Funny / Well There's Your Problem

• Justin gives a shout out.
• Episode 1: The Silver Bridge Disaster
  Justin: The locals on the other hand, assigned the blame to none other than Mothman.
• Episode 2: Sampoong Department Store
  Justin: A Catholic, a Muslim, and a Jew walk into a podcast. It's us. We're the joke.
• Episode 3: SEPTA Regional Rail Meltdown 1979-1992
  Justin: ... so they also wanted to in addition to building the tunnel they wanted to switch one of the Pennsylvania railroad lines over to the Reading side by building something called the "Swampoodle Connection".
  November: I beg your pardon.
  Justin: It's in a neighborhood called Swampoodle.
  November: Okay. Fine. It sounds like an airport novel.
  Justin: The Swampoodle Connection
  Liam: Thank God in England there's no crazed names for anything dating back to whatever, the Roman conquest.
• Episode 4: Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse
  November: You know it's not actually up to code to have the hallways be like a Junji Ito faultline thing where you just fit the person into them with no space.
  Justin: This is my hole, it was made for me!
  November: It was made for me and then it went through a series of revisions before being stamped and...
  Justin: It's just the hole, it's supposed to be made for you, but it's just a LEGO guy.
• Episode 5: The Politics of Traffic Engineering
  Justin: Left to their own devices, traffic engineers will always build New Jersey.
• Episode 6: MS Estonia
  Justin: Much to the chagrin, of course, of rednecks in the West, and the Cummins Diesel Corporation, the Soviets have always had us beat at rolling coal.
• Episode 7: Lac Mégantic Disaster
  • Justin quotes one witness account who sees the locomotive before the crash, barreling down the tracks with its lights off, in the middle of the night, with sparks coming out both sides. November and Liam take a moment to admit that, ignoring all the death it's about to cause in a few instants, it's an awesome visual worthy of an album cover. November opines that it's probably how her teenage self would've wanted to die.
• Patreon Only Bonus Episode 1: Groverhaus (Link goes to free preview)
  • November gives one of the early slides the poetic title of "Grover Climbing out of his Well to Shame Mankind" and it all goes downhill from there.
• Episode 8: Three Mile Island:
  • Justin using Layman's Terms to describe nuclear power as "spicy rocks in water making bubbles that turn a fan".
  • While discussing Three Mile Island, Justin begins describing the Water Hammer phenomenon. November chimes in that Water Hammer diagrams always look extremely metal◊." The crew immediately start trying to one-up each other by saying "WATER HAMMER" as dramatically as possible before November adds "In the grim future of Water Hammer 40K there is only—" before Liam complains of her stealing his joke.
  • Referring to Chernobyl as a Groverreactor
• Episode 9: Grenfell Tower Fire
  Justin: That's the traditional social housing that was advocated for by guys with mustaches and stovepipe hats.
  November: Yeah, but then there was one guy, with a slightly different style of moustache, who kind of interfered with all of this.
  Justin: Uhh.
  November: Nope, nothing? Making an Adolf Hitler reference, because he fucking bombed Britain hard enough that some sizable percentage of the housing was just totally destroyed.
  Liam: Fuckin' Hitler. Goddamit.
  Justin: I didn't make the connection because I was thinking of, I don't know, maybe it was like there was some good social reformer in Britain?
  November: Well there are a couple, but actually not with mustaches weirdly, because they tended to be Quakers...
• Episode 10: Roads for Rails - the Newfoundland Railway
  Justin: It was chaos and pandemonium at the ports; initially no-one could even figure out which company they were supposed to be working for.
  November: Railroad operating license given to one "Franz Kafka"?
  Liam: Yeah, that's me. I'll be there on Tuesday. Have to go work on the railroad, you're half bug, just like limping in with your Thermos...
  Liam: "You don't look too good, man."
  Liam: [Bug voice] "Yeah man it was a rough weekend let's just fuckin' unload this shit, ughhhhhhhhh."
  Justin: Yeah, they expect you to double your productivity 'cause you got two more legs.
  Liam: "You got two more legs Kafka, let's see you lift some shit!"
  • November mispronouncing the word "mispronunciation."
• Episode 11: The Aberfan Disaster.
  • The hosts' snark at the payout offered to the parents of the children killed in the Aberfan Disaster (£50, later upgraded to £500) goes straight into Crosses the Line Twice territory, with Liam pointing out that £50 in 1966 money is just shy of £800 in 2020. Justin then suggests that the money could be used to buy an X-Box for any surviving children. Guest Sean then points out that if you get one kid killed every month you've got something approaching Andrew Yang's idea for Universal Basic Income, which Justin refers to as "NEETbux", for "Nephew Entombed Entirely in spoil Tip".
  • November, who had been kicked from the conversation due to a power outage, rejoins the episode and asks if the others have gotten to the compensation part yet. When informed of the modern value of £50, she immediately suggests the parents could use the compensation to buy a PlayStation.
• Episode 12: Hillsborough Disaster
  November: They say Britain has no organic culture, but ... who else could have invented the Millwall Brick, folding up a newspaper so that you can sneak it through stadium security and using it as brass knuckles.
• Episode 12A: The Boeing 737 MAX
  • They had to re-record the episode three times before finally giving up and calling it episode 12A. They still managed to briefly lose Liam during the final recording.
• Patreon Only Bonus Episode 2: Liam's Van
  • Pennsylvania Secret Service.
  • Megatronix Car Audio and More. Justin emphasizes that the "And More" does a lot of work.
  • November mentions how Riley complained about the bubbles in one type of carbonated water being "too sharp." Rocz nearly dies laughing for a full minute.
• Episode 14: The Quebec Bridge
  • Justin is a solid two minutes Late to the Punchline for a bad airline pun.
• Episode 15: The Advanced Passenger Train
  • Slapstick unionism.
  • "Your station has been crushed into a cube."
• Episode 16: The Iowa Caucuses
  • The crew go over a worksheet that November describes as "an assault on the concept of maths" and then learn that they haven't even gotten to the actual disaster yet.
• Episode 17, "Atmospheric Railway".
  • Some of the early episode is given over to discussions on how amazing the vacuum seals on the atmospheric pipes (which were made of tallow and beeswax) must have smelled on a hot day.
  • A later rumour that a failure of the weather-flaps caused the vacuum seals to be exposed to sunlight, which caused rats to start eating it, led to the entire rest of the show being devoted to a Running Gag that the atmospheric pipes became pneumatic rat-delivery systems that would cover the trains in rat guts.
  • The running gag later extends to horses during a discussion on crosswalk bridges for horse carts, with the hosts joking that the "horsepower" of the steam engine powering the pipe vacuum is from all the horses sucked into the pipes by the vacuum and Justin suggesting the "Law of Conservation of Horses".
• Episode 18, "Texas City Disaster"
  • When the crew begin discussing the explosive behind the disaster, November points out that having a Muslim woman talking about Ammonium Nitrate will cause SWAT teams to come down her chimney and spends the rest of the slide going "LA LA LA!" whenever the chemical is brought up.
  • November gets a comeback when she starts discussing the potential of the crew putting the initial fire out with masturbation, and suggests the MI-5 agent still listening will probably write her off as a harmless crackpot at this point.
  • November points out that the Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Corp was apparently a real thing, and sounds like the name of a Joker hideout from Batman: The Animated Series.
  • The adventures of the last remaining firefighter after the rest were atomized, including, when asked to come in, texting back “Damn, that’s crazy, good luck.”
• Patreon Only Bonus Episode 3: The SA80 Rifle (Link goes to free preview)
  November: So, we talked about this on the APT episode, but like, the dismal nature of Britain. You made a Russian look depressed! How did we do that? How did we make Mike from Russia, who has only known making guns, and snow, and everybody he knows being killed by fascists, more depressed?
• Episode 19, "Lake Peigneur"
  • November takes a stab at pronouncing "Lake Peigneur" by working it into the sentence "shake hands with Peigneur".
    Justin: [sounding very defeated] ...I-I'll add the riff... In post...
  • The discussion on how the foreman must have felt when an entire drilling rig fell over and got sucked into a ten foot deep lake, with November remarking he probably considered whether he'd struck R'lyeh. This leads to the hosts discussing how shallow a lake you could get a lake monster into and whether there is such a thing as a 'puddle monster'.
  • Halfway through the episode, Liam ends up going on an extended rant out of nowhere on how much he hates fish. Not only does he hate fish, he doesn't respect fish. This leads to several bouts of snickering and snark from Justin and November for the rest of the episode.
  • The discussion on if blessing water to make holy water means you'd need to change the cement-to-water ratio in order to make blessed cement.
• Episode 20: 1918 Philadelphia War Bond Parade
  • DON’T SPIT.
  • The gang discusses how to deal with the one thousand plus bodies awaiting burial:
    November: Just the idea of like a Truckasaurus, but it's a hearse, it just shoves...
    Justin: Hearsasaurus!
    November: Look, we cope with the bleakness in our own ways here.
    Justin: Sunday, Sunday SUNDAY! At the Municipal Arena: HEARSASAURUS.
• Patreon Only Bonus Episode 4: Protestantism (Link goes to free preview)
  • Justin referring to Islam as the "post-release patch" of Abrahamic religions.
  • The preview segment on how Protestantism got started: The Pope wanted a new St. Peter's Basilica and wasn't willing to pay to touch up the old one.
    November: Everybody's a conservationist until they get the estimate.
  • The hosts' relentless mockery of Calvinism and the concept of predestination, and eventually settling on John Brown as the only good thing to come of it.
• Episode 21: 1953 Federal Express Wreck
  • The whole episode is generally Lighter and Softer but special attention must be paid to Justin's description of Union Station: "It's the most dark and grimy place I've ever been to that's made almost entirely of glass"
  • November's attempt at French:
    November: Hon hon hon, je ne c'est-pas brakes.
• Episode 22: Tenerife Airport Disaster
  • The "God Damn News" segment that predates the actual talk about Tenerife, containing someone who tried to ram a hospital ship with a train in Los Angeles and the Venezuelean navy losing one of their ships in trying to ram an Arctic cruise vessel designed for ice-breaking in international waters. November referring to the latter to an incident where there was stupid on both sides gets her mockingly referred to as an "enlightened centrist" by Liam.
  • November pointing out that the IRA had an authentication system during The Troubles so that British intelligence would know if a bomb threat was being genuine. The hosts then start snarking over whether or not the system had a fallback if the IRA forgot their password and whether or not that involved remembering their mother's maiden name.
  • November confusing "Churrasquería" (steakhouse) with "Churrosquería" (presumably some place that sells churros) and assuming that the Sole Survivor of KLM4805 (a woman who hadn't re-boarded the plane because she was at the aforementioned restaurant) was getting churros at the time of the impact. (In the next episode she describes this mistake as "thinking a restaurant was more delicious than it was".)
  • When the episode reach the moment of the collision, They use an image from a reconstitution made for the docuseries Mayday and Justin added during the editing that despite the show's high production values, he noticed that they altered the Pan Am Captain's "Goddamn, That son of bitch is coming!" to "That idiot is coming!" leading Justin to say:
    Justin: Because, y'know, this highly-produced graphic depiction of the deadliest aviation accident in history had to be family-friendly.
• Episode 23: Vajont Dam
  • November pointing out that after the Aberfan episode, the podcast has made dirt their Arch-Enemy. She later points out that a dam is where dirt fights water, before adding that this also means it fights fish, the podcast's other Arch-Enemy, causing Liam to almost go on another anti-fish rant.
  • November describes water going over the top of a dam as the dam "exceeding technical specifications".
  • Justin pointing out that he respects geotechnical engineers, or "dirt guys" as the hosts call them, for tussling with the dirt on a regular basis.
  • Justin steps away for a restroom break, leaving November and Liam to talk among themselves for a bit. When he returns, he finds the other two have decided in his absence that while cops aren't cool, cop cars are, especially undercover ones painted non-standard colors like green and burgundy... and that dams would be cooler if they had emergency lights.
  • Justin recalls seeing a "Danger, Dam" sign on the river during his youth, and musing to himself that maybe someday they'll get around to inventing the "Safety Dam" so they won't need signs.
• Episode 24: Kings Cross Fire
  Justin: So what makes escalators good?
  Liam: You don't have to wait.
  Justin: Yes, yeah you read the notes, thank you. Here I am trying to employ the Socratic method and you just ruin it.
  Liam: Yeah yeah, fuck your method, he's dead. I don't care.
  November: "Slave boy, it can be said that the escalator is a superior mode of transportation can it not?"
• Episode 25: The Bhopal Disaster
  • The crew having replaced the God Damn News jingle with a segment of "The East is Red".
    Liam: ...More. I want more.
    November: Oh, you want more? You want more? [plays the jingle again] I've become so powerful now that I've got a button that plays "The East is Red" at maximum volume, any time I want.
  • The God Damn News segment of the Denver man who forgot to call 811 to check if there were any cables where he wanted to dig. He ended up hitting the 811 line's optic cable, knocking out the service for the entire city.
• Episode 26: Transit in the Age of Coronavirus
  June: ...and I have an art history degree which... even Barack Obama says is worthless.
• Episode 27: Bhopal Disaster (Part 2)
  Justin:: So one of the alarm sirens goes off automatically at this point and it was too loud for the loudspeakers to be used so they followed usual procedure... and turned it off.
  November: Well, I mean look, it's an alarm siren, they're clearly alarmed, so job done.
  Justin: They also turned off the public alarm in the surrounding neighborhoods.
  Liam: Cool. Tight. Great.
• Patreon Only Bonus Episode 6: Too Many Floors (Link goes to free preview)
  • Justin's extended rant about video games and movies getting the interior of the Washington Monument wrong.
• Episode 28: Goiânia Incident
  • During the news segment detailing a tower fire in Sharjah, UAE; Justin mentions a different tower in Dubai that caught on fire twice. The name of that tower? The Torch. Cue everyone bursting into laughter.
    November: I'd love to live on the 86th floor of "Hope We Don't Jinx It Sharjah"! We call it "Hubris at the Avenue"!
    Justin: We just made a giant plaque on the top of the tower flipping off God.
    November: I mean, that's essentially what the Burj Dubai is.
    Liam: Tower of Babel episode when?
  • While looking at a map of Goiânia, November notices a place marked "Flamboyant Shopping Center" and wonders what kind of clothing you have to wear to be allowed to shop there.
• Episode 29: Print Media
  • This digression about Wawas:
  Liam: Wawas hoagies are bad now. And I'm not telling you what to do, but uh, you should probably liberate some deli slicers.
  November: This is the thing that finally gets the like FBI to kick your door in, is inciting violence against Wawas.
  Liam: The fucking sandwiches are bad now that's, that's absolutely true ...
  [November plays the FBI Raid drop]
  Liam: ...I didn't like that.
  • “You’re a goddamn newfman!!”
• Episode 30: Austrian Wine Tainting Scandal
  Justin: The Germans have a good reason to prevent intermingling with the Austrians again.
• Episode 31: Salang Tunnel Fire Part 1
  November: The image in my mind, is Liam, up the Hindu Kush trying to redline, trying to v-max a goat.
• Episode 32: Salang Tunnel Fire Part 2
  • The Gang's extended bit running with the concept of "train meat".
• Episode 33: Pier 34 Collapse
  • The gang's long aside on how Pier 34's owner refused to pay for structural reinforcement while keeping a much more expensive hobby: horse breeding, leading to a lot of jokes about horse cum.
• Episode 34: Ustica Massacre
  • November as an Operation Gladio agent.
• Episode 36: I-35W Mississippi River Bridge Collapse
  • In the buildup to the incident, November mentions there's a sound drop she'd really like to play once they get to the actual collapse. What is it?
    Drop: A man has fallen into the river in LEGO City!
• Episode 37: Costa Concordia
  • "Rail Accident at Windows XP Desktop"
  • Cruise ships, having higher centres of gravity, being called the crossover SUV of ocean liners. And, being ugly, are the Pontiac Aztec.
  • Justin listing a Long List of on-board features of the Symphony of the Seas while November and Liam get increasingly upset at the size and decadence, leading to both starting to scream over each other when they get to the two on-board climbing walls and robot bartenders.
    November: You're just trying to attack and dethrone God! Like, you're just—[Dual screaming devolves into incoherence, Justin breaks down laughing]
    Liam: That's some vintage Well There's Your Problem shit, where it's Rocz bravely trying to read through a features list while [November] and I scream at him.
    November: Robot bartenders!
    Liam: That's literally a bit from Futurama!
    November: It's also literally a vending machine!
  • Immediately following this, Liam brings up Jamie Oliver, and November's reaction thereto:
    Justin: I just read the features list, Liam.
    Liam: I know, man. There's family-style Italian from Jamie Oliver and much more.
    Justin: Oh my God...
    November: That, fucking... Thick-tongued cunt! He made all of the soda in this country taste bad!
  • The excerpt of the phone call between the drunk captain of the Costa Concordia, who had "accidentally fallen into a lifeboat" after hours of refusing to organize a proper evacuation, and the captain who took over the rescue operations. The other captain repeatedly tries to bully the Costa Concordia captain back on the ship to take responsibility for the rescue operation in person, while the Costa Concordia captain clearly doesn't want to.
    Liam: That's literally my mom's client who claimed that he had not intentionally stabbed a guy because the other guy had walked into the knife.
    November: That's a line from Chicago!
    Liam: No, he really did, though. He literally did claim, in court, that he had not tried to stab his friend over fifty dollars, the friend had run at him and had simply fallen upon the knife. I can get you the transcripts.
    November: "My friend decided to embrace the way of the Samurai, and chose an honourable death on my blade!"
    Justin: "L-look, I was already shooting. He just walked in the path of the bullet."
• Episode 38: V-22 Osprey
  • The concept of "load-bearing Jews".
  • Justin introduces the discussion of helicopters with...a picture of Donkey as a helicopter.
    Justin: In order to talk about the V-22 Osprey, I think it's useful to start by asking, "What is helicopter?"
    November: Uh, as seen here...[laughs]
    Liam: Thirty thousand moving parts looking for a place to crash.
    November: Yep. So ugly the ground repels it.
  • Nate comments that the LTV XC-142 looks like a Transformers toy that has stopped folding back the way it's supposed to.
  • Again from Nate, he says the photo of the Osprey refueling off a much larger Hercules just makes him think "Do not talk to me or my son ever again." Francis follows this up with calling the Osprey "A C130 with a pituitary gland problem."
• Episode 39: Great Heck Rail Crash
  • Liam outlines his idea for a meme poking fun at Christians accusing Jews of killing Jesus, which he'll respond to with Spongebob saying 'Want to see me do it again?'.
  • Justin describing the driver responsible for the incident falling asleep at the wheel as an 'oopsy-doopsy'.
• Episode 40: Urban Freight Rail & Industrial Sprawl
  • Justin's chart showing the comparative damage done by various vehicles starts with a 9-ton big rig at the top and ends with "Fat Man on a Freakishly Heavy Bicycle — 350lbs"
• Episode 41: 9/11
  • The episode opens with the title card "The Gang Never Forget".
  • Then, The Goddamn News segment immediately reveals Justin forgot to change the headline from the last episode ("Bullying Works" on a news story about trams), leading to an extended aside about building a bullies' union to ensure jobs in bullying remain domestic.
  • Halfway through the episode recording, the gang learns that Ruth Bader Ginsburg (a U.S. Supreme Court Justice) had just been announced dead. Liam's immediate reaction is to point out that of course she had to die on Rosh Hashanah and ask if anyone else needs any further proof that God hates the Jews.
  • Justin, who had lost track of the conversation, asks what had happened and gets told Ginsburg died. He immediately breaks into a solid minute of laughing that would impress the Joker.
  • Justin gives an apt description of the as-built drawings:
    Justin: After the work of architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, contractors, sub-contractors, and dozens of project managers come together, there are two distinct end products: The building, and the as-built documents showing how the building was finally built, and they bear a tenuous relationship at best. As-built documents display for all to see our lack of knowledge of our own creations and as such, to hide our shame, we usually store them in a rusty filing cabinet, under a leaky water heater, in a locked closet to which only two people have the keys, both of whom are retired. Ten years later when some major alteration or renovation occurs, these waterlogged documents are removed from their prison, scanned, saved as a low resolution .pdf and handed off to an intern to clean up the photo copier burn as best they can, so design work can commence.
• Episode 42: Piper Alpha
  • November and Liam take a moment to comment on how bizarre the Scottish judge uniforms look and how jarring it must be to recount how you saw your co-workers burn alive to a guy who looks like an Off-Model Santa Claus.
• Episode 43: Las Vegas Loop
  • November and Liam comparing entering the Las Vegas Loop station to storming Omaha Beach and making up a Rousing Speech on how the tourists will have to fight their way past the road outside and into the vehicles pulling in or out of the station at high speeds.
  • Justin revealing the reason that the Loop's claimed capacity to move 4,000 people an hour is even being considered in the calculations, even though you don't need to move that many people in a convention center:
    Justin: ...but, the contract Elon Musk signed said he would only get the full payout if he could demonstrate full capacity.
    November: They call me "Mr. Too Damn Deals"!
    [realization sinks in even further, November and Justin breaks down laughing]
    November: [through laughter] So he's... He agreed to do this... impossible thing on spec?
    Liam: He's a genius of our times, November.
    November: Oh, that's business. That's good business.
• Episode 44: Ghost Ships
  • Justin's various Added Alliterative Appeal-laden synonyms for ghost ships:
    Justin: Spectral sloops! Haunted hulks! Paranormal pinnaces! Spooky schooners. Ghoulish gondolas. Scary scows. Dreadful dredges. Creepy canoes. Yikes yachts. The boo barge. We're gonna talk about ghost ships.
  • They can't come up with a scary word starting with 'U' other than "uterus". Which is a pity because the result is "uterus utility vessels".
  • One of the news segments features the Greek Navy nearly losing a minesweeper after it collided with a container ship.
    Justin: In fairness to the Greeks, I lose Minesweeper all the time, too.
  • Their first picture has "bad JPEG compression" because it was taken in the 1920s and it took a whole floor of secretaries working on spreadsheets to compress it by hand.
  • After Justin mentions how the Coast Guard blew up the wreck of the Carroll A. Deering, the hosts then wonder what would happen to the ghosts afterwards, which then transitions into a similar discussion about deconstructing a Haunted House.
• Episode 46: Five-over-Ones
  November: We are connecting a pin and some red string between Saudi Aramco and why all the apartments look Like That as opposed to the usual connection of Saudi Aramco and 9/11.
  Justin: Yes.
  November: We're just gazing into this faceted jewel, one facet of which is "doing 9/11," and another is "all of the apartment buildings look like that."
  Justin: Which is worse? Who can say.
• Episode 47: Ashtabula Horror
  Justin: So in the 1840s after these trunk lines had been completed, men aspired to a singular and noble but nigh unobtainable goal, which was building a railroad from Cleveland Ohio, to Buffalo NY.
  November: JFK voice, "We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
  Liam: And some guy's just, "Ah, fuckin' Buffalo... I don't wanna go there."
  November: Which is more inhospitable to human life, the Earth's Moon or Buffalo?
  Justin: Uh, I've been to Buffalo. I didn't die. I've never been to the Moon.
  • Ashtabula's Fire Chief was apparently a notorious drunk. (Even by 19th Century standards) Considering how poorly he handled the firefighting efforts on the night of the crash (i.e. did nothing) the hosts speculate if it would've been a better outcome had his horse been put in charge instead.
• Episode 49: hindenburg
  • After long tangents about November getting canceled on Twitter and Swedish food, Justin finally decides that it's time for The God Damn News. November then proceeds to play an audio clip that is definitely not The God Damn News jingle.
    [everyone dying from laughter, especially Justin]
    November: ...I make a valuable contribution to this podcast.
    Liam: Well, we've murdered Rocz!
    Justin: [catching his breath] ...more-more of an Albany expression...
  • Benjamin Franklin, attendee at every gas balloon launch, lover of MILFs, lover of French MILFs, definitely not a serial killer, probably also the Kool-Aid Man.
  • Frank Seiberling, co-founder of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, was looking for new market for rubbers, one of which was airtight gas sacks for zeppelins. Guest Mia Mulder comments sarcastically that apparently nobody was making anything with rubbers that the company had to "scrape the bottom of the barrel". November adds that fetishes hadn't yet been invented, hence no rubber usage then. The conversation then devolves into how the Germans invented kink in 1956, single-handedly advancing material science, and the funny word that Germans (and Swedes) use for "rubber" ("Gummi"). Needless to say, November and Mia have a field day with "Gummi" for the rest of the episode.
  • The hosts are obviously amazed that the Prussian Army continued to be interested in Zeppelin's airships even when it seemed each could go no more than a few weeks at best before some manner of accident destroyed them, making them seem like a boondoggle even within the context of lavish/reckless military spending.
  • Count Zeppelin, after having to liquidate his company due to lack of investments, managed to find some "rubes who were interested in national pride" and get some money to start up his company again, in an effort that Justin calls "crowdfunding". Cue extended bit about Prussian GoFundMe.
  • Captain Chairman Doctor Hugo Eckener.
  • Ernst August Lehman was a skilled accordion player who liked to play Wagner and sometimes entertained flight guests with his playing. The hosts then joke about how Ernst would only play Wagner to the point that everyone was sick of it, and how the accordions were actually load-bearing.
  • November improves on Liam's Pun
  • One of the survivors of the disaster, Joseph Spah, was an acrobat, leading to jokes about how he survived by using various acrobatic moves, such as "the highest technology of gymnastics yet invented: a single backflip."
• Episode 51: One Meridian Plaza Fire
  • Justin's glorious attempt to illustrate the concept of hydraulic head, which leads to a return of the horse viscera Running Gag.
  • Justin mentions how one security guard in the building had ran down to the lobby all the way from the thirtieth floor, prompting the other hosts to remark about what an amazing thigh workout it must have been.
  • The "put out a fire via masturbation" gag from the Texas City explosion episode returns, topped off by a mock commercial for BlueChews
• Episode 52: 1996 Channel Tunnel Fire
  • As Justin's describing the wreckage left behind after the fire, things suddenly take a comedic turn
    Justin: Yeah, the heavy goods vehicles were basically reduced to ashes. Had to throw those out too.
    November: Yeah, "we found your truck," he says, as he brings you like a garbage bag and a shovel.
    Liam: Here you go!
    Justin: They present your truck to you in an urn.
    [cue much laughter]
    Liam: The urn itself looks like a truck so you can think about all the good times you had.
    November: I'm ceremonially scattering my truck's ashes!
    Justin: I spread its ashes at Iowa-80!
• Episode 53: New London, Texas School Explosion
  • Right off the bat, this little gem of Black Comedy:
    Justin: This is an interesting one, yeah, 'cause this is not usually the sort of disaster which occurs at schools.
  • Towards the end of the podcast (but before the Safety Third segment), Justin mentions how during the D.C. sniper attacks, his elementary school wanted to take precautions against a sniper shooting the students while they're walking to their cars, but couldn't, prompting an extended discussion about kids storming the school D-Day style.
• Episode 54: Gulf State Vanity Projects
  • Liam opens up the episode by impersonating a Jewish Mother and shaming Justin over his lack of hard drive space.
  • Liam's extended rant on the God Damn News concerning Jewish Space Lasers, complete with the intentionally incomplete Cluster Bleep-Bomb failing to cover up the whole thing.
  • One of the early slides features several images of buildings, including the Comcast Tower on its side. Justin explains it's the only way he could fit it on the slide.
    November: No, it's a radical new approach to building skyscrapers. You just take a 170 kilometer line in one direction...
    Justin: It's a radical new approach to making slides, which is that I had a couple of beers when I put this one together.
  • Justin, in explaining the backstory of the Gulf States, tries to compare the House of Saud with a podcast with a patreon. This leads to a graphic showing the Chapo Trap House of Saud.
  • The hosts' reaction to learning that Dubai didn't use its influx of wealth to build something as foundational as a sewage system, instead relying on 'poop trucks' to remove sewage until quite recently. Becomes a Call-Back later in the episode, while discussing forced relocations being made to vacate land for Neom.
    Séamus: These people don't live in squalor or anything, like people in Riyadh like to claim about them. They live in houses with plumbing and streets...
    Justin: Unlike Dubai.
  • Everyone then proceeds to lose it over the World Islands off of the coast of Dubai - namely, how much some of them don't look like the countries they're emulating. The group boggles at a piece of land under "Argentina" before declaring it to be the Falklands. November immediately imagines herself fistfighting a man from Argentina for the sole property title on the island.
  • November and Liam lose it over a Long List of features again, this time over the ridiculous malls that are being built in the Gulf States. At one point Liam sees a bunch of human-shaped statues and assumes they're immigrant labourers forced to hang off tether ropes in full-body covering looking artistic (which the other hosts point out is a fair assumption to make), and then gets mad after being corrected because after the level of decadence being shown, the proprietors of the mall somehow didn't take the next step and hire actual acrobats.
  • The Running Gag of Justin comparing Gulf State city populations and mall sizes to U.S. ones, which only further serves to confuse the other guests.
  • 150 minutes into the episode, guest Séamus is forced to leave to get food, which he had ordered for after recording the podcast. Once the gang sit down and start recording again:
    [Justin switches to a new slide showcasing the Jamal Khashoggi killing]
    Justin: So... Hi! I'm Mohammed Bin Salman, and this is Jackass!
  • There's soon mention of the time Bin Salman had a number of political opponents (including members of his own family) detained and beaten in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton. Justin points out that the hotel's slogan is "a retreat for those who simply desire the royal treatment".
  • The end bit with Justin pointing out that other petro-states can get just as silly as the Gulf States, leading to a picture of a reindeer in a keffiyeh representing Norway.
• Episode 55: The Kursk Disaster
  Milo: [in embarrassingly overblown accurate Russian accent] Why do I use highly dangerous chemicals aboard my submarine? The same reason why I bungee jump from top of my apartment block using only rubber bands — because I am man.
  • The sinking was theorized to have been caused by a faulty weld in a torpedo causing a chemical explosion. Furthermore, rescue was delayed because an automatic distress buoy on the sub did not deploy as it had been welded down to prevent accidental deployment giving away the sub's position during exercises. The hosts note the irony that of all the suspect welds done on the sub by the possibly drunk and demoralized post-Soviet-collapse naval workforce, the only one that did it's job was the one that arguably made rescue of survivors impossible.
  • The hosts going full Gallows Humor over the horrific deaths of the 'survivors' of the initial explosions — namely, burning to death when a Potassium-based re-breathing canister fell into the water.
    Justin: So, they solved the freezing problem.
    November: Yeah, you're no longer freezing.
    Justin: ...And you know what else they solved is the lighting problem.
    November: "Comrade Lieutenant has solved two of our problems at once, by setting himself on fire!"
    Milo: [In Russian accent] "Let us look at the positive side — now it is not only Mr. Putin who is barbecuing. Would anyone care to join me in a grill?"
    Liam: "Lieutenant Kebab, you've lost your legs!"
  • Theorizing that Putin's chronic tardiness to large events is because his pocketwatch is so old that it's lost several hours over the years, but no one is willing to tell him that.
• Episode 56: The Vulcan Bridge
  • Justin revealing the twist of the episode:
    Justin: So, in 1976, one year after the bridge had washed out, Robinette decided to go for broke: He contacted the foreign aid office of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
• Episode 58: The Station Nightclub Fire
  • Shortly after talking about knowing where the fire exits are, November's fire alarm goes off. A caption is printed on the screen: "not a bit this actually happened".
    November: Well I know where all of my exits are.
  • Johnny Pepperoni's Acoustic Supply.
  • In Safety Third, there's the story of a French fighter pilot nearly bombing a factory by accident on the way to a training exercise.
• Episode 59: Eschede Derailment
  • During the derailment, one of the train's wheels broke and caused a railroad switch to activate, resulting in the train suddenly moving on two tracks at the same time. What image does Justin use to describe this? Multi-track drifting.
• Episode 60: Andrew Cuomo (w/ Ironweeds)
  • Justin's incessant Andrew Cuomo impressions, and Liam's repeated threats to kick Justin's ass in response to hearing these.
    Chris: So... yeah, highest per capita death rate in the world, as far as I'm aware... And, yeah, the audacity of like, in the middle of that, writing a book, about fucking how good he were...
    Britney: Getting an Emmy! Didn't he get an Emmy?
    Chris: Yeah! He got an Emmy!
    [laughter]
    November: "Yo, all my losses was lessons!"
    Britney: Oh my God.
    Justin: [Cuomo voice] "I'd like to thank the Academy, for awarding me with this Emmy!"
    Liam: I know where you live, man.
• Episode 61: Khian Sea Disposal Incident
  • The cast introducing the ship as "pixelated boat" after the twitter personality.
  • Liam cheering on City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey like it's a sports match, complete with November playing the "go Birds" audio clip.
  • The crew's repeated use of Sarcasm Mode to hint that the company behind the incident might have been a mafia operation.
• Episode 62: Erfurt Latrine Disaster
  • The entire episode. All six minutes and thirty one seconds of it.
    • Justin getting upset about November giving actual, sincere insights on a joke episode.
• Episode 63: Infrastructure Week
  • The fact that the (pinned) top comment of the episode, normally reserved for anyone who annoys the hosts with bad feedback or criticism, belongs to Liam's dad criticising the episode for failing to take a sufficiently historical view of pre-colonial infrastructure in Native American nations.
• Episode 64: Smolensk Air Disaster
  • The crew making fun of an airport building that is inexplicably painted in camo.
  • Paul the bomb handler.
• Episode 65: Santiago Calatrava
  • The fact that on the slide explaining starchitecture, Bjarke Ingels is represented by a picture of the The Swedish Chef.^note The joke is that Bjarke sounds like "Bork", something the Swedish Chef says often.
  • November describing the Puente del Alamillo as a "penis harp"
• Episode 66: Johnstown Flood of 1889
  • Justin taking "a few bad apples spoil the bunch" literally by explaining how rotting fruit causes other fruit to spoil, which then segues into the gang discussing which fruits are which public services.
  • Liam's mock commercial for Main Line of Public Works.
    Liam: Come down to Pennsylvania's Pre-Owned Canal Lot and Sales Center! We have the best deals available for you! You want a canal? [slams table] This bad boy will fit so many boat cars in it, no problem. You want to take coal and shit from the mountains? You can take coal and shit from the mountains. You want to give a whole bunch of immigrant laborers dysentery, a whole bunch of shit no one's ever heard of, and bury them in basically a siding for 25 fucking years and then you lie about it? You can do that, no problem, no problem! Come down to Pennsylvania Excess Canal Storage! Joe, ask for Joe.
  • During the Safety Third, the crew take an aside to admire a picture of a bird sitting on a box of soil core samples and talk about ornithologists.
    Justin: Damn, you can fly, and I can't.
• Episode 67: Armored Trains
  • Liam forgetting to start recording, causing Joe and the gang to retract their "Yay, Liam!" and replace it with "Goddamnit, Liam!".
  • The crew's digression on the Czech Legion and their frankly insane train journey across Siberia, followed by the trains being captured by the Chinese and subsequently Japanese, with everyone agreeing there was probably one drunk Czech left on the train who had never left and probably ended up drafted by the Japanese army.
  • Everyone, guest included, upon discovering the Serbian way to build an armored train.
    Justin: A bunch'a Serbian railway workers decided to - y'know - help put down the Croatians, right, building an armored train, and this sorta starts out as a bunch'a flatcars with sandbags with some metal paneling over it - Eventually, they get some real armor over it.
    November: I was gonna say, I wonder what that turret is off of.
    Justin: It's not a turret. That is an entire M18 Hellcat tank destroyer.
    November: [Bursts into laughter]
    Liam: Holy shit! What?
• Episode 68: The Nedelin Catastrophe
  • Milo from Episode 55 returns and proves his podcasting chops right from the get go.
    [A picture of a missile on a truck is shown]
    Milo: Where'd you get this picture of my dick?
  • When explaining what an ICBM is, Justin replaces "warhead" with "present" leading to a long metaphor about trying to deliver "presents" on "Friends Day", and needing the missile to get the "present" to your "friend" before they can send one to you.
  • This exchange between Justin and Milo, as Lt. Col. Titov (the officer in charge of Baikonur Cosmodrome at the time) and Chief marshal Nedelin respectively:
    Milo (As Nedelin): When was the last time you shelled Berlin?
    Justin (As Titov): Same time you did!
  • Right before the catastrophe, Mikhail Yangel, the missile's designer went to a smoking bunker for a cigarette, and survived when the missile exploded. When they wondered why the Russians had a bunker just for smoking, Milo chimes in.
    Milo: In case someone were trying to give you a present while you were smoking.
• Episode 69 (nice): THE CRASH AT CRUSH
  • The opening with both November and Liam being sober and in a bad mood, leading to Liam being repeatedly censored over potentially actionable content including offering to fist-fight the listeners.
    Liam: I hate Mondays, man.
    Justin: Well, it's when we podcast, though. It's when we all hang out and...
    Liam: I know what day it is!
  • Liam and November's disbelief upon learning the mastermind behind the event was apparently named W.G. Crush.
  • The gang bemoaning the loss of train collision demonstrations in the modern era and suggesting bribing then-transport secretary Pete Buttigieg into making AmTrak resurrect the event with their obsolete train fleet.
  • The "Safety Third" segment, where a malfunctioning unmanned ground vehicle apparently almost exploded inside a V-22 Osprey by pure accident. November believes the robot was secretly Johnny Number Five.
• Episode 70: Medieval Siege Warfare
  • The repeated reference to The Lustful Turk hungering for the fortifications of others.
    Janega: Sieging is his kink.
  • The crew making detailed plans for besieging Walt Disney World and Hogwarts.
• Episode 71: Florida International University Pedestrian Bridge Collapse
  • While reading notes for a slide, Liam nearly says a cable-stayed bridge needs a "stiffer dick" instead of "stiffer deck".
• Episode 72: Schools & Childcare in the New River Valley
  • While discussing the design of Appalachian towns, the crew takes an aside to poke fun of a bakery called "The Breadman Bakery"
• Episode 73: Kaprun Disaster
  • November forgets where the "shake hands with danger" sound drop is...and activates one where the quality worsens every time it's pressed.
  • The Safety Third writer saying the security cameras are for "watching out for Osama bin Laden to do a terrorism."
• Episode 74: The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education
  • Since November is out sick, Justin and Liam have to improvise their own sound drops...poorly.
• Episode 75: The Space Shuttle
  • Due to having to record during a thunderstorm in Philadelphia, Dramatic Thunder interrupting Justin and Liam at the most opportune times.
    Justin: This is the first—this is the first time we talk about something that stays in space for extended periods of time.
    [Thunder rolls a six]
    Justin: ...With some dramatic thunder for effect.
• Patreon Bonus Episode 15: Country Music
  • After a discussion of 9/11 and its impact on country music, Liam decides to read the lyrics of Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue"
    November: [groan] Haven't we suffered enough?
    [beat]
    Liam: NO.
• Episode 76: The Halifax Explosion
  • Liam reacting to the descriptions of the Mont Blanc as if Justin is describing a girl at a bar.
  • Joe and Liam pretending the SS Imo is actually referring to Emo Music.
  • While discussing the aftermath of the explosion, Liam remarks that getting boiled alive by explosions ranks higher than getting burnt into concrete on his "Liam Fear Index". Cue aside about what the index would actually look like.
    Joe Kassabian: It's progressively more afraid Liam faces!
  • The Safety Third submitter signing off as "Hoping I Don't Get Killed by Something British".
• Episode 78: Supersonic Transport
  • November and guest Victoria Scott mock the shit out of the Lockheed L-2000's cockpit:
    November: They have answered the problem for any supersonic airliner, which is "How do you see out of the front of it?", with "You don't", which I appreciate a lot. Press your head out the side and look.
    Victoria: You can just pop the sunroof and enjoy yourself all summer.
    November: You like hold up the flight engineer's belt loops, and you get him to climb out of the sun roof.
  • Liam describes the Boeing 2707 mockup as a "turbo banana"
• Episode 79: Malbone Street Wreck
  • The Running Gag about the train driver (and others) being bribed with ball-and-stick toys.
  • November describing a sign advertising a watch and jewellery store as a "please rob this place specifically" sign.
  • While explaining the history of elevated rail in New York City, the gang makes fun of a very thin building precariously lodged between two rail tracks.
• Episode 80: Great Fire of London
  • The episode gets off on a great start with Justin realizing he chose a print from the wrong Great Fire of London.
  • Since one of The Goddamn News stories involves Andrew Cuomo's resignation, Justin's Cuomo impression naturally makes a glorious return.
  • Apparently Charles II found the idea of a toll canal so offensive that he imprisoned the architect who proposed it. The crew jokingly suggest this should be bought back for all modernist architects.
    Liam: Rem Koolhaas, live from the big house!
  • The entire Safety Third segment for the episode, which Justin aptly describes as very Looney Tunes.
• Episode 81: Palace of the Parliament
  November: [urban planning] is like Jazz. It's about the buildings you don't build.
  • The podcast devolves into leftist infighting between the communist wing (Justin and November) and the anarchist wing (Liam), which leads to Liam threatening to make a bonus episode about the failure of Communism and November drowning him out with the Soviet national anthem.
  • Guest Adam came prepared with a drop, leading to the picture of the Ceaușescu's execution being overlapped with WASTED and the following voiceover:
    [Record Needle Scratch]
    Adam: Hi, I'm Nicholai Ceaușescu, and you may be wondering how I ended up in this situation.
  • Almost two hours into the podcast, Adam suddenly wonders why Liam has been silent for most of the episode. Liam then reveals he'd accidentally muted his microphone sometime during the first twenty minutes and didn't notice; he'd spent the last ninety minutes cracking jokes and wondering why November kept talking over him. At this point Justin suggests they use Liam's recorded track as DVD Commentary for the episode, while Liam insists on making up for lost time through Hostile Show Takeover and November drowning him out with the "Shake Hands with Danger" jingle.
    Liam: Shake hands with Liam!
• Episode 82: The Pentagon
  • November brings up an anecdote about OSS agents planting dummy bombs in the Munitions Building and Navy Building (the precursors to the Pentagon) as part as their training.
    November: Apparently this was extremely easy to do, so...
    Liam: This is what we like to call radical architectural criticism, yes. Now go up there with this—this bomb just says "I don't appreciate this floor or the use of materials!"
    Justin: "I think this building is a little monotonous. You should really try to break up the massing". And then you just detonate the bomb.
  • This Safety Third segment stars a wacky nuclear physics professor who one day appeared transparent under a x-ray. The reason? He was carrying radioactive cesium in his shirt pocket and casually pulled it out when the technicians asked him about it. The gang have quite a field day with this.
    • But there's more! Then the school gets a new building...
    Justin: "When the new building for the physics department was constructed, his approach to nuclear safety was well-known to everyone, so appropriate measures were taken. So guess what they surrounded his office with."
    November: Lead. Lead. Lead. Lead.
    Liam: Hopefully lead.
    November: That steel they get off battleships.
    Justin: No.
    November: Um, fuck, what's like good, cheap shielding? Like rubber or something?
    Justin: Nope. "If you guessed lead, you'd be wrong, and you wouldn't be the first to try that guess. The answer was: teaching assistants."
• Episode 83: 1943 Frankford Junction Wreck
  • Due to November lacking sleep, the pod opens with Liam declaring that they're running on two and a half hosts today. Justin then admits he'd have made a Two and a Half Men joke but he wasn't sure it would come off as transphobic. November then declares she'll "transgend" real quick so the joke will work, leading to Liam saying she's glowing and lasers are shooting out of her head.
  • Liam coming back from another accidental muting by attempting to seduce the other hosts, only to be told it's a free episode. He then announces he's breaking up with Justin.
    Justin: ...We're not dating.
    Liam: Not any more!
    Justin: Great, fantastic. I lost a relationship I didn't even know I had.
  • The hosts bickering on whether or not they were switching bits for their On the Next segment.
    Justin: I didn't know we were switching bits.
    Liam: You don't listen to me, and this is why we broke up! You said communication is key, and yet where were you? When my sister was pregnant Rocz, where were you?
    Justin: ...You don't have a sister.
    Liam: ...Oh. Well, not that you would know, because you never listen, mister high-and-mighty!
• Episode 84: Military PowerPoints
  • There's a slide with an angry bulldog wearing a kabuto and floating in front of a torii and some artillery, with a banner saying "Warriors of the Pacific". What's this slide introducing? Instructions on finding your computer name.
    • Also, for some reason, the slide has a sidebar saying "Knowledge Is The Key", but the picture below is a lock.
  • The gang joking that the Extreme Graphical Representation-laden interface in the Ghost Recon slide is actually a forcefield.
    Francis: We can't shoot the soldier because he's got so many of these screens floating around him.
    Liam: Look at all the tabs he's opened!
    Justin: Yeah, his life was saved by a tab he had opened with Bible.com on it.
    Francis: Yeah, but if he opens one more tab, the whole thing crashes, and everybody's gonna see him.
  • The "LEVEL OF HUMAN EFFORT" chart on the Ranger School slide goes "INDIVIDUAL COMFORT RANGE" (12%), "SELF-IMPOSED LIMIT" (50%), "IMPOSED STRESS" (75%), and... TOTAL EXERTION (DEATH) (which Francis points out is on the same level as "HUMAN POTENTIAL", rated at 100%)
    • November jokes that this chart implies that if you get 6 extremely comfortable people together, that's equivalent to a Ranger. That also means the four of them (three hosts and one guest) are equal to 75% of a Ranger, so they would qualify for a tab saying "Rang".
• Episode 85: Avery Fisher Hall
  • The Safety Third writer says they're happy their co-worker was filming their "Jenga tower"-esque attempt to move the rack of safety deposit boxes because if they died, it would help their family understand why their "remains came packaged in a Campbell's tomato soup can."
• Episode 86: Winchester Mystery House
  • The pronoun check goes off in an...interesting direction.
    Justin: I'm...Justin Roczniak but with a spooky pun in there.
    Liam: Wow. I'm frightened.
    Justin: My pronouns are "boo" and "AAAAAAAH!"
    November: Goddamnit! I was gonna do that shit, fucking goddamnit dude...oh God, uh, I am, uh, fucking, Malice...Coldskull...Skellington, and my pronouns are...^note At this time, November went by "Alice", so her spooky name is based on that.
    Liam: Wow.
    November: ...they're fucking "she" and "her", alright? I can't think of another like pronoun joke.
    Liam: That is poor. That is poor form.
    November: Shut the fuck up.
    Liam: Well, I am Scre-am Anderson.
    November and Justin: Boooooo.
    November: It's not pronounced that way!
    Liam: It's not. People pronounce it like lye-am. It's lee-am, it's not that uncommon of a name motherfucker. The whole nation of Ireland demands an apology.
    Justin: Whole bunch of ghosts going "Boo", but in a displeased way, not in the usual ghost way.
    Liam: Oh yes, well I displease a lot of people, talk to my mother...who I love very dearly, hi mom, hope the move goes well.
  • Justin mentions that Sarah Winchester consulted a medium in Boston, whom he imagines had a thick Boston accent.
    November: None of us are gonna try to do one, are we?
    Justin: [doing just that] I'm channeling your husband.
    Liam: Dad?
    Justin: [still trying to do a Boston accent] He said to pahk the caah at Haahvad Yaahd.
    Liam: Stop that! I hate it when you do that!
    November: That was kinda too Cuomo. That was like Andrew Cuomo as a medium.
    Jake: [doing his own attempt at a Boston accent] You got a bunch of fucking specters after yuh....because of the freaking rifle...I...uh...[quits] no, I'm not the guy either.
  • Jake Flores describing the construction of the titular house as Sarah Winchester basically playing Fortnite against ghosts.
• Episode 87: UCSB Student Housing Cube
  • Liam pretending to worship the titular cube-shaped dormitory.
    Liam: The cube! We must pay homage to the cube! We love you, the cube! We live in the cube!
  • November points out the building is basically like an aircraft carrier, but worse...including the fact that the biggest danger is drowning.
• Episode 88: Titanic (Part 1)
  • The repeated jokes about Titanic's sister ship Olympic and her bloodlust after running down several other ships. And how Titanic wanted to get to New York to run down the Staten Island ferry.
  • The repeated references to the movie supposedly starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner (which was actually The Bodyguard).
  • November's repeatedly chanting "cursed ship", and Liam’s repetition of “Cursed by its own hubris”.
  • A discussion of the ship's amenities leads to this exchange:
    Liam: The Titanic didn't have a climbing wall...
    November: It did by the end.
• Episode 89: Titanic (Part 2)
  • It suddenly dawns on the gang just how long they've been recording, so they jokingly abridge it by saying "boat sink", which becomes another recurring gag in the episode.
  • The Heh Heh, You Said "X"-inducing names from the first part return with a vengeance, resulting in the crew having to deal with names like "Seaman John Poingdestre" (sounds like "poindexter", and yes, they get some snickers from "seaman" too) and "Archibald Butt" (who was also an major in the American Army, so he went by Major Butt).
  • Benjamin Guggenheim asks a steward to tell his wife his last words...and then accosts another steward and tells him to remember another set of last words, prompting the gang to make fun of him for trying to get a do-over. This eventually morphs into Guggenheim trying to find any excuse possible to talk about his Gag Penis, last words or no.
    Liam: "Tell them," as he's going down, lungs filling with water, "tell them...my schlong...it was big."
  • The entire saga of Chief Baker Joughin. He holes himself up in the pantry drinking "water" (that is, booze), stays there for almost the entire sinking (by the time he's done, the ship is at an extreme angle and almost entirely underwater), somehow walks off the sinking ship without getting wet, and wakes up in New York apparently no worse for wear. Kyle outright says he's his favorite character, just because his story is so ridiculous.
• Episode 90: KAL Flight 007
  • Justin's introduces the episode proper with a dark but witty summation of the disaster:
    Justin: The Soviet Union never killed James Bond, but they did get a 007.
  • There aren't a lot of pictures of the wreckage, so they have to settle with a picture of the airliner involved in the disaster. November points out that since the picture shows the plane intact, that means it is supposed to be like that, contrary to Justin's usual catchphrase of "It's not supposed to be like that"
• Episode 92: SS Leopoldville
  • November suddenly starts parodying A Christmas Carol as she's reminding the listeners that this disaster happened on Christmas Eve.
    November: "You there, boy, which pod is this?" [bad squeaky child voice] "Why, sir, it's Christmas Pod."
  • November and Liam's reactions to Justin describing how SS Leopoldville kept bumping into HMS Brilliant due to rough seas:
    Justin: This is a problem, because they're not trying to get the soldiers to jump from one boat to the other.
    November: Oh, fuck that!
    Liam: World's worst game of Frogger.
    November: Yeah, I signed up to be in a first-person shooter, not a fucking platformer.
• Episode 93: Tay Bridge Disaster
  • The extended bit at the beginning about balls and the smelling thereof.
    Liam: Rocz you are gonna have to smell my balls.
    Rocz: ... No.
  • Everything about the poem November reads at the end, "The Tay Bridge Disaster". The awkward rhythm, the sudden shift in rhyme scheme...it's truly So Bad, It's Good and very deserving of its reputation as one of the worst English poems ever.
• Episode 94: El Tren Maya
  • First things first. The guest host Eme Flores steals the show. Funny, insightful, and knowledgeable about Mexican culture and politics.
  • Regarding the Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis:
    November: The hostage taker here was a member of an intolerant minority that is an existential threat to the West. And I'm speaking here of course of him being British.
  • The British jokes continue throughout the episode.
  • Regarding Spring Break in Cancun:
    November: "You too can drink a load of awful tequila, fall off a Mayan step pyramid, and find your soul being sacrificed to Chaac."
  • The story of the first Yucatan railroads is straight out of Discworld.
  • Bat. Volcano.
  • A discussion.
    Liam: I think the whole [train system] will be controlled by the army.
    November: Yeah, but they'll make them be nice in the Northern segment.
    Eme: But even for tourists like that's kinda fucking weird. I don't know how much... [asshole American tourists] would like getting onto a train surrounded by guys with machine guns.
    Liam: It's okay. These are Americans so they inherently trust the Army.
    Eme: But these are brown people with machine guns.
    Everyone else: Oh shit.
• Episode 95: Caving Disasters
  November: So I thought I begin with a question: What is "the caves"? And you see sort of an answer here; it is when there is a terrifying existential void, when there is a hole in the world that should not be.
  • The entire crew very overtly dancing around referencing The Enigma of Amigara Fault for the first half of the episode until November finally gives in, at which point Devon and Justin reveal they've been waiting to do it since slide one.
  • November's slideshow on how a cave would gradually kill off all the members of the podcast, with episode guest Devon only escaping by dint of never going into the cave in the first place and Liam getting annoyed at November bringing up his Arch-Enemy, the fish.
  • November succeeding at turning the story of Floyd Collins from grade-A nightmare fuel into a hilarious Black Comedy of errors around the enormous amount of grifting and bizarre publicity surrounding the poor man trapped in a cave, ending with a thieves stealing Collins' body and abandoning it in a bush by a river.
  • The running gag of an eldritch double returning from the caves with whoever goes in, culminating in Devon and November describing Kill James Bond! as being hosted by Devon in conjunction with "Abi and Cave Abi".
  • The Safety Third segment, in which an army cadet demonstrates that his rifle has jammed by aiming it at his instructor and pulling the trigger. The range instructor's response is compared to something from Assassins Creed as he punches the cadet away, catches the rifle in one hand and ejects the live round in a single motion.
    • November dissolving into hysterics and being unable to finish the sentence "I may not have been a great cadet, my drill was always terrible... but I never attempted to shoot the range safety officer."
• Episode 96: John Forester & Vehicular Cycling
  • The Dutch language is an insult to both English and German.
    Jason: I have this in my notes: Liam's going to give me shit for the [figures in] Dutch.
  • This exchange:
    November: Yeah, what if you just get your cycle infrastructure out of a book. You implement it. You do it and then you just, you know, then it's done.
    Jason: That's crazy talk.
    Roz: What if you just had a book you could look in to show you what the right answer was?
    November: Yeah, it's called the Quran.
  • Palo Alto: the root of all evil in this world.
  • John Forester is essentially Venom, if Venom were lycra.
• Episode 97: Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire
  • The God Damn News is loaded with surprisingly appropriate Snark Bait.
    • Everyone has a field day with mocking the "Freedom Convoy".
      November: ...This is just purely: Justin Trudeau is a gay communist who's going to inject me with the 5G, and I don't want to. Therefore I'm going to park my privately owned tractor trailer on the Ambassador Bridge.
    • Story 2: Sao Paulo strikes sewer while trying to expand their subway system. The jokes just write themselves.
• Episode 98: Penn Central (Part 1)
  • Guest Jay (known as bsquiklehausen on Youtube) mentions that he'd like to visit Cairo, Illnois, but then Liam tells him the city is full of crime. Jay decides against visiting, but the hosts jokingly advise him that he'd be fine because he's related to the Vanderbilts.
    Liam: Jay, you're like eight-and-a-half feet tall, dude, you're gonna be fine.
    November: Got those Vanderbilt genes, you know?
    Jay: Alright. Look, I might have some of those genes barely but none of the money.
    Liam: Jay, I have seen your cheekbones, sir.
    November: No, I mean, if you get attacked by a poorer person, the genetics just kick in. Before you know it, you're like beating them unconscious with a diamond-tipped cane.
  • Jay mentions that chairman Robert Young suspended the dividend for the New York Central, an act considered so shameful that Young decided to kill himself. Justin and November chime in with some Black Comedy.
    Justin: He had to commit seppuku. He wrote his death poem—
    November: Yeah, WASP seppuku. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    Justin: He wrote his death poem on a stock certificate.
  • Justin tries to come up an example delivery while explaining railroads in the northeastern US. November responds with a perfectly-timed drop.
    Justin: So let's say...I don't know. I have...a carload of....something. What's made in South Jersey?
    November's Drop: Steamed hams!
  • November briefly ducks out of the podcast and tells the gang they can "be me for a bit". Liam obliges:
    Liam: [in a silly voice the official subtitles describe as "mocking Alice voice, but American"] Oo-dee-doo, I live in Glasgow. Look at me. My name is Alice. Ah-na-na-na-na. I know many things about many things. Na-na-na-na-na. My name is Alice.^note When this episode aired, November went by Alice.
• Episode 100: Penn Central (Part 2)
  • One of the Goddamn News items is a Norfolk Southern train derailing, causing the coal hoppers to bunch up together end-to-end. November jokes that this is the maiden voyage of an "amazing folding train" and references a Tweet jokingly suggesting that this is how long trains in Transport Tycoon can manage to fit inside a tiny depot.
  • Liam offhandedly mentions that the documentary American Factory was produced by Barack Obama. Cue guest Uday Schultz and other hosts joking that all movies were made by Barack Obama.
    Uday: All roads lead to Rome. All movies lead to Barack Obama.
    Justin: I love Barack Obama's movie, Star Wars.
    Liam: Yeah, Barack Obama actually directed Once Upon a Time in America. Greatest film ever made! Hi mom!
    November: I'm sitting down, in the dark, in the cinema. They're giving me the AMC "somehow sadness feels good in place like this", and I'm like, thank you Obama.
    Justin: Citizen Kane, produced and directed by Barack Obama.
• Episode 101: Year 2000 Problem
  • Liam claiming that one of the hosts of Kill James Bond! owes him 40,000 USD. Episode guest Abigail immediately chimes in:
    Abi: Look, I told you, I would pay you after I get proof of the body!
  • The Running Gag of Abigail progressively getting younger throughout the episode, from being too young to remember Y2K^note which happened in the year 2000, so early-to-mid-twenties at most to wanting to guest in the episode to get tips for her GCSEs^note Which are done between an age of 13-16 in the UK to still being in kindergarten by the end. The first one of these causes a rant-inducing slight from Liam.
  • The hosts discussing how Charles Babbage's Differential Engine ended up putting a lot of industrial revolution-era children out of work by automating the machinery they were forced to operate, causing November to state that it is impossible to say whether automation is a good or a bad thing.
• Episode 102: Penn Central (Part 3)
  • November joking that the various railroad logos are coats of arms for members of the Holy Roman Empire (which turns out to be an accurate metaphor, no less).
• Episode 103: St. Francis Dam Failure
  • After discussing looming water shortages on the West Coast, November corrects Rocz's mention of the California Water Wars as the First California Water Wars, complete with reverb.
• Episode 104: Sinking of the S.S. El Faro
  • Tom, a school teacher, sets up the slides for the episode as he would for a class, complete with stating Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards and asking the other hosts if they're sitting criss-cross applesauce.
  • Tom's "What is a boat?" slide has hilariously bad (and slightly terrifying) clip art of a boat with eyes and a mouth for some reason. Justin and November joke that the essential parts of a boat include a mouth and teeth, and Tom quips that the real reason MS Estonia sank was because the boat couldn't keep its mouth closed.
  • Tom offhandedly mentioning that an Egyptian man lives in his basement.
    November: Like, consensually, or...?
    Tom: Yes, yes, yes. I'm not a landlord!
    Justin: I built him a pyramid down here! He loves it!
  • When the episode covers the loss of suction in the lube oil system, Tom comments that's where things went from suck to blow.
• Episode 105: 1988 Gare de Lyon crash
  • Liam is out again, so guest Gareth Dennis starts the episode by breathlessly pretending he's actually Liam, which Justin and November happily go along with.
    November: We sent Liam to go away and, like, watch a load of shinty games and learn about railway permanent way engineering, and he came back as Gareth.
  • Gareth describing the wreck as "carnal relations between two train cars".
  • The story of how Jack Churchill^note whose story is covered in detail on the Lions Led By Donkeys episode about him, the WWII British Commando and repeated prison camp escapee, learned where his house was on the rail line home and would throw his briefcase into his backyard from the train so he didn't have to carry it the rest of the way.
• Episode 106: Heysel Stadium Disaster
  • Liam and Justin learn that, much to their amusement, English football hooligans very openly made agreements to fight each other, so they crack jokes like:
    Justin: 3 am text: "You up? I got a lead pipe."
    Liam: Not that kind of lead pipe. I mean a literal lead pipe!
• Episode 107: 2013 Salvation Army Building Collapse
  • The Forum used to be a porno theater, and the interior walls look suspiciously like they're coated in semen. This prompts Liam to quip that the walls were "load-bearing".
  • The guest and hosts joke that the Philadelphia's water department is so antiquated that they're actually from ancient Rome.
    June: It's just hot molten lead down there. They just got big vats of it.
    Liam: "Greetings, traveler!"
    Justin: You try to explain the Internet to them, and they only understand Latin. They want payment in gold coins.
  • The fact that the Safety Third submission begins with "Hello Liam, Roz, and Alice,^note November went by "Alice" at this time. and to the possible guest: fuck you, I don't know you."
• Episode 108: West Side Elevated Highway
  • From the Safety Third section, we have the gang's reaction to the whole concept of the Meat Deck.
• Episode 109: Rhodesia
  • Justin's voice. Justin was recovering from Covid during the recording of the episode and according to the Twitter, sounded like "Kermit sucked through a cigar store."
    • Around 75 minutes in this leads to an impromptu impressionism-off between Justin and episode guest War Takes on sounding like Jordan Peterson, with War Takes mentioning his Peterson impression once almost killed Joe Kassabian by laughter.
  • A discussion of microphone quality turns into November threatening to record the podcast using a vintage walkie-talkie, which she demonstrates with a voice filter. Justin then escalates by claiming to be transmitting his parts of the recording using "oral tradition".
    Liam: That was my stripper name in high school. ...not high school; college! College!
  • The episode's description, in all lower case:
    sorry for the bad quality but everything went wrong, much like in the bad country we are talking about
• Episode 113: Battery-Electric Locomotives
  • The episode starts off strong with guest Alan Fisher establishing his pronouns as He/Him/Dude/Whatever, which leads into the gang concluding that dude is, in fact, a pronoun.
    Justin: And we have a guest.
    Liam: No we don't.
    Alan: Hello, that would be me. I talk about trains, cities and other garbage on the internet, my name is Alan, He/Him/Dude, whatever.
    Liam: Is it He/Him or Any? That was confusing.
    Alan: He/Him, but also just, Dude.
    Liam: Oh.
    November: The pronoun is dude.
    Justin: Is dude a pronoun? Because it is a way to desc-
    Liam: It's a neopronoun.
    Justin: brief pause ...That'll do it.
  • While the gang are discussing the working conditions of modern railroad workers, Justin brings up "an old railroader joke":
    Justin: One day, a conductor came into the office one day right before his shift was to start. He found out the railroad had saved a whole bunch of money by eliminating the engineer and replacing him with a monkey, right? And he's like, "How come—how come the engineer's replaced by a monkey but I'm not?" He's really getting worried for his job security. So anyway, he boards the train with his monkey, right, and there's a little display in the locomotive now. And the display tells the monkey, "Okay, this is your throttle position, this is where you need to be, this is when you need to brake"—the monkey's well-trained, he knows exactly what's going on. And the conductor's getting more and more worried. He's like, "What am I here for? What is my job now?" He's really like, "What's gonna happen?" And then suddenly, he didn't notice there was a display on his side too. It lit up, and it said, "Feed the monkey."
• Episode 121: Therac-25
  • One of the power point slides is a diagram that's hard to read because of the dark background. Hosts and guest agree that they can fix it in post, at which point Devon inserts a note:
    OH FUCK I'M POST. HOLD ON.
• Episode 122: United Airlines Flight 232
  • November and Justin take some time discussing the various foibles of podcasters and comment that Liam, since he has an actual job, is the most normal one amongst them. Que the show's producer Devon cutting themselves into the podcast and telling the hosts to shut up.
  • November decides to illustrate the result of flight 232's engine failure on the plane's fuselage with a simile from the art world — Francisco de Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son.
• Episode 124: Berlin-Brandenburg Airport
  November: This is Berlin Brandenburg Airport Willy Brandt. As you see here, in the beautiful colours of grey, sky, and dead grass.
  • During The God Damn News discussion of the Ohio train derailment:
    Justin: ...That's why it's so bad, is cause this is a... three mile freight train doing 60mph or so.
    November: Hey, we got high-speed rail, sort of. Temporarily.
    Justin: That's a lot of... we have high-momentum rail.
  • The next God Damn News, which November described as "the real shit; the real substantial story" wiping off the previous story from the front page:
    November: Chairman Xi has, y'know, committed an act of serious aggression by loosing an enormous balloon in which a six year old boy has become trapped.
    Ben and Justin: [laugh]
    November: ...I may have run two things together in my head.
  • Ben relates a story of being in Schönefeld, an airport designed to have no commerce, and yet had duty free and restaurants stuffed into it:
    Ben: I remember being in there once and there was this old guy standing next to his suitcase, and he just looked at me and said, "under communism, at least there was some place to sit down."
  • Ben and a friend took a walk around Schmöckwitz:
    Ben: ...And we walked past a shuttered hair salon in this like, horrible–not “horrible”–in this very pretty but sort of depressed East German little town. And the sign on the hair salon said, “London, Paris, Milan, Schmöckwitz”.
    [laughter]
    Liam: It's good to have dreams.
  • Because the subcontractors didn't talk to each other, the fire alarm communications line in Berlin Brandenburg Airport is laid next to the data cables, the heating cables, and the high-voltage power, without any protection between them.
    Justin: Oh, that’s gonna cause a problem, yeah.
    Ben: All in one cable–
    November: Ah, so the fire alarm is very useful and efficient, because it is also a source of fire.
• Bonus Episode 31: Japan Airlines Poop Plane (Link goes to free preview)
  • During the discussion on the Sandwich Wars, the American definition of a sandwich ends up setting off Liam.
    Liam: Yeah I bet [pastrami sandwiches aren't sandwiches], you fucking WASP! Isn't that convenient?! Hey JEW-BOY; we've replaced your train with a plane! Now you can FLY to the camps and not get a good sandwich!
  • November makes sure to point out the pictured omelette is not one of the ones from the story and has been anonymized because it is blameless. Justin then points out that the baked good sitting on the tray looks like an AI blended a croissant and a bagel, which they dub a crabagel.
  • Liam zooms in on a smiling man in a photo of the flight because he has no idea what's about to happen.
  • The Running Gag of illustrating the situation using a classical painting returns, this time using a Hieronymous Bosch's Christ In Limbo for what it was like on the plane once the illness hit.
  • Devon's repeated on screen commentary about piloting and putting on headphones in the locked pilot's cabin ignoring the chaos in the passenger section.
• Episode 131: Sunshine Skyway Bridge Collapse
  • November and Liam reacting to the name James E. Bussey:
    Justin: There was a shipping channel that was dredged fairly early on to get up to the port, but y'know, other than that, y'know, if you wanted to get to- in 1920, y'know, you have cars, but you gotta drive all the way around, y'know?
    November: In your, like, Model T or Duesenberg or whatever.
    Justin: Exactly. So, at first, um, y'know, what are we gonna do? We're gonna start a ferry. There's these two guys, Charles R. Carter, and James E. Bussey.
    Liam: ...Yes.
    Justin: Yes.
    November: He invented it, actually!
    Liam: Please be respectful, November. That's Sir Bussey!
• Episode 133: Oldsmobile Diesels
  • Liam's mounting horror at how November has set up her computer culminating in an ear splitting scream
  • November's Double Entendre-laden but nevertheless accurate description of what a diesel engine is:
    November: It sucks, it squeezes, it bangs and it blows. That's what it is.
• Episode 135: Project Plowshare
  • The pre-Safety Third "Safety Turd" anecdote.
    The actual story of James' Twelve to eighteen second fart.
  • Justin repeatedly insisting that the nuke in his basement isn't his.
• Episode 147: SS Princess Alice Sinking
  • Given the name of the ship in question, it should come as no surprise that the YouTube comments were immediately filled with joking tributes to November's supposed passing.^note When this episode aired, November still went by Alice.
  • November pointing out how naming a ship after a woman can come off as insulting, a point made a minute later when Justin starts listing the physical parameters of the ship.
  • Justin launches into a discussion of London in Victorian times, "when Queen Victoria was... Queen Victoria."
• Episode 148: De Havilland Comet
  • During the God Damn News segment on Liam's marriage, Liam reveals that he once discussed marriage with Justin for health insurance reasons. Devon quickly edits the image of the segment by putting Justin's head on Corrin.
  November: *trying not to break down laughing* Every time I hear about you two living together...
  • Liam's anguished outburst at Justin getting a notification to free up storage space during The God Damn News, in the middle of relating how fast-casual food quality has gotten worse:
    Justin: I like Chipotle, But the thing about Chipotle is it seems to have- Like everything else, it's gone down in quality, I mean there's sort of a death spiral right now, all of the ingredients are getting- Last time I went to Chipotle was when I bought the suit for the uh, the wedding, right, and after I was at Jos. A. Banks, I went upstairs, I got the burrito - Free up storage space? Oh my God... Hold on... Um...
    Liam: HOW?! ^note Liam has mentioned in previous episodes, both public and bonus alike, how he has send Justin several hard drives and has offered to help install them on more than one occasion, something Justin has not done often.
  • After several cheeky remarks about planes "transitioning" ("What kind of hormones do you need for that?"), November remarks that the cockpit of the Comet gives her unmistakable transgender vibes, though she's "not sure how". Devon gets in the perfect zinger.
    Devon: ITS PROBABLY BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS A SWITCH OUT OF NECESSITY
• Episode 149: Ghost Ship Fire
  • The headline for the news story on the catastrophic door failure on an Alaskan Airlines flight? ALASKA THUNDERSUCK. Liam decides to join in with a rendition of "Nails."
• BONUS EPISODE 37 PREVIEW: Art Nouveau Architecture
  • The entire preview segment is funny in itself, because it tells the story of how the Peacock Room got its name, ^note The Peacock Room was painted between 1876-77 and, to no one's surprise, is named such because of the giant gold peacocks on the walls. and how it - at the time considered garish and offensively ugly - ruined the man who commissioned it, Frederick R. Leyland's marriage, complete with Leyland's now ex-wife leaving him for the painter, in the way only WTYP can deliver. It must be heard to be believed.
• Episode 151: The Cuban Embargo
  • Rocz sneezes in 3, 2, 1...
• Patreon Bonus Episode 39: The Ford Pinto (Link goes to Free Preview)
  November: Right, so here's the thing: Americans love to die in car crashes, you love it, you cannot get enough of it.
  Victoria Scott: It's my god given right.
  November: It's the classic American activity, you love doing it and I understand why: You can't hold the wheel with a burger in each hand, you fumble it and you go into like, a concrete barrier.