June 4, 2019 • 45 mins
What monsters of fatty flesh lie slumbering in the sewer guts of our great cities? Join Robert and Joe as they venture into the dark to discover the beast we all made together.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. And today I thought maybe we should
start off with a little don't do what Donnie Don't does?
All right, tell us about Donnie Don't. Okay, So let's, uh,
(00:25):
let's let's see what Donnie Don't is doing and see
if maybe we should don't do what he does. Uh,
try and spot the don't. So Donnie Don't is He's
cooking up a big old mess of French fries in
his deep friar, and he eats all the fries while
watching RoboCop three, And then it's time to clean up.
So first of all, he realizes he is greasy all
over from eating this big batch of fries, so he
gives himself a good wipe down with some wet wipes,
(00:47):
and then he flushes them down the toilet. Now it's
time to get rid of the gallon of duck fat
that he used to cook his fries. So what does
he do? He pours it straight down the drain in
the bathtub. Now I think most of us can easily.
I don't know about all of us, because somebody's obviously
doing what Donnie Don't does. But I think most of
us can easily spot the Donnie don'ts here. He's made
(01:10):
several errors, but now I think it's pretty common knowledge
that you are not supposed to flush wet wipes and
other non toilet paper products down the toilet, and you're
definitely not supposed to pour fat down the drain. Yeah,
I mean there's some other things that he's doing you
could potentially criticize. I mean, I don't I don't know
how how often he's eating French fries that have been
(01:31):
fried in duck fat. Like, if he's doing that too often,
that's probably not great for his health. But you know,
once in a while, why not, right? Um? RoboCop three,
I have no problem with that. It may not be
the strongest in the RoboCop movies, but it's uh it
has like cyber Ninja is in it. That's kind of cool.
But yeah, it's the it's the wet wipes and then
pouring that grease down the drain, and it's the pour
(01:52):
of the grease down the drain. I often forget that
that is a key rule. Oh do you do you
break this one? No? I I just am generally not
in a position to break it because we just don't.
We don't cook with with fat uh much anymore at
all anymore. And uh. And then as far as wet
wives go, like I I know, not to put wet
wipes down though, really no oils in your house, no
(02:15):
salad dressing, no, like no olive oil or anything. But
not duck fat. Oh well, I mean, of course, other
like non animal fats are still like fats and oils.
But I guess what I'm thinking, Like I I remember,
so I shouldn't have said just duck fat. I mean
that you're not supposed to pour oil or lipids of
any time down to drain but but but specifically like
(02:36):
the you know, like a big fry vat kind of
drainage situation. Like I I remember seeing jars of of
of fat and oil like underneath the sink growing up,
because like that was, you know, the appropriate thing to do.
That's the grandma's house kind of thing, like the big
old mason jar of bacon grease under the sink. And
(02:56):
then of course when whenever we go, if you go
to um fast food restaurant, or even a restaurant in general,
you're gonna find that big grease trap outside. Like sometimes
it's a little bit hidden, but sometimes there's no place
to hide it. Um, and it's just right up front.
It's just there in the parking lot. Yeah. I remember
one of my jobs that I worked at when I
(03:17):
was in college. Every morning when i'd go into it,
I'd have to park in the parking lot of a
restaurant that was like next to where I worked, and
I parked right next to their big it was like
a burger and fries place and the heart next to
their big grease grease depository. Uh. And it just looked
like the saddest robot from some Star Wars spinoff, like
(03:38):
Lithuanian Star Wars has our four, uh you know D seven,
And it's this big black thing with with like this
dripping sad, grease tears stained head. But of course that's
this restaurant usage, and we can I think we can
all understand that. I mean, there's certain rules and regulations
there they're following, and they're also producing just a ton
(03:59):
of the this uh, this material. I wonder if, like
the problem with a household situation is either you're creating
so little that you don't think about it, so it's
like death by thousand cuts, right, or when you do
produce a more sizeable amount, doing you know, some sort
of frying scenario like you just suddenly have this this
huge mess to clean up, and it's easy to just
(04:21):
convince yourself, I'm just gonna do the easy thing. I'm
just gonna go and put it down the sink and
next time I'll do better. Right, who's gonna know? Yeah,
but maybe we should step back and ask a question.
I mean, it's not like RoboCop is gonna show at
your house, right, right, So that's what they do in
RoboCop too, right, They reprogram him so instead of fighting crime,
he goes out and he he pursues uh minor infraction
(04:45):
minor and littering and stuff like that and people using
swear words. Uh. So we should ask this question of
wait a minute, why are you not supposed to do
these things? Why are you not supposed to pour oil
and fat and grease down the drain. One reason you're
not supposed to do this has to do with the
way sewers work. Sewers are I say, with no hesitation
(05:07):
one of the greatest human inventions. And if you doubt this,
listen to our invention episodes on the toilet or listen
to uh we we did an episode of stuff to
blow your mind about the miasma theory of disease. And
in all of these we talk about how you know
properly maintained sanitary sewer facilities are are not not just
there to make our homes and our streets more pleasant,
(05:30):
like they play a crucial role in protecting public health
and preventing outbreaks of diseases, especially fecal oral route diseases
which are as gross as they sound, diseases like cholera. UH.
Sewers work when everything flows smoothly to its destination point
at a treatment facility, and they're one of the best
innovations in the history of civilization. I say that no
(05:52):
qualifications at all. But sometimes things get in the way,
like tree roots can intrude on sewer pipes and block flow.
We live here in Atlanta where there are a lot
of trees and a lot of a lot of old
large trees and places that are intersecting with sewer pipes,
and so this we know about this happening a lot uh.
And of course they can cause turbulence and this can
(06:14):
lead to build up. Or you can have old, decaying
sewer mains that crack and do similar stuff, and sometimes
blockages in these sewer sewer pipes occur from the inside out.
One of the most all inspiring things that can block
a sewer is what we're going to be talking about today.
It's something that has in recent years come to be
(06:35):
known as a fat berg According to an article I
was reading by Kelly Oakes and New Scientists from earlier
this year. UH. This term was apparently coined in two
thousand and eight, but it became widely popular after news
reports about a huge fatburg in and what it refers
to is a giant, solidified mass of stuff based on
(06:59):
fat and oils that just states in the heart of
a sewer system, feeding on things like wet wipes and
floss and other trash, but especially on fats and the
byproducts of fats like cooking oils you know, uh, grease
from cooking animals, all that stuff that people wash down
the drain when they just either dump out oils they
(07:22):
cook with or just when they wash their dishes, and
the oils that are already on the dishes, come come
off and go down the down the tubes. Yeah, I
understand that they're they're like the wet wipes, the floss,
all of that can can sort of serve as a substrate. Right,
It's like a scaffolding on which this, uh, this new
mass will form. Yeah, and we'll talk about how it
forms in a little bit. But I wanted to talk
(07:43):
about the terminology because while fat bergs has really caught
on with the public, this is like what I think
the reason that there have been so many articles in
recent years about fat bergs is just because of the
term fat bergs, Like there was now this beautiful, attractive
terminology for it, whereas previously, especially in the US, I
think they were referred to primarily with the acronym fogs
(08:05):
for fat oil and grease or frogs for fat roots
as in tree roots and oil and grease. But they
have really miss an opportunity there to dug to dub
them for instead of frogs, same letters, but it would
have scratched more of a chudditch, you know, and I
think maybe would have resonated a little more, maybe not
as much as fat birds ultimately did, but I mean
(08:26):
attack of the Forgs be where the Forgs. I feel
like that could have resonated with with the public. If
there is not already a movie about one of these
things becoming sentient, there will be soon. But one particularly
massive fat burg that we might linger on for a
bit has been covered extensively, especially in the British press.
(08:46):
This was the White Chapel Berg. It was removed in
TV and it was a mass blocking the sewer under
the under White Chapel Road in East London. I think
this was Jack the Rippers neighborhood totally. I think that
adds to the appeal of the White Chapel fatburg, and
it sounds even more sinister exactly. And the berg itself
(09:07):
in a way was sort of a white chapel. It's
like this, uh, this unholy things, sort of a gray
off white color. And so it was about two hundred
and fifty meters long or about eight hundred and twenty feet,
and it weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons.
This monster was so magnificent that a piece of it
(09:28):
was broken off and displayed in a special exhibit in
the Museum of London. And I came across a gorgeous,
absolutely haunting description of this sewage fatburg fragment by Sam
Knight in The New Yorker. And this, this description of
the fatburg was so moving that I have to quote
from it. Are you ready, Robert? The piece of fatburg
(09:50):
was slightly smaller than a loaf of bread and looked
like it might have come from the moon. It was
putty colored and marked everywhere with geological looking indentation, including
a cluster of fingerprints from when it was removed from
a sewer in East London last October and lifted through
a man hole. On the surface, there was also a
dark fragment from an autumn leaf which must have slipped
(10:13):
down the drains into its mall. Emerging through the congealed,
calcified fat was the purple and orange perforated edge of
a double decker chocolate bar wrapper. Every detail of the
hideous object was starkly visible because it was resting on
a bed of black granules under a spotlight in a
glass box at the Museum of London at the opening
(10:34):
of its new exhibition fat Burg. I stared at it
for a while, and while I did so, a tiny
dark speck on the fat bird became animate and started
to move. A fly the size of a pinhead flew
up and battered against the glass. That's pretty great because
he capture us this sense of it almost being alive
(10:56):
and uh and and also this this haunting feeling that
it is like our sins. Uh, may you know manifested
into a physical form, like here is you know, all
your recklessness and your you're willingness to to flush inappropriate
things down the toilet. Well, here it is altogether, uh,
to confront you and to point it's grotesque finger at you. Yeah,
(11:20):
I hope this description of the fatburg it's nominated for
like a Pulitzer prize. That's uh. It's powerful stuff. But
the seen white chappelberg that mentioned a minute ago was
by no means the only fat burg. Fat Bergs form
all the time in cities all around the world due
to people flushing and washing fats and other inappropriate stuff
(11:43):
down the drain. According to Night's article, it's estimated that
London alone has at least five large fat bergs at
any given time. So sometimes you know, they go down
there to fight them, but they're they're always new ones forming.
So let's talk about side. Is they can become so huge.
Let me restate what I said a minute ago. This
(12:04):
White Chapel beast was two hundred and fifty meters long,
which is approximately the length of the Hindenburgh, and it
weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons, or heavier
by about a third than the biggest ever Sora pod dinosaurs.
Of course, it makes sense because we're talking about a
massive sewage system. We're talking about massive consumption, a massive population,
(12:28):
and therefore the clog the thing is going to be
massive as well. Well. Yeah, and also you want to
consider the particulars of the London sewer system, because this
is where a lot of these stories come from. The
London sewer system. You know, it's it's got Victorian elements,
and it was a sewer system built over a hundred
years ago, uh, you know, back in Victorian times as
a response to the great stink you know that we've
(12:50):
talked about on on this show before, where the you know,
sewage being discharged into the Thames one year in the
believe it's the eighteen fifties or sixties, sometimes in the
middle of the nineteenth century, it got so foul and
it stanks so bad that Parliament was just you know,
about to puke in their uh in their deliberation chambers.
(13:11):
And so they eventually did something about it, and that
was to get this sewage system. Uh not only because
of the smell, but also because it was you know,
the sewage system that they had in place at the time,
which consisted of more like open sewers in the streets
and stuff draining into the Thames, which uh then people
would drink out of. It was just leading to the
cholera outbreaks and terrible public health conditions and these horrible stinks.
(13:35):
So they created this massive sewer system under the ground
in order to take away all of the waste water
and discharge it away from the city. So you've got
these like in some cases very large, like old elaborate
and some sometimes kind of beautiful brick built sewage channels
and you know, access tunnels and all this. Uh So,
so you've got old facilities. But you might be wondering, Okay,
(13:58):
so one of these giant b east, You've you've got
a hindenburg of fat and sewage and waste stuck in
the sewer blocking blocking things, preventing them from flowing. What
do you do about it? Well, that's the question. We're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back
we will answer it. Thank thank Okay, we're back. So
(14:19):
we're talking about fat bergs. How do you fight them?
You got one of these giant concrete fat conglomerations made
out of wet wipes and and dental floss and old
you know, wrappers of food and bits of plastic, and
of course all of these fats and oils and grease
and sewage and waste. It just makes this huge mass
(14:40):
that blocks up the sewers. What do you do about it? Well,
you literally have sewer workers that go down to break
it up and remove it. The city sewer workers in
London are known as flush errs, and they have to
fight these wicked villains. They have to go down and
confront the ball rog in person. And in Night's article
in The New Yorker, he talks about the process of
(15:02):
breaking up the White Chapel mass. So first of all,
he says, they've got to wear protection and they've got
to have a breathing apparatus because this thing is in
a way alive. It's got a lot of uh life
feeding on it, and as a result, it can let
out sudden explosions of gas like hydrogen sulfide, which of
course smells like rotten eggs and is the It's a
(15:22):
common gas released as a byproduct of decaying organic matter,
but it also releases methane, and sometimes it can just
blast out carbon monoxide, which can be deadly. So let's
say you're outfitting your D and D Adventure the Flusher
class to go down into this dungeon and fight the monster.
What weapons do you want to equip them with? Well,
probably not fire. Fire would seem like a bad idea.
(15:43):
Oh yeah, that's uh. And and unfortunately they are not
a magic using class, so they don't have any spells
available to them. I don't know. Is that a thing
in D and D. There's some classes who can't do spells, right? Uh? Yeah,
I mean it seems like there are a lot of
classes that have some sort of magical abilities, especially as
they level up. Yeah, this sounds more like like fighter
uh uh material right here, You need some fighty to
(16:06):
go down and physically fight this physical threat and remove it.
These are paladins. I'll allow it. I'll allow it. I
mean paladins have some some you know that they have
holy powers, etcetera. But a lot of those holy powers
are about, like, you know, increasing their physical prowess. Right, Okay,
certainly I don't know my stuff. Okay, we'll say they're paladins. Anyway.
(16:28):
So the Mighty Flusher's weapons include the bomb hose. That's
the term bomb hose, which is just like a high
pressure water jet that should be able to cut through blockages.
It's like a cutting jet. But apparently, according to Night's article,
even this didn't work all that well on the hardened
mass of the White Chapelberg, and so later on these
these warriors had to use more old fashioned implements like
(16:51):
pick axes, shovels, and he says in one case, even
as Saul, when pieces were removed and kept for the
London Museum exhibit it, one expert who handled them described
the Fatberg chunks as sort of hard but light, feeling
like pumice stone. I think that was interesting. Yeah, but
(17:11):
even the smaller one so so that one's gigantic, But
even the smaller ones are still huge in disgusting ways.
I found a brilliantly funny article with a great title
on Atlas Obscura by Jessica Lee Hester from January of
this year is called seven Big Things. They're smaller than
this fatberg, and it refers to another British fatburg, one
(17:32):
found in a sewer beneath the town in beneath the
town in Devon, and according to the water utility in
that area, it was the largest fatburg that they had
come across in that area. It was about two and
ten feet or about sixty five meters uh. And so,
so what are the things she lists as smaller than
this fatberg? At least in terms of dimensions. I don't
think they had weight on it at the time she
(17:52):
was writing. Um. So smaller in terms of length was
the above water surface height of the iceberg that sunk
the Titan Annic, the tallest known Ginko tree in the world,
the Christ the Redeemer statue, and Rio de Jannaro, the
Coney's Island or the Coney Islands Wonder Wheel, uh, the
Statue of Liberty, the Roman Colosseum, and Nelson's column in
(18:18):
Trafalgar Square all smaller than this fatburg, which is not
even the largest fatburg by a long shot. And she
also pointed out something in in her article that was
just an interesting phrasing of things that it's sort of
echo thoughts I'd been having as I was reading about
Fatburg's in in Hester's words quote, the chunky, gunky sewer
(18:39):
cloggers are murky mirrors into the behaviors of people above
ground because they hold all the stuff we flush and
try to forget about, including cooking, grease, napkins, floss, minstrel
products which don't belong in the pipes in the first place.
So it's this idea of like these are sort of
the the places of all the things that we want
(18:59):
to just get out of our lives. It's, you know,
the purging of convenience all becomes this mass yea. And
again it kind of it confronts us once more. The
horror is even greater because it is all it is
a it's it's congealed into this this massive form. And
I think maybe that is part of the like the
psychological reason why people can't look away, Like why was
(19:21):
there a museum exhibit about these things where everybody wanted
to go see them. It's this fascinating, uh, you know,
almost kind of freudy and feeling kind of thing, like
the suppressed part of our culture and civilization. It's what's
shoved down and covered up and not looked at, almost
out of a sense of shame, and it becomes this stuff.
(19:41):
And a lot of our modern life is about distantcing
ourselves from the reality of our waste, from the reality
of our dead things of this nature. So so yeah,
I think it's it definitely speaks to us on that level. Okay,
maybe we should turn to the question of how, like,
how do simple bits of cooking oil and other turn
into these mighty slumbering beasts, the monsters of the dungeon,
(20:04):
because it could seem almost magical right that it's it's
it's like this thing has become alive down there. It
is like one of these uh you know, there are
multiple uh uh you know, I think horror properties where
some sort of garbage monster comes alive, uh And it
basically fulfills the same purpose we're talking about here, to
confront us and to uh, you know, to to show
(20:25):
us the horrors of our of of of our you know,
disposable society. But but there's a very but the process
is happening here is not magical. It is you know,
we can we can we can look at what is
happening chemically. Yeah. Uh So, obviously there's one extremely simple
way that there are multiple ways here, but there's one
extremely simple way that fat can end up blocking sewer pipes,
(20:47):
and that's by congealing. Like if you ever cooked bacon,
cooked bacon in a pan, what happens, Well, the white
solid fat in the bacon in the animal flesh renders.
It turns into a fluid that runs around in the
hand like water, and it flows, so you can pour
it out, etcetera. You can pour it down the drain,
but that's only because it's hot. If you take that
(21:08):
bacon grease and you leave it out at room temperature,
you put it in the fridge. We all know what happens, right,
It turns into a kind of waxy solid and this
is large, right Yeah, I guess the curing process of
bacon doesn't change that. Yeah, So it's pork fat either way. Uh.
And Now, not all fats can geal into solids or
semi solids at room temperature, but plenty do. So if
(21:29):
you melt this fat and then pour it down the
sink into cold pipes and wash it away, the cooling
fat forms a solid or semi solid mass. That can
build up, it can coat surfaces and so forth, and
can of course block sewer pipes. So that that that's
like the simple version. That's just one way fat can
clog up your sewers, that one reason you don't want
(21:50):
to put it down there, right, And I think we
can all grasp that even if if you've ever washed
dishes before, you can get a sense of how, how,
what's happening exactly. But this is actually not the main
mean piece of chemistry contributing to fat bergs. The truth
is actually weirder. Often the fats that we wash down
the drain essentially become soap. The chemical process is known
(22:13):
as saponification u. This word comes from the Latin sapo,
meaning soap, And once a mass of fat gets washed
down the drain, it chemically breaks down into fatty acids,
and these fatty acids undergo a chemical reaction in the
alkaline environment of the sewer, combining with other elements and compounds,
often calcium, to form this calcified soap like deposit And
(22:37):
of course, as we all know, soap can be pretty solid.
Like you, you don't want to get whacked with a
bar of soap in the bottom of sock. But it
gets even worse because calcified fat bergs build up a
real kind of rigidity. Like the workers who have to
cut them out sometimes compare them to concrete by the
time you have to go in and break them up. Uh.
And I don't know exactly what leads to all that.
(22:59):
It might be this forming of a solid mass and
then like the sort of compacting of time, you know,
think of pressure just forcing it together. But the soap
like masses tend to form around solid pieces of trash
that get flushed down the toilet. So that's the other
major component we mentioned earlier. Like wet wipes are by
far the worst offender here. This is in you know,
(23:21):
all the British press about this is just saying like,
don't wash fats and oils down the drain and don't
flush wet wipes. Don't flush wet wipes. Wet wipes are
like the the most hated thing but the sewer workers.
And that's of course because you know, they're not designed
industrially the way like toilet paper is, which is made
to break up when it's in this aqueous environment. The
(23:43):
wet wipes tend to not break up. They stick together
and they form a sort of binding or substrate for
this nightmare soap of the deep on its way to
becoming a berg. I mean it makes me think of
the of the science choice we've covered about uh creating
artificial say years we have some sort of a scaffolding
on which you're gonna you're gonna build up like the
(24:04):
you know, the collagen and create this artificial piece of flesh.
It's kind of like that process taking place in a
foul sewer, but imagine that process is taking place where
stuff just keeps flowing into it, so it just keeps
getting more solid material like wet wipes and more like
binding soap like fat structure, until it becomes an ear
(24:25):
the size of the Hindenburg. Another contributor to the fat
bergs in the London sewers, and not just the London
sewers in other places, but especially in London sewers is old,
rough brick surfaces. I'm not positive, but I think the
mechanism here is that rough surfaces create more friction with
the flowing water, and this causes turbulence. Instead of flowing
(24:48):
smoothly the water or the you know, the sewage, it
gets sort of churned up, and this interrupts the smooth
flow and it gives uh and and so it causes
build up of solid matter. But also I think the
rough surfaces just sort of give the wet wipes and
other trash little crags to catch on, and then of
course once they catch on, other things can catch onto them,
(25:09):
and it just builds up from there. Yeah. And and
also so these soap like masses are not water soluble,
meaning they're not dissolved by water, so they're not gonna
over time just like break up and wash away with
the flow of the sewer water. They just sit there
and they build up and they grow too, mescent with
new waste and trash and layers of soapy solids made
(25:30):
out of fat, until somebody finally goes down there to
slay the dragon. And as we discussed, of course the
battles of the flushers, you have to you physically break
these things up and remove them. Yeah, again with things
like pick axes and saws, because it is almost like concrete,
you know, it's not just this big, you know, gross
sewer jelly that you just need to sort of you know,
(25:51):
flush a little bit more, you know, just spray with
water and you know you'll get it done. A plunger
is not going to do it. Now. In some cases,
I do think these like water jet hoses can be
used to cut it up. They just, at least in
the one case I was reading about, they weren't quite
doing the job and they had to resort to the
old ways. Also, I just wanted to do a little
side note on suppontification because what's happening here in the
(26:13):
sewers is not exactly the same as but it's somewhat
analogous to, uh, something that I'm very interested in that
occasionally happens to human bodies in certain burial conditions. Robert,
have you been to the Mooder Museum in Philadelphia. I haven't.
I've never visited h Philly. Yeah, I haven't been, but
I've wanted to for a long time. So they've got
(26:33):
an exhibit, or I don't know about an exhibit. They've
got a thing at the Modern Museum that is a
human body. It's known as the soap Lady. And do
you know the soap Lady? No, but I'm already horrified
because I know enough about the mood Museum to know
that a soap Lady there is going to be a
site to behold. I think they've got a soap lady
and a soap man. I've primarily read about the soap lady,
(26:54):
so those two should mean yeah, exactly. So. It was
originally believed that she was a woman who lived in
Philadelphia in the eighteenth century and had died of yellow
fever sometime in the seventeen nineties. But in nineteen eighty
six they did some X rays of the body of
the Soap Lady, and this revealed that she was wearing
clothes with like buttons and pins that weren't manufactured in
(27:17):
the US until around the eighteen thirties. So it's now
believed that she must have died later than was originally believed.
But whenever she died. In eighteen seventy five, her body
was exhumed from a local cemetery and it was discovered
that the corpse was encased almost entirely in a solid
soap like substance, and that she was essentially a soap mummy.
(27:40):
If you look at pictures of her, she looks like
a mummy. She looks like some of these uh like uh,
you know, sort of dried, mummified, preserved corpses that you
might find in the case of some of like the
Andean mummies, um, except that she has except that, like
her features are less defined, and she's got a bunch
of extra stuff around the outside of her body, like
(28:01):
almost like she's encased in some kind of concrete or something,
but it's not concrete. This substance in reality is something
kind of like soap. It's not exactly so, but it's
something known as adipus here, also sometimes referred to as
corpse wax or grave wax. Now, I do think I
remember reading about this like years and years past, and
(28:23):
some you know, texts on decomposition. Uh yeah, there there's
some interesting stories about the role of grave wax in
uh in. Like, so, one thing that corpse wax does
when it forms around a body is that it can
help preserve some of the elements within um. And this
like keeps corpses from decaying like they would normally. So
(28:45):
the formation of adapass here, I do believe is it's
chemically considered a form of suppontification, like what's happening with
the fat bergs and the sewers. Adapas are is this
waxy substance that sometimes forms around dead bodies since they decay,
particularly in certain kinds of burial conditions. And these environments
tend to be alkaline, you know, like the the opposite
(29:07):
of acidic. They tend to be anaerobic, meaning without access
to air, and they tend to be warm and moist,
which are just you know that generally sounds like the
kind of environments you don't want to bury bodies. But
you know, some soil is like that. And and and
I'm guessing at least some of these are gonna I'm
gonna match up with with sewer scenarios. I know we've
talked before about some of the the organisms that can
(29:30):
grow in a sewer environment that really thrive in a
in a like a low oxygen environment. Yeah, exactly. So,
freshly formed adipas here can be kind of soft and waxy,
but older adipac here can more closely resemble something like concrete.
I was reading a Life science article about this by
Wynd Perry, and the author quotes an anthropologist from North
(29:52):
Carolina State University named Anne Ross, and she says, quote,
a lot of people say it's greasy. I always think
bit like a thick cottage cheese consistency because it's kind
of lumpy also, so maybe not the grave wax or
the grave soap, but the grave cottage cheese, cottage cheese
(30:12):
of the dead, the corpse cheese. Alright, well, on that
grotesque note, let's take one more break, and when we
come back, we have some other fat burg facts to
roll through, and uh, you know, maybe we'll talk to
us a little bit about about the sewer monster movies
at the end of the episode. Thank, alright, we're back. Okay.
So quite clearly these things you don't want fat bergs
(30:36):
in your sewers, and yet they form in sewers under
cities all over the world. It's happening all the time
because of this combination of like stuff that people shouldn't
flush and fats and oils going down the drain, which
I guess both variations of the same thing. You know,
stuff that you shouldn't put down the drain is going
down the drain. Uh. And in the article I mentioned
(30:56):
earlier in New Scientist, Kelly Oaks refers to a University
College Dublin professor named Tom Curran who is who works
in this field, and he says that the major factors
contributing to a sort of recent increase in fatberg incidents
in London are of course like a larger populations in cities,
So it's just more people washing more stuff down drains.
(31:18):
Aging sewers contribute a lot. One factor is more dining
out at restaurants, because it appears that restaurants are responsible
for a huge amount of the fats and oils that
go down the drain. You know, you know, I would
have thought it would be more regulated with the restaurants.
Apparently it's uh in the UK at least it is
not as regulated as some people think it should be,
(31:38):
or I don't know if that's changed recently. In the
articles I was reading from the past couple of years,
it's I think there's a problem with like last lack
of specificity in regulations, Like there are regulations that say
restaurants aren't supposed to wash anything down the drain that
would be harmful to the sewer system, but like it
doesn't specifically say don't wash fats and oils down the drain, okay,
(32:01):
And then the other big thing is of course trash
that goes down the drain. But there's you know, as
we've already said, there's like one huge culprit here that's
like of the problem, and it's wet wipes. It just
seems like that one would be an easier one to knock.
It seems like that would be something we could solve.
Is like, if you use a wet wipe, no matter
what you used it for, no matter how befoul it is,
(32:21):
just put it in a garbage can. Like maybe maybe
it's easier because you go to some you know, you
travel to you know, to certain you know parts of
the world where the sewer system can't even handle toilet paper,
and you get used to it. You know, like at
first it may seem a little weird, like, oh, you know,
I must wipe and then put the toilet paper into
(32:43):
a receptacle. Uh, you know, it runs against what you've
been doing. But you get used to it and it
becomes the new normal. I didn't even know that was
the thing. Oh yeah, I mean you travel, uh, and
it just depends on the on the sewage system, and yes,
some just can't handle the paper. Um, so you know
it's it's it's asking even less I feel to say, look,
(33:06):
just you have a wet wipe. I know you just
used it on some disgusting part of like a two
year old body, but you know, you just put in
the garbage apparently, so I was reading in the same
article that you know, there are there are things that
have proved effective, and it's essentially regulating the stuff we're
talking about. It's like regulating what restaurants can put down
(33:28):
the drain and putting grease traps in place and all that,
but then also doing like public education campaigns to get
people to not put anything in the toilet other than
human waste and toilet paper, and that this has been
effective and like Dublin already, but it's it hasn't been
effective enough everywhere. And I wonder if the problem is that,
I mean, I would hope that in a campaign against Fatburg,
(33:51):
somebody has created, with practical effects and costuming, an anthropomorphic
fat Burg creature, you know, or even like a know,
like thinking about when I know we both love good
like paranormal copsploitation films from years past, like Maniac Cop
and so forth, and there was that cool trailer from
what was it melt Cop or something, Yeah, like they
(34:13):
could make Fatburg cop, and so Fatberg Cop is this like,
you know, anthropomorphic Fatburg in a police uniform that it
comes to your apartment or your restaurant and chastises you
for your destructive ways. Fatburg Cop versus Flukeman the next
big crossover hit. Oh yeah, or they're they're buddy it's
a buddy cop. Yeah. Wait, this is making Fatburg's the hero.
(34:36):
You're doing it backwards. Well know, the fat Burg in
the same way that the Fatburg confronts us Fatburg becomes
the hero, like he's a cop made out of Fatburg,
raising consciousness about the need to destroy his own kind. Well, no,
it's not, you know, he's like, uh, he didn't want
to be in Fatburg form. You know. Maybe I don't know,
maybe he was previously human. I don't know, maybe he
(34:56):
just took on human consciousness. Maybe it's kind of a
you know, a swamp things swamp man of kind of
a scenario. Yeah, why don't they look? But I mean,
it can be hard to get people to behave you know.
It's like it's just usually pretty easy to get away
with flushing and draining things you shouldn't because who's going
to catch you? Something that is momentarily your problem is
(35:20):
now just gone. It's purged, and it becomes instead like
a small part of a big problem that is everybody's problem.
It's not your problem right now, right And of course
this I mean, there's so many other things in the
world that can fall into this category. This is the
tragedy of the commons. I mean, it's you know, people
have shared common resources that they all need. The biggest
(35:42):
one probably is like the natural environment. It's you know,
supposed to be something that is of common access to everyone,
but in fact there are individual actors who overexploit and
foul and cause damage to this common resource resource that
should be shared by everybody because it's momentarily convenient for
them and they can get away with it. It's one
of the most crucial flaws in human psychology that we
(36:04):
exploit common resources this way and in that way. I
do think we should think about sewers as a type
of commons, just like we would think about like the oceans,
the rivers, the air, the environment. Sewers are a common
shared resource among all the people who use them and
should be treated as such, even though it's definitely that
kind of thing where we don't want to think about
it and we try not to think about it unless
(36:25):
it's broken right. Well, apparently, when the London Museum was
running this Fatburg exhibit, it had a plaque on the
wall that read as follows the size and foulness of
fat Bergs makes them impossible to ignore and reminds us
of our failings that they do. It seems like something
that should be inscribed over like the I don't know,
over over the door of like a Puritan church from
(36:46):
the seventeen hundreds. But I should also point out I
was reading that, uh, at the same museum exhibit they
sold something called fat Burg fudge. I guess this was
in the museum. They'd have to have some thing like
the cafe or the gift shop to line up with it. Literally,
a sweet treat modeled on a fat Burg brick with
raisins to represent flies. You know we mentioned earlier. You
(37:12):
know that, of course, London isn't the only city to
have to deal with this, obviously, there are other large
metropolitan areas that that are plagued by fatberg's. And I
was reading a net Geo article titled huge Blobs of
Fat and Trash or Filling the World Sewers by Erica
Inglehop and this was a really nice article as well,
if I remember correctly, the lead UH said that, you know,
(37:35):
in one part of the city someone flushes a wet wipe,
and another part of the city someone flushes some oil.
When those two meet, a baby fat burg is born.
So I I applaud the the writing in this article.
But angle Hop points out that in New York City,
according to the city's two thousand sixteen State of the
Sewers Report, Greece causes se sewer backups in the city. Uh.
(38:00):
And then and and as a and as a result,
New York City spends eighteen million and spent eighteen million
dollars over a five year period fighting fat burgs. But
even in smaller U. S cities you can see, um,
you know, the local government having to blow like half
a million dollars a year to battle these build ups.
And UH. Another interesting thing that ingle Hop pointed out though,
(38:22):
was that, um, there was a particular River Thames project
with argent Energy UH to potentially harvest fat burgs and
turn them into renewable fuel. And this is pretty sensible
if you think about it. I mean, all that oil
going down the drains, uh, you know, it should be
going somewhere else. Uh, such as in the case of
(38:42):
restaurants into grease traps um, which are and and sometimes
grease traps are are pilfered for this very reason because
their contents are valuable in a sense. Uh. And and
and there are also parts of the world where you know,
essentially sewer oil is is reclaimed and sort of sold
on the black market, you know, kind like sewer oil.
(39:02):
But I think this has been done with some of
the British fat birds. I don't think all of them,
I'm I'm not sure, but yeah, I think at some
point some of them have become biofuel. Yeah, I mean,
and it seems like a logical alternative to the typical
fates for a fat burg, which are I mean, if
it except for the rare pieces that go to the
museum to become art, uh you know, other stuff, it's
either being hauled off to a landfill or it's broken
(39:25):
up so as to better diffuse into the sewer system. Um.
So yeah, to whatever extent you could. I mean, obviously,
you want to prevent the fat burg to begin with.
You don't want to have to to toil with it. Um.
You know, even if you get to the point where
you could send a robot down to battle the fat birds.
It's you still gotta you know, haul it up, uh
and all and then potentially hauled off to a landfill.
(39:45):
But if it could be turned into fuel, if it
could you know, uh, power the Deloreans the future, then
that sounds like the way to go. Well, I do
think it is a good idea to turn these things
as long as they are still being made into fuel.
But don't don't get distry acted by that as like
an excuse to Okay, so it's not so bad if
we keep making them because they turn into fuel, right right,
(40:06):
I mean, because again, the sewer systems are not made
for fat bergs. Like if you, I guess, if you
reach the situation where you're like, look, we refuse to learn,
we're not gonna stop flushing oil and wet wipes, then okay,
you could conceivably imagine a scenario where the sewer systems
have to be redesigned in order to um, you know,
sequester fat bergs for harvesting. But they're not built like that,
(40:32):
and they're probably not going to be rebuilt like that,
and it's ultimately an easier prospect to just change how
we're handling the things that we're sending down into the sewer.
This is going to become some crack pop political parties
energy platform. And they're saying all this talk about you know,
green energy. What you do is you pour oil down
the drain all day. Our energy problems are solved. I'm
(40:54):
not super up on British politics. Is there a Fatburg
party yet? I know that the new parties get get
formed in there. I can't heard about it, but I'm sure.
I mean, like all issues, especially issues in fact that
have to do with people exploiting or ruining the commons
for everybody, these issues often do get like politically polarized
(41:15):
because it's advantageous for somebody to do that. And this
is why we need Fatburg cop out there on the beat,
in the in the you know, at least in the
eyes of the public, in the messaging, uh, you know,
confronting us, chastising us far aways, um and and I
but and but I mean, I mean that's seriously because
I think, like, for my part, like one of the
(41:35):
reasons that the other reasons that fat birds are so captivating, uh,
in addition to all the grotesque photos and footage that
shows up I saw one article is like a video
based article online that the title was something along the
lines of the moment when a rat crawls out of
the fat Bird, and that was apparently the footage of
(41:55):
like a live rat swarming out of fat burg Um.
You know. So we can't look away from the grotesque
nature of them. But then also the sewers are this
unique location where there have been a number of notable
films over the years that populate the sewers with monsters,
be it you know, Chud's or or you know or
(42:15):
Or or cannibals in the British film Raw Meat, well,
I guess that was a subway system but still underground environment.
And Ghostbusters too, I think, yeah, the river of slime
flowing out of New York City, that's a big one
for me. But also definitely the Blob at least remake
had a lot of like, uh, you know, under I
think there was like the sewer system shenanigans there with
(42:37):
the blob, you know, ripping through the sewer and attacking people. Yeah,
and it definitely came up through the drains. So it's
I feel like the fat Berg reminds us of these
monstrosities as well. Except there they're not fantasy, they're real. Uh,
you know, they just don't actually assault us and try
to digest us. Well, I feel like some of these,
(42:59):
especially Ghostbusters too. Yeah, it does bring in some of
that same metaphor stuff we were talking about earlier about
you know, like it it's all the bad things we
don't want to think about and all the negative energy
is that that is what was feeding the slime and
Ghostbusters too, right, it was like Prince Vigo and just
New Yorkers being jerks. That's kind of weird for a
sequel to a movie in which an e p A
(43:22):
representative was a villain. Yeah, but there you go. It
was a different time. Ghostbusters a bravely pro littering movie.
Al Right, Well, there you have it. A fat Bergs
for you. Now. Obviously, if anyone out there has direct
experience with fat Bergs or any other strange monstrosities in
(43:43):
our sewer systems, let us know. I feel like, just
thinking about the sheer number of listeners and just all
the you know, the diverse backgrounds that you all have,
somebody out there has had to have battled the fat birg.
We've got a first hand flusher in the audience. I
know it. Yeah, it's just a matter of getting you
to write in and tell us about it. Uh. So
(44:04):
you know, if so, do right in and tell us
about it. And also just if there's some sort of
sewer monster movie that we've failed to reference, uh yeah,
hit us up on that as well. We're always happy
to cha at about movies. And hey, if you're if
you're an artist, maybe you can create uh an image
of fat bird cop because I feel like you'd be
(44:24):
not only amusing us and amusing other listeners, you would
potentially be um uh you know, saving the world by
introducing this character. In the meantime, if you want to
check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's where you'll find them all. You also find out
links to social media accounts, as well as our link
to our t shirt store. But ultimately the best thing
you can do to support the show is to just
(44:47):
make sure you rate and review us wherever you have
the power to do so. Wherever you get this podcast
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Tari Harrison.
If you would like to get in touch with us,
directly with feedback about this episode or the other. To
tell us about your battles for the fatburg, to suggest
a topic for the future, to suggest a guest, or
just to say hello. You can email us at contact
(45:09):
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios How
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to your favorite shows.
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. And today I thought maybe we should
start off with a little don't do what Donnie Don't does?
All right, tell us about Donnie Don't. Okay, So let's, uh,
(00:25):
let's let's see what Donnie Don't is doing and see
if maybe we should don't do what he does. Uh,
try and spot the don't. So Donnie Don't is He's
cooking up a big old mess of French fries in
his deep friar, and he eats all the fries while
watching RoboCop three, And then it's time to clean up.
So first of all, he realizes he is greasy all
over from eating this big batch of fries, so he
gives himself a good wipe down with some wet wipes,
(00:47):
and then he flushes them down the toilet. Now it's
time to get rid of the gallon of duck fat
that he used to cook his fries. So what does
he do? He pours it straight down the drain in
the bathtub. Now I think most of us can easily.
I don't know about all of us, because somebody's obviously
doing what Donnie Don't does. But I think most of
us can easily spot the Donnie don'ts here. He's made
(01:10):
several errors, but now I think it's pretty common knowledge
that you are not supposed to flush wet wipes and
other non toilet paper products down the toilet, and you're
definitely not supposed to pour fat down the drain. Yeah,
I mean there's some other things that he's doing you
could potentially criticize. I mean, I don't I don't know
how how often he's eating French fries that have been
(01:31):
fried in duck fat. Like, if he's doing that too often,
that's probably not great for his health. But you know,
once in a while, why not, right? Um? RoboCop three,
I have no problem with that. It may not be
the strongest in the RoboCop movies, but it's uh it
has like cyber Ninja is in it. That's kind of cool.
But yeah, it's the it's the wet wipes and then
pouring that grease down the drain, and it's the pour
(01:52):
of the grease down the drain. I often forget that
that is a key rule. Oh do you do you
break this one? No? I I just am generally not
in a position to break it because we just don't.
We don't cook with with fat uh much anymore at
all anymore. And uh. And then as far as wet
wives go, like I I know, not to put wet
wipes down though, really no oils in your house, no
(02:15):
salad dressing, no, like no olive oil or anything. But
not duck fat. Oh well, I mean, of course, other
like non animal fats are still like fats and oils.
But I guess what I'm thinking, Like I I remember,
so I shouldn't have said just duck fat. I mean
that you're not supposed to pour oil or lipids of
any time down to drain but but but specifically like
(02:36):
the you know, like a big fry vat kind of
drainage situation. Like I I remember seeing jars of of
of fat and oil like underneath the sink growing up,
because like that was, you know, the appropriate thing to do.
That's the grandma's house kind of thing, like the big
old mason jar of bacon grease under the sink. And
(02:56):
then of course when whenever we go, if you go
to um fast food restaurant, or even a restaurant in general,
you're gonna find that big grease trap outside. Like sometimes
it's a little bit hidden, but sometimes there's no place
to hide it. Um, and it's just right up front.
It's just there in the parking lot. Yeah. I remember
one of my jobs that I worked at when I
(03:17):
was in college. Every morning when i'd go into it,
I'd have to park in the parking lot of a
restaurant that was like next to where I worked, and
I parked right next to their big it was like
a burger and fries place and the heart next to
their big grease grease depository. Uh. And it just looked
like the saddest robot from some Star Wars spinoff, like
(03:38):
Lithuanian Star Wars has our four, uh you know D seven,
And it's this big black thing with with like this
dripping sad, grease tears stained head. But of course that's
this restaurant usage, and we can I think we can
all understand that. I mean, there's certain rules and regulations
there they're following, and they're also producing just a ton
(03:59):
of the this uh, this material. I wonder if, like
the problem with a household situation is either you're creating
so little that you don't think about it, so it's
like death by thousand cuts, right, or when you do
produce a more sizeable amount, doing you know, some sort
of frying scenario like you just suddenly have this this
huge mess to clean up, and it's easy to just
(04:21):
convince yourself, I'm just gonna do the easy thing. I'm
just gonna go and put it down the sink and
next time I'll do better. Right, who's gonna know? Yeah,
but maybe we should step back and ask a question.
I mean, it's not like RoboCop is gonna show at
your house, right, right, So that's what they do in
RoboCop too, right, They reprogram him so instead of fighting crime,
he goes out and he he pursues uh minor infraction
(04:45):
minor and littering and stuff like that and people using
swear words. Uh. So we should ask this question of
wait a minute, why are you not supposed to do
these things? Why are you not supposed to pour oil
and fat and grease down the drain. One reason you're
not supposed to do this has to do with the
way sewers work. Sewers are I say, with no hesitation
(05:07):
one of the greatest human inventions. And if you doubt this,
listen to our invention episodes on the toilet or listen
to uh we we did an episode of stuff to
blow your mind about the miasma theory of disease. And
in all of these we talk about how you know
properly maintained sanitary sewer facilities are are not not just
there to make our homes and our streets more pleasant,
(05:30):
like they play a crucial role in protecting public health
and preventing outbreaks of diseases, especially fecal oral route diseases
which are as gross as they sound, diseases like cholera. UH.
Sewers work when everything flows smoothly to its destination point
at a treatment facility, and they're one of the best
innovations in the history of civilization. I say that no
(05:52):
qualifications at all. But sometimes things get in the way,
like tree roots can intrude on sewer pipes and block flow.
We live here in Atlanta where there are a lot
of trees and a lot of a lot of old
large trees and places that are intersecting with sewer pipes,
and so this we know about this happening a lot uh.
And of course they can cause turbulence and this can
(06:14):
lead to build up. Or you can have old, decaying
sewer mains that crack and do similar stuff, and sometimes
blockages in these sewer sewer pipes occur from the inside out.
One of the most all inspiring things that can block
a sewer is what we're going to be talking about today.
It's something that has in recent years come to be
(06:35):
known as a fat berg According to an article I
was reading by Kelly Oakes and New Scientists from earlier
this year. UH. This term was apparently coined in two
thousand and eight, but it became widely popular after news
reports about a huge fatburg in and what it refers
to is a giant, solidified mass of stuff based on
(06:59):
fat and oils that just states in the heart of
a sewer system, feeding on things like wet wipes and
floss and other trash, but especially on fats and the
byproducts of fats like cooking oils you know, uh, grease
from cooking animals, all that stuff that people wash down
the drain when they just either dump out oils they
(07:22):
cook with or just when they wash their dishes, and
the oils that are already on the dishes, come come
off and go down the down the tubes. Yeah, I
understand that they're they're like the wet wipes, the floss,
all of that can can sort of serve as a substrate. Right,
It's like a scaffolding on which this, uh, this new
mass will form. Yeah, and we'll talk about how it
forms in a little bit. But I wanted to talk
(07:43):
about the terminology because while fat bergs has really caught
on with the public, this is like what I think
the reason that there have been so many articles in
recent years about fat bergs is just because of the
term fat bergs, Like there was now this beautiful, attractive
terminology for it, whereas previously, especially in the US, I
think they were referred to primarily with the acronym fogs
(08:05):
for fat oil and grease or frogs for fat roots
as in tree roots and oil and grease. But they
have really miss an opportunity there to dug to dub
them for instead of frogs, same letters, but it would
have scratched more of a chudditch, you know, and I
think maybe would have resonated a little more, maybe not
as much as fat birds ultimately did, but I mean
(08:26):
attack of the Forgs be where the Forgs. I feel
like that could have resonated with with the public. If
there is not already a movie about one of these
things becoming sentient, there will be soon. But one particularly
massive fat burg that we might linger on for a
bit has been covered extensively, especially in the British press.
(08:46):
This was the White Chapel Berg. It was removed in
TV and it was a mass blocking the sewer under
the under White Chapel Road in East London. I think
this was Jack the Rippers neighborhood totally. I think that
adds to the appeal of the White Chapel fatburg, and
it sounds even more sinister exactly. And the berg itself
(09:07):
in a way was sort of a white chapel. It's
like this, uh, this unholy things, sort of a gray
off white color. And so it was about two hundred
and fifty meters long or about eight hundred and twenty feet,
and it weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons.
This monster was so magnificent that a piece of it
(09:28):
was broken off and displayed in a special exhibit in
the Museum of London. And I came across a gorgeous,
absolutely haunting description of this sewage fatburg fragment by Sam
Knight in The New Yorker. And this, this description of
the fatburg was so moving that I have to quote
from it. Are you ready, Robert? The piece of fatburg
(09:50):
was slightly smaller than a loaf of bread and looked
like it might have come from the moon. It was
putty colored and marked everywhere with geological looking indentation, including
a cluster of fingerprints from when it was removed from
a sewer in East London last October and lifted through
a man hole. On the surface, there was also a
dark fragment from an autumn leaf which must have slipped
(10:13):
down the drains into its mall. Emerging through the congealed,
calcified fat was the purple and orange perforated edge of
a double decker chocolate bar wrapper. Every detail of the
hideous object was starkly visible because it was resting on
a bed of black granules under a spotlight in a
glass box at the Museum of London at the opening
(10:34):
of its new exhibition fat Burg. I stared at it
for a while, and while I did so, a tiny
dark speck on the fat bird became animate and started
to move. A fly the size of a pinhead flew
up and battered against the glass. That's pretty great because
he capture us this sense of it almost being alive
(10:56):
and uh and and also this this haunting feeling that
it is like our sins. Uh, may you know manifested
into a physical form, like here is you know, all
your recklessness and your you're willingness to to flush inappropriate
things down the toilet. Well, here it is altogether, uh,
to confront you and to point it's grotesque finger at you. Yeah,
(11:20):
I hope this description of the fatburg it's nominated for
like a Pulitzer prize. That's uh. It's powerful stuff. But
the seen white chappelberg that mentioned a minute ago was
by no means the only fat burg. Fat Bergs form
all the time in cities all around the world due
to people flushing and washing fats and other inappropriate stuff
(11:43):
down the drain. According to Night's article, it's estimated that
London alone has at least five large fat bergs at
any given time. So sometimes you know, they go down
there to fight them, but they're they're always new ones forming.
So let's talk about side. Is they can become so huge.
Let me restate what I said a minute ago. This
(12:04):
White Chapel beast was two hundred and fifty meters long,
which is approximately the length of the Hindenburgh, and it
weighed probably about a hundred and thirty tons, or heavier
by about a third than the biggest ever Sora pod dinosaurs.
Of course, it makes sense because we're talking about a
massive sewage system. We're talking about massive consumption, a massive population,
(12:28):
and therefore the clog the thing is going to be
massive as well. Well. Yeah, and also you want to
consider the particulars of the London sewer system, because this
is where a lot of these stories come from. The
London sewer system. You know, it's it's got Victorian elements,
and it was a sewer system built over a hundred
years ago, uh, you know, back in Victorian times as
a response to the great stink you know that we've
(12:50):
talked about on on this show before, where the you know,
sewage being discharged into the Thames one year in the
believe it's the eighteen fifties or sixties, sometimes in the
middle of the nineteenth century, it got so foul and
it stanks so bad that Parliament was just you know,
about to puke in their uh in their deliberation chambers.
(13:11):
And so they eventually did something about it, and that
was to get this sewage system. Uh not only because
of the smell, but also because it was you know,
the sewage system that they had in place at the time,
which consisted of more like open sewers in the streets
and stuff draining into the Thames, which uh then people
would drink out of. It was just leading to the
cholera outbreaks and terrible public health conditions and these horrible stinks.
(13:35):
So they created this massive sewer system under the ground
in order to take away all of the waste water
and discharge it away from the city. So you've got
these like in some cases very large, like old elaborate
and some sometimes kind of beautiful brick built sewage channels
and you know, access tunnels and all this. Uh So,
so you've got old facilities. But you might be wondering, Okay,
(13:58):
so one of these giant b east, You've you've got
a hindenburg of fat and sewage and waste stuck in
the sewer blocking blocking things, preventing them from flowing. What
do you do about it? Well, that's the question. We're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back
we will answer it. Thank thank Okay, we're back. So
(14:19):
we're talking about fat bergs. How do you fight them?
You got one of these giant concrete fat conglomerations made
out of wet wipes and and dental floss and old
you know, wrappers of food and bits of plastic, and
of course all of these fats and oils and grease
and sewage and waste. It just makes this huge mass
(14:40):
that blocks up the sewers. What do you do about it? Well,
you literally have sewer workers that go down to break
it up and remove it. The city sewer workers in
London are known as flush errs, and they have to
fight these wicked villains. They have to go down and
confront the ball rog in person. And in Night's article
in The New Yorker, he talks about the process of
(15:02):
breaking up the White Chapel mass. So first of all,
he says, they've got to wear protection and they've got
to have a breathing apparatus because this thing is in
a way alive. It's got a lot of uh life
feeding on it, and as a result, it can let
out sudden explosions of gas like hydrogen sulfide, which of
course smells like rotten eggs and is the It's a
(15:22):
common gas released as a byproduct of decaying organic matter,
but it also releases methane, and sometimes it can just
blast out carbon monoxide, which can be deadly. So let's
say you're outfitting your D and D Adventure the Flusher
class to go down into this dungeon and fight the monster.
What weapons do you want to equip them with? Well,
probably not fire. Fire would seem like a bad idea.
(15:43):
Oh yeah, that's uh. And and unfortunately they are not
a magic using class, so they don't have any spells
available to them. I don't know. Is that a thing
in D and D. There's some classes who can't do spells, right? Uh? Yeah,
I mean it seems like there are a lot of
classes that have some sort of magical abilities, especially as
they level up. Yeah, this sounds more like like fighter
uh uh material right here, You need some fighty to
(16:06):
go down and physically fight this physical threat and remove it.
These are paladins. I'll allow it. I'll allow it. I
mean paladins have some some you know that they have
holy powers, etcetera. But a lot of those holy powers
are about, like, you know, increasing their physical prowess. Right, Okay,
certainly I don't know my stuff. Okay, we'll say they're paladins. Anyway.
(16:28):
So the Mighty Flusher's weapons include the bomb hose. That's
the term bomb hose, which is just like a high
pressure water jet that should be able to cut through blockages.
It's like a cutting jet. But apparently, according to Night's article,
even this didn't work all that well on the hardened
mass of the White Chapelberg, and so later on these
these warriors had to use more old fashioned implements like
(16:51):
pick axes, shovels, and he says in one case, even
as Saul, when pieces were removed and kept for the
London Museum exhibit it, one expert who handled them described
the Fatberg chunks as sort of hard but light, feeling
like pumice stone. I think that was interesting. Yeah, but
(17:11):
even the smaller one so so that one's gigantic, But
even the smaller ones are still huge in disgusting ways.
I found a brilliantly funny article with a great title
on Atlas Obscura by Jessica Lee Hester from January of
this year is called seven Big Things. They're smaller than
this fatberg, and it refers to another British fatburg, one
(17:32):
found in a sewer beneath the town in beneath the
town in Devon, and according to the water utility in
that area, it was the largest fatburg that they had
come across in that area. It was about two and
ten feet or about sixty five meters uh. And so,
so what are the things she lists as smaller than
this fatberg? At least in terms of dimensions. I don't
think they had weight on it at the time she
(17:52):
was writing. Um. So smaller in terms of length was
the above water surface height of the iceberg that sunk
the Titan Annic, the tallest known Ginko tree in the world,
the Christ the Redeemer statue, and Rio de Jannaro, the
Coney's Island or the Coney Islands Wonder Wheel, uh, the
Statue of Liberty, the Roman Colosseum, and Nelson's column in
(18:18):
Trafalgar Square all smaller than this fatburg, which is not
even the largest fatburg by a long shot. And she
also pointed out something in in her article that was
just an interesting phrasing of things that it's sort of
echo thoughts I'd been having as I was reading about
Fatburg's in in Hester's words quote, the chunky, gunky sewer
(18:39):
cloggers are murky mirrors into the behaviors of people above
ground because they hold all the stuff we flush and
try to forget about, including cooking, grease, napkins, floss, minstrel
products which don't belong in the pipes in the first place.
So it's this idea of like these are sort of
the the places of all the things that we want
(18:59):
to just get out of our lives. It's, you know,
the purging of convenience all becomes this mass yea. And
again it kind of it confronts us once more. The
horror is even greater because it is all it is
a it's it's congealed into this this massive form. And
I think maybe that is part of the like the
psychological reason why people can't look away, Like why was
(19:21):
there a museum exhibit about these things where everybody wanted
to go see them. It's this fascinating, uh, you know,
almost kind of freudy and feeling kind of thing, like
the suppressed part of our culture and civilization. It's what's
shoved down and covered up and not looked at, almost
out of a sense of shame, and it becomes this stuff.
(19:41):
And a lot of our modern life is about distantcing
ourselves from the reality of our waste, from the reality
of our dead things of this nature. So so yeah,
I think it's it definitely speaks to us on that level. Okay,
maybe we should turn to the question of how, like,
how do simple bits of cooking oil and other turn
into these mighty slumbering beasts, the monsters of the dungeon,
(20:04):
because it could seem almost magical right that it's it's
it's like this thing has become alive down there. It
is like one of these uh you know, there are
multiple uh uh you know, I think horror properties where
some sort of garbage monster comes alive, uh And it
basically fulfills the same purpose we're talking about here, to
confront us and to uh, you know, to to show
(20:25):
us the horrors of our of of of our you know,
disposable society. But but there's a very but the process
is happening here is not magical. It is you know,
we can we can we can look at what is
happening chemically. Yeah. Uh So, obviously there's one extremely simple
way that there are multiple ways here, but there's one
extremely simple way that fat can end up blocking sewer pipes,
(20:47):
and that's by congealing. Like if you ever cooked bacon,
cooked bacon in a pan, what happens, Well, the white
solid fat in the bacon in the animal flesh renders.
It turns into a fluid that runs around in the
hand like water, and it flows, so you can pour
it out, etcetera. You can pour it down the drain,
but that's only because it's hot. If you take that
(21:08):
bacon grease and you leave it out at room temperature,
you put it in the fridge. We all know what happens, right,
It turns into a kind of waxy solid and this
is large, right Yeah, I guess the curing process of
bacon doesn't change that. Yeah, So it's pork fat either way. Uh.
And Now, not all fats can geal into solids or
semi solids at room temperature, but plenty do. So if
(21:29):
you melt this fat and then pour it down the
sink into cold pipes and wash it away, the cooling
fat forms a solid or semi solid mass. That can
build up, it can coat surfaces and so forth, and
can of course block sewer pipes. So that that that's
like the simple version. That's just one way fat can
clog up your sewers, that one reason you don't want
(21:50):
to put it down there, right, And I think we
can all grasp that even if if you've ever washed
dishes before, you can get a sense of how, how,
what's happening exactly. But this is actually not the main
mean piece of chemistry contributing to fat bergs. The truth
is actually weirder. Often the fats that we wash down
the drain essentially become soap. The chemical process is known
(22:13):
as saponification u. This word comes from the Latin sapo,
meaning soap, And once a mass of fat gets washed
down the drain, it chemically breaks down into fatty acids,
and these fatty acids undergo a chemical reaction in the
alkaline environment of the sewer, combining with other elements and compounds,
often calcium, to form this calcified soap like deposit And
(22:37):
of course, as we all know, soap can be pretty solid.
Like you, you don't want to get whacked with a
bar of soap in the bottom of sock. But it
gets even worse because calcified fat bergs build up a
real kind of rigidity. Like the workers who have to
cut them out sometimes compare them to concrete by the
time you have to go in and break them up. Uh.
And I don't know exactly what leads to all that.
(22:59):
It might be this forming of a solid mass and
then like the sort of compacting of time, you know,
think of pressure just forcing it together. But the soap
like masses tend to form around solid pieces of trash
that get flushed down the toilet. So that's the other
major component we mentioned earlier. Like wet wipes are by
far the worst offender here. This is in you know,
(23:21):
all the British press about this is just saying like,
don't wash fats and oils down the drain and don't
flush wet wipes. Don't flush wet wipes. Wet wipes are
like the the most hated thing but the sewer workers.
And that's of course because you know, they're not designed
industrially the way like toilet paper is, which is made
to break up when it's in this aqueous environment. The
(23:43):
wet wipes tend to not break up. They stick together
and they form a sort of binding or substrate for
this nightmare soap of the deep on its way to
becoming a berg. I mean it makes me think of
the of the science choice we've covered about uh creating
artificial say years we have some sort of a scaffolding
on which you're gonna you're gonna build up like the
(24:04):
you know, the collagen and create this artificial piece of flesh.
It's kind of like that process taking place in a
foul sewer, but imagine that process is taking place where
stuff just keeps flowing into it, so it just keeps
getting more solid material like wet wipes and more like
binding soap like fat structure, until it becomes an ear
(24:25):
the size of the Hindenburg. Another contributor to the fat
bergs in the London sewers, and not just the London
sewers in other places, but especially in London sewers is old,
rough brick surfaces. I'm not positive, but I think the
mechanism here is that rough surfaces create more friction with
the flowing water, and this causes turbulence. Instead of flowing
(24:48):
smoothly the water or the you know, the sewage, it
gets sort of churned up, and this interrupts the smooth
flow and it gives uh and and so it causes
build up of solid matter. But also I think the
rough surfaces just sort of give the wet wipes and
other trash little crags to catch on, and then of
course once they catch on, other things can catch onto them,
(25:09):
and it just builds up from there. Yeah. And and
also so these soap like masses are not water soluble,
meaning they're not dissolved by water, so they're not gonna
over time just like break up and wash away with
the flow of the sewer water. They just sit there
and they build up and they grow too, mescent with
new waste and trash and layers of soapy solids made
(25:30):
out of fat, until somebody finally goes down there to
slay the dragon. And as we discussed, of course the
battles of the flushers, you have to you physically break
these things up and remove them. Yeah, again with things
like pick axes and saws, because it is almost like concrete,
you know, it's not just this big, you know, gross
sewer jelly that you just need to sort of you know,
(25:51):
flush a little bit more, you know, just spray with
water and you know you'll get it done. A plunger
is not going to do it. Now. In some cases,
I do think these like water jet hoses can be
used to cut it up. They just, at least in
the one case I was reading about, they weren't quite
doing the job and they had to resort to the
old ways. Also, I just wanted to do a little
side note on suppontification because what's happening here in the
(26:13):
sewers is not exactly the same as but it's somewhat
analogous to, uh, something that I'm very interested in that
occasionally happens to human bodies in certain burial conditions. Robert,
have you been to the Mooder Museum in Philadelphia. I haven't.
I've never visited h Philly. Yeah, I haven't been, but
I've wanted to for a long time. So they've got
(26:33):
an exhibit, or I don't know about an exhibit. They've
got a thing at the Modern Museum that is a
human body. It's known as the soap Lady. And do
you know the soap Lady? No, but I'm already horrified
because I know enough about the mood Museum to know
that a soap Lady there is going to be a
site to behold. I think they've got a soap lady
and a soap man. I've primarily read about the soap lady,
(26:54):
so those two should mean yeah, exactly. So. It was
originally believed that she was a woman who lived in
Philadelphia in the eighteenth century and had died of yellow
fever sometime in the seventeen nineties. But in nineteen eighty
six they did some X rays of the body of
the Soap Lady, and this revealed that she was wearing
clothes with like buttons and pins that weren't manufactured in
(27:17):
the US until around the eighteen thirties. So it's now
believed that she must have died later than was originally believed.
But whenever she died. In eighteen seventy five, her body
was exhumed from a local cemetery and it was discovered
that the corpse was encased almost entirely in a solid
soap like substance, and that she was essentially a soap mummy.
(27:40):
If you look at pictures of her, she looks like
a mummy. She looks like some of these uh like uh,
you know, sort of dried, mummified, preserved corpses that you
might find in the case of some of like the
Andean mummies, um, except that she has except that, like
her features are less defined, and she's got a bunch
of extra stuff around the outside of her body, like
(28:01):
almost like she's encased in some kind of concrete or something,
but it's not concrete. This substance in reality is something
kind of like soap. It's not exactly so, but it's
something known as adipus here, also sometimes referred to as
corpse wax or grave wax. Now, I do think I
remember reading about this like years and years past, and
(28:23):
some you know, texts on decomposition. Uh yeah, there there's
some interesting stories about the role of grave wax in
uh in. Like, so, one thing that corpse wax does
when it forms around a body is that it can
help preserve some of the elements within um. And this
like keeps corpses from decaying like they would normally. So
(28:45):
the formation of adapass here, I do believe is it's
chemically considered a form of suppontification, like what's happening with
the fat bergs and the sewers. Adapas are is this
waxy substance that sometimes forms around dead bodies since they decay,
particularly in certain kinds of burial conditions. And these environments
tend to be alkaline, you know, like the the opposite
(29:07):
of acidic. They tend to be anaerobic, meaning without access
to air, and they tend to be warm and moist,
which are just you know that generally sounds like the
kind of environments you don't want to bury bodies. But
you know, some soil is like that. And and and
I'm guessing at least some of these are gonna I'm
gonna match up with with sewer scenarios. I know we've
talked before about some of the the organisms that can
(29:30):
grow in a sewer environment that really thrive in a
in a like a low oxygen environment. Yeah, exactly. So,
freshly formed adipas here can be kind of soft and waxy,
but older adipac here can more closely resemble something like concrete.
I was reading a Life science article about this by
Wynd Perry, and the author quotes an anthropologist from North
(29:52):
Carolina State University named Anne Ross, and she says, quote,
a lot of people say it's greasy. I always think
bit like a thick cottage cheese consistency because it's kind
of lumpy also, so maybe not the grave wax or
the grave soap, but the grave cottage cheese, cottage cheese
(30:12):
of the dead, the corpse cheese. Alright, well, on that
grotesque note, let's take one more break, and when we
come back, we have some other fat burg facts to
roll through, and uh, you know, maybe we'll talk to
us a little bit about about the sewer monster movies
at the end of the episode. Thank, alright, we're back. Okay.
So quite clearly these things you don't want fat bergs
(30:36):
in your sewers, and yet they form in sewers under
cities all over the world. It's happening all the time
because of this combination of like stuff that people shouldn't
flush and fats and oils going down the drain, which
I guess both variations of the same thing. You know,
stuff that you shouldn't put down the drain is going
down the drain. Uh. And in the article I mentioned
(30:56):
earlier in New Scientist, Kelly Oaks refers to a University
College Dublin professor named Tom Curran who is who works
in this field, and he says that the major factors
contributing to a sort of recent increase in fatberg incidents
in London are of course like a larger populations in cities,
So it's just more people washing more stuff down drains.
(31:18):
Aging sewers contribute a lot. One factor is more dining
out at restaurants, because it appears that restaurants are responsible
for a huge amount of the fats and oils that
go down the drain. You know, you know, I would
have thought it would be more regulated with the restaurants.
Apparently it's uh in the UK at least it is
not as regulated as some people think it should be,
(31:38):
or I don't know if that's changed recently. In the
articles I was reading from the past couple of years,
it's I think there's a problem with like last lack
of specificity in regulations, Like there are regulations that say
restaurants aren't supposed to wash anything down the drain that
would be harmful to the sewer system, but like it
doesn't specifically say don't wash fats and oils down the drain, okay,
(32:01):
And then the other big thing is of course trash
that goes down the drain. But there's you know, as
we've already said, there's like one huge culprit here that's
like of the problem, and it's wet wipes. It just
seems like that one would be an easier one to knock.
It seems like that would be something we could solve.
Is like, if you use a wet wipe, no matter
what you used it for, no matter how befoul it is,
(32:21):
just put it in a garbage can. Like maybe maybe
it's easier because you go to some you know, you
travel to you know, to certain you know parts of
the world where the sewer system can't even handle toilet paper,
and you get used to it. You know, like at
first it may seem a little weird, like, oh, you know,
I must wipe and then put the toilet paper into
(32:43):
a receptacle. Uh, you know, it runs against what you've
been doing. But you get used to it and it
becomes the new normal. I didn't even know that was
the thing. Oh yeah, I mean you travel, uh, and
it just depends on the on the sewage system, and yes,
some just can't handle the paper. Um, so you know
it's it's it's asking even less I feel to say, look,
(33:06):
just you have a wet wipe. I know you just
used it on some disgusting part of like a two
year old body, but you know, you just put in
the garbage apparently, so I was reading in the same
article that you know, there are there are things that
have proved effective, and it's essentially regulating the stuff we're
talking about. It's like regulating what restaurants can put down
(33:28):
the drain and putting grease traps in place and all that,
but then also doing like public education campaigns to get
people to not put anything in the toilet other than
human waste and toilet paper, and that this has been
effective and like Dublin already, but it's it hasn't been
effective enough everywhere. And I wonder if the problem is that,
I mean, I would hope that in a campaign against Fatburg,
(33:51):
somebody has created, with practical effects and costuming, an anthropomorphic
fat Burg creature, you know, or even like a know,
like thinking about when I know we both love good
like paranormal copsploitation films from years past, like Maniac Cop
and so forth, and there was that cool trailer from
what was it melt Cop or something, Yeah, like they
(34:13):
could make Fatburg cop, and so Fatberg Cop is this like,
you know, anthropomorphic Fatburg in a police uniform that it
comes to your apartment or your restaurant and chastises you
for your destructive ways. Fatburg Cop versus Flukeman the next
big crossover hit. Oh yeah, or they're they're buddy it's
a buddy cop. Yeah. Wait, this is making Fatburg's the hero.
(34:36):
You're doing it backwards. Well know, the fat Burg in
the same way that the Fatburg confronts us Fatburg becomes
the hero, like he's a cop made out of Fatburg,
raising consciousness about the need to destroy his own kind. Well, no,
it's not, you know, he's like, uh, he didn't want
to be in Fatburg form. You know. Maybe I don't know,
maybe he was previously human. I don't know, maybe he
(34:56):
just took on human consciousness. Maybe it's kind of a
you know, a swamp things swamp man of kind of
a scenario. Yeah, why don't they look? But I mean,
it can be hard to get people to behave you know.
It's like it's just usually pretty easy to get away
with flushing and draining things you shouldn't because who's going
to catch you? Something that is momentarily your problem is
(35:20):
now just gone. It's purged, and it becomes instead like
a small part of a big problem that is everybody's problem.
It's not your problem right now, right And of course
this I mean, there's so many other things in the
world that can fall into this category. This is the
tragedy of the commons. I mean, it's you know, people
have shared common resources that they all need. The biggest
(35:42):
one probably is like the natural environment. It's you know,
supposed to be something that is of common access to everyone,
but in fact there are individual actors who overexploit and
foul and cause damage to this common resource resource that
should be shared by everybody because it's momentarily convenient for
them and they can get away with it. It's one
of the most crucial flaws in human psychology that we
(36:04):
exploit common resources this way and in that way. I
do think we should think about sewers as a type
of commons, just like we would think about like the oceans,
the rivers, the air, the environment. Sewers are a common
shared resource among all the people who use them and
should be treated as such, even though it's definitely that
kind of thing where we don't want to think about
it and we try not to think about it unless
(36:25):
it's broken right. Well, apparently, when the London Museum was
running this Fatburg exhibit, it had a plaque on the
wall that read as follows the size and foulness of
fat Bergs makes them impossible to ignore and reminds us
of our failings that they do. It seems like something
that should be inscribed over like the I don't know,
over over the door of like a Puritan church from
(36:46):
the seventeen hundreds. But I should also point out I
was reading that, uh, at the same museum exhibit they
sold something called fat Burg fudge. I guess this was
in the museum. They'd have to have some thing like
the cafe or the gift shop to line up with it. Literally,
a sweet treat modeled on a fat Burg brick with
raisins to represent flies. You know we mentioned earlier. You
(37:12):
know that, of course, London isn't the only city to
have to deal with this, obviously, there are other large
metropolitan areas that that are plagued by fatberg's. And I
was reading a net Geo article titled huge Blobs of
Fat and Trash or Filling the World Sewers by Erica
Inglehop and this was a really nice article as well,
if I remember correctly, the lead UH said that, you know,
(37:35):
in one part of the city someone flushes a wet wipe,
and another part of the city someone flushes some oil.
When those two meet, a baby fat burg is born.
So I I applaud the the writing in this article.
But angle Hop points out that in New York City,
according to the city's two thousand sixteen State of the
Sewers Report, Greece causes se sewer backups in the city. Uh.
(38:00):
And then and and as a and as a result,
New York City spends eighteen million and spent eighteen million
dollars over a five year period fighting fat burgs. But
even in smaller U. S cities you can see, um,
you know, the local government having to blow like half
a million dollars a year to battle these build ups.
And UH. Another interesting thing that ingle Hop pointed out though,
(38:22):
was that, um, there was a particular River Thames project
with argent Energy UH to potentially harvest fat burgs and
turn them into renewable fuel. And this is pretty sensible
if you think about it. I mean, all that oil
going down the drains, uh, you know, it should be
going somewhere else. Uh, such as in the case of
(38:42):
restaurants into grease traps um, which are and and sometimes
grease traps are are pilfered for this very reason because
their contents are valuable in a sense. Uh. And and
and there are also parts of the world where you know,
essentially sewer oil is is reclaimed and sort of sold
on the black market, you know, kind like sewer oil.
(39:02):
But I think this has been done with some of
the British fat birds. I don't think all of them,
I'm I'm not sure, but yeah, I think at some
point some of them have become biofuel. Yeah, I mean,
and it seems like a logical alternative to the typical
fates for a fat burg, which are I mean, if
it except for the rare pieces that go to the
museum to become art, uh you know, other stuff, it's
either being hauled off to a landfill or it's broken
(39:25):
up so as to better diffuse into the sewer system. Um.
So yeah, to whatever extent you could. I mean, obviously,
you want to prevent the fat burg to begin with.
You don't want to have to to toil with it. Um.
You know, even if you get to the point where
you could send a robot down to battle the fat birds.
It's you still gotta you know, haul it up, uh
and all and then potentially hauled off to a landfill.
(39:45):
But if it could be turned into fuel, if it
could you know, uh, power the Deloreans the future, then
that sounds like the way to go. Well, I do
think it is a good idea to turn these things
as long as they are still being made into fuel.
But don't don't get distry acted by that as like
an excuse to Okay, so it's not so bad if
we keep making them because they turn into fuel, right right,
(40:06):
I mean, because again, the sewer systems are not made
for fat bergs. Like if you, I guess, if you
reach the situation where you're like, look, we refuse to learn,
we're not gonna stop flushing oil and wet wipes, then okay,
you could conceivably imagine a scenario where the sewer systems
have to be redesigned in order to um, you know,
sequester fat bergs for harvesting. But they're not built like that,
(40:32):
and they're probably not going to be rebuilt like that,
and it's ultimately an easier prospect to just change how
we're handling the things that we're sending down into the sewer.
This is going to become some crack pop political parties
energy platform. And they're saying all this talk about you know,
green energy. What you do is you pour oil down
the drain all day. Our energy problems are solved. I'm
(40:54):
not super up on British politics. Is there a Fatburg
party yet? I know that the new parties get get
formed in there. I can't heard about it, but I'm sure.
I mean, like all issues, especially issues in fact that
have to do with people exploiting or ruining the commons
for everybody, these issues often do get like politically polarized
(41:15):
because it's advantageous for somebody to do that. And this
is why we need Fatburg cop out there on the beat,
in the in the you know, at least in the
eyes of the public, in the messaging, uh, you know,
confronting us, chastising us far aways, um and and I
but and but I mean, I mean that's seriously because
I think, like, for my part, like one of the
(41:35):
reasons that the other reasons that fat birds are so captivating, uh,
in addition to all the grotesque photos and footage that
shows up I saw one article is like a video
based article online that the title was something along the
lines of the moment when a rat crawls out of
the fat Bird, and that was apparently the footage of
(41:55):
like a live rat swarming out of fat burg Um.
You know. So we can't look away from the grotesque
nature of them. But then also the sewers are this
unique location where there have been a number of notable
films over the years that populate the sewers with monsters,
be it you know, Chud's or or you know or
(42:15):
Or or cannibals in the British film Raw Meat, well,
I guess that was a subway system but still underground environment.
And Ghostbusters too, I think, yeah, the river of slime
flowing out of New York City, that's a big one
for me. But also definitely the Blob at least remake
had a lot of like, uh, you know, under I
think there was like the sewer system shenanigans there with
(42:37):
the blob, you know, ripping through the sewer and attacking people. Yeah,
and it definitely came up through the drains. So it's
I feel like the fat Berg reminds us of these
monstrosities as well. Except there they're not fantasy, they're real. Uh,
you know, they just don't actually assault us and try
to digest us. Well, I feel like some of these,
(42:59):
especially Ghostbusters too. Yeah, it does bring in some of
that same metaphor stuff we were talking about earlier about
you know, like it it's all the bad things we
don't want to think about and all the negative energy
is that that is what was feeding the slime and
Ghostbusters too, right, it was like Prince Vigo and just
New Yorkers being jerks. That's kind of weird for a
sequel to a movie in which an e p A
(43:22):
representative was a villain. Yeah, but there you go. It
was a different time. Ghostbusters a bravely pro littering movie.
Al Right, Well, there you have it. A fat Bergs
for you. Now. Obviously, if anyone out there has direct
experience with fat Bergs or any other strange monstrosities in
(43:43):
our sewer systems, let us know. I feel like, just
thinking about the sheer number of listeners and just all
the you know, the diverse backgrounds that you all have,
somebody out there has had to have battled the fat birg.
We've got a first hand flusher in the audience. I
know it. Yeah, it's just a matter of getting you
to write in and tell us about it. Uh. So
(44:04):
you know, if so, do right in and tell us
about it. And also just if there's some sort of
sewer monster movie that we've failed to reference, uh yeah,
hit us up on that as well. We're always happy
to cha at about movies. And hey, if you're if
you're an artist, maybe you can create uh an image
of fat bird cop because I feel like you'd be
(44:24):
not only amusing us and amusing other listeners, you would
potentially be um uh you know, saving the world by
introducing this character. In the meantime, if you want to
check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's where you'll find them all. You also find out
links to social media accounts, as well as our link
to our t shirt store. But ultimately the best thing
you can do to support the show is to just
(44:47):
make sure you rate and review us wherever you have
the power to do so. Wherever you get this podcast
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Tari Harrison.
If you would like to get in touch with us,
directly with feedback about this episode or the other. To
tell us about your battles for the fatburg, to suggest
a topic for the future, to suggest a guest, or
just to say hello. You can email us at contact
(45:09):
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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