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SYSK Selects: How the Panama Canal Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, hope you're having a good weekend. Chuck Bryant.
0:03
Speaker 1: Here ho host of the podcast you're listening to, and
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Speaker 1: I am in charge with picking this week's stuff you
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Speaker 1: should know. Select episode. It is from April to two,
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Speaker 1: the day after April Fool's Day. But I don't worry.
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Speaker 1: This isn't how three D printing works. When I famously
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Speaker 1: fake quit and was replaced by Ben Bowling. No, no, no,
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Speaker 1: this is the episode about the Panama Canal. So interesting.
0:27
Speaker 1: I love civic projects. I love huge, um unwieldy projects
0:31
Speaker 1: that seem impossible to complete, and the Panama Canal was
0:35
Speaker 1: and is that? So? I know you're gonna love this one. Everyone,
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Speaker 1: how the Panama Canal works. Welcome to Stuff you should
0:44
Speaker 1: know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
0:53
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Uh with me is
0:56
Speaker 1: always a child's w Chuck Bryant. And that's if you
1:00
Speaker 1: should know the podcast. The two of us together, a
1:02
Speaker 1: couple of mincs, our voices. You know what I've been
1:06
Speaker 1: singing all day, of course, Panama over and over and
1:11
Speaker 1: I just whistled it and Jerry was, well, now I
1:13
Speaker 1: got that stuck in my head. Yeah. When we were
1:15
Speaker 1: growing up, my sister I was singing it and I
1:17
Speaker 1: realized that she was singing turn and Run? Like what
1:21
Speaker 1: what she's like that song? That Van Halen song, like
1:24
Speaker 1: don't be an idiot? She thought that's what they were saying. Yeah,
1:27
Speaker 1: that's so interesting because there's so many misinterpreted song lyrics
1:30
Speaker 1: famously over the years, but I never have heard Panama
1:33
Speaker 1: as being one of them. Yeah, especially since the song
1:35
Speaker 1: is named Panama. Yeah parentheses, turn and run? Right, Maybe
1:41
Speaker 1: they were talking about the people who were working on
1:43
Speaker 1: the early French effort to build a canal and Panama. Yeah, boy,
1:48
Speaker 1: that didn't go over so well. We'll get to that, okay, spoiler,
1:52
Speaker 1: the French didn't build the Panama Canal. I thought we
1:56
Speaker 1: were gonna get to it right now. All right. Do
1:58
Speaker 1: you want to talk about Da Gama Balboa? Which one?
2:03
Speaker 1: Which one is? George Costanza's favorite explorer was a da
2:06
Speaker 1: Gama or Balboa? O? Man, it was one of the two?
2:11
Speaker 1: Da Gama, was it? Yeah? I think so? Okay, Um
2:14
Speaker 1: that was a funny conversation though, Um so, Yeah. Balboa
2:18
Speaker 1: back in the day was was wandering around in a
2:22
Speaker 1: region called Darien and he summoned to the peak there
2:26
Speaker 1: and was like, holy cow. If I look this away,
2:30
Speaker 1: I see the Pacific Ocean, and if I look at
2:32
Speaker 1: that a way, I see the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean.
2:35
Speaker 1: And the only thing between these two big bodies of
2:38
Speaker 1: water it's this little isthmus of land. Yeah. I'm gonna
2:42
Speaker 1: have a lot of trouble with that word. That's okay,
2:44
Speaker 1: just say strip, okay. So the strip of land here
2:48
Speaker 1: is the only thing in between, and we should figure
2:51
Speaker 1: out a way to use this as a as a thoroughfare. Yeah, yeah,
2:56
Speaker 1: because this is it. This connects the world us exactly.
3:01
Speaker 1: At the time, the Spanish we're trying to trade with
3:04
Speaker 1: the um Chinese and we're doing a pretty good job
3:07
Speaker 1: of it in the Philippines, and the best way to
3:09
Speaker 1: get to that was to come across the Atlantic and
3:13
Speaker 1: go into the Pacific. It worked very, very well. And
3:17
Speaker 1: the idea of just having a place where you could
3:20
Speaker 1: go straight through rather than go all the way down
3:23
Speaker 1: South America and then back up it was just mind boggling.
3:28
Speaker 1: It's like you said, it opened up the world. This
3:29
Speaker 1: guy got it immediately. The problem was it would take
3:33
Speaker 1: about four dred more years before anyone finally got around
3:35
Speaker 1: to completing it successfully. Well, yeah, and forget the rest
3:40
Speaker 1: of the world. The United States just like, Hey, I
3:43
Speaker 1: want to ship this by boat from New York to
3:45
Speaker 1: San Francisco. How can I do that? I can just
3:48
Speaker 1: like kind of sneak around Florida, right Nope, blocked? Right, Well,
3:52
Speaker 1: then what do I gotta do? You gotta go eight
3:54
Speaker 1: thousand miles nautical miles around South America to get to
3:59
Speaker 1: California or um, you know when you and I were
4:01
Speaker 1: in Nicaragua, we were in a town that in the
4:03
Speaker 1: nineteenth century was a way station for minor forty niners
4:07
Speaker 1: going on to California, and um, they would sail on
4:10
Speaker 1: to Nicaragua, take a train, and then ship out from
4:14
Speaker 1: Nicaragua up to California. Except the handful that was like
4:17
Speaker 1: I think I might just kick it here exactly. Yeah,
4:19
Speaker 1: I bet you there were some du oh, definitely, I'm sure. Um,
4:22
Speaker 1: but yeah, there was there was a continent in the way,
4:25
Speaker 1: in the idea that it was just this little narrow
4:28
Speaker 1: strip of land that that made a lot of people
4:32
Speaker 1: say this is the place to be. In the sixteenth
4:35
Speaker 1: or know, the eighteenth century, the Scottish showed up. They
4:38
Speaker 1: tried to establish an outpost, failed spectacularly. Yeah, that's there's
4:42
Speaker 1: a great um section in about it. Yeah. Um, the
4:47
Speaker 1: Spanish were there, the French were there. Uh, they established
4:52
Speaker 1: pretty good outposts there. It was very clear that this
4:55
Speaker 1: little area which was then part of Colombia is now
4:58
Speaker 1: present day Panama, was going to be a hoping spot
5:01
Speaker 1: because there was no thinner portion of the North or
5:04
Speaker 1: South American continents than this one, and everyone needed to
5:07
Speaker 1: figure out a way to get through. Yeah. And it
5:09
Speaker 1: wasn't as easy as like, hey, let's just dredge all
5:11
Speaker 1: this sand and let the waters meet, because that's not
5:14
Speaker 1: too hard. It's like dense jungle and mountains and the
5:18
Speaker 1: continental divide. Yeah, so it's it's My first thought was like,
5:22
Speaker 1: how hard could it have been? I didn't realize how
5:24
Speaker 1: treacherous that area was. Yeah, and I think that, um,
5:26
Speaker 1: that Balboa and a lot of people who succeeded him,
5:30
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing, like how hard is it?
5:33
Speaker 1: But it is like, that's that continental divide. That's a
5:36
Speaker 1: tough thing to break through. That's why they call it
5:38
Speaker 1: a divide. Yeah. Well that's where two tech time plates
5:41
Speaker 1: to come together and form a mountain range and like
5:43
Speaker 1: that's you're cutting through not one, but two tech time plates.
5:47
Speaker 1: Everybody wrap your head around that. Seriously, let's talk about it,
5:51
Speaker 1: because obviously we were successful eventually. But the first attempt
5:56
Speaker 1: was not in the first attempt, it was by the French, yeah,
6:00
Speaker 1: who in the eighteen twenties, I believe, started to undertake
6:03
Speaker 1: a what is known as a sea level canal, which
6:06
Speaker 1: is basically they were going to cut their way straight
6:09
Speaker 1: through the Isthmus of Panama. That's right. And canals were
6:12
Speaker 1: all the rage at the time because of steam technology.
6:15
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden you didn't have to use
6:17
Speaker 1: the very cool and quaint towpath and have a mule
6:21
Speaker 1: walk alongside of a river or canal. Well, yeah, a
6:24
Speaker 1: lot of them now are like jogging trails and stuff,
6:27
Speaker 1: you know, which you know, that's great, it makes for
6:30
Speaker 1: good us exactly. I don't see any mules on them
6:34
Speaker 1: these days. But it's great that people can use these
6:36
Speaker 1: topas now too, you know, it's like a nature trail. Yeah, um, yes,
6:41
Speaker 1: So the steam technology gave the French the idea that
6:45
Speaker 1: hey man, we can we can build a sea level
6:47
Speaker 1: canal here because we can just dig right through it.
6:50
Speaker 1: We have steam. We don't need the mules for the
6:53
Speaker 1: tow paths any longer. All we need is some good
6:56
Speaker 1: steam shovels. We're gonna cut right through this continental divide,
6:59
Speaker 1: right through this jungle. And as a result of this ambition,
7:02
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people died. Yeah, and um, they were able
7:07
Speaker 1: to you know, get a little, a little far thanks
7:10
Speaker 1: to the railroad there in Panama. Believe it or not,
7:14
Speaker 1: it was the first railroad in the world to connect
7:16
Speaker 1: both sides of a continent. Wasn't very big, but it
7:19
Speaker 1: didn't need to be, which is kind of great. But
7:22
Speaker 1: that allowed the French to get in there. They were
7:25
Speaker 1: deciding between Nicaragua and Panama at the time. Um, and
7:29
Speaker 1: they said, like you said, we can do sea level,
7:32
Speaker 1: we don't need these locks. Yeah. If you look at
7:34
Speaker 1: a map of Nicaragua and look at Panama, like the
7:37
Speaker 1: idea of going through Nicaragua over Panama is just nuts. Yeah,
7:41
Speaker 1: and we'll explain how the locks work. But it essentially
7:43
Speaker 1: just raises and lowers your ship right for sure, in
7:47
Speaker 1: a little like bay station of water that's flooded and
7:50
Speaker 1: then drained. Actually, that's how a lock works. So the
7:53
Speaker 1: French organized this thing called the company Universal Duca Now
7:58
Speaker 1: enter they cute and uh, led by a guy named
8:02
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Lesseps who had created a sea level canal through
8:06
Speaker 1: the Suez that connected the Mediterranean and the Red Seas.
8:11
Speaker 1: It was a big deal. So they brought him in
8:13
Speaker 1: and he's like, sure, we'll do another sea level canal.
8:15
Speaker 1: I'm feeling good about this. Like I did the Suez
8:18
Speaker 1: Canal with my eyes closed, exactly, Like I can do
8:20
Speaker 1: this with one arm tied behind my back. Well, he
8:22
Speaker 1: didn't realize was that digging through a bunch of sand
8:24
Speaker 1: is not like digging through two tectonic plates and a
8:28
Speaker 1: bunch of jungle and malaria. Uh. And like I said,
8:31
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people died as a result of this. Like
8:34
Speaker 1: this guy was like, no, we can do it. We
8:36
Speaker 1: can do it. We're gonna do a sea level canal.
8:38
Speaker 1: We can do it. And then finally it was like,
8:39
Speaker 1: I don't think we can do this. It was too late.
8:42
Speaker 1: A lot a lot a lot of people were dead
8:44
Speaker 1: from yellow fever, in malaria, from accidents. Um. It's privately financed,
8:48
Speaker 1: so a lot of people lost a lot of money too. Exactly.
8:52
Speaker 1: This company goes under well, he tried to salvage it though.
8:56
Speaker 1: First he tried to hire Gustav Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, right,
9:01
Speaker 1: and said, hey, I think we need those locks after all, um,
9:04
Speaker 1: and you're good at building big steel things, so can
9:07
Speaker 1: you help? And he was like, of course I can.
9:10
Speaker 1: And then it was too late though that the business
9:12
Speaker 1: was done right, and they had done a little bit. Well,
9:15
Speaker 1: they had done a lot, Like they made eleven miles
9:18
Speaker 1: of canal up to that point. Not bad, it's about
9:20
Speaker 1: a quarter of the way there, right, But this was
9:22
Speaker 1: the when did they start chuck the eighteen Yeah, so
9:27
Speaker 1: chuck as we understand it, they started in the eighteen
9:29
Speaker 1: twenties and this thing went bust by nineteen o two,
9:33
Speaker 1: I believe. Well that's when Congress. I mean they were
9:38
Speaker 1: busts before that, but that's when the US stepped in
9:40
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we'll buy your junk. Oh I'm sorry.
9:43
Speaker 1: Eight So in like sixties, about sixty years they they
9:49
Speaker 1: had managed to dig eleven miles of canal, build a
9:52
Speaker 1: bunch of buildings. They had a lot of equipment and
9:54
Speaker 1: supplies there. Um, and yeah, the US said, we smell
9:58
Speaker 1: a really really great opportunity. And congres said, let's spend
10:02
Speaker 1: some cash. We're feeling good about things these days, where
10:06
Speaker 1: we annexed Hawaii recently Puerto Rico, Philippines. What else, How
10:10
Speaker 1: why not take over this very ambiscious project. Why it's
10:14
Speaker 1: the American century by now, and we can stick it
10:17
Speaker 1: to the French at the same time. Exactly, So they
10:19
Speaker 1: did this in nineteen o two, UM with the one
10:21
Speaker 1: stipulation that said, you know what, you guys have to
10:25
Speaker 1: Columbia controls Panama right now, and you guys have to
10:28
Speaker 1: work out a deal with them. And we tried and
10:31
Speaker 1: that failed. So he said, you know what, We're just
10:33
Speaker 1: gonna overthrow Columbia then and give the control to the Panamanians. Yeah,
10:38
Speaker 1: they we supported this Panamanian independence movement and yeah, threw
10:43
Speaker 1: off the shackles of Columbia. And Columbia is like, what
10:46
Speaker 1: did you just do? Because we gain control of that.
10:52
Speaker 1: We we followed that congressional mandate and gain control of
10:55
Speaker 1: this Panama Canal zone. Basically, the swath uh that went
11:00
Speaker 1: through Panama was considered American soil thanks to a treaty
11:05
Speaker 1: UM from my believe nineteen o two, the hey Bunal
11:09
Speaker 1: Varia treaty UM where Panama signed over the canal zone.
11:13
Speaker 1: There was no Spanish translation of this treaty. Yeah, so
11:15
Speaker 1: basically the U S went in over through Colombian control
11:19
Speaker 1: of Panama, supported Panamanian independence and then rob Panama of
11:23
Speaker 1: its canal one fell in like a year, yeah, and
11:27
Speaker 1: Columbia is like, well, just I guess we'll just start
11:29
Speaker 1: exporting cocaine and massive exactly, we'll get you back one day.
11:33
Speaker 1: So um. In the end, they paid about forty million
11:36
Speaker 1: bucks in nineteen o four for the assets of this
11:39
Speaker 1: French company, just a lot of money back then, and
11:42
Speaker 1: about ten million dollars um as this very cheeky article
11:46
Speaker 1: by the way, did you notice um they offered they
11:52
Speaker 1: she referred to it as um alimony of sorts to
11:55
Speaker 1: Panama ten million bucks to get gain the rights to
11:59
Speaker 1: this canal zone. And basically, hey, we're gonna run the show.
12:02
Speaker 1: We're gonna finish your canal from the eleven mile mark
12:06
Speaker 1: to the you know, to the ocean where it belongs.
12:09
Speaker 1: And like you said, I think there was a certain
12:11
Speaker 1: amount of snub to it, right, probably so um, but
12:14
Speaker 1: they said, you know what we gotta do first, though,
12:17
Speaker 1: is we have to decide on if we can go
12:19
Speaker 1: sea level. Um, like, was it just the French were
12:22
Speaker 1: incompetent or is it really impossible to do sea level? Yeah,
12:25
Speaker 1: like we need to do our own due diligence basically,
12:28
Speaker 1: And they did that, and Theodore Roosevelt chose chief engineer
12:33
Speaker 1: John Frank Stevens, and he was like, it's all about
12:35
Speaker 1: the locks, dudes. If you want to canal here, you
12:37
Speaker 1: can have to go over these mountains, not through them. Right.
12:40
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. And this is just brilliant because
12:44
Speaker 1: there was another problem with this isthmus And there's this
12:48
Speaker 1: thing called the Chagres River and it is very temperamental.
12:52
Speaker 1: It was prone to flooding. All sorts of crazy stuff
12:56
Speaker 1: associated with this river. So not only did you have
12:59
Speaker 1: the continental divide, the jungle and the malaria to deal
13:01
Speaker 1: with once you completed it, what were you gonna do
13:03
Speaker 1: with this river? Stevens came up with this great idea
13:06
Speaker 1: that you go over the mountains, and you go over
13:09
Speaker 1: the mountains. You killed two birds with one stone by
13:11
Speaker 1: damming the river, and you create a lake that will
13:14
Speaker 1: carry you over the mountains. Like, yeah, I'm sure that's
13:18
Speaker 1: not pronounced correctly. Think about that. That is one of
13:20
Speaker 1: the most brilliant feats of engineering I've ever heard of,
13:24
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal. Yeah, but that's specific aspect of it
13:29
Speaker 1: damming the river to create a lake so you can
13:31
Speaker 1: go over the mountains. Yeah, that's just incredibly beautiful the
13:34
Speaker 1: whole thing too. And at the time, dude in the
13:36
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds is just like, it's amazing that they
13:38
Speaker 1: could pull us off. Yeah, because they're all wearing like
13:40
Speaker 1: knickers and stuff. Yeah, it's very there's some awesome documentaries
13:43
Speaker 1: out there, by the way, you should watch. In fact,
13:45
Speaker 1: there's one. There's one cool. Just go to the YouTube's
13:49
Speaker 1: and uh, put in time laps Panama Canal and it
13:53
Speaker 1: takes you the full route in like a minute and
13:56
Speaker 1: a half. Nice and said eight to ten hours. And
13:58
Speaker 1: it's kind of neat. You know. The boat goes in
14:00
Speaker 1: and sinks and then not sinks but lowers and then raises,
14:04
Speaker 1: and then it tools along in the lake for a
14:06
Speaker 1: little while and then sinks and lowers and raises and yeah,
14:09
Speaker 1: because it's like an eight to ten hour transit right
14:12
Speaker 1: from from deep water to deep water eight to ten hours. Yeah,
14:16
Speaker 1: depending on your boat. I guess once you finally get
14:18
Speaker 1: clearance to go through. That's right, So he's damned up.
14:22
Speaker 1: The river created got tuned lake. Um ships going towards
14:26
Speaker 1: the Pacific kind of enter it uh Lemon Bay in
14:30
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, go through a couple of locks upward and
14:34
Speaker 1: just it's like walking up steps basically, except it's a
14:37
Speaker 1: big boat and it's done with water. And then they
14:39
Speaker 1: navigate through that lake for a little while and then
14:41
Speaker 1: go towards Panama City through another series of locks and down, down,
14:46
Speaker 1: down over the mountains and boom, you are connected to
14:50
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Right, So when they when
14:53
Speaker 1: they um agreed on the lock method, they had one
14:57
Speaker 1: other thing to handle. And that's why the scott is
15:00
Speaker 1: maybe they were getting confused with locks meaning lakes, right,
15:04
Speaker 1: maybe that's a bunch of locks. They're like, where are
15:06
Speaker 1: all the locks? They're like they're right there. They're like, no,
15:09
Speaker 1: but where are the locks? So there was one other
15:13
Speaker 1: big problem that had leveled the French effort, which was
15:17
Speaker 1: um yellow fever, which you can be immune to if
15:21
Speaker 1: you're exposed to it in childhood, but if you're from
15:25
Speaker 1: New York, you're not. So you go down to Panama
15:28
Speaker 1: and you are stung by a mosquito and you die. Um.
15:31
Speaker 1: The thing is, nobody knew that it was mosquitoes until
15:34
Speaker 1: a guy named Ronald bross uh in seven studied mosquitoes
15:40
Speaker 1: in India and found malaria present in their stomachs and
15:43
Speaker 1: that it was transmittable through their saliva. Yeah, they didn't
15:47
Speaker 1: know what it was. They were all sorts of different theories. Yeah,
15:49
Speaker 1: they thought it was maybe from like unclean living whatever.
15:55
Speaker 1: When they found out that it was the mosquitoes, they
15:58
Speaker 1: that changed everything. So they to this really rigid um
16:02
Speaker 1: anti mosquito uh program. They cleaned up the country basically
16:07
Speaker 1: and basically eradicated came close to eradicating yellow fever in
16:10
Speaker 1: the area, which paved the way for this lock system
16:13
Speaker 1: to be built. Yeah, and you can thank Colonel William
16:16
Speaker 1: Gorgas for heading up that sanitation squad. And um, yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: I mean it worked, and that was the key, because
16:22
Speaker 1: you can't have your workers dropping dead of yellow fever
16:25
Speaker 1: every day. You have to they have to drop dead
16:28
Speaker 1: of landslides. Yeah. Even though a lot of these workers
16:31
Speaker 1: were you know, poor black people. I think eighty five
16:34
Speaker 1: percent of the people that died were black. Um, and
16:37
Speaker 1: a lot of people still died, but it wasn't like
16:40
Speaker 1: the dropping dead from yellow fever, you know. But it's
16:44
Speaker 1: still a very dangerous project. Mudslides, all all sorts of drownings,
16:48
Speaker 1: things like that. So we've got the the we've got
17:23
Speaker 1: yellow fever licked. We've settled on the lock system, and
17:28
Speaker 1: um John Frank Stevens is replaced by a guy named
17:30
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Gothals and he was a lock
17:34
Speaker 1: expert and he looked at the plan and he said,
17:37
Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna divide this up into three sections.
17:40
Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense. It does. You've got the Pacific
17:43
Speaker 1: section that's going to be working from Limon Bay, which
17:46
Speaker 1: by the way, means lime in Spanish. Did you know that?
17:49
Speaker 1: I did not. Uh. So they're working from Limon Bay
17:53
Speaker 1: to the newly created Lake Gatun. Yeah that was the
17:56
Speaker 1: Atlantic Division. Yeah, okay, you're right. So the Atlantic divis
18:00
Speaker 1: is synonymous with the Caribbean um. And then so you've
18:04
Speaker 1: got the Atlantic Division working from Gattuned to um or
18:08
Speaker 1: Lemont to get tune. You have the Central Division. This
18:11
Speaker 1: is the hardest part. Yeah, they're working in Lake Gatune
18:14
Speaker 1: to basically create a channel through this Continental Divide. You
18:19
Speaker 1: don't have to cut sea level, but you you don't
18:21
Speaker 1: need to make sure these ships aren't gonna like run
18:23
Speaker 1: around in a mountain. Um. And then you have the
18:26
Speaker 1: Pacific Division, which is working from uh the end of
18:30
Speaker 1: the Continental Divide pass which is Pedro Miguel locks down
18:34
Speaker 1: to the Pacific, right, that's right. And like we said,
18:39
Speaker 1: the railway, the Panamanium Railroad is there, and um, we
18:44
Speaker 1: had like awesome gear at the time. It was no
18:47
Speaker 1: longer you know, men with chisels and sledgehammers and stuff.
18:51
Speaker 1: It was steam shovels, rock drills, dynamite and uh they
18:56
Speaker 1: moved ninety six million cubic yards of earth and rock, right,
19:00
Speaker 1: which is seventy three million cubic meters, that's right. And
19:04
Speaker 1: uh it was really hot though, and it was a
19:06
Speaker 1: pretty bad scene and they called that Hell's Gorge and
19:09
Speaker 1: it was dangerous and that's where I think most of
19:11
Speaker 1: the lives were lost on this second pass. Yeah, and
19:13
Speaker 1: that was definitely the hardest work, but they made it through.
19:17
Speaker 1: Um and by nine a crane that was used in
19:22
Speaker 1: the construction of the Panama Canal was the first thing
19:25
Speaker 1: to ever make it through all the way and they
19:28
Speaker 1: were like sweet, yeah, and eight months later it was
19:31
Speaker 1: open for business as far as I understand, Yeah, big business.
19:36
Speaker 1: Um should we should we walk people through or I
19:39
Speaker 1: guess swim people through? Yeah? I think we should. Okay, Uh,
19:43
Speaker 1: you approach from the Atlantic, you go through the gattoon locks.
19:46
Speaker 1: It's gonna lift your vessel up eighty five ft pretty awesome,
19:51
Speaker 1: and take you to Gatun Lake. Very nice. There. You're
19:54
Speaker 1: gonna wind through that channel for about twenty three miles,
19:56
Speaker 1: then enter the Gallard cut about eight miles through there,
20:02
Speaker 1: and you're gonna reach the Pedro Miguel locks, and then
20:04
Speaker 1: they're gonna lower your ship about thirty feet to the
20:07
Speaker 1: mirror floors lake. You're gonna pass through this, it's about
20:10
Speaker 1: a mile long, and then the two steps mirror floors
20:13
Speaker 1: locks are gonna return you finally back to sea level
20:16
Speaker 1: to seven mile passage from there to the Pacific, And
20:19
Speaker 1: all told, you've gone fifty miles in about eight to
20:21
Speaker 1: ten hours. And um, mind bogglingly, I saw that it
20:26
Speaker 1: takes fifty two million gallons of fresh water to move
20:30
Speaker 1: a ship from one end to the other two million,
20:35
Speaker 1: and they're getting all that from Lake Gatun. Yeah, and
20:37
Speaker 1: it's just I imagine it's just recycled back into the system, right, No,
20:41
Speaker 1: what is it? What happens to it? They lose it,
20:43
Speaker 1: most of it. It's it's either pumped back in. It
20:46
Speaker 1: either goes flows back into Lake Gatun or else it
20:50
Speaker 1: flows out into the oceans, which is not necessarily good.
20:54
Speaker 1: They're worried that Lake at Tune may become brackish and
20:57
Speaker 1: like a Tune is now the freshwater supply of Panama
21:02
Speaker 1: and it they're using a lot of it up. Yeah. Well,
21:05
Speaker 1: it's always presented a bit of an environmental quagmire, especially
21:09
Speaker 1: with their plans to expand, which we'll get to. But
21:12
Speaker 1: right now they have two way traffic. Um. They're looking
21:14
Speaker 1: to make that a three lane highway, which would actually
21:18
Speaker 1: adding that third lane, um will double the amount of traffic. Yeah,
21:23
Speaker 1: which is crazy. You would think it would increase it
21:25
Speaker 1: by a third. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's wider.
21:29
Speaker 1: Oh maybe it allows for two ships at a time.
21:31
Speaker 1: They just jam like eight in there once. I don't know.
21:34
Speaker 1: I do know that if you are a large enough ship,
21:36
Speaker 1: they don't let you drive yourself because you know you've
21:39
Speaker 1: got one drunk sea captain and all of a sudden,
21:41
Speaker 1: your locks are out of commission, so they use electric
21:44
Speaker 1: towing locomotives to tow those big bad boys. Right, And
21:48
Speaker 1: we should say, just briefly, with the locks, if you
21:50
Speaker 1: want to move a ship upward, you flow into a lock.
21:54
Speaker 1: The lock closes behind you and it fills up with
21:57
Speaker 1: water so that you can float over the lip of
21:59
Speaker 1: the next higher lock that the gate closes behind you
22:03
Speaker 1: with that one and it fills in with water, and
22:05
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Yeah, it's remarkably basic. Yeah,
22:09
Speaker 1: and then the opposite takes place when you're stepping down. Yeah,
22:11
Speaker 1: it's just basically going into a little square pool, raising
22:15
Speaker 1: or lowering the water level so you can go up
22:17
Speaker 1: or down. It's really neat. Yeah. And if you've got
22:19
Speaker 1: a minute and a half to kill, you can take
22:20
Speaker 1: this voyage in high speed on the YouTube. So uh,
22:25
Speaker 1: Like we said, the US used gunboat diplomacy to and
22:29
Speaker 1: I guess good old fashioned, old timey nineteen o two
22:33
Speaker 1: swindling to gain control of the Panama Canal zone. And
22:37
Speaker 1: it had complete control until nine nine when Jimmy Carter
22:43
Speaker 1: um malaise forever right terrise that Simpsons, they unveil a
22:49
Speaker 1: statue of Jimmy Carter and it says Malaise Forever on
22:52
Speaker 1: the base and one of the townspeople goes, he's history's
22:55
Speaker 1: greatest monster. Anyway, Carter negotiated with the leader of Panama
23:02
Speaker 1: at the time, UH General Omar Terrios Herrera, and said, hey,
23:06
Speaker 1: how is he like this thing back? Give us You
23:09
Speaker 1: think they said, hey, we'd like this back. I like
23:12
Speaker 1: to think of American magnanimous. Not sure. So we said,
23:17
Speaker 1: you know what, we've had it for this long plus
23:19
Speaker 1: plus we're talking Carter, it's entirely possible. He just started
23:22
Speaker 1: contacting people and said, what's the US have that we
23:24
Speaker 1: can sell or give back. It's a good point. Um.
23:27
Speaker 1: So yeah, he he sold like one of the like
23:31
Speaker 1: the presidential yacht was sold by him. I really yeah.
23:35
Speaker 1: Why because he thought it was frivolous. That's awesome, um
23:37
Speaker 1: and Panama Canal He's like, how about this, Let's get
23:40
Speaker 1: rid of a significant portion of our economy. Anyway, he
23:43
Speaker 1: gives it back after twenty years and on December thirty,
23:47
Speaker 1: which is why I suspect they made it a twenty
23:50
Speaker 1: year deal. Yeah, I mean they had to transition. You
23:52
Speaker 1: can't just hand the keys over and be like all right,
23:54
Speaker 1: send your crew in, right, but not only that, Like
23:57
Speaker 1: why not a fifteen year deal or an eighteen year
23:59
Speaker 1: deal or year deal. They went with twenty because it
24:01
Speaker 1: was gonna end on December thirty millennium. Actually that didn't
24:06
Speaker 1: start till two thousand one though, Right, yeah, but you know, okay,
24:10
Speaker 1: it's symbolic, right, Okay, So the Panamanians take over and
24:16
Speaker 1: um immediately start taking flak because the things aging traffics
24:22
Speaker 1: jammed up. Yeah, they've done a good job with it, though,
24:24
Speaker 1: it's it's just by nature of how things are. These
24:26
Speaker 1: they are victims of circumstances. UM and five percent of
24:30
Speaker 1: the world's trade goes through the Panama Canal. We sold
24:32
Speaker 1: them a limit of a canal, right there. The millionth
24:35
Speaker 1: ship UM went through in two thousand, ten hundred and
24:38
Speaker 1: forty four thousand ships go through a year, and it's
24:41
Speaker 1: a very narrow little strip. Yeah, you know what that means,
24:46
Speaker 1: waiting in line, a lot of waiting in line. Plus
24:49
Speaker 1: also there's an upper limit to the size ship that
24:52
Speaker 1: can go through. It's called Panama Panamax is the is
24:56
Speaker 1: the ship size. That's yeah, what a great name for
24:59
Speaker 1: the guess ship that Panamax, what could be bigger than that? Well,
25:03
Speaker 1: these ships that are called post Panama exactly, A lot
25:06
Speaker 1: of shippers are like, you know what, I'm tired of waiting.
25:09
Speaker 1: It's actually going to be more economical for me to
25:12
Speaker 1: build a ship that can't go through the Panama Canal
25:15
Speaker 1: but can hold a lot more and I'll just sail
25:17
Speaker 1: around the lower part of South America. And um, that's
25:23
Speaker 1: kind of increasingly happening. Plus, Nicaragua threatened to open their
25:27
Speaker 1: own canal, So Panama says, okay, wait, wait, wait, let's
25:30
Speaker 1: let's holl the referendum and see if we can expand
25:32
Speaker 1: this thing and modernize it and save the canal. And
25:35
Speaker 1: Panamanian said, yes, let's so in two thousand and six
25:38
Speaker 1: they approved this third lane that's expected to be open
25:41
Speaker 1: by two fourteen. That is Nicaragua still planning a canal.
25:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if that shot it
25:46
Speaker 1: down or not. Well, and there's also talk now with
25:48
Speaker 1: a northwest passage thanks to um what some people might say,
25:53
Speaker 1: it's climate change and melting ice caps. There may be
25:57
Speaker 1: a way to get there, um by land. Henry Hudson
26:00
Speaker 1: is clapping in his grave. Um, So we'll see if
26:04
Speaker 1: that happens. I don't know. I didn't get a chance
26:06
Speaker 1: to really look into that research. And like, how real
26:09
Speaker 1: is that? Right? Even still, the Panamanians will probably make
26:12
Speaker 1: their UM five point to five billion investment back eventually,
26:17
Speaker 1: although it took the US good forty years to make
26:20
Speaker 1: four million back. Yeah, yeah, I think thee when they
26:25
Speaker 1: finally broke even. Huh that's crazy. Yeah, And um, you
26:28
Speaker 1: break even by charging a toll. I don't think we
26:30
Speaker 1: even mentioned that. You obviously, like any way station or passage,
26:36
Speaker 1: you gotta pay according to how what how much stuff
26:39
Speaker 1: you got, right, It's like I think the record is
26:43
Speaker 1: I looked it up. It was like a hundred fifty
26:44
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, they do it by ton in. The
26:47
Speaker 1: thing is is if you are, um carrying a lot
26:50
Speaker 1: of really expensive natural gas, right, you're gonna pay a
26:54
Speaker 1: lesser toll than if you're carrying a bunch of less
26:57
Speaker 1: expensive or even equally expensive coal, which isn't fair. And
27:01
Speaker 1: if you're if you're transporting a lot of raw steel,
27:04
Speaker 1: why should you pay more? So they're they're trying to
27:06
Speaker 1: figure out a new toll system, especially for the newly
27:09
Speaker 1: expanded version of the canal um that takes into account
27:13
Speaker 1: the value of the of what's on board rather than
27:16
Speaker 1: just the weight, right, So they should make a little
27:19
Speaker 1: more money that way. Yeah. I don't know if this
27:21
Speaker 1: is still accurate, but the record that I have is
27:24
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty three thousand dollars, six hundred and
27:27
Speaker 1: fifty three thousand, six hundred and sixty two and the
27:31
Speaker 1: cheapest was when a dude swam across it. Any weighed
27:35
Speaker 1: like a hundred and fifty pounds, and so they charged
27:37
Speaker 1: them what like thirty cents. Yeah, that back in Richard
27:40
Speaker 1: Halliburton and he swam the Panama Canal, and I guess
27:44
Speaker 1: it was some sort of publicity stunt. I'm sure people
27:46
Speaker 1: love doing stuff like that back then. Yeah. But if
27:48
Speaker 1: you look at this um this high speed route on YouTube,
27:53
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat and there's a lot of times you're like, oh,
27:56
Speaker 1: look out for that boat, and then it turns you're like, okay,
27:59
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of activity out there. Yeah, you know,
28:01
Speaker 1: it's not a pleasure cruise. Well no, and it's not
28:05
Speaker 1: one ship at a time. They have, like you said,
28:07
Speaker 1: two way traffic, right, that's right, and they try to
28:11
Speaker 1: keep them going through as efficiently as possible. And I
28:14
Speaker 1: should say also, um, the the um the new locks
28:19
Speaker 1: that they have can serve about six of the water used,
28:23
Speaker 1: so they'll address a lot of environmental concerns hopefully. I
28:27
Speaker 1: got a couple of little facts here if you're interested. Uh,
28:30
Speaker 1: the entrance to the canal in the Atlantic side is
28:33
Speaker 1: twenty two and a half miles west of the Pacific entrance,
28:37
Speaker 1: which is interesting because it has a unique S shape.
28:40
Speaker 1: And then, um, the locks themselves are seven ft thick each,
28:48
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering how to keep out that much water,
28:50
Speaker 1: like to to basically damn up the oceans, you need
28:53
Speaker 1: to do it with seven foot thick concrete. Um. The
28:58
Speaker 1: workforce is paname in right now, which is pretty great.
29:03
Speaker 1: And uh, it's about all. I got. Sixty million pounds
29:06
Speaker 1: of dynamite was used to construct this thing. That's some
29:09
Speaker 1: nice stats. Chuck, Yeah, it's not bad. Cool You got
29:13
Speaker 1: anything else then? No, all the rest of these are
29:15
Speaker 1: kind of boring. Panama Canal forever. Uh. If you want
29:20
Speaker 1: to learn more about the Panama can now, you can
29:22
Speaker 1: read this very good article on how stuff works dot
29:24
Speaker 1: com type in Panama Canal or turning a run canal.
29:28
Speaker 1: See what happens when you do the ladder. Um, Chuck,
29:31
Speaker 1: hold on, let's let's take a message break. Huh, it
29:52
Speaker 1: is time for a listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call
29:55
Speaker 1: this one listener mail about listener mail. Hey guys, I'm
29:59
Speaker 1: currently on the seven train heading to Queens for Manhattan
30:02
Speaker 1: after a long day of working as an auditor at
30:04
Speaker 1: a C p A firm. Um, as usual, I'm listening
30:07
Speaker 1: to your podcast. This time it was the death Mask episode,
30:10
Speaker 1: and you're concluding with a listener mail. And this is instance.
30:14
Speaker 1: It was from Martha regarding peak oil. And I think
30:19
Speaker 1: Martha was talking about the auditing of oil reserves. And
30:22
Speaker 1: he says this to Marda. She was correct for the
30:25
Speaker 1: most part, regarding the audit of oil reserves held by
30:27
Speaker 1: entities whose stocks may be publicly traded on the stock market.
30:31
Speaker 1: Just one thing. I was so a gas by that
30:34
Speaker 1: I felt I needed to type this from my phone
30:36
Speaker 1: as I'm on the train. Still, the SEC does not
30:39
Speaker 1: perform any audits of its own on these companies. It
30:43
Speaker 1: is firms like the one I work for that audit
30:45
Speaker 1: these companies, albeit under SEC guidelines. Actually p C a
30:51
Speaker 1: O B public company audit oversight board guidelines and if
30:54
Speaker 1: you want to get technical, uh, the SEC may perform
30:57
Speaker 1: a type of audit, but when they do, there you
31:00
Speaker 1: really auditing an audit firm or an audit that has
31:03
Speaker 1: already been done by an audit firm as part of
31:06
Speaker 1: some kind of investigation. What So they'll audit an audit
31:10
Speaker 1: like the SEC does an audit. So it's a long
31:13
Speaker 1: and sort of it. I've said audit club finds. I've
31:15
Speaker 1: actually been through one of these audits and it is
31:17
Speaker 1: no fun at all. For some reason, it seems everyone
31:21
Speaker 1: whom works at the SEC is what you stereotypically picture
31:24
Speaker 1: as an accountant with no humor. Plus the word audit
31:27
Speaker 1: loses all meaning when you hear it. That's right. I
31:29
Speaker 1: digress though, Guys. If you pull up a ten K
31:32
Speaker 1: annual filing for any public company, you can see in
31:35
Speaker 1: the audit opinion the audit firm which performed the audit
31:39
Speaker 1: for that particular year. I hope that clears things up.
31:42
Speaker 1: Henrik Gomez and Henry I'm not sure if that cleared
31:45
Speaker 1: it up, but um, if I was an accountant, I
31:48
Speaker 1: would probably say, yes, very much clear things, very nice,
31:52
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Henry. That was very nice of
31:54
Speaker 1: you to correct somebody who is correcting us. Yeah, and
31:56
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You gotta take that. Thank you.
31:59
Speaker 1: Seven train man? Is that a terrible train? Do that one?
32:02
Speaker 1: It's like it's the old red train that looks like
32:04
Speaker 1: it's about to fall off. It's like the midnight Meat train. Yeah,
32:07
Speaker 1: have you seen that? Now? What's midnight meat? That's a
32:11
Speaker 1: midnight meat train. It's got Vinny Jones and Bradley Cooper
32:13
Speaker 1: in it. It's actually based on a Clive Barker short story,
32:17
Speaker 1: because that's an old joke between me and my friend
32:19
Speaker 1: p J, who've met I believe. Yeah, he cookouts famously.
32:23
Speaker 1: PJ is a great chef home chef, but he was
32:26
Speaker 1: so he would typically take so long we referred to
32:29
Speaker 1: his meals as midnight meat. And then I made a
32:31
Speaker 1: joke about cold cooking a steak one time night because
32:34
Speaker 1: it took like twenty four hours. Yeah, no, that's definitely okay.
32:37
Speaker 1: This is not a slam on PJ. No, we love
32:39
Speaker 1: the midnight Meat. Uh, if you have anything you want
32:43
Speaker 1: us to know, if you want to correct somebody who's
32:44
Speaker 1: corrected us, or you just want to say hi whatever.
32:47
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
32:50
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook, dot com Slice Stuff
32:52
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can always find us on our
32:54
Speaker 1: website Right that's right, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
33:01
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
33:04
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. H