Good Job, Brain! - 269: Fire in the Hole

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

🔥 We're heating things up with some fiery facts! Colin shares an unbelievably real account about an epic fire... in an epic hole. Nerd out in Karen's pyromancy and pyrokinesis showdown challenge, and can you hold a candle to the fire logo quiz? And it's time for sad cheese sandwiches in our FEMA tents at the first annual FIRE (FILM) FESTIVAL. For advertising inquiries, please contact [e-mail]! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, practically praiseworthy prancing pranksters. This is Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. Today's show is episode 269. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. and we are your wise-ish wombat's woofing down whiskey and whoppers. Woo! I'm Colin.

I'm Chris. Okay, so I have to share this egg corn. It's in the Good Job Brain Loeb-Trotters Facebook listener group. Okay, so two of them. Chris earlier this season, we had his annual eggorn watch, and I have to add these to the mix. Oh, God. Uh, I really like this one. It's, I have the list here and everything is color, coated.

Oh, like coated in color. Yeah, there's a coat of color. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. Highlighter and I coded it. I coded it with a highlight. Color coated. Color coated, uh, versus color coated.

Another one was shared of a photo of, I think, what is a doctor's office. And it's like, you know how like there's the doctor's office. has a wall of like pamphlets and and forms and the one and they're all labeled and so there was a cubby uh for the label says missile anus forms all right funny but not an egg corn right unless unless unless i mean i guess it depends on what those forms are used for they could be If you got an ICBM lodged in your bubble, and then you would have to fill out the form. I'm doing a quick Google search now because I want to see something.

We're not quite there yet, but I think that in our lifetimes, there's an egg corn that we are going to see eclipse the actual phrase, which is, so the actual phrase is peak to my interest as in P-I-Q-U-E-D. Peek is excited, right? You peaked my interest. You excited my interest. And now, of course, I see, there's fewer Google results for it, but I see peaked P-E-A-K-E-E-B. I see that one.

I definitely see that one. My interest, as in you caused my interest to peak. Yeah, it got really high. And I see that, and I'm like, you know, that's almost getting to the point where if I were to respond and to say, you know, actually, it's piqued from the verb, which, you know, and it's spelled with a Q-U, it would be like that person would then have the legal right to shove me into a locker.

And of course, like, I see, you see this a lot, too, the sneak peak, like, a P-E-A-K, like, I'm going to get a sneak peek. Yeah, well, that's just ridiculous. That's just wrong. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the S-N-E-A-K-P-E-A-K, which is the stealth, the stealth mountain, right? Yeah.

Then you have the, like, then you have the extremely bad, like, S-N-E-E-K-P-E-E-K, which is like, that's not even a word. And then you have S-N-E-E-K, which is, like, which is the bottom of that hole, of that barrel. Yeah. All right, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have two random trivial pursuit cards. You guys have your barnyard buzzers. Let's answer some questions. Here we go.

Blue Wedge, people in places. What C word do Brits use when referring to? Sorry. It's a safe question. I just know where it's going when I'm reading it live. It's like to be a traditional word here. Sorry. I'm crying.

I think they did it on purpose. All right. Okay. What C word do Brits use? Oh no. Oh, no. Oh, no. All right.

No. It goes, all right. What C-word do Brits use when referring to red Bordeaux wines? Chris. Claret. Yes. Claret. Clear it.

So is that the claret like in the claret jug, the trophy? Like, is that? Oh, yeah, it is. I don't think I ever... It's just, it's like, I've just heard that used to describe wine. And I'm like, I know that we don't use that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Pink Wedge, Arts and Entertainment.

Who excited millions when she played Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati? Colin? That is Lonnie Anderson, I believe. Yes, Lonnie Anderson. Yeah. Who I believe was a bombshell back in the day. Total 70s blonde bombshell, yeah. All right, next question.

Yellow Wedge, what president was formerly U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and head of the CIA? Colin. That is George H.W. Bush. You know, this card just said George Bush. What year is this card? I don't know. I bet it's before W. Bush. Wow. Purple Wedge, science, and nature.

What virus did the World Health Organization say would infect 40 million people by the the year 2000. Correct. All right. Chris. Okay. Ooh. Ebola?

Incorrect. Okay. I'm trying to think of like the time frame. And so the 1980s, the 90s? Collin. Is it HIV, the AIDS virus? HIV. Oh, it is.

Okay. Next question, green wedge, sports and leisure. What sports team got its name because its owners wanted to, oh, set the pace. in the NBA. Oh, Lord. Chris, do you want to take a stab? Pacers?

Yes, it is the Pacers. My God. You don't put the answer in the question. You don't put the answer in the question. Exactly. Yep, yep. All right, last question on this card. What letter begins with the first name of Opera Titans, Bezette, Puccini, and Verdi?

I'm sorry. What begins the first? What letters? begins their first names. Bezette Cuccini and Verdi. Wow. What letter begins their first name? They all share the same letter.

So if you can think of any one of their first names, which I unfortunately thought. Is it C? Incorrect. Chris. G. G, it is G. It is. Okay, great.

George. Okay. George. Okay. Giuseppe, I believe. Oh, okay, all right. And Giacoma. I think, I think.

Oh, okay. I was just, yeah, I was just trying to, like, is there a letter that I feel was sort of associated with one of those names in my brain? Yeah. Pulled it. Good guess. Let's do another card. Yeah, why not? Blue Edge people in places.

What country was created in 1920 from the remains of the Habsburg Empire? Kind of lost my voice there. I'll read it again. Okay. What country was created in 1920 from the remains of the Habsburg Empire? Oh, interesting. Austria. Yes, Austria.

I did not know it was that young. Okay, cool. Yeah, it is. In 1920, that is very young. Pink Wedge, what movie sees Mike Myers claim, quote, Led Zeppelin didn't write songs everyone liked? They left that to the Bee Gees. Mike Myers.

Proclaim. Chris. Wayne's World. Wayne's World. Don't overthink it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rock and roll, Mike Myers. Yellow Edge, History.

What country's civil war was described as a rehearsal for World War II? Ooh. Hmm. Oh. Rehearsal for World War II, Country's Civil War. Hmm. Well, not Russia. It's in Europe.

Does that help? No. Civil war. Okay, so civil war in the 20s, 30s? I'm going to be mad when we hear the answer here. It is. Spain. Oh, of course.

Spanish Civil War. Purple Wedge, science and nature. What word that starts with the letter N describes a cloud of dust and gas in space? Chris. Nabula. Nabula. You are correct.

Some people would say nebula, but. I love mispronouncing things on purpose. Yeah, no, it's fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so wacky. Sports and Leisure, who was the first Swedish golfer to win the U.S. women's open two straight times? Oh. Colin.

It has got to be Anika Sorenstein. Correct. All right. Good job. Good. Because if it was not on a Kusorms, I had no other guess. Yep. When in doubt, name the only one you can think of.

Last question on this card. What future U.S. president worked as a fashion model while studying law at Yale? Oh, interesting. I mean, oh, no, I was going to say Barack Hussein Obama, but I think that's too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Harvard. And also too recent, probably for this card. Read it again? Can you read it again?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What future U.S. president worked as a fashion model while studying law at Yale. I'm going to look up some. Huh. Well, I don't know. I was going to go out on a limb here. Okay. I was going to say George H.W. Bush again.

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, because you went to Yale. Incorrect. Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford. Really? Wow. Wow.

All right. Good job, Brains. Colin, as our topic picker, what would you pick for us this week? You know, like, we range on these topics. We get, we get really big, we get really small, and I've been trying to get more elemental with some of my suggestions recently. Yeah, and in fact, my daughter has been really, really into the movie, elemental. Oh, yeah.

Probably seen that movie probably 10 times in the last three weeks. And it was just staring me in the first. face. I'm like watching the show with her. I'm like, what should we talk about? I'm like, fire. Like, that's it. I went back and I double checked to make sure we had not done a fire episode. So it's like, that's it. Write it down. Send it in. We're doing fire. So this week on Good Job, Brain, fire in the hole. All right, folks, I'm taking you to the fire festival. That's right

It's a festival It's a, yeah, here, Yes, here is your, uh, Colin. Here are your, uh, emergency, here's your emergency, uh, FEMA tent, Karen. Here is your cheese sandwich on white bread. Um, and it is the, we are here at the fire festival,

the hottest film festival around. Oh. Which only, which only shows movies that have the word fire in the title. Oh, I am not passing out a list of the films that we are playing. I will simply be passing out a list of the actors that are performing here at the Fire Festival. So I, we have Hollywood stars from around the globe, something, something. Some of them are dead, but they're here anyway. So we're going to, we're going to the Fire Festival, and I am going to, I'm going to give you.

you each movie, I will tell you five actors who appeared in this film and your job is to buzz in as soon as you can identify the movie that we will be watching at the Fire Festival. I don't have to wait until all five. You don't have to wait until all five. In fact, that's the game because by the time I get to the fifth person, it might, it might or it might not be obvious, you know what I mean? Like maybe it'll be obvious, but maybe it actually won't. but I am going to

fire in the title not necessarily about fire so backdraft no it's not about fine back draft will not appear in this quiz I spent a lot of time I spent not a lot of time but I spent about 30 seconds

trying to find the cast of the movie about Johnny Cash you know ring of fire and then of course it is not called that it is called Walk the Line but But I found other films that actually do have fire in their titles.

All right, here we go. First film. All right. The first actor in the first film of the fire festival is, appropriately, Harvey Firesteen. Oh, that narrows it down. Matthew Lawrence. Whoa. Karen.

Mrs. Doubtfire. Mrs. Doubtfire. Of course. Throwing you guys for a loop because it's, you know, baked into another word there with that one. Yes, Matthew Lawrence, Harvey Firestein, Pierce Brosnan,

Sally Field, and of course, Robin Williams. All right. Okay, well, let's make it a little bit more difficult. I don't know. Emilio Estevez. All right. It's stuck. I got it.

I got it. Wait, wait, who got it, who got it? Who got it? Okay. Oh, sorry. Okay. Well, she, you're, the sound is going off. Karen's shaking.

My buzzers got stuck. Well, I'll give him to Colin because it's his favorite song. Oh, it is true. I do trust that Karen knows this as well, but St. Elmo's Fire. St. Elmo's Fire. Very good. Wow. Melio Estevez, Ali Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, were the actors that I was going to name.

Wow, wow, wow, great work, great work. Okay. All right. Kiefer Sutherland. David Bowie Madshin Amic Cheryl Lee Kyle McLaughlin

Oh Oh Erin Twin Peaks Fire Walk with me Twin Peaks Fire Walk with me Nice job Kyle McLaughlin Good one, good one

Moving right along Alec Baldwin Mojo Nixon Stephen Tabalowski Oh Winona Ryder Dennis Quaid

Oh fire Alec Baldwin Mojo Nixon Stephen Tobolowski Winona Ryder Dennis Quaid All right man

And just this, this cast of characters, like, this has got to be 80s, 90s, late, late 80s, early 90s, right? Correct. With that assemblage of, oh, oh, of course. Colin. That is great balls of fire. That is great balls of fire. The Jerry Lee Lewis biopic. Yes.

Yes. Okay. Getting maybe a little tougher now, let's find out. Gary Cole. Okay. Dylan McDermott Whoa Renee Rousseau

John Malkovich Clint Eastwood Oh Oh oh Of course Holland That's in the line of fire That's in the line of fire

Something's the name Former CIA agent He's so funny I love Gary Cole Love Gary Cole That's great on. Moving on with the Fire Festival.

Our next film. Elizabeth Banks. Stanley Tucci. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Woody Harrelson. Jennifer Lawrence. This is The Hunger Games Catching Fire.

Hunger Games catching fire. Nice. Banks and Tooch. Exactly. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. It's, again, it's like, it's very, you, when you hear the final person sometimes, it all falls into place. But it's all, it's all very disconnected prior to that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. Art Carney. Okay. Hmm. David Keith. Heather Locklear. Martin Sheen.

Drew Barrymore Oh Holland I mean only on the Drew Barrymore It's Fire Starter It's Fire Starter Based on this Stephen King book

In which Bramore is a little child With psychic The ability to do pyrotechnics With her brain Yep All right, moving right along Let's see if you can get this one

Gerard Butler Doug Cackle Isabella Scorupco Matthew McConaughey Christian Bale Ah Christian Bail

Matthew McConaughey How about that Gerard Butler And Chirard Butler Christian Bail Doug Cackle Isabella Scorou

Matthew McConaughey Christian Bale Wow Wow. What year? I mean, I guess it can't be that early if it's got... Sure. Let me. Let me... I don't know if it's going to help me. It's going to be like... No, no, no worries. Yeah, okay. I'll tell you. It's 2002. Wow, Gerard Butler. I don't know. I, man. Yeah, I got a pass. Okay. No problem. It's okay to get stumped. Yeah.

The film is Rain of Fire. The one with the dragons. Oh, right. Right. Wow. How soon we forgot. Wow. That was 20 plus years ago. That's, wow. I feel bad because I bet a lot of people worked out that movie, you know?

Oh, my gosh. We're trivia people. Like, we remember things. I know. You know, not everything has that, that, you know, sticking power. Yeah. Here you go. Another, let's see, let's see if you get this one.

Bronson Pinchot. Oh. Okay, okay, okay. Matt Damon. Lou Diamond Phillips Karen Courage under fire Courage under fire

Courage under fire Meg Ryan You didn't even need Meg Ryan Good Good poll on that line And Zell Washington Didn't even need it Nice work

All right and I didn't know I didn't know Bulkie was Yeah Alki was in it The Fire Festival is coming to a close There are no refunds. There's no water.

And there's no water and there's no planes off the island. With our final film starring Timothy Spall. Oh, that's Peter Pedigrew from Harry Potter. Jason Isaac. Oh. Carrie. Is it Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I like how Karen's brain is getting out in front of her own brain.

Like, it's like in the middle of answering the trivia question, her brain has to throw out additional trivia before she can get to the question answer. Yes, it is. Yes, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Showing up, I'd be like, yeah, I know who Timothy Paul is. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And while I'm done, let me just answer the question here as well, yeah. You impress.

I know who he is. Oh, it's this movie. All right. Well, we'll see you next year for Fire Festival 2025. It's two slices of cheese on the sandwich. Wow. Wow. Get ready.

Here I have a quick quiz, and it's Chris battling, Colin. I have five questions. here from five very, very niche subjects, nerdy subjects, all about fire power. Fire powers. I need you guys to write this down, and it's a nerd versus nerd battle. Here we go. Question number one. Actor Joseph Quinn from Stranger Things has been casted as Jonathan

Lowell Spencer Storm in the upcoming MCU Fantastic Four movie. Can you name the two actors who have played the same characters before him? Let me repeat the question. Actor Joseph Quinn, who plays Eddie from Stranger Things, has been casted as Jonathan Lowell Spencer Storm in the upcoming MCU Fantastic Four movie. Can you name the two actors who played the same character before him? Not either. Please put both names.

Both. Okay. All right. I'm feeling confident here. So yes, a comics question. This is a comic slash movie question. Answers up, here we go. Chris says, Chris Evans, comma, no idea.

Listeners, Chris actually. is friends with Chris Evans. I'm kidding. No, I'm not. No. He has a strange connection. There is a strange connection, but not, yeah. Colin, you put, Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan, you are correct. Captain America and Killmonger have both

played Jonathan Loll, Spencer Storm, Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch. They're remaking it again. All right, next question. Yoga Flame, Yoga Fire, and Yoga Blast Are the fiery moves of what classic video game character? Now we're in Chris's Wheelhouse. Yeah.

Yoga Flame, Yoga Fire, and Yoga Blast are the fiery moves of what classic video game character? I'm not sure on the spelling. Not even sure I have the right answer. We'll find out. Phenetic is fine. Phenetic. All right. All right.

Answers up. Colin has Dalsim, D-A-L-S-I-M. Chris has Dalsim D-H-A-L-S-I-M. Chris is correct, but both of you are correct. It is Dalsim from the Street Fighter franchise. All right. Next question.

Porkas D. That's his name. Porcus D. Ace gets his firepower from eating the special flame-flame fruit in what is the top-selling Japanese manga of all time. Character's name is Porcis, Portgas. Porcis-D. Ace gets his firepower from eating the special flame-flame fruit in what is the top-selling Japanese manga of all time.

$523 million. dollars and it's not even that old of a series well I'm putting something down don't leave a blank one of the cardinal rules of trivia yeah yeah yeah it's okay I'm not I'm not going with the obvious one I'm going with I'm going with what's the obvious I don't know yeah exactly right well whatever I think it is answers up Colin put Porco Rosso If only Yeah, if only

Naruto It is One Piece Oh The bestselling Japanese manga of all time Wow

Of course Porcas de Ace You might know his Little brother's name Which is Monkey Luffy All right next question The Flame Troopers

and Star Wars made their debut on screen in which film Oh, that's a... Yeah, that's a good one. Flame Troopers in Star Wars made their debut on screen

in which film? It's pretty cool looking. They're blasting fire. There's no question. The stormtroopers of all types are pretty cool looking. Flame trooper is probably the coolest. All right.

Answers up. Colin puts Rogue One. And Chris put Star Wars, the Force Awakens. Chris is correct with episode seven, the Force Awakens. I did vaguely remember that that was a thing they were introducing in Force Awakens was Flame Groupers. They showed like a teaser of it and people like lost their minds. Right. Because it was like, oh my God.

And last question in this nerd quiz. One of the most iconic scenes in the Fellowship of the Rings. in the book and the film is when Gandalf fights the fiery old demon Balrog. Where did their fight take place? Oh, my gosh. You know, use your imagination. Maybe make up a name if you forgot. Right, right, right, yeah, yeah.

Maybe make it alliterative. Repeat the question, one of the most iconic scenes. and the fellowship of the rings in the book and the film is when Gandalf fights the fiery old demon Balrog. Where did their fight take place? Where were they?

Where were they going? Well, I'm going for the alliteration. You give me like a glimmer, a glint. A gleam of hope here. All right. Answers up. Colin put Mines of Moria than Chris said middle earth.

Tell me, I'm wrong. wrong. You cannot tell me that I am wrong. Colin is correct with minds of Moria. I was going to say a cave. Again,

like, yeah, yeah, creepy cave. Usually I had it right. Yeah, yeah, creepy cave.

Very good. Congratulations. I wasn't keeping the score. I think Colin took that one. Yeah, a little bit of everything. We got comics. We got video games, manga,

Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings. Good. That was good job. The nerd roundup. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size.

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Good job Brain. And we're back. Colin, it's lit. You sounded really convinced on that. Colin, I'm being told it's lit. I'm going to stick with literal, literal fire here. No metaphor, no word quiz, nothing like that. You know, you guys know I love camping. Talk about it a lot.

Find a way to work it into the show quite a bit. they teach you really early on when you're camping when you have a campfire when you're done with the campfire for the night make sure the campfire is out like out out out like you know if you're doing it like you should be able to put your hand directly above it and not feel any heat and a lot of people many people even people who think they're being safe you know don't really do the proper job of putting the campfire all the way out like dead cold like just done you don't pour water on it right that's like you do often pour water on it yeah i mean you can you know sand you know cover it up you want to break down the embers you really want to make sure

they're cold extinguishing extinguished exactly and a lot of people you know myself included especially when i was younger you don't want to use your water because it's wasting a little bit of water it puts smoke everywhere it puts ash everywhere you know that is really the best way to make sure your, your fire is out, out, out. And so they teach us this, you know, when I was the teenagers, like, okay, yeah, yeah, got it, whatever, put it out. I get it, right? And there was one trip, I remember.

The counselors basically let us, the teenagers, you know, kind of shut down the camp for the night. And, you know, we cleaned up with the food, so we don't get craters. We packed up stuff pretty well. And we did a rather half-assed job putting out the fire. Like, we got some sticks. And, like, we waited until the flames were gone. And we're like, okay, there's some glowing embers.

Right. So we break up the embers a little bit. Basically, like, once the orange stopped, we're like, okay, it's done. We're out. You know, we'll go to sleep. So we went to sleep, wake up in the morning. Did not wake up in the morning to anything on fire. There's no like real dramatic turn to this.

But we woke up in the morning. And, you know, one of the counselors is like, hey, you guys, you guys didn't care to put out the fire last night, did you? And we're like, oh, no. Yeah, we did. It was out. How do you know? And he's like, he's like, go put your hand over on. top of that, on top of that fire pit. So we go over and sure enough, like through the night,

like we had just let the embers kind of extinguish, but the embers will ash over and it will retain that if you do not do a good enough job. And so our, one of the counselors, he's like, yeah, let me show you guys something. So he came over and, you know, he kind of scooted some of the ash off the top. And, you know, you guys have seen this maybe out in the wilderness or maybe at home with a bellows, you know, you can blow on a fire to get it, to bring it back up again. You'd get the oxygen in. And he was able, after six or seven hours of us sleeping at night, to bring back to life this campfire just from the embers that we had not.

He's a pyromancer. He was a modern-day pyromancer. Wow. So that really, really drove the point home to us that, you know, if, God forbid, a tree or something had fallen on top of that in the middle of the night, it would have lit the tree on fire. And yeah, so from that point on, definitely got it drilled into me, like, make sure the fire is out, you know, put your hand above it, make sure it is out. So that little trifle of a seven-hour, eight-hour campfire is nothing compared to what I'm going to share with you guys here today. This is one of my favorite things that exists in the world.

There's a fire that's been burning for a little over 50 years with, No sign of stopping. What? Like by itself? Yep. No one is stoking it. No one is, no one is tending this fire. That's right.

That's right. The fire triangle, of course, you got fuel, heat, oxygen. If you travel out into the remote Karakum Desert, this is in Turkmenistan, you can pay a visit to the Darvaza crater. All right. This crater, as the name crater implies, is a big. Big, big old hole in the ground. The Darvaza gas crater is about 225 feet in diameter. It's nearly 100 feet deep.

It is, it is big. It is big. So, you know, about 65 meters across, about 30 meters deep for our metric friends there. So this giant crater, this big pocket in the ground, is directly above a massive amount of pressurized methane in the earth. And there are literal pockets of fire all over the dang thing. Whoa. It is as if someone gouged out a 225 foot wide bowl in the earth, lit it on fire, and 50 years later, it is still burning. No way.

I should say here, it has a much cooler, more badass name by which it is popularly known, which is the Gates of Hell. So you can Google Gates of Hell, Turkmenistan. And it is surreal enough during the daytime, this giant crater. It is out in the middle of the desert, basically unpopulated, and it is on fire. This is where Balrog lives. At night, I mean, it becomes otherworldly. You can see the glow of this flaming pit from miles away. And again, I want to emphasize how barren.

when it is out in this desert, you're out in the middle of the desert in a fairly isolated country and a fairly isolated part of that country and it just looks like nothing else on this planet. It takes its name, Darvaza, from the village of Darvaza, which is the closest settlement to it.

It is not a well-populated area out there. So, you know, Turkmenistan was a former Soviet Republic and is now an autocratic government. It does not get a lot of tourists. It is fairly, fairly underpopulated out there. But if you can get yourself out to the Karakum Desert, you can walk right up to the edge of this thing. You could. You could if you wanted to. Yeah, yeah, you could.

It's not like run by like the equivalent of the National Park Service, you know, where there's rangers and gates and signage. It is just there. It's a very rough and tumble road to get out there. There's, in the last, you know, 10, 15 years or so, it has become more well known, of course, thanks to the Internet. And some of the more intrepid travelers in the world have tried to trek out there to get there. I read that the country of Turkmenistan gets only something like 10,000 tourists a year. Not a lot of people. I mean, like for comparison, San Francisco gets 20 million tourists a year.

So where did this thing come from? Like what sparked this fire? And this is where it gets even more fascinating to me because no one knows exactly. There's legends, there's tales, it's kind of lost to the mists of history here. How do they know it's 50 years then? Okay, so because there are old timers who remember a time when it was not burning, okay? So probably the most commonly told origin story of the Darvaza crater is that it was the result of a failed Soviet-era oil drilling endeavor from 1971. One. They were set out to drill for oil. The entire field collapsed in on itself. And they're like, well, can't drill here. It's no good. So it pulled out the equipment. And the engineers on the site noticed rather quickly large amounts of methane and other gases being emitted from the crater, which in and of itself is not that uncommon, especially in that part of the world. So they decided, all right, well, we're just going to burn off the gas. You know, we're just going to, we're going to intentionally.

intentionally light of fire, burn it off. It'll burn itself out in, you know, a matter of days or weeks. And then we don't have these noxious, you know, gas. Yeah. We're good. What could go wrong? Well, what could go wrong is that it could still be burning 50 years later. Because the amount of methane underneath the crater, far beyond what anyone had any idea was down there.

And as it's under pressure. So it doesn't get put out in the wind. It doesn't get it put out in the rain. It doesn't, you know, it is, it is burn. burning, burning, burning. There are some old timers in Turkmenistan who say that it was actually a natural collapse, that the crater just kind of collapsed on itself and was lit on fire to keep the methane sort of at bay. No one knows, sort of just between history, Soviet records being gone, government secrecy, all that. We don't know exactly how it started. It is over 750 degrees inside the crater. And so when I say it's otherworldly, I mean, I'm not being that hyperbolic, it's in terms of somewhere that you can access on the surface of our planet, there's nowhere else that even comes close to these kind of temperatures.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not counting like, you know, a lava flow or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. In 2013, Explorer George Carunis, with backing from some organizations, including National Geographic, became the first person to descend to go into. the Darvaza gas crater.

Or, I mean, I suppose at least the first person to descend and return. Spent more than a year, training, preparing, getting the gear ready. Because, you know, as I say, well, so he was literally going to rope himself down from the edge of the crater, down to the bottom. And his mission was, I mean, beyond just checking it out. Checking it out, right. His nominal scientific mission was to collect soil samples. And the goal was to see, like, first of all, just what's the soil like, but they were looking for life. The goal is like, can even this harsh environment support, you know, what they call extremophiles, you know, extreme life forms that can thrive in high pressure, high temperature, extreme cold, whatever.

They did, in fact, find bacteria living there, living in the soil at 750 degrees. It's mind-boggling. All custom equipment, custom training to get down there. He had to have a special flame-proof suit, fireproof suit. He had to build his climbing harness. They had to fabricate out of Kevlar because a normal harness would just melt under the extreme temperatures. So this is him describing being down in the bottom of the crater. I described it as a Coliseum of Fire.

Just everywhere you look, it's thousands of these small. small fires. The sound was like that of a jet engine, this roaring, high-pressure, gas-burning sound. You know, it's like your fireplace that has the little gas thing on it, you know, the whoosh. And there was no smoke. It burns very cleanly. So there's nothing to obscure your view, just flames. Yeah, you can see just sort of the waves, the heat waves and the fires. It's natural gas, right? So it's like your stoke top, it's what it is. That's really what it is. It's mostly methane, some other gases in there. It's a big stove.

It's a giant stove. And so he's there with, you know, his oxygen supply and his flameproof outfit and his little probes and his diggers and his sensors. And, you know, he describes just basically, it's like being a deep sea diver where you don't focus on where you are because then you're going to kind of just lose it. You know, you just focus on the mission. Just focus on get the digger, dig the soil. Maybe look around at the fire, but don't think about that, you know, if something

goes wrong, you're on your own. No one's coming down there to, yeah, to. get you. When he was there, he was talking to a Turkmen geologists, locals, because he also wanted to get the real story. Like, what happened here? Even on the ground there, talking to the locals, there's no consensus about where the gas crater came from. Just it's the gates of hell, man. You just accepted it's the gates of hell. We don't know. Um, you know, some stories are that it was a fossil dig that the Soviet government was like looking for fossils down there and things went south. Um, it may have just naturally happened as early as the 60s even.

And some of the locals there say that, oh, yeah, it collapsed even in the 60s. And it wasn't until the 1980s that the government came and tried to start burning off the gas. So no one knows. And we don't have satellite photos, at least public satellite photos from them. So roughly 50 years, give or take, this thing has just been burning, open pit. All right. So the question that everybody asks, aside from like, you know, can I go there and can I visit is. Can I cook there?

Wait, I'm trying to think of what is the question that everybody has. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can go there. It's not great for the environment to have this massive open methane burning pit. Okay, you might ask, can you put it out? And, you know, it's like, why would you want to do that? I think it's great. Let it go.

Well, I mean, you know, if they could capitalize it on more of a tourist. destination, maybe. Yeah. I did read that about five or six years ago, the president of Turkmenistan, after years of it being known as the Gates of Hell or the Darmaza Gas Crater, officially named it, renamed it, the Shining of Karakum,

which is a, yeah, beautiful, just beautiful. Indiana Jones and. Absolute Indiana Jones level name. Yeah. But let's take mind of a child here. Well, how could they put, it out. You can't just get a big fire hose on it. You cannot put it out that way. The area is too huge to put a lid on it. But over the years, you know, in 2010, the government was trying

to make a push, or at least they were saying they were going to make a push to put it out. Just recently even in 2022, again, they were talking about, all right, this time we're going to get serious. We're going to put this thing out, get the team of experts on it. Nothing really came at that it's still burning um there was there was talk uh and has been talk about possibly using a nuclear bomb to no the fire and in fact this has worked before like even what smaller than gas fires so there have been examples of giant gas fires uh in the in the former soviet Union and in Ukraine, even there's an example I read about, where they did successfully extinguish a massive gas pit fire with a nuclear weapon. The science behind it is fairly sound. You set off

the nuclear bomb and it basically sucks all the oxygen from a massive radius out. So again, fire triangle, you're taken away the oxygen. And it did. Just the force and losing the oxygen made made these gas blast go out. They have not yet brought nuclear weapons to bear on the gates of hell. Yeah, every few years kind of comes up again. It's like, ah, maybe we should go and put this thing out. So even if they extinguish the fire, it doesn't change the gas coming out. Do you know what I mean?

Absolutely. I feel like I'm more concerned about that. It would be a massive, it would be a massive undertaking. They would have to extinguish the flames, first of all. then they would have to basically plug the holes. They would have to go in, you know, and... The gas has to go somewhere. The gas has to go somewhere.

Right. Normally, it stays underground for millions of years. But, yeah, once the gas starts creeping out, it's extremely hard to put that, you know, methane genie back in the bottle. So George Carunis did survive. He made it out. He made it, came back up. They documented this. There was a National Geographic film, a short film that made about this.

looked extremely fascinating. I found some short clips of it online. I really, really, really encourage you to go on your computer, go on your phone, pull up a picture of the gates of hell. It looks like AI. It does. You typed in Gates of Hell or like fiery pit. It really does. It really does. It has, as I say, you can sort of do camping out there. They have like yurts and tents and people will camp out there and try and get close to it at night. you know, when it's maybe a little more bearable. But the just the absolute intense heat of this thing, it's just too hot. You just cannot really approach it in any, you know, meaningful way for more than just a couple minutes at a time. Right. Yeah. Wow. I'd love to see it.

I really would too. I really would too. A big marshmallow on a really long stick. And you didn't want to call this episode fire in the hole. It is. It literally is fire in the hole. in the hole. Look what I found. They're the spiders that live near there. Yeah. Oh, now I don't want to go. There's a surprising amount of photos of spiders.

Oh my gosh. I saw this in just one or two places. So I didn't include this in the story here. I wasn't able to really find any hard evidence of this. These are big spiders. They are giant spiders. I read, so not only are they giant spiders, Karen, but they are attracted to the fire. So I read that. That if you're there, yeah, right, it makes sense. You're out in the, you know, you're out in this, you know, flat, desolate desert. And so I read that these giant scary looking spiders, if you're there, you'll see them kind of crawling toward the rim of this thing. It's like, yeah, I mean, to make it even more freaky. Yeah, exactly. It's like the siren song of.

And then what? They die? Guess they die. Yeah. Like I said, I wasn't able to find a real kind of, you know, complete anecdote about the spiders. But I did read in a couple places that there are some narwharf. Harley spiders there and that they're drawn to the flame. Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit.

Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online GoPASS ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash tickets. All right. Well, I have one last fiery segment here. Here I have a quiz about famous logos with fire in it.

Okay. Pretty tight group to start with. You know, we're kind of narrowed down. We've got a pretty good set. What I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you a few facts about this company. and buzz in when you think you know the company. All right. And I'll even give you the industry.

So here we go. Let's start with, all right. Let's start with this one. Tech. Tech industry. This was released in 2004. Whoa. Colin.

Firefox. It is. Oh, my God. Is that what you were going to guess too, Chris? Yeah. You guys are too good. I was going to get, well, you said, you said tech, and I was going to guess it. And I was like, can we buzz in before the clues?

My next clue was the original name is Mozilla Browser. I'm so impressed. All right, next one, sports and leisure. That's our industry. Invented in 1968 in Los Angeles, California, by, Elliot Handler You might know his wife Ruth Handler

might sound familiar Yeah So this first came in a set known as Original Sweet 16 The Red Line series Oh Okay, all right

Chris Hot Wheels Hot Wheels Elliot Handler founder of Mattel Ruth Handler his wife, inventor of Barbie. Yes.

He invented Hot Wheels. Ah. A little matchbox car. The nerdy thing is it's when you said original Sweet 16 because I absolutely have read books about the toy industry. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard that phrase before to describe. Yeah, yeah. Nice.

Yes. All right. Good job. Hot Wheels, a nice curvy long flame with the word. word hot wheels with a word hot wheels. It's a really pleasing logo. Yeah. Yeah. So next company industry is food and beverage. This was introduced in 1984. Developed in Canada. Its original name was Dr. McGillicuddy's firewater whiskey. Gosh. Oh, Chris. Fireball. Fireball. Of course. Fireball cinnamon Whiskey, cinnamon sugar whiskey.

Oh, yeah. We got like a fire demon breathing out fire. He's kind of cute. My next clue is the tagline, which I've actually never heard before until I look this up. Taste like heaven burns like hell. Oh, yeah, it's, yeah, it's not truth and advertising. Yeah, yeah. I saw Wikipedia had a list of fire.

ball concoctions with funny names, including a cider ball is a fireball with hard cider, the French toast shot, which is butterscotch lique, lique, bailey's Irish cream, and fireball. I don't know why. This is just some employee at the Fireball Corporation. Yeah, just trying to make a stick. The Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shot is a fireball with rum chata. Dr. Fire is Dr. Pepper with a fireball. Dr. Fire.

Ph.D. And then Fire starter is fireball with monster energy drink. Oh, no. Why would you do that to your body? Why would you subject your friends to that? Like, oh, all right, moving on. Okay. Next one is a business about business, founded in 1912, got its start known as the Associated Advertising Clubs of America.

It also has an alliterative name nowadays. ABC made a new segment around this company called The Best Ratings Money Can Buy. Oh, Chris. Is it the Better Business Bureau? Yes. Wow, that's right. It's a little torch, right? It's a little torch.

Better Business Bureau. All right, next one. Category is Sports and Leisure. This was founded in 1988 in Florida. Oh. Whoa, Colin. Well, I got to guess. Is it a team?

Is it Miami Heat? It is Miami. Good job. Nice. I thought, I was a little too far over my ski's there. Yeah, okay. All right. Sports and leisure, Florida.

Yeah. You know, yeah. Next couple of hints. Name came from a public naming contest. The other entries included beaches and suntan. The Miami Sun Tans. And my last hint is their rivals is Orlando Magic. Next one is tech, tech, tech, tech.

launched in 2012 in West Hollywood it was a result of a hackathon by the people who are working on another app called Cardify credit card loyalty app that completely got abandoned once they worked on this hackathon project

yeah 2012 result of a hackathon and then my last clue is the original name was matchbox Oh, Chris. Tinder. Tinder.

The Tinder flame. All right. Last one. Entertainment. Entertainment. Founded in 1918 in Los Angeles, California. The original name was Cone Brandt Cone Film Sales Corporation, CBC. The company was also primarily responsible for distributing Disney.

shorts, including silly symphony and Mickey Mouse cartoons between 1929, 1932. The main logo is of a woman. Oh. Colin. Is that Columbia? Columbia. Holding a torch. Nice.

Right. Right. That lights up. Woo. Oh, that's a good one. Good job. That was my quiz. Okay.

I was like so scared that. I was like, oh, this is too hard. This is too hard. But then you guys got like Firefox in two seconds. This is one of those quizzes where like, like, as you're like halfway through the question, I'm like, oh, I'm never going to get this. Never going to get this. And then he's like, oh, wait, I got a little bit of a turn. Yeah.

I love those kind of quizzes. Woohoo. All right. And that's our show. Thank you all for joining me. And thank you listeners for listening in. Hope you learn stuff about fire logos, gates of hell, and hope you had fun at our first annual fire festival.

You can find us on all major podcast apps and on our website, good job, brain.com. This podcast is part of Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows like The Explorer Podcast, movie therapy, and plotting through the presence. and we'll see you next week. Bye. to hear the latest from IGN on the world of video games, movies, and television with news,

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