Chapter 1: What is the Jeddah Tower and why is it significant?
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That's my cue. This is about the Jeddah Tower, J-E-D-D-A-H. Yeah. Thanks to Architectural Digest and CNN and HowStuffWorks for this stuff. But this is the story of if it's finished, eventually we'll be, at least for a while, the tallest building in the world. Yeah. It's going to make the Burj Khalifa look like poop. Right. So let's go back to 2008.
There was a billionaire investor named Prince Alawid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. And I think his goal was to make the Burj Khalifa look like poop. He was like, I want to make one taller. I want to build a city around it called the Jeddah Economic City. Terrible name. And basically, like, they wanted to compete with Dubai, but in Saudi Arabia. Right, because Dubai is in the UAE.
And he wanted to build the first skyscraper to reach over 3,280 feet or higher. And for those of us in the United States and for our friends in Liberia, that is a kilometer. So this would be the first kilometer-high building, which is mind-bogglingly tall. And he's doing it, baby. In 2000, well, I guess they made it up to 2018. Oh, no, year. I was thinking feet. Right. No, no, the year.
Yeah, that was a little confusing. I'm sorry about that. That's right. Especially when you know the construction history of the tower. But no, they made it up to 2018, the year. CE, I guess I should have said. Yeah. before they had to halt construction thanks to a bunch of different stuff. That's right. You know, it's the way you said it when you said they went all the way up to 2018.
You know, brick by brick all the way to 2018. So, yeah, construction paused in 2018. We'll talk about why here in a minute. And also COVID had a big dent in it. The Burj Khalifa is the current tallest building at 2717 feet tall. The year? Oh, no, no.
If you're wondering about the eventual kilometer high building, the Jetta Tower, if you remember our beloved Twin Towers here in the United States, it'll be about twice the size of those, which is astonishing to think about. Also, I mean, for a little closer to home, if you don't live in New York, the average two-story house is about 20 to 25 feet tall for comparison. How many Big Macs?
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Chapter 2: Who is behind the Jeddah Tower project?
Yeah, man, I've got to read that. That sounds great. It is so greatly suspenseful. It's just a wonderful article, one of the best ever. Awesome. So the Burj Khalifa, one of the differences is that one tapers in different stages at different sections. But the Jeddah Tower is sort of one big triangle. It's going to be one continuously tapering tower. Right.
And literally sort of piercing the clouds at one point. Yeah, I saw that Adrian Smith was inspired by how palm leaves stick up from the top of a tree before they unfurl and bend over. And I looked at a picture. I'm like, yep, that looks like the Jetta Tower. Oh, awesome. So you want to take a little break and come back and talk about, I don't know, the Jetta Tower some more? Yeah, let's do it.
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To find out, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're going to just give you a few nuts and bolts appropriately about the Jeddah Tower. The big showstopper there will be the observation tower, open-air observation tower, which is terrifying. It'll be at 2,187 feet.
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Chapter 3: What challenges has the Jeddah Tower faced during construction?
Yeah, agreed. The original name was the Kingdom Tower, and they broke ground in April of 2013. It took more than a year just to lay the foundation. And they have these concrete pilings 10 feet in diameter, longer than a football field that go down very, very, very deep into the earth.
And because of these delays, you know, they had to stop in 2017 when there was a political crisis in Saudi Arabia that was a move to sort of consolidate power. And Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a big anti-corruption purge where he arrested 11 Saudi princes, one of which was the financial backer of the Jeddah Tower. And some of the partners in the Saudi bin Laden group.
So because of that and COVID, it halted for a lot of years. And I think like five years. And I was watching this YouTube video where they basically said, like, when that happens in a place like this, like you usually tear it down and start over because COVID. You know, sand damage, salt damage, just corrosion to steel and corrosion to the concrete probably makes it very unsafe moving forward.
But apparently they had the foresight to install these underground sensors in those pilings, and they could get readings that apparently said, like, we're all good down here. Yeah, that's amazing. That is some foresight. You were telling me about that and you hadn't got to the part where they had the sensors.
And I was like, please tell me that they are not just building on top of an unsafe structure or they're going to have to tear the whole thing down and start over. But no, you really came through with the great positive twist at the end. Yeah, well, they eventually restarted after COVID, I think in 2023, September 2023 is when they finally restarted.
They said in 2023, it would be another four or five years. But in 2025, just over a year ago, 60 of the 167 floors have been built. And this year in January, they passed just recently the 80 floor mark. Yeah, so they're almost halfway there. They're thinking that they might be done in the next couple of years.
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Chapter 4: How does the Jeddah Tower compare to the Burj Khalifa?
Yeah, I don't know. But I mean, I did see the YouTube video also said that they are going at like breakneck pace now. Yeah, that's you don't really want to do that when you're building the world's tallest building. But no, I agree. Also, a little fact, if you're like Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he sounds kind of familiar.
When he did that anti-corruption purge, that was the same time that he ordered Jamal Khashoggi, the colonist and dissident, murdered. That's right. Yet he was still welcomed into our White House. So you got anything else? I have nothing else. We'll see what happens with the Jetta Tower.
I mean, it looks like it'll be finished, you know, I don't know, about four or five years from 2023, but we'll see. Yeah. And sorry to all the people who saw this short stuff title, Jetta Tower, and were like, they better not bring the White House into this. Short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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