The Day's Dumpster Fire

Send us Fan Mail What happens when brilliant engineering meets raw, unadulterated corporate ego? You get the electrifying, cutthroat story of the War of the Currents In this episode of History’s Greatest Dumpster Fires, we break down the chaotic and fascinating rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse (with Nikola Tesla behind the scenes). We explore Edison’s rise as a ruthless Gilded...

Send us Fan Mail How does a guy who failed at farming, real estate, and running his family’s leather shop go on to turn the tide of the American Civil War in less than 24 hours? You get the wild, blood-soaked, and chaotic story of Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Shiloh ! In this episode of History’s Greatest Dumpster Fires , Ed and Kara break down how a man who was average (or below average) at...

Send us Fan Mail The Rainmaker Who Drowned San Diego: Charles Hatfield and the 1916 Flood Throughout history, human civilization has risen and fallen by a single resource: water. When a decade-long drought threatened to ruin San Diego right as it prepared to showcase itself to the world, city officials turned to an unlikely savior: Charles Hatfield, a charismatic former sewing machine salesman tur...

Send us Fan Mail The 1888 Matchstick Strike: Phossy Jaw, White Slavery & The Matchgirls Who Built Modern Unionism In the late 1800s, British industrial titan Bryant & May dominated the global match market. But behind their shiny reputation as a "model factory" lay a grim reality: 12-hour workdays, predatory fines, low wages, and "phossy jaw"—a devastating disease caused...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a city known for rivers that literally catch on fire tries to fix its reputation by launching 1,429,643 balloons into a storm? We'll give you a hint: two missing bodies, multiple car wrecks, ecological issues everywhere, and a horse with brain damage! In this episode, we trace the wild, century-long history of Cleveland, Ohio—from its rise as an industrial t...

Send us Fan Mail How do you go from censoring a kiss longer than three seconds to a woman giving birth to the Devil’s baby in under two decades? In the epic conclusion to our three-part series on movie censorship, we’re tracing the final, messy downfall of the Hays Code. Armed with Catholic boycotts, $25,000 fines, and the iron fist of Joseph Breen, the Production Code Administration thought they...

Send us Fan Mail Ever feel like someone is constantly looking over your shoulder, judging your every move, and telling you "no"? Like you're being micromanaged to absolute death? Take a deep breath and give yourself some grace. No matter how restricted, watched, or heavily policed you feel in your day-to-day life right now, at least you aren't an early 20th-century filmmaker tr...

Send us Fan Mail What does it take to be a great filmmaker? If you ask Jordan Peele, Danny Boyle, or George Lucas, you’ll get completely different answers. But what happens when the art of filmmaking collides head-on with the sledgehammer of censorship? In the first of a three-part series, Ed and Kara dive into the wild, lawless early days of cinema—before the rules were written and before the mor...

Send us Fan Mail This is part 2 of a two part series of The Day's Dumpster Fire 's Iran Contra Affair. If you are just joining us, it is highly recommended that you listen to part 1 which can be found HERE . Part 1 will give some background as to why Iran and Nicaragua were such hot topics back in the 70s and 80s as well as the predicament the newly elected president, Ronald Reagan, was...

Send us Fan Mail Our President, Donald Trump has joined a long list of presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries who have embroiled America in the Middle East in yet another conflict. We here at The Day's Dumpster Fire don't like to take sides in terms of political parties, the Middle East has proven itself to do the exact same thing. It doesn't matter which president is in office,...

Send us Fan Mail Ever suffer from a brutal case of FOMO? We’ve all been there: you get left off the guest list for the party of the year, or plans fall through at the last second, and you’re left sitting at home drowning in a sea of resentment, wondering why the universe is punishing you. But what if missing out was actually the universe protecting you? In this episode, Kara makes her valiant retu...

Send us Fan Mail Ever feel like your life is completely off the rails? Like you’re stuck on a runaway train, heading full steam into a dead end, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it? Take a deep breath. Today, Ed is flying solo while Kara takes a well-deserved vacation, and he is here to offer you the ultimate perspective shift to make you feel instantly better about your current...

Send us Fan Mail Ever feel like your biggest, most ambitious ideas are just a little too wild for the world to handle? Like you’re pouring your heart and soul into a project, only to wonder if you’ve completely lost your mind? Take a deep breath and give yourself a break. In today's episode, Ed and Kara are back to wrap up the mind-boggling conclusion of history's most bizarre military e...

Send us Fan Mail In today's episode, Ed decided to go down a different kind of dumpster fire. Instead of a large volume of people being killed or injured or thousands of people losing their retirements due to sketchy accounting practices. The Bat Bomb of WWII is a testament to the creativity of the human mind in times of extreme need and how not all ideas are going to be good.  While vacation...

Send us Fan Mail In today's episode, Ed takes us down memory lane to one of the biggest business fraud cases of the 20th century.  Enron was a company that was the product of two major gas businesses that merged together with a vision to change how the world viewed work culture and how to make money with wild result.  For much of much of the 90s, Enron was the future of corporate mentality an...

Send us Fan Mail Ed is back for another "recent" historical dumpster fire in which a chemical that manufactures a chemical necessary for nylon production explodes in the largest non-WWII explosion in British history. They Nypro Flixborough chemical facility was built in the late 60's to be a sleek, state of the art facility that turned an extremely flammable substance called cyclohe...

Send us Fan Mail In today’s episode, Ed is back with a dumpster that can be traced back to the last decade instead of the last century. Kara’s monumental time travel into the Great Depression that changed America forever left off with the nation as the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. While that’s pretty comforting to thin, about as an American, for those outside America, that we...

Send us Fan Mail The time has come! We thought we'd never get there, but Kara's PhD scholarly review of the Great Depression comes to its climactic end in this episode. This is quite possibly Kara's most ambitious episode yet and this doesn't even include all the extra stuff you can find on at thedaysdumpsterfire.com ! In Part 1. Kara dove into the causes of the Great Depressio...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back for Kara's part 3 of her exploration into one of America's most influential dumpster fires in history, the Great Depression.  In Part 1. Kara dove into the causes of the Great Depression and dispelled some myths such as the "Crash of 29" was solely responsible for the entire economic collapse of the country.  In Part 2. Kara looked into what Herber...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Kara continues her investigation of the Great Depression. In the Great Depression Part 1 , Kara dug into the various factors that caused the Great Depression such as: Over using or extending credit The Dust Bowl of the Midwest (check out The Dustbowl Fire - Episode 48 for more. The stock market crashing in 1929 And so much more! In this episode, a newly elected He...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Kara is taking us way back to her favorite time period... when everything went to crap or in other words the Great Depression. She starts off with one of the most tremendous dumpster fires of the 20th century which was the stock market crash of 1929. While it was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, it was a foreboding sign of the things to come. Afterwards...

Send us Fan Mail It might be a few days late, but not more than $70 billion short.  In part two of the Deepwater Horizon dumpster fire, Ed describes the ecological, economical, and legal fallout from the Deepwater Horizon explosion back on April 20, 2010. The explosion itself cost the lives of 11 me, which unto itself an unmitigated tragedy that will affect generations to come.  However, when the...

Send us Fan Mail After Kara's eight week long marathon of talking about Prohibition (Kara had been researching this four part series since July!). Ed has decided to get off the editing couch and put together an episode of his own.  The Deepwater Horizon drill rig was one of the most powerful and highly regarded oil drilling rigs in the 2000's and for good reason. It held safety records f...

Send us Fan Mail We have finally come to the end of Kara's anthology of everything prohibition related. Kara has taken us from the origins of the prohibition movement and its relationship to the suffragette movement, to the colorful bootleggers and wild characters who openly broke the law to how the music and literature of the time period was affected by it and now finally organized crime and...

Send us Fan Mail Kara is back in the third installment of her ongoing Prohibition series. In this episode Kara paints a picture of how American culture was changed and adapted to the new restrictions of alcohol being band. Many people conformed to the amendment, but others saw a golden opportunity to make a grip of money as well as "sticking it to the man"  You'll get to see what &q...