The Day's Dumpster Fire

Ed and Kara
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In this podcast, Kara and Ed regale history's greatest mess ups. They do not celebrate humanity's successes but its most fantastic failures! This show is not dedicated to those who have accomplished incredible things, but to those who have accomplished incredible things and how they royally screwed things up in the process.  You might ask why they are doing this podcast: it's because you've botched up the best laid plans and you know what? THAT'S OKAY! Let this show help you navigate the mishaps that you have come across where there is no clear answer available.  So sit back, relax, and listen about people who messed up way more than what you could of possibly imagine.

  1. APR 29

    The Bat Bomb of WWII Fire Part 2. - Episode 73

    Send us Fan Mail We here at the Day's Dumpster Fire  felt that The Bat Bomb of WWII Fire Part 1 episode was so iconic and a breath of fresh air given the stresses of modern day living, Ed and Kara hammered through the recording and editing of Part 2 early so that you wouldn't have to wait tow weeks for the conclusion. Even though it would be worth the wait, Part 2 of The Bat Bomb of WWII should be released sooner than later! In this episode, Ed and Kara discuss the establishing, engineering, testing, and subsequent conclusions of Dr. Lytle Adams' brain child, the bat bomb or better known in the top secret circles: Project X-Ray.  If the Manhattan Project consisted of elite top tier scientists and engineers headed up by one of the greatest minds of 20th century, Project X-ray was the exact opposite. Comprised of a team of only two scientists, a hotel manager, a body builder, a pilot turned movie star, two random brothers with nothing else to do in the 1940s, a lobster fisherman, and two high school students, the idea of a bat bomb burning down cities in Japan would have been better reflected in a television comedy series.  Ed will show how Project X-Ray was put together, how the bats were selected, how little napalm bombs were attached to them, how they were stuffed into a glorified toilet paper tube after being flash frozen and then dropped out of a B-25 bomber outside Los Angeles and the conclusion that were derived from such a test.  Furthermore, Ed will look at how those conclusions were put together to make a second bomb but with actual destructive capabilities! World War II was a scary, intense, and involved time in American history, but it was also a time where any idea could be entertained. Some ideas were hugely successful and changed the trajectory of human history, and others... well... simply went up in smoke. Not to spoil anything, but we'll let you decided where Dr. Adams' bat bomb sat in terms of historical influence.  Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    1h 49m

  2. APR 27

    The Bat Bomb of WWII Fire Part 1. - Episode 72

    Send us Fan Mail In today's episode, Ed decided to go down a different kind of dumpster fire. Instead of a large volume of people being killed or injured or thousands of people losing their retirements due to sketchy accounting practices. The Bat Bomb of WWII is a testament to the creativity of the human mind in times of extreme need and how not all ideas are going to be good.  While vacationing in Carlsbad, New Mexico to watch bats, dentist / eccentric inventor, Dr. Lytle S. Adams, heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that sent America into World War II. The first half of 1942 didn't go well for America when fighting the Japanese Empire for a multitude of reasons, but Dr. Adams thought of using bats to wreak havoc on the Japanese Empire's homeland of...  well... Japan...  In this episode, you're going to be regaled with founding, setup, testing, and conclusions from one of the most "bat brained" ideas of WWII. Dr. Adams selected an elite crew of scientists and contributors to put together a bomb that when dropped, would dispense over 1,000 bats all carrying a little incendiary capsule of napalm. The idea was that the bats would disperse over Japan, find dark attics and other nooks and crannies so that the napalm charge would go off and set fire to the building.  The plan was so well thought out and so perfect, that if implemented correctly, it could rival that of another type of weapon being researched in Los Alamos at the same exact time as the Bat Bomb just out side Los Angeles... the nuclear bomb! This is all assuming that Adams and his team could make this Bat Bomb idea actually work and not burn the entire program to the ground in the process.  Oh wait! This is going to be two parter episode, but you won't have to wait two weeks for Ed to get the episode out containing the thrilling conclusion. If all goes according to plan, part 2 will be out a few days after this episode airs... What could possibly go wrong? Some other episodes that you might find interesting based on the time period and / or mentioned in the Bat Bomb episode: Oppie's Demo Core Fire The Dust Bowl Prohibition (Episodes 59-62) The Great Depression (Episodes 65-68) Be sure to check out the Day's Dumpster Fire website for detailed show notes, images, Kara's drawings, as well as an ever growing library of humanity's most fantastic failures! Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    1h 14m

  3. APR 13

    Enron's Financial Fiasco Fire - Episode 71

    Send us Fan Mail In today's episode, Ed takes us down memory lane to one of the biggest business fraud cases of the 20th century.  Enron was a company that was the product of two major gas businesses that merged together with a vision to change how the world viewed work culture and how to make money with wild result.  For much of much of the 90s, Enron was the future of corporate mentality and high morale among employees with tons of opportunity and even more prospects of striking it rich in the world of negotiating deals between natural gas sellers and buyers. As the years went by, Enron continuously dropped earnings reports that showed nothing but success, year over year growth, and a cash flow that would never end. As a result, Enron got rich, its executives got rich, investors got even richer, banks were happy to lend Enron money, and its employees were excited in what they sold.  There was one catch though...  ...No one knew exactly how Enron was making any money! And that was done by design.  As you'll see in this episode, Enron's CEO Ken Lay, and his two conspirators Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow, quickly turned an honest company of limited (but honest and stable) growth to a company on a meteoric trajectory unlike anything else in American history. However, it was done by bending the rules, flagrant fraud, hiding figures, and implicating CPA firms in piles of shredded documents.  All of us have made some financial blunders in our time, but few in humanity have successfully railroaded a billion dollar publicly traded company into the ground quick like Lay, Skilling, and Fastow did. In a few short months in 2001, These three men went from millionaires to Federally convicted felons. We may be stressing over a missed credit car payment, but at least we didn't cost the life savings, retirements, and careers of over 100,000 men and women who were oblivious to all the craziness that was taking place on the 50th floor of Enron's corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas.  For pictures and show notes, check out The Day's Dumpster Fire website Some other episodes Kara and Ed have put together that follows a similar "corporate greed and fraud" theme where business leaders prioritized money over literally EVERYTHING ELSE: Therac-25  Boston Molasses Flood I Love the Smell of Lead Thalidomide Outro Music Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdNYSTbPuL0&list=PLfP6i5T0-DkKlAN_qDvZ3nJwsdKRmrxI_&index= Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    2h 18m

  4. MAR 30

    The Flixborough Chemical Fire - Episode 70

    Send us Fan Mail Ed is back for another "recent" historical dumpster fire in which a chemical that manufactures a chemical necessary for nylon production explodes in the largest non-WWII explosion in British history. They Nypro Flixborough chemical facility was built in the late 60's to be a sleek, state of the art facility that turned an extremely flammable substance called cyclohexane and turn it into caprolactam. Caprolactam is one of the key ingredients to making nylon which is a ubiquitous substance found everywhere in the modern era. Without nylon, everything from clothing to car parts to kitchen utensils and even surgical implants would be impossible.  On paper and in the minds of the workers and their families, the Flixborough facility was the wave of the future and offered a means of a modern livelihood... until one of the massive reaction tanks that turns 20 tons of cyclohexane into caprolactam develops a crack and could potentially result in an explosion that could destroy the entire complex.  In this case, the dumpster fire isn't the crack, or what managers refused to do that often results in dumpster fires, but it's what the managers DID do that caused so many problems... or one big one! Take a listen and hop on over to the Day's Dumpster Fire website for show notes, sources, and pictures of what happened to this facility and how it affected an entire community in the English countryside.  Some other episodes that were mentioned in this episode that you might find interesting are: Nuclear Power Plants Victorian Bread Making The Boston Molasses Flood Byford Dolphin Incident The Deepwater Horizon Incident All of the above episodes have something common with the Flixborough Chemical Fire. Send Ed and Kara an email at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com when you notice the connection or what they all have in common? In other words, what often gets in the way of safety, sound practices, engineered solutions, and quotas in manufacturing that turns into a dumpster fire or contents for this podcast? Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    2h 3m

  5. MAR 16

    The Bangladesh Bank Heist Fire - Episode 69

    Send us Fan Mail In today’s episode, Ed is back with a dumpster that can be traced back to the last decade instead of the last century. Kara’s monumental time travel into the Great Depression that changed America forever left off with the nation as the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. While that’s pretty comforting to thin, about as an American, for those outside America, that wealth is a bull’s eye for those with the skills to “hack” into it.  Therefore, Ed is going to talk about the greatest bank heist in world history: the Bangladesh Bank Heist of 2016. This is where some very creative and skillful hackers put together a plan to rob the Bangladesh Bank and subsequent United States Federal Reserve of nearly $1billion! The heist itself only took a night to implement, but the plan dated back to the end of October 2014 and for over a year, these hackers hatched a plan so creative, detailed, and ambitious, any notion of failure was out the window. Even if failure did rear its ugly head, which happens often in this show, the hackers would still walk away with tens of millions of dollars.  In this episode, Ed will explain: Part 1. What electronic banking is, how it’s different from banking in the 1800s, the pros and cons of electronic banking and how it changed the landscape of bank robbing.  Part 2. What happened on that fateful February 6th, 2016, day when office workers of the Bangladesh Bank arrived to work, only find that computers and one special printer weren’t working.  Part 3. The origins, identification, and the plan to steal nearly $1 billion in a single night. The elaborateness of this plan will blow you away! Part 4. The execution of the plan on February 5, 2016, and how things went right from the beginning and how a misspelled word nearly brought the entire operation down.  Part 5. The outcome, who the hackers were, the nation state actors in play, and how does this affect your life.  Be sure to check The Day’s Dumpster Fire website of the complete catalog, detailed show notes, and Kara’s artwork.  Some other episodes you will like: Episodes 41 & 42 – America’s Involvement in the Vietnam War Episode 9 - Therac-25 Fire: a great episode that is computer themed much like this episode, but with the twist of what can happen when the computer can't keep up with the human user and people are getting zapped.  Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    2h 2m

  6. MAR 2

    The Great Depression Fire Part 4. - Episode 68

    Send us Fan Mail The time has come! We thought we'd never get there, but Kara's PhD scholarly review of the Great Depression comes to its climactic end in this episode. This is quite possibly Kara's most ambitious episode yet and this doesn't even include all the extra stuff you can find on at thedaysdumpsterfire.com! In Part 1. Kara dove into the causes of the Great Depression and dispelled some myths such as the "Crash of 29" was solely responsible for the entire economic collapse of the country.  In Part 2. Kara looked into what Herbert Hoover tried to do to correct things in American and how it ultimately was too little, too late. This led to Franklin Delano Roosevelt winning the 1932 election by a landslide.  In Part 3. Kara discusses Roosevelt's strategy in which the federal government would invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy to get people working again and banks up and running. In this episode, you'll be introduced to the "alphabet soup" in which a multitude of three-lettered government agencies sprung up across the country intending to right the ship and get America back on track economically. While the government funneling money into the economy may have been met with a sigh of relief to some. Many other workers were growing frustrated by low wages, long hours, and dangerous work, fueled by corporate greed and apathy. As a result, strikes formed coast to coast, and even though unemployment was rampant, so were the number of angry workers who were fed up being taken advantage of.  Lastly, in Part 4. Kara analyzes Roosevelt's second New Deal program that focused heavily on recovering the arts such as movie making and writing. This new New Deal brought in a number of lawsuits from dissenters (such as Roosevelt's own Vice President!!!) and eventually the supreme court had to get involved. Roosevelt didn't just stop there, he used the unemployed to build hospitals, schools, bridges, dams, hundreds of miles of roads, and airfields. However, this came at a cost as the fledgling "communist scare" tried its best to undermine Roosevelt's plan of recovery. Lastly, Kara sheds light on how the Great Depressions wasn't just an America only ordeal. The rest of the world was struggling in various degrees and this laid the canvas for which World War II would be painted on.  Some other episodes mentioned that you will find interesting: Episode 13. Hindenburg  Episodes 59-62. Prohibition Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    2h 6m

  7. FEB 16

    The Great Depression Fire Part 3. - Episode 67

    Send us Fan Mail Welcome back for Kara's part 3 of her exploration into one of America's most influential dumpster fires in history, the Great Depression.  In Part 1. Kara dove into the causes of the Great Depression and dispelled some myths such as the "Crash of 29" was solely responsible for the entire economic collapse of the country.  In Part 2. Kara looked into what Herbert Hoover tried to do to correct things in American and how it ultimately was too little, too late. This led to Franklin Delano Roosevelt winning the 1932 election by a landslide.  In Part 3. Kara discusses Roosevelt's strategy in which the federal government would invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy to get people working again and banks up and running. In this episode, you'll be introduced to the "alphabet soup" in which a multitude of three-lettered government agencies sprung up across the country intending to right the ship and get America back on track economically. While the government funneling money into the economy may have been met with a sigh of relief to some. Many other workers were growing frustrated by low wages, long hours, and dangerous work, fueled by corporate greed and apathy. As a result, strikes formed coast to coast, and even though unemployment was rampant, so were the number of angry workers who were fed up being taken advantage of.  Some other episodes of The Day's Dumpster Fire you might find interesting: The Dust Bowl - Episode 48 Prohibition - Episodes 59-62 So sit back and take a listen into a time period on American history when a generation of men and women who would grow up to change the world were trying to figure out how to make ends meet! Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    1h 38m

  8. JAN 31

    The Great Depression Fire Part 2. - Episode 66

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Kara continues her investigation of the Great Depression. In the Great Depression Part 1, Kara dug into the various factors that caused the Great Depression such as: Over using or extending creditThe Dust Bowl of the Midwest (check out The Dustbowl Fire - Episode 48 for more.The stock market crashing in 1929And so much more!In this episode, a newly elected Herbert Hoover inherits a thriving economy in 1928 and what was looking like four more years of a thriving nation. However, by 1930, everything had imploded. Hoover had to pull the nation out of this economic and political quagmire. In this episode Kara is going to talk about: Hoover's philosophies on what Americans need to do to fix thingsWhat happens when politically things don't go according planWhat happens when thousands of WWI vets don't get paid and Hoover uses the military ON those vetsHow Hoover treated WWI vets and influence on his reelection campaign of 1932 Lastly, who takes Hoover's place and whyKara is brining her A-game in this episode and there's a lot to it. So sit back, relax, and be grateful that you're not Herbert Hoover! Be sure to check out thedaysdumpsterfire.com for a massive catalog of history's dumpster fires where we don't celebrate humanity's successes, but its most fantastic failures! Hey before you go!  If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you! You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.  Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.  Check us out on the ol Instagrams! https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

    1h 25m
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About

In this podcast, Kara and Ed regale history's greatest mess ups. They do not celebrate humanity's successes but its most fantastic failures! This show is not dedicated to those who have accomplished incredible things, but to those who have accomplished incredible things and how they royally screwed things up in the process.  You might ask why they are doing this podcast: it's because you've botched up the best laid plans and you know what? THAT'S OKAY! Let this show help you navigate the mishaps that you have come across where there is no clear answer available.  So sit back, relax, and listen about people who messed up way more than what you could of possibly imagine.

Information

  • Creator
    Ed and Kara
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    76
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Day's Dumpster Fire
  • Show Website
    The Day's Dumpster Fire