Speaker 1: Good afternoon, folks, Happy weekend. You ever wanted to know
Speaker 1: how gold works? You're thinking that does gold work? It's
Speaker 1: just gold, It just is. Well, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: that goes into it, and we talk about all the
Speaker 1: history of gold, very very fascinating stuff from February first,
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, How Gold Works. Welcome to Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant. We're doing this again. It's been a
Speaker 1: little while. It's been a little while, but it's still
Speaker 1: stuff you should know that. I thought the name had
Speaker 1: changed since we took our little Christmas break. Don't you
Speaker 1: remember our race to the patent office, right, trademarket again
Speaker 1: at the eleventh hour. Yeah, that was a close one.
Speaker 1: Boom and they stamped it. Yeah, that's y s K.
Speaker 1: Actually they said s N s K right now. Wait,
Speaker 1: s Y s N is what we get from people
Speaker 1: a lot sometimes, and I'm like, you know, no, it
Speaker 1: starts with a K. One of them does one of Yes,
Speaker 1: it's not stuff you should know is because it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. How are you doing Oh, I'm great man.
Speaker 1: Are you okay? Good? Um? You want to do this one?
Speaker 1: We're talking about gold. Yeah, man, I've got a little
Speaker 1: bit of an intro. It might be a stretch. We'll
Speaker 1: find out. Okay, let's here. Today's January. Okay, tomorrow's January
Speaker 1: fig Newton Day. It is Big Newton Day. And also
Speaker 1: on this day in history in the Maya in general,
Speaker 1: fire is born. Uh. Conquered the Mayan city to Call,
Speaker 1: which was recently rediscovered, well not recently, it's been rediscovered,
Speaker 1: the rediscovered a new one. Uh. And Uh. What this
Speaker 1: did was it enlarged the kingdom of King spear thrower Owl.
Speaker 1: The Maya's had the best names. That's pretty great name. Um.
Speaker 1: And all of this was going on in the heart
Speaker 1: of the Yucatan Peninsula. If you went just a little
Speaker 1: to the north, you would run into another group of
Speaker 1: people called Aztecs, which were actually the Triple Federation, is
Speaker 1: what it's what they're really called. Um. But if you
Speaker 1: were to stumble northward and run into the Aztec Empire
Speaker 1: and ask for gold, what they would give you is
Speaker 1: what they would call excrement of the gods. Do you
Speaker 1: want to try to pronounce it. Yeah, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with do. I think that's pretty close. I think you
Speaker 1: may have done it, Chuck. The last part is I
Speaker 1: love that language. It's similar to like the some of
Speaker 1: the native languages we heard in Guatemala. The that's because
Speaker 1: they're mine, yeah, exactly, but it's got that same like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's very staccato. It's kind of cool
Speaker 1: to hear, I think, right, like the Mayan city, the
Speaker 1: heart of King, spear thrower, owls um empires, tetoto acton right,
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty close to that word teo quilt, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which means excrement of the gods. And that's what the
Speaker 1: the Aztecs considered gold. It was a holy metal, a
Speaker 1: very very precious metal in every sense of the word.
Speaker 1: And by three sev a d. They weren't the only
Speaker 1: ones to have loved gold for a very long time. No,
Speaker 1: Egyptians were all over it. They thought it was also divine. Wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, how would you rate that intro? I would
Speaker 1: say that was on a scale of what one to ten,
Speaker 1: I still one to one to twenty. I would give
Speaker 1: it a solid like sixteen. Wow, thanks, Chuck, higher than
Speaker 1: you thought, way higher. I thought I was going to
Speaker 1: get a ten. That's why I extended it twenty. No, no,
Speaker 1: no um. So the Egyptians, like I said, they also
Speaker 1: thought it was divine of the gods, indestructive and uh
Speaker 1: they called it uh, I guess Nube and ub And
Speaker 1: if you know of the African region in Northeast Africa Nubia,
Speaker 1: or if you're a fan of the rap group Brand Nubians,
Speaker 1: sure you would haven't heard of this. I was actually yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah they were, and um that that that name so
Speaker 1: holds today because of the original original Egyptian word for
Speaker 1: gold and um. Africa, of course, has always been a
Speaker 1: major supplier of this stuff. Yeah. One of the first well,
Speaker 1: Nubia was I guess, yeah, like the first heavily mined
Speaker 1: area for gold um. And then on the periodic table,
Speaker 1: the shorthand for gold is a U, which I've never
Speaker 1: understood until I realized that it's Latin, which makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. I thought it would be g O, right, right,
Speaker 1: you had something like that. No, No, we had to
Speaker 1: go with the Latin or um, which means um shining dawn.
Speaker 1: That's nice. Yeah, And we said all this to say
Speaker 1: that people have loved gold for a very very, very
Speaker 1: very long time. Can I drop one of the stats
Speaker 1: of the show for me? Right when I saw this,
Speaker 1: I was like just gonna say this is this is
Speaker 1: the fact. I think it's pretty good. I told Emily
Speaker 1: this last night, and she was not as impressed as
Speaker 1: I would hope she would have been. Um forever and ever,
Speaker 1: all the gold we've ever mined from the beginning of
Speaker 1: time is only a hundred and sixty one thousand tons, yeah,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of gold,
Speaker 1: right for all of time. That's not a lot of gold.
Speaker 1: They compare it to something like aluminium. We we get
Speaker 1: a five point six million tons a year in the
Speaker 1: United States alone of aluminum. And again, a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty one thousand tons of gold is all that's ever
Speaker 1: been mined. Yeah. And the secondary stat that comes later,
Speaker 1: which I'll go ahead and ruin now, is that of
Speaker 1: all the gold we've ever found is still around, we've
Speaker 1: only lost or cannot account for fifteen percent of the
Speaker 1: gold since the beginning of time. It's pretty good. Well,
Speaker 1: it is pretty good. And it suggests two things that
Speaker 1: William Harris points out. One UM that means that if
Speaker 1: you are wearing a piece of gold jewelry, it may
Speaker 1: have belonged to somebody else a very very long time ago.
Speaker 1: Uh And two, where exactly did they get that? Where
Speaker 1: are they getting these like um gold masks and headpieces
Speaker 1: and stuff of ancient time and then melting them down
Speaker 1: and reselling them? Yeah? I don't know. I mean it's
Speaker 1: efficient and it's good because gold is really bad for
Speaker 1: the environment, as we'll see you later on. But it's
Speaker 1: really recyclable though. Yeah, it makes you it makes me wonder, like,
Speaker 1: how are they acquiring that? Yeah? What is your wedding ring? Sir?
Speaker 1: My wedding ring is platinum? Platinum. It's lovely, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's very nice? What did yours? Oh? Minus, I think titanium.
Speaker 1: It's very cheap. It's like take too though with that
Speaker 1: I could. And this is actually my second one. I
Speaker 1: lost my first one and inside of a turtle, inside
Speaker 1: of a turtle. I have no idea where it is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's inside of a turtle. But I luckily I
Speaker 1: like had the old email and I just sent like
Speaker 1: the same order for the same ring, and boom, I'm
Speaker 1: married all over again the second time. Did you guys
Speaker 1: have another mini ceremony. He's just like you need to
Speaker 1: buy another damn ring. Yeah alright, So, um, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of gold stats. And as we've been trying to
Speaker 1: um hammer out people of like gold for a really
Speaker 1: long time, let's talk about the history of gold show.
Speaker 1: Speaking of hammering out, though I knew one more cool
Speaker 1: little fact gold. One ounce of gold. One ounce of
Speaker 1: gold can be drawn out into a fifty mile wire
Speaker 1: or hammered into a sheet five millions of an inch thick.
Speaker 1: So it's really well, we'll get to all this, but
Speaker 1: it's it's not only, you know, a beautiful thing for jewelry,
Speaker 1: but it's super handy and malleable and chemically and nert
Speaker 1: and like all these great things you can do with
Speaker 1: gold because of its property. It also makes it kind
Speaker 1: of ironic that the Egyptian is considered it indestructible because
Speaker 1: one of the more malleable medals around. It's so malleable
Speaker 1: that it has like almost no practical purposes as far
Speaker 1: as like hammering things go, Like you make a gold hammer,
Speaker 1: you're dumb, you know. Yeah, alright, so element number seventy nine,
Speaker 1: let's let's get in it Okay, so uh gold again.
Speaker 1: Uh was people go back to the Egyptians because they
Speaker 1: were the first ones to have like gold fever. But
Speaker 1: we've actually found evidence of gold being um smithed i
Speaker 1: guess um during the transition from the Stone Age, the
Speaker 1: Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age, which is the first
Speaker 1: metal age before Bronze even right, some some places that
Speaker 1: had easy access to gold, like Bulgaria, I believe in
Speaker 1: a four thousand BC. Um, we're already working with gold
Speaker 1: long before the Egyptians ever got their hands on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the Egyptians, um, like you said, they really had
Speaker 1: an appetite for the stuff um hira glyps as early
Speaker 1: as gold, and by b C they were it was
Speaker 1: like currency basically. Yeah in Egypt, well yeah, very much so,
Speaker 1: Um it was not the I don't know if do
Speaker 1: they actually minted is for is currency? Uh the Egyptians, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they minted it. I don't think
Speaker 1: the minting came until the Greeks and Romans. Actually King Crosius,
Speaker 1: the ruler of ancient Lydia, which is a low civilization,
Speaker 1: really he was the first to mint in mint gold
Speaker 1: currencies gold coins um in widespread use in sixty b C.
Speaker 1: But it was the Greeks and then the Romans that
Speaker 1: really started to to mint about a hundred years later though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's a pretty nice jump on things he got. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like, hey, I like the look at this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my face on it exactly, and you
Speaker 1: guys are going to use it. Yeah. By five fifty
Speaker 1: the Greeks were doing it, uh, and then um, the
Speaker 1: Romans of course, with their more sophisticated ways, followed suit.
Speaker 1: The orious coins they were called, Yeah, they produced millions
Speaker 1: of them. Those are the ones that they find, like
Speaker 1: to some farmer and like Devon Shy in England will
Speaker 1: still find we'll dig up like a chest filled with
Speaker 1: these things. Yeah, Because the Romans were everywhere they were
Speaker 1: and they minted a lot of these coins. So as
Speaker 1: they're doing this, the same thing is going on about
Speaker 1: the same time in South America because they have a
Speaker 1: lot of gold there as well. And what's it called
Speaker 1: the Middle Skon Era. Yeah, I couldn't tell if it
Speaker 1: was Cicon or Cissan. I bet at Cissan Sisson, I
Speaker 1: bet it's not. Um a D nine to eleven hundred
Speaker 1: and this is modern day Peru. They there has been,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of gold artifacts found in their region.
Speaker 1: So they were usually like crazy for sure. The Peruvians
Speaker 1: were crazy about the inca like masks, ornaments, chalices, stuff,
Speaker 1: and their specialty was hammering gold into sheets and like
Speaker 1: wrapping stuff in it, like creating gold leaf. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were pretty good at that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you know there's already a certain amount of
Speaker 1: gold fever over in Europe. Yeah. I think the the
Speaker 1: English minted their first gold coin in the mid century,
Speaker 1: the same with the um Florentine du get. Those were
Speaker 1: both about the middle of the thirteenth century. That's a
Speaker 1: popular coin, it was still is is it among collectors? Sure? Um,
Speaker 1: so there was. People in Europe were exposed to gold.
Speaker 1: They like gold, They wanted gold. Over in Central and
Speaker 1: South America, Over in Asia they also had a thing
Speaker 1: for gold. But the Europeans were one of the first
Speaker 1: to say, hey, let's see where the edge of the
Speaker 1: earth is and if there's gold there. And one of
Speaker 1: the first people to do that was Marco Polo. And strangely,
Speaker 1: a lot of people hate Christopher Columbus or think he
Speaker 1: was one of the more evil characters in history. Possibly
Speaker 1: rightfully so. Um, but you can actually trace the infection
Speaker 1: that Columbus released literally and metaphorically back to Marco Polo,
Speaker 1: because only it was evidence that Marco Polo directly inspired
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus to set sail in search of gold. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Growing up in history class, you always learned about the
Speaker 1: great explorers, and the more you learn about it, like
Speaker 1: the real histories, as you get older, the more you
Speaker 1: learn that many times they weren't just sailing upon the
Speaker 1: shore with like a bouquet of flowers to deliver most
Speaker 1: of the time. I would say, you know, it was
Speaker 1: usually and they were in conquer mode. Uh, for one reason,
Speaker 1: to spread Christianity, as the Spaniards really wanted to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the cover story, the cover story. But King
Speaker 1: Ferdinand in fifteen eleven also sent word quote while you're there.
Speaker 1: Well I added that part while you're there then start
Speaker 1: quote get gold humanly if you can, but by but
Speaker 1: at all hazards get the gold. So I mean that
Speaker 1: was definitely a charge in thanks to the travels of
Speaker 1: Marco Polo, the book that he wrote where he talked
Speaker 1: about palaces of silver and gold. Uh, you know, people
Speaker 1: thought it was just like this. Treets were lined with
Speaker 1: this stuff in the world. And I mean imagine though,
Speaker 1: if you were one of the conquistadors who started sailing
Speaker 1: um west and you ran into the Maya or the
Speaker 1: Aztecs or the Inca, and you saw that they had
Speaker 1: all this gold, you would think, well, this is all
Speaker 1: very much true in this place, gold city, So let's
Speaker 1: kill all these people and take their gold. And there
Speaker 1: was actually a famed gold city, El Dorado. What they're
Speaker 1: all looking for exactly like everyone was looking for Eldorado.
Speaker 1: And apparently every time a conquistador would find a significant
Speaker 1: seam of gold, they found El Dorado, and everybody else
Speaker 1: would come and it become like a boom area. But
Speaker 1: of course it was a mythical city, right, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was just like legend. Yeah, and probably the closest thing
Speaker 1: to it, obviously not a city built of gold. The
Speaker 1: closest thing to it. It was in Brazil, in the
Speaker 1: Minat Gurai region, Minas Gerais. That looks good, freaky Gervais. Oh,
Speaker 1: we've been doing it's like five years in Our pronunciation
Speaker 1: is maybe even worse rather than better. Actually, we have
Speaker 1: a listener mail today where someone lauds us just for
Speaker 1: taking a chance and being willing to be creative. Corrected,
Speaker 1: thank you, I'm glad to hear that. I'll read that
Speaker 1: one at the end of this one. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: invent in Brazil, and uh, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: gold there and they were the largest gold producer by sea.
Speaker 1: Twenty years. They became the world's largest gold producer because
Speaker 1: of this area, using of course slave labor painting for
Speaker 1: gold in sort of rudim entry ways. It's not good. No,
Speaker 1: we're not too far removed from that now. No, so
Speaker 1: onto America, North America, California. The the gold rush, Like
Speaker 1: the point here is is the gold has rewritten history
Speaker 1: and how we form societies because of the search for gold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like spread people out over the world and intermixed
Speaker 1: and inter intermarried and inter did it. And you know,
Speaker 1: like we have entire groups of people ethnicities who are
Speaker 1: the result of gold the gold rushes. Yeah. Um, California
Speaker 1: gets a lot of press obviously because by the end
Speaker 1: of the first year of the gold rush, afterwards discovered
Speaker 1: in eighty five thousand people were mining there. By the
Speaker 1: end of the second year, forty people were mining there.
Speaker 1: But North Carolina actually was the first American gold rush. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like you're saying, California gets all the all the attention.
Speaker 1: San Francisco forty Niners are named after the gold rush. Um.
Speaker 1: There was that great Scooby Doo episode with the minor
Speaker 1: forty Niner remember him, Yes, a scary guy. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: you think of gold rush, you think of California, or
Speaker 1: I also think of Delonaga. Yeah it was Gei. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the mayor of del on Goo was the
Speaker 1: one who said there's gold and then our hills. Oh
Speaker 1: really yeah, it was the mayor of Delanica. I had
Speaker 1: no idea. There was todd something. I think. Have you
Speaker 1: ever panned up there in Delana Huh? I did that
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. And you know, it's fun
Speaker 1: if you're a little kid, right, you think you're gonna
Speaker 1: find a little gold flak and it would be rich.
Speaker 1: Or you just might find a little gold flak and
Speaker 1: if you do, you won't be rich. Yeah, you're going
Speaker 1: to find it doesn't buy you virtually anything. But you
Speaker 1: were saying North Carolina doesn't usually get much attention, and
Speaker 1: that was the first gold rush. Yeah, up until the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirties. In fact, um, they supplied all of the
Speaker 1: domestic gold that was coined here at the U S
Speaker 1: Mint in Philly came from North Carolina or North Kakaaki
Speaker 1: as we like to call it. Who calls it that?
Speaker 1: You never called it that? Uh? Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: it called that? I have. There's a tribe called quest Song.
Speaker 1: Oh really, I can't remember what it is, but somebody
Speaker 1: calls it North Kakillaka and Compton check a check it out. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't make that up. Well I just ran you
Speaker 1: did your j tip so uh yeah, we talked about
Speaker 1: the gold rushes in the US. There was also a
Speaker 1: big one in oz. Yeah, we can't leave out our
Speaker 1: Ozzie mates. No, um, hello Australia. Yeah, they're like we
Speaker 1: got tons of gold. They're like it's so hot. I
Speaker 1: watched Mad Max the other day, by the way, all
Speaker 1: the way through the original it was and it was, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Road Warrior got most of the attention
Speaker 1: because it was bigger and more of an action adventure,
Speaker 1: but Mad Max was a really dark kind of revenge
Speaker 1: ee exploitation movie. Yeah, it was really good ozploitation. Osploitation.
Speaker 1: So was that the one where the guys in the
Speaker 1: personal helicopters, that road Warrior Mad Max. That's road Warrior.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen Max. Then. It's like I
Speaker 1: mean it was when Mel Gibson was still a cop
Speaker 1: and he was you know, there was this biker gang
Speaker 1: led by the toe Cutter and you know what it
Speaker 1: was something cool, you know, justin my friend. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: uncle is that was the toe cutter in Mad Max.
Speaker 1: Wow is uh? Man, I can't remember his name now, uncle,
Speaker 1: Uncle toe Cutter. I didn't call him that, that's what
Speaker 1: it saysn't as Christmas talking. Oh, I can know. He
Speaker 1: just sends toes every year in a little guard. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name now, Uncle. Yeah, Uncle toe Cutter.
Speaker 1: I think that's the better day. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Australia has this huge gold rush um in the
Speaker 1: what eighteen fifties, Yes, Edward Ham and Hargraves found golden
Speaker 1: New South Wales Bam gold brush. A few years later,
Speaker 1: South Africa steps onto the scene eighteen sixty eight. George Harrison,
Speaker 1: he uncovered gold in South Africa and what how many
Speaker 1: contributions has that man made humanity? In his hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty years. I mean he wrote here comes the Sun.
Speaker 1: He discovered gold like a hundred years before he was born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a hundred, but hundred us for he was famous
Speaker 1: right about the same time, about a full century. But
Speaker 1: down South Africa is the leading gold producer in the world.
Speaker 1: Oh today it is, oh wow, followed by the United States.
Speaker 1: In the United States, Nevada is the number one gold
Speaker 1: producer these days. You mean Nevada, Nevada. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about how you get gold onto your finger.
Speaker 1: It's not as easy as you would think, but it's well,
Speaker 1: it's at times rudimentary and at times a little more sophisticated.
Speaker 1: The whole process. Yeah, and it complex to say the least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like it really shows how much we want gold. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like fracking in a way to the
Speaker 1: one method. Yeah, alright, So what you gotta do there's different.
Speaker 1: You gotta start by prospecting, which is the act of
Speaker 1: looking for gold, right, and that's what you would call
Speaker 1: an old grizzled dude with the pack mule up in
Speaker 1: the hills in California prospect or. Yeah, that's what you
Speaker 1: call a geologists who finds gold today to still called prospectors,
Speaker 1: and I guess the idea is that, what are the
Speaker 1: prospects for finding gold. I'm sure that's where it came from,
Speaker 1: right maybe so their prospecting. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I've never thought about that. So back in the day,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of luck involved, uh, looking around
Speaker 1: for it basically where you think it might be. These
Speaker 1: days it is way more precise. Um, they have equipment
Speaker 1: that can tell you if there is likely gold there
Speaker 1: and then well here's the thing is there's gold everywhere,
Speaker 1: but it's just not concentrated enough to be worth mining. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an excellent point. In most cases it's invisible, but
Speaker 1: it's still present in the soil. Isn't it crazy? Invisible
Speaker 1: gold in dirt and rocks? Yeah, or it's in gold Schlagger.
Speaker 1: That's crazy too. It's like they're just throwing it away,
Speaker 1: throwing away. You're drinking it for a premium price. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's gross. That was like a college thing. Oh yeah, slager, yegger,
Speaker 1: maister anything that sounded like vaguely Germanic. That was a
Speaker 1: college thing, maister brow. Um, So where they find gold
Speaker 1: and the heaviest concentration is when they will say, all right,
Speaker 1: you know what it's worth setting up a mining operation here. Um,
Speaker 1: there may be other metals there, like silver, which is great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of times gold is combined with silver in
Speaker 1: an ore, which I'm sure you're just like, okay, great,
Speaker 1: that's fine with me. That's twice the value, right, well,
Speaker 1: not twice the value, but one in three quarters times
Speaker 1: of valid. I don't know, we could figure it out.
Speaker 1: So they drill down to obtain samples, UM, analyze it,
Speaker 1: see if there's enough gold. If there is, they're going
Speaker 1: to set up a mining operation there. Right, there's not,
Speaker 1: They're going to move on and look at another place
Speaker 1: that they think they might have a lot of gold. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then depending on how the gold is present in
Speaker 1: the area. UM, there's basically two ways. One is the
Speaker 1: load a load deposit, which is it's combined with rock
Speaker 1: or or and it's UM. It can be at the
Speaker 1: surface or underground. UM. And with a load deposit, basically
Speaker 1: you just want to blow things up when you find
Speaker 1: gold like that. If it's at the surface, you're gonna
Speaker 1: use what's called an open pit method, which is basically
Speaker 1: just drill a bunch of holes into the ore the
Speaker 1: gold ore, put some explosives in there and blow it
Speaker 1: up and then haul the ore out. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: your goal here is just to make I mean, if
Speaker 1: they could load up that huge boulder and take it
Speaker 1: and do it need or somewhere else, they might, but
Speaker 1: they're just trying to make smaller rocks. Excellent point for transport. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And then if it's underground, if the load is underground,
Speaker 1: they'll dig a shaft down to it and add it.
Speaker 1: They go down to it, and this is a big shaft.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they go down to it and drill holes
Speaker 1: all the way through that ore rock um, and those
Speaker 1: holes are called stops. Then they pack those full of
Speaker 1: explosives and blow it up. So it's basically like the
Speaker 1: open pit method, but underground because then they just truck
Speaker 1: that or out and off to the um extractor. That's right.
Speaker 1: If you're in Dlonaga, Georgia, or maybe at a river
Speaker 1: and Utah, why not why not give a utash shout out.
Speaker 1: You might look for something called a placer deposit, and
Speaker 1: that is when you find the loose gold um in
Speaker 1: a stream bed. You know, the little flakes or the
Speaker 1: little chunks of little nuggets in a mountain stream or
Speaker 1: a beach, and uh, this is where you would pan
Speaker 1: and you you know, you scoop it up in a
Speaker 1: pan and you shake it in the yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of water because gold is is more dense, so it's
Speaker 1: going to sink and collect at the bottom of your
Speaker 1: little screen that separates everything. And then you've got a
Speaker 1: little bit of gold hopefully, and then the sixth graders
Speaker 1: are all very happy. That's right. Or I imagine if
Speaker 1: you were a prospector in California back in the day,
Speaker 1: you could do quite well as a panner. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: look around and be like, it's mine, Yeah, it's my gold,
Speaker 1: all right. So then you have to extract it. That's
Speaker 1: the next step. Right, So you've got all these big
Speaker 1: rocks that you've blown up. Uh, yeah, I guess this
Speaker 1: is mostly The first couple of steps are from load deposits.
Speaker 1: You have a bunch of rocks, You put them on
Speaker 1: a on a conveyor belt and they go into a
Speaker 1: machine that's a pally called the crusher, which breaks the
Speaker 1: ore into gravel. Then you take that gravel and you
Speaker 1: put them into drums with a bunch of little steel
Speaker 1: balls spin it around real quickness. Steel balls collide with
Speaker 1: that gravel and they turn it into basically like a powder.
Speaker 1: And you add water to that powder. You form a slurry,
Speaker 1: add cyanide to that slurry, and expose it to oxygen,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you're starting to extract gold
Speaker 1: from ore. Yeah, the pulp. Basically, the gold in the
Speaker 1: pulp dissolves with that chemical reaction. The side and side
Speaker 1: and O two and uh the little carbon in there,
Speaker 1: like tiny little carbon greens, and um, the gold is
Speaker 1: gonna adhere to it. They have. They like each other
Speaker 1: very much, so they're gonna get together in party for
Speaker 1: a little while. Then you filter that and you have
Speaker 1: gold bearing carbon at this point still not pure gold, right,
Speaker 1: so it's gold with carbon. Then you move that to
Speaker 1: something called a stripping vessel. They put another solution, acoustic
Speaker 1: solution to separate the gold from the carbon, have more
Speaker 1: filters to filter out the carbon, and so now you
Speaker 1: have actual gold bearing solution. But you're still not done.
Speaker 1: And this is my favorite part. Yeah, this is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's called electro winning, which thank god, Charlie she never
Speaker 1: heard of this, because this whole thing would be even
Speaker 1: more annoying. But um, you put you put the gold
Speaker 1: into a cell with positive and negative terminals, pass an
Speaker 1: electrical current over it, and the gold separates, uh from
Speaker 1: the carbon solution or the gold bearing solution, and is
Speaker 1: attracted to the negative terminal so much so that I
Speaker 1: get the impression that basically becomes embedded in the negative terminal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I kind of wondered, because the next step is to
Speaker 1: actually melt that negative terminal along with the gold, right,
Speaker 1: and then you begin to separate the two. Basically, you
Speaker 1: pour off the negative terminal metal metal, maybe steel or
Speaker 1: something like that, by right exactly. Um, so when you
Speaker 1: smell and I thought smelt was just melting, Like why
Speaker 1: they add the s because it's not melting, it's smelting exactly.
Speaker 1: So when you pour off the steel, I guess maybe
Speaker 1: that comes off first, and then what you have left
Speaker 1: is relatively impure gold, but as close as you're gonna
Speaker 1: get it in the extracting process. You pour them into
Speaker 1: bars called door a bars, and then you ship them
Speaker 1: off to the refiner. Yeah, and that's not the bar
Speaker 1: that you will see in die Hard three. Um, this
Speaker 1: is a more impure do a bar. So you're still
Speaker 1: nice to have one. Yeah, I'm sure you can be
Speaker 1: like look at me right, um, okay, and then you
Speaker 1: need to refine gold from that point once you have
Speaker 1: it in its uh purest impure form. So imagine the
Speaker 1: process that we just went through. It was like add this,
Speaker 1: subtract this, remove that, but add this, and then like
Speaker 1: the gold that here, this, and let's burn the whole
Speaker 1: thing up until it gets melting. Still impure, it still
Speaker 1: has to be refined. So um, when refineries get gold
Speaker 1: dory bars. They also frequently when you sell your your
Speaker 1: gold to J. D. Wentworth or whoever, um, they take
Speaker 1: all this gold scrap and send that off also to
Speaker 1: these um refineries, which are all which also serve as
Speaker 1: recycling centers. To basically, that's like the saddest shipment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just full of people's like lost hopes and dreams
Speaker 1: and wedding rings and gold bracelets, anniversary bracelets I'll just
Speaker 1: sent back to be melted down because of the economy. Um.
Speaker 1: So when they throw all this into the same pot,
Speaker 1: they add a little bit of soda ash, a little
Speaker 1: bit of borax, And honestly, what camp borax do? Um,
Speaker 1: and the soda ash and borax basically filters out impurities
Speaker 1: and then what you have left most of the time,
Speaker 1: and they use essay tests to to to figure out
Speaker 1: the purity. But um, they you have about ninety nine
Speaker 1: nine percent pure gold and that's usually what they stamp
Speaker 1: on the bar that they pour. And those bars are
Speaker 1: called ingots. Yeah, those are the ones you'll see in
Speaker 1: the heist movies. And um, if you have ever seen
Speaker 1: Diehard three and you see them loading up these ingots
Speaker 1: into big gym bags and then throwing them over their
Speaker 1: shoulder and running out, that is uh not possible because
Speaker 1: each one of those bars weighs twenty seven pounds. So
Speaker 1: if you have fifty of those in a bag, like
Speaker 1: Jeremy Irons, might Jeremy Irons not a strong man. No,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna throw that on your back, like three
Speaker 1: pounds of gold and like go running up a bunch
Speaker 1: of stairs and out of the New York Uh where
Speaker 1: is it the New York Reserve Bank? Yeah, supposedly they're
Speaker 1: in Fort knox Is where they have all the gold. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Emily was talking last night about that. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: that be summary safe to have all this golden one place.
Speaker 1: I was like well, that's why they say, like it's
Speaker 1: built like Fort Knox, it's like super secure. She's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but what if you know some terrors just bombed it.
Speaker 1: She's like, you could just bomb it and then sneak
Speaker 1: out of there with a gold and I went, you
Speaker 1: just wrote die Hard three. She's like, is that what
Speaker 1: upen out? That's exactly what happened. But I think she
Speaker 1: makes a good point. I was thinking last night to like,
Speaker 1: if we have all this gold, and if it is
Speaker 1: all there, just keeping it in two places, it seems
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems unusually like tempting fate. I
Speaker 1: think I agree with Emily. Yeah, six billion dollars worth
Speaker 1: of gold at Fort Knox. No, No, my friend was
Speaker 1: that more? Now? Dude? So when when Harris wrote this
Speaker 1: one gold was forty two twenty two an ounces and ounce.
Speaker 1: Right now it's sixteen hundred and sixty seven dollars and
Speaker 1: forty nine cents and ounces. So that means that if
Speaker 1: Fort Knox holds a hundred and forty seven point three
Speaker 1: million ounces of gold, the gold is worth two hundred
Speaker 1: forty five point six billion dollars just sitting there in
Speaker 1: Fort Knox. Art No, I think gold went up much
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years because of the economy.
Speaker 1: Everybody flocked to gold. Demand increased, and so the price
Speaker 1: did so amazing to me, after all these years, gold
Speaker 1: is still like people hoard it. Yeah. Man, when gold
Speaker 1: prices are low, you're very smart to invest in gold
Speaker 1: because there's always going to be another economic downd turn
Speaker 1: and the prices are always just gonna skyrocket. You got
Speaker 1: a couple of and gets in your closet. I have them.
Speaker 1: I have them strepped on my leg. That's why I
Speaker 1: have a limp. That's how you walk funny um alright,
Speaker 1: So during the refining stage, we should point out that
Speaker 1: a lot of times they will um because gold is
Speaker 1: so solift pure gold is, they will combine it with
Speaker 1: other metals to form alloys, and that's why you will
Speaker 1: get something like white gold, which is gold combined with
Speaker 1: nickel or silver pladium. Red gold is golden copper. That's
Speaker 1: pretty and I've never seen red gold on they seen
Speaker 1: rose gold surely at all my fans. I mean it
Speaker 1: has like it has like a just a slight pink hue. Two.
Speaker 1: It's very pretty stuff. I'm not big into gold, like
Speaker 1: as far as jewelry, Yeah, I know, I'm with you. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course you have to talk about carrots carritage,
Speaker 1: and that is how much gold is in the object
Speaker 1: compared to like silver, nickel or whatever else is in
Speaker 1: that alloy. And interestingly, um, different countries have different preferences here.
Speaker 1: You always hear about fourteen carrot gold in the United States,
Speaker 1: which is only fifty eight point five percent gold. Apparently
Speaker 1: in India they're partial to the twenty two carrot and uh,
Speaker 1: which is ninety one point seven five percent gold, and
Speaker 1: the Europeans like to take that middle road and hit
Speaker 1: eighteen carrots. Yeah. That's very strange, and I don't understand
Speaker 1: what it is. I can understand price being a factor,
Speaker 1: but it's very odd to me that like cultures, yeah
Speaker 1: prefer it. So twenty four carrots is percent gold obviously. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In in fourteen or twelve carrot is fifty percent cold
Speaker 1: and about two thirds of all the gold is uh jewelry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. And what's interesting about the jewelries that
Speaker 1: it's still basically produced as it has been for hundreds
Speaker 1: or thousands of years, um, using the same techniques, virtually
Speaker 1: the same tools. I mean, I'm sure they're manufactured much differently,
Speaker 1: but they are kind of the same thing. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And while jewelry accounts for what do you say, two
Speaker 1: thirds of nearly two thirds, there's a lot of other
Speaker 1: pretty interesting uses for gold to electronics use a lot
Speaker 1: of gold and a lot of other rare earth minerals
Speaker 1: like um. Uh. Apparently gold is very very conductive. It's
Speaker 1: more conductive than any metal except for copper and um silver.
Speaker 1: But it has a leg up on conference olver and
Speaker 1: that it corrodes. It's very difficult for gold to corrode.
Speaker 1: So that means that if you want something that's gonna
Speaker 1: last a very long time and be conductive, you might
Speaker 1: as well use some gold. So they do in things
Speaker 1: like processors and hard drives and that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you you might see gold on your headphone plug.
Speaker 1: Your headphone jack might be gold plated because it's if
Speaker 1: it's higher end, they might use gold. Yeah, conducts h
Speaker 1: electricity therefore sound better that I just thought it was
Speaker 1: like fancy high end or something. Here's a cool stat
Speaker 1: because they use it so much in electronics and microelectronics,
Speaker 1: NASA used more than forty kilograms ninety pounds of gold
Speaker 1: and the construction of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Right, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Fat electronics, and they used it as a
Speaker 1: reflective surface. They use gold film. Remember, you can into
Speaker 1: like a point um point one five millimeter thin sheet.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. So it's light at that point, highly reflective,
Speaker 1: effective against radiation. Yeah, so that's pretty awesome. Um, you
Speaker 1: also use it for crowns. Yeah, they still use gold
Speaker 1: crowns cuddenly, and then I imagine it because it's not reactive,
Speaker 1: because when things are reactive, especially with cooking, it will
Speaker 1: make things taste terribly. Yeah, that's true. Like there was
Speaker 1: something called a fish fork and it was made of silver,
Speaker 1: and apparently if you had this thing, it was like
Speaker 1: a status symbol or whatever in Victorian the Victorian era.
Speaker 1: But it also did have a practical use in that
Speaker 1: silver didn't react with um lemon juice, which is often
Speaker 1: used to serve with fish, so it didn't affect the taste.
Speaker 1: I imagine that's probably one of the reasons why they
Speaker 1: use gold and crowns, right, so that you everything doesn't
Speaker 1: just taste bad because it's not reacting with anything because
Speaker 1: it's chemically inert. That's a good point. Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: don't want to be eating something and think, oh man,
Speaker 1: my new gold tooth makes this telapia tastes like squid,
Speaker 1: tastes like squid. I don't know, that's not so bad. No,
Speaker 1: I like squid. But if you're eat in telapia, you
Speaker 1: don't want to eat squid. Do you eat squid? Will
Speaker 1: you eat octopus? I mean I'll eat all that stuff
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. I mean, like Emily when it
Speaker 1: comes to calamari, she will only eat like the things
Speaker 1: that look like little onion rings. Right as soon as
Speaker 1: it looks like the little miniature creature, she's like, that's
Speaker 1: for you, and I pop that in my mouth. I
Speaker 1: will probably eat both, especially eat squid. You we won't
Speaker 1: eat octopus because of Remember one of our friends had
Speaker 1: ad and they told us a story that their friend
Speaker 1: was a cook for some couple down in the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: and the couple like caught an octopus and was going
Speaker 1: to cook it, or they gave it to the to
Speaker 1: their cook to cook, and the cook was going to
Speaker 1: put it in the pot alive, and the octopus was
Speaker 1: wrapping its tentacles around the woman, like, please don't kill me.
Speaker 1: And she said it was, you know, like one of
Speaker 1: the worst things that ever happened to her because she
Speaker 1: did it anyway, like you literally when you literally have
Speaker 1: to fight to put the animal to their death. And
Speaker 1: and then so that combined with I think being inspired
Speaker 1: to go research octopi and finding that they were very intelligents,
Speaker 1: like I just can't eat those anymore, which is said
Speaker 1: because there's they pop up. It's some pretty delicious dishes,
Speaker 1: I imagine, but they're a very smart animals, and he's
Speaker 1: like the animals just stupid ones. Right, Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: see that I would be dramatized, Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was like no, yeah, I would just walk
Speaker 1: slowly into the ocean until it released itself and swam away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd be like the Woodsman and snow White, like I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened to it. But then you start
Speaker 1: to walk back and the octopus reaches up with one
Speaker 1: hand and holds your hand. He's like, I want to
Speaker 1: be your pet. I don't want to go back to
Speaker 1: the sea. Just don't cook me. Don't cook me, all right,
Speaker 1: where do we leave off food and beverage. You can
Speaker 1: get it in gold Schlagger in certain jellies gold by
Speaker 1: the way, not octopus. Yeah yeah, yeah, um, And that
Speaker 1: that's all just for marketing and making things fans. It
Speaker 1: really is. You know. They have like the World's most
Speaker 1: Expensive Sunday or the world's most expensive salary always got
Speaker 1: gold flakes. It does so much so that I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about this. They have another category for World's
Speaker 1: most expensive non old because it's like any smoke, can
Speaker 1: you know, spit out a hot dog and relish and
Speaker 1: then put gold flakes on and be like world's experienceive
Speaker 1: hot dog and that doesn't really you know. So then
Speaker 1: that means some of the gold that we've lost that
Speaker 1: has been pooped out. Yeah. I guess that's sad, is it.
Speaker 1: I think so, since it's you know, so limited and
Speaker 1: supply and bad for the environment to get well, I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about that. Yeah, we probably should,
Speaker 1: because I was very surprised. I mean, I'd heard that
Speaker 1: gold was bad for the environment, but I didn't realize this.
Speaker 1: You want to you want to tell one of the
Speaker 1: facts of the podcast. Yes, it is like most mining operations, um,
Speaker 1: not great for the environment. In order to get just
Speaker 1: one ounce of gold, you have to get out two
Speaker 1: and fifty tons of the rock and ore and a
Speaker 1: lot of times. Um. Well, of course there's the cyanide,
Speaker 1: which is never great when you're introducing those kind of chemicals. No,
Speaker 1: and apparently they take this affluent, right yeah, or a
Speaker 1: fluent and they dump it out in the ocean. Oh really,
Speaker 1: which probably affects OCTOPI. Yeah, it's like, hey, here's a
Speaker 1: bunch of cyanide water, and I'm sure the ocean will
Speaker 1: eventually like even things out. But for that local area
Speaker 1: where it gets dumb, that can't be good. Of course not.
Speaker 1: And that's why there's a group, a nonprofit called Earthworks
Speaker 1: that runs a campaign called no Dirty Gold. So I
Speaker 1: imagine if you have a gold wedding band and a
Speaker 1: blood diamond on your finger, then uh, you just like
Speaker 1: you're that's a double whammy against hat trick. Yeah, well no,
Speaker 1: hatrick could be three. So not in this not in
Speaker 1: this the case. Okay, that's as good as you can get,
Speaker 1: as bad as it gets. So we should talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about gold. Although I think we should do
Speaker 1: a full podcast in the gold standard at some point.
Speaker 1: I know we've touched at some point, let's do it.
Speaker 1: But um, the gold standard was, wasn't it like, Uh,
Speaker 1: every dollar amount like was that you could print, there
Speaker 1: was a certain amount of gold that had to be
Speaker 1: in reserve that matched that. Yes. Is that what it was? Yes? Exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you had a bunch, if you had enough money,
Speaker 1: you could go up to you know, the federal reserve
Speaker 1: and say I want to catch this money out for gold,
Speaker 1: and they had to give it to you by federal law.
Speaker 1: And that was from nineteen hundred to nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: When didn't we just start pretty more money than gold
Speaker 1: and said we should abandon the gold standard? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I think when you detach your currency from gold becomes
Speaker 1: a fiat currency right to the whims of the market.
Speaker 1: I seem to remember discussing this sum in one of
Speaker 1: our econ podcasts way back when maybe even audiobook man,
Speaker 1: how the economy were uh the super stuff guidet to
Speaker 1: the economy, that's what it's called. Um. That was a
Speaker 1: good one. Um. So two d thirty six tons of
Speaker 1: gold are uh being so called hoarded by people and governments? Um?
Speaker 1: Is that all twoty six tons? Yeah? It seemed like
Speaker 1: if if there was still of the hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: one thousand tons. Yeah, if that doesn't seem like much,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't. It's a lot of jewelry being worn. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But um, they think there is actually gold out and
Speaker 1: outer space, you know, and some of these big asteroids
Speaker 1: flying by that are chuck full of minerals and other metals. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a near Earth asteroid rendezvous spacecraft passed close
Speaker 1: enough to the asteroid arrows to actually send back data.
Speaker 1: And um, they think the arrows might have as much
Speaker 1: as twenty billion tons of gold, which would probably really
Speaker 1: drop the value of gold here on Earth if anyone
Speaker 1: ever got their hands on that. How I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you go about capturing an asteroid? I wonder we've
Speaker 1: we did a podcast on asteroid minding. Remember is that
Speaker 1: the same thing? Okay, that's what they would do? Well,
Speaker 1: I retreat, Then we should just do that. I could do.
Speaker 1: That would send Bruce Willis up with a lasso, a
Speaker 1: golden lasso, riding a jackalope and attach it to the
Speaker 1: jackalop's tail and ride it back to Earth. You got
Speaker 1: anything else? No? I don't. Well that's uh. Oh, I
Speaker 1: have one more thing I want to recommend. Um, Harris
Speaker 1: didn't mention this. One of the other really bad environmental
Speaker 1: impacts of gold is illegal gold mining. Apparently, um Guiana
Speaker 1: has a lot of illegal gold mining. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that you if you're an illegal underground gold miner,
Speaker 1: you're not going through this elaborate extraction and refining process.
Speaker 1: You are basically taking your ore in. You're refining or
Speaker 1: extracting on site using mercury. Mercury is what they use.
Speaker 1: So there's not only a lot of like illegal, horrible
Speaker 1: for the environment gold mining going on, there's also a
Speaker 1: lot of mercury mining and a lot of mercury like runoff,
Speaker 1: So there's mercury poisoning all over Guiana right now. And
Speaker 1: there's a really great article may have one of peels.
Speaker 1: I found it on peels or dot org, but it
Speaker 1: was originally in Harper's that's where I read it, gold
Speaker 1: Guns and Gumpiers. That is g A R I M
Speaker 1: P E I R O S. And it's by Damon Tabor.
Speaker 1: Good stuff. Awesome article is so engross, one of those
Speaker 1: that makes you want to like not ever use gold
Speaker 1: for anything. Uh. It has that effect a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it's it's more just completely fascinating, like you can't
Speaker 1: believe that people are doing this. Yeah, and child labor two, right,
Speaker 1: isn't that a big problem? I think that was part
Speaker 1: of it. But more um, it's just you are you
Speaker 1: really risk death in these like they're called wildcat camps,
Speaker 1: these illegal gold mining operations, because I mean, if some
Speaker 1: in the mercury, in the guns, and you know, people
Speaker 1: staking other people's claims, bad bad news. So there you go,
Speaker 1: gold gold. If you want to learn more about gold,
Speaker 1: you can type that words into the handy search bar
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And since I said that,
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail Josh, I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this the ten Commandments of Chuck and Josh, although there's
Speaker 1: only eight. Um, and this is from Professor Tom uh Guys,
Speaker 1: I teach a communications course at an area of community
Speaker 1: college and UH and in universities. I often recommend your
Speaker 1: podcast in my classes, especially to students that seem to
Speaker 1: love learning but may have not been encouraged by family
Speaker 1: or friends. Um, I'm hoping that they may pick up
Speaker 1: a few important life lessons from you, guys, as well
Speaker 1: as interesting facts. Here a few life lesson highlights, So
Speaker 1: I think you guys, display number one, normal guys can
Speaker 1: talk about something other than sports. That's true, I know
Speaker 1: I like sports. Number two. Good presentations begin with an
Speaker 1: attention getting introduction. Josh. Josh will tell you this is
Speaker 1: sometimes easier said than done. Yes, that's absolutely correct. Um.
Speaker 1: If you don't know something, uh, look it up. And
Speaker 1: if you're looking it up on the internet, check more
Speaker 1: than one source. Life lessons this this this guy is
Speaker 1: really paying attention to what we're doing. Yes, learning involves mistakes.
Speaker 1: Number four. Take a shot at pronouncing new word. If
Speaker 1: you get it wrong, venture a guest, share a new hypothesis,
Speaker 1: then invite feedback, which is the important part. Jerem Pierro's
Speaker 1: number five. If you don't have to make fun of
Speaker 1: people to be funny. If you absolutely must mock someone,
Speaker 1: mock yourself and you're good at that. Number six, it's
Speaker 1: okay for guys to have a variety of emotions. There's
Speaker 1: nothing unmanly with being sensitive or expressing emotions other than anger.
Speaker 1: It's even healthy for guys to talk about their emotions
Speaker 1: and to chuckle. Do you like the new Rosy career? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Number seven, it's worth the effort to be respectful of others.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to stop yourself before you make an
Speaker 1: off hand joke, which we do. Um Sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to use a term that is more accurate or up
Speaker 1: to date, which we try and do. Sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to remember what it feels like to be seen as
Speaker 1: different and see if your language could be more inclusive
Speaker 1: or encouraging, even if only one person in your audience
Speaker 1: notices the efforts. It's worth it, man, this is my
Speaker 1: conscience writing. And number eight, curiosity can last a lifetime.
Speaker 1: And that was the last one, and he said, guy,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said. We're teaching by example,
Speaker 1: whether you realize it or not. You're doing it every week.
Speaker 1: And he goes on with an interesting ps from Professor Tom. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you have my gay male friends and I got
Speaker 1: talking about your show, we tried to figure out which
Speaker 1: type you would be if you've been born gay. It
Speaker 1: was unanimous. Chuck is clearly a bear. If you have
Speaker 1: a gay brother, Chuck, I have a few friends who
Speaker 1: would like to meet him. I do have a brother,
Speaker 1: but he's not gay, and he would not be a bear.
Speaker 1: He's he's prettier than me. He is very pretty. You
Speaker 1: would actually love my brother. Yeah, he's got great here.
Speaker 1: I thought you guys would know with like knowing that
Speaker 1: you were being stereotyped by a bunch of gay guys
Speaker 1: standing around drinking beer at a bar called the Whole
Speaker 1: Performing Stuff you Should Know podcast analysis. What a world,
Speaker 1: Thanks Professor Tom. Yeah, that's a great email. That was
Speaker 1: a great email. We gotta print that one out frame. Um,
Speaker 1: if you ever do analysis of stuff you should Know,
Speaker 1: we want to hear what you've concluded. Um. You can
Speaker 1: tweet to us if it's a short inclusion at s
Speaker 1: y s K podcast. You can join us at Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff Works
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