Doomed to Fail - Ep 218: Mystery Deaths at the Bicentennial - Legionnaires' Disease

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

It's 1976 - thousands of US Veterans in the American Foreign Legion meet up in Philly for a few days of meetings and camaraderie (and we assume not talking about trauma because it was the 70s). Staying at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, hundreds of men would get sick when they returned home, and over 30 would be dead in the next few days. What caused the Legionnaires (and some people who just walked by the hotel) to get sick? Send in the CDC (Rest in Power), shock your hot tub, and throw away your humidifiers for this medical mystery!  Forensic Files - Season 1, Episode 7 - Legionnaires' Disease - Full Episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5fh4opyUU8 Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for you. Hello, hello, Taylor. How are you? I am doing well. How are you? I'm good. I'm just looking at the most expensive house in America. Is it the, oh, it's an Aspen, you said? It's an Aspen, yeah.

Did you ever see the queen of Versailles that? of that lady. I liked her. I thought she was kind of fun. It is definitely a Florida energy. Yes, exactly. Exactly. She's bringing to the table.

Cool. Do you want to introduce us? Yeah. Hi, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you history's notorious disasters and epic failures. And I'm Taylor, joined by Fars. I am here and we are going to give you another riveting episode, I think.

Hopefully. Hopefully. So, um, Taylor, who goes first today? I do. Let me open up my, I'm opening up my Diet Coke to pour into my McDonald's Diet Coke because I drink all of my McDonald's Diet Coke, so I've got to add more health. It does feel better drinking out of McDonald's. I know.

Paper cup for some reason. I have, I have a caffeine one and a no caffeine one, so not crazy. I saw a thing where a doctor on Instagram was like, I drink a lot of Diet Coke and I don't talk about it, but I have a disease where my body doesn't create its own Diet Coke, so I have to supplement. And I laughed. I do get told quite a bit that I should cut back my Diet Coke intake. Don't people mind their own goddamn business.

You hear that, Rachel? She's actually, I can hear her saying what on the other side of the door? She's going to hear this and be like, what the hell is going on? Oh my God. My clock that has a quote from a book in it has a quote right now from Gerald's game. Did you see Gerald game? Yeah, I did. That's the one.

That's the book where my mom read it when I was like 10 and she told me everything about it. And I was so scared to sleep in the dark for so long. And we talk about it all the time how she ruined my life. I think that's like, who tells her 10 year old daughter that's great. I know. I was like the entire setup is not 10 year old appropriate, much less the rest of it. A thousand percent. Like none of it is appropriate for children.

But that's why you have such a deep affinity in love towards Stephen King and horror. It is. And my grandma, when my mom was a baby, my grandma took her to the theater where she wanted to see psycho. So my mom was there as a baby. So it just explains a lot. There you go. Yeah.

It's genetic. It's genetic. Okay, cool. So, you ready? Yes. I have a disease to tell you about. Florence was sick this week, but I thought about this before this. It's just kind of like, this has been in the news.

so I wanted to dig in and learn a little bit more. This is a disease. It's probably older than we know it as, but it wasn't named until the 1970s. Measles. No. It is a respiratory disease, and it happened to a very specific population

of U.S. Army, Navy, Navy, Air Force, whatever, veterans. Can you think of what I'm called? No, it is Legionnaire's disease. No way, okay. Have you heard of it? I have. It sounds almost like fancy and romantic because I can picture like a French legionaire, you know? That is. Okay, exactly. So I was thinking like, what is a legionaire, which I will tell you what that is. But I only, the first thing that comes to mind is a French one.

Yeah. Well, because of the French foreign legion, they're called legionnaires. Right, but this is the American Legion. They're also called Legioners. Oh my God, really? That's what I mean. It's not, but it was started in France. I'm going to tell you all about that. All right. Okay.

So, oh, and I watched a forensic files. It's Forensic Files, Season 1, Episode 7 on Legionnaire's Disease. If you want to watch that, I've watched it before. You may watch it again. It's playful. Taylor, for the first time in any of my researching history, I did watch a forensic files for my episode. Really? Yeah.

That's so cool. Serendipity. Gros. So, picture it. We're in Philadelphia. It is July 1776. It is the bicentennial, which we are now at the, whatever you call it. So I feel like the bicentennial was a huge freaking deal for people because it's the 200-year

anniversary of the United States. Yeah, we're 250. Yeah, this year I just like could not care less. Is it Quentin Senile? I have no idea. I mean, I know why I don't care, but like also look at us. So it's 50 years ago right now, ish. It's in Philly.

It's hot. I know I've mentioned this before, but the average temperature in Philadelphia in the 1700s and the 1900s and always during July is like high 80s, low 90s, which is awful. And especially if you're writing the Declaration of Independence wearing an old-timey outfit, you're going to be just so hot and sweaty. Yeah, of course. I just like wonder how much of it was written real fucking fast because they were like, we're going to suffocate in here, you guys. No, I think you get used to it. I think you're like, this is life. Life is sweaty and smelly and everybody. stinks. God, it seems so terrible. Terrible. Anyway, 200 years later, we're back in Philly.

And there's a fair amount of stuff going on. So I'll mention these things and then I'll bring them back later. But it's hot. There is a garbage strike, which is very European of them. So there's garbage everywhere. There are possible terrorist threats to the city because it's the 70s and there's terrorist threats everywhere. And there are a lot of sex workers in town, which like they usually are, but like this is something to bring up that like they're active because there's a lot of conventions happening. Yeah, of course. Just FYM. So anywhere like about 4,000 legionaires, again, I'll tell you what they are in a second, who are veterans from the American Foreign Legion are in town for their annual meeting. They stay at the Belford Stratford Hotel in downtown, in downtown Philly,

which has been having some air conditioning issues, so some problems with the AC. They stay there for three days. It's a Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, they leave on Saturday. Eight days later, two of them are dead. In total, about 31 of them are going to die, and hundreds are going to get sick. People who were in the hotel, people who walked by the hotel got sick. None of the hotel workers got sick. It was like a super weird mystery of what happened. So I'm going to tell you what happened. Please. Okay. So what are the Legionaire? Good question that you kind of asked earlier. it started so world war one it's over it is 1919 it's been awful have you listened to dan's blueprint for armageddon of course oh my god when it ended you know how he ends with that like boom i cried

i just like started stopping like absolutely unbelievable world war one terrible thank you taylor for that you're welcome oh my god i'm so glad that you're here we should tell the i think part of that emotion and sentiment is because he like it's all chronological i don't actually know if it's all chronological but like i think in those episodes he set it up chronologically to lead into world war two and then the atomic bomb and everything else and so because of that it was very like you he sets it up so well what's coming down the pipe it just gets you're so excited about it oh my god it's incredible incredible if you have eight hours to spare go listen to a blueprint for ever get in by dan carlin i like how in last podcast when henry was talking about listening to dan carlin he's like i'll just like

wake up at the end of his episode. And it's like, why am I, why have I walked to New Jersey from LA? Like it's so true. Totally. So now that the war is over, there's a bunch of men who are still stuck in France. Like a bunch of, like the war technically ended, but there's like cleanup to do when you're kind of hanging out, but you really want to go home. And morale is like falling really quickly. Like the money is there to get you there. The money is not really there to bring you home. All the things are happening. So during this waiting period, so, Some people decided to start an organization to give them something to do. So veterans from all types of the U.S. service get together and can join this group.

The person whose idea was is Teddy Roosevelt Jr., who is Teddy Roosevelt's son. And I just want to digress and talk a little bit about T.R. Jr., because he's exactly as weird as you want him to be. Like, there's a picture of him with a giant bird on his Wikipedia page. He looks crazy, but like super duper fun. And of course he's, you know, T.R. son. So what a life. He, so he has the idea to, like, improve morale. They're going to do it. Later on, T.R. Jr., this is just, again, an aside, he joins the New York State Assembly. He becomes a governor general of the Philippines, which is a job that Taft had had as well. He becomes a governor of Puerto Rico. Then he becomes the assistant secretary of the Navy, just like T.R. and FDR were. Then he goes back into World War II. Him and Patton got in a fight because Patton didn't like the way that he wore his uniform. And then T.R. Jr. was the oldest person to stormed the beach in Normandy in his 50s. That seems appropriate.

He like didn't have to, but he wanted to and he did anyway, which is exactly what. It's exactly what his dad would have done. What his dad would have done. Yeah. His son also stormed the Omaha Beach the same day. And T.R. Jr. died in his sleep in France on July 12, 1944. He was 56. I thought that was fun. Just fun to learn about him. Another person who was instrumental in starting the American Foreign Legion is John J. Pershing, who I don't know anything about. But remember, we used to work by Pershing Square. Oh, yeah.

Oh, really? Okay. I didn't know that. Yeah. He's a World War I general that we can learn more about later. But that's that. The first meeting of the American Foreign Legion was in Paris. So that's why it sounds so French.

And they went back to the U.S. and divided it up into states. So states were able to do whatever they wanted kind of and have their own set of guiding rules, which means some states were allowed to, like, segregate other, some states, well, there is a story for another time of a time when legionnaires and union people got into a fight and it is called a massacre. People died. So lots of stuff we could talk about that later, but that's essentially who they are. They did things like help pass GI Bill. They are continually fighting for veterans' rights, trying to get money into the VA, and they wear cute little hats. It's an association. It's an association of former. military. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So now it's 1976. There's lots of wars to be a vet of. So

there are a lot of people who come there. They meet every year, and this year it's in Philadelphia. The convention, like I said, is from July 21st to 24th, a Wednesday through a Saturday. A lot of the men share rooms. There's probably a handful of women, but it's mostly men. And everything goes fine. Like the convention itself seems to be fine. And then they start to get sick kind of almost immediately on july 22nd even before the it's over people start to have chills a fever a headache they generally feel just like not good some of them have a cough um and some of it

some of the times that cough progresses to like more of pneumonia um that starts to happen kind of right away if they get a fever the fever gets so high it can go up to 107 which is like you're almost dead yeah yeah this is high that goes so once to get home, things start to get worse. Again, not for everybody, but for some of them. So on July 27th, so three days after it's over, a man named Ray Brennan dies at home. He's 61 years old, and he dies of a heart attack. On July 30th, Frank Avini, who 60, dies, and then three other attendees die right around the same time. So because it's in Philly, it's like the Pennsylvania Legionnaires, so they all kind of live in the area. And,

And a doctor named Dr. Ernest Campbell in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania is like, okay, well, I just had three people die of pneumonia. Like, what is going on? Like, what are the, what's the, like, correlation? And they all had gone to this convention. So he alerted the CDC and was like, something's going on. Like, I don't know what it is, but like, it can't be a coincidence that these three guys just died. And they were all this thing together last week. By August 1st, which is like the next Sunday, six more people die.

have the fever congestion when they are autopsied. They said their lungs with like broilopads. They're just like dry and terrible. By in August 5th through 6th, there are like over 150 people in the hospital, 22 people die in that week. And so they're trying to figure out like what the hell is going on because they don't know, like they know that it all goes back to the convention, but they can't figure out like why they're all sick. So the call in the CDC, And the CDC goes to Philly and they do one of the largest disease investigations of ever. They send, I wrote the CDC, in parentheses, RIP, sends a team. And David Frazier leads it from the CDC and the press starts calling it Legionnaire's disease.

So it gets the name from this convention from these folks. They do all kinds of survey and research because they're like, how can like two people share a room, but only one of them get sick? You know? And then also, there's another disease that they're calling Broad Street pneumonia because people who just walked by the hotel are also getting sick. But not everyone. Yeah, I definitely don't know enough to have an opinion on it. So it's like what's going on? The employees in the hotel aren't getting sick. But some people who see it there are.

So the surveys that they ask and the things that the CDC ask, these guys are like, when did you take the elevator? Did you take the elevator to the meetings on like this day or that day? What meetings did you go to? Did you drink the coffee on Friday? Just like anything they can do to think of where this could possibly have come from. Then they're like, if you remember the other things that were happening in Philly at this time, they were like, did you see a sex worker? One of the options was potentially super gonorrhea, which sounds very bad. I do, well, I do recall that we did think there was a strain of super gonorrhea.

That sounds familiar. Yeah, I feel like that comes up every once in a while. I think that came up in our childhood. That sounds like a thing. Maybe. Okay. Probably always a thing somewhere. Also, like, could it have been the trash?

Like, if you ever, have you ever been in, even in, like, a city where the trash is working correctly during the summer, it smells terrible, you know? But if you have a garbage strike, too, it happened, I think, a couple of times when I was in New York, it's just like piles and piles, like over your head of garbage, and it just smells like death and it's terrible. And you're like, well, there's no way we're not getting sick from this, you know? Yeah. Absolutely worst. And then also they were like, could it have been a biological weapon?

Because there had been like the terrorist threats against the thing. So they're covering all their bases, trying to figure out what it was. Eventually they were able to narrow it down that people who were over 50 who smoked were the most infected. So definitely affected their lungs. That's why some people could like share rooms and one person would die and one person would be okay. At one point, they were sure they found the answer that it was nickel poisoning. So they were like checking everything for nickel. But it turns out that the autopsies, they used nickel scalples, and it was the scalples. That was the thing.

Oh, wow. Which is annoying. You would think somebody would have caught that earlier. By September, there's 200 cases and 34 deaths. Essentially, you die of, like, pneumonia. So they're trying to narrow down, figure exactly what it is. And on January 18th, 1977, they found the previously unknown

bacteria, and they named it Legionella Penome. Nope. Panomomillia. Nope. Anyway, they named it after them. It's a brand new bacteria that they hadn't seen before. The name of it after the Legionnaires. They were able to find it by putting it, like, you know, a couple of like giddy pig testing to like see like literally like using animals. So they tried to figure out like what it is and they found it. And then they were like, well, where did it come from? So it's a new bacteria that they've never seen before that causes a disease that they've never seen before. And they can't figure out where it. try to figure out where it came from do you know where it came from it has to be no no but you explain why it's not okay sorry i'm going back to like covid stuff anyways do i have no idea it is not person to person there's one case in the world where it was it's person to person but it's not person to person it actually came from the AC unit on the top of the hotel because the AC was a cooling tower and i'll explain to you how that works but it's essentially from stagnant water so

and like recent-ish since then cases of legionnaires disease have come from all types of things they've come from like it's a big building cooling towers showers hot tubs decorative fountains large plumbing just like anything where you can have water they get stagnant and gets gross because any like plain water that doesn't move is going to get bacteria in it and this is what this is where it came from so people probably died of this before yes okay yeah they've probably been dying of it for a very long time but it was never identified by like a scientific community until this right okay right like the current scientific community um so the hotel had what a lot of large buildings have which is a cooling tower so like a huge AC unit on the top of the of the hotel which i think is probably very similar to the swamp cooler that i have at my house um where like water goes through it and that's what cools that's what cools everything. So again, I'm not an engineer, but what happens is hot water gets pushed in to like a large flat pool area in the cooling tower. And then the heat rises. The cool air is pushed out. And that creates like the AC in the hotel. And then the rest of the water is recycled again. And the tiny bit is

evaporated. It becomes vapor. And that kind of, that's what goes out into the air. But mostly the water recycles itself and the cool air gets pushed through it while the hot air goes up. That's how your AC unit works. That's what a swamp unit is. I think so. I have a regular AC now and I don't think he does that. But also like your AC drips water because it's always like getting the condensation. But I think it's in like a big building where they have the water. My swamp cooler specifically is attached to the water and the water goes through a filter and then the the water cools and that's what cools the house. We don't use it anymore but like that's the same thing. Yeah. I thought like now it's like it's got to be

chemical. It's going to be like Freon and stuff. Yeah, yeah. But the cooling towers they used it in like a lot of big industrial buildings and a lot of hospitals use a cooling tower, especially like big buildings. So in this case at the Belford's Stratford Hotel, the water was stagnated

at the bottom of the cooling tower and it wasn't recycling and it wasn't doing what was supposed to be doing. It was a little bit broken and they had people fixing it, but they hadn't been fully fixed. So they have a picture on Wikipedia of this at the David J. Sensor CDC Museum in Atlanta, there's a jug of water that is the water from the

cooling tower during this outbreak, and it is yellow, which like cannot be good. It is like bright yellow. So that's like the bacteria in there that was like evaporating into the air that was going through the AC units. So now that you know what it is, it can be treated with like some antibiotics. So there is a way to treat it. It still has a, you know, like five to six percent fatality rate because if you don't treat it fast enough and depending on, you know, who you know, who you you are, if you've been soaking, if you're older, all those things can, like, essentially make it worse. Now, there are new laws around standing water, so you can start identifying what it is, but it really

needs to, those contraptions and things need to have a system where they are heating the water enough, like above 158 degrees Fahrenheit, so that it can kill the bacteria before it goes through the air, if that makes sense. Because, like, there's a huge gap, which is, 68 to 112 degrees where it can just grow, like that and many other bacteria can just grow. It helps if you remove slime and also just a note tip for everyone to get a new humidifier. I just got a new humidifier. Get anyone. Because why?

The bacteria can grow in it so easily at the regular ambient temperature of your house. You know what? I have one of, I have two of those little things that like create vapors. in the room and every now and then i open it and i look inside it is so disgusting in there yeah you should clean it or throw it away so just breathing the air in is enough to get infected yeah yeah that's how it's transmitted it's transmitted through like vapor in the air so it's not like the air conditioning system itself is the thing it's the water vapor so that it was because it wasn't working correctly and the water because it was so hot all these different things the water was never

doing what it was supposed to do to kind of clean itself and it was just like growing, growing and growing those bacteria. But then why would two people in the same room being fed by the same or receiving the same error? Because of their

personal history. So if you smoke and if you're older and if you like could be sick, you would get it more often. Like if you're more vulnerable to those things, like you would get sicker. So everybody who died from like the 1976 outbreak was someone who was older and who had like previous lung problems so it's like generally unhealthy and this

exasperated it's like okay yeah yeah that's so like you should clean your human your little things they're really gross like i get shocked whenever i do open them because i'm like how did it get so black and like gross in there is just black mine get orange uh there's there's definitely some orange there's definitely parts of it that are orange but then some of the some of the some of the like standing water is like mildewy and black yeah because standing water is like very dangerous if you just like don't let it let it filter itself out and move around right okay i'm gonna have to clean this out you're gonna have clean this yeah please clean those so like you said it's obviously happened before because it is a um it is something has probably happened for a long time as long as we've

have to had standing water but what we can actually track back to being this very specific thing In 1965, 16 people died at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. A lot of these are at hospitals in like old people's homes and apartment buildings that have these big cooling towers. So before this, 1976, in Spain, in 73 and 77, four people died at a hotel, and then they were able to trace it back to this. And then since 1976, in 1978, people died. in Memphis. There's a lot of cases in Australia, which is like another, I put, I'm going to add this to my list of reasons not to go to Australia because a lot of the cases are in Australia. I don't know why. In the 80s, a bunch of cases were in England and Australia, 28 people died

in a hospital in 1985 in Stafford, England. It kind of makes sense, though, because like the place you're talking about aren't arid places. They're places with high humidity and like, which is also exactly why because like the swamp cooler that we've used in the past that we're not using anymore because I think it's leaking but it's here but I'm like why don't have this everywhere it's cheaper than AC but you couldn't have it in a place that was humid because it would be a

like mosquitoes would swarm around it you know like it wouldn't dry out and we're so dry here exactly when you said Memphis my first thought was that campaign I did in 2006 whatever it was it was in Memphis I lived there for like three four months

and it was just a press of heat mixed with greasy humidity. And then if you also have built in standing water, I mean, it just sounds like an obvious problem. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

This one I thought was the most interesting. In 1999, 32 people died in the Netherlands at a flower exhibition for like a convention. And they died from a hot tub exhibition. So it was like a big room.

There you go. A bunch of hot tubs. Yeah. They had a bunch of hot tubs out for display, and 32 people died. In France, there was a petrochemical plant where 21 people died. It happened at the Rio in Las Vegas. One person died in 2017 at Disneyland from Legionera's disease. And then today is Saturday, August 30th, 2025.

Yesterday, they've officially announced it over. But from August 9th to yesterday this year, there was Legionnaires disease found in 12 cooling towers and 10 buildings in Harlem, New York City. They were able to look at the bacterial strains and the outbreak is believed to have started in a Harlem hospital and an under construction New York City public health lab because it was under construction, it was like not being taken care of enough. And that got into the system and 114 people got sick and seven people died just this month from Legionnaire's disease. is in New York City. That's wild. Not wild. So, still a thing.

Clean your stuff. I mean, and also just like be somewhat healthy. Like, the better you can like sustain. Like, yeah, like just, I mean, I'm not a picture of health. I know that. Like, I'm not trying to, like, shame anybody. I know that I'm not. What's that word?

I can't remember it for people who are like more vulnerable to things. You know, remember like Jim? Like we had like our boss who had had cancer. and he you know it's not his fault he had cancer but he was like someone who I guess is a preexisting condition or whatever but like if he got sick it was worse than it was for us no I know I'm saying like things like smoking for example or like being like super overweight like it's stuff that you have some agency in control over not the fact that Jim got cancer 17 times no I know but but like for yeah for people like that like you have to be

particularly careful because I mean I think I just at a certain age stay home I think, like, man. But then what if you're, no, but what if your little humidifier kills you? I'm throwing it right now. It's like starting to glow red. Yeah, okay. You know what, when you were talking, what I actually thought about was, you know that pool we swim in? The cowboy pool in my backyard?

Yeah. So that thing, when the last freeze hit in Austin, the pump burst on it. And it burst and it was cold. and I didn't feel like having to change it and fix it and do all that like do all the expense of it so I kind of let it sit there and it sat there with like water that deep

for probably six months before I was like okay I got to fix this but like that thing probably had this in there it would be baking in the sun in Austin exactly that's why they you know that's why you put

shit in pools you know because like chlorine or whatever you put in your pool yeah well I mean you know it that's been dealt with it was more so like it busts and i was like whatever i'm just let this thing sit until it rust and i can throw it away but like eventually i fixed it but yeah no totally i mean whenever you see a pool that hasn't been cleaned in a long time you know it's it's horrifying because who knows what kind of terrible bacteria is and that you just have to

empty it and clean it out and fix it shock it like they say sorry the dogs keep knock on the door um yeah i know i there's there's also that shock thing you can get and yeah and so I've done that before but anyways that's really interesting I never when when you started talking at first I was like oh we like discovered a new bacteria like they never existed like somehow we created this thing and it's like it's probably been around since time immemorial and we just never knew what it was it's like when we didn't know until like the Spanish flu remember that guy in wherever who like found out the malaria was um or the spanish flu was from mosquitoes and he like give it to himself

yeah yeah yeah so i feel like we'll talk about that eventually but he but like now i'm like no dust from the mosquitoes you know but like for all of human history they were like we don't know where this is from yeah you know but like now it feels like well freaking obviously it's from the mosquitoes like you're getting it's transmitting blood everywhere there's blood everywhere how do you not know this you know but it seems so obvious yeah like i again i couldn't have been the printing press but I don't know if I could figure that out if no one else did. I don't know.

Yeah. That's why I'm getting up, by the way. Every 15 seconds, they're fucking banging on the door. But Ben Franklin's ghost also knocks on the door, but it's a lot cuter because he's a tortoise. Yeah, it probably sounds less like a bunch of hyenas shredding a gazelle. He's been trying to climb this one shelf outside.

And one time I found him on his back, which was very scary because he can't be on his back because I could kill him. So, but he actually got up on the shelf today and then Florence made him a ramp to get down and he just like slid down it and I'm sure that was like the fastest he's ever gone and it was really cute. That's very cute, very cute. I've been getting less pictures of him, which I'm a little disappointed by, but. Oh, I know. I'll send you pictures of him. We took him to a hotel last weekend.

And we went to like an indoor water park and we brought him with him and just had him in the bathtub and just like dry, you know, sitting in the bathroom all day. And then we went out to eat, and I was like, okay, well, we have to do it on our way out. So we couldn't leave him anywhere. So we put him in his, you know, a tuckboard container that obviously has holes in it. And we put him in that. We put him in, like, a big paper bag. And we, like, we, like, very carefully. And we, like, we, like, very loudly were, like, we have this cake in this bag.

We had to make sure it's very still. And we just, like, talked about it being a cake. So I'm like, it's way to do it. That is absolutely way to do it. Then that he came to a restaurant. I don't know why there's something. Maybe it's, like, primitive brain of mine where, like, I could have sworn that, like, like reptiles also had one of those weird things where there was like they had diseases that were like

really gnarly in humans so i did have to sign a piece of paper with when i got him i signed a bunch of stuff but one of the things was like that i recognize that turtles and tortoises can carry salmonella um but the woman who gave me ben franklin's ghost was telling me that like it's of course possible but it's more likely with the reptiles that eat meat yeah yeah you know because he only eats, like, lettuce and, like, dandelion greens and cactuses. I never associated with, like, frogs and turtles. I mostly associate, well, I mean, those also eat meat sometimes. But, like, I mostly associate with, like, snakes and, like, very large lizards.

Yeah. For some reason, I don't know. Again, I probably watched Discovery way too much more when I was a kid and that, like, implanted my brain. I think that's safe. Like, don't get so close to them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, Gila monsters will kill you with their, like, spit because they're so toxic. yeah yeah yeah or like the you know the frogs that you can that you can put your arrow on and then kill someone with yeah yeah yeah double kill them yeah um but how did you come up with this topic i think you know legionaire's disease is like i know this is so stupid and you're never going to remember this and no one else will get this but like remember how i said that sometimes i just think harrison bergeron that curt vonnegut story but like the words harrison bergeron are like in my head a lot and so is legionaire's disease it's like one of those words that it's like i don't know

know kind of beautiful in a weird way it's like in my head i um yeah there's there's my brain it makes weird associations there's a 19 like late 80s or early 90s movie when john claude van damn became like famous action hero kind of a guy called the legionaire oh called the legionaire i'm gonna fact check me and let's up yeah it's called legionaire and for some reason like that imprinted in my brain about legionnaires

and when I would in John Claudey name was like the coolest guy in the world when you're like a young boy you know when he was coming up and so my mind I was like this disease sounds like it makes you super gnarly and really cool

but clearly does that make you really cool why is he wearing this hat because he's in the French foreign lesion because everything that I associate with legionaire is in the is in France which also reminds me I want to do an episode at some point about the French foreign legion because the whole concept is like wild it's it's it's like mercenaries it's it's not like what you described in the US it's like

hardcore that makes so much sense why I only think of it as like a French thing oh my god this is amazing it says when ambitious boxer elan lefev jon coveniam refuses to accept mobster's bribe, he ends up with the prize on his head, a marked man. The Fairf takes refuge by enlistening the French Foreign Legion and get sent to Morocco. Yeah, it's great. It sounds fun. 1998. There we go.

It's 29%. I would have been 14 years old and that was exactly the age where I was like, I'm going to kick everyone's butt. And I started taking karate lessons and I realized that I have no coordination. Oh, you took karate lessons? That's fun. Yeah, I was a little nerd. Fun.

Well, thank you for sharing anything else on that note. Um, hi, do you have some listener mail sort of. I, well, I reach out to Ben because my friend Ben, who has talked about who is a pilot. And I asked him if he has to do the, um, a simulator. Because like, I don't know, like a flight simulator is always like a thing that they talk about in plane crashes or especially in the Malaysia one because I was talking about that. Um, and he does. Um, they have to do, uh, courses every like trimester, different trainings. And then like this year he has to do like, he has to do like, he has to do like, he has to do like, he. just did one for the winter because like winter is different than everything else. You have to kind of like re-up your winter knowledge and that kind of thing. So. Fun. Yes to that. And then I've been watching a lot of those playing cross shows.

You're welcome. Thank you. I watched Green Dot that you suggested. I told you this, but it was so funny. They have ads and they had an ad for factor like like the shit meal kit. And they're, I'm going to say, well, the people on this doomed flight, their meal was served. And it's too bad. It wasn't factored.

And then it went to the commercial. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, people just are going to die. in like five minutes. You're in your drug an impractor. So funny. And then I watched Mayday Air Disaster. And I have a couple notes. On United Airlines Flight 232, they did a crash landing and a bunch of people died.

But the pilot made an announcement that said this is going to be the worst thing you've ever been through before they landed or crash landed. I just can't imagine. Like, okay, sugarcoat it a little bit. You don't need to like say that to me. Do you know when that one was? I can't remember. And then also the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Bureau, is that what that is? Are the people who look, board, who look into those.

It is a great job for adults with autism. You know, it's just, they have to be just like so detailed, you know? I mean, you're like, yeah, yeah. You're reconstructing just fragments of things. And then my last note is like, what is wrong with you if you are a parent and you have your child be on Mayday air disaster? as an actor on a plane that's crashing. Like, how much money could you possibly make from that? Like, $1,000? What is wrong with you?

Your kid is not going to win an Academy Award. They have to, like, do some CGI. They can't be, like, really that. There's no way. May Day Air Disaster is not new enough to have CCH. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I just think that's wild. I'm like, what? You're going to let your child be on this, like, fake plane crash show?

What is wrong with you? Hollywood parents, man. Jesus Christ. That would do it. Well, thank you for sharing. And Ben, thank you for answering our questions. We probably could just fill your inbox with the questions. Honestly, he was like, you should call me sometime.

I was like, I know, because he was sending him so many questions. We should do that. We should follow a list of questions and see if you'll do an interview. Yeah, yeah. That would be fun. And then also we're going to do a bunch of re-releases in the upcoming weeks with a lot of travel coming up, which will be super fun. and for us individually separately going places i'm going to a spa for a weekend i can't wait um and so that is coming up too so just look out for those i already scheduled a ton of them

no i appreciate that yeah this is a crazy travel a couple of months yeah so that's why that's we're going to be a little behind on things but um yeah appreciate that and go ahead sorry no you do it no i appreciate that and sharing and uh follow us on all the socials doofelpod at gmail dot or false on the socials at dunafel pod write to us at dunefell pot at gmail.com we do love getting your feedback so please do not be shy we get so excited we get very excited taylor messes me immediately immediately and we love it you know which is exhausting since we get so much mail it's just guys actually stop writing it's just so Leave me alone.

Stop contacting me over Instagram, Facebook, Slack, and my phone. Everywhere. Everywhere. Cool. We'll go and cut things off there. Thanks. Thank you.