Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 193: The Deepwater Horizon Disaster

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

joe bowden's wild well control of spring texas yee-haw *whip crack* sign to stop offshore drilling, or at least to express your displeasure with it: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/stories/stand-up-to-offshore-drilling Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

It doesn't, yeah, there it is, now it's failed. Oh, Bruce. All right, all right, all right. So November, I would like to introduce you to Magic the Gathering. No, no, this is an act of violence. You're threatening against me and I'm entitled to defend myself. You're a trans woman you like either magic or DNA. The people of Europe have suffered under the yoke of unpredictable American insanity.

Yes, yeah. And, you know, ever since I saw Macron wearing those sunglasses, I was like, I knew, I knew. I knew that we have to rejoin the EU so that you can never make me play Magic the Gathering. And I personally have a nuclear weapon that is hooked up to my heartbeat. And if it goes over the sort of like you are playing the Magic the Gathering, there's a Lorwyn Blonde, we're playing it, friend. Dusted. We're doing a cube draft and we're going to town.

Ron doesn't know how to play magic, you don't know how to play. Tori, can you play Magic? Absolutely the fuck not. My wife taught me to play Majong recently. Does that count for anything? How do I have two trans women and Raws and none of you can play magic? It's because you're talking to two trans women with jobs. I mean, I don't have a job, but I'm broke.

So, like, I've seen what this. The most I know about magic is that I have had people come through my home that I have printed out magic cards for to build their decks because it costs apparently somewhere around the price of like a used pond, a civic to build a decent deck. And so also, also every trans women I know. who's really into magic has a job, so it's kind of like... That was why you play Warhammer. That's why you play Warhammer. I don't... I play Marjong. I play Ritchie Marjong, okay?

Victoria, can you play Warhammer? No, but my wife likes to build the models. Oh my God. I'm playing... She's getting... I'm playing... I'm playing... I'm playing... ...incented...

...incentral insurgency in Afghanistan with a little counters, okay? I was... I was homeschooled my entire childhood. I got make friends until I was 19 years old. I grew up in Central Pennsylvania. I grew up in Central Pennsylvania. Which was harder. I might be getting to play like a tabletop role playing game

for the first time this year. When you come back out here, I'm teaching how to play Twilight Struggle, okay? Roz and I once played Magic at the Gathering and he got, he was just really bad about you. I didn't understand it at all. He hated it. Quick question.

Quick question for the floor. How many news items do we have on this episode? At least not. We still haven't clapped also. Okay. Oh, we need to clap now. I didn't like the concept of magic the gathering. I'm a man of science.

I want science the gathering. Science the symposium. Science the gathering or primitive accumulation. That's just blue. That's just mono blue control, my guy, and I play that. All right. All right. I'm going to do three, two, one mark.

Three to one, John, anyway. One mark. Okay, close enough. And we have to do, we have to do a podcast. Right. Yeah, that's what we do here is podcast. It's true. We do do those. Occasionally. Oh, my voice is fucked, by the way.

So it's not doing surgery on us. Yeah, this is true. There's, you know, the podcast who has had surgery, the podcast who is currently having surgery and the podcast who hopes to have surgery yet to come, you know? Yeah, I wouldn't recommend surgery. They did, they were like, okay, you don't have to be like, you know, fucking.

Hold up, hold up, hold up. I'm not being transphobic. like I'm saying for me. Number two. They were like, oh, you're a little nervous. Here's, we're going to shoot the good shit right to your vase. Love that shit. You were in the 1% regret rate because you got it just kind of on a whim.

You're not even trans. You're just like, I just feel like it. Cut me open, bro. They were like, hey, do you know what, like, what's happened to you? And I was like, yeah, you're cutting my scrot them open. And they were like, yes. I was like, yeah, what, what, what, you're cutting my scrotum up. It's no easy ways to say this.

Are you not cutting my shit open? Are you not cutting my shit open? Suddenly you're weird for like saying it in those terms. Right, I'm like, oh, you're a doctor, okay, yeah, look at my balls some more. I don't give a fuck. Do you have seven years of Balls Medical School to look at your balls and then they're going to make you look like you're the freak for saying, yeah, you're going to cut my balls out? You're going to cut my balls off.

That's what you fucking doing. Oh, goddam. Okay. Many people died of my... One of my favorite things is the person who got rid of mine. I actually... Oh, no, they gave me a third ball. Oh, damn.

I know you say person instead of doctor. Was this one of those, like, you drive up to a barn up state jobs? No, no, I went to a doctor, but like, this doctor did a bunch of my friends also. And so I gave her a copy of the book and was like, here, I think you've done like four different women's surgeries that are contained from the pages of this photo book. Considered a gift from the community. I regret to inform you my doctor went to Virginia. Ooh.

I have, I have finally met a Virginia alum I like. Wow. Finally, I have met one good Virginia alum. Burned UVA to the ground and everybody in it. Speaking of burning things to the ground. Mostiful. Yes.

Outta boy. Hello, and welcome to, well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Rosnick, I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

I'm November Kelly. I'm the person who's talking right now. I am desperately trying to salvage my completely fucked voice and my pronouns are she and her. Yay, Liam. Hey, Liam. Hey, I'm three ball Anderson. My pronouns are he and him, okay. From your days is a pitcher.

Yeah, yeah. Yo, I throw a nasty passball that I just, I go into my scrotum and I just, They actually banned that in Major League after Old Hoss Radbourne tried that at the World Series in 1911. They call him three ball because he's never been walked. Hi, my name is Victoria Scott. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are she and her.

Today I have prepared an episode mostly that I hated making. It's awful. This is the semi-submersible. drilling oil drilling rig the deep water horizon. And as you may have guessed by now, it should not look like that. I'm done. We can go back to balls. Back the same.

It's going to be way better than the rest of this episode. Doing the news slides. Oh, my God. I went, so obviously everybody knows at this point that I read the comments of these. So I went and looked at the last episode I was in to see the comments to make sure everybody like either was like tolerating me still or like had suddenly turned on me and hated me.

Because you know, Everyone say nice things about Victoria and tell her that she worries too much. You wake up at three in the morning, you have these anxieties. But I just looked through in every single comment is like, ah, yes, 2025 before context happened. So this is our first episode with a full news section since that, which was recorded December 23rd. And we've had a few of the weeks where decades happen.

It's true. We took a long vacation. We picked the wrong week to quit doing. the news segment. Yeah. I picked the wrong week to quit drinking, and yet I did it anyway. Everyone's only a nice thing's to Roz or you will be shot. And Devin, leave that in.

I'm still having two years a day. There's no way that we're keeping monetization on this video. YouTube is actually going to come to our... We're not monetized. We're not monetized. Although people have been saying they're getting ads now, which like I... They're forcing ads on everything. YouTube is going to come to our houses and to kill us.

I welcome, I welcome them with open arms, and by which I mean my 12 gauge. Well, the reason why we open the episode with sort of like eight minutes of ball surgery talk is to try and establish a strong bond between us and the listener. It's like we went to like boot camp together, right? And so that means you're locked in. You're not leaving because of like some fucking ad for Squarespace. And now granted, the solemn promise on our end is we're never going to be responsible for the ad for square space or whatever the fuck it is.

Right, right, right. We're never going to sell you underwear or like pre-made food. We would try to sell you by snooos.com, but you can't get it imported to the United States anymore. Thank you, President Trump, you Nazi pieces of show. We would only try and sell you shit that we were interested in, which means dipping tobacco, niche board games, airsoft guns, like, high-end camera equipment. Right, right-hand computer parts, please. But the thing is, only discontinued high-end camera equipment. This is probably a bad time to mention it, but I did accept the 10.

teaching position at Prager University. Can you get us in the back door? Once you've got tenure at Prager, you know, then. You've really made it, yeah, by which I mean, it's a suicide soup. Operating the Prager UD.I program. Oh my God, yeah. No, he is Polish. I'm in an engineering department.

And Catholic. Sort of. Trying to figure out how to make engineering work. conservative than it already is. Oh, God. People being like, I don't think there's any queer women in engineering. And I'm like, we do not hang out with the same group of fucking people,

do we? Fucking nerds. We're making more all the time. We are cracking eggs like we're farmers. So before we can talk about Deepwater Horizon, exploding, we have to do all

of the goddamn news. I gotta say that our use of classical paintings is my favorite gag on this program. I love it. I love the California Housing Policy one, most of all, of course, with Hieronymus Bosch. You can go and see, this one is called Pandemonium, you can go and see it in the Louvre, and then, you know, take a handful of tiaras on your way out as well, if you're quick. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff to get through. If you were one of the people who complains in the comments about like, why aren't they talking

about Deepwater Horizon? The thing is, if you want to find out about Deepwater Horizon, you could find literally any other source. And the one thing we can promise you is that literally any other source on Deepwater Horizon is not going to include a bunch of stuff that was happening on the 22nd of January, 26, and eight minutes of ball surgery. Yes. Once again, they make the chemical safety board take that out of the videos.

The CSB did a video on this. that I watched five times to make sure I had fully understood the disaster before I even wrote the slide deck. You should probably just go watch that if you don't want to see four people discuss various genitalia related operations.

Whatever, no, you come for the ball talk, you stay for the horrific disregard for human life. The CSB, they don't let the CSB do jokes is the thing. And they should, but they don't. They barely let us do jokes. But the CSB does. do jokes. Yeah, but only the kind of like, Ibsen, like, the Ibsen, like, kind of dramatic irony

kind of jokes, you know? Yeah. It's not, they're not, they're not doing, they're not on our level, or we're not on their level, one of the two. We're not on their level. That's definitely true. Yeah, they have, like, a really nice, like, graphic design team and, like, all that, they got the 3D modeler guys. Yeah, we got a guy with, uh, I love you, too. I don't, we, we got, we got, we got news. PNG saved at the bottom of my downloads folder from four years ago that goes on an overlay on all of these. And I'm the only one who has the high res. So if anything happens to me, that's my insurance policy.

That's my leverage. I actually wanted to ask you about that because I was like, I should just start throwing in the cry on so that, you know, Nova can do less. But I forgot that that was actually your bus insurance. No, I have to like turn the sort of second key on the news item. Otherwise, otherwise you're going to get a really low resolution question. Yeah, yeah, I just, I just copied them from previous slides, yeah.

Yeah, it's really the sort of photocopy of the photocopy of the photocopy thing. That's how you know it's authentic. Yeah. I hate going to Prager U. Engineering and your professor hands you at like photocopier burnt to fuck printout that just says communism killed 80 billion trillion people. Good. Should have killed more. Can't even see the number of zeros.

I mean, I'm not a communist because again, I'm not five years old, but at this time, fine, sure. Okay. News. Heavy with it. News. All right, we got to... YouTube. Like, seriously, start...

No. I don't know how much clearer I can make it. Like, what the fuck is it going to take? Yeah. Jesus is fucking Christ, you need to... Uh-uh. People, and I am 100% serious. It's not a joke.

Tensions are high. It's what... It's in the Declaration of Independence, if you, you know, purport to give a fuck about that, is if people... Prismosososes we know how to read as Americans. Yeah, sure, but like if agents of the state just roll up on you and murder you in the street, you live in tyranny.

And the point of being an American textually is that you are supposed to revolt against tyranny. Now, granted, all the guys who wrote that were hypocrites, but still, you got to- You can't say that on YouTube. Just bleep every verb, I guess. That was a lot. That was a lot of bleeps right there, yeah. Hey, Devon. I assume you're on hour 12.

of this. So love you, bud. Love you too, buddy. I just, I just, I need back. Yeah, I, I need. You know, but you can't say that. Yeah, I think, I think we all need to know that we're on the same page here. I think the listeners are too. I hope so. And I just, if you somehow live under a rock, I suppose it's worth mentioning that, you know,

an ice agent decided to unload a handgun into Reneggan's face and murdered her in the street in Minneapolis. and now the city of Minneapolis is federally occupied to an extent that is like schools are not in session, people are scared for their lives, court observers are getting pepper sprayed at point blank range. They just abducted a five-year-old kid and sent him to a facility where the food quality is so bad. They're giving like children nervous breakdowns. It is pretty much like, it's weird for me personally to talk to like the kind of like well-meaning cis liberals that I know in my life who are all. kind of like, oh wow, this is so crazy. I can't believe this is happening.

It's like, well, we blew past every other fucking warning sign on the way here, and now we're here, and everything is fucking horrifying. Minneapolis is like one of my favorite cities in America, and I have a ton of friends there. So it's like, I can't fathom what people there are going through constantly. Obviously, the media made it their fucking life goal. As soon as Renee was murdered to try to erase the fact that she was a lesbian who was in the car with her wife.

and that, you know, the administration position rapidly became, well, this do-gooder liberal, kooky lesbian deserved it. Yeah. Now, Devin, if you would not mind holding the bleep button, genuinely, genuinely,

I am going insane. I don't know, like, and this is the thing about trying to convince, like, the well-meaning, like, cis-liberal people I know is, like, you, all of the fucking signposts that we've been ignoring for, like, five years, we have blown past. And now there is literally no answer left except moderate position.

You must, you have to try everybody in ICE. If they have ever been even close to any document regarding deportations or any of this shit, you have to. We're all very upset. Yeah. Like, Christy Noem actually has to. You can't say that on YouTube. In a judicially sanctioned manner for America as a concept to continue existing or this

place has got to fucking Balkanize. I'm going to try and put this in it. I'm going to try and thread the needle here, right? Because there's been a lot of like libs like the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, future no gods, no mares episode, doing the tone but not the content of being like, listen up, fuckers, we're going to do nothing, right? I'm going to try and try and convey the thing in a way that we don't have to bleep, right? Which is just to ask the question, how do you imagine this is going to end with someone getting elected

with the passing of a law, because if you don't imagine that either of those is possible or sufficient, then you have to imagine something else. That's the button. At minimum, you got to do like debathification. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know,

completely dismantling the agency. Yeah, dismantling the agency is a good start, but these people need to be tried for crimes against you, man. I was reading, I was reading, I was reading, I mean, I'm, You can't. That should not have to get bleeped. No, no, that was not a bleep thing.

The next segment is the bleep thing. Yeah. Which is, these people should be. You know what he's saying, but I can't let you actually hear it. I mean, every ICE agent should be terrified for their fucking lives. They should go door to door waiting for the day, waiting for their day to come home to the Lord. And when they get to St. Peter's gate,

the St. Peter will have, I assume, the button that opens a trap door directly into hell. Please flash back to the last slide. I mean, if you are genuinely, I am pleading with you if you are an ice agent and you are somehow, you've slipped through the crack, you're listening to this, take your service weapon, put it in your mouth, it's been a long day. I don't want to tell them to do that. I want to tell them to. I have to take that out of the episode. Also that. Also that.

There is such a thing as the good ice agent, the ice agent that I sympathize with, and that's the ice agent that. This is no longer a question of demonetization. It is not legal for a British person to say that. Watching the... The other thing is... You know... You know it's going to be... I probably shouldn't say that.

Never mind. Well, actually... Say it and trust in Devin to keep us all out of Seckot, you know? Please keep me out of prison, Devin, thank you. The thing is, is every single time I watch a video of these motherfuckers fucking stomping around Minneapolis, they have absolutely no awareness whatsoever. I watched these guys deal with a crowd that they were tear gassing, and one dude just a little...

like peel off and kind of like turn his back at a whole crowd so he can pepper spray one person in the face and it's like dude the minute that you can that you can no longer do that with impunity they are going to can't put that in the podcast episode feed you to dogs like they are so fucking incompetent that it would be so easy to say i can't leave that in the podcast it is a testament to the fucking insane patience of every single person with a soul in the city of minneapolis that no no ice agent has been and they should be we should be very clear.

I mean I understand it should be and or I'm thinking I'm thinking a heaven's gate kind of situation I have my brain so here's the other thing too is like and I know that this is very much

like this is the crux of sort of like living as an American during horrible things that America is doing which is like I am not front and center Seattle is not a key focus city for ice I really can't do a whole lot I don't have very much money. I don't have, like, I have whatever influence this podcast gets me, which I know from experience is not, you know, I am not going to fix anything.

So I just kind of sit here and I'm like, well, I shouldn't be focused on this because I'm not really the main impact, obviously. Like, there are other people, this is materially harming who are scared for their lives. But I will admit, I can't fucking think at all. And I feel like I'm completely insane because I just, I don't know how you watch this kind of like with the horror of like an. Avalanche bearing down upon your location and just say like, well, you know, I'm going to go like pick up medications from the pharmacy that's about to also get wiped out in the avalanche in the span of, I don't know, a week, a month, who knows? I guess the only thing that's sort of a benefit to doing this part was not the only thing, but the only thing in this context, right? The only offset there is you can't get us fired for saying these things, right? Like you might be able to get someone as arrested, I hope not.

but like you can't get like, if you call my boss for the remarks that I've been making about ICE, you are going to get through to Justin, you know? Hello. So I listen to all of it. I'm fine with it. Confusingly, confusingly, if you call my boss, you get November. Yeah, it's weird. And if you call my boss, you get Liam, yeah.

Is that kind of circular ownership structure? And the thing for me is, like, I've fully given up on the idea that this economy will ever sustain me having a job again, no matter how bad I want to get out of my fucking apartment. So it doesn't matter anyway. Like, I mean, the thing is at this point, like, in future slides, I'm sure we'll get to it. But, like, the United States is just, we have crossed the event horizon into dollar is no longer world reserve currency. And the U.S. economy is just going to collapse to a degree that, like, I think most people here don't have not really, I mean, I'm sure poor people. people have reckoned with it because like I've been poor and I've thought about it a bunch and a lot of my friends have but like I feel like people who are still kind of like ah this will be

fine like you know the Democrats are in midterms and like we can reform ice like this this kind of moderate bullshit thinking is like no we are past the event horizon the minute the AI bubble collapses we are all so goddamn fucked that like go ahead try to get me fired from podcast or I won't have a job ever again or whatever it's fine I wasn't getting one anyway if the podcast collapses oh what are you going to do get me fired from being dead. Anyway, besides that, like, everyone's, the best job you can get is going to be banging two rocks together. So, like, are you going to call my fucking grug supervisor? I don't want to suck myself off too much and be like, oh, I'm so brave for saying all the

stuff that we're going to bleed, right? But I am aware that it's a privilege to get to say the stuff that I know a bunch of you are thinking and cannot say publicly. And I try not to take that lightly. And I hope that you are in agreement with me about this stuff, the stuff that we can only imply or allude to. Yeah, you can't, I want to be very clear, like, you can't fucking fire us. I answer to no one except Justin G. Rossiack and possibly buy snooose.com and also possibly might be. You're going to get a stern lesser from buy snooose.com. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Diminimus is shut down. I can't fucking important shit anyway.

I mean, the one saving grace here, I suppose, you know, is these ice guys, they're all, you know, sort of keystone cops types. You know, they're all... Doesn't stop them from killing people, but I guess not as many people as they might have. If they were good at it, they'd have killed a lot more. Every single time

I see a story out of one of these detention centers though, of which we have one in like the, in the Puget Sound, there's one in Tacoma. That we still, for some reason, a lot of keep fucking operating, because we won't do anything that would piss off the feds because we're again moral cowardice infects every fucking level of the United States government state and federal um but like every single time I read a story out of it it's like oh these are these are concentration camps in like the

literal textbook definition of the term in that people are not they're not getting medical care they're not getting food they don't have adequate like safety or shelter or lodgings and nobody really cares about what happens to them there's we're learning about deaths and custody all the time. So like, yeah, the Keystone Cops thing is good, but they're still like rounding up people by like the plane load and putting them in these places where they're expected to basically disappear

or die. And it's just, I mean, it's weird because it's like, I feel like there should be some sort of tone that I could strike here that was like lighter, but it's like, no,

this is fucking end game shit. It's been end game shit. We didn't stop it before now. And now it's just going to, the next couple of years are going to be unfathomably bad for. so many people, no matter what we do. It's just, it's, I mean, unless you tomorrow.

Mm. Tomorrow. And then maybe things will be fine. You never know. Verb every single noun. Yeah, I can't, I can't. Climb every mountain. Like, yeah, you, you know, you know.

I'm really good at not saying things in recordings, but y'all have pushed me over into saying things in recordings. I shouldn't do that. No, that's the whole point. Yeah. All these people should fuck. All right. The reckoning.

The reckoning's going to be ugly. Yeah. And I want to be very clear on something, the reckoning always comes. Yeah. In our, P. Renee, good. You were, you were better than the rest of us. Yeah. You deserved a lot better than you got. In other news. This one seems almost quaint in comparison. I was about to say, yeah, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we snatched the guy.

We blackbacked a guy. Hey, we did kill like, we did kill like 80 people in the process. process of black bagging him. We can't fucking do anything right. God damn, this country is so fucking stupid. Yeah, I mean... Well, hey, my fate... Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, because I know everybody's already seen all this shit already,

but my favorite part of this is that he got... Part of what they arranged him on was federal assault weapons charges. Yeah. They're his guns! It's his country. They're his guns. He's supposed to be there. We sort of await to see whether or not sovereign immunity is a sort of a way to see whether or not sovereign

immunity is still a thing in the United States and, you know, God help us if it isn't, because his defense is justifiably, I am president of Venezuela. Yeah. What the fuck? I am not, not, I didn't commit any crimes here. I am a sovereign. Yeah, like, okay, sure, he stole the election to be president of Venezuela. Fine, I'm not going to dispute that.

So did Bush, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't, we should have, we should have He's the reason we're in this mess. Just like a bunch of guys in helicopters, ice bushes entire secret service detail and then take him to trial in Caracas. Yes. What laws does Venezuela have about like assault rifles? Yeah, so Nicholas Maduro. We're going to find out.

Is now in prison with Luigi Vanjone, just in fucking Arkham Asylum in Manhattan, I guess. No bits because that shit would rule. I hope so. I think that would be cool. Hang out at the lunch table. I'd watch that buddy comedy. I mean, basically, I think the way

the ways I understand this. Hashtag Cafe Be Cute, hashtag Yeah, coffee shop A.U. Slow burn. Yeah. So in terms of what this actually has been, right, in the history of like U.S. intervention, it's not new, but it's newly sort of brazen, right?

We're doing all the stuff in the open and we're not sort of making any bones about it. And it's more honest in a way. And it's more of a license to, for any state anywhere, to just do the sort of like epic shit that they've always wanted to do. So we'll see what the... Besides the Israelis who have been, who have made well, it's about... Well, exactly, right.

We'll have been about assassinating people out in the open, but other countries have been too polite. We'll see what sort of what comes out of Pandora's box on this. one. But we also know now at the remove of a few weeks that his own vice president set him up, which is an insane move. And I would have said treason, I guess, but this is the thing about a dictatorship, right, is you end up with a lot of people at the top who are sort of like corrupt and sort of self-interested to the point of doing this. I'm not going to sort of burnish the supposed leftist credentials of Venezuela because you don't know.

need to to say that this is a fucking illegal, criminal, stupid thing to do. Very done. And if there is rule of law in the United States, which is still kind of up in the air, then they got to acquit him and then funnier, they got to bring him back. Yes. I know they won't, right? Because I'm not stupid enough to have faith in American courts, but like, it would be funny if they were mandated to bring him back and put him back where they found him.

That is the funniest part about this entire fascist project, is that they were like maybe three years out from getting the courts completely in line, but they just couldn't fucking wait. Probably because Trump knows he's going to die soon. And he's like, I got to fucking finish the project while I'm still alive because God only knows what the hell is rattling around up there. There was a weird kind of private admission of weakness about this. I was reading the New York Times as deep dive into the FBI under Cash Patel, right? And a lot of it was like, lib to like center-right FBI agents being like, well, where, where, my poor FBI,

we used to love following the Constitution and now we don't, right? Which is, fuck you. But one of the like MAGA appointees, as they were firing one of the FBI agents, very kind of Sakario vibe, was like, do you want to get, like, investigated for, like,

violating the Constitution now by us or in four years' time by the Democrats? And so on some level, some of these people know that maybe there is going to be some kind of like legal consequence of this. I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for it, but at least it's nice to know that they worry. My favorite part of this. As a, as a, I'm going to turn on my, my inner lib brain. Yeah. Hang these people for fucking treason.

Yeah, straight. No, absolutely. I got really, because someone was like, oh, you're an anarchist, which I am. But before that, I'm an annoying, wine-drinking, brunch-momming lip. And, and, and, what we should have done, we should have had people in the fucking streets for treason. Yeah. Donald Trump, oh God, I can't, nope. But here's the thing, do you think Gavin Newsom has the source to do that?

Do you know, fuck you? Do you think Gavin Newsom's gonna get up there? Gras the lectern at the inauguration and be like pronouns are back and Donald Trump is being executed. No. He's gonna- He's gonna be a-sniveling fucking, I don't know the trans people belong in in girl spaces. Fucking Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump. We can't- You know that you can't say that.

You could make Donald Trump homeless and then Gavin Newsom would do something about it. street lamps. I love my work. I love you guys. My favorite part of all this is how Trump was like, look, Venezuela is open for oil development. And the oil company is also. Oh, boy. I don't know, man.

Nah, we don't want to do that. My favorite thing is like, well, it's been ceased before. You know, and I'm just like, all right, listen, again, again, CEO of Exxon Mobil, Neil him over a ditch, Donald Trump, Neil him over a ditch. Gavin Newsom, Neil him over a ditch. Am I forgetting anybody? No, I don't think so. Oh my God, probably thousands.

Cash for Tal, nail him over a ditch. Every ice agent, I'm going to make them think their own. Welcome to Liam Stalin. I've changed my mind. Listen, eventually, you wait long enough and as a Marxist-Leninist, you will be proven right. There's a tweet going around that's like, listen, vulgar psychoanalysis and vulgar Marxism get you to 1,000 percent, like, like, correct, predictive power of events. And yeah, turns out.

All right, so we're gonna get my dad some sort of walker with guns on it. I think we must, yeah, we have to. Yeah. Yeah, the cane with the gun and it is no longer cutting it. So we must get him a walker with like two Tommy guns strapped to it. Yeah, I just- Gundam like situation at that point, isn't it? He can't see real good, so...

It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Just don't be around it. You're gonna have to give them the name, but... Give my dad a gun, double. The person I feel the most Sheldon fraud are about in this whole situation is Putin right? Because the plan here

of there is a guy in charge of what should be in our minds, our client state who's doing stuff we don't like we're going to go in, kidnap or kill him, depose him and the government's going to be friendly to us and we're just going to run the whole thing from a distance.

That was Russia's plan in Ukraine and it didn't work. And so all of those dead Russian paratroopers, what watching the Americans pull their shit off by successfully talking to the right person ahead of time, that's very pleasing to me. Yes. And then Trump got a Nobel Peace Prize for it. Well, he got handed someone else's Nobel Peace Prize.

Yeah, and the Nobel Committee got real indignant about it, which is funny. I know we're not supposed to do the like, you know, Air Bud playing basketball or whatever, but it is funny that the Nobel Committee was like, nah. Yet it happened. Well, it doesn't matter because I don't recognize Venezuela as a country. So all nation states are bad. I've been consistent on this line. Oh, I mean, listen, we did trash YouTube and we had a guest on.

And I got told that, you know, it's not our role as leftists to critique or to analyze, like, regimes in the global South that are left aligned or whatever. And it's like, is it my role as a leftist to have fucking eyes? because I've had hemorrhoids that are red of the Maduro. Exactly. Yeah. Ooh, that's, you should probably get those checkups. Can we, can someone, while we're, while we're, while we're, well, we're, a 35 minutes, 50 seconds in.

Can someone, uh, the, whoever did the illustration of my dad is chairman, Bill. Can you also do my dad piloting a Gundam for me, please? And, yeah, go for it. In additional news. Oh, my goodness. This is the one that's been driving me the most insane. And we're recording this right as,

right after Trump went to Davos and sort of walked it back. Poopped his pants is basically what he did. The line started to go down. Maybe somebody from the Joint Chief said, hey, this, probably we couldn't do this the way you wanted. Not today, chief, right. And so he kind of sort of backed out of this idea that the US was going to like invade and occupy Greenland.

for no reason I could tell other than Greenland big on map. He thought about it in 2019 and this presidential term he's decided he is going

to chase after everything he couldn't do before that's why he destroyed the east wing of the White House which again doesn't matter in the scheme of things but real fucking funny

it is really fucking funny it is really fucking funny. I look here's the thing is the thing Donald Trump as a pedophile right he yearns for an island and when his best friend died

and lost I guess lost custody of the island, Donald Trump lost access to that island, and now he needs a new island. And of course, being Trump, he wants the biggest one so that he can do the most pedophilia. What if he dug a moat around the White House, then it might. Call it White Castle. Oh, yeah. Oh, I like White Castle. I like White Castle.

I do think it's... Do we... Does this mean now that NATO is dead, we have to actually say critical support to Donald Trump? No. Yeah, it does. I said on top. TF that, you know, I wanted NATO to die in my lifetime, but I didn't expect it

to be in such a stupid fucking way. Very, very dumb. Nope, that's it. I'm going full NAFO. Let's do it, baby. I've been that woman in my life. I quit. Like, I... You can't quit.

You can't quit. You literally cannot quit. Within the corners of my soul, there is a little like fucking reprehensible NATO dog man, right? And anytime anyone on any podcast says some shit about Ukraine, I bite I like bite it back and I'm like listen you don't fucking know what you're talking about right I don't say that and in return for that I still get yelled out in the comment This is just my burden. It's fine. I'm not mad about it honestly

But yeah so basically what we need I guess is multi polarity and that means You know Europe is really deciding you know maybe we can't rely on we're gonna go it alone right all right. So yeah Welcome to the new world capital Leone. Yeah. My favorite part about this is that even like the foreign policy, like conservative foreign policy wonk guys are like they can't figure out

why Trump did this. No one can figure out why Trump wants. They're just like, so you don't know anything either. You don't know fucking anything either. All right, cool. None of us still jacked in. It's real dumb guy shit, right? Because as an American president, right,

you're allowed to disrespect the Europeans to a point, right? Because we are slime and we love that. shit. Now leaders are craven and will sort of like bend the knee. To a point, there is a limit on that and that limit is kind of threatening to invade Danish territory, right? And, and, you know, where this leads, I have no idea, but I think it's, you would have to be very stupid as anyone of influence in a European capital to say, we can't decouple ourselves from the Americans, right? Whatever they do, every four years, 10,000 of them in swing states get insane about seeing like, you know, a trans woman grade an essay in a way they don't like and decide to initiate World War

5. Fuck that. Absolutely not, because the one thing about China is it's predictable. It's predictably bad, but that you can work with that. The US is unpredictably bad. You know, it's like, okay, we're going to build military bases. You're already allowed to do that. Don't we already have mine for resources? We already do all this. Yeah, we're going to mine for resources. They've been actively seeking American investment for decades now. So far, they've got one Ruby mine.

That's the only thing that's given a return because it's so damn difficult to mine up there. There's like nothing there. I think what we should do is simply, no, I can't say that or all the shot. Maybe, maybe we can push China left. Trump is like really into fisheries now. That's why he's going after Greenland. You also got it confused with Iceland a bunch of times. Three times.

And Carolyn Leaver was like, no, he didn't. Yes, he fucking did, you dumb, you don't skag. I can't use a gender and insult. Old man's brain is melting. Go to the bad grandpa. The Biden ray got him. The fucking Cobalt 60 source embedded in the resolute desk that just makes you senile in a matter of days got to him, you know?

Have to come up with an angle can eyes. name for Rick Gilfax. I mean, the thing is, is like, I remember, I remember 2024, unfortunately. I just remember the past, which is a curse and a burden. I try not to do that. Neither of them looked very good that year. I think he may have already been going senile. I think the exposure to the Resilove Desk from his first term had already taken full

a hold. Yes. The thing is, it's just like, at a certain point, you know, we deserve to, we deserve the whole world telling us to fuck off. The US dollar crash is gonna be crazy. I'm already building a Jeep Cherokee with spikes on the front bumper and like a skull and crossbones flag mounted from a bullwhip antenna. Take me with you. And I intend to rule I five as a god king. You know what I'm signing up for Mandarin courses. Go find an ice agent to use as a blood bag. I am I I'm memorizing the phrase, this is what cisgender women look like in my country,

trust me, and I'm just getting that down. I do want to say, as someone who also is condemned her remember the past. It's so, it's so funny because you see these, I, a good friend of the show, Tom Payne, was pointing out that like, Europeans are not so good with the racism thing. No, this is true. And it's just like, I, the thing is about American hedge- It's like, you're absolutely right. And I really wanted to speak on your point about like, at least China is predictable.

Every day I wake up to make sure Reykivik is still there. I just, do you want to hear some absolute real politics in a way that's like really reprehensible? Honestly God I do. Okay. So I heard this from the line amongst people who are in favor of sort of aligning more to China is China is like having a neighbor. who beats their kids, right?

It's bad. You don't like to see it. America is like having a neighbor who beats his kids and then wants to come over and beat your kids, right? Yep. You see the difference. And it's like, if that's the calculation for a, as Mark Carney puts it, a middle power, fucking hell, right?

Yeah, I don't. Right, exactly. You can't fault these people. Like, it's just, it's just, we, it's, I know that we're going to get yelled out in the comments. Being in America is so goddamn embarrassing. Yeah. We don't care. I want to be very clear on that. Victoria might, November might, Ros might, I fucking don't.

I don't read the comments when I feel bad about myself. I search the, like, Reddit. They cut my shit open a week ago. You can, you can suck my surgically mangled balls. Gargle them, if you will. Jesus, dude. All three. All three.

All three balls. That's right. I know, I, here's a thing. I care what people think of me in terms of, like, I want them to find me personally agreeable. But if people want to yell at me for not liking NATO, that's fine. You like NATO. Yeah. Absolutely not.

Get the fuck out of here. Nafo, Victoria. That's what you're named. I'm going to on the webcam stream. It's actually called Navo, North Atlantic Victoria Organization. It's wild. We replace the star with just your face. The thing about NATO is they don't have all the starting vehicles.

So you got to, you really got to use the Soviet custom. house to start out. Yeah, true, actually. I know there's a, there's a trans man I know who walked into my home once with a trans flag NATO pin. Yeah, she sent me one of those. Yeah, she sent me one of those as well. I have one in my house.

I did not get rid of it. I still have mine. Can you mail be yours? Because my, my brother-in-law is going to like that. I can, I can, I can probably have a reach out to you, actually. Thank you. It glowed with the, like, brightness of 10,000. and sons, but I have been held it.

It's a somewhat evil objects, but I do still have it. Well, listen, you know. It's like the one ring. I can hear it whispering when it's in the same room as me. I, the worst is listening to my dad defend NATO as like an art of kindness and being like, listen. What the- Well, they did prevent a genocide that one time. You do have to give them-

That's where it starts and where it stopped. Yeah, that's basically my defense of Natives. as well. I say prevent the end. They ended a genocide that was sort of like, I mean, but like, I think on the whole,

you know, I'm still going to say, Victoria, I can't, I can't believe you. I mean, Navo is a, is a tough organization to get into

North Atlanta, Victoria organization. Somebody make that shirt up, please. Please do not. I beg of you. I beg of you. Nobody of any of the,

if you hate me on this show and you'd like me to never see me again, I guess make the shirt. Otherwise, please. Okay. Okay, but yeah, no, I don't know if you know. All I can say is, like, we're not an organization.

One second, one second, one second. God down. Well, there's your problem, make work program is mandatory. You, I will see you next Wednesday. It's more of a corvay. Yeah. I, we're not, we're not a podcast with a party line. Each of us ourselves are somewhat politically incoherent.

Like, I, I, programmatically. I am a Marxist-Leninist, right? I know what that means. However, it doesn't mean I don't have. sympathies and so like I can look at NATO and I can be like yeah but you know what the fuck I'm fine yes yeah so it's basically my approach to NATO it's the time of fucking monsters is what it is and I think you'll forgive all of us for being a little bit sort of like I caught my shit open a week ago I'm a little delirious I have

my criticisms but it is the only thing stopping Germany from invading Poland I think Poland might be the only thing stopping Germany from Just Rods, with like one G3 just laying there in the folding gap, just ready to go. Just like a half-smoking cigarette, Rod's just like, yeah, come at me, let's do this. I remember 1978. It'll just happen. They'll relapse instantly. What's that?

The tweet you did about scared the Navy. The first Secretary General of NATO, the British General, and he said that the point of NATO was to keep the Americans up, the French, in the Germans down, and the Russians out, right? And, like, that was the idea. And it was always rigged in the Americans' favor. And now America, for some reason, has decided but doesn't want to play the game of poker that it rigged anymore. How many times has Article 5 been invoked? Oh, I mean, like, one.

One time. After 9-11. This is the dumbest shit in the world. Yeah. Go to bed, Grandpa. And, again, if you support Donald Trump, if you support ICE, uh, well, What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing here?

What the fuck are you doing contributing to our Patreon and insulting my friend? I blocked you, by the way. And yeah, put a gun in your mouth. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Yeah, I'm so sorry, Devin. Yeah, I'm not. I feel kind of bad. I do actually feel kind of bad.

I feel bad for making Devin do the work, but not, yeah. Don't go into nightclubs. Every nightclub is a death trap. this was a ever ever this is the uh doesn't have a fire exit what was it this was a bar in switzerland spontana in switzerland yeah switzerland yeah very very crowded new year's party um and as you see here on somebody's phone video that is a bunch of sparklers like fireworks sparklers the ones that get up to like something crazy like eight billion degrees or something stuffed into the necks of champagne bottles

being lifted to the ceiling which is covered in flammable insulation. I will say, I thought it was always kind of like a uniquely American kid that we just treated sparklers like they were toys and children like waved them around at the 4th of July or whatever I'm like, this is crazy, those are so hot, you can absolutely do serious damage with those. But no, I guess it's just

everybody is like, eh, it's fine, fire indoors. So yeah, if you recall our episode on the state nightclub fire. You may notice that this is an exact identical incident, except the acoustic panels are on the ceiling as opposed to on the walls.

Yeah, and the pyro is being like hand carried by the like, I'll be right back. It's just, you know, obviously like this killed a bunch of people. I believe, I think 40 was the last death. Which is, which is for a nightclub fire is not unusual because you have a lot of people

trying to evacuate a crowded space if the evacuation is in any way compromised, then all those people fucking die, right? Also, there were a lot of people just like taking videos of the fire on their phone, like, whoa, that's cool. Yeah, which I don't want to condemn because like you're out to have a good time not to be in a fucking CSB video. You may be you're drunk. How many times if you actually like seen a fire spread enough to know when it's dangerous?

Like you don't know how fast this stuff spreads across acoustic insulation. And the answer is a lot. And as we did on the station Nycloth fire, the fumes that emit are very noxious. That is the one thing that you could like, if you take any lesson from this podcast ever, is if you see something on fire and you're indoors, you should get out of doors immediately.

Just don't fuck around with it. It's bad. The real practical solution here is we need to dramatically increase the listenership of the podcast so that everyone can recognize these problems from the lessons we have taught them. What we need is a kind of like, you know, European film

level of cultural funding to be like, you know, the EU fund on fire prevention has hired us to do like safety PSAs that's like every fire is an emergency and it is the check this shit out. It's your license to go ape shit.

You're allowed to shout, you're allowed to scream encouraged him. It's a good idea to hit the fire alarm. I wonder it's during Woke 2 we can get the CSB on board with this podcast. Oh, I hope so. Yeah. I'm I mean, they made podcasts as the head in charge of the FBI, right? Like, I should hope at the very least we could all get like deeply consequential jobs

and ruin things in the other direction. But yeah, no, I just, you got to, you got to, if you see a fire, especially in this kind of crowded environment, you have to not panic and freak out, but you have to panic and freak out, you know? Panic and freak out in a productive way. Yeah. Yeah. Which is get out of the building.

Get everybody else out of the building. Get everyone else out of the building. Yeah, exactly. Pray to God they haven't like padlocks the fire exits because all nightclub owners are scum who would just like paint the image of a fire door onto a wall if they could get away with it. I've always been like, yeah, I don't understand how nightclub owners get away with so much so frequently.

I mean, it seems like every, I don't know. The secret ingredient is bribes for this reason. Yeah, exactly. Maybe not in this specific case. It could be something else. but a lot of the time when you ask the question, the answer is bribes. Yeah, yeah, it's sad.

Know where the exits are, folks. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, so like, I think 40 people were killed in this. Well, that's what the notes say. So probably we started the new year with a disaster. A mass casualty event, yeah. So, anyway, if there's fire, leave. That's true.

Another news. Now, this is one where you should really have Gareth back on to explain. That is about to say there's there's there's a lot going on here. Renfei is having the the sort of terrible, horrible, very bad, no good set of days. Yes. There have been like two huge train crashes and then like two more minor ones. Yeah.

In Spain in the space of a week. Big one is this um, erio high speed train, uh, derailed between, oh god, I forget where it was. I also don't know. It was a train collision, I believe. Yeah, the one derailed and another train hit it after it derailed. Yes, there was a, as Denzel put it, a wreck on a wreck. Yeah. Apparently there was some kind of broken rail, which caused the Eurio train to derail. Erio is Frechia Ross's brand in Spain as the Italian State Railway operator.

And it derailed in such a way, like it wasn't a great derailment. you know, to start out with, but it derailed in such a way that it fouled the adjacent track. And a second high-speed train came along. And that one derailed much worse. Yeah, as you would imagine. As you do. And this killed, I think, 45 people at time of recording. Yeah.

It's real bad. I mean, Spain has like the largest high-speed rail network in the world outside of China, I believe. Yes. Really? And yeah, genuinely, like it's a huge point of like sort of national prestige and everything. But that also means that, you know, very occasionally you get sort of like bad accidents like this. And it's just like, you know, sort of ruinous. The other one is, I think it was a retaining wall collapsed onto the track, derailed another

high speed train. I think that was just a commuter train, but yeah. Oh, was it? Okay. know that only killed the driver, but it like injured like, you know, two dozen people, three dozen people. So huge crisis and confidence. I know I know the Renfay Union is calling for like a three-day strike just to be like,

we got to stop doing trains until we can figure out what the fuck's going on. Yeah, I mean, you know, three, four derailments in like a week, you know, you're nearly doing American class one railroad numbers. Yeah. I mean, it's just like statistical clustering as far as anyone knows, but like it's shitty luck to, again, to start the year on, you know? It does feel like it's been a bad January. We're not even, yeah, we're not even fucking out of January yet. The one thing we're celebrating is, hey, the U.S. didn't invade Greenland yet.

Yes. And I will admit, like, there's still amassing forces up there. It's not off the table. Like, by the time this episode drops, people could be posting like, oh, remember January 22nd? how sweet and naive they were. One of the funnier possible things to have happened. Yeah, is a fucking Danish SF or in like an Operation Flashpoint situation out there

and like we just put out the episode that's like, hey, uh, seems like he's backing down. Trump always chickens out, you know? Yeah, yeah, well, I can have... There was also, didn't make it into the sliding, but there's also a train crash in Thailand when a crane fell onto a train, which is... That killed like 30-something people too.

Jesus. Yeah, and then another cool. brain collapsed the day later. Yeah, I mean, these are all happening. Everything's happening all at once. This is old Lenin's fault. I'm speaking for Liam here. I do actually what, I mean, this is, you're right. I'm just eating chips. Probably not related to like the Spanish train crashes. But I do wonder if there's just going to be more operational errors this year is everybody's like psychic load of not knowing if we're going to World War III or not constantly. It kind of takes a greater and greater toll on them. Yeah. And more and more corners on top of all the corners that have

already been cut for the past like, you know, several decades plus the five years since COVID where everything just got worse. Everybody's doing five jobs. Like, at a certain point, like, the debts have to come due. And I'm wondering if like, these things are just going to happen at higher and higher frequencies where it's like, geez, we sure have compounded all of these failures into, you know, just a complete cluster fuck. Because everybody's gone insane because it's kind of hard to like function normally when you're

like, damn, though we might have, who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Maybe there'll be like a nuclear strike somewhere. The good news is that it's harder to fuck up doing a podcast in a way that kills someone. Like, I think I could do it. Well, we hope not. We do our best. I am excited for when Macron nukes America. That will be a fun day.

A great war of justice that turns the American, American soils ashes. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we're quite at nuclear war phase yet. But I mean, it just, it does feel like. things are kind of insane all the time. Maybe that's just my perspective as an American. No, it feels that way here, too. Yeah, I don't know.

Everybody I talk to... Maybe you're like... I don't know our listeners. Maybe you're in Chengdu having like eight different kinds of lesbian sex in one day and you're sort of like looking up from your apartment that's like 40 degrees indoors with the air conditioning on full blast and you're like, I don't know what you're talking about. This is great.

I want to move to Chengdu, but I genuinely think the heat would kill me. In which case, can you please... Can you please convince them to get cool about transom in real quick? Because I will learn Mandarin, please. Yeah. Well, that's an hour. What's Mandarin? What's Mandarin for that was the goddamn news?

You know what? I have no idea, but I have a drop that sounds like this instead. All right, all right, here we are in the podcast, finally. Listen, a lot of shit's been happening, okay? All right, well, I made this slide to show you, well, actually the EPA made this slide and then I modified it slightly. I didn't notice him until now. To understand how Deepwater Horizon, the movie with Mark Wahlberg happened, we first have to ask how Deepwater Horizon the disaster happened. And to understand that, we have to ask, how do you drill for oil?

Oil is under... Oh, I saw a movie about this. what you do is you take your son with you everywhere. No, the most frustrating fucking part of researching this episode for me, because I came into this, like, I know about cars. I didn't know about, like, the finer points of, like, drilling for oil. But I wanted to learn as much as possible in this span before we recorded, so I could try to give as accurate a depiction of what happened as possible,

because accuracy matters to me, which is why I've also started doing flashcards of the pronunciation of various river names in the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, I'm just playing turmoil like, oh yeah, you drill down, you avoid the fucking, like, rocks, easy. The really, the really frustrating part is that I realized I had heard most of this terminology in that stupid fucking movie with Bruce Willis, where they have to go blow up the asteroid. He actually did have some points about how hard it is to drill for fucking oil. I don't see why it would have applied in the space, but they did actually get some drilling guys on the set of that movie, apparently. Anyway, so the oil is underground, so you've got to dig to go get it.

You do this with a combination of tools. The ones that I'm going to focus on here are going to be the drill bit, the drill string, and the collar. What? Can I just say thank you so much for not including the photo of Drake's Well. First time we've talked about oil in six years that hasn't involved that photo of Drake's Well. Of course. Of course. Of course. So the bit is what you're actually going to think of when you're going to do oil drilling. You know, it's the gritty thing at the front that kind of like chews through the earth.

And then the collar is essentially a big weighted pipe that sits atop the bit to help force it downward. The part that is going to be, I think, most interesting and going to help us the most here is talking about, next slide, please. The drill string and how that, how we, because that's really what's going to let us actually dig downward. The string itself is basically a massive length of pipe that transmits torque from the rig above ground and all the cutting fluid, because otherwise you can't just, you know, drill dry. You got to go in wet, I guess. You know, you don't want to, it would be too much friction in heat otherwise. So you have to send down a cutting fluid, and this is known as drilling mud, so that you transmit that through the drill string down to the bit to allow you lubrication for

when you're digging into the earth. All right, so it's a big drive shaft and also a kind of like lube dispenser. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. It helps keep the pressure so that the well stays open. Yes. And yeah, so you basically,

you can see in the second diagram here, there's, you dig down a bit with a wider bit, and then you put in a length of pipe around the outside that you've just dug, and then you pour cement in behind that. And then you keep stepping these down further and further in as you dig further and further into the earth. So you have to have a rough idea of like how far you're digging.

You can't just start and be like, I will dig when we hit oil. You need to actually have like a target depth for this kind of thing, which people who know how to drill for oil probably do this already. I did not before I was learning about. This is some real like dirt science. Oh, it's insane. It turns out it's always the most complicated one. Yeah.

That's why they got paid the big bucks. also because it's, you know, destroying the planet. Yeah, it's like crazy evil. So I imagine that it's like to also make you feel less bad about the fact that you're like actively ruining the earth. It's the pay is usually really good. Yeah. Probably keeps you really busy as well because you're like,

oh, I'm destroying the earth, but it's like super complicated. I got to work really hard on it. Yeah, I mean, like, and you know, it's not like, I feel like the rest of us aren't, you know, relying on this. It's like all of global commerce requires it. So, I mean, it's not, it's it. This is still, I still feel like, you know, being the Earth scientist who ends up going into oil and gas is like, it's still a few rungs below,

like Lockheed Martin like weapons developer. But, you know, probably not. I'm troubled by what Lockheed Martin wants from a dirt scientist, you know? What the hell are they building in that? They're finally building the land summer. Yes, yes. From the incredibles? Yeah.

So anyway, as you dig down with the drill string, and you lower in this pipe that's called the casing into the borehole, and then you pump in a cement slurry into the void between the earth that's been dug and the casing that you've just installed, that area, that space, the cement is going to fill is called the annulus. And you do that basically to fix it in place. Cementing it prevents contamination of freshwater that might be also in the ground where you're trying to, you know, dig oil up through. It prevents the upper formations of what you've dug from caving in and like, it's collapsing onto the drill string and making it stop or, you know, digging a giant cavern

on accident that would greatly hamper your ability to get oil and gas out of the ground. It stops you from doing any, like, weird Minecraft stuff gives you a nice, clean, strong hole. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And it provides a strong foundation to throw in the, the drilling mud, because you're going to need more of that and thicker as you dig deeper because as Bras pointed out, like, you're using that mud for a couple of purposes. One is like you're using it as a cutting fluid, but you're also using it as you get further down to keep pressure on the bottom of the hole and keep the oil and gas that you might be hitting from blowing out the top. We'll get to that

in a minute. It will deafen your son and then, you know, set him on a sort of life against you in the Yeah, and then, you know, obviously it's like, it also gives you a smooth bore so you can, like, actually drop in the equipment you used to extract out. Smooth board, technically making an oil well a shotgun. You dare, you beat me to it. It sounds like you beat Ross to it, too. It's more of a flame thrower when you get right now. We'll get to that. Rifling my oil well.

Yeah, so, so as you're digging down, you know, you pump all the drilling mud down through the string, through the bit, and then it comes back up through the borehole that you've just dug. That's the blue inside this diagram that I stole. But I did credit. I don't know if it's actually going to be visible in the thing, but it was a really useful diagram. And I, you know, I was like, thank you to C. Once you put C.C. by S.A. on there, it's like, whatever, man.

Like, thank you. I mean, we appreciate it. You have left your car windows open and the stereo running. Like, thank you C. Strickland. Yeah. It's a good, it's a good, it's a good diagram. You pump out at the bottom, and that blue inside the pipe there is like, that's all of your drilling mud that you're recirculating. Back up, you're pulling off all of the sediment, which is called the cuttings.

And then you reuse the cutting fluid again. And as the pressure builds, that's what keeps down the oil that you're going to strike. And if the pressure of that fluid spikes, you're going to, like, run into some issues. If it spikes too high, that's called a kick. If it spikes way too high, next slide, please. I just, I just ate some. Here, look, see. Don't worry why it looks like a conda packet.

I'm not gonna, okay, sure, fine. What I do is I like to stick my balls in the gushers, and then, you know, it's okay. So once the well has been taking some like zinc and... It's got the Zygstack, yeah. Exactly. How the fuck do you know about that, Leone?

I am too fucking online. Well, aren't we all, but that's some deep knowledge. I'm not... I am making Napoleon at Austerlitz look like a coward. Okay. Sure. Fantastic. Um,

Victoria? Right, yes. I believe the, the exact quote I had put in here, which is going to sound really funny now is Eureka, baby. Um, yeah, anyway,

if, if you get too, too strong of a kick, it overwhelms the drilling mud, and it will spray out the top of the rig. Um, and, you know,

it creates an oil gusher. Um, this is what's technically known as a blowout. Uh, and, you know, This is how you know you struck it rich in like the early 1900s is, oh my God, this oil just spraying all over the landscape and like coating everything around it. It turns out that's bad.

It's a cartoon. Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. It's natural. You don't actually want the oil to do this. Oil is money, you know? Well, it's money.

It's also flammable. And also like it's, you know, the picture here is of the spindle top gusher that started the Texas oil industry. It sprayed like that for nine days. Oh dear. And spilled 16 million gallons of oil. An eyewitness account of hitting a gusher from the era. It goes as follows. Quote, with a roar like a hundred express trains racing across the countryside,

the well blew out, spewing oil in all directions. The Derek simply evaporated. Casings wilted like lettuce out of water as heavy machinery writhed and twisted into grotesque shapes in the blazing inferno. I'll say this, they could write back then. I know, I know. I really need to like bring that kind of thing. I need to do like a car review that's written like that. You can review

my wife's rap four. What year is it? 24. Yeah, it's pretty good. It is what you buy for one unit of S you mean. Look, I'm sorry. I didn't fucking buy it. I am fucking furious at the Toyota Motor Corporation

ever since Akio went out to a racetrack in Japan wearing the Trump Vance shirt. He's dead to me. Toyota's dead to me. All their good cars were made in the 90s. Everything they make now sucks shit. Fuck you, Akio. All right.

I'll tell my wife. That's actually perfect for me. Thankfully, there's no problematic history with Volkswagen. So GTI are golf already? I just assumed that you'd be taking this to Corinne and going, okay, so when can we buy the Viper? Wow. Yeah, obviously.

Reisler owns Jeep. Jeep won the war, or Stalantis or whatever the hell's going on. You're like one of those, like, fuds who's like, I'm not switching to Forty Smith and Weston because 9-mill killed more fascists than anything else put together, right? Where it's like, yeah, therefore, I'm going to, whatever Chrysler slop, you know, I'll buy it.

They're technically, like, they're French now, and like the French make the best cars. Stelontis. Stelanty. Selanty. Have you not, it was actually Borky Automotive Design Bureau that won the war. I drive Zed Dodge Vipar.

I knew Macron would get that way when I saw him in the sunglasses. Yeah. Calm down there, grandpa. Joe Biden already exists. We have Joe Biden at home and it's Emmanuel Macron. Next slide, please.

Oh, this man looks haunted. Do you remember that tweet that's like, see someone cheering gum? No need to hog the one. One, boy. Give this citizen a chew. Foundational humor. I quote that

in my apartment like three times a month. This guy looks like that. That except it's a dip. On these no smokeless tobacco on this airplane. Yeah, we'll find out American Airlines. I'm getting to my destination or I'm pulling this slide. One of two options. You'll have to spit this copper. We're going to have some problems.

Anyway, this is James Abercrown. Ross, what are you doing over there? What am I doing? I realized I screwed this up. There should be... Oh, the other thing behind here. Yeah, hold on. How do I...

Oh, thank you. Send to... There we go. Yeah, thank you, yeah. Amazing. Sorry, a fire truck is driving down my street. What kind of fire truck? I really love an American fire truck.

They're so, like, kid-coded. They're like, huge and red. They're like twice as large as they need to be. and they're part of why we can't get fucking pedestrian safe streets in Seattle is because the fire every time they're like hey what if we installed like a separated curb so that we don't like have a death toll of bicyclists that resemble that of like the Battle of the Psalm every year I need I need my big red truck with a massive American flag hanging off the back I and a firefighter is a kind of Labrador to me right they're a kind of stupid dog like there can be like oh my God a guy stubbed his toe and you would think okay, they'll bring out like the light duty ambulance. No, fucking full ladder response every single time. That would heal me instantly. Like I, okay.

I do like seeing them, but also like at the same time, it's, I recognize that it's a, you know, it's kind of like cars, you know, it's like this is probably a huge societal ill, but I saw like an Eagle four by four sedan for sale today with a swapped in board out. I said that to Jay. Yeah, yeah, with the straight six out of a Jeep chair. and I was like, damn, that's bitching. It just, the thing is, if you bought, like, European fire engines, it would look wrong.

They would do the same job so much better. Like, you could have your nice pedestrian, nice streets and everything, but it would not be right, you know? Like, you're supposed to have the fucking Pierce Eagleburger fucking thing. Like, you need it. That's part of what makes you the country that you are. I know. And I'm, again, I'm urging any Chinese listeners, please convince them to get cool about

trans women, I will move and I'll learn Mandarin. And you can, I don't know, I don't know what you even need me for. I can't get a job here. But like, I gotta imagine there's some sort of like, you know, sick new EVs. Sick new EVs? Yeah, that's sick. Honestly. Please. Anyway, uh, James Abercrombie is the guy. He's the Havercromby is the guy. He, um, he, actually, I couldn't, he seemed like a nice guy. I didn't see anything horrifying about him. He doesn't look it. He looks horrified. He looks like comes from a fucking Twilight Zone episode. He did like a ton of philanthropy and he invented. He got together with his friend Harry Cameron and the two of them invented and built

a threaded RAM device. You can see the patent drawing right there. It's called the Cameron Ram type blowout preventer. And basically what it does is it clamps down on either side of the drill string. Sort of. It depends on the variation. I'll get into that. And like just shuts down.

all the fluid coming out. So it's a very simple design. Like the original one is just a threaded mechanism. You turn. And it basically just provides a seal so that you don't have blowouts that wreck all of your equipment. You get a kick, you close this,

and then ideally, you know, you won't have just like uncontrolled oil pouring from the earth. So the cutaway diagram here is the various types of, of like rams that are in use today. And most of these are like very similar, like to the original design. They're hydro like a lot of them are hydraulic. They started changing to that in the 40s. But fundamentally, the design has always been kind of the same because the interest is that it just works.

Because this is your, this is what prevents, you know, the Derek from exploding. So you want something that is straightforward and going to work every time. So a cutaway here is the basic blind ram, which you pull out the drill and the piping and you just slam it shut. and that is the most basic kind so you can just shut off all flow. B, which has the circle cut out in the center there, is the pipe ram,

which allows you to keep the pipe in, but you can shut down the space between the bore and the pipe. So this is going to go in, like that's in a way, its own little annulus that it closes that area down. So you can keep everything in

if you're still actively drilling, but it prevents backflow. Right. And then C is your, oh, fuck. something has gone wrong. That is your that is your sheer ram

which cuts off, cuts through the pipe, cuts through the drill string and it just closes it as fast as possible because otherwise, you know, oil is going to spill everywhere.

That is your last resort. Yeah, because you were just like trapping a bunch of your equipment just like in the thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's all stuck down hole forever now.

Yeah. I have created a kind of expensive bomb. Yes. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass And you don't want to Technically speaking like The one that's pictured As a shear ram which cuts through the pipe

There's the blind shear ram Which just like I believe cut through slightly more Difficult to get exact cutaway diagrams Of all this stuff Somebody can yell at me But that's your basic concept right It's like the one that you use to cut through everything Is like your day is going really bad

You're having a fucking January 2026 day on the rig Yeah So next slide please In the interest of making this episode not nine hours long, which I have already failed at. Fucking fan! Dialogs die. I'm going to simply state that sometimes oil is underwater

and you need a big floating oil rig to dig down from. That's what this is. This is the deep water horizon. It is a semi-submersible floating drilling platform. There's a bunch of different kinds and they all look weird as hell. This kind, it's got like, like, big kind of mass like piers, like a big hole under the water line that you can't see. The ones that really fuck me up are the tension leg ones where like you see them being, you can see them off Scotland being transported. And it's like, they're too high in the water and it's like, oh, it's got legs, fucking hell.

Like those go all the way down. Very, very frightening. I'm calling the oil rig. Yeah. Yeah. I got some gams. Gams on you. Ha-ha.

Yeah. So mostly, you position this over where you want to like drill for oil and then you drill for oil. Like there's a bunch more to it. But like, again, the main that, the fact that this was a floating drilling platform is not really what actually caused the problem. It was just drilling for the oil. That's the main issue here. The fact that it floated just meant. that it could go wrong much worse.

So this one specifically, the Deepwater Horizon, had a maximum drill depth of 30,000 feet with a maximum operating depth of 8,000 feet of water, which is terrifying to consider. It was built by Hyundai, and it was owned and operated... Hey, I want a semi-submersible drilling rig and a mid-sized family sedan. Oh, shit, you're not going to believe this.

I guess we're making semi-submersible drill rigs now. I also need an electric multiple unit for my commuter rail network. That's not built very well. Then we'll shut the factory down. Then we'll complain to everybody else that it's somehow not our fault, even though we ruined everything. There's no word if Hyundai used child laborers to build this rig like they do EVs in Alabama. But that is why I'm no longer an automotive journalist. Anyway, this rig was owned and operated by Trent.

And I have principal. It's not so much. principles is just like, I'm just, you know. I can't swallow that. Yeah, I get you. Yeah. Hey, I really want to buy a K-1 main battle tank. Again, the

official vehicle of this podcast, there are two, is the K-1 main battle tank. Yeah, we all played war game, Red Dragon, right? And we all played the campaign because we didn't have any friends, so we didn't want to play the multiplayer and get called slurs. And so we played the really repetitive, defensive, like

South Korean one, because it was the easiest one and we got scared trying to play anything else and we just sat all of our K-1 tanks, nice and nice and sort of quiet in the forest, sniping at incoming North Korean tanks. And it was lovely. Gen 1-Wiper. Jan 1-Viper, side-dump exhaust, 8-liter v10. You know, you know what my dream purchases is not the Viper. Uh, it's, well, I guess, I guess it's been cool being friends with you and I'll see you later.

I mean, listen, I would, I would, I would love a viper, but here's my money, no object thing right now. Yeah, yeah. I saw, I saw, uh, like a Japanese guy who makes, uh, like hand makes shoes. Uh, I saw the process, like start to finish hand stitches, everything. Um, like, 500,000 yen, which I understand is a lot of money. Um, not money I would ever spend on a shoe, but they're beautiful. And, and so, you'd like real cool doing it, though. I look like a cool wearing them

but you know I think my wife would beat me to death with a hammer and then my bank would beat me to death with a hammer so as it is I just have to think about it forever I'm gonna get Roz a Nixie 2 watch I've decided for his birthday Ooh okay that's gonna be a big surprise now Yeah yeah yeah

I bought myself Alright so he doesn't know the plan to get him The plans to get him the K1 tank right Right It which is contained the Nixie 2 watch We tried to do it the other way around, but we haven't mastered that yet. Guys, I don't know how to drive this. It's sort of like, you know, if you owe the bank a million dollars, it's the bank's problem.

If you don't know how to drive a tank, it's everyone around. That's the damn truth. I bought myself corcorans recently. That was my fancy shoe purchase because I wanted to have big, stompy, leather fetishist boots. Women seem to like them. Subscribe to the Patreon so that we can keep Victoria in boots.

I mean, it was like... And to replace that person who was super transphobic and gross. Oh, yeah. Oh, was there? Nope. They're banned. Okay.

I sent them... I sent them from my personal Patreon account an incredibly cruel message and then banned them from the podcast account. Thanks. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah.

No. Leave my friends alone or you will be one hour, 24 minutes, 20 seconds in, shot, and then knelt over a ditch, and then shot again. Please continue. Okay, anyway, so this was owned and operated by TransOcean on behalf of British. I hope it does. What kind of hormones do you need for that? Just straight oil.

Just inject oil. No, I've been injecting this oil weekly, and I feel fucking terrible. Ross, it's called cis oil. Can you be respectful, please? 0.24 milliliters is straight crude into the thigh, baby. Texas Sweet ain't got nothing on me. Let's do this. That's how you transition to be in Texan.

I'm going to Austin in a few weeks, and I'm just like, all right, what will you, let me shoot of a shot? Imagine you get like one of those little vials they give us our Ian, but it's just a barrel. little glass barrel Oh that would fuck Yeah that would be awesome Yeah I do my old sublingually Anyway BP was leasing this

This is crucial because it means that they cost them money When they are digging holes With this BP is actively spending money to dig holes And as you may have remembered from the last episode about BP Which was yes the last episode I was on I've been on an anti-BP kick lately I don't know why they don't like spending money.

Yeah, I don't get that. So in 2010, this oil rig, this semi-submercible semi-submersible floating drilling platform, I can't call it an oil rig, was 48 miles off the coast of Louisiana, researching what was known as the Macondo prospect, which was an oil vein,

with a specific lease they had from the U.S. federal government, it was roughly 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The goal was to dig the borehole, tap the oil, and then you cement over the hole you've dug for another rig to come in later and actually extract from. So this is just your exploration rig. It's a little like pathfinder. Yeah. Yeah.

You're going to have somebody else come later and actually like bottle this and, you know, sell it. You're just trying to dig the hole. Just to make sure that we have every base covered. Halliburton was also here. They were doing the concrete work. They made good luggage. Halliburton? Zero Halliburton makes cases.

I've always kind of wanted one of the Attasha cases. I tried to convince my wife to let me buy one today. It's like, what the hell use would you have for an attache case? And then you have to go to the woman that you love and you go, What if I have to do some spy stuff? I got that same lecture. That's good point. Yeah, so as it turns out, she's like, I don't get nice luggage because you're just going to destroy it anyway, Liam, which is like, A, true, B, shut up.

My main luggage is like a palican case that has is covered in WTIP stickers has been like bounced off of every airport tarmac in the world. I love it to pieces. Oh Jesus Christ, I just realized I'm the wife. My wife is someone who comes to me and is like, hey, babe, check this out. I'm like, we don't need that, love. You love it. What if?

What if? What if? You know how many times I have to go to fucking, fucking diso? My feet had to be wet all. My feet had to be wet all winter for me to convince myself that I did actually need to get a new pair of boots. Okay, that seems like someone else's problem. Just fucking love to buy the Tash case. You know what wouldn't solve that problem but would make you feel better is a zero halibor Natasha case.

The fact that this Patriot makes money is a goddamn. Absolute fucking miracle. What you're enabling. Yeah, you're enabling me to pay my rent. Thank you. As coveting the thing, how many tabs do I have open of shit that I want and will never be able to afford right now? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. All right, well, next slide, please.

ADHD is a curse. I don't care. Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. People are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks. a month, and we give you an extra episode once a month. Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but, you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes, so you can learn about exciting

topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raised through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one. Anyway, that's something to consider if you have to be. have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com forward slash W-T-Y-P-P-Pod. Do it if you want.

Or don't. It's your decision, and we respect that. Back to the show. It's a BP episode, so I'm going to get to the part where everyone knew this was coming. Say the line.

Burt. And then you... Where's your cat? Oh, I don't know. Oh, he's sleeping on the table behind me. Oh, you can't wake him up. It's never... You kidding me.

PM, do you know where your cat is? He's just like this. Yeah, he's passed the fuck out. My parents have a cat named Margo, who looks like a cow. She's very cute. She has discovered, I've not done yet. She has discovered. Margot has discovered that if she lays like, like, I can't even put up, like that.

She gets belly rubs, so she'll tolerate belly rubs for exactly 15 to 20 seconds. And then, and then you, you, just get fucking annihilated. She just starts biting you. So she's like, rub my belly. I'm so sweet and innocent. Fuck that cat. I love that cat.

She's so, she's so real. Please continue. I'm sorry for interrupting you or whatever. Oh, why would you? No, I'm, I'm fairly certain I have to defer to you. Well, I don't know. It depends on what it depends on the order of who's my, it depends on who's the order of who's boss here.

Yeah. I, I think you, I think you're my direct report or I'm yours. I believe that we all have to file into Corinne. So if you knew it was going to happen. So weeks before the events of this episode, it was a confidential survey commissioned by TransOcean that found that workers were concerned about the safety practices on board the vessel and they were pretty certain they were going to get actual reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems. The survey raised concerns,

quote, about poor equipment reliability, which they believed was a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over maintenance. End quote. The survey found that, quote, many workers entered fake data to try and circumvent the system. As a result, the company's perception of safety on the rig was distorted. Amazing. Just like, big thumbs up. Yeah, everything's fine. That's what I do.

That's what I do on our safety report. Yeah, but ours, we don't work with like petroleum much. No. Drake's well. emails showed that as early as the second week of March in 2010 and you know disaster not take place till April BP was enlisting help from a Houston based firm that advised energy companies and how to respond to oil spills just because they kept having close calls Jesus Christ come on really yeah by April you know this this well digging this well is

way overdue it is costing BP millions of dollars because the rig is leased from TransOcean and it's not owned. So every day they're out there, I couldn't find an exact number, but it's estimated between $500,000 to a million dollars to BP in costs or extra leasing fees, basically. So imagine going over mileage on like, you know, your three-year-old crossover, but instead it's a million dollars every time you put an extra mile on it. By April 9th, the well drilling itself was complete, which left the decision for how the last bit of the well should be lined.

Now, if you remember, there was that slide, a couple slides ago about how you put in the casing and then you throw in the cement. That was oversimplified. There are a lot of ways you can do this, especially when you are at 18,000 feet, you know, below the earth. The physics gets a bit weird and, you know, you kind of want a lot of redundancy. There were two options for... Not to mention the 5,000 feet of water. Yeah, yeah. There were two options.

Just like, again, you are sitting on top of a gigantic bomb, but you have mentioned. made and every day you put some more dynamite in the bomb. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Learning about what, what like methane does when it goes from 18,000 feet below the seabed to sea level through a pipe was crazy. It doesn't like doing that.

The fluid dynamics of making stuff do things it really would rather not. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So by April 9th, they finished drilling the well. so they'd actually, you know, dug all the way down, but they got to case the hole that they've dug, basically,

so that they can get equipment in and out and actually, you know, extract oil. So there's two options. Just put in a liner and a second tube called a tieback that helps prevent annular flow, you know, around the outside of the pipe in case of a kick. Or just do a single liner and rely on the cement job to hold. Everybody that I could see, like, there were like a lot of emails for this. I mean, there are like six different post-incident reports.

So the White House commissioned one, like Obama was doing speeches about it. Like, I don't know if for those of you who are younger, this is horrifying to conceive of because this happened in 2010. But like, it was a really big deal. This is back when environmentalism was a real thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Obama was president.

So it was kind of like, you know, the United States was perceived as a relatively stable place. Dumbass! Yeah. You know, and I think everybody was, you know, we were all kind of reeling from the sort of of institutional complacency about ruining a bunch of people's lives that we saw in 2008 during the global financial crisis. So like, there was a lot of, huh? How old are you?

Me? Yes. I am 30. Okay. So I was 15 when this happened. Okay. And it is one of, like, I started reading the local newspaper of the Cleveland Plain Dealer when I was 12 because I'm on this podcast, like, obviously.

I was not going to be like a popular healthy child as a kid. kid. But I do remember this... Wow, okay. I mean, yeah, you're not wrong. I'm sorry. Nova, come on. We've bitched about our moms way too much for me to have any illusions. My mom just called me in the middle of recording

and she was like, well, you told me to call you and I was like, yeah, I know, but I forgot. Well, you might have had a healthy childhood. I don't know. Yeah, it wasn't that bad. Yeah, it's just the trans hosts. If you want to be transgender and I'm, well, there's your problem. Your mom has to really fuck you up bad. Is that fair? Is that true?

My mom is a saint. Literally, she's in my phone at St. Anne. And if you're mean to my mother, I will gut you like a carp. But I'm sorry about your childhood, Gloria. And I'm sorry about Cleveland. That's fair. I thought that I was going to get away without getting roasted for that, but that's fair. honestly.

Ross and I used to live with a woman from Cleveland and I always pitied her immensely. Yeah, Cleveland during the great financial crash was not super happening. Yeah. I briefed aggression because we're already an hour, 35 minutes, 48 seconds. I went to Thanksgiving with said aforementioned person Ross and I used to live with. And she ran a turkey trot, which is a thing that should be illegal. A turkey trot.

You run a 5K the morning of Thanksgiving. Don't ask me why I don't run. I'm built for power. Insane. Ridiculous. Just like the Dodge Viper. Shut up. Running in general should be avoided.

That's why God invented the bicycle. That's right. More of a segue if you prefer. And I was with her mom because we did the 1K fun walk. It was not fun, but we did it. And she was looking for her daughter. And I was like, oh, there she is. And there her daughter was, the woman in question that we used to live with, looking about as miserable as a human being has ever looked.

She goes, how did you pick her out? I was like, you know how many times I've seen that face directed at me? All right. Now that I go back into my hobble. Anyway, yeah, I was 15 when this happened. So there were a lot of post-incident reports. There was a lot of research. So basically, this is, you know, every single email that BP,

had sent for the past five years about this project was uncovered and everybody got to go through old. Back when they were still an EPA. Yeah. There was an EPA. Well, they, yeah. Just because the perception was the U.S. was better, I don't, it's pretty, it was pretty poorly managed.

But we'll get to that. It's, we're, it's going to, you're, again, you have strapped the fuck in for a four-hour podcast episode and you better be goddamn ready for us to keep going. My wife is going to come downstairs with her face just like this. like, yes, sweetie, this is what pays the bills. So, we go back to, to, you know, the email chain of like, how do we do this? Do we do the tieback method that everybody thinks we should do? Or do we just, you know, cement it and pray?

Because, you know, you're 18,000 feet below sea level. And, of course, every single qualified person was like, we should do the tieback just to be safe. and by safe I mean like even somewhat reasonably confident this will work. However, not running the quote from an email from some asshole. I had it written down and now I lost it, but somebody at BP who didn't go to prison for this. Fuckface Jones. Not running the tieback saves a good deal of time and money.

Oh, boy. So on April 15th, BP estimated that using a liner instead of a single string of casing would add $7 to $10 million in the completion cost. And again, a lot of that is because they were trying to get this done as fast as fucking possible because every single minute they are on the Deepwater Horizon is costing them money because they are leasing it. So six days before the events of this episode, Brian Morel, a BP drilling engineer, emails a colleague, quote, this has been a nightmare well, which has everyone all over the place, end quote. Always a good thing to have read into the congressional record.

Yes. Oh, yeah. April 15th, Morrell infirms Haliburton executive, Jesse Gagliano, that this. They are planning to use six centralizers. So basically, when you're casing the last bit of this bore, you want to keep the casing itself centered in the cement, your setting, best as I can tell. And this is they're cementing quite a bit of it at once. And they have simulation software to see how many of these they should use, because every single

one you use is more equipment and more money and more time to set up. And so you want to go to as few as possible. So the Halliburton executive says, hey, you should use 21 because any less than that we're simulating, it's not going to actually set right because the concrete is like 18,000 feet below the seabed. Yeah, but what if we did it cheaper? Morel says in an email and a reply to... I don't like that.

Victoria had that response ready to go. I will say that. Yeah. It's too late to get any more product on the rig. Our only option is to rearrange placement of these brackets six centralizers, end quote. So fuck you, we're going to use six. Like, who cares? We'll make it work.

Yeah, less than a third of the thing that you should be using. But it's fine, though, because it just will be. Gagliano from Halliburton, you know, then recommends like, okay, well, at least circulate the drilling mud, you know, the dense lubricant slash, you know, pressure segment that you've got at the bottom of this borehole to keep the oil from rupturing out. Like, hey, circulate it from the bottom of the well all the way up. at least once to get rid of all the gas pockets, because then it will help, like, the cement set.

And BP doesn't do that. They're just like, yeah, we'll cycle a little bit. And then they just kind of like, nah, fuck it. It's fine. Listen, ADHD can strike at any time. I'm five tabs deep into eBay for, like, used to zero haliburton attachu cases. Take me up while you're there. Yeah.

Thanks, bud. And, of course, this well has been so unstable to dig, and the pressure inside it, has been so inconsistent that they are using a harder to control nitrogenated foam cement to set the annulus of this casing, which is harder to control and much, much more challenging to get the set right. So you probably would think to yourself like, hey, we should probably be really certain this cement worked, right? It's like, you know the Swiss cheese failure model? It's like watching someone with a hand drill, go to like a block of EDAM, you know, and be like, it didn't have holes

until you drew all of them yourself. I didn't get to use the image in this diagram because all the PowerPoints I could find were too low resolution, but they were eight fucking slices of cheese in their post-incident report for this. It is so many layers as a failure. It's incredible.

Next slide, please. Imagining this nitrogenated foam cement and it's just an ordinary cement, but they use Guinness as the... Every time you go to a nice restaurant, Now they're like, oh, and this is served on our nitrogen foam cement. I'm like, huh? We want plates.

So 7 a.m. April 20th, 2010. Oh. BP cancels the cement bond log test, because it would have taken 9 to 12 hours and would have cost them a little over $100,000, about $12,000. Time is money, you know, in a very little bit. By canceling that test, they saved a bit over $100,000. So congratulations. That was, you know, good investment.

We will find out later how well that paid off for them. But they were like, now, we're not going to do the cement bond. And this may not have caught the cement issues, but it would have just been another level. Cancelling this, you know, roughly 12 hours before you cause the greatest psychological disaster in human history is what would I call a bad look? So they do an acoustic check, which I don't know how that works. I'm not going to lie to you. Somebody can tell me in the comments. It's a lot like a regular check,

but it has more of a kind of slowed down, more intimate vibe. You feel a bit kind of closer to the guy doing the check, and it's got a kind of richer, warmer tone. Yeah, this next, well, we're digging in the shoegaze. I would imagine they're just doing some kind of,

something with like, you know, either ultrasound or even just regular sound listening for the echo, how faint it is. They're going to be able to determine some amount of information from whatever's going on, with the cement way down.

This is just bullshit regular sound. We're using all three kinds of sound, regular ultra and Bakersfield. They do a positive pressure test where they pressurize the inside of the well to make sure that the bore, like the casing itself is good. They're like, yeah, it's fine, it's good. At this time, I couldn't get exact hours

probably sometime around noon. A bunch of BP officials gather on the rig to celebrate seven years without an injury on the deep water horizon. Right. Join us for a hubris party. So there is one, before they can pull all the drill. So at this point, the well is dug. They've got their casing in place. They've got the cement in the annulus.

They have capped the bottom of the well so they can move this rig off. to do one more test, which is a negative pressure test. So there's a lot of ways in which this failed, and it requires a very thorough understanding of how this test works. So it is outside the purview of this podcast. But allow me to state that it failed really obviously on like several levels. And several people seemed to notice this, but for some reason, it just never went up the chain a command. Nobody ever actually like raised the concern high enough that they stopped what they were doing and we're like, oh God, the cement at the base of this that is keeping all of the oil from exploding outward and destroying the ocean didn't work. There's oil coming up. There's two,

and the negative pressure. We can't get no pressure in here. That means still pressure. It's because there's, there's oil coming in from both the sides of the well and also like from the from the plug get the base. But again, oops. Whoops. Yeah, so let's just keep going. So what you do at this point, if you're going to keep going, is you replace the drilling mud that's inside that last segment of the well you've dug with a mixture of seawater. And you know, you pull out all the mud, you strain out all the tailings or whatever you, I don't know if they keep it for reuse later. Some of it they kind of pour overboard. But it's just really the ocean is the kind of solution to all of your problems on one of these rigs, it's just like, well, we need

something to put in this, how about sea water? Well, we need something to put this in, how about sea water? Yes. The solution to pollution is dilution. I think that's, I'm sure that's what they meant, and just dump it into open ocean. Certainly. But as you'll remember, the drilling mud,

the drilling mud is what's keeping the pressure on the base of this. So when you remove the drilling mud, and you start replacing it with much like lighter seawater, the oil is going to get a chance to press upward. So you will see this graph. And this graph is showing when the oil and gas starts entering the well bore

and inexorably marching upward toward the deepwater horizon. Because the concrete has failed, the oil is rushing up the pipe through the riser, you know, up 18,000 feet and then another 5K to the surface of the ocean where it will, you know, eventually start popping out the top of the deep water horizon. There are plenty of indicators, as early as like, 9 p.m. there are plenty of indications of a very severe kick and again everybody just misses it. Um, like I it seems to be human error. Uh, people were overworked to death on this thing because they were trying to get this thing done as fast as possible. Um, but they just never seemed to be like,

oh, we should, there's a kick. We should shut this off. Um, probably because they were like, oh, we're done. Let's get the hell out of here. Um, so from the bottom of the, from where the, the hole actually begins at 18,560-ish feet below. the surface of the ocean to sea level, methane can expand by about a hundred times. So you start getting some in at the bottom of this, and by the time it's like at the riser, it is massive and extremely fast. People aboard the Deepwater Horizon would later compare it to a freight train. It's sort of less like a bomb and more like a rocket at this point.

Yes. Yes. At 9.41 p.m. on April 20th, 2010, a geyser of seawater erupts, 230 feet high from the top of the rig. This is the pressure pushing all of the water out. And they're like, oh, shit, that's a problem. So they close the annular preventer, but it is too late because there's already oil and gas inside the riser. And also, crucially, the annular preventer does not work.

So this is the, there's basically an inflatable donut that goes around the outside of the pipe itself that is meant to keep anything that is like flowing up the annulus. it would be caused by like a concrete failure from rising upward and it just didn't work and again crucially even if it had worked they already have like methane inside the riser so that's already coming up it's too late

it keeps going they keep having a geyser of shit flow out at the top of the rig and they're like all right let's close the pipe rim and that closes and seals but it's too late because the seawater geyser is now turning to drilling mud and then all of the methane that was you know 23 3000 feet below them has finally made its way up.

And instead of pouring them this mix overboard, which is like the emergency, get this the fuck out of here immediately, they have it routed to a gas and mud separator, which is completely overwhelmed immediately and starts spewing oil directly onto the floor of the rig and all the methane gases like at the level of the machinery. And, yeah, there's a bunch of running diesel engines.

As you may remember from the last episode, British Petroleum and running diesel engines. Oh, no. There are bad things that happen when you give these legends combustible air. It just sucks in whatever it is around it. Next slide, please. Oh, God. Yep.

Mm-hmm. That's what happens. At 9.56 p.m. on April 20th, 2010, the methane ignites, and the Deepwater Horizon is engulfed in a series of explosions. It's kind of unclear what exactly happened because it all went real well. That's bad, like, in itself that you're like, yeah, we can't pick back through an exact sequence of events here because this is like just fused in on itself it's like yeah it's like yeah there's a bunch of methane everywhere aboard the rig is something all it needs is one spark right

and the whole thing goes up and then everything explodes because again the deck of it is coated in oil and shit from the oil gas separator getting overwhelmed and you know there's so much there's there's still stuff coming out of the riser um so the explosion kills 11 workers and injures 17 people the rig loses all power from the explosion. At this point, the Deepwater Horizon would be a bad disaster, right? Like 11 people are dead. It is a many hundreds of million dollar valued, extremely high technology drilling rig. It would be still worthy of an episode, probably.

Yeah, but that's like, what, like a tenth of the number of people who died on like Piper Alpha. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And at this point, it should all be roughly over. Well, actually, yeah, it should be all roughly over because, you know, the loss of power should trigger the final emergency break. This whole disaster is averted. Just as an aside, I have this in here and I probably could have worked it in better. But just to like clarify how fucking bad it sucks to work on this oil rig, seven of the 11 dead workers had pulled 24-hour shifts the week they were killed.

fucking Jesus. I'm never going to complain about a four-hour podcast again. I mean, I am. I'm lying. I absolutely am. Like, still. Jesus, I don't want to be a rough neck. Yeah, no.

And it's just, it was just like, you know, and everybody aboard is kind of like this shit is clearly not going well. And people are cutting corners every possible opportunity. And, you know, and a lot of it also is like, you kind of get why people miss so many warning signs in these disasters.

Because they are overworked to death. And they cannot comprehend the information. the information that is in front of them. Now, next slide, please. All right. So this is why I had to talk about Abercrombie and Fitch earlier was at the base of the seafloor is this massive mechanism. And this is a series of blowout preventers connected in a string, essentially.

Up top, you have your two annular preventors, one of which they had inflated before the explosion and had failed completely. and that's like, you know, your inflatable donut that keeps oil coming up the annulus. And then you've, and then beneath that, in the lower section of this, you have five separate blowout preventer rams of different intensity. One of these is converted to a test ram. There's still five in there. Basically, it's like, on a scale of one to five, how badly are you screwed?

Yes, yes. It's like, you know, so the pipe ram is when you're like, oh, shit, okay, we got to, we should close this down. And that, you know, worked temporarily, but there was already so much methane and gas inside that, it may have worked temporarily. I don't actually know if that one worked temporarily. It doesn't matter. It went worse later. But at this point, all of this segment had been bypassed

to cause the initial explosion because the methane and gas was already in the riser. And the riser is the segment of pipe connect between the floating platform and this. And so by the time it's in the riser, there's nothing else you can really do about it. There's no more blowout preventers or whatever. You're supposed to have caught this down here. Like this is when you would have had a chance to stop the kick, because you would have engaged something down here, you know, at 9 o'clock when you notice the kick, versus, you know, when there's seawater coming out of the top of the Deepwater Horizon,

because then you're, you're fucked. So this one failed in a funny way, but it's still kind of worked. I mean, is this funny at this point? I don't know. I think so. The podcasting Delirium is setting in. It's hard to tell. It's humorous.

They're going to do some funny stuff to this thing coming up. Don't worry. Yeah, that's true. All right. So when the Deepwater Horizon is rocked by a series of explosions and, loses all power and communications to this device at the sea floor 5,000 feet below it. This is supposed to have a like dead man switch that chokes off the oil supply immediately with the blind shear ram, which cuts through everything.

The big like guy with an axe. Yes, yes. This is the oh fuck, everything is fucked. And so there are multiple redundancies inside this mechanism. There's a, they had a blue box and a yellow box. And these are their transponder units, essentially. that contains solenoids that would engage the blind shear ram. Each of those boxes contain a 27-volt battery and two nine-volt batteries.

One of the battery, one of the 27-volt batteries is completely dead, so that one was just not working at all. I think it was the blue box. And then the yellow box was wired so incorrectly that the solenoid was never actually going to physically be able to trigger, to fire the... Been at work as an oil rig electrician for three straight days. I'm wiring shit to shit.

I don't even know what it is. I'm soldering. I'm trying to solder stuff to the ocean. Yeah. And luckily, however, one of the 9-volt batteries has gone dead. And so the mechanism still works because it's not aware the 9-volt battery has gone dead. And so the solenoid can still magically function.

The CSB video does a really good job explaining it. It's not materially that important to how this disaster happened. It's just kind of like, wow, they really work. not. This was the... So bad to be like, you fucked up so bad at work that it's not even consequential because it looped

back around to being fine. Yeah, well, and also like, it was kind of one of those things, this was like the made on a Friday fiat of blowout preventers, which you know, you generally don't want, but anyway, it doesn't matter, because it's still

somehow, by the grace of God, manages to get the blind shear ram to close. The pipe is severed. The Dead Man Switch worked. There is perhaps still proof of a loving God. No. No. Actually, it isn't. And this is why it was ultimately like immaterial. Like yes, the blind shoe ram did actually work in that it fired. However, the pipe inside this mechanism, because there is a pipe all the way up through the center of this that all of these Rams operate upon. And that pipe has been under such immense pressures with the like various pipe rams firing and like the amount of like methane

gas that's been in here that it has caused the the pipe itself to buckle um and it has bent so that it is no longer really well in the path of the blind shear ram um the blind shear rams are generally designed to cut through like a weaker section of pipe and it needs to be like aligned correctly um and that's not what happens here the pipe bends the blind shear ram like misses and so not now the blowout preventer is, doesn't work at all. So now the oil is like spraying into, well, the oil is spraying into the riser at this point in time. And of course there's like, you know, Deepwater Horizon up above is like on fire. So next slide, please.

A fire that is going to keep going more or less indefinitely because it is being constantly fed with fuel. Yeah. Yeah. On April 22nd, 2010, the, the Deepwater Horizon sinks after burning for two straight days. It does appear that they didn't coordinate the firefighting response to this super well. Again, it probably wouldn't have mattered a ton. But, you know, it sinks. And you will remember, so at this point, the Coast Guard is like, we don't think there's an oil spill.

We think everything's okay. And that is because it is still going up the riser. However, when this sinks, it shatters, it breaks the riser. And this is when it's like, okay, we have an oil leak. That's, it's probably fine, though, right? Like, it's probably, it's not going to be a big. big deal. BP immediately sends like a deep sea submersible vehicle under the ocean to try to close the blowup preventer and this of course fails because the blowup preventer is closed. It, you know,

it functioned as best it could, which is not well at all, but it's not a matter of the fact the dead man switched and get activated. And BP is like, it's probably like 5,000 barrels a day. Don't don't worry about it. It's it's no big deal. Meanwhile internally they're sending emails. They're like, oh my God, we're leaking 100,000 barrels a day in the ocean. Um, the the, the, the, the, the, the, the true number is closer to about 60,000 barrels a day, which is, I believe, roughly to four full Olympic swimming pools per day. 40,000 barrels of oil between Fred. Yeah, no, 60,000 barrels of oil.

Oh, I was saying the difference, 60 to 40. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, a little rounding error here in there, never heard anybody. So, this leads us to the next phase of the Deepwater Horizon fiasco, which is, you know, it's bad enough that this exploded through extremely ridiculously obvious to see corner cutting and has killed almost a dozen people. But now there are four Olympic swimming pools worth of oil being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico every single day at a depth of 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

Oh my God. Which is a little difficult to get to. Yeah. How do you plug this damn thing? Yes, this is, I will now hand the keys of the pot. podcast over to Roz. Please take this Dodge Viper of a episode and slam it directly into a wall at terminal velocity. So, okay, here's two vessels that are going to be important here in front is the Discover

Horizon. This is a drill ship, right? Back here is the Q4,000. This is a drill maintenance, or it's a well-maintenance, do-hicky thing. Mabai. It looks like a tiny oil platform. I work on the doohickey. I work on the thingamabob, yeah. There's a lot in this industry, there's a lot of thingmabobs.

I'm getting myself a beer. Hell yeah. So once they figure out, right, the blowout preventer is fucked. Everyone knew fixing this is going to be a long process, right? The correct permanent method to sealing this well is to drill a relief well, right? with the whole other drilling rig. So you're going to drill several thousand feet down and then several hundred feet sideways.

Hopefully you'll hit the well. So you're trying to tap into it to relieve the, okay. Yes. Sure, man. Yeah, that sounds dumbest shit. Let's do it. Now you've relieved pressure off the original well so it's easier to seal the top.

And since you have control over the relief well, you can pump high pressure mud and then cement down there. to seal that well from the bottom, right? This is, this is bomb surgery. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're trying to hit,

give me the suit. You're trying to hit a dry spaghetti with a wet spaghetti, right? And also the dry spaghetti is on fire. Yes. So this process actually starts almost immediately. There's drill rigs in place by May 2nd to try and get these relief wells done. They do two of them at once in case one of them misses, right? Are they more or less going in blind here?

So I don't know exactly how this stuff works. I think there's like highly accurate accelerometers that sort of let you know where the end of the drill string is. I am not an expert in this. No, that's fine. No worries. So they need, this is going to be a months long high precision process. You can't really rush it. At this point, it will look really bad if they rushed it anyway.

Right. So you need some stop gaps in the interim, because not only are you damaging the environment this whole time, you know, you're losing product, right? And like a lot of things in oil extraction, services like these, you know, controlling how to control wells, they're not in the purview of the oil companies themselves. They're provided by smaller specialized firms. So the BP and TransOcean and Halliburton, they call in the professional. right? Joe Bowden's wild, well-control, spring text, y'ah! I was about to say before you went on to this light, this is the ultimate level chud job, right? Like, is to be the guy, the one guy who can do the thing, and the thing is tough, it's manly, and you've got to go to some suit in an air-conditioned office and spit on his floor and be like,

you're going to pay me $58 billion that I'm going to direct immediately to the Trump campaign. Entirely, entirely paid in a mixture of Copenhagen, Wintergreen, and gold bullion. Guy speaking with an accent you haven't heard before saying he is going to build a house out of vipers. He makes he makes, he makes foghorn leghorn sound like JFK. Jesus Christ I'm just gonna say I people who follow me on blues

cover would probably see that I occasionally put together like cowgirl fits and stuff because I you know lived in Idaho for long enough for it to do actual like psychological damage to me I would literally kill somebody with my bare hands for that belt buckle me too it was insane

holy damn So hard. This is apparently part of a series. They have a lot of them. I have some more later on. Don't worry. Yeah. Now I'm going to need my wife to step in and be like, babe, babe.

This is my Halliburton briefcase. This is by Joe Boutens. Why, well control. Oh, Jesus. They do have a series. Yeah, you get to be like 30 bucks. This one looks like it was engraved onto the side of Hoover Dam. 50 bucks.

You can buy... Oh, fuck, side my ass up. You can buy a polo shirt and it's only an XL, which sounds about right. There's a lot of companies that do this sort of thing. They are, in fact, all like that because it takes a certain kind of person to see a 200-foot column of flame

coming from an oil well and say, yep, I can fix that. Kind of, like a prince of chuds. Yeah. So they have an idea of how to, this is not a permanent cap, this is a stopgap, right? They build this thing. This is the containment dome, right?

So in order to understand the containment dome, we have to understand the situation on the seafloor, right? You know, you have, here's the seafloat preventer, it's a box, here's the well down here, that's underground. Let me add some lines here so everyone knows this is the ground, right? And then here's a fish, right? So you know that's the water. Okay.

So on top of the blood preventer, normally, there's the riser. It goes straight up. Well, that's not the case anymore. The oil rig sank. So it now goes like that, right? It's on the ground, right? Most of the oil is going up through the blood preventer, where a blowout was not prevented. some of it leaks out of here,

but most of it goes down to riser and out over to here where there's a lot of it coming at the end of the riser, right? So there's also a third leak somewhere. Apparently that was plugged really early. I don't know where that was. So, you know, the idea here, right,

we're going to put a containment dome over the end of the riser. So this was constructed by, again, Joe Baddons, excuse me, not Joe Biden's, not. They'd kill me if I said, that. It's funny. Joe Bowden's wild well-controlled spring Texas,

y-haw. You're muted. Joe Biden's wild wings of Danforth, Connecticut. Oh, God. This was designed. The whole thing goes over the end of the leaking riser pipe, right? That's what this big

door-shaped opening is for. And then it's going to sink into the ground, right, until it reaches these big flaps here. That's going to stabilize it, right? Everything's going to be in place. And all of the oil and the gas is going to go up and it's going to come out this pipe at the top and go to be stored on a ship on the surface, right? I mean, shit.

Okay. Yeah, man. Yeah. So there was a concern here that under high pressures and low temperatures, right, these things called methane clathrates could form, right? And sort of a full explanation of this is outside the scope of the podcast. But essentially, while water isn't going to freeze in this environment because it's too high pressure and water expands when it freezes, it's very unique in the world of chemicals in doing that. Methane also isn't going to freeze in this environment because its freezing point is very, very, very, very, very low, right? Water and methane together will readily freeze into a weird methane-bearing ice,

which is only stable at high pressure and low temperature. Clatherates, yeah, I love these things. Water, one of the only effective carbon capture and storage systems besides trees in the sense that, like, one of the things that climate scientists are really worried about in terms of like tip-over points is methane clathrates melting and releasing all that methane. Oh, yeah, that's the fun scenario where we go to like plus 12C in like a month. Yeah, that's the real like, so nuclear bomb of climate. Why would you tell me this?

I don't sleep as it is. I give and I take away. I also just texted you a link to an eBay store full of vintage belt buckles, 90% of them are oil-related. Oh, God, damn it. I'll put it in the fucking Xancastle chat, I'll down. Oh my God. Here's the thing about the clathrate gun hypothesis is, it's probably not real.

I hope not. I hope not. Yeah. So. Holy shit, you can get a Kenworth belt buckle. That's fucking sick. Sorry, sorry. The formation of clathrates was anticipated.

As such, there was the tube that brought the oil up, but there was a second tube surrounding it that brought surface water down, and it would circulate, warm water would circulate up here and prevent the formation of clathrates, right? But apparently it wasn't enough warm, water. So the containment dome clogged up with methane and ice and it floated away. This is the last time in history that there was a problem caused by the ocean being too cold. Yes. So it's May 8th now. This is not worked. Which brings us to the next attempt. The next attempt is the

pipe, right? Here's the end of the riser. They appear to be trying to cut it with a big pair of scissors. Oh, that comes later. Oh, Jesus. So the drilling companies take back over with, okay, this seems like a fairly obvious stopgap solution, right? What if you took a smaller pipe and put it in the big pipe with a big stopper around it and siphoned off the oil, right? So they put a six-inch pipe in the 21-inch riser with a stopper around it, all using ROVs, which is very difficult, because ROVs kind of sucked for this sort of stuff. They managed to put a mile of pipe inside the pipe by May 14th, and they're able to siphon off most, but not all of the leaking oil,

or what they think is most, because they don't know what the flow rate is yet. This is not a long-term solution, but it works a bit until an ROV bumps the thing, dislodges the stopper and damages the pipe, so they have to go get another pipe, and they put that one in on May, 16th, right? And there's still at this point lots of oil leaking out. So they're trying to find, okay, can we do something more permanent than the stupid pipe, right? We have to have something

with a much cooler name. Yeah, yeah. So we try the top kill. Hell yeah. I don't know what that is, but I approve of it. There's connection points on the blowout preventer where you can connect a pipe, right? And you can pump stupid amounts of drilling mud at stupid pressures to try and kill the well. Now, if there's an uncontrolled blowout like this, half the stuff goes at the top. So you need to use a lot of it, right? So you're just trying to overwhelm this with sheer pressure and volume. Quality has a quantity all its own, or no way, the other way around. The other way around, yes. There's no replacement for displacement. Once you've overwhelmed the oil, of course,

that's when you start pumping in stupid amounts of cement to seal the well, right? Yeah, you just have to kind of like feed liquids into it until it assumes a kind of submissive posture, I guess. Yeah, exactly. You have to completely overwhelm the pressure from 18,000 feet of earth. This is how bartenders treat me. Yeah.

What? So, don't worry about it. Missed it. The thing about a top kill, it generally doesn't work very well without a functioning blowout preventer. And it did not work in this case. Oh. So there was another strategy, the junk shot.

Even the, even the, even the verbiage is getting like more and more shot here. Junk shot. Oh, yes, I love LeBron's junk shot. Chunk shop, baby. This is a method. I'm not actually certain they did this, but there's a lot of environmental groups who got mad about it, right?

Apparently, this worked great in Kuwait 91. Oh, yeah, you showed me this documentary. Yeah. Well, that was a different, well, plugging company. That was Boots and Coots. That was not... Boots, Coots, too.

Excuse me. That was not Joe Bowdens, Wildwell Controls, So if just pump big drilling mud in there isn't enough, here's what you do. You're going to throw lots of crap into the blowout preventer. This is the Chernobyl thing. You get a, you get an like an MIA with like an excavator bucket full of like basalt or whatever the fuck, like used razors, cinder blocks, etc.

and you just keep dumping it in there until the Geiger counter says it's okay. Fire and the hole. Yeah. In this case, it's golf balls, tennis balls, old rope, shredded tires, any old crap, they could fit down the high pressure pipe and into the blowout preventer with the hope that it would get wedged.

What if we just dump a bunch of shit in there? It would then get wedged. It would then get wedged. It would get wedged against the partially closed blowout preventer and restrict the floor. enough that they could then start pumping in the drilling mud

and then eventually the cement. Do we think that as well as t-shirts, we can just sell them a crazy Justin's well-plugging company belt buckle? We can try. So, still they, I am again, not sure if they actually tried this, but it seems like, wow, I don't see why they wouldn't.

So this also did not work. It was now May 29th. The thing has been leaking for nearly a whole month. right? And in the meantime, of course, the spill is reaching the surface, right? There are ways you can contain big oil slicks like that. You can have a big floating boom on the surface, right? That doesn't work in rough waters. Democrats when they get the presidency back. Yeah. I love the smiley face. Thank you. You can try and remove the oil. There were a lot of small skills. boats that are doing that, just skimming the oil off the top. There was also a specially equipped skimmer or oil ship. It could carry ore or oil.

It was called a whale. More ships should be named kind of conceptually like that. Yes. This didn't work very, although I did get a picture of it in there just because it, you know, really big like super tanker, but it can also carry ore. And you can see, oh, look, there's a whale on the, I will note that a whale has been named three different things, and each one of them comprises a different kind of transgender. It's been A whale, very non-binary.

It's been Madison Orca, very trans femme, and it's currently Cosmo Ace, very transmask. And, well, funnily enough, it's called A, it was called A whale, because the other ships in this class were B whale, C whale, all the way up to H whale. But I think it's funny, it's a whale. So anyway, these methods worked okay, but heavier-duty solutions eventually had to be implemented, namely chemical dispersants and controlled burns, right? Both of these things are pretty nasty, but, you know, they work to a certain extent. It's better to burn off the oil than have it, you know, wash ash ashore. The chemical dispersants aren't great, but they're better than the.

oil, right? To an extent. I've got some stuff about the dispersants later, and I think that they may have actually made it worse. It's difficult to say because nobody really did, like there are studies on specific aspects of this, but because of it just, you poisoned to the entire Gulf of Mexico for two months. It's such a big thing, yeah. Yeah, it's hard to say like, well, you know, it probably helped in some aspects and it probably

hurt other aspects. And the Gulf of Mexico is already mostly poison. Yes. Yeah, I lived in Houston for a while. I know. You go down to Galveston and, like, dip your toe in and watch it turn to shrivel and fall off your body. Oh. And this is also where the media circus starts around the whole thing.

I mean, it's obviously there would be because it's a horrible environmental disaster. No one can really understand why it takes so long to plug a hole. And plug in this hole is very difficult, as it turns out. You have these wild rumors. People are suggesting all kinds of crazy shit like BP should nuke the well to seal it, right? Just, yeah, give BP the nuclear weapons directly. That'll be, that'll be.

Yeah, exactly. You can trust us. See, we have a smiley face. The Soviets tried it three times or four times, and it worked three of those times. So. It's like, yeah, make the Gulf of Mexico also pretty radioactive. Yeah, exactly. People are like, okay, the relief wells are going to be doomed to failure.

BP knows all that, you know, all kinds of crap. You know, it was, you know, it was, it was a big, it was a big thing for a long time. I mean, I remember watching all this on television. You know, so, all right, the, the oil companies have, have done their piece and it didn't really work too well. So let's talk about the top hat, right? Yes. So if at first you don't succeed, you try, try again. And that was exactly. exactly what Joe Bowden's wild well-control spring Texas, y-haw, was about to do. Right? So they learned from their failures. They're now wise to the ways of the methane clathrate. They have figured out how to defeat it. I need to hear Joe Bowden of Joe Bowden's wild,

well-controlled Spring Texas, Yehaw, whip crack, pronounce methane clathrate more than anything. So the top of the top of the top of the state of the top. Hot is much smaller than the containment dome, right? This is only about five feet, or excuse me, four feet in diameter. Now that I'm looking at the diagram, right? It is designed to fit snugly over the end of the riser, which an ROV cuts into a cleaner shape, right?

This is their other logo down here. You can see there's... I know, right? Look at that. They have a... I looked at their website. They have unfortunately gone with like a more corporate thing now. This is bullshit.

I know, right? So the top hat is smaller. It's designed to fit on top of the riser, which has been cut into shape for it, right? And the top hat continuously circulates methanol, you know, wood alcohol, the type that makes you go blind, into the oil stream. Right. And that prevents the formation of methane clathrates both chemically and because it's hot, right? And this works okay-ish. It's limited by some unforeseen problems, right?

In order to place it on top of the riser, it has several relief vents on top, right? And that way you didn't have to like force it down on top of there with an ROV, which is something an ROV can't do. But once it was in place, the ROVs couldn't close the relief valves. So a big chunk of the oil just went in there and then went out the top. Or it came out the front, right? Highly vented top hat. Like you go kind of like the, like, you know, perforated bit around the top. Top hat by under armor.

Yeah. But there's still, you know, during the pipe, during the period where the pipe was inserted, the Discoverer Enterprise collected something like 22,000. barrels of oil in total, but with the top hat in there, they were collecting 15,000 barrels of oil each day. Jesus, okay. But they could still do better, right? The blowout preventer itself is still leaking right at that nasty kink right on top, right,

up here. Nasty kink, you say. Yeah. Yeah, it's leaking. So they can design a better top hat, the top hat tent. Top hat, yeah. So I have to have seen the intervening eight I don't know what happened.

I don't know what happened. Top Hat 10 was designed to fit snugly on top of the blowout preventer. All they had to do was cut the riser at the blowout preventer. All you have to do is cut the riser. It's easy. You just get a nice, clean cut on the riser. Just get a nice clean cut. It's not so hard.

Just do that. So they broke a diamond saw and fucked it up. Is that the cut? That's the cut. Oh, okay. Yeah, nice, nice clean cut, as you can see. God, it's like, I did this. They've seen someone completely inexperienced carver turkey.

You ever watch someone try to cut bread with a non-serrated knife? Oh, God. I mean like a sourdough, you know? The oil. The oil was now flowing into the Gulf. completely uncontrolled. No one knew if they could fix it now. This was so stupid and bad.

This was so stupid and bad. Oh, it's baby black. Oh, it's added like the soprados. All right. So they deploy top hat number 10 anyway. That's the belt buckle. That's the fucking belt buckle. That's the bell buckle with the guy

and the aviators. Yeah. Yeah. That does look kind of like Joe Biden. Ooh, arthritis, thanks for the crude oil. God damn it. Oh, my God. Why would you make me remember that?

Top hat number 10 is put in place. It makes a tight seal around the piece of shit cut and the blowout preventer. It is entirely successful. It works beautifully. Amazing. You may have not believed it. You didn't think they could do it, but Joe Bowden's wild well-controlled spring Texas. Because Yeha has contained this week, channeled all of the oil to the surface.

Now, who am I kidding? I always had faith in them. I knew that I were going to do it. I knew if you gave him five or six or ten tries, they would eventually do it. Yeah. This was now still a problem, though, because there was too much damn oil coming out. Between Discoverer Enterprise and the Q4,000 drilling platform, they could process 25,000 barrels of oil a day, which was not enough.

They still have no way of restricting the flow. And, you know, I don't know exactly what they do with what they can't process. I assume they're either. Burning it on it. I don't think they're even burning it. I think burning it is part of the capacity there. I think they're probably just tossing it overboard. Eventually they bring in more ships, but it's still a delicate situation, right?

And they, you know, eventually they managed to get the big gun in, right? something a little bit more permanent, the capping stack, right? I don't know what took them this long. I assume it's lead time because this is a complicated piece of equipment. But essentially, this is a small blowout preventer. They could put on top of the normal blowout preventer. It's July 12th when this thing is installed. It's the thing that's finally going to let them get a handle on the situation, right? And so they try closing the well very, very slowly. They want a, they're testing it as cautiously as possible because they don't know if there's some break further down the well, which if they change pressure rapidly, might just change where the oil is blowing out to somewhere underground, which is going to be much more difficult to fix. And considering it's already a very difficult situation, you don't want that.

So on July 16th, on what was supposed to only be a test, the capping stack did its job. The flow of oil stopped. But there was still reason to be uneasy, right? Because pressure in the well was much lower than expected, but no one could quite find a leak. Amazing. Like sort of like waking up and like, you know, your hand is wet, but you don't know why. Yes. Yes, pretty much.

Now, at this point, Tropical Storm Bonnie tries to. ruin everyone's day. The site was evacuated on July 22nd and then the storm just disperses. It doesn't happen. So everyone comes back. The well was still not leaking. They begin something called a static kill on the well on August 2nd, which is essentially the same process as the top kill, but much easier because the oil was not flowing. And this works, but they don't want to take any chances. The first relief well breaks through in mid-September. which allows the process of the bottom kill to start, right? They plug the whole damn well with cement.

It was done. The well was dead. Hallelujah. They finally did it. Norla took him was 10 tries. Nothing bad happened. But, you know, and I'm going to hand it back to Victoria here. The environmental damage had been done.

Oh, yeah. So this is the, this is from Noah. This is the oil spill extent and where they closed down all of the federal fisheries because the federal government essentially like lets fishermen go out in these areas. So they closed down like most of the Gulf for 2010 through 2011. And so fiscally, like I'm not even going to talk about the environmental damage yet. Just the fiscally, the fishing industry alone lost about $8 billion because there was oil from Texas to Florida along 1,300 miles of shoreline. that is the linear distance from New Orleans to New York City covered, like that has some sort of oiling

impact on these beaches. A slick, the slick ended up being the size of the state of Virginia, 43,300 square miles. No, tourism is completely annihilated. Although, and this is, I'm going to say his name because I don't want him to ever get to sleep again, is Tom Sessler, an official blogger. Tom Sessler. Tom Sessler. An official blogger on the BP website reporting from Huma, 30 miles north of the Gulf,

wrote around sometime after the disaster responses in July. Much of the region's other businesses, particularly the hotels, have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams. So, you know, that was his positive spin on it. Yeah, we destroyed the economic livelihood of like, you know, tens of millions of people and wiped out this entire ecosystem for a decade. But like the hotels

aren't doing bad because we have to have people here to cap the well. Yeah. Joe Biden, Joe Bowden's employees. Maybe Joe Biden was there too because he was Veeb at the time. He might have been down there. What was Joe Biden doing in 2010? Watching Will and Grayson eating a shit ton of ice cream. I don't know. He's probably driving. Doing cameos of Parks and Rec.

I know they won't let the president drive a car, but will they let the vice president drive a car? Was he out rocking the Corvette? Probably not. They should. They should let the president drive a car. I mean, they should let Trump drive a really unsafe car, but like they should let all presidents drive a car. Neil, I'm over a ditch. Well, like, part of the reason, part of the reason why they're, they're so, like, weird is because they're divorced from the everyday experience.

America is about driving your car, right? Sure. That's what your country is. And they don't let you do it if you're in charge of it, which is fucked up. Yeah, so the end result for BP is they pay out $4 billion in criminal. fines after pleading guilty to 14 different felony counts, some of which are clean water, some which are

EPA, I don't, just yeah, we fucked up, we'll plead guilty. They ended up paying about $20 billion in damages. Total. They're actually still paying out for another six years as of this recording. So they are still paying out to environmentally remediate this

to 2031. When I was in law school, my commercial law professor was guy I admired a lot because one of his deals was you got to put people in prison and I mean serious prison for corporate malfeasance like you just you just have to we're going to do corporate supermax I don't mean

private prison shit I mean we're going to do supermax we're going to do the shit they did to uh oh what's his name the guy who just died the Alder Gaines Charlie Kirk Alder Gave no Charlie Kirk Caddick coming. I don't give the shit. I, but he'd like done his research on this and his thing was like, yeah, you can, you know,

sort of corporate structures do adapt to having to send someone to prison. But ultimately it is, it is in some ways an effective deterrent if you really do, just do it and just like identify senior executives and hold them personally, criminally liable.

Seems to be working good for China. Yeah. Yeah, I mean like- I mean, not as good as it could be, but fuck of a lot better than us, either of us. Yeah, um, well, anyway, they paid out $20 billion and damages total, they're still paying out till 2031. It's the largest settlement against a single entity

in American history. No one went to prison. I should just make that clear. That's, yeah, that's the problem. That should be that in itself is a malfeasance. Yeah, next slide please. You really want to be upset. I do.

There is a picture of the oil slick as seen from the International Space Station on May 24. 2010. Mmm, grimy. Yeah. I mean, like, however big you're thinking this is, it's huge. Again, for the zoomers in the audience who don't remember this, it was really, it was bad. And the thing is, is like, it ended up being somewhere around 60,000 barrels a day leaking into the ocean when all of a sudden done.

And it was undersold for a while. It didn't become clear that that was the flow rate until like towards the end of the capping process. and, you know, all told it was 134 million gallons of oil over the 87 days that it was actively leaking. I mean, honestly, they should have just taken the whole board of BP and just, like, dumped them on a raft in the middle of this. Yeah, I mean, I would take that. I think it should be televised, but, you know, do some Mr. Beast shit to them.

I don't give a shit. Just like, let me watch them. So yeah, within a matter of weeks, they're finding polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or key agents. I haven't gone to that one yet. I'm still part the way through Polysecure. Oh, my God. Please, no, you can't. Please, we gotta, we gotta make, we gotta just, we gotta bring back cooler language for this stuff.

We're making being gay sound nerdy. Aldra games is who I was thinking of, but he died in FCI Cumberland. I thought he was in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, and. Supermax. But no, regardless, we don't even need prisons for these people. Just line them up and you can't say that on YouTube. Yeah, so these are, these are oil spill linked hydrocarbons that are extremely toxic and they're found like eight miles away and three thousand feet deep in the ocean within weeks. And because they are using so many dispersants, they are breaking this oil up into component chemicals that are arguably even worse for the environment. But they again, they have

no real decision here. I mean, you could also say that BP was that you could say this, I don't think you legally could and not get sued, but you could make an argument if you wanted to that like BP owned the company that made some of the dispersants and so they were making money off the fact that they were using so many dispersants. And also they were just trying to get the optics to look better. And if you coat a bunch of baby seals in oil, everybody gets mad at you. And if you kill off all the baby seals because you've just poisoned the ocean for a generation, then people are likely to have forgotten about it in hopefully five years or whatever. But you, again, legally, you can't say that.

but you could postulate it. We're doing so good here. Yep. Yeah, this whole episode is like, I don't know, people who really like me or really hate me after it. I guess we'll find out. I hope there isn't like an avid NATO fandom in the, well, there's your problem, listener base.

Like, yeah, but you're an anarchist, so like, I'm not... Yeah, it'll count. It's fine. Yeah. Listen, it's simple. Half of the fan base are FBI agency listeners, for fun, and half of them are FBI agents who listen for work. Yeah.

Yeah, so, and the use of dispersants also makes the oil leach into the beaches and then the groundwater a lot quicker because it's been broken down. And so you see all of this coastline erode really rapidly because all of the vegetation has been killed by the oil and the dispersants,

which causes, like, a lot of economic damage. In 2012, Hurricane Isaac brought over 500,000 barrels of oil ashore, which was more than it had been removed from the Gulf in the eight months prior, which suggested the deep ocean two years later was still like incredibly heavily polluted, which was a really big concern because the food chain requires that there's like sediment dwelling microorganisms that bed burrow under and kick up all the sand and oil

that's going to be buried at the bottom of this. And then of course, things upstream are going to eat them and it's going to poison everything forever. And of course, like three years later, they're still finding tarballs washing up on the coast of Mississippi. So like the government said, and this is again, this is the during the Obama administration, this is a massive oversimplifications. You don't get too mad at me. But like mostly everything was fine. The oil settled back down. It's all clean now. Don't worry about it. There are quite a few university researchers who did not agree with that assessment. And so the ecological damage is going to be like it's going to take generations to fully understand it. Um, the next slide, please.

What we do know is that, uh, I have numbers for a lot of this, 105,400 seabirds, 7,600 adult and 160,000 juvenile sea turtles, uh, were killed in the immediate aftermath. There was roughly half the dolphins in Barataria Bay in Louisiana died. Dolphins that the researchers were finding years later were like sickly and anemic and missing teeth, full of birth defects. and like not long for this world. Like anecdotally, like people who support themselves.

And it's so fucking like you get to go to, you know, like anything for sort of like people with corporate jobs, with email jobs. You get to go to like the nice restaurants or whatever and be like, yeah, I work for BP. I'm like a dolphin poisoner. And people. I'm the reason you throw up when you eat seafood in New Orleans. Yeah. And and you just get.

get to do that, you know? Not only do you face no kind of like criminal sanction, you don't even face any social sanction, because nobody knows who the fuck you are. Well, that's what's kind of wild to me is like, it's the, I don't know, obviously like I have pretty complicated feelings about having worked even tangentially related to the automotive industry for a while, and I tried to do good with it as I, when I could, and I don't think I did as much as I should have. But like, I just, I don't understand how people don't like grapple with their role in the system. We have built more. And I guess I'm finding out as kind of like I watched the United States systemically prove itself incapable of grappling with anything that anybody's doing ever,

that they just don't. I don't know. If I, when I, I used to be a software engineer and like, you know, I worked at NASA for a bit and I could have quit there and gone and developed weapons. I wasn't very good as a software developer, but they'll just give you a ton of money to do that. And I was like, no, I don't want to work for the military industrial complex. That's crazy. And then I watched a bunch of other people do it, who I previously held in high esteem. it was just baffling. But I don't know. This is a sidebar for no purpose other than I don't think I understand how other people work.

I don't, I mean, I don't know how any of this works other than, again, like vulgar Marxism, which seems to be, you know, getting by. Yeah, that's fair. Anyway, yeah, the guy who, uh, Zabwe has to poison dolphins, um, like fishing, like people who had historically fished this area said that like fish and shrimp were covered in lesions, born without eyes. And, you know, they didn't even have. eye sockets and it was just like it was horrifying for years and um you know the dispersants that they

were using were known mutagens so that was probably making things worse um if the oil wasn't enough the dispersants probably would have been um this this incident killed 17 percent of the entire known population of rice as whales which dwell in the gulf of mexico and now today they are critically endangered um that's like the most obvious like here is the lasting effect we have today you know 15 years later that I could find. At the time, we knew that anywhere between 4 and 8.5 billion oysters

were rendered dead or toxic by the soil spill, but it's really difficult to find out exactly how much things to recover. At least if you're the dolphin poisoning, you don't get to order the oysters at the nice restaurant anymore. I love oysters. I'm sorry. I've had

literally oysters the one time in my life, and I got really sick, so never again. Same here, actually. Yep. I would simply risk it every time. Oysters are delicious. I had oysters in New Orleans, which may have been poisoned by Deepwater Horizon.

You've got a little bit of dolphin poison in you. Yeah. Congratulations, Ross. Yeah, so, and of course, like, you know, we know that, like, there is extensive damage to coral reefs. There's probably still a ton of whale down there. I mean, granted, this is a 5,000 feet underneath the surface of the Gulf,

so it's difficult to tell exactly, like, what's down there still. And now we'll probably never know the full extent of it Because we've destroyed every single scientific research program that America has Because we live in hell But you know the Gulf is hitting record high temperatures every year now And has been for the past like five So maybe everything would have died off anyway And it won't matter in the end as it is next slide please

Damn I really was not in a good move But I wrote these slides was I? I'm sorry So the sort of quote I chose to encapsulate this entire disaster was from William Riley, who was the co-chair of, I believe, the White House investigation. And he said, the series of decisions that doomed Macondo, the specific prospect that they were drilling on, evidence to failure of management and good management could have avoided a catastrophe. But we didn't have good management because it was fucking BP again. This whole incident is kind of considered like the textbook example of like Ecoside, which is, you know,

where you fuck up the environment so bad that it will never be the same again. Like, the shoreline is erased and, you know, the repercussions on, like, fishing communities and tourism and just the general ecological health of the Gulf is permanent and can't be undone. Even, like, going, if you would like to ever make yourself incredibly depressed, I recommend going to Wikipedia's page on the Deepwater Horizon and just scrolling through the mental health impact section of the aftermath. And it's really like every study is like everybody was like alcoholic and depressed because their entire livelihood and community have been wiped out by this basically from basically Houston to like the panhandle of Florida. But you know, that's an area of America that we historically don't care about. So, you know.

Yeah. I mean it's it's it's something that like had this kind of huge disaster happen and then would is having being fucked over by the climate anyway. Yeah. Yeah. This slide is from BP's own website. This is from 29th to September 2025. BP approves the Tiber Guadalupe project in the U.S. Gulf of America, which is 250 miles off the coast of Louisiana, even deeper this time,

trying to pull out 80,000 barrels a day by 2029 in the same area, in the same region. There's a bunch of projects to drill there again because, like, why not? I mean, there's oil there, and we're certainly not transitioning off at any time soon. So just money. I just drill in and, you know, if you destroy the earth again, who the fuck cares? Like, what is the EPA going to, like, arrest you for it? Anyway, and now it's the Gulf of America. So, like, you know, in closing, we live in hell.

Yeah. And America, which is spiritually and physically poisoned. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was a discourse today, which I'm sure will be quaint by the time this episode releases after, you know, we have begun the military invasion of Rickievik because we got

confused about where we were actually trying to head. But it was like, is America, you know, is America actually bad? Or is it like? Yes. And it's like, are you seriously doing this? Are you like, come on? Like we can try to make America good if you want. Like if that's your, if that's your proposal is like make America good, cool.

Sure. I mean, there's a lot of people here. I think we should make it good instead of bad. But like you cannot sit here and be like, well, I think America's always had very high ideals. No. No. Fuck you. Absolutely not.

This was when I was 15 years old and the environment is still fucked from it and now they are drilling again. This is why I fundamentally do not think things can get better in America. I'm just ranting. I'm sorry. I'm kind of losing my mind. We only have 8 to 10,000 years until the next Ice Age comes and the glaciers roll over and restore all these. Can it come soon enough. So, yeah.

Wipe us out. Let the chimps have a turn. No, I think we should go back to, I think we should let like marine life have a go at it. No, I like chimps. I think they're neat. Okay, so my obsession lately is otters. Otters hold hands. They're adorable.

I love him to death. My wife, when I get really stressed out, will put the Monterey Bay Aquarium recording of otters hanging out off from California coast on the TV, and it like always works. I feel like, I feel like an infant. And then it's like, oh, sweetie, you're anxious. Here, look at your otters. But it does work every time.

Tricking your own brain is one of the things that like works the like best for something that it's like feels so insultingly dumb. It's just like, oh, what's up fucking like idiot dip shit organ? Are you like this because you haven't had water? Do you want some more water and then you drink some water and your brain's like, yeah, okay, sure, whatever. I guess we didn't mean all that stuff we said earlier. Yeah. Yep. I saw an otter once in the wild.

Where were you? written house town park. I was surprised. I didn't think Otters lived in the city of Philadelphia, except at the zoo. We should go to the zoo. My wife and I for Christmas went to Oysterville,

Washington, which is a real place. I did have oysters there. They were fucking delicious. But we went to... The whole time you're eating, you think, you know what really enhanced this? This is a bunch of British petroleum dumped all over them. Yes. Like crude oil as a side, you know We went to a nature reserve

While we were staying out there And I did get to see an otter in the wild For the first time And I shit you not It was probably the happiest I've been in the past Like I don't know How long it's it been since I got married It's been that long

It was like I was like happy days of my life When you come back out here We've got to find some like nature I think they still make it up here Oh yeah Do you have otters? Yeah probably

Scotland otters They call them Scotters Oh Yeah they're good day Oh, that's funny. We have about 80,000 of the guys. So, yeah. It's a little, little otter and a kilt, and he's got some bagpipes.

Oh, yeah. That's so cute. God damn. Somebody should make a shirt with that. Yeah. Anyway, I'm done now. I'm sorry. That last little bit of that episode was not very fun.

I apologize. It's this or therapy. And to be honest, I should probably get therapy as well. But, you know, that's, that's a thing to get over. Unfortunately, I've decided that when these episodes go to about three hours. We are here for a bad time and a long time. This is true. Well, it never ends. The thing about therapy is they have to email you back eventually.

Oh, God. No, I don't, don't talk to me about the prospect of getting a new therapist. My God. So what did we learn? Neal these people over ditches. There need to be serious, violent criminal consequences for corporate executives. capitalism is not only the worst and most insensible way of, not insensible, nonsensical way of organizing our resources. It's also literally poisoning you. And granted, communism will poison you too, but like, you know, it's the people's poison, so if I can suck it up, right?

Get in there. We have to get off oil. Yeah. And it's very plausible to do. And when we do, the only way that we're going to get to the kind of solar punk yogurt ad future where everything's nice is. is if there is like some kind of justice for the people who decided that our energy system was going to be this way when they knew about the consequences including this.

So after we do Nuremberg for the ice agents, we got to do Nuremberg for the oil executives. Yes. Literally yes. Just like. I will be running Batman fucking Scarecrow show trials. It's like, I'm with you. Oh. I would also like to shout out Devin at this point.

Thank you for not getting me. arrested and sent to federal prison. Well, we don't know. We don't know if they have or not, you know, you could have been. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, you might be, you might be listening to this in the future. You might be listening to this from prison.

And you're like, damn, we did a good job. Wish they'd, wish they'd done some more beeps, though. But I think the other thing we learned is that if you have a well that's blown out, you need to call Joe Bowden's wild well control of Spring, Texas. Yeeha! and they will get it fixed in as few as three tries.

All right. Well, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third. Greetings to all involved in production. No, too general. That's right. Production of crude oil. That's what we do on this podcast. That's us.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs ending in death. Yeah. Three wells producing 10,000 barrels a week. Today I'd like to talk to you about the cannabis industry in the state of Michigan, a sleeper state for the highest quality, cheapest, and most abundant legal weed in the United States of America. No photos because I'm under an NDA. I worked at one of the larger grows in the state in a few years back. We hired a new head of maintenance and facilities, a job that also put him in charge of safety

and security at our facility. You'll be about as pleased as I was to hear his background. Retired Air Force Colonel, then Amazon Warehouse Director, and he deigned to come all the way to Michigan to pursue his middle-aged dream of working with weed. Season 4 for all mankind, Ed Baldwin. That's for five people, but they'll be thrilled, I said it. working with weed, which all old guys think is cool as fuck. He was famous for losing his temper and screaming at employees in front of a bunch of other people and being extremely weird. You said he was a colonel, and a colonel is kind of the mayor of military, of the military,

in the sense that you have a lot of power in a kind of localized way a lot of the time, and also it's as high as you can get with one of the really oppositional personality disorders. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you can like, finagle that into still being a colonel but running Libya. It was decided by the powers that be that we would start fogging with ozone in order to disinfect grow rooms and our processing facilities. Ozone or O3 is an oxygen molecule that has three atoms of oxygen instead of two, and for whatever reason, that extra oxygen atom makes it great at killing pests and microbes.

Fucking binding preferentially or something, I don't know. Yeah. Plus, it's organic. Unfortunately, ozone is as toxic to humans as it is to pests and mold, including perhaps especially the humans that worked in the facility being disinfected. See hilarious figure below, unrelated to the poison thing. Is this Maslow's hierarchy of needs where the sort of like baseline need is lung function deference? Yes.

Got to have my lung function decrements. A new thing Google is doing is that when I copy the text, of these emails into the notes when there's an image, it adds an AI generated description of the image. Oh my God, we have to kill. Every Google executive as well.

That's all right. Throw up in the pile. Here is, it says a pyramid of healthcare with the Mediterranean Sea in the background. Literally none of that's right. It's not even a pyramid. Hold on, hold on. I'm drawing it in. Yeah.

There should be, what's, That's in the Mediterranean, right? That's right, the Coliseum. It does say AI generated content may be incorrect, which is true in the sense that, you know, this is not financial advice, kind of baseline disclosure. Right, right. It's not enough.

AI generated content is almost always incorrect. And is always stolen. This is a pizza, right? And it was deeply upsetting to look at as well. Yeah. So anyway, I corrected it so it's more similar to the AI description. Anyway, ozone fogging initially took place on the second shift where they would close foggers in unused rooms, which were not airtight, adjacent to rooms that second

shifters were hard at work in. Oh, see, I thought this was going to be a kind of that one scene from Tenet situation, but instead what you're doing is just like fumigating the entire building. Yes. When second shift started to complain about the overpowering metallic smell of the ozone, giving them headaches, our head of facilities and maintenance, Mr. Amazon, magnanimously decided that fogging would be done on the third shift instead. It's like, oh, I guess you don't want to have your sinuses cleared out. I'm sorry. Excuse me, it's Colonel Amazon to you.

To be fair, even in the Air Force, like everyone in the Air Force has been like splashing around in big puddles of toxic waste that they paint all the stealth aircraft in all day. It's true, yeah. Being in the Air Force gives you every kind of cancer. eventually. It's true. Nobody worked in the building between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. at the time, so all the teams setting up the foggers needed to do was to put them on a timer and then head home for the

night. Well, I guess we just couldn't figure out the timer situation. Building full of weed employees asked to work timer. It writes itself, I'm sorry. Hey, don't forget people who are around weed all the time. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm profiling them. Maybe, like, maybe all of these people have great short-term memories.

We're at the sober weed factory. We don't get high on our own supply. Anyway, one day, first shift came in, and we had to wait an hour and a half for the smell to dissipate before we could go into the building. The one airtight room in the facility happened to be the one I worked in, which stank of ozone and made me and my two co-workers ill within an hour of exposure. We submitted incident reports to Colonel Amazon and went home for the day. Fogging went back to second shift to avoid further delays on first shift, with no mention of why it was okay for second shift, which had no management, to get exposed every single working night for eight hours,

but first shift, which was all the management, was not allowed in the building while the smell persisted. Turns out that prolonged exposure to ozone can cause permanent breathing issues like COPD, which is amazing to have in a building full of workers that have been smoking weed since they were 13. I profiled correctly then, I see. A sharp spike in asthma attacks on the second shift and a couple of fainting spells

and a heart attack on first shift set a few people to the hospital the next town over, ultimately culminating in the hospital calling Michigan OSHA on our facility. Jesus Christ, okay. I mean, shout out to the hospital. Turns out Colonel Amazon

had been throwing out any incident reports related to ozone exposures, almost 50 of them, right, which is incredible considering there were maybe 20 people on second shift at any given time. And there's no satisfying end of the story, really. Colonel Amazon kept his job for almost a year after this fiasco, right up until he cussed out one of the executives at headquarters. We did stop using ozone as a fogger, and it seems like instances of medical distress sharply dropped, but we still regularly applied pesticides. in rooms that aren't airtight when workers carried on in the adjacent

grow rooms. Thanks for podcasting and keeping me entertained on my 10 plus hour shifts at the old weed factory from full legal name. Thank you for legal name. Your shift is now half done. Your watch. Yes. And remember, never climb Maslow's

pyramid of cardiac arrest. Do not do that, yes. I'm stealing this and I'm posting it on Twitter. So, yeah, when this episode comes out, you will have seen it tweeted about two weeks before. Yes. You've been on Blue Sky. I find out of a G. But Blue Sky, they don't, they should invent people who get jokes on Blue

Sky. Yeah, no, that is a difficult part about that platform. Well, I was Safety Third. Uh. Shake hands for danger. Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go? Oh, listen to order the podcast. If you are a Chinese automotive journal editor, editor, employ Victoria.

Yes. If you're really, like, if you're from any other country, aside from America, and you're cool with trans women there, you should hit me up. Do that. No, I want to come visit you. I want to come visit you in Chengdu, where it's, and, like, boil to death. I want to just, like, fry directly onto the pavement the second I step out of the airport. Too late, Victoria is going to be covering the Albanian motor industry.

There was a, I don't know if this episode is going to come out in time for it, so I'll probably post about my blue sky. But given the specific topic of this podcast, they are trying to open up offshore drilling off the coast of California and Alaska and the Gulf of what they now call the Gulf of America again. And there's an period for public comment. And Monterey Bay Area. Well, I got a fucking public comment. Let me tell you. The aforementioned people who make the Otter videos have asked for public comment. saying, what the fuck are you doing?

Please stop this. And as a fool who still hopes that somehow we can avert every disaster all at once, I was going to link that so that people could be like, hey, you know, maybe don't do this. It's a bad idea. The key thing, the key takeaway from this is I tried to research, could this happen again, was absolutely yes. Nothing has changed. So the only way to really stop it is if we don't do more offshore drilling, which is difficult

because the federal government controls whether or not people get to do that. Or if you're at BP and you're listening to this somehow, quit your job right now and tell your boss it's because you fucking hate everything you do. Shallow grave, shallow grave, shallow grave, shallow grave. I'm not going to advocate for actual violence at work. Shallow grave, shallow grave.

I am. So that link will be in the description. Please give them a peace of your mind. Yeah, other than that, I don't think so. I think that's everything. All right. Bye, everybody. I guess that was a podcast.

It was only three hours, which I feel like kind of... Oh, he managed fine. Yeah. All right. Amazing. And this. I have business. Business.