January 28, 2025 • 61 mins
What if you had to choose between your computer and the internet—could you even imagine life without them? Join Ron and me as we kick off with some lighthearted banter about Doug’s absence and dive into the tech that threads through our daily lives like a lifeline. We reminisce about how our passion for gadgets traces back to my dad’s influence and mull over the evolution of computers from mere workhorses to essential life hubs, packed with media, memories, and more. With a nod to data security and a tale of a lost laptop filled with cherished moments, we discuss the peace of mind brought by cloud storage today.
The conversation takes a historical turn as we tread through the evolution of transportation, starting from the basic act of walking to the game-changing innovations of the 19th century. From horse-drawn carriages to London’s pioneering horse-drawn omnibus, we explore how these developments addressed the urgent needs of burgeoning urban centers. Amidst this nostalgic journey, we discover how transportation advancements profoundly reshaped societies, molding them to better serve rapidly growing populations and their demands.
As we wrap up this episode, we unearth the gritty reality of 19th-century urban life, where the romanticized world of Jane Austen clashed with the very real problem of horse waste. The environmental and health challenges posed by horse-drawn transportation echo contemporary issues, reminding us of the creative solutions required for urban management. Our dialogue spins into speculative ideas like horse diapers, while we also draw poignant parallels with today's push for sustainable solutions like electric vehicles. The conversation reflects the ongoing struggle to balance economic imperatives with environmental responsibilities, proving that the past holds vital lessons for our modern world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Don (00:26):
And, and that's when Doug realized it wasn't soup after
all.
Ron (00:33):
Man, that guy is an idiot.
Don (00:36):
Welcome, everybody Welcome back to the.
Uncannery, my name is Don andI'm Ron, and we're talking about
Doug, but we are.
He's not here.
Yeah, that's why we're talkingabout it, but we are because
he's not here.
Ron (00:45):
Yeah, that's why we're talking about it.
It's fun, we talk behind hisback.
Um, he's not here and he willreturn, though.
Uh, once again at home withbabe in hand, um, and uh,
godspeed, yeah.
Don (00:58):
So just if you are you listening out of, uh, Listening
out of order.
Doug wasn't here last timeeither, but we didn't kick him
out of the club completely.
We just no, we're just waiting.
Ron (01:09):
Yeah, this is a test really and I'd say it's going very
well.
Don (01:18):
Oh, so well, welcome to another discussion.
Well, welcome to anotherdiscussion, ron.
I was thinking today on my wayhome about all of the technology
that we live with.
Oh man, yeah, cool technologyand I like gadgety stuff.
Yeah, it's one of the things Ilook for when I'm out shopping.
(01:42):
I like to play around.
I inherited it from my dad.
My dad was a gadget guy.
Ron (01:45):
Yeah.
Don (01:46):
So we had one of everything from um, from infomercials on
TV and in the kitchen, and uh,and that was always fun.
But you know, gadgets are onething and gadgets are, are, are
tricky and neat, but uh, but isthere, like what can you not
live without?
Like what?
What would be a a deal breakerfor you?
What if we took away some pieceof technology?
(02:07):
What would?
Uh, what would, what would thefirst?
Ron (02:10):
thing that comes to mind, I guess, is like the internet,
right, like, but I like it's nota gadget, that's a, that's a
technological phenomenon.
Um, but like thinking about italso, like it would be kind of
cool to not have the internet,maybe.
Don (02:25):
Um, cause, I'm at least.
Have you ever not had theinternet?
Ron (02:28):
Yeah, I, I have memories of not having the internet.
I am, uh, at least old enoughto remember not having the
internet.
I think we got it sometime whenI was around like I don't know,
six or seven, um, and I thinkwe were maybe even like later
adopters of it than most people.
But the real answer, somethingthat I can't live without, like
(02:48):
my computer, actually like my PC, whether or not it had the
internet, I kind of just lovehaving like a hub.
I'm thinking, like all thestuff I do, like you know that's
where I write, I, you know Itype.
It keeps our photographs.
You know the hard drives haveall my media, all of my music.
I can play video games.
Don (03:07):
You're like everything is in that thing, you know that was
what I was going to ask,because that's been a shift
recently, like geographic youknow, yeah, geologically
recently.
Um, computers used to be justbe for work and you would word
process them on.
On them there were some kind oflame games that would happen.
Like Doom, but through the2000s then, like they've kind of
(03:29):
transformed into like a lifehub.
Ron (03:31):
Yeah, it's like an entire media center, right, like pretty
much all the media we watch,like my computer is hooked up to
my TV, right, everythingstreams through there, basically
, and stuff.
So that would be a bummer.
I always think like, uh, if, uh, if there was like an
earthquake and everything in ourhouse was destroyed, I don't
think I'd mind all that much.
(03:52):
I mean I would.
Don (03:52):
Obviously it's a careless thing to say that would suck.
Ron (03:56):
But the only thing I feel like is super essential is like
my big giant 2005 pc tower whichI still have like four hard
drives in there.
Don (04:07):
It's a it's a liability, though, too, because, uh, I had
a laptop stolen out of the backof my truck once and, uh, it was
uh trying to think when it wasstolen, it would have been
around like 2010, 11, somethinglike that, so it had all of my
photographs on it yeah but itwas kind of before most things
were in the cloud right, yeah,exactly so so whoever owns my
(04:30):
2010 laptop has all the picturesof our honeymoon on it.
That uh, oh, that's how I canfind those so easily so um, but
uh, but kids these days won'tever know that that danger,
because everything is loaded toFacebook and to yeah, I don't
know, I don't.
Ron (04:48):
The cloud and iCloud.
I definitely use the clouds.
I think I have like backups ofmost of that stuff, but, um,
that's not my preferred way todo it, like I'd still rather
just.
Maybe that's the the oldfashionedness of me.
Don (05:06):
I want to know the the.
That megabit file is somewhereon a hard drive disk.
Ron (05:08):
Oh, I thought you were going to say the film no, like I
would just want it all in oneplace.
So I guess, if, yeah, mycomputer went away, that would
be a pretty big change in mylifestyle.
I don't really know how wewould.
You'd have to read more, yeah,which wouldn't be so bad.
I guess that would also be good.
But then how would I talk to?
(05:30):
My friends on Discord.
Don (05:33):
How about you?
So the reason that I wasthinking about it on the way
home is because I got a new car.
Yeah, yeah, nice and white.
I'm going to call my car thething I can't live without, but
I think it's only because ofwhere, where we live.
Ron (05:49):
Yeah.
Don (05:49):
Yeah, in in California we're a car country.
We're a very car country.
The public transport system'snot, uh, super well built out,
and so if you want to ever leaveyour house, you need to have
some kind of personaltransportation.
Ron (06:02):
Yeah, and that's a good answer too, but I think I'd kind
of love to like not have my car, because it would force me to
like be a rent, like, yeah,utilize public transportation
that doesn't exist, or walk orride a bike Um, you're right,
that would definitely likestrain, it's one of the things I
love about traveling.
Don (06:20):
Like I, one of our favorite places to travel is london,
because you can literally goanywhere you want in london with
and just by just walking outthe uh, the front door and you
know, walk a block down, take aescalator.
That goes forever and you're ona train?
Yeah, it's uh it's awesome andyou can get anywhere you need to
be in about a half hour.
Ron (06:39):
I do get mad when, uh, coming back from a european city
, or lond in particular, comingback home and being like why the
hell didn't?
Is it too late.
Like can we fix our cities, canwe do what they did?
Don (06:52):
Right, so and, uh, and, and you know the uh, the kind of
car I got was, uh, was, anelectric vehicle.
Ron (06:58):
I do this is pretty cool so uh, this is your first electric
, all electric vehicle.
Don (07:02):
It is my first all electric vehicle.
Quite a change from the, uh,the, the SUV that I used to
drive.
I used to get about 10, 10miles to the gallon and uh, so,
uh, so yeah, brave new world.
But, uh, I thought I wouldtackle that one and and charge
it.
And actually, uh, while I wascleaning out my truck, um, going
through the, the archaeologythat is the center console and
(07:25):
you know, the the bottom layerwas was at least 10 years old.
I found a um one of thosedisposable film cameras and I
have no idea what's on it solike you're uh it's why.
Why it's what I thought whenyou were talking about uh
wanting to go back to the actualmedia.
So someday I'll get thatdeveloped.
(07:45):
Yeah, you have to.
That'd be sick.
Ron (07:48):
The center console is an amazing space.
I went through mine in my Jeepa while back and I've had this
car actually since high school.
This was like my first car andI guess, my only car and I found
like old AAA maps.
I remember like going to AAAand being like I'm going to get
a map for every near neighboringCounty so I'll never get lost,
and those are just completelyworthless now.
(08:10):
Probably use them once.
Don (08:13):
Yeah, all right, my wife has a Thomas guide in her in her
car.
A real, a real, live, physicalThomas.
Ron (08:20):
I feel like those you should like be able to put those
on eBay and the Smithsonianwill buy it off of you for its
upcoming the Way we Were exhibitor something.
Don (08:31):
But actually our topic today, what I want to talk to
you about, what I brought to thetable today, is transportation.
Ron (08:37):
Okay.
Don (08:38):
But you know, like usual, my shtick.
We've got to get in the magictime machine, the magic time.
Ron (08:44):
Okay, so we're talking about like what's the?
Oldest form of transportation.
We're talking about dog-drawnsleds on the tundra.
No, that's not the oldest form.
Don (08:56):
Okay.
Ron (08:58):
Canoes, finnish toboggans oh yeah, no, just walking would
be the oldest.
Don (09:11):
Yeah, just to get on your feet about the invention of feet
, um, but if we were to go back,I don't know.
Let's say, uh, let's just picka number.
Let's say the 14th century.
We're talking about the 14thcentury last time, if lots of
rats everywhere if we were just,uh, regular, regular folk and
we needed to get from one cityto another, what would be our
options?
Ron (09:29):
uh, we could well, we could walk.
I I take it right, um, and wecould.
We could hop on a pony or ahorse, I guess probably not a
pony, we'd probably break itsback.
Don (09:37):
But a horse.
A horse if we were lucky enoughto have one.
Ron (09:40):
Yeah, okay, yeah, our horses, big big, uh like
aristocratic items back in theday.
Don (09:46):
No, uh, mostly agrarian, but uh, but if you were, the
luxury of travel was was limitedto the, the upper classes.
So, uh, if we were farm workersand we needed to get somewhere
else, it would have been becausewe were working, okay, but uh,
but another, another way wouldbe um water, so back in the 14th
century, canals and rivers andthings like that.
(10:09):
But if we move forward in ourschool bus, our time machine and
we get up to the 19th century,Not so far.
Industrial Revolution startingso early 1800s.
Now what kind of choices wouldwe have?
Again, we're just regular Joes,so we're not super rich, but
just regular people.
What would be our options ofgetting around town?
Ron (10:28):
1800s we got wagons.
Now there are wagons, coaches,still drawn by horses, I suppose
there are.
Do we have the first locomotiveyet?
No, when's the first locomotive?
Later.
Okay, so we're talking early1800s.
Um, maybe we've got when's thefirst, uh, moving sidewalk.
(10:50):
Um, I guess wagons is my.
I mean still more ships andboats and canals, right?
So wagons are are all ownedprivately, though we don't have
like a, like a cab company.
Don (11:05):
No, just like you own a wagon.
Ron (11:06):
Oh, like an island wagon.
Okay, this is my four-doorsedan wagon in hot red, cherry
red.
Don (11:17):
First, just to finish out our conversation first
locomotive in England is builtin 1814, but the first railway
is open in 1825 okay.
Ron (11:26):
Are those like public or are they predominantly like
industrial railways?
Are they like taking coal fromthe midlands down to the ports,
for both passengers and freight.
Don (11:35):
Okay, so a combination, yeah, um, but uh, but it's that,
uh, it's, it's that shift fromuh private ownership of
transportation to publicownership.
So do you know what happened onJuly 4th 1829 in London,
england?
Ron (11:52):
Definitely nothing to do with America.
Probably every Englishmantrying to ignore the word
America.
Probably, yeah.
Don (12:04):
That was the first horse-drawn omnibus.
That was a public, uh, publictransportation system.
Uh, it was one route.
It went from, uh, frompaddington in london to bank
okay, so I think this wordomnibus you used like uh, like I
know what it means, um, but Ithink there was a.
Ron (12:22):
There was a great shift, almost a vowel shift, at some
point where an omnibus to me islike a big collection of books
in one book.
What was the original omnibus?
Don (12:36):
So it's a carriage.
It looks like a stagecoach, butit's a little bit longer.
So it's got multiple rowsinside of it rather than just
the two facing that a stagecoachor a carriage would have.
So probably three or four rowscould hold.
Most of them held up to 12passengers.
Some of them later on could getup to 22.
Ron (12:55):
Okay.
Don (12:55):
Pulled by three horses.
Ron (12:56):
And what year was this?
1829.
1829.
First big bus.
With how many horses?
Three, three, why three, thatseems.
Don't you want to even it'sbecause you only need two, in
case one dies.
Don (13:11):
You only need two to pull it, but if the route gets steep
they need the third one.
So they always had the at thestart they had three.
As time marched forward itwould become a two horse system.
Okay, but the route fromPaddington, what I found was
interesting, the route fromPaddington to bank.
It ran four times a day.
It cost a shilling to take, uh,to take the omnibus, um, and it
(13:33):
would take about two hours.
Ron (13:36):
What's this distance in miles?
Don (13:38):
3.5.
Ron (13:42):
I'm walking man.
I'm saving my shilling, I'mwalking.
Don (13:49):
It's uh, it's because it's going through the, the heart of
london, down what was called thenew road uh, for our london
listeners is now marlebone uhroad, uh, but um, uh, what if
you wanted to take that sameroute today?
Um, it would take at least twobuses and it would take you at
least three hours so okay, itwas faster back then using the
horses than with our, with thecurrent uh uh transport system.
Ron (14:11):
I knocked them too soon.
Don (14:12):
They knew what was up, you could get the underground.
Underground tire requires twotrains and at least 45 minutes
and uh, several gaps yeah, thatyou will potentially lose your
life, and I suppose you have tomind those yeah, yeah yeah, um,
so so we, we have a populationof London about 1.5 million
people, okay, and uh, and we'reusing horses to transport
(14:33):
freight and now, starting a 29,we're transporting publicly,
transporting humans.
Ron (14:38):
Is this big?
Are people like hell?
Yeah, the omnibus is here.
I'm living in a golden age itis.
Don (14:44):
It takes off by 1833, there are several routes, so it only
takes a couple years for this toexpand.
Okay, yeah, but here's thequestion that I have is what is
the motor that is driving theomnibus in 1829?
Ron (15:04):
Three horses.
Don (15:04):
Three horses, that's right and um what do you have to pay a
horse?
Ron (15:09):
oh, this is the best part?
Um, very little.
I guess you're giving them oats, you're giving them hay and a
room to sleep and lots of loveand, uh, scratches on their neck
.
That's it.
So have you ever owned?
Don (15:22):
a horse.
Ron (15:22):
No, I've never owned a horse.
Horses are huge man like Ithink I would actually be.
I I've ridden horses.
I think they're cool.
I'm not like an anti-horse guy,but no, no, I want no business.
Do horses like you?
I don't know I am.
Is that a thing it is?
Don (15:41):
I think so because I don't think horses like me and I don't
know, why?
Ron (15:44):
yeah, I'm such a likable person they're just always sort
of like side eyeing you.
Don (15:47):
They do, yeah, like dogs love me I can give me a dog, I'm
good, but yeah, horses alwaysare like, not they're
intimidated by your intelligencedon it's most beasts feel.
That's why doug is oh we, wekid, just because he's not here
to defend himself.
Ron (16:06):
So we need to feed the horses.
Don (16:08):
Exactly.
How much do you feed a horse?
Bushels 40 pounds.
Okay, 40 pounds a day.
The trouble with feeding ahorse 40 pounds a day is what's
the horse going to give you backat the end of?
Ron (16:19):
that day.
Ooh, it's going to return youfor your kindness with uh some,
some uh big old piles of horsereturn or horse dividends.
Don (16:33):
Dookie yeah, 30 pounds of Dookie.
Ron (16:37):
Okay.
Don (16:38):
All right, so uh, uh, by about 1840, we've had about
300,000 horses working in LondonTo 1.5 million people.
Ron (16:47):
Yeah, it's about one horse for every five people.
Don (16:50):
All right, each producing 30 pounds of manure a day Sounds
like my ex-wife, holy cow.
So there's a lot of horse waste, waste I'm taking.
(17:12):
There is a lot, yes, uh, up toa thousand tons of horse waste a
day.
Ron (17:14):
So are we developing a sewer system?
Is this something we can sweepinto the gutter?
Uh, are we employ?
Is this a just an opportunityfor employment?
I'm, I'm just an old horsesweep like going up the.
What was it the main way?
Or?
Don (17:31):
the new road, the new road, the new road, yeah, um, well,
kind of.
So the it does turn into that.
It starts off with just piles,and it was why you always had to
be careful crossing the street,because there were so many
horses that there was no waythat the streets could be kept
clean at all times.
Okay, but there werecontractors that were hired by
(17:54):
the city to remove manure fromthe roadways, and they would
then take that and sell it tofarmers who were were raising
hay.
That would then the alfalfathat would then be fed to the
horses.
Ron (18:08):
So it's a perfect system, right you?
Don (18:10):
see, and you just got to find that balance so that the
horse production matches, thefertilizer sale matches, the
alfalfa production matches thehorse consumption match, right
and yes, you just got to findthe the right, uh, the right
magic balance so that the wholesystem works and they did.
Ron (18:29):
No, they didn't.
So which did they have excess?
I'm willing to bet, okay, theone they didn't want.
Excess of what?
What do you think they hadexcess of?
They had excess horse crap theydid.
Don (18:42):
Do you know how much a thousand tons of horse dookie
like what that looks like?
Um, I can't tell you what athousand tons of anything looks
like A thousand tons is a is acube of horse dookie, 62 feet on
on each edge, so uh, so giant,and each horse produces up to
(19:04):
two gallons of urine a day ohright, yeah, we're not even
talking about the wet so, uh.
So we got 300 000 horsesexcreting two gallons each.
It's uh, 600 gallon, 600 000gallons of urine, okay, this is
like.
Ron (19:18):
This is the middle of the 19th century, right?
I find this very funcontrasting.
This is supposed to be right,like the, the what, the height
of the british empire right,these are the most civilized
people.
Supposed to be right like theheight of the British Empire,
right, these are the mostcivilized people in the world.
London is the most incrediblecity in the world and it just
reeks of horse piss and shit.
Well, and.
Don (19:35):
But we don't ever, like we don't hear about that.
Ron (19:38):
No, no, you're right, none of the literature mentions like.
Don (19:41):
I can think of one instance in one book by Jane Austen
where a character says oh, thehorses have been here, but other
than that it's like it's sosanitized that we don't even
realize, Like of course it wasquaint because they were pulling
their buses with horses, andhow nostalgic that must be.
(20:03):
But the truth of the matter isit smells like poop.
Ron (20:06):
Yeah, we did that with a lot of our history, right?
Like, uh, talking about likethe Roman empire and ancient
Rome is supposed to be likesuper cool, all these marble
statues and beautifularchitecture.
And then like some realistweirdo comes in and tries to
dispel the rumor, he's like youknow, they ate anchovies, they
would have reeked.
They didn't bathe, you know,except but once a month or
(20:27):
something.
And then it's like thanks, man,I just wanted to live in
fantasy Rome.
Don (20:33):
It gets so bad, actually, that that in 18, in the 1850s,
benjamin Disraeli gives a speechin parliament where he is
pointing out in 1850 that uhwell, here's this quote he says
the cost of maintaining ourstreets in a state of moderate
cleanliness is becoming ruinous,while the health effects of
this ever-increasingaccumulation cannot be ignored,
(20:54):
we must ask ourselves if thereis not a limit to the number of
horses a city can sustain well,okay, all right.
Ron (21:01):
So this is, this is once the he's the prime minister,
right, uh-huh, uh, once theprime minister is is calling it
out.
So it's not just like acosmetic problem.
Don (21:11):
This is they're ringing alarm bells and in 1850, so so
there should be plenty of timeto fix this problem, because
it's been.
It's been noted.
Um, they, they actually werehired.
There were private sweepers youcould hire that.
We'd hang out on the corner andif you wanted to cross the road
and not have to walk throughhorse poop, you could pay the
private sweeper to clear yourway across the road.
(21:33):
Yeah, how has that not been?
Ron (21:36):
depicted in a film or something right, that sounds
quintessentially English Payingyour valet to scrub the asphalt
in front of you paying yourballot, to scrub the asphalt in
front of you, um, and then wehave another technological
invention.
Don (21:50):
I guess that, um, that that comes to england um the fire
hose.
Now we're just pressure washingit all the fire hose existed
back when, uh, when the GreatFire took place in 1666.
Ron (22:05):
A lot of good it did, though.
Don (22:08):
Now the horse-drawn railway .
Okay, okay, all right.
So this is like a trolley car.
Yeah, so if you've been toDisneyland?
the uh, the carriage that getspulled down the center, that's,
that would be a horse drawn.
Uh, uh, railway, um, so weopened this up between, uh,
between London and Greenwich.
Um and uh, we need, uh, 12horses per mile.
(22:28):
Yikes, that's getting worseBecause the each horse can only
work for about four hours.
So even on the buses it's 12horses per mile because you can
run a horse for about four hoursand then you got to switch that
horse out for the rest of theday and they ran 16 hour days.
(22:49):
But as we bring in the railwaynow, we're running longer
distances requires more horses.
And guess what?
More horses produce More waste.
They do, yeah.
Then in 18, well, in 1831, butthen again in 1848, we have a
cholera outbreak.
Oh, and cholera, of course, isspread by Poop, Poop, okay, poop
(23:10):
when it comes into water, okay,so we've got all of this horse
waste.
Ron (23:14):
Luckily, it never rains in London, that's right.
Don (23:18):
And we have you know, 600,000 gallons of horse urine
that are washing everything intothe Thames.
So do you know how much 600,000gallons is?
Ron (23:26):
That's an Olympic-sized swimming pool every day of horse
urine just being distributedacross the streets of London.
I'll never look at the LondonOlympics the same way again.
Don (23:41):
So by then it's exceeding 50 pounds per year to remove
horse manure per horse in thecity of London.
Ron (23:49):
Wow, okay.
So is that outstripping, likehow much it costs to even like
feed them?
It must be right, like I'mtaking it like.
Don (23:56):
It's getting close.
It doesn't outstrip it until afew more years down the road.
Ron (24:01):
And so all this kind of like Benjamin Disraeli was
saying this is being, this isall money that's falling on the
local government, right, Likethey're the ones in charge.
The municipality has to takecare of this, not the actual
owners of the horses.
Don (24:14):
They're not they're not okay.
Um, so what can we do?
We?
Our streets are full of horsepoop, right, what like?
How would you?
Ron (24:23):
solve the problem.
I mean, uh, get all thoseorphan kids out of those all
over.
Yeah, I mean I don't like uh.
So my my answer earlier, youkind of, I feel like, already
swept it away.
I was like hey, this is freefertilizer, this must be, this
must be fantastic.
Like you know, this is not auseless resource, right?
(24:44):
But it sounds like we arealready using that and we're
we're outpacing, but I guess youhave to move it also, right?
Don (24:51):
So right and I take it.
Ron (24:53):
The horses are moving it to the Midlands or wherever right
they are.
Don (24:56):
And there's another limitation here, because the hay
and the alfalfa that well, thehay the horse needs for bedding
is increasing the waste, but thealfalfa that they're eating has
to be grown somewhere.
So it takes about one and athird acres of land to grow the
alfalfa for one horse, and we'vegot at least 300 000 horses
(25:17):
that are working in london,probably more than that.
Now we've moved halfway throughthe the century, um and uh,
there's not enough land in thesurrounding areas within 100
miles to feed the horses thatare right.
So the, the, the overproductionof waste in the city is not,
has nowhere to go because thefarmlands can't take it.
The farmers are buying as muchas they can, um, so a couple of
(25:39):
a couple of technologies, uh,come along.
Um, the first is invented by aguy named Joseph Whitworth, uh,
who creates the first largescale mechanical street sweeping
system.
Ron (25:52):
Sick.
Yeah, I'm gonna imagine this islike a big Zamboni, like just
going around with the spinningwheel on the top and the guy can
just go to so it's got rotatingbrushes.
Don (26:01):
It clears a seven foot swath of of street at once.
Um, it can clear 1500 yards ofstreet in one hour, so almost a
mile, not quite.
Uh, accomplishing the work of20 men in one hour, okay, so
pretty good.
Um guess how it gets pulleddown.
Ron (26:20):
Oh no, the horses was whitworth like look, I tried
experimenting with cats withdogs, but they ain't got it in
them.
You need 45 dogs or threehorses.
What, what do you want?
Don (26:33):
governor so he can clear the street.
But it's adding to thecomplication because you've got
more horses that need to clearthe streets.
Ron (26:44):
Bring in even more horses.
Okay, this is starting to.
The sheer viciousness of thiscycle is starting to kind of
rear its head.
Don (26:51):
I'm starting to get where the prime minister was all.
So then we need to inventprocessing plants, because the
the wet manure is obviouslyheavy to move, and and and more
has more volume.
So it's it's it's a moredifficult task to get it to the
farmers.
So we start processing insidethe city which can reduce the
(27:14):
one ton of of of manure down tolike a 20 pound block are we
talking like sort of like?
Ron (27:21):
we're taking it into a big machine that is like a, like a
trash compactor, and we'recrushing it.
We're pulling all the liquidout of it.
It's like a dehumidifier okaylittle manure nuggets.
Don (27:34):
But guess where all that moisture goes?
That is evaporated from themanure?
It goes into the air.
Oh, okay, so if you live nextto a manure processing, plant.
Ron (27:50):
Guess what it smells like.
Everyone's mad now, right, Well, and right.
Don (27:54):
So the city is just not a good place to be.
Ron (27:59):
Right.
So like everyone's taking theirholiday in London and they're
like, good God, elizabeth, lookat the streets.
And then so then the tourismboard's like, okay, we'll clean
the streets and but we need tomake like waste plants to to
(28:20):
take all the waste.
And now they're pumping thesulfur and everything into the
atmosphere.
Don (28:26):
And now everyone's like, good god, elizabeth, the air in
london is terrible, okay, sosame thing is happening in new
york okay, all right, new yorkis about a tenth the size of
london in the time okay uh, samething is happening in boston,
um, but uh, these the?
The trouble is that the citiescontinue to grow and as the city
(28:49):
grows, there's a greaterdependence on horses to provide
transportation for people incargo.
Ron (28:56):
Um, so it's uh is it sort of like a, like a, an often
overlooked, I feel like the.
When we're learning history andwe're talking about, like, the
industrial revolution, it seemslike a very linear like.
And then they started, you know, developing these machines and
some, you know, proto-automation, and then people moved in the
cities and everything like movedvery like sort of uh uh,
(29:20):
linearly and the way you wouldexpect, and it evolved and now
we got, now we got pcs, um, butthere must have been like
vestiges of the old world thatwere sort of like, you know,
like horses right, that are notcatching up or or evolving at
the same rate as the othersociety changing things, right
right, and it's because societyhas to to realize at some moment
(29:43):
that an evolution is possibleyeah and and up to this point,
like horses have been theprimary, I don't know, uh,
mechanism of work.
Don (29:54):
I, I guess, right Since, like anyone can remember, like
literally thousands of years.
So like, why are we going tomove away from the horse?
We just need to figure out howto make the horse work in the
this industrial environment thatwe've created.
Ron (30:07):
Right, you can get your steam donkey to, like you know,
process some textiles, but youstill need your normal donkey to
walk to.
Or, you know, pull people tothe office.
Right, right, right.
Don (30:19):
So so there are some, some ideas coming along to uh to try
to adjust for the, themaintenance of these animals.
So, um, stables we werelaughing, I think, earlier today
.
But uh, big stable, um, uh, butuh, they were big like they.
There were five story stablesin Chicago like parking garages
(30:39):
right.
With vertical elevators to movehorses and to move um, to move
hay up and down, um the um.
All right, then we have, uhlike everything we're going to
have equine influenza.
So, just like the bird flu isaffecting egg prices today, when
all of our cities are dependenton horses and all of a sudden
(31:00):
the horses get the flu.
Bad day, bad thing the wholecity stops um.
There actually were men inboston that had to pull the the
streetcars honey, they justcalled me.
Ron (31:12):
I'm a horse today, so uh so and then um.
Don (31:17):
But I gave you, the problem is the, is the waste, um, so,
uh, berlin, uh, an engineer inberlin comes up with the idea of
um, of pneumatic system toremove waste okay a vacuum.
Basically, a vacuum runs pipeunderground and uh, and it can,
can move the waste from oneplace to another does he ever
get to employ this, or is thismerely theoretical?
(31:40):
I'd love to know what the crapvacuum did in berlin um, the
proposed system would require 87miles of underground tubing, so
this is uh, if it were employedin london.
Um, and 4,000 horsepower ofsteam energy.
So it's using a steam engine at4,000 horsepower, so not
(32:02):
actually 4,000 horses, but thecalculations showed only
processed 22% of the currentwaste production, a cost
exceeding the entire city'sannual budget.
Ron (32:12):
I'd love to be at that meeting.
And they're like well uh, mayor, we could just uh build the
city of the future, but it stillwon't take all the crap away.
Don (32:23):
Just like 20 percent yeah, um, the best system.
I came out of paris, um, theyhad a rail-based system, uh,
where they had night soil menwho it's a great band name night
soil which has been a job for along time.
Most uh prior versions of nightsoil men would come and remove
(32:47):
human excrement from cesspoolsokay um, but the paris system
involved a night system.
um, where they could, they wouldcome in and scoop up piles that
had been made during the day,and they were moved out of the
city by rail rather than by cart.
But that still was only able tohandle 40% of the daily
(33:08):
accumulation.
So we have this like less thanhalf.
So everyone's on this, though,right like it, this is a
worldwide problem, or at least auh like a a western
metropolitan issue right, andall of the cities are here, like
so paris is here, berlin ishere, london is here, chicago is
here, new york is here,boston's here, like everybody
(33:29):
has the same problem okay, andall the brains best and
brightest.
You got all the brains in theroom.
Somebody should like.
This should be fit Like.
This is the time to fix it.
Ron (33:38):
Yeah, yeah Right.
Don (33:39):
It's been a problem.
I mean, it was noted in 1850and now the the meeting we're
talking about taking place in1894.
Ron (33:46):
Okay.
Don (33:46):
Yeah, so it's been half a century and and, and you can
imagine, in 1850, they noticedthere was a problem like how big
the problem must be in 1894.
We have, interestingly, since1850, solved the problem of
human waste in the cities.
Ron (34:05):
Okay, what's the solution?
Are there treatment plantsalready?
We just have sewers, sewers.
Don (34:12):
Yeah, so there were sewers in the early 1800s, but they all
just dumped into the ThamesRight.
And then there was a heat wavein 1858 and the Thames didn't
flow as much as a heat wave anda drought.
So the Thames didn't flow andeverything was fermenting on the
surface.
The accumulated human waste onthe banks was six feet deep.
(34:35):
They had to cancel parliamentbecause parliament couldn't
stand the smell.
Queen Victoria had to cancelher river cruise.
No, yeah, not the Victoriariver cruise.
So so they hired an engineernamed Basilgate who invented the
, the sewer system.
That was all enclosed andrather than just dumping open
sewer into the, the thames uh istaken away to treatment plants,
(34:59):
and it's actually still in usetoday same one.
Ron (35:03):
Yeah, the ancient treatment plants of the thames river it's
only 150 years.
Uh, that's, that's old enoughto get a youtuber to go down
there and film some weird videos, you know.
Don (35:14):
So I think that a lot of the the infrastructure of it has
been replaced, but it runsalong the same route.
So, yeah, so so we've solved.
Ron (35:22):
The human race realizes a problem but this is because you
can tell people where to puttheir waste right and and it is
tougher to tell a horse yeah,yeah that is true, they're very
inconsiderate indeed, so, um, sowhat do we do, right?
Don (35:34):
so we can't, if we can't, uh, figure out a way to
mechanically remove the, thehorse manure from the cities
that is being accumulated by thebounty of horses that we need
to do our work, how can we?
How can we cut it back?
How can we trim it down alittle?
Ron (35:50):
bit.
I just figured it out.
Oh, I can't believe no onethought about this.
Why can't they make like somesort of big horse diaper?
Obviously it's not a diaper,somebody still has to empty it.
Don (36:00):
It doesn't take away the waste.
Ron (36:02):
Then we throw it in the new sewer.
If we're already throwingeveryone's waste down the Thames
.
We have this big net behindevery horse.
At the end of the day, throw itin the Thames.
Don (36:16):
I think they actually do do that in new york city today.
I think the uh the, the cardsthey have in the uh in central
park that you can.
I think they have little likebaskets under the yeah, yeah
like catch your basket man Ishould have been a 19 1894
change the trajectory of ourentire can we stop the bus here
and leave me here?
For a second.
Ron (36:36):
I feel like my life will take a more productive route.
Don (36:42):
So Chicago comes up with the idea.
Okay, the Chicago delegationproposes strict horse licensing
system with population caps andmandatory waste collection
requirements.
Ron (36:54):
Yes, this would work.
I'm all for this would work,right?
So you're you're saying thepeople who own the horses and
the companies that are runningthese public transportation uh,
you know routes and things.
They're responsible.
We're putting a limit on howmany horses they can have, so
we're just trying to minimizethe problem.
Don (37:11):
So we're like, okay, no, we're stopping growth, right no
more horses and and you areyou're artificially making it
more expensive to own a horse byputting a licensing fee on it
right, so you you wouldn't havetoo many horses, encouraging
them to you would need to bemore careful with how many
horses you are using right anddivest of unnecessary horses
that's right okay, um, but thatdoesn't sound like it'll work.
(37:33):
Hmm, so uh, from the theproceedings of the conference.
Uh, this the answer was themathematics of commerce render
population caps impossible.
Each horse removed creates aneconomic opportunity that
demands two more horses be added.
So we can't regulate our wayout of this crisis.
Right, cause they're tooessential.
Right To what every like right.
(37:54):
If you just take the horse away, the work that that horse was
doing remains but, there'snobody there to do it.
Ron (38:03):
Yeah, you can't just employ more Boston guys to do what the
horse did, right.
Don (38:07):
So we can't regulate it through.
Ron (38:10):
And Boston guys also.
Just shit on the street, soit's not going gonna help either
.
Don (38:18):
Um, vienna also has a regulation to propose.
Vienna says uh, they are justgoing to create stable zoning
laws okay and stable, meaninglike a place to hold a horse,
not like, oh sure, notchangeable they kind of do that
in london today.
Ron (38:34):
Right, they've got.
The last time I went to londonthe taxi guy was uh really was
really angry and justcomplaining to us about the uh,
the the zoning laws that theyhave in different parts of
london and what kind of cars youcan drive there.
Otherwise you have to pay a taxright right.
Don (38:47):
If you go through the, the centered parts of the city, you
have to pay additional fees,unless you're in a ev or hybrid
vehicle, right it's.
Ron (38:55):
I don't know that that's I'm pretty sure I could drive to
london.
Don (38:58):
I have an ev now yeah, yeah , yeah.
Ron (38:59):
Exactly that's why he was complaining, because he's like
they're trying to get us to buythese cars.
Don (39:03):
Well, so, uh, vienna's idea , uh, uh is, uh is also not
doesn't work out.
So the viennese, the viennesecity planning board, uh says
that our attempt to regulatestable locations has resulted in
horses traveling further toreach their work sites, thus
requiring more horses tocompensate for the increased
(39:24):
transit time each regulationseems to worsen the very problem
it tends to solve is this whatthe island of dr moreau is about
?
Ron (39:31):
are they trying to like create a better horse?
I can see someone being like ifonly we could make a better
horse, like a leaner, quickersmarter being.
Don (39:41):
I think this is an interesting uh, both of these
are historically interestingcomponents for me, though,
because, uh, it's like the ideathat we can regulate a solution
to a huge societal yes, yeah,yeah right and and we always
turn to our, our, ourpoliticians and our and as
regulators, to like we'll, youknow, change the, change the law
(40:03):
so that this doesn't happen ifwe tweak the parameters of
what's acceptable, then behaviorwill change or new solutions
will have to be discovered right, but in this particular case,
the the horses are pooping,regardless of licensing fees or
zoning laws, how many stablesthere are.
It doesn't.
There's no way to stop, thoughyou can't bet the cork in the
(40:24):
horse right um there was, theytried it there were.
There were discussions aboutchanging what horses were fed,
right to see if it would reducethe volume of waste.
Um, but I don't think they everlet's give them eels.
What does that do?
So here's the final assessmentfrom the committee.
(40:44):
This says we have examined 53distinct proposals, from
mechanical street cleaners tounderground waste networks.
The hard truth is, none ofthese solutions, even in
combination, can match the paceof waste accumulation in our
growing cities.
Ron (40:58):
Dang.
So they?
They said it's time to throw inthe towel.
We're giving up on Westerncivilization.
Don (41:05):
That's right, and so that's why.
That's why civilization, theChinese, can have it.
So a Colonel, john Howell, aBritish railway engineer,
delivered an, an address, anunscheduled address, and he said
gentlemen, we have spent twoweeks attempting to solve the
wrong problem.
Our crisis is not one of wastemanagement, but of dependence on
(41:29):
animal power at a scale thathas become unsustainable.
We must look.
Look beyond the horse To thestars.
Ron (41:37):
I'm proposing we colonize Phobos.
Don (41:42):
And that's why the British were the first on the moon.
Yeah, exactly In 1895.
Ron (41:47):
We've got a great alternate history sci-fi novel series
here Don.
Don (41:53):
No, but he's right right.
Ron (41:55):
And this is starting to sound, quite frankly, chillingly
relevant.
Don (42:01):
What?
What do you mean?
We don't use horses like thisanymore.
We don't have 62 foot cubes ofhorse manure being produced in
our city every day.
Ron (42:10):
Thank God we made the horse extinct to solve the problem
and then invented the automobile, um which I'm assuming was the
solution to this right, but theone that no one could foretell
right, right.
Don (42:22):
So so the solution is already in play because, um,
carl benz uh has patented his,uh, his automobile, his vehicle
powered by a gas engine, in 1886.
But it's not right in any kindof wide use no one's got one in
their, in their shed, in theirstable and and the ones that are
(42:45):
being produced are superexpensive, so it's not something
that could feasiblyeconomically replace the horses.
Ron (42:52):
Yeah, was there anyone at this conference being like,
let's just wait 25 years and seeif we're all still here.
Um, but uh like they must havebeen at least aware, right?
But again like, uh, easy for usto say just wait for the car,
idiots um, because we know it'scoming.
Yeah, we know it's coming, butthey don't right and and uh,
they don't even know if it wouldbe adopted right or adaptable
(43:15):
to like public use, right?
Maybe it is just a thing that,like the queen, instead of going
on the river Thames, she takesa car holiday.
Don (43:23):
Um so Benjamin Woods, in his closing address, says uh, we
depart without solutions.
Yet Perhaps this very failureis necessary.
Only by accepting theimpossibility of our current
path can we open our minds toradical alternatives that we
cannot yet imagine.
Dang, and then they crossed thestreet through the horse yeah,
(43:49):
back to their hotels.
Ron (43:50):
Yeah, hit the pub together.
What do you got?
What do you guys think ofafrica?
Anyone interested in that place?
Um, okay, so so they reallythey have to throw in the towel,
they give up and and they justbusiness as usual.
Right, everyone goes back.
Don (44:09):
The horse remains a staple of life in london until and all
the other cities new york comesback and they implement an
emergency night soil only policyum, which restricts horse
traffic during daylight hours inmanhattan okay but everybody
realizes that doesn't solve anyof the problems.
(44:31):
It just makes the nighttime theproblem, because now you've got
twice as many horses atnighttime on the same streets.
London introduces stableventilation systems, even though
that doesn't do anything forthe problem and do anything for
the problem.
So then there is a problem inI'm checking today, 1895.
(44:57):
We have a winter temperatureinversion, that happens, and so
there's Also very common today Acloud of aerial manure dust
that hangs over the city fornine days.
I'm never going back to londonand hospital wards overflow with
respiratory cases um, jesus,because of this, and so it was a
(45:21):
.
It was a moment when peoplerealized this wasn't just a
waste manager, this is a healthcrisis.
Right, right, right, this is apublic health crisis.
That has it transforms thedebate from just being about
waste management to being abouthow this is a direct threat to
our human health.
So the Manhattan street railwaycompany declares bankruptcy,
(45:44):
okay, despite increasingridership.
So it's not because they're,not because they don't have
customers, but it's becausethey're spending so much money
removing the horse poop Right,and they can't make money.
The London's Metropolitan Boardof Works also projects
bankruptcy within three years ifthe waste management costs
continue to rise.
And so by 1898, everybody'sdoom and gloom that this is,
(46:10):
this is a it's, it's reached apoint where these.
The sustainability ofhorse-based transport is
financially unsustainable, right, right, yeah, um.
So what can we do?
What's going going to happen?
Ron (46:26):
Oh well, world War I first.
Don (46:31):
No, not World War I first.
Ron (46:34):
Spanish-American War.
Berlin does it.
What's Berlin doing?
Don (46:40):
Berlin begins a large-scale trial of electric trams.
Ron (46:43):
Oh, okay, okay.
Don (46:46):
And so people look at the electric tram.
It does require a significantinfrastructure investment.
Oh, okay, okay, because, yes,it's an expensive investment in
(47:07):
infrastructure to start, butonce it's in place, you've
eliminated the crippling problemthat is threatening to bring
London and all the other citiesto a poop-entrenched standstill,
and I presume this is onlyfeasible because of advancement
in technology, right, right, notonly do they, you know, can
(47:29):
they now harness electricity,but they can harness it at the
capacity that they could powerthese railways and they're using
it to turn motors to make tramsgo forward.
Paris tries something withcompressed air buses.
I don't know how that wouldwork.
Seems like that would like youcould go, ooh.
Ron (47:44):
Like the car we made in Boy Scouts, like the pine car derby
Boy Scouts.
I can't.
Don (47:49):
The pine car derby.
Then you got to get out.
Okay, everybody Pump, pump onthe, and then in London we start
using motor wagons.
Ron (48:03):
Okay.
Don (48:04):
And then, of course, in 1908, another famous American
figures out a way to producethose automobiles invented by
Carl Benz in a more efficientand cost effective way, and
that's Mr Ford.
Mr Ford with the Model T.
So just waiting about 10 years.
The horse problem seems toresolve because now there's a
(48:24):
widespread adoption of motorvehicles to take that place, and
that's why the world is so muchcleaner today.
Ron (48:32):
Yeah, thanks, horses.
Thanks for stepping to the sideand letting the incredibly
clean automobile take your place.
But this is what I was sayingearlier.
Right, I can see, maybe, whythis grabbed your imagination.
Who doesn't like talking abouthorse cooters?
No, it's bawdy and, uh, it iskind of astonishing to me that
(48:55):
I've never heard about thisuntil now.
This seems to me like a like animportant uh story in the sort
of narrative of the advancementof human civilization right like
it's not so clean and there areconstantly issues that arise
and sometimes, uh, you know,seemingly civilization
(49:16):
threatening issues and healthcrises, right.
Um, and obviously that, like I'mseeing a clear parallel here
between the current climatecrisis, right, it seems like
we're kind of back in a in a,our, our, our city is full of
horse, uh poop, uh world.
How do you see that?
Instead of the horse poop, whatif the horses were farting?
(49:36):
And what if?
What?
if the horses were steel beasts.
And what if everyone had one ormore of these in their uh
stable attached to their house?
Right, um, obviously, the thepollution created by fossil
fuels, um is creating, uh, bothhealth crises and, uh, you know,
(49:56):
weather crises and you knowecosystem crises.
Uh, the world over, right, um,and we it sounds like similar to
1894, right, this bigconference.
We've had several of these.
Right, we have climateconferences between nations to
try and address this problem andit would seem, thus far we have
(50:19):
unsuccessfully addressed itlike to talk about.
Don (50:29):
Why, like what?
What do you think?
Why that is so.
In 1894, at the, the conferencethat we've been talking about,
there was a representatives of43 cities from across the world
talking about the, the manurecrisis.
Um, in 2015, the paris climateconference, we had 196 nations
there, so three times as manyyeah, uh in 1894, the new New
York City air quality crisis, wehad 1,200 deaths from bad air,
(50:53):
yeah, right.
2015, global air pollutiondeaths was 4.2 million, right,
right.
So the problem is way biggerthan the problem was 120 years
ago.
Yeah, yeah.
But why are we choosing to notsolve the problem when we have
the technologies to do it, right?
Ron (51:10):
Yeah, well, it sounds like a similar on the face value.
This is not my endinghypothesis, but on face value it
would seem like there's asimilar reliability.
Or we're stuck on ourreliability on fossil fuels as
(51:31):
energy right, like that.
We cannot find cheaper sourcesof energy.
And, yeah, we've got windturbines, we've got solar uh
cells and batteries right toprovide those clean energy
sources.
But thus far we have not seenthe necessary or requisite
investment in those uhtechnologies.
To uh, like you, you know,power, berlin, right, we, we
(51:54):
like the, the horse has stillgot to be there.
The automobile is still goingto be there and, uh, you know,
not even just the automobile but, like you know, fossil fuels
are utilized in the powergenerators.
Uh, the power, almost all ofour cities et cetera, our cities
, etc.
Right, um, so it seems like wehaven't yet taken that step to
make that infrastructure switchor investment that you said
(52:14):
berlin took back in.
What, 1895, or when was it?
Don (52:18):
1894?
Yeah, and it's.
It's that infrastructure piecethat is is the stumbling block,
I think, because if we go backto to 1850, when benjamin
disraeli first noticed the poopproblem, um it there was a
(52:40):
resistance to wanting to change,because no one could fathom
right that there would be aworld where the, where the horse
was not the primary mover ofgoods and people.
And I think what you're saying.
We are also living in a worldwhere we cannot imagine a future
that doesn't depend on fossilfuel.
But I wonder how much of thatresistance is manufactured by
(53:06):
corporate interests inmaintaining a level of
profitability in a system thatis is polluting the world where,
if we would switch those toinvesting in cleaner energies,
right that at some point itwould be cheaper.
Just just how running a car ischeaper than paying for a horse,
cause you don't have to feed acar as much, no, and the
(53:29):
maintenance is cheaper.
But when that switch washappening in the early 20th
century, there was resistance to.
You know, there were jobs inhay storage, there were jobs in
manure processing, there wasjobs in fertilizing sales.
Ron (53:45):
There was jobs in farming, the guy driving the.
Don (53:47):
Zamboni.
So there's lots of employmentthat is behind that, but it
doesn't mean like it wouldn'tmake sense for us today to say,
well, a solution to the climatecrisis would be to go back to
horses, right right, rightexactly.
You always have to take thatstep forward, and that step
forward is an economicopportunity.
Ron (54:07):
As long as you can let go of that opportunity you're you
currently have and you've landedon on my hypothesis I was
alluding to earlier too, whichis I think it's it's
predominantly a corporate oneright, which is, um, right now,
if you are exxon mobil, ifyou're shell, if you're bp right
, your money comes from taking afree resource from the ground
(54:30):
and turning it into gold,essentially right.
And whereas a lot of thesecompanies do make investments in
other forms of energy, right,wind turbines and you know, et
cetera.
But it's very minimal.
And you know, because they saylook until we receive returns on
those investments similar tothe kinds of profits ExxonMobil
(54:54):
expects to make based on, youknow, all the oil that we've
been extracting.
We're not going to make thattransition, right.
And that's just because thosecompanies are not, you know,
like the big stables of yore,right, they're not very
interested in having tocompletely switch their entire
(55:14):
business model when the currentone seems to be working just
fine.
Don (55:20):
Depends how you measure it.
It's working just fine in theirprofitability, like you say.
But you know, if you look backat the transition from horse to
motor vehicle, it looks likeabout 70% of London stable
owners and horse industrytransitioned to motor vehicle
(55:42):
services by 1910.
Ron (55:44):
So it didn't take that long , right?
No, yeah.
Don (55:47):
And they found success in the new technology.
So it wasn't something thatlike yes, it was a change in a
transition, but it wasn'tsomething that was, it didn't
obliterate.
Ron (55:57):
Right, right.
It wasn't entirelydestabilizing, or?
Don (56:00):
anything like that.
Ron (56:01):
Yeah, and you were saying earlier, like that the people of
1894 had a hard time likeenvisioning this world right,
like how, how they could beunshackled from the you know the
manacles of the horse, and I'mnot sure that is the problem.
Today, though, right Like I dothink it's a lot of people can
(56:21):
imagine a world right that isless reliant on fossil fuels.
We've done this before in likemore recent memory, to like
leaded gasoline was like a hugepublic health crisis issue that,
uh, you know doesn't.
It doesn't exist anymore, rightUm, but through regulation, but
it didn't take away gasoline.
Exactly Right it didn't requirethe sort of right, uh, massive
(56:44):
transformation from these sortsof, you know, powerful companies
that this uh problem awfully uhobviously will require Right Um
.
But, like you said, we've gotthe technologies right Um.
I think there's a lot of publicwill, or we just sort of seem
to lack, uh, you know, theability to budge these uh, these
(57:06):
large groups right the abilityto budge these, uh, these large
groups.
Don (57:10):
Right, that, and?
And it's a, it's a, it's aglobal issue, Right, and?
And if you owned a horse and wecould pile up the manure that
your horse produced outside yourhouse, like you would say oh,
that's gross.
And I don't want that in frontof my house.
Ron (57:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don (57:23):
Right, but when you're driving, we're driving your car
down the street and, like thepollution, doesn't follow you
like it it, you know and it'sinvisible right and it disperses
, and it spreads, and, and sothere's no.
It's not easy to quantify howmuch effect me as an individual
is having on the environmentwhere, if I could watch my horse
poop, I would be, and, and it'salso, like, you gave us some
(57:47):
figures about the uh number ofpeople who die from air
pollution, right, was it?
Ron (57:52):
last year and recently, 2015, 2.2 million, yeah, um,
those are also deaths wherepeople don't just oh my gosh, my
lungs, ah.
Right, like those aremultitudinous diseases and it's
hard to link those to rightactual quality of air, right,
even though those are probablythe most likely sources of those
diseases, right?
(58:12):
So, like, it is just a, it's aharder thing for a normal person
to sort of see and feel right,especially when you're saying
like, hey, your car the thingthat you rely on to get to work,
because this is how we'vedesigned our society so that
everyone is super far apart, atleast in america, right, and the
public transportation isn'treally there.
(58:33):
Um, the way it could be.
Uh, it's hard to say.
Like, these are parts of theproblem, right, right, the
electricity, that everythingruns on right it's not even like
I don't really like putting theonus on people who own cars to
be like, hey, switch to an ev,that's going to fix the problem,
like it's not, because your evis still drawing electricity
from a power plant that isutilizing fossil fuels.
Right, um, it requires not justlike, personal change, it
(58:57):
requires societal change.
Don (58:59):
And I wish that I, our society, would support that
change faster.
I hope that it doesn't get tothe point that the 1894
conference arrived at, which isbasically we can't solve this
problem.
And you know, from ourperspective, like you pointed
out, like we can say well, itwasn't that bad, because, you
know, a few years later a newtechnology came along and solved
(59:21):
that problem for them, orchanged the problem to an
invisible one, to an invisibleone, and uh, but, uh.
But if we get to to anotherpoint where we, we can't solve
the problem anymore, like that'skind of scary, for me.
Ron (59:34):
I do think there are a lot.
This is, this is an issue Iused to kind of uh volunteer my
time and my activist energy for,uh for a long time, um, and I
do a little less now than I usedto, but it's something I feel
fairly informed about.
But I do think there are a lotof people who believe, oh, we
just need to wait for the nextcar to be invented.
(59:54):
Right, there will be atechnological solution.
We'll have, you know, nuclearcold fusion, exactly right, and
these technologies will save us.
But the only problem is likethose are really big ifs right
To hedge our bets on right Likethe, the, the horse, people were
lucky that Mr Ford showed up toto help them out.
(01:00:17):
So, so well, um, uh, and thispresence uh problem maybe seems
a little bit larger and more allencompassing than than the.
The status of the really rottenstreets in London.
Don (01:00:35):
Well, thank you Ron.
Ron (01:00:36):
Appreciate talking poop with you today, yeah, I really
wasn't expecting that comingover here, don, and now that I
know that's on the table, I'mgoing to be a little bit more
reticent to show up for theseconversations, but I can't say
that it wasn't entertaining andit wasn't a fun time.
Don (01:00:49):
Watch your step on the way home.
Ron (01:00:51):
Thank you.
And, and that's when Doug realized it wasn't soup after
all.
Ron (00:33):
Man, that guy is an idiot.
Don (00:36):
Welcome, everybody Welcome back to the.
Uncannery, my name is Don andI'm Ron, and we're talking about
Doug, but we are.
He's not here.
Yeah, that's why we're talkingabout it, but we are because
he's not here.
Ron (00:45):
Yeah, that's why we're talking about it.
It's fun, we talk behind hisback.
Um, he's not here and he willreturn, though.
Uh, once again at home withbabe in hand, um, and uh,
godspeed, yeah.
Don (00:58):
So just if you are you listening out of, uh, Listening
out of order.
Doug wasn't here last timeeither, but we didn't kick him
out of the club completely.
We just no, we're just waiting.
Ron (01:09):
Yeah, this is a test really and I'd say it's going very
well.
Don (01:18):
Oh, so well, welcome to another discussion.
Well, welcome to anotherdiscussion, ron.
I was thinking today on my wayhome about all of the technology
that we live with.
Oh man, yeah, cool technologyand I like gadgety stuff.
Yeah, it's one of the things Ilook for when I'm out shopping.
(01:42):
I like to play around.
I inherited it from my dad.
My dad was a gadget guy.
Ron (01:45):
Yeah.
Don (01:46):
So we had one of everything from um, from infomercials on
TV and in the kitchen, and uh,and that was always fun.
But you know, gadgets are onething and gadgets are, are, are
tricky and neat, but uh, but isthere, like what can you not
live without?
Like what?
What would be a a deal breakerfor you?
What if we took away some pieceof technology?
(02:07):
What would?
Uh, what would, what would thefirst?
Ron (02:10):
thing that comes to mind, I guess, is like the internet,
right, like, but I like it's nota gadget, that's a, that's a
technological phenomenon.
Um, but like thinking about italso, like it would be kind of
cool to not have the internet,maybe.
Don (02:25):
Um, cause, I'm at least.
Have you ever not had theinternet?
Ron (02:28):
Yeah, I, I have memories of not having the internet.
I am, uh, at least old enoughto remember not having the
internet.
I think we got it sometime whenI was around like I don't know,
six or seven, um, and I thinkwe were maybe even like later
adopters of it than most people.
But the real answer, somethingthat I can't live without, like
(02:48):
my computer, actually like my PC, whether or not it had the
internet, I kind of just lovehaving like a hub.
I'm thinking, like all thestuff I do, like you know that's
where I write, I, you know Itype.
It keeps our photographs.
You know the hard drives haveall my media, all of my music.
I can play video games.
Don (03:07):
You're like everything is in that thing, you know that was
what I was going to ask,because that's been a shift
recently, like geographic youknow, yeah, geologically
recently.
Um, computers used to be justbe for work and you would word
process them on.
On them there were some kind oflame games that would happen.
Like Doom, but through the2000s then, like they've kind of
(03:29):
transformed into like a lifehub.
Ron (03:31):
Yeah, it's like an entire media center, right, like pretty
much all the media we watch,like my computer is hooked up to
my TV, right, everythingstreams through there, basically
, and stuff.
So that would be a bummer.
I always think like, uh, if, uh, if there was like an
earthquake and everything in ourhouse was destroyed, I don't
think I'd mind all that much.
(03:52):
I mean I would.
Don (03:52):
Obviously it's a careless thing to say that would suck.
Ron (03:56):
But the only thing I feel like is super essential is like
my big giant 2005 pc tower whichI still have like four hard
drives in there.
Don (04:07):
It's a it's a liability, though, too, because, uh, I had
a laptop stolen out of the backof my truck once and, uh, it was
uh trying to think when it wasstolen, it would have been
around like 2010, 11, somethinglike that, so it had all of my
photographs on it yeah but itwas kind of before most things
were in the cloud right, yeah,exactly so so whoever owns my
(04:30):
2010 laptop has all the picturesof our honeymoon on it.
That uh, oh, that's how I canfind those so easily so um, but
uh, but kids these days won'tever know that that danger,
because everything is loaded toFacebook and to yeah, I don't
know, I don't.
Ron (04:48):
The cloud and iCloud.
I definitely use the clouds.
I think I have like backups ofmost of that stuff, but, um,
that's not my preferred way todo it, like I'd still rather
just.
Maybe that's the the oldfashionedness of me.
Don (05:06):
I want to know the the.
That megabit file is somewhereon a hard drive disk.
Ron (05:08):
Oh, I thought you were going to say the film no, like I
would just want it all in oneplace.
So I guess, if, yeah, mycomputer went away, that would
be a pretty big change in mylifestyle.
I don't really know how wewould.
You'd have to read more, yeah,which wouldn't be so bad.
I guess that would also be good.
But then how would I talk to?
(05:30):
My friends on Discord.
Don (05:33):
How about you?
So the reason that I wasthinking about it on the way
home is because I got a new car.
Yeah, yeah, nice and white.
I'm going to call my car thething I can't live without, but
I think it's only because ofwhere, where we live.
Ron (05:49):
Yeah.
Don (05:49):
Yeah, in in California we're a car country.
We're a very car country.
The public transport system'snot, uh, super well built out,
and so if you want to ever leaveyour house, you need to have
some kind of personaltransportation.
Ron (06:02):
Yeah, and that's a good answer too, but I think I'd kind
of love to like not have my car, because it would force me to
like be a rent, like, yeah,utilize public transportation
that doesn't exist, or walk orride a bike Um, you're right,
that would definitely likestrain, it's one of the things I
love about traveling.
Don (06:20):
Like I, one of our favorite places to travel is london,
because you can literally goanywhere you want in london with
and just by just walking outthe uh, the front door and you
know, walk a block down, take aescalator.
That goes forever and you're ona train?
Yeah, it's uh it's awesome andyou can get anywhere you need to
be in about a half hour.
Ron (06:39):
I do get mad when, uh, coming back from a european city
, or lond in particular, comingback home and being like why the
hell didn't?
Is it too late.
Like can we fix our cities, canwe do what they did?
Don (06:52):
Right, so and, uh, and, and you know the uh, the kind of
car I got was, uh, was, anelectric vehicle.
Ron (06:58):
I do this is pretty cool so uh, this is your first electric
, all electric vehicle.
Don (07:02):
It is my first all electric vehicle.
Quite a change from the, uh,the, the SUV that I used to
drive.
I used to get about 10, 10miles to the gallon and uh, so,
uh, so yeah, brave new world.
But, uh, I thought I wouldtackle that one and and charge
it.
And actually, uh, while I wascleaning out my truck, um, going
through the, the archaeologythat is the center console and
(07:25):
you know, the the bottom layerwas was at least 10 years old.
I found a um one of thosedisposable film cameras and I
have no idea what's on it solike you're uh it's why.
Why it's what I thought whenyou were talking about uh
wanting to go back to the actualmedia.
So someday I'll get thatdeveloped.
(07:45):
Yeah, you have to.
That'd be sick.
Ron (07:48):
The center console is an amazing space.
I went through mine in my Jeepa while back and I've had this
car actually since high school.
This was like my first car andI guess, my only car and I found
like old AAA maps.
I remember like going to AAAand being like I'm going to get
a map for every near neighboringCounty so I'll never get lost,
and those are just completelyworthless now.
(08:10):
Probably use them once.
Don (08:13):
Yeah, all right, my wife has a Thomas guide in her in her
car.
A real, a real, live, physicalThomas.
Ron (08:20):
I feel like those you should like be able to put those
on eBay and the Smithsonianwill buy it off of you for its
upcoming the Way we Were exhibitor something.
Don (08:31):
But actually our topic today, what I want to talk to
you about, what I brought to thetable today, is transportation.
Ron (08:37):
Okay.
Don (08:38):
But you know, like usual, my shtick.
We've got to get in the magictime machine, the magic time.
Ron (08:44):
Okay, so we're talking about like what's the?
Oldest form of transportation.
We're talking about dog-drawnsleds on the tundra.
No, that's not the oldest form.
Don (08:56):
Okay.
Ron (08:58):
Canoes, finnish toboggans oh yeah, no, just walking would
be the oldest.
Don (09:11):
Yeah, just to get on your feet about the invention of feet
, um, but if we were to go back,I don't know.
Let's say, uh, let's just picka number.
Let's say the 14th century.
We're talking about the 14thcentury last time, if lots of
rats everywhere if we were just,uh, regular, regular folk and
we needed to get from one cityto another, what would be our
options?
Ron (09:29):
uh, we could well, we could walk.
I I take it right, um, and wecould.
We could hop on a pony or ahorse, I guess probably not a
pony, we'd probably break itsback.
Don (09:37):
But a horse.
A horse if we were lucky enoughto have one.
Ron (09:40):
Yeah, okay, yeah, our horses, big big, uh like
aristocratic items back in theday.
Don (09:46):
No, uh, mostly agrarian, but uh, but if you were, the
luxury of travel was was limitedto the, the upper classes.
So, uh, if we were farm workersand we needed to get somewhere
else, it would have been becausewe were working, okay, but uh,
but another, another way wouldbe um water, so back in the 14th
century, canals and rivers andthings like that.
(10:09):
But if we move forward in ourschool bus, our time machine and
we get up to the 19th century,Not so far.
Industrial Revolution startingso early 1800s.
Now what kind of choices wouldwe have?
Again, we're just regular Joes,so we're not super rich, but
just regular people.
What would be our options ofgetting around town?
Ron (10:28):
1800s we got wagons.
Now there are wagons, coaches,still drawn by horses, I suppose
there are.
Do we have the first locomotiveyet?
No, when's the first locomotive?
Later.
Okay, so we're talking early1800s.
Um, maybe we've got when's thefirst, uh, moving sidewalk.
(10:50):
Um, I guess wagons is my.
I mean still more ships andboats and canals, right?
So wagons are are all ownedprivately, though we don't have
like a, like a cab company.
Don (11:05):
No, just like you own a wagon.
Ron (11:06):
Oh, like an island wagon.
Okay, this is my four-doorsedan wagon in hot red, cherry
red.
Don (11:17):
First, just to finish out our conversation first
locomotive in England is builtin 1814, but the first railway
is open in 1825 okay.
Ron (11:26):
Are those like public or are they predominantly like
industrial railways?
Are they like taking coal fromthe midlands down to the ports,
for both passengers and freight.
Don (11:35):
Okay, so a combination, yeah, um, but uh, but it's that,
uh, it's, it's that shift fromuh private ownership of
transportation to publicownership.
So do you know what happened onJuly 4th 1829 in London,
england?
Ron (11:52):
Definitely nothing to do with America.
Probably every Englishmantrying to ignore the word
America.
Probably, yeah.
Don (12:04):
That was the first horse-drawn omnibus.
That was a public, uh, publictransportation system.
Uh, it was one route.
It went from, uh, frompaddington in london to bank
okay, so I think this wordomnibus you used like uh, like I
know what it means, um, but Ithink there was a.
Ron (12:22):
There was a great shift, almost a vowel shift, at some
point where an omnibus to me islike a big collection of books
in one book.
What was the original omnibus?
Don (12:36):
So it's a carriage.
It looks like a stagecoach, butit's a little bit longer.
So it's got multiple rowsinside of it rather than just
the two facing that a stagecoachor a carriage would have.
So probably three or four rowscould hold.
Most of them held up to 12passengers.
Some of them later on could getup to 22.
Ron (12:55):
Okay.
Don (12:55):
Pulled by three horses.
Ron (12:56):
And what year was this?
1829.
1829.
First big bus.
With how many horses?
Three, three, why three, thatseems.
Don't you want to even it'sbecause you only need two, in
case one dies.
Don (13:11):
You only need two to pull it, but if the route gets steep
they need the third one.
So they always had the at thestart they had three.
As time marched forward itwould become a two horse system.
Okay, but the route fromPaddington, what I found was
interesting, the route fromPaddington to bank.
It ran four times a day.
It cost a shilling to take, uh,to take the omnibus, um, and it
(13:33):
would take about two hours.
Ron (13:36):
What's this distance in miles?
Don (13:38):
3.5.
Ron (13:42):
I'm walking man.
I'm saving my shilling, I'mwalking.
Don (13:49):
It's uh, it's because it's going through the, the heart of
london, down what was called thenew road uh, for our london
listeners is now marlebone uhroad, uh, but um, uh, what if
you wanted to take that sameroute today?
Um, it would take at least twobuses and it would take you at
least three hours so okay, itwas faster back then using the
horses than with our, with thecurrent uh uh transport system.
Ron (14:11):
I knocked them too soon.
Don (14:12):
They knew what was up, you could get the underground.
Underground tire requires twotrains and at least 45 minutes
and uh, several gaps yeah, thatyou will potentially lose your
life, and I suppose you have tomind those yeah, yeah yeah, um,
so so we, we have a populationof London about 1.5 million
people, okay, and uh, and we'reusing horses to transport
(14:33):
freight and now, starting a 29,we're transporting publicly,
transporting humans.
Ron (14:38):
Is this big?
Are people like hell?
Yeah, the omnibus is here.
I'm living in a golden age itis.
Don (14:44):
It takes off by 1833, there are several routes, so it only
takes a couple years for this toexpand.
Okay, yeah, but here's thequestion that I have is what is
the motor that is driving theomnibus in 1829?
Ron (15:04):
Three horses.
Don (15:04):
Three horses, that's right and um what do you have to pay a
horse?
Ron (15:09):
oh, this is the best part?
Um, very little.
I guess you're giving them oats, you're giving them hay and a
room to sleep and lots of loveand, uh, scratches on their neck
.
That's it.
So have you ever owned?
Don (15:22):
a horse.
Ron (15:22):
No, I've never owned a horse.
Horses are huge man like Ithink I would actually be.
I I've ridden horses.
I think they're cool.
I'm not like an anti-horse guy,but no, no, I want no business.
Do horses like you?
I don't know I am.
Is that a thing it is?
Don (15:41):
I think so because I don't think horses like me and I don't
know, why?
Ron (15:44):
yeah, I'm such a likable person they're just always sort
of like side eyeing you.
Don (15:47):
They do, yeah, like dogs love me I can give me a dog, I'm
good, but yeah, horses alwaysare like, not they're
intimidated by your intelligencedon it's most beasts feel.
That's why doug is oh we, wekid, just because he's not here
to defend himself.
Ron (16:06):
So we need to feed the horses.
Don (16:08):
Exactly.
How much do you feed a horse?
Bushels 40 pounds.
Okay, 40 pounds a day.
The trouble with feeding ahorse 40 pounds a day is what's
the horse going to give you backat the end of?
Ron (16:19):
that day.
Ooh, it's going to return youfor your kindness with uh some,
some uh big old piles of horsereturn or horse dividends.
Don (16:33):
Dookie yeah, 30 pounds of Dookie.
Ron (16:37):
Okay.
Don (16:38):
All right, so uh, uh, by about 1840, we've had about
300,000 horses working in LondonTo 1.5 million people.
Ron (16:47):
Yeah, it's about one horse for every five people.
Don (16:50):
All right, each producing 30 pounds of manure a day Sounds
like my ex-wife, holy cow.
So there's a lot of horse waste, waste I'm taking.
(17:12):
There is a lot, yes, uh, up toa thousand tons of horse waste a
day.
Ron (17:14):
So are we developing a sewer system?
Is this something we can sweepinto the gutter?
Uh, are we employ?
Is this a just an opportunityfor employment?
I'm, I'm just an old horsesweep like going up the.
What was it the main way?
Or?
Don (17:31):
the new road, the new road, the new road, yeah, um, well,
kind of.
So the it does turn into that.
It starts off with just piles,and it was why you always had to
be careful crossing the street,because there were so many
horses that there was no waythat the streets could be kept
clean at all times.
Okay, but there werecontractors that were hired by
(17:54):
the city to remove manure fromthe roadways, and they would
then take that and sell it tofarmers who were were raising
hay.
That would then the alfalfathat would then be fed to the
horses.
Ron (18:08):
So it's a perfect system, right you?
Don (18:10):
see, and you just got to find that balance so that the
horse production matches, thefertilizer sale matches, the
alfalfa production matches thehorse consumption match, right
and yes, you just got to findthe the right, uh, the right
magic balance so that the wholesystem works and they did.
Ron (18:29):
No, they didn't.
So which did they have excess?
I'm willing to bet, okay, theone they didn't want.
Excess of what?
What do you think they hadexcess of?
They had excess horse crap theydid.
Don (18:42):
Do you know how much a thousand tons of horse dookie
like what that looks like?
Um, I can't tell you what athousand tons of anything looks
like A thousand tons is a is acube of horse dookie, 62 feet on
on each edge, so uh, so giant,and each horse produces up to
(19:04):
two gallons of urine a day ohright, yeah, we're not even
talking about the wet so, uh.
So we got 300 000 horsesexcreting two gallons each.
It's uh, 600 gallon, 600 000gallons of urine, okay, this is
like.
Ron (19:18):
This is the middle of the 19th century, right?
I find this very funcontrasting.
This is supposed to be right,like the, the what, the height
of the british empire right,these are the most civilized
people.
Supposed to be right like theheight of the British Empire,
right, these are the mostcivilized people in the world.
London is the most incrediblecity in the world and it just
reeks of horse piss and shit.
Well, and.
Don (19:35):
But we don't ever, like we don't hear about that.
Ron (19:38):
No, no, you're right, none of the literature mentions like.
Don (19:41):
I can think of one instance in one book by Jane Austen
where a character says oh, thehorses have been here, but other
than that it's like it's sosanitized that we don't even
realize, Like of course it wasquaint because they were pulling
their buses with horses, andhow nostalgic that must be.
(20:03):
But the truth of the matter isit smells like poop.
Ron (20:06):
Yeah, we did that with a lot of our history, right?
Like, uh, talking about likethe Roman empire and ancient
Rome is supposed to be likesuper cool, all these marble
statues and beautifularchitecture.
And then like some realistweirdo comes in and tries to
dispel the rumor, he's like youknow, they ate anchovies, they
would have reeked.
They didn't bathe, you know,except but once a month or
(20:27):
something.
And then it's like thanks, man,I just wanted to live in
fantasy Rome.
Don (20:33):
It gets so bad, actually, that that in 18, in the 1850s,
benjamin Disraeli gives a speechin parliament where he is
pointing out in 1850 that uhwell, here's this quote he says
the cost of maintaining ourstreets in a state of moderate
cleanliness is becoming ruinous,while the health effects of
this ever-increasingaccumulation cannot be ignored,
(20:54):
we must ask ourselves if thereis not a limit to the number of
horses a city can sustain well,okay, all right.
Ron (21:01):
So this is, this is once the he's the prime minister,
right, uh-huh, uh, once theprime minister is is calling it
out.
So it's not just like acosmetic problem.
Don (21:11):
This is they're ringing alarm bells and in 1850, so so
there should be plenty of timeto fix this problem, because
it's been.
It's been noted.
Um, they, they actually werehired.
There were private sweepers youcould hire that.
We'd hang out on the corner andif you wanted to cross the road
and not have to walk throughhorse poop, you could pay the
private sweeper to clear yourway across the road.
(21:33):
Yeah, how has that not been?
Ron (21:36):
depicted in a film or something right, that sounds
quintessentially English Payingyour valet to scrub the asphalt
in front of you paying yourballot, to scrub the asphalt in
front of you, um, and then wehave another technological
invention.
Don (21:50):
I guess that, um, that that comes to england um the fire
hose.
Now we're just pressure washingit all the fire hose existed
back when, uh, when the GreatFire took place in 1666.
Ron (22:05):
A lot of good it did, though.
Don (22:08):
Now the horse-drawn railway .
Okay, okay, all right.
So this is like a trolley car.
Yeah, so if you've been toDisneyland?
the uh, the carriage that getspulled down the center, that's,
that would be a horse drawn.
Uh, uh, railway, um, so weopened this up between, uh,
between London and Greenwich.
Um and uh, we need, uh, 12horses per mile.
(22:28):
Yikes, that's getting worseBecause the each horse can only
work for about four hours.
So even on the buses it's 12horses per mile because you can
run a horse for about four hoursand then you got to switch that
horse out for the rest of theday and they ran 16 hour days.
(22:49):
But as we bring in the railwaynow, we're running longer
distances requires more horses.
And guess what?
More horses produce More waste.
They do, yeah.
Then in 18, well, in 1831, butthen again in 1848, we have a
cholera outbreak.
Oh, and cholera, of course, isspread by Poop, Poop, okay, poop
(23:10):
when it comes into water, okay,so we've got all of this horse
waste.
Ron (23:14):
Luckily, it never rains in London, that's right.
Don (23:18):
And we have you know, 600,000 gallons of horse urine
that are washing everything intothe Thames.
So do you know how much 600,000gallons is?
Ron (23:26):
That's an Olympic-sized swimming pool every day of horse
urine just being distributedacross the streets of London.
I'll never look at the LondonOlympics the same way again.
Don (23:41):
So by then it's exceeding 50 pounds per year to remove
horse manure per horse in thecity of London.
Ron (23:49):
Wow, okay.
So is that outstripping, likehow much it costs to even like
feed them?
It must be right, like I'mtaking it like.
Don (23:56):
It's getting close.
It doesn't outstrip it until afew more years down the road.
Ron (24:01):
And so all this kind of like Benjamin Disraeli was
saying this is being, this isall money that's falling on the
local government, right, Likethey're the ones in charge.
The municipality has to takecare of this, not the actual
owners of the horses.
Don (24:14):
They're not they're not okay.
Um, so what can we do?
We?
Our streets are full of horsepoop, right, what like?
How would you?
Ron (24:23):
solve the problem.
I mean, uh, get all thoseorphan kids out of those all
over.
Yeah, I mean I don't like uh.
So my my answer earlier, youkind of, I feel like, already
swept it away.
I was like hey, this is freefertilizer, this must be, this
must be fantastic.
Like you know, this is not auseless resource, right?
(24:44):
But it sounds like we arealready using that and we're
we're outpacing, but I guess youhave to move it also, right?
Don (24:51):
So right and I take it.
Ron (24:53):
The horses are moving it to the Midlands or wherever right
they are.
Don (24:56):
And there's another limitation here, because the hay
and the alfalfa that well, thehay the horse needs for bedding
is increasing the waste, but thealfalfa that they're eating has
to be grown somewhere.
So it takes about one and athird acres of land to grow the
alfalfa for one horse, and we'vegot at least 300 000 horses
(25:17):
that are working in london,probably more than that.
Now we've moved halfway throughthe the century, um and uh,
there's not enough land in thesurrounding areas within 100
miles to feed the horses thatare right.
So the, the, the overproductionof waste in the city is not,
has nowhere to go because thefarmlands can't take it.
The farmers are buying as muchas they can, um, so a couple of
(25:39):
a couple of technologies, uh,come along.
Um, the first is invented by aguy named Joseph Whitworth, uh,
who creates the first largescale mechanical street sweeping
system.
Ron (25:52):
Sick.
Yeah, I'm gonna imagine this islike a big Zamboni, like just
going around with the spinningwheel on the top and the guy can
just go to so it's got rotatingbrushes.
Don (26:01):
It clears a seven foot swath of of street at once.
Um, it can clear 1500 yards ofstreet in one hour, so almost a
mile, not quite.
Uh, accomplishing the work of20 men in one hour, okay, so
pretty good.
Um guess how it gets pulleddown.
Ron (26:20):
Oh no, the horses was whitworth like look, I tried
experimenting with cats withdogs, but they ain't got it in
them.
You need 45 dogs or threehorses.
What, what do you want?
Don (26:33):
governor so he can clear the street.
But it's adding to thecomplication because you've got
more horses that need to clearthe streets.
Ron (26:44):
Bring in even more horses.
Okay, this is starting to.
The sheer viciousness of thiscycle is starting to kind of
rear its head.
Don (26:51):
I'm starting to get where the prime minister was all.
So then we need to inventprocessing plants, because the
the wet manure is obviouslyheavy to move, and and and more
has more volume.
So it's it's it's a moredifficult task to get it to the
farmers.
So we start processing insidethe city which can reduce the
(27:14):
one ton of of of manure down tolike a 20 pound block are we
talking like sort of like?
Ron (27:21):
we're taking it into a big machine that is like a, like a
trash compactor, and we'recrushing it.
We're pulling all the liquidout of it.
It's like a dehumidifier okaylittle manure nuggets.
Don (27:34):
But guess where all that moisture goes?
That is evaporated from themanure?
It goes into the air.
Oh, okay, so if you live nextto a manure processing, plant.
Ron (27:50):
Guess what it smells like.
Everyone's mad now, right, Well, and right.
Don (27:54):
So the city is just not a good place to be.
Ron (27:59):
Right.
So like everyone's taking theirholiday in London and they're
like, good God, elizabeth, lookat the streets.
And then so then the tourismboard's like, okay, we'll clean
the streets and but we need tomake like waste plants to to
(28:20):
take all the waste.
And now they're pumping thesulfur and everything into the
atmosphere.
Don (28:26):
And now everyone's like, good god, elizabeth, the air in
london is terrible, okay, sosame thing is happening in new
york okay, all right, new yorkis about a tenth the size of
london in the time okay uh, samething is happening in boston,
um, but uh, these the?
The trouble is that the citiescontinue to grow and as the city
(28:49):
grows, there's a greaterdependence on horses to provide
transportation for people incargo.
Ron (28:56):
Um, so it's uh is it sort of like a, like a, an often
overlooked, I feel like the.
When we're learning history andwe're talking about, like, the
industrial revolution, it seemslike a very linear like.
And then they started, you know, developing these machines and
some, you know, proto-automation, and then people moved in the
cities and everything like movedvery like sort of uh uh,
(29:20):
linearly and the way you wouldexpect, and it evolved and now
we got, now we got pcs, um, butthere must have been like
vestiges of the old world thatwere sort of like, you know,
like horses right, that are notcatching up or or evolving at
the same rate as the othersociety changing things, right
right, and it's because societyhas to to realize at some moment
(29:43):
that an evolution is possibleyeah and and up to this point,
like horses have been theprimary, I don't know, uh,
mechanism of work.
Don (29:54):
I, I guess, right Since, like anyone can remember, like
literally thousands of years.
So like, why are we going tomove away from the horse?
We just need to figure out howto make the horse work in the
this industrial environment thatwe've created.
Ron (30:07):
Right, you can get your steam donkey to, like you know,
process some textiles, but youstill need your normal donkey to
walk to.
Or, you know, pull people tothe office.
Right, right, right.
Don (30:19):
So so there are some, some ideas coming along to uh to try
to adjust for the, themaintenance of these animals.
So, um, stables we werelaughing, I think, earlier today
.
But uh, big stable, um, uh, butuh, they were big like they.
There were five story stablesin Chicago like parking garages
(30:39):
right.
With vertical elevators to movehorses and to move um, to move
hay up and down, um the um.
All right, then we have, uhlike everything we're going to
have equine influenza.
So, just like the bird flu isaffecting egg prices today, when
all of our cities are dependenton horses and all of a sudden
(31:00):
the horses get the flu.
Bad day, bad thing the wholecity stops um.
There actually were men inboston that had to pull the the
streetcars honey, they justcalled me.
Ron (31:12):
I'm a horse today, so uh so and then um.
Don (31:17):
But I gave you, the problem is the, is the waste, um, so,
uh, berlin, uh, an engineer inberlin comes up with the idea of
um, of pneumatic system toremove waste okay a vacuum.
Basically, a vacuum runs pipeunderground and uh, and it can,
can move the waste from oneplace to another does he ever
get to employ this, or is thismerely theoretical?
(31:40):
I'd love to know what the crapvacuum did in berlin um, the
proposed system would require 87miles of underground tubing, so
this is uh, if it were employedin london.
Um, and 4,000 horsepower ofsteam energy.
So it's using a steam engine at4,000 horsepower, so not
(32:02):
actually 4,000 horses, but thecalculations showed only
processed 22% of the currentwaste production, a cost
exceeding the entire city'sannual budget.
Ron (32:12):
I'd love to be at that meeting.
And they're like well uh, mayor, we could just uh build the
city of the future, but it stillwon't take all the crap away.
Don (32:23):
Just like 20 percent yeah, um, the best system.
I came out of paris, um, theyhad a rail-based system, uh,
where they had night soil menwho it's a great band name night
soil which has been a job for along time.
Most uh prior versions of nightsoil men would come and remove
(32:47):
human excrement from cesspoolsokay um, but the paris system
involved a night system.
um, where they could, they wouldcome in and scoop up piles that
had been made during the day,and they were moved out of the
city by rail rather than by cart.
But that still was only able tohandle 40% of the daily
(33:08):
accumulation.
So we have this like less thanhalf.
So everyone's on this, though,right like it, this is a
worldwide problem, or at least auh like a a western
metropolitan issue right, andall of the cities are here, like
so paris is here, berlin ishere, london is here, chicago is
here, new york is here,boston's here, like everybody
(33:29):
has the same problem okay, andall the brains best and
brightest.
You got all the brains in theroom.
Somebody should like.
This should be fit Like.
This is the time to fix it.
Ron (33:38):
Yeah, yeah Right.
Don (33:39):
It's been a problem.
I mean, it was noted in 1850and now the the meeting we're
talking about taking place in1894.
Ron (33:46):
Okay.
Don (33:46):
Yeah, so it's been half a century and and, and you can
imagine, in 1850, they noticedthere was a problem like how big
the problem must be in 1894.
We have, interestingly, since1850, solved the problem of
human waste in the cities.
Ron (34:05):
Okay, what's the solution?
Are there treatment plantsalready?
We just have sewers, sewers.
Don (34:12):
Yeah, so there were sewers in the early 1800s, but they all
just dumped into the ThamesRight.
And then there was a heat wavein 1858 and the Thames didn't
flow as much as a heat wave anda drought.
So the Thames didn't flow andeverything was fermenting on the
surface.
The accumulated human waste onthe banks was six feet deep.
(34:35):
They had to cancel parliamentbecause parliament couldn't
stand the smell.
Queen Victoria had to cancelher river cruise.
No, yeah, not the Victoriariver cruise.
So so they hired an engineernamed Basilgate who invented the
, the sewer system.
That was all enclosed andrather than just dumping open
sewer into the, the thames uh istaken away to treatment plants,
(34:59):
and it's actually still in usetoday same one.
Ron (35:03):
Yeah, the ancient treatment plants of the thames river it's
only 150 years.
Uh, that's, that's old enoughto get a youtuber to go down
there and film some weird videos, you know.
Don (35:14):
So I think that a lot of the the infrastructure of it has
been replaced, but it runsalong the same route.
So, yeah, so so we've solved.
Ron (35:22):
The human race realizes a problem but this is because you
can tell people where to puttheir waste right and and it is
tougher to tell a horse yeah,yeah that is true, they're very
inconsiderate indeed, so, um, sowhat do we do, right?
Don (35:34):
so we can't, if we can't, uh, figure out a way to
mechanically remove the, thehorse manure from the cities
that is being accumulated by thebounty of horses that we need
to do our work, how can we?
How can we cut it back?
How can we trim it down alittle?
Ron (35:50):
bit.
I just figured it out.
Oh, I can't believe no onethought about this.
Why can't they make like somesort of big horse diaper?
Obviously it's not a diaper,somebody still has to empty it.
Don (36:00):
It doesn't take away the waste.
Ron (36:02):
Then we throw it in the new sewer.
If we're already throwingeveryone's waste down the Thames
.
We have this big net behindevery horse.
At the end of the day, throw itin the Thames.
Don (36:16):
I think they actually do do that in new york city today.
I think the uh the, the cardsthey have in the uh in central
park that you can.
I think they have little likebaskets under the yeah, yeah
like catch your basket man Ishould have been a 19 1894
change the trajectory of ourentire can we stop the bus here
and leave me here?
For a second.
Ron (36:36):
I feel like my life will take a more productive route.
Don (36:42):
So Chicago comes up with the idea.
Okay, the Chicago delegationproposes strict horse licensing
system with population caps andmandatory waste collection
requirements.
Ron (36:54):
Yes, this would work.
I'm all for this would work,right?
So you're you're saying thepeople who own the horses and
the companies that are runningthese public transportation uh,
you know routes and things.
They're responsible.
We're putting a limit on howmany horses they can have, so
we're just trying to minimizethe problem.
Don (37:11):
So we're like, okay, no, we're stopping growth, right no
more horses and and you areyou're artificially making it
more expensive to own a horse byputting a licensing fee on it
right, so you you wouldn't havetoo many horses, encouraging
them to you would need to bemore careful with how many
horses you are using right anddivest of unnecessary horses
that's right okay, um, but thatdoesn't sound like it'll work.
(37:33):
Hmm, so uh, from the theproceedings of the conference.
Uh, this the answer was themathematics of commerce render
population caps impossible.
Each horse removed creates aneconomic opportunity that
demands two more horses be added.
So we can't regulate our wayout of this crisis.
Right, cause they're tooessential.
Right To what every like right.
(37:54):
If you just take the horse away, the work that that horse was
doing remains but, there'snobody there to do it.
Ron (38:03):
Yeah, you can't just employ more Boston guys to do what the
horse did, right.
Don (38:07):
So we can't regulate it through.
Ron (38:10):
And Boston guys also.
Just shit on the street, soit's not going gonna help either
.
Don (38:18):
Um, vienna also has a regulation to propose.
Vienna says uh, they are justgoing to create stable zoning
laws okay and stable, meaninglike a place to hold a horse,
not like, oh sure, notchangeable they kind of do that
in london today.
Ron (38:34):
Right, they've got.
The last time I went to londonthe taxi guy was uh really was
really angry and justcomplaining to us about the uh,
the the zoning laws that theyhave in different parts of
london and what kind of cars youcan drive there.
Otherwise you have to pay a taxright right.
Don (38:47):
If you go through the, the centered parts of the city, you
have to pay additional fees,unless you're in a ev or hybrid
vehicle, right it's.
Ron (38:55):
I don't know that that's I'm pretty sure I could drive to
london.
Don (38:58):
I have an ev now yeah, yeah , yeah.
Ron (38:59):
Exactly that's why he was complaining, because he's like
they're trying to get us to buythese cars.
Don (39:03):
Well, so, uh, vienna's idea , uh, uh is, uh is also not
doesn't work out.
So the viennese, the viennesecity planning board, uh says
that our attempt to regulatestable locations has resulted in
horses traveling further toreach their work sites, thus
requiring more horses tocompensate for the increased
(39:24):
transit time each regulationseems to worsen the very problem
it tends to solve is this whatthe island of dr moreau is about
?
Ron (39:31):
are they trying to like create a better horse?
I can see someone being like ifonly we could make a better
horse, like a leaner, quickersmarter being.
Don (39:41):
I think this is an interesting uh, both of these
are historically interestingcomponents for me, though,
because, uh, it's like the ideathat we can regulate a solution
to a huge societal yes, yeah,yeah right and and we always
turn to our, our, ourpoliticians and our and as
regulators, to like we'll, youknow, change the, change the law
(40:03):
so that this doesn't happen ifwe tweak the parameters of
what's acceptable, then behaviorwill change or new solutions
will have to be discovered right, but in this particular case,
the the horses are pooping,regardless of licensing fees or
zoning laws, how many stablesthere are.
It doesn't.
There's no way to stop, thoughyou can't bet the cork in the
(40:24):
horse right um there was, theytried it there were.
There were discussions aboutchanging what horses were fed,
right to see if it would reducethe volume of waste.
Um, but I don't think they everlet's give them eels.
What does that do?
So here's the final assessmentfrom the committee.
(40:44):
This says we have examined 53distinct proposals, from
mechanical street cleaners tounderground waste networks.
The hard truth is, none ofthese solutions, even in
combination, can match the paceof waste accumulation in our
growing cities.
Ron (40:58):
Dang.
So they?
They said it's time to throw inthe towel.
We're giving up on Westerncivilization.
Don (41:05):
That's right, and so that's why.
That's why civilization, theChinese, can have it.
So a Colonel, john Howell, aBritish railway engineer,
delivered an, an address, anunscheduled address, and he said
gentlemen, we have spent twoweeks attempting to solve the
wrong problem.
Our crisis is not one of wastemanagement, but of dependence on
(41:29):
animal power at a scale thathas become unsustainable.
We must look.
Look beyond the horse To thestars.
Ron (41:37):
I'm proposing we colonize Phobos.
Don (41:42):
And that's why the British were the first on the moon.
Yeah, exactly In 1895.
Ron (41:47):
We've got a great alternate history sci-fi novel series
here Don.
Don (41:53):
No, but he's right right.
Ron (41:55):
And this is starting to sound, quite frankly, chillingly
relevant.
Don (42:01):
What?
What do you mean?
We don't use horses like thisanymore.
We don't have 62 foot cubes ofhorse manure being produced in
our city every day.
Ron (42:10):
Thank God we made the horse extinct to solve the problem
and then invented the automobile, um which I'm assuming was the
solution to this right, but theone that no one could foretell
right, right.
Don (42:22):
So so the solution is already in play because, um,
carl benz uh has patented his,uh, his automobile, his vehicle
powered by a gas engine, in 1886.
But it's not right in any kindof wide use no one's got one in
their, in their shed, in theirstable and and the ones that are
(42:45):
being produced are superexpensive, so it's not something
that could feasiblyeconomically replace the horses.
Ron (42:52):
Yeah, was there anyone at this conference being like,
let's just wait 25 years and seeif we're all still here.
Um, but uh like they must havebeen at least aware, right?
But again like, uh, easy for usto say just wait for the car,
idiots um, because we know it'scoming.
Yeah, we know it's coming, butthey don't right and and uh,
they don't even know if it wouldbe adopted right or adaptable
(43:15):
to like public use, right?
Maybe it is just a thing that,like the queen, instead of going
on the river Thames, she takesa car holiday.
Don (43:23):
Um so Benjamin Woods, in his closing address, says uh, we
depart without solutions.
Yet Perhaps this very failureis necessary.
Only by accepting theimpossibility of our current
path can we open our minds toradical alternatives that we
cannot yet imagine.
Dang, and then they crossed thestreet through the horse yeah,
(43:49):
back to their hotels.
Ron (43:50):
Yeah, hit the pub together.
What do you got?
What do you guys think ofafrica?
Anyone interested in that place?
Um, okay, so so they reallythey have to throw in the towel,
they give up and and they justbusiness as usual.
Right, everyone goes back.
Don (44:09):
The horse remains a staple of life in london until and all
the other cities new york comesback and they implement an
emergency night soil only policyum, which restricts horse
traffic during daylight hours inmanhattan okay but everybody
realizes that doesn't solve anyof the problems.
(44:31):
It just makes the nighttime theproblem, because now you've got
twice as many horses atnighttime on the same streets.
London introduces stableventilation systems, even though
that doesn't do anything forthe problem and do anything for
the problem.
So then there is a problem inI'm checking today, 1895.
(44:57):
We have a winter temperatureinversion, that happens, and so
there's Also very common today Acloud of aerial manure dust
that hangs over the city fornine days.
I'm never going back to londonand hospital wards overflow with
respiratory cases um, jesus,because of this, and so it was a
(45:21):
.
It was a moment when peoplerealized this wasn't just a
waste manager, this is a healthcrisis.
Right, right, right, this is apublic health crisis.
That has it transforms thedebate from just being about
waste management to being abouthow this is a direct threat to
our human health.
So the Manhattan street railwaycompany declares bankruptcy,
(45:44):
okay, despite increasingridership.
So it's not because they're,not because they don't have
customers, but it's becausethey're spending so much money
removing the horse poop Right,and they can't make money.
The London's Metropolitan Boardof Works also projects
bankruptcy within three years ifthe waste management costs
continue to rise.
And so by 1898, everybody'sdoom and gloom that this is,
(46:10):
this is a it's, it's reached apoint where these.
The sustainability ofhorse-based transport is
financially unsustainable, right, right, yeah, um.
So what can we do?
What's going going to happen?
Ron (46:26):
Oh well, world War I first.
Don (46:31):
No, not World War I first.
Ron (46:34):
Spanish-American War.
Berlin does it.
What's Berlin doing?
Don (46:40):
Berlin begins a large-scale trial of electric trams.
Ron (46:43):
Oh, okay, okay.
Don (46:46):
And so people look at the electric tram.
It does require a significantinfrastructure investment.
Oh, okay, okay, because, yes,it's an expensive investment in
(47:07):
infrastructure to start, butonce it's in place, you've
eliminated the crippling problemthat is threatening to bring
London and all the other citiesto a poop-entrenched standstill,
and I presume this is onlyfeasible because of advancement
in technology, right, right, notonly do they, you know, can
(47:29):
they now harness electricity,but they can harness it at the
capacity that they could powerthese railways and they're using
it to turn motors to make tramsgo forward.
Paris tries something withcompressed air buses.
I don't know how that wouldwork.
Seems like that would like youcould go, ooh.
Ron (47:44):
Like the car we made in Boy Scouts, like the pine car derby
Boy Scouts.
I can't.
Don (47:49):
The pine car derby.
Then you got to get out.
Okay, everybody Pump, pump onthe, and then in London we start
using motor wagons.
Ron (48:03):
Okay.
Don (48:04):
And then, of course, in 1908, another famous American
figures out a way to producethose automobiles invented by
Carl Benz in a more efficientand cost effective way, and
that's Mr Ford.
Mr Ford with the Model T.
So just waiting about 10 years.
The horse problem seems toresolve because now there's a
(48:24):
widespread adoption of motorvehicles to take that place, and
that's why the world is so muchcleaner today.
Ron (48:32):
Yeah, thanks, horses.
Thanks for stepping to the sideand letting the incredibly
clean automobile take your place.
But this is what I was sayingearlier.
Right, I can see, maybe, whythis grabbed your imagination.
Who doesn't like talking abouthorse cooters?
No, it's bawdy and, uh, it iskind of astonishing to me that
(48:55):
I've never heard about thisuntil now.
This seems to me like a like animportant uh story in the sort
of narrative of the advancementof human civilization right like
it's not so clean and there areconstantly issues that arise
and sometimes, uh, you know,seemingly civilization
(49:16):
threatening issues and healthcrises, right.
Um, and obviously that, like I'mseeing a clear parallel here
between the current climatecrisis, right, it seems like
we're kind of back in a in a,our, our, our city is full of
horse, uh poop, uh world.
How do you see that?
Instead of the horse poop, whatif the horses were farting?
(49:36):
And what if?
What?
if the horses were steel beasts.
And what if everyone had one ormore of these in their uh
stable attached to their house?
Right, um, obviously, the thepollution created by fossil
fuels, um is creating, uh, bothhealth crises and, uh, you know,
(49:56):
weather crises and you knowecosystem crises.
Uh, the world over, right, um,and we it sounds like similar to
1894, right, this bigconference.
We've had several of these.
Right, we have climateconferences between nations to
try and address this problem andit would seem, thus far we have
(50:19):
unsuccessfully addressed itlike to talk about.
Don (50:29):
Why, like what?
What do you think?
Why that is so.
In 1894, at the, the conferencethat we've been talking about,
there was a representatives of43 cities from across the world
talking about the, the manurecrisis.
Um, in 2015, the paris climateconference, we had 196 nations
there, so three times as manyyeah, uh in 1894, the new New
York City air quality crisis, wehad 1,200 deaths from bad air,
(50:53):
yeah, right.
2015, global air pollutiondeaths was 4.2 million, right,
right.
So the problem is way biggerthan the problem was 120 years
ago.
Yeah, yeah.
But why are we choosing to notsolve the problem when we have
the technologies to do it, right?
Ron (51:10):
Yeah, well, it sounds like a similar on the face value.
This is not my endinghypothesis, but on face value it
would seem like there's asimilar reliability.
Or we're stuck on ourreliability on fossil fuels as
(51:31):
energy right, like that.
We cannot find cheaper sourcesof energy.
And, yeah, we've got windturbines, we've got solar uh
cells and batteries right toprovide those clean energy
sources.
But thus far we have not seenthe necessary or requisite
investment in those uhtechnologies.
To uh, like you, you know,power, berlin, right, we, we
(51:54):
like the, the horse has stillgot to be there.
The automobile is still goingto be there and, uh, you know,
not even just the automobile but, like you know, fossil fuels
are utilized in the powergenerators.
Uh, the power, almost all ofour cities et cetera, our cities
, etc.
Right, um, so it seems like wehaven't yet taken that step to
make that infrastructure switchor investment that you said
(52:14):
berlin took back in.
What, 1895, or when was it?
Don (52:18):
1894?
Yeah, and it's.
It's that infrastructure piecethat is is the stumbling block,
I think, because if we go backto to 1850, when benjamin
disraeli first noticed the poopproblem, um it there was a
(52:40):
resistance to wanting to change,because no one could fathom
right that there would be aworld where the, where the horse
was not the primary mover ofgoods and people.
And I think what you're saying.
We are also living in a worldwhere we cannot imagine a future
that doesn't depend on fossilfuel.
But I wonder how much of thatresistance is manufactured by
(53:06):
corporate interests inmaintaining a level of
profitability in a system thatis is polluting the world where,
if we would switch those toinvesting in cleaner energies,
right that at some point itwould be cheaper.
Just just how running a car ischeaper than paying for a horse,
cause you don't have to feed acar as much, no, and the
(53:29):
maintenance is cheaper.
But when that switch washappening in the early 20th
century, there was resistance to.
You know, there were jobs inhay storage, there were jobs in
manure processing, there wasjobs in fertilizing sales.
Ron (53:45):
There was jobs in farming, the guy driving the.
Don (53:47):
Zamboni.
So there's lots of employmentthat is behind that, but it
doesn't mean like it wouldn'tmake sense for us today to say,
well, a solution to the climatecrisis would be to go back to
horses, right right, rightexactly.
You always have to take thatstep forward, and that step
forward is an economicopportunity.
Ron (54:07):
As long as you can let go of that opportunity you're you
currently have and you've landedon on my hypothesis I was
alluding to earlier too, whichis I think it's it's
predominantly a corporate oneright, which is, um, right now,
if you are exxon mobil, ifyou're shell, if you're bp right
, your money comes from taking afree resource from the ground
(54:30):
and turning it into gold,essentially right.
And whereas a lot of thesecompanies do make investments in
other forms of energy, right,wind turbines and you know, et
cetera.
But it's very minimal.
And you know, because they saylook until we receive returns on
those investments similar tothe kinds of profits ExxonMobil
(54:54):
expects to make based on, youknow, all the oil that we've
been extracting.
We're not going to make thattransition, right.
And that's just because thosecompanies are not, you know,
like the big stables of yore,right, they're not very
interested in having tocompletely switch their entire
(55:14):
business model when the currentone seems to be working just
fine.
Don (55:20):
Depends how you measure it.
It's working just fine in theirprofitability, like you say.
But you know, if you look backat the transition from horse to
motor vehicle, it looks likeabout 70% of London stable
owners and horse industrytransitioned to motor vehicle
(55:42):
services by 1910.
Ron (55:44):
So it didn't take that long , right?
No, yeah.
Don (55:47):
And they found success in the new technology.
So it wasn't something thatlike yes, it was a change in a
transition, but it wasn'tsomething that was, it didn't
obliterate.
Ron (55:57):
Right, right.
It wasn't entirelydestabilizing, or?
Don (56:00):
anything like that.
Ron (56:01):
Yeah, and you were saying earlier, like that the people of
1894 had a hard time likeenvisioning this world right,
like how, how they could beunshackled from the you know the
manacles of the horse, and I'mnot sure that is the problem.
Today, though, right Like I dothink it's a lot of people can
(56:21):
imagine a world right that isless reliant on fossil fuels.
We've done this before in likemore recent memory, to like
leaded gasoline was like a hugepublic health crisis issue that,
uh, you know doesn't.
It doesn't exist anymore, rightUm, but through regulation, but
it didn't take away gasoline.
Exactly Right it didn't requirethe sort of right, uh, massive
(56:44):
transformation from these sortsof, you know, powerful companies
that this uh problem awfully uhobviously will require Right Um
.
But, like you said, we've gotthe technologies right Um.
I think there's a lot of publicwill, or we just sort of seem
to lack, uh, you know, theability to budge these uh, these
(57:06):
large groups right the abilityto budge these, uh, these large
groups.
Don (57:10):
Right, that, and?
And it's a, it's a, it's aglobal issue, Right, and?
And if you owned a horse and wecould pile up the manure that
your horse produced outside yourhouse, like you would say oh,
that's gross.
And I don't want that in frontof my house.
Ron (57:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don (57:23):
Right, but when you're driving, we're driving your car
down the street and, like thepollution, doesn't follow you
like it it, you know and it'sinvisible right and it disperses
, and it spreads, and, and sothere's no.
It's not easy to quantify howmuch effect me as an individual
is having on the environmentwhere, if I could watch my horse
poop, I would be, and, and it'salso, like, you gave us some
(57:47):
figures about the uh number ofpeople who die from air
pollution, right, was it?
Ron (57:52):
last year and recently, 2015, 2.2 million, yeah, um,
those are also deaths wherepeople don't just oh my gosh, my
lungs, ah.
Right, like those aremultitudinous diseases and it's
hard to link those to rightactual quality of air, right,
even though those are probablythe most likely sources of those
diseases, right?
(58:12):
So, like, it is just a, it's aharder thing for a normal person
to sort of see and feel right,especially when you're saying
like, hey, your car the thingthat you rely on to get to work,
because this is how we'vedesigned our society so that
everyone is super far apart, atleast in america, right, and the
public transportation isn'treally there.
(58:33):
Um, the way it could be.
Uh, it's hard to say.
Like, these are parts of theproblem, right, right, the
electricity, that everythingruns on right it's not even like
I don't really like putting theonus on people who own cars to
be like, hey, switch to an ev,that's going to fix the problem,
like it's not, because your evis still drawing electricity
from a power plant that isutilizing fossil fuels.
Right, um, it requires not justlike, personal change, it
(58:57):
requires societal change.
Don (58:59):
And I wish that I, our society, would support that
change faster.
I hope that it doesn't get tothe point that the 1894
conference arrived at, which isbasically we can't solve this
problem.
And you know, from ourperspective, like you pointed
out, like we can say well, itwasn't that bad, because, you
know, a few years later a newtechnology came along and solved
(59:21):
that problem for them, orchanged the problem to an
invisible one, to an invisibleone, and uh, but, uh.
But if we get to to anotherpoint where we, we can't solve
the problem anymore, like that'skind of scary, for me.
Ron (59:34):
I do think there are a lot.
This is, this is an issue Iused to kind of uh volunteer my
time and my activist energy for,uh for a long time, um, and I
do a little less now than I usedto, but it's something I feel
fairly informed about.
But I do think there are a lotof people who believe, oh, we
just need to wait for the nextcar to be invented.
(59:54):
Right, there will be atechnological solution.
We'll have, you know, nuclearcold fusion, exactly right, and
these technologies will save us.
But the only problem is likethose are really big ifs right
To hedge our bets on right Likethe, the, the horse, people were
lucky that Mr Ford showed up toto help them out.
(01:00:17):
So, so well, um, uh, and thispresence uh problem maybe seems
a little bit larger and more allencompassing than than the.
The status of the really rottenstreets in London.
Don (01:00:35):
Well, thank you Ron.
Ron (01:00:36):
Appreciate talking poop with you today, yeah, I really
wasn't expecting that comingover here, don, and now that I
know that's on the table, I'mgoing to be a little bit more
reticent to show up for theseconversations, but I can't say
that it wasn't entertaining andit wasn't a fun time.
Don (01:00:49):
Watch your step on the way home.
Ron (01:00:51):
Thank you.
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