Citation Needed - The Suez Canal

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

The Suez Canal (Arabic: قَنَاةُ السُّوَيْسِ‎, Qanātu s-Suways) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. In 1858, Ferdinand de Lesseps formed the Suez Canal Company for the express purpose of building the canal. Construction of the canal lasted from 1859 to 1869 and took place under the regional authority of the Ottoman Empire. The canal officially opened on 17 November 1869. It offers vessels a direct route between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, avoiding the South Atlantic and southern Indian oceans and reducing the journey distance from the Arabian Sea to London by approximately 8,900 kilometres (5,500 mi), or 10 days at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) to 8 days at 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph).[1] The canal extends from the northern terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 km (120.11 mi) including its northern and southern access-channels. In 2020, more than 18,500 vessels traversed the canal (an average of 51.5 per day).[2] 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.

Good morning sleepy head. Oh dammit. I'm waking up there. Where? I mean, do you like kidnap us? The matically. Yeah, I did. I did do that. Yes. Dude, what did we say about kidnap? It's the only way to get through to Republican lawmakers. What did we say about kidnapping that can be repeated on the podcast? Oh, I don't, don't, don't, exactly, don't do that. Come on, guys. This week's episode is about the Suez Canal. What better way to get into the spirit than to actually travel down it? I mean, he's kind of got a point. Thank you, best friend. Not best friends.

Hey, you want a chance to steer? It's super easy. You just pull this wheel thing. Why do I look out? Okay. Oopsie poop. Say no worries. I have got this. Uh, why are you going forward? Why do you have to go forward? No, what? No, you don't. So far.

On to the bank. Okay, so far. Yeah. And... Yeah, we are now stuck. Yes, we are. We're gonna be in so many memes. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet,

and that's how it works now. I'm no one, I'm going to be steering the ship tonight, but I'm going to need some other people to blame if I fuck it up, so joining me tonight are two men who anchor this show by not wanting to go into our Tom and Eli. Okay, it's just that I get this size there's so much inertia to overcome. I mean I want to go places. It's just I need to shower by thinking about going places. It's a whole thing. I don't want to need to shower by thinking about going places. It's a whole thing. I don't want to. I'm moistened.

And also joining us tonight is the comedy ball. Let's see. And yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not my fault. Nanny Eli jokes work without a straight man. Okay, that's not my tell me about it. Tell me about it. You like to joke and we'll be here. We'll just be here together.

Last time I did that, I had a pedophilia running joke for about a year and a half. Don't talk. I don't know why it's such a bad don't. I'll be here anyway. It's for fun. Now, before we get going, I want to remind our listeners that if one disability to park a car, could block global trade for a week, Eli's would do so on a weekly fucking basis. I want to open with a special thanks to all the people who keep him but employed in a job that never requires him to drive anywhere. You're the heroes, right? If you want to learn how to join their ranks, make sure to stick around to the end of the show

and with that out of the way, tell us Heath. What person place think concept phenomenon or event? What would be talking about today? We're going to be talking about the Suez Canal. All right, so Cecil, you dredged up a few facts about this one. Oh, you ready the set sail. Yeah, I think you're going to dig this. I think you're totally the same. Oh, my God. I'm going to dig it. Why ever? Did you pick this topic? Well, we've heard a lot about the Suez Canal and recent news because we only noticed how important

something is when it's not working. And-hmm. Like the Senate. Yeah. When the canal does it have a barge wedged into its bank like a chicken bone in the throat of global trade, 50 ships a day pass through those waters. And while 50 ships doesn't seem like a lot, these are big fucking ships that equate to about $10 billion a day in common. Jesus. The canal itself connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, allowing ships to bypass the long way around Africa, and without it, as we saw in recent weeks, global trade

takes an enormous hit. Okay, it feels like we should have a backup plan for the tiny hallway that we have in global commerce. Great. Listen, if 300 Spartans can shut down the word, you can't do that. You're going to plan me, God. Yeah, I mean, I know this essay is going to be about how hard this was to make, but I feel like we're better at digging now.

Like, we could bang out a second panel along the weekends. I see, I'm not saying that all 50 ships were the direct result of my wife's Amazon prime habit, but I'm saying at least 49 of these ships, were the direct result of my wife's Amazon Prime habit, but I'm saying at least 49 of the ship of the direct result of my wife's Amazon Prime habit. It would have like the ship is stuck in there and that guy from 300 just kicks it and it frees it out of there. It gives it a boon. This is Sue S.

The canal has had a lot of different iterations throughout history. Aversion of this was dug a thousand years before the Etruscans emerged from their pre-Villanoven civilization. During the time of Pharaoh, Senru set, and I'm probably mispronouncing that and we'll get an email about it, but whatever Sunru set in 1900 BCE the Egyptians built a canal that connected the top of the Egyptian Egyptian Pharaoh It connected the top of the bitter legs with a Nile river the bitter legs is a natural body of water that makes up part of the Suez Canal today

But back then the water from the Red Sea reached all the way up and sort of encompassed the bitter lakes. The canal they had built back then basically went east west, connecting the Nile Delta with the red sea. The canal was used for time and then fell into disrepair and filled with blowing sands and dirt. Then another leader would come into power, rebuild the east west canal, and it would go through that cycle again. Then the red sea receded from the bitter lakes and left an area full of silt and the canal

no longer met the Red Sea. And before you're fucking, Kathy gets excited. This has nothing to do with Moses. Yeah. Egypt has always been a hub for trade in the region. It was a place where goods came from Asia and they were split up into different routes and then sat through Europe. Witten without the canal, that kind of trade was still occurring.

It just was that moving the goods overland is a lot more difficult and the canal itself never was really meant for seagulling vessels. It was also a lot more dangerous to travel over land for both passengers and cargo because bandits didn't need to invest in a boat to steal your shit. Plus, river pirates feel silly, right? Like, I'm not a man. Jesus, I'm not a lover. I'm the end you're gone. Okay, I gotta get a damn or something and then our long-sighted other than river pirates. I don't know.

Walk the plank. Canoes and swim gently to the shore. Okay, you don't have to whistle while you're doing it. a plank. Canoes and swim gently to the shore. Okay. You don't have to whistle while you're doing it. My feelings. He walks the plank, jumps on one alligator's head and then jumps to the shore. It's like pitfall. In 1488, Portuguese explorer Bartolomu Diaz sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa

and completed a route from India to Europe over sea. This turned out great for trade because you could ship massive shipments of goods over sea. You didn't have to unload these for land transport during any part of the trip. This made that section of overland and water routes through that area kind of useless for a hundred years or so. You know some guy had just convinced a king to make a giant fleet of duck boats with wheels

like the sheep. I got in big trouble. In 1798, the chief engineer of Emperor Napoleon surveyed the land in hopes of digging a canal that connected the two seas, but came to the conclusion that the two bodies of water were 30 feet different in sea level. So they scrapped the idea because a construction project that connected two seas in 1800 with a complicated lock system

was not really possible. So the idea just languished for a year. You hear that, Panama Canal? Oh, this is too hard. Then let's not do it then. Would you like some cheese? I would like some cheese, then. Would you like some cheese? I would like some cheese then, you know. You know.

The route around Africa took months to complete. So Egypt completed a railroad project that spanned the distance between the two ports. One on the Mediterranean, one on the Red Sea in 1845. This wasn't a terrible way for passengers to travel, but cargo transportation was limited. This is also the time that ships were replacing sales for steam power and wooden hulls for steel, so ships at the time carried exponentially more goods than previous vessels. This overland route was not going to work for the large-scale trading the current technology ships would allow. Yeah, so before you marvel at the amazing feed of engineering we're about to get to,

temper it with the fact that ultimately the Suez Canal robbed us of our chance at gigantic super tray. Super tray. Yes, sir. There was an enterprising young engineer by the name of Ferdinand Lisseps who believed that in the potential of a canal that could connect these two seas, but the current vice-serie of Egypt, Muhammad Ali. okay, he was great at canals because he knew how to get rid of all that cashess clay. Fan fucking really was. He was an interest in this.

Muhammad Ali is actually pretty interesting as the way he's depicted in history is as a ruler who wanted to modernize and reinvent Egypt, but building a canal would bring a lot of outside money and political interests. So that might not be why he was super enamored with that idea. Side note, you might remember Ferdinand Delay Seps from his horrible fucking plan for the Panama Canal. So apparently this guy spent decades in the French government and every single meeting he went to, regardless of the topic, he was like, more rivers, we just need more rivers

to fix everything. Oh, they said yes. Yeah, right, right. Now this next bit is something of a legend. And I'm not sure how true it is, but I like the story. The Eli Bosnick story. Okay. Yeah. His son was named Muhammad Saeed.

And he was something of a chonker. I guess his dad, Muhammad Ali, was not super happy with his son's physique. So he had the kid on a diet always. Well, this French engineer was also a diplomat and befriended the chunky prince. The story goes that he would invite Saeed over to his house to eat whatever he wanted. Muhammad Ali also wanted his son to be something of a trained physical specimen too. So in addition to the rigid diet, his son had to train in fencing, horseback riding and swimming. I guess the young Ferdinand excelled at these things and

and then practiced them with the prince. Meanwhile, the horse was like, but then the fuck are going to write poems or some shit? I mean, right. And as a fact, and I wish I had had an all you can eat Uncle Lesif's house to go to, would have saved me a lot of shame eating in the bathroom. Yeah.

Some shame, okay, I still would have, let's give on. The cookies get soggy when you have to hide them in the back of the toilet. You know what I mean? They just get too soft. You got a zip lock. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't want to be hygienic. It's double zip lock. Yeah. Muhammad Ali goes down for the count in 1848 and his son takes over his viceroy or governor of Egypt. And a few years later, he he agrees to start a canal project that will connect the two Cs. And he gives Ferdinand permission to start the process.

C, C's all of you had taught me fencing and invited me over to dinner whenever I want. You would have gotten anal. Do you mean a canal? What you heard what I said? Oh, all right. Well, obviously this negotiation needs a minute and some practice.

No, it doesn't work out. It's just no negotiation. We're good. We don't need to take a break. We're good. and some price. No, it's not no, it's there's no No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Just look at it, Jenkins. Miles and Miles of sand at some day shall be the Suez Canal. This is fucking stupid. Sorry what? Stupid, this is stupid. Come now, Jenkins. My Suez can now show me what a mankind's greatest achievements. Really? Because it feels like two days shipping for a whole lot of fucking work. Okay, I mean, you gotta-

It saves three days. Who cares? Are we on some kind of fucking shortage that three extra days is going to blow everybody's dick off? I think. Okay, well, the pirates, so- I was dealing with the fucking pirates. I mean, surely that has to be easier. So let's deal with the fucking pirates. I mean, surely that has to be easier than dicking a river through the fucking continent,

right? Okay, but with, you know, man's indomitable will. Oh, shit. Well, you know what this is? Shovel. This is a shovel. And it's the fucking peak of digging technology right now. It's going to take us go fuck ourselves about a time.

In a hundred years, they're gonna have like dirt lasers or whatever. Then we'll just make this shit in half the time. It is bullshit and we shouldn't do it. Fine. Fine. We won't make a canal. Thank you. What about a ball of twine?

Like the world's a biggest ball of twine. Can we do that? Seriously, man, fine. Ugh. Ugh. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ And we're back. Now, way back on episode 151, we met for an on Delis Epps when he got a

few hard lessons during his failed attempt to carve a C-way through Panama. But that secondary education is still a long way off. So Cecil, are you ready to tell us more about his elementary penaltion? The first thing that Delis Eps does is start the international commission for the piercing of the isthmus of the Suez. Whoa. Oh yeah, that canal had to be 18 though before we make it. He consulted with several experts in 13 different countries and then surveyed the land and came up with a new route for the canal.

Instead of connecting the Nile to the Red Sea, they decided to dig several smaller canals and link the lakes that were already in the way. This means that instead of digging a whole new route, they could instead just dig about half that. They also say that the two bodies of water were the same level and that Napoleon's engineer made a mistake. Okay. To be fair, Napoleon's engineer, that guy was sort of required to pretend everything

was bigger than it really was. Why would you get it? They created a company called the Suez Canal Company. And the president of that company is Ferdinand De LaSeps. Now he has to fund the whole thing. And while he's trying to make this an international fair to avoid ruffling feathers, he can't convince the largest naval power on the planet, Great Britain, that the canal was not And while he's trying to make this an international fair to avoid ruffling feathers, he can't convince the largest naval power on the planet, Great Britain, that the canal was not a threat to them.

He had gone out of his way to make sure that he alleviated all the fears that one country would control this and it would be open to everyone. But the Brits, because they didn't come up with the idea to start out with, they weren't happy about it. Not only that, they were one of the richest countries on Earth at the time. If not the richest, and they were not lending any bit of their considerable wealth to the project. But guys, think about how much faster you can get your pilfered-and-take-what-ease.

Now, how about T? Daila Seps, instead, decided to sell shares in the new company in France. He sold half the shares there to the French and not just the wealthy. At this point, the world is balls deep into the industrial revolution and the common folk with a little bit of extra cash were buying into this canal as well as an investment. Yeah, they sold it to them as canal stop. I mean, how can you lose? Okay, you're almost certainly going to lose.

They made a lot of fucking money than this in the Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stunned Stun all the rest of the shares was like 200,000 of them. Oh, geez. Basically strong arming him into the purchase. Okay, look, I promise the canal has no locks. This is not a multi-level marketing scheme. Oh. Oh. A terrible cover. A terrible cover. The nation of origin, not a pyramid scheme.

And so. Mm. The vice-erite had to go to Great Britain to borrow the money for them. And they were happy to loan it and rates you normally get it a payday loan place. Okay, these rates are outrageous. You guys are lucky. My Nigerian prince friend that I actually have has not come through yet.

Otherwise, I would not take these loans. Saiyan had given a lot of money and had also offered a great tax cut for the project, 100%. And he was also gonna supply the labor for the canal. But let's not get crazy, this is mid-1800s and lots of countries are using slave labor, so why not use it here? The people conscripted into this backbreaking work were called the Corvei.

They had been using Corvei labor in Egypt for, at that point, like, for millennia. So it wasn't anything new. It's basically conscripted work. And in this case, they even transported the people to the labor sites. And in some cases, their families of these workers had to follow them because the person providing

for the family was conscripted. Yeah, you know, when you want to day off, you have to send an email with two weeks notice. These guys had a hard-knough no Pharaoh's heart like six times. Send a plague of love to get this way harder. And as I said, they were doing this since long before the common era. Well, they're also using the same tools in some cases. Some lucky workers got shovels.

Others got baskets. No, seriously, not all of them. And not a lot of them. What? Others got baskets that they could fill with dirt and then carry and dump. And then others seriously had to use their hands. They just carried loose dirt. Like just like a hand full of dirt or they would stand on the edge and just like like a dog you and a dog move some like between their legs.

That's I guess that's what I'm envisioning, just the whole line of these guys. Still better than Amazon warehouse. That's a great way. Whatever. The numbers of how many Egyptian Corvay died during this process isn't really known, but it's in the tens of thousands.

And there were so many people in the middle of the desert digging, they had to dig out fresh water channels to get the water there to that party, Egypt, just to keep that project going. Hey, Mr. Delayceps, everyone's really thirsty. Do you think we should be up more rivers? More rivers. There's an ancient Eliad the beauty. He's like, okay, okay, but but he was working on a waterway. I'm not asking you to laugh, but you can at least admit that Diana thirst is ironic, right? In 1864, the world decided that enslaving people was immoral and the canal should not be built by conscripted Corvay. This push was mostly from Britain and at this point, America's smack dab in the middle of a war about it. Britain, of course, found its smack dab in the middle of a war about it.

Britain, of course, found its way to capitalize on it, though, without conscripting labor, Egypt couldn't provide the workers because they didn't have the cash flow. But the British banks were open and lent the money for the rest of the project. The Suez companies spent a lot of these funds on dredging equipment since it was actually easier to dredge the area than dig the ground out, sort of dig, dig it out above ground. They had flooded parts of the areas they were digging just to make it easier to dredge. Made it easier. You know there had to be one guy who was like, Hey, Steve, this dredging thing is going pretty well. Do you think that maybe we could... Dredge the

whole thing? You think we'd dredge the whole thing? No, man, we can't dredge the whole thing. That's why we're making the canal. Right, right? That's why we're making the canal. That's not dredging. Now, November 17th, 1869, the first ship sailed through the canal in the maiden voyage.

A short time after that small part of Egypt was underwater, the economy joined it. See, this canal was built with a shit ton of borrowed funds. The Brits, who were not keen on this canal in the first place and passed on the initial offering because they were leery the whole idea, basically funded half the canal through loans. Well, the Egyptian government couldn't pay and offered their share in the Suez company to the British government for $19.2 million, which would be over about a half a billion dollars in today's money.

The British government snatched it up and became basically half owners of the canal. Well, in order to protect the massive financial interest in the canal, they had to basically put the country under colonial rule for almost a century, you know, like you do. Okay, Cecil, but counterpoint, if we forgive their student loans, it wouldn't be fair to people that pay their bills off. I get it. No, I once loaned Heath 20 bucks and I live in his house forever. What?

What were you? Egypt eventually revolted and took back their country. Well, when they did, they had some public works, works projects that had to be paid for. So they looked to other nations for loans to do so. This is right in the middle of the Cold War and everybody on the globe is side eye and everyone else, so no one wants to loan in the money. Now this wasn't for frivolous stuff. They wanted to build a dam and flood part of the Nile River Valley so they could feed people living there. Since there were no takers, they decided to actually just

take something. And on July 26th, 1956, they took the canal back so they could use the operating profits to fund the dam. And meanwhile, Prince Philip was going to parties with British Jeffrey Epsom. Prime Minister was on the death of the time. Grace Kelly became Princess of Monaco. Grace Metallius wrote an amazing novel about email sexuality called Peyton Place and the Queen had to keep it all together. It was a ridiculous time.

Most of my history knowledge is from Billy Joel. Yes. Oh, okay. I was like, where? What? It was the Crown and Billy Joel. This did not sit well with Britain, France, and Israel. So they invaded and took the canal back.

And what we would call the Suez crisis. In a weird bit of unity, the US and the Soviet Union didn't like what was happening in Egypt. So the UN a few days after the invasion sent a peacekeeping force to the region and basically kicked out the invaders. This of course, because it had the backing of the world's superpowers to do so. They kept the peacekeeping force there for a decade. And for the first time, last time in their story and history, the UN peacekeepers kept peace.

I was waiting for the weird thing for us. You know, this is a coincidence. This is crazy. This is when they got the name Blue Helmets because they wanted Berets, I heard, and then have enough braze Try to order more berets gonna be two days we can use. I wear a car feet on my head. In 1967, there was a conflict between Egypt and Israel called the Six Day War.

Israel started a war with pretty much everyone around them and they took the land east of the Red Sea. This land, the Sinai Peninsula, was occupied by the Israelis in the Egyptian government decided to close the canal to not allow Israel access to it. The canal would stay close for eight years. Yeah, also fun fact, when Egypt closed the canal on both sides, they blocked it off with like mines and studded ships.

There were 15 ships more at the midpoint of the canal that got stuck in the canal for those eight years. Eight years. That fleet, they eventually got the nickname the yellow fleet. After all the ships got a huge layer of desert sand all over the ship. That's a crime. Also, the crew of all those ships started their own little floating society. What? That included sporting events, an internal currency and trading system, and apparently they made their own stamps.

What? I have no idea why they would make the stamps, but it's cool that they made a little society. A few weeks ago on March 23rd, the cargo ship, the Evergiven, operated by Evergreen Marine, ran a ground on the side of the bank, stopping all shipping in the canal for six days. The canal itself is one way.

They have to let ships go through and groups in each direction. There's a few places in the canal that some that bypass, they have a bypass for some areas where ships can go around on coming ships. It's just so happened that the ever given Rana ground in a place where that just wasn't possible. The ships disrupted trade for a week and over 400 ships waited out the week for the vessel to get free so they could traverse the canal.

You know one guy tried to start a floating society, wait too soon, just like, right away, and now Lodi Bucks, Day one, and he's like, no, no. Additional fun fact in 1992, the same shipping company lost 28,000 rubber ducks at sea. And since then, I've been lost to shore at at least five continents, including both the east and west coasts of the U.S. which is pretty much crazy. The canal can support very large vessels larger than the Panama Canal. Brighay. Yeah. But for extra large vessels, they take some of the cargo off these ships and put it on

smaller canal owned boats so they don't scrape the bottom of the canal. These ships travel with the larger boat and then reload the larger ship after they get through the Suez Canal. No, fuck that. It's one trip, no matter how many bags. No way. Many. Just trying to put one of those huge crates into an overhead. Come on, man. The cargo container, you're not going to go to the first class. Now, a lot of the merchandise that's traveling through the canals coming from China and other Asian countries, and it's packed on these cargo ships and sent around India and then through

the canal into the Mediterranean and finally on to Europe. But with global warming, shipping companies are finding that the sea ice in the northern part of Europe is open longer, so they're saving thousands of miles of travel just by going north and taking a hard left at Russia and bypassing the whole Suez Canal entirely. That's right folks. Nobody has worn a game from global warming. So that's where food is Russia. Just, yeah, just in case you were out of trouble, I'm going to sleep. I thought I'd throw that one out of the book. We're not done yet. Not done yet. The canal itself is something of an environmental problem.

The bitter lakes, the large body of water that the two canals sort of feed into in the middle was a very salty lake. The salinity actually initially kept migration of species at bay, but it's time has gone down the salinity even doubt and there's been some invasive species that have crossed the canal. The red seas are harsher environments, so the migration is into the Mediterranean. And the invasive species thrive there and they're endangering local fish species. I thought the invasive species was going to be the Europeans for the time.

And if that wasn't sure enough, let me leave you with the greatest sentence to appear in Wikipedia for this quote in 1963, the United States considered using 520 nuclear bombs. About 160 mile long waterways, Israel's mega desert. And it's the most American thing. Yeah, amazing. To be fair, we have extras. Yeah, we have extras. And that would be the best thing we'd ever done to one of the ones we had.

Right. Right. All right. It's just a one big glass waterway. It's all glass. It's a slide. Yeah, it's a slide all the way down. Baby Heath is just squeaking along. He stands at the end, someone kicks him in the stomach. He shits and vomits right at the time.

That's great. Yeah, fun. You ever given? All right. If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I think that's great. Yeah, fun. You ever given? All right. If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? There's not a fucking glass fucking canal next year. I'm giving up on the case closed.

I'm giving up. All right. And are you ready for the quiz, sir? Absolutely. Let's do this. All right. Cecil, which of the following is the best fun fact that we haven't mentioned yet? Hey, the Statue of Liberty was supposed to be a sculpture of an Egyptian woman that would

stand along the Suez Canal, but the French artist of that sculpture couldn't sell the idea so we just changed the placard and told the US it was Lady Liberty. So a bunch of white American nationalists are actually all excited about an Arab lady representing America, which is a great idea. That's true. So that's a pretty good, that's a very fun fact for me. Yeah, strong possibility.

A, okay. B, Israel is considering a project to rival the Suez Canal, but way better with ponies and blowjacks, cocaine. They're thinking of a train instead of a canal that runs from HIFA on the Mediterranean to Dubai on the Persian Gulf, across the whole subcontinent. And instead of using 520 nuclear bombs from the US to explode a canal,

they're just gonna hold those 522 weapons and scare around. Yeah, that's it. That's all so true, yeah. All right, or see, there might be a pattern forming where the next episode from Cecil is about children of little mind. Oh, okay. Okay.

Okay. Princess Grace, take me away. It's trouble in the suit. The end of the next versus children. Read a book. I didn't get it. I'm glad for the clarification. Secret answer D all the above.

That is correct. Well done. All right, Cecil. If the Suez Canal were sold on Etsy, how might it be listed? A, a hand crafted, one of a kind canal built by artisanal imported. Also, how did no one make a bagel and locks joke this? Oh, so brutal.

So brutal. So brutal. Can now the root of the clown. I was trying to just do the math for this whole time and I got nothing. I just mentioned it. There wasn't as many of Muhammad Ali jokes I thought there was going to be more. I thought that Jamie's thought there was going to be more. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Come on. That one's not my, no, my Muhammad Ali jokes landed. It was the problem. Yeah. Yeah. That's because we were all floating like a butterfly. Is that what

happened? There it is. Anyway, the Thrall in Canala. No, I was trying to do like tunnel in the jungle. I was working with over like tunnel in the jungle if I was working with over here. This is going nowhere. Secret answer, see all the above. All right, sure. I'm just gonna keep doing that. The next one's gonna be that way too.

All right, she's on. All right, see, so what was the favorite working song of the folks who worked on the Suez Canal? Okay. Hey, walk and also all the other things. Like an emergency. Right. Okay, yeah, hey walk and also all the other Right, I like big boats and I cannot That's a good one. That's a good one. Maybe that's a stern is actually the name of that song.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's perfect. See? See? Back that up. Back that after is good. See? Don't step on my new made suits. I want that to be. It's pushing.

Push it. Push it. Push it. Yeah, I'm going to do that. Okay. You should use sues for sues. Bring it back in. Bring it back in. Bring it back in. Bring it

back with D. Me so Corvay. No, because it's Corvay. So it would be like little red Corvay is what you want to do. Not the other way. Yeah. So let's go with E. All the above. Correct. It's me so Corvay. Well, we Ely should have done better. So we're going to punish him by making him do the essay and ask a week So Tom literally just had a sentence and what if it's all right? I mean in that case you're the winner and you get the host next week. Yeah, that's much better. Thank goodness Oh, I choose no Panic and all right so much better

So much better. I don't understand how anybody wins if Eli doesn't All right, well for people tolerated my super I Love that we're recording before that came out so that we don't even we don't even know yet All right, well for Tom Cecil Eli and Heath I know I thank you for hanging out with us today We'll be back next week by then I'll be an expert on something else between now And then you can hear more from Tom and Eli on the cognitive alias and more from Cecil and heatham god awful dissonance and if you like to help to keep this show going you can make a per episode donation at

patreon.com slash citation pod or leave a five star review everywhere you can if you'd like to get in touch with us check out past episodes connect with the social media or check the show notes be sure to check out citation pod dot com Ciao!