What Went Wrong on the Hindenburg Luxury Airship (with Chelsea Handler)

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Welcome to Snafu, the show about history's greatest screw-ups, or shall we say,

the real eye-opening disasters that kind of show us who we really are.

I am your host, Ed Helms, and my guest today, and I honestly don't know any other way to say this.

She's just a fucking badass.

She's a hilarious stand-up actor, writer, TV host, podcaster, producer,

and just general force of nature.

She's written seven, number one, New York Times bestsellers, which is honestly obscene.

How do they even allow you to do that?

Her latest book is, I'll have what she's having, which is yet another expression of her raw honesty,

power and zero tolerance for bullshit.

She hosts the incredibly popular advice podcast, Dear Chelsea,

and her latest Netflix special was Chelsea Handler, The Feeling.

She's one of the funniest people on the planet, and you probably know who I'm talking about.

Welcome, Chelsea Handler.

Hi. Good morning.

Good afternoon. Good evening.

Yes, to all of our listeners, whatever time of day, you are downloading this.

What's happening? How are you?

I'm well, thank you, Ed. How are you doing?

I'm pretty splendid. I have to say.

I mean, the world is burning down, but I'm trying to stay positive.

I'm in this deep state of denial, and so I'm just saying I'm great.

I too, I'm also trying to remain positive, but yes, it's very interesting.

I find myself dipping in and out of the news, but when I dip in,

I feel so guilty for not having dipped out that I can't, then it's a vicious, vicious cycle.

I feel like I'm much better suited to handle the issues

when I'm not reading about them all day, but when so many people are impacted,

it's impossible not to want to know what's happening.

So it's a good thing to be optimistic. There's that.

I also feel like when you dip into things by yourself,

like if you kind of get into the news or you get into the social media,

sort of like black hole by yourself, it's just like despair.

You don't, whereas if you kind of engage with other people,

or if you're in a larger conversation, whether it's a dinner party,

or just a whatever, then at least you can commiserate and feel like there's,

I don't know, more humanity to the whole situation.

Yes, yes. It's very comforting to know other people,

especially people in other countries, when they're as concerned,

because I'm in Canada right now.

I spent a lot of time here in the winter,

and Canadians immediately, and whenever I'm at a dinner party,

immediately just make a b-line for me going, what is going to happen?

And I'm like, but it makes me feel it's heartwarming to know so many other people

are as concerned about our country as we are.

I don't think there's any question how you feel.

Chelsea Hitler. I know, I've been very close.

That's part of what's amazing about you.

You crush it in so many different disciplines.

Does any particular kind of outlet come more easily to you

or feel like sort of the most natural fit,

whether it's writing books or doing stand-up or hosting like your podcasts?

Like which one is kind of like the most easy fit?

You know, if I do the same thing over and over again,

I have a low tolerance for that.

So everything's a little bit different than the other thing.

Like writing a book is a lot different than my stand-up,

even though they're both storytelling.

My podcast is like me giving advice to people that are calling in.

So real people, I love communicating with real people.

There's overlap with that doing stand-up.

You know, I'm about to start this tour this month called the High and Mighty Tour,

where I get to see and have like live audiences and thousands of people

and you're right in front of them.

And that also means a lot to me too,

definitely during times like this that we're experiencing

when you can get up and really look out into the crowd

and see definitely two strangers who definitely did not arrive together,

laughing together and rubbing shoulders together.

Like that makes me feel purposeful.

Is touring hard?

Is it fun?

Is it like, I'm sure it's all those things.

But what's the hiring to travel all the time

and go to a different city each day?

But I'm so used to this.

You know, I've been doing this my whole life

that I operate the best out of a hotel room.

That's when I'm peaking.

That's when I get back to my house

where I start to go, where is everything?

I've grown so accustomed to being on the road

that it's really not a big deal for me.

I can tolerate a lot more travel than your average person.

Yeah, it's just like whatever patterns you get into,

you just want to kind of stay in that.

All right, well, the subject of today,

it's interesting we're talking about travel

because the subject of today's snafu is about that.

I'm really psyched to have you on the show.

So I wanted to pick something really,

it's sort of juicy and iconic.

This one's pretty epic and memorable.

Today we're going to take a ride on the Hindenburg.

Oh.

Oh yeah, yeah, that big ol'

Yeah, I mean, it is the most phallic snafu in the repertoire.

What do you remember or know about the Hindenburg disaster?

Oh God, the Hindenburg is a German ship

that was sunk, was it sunk?

It did crash.

Okay, so no.

Yes, essentially it's sunk from the sky.

Okay, so great.

First, I'm going to ground you with a little bit of airship history.

So we're going to go back to the 1930s,

which was the golden age of Zeppelin's.

Now, a Zeppelin is a large rigid airship.

It is not to be confused with a blimp,

which is basically just like a big balloon.

Think of it as like a blimp is soft

and a Zeppelin has structure.

So in aviation terms, a Zeppelin is like an erect blimp.

And a erect blimp.

Okay, but a passenger carrier.

Yes, well, they're used for all kinds of things

that they can, like they started out in World War One.

They were actually used for bombing missions and reconnaissance,

but it was all originated in Germany by a German inventor

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the late 1800s.

I wonder why Led Zeppelin, the band,

didn't name themselves von Zeppelin?

I love this.

You just brought up such a cool little nugget of music history,

which is that I believe it was Keith Moon from the Who,

who was making fun of Jimmy Page when he first,

because Jimmy Page put this band together

and they were originally called the new Yard Birds, I think.

That's a terrible name, Yard Birds.

It's a terrible name.

And then Keith Moon and the Who was like,

yeah, you guys will go down like a lead balloon.

And so Jimmy Page just thought that was hilarious

and decided to call the band Led Zeppelin.

On terms of the, back to the Who for a second.

I just want to make a quick shout out to the Who

because I want to go see a show of theirs

at the Hollywood Bowl a few months ago.

And who is the lead singer of the Who?

Dulltree, is it Roger Dulltree, yeah.

Roger Dulltree is like 80 something years old

or I mean something like that, he's old.

And he is out there with his little nugget body

and his little belly with his like stone wash,

Levi's on and his, you know, high heeled Reeboks,

whatever these old guys who are still performing

at this level.

He's probably wearing hookas.

Yeah, he's probably wearing hookas.

Oh, fucking hookas, honestly.

It's enough with the hookas.

I can't take it.

Anyway, he was wearing his hookas.

You've got to pair on my hair.

I have to.

I have plantar fasciitis.

The most exciting thing about this Hindenburg so far

is that there won't be no hookas mentioned

about this because it was too soon.

And he was swinging in lieu of dancing

because he can't really dance anymore.

He was swinging his microphone around.

It was one of the best shows I've ever been to.

And Roger Dulltree was just like, just screaming

and jumping on the stage going, who are you?

Who, who?

And I was like, this guy, I'm attracted to this guy.

Like I was attracted at his tenacity,

at his passion for his music.

I mean, I've seen Springsteen perform at this age,

you know, similar ages.

It's pretty impressive what these guys are up to.

And I would like to know exactly

what peptides and blood transfusions

they all have access to.

That's awesome.

I'm so glad to hear that.

That's, and it's like Mick Jagger, right?

The guy can just still move and groove at,

and he's like 900 at this point.

Yeah, I mean, he's, I don't know.

We nobody can even keep track.

He's already aged out of what we're keeping track of age-wise.

All right, well, let's get a little more specific

about what a Zeppelin is.

It's basically a fabric covered metal framework

of transverse rings and longitudinal girders,

kind of like a big metal rib cage.

And inside are a number of bladders filled

with either hydrogen or helium gas

because those are both significantly lighter than air.

However, only one of those gases is also highly flammable.

And which one is that?

Well, let's just say there's a reason

we don't give kids hydrogen balloons at parties.

So at first, Germany used Zeppelin's

as bombers and scouting craft during World War I,

as I mentioned before, and they were surprisingly effective,

but not everyone was buying the Zeppelin hype.

One very early hater was Orville Wright.

In 1909, the New York Times ran an article titled,

Right, sees no hope in Zeppelin airship.

And I mean, come on, he's the inventor of the airplane.

Of course, he's gonna shit on arrival.

Absolutely.

Air travel, right?

Come on.

Would you ride in a, in like a blimp?

Is that something that would be cool?

Yeah, I'm not scared of any sort of height,

air travel type thing situation.

The higher the better is my theory.

I was researching this story,

and I got so into the idea of riding in a blimp

that I looked how you get tickets to ride

on the good year blimp.

Uh-huh.

And are there tickets available for that?

No, they're not.

They're only like occasional sort of like buzz,

you know, like the charity buzz auctions or whatever.

Aren't blimp's unmanned?

Oh, no, they have little men.

They have, they have men.

They have little men.

Little men.

Okay, so Count von Zeppelin died

before World War One ended in 1917.

The whole operation passed over to Hugo Echner.

Echner was not into war blimp's.

He believed Zeppelin's had enormous potential,

just in long distance travel.

So he thought he was like,

these can become the slow, elegant,

floating luxuries cruisers of the sky.

And that's a little bit too slow,

even for World War One, no.

It's not these things were quick.

How many miles per hour?

They could get up to like 80 or 90 miles an hour.

So okay, so nothing close to what a plane can accomplish.

But a lot faster than a ship.

So when you're talking like transatlantic travel,

the Hindenburg could cross the Atlantic

in a couple of days as opposed to five or 10 days

on a cruise ship.

Okay.

Yeah.

They're pretty cool.

I have to say.

So this guy who's taken over the company,

he's like, I think we can do luxury air travel

on these things.

And that brings us to the Hindenburg,

which was named after former German president,

Paul von Hindenburg.

Construction began in 1931.

And it was the biggest airship ever built.

There had been actually a lot of airship work

over the last 30 years.

Like I said, they were used in World War One,

but they were starting to be used for cargo

and all these different kinds of things.

This thing was over 800 feet long,

which is basically like a small stadium size.

Wow.

Yeah.

Get that up in the air is quite a feat.

Yeah, yeah.

And here's my favorite little dark detail.

It was partially built using metal,

salvaged from another hydrogen airship

that had already crashed,

which it's less like recycling

and more like tempting fate, I think.

Well, I've even listened to recycling

how to start at some point.

Chelsea, why do we keep equating

the biggest ever built with the best

or like the smartest thing?

I think that's a very American thing,

even though we're talking about Germany right now.

I feel like that's a very Western thing, right?

The biggest and the best,

rather than the most efficacious or the most.

Like, yeah, bigger is America, better is America.

We need the tallest buildings.

We need the skyscrapers.

We need the biggest phones.

Remember when phones first came out

and they were like little flip phones

and then all of a sudden you were talking

on a fucking iPad.

Yeah.

Why?

Why do they keep going around in circles?

Just leave them small and manageable.

But I don't know.

I find that to be a very American thing

and a very war thing.

Well, you're so right, also SUVs, right?

There was a time in the 80s

when cars got very small and efficient

and then all of a sudden everyone just wanted

like these tanks.

Right, and now we have that Tesla truck

that is loitering around everywhere.

They're very ugly.

Yeah, they give off to me Robocop vibes.

Yeah.

It's like 80s violence.

It just looks like a violent vehicle.

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So this Hindenburg, it was 800 feet long.

It was absolutely massive, but it had a cabin.

So underneath was this sort of structure

in which the crew and the passengers would ride.

And it was really incredible.

It had private cabins, a dining room with fine crockery,

two promenades with large observation windows,

a bar and a lounge that featured a custom-built

bloutner baby grand piano that was made from aluminum

so that it would be a lot lighter.

It was only 350 pounds.

Okay, just for some modern reference,

do we know how many feet a 747 is long?

I love this question, and I wish I could pull it up.

Probably 747 feet.

Okay, Boeing 747 is 231 feet long.

Okay, great. This is four times longer.

And it sounds like it was before,

I mean, obviously this was when planes came on,

closer to when planes came on the scene to begin with.

So they weren't into stacking us like stardines in a plane.

So they didn't know about that yet,

which accounts for some of their luxury.

Like the bar, the lounge.

Sure, also it was,

it was so expensive to operate,

they wanted to attract high pay and customers.

Kind of like, I mean,

The oriental express?

Yeah, or the Titanic,

which had like crazy first class accommodations.

For the wealthy passengers,

the Hindenburg was essentially an airborne luxury hotels,

graceful, glamorous, and effortlessly refined.

One of my favorite details is that they had a smoking room

on the Hindenburg, which seems insane

because it was filled with hydrogen gas,

which is highly explosive.

But the smoking room was like this pressurized room,

the room itself was pressurized

so that nothing could leak into it.

And the theory was,

if there's a hydrogen leak,

it'll keep it from entering the smoking room

and we'll be fine.

Absolutely.

Well, the Hindenburg and the Titanic,

which how many years apart were those two things?

When was the Titanic?

1912.

1912. Okay, Titanic, 1912, 1930,

and then 1931 we're talking.

Okay, great.

So it's not like fresh.

So both of them had great, great big plans

and huge demises.

Yes.

Yeah, and it's in those ways.

Totally.

It's a very apt comparison and it's often made.

Basically they're both just a monument to human hubris.

If you were to travel on a luxury airship

for like three or four days,

what are you bringing with you?

Well, probably LSD, definitely some microdosing.

You know how I feel about that.

I would have to have alcohol.

I would have to have some LSD.

I would bring like a really good book

because I would definitely get a book done

in that amount of time.

I would enforce myself to read a book

before I could really enjoy the luxury aspects.

Because I feel like in order to have fun,

I have to also put some stuff into my brain.

So I would read a book and then I would start to party.

And then I would mingle.

I would and I would bring a friend that I hopefully

I could either have sex with

or just have a really good time with.

That's a frickin' perfect hot take.

I love the idea of going on a Zeppelin like this

because they don't fly that high.

Like you're probably about a thousand feet up, maybe less.

And so you can really see what's around you.

And it's a really beautiful flow.

People describe people who rode in these airships,

describe the ride as like very gentle.

And you're just floating.

There's very little turbulence effect on the airship.

It just feels like such a cool special way to get around.

I mean, not everybody loves helicopters.

I'm aware of this.

But I love a helicopter ride.

And one of the reasons I love a helicopter ride

is because you are so close to the ground

that you can actually see the terrain

and the topography of what you're flying over

rather than see it from 30,000 feet in the sky.

And so I was just on a helicopter two days ago.

We went to these ice caves in Pemberton, North of Whistler.

And so we took a helicopter ride through the mountains.

And with helicopters, people think that they're so dangerous

and they're probably right.

But with a helicopter, you can land three different ways.

You can land with your propeller.

You can land anywhere pretty much on a mountain.

A plane can't, doesn't have the ability

to land on the jagged edge of a mountain.

Whereas a helicopter can.

And if the engines go out, you have the propeller.

So that's like a good thing about helicopters.

And also not being so high in the sky

also really allows for a more enjoyable sightseeing adventure.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, I am so with you.

I love helicopter ride.

Okay.

So finally, interesting detail about the Hindenburg

on the tail fins were a couple of massive swastikas.

Yeah.

Let's do that.

Hugo Echner actually, he had huge disagreements

with the Nazis, but was apparently happy to take their money.

And when it was done, it actually became a massive symbol

of Nazi pride.

Here's the kicker.

The Hindenburg was designed to be filled with helium,

which is a very safe gas.

But instead, it was filled with hydrogen.

This is because the US had locked down

the global helium supply under the Helium Control Act of 1927.

Who was trying to control the helium?

What was people were just using that at parties

to get their voices high?

You know, it has, I guess it has a lot of industrial uses

or something.

It was a hot commodity back in the dead still is

because it's a limited, there's only a finite amount of it.

Of helium.

Yeah, well, why are they putting it in balloons then?

I mean, shouldn't we hold on to it?

I agree.

I agree.

Why are we putting it in children's party balloons?

First of all, we should get rid of balloons altogether.

Yes.

The balloons are terrible for the environment.

Yes, they are.

And I know we're watching the world end right now,

but there's no reason to accelerate it beyond

what we're already doing.

Come on, humanity.

Let's do better.

But evidently, and I don't know the reason why,

but helium was America had a stranglehold

on the world helium supply,

and they did not give it to anybody.

The Hindenburg design was for helium,

but then they were just like, I guess,

if we're not going to get helium,

we'll just put hydrogen in there.

And interestingly, that actually gave it more lift.

Hydrogen is a lighter gas than helium,

so it gave the whole airship more lift.

They were able to add more cabins to the Hindenburg

for passengers, but it was a lot riskier.

But they just decided like, hey, where are the Germans?

Were like the kings of engineering.

We've got this.

We've got a lock on the safety protocols.

It's going to be all good.

So here's a picture.

Let's take a look.

Oh, I like that body type.

You do.

All right.

Corpulent things, you know?

Like things that are a little bit heavy

and thick around the middle.

All right.

Go on.

But that is, but that is, that is very long.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's four 747s long.

Wow.

That's amazing that they were able to get that in the sky.

Yeah.

And here's, it's such a cool piece of engineering.

You can definitely see the lateral struts

through the skin of the blimp there.

Yes.

And then it also had these giant circular things inside.

And the little gondola there is where the pilots operated.

The rest of the cabins and crew facilities, so forth,

were inside the belly of this tube.

I think you can kind of see the observation windows

sort of cut into the side there.

They look like gills in the front.

So the guy who's, the pilot is outside?

Well, he's in that little gondola.

But is he, is he dangling?

He's dangling.

He's dangling.

No, no, no.

It's like a little cabin that's, that's, that's

hanging from under there.

I'm like, this guy is just flying, yeah, flying free

while everybody else is OK.

Wow.

And then there were a series of bladders

throughout the airship filled with, with the gas.

But there were catwalks and various ways

that crew could kind of like maneuver around inside the zeppelin

itself, which is really cool.

And they would get to, you can also see the engines,

the propellers off the side here, which were big diesel engines.

And, and the crew could actually climb out onto those things

and perform maintenance while in flight.

So it was a really cool, just feat of design and engineering.

Sounds like a great place for a birthday party.

Yeah, right.

It's like, do you want a helium balloon for your birthday party?

Or do you want to ride in a fucking balloon?

Do you want to ride in a giant one?

Yeah, come on, let's do it.

So we're going to get to the disaster in a second.

But a lot of people forget that the Hindenburg actually

made a lot of successful flights before it actually crashed.

So in 1936, the ship flew round trip across the Atlantic 17

times, including trips to both the US and Brazil.

That same year, the Hindenburg made an appearance

at the Berlin Summer Olympics, Nazi propaganda minister,

Joseph Garibels thought it would be a powerful symbol

of German strength and technological superiority,

which is an interesting take, given how this story ends.

All this brings us to May of 1937.

The Hindenburg sets off on a routine flight

from Frankfurt, Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey.

On board, we have 97 passengers and crew.

Now, you might be wondering how much does a ticket cost?

It was $450 in 1937, which in today's dollars is about 10 grand.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's almost exactly how much I'd like to pay for a flight.

That's like a lot of first class tickets on airplanes

are in that zone.

Yeah.

Even like those, I haven't been on one yet,

but I want to fly on one of those like Emirates cabins.

Yeah.

Where you just get your own fricking hotel room.

In your own bathroom.

You get your own shower and bathroom.

And then you get a bedroom.

In your room.

Like, I just want to make a round trip.

Exactly.

So I don't even want to get off the damn thing.

We want to even go to Singapore.

You just want to fly there and then fly back.

I love long flights.

Me too.

I love.

There's nothing that gets me more excited

than a 10 plus hour flight.

Oh, I love it.

We're weird that way.

I don't know.

I mean, it's pretty luxurious.

I also think, in this case, on the Hindenburg,

if you're dropping 10 grand on a ticket,

you shouldn't have to ask,

but will it explode?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

What turns out?

No, that's not the intention of the flight

to have it explode.

Of course.

So obviously, nobody is going to be like,

there's a good chance this will explode.

Yeah, no, you should have a reasonable expectation

that you're not going to explode.

I feel like for that ticket price.

Or a reasonable expectation that you'll be landing.

Exactly.

When you're on a plane and people clap when they land,

when nothing untoward has happened.

Yes.

And you're like, this is an unnecessary reaction

to what was supposed to be in the schedule.

Right.

So you don't support clapping for a pilot

for a successful landing.

Not unless you're landing on the Hudson,

like Sully, Sully and Murray.

Yeah.

And then that deserves a round of applause.

Yeah.

You guys, before we get off the plane,

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So May 6th, 1937,

the Hindenburg arrives in Lakehurst Naval Air Station

and the weather is garbage.

There's thunderstorms, delays,

the Hindenburg circles for a while.

This is, it's nothing unheard of,

but the vibes are definitely off.

So finally at 7.25 pm, the ship comes in to dock.

It's an interesting process.

In this instance, they were gonna drop ropes

from the, from the Zeppelin

that would then be attached to winches

and they kind of pull it down to the ground gently.

It also has ballast tanks inside of it

full of water, which it can drop to change

its sort of buoyancy in the sky.

It's very cool technology.

Anyway, it's coming in for the landing.

It drops the winch cables

and then something just goes horribly wrong

and it's like the sky itself explodes.

And just 34 seconds, the largest airship ever built

turns into a catastrophic inferno

as it's still in the sky

and it collapses down onto the airfield

in a massive, massive explosion.

It is truly an incredible thing to watch.

You can Google the news real footage.

It is, it is wild.

We can look at a photo here.

Oh, yeah.

You know what that reminds me of the challenger space shuttle

watching that implode?

Yes, yes.

Wow.

So in this picture, it looks like it's crashing into a tower.

That's actually just in the foreground.

The Zeppelin is way in the background of this photo.

It's just simply exploding.

This, I believe, is the same photo

that Led Zeppelin used on their first album cover.

Which is, yeah.

Really?

Yeah, and apparently the Zeppelin family estate

was outraged by this and tried to sue Led Zeppelin

or something.

But yeah, this is the beginning of the explosion.

It then sort of drops and hits the ground

and the whole thing is enveloped in flames.

There are a lot of harrowing firsthand accounts

of what went down.

One passenger was thrown out a window

by his mother and survived.

A cabin boy was miraculously saved by a ruptured water tank

which ended up tipping over and drenching him

so that he could then kick open a hatch and escape

without burning.

And did he survive?

He did.

There's a really famous radio recording

of Herb Morrison was recording a broadcast during this.

It became one of the most iconic disaster broadcasts of all time.

It's where we get the phrase, oh, the humanity.

This is what he shouts in real time

as he's watching the Hindenburg crash.

It's a really wild recording.

I suggest googling it

because it's just such a fascinating little nugget of history.

But he's sort of narrating in a very calm,

like, oh, here we are in Lakehurst, New Jersey

with the famous Hindenburg dirigible coming in for a length.

I mean, I'm making this up, but then all of a sudden,

he's like, oh no, the fire is starting.

What is this?

This is the worst catastrophe in humanity.

And then he says, oh, the humanity.

And that's like something people say to this day.

Yeah, it is.

It's interesting that that's how it was coined.

Oh, the humanity.

Because it's almost the opposite of humanity.

What he thought he was witnessing was total loss.

He thought everyone on board, the Hindenburg was just scorched.

He was so mortified that he thought he was just witnessing

a mass death.

As we will learn, there were a lot of survivors,

which is incredible.

If you, when you watch the footage, it's totally incredible.

I would credit that with it not being a plane in the sky.

Don't you think the proximity to the ground

is a major factor?

You could actually jump out.

Oh, for sure.

And it's a much more gentle process.

The landing of Zeppelin is like just sort of like a balloon

coming down.

So it's inherently more like there's no, there's no high speed.

All the things that make air travel so much more inherently dangerous.

Now disaster happens.

And there's no, there's no decency, a moment of decency

where anybody can hold back their comments

or actually mourn for the loss of a life.

Yeah, it's just an attack.

So yeah, God, I never thought I would want to be

around during the Hindenburg.

But now you're making me melancholy and nostalgic.

Well, that's what we do here at Snafu.

I didn't even know exactly what the Hindenburg was

when we started this podcast.

So look how far I've already come.

I know.

This is the fun.

You get to come on and learn something,

maybe have a few chuckles.

And yeah, and I might tug at your heartstrings a little bit.

Who knows?

Here's the wild part.

Despite the scale of this disaster, which was huge.

Out of the 97 people onboard the Hindenburg, only 35 were killed.

That's 13 passengers and 22 crew members.

Now, there was also one of the ground workers,

also perished, which brings the total to 36.

Now, this is obviously still a very tragic,

but honestly, it's astonishing

given that photo we just looked at, right?

Yeah, that's pretty incredible.

That many people survived.

Wow, I would never have guessed that.

Yeah, it's totally incredible.

So what actually happened?

Why did it explode?

The investigations that followed were murky.

The US and Germany both had strong incentives,

not to take the blame.

Germany pushed sabotage theories,

quietly pointing to crew members,

others floated the idea that Hitler himself might have ordered it

as a way to punish Hugo Eckner for being openly anti-Nazi.

Most historians today agree there's no solid evidence

for sabotage.

No single cause was ever proven beyond doubt.

The leading theory is that a static charge from the storm

ignited a hydrogen leak somewhere in the Zeppelin itself.

Well, what was there reasoning for using the hydrogen

rather than the helium?

Because they didn't have access to the helium?

Yeah, because we wouldn't give them any helium.

Oh, okay, so it wasn't a secret that they used the hydrogen.

No, no, no, they definitely chose to use the hydrogen

and they thought they had enough safety protocols in place.

And to their credit,

they had a lot of successful transatlantic flights

with this thing.

Right, okay.

So they just thought they could manage the risk

and it turns out they couldn't.

If you do some real deep dives on it,

there are some really interesting theories

on what might have caused the spark.

All it would take is a spark.

The prevailing theory is that it was a static charge

from the storm.

So in the 1960s, a former NASA scientist argued

that it may not have been the hydrogen at all,

but in fact, the flammable outer coating,

that idea has some merit,

but most scientists are skeptical of that.

However, it started, the result was that the Hindenburg

permanently killed the dream of airship travel

and not because it was the first Zeppelin to burn.

Lots had gone up in flames before.

This one was just too big and too hyped and too public.

It was like such a massive thing.

All of a sudden, the public is like,

we ain't getting on those things anymore.

Tell me this, if you have the answer to this, Ed.

So in terms of a flight and air travel,

this was happening while planes were also starting

to be built or regular planes, like, you know,

what we know is jets.

Or was this the prelude to air travel?

There's a lot of parallel development going on.

Because that would have been a totally different way

to travel than what we're doing.

I mean, I don't know how long it would have lasted

before, you know, there was another incident or,

but I mean, it's an airship we're talking about.

We're talking about a blimp, you know what I mean?

Like the whole different kind of air philosophy.

Yeah, it is.

And I still kind of hope that it comes back.

I mean, there are some companies

that are trying to develop modern airships.

They do have certain advantages.

They're extremely efficient.

They can be very effective in disaster recovery

because they can deliver things very gently

to, you know, horrible disaster areas or remote areas.

I personally hope that it starts to become

passenger travel again because I'm just so fucking psyched

to ride a blimp.

I don't know why.

You are very passionate about it.

And I'm not disagreeing with you.

It kind of sounds like, I just why worry about the

alacrity with which you can get there, you know what I mean?

Why would you, why would you opt for that

when you can get somewhere in half the time?

It's the slowness is the point, right?

Like that's, we were just talking about how long we love long flights.

To me, like, I don't know, two or three days to get to Hawaii

or whatever it's like, I'll take it.

I'll just chill out.

Yeah, that would be an interesting survey to see how many people

would be willing to forego.

People want to go to Hawaii, right?

They want to go for seven days.

They don't want to go for three days.

If it takes you three days there and three days back,

or maybe you just use it on the outbound

and then you take a regular plane on the way home.

It's very retro.

Yeah.

All right, so that's, that is essentially the Hindenburg story.

It's an Icarus story.

We flew too close to the sun and we just,

we crashed and burned.

Are there any modern comparisons?

I weirdly think that AI is like our modern Hindenburg, right?

It's like this awe-inspiring marvel.

It's wildly hyped.

It's insanely powerful.

But maybe it's rolling out a little faster

than anyone understands and everyone's insisting

that it's safe while it's quietly cutting corners.

I think the general consensus around AI

is that we know it's not safe.

You know what I mean?

There's a lot of upside and there's a lot of downside.

And no one has really, you know,

obviously without any regulation,

it's just going to be a shit show.

But I would also say traveling to space

is probably similar to this,

like all these flight travels

that everyone wants to take to go to the moon.

And I mean, I don't have any desire to go to the moon.

Do you have a desire to land on the moon?

I don't.

Yeah.

If it turns out that like big, comfortable,

like space cruise ships are a thing in my lifetime,

then like, that could be cool.

I would love to be in zero gravity.

That seems like like a ton of fun.

Yeah, and I like adventure.

I like to bounce around.

I just went to Antarctica.

So that was a, that was a really fun adventure.

Oh, that's so cool.

Did you get on, on a ship or?

Yeah, on a vessel.

We crossed the Drake's passage,

which was another example of getting

taking three days to get somewhere.

Yeah.

It makes about three days to get,

you have to pass 60 degrees latitude

to get into Antarctica.

And then so you're there for like two and a half,

three days and then it's three days travel back and forth.

And all I wanted to do was be in Antarctica.

You know what I mean?

I was like, is there another way to return?

Because I don't really need to be on that ship

crossing Drake's passage for another three days.

Which is Drake's passage is notorious.

It's supposed to be like a super rough crossing.

Was it?

Yeah, turbulent for sure.

I mean, people, and you're walking around the boat

and you're everyone's falling all over the place

holding on to the railings.

You know, it's kind of a hot mass situation.

And so anybody who has a weak stomach

or gets seasick should not be taking that trip.

Did you get sick?

I did not.

Well, no, not from the seasick man.

Oh god.

So there's another kind of trip that I feel like you're

an expert in that I just am not and I want to know more about.

Will you sell me on microdosing hallucinogens?

I just feel like it's, you know what?

The best way to describe it is, we just took some LSD,

me and my friends, when we went to these ice caves in

Pemberton.

And I would say the best way to describe it

is it puts an exclamation point on whatever experience

you're having.

So if you're outside, especially if you're

in some sort of cool nature environment,

we were in a glacier, in a cave underneath a glacier.

So that was pretty cool.

And it just kind of makes you really sit and appreciate

whatever experience you're having.

It adds a little giggle to the situation, which is always

welcome for me.

I like to laugh and like to not speak, you know,

taking myself too seriously.

But it's just an accentuation of life.

And it kind of makes you have a little bit extra gratitude,

which is one of the aspects that I don't think people talk

about enough.

It makes you really grateful to be exposed

to the things that we're exposed to.

Even if I go skiing for an afternoon with my girlfriend's

up here, you know, and if I take a microdose,

it's like, I spend more time looking at the trees,

looking at the view, looking at all the beauty that's

surrounding me rather than just, you know, kind of being

in your head, it gives you a release.

So I feel like the whole world needs a microdose.

I am very interested in this.

Now would you also advocate the occasional macrodose?

I would.

I would.

It really depends on your personality

and how much you can handle.

But those years of me and the macrodosing,

that was like years and years ago.

Now I like just a little punch.

Like I like that.

I like a little, an MDMA.

They do everything's a microdose now.

So you don't have to be scared to do it.

Right.

And also I would like to say, you know,

not everybody gets along so well with drugs.

I do.

We have a good working relationship.

So I know what my limits are.

I've done lots and lots of testing.

So I know exactly what's going to work for me and what isn't.

And in Canada, they have the cleanest drugs.

So that's, so yeah, so I'm a big advocate of that.

I think it helps a lot of people and helps people, you know,

in more serious ways than it's helping me.

And I love sharing my drugs too.

I love giving them away.

My whole tour is basically about me traveling around the world,

handing out LSD to strangers.

That's so great.

You're just, you're like the, the little,

I'm a Sherpa healer.

You're the pied piper of microdose.

Yeah, I like to think of myself as a Sherpa.

I thought it's expected, you know, coming for me.

But that's where I'm out of my life.

I honestly, you're so transparent in everything that you think,

feel and believe.

And I, I think in many ways, you are like an aspirational figure

for a lot of people because of just how much you,

just how in touch you are with yourself,

which I think a lot of people are.

But then you are also just an open book.

And like, you don't hold back when it's when you've got something

like difficult to say.

And you also don't hold back when you have like

these sort of joyful, fun expressions.

And it's, it's awesome.

So keep doing what you're doing.

Thank you, Ed.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

So this tour coming up, very exciting news.

I'm hoping to catch you on the road.

I'm currently on the high mighty tour you guys

so you can get your tickets at chelseahandler.com.

I will be coming to a city near you.

Amen.

Thanks for being on snafu.

It was super fun to have you.

Well, thanks for my learning lesson today.

I mean, now I'm going to go, this was such a nice way

for me to start my day.

I'm much more well informed about the Hindenburg

than I was when I started this podcast.

Yeah, and I'm more informed about microdosing.

So it's a trade-off.

It's a trade-off.

And you have it.

All right.

Thanks, chelsea.

OK, thanks.

Take care.

Snafu is a production of I Heart Podcasts

and Snafu Media, a partnership between film nation

entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company,

post-production and creative support from Good Egg Audio.

Our executive producers are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo,

Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan.

This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith.

Our managing producer is Carl Nellis.

Our video editor is Jared Smith, technical direction

and engineering from Nick Dooley, additional story

editing from Carl Nellis.

Our creative executive is Brett Harris, logo

and branding by Matt Gosson and the Collected Worms.

Legal review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson, and Caroline

Johnson.

Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein,

and everyone at I Heart Podcasts,

but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nick

D.A. Tori.

While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy

of my book, Snafu, the definitive guide

to history's greatest screw-ups.

It's available now from any book retailer.

Just go to snafu-book.com.

Next for listening, and see you next week.

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