Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 51: One Meridian Plaza Fire

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

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We're all gone. We're having a nice day. We're having a nice time. Fuck it. Are we bud? Yes, I I don't know I was having a nice day. I got a really good night's sleep I woke up and and it was not even it was well before noon For the first time in like two weeks. Oh, actually, I feel you. I woke up at 9 a.m. Sharp today. I Did some stuff around the house, so I'm feeling I would say I'm feeling good But there's sort of this unexplainable air of doom and gloom What's with the trend? I don't know what might be happening, say, in the goddamn news that might be causing it.

I don't know. I mean, this this this was this was coming for a long time. Anyway, yeah We'll get there. We'll get there. Welcome to Well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters has slides Such as the one you are looking at now. I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him Okay, I am Alice Kortor Kelly. I'm the person who's talking now I'm the only real member of the working class so we can resolve that argument right now It's just me and my pronouns are she and her I make less money than you do You're on trash future Can you can you file a class action lawsuit as a result of being a class of one? Yes

Yeah, I'm just gonna start suing people on behalf of the working class That's why you should move to America. You can sue anyone for fucking anything. Yes. I am Liam Anderson I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him Okay, and what do you see on the screen in front of you unless you're listening as audio? No, no, no, this is earlier than 9-11 9 10 and this We could we could do this all day No, not that This is this all goes all the way back to one baby. This is one meridian

This is this building on fire Poorly this building is on fire and it should not be Today in response to will medical will menikers insults of Philadelphia The most Philadelphia disaster ever to occur besides the Eagles most recent season, which is pretty high up there This is also true. I have a theory about that, but we'll get to that later. Okay towering Inferno John. Yeah This is one meridian plaza This was the first I think the the largest high-rise fire Until 9-11. Yeah, I believe that's correct. Yeah, and we're gonna talk about it, but of course first we have to do

the goddamn news Was really expecting the steam ham I was so close Oh I'll save you the steamed hamstrap. Yeah a bunch of a bunch of a bunch of a Trump guys Decided to go storm the Capitol building and they got in oh, they sure Got scared. Yeah, and then shut shot one of them got shot one of them taste himself in the balls Died and died and died one of them got trampled to death

While holding a don't tread on me flag And one of them just fucking had a heart attack cuz Yeah, cuz you can just like holler about like civil war civil war civil war day of the rope hang a journalist all of that And then like your resting heart rate goes up by one BPM and you're having a cardiac event It's unfortunate Yeah, it's it was interesting because it was like, you know, oh my god They're inside the Capitol building and they get in there and what do they do they take a bunch of selfies and leave No, they're this stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop. They stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop

They like pissed everywhere. They took a bunch of posters and memorials and stuff and I will say if you were I Do have to say if you were like a nefarious foreign agent Oh, yeah, like you couldn't have you wouldn't imagine how easy this shit would be And I say he's gonna have to get in there as like a preventative measure Wire I put on my neck sack hat and I just start crying We got a rebuild the entire IC infrastructure of the Capitol the new Capitol just looks like that windowless building in New York that the NSA uses for survey We're done with metaphors here look at it You know the floor plans of this building are public record. You can just they're on Wikipedia even

Yeah, I mean they should be we can we it's the people's palace Roz. This is true Yes, not like not like the Chachescu one either. This one almost looks good You're gonna get a bunch of Romanians very angry at us Wasn't it the large the heaviest building in the world? It's the heavy Yes, it's like the largest government building in the world. I believe It looks like ass Well, so so we had some fascism We did a fascism. We did a no growth and all of that

And now that we get the really the really fun part of this kind of attempted insurrection or whatever Which is a leftist arguing with other leftists on Twitter for the next week about whether or not these people are workers Well, I'm I don't there was basically no boss directing them to do this. I don't think That's the problem they're anarchists I saw that that chai Chiron, I don't even know how to say the word Thank you Roz, and I just was like no no, it's like it's like seeing about Jeffrey Epstein for the first time You're like fucking Jews, man

Fascists we we would have had a bake sale. We would have just set up a food not bomb set right there the capital Yeah, just just set up set up mutual aid to get into Nancy Pelosi's office The most famous demand of any anarchist as we know is to keep the current head of the state in power They love that shit. Did you say behead the curtain? Oh? I Never ride locker of talk locker of talk moving on swiftly. Yeah, he's president for like 12 more days assuming You know the military doesn't pull it on Argentina and I kind of feel like it's already happened Like I feel like there was a kind of a soft coup that went down because there was like an hour

Where Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi were trying to get the National Guard in and all they were getting was like no no We don't have the authorization from like the Trump loyalists at DOD and then this statement came out That was like oh, yeah in consultation with the secretary of defense secretary of the army does not mention the commander-in-chief Asshole, no, but Mike Pence phoned it in Mike. We are yeah, we're activating Like the DC and Virginia and Maryland National Guard and I thought what she does not have I don't I don't know And then shortly after that a bunch of for every living former secretary of defense and a bunch of former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Stuff all put out these really weird public statements and then the next day Trump gave this like Gun to his head concession speech where he's just seething

It's difficult not to read between the lines there and think that somebody has had a talk with our big special wet boy and told him what's gonna happen I I had figured that they basically showed him the video of Kennedy being waxed like Play nice Talking about that about like who had to basically put a gun to his head and say alright asshole like it's it's time to pack this up No, it's got to be the military. No one else is in a position to do it. So now well, there's this really interesting kind of side note here, but The Kennedy Library for years in Boston had a exhibit about the Cold War

I have no idea if it's still there specifically about the Cuban Missile Crisis and How there was an alternate speech drafted in the event we had, you know nuked Cuba But nobody knows who wrote it. It wasn't written by Kennedy No one on the Joint Chiefs of Staff ever sort of claimed ownership So there's just this phantom speech going around which would have really literally been a coup Because they would have subverting Kennedy's authority. So like this sort of thing has happened before but yeah I got a figure, you know, not Esper because he doesn't have the have the stones for it But somebody or former Secretary Esper or whatever

Pulled him aside put a nine millimeter to his head and said alright asshole Like it's it's it's time to go there's the hot shot Exciting times we love to live in history, don't we? We love to like perceive and exist in a historical moment We don't actually I was told that there was the end of history and and it doesn't feel very ending to me I was about to say yeah, I've just I'm just surprised It seems like the Democrats may not in fact impeach Trump Recording right yeah, cuz they're useless and I'm like there's only there's only one thing you can do in this situation And that is to hang Trump on the Capitol steps and leave his body to Pewter pie for about six months

Like by this point you have to set an example somehow Exactly, otherwise the next guy whether that's like Holly or like Tom Cotton or whoever the fuck is gonna be pulling this shit But competently and that's that we've seen we've seen like the the character of like these various people who have been identified They're all like X like they all own pool cleaning companies and boat dealerships and my pillow guy some of them are cops some of them are like in the military or were in the military and it's like It's chud dawn it rules Yeah, I feel so good about this Joe Cossabian had a did a tweet. I apologize to say did a tweet

About how these people aren't larpers and shouldn't be considered such and I think that's probably true like These people are fucking serious man, like they might not be competent, but they are fucking serious Well, you don't you don't need to be that competent to do what they're trying to do Again you should be suspicious of these people and like you should like but I can't believe I said on this program, but like Yeah, don't tolerate fascism Yeah, I'm like you don't have to you don't have to hand it to him. You don't have to try to Rehabilitate these people like I know that I might Differ from some people on the left with that with that stance

But like they're fucking Nazis you can shoot him like fucking Nazis and Nazis get the rope Unless unless you're in the United States in which case you just start NASA No, I mean the thing is right as as at time of recording as we're recording this pretty much everybody who like Livestream themselves taking a shit and Nancy Pelosi's office or whatever is currently getting arrested by the FBI, right? And resistance Twitter love this shit They live for this shit because this is the thing that they love more than ever thing It's like the cops come in and they save the day and they finally get the like catharsis of like handcuffs and perp walks and stuff that they've always wanted from the Trump administration

And I think you've got a chart of course between like saying. Oh, yeah, this is great Actually, I love the FBI and I want to kiss them on the mouth and then the kind of like dumbass left reaction to that which is like Because the FBI and my enemies my enemies arresting my enemies means that I have to feel bad for like West Virginia newly elected state representative chud Gork Lynch as he's being marched away, you know, oh the wheeling Gork Lynch's Yeah, no, I you know, we had this this this conversation before we started recording and like there's this weird divide of like You know, the enemy of your enemy is not your friend Like and you don't have to fucking

You don't have to have solidarity with Nazis and listen, I don't like we had this discussion I don't know what the correct answer is like, you know, there's been people on the left who have like Called the FBI to report death threats or have really, you know, weighed those considerations heavily and like I'm gonna tell you on this podcast I don't know what the answer is. I don't talk to cops But like if somebody sent me a death threat, it's and I thought that was credible It was like I'm gonna kill you and your girlfriend my tune might change Like all the self-defense in the world and I can't tell you, you know What I would or wouldn't do because I've never been put in a situation like that and I feel very confident in my personal abilities to defend myself

But you know that calculus is gonna change if it's somebody I love if it's you know, my girlfriend and Megan like That that would be scary. And so like I can't you know Avoid talking to the cops whenever necessary. I mean, that's a good rule of thumb But like I think that for a lot of people it's just sort of like well when they're arresting Nazis What do you I'm not gonna fucking like boo them for it. Mm-hmm. Yeah Like, you know, there's there's a lot of people out there, you know disaffected working-class people who are Unengaged in politics that is possible to radicalize left They they aren't these people. No, right?

I'm not gonna like friend of the show, but I'm not gonna get into it So, oh, do you really think the average rank-and-file Trump supporter is a literal fascist? I'm like, well, maybe not but if you're just talking about Damn close like if you're talking about these people. Yeah, I think we've seen pretty conclusively That they did you know that they'll make that case for you. I Think that's absolutely true. And I think a lot of it is it like for four years, you know If you called Trump and his supporters Nazis like you were overreacting and it's just like well What the fuck would you have done during the equivalent of the beer hall pooch, which was this?

Like, you know This is a thing that's frightening to me, right? Is not that this happened because as Just in service a long time coming and it was pretty much inevitable Based on the like level of complicity with the cops and like incompetence and all of this What frightens me is the number of people who I like know and respect and trust on the left who are suddenly starting to talk Fascists in a way that is very like a very strange to me and I that that frightens me Yeah, don't frightens me too. I mean I I

Suppose I I understand the desire to rehabilitate these people and you know try and sort of if you really do sort of buy into the like Every single person who voted for Trump is just inches if they just read theory or whatever But like yeah, I don't believe that to be true. I I Believe that you have to you can't really Reconcile I know the people that do this and do reconcile with these people and get people out of the clan I personally don't have the patience for that and I believe you should still keep slugging Nazis in the mouth Yeah, I mean the thing is right like all of the talk about the class character of this gets into like the same fucking

arguments we've been having for the last five ten years about class reductionism and about id poll and like it's not id poll Specifically to talk about white supremacy, which is the point of this like it's It's it's a race riot, right? These these people are racist first and the fact that that's why that they're like This contains people of multiple classes because they're bound together by chiefly racism This this this seems like, you know, as much as it's like, okay, maybe there's some there's some Trump voters You can you can like maybe bring back into the fold of you know The folks and I think in fact there's probably a lot of a lot of them that you could bring into the fold of our side

Anyone who showed up for this bullshit you can write off No, it doesn't matter what that what they're doing, you know, if they're in your favorite indie band if they're in your union Whatever you got to kick them out There should be social consequences for for being a fascist and like I understand that you know That might be unpopular and like whatever I understand. Yeah, we're not like waving a big sports pen that just says FBI on it here, right? You know you you don't have to fucking be making nice with these people. I Do think there are some nasty implications about these domestic terrorism laws that

That's obviously Goosey arrows is gonna get fucking shot with an M134 or something because we passed the the president's respecting acts because of this Yes But like You're causing a bit of echo. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry about that. I like that's that's a difference, right? Is your You can oh, yeah much. Yeah. Okay. Thank you You can you can support these people facing consequences for whatever they personally have done and the crucially not support whatever like acts the Democrats crammed together

To make it illegal to like frown at a picture of Joe Biden or whatever Yeah, it's much like a lot of things. It's not black and white as it turns out Get sent to prison for a picture of Joe Biden looking like Winnie the Pooh Oh, we're getting there. There's one form of government that's socialism with Chinese characteristics Cool, we get socialism with Biden characteristics Jack right as he throws you into a six by four cell. Yeah. Yeah Well Now that that's going to I'm sure sparks some discourse. Oh boy on the Twitter. Oh boy. Yep. Yep. Yep

In other news redirect Elon Musk is now the world's richest man In African-american That's identity politics for you. I think I think we actually did steal that from Nate. Yeah We're all He's entered into the octagon is just like throwing elbow strikes left and right Yeah, I love watching like Nate get genuinely pissed off on Twitter just because like I watched him like More or less just go psychotic on like one guy and I was like I see Nate has found somebody to kick around today

And I was like it was like I felt like an affinity for him I felt our souls grow close because I was like I do this Bullies so that's all they block you. That's Liam, baby. Yes. That's a good idea Elon Musk now has a net worth of 180 billion dollars based on his electric car company that makes half as many cars as The next smallest car maker. Yep. The reason why is Trading yeah stock value in emissions trading the two business models of Tesla basically Yeah, it works to make an African-american the world's richest man Yes, he's temporarily eclipsed Jeff Bezos. He's gonna go back down again in a bit but like

Yeah, no, so very exciting that we we now have guys making the money that you can't comprehend how much it is On the basis of things that you can't comprehend how they work In order to produce nothing I'm just to give you an idea if I had one dollar for every dollar that Jeff Bezos had excuse me Elon Musk had I would have 180 billion dollars Yes, I I shuttered to think what you would do with that sort of money Lots of trains. Yeah by every class one at every class two probably. Oh, yeah, I could buy Do you like short lines?

I could finally I could finally do what Jay Gold set out to do and have a Transcontinental Railroad under a single ownership Western yes, it's just your face Well, no, I could finally fulfill the manifest destiny of the Atlantic and Western Railroad. Oh boy And we could market a root beer afterwards Actually where I and I and W root beer comes from I have no idea I gotta look this up now No, it's gonna be like two immigrants who decided to like put a bunch of weird shit in a barrel and like charge people to drink from it So it's gonna be called. It's the initials of the founder. Yes

It's gonna be like Anthony recent use or something Allen and close enough right close enough sounds Polish to me Oh Anyway, so let's get on to today's incident incident. Yes All right, so I thought we'd start out with some history always good because it's fun Here is image of Center Square in Philadelphia. Thanks. Yes the pubic buildings. Yes It's this is from the 1910 GW Bromley Atlas, right?

I love the Masonic temple right fucking there. Just so you know, it's a charge. Oh, yeah Yeah, it's a it's a nice building you can take tours of it Do not ask about the secret basement What secret basement that's right shut up. How'd you get it here? I haven't been in the Masonic temple I have been in the Union League. We'll get to that in a second Hey, me too. I was there with you. Was that a nice chandelier? We're not class traders. We're not class traders We're on an architecture tour So

Center Square was the is the intersection of Philadelphia's Cardo Maximus and Decumonus. Do you want to go by Roman? That is you know traditionally in a Roman city plan you'd have Cardo Maximus is the north-south street Decumonus is the east-west street traditionally the forum would be at the Intersection but here in Philadelphia, of course, we had Center Square and then later City Hall, right? Is is right there smack in the middle of the city, right? It's also where the subway and the L intersect right everything can can everything goes into City Hall That's why we're the best city because the government is in the middle

Nothing ever comes out notably He does go in isn't city Hall the building with the statue of John Hancock holding a scroll Where now that the buildings have gotten taller they're at a level that like if you look at it It looks like he's just holding a massive dick. Are you talking about William Penn? William Penn. Why don't I say John Hancock? It's because of the cock thing. God damn British It's Holding the treaty the pen treaty. Oh, yeah, that's why oh fun fact in case you're ever wondering why he doesn't point North-south, east or west of why instead he points sort of north northeast

It's because he points in the direction of Penn's landing where William Penn landed in 1682 Also, where the Treaty of Shaka Max on the side. There we go. That was the name of the tree. Thank you. Yeah Yeah, we don't have to do a land acknowledgement because the land was actually bought in good faith there So behold is our Twitter feed implodes. Yeah, exactly, right? This is the other thing we're gonna cause discourse about so traditionally Sort of East Market. That's like East of Broad Street over over here This was the more expensive area West Market was a little cheaper This was on account of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Broad Street station being here

It's a very large, very beautiful building Most most cities that have an east-west divide the West bits the nice bit Well, we've gotten it's funny because now we're there as a city. Yeah, it's like the Earth's magnetic field Yes, the problem was the Pennsylvania Railroad had all these railroad tracks coming in on what was known as the Chinese wall Okay Because it was just a huge wall with railroad tracks on top which divided It reduced the amount of area on Market Street usable for buildings and it sort of it blocked a bunch of streets So people couldn't travel easily

From north of the viaduct to south of it So that's roughly along today's JFK Boulevard But yeah center square was where you built in this sort of area center square was where you built your prestigious institution So, you know, you had Broad Street station, of course empties out into the center stuff You had the rating terminal over here that is still there But now it's part of the convention center John Wanamaker's department store, right? You had Snellenberg's over here. You had The Masonic Temple, right? You had the Academy of Fine Arts. You had the Union League

You had the Odd Fellows Temple, you know All of these like 19th century societies for those who like joining things Yeah, exactly saving America Alice saving America Wearing like I'm wearing like a Fez just in your own time driving a tiny little takedown the street I just knew that was just a family guy bit I think that I referenced because I thought for some reason there was a real thing called the Fighting Dukakai A little Dukakai in Feds hats driving tiny little tanks down Broad Street No, that's what the that's what the shiners do. They drive the tiny little cars while wearing Fezes. Thank you. Yeah, I

Always thought it'd be fun to be a shiner. I always want to drive the little car I'll play Shriners not Shiners The Shriners Shriners words. Yeah, also, you can't drive although to be fair if you can't drive a full-size car Roz Yeah, this might be to your benefit I love the idea of you like replacing your bike with one of these like I can't carry anything but look how cute I look Here's a fun. Here's a fun fact Note how there's a subway station here. This is 15th. Then here is 13th

Then here is 11th, right? Hmm. This is because the Market Street L was privately financed So in order to take away some of the department stores sidewalk vaults That's their storage vaults that extended underneath the street They had to make a deal Um, so that every department store got its own subway station. Oh, yes. Are they still open? Oh, they are all still or the subway. Yeah, the subway station. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Oh, yeah Only one of makers is still open as a department store though and it's now Macy's great fun though to uh To for people who haven't ridden SEPTA for the first time to be like, why are we stopping so often to be like?

I'm glad you asked and then by the time your speech is over You've cleared three out of the four unnecessary subway stops Yeah, because it goes it goes second fifth eighth 11 11th 13th 15th 30th Once they cleared the department stores, they're like, no, no stations for you You want to get off in 22nd? Take a fucking trolley, buddy. Yeah One institution of note here is the Gerard Trust Company right here. Yeah famously easy to 3d model Yes, beautiful building The Gerard Trust Bank was the still chugging along

Uh, privatized remnants of alexander hamilton's first bank of the united states, right? It was bought by steven gerard after its charter expired um By 1903 they were just this massive enterprise, right? And they needed a new building, right and they commissioned the greatest architect in philadelphia to design it Right that man was frank fernes That's a hell of a moustache. Oh, yeah, I love this guy. This is my guy looks like he like when he's not, you know designing Genuinely like gorgeous buildings. He is trying to fight

Yes Frank fernes wakes up goes to a drafting board smashes a bottle over his own head and cranks out a masterpiece And drops a dude before you wake up for pennsylvania secret service agent 0001 Oh, absolutely Yes, truly truly some astonishingly good architecture Frank fernes is known for sort of violent juxtapositions a clashing architect architectural elements And prominent use of new materials like riveted steel beams As architectural features, right? Uh, most of his best work has been demolished, which we'll sort of talk about cowards

Yeah, I know he was also a civil war veteran He was the captain of company f of the sixth pennsylvania volunteer cavalry. He was a medal of honor recipient It sounds more impressive until you realize that until well off the civil war the medal of honor was the only medal the us awarded Shut up. Do you have one? You didn't put uh, you didn't put the bridmore hotel up here Uh, no, I didn't because of that less space. It's not that's not even in philly. That's so pretty Oh my god, it's so pretty now. They use it as a school, but it was a hotel It's dude. This is my favorite frank fernes building and there's no leon representation on this slide

All right, all right, I'll put it in and post. Thank you. Thank you It's been up on towards the screen like a newspaper in an old movie So, uh, frank fernes was a larger than life character, right? He's said to have Had a target painted on the back of the elevator shaft in his office, right? And he would take potshots at it with a shotgun during the day to relieve stress, right? dude's rock Is a very prolific architect his firm fernes evans and company Designed something like 600 buildings mostly in southeast pennsylvania and south jersey area

In fact, I think almost exclusively the only building I can think of that's out of that area was uh, the old new orleans union station um so Gerard bank commissioned furnace to uh, no, he did um He did uh, he did a couple things in uh in newport. I think He did one of the uh, the the newport mansions. I'm pretty sure it may have just been The carriage house, but I'm almost positive. He did a new port mansion or tail

Hmm, and he did a church on mount desert island in maine And okay, just a little one other fun fact. He did fight at the battle of gettysburg. He is our proudest son We found the only good architect slow down So he um All right, so gerard bank commissioned him to do The uh, the new gerard bank uh trust building right and they took one look at his plans And they said well We'll let you know

And then they handed off his site plan to the prudes at mckinn needon white right And um, they designed this thing Yeah Kind of boring. Uh, it looks like a bank. You just you just did the jefferson the jefferson, uh monument Yeah, I know it's it's kind of it's kind of um Kind of kind of well, you know, it's a classical building whatever. Mm-hmm. That's fine

But he's meanwhile this guy's designing hogwarts on either side like yes. All right. We got the national bank of the republic This is um, this is actually like the presentation font, which is great um, and then we had the uh, what's this other one shit um Hold on. I I should uh, I should have written down what this one is called because I forget West end trust building No west end trust is actually this building here. Oh, okay. Yeah um

You can tell because it looks nice that it was one of those. I know right because it's a ridiculous looking building I think I think I put it I think I put it down somewhere. This is this is one of the most famous ones, which was of course demolished um so Okay, so Life and trust was that it rovin life and trust. That's the one. Yes. Yep. Yep so

All right, shortly afterwards they attached this the morris building here Because they needed more office space. I believe I believe that was named for robert morris the other rich guy who financed the revolutionary war um And uh, well morris financed the revolutionary war gerard financed the war of 1812 Yeah So on an overtime gerard bank realized they needed more space so They hire makin meet and white again to tear down frank furnaces west end trust building

And put up a larger and more boring building in its place Right. That's the gerard trust building right here, right? That's much uglier. It looks like uh, yeah, it's it looks like the fucking like Mormon church administration buildings and sort of like sassy Yeah, it's just honestly, uh, so it's so depressing. It's just it's it's okay. It's okay. It's not great You know, it's it's it's a bozar skyscraper. What it would how much can you expect out of it? Justin Ludwig van Mies Rosniak, uh, yes, I shut down the barhouse to appease the nazis it was me

So They completed construction on this in 1931 just in time for the great depression As a result the office space in there was more than adequate for the bank's needs until the mid 1960s When they decided to go in with fidelity mutual life insurance on a much larger tower on the adjacent lot This was called three gerard plaza, right? this guy here I had topped out at 492 feet, which is still short of the 580 foot height of william penn's hat But it was the tallest building built in philadelphia since before the war because there was a long-standing gentleman's agreement

That no building in the city could be taller than william penn's hat People reside over this by the way, we'll get there. Cool. Yes. We love we love city planning done by gentlemen's agreement Yeah, so I was 38 floors 756 square 756 thousand square foot of space designed by the offices of Vincent Kling and associates, right and they sort of specialized in replacing frank furnace buildings philistine philistine and philistine It's so depressing Let's look at some examples

All right, so here's broad street station right here, right? Vincent Kling and associates replaced that with one and two penn square This is the arcade building, right notable because it was largely built over a sidewalk We're gonna fill it Yeah, this this behind this facade is almost no building. It's hilarious when you look at the floor plans They replaced that with one and two penn center. Excuse me one and two center square here two of the most impressive buildings Interesting buildings and putting boxes Center square used to at least have a bar in the basement and they closed that tail

Yeah, I just has a fucking daycare. It was the only it was it was interesting because they had outdoor seating indoors Yeah, they really they did it was great american pub was a just a strange place Because there was like a skylight In the concourse level and then the bar was like contained underground, but there was outdoor seating In sort of this skylight area I will say are back many years ago when I worked at city hall That was the easiest place to get dip and it got to the point where the convenience store shut up the convenience store Guys recognized me and they just like grabbed one from behind them and slapped it on the counter

How nice go back to work. Yeah, it was like deficit. We had a system And I believe Vincent Kling worked in the offices of edmund bacon when they were planning When when they did uh independence mall, which you can see here This is independence hall right here and you can see in front of it are lots of buildings So you got a whole historic district right there of like everything built up together instead of a fucking disney land national mall Yeah, what they did instead is they decided what if we demolished all of those buildings So that the tourists can have a nicer view of independence hall And then we can build the national constitution center back here

So they can give a a medal of liberty to a war crimes guy each year and Oh god, the national constitution center. I think it's the worst museum in philly Besides the museum of the american revolution. Well, I went there I went to the national constitution center with my dad and my actual both my parents and my dad complained for two and a half hours How jingoistic it was? Uh, which is true. It really is it's just like america good war crimes. No Do they at least have a copy of the constitution?

Yes, okay, the museum of the american revolution is an event space masquerading as a museum which kind of makes it worse Yeah, that's true. It's like a tiny museum big hall. Yeah So both those frank furnace buildings I showed before Uh, the we're we're within this uh footprint Oh Yeah, dude One of the worst decisions the city ever made was building this fucking stupid mall Doesn't it make you feel more like washington dc? I don't want to feel like

I don't want to feel yeah gc sucks Dude, I just it sucks ass because you just go down there and whatever It's bible thumping fucking protested ass weirdos are just like y'all are going to hell. It's just like I fucking know dude It's 8 30 on a tuesday. I don't care They're just like, oh, well if you came to our church, it was fucking below me wasn't uh, wasn't the the mall in philadelphia also the thing where they had um This massive controversy because they uncovered george washington's uh, like slave slave slave quarters. Yeah They have sort of a permanent outdoor exhibit to it now, but that's good. But yeah, well it's it's

I would prefer if they if they weren't just like and nothing bad ever happened again They sort of strip it of its context, which is a little which you you expect but like it's still it's still a little It's still a little rich and it's like it's separate from the actual like uh president's house, right? So if you want the the full like Historical uh brutality included you have to like go and walk a little way and see the extra bonus content, right? Which is like a whole bunch of weird shit with the park service down there Do you understand that washington dc and philly aren't the same city? Yeah, you said the president's house. I just wanted to make sure you don't think the president lives in philly. No, no, no the first

Oh Right here. Yeah, I was just very confused. That's why I called it the president's house because that's it's a name I was just Yeah, I'm I'm I'm sorry. I ever doubted you. Well, you ever forget that's all right. I forget Come on boys and green. Love you so much buddy. Sorry everyone All right I'll shut the fuck up for 30 seconds

Many crimes the many crimes of vince and cling also did the uh us mint building back here I kind of like the mint building Sorry I I am not a huge fan of it. It's tucked away though. So it's less egregious Oh, I kind of like it sort of suburban industrial building, but they plopped it in this urban setting When they've already done so much and did he at 17th? No, we couldn't have him. No, I did not. Yeah, that was way earlier Yeah, he wasn't even born yet. Okay You gotta stick to like the denver mint, which just looks like uh, fuck you. Fuck you. Do not rob me

Automated guns automated guns everywhere the denver mint like if you don't know what the denver mint looks like I highly recommend googling it because it sounds like the noise of a car door being locked But like in 19th century The other thing is vince and cling did one of my favorite buildings in the city, which is the municipal services building. Oh great building How to be it, but it's a great building. What's wrong with being in it? So when I worked for the city, uh, we had this this task we had to do every friday Where despite being city employees, it's not the fault of the building itself is the fault of the philadelphia government and the sheriff's office

Who because we were responsible at least in part for payroll Uh made it absolutely as difficult as possible for us to give the nice government workers their money So to go up to like the 14th floor and like barter basically with a sheriff's deputy to get access to the computer We needed to be able to give the people their money Until like make sure that like Everyone had had done what they needed to do to get paid and made sure that like, you know If there were people who who had uh In some cases like and like court fees and stuff to make sure they were paid and the sheriff's deputies were like

Court fees we'll make this worse for working people and I was just like guys Please just please just let me back there so I can do my job, which I don't get paid enough Please just like some sheriff's deputy was I was just on his phone. I was like, why are you even here, man? What are you doing? Get out of here Every time I had to bring payroll to the folks at one parkway They were just like, uh, yeah, take that take the envelopes and I was able to go around The office and give people their pay stubs. It was great. It was like have some money. Have some money. I have some I was Santa Claus. Yeah

That was uh working for the city is an experience. Um, it's surprisingly casual That's how I felt about working for the state too. Also in some ways surprisingly not casual Um, I always liked that the city was just like one hour lunch. It's paid. Just go do whatever the fuck you want. We don't care All right, so anyway this building One meridian plaza at this time known as one gerard, uh, three gerard plaza, right? Um, you remember the 9 11 episode we talked about yeah, never forget Yeah, I never forget We talked a bunch about the special structural systems holding up those towers the tube frame constructions on so forth and three gerard plaza

Did not have any of that. This is a very conventionally framed building regular old steel frame with internal columns, you know, so You know your basic sort of grid structure, right? I'm not going to draw all of these grid lines every single one You've already committed to every single one there, but The only really unconventional thing here is that the elevator banks were all on one side of the building That was because the intention was that they would eventually buy the lot down here And construct another building as an addition and they would then share the elevator bank, right?

Putting an extension on my skyscraper cool Yes, considering also this is this is a um, this is already attached to the gerard trust building over here Right, that was uh, they had a crossover on I think most of the lower floors. I think they stopped at some point though um There were three stairwells Right east stair. There was the west stair. There was the center stair, right? Mm-hmm Concrete floors on metal decks spray on fire proofing so on and so forth, right?

Was this done better than the spray on fire proofing in the world trade center where we saw the guy just kind of like went Okay, cool Seal done. Let's go home That is a good question, which I don't know the answer to we love we love a union job Don't we folks where we can simply go? All right, I'm going home I am I I I I can't do this unless we have uh, 45 minutes of ranting about ass belts Drawing a Sean's face on a football

So this was built in compliance with the 1949 Philadelphia building code. Oh, yeah so sprinkler systems were only required on below grade floors Um, yeah, there were hose which by the way, that seems a lot better than whatever the hell grandfell was built to No, we have worse than uh, Philadelphia in Well the late 40s. Yeah, cool. Yeah There were some hose stations throughout the building. They were connected to the low pressure potable water supply, right?

So that's you know, like the the Water supply that goes to like the drinking fountains the toilets the sinks on so forth Um, and then there was something called a dry standpipe for fire department use right dry risers for our British audience So let's explain. What's a dry standpipe or a dry riser? Um Other than the thing that you see the sign for on a building like you'll see a big safety sign that says dry riser and you'll be like Yeah, I don't know what that is

So now you do now you're a member of the fucking elite the selects the problematics now You will know what a dry riser is We got to get one of those dumbass marine billboards. They put up in rural areas Do you want to fight a dragon in your dress blues? Of course you do Yes, this ross has to give you a sword he drops it slices one of his fingers out congratulations You got 11 fingers now you take that old son so You may have seen

on the outside of buildings or on the inside of buildings these um These sort of brass plates, right? They say dry standpipe. They say exterior fire sprinklers or something's like that That's where the fire department can hook up to these systems the idea of the dry Standpipe is it's just a pipe the pipe goes from the bottom of the building to the top of the building It has several um valves on it where you can connect To fire hoses so you can fight a fire anywhere in the building without having to drag Hoses all the way up the stairs from the pump truck on the floor You can just have a relatively short length of hose

And the pump truck fills the dry standpipe with water and then the water comes out of your hose, right? So and and you know if you so so this is a very simple system. It's just a pipe, right? So it was the atmospheric railway and look where that got us Oh, well this pipe doesn't have a slot in it. Ah, okay Yeah, it makes it a little easier, right? So, you know, instructions unclear dry rise are filled with horse viscera Ah, shit. What am I doing here, man? Spraying a pink mist on the fire. Yeah

This boss, this is not helping at all boss. I've engulfed the boss Come get me So, you know, they're supposed to be tested every once in a while. Sometimes they're not tested frequently Sometimes there's obstructions in the pipe, but you know, usually these things are pretty reliable, right? And usually there's more than one dry Standpipe or riser in the building, right? Usually I see. Yeah, usually things are gonna go poorly Now another option some buildings have is something called a wet standpipe, right? And a wet standpipe has pressurized water in it at all times and is there thus more complicated?

Let's explain why Well, if you play with any of the valves you get hit in the face with a fire hose All right, this is fun because I can I actually I'm just going to draw this. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so We need to explain the concept of hydraulic head Ah So this is a This This is a a unit of pressure which is often used in pipe systems, right?

So it's expressed in a unit of length, right? So it's usually X meters centimeters feet of water. It's fairly intuitive, right? Let's imagine, you know, this is a Water tower I'm going with the old fashion type with the peaked roof. It's probably made of wood. Oh, yeah, that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly, right our teast here Yeah Um, this is at some elevation Great, and then there's water in here. We got our free surface marker here Right, and there's a pipe

That comes out of the water tower and we're what we're gonna do is we're gonna assume the water is flowing right Through this pipe to uh, let's say You have a house here, right?

Right, okay, okay This this is the house um Has a a door. Yeah, um, there's that is a press looking house. No, there's a flower here that makes it nicer It's got a chimney and there's some smoke coming out of it, right? Maybe there's a dormer as well on this side. Okay so Beautiful now then

So five years gets you a Drexel ladies and gentlemen All right, so let's let's um Sort of look at all right, so you can imagine, you know, we have our surface here in the water tower, right? Um, and you can imagine this this pipe here. It's full of water It's flowing if you took another tube and jammed it into the pipe as such right The water would then flow

Up to the same level that it is in the water tower, right? Okay minus Something called the hydraulic gradient, right, which there's some losses due to friction over the uh Over the length of the pipe, right? Have you a long enough pipe, you know, the head decreases to zero? Um, in addition, there's something called dynamic head Which is where if you have a pipe which is inclined towards the angle of flow um

It will actually because of the velocity of the water it will flow slightly higher than the hydraulic gradient. Um But you know, so the result of this is um The pressure in the pipe Is equal to sort of the pressure of water from the free surface All the way down to the location of the pipe. That's why you know, these pipes are under very high pressure despite being, you know four feet underground is because the reservoir is I don't know 100 200 feet above

the inlet of the pipe, right? And you know most municipal systems give you 70 or 80 feet ahead just out of the pipe after that you need a pump right Um, and that means if you have like residential service, that's far too much for the pipe No, no, it's not. No, it's not. I want to open my faucet and let's get killed instantly You take a shower and are reduced to a paste And that's how that's how you get the pink viscera in the stand pipe. Yeah We're efficient here

So normally if you're if you're not looking to be reduced to a pink mist by your shower head In order for you know, a house or something to receive water from the municipal system, you need a pressure reducing valve, right? Um Now if you've ever rented like a whole house, right? And you notice you don't have enough water pressure And you called the landlord up to complain about it, right? And the landlord comes Or maybe the landlord's guy comes

And he goes and does 10 seconds of work in the basement and everything's fixed That was adjusting the pressure reducing valve He's not actually fixed the problem with the pipes. He's just increased the amount of pressure going into the system um So, you know, and that that sometimes that's fine. Sometimes it's not but you're telling me that if if you live in a house You can just go in your basement and um and and just open up the valve. Yeah Yeah, and blind and or turn into a fly fine pig mist. Yeah, it might blow up all your pipes. Yeah Sounds fucking great. I mean, I know what i'm doing after we finish recording this

It would just be Liam and bras and if everyone would get mad at me because then it would just be one person interrupting instead of two This way we outvote him Very creative way to commit suicide opening up the pressure reducing valve points points points for technique. Yeah Just someone over your corpse holding up a 10 The soviet judge gives you a 6.8 My my my resurrected corpse yells that's bullshit from my half destroyed jaw. Yeah Well, it'd be like a be like a Puppeteer dead guy puppeteer. All right. So this is easy enough in a house. You have one pressure reducing valve

Let's say you have a high rise building with many of them. Yeah Uh sort of soulless corporate office building here. Can you write capital one on top of that for me? Yeah, that works Yeah, there we go, I can feel my soul getting sucked out of her. Oh Men will literally storm the capital instead of storming the capital Makes you think They should they should that building is god God, you you have some issues here You can't necessarily use your municipal service for the top floors, right? Because you know the the hydraulic

gradient a is low enough that You know, it's reduced something from the water tower B even the free surface in the water tower is not high enough for the top floors, right? So you got to start you got to add a pump and that pump's going to pump water to the top of the building, right? Because of this The water pressure on the lower floors is always much higher than the water pressure on the top floors So you need a different pressure reducing valve on every floor in order to make sure That when you open the sink

It doesn't you know turn you into pink. Yeah, and now you see, right? Why like every fifth floor of a skyscraper is just plunked. It's just a machine floor Yeah, actually that was my next question. Does it correspond? Sort of to a range of floors or is it have to be by floor? I am not sure. Okay. Um, I would imagine you could probably have it correspond to a range of floors relatively easily Yeah, because my question was sort of like, I know for a fact two Liberty in Philly Has I think it's something like 10 floors which are all mechanical For floors above 35

Like 35 for like 26 to 35 is just all mechanical I know that's common. I just wasn't sure if it was a range or if it was per There's a huge amount of services you need in these buildings in order to keep them running And as air handlers, there's uh transformers. There's you know, all kinds of stuff Like skyscrapers Skyscrapers very efficient in some ways very inefficient in others In that you have to have this many floors of mechanical to make one floor of livable I'm convinced that there's no reason to build a building over 10 stories basically ever. Um

Prestige though prestige you can you can put your name on it So This also applies to the wet stand pipe, right in a dry stand pipe system the firefighters go up to a certain level, right? They open up the thing the pump truck can adjust the pressure for any amount of pressure the firefighters need for their hoses, right? Um, but the wet stand pipe needs a series of pressure reducing valves to ensure that the water pressure delivered to the firefighters hoses is not too high, right? Because the fire hose You know every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, right? If the stand pipe delivers too high pressure water the fire hose

The fireman holding the hose is going to start flying around like he's in a cartoon, you know Just flung through the air, right? You know, so you need an embarrassing way to die. Yes, you need You need these pressure reducing valves in order to prevent Having an embarrassing loony toons death So That being said um I'm going to use the restroom

Every time how are you doing lamb? Oh, I'm good. You know, there's the creeping specter of fascism, which is kind of a bummer. Yeah Uh, but but I could be worse. I I didn't think we were gonna record today I'm happy we're gonna either I woke up like Just in time to record this because I woke up and then uh, you guys were We're yelling at me and like, hey, do you want to record in half an hour? I was like, yeah, actually this sounds good I'm conscious. Let's do that. I am conscious. I am conscious. I've just got up So this is a big change from like and I apologize again to the to the listeners of the last bonus episode

I don't you deserve that You knew what you were getting into but like Yeah, I know all the people who like maybe you should at least record but you're not tired Like yeah, shut up. You at least had a good reason to be tired. I was just Fucking I don't know what was going on with me other than not being able to keep consistent hours, but I was dead on my feet for that. So Oh, yeah, by the way speaking of bonus episodes next bonus episode. It's my turn Kids, that's right, and it's gonna be the nfl. You were annoyed when I did a sports episode

I'm doubling down, baby. Stick to sports stick to sports stick to sports I I really want to talk about the nfl's response to cobit and just like The nfl as an institution and how goddamn dumb it gets. Yeah, I like just like the We've talked a little bit a little bit about like the ncAA which is in some ways more evil But like we got to talk about the nfl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, like I you know, there's been this whole debate over Over whether or not these leagues should even play and I kind of my my thing with the nfl and and sort of the mba And hockey and baseball is that I don't

Really care simply because these guys have a union. There's no penalty opt-outs like They at least are getting paid But like for these kids a lot of whom see playing as their only chance to like make it to the nfl If you're in a program like alabama Yeah, you know and you're starting ot besides he's not going to play then you're absolutely going to play Yeah, you know because a lot of these kids are poor. They're there on scholarship like You know, if you don't play you might miss your opportunity to like get drafted and you're gonna get you're gonna get a cte And covet at the same time because we've made things more efficient

Yeah, and I mean they've gotten lucky I guess in that like No student athletes from prominent programs that I know of have dropped dead of covet But if that's your only benchmark, I don't know what to tell you other than I'm not surprised because here's the ncAA But like there's this story going around now about how all the sixers have to quarantine I'm just like we couldn't have just done this in a tournament bubble. No every team comes every play a best of three We have to drag out a whole fucking season for this ended and I'll say like the ncAA season I haven't watched but I've seen the highlights here and there and it sucks And ohio states in having won seven games and like it's an illegitimate season. So

That is my opinion on that. But yeah, it's it's that's gonna be the next bonus episode is the nfl Uh, and then eventually I'll get around to country music and online dating All right, how was your pee? Uh, it was good. I we were talking all this about water and I was like, I need a pee Fair enough. So Anyway, let's fast forward a bit to the mid 1980s, right? So a fantastic time in american history And what's nothing bad? Everyone is everyone is wearing those blue shirts with the white collars and red suspenders

Everyone is talking on a comically large cell phone And driving a poor shirt everything is A star track maybe you got a kuntosh. Oh, you know what you've now went into a wall Statistically you have been killed by driving your Lamborghini into a wall This is true. Yes. It's a great time. Great timing. I'm gonna switch to I'm gonna switch The pen color to red because we're not talking about water anymore. So Gerard bank was bought by melon bank, right? The building was renamed three melon bank center Then melon bank moved out and it became one meridian plaza after meridian bank moved in another major tenant was Comcast

Building ownership itself, uh, it was 65 owned by Algemeen Fun As a dutch civil servant pension fund again So 80s that like a dutch civil servant's pension could be tied up in a skyscraper in philadelphia I love to have my business like my my building owned by like honkball hoof de klasse sv or whatever They they they stage a honkball tournament on the roof every year So the remainder was by e slash r partners that was equitable life insurance in the rubin organization

I have no idea what the rubin organization is. Um, I believe that's uh Oh one of the the sixers owners Oh Michael g rubin, I think that's him, but it might not be no, it's not him apparently Uh, philadelphia adopted a new fire code in 1981 it required improved smoke detector systems, right? So the uh, the building you can see right here in this 1980s skyline with lots of pixelization Because it's from the office of records and all their scans are shit. Um, nice I know right I I I I I like that they have like this whole system for searching for historic photos

I don't like that all of the pictures are about 480 by 220 or whatever Rubin organization was bought by pr e it It's it's part of pre it. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. Oh my god. It's pennsylvania pennsylvania real estate investment trust Oh Recently been having a bunch of financial problems. I believe they filed for bankruptcy and then got right back out of it Like i'm 40 days later All right, that's efficient bankruptcy right there Definitely not a cheat code in any sense

They uh, they um Uh, shit. What's the other one philadelphia suburban development corporation, which owns a bunch of urban properties All of these sound like the conspiracies that like a private eye has to unravel in a james elroy novel More like scooby-doo because it's real estate Uh, it's another real estate developer. What a what a what a uh, what a surprise So Okay, by 1989 they were doing some uh, gradual renovations on the building right Including fire safety improvements, right?

So they started to convert the dry stand pipe system to a wet stand pipe system, right? With the associated pressure reducing valves so they can install sprinkler systems on the upper floors They were eventually gonna retrofit the entire building with sprinklers But in the interim they were only installing them either as tenants moved out or as tenants requested them, right? Um, yeah, I love to like rent out a couple of floors for my dry tinder storage company And ask hey, do you mind if I you know, you put some sprinklers in here? We we I rented out three floors to build a maltings Yeah, what are you going to be using the 111 floor for well, I'm mostly making thermites

Yeah, actually, I think I'm gonna I'm gonna throw a uh, some kind of chemical plant up here store a bunch of magnesium This this this this seems like an ideal spot for a meth lab This is why this is why petrochemical company really high up petrochemical company llc He's different the different atmospheric uh conditions up there on the top. Oh, yeah Yeah, exactly So, um, all right. So this is um, all right So, you know, they were gradually installing these sprinkler systems and through a creative interpretation of the fire code Oh boy the building was

Allowed to only have smoke detectors near the exits on each floor Instead of throughout each floor, right? Why how like what? So there was something about the Definition of a common area, okay Okay, which since it was an open Plan office space on every floor. Oh, that's just fucking great Required one or two smoke detectors on each floor Conveniently located next to the risers as opposed to actually going through the whole floor awesome

We love shortcuts. We love our shortcuts. They're more efficient. That's why you take them Yes, how do you present building fires? So this is um, uh, this is a picture of the philadelphia skyline in the uh late 80s early 90s, I think Um, well it has to be it couldn't be early because one liberties up Yeah, one liberties up two liberty is not one liberty was the first building to break the gentleman's agreement You can see william penn here being very very mad At this tall building Son of a bitch

The result of which of course was william penn cursed the eagle sixers philly's flyers sewn and so forth, right? um, the uh The philly sports has been shit ever since this building went up the eagles won a super bowl like two years ago, dude Yeah, well, I will get to that. Yeah, okay. How we restarted the curse. Yeah So anyway Now before we go we go further. I just wanted to take a moment to discuss fire safety With pause and gentry Oh my god

Paul if you've ridden septa you've seen pause and gentry. Um They are the septa dog a pause and the philadelphia fire department dog Gentry and they explained you through easy to remember mnemonics Of fire hazard, right? So let's start with stop, right? S stoves are dangerous t. They can start fires Oh often with hot greaser flames p Pay attention when cooking. Uh, I used to be the philly fire department's mnemonic guy

I I really like danger where he's not even pointing at what I assume is the fire alarm Is he all through this and drew these ever seen a dog? Didn't want never did it again, baby I'd like to point out that over 20 years of these cartoons existing the characters have been drawn exactly once That's true. Oh, they have been they've just mirrored gentry Talk about copy degradation Here's here's another one pause and gentry say check wires prevent fires Uh-huh. Uh, it's check c cords for cracks or frayed

h hidden dangers in old wiring e electrical outlets for loose plugs c counterfeit electrical appliances k keep from overloading outlets You know like I I have a lot of friends in like uh Various like mostly emt and paramedics, but like across emergency services and stuff And the one thing they all say about fire fighters, right?

Is that they've kind of done themselves out of a lot of work because of all of the public education that they do By doing this stuff if it's done Well, you get to a place where most of a fire fighters work day is like playing playstation And then like one percent will be actually, you know putting wet stuff on red stuff I'm not sure that that's still wet your drives I'm not sure that still applies when you're using fucking reused clipper from 1995 I don't know. We haven't had a skyscraper fire since uh, um, yeah, because all the skyscraper guys are Looking at these as they ride the subway. They're looking here. They're looking at pause and gentry. Yeah

So Pause horns me look look at that cold dead-eyed expression in the bottom left Honestly though. Yeah, he looks he looks kind of weird Gentry looks uh, uh, like a friendly dude pauses like just like he looks like he's got that thousand thousand yards stare Probably seeing some shit while operating the subway So Anyway, um pause. I was gotta clean the guys off the tracks with it. Yeah, you've seen you've seen a few too many man unders So anyway

Now we need to talk about flax Uh The seed Yes Oh, oh the right linseed oil. Yeah, right. Roll tight. Go flax. It's the uh, I'm renting my hundred and 11th floor flax storage facility So this is flax is the plant you get linen from right? This is flowering blue fibrous plant very pretty so on and so forth um, in addition to linen

You can get flax. Uh, you can get flax seed oil or linseed oil out of the flax plant. This is a natural edible oil. It's organic You know most unnatural non-toxic thing you can think of right and it has some properties that make it very good for treating wood for finish and durability, right That property is that it's a It's a drying oil right so when exposed to oxygen it polymerizes into a solid form, right? And this is sort of this long-term process which darkens the color of the wood over several months as volatile components evaporate, but the initial

polymerization is very quick And it's also Exothermic it gives off heat as the reaction occurs, right? All of the best reactions do that. That's fine. That's cool This is true. Yes, um that the burn means it's working Um So if there's a large surface area for this linseed oil to react say a linseed an oil soaked rag Uh-oh Such as one might use to apply linseed oil to wood

This process happens rapidly enough and is exothermic enough that the oil may auto ignite and catch fire, right? So when using linseed oil care must be taken to ensure that the rags aren't left lying around They should be immediately be burned in a controlled fashion Or soaked in soapy water and disposed of in a fireproof container And then what happens? February 23rd 1991 when ross says a date Things are going to go poorly Workers were finishing wood with flaxseed oil on the 22nd floor of the one meridian plaza building

That's crazy. Normally. I just finished wood with my hands Thank you This also would have put out the fire as we've seen in texas city You guys have got to kiss harder Anyway a moment for our sponsor blue chew Dicks rock hard buildings on fire rags You want a top you want a bottom you want to do missionary blue Blue

Vice news hasn't gotten back to me so So The workers finished their work for the day. It was saturday Um, they left and and they left for the day and they left the rags out in the open and went home For the weekends every time Do we know what they were tracing like was it just furniture or Like structure or It was a woodpan 1980s wood paneling. Oh cool. Yeah, you're gonna have a rumpus room on the 22nd floor

Yeah It's anyway, uh Danger Not good All right, so Um Predictably That linseed oil auto ignited

And the small fire it produced from one rag Quickly grew into one that could trigger the smoke alarm, which was all the way on the other side of the building. Oh boy Yeah So at 8 23 p.m. The smoke alarm went off And a building engineer was like Uh, god, and he went up the elevator to the 22nd floor to investigate The elevator car opened And there's just a wall of smoke and flame. Oh good

Yeah I pressed the wrong button. It's taken me to the floor that's on fire Took it took me to hell You know, I just come to the fuck nope going on. Nope. I am out sick, baby So Yeah, the elevator car immediately filled with smoke and the building engineer was unable to find It was so full of smoke the building engineer couldn't find the elevator control panel to bring himself back down He had a radio downstairs in the security guard to use the fire controls to manually recall the elevator

far Yeah So, you know the engineer and the security guard reconvened in the lobby There was another security guard on the 30th floor who took the stairs down Very quickly, that's what you want to imagine. Yeah, that's a good cardio though That guy has incredible thighs. Just like three trunks. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck That was a trailer for you right behind him When I was in high school and on the rowing team, we would go to we would go to Stoutsbury every year

Stoutsbury, Regatta on the Skookle River And we stayed in What's the one on the parkway? I want to say the double tree. It's not the double tree. That's the embassy suites, bud The embassy suites. Yes. I have a very nice building actually It's surround Our coach would Say, okay, this is the day's warm-up before like the regatta What do you have to do is you have to go up and down the stairs in this 30 35 story building three times

No, thank you. Just lighting it on fire as motivation So, yeah, it's that was that was an experience that's that's a lot of stairs. Um Imagine imagine you're taking the stairs up a floor or down a floor and an entire fucking rowing team Just streams past you and they have to explain that like no, it's not on fire. We're doing a thing We're idiots. Yeah, we're fucking idiots. Yeah, we're idiots. Um So look at our thighs. Look how big my calves are I shit, you know what I just noticed in this picture. Remember I had told you the story about the mass climber Yeah, yeah, it was on this building right here. Oh, Jesus. Oh, yeah

Yeah, there she is So Okay Once the engineer made it down the security guard came down from the 30th floor and the security guard in the lobby They all, you know convene. They made sure they were all safe. They to the best of their knowledge They were the only three people in the building, right? You know, so they convene they got out of the building Um, they called the fire alarm company to the term to

Related them that yes, it is an actual fire. Don't put this in as a false alarm And at that point they realized, oh, we should also probably call the fire department. Yeah, that might help The first the first call actually came from someone on the street Um went to a pay phone to call 911. That's embarrassing. Yeah So Anyway, eight 27 p.m The Philadelphia fire department calls the first alarm. They dispatch engine 43 and a battalion chief And when the battalion chief gets there, he orders a second alarm immediately, right?

Um, the first uh group of firefighters went up to the 11th floor on the low-rise elevator bank Because there are two elevated banks one of them only went up went up to the 11th floor the other one went up to the 38th um Once they got off the elevator to the 11th floor the power went out. Oh good. Oh, yeah At least it didn't go out while they were in the elevators Yeah So Really intense heat from the fire on the 22nd floor melted cables in the electrical riser, right?

That's where the electrical cables go up and down the building Um, and those cables shorted together and they tripped every breaker in the building um And the emergency natural gas generator just failed to come online All right, so there were no there were no emergency lights anywhere in the building. The building was completely dark um And of course, you know, it's february and it's 8 23 We gotta give firefighters those cool tactical night vision goggles

In my opinion like modern warfare, but you're carrying a fire hose I don't know if that would work with So the firefighters turned on their flashlights and they Yeah Mm-hmm They got to the 22nd floor It was clearly a lot of fire and the door was warped and blistering from heat, right? The paint was falling off the door was like sagging

The other thing was the door was locked. Oh Just gently trying the door and be like, uh Well, I I their firefighters they like that's true. They love that They love that shit so much that big beautiful himbows in the fire department and we love them for it and and you know She herb embo's now, but like No, we It beats playing PlayStation is the thing I assume they made a a solid effort at breaking down that door

um What they what they wound up doing was they um the first thing they did is they took they managed to break You know like wire glass that you have on these sorts of doors Oh, yeah, there's a little tiny window with like some chicken wire on it and there's glass they managed to hook up a hose to the dry riser and um, you know start spraying water through the tiny window Right Through a keyhole yes

and Some of them went down one floor and found out the 21st floor door was unlocked. Thank god It turned out the building had obtained some sort of variance which said Stairway doors could remain locked As long as every third floor was unlocked Oh We're doing we're doing keyhole surgery, but for firefighting

This is very cool to me Jesus This is an effective way of uh, uh of of fighting a fire, right? All right, so Tiny fire grows into huge fire because the smoke alarm was in a bad spot um powers out Door is locked. Um Doing good. Doing so already. We're not we're not doing so great. Um

Now this suite of offices Had a convenience stair between the 21st and 22nd floor So the firefighters were able to use that for access They hooked up the line to the stand pipe on the 22nd floor They dragged the hose up the stairs They opened the valves and the water just sort of trickled out. Oh boy Yeah, the the pressure reducing valves were doing their job Uh a little bit too well. Oh, that's really sad to imagine this fire. I was like fully stanced up against this hose and you just get

I Well, it would have been cool so So Yeah, I had too much to drink Few operating these valves required a special tool which the first responders did not have um It was it was commonly available like a second alarm

They would have found one and brought it but the other thing was These pressure reducing valves weren't marked in psi or any unit of pressure They were marked with unitless numbers that could mean anything And you know, okay, you could try and maybe adjust it But you know, you could do anything from you know You turn the guy holding the hose into paste Yeah, exactly, right? So they couldn't do anything about it until someone with knowledge of the valve system arrived, right? And so at this point the fire chief

on duty Called some additional alarms, right? So Alarms are a loosely defined term Um, usually referring to the number of firefighting units that show up to a fire So, you know, it's a one alarm fire two alarm fire. Yeah, and in most jurisdictions in Britain That's a pump. So like we'll say pumps for a pump six or pumps eight Yeah, a lot of jurisdictions only go up to five alarm Philadelphia is not one of those places one meridian quickly became a 12 alarm fire

Punches big red button reading send everything Send everything, yeah so One of the things they tried to Overcome the pressure reducing valves is a but they sent a lot of pump trucks in And just sort of hooked them up together And attempted to pump enough water and gain enough pressure To overcome these pressure reducing valves. It didn't work. The valves were too good

Um, we should have built this was Yeah Over the first two hours the fire spread upwards to 23rd and 24th floors, right? And this is this is the sheer quantity of smoke Being created by this fire made travel up to the location of the fire extremely difficult Especially if you're working in the stairwells, which of course They were because they couldn't actually get into those floors um, so Three men from engine 11, which is one of the first units to show up on the scene

We're set up to the top floor of the building to attempt to open hatches or doors at the top of the stairwells to vent the smoke, right? So some facts about engine 11 engine 11 was philadelphia's first all-black fire company established in 1919 They were desegregated in 1952. It is funny how much uh, like Entirely black organizations helped pioneer a lot of this stuff the first paramedic service in the u.s Was to the best of my knowledge all black Yes, I believe so Now by 1990 engine 11 was uh, sort of just you know, it's a regular fire company. It's located at sixth and south streets. It's still there um

Three men from engine 11 captain david b holcomb phyllis mcallister and james a chappell Started up the center stairway around 9 30 no one's exactly certain When they were ordered up there or when they started going up there because the emergency channel was not recorded Jesus Christ, also we had to send them up in threes. I thought you always wanted to have like an even number of people so you can you know Drag them. Yeah Yeah, it makes sense Um, and they reported soon afterwards that they had become disoriented by smoke

And we're now outside the stairwell on the 30th floor Dude, how much does it take for a fire fire to be disoriented by smoke? Yeah, I know Which is They had a whole they they all had uh, they all had scuba gear as well It was all all had the self-contained breathing apparatus All right So over the radio some attempts were made to direct them back to the stairwell Didn't quite work right they broke a window for ventilation

But it pretty quickly they were all overcome by smoke Right shit. Yeah Not so good. Um an eight man search and rescue team was dispatched to search the 30th floor Didn't find them right And that eight man team started searching upper floors above the 30th floor And they themselves became lost and disoriented on the 38th floor. Fuck that So another search and rescue team that was dropped on the roof by a helicopter had to come and save them Um, but they did save them successfully. They did save the search and rescue team. Yes

Um one back at least that's nice So search efforts continued even as the fire was out of control and reaching the 26th floor At some point they had to discontinue helicopter operations on the roof because there's too much smoke But the exterior searches with the helicopter searchlight continued at 2 15 a.m They found a broken window on the 28th floor And they found out that was broken by the men of engine 11 Uh, and you know at this point had been five hours Uh, they were all dead of smoke inhalation

Jesus and I mean the search and rescue team the first one was within two floors of them They just went up instead of down just by chance. I guess that's fucking sucks One of the problems was the window they broke was um, if you sort of look at this picture It was sort of around here ish Which was a location which was not really visible from any adjacent street And they didn't have the like the past Devices that firefighters have now where they just like Set off a loud ass alarm if you stop moving I guess

Oh, yeah, I guess I assume no I I have no idea and they may have had them they may have not I I don't know um Well in the meantime Firefighters who were engaged in you know fighting the fire decided. All right. Fuck these standpipes We're gonna run five inch hoses up the stairs. Jesus. Okay. Oh, yeah so Those came online around 2 15 a.m The first one at least two further were installed later that night

um This gave them proper pressure for fighting the fires and Some parts of the fire were even able to be contained at this point, right? They started making some progress um Shortly after the first line was uh laid The sprinkler system contractor arrived Oh, hey, guy. Hey, what's up? Things are going portally. Hello, and he had the engineer's secret weapon

The manual I like that this is distinct from 9 11 because like you don't have this cool sort of unique frame design So you're not worrying about the building actually collapsing At this point. Yeah, just you can fight the fire At this point, we're not worried about the building collapsing So Anyway, he he goes up he goes up to the 22nd floor

And using the manual He adjusted the pressure reducing valves to provide adequate pressure for the firefighters And suddenly in the floor on the fire on floor 22 looked containable The Issue was there was now at this point also quite a lot of a fire on quite a lot of fire on floors 23 to 26 And it was still rapidly spreading. Well, okay in the pro column Yeah So

While this fire was occurring uh firefighters were observing The significant displacement of structural members within the stairwells, right? The fire chief reported cracks in the walls large enough to put a man's fist through And they consulted with the structural engineer who basically said Yeah, that's building is probably going to come down. Um So, you know, the fire chief said, all right At this point, we're just protecting property. Let's get our people out of there Right, thank god for that man. Just yeah

Yeah, having having having done enough of these The fire the fire chief wearing a big dsa pin is like Well That's about that. That's uh, that's the ball game. Uh, let's get everyone out. All right. Do you guys want to go to the bar? So You know the building was fully evacuated Around 7 30 a.m. The last firefighters left the building. And the only thing they had left were stationary water jets from adjacent buildings You can see two of them coming out of uh center square right here

All of center city was basically evacuated because it was everyone expected this building to come down, right? In the early afternoon of february 24th the next day The fire reached the 30th floor And the 30th floor had a sprinkler system installed The sprinkler system here if the sprinkler system turned on and basically extinguished every fire on the floor as it started

Um Floors 23 to 29 burned themselves out The fire was declared under control at 301 p.m. That day. Oh good. So you just had uh Fuck six floors just burned to a crisp and then it hits the sprinkler system and just stopped dead You just stopped dead. Yeah Just annihilated Got some pictures you can see here's some firefighters on one of the balconies on the gerard trust building spraying water into the building, right?

You can see here's Here's a stationary water cannon from uh one center square You see they broke two windows. They're using that building standpipe system to spray water on the fire Um Martian, yeah, that's cool towering inferno. That's dizzying. Yeah I do not get too close to those windows, you know, just for the sake of your own anxiety Yeah, exactly, right? Not a not a good time

so Sort of the aftermath here You know, we have three firefighters who are dead The building is trashed Completely trashed, right? Some of these floor plates sagged as much as three feet from the horizontal, right? A lot of uh granite panels fell off the facade the adjacent gerard trust building suffered major water damage It was shut down for years

um The area around the building was cordoned off For two months until they could figure out if the building was actually structurally stable, right? um And eventually they found out yes, the building will continue to stand up, right? so You know, what what is sort of the aftermath of this? Um And there's actually some good legislation that came after it, right? Um

So Mayor Wilson good who you may remember from the move bombing You you may remember me from such atrocities as Yeah, America's first uh The the first african-american uh big city mayor in america, um Who bombed his own city make it count? Yeah So He signed a law which required sprinkler systems to be installed in all non residential high-rises by 1997

I don't know why residential high-rises were exempted. I could just Leave yourself the option to do a grand fail for fun. Yeah or another move bombing. Yeah, you gotta keep exactly Well, move bombing was not a that was not a high-rise. I mean if they added some more floors of fortification, maybe I don't know that was probably that was that was probably a 40 50 foot structure by the time they were finished with the uh, the weird fortifications on that row house So, you know that All buildings in philadelphia had to have sprinkler systems all high-rise buildings. I think it was over 70 feet

Uh, and a lot of landlords complained a whole bunch Uh, but eventually this the city forced them to comply with this, right turns out you can do stuff like that It's weird. Yeah, I it's nice to have a little bit of state capacity. You know, that's uh back in the day Yeah, there were several other code changes which were implemented to increase fire safety one of which was also Mandating that the stairwell doors should be unlocked Genius. Yeah it's like a I feel like a relatively simple change

But like who thought it was a good idea to lock the emergency stairwells My god And then Yeah, the the building itself um So they had to figure out what to do with the building afterwards right um, and the owners um

Honkball associates or whoever They ended up in a legal batter with their fire insurer etna, which I believe etna only does health insurance now I'm not sure. Yeah, they spun off everything else. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this fire is a pre-existing condition Trouble do it And they were you know trying to figure out how to repair the building who is liable for what right? um One of the one of the plans they tried to Put forward was they were going to demolish the building down to the 19th floor and build it back up again, right?

Oh, that's Yeah, okay You know, but in the meantime the entire surrounding block was shut down including the gerard trust building Including the morris building several smaller buildings facing chestnut street um And eventually the city just said fuck it and started slapping the owners with fines and l and i violations and so on and so forth And they decided all right, we're gonna tear down the build like whatever Demolition commenced in 1997

After being a blight for seven years Jesus the better part of seven years. Yeah It's finished in 1999. It was the third tallest building to be voluntarily demolished at that time voluntarily That's what we said voluntarily. Yes After the singer building and the morris hotel in chicago Um, most of the surrounding block was demolished with it. The only thing that stayed up was the gerard trust building Uh, the morris building came down because they'd all been damaged Uh, the fire damaged from you know falling shit so and so forth

And for about a decade afterward this was like just this was a vacant Not a vacant lot. It was a parking lot On some of the most valuable real estate in philadelphia Um, well, obviously that was never going to be allowed to stand. So and now it's the fucking Residences at something right? Yes, actually The residences it is the residences Is it actually is it actually the residences at

Oh, yeah at the ritz carlton alice Jesus christ The the gerard trust building was renovated into the ritz carlton And um, they built the residences at the ritz carlton on the former site of the Of the of one meridian and then behind alice. I did think Behind it is the now the w hotel and element by west Which is only just completed and is the closest building to city hall to exceed the height of city hall Which is I assume why the eagles suck this season. You got the curse back. Yeah

Yeah, the curse has come back, you know developers have once again, um You know decided to uh impugn play god. Yeah, exactly right So And so That's the story Of one meridian plaza and we learned from this That um 9 11 was an inside job controlled demolition uh google building seven

Uh, yeah things of that nature As we know high rises never sustained significant damage from fire because because this one didn't fall down And so that means that they can never fall down even when they're framed completely differently Don't worry about that. Yeah. Yeah, don't worry about and definitely don't worry about that one in iran or the one in brazil I was gonna throw on some footage of those just to say I I rise fires actually sometimes make the buildings fall down Anyway, yeah, and eventually they erected a memorial to the three fallen firefighters That's good as far as as far as memorials go. It's not bad like

Yeah, and it's uh, yeah, it says to sacrifice one's own safety in the service of others Requires a courage that is rare Those among us who do are true heroes I'm I'm not sure where that's from, but It sounds like forkner to me, but I bet it isn't I I don't know Hmm Yes Poor went out for the firefighters

Yes The moment of respectful silence there slightly interrupted by as soon as do do do do respect the troops of fighting fires If nothing else I will say this much they do have much cooler patches than cops. Yes because like Cop unit patches are all like Oh, we put we put a skull on this because we're like the punisher There's firefighters ones. It'll just be like a 50 foot tall Red ork

Like shouldering his way through an inferno and you're just like Shit Yeah, that's fucking cool. Like I said firefighters firefighters beautiful him bows and like yes the the patch design bears that out So, you know, I I respect that very much Uh Liam did you figure it out? No, it just relays back to either a navy seal fan page or a thing about one meridian Oh, that's curse this curse navy seal fan page Well, you know, yeah the firefighters. They're like the navy seals of fire. Yes

If a seal lived in fire Oh Yes, no, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, I I I don't understand like, you know, we're the we're the seals, right? We we we balance a ball on our nose So the ball is good and so is my dick I honk a horn when the trainer tells me to sometimes I sort of lie I lie on a floating dock in seattle You know, just just sunning myself

I'd be in a real seal. It sounds like a lot better than being a navy seal, honestly Oh, yeah, let's walk. Yes and anyway That's the story of one meridian plaza. Let's go to A segment on our show we call safety third All right, this one is this one is from a while back we should have done this earlier. Um Yeah, we get to these when we get to them first of all, I discovered y'all during quarantine and this pod is sweet

Sweet music to my ears. I've watched most of the chemical safety board videos and those don't even have jokes so Wtyp is exactly the content I crave I've got a story or a series of scenarios at least for safety third I spent my last year of undergrad Working in an organic chemistry lab Oh boy, it's not at a particularly prestigious university But the lab was at the time participating in a worldwide chemistry late related competition

And getting a lot of press I just note that to contextualize the complete lack of safety in the lab that That this was at the time the department's top news item, right The building was 50 years old and notoriously unhealthy Two separate labs upstairs had caught fire over the past couple of decades And one of them stayed empty with doors and windows blacked out for years after the fire Oh golf lab

sewage pipes backed up relatively often and because all kinds of chemicals went down the lab drains You might just lean over a water fountain and smell something odd Oh boy This sounds like Hess labs at Drexel. Oh, yeah We ran a whole place like a 70s dascar team. Yeah The lab I was in was the worst lab in the building It was in the basement

We had one emergency fluorescent light which was always on And every time it rained this light filled with water which pooled in and dripped out of the corners of the fixture Oh, no I worked there for a year and this was never fixed The lab also had no windows and no ventilation. I don't need them Don't need it. I just asked reached It reached 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the summers and stayed around 58 degrees Fahrenheit in the winters. Nice No comment on how this affected the reproducibility of our experiments

And of course we worked with gallons and gallons of organic solvent I frequently ran two to four liters of organic solvent through an enormous silica column to purify chemicals I did this in a fume hood, but few of our fume hoods worked At least one fume hood ran in reverse and blew air out of the fume hood So when I ran columns I would take breaks to stop my head from spinning I remarked often on how a single spark would probably send the entire basement up in flames due to all the fumes Yeah, probably cool I put up with this all because it was one of the few lab jobs on campus that was paid

And I was a depressed undergrad without adequate fear of cancer My co-workers mostly grad students did not give a fuck Grad students really a month or two after starting in the lab. I realized that solvent waste had not been disposed of for ages There was no formal training upon joining the lab. So I didn't know how disposal worked now Organic solvents being extremely flammable are supposed to be stored in fire boxes And running solvent through a column and then combining it with other kinds of solvent Doesn't make them less flammable So we had a separate fire cabinet for waste bottles

That cabinet I held I think about 12 four liter bottles of waste When it got full The grad students just stashed more waste in a wooden cabinet without flammable direction Okay, so after trying to badger the more senior grad students and getting nowhere I taught myself how EHS disposal worked in the building borrowed a cart and took two trips upstairs to turn in over 18 four liter bottles of organic solvent waste Only you can prevent lab fires. And I mean this this vindicates the grad students, right?

If you just leave it alone until it gets dangerous enough someone else will do it. Yes, someone else did So twitter has permanently suspended donald trump. That makes me smile He can't post anymore. Oh my god. He's screaming log off at the white house Who's screaming log off at the white house? Join me on gab or a parlor. It didn't even You know that they they took an insurrection to suspend that guy. All it took was they really should have done that Yeah, saying that you're gonna salt the field. Yeah, exactly. I say when he goes to the ground So until he goes on uh ruzz you simply have to become president of the united states and I think you could swing that

That's probably a good idea. I could become president like no problem I just choose not to Do do not eat 2024. Yes. Oh boy. Oh boy. I'm gonna run for mera philadelphia first. You coward Yeah 2023 mera philadelphia. Okay so Waste disposal continued to be my problem for the entire year because everyone else refused to do it I vividly remember finding bottles with smeared red sharpie where someone had noted They'd added an unusually dangerous chemical

And then organic solvent running down the side of the bottle had wiped out the name example here Oh, I love to have added A few other notes that will make that will specifically make ehs people cringe Lab members wore shorts in lab in the summer and goggles were kind of optional Oh, no, but they did have how hot did they say I got in the summer like uh 80 fahrenheit 80 fahrenheit. Yeah Yes, I I I take the risk of wear the shorts. Yeah, that's a good point Yeah, they should probably should have installed some air conditioning if they wanted people to wear have proper safety equipment specifically the postdoctorate I worked with

Told me that since he wore regular glasses for his vision. He didn't need to wear goggles Oh, no Because I'm home So uh r.i.p. Splash protection in retrospect, I should have worn masks when handling the silica for our columns But I don't think we had any we did have a bunch of inherited chemicals from the 1980s or so including uranium salt Our ehs department inspected the lab once while I was there and plastered us with two critiques Our fume hood glass sashes should have been closed and we should have an explosive proof fridge for some of our chemicals

The pi I don't know what a pi is Shot an email back to let them know that the fume hood sashes were open because they were actually physically stuck like that Because they were 50 years old and the age said oh that makes sense carry on What But on to the serenaria that finally freaked out even my pi I still don't know what a pi is I was running hd instructor. I guess that could be it. Yeah, that sounds about right I was running a series of experiments involving organic peroxides If you google organic pero it autofills organic peroxide explosion

But this story isn't actually about me or the peroxides. I somehow never had any incidents there It's about an undergrad who had been working the lab longer than me and her incredibly incompetent grad student mentor The undergrad's academic schedule for the semester was basically incompatible with the project. She's just been shifted to Because it required eight hours of continuous work She'd been making the project work by splitting it up over two days leaving her reaction project in the fridge between reaction and purification But the pi had decided this was unacceptable and probably the reason that things weren't working At this point, I should note that the pi had not replied to any of her emails over the past eight months or so He means communication with him was perpetually fucked

Now sounds like academia Yes The undergrad made it work by going in on the weekends technically we were not allowed to work alone But the grad student on this project or the grad student on this project should have taken On this weekend work instead of her but he was an amazingly lazy person Once when I asked him to help me with waste disposal He made an excuse and literally ran down the hallway away from me to get out of it Excuse me, I left the stove on

Now now in some labs having an undergrad working alone on the weekends is not a problem An organic chemistry lab is not one of those The number of ways you could hurt yourself or find yourself in need of the safety shower endless especially on her project because the reaction she was working on in involved Tert butyl lithium Uh You may remember the name tert butyl lithium from any chemical safety training since 2008 Or from the news or from the 4.5 million dollar lawsuit all resulting from an incident in which a grad student burned to death at ucla

This stuff ignites spontaneously on contact with air if you've gotten this far in the email You know this lab was not nearly safe enough to be able to work with this I will say to avert suspense Uh open parentheses leave the sentence out if you want suspense to be maintained close parentheses Do we want suspense to be maintained? I already left put the sentence in Okay No one was injured in this lab by the sheer grace of god I heard all this story second hand

So I may be a little bit fuzzy on some details where things started going wonky as soon as the undergrad got there She tried to get her reagents together and realized there were three separate bottles of tert butyl lithium in the fridge Without date labels. Oh good That seems safe She sent a picture to her grad student asking which to use she didn't get a response. So she picked one She safely got the compound out and injected it into a reaction flask Which was sealed with a rubber stopper and had inert nitrogen gas pumped into it to burnet ignition But it looked weird when our reagents were combined. It was the wrong color

The undergrad wasn't an idiot and was already suspicious of the three undated bottles So she stopped here and sent a picture to the grad student and to our pi She put the sealed reaction flask in the fridge And asked how to neutralize the solution so she could dispose of it and try again with the newer bottle That's right She had been working on a project using tert butyl lithium for months and never been Instructed on how to neutralize the reagent if you needed to oh boy Yeah

This prompted my pi's a pi's first email to her in months Which is a panicked all caps email as it should have been good You know i'm just looking at this second picture on the right here is is is that this looks like a fucking Yeah, is this flask on the bottom left of that picture filled with beans? Kyle looks like a right or a cat vomit. Yeah, this this amount of reacting beans I Her grad student mentor admitted he also had no idea how to neutralize the solution

Oh, cool. Okay. Nice. I won't see it I'm a little fuzzy on the details what happened next But I believe it resulted in all three of them in the lab neutralizing the reaction and disposing of it and horrific disaster was a murdered Uh the verdict, excuse me The aftermath did not involve any kind of ehs intervention because of course no one told them Stop snitching. Oh my god It did not involve disposing the two old bottles of tert butyl lithium

Which it turned out the grad students knew had been sitting in there for months to years And just ignored because no one knew how to get rid of them I love chemistry students. So we just got a couple of bombs Uh, this is probably turn. This is a chemical that turns you inside out. Um, don't know what to do with it Yeah, don't don't touch it We did get much stricter lab guidelines on what undergrads were allowed to use and what they could not work with alone I was no longer allowed to run my peroxide reactions without having a grad student watch me through the whole present process I was still allowed to use the stuff

And the other undergrad was still allowed to use tert butyl lithium We did not get an explosives proof fridge The building was renovated after I graduated and I hope the conditions have been proved But knowing when ehs passed is acceptable previously I'm sure employees there are still courting death every day Personally, I expect I've taken a couple years off my life Yeah, this was nice to get an email from the the shinobal firefighter Congratulations. Yeah, we'll get you a himbo challenge coin

Yeah Wtyp himbo challenge coin Yes strength through strength um This is probably too long, but I think that's a wtyp tradition and this is a story I've been percolating for a few years now considering which kinds of cancer or polyneuropathy I will develop I only hope that wtyp pod will be there for me in my convalescence Yeah, don't worry. We'll be there. We got 50 plus episodes for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

So just uh, we we have just read the lyrics to the great big c song the process The only podcast yeah, that's right Every day every day you're in this place your two days nearer death. Yes Good lord My god well Well, I forgot to never never go into chemistry. Don't do not do no chemicals are bad for you Every every chemical you ever consume chemicals. Fuck that shit. Absolutely not even once

I have a I have a chemical free diet actually There's no chemicals in my diet. I because I don't eat anything actually You're like breakfast sausage No, that's full of chemicals. No chemicals in that. No Absolutely no chemical. Yeah, beef is not a chemical What's that? What's the chemical name for beef? Uh, what's the molecular structure of beef? Just sticking together a bunch of those little balls with her in the shape of a cow. I've synthesized beef

I have a genius Now the molecule of cow looks like it's tiny cow A humus spherical cow. Yeah, it's some a spherical cow of uniform density You know on googling I do find a foreign thread where someone is asking other chemists What the chemical formula of beef could possibly be? The standard the ASTM beef sample Or no, it's nist that does the standardized materials Because you can get the they make the two hundred ninety nine dollars standard peanut butter

As they point out something called the myosin light chain alone is around 20 000 dortons To represent beef chemically you would need a billboard minimum No, I I choose to believe the beef molecule is a small cow It's small cow. Yeah done in done in like hydrogens molecules. Yeah This is why I I I didn't go into chemistry. I would not I would not want to Look if they're not the beakers, they're not tiny animals in there. Why is it called a mole? Why am I here? What day is it? I don't know like the beakers in the tubes. That's pretty cool

Like the the the part where I have to think about things. I don't like that I want to I want to be like the Barbie scientist not like the real scientist Yeah, you want one of the like modern chemistry sets unlike the early ones That just gave you a like a a flaskill of uranium. Yeah, would you like some string? No, I want the flaskill of uranium kids You want some strickenin? What do you mean? No, why are you only going for me? Come back here? We're gonna finish this marathon god damn you Um So anyway, I forgot to put in the last slide because I'm a moron

So I'll just hit it this in and post next episode's on the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster finally. That's right. Yeah, here here's uh Second time I've done this on this podcast 51 episodes you all had to do it twice. That's not so bad. Yeah That's fine. And what have we learned from this put sprinklers in your buildings put smoke alarms in your building Yeah, they're also locked apparently keep your stairwells unlocked Yes um Don't demolish respect firefighters always respect frank fernace

Yeah, or he'll burn your building down from beyond the grave. Yeah, that's why they call him frank fernace true. Yes Well, it's because his mixtape was fire, but yeah, sure Yes, I'm on the road backstory. I guess That's right. Have any commercials before we go Next bonus episode is on the nfl. I'll get around to writing slides shut up Okay Telling them to shut up. Don't you have oh, okay? Yeah, fuck you to the fans

Everybody try not to like try to survive fascism. Good luck your best Good luck. See you next week. Yes Don't don't become uh, don't don't become fascist. Don't do that. It's not idea. That's bad You know what happens the fascism it collapses in on itself because all those people are morons They were yeah, it's true It's it eats its own. Yes Um on the other hand if you do have an opportunity to steal the podium for the speaker of the house I would go with it

We are open to negotiation. Yeah, I'm I'm actually fine with like the concept of breaking into Nancy Pelosi's office. It's just you know, I'd prefer it's like one of us Oh files. God damn. Yes, exactly. Give me give me the uh, give me the uh I don't know Just give give me the other zapruder film. Yeah, I would like the uh, I would just like to entertain the zack snider cut Yeah Directed cut of the zapruder film Yeah, joder rasky's version of dune in there

Uh, that's what they're really keeping from us. Is this the original duke nukem forever? What else are they keeping in there? And patriots it's up to us to find out Yes, exactly. So hi everybody in conclusion. Good about Alice. Well, I'll feed us in. Yeah, I will I'll feed us in boy. That's for donya Shit, okay end of slideshow click to exit, right? There you go