Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Happy Saturday. I hope you have your breakfast
Speaker 1: cereal and your Saturday morning cartoons all taken care of.
Speaker 1: It is in Select time, June, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: how lighthouses work. This is a really cool podcast. I
Speaker 1: remember really enjoying this one because I had done some
Speaker 1: research on lighthouses for a movie script I was writing,
Speaker 1: so this one was really pretty key for that. So
Speaker 1: here we go with how lighthouses work. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry over there, and this is
Speaker 1: the lighthouse episode, Take one. Uh can I just go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that I love lighthouses. You love love
Speaker 1: already before like you fell in love with them. I'm
Speaker 1: researching this both, like if I'm I grew up going
Speaker 1: to Honey Island, South Carolina. Not every year, but we
Speaker 1: went quite a few times near Buford and they have
Speaker 1: a lighthouse and it was one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: to do as a kid, was climbing the lighthouse. And
Speaker 1: I would I if I am near a lighthouse, now ever,
Speaker 1: I will go climate the outside. I will seek it
Speaker 1: out and then shim me up the outside like spider Man. Um. No,
Speaker 1: I will seek it out and go look at it
Speaker 1: and then climb it. And um this article just made
Speaker 1: me love it even more. I have a precious memories
Speaker 1: lighthouse too. Let's hear marble Head Lighthouse near Kataba Island,
Speaker 1: which is where what state by Sandusky in Ohio on
Speaker 1: Lake Erie. And it was the same thing. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid. We used to go vacation on Kataba Island,
Speaker 1: and um, we would go to that lighthouse every once
Speaker 1: a while. I don't remember ever going inside, though it
Speaker 1: might not have been open, because there's no reason why
Speaker 1: you would go to a light house more than once
Speaker 1: and not go inside climb it up. I don't remember
Speaker 1: every going in, but or maybe you're just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks nice from down here. Yeah, I would have
Speaker 1: climbed it. I was a climber. Yeah, me too. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think the other thing that factors in for
Speaker 1: me is I found I really love antiquated systems that
Speaker 1: could still be viable. Yeah, like post apocalypse, you could
Speaker 1: fire up lighthouses again, you know fire yeah, and it
Speaker 1: would work. Yeah, I would, And I think that's a
Speaker 1: weird thing with me that I love. I love stuff
Speaker 1: that's still around that you could use if if need be.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never really looked at my environment that way,
Speaker 1: like to see what it was going to be standing
Speaker 1: after an apocalypse. Maybe I should. Well I don't know
Speaker 1: about standing, but let's just let's say there was some
Speaker 1: weird domino effect type thing like that movie where electricity
Speaker 1: and internet and everything went out right and people turned
Speaker 1: on each other. You could still lit a lighthouse and
Speaker 1: bos could find their safe harbor. What movie are you
Speaker 1: talking about? The Domino effect? Oh? Really, there's a movie
Speaker 1: like that called that. Yeah, I didn't know that. I
Speaker 1: think it was called with Elizabeth Shoo and agent Agent
Speaker 1: Cooper from Twin Peaks Kyle what's his face? McLaughlin and
Speaker 1: he is so great is the mare um Portlandia? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is good. I love that guy. I think it's
Speaker 1: called the domino effect. If not, that was the you know,
Speaker 1: essentially what happened There was a domino effect like a
Speaker 1: blackout right, Yeah, that just like and it created a
Speaker 1: domino effect that things kind of spun out of control.
Speaker 1: You're talking about Fury Road. Oh right, sorry, so, uh
Speaker 1: chuckout love lighthouses too, but I knew virtually nothing about
Speaker 1: him until researching this. And Um, if you think about them, though,
Speaker 1: it's like you were saying, after the apocalypse, you'll still
Speaker 1: still be standing. You just need to replace the electricity
Speaker 1: with the fire, and then you'd have basically what lighthouses
Speaker 1: have always been, which is some sort of highly visible signal.
Speaker 1: For most of the time, it was a fire either
Speaker 1: a wood fire, coal fire, tar fire, um, that you
Speaker 1: could see that was meant to signal to ships that
Speaker 1: hey man, there's some treacherous waters around here. It's one
Speaker 1: of the main things that they did. And as the
Speaker 1: light got better and better, one of the roles that um,
Speaker 1: lighthouses played was not just to say careful in this area.
Speaker 1: We went to the trouble building a lighthouse here because
Speaker 1: it's so treacherous, but also check out these rocks. See
Speaker 1: this with this light, there's some rocks there. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: literally lighting up a harbor. Yeah. Um, well, because there
Speaker 1: was no light otherwise. Right. And then, um, the other
Speaker 1: role that they play is in the daytime, right, because
Speaker 1: lighthouses I don't think that they actually keep them on
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, highly efficient on a cloudy day.
Speaker 1: If it's foggy, they'll turn it on and start sounding
Speaker 1: the fog horns, which we'll talk about. But um, for
Speaker 1: the most part in the daytime, it's off. But a
Speaker 1: lighthouse still serves a purpose during the day because they
Speaker 1: don't decorate them the way that they decorate them just
Speaker 1: for looks. They do it so you can differentiate one
Speaker 1: lighthouse from another. Yeah, like this one looks like a
Speaker 1: barber pole, so I know I'm near North Carolina's Cape
Speaker 1: Hatteras exactly right. And there's like a whole book called
Speaker 1: the light List where it has pictures of them, and
Speaker 1: did you get your hands on that? I'm meant to
Speaker 1: look it up, but I ran out of time. I'll
Speaker 1: bet it's neat. I bet it's neat too. By the way,
Speaker 1: that movie is called the Trigger Effect. I have heard
Speaker 1: of that one. There was a movie called the Domino Effect,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same one. What about the butterfly effects?
Speaker 1: Remember that garbage that was the coop? Right? Yeah? Man?
Speaker 1: Why does he haunt us? I don't know. He comes
Speaker 1: up a lot. All right. Where were we were we
Speaker 1: in the lighthouse? We were talking about the day mark. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty neat. But there's also what's called the light signature, right, yes,
Speaker 1: where that's um, that's we're going back to nighttime again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sorryverson the sun's going up and down you turn the
Speaker 1: lights off. It got weird. It is a little weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, Jerry, are you still here here? So? Um,
Speaker 1: at night, the light has its own flashing signature, light signature,
Speaker 1: and that's also in the Light book two. And there's
Speaker 1: actually a number of different ways that a light can flash. Right,
Speaker 1: who knew? I didn't know. You've got the fixed and
Speaker 1: that is, of course, if you just have a light
Speaker 1: on saying we're open, it shines continuously. Come on in.
Speaker 1: It's the waffle house. You have the occulting light. I
Speaker 1: love this one, the creepiest of all lights. Uh. It
Speaker 1: has longer periods of light than dark. Um, and then
Speaker 1: it flashes six six six uh. And a flashing light
Speaker 1: has longer periods of dark than light. So a halting
Speaker 1: and flashing or just sort of inverse of one another.
Speaker 1: There are two sides of the same coin. That's right.
Speaker 1: I can't have light without the dark is the whole premise.
Speaker 1: And then you have the isophase light that's equal light
Speaker 1: and dark with its uh signature blips and then a
Speaker 1: group flashing light super seventies. Yeah, it has a regular
Speaker 1: repeating number of flashing lights the same pattern, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's actually really famous one of those, um, the
Speaker 1: Minnot's Ledge light in Boston. It was very famously known
Speaker 1: as I think it still is that I Love You
Speaker 1: light because it would flash one, then it would flash four,
Speaker 1: and then we flashed three. So I l O V
Speaker 1: E y O U. So it was like a very
Speaker 1: romantic light. That's how people took it. I didn't make
Speaker 1: that up. Oh see, I thought it was I hate
Speaker 1: cal it could. That's the secondary way that it's known.
Speaker 1: The people of Boston are known for their soft side.
Speaker 1: I know, so that's why I love you. Yeah. They're
Speaker 1: prone to break into sobs and the public on the
Speaker 1: street frequently just walking around thinking about the beauty of life. Um.
Speaker 1: And then finally we have our alternating I'm sorry. We
Speaker 1: have the Morse code um, which is what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It It mimics Morse code with stats and dashestats and dashes.
Speaker 1: That's Morse code dots and dashes man um just spell
Speaker 1: out you know, things like I love you. But that's
Speaker 1: not when wheno's ledged us and it's not Morse code,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just one four and three yea, And
Speaker 1: people took it that way. I hate go. And when
Speaker 1: its ledge, actually it's pretty awesome to begin with. It's
Speaker 1: it's under ten ft of water at high tide and
Speaker 1: they had to build it, I think in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century whenever the tide was out, so they only had
Speaker 1: like X amount of hours and day during low tide.
Speaker 1: When the ledge was exposed. It was interesting. It's still there.
Speaker 1: It's tough cookie, but Josh, these are all sort of
Speaker 1: modern modern is modern ish, but um, although old, they
Speaker 1: can go back to uh what Homer's Iliad They mentioned
Speaker 1: a lighthouse. Crazy, and I mean like we're talking basically
Speaker 1: a huge bonfire on a cliff more exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: not like but well, not like Minot's ledge or anything,
Speaker 1: but then still qualifies as a lighthouse. It was the
Speaker 1: premise behind it. Yeah exactly. I sounded weirdly defensive just
Speaker 1: now about that. Still a lighthouse. Yeah. Uh, like you said,
Speaker 1: you would have like either wood or coal burning on
Speaker 1: a long pole. Uh. And then finally in the eighteenth century, um,
Speaker 1: they started using lanterns, which is a little more probably controllable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The problem was that they kept running into, um, was
Speaker 1: that the oil or coal would smudge the lantern, the
Speaker 1: glass around the lantern, and the so the glass top,
Speaker 1: the whole thing where the light is that you can
Speaker 1: walk around and that's the lantern of the lighthouse. And
Speaker 1: if you're burning a coal fire in there, it's gonna
Speaker 1: get sooty pretty quick. Yeah. One of the best one
Speaker 1: of the main jobs of the lighthouse keepers to wash windows. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: The problem is in between washings, which they did at
Speaker 1: least once a day normally, um, the light would degrade
Speaker 1: as the soot built up. Uh. So they figured out, oh,
Speaker 1: we need better better fuel than coal or tar. We
Speaker 1: thought to use tar. Let's burn the dirtiest thing on
Speaker 1: the planet. Inside. They were working with what they had
Speaker 1: at the time. So they figured out, especially in New England,
Speaker 1: that they could um use things like blubber and lard,
Speaker 1: which they did from Wales, burns a lot cleaner. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they also figured out, hey, you know what
Speaker 1: this flame is, Okay, but wouldn't it be great pre
Speaker 1: electric city if we had something like electricity to beam
Speaker 1: this thing out there for miles and miles and a
Speaker 1: very smart physicist from France named Augustine Fresnell. I like Fresnell,
Speaker 1: that's cool. For Nell said, all right, take my lens
Speaker 1: and do with it what you will, and he indited
Speaker 1: the Fornell lens. He did, I'm sorry, And it's like
Speaker 1: what you would think it would be. It's a bunch
Speaker 1: of prisms. Um through that through magic can cast a
Speaker 1: beam like twenty something miles out to the ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. They concentrate in the the gather light from
Speaker 1: the top and the bottom and in the middle and
Speaker 1: basically just shoot it all back to a single magnifying point.
Speaker 1: It just goes miles. Yeah. Yeah, and that really that
Speaker 1: changed everything and did a great job of handling the
Speaker 1: load until electricity would come around. And that's when everyone like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we don't need these silly flames anymore.
Speaker 1: Let's just plug in the light. But you can still
Speaker 1: use it Fornelle lens with the light and it's even brighter.
Speaker 1: That's true. Like today's modern lighthouses use um or have
Speaker 1: produced lights between ten thousand candelas and a million candelas.
Speaker 1: What's a candela? Did you see this reference, Like, this
Speaker 1: is the worst analogy I've ever run across. What did
Speaker 1: it say? A candela is one two hundred the brightness
Speaker 1: of a fifty watt light bulb? Oh okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know exactly how much a candela is. I also saw
Speaker 1: that it's roughly the brightness of a candle, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: and that's a much better frame of reference. So the
Speaker 1: brightness of a million candles burning in the same place,
Speaker 1: that's how bright modern lighthouses are, not one two hundred. Bowl.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break. Yeah, seriously, let's go find out
Speaker 1: who wrote that and write a strongly worded letter. Well
Speaker 1: that got ugly, so, uh, we're I feel like we're
Speaker 1: still talking about the history of lighthouses, right yeah sure, um,
Speaker 1: well what they were they were made of wood early on. Um.
Speaker 1: But the problem with a wooden lighthouse and a massive
Speaker 1: burning fire of tar is that they can burn down
Speaker 1: and be washed out to see, or in rough weather
Speaker 1: it can just be knocked plumb over by waves. And
Speaker 1: but like I said, they used what they had at
Speaker 1: the time, and over the years they got sturdier and
Speaker 1: sturdier with steel and concrete and stuff like that. Well,
Speaker 1: even over even before, over the years before, over the years, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Farah said Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of
Speaker 1: the ancient world was this um lighthouse at the mouth
Speaker 1: of the harbor to Alexandria, Egypt. And it was around
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure when it was around. I think
Speaker 1: the which one the Pharos of Alexandria to seventy BC.
Speaker 1: My friend, that thing was pretty sturdy. It took a
Speaker 1: massive earthquake to bring it down. It was made of masonry.
Speaker 1: It wasn't made of wood, you know. So it looks
Speaker 1: like lighthouse construction got dumber as the years went on,
Speaker 1: and then it got smart again, then got smart again.
Speaker 1: It just dipped down in the wood era and then
Speaker 1: came back up. Well, um, what you you normally have
Speaker 1: is the lighthouse, which can be just a lighthouse, or
Speaker 1: there might be uh a fog signal building. There might
Speaker 1: be a boat house. You might have a little house
Speaker 1: or apartment attached to it, and you might live there
Speaker 1: with your family on in a very remote part of
Speaker 1: the world, um, all by yourself for with a couple
Speaker 1: of other dude. Yeah, and take turns and take shifts.
Speaker 1: That's called a stag station. Yeah. And I think the
Speaker 1: other thing that appeals to me about lighthouses is I
Speaker 1: could have lived that life. Oh yeah, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: have seen myself dropping out and you got a neck beard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: All you need is like a cable nuts sweater and
Speaker 1: living up there all by myself corn cob pipe really yeah,
Speaker 1: grow my own crops and just sit up there and
Speaker 1: be quiet, no one bugging me. It's like it appeals.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. I did not picture you
Speaker 1: as a lighthousekeeper. I could totally do it, or a
Speaker 1: lightkeeper for short. Um and um. This is another thing
Speaker 1: that I thought was remarkable in this article. You might
Speaker 1: as well mention it is it. If there is a
Speaker 1: lighthouse near you that nobody operates, it is possible that
Speaker 1: you could own that lighthouse. Yeah. One door. The National
Speaker 1: Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of two thousand, it h got
Speaker 1: a process together where the Coast Guard, which is what
Speaker 1: runs the lighthouse biz now the lighthouse racket. Um. They
Speaker 1: you can basically start a nonprofit or have a nonprofit
Speaker 1: and at no cost, they will give you a decommissioned
Speaker 1: lighthouse if you maintain it and keep it open to
Speaker 1: the public. Yeah, for the most part, it's like preservation societies.
Speaker 1: But if nobody wants it, they put it up for auction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you can do what you want to. You
Speaker 1: can live out my dream. And I wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: do the windows either. I could just live up there
Speaker 1: and be a crusty old hermit. You know. We could
Speaker 1: do a kickstarter to help you live out your dream. Chuck, Well,
Speaker 1: let's do a few more years of stuff. You should
Speaker 1: know first though, before you go. Okay, okay, um, all right,
Speaker 1: so back to more modern times. Um, we're building them
Speaker 1: of concrete and steel. At this point they're a little
Speaker 1: more sturdy. You got your little keeper's house. You're not
Speaker 1: getting paid much money. How much money, dude? Not much? So.
Speaker 1: This article says that they earned about two dollars annually
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century. I went on to the
Speaker 1: gee Whiz West Egg inflation calculator for eight in eighteen nine.
Speaker 1: That was five grand. Today. Your provisions are covered, though, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the very least your room is. I don't know
Speaker 1: about board. I bet you they all the whale lard
Speaker 1: you can eat. Yeah, Now imagine they take care of
Speaker 1: stuff because you can't like leave and go shopping like
Speaker 1: imagine you just have everything shipped to you and um again, ideal.
Speaker 1: I love that. Don't have to go out, you don't
Speaker 1: have to spend any money. It's like web van, yeah,
Speaker 1: coming to you. You're banking that five five grand a
Speaker 1: year essentially. Wow. Man, when you get into like lighthouse mode,
Speaker 1: you're lower in the standards like jimmandess like You're like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm making five grand. People are bringing me food. I
Speaker 1: don't have to talk to anybody. Yeah, that's awesome. It's
Speaker 1: like your fantasy. That's hilarious. Um. So that lens we
Speaker 1: were talking about, we we didn't use that in the
Speaker 1: United States for a while because the way I read
Speaker 1: this is we kind of cheaped out when it was
Speaker 1: being run um by this guy Stephen pleasant from for
Speaker 1: thirty years eighteen fifty two, thirty two years. He ran
Speaker 1: an efficient some might say chintzy program to where he
Speaker 1: was like, you know, we don't need those fancy French lenses.
Speaker 1: UM take these creddy versions. They probably wouldn't even a lens.
Speaker 1: It is like a mirror reflector or something. Maybe if that, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a piece of metal at somebody had to just
Speaker 1: stand behind the light with the reflected, you're my mute assistant,
Speaker 1: right quiet. But then finally the US government got involved
Speaker 1: in said you know what, we need to regulate this.
Speaker 1: We the US they were involved. That's why. Yes, from
Speaker 1: seventeen sixteen to seventeen eighty nine, that was not run
Speaker 1: by the US government. No, it wasn't until Alexander Hamilton's
Speaker 1: almost got in a shipwreck off the coast of I
Speaker 1: think North Carolina, and he went back and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I think we need some lighthouses. The federal government needs
Speaker 1: to get involved. And so I think the nineteenth piece
Speaker 1: of legislation the US Congress ever passed was to establish
Speaker 1: the Lighthouse Board. Uh, the U S Lighthouse Establishment initially
Speaker 1: is what it was called. And you know socialist program.
Speaker 1: He said that the federal the federalities are going to
Speaker 1: run this thing. Uh and then in charge now and
Speaker 1: you know what things um went downhill? Yeah, improved, improved.
Speaker 1: Everyone who's critical big government, right, Yeah, But there were
Speaker 1: a lot of lighthouses at the time. By nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: we had about a thousand lighthouses. Well, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred government had reformed its reputation, like seriously, the world
Speaker 1: ground for the mid nineteenth century, the US governed. The
Speaker 1: US lighthouse system was second rate at best. They just
Speaker 1: had a terrible reputation. And I guess it sounds like
Speaker 1: they got rid of Stephen Pleasant, whose name is basically
Speaker 1: mud these days, and the quality went up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's when they established the Lighthouse Board, which is I
Speaker 1: think what you were thinking to shape things up. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two, they said, let's get some fronel lenses
Speaker 1: for all these lighthouses. Finally, Yeah, we can be like
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Pleasant dead. Uh, did you
Speaker 1: know the Statue of Liberty was a lighthouse. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I knew it, but when I read it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, yeah, but I don't know if it
Speaker 1: unlocked some memory or if I'm just like, that's just
Speaker 1: too obvious. I didn't know. Yeah, I was like, I
Speaker 1: surely I knew that, right right that that was it.
Speaker 1: For fifteen years it was a lighthouse in New York Harbor,
Speaker 1: which is pretty neat. And then by nineteen thirty, when
Speaker 1: electricity was effective and rampant um, you didn't need these
Speaker 1: fires burning or candles burning or whale blubber. No, but
Speaker 1: there were a lot of lighthouses where that we're on
Speaker 1: like islands or on offshore like ledges like Minno's Ledge
Speaker 1: or Eddie Stone in England. Um, that were just like
Speaker 1: the technology to run electricity out there just was not around,
Speaker 1: of course. Um, so they were still using oil of
Speaker 1: various types to to fuel these things. Well into the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, into the sixties, um easily, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: were um still people working there, um living in the
Speaker 1: lighthouse or on the property. Uh. Into the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: it was definitely more rare, but um and night. Uh
Speaker 1: that's when the Coast Guard brought about their lighthouse automation
Speaker 1: and modernization program and that pretty much dwindled by the
Speaker 1: end of that decade. It dwindled it down to sixty
Speaker 1: that still had people working there. Yeah, sixty out of
Speaker 1: a thousand. Today there's one in Boston, the Brewster Island,
Speaker 1: one little bruster little Brewster Island was interfusing it with
Speaker 1: Big Brewster. Well, there might be one Brewster's Millions Island,
Speaker 1: Little Brewster, that's right. It was the first one in
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh, seventeen sixteen was when it was built.
Speaker 1: And then that one was replaced in Sight three and
Speaker 1: it's the second oldest working one behind Sandy Hook, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: is the right and the person that lives there is
Speaker 1: basically living there as a tour guide, not necessarily like
Speaker 1: guiding boats into harbor. They may do both. No, I
Speaker 1: think it's still working. Yeah, well then I guess they
Speaker 1: do both. I saw modern marvels on lighthouses and they
Speaker 1: interviewed one of the light keepers on Brewster Island, little
Speaker 1: Brewster Island, and he he was They showed him like
Speaker 1: polishing the glass and everything. Yeah, but it's automated. I
Speaker 1: got the light itself. I see. I see. So they
Speaker 1: keep into our guided I think, okay, but yeah, he's
Speaker 1: still I mean, he's providing a function there that's not
Speaker 1: just show. Maybe I could that's what I could do.
Speaker 1: Then you should have heard that guy. He's like, I
Speaker 1: can't even begin to do it. But he was like
Speaker 1: a hardcore light keeper in Boston. Yeah, I can imagine,
Speaker 1: although I wouldn't be the best person because Chuck silent
Speaker 1: lighthouse story isn't really You're just like you just sweep
Speaker 1: your arm in a room and turns out quietly. People
Speaker 1: ask questions, I just wrap them on the knuckles out
Speaker 1: all right, I'm getting all excited thinking about the prospects
Speaker 1: of living in a lighthouse. So I'm gonna go do
Speaker 1: some push ups and we'll come back right after this. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: say that you did live your life as a lightkeeper,
Speaker 1: what would you what would it be like? Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: First of all, what's what's your family background? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: my dad was a fisherman. Probably actually my my great
Speaker 1: great grandfather was a fisherman. My grandfather was a lightkeeper.
Speaker 1: My dad was a son of a light keeper, and
Speaker 1: some mom was a keeper. Pirate captain. Pirate captain. Like
Speaker 1: Gina Davis. Yeah, that was a good movie. She's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah she uh see. Thorn interviewed her recently on his
Speaker 1: Bull's Eye show. She's just like the best, and they
Speaker 1: were all excited in the office. Everyone was like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: Gina Davis is the coolest. She supposedly was known for
Speaker 1: bringing cookies to that she baked herself to interviews. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a MENSA member. Yeah, I got a lot going
Speaker 1: on there. Julius Smith, who works at the Max fun
Speaker 1: HQ and produces Judge Sean Hodgman, said on her Facebook
Speaker 1: she was like, Gina Davis is like the coolest aunt
Speaker 1: of all cool aunts of all time. Yes, she was
Speaker 1: in Beetle Juice. I mean, like, yeah, it didn't get
Speaker 1: much cooler than that. She could she could just be
Speaker 1: a total jerk and she was still awesome in Beetle Juice.
Speaker 1: Um So, anyway, hats off to Eugena Davis. How'd that
Speaker 1: come up? I don't even remember now, your mom was
Speaker 1: a pirate captain alright, Gina Davis? Was that a shout
Speaker 1: out to Cutthroat Island? I guess the movie. You're the
Speaker 1: one that said it. I guess, Yeah, was that Cutthroat Island? Huh?
Speaker 1: Is it the name of it? It was that bad
Speaker 1: pirate movie. I loved it. That wasn't bad. It got
Speaker 1: bad pressed, it wasn't bad. It's funny you like some
Speaker 1: of the most legendarily bad movies of all time. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that bad as far as just like critics and
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, man Ishtar, I never saw. I've actually
Speaker 1: stayed away from his star. I also stayed away from
Speaker 1: Rock the Kasbo because I saw that it was basically
Speaker 1: an updated Ishtar. Did I even see that? I can't
Speaker 1: remember If I watched it one night. Rock the Kasba. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or if I wanted to and didn't. Like that's how
Speaker 1: little of an impact it made. It's on Netflix. I
Speaker 1: think I actually did watch it and it was just
Speaker 1: sort of like, yeah, not very good. Yeah, no, ishtar
Speaker 1: is a pretty good code word to stay away from
Speaker 1: him movie. I never saw Ishtar? What else do I like?
Speaker 1: That was bad? It was supposedly bad. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: just have you have you seen cuts Rorod Island? Sure
Speaker 1: it's terrible, it's not terrible. Um, all right, So we
Speaker 1: were talking about the lineage what might get you into
Speaker 1: the light keeping business. We were being coy and role playing,
Speaker 1: but that is true people. It's a family business for
Speaker 1: the most part. Uh your parents or your father might
Speaker 1: have done it, or you come from a long line
Speaker 1: of uh seafaring types. At the very least you feel
Speaker 1: close to the sea. Yeah, Like if you want to
Speaker 1: spend your time out there on a rocky point overlooking
Speaker 1: the waves all day long, like you probably didn't come
Speaker 1: from Kansas to do so, you know. Yeah, there they
Speaker 1: have wheat watchers. They just sit in the tower and
Speaker 1: watch the wheat and the flatness and they stand up
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they're like, oh my God, there's
Speaker 1: a wheat missing. There's a wheat. Um. One thing we
Speaker 1: keep saying is men. That's because most of the lighthousekeepers
Speaker 1: were men, but not all. No, not all, and not
Speaker 1: all of them were necessarily white men either. There were
Speaker 1: some very famous legendary African American lightkeepers and um, light
Speaker 1: life savers as well. Surfmen is what they were called too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because supposedly you're just there to provide light and signal.
Speaker 1: But when the S hits the f um, I think
Speaker 1: you can say a fan fan when the S s s
Speaker 1: it's a fan. Brave lightkeepers were known to go out
Speaker 1: there and provide rescue. Yeah. Um. And one of them
Speaker 1: was a woman named Ida Lewis, actually American hero. She
Speaker 1: grew up on Lime Rock Island, uh, near Newport, Rhode
Speaker 1: Island and Newport Harbor, and her dad was a lightkeeper,
Speaker 1: so she followed that tradition and she actually started taking
Speaker 1: over the duties after her father had a stroke. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, she just became a lightkeeper, but a very
Speaker 1: famous one for her life saving skills. Rescued a dozen
Speaker 1: men over the years. No, actually eighteen affirmed. They think
Speaker 1: it's as high as twenty five. They're not gonna say dozens.
Speaker 1: She uh, she rescued her last person at age sixty three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's quite a lady, that's but for the most part,
Speaker 1: And and she's not the only one who saved lives,
Speaker 1: like there were plenty out there that did. But it
Speaker 1: was not h an expected role of a light keeper
Speaker 1: because the Coast Guard had a lifesaver house usually nearby
Speaker 1: a lighthouse, because the lighthouse was there in the first
Speaker 1: place too, because there was a treacherous area. So it
Speaker 1: just makes sense to also put a life saving house
Speaker 1: there because even with the light the lighthouse itself, ship
Speaker 1: may still run the ground and there may be rescuing
Speaker 1: And if you want to be thrilled, there's a really
Speaker 1: neat um article that's posted on this podcast page about
Speaker 1: the p Island Um life Saving House. It was um.
Speaker 1: But by the way that pre Coastguard, we have the
Speaker 1: U S Life Saving Service, which is what that term
Speaker 1: comes from. Yeah, and then they merged everything together under Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: and the the lighthouses and the life saving service all
Speaker 1: came under the purview of the Coastguard. Right, we should
Speaker 1: do one on the Coastguard. Remember that married couple that
Speaker 1: were both Coastguards that lobbied us for many years until
Speaker 1: they gave up. We're still thinking about you guys, and
Speaker 1: we're still going to do a Coastguard podcast. Don't worry
Speaker 1: eventually years and years later. Um So, pre nine when
Speaker 1: they made the Coastguard is where you really can't find
Speaker 1: a whole lot of written history. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: that has been lost to time. And um they say
Speaker 1: here in this article that what we have now our
Speaker 1: stories from families that remain lower. Yeah, lore, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah and then chuck. Um. So if you're in a lighthouse,
Speaker 1: even as remote and cut off as they are, if
Speaker 1: you hated it, you would still be like, at least
Speaker 1: I'm not working on a light ship. Yes. So, before
Speaker 1: they had booies like modern booies today there's there's buoys
Speaker 1: out there. They're basically like floating lighthouses. In areas that
Speaker 1: require some sort of warning but are just too far
Speaker 1: off land to build a lighthouse, they put booties out there,
Speaker 1: and today the booies are like sometimes something like forty
Speaker 1: feet in diameter. They're huge, massive things. Um. But before
Speaker 1: booies even they would use something called light ships, and
Speaker 1: it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a lighthouse on
Speaker 1: a ship and it's in a very remote area. You
Speaker 1: are out there for months at a time. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: just sail out and anchor down and live there right um,
Speaker 1: and the boats anchored all the time. You would have
Speaker 1: to like go to and from the boat to the
Speaker 1: to shore. Um. But while you're working there, it's just
Speaker 1: mind bogglingly awful. But there was a lot of like insanity, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would happen, Like when the fog rolled in before
Speaker 1: the evan of foghorns, you would have to yank the
Speaker 1: bells rope the fog bell rope um every ten seconds,
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day for as long as the
Speaker 1: fog was around. Every ten seconds you had to ring
Speaker 1: a bell. That was your job. And if you didn't
Speaker 1: then you were risking the lives of anybody passing by
Speaker 1: in the area. So not cool, man, not cool at all.
Speaker 1: But the lightships, apparently we're just about as bad as
Speaker 1: it it got as far as boredom, loneliness, isolation, hatred
Speaker 1: of bells. The lightship had it all. Hate bells. I
Speaker 1: didn't I never worked on a lightship, but I'll bet
Speaker 1: they hated bells. You would hear that in your sleep.
Speaker 1: If you rang a bell every ten seconds for hours
Speaker 1: at a stretch, you're not going to get that out
Speaker 1: of your head. And even if you did, when you
Speaker 1: tried to go to sleep, one of the guys on
Speaker 1: the next shift would be out there ringing the bell anyway,
Speaker 1: So you had draby nuts. Let's talk about some famous lighthouses. Well,
Speaker 1: we already talked about the h the Pharos of Alexandria Um,
Speaker 1: which is the oldest known lighthouse and at the time
Speaker 1: they contend might have been the tallest thing on the
Speaker 1: planet at fot that's super dull. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: masonry too. They found it in underwater at the bot
Speaker 1: the ocean. They found pieces of it and in Alexandria Harbor.
Speaker 1: I guess you mentioned Eddie Stone light already in Plymouth, England,
Speaker 1: which is I guess that's where the fine gin comes from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: still hitting Plymouth up if anyone out there works for Plymouth.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's such good gin. It's delicious. So is
Speaker 1: Leopold's Leopold's gin. Yeah, it's American gin really good too good.
Speaker 1: That's that's my go to American gin. Nice, Although I
Speaker 1: like most American jin's, but that's been Have you had
Speaker 1: st George? I love that stuff. Yeah, there's three of them.
Speaker 1: One of them I do not care for it all really,
Speaker 1: but the other two I like. I'll bet it's the
Speaker 1: terror Terry War. You don't like it's so got a
Speaker 1: weird taste. Yeah, but love it. But I don't appreciate
Speaker 1: its own things, the fact that it doesn't have its
Speaker 1: own classification of gin like old Tom or Jennifer or
Speaker 1: something like that. It should have its own thing like
Speaker 1: foot gin. I love that stuff. It's dude, it's really good.
Speaker 1: You know what it's really good with? Have you ever
Speaker 1: had um fever tree bitter lemon? No, it's like a
Speaker 1: lemony lemon, limy, citrusy drink, but without much sweetness. Um
Speaker 1: that with the Territory war gin and juice. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's knock your socks off. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: care for it. And you know what, I'll just go
Speaker 1: ahead and bring you my bottle because I've had like
Speaker 1: two drinks out of it. Try to wrap my head around.
Speaker 1: I will take you just can't do it. I will
Speaker 1: email you tonight as a reminder, say hey, I'll bring
Speaker 1: in that st George, thanks man. And also, by the way,
Speaker 1: I am now on because you know, I drink the
Speaker 1: dirty Martini, but I don't eat olives, which is a
Speaker 1: little weird, just like the juice. Yeah, the brine um
Speaker 1: with a twist. It's a little different. I know. I've
Speaker 1: I've had that and um for years. I would have
Speaker 1: empty jars of dry olives in my fridge and very
Speaker 1: little juice. You know it's in there. I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Now. So now I bought Dirty Sue
Speaker 1: olive juice and you can buy it in a bottle,
Speaker 1: and I bought a box of it and it just
Speaker 1: sits in the cabinet my house. And so big shout
Speaker 1: out to Dirty Sue Olive brine. Really dirty? Is up
Speaker 1: your martini? What's your gin that you use for this? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean, I love Plymouth, I love Hendrix and our
Speaker 1: friends at Spring forty four. Gin, dude, send us gin
Speaker 1: from a They said it's all about the water, and
Speaker 1: they have like the best water on earth. They made
Speaker 1: some old tom gin. Yeah, and it is. It is
Speaker 1: delicious like it it made I love Martinez. Is it's
Speaker 1: um old tom gin? Uh um marischino liqueur not the
Speaker 1: cherry stuff, but like the real liquor, and then um,
Speaker 1: some sweet vermouth. It's like probably the most perfect drink
Speaker 1: anyone's ever made. It's very old. Um. That made maybe
Speaker 1: the best Martinez I've ever had. That was good stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: for a while lately I've been stirring. I got a
Speaker 1: little martini picture or a cocktail picture to stir um.
Speaker 1: But I'm back to shaking now because I've found out
Speaker 1: that bruising gin is a total myth. So James Bond
Speaker 1: wasn't cuckoo. No, you can't bruise gin. Yeah, that's all
Speaker 1: just garbage. Do you use orange bitters in yours? No?
Speaker 1: Really brightens it up, straight up dirty sue gin. I
Speaker 1: do use a little vermouth, like I know that people
Speaker 1: don't like vermouth at all anymore. Really, Yeah, I see
Speaker 1: bartenders now don't use any vermouth. That's that's not a martini.
Speaker 1: Well agreed, that's a gin, a child gin up with
Speaker 1: some um. Just the one in the green Italian bottle?
Speaker 1: Was that Dolan Blanc? Yeah, that's good stuff. But I
Speaker 1: also found out recently that that vermouth is a wine
Speaker 1: and you don't just keep it on your shelf for
Speaker 1: two years, keep it in the fridge for maybe a month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. So I've been drinking this old
Speaker 1: old vermouth. You still can, It's not like you can't,
Speaker 1: but just for the best possible impact, you want to
Speaker 1: just get that small bottle. Yeah, I learned that the
Speaker 1: hard way to. I'm gonna start doing that. Man. We
Speaker 1: we should have our own cocktail show. We should because
Speaker 1: we've just talked. We talked about booze a lot. We
Speaker 1: don't need to. Let's drink about it. Has that covered? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Are good friends that let's drink about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and thanks also to Ben who sent us um some
Speaker 1: ambler smooth ambler. Uh what was it called contradiction? That
Speaker 1: stuff is good too, that's right man. Booze talk on lighthouses.
Speaker 1: Who knew? Oh I bet you. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: boozeing that goes on a lighthouse. But they're not making
Speaker 1: amazing drinks with St. George and bitter lemon. They're just
Speaker 1: drinking that stuff straight out of the deer skin. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Um where were we? Eddie Stone Lighthouse, Plymouth, England? This
Speaker 1: that started? Um, this thing is it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very rough area to have a lighthouse, and it seems
Speaker 1: like nature doesn't want a lighthouse there because over the
Speaker 1: years it has been knocked down and burned down many
Speaker 1: many times. This dude, basically um went out there by himself,
Speaker 1: Harry Harry or Henry Winstanley in sixteen sixty six and
Speaker 1: just started building this wooden lighthouse out and these rocks
Speaker 1: off the coast of Plymouth. Himself got captured by a
Speaker 1: French pirate released and lit the thing in and he
Speaker 1: actually hid. He deconstructed it and rebuilt it and died
Speaker 1: in the second version of it. Really it got swept
Speaker 1: away with him inside. But he was a pretty cool cat.
Speaker 1: That was s three. Then another one in seventeen o
Speaker 1: eight was built that burned down in seventeen fifty five.
Speaker 1: And then a guy named John Smeaton, he was an engineer.
Speaker 1: He built one that was built to last for a
Speaker 1: little while. He actually came up with what you think
Speaker 1: of as the modern lighthouses. Stick at the bottom, tapers
Speaker 1: at the top, and then it flares out right below
Speaker 1: the lantern. And the reason most lighthouses flare out right
Speaker 1: below the lantern is when a wave comes up and
Speaker 1: the waves can get that big. It won't ride up
Speaker 1: into the lantern. It will be thrown back out to
Speaker 1: see when it hits the flare. It's a water guard
Speaker 1: pretty much. Interesting. I did not know that he was
Speaker 1: a smart dude. Um. So that one lasted for a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three years, which was you know, as
Speaker 1: far as the Eddy Stone Light is concerned, an eternity.
Speaker 1: But eventually, uh, the Trinity House, which is England's version
Speaker 1: of the coastguard of the lighthouse, they said, no, let's
Speaker 1: let's tear that thing down this long, but we think
Speaker 1: it might not for much longer. But then they built
Speaker 1: another one. This one actually they used almost a jigsaw
Speaker 1: puzzle the foundation. Yeah, so when a wave hits it,
Speaker 1: it actually compresses together and becomes stronger when a wave
Speaker 1: smacking into it. So that was there for good wonderful
Speaker 1: We talked about Boston Light. There's also the Cape Hatteras
Speaker 1: on the outer banks of North Carolina, which is I
Speaker 1: believe the tallest one in the United States two eight
Speaker 1: feet and it's one of the most famous as well.
Speaker 1: It's the one with the black and white barber pole design. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's sixty three for our friends everywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: Did you know that that one was in trouble? The
Speaker 1: sea was encroaching upon it, and they got some money together.
Speaker 1: Congress did and moved it. Moved this lighthouse feet ac
Speaker 1: inland over the course of twenty three days. They slowly
Speaker 1: moved it on tracks. It was pretty amazing. It was
Speaker 1: on that modern marvels one. It's like fitz CARLDO. Sure, um,
Speaker 1: I got a few more fast facts. Unless you have
Speaker 1: something else, I'm done. Uh. Six hundred and eighty lighthouses
Speaker 1: remaining in the US estimated out of that original thousand
Speaker 1: plus thirty seven states have lighthouses, just not Kansas. Michigan
Speaker 1: has the most, don't they of all the states? Twenty
Speaker 1: in Michigan because of the Great Lakes, I would imagine
Speaker 1: makes sense. The East Coast says three one. West Coast
Speaker 1: only has ninety four. I guess there's just a lot
Speaker 1: more shipping and stuff. Huh need to step it up
Speaker 1: West coast um and worldwide. Uh, we estimate seven more
Speaker 1: than seventeen thousand lighthouses in two d and fifty countries
Speaker 1: m and the brightest one Oak Island in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: fourteen million candle power. You can see it twenty four miles. Great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. Fourteen million candles, all burning and once
Speaker 1: pretty neat. It sounds like a new religion. The Candela's
Speaker 1: really a million is one lighting their candle and I
Speaker 1: think you just established it reciting the the Candela's prayer. Nice.
Speaker 1: See we just started a religion. Yeah, that easy? Well
Speaker 1: you did. I just bore a witness. That's all right.
Speaker 1: You can be my faithful assistant. Thanks. Can I baptize you? Sure? Okay? Uh?
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about lighthouses, you can
Speaker 1: type that word into the search part how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And since I talked about baptizing Chuck, it's
Speaker 1: time for listener, ma'am. Since you talked about baptizing Chuck,
Speaker 1: that must mean it's Hey, guys, I recently discovered your
Speaker 1: podcast and immediately fell in love. I'm thirsty for knowledge.
Speaker 1: Find it quite impressive that you've become as I experts.
Speaker 1: Not really, yeah, but I'm writing in to respond to
Speaker 1: the controlled burn episode. I used to work for my
Speaker 1: local county park system doing habitat and wildlife management, and
Speaker 1: controlled burns took up many days in the early spring.
Speaker 1: For US, our department only consists of about six to
Speaker 1: seven people, three of which were licensed burn bosses by
Speaker 1: the state. They make the burn plan, they light the fire,
Speaker 1: and basically coordinate and oversee the entire operation. I would
Speaker 1: make everybody call me burn boss job totallywood um. Additionally,
Speaker 1: local fire departments volunteer personnel and sometimes equipment. Uh so
Speaker 1: they lend out their stuff, which is nice, and people
Speaker 1: such as water trucks to assist. We all said quite
Speaker 1: a large number of park volunteers that go through our
Speaker 1: training and help on fire line. On the fire line
Speaker 1: as well, that would be neat. I would do that, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a Saturday afternoon. Sure, I'm sure it's different for
Speaker 1: each state and agency. Um, but our burn bosses go
Speaker 1: through training put on by the state in order to
Speaker 1: get certified. I can't recall this as men and but
Speaker 1: another advantage of controlled burns is that the charred earth
Speaker 1: absorbs light because it's black in color, more than it
Speaker 1: normally would, causing the soil to heat more quickly and
Speaker 1: thus early germination for the desired species. I had not
Speaker 1: considered that. We didn't mention that good factoid there. Thanks
Speaker 1: for satisfying my wondering mind. Tracy comp and sent Sineta, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Tracy. We appreciate that. Oh. We always
Speaker 1: love to hear from people who know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Burn Boss comp. Yeah. If you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us, you can tweet to us at sysk
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