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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's lurking around too, which makes this stuff
Speaker 2: you should know. Uh, one of the first I think
Speaker 2: the first, No, I think we've talked about iron before
Speaker 2: the second in our ongoing saga to do an episode
Speaker 2: on each element in the periodic table. Oh kill me,
Speaker 2: it's like so much fun, Chuck.
Speaker 3: No, this is a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it for me. I'm done.
Speaker 2: We'll see about that. But we're talking today about aluminum,
Speaker 2: which is pretty much ubiquitous. If you think about it,
Speaker 2: you find aluminum everywhere. I don't even need to rattle
Speaker 2: off where you find aluminum. You can figure that out yourself.
Speaker 2: Because it's just that ubiquitous, right, agreed. So one of
Speaker 2: the interesting things about it, though, Chuck, is that as
Speaker 2: much as it's like entered into our world or become
Speaker 2: like so enmessed with our world, it is a very
Speaker 2: very new invention as far as elements go and discovery
Speaker 2: and use. Yeah, I mean we've been using copper forever,
Speaker 2: iron forever, a bronze even longer than iron. Remember, aluminum
Speaker 2: we've been using essentially since the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Is this the aluminum age, Yes, it is an people
Speaker 1: call it that, no, but I think we should start
Speaker 1: calling it then.
Speaker 3: I mean, bronze had an age, and if iron had
Speaker 3: an age, stone had an age.
Speaker 2: Yeahs a great idea, Chuck, the aluminum age. It's a
Speaker 2: wonderful idea. It really gets the point across.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned that it's ubiquitous in use these days
Speaker 1: for sure, but it's also abundant. And as Libya Livia
Speaker 1: pointed this out because she helped us out with this one,
Speaker 1: she did a really good job on this one. I
Speaker 1: think eight percent of the total mass of the Earth's
Speaker 1: crust has aluminum in it. But it's not like from
Speaker 1: the beginning we could just go down there and chop
Speaker 1: out a bunch of aluminum with a screwdriver and a hammer,
Speaker 1: because aluminum had a well, not a problem, it just
Speaker 1: had a quality that it's it bonds very easily with
Speaker 1: other elements, so that means it's reactive, so that means
Speaker 1: it's in the crust. It is, you know, parts of
Speaker 1: rock and parts of other things in combination with other
Speaker 1: elements and minerals. And it wasn't just like, oh, look
Speaker 1: there's aluminum, we can just go like, we had to
Speaker 1: figure out how to extract usable aluminum from other things.
Speaker 1: Mainly these days and back then something called box site.
Speaker 2: Yeah, boux site is it's kind of like an umbrella
Speaker 2: term for naturally occurring aluminum ores.
Speaker 4: Basically, yeah.
Speaker 2: But the problem with aluminum, like a lot of metals
Speaker 2: and minerals like show up in nature's ores and we
Speaker 2: can extract them. The difficulty is that aluminum is so
Speaker 2: reactive it really really meshes with the other mineral or
Speaker 2: the other rock or the other metal, and it's really
Speaker 2: tough to get apart. Kind of like poor Wilfrid Brimley
Speaker 2: in the thing. It's like that ameshed.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I'm feeling better now.
Speaker 2: So you've got this box site and we know about it.
Speaker 2: We know that there's something useful in it, but we
Speaker 2: didn't know how to get it out. And for a
Speaker 2: long time people had noticed like, oh, there's all sorts
Speaker 2: of stuff you can do with this box site that
Speaker 2: we'll call alum which is a kind of aluminum sulfate
Speaker 2: made with potassium. People have been using that for about
Speaker 2: seven eight thousand years.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, all sorts of stuff like oh, of course,
Speaker 1: the Egyptians they put all kinds of things in makeup,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about before. Aluminum or that potassium aluminum
Speaker 1: sulfate is one of them used often, and dyes used
Speaker 1: for dressing wounds. I think you can also find aluminum
Speaker 1: in clay. So yeah, for many thousands of years they
Speaker 1: were using aluminum strengthened clay to make harder and stronger pottery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't break it. It's like an unbreakable comb.
Speaker 3: Unbreakable what comb? Like a hair comb?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a I think it's a brand name even.
Speaker 3: Oh really, I've never heard of it.
Speaker 2: It just invites you to break it, and it eventually
Speaker 2: does break, by the way, but it's hard to break.
Speaker 2: I got so yes, people were using it for a while.
Speaker 2: And by the way, as an aside, there's a I
Speaker 2: don't want to say famous, but there's a noteworthy artifact
Speaker 2: that was discovered in the tomb of a general zoo
Speaker 2: Chu who lived in China about seventeen hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: And it's a belt and it's made of aluminum, and
Speaker 2: it's what you would refer to as an out of
Speaker 2: place artifact or oop art, which is something that kind
Speaker 2: of bucks our understanding of history and time like that
Speaker 2: should not exist because this was the third century CE,
Speaker 2: and it.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Lomo control in you know, the Old West or
Speaker 1: something like that exactly.
Speaker 2: That would be that would be a very significant out
Speaker 2: of place artifact. This one's pretty significant, so much so
Speaker 2: that they're like, we think this is an archaeological prank,
Speaker 2: like a joke. Like somebody was like, this is really
Speaker 2: going to blow their minds, and it did. But most
Speaker 2: people are like, this is so inexplicable, there's no way
Speaker 2: that it's real.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome, yeah, but still an explicit Yes.
Speaker 2: That's one of the things that makes it awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 2: But the upside of my whole point was we knew
Speaker 2: that there was something useful in there, and as far
Speaker 2: as the chemistry world goes, it's not enough to just
Speaker 2: know it's there. They have to isolate it. They're just
Speaker 2: fanatics about it. And they said that about doing that
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, there was one chemist in particular name Antwin Lovoisier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously French, and he was like, hey, you know
Speaker 1: this aluminum oxide or I think you were calling ilumina
Speaker 1: at that point, you know, we can probably extract this
Speaker 1: stuff wasn't able to. But not too long after an
Speaker 1: eighteen and oh eight there was a British chemist name
Speaker 1: Sir Humphrey Davy who and he actually named named it. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to the naming thing in a second. It
Speaker 1: goes through some stages. It was to him it was illuminium,
Speaker 1: and then he wrote a book of elements elemental in
Speaker 1: chemistry I'm sorry, Chemical Philosophy four years after that, and
Speaker 1: at that point it was spelled aluminum. But then later on,
Speaker 1: like four years later in the Quarterly Review, there were
Speaker 1: a bunch of British chemists who were just like, I
Speaker 1: don't like the ring of aluminum. It doesn't sound British enough,
Speaker 1: so they went with aluminium with an extra eye, and
Speaker 1: that was basically what people called it for a long time,
Speaker 1: except for Americans who were like, you know what, we're
Speaker 1: using both of these terms. We really like aluminum. It's
Speaker 1: in the dictionary, It's in Webster's dictionary.
Speaker 3: Is aluminum? Can we just settle this?
Speaker 1: And in nineteen twenty five, finally the American Chemical Society said, yes,
Speaker 1: we were going to say it's aluminum. And so Americans
Speaker 1: and Canadians are the only people who call it that's
Speaker 1: for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody else calls it aluminium. Yeah, they stuck with it,
Speaker 2: They really did. They really stuck with it for sure.
Speaker 2: So that Humphrey Davy, going back to him, probably one
Speaker 2: of the reasons he came up with different spellings was
Speaker 2: because he was fresh off of his self experimentation with
Speaker 2: nitrous oxide. He was the guy who called the O
Speaker 2: excellent airbag, remember him. So he was the one who
Speaker 2: said there is an elemental useful metal here in this
Speaker 2: cruddy or and he described it before anyone had ever
Speaker 2: even isolated it. But in the world of chemistry, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't call Sir Humphrey Davy the discoverer of aluminum in chemistry,
Speaker 2: to discover something, you have to have isolated it in
Speaker 2: its pure form, and there was an early attempt to
Speaker 2: do that. I think there was a guy named Hans
Speaker 2: Christian Ursted who in eighteen twenty five came very close,
Speaker 2: but he had an impure isolated aluminum, and then very
Speaker 2: triumphantly Friedrich Vohler or Vuler i think, came up with
Speaker 2: pure aluminum two years after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the old chemistry tradition that in order to
Speaker 1: be named the discoverer, you have to extract it and
Speaker 1: then roll up in a ball and hit someone with it.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's the tradition.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: But it was really expensive to do so for the
Speaker 1: first And it's kind of funny to think about now
Speaker 1: because they've gotten so good at making aluminum. It's obviously
Speaker 1: used in so many different things and it's fairly inexpensive,
Speaker 1: but back then it was a luxury item. So aluminum
Speaker 1: at first was known as the Medal of Kings, and
Speaker 1: Napoleon loved it and he was like, just think of
Speaker 1: what we could do with this stuff in the military.
Speaker 1: Like it's fairly strong, it's very light, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the lightness was such a huge attractive quality for aluminum
Speaker 1: still is. And he was like, we need this stuff,
Speaker 1: and here I even want to eat off of it.
Speaker 1: So make some cutlery for me, and I'll just keep
Speaker 1: very select sets of this stuff for me and my
Speaker 1: very special guests, and everyone else will just dine on
Speaker 1: silver with silver spoons and will use this aluminum. And
Speaker 1: they were just going crazy for illumina. It was very
Speaker 1: kind of funny to look back at how it was
Speaker 1: a luxury metal in its earliest days.
Speaker 2: It definitely was. And one reason why is because even
Speaker 2: though Voler had come up with a method for extracting
Speaker 2: pure aluminum, it was really labor intensive. It was really
Speaker 2: hard to do, and you didn't get very much from it.
Speaker 2: So that made it a very precious metal, especially when,
Speaker 2: like you said, you had people like Napoleon the Third
Speaker 2: bankrolling investigations into getting more and more aluminum.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why I did not know this,
Speaker 2: but there's probably people out there who do that there
Speaker 2: is an aluminum pyramid capping the Washington Monument that was
Speaker 2: put It was installed when the monument was built in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty four. Finished is in part because America was
Speaker 2: showing off. Yeah, in eighteen eighty four, it was sill,
Speaker 2: a very luxurious good and they had the six pound
Speaker 2: aluminum period pyramid placed on the top. And it was
Speaker 2: so difficult still at that time to extract aluminum that
Speaker 2: that represented one quarter of the annual production of all
Speaker 2: the aluminum in the world that was produced that year,
Speaker 2: that one six pound pyramid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty funny. Eight inches and six pounds, and
Speaker 1: they like, get a load of this. Wait'll they see
Speaker 1: this thing? Yes, it's like a bunch of beercans mashed
Speaker 1: together exactly.
Speaker 2: That's the funniest part. This is eighteen eighty four. They
Speaker 2: paid like seventy five hundred bucks in today's money for it,
Speaker 2: which seems kind of cheap to me. But two years later,
Speaker 2: we got so good at extracting aluminum we came up
Speaker 2: with another process, which we'll talk about in a second,
Speaker 2: that that pyramid went from like hero to zero almost overnight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it you know, it also served a purpose
Speaker 1: because well everyone knows aluminum is very anti corrosive, so
Speaker 1: that's a nice topper for a monument. And it also
Speaker 1: served as a lightning rod, so it served a purpose.
Speaker 1: But it was for sure a brag, but like you said,
Speaker 1: it went kind of to a staple thing very quickly
Speaker 1: once some very smart people got to work refining this process.
Speaker 1: One was Charles Martin Hall, an Ohian. He's very so
Speaker 1: HIGHO and I would say, Paul heral Hero, how would
Speaker 1: you pronounce that Herald Herauld?
Speaker 2: I think you might actually say the T in that one.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure he.
Speaker 3: H h E R O U L T.
Speaker 1: Another Frenchman, they independently in eighteen eighty six, invented this
Speaker 1: technique that they have now has been code named after
Speaker 1: them as the Herald process, in which you dissolve aluminum
Speaker 1: oxide and molten cryolite mineral pass the.
Speaker 3: Current through there.
Speaker 1: We've talked about those kind of processes before and leave.
Speaker 1: The Frenchman actually filed the patent about a month and
Speaker 1: a half before Hall, but Hall proved that he had
Speaker 1: come up with it previously, and so they worked it out.
Speaker 1: They shared credit. They even ended up dying in the
Speaker 1: same year. I guess they really wanted to share everything,
Speaker 1: so they said let's just die together as well, and
Speaker 1: they both passed away in nineteen fourteen, and that was
Speaker 1: at the end of the process. Though I think someone
Speaker 1: else came along and really refined it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was not only not the end, that
Speaker 2: was just the beginning. That process is still in use today.
Speaker 2: And then, like you said, a third guy, Karl Josef Behar,
Speaker 2: would you say Yosef Oh?
Speaker 3: Probably? I think yeah, okay with Yoseph.
Speaker 2: Carl Joseph Bear in nineteen eighty seven. The next year
Speaker 2: came up with a way to get aluminum oxide, which
Speaker 2: was the base form of aluminum that you start out
Speaker 2: within the Hall Herald process. Somebody came along and figured
Speaker 2: out a better way to get aluminum oxide from box side.
Speaker 2: So in the span of a year, essentially we went
Speaker 2: from aluminum being a precious metal to having an industrial
Speaker 2: process in place that we still use today. That's incredible.
Speaker 2: That's why we live in the aluminum age today. I
Speaker 2: just think the timing of the whole thing is so amazing.
Speaker 2: And I saw it explained in part because people were
Speaker 2: so well aware that aluminum was light and strong and conductive.
Speaker 2: Those are really desirable properties. They wanted this metal really bad,
Speaker 2: so it was a real target in the chemistry world,
Speaker 2: which explains why Hall and Herault both came up with
Speaker 2: this same process independently. At the same time. But the
Speaker 2: fact that you put that together with Bears Discovery, it
Speaker 2: just all congealed all at once rather than over the
Speaker 2: course of you know, decades and decades. Yeah, I just
Speaker 2: find that very interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very cool.
Speaker 1: In fact, Hall in eighteen eighty eight helped out a
Speaker 1: company that still around today. Back then it was called
Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, and now it's known as the
Speaker 1: Aluminum Company of America ALCOA. I'm sure we have listeners,
Speaker 1: plenty of listeners in Pittsburgh that work for alcoa very
Speaker 1: big company. And the price of aluminum really went down.
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you want something to go from
Speaker 1: a luxury to like something that you crush against your
Speaker 1: head from a beer, can you go from almost five
Speaker 1: dollars a pound in eighteen eighty eight to seventy eight
Speaker 1: cents in eighteen ninety three, and then all the way
Speaker 1: down to about twenty cents a pound in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in today's prices, it's going from six hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty five dollars a pound to five dollars and
Speaker 2: forty five cents a pound in just a few decades.
Speaker 2: That's how how radical and just world changing that process
Speaker 2: was and is.
Speaker 3: All Right, I think that is a heck of an intro.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's take an that break then, I say,
Speaker 2: some podcasts might stop there, Yeah, but we're gonna keep going.
Speaker 4: All right, We'll be right back, all right.
Speaker 2: So one of the things, Chuck, that we talked about
Speaker 2: was you've mentioned that you melt cryolite. I think it
Speaker 2: melts at a thousand degrees celsius, and then you melt aluminum,
Speaker 2: so the temperature has to be even hotter than that,
Speaker 2: like really really hot, and then you pass a really
Speaker 2: strong electrical current through that and to do all this
Speaker 2: it's really really energy intensive, as we'll still is. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So one of the other things that supported the boom
Speaker 2: in aluminum was that the electrical grid and ways of
Speaker 2: creating and generating and getting electricity from place to place
Speaker 2: was also developing simultaneously in the United States as well.
Speaker 2: That really helped a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, big time.
Speaker 1: And in fact, a lot of aluminum plants early on
Speaker 1: were built near dams. They were like, let's just you know, this,
Speaker 1: really make this efficient instead of camp right next to
Speaker 1: that dam over there, so you know, we should probably
Speaker 1: go over some of the modern uses of aluminum. Aluminum is,
Speaker 1: like we said, has so many great properties, but it
Speaker 1: is fairly soft and weak in and of itself. I
Speaker 1: mean it makes then we'll talk about foil and beer.
Speaker 1: I can't stop talking about beer cans. And it's great
Speaker 1: for that stuff. But if you want to use it
Speaker 1: in you know, commercial settings, you can make commercial aluminum.
Speaker 1: You just have to mix in a little iron, maybe
Speaker 1: a little silicon, and it makes it much stronger. And
Speaker 1: there are like all kinds of ways that you can alloy.
Speaker 3: Is that a word?
Speaker 2: I think it works all right.
Speaker 1: You can alloify aluminum to do things like, you know,
Speaker 1: build an airplane, and in fact that the right brothers.
Speaker 1: You might be thinking that airplane was made of wood,
Speaker 1: and it was, but the engine and I never knew
Speaker 1: this was made of ninety two percent aluminum. Because they
Speaker 1: needed horsepower. They needed a strong enough engine to get
Speaker 1: that little wooden frame off the ground. But they couldn't
Speaker 1: make it like out of like you would a car
Speaker 1: enginecause it'd be way too heavy. So they needed to
Speaker 1: be less than two hundred pounds produce that eight horses.
Speaker 1: And German car makers were starting to use aluminum for
Speaker 1: their engines and they said you're onto something. They ended
Speaker 1: up using eight percent copper to the ninety two percent
Speaker 1: aluminum and they got that thing off the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they turned to their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, and it
Speaker 2: needed to be no more than two hundred pounds and
Speaker 2: produce eight horsepower. Like you said, he delivered one from
Speaker 2: scratch that weigh one hundred and eighty pounds and produced
Speaker 2: twelve horse power. So Charlie Taylor really came through. I know,
Speaker 2: we talked about him in the Right Brothers episode we did.
Speaker 2: Was that a two parter mm?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I want to say it was, but I make a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff up in my head.
Speaker 1: So, you know, come World War One, not too long after,
Speaker 1: they were making full airplanes out of metal. Like aluminum
Speaker 1: replaced wood very very quickly, because you had wood and
Speaker 1: fabric airplanes obviously, you know, that was the best they
Speaker 1: could do at the time, but aluminum is so much
Speaker 1: stronger and you could go a lot faster and do
Speaker 1: all kinds of things you couldn't do with wood and fabric. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's even Lyvia found a gentleman at the National
Speaker 1: Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian who was like, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for aluminum, we wouldn't have the planes in
Speaker 1: spacecraft we have today.
Speaker 3: Kind of period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that really gets across one of the
Speaker 2: big prized things about aluminum. It's strong, but it's also light.
Speaker 2: It's not quite as strong as steel, but it's much
Speaker 2: lighter than steel, I think three times lighter, so its
Speaker 2: strength to weight ratio is much better, which means that
Speaker 2: it requires a lot less either horsepower in your your
Speaker 2: twelve horse power engine or a lot less I guess
Speaker 2: solid rocket fuel to get your rocket off of the
Speaker 2: ground because you're using aluminum. So that's pretty great. There's
Speaker 2: another quality of it that's allowed aluminum to really kind
Speaker 2: of help us, as it's conductivity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it was equally as conductive as copper, it
Speaker 1: would have fully replaced copper at this point because of
Speaker 1: how much easier aluminum is, you know, to get. But
Speaker 1: it's about two third is as good as copper, which
Speaker 1: is still great, very conductive, but it's a third is heavy,
Speaker 1: which is great. That the problem there is you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna need aluminum wire. It's about one and a
Speaker 1: half times the diameter of copper if you want it
Speaker 1: to perform the same.
Speaker 3: So it is, but that's a lot bigger, so they couldn't.
Speaker 1: They tried to for a little while, but they couldn't
Speaker 1: just like go in and replace copper and households and
Speaker 1: stuff because the wiring is too big. They do use
Speaker 1: it for overhead and underground transmission because you reinforce it
Speaker 1: with steel and it can be bigger in diameter. It's
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal, but I think in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies they were trying it in houses
Speaker 1: because copper was really expensive. I think it worked well,
Speaker 1: but the connections ended up where you connect it together
Speaker 1: ended up being a fire hazard, so they did away
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens is in where the wiring goes into
Speaker 2: like your outlet, your socket right in the back. The
Speaker 2: aluminum expands and contracts much more than copper does, so
Speaker 2: it loosens over time, and when it gets loose enough,
Speaker 2: it'll arc. And an electrical arc is way worse than
Speaker 2: just an electrical current because the electricity encounters gas the
Speaker 2: atmosphere and it shoots up to like thirty five thousand
Speaker 2: degrees farent height and causes fires. So if you have
Speaker 2: you buy a house with aluminum wiring, like from the
Speaker 2: sixties or seventies. Your insurance company is probably going to
Speaker 2: be like, if you want insurance on this house, you're
Speaker 2: going to have to totally rewire it.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: And now we can talk about beer cans finally, because
Speaker 1: that is what started to happen all the way back
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen fifties. You know, the old cans
Speaker 1: were made of usually ten sometimes steel, and there was
Speaker 1: a very forward thinking company in Hawaii called the Hawaii
Speaker 1: Brewing Company, and they tried it out on their Primo
Speaker 1: beer and they said, shipping this stuff is a lot better,
Speaker 1: it's a lot cheaper.
Speaker 3: We can ship it.
Speaker 1: To the mainland, no problem. But the can linings that
Speaker 1: they were using at the time, there was a chemical
Speaker 1: reaction going on between the beer and the can. It
Speaker 1: ruined the beer, bankrupted the company. But it did not
Speaker 1: die there because Cores was right on their heels. They
Speaker 1: were already working on the same thing, and they perfected
Speaker 1: it just a year later in nineteen fifty nine and
Speaker 1: basically said the same thing is like, this is a
Speaker 1: lot cheaper, it's easier to and you know, lighter obviously
Speaker 1: than glass bottles. It actually helps the beer deprive the
Speaker 1: beer of light and oxygen better than bottles, and cores
Speaker 1: started the whole thing as far as beer goes, followed
Speaker 1: very quickly by Arci Cola on the soft drink side,
Speaker 1: and then it was aluminum can City as far as
Speaker 1: soft drinks and canned anything goes, basically. But if you
Speaker 1: remember when like we were kids, those same aluminum cans
Speaker 1: just were felt heavier and thicker. It's because they were.
Speaker 1: They've they've refined the process and made it much thinner
Speaker 1: over the years. But those old cans, because I was like,
Speaker 1: were those ten They weren't. They were aluminum. They were
Speaker 1: just a lot heavier back then.
Speaker 2: Right. So today aluminum cans are so useful that twenty
Speaker 2: percent of the entire global supply goes to making aluminum cans,
Speaker 2: which is pretty amazing. And the other thing about it
Speaker 2: is it's high recyclable. As we'll see, it has what's
Speaker 2: called infinite recyclability, like it doesn't degrade in the recycling process,
Speaker 2: and it requires way less energy, time and money to
Speaker 2: recycle aluminum cans. So much so that I read that
Speaker 2: the can of say like coke or beer or whatever
Speaker 2: you're drinking was probably in the exact same form in
Speaker 2: a different life sixty days before. Each can has about
Speaker 2: a sixty day life cycle from sale to use, to
Speaker 2: recycling to reprocessing to repackaging to going back on the
Speaker 2: store shelf. Again. Isn't that amazing? But it's not like
Speaker 2: they just wash out the same can. It's completely disintegrated,
Speaker 2: so it's not the exact same can, but it was
Speaker 2: in some way that same can before. It's like that
Speaker 2: ship we talked about, and does your body replace itself
Speaker 2: if you slowly replace each part of the ship, when
Speaker 2: you replace everything, is it's still the same ship? Same
Speaker 2: question applies to aluminum cans. It turns out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we might as well finish up on
Speaker 1: recycling and just say that we've tried to beat the
Speaker 1: recycling drum over the years, and we know that there
Speaker 1: are some problems with the recycling process for a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. I know glass is particularly problematic, but aluminum
Speaker 1: is one of those that they have really really figured
Speaker 1: out how to do it in a great efficient way,
Speaker 1: and it's so recyclable and it's very easy to recycle.
Speaker 1: Yet only fifty percent of aluminum and it's just cans,
Speaker 1: just the cans that people drink. Only fifty percent of
Speaker 1: those still are recycled. So just we implore you. We
Speaker 1: try not to get on the old high horse, but
Speaker 1: if you're not going to recycle anything else, please just
Speaker 1: recycle those cans. It's so easy and it really really
Speaker 1: makes a big dip.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, it requires five percent of the carbon emissions
Speaker 2: to recycle aluminum pound for pound then it does to
Speaker 2: process it and create it initially five percent.
Speaker 1: It's not a scam. It's not just going to some
Speaker 1: landfill like. They've really got aluminum recycling down pat so
Speaker 1: you can feel good about throwing that can and the
Speaker 1: recycling and knowing that some other jerk next to you
Speaker 1: will be drinking from almost that same can.
Speaker 3: What two months later.
Speaker 2: You said, yeah, about six, six to eight weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a wonderful thing. So recycle that aluminum.
Speaker 2: There's a very often cited stat that I think goes
Speaker 2: all the way back to two thousand and one. I
Speaker 2: couldn't find a more updated one. But we throw away
Speaker 2: so many aluminum cans that we could rebuild the entire
Speaker 2: US commercial air fleet every three months with that aluminum
Speaker 2: just thrown away. And the other thing talking about is recyclability.
Speaker 2: If you can just recycle aluminum over and over and
Speaker 2: over again, eventually we have enough that we've mined and
Speaker 2: processed that we don't have to mine and process it
Speaker 2: anymore because it's all getting recycled. So we could stop
Speaker 2: to that now, right, No.
Speaker 3: Not.
Speaker 2: If we're we're only recycling fifty percent of our cans,
Speaker 2: that means we have to we have to supplement the
Speaker 2: recycled material with another fifty percent of new cans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but about seventy five percent of all aluminum ever
Speaker 1: used is still being used.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that's true. So sure, I guess twenty.
Speaker 3: There's some missing math in there somewhere.
Speaker 2: Well, that's so we're talking cans and then we're talking
Speaker 2: all aluminum.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently the building industry has a much higher recycling rate.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's good for them.
Speaker 2: You want it? Wow? Do you want to take another break? Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do it. Okay, Well here we are. Everybody taken
Speaker 2: another break?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Everyone? Cans are great. We love those cans. But I love,
Speaker 1: and I always have loved aluminum foil. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is about it. I think it's the I
Speaker 1: think it's the fold ability of foil. I just love it.
Speaker 1: I've had a roommate who used to make eat candy
Speaker 1: and make little things out of gum wrappers, little little
Speaker 1: swords and things and poke people, and I just, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I've always loved aluminum foil. I even make
Speaker 1: the mistakes sometimes still calling it tinfoil, even though I
Speaker 1: don't think it was at all, even around when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. Even I'm not picked it up for
Speaker 1: my grandmother or something.
Speaker 2: Probably, I mean, everybody calls it tinfoil still.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: Even Adam Savage on his his Japanese fol oil ball
Speaker 1: video called tinfoil yeah, which we'll talk about in a sec.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen ten, there was a manufacturer, an aluminum manufacturer,
Speaker 1: that said, all right, I can figure out how to
Speaker 1: get this aluminum into these big rolled sheets, and we
Speaker 1: can package candy in it, we can package tobacco in it,
Speaker 1: And before you know it, in nineteen thirteen it hit
Speaker 1: the US in the form of life savers, candy rolls,
Speaker 1: and other kinds of candy bars. And then it didn't
Speaker 1: take long before like the nineteen twenties, when it was
Speaker 1: used as you know, the rolls of foil.
Speaker 3: That very useful.
Speaker 1: I still try to not use it because you know,
Speaker 1: to you know, cutting, like reducing is the first thing
Speaker 1: in reduce, reuse, recycle. So it's not like I'm just
Speaker 1: like ripping tinfoil off all the time just to play
Speaker 1: with it. But it is a very handy thing to
Speaker 1: have in the house.
Speaker 2: If you toss that aluminum foil ball in the recycling,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. You can play with it all day long.
Speaker 2: Heck yeah, because it's infinitely recyclable. I don't know if
Speaker 2: we said that or not yet.
Speaker 1: We've a bunch of times, but reducing is still better.
Speaker 3: Sure, that's why it's number one on the list.
Speaker 2: But it's so hard, Chuck.
Speaker 3: To not play with illuminum boil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to reduce, Yeah, it is. So we can't not
Speaker 2: talk about the tinfoil hat too, Like think about it.
Speaker 2: No one ever says the aluminum foil hat. They say
Speaker 2: foil or tinfoil. Apparently, the Vice magazine traced it back
Speaker 2: to a nineteen twenty seven story by al Juics Huxley's
Speaker 2: brother Julian. I can't remember what it's called, and I
Speaker 2: knew it. It's a great name too. Sorry, everybody, but
Speaker 2: he develops this form of mass control. The scientists the
Speaker 2: main character, and he uses a cap of metal foil
Speaker 2: to prevent that mind control being used on him. And
Speaker 2: as far as Vice Magazine's concerned, that's where the whole
Speaker 2: thing began.
Speaker 3: Who brother was this?
Speaker 2: Al Juis Huxley. The door is a perception guy.
Speaker 1: I think you added you did the josh Adavowl al Juis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always done that. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 2: said his name other than al Juis Huxley.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm surprised you don't say aluminium because they've added
Speaker 1: the valeve for you.
Speaker 2: I refuse to because I'm an American three and three.
Speaker 2: I believe red, white and blue chuck.
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, So that happened in what nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven?
Speaker 2: No, seriously, please call a doctor. My blood is white.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's no, it can't be helped.
Speaker 3: You're fine, You're fine. That was in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 1: And then in World War Two there was a propaganda
Speaker 1: broadcaster named William Joyce who talked about tinfoil hats protecting
Speaker 1: against shrapnel.
Speaker 3: So that was another use.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that guy was a Nazi propagandist who was
Speaker 2: trying to undermine the British morale. He was a real jerk.
Speaker 2: They hung him named lord he ha ha.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I always want to say lord he haw. Actually I
Speaker 2: want to say lord he haw haw because I always
Speaker 2: had an extra vowel. But the upshot of all this,
Speaker 2: I don't even know if that applies in this case.
Speaker 2: But how about to wrap up this section like a
Speaker 2: piece of aluminum foil. If you've ever watched Better Call
Speaker 2: Saul the original, I guess the first couple of seasons
Speaker 2: is brother. What's his brother's name?
Speaker 3: I never seen the show.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Well, Michael McKeon plays his brother very well.
Speaker 2: He's a big jerk, but he has an electro magnetic sensitivity,
Speaker 2: which they explore in depth, and he wraps himself in
Speaker 2: magnetic foil anytime he wants to get out of the house.
Speaker 2: But an MIT study in two thousand and five found
Speaker 2: that doing that would actually amplify electromagnetic frequencies rather than
Speaker 2: prevent them from entering your body or head.
Speaker 3: No goods, then, yeah.
Speaker 2: Tim, foil hat does not work, everybody.
Speaker 1: I referenced the Japanese foil ball thing, and it's apparently
Speaker 1: one of these internet challenges from like five years ago
Speaker 1: that I had never heard of me either, so immediately
Speaker 1: went and looked it up. And you know, it's basically
Speaker 1: you take a big, you know, crinkly ball of foil
Speaker 1: and you start hammering on it until you do it
Speaker 1: so much that it ends up. You know, if you
Speaker 1: just use the hammer, you can even get it down
Speaker 1: to a pretty smoothish.
Speaker 3: Aluminum ball.
Speaker 1: I did see others though, that you know, then they
Speaker 1: would get out some grinders and some sandpaper and stuff.
Speaker 2: That feels like cheating.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it depends on what you want to
Speaker 1: up with it. They could have stopped and just said,
Speaker 1: all right here, this is like really cool. But then
Speaker 1: when you like sand it down and use the grinder
Speaker 1: and use like polish and stuff, you can literally take
Speaker 1: it to the point where it's a very very shiny.
Speaker 1: It looks like almost like a solid chrome steel ball,
Speaker 1: and it's really cool and fun to see. And I
Speaker 1: think I want to try to do it.
Speaker 2: I think you shouldn't. You should post it on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean, if I'm well, I'll post it either way.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, if it's a success, but
Speaker 1: it's even more fun if I screw it.
Speaker 2: Up exactly totally. But that gets across how aluminum can
Speaker 2: be decorative. So, like a lot of shiny paper or
Speaker 2: shiny materials that are just shiny on one side, they're
Speaker 2: coated in aluminum because they figured out a technique to
Speaker 2: flash vaporize it in a vacuum and it goes whoop
Speaker 2: and coats whatever happens to be in there with it.
Speaker 2: That's the process they use it, flash vaporizing aluminum. You've
Speaker 2: got to feel like some sort of god on Earth
Speaker 2: when you're able to do that, when you press that button,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's used in all kinds of buildings, kind of
Speaker 1: starting with in the nineteen thirties in New York City
Speaker 1: with the Empire State Building. Use a lot of aluminum.
Speaker 1: It is used a lot in car making. They use
Speaker 1: about eighteen percent of all aluminum is used in automaking
Speaker 1: these days. And then I mean what else, Like you
Speaker 1: mentioned the decorative paper, it's in toys, it's in medicine.
Speaker 1: It can be an acid if it's aluminum hydroxide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most over the counter an acids are made to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still used topically, just like they did back
Speaker 1: in the old days for burns and wounds and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and it's still in makeup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it plugs up your pors and your anti.
Speaker 1: Persprint, yeah, which we just talked about in What History
Speaker 1: of Hygiene? That's right and apparently and I always thought
Speaker 1: that that was not good at all, but Lvia pointed
Speaker 1: out in that podcast, and you know, we can talk
Speaker 1: about it from here too, that it is it has
Speaker 1: not been proven decidedly that aluminum is really really bad
Speaker 1: for your body and the quantities that you would normally
Speaker 1: have aluminum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a scare back in about twenty eleven
Speaker 2: that the aluminum in your anti perseprint was going to
Speaker 2: give you breast cancer, and apparently that was just made
Speaker 2: up on the internet and studies don't actually support that.
Speaker 2: The new one is that aluminum and I shouldn't say new,
Speaker 2: because I think it kind of started in the sixties
Speaker 2: and seventies that there was some sort of correlation between
Speaker 2: the tau protein tangles and plaques that are associated with
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's and aluminum consumption. Was it in like mice or
Speaker 2: rats that they found this in I think I.
Speaker 1: Think it was mice, but they were I think they're
Speaker 1: like injecting mice, right, And they ended up saying like
Speaker 1: humans are never going to come into contact with this
Speaker 1: much aluminum just from you know, being on the Earth
Speaker 1: and using aluminum. I think they have found that there's
Speaker 1: like aluminum in the drinking water supply of your town,
Speaker 1: which has happened and is a real problem. Then if
Speaker 1: you have Alzheimer's, that can accelerate it. But I don't
Speaker 1: think they have still linked it to like causing full
Speaker 1: stop Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: No, but they have identified it as a neurotoxin because
Speaker 2: remember how it's super reactive. It does the same thing
Speaker 2: with cells in your body, including your neurons, so it
Speaker 2: can really mess your brain up, and it causes double
Speaker 2: strand breaks, which messes up your DNA. So when that
Speaker 2: cell divides into another one that new cells, DNA is
Speaker 2: messed up too, hence tumors too. So there are problems.
Speaker 2: That's aluminum, Like you said, it is in the water supply.
Speaker 2: It's really in a lot of surprising places, and we
Speaker 2: put those things in our body. Again, want to point
Speaker 2: out before the twentieth century, this didn't happen. People weren't
Speaker 2: like ingesting aluminum. It just didn't exist in that form
Speaker 2: on Earth. Right, that's a new thing. But it does
Speaker 2: seem that despite it not being used in any biological process,
Speaker 2: despite it being very new, and so the human body
Speaker 2: has not really encountered this and gotten used to it.
Speaker 2: Our kidneys are supposedly very very efficient at flushing aluminum
Speaker 2: right out of the body about as fast as it
Speaker 2: comes in. Yeah, I mean, that's that's impressive.
Speaker 3: It is, And that's the that's where it stands right now.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone has like closed the book and said, well,
Speaker 1: we're just not going to study this anymore.
Speaker 3: Right, but right now that's where things stand.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: One problem with aluminum is that there have been instances
Speaker 1: fairly recently about aluminum hoarding. In the early twenty tens,
Speaker 1: the Go Goldman Sax Company, they bought a warehouse complex
Speaker 1: outside of Detroit, Michigan, and they stored aluminum for producers
Speaker 1: and for banks and for people who traded aluminum. And
Speaker 1: they said, you know, at a certain point in the
Speaker 1: years that followed, buyers are trying to get a hold
Speaker 1: of aluminum, and all of a sudden, what used to
Speaker 1: take you know, a month a month and a half
Speaker 1: to get was taking a year or more to get
Speaker 1: and it was a real problem, and there were people
Speaker 1: like beer companies and soft drink companies were saying, what's
Speaker 1: going on. This is costing us millions and billions of
Speaker 1: dollars waiting on these aluminum delays. And Goldman Sacks was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have enough forklift drivers and trucks
Speaker 1: and that's the problem. It's not us telling everyone to
Speaker 1: hold on to that aluminum to make a false supply
Speaker 1: issue so we can charge more for it. But the
Speaker 1: New York Times came along and said, none, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on. You're just increasing profits by creating a
Speaker 1: false supply.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What's interesting is the aluminum market. Aluminium as a
Speaker 2: commodity is in like the supply is tracked so closely that,
Speaker 2: you know, just little instances of hoarding like that, if
Speaker 2: it happens like enough times, it can it can affect
Speaker 2: like the price pretty easily. The supply can just stop.
Speaker 2: People do that. When it's really cheap, they'll do what
Speaker 2: Goldman Sex did, it just buy up supply and sit
Speaker 2: on it until it goes up in price. Because in
Speaker 2: part you're sitting on the supply and then you just
Speaker 2: kind of slowly reintroduce it to the market so that
Speaker 2: you don't drop that high price while you're still raking
Speaker 2: in the dough by selling the aluminum you have. And
Speaker 2: to be fair, Goldman Sex was far from the only
Speaker 2: investment bank doing this running these kind of warehouses. But
Speaker 2: this is the early twenty tens, fresh off of the
Speaker 2: financial meltdown that Goldman Sex got bailed out for, so
Speaker 2: everybody was they were just pointing out Goldman Sex alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fair, I think. So that's as fair as
Speaker 3: you get.
Speaker 2: It's called tit for tat, buddy.
Speaker 3: In this case.
Speaker 1: Even just a couple of years ago, in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: they found aluminum hoarding going on in Vietnam to the
Speaker 1: tune of about up to five billion dollars worth of aluminum.
Speaker 1: They said, this may be the largest aluminum horde that's
Speaker 1: ever been And like you said, people are just you know,
Speaker 1: doing the wrong thing. And the prices really fluctuated quickly.
Speaker 1: I think there was a low of about fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a ton during the pandemic shutdown, and then they
Speaker 1: went to about thirty five hundred dollars a ton, just
Speaker 1: a couple of years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very big, very sensitive. The price is very sensitive.
Speaker 2: China is a big producer now, and they've figured out
Speaker 2: that when they throttle or dial back supply, they can
Speaker 2: change the price pretty easily themselves too. So it's a
Speaker 2: it's a strange market, especially if we stop mining it.
Speaker 2: I want to know what's going to happen to the
Speaker 2: price when we just say, okay, we have our aluminum
Speaker 2: supply and now we're just circulating it throughout the economy, Like,
Speaker 2: is that gonnke? Is that going to make it more
Speaker 2: expensive less expensive? I'm curious what will happen to that.
Speaker 1: Well, the cynical human in me thinks that they will
Speaker 1: then find a way to maximize profits there by doing
Speaker 1: something untoward.
Speaker 2: Probably you don't have much faith and commodity traders, huh,
Speaker 2: I know. So one other reason Chuck to make it
Speaker 2: to this circular economic status for aluminum where we've mined
Speaker 2: everything that we need and we're just reusing the stock
Speaker 2: is because box site mining is really really bad for
Speaker 2: the environment. Most mining is, but any kind of strip
Speaker 2: mining is really bad because it just completely depletes the
Speaker 2: land of everything it needs to keep itself going. Box
Speaker 2: site also really pollutes water supplies to with other heavy metals.
Speaker 2: And then also because it's so energy intensive, just the
Speaker 2: box site mining produces three percent of the world's direct
Speaker 2: CO two emissions. Just the mining, not startling, not processing
Speaker 2: it into aluminum, just the mining alone does that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's uh yeah, three percent. I mean three is
Speaker 1: a small number, but we were talking about all of
Speaker 1: the CO two emissions on planet Earth coming from one
Speaker 1: single process.
Speaker 3: That's that's staggering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so start looking around if you're like, just
Speaker 2: ask yourself before you throw something, await, is this aluminum?
Speaker 2: If the answers, yes, throw it in recycling, then yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, world War two there were kids turning
Speaker 1: in their gum wrappers for the war effort to get
Speaker 1: aluminum recycled, so.
Speaker 3: Be more like World War two kids.
Speaker 2: Someone apparently suggested melting down the Washington Monument cap during
Speaker 2: that time, but everybody just kind of didn't say anything
Speaker 2: about it, just what.
Speaker 3: It did they really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody did.
Speaker 3: And people are like, how do you even know that?
Speaker 2: Right, that's a really arcane piece of trivia. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: well that's it for aluminum everybody. And that means, of course,
Speaker 2: it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this airplane etiquette. Did you read this
Speaker 1: one yet?
Speaker 2: I don't think that I didn't.
Speaker 3: This is fresh offor presses.
Speaker 1: But I'm also gonna call it, am I the a
Speaker 1: hole because this is sort of what this person is
Speaker 1: asking a little bit with this airplane situation that this
Speaker 1: gentleman was on recently, and it is asking for advice.
Speaker 3: And like, did I do the wrong thing?
Speaker 2: Oh boy?
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna read sort of a shorter version. But
Speaker 1: needless to say, Frank is really into the show and
Speaker 1: very thankful for it. So Frank and his wife were
Speaker 1: on a comfort plus flight from our good friends at
Speaker 1: Delta recently and they were in the you know, the
Speaker 1: aisle seat in the middle seat.
Speaker 3: I believe Frank was on the aisle. He's tall. His
Speaker 3: wife took the.
Speaker 1: Middle seat and they were bored and seat belted when
Speaker 1: a passenger assigned to the windows heat arrived.
Speaker 3: It's a courtesy.
Speaker 1: My wife and I turned our leg sideways so he
Speaker 1: would have an easier time sliding past us. But he
Speaker 1: said that he doesn't feel comfortable sliding past people like
Speaker 1: that and asked us to get up and let him in.
Speaker 1: I mentioned there was plenty of room for him to
Speaker 1: slide past, since we were in comfort plus, but he
Speaker 1: insisted we get up, so we unbuckled, We.
Speaker 3: Got up, and we let him in.
Speaker 1: When we were preparing to land, about ten minutes out,
Speaker 1: the same passenger decided they needed to use the restroom.
Speaker 1: He asked my wife and I to get up again
Speaker 1: to slide out. I was watching a movie at the time,
Speaker 1: so I had to pause the movie. Oh my God,
Speaker 1: fold the arm that holds the screen back into the seat,
Speaker 1: you know. Sometimes they come out of the arm there,
Speaker 1: and then fold up my tray holding my drink into
Speaker 1: the seat so he could get it out. I did this,
Speaker 1: turn my leg sideway so we could slide out, and
Speaker 1: this angered him, and he showed his displeasure by sliding
Speaker 1: past us angrily and shaking his head in an exaggerated manner.
Speaker 3: So this is where we are so far.
Speaker 1: He returned from the restroom and then asked again if
Speaker 1: we would get up this time and let him in.
Speaker 1: I mentioned to him that he slid pats us getting
Speaker 1: out quite easily, so can't you just do that sliding
Speaker 1: back in? He said, no, I feel uncomfortable sliding past,
Speaker 1: and he called the flight attendant to come over. And
Speaker 1: the flight attendant arrived and was fairly puzzled. I think
Speaker 1: he was. The flight attendant was confused as to what
Speaker 1: was going on. I knew the situation was beginning to
Speaker 1: stress my wife out, and quite frankly me as well.
Speaker 1: Not wanting to cause any more stress issues because we
Speaker 1: were landing, I relented, unbuckled and stood up again, and
Speaker 1: my wife did the same. So before we get into this,
Speaker 1: just may finish this last part, which is what bothers me,
Speaker 1: is the h he kept saying he's not comfortable doing so.
Speaker 1: He never said why he was uncomfortable, and that he
Speaker 1: just insisted that people unbuckle and stand What about my comfort,
Speaker 1: life's comfort. What if we weren't comfortable unbuckling and getting
Speaker 1: up because you're supposed to remain seat belt at all
Speaker 1: times in case of turbulence. But if my wife was
Speaker 1: nine months pregnant, But if I was an eighty year
Speaker 1: old man with bad knees, what if I had anxiety
Speaker 1: about unbuckling? So the wife, I'm sorry. The flight attendant
Speaker 1: never said anything. And my question to you guys is
Speaker 1: what is the proper etiquette that did a lot of
Speaker 1: internet searches couldn't find an answer. Passengers in his twenties.
Speaker 1: My wife and I in her mid fifties. We were
Speaker 1: in good shape, so it wouldn't a health issue. But
Speaker 1: I thought this man was an entitled young man who's
Speaker 1: never been told no in his life.
Speaker 3: All right, that's from Frank. So what do you say?
Speaker 2: I mean, Frank, I think yes, you were the a
Speaker 2: hole in this in this instance, Oh for sure.
Speaker 3: Well here's what I'll say.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, now I have to explain. I can't just
Speaker 2: be like, sure, there you go, that's my ja.
Speaker 3: It sounded like you were, dude no, So.
Speaker 2: Like the it seems like you were put out because
Speaker 2: you're being asked to do something you didn't want to do.
Speaker 2: It didn't have anything to do with your comfort level.
Speaker 2: And the examples that you came up with for at
Speaker 2: that man intruding on your comfort level were just made up,
Speaker 2: Like you're not eighty, your wife isn't pregnant. You were
Speaker 2: just annoyed. That guy sounded like he had like a
Speaker 2: real thing about pushing past people's knees, maybe touching other
Speaker 2: people physical contact. Sounds like he was not into that
Speaker 2: at all. Some people are not into that to a
Speaker 2: clinical degree, and I feel like, whoever's more put out,
Speaker 2: you should just refer to them. It just makes things
Speaker 2: so much more pleasant than saying no to somebody who's
Speaker 2: asking you to do something for them that really is
Speaker 2: no skin off of your.
Speaker 4: Back at all.
Speaker 2: So I don't think you are an a hole like necessarily,
Speaker 2: but I think in this case, if there was an
Speaker 2: a hole, it was it was you. Okay, okay, check,
Speaker 2: now I'm done.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I agree in that. My philosophy is two parts. One is,
Speaker 1: you know, you're all on this plane together, everyone's crammed
Speaker 1: in there, and it's just one of those social situations
Speaker 1: where I think everyone should just do their best to
Speaker 1: just work it all out and.
Speaker 3: Get along while you're done.
Speaker 1: In that short time that you're forced to be rammed
Speaker 1: in there together, you know, like just help each other out.
Speaker 1: It's just a lot easier, a lot less friction. No
Speaker 1: one likes to be on those planes anyway. And then
Speaker 1: the second part is I think there's an implicit thing
Speaker 1: where if you're an aile seed person. I'm an ile
Speaker 1: seed person, you know that you're gonna have to get
Speaker 1: up and let people out, Like I like an aisle
Speaker 1: seat at a concert and at a sports game, and
Speaker 1: you're going to get up and down a lot and
Speaker 1: let people in who have to use the bathroom or
Speaker 1: get their beer or whatever. And it's the same on
Speaker 1: a plane, Like, you know what you're getting into with
Speaker 1: an aisle seat. That's if you want it. I love
Speaker 1: the aisle seat, but you got a you know what's coming.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you could sit by the window, and that's what
Speaker 1: you do if you know, Like I'm just I'm going
Speaker 1: to sleep. I know, I don't pee on airplanes. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be bothered, so I'll just take that
Speaker 1: window seat. So that's my thing, is you know what
Speaker 1: you're getting into if you're in an aisle seat, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to get up. I think people should always
Speaker 1: get up. It's just easier. I don't like sliding my
Speaker 1: crutch or my butt past somebody's face what at all ever,
Speaker 1: So like it's a reasonable thing I think to say,
Speaker 1: you know, would you mind just standing up and letting
Speaker 1: me in? And that's what I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one another there was one other red
Speaker 2: flag that I that caught my attention was when Frank
Speaker 2: suggested that this guy was just an entitled young man
Speaker 2: who no one had said no to in his life.
Speaker 2: That sounds then that you were doing this out of hostility,
Speaker 2: not just because you felt like you were being put out,
Speaker 2: but because you wanted to be an obstacle in this
Speaker 2: man's life, be the person who said no to him.
Speaker 2: And again, that's just hostile, and I agree with you.
Speaker 2: It flies in the face of just going along and
Speaker 2: getting along while we're on this flight together so everybody
Speaker 2: can get off and never see each other again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we weren't there, so kid may have been
Speaker 1: very sarcastic and nodded and acted like sort of a jerk,
Speaker 1: but he may have thought that you drew first blood. True,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's where we stand. And Frank, you're
Speaker 1: certainly not an ahole. You're sound like a sweet guy
Speaker 1: who listens to the show and it means a lot
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 3: So we're not we're not calling you out for that.
Speaker 2: But he literally wrote in and asked, but you did.
Speaker 1: Ask, and that's our stances. Just get out, let the
Speaker 1: guy out, live and let live. And if you see
Speaker 1: that same twenty year old kid asking some old person
Speaker 1: who has bad knees like, that's a different situation'suly different.
Speaker 2: We were responding strictly to the to the situation as
Speaker 2: it was presented.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, all right, boy. We could have a whole
Speaker 3: other show where we did this.
Speaker 2: We could think we would routinely get ourselves into trouble though.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Instead, listen to the Ultimate Judge, our friend Judge John.
Speaker 2: Hodgman on what the Max Fun Network?
Speaker 4: That's right?
Speaker 2: Nice, Well, since we shouted out the Max Fun Network
Speaker 2: and I already ended the episode, and now listener mails
Speaker 2: over if you want to be like Frank. Frank, by
Speaker 2: the way, thank you for being brave and putting yourself
Speaker 2: out there like that. If you want to put yourself
Speaker 2: out there like that, you can give a shot. Maybe
Speaker 2: we'll answer it, who knows. Either way. You can give
Speaker 2: it a try by sending an email to Stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.