Citation Needed - The Panama Canal

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is an artificial 82 km (51 mi) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade. Canal locks are at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 m (85 ft) above sea level, and then lower the ships at the other end. The original locks are 32.5 m (110 ft) wide. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded canal began commercial operation on June 26, 2016. The new locks allow transit of larger, neo-Panamax ships, capable of handling more cargo.[1] --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.  

Yeah, he was bitching about the witcher. He said no women can actually short-white Whatever man, I like dozens of women on speed dial. I could set them up with one if he wants to test that fucking theory Wait, you you have dozens of women on speed dial. Yeah, but it's like for geek stuff, so it's doesn't that doesn't count Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very clearly has a system of obviously use your eyes second of all isn't it great? I was inspired by this week's episode. We're gonna be rich you guys He's right did the locks are very clearly visible. That's not the problem by the way Just I just yeah, yeah Eli our studio isn't between two major bodies of water plus it appears you built this into like a small Circle who are your customers? Who could they possibly be uh I mean so far I will admit mostly Heath but others are gonna come you'll see uh by the way that'll be 233 dollars thank you

yep yep you're welcome oh hey hey Cecil hey no uh you guys like it? he's no where did you get the money to buy that boat? Oh yeah, Eli loaned it to me with the money he's making on this canal. Pretty sweet, right? Sweet boat? I mean, no. It seems like you just bought a boat with money you're giving back to Eli. Oh, so pretty sure that's monopoly money and not real money? So wait, I didn't need to get Dip Thierrya as part of the business plan, Eli.

Oh no, you did not. Very much did not have to do that. Man, where did you get dip theory? Ah, I got a disease guy. Oh. That tracks. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcast where we choose a subject, we do a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts.

This is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be the Steam Shovel host, which actually has a nice double meaning this week, and joining me is the usual panel of experts, and also Tom and Eli, but let's make it official. First up, we have the before and after pictures for Lawn Nome CrossFit, Eli and Tom. And Tom.

Shh. Lawn Nome's wish they could twerk like me, Heath and right, they wish. Okay, we also, it's the after pictures. It's just like, just to put you lawn gnomes of blown out knees and slip discs hobbling around. And also joining me are the before and after pictures for larping supplements, Noah and C-Sum. Yeah, they're like the opposite of Bonerpael.

And if you're a girl, that supplement is just a prominently displayed packet of desiccant. Right, you mean? Do not eat. All right, let's get right into it. Tell us, Eli, what person- place thing, concept phenomenon or event? Are we going to be talking about today? We'll be talking about the panda mole canal, he.

Okay, this is one of the easier ones to just read. And no, are you ready to tell us about the time that we went to soft South American, push it away into the ocean like Bugs Bunny did with Florida? I'll say that for my essay on the Monroe doctrine, but I can tell you about one of the times that we did that with with shovels. Great. So what was, well, what was the extremely road-tracked back story of your eventual topic? What was the extremely protracted backstory of your eventual topic? Oh, they're on to me.

Okay. So when we think about Europeans learning about the Americans, we tend to think of it as a discovery. Hey, come on, I didn't start with the formation of these continents. We're all ready. Okay. I so wanted to start with the formation of these continents. Okay. Nearly 2000. So, but we tend to think of this as a discovery. Unfortunately, when you're trying to get to China, which is what they were doing when they came across that it's more of a cruel fucking joke, right? There are literally two entire North South oriented continents blocking your way for all, but like the 600 southernmost miles on the planet. And for those two continents to be fused together by a tendril that's less

than 40 miles wide at one point seems like Earth's intentionally fucking with you. Panama is the thinnest part of the tape that separates the living room in the odd couple. Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. For listeners under the age of 40, the odd couple was a play in the 1960s about Neil Simon not knowing his neighbors were gay. So, I'm looking up a lot of front. Basically, from the time we mapped that shit, we're looking for a way through.

There were two schools of thought on how and where to do it, often divided up as the French and American strategies. The French locked their sights on the Panamanian isthmus, which seems logical because it's the part where the two oceans are closest together. At its narrowest point, it's literally only 37 miles long. That's like 60 kilometers. Okay. Spoiler alert. The French never successfully built it, but they did have a much better name. They called it the French connection. Oh, hell's yeah. All right. So the Americans tended to favor Nicaragua, which seems crazy if you just glance at the map, but if you look a little harder, you'll see why.

Yes, Nicaragua is a much wider country, almost three times the coast to coast distance that you'd have in Panama, but a lot of that space that you'd need to cover is already filled up with Lake Nicaragua. Right. So the actual amount of canal that we need to dig wouldn't be that much longer. Okay, but there is nothing more American than building walls inside a central American lake to make our own dedicated canal within that lake. That's American.

All right. So obviously longer isn't better in this instance, but Nicaragua had a lot of other shit going for it as well. Uh, girth is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For example, that's a selling point. I don't know if that's a selling. Oh, no, not in this instance. Um, but it was a more developed area.

It was a more politically stable region. There wasn't a huge flood, yes, river in the middle of your canal path. And Nicaragua was significantly less malaria. Any smart project manager knows that your job is to reduce the chance of your canal path, and Nicaragua was significantly less millerial. Any smart project manager knows that your job is to reduce the chance of any biblical plague. So cutting blood, and insects seems like a great start to this. Exactly. Now, in addition to an American and French location for the canal, there was also something

of an American versus French type of canal during the planning phase. The French favor to sea level canal, like they were the one that they had just built at Suez, the Americans favored a lot canal, like they won that they just built across New York. There are pros and cons of both of these too, but a sea level canal, of course, can accommodate more traffic more quickly, but a lot canal can be built quicker since you have to excavate less. It's that old question of faster, cheaper, better.

You get two out of three. So someone asked America about that and it was like, all right, so do you want faster? Yes, faster. Great. We want faster. Exactly. Right. Another fun fact actually about the difference between the different types of canal.

No. Okay, that was six paragraphs though. Damn it, you're right, it was six. So close. That's me, that's me, I'm sitting in the box. I'm in the box. I'm in the box. Oh, you up, fuck.

All right, pay up. I was so sure he'd get it with Ithmus. Right Ithmus, I thought for sure. I thought so. I'm back. Lynn, on that. Lady owns the yoga studio's car. It's a soft car.

She does not like, she does not. That is true. She needs a new car. She should or park anywhere else. I'm going sea level canal though. Sea level canal is my favorite though. No, I'm sorry, just go on. Yeah, just go.

So the first major player we meet in this story is Ferdinand Deliceps. All right, so he's the guy chiefly responsible for building the Suez Canal He's he was a French consul in Cairo and he worked out a deal to build this canal even though he had Zero qualifications to do it then he made it happen even all the smart folks told him it was impossible and told his investors it was a scam So that opens an 1869 makes Deliceps a national hero. The Suez Canal was a huge source of national pride for a country that still hadn't quite lived down the continental pariah reputation

that Napoleon had left them. This is like an inspiring story. It's a story of a man with no qualifications undertaking massive infrastructure projects and succeeding. It's not only massively unexpected, but I guess it's also dangerously irresponsible, but a true hero is an accidental hero, damn it. That's what they say.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, honestly, he would be worthy of his own episode as well. But naturally, once he had done that, he turned his eyes to Panama, and he very slowly learns the problem with accomplishing the impossible. So throughout his work at Egypt, everybody kept telling him this is impossible. You'll never succeed. This can't be done. And he shrugged off what all the experts said and he did it anyway. So when the surveyors come back from Panama and told him that what he wanted to do there was impossible, he ignored him even though this time they were right.

If you're just going to do that, why do you want to hire the surveyors anyway? I don't even understand why you would hire them. Yeah, why even have a Senate? If you're just gonna do it, you're just gonna do it right away. What if I was Senate? Well, so what he needed, he wanted like the patina of scientific consensus to his idea was good. So, and let me be clear about what his idea was.

He wanted to build a canal at sea level, right? Over and over, they sent out these surveying teams, then they came back saying one of two things. Either they'd say, you can't build a sea level canal there. You'd need to use locks or they'd say, yeah, man, whatever you want me to say, you'd be amazed how many prostitutes you can get with French money over there. But Delisub's made it super clear that the answer he wanted was sea level, could that was the best way to go? And so eventually he got it.

Weird way to fish for approval. So if you see here, sir, the sea level would be quite impossible to maintain due to several factors. Yeah, whatever. I don't even care about that. What? What's the matter, sir? Yeah, if you don't know. I don't even care about that. What? What's the matter, sir? Yeah, if you don't know, I'm not even gonna tell you.

Okay, I can tell you if you don't. Are you mad? Are you mad? No. You're mad. All right, so what followed was one of the greatest engineering disasters of all time. Yeah, but there was no way to predict that.

So we couldn't have known, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. couldn't have found right. Exactly. Exactly. Left field. All right. So it was the largest financial failure in history to that point. If you exclude the existence of war, because there are fucking mountains along the way there, right?

They literally would have to chop down mountains to make this work. And when you start digging out mountains, they tend to slide more mountain and all that shit you just dug out. Okay, so throughout this ordeal every time that makes some real progress, a big land slide will come through and fill in all the shit that they just dug in. And by the way, they're just digging away like don't look up it, it won't happen again, Frank. But yeah, exactly. Well, and then here's the fucked up thing is that you'd have all your steam shovels and shit right there where all the fucking burial shit was just going to slide in. And as you can imagine, it isn't super easy to get industrial excavating equipment in

the middle of what's pretty much an uncharted jungle at this point. That every time they're digging out the canal the size collapse, they just need a good motto, like short a shore gentlemen short a shore. You know, know what to be fair. He had faith he could do this and that shit will move mountains. I read all about. Yeah, right right into your fucking. People. Hill and then it keeps rolling back down.

He's killed. Right. Right. Yeah. Just the bird have to eat my liver. It's fine. That's different one. That is different one.

All right, but the landslides. All right, so the landslides were far from the biggest problem. In terms of mortality, that would be the disease. Malaria and yellow fever were the big ones. Now, there are no official numbers on the desk, but we know that the death rate was significantly higher than 200 people a month, right? Half a dozen people die at a yellow fever every day. That's bad for all kinds of reasons,

among which is that it makes it like super hard to recruit new people, make sure you need to constantly recruit new people, make sure you don't have any experienced people on hand, and also not great for morale. We might want to rethink our investment in the Wuhan canal. I think that's it. Oh, Eli, that joke will be so outdated. I'm sure by the time this

episode goes up, the Chinese government will have that under control. They'll have it all flamethrower. All right. So the biggest problem in terms of engineering was probably the rain. So Panama gets a dry season of about four months a year and it just so happens that most of the surveying expeditions chose that time of year to do their work. And like, honestly, why wouldn't you, right? You're going to get a lot more done if it's not raining all the time. But that meant that the engineers planning this thing never got a sense of just how brutal and constant the rain was there well they knew enough to send their surveyors there when it was right but but it made they didn't realize like how hard it was going to be to keep metal ship from rusting how hard it would

could be to secure new excavations and also obviously increases the likelihood of landslides and And perhaps most importantly, it turns the Chagras River, I believe is how it's pronounced, the Chagras River, which is right down the fucking path of the canal, into a raging torrent that flooded its banks by more than 20 pieces. Sir, look, we figured out the fire spurts in the lightning sand, but this flooding river is given us headaches.

And tackled by a troupe of cobra. Oh, what the fuck? Okay. This rodent is unusually large in size. This is, yeah. I'm going to be dead. That's right. All right, so one thing you have to keep in mind here is that this is not a French government

project doing this, right? Deliceps has a ton of support and help from the government, but this is a private enterprise. The contract that the Colombian government signed, that Panama was a province of Colombia at the time, was with Deliceps, not the French government, and this was all being funded by the money that he could raise selling stock in that new company. The fucking invisible hand was like,

all covered in calluses and shit. And also malaria. That was all malaria. And malaria. It makes thrive sound like a damn good deal by comparison, doesn't it? It was actually by comparison. Okay, but here's the thing though, this stock is spectacularly easy for him to sell. The people that invested in the Suez Canal got fucking rich.

And since most of the banks and shit thought that was a pipe dream, most of the original Suez investors weren't fat cats. There were a lot of stories of like working class folks investing a few hundred bucks in savings in the Suez Canal and then retiring to the Riviera. So people were gobbling up a chance to get in on Deliceps newest. I mean, they couldn't afford not to, right? Yeah. And of course, since most of his backers aren't like the savviest of investors to begin with, they didn't really freak out when the actual progress kept coming in way under the

projections. He just come out and say, yeah, this is how it is when you build shit. They'd go, okay, they didn't freak out when he kept going back and selling yet more bonds against the future earnings of this thing. Oh, yeah, right. Or even worse, when he literally sought government approval to sell lottery bonds, which were basically like lottery tickets that paid off with bigger chunks of the canal's future earnings if you were lucky.

Yeah, but unlike other bonds, they were just like regular lottery tickets, worthless. So yeah, yeah, that's not true, C. So you just got to be the one selling the lottery tickets is all right. It's in this interest. Yeah. And that is why I diversified my portfolio, mostly heavily invested in scratch. Right. Yes.

And the high dollars to bingo once they pay off the lottery tickets. That's the key. Buy a bunch of plus on lottery tickets. Yeah. Killin'. All right. So eventually, the whole thing falls apart and construction stops on May 15th of 1889. The company went bankrupt after spending a reported $287 million, about eight billion in today's money. They killed off over 22,000 people and they did way less than

a fifth of a canal. So needless to say, the backlash in France was seismic. Over 800,000 investors lost everything. The court started tossing people in jail for misappropriating funds. The ensuing scandal in stared names as big as Alfred Nobel, the the prize guy, Gustav Eiffel, the tower guy, and well done. LaSaps avoided jail time. His son wasn't as lucky. So all that being said, there was a perfectly good chunk of canal just sitting there for the taking and a pretty big country nearby that really wanted one of those. And was about to be presided over by a 10 year old boy that loved to play with his construction toys. Okay.

So, uh, sociopathic idiot was way too confident about a giant construction project. He defrauded investors and he never got convicted. Great. All right. I guess we'll take a quick break while France holds our beer and we'll do a little The frauded investors, and he never got convicted. Great. All right, I guess we'll take quick break while France holds our beer, and we'll do a little offer for them. Yeah. Ah. Bonjour gentlemen, how does the work on my magnificent canal?

That's so... not great. It just keeps filling in! As you can see, whatever we dig, the high waters of the river fill in, we've done with the landslides. I see, perhaps we should extend the shifts, work the men harder, longer. It's coming from the underneath! Uh, no, I don't think so, sir. Ah, well, you know what they say, no pressure, no diamonds. They're sure things are.

My arms, they're so tired! Oh show gentlemen, how is it? Wait, where's the guy from yesterday? Oh yeah, Steve became convinced last night that he was in hell and the foreman was the devil, so Steve killed him. That was on me! Me?

Yep. Ah, that's too bad. Really, really is bad, though. I brought donuts, so. Yep, well, he did bring donuts. That's good, that's good. So what's the good word? Honestly, it's not great. We've gone from digging in the water to running from landslides.

That's mostly what we're doing now. Landslides? Yeah, but when you actually succeed in digging into a mountain, it's mostly landslides at that point. I see, well, keep up the good work and remember, no pressure. No diamonds, yep. Oh, you heard that one. I have, yes, heard that.

Just so much water! Yep. So much! You're digging, buddy, you're fine. I'm...I'm big digging! You want a donut? I'm good. Okay, I'm finishing the last one.

Hey podcast listener, do you enjoy this show? Do you want even more of this show? Well then why not sign up to support the show over at patreon.com slash citation pod. Our patrons don't just get the warm feeling of knowing they're supporting the show, they also get access to our patron only short episodes like the one we just did about the Battle of Karen Settas. Just listen to what you're missing. Aaron set us. Just listen to what you're missing. And Cecil, you learned about this

in between World War II documentaries and falling asleep in your chair. Are you ready to history dead it up? History dead sounds so repulsive. You'd have to reproduce gross. I'd rather be like a history uncle. That'd be better. There you go.

There you go. All right Cecil, so tell us about the Battle of Karen's Beasts. Oh, Jesus. Okay. So it's, there's different ways to pronounce it. Karen Sebis. Karen Shabish is another way I heard with the Shaq going on there, but I'm not going to do the Shaq.

You seem right. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do that. So the Battle of Karen Sebis was a terrible case of friendly fire. And by that, I mean that this article is riddled with citation needed and dubious discussions. So basically everything Eli writes, that's what this is. Well, actually, so Eli, maybe just, you know, tell us a quick version of the Battle of

Kansei. So off the top of your head, Megan's kind of, okay, the year was 1997 and Charlize the Rooms dad was about to get what was going on. I mean, he was, but you're not here as the rest of what you were about to say. He's going to be fake. But that's not all. Our $2 patrons can check out the video we took of our live shows in New York, full of all the mimeing and physical business you didn't know you were missing.

Patreon.com slash citation pod. More of this show, less of us being poor. Zip top. Zip top. And we're back. When we left off, the French were giving up on something and asking for America's help. So good practice. Oh, what's on the ass? Oh, see this. All right, so imagine you're a salesman, right? So you've got this canal. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, never again.

No, I get it. I get it. Just in your imagination. So you got this canal that you've got to offload. There is precisely one potential buyer in the goddamn universe. They like the color, but they want it somewhere a little closer to Nicaragua. This is the job of one Philip Buneu-Varia. All right, after the Panama affair blows over in Paris, the courts create a new company called

the company Newvelle, De La F***in Panama or whatever. Buneu-Varia is tasked with selling the French interest in that company and returning at least some investment to the three quarters of a million people who lost their shirts over this thing. So he goes to the three quarters of a million people who lost their shirts over this thing. So he goes to the only potential buyer. He says, Hey, you guys want the biggest financial disaster in history? I'll give it to you for a hundred million bucks. And the US is like, and we'll take it for 40 million bucks.

And then what the fuck is he going to do? Right. He's like, have this big money bonfire going. You guys want to pay me to burn some of your money? No worries. Right. I mean, it seems super sure, but they don't actually buy the canal. They bought points and they can use those points.

It does. It's a canal. Oh, well, you're going to use a canal. Anyway, sir, right. They have to sit through the whole presentation to get the golf clubs sit down. All right. So America gets the canal for a song, but there's a snag. The deal that Delis Samp signed with the Colombian government didn't give him the right to sell,

especially not to a foreign government. Right. And if you think about this from Colombia's perspective, the canal be in control by some far away European country or a company in a far away European country is way different as a proposition than it being controlled by the dominant military force in your hemisphere Right, and they weren't even consulted when the deal was being done between the US and this French company What I think okay, we'll buy your disease-infested landslide mud pit I got 40 million right here. Okay great great great great great

30-Eat, 30-Nan, 40, yep seems great, great, 38, 39, 40. Yep, seems in order. Seems in order to me. Indeed, indeed. Just one quick question. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. So you have the right to sell me this property. Right? I've gots again. Cilly boy. I've gots again. What I just did. Did I not? No, no, I mean, legally. I probably should have checked all this, but you know, I mean, I mean legally I probably should have checked all this, but you know, I mean dot my eyes and all Eagaly is legally you have sayable rights. That's the question. I'm asking you the question Yeah, the question you're asking after you gave me 40 million others What wait, I mean we spit in our hands and wait did

You're not gonna give me back that money are you? No, I'm not please don't tell my dad You're not going to give me back that money, are you? No, I'm not. Please don't tell my dad. All right, so what Columbia was demanding here was not at all unreasonable. They wanted a cut of the $40 million that the company was getting. Right, the company came in with a lot of big promises before they went bankrupt.

The Colombian government and invested in this project themselves, they've foregone a lot of tax revenue along the way to this bankruptcy. They just wanted some level of compensation for that. I mean, you got to give us something. The only thing that grows on this land we gave you is cocaine. What are we supposed to do? Yeah, right.

Right. So the president of the United States at the time is one Teddy Roosevelt. The cocaine of residents. Yeah, exactly. Yes. And he doesn't see the Colombian demands as reasonable at all. In fact, he sees him as a shakedown because he's a fucking racist, right? Like they literally weren't even asking the US to pay them anything.

They were asking a private company, a private French company to compensate them from violating a contract, but they were darker skinned than the French people. So Roosevelt assumed that they were the bad guys in this story. And then with absolutely no help from the US government, by the way, the fact that a US Navy destroyer showed up just in time to block Colombian forces, notwithstanding the people of Panama all on their own rebelled against their Colombian government. Interesting.

Yeah. And since the US had an official duty to protect the Transpanamanian railroad under the bid lack treaty. The bid lack treaty. And since things, yes, since things looked like they were about to get violent white by golly, they had no choice but to land a bunch of troops just then and stop both armies before anything got out of hand. It's depressing how well our US foreign policy of middle school fighting seems to work just all the time

everywhere. We just show up, push people into the middle of a circle and start yelling fight, fight, fight. And it works. And then we drop a fucking Haliburton and Villan both sides and then we get paid to clean up the bodies too. Yep. Also, we own that middle school. Yeah, that's what we do. So that we can teach everyone in history class that the problem with that fight was communism. Yeah, that tracks. That tracks.

That's too kids' moves. So the Panamanian people rose up in this bloodless coup. the US recognizes the rebel government immediately. And as their first act as a government, they appoint Buno Fereya as their ambassador to the United States. The French dude that sold them the goddamn canal. So the US negotiation and signed a canal treaty with the guy selling the canal without any actual Panamanians present. All of us in hours of the crew that we had nothing to do. Yeah. Oh, man, we were like the Thomas Edison's a global politics. That's a nice voice recorder you got there. Can I see it?

Boom, patented, patented bitch. Yeah. Right. Great. And now stand right there next to, uh, you see Nicola Tesla right there with the red axle. And we all know that this story ends with a canal. When we look back on this, it seems like the US got a ridiculously good deal. But at the time, a lot of people saw it as us

buying the biggest financial disaster of all time, which is exactly what we did, right? We let a revolution and alienated an entire continent for 117 goddamn years and counting for the right to buy the biggest financial disaster of all time. So obviously the pressure is high to make this work. All right, so step one of making this canal happen. You got a cure malaria, which seems like a huge fucking ass giving it that it like co-evolved with the human species, but fortunately for the entire effort, the disease vector was recently identified as the

mosquito. And not only that, but they actually figured out specifically which breed of mosquito carried it, there's just the one. Oh, that is an important one. You wouldn't want to kill the wrong mosquitoes. What a bad, so much to be how it fucking be. I'm sorry. Yeah, so how do you cure malaria? You get rid of all the fucking mosquitoes. That means literally going door to door, making sure that there's no standing water for the little bastards to breed in.

It means fumigating constantly. It means cutting back big swaths to jungle, so that's exactly what they did. Now, as much as this is normally thought of as this, you know, story of a bunch of people dying in a malaria, the efforts against that disease stand out as one of the biggest accomplishments of the entire project. Yeah, sure did.

And over 400,000 people each year still die of malaria. Just want to point that out. We figured it out. It just costs too much to save those people. Okay. Cecil, we didn't cure malaria. What we did is we stopped it from spreading to white people. So you know, tomato, fuck you. It's the same. It's like, what's the same right there? Well, actually, yeah. And that's all we did then, too, right? So all these advances pretty much only affected the white workers.

The work was segregated and the white workers were given pretty decent places to live, especially if they were married and had kids. Black workers, mostly Caribbean black workers, were crammed into overcrowded and under-previsioned shit holes. Right, so many of them took the option of forgoing company lodging all together and they'd stay in a nearby town or just out in the jungle where the malaria eradication efforts hadn't reached.

Of course, we don't really have numbers on it, but it's worth emphasizing that all these great benefits of modernity weren't exactly being doled out fairly. Okay, but employment in the black community was at an all time high. Let's go on a show. This is why we need to avoid big infrastructural change. So once you got disease under control for the white people, let's be clear for the white people. Yeah.

You've got to tackle the big engineering problems. Now, the US got to leap frog over the biggest hurdle for the French because they didn't go into it with these starry eyed hopes for a sea level canal. They would be using locks to raise ships up to an artificial lake, a good tune lake, and then lower them back down on the other side. That's all the shit ton of the problems. First of all, you don't have to dig out as much shit. Secondly, you basically drowned the chagras river, which is the one causing you all the

trouble. The Andrea Yates method. Wow. That's dark. That's dark. So many other people you could have made that trick the Andrea Yates method. Oh, wow. That's dark. So many other people you could have made that trick. Andrea Yates. Don't look it up. So bother. Google that. Don't know what to do. Google that. Uh, third and maybe most importantly, the tides on the Pacific side are way higher than on the Atlantic. And it's really hard to account for that

with a sea level canal. Like what was the French plan for that? Just like a Dutch kid that they were going to have stick to finger in or something. What the fuck? No, it was. All that being said, there are still plenty of engineering obstacles to overcome and there weren't a hell of a lot of people clamoring to take this job. Yeah, I mean, you'd go down in history if you did, but given the past performances, it would probably be as another miserable failure. The US officially took over in May of 1904 under the direction of the student named John Finley-Walls. He resigns after about a month. The next dude to take the job was John Frank Stevens. He was a self-educated engineer with a long background in railroad construction.

That might not seem like the most significant qualification, but at its heart, it turns out that this thing was actually mostly a railroad project. Man, I really don't understand canals. You do not know. Okay, so here's what is a lot canality on? You put a train in the water, and then it becomes, what? So here's the thing, the limiting factor is not how much can you dig.

It's how much dirt can you haul away from the dig site? And that other guy who had failed earlier just walks away like, how much wood could a wood chuck chuck? Wrong question. Stoom. All right. So Steven set up the system that is crazy, efficient like where the whole fucking train tips over all together to dump off the dirt from what I understand if we dug this canal today, we wouldn't be

able to dig any faster than we did with the 1904 technology. Now the scale of this whole thing is impossible to get your head around, but I came across this amazing fact that that kind of helps you with this problem. At one point, the accountants and bureaucrats in shit were able to save millions of dollars a year by implementing a shake the concrete bags harder before you throw them away policy. God damn.

In all, they'd need to remove about 170 million cubic yards of dirt. In their dozen year venture, the French by the way, had excavated about 30 million. Most of this was done by these massive, like, railroad mounted steam shovels. And apparently, by the way, the company newspaper that circulated in the company town printed weekly totals on how much earth each steam shovel moved. And people would follow that shit like baseball scores.

There's one guy super pissed because he has a different steam shovel starting in his fantasy league. He's like furious about it. It was, it was almost that. It was very clear. They would bet money on it. It's fucking crazy. Okay. So ultimately, the canal was finished two years ahead of schedule and came in under budget.

If you can believe that shit. And the plan was they had to do this whole big ceremony and pull out all the stops for it. But they just so happened to finish the whole thing up in the summer of 1914, right about the time World War One was starting. So yeah, basically there are the fucking big thing was just two guys on a tugboat blowing into noise makers and throwing confetti at each other. All right.

So since it's completion, nearly a million ships have passed through the canal. Today, it accommodates about 14,000 a year. The 50 mile trip takes between eight and 10 hours and throughout it, especially trained pilots to take control of the boat no matter who owns the damn boat or how good they are at boating. It's like one sea captain, dad, just like, give me the keys. I'm back at it in. You can't do anything about the kids. Exactly.

No. A new larger set of locks was added between 2007 and 2016, but other than that, not a hell of a lot has changed because as impressive a feat of engineering as this is, it's still just a big hole and they don't need to be very high-time. Right. And if you had to summarize what you've learned

in one sentence, what would it be? That the least interesting part of the Panama Canal story is the part where they dug a canal. All right. And are you ready for the quiz? I am, sir. Okay, I'm gonna go first here. No, what's the best part about renting the land

for your shipping canal? A, your landlord won't barge in. B, you get to serve your landlord with conviction paperwork or C. no one will change the locks. Oh, it's hard to pick just one. I'm going to go with C. See it is, it is, they can't change your locks. All right, Noah, it doesn't take it effective to know that while the Panama Canal is pretty great, there is another canal full of mud that is significantly sexier.

Which one is it? A, it's elementary. It's an amazing question. Whether it's multiple choice or essay style, the answer is A. I've got it. I just wanted to make an elementary canal joke and I stopped there. Is that about anal too. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. All right, no, technically the end of the elementary. Yeah. What's the most impressive thing about the Panama Canal? Is it A that we filled 12 pages with one time they dug a hole for boats? Or B? A. I filled most of those 12 pages.

You know what, I'm gonna go with C. There's all kind of interesting shit about it. I'm sure a number of people thought this was a great topic for me. I'm gonna have a check. Which when Pangea started, there wasn't even, like, it wasn't even close to that. That's what I'm saying. That's right. And then the shake's happened like this.

It's a really reasonable time to start this story. See, there's the answer. No. Yeah, bro, I'm not. I'm sorry. You're for me for me. Incorrect. Yeah, so congratulations, Eli.

You are the winner. Fantastic. Heath, you write the next essay. Great. All right, well, for Tom Noah Cecil and Eli, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll back next week and by then,

I, apparently, will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Dissonance, and you can hear Eli knowing myself on God off the movies, The Skating Atheist, and The Skeptocrat. And if you'd like to help finance our Panama Canal of podcasts, White Dudes, winging it, aka Citation Needed, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation

pod. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media, or take a look at the show notes, be sure to check out CitationPod.com. .com.