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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 had Hollywood on a leash. What they didn't count on was the sheer spite, loop-holing genius, and legal maneuvering of iconic directors determined to push the envelope.

From Howard Hughes suing censors over Jane Russell’s cleavage to Alfred Hitchcock orchestrating a flush heard 'round the world in Psycho, discover how code-breaking filmmakers, Supreme Court battles, and a rapidly changing 1960s culture finally burned the Hays Code to the ground—paving the way for the MPAA ratings system we know today.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Gatekeeper Era: Joseph Breen, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and the strict rules of 1930s Hollywood.
• Bending the Code: How The Maltese Falcon, Gone With the Wind, and Notorious used loopholes, fast talking, and subtext to dodge censors.
• The Legal Turning Point: The landmark Supreme Court ruling that gave movies First Amendment protection.
• The Final Nail in the Coffin: How 1960s masterpieces like Some Like It Hot, Bonnie and Clyde, and Rosemary’s Baby proved the Code was dead in the water.
• The Birth of Modern Ratings: The transition from rigid censorship to G, PG, R, and X.

If you want more instances of humanity messing things up, check out the The Day's Dumpster with some suggested episodes below!

The Prequels: If you missed how Tinseltown first lost its innocence, stream Movie Ratings (Pt. 1): Early Hollywood Scandals and the Silent Era - Episode 78 and Movie Ratings (Pt. 2): Rise of Popular Movie Genres and Their Codes

Throwing Money Into the Ocean: Movie Busts: How Waterworld Became the Most Expensive Disaster in Hollywood History - Episode 55

Adam Savage Talks About Dodos, Maltese Falcons and the Art of Obsession

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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 trying to navigate the iron fist of the Hays Office. Back then, showing a little too much ankle, displaying an anti-hero, or letting a character have a drink could get your entire creative project permanently axed!

In Part 2 of our exploration into the scandalous history of movie ratings and film censorship, we cover the dramatic rise of the rules that defined Hollywood. While the movie studios struggled to keep their public image clean amidst early Tinseltown scandals, a wave of cultural, political, and religious pressure forced the industry to police itself. The result? A wild, decades-long battle between pure artistic expression and heavy-handed censorship.

What We’re Unpacking This Episode:

• The "Immoral" Origins: How early motion pictures like Edison’s The Kiss (1896) instantly triggered the moral panic police.
• The Sims Act of 1912: The shocking political backlash against legendary African American boxer Jack Johnson that brought federal censorship into the theater.
• Pioneering Black Cinema: How trailblazing director Oscar Micheaux fought back against the toxic racism of Birth of a Nation by creating the first "race films" and celebrating complex Black narratives.
• The Birth of the Hays Code: How a postmaster general, a Catholic editor, and a Jesuit priest drafted the infamous "Don’ts and Be Carefuls" of 1930.
• The Glorious "Pre-Code" Era: The golden age between the arrival of "talkies" in 1927 and strict code enforcement in 1934. We’re talking about the rise of gritty gangster films (Scarface), legendary horror (Frankenstein), and fiercely independent, sexually empowered female leads like Mae West.

Sometimes, being put in a box is exactly what forces us to think outside of it. Tune in to hear how Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers turned censorship into a high-stakes game of creative chess!

Disclaimer: Because the history of film censorship naturally deals with sensitive topics—including historical racism, violence, and early cinematic sexuality—this episode is rated a soft PG-13.

Enjoyed the historical drama? Keep the dumpster fire burning with these episodes on our website:

• The Prequel: If you missed how Tinseltown first lost its innocence, stream Movie Ratings (Pt. 1): Early Hollywood Scandals and the Silent Era - Episode 78 right now!
• For more government-mandated chaos: Dive into our four-part deep dive on Prohibition (Episodes 59-62).
• For the ultimate economic meltdown: See how the movie industry survived the crash in The Great Depression (Episodes 65-68).

Support the show

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If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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 moral police took over. From Thomas Edison’s cutthroat patent wars to the incredible women, immigrants, and Jewish creators who literally built Hollywood from the ground up in the sunny hills of California, early film was a thriving frontier of taboo topics and artistic freedom.

But with massive success came massive scrutiny. Join us as we explore the rise of feature films like the highly innovative (and deeply racist) The Birth of a Nation, the groundbreaking work of Lois Weber, and the trio of dark, sensationalized 1920s scandals—including the tragic downfall of Fatty Arbuckle—that ultimately forced a roaring, jazz-age Hollywood to face its very first major dumpster fire: the call for federal regulation.

Pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and welcome to Tinseltown.

Be sure to check out The Day's Dumpster Fire website for more episode details, Kara's artwork, and musings from Ed and Kara.

Support the show

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If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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 in at the time:

• On one hand, the Cold War was still very much a thing in the 70s and 80s and America was still worried about communism spreading like a contagion into America's hemisphere and ultimately corrupted hundreds of millions of democracy leaning people. The communists saw an opportunity to spread into Nicaragua, which was too close for America's comfort. The only solution to the problem was to support a group of militants known as the Contras. The only issue is that congress passed an amendment that absolutely forbade the White House from helping the Contras because it could start another Vietnam War. To get a sense of how much of a hot mess that war was for America, check out episodes 41 and 42 HERE.
• On the other hand, Iran was backing a terrorist organization called Hezbollah who were taking hostages, many of them American. During Reagans campaign, he criticized Jimmy Carter's handling of the hostage situation and vowed that he would NEVER negotiate with terrorists. 

In today's episode, Ed is going to expand on how Reagan and some of his closest advisors put together a plan that could not only free the hostages held by Hezbollah but also get some badly needed support going for the Contras in Nicaragua. 

Ed is going to cover the following ideas of this crazy dumpster fire:

• Who were Robert MacFarlane, Oliver North, and John Poindexter. What were their backgrounds, and how did they get involved with Reagan's plan to free the hostages. What was the strategy, how well did it work, and how did it fly out of control. 
• Then we're going to look at Marine Eugene Hasenfus who survived a plane crash in Nicaragua and simultaneously blowing the lid clean off the Iran-Contra cover-up. Hasenfus's plane got shot down like any other plane of the time period, but what was so different about it was that it was full of AK-47 bullets, AK-47 spare parts, and a bunch of other stuff that served no purpose other than to support the Contras, especially since the plane was flying towards a Contra held hold out. Needless to say, the media, including Nicaragua, had a lot of questions to ask.
• Lastly, even with the cover-up no longer covering anything up, how did Reagan walk away from the entire ordeal for the most part unscathed? How did he weather the storm of political turmoil with what seemed like ease and grace. He did such a good job handling the issue, instead of being impeached, he won the next election!

This episode flies off the rails at the very beginning and it's a fascinating view of presidential powers, checks and balances, and just exactly can the president get away with. And what happens to those who are not necessarily shielded by the president's aura of protection. Be sure to get comfortable with this one! It's going to make you feel good that you never got caught selling anti-tank missiles to an Iranian arms dealer so that you can negotiate with terrorists and make some extra cash to give to some anti-communist movement in Central America that you're forbidden to do.

Enjoyed this presidential mess? Check out these other classic Dumpster Fires:

The Prologue: For the full background on why Congress banned the White House from intervening, listen to our Vietnam War deep dive in Episodes 41 and 42.

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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, democrat or republican, the Middle East and America have been involved with one another for decades for one reason or another with no end in sight. 

Kara and Ed would often get questions from their students as to why the Middle East is such a confusing conflict and all they could say is that "Well, it's complicated." And you know what, nothing has changed all that much year after year other than things continue to get more and more confusing, complicated, and worse yet for America, polarizing. The best way we can describe the situation over there is that the Middle East is a combination of multiple different jigsaw puzzles that need to be assembled but with no pictures on the boxes as a frame of reference...

... Oh, and all the pieces are in a dumpster that just so happens to be on fire...

In today's episode, Ed doesn't tackle any of the laundry list of issues in the Middle East dating back to the time after WWII. Instead, Ed has put together a few of the puzzle pieces that involve a part of the puzzle contributing to some of the issues today. 

Today's episode is about The Iran Contra Affair or Scandal. In Part 1 Ed is giving us some background on:

• A brief overview of what the Iran Contra Affair was about and what sort of questions the whole kerfuffle brought about in American politics.
• What role did communism and the Cold War served in shaping American foreign affairs.
• What in the world was going on in Nicaragua and who the Contras were and what they stood for.
• What was going on with Iran and Iraq going to war in the 1980s and how the Soviet Union was playing a part. 
• A quick overview of Hezbollah and the hostages they were taking with the backing of Iran.
• And lastly, what was President Ronald Reagan doing to handle Nicaragua (which his hands were tied to do anything because of congress not wanting another Vietnam War) and Iran (in which his hands were tied due to a campaign promise of never negotiating with terrorists

Be sure to tune into Part 2 when it comes out because it's going to conclude the whole ordeal and exactly how the Reagan administration got themselves in one of the wildest scandals in American history aside from Watergate. 

Enjoyed this presidential mess? Check out these other classic Dumpster Fires:

The Prologue: For the full background on why Congress banned the White House from intervening, listen to our Vietnam War deep dive in Episodes 41 and 42.

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

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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 return from vacation to bring you a historical reminder that sometimes, it is a profound blessing to not be the most popular person in the room. Travel back to the 1300s, where the job of the century was throwing a memorable masquerade for the King of France—a man struggling so deeply with his mental health that history deemed him insane.

To make this the event of the season, the party planners decided to go big or go home. They literally sewed the guests (King included) into highly flammable outfits, slathered them in explosive tree resin, and covered them in shaggy flax fibers to look like "wild men."

Now remember: this is the 14th century. The only source of light is open-flame torches. What could possibly go wrong?

Tune in to discover the ultimate catastrophic party foul in French history. By the end of this episode, you’ll walk away with a fresh dose of gratitude for your quiet nights in, thanking your lucky stars that you weren't popular enough to be invited to the Bal des Ardents.

Sometimes, staying put and being "unreliable" is self-care.

If you like this episode, check out the below classic historical dumpster fires below!

King Henry VIII: How a British King Failed at Marriage Six Times in a Row - Episode 19

Chinese Gunpowder: How to Get an Emperor Into Heaven... In Pieces - Episode 26

Disasters of the Dead: How to Explode a Royal Corpse and Blow up an 80-Ton Whale - Episode 58

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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 situation.

Welcome to July 9, 1918. Imagine waking up early for a routine morning commute between Memphis and Nashville, only to find yourself on a blind turn known as "Dutchman's Curve." What followed was the deadliest head-on train collision in United States history—a catastrophic wreck that claimed over 101 lives, predominantly affecting African American workers on their way to a wartime munitions factory.

In this episode, Ed nerds out on the raw mechanics of steam engines, unpacks the downright terrifying safety standards that railroad workers faced daily, and breaks down the exact geography of the crash. But more importantly, he digs into a brand-new theory about the real culprit behind the disaster.

Spoiler alert: it’s not what the history books tell you.

So grab a notebook, prepare to learn a little bit of unexpected math, and wrap yourself in a blanket of gratitude. Things might be chaotic for you right now, but at least you aren't engineering a 1910s steam locomotive around a blind bend with zero radio communication.

Enjoyed this turn-of-the-century mess? Check out these classic Dumpster Fires on our website:

The Transatlantic Telegraph: Breaking, Frying, and Failing Across the Ocean - Episode 37

The Hindenburg Disaster: How to Burn up a Blimp Without a Match! - Episode 57

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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 experiment. If you've been stressing over a chaotic week, just wrap yourself in a blanket of gratitude that your job doesn't involve flash-freezing live mammals and stuffing them into glorified toilet paper tubes.

Welcome back to the world of Project X-Ray. If the Manhattan Project was an elite gathering of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century, the team behind the "Bat Bomb" was the exact opposite. We’re talking about a roster that reads like a logic puzzle: two scientists, a hotel manager, a bodybuilder, a lobster fisherman, a Hollywood star turned pilot, and a couple of high school kids with nothing better to do in the 1940s.

Ed and Kara break down the absolute comedy of errors that ensued when this ragtag crew tried to drop bats out of a B-25 bomber over Los Angeles. But more importantly, you'll see what happened when they actually tried to scale up this "bat-brained" idea into a weapon with real destructive capabilities.

World War II was an intense time where any idea could get a blank check. Some changed the trajectory of human history, and others... well, literally went up in smoke. Tune in to find out exactly where Dr. Adams' flying circus lands in the history books.

Remember: sometimes, having your plans fall a little flat is a massive win. At least your ideas don't require handling military-grade napalm!

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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 vacationing in Carlsbad, New Mexico to watch bats, dentist / eccentric inventor, Dr. Lytle S. Adams, heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that sent America into World War II. The first half of 1942 didn't go well for America when fighting the Japanese Empire for a multitude of reasons, but Dr. Adams thought of using bats to wreak havoc on the Japanese Empire's homeland of...  well... Japan... 

In this episode, you're going to be regaled with founding, setup, testing, and conclusions from one of the most "bat brained" ideas of WWII. Dr. Adams selected an elite crew of scientists and contributors to put together a bomb that when dropped, would dispense over 1,000 bats all carrying a little incendiary capsule of napalm. The idea was that the bats would disperse over Japan, find dark attics and other nooks and crannies so that the napalm charge would go off and set fire to the building. 

The plan was so well thought out and so perfect, that if implemented correctly, it could rival that of another type of weapon being researched in Los Alamos at the same exact time as the Bat Bomb just out side Los Angeles... the nuclear bomb!

This is all assuming that Adams and his team could make this Bat Bomb idea actually work and not burn the entire program to the ground in the process. 

Oh wait! This is going to be two parter episode, but you won't have to wait two weeks for Ed to get the episode out containing the thrilling conclusion. If all goes according to plan, part 2 will be out a few days after this episode airs... What could possibly go wrong?

Some other episodes that you might find interesting based on the time period and / or mentioned in the Bat Bomb episode:

The "Demon Core": How One Little Ball of Metal Reeked Havoc on Scientists - Episode 17

The Dust Bowl: Was the 10 Year Drought an Act of God? Or American Made - Episode 48

Prohibition Series (Episodes 59-62)

The Great Depression Series (Episodes 65-68)

Be sure to check out the Day's Dumpster Fire website for detailed show notes, images, Kara's drawings, as well as an ever growing library of humanity's most fantastic failures!

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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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 and high morale among employees with tons of opportunity and even more prospects of striking it rich in the world of negotiating deals between natural gas sellers and buyers. As the years went by, Enron continuously dropped earnings reports that showed nothing but success, year over year growth, and a cash flow that would never end. As a result, Enron got rich, its executives got rich, investors got even richer, banks were happy to lend Enron money, and its employees were excited in what they sold. 

There was one catch though... 

...No one knew exactly how Enron was making any money! And that was done by design. 

As you'll see in this episode, Enron's CEO Ken Lay, and his two conspirators Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow, quickly turned an honest company of limited (but honest and stable) growth to a company on a meteoric trajectory unlike anything else in American history. However, it was done by bending the rules, flagrant fraud, hiding figures, and implicating CPA firms in piles of shredded documents. 

All of us have made some financial blunders in our time, but few in humanity have successfully railroaded a billion dollar publicly traded company into the ground quick like Lay, Skilling, and Fastow did. In a few short months in 2001, These three men went from millionaires to Federally convicted felons. We may be stressing over a missed credit car payment, but at least we didn't cost the life savings, retirements, and careers of over 100,000 men and women who were oblivious to all the craziness that was taking place on the 50th floor of Enron's corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas. 

For pictures and show notes, check out The Day's Dumpster Fire website

Some other episodes Kara and Ed have put together that follows a similar "corporate greed and fraud" theme where business leaders prioritized money over literally EVERYTHING ELSE:

Therac-25 

Boston Molasses Flood

I Love the Smell of Lead

Thalidomide

Outro Music Credit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdNYSTbPuL0&list=PLfP6i5T0-DkKlAN_qDvZ3nJwsdKRmrxI_&index=

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/