July 6, 2016 • 32 mins
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many cities were facing the same issue: so much horse manure, they couldn't keep up with it. It created unhygienic conditions, and very real problems.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, I just wanted to include a brief heads up
for our listeners on this one. There is a little
bit of talk of animal cruelty. We're not going to
go into details, but if that's something you're sensitive to,
you may want to check out on this one. Also,
as you may have guessed from the title, sometimes this
episode is gross. Welcome to Steph you missed in history
class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome
(00:29):
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, Tracy,
pollution is probably something you think of as a post
industrial age problem for humanity. I think a lot of
folks do. Yeah, I think that's a pretty common belief.
But in truth, we've kind of been finding ways to
trash the planet for thousands of years, perhaps not with
(00:50):
the great efficiency we currently possess. But there was a
really interesting study of Greenland's ice cores in late and
early that led to the revelation that greenhouse gases were
actually a problem as far back as two thousand years ago,
and that was thanks to metallurgy and large scale agriculture.
So even as far back as the year one b C.
(01:11):
Ancient Romans and their livestock, we're producing methane emissions. So
are rice fields of China at the time, because of
a bacteria that's associated with UH, the rice crop that
are methane producers. So as ancient Rome and the Han
dynasty of China decline, so did evidence of these emissions,
according to this Greenland study, which was interesting, but of
(01:34):
course it's not like human civilization declined. It continued to develop,
and as agriculture and technology and its various stages also developed,
the emissions of human culture did too. And between the
time of those ancient Roman livestock herds and Chinese rice
fields that we just started talking about a moment ago
in the year sixteen hundred, emissions rose by almost thirty
(01:54):
one million tons per year. But today we're going to
talk about sort of a different type of pollution related
to methane. Methane is a factor UH, and we're stepping
forward a couple hundred years from six hundred to first
the precursor and then what's called the Great Manure Crisis,
and sometimes you'll see it listed as the Great Manure
(02:15):
Crisis of eighteen ninety four, although I did not want
to give it one particular year because It's not like
it was only a problem that year. Uh, an ongoing issue. Yes,
it's a time when methane was making things smell horrible
and was a problem. But really, the manure produced by
one of the most vital animals for human survival at
the time and human way of life led to serious
(02:38):
issues in urban development. And before we jump in, I
want to mention that primarily we're talking about New York
and London in this episode, although this was a problem
for pretty much any developing city at this time, but
those are the places where they seem to have the
most documentation of this problem. Manure had become a problem
in urban areas by the eighteen teens. The New York
(02:59):
City Council pass law in eighteen eighteen to license dirt carts,
which were manure collectors, as part of a management effort.
But is the city group so did the colossal amount
of manure there. It's gonna get so colossal I feel
like I should tell everyone to just brace Yeah. In
November of eighteen eighty there was a New York Times
(03:21):
report on the workings of the city Sanitations Department, and
one of the ongoing nuisances that's described in great detail
is a manure dump at the foot of East ninety
two Street, and that article says, quote, during the cold weather,
while the river is filled with ice, stable refuse collects.
At this point. The Board of Health has permitted this
accumulation under the stipulation that the offensive material shall be
(03:45):
removed on or before May one of each year. This
the owners have generally failed to do, and the board
will probably refuse to permit the usual accumulation this winter.
This is like an even more disgusting version of Boston
snow farms. When there's a really snowy winter and we
just put all the snow somewhere, just good, put it there,
(04:08):
a big, big pile, big pile of it. It's going
to be grosser as the year goes on. Very similar,
except that this way grosser. Except even yeah, I don't
know you when you when you see pictures of the
melting snow farm and you see that like all the
filth that was plowed all the off the roads, that's
where it gets really crossed, but not this gross. So
(04:30):
by the eighteen nineties, cities had all kinds of transportation
needs you need, had goods and materials that needed to
be carried from place to place, and then people needed
to get around faster than they could walk. To meet
these transportation needs, horses were increasingly what people turned to.
By nine hundred, in London there were more than fifty
(04:51):
thousand working horses powering eleven thousand cabs, several thousand buses,
and various carts and delivery vehicles. But London wasn't you
nique in this, Most large cities had similar populations of
working horses. I'm just gonna take a moment to say
when you and I were in New York doing our
live show last year, we came around a corner and
(05:12):
I was like, I smell horse. And it was because
you know, there are those horse drawn carriage places and
and like also some mounted police, but this was this
was a stable for the horse drawn carriage people. There
were maybe four or five horses right when we came
around the corner, and I was like, I smell horse.
I cannot imagine the smell of horse everywhere in a
(05:36):
place with thousands of horses, like I don't. I don't
know how that would have all factory fatigue. I think
that's why we developed the ability to stop smelling things
Over time, right, When people speak about various different bathing
standards of various cultures at different points in time, I
(05:58):
think sometimes they're neglecting to factory in the fact that
there are things like horse smell everywhere in the air. Right. So,
once horses became the public transportation option, that segment of
the working equine population grew really quickly. In the eighteenth
century colonies, the use of horses for personal transport versus
(06:20):
pulling cargo was a luxury only for well off people,
but by the late nineteenth century, a hundred and twenty
thousand passengers were taking horse pulled transportation in New York
on an average day. Eventually, tracks were laid in New York,
which made omnibuses even faster and more frequent and more affordable,
(06:40):
which meant demand for horse drawn conveyance surged. Yeah, I
mean it's you know, it was a time of great growth.
We're in the Industrial Revolution time, so everything was happening
very quickly. And if you've ever spent time with horses
like Dracy just mentioned being in New York, or any
large animal for that matter, you know that produce waste.
(07:01):
And if you're talking about an animal the size of
a horse, just a large animal, they produce waste in
significant amounts. So the average horse being fed regular meals
produces fifteen to thirty five pounds that's six point eight
to fifteen point eight kilograms of manure each day, as
well as about a quart of urine That is a
(07:22):
small child worth of waste. Yes, try to imagine fifty
thousand horses each producing their average output of feces in
the streets of your nearest city. That is between seven
hundred and fifty thousand and one point eight million pounds,
or for the metrically inclined, forty thousand to eight hundred
(07:42):
and sixteen kilograms of horse manure piling up every day,
and a city as large as New York and nine had,
which had a larger horse population than London, reaching up
to two hundred thousand horses at its apex, that amount
could easily reach between two point five and a million
pounds one point one to one point ms every day,
(08:05):
literally every day, and all of that you're in in
the combined area of New York and Brooklyn. Towards the
end of the nineteenth century, this added up to as
much as forty gallons or a hundred and fifty cubic
leaders per day, so much poop and p so much
giant amounts. Well, and my thing is like you kind
of have that moment where you read the statistic and
(08:26):
you go, wow, that's a lot, and then you go
every day there's that amount over and over and like
there's no end. It's not like you go, Okay, we
got two point five million pounds of maneuver that we
got to deal with. It's like tomorrow this will be
five million if we don't cope with this today at
seven point five million the day after that. Like, I
(08:47):
really cannot stress how severe this problem was. And in
addition to the horses, there were other animals on streets
at this time, including pigs, cattle, sometimes sheep were not
entirely out of the ordinary, and those animals were also
contributing to the manure problem. Uh. And in addition to
all of that manure and urine, horses would sometimes die
(09:11):
in the course of their work. UH. Some would fall
in the busy streets, and if they were badly injured,
they would be shot on the spot or sometimes simply
left to die heads up for sensitive listeners. Animal cruelty
was also a very common reality for many of these animals,
they were worked literally to death, which people who've read
(09:33):
Black Beauty new it was cheaper to treat a lot
of horses very poorly and replace them than it was
to treat them well and extend their working lives. And
they were often stabled and very crowded conditions which made
them susceptible to disease. While efforts were made to clean
up the carcasses of these horses that were unfortunately dying
in the street, uh for a number there were as
(09:55):
many as fifteen thousand deceased horses cleared from New York
streets in the year eight teen eighty. That wasn't always
possible though, due to the large size of these animals,
so sometimes they were left to decay in the thoroughfare
so that they could eventually be reduced to a point
where they could be disposed of more easily. So imagine
the stench. In addition to this, you know multimillion pounds
(10:17):
of manure, the thousands of gallons of urine, as well
as decomposing bodies in the streets. I just want to
take another moment. I know I'm interjecting a lot in
this episode. I had a class in college that was
about Southern literature. There's a whole conversation about this hallmark
of Southern literature. Was there being a dead mule that
(10:39):
somebody had to figure out how to deal with? Uh
bo into this whole thing about like perceptions of of
life in the South and and life in an agricultural area.
And I'm like, whoa, we were not on purpose leaving
the dead mule in the middle of a busy street. Yeah,
that was I mean, it was a very real problem.
Now I'm thinking of both Enry O'Connor and Faulkner mentioned
(11:03):
that though yet so uh before we talk about how
some of this problem was dealt with, as well as
some of the issues that we're facing cities in addition
to the manure and the dead animals, we are going
to have a word for one of our sponsors, so
(11:27):
to return to our story, maybe wondering what happened to
all of this animal waste. Ideally people cleaned it up.
In reality, that's really difficult given the amount of manure
there was to keep up with. Some of it could
be used in the fertilizer trade, but the output of
all of the manure from the animals quickly exceeded the
(11:47):
demand for fertilizer. Eventually the trade turned and instead of
farmers having to pay to have the fertilizer brought to them,
city stables had to pay to have the manure taken
out of the city. And of course not everyone paid
for the services offered to take the manure the manure away,
so many opted instead to go the cheap route and
(12:10):
dump their manure in vacant lots. Some lots grew so
popular for this practice that the piles of waste were
said to have risen as high as forty to sixty feet,
so that's twelve to eighteen meters high, and that was
in New York City. So that's the manure from the stables.
Manure that was not in the stables, but from the
(12:30):
horses relieving themselves while out on their roots, which if
you have ever ridden a horse, you know it just
happens wherever. It would just sit untended in the streets,
attracting flies and slowly drying out, and eventually that dry
manure would turn into dust to be carried around the
city on the wind if the weather was dry. In
rainy conditions, a muddy mier of this manure developed, making
(12:52):
traveling the city streets extremely difficult at best and miserable
at worst, and gross and unhygienic. Yeah, just the ickiest.
I think about all of the the various fictional films
and whatnot that I have watched about London or New
(13:14):
York during this time, and I'm like, some of them
have the dirt. None of them show piles of manure
forty high. Yeah, I'm I'm like, I'm thinking about some
historical dramas that have you know, ladies dresses obviously filthy
at the hems. Uh, But I don't we think we
(13:35):
think mud, we don't think slurry of horse species. Yeah,
it's very very gross. Uh. And of course a cottage
industry of crossing sweepers grew out of this problem as well.
So there were men that would stand on street corners
waiting for pedestrians that wanted to cross, and they would
(13:56):
charge a fee to clear the path of the people
on foot so that the door would not be in
their way and they would not have to drag their
clothes through it. I'm just baffled by this whole thing.
It's very strange to think about this whole horse situation.
Also caused lots of other problems in addition to the
(14:16):
manure crisis. While additional animals to keep up with cities
continuing to expand meant that there was more manure, the
animals also needed additional resources. You needed land for stables
and land for growing the hay that they needed to eat,
and then land that people couldn't use because of the
support crops that were going to feed the animals. Yeah,
(14:38):
urban working horse regularly could consume, according to estimates, anywhere
between one point four and two point four tons of
hay in a given year, and that translates to roughly
five acres of land. And that's to feed one horse,
And that would be the equivalent of enough to provide
crops for six to eight people by these same estimates,
(14:58):
And when horse traffic was at its history racle height
in New York, it required an estimated fifteen million acres
of land to produce the hay to feed them. To
make matters even worse, horse traffic was an issue. There
was overcrowding on the streets and so there were also accidents.
And as an aside, this problem also existed in Julius
(15:19):
Caesar's Realm horse drawn carts were forbidden in ancient room
from dawn to dusk as a means of controlling the
traffic and pollution created by the city's horses. And with
traffic came traffic accidents, and many of these were quite
brutal and had high mortality rates. Because horses can be
skittish and startled, they could stampede or fatally kick humans.
(15:40):
In addition to actual wrecks happening where horse carts ran
into one another, there were two hundred mortalities attributed to
horse drawn vehicles in New York in nineteen hundred, and
for every ten thousand vehicles pulled by horses in Chicago
in nineteen sixteen, there were sixteen point nine related deaths.
Every year, this hiding issue of manure in the streets
(16:03):
manifested unsurprisingly in very real illnesses. An estimated three billion
flies a day hatched in horse manure in cities across
the United States and nine and its flies travel throughout
an urban area. Everything they land on is touched by
everything they have landed on before, including the manure where
(16:25):
they hatched, all kinds of bacteria that they're the carriers
of a variety of infectious diseases, and the streets of
horse inhabited inhabited cities were a perfect habitat for flies
to flourish. Yeah, there are a number of illnesses and
diseases that are are linked, at least in theory to
(16:47):
this fly problem. Um, particularly diseases that affected young children
that didn't have immunity built up yet. So there were
so many problems, and you might think somebody fix these problems.
They tried well. And I'm thinking that in addition, the
dust when in dry weather, the manure dust filled air
(17:08):
has to have caused some kind of respiratory problems. Absolutely,
I wonder if there was a name for that that
we have lost. Now I didn't. Yeah, I didn't see
any of my research, but I'm sure there's some colorful
moniker out there, like cheese washers lung. Probably there was something.
(17:30):
Uh So in there was actually a conference convened in
New York for ten days. Engineers and leaders would come
together for the first International Urban Planning Conference, and one
of the main agenda points was going to be solving
this manure problem. The reality of this conference was disappointing
because after three days of deliberating, the remaining week of
(17:53):
the conference was canceled. The planners and attendance got tired
of talking about horse manure. No one had any idea
is of how to actually combat the problem, and horses
were essential to keeping society going at that point. They're
basically like, we don't know, throw up our hands, leave
the facilit let's all go home. Yeah, it wasn't like
they could stop using horses. Consider that horses had been
(18:16):
used by humans for both transportation and agriculture for literally
thousands of years at this point, and they were pretty
much the only game going as far as that that went.
There were other animals that could do some of those things,
but horses were really the accepted and most common way,
and they were so ingrained in the day to day
functioning of life for most people that it was unthinkable
to envision a world without horses working for us. Everything
(18:39):
would have ground to a halt. And the idea of
even cutting back on the horse workforce translated immediately in
most people's minds to stifling progress and industry at a
time when we were really excited about unprecedented growth. Twenty
six years before this conference, the northeastern United States had
actually gotten a taste of what life would be like
(19:00):
the reduced horse workforce. After the equine influenza epidemic of
eighteen seventy two, commerce was significantly affected with just not
enough animals to carry goods, and when the city of
Boston had a massive fire downtown there weren't enough horses
to power the city's fire trucks. No one wanted to
risk those events happening again, So even those civic leaders
(19:23):
were aware of the problem and the sanitation danger as
cities experienced population growth, so urban population in the US
had a thirty million person spike in the hundred years
from eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, and this was happening
globally as well. They just acknowledged that we couldn't figure
out a way to fix it, and we still need
more horses. This is also a compounding problem because the
(19:47):
standard of living was rising, so there was more need
on average per person for all of the goods that
the horses were hauling around. That meant that they needed
more horses to hauld the which no end and even
attempting like even kind of concentrated efforts to try to
(20:07):
really have like a surge of management to clean up
the existing manure problem had to employ the work of
more horses to hollowed away, which produced more manure. I
feel like the growth motto for all cities during this
time should have been like, shrug, we just need more horses,
(20:29):
Like just kept putting more horses on the horse problem.
One journalist predicted that London would be under nine feet
or two point seven meters of manure by the mid
twentieth century, and a similar declaration in New York predicted
that by the nineteen thirties, manure would have risen to
the level of third story windows. Dracy is just wiping
(20:52):
her face in dismay. Obviously, because we're all here listening
to things on the internet. We didn't wind up with
cities being literally buried in manure. So next we're going
to talk about some of the things people tried to
fix this issue involving urban horses in the late Victorian
era and what eventually did actually fix it. But first
(21:14):
we're going to pause or sponsor break, so to get
back to how we finally kind of resolved this problem
sort of, A number of actions were taken to try
to address all of these issues of horse overcrowding in
the cities and one of the earliest was the founding
of the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
(21:36):
also known as the a s p c A. On
April tenth, eighteen sixty six. Philanthropist Henry Burg founded the
society with the primary goal of improving the lives of
working horses. Burg had witnessed cruelty to horses when he
was a U. S. Diplomat in Russia during Abraham Lincoln's
presidency uh and he on his way back to the US,
(21:57):
he traveled through London and he observed there the Royal
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and that's
really what inspired him to create a similar organization in
the United States. When Bird campaigned for the approval of
the s p c A charter, he stated, quote, this
is a matter purely of conscience. It has no perplexing
side issues. He works diligently for the next twenty years
(22:18):
until his death, in often rescuing horses from the street himself.
He was the driving force for the country's first animal
rights laws, and the rapidly growing horse population made it
basically impossible to eliminate the cruelty problem. Though yeah, he
made it his life's work, but uh, it didn't all
(22:39):
get solved. Uh. And then, in terms of traffic issues,
a lot of the traffic laws that we still have
today in the United States are actually the result of
these crowded city streets filled with horse drawn vehicles. William
Phelps Eno, who was also called the Father of traffic safety,
started noticing traffic issues when he was just a boy
in New York in the eighteen sixties, and as he
(23:01):
and his family traveled throughout Europe, he observed how other
countries handled their traffic, and each of them had problems,
but some of them also had some unique solutions. And
one of his books, titled Quote the Story of Highway
Traffic Control, published in nineteen thirty nine, he wrote, quote,
I don't think I ever went on the streets of
New York, nor of any other city or town without
(23:21):
being astonished at the stupidity of drivers, pedestrians, and police.
And once he grew up uh and was working in
New York with his father in the eight nineties, he
wondered why no one was doing anything about the horse traffic,
so he decided that he would in He submitted a
proposal for a subway route that also had surface roads
(23:43):
and elevated roads and bicycle lanes on top. And it
was designed to ease congestion. And this plan wasn't adopted,
but he really didn't give up. He wrote several articles
in rapid succession. They were called Reform in our Street
Traffic most Urgently Needed, and then six ms for the
Management of Carriages and Entertainments, and then Rules of the
(24:04):
Road Revised. While these were initially published in a horseman's
periodical titled The Rider and Driver, you Know continued to
publish and spread them in various places and pamphlets until
many of his ideas were actually adopted. You can thank
you know for stop signs, yield signs, pedestrian islands, which
he first saw in Paris as a kid and adapted
in New York, and driving on the right side of
(24:25):
the road. And his rules really did help with congestion
and traffic accidents, thus reducing horse carriage related deaths. But
you may have noticed, neither the A s p c
A nor these road rules helped the manure crisis, and
the end of the manure issue was never solved so
much as it was outmoded. Nobody ever figured out a
(24:47):
way to keep up with the millions of pounds of
horse manure that we're dropping in cities daily. But when
Henry Ford introduced the Model t in, it made the
personal the personal car relatively a four pitable for a
lot more consumers in the United States, and so many
of them did switch over time from a family horse
and buggy to mechanized travel, and Ford's advertising made clear
(25:12):
the cost effectiveness of making this switch. Quote this is
one of the ad campaigns. Quote Old Dobbin, the family
coach horse weighs more than a Ford car, but he
has only one twentieth the strength of a Ford car,
cannot go as fast nor as far, costs more to
maintain and almost as much to acquire. It wasn't as
(25:34):
though the United States and other countries instantly ditched their
horses and moved over to gasoline powered automobiles, although some
did herald the automobile add the solution to the pollution problem.
But slowly, over time, as more vehicles are manufactured, more
people bought them, horses became progressively more and more phased out.
By nineteen twelve, there were more cars on New York
(25:55):
streets than there were horses. For the first time in history. Yeah,
they really thought, like, thank goodness, someone, someone has solved
this methane issue. Were considered Yeah, but they didn't. They
weren't thinking that. They were like, the yet pollution is solved.
You guys cars fixed it. Yeah, but then came lead pollution. Yeah,
(26:22):
their vehicle emissions the other problems. I mean, yeah, but
forces were seeing less and less on city streets. The
manure crisis ended anyway, So not in one fell swoop,
but in this slow sort of ebb. We didn't know
what was coming down the pike. But you know, the manure.
(26:42):
We're not living in forty ft of manure. That's that.
You gotta look on the bright side with this one. Treacy. Sure,
I don't have a car anymore. It's great, I say that.
I say that, but we do have a car in
our household, so when I need to get somewhere in
a car, I can. Yeah. I am definitely, you know,
(27:04):
even though we have plenty of other environmental problems related
to our transportation, I'm definitely glad I'm not waiting through
hiphi manure to get anywhere, because that would be off.
It's horrifying to think about. It's horrifying, Like I can't
you know, even in the dirtiest cities today, there's like
(27:28):
I still couldn't imagine. Yeah, I just can't. Uh. Yeah,
it's the short version. Yeah, I just said yuck times
and very informative. Though there are definitely plenty of other,
uh problems like this. I had always considered that, like
(27:49):
the dirt problem in earlier like first European and then
colonial American cities to be about like garbage and not
having enclosed sewers, and like there was a part of
me that was like, horses poop, you got to clean
that up, But like the scale of this poop situation
(28:10):
was not anywhere in my consciousness. And so you handed
this to me, No, I was. I was because it's
so I hope our listeners are not so grossed out
that they will enjoy the opportunity to wow their friends
with these little factoids. But I had I am a
friend of mine and said, how much manure do you
think fell in New York on an average day in
(28:32):
the eight nineties, And it was like something like three
tons or something was the number that they could come
up with. And I'm like, oh, you beautiful child, Wow,
you know what I have pretty pretty listener mail I
was to do with gross things, not about please, not
(28:53):
even a little, but not. I have a mail. I
have two pieces. The first one is from our listener
d Anne. She says, Holly and Tracy, I'm reading to
thank you for the hours of enjoyment and education you
and the past host have given me over the years.
I've been listening since twelve and have spent countless hours
in your company. I have an hour long each way
commute and have found podcasts and audio books to be
(29:14):
great friends to keep me saying stuff you missed in
history class has become one of my favorites. And I've
actually listened through the past episodes twice, the first time
picking and choosing those episodes I wanted to hear, and
the second most recent time listening to all the episodes
in an attempt to broaden my horizons. It worked, so
in appreciation, I haven't closed a few things first handmade
by me, ear rings. I do hope you both have
(29:36):
your ears pierced, but if you don't, I don't mind.
If you read gift the Medalist sterling silver and you
can leg wrestle for choice. And then she also sent
a book along with an episode recommendation that I'm not
going to read because we might do it and it's interesting,
but I wanted to thank you Danne so much. Those
ear rings are beautiful, Tracy and I aren't gonna leg wrestle.
(29:57):
The bigger problem is that we both like both of them.
We do both like both of them, like you. You
sent me a picture and I was like, I can't pick.
I suggested we each get one of each, but Tracy
doesn't seem to like that plan. We'll see what happens,
but thank you, thank you so much. They're so lovely
(30:19):
and we'll post pictures of them on our social so
other people can see them. They're absolutely, so so pretty.
And the other one is a wonderful card that I
got from our listeners and my pals, Ashley and Gin.
They came to visit the house to works offices a
while back and I hung out with them and I
just adored them both through the most wonderful ladies, super fun,
really fun to talk to you. And they sent me
(30:40):
a beautiful card, like a thank you card for the day.
And here's what makes it majestic and delightful for me.
It is a card in the shape of Oscar Wild
and it's him, so he can stand on my desk
forever and judge me. He would, and I love it
so much. It's just the absolute best. Thank you, thank you,
(31:01):
Thank you so much, Ashley and Jen. You guys are
delightful and I adore you, and I'm so thankful for
all our listeners that write us cool stuff. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at how st works dot com. You
can visit us at Facebook dot com slash missed in history.
We're on Twitter at misst in history, at pinterest dot com,
slash misst in history at misst in history dot tumbler
(31:22):
dot com, and we're on Instagram at missed in History.
You can also visit our parents site, how stuff Works.
Do a search for almost anything you can think of,
and you're gonna find some pretty cool content that will
inform you and educate you and at least entertain you
around that content. You can also visit us at missed
in history dot com, where we have the back catalog
of every episode of this show ever with all hosts
(31:44):
through the years, as well as show notes for any
of the episodes that Tracy and I have put together
as well as some other goodies, So if you want,
please come and visit us online at Houston Works dot
com and missed in History dot com for moralness and
thousands of other topics. Visit Hastaff Works doft home e
Hey, I just wanted to include a brief heads up
for our listeners on this one. There is a little
bit of talk of animal cruelty. We're not going to
go into details, but if that's something you're sensitive to,
you may want to check out on this one. Also,
as you may have guessed from the title, sometimes this
episode is gross. Welcome to Steph you missed in history
class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome
(00:29):
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, Tracy,
pollution is probably something you think of as a post
industrial age problem for humanity. I think a lot of
folks do. Yeah, I think that's a pretty common belief.
But in truth, we've kind of been finding ways to
trash the planet for thousands of years, perhaps not with
(00:50):
the great efficiency we currently possess. But there was a
really interesting study of Greenland's ice cores in late and
early that led to the revelation that greenhouse gases were
actually a problem as far back as two thousand years ago,
and that was thanks to metallurgy and large scale agriculture.
So even as far back as the year one b C.
(01:11):
Ancient Romans and their livestock, we're producing methane emissions. So
are rice fields of China at the time, because of
a bacteria that's associated with UH, the rice crop that
are methane producers. So as ancient Rome and the Han
dynasty of China decline, so did evidence of these emissions,
according to this Greenland study, which was interesting, but of
(01:34):
course it's not like human civilization declined. It continued to develop,
and as agriculture and technology and its various stages also developed,
the emissions of human culture did too. And between the
time of those ancient Roman livestock herds and Chinese rice
fields that we just started talking about a moment ago
in the year sixteen hundred, emissions rose by almost thirty
(01:54):
one million tons per year. But today we're going to
talk about sort of a different type of pollution related
to methane. Methane is a factor UH, and we're stepping
forward a couple hundred years from six hundred to first
the precursor and then what's called the Great Manure Crisis,
and sometimes you'll see it listed as the Great Manure
(02:15):
Crisis of eighteen ninety four, although I did not want
to give it one particular year because It's not like
it was only a problem that year. Uh, an ongoing issue. Yes,
it's a time when methane was making things smell horrible
and was a problem. But really, the manure produced by
one of the most vital animals for human survival at
the time and human way of life led to serious
(02:38):
issues in urban development. And before we jump in, I
want to mention that primarily we're talking about New York
and London in this episode, although this was a problem
for pretty much any developing city at this time, but
those are the places where they seem to have the
most documentation of this problem. Manure had become a problem
in urban areas by the eighteen teens. The New York
(02:59):
City Council pass law in eighteen eighteen to license dirt carts,
which were manure collectors, as part of a management effort.
But is the city group so did the colossal amount
of manure there. It's gonna get so colossal I feel
like I should tell everyone to just brace Yeah. In
November of eighteen eighty there was a New York Times
(03:21):
report on the workings of the city Sanitations Department, and
one of the ongoing nuisances that's described in great detail
is a manure dump at the foot of East ninety
two Street, and that article says, quote, during the cold weather,
while the river is filled with ice, stable refuse collects.
At this point. The Board of Health has permitted this
accumulation under the stipulation that the offensive material shall be
(03:45):
removed on or before May one of each year. This
the owners have generally failed to do, and the board
will probably refuse to permit the usual accumulation this winter.
This is like an even more disgusting version of Boston
snow farms. When there's a really snowy winter and we
just put all the snow somewhere, just good, put it there,
(04:08):
a big, big pile, big pile of it. It's going
to be grosser as the year goes on. Very similar,
except that this way grosser. Except even yeah, I don't
know you when you when you see pictures of the
melting snow farm and you see that like all the
filth that was plowed all the off the roads, that's
where it gets really crossed, but not this gross. So
(04:30):
by the eighteen nineties, cities had all kinds of transportation
needs you need, had goods and materials that needed to
be carried from place to place, and then people needed
to get around faster than they could walk. To meet
these transportation needs, horses were increasingly what people turned to.
By nine hundred, in London there were more than fifty
(04:51):
thousand working horses powering eleven thousand cabs, several thousand buses,
and various carts and delivery vehicles. But London wasn't you
nique in this, Most large cities had similar populations of
working horses. I'm just gonna take a moment to say
when you and I were in New York doing our
live show last year, we came around a corner and
(05:12):
I was like, I smell horse. And it was because
you know, there are those horse drawn carriage places and
and like also some mounted police, but this was this
was a stable for the horse drawn carriage people. There
were maybe four or five horses right when we came
around the corner, and I was like, I smell horse.
I cannot imagine the smell of horse everywhere in a
(05:36):
place with thousands of horses, like I don't. I don't
know how that would have all factory fatigue. I think
that's why we developed the ability to stop smelling things
Over time, right, When people speak about various different bathing
standards of various cultures at different points in time, I
(05:58):
think sometimes they're neglecting to factory in the fact that
there are things like horse smell everywhere in the air. Right. So,
once horses became the public transportation option, that segment of
the working equine population grew really quickly. In the eighteenth
century colonies, the use of horses for personal transport versus
(06:20):
pulling cargo was a luxury only for well off people,
but by the late nineteenth century, a hundred and twenty
thousand passengers were taking horse pulled transportation in New York
on an average day. Eventually, tracks were laid in New York,
which made omnibuses even faster and more frequent and more affordable,
(06:40):
which meant demand for horse drawn conveyance surged. Yeah, I
mean it's you know, it was a time of great growth.
We're in the Industrial Revolution time, so everything was happening
very quickly. And if you've ever spent time with horses
like Dracy just mentioned being in New York, or any
large animal for that matter, you know that produce waste.
(07:01):
And if you're talking about an animal the size of
a horse, just a large animal, they produce waste in
significant amounts. So the average horse being fed regular meals
produces fifteen to thirty five pounds that's six point eight
to fifteen point eight kilograms of manure each day, as
well as about a quart of urine That is a
(07:22):
small child worth of waste. Yes, try to imagine fifty
thousand horses each producing their average output of feces in
the streets of your nearest city. That is between seven
hundred and fifty thousand and one point eight million pounds,
or for the metrically inclined, forty thousand to eight hundred
(07:42):
and sixteen kilograms of horse manure piling up every day,
and a city as large as New York and nine had,
which had a larger horse population than London, reaching up
to two hundred thousand horses at its apex, that amount
could easily reach between two point five and a million
pounds one point one to one point ms every day,
(08:05):
literally every day, and all of that you're in in
the combined area of New York and Brooklyn. Towards the
end of the nineteenth century, this added up to as
much as forty gallons or a hundred and fifty cubic
leaders per day, so much poop and p so much
giant amounts. Well, and my thing is like you kind
of have that moment where you read the statistic and
(08:26):
you go, wow, that's a lot, and then you go
every day there's that amount over and over and like
there's no end. It's not like you go, Okay, we
got two point five million pounds of maneuver that we
got to deal with. It's like tomorrow this will be
five million if we don't cope with this today at
seven point five million the day after that. Like, I
(08:47):
really cannot stress how severe this problem was. And in
addition to the horses, there were other animals on streets
at this time, including pigs, cattle, sometimes sheep were not
entirely out of the ordinary, and those animals were also
contributing to the manure problem. Uh. And in addition to
all of that manure and urine, horses would sometimes die
(09:11):
in the course of their work. UH. Some would fall
in the busy streets, and if they were badly injured,
they would be shot on the spot or sometimes simply
left to die heads up for sensitive listeners. Animal cruelty
was also a very common reality for many of these animals,
they were worked literally to death, which people who've read
(09:33):
Black Beauty new it was cheaper to treat a lot
of horses very poorly and replace them than it was
to treat them well and extend their working lives. And
they were often stabled and very crowded conditions which made
them susceptible to disease. While efforts were made to clean
up the carcasses of these horses that were unfortunately dying
in the street, uh for a number there were as
(09:55):
many as fifteen thousand deceased horses cleared from New York
streets in the year eight teen eighty. That wasn't always
possible though, due to the large size of these animals,
so sometimes they were left to decay in the thoroughfare
so that they could eventually be reduced to a point
where they could be disposed of more easily. So imagine
the stench. In addition to this, you know multimillion pounds
(10:17):
of manure, the thousands of gallons of urine, as well
as decomposing bodies in the streets. I just want to
take another moment. I know I'm interjecting a lot in
this episode. I had a class in college that was
about Southern literature. There's a whole conversation about this hallmark
of Southern literature. Was there being a dead mule that
(10:39):
somebody had to figure out how to deal with? Uh
bo into this whole thing about like perceptions of of
life in the South and and life in an agricultural area.
And I'm like, whoa, we were not on purpose leaving
the dead mule in the middle of a busy street. Yeah,
that was I mean, it was a very real problem.
Now I'm thinking of both Enry O'Connor and Faulkner mentioned
(11:03):
that though yet so uh before we talk about how
some of this problem was dealt with, as well as
some of the issues that we're facing cities in addition
to the manure and the dead animals, we are going
to have a word for one of our sponsors, so
(11:27):
to return to our story, maybe wondering what happened to
all of this animal waste. Ideally people cleaned it up.
In reality, that's really difficult given the amount of manure
there was to keep up with. Some of it could
be used in the fertilizer trade, but the output of
all of the manure from the animals quickly exceeded the
(11:47):
demand for fertilizer. Eventually the trade turned and instead of
farmers having to pay to have the fertilizer brought to them,
city stables had to pay to have the manure taken
out of the city. And of course not everyone paid
for the services offered to take the manure the manure away,
so many opted instead to go the cheap route and
(12:10):
dump their manure in vacant lots. Some lots grew so
popular for this practice that the piles of waste were
said to have risen as high as forty to sixty feet,
so that's twelve to eighteen meters high, and that was
in New York City. So that's the manure from the stables.
Manure that was not in the stables, but from the
(12:30):
horses relieving themselves while out on their roots, which if
you have ever ridden a horse, you know it just
happens wherever. It would just sit untended in the streets,
attracting flies and slowly drying out, and eventually that dry
manure would turn into dust to be carried around the
city on the wind if the weather was dry. In
rainy conditions, a muddy mier of this manure developed, making
(12:52):
traveling the city streets extremely difficult at best and miserable
at worst, and gross and unhygienic. Yeah, just the ickiest.
I think about all of the the various fictional films
and whatnot that I have watched about London or New
(13:14):
York during this time, and I'm like, some of them
have the dirt. None of them show piles of manure
forty high. Yeah, I'm I'm like, I'm thinking about some
historical dramas that have you know, ladies dresses obviously filthy
at the hems. Uh, But I don't we think we
(13:35):
think mud, we don't think slurry of horse species. Yeah,
it's very very gross. Uh. And of course a cottage
industry of crossing sweepers grew out of this problem as well.
So there were men that would stand on street corners
waiting for pedestrians that wanted to cross, and they would
(13:56):
charge a fee to clear the path of the people
on foot so that the door would not be in
their way and they would not have to drag their
clothes through it. I'm just baffled by this whole thing.
It's very strange to think about this whole horse situation.
Also caused lots of other problems in addition to the
(14:16):
manure crisis. While additional animals to keep up with cities
continuing to expand meant that there was more manure, the
animals also needed additional resources. You needed land for stables
and land for growing the hay that they needed to eat,
and then land that people couldn't use because of the
support crops that were going to feed the animals. Yeah,
(14:38):
urban working horse regularly could consume, according to estimates, anywhere
between one point four and two point four tons of
hay in a given year, and that translates to roughly
five acres of land. And that's to feed one horse,
And that would be the equivalent of enough to provide
crops for six to eight people by these same estimates,
(14:58):
And when horse traffic was at its history racle height
in New York, it required an estimated fifteen million acres
of land to produce the hay to feed them. To
make matters even worse, horse traffic was an issue. There
was overcrowding on the streets and so there were also accidents.
And as an aside, this problem also existed in Julius
(15:19):
Caesar's Realm horse drawn carts were forbidden in ancient room
from dawn to dusk as a means of controlling the
traffic and pollution created by the city's horses. And with
traffic came traffic accidents, and many of these were quite
brutal and had high mortality rates. Because horses can be
skittish and startled, they could stampede or fatally kick humans.
(15:40):
In addition to actual wrecks happening where horse carts ran
into one another, there were two hundred mortalities attributed to
horse drawn vehicles in New York in nineteen hundred, and
for every ten thousand vehicles pulled by horses in Chicago
in nineteen sixteen, there were sixteen point nine related deaths.
Every year, this hiding issue of manure in the streets
(16:03):
manifested unsurprisingly in very real illnesses. An estimated three billion
flies a day hatched in horse manure in cities across
the United States and nine and its flies travel throughout
an urban area. Everything they land on is touched by
everything they have landed on before, including the manure where
(16:25):
they hatched, all kinds of bacteria that they're the carriers
of a variety of infectious diseases, and the streets of
horse inhabited inhabited cities were a perfect habitat for flies
to flourish. Yeah, there are a number of illnesses and
diseases that are are linked, at least in theory to
(16:47):
this fly problem. Um, particularly diseases that affected young children
that didn't have immunity built up yet. So there were
so many problems, and you might think somebody fix these problems.
They tried well. And I'm thinking that in addition, the
dust when in dry weather, the manure dust filled air
(17:08):
has to have caused some kind of respiratory problems. Absolutely,
I wonder if there was a name for that that
we have lost. Now I didn't. Yeah, I didn't see
any of my research, but I'm sure there's some colorful
moniker out there, like cheese washers lung. Probably there was something.
(17:30):
Uh So in there was actually a conference convened in
New York for ten days. Engineers and leaders would come
together for the first International Urban Planning Conference, and one
of the main agenda points was going to be solving
this manure problem. The reality of this conference was disappointing
because after three days of deliberating, the remaining week of
(17:53):
the conference was canceled. The planners and attendance got tired
of talking about horse manure. No one had any idea
is of how to actually combat the problem, and horses
were essential to keeping society going at that point. They're
basically like, we don't know, throw up our hands, leave
the facilit let's all go home. Yeah, it wasn't like
they could stop using horses. Consider that horses had been
(18:16):
used by humans for both transportation and agriculture for literally
thousands of years at this point, and they were pretty
much the only game going as far as that that went.
There were other animals that could do some of those things,
but horses were really the accepted and most common way,
and they were so ingrained in the day to day
functioning of life for most people that it was unthinkable
to envision a world without horses working for us. Everything
(18:39):
would have ground to a halt. And the idea of
even cutting back on the horse workforce translated immediately in
most people's minds to stifling progress and industry at a
time when we were really excited about unprecedented growth. Twenty
six years before this conference, the northeastern United States had
actually gotten a taste of what life would be like
(19:00):
the reduced horse workforce. After the equine influenza epidemic of
eighteen seventy two, commerce was significantly affected with just not
enough animals to carry goods, and when the city of
Boston had a massive fire downtown there weren't enough horses
to power the city's fire trucks. No one wanted to
risk those events happening again, So even those civic leaders
(19:23):
were aware of the problem and the sanitation danger as
cities experienced population growth, so urban population in the US
had a thirty million person spike in the hundred years
from eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, and this was happening
globally as well. They just acknowledged that we couldn't figure
out a way to fix it, and we still need
more horses. This is also a compounding problem because the
(19:47):
standard of living was rising, so there was more need
on average per person for all of the goods that
the horses were hauling around. That meant that they needed
more horses to hauld the which no end and even
attempting like even kind of concentrated efforts to try to
(20:07):
really have like a surge of management to clean up
the existing manure problem had to employ the work of
more horses to hollowed away, which produced more manure. I
feel like the growth motto for all cities during this
time should have been like, shrug, we just need more horses,
(20:29):
Like just kept putting more horses on the horse problem.
One journalist predicted that London would be under nine feet
or two point seven meters of manure by the mid
twentieth century, and a similar declaration in New York predicted
that by the nineteen thirties, manure would have risen to
the level of third story windows. Dracy is just wiping
(20:52):
her face in dismay. Obviously, because we're all here listening
to things on the internet. We didn't wind up with
cities being literally buried in manure. So next we're going
to talk about some of the things people tried to
fix this issue involving urban horses in the late Victorian
era and what eventually did actually fix it. But first
(21:14):
we're going to pause or sponsor break, so to get
back to how we finally kind of resolved this problem
sort of, A number of actions were taken to try
to address all of these issues of horse overcrowding in
the cities and one of the earliest was the founding
of the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
(21:36):
also known as the a s p c A. On
April tenth, eighteen sixty six. Philanthropist Henry Burg founded the
society with the primary goal of improving the lives of
working horses. Burg had witnessed cruelty to horses when he
was a U. S. Diplomat in Russia during Abraham Lincoln's
presidency uh and he on his way back to the US,
(21:57):
he traveled through London and he observed there the Royal
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and that's
really what inspired him to create a similar organization in
the United States. When Bird campaigned for the approval of
the s p c A charter, he stated, quote, this
is a matter purely of conscience. It has no perplexing
side issues. He works diligently for the next twenty years
(22:18):
until his death, in often rescuing horses from the street himself.
He was the driving force for the country's first animal
rights laws, and the rapidly growing horse population made it
basically impossible to eliminate the cruelty problem. Though yeah, he
made it his life's work, but uh, it didn't all
(22:39):
get solved. Uh. And then, in terms of traffic issues,
a lot of the traffic laws that we still have
today in the United States are actually the result of
these crowded city streets filled with horse drawn vehicles. William
Phelps Eno, who was also called the Father of traffic safety,
started noticing traffic issues when he was just a boy
in New York in the eighteen sixties, and as he
(23:01):
and his family traveled throughout Europe, he observed how other
countries handled their traffic, and each of them had problems,
but some of them also had some unique solutions. And
one of his books, titled Quote the Story of Highway
Traffic Control, published in nineteen thirty nine, he wrote, quote,
I don't think I ever went on the streets of
New York, nor of any other city or town without
(23:21):
being astonished at the stupidity of drivers, pedestrians, and police.
And once he grew up uh and was working in
New York with his father in the eight nineties, he
wondered why no one was doing anything about the horse traffic,
so he decided that he would in He submitted a
proposal for a subway route that also had surface roads
(23:43):
and elevated roads and bicycle lanes on top. And it
was designed to ease congestion. And this plan wasn't adopted,
but he really didn't give up. He wrote several articles
in rapid succession. They were called Reform in our Street
Traffic most Urgently Needed, and then six ms for the
Management of Carriages and Entertainments, and then Rules of the
(24:04):
Road Revised. While these were initially published in a horseman's
periodical titled The Rider and Driver, you Know continued to
publish and spread them in various places and pamphlets until
many of his ideas were actually adopted. You can thank
you know for stop signs, yield signs, pedestrian islands, which
he first saw in Paris as a kid and adapted
in New York, and driving on the right side of
(24:25):
the road. And his rules really did help with congestion
and traffic accidents, thus reducing horse carriage related deaths. But
you may have noticed, neither the A s p c
A nor these road rules helped the manure crisis, and
the end of the manure issue was never solved so
much as it was outmoded. Nobody ever figured out a
(24:47):
way to keep up with the millions of pounds of
horse manure that we're dropping in cities daily. But when
Henry Ford introduced the Model t in, it made the
personal the personal car relatively a four pitable for a
lot more consumers in the United States, and so many
of them did switch over time from a family horse
and buggy to mechanized travel, and Ford's advertising made clear
(25:12):
the cost effectiveness of making this switch. Quote this is
one of the ad campaigns. Quote Old Dobbin, the family
coach horse weighs more than a Ford car, but he
has only one twentieth the strength of a Ford car,
cannot go as fast nor as far, costs more to
maintain and almost as much to acquire. It wasn't as
(25:34):
though the United States and other countries instantly ditched their
horses and moved over to gasoline powered automobiles, although some
did herald the automobile add the solution to the pollution problem.
But slowly, over time, as more vehicles are manufactured, more
people bought them, horses became progressively more and more phased out.
By nineteen twelve, there were more cars on New York
(25:55):
streets than there were horses. For the first time in history. Yeah,
they really thought, like, thank goodness, someone, someone has solved
this methane issue. Were considered Yeah, but they didn't. They
weren't thinking that. They were like, the yet pollution is solved.
You guys cars fixed it. Yeah, but then came lead pollution. Yeah,
(26:22):
their vehicle emissions the other problems. I mean, yeah, but
forces were seeing less and less on city streets. The
manure crisis ended anyway, So not in one fell swoop,
but in this slow sort of ebb. We didn't know
what was coming down the pike. But you know, the manure.
(26:42):
We're not living in forty ft of manure. That's that.
You gotta look on the bright side with this one. Treacy. Sure,
I don't have a car anymore. It's great, I say that.
I say that, but we do have a car in
our household, so when I need to get somewhere in
a car, I can. Yeah. I am definitely, you know,
(27:04):
even though we have plenty of other environmental problems related
to our transportation, I'm definitely glad I'm not waiting through
hiphi manure to get anywhere, because that would be off.
It's horrifying to think about. It's horrifying, Like I can't
you know, even in the dirtiest cities today, there's like
(27:28):
I still couldn't imagine. Yeah, I just can't. Uh. Yeah,
it's the short version. Yeah, I just said yuck times
and very informative. Though there are definitely plenty of other,
uh problems like this. I had always considered that, like
(27:49):
the dirt problem in earlier like first European and then
colonial American cities to be about like garbage and not
having enclosed sewers, and like there was a part of
me that was like, horses poop, you got to clean
that up, But like the scale of this poop situation
(28:10):
was not anywhere in my consciousness. And so you handed
this to me, No, I was. I was because it's
so I hope our listeners are not so grossed out
that they will enjoy the opportunity to wow their friends
with these little factoids. But I had I am a
friend of mine and said, how much manure do you
think fell in New York on an average day in
(28:32):
the eight nineties, And it was like something like three
tons or something was the number that they could come
up with. And I'm like, oh, you beautiful child, Wow,
you know what I have pretty pretty listener mail I
was to do with gross things, not about please, not
(28:53):
even a little, but not. I have a mail. I
have two pieces. The first one is from our listener
d Anne. She says, Holly and Tracy, I'm reading to
thank you for the hours of enjoyment and education you
and the past host have given me over the years.
I've been listening since twelve and have spent countless hours
in your company. I have an hour long each way
commute and have found podcasts and audio books to be
(29:14):
great friends to keep me saying stuff you missed in
history class has become one of my favorites. And I've
actually listened through the past episodes twice, the first time
picking and choosing those episodes I wanted to hear, and
the second most recent time listening to all the episodes
in an attempt to broaden my horizons. It worked, so
in appreciation, I haven't closed a few things first handmade
by me, ear rings. I do hope you both have
(29:36):
your ears pierced, but if you don't, I don't mind.
If you read gift the Medalist sterling silver and you
can leg wrestle for choice. And then she also sent
a book along with an episode recommendation that I'm not
going to read because we might do it and it's interesting,
but I wanted to thank you Danne so much. Those
ear rings are beautiful, Tracy and I aren't gonna leg wrestle.
(29:57):
The bigger problem is that we both like both of them.
We do both like both of them, like you. You
sent me a picture and I was like, I can't pick.
I suggested we each get one of each, but Tracy
doesn't seem to like that plan. We'll see what happens,
but thank you, thank you so much. They're so lovely
(30:19):
and we'll post pictures of them on our social so
other people can see them. They're absolutely, so so pretty.
And the other one is a wonderful card that I
got from our listeners and my pals, Ashley and Gin.
They came to visit the house to works offices a
while back and I hung out with them and I
just adored them both through the most wonderful ladies, super fun,
really fun to talk to you. And they sent me
(30:40):
a beautiful card, like a thank you card for the day.
And here's what makes it majestic and delightful for me.
It is a card in the shape of Oscar Wild
and it's him, so he can stand on my desk
forever and judge me. He would, and I love it
so much. It's just the absolute best. Thank you, thank you,
(31:01):
Thank you so much, Ashley and Jen. You guys are
delightful and I adore you, and I'm so thankful for
all our listeners that write us cool stuff. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at how st works dot com. You
can visit us at Facebook dot com slash missed in history.
We're on Twitter at misst in history, at pinterest dot com,
slash misst in history at misst in history dot tumbler
(31:22):
dot com, and we're on Instagram at missed in History.
You can also visit our parents site, how stuff Works.
Do a search for almost anything you can think of,
and you're gonna find some pretty cool content that will
inform you and educate you and at least entertain you
around that content. You can also visit us at missed
in history dot com, where we have the back catalog
of every episode of this show ever with all hosts
(31:44):
through the years, as well as show notes for any
of the episodes that Tracy and I have put together
as well as some other goodies, So if you want,
please come and visit us online at Houston Works dot
com and missed in History dot com for moralness and
thousands of other topics. Visit Hastaff Works doft home e
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
Today’s Latest News In 4 Minutes. Updated Hourly.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.