5 Good Ideas That Went Horribly Wrong | Answers With Joe 

My mom was pregnant in Germany in 1959. She was having the usual morning sickness. Her landlady, Frau Reuder, gave Mom a bottle of pills for morning sickness. When My dad got home, he asked about it, and Mom told him and he promptly flushed them down the toilet. There were no reports of problems with it, but he Didn't want her taking ANY meds while pregnant. If he hadn't done that, my twin brother and I would have been born with flippers and I wouldn't be typing this right now. The pills were Thalidomide.

How about: 5 Bad Ideas That Went Fantastically Well

Fun story about kudzu - My mom is a real black thumb, every plant she touches shrivels up and dies within days. Back in the '80s, we went on a road trip across the US, and when we got to the South and saw the kudzu blanketing entire states, my mom got the bright idea that we could bring some of it back to make our California lawn a little less barren. So we stopped on the side of the road, she shoveled some dirt into a bucket, and planted some kudzu cuttings in it. By the time we got back to California, the kudzu was dead. Yep - my mom killed kudzu. So if anyone driving along a major highway back in the '80s noticed a patch of dead kudzu at the side of the road, now you know why.

“Turns out eggs run slower than rats” “It can totally kill you to death, seriously” I love you 😭

*remember seeing a dude stuck in a slide naked and covered in jam* WAIT THAT WAS YOU?!

Fun fact about the mongoose thing: Kauaii is the only Hawaiian island that has their native bird species. It's something I learned while my family were vacationing there from a botanical garden tour guide. Apparently, when the mongoose were shipped out to the island, they bit the guy who was unloading them from the boat they were on. He - the guy - in return tossed the pair of animal into the sea afterwards, drowning them and unknowingly saving the island's native bird species in the process.

Just wish you'd spent some time explaining how Thalidomide is a cancer treatment. It hinders the growth of new capillaries which in turn starves glioma brain tumors--truly a case where a medicine is horrible for its original intended use and serendipitously good for an entirely different use.

You're telling me that out of all the deadly animals in Australia, none of them are a threat to cane toads? That's one badass toad.

Society: The end is near!!!!! Farmer: We'll See...…….

This channel is criminally underrated. He deserves more than 10mil subscribers

I know this is an old video but I just had to add my comment on MTBE. While I was in college I took an organic chemistry lab, and one of our experiments involved the use of MTBE. However, being in a room full of newbie chemistry students, a lot of people forgot to re-cap their bottles. Because MTBE is highly volatile, this caused the entire room to stink of MTBE. Fun fact, another ether, diethyl ether, was used as one of the first surgical anesthetics. I learned I was very sensitive to ether that day. Walked home after the lab, dizzy as hell, and passed out in my bed for 4 hours. Good times.

I love how Australia already had so many venomous animals and there were like “eh, what’s one more”

The Butterfly Effect upgraded: "Someone ate a bat in China and, some time later, the stock market starts to crash."

"Turns out, eggs run a lot slower than rats" 😂😂😂😂😂

I always love when Joe dives into the depressing bit of the story and the funky little fun music starts playing.

I remember as a youngster in Queensland the cane toad problem. They were everywhere, especially at night. I clearly recall being in the family car and hearing them pop as we ran over them. It was disgusting. Luckily the family moved to Perth in 1971 and we didn’t have to put up with them anymore, though I did hear a few years ago that they had found some in Western Australia. Something else to blame Queensland for 😝

Everyone in town: "Wow what luck..." Me: "Stop coming here...."

You should definitely do the reverse video of terrible things that had positive outcomes

When you started talking about Kudzu I was driving past an gigantic patch of it

my grandmother was born in poland a few years after thalidomide was taken out of production. im unsure whether her deformed arm came from that, or the german measles her mother had while she was pregnant with her as we had previously thought, but finding out about it a few years ago really makes me wonder now which it could be. she then got polio a year later. and later was somehow mostly fine, living a full life. absolute legend.

”It can kill you to death”- Joe

Me, in the South: “Hey, I can’t see any kudzu.” *takes two steps to the left* “Ah, there it is.”

I was born in 1976, I remember leaded gas being sold up through the eighties. You could get leaded or unleaded gas at the gas station. So it didn't go away till the late eighties. Great videos by the way, love the channel.

Here in Latvia there is a plant called "Sosnovska Latvānis" (can't translate it) it was brought in from the alps, I think, and was used as a food for farm animals. Little did they know, that thing spreads really fast, if it has the water to do it. Not only that, but inside of it, there is a toxic "juice" that litteraly makes it look like you have burned a body part.

I actually really needed to hear that story in the beginning. Some bad stuff happened last week but I'm going to see what happens

I just wanted to let you know your mild spontaneous humor lately has been spot on 😂 I’ve been enjoying your videos more and more.

i live in metro atlanta, and seeing kudzu completely cover any forested areas in the suburbs has always been super common for me ! like right now, i’m looking out my window and mine and my neighbor’s backyards are both drowning in kudzu and i didn’t even notice before now just because i’ve grown up seeing it everywhere

This guy and Mr Ballen stories are my favorite thing on youtube

A limerick from me to you: There once was a farmer from Leeds, Who swallowed a packet of seeds. It soon came to pass, He was covered with grass, But has all the tomatoes he needs.

Me: how bad can these ideas be Joe: So there was this medicine for morning sickness Me: Oh no!

That Debbie Downer part at the beginning reminded me of that episode of Becker about Karma and how he got upset about everything good that happened because he knew something bad would follow to even out the universe, lol.

Hi Joe :) I just found you and have been binge watching you for severeal hours now and I must say I love your humoristic comments, you're great! I haven't watched every video that you have made (yet) but if you haven't done it already - please DO the video about bad things that caused really good things to happen.

Remember the old saying, “If there’s one thing we’re worse at than not killing each other, it’s predicting the future”.

Q: How do you plant Kudzu? A: Drop the seeds and run.

About the Thalidomide: I am studying Chemistry in Austria and in every lecture we have about drug testing and approval, as well as every lecture about stereochemistry (which way of the symmetry the molecule faces was the problem with thalidomide) we get told the story to always remind us what big influence such small differences can have.

I started watching you yesterday Joe, I've already learned so much and I absolutely love your content, it's interesting, hilarious, and educational, keep up the good stuff man!

Very similar to the Croesus quote by Herodotus “Count no man happy until the end is known” ... enjoyed this thanks.

"Sir Isaac Newton, the original APPLE GUY" Brilliant.

Watched this when it first came out, coming back now to let you know that some Australian species of birds and snakes have worked out how to safely eat cane toads! Ain't nature amazing? ;)

Great topic thanks Joe. I was born in the UK in 1959 and my mum had been told that thalidomide would really help her anxiety and pain, nearly every doctor and nurse and her peers told her to, including her mother-in-law were trying to get her to have it. Luckily for me, my brother and sister she never touched the stuff and left it well alone. She also stopped giving me food with any additives and preservatives because she saw what an annoying, hyperactive little shit I became. Growing up I'm from a military family we moved around a lot and I was a real dunce in school, always playing the class idiot but liked doing physical stuff, working with my hands and making things. In fact by the age of 5 you can usually tell if a child will be an academic or be good with their hands. It saves a lot of heart-ache and wasted time forcing children to do what they don't want to. I was sent to 12 different schools as a kid, 5 of them were boarding schools and I was first sent to one aged 8. In the 80's I was still using leaded fuel in the UK and can remember the clouds of vehicle exhaust fumes that the population inhaled on the street. I live and work in the countryside doing lime putty mortar and plaster work. In my 20's I worked on dairy and arable farms and my last farm job I was a cheese-maker, the farm made prize winning, proper, fine tasting cheddar cheese wrapped in lard soaked, muslin cloth. 5,000 gallons of local milk produced 40, 70lb rounds of cheddar cheese. I also worked with chemical sheep-dip and an organo-phosphate chemical used to kill the warble-fly larvae that appeared as lumps on a cows back. The fly lays eggs in the grass which a cows hoof brushes past and the eggs stick to the hair and turn into maggots which then burrow up under the skin from the foot to come out through the skin on it's back. Just like popping zits these were amazing, you put your thumb either side and give a sharp squeeze and there's a loud 'pop' and a maggot the size of my thumb bursts out in a spray of whitey-yellow puss, disgusting but fascinating at the same time. Interesting story of how and why Kudzu and the kudzu bug got to the US. It's an edible plant from the pea family and gives soil more nitrogen, used in clothing and paper it's also great for basket making. In traditional Chinese medicine kudzu was used for treating fever, headache and diarrhoea. Many invasive species do well and thrive just like the cane toads migrating west along the US and Australia. Florida has just approved a program to release 750 million GM mosquitoes into the Florida Keys , lets see what happens there. We mess with nature at our peril.

"Eggs run much slower than rats"

*Top egg speed : 0 mph* 😂😂😂

The danger of Asbestos is way overblown. It’s almost treated like it’s radioactive. You have to disturb it, make it airborne, and breathe in the particles. Not only that, but even for those who worked in Asbestos Mines the onset of Mesothelioma is on average 40 years of exposure

The roof of my highschool was made of asbestos, one classroom in special was insulated with it so much that one of the teacher whos classroom it was now was listing how many other teachers before him died of cancer, he listed around 30 people. They fixed it by changing the roof only a few years ago.

"Another invasive species might help" I've seen this episode.

"Yey invasive species!" "I'm sure nothing will happen to them" "We'll see"

When you said "cane toad; Australian for plauge!", I almost spit cereal everywhere. 😂🤣😂

Just recently came across this channel. I'm in love with Joe and the channel. Love the humor. Love all the various topics and the way it is presented.

New millennial comeback to boomers: “OK Lead Huffer”

Joe: “WW1 wasn’t all that bad. Women got the vote.” Farmer: “We’ll see...”

I grew up a few miles from the research station where they brought them in, and the little cage they were first kept, was still there when I was young. In the early days they were enormous, and gotten smaller and smaller, less and less numbers in recent decades, locally. My grandmother had gone to the convenience, to find a monster cane toad in the way. People should check out cane toad, the documentary movie was done here. It's a bit entertaining, but it shows how many cane toads were here decades ago. BTW, I think the original cane toads might have been a South American variety, they imported from the sugar cane feilds, of Hawaii. The problem was, that the local cane beetles spent very little time within reach of the cane toads. They went from under ground to high above the reach of the cane toads, relatively quickly. However, parts of Queensland, is an insect paradise, en mass, and since the cane toads, there was a lot less insects. Which is a benefit. BTW, I also grew up next to the township where they found another famous beetle, an Egyptian scarab beetle, burried under 20 feet of soil, in an ancient Aboriginal trading site. I don't know if this is your sort of thing, but the whole Egyptian Celtic mining archeology is something which crops up. 😃

7:58 "Nailed it" Er... MTBE actually stands for Methyl tert-Butyl Ether. I'm a chemist and I've used this stuff a fair bit. The chemical name you gave doesn't and couldn't exist.

My dad used to have “snowball fights” with asbestos in a shipyard. He’d come home covered in the stuff. He later died of respiratory failure. . . at age 92.

Kipling put it more succinctly in his brilliant poem, "If': "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same..."

I predict this channel will have a million subs by 2021, and first video in 2021 Joe will make a video about a moon base and when it’s expected to be complete

Great video bro! Love your information !

I'm fairly sure that cane toads are poisonous and not venomous.

"and sometimes you wake up at 4 in the morning stuck in a park slide covered in jam" will be my new bad decision example from now on

i really like your soundfile at the beginning!! i remebererd it lately, but without the connection to your channel. now i remembered, and i think it terrific!

Oh my gosh I read about this story in my research on happiness and then I put it in the book I’m working on and it took many many more months for me to realize how much this applies to my own life and I just discovered your channel recently I am so so so proud of you

I'll be honest,I was kind of expecting a video on pandemics, "we'll see"

"Oh Joe has a new video out, should i watch it?" *open in new tab* "We'll see"

Where I live, we have Kudzu, English Ivy, & Blackberry all growing wild & out of control.

1:49 the Answer, to life and everything in it. Thanks Scott! ❣️🎉

Finally something to watch! Total Lockdown from where I am, the whole island, my country's President just declared no going out no matter what. Hope everyone's safe out there. (I'm from a municipal town just a mile near the National Capital Region, Luzon Island, Philippines)

Joe, you’ve just about reached your ‘standing on the porch yelling at kids to get off your lawn phase!’ Welcome to the club!

As an Australian I suggest we solve the Cane toad problem by importing the natural predators and releasing them in to the wild. We have to restore the balance to this delicate environment.

You are very, very interesting and you do it all with a great sense of humor and sympathy.

Fun Fact: Asbestos, Quebec is only recently looking at changing it's name.

#6: Joe's Aussie accent. Or maybe not. We'll See.

Asbestos is what gave my grandpa mesothelioma and he died before I was born. He was a construction worker and spent his whole life working only to die before retirement. Not sure how it still isn't banned at this point

You're great Joe!!!!! Watching from Brazil :)

I love these stories, they’re always interesting

Man Joe the timing could not be more perfect for you to do a video about five tragedies that had positive outcomes! I would love to see that video!

Me binge watching all your videos for some good feels during emotional times, but when you get to those little bits, the sentimental bits with that sentimental expression, I may as well be watching the Lloyd's adverts because I am BAWLING But genuinely thank you to you and a bunch of other educational youtubers for keeping me relatively sane at the moment Edit: I realise I commented that I'm watching these videos for good feels on a video about things going horribly wrong. Education feels good, I mean

Great Video!

"those who do not know history are bound to repeat it" Humanity's obsession with importing invasive species: Hold my cane stalks

I remember when I was a kid that my father when he was working in the garage would have a sheet of asbestos to protect something from his butane torch. The more we know...

Great video!

It's food for thought, thanks Joe Scott... simply cool

You know that what I find interesting is the fact that I keep running into subjects on RU-vid that are presented as history that I lived through. As I am reminded of those events, I begin to remember how it was to live through them and to what degree each event in question affected my life and indeed to reflect upon the efect each had on society. I have become much more conscious of those memories it the recent month. Just Saying.

When I was a child I didn’t care. When I was a young adult I didn’t care. When I grew up, I cared about what I thought was the next right move and I never looked back. I am not concerned with the future. I am concerned with what is the right thing to do. Then I do it.

Cane toads - we hate them in Australia! Endemic predators are adapting, but native frogs are struggling. We drop cane toad sausages ahead of the invasion front to condition the predators not to eat them.

Amazing stuff ✌

*Story #5: Asbestos!* Me, sitting in a room with popcorn ceiling: 👀👌🏻

Yet again Mr Scott you completely forget about the tragic events of the sleepy American town of Kingston Falls. For those unfamiliar, there was an introduction of a seemingly harmless asexual family pet in December 1984, which, ultimately led to the unforeseen and deadly consequences of the animal over breeding, mutating and killing half of the town's residents. Tragic events indeed!

That frog idea was such a RU-vid move.

Hay Joe Aloha from Maui! I just want too say I love your show and especially your querky humor 😜 Keep up the good informative and entertaining info!! Aloha!

I love this channel. I love how you introduce something at the beginning of your presentation and then hit it at the end. I think your good at what you do. Keep it up

MTBE is Methyl Tertiary-Butyl Ether (not Ethyl as stated in the video). -Some Chemistry Nerd.

11:05 when mom walks in the room

I live in south central Kentucky- We still have large forests with a lot of Kudzu!!! It's beautiful

"Sensitive dependence on initial conditions" Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park. 🤣

2:30 "I made a bad decision, OK?" We'll see... ... The video goes viral, you have enough money to buy a Tesla.

I've tried to verbalize how my mind works and the intro to this video is the best example I've heard so far.

The photos and footage of the children affected by the Thalidomide stunned me.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

4:18 he's like a tyrannosaurus rex trying to do his school work. I know, Im going to hell for that.

You give me a laugh always. Thanks

My favorite of the three wisemen maybe. Watching all the videos from the before time now. Keep up the great work Joe! And please never sell out.