Boo_ep606

[TRANSCRIPT]
0:00:00 - (Jethro): All right, now, the dark Ages, in case you were. You were not clear on this dark.
0:00:04 - (Kat): Right.
0:00:05 - (Jethro): It was in general, it was a bad time. And what was the worst time, the darkest of the dark ages?
0:00:14 - (Kat): Well, the dark ages were between the years, like, 600 and 1600. Is that correct?
0:00:23 - (Jethro): You were just talking about that the other night, which is what gave me the idea for doing this topic. And that sounds about right. Yeah, maybe slightly earlier than that, because historians agree 400 to 1600, the year 536, was the worst year ever to be alive.
0:00:43 - (Kat): That's amazing. I love that. That's a thing.
0:00:45 - (Jethro): 536.
0:00:47 - (Kat): Okay, hold on a second. I'm going to write this down. 536. Okay. Dear historians who took the time to figure this out, I adore you.
0:00:57 - (Jethro): Yeah. The darkest of the dark Ages was the year 536. Now, the following years weren't that great either, but 536 really blew. So what happened? Well, it started early in the year when a mysterious fog came in and blanketed most of Europe and never left.
0:01:18 - (Kat): That's what happened to the end.
0:01:22 - (Jethro): Now, I guess in the 1520s, a mysterious fog rolled in over Europe, but only stayed for a few weeks. Now, this is all according to ranker.com. In 536, Procopius, who was a military advisor to Belisarius, one of byzantine empire's most distinguished generals, he wrote this. These are actual reports from the time. Contemporary reports, quote, for the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon during the whole year.
0:01:55 - (Jethro): And it seemed exceedingly like a sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear, nor such as it as accustomed to shed. And from that time, when this thing happened, men were free neither from war, nor from pestilence, nor any other thing that leadeth to death.
0:02:15 - (Kat): Oh, my goodness.
0:02:16 - (Jethro): But he wasn't the only source that documented this. A byzantine scribe. The guy's name was Michael the Syrian. He wrote, quote, the sun was eclipsed for 18 months. For 3 hours in the morning, it would give light, but a light that resembled neither night nor day. There were other sources in the mediterranean area that referenced this fog, this cloud that was there for the entire year of 536 and well into the next year.
0:02:45 - (Kat): Wow.
0:02:45 - (Jethro): And of course, they didn't know what was going on. Many people in modern times thought it was the result of a meteor strike that had kicked up debris and blackened the sky, depositing ash around the globe. But the fog was just the beginning, because when that happened, it really messed up crops.
0:03:05 - (Kat): Sure.
0:03:06 - (Jethro): And the agriculture. So famine became widespread. In 536, temperatures around the earth dropped an average of 2.5 degrees celsius, and civilizations just struggled to get their crops in. Well, they'd get the crops in, but nothing would grow, or it would just grow a little bit. Michael the Syrian again said, during that year, fruit did not reach the point of maturity, and all the land became as though transformed into something half alive or like someone suffering from a long illness.
0:03:38 - (Kat): And that's how we got baby carrots.
0:03:41 - (Jethro): Yep, that's it. The end. Now, the issues with the crops, it wasn't just localized around the Mediterranean or any one particular area. It extended from Ireland, all the way through continental Europe, across Asia, into China, and famine became widespread.
0:04:02 - (Kat): Oh, my goodness.
0:04:03 - (Jethro): So you've got this mysterious fog that.
0:04:06 - (Kat): Rolls in, which is a bummer.
0:04:08 - (Jethro): You can't work on your tan. Then the crops are all messed up, so you're hungry and you're pale. And then the plague sets in. All the same year again, Michael the Syrian wrote, quote, an unprecedented plague ensued, which began in Constantinople, where the first day, the first day of the plague, 5000 people died.
0:04:29 - (Kat): How do you know it was the first day?
0:04:31 - (Jethro): This is what he says.
0:04:32 - (Kat): All right, you know what? Michael, was that his name?
0:04:37 - (Jethro): Yeah.
0:04:38 - (Kat): Can I call you Mike? Sure, Mike. I don't think that was the first day of the plague. I'm just saying.
0:04:45 - (Jethro): Well, he says the second day was 10,000, the third day, 15,000, the fourth, 18,000.
0:04:50 - (Kat): And who is counting these?
0:04:52 - (Jethro): Well, I'm getting to that.
0:04:54 - (Kat): Okay, I'm sorry.
0:04:54 - (Jethro): The figures reported by auditors that the emperor had placed at the gates of the city and counted the dead bodies as they were being towed out of the city.
0:05:04 - (Kat): It just sounds like suspiciously round numbers to me.
0:05:11 - (Jethro): No one, of course, was immune. It first attacked the poorer class population, as this shit often does, and then it spread to merchants and then ultimately nobility, including the imperial palace. The symptoms were described as sore forming in the palm of the hand, progressing until the affected could not take a step. Legs would swell, and then little things, pus, pockets would burst on their legs and pus would run out. Clearly, this was the bubonic plague.
0:05:46 - (Jethro): Again. According to Michael the Syrian, the presence of the disease in Constantinople really started to make the city stink because of the unburied. There were so many of them that ultimately what they decided to do was just throw all the dead people into the ocean, and there were 300,000 of them, and they all just washed back ashore.
0:06:10 - (Kat): That's not how ocean works.
0:06:12 - (Jethro): No. And that was one more lesser thing that contributed to 536 being the worst year ever. No title charts the emperor Justinian ordered them to be removed from the cities. And then the bearers, the people who would carry them away, got the disease, and it killed them so quickly in many cases that they would be carrying the dead out and they would themselves drop dead.
0:06:37 - (Kat): Oh, wow.
0:06:37 - (Jethro): On the spot, there were reports of people breaking into the dead's houses to gather up their treasures, but they would not even make it out the door. They would just die at the door with their arms full of treasures.
0:06:50 - (Kat): See what happens when you loot your treasure is a pus filled pocket on your leg.
0:06:55 - (Jethro): Good day to you, sir. Things got even worse in other parts of the empire. The plague spread to Egypt, and reports were that one city in particular, only seven men and one boy, remained alive.
0:07:09 - (Kat): What?
0:07:09 - (Jethro): That was what came to be called the plague of Justinian. Bubonic plague, obviously. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but certainly sounds like the black Death. It took out millions of people in the byzantine empire between 536 and the mid 8th century. So that shit was around for a while.
0:07:31 - (Kat): For a bit then.
0:07:32 - (Jethro): Yeah. Then it began to snow in the summer.
0:07:34 - (Kat): What?
0:07:35 - (Jethro): Yep. Like, snow, snow, snow, snow. It began to snow in China.
0:07:41 - (Kat): That's like what we're going through right now in Maine.
0:07:43 - (Jethro): Yeah. Freak snowstorm we just got yesterday.
0:07:46 - (Kat): It's still snowing.
0:07:47 - (Jethro): Fortunately, we have no pus nodules as of yet. Yeah, but we make no promises. In the chronicles of the southern dynasties, they reported frost in midsummer and snow in August in parts of China and various provinces. The result was increased, widespread famine. That pushed the famine another two years out and roughly killed 70% to 80% of the population. There were also reports of snow and frost in Mesopotamia, and that was in the summer of 536.
0:08:22 - (Jethro): And the winter was even worse than it would normally be.
0:08:26 - (Kat): Right?
0:08:27 - (Jethro): It was like summer was winter and winter was uber winter. Uber winter. It was so bad that Scandinavians abandoned entire cities. They're not sure if that was the only reason, but it certainly looks like it's a pretty good one. The norse legend called Thimble Winter includes a three year long winter that occurred before ragnarok, the end of the world, also referred to as the twilight of the gods. So they know it's the end of the world as we know it.
0:08:56 - (Jethro): And I feel not so fine.
0:08:58 - (Kat): Right. And did Thor show up to help? No.
0:09:01 - (Jethro): Where's Thor when you need him? There were also monks in Ireland that documented all of this. They called it the time of the failure of bread in 536. They wrote about this, and they said there were massive bread shortages between 536 and 539, people didn't know what the hell was going on. This was 536. Very limited understanding of meteorology. And really no grow lights. No grow lights, no way to really disseminate information.
0:09:35 - (Jethro): Even if somebody knew what was causing this, how do you get it out there? There's no emergency alert system.
0:09:41 - (Kat): Right.
0:09:41 - (Jethro): So a layer of fog really stressed people out, and they struggled to understand its origins. Roman historian Cassiodoris emphasized the unease brought on by the cloud. He wrote a letter to one of his associates and said, quote, strange has been the course of the year thus far. We have had winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat. Whence can we look for harvest? Since the months which should have been maturing, the corn have been chilled by boreus.
0:10:12 - (Jethro): How can the blade open if rain, the mother of all fertility, is denied. The middle air is thickened by the rigor of snow and rarefied by the beams of sun. Basically, he's saying it's a real shitty year.
0:10:25 - (Kat): Yeah, but he said it so beautifully, he did.
0:10:27 - (Jethro): Historians say that all of these events that took place in 536 and the immediate years following that led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
0:10:37 - (Kat): Oh.
0:10:39 - (Jethro): With the outbreak of the bubonic plague. By 541, the byzantine empire lost between 35 and 55% of its population, weakened the empire economically. It caused social upheaval, of course, disease, strife. It was all triggered by these events of 536. Now, I mentioned that for quite a while, many scientists and historians thought that this was possibly due to a meteor, right? Others say a volcanic eruption.
0:11:12 - (Jethro): But it wasn't until 2018, last year, that they definitively determined in their minds what caused this. Harvard historian Michael McCormick was among a group who pulled their research to determine whether 536 was truly the worst year ever. And they all said, yeah, pretty much the worst year ever. But during a different expedition, they had drilled ice cores, right, from Iceland, and they found volcanic debris at the level of the year, which would be the year 536.
0:11:49 - (Jethro): In addition, dendrochronologists, those are the guys who study tree rings, said they found the same thing, that what would have been the year 536, and then following, there were much, much smaller rings. What they determined was, and these were trees in Iceland. And so what they determined was that a giant volcano in Iceland erupted, and the cloud drifted down over Europe and the Mediterranean and into Asia.
0:12:17 - (Jethro): And so it was, in fact, a volcano in Iceland that caused the worst year ever, 536.
0:12:24 - (Kat): I can't imagine that the intensity of living in an environment where there's a volcanic ash cloud everywhere. There's no food. Everyone's pissed and pussy.
0:12:40 - (Jethro): Pissed and pussy.
0:12:41 - (Kat): And then you think about the living environments as it is. I mean, everything's dark, like, inside and outside and sooty and ashy, and the.
0:12:50 - (Jethro): Streets are full of human excrement.
0:12:52 - (Kat): You can't breathe. Well, everyone smells bad. There are rotting bodies washing up on the shore. It just doesn't sound great.
0:13:01 - (Jethro): I don't like getting into a taxicab for a lot of those reasons.
0:13:05 - (Kat): No, I got to wash the cab off my hands.
0:13:08 - (Jethro): The same scientists drilling through these ice samples determined that things did improve, but it was a century later. It was 100 years of this bullshit.
0:13:16 - (Kat): Wow.
0:13:16 - (Jethro): With 536 being the worst of them all. Annie Hoozle. There you go.
0:13:22 - (Kat): That was really interesting. Thank you.
0:13:24 - (Jethro): You're welcome.
0:13:24 - (Kat): I enjoyed that. I mean, obviously I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't like you, but it enjoyed it. I mean, it's fascinating. Sure, it was long enough ago where I can say, ooh, neat. The first ever new year ball drop was held on December 31, 1907. Welcoming the year 1908, the ball drop was placed on hiatus for New Year's Eve, 1942 into 43 and 43 into 44 due to wartime lighting restrictions during World War II, as well as efforts on the home front to save and reuse regarding energy and fuel.
0:14:06 - (Kat): In addition, there was concern that bright lights from the cities created silhouettes of ships in the water and made them easy targets for lurking german U boats.
0:14:16 - (Jethro): German U boats were lurking. That is such a main word.
0:14:20 - (Kat): I love it so much when you use the term lurking.
0:14:22 - (Jethro): Lurking.
0:14:22 - (Kat): That's not how you say it, though.
0:14:24 - (Jethro): I know. You gotta say it with the main accent. That police officer was lurking.
0:14:29 - (Kat): Other than those years, the NYC ball drop has been a yearly tradition to help many of us ring in the new year. But where did it come from? Let's get into it. Big thanks, by the way, to Skyler for recommending this topic. The falling of a little ball was a way to show the passage of time. Ancient greek clocks had this system in the main square of a city, and the idea was adapted when sailors were looking to create visible signals for ships to see the correct time.
0:15:02 - (Kat): The first time ball was installed atop England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. The raised balls were visible to ships along the british coastline. Normally each day at 12:55 p.m. The time ball was raised halfway up its mast, and this was to signal like, hey, we're getting ready. Then at 1258, it was risen all the way to the top and at exactly 01:00 p.m. The ball would start to fall, providing the intended signal and it allowed captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers.
0:15:42 - (Kat): Chronometers were used to determine the ship's position by celestial navigation. Originally, time balls either had to be stationed at an observatory or had to be kept near a very accurate clock at a station which was set manually to the observatory. Time the first american time ball was at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC in 1845, and a few years later the observatory began sending the time to New York via telegraph. And there a time ball atop the Western Union building was dropped at noon. It was always dropped at 01:00 p.m.
0:16:21 - (Kat): In Europe and once it came to the states, we started dropping it at noon because of course we do doing things the right way, drive on this side of the road and use these numbers instead.
0:16:35 - (Jethro): Also the imperial weight system.
0:16:37 - (Kat): I mean, everything is so much more difficult than it has to be. Side note the US Naval Observatory at Washington DC time ball later helped record history, the precise time of Lincoln's assassination.
0:16:52 - (Jethro): Oh, really?
0:16:53 - (Kat): So time balls were used for marine timekeeping from the early 18 hundreds until the early 19 hundreds. Use of time balls started to decline with the widespread adoption of radio time signals and the availability of self winding clocks in the early 20th century. But they live on in another way. I hear the clickety clack of a little boy's feet.
0:17:17 - (Jethro): Here he comes.
0:17:18 - (Kat): For many years, New York City gathered around Trinity Church to hear the ringing out of the old and ringing in of the new year on Trinity's bells. But the tradition had begun to be curbed as crowds were becoming larger and more boisterous and increasingly intoxicated, which the church didn't really want to be associated with. Cool, because in 1904, New York Times owner Adolf Oakes decided to celebrate the opening of the newspaper's new headquarters, one Times Square, with New Year's fireworks on the southern roof of the building to welcome in 19 five.
0:17:58 - (Kat): Following several years of fireworks shows, Oaks wanted a bigger spectacle at the building to draw more attention to the area. And maybe they wouldn't burn so many onlookers below. In 1907, Oaks commissioned Jacob Starr, who worked for a sign making company called Strauss Signs, later known as Artcraft Strauss, which Starr served as president, and they were working to create a new visual display. Both Oakes and the New York Times chief electrician Walter Palmer have been credited with the idea of recycling the concept of the time ball. They were inspired by one that was used on the Western Union Telegraph building near Trinity Church.
0:18:44 - (Jethro): Can I just say, every time you say time balls, it sounds to me like a 1960s science fiction film.
0:18:51 - (Kat): Yeah.
0:18:52 - (Jethro): And not a particularly good one, but one I would watch enthusiastically.
0:18:56 - (Kat): Are there robots in this film who have like, dryer vent arms?
0:19:00 - (Jethro): Yes. Warning, Will Robinson. Danger.
0:19:03 - (Kat): All right. Jacob Starr, who was a young immigrant metal worker, constructed the very first New Year's Eve ball using iron and wood and it was embellished with 125 watt light bulbs. This initial ball was 5ft in diameter and weighed 700 pounds. The ball was hoisted on the building's 70 foot flagpole with rope by a team of six men. And then there was a guy also who had like a stopwatch who would be like, okay, lower a little bit more.
0:19:35 - (Kat): A little more.
0:19:36 - (Jethro): Now go back up. Okay, perfect. Okay, now lower it again.
0:19:41 - (Kat): Now at the bottom of the pole was a large lighted sign displaying the numbers of the year and the minute, or I should say the moment that the big ball of lights hit the bottom of the pole or really the top of the year sign, they switched off the ball lights and turned on the year lights so it looked kind of like magic. Like the ball hit the bottom of the post and the lights lit up the year and it was magical.
0:20:12 - (Kat): And of course it's 1908, so electricity isn't everywhere at this time. And there's this brilliantly lit ball illustrating the change of the years. And the year lights up and it's all very magical. I just used the word magical like three times. But it must have been.
0:20:31 - (Jethro): Do you remember in Bangor when we lived in Bangor, Maine, they would have a ball drop from one of the buildings downtown.
0:20:39 - (Kat): Yeah.
0:20:39 - (Jethro): Remember that? And I got to host that one year.
0:20:42 - (Kat): Yeah, I was up there with you.
0:20:43 - (Jethro): Yeah, that's right. In order to get to the roof, we had to go through somebody's apartment.
0:20:47 - (Kat): Yes.
0:20:48 - (Jethro): That was awkward. We get up to the top and they just hand us this beach ball with Christmas lights wrapped around it. And they said, okay, when we point at you, throw it off the building.
0:21:00 - (Kat): Yeah.
0:21:01 - (Jethro): And that was it.
0:21:01 - (Kat): That's kind of how it went.
0:21:03 - (Jethro): Yep.
0:21:03 - (Kat): I loved it.
0:21:04 - (Jethro): It was great.
0:21:05 - (Kat): I think they have advanced their New Year's Eve technology since then.
0:21:10 - (Jethro): You think so?
0:21:11 - (Kat): But not a lot.
0:21:12 - (Jethro): It's Bangor, Maine. They love tradition.
0:21:15 - (Kat): I love it. I think that was our first New Year's Eve together, actually, I think you're right.
0:21:20 - (Jethro): Aw.
0:21:20 - (Kat): Yeah.
0:21:21 - (Jethro): And we spent it in a stranger's apartment.
0:21:23 - (Kat): Only for a little bit.
0:21:25 - (Jethro): Yeah. We just tracked through with our muddy.
0:21:27 - (Kat): Galoshes where you are painting a picture. Anyway, over the years there have been several versions of the show and of the ball itself, changing materials and light, types and styles, and even location. Today's ball is a collaboration between Waterford Crystal and Phillips lighting using 32, 256 leds.
0:21:51 - (Jethro): Wow.
0:21:52 - (Kat): Now, as I said, the New York City ball drop was placed on a hiatus from New Year's Eve 1942 into 43 and 43 into 44. Instead, a moment of silence was observed 1 minute before midnight in Times Square, followed by the sound of church bells being played from trucks. It's a bit more of a Bangor style celebration, really.
0:22:16 - (Jethro): Instead of a cathedral bell tower ringing out just really some ice cream trucks.
0:22:20 - (Kat): That have been reprogrammed, this has remained a tradition and the center point of huge celebrations, not just in New York City, but around the world. And it started with a marine tidekeeping device. The last time ball in regular use was at the Littleton timeball station in New Zealand, which operated until 1934.
0:22:42 - (Jethro): No kidding?
0:22:43 - (Kat): Yeah.
0:22:43 - (Jethro): That's amazing.
0:22:44 - (Kat): So anyway, I just thought time balls were neat. I'd never really heard about them before because they were in use for such a short period of time.
0:22:50 - (Jethro): I was fascinated by the idea that, what was it? The Naval observatory would relay the time to New York so that they could drop the ball accurately. It reminded me of when I first began my very first job in radio in my hometown, at a radio station that had not been updated at all since probably the. They had a big analog clock in the control room and there was a big red button on the control board and you used to have to join the network feed at the top of the hour for the news.
0:23:25 - (Kat): Okay.
0:23:25 - (Jethro): And right before the news would start, they would send a time tone. It would be like, bong. And then they would begin the news.
0:23:32 - (Kat): Okay.
0:23:33 - (Jethro): And we would hold the button in so that the second hand stayed right at the top of the clock until that bong. And then you'd release it. And that way you were right to the network time.
0:23:43 - (Kat): Oh, I see. That's how you reset your clocks just to make sure that they were.
0:23:47 - (Jethro): We were getting the time from the network.
0:23:49 - (Kat): I love that.
0:23:50 - (Jethro): They also didn't have indoor plumbing.
0:23:52 - (Kat): Oh, no.
0:23:54 - (Jethro): I had to poop by the tower.
0:23:55 - (Kat): I don't think that's real.
0:23:57 - (Jethro): No, I peed by the tower. Not on it, though.
0:24:00 - (Kat): No, of course. No.
0:24:02 - (Jethro): I could have killed myself.
0:24:03 - (Kat): Wasn't there a ghost at that radio station?
0:24:05 - (Jethro): There was, because it was built on farmland. My grandfather told me this story.
0:24:10 - (Kat): Okay.
0:24:10 - (Jethro): There was a farm in the land that the radio station was ultimately built on. That burned to the ground, killing the entire family, including a little girl. She was, like, eight years old, something like that. And there were numerous sightings over the years of this little girl in the yellow sweater inside of the radio station, and I never saw it myself.
0:24:37 - (Kat): Okay.
0:24:37 - (Jethro): But two people I worked with did, and they were terrified. There was one night, however, where I had had to work late and then come back early in the morning, so I decided I was just going to sleep there at the radio station, and I was the only one in the building, and everything was turned off and I was just trying to nap in like a lazy boy lounger. And this horrible feeling of dread and sadness came over me to the point where I had to go home.
0:25:02 - (Kat): Oh, my gosh.
0:25:03 - (Jethro): I couldn't stay there. I didn't see anything, I didn't hear anything, but the feeling was just. I was so sad. And as soon as I left the building, I was fine.
0:25:13 - (Kat): It was probably just knowing that your career was going to be in radio.
0:25:18 - (Jethro): Yeah. And I had to get up early to run Casey. Casey's top 40. God, I hated that. I mean, I love the show. I hated running it.
0:25:25 - (Kat): Of course. Yes. I used to have to run NASCAR shows, and that was the most boring job in the history of the world. I was thinking, though, when you said that you slept at the station, I wonder how many people who've worked in radio have slept in a radio station.
0:25:41 - (Jethro): Every one of them.
0:25:42 - (Kat): I have slept in a radio station.
0:25:44 - (Jethro): So many nights, I don't know anybody, any of my friends in radio, that could honestly say they never slept at the radio station.
0:25:51 - (Kat): Really?
0:25:51 - (Jethro): Yeah. It's just one of those things that.
0:25:53 - (Kat): Would be an interesting poll, especially for.
0:25:55 - (Jethro): People like us that did the morning show.
0:25:56 - (Kat): Right.
0:25:57 - (Jethro): Anyway, where that haunted radio station once stood is now a Tim Horton's donut shop. I wonder if the little girl in the yellow sweater has been seen ordering a kroller. We are going off on tangents here a little bit.
0:26:09 - (Kat): Yeah. Let's wrap this up.
0:26:11 - (Jethro): Okay. In the summer of 1858, specifically the months of June and July, the population of London suffered greatly due to what is now referred to as the great stink of 1858. No proper disposal of human waste had become an increasingly difficult problem.
0:26:33 - (Kat): Yeah. There was a real issue during that.
0:26:36 - (Jethro): Time, and it started long before that. As the population of cities grew, so did the challenge of the disposal of waste created by thousands of people concentrated in one particular area or city.
0:26:52 - (Kat): Yeah. And the go to was just toss it out your window into the street.
0:26:57 - (Jethro): It was. And since London is known as one of the largest cities on earth, dating back to roman times. The biggest problem was in London, and waste treatment was a problem from the very start of civilization. Hygiene wasn't really important in the Middle Ages. And as you said, people would. They would go to the bathroom in their chamber pots or coffee cans or.
0:27:21 - (Kat): It was probably coffee cans, whatever they.
0:27:23 - (Jethro): Had at the time. And then they would just empty them out of the windows of their home.
0:27:28 - (Kat): Right along with the bathwater. But fingers crossed, not the baby.
0:27:33 - (Jethro): This led to rivers of human excrement flowing through the ditches of streets in London. And it's interesting that etiquette today tells us that when a man and a woman walk along a sidewalk, the man is supposed to walk on the outside. And that dates back to this period. And that's the reason why. Because guys would be expected to endure the shitstorm.
0:27:58 - (Kat): See, here's the thing is, I don't think that outside of learning about the waste disposal issues in old cities, I don't think I've ever heard the rule that men are supposed to walk on the outside.
0:28:11 - (Jethro): Oh, it's common etiquette.
0:28:12 - (Kat): I know that when I'm walking my dog, I walk on the outside so that if there's a car coming too close, then I will get struck before the dog does.
0:28:22 - (Jethro): It's the same principle only with poop. Of course, London wasn't the only place that suffered from rivers of poo in the streets. In fact, if you visit Liberty Square at Disney World, you'll notice along the streets there are areas of brown paving stones that look like a stream.
0:28:39 - (Kat): They kind of wave in and out the brown walkway.
0:28:42 - (Jethro): Right. This is a reference to the streams of human shit that flowed in the streets of colonial America.
0:28:49 - (Kat): I know that Disney is not for everyone, but there are a lot of fun details. And the river of poop is one of them.
0:28:57 - (Jethro): Yes. Along with just emptying their shitpots out the windows of upstairs apartments in the morning, some of the fancier dwellers had toilet rooms or privies during these times. Unfortunately, the pipe would just end midair.
0:29:14 - (Kat): Oh, that's right. Yes, we've talked about that. Like in the castles, they had those outward pipes that kind of just stopped. And so it would just be piles of poo. Or they would dig giant holes.
0:29:28 - (Jethro): Only the fancy people had.
0:29:29 - (Kat): The fancy people had holes.
0:29:30 - (Jethro): Had giant holes. Yeah, the pipe would just end midair. And as you were pooping, the poop would just fall on the ground or perhaps a neighbor's roof.
0:29:41 - (Kat): See, the thing is, I never want anyone to know when I'm going, sure. And in that situation, everyone would know.
0:29:49 - (Jethro): Well.
0:29:49 - (Kat): And your neighbors would get to know whose poop was whose. And they would be like, oh, well, that's a loose one. That must be JG's.
0:29:58 - (Jethro): It landed on my gazebo.
0:30:00 - (Kat): Oh, my. Gross.
0:30:03 - (Jethro): And that's clearly a violation of the homeowners association.
0:30:07 - (Kat): Right? No parking your pickup truck in the front yard and no pooping on the gazebo.
0:30:13 - (Jethro): In those days, there was a very unique vocation in London. The title was night soil collector. This was a job that only the lowest people of society were willing to do. In the evening, people would fill up their chamber pots, and then in the morning, the night soil collector would come around with his poop cart. Bring out your poop. And then they would empty the chamber pots into the poop cart.
0:30:42 - (Kat): Isn't night soil an eloquent way to refer to pots of shit?
0:30:48 - (Jethro): It is. Now, here's something kind of like a boo effect.
0:30:52 - (Kat): Yeah.
0:30:52 - (Jethro): I didn't know this until I was researching it. Interestingly, night soil collectors were also known as gold finders. Not so much because they sifted through poop for gold, but they believed that emptying the chamber pots of local nobles gave them first dibs on any gold jewelry that may have fallen into the castle privies.
0:31:14 - (Kat): Oh, I see. Well, that must have been an incentive. There probably weren't a lot of incentives for someone to perform this particular occupation.
0:31:23 - (Jethro): She was like a poop coupon. A poopon, if you will. So at least people stopped dumping their shit in the streets. However, where did the night soil collector dispose of his carts full of human waste? Well, much of it was used to fertilize farmland.
0:31:40 - (Kat): Gross.
0:31:41 - (Jethro): I know, but that's what they did. But that didn't even begin to put a dent in the sheer volume of collected waste. So the next best thing was to dump it in the river. Or a stream. Or a stream that led to a river, probably the River Thames. The River Thames in London became everyone's goto sewer source since the 16 hundreds. And even before, Londoners had been dumping human waste in the river as well as animal carcasses.
0:32:14 - (Jethro): Pretty much anything they wanted to get rid of. So by the mid 18 hundreds, it had been 2300 years. The waste in the river was hundreds of years old and was described as, quote, alive.
0:32:29 - (Kat): Alive.
0:32:30 - (Jethro): That's what contemporary papers referred to it as. Everything came to a head in the summer of 1858. It was excessively hot that summer in London, and it said that the heat literally boiled up the filth from the river, it became so bad that you couldn't even walk by the river without becoming physically ill. Many people just passed out.
0:32:55 - (Kat): No.
0:32:56 - (Jethro): The Thames at the time was described as, quote, an oozing fluid composed of human excrement, industrial waste, animal carcasses, rubbish, dead fish muck and who knows what else.
0:33:10 - (Kat): And this continued to be, like, a good idea. Let's continue adding to this situation. It seems like at some point, you'd go like, oh, this isn't working out great.
0:33:22 - (Jethro): Yeah, well, it took them 200 and 5300 years, and it wasn't until the summer of 1858 that the problem became so pronounced. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, famously said, quote, the noble river, so long the pride and joy of Englishmen, which has hitherto been associated with the noblest feats of our commerce and the most beautiful passages of our poetry, has become a stagnant pool, reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors.
0:33:57 - (Jethro): The public health is at stake. Almost all living things that existed in the waters of the Thames have disappeared or been completely destroyed. A very natural fear has arisen that the living beings along its banks may share the same fate. There is a pervading apprehension of pestilence in this great city. Yeah, that wasn't in there, I just added it.
0:34:23 - (Kat): Sure. The hubba blah, blah, blah.
0:34:25 - (Jethro): Right, so, in July and August of 1858, the heat was unbearable in the City of London, and so is the stink. And it was the stink that got people's attention. Not so much the fact that for 200 and 5300 years, people had been dumping shit in their rivers.
0:34:45 - (Kat): And. I'm sorry, real quick, where were they getting their drinking water from the river.
0:34:50 - (Jethro): Many people decided something needed to be done. But there were many major health issues long before the great stink of 1858 that should have alerted them to the issue, namely cholera outbreaks.
0:35:05 - (Kat): Right.
0:35:05 - (Jethro): The first London cholera outbreak happened in 1832. It claimed about 20,000 lives across Britain, 6500 in London alone. In 1848, the second cholera outbreak occurred, and it claimed twice as many victims as the previous outbreak. Yeah, it was ramping up. And then there was the third cholera outbreak. That was in 1853. Through 1854, people suffered all over Britain, but London suffered the most. Nearly 11,000 people died in London alone.
0:35:42 - (Jethro): And, of course, this was due largely to the poor sanitation and living conditions and the extreme foulness of the Thames river.
0:35:51 - (Kat): See, I think about sometimes the standards that I have for certain things.
0:35:58 - (Jethro): You don't even like having to drive somebody else's car.
0:36:02 - (Kat): No. Let alone drink someone else's poop water.
0:36:05 - (Jethro): At this time, the most impoverished people lived closest to the river. Of course they did. The poor people need to live closest to the poop, and they needed help badly. In fact, they wrote to the London Times newspaper, pleading for help. Quote, we live in muck and filth. We ain't got no privies, no dust bins, no water supplies, no drain or sewer in the whole place. If cholera comes, God help us. Even though London was bearing the brunt of the problem because of the extremely poor condition of the Thames, people all over Britain were aware of the issue, and many had similar problems.
0:36:47 - (Jethro): Glasgow, for example, was called possibly the filthiest and unhealthiest of all british towns. And at the time, because of the sewage and waste disposal problems, it was predicted. Check this out. That 50% of all children would die before the age of five. Wow, that's serious. You've heard of Michael Faraday, english chemist and physicist. He proposed a complete reformation of the toxic river, and so he could better demonstrate the urgency of the situation, he took a boat ride across the oozing body of filth.
0:37:26 - (Kat): Can you even boat across that? Because I imagine it's chunky.
0:37:29 - (Jethro): It is. Especially when you factor in the dead carcasses.
0:37:33 - (Kat): Oh, stop with the carcasses.
0:37:35 - (Jethro): He then wrote a letter to the government describing what he saw. He said the Thames was, quote, an opaque, pale brown fluid, and it was nothing more than a real sewer. Public pressure was increasing on the government, and at this point, the unbearable, rotting stench had reached the palace of Westminster. And so now the royal family was starting to smell bad things, and parliament.
0:38:00 - (Kat): Leapt into action once they had been affected.
0:38:03 - (Jethro): Right. 250 years later. Now, keep this in mind. This had been an issue for hundreds of years, but when Parliament finally decided to act, it took just 18 days to create, sign and pass into law a bill that would completely refurbish the affected regions of the river, which was pretty much most of the river or all of the river. So, after hundreds of years of improper waste disposal, London was about to receive a modern sewage system.
0:38:37 - (Kat): What was the plan?
0:38:38 - (Jethro): Well, it was designed by an english civil engineer named Kevin. No, Sir Joseph Basilget. And this was no small proposal. This new sewage system that he designed for London would stretch over 1100 miles, or about 1800, included pipes above and below the streets and the creation of two embankments. The two embankments were regarded at the time as a major feat of civil engineering that allowed them to reclaim the marshy polluted areas on the sides of the Thames, as well as create drainage for the sewer systems. The creation just of those two embankments alone cost an estimated 1.71
0:39:23 - (Jethro): million pounds at the time.
0:39:25 - (Kat): What?
0:39:26 - (Jethro): Making it the most costly civil engineering project in the history of London. That didn't include the building of the sewer pipe system. That took several more years, but when it was done, it was considered a marvel. It was built in such a way 150 years ago that even to this day, it's being used, and it's still pretty effective.
0:39:45 - (Kat): Oh, wow. I didn't know that.
0:39:48 - (Jethro): Once the sewer and waste disposal system was completed, it only took a few years for the Thames river to clean itself. It healed itself. It's now considered to be one of the cleanest rivers in the world. It's the home of about 125 different species of fish and 400 species of invertebrates. But even so, it's still not considered completely swimmable. In fact, if you go in there, you might get what locals call Thames tummy.
0:40:17 - (Kat): What the hell does that mean?
0:40:19 - (Jethro): You get nauseous and you throw up and it's accompanied with a high fever, but you don't necessarily. It's like cholera light.
0:40:26 - (Kat): Oh, my gosh. It's been 150 years. The next time I don't feel well, I'm going to be like, I got the Thames tummy.
0:40:34 - (Jethro): And because they're still using this 150 year old sewer system, the Thames still does receive raw sewage.
0:40:42 - (Kat): No.
0:40:42 - (Jethro): From time to time.
0:40:43 - (Kat): Stop it.
0:40:44 - (Jethro): It's routinely pumped out into the river during heavy rains. The reason is because when they designed the system, it was designed to mix sewage and rainwater. And when there's a heavy storm, the sewage system becomes overrun with stormwater.
0:41:01 - (Kat): Like, there's overflow.
0:41:03 - (Jethro): Right. Then the overflow is pumped into the river through 57 existing sewer overflow pipes. So even though much progress has been.
0:41:11 - (Kat): Made, it's still estimated it's 2022, guys.
0:41:15 - (Jethro): It's still estimated that around 39 million tons of mixed sewage, wastewater and rainwater is pumped in the river every year.
0:41:25 - (Kat): No, not cool.
0:41:28 - (Jethro): The good news is, help's on the way. Currently, a 16 miles super sewer is under construction.
0:41:34 - (Kat): Ooh, that sounds fun.
0:41:35 - (Jethro): It's got a fancy name, too. It's called the Thames Tideway tunnel. It's being constructed at 24 different sites that run from west London all the way through Becton, which is just past the Thames river.
0:41:48 - (Kat): That's amazing.
0:41:49 - (Jethro): It's a highly modern sewer design, and it's expected to solve the remaining waste disposal problems. The sewer project is a lot more expensive than the one that was built 150 years ago. That was like 1.71 million pounds. Today, this project is about 6 billion pounds, which is $6.78 billion, and the date of completion is 2024.
0:42:19 - (Kat): Wow.
0:42:20 - (Jethro): And even though this will once again greatly improve the quality of the water in the Thames, it will never return to its natural, pristine condition. But at the very least, London will never have to relive conditions similar to the ones of the great stink of 1858.
0:42:38 - (Kat): Wow. Congratulations, you guys.
0:42:42 - (Jethro): My source material was the London Times, ancient origins, Wikipedia, and fancy papers IPA.
0:42:53 - (Kat): What did you do today? I haven't seen you all.
0:42:56 - (Jethro): I. Well, I got up, I had some coffee, and then I took a nap almost immediately after that.
0:43:03 - (Kat): That sounds like your best day.
0:43:05 - (Jethro): Yeah, it's pretty much my best day.
0:43:07 - (Kat): Good.
0:43:07 - (Jethro): The best birthday ever.
0:43:09 - (Kat): I'm really glad.
0:43:09 - (Jethro): Thanks. What about your day? You had to go to work. How did your day go?
0:43:13 - (Kat): Oh, well, I figured out that I can fit a water bottle, a jug of nail files, and a can of soup in my pants.
0:43:23 - (Jethro): Was this some kind of office wide competition?
0:43:29 - (Kat): I guess I have the Mr. Potato head of the human body, because these pants fit me all the places except for right in that front ponch area. There's just a lot of extra room, so I thought we'd see how much I could jam in there. Yeah, not what you do at work.
0:43:43 - (Jethro): Well, most people don't. Although maybe the world would be a better place.
0:43:47 - (Kat): See how much you can jam in your pants.
0:43:49 - (Jethro): See how many objects you can put in your pants. Maybe that's how it should be determined who climbs the corporate ladder.
0:43:55 - (Kat): Maybe my boss came by and he was like, oh, what's going on here? And I pulled a can of soup out, and he was like, were you warming that up? Don't be gross. Like, I'm pulling items out of my pants and telling other people to stop being gross. It's amazing.
0:44:13 - (Jethro): So I'm the birthday boy today. So tell me a story.
0:44:17 - (Kat): Oh, okay.
0:44:18 - (Jethro): What you got for me?
0:44:20 - (Kat): I thought you went first because it was your birthday, but okay, this is fine, too.
0:44:24 - (Jethro): No, I want to sit back and be regaled.
0:44:26 - (Kat): Excellent. Well, then let me tell you about this. So the Fiestas de Santa Fe. It's a festival that's held every autumn in Santa Fe in New Mexico, and it's been held since 1712 to celebrate the spanish retaking of the city in 1692 by Don Diego Devargas from the Pueblo tribes who had occupied the city since the pueblo revolt of 1680. So the fiesta was revamped in 1912 by a group led by the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce and a man named Edgar Lee Hewitt. So Hewitt re envisioned the fiesta as a celebration of the history of New Mexico from prehistoric times to the annexation by the United States and rooted in the culture of Indians, Hispanics and Anglos. Okay, so from 1925 to 1932, the spanish colonial Art Society sold Santos at the festival.
0:45:29 - (Kat): Santos, you may know, are like painted, carved images of saints.
0:45:35 - (Jethro): Okay. Yeah, no, I didn't know what that was, but I can envision it in my head.
0:45:40 - (Kat): Okay. So, like, when the Spanish came to the Americas and they wanted visual representations of the stories of the saints, they would make these. They didn't call them Santos, I don't know what they called them, but they would make visual aids. It was a way to convert people to their religion. Now, they were selling these Santos during the fiesta, and that event spun off into its own celebration called the Spanish Market.
0:46:06 - (Kat): So when Hewitt started charging admission to this fiesta, a group kind of got jacked up about it. And they were like, no, this is a city thing. This is something that we all do together. It's a fit place for artists. It's a place for the people. You shouldn't be charging admission. That's not cool, dude. So they started their own group called El Paso Tiempo. Now that kind of ended up being reabsorbed into the fiesta over the years.
0:46:36 - (Jethro): Okay, so it's morphing, it's changing, it's evolving.
0:46:38 - (Kat): Exactly. And when it was reabsorbed into the fiesta, it featured, and it brought with it what was called a hysterical pageant, which was a parody of the historical pageant that they had at the fiesta. So these artists were like, we're going to have this hysterical pageant and also the burning of the Zozobra.
0:47:02 - (Jethro): Explain, please.
0:47:03 - (Kat): Now this is what we're talking about today, the burning of the Zozobra. Big thanks, by the way, to the kid who sent me a message and said, you should talk about the burning of the Zozobra. So the Zozobra, aka old man Gloom, aka omg.
0:47:20 - (Jethro): OMg.
0:47:21 - (Kat): Right? He was the original OMG. The Og OMG.
0:47:25 - (Jethro): Get down with OMG.
0:47:26 - (Kat): Yeah, you know me.
0:47:27 - (Jethro): Get down with OMG.
0:47:29 - (Kat): Yeah, you know me. Anyway, the Zazobra is a 50 foot tall marionette effigy that is built and burnt during the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe.
0:47:40 - (Jethro): So it's like burning man.
0:47:41 - (Kat): It's like burning man, but with a puppet. But with a really weird puppet.
0:47:47 - (Jethro): I am all in on this.
0:47:49 - (Kat): Josebra, also man as old man Gloom is the creation of Will Schuster, who is one of the group of artists known as the Cinco Pintores who made their way to New Mexico in the 1920s.
0:48:04 - (Jethro): And of course, even to this day, Santa Fe is a huge art district.
0:48:08 - (Kat): Yes, I've been to New Mexico.
0:48:10 - (Jethro): Not Santa Fe.
0:48:11 - (Kat): No.
0:48:12 - (Jethro): But you've been to Albuquerque.
0:48:15 - (Kat): Yes. I'm still learning how to spell it, though. So as his name suggests, Omg embodies gloom, and by burning him, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames.
0:48:31 - (Jethro): This is beautiful.
0:48:32 - (Kat): I know. This is something that I really like to do, like symbolically, like, when we have a fire, I like to write down things that have jacked me up over the last week or so. Ball them up, toss them in the fire, let them go into the flames. Let them right away from me. I don't need you anymore.
0:48:50 - (Jethro): I do that with bills.
0:48:51 - (Kat): Yeah, that's been an issue before. So anyone with an excess of gloom is encouraged to write down the nature of his or her gloom on the slip of paper and leave it in the gloom box, which is found in the offices of the Santa Fe reporter in the weeks leading up to the burn.
0:49:09 - (Jethro): I love that there's something called a gloom box.
0:49:12 - (Kat): There is something called a gloom box. I think we all need one. It also sounds like something that's downstairs on a sad flusy, or it could.
0:49:22 - (Jethro): Refer to some sort of infection.
0:49:24 - (Kat): Right. Oh, my gosh, you're right. Yeah. Oh, I can't go out tonight. I've got the gloom box.
0:49:32 - (Jethro): Don't come near me for a while. Okay.
0:49:34 - (Kat): The tests are back.
0:49:35 - (Jethro): I have the gloom box.
0:49:40 - (Kat): Anyway, participants can also add documents on the day of the burning prior to the event by visiting a gloom tent where they can add to the marionette stuffing. So this is very well organized.
0:49:53 - (Jethro): When you've got the gloom box, it's very unlikely your partner will pitch a gloom tent. I'm just trying to get this straight in my mind.
0:50:01 - (Kat): Sure, but where does the stuffing come into play?
0:50:06 - (Jethro): Not authorized to answer that.
0:50:08 - (Kat): All right, so according to burnzazobra.com, Zazobra is the enemy of all that is good. Santa Fe knows all too well the spell of darkness and despair that Zobra casts annually over the city. This doomful specter is a monster who is created and reborn annually because of our own nefarious and woeful deeds throughout the year. In order to lure Zobra out of hiding, the leaders invite him to the Santa Fe celebration, the annual Fiestas de Santa Fe.
0:50:44 - (Jethro): You'd think after several years of getting burned up, you'd catch on and refuse the invitation. Maybe just don't respond to the RSVP.
0:50:52 - (Kat): I know. That's what I do.
0:50:54 - (Jethro): Get down with RSVP.
0:50:56 - (Kat): Yeah, you know me. How many times can we do this show?
0:50:59 - (Jethro): I don't know. I'm going to keep a tally.
0:51:01 - (Kat): Okay, cool. So with his enormous ego urging him on, Zozobra accepts the invitation, recognizing it as his best opportunity to invade the heart of the town to destroy hope and happiness that he can't stay away.
0:51:21 - (Jethro): And you can get what you want from him by simply appealing to his ego.
0:51:26 - (Kat): That's right.
0:51:27 - (Jethro): So you just tell him things that he wants to hear and then he'll give you what you want. But his motives are to destroy humankind.
0:51:37 - (Kat): Yes, that's 100% accurate.
0:51:40 - (Jethro): He sounds narcissistic.
0:51:42 - (Kat): He sure does. So Zobra appears at a place called Fort Marcy park, and that's kind of north of Santa Fe's midsection. And at the appointed hour, the crowd has shown up. Zezobra is there. And Zobra apparently becomes disgruntled by the.
0:52:05 - (Jethro): By the catering, because that makes me grumpy. If it's bad catering, because the crowd.
0:52:10 - (Kat): Isn'T big enough, he gets kind of upset. He also doesn't like to be kept waiting. So while the townfolk gather, he casts a spell over the children of Santa Fe to come to him. Now, again, this is from burnzozobra.com. He drives hope and happiness out of the minds of children. They become his minions, aka gloomies. It turns out Zozobra does know the town's plan to capture him. Okay, so the gloomies are part of his plan.
0:52:44 - (Kat): And they, this is beginning to sound.
0:52:47 - (Jethro): More like a Dr. Seuss.
0:52:48 - (Kat): It is a very interesting story that has been created. And again, this was all part of his name was Will Schuster. He was an artist and this was all part of his idea.
0:52:59 - (Jethro): He created the backstory.
0:53:00 - (Kat): Yes.
0:53:01 - (Jethro): I love this guy.
0:53:02 - (Kat): I know. So as if from a waking nightmare. Again, burnzazobra.com. The gloomy children return to reality and scatter at the sight of the bright light from the torches that the town's people carry. So keep in mind, Zazobra's image is like 50ft tall. He's very large thing that they've created.
0:53:25 - (Jethro): Now they make this out of wood.
0:53:26 - (Kat): Out of wood and fill him with paper.
0:53:29 - (Jethro): Can you imagine picking up that order at like Lowe's?
0:53:32 - (Kat): Zobra's victory is short lived because the crowd starts to yell, burn him, burn him. And Zobra's eternal enemy, the fire spirit, materializes from the hopes the dreams and the faith of Santa Fe's citizens.
0:53:51 - (Jethro): You know, this is kind of silly, but yet there's an element of beauty to it.
0:53:56 - (Kat): That's the thing, is, I love it. I love this idea. I love the whole concept of it. I think it's important that we use our. I mean, I'm getting a little goofy here, but we have to acknowledge the things that are the gloomies in our lives.
0:54:14 - (Jethro): Sure.
0:54:15 - (Kat): And maybe sometimes we have to set them on fire. I'm just saying it's important. That's how you move forward.
0:54:22 - (Jethro): I'm wondering if an oral history of this festival would be passed down over generations and then maybe lost to time. But then they start finding little elements of it archaeologically, like maybe 800 years in the future, and determine that this was, in fact, a legitimate religion.
0:54:43 - (Kat): I know this. You want to be really careful with your oral history when you're dealing with a gloom box. So again, the fire spirit is the enemy of. The fire spirit is the enemy of Zobra. He dances about, which is basically the flaming torches that the citizens of Santa Fe carry with them.
0:55:06 - (Jethro): Right.
0:55:07 - (Kat): They light him on fire, and then there are fireworks, and everyone kind of dances about and has a festival.
0:55:15 - (Jethro): There's alcohol involved, isn't there?
0:55:17 - (Kat): I can't imagine that. There wouldn't be.
0:55:19 - (Jethro): There would have to be. Whenever you're burning something large like that. Normally there's alcohol involved.
0:55:26 - (Kat): Yes. Often to the detriment of those involved.
0:55:29 - (Jethro): Are you speaking from personal experience?
0:55:31 - (Kat): I don't know why. Anyway, so everyone has this giant party while he burns, and one. We have to go to this festival. Yes, we have to go to this festival.
0:55:44 - (Jethro): I kind of want to create a mini version of it in our yard tonight.
0:55:48 - (Kat): Oh, well, we can absolutely do that.
0:55:50 - (Jethro): That would be fun.
0:55:50 - (Kat): Yeah. Okay. Fire. Smoke fills the air. It's a whole thing. And once he's burned down, there's a big celebration. It goes into the night, of course, and then he's vanquished. However, immediately, he starts building his strength again. Right. For next year's celebration, people are going to be dicks.
0:56:15 - (Jethro): Naturally, as soon as the alcohol wears off.
0:56:17 - (Kat): Yeah. So then the next September, usually in the second week of September, they will go through the whole thing again and take care of Zobra and trick him, and he will think that he's tricking them. And then the fire and the fun and all that business.
0:56:34 - (Jethro): It's a delicate dance of fate.
0:56:36 - (Kat): It really is. Now, the whole festival, as I've said, has been going on for a lot longer than this but this is a part of it that I just think that is magical and amazing. And, I mean, it's been going on for almost 100 years.
0:56:49 - (Jethro): That's incredible.
0:56:49 - (Kat): And it's kind of built its own traditions and magic and there's something. I don't know. I just really think it's rad.
0:56:59 - (Jethro): I think it's great.
0:56:59 - (Kat): I want to be a part of it. It's the 1 September, usually the 2 September.