Doomed to Fail - Ep 236: A Stolen Ship to Freedom - Robert Smalls

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

 It's Black History Month! Today, we're talking about Robert Smalls. Smalls was born enslaved, worked on ships for the confederacy whilst enslaved, and then took it upon himself to steal a steam ship, save his family & others, sail past Ft Sumter in the middle of the night, and provide the Union with guns & info. Later, he went back south, invested in his community, and represented them in Congress. Join us for this heroic tale! Some sources:https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/robert-smalls-bold-feat-so-skillfullyhttps://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/which-slave-sailed-himself-to-freedom/https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/21764 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] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans. And what your country can do for you. Boom. Taylor, happy Super Bowl Sunday. How are you? Good. Happy Bad Bunny Day, if you're in California. Newsom's press office did like a hilarious all-caps announcement that today is Bad Bunny Day in California. Seriously? It's like, you know, it's part of.

of his jokes where he like does everything in all caps and he's like I'm the hands of all time he's trying to roast Trump he's trying to got it got it okay he's doing his bit he's doing his he's doing his he's doing his he's doing his yeah but and it's like AI generated like like like uh like gold like medallion on the press release and it's like definitely AI and it says like America's favorite governor it's just so funny it's just what are you planning on doing for the Super Bowl like are you going somewhere is everybody coming to your house are you making food what are you doing we're just going to

we're just going to watch it just the four of us and then I want to watch the game I don't want the Patriots to win because I like when Boston sports fans are sad weird I kind of am rooting for the Patriots because I kind of the Daily did an episode about

like the two teams and one thing they harped on was how I don't want to say bad of a person I don't know how I don't know who Bill Belchick is as a person, but he was definitely like a mean person when they came to his team. And it was like, he was just always on everybody all the time. And they were like,

and then this new coach you came in is like the opposite. They called them like basically a real life Ted Lassow. He like shows them just like hugging everyone and telling them, encouraging them and everything. I was like, oh, cool. Okay, maybe I'm into the Patriots then. Like, have you seen that the South Park about Bill Belichick when when Cartman's like, how do I get these kids? It's the one of him goes, how do I teach these kids? and he's like, I'm going to teach them to cheat, like, build Bealecich. And he just says Bill Bealecheque a lot like that.

And he's like, we have to cheat like the Patriots. It's the bad bitch. Do you have any special menu items? I'm just going to get, well, I'm going to get just a lot of chips and dip. A lot of dips. Good. You know? How about you?

What are you doing? So we're going to go to this really awesome fun French place that's, it's like our favorite place. We love it. We actually have already been there this week. And we're going to go back. and they're going to have um drablanc wings

and you know it's like a fancy Super Bowl party basically so that's funny near to that. Yeah. Which also is one of the places I should probably take you when you come to Austin, but TV TV. We'll forget that out later.

But let's dive into it because recording my story is going to take a ball. Oh sweet. And we got stuff to do. Awesome. Well, welcome doomed to fail. Friends, happy Super Bowl Sunday. Middle of the Olympics. Lots of sports going on. We bring you historical disasters and failures and fun stories. And I am Taylor joined by Fars.

Yes, I am here and we are going to be talking or hearing Taylor. I have a really fucking cool story to tell you for Black History Month. Yeah, it's here. Have you heard of U.S. Congressman Robert Smalls? And when he, he wasn't a congressman when he did this, but he stole a ship and sailed himself and his family to freedom during the Civil War. You know what? I think we have talked about him. In passing, we haven't done a full story about him. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I remember those. It always comes up, I feel like on things where it's like, why isn't this a movie? And it does look like it's been options to be a movie a couple times. And they're like working on it. But it should definitely like be a movie because it's really fucking fun. So Robert Smalls was born on April 5th, 1839 in Beauford, South Carolina. It's spelled B-E-A-U-F-O-R-D. and I feel like Buford.

Buford. But then there is a Buford. I think there's a B-U-F-O-R-T in like Indiana or something. Yeah. And I'll also like, you know, say that with a South Carolina accent or whatever, but he was born in South Carolina in 1839. His mother was an enslaved woman named Lydia Polite. And his father is unknown.

It could be a, it could be the person who enslaved to their family, it could be that person's son, it could be another person. Like, no one knows exactly who whose father was. But his mom seems like, you know, very smart, very forward-thinking. One thing that she taught him, that is something that, like, have you ever heard of Gullah as a language and Gullah people? I have, yeah. I think I know there's some island off South Carolina where that's the last place they actually speak.

it or it's like dead already but it was originally is there something around that i recall exactly it's very similar that that's almost that so gala is um you know an african-american uh population that's in the coastal islands of like south carolina georgia north carolina and florida and i heard about it there is a kids show from the 1990s called gula gala gala island and it's like a cup like a black couple in their family and they talk a lot about like the gola culture and stuff and it's really sweet and i forgot about it until today because I remember watching it when Florence was younger. So he's part of like that community of people as well as living in in Beaufort, Beaufort and and with his, with his mother. They were enslaved by a man named Henry McKee. And McKee liked small. He liked

him like as a kid and had him, you know, working in the house and in the house around him, which is like maybe part of the speculation that he could have been the father. that kind of thing. But his mother was like, no, he needs to know what is going on. He needs to be like a lot more aware. He can't just like have this technically cushy enslaved role in this house. So he asked him to move to the fields when he was 12 so that he could see what was happening because she wanted him to know like more viscerally like watching people get like whipped and punished and things like that. After that, she asked if he could be hired out to, work in other jobs. And so the way that it worked is he was enslaved by Henry McKee and so enslaved by by McKee, but he would be hired out as like a lamplighter in town or he worked at a hotel and eventually he started working on boats. But there are things like when he worked in some of his jobs, the compensation was like $16 a week. But he only got to keep $1 and McKee got $15. dollars of his salary.

You know? So like, again, you cannot like build a life with that. You're still very much enslaved by this person, even though you're like. Is this a time period when $1 was worth like $1,000? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There's a little bit later where there's something that's like $800 is like $30,000. So yes, it's still like, like he would have been making like he a lot of making a decent living.

I mean, if he kept the whole 16, he would have been making a great living. Yeah. A lot of his like jobs and occupations before and during the Civil War, if he were, if he had been a free white person with those jobs and occupations, he would have been successful, you know? Yeah. Like he could have supported his family and like lived a life, but it was impossible because of the money that he owed McKee because Mickey enslaved him, you know? Yeah. So when Smalls was 17, he got married to a woman named Hannah Jones. owns. She was older than him and already had two kids. And then they would have two more children,

but one of the children died when he was two, which is super sad. He wanted to buy his family's freedom. But this is it. It was $800 to free his wife, her two children and his own child. And I believe himself, I'm not sure if he would have remained enslaved. Wait, they could do that. They could buy their own freedom. Yeah, you could buy. Like you could as like one member of the family, you know, pay for the rest of your... Like, you basically are buying them, you know. I never...

And then setting them free. Wait, so, but he wasn't, but he wasn't free. No, but he would have been able to, like, do that for them. But he would stay a slave? Yes. Interesting, okay. But he wasn't able to save the money because it was $800 to do that, which is like $30,000 now.

And again, he's making a dollar a week. Right, right. You know? So again, yeah, yeah, like he would have been successful if he was allowed to be, but he was not. And so now it is the Civil War. It is April 1861, and there's a Battle of Fort Sumter, which is I read, there's a new Eric Larson book about it. And he's the guy who wrote The Devil in the White City, Eric Larson, and he has a book about the Battle of Fort Sumter. And I read it and I felt like I hadn't, I didn't feel like I could do an episode on it yet.

I need to like learn more. Actually, Fort Sumter is a man-made island that's in front of the Charleston Harbor. And it was the opening battle of the Civil War when Confederate forces fired on the U.S. Union Army that was holding the fort. And then the fort surrendered April 13th and the Union left. There's a whole bunch of stuff happening there with the person who refused to leave, really wanted to hold it down. But they were starving. It was like a blockade, a whole bunch of stuff. And then because this first battle, the Confederacy won, it started to, it like really triggered.

Lincoln being like, come on, let's, we have to do this and trying to get more, more volunteers and more states and more people in, because now it became like a violent war, because now there were like guns involved, you know? Yeah. That was the opening shot. Yeah. So, Forst Sumter is close to where smalls lived and worked. So by this time, he's working on boats. Um, he decided he like was, you know, working around town, odd jobs, started working in the, it's a big, it's a really, it's like a, an inlet and a very active waterway where like Fort Sumter is sort of like on the outside of it going out into the ocean but inside there's a lot of stuff going on and he really liked working there he liked working on boats and so he became like a boat worker there in Charleston and so yeah have you been to Charleston no I've been to Charleston a few times I'm actually going back um like in a month or so it is such a cool town It has all the energy of like an old southern town that is like all ocean base too. So like all the architecture, it's such a, it's such an interesting place.

Like you really feel like you're in like old, old America when you're there. There was one of that I went to there. And they had like oyster chuckers walking around. Like people just walking around with a bucket of oyster. and they had holsters that had like vinegar and like sauces on them and they just walked by like yeah oven oysters and take an oyster out and chuck it right there and then spray it with the sauce it was so cool that is you should have that that is so gross but that but i get but i get it i guess that that's cool um you're like oysters yeah ew oysters are disgusting it's like the sea i don't want to taste the sea

oh my god hot take i'm a hard no coconuts and oysters who would have thought So, but to your point, I bet it looks very similar to what it looked like when Smalls was working there. Probably. Yeah. I don't think it's very different. I think you're right. It's like an old-timey and merry-timey town. So he's working on a boat.

It's called the CSS planter. And in my brain, at first I was like, this must be a pirate ship. Like my picture of a boat during the Civil War would be like, oh, it must have like sails. I mean, boats had sales during this, but the boat that he worked on was, actually a steamship. It was 147 foot steamboat. And there are pictures of it. And there are pictures of small. So, like, this is not super long ago in our, in our history that this has all happened. But he, it's like, it kind of looks like a boat you'd see on, like, a river. And it has a big chimney in the middle and, like, lots of coal to, like, make it work. So, like,

when you look at the pictures of it, like, the smoke coming out of it is, like, super black. It's, like, just like a, it's a steam chip. And so he is, he steers the boat. That's his job to steer the planter. He, his goal, what it does, it delivers troops and supplies the Confederacy, up and down the coast. It's wartime. And Smalls is like, you know what I should get out of here. You know, like his, it's not, obviously not safe for him and his family to continue to live

in the South. And he wants to flee and go, and go north. She begins to plan an escape, not just for himself, but also for his friends and family. And then, like, again, he's really. me a great job. He has a great job. If he was free, he would have higher rank. He would have more money. And then also like, you know, this war is about enslaving people. It also is happening. So he's like, we have to go. So on May 12th, 1862, the planter sails from Charleston's Coal Island, which is an island on a river. So it's like a small enough boat that it also goes

into rivers. I don't know exactly like what it looks like there. But you can imagine like it's like an inlet from the sea, but also like rivers are connected to it, you know? in in in in that port so if you look at charleston that's all it is that's why it that's why it just smells like the ocean everywhere like it's yeah awesome yeah um so he's he's on the boat um on the planter with his the people that work with him and they are commanded by a couple white dudes and those white guys the white confederate soldiers leave the boat to go on shore at night to like go party in town, which they did often. It like wasn't something that they didn't do. They would often go and leave the boat and leave the enslaved people on the boat to

take care of it overnight. Those people, those Confederate soldiers who left the boat later, they're going to be court-martialed for this, but it will be overturned and they're not going to like be punished for what happens next. But smalls and eight enslaved crew members are on board. And he asks if they can have their families come visit. Because that's, that has happened before. They're like, you guys are going into town to party. Can we please have our families over? And they were like, sure, you can have your families.

So a bunch of wives and a couple of kids come on the boat with them to hang out in the evening, which was normal and not something that would be suspicious. When they get there, they tell the wives, like, we're going to escape. Some of them are freaking out, obviously, because they're like, this is super ridiculously dangerous. Harriet Smalls' wife knew that he was planning it, but wasn't like, knew, didn't know what was happening soon, but it was like, okay, like, if we're going to go now, like, this is the only time we have to go. We should go. I have a list of people that were on the boat with him from, just from the National Park Service website. So he, there was, um, a four-year-old girl named

Elizabeth Smalls, Bampfield. Another, uh, there, his wife, uh, I'm sorry, his wife Hannah, a woman named Clara Jones, a man named Alfred Gordine, Robert. Robert Smalls himself, Abraham Jackson, Charles Chisholm, Levinea, Wilson Hagen, Susan Small, she was 17 years old, John Small, and then Abraham Ballston, Annie White, and then a man named Gabriel Turner, and then another one named William C. Morrison, who we could do a whole other episode on. He was helped escape with the planter, but then also later worked with Harriet Tubman and did more stuff too. So all the other people like what they went on to freedom in the north. They, at like, later in the evening, they pretend to bring their families back home. So they can say, oh, we saw them leaving the boat and bringing their, their wives and children back to where they lived. But instead of going back to their houses, they circled around and waited on another dock, like just like a little bit down the row of docks and hid and waited. So the families are waiting. The men are back on the planter.

The Confederate soldiers have not returned and it is out 3 a.m. So it's really dark. Smalls puts on the captain's uniform and a hat. So from, you know, why did they have to pretend? Oh, so not everybody was enslaved. That's why they had to pretend some of them are going to leave. No, they were all enslaved, but they were like, but they pretended to leave so they wouldn't be suspicious.

So like no one would say like, oh, these families never left the boat and like go tell the other guys. Oh, so other people were there too. Okay. Yeah. So they were like, you know, because it's like a busy dock, you know, so they just wanted to like, okay, we did this. Like we completed our, you know, gather family.

gathering they went home nothing is a miss you know so you wouldn't even notice um so he put on the captain's uniform from like not that far away you would never know that he wasn't the captain because it's dark you know and we're like on the sea he they kind of they sail around to the other dock get the families um the thing that smalls knows is he knows all of the signals and how to move the ship and like you know all the different like light signals that you do to be like all as well we need help all the things. So what they have to do is they have to get through, if they get out of the port past a fort called Fort Ripley, then past Fort Sumter, which is the big one, to the U.S. Union blockade, which is like outside of this inlet. So he gets past Fort Sumter and everybody,

a couple guys on the boat are like, we should go really fast and like around, you know, just to like get this over with as fast as possible. But Smalls was like, no, they need to believe that everything is fine. So they just like went by casually like normal. And when Fort Sumter signaled like a what's going on signal, he was able to signal back like, oh, we're fine. We're just doing this like normal run. And they were like, great, you're clear.

And he got through because they couldn't really see him. And if they could, they would look like the captain was steering the ship. And he was able to, they were able to get past it. it kind of reminded me a little bit of like the East Germans and the balloon with their family you know just like what you wouldn't do to escape a place with your family I don't remember that story I told remember I talked about a long time ago about the Berlin Wall and like people who would who were going over it and there was like there were two families they built an air balloon and they all just got on it and went over you know um so by the time they

noticed that they were gone they were too far gone so they're heading into the U.S. which is a bunch of ships with sails. And they have a Confederate boat with Confederate flags, but his wife brought a white sheet. And so they flew that white sheet, so like the white flag. And the USS onward, a boat saw them first at sunrise. They saw them sailing north with their bed sheet. They got to, I got closer and someone was like, hey, I see a white flag. But I don't see any white people.

So they were like kind of looking at the boat as like as the, as the, as the, it came closer. On the ship, the people were dancing and singing. They were looking across the water towards Fort Sumter and, like, swearing at it, which is fun because they were like finally past it. And a witness said that when they got closer, Smalls came forward and said, good morning, sir. I brought you some of the old United States guns, sir, because he brought a whole bunch of guns with him on the boat. Was he intending on rendezvous with this ship? Okay.

Yeah, they didn't know, but he knew they'd be there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The onward captain came on board and Smalls asked for a U.S. flag and they changed the flags from the Confederate flag to the U.S. flag. Besides the guns that he brought, he brought, I think more importantly, his code books and his own knowledge of what the Confederacy was doing. So there were things that like the union thought that like weren't true like the number of troops in a certain place, blah, blah, blah. But he knew and he was able to help them, help them secure Kohl's Island and then hold parts of the coast. flying for the entire war.

So it was like really essential and very, very helpful all the stuff that he brought as well. He was kind of like a spy. Yeah. They keep on his own, you know, he was like, I'm available to spy right now. He never went back, but he brought a bunch of information, you know. Yeah. S.F. DuPont, the flag officer of, of the boat that they rendezvoused with, sent a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, getting Wells.

And in that letter, he said, like, this is super exciting. have a bunch of information. One thing he said, quote, is about Robert Small. He said, Robert Small is the intelligent slave and pilot of the boat who performed this bold feat so skillfully. This man, Robert Small, is superior to any man who has come into our lines. His information has been very interesting and portions of it of the most important. The steam is quite an acquisition to the squadron by her good machinery and very light draft. We shall continue to employ Small as a pilot on board the planter for inland waters with which she appears to be very familiar. I do not know whether in the view of the government this vessel will be considered a prize.

If so, I respectively submit the claims of the man small. So basically he's like, this guy's great. He's going to keep working here and they get a little bit of prize money for bringing in. Bring the ship. Yeah. And by the way, they told this on when he does this. He's only 23 when he does this. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Again, like times are different, right? 23 to them is like 40 to us. I mean, he's been through a lot. So him and his crew do get some of the prize money. It's like $50,000 in today's money for bringing the boat over. The Confederate news was like, they got away, but there are white people helping them because it was embarrassing that like they were able to do it on their own.

But obviously it was just disinclay people who were able to get free. Smalls would go to D.C. and work to help formerly enslaved people there. Also, when he actually did the stealing. of the boat and this whole escape. He didn't know how to read and write, but he learned. He would learn, like, in the years afterwards, how to do those things.

He worked, he went to D.C. also talked to Edwin Stanton, who's a secretary of war, and was really influential in persuading Lincoln to let formerly enslaved people or black people at all fight, and they soon after assigned the first 5,000 black men to the Union Army.

So he was like a big part of that. he would by his own accord smalls was in 17 battles of the Civil War he was a pilot of several boats one of them called the Crusader he worked

to remove some of the sea mines that he had put down on the other side so the planter one of its jobs when it was on the Confederate side was to plant like bombs in the ocean that boats would bump into and explode you know and so his job in the union side

was to get rid of those because he knew where they were. It was cool. Kind of like those guys, remember those? Didn't you tell me about guys in Japan who were blowing up bombs?

Did you tell me that? I don't think so. I feel like I remember at some point we told a story of men whose jobs were to like find bombs and blow them up. Or no, that might have been in the newest Godzilla movie.

It's interesting that we've done so many episodes that we literally forget around episodes at this point. I know. No, actually, I think it wasn't the guzzell movie, but I think it's a real job. You know, you blow up. You find bombs and you blow them up. Yeah, of course. So he did that. He did get to use the planter again, which is so fun. You got to be captain of it for real. But they're obviously like, it's not perfect. He was the captain of the planter, but it was like murky. He got paid, but it's not clear if he was really part of the United States Navy. Later, he would try to get a Navy pension. And they were like, well, we're not really sure. And it took an active Congress in 1897 to find. finally give him his pension. But again, that was like 30 years later, you know. So it's crazy. So it's like fight for that. That's insane lobbying. I know. In 1863, the planter almost surrendered. They were kind of stuck in the middle of a battle. But Small said absolutely not. We got to fight our way out of this because if my crew get sent back to the South, like,

we're fucked. We can't. We're not doing it. So they were able to get out of that. Later, the planter would sink under different command on March 25th, 1876. Small said it was like, losing a member of his family in the 2020-something. They said that they found the remains of the planter at the bottom of the ocean. You know, like all the shipwrecks that are down there, but maybe it was down there. So the war is, in May, in May 1864, the war is almost over. Smalls becomes an unofficial delegate to the Republican National Convention in Baltimore. And now the war is over.

It's April 1865. Smalls goes back to South Carolina. He goes back to Beaufort. He buys the house of the guy who had enslaved him in his family. The taxes hadn't been paid and he was able to buy it and keep it and have his mother live there. So he was able to have his mother live at the house where she had been enslaved her whole life and, you know, just live there normally. He did let the widow of his enslaver live there when she was older as well, which is nice. He didn't have to do that.

He works on his own literacy. He builds a school. He starts businesses. He invested in horse-drawn railways, which is like a trolley with a horse, and it looks wild. It's like a huge trolley, the horse is a go around town. He owned a newspaper, just like doing good stuff there. And then he started the South Carolina Republican Party. And some things that he said about the Republican Party, it's, he said, quote, the party of Lincoln, which unshackled the necks of our four million human beings.

And then, just to talk about politics for a second, in the 1912 presidential, which was a big one much later. that's the one where Wilson won. He was a Democrat, and that started World War I. That's the one where TR came back for a third term as a progressive candidate against his former best friend Taffed, who was a Republican. So it was a whole thing. But Wilson won. Before that, Small said, quote, I asked every colored man in the North who has a vote to cast, would cast the vote for the regular Republican Party and thus bury the Democratic Party so deep that there will not be seen even a bubble coming up from the spot where the burial took place.

Jeez. Which is fun. Jeez. That's harsh. And way harsh. So when Small starts a career in Republican politics, he joined the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1868. He was a delegate at several RNCs. He was the vice president at the South Carolina Republican Party. He was in 1873, he was an appointed lieutenant colonel of a third regiment, South Carolina state militia, which is wild.

In 1874, he went national. He was elected to Congress's Fifth District, later the 7th District after some gerrymandering, but in South Carolina. He did put up a bill to let men join the Army with no distinction on race, but that wasn't brought for a vote. What does that mean?

Like, just they, the, the, um, the U.S. Army is going to be segregated, like, well into World War II. He was just trying to say, like, let's not do that. Okay. Okay. Okay.

No distinction to, as in don't consider race. Okay, got it. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I misunderstood. Yeah, but that didn't come up for a vote. But he was there.

So he was in D.C. He's a congressman. In 1877, there was a controversy. Some Democrats accused him of election fraud because he took a printing contract. He was also a printer. But they pardoned him and he wasn't convicted of anything. He was in and out of politics, but still very, very active. His wife passed away in 1883.

And later, he remarried a woman named Annie Wigg. And they had one son. Guess what year that son died in? It's going to be in 2016. It's going to be like 2020. It's 1970, but still. Okay. That's still wild, right?

Like, this man's son died in 1970. His great, great-grandson, Michael B. Moore, ran for South Carolina for his congressional in 2024 as a Democrat, but he lost, but like still. Cool. Smalls died of malaria and diabetes on February 23rd, 1915. He was 75.

He's buried in Beaufort, South Carolina. His monument says, quote, My race needs no special defense. For the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the Battle of Life. In South Carolina, May 13th, it's Robert Smalls Day, and there are lots of monuments and ships and such named after him, of course. And I'm not to look out for the next moment there.

Yeah, you should. Oh, yeah, send me some pictures when you, I'm sure you're like, now that you know, I feel like you'll notice, you know. It's hard to know who is who. There's monuments everywhere. It's like, I don't. When I was in London, I was just like, do I care about this person? Do I not?

Like, so anyways. No, totally. This guy lived a lot. He really packed in a lot in those 75 years. I mean, it's wild to like be a very active part of the Civil War and then also be active in politics when like Wilson's elected president. You know? Like that is, the time between the Civil War and World War I is so small. It's like, it feels like such wildly different periods.

And like for a lot of reasons it is, but for a lot of reasons, it's not that far between, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's really wild. Are you going to do, do you have another one teed up for Black History Month? No. Okay. If you need ideas, I would throw ideas out there.

I think it's called Lake Leonard. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like the fuel of horror story nightmares that I think would be really interesting to cover. If you're interested in it, I'm just starting up there. No, I think I will. I think, yes, I know where you're talking about, and that is a good suggestion. If you say something about it, it's so scary. Like, I mean, besides the atrocity of it, think about it today, and like people are, like, in this.

and it's just like, do you all know what's underneath you? It's terrifying. There is, I think maybe we said this as well. I'm Googling. There is a really good movie about a really good horror movie about... Deep House. Deep House, yes. Oh, it's so good.

It's so good. And that is... So I went down a rabbit hole after I watched Deep House and was like, is there a... Could this even be a thing? And it was like, no, no, it is a thing. It's a whole city. Yeah. And it's like,

and it's, I think he's Georgia, right? Let me, let me do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. Okay,

okay. Yeah. Whatever. We'll skip past it. We'll fast for it. But in terms of like, yeah. Like,

a three month things, like that is the one that is the most nightmare fuel for me. Mm-hmm. No, absolutely. It's absolutely wild. I, yeah,

I definitely want to watch the deep house again. It's so good. It's so good. It's so scary. I really was impressed by how good it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely will.

And, yeah, that's a good one. I mean, there's so many, obviously, there's millions of stories that we can tell for a Black History Month. I know, but you only have one more episode. It's true. I know. I'm feeling a little bit, I'm feeling lighter this year because I'm like, oh, my God, I only have two episodes for like all these different months, you know. But yeah, I'm excited. And, oh, what did you mean?

What did you just say that reminded me of something, something you said reminded me of he did a rivalry. I can't remember what it was. Georgia? I don't know. I don't know. But I wanted to tell you something about him, but I forgot. Yeah, cool. That's my story. It's great. I'd love to watch that movie because it's super fun to be like, oh, we're sticking past this thing and, you know, just getting out of there and getting

the family out of there and just moving on to success and helping people learn how to read and all the things. It's so great. I agree with you. I will say that with all those, like, I don't know, I'm probably not that's part of demographic, but with all those movies that are like, based in that timeline with that kind of like an overarching theme. You know, all like sad. And it's like, can't someone like get Michael Bata direct this.

Like that feels appropriate. As you're saying. Like I'd be into that. I'm not going to go spend two, three hours to be sad. Like why do that? Why bother? No,

I definitely don't watch that movie. It's like I, I know you, you have not seen Gone with the Wind, have you? What do you think? So the first have gone with the wind is so fun. It's like,

blah, blah, and then all of a sudden it gets real fucking sad. And I'm like, I want to watch something have gone to win. It is too sad. But of course, like, these, like, movies about the war are going to be super sad, but this is, like, a winner story that you need, like, a winner story

sometimes, you know? Yeah, anybody in Hollywood listening, get Michael Day on this. Yeah. It would be fun. Yeah. Well, Taylor, thank you for sharing. That was,

that was, it is a feel-good story. It actually is a feel-good story. It is. It's exciting. It's, you know, you're, I mean, imagine how scary that would be. You know, like you have your family on a boat and you're, you've got to get past a thing and you can very, very quickly get shot and killed in your whole family. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's super cool. And then getting there and them being like, hell yeah, keep capping your boat. Keep doing stuff. Yeah, that's fun. That's really fun. You know, like that's super cool as well. And, like, of course, there's like, you know, things happen, like, it's not perfect. And there's stuff with his rank and stuff with his money and all those things.

But he did manage to save a bunch of people, which is super cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I think he bought his house. Do it. That's fun. Yeah. We're going to call this a feel good story of, well, mine's not a feel good story.

Actually. Yeah, we'll call this a film. It's an adventure. It's an adventure. It's an adventure. Yes. Yes. Very cool.

Very cool. Thank you for sharing. Do we have anything to lead off with? I do. Someone on YouTube, on one of our episodes I had mentioned that my daughter went to Girl Scout camp up in the mountains, and someone commented that they went to that Girl Scout camp like 50 years ago, which was really fun. They just happened to be listening to our story, and we're like, oh, I also went to that

Prescott Camp. You just reminded me because it's like the same theme of Black Phone 2. Oh, I didn't see Black Phone 2 or 1. Okay, Black Phone 1 was pretty good. Black Phone 2, it's all about like finding like this 50-year-old winter camp that kids go, whatever, you're your story. What you just said remind me of that. It is unequivocally one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The dialogue, the acting, the story, the, like, it's so stupid. it's really stupid. It's one of the worst movies.

Defendatively, I can't think of a worst movie I've seen. Like, I, even, like, 45 minutes to an hour in when there was still, like, time to go. And I was already like, I was like, I've invested all this time. Might as well finish it. I was like, I can't do it. I can't finish this. Wow. It's garbage.

So, yeah. Skip it. Skip it. I will. I will. I'll skip. I don't know. Who was time?

I, last night, I watched, like, the first 15 minutes of The Conjuring, just because I like it so much. Yeah. Yeah, do that. watch the conjuring and said. Yeah. Do we have any listener mail besides that? Nope. That's it for now.

Okay. Well, I mean, I do, but like I have to save it for your episode because I can't tell you everything right now. I know, I know, I know. Stop trying to get me to tell you more because I need to spread it out because otherwise I can say no in the next one. Fine, fine. Well, again, please write to us.

Let us know your thoughts. And you say whatever. We're open, open book here at dune default pot of gmail.com. Find us on these socials at Doom to Phil POD. And I think that's it. Yeah, that's it. Help. Oh, follow us on Instagram.

I'll be posting some Olympic stuff and then we have our Olympics episodes coming out when we releases, but you can always find all four of them. If you want to learn a little bit more about some of the crazy things that happened at the Olympics. We cover the original Olympics. And then the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the massacre in Munich, and then also the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics. which is like kind of a nice reminder that things have never been fine i'm going i'm going to touch a lot on that in my next section great like sometimes you're like oh remember the 90s and you're like no

during the 90s there was a bomb at the land of the Olympics so at least we have that yeah yeah yeah mine's going to be the 70s and 80s and trust me you did not want to live in the 70s and 80s so Oh, my God. Anywho. Well, thank you, Taylor. Thanks, everyone for listening. We'll be back next week. Have a great Super Bowl Sunday.

And write to us, again, do me to fall pod at gm.com. Ooh. Sweet. Thanks. Bye.