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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 2: We have something a little different and a little familiar

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Speaker 2: for you here today on today's episode of Stuff to

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Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind. In a way, this is kind of

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Speaker 2: a spin off from our old anthology of horror series

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Speaker 2: that we used to do, but it's also a response

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Speaker 2: to listeners over the years who've written in about their

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Speaker 2: nostalgia for marathons of TVs The Twilight Zone on the

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Speaker 2: Sci Fi Channel on New Year's Eve and or New

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Speaker 2: Year's Day?

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Speaker 3: Do you know why they do that? Like, what's the

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Speaker 3: connection with New Year's Is it just a coincidence or

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Speaker 3: a coincidence?

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Speaker 2: Is it random? I'm not entirely certain. I mean, I've

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Speaker 2: been thinking about it a lot, Like why the Twilight

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Speaker 2: Zone at New Year's And I guess it's because it's

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Speaker 2: this space between right, I mean, I feel that heavily.

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Speaker 2: Right now. It's like, all right, we're done with Christmas.

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Speaker 2: The New Year's about to start, but it's not there yet,

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Speaker 2: and even once it has started, it's not going to

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Speaker 2: feel real for a little bit, so I don't know,

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Speaker 2: it seems like maybe a fitting time. I'm also not

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Speaker 2: super hip to all of like the cable channel business

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Speaker 2: side of all of this, Like why does it even

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Speaker 2: make sense to run, say a Turkey Day marathon? There

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Speaker 2: may just be very like strong and pretty straightforward industry

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Speaker 2: reasons why, you know, it's like, I don't know, you've

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Speaker 2: got to put something on. Maybe there are more people

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Speaker 2: watching at that time, but I don't know, over the years,

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Speaker 2: you've seen these kind of holiday marathons really take root.

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Speaker 2: Be it MST three K, Turkey Day, or I forget

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Speaker 2: which turner channel would air a Christmas story just over

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Speaker 2: and over again for like twenty four hour period.

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Speaker 3: I wonder if it's that on days people are expected

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Speaker 3: to be off work and home for a holiday, that

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Speaker 3: they're more likely to just leave the TV on on

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Speaker 3: a certain channel where they can expect to kind of

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Speaker 3: some kind of like predictable stream in the background.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it could be it's something comforting and if

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Speaker 2: you're like if you're a fan of the Twilight Zone

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Speaker 2: or just old timey television in general, like there's a

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Speaker 2: pretty good choice to put on in the background now

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Speaker 2: for my own part. I think I probably watched episodes

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Speaker 2: of the Twilight Zone this way because I believe they

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Speaker 2: started doing these marathons on the Sci Fi Channel around

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, so I was definitely watching the channel,

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Speaker 2: but I don't have strong specific memories of these marathons

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Speaker 2: in the same way I do for the Turkey Day

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Speaker 2: marathons or for particular tales from the crypt marathons that

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Speaker 2: I caught like semi scrambled on HBO back in the day.

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Speaker 2: And I think I was looking around. I think there

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Speaker 2: may be some regional channels that did Twilight Zone marathons

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Speaker 2: as far back as the nineteen eighties. So depending on

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Speaker 2: where you are and where you were watching television, this

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Speaker 2: might be very deeply rooted. So we figured, okay, let's

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Speaker 2: lean into this idea. Let's take an episode of the

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Speaker 2: Twilight Zone and consider it, give it sort of the

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Speaker 2: old anthology of horror treatment, where we would in that

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Speaker 2: we would take a horror anthology episode and we kind

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Speaker 2: of like squeeze it out see what kind of science

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Speaker 2: or culture we could get out of it. And we figured, Okay,

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Speaker 2: there are a lot of episodes of the Twilight Zone

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Speaker 2: we've talked about episodes of The Twilight Zone before, so

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Speaker 2: there's got to be a good one. There's got to

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Speaker 2: be a really juicy one that we can start juicing

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Speaker 2: here on the show. And so we decided were to

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Speaker 2: juice that it's got to be juicy. Yeah, it needs to.

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Speaker 2: It needs to have at least three types of juice

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Speaker 2: in it. So we decided to pick a season two episode.

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Speaker 2: This is episode twenty four, the Rip Van Winkle Caper,

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Speaker 2: which originally aired April twenty first, nineteen sixty one. Joe,

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Speaker 2: is this one that you had seen previously?

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Speaker 3: I think I had not seen this before, but I

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Speaker 3: was aware of it, at least in part because a

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Speaker 3: listener wrote in about it sometime in the past couple

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Speaker 3: of years. And I forget what the original context of

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Speaker 3: that was, but a listener wrote in about it, and

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Speaker 3: so I had to explain it briefly in that listener

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Speaker 3: mail episode where I was talking about that message. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: I had not seen it before, at least as far

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Speaker 3: as I remember. And so I laid down horizontally in

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Speaker 3: my bed last night and watched it with a laptop

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Speaker 3: sitting on my chest the way Rod Serling intended.

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Speaker 2: Yes, clearly. Well, there's no bad way to watch a

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Speaker 2: Twilight Zone episode. So this is one that I had

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Speaker 2: seen on television a long time ago, and I do

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Speaker 2: I do remember this one having an impact on me,

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Speaker 2: Like it was clever and it's plotting, but also in

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Speaker 2: its treatment of human value systems, so as we'll discuss,

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Speaker 2: you know, it's it's very economic piece. And that's the

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Speaker 2: thing about the Twilight Zone that they didn't have a

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Speaker 2: lot of time to bust out their stories and their

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Speaker 2: twist and really hit you over the head with some meaning.

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Speaker 2: But you know, they generally managed to do a pretty

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Speaker 2: good job of it. Sometimes they would, you know, these

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Speaker 2: episodes would be more sci fi in nature, other times

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Speaker 2: a little more magical realism or outright magical. This one,

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Speaker 2: this one's I guess, more in the sci fi area,

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Speaker 2: but not so much concerned with the SI so much.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, a significant chunk of it does take place

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Speaker 3: in the future from our perspective, but also is only

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Speaker 3: the slightest bit concerned with what that future is like.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the characters barely encounter the future. They're just

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Speaker 3: mostly wandering in a desert in the future, which would

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Speaker 3: have been the same if it was one hundred years

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Speaker 3: beyond or one hundred years ago.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And one thing that becomes clear if you watch

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Speaker 2: a number of Twilight Zone episodes is that they'll frequently

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Speaker 2: come back to the well on sort of a base,

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Speaker 2: sort of gimmicks. So this is one of I think

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Speaker 2: several wandering in the Desert episodes, you know, because it

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Speaker 2: was it was a location that was attainable, and there

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Speaker 2: are all sorts of stories you can tell about wandering

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Speaker 2: through the desert, be it a situation where time traveling bandits,

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Speaker 2: bandits are trying to get their gold to the nearest town,

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Speaker 2: or astronauts who think they're on an alien planet but

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Speaker 2: they're actually just outside of Las Vegas. There are so

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Speaker 2: many different ways to spin it, you know.

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Speaker 3: This episode does have the significant plot point of people

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Speaker 3: trying to get their stash of gold ingots from a

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Speaker 3: cave in the middle of the desert back to town

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Speaker 3: by foot, and they're like dying along the way. You

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Speaker 3: would think they would just stash the gold somewhere and

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Speaker 3: walk without carrying it. I think they might have lived

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Speaker 3: if they had done so, if they had made choices, Well,

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Speaker 3: what is they think a porcupine is going to find

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Speaker 3: their gold and take away or something. I don't know

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Speaker 3: what lives in the desert. Not a porcupine, armadillo or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, heavily, this will come for the gold, all right. Well.

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Speaker 2: This episode was written by Twilight Zone maestro Rod Serling,

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Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty four through nineteen seventy five, and

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Speaker 2: it was directed by TV director Justice Attis who lived

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen through nineteen seventy nine, who also directed two films,

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Speaker 2: fifty eight's Cry Baby Killer and nineteen sixty six is

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Speaker 2: the Magnificent Stranger, though this late. This latter picture was

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Speaker 2: cobbled together from two episodes of TV's Raw Hide. This

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Speaker 2: sounds great, Well, you know, I don't know. I've seen

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Speaker 2: watchable films that were cobbled together in that manner, so

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Speaker 2: who knows.

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Speaker 3: Sure.

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Speaker 2: So this particular episode of The Twilight Zone concerns a

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Speaker 2: band of criminals working for a mastermind by the name

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Speaker 2: of Farwell. Farwell is an intellectual we'll come to realize.

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Speaker 2: He has expertise at least a couple of different areas,

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Speaker 2: and he is played by Oscar Bareiki Junior lived nineteen

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Speaker 2: eighteen through nineteen seventy six, a Hungarian born actor, whose father,

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Speaker 2: Oscar Bragi Senior, escaped the Holocaust and had previously appeared

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Speaker 2: in Fritz Lang's The Testament of Doctor Maiboos in nineteen

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Speaker 2: thirty three. Baggie Junior did a lot of TV work

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Speaker 2: and appeared in such films as seventy four as Young Frankenstein,

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Speaker 2: but is perhaps best remembered for three Twilight Zone appearances,

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Speaker 2: including sixty one's Deaths Had Revisited and also the episode Mute.

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Speaker 3: I don't know if I know either of those.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not two episodes. I'm that familiar with it,

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Speaker 2: And I'm not sure if they fall into any of

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Speaker 2: the sort of like standard buckets of like desert wanderers

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Speaker 2: or weird airplane Shenanigans and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Or Monkeys Paul scenarios.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so Farwell's band here includes criminals played by John

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Speaker 2: Mitcham that's Robert's younger brother, and most notably Simon Oakland,

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Speaker 2: who lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen eighty three as the

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Speaker 2: merciless D'Cruz.

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Speaker 3: Ooh, D'Cruz. He's a mean one, isn't.

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Speaker 2: He he is? I remember being rather impressed by his

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Speaker 2: meanness as a young viewer, because we learned pretty quickly

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Speaker 2: that he's ruthless when it comes to the gold. Oakland

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Speaker 2: will be familiar with many film fans out there for

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Speaker 2: his roles in Psycho, West Side Story from sixty one,

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Speaker 2: The Sand Pebbles from sixty six, and Bullet from sixty eight,

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Speaker 2: And I realized, oh, yeah, that's as I was rewatching

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Speaker 2: this episode. I think that's where i'd primarily seen it

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Speaker 2: before Bullet.

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Speaker 3: Now I'm trying to remember who is he in Psycho.

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Speaker 3: He's not the detective or is he one of the

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Speaker 3: cops At the end.

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Speaker 2: He plays doctor Richmond. I haven't seen Psycho in a

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Speaker 2: long time, so I don't remember who this character is.

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Speaker 3: Could he be the psychiatrist who comes out at the

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Speaker 3: end of the film to explain things.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he could be. He's like each Psycho analysis one

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Speaker 2: bar of gold. I think that's pretty standard. So this

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Speaker 2: is a fun episode. Like I said, the location was

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Speaker 2: readily available Death Valley National Park, and looking around at

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Speaker 2: different rankings, this episode tends not to rank as highly

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Speaker 2: as some of the really iconic episodes like Time Enough

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Speaker 2: at Last or The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,

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Speaker 2: or certainly the Airline episodes like Nightmare twenty thousand Feet

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Speaker 2: or the Odyssey of Flight thirty three, but it does

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Speaker 2: seem to be generally very well regarded by Twilight Zone fans,

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Speaker 2: Like this is not one of those that people seem

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Speaker 2: to just completely forget that it exists. I don't know

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Speaker 2: if it's anyone's absolute top episode, but it's really solid

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Speaker 2: and again, I remember being impressed by its brutality, its

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Speaker 2: twist ending, and so forth when I watched it for

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Speaker 2: the first time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, like a lot of Twilight Zone episodes, not all,

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Speaker 3: but a lot hinges a lot on the twist endings

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Speaker 3: to really make its point.

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Speaker 2: But it's a pretty great twist. So yeah, we'll just

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Speaker 2: run through the plot really quickly here. So a crew

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Speaker 2: of criminals, again led by former chemistry and physics professor

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Speaker 2: mister Farewell, sets out to steal a bunch of gold.

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Speaker 2: We're told it's ten million dollars worth of gold bars

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Speaker 2: that are bound for Fort Knox.

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Speaker 3: I think they had them in a truck going for

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Speaker 3: a train. No, a train, right, yeah, yeah, a train

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Speaker 3: because D'Cruz blows up the tracks. Yeah that's how they

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Speaker 3: get the train to stop.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we we we do learn that each member

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Speaker 2: of the crew has a different skill set as his

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Speaker 2: standard for your heist. Though we don't see the heist really, right,

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Speaker 2: it's just it's we're just kind of told it worked,

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Speaker 2: they pulled it off, they got the gold. But then

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Speaker 2: what And those skill sets, by the way, were mechanical engineering, firearms,

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Speaker 2: and demolition.

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Speaker 3: Right, so D'Cruz does demolition, mechanical engineering. Is this other

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Speaker 3: guy named I forget his name, And then there's this

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Speaker 3: this guy named Brooks who is sort of at odds

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Speaker 3: with D'Cruz at multiple points, and he just seems to

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Speaker 3: be the gun guy. He's the button man.

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Speaker 2: So, as the characters point out, all right, we've got

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Speaker 2: the gold, but one thing about crime is how do

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Speaker 2: you get away with it? Where are you going to

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Speaker 2: take your gold? Where are you going to spend it,

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Speaker 2: where are you going to hide out? And indeed, where

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Speaker 2: are you going to run to? But farwell as a

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Speaker 2: smart cookie, and he has it figured out. They're going

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Speaker 2: to escape into the future.

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Speaker 3: The last place that the cops would look, and.

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Speaker 2: They're going to They're going to accomplish this, you know,

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Speaker 2: not via the standard method of going to the future

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Speaker 2: by just continuing to exist at the normal pace of things.

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Speaker 2: They're also not going to use a time machine, but

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Speaker 2: they are going to use a set of suspended animation

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Speaker 2: chambers that are secreted away in a death valley cave.

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Speaker 3: Right, So their method of traveling into the future is

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Speaker 3: to sleep for one hundred years when when at the

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Speaker 3: time they emerge, it will be safe to spend their

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Speaker 3: gold without raising any suspicion.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the statute of limitations on stealing a bunch of

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Speaker 2: gold from the US government will be will be, it

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Speaker 2: will be over. Yeah, probably not. But their idea is like, okay,

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Speaker 2: but by this time, like we'll be in the clear.

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Speaker 2: Nobody will be looking for us this this gold will

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Speaker 2: just be lost. There will maybe be you know, conspiracy

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Speaker 2: theorists out there. They're like, remember the story the lost

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Speaker 2: Gold and so forth. They'll they'll be in the clear.

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Speaker 2: So that's that's the tactic here. They're just gonna park

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Speaker 2: the loot and hibernate within these high tech chambers for

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Speaker 2: a century and then then they're free. What could possibly

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Speaker 2: go wrong?

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Speaker 3: You know, maybe I don't know enough about gold. I

256
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Speaker 3: would have assumed that gold is fairly easy to get,

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Speaker 3: because it's not like you know, banknotes or something that

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Speaker 3: would have serial numbers, or it's got a die pack

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Speaker 3: in it. You know, gold you can melt down, and

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Speaker 3: can't you just turned I don't know. Maybe maybe they

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Speaker 3: could have special radioactive isotopes in them or something that

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Speaker 3: would make it traceable. But but who knows. But my

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Speaker 3: assumption would be the gold is fairly easy to disguise

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Speaker 3: the origin of.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it could melt it down, right, I don't

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Speaker 2: At any rate, we can disagree on whether this is

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Speaker 2: really a great plan or not, but it seems like

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Speaker 2: a great idea within the context of the show. It's

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Speaker 2: a best laid plan in fact, and we know what

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Speaker 2: happens to those. So let's start talking about how things

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Speaker 2: go wrong, the complications that occur. Yeah, So, first of all,

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Speaker 2: in this one, I've strongly remembered from watching this when

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Speaker 2: I was younger, When they wake up in their simplistic

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Speaker 2: cryogenic chambers and they begin to emerge, they quickly learned

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Speaker 2: that one of the criminals, mister Irby, is long dead

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Speaker 2: because a random rock had fallen from the cavern ceiling

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Speaker 2: and broken open the top of his suspension chamber. So

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Speaker 2: it's just a skeleton in there.

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Speaker 3: Now, yeah, just a skeleton with rings on.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, which pretty impressive. I liked it. And then things

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Speaker 2: get more complicated because D'Cruz, again the demolition guy, the

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Speaker 2: nastiest member of the team. He ends up killing Brooks,

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Speaker 2: their firearm expert. In what are they fighting over? Who's

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Speaker 2: going to drive the truck into civilization?

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Speaker 3: That's what happens immediately before he kills him. But it

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Speaker 3: is I think rather confusing. So it for yeah, they're

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Speaker 3: arguing about who's going to be driving and who's going

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Speaker 3: to be in the back of the truck watching the

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Speaker 3: gold while they drive. Also, they have a truck that's

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Speaker 3: been sitting in a cave for one hundred years and

291
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Speaker 3: it still just starts up fine.

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Speaker 2: It's for tough, right.

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Speaker 3: But so yeah, they start up their truck just works

294
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Speaker 3: fine after one hundred years, and for some reason, Brooks

295
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Speaker 3: is out walking ahead of where the truck is and

296
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Speaker 3: D'Cruz drives the truck into him, like runs him down

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Speaker 3: with the truck, but jumps out of the truck so

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Speaker 3: that the truck after that goes over the edge of

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Speaker 3: a cliff and crashes on the rocks low and then

300
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Speaker 3: he you know, says to Farwell, who's standing there looking

301
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Speaker 3: on incredulous. He's like, you know, it looks like poor

302
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Speaker 3: mister Brooks had an accident with a truck. But I

303
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Speaker 3: was thinking, who is he trying to fool here? And

304
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Speaker 3: how does it What does it mean that the truck

305
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Speaker 3: was wrecked, Like, why would that affect anything? It just

306
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Speaker 3: seems like they're I don't know, it seemed like they

307
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Speaker 3: had to get rid of the truck somehow. Yeah, and

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Speaker 3: that part made the least sense to me of anything.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so it does deliver us to this resulting scenario. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: we're down to just two people. Farwell again, the intellectual

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Speaker 2: d'cruze the nasty demolitions expert. They have all the gold

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Speaker 2: between them, but they don't have a truck. They're gonna

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Speaker 2: have to lug what however much gold they can carry

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Speaker 2: across the desert into civilization all by themselves. So they

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Speaker 2: set out. They travel by day. Of course, that's the

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Speaker 2: only proper time to travel with an enormous amount of gold.

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Speaker 2: During the middle the day through the desert, they clearly

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Speaker 2: needed a ranger or a desert survival expert in their crew.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think they just couldn't have anticipated that

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Speaker 3: Dacruz would have this amazing idea of what to do

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Speaker 3: with the.

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Speaker 2: Trallic I mean, he demolished it. That's his skill set, right,

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Speaker 2: you're right, yeah, they should have seen it coming. So

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Speaker 2: our two surviving criminals, they're hiking along and Farwell quickly

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Speaker 2: discovers that he's lost his canteen. They have one canteen each, apparently,

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Speaker 2: which is the appropriate amount of water for trekking across

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Speaker 2: the open desert during the middle of the day, and

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Speaker 2: D'Cruz begins to sell Farwell SIPs from his own canteen

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Speaker 2: at the extravagant price of one gold bar per sip.

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Speaker 2: And I really like this. I think like it's an

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Speaker 2: excellent introduction to the episode's core themes of the shifting

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Speaker 2: value of resources. How much is a gold bar worth? Well,

333
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Speaker 2: how much is a sip of water worth? The answers

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Speaker 2: are highly conditional.

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Speaker 3: Right, So obviously Farwell's logic is that gold is worth

336
00:18:03,440 --> 00:18:05,439
Speaker 3: nothing if I'm not alive to spend it. So I

337
00:18:05,520 --> 00:18:07,720
Speaker 3: will give you a whole gold bar for one sip

338
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Speaker 3: of water, because that's my only chance to make it

339
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Speaker 3: to the town we're going to. And D'Cruz is not

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Speaker 3: going to take pity on him.

341
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Speaker 2: Yeah, So eventually Dacruz, relishing the Cruelty of it all,

342
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Speaker 2: ups the price one more time, saying, what it's like

343
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Speaker 2: two bars of gold for a sip or something, and

344
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Speaker 2: Farwell's just basically out of gold. So Farwell loses it,

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Speaker 2: beats the Cruz to death in the desert with one

346
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Speaker 2: of the blocks of gold, I think maybe his last

347
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Speaker 2: block of gold, and so now we just have Farwell

348
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Speaker 2: as the lone survivor. He scoops up as much gold

349
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Speaker 2: as he can carry, which isn't much at this point.

350
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Speaker 2: He marches on, but as he wanders, you know, more

351
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Speaker 2: and more through the desert and he doesn't encounter a

352
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Speaker 2: single living soul, He's forced to steadily shed his gold

353
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Speaker 2: bars until he collapses with just a single bar of

354
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Speaker 2: gold clutched in his dying hands.

355
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Speaker 3: Note that they have not met anyone in the future

356
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Speaker 3: at this point, and at one point while they're walking,

357
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Speaker 3: they speculate, They're like, you know, what if there is

358
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Speaker 3: nobody to meet here, what if there's a war, and

359
00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:09,440
Speaker 3: what if there was a war, what if we're living?

360
00:19:09,560 --> 00:19:12,680
Speaker 3: You know, what if humanity no longer exists? And they

361
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Speaker 3: decide that they think that there is somebody out there

362
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Speaker 3: to meet because they see airplanes flying over in the sky.

363
00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:21,360
Speaker 3: I remember, so they're like, okay, so there is still civilization,

364
00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:23,399
Speaker 3: but who knows what it'll be like.

365
00:19:23,920 --> 00:19:27,760
Speaker 2: It could the airplanes could be full of apes. Yeah, yeah,

366
00:19:27,840 --> 00:19:30,840
Speaker 2: Serling of course. Yeah, credit due with that twist as well,

367
00:19:31,240 --> 00:19:34,879
Speaker 2: but it did any rate. Farwell loses consciousness. Having collapsed,

368
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Speaker 2: he opens his eyes and he finds a man looming

369
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Speaker 2: over him. He offers this stranger his one remaining bar

370
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Speaker 2: of gold and says, it's you know, this is gold.

371
00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:46,760
Speaker 2: This is gold. It's yours if you just take me

372
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Speaker 2: to the nearest town. But then he dies before the

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Speaker 2: stranger can really respond to him, and the stranger is

374
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Speaker 2: just kind of puzzled by this, and he turns around.

375
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Speaker 2: He walks back to his future car, which I'm to

376
00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:02,879
Speaker 2: understand is a reused prop from Forbidden Planet.

377
00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:06,320
Speaker 3: Oh with the little bubbles in front of the face.

378
00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:08,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I didn't do a side by side, so

379
00:20:08,320 --> 00:20:10,080
Speaker 2: I don't know if they augmented it at all or

380
00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:12,040
Speaker 2: if they just drove it right out of the lot

381
00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:13,119
Speaker 2: and reused it.

382
00:20:13,160 --> 00:20:15,440
Speaker 3: But I was wondering why it looked so familiar.

383
00:20:15,760 --> 00:20:18,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he returned. He walks over to the future

384
00:20:18,400 --> 00:20:21,680
Speaker 2: car and who we presume is his wife, I guess,

385
00:20:21,760 --> 00:20:23,720
Speaker 2: is setting there and she's like, what's going on with

386
00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:27,480
Speaker 2: that man? Is that dead man over there? And he's like, yeah, yeah,

387
00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:29,960
Speaker 2: he totally died. And the weird thing is is he

388
00:20:30,520 --> 00:20:32,679
Speaker 2: gave me this piece of he said it was gold.

389
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Speaker 2: What's he doing with gold? Out of here? Out here?

390
00:20:35,240 --> 00:20:40,120
Speaker 2: And then they both reveal, uh, oh, gold is useless

391
00:20:40,240 --> 00:20:42,720
Speaker 2: in this future getting there like, didn't gold used to

392
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Speaker 2: be worth something? Didn't people make a big deal out

393
00:20:44,880 --> 00:20:46,919
Speaker 2: of it? And he's like, yeah, yeah, back before we

394
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:49,240
Speaker 2: could just manufacture it. It will.

395
00:20:49,359 --> 00:20:52,359
Speaker 3: So in Farwell's defense, based on what they say there,

396
00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:55,440
Speaker 3: I would say gold is not worthless in this future.

397
00:20:55,920 --> 00:20:59,159
Speaker 3: It's probably worth I don't know, twenty dollars a pound.

398
00:20:59,600 --> 00:21:03,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's worth something. That's why people make all

399
00:21:03,880 --> 00:21:06,560
Speaker 2: they need of it, you know. And from our certainly

400
00:21:06,760 --> 00:21:08,879
Speaker 2: we can assume it's used in all sorts of crazy

401
00:21:08,880 --> 00:21:12,160
Speaker 2: futuristic electronic parts there. You know, there's probably a fair

402
00:21:12,160 --> 00:21:15,320
Speaker 2: amount of gold in that future car that they're driving in.

403
00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:18,680
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's that's the big twist of this episode,

404
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:23,280
Speaker 2: is this precious commodity that these criminals you know, stole,

405
00:21:24,280 --> 00:21:27,240
Speaker 2: gave up their lives for, you know, traveled essentially traveled

406
00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:30,320
Speaker 2: through time with and then killed each other and died

407
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:32,719
Speaker 2: for it. Turns out it was worth nothing.

408
00:21:33,200 --> 00:21:36,920
Speaker 3: You can tell. Rod just loves this irony. Yes, he's

409
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:40,080
Speaker 3: really relishing the narration in this one, especially because I

410
00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:44,840
Speaker 3: always forget that it does this where you don't you

411
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:47,360
Speaker 3: don't just get his narration at the beginning and the end.

412
00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:50,879
Speaker 3: There's also a mid point stinger where you're in the

413
00:21:50,920 --> 00:21:53,320
Speaker 3: cave with these four criminals and they're arguing, and the

414
00:21:53,520 --> 00:21:56,280
Speaker 3: camera just pans over. Oh there's Rod. He's right there

415
00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:59,600
Speaker 3: in the cave and he's like four men arguing over gold.

416
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:02,400
Speaker 3: You know what will become of them? We can only

417
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:03,840
Speaker 3: find out in the twilight Zone.

418
00:22:04,480 --> 00:22:06,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, he can appear at any moment, you never know.

419
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:11,320
Speaker 2: But yeah, his closing narration is juicy. He says, the

420
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:14,639
Speaker 2: last of four root van Winkles, who all died precisely

421
00:22:14,680 --> 00:22:17,600
Speaker 2: the way they lived, chasing an idol across the sand

422
00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:20,160
Speaker 2: to wind up bleach to dry in the hot sun.

423
00:22:20,440 --> 00:22:23,640
Speaker 2: As so much desert flotsam worthless as the gold bullion,

424
00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:28,320
Speaker 2: they built a shrine too Tonight's lesson in the Twilight Zone.

425
00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:33,399
Speaker 3: I love how in these little narrated segments they're simultaneously

426
00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:36,480
Speaker 3: trying to do so much in so few words, but

427
00:22:36,640 --> 00:22:40,160
Speaker 3: also just recapping the plot of what you just saw.

428
00:22:41,280 --> 00:22:41,440
Speaker 1: You know.

429
00:22:41,880 --> 00:22:44,480
Speaker 2: I wonder how much of that, too, was thinking like, well,

430
00:22:44,560 --> 00:22:46,359
Speaker 2: people might not have caught the beginning of the episode,

431
00:22:46,359 --> 00:22:48,640
Speaker 2: and you can't just run it back, So yeah, you've

432
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:50,680
Speaker 2: got to do everything you can to make sure that

433
00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 2: meaning is at the forefront of the viewer's experience, even

434
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:55,200
Speaker 2: if they didn't catch the whole episode.

435
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:57,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, TVO in nineteen sixty.

436
00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:11,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well let's get into it. Obviously we're

437
00:23:11,359 --> 00:23:15,000
Speaker 2: gonna be talking about value, because that's ultimately what this

438
00:23:15,320 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 2: episode is about, and particularly when it comes to metals

439
00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:24,119
Speaker 2: and specifically when it comes to gold. And I'll be honest,

440
00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:27,840
Speaker 2: I grew up watching this episode and the Bond movie

441
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:32,200
Speaker 2: Goldfinger Finger, and my understanding of the economics of gold

442
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:36,119
Speaker 2: value still probably hinges mostly on these two treatments. Like

443
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:38,840
Speaker 2: I over heard something on NPR the other day where

444
00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 2: they were talking about, you know, the value of gold

445
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:45,199
Speaker 2: and the gold standard, and you know it, most of

446
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:47,199
Speaker 2: it made sense to me. But at heart, I just

447
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:50,520
Speaker 2: still come back to this episode, the Rip Van Winkle

448
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 2: Caper and Goldfinger is my way of understanding the value

449
00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:55,880
Speaker 2: of gold Man.

450
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,000
Speaker 3: When I was a kid, I thought the plot of

451
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:01,600
Speaker 3: Goldfinger was just brilliant, and I was like, I thought

452
00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:04,520
Speaker 3: it was amazing. Oh my god, he's gonna, yeah, use

453
00:24:04,560 --> 00:24:06,680
Speaker 3: a nuke on all the gold to make the gold

454
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:11,160
Speaker 3: he's already got worth so much more. That's nobody else

455
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:12,680
Speaker 3: would have thought of that. That's really good.

456
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:15,680
Speaker 2: Yeah. Essentially his plot was to lick all the role

457
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 2: dinner rolls. Yes, and then the unlicked dinner roles which

458
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,880
Speaker 2: are on his plate are the most valuable ones. Valuable ones.

459
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:23,560
Speaker 2: Then you know, I guess there's some there's a fair

460
00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 2: amount of economic truth to all of that. But yeah,

461
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 2: I left these two media properties knowing that number one,

462
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:36,040
Speaker 2: less non radiated gold in circulation makes non radiated gold

463
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:40,439
Speaker 2: worth more. Okay, gold is worthless if you're thirsty. Gold

464
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:42,439
Speaker 2: is only worth as much as people are willing to

465
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:43,760
Speaker 2: pay for it.

466
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 3: True, basically anything true.

467
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:49,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, an excess of gold makes that gold worthless. And

468
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 2: if you paint a naked woman gold, she'll die. All

469
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:55,280
Speaker 2: these statements I think are essentially correct.

470
00:24:55,880 --> 00:24:58,680
Speaker 3: I don't know, does painting somebody gold actually kill them?

471
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:00,359
Speaker 3: I have questions about that.

472
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I haven't really done a deep biology

473
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:06,119
Speaker 2: dive on that recently. I guess that the logic was

474
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:08,440
Speaker 2: that her skin couldn't breathe anymore because she was covered

475
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:09,280
Speaker 2: in gold, right.

476
00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we breathe through our lungs, not our skin.

477
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 2: Well lungs too. I don't know. We'll put a pin

478
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 2: in this one. We'll come back to the gold gold

479
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 2: finger question in the future.

480
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:23,399
Speaker 3: Yeah.

481
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 2: Maybe I only learned four things.

482
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 3: I'm sure it wouldn't be good for you. Maybe it's fatal.

483
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:29,960
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm just raising the question.

484
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:34,440
Speaker 2: All right, So why is gold valuable? Well, I mean

485
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:36,840
Speaker 2: it's gold, right, I mean it kind of comes back

486
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 2: to like that's you know, everybody wants money, that's why

487
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:43,879
Speaker 2: they call it money. Right. But you know, the answer

488
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:46,640
Speaker 2: basically comes down to three factors in our modern age.

489
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 2: The first one is that it's pretty. It's great to

490
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:52,640
Speaker 2: look at. It's the color of the sun all always

491
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:56,399
Speaker 2: has been and maybe always will be. Another aspect, of course,

492
00:25:56,560 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 2: is that it's rare. Estimates very on this, but the

493
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 2: amount of gold that has ever been mined on Earth

494
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 2: can fit into something like three Olympic swimming pools. I've

495
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 2: also read inside a twenty two meter cube. These these

496
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:16,960
Speaker 2: types of analogies can be a little confusing because you

497
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:18,639
Speaker 2: can sort of picture it, but you can't, and then

498
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:20,360
Speaker 2: you can think, oh, that doesn't sound like a lot

499
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 2: of gold, and then you can easily be reminded that's

500
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,679
Speaker 2: an awful lot of anything. And then there's also the

501
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 2: fact that most of it was mined since then, since

502
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:35,160
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty. So gold is rare throughout the universe, produced

503
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 2: in high energy cosmic events, and rare on Earth because

504
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,119
Speaker 2: most of what wound up here sank deep into the

505
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:45,120
Speaker 2: Earth long ago, and most of what we do have

506
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:49,480
Speaker 2: came via asteroid bombardments later on. So gold is literally

507
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:52,159
Speaker 2: not of this world. I think we can say that,

508
00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:55,639
Speaker 2: especially in an episode that we started via discussion of

509
00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 2: the Twilight Zone. It's rare, and it's made by cosmic

510
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:02,320
Speaker 2: events that are high energy in nature.

511
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:05,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so the constrained supply of gold is one

512
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 3: of the attributes that people prize it for when it's

513
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:12,199
Speaker 3: used as a currency or basis of currency. So the

514
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:15,399
Speaker 3: idea is like, well, you can't just, you know, infinitely

515
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 3: inflate your currency if it's based on gold or so

516
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 3: the thinking was.

517
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where we get the you know, the

518
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:24,360
Speaker 2: idea of the gold standard, the historical monetary system where

519
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:27,439
Speaker 2: the currency value is tied to gold. This is what

520
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:32,119
Speaker 2: British economist John Maynard Keynes referred to as the barbarous relic,

521
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 2: the idea that it was an outdated thing to base

522
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 2: the nations and international wealth in general on, and yet

523
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 2: it continues to to stand as a significant asset. Gold

524
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 2: has not gone away. And then, of course, while gold

525
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 2: was long valued for its decorative aspects, during the nineteen

526
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 2: thirties and the nineteen forties, it began to become important

527
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:58,520
Speaker 2: in telecommunications, and then again during the fifties and sixties

528
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 2: as a semiconductor. It also has various uses in aerospace.

529
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 2: So we now live in a world where gold is

530
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 2: valued for both esthetic and highly practical technological reasons. Gold

531
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 2: is valued by people who just want to wear it,

532
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 2: by people who want to shut it away in a vault,

533
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:18,560
Speaker 2: and by people who want to use it in the

534
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,679
Speaker 2: circuitry of a microchip or on the visor of a

535
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:25,920
Speaker 2: space helment. So it does make sense that we would

536
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:28,360
Speaker 2: want more of it from a number from a number

537
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 2: of a vantage points. Right, want more of it because

538
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:32,199
Speaker 2: it's great to look at it, and I want to

539
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 2: make more things out of it. But also there are

540
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 2: all these practical applications for it, and one can imagine

541
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 2: that the need for such precious metals will just continue

542
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 2: in the future. So what can we do to get

543
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 2: more of it as opposed to just the normal mining

544
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 2: efforts that we already have. And there's some really interesting

545
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 2: science here. One idea that scientists have discussed is, of course,

546
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 2: to get it somewhere else, somewhere not of this Earth.

547
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 2: And granted we have the universal rarity factor to consider,

548
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean it can't be found in reasonable

549
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 2: abundance in specific places, such as possibly the asteroid sixteen

550
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 2: Psyche in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. In fact,

551
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 2: NASA's Psyche spacecraft launched in twenty twenty three. It's not

552
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 2: actually going to get to the asteroid toll I think

553
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 2: twenty twenty nine, and even then it's just going to

554
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 2: study it. It's not going to bring anything back. It's

555
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 2: also not expressly going there to prospect for gold. There

556
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:39,360
Speaker 2: are a number of astrogeology objectives in play, and we

557
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 2: used to think that Psyche was mostly metal. More recent

558
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 2: estimates look at a possible thirty to sixty percent metal

559
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 2: composite alongside rock. But it very well may contain significant

560
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 2: amounts of metal from the core of a Planetismal, and

561
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 2: that could mean a fair amount of gold. So that's

562
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 2: one possibility. This asteroid is most like a survivor of

563
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:04,360
Speaker 2: multiple collisions during the formation of the Solar System, and

564
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 2: thus it might have, on one level, just much to reveal,

565
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 2: perhaps giving us a better understanding of how Earth's core

566
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 2: and the cores of earth like worlds formed. But it

567
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 2: could be a potential source of gold, as are various

568
00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:25,080
Speaker 2: other suspected metal monster asteroids out there. So in theory, yes,

569
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 2: we could harvest them, mine them, bring back gold, and

570
00:30:30,520 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 2: bring it back in enough abundance to destabilize the value

571
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 2: of gold here on Earth.

572
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 3: So by mentioning this, are you trying to address the

573
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 3: question of could we actually have a scenario like in

574
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 3: the Rip Van Winkle Caper where we have criminals go

575
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 3: to sleep and then they wake up and all the

576
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 3: gold they stole is no longer as valuable as it

577
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 3: once was.

578
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, could we have a situation like that occur? Essentially,

579
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 2: could gold be devalued to such a degree on Earth?

580
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 2: And it seems like yes it could. And the main

581
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 2: way that it could happen would be if something like

582
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 2: this occurred, if we did actually reach the point where

583
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 2: we were harvesting gold from asteroids and bringing back to Earth,

584
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 2: bearing in mind, of course, that there are multiple technological

585
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 2: hurdles to that, and it would have to be you know,

586
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 2: there would have to be some major will behind the

587
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 2: quest to get that particular gold. Now, another possibility, and

588
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 2: one that we've discussed in greater depth in the show before,

589
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 2: is the capture of trace amounts of gold and seawater

590
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 2: via absorption, electrochemical extraction, and biomineralization via gold loving bacteria. Yeah.

591
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 3: We talked about this, I believe in an episode about

592
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 3: the I don't remember if it had a specific name,

593
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 3: but the Lubec Main Great Gold Hoax. There was a

594
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 3: guy who went there and convinced a bunch of people

595
00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:00,479
Speaker 3: that they could harvest vast amounts of gold from the seawater. Uh,

596
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:03,080
Speaker 3: And it turned out and he didn't actually have a

597
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 3: method for doing that.

598
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 2: It was all a.

599
00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:10,200
Speaker 3: Scam, but that it is possible in principle to harvest

600
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 3: some amount of gold from the ocean, and it has

601
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 3: in ways been done with The question would be what

602
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 3: is the efficiency of doing so?

603
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah? Yeah? The problem, as I understand it, is

604
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:27,160
Speaker 2: you'd need to process and success successfully process a colossal

605
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 2: amount of sea water in order to get even a

606
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 2: gram of gold. And this means that it's it's currently

607
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 2: not all that feasible as a primary process, but in

608
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 2: the future, the idea is it might prove useful as

609
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 2: a secondary process for something like industrial scale desalination. So

610
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 2: you're already carrying out an industrial process with the salt water.

611
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 2: Is it possible that you have this secondary process going

612
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 2: on that is generating gold for you?

613
00:32:58,120 --> 00:32:58,680
Speaker 3: Interesting?

614
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 2: Okay. Likewise, there's apparently this one. I was not familiar

615
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 2: with it because I don't think we talked about this.

616
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 2: Maybe we did and I've forgotten it. But there's also

617
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 2: the potential for gold capture in sewage like human sewitch. Okay, cool,

618
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 2: there's gold and den Derek toilets.

619
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 3: Is this from people drinking gold schlager. There's enough of

620
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:23,719
Speaker 3: that worldwide that you could recapture some of that and

621
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:24,479
Speaker 3: repurpose it.

622
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 2: I think the answer is yes, But I don't think

623
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 2: goldslager is is really singled out as like one of

624
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 2: the primary factors here. But yeah, you're dealing with trace

625
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:39,760
Speaker 2: amounts of gold in our wist, in our waste water,

626
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 2: and this apparently comes from traces of gold lost off

627
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:49,320
Speaker 2: of jewelry industrial waste, but also food additives, which I

628
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 2: think that includes goldslagger. I'm going to throw it in

629
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 2: there that in your like gold foil based fancy pastries

630
00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 2: and so forth. So essentially human.

631
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 3: Life eat some of that gold.

632
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 2: I mean, you know where it's going to go. But essentially,

633
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 2: I guess the idea is lot human life lived alongside

634
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 2: gold means tiny bits of gold make their way down

635
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:15,759
Speaker 2: our drains and toilets, and the process to reclaim this

636
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:20,960
Speaker 2: gold could also prove environmentally helpful in keeping harmful substances

637
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:21,880
Speaker 2: out of the environment.

638
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 3: Oh you mean other things would be filtered out seage, Okay, yeah.

639
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, so not just the gold, but various other substances

640
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 2: as well. Kathleen Smith of the US Geological Survey is

641
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 2: quoted in the twenty fifteen Guardian article gold in feces

642
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 2: is worth millions and could save the environment. That was

643
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 2: authored by Hannah Devlin at the time said that that

644
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,920
Speaker 2: gold had been found at the level of minimal mineral

645
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:49,400
Speaker 2: deposits in human sewage systems, and once more, kind of

646
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 2: like with the oceanic gold capture example, there's a potential

647
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 2: here for a secondary process. So you wouldn't have a

648
00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:01,360
Speaker 2: harvesting scheme that was just going straight after the gold

649
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 2: in the sewage, but perhaps it could become a secondary

650
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 2: process alongside basic sewage management. Okay, cool, Though to be

651
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,720
Speaker 2: clear here, of the tactics we've discussed here, the sewage

652
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:17,399
Speaker 2: and the saltwater options are not going to devalue gold.

653
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 2: I couldn't find anybody making that argument. I think the

654
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 2: main way it could potentially happen at some point in

655
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 2: the future would be if we were bringing a lot

656
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 2: of gold back from asteroids.

657
00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 3: Okay, so if we have a space mining program, then

658
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:35,640
Speaker 3: there would be a significant impact obviously, right.

659
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 2: But then there's another option. What about the alchemical solution

660
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 2: the generation of gold as it's alluded to in this episode.

661
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:48,399
Speaker 2: So as already mentioned, we already mentioned gold is an

662
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:52,840
Speaker 2: extraterrestrial product of intense stellar energy, so we're talking neutron

663
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 2: star collisions and supernova and this would surely mean that

664
00:35:56,600 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 2: humans would need to have such power at their fingertips. Right,

665
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 2: one would think, yeah, but this is not I mean,

666
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 2: it's one of those things. The reality of it is

667
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 2: not far fetched. The scalable reality of it might might

668
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:13,440
Speaker 2: be far fetched. But yeah, I was reading a bit

669
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,839
Speaker 2: about this. Much has been written on this topic. Tom

670
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:19,480
Speaker 2: Bartlett had a great article about this recently in the

671
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 2: Atlantic The profiling a new San Francisco company that was

672
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:27,239
Speaker 2: arguing that gold could be generated as once more a

673
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:31,319
Speaker 2: byproduct of another process, in this case a byproduct of

674
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 2: nuclear fusion, which of course is in many ways the

675
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 2: holy grail of atomic energy, entailing not the splitting of

676
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:40,439
Speaker 2: the atom as in fission, but the process by which

677
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:43,919
Speaker 2: two or more atomic nuclei combine to form a larger

678
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 2: nucleus and potentially release a tremendous amount of energy in

679
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:50,840
Speaker 2: the process. So the San Francisco company in question argues

680
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 2: that by tweaking the process, one could create gold as

681
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:58,480
Speaker 2: a secondary byproduct of nuclear fusion, thus offsetting the cost

682
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 2: of the energy production. Specifically, they think one could create

683
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 2: gold from mercury one ninety eight by bombarding it with neutrons,

684
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:10,960
Speaker 2: changing it into the less stable mercury one ninety seven,

685
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:14,279
Speaker 2: which would then decay into gold one ninety seven, the

686
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 2: stable isotope of gold. This is hypothetical, however, and the

687
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:22,320
Speaker 2: results in gold might be gold fingered and require lengthy

688
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:24,000
Speaker 2: storage before it could be utilized.

689
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as with anything about nuclear fusion, always you know,

690
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 3: let's wait until we see the results, because they're you know,

691
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 3: for years and years, always lots of claims about what

692
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:39,840
Speaker 3: could be done with nuclear fusion. And but yeah, interesting

693
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 3: to think about.

694
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, So again, the idea of creating gold through a

695
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 2: technique like this at scale open question. But the basic idea,

696
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 2: the basic thing they're hypothesizing about here isn't isn't all

697
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 2: that new. It's called nuclear transmutation, and we've already successfully

698
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 2: carried it out via particle accelerators. In fact, scientists pulled

699
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 2: this off for the first time back in nineteen forty one. Granted,

700
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 2: the resulting gold was radioactive and it was also an

701
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 2: unstable isotope that decayed within days, but still quite an

702
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:18,880
Speaker 2: alchemical feat. And I think we have to acknowledge that

703
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 2: given that this was achieved in nineteen forty one. That

704
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 2: experiment was likely partial inspiration for this Twilight Zone episode,

705
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 2: or at least they might have factored that into the plotting.

706
00:38:29,360 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 3: Interesting though again obviously the amount of gold that you

707
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,759
Speaker 3: would be transmuting in particle accelerators once again would be

708
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:38,959
Speaker 3: quite physically tiny.

709
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 2: In physically tiny, and then also if it's radioactive and

710
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:47,640
Speaker 2: or decays, then it's also useless in terms of all

711
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 2: these uses for gold that we have. In nineteen eighty

712
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize winner Glenn Seborg was able to successfully transmute

713
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 2: bismuth into gold and an accelerator, producing several thousand atoms

714
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:03,680
Speaker 2: of statele gold, but it was essentially microscopic, and more recently,

715
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 2: Cern has produced minuscule amounts of gold via the Large

716
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 2: Hadron collider by colliding lead ions. So I mean that

717
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 2: in itself is interesting because we're finally talking about the

718
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 2: alchemical dream of turning lead into gold. But I believe

719
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 2: the result here was also unstable and radioactive. Yeah, so

720
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:26,319
Speaker 2: in essence, yes, it can be done. We've done it,

721
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 2: but we're a long way off from being able to

722
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 2: do it at scale and in a way that could

723
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:36,720
Speaker 2: actually on any level impact the value of naturally occurring

724
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:37,400
Speaker 2: gold on Earth.

725
00:39:37,719 --> 00:39:50,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I agree. Based on what I've been reading,

726
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:54,279
Speaker 3: it seems unlikely to me that we will ever be

727
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 3: able to manufacture gold in an economically efficient way. But

728
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 3: I did want to talk here at the end of

729
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 3: the episode about how something like the scenario described in

730
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:11,879
Speaker 3: the Rip van Winkle caper not only could happen with

731
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:17,760
Speaker 3: some metals, it actually has happened in history, not with gold,

732
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 3: but with a very surprising substance, and that is aluminum.

733
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:25,160
Speaker 3: So I just want to riff on aluminum here for

734
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:30,880
Speaker 3: a second. So, aluminum is the third most abundant element

735
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:35,719
Speaker 3: in Earth's crust, after only oxygen and silicon. It is

736
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 3: more abundant than iron. Iron is only about five percent

737
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 3: of the Earth's crust. Aluminum is about eight percent, so

738
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 3: more abundant than iron. Today, aluminum is the second most

739
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 3: important metal in human industry, with more than one hundred

740
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 3: million tons produced annually. When you combine refinement from primary

741
00:40:55,200 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 3: sources and recycling, and especially when combined with other materials

742
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 3: as an alloy, aluminum is I think one of the

743
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 3: most useful raw materials on Earth. It's strong, it's lightweight,

744
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,360
Speaker 3: it's highly versatile, which is why it's used in so

745
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 3: many wide ranging applications, so many different things. You know,

746
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 3: aluminum is it's the substance of your beer can, it's

747
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 3: the substance of power lines, of airplane wings. I mean,

748
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 3: there's a real range of what you can do with it.

749
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 3: But there's a curious thing about aluminum. I wonder if

750
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 3: you've ever noticed this, Rob, how come when you go

751
00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 3: looking through the artifacts of ancient civilizations in a museum,

752
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:43,759
Speaker 3: you never come across aluminum swords or aluminum arrowheads, or

753
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 3: aluminum chariot wheels or plowshares or helmets. You see all

754
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:52,160
Speaker 3: these important ancient tools made out of iron, which is

755
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 3: less abundant in the Earth's crust than aluminum. And you

756
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:59,240
Speaker 3: see them in bronze made from copper and tin, both

757
00:41:59,239 --> 00:42:02,680
Speaker 3: of which are significantly harder to dig up than aluminum. So,

758
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:06,799
Speaker 3: if aluminum is so useful in human industry, and if

759
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:10,120
Speaker 3: there is more aluminium in the ground than iron, and

760
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 3: it's always been this way, where are all the aluminum

761
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:14,640
Speaker 3: artifacts from history?

762
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:17,359
Speaker 2: You know, I'd never thought about this before, but you're right,

763
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:20,760
Speaker 2: there's like no aluminium age in the history books.

764
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:25,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. The aluminium age does not emerge until the

765
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 3: nineteenth century. In fact, the reason for this, I think

766
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,399
Speaker 3: is really interesting. I found this one of the most

767
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 3: fascinating chemistry rabbit holes I've gone down in a bit.

768
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 3: So metallic aluminum basically does not exist in nature. There

769
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:44,560
Speaker 3: are some extremely tiny exceptions to this, tiny globules from rare,

770
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 3: strange kinds of sources, maybe like volcanic or extraterrestrial sources.

771
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 3: But basically you can't find aluminum metal in nature. Almost

772
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 3: all of the unrefined aluminum found on Earth comes in

773
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 3: the form of a compound called aluminium oxide or AL

774
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:06,200
Speaker 3: two O three, also known as alumina, most of which

775
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 3: is found within a type of reddish brown sedimentary rock

776
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 3: called box side. Now, if you think you've never seen

777
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:18,320
Speaker 3: aluminium oxide on its own, and you can only picture,

778
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 3: you can only picture aluminium as a metal. Here's a

779
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 3: kind of strange fact. Did you know that rubies and

780
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 3: sapphires are made mostly out of a crystalline form of

781
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 3: aluminum oxide.

782
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 2: I was not aware.

783
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's the crystalline form of aluminum oxide called

784
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 3: corundum a CO r U n d um, and different

785
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,720
Speaker 3: trace elements or impurities within it give it the different

786
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:47,520
Speaker 3: colors that make it a ruby or a sapphire. So like,

787
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:50,279
Speaker 3: if there's chromium in it, it'll turn red and it'll

788
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:53,880
Speaker 3: be a ruby, and there are other other elements and

789
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 3: traces give it the sapphire color. And you know that

790
00:43:57,320 --> 00:43:59,280
Speaker 3: just doesn't seem right. You don't look at a ruby

791
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 3: or a sapphire, think I'm looking at aluminum. But remember

792
00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 3: the aluminum doesn't take on its metallic properties when in

793
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 3: compound with oxygen, so forms of crystalline aluminum oxide really

794
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 3: can look like precious gems. But when you separate the

795
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:21,320
Speaker 3: aluminum atoms from the compound, you get the opaque aluminum

796
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 3: metal that we're familiar with today. So it's a complex

797
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 3: process to get it. To get pure aluminum metal, you

798
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 3: have to mine raw boxide or from the ground and

799
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 3: then crush it up and heat it with caustic chemicals

800
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:41,880
Speaker 3: like sodium hydroxide like LYE to extract and isolate the

801
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 3: aluminum oxide from it. And then at this point the

802
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:49,319
Speaker 3: aluminum oxide takes the form of a white powder that

803
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 3: looks like sugar. And then so you've got this powder,

804
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:54,680
Speaker 3: and after that you have to find a way to

805
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 3: isolate the pure metallic aluminum from the aluminum oxide. But

806
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:03,040
Speaker 3: for most most of history, this last step was really

807
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 3: really difficult to do, so the amount of metallic aluminum

808
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 3: produced in this way was minuscule now according to a

809
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,839
Speaker 3: commemorative article on something called the Hall Herald process, which

810
00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 3: I'll explain in a minute, this article is produced by

811
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:22,240
Speaker 3: the National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program of the American Chemical

812
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 3: Society in nineteen ninety seven. According to this article, before

813
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 3: the year eighteen eighty six, aluminum was a rare and

814
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 3: precious metal with a price similar to that of silver.

815
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 3: Scientists had by this point in the eighteen eighties they

816
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:45,879
Speaker 3: had already figured out ways to refine metallic aluminum, but

817
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 3: they were complex, inefficient procedures with multiple steps, like one

818
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 3: involved first producing aluminum chloride and then reacting that with

819
00:45:56,040 --> 00:45:59,920
Speaker 3: metallic sodium to squirt out some tiny bits of aluminum metal.

820
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:04,239
Speaker 3: In the end, really inefficient, expensive, difficult to.

821
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:08,879
Speaker 2: Do, and so it was rare and it was as

822
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,239
Speaker 2: expensive as silver. I can't help but wonder if at

823
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 2: the time, any like fiction writers were dreamed up a

824
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:19,879
Speaker 2: monster that could only be killed with aluminum. Oh, that's a.

825
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 3: Good point, like the werewolf. Yeah, I heard, I can

826
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 3: now I can't remember where I read this, but in

827
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:28,360
Speaker 3: one of the sources I was looking at for this episode,

828
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 3: somebody was quoted talking about the appearance of this fad

829
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 3: for aluminum jewelry in the mid nineteenth century because it

830
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 3: was so precious, and I think the person said that

831
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:41,319
Speaker 3: it had the luster.

832
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:41,760
Speaker 2: Of the moon.

833
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 3: People thought it was like a kind of moon metal.

834
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 3: So one common way of illustrating the preciousness of aluminum

835
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:57,320
Speaker 3: before before the Hall herald process is that people point

836
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:00,920
Speaker 3: out that when the Washington Monument was deleted in eighteen

837
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 3: eighty four, again this is two years before the whole

838
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:07,920
Speaker 3: heralds process in eighteen eighty six. It was completed in

839
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:12,320
Speaker 3: eighty four the tower was capped with a one hundred

840
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 3: ounce cast aluminum pyramid, which was supposed to be an

841
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:21,319
Speaker 3: ornament of great power and ceremony. So this would be

842
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:25,479
Speaker 3: roughly six and a quarter pounds of aluminum, roughly enough

843
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:29,399
Speaker 3: to make two hundred Lacroix cans today. And just look

844
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:31,920
Speaker 3: on my work see mighty in despair. Look at all

845
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:32,840
Speaker 3: these cans worth.

846
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 2: Oh wow. So this would have been exactly the wrong

847
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:38,840
Speaker 2: item to steal and then run into the future with.

848
00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:41,520
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so we're about to see exactly how wrong

849
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 3: you would have been. But you wouldn't You wouldn't have

850
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,839
Speaker 3: been able to predict necessarily. You know that this would

851
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 3: be good. I mean, this would be a precious, precious

852
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:53,359
Speaker 3: item to steal and take into the future for your

853
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 3: group of criminals in eighteen eighty four. So, according to

854
00:47:56,760 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 3: that ACS article, the pyramid at the top of the monument,

855
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 3: weighing again a little over six pounds, was by itself

856
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 3: about twenty percent of the roughly one hundred and twenty

857
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 3: five pounds of aluminum produced in America in the year

858
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:16,200
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty four. So if the entire country's aluminum production

859
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:20,760
Speaker 3: infrastructure in eighty four eighteen eighty four had been harnessed,

860
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 3: we could have made about five of these pyramids, or

861
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 3: about one thousand La croix cans.

862
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:26,840
Speaker 2: Wow.

863
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 3: So, as hard as it is to believe, aluminum in

864
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 3: the eighteen eighties, the early eighteen eighties was rare, precious

865
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:41,279
Speaker 3: and highly valuable like gold or silver. Another anecdote that

866
00:48:41,440 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 3: people often cite to show the value of aluminum at

867
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:47,719
Speaker 3: the time is actually one that couldn't verify, but a

868
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:50,440
Speaker 3: figure it's worth mentioning because you come across it a lot.

869
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 3: So the story is that the French Emperor Napoleon the

870
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 3: Third would serve his most honored guests on aluminum plates. Mean,

871
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:02,279
Speaker 3: you know, if you got like the less pritt you know,

872
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:05,919
Speaker 3: silver plates or whatever, the less precious metals, you weren't

873
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 3: quite as honored. I could now find a good early

874
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,399
Speaker 3: source for this claim, and as far as I could tell,

875
00:49:11,440 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 3: it only pops up unsourced in later books from the

876
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:19,760
Speaker 3: twentieth century. But there absolutely were lavish royal luxury items

877
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:23,359
Speaker 3: in the mid nineteenth century, especially in France, made out

878
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:26,879
Speaker 3: of aluminum. So one example I came across is that

879
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 3: a German chemist named Friedrich Wohler who was very much

880
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 3: working on processes for isolating and extracting aluminum from these ores.

881
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:42,360
Speaker 3: Wohler designed an aluminum and gold rattle for the infant

882
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:45,560
Speaker 3: Prince Louis Napoleon in the eighteen fifties. This would have

883
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:50,280
Speaker 3: been Napoleon the third baby son. And at the eighteen

884
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 3: fifty five Paris World's Fair also known as the eighteen

885
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:59,839
Speaker 3: fifty five Paris Exposition or the Exposition Universal Bars or

886
00:49:59,880 --> 00:50:04,760
Speaker 3: a like, ingots of aluminum were exhibited in the same

887
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:10,040
Speaker 3: venue as the crown jewels of the French royals, and

888
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:12,640
Speaker 3: they were calling it the I don't remember the French phrase,

889
00:50:12,680 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 3: but the French phrase they were using to describe it

890
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 3: was the silver from clay, you know, because it came

891
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 3: from this reddish brown ore and they could extract it

892
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:25,880
Speaker 3: through this laborious, expensive process and create a new type

893
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:40,880
Speaker 3: of silver from it. Apparently, aluminum jewelry, for a time

894
00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 3: in the mid nineteenth century became quite fashionable among the

895
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:46,319
Speaker 3: rich in Paris, and I think to some degree in

896
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:50,440
Speaker 3: England as well, but especially in France. Not just because

897
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:52,839
Speaker 3: it was novel and expensive. It's not just like this

898
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:55,840
Speaker 3: is a rare status item, but it did have some

899
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:59,800
Speaker 3: intrinsic qualities that made it desirable, like its light weight,

900
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:03,320
Speaker 3: it didn't it was thought not to tarnish, and it

901
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 3: was considered beautiful by some, which is funny because you

902
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 3: can imagine now like making jewelry out of aluminum foil

903
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 3: from your kitchen, and you think you the same.

904
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 2: I remember playing with aluminum foil a lot as a kid,

905
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 2: where you could you could like take a little bit

906
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 2: of it and wrap it around a g I. Joe

907
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:22,719
Speaker 2: figure's head and like, oh, now there is another desk

908
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 2: stro kind of a situation. You know, there arell sorts

909
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:28,640
Speaker 2: of things like that you could do or make little

910
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 2: arrow heads out of it, you know. And then over

911
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 2: time we we come to realize, or at least we

912
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 2: we get into our heads that aluminum isn't beautiful. It's

913
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:40,360
Speaker 2: just this thing you wrap up leftovers in.

914
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's because it's abundant now, industrially abundant. So

915
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 3: how did we get from preciousness to abundance. Well, it

916
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:52,239
Speaker 3: all changed in the year eighteen eighty six, when, at

917
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 3: roughly around the same time, two different people on opposite

918
00:51:56,960 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 3: sides of the Atlantic discovered a radically more cost effective

919
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:06,080
Speaker 3: process for refining metallic aluminum from aluminum oxide. And these

920
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 3: two inventors were the American chemist Charles Martin Hall, who

921
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:13,799
Speaker 3: lived eighteen sixty three to nineteen fourteen, working out of

922
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,360
Speaker 3: the woodshed behind his house in Ohio, and a French

923
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:21,400
Speaker 3: scientist named Paul Harold who lived eighteen sixty three to

924
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:25,360
Speaker 3: nineteen fourteen, also working in France. Note they share the

925
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,319
Speaker 3: same birth and death years. Neither of these inventors, I

926
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:33,400
Speaker 3: think it's worth noting we're working in a vacuum lots

927
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:36,960
Speaker 3: of chemists in the university systems, in private industry, and

928
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 3: even just in like independent laboratories at the time were

929
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 3: working on the aluminum problem. So this was like a

930
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:46,239
Speaker 3: big thing a lot of people were feeding into. And

931
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 3: these these scientists were you know, they had they had

932
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:51,719
Speaker 3: mentors and had been inspired by others, So they were

933
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:54,239
Speaker 3: not they were not just like loan geniuses striking.

934
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:56,880
Speaker 2: Getting an idea in a dream about right slated.

935
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 3: But what Hall and Harold discovered was that you could

936
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:08,200
Speaker 3: produce metallic aluminum quite efficiently by well it's actually depending

937
00:53:08,320 --> 00:53:12,479
Speaker 3: it's only efficient relative to the other processes. It's still

938
00:53:12,600 --> 00:53:16,480
Speaker 3: quite costly, an energy intensive process, but you could do

939
00:53:16,560 --> 00:53:21,240
Speaker 3: it by first melting the aluminum oxide in a furnace

940
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:27,359
Speaker 3: alongside a solvent mineral called cryolite. Now you might hear

941
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:32,359
Speaker 3: that name and intuitively detect some interesting etymology. You think, like, wait,

942
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:37,799
Speaker 3: cryo meaning ice and light meaning stone, ice, stone. Yes,

943
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:39,719
Speaker 3: that is what the name means. And if you look

944
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,919
Speaker 3: up pictures of cryolite, it will all become clear because

945
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,000
Speaker 3: it really does look like ice. It looks like a

946
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 3: kind of a snowball or a chunk of ice somebody

947
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 3: has squished together I couldn't find a a I was

948
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:53,239
Speaker 3: trying to find a video of this right before we

949
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 3: got started, and I didn't turn it up. Maybe there

950
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 3: is one out there I didn't connect to. But allegedly,

951
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:03,480
Speaker 3: if you submerge this rock in water, it becomes nearly

952
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:07,360
Speaker 3: invisible or takes on a kind of ghostly translucent appearance

953
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 3: because it has a similar refractive index to water. The

954
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:18,280
Speaker 3: first major deposit of cryolite discovered on Earth was found

955
00:54:18,360 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 3: on the southwest coast of Greenland at a place called Ivetut,

956
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:27,840
Speaker 3: and an important mining community sprang up there to support

957
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:32,520
Speaker 3: the extraction of this mineral. And so important was cryolite

958
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 3: for the industrial production of aluminium that the protection of

959
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,840
Speaker 3: this mine in Greenland became an important point of strategic

960
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 3: defense in World War II for the Allies, for the

961
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 3: fear of what would happen if this big source of

962
00:54:46,280 --> 00:54:50,719
Speaker 3: natural cryolite fell under Nazi attack or Nazi control. But

963
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:53,600
Speaker 3: coming back to the chemical properties of cryolite, So the

964
00:54:53,640 --> 00:54:58,520
Speaker 3: chemical name for cryolite is sodium hexafluoro illuminate, and it's

965
00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:02,360
Speaker 3: made from three sodium atoms, one aluminum, and six fluorines.

966
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 3: When melted in an industrial furnace. Cryolite has the special

967
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:13,520
Speaker 3: attribute of dissolving and then greatly lowering the melting point

968
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:17,840
Speaker 3: of aluminum oxide dissolved with it, and this makes the

969
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:24,359
Speaker 3: aluminum oxide molecules susceptible to separation by electrolysis. So when

970
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:28,120
Speaker 3: you run electric current through this solution of cryolite with

971
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 3: aluminum oxide dissolved in it, it causes the aluminum oxide

972
00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:37,120
Speaker 3: to separate into waste products based on oxygen like carbon dioxide,

973
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:39,839
Speaker 3: carbon monoxide, and stuff. And then on the other end

974
00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:45,279
Speaker 3: you get nearly pure metallic aluminium which gathers near the cathode. Now,

975
00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 3: this process uses a lot of energy and produces a

976
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 3: lot of waste products, especially fumes released into the air.

977
00:55:55,280 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 3: You get carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, perfluorocarbons. But fortunately, once

978
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 3: the metal has been separated like this, it can be

979
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:08,480
Speaker 3: melted down, reused, and recycled pretty efficiently compared to the

980
00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:12,920
Speaker 3: initial smelting process. So recycling aluminum is actually quite important

981
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:16,920
Speaker 3: when it comes to saving energy and preventing pollution, but

982
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:20,120
Speaker 3: getting it out of the oxide where it's found in

983
00:56:20,200 --> 00:56:23,799
Speaker 3: nature initially is quite rough. But once the aluminum is

984
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 3: in circulation, we can continue to do a lot with

985
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:29,480
Speaker 3: it over the life cycles of many products and uses.

986
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:33,240
Speaker 3: But coming back to the idea of a metal devalued

987
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 3: like the gold and the rip Van Winkle caper. According

988
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:39,880
Speaker 3: to the ACS, within a few years of the invention

989
00:56:40,160 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 3: of the Hall Herald process, the price of aluminum it

990
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:47,480
Speaker 3: just dropped through the floor, like as suddenly vastly greater

991
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:51,239
Speaker 3: amounts could be produced. So to read a quote from

992
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:55,000
Speaker 3: that article, quote, as Hall improved his process, the price

993
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 3: of aluminum ingots dropped from four dollars and eighty six

994
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:01,760
Speaker 3: cents per pound. Remember that's eighteen eighty dollars four dollars

995
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 3: and eighty six cents per pound in eighteen eighty eight

996
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 3: to seventy eight cents per pound in eighteen ninety three.

997
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:11,360
Speaker 3: And then later they say, by the late nineteen thirties,

998
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:14,640
Speaker 3: a pound of aluminum costs just twenty cents. Its use

999
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:19,120
Speaker 3: is numbered more than two thousand. Oh wow, So drastic,

1000
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:22,440
Speaker 3: drastic reduction. And you know remember in the episode they

1001
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:26,000
Speaker 3: sleep for one hundred years. So if you you know stole, yeah,

1002
00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:31,080
Speaker 3: stole your one hundred pounds of aluminum in the early

1003
00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:33,680
Speaker 3: eighteen eighties, and you think I'm rich, I'm rich. I'm rich.

1004
00:57:33,720 --> 00:57:35,520
Speaker 3: I just need to go sleep for one hundred years

1005
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:37,200
Speaker 3: and then wake up when I can put this into

1006
00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:41,480
Speaker 3: circulation and cash out. You would be, you know, not worthless,

1007
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:44,000
Speaker 3: Like one hundred pounds of aluminium is I don't know.

1008
00:57:44,040 --> 00:57:47,200
Speaker 3: You can get something for that, but wouldn't be worth

1009
00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 3: the squeeze.

1010
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Wow, it is fascinating how well this line's

1011
00:57:52,160 --> 00:57:54,920
Speaker 2: up with the idea here and in Indet. Maybe this

1012
00:57:55,040 --> 00:57:58,200
Speaker 2: was partially on the mind of Rod Serling as well.

1013
00:57:58,280 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 2: I don't know, but but but yeah, that's that's fascinating.

1014
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:06,960
Speaker 2: This this brief aluminium age in which it was a

1015
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 2: highly valued moon metal, and you know, the richest people

1016
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 2: and most powerful people on Earth were wearing it and

1017
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:17,840
Speaker 2: eating off of it. I mean, we're still eating out

1018
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:19,600
Speaker 2: of it and off of it and drinking out of it,

1019
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:25,000
Speaker 2: but without the air of sophistication. Now, this would be

1020
00:58:25,000 --> 00:58:30,680
Speaker 2: a good Twilight Zone twist. Some sort of an aluminium

1021
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:34,200
Speaker 2: sensitive werewolf type creature escapes from the past to go

1022
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:36,640
Speaker 2: into the future. Finally I'll be rid of my hunters,

1023
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 2: and then they realize no, every household in the world

1024
00:58:41,240 --> 00:58:45,800
Speaker 2: has a copious amounts of aluminum at its disposable they

1025
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:49,640
Speaker 2: have sheets of it in their drawers, they have you know,

1026
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:52,520
Speaker 2: cans of it all over the place. That would be good.

1027
00:58:52,600 --> 00:58:55,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, the kids are fighting the werewolf by just like

1028
00:58:55,200 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 3: ripping out the foil. Yeah, makings just mummifying him in

1029
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:01,920
Speaker 3: tenfoil from the kitchen.

1030
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:05,160
Speaker 2: There you go. It rights itself, rights itself.

1031
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 3: Tonight's lesson in the Twilight Zone.

1032
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:11,680
Speaker 2: Submitted for your approval. All right, well, we're gonna go

1033
00:59:11,680 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 2: ahead and close this episode out here, but we'd love

1034
00:59:13,400 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts

1035
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:17,680
Speaker 2: about the science and history that we've discussed here, if

1036
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 2: you have thoughts about this particular episode of the Twilight Zone,

1037
00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:25,280
Speaker 2: your history with this episode right in as well, and

1038
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:29,400
Speaker 2: in general. Hey, you know, when New Year's rolls around

1039
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 2: once more, maybe we'll do another one of these if

1040
00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 2: if that is something you want to see happen, let's

1041
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:37,600
Speaker 2: get on top of it. Write in and let us

1042
00:59:37,640 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 2: know which episode we should consider. With the understanding that

1043
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:44,640
Speaker 2: we have already covered to serve man and I believe

1044
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:47,120
Speaker 2: we also discussed the one with the Grimlin on the

1045
00:59:47,160 --> 00:59:49,280
Speaker 2: wing of the plane. We've done those two, so we've

1046
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 2: done three now, but the rest are fair game.

1047
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 3: I talked about the one where the guy is sentenced

1048
00:59:56,680 --> 01:00:00,000
Speaker 3: to death and then he tells people that they are

1049
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:02,440
Speaker 3: all exists within his dream and if they put him

1050
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:04,320
Speaker 3: to death that they will stop existing.

1051
01:00:04,720 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 2: Okay, so we've done. We've essentially covered four episodes of

1052
01:00:07,680 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 2: the Twilight Zone. Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot more

1053
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:12,480
Speaker 2: of them, so there's still a lot of possibilities. So

1054
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:15,000
Speaker 2: if you have thoughts right in, we'd love to hear

1055
01:00:15,040 --> 01:00:16,720
Speaker 2: from you. Just to remind it that Stuff to Blow

1056
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:19,000
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with

1057
01:00:19,080 --> 01:00:22,320
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then we have

1058
01:00:22,320 --> 01:00:24,640
Speaker 2: a short form episode on Wednesday and on Fridays, we

1059
01:00:24,680 --> 01:00:26,720
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a

1060
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:28,520
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1061
01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:32,560
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1062
01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1063
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:36,920
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1064
01:00:36,920 --> 01:00:38,919
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1065
01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:41,600
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1066
01:00:41,640 --> 01:00:49,600
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1067
01:00:49,760 --> 01:00:52,640
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1068
01:00:52,760 --> 01:00:55,560
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app

1069
01:00:55,680 --> 01:01:13,320
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.