Aug. 29, 2026

30 Year Old Fish Sauce Cleanup

Show Notes
Transcript

Johnny Mac shares five good news stories: St. Mary’s, Canada begins removing about 330,000 gallons of fermented fish sauce left in an abandoned Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company factory, with crews draining tanks, mixing the liquid with peat moss, and burying it in a prepared pit. In upstate New York, the Salamanca City Central School District postpones introducing “Sally,” a $60,000 robot teacher’s assistant, after questions from parents, teachers, and officials about data collection and concerns about robots replacing educators; union leader Melinda of NYSUT says students need relationships with caring adults, and Sally’s maker Realbotics is linked to RealDoll. In Australia, a library book missing since the 1870s is found bricked in a fireplace and returned after 150 years, with a calculated late fee of about 28,000 AUD but no penalty charged. Dutch students build a solar-powered ambulance, Stella Juve, designed for remote care and equipped with medical gear and a fold-out clinic tent. Finally, Pacifica, California hosts the World Dog Surfing Championships, where dogs compete by size and skill, including tandem and human-dog rides.

00:10 Fish Sauce Factory Cleanup
01:51 Robot Assistant Controversy
03:32 150 Year Library Return
05:07 Solar Powered Ambulance
06:04 World Dog Surfing
06:58 Wrap Up and Plug

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WEBVTT

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Hey there, I'm Johnny Mac with five good news stories

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in Canada. A small town is getting rid of a problem.

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It was a problem you could smell before you could

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see it. The community of St. Mary's has spent years

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dealing with an abandoned factory containing an estimated 300,000 gallons

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of fermented fish sauce. That's right, 330,000 gallons of old

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fish sauce. The Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company, great name, was

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abandoned more than 20 years ago, leaving behind around 110 tanks.

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Each tank held around 3,000 gallons of fermented fish sauce.

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And then everybody left. Over the years, the building deteriorated.

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Windows broke. The roof blew off. A storm knocked down

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an entire wall. But the fish sauce, the fish sauce

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is still there. Bacteria did what bacteria do. And whenever

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the wind blows through the town... Residents were reminded, you

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guys live next to several hundred thousand gallons of fish sauce.

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Steve is the mayor. Mayor Steve described the smell as

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the worst rotted fish you ever smelled in your lifetime

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times a hundred. Well, good news. Crews started removing the

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contents of the tanks. It's expected to take a couple months.

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And it turns out, getting rid of 30,000 gallons of

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fish sauce is complicated. Workers will drain the tanks and

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mix the liquid with peat moss, which will absorb the

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fish sauce. Then... Trucks equipped with giant hoses will vacuum

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up the fish sauce and the peat moss and transport

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it to a specifically prepared pit. Crews spent three weeks

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digging the pit. Once they bury the fish sauce, it

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will be covered with topsoil. Many, many centuries from now,

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archaeologists will discover this site and be like, what was

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going on in the 21st century? Why did they bury

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fish sauce? And no one will know. In upstate New York,

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they were introducing a new teacher's assistant. Her name is Sally.

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She has long dark hair and she can move her

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arms and hands and costs $ 60, 000. I should probably mention

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Sally is a robot. Parents, teachers and state education officials

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had a couple questions. So they have postponed Sally's first

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day of school. The Salamanca City Central School District say

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that a couple times. I did. had approved the purchase

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as part of an effort to expose high school students

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to robots, AI, and other emerging technologies. The superintendent said,

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having a difficult time programming an Arduino board? Don't even

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know what an Arduino board is? I know I don't.

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Ask Sally and she can explain it. Now I'm curious.

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I'm doing a quick Google search on the fly here.

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Let's see. Arduinio Uno is a microcontroller board based on

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the ATmega32HP data sheet. It has 14 digital input slash

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output pins. See, that's why you need a robot. Parents, teachers,

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and officials wanted more information about what kind of data

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might this robot collect and where's that information going to go.

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District officials said the robot wouldn't actually teach classes. Teachers

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were a little worried that robots could become substitute teachers.

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You know, when that happens, next thing you know, you've

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got full-time robot teachers with tenure. Melinda is the president

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of the New York State United Teachers. Melinda said, Sally

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is manufactured by Realbotics, who has a sister company called RealDoll.

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If you know, you know, and I'm not going to

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tell you. But if you know, that's one of the

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reasons the parents were upset. Let's move on, John. Okay.

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Every now and then I have one of those stories

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about an overdue library book. Well, in Australia, they might

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have just blown the record off the doors. A book

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has been returned to a library after how long? 150 years.

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They found the book bricked inside a fireplace. Ross was

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renovating his house. He discovered a tea crate hidden behind

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the bricks of a sealed fireplace. Inside was a water-damaged

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copy of Antiquities of Athens, published in 1858. and it

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belonged to a local library it had been missing since

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the 1870s. Michelle's the local library manager and said, we've

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never had anything that old come back to us. The

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library opened in 1872 with a collection of 1,000 books.

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Antiquities of Athens was book number 506. Ross, who found

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the book, has a theory. It's about his great-great-grandfather John,

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who owned the house where the book was discovered and

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lived there when it went missing in Ross said of

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making an assumption he was in residence in the cottage

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around that time and his children were probably too young. Unfortunately,

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the library does not have records from the 1870s, so

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nobody knows who checked out the book, but they did

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calculate the late fee. The rules are printed inside the book.

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There's an overdue charge of three British pence per week

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adjusted for inflation. The late fee is roughly $ 28, 000 Australian

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dollars in U.S. currency, around $ 19, 500. However... Ross is not

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being asked to pay the penalty, which I think is unfair,

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because I've been trying to take that book out for

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a century and a half now. But Ross said if

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an angry librarian had tried to collect on it, he

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would have said, just stick to your guns and do

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your worst. Wow, don't mess with this guy. In the Netherlands,

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some university students have built what is believed to be

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the world's first solar-powered ambulance. It's called Stella Juva. The

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idea is to bring medical care to remote areas where fuel, electricity,

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and traditional infrastructure might be hard to come by. Mathis

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is the team manager, and he said, we were inspired

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by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which strive to make

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good health care accessible to everyone. Stella Juva is fully

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equipped to deliver medical health care in hard-to-reach areas. There

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are solar panels built into the roof. Those generate power

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for both the vehicle and the medical equipment inside. On

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a sunny day, the ambulance can reach about 75 miles

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per hour and is expected to travel roughly 445 miles.

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The ambulance carries equipment including a defibrillator, x-ray technology, tuberculosis

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testing kits, refrigerated vaccine storage, and ultrasound equipment for pregnant patients.

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When the ambulance is parked, it can also be a

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small mobile clinic. A tent folds out from the vehicle,

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along with chairs, creating space for patients to be seen

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on location. Nice job, students. And recently, some of the

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world's top surfers gathered in Northern California, and they happened

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to be dogs. That's right, it was the annual World

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Dog Surfing Championships in Pacifica, California. Dogs jumped on surfboards

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and rode the waves. And it's just not like random

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casual dogs. This is a competition. The dogs are judged

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on how long they stay on their surfboards, the size

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of the waves they catch, and how confidently they ride them.

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Dogs compete in different divisions based on size with small, medium,

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and large dogs going through preliminary heats before the highest

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scoring surfers advance. There are even tandem competitions where multiple

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dogs share one surfboard and sometimes a dog will surf

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with a human. One of the dogs is Rusty. Rusty's

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human friend said, I wanted to see what happened. I

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walked over to the beach and put him on a

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surfboard and he surfed it. He was four months old.

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He took third place. So we've been surfing since and

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we got hooked. Those are your five good news stories

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for today. If you like this show, I think you'll

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like my other one. It's called Daily Comedy News. I

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do it every single day. We talk about comedians, late night,

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Netflix specials, the business of stand-up. Basically, if it's happening

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in comedy, I talk about it. It is a fun show.

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There's a lot of gossip. There's a lot of beefs.

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I try and have fun with it and a good

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time with it. So search for Daily Comedy News wherever

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