Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. Uh with Me is always a Child's de
Speaker 1: wt Chuck Bryant and that's stuff you should know the podcast.
Speaker 1: The two of us together a couple of months, our voices.
Speaker 1: You know what I've been seeing all day? Of course,
Speaker 1: Panma over and over and I just whistled it and
Speaker 1: Jerry's you know, I got that stuck in my head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we were growing up, my sister was singing it
Speaker 1: and I realized that she was singing turn and Run, Like,
Speaker 1: what what she's like that song? That Van Halen song.
Speaker 1: Don't be an idiot? She thought that's what they were saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting because there's so many misinterpreted song lyrics
Speaker 1: famously over the years, but I never have heard Panama
Speaker 1: as being one of them. Yeah, especially since the song
Speaker 1: is named Panama. Yeah parentheses, turn and run? Right, Maybe
Speaker 1: they were talking about the people who were working on
Speaker 1: the early French effort to build a canal in Panama. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: that didn't go over so well. We'll get to that, Okay, spoiler,
Speaker 1: The French didn't build the Panama Canal. I thought we
Speaker 1: were gonna get to it right now. All right, do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about Da Gama Balboa? Which one?
Speaker 1: Which one was? George Costanza's favorite explorer was a da
Speaker 1: Gama or Balboa? Oh man, it was one of the two.
Speaker 1: Da Gama was Yeah, I think so okay, um that
Speaker 1: was a funny conversation though, Um so, yeah. Balboa back
Speaker 1: in the day was was wandering around in a region
Speaker 1: called Darien, and he summoned to the peak there and
Speaker 1: was like, holy cow, if I look this away, I
Speaker 1: see the Pacific Ocean, and if I look at that away,
Speaker 1: I see the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean. And the
Speaker 1: only thing between these two big bodies of water it's
Speaker 1: this little isthmus of land. Yeah. I'm gonna have a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble with that word. That's okay, just say
Speaker 1: strip okay. So the strip of land here is the
Speaker 1: only thing in between. And we should figure out a
Speaker 1: way to use this as a as a thoroughfare. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is it connects the world. It does exactly.
Speaker 1: At the time, the Spanish we're trying to trade with
Speaker 1: the Chinese, and we're doing a pretty good job of
Speaker 1: it in the Philippines, and the best way to get
Speaker 1: to that was to come across the Atlantic and go
Speaker 1: into the Pacific. It worked very, very well, and the
Speaker 1: idea of just having a place where you could go
Speaker 1: straight through rather than go all the way down South
Speaker 1: America and then back up it was just mind boggling.
Speaker 1: It's like you said, it opened up the world. This
Speaker 1: guy got it immediately. The problem was it would take
Speaker 1: about four dred more years before anyone finally got around
Speaker 1: to completing it successfully. Well, yeah, and forget the rest
Speaker 1: of the world that you know, added states, Just like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to ship this by boat from New York
Speaker 1: to San Francisco. How can I do that? I can
Speaker 1: just like kind of sneak around Florida, right Nope, blocked? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: then what do I gotta do? You gotta go eight
Speaker 1: thousand miles nautical miles around South America to get to California,
Speaker 1: right or? Um, you know, when you me and I
Speaker 1: were in Nicaragua, we were in a town in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century was away station for minor forty niners going
Speaker 1: on to California, and um, they would sail on to Nicaragua,
Speaker 1: take a train and then ship out from Nicaragua up
Speaker 1: to California, except the handful that was like I think
Speaker 1: I might just kick it here exactly. Yeah, I bet
Speaker 1: you there were some d oh, definitely, I'm sure. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there was. There was a continent in the way,
Speaker 1: in the idea that it was just this little narrow
Speaker 1: strip of land that that made a lot of people
Speaker 1: say this is the place to be. In the sixteenth
Speaker 1: you know, the eighteenth century, the Scottish showed up. They
Speaker 1: tried to establish an outpost, failed spectacular literally, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: there's a great um section in about it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the Spanish were there, the French were there. Uh, they
Speaker 1: established pretty good outposts there. It was very clear that
Speaker 1: this little area which was then part of Colombia is
Speaker 1: now present day Panama, was going to be a hop
Speaker 1: in spot because there was no thinner portion of the
Speaker 1: North or South American continents than this one, and everyone
Speaker 1: needed to figure out a way to get through. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't as easy as like, hey, let's just
Speaker 1: dredge all this sand and let the waters meet, because
Speaker 1: that's not too hard. It's like dense jungle and mountains
Speaker 1: and the continental divide. Yeah. So it's it's My first
Speaker 1: thought was like, how hard could it have been? I
Speaker 1: didn't realize how treacherous that area was. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that um that Balboa and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who succeeded him, I thought the same thing, like how
Speaker 1: hard is it? But it is like, that's that continental divide.
Speaker 1: That's a tough thing to break through. That's why they
Speaker 1: call it a divide. Yeah, well that's where two tech
Speaker 1: time plates come gather and form a mountain range. And like,
Speaker 1: that's you're cutting through not one but two tech time plates.
Speaker 1: Everybody wrap your head around that. Seriously. Let's talk about it,
Speaker 1: because obviously we were successful eventually. But the first attempt
Speaker 1: was not in the first attempt, it was by the French,
Speaker 1: who in the eighteen twenties, I believe, started to undertake
Speaker 1: a what is known as a sea level canal, which
Speaker 1: is basically they were going to cut their way straight
Speaker 1: through the isthmus of Panama. That's right, and canals were
Speaker 1: all the rage at the time because of steam technology,
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, you didn't have to use
Speaker 1: the very cool and quaint towpath and have a mule
Speaker 1: walk alongside of a river or canal. Well, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of them now are like jogging trails and stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, which you know, that's great, makes for good thing.
Speaker 1: I don't see any mules on them these days, but
Speaker 1: it's great that people can use these to pass now too,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a nature trail. Um. Yes, So
Speaker 1: the steam technology gave the French the idea that hey man,
Speaker 1: we can we can build a sea level canal here
Speaker 1: because we can just dig right through it. We have steam.
Speaker 1: We don't need the mules for the towpaths any longer.
Speaker 1: All we need is some good steam shovels. We're gonna
Speaker 1: cut right through this continental divide, right through this jungle.
Speaker 1: And as a result of this ambition, twenty thou people died. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, they were able to you know, get a little,
Speaker 1: a little far thanks to the railroad there in Panama.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, it was the first railroad in
Speaker 1: the world to connect both sides of a continent. Right.
Speaker 1: Wasn't very big, but it didn't need to be. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of great. But that allowed the French to
Speaker 1: get in there. They we're deciding between Nicaragua and Panama
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, and they said like you said,
Speaker 1: we can do sea level we don't need these locks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look at a map of Nicaragua and look
Speaker 1: at Panama, like the idea of going through Nicaragua over
Speaker 1: Panama's just nuts. Yeah, and we'll look plain how the
Speaker 1: locks work. But it essentially just raises and lowers your ship,
Speaker 1: right for sure, in a little like bay station of
Speaker 1: water that's flooded and then drained. Right. Actually, that's how
Speaker 1: lock works. So the French organized this thing called the
Speaker 1: Company Universal d Canal Enter thank you and uh, led
Speaker 1: by a guy named Ferdinand Lesseps who had created a
Speaker 1: sea level canal through the Suez connected the Mediterranean and
Speaker 1: the Red Seas. It was a big deal. So they
Speaker 1: brought him in and he's like, sure, we'll do another
Speaker 1: sea level canal. I'm feeling good about this. He's like,
Speaker 1: I did the c S Canal with my eyes closed,
Speaker 1: Like I can do this with one arm tie behind
Speaker 1: my back. Well, he didn't realize is that digging through
Speaker 1: a bunch of sand is not like digging through two
Speaker 1: tectonic plates and a bunch of jungle and malaria. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like I said, twenty thousand people died as a
Speaker 1: result of this like this guy was like, no, we
Speaker 1: can do it. We can do it. We're gonna do
Speaker 1: a sea level canal. We can do it. And then
Speaker 1: finally it was like, I don't think we can do this.
Speaker 1: It was too late. A lot a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: of people were dead from yellow fever, in malaria, from accidents. Um,
Speaker 1: it's privately financed, so a lot of people lost a
Speaker 1: lot of money too exactly, and this company goes under.
Speaker 1: Well he tried to salvage it though. First he tried
Speaker 1: to hire Gustav Eiffel of the Eiffel Tower fame right,
Speaker 1: and said, hey, I think we need those locks after all, um,
Speaker 1: and you're good at building big steel things, so can
Speaker 1: you help. Then he was like, of course I can.
Speaker 1: And then it was too late though that the business
Speaker 1: was done and they had done a little bit well,
Speaker 1: they had done a lot, Like they made eleven miles
Speaker 1: of canal up to that point. Not bad. It's about
Speaker 1: a quarter of the way there, right, But this was
Speaker 1: the when did they start chuck the eighteen so chuck
Speaker 1: as we understand that they started in the eighteen twenties
Speaker 1: and this thing went bust by nineteen o two. I
Speaker 1: believe well, that's when Congress. I mean, they were busts
Speaker 1: before that, but that's when the US stepped in and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll by your junk. Oh I'm sorry. So in like sixties,
Speaker 1: about sixty years they they had managed to dig eleven
Speaker 1: miles of canal, build a bunch of buildings, They had
Speaker 1: a lot of equipment and supplies there, um, and yeah,
Speaker 1: the US said, we smell a really, really great opportunity.
Speaker 1: And Congress said, let's spend some cash. We're feeling good
Speaker 1: about things these days, where we annexed Hawaii recently, Puerto Rico, Philippines.
Speaker 1: What else, How why not take over this very AMBUSHSS project.
Speaker 1: Why it's the American century by now, and we can
Speaker 1: stick it to the French at the same time exactly.
Speaker 1: So they did this in nineteen o two, um, with
Speaker 1: the one stipulation that said, you know what, you guys
Speaker 1: have to Columbia controls Panama right now, and you guys
Speaker 1: have to work out a deal with them. And we
Speaker 1: tried and that failed. So he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna overthrow Columbia then and give the control
Speaker 1: to the Panamanians. Yeah, they we supported this Panamanian independ
Speaker 1: its movement and yeah, throw off the shackles of Colombia.
Speaker 1: And Colombia's like, what did you just do? Because we
Speaker 1: gained control of that. We we followed that congressional mandate
Speaker 1: and gained control of this Panama canal zone. Basically, the
Speaker 1: swath uh that went through Panama was considered American soil
Speaker 1: thanks to a treaty UM from my believe nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: the hey Bunal Varia Treaty UM, where Panama signed over
Speaker 1: the canal zone. There was no Spanish translation of this treaty,
Speaker 1: so basically the U S went in over through Colombian
Speaker 1: control of Panama, supported Panamanian independence and then rob Panama
Speaker 1: of its canal in one fell sw in like a year,
Speaker 1: and Columbia is like, well, just I guess we'll just
Speaker 1: start exporting cocaine and mass exactly. We'll get you back
Speaker 1: one day. So um. In the end, they paid about
Speaker 1: forty million bucks in nineteen o four for the assets
Speaker 1: of this French company, just a lot of money back then,
Speaker 1: and about ten million dollars UM as this very cheeky article.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you notice UM they offered they
Speaker 1: she referred to it as UM alimony of sorts to
Speaker 1: Panama ten million bucks to get gain the rights to
Speaker 1: this canal zone. And basically, hey, we're gonna run the show.
Speaker 1: We're gonna finish your canal from the eleven mile mark
Speaker 1: to the you know, to the ocean where it belongs.
Speaker 1: And like you said, I think there was a certain
Speaker 1: amount of snub to it, right, probably so um, But
Speaker 1: they said, you know what we gotta do first though,
Speaker 1: is we have to decide on if we can go
Speaker 1: sea level? Um, Like, was it just the French were
Speaker 1: incompetent or is it really impossible to do sea level? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we need to do our own due diligence basically,
Speaker 1: And they did that, and Theodore Roosevelt chose chief engineer
Speaker 1: John Frank Stevens, and he was like, it's all about
Speaker 1: the locks, dudes. If you want to canal here, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to go over these mountains, not through them. Right.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. And this is just brilliant because
Speaker 1: there was another problem with this isthmus And there's this
Speaker 1: thing called the Chagres River and it is very temperamental,
Speaker 1: was prone to flooding. All sorts of crazy stuff associated
Speaker 1: with this river. So not only did you have the
Speaker 1: continental divide in the jungle and the malaria to deal with.
Speaker 1: Once you completed it, what were you going to do
Speaker 1: with this river? Stevens came up with this great idea
Speaker 1: that you go over the mountains, and you go over
Speaker 1: the mountains. You killed two birds with one stone by
Speaker 1: damming the river, and you create a lake that will
Speaker 1: carry you over the mountains. Like, yeah, I'm sure that's
Speaker 1: not pronounce correct. Think about that. That is one of
Speaker 1: the most brilliant feats of engineering I've ever heard of,
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal. Yeah, but that specific aspect of it,
Speaker 1: the river to create a lake so you can go
Speaker 1: over the mountains. That's just incredibly beautiful the whole thing too.
Speaker 1: And at the time, dude in the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: is just like, it's amazing that they could put us off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're all wearing like knickers and stuf. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very There's some awesome documentaries out there, by the way,
Speaker 1: you should watch. In fact, there's one. There's one cool.
Speaker 1: Just go to the YouTube's and uh put in time
Speaker 1: lapse Panama Canal and it takes you the full route
Speaker 1: in like a minute and a half. Nice, he said,
Speaker 1: eight to ten hours, and it's kind of neat. You know.
Speaker 1: The boat goes in and sinks, and then not sinks
Speaker 1: but lowers and then raises, and then it tools along
Speaker 1: in the lake for a little while and then sinks
Speaker 1: and lowers and raises and yeah, because it's like an
Speaker 1: eight to ten hour transit right from from deep water
Speaker 1: to deep water eight to ten hours. Yeah, depending on
Speaker 1: your boat. I guess once you finally get clearance to
Speaker 1: go through, that's right. So he's damned up the river
Speaker 1: created cat tuned lake. UM ships going towards the Pacific
Speaker 1: kind of enter it uh Lehman Bay in the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: go through a couple of locks upward and just it's
Speaker 1: like walking up steps basically, except it's a big boat
Speaker 1: and it's done with water. And then they navigate through
Speaker 1: that lake for a little while and then and go
Speaker 1: towards Panama City through another series of locks and down, down,
Speaker 1: down over the mountains and boom, you are connected to
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Right. So when they when
Speaker 1: they um agreed on the lock method, they had one
Speaker 1: other thing to handle. And that's why the Scott is
Speaker 1: maybe they were getting confused with locks meaning lakes. Right,
Speaker 1: They're like, where all the locks. They're like, they're right there.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, but where the locks. So there was
Speaker 1: one other big problem that had leveled the French effort,
Speaker 1: which was um yellow fever, which you can be immune
Speaker 1: to if you're exposed to it in childhood, but if
Speaker 1: you're from New York you're not. So you go down
Speaker 1: to Panama and you are stung by a mosquito and
Speaker 1: you die. Um. The thing is, nobody knew that it
Speaker 1: was mosquitoes until a guy named Ronald bross Uh in
Speaker 1: seven studied mosquitoes in India and found malaria present in
Speaker 1: their stomachs and that it was transmittable through their saliva. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't know what it was. They were all sorts
Speaker 1: of different theories. Yeah, they thought it was maybe from
Speaker 1: like unclean living whatever. When they found out that it
Speaker 1: was the mosquitoes, they that changed everything. So they institute
Speaker 1: this really rigid um anti mosquito uh program. They cleaned
Speaker 1: up the country basically and basically eradicated came close to
Speaker 1: eradicating yellow fever in the area, which paid the way
Speaker 1: for this lock system to be built. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: can thank Colonel William Gorgas for heading up that sanitation squad,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, I mean it worked, and that was
Speaker 1: the key, because you can't have your workers dropping dead
Speaker 1: of yellow fever every day. You have to they have
Speaker 1: to drop dead of landslides. Yeah, even though a lot
Speaker 1: of these workers were you know, poor black people. I
Speaker 1: think eighty five percent of the people that died were black,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people still died, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: like the dropping dead from yellow fever, you know, but
Speaker 1: it's still a very dangerous project. Slides, all sorts of
Speaker 1: drownings and things like that. Um. So we've got the
Speaker 1: the we've got the yellow fever licked. We've settled on
Speaker 1: the lock system, and um John Frank Stevens is replaced
Speaker 1: by a guy named Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Gothals and
Speaker 1: he was a lock expert, and he looked at the
Speaker 1: plan and he said, you know what, We're gonna divide
Speaker 1: this up into three sections. That makes perfect sense. It does.
Speaker 1: You've got the Pacific section that's going to be working
Speaker 1: from Limon Bay, which by the way, means lime in Spanish.
Speaker 1: Did you know that I did not. Uh, So they're
Speaker 1: working from Limon Bay to the newly created Lake Gatun.
Speaker 1: That was the Atlantic Division. Yeah, okay, you're right. So
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Division is synonymous with the Caribbean UM. And
Speaker 1: then so you've got the Atlantic Division working from Ghatun
Speaker 1: to um or Lemon to get tune. You have the
Speaker 1: Central Division. This is the hardest part. They're working in
Speaker 1: Lake glad Tune to basically create a channel through this
Speaker 1: Continental divide. Yeah, you don't have to cut sea level,
Speaker 1: but you you don't need to make sure these ships
Speaker 1: aren't gonna like run aground in the mountain. Um. And
Speaker 1: then you have the Pacific Division, which is working from
Speaker 1: uh the end of the Continental divide pass which is
Speaker 1: Pedro Miguel locks down to the Pacific, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And like we said, the railway, the Panamanium Railroad is there,
Speaker 1: and um, we had like awesome gear at the time.
Speaker 1: It was no longer you know, men with chisels and
Speaker 1: sledgehammers and stuff. It was steam shovels, rock drills, dynamite
Speaker 1: and uh they moved ninety six million cubic yards of
Speaker 1: earth and rock, right, which is seventy three million cubic meters,
Speaker 1: that's right. And uh, it was really hot though, and
Speaker 1: it was a pretty bad scene and they called that
Speaker 1: Hell's Gorge and it was dangerous and that's where I
Speaker 1: think most of the lives were lost on this second pass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was definitely the hardest work. But they made
Speaker 1: it through, um and by a crane that was used
Speaker 1: in the construction of the Panama Canal. Was the first
Speaker 1: thing to ever make it through all the way. And
Speaker 1: they were like sweet, Yeah, And eight months later it
Speaker 1: was open for business as far as I understand, Yeah,
Speaker 1: big business. Um, should we should we walk people through
Speaker 1: or I guess swim people through? Yeah, I think we should. Okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: you approach from the Atlantic, you go through the Gattoon locks.
Speaker 1: It's gonna lift your vessel up eighty five ft, pretty awesome,
Speaker 1: and take you two Gatun Lake, very nice there. You're
Speaker 1: gonna wind through that channel for about twenty three miles,
Speaker 1: then enter the Gallard Cut about eight miles through there,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna reach the Pedro Miguel locks and then
Speaker 1: they're gonna lower your ship about thirty ft to the
Speaker 1: mirror Flors Lake. You're gonna pass through this it's about
Speaker 1: a mile long, and then the two steps mirror floors locks.
Speaker 1: We're gonna return you finally back to sea level to
Speaker 1: seven mile passage from there to the Pacific, and all told,
Speaker 1: you've gone fifty miles in about eight to ten hours.
Speaker 1: And um, mind bogglingly, I saw that it takes fifty
Speaker 1: two million gallons of fresh water to move a ship
Speaker 1: from one end to the other two and they're getting
Speaker 1: all that from Lake Gatun. Yeah, and it's just I
Speaker 1: imagine it's just recycled back into the system. Right, what
Speaker 1: is it? What happens to it? They lose it, most
Speaker 1: of it. It's either pumped back in. It either goes
Speaker 1: flows back into Lake Gatun or else it flows out
Speaker 1: into the oceans, which is not necessarily good. They're worried
Speaker 1: that La gat Tune may become brackish and like a
Speaker 1: tune is now the freshwater supply of Panama and it
Speaker 1: they're using a lot of it up. Yeah. Well, it's
Speaker 1: always presented a bit of an environmental quagmire, especially with
Speaker 1: their plans to expand, which we'll get to. But right
Speaker 1: now they have two weight traffic UM. They're looking to
Speaker 1: make that a three lane highway, which would actually adding
Speaker 1: that third lane UM will double the amount of traffic, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is crazy. You would think it would increase it
Speaker 1: by a third. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's wider.
Speaker 1: Oh maybe allows for two ships at a time. They
Speaker 1: just jam like eight in there once. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I do know that if you are a large enough ship,
Speaker 1: they don't let you drive yourself because you know you've
Speaker 1: got one drunk sea captain and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: your locks are out of commissioned, so they use electric
Speaker 1: towing locomotives to tow those big bad boys. Right, And
Speaker 1: we should say, just briefly, with the locks, if you
Speaker 1: want to move a ship upward, you flow into a lock.
Speaker 1: The lock closes behind you and it fills up with
Speaker 1: water so that you can float over the lip of
Speaker 1: the next higher lock that the gate closes behind you
Speaker 1: with that one, and it fills in with water, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Yeah, it's remarkably basic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the opposite takes place when you're stepping down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just basically going into a little square pool, raising
Speaker 1: or lowering the water level so you can go up
Speaker 1: or down. It's really neat. Yeah, And if you've got
Speaker 1: a minute and a half to kill you can take
Speaker 1: this voyage in high speed on the YouTube. So uh, like,
Speaker 1: we said, the US used gunboat diplomacy to and I
Speaker 1: guess good old fashioned, old timey nineteen o two swindling
Speaker 1: to gain control of the Panama Canal zone. And it
Speaker 1: had complete control until nineteen nine when Jimmy Carter um
Speaker 1: malaise forever, right, Jerise that Simpsons, they unveil a statue
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Carter and it says Malaise Forever on the
Speaker 1: base and one of the townspeople go, he's history's greatest monster. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Carter negotiated with the leader of Panama at the time,
Speaker 1: UH General Omar Terrios Herrera, and said, hey, how would
Speaker 1: you like this thing back? Give us you think they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we'd like this back. I like to think of um
Speaker 1: American magnanimous. Not sure, So we said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we've had it for this long plus plus we're talking Carter,
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible. He just started contacting people and said,
Speaker 1: what's the US have that we can sell or give back.
Speaker 1: It's a good point. Um. So yeah, he he sold
Speaker 1: like one of the like the presidential yacht was sold
Speaker 1: by him. Why because he thought it was frivolous UM
Speaker 1: and Panama Canal. He's like, how about this, let's get
Speaker 1: rid of a significant portion over our economy. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: gives it back after twenty years and on December thirty first,
Speaker 1: which is why I suspect they made it a twenty
Speaker 1: year deal. Yeah, I mean they had to transition. You
Speaker 1: can't just hand the keys over and be like, all right,
Speaker 1: send your crew in. Right, but not only that, Like
Speaker 1: why not a fifteen year deal or an eighteen year
Speaker 1: deal or ten year deal. They went with twenty because
Speaker 1: it was gonna end on December thirty first millennium. Actually
Speaker 1: that didn't start til don't one though, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, okay, it's symbolic, right, Okay, So the Panamanians
Speaker 1: take over, and UM immediately start taking flak because the
Speaker 1: things aging traffics jammed up. They've done a good job
Speaker 1: with it, though, it's it's just by nature of how
Speaker 1: things are. These they're victims of circumstances. UM and five
Speaker 1: percent of the world's trade goes through the Panama Canal.
Speaker 1: Weld of a canal right there. The millionth ship UM
Speaker 1: went through in two thousand, ten hundred and forty four
Speaker 1: thousand ships go through a year, and it's a very
Speaker 1: narrow little strip. You know. That means waiting in line,
Speaker 1: a lot of waiting in line. Plus, also there's an
Speaker 1: upper limit to the size ship that can go through.
Speaker 1: It's called Panama. Panamax is the is the ship size?
Speaker 1: That's yeah, what a great name for the biggest ship
Speaker 1: that Panamax. What could be bigger than that? Well, these
Speaker 1: ships that are called post Panama exactly, a lot of
Speaker 1: shippers are like, you know what, I'm tired of waiting.
Speaker 1: It's actually going to be more economical for me to
Speaker 1: build a ship that can't go through the Panama Canal
Speaker 1: but can hold a lot more and I'll just sail
Speaker 1: around the lower part of South America. And um, that's
Speaker 1: kind of increasingly happening. Plus, Nicaragua threatened to open their
Speaker 1: own canal, So Panama says, okay, wait, wait, wait, let's
Speaker 1: let's holl the referendum and see if we can expand
Speaker 1: this thing and modernize it and save the canal. And
Speaker 1: Panamanians said, yes, let's so in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: they approved this third lane that's expected to be open
Speaker 1: by two fourteen. Is Nicaragua still planning a canal. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know if that shot it down
Speaker 1: or not. Well. And there's also talk now of a
Speaker 1: Northwest passage thanks to um what some people might say,
Speaker 1: it's climate change and melting ice caps. There may be
Speaker 1: a way to get there um by land. Henry Hudson
Speaker 1: is clapping in his grave. Um, So we'll see if
Speaker 1: that happens. I don't know. I didn't get a chance
Speaker 1: to really look into that research. And like, how real
Speaker 1: is that? Even? Still, the Panamanians will probably make their
Speaker 1: five point to five billion investment back eventually, although it
Speaker 1: took the US good forty years to make four million back. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the nine when they finally broke even. Huh
Speaker 1: that's crazy. And um, you break even by charging a toll,
Speaker 1: I don't think we even mentioned that. You obviously, like
Speaker 1: any way station or passage, you gotta pay according to
Speaker 1: what how much stuff you got, right, It's like I
Speaker 1: think the record is I looked it up. It's like
Speaker 1: a d or something. Yeah, they do it by ton in.
Speaker 1: The thing is is, if you are um carrying a
Speaker 1: lot of really expensive natural gas, right, you're gonna pay
Speaker 1: a lesser toll than if you're carrying a bunch of
Speaker 1: less expensive or even equally expensive coal, which isn't fair.
Speaker 1: And if you're if you're transporting a lot of raw steel,
Speaker 1: why should you pay more? So they're they're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out a new toll system, especially for the newly
Speaker 1: expanded version of the canal um it takes into account
Speaker 1: the value of the of what's on board rather than
Speaker 1: just the weight, right, So they should make a little
Speaker 1: more money that way. Yeah. I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is still accurate, but the record that I have is
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty three thousand dollars six hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty three thousand, six hundred sixty two and the cheapest
Speaker 1: was when a dude swam across it any weighed like
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty pounds, and so they charged them
Speaker 1: what like thirty six cents. Yeah, that back in Richard
Speaker 1: Halliburton and he swam the Panama Canal, and I guess
Speaker 1: it was some sort of publicity stunt. I'm sure people
Speaker 1: love doing stuff like that back then. Yeah, but if
Speaker 1: you look at this um this high speed route on YouTube,
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat and there's a lot of times you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: look out for that boat and then it turns you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of activity out there. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: it's not a pleasure cruise. Well no, and it's not
Speaker 1: one ship at a time. They have, like you said,
Speaker 1: two way traffic, right, that's right, and they try to
Speaker 1: keep them going through as if recently as possible. And
Speaker 1: I should say also, um, the the um the new
Speaker 1: locks that they have can serve about six of the
Speaker 1: water used, so they'll address a lot of environmental concerns hopefully.
Speaker 1: I got a couple of little facts here if you're interested. Uh,
Speaker 1: the entrance to the canal in the Atlantic side is
Speaker 1: twenty two and a half miles west of the Pacific entrance,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because it has a unique s shape.
Speaker 1: And then, um, the locks themselves are seven feet thick each.
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering how to keep out that much water,
Speaker 1: like to to basically damn up the oceans, you need
Speaker 1: to do it with seven foot thick concrete. Um. The
Speaker 1: workforce is Panamanian right now, which is pretty great. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's about all I got. Sixty million pounds of dynamite
Speaker 1: was used to construct this thing. It's some nice stets Chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not bad. Cool you got anything else? Like? No,
Speaker 1: all the rest of these are kind of boring. Panama
Speaker 1: Canal Forever. Uh. If you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal, you can read this very good article
Speaker 1: on how Stuff works dot com. Type in Panama Canal
Speaker 1: or turning around Canal. See what happens when you do
Speaker 1: the ladder, Um, Chuck, hold on, let's let's take a
Speaker 1: message break. Huh. It is time for a listener mail, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one listener mail about listener mail.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm currently on the seven train heading to
Speaker 1: Queens for Manhattan after a long day of working as
Speaker 1: an auditor at a cp A firm. Um. As usual,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to your podcast. This time it was the
Speaker 1: death Mask episode and you were concluding with a listener mail.
Speaker 1: And this is instance. It was from Martha regarding peak oil.
Speaker 1: And I think Martha was talking about the auditing of
Speaker 1: oil reserves. And he says this to Martle. She was
Speaker 1: correct for the most part, regarding the audit of oil
Speaker 1: reserves held by entities whose stocks may be publicly traded
Speaker 1: on the stock market. Just one thing I was so
Speaker 1: a gas by that I felt I needed to type
Speaker 1: this from my phone as I'm on the train. Still,
Speaker 1: the SEC does not perform any audits of its own
Speaker 1: on these companies. Uh. It is firms like the one
Speaker 1: I work for, that audit these companies, albeit under SEC guidelines.
Speaker 1: Actually p c A I would be Public Company Audit
Speaker 1: Oversight Board guidelines if you want to get technically yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: the SEC may perform a type of audit, but when
Speaker 1: they do, they're usually auditing an audit firm or an
Speaker 1: audit that has already been done by an audit firm
Speaker 1: as part of some kind of investigation. What so they'll
Speaker 1: audit an audit like the SEC doesn't audits. It's a
Speaker 1: long and charget. I'm s an audit. Well fund actually
Speaker 1: been through one of these audits and it is no
Speaker 1: fun at all. For some reason, it seems everyone whom
Speaker 1: works at the SEC is what you stereotypically picture as
Speaker 1: an accountant with no humor. Plus, the word audit loses
Speaker 1: all meaning when you hear it. That's right. I digress though, Guys.
Speaker 1: If you pull up at ten K annual filing for
Speaker 1: any public company, you can see in the audit opinion
Speaker 1: the audit firm which performed the audit for that particular year.
Speaker 1: I hope that clears things up. Henrik Olmez and Henry.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that cleared it up, but if
Speaker 1: I was an accountant, I would probably say yes, very
Speaker 1: much clear of things over, very nice. Thank you very much, Henry.
Speaker 1: That was very nice of you to correct somebody who
Speaker 1: is correcting us. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You
Speaker 1: gotta take that. Thank you. Seven train man, is that
Speaker 1: a terrible train? Not do that one. It's like it's
Speaker 1: the old red train that looks like it's about to
Speaker 1: fall off. It's like the midnight meat train. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: you seen that now? Man, what's midnight meat? That's a
Speaker 1: midnight meat train. It's got Vinnie Jones and Bradley Cooper
Speaker 1: in it. It's actually based on a Clive Barker short
Speaker 1: story because that's an old joke between me and my
Speaker 1: friend p J, who he's met I believe. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: uh cookouts famously. P J is a great chef home chef,
Speaker 1: but he was so he would typically take so long.
Speaker 1: We referred to his meals as midnight meat and then
Speaker 1: made a joke about cold cooking mistake one time night
Speaker 1: It took like twenty four hours. Yeah, no, that's definitely
Speaker 1: this is not a slam on t J. No. We
Speaker 1: love him in nighted Uh. If you have anything you
Speaker 1: want us to know, if you want to correct somebody
Speaker 1: who's corrected us, or you just want to say hi, whatever,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at scovery dot com and chuck uh. They
Speaker 1: can always find us on our website, Right stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Hey,
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