, but to an extremely nosey deer. And you can find every episode of MFM Animated at youtube.com/ExactlyRightMedia.
13:25 Karen Kilgariff? MFM Animated, I highly recommend that TV show.
13:28 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
13:29 Karen Kilgariff? Just like Widows Bay.
13:30 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
13:30 Karen Kilgariff? It's up there.
13:31 Georgia Hardstark? Do you need something like Light Hearted and Enjoy Us to watch?
13:34 Karen Kilgariff? Get in there.
13:34 Georgia Hardstark? Get in there.
13:37 Georgia Hardstark? October is the month when being scared is supposed to be fun.
13:39 Karen Kilgariff? Terrified in a haunted house? Sure. Your actual house? Absolutely not.
13:44 Georgia Hardstark? Feel safe in your home with SimpliSafe.
13:46 Karen Kilgariff? SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside.
13:50 Georgia Hardstark? I recently got an alert from my camera outside that there was like someone prowling around late at night. And of course, I got freaked out. I opened my camera and it was a big spider dangling in front of the camera.
14:04 Georgia Hardstark? Which was terrifying in itself, but such a relief. And I love that I know that it works. You know what I mean? Like, it's so much better a spider than an actual person, but I'll be prepared.
14:13 Karen Kilgariff? All the answers are on your phone. You don't have to worry and sit there and wring your hands.
14:17 Georgia Hardstark? Join the more than 6 million people who entrust SimpliSafe with their home security.
14:21 Karen Kilgariff? Right now, save 60% off with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com/fave.
14:26 Georgia Hardstark? That's simplisafe.com/f-a-v.
14:29 Karen Kilgariff? And when you order, please write in "My Favorite Murder" in the checkout survey. It lets them know that we sent you and it really helps support the show.
14:35 Georgia Hardstark? SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time.
14:37 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
14:40 Georgia Hardstark? All right, I'm first. And I have a really interesting story to tell you, hopefully.
14:44 Karen Kilgariff? Martinelli's Apple Juice, everybody.
14:46 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
14:46 Karen Kilgariff? Celine.
14:47 Georgia Hardstark? Happy birthday.
14:48 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you.
14:49 Georgia Hardstark? So for today's story, we are headed back to a place that we have visited many times in My Favorite Murder lore.
14:57 Karen Kilgariff? Widows Bay.
14:58 Georgia Hardstark? Broadmoor Hospital.
15:00 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, shoot.
15:01 Georgia Hardstark? It's a sprawling psychiatric hospital about two hours east of London, dating back to the Victorian era. Many of the worst criminal offenders in the UK who have been found to need psychiatric care have been sent there. We've covered people who were sent here, who sit on a spectrum of violence, including the teacup poisoner Graham Young, organized criminal Ronnie Cray, painter Richard Dodd, William Chester Minor, who helped compile the Oxford English Dictionary.
15:28 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
15:29 Georgia Hardstark? Remember? As well as like almost completely nonviolent people who were just dealt more difficult hands, like June and Jennifer Gibbons, the silent twins that you've covered. So we have been to Broadmoor many times here. And today, we're back at the hospital. It's 1989 and we're in the central hall. Usually during the day, the space would be full of patients seeing visitors. In the evening, it's where the hospital will occasionally host a disco for patients who can safely socialize. Today, however, it's being used for a production of Hamlet, put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
16:03 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
16:03 Georgia Hardstark? With its creative director, the actor Mark Rylance, in the title role.
16:08 Karen Kilgariff? Hell, yes.
16:08 Georgia Hardstark? You know Mark Rylance?
16:09 Karen Kilgariff? Hell, yes.
16:10 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. The audience is mostly Broadmoor patients. They have a much more intimate knowledge of the play's subject matter, the violence and mental illness of Hamlet, than perhaps any prior audience has ever had. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, today, we're telling the story of how Shakespeare came to Broadmoor and how those performances affected the patients, staff, the actors, and the hospital.
16:34 Karen Kilgariff? Wow. Mark Rylance, I got to see him on Broadway. It's like La Bête or something like that. In it, he did a 15-minute monologue.
16:43 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus Christ.
16:44 Karen Kilgariff? And it's just him holding forth, and he is one of the most compelling, incredible, well, stage actors, obviously, movie actors, but like onstage, you can't take your eyes off him.
16:53 Georgia Hardstark? We have a photo of him in Hamlet when he was younger, if people want to see it.
16:57 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yes.
16:59 Georgia Hardstark? Right?
16:59 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
17:00 Georgia Hardstark? Like, that is an actor.
17:02 Karen Kilgariff? Actor.
17:03 Georgia Hardstark? Actor.
17:03 Karen Kilgariff? But also the thing of like, in England, and this was the one time I got a part and I had to go to Glasgow to do it.
17:09 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
17:10 Karen Kilgariff? Many of the cast members that I was acting with had gone to the Royal Shakespeare Academy.
17:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
17:16 Karen Kilgariff? And it is, it unnerved me from the first moment I stepped into the rehearsal room. I was just like, what am I doing?
17:22 Georgia Hardstark? You're a Sacramento State dropout.
17:25 Karen Kilgariff? Come on.
17:26 Georgia Hardstark? Shakespeare Company royalty.
17:28 Karen Kilgariff? Although Tom Hanks did go to Sac State.
17:30 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
17:30 Karen Kilgariff? And he did drama there.
17:32 Georgia Hardstark? There you go.
17:33 Karen Kilgariff? But I think he graduated. I don't know. I don't know.
17:35 Georgia Hardstark? But look at you now.
17:38 Karen Kilgariff? But I just have so much respect for that.
17:40 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, it's a big, huge, important thing.
17:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
17:43 Georgia Hardstark? Like Juilliard. So the main source for this story is a book called Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor, which was compiled by the doctor who spearheaded this program, Dr. Murray Cox. And the rest of the sources are in the show notes. And also shout out to Molly Smith and Ally Elkin, my wonderful researcher, for this idea. I just, I wouldn't have stumbled upon this and I just love it.
18:05 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it's a good one.
18:06 Georgia Hardstark? So this all begins with the psychiatrist named Murray Cox. He's born in Birmingham, England in 1931. He goes to St. Catherine's College at Cambridge, then trains as a doctor at London Hospital. He works as a general practitioner for about 10 years before becoming a psychiatrist. And he first works as a forensic psychiatrist at a prison before taking a position at Broadmoor in 1970, when he's about 39 years old. So throughout his career at Broadmoor, Murray Cox becomes known for three things. His insistence in seeing the humanity of each of his patients, which sadly is a kind of rare thing, seems like, those days and these days maybe, his Christian faith and
18:48 Georgia Hardstark? his affinity for the theater, for theater, especially for Shakespeare's plays.
18:54 Karen Kilgariff? The way you said it the first time, I was like, for the theater?
18:56 Georgia Hardstark? Theater. You may remember from English class, if you weren't sleeping through it, or from Shakespeare in Love, that in Elizabethan London, poor people who led pretty miserable lives were able to get standing room tickets on the floor at the Globe Theatre to see live performances of Shakespeare's play, which was a huge deal. It makes Dr. Cox consider that theater may have had some therapeutic effect even then. Dr. Cox presents these ideas at a conference of Shakespeare scholars, and that's when he first meets Mark Rylance. So they get coffee together in May of 1989, right around when the Royal Shakespeare Company is about to perform Hamlet.
19:35 Georgia Hardstark? Dr. Cox tells Rylance that he discusses Shakespeare with patients sometimes in their sessions, especially the ones who remember reading the plays in school. And he says he has frank discussions with those patients about the violence in the plays and the portrayals of madness, quote unquote, and whether they can relate. And so he uses them as a tool to get them to open up.
19:57 Karen Kilgariff? Mm hmm.
19:58 Georgia Hardstark? During that coffee meeting, Rylance has the idea of bringing a production of Hamlet to the hospital.
20:04 Karen Kilgariff? And it totally makes you think of when the Cramps went to a psychiatric institution as well and played like their best show.
20:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
20:11 Karen Kilgariff? There's video of that online. It feels like so truly like we're being artists here. When you do stuff like that, where you're like, we're not, we're not sitting here talking about like, how are we going to make it, whatever. It's like, Mark Rylance is like, how do I take this talent and do something that, for the good?
20:28 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. And it's like, the importance of art in mental health and that people actually recognize that is so important.
20:35 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
20:36 Georgia Hardstark? You know, nowadays, it doesn't even happen. But back then, it's really, it's really impressive.
20:40 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
20:40 Georgia Hardstark? So after some logistical planning and some back and forth, it is agreed that for one night only, the Royal Shakespeare Company will bring its production of Hamlet to Broadmoor Hospital. The performance takes place in August of 1989. I was just nine years old. How old were you? Nineteen.
20:57 Karen Kilgariff? Mm hmm.
20:57 Georgia Hardstark? Okay. And so here we are, nine and 19, living our lives. I thought it would be interesting to those who weren't alive then and don't have the PTSD that we have and that everyone from that time has, to understand what a turbulent shit show the world was at that moment, and why having this moment of art and peace would have been so impactful to the patients. Because, I mean, I heard 1989 and I'm like, oh, that was hard. And then I realized, like, not everyone knows who listens to this was alive then.
21:29 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
21:30 Georgia Hardstark? So here are some fucked up things. And shout out to Wikipedia for the help. The massively destructive Exxon Valdez spill had just happened.
21:39 Georgia Hardstark? Colombia's War on Drugs, where Colombian drug cartels declared total and absolute war against the government was raging. And in August of 1989, it was a critical and chaotic turning point in the final months of the Cold War.
21:51 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:51 Georgia Hardstark? With anti-communist revolutions happening in Central and Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall just a couple of months away.
21:57 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:58 Georgia Hardstark? So it was very turbulent. I have more. You want to hear more?
22:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, absolutely.
22:02 Georgia Hardstark? Horrible things. The pro-democracy student demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square had just been violently and publicly suppressed by the Chinese government. Apartheid in South Africa was raging with a 70-year-old Nelson Mandela sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to overthrow the state. There's more. The troubles in North Ireland were violently raging with the provisional IRA conducting paramilitary campaigns on British military targets and civilians in the British mainland. What?
22:29 Karen Kilgariff? Well, I just want, you know, we're talking about the IRA targeting the British. They shouldn't have been there.
22:34 Georgia Hardstark? Right. No, 100%.
22:35 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, if they had just gone, then nobody would have been targeted.
22:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yes. It was not a
22:39 Karen Kilgariff? They started it.
22:39 Georgia Hardstark? It was not a one-way street.
22:40 Karen Kilgariff? Colonialism.
22:41 Georgia Hardstark? Colonialism happened. And then, let's not get started on Serbia and Kosovo or the Middle East and the Gulf War that's about to pop off. But don't worry, just to end this on a, like, bright
22:51 Karen Kilgariff? There's also a hole in the ozone layer.
22:52 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Oh, yeah, we were freaking out about that.
22:54 Karen Kilgariff? Remember that?
22:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yep. But just to cap that with something positive, Taylor Swift is born that year. So it's gonna be okay.
22:59 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I didn't realize what a true Swiftie you are.
23:01 Georgia Hardstark? Everything's gonna be okay.
23:02 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
23:03 Georgia Hardstark? Well, her album's called 1989, so like, I'm not brilliant.
23:07 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, okay.
23:07 Georgia Hardstark? I just know.
23:08 Karen Kilgariff? Just a reference.
23:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. So we're here in Broadmoor Central Hall, under the disco ball that's used for the hospital discos. Take me there. And it's, you're gonna love this, it's an In the Round performance.
23:19 Karen Kilgariff? [laughing]
23:21 Georgia Hardstark? Which we intimately know about because we did that on like, our first or second leg of our tour in Arizona.
23:29 Karen Kilgariff? And they're doing it for Hamlet.
23:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. So tell everyone who doesn't know what In the Round means.
23:34 Karen Kilgariff? I believe it was the Celebrity Theater in either Phoenix or Tucson.
23:39 Georgia Hardstark? I think it was Phoenix.
23:40 Karen Kilgariff? Phoenix. And we didn't know until we arrived that night that this would be not just a stage in the round, which means everyone can see you at all. All times, there's no, you can't.
23:50 Georgia Hardstark? Like a Gladiator, in the middle of a fucking Gladiator theater.
23:54 Karen Kilgariff? People are like, no. But also that the stage rotated, so it wasn't a still round stage.
24:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:00 Karen Kilgariff? Where you could kind of be like, well, now I'm gonna walk over here.
24:02 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:03 Karen Kilgariff? You just moved there. And it was really slow, kind of like the old Holiday Inn in Hollywood that had the rotating restaurant.
24:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
24:10 Karen Kilgariff? Where it just kind of like, it's not crazy, but it's also not still at all.
24:14 Georgia Hardstark? Right, yeah.
24:14 Karen Kilgariff? And we were out of our minds.
24:17 Georgia Hardstark? It was the most fun.
24:18 Karen Kilgariff? It was so hilarious.
24:19 Georgia Hardstark? I don't remember anything about that time, and I fucking will never forget being in the round.
24:23 Karen Kilgariff? I will never forget the two girls that I used as my 12 o'clock, because I was like, okay, now we're back here again.
24:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. I definitely got seasick. Okay.
24:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
24:31 Georgia Hardstark? So, all patients and staff sit around the actors who perform in the central circle. And so, this new venue is a bit of an adjustment at first. The actors had been performing for 2,000 people in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford upon Avon. So, they're kind of figuring out how loud to be, like, but it quickly becomes a very intimate, and for that reason, powerful, performance.
24:56 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
24:57 Georgia Hardstark? The actors say they can feel a palpable difference in this performance. Certain speeches don't seem to have quite their usual reception, but others that normally wouldn't get any attention, or, you know, any kind of.
25:10 Karen Kilgariff? Response?
25:10 Georgia Hardstark? Response are imbued with a newfound potency.
25:14 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
25:15 Georgia Hardstark? So, after the performance, the actors have a talkback session with the patients and the staff, and it's clear that this has been a positive experience for everyone. Mark Rylance says he's sad to go back to his normal performances after that. The performance at Broadmoor had been such a welcome escape, and in some ways, the audience there could relate to the content so much more powerfully than typical theater goers.
25:37 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
25:37 Georgia Hardstark? Right? So, if you remember the play, I'm sure you do, but let me just say, Hamlet's mental health and Ophelia's mental health are central elements. In the end, Hamlet forces his uncle to confront the fact that he committed a murder by making him watch a play about it. So, this is very powerful in a room that contains people who have committed similar crimes, and it's. Seems like this play has touched people's consciences in a way nothing really has before. So the Royal Shakespeare Company goes back to their scheduled performances in Stratford. Rylance says, quote, "It was awful going back to Stratford after that, going back to the audiences. They felt much more in prison," the audiences, funnily enough, "in Stratford."
26:18 Karen Kilgariff? Hmm.
26:18 Georgia Hardstark? "I always imagined that you are talking to people on the level on which they want to communicate, and that's fine, but it was difficult after Broadmoor where we thought we were having a wonderful conversation," end quote. On the patient's side, the performance has a deep-
26:32 Karen Kilgariff? On the patient's side, they thought the performances were lacking.
26:35 Georgia Hardstark? They actually hated it, and so they decided to put their own performances on.
26:39 Karen Kilgariff? They're so critical about the acting, where it's just like, I just didn't believe it.
26:42 Georgia Hardstark? Like, I could do it better. That's how this podcast came around. On the patient's side, the performance has deep and lasting impacts. Dr. Cox will later write, quote, "The insurgents of the Hamlet Company and its nonjudgmental energies opened doors of possibility which have not closed," end quote. There are the therapeutic effects of seeing live theater, of course, but there's also impacts to the patient's self-esteem by participating in something that the rest of the outside world gets to participate in as well, treated like humans.
27:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yep.
27:12 Georgia Hardstark? The Royal Shakespeare Company tours with this production, mounting it in several different locations, so when the London leg of the tour is reviewed in The Guardian, patients at Broadmoor read the review and get to know exactly what the critic is talking about, so they're participating. And one patient, named David Caldwell, writes a letter to the editor, he's a patient at Broadmoor-
27:33 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
27:34 Georgia Hardstark? -saying, quote, "I did not see Hamlet staged at the Barbican or the Old Vic. The RSC's stage was the wooden floor of the central hall here in Broadmoor. The only scenery was the nicotine-stained walls and the backdrop of aged oil drapes. Mark Rylance was able to capture every aspect of a person's slip into the world of psychopathic, manipulative paranoia. Many of us here in Broadmoor are able to understand Hamlet's disturbed state because we have experienced such traumas. We are most grateful for the cast's spectacular efforts in staging Hamlet for us for free- Of charge and on one of their infrequent days off, end quote.
28:13 Karen Kilgariff? I didn't, I mean, I was kind of thinking about that, but then the idea, your story is not some, you know, maybe in your family, you're the only one, or maybe in your town, you were the crazy person.
28:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
28:25 Karen Kilgariff? Your story is as old as time.
28:27 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
28:28 Karen Kilgariff? This is what people have been dealing with since the beginning of time.
28:31 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. And someone in a regular theater goer would not, couldn't, can't understand such a thing.
28:35 Karen Kilgariff? Don't have to understand.
28:36 Georgia Hardstark? Right, right. They can watch it purely as entertainment rather than like, you know.
28:42 Karen Kilgariff? It's like a little telegram from Shakespeare to those patients.
28:45 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
28:45 Karen Kilgariff? Over hundreds of years. I mean, that must have felt wild, incredible.
28:50 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it did.
28:52 Karen Kilgariff? I loved it.
28:53 Georgia Hardstark? Okay, so the experience is so positive for everyone that the Royal Shakespeare Company returns in 1990 to perform Romeo and Juliet. And in 1991, the Royal National Theater performs King Lear. In King Lear, Brian Cox.
29:07 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
29:08 Georgia Hardstark? From Succession, plays the title role. And Sir Ian McKellen plays the Earl of Kent. So.
29:14 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, Lee.
29:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I have photos. These are two of the greatest actors of all, you know, modern actors of all time.
29:19 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
29:20 Georgia Hardstark? And they're, yes, Brian Cox, amazing, right?
29:23 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Also, like, I wish that people cared about acting more in America.
29:27 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
29:28 Karen Kilgariff? The way they do over there because it's like, it's a true trade. It's like you go into it, it's, you're respected. It's like you want to be great.
29:35 Georgia Hardstark? Historical. It's not just like money making.
29:38 Karen Kilgariff? Have you ever seen that thing where Judi Dench was on Graham Norton? And they ask her to just perform a little bit of Shakespeare? And she just does this thing and she goes like zip. And then she's like speaking and talking, but it's the most compelling. You don't know what she's saying per se.
29:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
29:55 Karen Kilgariff? And it's the most compelling thing. It's like, the people who know how to do that.
29:59 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
30:00 Karen Kilgariff? Are like wizards.
30:01 Georgia Hardstark? No, that's so true. So all of these plays that they are staging deal with violence and mental illness, described as madness in Shakespeare's language. And all the actors talk about how the Broadmoor audience would react to lines that went over everyone else's heads. Brian Cox and Ian McKellen. Talk about how the experience reinvigorated their passion for the plays. McClellan writes that the actors, quote, "were reminded of the purpose of playing, which can too often be obscured by the pressures of first nights and of long runs. Who do we do these plays for? Anonymous audiences whom we never meet? Directors who we meet all too often? Or drama critics who sometimes tell us they're bored with Hamlet?" End quote.
30:43 Georgia Hardstark? A reporter goes along to the performance of King Lear and notes how it moved the audience. Afterward, a doctor tells her, quote, "Patients will go on talking about these performances for months, even years afterward. They come up in dreams and therapeutic sessions." End quote. As these productions continue at Broadmoor, a drama program there also becomes more robust under a new creative unit that uses the arts for therapy. This has very positive effects for patients and it must be, I have to just note this, it's around the same time and it sounds like part of this effort comes through Jimmy Savile.
31:19 Karen Kilgariff? No.
31:20 Georgia Hardstark? So like the arts program, like we can't just freeze over that.
31:24 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, no.
31:25 Georgia Hardstark? It's tainted. So.
31:27 Karen Kilgariff? That is one of the many hideous things about people like Jimmy Savile, where because you are a wolf in sheep's clothing and you're basically exploiting this opportunity, that actually is very needed and wanted of people volunteering and helping in places like that where maybe everybody doesn't care as much.
31:47 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Like you tainted it for everyone for life.
31:50 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
31:50 Georgia Hardstark? Don't be a bucket monster. So, well-publicized improvements to conditions at Broadmoor inevitably leads to backlash. Some people in Broadmoor have committed violent and horrible acts and there's an attitude among the public that the patients there are living the high life on taxpayer money. Before King Lear, a Conservative Member of Parliament attacks the initiative, saying, quote, "Why on earth should taxpayers fund the RSC to perform to a bunch of psychopathic killers?" End quote. And it's like, that's the attitude that leads people to be in prison for life and in and out and.
32:25 Karen Kilgariff? Well, and also, it's the easiest attitude to have.
32:28 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
32:28 Karen Kilgariff? They're all bad the end.
32:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, and they don't deserve good things.
32:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yep. And like, we've done this show enough to be like, oh, right, there's so much nuance.
32:36 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, there's no humanity in that way of thinking whatsoever.
32:40 Karen Kilgariff? Because also, it's like, maybe there are killers there. What about all the people that got put there when they were teenagers?
32:47 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
32:47 Karen Kilgariff? Because their mental illness makes it so that someone has to take care of them.
32:51 Georgia Hardstark? And even the violence, you have to say, like, where did they come from? What advantages and disadvantages did they have that other people didn't?
32:58 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
32:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it's nuanced.
32:59 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
33:00 Georgia Hardstark? So it doesn't seem like there's a direct link between this backlash and an end to the performances, but the professional performances by the National Shakespeare Companies at Broadmoor are limited to these three performances in the late 80s and early 90s. But the use of theater and the arts in therapy has lived on at Broadmoor. We don't know about any of the identities of the patients who saw the plays, other than David, who wrote that letter to the Guardian. So we don't know if any of the people we have covered on the show were present at any of the performances.
33:30 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah.
33:31 Georgia Hardstark? However, Ron, Cray, and June and Jennifer Gibbons would have been there at that time. So it's possible that they saw those performances.
33:39 Karen Kilgariff? I'm going to write a musical about the audience of that.
33:42 Georgia Hardstark? Girl.
33:43 Karen Kilgariff? Come on.
33:43 Georgia Hardstark? Do it. Sing us the opening song.
33:46 Karen Kilgariff? I'm Ronnie Cray, and I don't care what you say.
33:51 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
33:53 Karen Kilgariff? Hey.
33:53 Georgia Hardstark? Hey.
33:55 Karen Kilgariff? It's easy to rhyme.
33:57 Georgia Hardstark? When you don't have a dime.
33:59 Karen Kilgariff? Don't have the time.
34:01 Georgia Hardstark? Any time.
34:02 Karen Kilgariff? This is the worst song we've ever written.
34:04 Georgia Hardstark? We're going to work on it.
34:05 Karen Kilgariff? It's my birthday.
34:08 Georgia Hardstark? Shakespeare's plays are often compared to a mirror reflecting the audience so that they can see their own lives in the stories. Dr. Cox says this quality is what gives them their therapeutic value. He says, quote, "In therapy, we try to help what has been buried to become conscious, but that's only half the story." What becomes conscious? Conscious has to become integrated. So that can accept my aggression, depression, low self-esteem. It's making something you can't tolerate into an integrated part of yourself. That's like that end quote. And that's actually what my therapist calls and what is called parts work, which is a really interesting kind of therapy. There's a great book on it.
34:48 Karen Kilgariff? And what is that? That you're just, there's many parts of you?
34:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, and whatever one is leading is, you know, like you're acting the way that helped you at one time to get through life, probably as a child. And you're still figuring that out. But there's other parts of you, including that part, that needs to be addressed and needs to be shown that they're safe now and they're taken care of, not just like suppressed.
35:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
35:12 Georgia Hardstark? So suppressing the angry part of you isn't going to get rid of it. But understanding why that anger is there and what happened when it came like, and what happened in your life when you needed it is the way to work through it.
35:26 Karen Kilgariff? Happy birthday, Georgia. That was beautiful.
35:29 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
35:29 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, that's so true. It is so true. It's, I mean, I was in therapy for years before I could really get that.
35:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
35:37 Karen Kilgariff? It's because it's really hard. And it is that kind of thing where it's like, much like watching a play, you have to look back and tell yourself different stories about
35:46 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
35:47 Karen Kilgariff? the experiences that you've had, which is, can be hard in and of itself.
35:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, you're contextualizing all the history in, as that personality. And that personality might not be correct about what they're assessing. Like you can, you know what I mean? It's just.
36:02 Karen Kilgariff? Or it's just one version.
36:03 Georgia Hardstark? Exactly.
36:03 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
36:04 Georgia Hardstark? So it's called, the book's called Parts Work. And to put it better, Dr. Cox quotes The Tempest and says, quote, "This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine," end quote. And that is the story of how Shakespeare came to Broadmoor.
36:18 Karen Kilgariff? Hell, yeah.
36:19 Georgia Hardstark? Our Mental Health Awareness Month.
36:21 Karen Kilgariff? I love that story.
36:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, wasn't that cool? Thank you, Ally and Molly, for suggesting it. What a great.
36:27 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, great job. Also, just those actors, like, because I bet you there's about 25 other actors that are like lesser known that would have been in, I'm gonna absolutely look up who was in all those productions.
36:39 Georgia Hardstark? And who knows what it did to them.
36:41 Karen Kilgariff? Right? Exactly, because like, when you go out and you're acting, you're just like, okay, I'm facing this way, three quarters this way, or whatever.
36:48 Georgia Hardstark? Every night's the same, pretty much.
36:50 Karen Kilgariff? You're, you're playing silences that you know will be there.
36:53 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
36:53 Karen Kilgariff? Here's, here's the big part where they clap for holding up a skull, or whatever the fuck it is. And suddenly now, it's like, it's probably very similar to, but they would never do this, doing it for a grammar school.
37:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
37:06 Karen Kilgariff? Where it's like, now they're laughing at some weird thing.
37:11 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
37:12 Karen Kilgariff? That was great.
37:12 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Thank you.
37:14 Karen Kilgariff? Mark Rylance for the win.
37:16 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
37:18 Georgia Hardstark? October is the month when being scared is supposed to be fun.
37:20 Karen Kilgariff? Terrified in a haunted house? Sure. Your actual house? Absolutely not.
37:25 Georgia Hardstark? Feel safe in your home with SimpliSafe.
37:27 Karen Kilgariff? SimpliSafe is designed to help stop intruders before they get inside.
37:31 Georgia Hardstark? I recently got an alert from my camera outside that there is like someone prowling around late at night, and of course, I got freaked out. I opened my camera and it was a big spider dangling in front of the camera.
37:45 Georgia Hardstark? Which was terrifying in itself, but such a relief. And I love that I know that it works. You know what I mean? Like, it's so much better a spider than an actual person, but I'll be prepared.
37:54 Karen Kilgariff? All the answers are on your phone. You don't have to worry and sit there and wring your hands.
37:58 Georgia Hardstark? Join the more than 6 million people who entrust SimpliSafe with their home security.
38:02 Karen Kilgariff? Right now, save 60% off with professional monitoring when you visit simplisafe.com/fave.
38:07 Georgia Hardstark? That's simplisafe.com/fav.
38:10 Karen Kilgariff? And when you order, please write in "my favorite murder" in the checkout survey. It lets them know that we sent you and it really helps support the show.
38:16 Georgia Hardstark? SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time.
38:18 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
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39:33 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, well, we're going to go in a different direction. Please.
39:38 Karen Kilgariff? We're going to come back to America where you were born and raised. Pay your taxes. Shut up, the IRS is listening to this. God damn it. Yeah, if you didn't pay yours, that means I didn't pay mine. This is a story that I was going to do when we were on tour and I was so excited about it. And then, but it came down to, it was the Chicago show, but this is a Wisconsin story. Okay. And so we, the Chicago story is a little more Chicago-y. Yeah. And so we saved this one. And finally, Molly Smith, again, our producer, our great producer Molly Smith, was like, "What if we do that one on your birthday?" Ooh. That's such a good idea. Oh God, what is it?
40:18 Karen Kilgariff? Well, it's basically, it was just the 35th anniversary of this event this month. It happened on Friday, May 3rd, 1991, around the same.
40:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
40:30 Karen Kilgariff? Time is your event.
40:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
40:31 Karen Kilgariff? It happened on the east side of Madison, Wisconsin, at a business called Central Storage and Warehouse, which is a massive storage complex consisting of five buildings. Inside these buildings, they store an unimaginable amount of food and dairy products. The Associated Press reports that it's about 53 million pounds of food, including, quote, "weiners." I swear to God, that's the AP.
40:58 Georgia Hardstark? Weiners.
40:58 Karen Kilgariff? Weiners. Cranberries, and about 14 million pounds of surplus government butter and cheese.
41:05 Georgia Hardstark? I have a feeling I know what happens when heavy stuff is in a warehouse.
41:08 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm. Marin added this note, which is so Marin. 53 million pounds is very roughly the weight of 170 blue whales.
41:17 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you. That's a lot.
41:19 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, that's, that's several pods of blue whales.
41:22 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
41:22 Karen Kilgariff? So, on this day in 1991, about 20 or so CSW, Central Storage and Warehouse, employees are clocked in. It's the afternoon on a Friday, so the end of a long work week is just around the corner. But things are about to take a very unexpected and unfortunate turn because somewhere in this massive complex, a small spark will ignite. And soon, it'll build into a fire that will be among the most destructive in Madison's history. This is the story of the 1991 Wisconsin Butter Fire.
41:58 Georgia Hardstark? Butter Fire? I was totally thinking you were going sinkhole.
42:02 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, no.
42:02 Georgia Hardstark? When you were like, it was really heavy. I was like, I know what happens when things are heavy.
42:06 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, that's a great idea.
42:08 Georgia Hardstark? This one, no, I'm like, this is a...
42:09 Karen Kilgariff? I also feel like the story of a sinkhole is just like, it sank.
42:13 Georgia Hardstark? It's a sinkhole.
42:13 Karen Kilgariff? It sank, and then some cars fell in. You hope people didn't die.
42:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, no.
42:18 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
42:18 Georgia Hardstark? Fire, love it. I mean, hate it.
42:20 Karen Kilgariff? Hate it.
42:21 Georgia Hardstark? Hate it.
42:21 Karen Kilgariff? We gotta fight it.
42:22 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
42:23 Karen Kilgariff? The articles used as sources today are some from the Associated Press and the Wisconsin State Journal archives. There was a 2022 piece by journalist John Onkin that ran in the Wisconsin State Farmer, which is a precious name for a newspaper.
42:38 Georgia Hardstark? Love that one.
42:39 Karen Kilgariff? Let's keep it alive. And then a 1991 piece from a magazine called Fire Engineering.
42:46 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
42:46 Karen Kilgariff? Home Jim is a subscriber, entitled "Central Storage Warehouse Fire, Madison, Wisconsin."
42:53 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
42:53 Karen Kilgariff? Grabby headlines.
42:54 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
42:55 Karen Kilgariff? Get readers. The rest of the sources are in our show notes. I started off by saying, have you ever tried to brown butter?
43:03 Georgia Hardstark? I bet it smelled really good at first is what I was thinking.
43:06 Karen Kilgariff? I bet it did.
43:07 Georgia Hardstark? Brown butter Rice Krispie Treats. Next time you make Rice Krispie Treats, everyone, brown, lightly brown the butter.
43:13 Karen Kilgariff? Brown that butter.
43:14 Georgia Hardstark? Life changing.
43:14 Karen Kilgariff? But you gotta stand there. It's like a thing. There's all these fats and there's all this chemical reaction and all this stuff to it. And then if you wait one second too long, you burn it. So let's just all get in our minds in that way of what we're dealing with here. Okay. So what really happens is this. The battery in one of the forklifts sparks and starts a small fire in the one warehouse. The sprinkler system immediately kicks on. A couple of employees hit the flames with fire extinguishers, but they can't put it out. Luckily, there is a fire station one block away. So those guys arrive immediately. They better. So some firefighters attack this fire with hoses. Others make sure all
43:57 Karen Kilgariff? the building's doors are shut so no oxygen gets in to feed the blaze. Now the firefighters are feeling like they have things under control, but there is a problem. The walls of this building have flammable insulation. So when the fire gets to the walls, it just immediately shoots up to the ceiling and burns a large hole in the roof. And it's a windy day in Madison this day. So once that hole even starts, fresh air rushes in, it feeds the blaze, and the fire starts to grow exponentially. So basically, it all starts like a campfire. A small flame, someone blows on it, and now you're having the best senior spring week
44:37 Karen Kilgariff? beach care ever. That's my funny joke that I wrote in at the end of that line. A key difference from your typical campfire, though, is that in this scenario, the kindling is millions of pounds of oily fatty foods.
44:51 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
44:53 Georgia Hardstark? That's bad, right?
44:54 Karen Kilgariff? It's bad. It's bad because it's a great fuel.
44:58 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
44:58 Karen Kilgariff? But it also, the smell, which we will get to.
45:01 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
45:02 Karen Kilgariff? So Madison East Fire Department Chief Ron Schmelzer will tell reporters, quote, "What we got here is a massive grease fire." Wait, sorry. Oh, yeah. What we got here is a massive grease fire, eh?
45:13 Georgia Hardstark? Is he Canadian?
45:15 Karen Kilgariff? Well, I had to come, I had to come up from wherever I was at the beginning.
45:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
45:21 Karen Kilgariff? And Madison Fire Department spokesperson Tom Olshansky will add, quote, "When you splash water on a grease fire, it just splashes back at you."
45:29 Georgia Hardstark? Shit. We learned a long time ago you're supposed to use baking.
45:33 Karen Kilgariff? Baking soda.
45:34 Georgia Hardstark? Soda.
45:34 Karen Kilgariff? I'm gonna go back over that to fix the damage Home Jim and I did with that misstatement that we made one time.
45:41 Georgia Hardstark? No one's gonna listen.
45:43 Karen Kilgariff? No one's gonna listen this time. It's already.
45:44 Georgia Hardstark? No, no, that one.
45:45 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, okay. Okay, great. So these fire crews have to be strategic because they can't just go in, douse the flames with water. That will make it worse. But even the most seasoned firefighter on the scene, and there will eventually be 70 firefighters fighting this fire.
46:01 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus.
46:02 Karen Kilgariff? None of them can claim to have ever fought a warehouse-sized grease fire before.
46:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
46:07 Karen Kilgariff? They have to get creative. Some crews tackle the central grease fire, so the one that's right on top of the melted food products inside the warehouse. Others are hosing down the outside of the building, the roof, and any adjacent buildings to keep the fire from spreading. And those guys can use as much water as they want to, and they do, at a rate of 5,000 gallons a minute.
46:29 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my God.
46:30 Karen Kilgariff? But the fire keeps burning and expanding. And since Home Jim and I really messed it up the first time, let's, let's use this teaching moment to give the correct information of how to extinguish a grease fire.
46:43 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
46:44 Karen Kilgariff? Do not use water on those flames.
46:46 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
46:47 Karen Kilgariff? Do not move the burning pot or pan that you have this grease fire in.
46:51 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
46:52 Karen Kilgariff? Like, a lot of people try to move it to the sink and the fire goes other places. Like, the grease will splash.
46:57 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
46:58 Karen Kilgariff? If it's safe to do so, turn off the heat source. That's a big one people forget.
47:02 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
47:03 Karen Kilgariff? Yep. And if the fire's small enough, you can cover the flames with a lid or baking sheet. Only something metal, nothing glass.
47:11 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Or like throw a towel over it.
47:13 Karen Kilgariff? No towels. I bet you that's... Did my dad say throw a towel?
47:17 Georgia Hardstark? No, but I feel like I would throw a towel on something on fire.
47:21 Karen Kilgariff? Just grab something metal.
47:22 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:23 Karen Kilgariff? You can definitely pour baking soda on top. I think that's the thing they really recommend.
47:27 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:28 Karen Kilgariff? Uh, but if the fire isn't going out or it's spreading, you can go ahead and grab that fire extinguisher you don't know how to use. Also, don't be a hero. If the flames spread or you feel unsafe in any way, just get outside and call 911.
47:42 Georgia Hardstark? I own like five or six, uh, fire extinguishers now.
47:45 Karen Kilgariff? Do you?
47:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:46 Karen Kilgariff? Do you have the... You know, one thing they say is cut that little piece of plastic.
47:50 Georgia Hardstark? So smart.
47:51 Karen Kilgariff? The plastic ring?
47:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:52 Karen Kilgariff? So you can just get it going.
47:53 Georgia Hardstark? Gonna do that. Still, it's still in the box.
47:56 Karen Kilgariff? It's up in the attic.
47:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:59 Karen Kilgariff? But the fire we're talking about today does not go easy, of course. In fact, no matter how the firefighters approach it, it just keeps growing. And it becomes so massive, the smoke can be seen for miles. And the heat is so intense from this fire that drivers that are driving by on the nearby interstate freeway can feel it from inside their cars.
48:21 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, no.
48:22 Karen Kilgariff? Let's take a look at what it looked like.
48:24 Georgia Hardstark? Whoa, that's a big fucking fire.
48:27 Karen Kilgariff? Yep.
48:28 Georgia Hardstark? Central storage, yeah.
48:29 Karen Kilgariff? Central storage. And also their mascot is a polar bear.
48:33 Georgia Hardstark? Cocaine bear?
48:34 Karen Kilgariff? Poor cocaine bear. So one of the few silver linings here is that all of the staffers at CSW have evacuated the building. Only one employee has to be treated for minor injuries. So as far as good news, we've got that and that's about it.
48:50 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
48:51 Karen Kilgariff? Because the closer you get to CSW, the more hellish the scene is. There's a thick smoke and ash covering everything. But since the source of this fire is processed foods, the smell it gives off is disgusting. And the flames reportedly reach eventually 300 feet into the sky, about the height of the Statue of Liberty.
49:12 Georgia Hardstark? No.
49:12 Karen Kilgariff? We have a different angle just to see kind of how big this thing is to start with.
49:17 Georgia Hardstark? Wow. That's tiny little fire.
49:20 Karen Kilgariff? Tiny little fire truck over there for scale.
49:22 Georgia Hardstark? Nothing.
49:24 Karen Kilgariff? So now it's 6:00 PM and it's three hours into this ordeal. Firefighters are working hard to contain this blaze, but they are struggling. And as things continue to deteriorate, a new threat evolves. The flames have reached a second building in that complex and they're creeping toward a third. And these buildings store hazardous chemicals-
49:44 Georgia Hardstark? No!
49:45 Karen Kilgariff? -that are used by CSW for everything from cleaning to fueling refrigeration systems, including sulfuric acid, potassium hydroxide, and ammonia.
49:55 Georgia Hardstark? Are they flammable?
49:56 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, yeah. They're bad. So there's a new threat that if the fire reaches those storage areas, there will be not just more fire, a dangerous cloud of fiery toxic fumes.
50:09 Georgia Hardstark? Fuck.
50:10 Karen Kilgariff? So as the exterior battle to contain the blaze continues, there are crews sent into those at-risk buildings to shut off any systems that might circulate those dangerous chemicals, like the refrigeration systems. And if possible, they physically haul the chemical reserves out of those buildings to safety. This whole fire and this whole disaster has like a whack-a-mole energy because the problems just keep coming up as ones go down. Reports vary on when this happens, but sometime between 8:00 and 11:00 o'clock at night, the building where the fire first started collapses.
50:47 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
50:48 Karen Kilgariff? And when it does, a wave of melted lard, butter, and cheese comes pouring out of the building-
50:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yum.
50:55 Karen Kilgariff? -with some sources claiming that it's 2 to 3 feet high when it does.
51:00 Georgia Hardstark? But butter, cheese, and...
51:02 Karen Kilgariff? And lard.
51:03 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, God. Ew!
51:06 Karen Kilgariff? Look at it. That's all like melted processed food and butter and margarine. It's so bad.
51:13 Georgia Hardstark? That's so gross.
51:14 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so Stephen Davis, who is the city of Madison's fire chief at the time, will describe it as, quote, "Literally a river of butter." It just comes pouring out.
51:25 Georgia Hardstark? What do you even do? Like, I would just be like, this is, I can't do anything.
51:29 Karen Kilgariff? Those firemen? I mean, like, they're swearing, they're laughing, for sure.
51:34 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:34 Karen Kilgariff? They're making references to other people's cooking.
51:38 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:38 Karen Kilgariff? This is like, that spaghetti you made the other. That's just my opinion.
51:41 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
51:42 Karen Kilgariff? All editorial. It is important to say, all the firefighters make it through this building collapse unscathed. Although, the fire is still raging, the tidal wave of melted food does seem to dilute the most concentrated parts of that grease fire.
51:59 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
51:59 Karen Kilgariff? Which is great. It takes disgusting sludge to put out a grease fire. But we're talking about 15 million pounds of liquefied dairy. So now, they have all new problems, because you saw how much goo there was, and how nasty it looked. One report notes that, quote, "One firefighter inadvertently sank up to his chest in butter and nearly lost his boots, as comrades pulled him to safety," end quote. And another describes it as, quote, "Disgusting to look at, difficult to slog through."
52:34 Georgia Hardstark? Tom, get out of the fucking puddle!
52:37 Karen Kilgariff? Get out of there! He's like, "God damn it, get me out of here, you guys!" The Associated Press will write about what they call the, quote, "Traces of black comedy," as these firefighters are forced to trudge through the slop that has now made everything incredibly slippery.
52:52 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
52:53 Karen Kilgariff? Some hoses slip right out of their hands. When others are able to hold on to the hoses, when they turn the water on, they get knocked backwards by the force. When they try to get back up, they're slipping and sliding all over the place.
53:06 Georgia Hardstark? That's a Three Stooges episode.
53:08 Karen Kilgariff? Completely. Meanwhile, the excess water runoff is mixing with this oily goo, so streams of contaminated, burnt, buttery glop are just flowing downward from the complex. Some of this liquid eventually pools in low areas, up to five feet in some places.
53:26 Georgia Hardstark? Gross.
53:28 Karen Kilgariff? While other streams stretch onto nearby roads. The hardest road hit is the one that runs along outside CSW, which is called Cottage Grove Road. It becomes so dangerously slick that a city engineer describes it as, quote, "Like ice in winter." It gets so bad, they actually have to close that road. No, you can't have anybody driving on it, because you're-
53:50 Georgia Hardstark? Slipping around, black ice.
53:54 Karen Kilgariff? And still the butter fire burns into the night. There seemed to be no end in sight for these poor slippery firefighters. Fire Chief Stephen Davis was there for the butter tidal wave. He tells reporters that he had, quote, butter in places a guy shouldn't have butter by the end of the night. End quote.
54:13 Georgia Hardstark? TMI, bro.
54:14 Karen Kilgariff? Listen, Stephen Davis is gonna tell you how it is, like it is.
54:19 Georgia Hardstark? Come with me to the butter fire.
54:22 Karen Kilgariff? Come with me to get your butter treatment. Around 11:00 PM, the roof on one of the other still burning buildings implodes. So evacuation orders are put into place for all the residents in the area around CSW. Emergency workers are still worried about fire reaching those chemical reserves, especially ammonia, because while the crews were able to shut down the system that circulates ammonia through the refrigeration, like conductor.
54:52 Georgia Hardstark? Did you see me nodding?
54:54 Karen Kilgariff? You're like, uh huh. I'm just reading this paper. There's still a 7,750 pound capacity ammonia tank that's on site that they can't move.
55:06 Georgia Hardstark? No.
55:07 Karen Kilgariff? So the fire can't get to that thing because it's huge and it's a basically a bomb waiting to go off. So the local police have to drive around with bull horns, telling people to leave their homes while cities workers scramble to put together an emergency shelter. It's like, you gotta get out of here.
55:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, well, where do we go?
55:26 Karen Kilgariff? And because it's Madison, Wisconsin, they pull it off. They do it. 3,000 residents.
55:31 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
55:32 Karen Kilgariff? Including a couple hundred from a nearby nursing home are directed to shelter at a local high school with the last evacuees leaving their homes around 2:00 AM Saturday morning.
55:43 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, fuck that shit.
55:44 Karen Kilgariff? It's just going.
55:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
55:46 Karen Kilgariff? When these people are interviewed by reporters, they have a delightful and deeply Wisconsonian attitude about the whole event. Okay, I'm really gonna try to focus on this one. One local describes the scene there as, quote, "real calm."
56:02 Georgia Hardstark? Good, that's good.
56:03 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you. We just sat in the common areas in the high school and visited. We weren't scared. We weren't scared, it was a new experience.
56:12 Georgia Hardstark? Aww.
56:13 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. I'm kind of doing Maria Bamford doing her mom.
56:16 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
56:16 Karen Kilgariff? Cause that's as close as I can get.
56:18 Georgia Hardstark? October is the month when being scared is supposed to be fun.
56:21 Karen Kilgariff? Terrified in a haunted house? Sure. Your actual house? Absolutely not.
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56:31 Georgia Hardstark? I recently got an alert from my camera outside that there is like someone prowling around late at night and of course I got freaked out. I opened my camera and it was a big spider dangling in front of the camera. Which was terrifying in itself, but such a relief. And I love that I know that it works. You know what I mean? Like it's so much better a spider than an actual person, but I'll be prepared.
56:54 Karen Kilgariff? All the answers are on your phone. You don't have to worry and sit there and wring your hands.
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57:17 Georgia Hardstark? SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time.
57:19 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
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58:39 Karen Kilgariff? So they're having a nice time. Yeah. All the while, the fucking butter fire is still burning. So while they're cool and chill, they are facing the possibility of never seeing their homes again. Cause if the ammonia tank goes, we all go. Fortunately, by 3:30 that morning, fire crews have fought and finally won the battle against the butter fire and they do keep the blaze away from the ammonia tanks. The residents are told they can go home, but instead they stay and they make jams and jellies for the high schoolers. That's not true. But wouldn't that be fun? It's like, why don't we go to the high school more and help those kids out?
59:23 Karen Kilgariff? So now it's dawn on Saturday, you know, it's breaking dawn, Saturday, May 4th. The firefighters are still hard at work. Everything is being done in a life-size vat of melted buttery shit. So fire engines and other emergency vehicles are getting stuck in the sludge. So it's getting hard to get the fuel trucks in to refuel or move equipment around at all. I think we have more pictures, right? Of just the like, the buttery mess? Ew, that's like a fucking raging river of butter up to his thighs. I mean, it is a fireman. It looks like he's down in floodwaters. Yeah. Can I say though, I bet their skin was so soft for like weeks afterwards.
1:00:07 Karen Kilgariff? And they're kinda delicious. And like licking your hand. Do you want to go to the movies? I don't know why, but do you want to go to the movies?
1:00:14 Georgia Hardstark? That's fucking crazy.
1:00:15 Karen Kilgariff? It's so wild. So again, they have to get creative with solving this problem because everything is so crazy slippery. So they get mechanics, they send in mechanics on foot holding five gallon buckets of diesel to refuel the trucks.
1:00:30 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:00:31 Karen Kilgariff? They also have to slosh through thick pools of grease while they do that. So they have to make sure they don't fall down and add like gasoline to this issue.
1:00:41 Georgia Hardstark? Oh shit, yeah.
1:00:42 Karen Kilgariff? But the tides are turning and by 6pm Saturday evening, the situation is downgraded to basically just a fire watch, meaning that it's still unsafe in general, but it's nowhere near, obviously, the four alarm fire from the day before.
1:00:56 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
1:00:57 Karen Kilgariff? And that's a huge victory. But now there are crises beyond the fire because for hours biologists and city engineers have been at the scene tasked with keeping all that greasy runoff from flowing into the nearby Starkweather Creek.
1:01:11 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-hmm.
1:01:12 Karen Kilgariff? Because if that goes there, you're just killing everything in that creek.
1:01:15 Georgia Hardstark? Oh no.
1:01:17 Karen Kilgariff? These officials haven't had a lot of time to think through a game plan. They don't have a butter fire game plan. And that's why I am running for comptroller of Madison, Wisconsin.
1:01:27 Georgia Hardstark? Oh god, there's a fucking...
1:01:30 Karen Kilgariff? There's a big binder for everything.
1:01:32 Georgia Hardstark? Oh my god.
1:01:33 Karen Kilgariff? And if all the butter melts, we go down there with some nice Parker House rolls. It's not a good, it's not a good accent.
1:01:41 Georgia Hardstark? Mmm, Parker House rolls.
1:01:42 Karen Kilgariff? I'm so hungry. But they rise to the occasion. Front end loaders, which are basically those, the kind of trucks little kids like the best with the big scoopers on the front, is the way I'll describe them to you.
1:01:55 Georgia Hardstark? And I get it.
1:01:57 Karen Kilgariff? They're brought in and they basically, they bring in sand. So...
1:02:02 Georgia Hardstark? Wow, like cat litter.
1:02:04 Karen Kilgariff? Exactly, exactly. They're just absorbing up as much butter as they can.
1:02:08 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
1:02:09 Karen Kilgariff? Emergency workers also start digging deep trenches, hundreds of feet long in some cases, to basically trap rank dairy runoff as it's heading downhill to make basically direct it away from the creek.
1:02:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:02:25 Karen Kilgariff? These trenches are sometimes referred to in reporting as, quote, "lagoons"
1:02:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yuck.
1:02:30 Karen Kilgariff? of melted, like butter type stuff. And apparently, they smell god awful.
1:02:35 Georgia Hardstark? Really? Because it's like rotting at that point.
1:02:37 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
1:02:37 Georgia Hardstark? And hot.
1:02:38 Karen Kilgariff? And you're just mixing gross, you know, it's like cooled ranch Dorito mix with margarine. No, that would be good.
1:02:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I'll put that on toast.
1:02:48 Karen Kilgariff? And then sprinkles on the top.
1:02:49 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
1:02:50 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so by the next day, Sunday, May 5th, Fire Chief Ron Schmelzer gives an update to reporters telling them, quote, "This fire will probably still be burning Wednesday yet."
1:03:03 Karen Kilgariff? It's a little yet at the end.
1:03:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:03:05 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. But things are moving in the right direction. That same day, Cottage Grove Road, which has now been nicknamed Cottage Cheese Road.
1:03:14 Georgia Hardstark? Ah.
1:03:14 Karen Kilgariff? Come on, by the locals, partially reopens to the public and a line of teenagers in their cars are waiting to spin donuts.
1:03:23 Georgia Hardstark? How bummer is everyone that it's happening on a weekend? Not like, "I can't go to work today."
1:03:27 Karen Kilgariff? "So sorry, can't be at that meeting."
1:03:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:03:29 Karen Kilgariff? "I'd love to meet you." So, the Great Wisconsin Butter Fire is officially extinguished on Saturday, May 11th.
1:03:37 Georgia Hardstark? Your birthday!
1:03:38 Karen Kilgariff? On my birth, on my birthday. That is actually my 21st birthday.
1:03:43 Georgia Hardstark? Wow, what was Karen Kilkarev doing that day?
1:03:46 Karen Kilgariff? I'll tell you what, I know exactly what I was doing. I, it was in Sacramento.
1:03:50 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:03:51 Karen Kilgariff? And I want all my friends, I wanted to go to a bar I didn't think anyone else would go to. So there's a bar I used to drive by on Folsom Avenue all the time. And I can't remember the name, I'll have to look it up. But it was basically a biker bar. And I made everyone meet me there. I like, we all met there. And from when we got there, which was, you know, 7 o'clock or whatever, we were just like hanging out and laughing. And finally, this guy comes over in a full on like Hell's Angels, like he's an extra in a Hell's Angels movie. And he goes, "Why'd you guys come here?" We're just like, I don't know, we were just trying to be like edgy or whatever. And people end up like playing pool and having fun. They were very nice to us.
1:04:30 Georgia Hardstark? That's so cute.
1:04:32 Karen Kilgariff? I think they were retired. Okay, so.
1:04:35 Georgia Hardstark? Do Hells Angels retire?
1:04:37 Karen Kilgariff? Can they? Are they allowed to? They retire from violence.
1:04:41 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:04:42 Karen Kilgariff? And mayhem. And they help children. And Santa Claus. Okay. This is eight days after the fire first breaks out. It takes eight days for this thing to be over. In the end, the fire crews are able to save three of CSW's five warehouses. No lives are lost, thank God, which is of course, a huge accomplishment, both of those things. The tearful owner of the complex, a man named Ken Williams, is genuinely devastated at this huge loss to his family business. And they do find out, fire investigators go in and it is the spark from this, from that.
1:05:18 Georgia Hardstark? Just a random.
1:05:20 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, like no one's fault, thank God. Ken Williams tells reporters, quote, "Thank God for the chief and his people for their hard work. At times, it was like the Battle of the Bulge out there." End quote.
1:05:31 Georgia Hardstark? With butter.
1:05:32 Karen Kilgariff? With butter.
1:05:34 Georgia Hardstark? The butter of the bulge.
1:05:35 Karen Kilgariff? The butter.
1:05:35 Georgia Hardstark? The battle of the butter.
1:05:36 Karen Kilgariff? The pre-bulge, the butter. Now we're on to the cleanup.
1:05:41 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
1:05:41 Karen Kilgariff? Which is a lingering and expensive crisis in and of itself. For starters, again, we're at the smell. A Facebook group made up of Madison residents commiserate about the pervasive stench in a post made last year.
1:05:56 Georgia Hardstark? Still?
1:05:57 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, still talking about it. One user remembers how they, quote, "Had to keep the car windows up and the AC off when I drove past CSW for two to three summers."
1:06:07 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:06:08 Karen Kilgariff? Uh huh.
1:06:08 Georgia Hardstark? That's nasty.
1:06:09 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. Another will add, quote, "I can still smell the rancid dairy."
1:06:14 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
1:06:15 Karen Kilgariff? Because it's just such a different smell than you've ever probably smelled before.
1:06:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, yeah. And not one that you want to like continue to smell.
1:06:22 Karen Kilgariff? No.
1:06:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:06:24 Karen Kilgariff? But guess who did continue to smell it? The firemen.
1:06:27 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
1:06:27 Karen Kilgariff? Because that butter sludge was all over their trucks, their fire equipment, their hoses, and their uniforms that now have to be not only washed but sanitized. Or maybe just thrown away. Meanwhile, big trucks sweep onto the CSW property to pick up and haul away debris. It's taken to the local dump, which has to extend its hours of operation to accommodate all of this sludge.
1:06:54 Georgia Hardstark? Everyone.
1:06:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yes. But a bigger problem and a more difficult problem are those lagoons of fatty runoff. Which is the worst phrase of all time.
1:07:04 Georgia Hardstark? Lagoons of fatty runoff.
1:07:06 Karen Kilgariff? Lagoons of fatty runoff.
1:07:09 Karen Kilgariff? Fire Department spokesman Tom Olshansky describes this cleanup as, quote, "not as volatile or explosive, but it's the toughest stuff to clean up next to radiation," end quote.
1:07:21 Georgia Hardstark? Gross. Sucks.
1:07:22 Karen Kilgariff? The same weekend, the fire is finally extinguished. Tom Olshansky is interviewed in an NPR broadcast, and he describes these challenges, which results in a bunch of unsolicited advice from listeners. The AP reports that, quote, "suggestions to Olshansky's department include an Arizona caller's recommendation that the University of Wisconsin come up with a device that would freeze the goo so it could simply be cut away." That's a recommendation where you go, "I'm going to make up a dream scenario."
1:07:53 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:07:53 Karen Kilgariff? And now you enact my dream scenario.
1:07:55 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
1:07:57 Karen Kilgariff? If I knew things about Marvel characters, I could reference one that could do that with his eyes. But I can't.
1:08:02 Georgia Hardstark? Ice, ice eyes. Good old...
1:08:06 Karen Kilgariff? Maureen Ice Eyes.
1:08:07 Georgia Hardstark? Good old...
1:08:08 Karen Kilgariff? Let it be a girl for once.
1:08:09 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
1:08:10 Karen Kilgariff? A New York City man.
1:08:12 Georgia Hardstark? That's his, is that his character?
1:08:16 Karen Kilgariff? Marvel New York City. New York City man. He's just got a white tank top on and he's chewing gum. Big accent. This man claimed to work with grease in his job. He says kitty litter would sop up the masses. In the end, Madison consults with experts and uses what's described as a quote, "rendering process," aimed at dissolving the fatty debris so that everything can be carefully pumped and disposed of through the city's sewer system. Officials are extremely careful with this process because lard can solidify in the sewer system and cause costly and destructive blockages.
1:08:51 Georgia Hardstark? Shit, like in your arteries.
1:08:53 Karen Kilgariff? Have you heard of fatbergs?
1:08:55 Georgia Hardstark? No.
1:08:57 Karen Kilgariff? This happened in New York City in their own sewer system because there was so much lard and grease and stuff that they had these things called fatbergs that were-
1:09:06 Georgia Hardstark? Like icebergs?
1:09:07 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, but they were basically, it was just like big clumps of stuff like that that they, that were blocking the drains of the sewer.
1:09:14 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus Christ.
1:09:16 Karen Kilgariff? And that all goes okay, and Starkweather Creek and the other bodies of water that it feeds are protected.
1:09:22 Georgia Hardstark? Great.
1:09:23 Karen Kilgariff? So as for the cost of this event, many sources put the total at somewhere around $100 million, which in today's money-
1:09:31 Georgia Hardstark? So from 1991, $100 million. $100 million in today's money is $700 million.
1:09:38 Karen Kilgariff? $240 million.
1:09:40 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
1:09:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it's basically a little over double. Okay, so among those contributing to the cleanup costs are, of course, CSW's owner, Ken Williams. He has to pay like half a million dollars.
1:09:56 Georgia Hardstark? Shit.
1:09:57 Karen Kilgariff? The US Department of Agriculture gives $200,000, and the good folks over at Oscar Meyer Wieners, out of the goodness of their hearts, donate another $50,000.
1:10:08 Georgia Hardstark? That's nice.
1:10:09 Karen Kilgariff? They're nice people.
1:10:11 Georgia Hardstark? Sure.
1:10:12 Karen Kilgariff? But also remember, there's Wieners in that, their sludge. Takes decades, basically, until 2011.
1:10:19 Karen Kilgariff? Uh, for CSW to finally finish rebuilding that complex that year. Sorry, I made it sound like to clean it up.
1:10:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:10:26 Karen Kilgariff? That year, Ken Williams tells the Wisconsin State Journal that, quote, "There were a lot of doubts. Really, in a way, I thought I'd never see it, but we persevered," end quote.
1:10:35 Georgia Hardstark? Poor Ken.
1:10:36 Karen Kilgariff? I know. Ken Williams passed away in 2021, but his younger family members are now involved in the business. And they are all very deeply indebted to the firefighters who worked for days, for eight days, to basically save their family business. And this is a very cute front of the building.
1:10:57 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, they put a fire hat on the, on Cocaine Bear.
1:11:02 Karen Kilgariff? On Cocaine Bear, they did a little, the cleanup in the background and a little celebration for Madison Fire Department in the foreground, which is very nice. Uh, and that crew included Ron Schmelzer, who would sum up this bizarre grotesque and extremely hard fought job in plain terms, telling a reporter, quote, "In my 25 years as a firefighter, I have never seen anything like it. I think it's safe to say I won't see anything like it again in my career." And that's the story of the 1991 Wisconsin Butter Fire.
1:11:33 Georgia Hardstark? Wow, never heard of it.
1:11:35 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
1:11:36 Georgia Hardstark? Great job.
1:11:36 Karen Kilgariff? Me either, thank you.
1:11:37 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, great birthday story.
1:11:39 Karen Kilgariff? Right?
1:11:40 Georgia Hardstark? Ah, you did it.
1:11:41 Karen Kilgariff? This is how we celebrate.
1:11:44 Georgia Hardstark? What are you gonna do for your birthday? Any plans?
1:11:46 Karen Kilgariff? I think I'm gonna go out of town to a relaxing, a place that's very relaxing.
1:11:52 Georgia Hardstark? That's a good idea.
1:11:52 Karen Kilgariff? Lafayette!
1:11:53 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, baby!
1:11:57 Karen Kilgariff? I'm going to the Strip.
1:11:58 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, God, yeah, the most relaxing place on the planet. Everyone knows.
1:12:01 Karen Kilgariff? Everyone knows. Well, you know what's really great? And this is again, we'll just keep on talking about our producer, Molly Smith, suggest, why don't you take Monday off?
1:12:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
1:12:10 Karen Kilgariff? Cause it's your birthday.
1:12:11 Georgia Hardstark? It's your literal birthday.
1:12:12 Karen Kilgariff? I'm like, oh, yeah.
1:12:13 Georgia Hardstark? I'm taking, I'm taking your birthday off, too.
1:12:15 Karen Kilgariff? Hey, great. It's gonna work out. I mean.
1:12:19 Georgia Hardstark? Well, great job.
1:12:20 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you kindly.
1:12:21 Georgia Hardstark? We did it again.
1:12:22 Karen Kilgariff? We have done it.
1:12:23 Georgia Hardstark? I'm proud of us.
1:12:24 Karen Kilgariff? Me, too.
1:12:25 Georgia Hardstark? It's like.
1:12:26 Karen Kilgariff? It's like, we do yoga with swords. We bring back the real Nancy Drew.
1:12:32 Georgia Hardstark? We brown butter.
1:12:33 Karen Kilgariff? We brown butter, we don't burn butter.
1:12:35 Georgia Hardstark? We're basically Shakespearean actresses, actors.
1:12:38 Karen Kilgariff? Who now know how to put out a basic grease fire.
1:12:41 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
1:12:42 Karen Kilgariff? If we're not giving you everything you need on this show, I don't understand what you need.
1:12:47 Georgia Hardstark? Then I don't know what else you need.
1:12:48 Karen Kilgariff? Then I, in all my 56 years, I don't understand what the fuck you're looking for.
1:12:53 Karen Kilgariff? Stay sexy.
1:12:53 Georgia Hardstark? And don't get murdered.
1:12:56 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
1:13:06 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an Exactly Right Production.
1:13:08 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.
1:13:12 Karen Kilgariff? Our editor is Aristotle Lasevedo.
1:13:14 Georgia Hardstark? This episode was mixed by Liana Scolacci.
1:13:16 Karen Kilgariff? Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
1:13:19 Georgia Hardstark? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
1:13:22 Karen Kilgariff? And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.
1:13:24 Georgia Hardstark? Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:13:29 Karen Kilgariff? And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
1:13:32 Georgia Hardstark? And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and the remind me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show.
1:13:37 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
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