Selects: The Manhattan Grid

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know – "Selects: The Manhattan Grid"

Host: Josh Clark & Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant
Podcast: Stuff You Should Know (iHeartPodcasts)
Episode Date: August 15, 2026
Topic: The history, design, and impact of the Manhattan street grid (Commissioner's Plan of 1811)

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Overview:

This episode explores the origins and legacy of the Manhattan grid, one of the most famous urban layouts in the world. Hosts Josh and Chuck break down how New York City north of Houston Street came to be so rectilinear, the people behind the plan, what drove its creation, and what critics and defenders have said through the years.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction and Context

• Obsession With NYC Infrastructure:
  Chuck shares his particular fascination with New York’s “inner workings” (garbage collection, mail delivery, and, in this case, urban planning), setting up the episode’s dive into the city’s skeleton: the grid. (03:35)
• Origin of the Episode:
  Chuck’s continuous interest in the transformation from Mannahatta to modern Manhattan prompted this topic (04:58).

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Anatomy of the Grid

• Definition of the Grid:
  • Everything north of Houston Street is governed by the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan: a grid consisting of eleven numbered avenues (plus Lexington, Park, and Madison), paired with numbered streets running east-west, ranging from East 1st to 220th on the island (05:11–06:21).
  • Broadway: The principal disruptor, famously ignoring the grid (05:28).
• Navigational Tips:
  • East vs. West determined by Fifth Ave.
  • Odd number streets run west, even numbers run east (06:41).

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The Pros and Cons of the Grid

• Advantages:
  • Simplicity and navigability—making orientation straightforward for locals and visitors alike (07:33).
• Drawbacks:
  • Perceived "soullessness," inflexibility, creates “canyons” of tall buildings.
  • Noted by critics as lacking organic beauty or variety.
• Notable Quotes:
  • Walt Whitman: “One perpetual dead flat.”
  • Edith Wharton: “Rectangular New York…hidebound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness.” (11:41–12:13)
  • Architect Peter Markus: Called it “one of the worst city plans of any major city in developed countries.” (12:23)

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The Global and Historical Context of Grids

• The Grid Is Not a New Idea:
  • Indus Valley Civilization (Mohenjo Daro, ~5,000 years ago), Greek Hippodamian plans, Spanish colonial “Law of the Indies” all used grid city layouts (17:04–18:53).
  • William Penn’s Philadelphia and the intentionally-planned DC are other prominent examples (20:10).

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Before the Grid: The Organic City

• Lower Manhattan:
  • Grew organically from Dutch colonial settlement patterns, following the contours of swamp, marsh, and rock.
  • Unlike the upper grid, its meandering, non-right-angled streets remain beloved by many for their “locked in time” vibe (21:35–22:17).
• Manhattan's Original Geography:
  • Was wild, hilly, and marshy; large-scale leveling and filling was required to implement the grid (22:44–22:55).

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The Commissioner's Plan of 1811

• Why the Grid?:
  • New York City, aiming to capitalize on land sales and facilitate rapid growth following the Revolutionary War, needed an easily divisible, promotable layout (24:03).
• Casimir Theodore Goerck:
  • Preceding the commission, Goerck surveyed and mapped the “common lands” into 5-acre grid parcels using a 66ft. survey chain. These early parcels influenced, and were later largely copied, by the Commissioners (24:42–26:21).

The Commissioners and Their Process

• Appointed in 1807:
  • Gouverneur Morris (Founding Father, no surveying experience, described as energetic and likable but a philanderer)
  • John Rutherford (Morris’ nephew-in-law, largest NJ landowner, largely uninterested—pure nepotism)
  • Simeon De Witt (professional surveyor, Surveyor General of NY, but seemingly uninspired for this work) (29:39–31:11).
• Process & Lack of Rigor:
  • Given absolute authority—no oversight or design competition
  • Took four years (1807–1811), only produced an 11-page report.
  • Heavily based the plan on Goerck’s map without credit (32:09–33:00).
  • "They borrowed pretty heavily," Chuck notes. The avenues and block dimensions were "basically the exact same." (33:05)

The Grid Plan's Details and Oddities

• Layout:
  • 12 north-south avenues and 155 east-west numbered streets (34:10).
  • Avenues “widened” to 100ft; 15 cross streets also expanded.
• Design Inconsistencies:
  • No clear logic to which streets were widened (e.g., 72nd widened despite 71st being wider already)
  • West side avenues spaced much farther apart than east side, for no apparent reason (36:22–37:21).
  • The hosts suggest the commissioners likely never even visited the land in person, based on some decisions’ arbitrariness.

Why So Hasty?

• Notable Quote from the Commission:
  • "If it should be asked, why was the present plan adopted in preference to any other, the answer is because after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be the best or in other more proper terms, attended with the least inconvenience." (41:10)
    • Chuck’s take: the plan was simply “least inconvenient for the three commissioners” themselves.

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Impact and Legacy

• Massive Transformation:

  • The plan erased much of Manhattan’s original landscape, filling marshes, leveling hills, and displacing residents through the largest act of eminent domain in NYC history—40% of affected structures were demolished (41:52–47:18).
  • Lawsuits abounded for 60 years but were unsuccessful.

• Underestimation of Growth:

  • The grid was intended to accommodate explosive population growth, but the commissioners underestimated NYC’s rise, and their predictions fell short by half (42:30).

• Failure to Provide Green Space:

  • The commission provided few public squares or parks, rationalizing that “the rivers” would suffice as the city’s “green space.” Only 5% of the grid was public green, and much of that was parade ground, not parkland (43:47–45:13).
  • Central Park came 40 years later, an explicit correction for this omission.

• Filling the Grid:

  • Even decades later, much of the grid remained unsettled. It wasn’t until 1875 that more New Yorkers lived above 14th Street than below, and half the space was still vacant lots (47:53–48:45).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Grids and Beauty:

  • Walt Whitman: “Streets cutting each other at right angles are certainly the last things in the world consistent with beauty of situation.” (11:49)
  • Edith Wharton on NY: “Hidebound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness.” (12:13)

• On Green Spaces:

  • Chuck: "Central Park is great, but as we’ll find out, they...didn’t really plan for green spaces." (13:46)
  • On the commissioners’ reasoning for no parks: "Go hang out at the Hudson or the East River." (Chuck/Josh, 45:44–45:48)

• On the commissioners’ work ethic:

  • “It does seem like the least inconvenient for the three commissioners.” – Josh (41:25)
  • “I also have a lot of respect for that kind of laziness at times…” – Chuck (42:16)

• On the origins of the plan:

  • Chuck quips about the commissioners copying Goerck: “I don’t want to go so far as to call it a tracing project, but…” (33:05)
  • "The big thing is, so adding the 12 numbered avenues was a definite change...but...sure, sure, all right...these guys are definitely not a hill I'm willing to die on." – Josh (34:19)

• On the arbitrariness of certain grid choices:

  • “Avenues on the east side are spaced at 650 and 610ft apart ... on the west they are all 800ft apart for no reason.” – Chuck (37:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|---------------| | Episode intro & context | 03:35–05:08 | | Anatomy of the grid, navigation explained | 05:11–08:37 | | Famous critiques of the grid | 11:41–13:23 | | Global history of grids | 17:04–20:27 | | Pre-grid, the organic Lower Manhattan | 21:35–22:55 | | Goerck’s precursor plan | 24:42–26:21 | | Commissioners and process | 29:39–33:00 | | Grid details, oddities & inconsistencies | 34:10–37:21 | | "Least inconvenience" quote & critique | 41:10–42:16 | | Eminent domain, lawsuits, and resistance | 41:52–47:18 | | Lack of parks & green space | 43:47–45:48 | | How grid expansion urbanized Manhattan | 47:53–49:53 | | First apartment buildings | 48:45–49:53 | | Closing reflections on the grid’s legacy | 50:00–51:42 |

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Conclusion & Legacy

• The Manhattan grid, designed for simplicity and “least inconvenience” to its creators, became both a model of pragmatic urban planning and a lightning rod for criticism about the city’s beauty, soul, and livability.
• While the plan’s strengths (navigability, scalability) have supported NYC’s worldwide status, its failures (green space, lack of organic street life in some areas) remain glaring and have required correction over subsequent generations.
• The story of the grid is as much about city-making as it is about attitudes toward planning, efficiency, and the unintended consequences (both positive and negative) of decisions made for expediency.

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Further Reading Recommended by Hosts

• Book: City on a Hill: How New York Became New York by Gerard Koeppel
• History: Look up the lives and legacies of Gouverneur Morris, Simeon De Witt, and Casimir Theodore Goerck for more depth.
• Other episode suggestions: Central Park, the New York City water supply, and mail/trash logistics.

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Notable End-Show Listener Mail

• A touching letter from a fan’s parent about living with narcolepsy and advocacy work by Julie Flygare, adding a human, compassionate close to the episode. (52:03–53:44)

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For listeners and city lovers:
This episode offers a comprehensive, wry, and critical take on how one of the most iconic city grids came to be, why it matters, and why it incites such strong opinions to this day—a must-listen for anyone curious about urban history or simply how to get around New York City.

Transcript

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Hi everybody, it is on our Covid timeline, 06-18-2020 and I am here to introduce the episode on the Manhattan Grid. I loved loved this episode. I think as most people know by now, I in particular am pretty obsessed with not just New York like I love New York as a town, but the inner workings of New York and the garbage collection and the mail delivery and building that city up from the ground up, which is what this episode relates to is how they laid out that Manhattan grid. And here's one thing I remember from it and here's a fun tip. If you're traveling to New York, they use spikes in the ground, I think iron spikes to map out that grid and you'll learn that in this episode to follow, you know, so they knew where the streets and the street corners would meet up in that big rectangle. And to this day, you can still find some of those. The only place I know about them. I'm not sure if they're on the streets anymore at all. It seems highly unlikely. But I know you can find them for a fact in Central park, here and there in the rocks, those big giant boulders there. Because I learned about these. And when I was in New York, sometime between June 18, 2020, when we released this, and now I can't remember. I feel like it's a few years ago, I saw one of those spikes, and I think I talked about that on a later episode, but it thrilled

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me to no end.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And I geeked out and told everybody I was with what that was and what it represented. And it was a real thrill for me. No lie, just a spike in the. In the rock. Thought it was super cool. So check this episode out on the Manhattan Grid.

[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know, another in our endless Annals of New York City edition.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. This is pretty interesting episode, I think. And my favorite part about it, this was Dave Ruse, one of our writers, helped put this together. And Dave is clearly annoyed about this whole thing. And I think it's hysterical how many times he. He gets annoyed by the laziness of the commission.

[Josh Clark]

I have to say, I agreed with Dave, too. I was annoyed by it as well. I think it's always annoying when you see somebody have a great opportunity and just pee it away. You know what I mean?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we should also point out Dave got a lot of his information from a really wonderful book called City on a How New York Became New York by Gerald Keppel.

[Josh Clark]

Not Gerald McCraney. Different Gerald.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right. Or is it Copple? I think it's Keppel. If it's K O E. That's what

[Josh Clark]

I was going with, was Keppel.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I'm gonna get this book, though. This is right up my alley, because, you know, I'm obsessed with the history and the sort of formation of New York City as we know it today.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Where'd you get the idea for this episode?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Just my constant desire to learn about Mannahatta and how that became eventually Manhattan that we know and love.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm just fascinated by it. I love it. I love everything about it.

[Josh Clark]

This is definitely a big chapter in it, because what we're talking about is the plan called the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, that basically laid out Manhattan as we know and understand and love it today. Everything north of Houston Street, I should say.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And here's sort of a quick primer is Manhattan above Houston is almost a perfect grid. Broadway kind of screws everything up.

[Josh Clark]

Boo.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But, you know, great street, but it's just Broadway's. Like, I'm not following any rules, so I'm gonna confuse people. But aside from that, it's pretty much a grid of 11 numbered avenues that run north to south, generally speaking. Then you've got Lexington, park, and Madison avenues, and then 200. And this was, at the time, numbered streets running roughly east to west. And if you want to get a little more granular than that, the southernmost street in the East Village is east first, as you would imagine. The northernmost is 220th street, as we live and breathe today in Inwood.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's on the island, technically, in Manhattan. If you're talking about the borough, it goes up to 227th, I believe.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right. And if you want to go through the Bronx, you go all the way up to 263.

[Josh Clark]

Man, that's crazy. That's so many streets.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's so many streets.

[Josh Clark]

You've got 263 streets.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You've got an east and west signifier which says. And this is sort of a dummy's guide to getting around New York for the first time, too. If you, you know, broke your smartphone and you also don't want to walk around just staring at your smartphone the whole time.

[Josh Clark]

No. You're going to miss a lot.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So try and get a little intuitive feel, because it's really easy to get around if you know this stuff. East and west will signify whether you're east or west of Fifth Avenue. And then here's a little trick, too. Odd number street, streets run west. Even number streets run east. So if you come out of a subway and you know which way north, south, east, and west are, then you will never do the thing that I always do and walk in the wrong direction. Trying to go up or down.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because that's the thing. Like, if you know what direction you're facing and you know where you're trying to go and where you are right now, you can basically make. Make your way anywhere in Manhattan above Houston Street.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And if you're like me and you have no idea ever what's north, south, east, and west in New York, I Don't either.

[Josh Clark]

I don't either.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I had an easy time in la. Cause LA has the sun. Well, they have that. But they also have geographical landmarks that make it super easy to tell which way north. And like the Hollywood sign and the hills and stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Is that real? Is the Hollywood sign real?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What do you mean, is it real?

[Josh Clark]

I'm just kidding. Okay,

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

so that makes it a lot easier in New York when I come out there, all those big tall buildings, I never know. I can never come out and say like, well, that's north. But if you know that stuff and you know that the even numbered streets run east, the odd ones run west, then you can, you won't walk in the wrong direction for a block and then get there like I do and go, oh, we should have gone the other way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because depending on what direction you're walking, if you're walking north or south, going the wrong direction in a block isn't that bad. But if you're going east or west, it's real bad. Well, because there's very long blocks going east to west. And that's all part of that commissioner's plan that was laid out in 1811. And on the one hand, you know, we've kind of hit upon the pros and the cons of it, that it's easy to get around, which is really saying something because New York is absolutely huge. But you could make it from one end to the other without a map, just knowing that it's on a grid and how the grid's laid out, even roughly. But the problem is it's on a grid. And a grid is one of the least organic shapes around. And because this grid stretches over almost all of Manhattan, most of Manhattan for sure, it's viewed by a lot of people as kind of soulless and canyon esque, because you're just totally surrounded almost constantly by big imposing buildings, all at these right angles, which, it feels like a very built environment. And until Central park came along, which we did an episode in what, the 1850s or 60s, that was it. That was New York. There was nothing but that built environment.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I got a few more of my things.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay, let's have them, buddy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Manhattan's about 13 and a half miles long. And then, so this grid makes sense. But then once you get north of 59th street, you, you start to get like Atlanta does. And a road will just change names out of nowhere. Atlanta's very famous for that. People get very confused here.

[Josh Clark]

It is very confusing also, because the road will change names but one of the names, Peachtree, will still be there, but it's a totally different street.

[Ice Cube Big Three Advertiser]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

It does not help things.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So north of 59th, avenues on the west side change names, but avenues on the east side do not. So 8th becomes Central Park West, 9th becomes Columbus Avenue, 10th becomes Amsterdam Avenue, and 11th becomes West End Avenue.

[Josh Clark]

What about Avenue of the Americas?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, that's Sixth, right? Or is that Seventh?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, I think it's Sixth. That's my understanding. I think it's six.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But that's really not a name change. That's just. That's something that tourists call it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I remember you making fun of me when I called it that. Did I really?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[Josh Clark]

It was really jarring.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And then to get people really confused, between 3rd and 5th Avenue, there are three avenues instead of what you would think would be one, because Lexington park and Madison fall between those.

[Martha Stewart]

Yep.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And then south of 23rd, you've got your lettered avenues A, B, C and D, which is Alphabet City.

[Josh Clark]

So you wouldn't need to ever pull out a map. You just have to stand in the middle of New York and listen to the first, like, 10 minutes of this episode, and you'll find your way. No problem.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, should we get into this? You said people don't like the grid. There are a lot of people. I mean, what did Walt Whitman call it?

[Josh Clark]

Icky, I think.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I think he said. He called it one perpetual dead flat.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And streets cutting each other at right angles are certainly the last things in the world consistent with beauty of situation.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

How about this one from Edith Wharton? Rectangular New York. This cramped horizontal gridiron of a town without towers, porticos, fountains or perspectives. Hide. Bound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I like hidebound. That's great.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's a great word.

[Josh Clark]

And mean ugliness definitely captures, like, a certain sense of New York, depending on your mood or mindset, you know?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There's one, a guy named Peter Markus, who's an architecture critic, he said that the grid layout of Manhattan was one of the worst city plans of any major city in the developed countries of the world.

[AT&T Advertiser]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But some people love it. Some people said it was pragmatic. Some people said it really accommodated for the one thing it needed to accommodate for, which was massive growth.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Let me see here. An architect named Raphael Vinoli, who's, I think, a modern architect. Not modern. I just mean current architect. But he may do modern work. Who knows? He said the grid is the best manifestation of American pragmatism. Pragmatism in the creation of urban form. And then in 1978, a Dutch architect named Rem Koolhaas said that the grid was the most courageous act of prediction in Western civilization. Clearly talking about the growth.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, but a courageous act. That's like architect talk. Right there. Right there. But for the most part, from what I understand, and definitely Dave says the same thing, most New Yorkers, especially born and raised New Yorkers, are not happy that that's how their city is laid out, that there's a lot of room for improvement. Is that your experience too? Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I mean Central park is great, but as we'll find out, they did not. They didn't really plan for green spaces. And New York has done their best to kind of carve them out since then. But you know, let's get into this commission.

[Josh Clark]

Well, let's talk about grids first. Do you want to.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. All right. Do you want to take a break and then talk about the grid story?

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

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[Josh Clark]

So New York didn't invent the grid. As much as they like to boast that they did. They did not. In fact, a grid layout of a city goes back to that Indus Valley civilization that for some reason keeps popping up in the last, like, year or so. I guess they're gonna make a comeback or something like that, but they've just been coming out all over the place. But one of the. What was it, Chuck? Was it. Did they invent the zipper?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't think it was a zipper.

[Josh Clark]

What was it? Indigo?

[T-Mobile Advertiser 3]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

There's been a number of them. But anyway, about at least 5,000 years ago, the Indus Valley civilization was using the grid layout to create Mohenjo Daro, which is a 750 acre city on a grid. And then shortly after that, the Greeks said, I really like this. In fact, there's a Greek thinker and mathematician named Hippodamus who's known as the father of city planning. And he was bully for grids, too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. If you have a grid, people still call that the Hippodamian plan, which is kind of great all these years later to still get recognized for your grid work.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. If you're ever talking to somebody and they refer to a grid as a Hippodamian plan, that person knows what they're

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

talking about or listens to this show.

[Josh Clark]

It's one and the same, basically.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I knew you were gonna say that. Let me see. The Conquistadors of Spain, they kind of had a habit of coming in, conquering, and then having their template in place to create these grids is what they call the law of the Indies. And they would sort of just come in, set up shop. You got a town with A big central plaza and then a grid surrounding that central plaza.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And they use that for everything from Lima to Los Angeles. And this took me back in my mind to what was the name of that colonial town in Guatemala that we visited?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. It was wonderful.

[Josh Clark]

Driving crazy. It really was wonderful. It was one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been in. But it had like a central plaza with a fountain. It was a much smaller town, but now that I think about, it was laid out on a grid, too. And it was part of that law of the Indies that you were mentioning, that it was just like, this is how you build a town. And apparently the reason that they. They use that, that law, like in town after town after town that they just basically took over and said, this is ours now, it's Spain's is applying a grid was kind of a metaphor for applying order and civilization to a formerly disordered and wild indigenous town. Which makes sense from a colonizer's perspective, but I'm sure it sucked from the indigenous person's perspective like everything else. Yeah, that's with this stupid right angle stuff.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So New York City comes along. Philadelphia had been laid out in a grid by William Penn, very deliberately, though. And that grid was kind of roomy and spacious because William Penn did not like the congestion of London.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But again, Philly very much purposeful.

[Josh Clark]

Same with DC too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, boy, DC has a. Has kind of a crazy grid.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But once you understand it, it makes total sense. Numbers and letters and directions. Yeah, I always get lost in it. It takes more getting used to than New York, too, from my experience and what I understand.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 is really sort of the demarcation point between what was first New York, New Amsterdam, and then what we now know as Manhattan. Because anyone who's ever seen almost said games of New York, gangs of New York knows that those were crazy days down there in Lower Manhattan. And things just sort of sprouted up organically from the river upward as far as the layout and the design. And, you know, you can still feel that when you go down to Lower Manhattan, which is why I love the villages now. I think it's just. I mean, I like the simplicity of the grid, but I think what I love about Lower Manhattan is how organic it feels.

[Josh Clark]

It's a jumble. And I mean, it's a jumble for a reason. Because those streets largely follow these original organic paths that the Dutch settlers and earliest English settlers basically said, oh, we need to get from the waterfront up, you know, to the common lands or whatever. Let's go this way. Here's a good path. And this path happens to meander around a salt marsh. And we avoid having to go up a hill by going around this way. So it's kind of like meandering. And it's definitely locked in time from those streets down there in lower Manhattan. I like it too. But it is very easy to be like, are you sure we're going the right direction still? It's very easy to get lost in those. Cause it isn't at all a grid.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I've spent enough time in lower Manhattan now to where I can landmark it. Like it's just familiar enough to me to where I kind of know like this block and that block. So I know where I'm going. And you mentioned something important. I don't think we've even kind of said that New York was not all this just big, one big flat slab 13 miles long that we love today because you can walk forever without ever getting out of breath. Because it's not Seattle.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

New York was swampland and it had hills and marshes and creeks and rocks and it was, you know, it was kind of wild eating coast territory.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I mean, the reason that those marshes and the ponds and hills and stuff aren't there anymore is because of this 1811 Commissioners Plan. It basically said, tear it all down, fill it all in, build this over it. And they did. That's the most astounding thing is they did that. They, you know, as we'll see, they passed a law that basically said, we're going to appoint a commission of three people. They're going to come up with three people. And whatever they come up with is law that it can't be challenged in court. We're not going to back it up and change it in any way. And they really didn't. As bad as the plan was in almost every way, they really stuck to it. But the thing that struck me, I had no idea about this, was that the 1811 Commissioner's Plan was just a ripoff of another earlier surveying map that basically provided the basis of the commissioner's plan, not even the basis of it. They weren't like, oh, we'll take this as a starting point. They just said, we'll take this, print it and put our names on it. And that's ultimately what happened.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So pre Revolutionary War, most of Manhattan was in that lower third of the island. And we got into big time debt because of the Revolutionary War. And so the city said in the 1780s, all right, here's what we gotta do. We own tons of land, publicly owned land, and all this marshy, kind of reedy, rocky, pondy area. It's not developed. Let's sell this stuff off and make some dough. It's called the common lands. And we need somebody to get in there and just sort of survey this and plot it all out so we know exactly how to best sell this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So they hired a guy named Casimir Theodore Gourk. That's what I'm going with. This Gurk.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

It's not a cucumber, it's a gherkin. Do you remember Mr. Cabbage Head from Kids in the Hall? Sure. Well, this had nothing to do with that. Right, right. So this surveyor actually went through the common lands. Like basically what we understand is all of Manhattan between Houston and North Harlem. He just went across and broke it into 500 acre parcels. He had a 66 foot chain on his surveying poles. And so he said, well, I'll just use that as the basic measurement for the widest streets. 66ft is what it's going to be.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I think he said 500 acre parcels. Weren't they 5 acre?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yes, I'm sorry, bigger. There's a little bit of a difference. They were 5 acre parcels. So that's even more work, that's 100 times more work than what I described.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So he laid him out as a grid because he wasn't like, this guy wasn't out to say, here's how Manhattan should be built.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Right. This is the best way to promote the future of growth in Manhattan.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, that was not his charge. His charge was like, hey, let's just divide this stuff up and sell it. He had some interesting constraints. They had to be five acres. They had to have a central road that all of these could sort of access fairly easily. And then he had a survey chain. It's crazy to think about. This was one of the things that informed what is modern New York. His survey chain was 66ft. So he said, all right, that's how wide the road is.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. So I think that was like the widest road, the central access road. He called that one Middle. And now I believe that's Fifth Avenue is middle. What was originally Middle road back in 1796.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's adorable.

[Josh Clark]

So he carved this up, this place up into these plots that are 200ft on the east and west boundaries of it. So going up and down, running north, south, but if you're on the plot, it would be on the east side of the plot and the west side of the plot. If that was not confusing before, it is now. And then across. Or the width was 920ft. And those were the plots. He said, here you go. There's a bunch of them up there. But I've carved up all of these common lands and you can start selling them if you want.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Did you mention the names of the other two roads?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. He said, I'm gonna put two more in. Of these 66ft wide roads. And he had some very clever names for them.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. One was middle. Remember the one to the east he named east, and the one to the west he named West.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which makes sense if you're looking at it from. If you're on the middle road. To the east is the east road, to the west is the west road. But they run north, south.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Man, I hate directions.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And like you said, that was fifth in the center. So that's now Fourth, Fifth and sixth Ave, right?

[Josh Clark]

Or Fourth Avenue.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Fifth Avenue and the avenues that we miss. You know, you're really not supposed to say that.

[Josh Clark]

What a jerk.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I can't believe I said that.

[Josh Clark]

You didn't say it like that. I didn't. You just made sure that you waited until a crowd had gathered and really laid into me.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I think I remember. Was that our first trip to New York? Probably, man.

[Josh Clark]

Probably.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's funny.

[Josh Clark]

We've been back a couple of times

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

since then as a team, huh?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I know. I've got some really great memories of New York.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I miss it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It's been a while.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

20, 21. We will see you again.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, we will. New York, don't you worry.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

At least I hope so. There are no guarantees, right?

[Josh Clark]

No. We will see New York again.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right. So do we take another break? I feel like there's still a lot.

[Josh Clark]

There's still a lot. We should keep going for now, I think.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right. So in 1807, this is when the New York State legislature said, you know what? We need to. Like, we're growing here. It's clear that this southern tip of Manhattan is just the beginning. So they passed a bill that they described as an act of relative. An act relative to improvements, touching the laying out of the streets and roads in the city of New York and for other purposes.

[AT&T Advertiser]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Which made sense. But like I said, this law, they decided to just vest absolute authority into these three commissioners and said, we're going to follow whatever they come up with. Whatever that Seems to them most conducive to public good. We're just going to take on its face that it is most conducive to public good and just go with it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's crazy that it was just three people and that it wasn't like 10 teams of three people submitting the best designs that then would be gone over and voted on.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's really weird. No one took it seriously. Weirdly enough, it's very odd.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So who were these guys?

[Josh Clark]

So there are three commissioners appointed. One was Governor Morris. His first name was Governor. He was one of the founding fathers. He wrote a lot of the Constitution, including the preamble. He had a peg leg. He lost his leg in a carriage accident, although there's rumors that it was something else. But he was known as a Dave Putz, an energetic philanderer, but he was apparently a very likable, Benjamin Franklin esque kind of dude who seemed to be fairly smart but had really no understanding of surveying, as far as I can tell, no.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Then his nephew in law, John Rutherford, he was a landowner in New Jersey. In fact, I think the largest landowner in New Jersey at the time. And by all accounts, it looks like this was pure nepotism. He was late for meetings, he was not especially interested, even to the annoyance of Gouverneur Morris.

[Josh Clark]

All the reasons to not exercise nepotism. This guy brought to the table is one third of this commission who's figuring out how to lay out the plan for New York City.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And then the third guy, Simon Le Bon. No, no, no. Simeon DeWitt. Excuse me. And this guy actually knew what he was doing. He was a really very respected, accomplished surveyor. Worked with George Washington, I think eventually became the, which I didn't even know was a thing, was the official surveyor for the Continental army and then the Surveyor General of New York State.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So he knew what he was doing, which makes his role all the more shameful that he didn't say like, oh well, we really gotta, we gotta get crackin'. It's been three years and we've got four years to do this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Maybe he did, though, who knows? He might have been completely run over by these other two chumps.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, and he just got shouted down, I guess.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

Well, at the very least, Gouverneur Morris was also one of the founding members of the commission that created the Erie Canal, which was for a very long time considered one of the greatest public works projects in the history of America, certainly in the history of New York State. And that kind of energy and imagination and drive just did not make it to this 1811 Commission for the planning of New York.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I wonder if he, I mean, this sounds cynical, but I wonder if he literally was like, man, that Erie Canal project really was a big bummer in how hard we had to work. And let's just kind of, hey, look at these maps that this guy drew to sell off New York. Let's just use those.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so that's, I mean, that's kind of what they did. Like they, they had four years or they took four years. I'm not sure how long they had, but they, they took four years from 1807 to 1811 to turn in their report. Four years of meeting sporadically. True, but they still met. Over this four year period, they came up with an 11 page report to lay out these 13 miles in length, not even square miles of Manhattan, these common lands all the way from Houston street up to North Harlem. They came up with 11 pages to explain their map. And their map really made sense as a grid. But again, they stole the grid from Kasmir Gork. I can't remember what I called them before Girk. I'm going with Gork now.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay, sure.

[Josh Clark]

But they didn't give him any credit for it whatsoever.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I mean, I don't want to go so far as to call it a tracing project, but, you know, they borrowed pretty heavily. Like the streets and the avenues were basically the exact same. When, you know, earlier you mentioned the blocks were 200 by 920ft in girt from Gurk.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This had the exact same layout. And that was no accident.

[Josh Clark]

No. And they were in virtually the same spot. They did do some stuff. You know, they didn't just take his map, like you were saying, and trace it and call it their own. They made some changes to it. They created Instead of the three Middle east and West, they created 12 avenues running north south and not true north south, but just, you know, for our purposes, north and south. And then they created 155 numbered streets.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but they.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They added this stuff, but it's sort of just copy paste kind of.

[Josh Clark]

Kind of. But the big thing is, so adding the 12 numbered avenues was a definite change to Gurks. Gorks. Never gonna say the same thing twice.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But was it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, because he only had the three.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I know, but he just had the three. And they were like, well, we need more. So let's just do what he did all over the place.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, sure. Okay. All right.

[Martha Stewart]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You know what?

[Josh Clark]

I'm saying that's fair. Yeah. These guys are definitely not a hill I'm willing to die on. So say what you will, they're lazy schmoes, too. All right. And then they took these cross streets that are formed by the surveying of these blocks and turned them into numbered streets. So avenues running north, south, they were the big ones. 155 numbered streets running east to west. They widened the avenues. They said they're going to be 100ft wide. I guess they had a longer survey.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They had bigger chain.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And then they widened some of the cross streets to, I guess, ease congestion. I think they widened 15 of them total.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I think the other streets were 60ft, and then 15 of them went to 100 at 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 72, 79, 86, 96, 106, 116, 125th, 135th, 145th, and 155th.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But why? Why those particular ones?

[Josh Clark]

There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason because if you notice, they didn't really hit their stride into keeping them separated by 10, 10 cross streets until 86th Street.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So there's not really much rhyme or

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

reason there when they only did that for three of them. Right, Four of them.

[Josh Clark]

And then the streets that they did choose to widen didn't necessarily make much sense one way or the other. Like, for example, 71st street was already fairly wide. It was definitely wider than 72nd Street. But they decided to make 72nd street the widened. The widened cross street rather than 71st. And apparently no one knows why. The closest thing I could find is there's some record in 1857 of somebody having to remove a big rock from 72nd street to widen it. But that doesn't even explain or make sense because there was a bunch of houses that had to be torn down to make 72nd street widened rather than

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

71st, which was already wide and had almost no houses.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So these guys were just. When you start to compile all the evidence, we'll kind of pay more out. It really seems like these guys didn't even go to the Common Lands, that maybe they were just working from Gurk's map. Or if they did go to the Common Lands, they took zero notes or paid zero attention, and that all of this came from a place of laziness and ignorance. Like not knowing that 72nd was wider than 71st or vice versa would explain that decision more than anything else.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Another example is if you've ever been on the west side and you feel like, man, these avenues are big. It's because they are. The avenues on the east side are spaced at 650 and 610ft apart or 610ft apart. And on the west they are all 800ft apart for no reason.

[Josh Clark]

No reason at all. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Again, it seems like they just phone this in. And what's even more astounding is that New York's founding father said, okay, we're going to do exactly what you say without questioning it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and actually we kind of do have the reason, if you read closely. And we'll tell you the secret reason right after this.

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

How's that for a cliffhanger?

[Josh Clark]

It was great. I'm still a little tense waiting for you to pay it off.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, here's the real reason everyone. And it all lies in this quote that is pulled from their commission report. If it should be asked, why was the present plan adopted in preference to any other, the answer is because after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be the best or in other more proper terms, attended with the least inconvenience.

[Josh Clark]

I think that's the magic phrase right

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

there, that last phrase, attended with the least inconvenience. And Dave rightfully says what is obvious, which is inconvenient for the three commissioners.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because their plan was extraordinarily inconvenient for basically everyone involved. Like, there was, from the people who were in charge of, like, making this, like, building this grid or this plan to the people who were already living in places that were torn down.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

40%.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 40% of places were torn down to adhere to this plan, this 1811 Commission plan.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That's crazy. And again, when you start to add all this stuff up, it does seem like the least inconvenient for the three commissioners. And the fact that if that is true and they just included that as kind of like a cheeky little joke, you know, those guys are. They're not necessarily burning in hell, but they're probably in purgatory somewhere.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I also have a lot of respect for that kind of laziness at times,

[Josh Clark]

so the kind that makes fun of itself in public documents.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, just is that upfront about the fact, like, you know what? I didn't really want to work too hard on this, so here it is.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So, yeah, it was very inconvenient for everyone but them. They did this because of the growth population they expected, so it sort of made sense. But they even got that wrong. They were wrong by about half of what they thought the growth rate was going to be.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's the thing is they were saying, like, okay, this affords enough population growth to afford a population greater than any other this side of China is how they put it. So they clearly did have at least growth on their mind. And that if you build on a grid Afford for the most growth. It's the easiest to build on. Right. Angled structures are the easiest to build and settle and live in. But the thing is, is part of that law, the 1807 law that established the commission charged them with creating public squares, Although it said in size and form and all that in number that the commissioners see fit. Unfortunately, the commissioners didn't see fit to make almost any kind of public gathering places, especially green spaces for mental health, I guess, is what you would call it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And their reasoning is kind of bs, actually. I'm not sure which one it was. I guess it was Morris that. I'm not going to read the whole quote, but he basically said, hey, listen, we don't have the Sin river or the Thames winding through the middle of town. But what we do have are these two wonderful rivers that just kind of hug Manhattan. And that's enough. Because everyone's just gonna go hang out at the river all the time. Cause it's beautiful and gorgeous and you can swim in it. And the east river and the Hudson river will forever be our green space. Basically.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Basically, the city had enough. It didn't need green spaces because of the east and the Hudson Rivers. And like, in about 40 years, people were like, no, we do. We need to build Central Park.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which was a savior. Because I think it says here, on their original plan, only 5% of the grid was public green space. And 240 of those 400 acres was a parade ground.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Which I didn't know exactly where that was. Do you?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, there are, you know, there's Washington Square Park. There's some cool kind of central promenades and things like that. And then these, you know, New York's famous for these tiny little slivers of a park kind of all over the place. But they're small.

[Josh Clark]

They are very small, especially compared to the surrounding areas, for sure. In the buildings.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's why the High Line was such a big deal.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was a big deal. And I remember not quite grasping why. No, I definitely do. Because there's just. People need that. People need green space. They need nature. They need to be like, outside of a built environment, even if it's a built natural environment. You know what I mean?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Central park is amazing and we love it. But that's a long way, if you're in southern Manhattan, to get up there.

[Josh Clark]

Right, right. But basically these guys said, you don't need it. Go hang out at the Hudson or the East River.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's so wonderful and lovely.

[Josh Clark]

So the. There were a lot of people, like we said, that were really unhappy with this. This was a huge exercise of eminent domain. There were a lot of people on these lands already. Remember Seneca Village that was destroyed to create Central Park? They managed to survive the 1811 Commission. I can't remember how long that was around, but I want to say Seneca Village was around for a good 50 years before it was leveled in the 1850s. So it would on the common lands during this time. But there, like you said, about 39 or 40% of homeowners or established buildings had to be torn down. They filled in ponds, they filled in salt marshes. They completely altered the ecosystem of stuff that could have been built around or incorporated had they stopped and thought about how to do that. They just leveled everything and built a grid over it. And so a lot of people were really, really unhappy about this, and they were particularly unhappy that the city administration was just sticking to this no matter what. And there were a lot of lawsuits, and all of them, from what I understand, were unsuccessful.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. For about 60 years. There were tons of lawsuits going on. And I know you said it was a big, imminent domain act, but it was, I think, still the largest act of imminent domain in New York City.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And that includes Central park and

[Ice Cube Big Three Advertiser]

how

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

they get their water, which was another good episode.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because, I mean, Central park is huge, but it's just a small sliver of this larger area.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This one quote from landowner Clement Clarke Moore. He published a pamphlet about the tyrannical commissioner's plan, and in it, it says this. Nothing is to be left unmolested, which does not coincide with the street commissioner's plummet and level. These are men who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome. Burn big time.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. So didn't matter, though. No, it really didn't matter. They just went ahead with it blindly and thoughtlessly, and did, and again, like, it did accommodate growth, although they underestimated the growth. But it took a little while for this stuff to fill up. This. This plan was delivered in 1811, but it wasn't until 1875 that enough people had started to move in that there were more New Yorkers living above 14th street than there were living below it. Because, remember, I mean, Lower Manhattan was where it all began. So that, I mean, it took a little while to fill in, and it didn't even necessarily fill in uniformly. By that same year in 1875, there's still 40,000 vacant lots left in this grid plan. And that was, like, about half of the space.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I love that fact. That's good. Dave has some nice facts here at the end. 1869, the very first apartment building in New York was built, called the Stuyvesant. And they called them. I don't even think they called them apartments at the time. It was called a French flat or a French house. But prior to that, it was, you know, tenement houses and houses. And so the Stuyvesant is built, and everyone thinks it's silly that anyone would want to live in the same building as other people. And they called it Stuyvesant's Folly, but that was at 142 East 18th between Irving Place and 3rd. And it was a huge hit. Like, people made fun of it in the newspapers, but people signed up to live there. Almost immediately it filled up. It was demoed and replaced in 1960, but. So this was 1869. Very. It didn't take long, though. In 1884, the Dakota was built, which still stands today. So apartment buildings kind of came into fashion, I think, probably due to Stuyvesant's Folly.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, it went over so well and so quickly that it really opened the way for more and more to be built.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

So one thing that people point to is this Commissioner's Plan of 1811 is just like that same principle or the same significance that the Spanish coming in and imposing a grid over an indigenous settlement was somehow taming the wild or the organic or something like that. This is the turning point between kind of unplanned, organic, much more harmonious, naturally New York, and the planned modern New York that we know and love today. This is where it went from one to the other, almost like flipping a switch. And granted, it took decades and decades to realize this plan, but when it was delivered and when it was adopted, that was it. That change happened and the transition began.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

[Josh Clark]

I think so, too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What else is there for New York? I mean, we figure we got water, we got the subways covered, we got Central park, we've got this.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's see.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

There can't be much else as far as just the bones of. Oh, I know. What I want to do is maybe how the mail and the trash work. It's a miracle.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. All right. Yeah. We did the Rockettes once even, too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's right.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, we've done a lot of New York topics. That's true.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Or maybe we should move to a different city. Let's start Talking about Des Moines.

[Josh Clark]

Holy cow, dude. It almost simultaneously came out of my mouth.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Des Moines?

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's so weird.

[Josh Clark]

It is weird. It's in the zeitgeist, apparently. You got anything else?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, if you want to know more about New York, just start reading and then eventually travel there. They'll give you the all clear when they're ready. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Hey, guys. My 16 year old son Owen is probs yous biggest fan. For real. He also has narcolepsy. I appreciate you taking on this topic and bringing some understanding of it to the masses. He was diagnosed when he was 10 and it affects every single aspect of his life. I think it has made him wise beyond his years, personally and compassionate to other people with invisible struggles. But it still sucks. If you ever want to read or hear first hand accounts from people with narcolepsy, check out Julie Flygare. That is F, L Y G A R E or Flygare. I'm not sure. How would you say that?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I like the one with flavor. The second one.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Flygare, who is doing all kinds of advocates for people with narcolepsy, including a scholarship foundation. She founded Project Sleep and Voices of Narcolepsy. She also wrote a great book about her experiences with being diagnosed during law school called Wide Awake and Dreaming. When Owen received his diagnosis, I reached out to her for help. She sent Owen a care package with a book, a T shirt, wristbands, a very kind card, et cetera, to let him know that he's not alone. That is very sweet.

[Josh Clark]

It is.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I think she deserves an award for the work she's doing. Anyway, a great resource for sure. Thanks for the work that you do. I mean, could we get an award?

[Josh Clark]

You know, we've won a Webby before, I think.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's true. Yeah, sometimes it's fun and entertaining, but sometimes, and often it's really important and educational as well. Sincerely, the mom of your biggest fan. And that is from Brooke.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks, Brooke. And thanks Owen for listening. It's really good to hear from you guys and I feel like we should send Owen something too. Sure, let's do it, Chuck. We'll figure it out.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

We can't be shown up by this Flygari person.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. Send us. Send us your physical address and we'll mail you something.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. And in the meantime, thanks for listening and thanks for being a fan and thank you for listening and thank you for being a fan. Too. And if you want to get in touch with us like Brooke did, you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuff [e-mail]

[Podcast Announcer]

Stuff

[Josh Clark]

youf Should Know is a production of iHeartradio.

[Martha Stewart]

For more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeartradio app.

[Josh Clark]

Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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