Paul Scheer and the Johnstown Flood

Paul Scheer is an OG podcaster about movies. Ed tells him the story of the snooty country club project that ends up inciting the Johnstown Flood -- and becomes fodder for an epic silent film on its own. Subscribe to the SNAFU YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@SNAFUPod Buy the SNAFU book: www.snafu-book.com http://www.snafu-book.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  No one talks about that. No one talks about how the fishing and that club went downhill.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  You know what? There's a reason for that, Paul. I'm just gonna be honest, that's a kind of a shitty take because like-

• 0:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm paying top dollar to be in this hunting and fishing club. We've got a lot of hunting.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Now, hold on a second. How good was that fishing?

• 0:18Speaker 00

  Really good.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Really good.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Alright, damn it.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm Ed Helms and welcome back to Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. More specifically, a show in which I walk my wonderful guests through distinctly unwonderful moments from the past. Today, we'll be covering the infamous Johnstown Flood of 1889 and our guest, well, he's truly one of the best in the biz. And I mean that in both the general sense in that he's just an awesome dude, but also he is someone who is just constantly crushing it across like every platform in the whole business. You might know him from

• 1:05Speaker 01

  TV shows like The League or Black Monday, or his uber-popular podcasts, How Did This Get Made and Unspooled. Please welcome my very dear old friend, the great Paul Sheer.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  Ed, so excited to be here because honestly, it's the only time I've ever gotten any validation. You just reading off those credits made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  I mean, you're correct. I didn't even mention your book. You just had a, you just wrote a book.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  I have a book. You know, look, you and I are now authors. We are bestselling authors. Very exciting.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  It is very exciting. I'm very proud of us. I was trying to, I was trying to think back to the origin of our friendship and it just, it falls into that huge basket of just wonderful people orbiting the UCB Theater in New York City around, what, like 1999?

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Right in that that area because you know, it's it's interesting. There are certain people that like Jason Manzoukis. Obviously, we co-host this podcast together. I know Jason for many years, but Jason was not somebody that was invited to my wedding. Uh, which is a crazy thing because we weren't that close at that point in our, he's definitely a friend. He didn't make that cut. He didn't make that cut.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I was at your wedding.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  You were.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  And I was the whole time. I was like, where is Jason? This is horrible. Meanwhile, Jason gave a toast at my wedding as a matter of fact.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  It's wild to me that I talked to him all the time and he was somebody that was not, that was just not a close friend at that moment.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it you're so right in that. Uh, I feel like there's so many people from that community that I that they somehow like merged with our DNA at that time. It's like we, we knew each other when we were just comedy larva wriggling around.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  We were performing in an old strip club where sometimes you'd be doing a show and people would get up and leave and you're like, did I do a bad job? Like, no, they just thought they were coming to a strip club and were very confused for the first 45 minutes of the show. They're like, this is great, but when are they going to take off their clothes?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  I remember there was a basement, uh, that you would get to through a trap door, basically.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  On the most rickety wooden staircase of all time to get down it.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  And you would go down there and it was like a grotto from, from like 16th century Paris. Wet brick walls and dirt floor.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  It was a, it was a, a New York City catacomb, if you will.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  That's what it was.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, you would see the craziest stuff and it was only one way in and one way out.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Wait, somebody was giving haircuts down there.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Well, haircuts down there and on stage. Uh, yeah, one of the, uh, one of the, uh, resident teachers.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, a legend. One of the originals.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  No audience, no audience. Really crazy.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  That should have been its own show, the haircut show. Weirdly, it would have found an audience too. I'm sure of it.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. Actually, more palatable than some of the shows that we did experiment with.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Well, as, as one of, uh, the OG podcasters and one of, one of the greats in the podcasting biz.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  No, truly like you've, you've carved out such an awesome niche. It's been so cool to see. You do a lot of shows in the studio. You do a lot of shows live on tour. Do you have a preference?

• 4:16Speaker 00

  I think, yeah, for me. I think there's something really fun about when it's just Jason, June and I chatting with each other. I think that that's always really a blast and we're not playing for laughs, but when we do it in front of an audience, it's, I like the, I like the showmanship of it. I like, I like getting out in front of an audience. I like finding where the jokes are, finding what they find funny and kind of chasing that because sometimes also it can get almost so, what I love about the studio is it's so casual that sometimes you are just having a conversation and maybe that's okay too. But like, you know, you forget like, oh, we gotta like hit some more jokes or, or that one thing is funny. Like, and I didn't even think it was that funny.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Well, are you ready?

• 5:01Speaker 00

  I'm thrilled. I'm such a fan of Snafu. The book was great. I love the podcast. But the, the thing is, is I also have experience with floods here because

• 5:11Speaker 01

  No way.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  I'm not, not a major flood, but we've, I've had some flooding issues.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  In LA?

• 5:18Speaker 00

  In LA, you can't get over, I mean, obviously there's, natural disasters are awful, but flooding is like, it's infuriating because it's all there, but it's all wrecked and you can see it and you can't stop it and it's, and it's, you feel like powerless as the water comes in and you're sleeping and I flooded, I mean, I did also flood my own house too. And I have experience in floods, I'm excited.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Paul, I'm concerned about you and your lack of water maintenance.

• 5:54Speaker 02

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• 8:01Speaker 01

  So, as I mentioned before, we're going to be talking about the Johnstown flood of 1889. Not the Johnstown. Not the Johnstown. Different flood, Kool-Aid flood. Also a different disaster. Yeah. Very different kind of disaster. Do you know anything about the Johnstown flood? Never heard a thing. Okay, oh, good. Well, I mean, not good. You should know better, honestly. Okay, sorry. But this will be fun, because it's all fresh. Our story begins in central southwestern Pennsylvania, a bustling bucolic little city. Now, just to orient you, Johnstown is about 52 miles east of Pittsburgh, founded in 1800 by Swiss immigrant Joseph Johns. It is nestled At the confluence of the Stony Creek and Little Conemaugh Rivers.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Now, just 14 miles upstream from Johnstown on the Little Conemaugh River is the South Fork Dam. You know, cue the spooky music, because that's going to be real important real soon. Uh, I know you're, you're from Long Island originally. Do you know this area at all? Like Western PA?

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Very familiar with this area. This is right in my wheelhouse as far as places I know.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Like from, from like getaways as a family?

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, look, I've been to Sesame Place, which is in Pennsylvania, or Hershey Park.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  You got all the amusement parks dialed in. All right, well, 1889 Johnstown is thriving. It was basically the Rust Belt before it got rusty. Steel was king, thanks to the mighty Cambria Iron Company. Nearby coal mines kept the fires burning and the bustling dense railroad lines all tied it together. This was a blue collar boomtown, and as a result, European immigrants were pouring in, looking for work. The population exploded by roughly 30,000 people in the mid 1800s. Now, on paper, Paul, explosive growth is great, right?

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  But is it always good for a community?

• 9:54Speaker 00

  No.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Or is it just an efficient way to stress people out?

• 9:56Speaker 00

  I mean, I know this from many years of playing the Sims video game. You can't build too quick. Uh, things happen. Uh, you know, you can't, you can't keep up. Supply and demand. Yeah, there's a lot of jobs, but then, you know, is there enough sewage plants? There are things, you know, things happen, you know?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Paul, as, as someone who's known you a long, long time, so many of us have been trying to pull you out of SimCity.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  No, I gotta, I'm in the, and I'm not even in the Sims. I'm not even doing the people. I'm just doing the cities. I'm building the city.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  I can't, I'm so worried about when Sim goes VR and you'll like, just you'll be so immersed.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  I gotta put this baseball stadium somewhere, Ed.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Well, you know, rapid growth can often lead to corner cutting, as we all know. And, uh, boy, will that come into play. So, uh, watch out. At some point, the state of Pennsylvania, or as it's formerly known, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Sold two of its major infrastructure assets, the Western Division Canal and the aforementioned South Fork Dam to a private investor named Henry Clay Frick.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  All right.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Um, I hope, I wish this is the origin of the term frickin'. I don't know if that's true, but there will be good reason for it.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Henry Clay Flick does feel to me like a, I don't know if this is the appropriate term, but like a robber baron has a name of.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Okay, a hundred percent. He was like buddies with Carnegie and Mellon and all those guys. So Frick was a rising industrial heavyweight in his 30s, juggling coal, steel, and of course, the society clubs with a knack for turning big risks into even bigger fortunes. Naturally, the steel tycoons' first order of business upon this purchase was to convert the sleepy Lake Conemaugh above the dam into, wait for it, the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Because, yeah, as we all know, rich people love to hang out with other rich people and just shoot things.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, you have to. I mean, you know, that's the thing. Uh, what are you gonna do with your spare time without that? Now, this is interesting though, because you're saying it's a working class town, but now is kind of, uh, it's kind of gentrifying itself in a way, right?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Well, yes. Now, this is 14 miles upstream of Johnstown. So we are in, um, and it's, and it's a significantly higher elevation. We're maybe like 500 feet higher in the mountains.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  And I guess 13 miles in the 1800s is, that's a, that's a far, like right now.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a trick.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a hike. Yeah, it's a hike.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  We ain't got the Model T yet. So it's like a resort, um, and it, and the lake is kind of dumpy when he buys it, but his goal is to, is to really make it this beautiful place just for rich people to hang out and I guess scoff at poor people, maybe? Is that another one of their hobbies?

• 12:41Speaker 00

  It's perfect because you're high enough and you can look down. You can shoot.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Literally look down.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Shoot a bird and then look down at the poor people and laugh at them as you eat. Yeah, you're, you're squab.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. So to do this, to make this resort, Frick and his resort investor buddies lowered the dam head to put. A road across the top of it, which reduced the dam's safety margin. He also sold off the dam's safety pipes and valves for scrap and he did not replace them. He slapped a fish screen over the spillway to ensure good fishing. Yeah, they stocked this lake with lots of good fish because keep in mind it is a hunting and fishing club.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you gotta have them both.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  If it's in the name, you gotta make sure the fish are in the lake, right?

• 13:23Speaker 00

  And you want to make sure it's easy to catch those fish. So you feel good about yourself.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you feel you stock that thing. Yeah. And now meanwhile, they're also just patching various leaks in this dam. It's a giant earthen dam with mud and straw and basically treating critical infrastructure like a summer tiki bar. Now, this is all because some rich guys really, really wanted a pretty lake and they wanted it fast and cheap. And I don't know, this is a kind of horrifying pattern in class dynamics. When rich people make terrible decisions like this, do you think it's honest ignorance with maybe a dash of optimism bias? Or is it just straight up willful negligence?

• 14:05Speaker 00

  You know, I never think that people truly are out to hurt other people. I don't think it's like, well, we're going to flood this down because it doesn't make, it's not good business sense. But I feel like you can, you can talk somebody into a bad idea really quickly where it's like, well, you know, we're just going to lower the, it's already high. We're just going to lower it a little bit.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  We need a road across the top.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  And that's actually going to help us and it's a bunch of small things that make sense. But then when you pile them all together, it is disaster. The thing that I'm curious about that you said that really jumped out to me was like, he took away the safety gauges of the, of the dam.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were pipes and valves built in that, that were part of the release mechanism for, for.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  Seems like that's a hard one to kind of smooth over and also for no reason. Yeah.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  I mean, if you really dig into this, which I encourage listeners to, to, to read more about this. David McCullough wrote an incredible book about the Johnstown flood and it's pretty dark. Unlike you, I want to give some benefit of the doubt and I, because I think there's a ton of just optimism bias in people like this. Where it's just sort of like, I mean, this can't happen. And it's like, or this is too, that's too crazy to even contemplate that this whole massive dam could fail. Sorry, spoiler alert, but we're gonna, we're gonna get there.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Wait a second.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Now, uh, here's the, the, the good news is that this club, but once it was finished, was enormously successful and many of the richest men in the world joined this club, making it instantly profitable. Now, this was the largest reservoir in the country at the time. It's about two miles long, roughly one mile wide and 60 feet deep. Lake Conemaugh had basically become a summer paradise. Meanwhile, 14 miles downstream, Johnstown was churning away as the industrial little trooper town that it was. Uh, and to make room for this massive influx of workers that was occurring, the steel mills had begun dumping a lot of their slag or the industrial refuse from the, the steel making process. They were dumping

• 16:10Speaker 01

  this slag into the river to build up more land, uh, where they could build more homes. Of course, this had the unfortunate effect of narrowing the riverbed, which was sort of clogging it like an artery and, and it just was making it more prone to flooding. Basically, Johnstown now had the cardiovascular health of a chain smoking borscht belt lounge act.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we really are, we're basically, we've created like, again, spoiler alert, the flood, we are creating the perfect, the perfect storm. It really like we're, we're building it.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Oh, you, you stole my setup.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, the perfect storm. Yeah. I mean, I'm just gonna read it anyway, but it's, uh, but no, you hit it right on the head. Basically you've got an entire region undergoing massive, very short sighted infrastructure changes and they are, all of these things are coalescing into, wait for it, say it.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  The perfect storm.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Which is sadly the perfect metaphor.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Because the actual perfect storm is about to hit.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Uh, do you, do you ever feel that, that movies and history both build tension the same way? Like everything's kind of feels fine and there's that, that first act of a movie where you're just sort of building the Jenga tower and, and then.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Just relaxed into it and you feel like nothing can go wrong. I mean, Titanic is a perfect example of it. James Cameron's Titanic. You're, it, it looks, what a wonderful film. What a beautiful boat. What great people.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  And then watch out.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, and also Titanic, that's another, it's, that's another great example of the class dynamics at play.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  The storm is upon us. A note to my sound editor, please add some sound effects in post. Thank you very much. It's late May.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not very good. You're no Michael Winslow. Let's be honest.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Oh, man. And you know what? I lost that part to him so bad. The reboot, of course.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  All right. It's late, it's late May 1889. A low pressure system that has, that had formed over Nebraska and Kansas two days earlier was now a massive storm directly over western, central Pennsylvania. And it was for real, very scary. It was the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the eastern United States to date. Estimates say that six to 10 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. I always feel like those metrics are like, what? Like, what does that mean? Six to 10 inches isn't very tall, but, but then you're like, oh, I guess that is actually crazy relative to what was normal for the time. And then here's the other thing is that there was still snow in the mountains. So the rain is falling on the snow, which is creating even more water

• 18:58Speaker 01

  coming from the fresh snow melt. Creeks and streams were quickly overrun, taking down trees and other debris. Even telegraph lines and rail lines were starting to come down. This is just from the, the rainstorm. We haven't even gotten to the, the real disaster yet. The next morning, it's May 31st. The president of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, Elias Unger, awoke in a tizzy. It was still pouring rain and as such, that damn, damn, damn near was overflowing.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Well, now what do you do? Yeah. Cause this is the moment where you know, like, this is the problem with a natural disaster. You can see it start to come, right? Like this is it. Like this morning, he knows, but what can you do? You can't, you almost can't do anything to stop it at this point, can you?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  He tries. Unger, Unger quickly gathered a group of men to unclog the debris. They'd put a fish strainer basically at the spillway to keep fish from leaving the lake. And so that was now completely clogged with debris and so no water was getting. Out of the lake, it was only rising.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Oh boy.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  He sent one of his engineers, John Park, on a horse down to the telegraph office. Uh, he wanted to issue a warning to the people of Johnstown. The dam was in danger of collapsing.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Get out of there.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, uh,

• 20:20Speaker 00

  It's like what the, in the Fantastic Four, New Galactus was coming there. Get out, get out of the city, guys.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Get out of the city.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  I don't know what you're talking about, but yes, exactly.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  This was tricky for two reasons. Number one, I would think that in, if like, under this kind of duress, like sending a telegraph message, actually tapping the thing.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Must have been like, like so hard to do right. Like you're just like, cause you're probably shaking, you're trembling and it's like,

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Well, that's why you have to hire the best. It's like you have to hire the best, uh, telegraph. They, they have to be emotionless, you know, whether you're

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Breaking up with your husband, uh, you're telling somebody that a loved one has died or telling you that the, an impending flood is happening.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Well, to make matters worse, telegraph lines were down.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Well, they're down, right?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  So, so we're didn't even, it didn't even get there. Uh, no messages were sent to Johnstown. And even so, there were people racing down on horses and stuff, telling people, but there had been so many false alarms that the dam was gonna burst over the previous decades that, that there was also a kind of like blasé sense about it.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  This is the, the sky is falling kinda Chicken Little moment.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  And this is why I think again, that like, we prepare a lot for something terrible. You know, you're always like ready for something bad to happen. And then I would say 95% of the time, the, the worst version doesn't happen, but you know, uh, and then you're, oh, I prepared for nothing. I did all the things. So I can imagine here that they've probably had some moments like, okay, you know, they're not gonna, they're not buying it.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's the whole cry wolf scenario.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  You get, you get kinda tired of freaking out and who knows, but this one, this one was real and it was real, real bad. There was a lot of drama at the top of the dam. Some guys were, were trying to actually stack more material on the top of it. Uh, but they could feel the dam moving and so they, they got off and that. Unger guy was like, get out there. And they were like, no, we're not going.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Is this like an earth dam?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yes. What's interesting about this type of dam is that when they do breach, it is almost always catastrophic because the flow of water instantly compromises the entire structure and it begins just washing out the, the material of the dam, as you can imagine. So at 2:50 PM, the dam is finally compromised and it collapses and the water just comes rushing out. Now, South Fork is the first little town to be hit by this flood. The town thankfully is on a little bit higher ground, but 20 or 30 houses were still destroyed. Tragically, four

• 23:01Speaker 01

  people were killed in South Fork. The rest of the citizens were able to get to safety in time, but this flood was just beginning. And a word of warning, it's about to get real grim. I gotta ask you, Paul, if you were in like Johnstown or South Fork that day, would you be the guy like calmly sandbagging? Or are you the guy sprinting for higher ground like it's the last chopper out of Saigon?

• 23:25Speaker 00

  You know, it's interesting. My, uh, my gut is always to be the calm sandbagger. My wife's job is to get the hell out and, um,

• 23:37Speaker 01

  I mean, that might be your job, but what, what are you doing? Like, what's your, what's your, what is your adrenaline telling you to do?

• 23:43Speaker 00

  I always say that my wife and I are like kind of Kirk and Spock, the way we look at things. Like I'm, I'm looking at it very logically and my wife is like, let's just go.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  I think in this moment, uh, you know, look, if my wife gets the urge to run, I'm going to be following her.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think at a certain, it's like, you know, when it's this insane and, and we're about to hear more about it. It's like, you just run best you can.

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  Oh.

• 25:19Speaker 07

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• 25:37Speaker 09

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 25:52Speaker 10

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 26:03Speaker 09

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 26:08Speaker 11

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 26:14Speaker 09

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 26:34Speaker 12

  I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.

• 26:46Speaker 13

  The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trails that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.

• 27:21Speaker 12

  Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  The flood raced down the 14 miles of the little Conemaugh River Valley, destroying everything in its path. I mean, how quickly? In seconds? Is it minutes? What have we got here? It's moving a lot faster than you can run. I'll put it that way. Okay. At one point, the flood was briefly stopped by a railroad bridge, but it eventually pushed past the bridge, gaining even more momentum. It raced through to more small towns with massive force, destroying literally everything. At this point, because the gorge is so deep, it's sort of like funneled and the force of the water is so intense that it wipes these towns out to the bedrock. There is nothing but bedrock left in the wake of the flood. And then Johnstown.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Residents heard a deafening roar before they saw it, but most even had no idea that this roar could be a flood. Suddenly, a massive wall of debris slammed into, first, the Cambria ironworks. The water swept up railroad cars, barbed wire, which was a product of these steel plants. It then reached Gautier wireworks, causing boilers to explode. And emit black smoke, just making it a more nightmarish scenario. Just fifty seven minutes after the collapse of the dam. The flood reached the center of Johnstown, moving at a whopping forty miles per hour. And it was up to sixty feet high in some places.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  This wall of water and debris that was just like, I mean, you know, just rushing through.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  Even knowing everything that I know in the movies that I've watched and many of them like Day After Tomorrow, great films. The, but like that sixty feet of water, right? It's like, and you're not, you're not an island. It's not a tsunami, but it is acting like a tsunami in a way.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  It really is acting a lot like a tsunami and, um, or an avalanche. It's sort of a combination of the two. And I remember it's so funny because I, when I was a kid, you know, I would hear about tsunamis and I would be like, bah, no big deal. I can swim. I can swim, a good swimmer, you know? But like in this situation, you can't like, it doesn't even matter how, how comfortable you are in the water. How good a swimmer you are because there is, it's barely water. It's just, it's like debris.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're, you have a train wrapped in barbed wire heading for you. It doesn't matter if you're a good swimmer.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Johnstown residents were either crushed by debris or caught up in the barbed wire or drowned in their homes or places of work. Some folks were able to stay afloat on debris, waiting for help. Most people in this situation, they're, it's, they're overtaken so quickly and, and there's so much panic and chaos. That you're just grasping for anything that you can grab on to.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  A hundred percent, but this is why I travel with two hundred pound weights on me at all times, just in case, you know, it keeps me grounded.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I know you're legendary in the rucking community.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  It's, and it's a hard of go to restaurants, things that goes out, but I'm ready for it.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  It's a pain for all of us who are friends with you, but yeah, it's very cool. We respect you for it.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is kind of reminiscent of Rose in the Titanic, right? You brought up the Titanic, she found a chunk of, of something to cling to.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  To hold on to, yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  I feel like there was room for Leo to have climbed up on there, but it's a big debate. I don't know.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Well, you know what? You bring this up. This just came up. Now, obviously Mythbusters put it to the test. But James Cameron was not happy with Mythbusters and recently recreated the water temperature. And the thing and basically proved that at the rate that Leo was hyperventilating and freezing, he could not have like stayed on.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  That's so funny.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  It just, I just saw it the other day. Like he just did it the other day.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  Which is really funny to me.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  So fun, weird little, I wouldn't maybe not a fun fact, but a weird little additional Titanic connection here is that our buddy Frick had actually canceled his Titanic ticket because his wife had a sprained ankle and had to be hospitalized. So this guy, he can avoid a disaster here and there. Anyway, back in the middle of Johnstown. This is crazy. The Pennsylvania Railroad Stone Bridge, uh, which was this huge stone bridge in the middle of Johnstown. Uh, it became this kind of catch-all filter, which was, uh, so, so building up in this bridge was all of these twisted train rails and boxcars and barbed wire and entire buildings. And yes, sadly, of course, lots of bodies piling up against it,

• 32:13Speaker 01

  forming a temporary dam. Now this dam, uh, which was sort of catching the flood, redirected floodwaters upstream of the Stony Creek, which is the other river that, that kind of comes into the town of Johnstown. So now there's, there's, the flood is going upstream Stony Creek. Uh, it reaches a sort of a point where gravity then overtakes it again and pulls it back, unleashing a, unleashing a second wave that floods back into the city from the opposite direction, which is just completely bonkers.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  It's almost overwhelming to even comprehend what is going on. It sounds like, whoa, but to be in it, to be there, it just seems like, well, no one can survive this. This is, this is an insurvivable situation that you have presented.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  It is nuts. Now, it's about to get even more nuts. If you were writing this script, Paul Shear, uh, and you wanted things to get even worse in this moment. What would you do?

• 33:18Speaker 00

  I mean, I want to break another dam. I want to, I don't know, maybe dual dams or, or, uh, oh, gosh, I mean.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Come on, think it through.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Fires. We gotta have a fires. We gotta have a fire. Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Okay, here's how things actually spiraled even more. Let's just throw in a completely new kind of natural disaster. The massive pile of flood debris at the Stone Bridge suddenly caught fire. At least 80 people were trapped inside the wreckage and killed just in this inferno. The fire raged for three full days, lighting up the ruins of the city, which is just heartbreaking and incredible.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Well, I imagine there's also gasoline. There's things that there's oil in there. There's things that are gonna catch fire. Yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  All the industrial waste of, of, of a big industrial town like piled up in there.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's gonna, that's gonna keep it going.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  And trees, like, trees, which is just fire fuel. It's just like a big old mass of tons of trees that had been ripped out.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  So we got black smoke. We got waves. We got fires. This is truly a nightmare.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  It's epic.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, it's epic. This is like going on the ride at Universal Studios where they recreate the earthquake. We're, we're seeing everything.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say it's a little worse than that.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Maybe King Kong?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, okay. All right. Yeah. Maybe they threw the King Kong in the picture.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  So by the time this fire actually died out, the flood waters had receded and Johnstown was left with a staggering 30 acre heap of wreckage.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Oh, my Lord.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  In some places 70 feet high, just the wreckage. Uh, this would take nearly three months to clear out. Um, we have a, a famous image taken from the cleanup here. This is the Schultz family house. The six people living in that house, uh, survived.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  This is an iconic photo that, that a lot of people think just sort of captures the insanity. There's so much cognitive dissonance looking at that.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  It clearly went on a little bit of a, a journey. Like, this house is not where it was. And, and wow, and the way that that tree goes through, like, if you were picturing the house as like two eyes and a mouth, it's gone through one of the eyes of the, uh, the top half of the window there. And it's really, wow. That's massive.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Oh, he'll, he'll need a glass eye, for sure.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  I mean, a hundred percent.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Let's get into the aftermath. The magnitude of the Johnstown flood was unimaginable. It ended in 17 million in damage, which is 600 million today. And this is, remember, this is a town of 30,000 people. It's not like New York City. Like, this is just an epic wipeout for this town. 2,209 people were killed, which made it the largest loss of civilian life.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Oh, my Lord.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  At the time.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  All because a hunting and fishing club wanted to catch some fish a little bit easier.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Well, I guess, yeah. But, I mean, did you taste those fish, Paul?

• 36:17Speaker 00

  I mean, it was so easy to catch, so easy to catch those fish.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  The loss of life was epic, and it wouldn't be surpassed until 1900, when the Galveston hurricane hit, which was also another epic natural disaster. This is crazy. There were even reports of the flood carrying bodies as far as Cincinnati, Ohio. Like, way, way down river. Reportedly, one baby survived on the floor of a house as it floated 75 miles down river from Johnstown.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Isn't that like Baby Moses? Didn't they put Baby Moses in one of those, like, a little carrier in the water? Is that Baby Moses?

• 36:57Speaker 01

  But he didn't wash away. They just hid him in the reeds.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. Oh, my God, buddy.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. This little baby washed away, 75 miles away. And, wow, and, and it was fine. And, and that little baby grew up to be me.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Well, Ed, aw.

• 37:17Speaker 14

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• 37:45Speaker 07

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• 38:09Speaker 07

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• 38:45Speaker 09

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 39:00Speaker 10

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 39:10Speaker 09

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 39:16Speaker 11

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 39:22Speaker 09

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 39:42Speaker 12

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems.

• 40:25Speaker 12

  Cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Anapaula Assis and Access CIO Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  All right, so news spread rapidly to the surrounding areas and support was provided in the form of clothing, disinfectants, fish, bread, cigars, whiskey, and weirdly, 20,000 pounds of ham, among other useful items. There's a lot more to this recovery effort that I wish I could get into more because it's incredibly beautiful and cool. But this is one of the first large-scale rescue efforts by the American Red Cross. And it's sort of like a huge-scale disaster relief, and it really kind of changed the game for disaster response.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  When you were saying this, I was starting to put together things that I remembered. Is this the first time the Red Cross exists? Or no, the Red Cross did exist, but this is the first time they were called into action?

• 41:57Speaker 01

  I think it's the first time they were called into action in this capacity. Claire Barton was a huge part of this recovery effort and stayed in the region for a long period of time, kind of running logistics.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  And just further cemented her legendary status as a humanitarian.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  There's a part of me that goes, do you, I mean, I guess you have to rebuild on some level. You have to, but should I mean, I don't know. It's like, is it worth? I mean, is it worth rebuilding because it could all happen again? And this is the kind of the same thing that happens in New Orleans when the dam broke in New Orleans. Is this too dangerous to do again? I mean, or, or do they find a way to just go, you know what? We're going to put more safety measures in. Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Paul, I think you're forgetting that we're as a species, like we're basically cockroaches. Like we, we just, we just gotta make it work wherever the hell we are. And

• 42:46Speaker 00

  Clean out that 30 acres and start going again.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  You're asking questions that really have no place here, Paul.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  No, but, but, but, but there certainly were a lot of kind of infrastructure considerations that went into the redevelopment and rebuilding of Johnstown and the entire region that had been rather carelessly handled and or completely overlooked, obviously beforehand. The answer is yes, they rebuilt, they felt the need to rebuild. It was a very strategic location for so many, so many industries at the time. And it was rebuilt a lot more safely. That did not prevent future floods. Unfortunately, there were future floods in Johnstown and still are from time to time, but, but it is, it is much safer than, of course, it was.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  But the fishing has gone down and the, and that's why, that's why I stopped, you know, being a member of that club. Cause the, back when the fishing was good for a little bit and they really, you know, it went downhill.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. After that.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  No one talks about that. No one talks about how the fishing in that club went downhill.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  You know what? There's a reason for that, Paul. I'm just gonna be honest, that's a kind of a shitty take because like.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm paying top dollar to be in this hunting and fishing club. I've got a lot of hunting.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  How good was that fishing? Really good, really good.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Really good.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  All right, damn it. Okay, so, uh, I, let me just throw this out there.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  Yes, sure.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Because in times of disaster or mass casualties like this, I, I think something incredible about human nature emerges. We rally for each other. We were just talking about some of the rescue efforts, Claire Barton, among others, and all of these incredible resources that just flooded into the region. Sorry for the terrible metaphor, but, but so much support came, just kicked in from all around. We rally for each other. We come together. We help each other in these ways that might have seemed unthinkable just a day before a tragedy like this. Do you agree that this is such an incredible thing of humanity? Do you see it around you sometimes? And why is it so fucking rare? Not that it's rare, but why do we have to wait for disasters for this side of us to emerge?

• 44:58Speaker 00

  I, you know, it's interesting. I, I will say that, uh, being in New York City during nine 11, it was, I talk about this as like one of the most beautiful times post nine 11. In the sense of

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  The way that the city came together, uh, neighbors and, you know, there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of goodwill.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  And, um, and, you know, we even see out here at the fires that happened this year. Like, there's a lot of, how do we make a difference? How do we pull together? And you're right. And I think that ultimately we are society, we're cockroaches, we fall into patterns. And, um, there are many people like a Claire Barton and, and many other wonderful people who devote their lives to making sure that everybody has the same, you know, access to whatever. And we just get selfish and we forget and we forget about it. And then every now and then we see a commercial or we hear about something or we get caught up because we have a personal connection to it and then we move into action. But every now and then, when there's something that is undeniable, where everybody kind of kicks in, it's, it's

• 46:02Speaker 01

  It's the best of us.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Um, yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  The worst of us can bring out the best of us. Now, of course, as soon as the floodwater was dry, people began to look for someone to blame for the tragedy. And it wasn't long, uh, before the town turned to the South Falk fishing and hunting.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  Club, which you have to say like that.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  The South Fork.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  And of course, our old friend, Henry Clay Frick.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  Now, here's a question I got for you. If I'm Henry Frick, I'm like, maybe I should have gotten on the Titanic because I don't want to face the wrath.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Well.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Of this town.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  He's gonna be fine. Don't worry.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Survivors of the flood sued the club. The American Society of Civil Engineers launched a massive investigation. It ultimately concluded that while the dam was modified to be less secure, it would have failed either way. Now, it should be noted that the American Society of Civil Engineers was bankrolled by legendary tycoon Andrew Carnegie.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Wow, okay, okay.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Himself a member of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Of course he was. It was good fishing.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  So perhaps they were not the most neutral referee in this matter. And indeed, more research in recent times has very much questioned those findings. Still, the courts ultimately ruled the flood was merely a, quote, "act of God."

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Well, you know, here's something that's interesting about it. This is a bona fide natural disaster that maybe in a way was worsened by dam precautions or maybe even staved off for a little, I don't know, like you don't know. I think that sometimes these are the things that change our lives. The Titanic has sent, like, created all these regulations, like these OSHA regulations, these things that we would never have.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  I think you're being generous.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Why am I on the side of the tycoons? I shouldn't be on the side of the tycoons.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  You're always sticking up for the moneyed interests.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Just want to get that, I want to get that membership back.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Whether or not it was criminal, we can never know necessarily, but but bad mistakes were made. There's more details about someone who was offering to make the necessary fixes to the dam in advance of

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Oh, boy.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  of all of this. And they were just like, eh, it would be too inconvenient for the club, so we're not going to do it and.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, because you don't want to have those people out there working. When you catch a fish.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  You don't want those people banging, banging on the thing.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Well, they probably have to drain the lake in order to make repairs.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  I'm coming here for peace of mind, not to get a bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Yeah, exactly.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Well, either way, without a legal obligation to do so, Frick and the club never accepted responsibility. This is, this is a very common theme throughout my study of snafus. Virtually no one ever is held accountable in any way. Frick, however, did go on to be embroiled in other controversies and he even did a few good things also. He amassed the incredible Frick Art Collection in New York City.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  That fricking guy. I love that art collection. Yes, the Frick. I took many trips to the Frick and I enjoyed, I enjoyed the Frick. And now I am, I am frustrated to know that, what a scoundrel he might have been. But Frick was also a part of the super anti-union forces that led to the violent Homestead Strike in 1892. He even survived an assassination attempt during it. Not to tease you, but we will save that snafu for another day.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Ooh, I love that.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yes, indeed. We were talking before about some of the ways the infrastructure was improved after the flood. Uh, this is interesting. Johnstown built an inclined railway in 1890, which allowed folks to easily go back and forth from the nearby town of Westmont, which was at a much higher elevation, safer from flooding, et cetera. Um, as well as safer from the leftover pollution. Here's a photo of the inclined railway.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  Boy, look at that. All right. So there you go. Yeah. So some, so they, they made some changes, some good changes. And, uh, but here's what I'm going to say, like for somebody like Frick, do you think that he feels any responsibility? Or when you're in that level, the reason why you're that successful, the reason why you're that wealthy is because you don't ever. Naval gaze. You never, you never think it's my fault.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  That is a great question, and it is one of the things that I never, I, I just never understand about, about people who do like, large-scale, dastardly things. Like, I think that in order to sort of persevere as a tycoon of this nature, like, you have to have the most toxic coping mechanisms. You are never analyzing these things. You're never even considering the possibility that you might be culpable, except in the, uh, in the possibility that you might face legal repercussions, in which case you're like, mounting your legal defense. And, uh, and it is, it is amazing the extent to which

• 51:07Speaker 01

  powerful and, and/or wealthy people, um, escape culpability, both literally and, to your question, I think even in their own conscience.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  I think on some level, every great leader, tycoon, uh, even athlete, has to have this ability to separate themselves from their actions, because I don't think you could go to bed at night. I always say that if every president has to be a little bit insane, or at least narcissistic, because you're saying, I'm taking the whole world on my shoulders. And if you, and if people die, you're like, well, all right, I'll get them tomorrow. Like, and, and you know, because you have to get back up.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Which they will. People will die under your watch as a president.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And I think that's the thing that unites all these people, and, and for better and for worse. It's just a very, I would even say Clara Barton probably is like that to a certain, like, I have to keep on moving. I can't take on all this grief. Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So finally, Paul.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Being a guy who dissects Hollywood's most baffling films, you will appreciate this. In 1926, they actually made The Johnstown Flood as a silent disaster movie. And, like any great disaster flick, the plot is shaky, but the special effects for the time were spectacular. Can we, uh, just see this one little clip?

• 52:22Speaker 00

  This is exciting. Whoa.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  Oh my goodness. I'm already loving, I'm gonna watch this whole entire thing.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Look at these special effects.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  Holy cow.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, uh, this is great. Mind blowing.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  So you can tell it's all done in miniature.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  And then, and then watch how it's, um, watch how it's like superimposed or double exposed somehow.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Some of the filmmaking, wow, this is fascinating. I just am blown away by the amount of wow.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Look at that. How do they do that? That looks so real.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  That looks unbelievable. I don't even understand because people are flying away too. This is the thing, people, the special effects that were going on in these early days are truly outstanding. You know, these sci-fi movies, like when you think about what they had and what they were, that looked amazing.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Paul, how did this get made?

• 53:18Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  And I don't mean that ironically, in the way that you do. I mean, how did they actually do that technically?

• 53:25Speaker 00

  I am gonna get off this podcast and do some research because I'm interested.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Paul Scheer, this has been a goddamn delight.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  What a blast. What a fun blast.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  I just, I love deconstructing with you about anything.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  What a gift this, uh, this is because every one of these, it makes me feel smarter. I did not know about the, the Johnstone, uh, flood. And yes, it was awful, but I feel good that these guys got some good fishing in. And that, you know, so that was the moral of it, right? That they, there was some good fishing, but there was a cost in it.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Of course. No, I really do love and appreciate how your brain works and I'm really grateful that you came on and shared it with us.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Happy to be here. Thank you, Ed, for having me. Uh, what a blast.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Of course. Cheers.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post-production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith, technical direction and. Engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson, and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein,

• 54:50Speaker 01

  and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etor, Nathan Otowski, and Alex Corral. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.

• 55:26Speaker 15

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• 55:54Speaker 05

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

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• 56:50Speaker 06

  This is an advertisement for Zolair paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.