Overcoming Our Fear of the Underground

Build For Tomorrow

Jason Feifer

Business, History, Technology, Entrepreneurship

4.7 • 573 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“A big humbug” -- that’s how one critic described America’s first subway system. Other opponents were more extreme. It would release dangerous underground air, some said. It would disturb the dead, others said. A religious leader in Boston declared it a project of Lucifer himself. Why were people so opposed to this new form of transportation? To understand it, we have to rewind centuries -- to a time when people thought that Earth was hollow, and that hell was directly under their feet. Get in touch! Web: jasonfeifer.com Email. jasonfeifer@gmail.com Twitter / Instagram: @heyfeifer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:59.2	conditions apply. This is pessimists archive. I'm Jason Pfeiffer. Maybe you think you've seen
1:07.3	bad traffic. Maybe you've sat around in some insufferable weights. But whatever
1:12.1	you've seen, you've probably had it easy compared to the people of London in the 1820s.
1:17.3	The place was just choked with congestion. And if you needed to cross over the Thames River,
1:21.4	well, you might as well just drink beer until you pass out and try again when you wake up.
1:25.1	Because here's the thing. There were just too many people
1:28.5	on foot or horse-drawn carriages trying to get around one of the world's most important cities.
1:33.7	And the only options for crossing the river were London Bridge or a ferry and both were maxed out.
1:39.2	So in 1824, a group of men gathered at the city of London Tavern and they drank until they passed out.
1:46.2	Kidding. Well, actually, it probably did happen. But anyway, before they drank and passed out,
1:50.8	this particular group of men I'm talking about met at that bar and they formed a company called
1:55.1	the Thames Tunnel Company, which was going to push an ambitious solution to all of this traffic.
	...

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