Historically High - The Panama Canal

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

It's one of the greatest feats of engineering in Human History. The Panama Canal was created to bridge the world's two largest oceans together in an effort to speed commerce and travel. Well that all well and good until you discover you gotta punch a trench through a country. Find out why Panama was chosen, how the French lost 20,000 workers, and why they had to pass the baton to Uncle Sam to finish the job. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Being the shit into, like, probably led into Dice's shitty act that finally showed. That was probably his more leaning into how he really was. And if people didn't respond to it well, he could say, oh, it was just a character. Maybe that's true. And then it rang home, and he was like, oh, thank God I can act like this all the time now. Well, you listen to, like, Roddy Dangerfields. I get no respect, no respect at all. I'm sure those were, like, real-life experiences that had happened to.

that bled into his act, but they were funny and they were nice. And I wonder if he had, like, any secrets because you would think it would have come out by now. Just because he's dead doesn't mean somebody wouldn't come out and be like, hey, he was dirty. It was just so much easier to hide everything back then, just because there was no one with a camera on you at all times. I wonder about, like, John Belushi, too. Like, had he not died so young? Like, would we still... Would him and his brother be hanging out growing weed together?

Like, there's been a few times that Jim Belushi's come out and said, hey, I do believe that the pot that I grow now would have saved my brother's life had it been there for him instead of cocaine, which is probably a good thought, but I don't think that really compares. Like, marijuana is not going to stop me from doing cocaine. That's a completely different deal. That's going to come either. before or after.

You're reaching, John. Yeah. Or Jim. So I needed to write down a lot more context with these high thoughts because there's a lot of them that don't make sense anymore. Just start naming them and I'll see if I can help you get there. That'll be a fun game in itself. True. Because you write these down and win your stone, right?

Oh, yeah. Oh, it's, okay, this is going to be like a fucking stoner puzzle. So first one that I wrote down is a corner. maize in Mexico called a maze maze well okay maize no no no I already have this was it

was it Mexicans that called a maze I thought it was maize to the Native Americans I think it's in both okay so it would probably be a maze but they have a different word for the second one their word for maize would be something different yeah whatever the Spanish word is for maize

if like yeah it's an easy one to figure out um this one We're off to a hot start. That was good. I like that. This one says, how is teen mom okay? I think I probably saw a commercial for it or something like that. Oh, how is making the show teen mom? How is that like allowed?

Yeah. Why are we doing that? Do you think that that led to like the glamorization of like teenagers getting pregnant once they did? If you're, you got like, you're weighing the scales and you're like, okay, so we can make this show and we're either going to make this show as a message. to dissuade people from doing this, or we're going to make a show that's going to glamorize this and make people more likely to do it, or don't care as much because they think they're going to get famous doing it. But I think what they did was they found that maybe they thought within the first couple episodes they'd see how they framed it,

and people just responded better to them glamorizing it. because how many people like are still somewhat you see pop up every now and then and it's like former tame mom star like blah blah whatever yeah there is but I think like it's still on

MTV like there's still shows from the first original couple that like they do reunions now and all that kind of stuff I don't even know I'm trying to think that last time I legitimately watched MTV ridiculousness still tickles me ridiculousness is like

Isn't that what MTV is now I've heard someone say that it's just ridiculousness, teen mom. Are they still doing real world or road rules? They're doing the challenge. Yeah, but is that even on a different, and that's even on a different network now? Isn't it like on Paramount? Probably on VH1. They probably progressed age-wise to being on VH-1.

I just, I don't understand how that works. It's like... It's the same thing in my viewpoint. I mean, I don't know if it's... Yeah, I guess it is. This is going to sound bad when I say. it and I'm just going to preface it that way. But it almost is one of those things

when they do show teen mom, it's kind of like that show like Love on the Spectrum. To me it's, I was going to compare to the, what is like my 500 pound life, my 400 pound life. Yeah, I can kind of see that. But like love on the spectrum to me when I see it, it's great. I'm super happy that people that are on the spectrum

can be and find love and all that kind of stuff. But there's so many, that's like maybe a half a percent of the people that do have autism. Like there's a very large swath that won't be able to do that. So it's kind of like glamorizing a little bit. Maybe people that don't understand it. I don't like that that has to be a TV show. When I know what they say the reason is for making it, it's like, we want to show that like people can have like a normal like relationship and everything like that with it. And I think that's the message, the like wink-wink message to get it made.

Yeah. But I think the reason it stays on is because I think people tune in for the wrong reasons. Yeah, it's more than exploitation. Yeah. And at that point, if they're getting ratings and able to continue making the show, no one that's running that show, and if it's making money, is going to question the reason this show. Are we, people are getting the right message from us on this, right?

We think we're doing one thing. and the people are perceiving it as another thing. This was our idea for it. People are tuning in. They must have the same way. I think it's the same thing with like, like we got on a kick of watching. I can't, I can't, is it my 400, my 500, my 500?

I can't remember which one it is. But we were watching that and I was, it's just like, it's crazy because you do understand that like stuff comes through as far as like tragic things have happened to these people. But does, does the show do more good than bad? Like, does this show inspire people to know that they can go get help and that it's possible no matter like how far gone you are? Or are the people watching this show technically like me watching it and being like, I just feel like I feel either bad or guilty watching this?

But like you continue watching it like, is the next person going to be worse and are they going to try to change their life? That's almost at the end. You're like, please like after like I invest. did this time watching this episode so please tell me this person actually did something like they dropped a hondo or something like that i kind of feel i hope in those situations that it is good but there's still a sick part of me where like when i watch hoarders and i see an episode that's kind of mild and it's like why how come this made it on the air like this is half as bad as last week's episode like i almost tune in to see how bad humanity can get but at the same time

i don't like it like i'm not i'm not happy to watch it but there is something just so interesting about seeing a mental illness at that point like take a physical form. And maybe I just have a bad time watching those because like love intervention

don't know if I've ever watched intervention not being high. It's just a preference man like I watch shows that like Katie wouldn't touch and she watches shows that I wouldn't touch. And we like it's like you know what are they called? Is it a Venn? What's the

Ben diagram? Is that a bend? Yeah, so you literally have, it's a bend diagram. So my interest on one side, and then literally for TV shows, there's like that overlap. It's just like a sliver overlap. And in there lives certain shows like The Office, Friends, at one point Sons of Anarchy. There was like shows that we've been able to kind of like merge into that and then like certain movies. But she likes to watch like certain things and I like to watch certain things that.

But the On the 500-pound person thing Or whatever it is Do you remember True Life on MTV? So That's where it got started That's where I think this show

Kind of got started And isn't that We're like catfish Kind of the documentary type things like that I thought it was true life There was a true life I don't remember Team online

I actually came up I think that show is actually Now thinking back on it I think that show was Responsible for a lot of this shit Just a jumping board For everything else Yeah because like

If you think about When it came out It came out when we wanted, like, entertainment, like, when I was probably, I was watching that, probably around, like, when I was 15 or 16. Mm-hmm. But, like, that's the things that you watch, and so the shows just followed you. Like, as you started getting old, it's, like, now it's catfished, and then it was teen mom. And, yeah. There was one where it was, like, true life, I'm obese or something like that.

And dude rolled up to a fast food place and ordered, like, two or three meals. and he ordered like large drinks with them too and it was just him like just him in the car and then he pulled over and moved it all down and to this day if I'm ever at like a fast food place and like I'm picking something up for me and for somebody else and I ordered like two meals I immediately that's immediately where I flashed back in my head

I'm like oh god they're going to think that I'm that guy like they're going to think that I'm ordering all this stuff for me when in reality everybody goes to fast food and orders Like if I'm the only one in the car, they're going to think it's all for me. You go pick stuff up for people all the time. And you're making that assumption because you're a larger individual. Yeah, just being a big person, sometimes that's what it is. I don't think that by that either.

No, it just... You're just like, yes. We having this conversation while you were standing by the sink. It looked like, I was like, that... I didn't thought that was a normal height sink. Just being a massive individual. Like, if I were to walk into a McDonald's and I'm a foot and a half taller than the person taking my order and I'm just...

big bear like individual tools you just need to start preface it by saying order your first mail and then being like and my girlfriend's gonna have and then just like a phone call and then when you and then when you pull up or be like hold on i got to pull up my girlfriend's order on my phone just mentions i like that it'll make you feel better it'll leave no doubt i mean they'll still be like uh-huh they're like anything else i'm just like uh no that that's it and it's for more than just me i just want to get that out there i want to tell you that that that's one of those things where when it happens and you think like looking at meals now everything is always bigger than it used to be like the drinks and all that stuff would it

blow your mind if I told you that when we built a canal we built a ship that was the exact size for that canal but the desire to send more shit made people build a bigger ship that wouldn't fit in the canal just because they wanted to send more stuff. Are you talking about my second favorite Van Halen's song? Panama. Yes. Panama Canal. Panama.

Panama. Are you talking about, oh, you're talking about how the name of the, like, standard of ships that they would have to build would have to be a specific, you know what? This I'm actually kind of curious about. If this is something there, I'm going to start jumping around on this. Okay. Because of the amount of trade that went through the canal, which it's still a ton. Yeah.

It's still a ton. It's more than I can, you know, fathom when you say, like, the percentage. The percentage makes it sound low, but the amount of ships that go through it, you're like, oh, that's still an insane amount. Yeah, when you think that 5% of the world trade goes through the Panama Canal. Yeah. And 5% is not a big number, but also when you look at the Panama Canal and how small it is, that's a lot of trade. Yes. So when you have, like, the canal is determining these companies that are building ships, and then they even have to, like, name the build of the ship or the size of it after the Panama Canal. So it was the Panamax, right?

That's what they made. It was the max-sized ship that was able to go through. Okay. So it was also, did you know that the Panama Canal also? had something to do the size that they determined was determined because of like warships to when the United States took over construction they had to determine the size of warships that could go from the East Coast to get to the Pacific Fleet but I didn't know that yeah I knew that that was a thought process was if we can build this if we need to for war which luckily they did because right after it got done things started to get real hot worldwide but I didn't realize that that was one thing that they

built it for like with the forethought of hey we're gonna need this for our military Oh yeah, definitely. I think that's one of the reasons that we probably intervened to get the whole thing finished. There's a lot of reasons, and I'd like to say that all of them were good at that point, but it, no, all of them I think were good at that point. Just how they came about getting things was not great. So the entire concept, to me, when I'm looking at this, is the entire concept is actually kind of just, it's weirdly kind of back shit crazy when you think about it, when the first person tried to imagine this thing. done when they didn't know like when the technology of the time you're like how did you think you ever would ever do that with like just like steam shovels and like manpower to think that you could do that like nowadays i think we're so used to such like grand buildings and feats of

engineering because the technology is so advanced like the new world trade center tower would be like oh my god look at it like we like you look at some of these suspension bridges and like China and everything. They're just, they're wonders. Yeah, we have full-on bridges that span miles and miles to go out to the Florida Keys and places like that. But to basically say, hey, why don't we just kind of like divide North and South America, basically? On the continental divide. It's where two, where two tectonic plates come together. And just slice it to where we could get ships instead of having to go all the way around South America and Strait of McGon. Or, did you know that there was also a passage north,

like through, like, northern Canada, between Northern Canada and the North Pole? That wasn't all iced over? No. It would be, like, you could see just, like it was almost like island chains, and you could get through all the way. Like, almost like a Hudson.

Yeah, I'm guessing not a lot of people took that, but they said it was a path. Yeah. But anyway, we're like, fuck this piece of land. Let's just punch a freaking canal through it. And then we'll just be able to take a shortcut. Well, I think like you were talking about, too. There was a lot of thought process at the time where, like, everybody wanted to do it.

Because the first guy that saw it and thought that it would have been a good idea was Vasco Balboa, the Spaniard that was... Rockies, great ancestor. Yeah, exactly. and he discovered the isthmus in like 1513 and stood right in the middle and realized that he could look over and see the Atlantic Ocean is an isthmus I didn't even look at it up but I knew they said a lot is an isthmus basically just a tiny connection of land between two age economies yeah it's just basically like the thinnest strip between uh two bodies of water I think is what it would be which the land of Panama confused the shit on me because when I googled Panama Canal and it showed me do you see the close one I have over here. Yeah. When it shows you the close-up of the canal, and then it shows you this is the Pacific Ocean down there, and that's the Atlantic Ocean up there and the Caribbean, you're like, the maps

upside down. Like, I can't find one has... Holy shit. Do you notice that? Now I do. Yeah, so you're like, what do you mean that's the Pacific? The Pacific is supposed to be on that side of it. So Panama, if you're looking at it, so you have Mexico, then the Central American country,

you get to Costa Rica, and then Panama almost goes almost entirely west to east. It's like a... Like a parallel. A reverse S. Yeah. So basically, if you wanted to drive across Panama, you would start, and you could start driving kind of... I guess that would be southeast. Yeah, or southeast.

Then you would start going east. Then you would have to go more like northeast. So you're going up. Well, and I think I read that the port to get into it from the Atlantic side is like 22 miles west of where it is to get into the Pacific. So, like, it's not a straight shot. Like, it's bent in a certain way. No, it, like, it's almost like you have to backtrack. Like, look at the, how you're coming from the Caribbean.

So you have to sail into the Caribbean. And then you're almost kind of, like, turning south. and then you start heading southeast through the canal, and then you come out in the Pacific Ocean further east, then you started in the canal. I don't know why this is so amazing. It's just like when you look at it, the picture is like, it's got to be wrong.

It's upside down. Well, and 99% of the reason that it is that way is because that was just how the water was flowing. That was how they could get through the mountain range. And I think it was the smallest point, and there was also, at that time, there was some smaller existing lakes that they thought would make it easier for them.

It also might have been, like you were talking about, the continental divide, it also might have probably been the lowest point of that, maybe. Yeah, just like the canyon that runs between them. And this, one thing that America figured out real quick from a lot of trial and error was that there was no way to shape the earth. You had to work with everything that you had. And right around the 1820s is when the French really started to work on trying to make this happen.

And I think at that point they had steam power. I think they might have had steam. Like it would have been like steam shovels that were barely early. And if you like Google an image of a steam shovel, this isn't like an excavator or a backhoe.

No. Basically think of like a scoop on a rail and it could basically just move up and down. It's really all it could do. It may be dump. So it wasn't like it was expediting the process. Of course it was making it to work can carry a lot more and do the war with like tons of dudes

but it's not what you're thinking is it's not the end up the all of the structure equipment no and it just wasn't enough and the French wanted to build the canal at sea level because they thought that that would be the easiest way across

50 miles that's the stretch that the canal goes across is 50 miles and they realized real quick that no matter how much they dug down through mudslide that it would trigger for torrential rains or anything like that

like every time they would dig out there'd just be a mudslide that would fill it right back up well when they went and did the survey to determine if they could do a sea level canal they did it during like the summer it wasn't the rainy season

so basically they were seeing everything at the lowest possible level it would be as far as flooding and stuff and so they designed it like that and kind of like you're saying like the way that they're happened to go ahead and do the canal is the terrain of Panama

to get that much out of the way and to dig a trench through all that, it just ended up not being possible. And the other thing that they really kind of screwed up on was any of the excavation that they had taken out from where they were, they didn't spread it out. There wasn't a way to push it further away from where the excavation site was. So there were just mounds of dirt that would eventually give way

with a mudslide and they would slide right back into the same hole not only back into the same hole but burying all the people that were down there too and France the Frenchies just did not do well what they lost 20,000 people trying to cut through well the guy that ended up kind of thinking they could do the sea level was Ferdinand is it de la Cps yeah yeah de la Taylor didn't get his job done. So he was the one who built the Sews Canal. Is it the Suez or Sue? Suez.

Suez Canal. So the Suez Canal is the one that actually connects. Is it the Mediterranean? The Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. The Red Sea and the Mediterranean. It was a passageway basically so they could get down to trade routes, trade routes. Without having to go all the way around Africa and Cape of Good Hope and everything.

That, to me, it's so nuts to think about just. just how far they would have to travel back in the day. And what they'll undertake to try to go ahead and just, like, even if they don't get it done in their lifetime, just to be able to do that. The Sitz Canal is kind of crazy because it's sand. So to me, I think that with sand, I'm like, how much do you have to dredge that? No. And that was, that was all that it was, was it was dredging.

They would have to dredge out the sand to get across there, whereas you're going through rocks and hard. That's why they thought they could do the C-level one, because the guy that designed was like, oh, no. I designed the Suez is 120 miles. So he's like, I made something 120 miles. This is only 50 miles, guys, like I got this. Yeah, this isn't even half of what I did before. We're cool here.

They severely underestimated it. They only ended up completing, what was it, 11 miles between 1820 and 1888. So they didn't even get halfway. Oh, no. That's a fifth. Yeah, it's fifth. Barely a fifth.

Just a little bit more than a fifth. So one thing, too, with this part of Panama, so it had been determined after Balboa discovers the ESFIS and everything, they determined that that is the smallest portion of Panama. And so the reason that this location was also taken was that this was already kind of an established like railway route. So basically, if you were trying to get from like the East Coast or the Atlantic and you were traveling somewhere

into the Pacific. Unless you're going the other direction, you're heading around Africa and going by India and everything, you would come this way. You'd want to avoid the additional time it took, especially I think trips that were coming from the east coast to the United States just trying to get to the West Coast. It was still quicker to do it this way.

9,000 nautical miles is how far it takes you to go from New York all the way around to San Francisco. Not going to the past. No, not going through the Panamo County. So going down to South America. Gotcha. So, but there was an entire group or, like, an option would always be to stop in Panama City.

Uh-huh. And you would take a railroad all the way to the other side of that, that 50-mile stretch. Yeah. And the company that you were taking your ship with or doing your shipping and everything would have another one of their ships on that side. And the different ship would then take it from that side of Panama to the East Coast. Just basically dry dock it across land. Exactly, but they figured, you know, we're having to unload this stuff and load it. We're losing so much money.

And this is pre, I want to say it's pre-transcontinental railroad, and I'm not positive on that, but during this time was when the gold rush was happening in San Francisco, or in California. So your only option was to either figure out how to travel across the land without a railroad or anything like that, which I'm sure was treacherous, or you take a boat around. That was what the need for the railway was across Panama, was if they can get you down there, they can get you across the railway,

and then they can get you up to California to the gold rush quicker. And at this point, isn't it, it's actually not even Panama. So at this point early on, I think, wasn't it part of Columbia? It was Panama before, and then Columbia got greedy, and basically took them over. And that's... At one point the U.S., when there was like, when we start getting interested in it

to take it over after seeing kind of what the French had done I think we funded and backed the rebels that were like Panamanian like independent and help them basically kick at the

Colombian government and Columbia rule out of Panama with the intention of being like okay we helped you guys get this now you're going to give us a good deal on trying to get this thing finished. This is the part where I don't know if I want to, I don't think that the U.S. did this for

purely selfish reasons, but in 1902, they decided that this was where they needed to be, and this is where they wanted to, excuse me, basically take over where France had failed and fix it, because they wanted to make themselves more of a world power. They wanted

to really show that they could flex their muscle and that they were big in the world. Well, and at this point, too, I don't know how, kind of what the temperature in the room is in 1902, far as World War I. But I think kind of just looking when

the United States started building like battleships and I think when countries, especially the United States, started developing its Navy and realized, okay, in order for our Navy to be successful, not only do we need to have a Navy in the Atlantic and a Navy in the Pacific, but we need to be able to go ahead and add

and subtract from those and swap ships and step a lot faster than sailing than what did you say, 7,000 or 9,000? 9,000 extra nautical miles around. I think if we just bite the bullet right here, finish this canal, and then especially if we're going to have access to it, because if the United States is going to step in and finish it,

you can be sure as shit that we're not just doing it and then handing over to Panama and being like, okay, you're guys a show. Because if anything happened and there was a World War, what better way to give your Navy advantage than to control the shortcut? Yeah, absolutely. It's a, that one passage way to get through there is a cheat code to beat your enemies to wherever they're going.

Oh yeah, or to reinforce your own, you know, reinforce your own, maybe. And that's kind of where I think that the U.S. saw their distinct advantage. And if it was a 50-50 deal, it would have been great. I think that it was more that they overthrew the Colombian government to try to gain access to that land because they wanted it for what their reasons were. And part of that was after they had overthrown Colombia and Panama had taken themselves back over, they had paid, it was like $40 million to the French company for, like, their assets and everything that they had had there. Then they gave Panama $10 million and had signed a treaty with them that was called...

And they also lease it for $250,000 a year or something like that. Well, this is the part where it gets weird and it seems like America kind of pulled a fact. last one was they had a Panama with or wow they had a treaty with Panama that was called the Hey Bunal Venea Varia treaty or whatever and it said that the U.S. was granted power over everything inside the canal zone so the canal zone wasn't like 10 miles to each side or something yeah it was a pretty sizable area to each side of the canal well in the Panamanian understanding of it was that all the villages and everything that fell within that zone were still their villages but the u.s. had said i know that we said that we were only going to control the zone but we also control

all the villages that are in the zone too so if we need you guys to move we're going to flood this area and you guys are going to move whereas i don't think panama really understood like that there was a difference between the zone that they wanted and then the villages yeah that's one thing too um kind going into what it ended up being decided that would be the way, the best way to develop the Panama Canal. And when you think about making canal in my head, all I thought about was exactly what I think the Suez Canal is. It's a sea level canal that just goes straight through. That's what you think about if you think of a canal. It's just a straight water right. Yeah. So after, and I'm not sure who ended up kind of creating the survey or the determination

of this would be the best way to do it was the determined. that in order to go through as little land as possible and make like essentially, you know, like you said, the artificial valleys and the actual canal itself, they were like, we could dam up the natural river that comes through here, create a giant lake, flood a huge amount of area, that would raise essentially the water high enough to get over a majority of the hills and everything that we normally have to just either blast and then dig through. So basically instead, what they're saying is instead of going through it, we're just going to go and bring the water level up and go over it.

And they determined that the height that you would have to go from sea level to get over a majority of the mountains or land, they would still have to do some work. And we'll talk about that. That's what the Gold Brook had. Yeah, going through the mountains. Going through the tectonic plates. It's the continental. It was called like Hells Galtz or something like that.

Hell's Gorge. So in order to basically the Panama Canal for the majority of the trip through that 50 miles, the ships are 50 or 80 and 85 feet above sea level. That doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe I'm just dumb and I don't understand that. But how can water sit that far above sea level? It's sitting in an area that's already. above sea level, you're just trapping it.

But why wouldn't it, I get with the lock system and we get into that, but why wouldn't all that water just run to the lowest point? They, and the whole point in this is, so the name of the, what was the name of the river? The Chagras. Okay, the Chagras. So they create a natural dam on the Chagras, and what they determined was they found all the points, and they found that 85 foot mark. So essentially, they would have survey teams go out around this whole area,

And probably as they started this dam, they were like, okay, the dam naturally has to hold 85 feet of water. Yeah. So let's go ahead and make it, you know, let's just say 100 feet. So it's going to hold. As that dam and that water started pooling, if it never kept rising, they'd be like, okay, I think we've got a leak. And they would go find that. So that might be the main primary dam, but I'm guessing there's a lot of earthwork that goes in to seal up those smaller valleys and stuff. So at this point, though, the question I got is when they decided to,

do that that lake is huge at one point it was the largest man-made lake in the world yeah Gatoon who got displaced a ton of people a ton of those villages ended up getting flooded to where they had to move I think that there's a Panama City that's another big one and then there's another town but they were moving these people out and the other really shitty thing that they said was anybody that would be displaced by Gatoon Lake or by the damning or anything that was going on or in the canal zones, if they took their houses with them, then they wouldn't be compensated for the move.

And these people didn't have a whole lot. I mean, it wasn't an affluent area or anything like that. No, it's the Panamanian, it's the middle of, it's the Panamanian jungle. It's a fucking third world country at that point. So anybody that moved their actual shit, like move their houses and all their furniture, if they had it, or any of their valuables, collectibles, anything like that, Probably not collectibles.

They probably didn't collect a lot back then. I understand that, but you got to understand. Okay, here's my thing. This is like the 1910s. Let's just say the 19s to the 1910s. Yeah. How much of an effort, look how big that is. If you're looking up Google,

just kind of pull up the close-up of it. So Gatoon Lake, it is, it takes up the majority of the travel goes through Gatoon Lake, I think. Oh, it's massive. So the majority of the 50 miles. Go through this lake. Here's the deal. this lake doesn't run

just kind of like along the root of the Panama Canal the lake is almost longer north to south it looks like than it is like the path of the canal so this is huge it was the largest man-made lake in the world at one point what I'm saying is before they start doing this

what percentage of these people living in villages do you think they actually are able to find or get in touch with or even make the effort to do none a token amount to say, yeah, like the canal zone.

It was probably 10 miles to one side, 10 miles together. And not to mention how are you going to communicate with these people because if it is tribes or anything like that.

Or you can just say I try to communicate with them and I told them I gave them what I was supposed to give them and if they stay, they stay. All I'm saying is like the 20,000 French people died.

That's just on the French people that were working on that. And the majority of that was what was malaria? It was a lot less than what I thought it would be between malaria and yellow fever. But kind of the thing that I think was a little bit odd with that was it's something where once you get malaria

and I think maybe yellow fever too, you just get a natural immunity from. So if you survive through the first run of it, you were going to... Who? Come on, bro. We got a... We got a four-legged situation. Go. Go.

Go try. Fine. Go. Go on now. Go brew. Brew. Go. Brew. So I think there was a lot of them that did end up getting natural immunities and were able to stay there in work. But most of the people, I think, died from just mudslides and accidents. Because that's where so much of it was, was in where they were and the way that they were trying to do it, just lent to all these just terrible accidents. The Seuss Canal, like, I know we keep going back on this.

This was like, the Seuss Canal is in Egypt. Or, yeah, it is, right? Yeah. Okay, so it's the desert. Yeah, it's hot as fuck. But you're like, just dating from sand. There's not, like, fucking jungle and poisonous snakes and a bunch of fucking, like, jungle animals that are going to fucking eat and kill you.

There's no, like, bugs and shit that will give you infections. There's also no bedrock. It's just all sand and sea. So it's going to be easy to go through. You're going to dig forever until you find solid ground. So it was an easy trip to go across there. Well, Teddy Roosevelt ends up stepping up. And to figure this thing out, chooses John, is it Frank?

John Frank Stevens? Yes. Okay, so John Frank Stevens to design like the lock system, or is it to lead? He was chosen to lead, and they kind of decided around that time that they were going to need a lock. They realized that there was nothing that they could do as far as like at sea level. That was kind of the big debate back and forth. is when they first decided about the method they were going to do, is even the lock system to raise the level or C level.

And because of the, I'm pretty sure because of how technical and how much work the lock system would have required, they were like, well, if you can do it C level, do it C level. Yeah, but it was just an impossibility at that point. So basically what the lock system is, is, I'm going to try to explain this without looking at a picture. so I'm not just describing it. It's a...

You drive your boat into it. Doors close behind the boat. Seven foot wide concrete barrier back behind you. And it's huge. It's enough to accommodate. I think it's 100... When they first designed him, it was 118. So they agreed upon when the United States bought it,

the plans were originally for smaller, or narrower. Roosevelt told them that, I guess, what our battleships are actually 130. I think he said a hundred twenty-eight feet wide. So you guys need to make it a hundred twenty-nine feet wide so the battleships get through. And they ended up coming to an agreement on a hundred and eighteen. So that even shrunk our battleships.

So we designed them. So 118 about the battleships. When one of them go through, I'm not even shitting you. When they said they pushed it, not even shitting you, six inches on each side. That just gives me anxiety thinking about it. And one of the other things that they did with this, that is you weren't allowed to drive your own ship through.

You had to be tugged by towboats. The towed by tugboats. The rail system on the side. Tug rails. Yeah. And tug rails. It was just enough to where if you didn't have those two things synced up, like if one car was too far like six inches in front of the other one.

And pull it in certain. Yes. Eventually you're going to run into the side. It has to have happened more. multiple times. Well, fuck, it happened like four years ago, too. Did it? You don't remember the dude that ran ashore and closed the Panama Canal for like two weeks?

Oh, was that the Suez? Yeah, and it just happened again like three weeks ago. Yeah, well. First of the report was like, Jesus Christ, how did they not fix this? Yeah, two words, tug rails, I know. Well, because the Suez is, it's wider, and it doesn't, because it's the sea level, you don't have to have people checking in like this. True.

So you drive into the first, let's just call it, like, Bay. It's a really long bay wide, but you can get the whole boat in there. So it's about, I think, they said the first one, and the amount it raised your boat, different. So I think there were three on the Pacific side. I'm actually just going to pull this up real quick. The total coming out, just because it was 85 feet above sea level, was how far they would have to raise it.

And that was on the Atlantic side. On the Pacific side, there was a couple locks that would drop you down, kind of stair stepping you getting down to the ocean and they would be like there's on one side of it there's three locks the Pacific side is on the Pacific side so there's three

on the Pacific side so basically you would come in and they were staggered so you'd hit two and then you would go for a little bit and then hit a third one think so drive in door shut behind you the walls next to you holding your ship in are probably like 20 feet high they then would

flood that by opening the doors in front of you or they would have a flooding system I don't think they just open the doors in front of you and they would then bring you up probably like 15 or 20 feet from the freshwater Gatoon Lake yes

yes all from the lake so they bring you up then they open the doors in front of you and that water level that was in that compartment is the same height that you are now you then drive forward it takes well as the doors behind you another

you're in another lock you're about 20 feet you know walls are 20 feet they flood you up another 20 feet and then they open it up in front of you and now you're a level with that water so it's like it's like an escalator yeah kind of yeah it's like you feel like saying that though without describing what it is doesn't do it justice

to how fucking like what it actually does well in my simple mind to think of these or the old people bathtub where you walk into it and then close the door and then it fills up with water Yeah. It's basically like that.

Like you pull in, they close the old person door, it fills up with water, you drive onto the next one. I wish you just described it like that. You could save me a lot of fucking time. It's the thing, it's the old person thing. The other thing, too, is what did they say it takes per time a ship goes in? It's millions of gallons. Yeah. They come out of the lake, the freshwater lake.

Well, and that was an issue because Gatoon Lake was the main water source for everybody not all of Panama but all the port cities. Yeah, in that huge region. You're flooding all this water out, which means you're draining it, but also there's some sea water that's getting in there.

So you're creating brackish water that's undrinkable for people. Which is weird how that would eventually get in there. It would just see. Yeah, and it was something like every time they filled the lock, it was like 80% of the water

that came from Gatoon Lake was just wasted at that point that they couldn't filter back in. Yeah, they did some reconstruction on it here recently, and basically the system now is they can recycle about like 60% and turn 60% of that waste into reusable which is still insane when you really think about it that even in this day and age they're like yeah we can't figure out a system

but just reuse all the water well and I immediately think like just a big bladder or something underneath but that's probably probably pro-upon-shunders-rower in I get the water that you have to lose when a ship is going out because you're flooding it you're opening it yeah and then you open it's going with it but you would think that like with the technology Yeah, they're like, yeah, man, apparently 60% is as much as we can do. All right, so kind of in structuring this, I feel like I'm talking a lot.

This whole thing just kind of blows my mind, and I'm just kind of in awe of how this works, because engineering at the time, I think, was a little bit. We were out of the Industrial Revolution. We had already wreaked the benefits of that. This undertaking, to me, always, like, when I think of 50 miles nowadays, they could cut through this shit very quickly. And it took the French from the 1820s to 1888 to get 11 miles. It took America from 1902 to, what, 1914.

So in 12 years, they went 50 miles, were in, like, 60 years. In defense of the French, and I did not... Don't see that. No, listen, I don't see that being a phrase. I ever really say that often, but listen, it was all about how the French went about it. Had they just went with the lock system and just raised the water level age? five feet for the majority of the trip between the two, they wouldn't even had to do that.

So the biggest thing that they still had to overcome, though, even though we decided to do the lock system because it obviously was easy to do it. But what we were talking about was that they called it the Gileard and then the Culebra's... I'm just butcherous. Culebra is the Panamanian word for it. And what they found was this was where the two tectonic plates collided in creation. the continental divide. For everyone that's not aware, the continental divide is the point in a country or a region in which water is going to go from one side.

So any rainwater that falls on this side of the mountain is heading for the Pacific. Any rainwater that falls on this side of the mountain, that's heading for the Atlantic. I had no idea what that was. Oh, really? Yeah, I assume the Rocky Mountains are a continental divide. Yes, because... Any mountain range would have to be a continental divide, right? because that's where the tectonic plates have hit and pushed mountains up.

No, so basically thinking it this way. Even if water landed on, like, you have another mountain range next to the Rocky Mountains. Yeah. Between us and the West Coast. Even if it was another set of mountains, that would still, the Rocky Mountains would still funnel the water between them and send it up to the Atlantic.

So it's never getting past that way of the Rocky Mountains, and that's what makes it the divide. Okay. So they still had to, basically blast and diga valley through the continental divide and so what did you say it was hell's gulch uh yeah hell's gorge hell's gorge and you kind of brought some of the attention because when i thought like the united states like um decided to build this part of me for some reason thought that like this was like the united states building it like they were in charge of it but

it wasn't like workers from the U.S. No. So interestingly enough, I don't know if these two were related but after we get done with John Frank Stevens after his time is done Roosevelt replaces him with a guy named George Washington Gothels which I don't know

if he was related to George Washington or maybe that was... I think that was just a thing that people would do. Like a good name of the time. Yeah, like a flex. I'm sure there's like a John Adams-Robertson. Yeah, okay. A James Hamilton row. I could see that.

I think it was like a flex, my name is, hey, George Washington. He doesn't drill up the last name. You said your name was George Washington. I said my name was George Washington Smith. And I wasn't lying because two of my three names are George Washington. He's the guy that really gets everything going as far as the construction. and one of the biggest concerns that they had, like you were talking about with malaria and with yellow fever,

was that it was from a certain mosquito that bred in, like, contained confined areas, so like water barrels or anything like that. And the first thing that they wanted to do to make sure that everybody was going to be safe down there was they created a mosquito program to basically go through and clear-cut any areas where there was a breeding ground. they would drain any lakes or any standing bodies of water that weren't constantly moving and then they went through and I don't know if they sprayed

I'm sure they probably did because we were pretty pumped about that. We fucking sprayed everything. Yeah, maybe I'm just trying to give us a little bit of credit but they went through If it killed what you wanted it to kill and it didn't kill you immediately and we fucking used it.

Well, and they were going through in the villages where the spraying was happening and they were going through houses like they basically gave themselves the power to go through houses and make sure that there wasn't anybody collecting any rainwater. They pulled down gutters from these shacks and these villages to make

sure that it didn't happen. And to the U.S. credit, they did pretty much wipe out like 95% of the malaria and everything. At what cost is sort of a different story. Not great. I was going to say, because if you're really factory and you would say, well, they got rid of the malaria.

Well, remember with the malaria, didn't you say that if you do get it, you became immune to it If you live through it, then you would get a full on immunity. So, like, it's one of those things. Like, well, thanks a lot of us living, I already had it, so it wasn't a bit concerned. But at the same time, you do have to be like, well, thank God our children, we'll have to try to fight through this. But that's the thing is...

But it was for our own... It was for our own... It was directly for white people being down there that didn't have the immunity. Yes, correct. I understand that. These people that were living in these communities... These people benefited by, what would the... They benefited just by, like, association. by proxy maybe but was it worth it for them i mean it would suck to have a kid die from it but at the

same time if they lived through it they would have been fine forever they wouldn't have had to have gone through getting sprayed and all that so after they get that through they decide on the lock system being the way that they needed to go like they had earlier they decided on the depth and all that and the white people that came down from america which hopefully they weren't all white but I have a feeling back in that time and they were the 19-ards, they're probably all white, came down and took on these skilled labor jobs. So they were the ones

that were running the cranes, they were the ones that were running the excavators, and this is where the French... I'm guessing Foreman. Yeah, this is where the French really fell short because they sent all their manpower over there. What America did was they courted people from the Caribbean, so the West Indies,

the African Americans that were stuck over there from the slave trade, different ethnicities would come from there with hopes of being able to make good money. And there were a couple weird things that I'd read. Like they had, you know, like Panama hats. Yeah. They basically created those in like the white linen suits and would give those to people as like a reason to come to Panama as far as like this is what you wear. This is what you would have and all that kind of stuff.

Back to the Caribbean. So like people that had come down to Panama. Panama would come back with that kind of stuff. They'd be like, see, this is what we have. Oh, like it would better your life. Yeah, that's why Panama hats are called Panama hats. And when they would do that, they would attract more people to come over and work. And all the unskilled labor jobs went to essentially black folks from the Caribbean.

And when they would come down there, they would get all the unskilled labor jobs. So they wouldn't be the ones that were working around machinery or anything. They were the guys that were in there digging all day long and to make all that stuff. happen. This is an unrelated and unsurious question, but looking at this map, and I understand you're talking about a serious thing right now, but I can't get to that set of my head. Has there ever been a super villain in the plot of anything who was like, I'm going to destroy, like, that bridge between North America and South America?

Like, I'm going to nuke it. And, like, that's supposed to be, like, a nefarious plot. Like, that's... Like, instead of taking out a bridge, they're taking out that strip of land. Yeah, like it would be, I don't know, that seems like It seems so ridiculous But I can see that being like a bad being movie Being like, oh my God, he's gonna nuke the Panama Canal

We won't be North and South America together And like all of a sudden that's a big deal In my mind when you were saying that I thought If they blow that apart, would that mean that they would separate out Like what I'm just float away? Yeah That happens That's how the movie goes

Like we know we actually had no idea our scientists found that we're just floating they wanted to steal all of south america so they just blew up that point and everything floated away south america onto us is this little spit of land pangia man we'll do an episode of that one time that'll be interesting too all right i'm sorry like we go back to the seriousness so yeah yeah so and so the people that actually died during kind of the second go-round with america running this show was significantly less i think it would end up still being like 4800 wasn't it it was a decent amount not a lot of Americans ended up dying. It was more of the Caribbean folks that were working down there.

And them just being in the general vicinity of where if a catastrophe happened, they would be the ones that were in it. And they had instituted something called a gold and silver system where the white Americans would end up getting paid in gold. And the black people from the Caribbean would end up getting paid in silver, which obviously there's a very big disparity there. Here's the other thing I'm curious about. who the fuck like they're paying like the Americans down there in gold like why don't you just pay me in dollars

like no man down here you get paid in gold I wonder if it had something to do with the currency because they couldn't be it wasn't like they were getting paid oh they're living down there yeah there's no bank accounts back then or anything like that because I forget if they're down there

they're living down there for the duration of the time they're working down there yeah and that was another thing that America really focused on was anybody that came down there would be given permission to bring their families down there and they would build them like very nice places to live as far as living conditions down there for americans would be great whereas the people that came from the caribbean would end up having to work or having to live in like shanty towns basically right around the areas that they were working

kind of like when they built Vegas how they did that yeah exactly like how they built Vegas it's a callback yeah you see that it's a good callback too it to me that's one reason that America unfortunately through you know bad means for everybody else that was helping them really changed from where the French were the other thing that they did was the Panamanian railway

system that the French had had access to. They had built offshoots from there so when they would go through and they would have to dredge an area they would have to clear an area they would load these box cars with all that earth and they would take it as far away as they could on the rail system away from where they were working

so that way it wasn't cluttering the area they were in. Yeah, and they ended up developing. I think it kind of followed the way the railway does, of course, once it gets to the lake, you know, the path that it goes, it has to, the railroad kind of has to take another path or kind of widen away from it. But it's pretty close to following the exact path of the railway. Well, yeah, I could see, definitely from that picture, I never really looked at any of these

pictures in depth. And seeing them now, it kind of brings a little more into focus as to how close everything kind of was. Yeah. And like you said, I had never seen Gatun Lake really in that size and scale, but it was massive. So kind of looking at it, if you were to go through the Panama Canal, so you would come into the Caribbean, and once you got to Panama, you would basically have to kind of hang a hard left and go straight, kind of south. And you would enter in through, it's what they call the Gatoon locks, and that's where the Gatoon Dam is.

it would then raise you up. That was the one with two, correct? On the Pacific side? Yes. Or no, no, no. You said three on the Pacific, two on the Atlantic. I think there was only one on the Atlantic. There had been two.

There might have been two. Okay. There's a couple locks. So you go through those. That, those, I think, one or two combined. It has to be two because it can't raise you 85 feet in one lock. Okay. Sounds good to me.

You had two old people bathtubs. Okay. Two old people bathtubs. lifts you up and puts you basically into Gatoon Lake. So at that point, there's like buoys, because this lake is huge. Like, you've got to understand this lake takes up about half of the 50 miles. And there's basically like buoys in the water that show you shipping lanes, and the ships just stay within them, and they travel through.

After you, if you're going that way, you go through Gatoon Lake, um, there's a, it kind of narrows. then you head into the actual area that was cut. You had kind of down a river and then into the area that was actually cut. So it's a straight shot called the Kula Bra cut. That's what the Panamanians call it. And then you get to the Pedro Miguel locks, go down, the Mira Flores locks, and you go through Miraflores Lake,

and then you go down to the final locks to put you out into the Bay of Panama, which is technically the Pacific Ocean. You know what I think we're getting this confused I think the locks can mean a series of separate locks Yeah Because the pictures we're looking at If there's multiple locks like the Pedro and Miguel locks That might have been one or two

The mere fours could add three within it So there's like five sets of locks And then each one could I guess have multiple Yeah As you're talking about We're 80% Yeah close enough I mean it's just a big canal that runs across there

but it took them so after they ended up getting through with everything they completed everything the last part that they had to cut through was that hell's gorge area that was the roughest part to cut through and they actually had I think it was one of the dams

for Gatoon Lake from that dam or from that river they one of the last things that they did was they filled it with dynamite and they blew it to end up filling all that in there. Like the big celebration that we were able to release the water. It was a big, big deal down there. And when they did that...

Who do you think got to do the plunger? So it was... Oh, you know who it was? It was the president, yeah. I don't think it was Rosamiloh. I think it was... He did it like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he did a signal. That's right. He pushed it over the phone, and then when he pushed it, it sent a signal down there, and then they were the ones that pressed it and did it. So, the goddamn president. I don't know. It was right after Roosevelt, I believe, because he wouldn't have been in office for that long.

What? It would have been... It would have been right after Roosevelt because it would have been two years into that next presidency because it wasn't Roosevelt 10 years because he took over for the guy that died? Sure. Yeah, close enough.

I didn't study for that. It looked like to be the American side. But yeah, he pressed the button. so America had their hand in doing it, and the president had his own personal hand and exploding it making it happen. So they ended up opening it up. It was August 15th, 1914.

And in the nick of time, because I believe in this is something that I really should have studied up on, and now that I'm high, I'm really regretting that I didn't do this earlier. Was that the kickoff like a war war? I believe that was when Germany declared war on France. And there were still French people

over helping the Americans get through things because obviously they had had a pretty good idea of what they had to go through. So the Americans brought me in. If the Americans had bought all of their equipment and everything like that too, I'm sure you had French companies over there for maintenance of the equipment to build parts and stuff like that. So there were people that were down there that just heard that their home country and all their families and everything back home were getting war or getting war declared on them. so I believe it wasn't some of the first ships but some of the first ships coming from the Pacific side were the warships that were traveling through in order to get up to France to

that wouldn't be surprising to start protecting them so it was kind of we get to use it yeah and it was I'm sure they're like yeah this will be cool to use one day and then they hear that and like ah fuck we can imagine now can you imagine the fucking cap down that shipping these motherfuckers better made these things wide enough yeah Well, and if you only have so much... Yeah, they better not have been lying to us about making these things.

It's just absolutely amazing how close they would have had to have been with the parameters that they were built in. But to get from one side to the other, it was 8 to 11 hours to travel across. So that's kind of what I was getting to is. With as complicated as it is, it's a 50-mile stretch, so it's not like it would have taken forever. But 8 to 11 hours to get from the Pacific to the Atlantic. or vice versa would seem like an eternity when you're in there but you're always going through something where you're not driving but there's always another impediment like how are you sitting in a lock system and not just looking over the edge like oh fuck this better go right because if this

holds us up something goes wrong here everybody that's behind us is screwed up well the other thing too is once you get into the lake if you're like you know you're used to doing any type of shipping you're probably used to moving within like more of a confined space. The lake is not small. No. I'm not trying to. So it looks like, you know, it's like imagine you get out in the middle of Lake Michigan. You can hardly see either side.

It can get in the ocean. So getting through that part, you just have to stay within the shipping lanes. But if you think about it, break it down like you're taking an 8 to 11 hour shortcut that is saving you 9,000 miles. Yeah. Or not 9,000. A little less at that, but thousands of not. Even if you said half the distance. Yeah.

Because I think it was actually half. Because if you figure you're getting from New York to Sam Fran come down, probably half. So even if you said 4,500 miles. Yeah, you're cutting off traveling around all of South America. Weeks. Weeks. Absolutely. And it was probably extremely efficient for the Navy to be able to do that.

Unfortunately, getting back on the trade side. So it was two lanes, which, obviously, one lane going one. one way, one lane going the other way, so it was just basically a two-lane road. They built these ships specifically, like we were talking about in the beginning, called PanMax ships that were built to the exact specifications to be the maximum amount that they could get for width across these lanes. It was max length, max width. They tried to maximize everything, max length, max width, and max draft,

because it could only be, its draft could only be so deep. And especially if you were passing another ship, everything that's... be yeah if anyone is in where a draft is essentially the distance between the water and where the bottom of the boat is so how much travel it has between the level of the bottom it would back up shipping lane or back up the shipping lane so much to take that eight to 11 hour as far as like getting into the locks and we're talking about back in um 1914 when it opened that full year there were a thousand ships that pass through. So a fairly good amount, but nowadays in this current time, 14,000 ships. So we've gone 14 times as many ships through there. So you can imagine the backup in waiting. You're not waiting

if you're the sixth boat in line to go through that day. So is it 14,000 ships in that year? A year. Yeah. So 40 pass through daily. So if you're 50th in line, you're, you're waiting a whole other day. Yeah. And there's many more than 50 that are sitting out there waiting their spot in line. So they created ships that were, I believe they're called more than max or post-max. It's post-panmax ship. And they found that instead of using, like if you had to wait six days, if you were in line

to get through there and it only took you five days to get around it, they would build these post-panamax ships and just go ahead and circumvent the whole thing and do the old route, but they would be carrying much more stuff. Yeah, so basically what you're sacrificing is you're saying, what's the, it's a cost-benefit analysis. Yeah. Can we go ahead and fit more on a ship to make up for the fact that we're taking more there and where it would take another, you know, ship and a half float?

So instead of having to send out two ships, we'll have you to send one despite it take a little bit longer. Yeah, and this was more kind of towards current time. But luckily, and I don't really give Jimmy Carter credit for a whole lot just because he's a one-term president. And it seems like an overall nice guy. I mean, he's like 96 years old and he's still building habitat for humanity. Yes. Great guy.

Maybe not the most effective president. But in 1979, they kind of realized at that point that we'd occupied that for long enough. And it was probably time to give it back. So they negotiated giving back the Panama Canal. of the Panamanian country, as they did it, they had signed a 20-year agreement. So on December 31st,

1999, they gave back the Panama Canal to Panama, which maybe I don't really understand what the significance would be to do it right before Y2K. Maybe it was like a new millennium, so they wanted to give it up. We thought we were going to lose the record of our ownership,

and so we wouldn't have been able to improve it. Yeah, just weird that they did it right on Y2K, but after that they basically handed them a bag of shit because it had been around for so long and they had been doing maintenance and different things but it was almost outdated at that point just because they needed more they were starting to build these post-pan ships that were so much bigger and so Panama realized that they needed to basically sink as much money in this as possible because now this is their asset. And I think they sunk about $8 billion into it.

And they started construction, I think it was 2006. Is that what that is? Third to the last one on the bottom. Oh, 2006 started the expansion. Yeah. And the third lanes were completed in 2016. So it took them 10 years, and I think it was $8 billion. Don't quote me on that number.

to build this third lane in order to accommodate more ships and to accommodate these post-panmax ships that they were losing business from. And the best business that they could be in was getting people through here because they would charge a toll based on weight. I know. That's the thing that you really don't think about when you're like, oh, did they just build this

because he would make it faster for people to come through, but you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Like, this thing's a money maker. Absolutely. If you're thinking you're getting 5% of global trades money based on weight coming through there, 5% for a country that is very small and very not developed area. And I know that they had to view these expansions and everything like that, and they have to have people that are working,

and the equipment has to be up kept. Like you were saying, the locomotives that tow the boats through the locks, they have to stay perfectly in sync. So upkeep is a cost. what I'm saying is after that stuff is done this thing you just are getting paid from it it's like a cash flow positive all the time I think they said some of the one of like the most expensive

passages was like $585,000 that's it? Yeah oh as far as like a single toll to get true Okay I thought you were talking about to like upkeep it No no no what I'm saying is like okay so imagine even if that's the highest one but if it's based on like shipping weight, you're still getting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, yeah.

For a lot of these. And if you're getting 40 these a day, I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but then you say 14,000 ships come through a year, hundreds of thousands of dollars. This thing is like... Well, if even you say what, if you average it out to the average toll would be $40,000

and you're sending 40 ships through a day, you're making like $16 million. a day in tolls sending them through. So, no, your math is, because you're saying 14,000 a year. Yeah, but if they're sending 40 a day, and it's $40,000, $40,000, $40,000, okay, $50,000, just to make it easy. That's like $20 million. Okay, let's see.

I'm going to use. I cannot do this without calculator right now, times 40. Yeah. Two million a day. Okay, so it was a little off. It's only $18 million off. But still $2 million. a day that you're making.

Times 365. 730 million a year? That... I don't think... That sounds like it's too low. I think my phone's not getting enough numbers on there. Not dead serious. Because, like, think about that, it was 20...

Did I just... Well, if you do $2 million a day... Yeah, times 365. It's 700 million in change. That's still a lot. Yeah. Well, and... That's just what they're grossing.

As far as operating costs and all that, it's going to be a lot lower, but it's still going to be a shitload of money that you're going to be making a year. I would imagine, too, that some shipping companies just have a flat rate that they pay. Oh, yeah.

Probably through the year. Whether they have to get that many ships through or not, they're just like, nope, average it out. Historically high math is not, or I'm glad that we don't have a historically high math podcast. We're not about the class. No, that's one thing. Your professor's a pot leaf.

don't get into. So, this thing's on a list of, you know, and you know what I'm finding out, there's a lot of lists of, like, greatest wonders of the world.

Yeah? And I think we're starting to kind of figure out that it's the same issue that they had, who, whose did they go? Who was it that they went off of

for the ancient world? Philo of Byzantium. Philo. So, Philo, like, how did Philo, how is he the, How did he get his to be the game in town When there's all these kind of lists out

But anyway, getting back to Pamukinaw. It's one of like the Seven Wonders They say of like the modern world. It's on a lot of those lists. Huh. I didn't know that. It's an impressive feat And to think that it was only 50 miles,

50 miles, excuse me, in today's terms, I would like to know with all of our technology and everything that we have now like what their estimated time to do and obviously their estimate's going to be very beneficial to be. You couldn't do this now. You couldn't do this now, not from a physical standpoint or a technical standpoint.

You couldn't do this now because you'd have to build that lake and you'd just, there'd be no way that like... Oh, as far as like EPA and environment of shit. Yeah. There'd be no way to be able to be that. Displace all those people wildlife, everything like that. They'd be like, no. At that point, it would have been a sea level canal if we try to do it. Now they're like, don't disturb shit.

You can have this. They probably wouldn't even be able to do that. But I think, you don't think they would be able to do that with modern technology? Oh, to do just a sea level? Yeah, I think they could. No, no, no. What I was saying is the environmental impact. Yeah, no, no, no, no.

It's just one of those things. It wouldn't pass any EPA. Yes, this is one of those things that was just ballsy fucking engineering that could be, it was cowboy engineering that could be done at that time. Good old American overthrowing governments and taking over reclamation projects that I guess they might have business in. This obviously I think was a net positive for the world that they did this because it does help cut down on so much time spent for getting things. It does, but it's not for Ace. No, yeah, and even then it's still just good.

And again, we didn't do it out of the goodness of our hearts. We did it for a military advantage because we could control this because we did control it for the longest time. And we made it have to be the size or a battleships could get through. Oh, military and consumables are the two probably biggest drivers in America. And then they had to also make it to where the hole of an aircraft carrier, so they had to make it to where the hole of an aircraft carrier could get through, but they didn't anticipate the overhang from the flight deck. So there was an aircraft carrier that came through,

and I can't remember which one it was, but it came through and literally knocked over every lamp post in concrete on its way up. They didn't stop taking it up. It just fucking knocked them over, and then they were just like, fuck it as they left. They're like, fucking deal with it. Sorry. You didn't say sorry.

My bad. Have those fixed when we get back. Yeah. And make sure that this happens right. All right. Well, I know this one was shorter, but I mean, this is just something that was kind of interesting. We looked into it and just did a little bit of research. Like, oh, there's a lot more to this.

Like, 20,000 people died trying to do this on the first room. And the French were like, we give up. What? And you don't want to buy it? Yeah, to me it's just kind of one of those things where you can let your mind wander. Like, it's, we've built a lot of pretty crazy things and kind of talking about, like, when we were talking dumb about when I thought South America was going to float away. Like, we cut through a continent. We cut through an entire fucking continent to connect these two oceans.

That's never been done. No, that's not. I guess maybe the Suez because the seas led into the oceans. Yeah, but even then, like, okay, so I get the overcom. confidence for the guy that was the builder of the Swiss that stood there and looked at it was like I can do this bring me my cheese you American Pussies can't do this exactly but the other point though is the balls it would like the thought process you would have to have to be like you could because they said you could stand in the middle there was like a mountain in the middle that you could

stand on and you could see one ocean you could see the other. That's where Balboa was. That's where he got the idea. So, but like to be the guy that looked both ways and literally saw a continent. Like, do you not, like, and mountains between it was like, oh, we, yeah, we should do this. We could get this

wrapped up pretty quick, I think. Yeah. So to me, it's just like when you look at it from that standpoint, it's like, oh, like, oh, but look at it, 50 miles of it cuts through, or not 50, look like 25 miles because they made a fucking lake. That was pretty much all... They had to make the lake.

That was all land pretty much at one point. Yeah. This is one that just lets your mind wander as far as seeing it because it's... I mean, I don't really know how to put it into words besides, like, man's done a lot of very cool things. We've come to this point. We've evolved from whatever you believe

that we evolve from to be what we are today. And we figured out how to manipulate nature enough to where we could cut through an entire continent and separate two continents, all because we needed military and consumables. Technically, yes. I mean, we do not continuously, like, of course, under the... Oh, well, can you consider that? Because if they rose at 85 feet, then there is some connection there that's underneath, that's still above sea level. Oh, yeah. Well, my point was, like, if you really think about it, like, we did.

we cut the North America and South American apart. We chiseled it apart. Yeah. Is that one of the things like on America's resume? Like it says here that you actually like separated two continents. Yeah, you ever hear of Panama Canal? I'd put that on my resume. You're getting hired for any job at that point. All right, man. You got anything else?

No, I think we're good. I think Panama's covered. All right. Later, guys. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button, follow us. If you didn't like what you heard, still hit that anyway, because we'll probably cover something in the future that you do like. Please follow us on our social media.

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