Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is a good
Speaker 2: old fashioned, root and tootin wholesome, down home hour of
Speaker 2: fellowship with Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1: Wow, these sound like the coolest youth director in the building.
Speaker 2: You nailed the chuck, You totally nailed it.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: I'm also the only youth director in the building right now.
Speaker 1: That's right. I I had to hang out my spurs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got run out on a rail, didn't you.
Speaker 1: They were like, if there's one thing that's certainly not cool,
Speaker 1: this youth directors in their fifties, so you're out right.
Speaker 2: I'm still in my forties. So it's kind of like
Speaker 2: David Bowie said, don't trust any youth director over fifty.
Speaker 1: That's right. You know. He also sung about styrofoam.
Speaker 2: No he didn't.
Speaker 1: I just thought I could get you.
Speaker 2: No, I could see it. I mean like it was
Speaker 2: when Bowie was Bowie, it was styrofoam was still this
Speaker 2: amazing wonder product. But I gotta say, Chuck, I feel
Speaker 2: like in the last decade or so, maybe it's started
Speaker 2: to get kind of a bad name.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, uh, And we're gonna, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the science of it all, how
Speaker 1: it's made, and clear up some misconceptions and reinforce some conceptions.
Speaker 1: But the first thing we should probably clear up, and
Speaker 1: big thanks to Lvia by the way, she knocked the
Speaker 1: outther one out of the park, YEP, is that styrofoam
Speaker 1: is a brand name, and Levi Levia Lyvia is keen
Speaker 1: to point out that it's not just like you know,
Speaker 1: band aid or Kleenex like this one actually matters because
Speaker 1: the styrofoam that you and I think of and most
Speaker 1: people probably think of as like, you know what, what
Speaker 1: to go container or an old school coffee cup or
Speaker 1: to go coffee cup might be Ye, that's actually not styrofoam.
Speaker 1: That's technically something called EPs expanded polystyrene, whereas the brand
Speaker 1: name styrofoam is extruded polystyrene and that's mainly just like
Speaker 1: used for insulation and you know, cut into big boards
Speaker 1: and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Right, And you're like, well, what's the big deal? They're
Speaker 2: actually basically exactly the same products. They have slightly different properties.
Speaker 2: But it's all the same raw materials, very similar production processes,
Speaker 2: and that the final product is, for all intentsive purposes,
Speaker 2: the same. The big difference is the styrofoam is used
Speaker 2: for years and years and years and years. Like, once
Speaker 2: you put it in to insulate a radiant heat floor,
Speaker 2: you're not going to tear that up after a couple
Speaker 2: of days and throw it in the dump. Ye with
Speaker 2: the other stuff that expanded polystyrene, the stuff we think
Speaker 2: of as styrofoam, that's the stuff we used once for
Speaker 2: a few minutes and just throw away and get another
Speaker 2: new one. And that's posing a bigger and bigger problem
Speaker 2: as time goes on.
Speaker 1: That's right, unless you're at my house than Emily collects
Speaker 1: every bit of styrofoam and drives it to the specific
Speaker 1: styrofoam place Charm, Yeah, which still may not be recycling it.
Speaker 1: Oh no really, Oh I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think Charm does the right thing, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just think so much of that stuff is dubious
Speaker 1: once you drop it off, Like who knows what even
Speaker 1: happens to it? Yeah, And I don't mean that in
Speaker 1: a conspiracy minded way. I just mean that as we'll
Speaker 1: see recycling styrofoam, there's just not a lot of reason
Speaker 1: to do it if you're styrofoam people, because you can
Speaker 1: just make it again so cheaply.
Speaker 2: It's true. And for those of you, yeah, it is
Speaker 2: sad for sure. And for those of you outside of
Speaker 2: the Atlanta area, CHARM is the one recycling center in
Speaker 2: the entire metro Atlanta area where you can take styrofoam
Speaker 2: stands for the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, God bless Emily for doing all that,
Speaker 1: because I certainly wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I know, it's a hall. It's not really conveniently.
Speaker 1: Neither is saving tons and tons of styrofoam to go
Speaker 1: to CHARM once a month or whatever. But she does it,
Speaker 1: so yeah, you know, she does the right thing.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about all this stuff because I find
Speaker 2: it pretty fascinating. There's some science involved, or some environmentalism involved,
Speaker 2: there's some corporate tomfoolery involved. I'm excited about this one. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm glad, good, Well, I'm going to kick it off
Speaker 2: because styrofoam, Well, let's start. We're talking about polystyrene, and
Speaker 2: polystyrene is a form of styrene and styrene occurs naturally
Speaker 2: in a lot of different plants. It's just kind of
Speaker 2: part of the ecosystem. But it was first distilled out
Speaker 2: in I think eighteen thirty nine, Yeah, by a German pharmacist.
Speaker 2: I'm going with Edward Simmon in German.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know that sounds French.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't sound very German.
Speaker 1: I me just call him Eddie Simon.
Speaker 2: Eddie Simon. In eighteen thirty nine, he was a pharmacist
Speaker 2: who got his hands on a sweet gum tree from America,
Speaker 2: which was probably very exotic in Germany at the time,
Speaker 2: and he got styrene out of there, and he figured
Speaker 2: out how to take styrene molecules, which are a monomer,
Speaker 2: and put a bunch of them together to make a polymer.
Speaker 2: And what he got was a rigid plastic solid. What
Speaker 2: we're talking about is a type of plastic. And he's like,
Speaker 2: I can't do anything with this, and just moved along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it stayed that way for close to one
Speaker 1: hundred years, like ninety years or so. And finally in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, again a lot of stuff comes about
Speaker 1: because they're trying to figure out some sort of military
Speaker 1: use for something that was the case here as we were,
Speaker 1: you know, between wars, the military was like, hey, how
Speaker 1: can we use this stuff? The literal brand name styrofoam,
Speaker 1: which again is the XPS the stuff that's you know,
Speaker 1: used in radio flooring and like wall insulation and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, that wasn't been in a couple of times.
Speaker 1: The first time I'm by a Swedish and minter named
Speaker 1: Carl Munters who developed it in the thirties but again
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of practical use for it. And
Speaker 1: then Dow came along, the Dow Chemical Company during World
Speaker 1: War Two, and they had an engineer named Ray McIntyre
Speaker 1: who said, I'm looking to try and get a synthetic
Speaker 1: or I guess he was charged with trying to develop
Speaker 1: a synthetic substitute for rubber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was facing five years for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to use as a flexible insulator. And he combined
Speaker 1: styrene with isobutylene and what he got was something he
Speaker 1: didn't expect, which was this very airy The i of
Speaker 1: buteline formed bubbles in the styrene. So it was you
Speaker 1: know what we think of a styrofom, this super light,
Speaker 1: very airy, very insulating, water resistant flexible material.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so imagine taking something like imagine taking a CD
Speaker 2: jewel case because that's polystyrene m and chopping it up
Speaker 2: into little tiny pellets, and then you're messing around with
Speaker 2: it and adding so beautilene, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: those pealaces turn into little foamy balls, the exact same
Speaker 2: thing that if you have a very lightweight bean bag chair,
Speaker 2: it's full of those. It's polystyrene foam. That's the basis
Speaker 2: of the whole thing, right, these little tiny pellets. And
Speaker 2: he must have just been as surprised as the day
Speaker 2: is long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Dow was certainly surprised and delighted, and they
Speaker 1: were like, hey, let's just start manufacturing this stuff. We
Speaker 1: got plenty of things we can do. And somebody said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, there's this other guy named Carl Munters
Speaker 1: who already developed, you know, and has patented this concept.
Speaker 1: And dal said, great, let's just write him, cut him
Speaker 1: a check, and now we can patent capital s styrofoam.
Speaker 1: And they did so, and they started saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: we can build like floating docks out of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and there's all sorts of marine uses basically because it
Speaker 1: floats really well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that extruded polystyrene, the actual styrofoam brand type
Speaker 2: that is very water resistant, it's extremely lightweight, it's very buoyant.
Speaker 2: So it just automatically made sense to apply it to
Speaker 2: different like water based situations, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. As far as the stuff that we
Speaker 1: think of as styrofoam, around the same time in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty is a German company called ip Farban, who
Speaker 1: I know, we've talked about them before several times.
Speaker 2: They're the ones who created the gas that was used
Speaker 2: in the gas chambers. Ah Okay, they've come up a
Speaker 2: time or two. They don't have a great reputation these
Speaker 2: days now.
Speaker 1: I know, we've definitely talked about them a few times.
Speaker 1: But they were developing the EPs, the polystyrene foam, the
Speaker 1: stuff again that we think of as styrofoam, like you know,
Speaker 1: the cups and the to go containers and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and both sides in World War Two started saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this stuff is super light and super insulating, works good
Speaker 1: as a shock absorber. We can use it in various
Speaker 1: parts to make them lighter, So let's get going with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The thing is, I guess it's part of the
Speaker 2: extrusion process. Essentially is only made in board form long
Speaker 2: finished boards, right, kind of like it looks like drywall,
Speaker 2: but it's foam. If you've ever been to a do
Speaker 2: it yourself hardware store and they have like big big
Speaker 2: rectangles of foam, that is styrofoam styrol. It might not
Speaker 2: be Styrofoam brand, but it's that exact same thing, right,
Speaker 2: And there's not that many uses to it. But the
Speaker 2: stuff it does do like blockout heat, insulate is another
Speaker 2: word for it. It does really really well. Right, So
Speaker 2: the XPS is it has like some limited applications. The EPs,
Speaker 2: the stuff we think of like the styrofoam cups and
Speaker 2: all that stuff, that has like a limitless applications because
Speaker 2: you can take that stuff as part of the production
Speaker 2: process and push it into a mold and mold it
Speaker 2: into any shape you want. And they definitely did that
Speaker 2: in the post war era of prosperous better living through chemistry.
Speaker 2: That styrofoam was a a big star of that at first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you can probably name any sort
Speaker 1: of insulation application that it was used for, everything from
Speaker 1: you know, ice cream containers, like you know, when you
Speaker 1: go to taste all the ice cream and then finally
Speaker 1: settle on one those big coolers. Those are lined with
Speaker 1: thick styrofoam. They used them for Christmas ornaments because they
Speaker 1: were super light and won't weigh down a tree. All
Speaker 1: kinds again of marine applications, you know, buoys, floating docks,
Speaker 1: in boats. Again, you can mold it however you want.
Speaker 1: But you know the styrophone coolers that you know, you
Speaker 1: pick up at the gas station because you just have
Speaker 1: a hankering for cold beer and you're on the road
Speaker 1: you want to drink and drive smart. Just kidding, But
Speaker 1: those that you see in the convenient store, those started
Speaker 1: popping up in the nineteen fifties, but we didn't see
Speaker 1: the cups until the nineteen sixties, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently Chick fil A was one of the first
Speaker 2: restaurants to adopt styrofoam cups to go stuff. Right, that
Speaker 2: was in nineteen sixty I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right on the nose from what the Dart Manufacturing
Speaker 1: Company of Michigan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Dart Manufacturing got into this, and they got
Speaker 2: into it so heavy that they actually ended up changing
Speaker 2: their name to Dark Container Corporation. They're one of the
Speaker 2: leading companies or leading producers of what you would consider
Speaker 2: styrofoam containers. Yeah, so they were the ones that started
Speaker 2: producing this, started kind of getting it out there, like, Hey,
Speaker 2: you know how you don't like your customers sitting around
Speaker 2: taking an hour and a half to drink their coke. Yeah,
Speaker 2: buy one of our styrofoam cups. They'll just get right
Speaker 2: out of your hair and somebody else can come in
Speaker 2: and patronize your restaurant. Right, So it caught on pretty quick.
Speaker 2: I think seven to eleven was the first chain to
Speaker 2: actually start using styrofoam cups for coffee, which, as we'll see,
Speaker 2: was a bad idea right out of the gate. And
Speaker 2: by the seventies it was like anywhere you went and
Speaker 2: got coffee, it came in a white And again, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I realized I keep using the word styrofoam. You couldn't
Speaker 2: do any different than I am right now trying to
Speaker 2: talk about this.
Speaker 1: It's impossible, but that just.
Speaker 2: Became the standard for this whole thing, Like a styrofoam cup,
Speaker 2: that's what your coffee came in until Starbucks came along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean for decades basically, and then Starbucks did
Speaker 1: lead the charge to sort of, you know, get rid
Speaker 1: of that, and then you know, a bunch of people
Speaker 1: followed suit, thankfully. But you know, when fast food came
Speaker 1: along and take out food got more popular, obviously that's
Speaker 1: gonna grow, grow, growth, the syrophoam business. I'm very glad
Speaker 1: Livia included this because I would have if she wouldn't have,
Speaker 1: and you probably would have to. But if you grew
Speaker 1: up a kid in the eighties, then you remember the
Speaker 1: McDonald's McDLT. If you don't remember, I think we've mentioned
Speaker 1: it before, but it was. The idea was they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: no one wants all this hot, droopy lettuce and steamy
Speaker 1: tomatoes on their hamburgers. They want that stuff to be cold,
Speaker 1: and they want their burger to be hot, and they
Speaker 1: want to do it like you do at home, is
Speaker 1: you add that stuff right before you put it in
Speaker 1: your mouth for the right mixture. And that's what the
Speaker 1: McDLT was. It was not only an offending styrofoam container,
Speaker 1: but it was a double because you had one side
Speaker 1: that had keeps the hot stuff hot and the cool
Speaker 1: side cool. That's right, and none other than Seinfeld's own
Speaker 1: Jason Alexander Sang and danced in a TV commercial in
Speaker 1: the eighties extolling the virtues of the McDLT container itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wearing a skinny tie. I think he's wearing a
Speaker 2: blazer with the sleeves rolled up.
Speaker 1: Even maybe probably pushed.
Speaker 2: Up like he thinks of nineteen eighty five. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: thing about the McDLT container, and yeah, if you don't
Speaker 2: know we're talking about, just go look it up. Once
Speaker 2: you took the top off, you could actually like close
Speaker 2: the bottoms together and put your sandwich together, like using
Speaker 2: your styrofoam container. For those who were like really good at.
Speaker 1: It, Yeah, I see. I don't know. I never ate
Speaker 1: that because that wasn't my jam, but it seemed like
Speaker 1: it would just kind of not do a very great
Speaker 1: job at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, mcdelt never passed my lips either because of
Speaker 2: the L and the T. But I have to say,
Speaker 2: one of the things that makes me really nostalgic for
Speaker 2: my childhood is looking at old styrophoem McDonald's containers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard not to just see that that yellow
Speaker 1: container with all the m's all over it. Yep, and
Speaker 1: not pine for it, but just you know, just like
Speaker 1: nostalgia does.
Speaker 2: Definitely takes you back. What knocked me out is, as
Speaker 2: we'll see, it wasn't until nineteen ninety that they stopped
Speaker 2: using those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll get to you know how it's been
Speaker 1: sort of weeded out here and there, but it's still
Speaker 1: a booming industry. I think last year worldwide there were
Speaker 1: fifteen point two million total tons of polystyrene produced, and
Speaker 1: about sixty percent of that is in the Age of
Speaker 1: Pacific region. Apparently it's a growing thing, but it's growing
Speaker 1: much slower in Europe and North America than it is
Speaker 1: in industrializing areas around the world.
Speaker 2: Right, most of it goes in the packing industry. I
Speaker 2: think a third of it is used by packaging industry.
Speaker 2: Those packing peanuts were invented by a guy named Robert E.
Speaker 2: Holding back in nineteen sixty five. Household appliances used as
Speaker 2: another quarter of it. I didn't understand that. I think
Speaker 2: some of it as packing materials. You know you have
Speaker 2: to pull all those boards of cyrofoam out of your
Speaker 2: new refrigerator.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's also in some of the units,
Speaker 1: like in a washer, aren't there like big chunks of
Speaker 1: styrofoam is just like air? Yeah, take up airspace.
Speaker 2: I think that's part of it. And then also like
Speaker 2: in that same fridge, there's like around the dials and controls.
Speaker 2: They'll use some for insulation. They don't actually insulate the
Speaker 2: fridge with it because you can't create an air tight
Speaker 2: seal between two boards, but they do use it in
Speaker 2: another place is in the fridge where you don't need
Speaker 2: an airtight seal.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this is off to a capital start.
Speaker 1: Shall we take a break and let you take over?
Speaker 2: Sure? I think that's a capital idea.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck. So we're back, and you said that I
Speaker 2: would be taking over, and since I'm taking over, I'm
Speaker 2: in charge and I'm delegating it to you.
Speaker 1: I can start this part. But you know when did
Speaker 1: come in because it's part of you know, it's chemistry,
Speaker 1: and that's famously the only class I ever failed.
Speaker 2: I'm just fascinated by it. So yeah, this works out
Speaker 2: just perfectly.
Speaker 1: That's great. If we're talking about styring today. Another name
Speaker 1: for it is vinyl benzcene because it is a vinyl.
Speaker 1: As we'll see, it does not come from a plant
Speaker 1: like Eddie Simon used back in Germany in the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1: The modern process is it starts with you know, it
Speaker 1: comes from petroleum products these days, and specifically a couple
Speaker 1: called benzene and ethylene. They're combined with a catalyst called
Speaker 1: aluminum chloride to eventually produce ethyl benzene. You get that
Speaker 1: in a gas state process. It at a high temperature
Speaker 1: with another catalyst. It's a process called dehydrogenating. And finally
Speaker 1: you have your styrene.
Speaker 2: Yes, styrene is eight h eight lots of carbon, lots
Speaker 2: of hydrogen together. Yeah, and in that styrene molecule there
Speaker 2: are carbon atoms that have a double bond between them, right,
Speaker 2: which means that they can share one. So when you
Speaker 2: take styrene a monomer and put a bunch of them
Speaker 2: together to create a polymer, one of those double bonds
Speaker 2: kind of opens up and connects to another one and
Speaker 2: another one another one. It forms a car chained right.
Speaker 2: But if you look at the I don't know what
Speaker 2: it's called, but like the chemical drawing, you know of
Speaker 2: like the molecule with the lines and the seas and
Speaker 2: the h's and everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like in most movies that's rendered three D,
Speaker 1: so you can zoom it around and stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, this is more like the written out shorthand that
Speaker 2: I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know what mine's called, but whatever that is.
Speaker 2: For the polystyrene, if you look at it, it's a
Speaker 2: nice little carbon chain, but then there's these like medallions
Speaker 2: dangling off of them. Those are called phenol groups. And
Speaker 2: because of those things, the polymers can't form a really
Speaker 2: nice crystalline structure, which means that you could it's see through.
Speaker 2: It's not particularly thick, it's brittle, so it can break,
Speaker 2: and it's not flexible very much. Right, And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute. Crystal you think about is already see through.
Speaker 2: But as far as chemistry goes, the more crystalline the
Speaker 2: structure is, the tighter the whole thing is put together,
Speaker 2: so the thicker and less see through. It is, so
Speaker 2: like steel has a very crystalline structure, even though you know,
Speaker 2: I think rose quartz when I think of a crystalline structure.
Speaker 2: But that's wrong, wrong, wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah. See that's why I'm like good at chemistry. It's
Speaker 1: not very intuitive, is.
Speaker 2: It, I know, But I mean this is pretty late
Speaker 2: in life. It's not like I was a chemistry whiz
Speaker 2: in high school. I'm not even sure if I took
Speaker 2: a chemistry class in high school. Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: got out of a lot of stuff. Never took trig.
Speaker 1: How'd you get out of that stuff?
Speaker 2: I had my ways?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I won't ask any further.
Speaker 2: So again, if you take the stuff this polystyrene, you
Speaker 2: don't have anything that even resembles a foam cup. You
Speaker 2: have like what looks like a bunch of pellets that
Speaker 2: if you mashed together, you would again create a CD
Speaker 2: jewel case, because that's exactly what they do to create those.
Speaker 2: You have to go add a couple extra steps to
Speaker 2: create polystyrene foam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know we said that that stuff
Speaker 1: was prone to cracking and very breakable. If you came
Speaker 1: about in the CD jewel case era. Red solo cups too,
Speaker 1: are also the same thing. But you know those CD
Speaker 1: jewel cases, if you had one long enough, it's going
Speaker 1: to have a crack in it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the entire thing.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, there's almost a badge of bonner. Like,
Speaker 1: look how long I've had this thing. It's you can't
Speaker 1: even see through it anymore. It's cracked all over the place.
Speaker 2: You can't even see Billy Joel's face.
Speaker 1: By the way. Well, I think we'll just follow up
Speaker 1: with the Billy Joel listener mail. But he he announced
Speaker 1: he has a medical condition and he's canceling his tour
Speaker 1: for now. So it's very sad to see, kind of
Speaker 1: right after we talked about him. I know, jinks hopefully
Speaker 1: he'll be uh, he'll be okay though, but any.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he will be.
Speaker 1: So these XPS boards that we keep talking about, the
Speaker 1: capital s dirofoam that's used an insulation and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: How they make that As they melt those little beads
Speaker 1: that you were talking about, those little granules, add chemicals,
Speaker 1: one of which is a blowing agent, and then they
Speaker 1: forced that thing through a die as in a dee
Speaker 1: is in like die cast metal.
Speaker 2: Right thing right, And then they're constantly pushing that stuff
Speaker 2: through and it's melting it and pressing it together and
Speaker 2: the final product those boards of polystyrene are really smooth,
Speaker 2: they're really thick, they're not very they just look really uniform.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because all of those cells,
Speaker 2: all those polystyrene foam pellets that you use in a
Speaker 2: beambag chair. They get pressed together so tightly with so
Speaker 2: much pressure and heat that they there's no space between them.
Speaker 1: Basically.
Speaker 2: Okay. With expanded polystyrene, the stuff that you make cups
Speaker 2: and containers out of, it's it's slightly different. You take
Speaker 2: those same pellets, and like you said, there's a blowing
Speaker 2: agent in there. Both kinds have a blowing agent, but
Speaker 2: they use different ones. And the blowing agent is this
Speaker 2: kind of gas that is put into in little tiny
Speaker 2: bubbles into the little polystyrene foam pellets. That's what makes
Speaker 2: it foamy. But if you take those same pellets and
Speaker 2: you expose them to steam, they swell up because that
Speaker 2: blowing agent suddenly boils and vaporizes at very low temperatures,
Speaker 2: and the pellets expand to like forty times their size,
Speaker 2: and they melt together very easily. And what you have
Speaker 2: now is essentially the raw material for expanded polystyrene. That's
Speaker 2: why they call it expanded which you can make everything
Speaker 2: from a coffee cup to vintage Santa Claus door ornament face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exact.
Speaker 2: Do you remember those? Oh?
Speaker 1: Totally?
Speaker 2: I mean that's another nostalgic. Yeah, I think you can
Speaker 2: get them still on like eBay.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of nostalgia around styrofoam if you kind
Speaker 1: of really think about it, if you're a gen xer.
Speaker 2: But that, I mean, that goes to show just how
Speaker 2: what a huge part it was of twentieth century life.
Speaker 1: It really was. Yeah, for sure, So we mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: those boards are really great at insulating, which is why
Speaker 1: they use it in like sighting sometime and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: or in ice cream coolers. One reason is because it
Speaker 1: is water resistant. If you have an insulating material that
Speaker 1: has moisture in it, that's no good because water conducts
Speaker 1: heat really well, so that's one good thing, but they
Speaker 1: do degrade over time the board, you know, that blowing
Speaker 1: agent will leak out of those cells a little bit
Speaker 1: over time, so it's a little less insulating. And while
Speaker 1: it is water resistant, it's not completely water resistant. So
Speaker 1: when it does not resist a little bit of water,
Speaker 1: it has a really aka absorption, it has a really
Speaker 1: hard time getting rid of it again, So that just
Speaker 1: kind of knocks it down over time. But even considering depletion,
Speaker 1: it still has a really good thermal resistance and is
Speaker 1: still a really good insulator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like twice as twice as good, I guess then, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that roll out insulation that you can buy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned early on, you
Speaker 1: know they were they used to put like foot thick
Speaker 1: cork walls, yeah, in like industrial referators and stuff, and
Speaker 1: they could get that down to like two inches of styrofoam,
Speaker 1: so it was really useful.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we said this too. It's like
Speaker 2: really really cheap to manufacture as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, super cheap, And so it sounds like just this
Speaker 1: wonder product. That's everything about it is great. But here's
Speaker 1: where it goes dark. Here's where the VH one behind
Speaker 1: the music. It's probably like thirty forty minutes into the
Speaker 1: VH one, right before the commercial break, they'll say, and
Speaker 1: that's when things cut dark. Because, of course, styrene is
Speaker 1: dangerous if you're just talking about health problems, central nervous
Speaker 1: system problems, headaches, depression, fatigue. Obviously, if you're breathing this
Speaker 1: stuff in, it's no good. It's no good for your
Speaker 1: skin and your eyes. And you might think, well, what's
Speaker 1: the big deal, because we're not breathing that stuff in,
Speaker 1: But if you work at one of these places, at manufacturers,
Speaker 1: you totally are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they've followed people who work in styrene plants
Speaker 2: and found that the neurotoxicity makes them kind of dull
Speaker 2: and a little dippy, kind of like you're drunk and
Speaker 2: your reaction times are slower. And we're talking styrene itself,
Speaker 2: the monomer that's the basis of polystyrene foam. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's been shown to cause birth effects, reproductive defects, cancer.
Speaker 2: Like you said, it's a bad jam. Polystyrene seems to
Speaker 2: be not nearly as dangerous. The problem is the way
Speaker 2: that we make polystyrene. There's still styrene that can break
Speaker 2: off essentially from the polymer and float around and get
Speaker 2: into your body, and that's no good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they've since the mid eighties, they've found
Speaker 1: styrene and samples of human fat tissue. Of course, the
Speaker 1: public health organizations are saying, like they do with everything
Speaker 1: like that, like, oh, it's not enough to really worry
Speaker 1: about it. Everyone's got a little styrene in their fat,
Speaker 1: don't sweat it. But in twenty eighteen it was bad
Speaker 1: enough as a potential carcinogen that the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: raised it from possible carcinogen to probable carcinogen, and imagine it
Speaker 1: won't be long till they're just like, can we all
Speaker 1: just admit it's a carcinogen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that the polystyrene companies are fighting that
Speaker 2: last tooth and nail. Yeah, So we should say that
Speaker 2: most of the most of the studies that have shown
Speaker 2: like styrene's bad for you, Like we said, looked at
Speaker 2: workers who who work around styrene, and we don't work
Speaker 2: around styrene. We're just podcasters. You probably don't work around
Speaker 2: styrene either, So like you said, it's not it's not
Speaker 2: like they're not clutching their pearls over this or whatever.
Speaker 2: But it does seem like this thing where the more
Speaker 2: that we look at it, the more problems we find
Speaker 2: from it, and the more we come to understand that
Speaker 2: actually there's probably more exposure to styrene than we thought. Like,
Speaker 2: if you look across the board, everyone will tell you.
Speaker 2: Anyone who knows anything about polystyrene, I should say, well, say,
Speaker 2: do not microwave your polystyrene to go container. Yeah, ever, never,
Speaker 2: just don't ever do it. Because they found that that
Speaker 2: polystyrene can leach styrene into your food, and you eat
Speaker 2: that stuff, you don't want to do that. And there's
Speaker 2: even types of containers, polystyrene containers that have like three
Speaker 2: little wavy lines and says microwaves safe for microwaveable or
Speaker 2: something like that, and those supposedly you can microwaves with
Speaker 2: no because what that refers to is the container will
Speaker 2: survive it. It has nothing to do with whether or
Speaker 2: not there's going to be chemicals leaching into your food.
Speaker 2: They're just saying this container won't melt. In your mind,
Speaker 2: that's it. So you never ever ever do that, just
Speaker 2: take the extra step of dumping it onto a plate
Speaker 2: for Pete's sake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know, especially hot things, especially
Speaker 1: acidic things like oh, I don't know, hot coffee. They
Speaker 1: found that, you know, that stuff can leach into your
Speaker 1: body as styrene.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they said that it starts leeching out
Speaker 2: at about one hundred and four degrees fahrenheit forty degrees celsius.
Speaker 2: Not that hot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's used specifically to keep liquids and foods hot,
Speaker 1: I guess, or cold. But you know, but hot is
Speaker 1: the problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think it still can leach out when
Speaker 2: it's even cool or room temperature, but heat is where
Speaker 2: it really starts to jack up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So hey, if you get a salad and it's
Speaker 1: in one of those stupid things, put that in a
Speaker 1: nice ceramic bowl as well.
Speaker 2: Put it in a solo cup. No, there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of other impacts that it has, specifically environmentally.
Speaker 1: Should we break?
Speaker 2: Are we gonna break? Okay?
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a third act sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Well, man, I'm glad you caught me because
Speaker 2: I was about to take off.
Speaker 1: Right, you're grounded. We'll be right back, all right, since
Speaker 1: I rudely cut off of Josh Off when he was
Speaker 1: trying to talk about or Joff.
Speaker 2: That's a new good new name g E O F
Speaker 2: F your favorite spelling of Jeff. Yeah, but you have
Speaker 2: to say it like Joff. If you're going to go
Speaker 2: to the troubles spelling Jeff like Joff, you should say Jeff.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I cut off Jeff when you start to get
Speaker 1: hot on the environment, and so I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: take it away because the environmental disaster is basically into
Speaker 1: three categories, right yeah.
Speaker 2: Air pollution, threats to marine life, and then solid waste.
Speaker 2: Those are the big three environmental impacts. We found that
Speaker 2: that it poses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the air pollution. You might be thinking, like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't get it, Like it's just blung
Speaker 1: into the air. It's in the manufacturing process. Those blowing
Speaker 1: agents that we talked about used and making both EPs
Speaker 1: and xps. They for decades and decades they were using
Speaker 1: CFCs chlorofluorocarbons, and then everyone's like, now, we can't use
Speaker 1: that stuff anymore. So we stopped using that stuff, and
Speaker 1: they switched over to hydrofluorocarbons in this case specifically HFC
Speaker 1: DASH one thirty four little A. But that stuff's awful too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat
Speaker 2: fourteen hundred and thirty times more efficiently than carbon dioxide. Man,
Speaker 2: that's a lot. They have other stuff that's way worse
Speaker 2: than that, But that's still not good, especially considering how
Speaker 2: much styrofoam is made every year. Right, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: But so that's a problem with the extruded version. Apparently
Speaker 2: the expanded version doesn't have nearly the same problem because
Speaker 2: it uses a different blowing agent. The best reason I
Speaker 2: could come up with, and this is all supposition, is
Speaker 2: that the extra version keeps its blowing agent trapped into
Speaker 2: its structure.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why it uses a different one than the
Speaker 2: expanded one. The expanded one, when it's blowing agent vaporizes,
Speaker 2: it creates I guess essentially pockets that get filled with air,
Speaker 2: so the blowing agent gets replaced with air. So they
Speaker 2: use a much less dangerous or potent greenhouse gas wise,
Speaker 2: gas pentane. It's like ten times more efficient at trapping
Speaker 2: heat than carbon dioxide. So you know, big woop. So
Speaker 2: the big problem as far as air pollution goes is
Speaker 2: with the expanded version, the styrophoam version.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. You mentioned threats to marine life. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty obvious one because it's used so much out there.
Speaker 1: Booize again and like any like boogie board or kind
Speaker 1: of floaty thing that you're using, floating docks that I
Speaker 1: mentioned a few times, fish boxes that hold the fish
Speaker 1: that you catch when you're out at sea, and that.
Speaker 2: The same thing is that nineteen fifty seven ice cooler. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a good point. But the problem with all
Speaker 1: this stuff is that when a buoy is floating out
Speaker 1: there that's made a styrofoam or there's a floating dock,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna stay pristine. You know, it's gonna chip away,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna degrade, and it's gonna start to float
Speaker 1: away in little bitty pieces. Birds are coming along and
Speaker 1: eating that stuff. When it's floating on top, it'll get
Speaker 1: heavier as it goes. It'll attract other organisms that make it,
Speaker 1: you know, not floatable, and it will sink and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it's eaten in the water and
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the sea floor by other marine animals.
Speaker 2: Yes, And the reason why it starts to break down,
Speaker 2: like say, if it's part of your marina dock, is
Speaker 2: because it's exposed to sunlight and UV radiation of different
Speaker 2: types break down. Polystyrene actually can break it down within
Speaker 2: a few years as a matter of fact, when it's
Speaker 2: exposed to sunlight. The problem is is a bunch of
Speaker 2: that stuff never gets exposed to sunlight. We throw it
Speaker 2: away and it gets buried in a landfill. And there
Speaker 2: are plenty of other types of waste that are not
Speaker 2: great to throw into a landfill, but they're biodegradable as
Speaker 2: far as we've known. Until very recently, styrofoam is not biodegradable.
Speaker 2: It's only chemically degradable, and it takes centuries for it
Speaker 2: to chemically degrade within a landfill. And because they're so
Speaker 2: big and bulky, even though they're very light, they're still
Speaker 2: usually in large shapes or they can be. They take
Speaker 2: up a lot of space in those landfills. So they
Speaker 2: take up a lot of space, and they don't break
Speaker 2: down to free up space for again centuries, which someone
Speaker 2: pointed out, I believe that essentially every piece of styrofoam
Speaker 2: that was ever made is still around in some shape
Speaker 2: or form on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's not the kind of like staying power
Speaker 1: that should inspire you.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, the thing something that stuck out to me, Chuck,
Speaker 2: when you said earlier about how they're derived from petrol petrochemicals.
Speaker 2: The fact that styrene is found in petroleum. Petroleum is
Speaker 2: compressed ancient plant matter, right, Yeah, So that styrene that
Speaker 2: was originally in plants is still around millions of millions
Speaker 2: of hours later in the petroleum that we're extracting from
Speaker 2: the ground. That just goes to show you the kind
Speaker 2: of staying power that thing has.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, because of all these problems,
Speaker 1: of course, there's been many movements over the years to
Speaker 1: get rid of it. It depends on the state you
Speaker 1: live in, probably, or maybe even the community that you
Speaker 1: live in. What kinds of bands have been put into place.
Speaker 1: I think Berkeley, California, no surprise, and Suffolk County, New
Speaker 1: York again no surprise, were the first communities in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties to put a band in place for this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fourteen different states have enacted bands on styrofoam. They don't
Speaker 1: always hold up because, of course, you've got these companies
Speaker 1: that are going to fight them tooth and nail. You said,
Speaker 1: fight them in court. You've also got city governments and
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily going to enforce stuff too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: They tend to be very shy about getting sued, especially
Speaker 2: when their budgets are kind of tight. Right. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: if you're a big, bad plastic company. Apparently Dark Container
Speaker 2: is one of the more aggressive players in this in
Speaker 2: lobbying for styrofoam to stick around, all you have to
Speaker 2: do is show up and be like, you know, we
Speaker 2: would hate to sue you guys into bankruptcy. This seems
Speaker 2: like a really nice town and the city's going to
Speaker 2: be like, I don't even remember the styrofoam ban you're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or we'd hate to close down these warehouses that
Speaker 1: employ people in your state, right, which is what they
Speaker 1: did in Maryland. Maryland banned the home and the Dark
Speaker 1: Container company shut down two warehouses. They're employed close to
Speaker 1: one hundred workers, and that is how they played that game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did it in California too, in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: They put one hundred and seventy five of their workers
Speaker 2: out of work. And they always say, well, it's because
Speaker 2: of this ban. What I understand, these bands don't affect
Speaker 2: like warehousing or transportation of this stuff within the state
Speaker 2: or outside of the state. It just seems like it's
Speaker 2: a vindictive move.
Speaker 1: It probably helps her bottom line, I would imagine in
Speaker 1: some way.
Speaker 2: I guess. I don't know. But from from what I understand,
Speaker 2: the aggressive lobbying that they engage in, it, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It seems like, I mean, they really want Syrophoam to
Speaker 2: stick around, and they're fighting a tougher and tougher battle
Speaker 2: each year.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, I think what I meant was, I bet
Speaker 1: they're not financially hurting their company by shuttering these warehouses.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not. I'm sure not. I'm sure even if
Speaker 2: they do, it's negligible, you know, to punish a state
Speaker 2: into submission.
Speaker 1: There's also pressure campaigns. You know. McDonald's is one of
Speaker 1: the early ones in the nineteen eighties, and I guess
Speaker 1: if they quit in the nineties. It was kind of
Speaker 1: fully in the eighties when people like human beings would
Speaker 1: you know, protest or just sort of raise a ruckus
Speaker 1: over this stuff. And they got together and there were
Speaker 1: a few tries that like, hey, you shouldn't worry about
Speaker 1: it too much, because we do it this way, we
Speaker 1: only use this much. They really wanted to hang on
Speaker 1: to them. But finally, like you mentioned in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: they said, all right, we'll use paper. And you know,
Speaker 1: you should be housing that cheeseburger the second it gets
Speaker 1: into your car anyway, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. I mean just tell them to put it
Speaker 2: in your hands without even a paper wrapper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess if you've got to get
Speaker 1: it and you can't eat it in your car, I
Speaker 1: have to carry it somewhere. It's not gonna be as hot.
Speaker 1: But I don't know house. I mean, housing fast food
Speaker 1: in the cars is a rich tradition that needs to
Speaker 1: be upheld.
Speaker 2: For sure, ever since there were cars, and ever since
Speaker 2: they were fast food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how else are you going to find, you know,
Speaker 1: three year old French fries under your car seat when
Speaker 1: you vacuum it. That look exactly the same as they
Speaker 1: did the day they got down there.
Speaker 2: They don't taste quite the same, but they do look
Speaker 2: like it, don't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a.
Speaker 2: Lot of people say, okay, well we got all this polystyrene,
Speaker 2: and it does provide a lot of benefits, even though
Speaker 2: it seems like the health and environmental benefits are kind
Speaker 2: of racking up against it. Maybe there's something we can
Speaker 2: do to recycle it instead. And kind of at the outset,
Speaker 2: you were pointing out just how hard it is to
Speaker 2: recycle this stuff. And one reason why it's so hard
Speaker 2: is because these are big, oftentimes bulky items, especially when
Speaker 2: you put a bunch of style. I mean you can
Speaker 2: attest if Emily's collecting stuff, it's a nightmare. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: takes up a lot of space. Even though it's all light.
Speaker 2: You could lift all of it with one hand, but
Speaker 2: it takes up a lot of space. Right, So, if
Speaker 2: you have a truck that is spending a bunch of
Speaker 2: money on gas to haul recyclables to a recycling center,
Speaker 2: and then they get paid for that load in return
Speaker 2: that styrofoam. I mean they get paid by the pound,
Speaker 2: So that styrofoam takes up a whole truck, but it
Speaker 2: does not add up to a lot of money. So
Speaker 2: no one wants to haul this stuff. That's one problem.
Speaker 2: And that problem also belies an a pro styrofoam argument
Speaker 2: that you'll frequently run into, and that is that it
Speaker 2: has a small carbon footprint because it's so light, it
Speaker 2: takes so little gas and fuel of all kinds to
Speaker 2: transport it by ocean rail truck. The problem is is
Speaker 2: you still have that bulky thing, so you actually are
Speaker 2: probably hiring more transportation to move styrofoam stuff because yeah,
Speaker 2: it's light, but it takes up a lot of space
Speaker 2: in the truck. So I think that that's kind of
Speaker 2: a in disingenuous argument in favor of styrofoam.
Speaker 1: I think you're probably right. Another problem with recycling it
Speaker 1: is a lot of the foams will have pigments in them.
Speaker 1: They might be colored, or they may have flame retardants
Speaker 1: that make it not as or completely unrecyclable. Along with
Speaker 1: food contamination, and then, like I mentioned at the beginning,
Speaker 1: just the cost of this, it's pretty cheap to make,
Speaker 1: so there's not a lot of incentives for company to
Speaker 1: try and recycle it. There's a little more promise in
Speaker 1: upcycling it by breaking it down into its various chemical constituents,
Speaker 1: some of which have some pretty high value. But as
Speaker 1: far as recycling, it just doesn't make a lot of
Speaker 1: cost effective sense for a company or a recycling firm.
Speaker 2: Right. I was reading a J Store Daily article on this,
Speaker 2: and they profile a company in Oregon called Aegilicks and
Speaker 2: they upcycle styrofoam into petroleum. Again, they turn it back
Speaker 2: into too crude oil, which can in turn be used
Speaker 2: for like jet fuel and other like really high quality fuels.
Speaker 2: But that they're definitely not. They're in the minority as
Speaker 2: far as recycling companies go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you're you know, into
Speaker 1: helping the environment and recycling and stuff like that, don't
Speaker 1: be fooled just because you see the little chasing arrows
Speaker 1: recycling symbol, because that is on so many things. You
Speaker 1: have to look at the number and then know what
Speaker 1: that number means, and you know, you can look all
Speaker 1: that stuff up but the ones and twos are generally,
Speaker 1: although not entirely consistently recycled, that they have the best
Speaker 1: chance at being recycled. But something with a number six
Speaker 1: on it, it's probably not being recycled.
Speaker 2: No, that's polystyrene's number, and it, like I mean, for
Speaker 2: all the reasons we just said it, Like you said,
Speaker 2: it's probably not being recycled. And apparently some environmentalists say
Speaker 2: that whole chasing arrows application for the plastics was basically
Speaker 2: made up by plastic companies to make you feel like, oh, Okay,
Speaker 2: this thing can be recycled. I don't have to feel
Speaker 2: bad about using it for two minutes and then throwing
Speaker 2: it away. Yeah, so there are Like I said, up
Speaker 2: until very recently, styrofoam was considered to be non biodegradable,
Speaker 2: and there are not many things, including plastics, that are
Speaker 2: not biodegradable. Right, they're starting to find that there are
Speaker 2: some might crobes out there that have an ability to
Speaker 2: break it down. Apparently they're found in the guts of
Speaker 2: meal worms, wax worms, yeah, some kinds of insect larvae,
Speaker 2: and that these things will feed on cyrofoam and they
Speaker 2: will break it down. So thoroughly that you could actually
Speaker 2: eat these worms afterwards. It's just metabolized into harmless stuff.
Speaker 2: And even the solid waste they excreete just keep it
Speaker 2: in the soil and eat food grown from the soil.
Speaker 2: The problem is is this is a really new kind
Speaker 2: of revelation as far as I know, and it takes
Speaker 2: a lot of those things to break down styrofoam, and
Speaker 2: we're making way more syrofoam than these worms can possibly handle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, the size of that worm farm would
Speaker 1: be tremendously large. But you did fine. I mean, boy,
Speaker 1: you texted me yesterday that something can actually melt styrofoam.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you say what it is. But my question,
Speaker 1: my friend, is does that is there an application for
Speaker 1: that or is that just a factoid?
Speaker 2: This is something you can do, like if you I
Speaker 2: hate packing peanuts and so I've done this before with them,
Speaker 2: but it's it's a slog so probably people can actually
Speaker 2: do it. But any organic solvent, and in particular acetone
Speaker 2: that's one I've always used, can dissolve styrofoam into basically nothing.
Speaker 2: You can take an entire beambag chair worth of pellets
Speaker 2: and melt it. All down into nothingness in a cup
Speaker 2: of acetone. It's really neat to see.
Speaker 1: And oh, just like very slowly adding it in.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, little by little, But it doesn't take
Speaker 2: very long for it to break down. It's not like
Speaker 2: instantly dissolving. But it's not you know, days or anything
Speaker 2: like that either.
Speaker 1: And doesn't that create probably some awful thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't want to chase that down out of the
Speaker 1: solo cup, right?
Speaker 2: No? I still have that mason jar of acetone with
Speaker 2: syrophoam in it because I have no idea what to
Speaker 2: do with it now.
Speaker 1: I think you spur it in the backyard and forget
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: I'll just drop it off at a number six recycling center.
Speaker 2: Oh great, you got anything else about styrofoam?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Try and avoid it if you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeh, since Chuck told you to avoid styrofoam, obviously, everybody.
Speaker 2: That means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right, promised to Billy Joel, And here we go
Speaker 1: from Levi and hang Zuo. China was giving me a
Speaker 1: little bit of a break when I bagged on one
Speaker 1: of my favorite performer songs. We didn't start the fire,
Speaker 1: He said, Chuck, You're in good company, because Billy Joel
Speaker 1: himself is called we Didn't start the Fire the worst
Speaker 1: musical thing I've ever written, calling out the simplicity of
Speaker 1: its musical structure. Someone who has only recently gotten into
Speaker 1: his music that has personally ranked all of his one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen studio recordings, Wow, you went hard. I
Speaker 1: tend to agree. Fun song, but it doesn't hold a
Speaker 1: candle to the rest of the catalog. As for his
Speaker 1: best and favorite, he's cited scenes from an Italian restaurant
Speaker 1: great song, and you may be right, I know that
Speaker 1: one great song off of Glass Houses Okay, as two
Speaker 1: of his favorites. And if Josh hasn't heard Miami twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the one you mentioned, make sure he starts with the
Speaker 1: live version from these songs in the attic album miles
Speaker 1: better than the studio version. Of my opinion, keep repping
Speaker 1: the piano man, and that is Levi and hang Zou China.
Speaker 1: And he sent a link to the YouTube of the
Speaker 1: Howard Stern appearance where Billy Joel called that his worst
Speaker 1: musical outing and he was like, the lyrics are fine,
Speaker 1: he said, I don't hate the song, but he just
Speaker 1: said musically it's just very simplistic and not my best work.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think everybody can basically agree that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but mister Joel, we wish you good health and recovery.
Speaker 1: He got a lot of fans thinking about you and
Speaker 1: your family right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great, Chuck. I think that this Billy Joel
Speaker 2: saga should just continue. Every third, fourth, fifth listener mail
Speaker 2: should be about Billy Joel.
Speaker 1: I think I hope so. And you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: even mention the deep cut, so maybe we'll just surprise
Speaker 1: people here and there.
Speaker 2: With those yeap, just pay him out slowly, man, patients. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you want to be like Levi and you're in
Speaker 2: China or anywhere else and want to get in touch
Speaker 2: with this about Billy Joel or anything else, you can
Speaker 2: send us email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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