Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Tugboats: Pushing Their Way Around Since 1803 About this episode Tugboats are amazing because they do the dirty work without much recognition. Well that's changing today - ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY TUG!
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Transcript 10,702 words · 6 speakers
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0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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0:51 Speaker 03 Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.
1:36 Speaker 03 Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.
1:58 Speaker 02 Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.
2:06 Speaker 04 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:16 Josh Clark? Toot toot and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too for the present moment and this is Stuff You Should Know.
2:25 Speaker 05 That's right. Another listener request. These are just kind of pouring in now. Or rather, we're leaning on them more than we have before, I guess. Because they're great ideas, but this one came also from the live show in Atlanta.
2:38 Josh Clark? Yeah.
2:38 Speaker 05 And do you remember this guy? Do you remember his name?
2:40 Josh Clark? Yes, I do. It was Thomas because this episode is tugboats for Thomas.
2:46 Speaker 05 Tugboats for Thomas. And Thomas, I believe, worked on tugboats, suggested it. And this has turned out to be just a bread and butter Stuff You Should Know episode.
2:56 Josh Clark? Yeah, I remember when he was at the mic asking the question or making the suggestion, he kept moving around because he still had his sea legs.
3:03 Speaker 05 He's bumping into people. They're like, dude.
3:06 Josh Clark? So yeah, hopefully we'll do Thomas proud because we know a little bit about tugboats now after researching them for a little while. Big shout out to our friend Dave Ruse for helping us with this. You could do worse than going to check out Ruse's podcast, Bible Time Machine. And that has nothing to do with tugboats, but let's talk about that.
3:26 Speaker 05 That's right, because we're gonna, we're gonna sing the unsung like we like to do on the show because no one ever thinks about tugboats. You see them all the time. If you live near a harbor or vacation or visit cities that have harbors, you see those tugboats and those big ships and barges get all the, all the sexy headlines. But those tugboats are doing the yeoman's work. That's why they called them nautical laborers early in their, I guess, mission when they first started coming online on sea.
3:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, so we'll get to that in a minute about the history of tugboats because it actually goes back way further than you would think, or not as far as you'd think, depending on what you're thinking. But-
4:08 Speaker 05 1320?
4:10 Josh Clark? Nope, not that far.
4:12 Speaker 05 2020.
4:13 Josh Clark? But one of the things that tugboats are that makes them like the workhorses of the sea, as you could put it, is that they have really impressive power to tonnage ratios.
4:25 Josh Clark? So the size of the tugboat, the actual weight the tugboat weighs compared to the amount of power output its engines can create, usually in horsepower, is really lopsided. So that the these fairly comparatively light boats compared to like the horsepower they create can pull, pull, pull, and they can push, push, push, and they can do all sorts of amazing stuff, which is why they can move these enormous, huge oil tankers and shipping tanker or shipping container ships with just the mighty might of their little hearts.
5:07 Josh Clark? You'd think I would have practiced something like that because it would have been way better.
5:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, not to undersell tugboats, they are dealing with things that are floating in water, which helps, but these are big, massive things flowing in, floating in water. Like you could get in a, in a lake, my friend, and you could, you could pull a rope attached to a pontoon boat.
5:28 Josh Clark? What?
5:29 Speaker 05 And you could pull that thing around a little bit. You could swim that thing around a little bit because it's floating in water.
5:35 Josh Clark? What universe do you live in?
5:37 Speaker 05 That may be where you max out. You are the tugboat of the lake, Josh, if you can do that to a pontoon boat, because these tugboats are little compared to those huge barges that are floating around. Does that, is that making any sense at all?
5:51 Josh Clark? It's making too much sense. I've never considered myself the tugboat of the lake. Can I be doing this with my teeth? Can I be holding the rope with my teeth? Because that'd be much cooler.
6:01 Speaker 05 Uh, that's up to you.
6:02 Josh Clark? Okay.
6:03 Speaker 05 That'd be better swimming with two arms.
6:06 Josh Clark? We'll go do some, some third leg trials for it and figure out the most, the one right way to pull a pontoon in a lake.
6:13 Speaker 05 We should tell them what bollard pull is too, because that's the other big sort of measurement when it comes to tugging and pushing. A bollard, first of all, is that big sort of chunky thing on a dock that you'll tie a boat to, the big daddies. And bollard pull is the total amount of towing force generated by a tugboat, and they measure that in kilo newtons.
6:38 Josh Clark? They do, and I've seen that often converted to tons. And it's the same thing, the more kilonewtons you have, or the more tons you have, the more pulling power, towing power, pushing power that tugboat has. So, there's this one boat that Dave found called the Island Victory. At least one article called the most powerful boat in the world. I saw other articles that named some other shipping container vessel, but this tugboat, say it's probably the most powerful tugboat around. The Island Victory has a bollard pull of 4,680 kilonewtons, which converts to 477 tons.
7:22 Josh Clark? A typical harbor tug, which is nothing to sneeze at, has a bollard pull between 500 and 600 kilonewtons. 600 kilonewtons converts to 61 tons. So, this is an enormously powerful boat, and that's the whole point. They're not fast, they aren't pretty, they're cute in a really weird way, but they can generate so much power that they can push a shipping container vessel around. More importantly, if you have a really high bollard pull, the reason that this rating is even there is to find out which tug you can connect to which vessel, because if a
8:03 Josh Clark? vessel's starting to go in the wrong direction and it's about to crash into, say, a bridge, the tugboat has to be able to go from zero, not moving at all in the water, to pulling that boat in the opposite direction away from that bridge in a moment's notice. And it has to have that much power, and they do, they do.
8:27 Speaker 05 I think they're very attractive boats. You can tell a tugboat, because it has, you know, they're built to tug and push. So, they have a very wide beam, which is the widest point of the boat. They sit very low in the water, which is called a deep draft. And, you know, they're little, short, stubby, wide guys that sit really low. I think they're adorable and cool looking. They're very, very stable. They're not tippy at all. You know, they're bumping against other things, they're pushing other things. And so, they have to be just super stable. And I also love that they have beards. That front bumper, or a bowfender.
9:08 Speaker 05 They call it a beard in that lingo, and I think that's pretty great.
9:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's it's just what they use. Like you said, when they purposely or accidentally bump up against a larger ship, you can't just have the tugboat like crack up. So you have a fender.
9:23 Speaker 05 They're built to bump.
9:24 Josh Clark? They are built to bump, and some tugboats aren't necessarily built with a beard. They'll have tires strung along the side to use as a bumper as well.
9:35 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think those are additional. I think the front always has a built in beard.
9:39 Josh Clark? Okay, fine.
9:43 Josh Clark? So one other thing that you're going to find about tugboats that we'll talk about more in depth later is that they're extremely nimble. They're agile. They can move in a different direction very quickly. And that is a really important thing, too, because one of the big jobs that the tugboat plays in, say, like a shipping lane at like a port is to help ships avoid other ships coming in or out. So they have to be able to move, not just pull a ship very easily, but they have to be able to move quickly and move that ship out of the way of, say, like another ship.
10:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly. And I say we take an earlier break.
10:22 Josh Clark? Oh, my gosh.
10:22 Speaker 05 Because we're at a great spot to break here before we talk about the history of these things. You want to do that?
10:28 Josh Clark? Let's break it.
10:29 Speaker 05 All right, let's break on three.
10:45 Speaker 02 Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness. I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Terzipatide, the first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.
11:01 Speaker 03 Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic
11:46 Speaker 03 reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.
12:09 Speaker 02 Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.
12:18 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.
12:28 Speaker 05 That's right. Make a smart buy on the off-road Ready Tacoma or Half-Ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventure, and the rugged style for everything in between.
12:41 Josh Clark? Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.
12:56 Speaker 05 That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.
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14:44 Speaker 05 All right, I promised talk of history, and here we go. Because if you wanted to invent a tugboat, the 18th and 19th centuries was a pretty good time to do it, because we were using sailing ships at the time for transporting people and goods and all kinds of things. And those things are gorgeous, beautiful in the water. They sailed great out on the high seas. But they did not do well, especially because they were just sailing ships, when they got around land in small, tight spaces.
15:15 Josh Clark? Right.
15:16 Speaker 05 So they would, you know, you've seen it in movies. They would dock, or not dock, but they would anchor, you know, a couple of hundred feet from shore, and then start shuttling people and stuff in little tiny boats. Because that's about as close as they could safely get. And that's not efficient. Taylor would be rolling over in his grave.
15:32 Josh Clark? That's right. There was another problem, too, even for a ship that could, that was nimble enough to kind of navigate its way into port, say like the mouth of a river in a harbor or something, right? Once it got in there, it had to wait for the wind to whip up again to set sail once more. And this was not something that happened every hour on the hour, even twice a day like the tide. Sometimes you would have to wait for days or weeks for the right wind to come up that you could catch and ship back out to sea again. Also not at all efficient. So there was like a real need for tugboats to be invented. But what's nuts is tugboats were invented and then ignored for decades. And then finally, the guy who
16:16 Josh Clark? invented them, who was just totally made fun of, as we'll see, for inventing tugboats, was vindicated, but I think he was dead already.
16:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think he was. He was from England, 18th century inventor. His name, no lie, was Jonathan Hulse.
16:33 Josh Clark? That's nuts.
16:34 Speaker 05 It is pretty nuts. And he, he thought it was like a helper vessel is what he called it. It was powered by a steam engine. And, but we was talking about was tugboats. It could tow a sailboat in and out of port. This was in 1737 when he filed for a patent. It was called "A Description and Draft of a New Invented Machine for Carrying Vessels or Ships Out of or Into Any Harbor, Port, or River Against the Wind and Tide or in a Calm." And it was totally genius, 30 years before James Watt's steam engine hit the scene. And everyone was like, what a dumb idea.
17:10 Josh Clark? Yeah. Not only that, the people in his hometown of Gloucester, they wrote a song about him. They wrote a song. They wrote, like, they thought this guy was so terrible and just such a lousy inventor, that there was a song, I'm guessing people would sing in pubs, about him specifically, his name's in the song. It went Jonathan Hulse with his patent skulls, invented a machine to go against wind and stream, but he being an ass couldn't bring it to pass, and so was ashamed to be seen. Imagine sitting there nursing like you're mead, while everybody around you is singing that song about you. You're not gonna try?
17:52 Speaker 05 Whip whip up a melody.
17:54 Josh Clark? Oh, oh, um, Jonathan Holes with his patent skulls invented a machine to go against the wind and stream. You should finish.
18:05 Speaker 05 Okay. But he being an ass couldn't bring it to pass, and so was ashamed to be seen.
18:13 Josh Clark? Wow, you uh, you went with the Gilbert and Sullivan version.
18:17 Speaker 05 I guess so. All I know is we're getting kicked out of this pub any second now.
18:21 Josh Clark? For sure. They're like, get out of Gloucester.
18:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, God, just stop it. We're gonna get so much for that.
18:27 Josh Clark? Uh, so yeah, uh, Holes was definitely ahead of his time, but it would be 60 years before the first steam powered tugboats. His invention, uh, were actually put into good use and they were deployed in Scotland.
18:41 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
18:42 Josh Clark? Yeah. And as we'll see, actually, Scotland is where the tugboat got its name. At the time, I'm not sure what they called them, maybe still helper vessels, I don't know. But one of the first things they did was to start pulling cargo along canals because at the time, if you wanted to move cargo easily over land, you did it over water that was cut into land and you would do it with a donkey pulling your, your cargo along the shore. The donkey was walking on the shore with the line going from the donkey to a little barge that was being pulled down a water filled canal. That was the state of the art at the time.
19:18 Speaker 05 Yeah. Have you ever walked along an old riverway that has those built up banks for that purpose?
19:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, Toledo has something called the Canal Experience or Historic Canal Experience. There's some canals running through part of the town from the early 19th century that you can walk along and you're like, wow, this is an old donkey path, huh?
19:38 Speaker 05 Yeah, I had my experience doing that in Akron, so that may be an Ohio thing. I believe the waterway through Sand Run is where that was and it was the same deal and Emily or her mom or somebody, you know, cause you're up higher and you know, it's an obvious path and they're like, yeah, this, this is where the, the donkeys and pack horses would pull these things.
19:59 Josh Clark? Yeah. Oh, it's a donkey.
20:02 Speaker 05 There was a paddle steamer named Charlotte Dundas that was the first tugboat in operation towing for the very first trip, I think, two fully loaded sloops 18 miles along the Forth and Clyde Canal at Glasgow at scorching 2 miles per hour.
20:23 Josh Clark? Yeah, but still, like, it was working. That was the key.
20:26 Speaker 05 That's all that mattered. Yeah, they had all the time in the world.
20:28 Josh Clark? Right. And you can bet that every donkey in Scotland was like, thank God they invented these things, right?
20:34 Speaker 05 Yeah, probably.
20:35 Josh Clark? So there was also, as we talked about, one of the big problems with sailboats as shipping vessels was that they had trouble getting in and out of harbors. They had trouble navigating. They had to wait for the wind. So very quickly, it seemed kind of obvious that you could, if you could get one of these boats into port, into harbor, which you could use a tugboat for, you could also pull it up river. It wouldn't have to navigate any longer because you could just pull it by a helper vessel into some of the cities that were not located on the coast, but they were located on a river. One example I can think of is London and the Thames.
21:15 Speaker 05 That's right. 40 miles inland. So that was a huge boon for London at the time. There was a steamship called the Majestic that worked with the East India Company towing things back and forth up the Thames. And Liverpool had one as well. So they were, they were getting in on the game there in the UK.
21:35 Josh Clark? They were. So like I said, it was in Scotland that tugboats got their name back in 1817 in Dumbarton. I think I'm saying that right?
21:45 Speaker 05 Okay.
21:46 Josh Clark? Oh, well, how would you say it?
21:48 Speaker 05 I would say Dumbarton, but I don't, I don't know. I'm just guessing.
21:51 Josh Clark? No, it's gotta be Dumbarton.
21:53 Speaker 05 Okay.
21:54 Josh Clark? Okay, well, we'll go with one of those two. How about that?
21:57 Speaker 05 Sure.
21:57 Josh Clark? Somebody built a steamship, a tugboat that they named tug. They weren't called tugboats until this time. And I guess that name stuck because it also makes sense practically. You're tugging a boat behind you. So that from henceforth on, they were known as tugboats.
22:15 Speaker 05 Yeah, and you know, earlier I was saying that um, they said, oh, this idea is so dumb. I don't know if it was that it was so dumb, but steam power and stuff that came along a little bit later. Like they didn't have steam engines at the time, so they wouldn't have even known it was dangerous. But when they did come online, why do I keep saying that? Uh, I don't think it fits, right?
22:35 Josh Clark? Hmm, it's a little anachronistic.
22:38 Speaker 05 I think so. Um, but online doesn't mean just on the internet. Online just means like it's beginning to function, right, as a thing?
22:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, remember that Simpsons where Lenny goes, little kid Lenny's like, oh, I just logged on to my internet. Cause he pooped his pants out of, he pooped his bathing suit with the little interneting. So he said he logged on to his internet.
22:59 Speaker 05 Oh, that's so good.
23:06 Speaker 05 That's a good line. Oh, boy, Lenny. Um, and he logged on to my internet. Um, where was that? Oh, yeah, steam engines were dangerous. They would, they would blow up a lot. Um, there was, uh, you know, when tugboats first started using, uh, you know, coming online, using that steam. They were like, I don't know. I mean, is it, is it better to have this thing that might, uh, blow up a port?
23:32 Josh Clark? Right. And then the owners were like, well, we don't go on these boats. We just own them. So sure. I mean, that's fine. They can blow up. But yes, they were viewed skeptically, I think, right? Like it was, it was not just a done deal that these things were like gonna save the industry or shipping.
23:48 Speaker 05 Yeah.
23:48 Josh Clark? But there was a proving ground, what ended up being a proving ground in the Tine River that connected Newcastle to the North Sea. It was, they were facing a problem, right? They had these barges that were, they were called colliers and they were sailboats, but they were coal movers because Newcastle was a huge coal producer. And these colliers could do a lot of damage because they were, they were hard to navigate. They had all the same problems that any sailing vessel had. So there was a guy named Joseph Price, who in 1818 was like, I think I've got a solution to this. I'm going to buy some of these steamships that they're now being called tugboats.
24:30 Josh Clark? And I'm going to have them pull these colliers, these coal ships up and down the Tine. And I think it's going to revolutionize shipping. And Joseph Price was right on the money. The Price was right.
24:42 Speaker 05 Oh, man, you almost had it right out of the gate. So now you could get 400 ton ships because, you know, I don't know if we mentioned, they were loading like railroad cars onto these things for the first time. So it was very, very heavy stuff. They could go to Newcastle for the first time. All of a sudden, people in more distant places could get coal. So it wasn't just like, hey, it made, you know, make things cheaper and more efficient. It like, it was literally changing like lives all over the world.
25:13 Josh Clark? Right. And these new towns that were getting coal for the first time were able to give up having to burn dry donkey poop that they scraped up off the donkey trails along the canals. It was huge for them.
25:25 Speaker 05 Totally.
25:26 Josh Clark? So, yeah, Joseph Price, Price proved to the world like, no, these things are extraordinarily valuable, so much so that they're going to completely change shipping from this point on. And they definitely have, and they're still just as useful as ever. And they, they made a name for themselves so much that when the Royal Navy purchased their first steamships of any kind, they were tugboats.
25:49 Speaker 05 Yeah.
25:50 Josh Clark? The Comet and the Monkey. Comet and Monkey. And I can't decide whether it's a band name or a cartoon name.
25:59 Speaker 05 Comet and Monkey, that'd be a fun cartoon. I'd watch that.
26:02 Josh Clark? Or Drug.
26:04 Speaker 05 I'd also take that.
26:06 Josh Clark? Comet and Monkey.
26:08 Speaker 05 Just kidding.
26:09 Josh Clark? So yeah, they definitely proved their worth pretty early on. I mean, this is 1818 and the first ones were used shortly before that, right?
26:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, and these were paddle boats, by the way. Up until the late 19th century, if you're picturing like your little friendly tugboat in your mind as we talk about all these stories, erase that. And now picture a tugboat with two paddles on both sides. It wasn't like the big paddle in the back, like the sort of fun things you ride around on at Stone Mountain Park here in Georgia.
26:39 Josh Clark? Sure. That's where they're most famous.
26:42 Speaker 05 They were paddle wheels on both sides, which seems a little wider and more cumbersome, but that really, really, really made them much more maneuverable and able to steer in tighter places. And to steer in two different directions, like a, I got one of those zero-turn lawnmowers. You put those things in two different directions and you're spinning like a top.
27:02 Josh Clark? It's the exact same thing because those two paddle wheels were able to be moved independent of one another. And once you can do that, yes, you just start doing donuts to show off in the harbor, you know?
27:15 Speaker 05 Yeah.
27:15 Josh Clark? So the 19th century came and went and those paddle wheel tugs were replaced with screw propellers, which is another term for a propeller like you see on a ship. Like that's just called a screw propeller. So like any ship, they were propelled by propellers.
27:34 Josh Clark? And then diesel engines came along and that's when everything really kind of changed. Because when you have a diesel engine, you can get some amazing horsepower out of it, way more than steam. It's also less dangerous. I think we talked about all this in our Rudolph Diesel episode. And that's when the tugboats became, started to become the tugboats that we think of today.
27:54 Speaker 05 That's right. Shall we take our second break?
27:57 Josh Clark? You bet.
27:58 Speaker 05 All right, we took an early one, so we're gonna take this one. And we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about, well, tugboats, right after this.
28:19 Speaker 02 Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.
28:35 Speaker 03 Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.
29:20 Speaker 03 Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.
29:42 Speaker 02 Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.
29:51 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.
30:01 Speaker 05 That's right. Make a smart buy on the off-road Ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventure, and the rugged style for everything in between.
30:14 Josh Clark? Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven rep- ...for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.
30:30 Speaker 05 That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.
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32:15 Josh Clark? So you mentioned tugboat strike, right?
32:19 Speaker 05 I didn't.
32:19 Josh Clark? Oh, well, there's a tugboat strike we have to talk about that really kind of demonstrates how how important tugboats made themselves over the years. In New York Harbor in 1946, every single tugboat operator, there were 300 of them in the harbor at the time, they all went on strike. And this was, very quickly, it became evident how essential tugboats were for everything in New York, because there was coal coming from Lake Erie through the Erie Canal to the Hudson, down to the harbor. And they would be spread all throughout Manhattan and all throughout New York. Food shipments came in by barge. Garbage went out by barge.
33:03 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
33:04 Josh Clark? New York operated on barges, and if you're using barges, you need a tugboat to tow or push those barges. So when the tugboats stopped working, New York stopped working. And within 12 days, the tugboat operators got their demands fulfilled, which turns out to have just been nicer hats, from what I read.
33:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, they rationed food. They they literally shut the lights down on Broadway. It was their backup plan of just, you know, using smaller boats to ferry stuff in and out. They were just like, Manhattan is far too big for this already.
33:39 Josh Clark? Right.
33:40 Speaker 05 And the tugboat operators, I guess, I mean, what a what a moment to sit back and just sort of like
33:46 Josh Clark? Float?
33:46 Speaker 05 Say, yeah. Now, yeah, gloat a little bit. Now, now, who is important? The tugboat driver, Thomas. One day we'll be in Atlanta, so we could get the word out about tugboats. And New York Harbor was a great place to sort of make that point, because, you know, if you didn't have tugboats, then those containers with all those goods and services are essentially useless.
34:11 Josh Clark? Right. I said float, by the way, but gloat works even better.
34:16 Speaker 05 Oh, you said float?
34:17 Josh Clark? Yeah. They were gloating while they were floating.
34:20 Speaker 05 Oh, okay.
34:21 Josh Clark? So there were some things that changed, stuff you would not at all connect to why tugboats became less vital over the years. Still incredibly important. And you can make a case that that world shipping would essentially just stop if tugboats stopped. So they're really important, but just not in exactly the same ways as they were before. Because we started getting our energy over things like pipelines. We started using things that weren't coal. Trucking and shipping containers became a much bigger thing than, say, barges over the years. So with each of those things, the tugboat became less and less able to to do what it did in 1946.
35:05 Josh Clark? And yet, it's still so vital that you just can't do anything without them.
35:10 Speaker 05 Yeah, for sure.
35:13 Speaker 05 You know, they've got a they've got electric tugs now.
35:17 Josh Clark? I saw that there's one called the E-Wolf, right?
35:20 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's a good looking tug. I mean, it's interesting. I never really thought about electric boats, but that's becoming more and more of a thing, which is kind of awesome.
35:28 Josh Clark? It is awesome. And let's talk about why. Here's why, Chuck. Remember we said that these things generate crazy amounts of horsepower?
35:36 Speaker 05 Yes.
35:37 Josh Clark? Some harbor tugs or ocean-going tugs generate 27,000-plus horsepower.
35:44 Speaker 05 Yeah.
35:44 Josh Clark? It's like having 27,000 horses just running at the back of this thing, like kicking their legs all at once, right?
35:51 Speaker 05 Yeah.
35:52 Josh Clark? And to do that, you use a lot of fuel, a ton of diesel fuel.
35:58 Josh Clark? Some of these boats can carry way more than they need in a day, like 30,000 gallons of diesel. But I saw that the average harbor tug, which is working almost constantly, will use about 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day.
36:13 Speaker 05 True.
36:13 Josh Clark? And that is a lot of fuel to use, right? So it's using this non-renewable resource. It's also putting out crazy amounts of diesel emissions.
36:23 Speaker 05 Yeah.
36:24 Josh Clark? And that's just one tugboat using 3,000 gallons of diesel a day.
36:28 Speaker 05 Yeah.
36:29 Josh Clark? The reason also, I was like, why do they carry so much more than they need? Because doesn't that make the tugboat heavier and therefore you have to use more fuel to get more horsepower out of it? And the reason that I came up with, that I found was that time is of such value in a harbor, at a port, that it's more costly to stop what you're doing and go refuel than it is to carry around all that extra fuel. They have those capacities so that they have, they take way longer in between refuelings. That's the point. That's how crazy important time is in ports.
37:10 Speaker 05 Yeah. I get it. You know, especially in a place like New York Harbor. Very busy, very busy. So you've talked about-
37:19 Josh Clark? That's the motto over the entrance.
37:22 Speaker 05 Down to the dock, it says that.
37:23 Josh Clark? Yeah.
37:25 Speaker 05 What also you need to be as maneuverable, because it's very busy, very busy. And you mentioned that a little bit earlier on, that they need to be able to move really in any direction very accurately and as quickly as possible. And the azimuth thruster was a big change in that because that is a, imagine a propeller inside a housing, sort of like a, you know, sort of like an E fan or something like that. And it can just turn, that's exactly what it looks like.
37:55 Josh Clark? Yeah, it does. I'd never thought that.
37:57 Speaker 05 But it can, it can turn 360 degrees. So it's not a fixed propeller and a rudder for steering. And it's not even a non-fixed propeller that can move left and right. It's a propeller that can spin in any direction, which means you got one of those little joystick controllers as a tugboat pilot. And you can inch that thing in the most minute little ways with just a flick of the stick.
38:24 Josh Clark? Yeah. Isn't that amazing?
38:26 Speaker 05 Pretty cool.
38:27 Josh Clark? I also read about something called a tractor tug, which is, has basically two outboard motors, like those two side paddle wheels. And so you can move them independently. And they have a lot of power too, just not as much as the azimuth, I think. But they, they're controlled by two joysticks. So it's, it's hard enough, just think about using one. Imagine using two to move a tugboat around like a huge ship that you're trying not to knock into other ships. It's just, I can't, it's gotta be one of the more stressful jobs around piling a tugboat, right?
39:02 Speaker 05 I bet.
39:03 Josh Clark? We'll have to ask Thomas, yeah.
39:07 Speaker 05 We did mention a lot, I mean, we've talked a lot about moving boats around. That's obviously what you think of when you think of a tugboat, but they do a bunch of other stuff, too. Salvage operations, S and R, or SAR, or search and rescue ops that we've talked a lot about on the show. If there's ever a, you know, if there's a busy canal that's blocked or something, or a ship that has gone offline. See that? That is gumming up the works. You're gonna send a tugboat in there to get those things out of there.
39:39 Josh Clark? So, yeah, we talked about that, the ship that ever given, which blocked the Suez Canal for, I think, weeks, which is a huge dent in global shipping, right? We talked about that in detail, and I could not for the life of me remember what episode that was in. Do you?
39:55 Speaker 05 Was it in, did we do one on the Suez Canal, or just the?
39:58 Josh Clark? I looked. If we did, we didn't name it that.
40:01 Speaker 05 Which canal did we do what episode on?
40:03 Josh Clark? I don't remember doing any canal episode.
40:06 Speaker 05 Oh, we did some on canals, right? That seems very familiar to me.
40:10 Josh Clark? I think we just earlier talking about donkey paths and stuff did our canal episode.
40:15 Speaker 05 Hmm, I guess that's possible.
40:18 Josh Clark? We might have done one that included like the Panama Canal, and maybe, yes, I'll bet it was in the Panama Canal episode. I think we did that one.
40:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, we did Panama Canal.
40:26 Josh Clark? Okay, there you go.
40:27 Speaker 05 True, and Love Canal.
40:29 Josh Clark? We did. A little different, but yeah. Also, by the way, the Navy just unveiled a whole new group of search and rescue ships. They're called Navajo class tugboats, and they're pretty cool looking.
40:44 Speaker 05 All right, what else? Firefighting tugboats, of course.
40:47 Josh Clark? Yeah, they're called Fifi's.
40:49 Speaker 05 Cute.
40:49 Josh Clark? Either Fifi or Fi-Fi. I've only seen it spelled out.
40:54 Speaker 05 I bet it's Fifi. Fi-Fi would be weird.
40:56 Josh Clark? Yeah, Fifi's not weird in the sea. We go up the sea.
41:03 Speaker 05 It's... Well, I don't know, Captain. I don't have my sea legs, but Fifi is at least a cutesy name. Fi-Fi is nothing.
41:11 Josh Clark? Let's try this out. Argh, look at that Fi-Fi. Argh, look at that Fifi.
41:18 Josh Clark? I think FiFi wins the day.
41:21 Speaker 05 Okay.
41:22 Josh Clark? Yeah.
41:23 Speaker 05 So what else? Icebreakers? And I don't mean at, at, uh, office parties either.
41:27 Josh Clark? Right. A tugboat just goes in between two people, struggling to find something to talk about. And now all of a sudden, they can talk about the tugboat that just went in between them.
41:35 Speaker 05 Yeah. He goes up to a, and says, uh, if you could invite anyone from history to dinner, who would it be?
41:40 Josh Clark? I hate those questions so much.
41:43 Speaker 05 It's the worst.
41:44 Josh Clark? There's also anchor handling. There's actually special tugboats called anchor handling tugs, appropriately enough.
41:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:50 Josh Clark? And the anchors they're talking about are oil platform tankers. And these are ocean going tugs, the ones that carry a hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel because they're out to sea for indefinite periods of time. And the anchors that they're pulling around are massive. Like, they're like keeping oil rigs in, out in the open ocean from floating away. So obviously they're really big anchors. But it's hard to get across how big they are unless you go look up photos of them. Try to find a photo of a human being standing or working near an oil rig anchor and it'll really kind of drive home what these tugboats are pulling around. Makes it even more impressive.
42:31 Speaker 05 All right. I'm gonna look that up and tell you what I think before the end of the episode.
42:35 Josh Clark? Okay, good.
42:37 Speaker 05 Line handling too, like these tow ropes. If they're like, hey, we need to get this tow rope out to that, that ship. Uh, you don't just throw it on a guy's shoulder. Like these ropes, like those anchors are the most massive thing, ropes you've ever seen in your life.
42:51 Josh Clark? Yeah.
42:51 Speaker 05 And so there's Thomas saying, just throw it on, guys. I got it. I'll take it out there.
42:56 Josh Clark? Yeah, I was reading a LA Times article about, remember the, the shipping shutdown, the cargo container backup in LA, in Long Beach, that, at the pandemic? It just killed everything. Um, the writer went out on a tugboat and he was just kind of chronicling like a mourning in, in the life of this tugboat. And they were talking about how, um, recently some, uh, two decans wouldn't have been injured and wouldn't have been killed by a line tightening and pressing them up against the side of the tugboat. So...
43:25 Speaker 05 Oh, like jaws?
43:26 Josh Clark? Yeah, exactly. But killed. Um, yeah, so it was a, I mean, you can just imagine like this is a three inch thick rope. That just suddenly is, you know, thousands of kilo newtons pressing you against a metal. A big piece of metal, which is the inside of the ship. That's not, that's not the place that you want to be. So it is being a deckhand. Um, which is one of the jobs on the tugboat is very dangerous. And as we'll see. Kind of the job you want to work your way up out of, I think.
43:57 Speaker 05 Yeah. Uh, you've also got engineers who, uh. You know, they take care of those engines. They take care of all the getting things online. Mechanical systems, electrical systems. You have your mate, your second in command. And secondary pilot, and then you got that captain, the primary pilot that's running that ship.
44:17 Speaker 05 If you work in, let's just pick out New York City, uh, cause people think about tugboats a lot there in New York Harbor.
44:24 Josh Clark? Do they?
44:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, everyone does.
44:26 Josh Clark? Okay.
44:29 Speaker 05 I took a poll.
44:30 Josh Clark? Okay.
44:31 Speaker 05 Uh, they work two week shifts, two weeks on, two weeks off. Uh, you live on that boat full time and then on those days that you work, you work two six hour shifts. Uh, six hours working, six hours off, six hours working, six hours off. And, uh, that is, uh, I'm, I'm sure Thomas would, would verify that this is tough, hard work.
44:52 Josh Clark? That is too short. I mean, you're like, oh, six hour shift. That's not bad, but then you have to eat and sleep in the next six hours. That's, yeah, I don't know why they do it like that. It seems like you would wear your crew out really fast with that schedule.
45:06 Speaker 05 Would you have them work 12 hours straight and then 12 hours off?
45:09 Josh Clark? No, I think even eight hours, that extra two hours to unwind and eat and then get six hours sleep is. Adequate. Cause I mean, seriously, you think about it, you're like, you're not doing six hours off and then you just. Fall over and sleep where you were just standing while you were working. Now that you're off the clock, you're going to like unwind, you gotta eat. You're going to just do whatever, shave, shower, and, um, then you're going to get what? Three and a half, four hours sleep. If you're lucky, maybe five. I think that's a little whack as they say.
45:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's whack, but I think it's one of those things with shift work. Like you get used to. Sleeping all day and working at night. Those people probably get used to sleeping in two, four hour sets.
45:48 Josh Clark? Yeah.
45:48 Speaker 05 You know?
45:48 Josh Clark? And I'm sure they're signaling to others like, oh, you're awake again, huh?
45:53 Speaker 05 Yeah, but then they're at home for two weeks straight.
45:55 Josh Clark? That's what I mean.
45:55 Speaker 05 Geez, can you get back to work?
45:57 Josh Clark? I don't know, man. It's a hard life. I'm sure Thomas can tell us.
46:01 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah, for sure. There are push boats. These are pretty fun. A push tug. That's a tow boat that has a squared off front at the bow and these padded beams called push knees. And you basically push those knees against the stern and you even lash it together sometimes and that you're just pushing, pushing something around.
46:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, that one's fine, but I like the articulated tug barge or ATB.
46:33 Speaker 05 The sexiest link.
46:34 Josh Clark? It's an improved version of this, right? So the barge and the tugboat have like a notch and a corresponding like pointy part. You put them together and put a pin through the two and now you've got like one single machine, but the tugboats can still maneuver like fishtail and move that barge in all sorts of crazy hard angles, right? And I was like, why don't you just mechanize or motorize the barge? And apparently they use this mostly for oil tank, oil shipping. And you just get more oil out of it and the barges are cheaper because they don't have any self propulsion. So it's kind of like a shipping container in a truck.
47:15 Josh Clark? Like the tractor is different than the trailer and so you can hook all sorts of different trailers up to the same tractor time and time again, rather than just, you know, having to pilot that, that trailer all the time. It made more sense to me when I was researching it than it is now that I'm explaining it.
47:33 Speaker 05 Well, it does sort of lend itself to the question of like, why don't these huge barges have a little secondary azimuth propeller system that can be deployed?
47:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think the expense, the added expense, I think they're cheaper because it's just a barge that is just basically a floating container that a tug can hook on to.
47:55 Speaker 05 The, well, maybe so. And the other thing that I also regret not investigating now is how the finances of this work. Is it a tugboat company that just says, all right, we're going to contract with this barge company for a certain set of time?
48:10 Josh Clark? Yes.
48:10 Speaker 05 And we'll just handle all your tugging and pushing needs, basically, in this harbor?
48:14 Josh Clark? So I think it kind of, from what I understand, it bears a bit of a resemblance to like the shipping, like trucking industry, where somebody needs a tow or an escort or something like that in or out of the harbor, and you just contract with somebody then. I don't know if like you contract with one specific shipping company, or you just kind of go back and forth, depending on who needs what when, or it's a mixture of both, I'm not sure. But I know that back in the day, they, it used to be whoever got there first. So as a ship was coming in, tugboats would race out to meet them, and whoever got there first had that contract right there, because they were the first ones on the scene, and they were the ones who were going to pull the ship into its berth.
48:58 Speaker 05 Surely, it's an all-inclusive thing, though, and it's not just like, oh, you need to get over there, 500 bucks?
49:06 Speaker 05 You know?
49:07 Josh Clark? Yeah. No, I don't think it's like that, for sure. But the, I read another article, the AP did an article on the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, what, last year, earlier this year? You remember? When that ship ran into the bridge and the bridge collapsed in Baltimore?
49:26 Speaker 05 Yeah, of course.
49:26 Josh Clark? So the, there was like heavy criticism because that ship wasn't being escorted by a tugboat, and everybody's like, where was the tugboat? Why was this allowed to happen? And the AP was explaining, that's just not how it works. Like you, the tugboat pulls the, the ship out of its berth and kind of gets it on its way. And then it goes back and attaches to another ship. And then that ship has to find its way out of harbor, including navigating under and next to bridges and other stuff, right? Um, and the reason why is money. It costs an extra 10 grand to pay a tugboat to pull you safely out into a harbor. So you can make way. And the shipping industry, um, holds the cards now.
50:11 Josh Clark? Because if you start charging more to port, or you start, sorry, say, requiring ships to have a tugboat all the way out into the harbor, um, it's going to cost more money. And if another port nearby doesn't force you to do that, it's going to be less. And so there, everybody's going to go to that port and all of your dock workers are going to lose their jobs and you're not going to get reelected as mayor of Baltimore. You see what I'm saying?
50:34 Speaker 05 Wow.
50:34 Josh Clark? Yeah. It's crazy how weirdly entrenched it is. And again, it's just so discouraging. It seems like every episode we talk about, you can trace it back to some group of people who are cutting corners because of money. And then something bad happens and nobody does anything about it. I'm so sick of it.
50:53 Speaker 05 Yeah. That sounds like a new episode of The Wire, too.
50:56 Josh Clark? It does.
50:58 Speaker 05 You okay?
50:59 Josh Clark? Yeah, I'm all right now.
51:01 Speaker 05 Right.
51:01 Josh Clark? Let me just apologize to Thomas. Sorry, Thomas.
51:04 Speaker 05 If you, if you want to pick up your spirits, my friend, uh, go to New York City and take a ride on the W O. Decker, because that's one of the fun thing, uh, fun things you can do in New York. I have not done it yet, but I'm gonna make a point to go to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York, where you can actually take a, take a ride on the classic and beautiful W O. Decker tugboat.
51:28 Josh Clark? Yep. Pretty neat.
51:30 Speaker 05 I'm gonna do it.
51:31 Josh Clark? There's some other stuff you can do too, but that's probably the best.
51:36 Speaker 05 Okay. Good. I'd like to do the best things.
51:38 Josh Clark? Good. Uh, you got anything more on tugboats, Charles?
51:42 Speaker 05 I got nothing. I just love these pictures. There's something about a tugboat. I like the way they look.
51:46 Josh Clark? Yeah.
51:46 Speaker 05 Got those tires hanging off of them and they're just, there's something about the utilitarian aspect and especially that W O. Decker with that big old nose on the front. I don't even know what that is.
51:57 Josh Clark? That's the beard, right?
52:00 Speaker 05 Yeah, but it's not a beard that I've ever seen. It really looks like a beard.
52:05 Josh Clark? I was reading like a kids maritime museum website about tugboats and they were trying to explain why everyone loves tugboats because it's true. Like, there's nobody who doesn't like tugboats, especially if you have nothing to do with the industry, right? You're just watching them from afar. And they explained that they're very powerful and they're small, but they're also very helpful. And I think they kind of nailed it on the head.
52:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, actually, some of these beards are very beardy, so I get it.
52:33 Josh Clark? Okay, good. So Chuck gets it and he mentioned beards twice in Quick Secession, which of course unlocks listener mail.
52:45 Speaker 05 That's right, and it also conjures Beetle Beard.
52:48 Josh Clark? What?
52:49 Speaker 05 Sorry. You know, you say Beetle just three times.
52:52 Josh Clark? Oh, gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah, I got it now.
52:55 Speaker 05 I saw that sequel last night.
52:57 Josh Clark? Yeah, what'd you think?
53:00 Speaker 05 Did you see it?
53:00 Josh Clark? Yeah.
53:01 Speaker 05 You know, I enjoyed it. I thought it was fun. It's not some great movie, but none of Tim Burton's movies are great to me.
53:09 Josh Clark? Oh, I don't know about that.
53:12 Speaker 05 I mean, I think Ed Wood was great, but I think that's his only truly great film.
53:15 Josh Clark? What?
53:17 Speaker 05 I mean, tell me another.
53:18 Josh Clark? Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow?
53:21 Speaker 05 I enjoyed Edward Scissorhands. I don't think it's great. Sleepy Hollow, I thought, was mid at best.
53:27 Josh Clark? He's kind of whole. I disagree. Sleepy Hollow is one of my all-time favorite movies. That's one of those ones I can watch like anytime.
53:33 Speaker 05 Yeah. Hey, I like most of his movies, but I just don't think they're great films.
53:38 Josh Clark? I understand what you're saying. The 1990 Batman, not the best. I would say that that's not a great movie, too, for sure.
53:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, but I mean, I like most of his movies.
53:48 Josh Clark? I understand what you're saying. Fair enough.
53:49 Speaker 05 Yeah. Anyway, I thought it was good. It was fun. It was good enough for what I wanted out of it, which was a bit of nostalgia and I LOL'd quite a few times because I just think Michael Keaton is really funny and Catherine O'Hara is really funny.
54:03 Josh Clark? Yes, I think Catherine O'Hara did great.
54:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, but you know, it was just okay.
54:09 Josh Clark? I keep forgetting to recommend a movie to you that I'll see it and remember how great it was and then I forget to tell you about it again. It's called A Dark Song.
54:21 Speaker 05 Okay.
54:21 Josh Clark? It's about a woman who seeks revenge, so she finds an occultist to help her conjure demons to enact revenge.
54:28 Speaker 05 How do you find movies that no one else has ever heard?
54:31 Josh Clark? I don't know how I found that one. I really don't remember, but it's on Amazon Prime, if I'm not mistaken. And it sounds like a hokey premise, but the research that the writers did is so like dead on that it's entirely possible there's people out there who believe that you can do this exact thing that they're doing and conjure this exact demon. It's nuts. It's really, it's really a good movie. It's pretty rough. I would not watch it with the kids, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very good art house horror film.
55:03 Speaker 05 Uh, well, Ruby went as Megan for Halloween, so she's pretty into that stuff, but this sounds too dark.
55:08 Josh Clark? It's a little, there's a part in there that she should not see.
55:12 Speaker 05 Uh, okay. And I'll also say this, I just looked up a dark song really quickly and there's a Reddit thread, a dark song, is it real? So apparently it's pretty convincing.
55:20 Josh Clark? It is very convincing.
55:22 Speaker 05 All right. So that's been Movie Minutes.
55:24 Josh Clark? Yep. Uh, did you ever read the, um, listener mail?
55:28 Speaker 05 No, man. I'm waiting on the queue.
55:30 Josh Clark? I said that you said, um, you said something in quick succession and you unlocked listener mail. Jerry already ran the chime.
55:37 Speaker 05 I got us sidetracked. Hey buddy, I don't jump unless you tell me to, so.
55:41 Josh Clark? I did tell you and you didn't jump and everything broke down as if the tugboat stopped tugging.
55:46 Speaker 05 Oh, that means another lashing tonight.
55:49 Josh Clark? No, I'm gonna lash you to the tugboats.
55:53 Speaker 05 Uh, yeah, put me up there with the beard.
55:55 Josh Clark? Okay.
55:59 Speaker 05 Um, all right. Hey, guys. Love the show, especially the Unsolved Mystery episodes. Needless to say, I loved the one a couple of months ago about the mysteries of the internet and the mysterious song that caught my attention.
56:09 Josh Clark? Oh, I know where this one's going.
56:11 Speaker 05 Boy, they came pouring in and I have to say, the mystery seems to have been solved about the most mysterious song on the internet. It is not the one that people sent in right after we published, that was not even the same song. Those people were lazy. But yeah, it broke and we've gotten like a hundred emails that that artist has been identified. There's a Reddit thread, it's a Reddit user tracked it down, the song is called "Subways Of Your Mind" by the group, I don't know if it's FEX or F E X, not sure how they pronounce it. The user found the band from an old newspaper article in the northwest Zeitung archive.
56:49 Josh Clark? Wow.
56:50 Speaker 05 While they were researching Hurrfest bands, bands performed that music festival as a lead, the subreddit was working on. The article they found was about a band called FEX from Kiel, who won a talent contest in Bremen, September 1984. Their music was described as "rock with wave and pop influences" in tracks. The user managed to get in touch with a member of the band and they produced original tapes of the recorded song to prove they were the ones who recorded it.
57:15 Josh Clark? Wow.
57:16 Speaker 05 I read through the subreddit, they said, "Wait a minute before you go wide with this, because I want to talk to the rest of the band first." Came back and said, "I talked to the rest of the band, they're into it, and we want to like re-record it and, you know, get back together and re-record this thing now that it's got some fame."
57:33 Josh Clark? Yeah, they're gonna do an acoustic country version.
57:35 Speaker 05 This is from Michael, but big thanks to everybody who wrote in because it's pretty exciting, you know, Somerton Man was found on our watch, on our watch.
57:47 Josh Clark? Right, thanks to us.
57:49 Speaker 05 Thanks to us and this was solved on our watch, so as, the longer we do the show, the more of these mysteries are kind of, you know, maybe they'll find that guy who disappeared from the airport, remember that guy?
58:01 Josh Clark? Oh yeah, that poor kid from, yeah, I don't remember what island he was on.
58:06 Speaker 05 He was like Swedish or something?
58:07 Josh Clark? Yeah, that was a sad story.
58:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, so we're hoping to clear up all these mysteries, but yeah, the mysterious song has been solved.
58:13 Josh Clark? Great, and it was FEX, "Subways Of Your Mind." And who wrote in? Because I mean, a million people wrote in. I don't think we've ever got more email about the same thing in less time than on this one, it was astounding. It was like when those post office workers come in at the end of Miracle on 34th Street and start dumping Santa letters onto the judge's bench. It was like that, but with emails about the most mysterious song on the internet.
58:39 Speaker 05 Yeah, and it's gonna get worse because this isn't gonna come out because we're front-loading for Christmas break. And so like, we're gonna be getting these emails for weeks,
58:46 Josh Clark? Oh dude, we'll be getting them for years, Chuck. We got an email from somebody this week, and the subject line was Chuck Predicted Sharknado.
58:55 Speaker 05 Right.
58:57 Josh Clark? That is an old, old classic.
59:00 Speaker 05 Oh, man. Wait till they hear about Jared from Subway and Hugh.
59:04 Josh Clark? Hugh Jackman.
59:05 Speaker 05 Hugh Jackman playing.
59:07 Josh Clark? P T Barnum.
59:08 Speaker 05 Who was it? P T Barnum.
59:09 Josh Clark? The Greatest Showman, yeah.
59:12 Speaker 05 Anyway, that was for Michael.
59:13 Josh Clark? Thanks a lot, Michael. Very much appreciated. Thanks to everybody who wrote in. We don't mean to sound ungrateful. We're just joshing around.
59:21 Speaker 05 Yeah, we love it.
59:22 Josh Clark? Yep, thank you. Yeah, keep us informed as best you can all the time. And since I said that, and you want to be like Michael, I should tell you that you can send us an email. Send it off to [email protected] .
59:38 Speaker 04 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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1:00:10 Speaker 03 Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor. If you get a lump or swelling in your neck, stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain
1:00:54 Speaker 03 or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.
1:01:18 Speaker 02 Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.
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1:01:55 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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