I'm Super Serious

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Hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to I’m Super Serious. My name is Quomsec, I’m your host, and over there in his little booth is Markus Dewitt. Say hi to our listeners, Markus. I can’t hear you man. Can you speak into the mic? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ohh, ohh. Wait. I-I-eh-I forgot-ah. You don’t have a mic. Wow. I-I-I just realized that. Ok. Ok. I’m not sure how a simple microphone for Markus escaped the plans for this studio when I set it up, but somehow it did. Sorry about that, Markus: I’ll get you a mic soon. Don’t you worry about it, man. OK. I’m-I’m sorry. OK. I-I, man, I feel bad for him. It’s all good, though. It’s all good.

Anyways, sitting just a few feet behind me is my producer Ethan James. His contractual agreement on this podcast is to not make a single peep during the recording of this show, so unfortunately you’re not going to be heading from him during this show. He has to remain still and silent. The reason for this is due to a few issues he has had on other podcasts, of which I am not allowed to discuss. Maybe I’ve already said too much, actually. Ok, well, Ethan is giving me a nasty look right now, but he is also giving me a thumbs up. I’m not sure how to process this.

So, according to his contract any sneezes, coughs, sniffs or any slew of verbal content that escapes his body during this recording will have to be meticulously edited out in post. However, if your sound system is sensitive enough you might be able to pick up his shallow breathing in the background, though I have to admit he is an insanely quiet breather. Not even my sound pressure meter can pick up his breathing. But, it may be different for you as a listener, especially from the fact that I am recording with a condenser microphone right now, which are extremely sensitive mics. These mics are great at picking up distant background sounds. You’re going to need some ultra-ultra-ultra hi-fidelity speakers to hear anything out of him in this podcast, unless our post production editing pro Quincy manages to catch it in time.

You know what: even if you download, ah, this podcast in a lossless format, which honestly I have no idea if that’s even possible. Am I taking this too far? Eh-eh. Probably so. Let’s continue: So, so, if you are able to do that: you might be able to pick up some sounds from him. But, you’re going to have to turn off all sound sources within a highly controlled perimeter of at least four-thousand feet. That’s just a guess–an educated guess. Now, you might have to get the local police involved–you know, to stop traffic nearby. Plus they are going to have to go door to door to get people to turn off all electronic and mechanical devices in their homes, which is going to be impossible to do in the first place. And then get these home goers to stand completely still, and hold their breath while listening to this podcast, to prevent any extraneous sounds from disturbing your acute listening experience.

Furthermore, you’re probably going to have to get in touch with the FAA to ban all air traffic above your location and to go the extra mile: contact NASA, NORAD and the United Nations to halt any and all space activity above your location. Eh, OK. Now that’s going to likely entail getting the International Space Station to take a detour around your area. Eh, eh. You’re gonna have a really, really tough time accomplishing that. You’e going to have to have some good connections too–some good governmental connections. Ah, OK, OK. I’m probably taking things too far, but you never know these days, ya know. Ehhh. If you’re going to get serious about something: get super serious. That’s what I say.

Anyways, let’s get back on track here.

Today’s episode is about The Transatlantic Mezzanine Bridge.

This bridge is the most incredible, largest, and most expensive engineering project ever accomplished by mankind. I-I-I know. That’s crazy, right? I have chosen this subject for today’s podcast because this bridge was just opened up to the public last week.

OK. So, this bridge–what it does–is it connects New York City to London. OK. Just-just close your eyes and think about that for a moment. OK, OK. If you’re driving: keep your eyes open. But if you’re doing something that doesn’t entail active eye action–just close ‘em for a moment. Imagine a bridge stretching from New York City to London. Incredible, huh? I’m just blown away at this.

So, let’s get into how this incredible feat of engineering was even achieved in the first place. We will also look at the numerous challenges and issues that have come up during the construction of the Mezzanine Bridge, as well as problems it is currently facing and will likely be facing years down the road. Sounds interesting, huh?

So, the bridge was born in the mind of a single individual by the name of Jonathan Michaelson. Jonathan grew up in the Bronx in New York City and lived a pretty tough life initially. He was an orphan whose dad died in nineteen forty-one during World War Two. Also, his mother passed away after getting struck by a car while crossing the road one cold February morning in 1942.

Jonathan, at eight years old, ended up being adopted and raised by a wealthy family out of Tribeca, which is an upscale neighborhood in New York City. Almost a decade later at--this is at about seventeen years of age–he meets a girl named Olivia visiting from London. They met at a restaurant in New York City. As you could probably imagine: they fall in love. They fall in the deepest of love imaginable.

So, I-I-you can probably guess where this story is going–how it’s tying together–how this bridge was even conceptualized from the get-go: yeah: it’s love. This bridge is here because of love. Love built the Transatlantic Mezzanine Bridge, which took fifty-six years to construct. And here’s what’s incredibly mind boggling: the bridge ended up costing over six point two trillion US dollars. That’s about four point two trillion British pounds. That’s some expensive love right there.

Can you believe it? Can-can-can you believe love accomplished this? OK. OK. I’m sure a lot of ya’ll can. Markus, man, why are you giving me that weird look? You-you’ve been in love, right? No? Wait, what, hol-OK. Aren’t–wait. You’re married. Eh, Markus. Right? You–ya–exactly: you’re married So, so, oh, oh, oh, oh, OK, so hold on. Hold on. So, you’re saying that you’re married but you have never been in love? So, do you not love your wife? Oh, oh, OK, you do, OK. That’s a relief. Ohh: it’s a joke. Oh–you thi–oh-oh-oh-oh-ohh. You think you’re funny, Markus? Heh, heh, heh, heh. Wow. Mmm, mmm, man. I-I-I hope your wife doesn’t hear this episode. Goodness gracious, man. That’s a–that’s a–that’s a rough joke. Now, now, OK: it was pretty good. You-you got me. So I guess you win? OK. Whatever. We’re getting off track here.

Anyways, back to the Mezzanine Bridge: So, Jonathan’s love–his love knew no bounds. But, why, might you ask? Why was a bridge necessary to bridge their love? Why can’t he just take a plane to the UK? Or a boat? They got boats, right? There’s-there’s boats out there, ya know? Those things that go on the water? The boats, man. Hmm. Well, he has a pretty severe fear of both, believe it or not. So, OK. OK. So, why can’t he just flat out move to the UK or get the girl to move to the States? He’ll just have to put up with just one flight, or just one boat trip. I mean, come on: they can just sedate him if it’s really that bad for him.

Um, so, we do not have an answer to those questions, unf. All-all we know is the outcome of-of the situation, which is this bridge. There were only a few interviews done of Jonathan and his history and how the bridge got created-uh-before his passing. So, we don’t have a massive amount of information ‘cause the interviews were pretty short. But, we have a little bit of information to go off of here.

Now–so, planning and initial funding for the bridge was greatly assisted by Jonathan’s parents. Now, his parents had very strong stakes in multiple iron ore mining and transportation companies. So, once these companies got wind of this idea and once they heard that multi-millions of dollars were already being tied to the project, they decide to put their hand in the pot. So, what ends up happening is thousands of companies in both the US and UK end up bidding exorbitant amounts of cash to be involved in this monumental project.

Ahh. In the end, roughly sixty to seventy companies were chosen from both sides of the water.

Now, the inception of the bridge started in nineteen fifty-four, while it dwelled in an extremely complicated planning phase between nineteen fifty-seven and nineteen sixty-three–only six years before the first shovel broke the earth in July of nineteen sixty-four on the US side of the bridge. Or on the East coast of Staten Island in New York City.

Now, during planning, many important aspects of the bridge were, uhm, what’s a good word to use here? Uh. Planned. There we go. These important aspects were things such as the bridge being a four lane bridge which has two wide shoulders on each side–enough for emergency vehicles and so forth. We’ll get more into that later on.

Also, a rail and a hyperloop system was going to be added to the bridge during construction. So, all of this puts the bridge’s width at eighty-four feet or about twenty-five meters. Now, what’s interesting is the rail system was later scrapped. It was determined to be way too expensive to add a train rail system, especially considering the insane amount of weight.

The length of the bridge–OK–this is pretty cool: the length is at about thirty-one hundred miles, or about five thousand kilometers. The connecting side, as we discussed previously is Staten Island in New York City. It’s connecting to the UK on the other side. So it connects to a town called Porthcraw. OK, now, Porthcraw is not necessarily near London. We’re talking about one hundred and fifty miles between Porthcraw and London. So, what was done was an on-land expansion–sort of a express expansion system was added to connect the bridge to actual London itself. Pretty–pretty fascinating stuff, huh?

Anyways, awesome facts aside. I’m gonna turn off the lights for a moment. I’m gonna give you a dark fact: it’s a sad fact about this bridge. But, it-it’s important to know. So, the lights are out now. Six hundred and three people died while constructing the bridge. Now, the period of construction was fifty-six years, so this is over six hundred people who have died in the time span of fifty six years. Now, thankfully all six hundred and three workers have their own individual memorial at the centerpoint of the bridge that all drivers can see as they drive by. And they can even stop and pay their respects. So, that’s nice.

So, let me turn the lights back on. Ze-boop. There we go. Beautiful.

That’s it folks. I am out of time. Thank you so much for listening.

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