1 00:00:00,580 --> 00:00:01,609 Ahh, Cancun. 2 00:00:01,609 --> 00:00:06,009 No better place to kick back, relax, and enjoy the sounds of a teenager getting their stomach 3 00:00:06,009 --> 00:00:07,149 pumped for the very first time. 4 00:00:07,149 --> 00:00:11,150 And when I say “no better place,” I’m being very literal—the city of Cancun was 5 00:00:11,150 --> 00:00:15,901 built entirely from scratch in the 1970s when the Bank of Mexico calculated that that exact 6 00:00:15,901 --> 00:00:20,359 location in the Yucatan Peninsula would make the statistically best vacation spot in the 7 00:00:20,359 --> 00:00:21,930 entire country. 8 00:00:21,930 --> 00:00:22,930 Sound interesting? 9 00:00:22,930 --> 00:00:23,930 Well, uh… 10 00:00:23,930 --> 00:00:26,500 I sure hope so, because that’s what I’m going to be talking about for the next four 11 00:00:26,500 --> 00:00:27,500 minutes. 12 00:00:27,500 --> 00:00:31,880 In the late 1960s, Mexico was primed for a tourism boom. 13 00:00:31,880 --> 00:00:35,220 International flights were becoming much cheaper—made possible by larger planes that carried more 14 00:00:35,220 --> 00:00:37,320 people and served fewer lobsters. 15 00:00:37,320 --> 00:00:41,410 The American middle class also not only existed during the 1960s, but people had the money 16 00:00:41,410 --> 00:00:44,710 to leave their house for longer than two hours at a time without going bankrupt. 17 00:00:44,710 --> 00:00:48,450 So, the Mexican government went to the Bank of Mexico and said, “hey Bank of Mexico, 18 00:00:48,450 --> 00:00:52,190 here’s 2 million dollars, which, by the way, would be worth about 17 million dollars 19 00:00:52,190 --> 00:00:53,190 in 2022. 20 00:00:53,190 --> 00:00:54,550 You’re in charge of our tourism industry now.” 21 00:00:54,550 --> 00:00:57,420 And the Bank of Mexico said, “wait, don’t we use pesos? 22 00:00:57,420 --> 00:01:00,160 Also, why did you adjust for inflation for 46 years from now? 23 00:01:00,160 --> 00:01:01,160 Is that even possible? 24 00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:02,960 Y’know what, never mind, we’ll figure it out.” 25 00:01:02,960 --> 00:01:06,560 The objective was pretty simple: Infratur, the bank’s new tourism division, set out 26 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:10,240 to find the perfect Mexican tourist destination, and build a resort there. 27 00:01:10,240 --> 00:01:14,830 But the question of how to go about finding that perfect spot was much more complicated; 28 00:01:14,830 --> 00:01:18,360 after all, Mexico is a big country—even bigger than the biggest cookie ever made—with 29 00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:22,440 a little over 6,000 miles or 10,000 kilometers of beach to consider. 30 00:01:22,440 --> 00:01:25,560 To make matters more complicated, the bank didn’t want to just throw money at some 31 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:30,000 existing beach town and call it a day; they wanted to build an entirely new city from 32 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:31,480 the ground up. 33 00:01:31,480 --> 00:01:34,640 That meant that they weren’t just looking for the perfect town, they were looking for 34 00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:39,909 the perfect stretch of coastline–the mathematically most relaxing combination of sand, sea, and 35 00:01:39,909 --> 00:01:42,220 ambient bird sounds in the entire country. 36 00:01:42,220 --> 00:01:45,800 Now, the Infratur committee couldn’t just walk the full coastline of Mexico in search 37 00:01:45,800 --> 00:01:49,810 of the perfect spot—according to Google Maps, this isn’t how Google Maps works. 38 00:01:49,810 --> 00:01:54,020 So instead, they decided to use a new-fangled technology called computers—which I guess 39 00:01:54,020 --> 00:01:57,690 sounds like a joke, but they were new-fangled at the time—to create a statistical model 40 00:01:57,690 --> 00:02:01,570 for the average Caribbean tourist; what sort of weather they were drawn to, how far they 41 00:02:01,570 --> 00:02:04,800 were willing to travel, and what sorts of things they did on vacation. 42 00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:08,670 They pulled data from other successful resorts in places like Miami and Acapulco, where they 43 00:02:08,670 --> 00:02:13,700 accounted for every possible variable—available occupancy, rainfall levels, frequency of hurricanes, 44 00:02:13,700 --> 00:02:17,310 everything; or at least everything that their plucky little 1970s computers could handle, 45 00:02:17,310 --> 00:02:20,940 because, fun fact: this whole project nearly melted the bank’s computers and they eventually 46 00:02:20,940 --> 00:02:23,200 had to outsource the work to a guy in California. 47 00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:27,120 After weeks of hard thinking and tantrum-throwing, the computers generated a list of geographic 48 00:02:27,120 --> 00:02:29,630 locations that matched those in their model. 49 00:02:29,630 --> 00:02:33,410 To narrow it down from there, the bank dispatched a team of engineers, economists, and lawyers 50 00:02:33,410 --> 00:02:37,730 to meticulously vibe check each site; they vibe checked the shark populations, they vibe 51 00:02:37,730 --> 00:02:41,010 checked the local insects, they checked the vibes of basically anything that could eat 52 00:02:41,010 --> 00:02:43,500 part of a drunk, slow-moving American tourist. 53 00:02:43,500 --> 00:02:47,050 They also studied local economies to see how they might benefit from becoming the world’s 54 00:02:47,050 --> 00:02:50,800 most popular non-stop puke-fest; they needed a large labor force, and one that actually 55 00:02:50,800 --> 00:02:52,070 needed work. 56 00:02:52,070 --> 00:02:56,870 In the end, all of these scientific models and investigations yielded one perfect location: 57 00:02:56,870 --> 00:03:00,599 a tiny island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula whose name roughly translated to 58 00:03:00,599 --> 00:03:04,050 “overfilled with snakes,” and was home to exactly three people. 59 00:03:04,050 --> 00:03:07,490 The geography was perfect, the sharks were minimal, and with the collapse of the local 60 00:03:07,490 --> 00:03:12,050 sisal industry, the population was desperate for a constant stream of the worst 19-year 61 00:03:12,050 --> 00:03:13,459 olds the United States could produce. 62 00:03:13,459 --> 00:03:16,880 Over the course of the next few years, the bank crossed their fingers that the computer 63 00:03:16,880 --> 00:03:20,960 was right and completely overhauled what was basically just a deserted island and a couple 64 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:21,960 miles of jungle. 65 00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:25,960 They dug 16 wells so that the tourists had something to drink, built 62 miles or 100 66 00:03:25,960 --> 00:03:28,910 kilometers of sewers so that the tourists’ drinks had somewhere to go, and brought in 67 00:03:28,910 --> 00:03:32,390 power lines from a city 100 miles or 160 kilometers away so that… 68 00:03:32,390 --> 00:03:35,810 I don’t know what they used electricity for in the 70s, but they did that for some 69 00:03:35,810 --> 00:03:36,810 reason, too. 70 00:03:36,810 --> 00:03:40,379 Not only did they have to develop an entire tourist corridor with hotels and golf courses 71 00:03:40,379 --> 00:03:44,522 and all that, they also had to develop an entire city around the corridor in order to 72 00:03:44,522 --> 00:03:47,860 support the people who would live and work there; that meant building schools, hospitals, 73 00:03:47,860 --> 00:03:49,970 houses, roads, well… you know what a city is. 74 00:03:49,970 --> 00:03:53,870 And on top of all of that, Cancun needed to be easily accessible to American tourists; 75 00:03:53,870 --> 00:03:57,180 one of the big problems with building a new city in the middle of nowhere on an underdeveloped 76 00:03:57,180 --> 00:04:00,060 peninsula is that it’s in the middle of nowhere on an underdeveloped peninsula. 77 00:04:00,060 --> 00:04:03,769 So… they just went ahead and built a giant international airport, too. 78 00:04:03,769 --> 00:04:06,989 This whole development project could honestly use its own 20 minute video essay, but it 79 00:04:06,989 --> 00:04:10,370 seems like Sam from Wendover is busy making videos about… gas prices!? 80 00:04:10,370 --> 00:04:11,370 Really? 81 00:04:11,370 --> 00:04:13,600 He could literally make a video about anything, and he chooses to make a video about—whatever, 82 00:04:13,600 --> 00:04:14,600 nevermind. 83 00:04:14,600 --> 00:04:18,180 Anyway, it kind of goes without saying, but this project was a big success; Cancun became 84 00:04:18,180 --> 00:04:22,180 the occasional host of MTV’s Spring Break, which, believe it or not, is the only metric 85 00:04:22,180 --> 00:04:24,210 you can use to accurately track tourism. 86 00:04:24,210 --> 00:04:26,740 The computer, it turns out, was right all along. 87 00:04:26,740 --> 00:04:29,979 So the next time someone tries to tell you that computers are just a fad and don’t 88 00:04:29,979 --> 00:04:33,520 have any use, you can just laugh and shake your head because you know that they have 89 00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:38,580 at least one use: triangulating the approximate location of Cancun. 90 00:04:38,580 --> 00:04:44,460 But I’m gonna let you in on a little secret—computers actually have a second use: browsing high-quality, 91 00:04:44,460 --> 00:04:48,169 ad-free, exclusive videos from all of your favorite educational creators on our independent 92 00:04:48,169 --> 00:04:49,280 streaming service, Nebula. 93 00:04:49,280 --> 00:04:53,490 Me and my friends started Nebula because we wanted to unshackle ourselves from the YouTube 94 00:04:53,490 --> 00:04:56,449 algorithm; there were so many videos we wanted to make but couldn’t because they would 95 00:04:56,449 --> 00:04:58,379 bomb or get demonitized. 96 00:04:58,379 --> 00:05:01,800 Just a few months ago, we released a whole game show on Nebula called Half as Interesting’s 97 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:06,979 Crime Spree, where my writers found the 33 weirdest laws in America and I got $5,000 98 00:05:06,979 --> 00:05:10,629 and 72 hours to break as many of them as possible while they tried to track me down. 99 00:05:10,629 --> 00:05:14,270 It’s also where we put our feature-length documentaries, our 40-minute long brick-themed 100 00:05:14,270 --> 00:05:18,219 comedy variety special, and a whole bunch of extra behind-the-scenes content that just 101 00:05:18,219 --> 00:05:19,430 wouldn’t work on YouTube. 102 00:05:19,430 --> 00:05:22,869 And if that’s not enough content, the best way to sign up for Nebula is through the Curiosity 103 00:05:22,869 --> 00:05:27,729 Stream Nebula bundle, where you also get access to the hundreds of amazing documentaries on 104 00:05:27,729 --> 00:05:28,729 CuriosityStream. 105 00:05:28,729 --> 00:05:33,909 This whole package is only 15 dollars for an entire year—it’s an absurdly good deal, 106 00:05:33,909 --> 00:05:36,210 and the best way to support creators like me. 107 00:05:36,210 --> 00:05:39,240 To sign up, just click the button on screen or go to curiositystream.com/HAI.