The French Failure of The Panama Canal
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See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. Apple intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Hello, everyone. Sakuya here. I'm Gabby. And welcome back to the podcast, my hoes. Welcome back. Oh, my God. It's been an insane week this week. I don't even know where to really begin with all this. Did we do anything this week or did everything do us? It's kind of a mix of that. Gabby, we're going to take your videos as inspiration for that.

Okay. That is not how we operate. Basically, yesterday, he was living his life, you know, trying to do his recording. And midstream, his computer just dies. I mean, completely dead. The computer that uses every single day for every single thing.

Yeah. I don't know. We checked the CPU. We checked the GPU. I checked thermals. I checked every single thing you could imagine. We're going to scrap it for parts. Like, I'm not trying to deal with it. I'm so confused. So, yeah, that was a fun expense to have here at the middle of the week. But you know what? Here we are. And now we are making videos and making everything. And you know what? I am happy with life. That is exactly what I am. You know who is not happy with life? All the people who died making the Panama Canal.

What a segue. What a segue. I didn't know what else to do. Wait, didn't we do an episode on the Panama Canal already? No. I mean, here's the thing. We've talked about the Panama Canal. There's a key reason why.

why I am doing this. Okay. We are not talking just about the Panama Canal. We're talking about the French part of the Panama Canal because I've talked about the Panama Canal and what was done with Columbia because here's the thing. Here's the thing. We, if I recall correctly, we did an entire section that was on US intervention. And one of the things that happened is that the United States basically

launched a rebellion or helped a rebellion inside of Colombia to break away Panama, which created the modern state that we have today of Panama. And that is that that's why the Panama Canal exists. How about we do an episode on all of the unrest we've launched in order to get what we want? I say we, but I mean, the U.S. government.

I've done a thing on sneaky CIA shenanigans before, or at least the weird things they've done. I could definitely do a thing on like US coups around the world and what has actually happened because there have been a number of things. I mean, the Cold War was a wacky period. Is it legal to do a coup on another country? Okay, define legal.

Is it frowned upon? It is frowned upon, yes. So how do we keep getting... We can't keep getting away with this. I mean, in some ways you can. It's also, there's the whole thing of plausible deniability. And there's really a thing of like, if you're supporting someone, does it mean that you actually coup the government? Or does it mean that you're supporting an entity that is actually rising up against a dictator? And it's, there's a lot of, listen, politics and geopolitics especially, there's a lot of gray areas. I'm telling you this right now.

So, though, the reason that I'm even bringing up this, the reason why we're doing all this is because the Panama Canal is back in the news. For anyone who follows along with my YouTube channel, I've done a lot of stuff with the geopolitical developments that have happened here under Trump. And I will tell you this right now. I will say this to you all so that you hear it from me directly. I do not get political.

I do not tell people what they should believe. I do not tell people what they should think. I should not. I do not tell people even what I believe on things. What I do for my channel on YouTube is I explore the history that led to why we are where we are today. And so when I say this statement of Trump makes interesting things happen.

That is not me giving an endorsement or condemning him. It is just a mere fact of saying, oh my God, so many things happen in the world every single time this man comes on the screen. Literally every single minute of every single day, my phone news app is like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I'm like, please, I just lay down to sleep.

Yes. So in this case, we are talking about the Panama Canal, which has been in the news lately because for the past several months, President Trump has been talking about taking it back from Panama. And in social media posts and remarks to supporters, Trump would go and accuse Panama of charging the U.S., quote, exorbitant rates to use the canal. And he even hinted at growing Chinese influence over this crucial waterway, something that Panama, mind you, has fiercely denied. But...

If you saw the video that I put out on YouTube, that whole saga may be coming to a close. I did an entire episode on the drama involved in all of it. So if you want to go and check that out, definitely do so. But really, the entire thing was a mess. And that is just part of the modern day and age.

Anyway, in that video, if you are coming from that video, as I know I told people in it that I was going to be doing this for a podcast episode, I did say that I wanted to do a full episode on the history of the canal because I really only scratched the surface of the sheer amount of crap that happened to get this thing underway. We are talking about thousands of deaths, bankruptcy, foreign intervention, and a rebellion. Yeah, this thing is messy.

So by all means, sit back, buckle up, and let's dive into this, my friends. Today, we're going to be diving into the monstrosity that was the French attempts to set up the Panama Canal. Now, when I talk about this, because a lot of people are going to get a little confused that they don't know the history in the background, they think, okay, well, the Panama Canal, American.

The Americans are the ones that set this up. Yes, technically speaking, but the idea of creating a water passage across the isthmus of Panama to link the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, that is something that goes back not just decades, not just the past century. We're talking many centuries back to the 1500s when Panama was first being settled in the first place by Europeans.

In 1513, 10 years after the first European ship sailed along the isthmus of Panama, you had the Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Baboa, who put together an expedition to cross the isthmus. He had heard about the ocean that was on the other side and the land bridge that, you know, existed and all the gold that was supposedly there.

So he took a party of more than 100 Spaniards, and these were the first Europeans to learn a key feature about the Isthmus of Panama that apparently no one in the 1800s really processed when they were trying to set things up in the first place. It's a jungle. For anyone who has not been to the Caribbean and the southern part here and Latin America right around the Central American region, it is quite literally a lot of jungle.

So the expedition would struggle for four weeks with torrential rain, disease, and a very difficult landscape without any actual natural paths. Because, go figure, it's a jungle. They covered the distance of around 100 kilometers in the south of Panama near today's border with Colombia before it is that they reach the Pacific Ocean.

Ultimately, in the end, his expedition was a success. He did find gold. He heard rumors about more gold. He discovered a whole new ocean to explore. Balboa was, he did succeed. The only problem was there wasn't a literal way to actually access the newly discovered ocean, but still this path that they tracked could be exploited. So in the year 1519, this is where you have a very important milestone. A city on the Pacific Ocean gets founded.

Panama, and a road was built to link it to the existing port in Nombre de Dios in the Atlantic Shore. 4,000 natives were forced to work on a track which was around 80 kilometers long, and this was about... It's not too long, it's like a couple meters wide, and it was something that was partially covered with stones and river crossings, which was facilitated with simple log bridges. Not anything fancy. If you've ever seen...

any kind of stereotypical old exploration show and like the rope bridges and stuff of trekking through the jungle. Basically, imagine this. And while it was basically nothing more than a little jungle path, this Camino Real, which is what it was called, this was the key infrastructure that enabled the Spanish to fully conquer and exploit Central and South America. Because

Since the early days. Do you know what the strategy of the Spanish was? Gabby, you as a Trini girl, you I'm sure learned extensively about their modus operandi. Is that? Modus operandi? It's operandi, is it not?

What did they do? What did the Spanish do? I don't know. They saw it. They like it. They took it. You know what? That is the best description you could possibly give. I was really trying to channel like Ariana Grande where it's like, I see it. I want it. I buy it. Like, you know, that one song. Yeah. And they did that except with a lot more like murder.

that that was definitely something that did happen here the um the spanish pretty much moved into the area and any and all gold or silver or in general riches that they could get steal and then carry away they absolutely would there was as such because the majority of things they were trying to take was literal precious items like gold and other stuff you don't need to transport

big items then, right? It's literally precious metals. You can keep that in smaller amounts. And because there's no large volume of basic goods, that trail that they had was pretty much all you needed.

So about 10 to 15 years later, the Camino Real was supplemented by the Las Cruces Trail. This jungle trail was about half the length and went from Panama to the settlement of Las Cruces on the Chagras River. And then from there, people and goods would be transported on simple boats to the Caribbean Sea at San Lorenzo. And this was pretty much how things operated. And when I say operated, I mean for 300 years. That's what they did.

Panama was the base for Spanish activities on the Pacific coast in South America, and after the initial exploration, conquistadors like Pizarro would discover and conquer the Inca Empire in 1531 and 1532.

And all the gold, all the gems, all the silver, all the everything that was taken from the Incas, that was transported back north. It went through Panama. It crossed the jungle. It went to Nombre de Dios. And then from there, it got on a ship and it went to Spain. This was only the beginning of the Isthmus of Panama. And it was easily the most important transport hub in the entire Spanish Empire.

So in 1545, not long after the conquest of the Inca Empire, you have the town of Potosi that was founded in the remote highlands of Bolivia. And this place, oh my god, it was the mining settlement for the Cerro Rico, the rich mountain, the world's largest silver deposit. For more than 200 years, this something is something that was mined extensively and the silver would make its way up north through Panama and then from there it would get on a boat. But first,

Caravans of mules and llamas would make a trek 700 kilometers long all the way to the port of Areca in what is today Chile. And from Areca, it would ship around 5,000 kilometers to Panama. And from there, you would have storehouses and mule stables that were built for transportation. And that's how you did it.

Around 1600, when the silver flow reached its peak, 8 million pure silver pesos were shipped through Panama. This is about 200 tons of silver and 2,000 mules were required to carry this cargo. From there, the Spanish treasure fleets would take the riches back to Europe and that was it. No further developments were deemed to be necessary or really even possible because again, we're talking about a literal jungle at this point.

That's how it operated. And if you remember when we did all those things talking about Charles V and the Spanish treasure fleet and his wars of conquest in Europe and how they were fueled by this treasure...

This is exactly what I'm referring to. Absolutely. I remember all of that. Yes. In great detail. In extensive detail, I am sure. Yes. Because Charles V was, you know... Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Ebbgliss.

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The fifth guy. The moment I said that, the moment I put you were going to say, yeah, the fifth one was that guy. So here's the thing.

A major route across the mountainous tropical terrain was basically deemed impossible at the time. They may have wanted a canal. They may have wanted easier access. That just wasn't going to happen. The idea was highly desirable because if you could get a potential shortcut from Europe to Eastern Asia, that would be

ludicrously big. The only other route to sail around or other route to get to Asia at that point was to sail all the way south around what is today Argentina and then Chile through the Strait of Magellan. And then from there, make your way east, which is a very long, very expensive and very dangerous path in the first place.

That means that the land route basically remained a jungle trail and the dominant form of transportation until the 1800s, like the mid-1800s when a railway was made. And then the French came. Yes, my friends, this is where things get really interesting and go very wrong. Very wrong, very fast. And it all starts with one guy called Ferdinand de Lesseps.

Now, Ferdinand de Lesseps, this guy, it kind of sucks what happens to him. I'm spoiling this right now. You will already know that the French kind of fail. But does he die? No, it's just it's worse because it's worse than death. It is because you're kind of honor your reputation. All of this is pretty much everything for a lot of these guys. And in his case, he was before all of this, basically a hero.

You remember how I've talked about it before in the Victorian age and really over the course of the 1800s heading into the late 1800s, early 1900s? The idea that Europeans had was like, oh, we have technology. We can do anything and everything. Yes. He had that same mentality that a lot of people did without really understanding that there are limitations and without proper planning and foresight, things will go very, very wrong.

See, he's famous. He was an international celebrity because he is the guy who built the Suez Canal through Egypt, something that connected the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. And so when he announced that a sea level canal in Central America was going to allow for just stupid amounts of trade and riches from Asia, unprecedented opportunity.

People were going to listen to him. After all, this guy had succeeded in something that no one else ever had. The Suez Canal? That was massive. The only reason, in fact, I haven't done an episode on the Suez Canal is because the whole thing was actually extremely easy, relatively speaking. So in 1875, the Lesseps was approached by the Société Civile Internationale du Canal Introsynique de Dariens, which is from French, basically, you had the...

civil society, like the International Civil Society of the canal to connect the two oceans, which I know I'm portraying that in the first place. This is talking about the Darien, like the Darien Gap and the thing that connects North America and South America.

This is also known as the Tör syndicate, which was something that was formed to promote the building of an interoceanic canal across Panama. Its directors were the Hungarian freedom fighter Istvan Tör, a financier called Jacques de Renac, and Tör's brother-in-law, Lieutenant Lucien Bonaparte Wise.

Between 1876 and 1878, Bonaparte Wise and Armand Reclus would investigate a number of different possible routes across Panama and see if they could figure out where exactly they wanted to get a canal.

What would end up happening is that Bonaparte Wise would go all the way to Bogota, Colombia, where he would obtain a concession from the Colombian government in order to build a canal across Panama in 1878, something known as the Wise Concession. This would be valid for 99 years and would allow the company to dig a canal and then exploit it.

So in May of 1879, the Lesseps would convene an international congress in Paris. And from there, they were going to figure out whether or not it would be possible to get a shipping canal across Central America. There would be 136 delegates that would go to this thing from 26 different countries. Now, when you have a...

What would I even call this? Like a tech convention? When you have some of these, you typically think of industry leaders that go to these kind of conventions and things, right? Yeah. In this case, not necessarily.

Of the 136 delegates, only 42 of them were engineers or people that were experienced with any kind of engineering thing. The remainder were politicians, speculators, investors, and friends of de Lesseps. So de Lesseps used the Congress to promote fundraising for the scheme that he preferred, which was to build a sea canal across Panama, which was pretty much the exact same thing that was done with the Suez Line.

De Lesseps was able to gain approval of a majority of the delegates for his plan, despite a number of reservations expressed by some who preferred a canal in Nicaragua, which was significantly flatter, or who emphasized the likely engineering difficulties and health risks posed by the region. But following the Congress, De Lesseps, at age 74, mind you, he is 74 years old at the time, would organize a company to construct the canal, the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Intouiss unique de Panama.

The company would buy the Wiseman concession from the tourist syndicate, and then it would move to raise funds through stocks. You know, like when you have the initial offering when a company first goes public? Yeah. That's what they were doing. And the thing is, in France, this was so wildly successful because anyone who was looking at investing, this wasn't like major companies. This wasn't like major governments. This was real.

Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of small investors that pooled together their resources specifically to invest in this because they looked at it and went, well, this guy did the Suez Canal and that Suez Canal has made people rich. We should do the same. And so they did. So how do they make money from building? They charge people to use the canal or? Yes, you literally pay a fee to use the Suez Canal.

How do they track everyone who goes through it? Is it like, are they gay? Yes, actually. We'll actually get into that here. But the way that the Suez Canal works now is that there are a series of locks. Because here's the thing that you're going to figure out from this. The Panama Canal is not level. Unlike the Suez Canal, like from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, which was basically flat.

The Panama Canal goes up and down elevations because the land itself is not at sea level. It is quite literally mountainous and jungle filled and it's not flat. So they have a series of locks that you go into and the water raises or lowers depending upon where you are, where you then sail into the next position. That sounds slow moving. It is slow, but in comparison to sailing around South America, it's

It's all the world's difference. Have they heard of speedboats? Yeah, except it wouldn't work in here unless you try to speed. I don't think you'd get a speedboat fast enough that you'd be able to launch off a ramp from one side and land onto the other side. Because the thing is 80 kilometers long. It's 51 miles, 80 kilometers. I just meant speedboat around South America. Not speedboat on the...

Oh, no, I completely misunderstood. I completely. But that's how I like where your head's at. Yeah. Yeah. This is also the 1800s and they don't have speedboats. Right. Right. Right. Minor setback. It's a little minor setback. So the investment scheme was so successful. They reached the funds that they needed and sold out in three days.

That's it. That is all that it took. They sold out investment spots? Yep, they sold out investment spots to the point that they accidentally oversubscribed and they had more stocks released than they actually had stock for, I guess. I don't understand how stocks work. Aren't they all made up so you could just say it's fine? Well, back in the day, it would have been even messier because none of it was digitized.

Anyway, so they were able to raise considerable funds from small French investors on the basis that they were going to make huge profits just like they did with the Suez Canal, and they were wrong. Oh my god, they were so incredibly wrong. Because of Lesseps' recent triumph building the Suez Canal, he was able to attract a lot of public support for building a sea-level canal across Panama. Sea-level. Again, as I already said, it is really important to note here, that proposal was protested very strongly by anyone who...

knew what the hell Panama was actually like. And in particular, Adolphe Gordon de Lepinay, who was the Baron de Bruceley and an engineer who had recently studied the Isthmus.

Lepine knew that the surface features at Panama would not allow for just a flat canal to be built. The continental divide, which was nine miles from the Pacific, the torrential Chagras River, which flowed into the Atlantic, and the smaller Rio Grande flowing into the Pacific, all these rivers were suitable for creating artificial lakes that could be used instead, because if you dug everything flat, it just wasn't going to work.

I really thought the entire time you're saying Le Penet like the pasta. I'm like, damn, what a name. Yeah, I know. I know I'm butchering everything as well because it's all French names in the first place.

Anyway, this guy in 1879, he proposed a more practical plan for building a canal, calling for a dam at Gatun and another at Miraflores, letting the waters rise to form two lakes that would be about 80 feet high and would join the lakes by cutting across the continental divide and then connect them to the oceans through a series of locks.

Now, Le Penet's conception, his idea, this would eventually establish him as an architectural and engineering genius. And he is the guy that his design is what the actual Panama Canal of today is based off of. Unfortunately for the French, they all basically ignored him at the time. And the company decided to go forward with the other idea.

Making good on his promise to dig the first spade of earth for the Panama Canal on January 1st of 1880, de Lesseps would organize a very special ceremony at which his young daughter, Ferdinanda Lesseps, would do the honor of turning the first sod. The ceremonial act was supposed to take place at the mouth of the Rio Grande, which was scheduled to become the Pacific entrance for the future canal.

And so, on the designated day, but later than the time that they were supposed to, the steam tender, the tabagria, would take Lesseps and his party of highly distinguished guests, the varying different politicians, the investors, the other people who wanted to attend, three miles onto the side of the Rio Grande where the ceremony would take place, following appropriate feasting and festivities on board.

However, since the guests had arrived late and delayed the tabagia, the Pacific Ocean tide had already receded so that the vessel was not actually able to land at the site that they were supposed to. But Lesseps was like, guys,

Guys, don't worry about it. This is not a problem. And undaunted, he came up with another solution. He bought a very special shovel and a pickaxe with him from France for the occasion that he wanted to use. And since this whole thing was supposed to only be symbolic anyway, he had his daughter go and strike the ceremonial pickaxe in a dirt filled champagne box.

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Like they just got a champagne box they brought with them. They filled it with dirt. And then on this boat at this location, they just stuck it into the dirt. I mean, I get it. I'm not saying it's right, but I get it. Honestly, if you want to say that this whole thing is symbolic of what you're going to hear about afterwards, you'd be right.

The Lesseps then decided, okay, well, we are going to need to do another ceremony, something that would inaugurate the section of the canal that would have the deepest excavation. They cut through the continental divide at Culebra. A ceremony was arranged, and on January 10, 1580, appropriate officials and guests gathered at Cerro Culebra, later known as Gold Hill, for the ceremony, which would include witnessing a blast from an explosive charge to break up a basalt formation below the summit.

After blessings from the local bishop, which yes, they had a literal priest come by and bless the ceremony, young Ferdinand would again perform the honors, pushing the button of the electric detonator, setting off the charges, which would then blow everything up, sending a bunch of debris and rock and dirt into the air. And that is how they began. Here's the thing. When I talk about de Lesseps and his origin in all of this,

You need to understand that this guy was not an engineer. Despite the fact that he was a national hero for doing the whole thing with the Suez Canal, he was a trained diplomat, not an engineer. Something that should probably be remembered with all the decisions that he actually made about the canal. His son, Charles, would then take on the task of supervising the daily work as a result.

then Lesseps himself would handle the important work of promoting and raising money for the project from private subscription, basically issuing out more stocks for people back in France.

Not having any scientific or technical knowledge at all, the Lesseps instead relied on just this kind of belief and faith in society and technology. Like literally, this is the exact thing that I'm talking about when it came to the Victorians, that they basically believed that they could do anything because it's the modern day and age. Like, you know how, you know how when people talk about stuff for social arguments and they go, well,

Well, it's 2025. It's this year. It's X current year. You know what I mean? Yeah. They basically did the same thing, except instead of referring it to social issues, it was any kind of technological feat. Like, of course we can do this. We have the technology. It's 1887 after all. That's funny. And that's kind of how they proceeded. Yeah.

So the big thing is that he believed that even if they ran into any issues, that the technology or people or whatever would come along, they would be able to save him. And his confidence was something that would attract a lot of investors because they firmly believed in his vision. You really this was the guy who could speak to a crowd and really make them believe that he knew what he was talking about, except he didn't. Here's the thing.

Remember how I talked about how there was a railroad there before? Yeah. They built in like the 1850s. This was the thing that was crucial at the time in order to be able to transport goods. And De Lesseps was aware that this railroad was very important to the work and that control of that thing was going to be vital. So it was gained by the French in August of 1881, but it cost them a lot of money. $25 million. We're talking a third of the entire company's resources.

Now, strangely, though, despite buying the railroad, the railroad was never used properly to its full potential to actually move material from the site and excavation to places where it would be deposited. You're going to understand. Remember how you always look at me and you go, Stephen?

Work smarter, not harder. You don't need to go back and forth four times carrying this. You can just do this one thing and make one trip and not have to worry about it. Yeah. Yeah. They did not do that. Their big thing was basically throwing whatever technology, whatever manpower, whatever they could think of at a situation instead of actually behaving smarter to know how to do it properly.

And that, again, is the thing that you're going to see. Seeing as they ignored the guy who was like, hey, this idea won't work because it's not flat. I just didn't have very high hopes for that. Oh, yeah. No, it's going to get way worse because now at this point we're getting into disease. I'm sure you're going to appreciate this. Hold on. We're trying to remember here. Was it yellow fever? Yes. Didn't you say that your grandmother was it? Did she was that yellow fever that she had or was that a different one?

I don't remember, but I know she got a fever that damaged her heart. Yeah. This is a brutal thing for people who don't understand the severity of a lot of tropical diseases. As the workforce increased, and we're talking tens of thousands of workers are there in the jungle in the 1800s with basically no understanding of modern medicine and prevention. Remember, bacteria and whatnot have not been discovered yet. They don't know about any of that. They don't know about how things are actually transmitted.

It was a different kind of, oh no, the belief was still not widely... I'm getting distracted from here at this point. Anyway, they didn't really have an understanding of diseases or viralness. At this point, they actually did have a belief when it came to viruses and bad earth that if they dug up certain things, it would release from tropical environments the bad smelling earth and bad ground which carry disease and that is what would get people sick. Not the actual other elements like mosquitoes.

So you're going to understand how painful this is here shortly. As the workforce increased, so did illness and death. The first yellow fever death would occur among the 1,039 employees in June of 1881, soon after the beginning of the wet season. A young engineer by the name of Etienne would die on July 25th, supposedly of brain fever. A few days later, on July 28th, Henri Bion would die. And this is something you have to understand about this guy.

Holding degrees in medicine and law, as well as being a significant international finance authority, this was a guy who was really important for the operation. He had arrived from France to make a personal inspection for De La Seps, and several of the engineers had arranged for a dinner in his honor at the employee's dining hall at the camp at Gamboa. This was a whole party, apparently.

And Bjorn, being the last to arrive, had come into the hall just as everyone was being seated. And one of the guests, who was a Norwegian woman, was exclaiming with great agitation that there were only 13 at the table. You know, like 13 as an unlucky bad number. And he said, and I quote, Be assured, madame, in such a case, it is the last to arrive who pays for all. Bjorn said gaily. He drank to our success on the Isthmus, as one engineer would recall. We drank to his good luck. Two weeks later, he was dead.

He died on a ship heading back to France of what the ship's doctor would only call fever. Not yellow fever, just fever. His body was buried at sea. His story would be repeated time and time again by so many people that would show up. And this is one of the things that you have to understand because I talked about this before with the history of Haiti.

The amount of people that would go into tropical or Caribbean environments, like in the case of Haiti and others, the sugar plantations, to make their fortune and then leave as soon as possible, it was because, go figure, disease would ravage people. By October, equipment and materials were arriving and accumulating in Cologne faster than they actually had a workforce that could be hired to use them in the first place. By December of 1881, the French had set up headquarters in Panama City at the Grand Hotel on Cathedral Plaza.

A banquet and ball in Panama City would mark the official beginning of the Culebra Cut excavation on January 20, 1882. It seemed pretty awesome, but no real digging was done.

Very little was ever actually accomplished because there was no organization whatsoever in the field. No one really knew what their orders were, how to properly follow things, what machines to use. They didn't have an actual company set up. If I could describe this, imagine just a bunch of guys being dudes going and digging a hole in the jungle.

And that is pretty much how I'm going to describe it. Engineers continued during survey and preliminary work, which was necessary to the project. And the crazy part is these surveys were happening as they were working. Do you know how things normally work when you're going to undertake a massive project? You do the surveys first, then you send over all the workers and equipment.

They were doing the surveys as they were trying to do the work and blow up the land. Well, that's not ideal. Exactly. So they had no like plan. They were just flying, winging it. They were basically just winging it and sending people in. They did have a plan, but their plan was a couple weeks in advance as they were getting engineers to go out and investigate the land in front of them as they were moving. So they had the, what is that? What was that chunk of land?

Oh, wait. I know what you're talking about. I can't remember off the top of my head. Oh, that's going to bother me now. Oh, my God. Anyway, we were talking about disease. Do you want to hear where it gets really bad and really stupid? In one of the most, not dumb events in history necessarily. I'm going to say unfortunate events in history. They have concepts of a plan. Yeah, they had concepts of a plan. Yes, there you go. Just as they had concepts of disease, which didn't really work out for how things actually transmitted.

See, on the Isthmus, the company would go and establish medical services presided over by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. The first 200-bed hospital was established in Cologne in March of 1882 because naturally they got a lot of sick workers. On the Pacific side, you had construction for L'Hospital Central de Panama, which was the forerunner of the Ancon Hospital, which was begun on Ancon Hill.

This is something that was dedicated six months later on September 17th, 1882. And from there, people began to be treated for sickness. The thing is,

With the fact that no one really knew how it is that yellow fever and malaria and everything were transmitted, no one really knew that mosquitoes were responsible. I know that. That hadn't been discovered. Well, yeah, they probably didn't know how it was transmitted, but they did know about bacteria. This is the 1800s, right? Yes. Because that's kind of... It's the late 1800s. Right. So they definitely for sure were coming around to germ theory. Yes, they were coming around to germ theory. And that was the whole thing that was happening in Britain there at the time, even if they didn't have a way to properly be able to treat it.

But they probably didn't know about mosquito theory. No, they did not. And the problem is here is that the French and the sisters that were taking care of the patients unwittingly ended up creating more suffering and costing more human life because the hospital grounds were set up with a variety of different vegetable and flower gardens. And in order to protect them from leaf-eating ants, waterways were constructed around the flowerbeds.

Inside the hospital itself, you had water pans that were placed under the bedposts in order to keep off insects because they didn't want insects crawling over the patient. So you know how there was that whole thing, Gabby, when we were talking about a thing to fight against bedbugs? Yeah. In order to stop that, you would put like the sticky pad that was under the bedpost. So as the bedbugs crawl from the carpet ground to get onto the bedpost to come up, they get stuck. But also you'd put like the poisonous powder all around the place.

or around the post. There's like multiple guys we had.

Side note. Let's just do like a little story time. Okay. We're about to drop some lore for you all. So you know our situation. Back in 2020, we moved into a new apartment. Keep in mind, we were living in his aunt's basement because we had no money to pay for our previous apartment because he had lost his job. It was like a whole thing. So we were living in his aunt's basement for a little bit. We finally started having no money to get an apartment. We got this apartment. We move in. Keep in mind, Joya's like, it's not even a year old yet. We moved in.

We move in a few weeks in there. He's like waking up every single morning covered in giant wells, like bug bites. And I'm like, Steven, like what's going on? Like something, something has to be wrong. Like every day was getting worse and worse. He was so swollen. It was so bad. I'm not getting bitten. So everyone's like, it's bedbugs. I'm like, there's no bedbugs because if there were bedbugs, I would look like he does. No, this man is just really allergic to bedbugs. And we had bedbugs.

dudes, it was so bad. So we called the apartment. We're like, hey, we move into this apartment and there's bedbugs. They send someone to like kill the bedbugs. We have to take everything and it's carpet. It's carpeted. So we have to take every single sheet and our one, not even a one-year-old, she's like eight months old, has so many stuffed animals. We have to like wash and then put everything through the dry cycle multiple times to potentially kill everything. Then seal them in trash bags. Then the bedbug company comes and sprays.

You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

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Get an expert now at TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax live full service. See guaranteed details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees. They come in, they spray. We still have bed bugs. Like two weeks later, they're like, in two weeks, you should know. Yeah, two weeks later, we still have bed bugs. So they come back out. They do the, we do the exact same thing all over again. Still have bed bugs. Eventually Steve is like, screw this. I'm so tired.

He just like goes out and buys all this anti-bed bug stuff. I mean, like it was a full on like chemical zone. I went to Lowe's and dropped about $200 in like varying different chemicals. And I didn't we did not have money. We didn't have money. No, we didn't have money. But like we had to we had to do something. And so he I don't know what he did. The cocktail that this man created abolished those bed bugs.

So well, we've never had the issue again. So if you need any bug fighting help, hit us up. See, he's got it. Stekui, podcaster, YouTuber, bed bug. Exterminator.

I just dropped my phone. I was laughing. Oh my god. That had your notes. Okay, well, we're doing great. It's midnight, guys. Anyway, yeah. So essentially, where was I? The bedpost? Yeah, the bedpost. Okay. That whole thing was to keep off insects. Here's the problem. They didn't have sticky pads. It wasn't like that. It was literal cups of water that were being placed under the bedpost. Do you know what a still cup of water is also perfect for? Mosquitoes.

Mosquito eggs. Guys, mosquitoes are... Oh my gosh. We have dengue fever back home. I don't know. I'm sure people get yellow fever probably. I don't know if anyone's gotten it recently, but dengue is the one we're afraid of. Like you see some still water, you panic.

So basically, this was a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes that carried yellow fever and malaria. And so when many patients who came to the hospital for other reasons fell ill with those diseases after they arrived, it got so bad to the point that if someone got sick, they just stopped going to the hospital. They didn't go to get care because they feared if they would go to the hospital, they would catch malaria and die, which was a very real reality. But...

What about people who didn't go anywhere and they still got sick? Oh, yeah. They could just die. You have to understand the fatality rate. Like literally thousands of people were dying from all this as time went on. And so for a time, organization was a complete and utter mess. Oh, also have to mention this in here. The majority of workers were Afro-Caribbean. So a lot of people that were coming over and dying and suffering from this were literally Afro-Caribbean, mostly from Jamaica.

That was the biggest percentage of workers. Anyway, for a time, organization was an absolute utter mess with just a constant loss of staff, either from disease or just straight up quitting. So you know how there's that whole thing in the military of the breakdown of the chain of command?

Yeah, because they had such a high turnover rate. You could never tell from week to week or month to month who your boss was, whether or not they were still alive, what was going on, who your team was, because at any given point, you could just be reshuffled into something else because all the people around you could be sick or dying. Like it's literally a breakdown of command. That's exactly what would happen.

So this was an absolute mess until the appointment of Jules Dingler as the new director general. He was an engineer with outstanding ability, he had a great reputation, he had good experience, and Dingler just did not care about the yellow fever threat. He completely wanted to just ignore it. And accompanied by his entire family, he would arrive in Cologne on March 1st, 1883.

Now, here's the thing. For a while, things were actually progressing pretty decently. Dry excavation work was progressing at Gleb Rakhut and was expected to finish by May of 1885. However, there was growing concerns about bank stability, as in, you know, the running out of money, and also the danger of slides. Here's what I mean.

At the Atlantic and Pacific entrances, dredges would work their way inland. Machinery came from many different areas, France, the United States, Belgium, and more. Equipment was constantly being modified to use in experimental combinations in order to try and clear things out. But mostly, the equipment was either too light or too small or just couldn't be brought in in the first place if it was too heavy.

And so a growing accumulation of discarded inoperative equipment along the canal is something that is further evidence of people not actually being prepared. It's kind of like, you know how when we would go on a trip and we would say, oh, well, we need this, we need that, we need this. And then it turns out we didn't need half the things that we ended up bringing. See, I don't have that particular problem because I always use my stuff. Okay, fair enough. Yeah.

This is a problem that I'm sure a number of people who are listening could probably relate to. Unless we're packing for Joy and then... Oh, no, we overpack. Actually, well, yeah, because it's a five-year-old. You don't know what she needs. She might wake up one morning and be like, you know what I need today? I need pink sparkly socks with unicorns on them. Girl, we only brought the blue ones. What do you mean? You need the pink ones. Fair enough. And so basically, this machinery was their unicorn socks. They had no idea what was going on. Anyway...

They employed a lot of people to get the stuff going. With around 10,000 people employed, work was going well, at least in September. Isn't it a good thing they sold so many stocks? Yeah, I mean, it kept them going for a while. That's the thing. If they had not sold as much as they did, this thing would have shut down so much earlier. So when does it shut down? Because I'm concerned.

to that. In September of 1883, the 10,000 people they had working was going pretty decent. The maximum force employed by the French at any one time was reached in 1884, that next year, when they had 19,000 people working. They were paid, right? Well, yeah, they were paid. Oh, I'm just wondering. And we're talking that the majority of this was with light machinery, pickaxes, shovels. Like, literally, this is what they were doing. The labor supply largely came from the West Indies, as I said, chiefly Jamaica. And...

This is how it progressed. But just as things appeared to be going well, everything went to shit for Dingler's family. First, his daughter, Louise, would die of yellow fever in January of 1884. A month later, his 20-year-old son, Jules, would die of the same disease. And if that wasn't enough, the daughter's fiancé, who had come with the family from France, also would then contract the disease and die. So that's not great. But was he okay? Initially.

He would persevere. He would keep up the pace with his work. He would go back with his wife to France on business in June. While sad, they still would return to the Isthmus, or at least he would, or no, they would return to the Isthmus in October, and they would bring with them a young and capable engineer by the name of Philippe Bernal Varela.

who was a man that later on, as you're going to see, was destined to actually do a great job. He was going to have a pivotal role in the history of the Panama Canal. He was assigned to work as a division engineer in the key work at Culebra and Pacific Slope Construction, and he was involved in dry excavation and dredging. The thing is, even if they brought back some good and young talent, tragedy was going to strike again. Dingler's wife would then die of yellow fever just about a year after his daughter and son.

He lost literally his entire family. He was devastated, but he stayed on with the job. Why, bro? Until June, where he then returned to France and never returned again. Like, homie. I know. After the first person died, I'd have been like, anyway, guys, so we're leaving. Yeah. So remember what I said, like, this is one of those things where it's like, there's a lot of tragedy that is involved in all this. Yeah, but like, there's also a certain level of knowing when to quit. Quitting while you're behind.

If you will. Yeah. And here's this goes back to the exact point that I talked about, that it's not this is not one of those things where it's like, oh, just the rich exploiting the poor and the people living up in the glass houses that are like glass high towers that are free from suffering like the people on the ground are. When you are in the tropics, it's almost like a plague. Mosquitoes don't care whether you are rich or poor.

they're going to come after you regardless. Well, if you get some good citronella and then a mosquito net over your bed, and then you make sure every time you go outside, you cover your body in citronella. We don't really use bug spray. We use like citronella oil. And then you make sure to wear long sleeves, long pants, boots. You just cover up. And that's good. That's good.

Unfortunately, the 1800s, they didn't really have the knowledge to nearly the same degree of what we have nowadays. Surely there was a citronella plant or somebody had some really stinky cologne. Oh, wouldn't it be funny if like a lot of French or something? So they had some cologne and then they were like the only one that the mosquitoes didn't go after.

Maybe it happened. I don't know. But it would be cool if it did. So anyway, Dingler goes and leaves. This means that Maurice Hutton is the next person that serves as director general. And he serves in that role for one month until he's forced to return to France for health reasons. Was it yellow fever? The new acting general at this point was 26 year old.

But now, Varilla, the guy that had been brought over before. He is 26 years old and he's in charge of the entire project now. That's fine. If you have, if you got the brain, you can do it. Now, he was a better leader than the previous guys. He did improve workers' morale. He did help move things along. But at the same time, despite doing so, things were still woefully inadequate.

They were still using hand cars for most of the work at Gleber on the Pacific side. And each of the five excavators that they had working on the Atlantic side could remove 300 cubic meters of soil each day. But they didn't have spoil trains in order to be able to actually remove said debris.

So what were they doing with the debris? Literally, oh my God, this is going to be the dumbest thing. All right. All right. All right. It's good. It's slight spoiler on here. But here's the problem that would end up happening. You know how there's mudslides like you've seen mud stuff or mudslides here before. Yeah. So they would have these dredges. They would dredge up the soil and all the area and they would move.

the soil by hand cart and they initially weren't using trains this is one of the things that they bought the train they literally did not use the train to transport soil like they should have to actually so they're just putting it to the side so it's like when you dig a little trench at the beach and you pile up all the stuff over so then you do get really it looks deeper than it is and then yep but did they move it far enough away so that it wouldn't no it's

Slide back in. They moved it away. But the rains. Yes, there you go. Now you see. It's the tropics. You are piecing this together. I don't have to piece it together. I grew up in the tropics. So they would move it away because naturally you don't want to just fall back into the hole. Right. So they would move it away, you know, several dozen or hundred yards or whatever. Like you would move it off to the side. But did they get lazy? No.

But the problem is, especially moving through the jungle, the amount of land that had to be cleared on either side in order to actually allow for that to happen was quite a bit. And then what would end up happening is that every time it rained, because it's the tropics, it would cause mudslides that would pour the soil right back in. Right back in, right? Yeah. But like, why would they do that? Yep.

Yeah. So they continued and they continued and they continued, but there just wasn't enough at the right time equipment. The equipment they had was too light and too small. There was too big of a turnover for labor because people kept on getting sick and dying or quitting and running away.

The spoil disposal system was horribly inefficient. It was terribly organized. It just didn't work. The dump areas were way too close to the excavation sites, which meant that the soil would just slide right back into the channel whenever the rains came. Drainage ditches that were built parallel to the canal did help, but it wasn't a lot. And the deeper the excavation was made, because remember, the land isn't flat. It is mountainous, meant that

The worse the slides became because they had to pile stuff up even higher. Making the slopes less steep by carving them back was another method of alleviating the slides. But that only added to the total amount of digging because instead of digging like 80 feet across, you would have to dig several hundred feet across in order to make sure that it wasn't too, it wouldn't slide. So that just meant more digging.

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This added to the total amount and the soil would just slide easily back into the channel. Okay, so they're using hand carts, which means they're like hand rail carts? Yes, hand rail carts and also literal like wheelbarrows, basically. At that point, why didn't they get some wheeled carts and get some animals? It didn't work very well. They did. They did use animals, but it

That doesn't work well. And here's the problem. You put a gravel pot down. I'm sure they can find some gravel. Like, use the train to bring in some gravel to give a little bit of traction. Yeah, you think, but it is more complicated. I mean, there's a lot of options and they're engineers. They're supposed to be the brightest minds. Come on. They can do better. And so the problem was all the soil that we're talking about removing, the soil would slide back into the channel. You know what wouldn't?

The clay, they would end up getting stuck and would break all their machines. Oh. Because it's not sand like Suez Canal. It's clay. And you've seen what happens when we have clay stuck to the shovel. Yeah. Yeah. It would break their excavators. It would break their machines. It would break all the things that they were dealing with. It's like really heavy. So mind you, they started back in like what, 1881? As of July of 1885, only 10% of the estimated total had been excavated.

In four years, they had done 10% and they were supposed to have the entire thing done in eight years. Ultimately, the problem of the slides was what was going to end up doing the entire thing. And all the while, the toll on human lives was just getting worse and worse and worse, peaking in 1885.

Yellow fever would come in two or three year cycles before was now constant. Malaria would take away even more. And because the sick avoided the hospitals whenever possible because of its reputation for getting people sicker, a lot of the death toll was never even recorded. People just died or disappeared. They were missing in action. They just never showed back up to work again. See, that worries me. Like, you know how some people live alone?

What if they like die and then nobody knows? Yep. That's like one of my fears. It's why I can't live alone. Sorry. That was so weird. It's a fair point. And here's the thing. A new director general called Leon Boyer would arrive in January of 1886, relieving Benavrila. But soon after, Benavrila himself would contract the yellow fever. Oh, my God. He doesn't die.

He doesn't. Okay, good. But, greatly weakened, he goes back to France in order to recuperate. Alright, that happens to him. Boyer would communicate to his superiors that he can do this. With enough time and with some cost limits, it would be something that

Could happen, but it was going to be basically impossible to construct a sea level canal. They were going to have to do something different. So where's the penny guy? Isn't he the one with the brilliant idea? I know. Does he come back? Yeah. I want to do like a mic job. I want to be like so like cocky about it.

You'll see. To soften the report that he sent back to Paris, he recommended the design proposed by Bonavrilla of a temporary lake and lot canal that could later, after it was built and functioning, be gradually deepened to sea level. So the basic idea was in order to, similar to what you have to do on a corporate level, is he told his bosses, in paraphrasing this, alright guys, what we are doing now is not going to work. We need to do this different thing. Corporate speak, but I don't want to do this thing. This is not what we agreed to do. Okay, but guys,

Don't worry, we'll set it up like this and then we'll just keep on digging down to eventually make it sea level. No, but he had to at least give that proposal in order to save face. Either way, it doesn't matter. By May, he's gone. Also because of yellow fever. So remember what I said, it's not just the poor. Like these are literally the leaders of the entire project, the director generals, and they have gone through...

What? Five at this point, I think. So the thing is, I'm like, oh, eventually someone would have noticed the mosquitoes, right? But it's the tropics and nobody was going to cover up because it's hot. Nope. Exactly.

So the job of provisional director would go to his assistant, uh, no lock pickle until another director general, a man by the name of Jacques here would arrive in 1883. And he was, or no, no, no. He would arrive after this, but he was the sixth one since 1883. So mind you, it's what 1885, 1886, I think at this point. So they've gone through six overall heads of the project in three years. That is how high the turnover rate is.

He gets appointed in July of 1886, a position that he would actually manage to hold until everything came crashing and burning down in 1888. It was becoming very obvious at this point that things were not going to work. But Ferdinand de Lesseps was still under the belief that no, this absolutely can be done. To everyone else, a sea level canal was out of the question. Only a high level lot canal had any hope of succeeding at this point.

And so under pressure from all sides, Lesseps would continuously say, no, we are doing the sea level canal until eventually after enough people forced him to see what was going on, he would finally agree to make a change.

Thing is, this was like a nine month process. He literally would deny them for nine months until he finally made that change. During that whole time, he still would say, oh, no, no, we're just we're just going to study alternate plans. Guys, we're going to study alternate plans. No, they were going to go back to the idea that they should have done in the first place. It was initially proposed because they said this exact thing would happen in the first place.

In October of 1887, the Superior Advisory Committee would release its report. The French engineers established the possibility of building a high-level long canal through the Isthmus of Panama, and the plan would allow a vessel to transit while at the same time permitting dredging of the channel at sea level sometime in the future. Basically, to save face, they're still going to go with the sea level plan at some point, but now they're going to do this as a temporary measure to at least get something to show for it. It was never intended to be permanent.

The Liceps would finally agree, and Benalverilla's idea was to create a series of pools in which floating dredges could be placed. The pools would then connect into a series of 10 locks, and the highest of these would be 170 feet. Work on the lock would start in January 15th of 1888, and Gustave Eiffel, recognize the name? Recognize the name? Eiffel Tower? Eiffel Tower. This is the guy who built the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He is now involved in this to construct the canal locks.

Does he get yellow fever? I don't think he does. No. But the waterway at this point would have a bottom width of 61 feet and they move on from there. The Galerid Cut, where the average level had been lowered only 3 feet in 1886, was lowered by 10 feet in 1887 and 20 feet in 1888. They actually started to make progress to lower things, ultimately bringing the level to 235 feet at the time the work was stopped. It's at this point that things actually begin to work.

Some areas of the canal were nearly complete. The Panama Railroad was being rerouted away from the cut, and the first lock was nearly ready to begin installation, with preliminary work on a dam that had been started. But then guess what? They ran out of money.

Can they sell more stocks? That's just it. They did try. A public subscription was asked for by Didliceps, but at this point, it is, what, seven years? No, no. It is 10 years since the initial offering, because I think they did this in 1879 is where they first tried, and people had really believed him at that point because he was a hero, but now he was a failure. And so when he asked his shareholders at their last meeting in January of 1889, they

They, instead of giving him the money, decided to dissolve the company. Everything was crashing and burning. Some aspect of the work would still continue on for a few more months, but by May 15th, 1889, everything had shut down and the company began the process of liquidation. In France, popular pressure on the government because of just how awful this was. And remember, this wasn't a series of companies that had invested in this. This was thousands of small investors had done this. Tens of thousands even.

They were so upset by the result that this whole thing called the Panama Affair led to prosecution of company officials, including Ferdinand and Charles de Lesseps, who were both indicted for fraud and maladministration. Advanced age and ill health would excuse the senior de Lesseps from actually going to court, but both were found guilty in the end and sentenced to five years in prison.

However, they were never actually sent to prison. They were sentenced, but the statute of limitations had run out, and so there was no actual way for them to go serve time. Charles, in a second trial for corruption, was indicted and found guilty of bribery, and months he had already spent in jail during the trials were deducted from his one-year sentence. Who was he bribing?

I don't know. Just in general, for things that would be for shareholders or to try and get equipment, they had a lot of interesting ways. Because here's the thing. When they were doing all this, they weren't just doing things by themselves. They were using contractors and subcontractors. So they often had to use money in order to grease palms of people to get things done. So you could say that. By this time, Fernando Lucep's mental state was so bad that the senior had no idea what was going on.

It's kind of a relief that all he remembered from himself was being a hero in the end. But whether it's from Alzheimer's or something else due to his advanced age, it reached to the point that he had no idea what was going on around him anymore, even in court. Huh. So he died at the age of 89 on December 7th, 1894, not knowing that the entire country hated him now. Charles, his son, would live on until 1923.

And this was actually long enough to see the Panama Canal completed by the Americans. At that point, his father's name was restored to honor and his own reputation was cleared. In the end, Lesseps was unfamiliar with the actual conditions of Panama, or he was unwilling to acknowledge that they were very different from the Suez Canal.

Unlike the arid desert of the Suez, Panama was a tropical jungle. It was filled with rainfall. It was filled with heat and humidity and tropical diseases. Topographic conditions along the proposed route would vary considerably and ranged from marshes to mountains and everything in between.

Despite actually having competent engineers, there was no real proper plan in place. The machinery used to dig the canal was either too light or it was ill-suited for the tough terrain. And disease would kill thousands of workers in this time. With some estimates, I'm trying to remember here in the first place for how many people were supposedly to have died because you see stuff from the American numbers. But if I recall correctly, the number varies from like, oh, a couple thousand to

to tens of thousands of workers died. It's that brutal. Things would eventually be completed. But I think we will probably maybe do the American part as a patron exclusive and go over the coup and exactly how that went down. Because I think I partially did that before, like what we talked about. Still, what is crazy to think, and this is an interesting alternate history suggestion, yeah, if the French had just listened

To the first guy, Lepiné, in the first place, if they had just gone with the lock idea, the Panama Canal would have probably been made and it would have been French. Like the French would have had control over one of the most vital waterways, which would have created a huge geopolitical strain between the United States and France. This is going to make me sound really dumb, but how can you sell a canal?

It was a temporary lease. So as I covered in my geopolitical video... Wait, who had the lease? So it was the Wise concession. The company was granted the territory by Columbia for a period of 99 years. Oh, so now it's just

Colombia owns it? No, now Panama does. Right. Because what ends up happening, spoiler alert. Wait, I'm still confused. Okay, yeah. Spoiler alert. Right, the coup. Yes. The people within Panama kind of wanted to be free from Colombia because Colombia in the years prior, like decades, many decades prior, actually early 1800s, had been a grand, powerful state that had taken over large parts of the northern reaches of South America. Is this in your video tomorrow? No. Well, no.

I do mention it. Yes, I do mention it. But I don't go into extensive detail because I don't need the stuff for the background for this. But it is part of it. Basically, the gist of it. And I sum it up very quickly in there. The Americans want to get in where the French left off. The Colombians at this point back out of the deal. They don't want to do it anymore. And so the Americans then go and say, hey, Panamanians, do you want to be an independent country? Yeah, we're going to support you.

And then they launch an intervention in order to basically cut off the railroad so that Colombia can't send reinforcements to put down the rebellion in Panama, which causes them to easily gain their independence. And then Panama leases the strip to America. For 99 years? I don't think it was for 99 years. I think it was indefinite at that point. So then how can it be sold now? Who's selling it?

It's not. You'll have to watch the video in order to understand. Wait, it's not being sold? It's not. But that's not what the news just said. I know. It's freaking news. Anyway, guys, are you actually going to leave us on a cliffhanger until... What if your management doesn't clear the video and it'll go off tomorrow? Tough luck. People got to wait. That's like so cruel. Wait, can I just go watch it on your laptop? Go watch it on my laptop. Okay. Sorry, guys. I'm going to leave you all on this one. Anyway, my friends, thank you all for joining us. I'll see you next time. Bye. Goodbye, guys.

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As a longtime foreign correspondent, I've worked in lots of places, but nowhere as important to the world as China. I'm Jane Perlez, former Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times. On Face Off, the US versus China, we'll explore what's critical to this important global relationship. Trump and Xi Jinping, AI, TikTok, and even Hollywood. New episodes of Face Off are available now, wherever you get your podcasts.