March 2, 2019 • 33 mins
It's on more than one list of the Seven Wonders of the World and for good reason - the Panama Canal is one of the great feats of engineering ever undertaken. First conceived of in the 1580s and finally completed in 1914, the canal has a fascinating history (including a stint where it was considered U.S. soil). Learn all about it on this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, hope you're having a good weekend. Chuck Bryant.
Here ho host of the podcast you're listening to, and
I am in charge with picking this week's stuff you
should know. Select episode. It is from April to two,
the day after April Fool's Day. But I don't worry.
This isn't how three D printing works. When I famously
fake quit and was replaced by Ben Bowling. No, no, no,
(00:23):
this is the episode about the Panama Canal. So interesting.
I love civic projects. I love huge, um unwieldy projects
that seem impossible to complete, and the Panama Canal was
and is that? So? I know you're gonna love this one. Everyone,
how the Panama Canal works. Welcome to Stuff you should
(00:44):
know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Uh with me is
always a child's w Chuck Bryant. And that's if you
should know the podcast. The two of us together, a
couple of mincs, our voices. You know what I've been
(01:06):
singing all day, of course, Panama over and over and
I just whistled it and Jerry was, well, now I
got that stuck in my head. Yeah. When we were
growing up, my sister I was singing it and I
realized that she was singing turn and Run? Like what
what she's like that song? That Van Halen song, like
don't be an idiot? She thought that's what they were saying. Yeah,
(01:27):
that's so interesting because there's so many misinterpreted song lyrics
famously over the years, but I never have heard Panama
as being one of them. Yeah, especially since the song
is named Panama. Yeah parentheses, turn and run? Right, Maybe
they were talking about the people who were working on
the early French effort to build a canal and Panama. Yeah, boy,
(01:48):
that didn't go over so well. We'll get to that, okay, spoiler,
the French didn't build the Panama Canal. I thought we
were gonna get to it right now. All right. Do
you want to talk about Da Gama Balboa? Which one?
Which one is? George Costanza's favorite explorer was a da
Gama or Balboa? O? Man, it was one of the two?
(02:11):
Da Gama, was it? Yeah? I think so? Okay, Um
that was a funny conversation though, Um so, Yeah. Balboa
back in the day was was wandering around in a
region called Darien and he summoned to the peak there
and was like, holy cow. If I look this away,
I see the Pacific Ocean, and if I look at
(02:32):
that a way, I see the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean.
And the only thing between these two big bodies of
water it's this little isthmus of land. Yeah. I'm gonna
have a lot of trouble with that word. That's okay,
just say strip, okay. So the strip of land here
is the only thing in between, and we should figure
out a way to use this as a as a thoroughfare. Yeah, yeah,
(02:56):
because this is it. This connects the world us exactly.
At the time, the Spanish we're trying to trade with
the um Chinese and we're doing a pretty good job
of it in the Philippines, and the best way to
get to that was to come across the Atlantic and
go into the Pacific. It worked very, very well. And
(03:17):
the idea of just having a place where you could
go straight through rather than go all the way down
South America and then back up it was just mind boggling.
It's like you said, it opened up the world. This
guy got it immediately. The problem was it would take
about four dred more years before anyone finally got around
to completing it successfully. Well, yeah, and forget the rest
(03:40):
of the world. The United States just like, Hey, I
want to ship this by boat from New York to
San Francisco. How can I do that? I can just
like kind of sneak around Florida, right Nope, blocked? Right, Well,
then what do I gotta do? You gotta go eight
thousand miles nautical miles around South America to get to
California or um, you know when you and I were
(04:01):
in Nicaragua, we were in a town that in the
nineteenth century was a way station for minor forty niners
going on to California, and um, they would sail on
to Nicaragua, take a train, and then ship out from
Nicaragua up to California. Except the handful that was like
I think I might just kick it here exactly. Yeah,
I bet you there were some du oh, definitely, I'm sure. Um,
(04:22):
but yeah, there was there was a continent in the way,
in the idea that it was just this little narrow
strip of land that that made a lot of people
say this is the place to be. In the sixteenth
or know, the eighteenth century, the Scottish showed up. They
tried to establish an outpost, failed spectacularly. Yeah, that's there's
a great um section in about it. Yeah. Um, the
(04:47):
Spanish were there, the French were there. Uh, they established
pretty good outposts there. It was very clear that this
little area which was then part of Colombia is now
present day Panama, was going to be a hoping spot
because there was no thinner portion of the North or
South American continents than this one, and everyone needed to
figure out a way to get through. Yeah. And it
(05:09):
wasn't as easy as like, hey, let's just dredge all
this sand and let the waters meet, because that's not
too hard. It's like dense jungle and mountains and the
continental divide. Yeah, so it's it's My first thought was like,
how hard could it have been? I didn't realize how
treacherous that area was. Yeah, and I think that, um,
that Balboa and a lot of people who succeeded him,
(05:30):
I thought the same thing, like how hard is it?
But it is like, that's that continental divide. That's a
tough thing to break through. That's why they call it
a divide. Yeah. Well that's where two tech time plates
to come together and form a mountain range and like
that's you're cutting through not one, but two tech time plates.
Everybody wrap your head around that. Seriously, let's talk about it,
(05:51):
because obviously we were successful eventually. But the first attempt
was not in the first attempt, it was by the French, yeah,
who in the eighteen twenties, I believe, started to undertake
a what is known as a sea level canal, which
is basically they were going to cut their way straight
through the Isthmus of Panama. That's right. And canals were
(06:12):
all the rage at the time because of steam technology.
So all of a sudden you didn't have to use
the very cool and quaint towpath and have a mule
walk alongside of a river or canal. Well, yeah, a
lot of them now are like jogging trails and stuff,
you know, which you know, that's great, it makes for
good us exactly. I don't see any mules on them
(06:34):
these days. But it's great that people can use these
topas now too, you know, it's like a nature trail. Yeah, um, yes,
So the steam technology gave the French the idea that
hey man, we can we can build a sea level
canal here because we can just dig right through it.
We have steam. We don't need the mules for the
tow paths any longer. All we need is some good
(06:56):
steam shovels. We're gonna cut right through this continental divide,
right through this jungle. And as a result of this ambition,
twenty thousand people died. Yeah, and um, they were able
to you know, get a little, a little far thanks
to the railroad there in Panama. Believe it or not,
it was the first railroad in the world to connect
(07:16):
both sides of a continent. Wasn't very big, but it
didn't need to be, which is kind of great. But
that allowed the French to get in there. They were
deciding between Nicaragua and Panama at the time. Um, and
they said, like you said, we can do sea level,
we don't need these locks. Yeah. If you look at
a map of Nicaragua and look at Panama, like the
(07:37):
idea of going through Nicaragua over Panama is just nuts. Yeah,
and we'll explain how the locks work. But it essentially
just raises and lowers your ship right for sure, in
a little like bay station of water that's flooded and
then drained. Actually, that's how a lock works. So the
French organized this thing called the company Universal Duca Now
(07:58):
enter they cute and uh, led by a guy named
Ferdinand Lesseps who had created a sea level canal through
the Suez that connected the Mediterranean and the Red Seas.
It was a big deal. So they brought him in
and he's like, sure, we'll do another sea level canal.
I'm feeling good about this. Like I did the Suez
Canal with my eyes closed, exactly, Like I can do
(08:20):
this with one arm tied behind my back. Well, he
didn't realize was that digging through a bunch of sand
is not like digging through two tectonic plates and a
bunch of jungle and malaria. Uh. And like I said,
twenty thousand people died as a result of this. Like
this guy was like, no, we can do it. We
can do it. We're gonna do a sea level canal.
We can do it. And then finally it was like,
I don't think we can do this. It was too late.
(08:42):
A lot a lot a lot of people were dead
from yellow fever, in malaria, from accidents. Um. It's privately financed,
so a lot of people lost a lot of money too. Exactly.
This company goes under well, he tried to salvage it though.
First he tried to hire Gustav Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, right,
and said, hey, I think we need those locks after all, um,
(09:04):
and you're good at building big steel things, so can
you help? And he was like, of course I can.
And then it was too late though that the business
was done right, and they had done a little bit. Well,
they had done a lot, Like they made eleven miles
of canal up to that point. Not bad, it's about
a quarter of the way there, right, But this was
the when did they start chuck the eighteen Yeah, so
(09:27):
chuck as we understand it, they started in the eighteen
twenties and this thing went bust by nineteen o two,
I believe. Well that's when Congress. I mean they were
busts before that, but that's when the US stepped in
and said, hey, we'll buy your junk. Oh I'm sorry.
Eight So in like sixties, about sixty years they they
(09:49):
had managed to dig eleven miles of canal, build a
bunch of buildings. They had a lot of equipment and
supplies there. Um, and yeah, the US said, we smell
a really really great opportunity. And congres said, let's spend
some cash. We're feeling good about things these days, where
we annexed Hawaii recently Puerto Rico, Philippines. What else, How
(10:10):
why not take over this very ambiscious project. Why it's
the American century by now, and we can stick it
to the French at the same time. Exactly, So they
did this in nineteen o two, UM with the one
stipulation that said, you know what, you guys have to
Columbia controls Panama right now, and you guys have to
work out a deal with them. And we tried and
(10:31):
that failed. So he said, you know what, We're just
gonna overthrow Columbia then and give the control to the Panamanians. Yeah,
they we supported this Panamanian independence movement and yeah, threw
off the shackles of Columbia. And Columbia is like, what
did you just do? Because we gain control of that.
(10:52):
We we followed that congressional mandate and gain control of
this Panama Canal zone. Basically, the swath uh that went
through Panama was considered American soil thanks to a treaty
UM from my believe nineteen o two, the hey Bunal
Varia treaty UM where Panama signed over the canal zone.
(11:13):
There was no Spanish translation of this treaty. Yeah, so
basically the U S went in over through Colombian control
of Panama, supported Panamanian independence and then rob Panama of
its canal one fell in like a year, yeah, and
Columbia is like, well, just I guess we'll just start
exporting cocaine and massive exactly, we'll get you back one day.
(11:33):
So um. In the end, they paid about forty million
bucks in nineteen o four for the assets of this
French company, just a lot of money back then, and
about ten million dollars um as this very cheeky article
by the way, did you notice um they offered they
she referred to it as um alimony of sorts to
(11:55):
Panama ten million bucks to get gain the rights to
this canal zone. And basically, hey, we're gonna run the show.
We're gonna finish your canal from the eleven mile mark
to the you know, to the ocean where it belongs.
And like you said, I think there was a certain
amount of snub to it, right, probably so um, but
they said, you know what we gotta do first, though,
(12:17):
is we have to decide on if we can go
sea level. Um, like, was it just the French were
incompetent or is it really impossible to do sea level? Yeah,
like we need to do our own due diligence basically,
And they did that, and Theodore Roosevelt chose chief engineer
John Frank Stevens, and he was like, it's all about
the locks, dudes. If you want to canal here, you
(12:37):
can have to go over these mountains, not through them. Right.
So here's the thing. And this is just brilliant because
there was another problem with this isthmus And there's this
thing called the Chagres River and it is very temperamental.
It was prone to flooding. All sorts of crazy stuff
associated with this river. So not only did you have
(12:59):
the continental divide, the jungle and the malaria to deal
with once you completed it, what were you gonna do
with this river? Stevens came up with this great idea
that you go over the mountains, and you go over
the mountains. You killed two birds with one stone by
damming the river, and you create a lake that will
carry you over the mountains. Like, yeah, I'm sure that's
not pronounced correctly. Think about that. That is one of
(13:20):
the most brilliant feats of engineering I've ever heard of,
the Panama Canal. Yeah, but that's specific aspect of it
damming the river to create a lake so you can
go over the mountains. Yeah, that's just incredibly beautiful the
whole thing too. And at the time, dude in the
early nineteen hundreds is just like, it's amazing that they
could pull us off. Yeah, because they're all wearing like
knickers and stuff. Yeah, it's very there's some awesome documentaries
(13:43):
out there, by the way, you should watch. In fact,
there's one. There's one cool. Just go to the YouTube's
and uh, put in time laps Panama Canal and it
takes you the full route in like a minute and
a half. Nice and said eight to ten hours. And
it's kind of neat. You know. The boat goes in
and sinks and then not sinks but lowers and then raises,
(14:04):
and then it tools along in the lake for a
little while and then sinks and lowers and raises and yeah,
because it's like an eight to ten hour transit right
from from deep water to deep water eight to ten hours. Yeah,
depending on your boat. I guess once you finally get
clearance to go through. That's right, So he's damned up.
The river created got tuned lake. Um ships going towards
(14:26):
the Pacific kind of enter it uh Lemon Bay in
the Caribbean, go through a couple of locks upward and
just it's like walking up steps basically, except it's a
big boat and it's done with water. And then they
navigate through that lake for a little while and then
go towards Panama City through another series of locks and down, down,
down over the mountains and boom, you are connected to
(14:50):
the rest of the world. Right, So when they when
they um agreed on the lock method, they had one
other thing to handle. And that's why the scott is
maybe they were getting confused with locks meaning lakes, right,
maybe that's a bunch of locks. They're like, where are
all the locks? They're like they're right there. They're like, no,
but where are the locks? So there was one other
(15:13):
big problem that had leveled the French effort, which was
um yellow fever, which you can be immune to if
you're exposed to it in childhood, but if you're from
New York, you're not. So you go down to Panama
and you are stung by a mosquito and you die. Um.
The thing is, nobody knew that it was mosquitoes until
(15:34):
a guy named Ronald bross uh in seven studied mosquitoes
in India and found malaria present in their stomachs and
that it was transmittable through their saliva. Yeah, they didn't
know what it was. They were all sorts of different theories. Yeah,
they thought it was maybe from like unclean living whatever.
(15:55):
When they found out that it was the mosquitoes, they
that changed everything. So they to this really rigid um
anti mosquito uh program. They cleaned up the country basically
and basically eradicated came close to eradicating yellow fever in
the area, which paved the way for this lock system
to be built. Yeah, and you can thank Colonel William
(16:16):
Gorgas for heading up that sanitation squad. And um, yeah,
I mean it worked, and that was the key, because
you can't have your workers dropping dead of yellow fever
every day. You have to they have to drop dead
of landslides. Yeah. Even though a lot of these workers
were you know, poor black people. I think eighty five
percent of the people that died were black. Um, and
(16:37):
a lot of people still died, but it wasn't like
the dropping dead from yellow fever, you know. But it's
still a very dangerous project. Mudslides, all all sorts of drownings,
things like that. So we've got the the we've got
(17:23):
yellow fever licked. We've settled on the lock system, and
um John Frank Stevens is replaced by a guy named
Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Gothals and he was a lock
expert and he looked at the plan and he said,
you know what, We're gonna divide this up into three sections.
That makes perfect sense. It does. You've got the Pacific
section that's going to be working from Limon Bay, which
(17:46):
by the way, means lime in Spanish. Did you know that?
I did not. Uh. So they're working from Limon Bay
to the newly created Lake Gatun. Yeah that was the
Atlantic Division. Yeah, okay, you're right. So the Atlantic divis
is synonymous with the Caribbean um. And then so you've
got the Atlantic Division working from Gattuned to um or
(18:08):
Lemont to get tune. You have the Central Division. This
is the hardest part. Yeah, they're working in Lake Gatune
to basically create a channel through this Continental Divide. You
don't have to cut sea level, but you you don't
need to make sure these ships aren't gonna like run
around in a mountain. Um. And then you have the
Pacific Division, which is working from uh the end of
(18:30):
the Continental Divide pass which is Pedro Miguel locks down
to the Pacific, right, that's right. And like we said,
the railway, the Panamanium Railroad is there, and um, we
had like awesome gear at the time. It was no
longer you know, men with chisels and sledgehammers and stuff.
(18:51):
It was steam shovels, rock drills, dynamite and uh they
moved ninety six million cubic yards of earth and rock, right,
which is seventy three million cubic meters, that's right. And
uh it was really hot though, and it was a
pretty bad scene and they called that Hell's Gorge and
it was dangerous and that's where I think most of
(19:11):
the lives were lost on this second pass. Yeah, and
that was definitely the hardest work, but they made it through.
Um and by nine a crane that was used in
the construction of the Panama Canal was the first thing
to ever make it through all the way and they
were like sweet, yeah, and eight months later it was
(19:31):
open for business as far as I understand, Yeah, big business.
Um should we should we walk people through or I
guess swim people through? Yeah? I think we should. Okay, Uh,
you approach from the Atlantic, you go through the gattoon locks.
It's gonna lift your vessel up eighty five ft pretty awesome,
and take you to Gatun Lake. Very nice. There. You're
(19:54):
gonna wind through that channel for about twenty three miles,
then enter the Gallard cut about eight miles through there,
and you're gonna reach the Pedro Miguel locks, and then
they're gonna lower your ship about thirty feet to the
mirror floors lake. You're gonna pass through this, it's about
a mile long, and then the two steps mirror floors
locks are gonna return you finally back to sea level
(20:16):
to seven mile passage from there to the Pacific, And
all told, you've gone fifty miles in about eight to
ten hours. And um, mind bogglingly, I saw that it
takes fifty two million gallons of fresh water to move
a ship from one end to the other two million,
and they're getting all that from Lake Gatun. Yeah, and
(20:37):
it's just I imagine it's just recycled back into the system, right, No,
what is it? What happens to it? They lose it,
most of it. It's it's either pumped back in. It
either goes flows back into Lake Gatun or else it
flows out into the oceans, which is not necessarily good.
They're worried that Lake at Tune may become brackish and
(20:57):
like a Tune is now the freshwater supply of Panama
and it they're using a lot of it up. Yeah. Well,
it's always presented a bit of an environmental quagmire, especially
with their plans to expand, which we'll get to. But
right now they have two way traffic. Um. They're looking
to make that a three lane highway, which would actually
(21:18):
adding that third lane, um will double the amount of traffic. Yeah,
which is crazy. You would think it would increase it
by a third. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's wider.
Oh maybe it allows for two ships at a time.
They just jam like eight in there once. I don't know.
I do know that if you are a large enough ship,
they don't let you drive yourself because you know you've
(21:39):
got one drunk sea captain and all of a sudden,
your locks are out of commission, so they use electric
towing locomotives to tow those big bad boys. Right, And
we should say, just briefly, with the locks, if you
want to move a ship upward, you flow into a lock.
The lock closes behind you and it fills up with
water so that you can float over the lip of
(21:59):
the next higher lock that the gate closes behind you
with that one and it fills in with water, and
so on and so forth. Yeah, it's remarkably basic. Yeah,
and then the opposite takes place when you're stepping down. Yeah,
it's just basically going into a little square pool, raising
or lowering the water level so you can go up
or down. It's really neat. Yeah. And if you've got
a minute and a half to kill, you can take
(22:20):
this voyage in high speed on the YouTube. So uh,
Like we said, the US used gunboat diplomacy to and
I guess good old fashioned, old timey nineteen o two
swindling to gain control of the Panama Canal zone. And
it had complete control until nine nine when Jimmy Carter
(22:43):
um malaise forever right terrise that Simpsons, they unveil a
statue of Jimmy Carter and it says Malaise Forever on
the base and one of the townspeople goes, he's history's
greatest monster. Anyway, Carter negotiated with the leader of Panama
at the time, UH General Omar Terrios Herrera, and said, hey,
(23:06):
how is he like this thing back? Give us You
think they said, hey, we'd like this back. I like
to think of American magnanimous. Not sure. So we said,
you know what, we've had it for this long plus
plus we're talking Carter, it's entirely possible. He just started
contacting people and said, what's the US have that we
can sell or give back. It's a good point. Um.
(23:27):
So yeah, he he sold like one of the like
the presidential yacht was sold by him. I really yeah.
Why because he thought it was frivolous. That's awesome, um
and Panama Canal He's like, how about this, Let's get
rid of a significant portion of our economy. Anyway, he
gives it back after twenty years and on December thirty,
which is why I suspect they made it a twenty
(23:50):
year deal. Yeah, I mean they had to transition. You
can't just hand the keys over and be like all right,
send your crew in, right, but not only that, Like
why not a fifteen year deal or an eighteen year
deal or year deal. They went with twenty because it
was gonna end on December thirty millennium. Actually that didn't
start till two thousand one though, Right, yeah, but you know, okay,
(24:10):
it's symbolic, right, Okay, So the Panamanians take over and
um immediately start taking flak because the things aging traffics
jammed up. Yeah, they've done a good job with it, though,
it's it's just by nature of how things are. These
they are victims of circumstances. UM and five percent of
the world's trade goes through the Panama Canal. We sold
(24:32):
them a limit of a canal, right there. The millionth
ship UM went through in two thousand, ten hundred and
forty four thousand ships go through a year, and it's
a very narrow little strip. Yeah, you know what that means,
waiting in line, a lot of waiting in line. Plus
also there's an upper limit to the size ship that
can go through. It's called Panama Panamax is the is
(24:56):
the ship size. That's yeah, what a great name for
the guess ship that Panamax, what could be bigger than that? Well,
these ships that are called post Panama exactly, A lot
of shippers are like, you know what, I'm tired of waiting.
It's actually going to be more economical for me to
build a ship that can't go through the Panama Canal
but can hold a lot more and I'll just sail
(25:17):
around the lower part of South America. And um, that's
kind of increasingly happening. Plus, Nicaragua threatened to open their
own canal, So Panama says, okay, wait, wait, wait, let's
let's holl the referendum and see if we can expand
this thing and modernize it and save the canal. And
Panamanian said, yes, let's so in two thousand and six
(25:38):
they approved this third lane that's expected to be open
by two fourteen. That is Nicaragua still planning a canal.
I don't know. I don't know if that shot it
down or not. Well, and there's also talk now with
a northwest passage thanks to um what some people might say,
it's climate change and melting ice caps. There may be
a way to get there, um by land. Henry Hudson
(26:00):
is clapping in his grave. Um, So we'll see if
that happens. I don't know. I didn't get a chance
to really look into that research. And like, how real
is that? Right? Even still, the Panamanians will probably make
their UM five point to five billion investment back eventually,
although it took the US good forty years to make
(26:20):
four million back. Yeah, yeah, I think thee when they
finally broke even. Huh that's crazy. Yeah, And um, you
break even by charging a toll. I don't think we
even mentioned that. You obviously, like any way station or passage,
you gotta pay according to how what how much stuff
you got, right, It's like I think the record is
(26:43):
I looked it up. It was like a hundred fifty
or something. Yeah, they do it by ton in. The
thing is is if you are, um carrying a lot
of really expensive natural gas, right, you're gonna pay a
lesser toll than if you're carrying a bunch of less
expensive or even equally expensive coal, which isn't fair. And
if you're if you're transporting a lot of raw steel,
(27:04):
why should you pay more? So they're they're trying to
figure out a new toll system, especially for the newly
expanded version of the canal um that takes into account
the value of the of what's on board rather than
just the weight, right, So they should make a little
more money that way. Yeah. I don't know if this
is still accurate, but the record that I have is
(27:24):
a hundred and fifty three thousand dollars, six hundred and
fifty three thousand, six hundred and sixty two and the
cheapest was when a dude swam across it. Any weighed
like a hundred and fifty pounds, and so they charged
them what like thirty cents. Yeah, that back in Richard
Halliburton and he swam the Panama Canal, and I guess
it was some sort of publicity stunt. I'm sure people
(27:46):
love doing stuff like that back then. Yeah. But if
you look at this um this high speed route on YouTube,
it's pretty neat and there's a lot of times you're like, oh,
look out for that boat, and then it turns you're like, okay,
so there's a lot of activity out there. Yeah, you know,
it's not a pleasure cruise. Well no, and it's not
one ship at a time. They have, like you said,
(28:07):
two way traffic, right, that's right, and they try to
keep them going through as efficiently as possible. And I
should say also, um, the the um the new locks
that they have can serve about six of the water used,
so they'll address a lot of environmental concerns hopefully. I
got a couple of little facts here if you're interested. Uh,
(28:30):
the entrance to the canal in the Atlantic side is
twenty two and a half miles west of the Pacific entrance,
which is interesting because it has a unique S shape.
And then, um, the locks themselves are seven ft thick each,
So if you're wondering how to keep out that much water,
(28:50):
like to to basically damn up the oceans, you need
to do it with seven foot thick concrete. Um. The
workforce is paname in right now, which is pretty great.
And uh, it's about all. I got. Sixty million pounds
of dynamite was used to construct this thing. That's some
nice stats. Chuck, Yeah, it's not bad. Cool You got
(29:13):
anything else then? No, all the rest of these are
kind of boring. Panama Canal forever. Uh. If you want
to learn more about the Panama can now, you can
read this very good article on how stuff works dot
com type in Panama Canal or turning a run canal.
See what happens when you do the ladder. Um, Chuck,
hold on, let's let's take a message break. Huh, it
(29:52):
is time for a listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call
this one listener mail about listener mail. Hey guys, I'm
currently on the seven train heading to Queens for Manhattan
after a long day of working as an auditor at
a C p A firm. Um, as usual, I'm listening
to your podcast. This time it was the death Mask episode,
and you're concluding with a listener mail. And this is instance.
(30:14):
It was from Martha regarding peak oil. And I think
Martha was talking about the auditing of oil reserves. And
he says this to Marda. She was correct for the
most part, regarding the audit of oil reserves held by
entities whose stocks may be publicly traded on the stock market.
Just one thing. I was so a gas by that
I felt I needed to type this from my phone
(30:36):
as I'm on the train. Still, the SEC does not
perform any audits of its own on these companies. It
is firms like the one I work for that audit
these companies, albeit under SEC guidelines. Actually p C a
O B public company audit oversight board guidelines and if
you want to get technical, uh, the SEC may perform
(30:57):
a type of audit, but when they do, there you
really auditing an audit firm or an audit that has
already been done by an audit firm as part of
some kind of investigation. What So they'll audit an audit
like the SEC does an audit. So it's a long
and sort of it. I've said audit club finds. I've
actually been through one of these audits and it is
no fun at all. For some reason, it seems everyone
(31:21):
whom works at the SEC is what you stereotypically picture
as an accountant with no humor. Plus the word audit
loses all meaning when you hear it. That's right. I
digress though, Guys. If you pull up a ten K
annual filing for any public company, you can see in
the audit opinion the audit firm which performed the audit
for that particular year. I hope that clears things up.
(31:42):
Henrik Gomez and Henry I'm not sure if that cleared
it up, but um, if I was an accountant, I
would probably say, yes, very much clear things, very nice,
Thank you very much, Henry. That was very nice of
you to correct somebody who is correcting us. Yeah, and
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You gotta take that. Thank you.
Seven train man? Is that a terrible train? Do that one?
(32:02):
It's like it's the old red train that looks like
it's about to fall off. It's like the midnight Meat train. Yeah,
have you seen that? Now? What's midnight meat? That's a
midnight meat train. It's got Vinny Jones and Bradley Cooper
in it. It's actually based on a Clive Barker short story,
because that's an old joke between me and my friend
p J, who've met I believe. Yeah, he cookouts famously.
(32:23):
PJ is a great chef home chef, but he was
so he would typically take so long we referred to
his meals as midnight meat. And then I made a
joke about cold cooking a steak one time night because
it took like twenty four hours. Yeah, no, that's definitely okay.
This is not a slam on PJ. No, we love
the midnight Meat. Uh, if you have anything you want
us to know, if you want to correct somebody who's
(32:44):
corrected us, or you just want to say hi whatever.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com Slice Stuff
you Should Know. You can always find us on our
website Right that's right, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how Stuff Works dot com. H
Hey, everyone, hope you're having a good weekend. Chuck Bryant.
Here ho host of the podcast you're listening to, and
I am in charge with picking this week's stuff you
should know. Select episode. It is from April to two,
the day after April Fool's Day. But I don't worry.
This isn't how three D printing works. When I famously
fake quit and was replaced by Ben Bowling. No, no, no,
(00:23):
this is the episode about the Panama Canal. So interesting.
I love civic projects. I love huge, um unwieldy projects
that seem impossible to complete, and the Panama Canal was
and is that? So? I know you're gonna love this one. Everyone,
how the Panama Canal works. Welcome to Stuff you should
(00:44):
know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Uh with me is
always a child's w Chuck Bryant. And that's if you
should know the podcast. The two of us together, a
couple of mincs, our voices. You know what I've been
(01:06):
singing all day, of course, Panama over and over and
I just whistled it and Jerry was, well, now I
got that stuck in my head. Yeah. When we were
growing up, my sister I was singing it and I
realized that she was singing turn and Run? Like what
what she's like that song? That Van Halen song, like
don't be an idiot? She thought that's what they were saying. Yeah,
(01:27):
that's so interesting because there's so many misinterpreted song lyrics
famously over the years, but I never have heard Panama
as being one of them. Yeah, especially since the song
is named Panama. Yeah parentheses, turn and run? Right, Maybe
they were talking about the people who were working on
the early French effort to build a canal and Panama. Yeah, boy,
(01:48):
that didn't go over so well. We'll get to that, okay, spoiler,
the French didn't build the Panama Canal. I thought we
were gonna get to it right now. All right. Do
you want to talk about Da Gama Balboa? Which one?
Which one is? George Costanza's favorite explorer was a da
Gama or Balboa? O? Man, it was one of the two?
(02:11):
Da Gama, was it? Yeah? I think so? Okay, Um
that was a funny conversation though, Um so, Yeah. Balboa
back in the day was was wandering around in a
region called Darien and he summoned to the peak there
and was like, holy cow. If I look this away,
I see the Pacific Ocean, and if I look at
(02:32):
that a way, I see the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean.
And the only thing between these two big bodies of
water it's this little isthmus of land. Yeah. I'm gonna
have a lot of trouble with that word. That's okay,
just say strip, okay. So the strip of land here
is the only thing in between, and we should figure
out a way to use this as a as a thoroughfare. Yeah, yeah,
(02:56):
because this is it. This connects the world us exactly.
At the time, the Spanish we're trying to trade with
the um Chinese and we're doing a pretty good job
of it in the Philippines, and the best way to
get to that was to come across the Atlantic and
go into the Pacific. It worked very, very well. And
(03:17):
the idea of just having a place where you could
go straight through rather than go all the way down
South America and then back up it was just mind boggling.
It's like you said, it opened up the world. This
guy got it immediately. The problem was it would take
about four dred more years before anyone finally got around
to completing it successfully. Well, yeah, and forget the rest
(03:40):
of the world. The United States just like, Hey, I
want to ship this by boat from New York to
San Francisco. How can I do that? I can just
like kind of sneak around Florida, right Nope, blocked? Right, Well,
then what do I gotta do? You gotta go eight
thousand miles nautical miles around South America to get to
California or um, you know when you and I were
(04:01):
in Nicaragua, we were in a town that in the
nineteenth century was a way station for minor forty niners
going on to California, and um, they would sail on
to Nicaragua, take a train, and then ship out from
Nicaragua up to California. Except the handful that was like
I think I might just kick it here exactly. Yeah,
I bet you there were some du oh, definitely, I'm sure. Um,
(04:22):
but yeah, there was there was a continent in the way,
in the idea that it was just this little narrow
strip of land that that made a lot of people
say this is the place to be. In the sixteenth
or know, the eighteenth century, the Scottish showed up. They
tried to establish an outpost, failed spectacularly. Yeah, that's there's
a great um section in about it. Yeah. Um, the
(04:47):
Spanish were there, the French were there. Uh, they established
pretty good outposts there. It was very clear that this
little area which was then part of Colombia is now
present day Panama, was going to be a hoping spot
because there was no thinner portion of the North or
South American continents than this one, and everyone needed to
figure out a way to get through. Yeah. And it
(05:09):
wasn't as easy as like, hey, let's just dredge all
this sand and let the waters meet, because that's not
too hard. It's like dense jungle and mountains and the
continental divide. Yeah, so it's it's My first thought was like,
how hard could it have been? I didn't realize how
treacherous that area was. Yeah, and I think that, um,
that Balboa and a lot of people who succeeded him,
(05:30):
I thought the same thing, like how hard is it?
But it is like, that's that continental divide. That's a
tough thing to break through. That's why they call it
a divide. Yeah. Well that's where two tech time plates
to come together and form a mountain range and like
that's you're cutting through not one, but two tech time plates.
Everybody wrap your head around that. Seriously, let's talk about it,
(05:51):
because obviously we were successful eventually. But the first attempt
was not in the first attempt, it was by the French, yeah,
who in the eighteen twenties, I believe, started to undertake
a what is known as a sea level canal, which
is basically they were going to cut their way straight
through the Isthmus of Panama. That's right. And canals were
(06:12):
all the rage at the time because of steam technology.
So all of a sudden you didn't have to use
the very cool and quaint towpath and have a mule
walk alongside of a river or canal. Well, yeah, a
lot of them now are like jogging trails and stuff,
you know, which you know, that's great, it makes for
good us exactly. I don't see any mules on them
(06:34):
these days. But it's great that people can use these
topas now too, you know, it's like a nature trail. Yeah, um, yes,
So the steam technology gave the French the idea that
hey man, we can we can build a sea level
canal here because we can just dig right through it.
We have steam. We don't need the mules for the
tow paths any longer. All we need is some good
(06:56):
steam shovels. We're gonna cut right through this continental divide,
right through this jungle. And as a result of this ambition,
twenty thousand people died. Yeah, and um, they were able
to you know, get a little, a little far thanks
to the railroad there in Panama. Believe it or not,
it was the first railroad in the world to connect
(07:16):
both sides of a continent. Wasn't very big, but it
didn't need to be, which is kind of great. But
that allowed the French to get in there. They were
deciding between Nicaragua and Panama at the time. Um, and
they said, like you said, we can do sea level,
we don't need these locks. Yeah. If you look at
a map of Nicaragua and look at Panama, like the
(07:37):
idea of going through Nicaragua over Panama is just nuts. Yeah,
and we'll explain how the locks work. But it essentially
just raises and lowers your ship right for sure, in
a little like bay station of water that's flooded and
then drained. Actually, that's how a lock works. So the
French organized this thing called the company Universal Duca Now
(07:58):
enter they cute and uh, led by a guy named
Ferdinand Lesseps who had created a sea level canal through
the Suez that connected the Mediterranean and the Red Seas.
It was a big deal. So they brought him in
and he's like, sure, we'll do another sea level canal.
I'm feeling good about this. Like I did the Suez
Canal with my eyes closed, exactly, Like I can do
(08:20):
this with one arm tied behind my back. Well, he
didn't realize was that digging through a bunch of sand
is not like digging through two tectonic plates and a
bunch of jungle and malaria. Uh. And like I said,
twenty thousand people died as a result of this. Like
this guy was like, no, we can do it. We
can do it. We're gonna do a sea level canal.
We can do it. And then finally it was like,
I don't think we can do this. It was too late.
(08:42):
A lot a lot a lot of people were dead
from yellow fever, in malaria, from accidents. Um. It's privately financed,
so a lot of people lost a lot of money too. Exactly.
This company goes under well, he tried to salvage it though.
First he tried to hire Gustav Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, right,
and said, hey, I think we need those locks after all, um,
(09:04):
and you're good at building big steel things, so can
you help? And he was like, of course I can.
And then it was too late though that the business
was done right, and they had done a little bit. Well,
they had done a lot, Like they made eleven miles
of canal up to that point. Not bad, it's about
a quarter of the way there, right, But this was
the when did they start chuck the eighteen Yeah, so
(09:27):
chuck as we understand it, they started in the eighteen
twenties and this thing went bust by nineteen o two,
I believe. Well that's when Congress. I mean they were
busts before that, but that's when the US stepped in
and said, hey, we'll buy your junk. Oh I'm sorry.
Eight So in like sixties, about sixty years they they
(09:49):
had managed to dig eleven miles of canal, build a
bunch of buildings. They had a lot of equipment and
supplies there. Um, and yeah, the US said, we smell
a really really great opportunity. And congres said, let's spend
some cash. We're feeling good about things these days, where
we annexed Hawaii recently Puerto Rico, Philippines. What else, How
(10:10):
why not take over this very ambiscious project. Why it's
the American century by now, and we can stick it
to the French at the same time. Exactly, So they
did this in nineteen o two, UM with the one
stipulation that said, you know what, you guys have to
Columbia controls Panama right now, and you guys have to
work out a deal with them. And we tried and
(10:31):
that failed. So he said, you know what, We're just
gonna overthrow Columbia then and give the control to the Panamanians. Yeah,
they we supported this Panamanian independence movement and yeah, threw
off the shackles of Columbia. And Columbia is like, what
did you just do? Because we gain control of that.
(10:52):
We we followed that congressional mandate and gain control of
this Panama Canal zone. Basically, the swath uh that went
through Panama was considered American soil thanks to a treaty
UM from my believe nineteen o two, the hey Bunal
Varia treaty UM where Panama signed over the canal zone.
(11:13):
There was no Spanish translation of this treaty. Yeah, so
basically the U S went in over through Colombian control
of Panama, supported Panamanian independence and then rob Panama of
its canal one fell in like a year, yeah, and
Columbia is like, well, just I guess we'll just start
exporting cocaine and massive exactly, we'll get you back one day.
(11:33):
So um. In the end, they paid about forty million
bucks in nineteen o four for the assets of this
French company, just a lot of money back then, and
about ten million dollars um as this very cheeky article
by the way, did you notice um they offered they
she referred to it as um alimony of sorts to
(11:55):
Panama ten million bucks to get gain the rights to
this canal zone. And basically, hey, we're gonna run the show.
We're gonna finish your canal from the eleven mile mark
to the you know, to the ocean where it belongs.
And like you said, I think there was a certain
amount of snub to it, right, probably so um, but
they said, you know what we gotta do first, though,
(12:17):
is we have to decide on if we can go
sea level. Um, like, was it just the French were
incompetent or is it really impossible to do sea level? Yeah,
like we need to do our own due diligence basically,
And they did that, and Theodore Roosevelt chose chief engineer
John Frank Stevens, and he was like, it's all about
the locks, dudes. If you want to canal here, you
(12:37):
can have to go over these mountains, not through them. Right.
So here's the thing. And this is just brilliant because
there was another problem with this isthmus And there's this
thing called the Chagres River and it is very temperamental.
It was prone to flooding. All sorts of crazy stuff
associated with this river. So not only did you have
(12:59):
the continental divide, the jungle and the malaria to deal
with once you completed it, what were you gonna do
with this river? Stevens came up with this great idea
that you go over the mountains, and you go over
the mountains. You killed two birds with one stone by
damming the river, and you create a lake that will
carry you over the mountains. Like, yeah, I'm sure that's
not pronounced correctly. Think about that. That is one of
(13:20):
the most brilliant feats of engineering I've ever heard of,
the Panama Canal. Yeah, but that's specific aspect of it
damming the river to create a lake so you can
go over the mountains. Yeah, that's just incredibly beautiful the
whole thing too. And at the time, dude in the
early nineteen hundreds is just like, it's amazing that they
could pull us off. Yeah, because they're all wearing like
knickers and stuff. Yeah, it's very there's some awesome documentaries
(13:43):
out there, by the way, you should watch. In fact,
there's one. There's one cool. Just go to the YouTube's
and uh, put in time laps Panama Canal and it
takes you the full route in like a minute and
a half. Nice and said eight to ten hours. And
it's kind of neat. You know. The boat goes in
and sinks and then not sinks but lowers and then raises,
(14:04):
and then it tools along in the lake for a
little while and then sinks and lowers and raises and yeah,
because it's like an eight to ten hour transit right
from from deep water to deep water eight to ten hours. Yeah,
depending on your boat. I guess once you finally get
clearance to go through. That's right, So he's damned up.
The river created got tuned lake. Um ships going towards
(14:26):
the Pacific kind of enter it uh Lemon Bay in
the Caribbean, go through a couple of locks upward and
just it's like walking up steps basically, except it's a
big boat and it's done with water. And then they
navigate through that lake for a little while and then
go towards Panama City through another series of locks and down, down,
down over the mountains and boom, you are connected to
(14:50):
the rest of the world. Right, So when they when
they um agreed on the lock method, they had one
other thing to handle. And that's why the scott is
maybe they were getting confused with locks meaning lakes, right,
maybe that's a bunch of locks. They're like, where are
all the locks? They're like they're right there. They're like, no,
but where are the locks? So there was one other
(15:13):
big problem that had leveled the French effort, which was
um yellow fever, which you can be immune to if
you're exposed to it in childhood, but if you're from
New York, you're not. So you go down to Panama
and you are stung by a mosquito and you die. Um.
The thing is, nobody knew that it was mosquitoes until
(15:34):
a guy named Ronald bross uh in seven studied mosquitoes
in India and found malaria present in their stomachs and
that it was transmittable through their saliva. Yeah, they didn't
know what it was. They were all sorts of different theories. Yeah,
they thought it was maybe from like unclean living whatever.
(15:55):
When they found out that it was the mosquitoes, they
that changed everything. So they to this really rigid um
anti mosquito uh program. They cleaned up the country basically
and basically eradicated came close to eradicating yellow fever in
the area, which paved the way for this lock system
to be built. Yeah, and you can thank Colonel William
(16:16):
Gorgas for heading up that sanitation squad. And um, yeah,
I mean it worked, and that was the key, because
you can't have your workers dropping dead of yellow fever
every day. You have to they have to drop dead
of landslides. Yeah. Even though a lot of these workers
were you know, poor black people. I think eighty five
percent of the people that died were black. Um, and
(16:37):
a lot of people still died, but it wasn't like
the dropping dead from yellow fever, you know. But it's
still a very dangerous project. Mudslides, all all sorts of drownings,
things like that. So we've got the the we've got
(17:23):
yellow fever licked. We've settled on the lock system, and
um John Frank Stevens is replaced by a guy named
Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Gothals and he was a lock
expert and he looked at the plan and he said,
you know what, We're gonna divide this up into three sections.
That makes perfect sense. It does. You've got the Pacific
section that's going to be working from Limon Bay, which
(17:46):
by the way, means lime in Spanish. Did you know that?
I did not. Uh. So they're working from Limon Bay
to the newly created Lake Gatun. Yeah that was the
Atlantic Division. Yeah, okay, you're right. So the Atlantic divis
is synonymous with the Caribbean um. And then so you've
got the Atlantic Division working from Gattuned to um or
(18:08):
Lemont to get tune. You have the Central Division. This
is the hardest part. Yeah, they're working in Lake Gatune
to basically create a channel through this Continental Divide. You
don't have to cut sea level, but you you don't
need to make sure these ships aren't gonna like run
around in a mountain. Um. And then you have the
Pacific Division, which is working from uh the end of
(18:30):
the Continental Divide pass which is Pedro Miguel locks down
to the Pacific, right, that's right. And like we said,
the railway, the Panamanium Railroad is there, and um, we
had like awesome gear at the time. It was no
longer you know, men with chisels and sledgehammers and stuff.
(18:51):
It was steam shovels, rock drills, dynamite and uh they
moved ninety six million cubic yards of earth and rock, right,
which is seventy three million cubic meters, that's right. And
uh it was really hot though, and it was a
pretty bad scene and they called that Hell's Gorge and
it was dangerous and that's where I think most of
(19:11):
the lives were lost on this second pass. Yeah, and
that was definitely the hardest work, but they made it through.
Um and by nine a crane that was used in
the construction of the Panama Canal was the first thing
to ever make it through all the way and they
were like sweet, yeah, and eight months later it was
(19:31):
open for business as far as I understand, Yeah, big business.
Um should we should we walk people through or I
guess swim people through? Yeah? I think we should. Okay, Uh,
you approach from the Atlantic, you go through the gattoon locks.
It's gonna lift your vessel up eighty five ft pretty awesome,
and take you to Gatun Lake. Very nice. There. You're
(19:54):
gonna wind through that channel for about twenty three miles,
then enter the Gallard cut about eight miles through there,
and you're gonna reach the Pedro Miguel locks, and then
they're gonna lower your ship about thirty feet to the
mirror floors lake. You're gonna pass through this, it's about
a mile long, and then the two steps mirror floors
locks are gonna return you finally back to sea level
(20:16):
to seven mile passage from there to the Pacific, And
all told, you've gone fifty miles in about eight to
ten hours. And um, mind bogglingly, I saw that it
takes fifty two million gallons of fresh water to move
a ship from one end to the other two million,
and they're getting all that from Lake Gatun. Yeah, and
(20:37):
it's just I imagine it's just recycled back into the system, right, No,
what is it? What happens to it? They lose it,
most of it. It's it's either pumped back in. It
either goes flows back into Lake Gatun or else it
flows out into the oceans, which is not necessarily good.
They're worried that Lake at Tune may become brackish and
(20:57):
like a Tune is now the freshwater supply of Panama
and it they're using a lot of it up. Yeah. Well,
it's always presented a bit of an environmental quagmire, especially
with their plans to expand, which we'll get to. But
right now they have two way traffic. Um. They're looking
to make that a three lane highway, which would actually
(21:18):
adding that third lane, um will double the amount of traffic. Yeah,
which is crazy. You would think it would increase it
by a third. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's wider.
Oh maybe it allows for two ships at a time.
They just jam like eight in there once. I don't know.
I do know that if you are a large enough ship,
they don't let you drive yourself because you know you've
(21:39):
got one drunk sea captain and all of a sudden,
your locks are out of commission, so they use electric
towing locomotives to tow those big bad boys. Right, And
we should say, just briefly, with the locks, if you
want to move a ship upward, you flow into a lock.
The lock closes behind you and it fills up with
water so that you can float over the lip of
(21:59):
the next higher lock that the gate closes behind you
with that one and it fills in with water, and
so on and so forth. Yeah, it's remarkably basic. Yeah,
and then the opposite takes place when you're stepping down. Yeah,
it's just basically going into a little square pool, raising
or lowering the water level so you can go up
or down. It's really neat. Yeah. And if you've got
a minute and a half to kill, you can take
(22:20):
this voyage in high speed on the YouTube. So uh,
Like we said, the US used gunboat diplomacy to and
I guess good old fashioned, old timey nineteen o two
swindling to gain control of the Panama Canal zone. And
it had complete control until nine nine when Jimmy Carter
(22:43):
um malaise forever right terrise that Simpsons, they unveil a
statue of Jimmy Carter and it says Malaise Forever on
the base and one of the townspeople goes, he's history's
greatest monster. Anyway, Carter negotiated with the leader of Panama
at the time, UH General Omar Terrios Herrera, and said, hey,
(23:06):
how is he like this thing back? Give us You
think they said, hey, we'd like this back. I like
to think of American magnanimous. Not sure. So we said,
you know what, we've had it for this long plus
plus we're talking Carter, it's entirely possible. He just started
contacting people and said, what's the US have that we
can sell or give back. It's a good point. Um.
(23:27):
So yeah, he he sold like one of the like
the presidential yacht was sold by him. I really yeah.
Why because he thought it was frivolous. That's awesome, um
and Panama Canal He's like, how about this, Let's get
rid of a significant portion of our economy. Anyway, he
gives it back after twenty years and on December thirty,
which is why I suspect they made it a twenty
(23:50):
year deal. Yeah, I mean they had to transition. You
can't just hand the keys over and be like all right,
send your crew in, right, but not only that, Like
why not a fifteen year deal or an eighteen year
deal or year deal. They went with twenty because it
was gonna end on December thirty millennium. Actually that didn't
start till two thousand one though, Right, yeah, but you know, okay,
(24:10):
it's symbolic, right, Okay, So the Panamanians take over and
um immediately start taking flak because the things aging traffics
jammed up. Yeah, they've done a good job with it, though,
it's it's just by nature of how things are. These
they are victims of circumstances. UM and five percent of
the world's trade goes through the Panama Canal. We sold
(24:32):
them a limit of a canal, right there. The millionth
ship UM went through in two thousand, ten hundred and
forty four thousand ships go through a year, and it's
a very narrow little strip. Yeah, you know what that means,
waiting in line, a lot of waiting in line. Plus
also there's an upper limit to the size ship that
can go through. It's called Panama Panamax is the is
(24:56):
the ship size. That's yeah, what a great name for
the guess ship that Panamax, what could be bigger than that? Well,
these ships that are called post Panama exactly, A lot
of shippers are like, you know what, I'm tired of waiting.
It's actually going to be more economical for me to
build a ship that can't go through the Panama Canal
but can hold a lot more and I'll just sail
(25:17):
around the lower part of South America. And um, that's
kind of increasingly happening. Plus, Nicaragua threatened to open their
own canal, So Panama says, okay, wait, wait, wait, let's
let's holl the referendum and see if we can expand
this thing and modernize it and save the canal. And
Panamanian said, yes, let's so in two thousand and six
(25:38):
they approved this third lane that's expected to be open
by two fourteen. That is Nicaragua still planning a canal.
I don't know. I don't know if that shot it
down or not. Well, and there's also talk now with
a northwest passage thanks to um what some people might say,
it's climate change and melting ice caps. There may be
a way to get there, um by land. Henry Hudson
(26:00):
is clapping in his grave. Um, So we'll see if
that happens. I don't know. I didn't get a chance
to really look into that research. And like, how real
is that? Right? Even still, the Panamanians will probably make
their UM five point to five billion investment back eventually,
although it took the US good forty years to make
(26:20):
four million back. Yeah, yeah, I think thee when they
finally broke even. Huh that's crazy. Yeah, And um, you
break even by charging a toll. I don't think we
even mentioned that. You obviously, like any way station or passage,
you gotta pay according to how what how much stuff
you got, right, It's like I think the record is
(26:43):
I looked it up. It was like a hundred fifty
or something. Yeah, they do it by ton in. The
thing is is if you are, um carrying a lot
of really expensive natural gas, right, you're gonna pay a
lesser toll than if you're carrying a bunch of less
expensive or even equally expensive coal, which isn't fair. And
if you're if you're transporting a lot of raw steel,
(27:04):
why should you pay more? So they're they're trying to
figure out a new toll system, especially for the newly
expanded version of the canal um that takes into account
the value of the of what's on board rather than
just the weight, right, So they should make a little
more money that way. Yeah. I don't know if this
is still accurate, but the record that I have is
(27:24):
a hundred and fifty three thousand dollars, six hundred and
fifty three thousand, six hundred and sixty two and the
cheapest was when a dude swam across it. Any weighed
like a hundred and fifty pounds, and so they charged
them what like thirty cents. Yeah, that back in Richard
Halliburton and he swam the Panama Canal, and I guess
it was some sort of publicity stunt. I'm sure people
(27:46):
love doing stuff like that back then. Yeah. But if
you look at this um this high speed route on YouTube,
it's pretty neat and there's a lot of times you're like, oh,
look out for that boat, and then it turns you're like, okay,
so there's a lot of activity out there. Yeah, you know,
it's not a pleasure cruise. Well no, and it's not
one ship at a time. They have, like you said,
(28:07):
two way traffic, right, that's right, and they try to
keep them going through as efficiently as possible. And I
should say also, um, the the um the new locks
that they have can serve about six of the water used,
so they'll address a lot of environmental concerns hopefully. I
got a couple of little facts here if you're interested. Uh,
(28:30):
the entrance to the canal in the Atlantic side is
twenty two and a half miles west of the Pacific entrance,
which is interesting because it has a unique S shape.
And then, um, the locks themselves are seven ft thick each,
So if you're wondering how to keep out that much water,
(28:50):
like to to basically damn up the oceans, you need
to do it with seven foot thick concrete. Um. The
workforce is paname in right now, which is pretty great.
And uh, it's about all. I got. Sixty million pounds
of dynamite was used to construct this thing. That's some
nice stats. Chuck, Yeah, it's not bad. Cool You got
(29:13):
anything else then? No, all the rest of these are
kind of boring. Panama Canal forever. Uh. If you want
to learn more about the Panama can now, you can
read this very good article on how stuff works dot
com type in Panama Canal or turning a run canal.
See what happens when you do the ladder. Um, Chuck,
hold on, let's let's take a message break. Huh, it
(29:52):
is time for a listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call
this one listener mail about listener mail. Hey guys, I'm
currently on the seven train heading to Queens for Manhattan
after a long day of working as an auditor at
a C p A firm. Um, as usual, I'm listening
to your podcast. This time it was the death Mask episode,
and you're concluding with a listener mail. And this is instance.
(30:14):
It was from Martha regarding peak oil. And I think
Martha was talking about the auditing of oil reserves. And
he says this to Marda. She was correct for the
most part, regarding the audit of oil reserves held by
entities whose stocks may be publicly traded on the stock market.
Just one thing. I was so a gas by that
I felt I needed to type this from my phone
(30:36):
as I'm on the train. Still, the SEC does not
perform any audits of its own on these companies. It
is firms like the one I work for that audit
these companies, albeit under SEC guidelines. Actually p C a
O B public company audit oversight board guidelines and if
you want to get technical, uh, the SEC may perform
(30:57):
a type of audit, but when they do, there you
really auditing an audit firm or an audit that has
already been done by an audit firm as part of
some kind of investigation. What So they'll audit an audit
like the SEC does an audit. So it's a long
and sort of it. I've said audit club finds. I've
actually been through one of these audits and it is
no fun at all. For some reason, it seems everyone
(31:21):
whom works at the SEC is what you stereotypically picture
as an accountant with no humor. Plus the word audit
loses all meaning when you hear it. That's right. I
digress though, Guys. If you pull up a ten K
annual filing for any public company, you can see in
the audit opinion the audit firm which performed the audit
for that particular year. I hope that clears things up.
(31:42):
Henrik Gomez and Henry I'm not sure if that cleared
it up, but um, if I was an accountant, I
would probably say, yes, very much clear things, very nice,
Thank you very much, Henry. That was very nice of
you to correct somebody who is correcting us. Yeah, and
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You gotta take that. Thank you.
Seven train man? Is that a terrible train? Do that one?
(32:02):
It's like it's the old red train that looks like
it's about to fall off. It's like the midnight Meat train. Yeah,
have you seen that? Now? What's midnight meat? That's a
midnight meat train. It's got Vinny Jones and Bradley Cooper
in it. It's actually based on a Clive Barker short story,
because that's an old joke between me and my friend
p J, who've met I believe. Yeah, he cookouts famously.
(32:23):
PJ is a great chef home chef, but he was
so he would typically take so long we referred to
his meals as midnight meat. And then I made a
joke about cold cooking a steak one time night because
it took like twenty four hours. Yeah, no, that's definitely okay.
This is not a slam on PJ. No, we love
the midnight Meat. Uh, if you have anything you want
us to know, if you want to correct somebody who's
(32:44):
corrected us, or you just want to say hi whatever.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com Slice Stuff
you Should Know. You can always find us on our
website Right that's right, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how Stuff Works dot com. H
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