WEBVTT - How Alumin(i)um Works 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:03.159 Hey, everybody, we want to remind you we are wrapping 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:05.880 up our tour this year with three shows in Orlando, Florida, 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:09.520 and Nashville, Tennessee and Atlanta. Tickets are on sale now, 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:10.160 isn't that right? 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.720 That's right? So go to link tree, slash sysk or 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.240 our website Stuff youshould know dot com for ticket links, 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:20.280 info and everything you need. We'll see you guys starting 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:21.040 in August. 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.480 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.200 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:38.760 Chuck and Jerry's lurking around too, which makes this stuff 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:43.520 you should know. Uh, one of the first I think 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:47.040 the first, No, I think we've talked about iron before 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:51.760 the second in our ongoing saga to do an episode 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.280 on each element in the periodic table. Oh kill me, 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:58.360 it's like so much fun, Chuck. 0:00:58.520 --> 0:00:59.840 No, this is a good one. 0:00:59.760 --> 0:00:59.960 Yeah. 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.640 Yeah, that's it for me. I'm done. 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:07.000 We'll see about that. But we're talking today about aluminum, 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:10.160 which is pretty much ubiquitous. If you think about it, 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:12.960 you find aluminum everywhere. I don't even need to rattle 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.840 off where you find aluminum. You can figure that out yourself. 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:21.120 Because it's just that ubiquitous, right, agreed. So one of 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.800 the interesting things about it, though, Chuck, is that as 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.880 much as it's like entered into our world or become 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.880 like so enmessed with our world, it is a very 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:34.319 very new invention as far as elements go and discovery 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.680 and use. Yeah, I mean we've been using copper forever, 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:43.600 iron forever, a bronze even longer than iron. Remember, aluminum 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:46.480 we've been using essentially since the twentieth century. 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:51.320 Is this the aluminum age, Yes, it is an people 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.320 call it that, no, but I think we should start 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:54.960 calling it then. 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:57.880 I mean, bronze had an age, and if iron had 0:01:57.920 --> 0:01:59.240 an age, stone had an age. 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.360 Yeahs a great idea, Chuck, the aluminum age. It's a 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:04.680 wonderful idea. It really gets the point across. 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:05.520 It does. 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:11.240 And you mentioned that it's ubiquitous in use these days 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:15.760 for sure, but it's also abundant. And as Libya Livia 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:18.320 pointed this out because she helped us out with this one, 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:20.120 she did a really good job on this one. I 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:26.280 think eight percent of the total mass of the Earth's 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:30.960 crust has aluminum in it. But it's not like from 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.640 the beginning we could just go down there and chop 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.240 out a bunch of aluminum with a screwdriver and a hammer, 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:41.520 because aluminum had a well, not a problem, it just 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.800 had a quality that it's it bonds very easily with 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:47.880 other elements, so that means it's reactive, so that means 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:50.960 it's in the crust. It is, you know, parts of 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.560 rock and parts of other things in combination with other 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:57.799 elements and minerals. And it wasn't just like, oh, look 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:00.880 there's aluminum, we can just go like, we had to 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:06.760 figure out how to extract usable aluminum from other things. 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.760 Mainly these days and back then something called box site. 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.440 Yeah, boux site is it's kind of like an umbrella 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:17.919 term for naturally occurring aluminum ores. 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:19.679 Basically, yeah. 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.560 But the problem with aluminum, like a lot of metals 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.640 and minerals like show up in nature's ores and we 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:30.680 can extract them. The difficulty is that aluminum is so 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:35.080 reactive it really really meshes with the other mineral or 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.400 the other rock or the other metal, and it's really 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:41.840 tough to get apart. Kind of like poor Wilfrid Brimley 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.640 in the thing. It's like that ameshed. 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.280 Oh man, I'm feeling better now. 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:52.400 So you've got this box site and we know about it. 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:54.800 We know that there's something useful in it, but we 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:57.000 didn't know how to get it out. And for a 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:59.160 long time people had noticed like, oh, there's all sorts 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:01.960 of stuff you can do with this box site that 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.840 we'll call alum which is a kind of aluminum sulfate 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:10.320 made with potassium. People have been using that for about 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:12.120 seven eight thousand years. 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:15.720 Now, Yeah, all sorts of stuff like oh, of course, 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:18.640 the Egyptians they put all kinds of things in makeup, 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:23.680 as we've talked about before. Aluminum or that potassium aluminum 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.599 sulfate is one of them used often, and dyes used 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:31.440 for dressing wounds. I think you can also find aluminum 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.920 in clay. So yeah, for many thousands of years they 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:41.679 were using aluminum strengthened clay to make harder and stronger pottery. 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.440 Yeah, you can't break it. It's like an unbreakable comb. 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.960 Unbreakable what comb? Like a hair comb? 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.120 Yeah, there's a I think it's a brand name even. 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.120 Oh really, I've never heard of it. 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:56.919 It just invites you to break it, and it eventually 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.360 does break, by the way, but it's hard to break. 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.440 I got so yes, people were using it for a while. 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.240 And by the way, as an aside, there's a I 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.440 don't want to say famous, but there's a noteworthy artifact 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:12.680 that was discovered in the tomb of a general zoo 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:17.120 Chu who lived in China about seventeen hundred years ago. 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:21.200 And it's a belt and it's made of aluminum, and 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:23.800 it's what you would refer to as an out of 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:27.760 place artifact or oop art, which is something that kind 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.520 of bucks our understanding of history and time like that 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.280 should not exist because this was the third century CE, 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:36.120 and it. 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.479 Wasn't Lomo control in you know, the Old West or 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:40.680 something like that exactly. 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:42.800 That would be that would be a very significant out 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.359 of place artifact. This one's pretty significant, so much so 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.400 that they're like, we think this is an archaeological prank, 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.240 like a joke. Like somebody was like, this is really 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:53.440 going to blow their minds, and it did. But most 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.080 people are like, this is so inexplicable, there's no way 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:56.760 that it's real. 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.000 Oh that's awesome, yeah, but still an explicit Yes. 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:02.920 That's one of the things that makes it awesome. 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:03.640 Yeah. 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:03.960 Sure. 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.560 But the upside of my whole point was we knew 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:10.640 that there was something useful in there, and as far 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.760 as the chemistry world goes, it's not enough to just 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:15.960 know it's there. They have to isolate it. They're just 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.039 fanatics about it. And they said that about doing that 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:20.520 in the nineteenth century. 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:26.560 Right, Yeah, there was one chemist in particular name Antwin Lovoisier. 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:27.760 Yeah, very nice. 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.400 Yeah, obviously French, and he was like, hey, you know 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:35.280 this aluminum oxide or I think you were calling ilumina 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.320 at that point, you know, we can probably extract this 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.520 stuff wasn't able to. But not too long after an 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:43.400 eighteen and oh eight there was a British chemist name 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:50.800 Sir Humphrey Davy who and he actually named named it. Well, 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:52.599 we'll get to the naming thing in a second. It 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:57.280 goes through some stages. It was to him it was illuminium, 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:02.200 and then he wrote a book of elements elemental in 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:06.560 chemistry I'm sorry, Chemical Philosophy four years after that, and 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:11.000 at that point it was spelled aluminum. But then later on, 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:14.840 like four years later in the Quarterly Review, there were 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.080 a bunch of British chemists who were just like, I 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:20.560 don't like the ring of aluminum. It doesn't sound British enough, 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:25.240 so they went with aluminium with an extra eye, and 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.480 that was basically what people called it for a long time, 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:32.080 except for Americans who were like, you know what, we're 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:36.680 using both of these terms. We really like aluminum. It's 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:38.600 in the dictionary, It's in Webster's dictionary. 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:40.080 Is aluminum? Can we just settle this? 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:45.720 And in nineteen twenty five, finally the American Chemical Society said, yes, 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.640 we were going to say it's aluminum. And so Americans 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:51.880 and Canadians are the only people who call it that's 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:52.640 for some reason. 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:56.160 Yeah, everybody else calls it aluminium. Yeah, they stuck with it, 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.400 They really did. They really stuck with it for sure. 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:04.360 So that Humphrey Davy, going back to him, probably one 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.440 of the reasons he came up with different spellings was 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.320 because he was fresh off of his self experimentation with 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.080 nitrous oxide. He was the guy who called the O 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.520 excellent airbag, remember him. So he was the one who 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.720 said there is an elemental useful metal here in this 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:24.600 cruddy or and he described it before anyone had ever 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:28.280 even isolated it. But in the world of chemistry, you 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:32.800 wouldn't call Sir Humphrey Davy the discoverer of aluminum in chemistry, 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:36.360 to discover something, you have to have isolated it in 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.120 its pure form, and there was an early attempt to 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.400 do that. I think there was a guy named Hans 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:45.640 Christian Ursted who in eighteen twenty five came very close, 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.760 but he had an impure isolated aluminum, and then very 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:55.560 triumphantly Friedrich Vohler or Vuler i think, came up with 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.560 pure aluminum two years after that. 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:03.800 Yeah, it's the old chemistry tradition that in order to 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.960 be named the discoverer, you have to extract it and 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.679 then roll up in a ball and hit someone with it. 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:11.840 That's right, that's the tradition. 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:12.960 That's right. 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.680 But it was really expensive to do so for the 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:18.439 first And it's kind of funny to think about now 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:23.760 because they've gotten so good at making aluminum. It's obviously 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.600 used in so many different things and it's fairly inexpensive, 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.000 but back then it was a luxury item. So aluminum 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.319 at first was known as the Medal of Kings, and 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:36.840 Napoleon loved it and he was like, just think of 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.000 what we could do with this stuff in the military. 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.200 Like it's fairly strong, it's very light, I think, you know, 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.680 the lightness was such a huge attractive quality for aluminum 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.360 still is. And he was like, we need this stuff, 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:52.840 and here I even want to eat off of it. 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.040 So make some cutlery for me, and I'll just keep 0:09:57.240 --> 0:09:59.160 very select sets of this stuff for me and my 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.280 very special guests, and everyone else will just dine on 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:06.160 silver with silver spoons and will use this aluminum. And 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:08.800 they were just going crazy for illumina. It was very 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:11.400 kind of funny to look back at how it was 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.480 a luxury metal in its earliest days. 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:16.559 It definitely was. And one reason why is because even 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:22.080 though Voler had come up with a method for extracting 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.760 pure aluminum, it was really labor intensive. It was really 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.920 hard to do, and you didn't get very much from it. 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.240 So that made it a very precious metal, especially when, 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.320 like you said, you had people like Napoleon the Third 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:38.959 bankrolling investigations into getting more and more aluminum. 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:39.199 Right. 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.040 And one of the reasons why I did not know this, 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.520 but there's probably people out there who do that there 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:49.800 is an aluminum pyramid capping the Washington Monument that was 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:52.000 put It was installed when the monument was built in 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:56.480 eighteen eighty four. Finished is in part because America was 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.280 showing off. Yeah, in eighteen eighty four, it was sill, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:04.760 a very luxurious good and they had the six pound 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:10.000 aluminum period pyramid placed on the top. And it was 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.920 so difficult still at that time to extract aluminum that 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.480 that represented one quarter of the annual production of all 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:19.760 the aluminum in the world that was produced that year, 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:21.640 that one six pound pyramid. 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:24.520 Yeah, it's pretty funny. Eight inches and six pounds, and 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:26.520 they like, get a load of this. Wait'll they see 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.360 this thing? Yes, it's like a bunch of beercans mashed 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:30.560 together exactly. 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:32.719 That's the funniest part. This is eighteen eighty four. They 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.079 paid like seventy five hundred bucks in today's money for it, 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:39.200 which seems kind of cheap to me. But two years later, 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.600 we got so good at extracting aluminum we came up 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:45.600 with another process, which we'll talk about in a second, 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.920 that that pyramid went from like hero to zero almost overnight. 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:52.840 Yeah, but it you know, it also served a purpose 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.920 because well everyone knows aluminum is very anti corrosive, so 0:11:57.360 --> 0:11:59.840 that's a nice topper for a monument. And it also 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.680 served as a lightning rod, so it served a purpose. 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:07.360 But it was for sure a brag, but like you said, 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:11.679 it went kind of to a staple thing very quickly 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:16.360 once some very smart people got to work refining this process. 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:21.400 One was Charles Martin Hall, an Ohian. He's very so 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:27.800 HIGHO and I would say, Paul heral Hero, how would 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:30.240 you pronounce that Herald Herauld? 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:32.600 I think you might actually say the T in that one. 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:33.480 I'm not sure he. 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:36.600 H h E R O U L T. 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:42.400 Another Frenchman, they independently in eighteen eighty six, invented this 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.640 technique that they have now has been code named after 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:51.000 them as the Herald process, in which you dissolve aluminum 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:55.200 oxide and molten cryolite mineral pass the. 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:55.800 Current through there. 0:12:55.840 --> 0:13:00.240 We've talked about those kind of processes before and leave. 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.160 The Frenchman actually filed the patent about a month and 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.280 a half before Hall, but Hall proved that he had 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:10.160 come up with it previously, and so they worked it out. 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.920 They shared credit. They even ended up dying in the 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:17.080 same year. I guess they really wanted to share everything, 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:20.160 so they said let's just die together as well, and 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:24.600 they both passed away in nineteen fourteen, and that was 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:26.880 at the end of the process. Though I think someone 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:28.920 else came along and really refined it. 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:31.600 Yeah, and that was not only not the end, that 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:34.120 was just the beginning. That process is still in use today. 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.400 And then, like you said, a third guy, Karl Josef Behar, 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.920 would you say Yosef Oh? 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:45.000 Probably? I think yeah, okay with Yoseph. 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:48.040 Carl Joseph Bear in nineteen eighty seven. The next year 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:52.319 came up with a way to get aluminum oxide, which 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:57.160 was the base form of aluminum that you start out 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:01.760 within the Hall Herald process. Somebody came along and figured 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:05.040 out a better way to get aluminum oxide from box side. 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.440 So in the span of a year, essentially we went 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:14.160 from aluminum being a precious metal to having an industrial 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:18.800 process in place that we still use today. That's incredible. 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.520 That's why we live in the aluminum age today. I 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:23.640 just think the timing of the whole thing is so amazing. 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.600 And I saw it explained in part because people were 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:30.920 so well aware that aluminum was light and strong and conductive. 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:35.400 Those are really desirable properties. They wanted this metal really bad, 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:38.000 so it was a real target in the chemistry world, 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:40.960 which explains why Hall and Herault both came up with 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:45.480 this same process independently. At the same time. But the 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:47.920 fact that you put that together with Bears Discovery, it 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.200 just all congealed all at once rather than over the 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:53.920 course of you know, decades and decades. Yeah, I just 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:55.080 find that very interesting. 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:56.320 Yeah, it's very cool. 0:14:56.760 --> 0:15:00.200 In fact, Hall in eighteen eighty eight helped out a 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.600 company that still around today. Back then it was called 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.440 the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, and now it's known as the 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:10.520 Aluminum Company of America ALCOA. I'm sure we have listeners, 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.880 plenty of listeners in Pittsburgh that work for alcoa very 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:18.560 big company. And the price of aluminum really went down. 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.120 So I mean, if you want something to go from 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.600 a luxury to like something that you crush against your 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:28.840 head from a beer, can you go from almost five 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:32.240 dollars a pound in eighteen eighty eight to seventy eight 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:34.640 cents in eighteen ninety three, and then all the way 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.520 down to about twenty cents a pound in the nineteen thirties. 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:40.520 Yeah, So in today's prices, it's going from six hundred 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:42.840 and sixty five dollars a pound to five dollars and 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.000 forty five cents a pound in just a few decades. 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:50.960 That's how how radical and just world changing that process 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:52.480 was and is. 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:54.760 All Right, I think that is a heck of an intro. 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:58.000 All right, well, let's take an that break then, I say, 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.400 some podcasts might stop there, Yeah, but we're gonna keep going. 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:31.160 All right, We'll be right back, all right. 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.120 So one of the things, Chuck, that we talked about 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:38.640 was you've mentioned that you melt cryolite. I think it 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:42.080 melts at a thousand degrees celsius, and then you melt aluminum, 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.240 so the temperature has to be even hotter than that, 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.760 like really really hot, and then you pass a really 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.000 strong electrical current through that and to do all this 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:55.440 it's really really energy intensive, as we'll still is. Yeah. 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:58.920 So one of the other things that supported the boom 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:03.520 in aluminum was that the electrical grid and ways of 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.440 creating and generating and getting electricity from place to place 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:10.480 was also developing simultaneously in the United States as well. 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:12.400 That really helped a lot. 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:13.600 Yeah, big time. 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:16.119 And in fact, a lot of aluminum plants early on 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:19.280 were built near dams. They were like, let's just you know, this, 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.760 really make this efficient instead of camp right next to 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.480 that dam over there, so you know, we should probably 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:30.840 go over some of the modern uses of aluminum. Aluminum is, 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:34.440 like we said, has so many great properties, but it 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.960 is fairly soft and weak in and of itself. I 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:39.960 mean it makes then we'll talk about foil and beer. 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:42.880 I can't stop talking about beer cans. And it's great 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.359 for that stuff. But if you want to use it 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:49.000 in you know, commercial settings, you can make commercial aluminum. 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:51.160 You just have to mix in a little iron, maybe 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:55.040 a little silicon, and it makes it much stronger. And 0:17:55.080 --> 0:18:00.160 there are like all kinds of ways that you can alloy. 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:00.879 Is that a word? 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:04.960 I think it works all right. 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:09.120 You can alloify aluminum to do things like, you know, 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.320 build an airplane, and in fact that the right brothers. 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:15.800 You might be thinking that airplane was made of wood, 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:19.480 and it was, but the engine and I never knew 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:23.560 this was made of ninety two percent aluminum. Because they 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:26.800 needed horsepower. They needed a strong enough engine to get 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.200 that little wooden frame off the ground. But they couldn't 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:31.760 make it like out of like you would a car 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.240 enginecause it'd be way too heavy. So they needed to 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.240 be less than two hundred pounds produce that eight horses. 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:42.439 And German car makers were starting to use aluminum for 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.000 their engines and they said you're onto something. They ended 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:47.919 up using eight percent copper to the ninety two percent 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:50.160 aluminum and they got that thing off the ground. 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.520 Yeah, they turned to their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, and it 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:54.600 needed to be no more than two hundred pounds and 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.440 produce eight horsepower. Like you said, he delivered one from 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:00.840 scratch that weigh one hundred and eighty pounds and produced 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:03.560 twelve horse power. So Charlie Taylor really came through. I know, 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:06.160 we talked about him in the Right Brothers episode we did. 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:08.840 Was that a two parter mm? 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:10.640 I don't know. 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:13.080 I want to say it was, but I make a 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:14.359 lot of stuff up in my head. 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:19.760 So, you know, come World War One, not too long after, 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:26.639 they were making full airplanes out of metal. Like aluminum 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:29.439 replaced wood very very quickly, because you had wood and 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.879 fabric airplanes obviously, you know, that was the best they 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:35.160 could do at the time, but aluminum is so much 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:38.760 stronger and you could go a lot faster and do 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:41.760 all kinds of things you couldn't do with wood and fabric. Yeah, 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.320 and there's even Lyvia found a gentleman at the National 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:47.959 Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian who was like, if 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:50.639 it wasn't for aluminum, we wouldn't have the planes in 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:51.840 spacecraft we have today. 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:52.600 Kind of period. 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.119 Yeah, and so that really gets across one of the 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:59.320 big prized things about aluminum. It's strong, but it's also light. 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.000 It's not quite as strong as steel, but it's much 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.679 lighter than steel, I think three times lighter, so its 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.719 strength to weight ratio is much better, which means that 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:11.160 it requires a lot less either horsepower in your your 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:15.440 twelve horse power engine or a lot less I guess 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.600 solid rocket fuel to get your rocket off of the 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:23.120 ground because you're using aluminum. So that's pretty great. There's 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:26.680 another quality of it that's allowed aluminum to really kind 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.720 of help us, as it's conductivity. 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:33.760 Yeah, if it was equally as conductive as copper, it 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.919 would have fully replaced copper at this point because of 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:41.919 how much easier aluminum is, you know, to get. But 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:44.320 it's about two third is as good as copper, which 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:48.360 is still great, very conductive, but it's a third is heavy, 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.800 which is great. That the problem there is you know 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:54.359 you're gonna need aluminum wire. It's about one and a 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:57.800 half times the diameter of copper if you want it 0:20:57.840 --> 0:20:58.800 to perform the same. 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.240 So it is, but that's a lot bigger, so they couldn't. 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:04.639 They tried to for a little while, but they couldn't 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.639 just like go in and replace copper and households and 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:11.160 stuff because the wiring is too big. They do use 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:16.240 it for overhead and underground transmission because you reinforce it 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:18.280 with steel and it can be bigger in diameter. It's 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:20.480 not that big of a deal, but I think in 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:22.840 the sixties and seventies they were trying it in houses 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:27.120 because copper was really expensive. I think it worked well, 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:30.600 but the connections ended up where you connect it together 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:32.800 ended up being a fire hazard, so they did away 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:33.080 with that. 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.800 Yeah, what happens is in where the wiring goes into 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.439 like your outlet, your socket right in the back. The 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:44.280 aluminum expands and contracts much more than copper does, so 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:46.720 it loosens over time, and when it gets loose enough, 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:50.639 it'll arc. And an electrical arc is way worse than 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:54.960 just an electrical current because the electricity encounters gas the 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:58.119 atmosphere and it shoots up to like thirty five thousand 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:00.879 degrees farent height and causes fires. So if you have 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:03.760 you buy a house with aluminum wiring, like from the 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.560 sixties or seventies. Your insurance company is probably going to 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:08.640 be like, if you want insurance on this house, you're 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:10.480 going to have to totally rewire it. 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:11.720 That's right. 0:22:12.160 --> 0:22:14.960 And now we can talk about beer cans finally, because 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:19.080 that is what started to happen all the way back 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:21.840 in the late nineteen fifties. You know, the old cans 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:25.240 were made of usually ten sometimes steel, and there was 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.439 a very forward thinking company in Hawaii called the Hawaii 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.840 Brewing Company, and they tried it out on their Primo 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:34.920 beer and they said, shipping this stuff is a lot better, 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:35.719 it's a lot cheaper. 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:36.680 We can ship it. 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:40.199 To the mainland, no problem. But the can linings that 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:43.200 they were using at the time, there was a chemical 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:45.919 reaction going on between the beer and the can. It 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:49.800 ruined the beer, bankrupted the company. But it did not 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:52.679 die there because Cores was right on their heels. They 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:55.520 were already working on the same thing, and they perfected 0:22:55.520 --> 0:22:58.959 it just a year later in nineteen fifty nine and 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:00.800 basically said the same thing is like, this is a 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:04.840 lot cheaper, it's easier to and you know, lighter obviously 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.919 than glass bottles. It actually helps the beer deprive the 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:12.520 beer of light and oxygen better than bottles, and cores 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:16.320 started the whole thing as far as beer goes, followed 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:19.600 very quickly by Arci Cola on the soft drink side, 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:24.440 and then it was aluminum can City as far as 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:28.879 soft drinks and canned anything goes, basically. But if you 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:32.800 remember when like we were kids, those same aluminum cans 0:23:32.840 --> 0:23:36.400 just were felt heavier and thicker. It's because they were. 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:38.720 They've they've refined the process and made it much thinner 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.480 over the years. But those old cans, because I was like, 0:23:41.520 --> 0:23:44.520 were those ten They weren't. They were aluminum. They were 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:45.640 just a lot heavier back then. 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:51.520 Right. So today aluminum cans are so useful that twenty 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:56.359 percent of the entire global supply goes to making aluminum cans, 0:23:56.640 --> 0:23:59.520 which is pretty amazing. And the other thing about it 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:02.720 is it's high recyclable. As we'll see, it has what's 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:08.840 called infinite recyclability, like it doesn't degrade in the recycling process, 0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:12.520 and it requires way less energy, time and money to 0:24:13.080 --> 0:24:17.160 recycle aluminum cans. So much so that I read that 0:24:17.800 --> 0:24:20.840 the can of say like coke or beer or whatever 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:25.439 you're drinking was probably in the exact same form in 0:24:25.480 --> 0:24:29.680 a different life sixty days before. Each can has about 0:24:29.680 --> 0:24:32.960 a sixty day life cycle from sale to use, to 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.639 recycling to reprocessing to repackaging to going back on the 0:24:36.680 --> 0:24:39.280 store shelf. Again. Isn't that amazing? But it's not like 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:42.680 they just wash out the same can. It's completely disintegrated, 0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:45.280 so it's not the exact same can, but it was 0:24:45.680 --> 0:24:48.320 in some way that same can before. It's like that 0:24:48.359 --> 0:24:51.159 ship we talked about, and does your body replace itself 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:53.520 if you slowly replace each part of the ship, when 0:24:53.600 --> 0:24:56.560 you replace everything, is it's still the same ship? Same 0:24:56.640 --> 0:24:58.920 question applies to aluminum cans. It turns out. 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:01.639 Yeah, I mean, we might as well finish up on 0:25:01.680 --> 0:25:07.919 recycling and just say that we've tried to beat the 0:25:07.960 --> 0:25:11.080 recycling drum over the years, and we know that there 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:14.000 are some problems with the recycling process for a lot 0:25:14.080 --> 0:25:18.359 of stuff. I know glass is particularly problematic, but aluminum 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:21.200 is one of those that they have really really figured 0:25:21.240 --> 0:25:24.400 out how to do it in a great efficient way, 0:25:24.720 --> 0:25:28.639 and it's so recyclable and it's very easy to recycle. 0:25:29.600 --> 0:25:33.520 Yet only fifty percent of aluminum and it's just cans, 0:25:33.960 --> 0:25:36.000 just the cans that people drink. Only fifty percent of 0:25:36.040 --> 0:25:41.760 those still are recycled. So just we implore you. We 0:25:41.800 --> 0:25:43.800 try not to get on the old high horse, but 0:25:44.560 --> 0:25:47.040 if you're not going to recycle anything else, please just 0:25:47.119 --> 0:25:50.600 recycle those cans. It's so easy and it really really 0:25:50.600 --> 0:25:51.280 makes a big dip. 0:25:51.400 --> 0:25:56.399 Yeah. Again, it requires five percent of the carbon emissions 0:25:56.440 --> 0:26:00.080 to recycle aluminum pound for pound then it does to 0:26:00.080 --> 0:26:03.360 process it and create it initially five percent. 0:26:03.840 --> 0:26:05.760 It's not a scam. It's not just going to some 0:26:05.880 --> 0:26:09.879 landfill like. They've really got aluminum recycling down pat so 0:26:09.920 --> 0:26:11.879 you can feel good about throwing that can and the 0:26:11.920 --> 0:26:16.159 recycling and knowing that some other jerk next to you 0:26:16.200 --> 0:26:18.639 will be drinking from almost that same can. 0:26:18.800 --> 0:26:19.840 What two months later. 0:26:19.680 --> 0:26:22.399 You said, yeah, about six, six to eight weeks. 0:26:22.880 --> 0:26:26.359 Yeah, it's just a wonderful thing. So recycle that aluminum. 0:26:26.400 --> 0:26:30.120 There's a very often cited stat that I think goes 0:26:30.119 --> 0:26:31.440 all the way back to two thousand and one. I 0:26:31.440 --> 0:26:34.800 couldn't find a more updated one. But we throw away 0:26:34.960 --> 0:26:39.200 so many aluminum cans that we could rebuild the entire 0:26:39.480 --> 0:26:42.880 US commercial air fleet every three months with that aluminum 0:26:43.320 --> 0:26:46.920 just thrown away. And the other thing talking about is recyclability. 0:26:47.280 --> 0:26:49.720 If you can just recycle aluminum over and over and 0:26:49.760 --> 0:26:54.040 over again, eventually we have enough that we've mined and 0:26:54.119 --> 0:26:57.000 processed that we don't have to mine and process it 0:26:57.040 --> 0:27:00.000 anymore because it's all getting recycled. So we could stop 0:27:00.080 --> 0:27:02.200 to that now, right, No. 0:27:02.320 --> 0:27:02.399 Not. 0:27:02.480 --> 0:27:05.160 If we're we're only recycling fifty percent of our cans, 0:27:05.160 --> 0:27:08.119 that means we have to we have to supplement the 0:27:08.320 --> 0:27:12.560 recycled material with another fifty percent of new cans. 0:27:13.080 --> 0:27:15.960 Yeah, but about seventy five percent of all aluminum ever 0:27:16.119 --> 0:27:17.480 used is still being used. 0:27:17.560 --> 0:27:20.080 Okay, yeah, that's true. So sure, I guess twenty. 0:27:21.240 --> 0:27:22.960 There's some missing math in there somewhere. 0:27:23.119 --> 0:27:25.520 Well, that's so we're talking cans and then we're talking 0:27:25.600 --> 0:27:26.320 all aluminum. 0:27:26.600 --> 0:27:27.439 Well, yeah, it's true. 0:27:27.600 --> 0:27:31.560 Yeah, apparently the building industry has a much higher recycling rate. 0:27:32.160 --> 0:27:34.200 That's right, it's good for them. 0:27:34.560 --> 0:27:38.560 You want it? Wow? Do you want to take another break? Yeah, 0:27:38.640 --> 0:27:41.160 let's do it. Okay, Well here we are. Everybody taken 0:27:41.200 --> 0:27:41.840 another break? 0:28:09.200 --> 0:28:09.560 All right? 0:28:09.600 --> 0:28:14.840 Everyone? Cans are great. We love those cans. But I love, 0:28:15.920 --> 0:28:19.119 and I always have loved aluminum foil. I don't know 0:28:19.160 --> 0:28:22.680 what it is about it. I think it's the I 0:28:22.760 --> 0:28:27.200 think it's the fold ability of foil. I just love it. 0:28:27.320 --> 0:28:30.400 I've had a roommate who used to make eat candy 0:28:30.440 --> 0:28:33.920 and make little things out of gum wrappers, little little 0:28:33.920 --> 0:28:36.560 swords and things and poke people, and I just, I 0:28:36.560 --> 0:28:40.239 don't know. I've always loved aluminum foil. I even make 0:28:40.280 --> 0:28:44.680 the mistakes sometimes still calling it tinfoil, even though I 0:28:44.720 --> 0:28:47.400 don't think it was at all, even around when I 0:28:47.440 --> 0:28:50.320 was a kid. Even I'm not picked it up for 0:28:50.440 --> 0:28:51.600 my grandmother or something. 0:28:51.760 --> 0:28:54.560 Probably, I mean, everybody calls it tinfoil still. 0:28:55.680 --> 0:28:56.440 Yeah, I guess so. 0:28:56.800 --> 0:29:00.480 Even Adam Savage on his his Japanese fol oil ball 0:29:00.600 --> 0:29:04.400 video called tinfoil yeah, which we'll talk about in a sec. 0:29:04.480 --> 0:29:09.800 But in nineteen ten, there was a manufacturer, an aluminum manufacturer, 0:29:09.800 --> 0:29:12.480 that said, all right, I can figure out how to 0:29:12.480 --> 0:29:15.840 get this aluminum into these big rolled sheets, and we 0:29:15.880 --> 0:29:19.000 can package candy in it, we can package tobacco in it, 0:29:19.600 --> 0:29:21.920 And before you know it, in nineteen thirteen it hit 0:29:22.000 --> 0:29:25.240 the US in the form of life savers, candy rolls, 0:29:25.680 --> 0:29:28.520 and other kinds of candy bars. And then it didn't 0:29:28.520 --> 0:29:31.680 take long before like the nineteen twenties, when it was 0:29:31.840 --> 0:29:34.440 used as you know, the rolls of foil. 0:29:35.000 --> 0:29:36.440 That very useful. 0:29:36.520 --> 0:29:38.840 I still try to not use it because you know, 0:29:40.680 --> 0:29:44.200 to you know, cutting, like reducing is the first thing 0:29:44.240 --> 0:29:47.040 in reduce, reuse, recycle. So it's not like I'm just 0:29:47.120 --> 0:29:49.560 like ripping tinfoil off all the time just to play 0:29:49.600 --> 0:29:52.320 with it. But it is a very handy thing to 0:29:52.400 --> 0:29:53.000 have in the house. 0:29:53.120 --> 0:29:55.920 If you toss that aluminum foil ball in the recycling, 0:29:56.160 --> 0:29:58.120 it doesn't matter. You can play with it all day long. 0:29:58.720 --> 0:30:01.920 Heck yeah, because it's infinitely recyclable. I don't know if 0:30:01.960 --> 0:30:03.120 we said that or not yet. 0:30:03.640 --> 0:30:06.200 We've a bunch of times, but reducing is still better. 0:30:06.360 --> 0:30:08.040 Sure, that's why it's number one on the list. 0:30:08.240 --> 0:30:09.560 But it's so hard, Chuck. 0:30:10.200 --> 0:30:11.720 To not play with illuminum boil. 0:30:11.800 --> 0:30:15.760 Yeah, to reduce, Yeah, it is. So we can't not 0:30:15.880 --> 0:30:19.320 talk about the tinfoil hat too, Like think about it. 0:30:19.360 --> 0:30:21.880 No one ever says the aluminum foil hat. They say 0:30:21.920 --> 0:30:26.080 foil or tinfoil. Apparently, the Vice magazine traced it back 0:30:26.120 --> 0:30:29.560 to a nineteen twenty seven story by al Juics Huxley's 0:30:29.560 --> 0:30:33.640 brother Julian. I can't remember what it's called, and I 0:30:33.720 --> 0:30:36.120 knew it. It's a great name too. Sorry, everybody, but 0:30:36.440 --> 0:30:39.760 he develops this form of mass control. The scientists the 0:30:39.760 --> 0:30:42.560 main character, and he uses a cap of metal foil 0:30:43.440 --> 0:30:46.800 to prevent that mind control being used on him. And 0:30:46.880 --> 0:30:49.880 as far as Vice Magazine's concerned, that's where the whole 0:30:49.920 --> 0:30:51.160 thing began. 0:30:52.400 --> 0:30:53.200 Who brother was this? 0:30:53.400 --> 0:30:56.360 Al Juis Huxley. The door is a perception guy. 0:30:56.560 --> 0:31:00.000 I think you added you did the josh Adavowl al Juis. 0:31:00.160 --> 0:31:02.960 Yeah, I've always done that. I don't think I've ever 0:31:03.040 --> 0:31:05.720 said his name other than al Juis Huxley. 0:31:06.200 --> 0:31:08.760 Oh, I'm surprised you don't say aluminium because they've added 0:31:08.760 --> 0:31:09.400 the valeve for you. 0:31:09.560 --> 0:31:12.360 I refuse to because I'm an American three and three. 0:31:12.440 --> 0:31:14.120 I believe red, white and blue chuck. 0:31:14.640 --> 0:31:18.040 That's right, all right, So that happened in what nineteen 0:31:18.040 --> 0:31:18.640 twenty seven? 0:31:18.800 --> 0:31:21.200 No, seriously, please call a doctor. My blood is white. 0:31:21.200 --> 0:31:23.240 Sometimes it's no, it can't be helped. 0:31:23.240 --> 0:31:26.640 You're fine, You're fine. That was in nineteen twenty seven. 0:31:26.760 --> 0:31:30.360 And then in World War Two there was a propaganda 0:31:30.440 --> 0:31:35.920 broadcaster named William Joyce who talked about tinfoil hats protecting 0:31:35.960 --> 0:31:36.880 against shrapnel. 0:31:37.440 --> 0:31:38.880 So that was another use. 0:31:38.760 --> 0:31:43.960 Right, Yeah, that guy was a Nazi propagandist who was 0:31:44.000 --> 0:31:47.840 trying to undermine the British morale. He was a real jerk. 0:31:47.920 --> 0:31:49.880 They hung him named lord he ha ha. 0:31:50.800 --> 0:31:51.040 Yeah. 0:31:51.040 --> 0:31:52.920 I always want to say lord he haw. Actually I 0:31:52.920 --> 0:31:55.440 want to say lord he haw haw because I always 0:31:55.480 --> 0:31:58.719 had an extra vowel. But the upshot of all this, 0:31:59.880 --> 0:32:01.760 I don't even know if that applies in this case. 0:32:01.760 --> 0:32:04.720 But how about to wrap up this section like a 0:32:04.760 --> 0:32:07.920 piece of aluminum foil. If you've ever watched Better Call 0:32:08.040 --> 0:32:13.120 Saul the original, I guess the first couple of seasons 0:32:13.160 --> 0:32:14.640 is brother. What's his brother's name? 0:32:15.560 --> 0:32:16.520 I never seen the show. 0:32:16.840 --> 0:32:20.280 Oh okay, Well, Michael McKeon plays his brother very well. 0:32:20.360 --> 0:32:24.960 He's a big jerk, but he has an electro magnetic sensitivity, 0:32:25.600 --> 0:32:28.040 which they explore in depth, and he wraps himself in 0:32:28.400 --> 0:32:31.440 magnetic foil anytime he wants to get out of the house. 0:32:32.280 --> 0:32:34.480 But an MIT study in two thousand and five found 0:32:34.480 --> 0:32:38.080 that doing that would actually amplify electromagnetic frequencies rather than 0:32:38.680 --> 0:32:40.760 prevent them from entering your body or head. 0:32:41.760 --> 0:32:43.000 No goods, then, yeah. 0:32:42.840 --> 0:32:45.160 Tim, foil hat does not work, everybody. 0:32:46.320 --> 0:32:50.640 I referenced the Japanese foil ball thing, and it's apparently 0:32:50.680 --> 0:32:53.600 one of these internet challenges from like five years ago 0:32:53.640 --> 0:32:56.760 that I had never heard of me either, so immediately 0:32:56.760 --> 0:32:59.800 went and looked it up. And you know, it's basically 0:32:59.840 --> 0:33:03.600 you take a big, you know, crinkly ball of foil 0:33:04.320 --> 0:33:07.920 and you start hammering on it until you do it 0:33:07.960 --> 0:33:09.880 so much that it ends up. You know, if you 0:33:10.080 --> 0:33:12.040 just use the hammer, you can even get it down 0:33:12.080 --> 0:33:15.160 to a pretty smoothish. 0:33:15.960 --> 0:33:16.840 Aluminum ball. 0:33:17.960 --> 0:33:20.160 I did see others though, that you know, then they 0:33:20.200 --> 0:33:23.400 would get out some grinders and some sandpaper and stuff. 0:33:23.520 --> 0:33:24.400 That feels like cheating. 0:33:25.240 --> 0:33:26.880 Well, I mean, it depends on what you want to 0:33:26.920 --> 0:33:28.600 up with it. They could have stopped and just said, 0:33:28.600 --> 0:33:30.840 all right here, this is like really cool. But then 0:33:30.880 --> 0:33:32.840 when you like sand it down and use the grinder 0:33:32.880 --> 0:33:35.320 and use like polish and stuff, you can literally take 0:33:35.360 --> 0:33:39.560 it to the point where it's a very very shiny. 0:33:39.600 --> 0:33:42.280 It looks like almost like a solid chrome steel ball, 0:33:43.240 --> 0:33:46.240 and it's really cool and fun to see. And I 0:33:46.280 --> 0:33:47.920 think I want to try to do it. 0:33:48.360 --> 0:33:52.640 I think you shouldn't. You should post it on Instagram. 0:33:51.320 --> 0:33:53.920 Maybe, I mean, if I'm well, I'll post it either way. 0:33:53.920 --> 0:33:55.320 I was going to say, if it's a success, but 0:33:55.520 --> 0:33:56.840 it's even more fun if I screw it. 0:33:56.880 --> 0:34:00.000 Up exactly totally. But that gets across how aluminum can 0:34:00.120 --> 0:34:03.719 be decorative. So, like a lot of shiny paper or 0:34:03.720 --> 0:34:06.200 shiny materials that are just shiny on one side, they're 0:34:06.200 --> 0:34:08.960 coated in aluminum because they figured out a technique to 0:34:09.080 --> 0:34:12.480 flash vaporize it in a vacuum and it goes whoop 0:34:12.560 --> 0:34:14.879 and coats whatever happens to be in there with it. 0:34:15.320 --> 0:34:18.640 That's the process they use it, flash vaporizing aluminum. You've 0:34:18.640 --> 0:34:21.040 got to feel like some sort of god on Earth 0:34:21.080 --> 0:34:23.400 when you're able to do that, when you press that button, 0:34:23.440 --> 0:34:23.680 you know. 0:34:24.440 --> 0:34:29.279 Yeah, it's used in all kinds of buildings, kind of 0:34:29.320 --> 0:34:32.600 starting with in the nineteen thirties in New York City 0:34:32.640 --> 0:34:35.799 with the Empire State Building. Use a lot of aluminum. 0:34:36.520 --> 0:34:38.799 It is used a lot in car making. They use 0:34:38.880 --> 0:34:44.440 about eighteen percent of all aluminum is used in automaking 0:34:44.480 --> 0:34:48.319 these days. And then I mean what else, Like you 0:34:48.360 --> 0:34:52.400 mentioned the decorative paper, it's in toys, it's in medicine. 0:34:52.920 --> 0:34:55.359 It can be an acid if it's aluminum hydroxide. 0:34:55.440 --> 0:34:57.719 Yeah, most over the counter an acids are made to that. 0:34:58.440 --> 0:35:01.640 Yeah, it's still used topically, just like they did back 0:35:01.680 --> 0:35:03.720 in the old days for burns and wounds and stuff 0:35:03.760 --> 0:35:05.560 like that, and it's still in makeup. 0:35:05.640 --> 0:35:07.680 Yeah, and it plugs up your pors and your anti. 0:35:07.480 --> 0:35:12.479 Persprint, yeah, which we just talked about in What History 0:35:12.480 --> 0:35:16.520 of Hygiene? That's right and apparently and I always thought 0:35:16.560 --> 0:35:20.520 that that was not good at all, but Lvia pointed 0:35:20.560 --> 0:35:23.279 out in that podcast, and you know, we can talk 0:35:23.280 --> 0:35:26.359 about it from here too, that it is it has 0:35:26.400 --> 0:35:31.359 not been proven decidedly that aluminum is really really bad 0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:34.360 for your body and the quantities that you would normally 0:35:34.520 --> 0:35:35.319 have aluminum. 0:35:35.400 --> 0:35:38.360 Yeah, there was a scare back in about twenty eleven 0:35:38.440 --> 0:35:40.960 that the aluminum in your anti perseprint was going to 0:35:40.960 --> 0:35:43.439 give you breast cancer, and apparently that was just made 0:35:43.480 --> 0:35:46.000 up on the internet and studies don't actually support that. 0:35:46.560 --> 0:35:49.440 The new one is that aluminum and I shouldn't say new, 0:35:49.480 --> 0:35:51.360 because I think it kind of started in the sixties 0:35:51.360 --> 0:35:55.440 and seventies that there was some sort of correlation between 0:35:55.680 --> 0:35:59.880 the tau protein tangles and plaques that are associated with 0:35:59.880 --> 0:36:03.440 Alzheimer's and aluminum consumption. Was it in like mice or 0:36:03.560 --> 0:36:06.120 rats that they found this in I think I. 0:36:06.120 --> 0:36:09.640 Think it was mice, but they were I think they're 0:36:09.719 --> 0:36:13.520 like injecting mice, right, And they ended up saying like 0:36:14.640 --> 0:36:16.880 humans are never going to come into contact with this 0:36:17.000 --> 0:36:20.239 much aluminum just from you know, being on the Earth 0:36:20.239 --> 0:36:23.560 and using aluminum. I think they have found that there's 0:36:23.600 --> 0:36:25.919 like aluminum in the drinking water supply of your town, 0:36:26.280 --> 0:36:29.120 which has happened and is a real problem. Then if 0:36:29.120 --> 0:36:32.799 you have Alzheimer's, that can accelerate it. But I don't 0:36:32.840 --> 0:36:35.919 think they have still linked it to like causing full 0:36:35.920 --> 0:36:37.040 stop Alzheimer's. 0:36:37.160 --> 0:36:39.799 No, but they have identified it as a neurotoxin because 0:36:39.800 --> 0:36:42.319 remember how it's super reactive. It does the same thing 0:36:42.360 --> 0:36:44.880 with cells in your body, including your neurons, so it 0:36:44.920 --> 0:36:48.120 can really mess your brain up, and it causes double 0:36:48.160 --> 0:36:50.920 strand breaks, which messes up your DNA. So when that 0:36:51.080 --> 0:36:54.799 cell divides into another one that new cells, DNA is 0:36:54.800 --> 0:36:58.560 messed up too, hence tumors too. So there are problems. 0:36:58.600 --> 0:37:00.960 That's aluminum, Like you said, it is in the water supply. 0:37:01.040 --> 0:37:04.560 It's really in a lot of surprising places, and we 0:37:04.680 --> 0:37:07.879 put those things in our body. Again, want to point 0:37:07.920 --> 0:37:12.080 out before the twentieth century, this didn't happen. People weren't 0:37:12.120 --> 0:37:15.520 like ingesting aluminum. It just didn't exist in that form 0:37:15.719 --> 0:37:19.640 on Earth. Right, that's a new thing. But it does 0:37:19.680 --> 0:37:23.760 seem that despite it not being used in any biological process, 0:37:24.040 --> 0:37:26.920 despite it being very new, and so the human body 0:37:26.920 --> 0:37:28.680 has not really encountered this and gotten used to it. 0:37:28.719 --> 0:37:32.840 Our kidneys are supposedly very very efficient at flushing aluminum 0:37:32.920 --> 0:37:34.960 right out of the body about as fast as it 0:37:35.000 --> 0:37:38.120 comes in. Yeah, I mean, that's that's impressive. 0:37:38.800 --> 0:37:41.359 It is, And that's the that's where it stands right now. 0:37:41.360 --> 0:37:43.839 I don't think anyone has like closed the book and said, well, 0:37:43.880 --> 0:37:45.560 we're just not going to study this anymore. 0:37:45.239 --> 0:37:48.800 Right, but right now that's where things stand. 0:37:48.920 --> 0:37:49.200 Yes. 0:37:49.640 --> 0:37:53.040 One problem with aluminum is that there have been instances 0:37:54.120 --> 0:37:59.320 fairly recently about aluminum hoarding. In the early twenty tens, 0:37:59.400 --> 0:38:03.480 the Go Goldman Sax Company, they bought a warehouse complex 0:38:03.640 --> 0:38:09.160 outside of Detroit, Michigan, and they stored aluminum for producers 0:38:09.200 --> 0:38:12.719 and for banks and for people who traded aluminum. And 0:38:13.200 --> 0:38:15.560 they said, you know, at a certain point in the 0:38:15.600 --> 0:38:17.960 years that followed, buyers are trying to get a hold 0:38:18.000 --> 0:38:20.480 of aluminum, and all of a sudden, what used to 0:38:20.480 --> 0:38:21.959 take you know, a month a month and a half 0:38:22.000 --> 0:38:24.279 to get was taking a year or more to get 0:38:24.840 --> 0:38:26.640 and it was a real problem, and there were people 0:38:26.640 --> 0:38:29.480 like beer companies and soft drink companies were saying, what's 0:38:29.520 --> 0:38:31.880 going on. This is costing us millions and billions of 0:38:31.920 --> 0:38:37.200 dollars waiting on these aluminum delays. And Goldman Sacks was like, Hey, 0:38:37.239 --> 0:38:40.520 you know, we don't have enough forklift drivers and trucks 0:38:40.520 --> 0:38:44.160 and that's the problem. It's not us telling everyone to 0:38:44.200 --> 0:38:47.280 hold on to that aluminum to make a false supply 0:38:48.120 --> 0:38:50.719 issue so we can charge more for it. But the 0:38:50.719 --> 0:38:52.760 New York Times came along and said, none, that's exactly 0:38:52.760 --> 0:38:56.759 what's going on. You're just increasing profits by creating a 0:38:56.760 --> 0:38:57.280 false supply. 0:38:57.440 --> 0:39:00.920 Yeah. What's interesting is the aluminum market. Aluminium as a 0:39:00.920 --> 0:39:05.359 commodity is in like the supply is tracked so closely that, 0:39:05.560 --> 0:39:09.120 you know, just little instances of hoarding like that, if 0:39:09.160 --> 0:39:12.400 it happens like enough times, it can it can affect 0:39:12.719 --> 0:39:16.080 like the price pretty easily. The supply can just stop. 0:39:16.120 --> 0:39:18.560 People do that. When it's really cheap, they'll do what 0:39:18.640 --> 0:39:20.879 Goldman Sex did, it just buy up supply and sit 0:39:20.960 --> 0:39:24.120 on it until it goes up in price. Because in 0:39:24.239 --> 0:39:26.480 part you're sitting on the supply and then you just 0:39:26.560 --> 0:39:29.080 kind of slowly reintroduce it to the market so that 0:39:29.160 --> 0:39:32.280 you don't drop that high price while you're still raking 0:39:32.320 --> 0:39:35.120 in the dough by selling the aluminum you have. And 0:39:35.200 --> 0:39:38.080 to be fair, Goldman Sex was far from the only 0:39:38.160 --> 0:39:41.120 investment bank doing this running these kind of warehouses. But 0:39:41.280 --> 0:39:43.360 this is the early twenty tens, fresh off of the 0:39:43.360 --> 0:39:46.560 financial meltdown that Goldman Sex got bailed out for, so 0:39:46.680 --> 0:39:50.360 everybody was they were just pointing out Goldman Sex alone. 0:39:51.040 --> 0:39:55.640 Yeah, that's fair, I think. So that's as fair as 0:39:55.680 --> 0:39:55.920 you get. 0:39:55.920 --> 0:39:58.000 It's called tit for tat, buddy. 0:39:57.760 --> 0:39:58.480 In this case. 0:39:59.480 --> 0:40:01.719 Even just a couple of years ago, in twenty twenty one, 0:40:02.200 --> 0:40:06.560 they found aluminum hoarding going on in Vietnam to the 0:40:06.600 --> 0:40:11.120 tune of about up to five billion dollars worth of aluminum. 0:40:11.280 --> 0:40:14.000 They said, this may be the largest aluminum horde that's 0:40:14.040 --> 0:40:17.319 ever been And like you said, people are just you know, 0:40:18.280 --> 0:40:21.920 doing the wrong thing. And the prices really fluctuated quickly. 0:40:21.960 --> 0:40:24.200 I think there was a low of about fifteen hundred 0:40:24.239 --> 0:40:28.359 dollars a ton during the pandemic shutdown, and then they 0:40:28.400 --> 0:40:31.319 went to about thirty five hundred dollars a ton, just 0:40:31.360 --> 0:40:32.279 a couple of years later. 0:40:32.719 --> 0:40:35.760 Yeah, it's very big, very sensitive. The price is very sensitive. 0:40:35.840 --> 0:40:37.920 China is a big producer now, and they've figured out 0:40:37.960 --> 0:40:42.160 that when they throttle or dial back supply, they can 0:40:42.320 --> 0:40:45.719 change the price pretty easily themselves too. So it's a 0:40:45.920 --> 0:40:49.640 it's a strange market, especially if we stop mining it. 0:40:50.040 --> 0:40:52.040 I want to know what's going to happen to the 0:40:52.080 --> 0:40:55.160 price when we just say, okay, we have our aluminum 0:40:55.160 --> 0:41:01.120 supply and now we're just circulating it throughout the economy, Like, 0:41:01.200 --> 0:41:03.440 is that gonnke? Is that going to make it more 0:41:03.440 --> 0:41:06.759 expensive less expensive? I'm curious what will happen to that. 0:41:07.800 --> 0:41:11.040 Well, the cynical human in me thinks that they will 0:41:11.120 --> 0:41:17.320 then find a way to maximize profits there by doing 0:41:17.360 --> 0:41:18.760 something untoward. 0:41:19.560 --> 0:41:25.360 Probably you don't have much faith and commodity traders, huh, 0:41:25.520 --> 0:41:27.839 I know. So one other reason Chuck to make it 0:41:27.880 --> 0:41:31.600 to this circular economic status for aluminum where we've mined 0:41:31.719 --> 0:41:34.240 everything that we need and we're just reusing the stock 0:41:35.120 --> 0:41:38.680 is because box site mining is really really bad for 0:41:38.719 --> 0:41:41.720 the environment. Most mining is, but any kind of strip 0:41:41.800 --> 0:41:45.040 mining is really bad because it just completely depletes the 0:41:45.719 --> 0:41:50.040 land of everything it needs to keep itself going. Box 0:41:50.040 --> 0:41:55.360 site also really pollutes water supplies to with other heavy metals. 0:41:56.360 --> 0:42:00.640 And then also because it's so energy intensive, just the 0:42:00.719 --> 0:42:03.840 box site mining produces three percent of the world's direct 0:42:04.400 --> 0:42:08.400 CO two emissions. Just the mining, not startling, not processing 0:42:08.400 --> 0:42:10.840 it into aluminum, just the mining alone does that. 0:42:11.800 --> 0:42:15.960 Yeah, that's uh yeah, three percent. I mean three is 0:42:16.000 --> 0:42:18.120 a small number, but we were talking about all of 0:42:18.120 --> 0:42:20.799 the CO two emissions on planet Earth coming from one 0:42:20.840 --> 0:42:22.360 single process. 0:42:22.400 --> 0:42:23.440 That's that's staggering. 0:42:23.520 --> 0:42:26.319 Yeah, And so start looking around if you're like, just 0:42:26.360 --> 0:42:29.120 ask yourself before you throw something, await, is this aluminum? 0:42:29.200 --> 0:42:32.920 If the answers, yes, throw it in recycling, then yeah. 0:42:32.960 --> 0:42:36.560 And you know, world War two there were kids turning 0:42:36.560 --> 0:42:39.120 in their gum wrappers for the war effort to get 0:42:39.120 --> 0:42:40.520 aluminum recycled, so. 0:42:42.760 --> 0:42:44.360 Be more like World War two kids. 0:42:44.560 --> 0:42:48.840 Someone apparently suggested melting down the Washington Monument cap during 0:42:48.840 --> 0:42:51.680 that time, but everybody just kind of didn't say anything 0:42:51.719 --> 0:42:52.360 about it, just what. 0:42:52.480 --> 0:42:53.239 It did they really? 0:42:53.320 --> 0:42:54.280 Yeah, somebody did. 0:42:54.880 --> 0:42:56.719 And people are like, how do you even know that? 0:42:57.040 --> 0:43:01.400 Right, that's a really arcane piece of trivia. Yeah, okay, 0:43:01.480 --> 0:43:05.040 well that's it for aluminum everybody. And that means, of course, 0:43:05.080 --> 0:43:06.320 it's time for listener mail. 0:43:09.760 --> 0:43:14.160 I'm gonna call this airplane etiquette. Did you read this 0:43:14.200 --> 0:43:14.600 one yet? 0:43:15.160 --> 0:43:17.040 I don't think that I didn't. 0:43:17.360 --> 0:43:18.520 This is fresh offor presses. 0:43:18.600 --> 0:43:20.840 But I'm also gonna call it, am I the a 0:43:21.000 --> 0:43:24.160 hole because this is sort of what this person is 0:43:24.239 --> 0:43:27.880 asking a little bit with this airplane situation that this 0:43:27.960 --> 0:43:30.680 gentleman was on recently, and it is asking for advice. 0:43:30.400 --> 0:43:31.640 And like, did I do the wrong thing? 0:43:31.680 --> 0:43:32.120 Oh boy? 0:43:32.560 --> 0:43:37.040 So I'm gonna read sort of a shorter version. But 0:43:37.520 --> 0:43:40.279 needless to say, Frank is really into the show and 0:43:40.400 --> 0:43:43.319 very thankful for it. So Frank and his wife were 0:43:44.480 --> 0:43:48.400 on a comfort plus flight from our good friends at 0:43:48.400 --> 0:43:52.799 Delta recently and they were in the you know, the 0:43:52.840 --> 0:43:54.200 aisle seat in the middle seat. 0:43:54.680 --> 0:43:56.719 I believe Frank was on the aisle. He's tall. His 0:43:56.760 --> 0:43:57.319 wife took the. 0:43:57.239 --> 0:44:01.279 Middle seat and they were bored and seat belted when 0:44:01.280 --> 0:44:03.400 a passenger assigned to the windows heat arrived. 0:44:03.880 --> 0:44:04.560 It's a courtesy. 0:44:04.600 --> 0:44:06.360 My wife and I turned our leg sideways so he 0:44:06.360 --> 0:44:08.719 would have an easier time sliding past us. But he 0:44:08.760 --> 0:44:11.080 said that he doesn't feel comfortable sliding past people like 0:44:11.080 --> 0:44:13.040 that and asked us to get up and let him in. 0:44:13.800 --> 0:44:15.759 I mentioned there was plenty of room for him to 0:44:15.760 --> 0:44:18.360 slide past, since we were in comfort plus, but he 0:44:18.400 --> 0:44:20.879 insisted we get up, so we unbuckled, We. 0:44:20.880 --> 0:44:21.960 Got up, and we let him in. 0:44:23.040 --> 0:44:25.799 When we were preparing to land, about ten minutes out, 0:44:26.360 --> 0:44:28.800 the same passenger decided they needed to use the restroom. 0:44:29.239 --> 0:44:31.080 He asked my wife and I to get up again 0:44:31.120 --> 0:44:33.960 to slide out. I was watching a movie at the time, 0:44:34.040 --> 0:44:35.920 so I had to pause the movie. Oh my God, 0:44:36.480 --> 0:44:41.960 fold the arm that holds the screen back into the seat, 0:44:41.960 --> 0:44:43.440 you know. Sometimes they come out of the arm there, 0:44:44.120 --> 0:44:46.239 and then fold up my tray holding my drink into 0:44:46.239 --> 0:44:48.440 the seat so he could get it out. I did this, 0:44:48.560 --> 0:44:51.160 turn my leg sideway so we could slide out, and 0:44:51.200 --> 0:44:54.240 this angered him, and he showed his displeasure by sliding 0:44:54.280 --> 0:44:58.640 past us angrily and shaking his head in an exaggerated manner. 0:45:00.200 --> 0:45:01.239 So this is where we are so far. 0:45:01.600 --> 0:45:05.120 He returned from the restroom and then asked again if 0:45:05.120 --> 0:45:06.880 we would get up this time and let him in. 0:45:07.520 --> 0:45:11.000 I mentioned to him that he slid pats us getting 0:45:11.000 --> 0:45:13.640 out quite easily, so can't you just do that sliding 0:45:13.680 --> 0:45:17.279 back in? He said, no, I feel uncomfortable sliding past, 0:45:17.400 --> 0:45:21.440 and he called the flight attendant to come over. And 0:45:21.480 --> 0:45:25.319 the flight attendant arrived and was fairly puzzled. I think 0:45:25.400 --> 0:45:27.799 he was. The flight attendant was confused as to what 0:45:27.840 --> 0:45:29.880 was going on. I knew the situation was beginning to 0:45:29.920 --> 0:45:32.160 stress my wife out, and quite frankly me as well. 0:45:32.680 --> 0:45:35.279 Not wanting to cause any more stress issues because we 0:45:35.280 --> 0:45:38.520 were landing, I relented, unbuckled and stood up again, and 0:45:38.560 --> 0:45:42.719 my wife did the same. So before we get into this, 0:45:43.160 --> 0:45:46.360 just may finish this last part, which is what bothers me, 0:45:46.680 --> 0:45:50.239 is the h he kept saying he's not comfortable doing so. 0:45:50.880 --> 0:45:55.719 He never said why he was uncomfortable, and that he 0:45:55.920 --> 0:45:59.680 just insisted that people unbuckle and stand What about my comfort, 0:46:00.040 --> 0:46:03.680 life's comfort. What if we weren't comfortable unbuckling and getting 0:46:03.800 --> 0:46:06.839 up because you're supposed to remain seat belt at all 0:46:06.920 --> 0:46:09.279 times in case of turbulence. But if my wife was 0:46:09.360 --> 0:46:11.080 nine months pregnant, But if I was an eighty year 0:46:11.080 --> 0:46:13.800 old man with bad knees, what if I had anxiety 0:46:13.800 --> 0:46:17.640 about unbuckling? So the wife, I'm sorry. The flight attendant 0:46:17.640 --> 0:46:20.640 never said anything. And my question to you guys is 0:46:21.040 --> 0:46:22.920 what is the proper etiquette that did a lot of 0:46:22.920 --> 0:46:27.400 internet searches couldn't find an answer. Passengers in his twenties. 0:46:27.400 --> 0:46:29.799 My wife and I in her mid fifties. We were 0:46:29.800 --> 0:46:32.040 in good shape, so it wouldn't a health issue. But 0:46:32.120 --> 0:46:34.000 I thought this man was an entitled young man who's 0:46:34.040 --> 0:46:35.920 never been told no in his life. 0:46:36.840 --> 0:46:38.879 All right, that's from Frank. So what do you say? 0:46:41.840 --> 0:46:44.600 I mean, Frank, I think yes, you were the a 0:46:44.680 --> 0:46:47.560 hole in this in this instance, Oh for sure. 0:46:48.320 --> 0:46:50.319 Well here's what I'll say. 0:46:50.320 --> 0:46:52.480 Wait, wait, now I have to explain. I can't just 0:46:52.520 --> 0:46:54.560 be like, sure, there you go, that's my ja. 0:46:55.600 --> 0:46:57.320 It sounded like you were, dude no, So. 0:46:57.360 --> 0:47:03.480 Like the it seems like you were put out because 0:47:03.520 --> 0:47:05.920 you're being asked to do something you didn't want to do. 0:47:05.960 --> 0:47:08.200 It didn't have anything to do with your comfort level. 0:47:08.239 --> 0:47:11.440 And the examples that you came up with for at 0:47:11.480 --> 0:47:14.040 that man intruding on your comfort level were just made up, 0:47:14.400 --> 0:47:17.520 Like you're not eighty, your wife isn't pregnant. You were 0:47:17.640 --> 0:47:21.040 just annoyed. That guy sounded like he had like a 0:47:21.080 --> 0:47:25.000 real thing about pushing past people's knees, maybe touching other 0:47:25.040 --> 0:47:28.319 people physical contact. Sounds like he was not into that 0:47:28.400 --> 0:47:31.719 at all. Some people are not into that to a 0:47:31.760 --> 0:47:38.239 clinical degree, and I feel like, whoever's more put out, 0:47:39.120 --> 0:47:41.240 you should just refer to them. It just makes things 0:47:41.400 --> 0:47:44.880 so much more pleasant than saying no to somebody who's 0:47:44.920 --> 0:47:47.680 asking you to do something for them that really is 0:47:47.880 --> 0:47:49.120 no skin off of your. 0:47:48.960 --> 0:47:49.560 Back at all. 0:47:49.680 --> 0:47:53.839 So I don't think you are an a hole like necessarily, 0:47:53.920 --> 0:47:56.319 but I think in this case, if there was an 0:47:56.360 --> 0:48:00.520 a hole, it was it was you. Okay, okay, check, 0:48:00.640 --> 0:48:01.200 now I'm done. 0:48:02.280 --> 0:48:02.600 Well. 0:48:02.719 --> 0:48:08.360 I agree in that. My philosophy is two parts. One is, 0:48:09.120 --> 0:48:11.800 you know, you're all on this plane together, everyone's crammed 0:48:11.800 --> 0:48:13.920 in there, and it's just one of those social situations 0:48:13.960 --> 0:48:17.000 where I think everyone should just do their best to 0:48:17.080 --> 0:48:18.279 just work it all out and. 0:48:18.280 --> 0:48:20.640 Get along while you're done. 0:48:20.680 --> 0:48:23.320 In that short time that you're forced to be rammed 0:48:23.320 --> 0:48:26.520 in there together, you know, like just help each other out. 0:48:26.520 --> 0:48:29.200 It's just a lot easier, a lot less friction. No 0:48:29.239 --> 0:48:32.399 one likes to be on those planes anyway. And then 0:48:32.480 --> 0:48:36.160 the second part is I think there's an implicit thing 0:48:36.239 --> 0:48:39.399 where if you're an aile seed person. I'm an ile 0:48:39.440 --> 0:48:43.279 seed person, you know that you're gonna have to get 0:48:43.400 --> 0:48:45.160 up and let people out, Like I like an aisle 0:48:45.160 --> 0:48:48.319 seat at a concert and at a sports game, and 0:48:48.360 --> 0:48:50.360 you're going to get up and down a lot and 0:48:50.440 --> 0:48:52.799 let people in who have to use the bathroom or 0:48:52.800 --> 0:48:55.160 get their beer or whatever. And it's the same on 0:48:55.200 --> 0:48:56.880 a plane, Like, you know what you're getting into with 0:48:56.880 --> 0:48:59.080 an aisle seat. That's if you want it. I love 0:48:59.120 --> 0:49:01.600 the aisle seat, but you got a you know what's coming. 0:49:02.400 --> 0:49:04.960 Otherwise you could sit by the window, and that's what 0:49:05.000 --> 0:49:07.440 you do if you know, Like I'm just I'm going 0:49:07.480 --> 0:49:09.520 to sleep. I know, I don't pee on airplanes. I 0:49:09.520 --> 0:49:11.000 don't want to be bothered, so I'll just take that 0:49:11.040 --> 0:49:14.000 window seat. So that's my thing, is you know what 0:49:14.040 --> 0:49:16.399 you're getting into if you're in an aisle seat, you're 0:49:16.400 --> 0:49:18.160 gonna have to get up. I think people should always 0:49:18.160 --> 0:49:20.719 get up. It's just easier. I don't like sliding my 0:49:20.880 --> 0:49:26.160 crutch or my butt past somebody's face what at all ever, 0:49:26.360 --> 0:49:29.560 So like it's a reasonable thing I think to say, 0:49:29.640 --> 0:49:31.360 you know, would you mind just standing up and letting 0:49:31.360 --> 0:49:33.520 me in? And that's what I think. 0:49:34.760 --> 0:49:37.239 Yeah, there was one another there was one other red 0:49:37.280 --> 0:49:41.000 flag that I that caught my attention was when Frank 0:49:41.040 --> 0:49:43.520 suggested that this guy was just an entitled young man 0:49:43.560 --> 0:49:47.160 who no one had said no to in his life. 0:49:47.200 --> 0:49:50.200 That sounds then that you were doing this out of hostility, 0:49:50.480 --> 0:49:54.080 not just because you felt like you were being put out, 0:49:54.080 --> 0:49:57.520 but because you wanted to be an obstacle in this 0:49:57.560 --> 0:50:00.000 man's life, be the person who said no to him. 0:50:00.239 --> 0:50:02.239 And again, that's just hostile, and I agree with you. 0:50:02.280 --> 0:50:04.440 It flies in the face of just going along and 0:50:04.440 --> 0:50:06.800 getting along while we're on this flight together so everybody 0:50:06.840 --> 0:50:08.400 can get off and never see each other again. 0:50:09.680 --> 0:50:14.000 Yeah, and we weren't there, so kid may have been 0:50:14.080 --> 0:50:17.080 very sarcastic and nodded and acted like sort of a jerk, 0:50:17.120 --> 0:50:21.720 but he may have thought that you drew first blood. True, 0:50:22.480 --> 0:50:25.399 you know. So that's where we stand. And Frank, you're 0:50:25.440 --> 0:50:28.040 certainly not an ahole. You're sound like a sweet guy 0:50:28.040 --> 0:50:29.680 who listens to the show and it means a lot 0:50:29.719 --> 0:50:29.920 to you. 0:50:29.960 --> 0:50:31.719 So we're not we're not calling you out for that. 0:50:31.840 --> 0:50:36.239 But he literally wrote in and asked, but you did. 0:50:36.239 --> 0:50:39.759 Ask, and that's our stances. Just get out, let the 0:50:39.800 --> 0:50:43.200 guy out, live and let live. And if you see 0:50:43.239 --> 0:50:47.400 that same twenty year old kid asking some old person 0:50:47.400 --> 0:50:50.440 who has bad knees like, that's a different situation'suly different. 0:50:50.640 --> 0:50:54.359 We were responding strictly to the to the situation as 0:50:54.360 --> 0:50:55.160 it was presented. 0:50:55.600 --> 0:50:58.040 Okay, yeah, all right, boy. We could have a whole 0:50:58.080 --> 0:50:59.040 other show where we did this. 0:50:59.160 --> 0:51:02.479 We could think we would routinely get ourselves into trouble though. 0:51:03.200 --> 0:51:03.439 Yeah. 0:51:03.560 --> 0:51:07.840 Instead, listen to the Ultimate Judge, our friend Judge John. 0:51:07.640 --> 0:51:10.920 Hodgman on what the Max Fun Network? 0:51:11.520 --> 0:51:11.880 That's right? 0:51:11.960 --> 0:51:15.840 Nice, Well, since we shouted out the Max Fun Network 0:51:15.920 --> 0:51:18.840 and I already ended the episode, and now listener mails 0:51:18.880 --> 0:51:21.279 over if you want to be like Frank. Frank, by 0:51:21.320 --> 0:51:23.360 the way, thank you for being brave and putting yourself 0:51:23.360 --> 0:51:26.000 out there like that. If you want to put yourself 0:51:26.000 --> 0:51:27.640 out there like that, you can give a shot. Maybe 0:51:27.680 --> 0:51:30.480 we'll answer it, who knows. Either way. You can give 0:51:30.520 --> 0:51:33.600 it a try by sending an email to Stuff podcast 0:51:33.800 --> 0:51:37.640 at iHeartRadio dot com. 0:51:38.760 --> 0:51:41.080 Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:51:41.560 --> 0:51:44.760 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:51:44.960 --> 0:51:47.880 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.