Stuff You Should Know - The Magnificent Golden Gate Bridge

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

If you think the Golden Gate Bridge is named because of its color then you are wrong. That name proceeds the bridge by a long time. But that’s just one interesting fact about this amazing structure. Tune in today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I hit a bad note, and then I couldn't kind of recover. And I had built up this idea that music and being musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging with us too, and it's Stuff You Should Know.

and we are headed west. And, yeah, I mean, we're recording on the Golden Gate Bridge. I guess this is like two weeks. Wow, two weeks to the day, I think. What? From our live show in the city of San Francisco. That's true, because it's the 15th and our show's on the 29th. That's right, on a rare Thursday.

Oh, show? Yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, too. I meant to mention, and I hope this is okay with you, I got booked to do a show on Friday, and I haven't mentioned that to people, but on Friday, I will be performing in the Hanging with Dr. Z.

show. Like Dr. Zayas? Yeah, do you know about this? No, no, I don't know anything about that. This is the one in which comedian Dana Gould, he owns a professional, like, full-blown Dr. Zeyas costume, and he's been doing this for a year, and it's like a talk show with him as the host is Dr. Zeyas.

So I'm on that. And I'm very excited because not only is Janet Barney in it, co-founder of Sketchfest and dear friend, but Dave Foley. I get to like be on stage with a kid in the hall. What? Man, that's going to be amazing. Yeah, and the great Andy Daily.

So if anyone wants to see that on Friday night, just go to the SketchFest website and check it out. I think it's kind of one of the small comedy clubs. Oh, okay, so is it a comedy club? Yeah, it's one where I did movie crush one year. I can't remember the name of it, though. Well, do you remember how to find your way back there, though? Boy, I hope so.

I hope so, too. That's awesome, man. Congrats. And, yes, I second that. Everybody should go see it, whether you're in San Francisco or not, because I'm sure that's going to be awesome. Yeah. I mean, you can come.

I imagine you'll be on a plane home, huh? Yeah. Yeah, all right. But thank you. I appreciate the invite. I'll be there in spirit supporting you. You text me immediately after and be like it was a triumph. Or.

No, it won't be anything but a triumph. All right, so Golden Gate Bridge? Yeah. That's why we started talking about California and San Francisco in the first place, because if you don't bother to look at the titles of episodes and you just let it roll one end of the other, that's what we're talking about in this episode. The Golden Gate Bridge.

There's a pretty good chance you know what we're talking about. It's often named as the most photographed bridge in the world. I can believe that. Yeah, this is my second favorite. What's your first? No, Brooklyn Bridge, man. Okay. It's got to be the BB.

Okay. All right, all right. What about you? I don't know. I don't know that I have a favorite bridge. I kind of like the ones that look like sailboats. There's a few of those around. Yeah, those are nice.

A tower bridge in London is also quite magnificent. Sure. And then I'm going to sound so obnoxious, but in Budapest. It's not obnoxious. No, just being like, what's your favorite bridge? Oh, mine's in Budapest. Oh, no. But they have, I think, seven different bridges.

And they did seven different designs for all the bridges that go through the city and connect Buda to Pest. Right? And it really is like a city of amazing bridges. They're all just really well done and they're just different. It's cool. I agree. I forgot about that. Well, also, I mean, since we're shouting out bridges, we can't not talk about Pittsburgh because I went to a baseball game there in that beautiful stadium.

And you get those beautiful bridges there. It's lovely. Yeah, it's like eight bridges stadium. Yeah, I think so. Is that right? Yeah. Okay, eight or 12, I think they call it eight or 12 bridges stadium. The does.

That's right. So back to the Golden Gate. It's also one of the seven wonders of the modern world. I didn't know that. Yeah, and the American Society of Civil Engineers named it one of the bridges of the millennium in 2000. Wow. So it's a well-regarded bridge. And if you've always wondered or always thought, like, hey, I guess the Golden Gate Bridge is called that because I guess the weird orange color is roughly golden, I don't know.

You would be like me, probably like you, Chuck, and that would mean you were wrong. That's right, because Golden Gate very much predates the construction of that bridge. And with that, we come to our first story. Okay. I'm going to make like a horse sound while you tell the bridge. a store, so this guy will be riding a horse, okay? You got two adds of coconuts, and you're banging them together. 1846, this is the Mexican-American wartime.

It's going on. And there's an army officer in the United States named John Fremont, who basically said, without, it sounds like, without even asking anyone, hey, California's independent from Mexico. At one point, he was crossing the San Francisco Bay there from Sonoma to San Francisco to fight the Mexican army there, and he named that, boy, you're really doing a great job. And he named that mile wide straight that connects the bay to the ocean. What would that be, Chrysophilae?

Can't stop. Oh, no. There he goes. Off into the sunset. I guess Chrysophilae, which means golden gate, and later on, rather than the Greek version, he went with the English. And that passage was called the golden gate. That's right. So this is the bridge over the Golden Gate.

Right. Did you know that? No, I was yesterday years old, as they say. Yeah, so yeah. And the Golden Gate in particular is pretty neat, not just because it's like the, it connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, but geographically, it's like 300 feet deep right there. But on the shelf in the Pacific side, it's much shallower. and then in the bay, I saw the bay is like an average of 14 feet deep or something crazy like that.

So it just suddenly goes like this huge depression, and this is what they needed to cross, like a 300-foot depression through the Golden Gate with a bridge. And I think the first person to ever suggest it was a guy named Charles Crocker. And one of the reasons they needed a bridge truck in the first place is because if you ever look at a map of San Francisco, it's actually a peninsula. So it's connected to the south, to the rest of California. But there's a lot of stuff to the north of that. To get to the north, you have to cross the Golden Gate.

So people were like, we've got to get here to there. You know, we like Marin County. We like Petaluma. We like to say Petaluma, at least. Yeah, Sal Salisito. Sausalito is another fun one to say. So they started with ferries, and that worked just fine. But as more and more people showed up,

San Francisco is a magnet for immigrants, especially after the gold rush of 1849, they were like, we might need something better than just ferries, like especially if we want to run railroad cars. Yeah, and Jack, that ferry was expensive, man. Yeah. They were actually just like tanker boats, but they would double as ferries and say, yeah, sure, we'll take you across. It was $2 ahead, which is almost $70 today. Yeah, and you got salteam. Yeah, I saw 77. even. Wow, that's even more outrageous. And they gave you saltines and grape

Kool-Aid. That was the only food you had on board. Just like Southern Baptist Communion. That's what I had in nursery school. It's actually a winning combination. That was pretty good, especially if you're in church and you're like hard up for snacks. So, oh, there was finally one called the Princess. There was a side wheel, paddle wheel steamer, I guess, that was the first official ferry. That happened at 1868. But that guy, Charles Crocker. All the way back in 1872, he said, we need a bridge. And the reason why he said we need a bridge is because he was a railroad guy. And he's like, we need to get railroads up there. We need to get people. We need to move lumber. We need to do all sorts of cool stuff. So let's get

a bridge, guys. Yeah. And people are like, there's no way. That's two miles. No one's ever built a suspension bridge that long. And in 1916, there was a San Francisco Sun journalist who used to study engineering named James Wilkins. He said, no, I think we can build a suspension bridge. It'll be 3,000 feet, and it'll cost in those days dollars, $100 million, which is almost, I'm sorry, it's more than $3 billion today. So everyone said, that's probably not going to happen either. So eventually it took a city engineer named Michael O'Shaughnessay to be on the lookout to say,

we do need a bridge, but we got to get this cost lower. and enlisted a guy in 1921 from Chicago an engineer named Joseph Strauss who said, here's what we do, everyone. It is possible, but it can't be a straight suspension bridge all the way over, and it can't be just a cantilever bridge. The suspension will be too flexible and flexi

with those wins, and the cantilever would be way too heavy. So if we do a combination of the two, I think that's the winning idea, and it'll cost you only $17 million. Yeah, that was much more in line with what the city engineer knew that the city of San Francisco would be willing to pay for something like this, right? Yeah. Joseph Strauss, he became the central figure of the Golden Gate Bridge. He's often credited as the man who built the Golden Gate Bridge.

That's a genuinely unfair thing to say because so many people contributed so much to it. But he was not a shy person. He could work with just about anybody. he knew how to work the system and he was not a self-promoter but he definitely was after the acclaim of being the man who built the Golden Gate Bridge. So just kind of

put that in your pipe for later. Right. Don't smoke it yet though, right? No, no. Don't spark it. But he enlisted a guy named Charles Ellis who is like the, I don't know how you would describe him. I can't think of an analogous movie character, but

I feel like we can get him across a little bit. He was obsessed with making sure that this bridge was not going to collapse. Yeah, I would describe him as a math-wiz. He was the guy, I think we did the, when we did the New York Subways episode, we talked about the tunnels that went under the Hudson River. He was a guy that came up with that plan.

And so that's a pretty good dude to get if you're trying to build a bridge that no one thought could be built at the time. Right. Like, super, super math guy. Just keep math in your head because as we'll see, math would end up being his undoing.

Yeah, but he was not after a claim. He did not, I get the impression, necessarily know how to work with everybody or work the system. He just wanted to do his math stuff, right? Yeah. So he was a good guy to have in that sense. And one of the reasons why he was so good is because the design process was so long. At one point, as we'll see, they just completely scrapped Strauss's idea and started over. Financing was also a thing.

I mean, Strauss had gotten it down to an estimate of $17 million. And I'm sure anybody who is paying any attention was like, we should plan on probably at least double that. Just about right. Yeah. But the state was interested enough that in 1923, they passed the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act of California, which basically said to the people in the surrounding 21 counties, hey, you guys want to get in on this and basically vote for a tax district that can create debt to borrow money, basically against our counties. What do you think? Yeah, and they said, well, what does that mean?

That sounds weird. And they said, well, it means that all the businesses and all your homes in your county are going to be put up as collateral jointly against that loan. And surprisingly, maybe six out of the 21 county said, we're in. We see this progress is something that we need. As far as the remaining counties that weren't into it, you know, some of the obvious reasons is they just didn't want to do that, A. So I'm worried about the cost overruns and like, hey, this isn't even going to be enough. Other people didn't, you know, this was the early 1920s. So it was still, you know, kind of a, I mean, it was a bustling city for 1920s,

but there were areas of rural, you know, ruralness. Sure. Across the other side. And like, they were like, we don't want this bridge. Like, we've got livestock over here and we're cutting down our lumber. And even back then they had conservationists agitating against stuff like this. Notably, the Sierra Club was like, we don't want a bridge in that beautiful bay. And there were a lot of other people that came out with a lot of good reasons to bring up lawsuits like, you know, earthquakes.

It was one in 1906 that was recent enough to where like, what about this earthquake thing? Like, what if that happens? Yeah, the first big one. Yeah. Shippers were like, well, you know, we can make it through the. the Golden Gate to the Pacific, pretty easy right now. We're a little worried that just building this bridge is going to hamper our ability to make mad cash.

The Department of War, which had a heavy presence in that area, was like, look, we run really important warships in and out of this harbor. We're worried that this bridge is going to block our progress, but then also we're worried that it's going to become a real target for saboteurs and that they will blow up the bridge and block the harbor with the debris. And then the Southern Pacific Railroad stepped up and said, we run the ferries.

Like, we're going to lose a bunch of money if you guys build a bridge. So all these people together were either parties to or had their own lawsuits against the bridge authority, saying, like, no, you can't do this. And against all of those odds, the people in favor of the bridge managed to overcome that. Yeah, and before we break, I do want to mention before we get some email, We mentioned Department of War, not in bended knee to Pete Hegeseth. That was the original name that later became the Department of Defense. Yeah, I forgot.

That's what it's called again now? Yeah, is now, to the tune of what I just read, was going to cost $125 million to change that name back to the Department of War. And then another 125 to change it back to the Defense Department again eventually. Probably so. So I just want to point that out. Let's take a break, and we'll be right back. So the first design, this hybrid design, was pretty ugly.

There was a critic that said it looked like an upside-down rat trap. So they said, all right, we got to redesign this thing because it's got to look good. Ellis gets together with consulting engineers, Leon, I guess that would be Moisef, and O.H. Amman. And they got together with Strauss. And they said, all right, let's go back to this old idea, but a new design of a full suspension bridge. Yeah. The longest one ever, and it'll end up being the tallest one ever at the time, at least, because, you know, all the winds and the water and the boats and everything, this thing needed to be tall and super long.

Yeah, and it also needed to be tall because the angle of the cables to hold up such a long deck had to come down at a crazy angle, which meant that those towers had to be really tall. So this is going to be the tallest bridge in the world, the longest suspension bridge in the world. And they're like, let's do that. Let's make the impossible happen. And it's worth pointing out, Chuck. Like, these guys aren't using CAD. They're not using any sort of computer. They do not exist yet.

They're not using calculators. They're doing all of these calculations by hand using their noodles. Slide rules. Slide rules, pencils. Like, that's how this bridge was designed. That's how they calculated the stresses on it. That's how they figured out how to engineer it all by hand. using their heads.

Yeah. Amazing. They did all kinds of testing, obviously. Some pretty impressive stuff, as you'll see. They created a model that was 156 scale,

took it to Princeton University there in New Jersey, and did a scale-down equivalent of 120 million pounds of vertical load to test to make sure those towers could take that. Pass that test.

And like I said, there was so much math going on. Eventually, Strauss got irritated. So the guy, Ellis, that they hired because he was great at math, got fired because the math was so irritating to Strauss. Yeah, Ellis later recorded that Strauss said that the structure was nothing unusual and didn't require the time that Ellis thought necessary for it. Oh, man. I also saw elsewhere somebody say that Strauss was envious of or resentful of, I guess, the respect that Ellis got from the board whenever he went and spoke to them.

I could see that. So, yeah, this is, and I also think that Strauss was getting leaned on. He was the one that was getting pressured to meet the time. Yeah. And Ellis was like, no, it's going to take six months more than that. So finally, Strauss fires Ellis in the most, like, cowardly way a person can. He forces him to take vacation. And then before his vacation's over, he sends him a telegram saying you're fired.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Ellis didn't receive a lot of credit at the time. And, in fact, he didn't get a lot of credit. until after he passed away in 1949. So we're taking our hat off to you, Mr. Ellis, for your great work and your great math, because we are both math whizzes ourselves, and we have a lot of respect for maths. That's right. He also, he didn't have anything to do.

He couldn't really find much work because this was during the Depression and he was fired. He went back and he went over all the figures again, all of the calculations to make sure they were right. He was spending like 70 hours a week and it took a month. And he did. And he was like, yep, this is going to work. Even though no one was listening to him, he wasn't being paid for it. He just wanted to make sure that this thing was going to work. That's great. So in 1928, they kind of mired their way through or got their way through the mire of the legal activity and all the protests and everything. The state government of California said the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District is now a thing. They're going to pull off every facet of this bill. And in November 1930, the district issued $35 million in bonds to finance this thing, which was a problem at the time, though, because it was during the Great Depression, obviously. And they couldn't find any buyers for these bonds.

And all these legal matters were scaring people away. And so they turned to kind of one of the heroes of this whole thing. In 1932, a guy named Amadio Giannini, the president of Bank of America. Yeah, one of the most revered and respected banks in the world. Everyone loves Bank of America. They're basically a mascot here in the U.S. That's right. And he was also just a California hero.

He kind of kick-started the Hollywood movie industry, the California wine industry. So he was a guy to go to, and he was like, I got you. I got a big room with $6 million over here. And I'll buy those bonds, and you can get started on your project. Yeah, which is pretty cool. And he is one of the heroes for sure. So they got started. They started during the Depression, as we saw.

And on the one hand, that meant financing. It was difficult. On the other hand, it meant that they had a huge pool of laborers to tap because there were a lot of out-of-work people. So they got everyone they needed basically immediately to get started. It started on January 5, 1933. And there were a lot of issues that construction faced that made this a unique construction job. Every day, four times a day, so two times in and two times out, the tide brings in and takes out 390 billion gallons of water through the Golden Gate while these guys are trying to build their bridge. There's tons of fog.

There's a lot of storms. There's high winds. It was not just like a walk in the park. Like apparently the Bay Bridge was to build. Yeah. I mean, apparently the Bay Bridge is more impressive in some ways and was built and finished before, but it didn't get nearly the press. because it was just an easier job overall. Right.

It's like eight miles long, which is the exact distance from downtown Detroit to Eminem's house. Oh, man, I didn't see that coming. When you said Detroit, I didn't even see it coming. Nice work. Thanks. All right, so it's a difficult job, super, super hard

because of the terrain and the water and the wind and the fog and everything going on. The North Tower was built on the Marin County side, on the coastline there. into a very strong layer of basalt and sandstone. And that's great. So they were like, the north side is fine, because this stuff is very, very sturdy to build into.

The South Tower was about 1,000 feet offshore and a bed of serpentine rock. And they went, this side is a little trickier, so we're going to have to take our time a little more. Yeah. They got this guy named Andrew C. Lawson. He's a great example of how many people were thoroughly involved in this, because every person you mentioned in this story,

just imagine there's dozens or maybe hundreds of people working beneath them in coordination with that person. He was a geologist and he basically took to test the bedrock. I'm not exactly sure how he did it, but he put the equivalent of a railroad box car fully loaded that amount of weight and force onto a 20 square inch area and it held up fine. That's incredible. It is. I could not. I could not. I could not. I could find out how we did that exactly. It's just such a spectacular way to put it that I guess everyone's like, no one cares what actually happened. Yeah, just tell him he did it. Right. And then he put on an old-timey diving suit and diving bell and went down to the bedrock and hit it with a hammer. And apparently if it makes this sound like a dinging sound, that's what you're looking for because

not only is it strong, but it's also flexible, which is going to come in handy whenever the San Andreas gives California the big one, the 8.6 magnitude earthquake that everyone says is inevitably coming someday. Yeah, for sure. In order to ensure that stability, they had workers dive 90 feet down to put explosives down, to blast out even more rock, so they could go even deeper. They had to get rid of those fragments to even get out to that tower. You know, they have all these materials. So a lot of big construction like this is constructing things so you can do the construction. And that was the case here. So they had to build a road basically on a trestle just to get out to that tower.

And then they had to protect this thing from being bumped into by a ship. Yeah, if you look at the concrete foundations that the towers are built on, you'll notice that they're like oval. And those were designed to basically act as fenders, kind of like if you play bumper bowling, Okay. It's basically like that. And imagine the bowling ball is a ship that's being captained by somebody who's not paying attention. Uh-huh.

Probably on his phone. Yeah, yeah. And they will hit that fender, the bumper, and it will keep them from running into the actual tower itself. And because of the oval shape, hopefully kind of push the ship away from the fender itself. Yeah. While the captain says, what was that? Yeah, they weren't, I think they said they'd, It looked like a giant bathtub is what they referred to it.

But, you know, they filled that thing once it was peeking above the surface, partially with concrete, pumped out the water, reinforced it with steel, more concrete. And all of a sudden, you've got a protected tower with that billiards bumper bowl. Bumper bowl? Is that what you called it? Bumper bowling. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about like bumper billiards.

No, no, no. No, bumper bowling where they put those guardrails down in the gutters. Yeah, we went bowling last week, and Ruby still uses those. I do too sometimes. I can still manage to miss pins, bumper bowling, but. Oh, okay. I thought you meant to just roll a gutter ball. I was like, man, who can't?

No, I'm saying even bumper bowling, I can miss the pins still. I did the usual. I know I mentioned this before, but with bowling, usually for, and I think the other day, I hit like a 140 and then like a 70. I don't remember. Are those good? I mean, 140 for someone who doesn't bowl much, I feel like, is a pretty strong number. Is that dude or Jesus level good? Oh, no, no, no. Like, 300 is a perfect game.

But, I mean, 140 means you've hit plenty of strikes and spares and probably had a good last frameout. I don't know if that's what they call it, but 70 is bad. My whole point was, though, is I'm good for one game, and then my game really drops off. Okay. Well, were you junk by the second game? No, no, no, no, no. I had but one beer, a PBR draft. It was delicious. Oh, okay.

Yeah, sometimes those are the best ones, the really crouty ones. I don't do that much anymore, but it was super refreshing and delicious. Great. Yeah. That's Chuck goes bowling. Yeah, and PBR. Uh-huh. So you want to take a break?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're there already. Let's do it. Okay. So, Chuck, they've got the foundation poured. It's a nice fender, a bumper around the towers. Apparently, once they got that foundation done, they erected the South Tower, which was the more difficult of the two towers, the one closest to San Francisco. They erected it in like six months, which is really amazing, especially as you find, like, that added up.

That was not an anomaly for this project. It kept, like, hitting milestones ahead of time. And it used quite a bit of steel, thanks to Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Pennsylvania. And as we know from our Christmas episode, the reason it is Bethlehem. Pennsylvania is thanks to our Moravian friends who moved there in the 18th century. That's right. New Jersey chipped in, too. Got a shout out New Jersey. For sure. I don't believe the Moravians had much to do with naming New Jersey. No, no, no, but as far as the steel goes. Okay, yes. And so Bethlehem Steel provided 44,000 tons of steel for each tower. That was each

tower. And this is not like a quick thing. They prefabricated them, put them on a barge, and then sent them to San Francisco, down the East Coast, past Florida, through the Panama Canal, and then up to San Francisco. That's how every single piece of steel, prefabricated steel, made its way to the Golden Gate project. Yeah, that's right. Via the Panama Canal, they get there. They obviously use these giant cranes to lift these steel sections into place and start kind of just putting this thing together like a kit at this point.

And at this point, they haven't even, you know, eventually they had temporary elements. elevator is built so people could get up and down quicker. But before that, it would take a worker 20 minutes just to climb a ladder. I can't imagine how terrifying that would be just to be climbing a ladder that high that takes 20 minutes to climb. But that's how they got to the top. And then we get to the color. Like we mentioned before, it's not named Golden Gate Bridge because of the color, because it's really not golden in color. It got there, like we said, prefab, then it was painted with an orange.

just red lead primer just to kind of make sure it made the journey there okay without getting rusted out. And once it got there, consulting architect Irving Morrow said, man, that looks pretty darn good, everybody. What do you think? And everyone went, bully, bully. And so they started searching for sort of related colors and ended up landing on what is now known as Golden Gate Bridge International Orange. I would have cut my mouth shut, but I would have been looking around like, you guys think that looks good. That's the color we're going to paint the prince. I'm into green, personally, but. Okay, so one of the things that is great about that particular color, orange, and I think one of the reasons people said Bowley for it was because it didn't, it didn't,

well, it harmonized with the surrounding area. It's nice, hilly, shrubby. It, like, it was a good choice for sure for that. And I think it also kind of placated a lot of people, too, they're like, That actually kind of goes with everything. It doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. So it was a good idea. And that international orange is still used today. You can thank International Orange for the color of your life vest if it's orange. That's right.

That is just regular international orange. The Golden Gate Bridge International Orange is a little different. It's like a variation on that. But like you said, it blended in well and it also did the job that it was really supposed to do was to stand out for ships and boats there in the fall. bog. Rejected colors included silver, black. And then black and yellow, which was suggested by the U.S. Navy, like, you know, stripe black and yellow because that was the best color for visibility to them. It's the best color for Christian metal, too.

That's right. It's funny because I can, that striper, the stuff looks so good, but I can't picture a bridge in yellow and black stripe. It just looks too safety industrial, you know? Or Cliff's notice. Yeah, yeah, true. Didn't the dude, the drummer from Striper, have black and yellow striped drumsticks even? I think he had a black and yellow striped everything, if you know what I mean.

Oh, I see. He had a black and yellow striped nom on. Let's keep going. Oh, boy, that's good. All right, so Morrow, we mentioned Irving Morrow. He's the consulting architect who said, like, I like this color. He also, obviously, played a part in a lot of the aesthetic aesthetic decisions.

That's tough. Good band name, but also bad. Aesthetic decisions. No one could ever say it. Who are you going to see tonight? The Aesthetic decisions. One of the things that he designed aesthetically was to make it look a little taller, was those tower panels decrease in size from bottom to top? Pretty good idea.

Yep. And while I guess Lawson was like, let's do this and let's add a little bit of this and maybe put both. on the top kind of thing. Strauss, who again is the man at the center of all of this, he was way ahead of his time as far as safety goes. Apparently the Golden Gate Project was the first one that required hard hats on site, which is now fairly ubiquitous. Yeah, good little fact.

Yeah. And then he also created a safety net that was movable. So I think the people who were in the highest risk of falling to their deaths got to use the safety net while they were up there working. Yeah, and use it they did because that thing ended up saving the lives of 19 construction workers. They became known that those 19 became known as the halfway to hell club, which is pretty funny in a way.

But there were some deaths in February of 37, scaffolding collapsed due to an accident, 13 men on it. The net failed and 10 of them died. But in the end, 11 people died. from this project, which is pretty good. I mean, it's awful that 11 people died, but for the time, they would say, like, for every million dollars of a project,

you can expect one death. And this thing came in at, like, 35 million or so. So they expected, you know, 30 to 40 deaths, and there were only 11. So that was, I guess, a win for safety, for the time, at least. Yeah, for sure. I find that a really strange rule of thumb for every million spent you can expect a death.

Like, I guess what that's based on is just the complexity increases by the price maybe or the height, something. Yeah, probably just that means it's big and difficult and complex. I think you're right. But it's definitely a weird way to calculate something. It really is. So, yeah, there's 34 people dead and one person's like, how much is this bridge going to cost? There's like 35 and you're next. There's a cost overruns, and you know what that means?

So they completed the towers, both towers, in 1935. Remember, they started this whole thing. I think they started building that temporary roadway to the first foundation in 1931. They're moving along. And after the towers were complete, it was time to create those four iconic cables that are the actual things that hold up the road deck, the bridge itself. The point of the bridge is held up by these. cables. And if you see one of those cables in person, you will find that it is three feet,

one meter, 36 inches. Let's see. No, do it. Three hundred centimeters in, let's see, it would be a third of a decimeter in width or in diameter. And it's actually made of 25,000 wires, each of those cables are all twisted together. Yeah. And to get that done, they hired John A. Robling's son's company, is the name of the company. And they had worked on the Brooklyn Bridge, so they were obviously great people to call for that. But like you said, I think you said, it was completed ahead of schedule. This was April 19, 1937, about a million three under the $35 million budget. Not bad. Just a little housekeeping here. It's 1.7 miles long, 90 feet wide, holds six lanes of traffic, two sidewalks, 746-foot-high towers,

with the main span between them being 4,200 feet, and at his midpoint, the span hangs 265 feet above the average height of the water below, and people were really excited to get on this thing. They were. The first day they let pedestrians across. The next day was cars, and at the grand opening, I think this kind of good. gets across the type of person Joseph Strauss was. He read a poem that he wrote for the day.

And he was a poet, so it's not bad. I like the rhythm of it, the meter. Sure. Is that correct? Yeah, I think so. I would say go look it up and read it yourself. I'm not going to read it, but it's called The Mighty Task is done by Joseph Strauss. The thing that bothers me, aside from a couple of clunky lines, he says essentially

like that all the people who were involved of this are glorified and that no selfish urge stains its life, no envy, greed, intrigue, or strife. And I'm like, dude, he specifically didn't mention Ellis, Charles Ellis, at this whole thing. And then he goes to the, he has the audacity to say that that's not being done here at this grand ceremony. Yeah, and they built a trellis. So you had a word there in the bag. That's right. Good point, Chuck. Man, I don't know about Strauss now. Yeah, he's not really talked about like that from what I can tell. I just kind of put this together from different places. But there's a bronze statue of him in Golden Gate Park, I think, and there's books about him and his amazing feat. And it's just, I don't like people like that who take full credit

for something that hundreds or thousands of people have done and that they did like backbiting along the way with. It's just I don't like people like that. I'm with you. He actually had a trellis line. He was like, what rhymes with trellis? Hmm. I got nothing, yeah.

And he scratched it out. Like Ellis is outside the window holding up a sign. The math checks out. I saw that no one can say for certain whether Ellis ever saw the Golden Gate Bridge himself. I'm sure, sure that he went and saw it at some point because he died a good decade or two. Yeah, a good decade after it opened. So I would guess unless he had like a horrible aversion

that just even the thought of the bridge, I'll bet he went and visited it. Yeah, I bet you're right. So we can compare it to other suspension bridges in a few ways because I think that's fairly interesting. It's got a lighter roadway than most. It does not have train tracks on it. But it seems like that was one of the original ideas is they wanted to train to be able to run across that thing.

But they realized that the winds were a real problem in 1940 after the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster. And they saw those things in 40-mile-an-hour winds twisting around. They're like, we need to, because we get winds up to like 75 miles an hour, so we need to stiffen this thing up. So they added horizontal trusses to stiffen the structure against twisting. And that's what brought the total weight of that. the deck too high, basically, to where they could not end up putting railroad tracks down. No. Like they were close to the limit of it, I guess, right?

Yeah, couldn't do it. Okay, so the Golden Gate, it was the longest suspension bridge until 1964, when the Arizona Narrows took over that for a while. And like we said, there's Golden Gate Park. That predates the bridge. But Golden Gate National Recreation Area was created on either side of the bridge. after the bridge was already around for a while. And there's some pretty neat things about it.

One of the things, remember we talked about how people were worried about earthquakes. Well, it actually survived the Loma Prieta earthquake, the 1989 earthquake, that took place when the A's and the Giants were playing each other in the World Series and just killed a lot of people. The Bay Bridge, apparently a section of that collapsed. and the Golden Gate survived with no damage whatsoever from when I could tell her very little of it. Yeah, pretty good.

And this is something I heard early on in my life was that the Golden Gate Bridge basically is in constant paint mode, basically. So, like, it's always being painted, apparently. Like, it takes so long to paint and sort of, you know, take care of the corrosion because of all that salty fog and salty air and water. Right.

That is just, it never stops. It's not like, all right, we're done and we're going to take a few months off. It's continuously being kept up. Yeah, and one other thing about the earthquake thing. Somebody at some point figured out that the San Andreas could produce at most of 8.6 magnitude earthquake, and then they went and figured out that the Golden Gate would probably not be able to withstand that. So they started, I think, back in, well, after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, they started a bit of a retrofit to try to make it earthquake.

proof up to 8.6 magnitude. And one of the things that they were having to shore up, Chuck, was that they didn't bolt the towers to the foundation because they're like, these are so heavy. We don't even need to waste the time or money on bolts. And in 8.6 earthquake, they realized if you stay in stiffly with your leg stiff, and then you kind of fall to the side and one of your feet comes off the ground, when you go back to center again, your feet comes down. And imagine one of the towers doing that when it comes back down on that foundation.

like that foundation is not going to hold that up. Yeah. So that's what they're trying to retrofit now. Yeah. That's a big footstomp is what they said. For sure. So we have to close now with some sort of darker stuff because the Golden Gate Bridge, if it's known for, it's known for many things.

But one thing it's very much known for is that there have been many, many suicides attempted and completed over the years. They averaged about 20 per year for a very long time. Hundreds of others had been stopped by, obviously, volunteers that are stationed there to watch for this sort of thing, bridge workers, cops, sometimes just random people like you see in a movie. And they took a very long time to eventually get a safety net, even though it was possible. They really dragged their feet getting that thing up, didn't they? Yeah, I saw that there was opposition to it that included It Will Be Ugly. Oh, God. So every, I think since the first guy who died by suicide, his name was Harold Wobber, he was walking on the bridge all the way back just like a few months after it opened.

And he was walking with a friend. He said, this is as far as I go. And he became the first person to jump to his death from the bridge. That was in 1937. Yeah, what a thing. What a last line, you know. Yeah, imagine being that friend and being like, wait, what? And then, boom.

Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine that. Since then, at least 2,000 people, maybe a little more, probably more, because I think they assume that there's plenty of people who have jumped and their bodies were never found. Right. But at least 2,000 confirmed people have jumped to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge.

And in 1995, the California Highway Patrol, which had been keeping an official count, stopped their official count at 997 because they were worried that there was going to be a rash of suicides to become the 1,000th person to die by suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. So officially the counts 997, but I think most credible sources put it at over 2,000 now. Yeah, and what a thing to think about. What an awful thing to consider,

but like, thank God they thought of something like that because they're probably right, you know? What, the security nets? No, the stopping the public count because... Oh, yeah. You know, I would never have thought of something like that. I'm glad they thought of that. There was a really, I don't know what to call it,

interesting and awful documentary from 2006 called The Bridge. I saw it, I'm not sure. Did you see that one? Yeah, there's a lot to it. The point was to drive awareness about this and about suicide and suicide prevention, but it was very controversial in that they captured footage. They had cameras, you know, trained on the bridge

from the mountains nearby. and they captured footage of 23 suicides, including a survivor, and they filmed family members and interviewed them about their loved ones. It's a very moving and upsetting documentary from, when did I say, 2006. Yeah, it is. So, yeah, that definitely raised public awareness in kind of, I think, amplified the public outcry about this and made people be like, yeah, we probably should do something about this,

because 20 to 30 people a year were taking their own. lives at this time, right? They finally, finally, in 2020, the beginning of 2024, they finished putting up these safety nets essentially that stick out from the side of the bridge so that if you jump off the side of the bridge, you're going to land in the steel net. The whole thing cost $224 million and completed suicides dropped by 73% after they were installed. And even more amazing than that. I think there were 200 attempts in 30 completed suicides a year on average. After the

nets were installed, that fell to 132 and 8 in 2024, and there were no suicides in the last seven months of 2025. So these nets are actually preventing people from completing suicide and also deterring people from attempting suicide there.

Yeah, and you know, they've done studies where they've interviewed people who did survive. Most of them ever try again, which is like very encouraging to know. I think there was a study in the 1970s by a guy named Richard Seiden and he followed up on 515 people who had been stopped. These aren't people who jumped and survived, but they were stopped from jumping in the 35 years prior to the study and he found that only 35 of the 515 went

on to die by suicide. So that's that's really great to know that if you can be an EMT or a police officer or a random passerby who can get someone out of that dire situation, that there's a very, very good chance that that will be not something they go on to complete. Yeah. And you mentioned those volunteers that are stationed along the bridge just for that very purpose. I would wager that there's at least one stuff you should know, a listener, who does that, and I would love to hear from them. I bet you're right. And I hope someone comes to our live show and stands up at the end and tells everybody that they do that. I bet you're that happens.

Yeah, they will get thunderous applause. That's right. I feel like we should end on a high note, and the high note is the Gongay Bridge was where James Bond successfully defeated Christopher Walken, saving Tanya Roberts in the bargain. That's right. A view to a kill.

Probably the best Bond movie ever. Hmm, interesting. All right. I mean, that was the one I grew up on, so that's probably why I like that. But there's no kid who grew up on, like, the living daylights and was like, that's the best one over. Good stuff.

Chuck said good stuff, which is where I was trying to push him because that unlocks listener mail. All right, this is a chance to plug Friends of the Show here. Hey guys, just finished the episode on the radio, the National Radio Quiet Zone. Found it very fascinating. And by the way, we got a few emails from people pointing this out. I wanted to reach out with a recommendation of one of the

Macaroy pods, the Macaroy brothers. Justin, Griffin, and Travis McElroy have long done my brother, my brother and me. And I've known those guys for a long time, super cool dudes. And then they do a show with their dad called The Adventure Zone, which is where they play D&D. And that's become hugely popular. That's awesome, man. What a cool thing to do. Yeah, it's super cool.

But the second season of Adventure Zone is called Amnesty. And it is, well, it's a tabletop role-playing game. So I don't know if it's always D&D. but Griffin has said it in the Green Bank area. So the folks in that area that it attracts and the lack of communication is a plot device and really drives a story. It's one of my favorites that they've done. I hold the stuff you should know dealing in my heart. Thanks for doing what you do.

And P.S. I loved hearing a few of the macaroys on Movie Crush. I loved hearing Josh on Behind the Bastards and so on. All of my favorite podcasters crossing paths now and then really drives those parisocial bonds. So go listen to Josh on Behind the Bastards, your past episodes. You were on a couple of times, right? Yes, I was. And on Daily Zykeyes. No, I was on Behind the Bastards once.

I was on Daily Zykeyes a couple times. Zykeyes a couple of times. And then I had Griffin on Movie Crush in his favorite movie, which he claims is not his favorite movie only, but also the best movie was Groundhog Day. It is a good movie. And I had Justin on, and Justin, I think I can remember every single. single guest in their movie still.

His was With Nail and I. I've never seen that. Isn't that a Morrissey album? I don't know. But it's a British independent film, so it wouldn't surprise me. Oh, his is Vauxhall and I. Oh, okay. With Nail and I, Richard E. Grant, it's really good.

I think you and Yumi would both like it. All right, we'll watch it then, Chuck. It's from, like, the indie movie Revolution of the 90s and from England, and it's really, really great. You know, I think I was talking smack not too long ago about P.T. Anderson. I don't know if it was on the podcast or not. And I basically hadn't liked anything at his since Boogie Nights, maybe Magnolia. Okay. Then I saw one battle after another, and I'm like, this guy is back in my estimate.

Not only did he direct it, he wrote it, too. It's a good movie. Yeah, he writes all his movies. Yeah, I loved, love one battle after another. I think it was my favorite movie of the year. That in sinners were probably tied. I've not seen sinners yet. Is it pretty good? All right, I'll check it out.

Don't tell me anything. It's fine. All I needed to hear was, oh, man. Capital G great, and it's right up your alley. Okay, cool. Great. And that, by the way, is from Ryan Pinto, who's coming to see us in Denver. And I'm sorry, Ryan, but we're not doing it on the Pinto.

We've already done that live show. That's a shame. You can go back and listen to it and imagine that you're there because we did release it eventually as an episode. and he might have been. Who knows? Thanks, Ryan. We'll see you in Denver. If you want to see us in Denver or Seattle or San Francisco, where you can also visit the Golden Gate Bridge,

you can go to Stuff You Should Know.com and get tickets. And in the meantime, if you want to email us like Ryan did, you can send an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you. listen to your favorite shows. This is an I-Heart podcast.

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