Close your eyes and picture a dominant city politician. You’re likely imagining a lawyer in a tailored suit, but today on pplpod, we are completely inverting that archetype. We explore the extraordinary life of James Douglas, a master plumber who literally engineered the sanitation infrastructure of his city before ever sitting in the mayor’s office to run it. This deep dive into New Zealand history reveals a trajectory from a teenage apprentice in 1888 to a political figure so universally respected for his practical civic leadership that he was elected mayor of Dunedin unopposed in 1921. We examine the "political physics" of why he succeeded where his partisan brother failed, and how he used his expertise to build an epidemiological defense for  ...