Tugboats: Pushing Their Way Around Since 1803

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Tugboats - Pushing Their Way Around Since 1803

Episode Overview Released on December 12, 2024, the episode "Tugboats: Pushing Their Way Around Since 1803" delves deep into the history, functionality, and modern advancements of tugboats. Hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant navigate through the pivotal roles tugboats have played in maritime operations, their technological evolution, and their enduring significance in today's shipping industry.

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1. Introduction to Tugboats

Josh Clark opens the discussion by acknowledging the often-overlooked importance of tugboats in the maritime world. He emphasizes their role as the "workhorses of the sea," highlighting their impressive power-to-tonnage ratios that enable them to maneuver colossal ships with relative ease.

Josh Clark [03:27]: "These fairly comparatively light boats, compared to the horsepower they create, can pull, push, and do all sorts of amazing stuff, which is why they can move these enormous, huge oil tankers and shipping container ships with just the mighty hearts of their engines."

Chuck Bryant adds to this by describing the physical attributes of tugboats that make them both functional and endearing.

Chuck Bryant [07:30]: "You can tell a tugboat because it has a very wide beam, sits very low in the water with a deep draft, and has those front bumpers or 'beards'... They're built to bump and push other vessels."

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2. Historical Evolution of Tugboats

The conversation transitions to the origins of tugboats, tracing back to the early 18th century. Chuck introduces Jonathan Holes, an English inventor who patented the first steam-powered tugboat in 1737, although his innovation was initially met with ridicule.

Chuck Bryant [14:40]: "Jonathan Holes... invented a machine to go against the wind and stream. But he, being an ass, couldn't bring it to pass and so was ashamed to be seen."

Josh recounts how tugboats remained underutilized for decades until Joseph Price in 1818 revolutionized their application by deploying them in Scotland to tow coal ships along the Tyne River.

Josh Clark [22:00]: "Joseph Price was right on the money. The price was right... They could move heavy cargo efficiently, changing shipping dynamics globally."

The hosts discuss the transition from paddle wheel tugs in the 19th century to screw propellers and eventually to diesel engines, which enhanced their power and safety.

Chuck Bryant [24:31]: "Paddle wheels on both sides made them more maneuverable... Later replaced by screw propellers and then diesel engines, which transformed tugboats into what we recognize today."

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3. The Critical Role of Tugboats in Maritime Operations

Josh and Chuck emphasize the indispensable role tugboats play in ports and harbors. They facilitate the movement of ships, prevent collisions, and ensure the smooth operation of shipping lanes. A pivotal moment discussed is the 1946 tugboat strike in New York Harbor, where 300 tugboat operators went on strike, halting essential operations.

Josh Clark [29:44]: "When the tugboat operators stopped working, New York stopped working. Within 12 days, their demands were fulfilled, highlighting their essential role."

This event underscored how integral tugboats are to the functioning of major ports, emphasizing that modern shipping would be impossible without them.

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4. Technological Advancements and Modern Innovations

The episode explores contemporary advancements in tugboat technology. Hosts discuss the introduction of electric tugboats, such as the "E Wolf," which aim to reduce diesel emissions and reliance on non-renewable resources.

Josh Clark [32:39]: "Electric tugboats are becoming more of a thing, which is awesome. They're less reliant on diesel fuel and environmentally friendlier."

They also delve into the design innovations like azimuth thrusters, allowing tugboats to rotate 360 degrees for enhanced maneuverability, a crucial feature for navigating crowded harbors.

Chuck Bryant [35:23]: "Azimuth thrusters can turn 360 degrees, enabling tugboat pilots to maneuver with pinpoint accuracy using joystick controls."

Additionally, the discussion covers specialized tugboats, including salvage and search and rescue (SAR) tugboats, firefighting tugs like "Fifi," and anchor-handling tugs crucial for maintaining oil rigs.

Chuck Bryant [38:39]: "Firefighting tugboats, like 'Fifi,' play a vital role in marine safety operations."

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5. Operational Challenges and Economic Impact

Josh highlights the immense fuel consumption of tugboats, citing that a harbor tug can use up to 3,000 gallons of diesel per day, leading to significant environmental and economic concerns.

Josh Clark [33:05]: "An average harbor tug will use about 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day. That's a lot of fuel and a hefty diesel emission footprint."

Chuck discusses the economic dynamics of tugboat operations, explaining how cost considerations influence their deployment and the reluctance to mandate additional safety measures due to financial implications for ports.

Chuck Bryant [46:36]: "It costs an extra ten grand to pay a tugboat to pull you safely out into a harbor. Ports fear increasing costs might drive shippers to competing ports."

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6. The Human Element: Life on a Tugboat

The episode sheds light on the demanding life of tugboat crew members. Working two-week shifts, tugboat operators live aboard the vessel, managing tight schedules that can lead to exhaustion.

Chuck Bryant [42:00]: "They work two-week shifts, living on the boat full-time, which is tough and hard work."

Josh shares insights into the dangers faced by deckhands, citing recent incidents where accidents led to fatalities, underscoring the perilous nature of the job.

Josh Clark [40:24]: "Being a deckhand is very dangerous. There were recent incidents where deckhands were injured and even killed by tightening lines."

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7. Cultural and Emotional Significance

Despite their utilitarian purpose, tugboats hold a special place in the hearts of many. The hosts express their appreciation for their robust and endearing designs, often likening their charm to beloved characters.

Chuck Bryant [49:15]: "There's something about the utilitarian aspect of tugboats. They have those tires hanging off and the big old nose on the front. It's just cool."

Josh references how maritime enthusiasts and the general public alike admire tugboats for their strength and helpfulness, noting their universal appeal.

Josh Clark [49:59]: "Nobody who doesn't work in the industry doesn't like tugboats. They're powerful, small, and incredibly helpful."

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8. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In wrapping up, Josh and Chuck reflect on the enduring importance of tugboats in maritime operations and their continuous evolution to meet modern demands. They advocate for greater recognition of tugboat operators and the pivotal roles these vessels play in global shipping.

Chuck Bryant [50:24]: "Some of these tugboats are very beardy, so I get it. They have a charm that's undeniable."

Josh Clark [51:20]: "Tugboats are fundamental to our ports and shipping lanes. Without them, the global economy would face significant disruptions."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Josh Clark [03:27]: "These fairly comparatively light boats... can pull, push, and do all sorts of amazing stuff..."

• Chuck Bryant [07:30]: "You can tell a tugboat because it has a very wide beam... and has those front bumpers or 'beards'..."

• Chuck Bryant [14:40]: "Jonathan Holes... invented a machine to go against the wind and stream..."

• Josh Clark [22:00]: "Joseph Price was right on the money... changing shipping dynamics globally."

• Josh Clark [29:44]: "When the tugboat operators stopped working, New York stopped working..."

• Josh Clark [32:39]: "Electric tugboats are becoming more of a thing, which is awesome..."

• Chuck Bryant [35:23]: "Azimuth thrusters can turn 360 degrees, enabling tugboat pilots to maneuver..."

• Josh Clark [33:05]: "An average harbor tug will use about 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day..."

• Chuck Bryant [46:36]: "It costs an extra ten grand to pay a tugboat to pull you safely out into a harbor..."

• Chuck Bryant [49:15]: "There's something about the utilitarian aspect of tugboats..."

• Josh Clark [51:20]: "Tugboats are fundamental to our ports and shipping lanes..."

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Final Thoughts

This episode illuminates the indispensable role tugboats play in the maritime industry, blending historical insights with modern technological advancements. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant successfully highlight the blend of engineering prowess and human dedication that keeps the global shipping industry afloat. Whether you're a seasoned maritime enthusiast or a curious listener, this episode provides a comprehensive understanding of tugboats' vital functions and their evolution over more than two centuries.

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For more engaging content, listen to "Stuff You Should Know" on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Courtney Thorne Smith]

Hey, everyone. This is Courtney Thorne Smith, Laura Layton, and Daphne Zuniga. On July 8, 1992, apartment buildings with pools were never quite the same as Melrose Place was introduced to the world. We are going to be reliving every hookup, every scandal, and every single wig removal together.

[Laura Layton]

So listen to still the place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Jess Hilarious]

Yo, what up? It's your girl, Jess. Hilarious. And I think it's time to acknowledge that I'm not just a comedian. It's time to add uncertified therapists to my credentials. Because each and every Wednesday, I'm fixing your mess on Carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Got problems in your relationship? Come to me. Your best friend acting shady? Come to me. Thought you was the father, but you not come to me. I can't promise I won't judge you, but I can guarantee that I will help you. Listen to Carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast at. And T connecting changes everything.

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio. 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. This is stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. And do you remember this guy? Do you remember his name?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, I do. It was Thomas. Because this episode is Tugboats for Thomas.

[Chuck Bryant]

Tugboats for Thomas. And Thomas, I believe, works on Tugboats, suggested it. And this has turned out to be just a bread and butter Stuff youf Should Know episode.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's bumping into people. They're like, dude.

[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 Roos 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, because we're going to 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 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.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

13, 20?

[Josh Clark]

Nope, not that far.

[Chuck Bryant]

2020.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[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. The mighty might of their little hearts. You'd think I would have practiced something like that because it would have been way better.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 floating in water. Like you could get in a lake, my friend, and you could pull a rope attached to a. A pontoon boat.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

What universe do you live in that.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. Is that making any sense at all?

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's up to you.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

That'd be better swimming with two arms.

[Josh Clark]

We'll go do some therblig trials for it and figure out the one right way to pull a pontoon in a lake.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 kilonewtons.

[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 this, there's this one boat that, that Dave found called the Island Victory. At least one article called the most powerful boat in the world. I saw other articles that name some other shipping container vessel. But this, this tugboat say it's probably the most powerful tugboat around. The Island Victory has a, a bollard pull of 400 or 4,680 kilonewtons which converts to 477 tons. 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 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 when they're bumping against other things. They're Pushing other things. And so they have to be just super stable. And also love that they have beards. That front bumper or a bow fender. They call it a beard in that lingo. And I think that's pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 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 crack up. So you have a fender.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're built to bump.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think those are additional. I think the front always has a built in beard.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, fine. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. And I say we take an earlier break.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because we're at a great spot to break here before we talk about the history of these things. You want to do that?

[Josh Clark]

Let's break it.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. Let's break on three.

[Josh Clark]

This is the purpose of this.

[Danny Shapiro]

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time, he didn't even say hello? And how would you feel if your doctor advised you to keep your life altering medical procedure a secret from everyone? And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child? These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of family Secrets. Some of you have been with us since season one and others are just tuning in. Whatever the case and wherever you are, thank you for being part of our Family Secrets Family, where every week we explore the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Matt Levine]

The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers.

[Amanda Mull]

So that's why we created the Big Take from Bloomberg podcast, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all.

[Matt Levine]

Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters.

[Amanda Mull]

You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the Sec.

[Amanda Mull]

Amanda Mull, who writes our BusinessWeek Buying Power column.

[Danny Shapiro]

Very few companies who go viral are.

[Josh Clark]

Like, totally prepared for what that means.

[Amanda Mull]

And Zoe Tillman, senior legal report reporter, courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide.

[Matt Levine]

Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

[Courtney Thorne Smith]

Hey, everyone, this is Courtney Thorne Smith.

[Laura Layton]

Laura Layton, and Daphne Zuniga.

[Courtney Thorne Smith]

On July 8, 1992, apartment buildings with pools were never quite the same. As Melrose Place was introduced to the world, it took drama and mayhem to an entirely new level. We are going to be reliving every hookup, every scandal, every backstab, blackmail and explosion, and every single wig removal. Together, secrets are revealed as we read, Rewatch every moment with you.

[Laura Layton]

Special guests from back in the day will be dropping by. You know who they are. Sydney, Allison and Joe are back together on still the Place with a trip down memory lane and back to Melrose Place. So listen to still the place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 on 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. 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.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. There's another problem, too. Even for a ship that could, it 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, or 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 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think he was. His. He was from England, 18th century inventor. His name, no lie, was Jonathan Holes.

[Josh Clark]

That's nuts.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is pretty nuts. And he thought it was like a helper vessel is what he called it. It was powered by a steam engine. And what we were talking about was tugboats that 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, in tide, or in a calm. And it was totally genius. 30 years before James Watts steam engine hit the scene.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And everyone was like, what a dumb idea.

[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 Holes, 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 your mead while everybody around you is singing that song about you.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're not going to try.

[Josh Clark]

Whip.

[Chuck Bryant]

Whip up a melody.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, oh. Jonathan Holes, with his patent skulls, invented a machine to go against the wind and stream. You should finish.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. But he, being an ass, couldn't bring it to pass and so was ashamed to be seen.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, you went with the Gilbert and Sullivan version. Very nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guess so. All I know is we're getting kicked out of this pub any second now for sure.

[Josh Clark]

They're like, get out of Gloucester.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Stop it.

[Chuck Bryant]

We're gonna get so much for that.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, Holes was definitely ahead of his time, but it would be 60 years before the first steam powered tugboats, his invention, were actually put into good use and they were deployed in Scotland. Yeah. And as we'll see, actually, Scotland was where the tugboat got its name at the time. I'm not sure what they call 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 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Have you ever walked along an old riverway that has those built up banks for that purpose?

[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?

[Chuck Bryant]

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, because you're up higher and it's an obvious path and they're like, yeah, this is where the donkeys and pack horses would pull these things.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's a donkey.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 4th and Clyde Canal at Glasgow at a scorching 2 miles per hour.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But still, like, it was working. That was the key.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's all that mattered.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

They had all the time in the world.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And you can bet that every donkey in Scotland was like, whew, thank God they invented these things. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, probably.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 getting in on the game there in the uk they were.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, well, how would you say it?

[Chuck Bryant]

I would say Dumbarton, but I don't know. I'm just guessing.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's gotta be Dumbarton.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Well, we'll go with one of those two. How about that? Sure. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And, you know, earlier I was saying that, 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? I don't think it fits. Right.

[Josh Clark]

It's a little anachronistic.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so. But online doesn't mean just on the Internet. Online just means, like, it's beginning to function. Right. As a thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Remember that Simpsons where Lenny goes. Little kid Lenny's like, oh, he just logged onto my Internet because he pooped his pants out of. He pooped his bathing suit with the little Interneting. So he said he logged onto his Internet. Oh, that's so good.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good line. Oh, boy. Lenny locked onto my Internet. Where was that? Oh, yeah, steam engines were dangerous. They would blow up a lot. There was when tugboats first started using. 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 blow up a port?

[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, going to save the industry or shipping.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But there was A proving ground. What ended up being a proving ground on the Tine river that connected Newcastle to the North Sea. 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. And I'm going to have them pull these colliers, these coal ships up and down the Tyne and I think it's going to revolutionize shipping. And Joseph Price was right on the money. The price was right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 was literally changing like lives all over the world.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Totally.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, Joseph 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 made a name for themselves so much that when the Royal Navy purchased their first steamships of any kind, they were tugboats.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Comet and Monkey. That'd be a fun cartoon. I'd watch that.

[Josh Clark]

Or drug.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'd also take that.

[Josh Clark]

Comet. Monkey.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just kidding.

[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?

[Chuck Bryant]

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, erased 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.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. That's where they're most famous.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 just spin in like a top.

[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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[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. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Shall we take our second break?

[Josh Clark]

You bet.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we took an early one, so we're going to take this one and we're going to come back and talk a little bit about, well, tugboats right after this.

[Josh Clark]

This is srecast. The purpose of SREC is today.

[Danny Shapiro]

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time, he didn't even say hello? And how would you feel if your doctor advised you to keep your life altering medical procedure a secret from everyone? And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child? These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of family Secrets. Some of you have been with us since season one and others are just tuning in. Whatever the case and wherever you are, thank you for being part of our family Secrets Family, where every week we explore the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Amanda Mull]

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Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters.

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A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the Sec.

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Amanda Mull, who writes our BusinessWeek Buying Power column.

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Very few companies who go viral are.

[Josh Clark]

Like, totally prepared for what that means.

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[Josh Clark]

So you mentioned tugboat strike, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't.

[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 it. 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 it would be spread all throughout Manhattan and all throughout New York. Food shipments came in by barge, garbage went out by barge. New York operated on barges. And if you're using barges, you need a tugboat to tow or push those barges. So when the tugboat 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they rationed food. They literally shut the lights down on Broadway. It was their backup plan of just using smaller boats to ferry stuff in and out. They were just like, Manhattan is far too big for this already. And the tugboat operators, I guess, I mean, what a moment to sit back and just sort of like say, yeah, now. Yeah, gloat a little bit. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I said float, by the way, but gloat works even better.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you said float.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they were gloating while they were floating.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[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 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. And yet it's still so vital that you just can't do anything without them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. You know, they've got electric tugs now.

[Josh Clark]

I saw that. There's one called the E Wolf, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Some harbor tugs or ocean going tugs generate 27,000 plus horsepower. Yeah, it's like having 27,000 horses just running at the back of this thing, like kicking their legs all at once. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And to do that you use a lot of fuel, a ton of diesel fuel. 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. 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. Yeah. And that's just one tugboat using 3,000 gallons of diesel a day.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[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 take way longer in between refuelings. That's the point. That's how crazy important time is in ports.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I get it. Especially in a place like New York Harbor. Very busy, very busy. So you talked about.

[Josh Clark]

That's the motto over the entrance.

[Chuck Bryant]

Go down to the dock. It says that 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 asthma 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.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know why you're laughing. I never thought that.

[Chuck Bryant]

But 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Isn't that amazing?

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty cool.

[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're controlled by two joysticks, so 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. That's gotta be one of the more stressful jobs around, piling a tugboat. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I bet.

[Josh Clark]

Well, we'll have to ask Thomas. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 going to send a tugboat in there to get those things out of there.

[Josh Clark]

So. Yeah, we talked about that. The ship, the 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Was it in. Did we do one on the Suez Canal or just the.

[Josh Clark]

No, I looked. If we did, we didn't name it that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which canal did we do what episode on?

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember doing any canal episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, we did something on canals.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think it seems very familiar to me.

[Josh Clark]

I think we just earlier, talking about donkey paths and stuff, did our canal episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hmm.

[Josh Clark]

Wait, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we did Panama Canal.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, there you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Love canal.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, what else? Firefighting tugboats, of course.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they're called Fifi's.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cute.

[Josh Clark]

Either. Fifi or Fifi. I've only seen it spelled out.

[Chuck Bryant]

I bet it's Fifi5.5. It would be weird.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Fifi's not weird. In the sea of the sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I don't know, Captain I don't have my sea legs, but Fifi is at least a cutesy name. Fifi is nothing.

[Josh Clark]

Let's try this out. Argh. Look at that Fifi.

[Chuck Bryant]

Arg.

[Josh Clark]

Look at that, Fifi. I think Fifi wins the day. Okay, what else?

[Chuck Bryant]

Icebreakers. And I don't mean at office parties either.

[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. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

He goes up to and says, if you could invite anyone from history to dinner, who would it be?

[Josh Clark]

I hate those questions so much.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's the worst.

[Josh Clark]

There's also anchor handling. There's actually special tugboats called anchor handling tugs, appropriately enough. And the anchors they're talking about are oil platform tankers. And these are ocean going tugs, the ones that carry 100,000 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. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'm going to look that up and tell you what I think before the end of the episode.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good line handling too. Like these tow ropes, if they're like, hey, we need to get this tow rope out to that ship. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so there's Thomas saying, just throw it on, guys, I got it. I'll take it out there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I was reading a LA Times article about, remember the shipping shut down the cargo container back up in LA in Long beach at the pandemic that just killed everything. The writer went out on a tugboat and he was just kind of chronicling like a morning in the life of this tugboat and they were talking about how recently two deckhands, one had been injured and one had been killed by a line tightening and pressing them up against the side of the tugboat, so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, like Jaws.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. But killed them. Yeah, yeah. So it was a. I mean you can just imagine like this is a 3 inch thick rope that just suddenly is, you know, thousands of kilonewtons pressing you against a metal, a big piece of metal, which is the inside of the ship. That's not, it's not the place that you want to be. So it is. Being a deckhand, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You've also got engineers who, 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. If you work in. Let's just pick out New York City, because people think about tugboats a lot. They're in New York Harbor. You work. Yeah, everyone does.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I took a pole.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They work two week shifts. Two weeks on, two weeks off. You live on that boat full time. And then on those days that you work, you work two six hour shifts. Six hours working, six hours off. Six hours working, six hours off. And that is. I'm sure Thomas would verify that. This is tough, hard work that is too short.

[Josh Clark]

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. Um, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Would you have them work 12 hours straight and then 12 hours off?

[Josh Clark]

No, I think even eight hours. That extra two hours to unwind and eat and then get six hours sleep is adequate because, 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 got to eat, you're going to just do whatever, shave, shower, and 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know, and I'm sure they're significant others. Like, oh, you're awake again, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But then they're at home for two weeks straight.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I mean.

[Chuck Bryant]

Geez. Can you get back to work?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, man. It's a hard life. I'm sure Thomas can tell us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, for sure. There are push boats. These are pretty fun 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 you're just pushing something around.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that one's fine. But I like the articulated tug barge or atb.

[Chuck Bryant]

The sexiest link.

[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 tugboat can still maneuver, like fishtail and move that barge and 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. 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 trailer all the time. It made more sense to me when I was researching it than it is now that I'm explaining it.

[Chuck Bryant]

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?

[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 onto.

[Chuck Bryant]

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? Yes, and we'll just handle all your tugging and pushing needs basically in this harbor.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Surely it's an all inclusive thing, though, and it's not just like, oh, you need to get over there. 500 bucks.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, no, I don't think it's like that for sure. But 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, of course.

[Josh Clark]

So 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, the tugboat pulls 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. And the reason why is money. It costs an extra ten grand to pay a tugboat to pull you safely out into a harbor so you can make way. And the shipping industry holds the cards now, because if you start charging more at a port or you start, say, requiring ships to have a tugboat all the way out into the harbor, 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 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That sounds like a new episode of the Wire, too.

[Josh Clark]

It does.

[Chuck Bryant]

You okay?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm all right now. Let me Just apologize to Thomas. Sorry, Thomas.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you want to pick up your spirits, my friend, go to New York City and take a ride on the WO Decker, because that's one of the fun things you can do in New York. I have not done it yet, but I'm going to make a point to go to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York, where you can actually take a ride on the classic and beautiful WO Decker tugboat. Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Pretty neat.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna do it.

[Josh Clark]

There's some other stuff you can do, too, but that's probably the best.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, good. I'd like to do the best things.

[Josh Clark]

Good. You got anything more on tugboats, Charles?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing. I just love these pictures. There's something about a tugboat. I like the way they look.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

That's the beard, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but it's not. It's not a beard that I've ever seen. It really looks like a beard.

[Josh Clark]

I was reading, like, a kids maritime museum website about tugboats, and they were trying to explain why everyone loves tugboats. Because you're. 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 explain 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Actually, some of these beers are very beardy, so I get it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, good. So Chuck gets it. And he mentioned beards twice in quick succession, which, of course unlocks listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And it also conjures Beetlebeard.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sorry? You know, you say Beetlejuice three times.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah, I got it now.

[Chuck Bryant]

I saw that sequel last night.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah? What'd you think?

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you see it? Yeah, 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, but.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I don't know about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, I think Ed Wood was great, but I think that's his only truly great film.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, tell me another Edward Scissorhands.

[Josh Clark]

Sleepy Hollow.

[Chuck Bryant]

I enjoyed Edward Scissorhands. I don't think it's great. Sleepy Hollow I thought was mid at best.

[Josh Clark]

He's Got a whole. I disagree. Sleepy Hollow is one of my all time favorite movies. That's one of those ones I can watch, like, any time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Oh, hey, I like. I like most of his movies, but I just don't think they're great films.

[Josh Clark]

I understand what you're saying.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know what I mean.

[Josh Clark]

The 1990 Batman. Not the best. I would say that that's not a great movie too. For sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But I mean, I like most of his movies.

[Josh Clark]

I understand what you're saying. Fair enough.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Anyway, I thought it was.

[Josh Clark]

I thought it was good.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was fun. It was good enough for what I wanted out of it, which was a bit of nostalgia. And I LOL quite a few times because I just think Michael Keaton is really funny and Catherine O'Hara is really funny.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. I think Catherine O'Hara did great.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But, you know, it was just. Okay.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

It's about a woman who seeks revenge. So she finds an occultist to help her conjure demons to enact revenge.

[Chuck Bryant]

How do you find movies that no one else has ever heard of?

[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 very good art house horror film.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, Ruby went as Megan for Halloween, so she's pretty into that stuff. But this sounds too dark.

[Josh Clark]

It's a little. There's a part in there that she should not see.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

It is very convincing.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so that's been movie minutes.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. Did you ever read the Listener Mail?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, man, I'm waiting on the queue.

[Josh Clark]

I said that you said something in quick succession and you unlocked listener mail. Jerry already ran the chime.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got us sidetracked. Hey, buddy, I don't jump unless you tell me to.

[Josh Clark]

So I did tell you and you didn't jump and everything broke down as if the tugboat stopped tugging.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that means another lashing tonight.

[Josh Clark]

No, I'm gonna lash you to the tugboats.

[Chuck Bryant]

Uh, yeah, put me up there with the beard. Um, all right. Hey, guys. Love the show, especially the unsolved mystery episodes. Needless to say, I love the one a couple of months ago about the mysteries of the Internet and the mysterious song that caught my attention.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I know where this one's going, boy.

[Chuck Bryant]

They came pouring in and I have to say, the mystery seems to have been solved. About 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 100 emails that that artist has been identified. There's a Reddit thread as a Reddit user tracked it down. The song is called Subways of youf Mind by the group. I don't know if it's Fex or Fex. Not sure how they pronounce it. The user found the band from an old newspaper article in the Nordwest Zeitung archive while they were researching Hrfest bands the bands performed. That music festival was 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, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 van first came back and said, I talked to the rest of the band. They're into it and we want to, like, rerecord it and, you know, get back together and rerecord this thing now that it's got some fame.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they're going to do an acoustic country version.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is for 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Thanks to us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks to us. And this was solved on our watch. So as the longer we do the show, the more these mysteries are kind of, you know, maybe they'll find that guy who disappeared from the airport. Remember that guy?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, that poor kid from. Yeah, I don't Remember what island he was?

[Chuck Bryant]

He's like Swedish or something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was a sad story.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So we're hoping to clear up all these mysteries, but, yeah, the mysterious song has been solved.

[Josh Clark]

Great. And it was Fecks, 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. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and it's going to get worse because this isn't going to come out because we're frontloading for Christmas break. And so, like, we're going to be getting these emails for weeks.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

That is an old, old classic.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man. Vital to hear about Jared from Subway. And Hugh.

[Josh Clark]

Hugh Jackman.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hugh Jackman playing P.T.

[Josh Clark]

Barnum.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who was it? P.T. bar.

[Josh Clark]

The greatest showman. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Anyway, that was for Michael.

[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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we love it.

[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 stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Danny Shapiro]

Stuff youf.

[Josh Clark]

Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

[Amanda Mull]

For more podcasts iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

[Josh Clark]

To your favorite shows.

[Courtney Thorne Smith]

Hey, everyone, this is Courtney Thorn Smith.

[Laura Layton]

Laura Layton and Daphne Zuniga.

[Courtney Thorne Smith]

On July 8, 1992, apartment buildings with pools were never quite the same as Melrose Place was introduced to the world. We are going to be be reliving every hookup, every scandal, and every single wig removal together.

[Laura Layton]

So listen to still the place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Jess Hilarious]

Yo, what up? It's your girl, Jess. Hilarious. And I think it's time to acknowledge that I'm not just a comedian. It's time to add uncertified therapists to my credentials. Because each and every Wednesday, I'm fixing your mess on carefully reckless on the black Effect Podcast Network. Got problems in your relationship, come to me. Your best friend acting shady, come to me. Thought you was the father but you not come to me. I can't promise I won't judge you, but I can guarantee that I will help you. Listen to carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. ATT Connecting Changes.

[Ed Zitron]

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google Search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever else you get your podcasts from.