The Hindenburg Disaster

Summary

Stuff You Should Know — “The Hindenburg Disaster”

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: May 14, 2026
Episode Theme:
A detailed exploration of the Hindenburg disaster, covering the background and development of airships, the events of May 6, 1937, the aftermath, and the ongoing speculation around the cause of the disaster. The episode dives into the evolution and mechanics of dirigibles, social context, the luxury of airship travel, notable moments of the crash, and its historical impact—all served with Josh and Chuck’s signature curiosity and humor.

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Main Theme Overview

This episode provides a comprehensive account of the Hindenburg airship disaster, unraveling myths, technological details, and the human stories around the infamous crash in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Josh and Chuck break down how the Hindenburg was built, why hydrogen was used instead of helium, what happened the day of the disaster, and how it marked the end of the airship era. The boys also explore lasting mysteries about the ignition source and deliver their signature observational riffing and running jokes.

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Episode Breakdown

1. Setting the Stage: What Was the Hindenburg?

• Hindenburg as Dirigible: The Hindenburg was a German rigid airship—a “dirigible” meaning steerable and powered, rather than just a floating balloon. (05:10–06:40)
• Types of Dirigibles:
  • Non-rigid (like a hot air balloon)
  • Semi-rigid (structure along the bottom)
  • Rigid (full metal skeleton—Hindenburg’s type) (06:53–09:10)
• Enormous Scale: Hindenburg was over 800 feet long, beating the 747 in length and height.
  • Josh: “Seriously, go look up just ‘Hindenburg over New York City’—the scale is really kind of... it drives it home for sure.” (12:19)
• Gas & Structure: 7,062,000 cubic feet of hydrogen in 16 interior bags, with a duralumin frame and a Goodyear-latex-and-canvas shell (09:20).

2. Dirigibles Before Hindenburg: A Quick History

• Origins in 1850s France—Pierre Jullien and then Jules Henri Giffard (14:14).
• First rigid airships pioneered by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1899 (15:02).
• Dirigibles reached commercial success starting 1910 (17:03), reaching regular transatlantic flights by the late 1920s.
  • Chuck’s Safety Rule: “Do not go in any models that are still in the single digits. That’s just a good rule of thumb.” (16:15)

3. Inside the Hindenburg: The Golden Age of Airship Travel

• Luxury on Board:
  • Decor: Art Deco, lots of Formica
  • Amenities: bar, restaurant, smoking room (with a single protected lighter), aluminum piano, hot/cold running water, bunk-style cabins (27:33–31:23)
• Atmosphere: Rich and famous clientele; pricing was about $10,000 one-way in today’s dollars (22:01–23:49).
• Smoking Room Paradox: “At first I’m like, well, of course there’s a smoking room. It’s the 30s. And then I was like... [it’s a] hydrogen dirigible. That is actually pretty remarkable.” (Chuck, 28:25)
• Famous Drink Invention: British author Leslie Charteris’s wife Pauline invented a martini made from kirschwasser when gin ran out. “Apparently the rest of the ingredients are lost to history.” (30:18)

4. German Propaganda, the Nazi Era, and the Pre-Disaster Voyages

• Nazi Connection: German-built in the Nazi era, with swastikas on the tail. Used for propaganda flights. (32:00–33:04)
• Fleet Dreams: Hindenburg was first in a planned luxury Zeppelin fleet; 34 successful flights in 1936, including high-profile tours and an Olympic Games flyover (33:34).

5. Why Hydrogen Instead of Helium?

• Initial Plan: Hydrogen rejected after R101’s fiery crash in 1930; designers wanted helium for safety (24:22).
• Helium Embargo: The U.S.—the sole source—refused to sell helium, citing the Helium Act of 1925, so Hindenburg reverted to hydrogen (24:57–25:41).
• “Let’s just cross our fingers.” (Josh, 24:22)

6. The Day of the Disaster: May 6, 1937

• Voyage Details:
  • Departed Frankfurt May 3 (38:01)
  • Delayed by storms; circled over the ocean before landing approach
  • Descended from 500ft to under 300ft; dropped mooring ropes (39:13)
• The Flame: Ropes grounded at 7:25pm—within 34 seconds, fire erupted and the airship crashed (39:23).
  • Josh: “It was all over in less than 30 seconds.” (39:13)
• Survivors: Two-thirds survived: 97 onboard, 36 died (22 crew, 13 passengers, 1 ground crew) (40:20).
  • Chuck: “People were running out of the flames and survived. They were running for their lives—and they actually made it, which is crazy.” (39:32)

7. "Oh, the Humanity": Reporting & Cultural Impact

• Infamous Radio Commentary: Herb Morrison’s emotional live coverage immortalized the disaster.
  • Josh (reading Morrison, 41:04):

    “It’s fire and it’s crashing, it’s burning, bursting into flames… This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. …Oh, the humanity...”

• Notable exchange:
  • Josh: “That had never been said before. Is that true?”
  • Chuck: “I don’t know if it had been said, but… everything he said was just pouring out of him without thinking.” (42:58–43:12)

8. Theories on the Cause—Myth, Sabotage, and Science

• Sabotage?
  • Suspects: Joseph "Ben Dova" Spah, anti-Nazi agitators, insurance fraud, even a Zeppelin crewman for his communist girlfriend (44:12–48:36).
• Paint Theory: NASA scientist Addison Bain (1990s) suggested the outer-shell dope coating ignited first, later debunked by test burns (49:03).
• Electrostatic, Hydrogen & “Giant Capacitor” Theory:
  • Most likely: A combination of a hydrogen leak and an electrostatic charge from the storm, possibly triggered by the grounding of the mooring lines.
  • Chuck: “What Giapas basically said was… all it took was one spark for all of them to start sparking. If you have hundreds or thousands… sparking at once, it’s going to blow up a hydrogen dirigible, and it’s going to do it pretty fast.” (51:18)

9. The Hindenburg Legacy and the End of Airships

• Aftermath:
  • Ended transatlantic passenger airship travel overnight (52:34).
  • Permanently damaged hydrogen’s reputation as a fuel (52:50).
• Modern Projects: Some contemporary airships in development (e.g., Pathfinder One), but all use helium (53:08–53:44).
• Artifacts and Museums: Surviving Hindenburg parts at Smithsonian and the National Postal Museum. (54:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the word "dirigible":

  • Josh: “It can be an adjective as well for steerable.”
  • Chuck: “Dirigible means steerable. Like, ‘This car is highly dirigible because it's got great responsiveness.’” (06:11–06:23)

• Personal Connections:

  • Josh, on Goodyear blimp rides: “My father-in-law, Steve, has at one point rode in that Goodyear blimp, but I have never done it. So if anyone can take me up... you’re invited.” (07:21)
  • Chuck: “I don't know if I am or not. My dad went on a hot air balloon ride and I was like, I’m not getting in that thing.” (07:37)

• Societal Satire:

  • Chuck, on Nazi propaganda flights: “...the Nazis were like, hey, we're trying to get everybody to like us, to psych them out.” (32:32)

• On the in-flight bar:

  • Josh: “They had a bartender as well... The bartender was... a pretty popular guy.” (28:34)
  • Chuck on the Hindenburg martini: “Apparently the rest of the ingredients are lost to history.” (30:18)

• On the reporting:

  • Josh (reading Morrison, 41:04):

    “Oh, the humanity.”

• On Hindenburg’s end:

  • Chuck: “Not only did it immediately put an end to the idea of transatlantic airship flights... it put the kibosh on hydrogen as a fuel.” (52:49)

• Humor & Running Jokes:

  • Chuck, on Ben Dova: “Sounds like a Bart Simpson call into Moe’s Tavern.” (44:36)
  • Josh, on stealing museum artifacts: “Just keep your eyes off that ladder. That’s for Josh.” (54:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [05:10–06:40] Dirigible definitions and distinctions
• [09:20] Structure of the Hindenburg explained
• [12:19] Relative size and awe
• [22:01–23:49] Luxury, pricing, and elite clientele
• [24:22–25:41] Hydrogen vs. helium debate & embargo
• [27:33–31:23] Aboard the Hindenburg; amenities and quirks
• [32:00–33:34] Propaganda and pre-disaster voyages
• [38:01] Final voyage, May 6, 1937
• [39:13–40:20] Crash, fire, and casualties
• [41:04–42:38] Herb Morrison’s radio coverage
• [44:12–48:36] Sabotage theories & cultural rumors
• [49:03–52:22] Paint, spark, and “giant capacitor” technical theories
• [52:34–54:20] Legacy, hydrogen stigma, and museum relics

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Conclusion

Josh and Chuck deliver an absorbing, often funny and always informative account of one of the most iconic disasters in 20th-century history. By untangling the Hindenburg's myth, reality, and scientific mysteries—and preserving the humanity of its passengers—the hosts reveal why the disaster stuck in the public mind and spells out the technological and cultural end of the Zeppelin era. The episode balances tragedy, science, and cultural context, all while riffing on dirigibles, Nazi propaganda, and forgotten cocktails.

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For more on airships, dirigibles, and wild historical shifts, tune into the full episode or visit Stuff You Should Know’s archives.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

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[Josh Clark]

Hey, there. Before this podcast continues, I need you to fill out 37 forms about your listening history.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And Jerry's here, too. And this is stuff you should know. This is one of those ones, Chuck, that I'm really surprised we haven't done already.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And actually, boy, talk about a segue. This is about the transatlantic voyage of the Hindenburg. But before we get into that quickly, we want to remind everybody, or maybe if you're hearing this for the first time, about the Stuff at Sea voyage that we are going on in partnership with Virgin Voyages, we're taking to to the great seas, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

We are not the skies, the seas. And we are actually headlining a very special voyage called Stuff at Sea. And it's us doing our thing, including a live podcast on board, and then some of our other colleagues too. Including the stuff they don't want you to know. Guys are going to be doing their thing too on this. I think it's a five, five night voyage.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. October 2 through 7 from New York City to Bermuda. Like I said, this is through Virgin, so that means it is a kid free luxury experience. And there's also gonna be interactive sessions, there's gonna be meet and greets, they're gonna be themed activations. Whoa, wonder what that is.

[Chuck Bryant]

I also saw it described as a culture soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds. I don't think anything else needs to be said besides that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, you get it, folks. If you want to come hang out on a very large boat with us in the middle of the ocean and hear us do our live podcast along with other things, then this is going to be your only chance to ever do that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, very nice. You can go to virginvoyages.com stuff and that's in October. Cool. I don't know that this was the best episode to put that in, but we did what we did, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Well, it's not like it's the Titanic episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's a great, great. Yeah, that's a good point. That would have been.

[Josh Clark]

That would be bad because we're taking to the skies now, right? Talking about what happened on May 6, 1937 when the Hindenburg dirigible crashed, burst into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey. And I am also surprised we haven't covered this. This is, you know, I didn't really know much about it. I knew the Hindenburg crash and I'd seen the footage and heard the stuff, the commentary, but I was like, yeah, man, they built that thing and they tried it out and it crashed. I didn't know that they had successfully flown this stuff a bunch and that there were even worse airship disasters than this. This is just the most well known for reasons we'll get into.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was pretty shocking to see and it was really well documented. But yeah, I think including me.

[Josh Clark]

Never mind. There it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

What?

[Josh Clark]

Those are the reasons.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh yeah. But including me though, Chuck, I thought it was the maiden voyage too. I didn't realize it was just part of a larger thing either. And I think the Hindenburg itself had already been on a three day publicity tour and a round trip to Buenos Aires and back from Germany before the unfortunate incident happened in New Jersey.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it had flown a bunch.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So let's talk about this. Because the Hindenburg was known as an airship, which was also known as a Dirigible, which you mentioned a second ago, and there's actually specific criteria to be a dirigible. And the Hindenburg just checked all the boxes.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. Dirigible means it is powered. So it's not just floating around up there like a hot air balloon. But hot air balloons and dirigibles are the same things as far as being lifted by what's known as lta gas. Lighter than air gas. In this case, we're talking hydrogen, but also helium was almost used and now it's pretty much exclusively used.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then it means it's steerable as well. So you can, you can tell it to go in a certain direction, tell it by way of working the rudder and powering those engines, and it'll go in that direction.

[Chuck Bryant]

All you have to do is shout dirigible, go there, and it goes there.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't know that it was actually. Can be an adjective as well for steerable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dirigible means steerable. So like this car is highly dirigible because it's got great responsiveness.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, just try using that word like that, though, and see if you don't get pushback.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would think there have to be an auto journalist who's used it here, there because they're just so sick of using the same. The same terms, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, like Car and Driver magazine, the snooty writers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, exactly. So there's three forms that dirigibles come in, Chuck. And it basically all has to do with how the structure, the blimp part is well structured, I guess. The B word. Yeah, I know you're not really supposed to say that, but it's true. I mean, I think it's pretty accessible to say blimp, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we got, you know, the Eastlake golf tournament is right near my house. And so when we're hanging out at the house during the tournament, oftentimes that Goodyear blimp is directly over my home. It's very cool to see.

[Chuck Bryant]

Didn't you say you're trying to angle for a ride in the Goodyear blimp and that your in laws have ridden in the Goodyear blimp at our Akron show?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I have never done that. You know, obviously Akron is the home of Goodyear and I think the blimp still. And my father in law, Steve has at one point rode in that Goodyear blimp, but I have never done it. So if anyone can take me up and you, I mean, you're invited, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, sure, sure. I assume that if you're interested. I don't know if I am or not. My dad went on a hot air balloon ride and I was like, I'm not getting in that thing. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, after reading this, I mean, it's a different deal now, but it definitely gives pause.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, so let's get back to what the balloon like envelope, AKA the blimp part, how that describes what type of dirigibles there are. There's three of them, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. There's non rigid, semi rigid and rigid. Non rigid is more like a hot air balloon. That means there's no structure on the inside and it's just the pressure of that gas keeping everything puffed out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. And hot air balloons are what make New Mexico's license plates so nice. Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Agreed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Semi rigid is kind of like non rigid, except there's like a keel. There's like a structure for the keel, the part that runs along the bottom of the envelope, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there is some structure to essentially the bottom, but then I guess it flops over. So it's basically like a chef's hat. Like the Swedish chef's hat.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it flies. Right. And then rigid is the last one. There's like a skeleton like frame, usually of a really light but strong material, maybe aluminum. You sent a YouTube of colorized photos of the Hindenburg, the interior in particular, and they said that its skeleton was made of duralumin. Have you ever heard of that before?

[Josh Clark]

I had never heard of it, so of course I had to look it up. I'm sure you did too. That's an aluminum copper alloy, Right. That's as strong as soft steel, whatever that is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I don't know what that is either, but if it's not exactly what it sounds like, then somebody messed up naming it.

[Josh Clark]

It's a lot lighter than soft steel, obviously. And in the case of the Hindenburg, and I learned this all from that YouTube video, it's pretty cool to see those pictures as well. There are 15, as they describe them, Ferris wheel like rings that gave this thing the shape in between those rings. And this is something I didn't know. There were 16 separate balloons between those rings, and that whole thing was covered with Goodyear latex and then a cotton, like canvas fabric outer shell.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So the outer skin, the envelope was not what the gas was filled in. Like, it was in these basically bladders inside the envelope, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

How many were there? Like 14, I guess.

[Josh Clark]

Then I think 16 balloons. We all should mention that cotton canvas fabric was Coated with their protective coating, because that'll come into play.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It kept the sun off, essentially, so that the sun wouldn't heat the gas inside and so that the UV rays wouldn't break it down into useless. I don't know what you'd break hydrogen down into. I guess ions, I don't know. So the other thing about the rigid one, and I had no idea about this either, is that the, the passengers and crew usually are inside that envelope, inside the blimp. And if you look at the Hindenburg, there's like a little, you know, what's called the gondola attached to the bottom of it. And that seems to be, I think, the cockpit where if you were a passenger and you were hanging out in the Hindenburg, you were inside that blimp. I had no idea about that. Did you?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I did. Because, like, where else would they be? Because, I mean, once you find out that There are like 25 cabins and a bar and a restaurant and all that stuff, it's obviously not going to fit. I mean, you know, you could hang out there. In fact, I think they encouraged the passengers to hang out in those two, that double decked area because that's where all the windows were.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But I also learned that from watching the trailer to the Hindenburg movie when it showed a lot of action inside that shell.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, gotcha. So I just thought that the gondola was just that dwarfed by the blimp itself and that it held all that stuff. I had no idea they were inside the blimp. I find that much more claustrophobic.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And I could see how you would think that because once you get a little bit. And we'll talk about the size of this thing, but you need not only look at pictures of the Hindenburg flying over New York City to see how gargantuan this thing was.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was enormous. So that Goodyear blimp, it depends on which one you're talking about. I've seen that the Hindenburg was more than 800ft long. Almost as long as the Titanic.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. How does it Compare to the 747? Where is that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it's like three times as long as the 747 and twice as tall.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

Yeah,

[Josh Clark]

seriously, like, go look up, just type in like Hindenburg over New York City. And the scale is really kind of. It drives at home for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's really impressive. One of the other things I saw too is that it had a gas capacity of the hydrogen. It held of 7,062,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas. And to put that in perspective, that's the gas equivalent of 7,062,001 cubic foot bags of topsoil that you get at the garden center. That's how much hydrogen gas it held.

[Josh Clark]

It's a lot of gas. And of course, that's what keeps it aloft. As far as those engines, it had four diesel engines, and it moved pretty quick. I mean, as far as travel of the day, it could get across the Atlantic in two days. The fastest ocean liner trip took five. And it still had the sister ship, the LZ130. They're still the two largest aircrafts to ever take flight off the ground.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, so this is a pretty impressive ship for anybody to see, but it also was not like the first of its kind. It was the, the point that they had reached in the development of dirigibles up to that point, which had really been kind of going for almost 100 years at that point. I think it was in 1850 when the whole dirigible craze kicked off in Paris, thanks to our friend Pierre Jullien.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, that's right. There was the first one, I think was in 18. Yeah, 50, like you said, the next one. And that seemed more like a little like, hey, everybody, check this thing out. In 1852, you got the first full size one. Thanks. It was really the French and Germans leading this charge. It was a French engineer named Jules Henri Giffard. 143ft. Pretty big.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Can't sneeze at that. He also traveled 17 miles around in his first flight of his airship, which is, again, nothing to sneeze at. He was puttering around at six miles an hour.

[Josh Clark]

Literally around, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. In circles. Essentially. The first few airships just basically traveled in circles. The next was 1884. This was considered the first round trip flight. I'm not sure what Giffard was doing, but the French Army Corps of engineers, like 30 years later took their dirigible in a round trip flight. Again, a circle. This one was just four to five miles, and it had a nine horsepower motor. And that is the same size motor of a really good push mower, lawnmower.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, you know, you're up there in the sky, so you're, you don't have to give it a lot to get it going. And again, they're not going very fast. Six to ten miles an hour. All of these so far have been non rigid, by the way. The first rigid one came in 1899, courtesy of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. That's where that word and eventual band name would come from.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. Zeppelin basically became the leader in developing, designing and developing airship dirigibles at a time when it was like, this is the new thing. Like, if you wanted to get from one continent to another, you took a luxury liner. Like you said, they were kind of slow. They. Zeppelins could go way faster. And it was like the promise of airship travel was just limitless at this time. When Zeppelin came along.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And as far as the band, I can't remember who said it, this is off the dome. But somebody said something about them going over. They would go over like a Led Zeppelin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Obviously that's two contradictory terms.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And that's what they meant. They were being sort of cheeky. And of course, you know, it was. The Hindenburg was on the COVID of their first record of their debut album.

[Chuck Bryant]

One other thing, I looked up the LZ in any of the Zeppelins. So, like, the first rigid airship was called LZ1. And you mentioned not for lead. No, I thought probably it was. Yeah. But it's a Luftschif, or airship in German. SO airship. Zeppelin 1 was the first rigid airship. The sister ship of The Hindenburg was LZ130. You know, that's right. So, yes, I. I think as a rule of thumb, anytime you're taking advantage of a new technology that carries you away from Earth or carries you along Earth at really fast speeds, do not go in any models that are still in the single digits. That's just a good rule of thumb, I think.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so if the new plane comes out and it's the, oh, I don't know, Air Max 7.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just wait until they get to 10. They're going to get there fast because those next three are not going to stay around very long.

[Josh Clark]

You're right. That's good advice. So 1910 was the first commercial passenger flight this baby went. I think it carried 23 people plus nine crew on a sightseeing loop. But it crashed. No casualties.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. Get this. So this was LZ7. Still single digits.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ran out of fuel, was blown off course, and it had engine trouble and it crashed into some trees. But the fact that nobody died is pretty well happy, I guess. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Eighteen years later, we got our first transatlantic flight. And this is what they were gunning for. This thing went from Germany to where the Hindenburg would go. Lakehurst, New Jersey. It's sort of suburban Philadelphia, like east of Philly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

111:44. But this is what they were, you know, they were looking for, you know, the next wave of like taking people. It wasn't just like wowzer stuff or hey, like we tried it once. They were like really trying to compete with ocean liner travel.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I say we take a break and we come back and get into that a little more. How about that? All right.

[Josh Clark]

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[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

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Hey, everyone, it's Rider Strong and Will Friedle from Pod Meets World. And now the Pod meets Twirled podcast. We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV who now have covered Dancing with the Stars. Traitors. And we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So, yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of Survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just gonna remind you, I have watched some Survivor I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like it? Like, yeah, just because we. Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion of the 50th season. From the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate pleas of finalists to a bunch of ha oo ha ha oo ha ooh. Again, we are experts, so make sure to tune into Pod Meets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to Pod Meets twirled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Foreign. Okay, Chuck, so like you were saying before the break, the, the Zeppelin development had gotten to the point where it's like, we can get across the Atlantic. We can get down to South America anytime we want, like no problem. We've reached that point. Let's just start creating dirigibles that are meant for transatlantic travel. Like, let's really put a dent in the ocean liner industry. We're just going to create a new travel industry and that's what they set about doing. So the, the Hindenburg LZ129 was the part of this larger planned fleet of specifically transatlantic luxury zeppelins that were going to essentially change the world and make it much smaller.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. It was, you know, it was luxury in the sense that it was an airship that catered to rich people. If you look at the pictures, it looks nice, but it's still not like anything you would get on board like the Titanic or anything like that just because it was an airship. So they couldn't, you know, there are obvious weight limitations and size limitations. Like the cabins were really, really small, but they, you know, they were good, good looking enough for the crowd that they were catering to, which is really rich people. Because I think it costs like in Today dollars, like $10,000 compared to about half that for an ocean liner. Transatlantic ocean liner voyage.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, those are one way too. Not like our voyage in October, which is round trip.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. They're bringing us back, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're just gonna leave us stranded in Bermuda.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, they could drop us in Atlanta on the way home, I would think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's a great idea. That's a wonderful idea. Chuck will ask. Okay, so yeah, I mean there, it was expensive, but it was also very new. Right. So you can imagine, I mean, luxury ocean liners have been doing this for a very long time. By the time they reached that, that cost of about $5,000 for a luxury liner. So you can imagine that like the Zeppelin company had their eye on bringing costs down eventually so that more people could afford it. Yeah, but, but in the meantime, to start, I mean, that's kind of what you do. You attract everyone's attention by getting the richest, most famous, most powerful people that come fly on your friendly skies. And then newspapers write about it. Like, oh, my gosh, did you see Mrs. Astor 800ft up, hanging from the outside of the Hindenburg? It was amazing. You could see right up her dress. That's what. That's what newspapers want to write about, you know, and so that's what they were doing. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And today Mrs. Esther's equivalent, I guess, is Katy Perry.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's exactly right, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

What a time to live.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was amazing.

[Josh Clark]

So I mentioned hydrogen and helium as the lta lighter than air gases used to power anything like this. And they had a real decision to make early on with the Hindenburg, like, what to use. And the original design was hydrogen, but then they said there was a crash in 1930 of the British Airship R101 was out of the single digits.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Still crashed, Survived impact. But everybody died in the hydrogen fire because hydrogen turns out super flammable. So Hugo Echner said, you know what, let's go to helium. It's way more stable. It's a little bit heavier, so we're going to have to design a larger envelope so we can keep that same payload. But then there was a US Helium embargo, and the United States was the only maker and seller of helium at the time. And so they said, all right, you know what, let's go back to hydrogen, and let's just cross our fingers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there was a helium act of 1925 that I never heard of that the US is like, this is a natural resource that we really need, so we're just going to keep it all to ourselves.

[Josh Clark]

We did a podcast on that at some point. Right, on helium.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, we definitely talked about it because there was a shortage, and it was all. Everybody was really worried about it going away. And then all of a sudden, we found a huge new vein of it in the United States, and now there's no problem with helium anymore. Stuff like that makes me feel like we are definitely in a simulation sometimes. You know, it happens a lot. Like, people are like, oh, we're hitting peak oil, or we're going to run out of helium and all this horrible stuff's going to happen, and then nothing happens. Like something comes along and just completely does away with that randomly.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

At any rate, that was not the case for the designers of the Hindenburg. They had to go with hydrogen, like you said. And because they had made that envelope so much bigger to accommodate the more helium that they were going to need, they were Going to now have to fill the whole thing with hydrogen. So they added a bunch more passenger cabins to basically, well, make more money, but also to make it heavier so that it would do all the same things it would have had it been helium.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So it wouldn't float away.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty much.

[Josh Clark]

Pretty much. We went over some of the sizes I think we should probably mention the cruising speed was 76 miles an hour with a topper of 84 miles per hour. In total, you've got about 40 flight crew, 10 to 12 stewards and cooks, as we'll learn. There was a bartender as well. And then 50 passengers in 36, and then up to 72, I guess, because they built those extra cabins.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, right, right. And that was 1937 season, and I think 1936 was the only complete season in the Hindenburg service. One other thing that I was trying to get to the bottom of that was surprisingly hard to find was its cruising altitude.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Apparently it's usual cruising altitude, or normal cruising altitude was like 650ft or about 200 meters.

[Josh Clark]

Man, that's impressive.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is impressive. But they would usually fly lower to basically fly under clouds rather than through or over them. So. Yeah, I mean, these things I saw somebody say, like, these are. They were flying at the height of like, you know, the tallest trees in the world. Like, it. It wasn't that high up that they were flying.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, also, I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but you want people to see this thing if they're trying to drum up business.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And again, those pictures over New York City, that thing is pretty low.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is, like, kind of concerningly low, actually. Yeah, yeah. So, Chuck, just a little more about what it looked like inside and what it was, you know, like aboard the Hindenburg. Remember, these were luxury, like state of the art luxury accommodations in the mid-1930s, but they also had to adjust for weight and stuff like that. Like you were saying, it seemed like there was Formica everywhere. Like, it looked like the walls were made of Formica, even.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally. A lot of Formica. But that jived a little bit with sort of the Art deco look that seemed like it ran throughout.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. They dressed for dinner. Like you would think there was an aluminum piano made specifically because a baby grand would just be too heavy. Yeah. And they had, of course, incredible meals in this incredibly cramped dining room.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then there was a smoking room, which at first I'm like, well, of course there's a smoking room. It's the 30s. And then I was like. Hydrogen dirigible. That is actually pretty remarkable.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It had a double airlock. Apparently there was one lighter. So they didn't trust people to, you know, just to bring their own lighter. So there was one lighter that would light everyone's cigarettes, I guess, or whatever else they were smoking pipes, I imagine. Cigars, blunts, who knows? The bartender was. I can't remember the guy's name, but they talked about him in the YouTube video and he seemed to be a pretty popular guy. And there's one story of a famous passenger who created a drink, or I guess rather his wife did. British author Leslie Schoteris, who created the Saint. Yeah, franchise. His wife Pauline was aboard and apparently they ran out of gin, like probably pretty fast. A lot of gin based drinks back then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So she created a martini made from Kishwasser, which I looked up, which is like some sort of a cherry thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's like a cherry brandy. It's really good.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you've had it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Remember when I was like super into making cocktails?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, I've used like the cherry, like the Luxardo liqueur and stuff. Is it sort of like that?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's much lighter and not. It's not nearly as syrupy and heavy. It's more of a spirit than like a syrup. You know what I mean?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, because the. Yeah, Luxardo is a liqueur, but the other one is like a legit Nani proof, you know, kind of thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Where you're like. But it is very good and it's like a cherry flavor. So she used that instead of gin. And apparently. Did the bartender die because like supposedly the rest of the ingredients are lost to history.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, I guess Pauline must have died or else she could have just probably told everybody. By the way, like after this tragedy settles, I created a whiz bang of a drink up there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. Remind me to tell you about the Hindenburg cocktail I came up with. But I saw somebody surmise that the other ingredients were probably driver mouth, which would make it a martini. Grenadine. And not like Rose's grenadine, but like the real pomegranate syrup and a lemon peel.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that sounds nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure, I would try that.

[Josh Clark]

So what else? They had that piano. Oh. The cabins had running hot and cold water. They had a little fold down desk, but they were small. The crew cabins were just like you would expect a crew cabin to be, very small. It looked like those beds were a couple of feet Wide.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there were bunk beds, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So with the art deco ladder, no less. Too pretty, of course. It was kind of cool looking. I'm not a huge fan of the 1930s aesthetic.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I love it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like the ladders.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

For the bunk beds.

[Josh Clark]

I'm big into deco. Maybe you can get one of those off of ebay or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man. Like a Hamburg ladder. It's probably dead or gone up in flames, I would guess.

[Josh Clark]

Well, some of that stuff survived is in a museum.

[Chuck Bryant]

True.

[Josh Clark]

So you couldn't buy it, but maybe we could, you know, bust it out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. If we could break into the Smithsonian, get that ladder for you, just pass everything else by and go straight for the Hindenburg ladder.

[Josh Clark]

That's it. That's all you want.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I'd be like, I'd get it home and be like, I don't even have bunk beds. So this is all getting lots of press. Like, this is a big deal. Remember, the Hindenburg was part of a planned transatlantic fleet. So this is big news. One thing that a lot of people forget is that the Nazis were in charge of Germany at the time. The Hindenburg was a German ship. It was a civilian ship, but it still had big fat swastikas on its tail fins. And I, as everyone knows, the Hindenburg went up in flames. I think it's no coincidence that its tail went up in flames first because why wouldn't it? Right.

[Josh Clark]

That's a good point. I didn't think about that, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the Nazis were like, hey, we're trying to get everybody to like us, to psych them out. And let's send the Hindenburg on a three day publicity tour around Europe. Essentially, that was its maiden voyage in March of 1936.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They did a lot of these little propaganda flights and apparently the one that lifted off on May 6 had some engine trouble, but they had had to skip endurance test because of one of those propaganda flights. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They were like, it'll be fine. They apparently think that they would have found the engine troubles. But the Hindenburg made its first passage to America in May of 1936, which is confusing because it was May of 1937 when it had its last. Its last voyage to America. So almost exactly a year later, in between its first trip to America and its last trip to America. Yeah, it got me all throughout researching this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wait, what? How are these people alive? And then. Right. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They completed 34 flights in 1936 which included some of those propaganda flights, one of which very famously, at the 1936 Olympic Games there in Berlin and then, you know, round trip flights to America and then the one to Brazil that you mentioned. And they had, you know, they were catering like you mentioned, the Astors, you know, Nelson Rockefeller, the head of Eastern Airlines, twa, Pan Am, like, I think they were kind of rubbing it in the face of all these early airlines, right. Saying comply on this super slow but kind of awesome thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wonder also if they were like, hey, don't you guys want to start your own airship division? We'll sell you airships, you know. Yeah, I bet it could have also been a little of both.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I bet you're right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That millionaires flight you mentioned, Eddie Rickenbacker was also on that and he's the American flying ace from World War I who took down the Red Baron.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I'm sure it was a tad awkward around the other German military, Nazi leaders who were on that millionaire's flight too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, this guy, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

So that was 1936. It was a triumphant year for the Hindenburg and it had six more successful flights in 1937 when it started. I say we take a break and come back again and things just start to go poorly for the Hindenburg. How about that?

[Josh Clark]

All right, we'll be right back.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious various guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week. My guests SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey everyone, it's Rider Strong and Will Friedle from Pod Meets World. And now the Pod meets Twirled podcast. We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV who now have covered Dancing with the Stars, Traitors, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of Survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just going to remind you, I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, just because we.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

Yeah. We'll be recapping the big conclusion of the 50th season from the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate pleas of finalists to a bunch of ha, ooh,

[Chuck Bryant]

ha, ha, ooh, ha, ooh.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

Again, we are experts, so make sure to tune into pod meets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to PodMeet's Twirl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

[Podcast Announcer]

your podcasts agency the ability to know that we're the experts in our own body on the podcast. Cultivating her space. Dr. Dom and Terry Lomax create a space where black women can show up fully and be heard. I wholeheartedly think, you know, you hit 30, you shouldn't have to share a room with anybody. From navigating friendships and healing to setting boundaries and prioritizing your mental health, these are real, honest conversations we don't always get to have out loud. Totally unreasonable with different parts of life. Right. Like, oh, have all three meals and make sure you're mindful during all of them. Absolutely not. During one meal. I'm standing. I'm standing and handing my children food. Because healing, empowerment and resilience aren't just ideas, they're practices. And this mental health awareness Month, there's no better time to pour back into yourself. Listen to Cultivating her space on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

All right. I was confused by the May stuff as well, because here we are in May again, one year after the first commercial passage in 36.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

All those successful flights later, the seventh one of the new year, on May 3, 1937, Captain Max Press was at the helm, and it lifted off there in Frankfurt, headed toward Lakehurst. There's a naval air base there, by the way. Which is why they kept going to suburban New Jersey.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which is kind of shocking. They were letting the Nazis land blimps at a naval air base in New Jersey.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, this was still. I mean, this was just before. They probably would have said no.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right, right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So they got all the way there. They flew. And that's sort of the cruel tragedy of this is. Or one of them is, you know, if there were any nerves, they're like, landing in New Jersey, and they're like, this is great. We made it. Everybody. We're all sort of drunk. We put out our last cigars. It was a storm. There was a storm happening. So they sort of delayed the landing. They flew out over the ocean for a few more hours. I imagine everyone got even more liquored up. And Then finally, around 7pm they descended in high winds from about 500ft down, down, down to a little under 300ft. And they actually dropped those mooring ropes, which turned out, spoiler alert, could have caused this whole thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And they secured those ropes at 725. They secured those ropes to the ground with their winch system, and in less than 30 seconds, it was all over.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But the ropes bear this in mind. The ropes had been dropped and touching the ground for at least four minutes by this time. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, yes, it took, I think I saw 34 seconds from the time when the flames erupted to the time when the entire thing was destroyed and crashed on the ground. It went that fast. Like I said, the stern, the tail of it caught fire first, and the flames just kind of blew through the envelope and came out the nose. And what's just mind boggling is that as it landed on the ground, because it was a light skeleton, but not something you would want to land on you. And in fact, one of the ground crew died from the skeleton landing on him. People. Once it hit the ground, people were running out of the flames and survived. They were running for their lives, and they actually made it, which is crazy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, we'll go ahead and go over the numbers. Two thirds of the people basically survived. There were 97 people on board, total 36 passengers, 61 crew. And only 36 people perished. 13 passengers and 22 crew. And then the one ground crew person that you were talking about, and very famously, it was called Live by a Chicago radio reporter named Herb Morrison.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And I think we should either. I'll either read it. Well, I'll read it. But hopefully we can replace it with the real thing. Like, surely this is, like, within the public domain. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I saw Uncertain according to the Library of Congress.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, shall I do it then?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, do it. Can you do a great Herb Morrison impression, though?

[Josh Clark]

I'll do my best.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wait, can you do it as Jim Morrison?

[Josh Clark]

Maybe I should do it as Sammy Davis Jr. Just to give it some light.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would love to hear that, if you're okay with that.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, I can't do that. That would be. Even this decades later, it would be disrespectful, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I guess it hasn't been a hundred years.

[Josh Clark]

No. All right, so here we go. This was Herb Morrison's call, and this is what was played and literally played in movie theater newsreels, like, the next day. So it's all over the place. It's fire and it's crashing, it's burning Bursting into flames. And it's falling on the mooring mast. This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh, it's crashing. Oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky. And it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke and there's flames now. And the frame is crashing to the ground. Oh, the humanity. And all the passengers screaming around here. I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen, honest. It's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage, and everybody can hardly breathe and talk. Honest, I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was excellent. If you listen to Herb Morrison actually doing this, he's in between a lot of these sentences like, oh, oh. He is just completely overwhelmed. It happens immediately. The moment he sees those flames, he's just completely overwhelmed. Go listen to her. Morrison calling that because it's just. It's quite stirring. And he's the one who gave us that. That phrase. Oh, the humanity.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, apparently that's where that comes from. I did. I just kind of wanted to do a straight reading. I didn't want to do all the moaning.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no. I mean, no one expected you to do that.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I didn't want to arouse anybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you've always got your eye like three steps ahead, man.

[Josh Clark]

I hope so, but, yeah. Oh, the humanity. That had never been said before. Is that true?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I don't know if it had been said, but certainly Herb Morrison was the one who popularized it. It's. It seems to me like everything that he said was just pouring out of him without thinking.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I would guess that was just off the cuff for him.

[Josh Clark]

Man. It's amazing. So again, only 36 of the 97 people aboard perished immediately. There were about 1,500 U.S. navy personnel there that were all of a sudden doing not much of a search, but just rescue attempts. And like I said, it was all over the news the next morning. It was on movie theater newsreels. Within hours, both American and German investigators were there. And immediately theories started coming out kind of left and right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So this is the 30s. Everybody's already starting to get wise to what the Nazis are like. There's also Communists running around, maybe even old school anarchists who like to throw bombs. So the idea that it was an act of sabotage was bandied about very quickly. Yeah. One of the first people who had their eyes set on them was a guy named Joseph Spey. Have you. Did you see his professional name?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, no, I didn't I saw. He was an acrobat.

[Chuck Bryant]

But he was an acrobat. He was also an actor. He appears in Marathon Man. Apparently he's the guy who dies in the car crash that starts everything off.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

His professional name as an acrobat was Ben Dova. I'm not kidding. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Yeah. So he. I'm just going to call him bend over from here on out.

[Josh Clark]

Sounds like a Bart Simpson call into Mo's Tavern.

[Chuck Bryant]

It totally does. He was deemed suspicious by one of the stewards, a German steward aboard the Hindenburg. And apparently the German steward told the authorities who were investigating this that he found Joseph Spendova, quote, unsympathetic to airship travel. Like, he wasn't just overjoyed or blown away by it, apparently. Which is spoken like a true everyday fascist pos, if you think about it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But he might also been like, I'm Ben Dova. You think? Like, you should see what I've seen.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. Well, that was one of the other things too, that when he was being investigated, they were like, he's also an acrobat. He could probably climb around inside the skeleton and plant a bomb. So apparently they found zero evidence to that of, like, supporting him being a bomber whatsoever.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I have not seen the film from 1975 with. What's the guy's name? George C. Scott and. And Ann Bancroft, among others. But it seemed from the trailer that they fully, like, just fictionalized and that it was a bomb and it was sabotage and that was the movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really? I didn't know that. That's lame.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's what it looked like to me. And apparently it was a $15 million movie at the time, which was a lot of dough in 1975 for a movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. What was going on with blimps and disaster stuff in the 70s? Cause there was also that movie, Black Sunday.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was just the peak. It was peak disaster film. So they were looking at all angles, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha. I should have guessed that there were other people who were considered for sabotage. Anti Nazis. Sure. There was one that. That said the Zeppelin company and. Or the Nazi party blew up the ship for insurance money.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was one.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was. I think it was covered for $15 million. And according to West Egg, that's about $355 million today. Do not think the Nazi party would not have considered doing that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Bombs being fired at from below, from above. The one thing they do know for sure is that the hydrogen was what caused it to go up in flames in like 30 seconds. There is no controversy about that. How that happened is still not for sure known. Witnesses said that as the ship approached, it appeared to be glowing before the fire even started. And so at the time, scientists heard that and they were like, oh, okay. Well, it gathered an electrostatic charge because of these storms that were going on, and that there was probably like a hydrogen leak and that's what ignited the whole thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. The thing is, that electrostatic charge, if it had like sparked, it would have had to have sparked exactly where that hydrogen leak was and across an 800 foot dirigible. The chances of the spark and the leak happening at the exact same spot are pretty low.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Yeah, I agree.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there's other theories that are. That. That try to basically. Basically everyone agrees there was. It was. There was an electrostatic charge. Somehow the electrostatic charge sparked. Somehow that spark set off the hydrogen explosion. Almost everyone agrees on that. But within that, you still have a lot of room to maneuver around and figure out what exactly led to this disaster. And what's amazing is that we still don't know today.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, there've been a lot of books written about it over the year. There was one in 1962 called who destroyed the Hindenburg by A.A. hoehling. And they blamed a ground rigger named Eric Spell, who was actually on the crew. He was inside the blimp and apparently blew it up to appease or to his communist girlfriend. But I don't know if he survived or not. But that doesn't make sense. And I don't think there was any evidence at all about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. And now that I see Michael Mooney, he wrote a book called the Hindenburg, and that movie was based on the Hindenburg. And he basically used that theory. So that's why they would have made it like a bombing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He must have been the character in the movie that I saw that was running around up to no good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ben Dova is a character in that movie, but he goes by, I think, Joseph Spiel. I think, oh, this is a missed opportunity. Oh, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's also a theory about incendiary paint, which is basically a scientist from NASA named Addison Bain, who. His career is based on creating hydrogen fuel propulsion systems. Right. Using hydrogen as fuel.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So he's pro hydrogen.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very much so. He had an idea that, no, the hydrogen was. That was secondary. That what really ignited first and then eventually ignited the hydrogen was this coating on the outer shell of the envelope which we Talked about that kept the sun's rays off and that that ignited. And he really went to town on this. Apparently he had a television special and had to really work at getting an actual piece of salvaged envelope from the Hindenburg. He burned it on tv, but he really had to bend. He had to bend over backwards to get this thing to light. So essentially his own demonstration proved to critics like, that theory doesn't hold hydrogen.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was debunked. Boy, you were just flying all over the place with these jokes and double entendres. Very impressive.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks. I appreciate you noticing.

[Josh Clark]

The giant capacitor theory, that was just like five years ago. There's a Caltech professor named Konstantinos Giapas, not sure where he was from, but he offered a different take on the ignition source. I think there was a PBS show, Hindenburg Colon the New Evidence. And here was the deal. There was that outer skin that we were talking about, but that skin wasn't directly wrapped on the frame. It had these little wooden spacers, like hundreds, I would imagine thousands of these things spacing it out so it didn't actually touch the frame. And his proposal was that when the ship dropped those ropes that we talked about, and I said to put a pin in it, that the space between the ship's skin collected a lot of positive electrostatic charge during that storm. So that the area between the skin and the metal frame collected electrons when the ropes hit the ground. And it turned it into just a big, basically a giant bomb, a big energy storing capacitor that was dotted with these little capacitors like ignition points, essentially.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's. So that's what he. His. That's what we were saying, that the ignition point, the spark and the hydrogen leak being at the same spot was very unlikely. And what Giapas basically said was like, no, all those spacers became capacitors themselves and they were all storing all this energy. Negative on the frame, positive on the skin. And all it took was one spark for all of them to start sparking. And if you have hundreds or like you said, thousands of little capacitors sparking at once, it's going to blow up a hydrogen dirigible, and it's going to do it pretty fast. And I said that there was four minutes in between the time when they dropped the mooring cables to the ground and the time the Hindenburg blew up. And in this, in one of the tests that Giapis ran for NOVA for this program, he basically ran essentially the same situation that the Hindenburg would have gone through under his theory. And it took four minutes for it to build up enough of a charge for the capacitor to spark.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, this sounds pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I like this one a lot too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it's the most recent one. I guess the others have been debunked. So, you know, I'm bandwagoning, admittedly, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So. One of the things that a lot of people aren't aware of is that the Hindenburg, when it went up, not only did it immediately put an end to the idea of transatlantic airship flights, or airships in general, aside from Goodyear, who braved on.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It put the kibosh on hydrogen as a fuel. That's why people like Addison Bain in the 90s were coming up with these things trying to defend hydrogen. They're saying, no, it's safe, it's safe. And people are like, did you see the Hindenburg? You're a fool. And apparently it is safe in some ways compared to, like, gasoline.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, there are new airships happening, and there's, you know, there's people working with hydrogen again. So it's like, enough time has passed to where they're looking into this kind of thing again. I think the Pathfinder One, Google co founder Sergey Brin is the sort of brainchild behind that one. That thing is 408ft long, and I think is still. Like, none of these things are commercialized yet. They're, like, still in testing phases and development phases.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And they all run on helium, not hydrogen, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, hydrogen's being used for other things, but, yeah, they're still. I don't think they could ever use hydrogen again for something like this.

[Chuck Bryant]

We've talked about the Hindenburg before. It must have been on, like, one of the videos we did, because I remember a saying that none of the people who jumped. No, none of the people who didn't jump died. That it was only the people who jumped from the Hindberg who died. That's not true. That is a urban legend. And we. We kept it going, but this was 15 years ago, so. Come on, give us a break.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Yeah. If you want to see parts of it, I told you, the summit is in the Smithsonian. Some of the pieces of the ship, some of the luxury stuff, you know, kind of like the Titanic survived. The National Postal Museum has some stuff, obviously. The Air and Space Museum has some stuff, and that's where you can see it. Just keep your eyes. Keep your eyes off that ladder. That's for Josh.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks, man. I appreciate you looking out for Me like that. Since Chuck is looking out for me with Smithsonian art artifacts, that means obviously it's time for listener mail. Guys,

[Josh Clark]

this is just a really nice email from Michael in Columbus, Ohio. Hey guys, just wanted to give you thanks for being one of the most consistent aspects of my world for almost two decades. I started listening when I was 10 years old, on and off of course at first, but in the last couple of years I've been listening to new episodes every week. Such a gift you've given and are still giving to this world, sharing your stories, perspectives, perspectives and jokes and rants and spectacles with us. I truly hope you too and Jerry and all the people who help behind the scenes are able to recognize the benefit and impact of having consistent worldly discourse. Being able to turn on a podcast and learn about landing on the moon or the wonders of the world or anything in history really inspired the learning in me and continues to spark my curiosity every week. Josh, Chuck and team, you guys rock. Thanks. From a 27 year old kid trying to figure out this world, hope remains alive and that is Michael and Columbus.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man alive. That was really great. Thanks a lot, Michael.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that inspires us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm inspired to go another 18 years, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

I hope I live that long.

[Chuck Bryant]

You better, man.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I plan on it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, well, if you want to be like Michael and send us just a really. Gee whiz, that's super nice email. We love those. Love them. You can send it off to Stuff. Podcastheartradio.com

[Podcast Announcer]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartradio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartradio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Oh, no.

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[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Josh Clark]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

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Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week. My guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs Banter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

[Guest or Advertiser Voice]

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Announcer]

The story I told myself can then shape my behavior and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection this Mental Health Awareness Month. Tune into the podcast Deeply well with Debbie Brown. If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you to hear more. Listen to Deeply well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.