Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and this Wednesday, October two,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be in beautiful Austin, Texas to do
Speaker 1: the live version of my End of the World with
Speaker 1: Josh Clark show. I'll be at the North Door and
Speaker 1: you can get tickets in info at n D venue
Speaker 1: dot com. Just search for the End of the World
Speaker 1: with Josh Clark and there's a few tickets left for
Speaker 1: the Stuff You Should Know live show in New Orleans
Speaker 1: on October tent For those tickets and more information, go
Speaker 1: to s y s K live dot com. Tickets are
Speaker 1: going fast to both shows, and we'll see you in October. Everybody.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's
Speaker 1: Jerry over there, and uh like Staying through the Hourglass.
Speaker 1: These are the uh podcasts of our lives. I love
Speaker 1: that and that that beginning so much that I just
Speaker 1: made an homage to it. I didn't even realize I
Speaker 1: loved it until it was coming out of my mouth
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, God, this is so good. You know,
Speaker 1: we live in a cancel culture, we might get canceled
Speaker 1: for that one for what the Days of Our Lives reference? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because it was so bad. Okay, yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: we It's an odd time to be alive, isn't it.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're in the transition. But in true stuff
Speaker 1: you should know fashion we are doing an episode on
Speaker 1: sand after about what a month or so after an
Speaker 1: episode on sand dunes? Right, and this is technically not
Speaker 1: even necessarily the sand episode. It may be we're gonna better,
Speaker 1: we're gonna put it together like it is, but there
Speaker 1: may come a time fifty sixty years down the road
Speaker 1: when life extension is really kicked in and we're still
Speaker 1: doing this where we're like, we gotta do just saying
Speaker 1: it now. Yeah, except by then, the episode maybe titled
Speaker 1: what was sand? That's right, man, because boy, this episode
Speaker 1: is depressing. Yeah, and it could be titled sand colon
Speaker 1: yet another way humans are destroying our planet. Yeah, oh look,
Speaker 1: another ecological disaster added to the list. But we need
Speaker 1: hotels in fake islands. Yeah, the fake islands kind of
Speaker 1: got me the most, you know. Yeah, but we're spoiling
Speaker 1: this thing. Oh sorry, sorry, So sand, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of it so much so. The way back in the day, Archimedes,
Speaker 1: one of our favorite people, UM used it in a
Speaker 1: thought experiment called the sand reckon Er. And in the
Speaker 1: sand Reckoner, he basically he created this to to start
Speaker 1: figuring out how to how to create numbers to express
Speaker 1: extraordinarily large values, because that's what it's used for. Still, yeah,
Speaker 1: just because there's so much of it. It's either it
Speaker 1: depends there's the world is divided into two types of people, Chuck,
Speaker 1: people who point to the stars as an enormous number,
Speaker 1: example of am enormous number, and people who point to sand,
Speaker 1: and then people like us that use big max. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's size, though not number, it's size. It
Speaker 1: could be length member we've stacked him to the moon before, Um,
Speaker 1: but so our comedies came up with a base of
Speaker 1: one million. That's what he started with, and he figured
Speaker 1: out how to how to express numbers up to eight
Speaker 1: times ten to the sixty three power with the sand
Speaker 1: reckon or thing. And the point of it is is like, yes,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of sand, a lot of sand, so
Speaker 1: much so I've seen um that there's seven and a
Speaker 1: half billion billion grains of sand just on the world's beaches.
Speaker 1: That's from University Hawaii. I saw another one from Chris
Speaker 1: Flynn from Tour Observatory in Finland. He estimated a mill allion,
Speaker 1: billion billion grains of sand just on the world's beaches.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna say a jillion jillian bazillion because
Speaker 1: apparently you can say whatever. Yeah, but there's a lot.
Speaker 1: But the point is this, there is a lot of sand,
Speaker 1: especially depending on the math and the grain of the
Speaker 1: grain size, that kind of stuff. But there's a finite
Speaker 1: amount of sand. And what's been going on behind the
Speaker 1: scenes for decades now is a very um rapid depletion
Speaker 1: of the available sources of sand, so much so that
Speaker 1: it is literally being shuffled from one part of the
Speaker 1: world to another, from poorer countries to wealthier countries, sometimes
Speaker 1: from uh some inland areas out to other areas, from
Speaker 1: the rural areas to the cities. Um, there's a huge
Speaker 1: sand shuffle going on, and it is proving pretty rough
Speaker 1: for the environment as a result. Yeah. I mean, first all,
Speaker 1: I'm forty eight years old and this is the first
Speaker 1: I've really heard of this. Like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: thought there was just enough sand for all of time,
Speaker 1: you would think. So, I mean, look at a desert.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of sand, right, But here's the deal.
Speaker 1: We use about fifteen billion tons for just construction every year,
Speaker 1: and they are mining worldwide about forty billion tons of
Speaker 1: sandy year. I think that's sand and gravel. But still, well,
Speaker 1: I do know that it is. I think with gravel.
Speaker 1: There's a u N report called Sand and Sustainability. That
Speaker 1: report from UNIP United Nations Environment Program. So crushed rock,
Speaker 1: sand and gravel account for the largest volume of extracted
Speaker 1: solid material worldwide. Okay, so you're saying, like more than oil,
Speaker 1: more than natural gas, more than any other Is that
Speaker 1: solid material? Yeah? Okay, I think so. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what they mean by that is, look, is oil is solid?
Speaker 1: I I don't know. So I saw it also. Put
Speaker 1: as like um as are as extractable raw material, sand
Speaker 1: and gravel is by far the most um extensively mind,
Speaker 1: which is why I said that, and we'll get to
Speaker 1: it in detail. But the spoiler here is although new
Speaker 1: sand is being made constantly by erosion, which are also
Speaker 1: also going to cover not nearly nearly quickly enough. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, our use is far far out basing it, yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes sand and non renewable resource. Technically, it's just
Speaker 1: like oil like yeahs as if you know the environmental
Speaker 1: conditions are right, over time, new oil will be made,
Speaker 1: but we're talking over very long periods. Sand doesn't take
Speaker 1: nearly as long to form as oil does, but it
Speaker 1: still takes way longer to replenish itself than than we're
Speaker 1: using it up. That's right. So, um, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about sand. Yeah, so we get sand. Um.
Speaker 1: Sand is the final product. I guess I even hate
Speaker 1: calling it a product, but I don't mean it in
Speaker 1: the sense of something to be bought and sold, even
Speaker 1: though it is. But it's the final product of erosion
Speaker 1: from everything from water and wind of course, to ice
Speaker 1: and land like glaciers. Grinding against stone creates sand and
Speaker 1: volcanic lava. Even when that stuff chills and then shatters
Speaker 1: when it makes contact with air. That's how you get
Speaker 1: lava sand like the black sand in Hawaii. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that stuff's really good. Is a soil a mender apparently? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's like a locked in carbon, I believe, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure it's add that some to the
Speaker 1: red clay here in Georgia and you're cooking, Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: cooking with volcanic ash um. There's also rain, the mild
Speaker 1: bit of um like acid that is in rain. Still
Speaker 1: even though we we beat acid, rain beat it bad um.
Speaker 1: There there's still some in there always. And it weathers rocks,
Speaker 1: so that helps the road rocks and create sand to um.
Speaker 1: And you've got geological sources of sand, which is just
Speaker 1: straight up rocks. You also have biological sources of sand,
Speaker 1: things like coral um for minera I believe, for a minieria, No,
Speaker 1: for a menifera. I got it. I got it, very
Speaker 1: very very tiny shelled creatures um that that produced like
Speaker 1: white or pink sand sometimes. And then there's also we
Speaker 1: get sand from the poop of the parrot fish. Did
Speaker 1: you did you hear about that? Yeah, we talked about
Speaker 1: that before, did we. It didn't strike me. It didn't
Speaker 1: ring a bell at all. Yeah, it was either I
Speaker 1: don't think it was in dunes. I feel like it
Speaker 1: was further, it must have been coral reefs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it because they actually eat parts of the coral
Speaker 1: reef accidentally while they're eating food, and then there's guts
Speaker 1: grind up the reef and then they poop out pure
Speaker 1: beautiful white sand, like hundreds of pounds of white sand
Speaker 1: a year. Yeah. But when you really are talking about
Speaker 1: sand that most of us think of a sand, we're
Speaker 1: thinking wind and water generally oceans, rivers, and then in
Speaker 1: the desert of course wind right and then the desert.
Speaker 1: We must have talked about this in sandy, is that
Speaker 1: the deserts are just ancient beaches from old like seabeds
Speaker 1: and things like that, riverbeds sometimes that's right. And as
Speaker 1: far as what sand is literally, you know, it's parts
Speaker 1: of rock, uh se. The hardest parts of rock of
Speaker 1: sand is quartz, but you've also got gypsum in there,
Speaker 1: you've got limestone. Um. We already talked about lava like
Speaker 1: there are other compositions, and it really depends on what
Speaker 1: kind of sand you're gonna have on obviously what kind
Speaker 1: of rock it came from, like where you are in
Speaker 1: the world, right. And then if you're an engineer or um,
Speaker 1: somebody who makes use of sand, um, they typically don't
Speaker 1: classify it or categorize it by composition. They more interested
Speaker 1: in the size. Um. So sand is there's and there's
Speaker 1: not one universal definition, which I found kind of surprising.
Speaker 1: But um, depending on who you ask, uh it is. UH.
Speaker 1: Civil engineering today says it's a small gray of rock,
Speaker 1: finer than gravel, coarser than silt. The American Society for
Speaker 1: Testing and Materials they produced their Standard Practice for Classification
Speaker 1: of Soils for Engineering Purposes, Unified Soil Classification System. That's
Speaker 1: all one title. They say that sand is particles of
Speaker 1: soil between seventy five microns and four point seven five
Speaker 1: millimeters in size. That's a big piece of sand. And
Speaker 1: then it comes in course medium and fine. And this
Speaker 1: is extraordinarily boring. I understand that fully, but it points
Speaker 1: out the fact that sand is still a rock. It's
Speaker 1: just a very very tiny size rock. Right Like there's gravel,
Speaker 1: there's silt. They're stand in between, but it's still a rock.
Speaker 1: It's just a different size as far as like engineers
Speaker 1: and construction people are concerned. Right, And depending on again
Speaker 1: what kind of rocket came from and what it's made
Speaker 1: of and where you get it and how it was formed,
Speaker 1: the shape is going to be different. It can be
Speaker 1: very rough, it can be very smoother. Around the river sand,
Speaker 1: which is what's mainly used in construction is irregular, and
Speaker 1: they need that irregular shape for that kind of construction
Speaker 1: because the middle sort of sand, which is the smoother
Speaker 1: ocean sand, isn't as good. And desert sand, which is
Speaker 1: the crime Dela crime of sand, very polished, very uniform
Speaker 1: and smooth and round turns out is not good at
Speaker 1: all for construction. No. So, so the three types of
Speaker 1: sand that we find on Earth, our river which is
Speaker 1: a regularly shaped ocean, which is smooth, and desert which
Speaker 1: is Billy D Williams Sorry for that. I was like,
Speaker 1: did Josh just pass out because I just said all that? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: I know, I just had to rebuild it though for
Speaker 1: the joke, I understand. So um you said that, Uh well, hey,
Speaker 1: should we take a break now and come back and
Speaker 1: talk about how we use sand? I think saying this
Speaker 1: is really boring. Let's take a break is a perfect
Speaker 1: opportunity for people to leave and not come back. So
Speaker 1: let's do that. I'm thrilled, alright, Chuck is we're saying
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled by this because I know we're building up
Speaker 1: to the big payoff. You know, San did it in
Speaker 1: the parlor. I was going to say the candlestick. I
Speaker 1: always go to the candlestick For some reason. I think
Speaker 1: the idea of just hitting someone over the head with
Speaker 1: the candlestick really resonates with me. Wow, you know, not
Speaker 1: like I want to do it or whatever. I just
Speaker 1: I'm like, geez, you know, it's gotta hoit. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: watch my back next time we're candle shopping. It's right,
Speaker 1: That's why I always take your candle shopping. I'm always
Speaker 1: always right there on the end. You're just trying to
Speaker 1: work up the courage. Yeah, or just I'm like, just say,
Speaker 1: just say the wrong thing, chick right now. And then
Speaker 1: I always turned around, you go, this one's pretty right.
Speaker 1: Cut crystal, chuck. Look, So, speaking of cut crystal, sand
Speaker 1: is not made used to make cut crystal. Oh is
Speaker 1: that right? No, it's not. But sand is used to
Speaker 1: make glass. And we did a great episode on was
Speaker 1: it glad Mirrors years ago, Yeah, where we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about this, and then of course silicon microchips
Speaker 1: are made from silica sand. It's also used in plastic.
Speaker 1: We should I know, we planned to do one on
Speaker 1: plastic at some point, so that'll figure in again. Cosmetics, cleaners,
Speaker 1: grit and the cleaner sometimes. Yeah, I mean, like, um,
Speaker 1: if you use something like soft scrub or something like that,
Speaker 1: like that, grit's got to come from somewhere, and you
Speaker 1: can bet it's probably sand because again sand, it's just
Speaker 1: very tiny rock. It's not gonna like break down or
Speaker 1: anything over time. Um. And we've been using sand for
Speaker 1: industrial purposes, specifically glassmaking, for at least years. I believe
Speaker 1: they used it back in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Used in
Speaker 1: Egypt for construction for sure, did they as well? Well,
Speaker 1: they use it for glass too, So I mean we've
Speaker 1: figured out that sands pretty pretty useful. We also now
Speaker 1: today use it for fracking. We did an episode on fracking.
Speaker 1: Remember that our world is getting smaller, and like you,
Speaker 1: when you inject like water and slurry, um, part of
Speaker 1: the slurry is sand to kind of use it to
Speaker 1: break up rock to release natural gas. But just far
Speaker 1: and away, the biggest use of sand today by human
Speaker 1: beings is to make concrete. That's right, and I'll say
Speaker 1: it again we said it before. Fifteen billion tons of
Speaker 1: sand every year by the construction industry alone. Um. And
Speaker 1: here's a few stats for you. UM, A typical house
Speaker 1: that's with that means that three bedroom, two bass feet
Speaker 1: I guess made entirely of concrete. I guess. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's typical these days. Two hundred tons of sand. Um,
Speaker 1: A larger building like a school, maybe about three thousand
Speaker 1: tons of sand. A nuclear power plant about twelve million
Speaker 1: tons of sand. And we just did an episode on
Speaker 1: the US high interstate system. Remember all those roads, Yeah,
Speaker 1: think about thirty thousand tons of sand per kilometer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I did the math, and I converted about two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand miles, because there's like forty eight thousand miles
Speaker 1: of interstate and about a hundred and fifty thousand miles
Speaker 1: of highway. Fair enough. Converted that to kilometers. I no
Speaker 1: longer remember what it converts to. But times thirty thousand
Speaker 1: tons of a kilometer, that's nine billion, six hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six million tons of sand locked into the highways,
Speaker 1: just in the U S alone, that are constantly being
Speaker 1: re redone and they are you know. Yeah. And also
Speaker 1: apparently it's used in asphalt too, so just surface streets too.
Speaker 1: And that's a that's a big point. I used a
Speaker 1: really important word just now. Locked, Like when we use
Speaker 1: sand for concrete in construction. Um, it stays put. That's
Speaker 1: the point of it. When you use sand in in concrete,
Speaker 1: it's part of the aggregate. It's also part of the
Speaker 1: binder because it's used in cement too. So when you
Speaker 1: use a bunch of sand and you create something out
Speaker 1: of concrete, that sand is staying put. And because it's
Speaker 1: not a non renewable resource, it's you just used up
Speaker 1: some sand and you're no longer shuffling around from place
Speaker 1: to place. It's it's in construction now, it's locked in.
Speaker 1: That's right. And as I mentioned before, it's locked together
Speaker 1: mainly that river sand that's really irregular, uh, and its
Speaker 1: shape locks together better that if you think about it, it
Speaker 1: it kind of makes sense that really smooth round desert sand.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, put a bunch of ping pong balls
Speaker 1: in a bag that's not gonna lock together. That's a
Speaker 1: good analogy. I would have said, more like putting a
Speaker 1: bunch of Billy d Williams in a bag together. They're
Speaker 1: not going to lock Hey man, that's some schlitzmalt locker
Speaker 1: and you've got a party. Yeah. Wait, was that the
Speaker 1: one he used to know? He did? Cult? Right? How
Speaker 1: could I forget he never made Cult forty five taste
Speaker 1: any better? Which was the one with the Oh I
Speaker 1: guess it was Slits that had the bowl that wouldn't
Speaker 1: charge into the bar and Billy d Williams wrestled that
Speaker 1: bowl in one again. Can you imagine working on those
Speaker 1: commercials back in the day. Yeah, I'm sure everybody was
Speaker 1: really drunk on malt liquor. It's like, we're gonna build
Speaker 1: a big set here on stage, a bar set, and
Speaker 1: we're going to release a live bull and film it.
Speaker 1: See what half it? Wouldn't you have to be drunk
Speaker 1: on malt liquor to do that? I guess. So what
Speaker 1: about Errol Morris directing all those Miller like commercials? Those
Speaker 1: are great Miller heavy? Oh was it? I thought? Was?
Speaker 1: Are you sure? Almost positive as light? I think were?
Speaker 1: Those are Miller high life. Okay, So here's the thing
Speaker 1: I like. I like Carol Morris. I like his work.
Speaker 1: I think Thin Blue Line is arguably the best documentary
Speaker 1: ever made. It's certainly up there. Um It's not my favorite,
Speaker 1: but I respect it. But I'm not like a junkie
Speaker 1: for his work. I just love the fact that he
Speaker 1: just does whatever project appeals to him at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he directs a lot of commercials. That's that's
Speaker 1: where the money is. There's not money in documentaries. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he's not doing it because he's like there's some
Speaker 1: you know, neat philosophical bent that he has toward Miller
Speaker 1: at that moment, and so he's gonna go do. Oh
Speaker 1: he's just hired. And I'm sure they hire him for
Speaker 1: his unique perview Okay, not per view but point of view.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's he's a commercial director for money, and
Speaker 1: that affords him the ability to go um making no
Speaker 1: money on documentaries. I may love him even more now.
Speaker 1: He's great. Okay, so we're talking about malt Lak or
Speaker 1: what was before that, Billy Do? But oh yeah, hey done. Though,
Speaker 1: there's this all comes full circle because Errol Morris directed
Speaker 1: a great documentary called Vernon, Florida and one of the
Speaker 1: elderly couples in Vernon, Florida that was a whole thing
Speaker 1: about the star of sand that they had and they
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that the sand they collected I
Speaker 1: think from the desert in New Mexico is actually growing nice.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you picked up on that, because that
Speaker 1: is why I brought up Billy D Williams again so
Speaker 1: we could get to that point. Man. Nice job, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So um, you said that the river sand is really
Speaker 1: the only kind you can use for construction. That's right, okay,
Speaker 1: which is is true, and we're using a lot of it,
Speaker 1: so much so that every time a city gets bigger
Speaker 1: they build a new high rise or something like that.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in the world a river is scraped of its sand.
Speaker 1: A river, a lake, maybe a dam, but some inland
Speaker 1: system of water because really river sand, from what I
Speaker 1: can tell, is just beach sand that hasn't happened yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's where it's all, but it all wants
Speaker 1: to go there. It's all down the road and then
Speaker 1: once it gets down to the beach, it's really broken
Speaker 1: down to like it's it's most you know, constituent, hardest
Speaker 1: parts that aren't going to wash away. Um, but it
Speaker 1: it's so it's still a regular it's not it's not
Speaker 1: smooth or polished yet. So construction is an enormous consumer
Speaker 1: of sand. I saw that China in either in three
Speaker 1: years or every three years uses the more the an
Speaker 1: amount of sand that's greater than the entire amount of
Speaker 1: sand the United States consumed in the twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll talk more about this, but a
Speaker 1: lot of this is um well, not in China, but
Speaker 1: in some of these vacation destinations, building these fake islands.
Speaker 1: No China is doing that too, Oh are they doing that?
Speaker 1: They're using it for every possible idea you can think of, well,
Speaker 1: fake islands and then just adding you know, adding land
Speaker 1: to the shoreline. Yeah, you want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about beach nourishment here. So there's a there's something
Speaker 1: called beach nourishment or beach replenishment or beach filling, and
Speaker 1: it is basically like um, people are saying, Hey, are
Speaker 1: our beaches wearing away? We really like this incredibly valuable
Speaker 1: coastal real estate, this plot, let's get the beach back.
Speaker 1: So they will go and get some sand. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: import it. Sometimes they go out offshore and actually literally
Speaker 1: vacuum the stuff up, or they'll use huge buckets to
Speaker 1: dredge it up and then they dump it on shore
Speaker 1: and then they run over it with some heavy equipment
Speaker 1: and they have extended the beach significantly. Depending on the
Speaker 1: size of the project. It can. It can replenish an
Speaker 1: enormous beach for a very long stretch. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: that's beach nourishment. That's a huge use of sand right now.
Speaker 1: Um in addition to construction for river sand, but as
Speaker 1: far as like sea sand and coastal sand, beach nourishment
Speaker 1: is a big use of it. And then like you
Speaker 1: were saying, building artificial islands is a is a huge use.
Speaker 1: Like islands that just aren't were never there, They were
Speaker 1: never It's not replenishing an island, it's hey, let's build
Speaker 1: an island here where there really wasn't one. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the irony there is they're islands that are disappearing because
Speaker 1: the sand is being taken away to build island shaped
Speaker 1: like palm trees right off the coast. Yeah. Literally, that's
Speaker 1: what those islands. So, like I think in Indonesia at
Speaker 1: least twenty four islands have literally vanished because they were
Speaker 1: mined for their sand and it was moved over to um.
Speaker 1: I guess Dubai is that where it went. I think
Speaker 1: Dubai Dubai or Singapore one of the Singapore those are
Speaker 1: they're they're both doing a lot of that. Singapore, I
Speaker 1: think is created about fifty square miles of land and
Speaker 1: grown by twenty as a country, like physically grown because
Speaker 1: of adding sand. Yeah, but it's just shuffling sand from
Speaker 1: one part of the globe to another. And you know,
Speaker 1: and the one hand, it's like that's terrible, like that
Speaker 1: sand was meant to be there in Indonesia. Um. But
Speaker 1: Indonesia also has like sev in habited islands that are
Speaker 1: just basically made up of sand. Um. And who said
Speaker 1: that they had to be there? I think it's there's
Speaker 1: there's also something to be said about human ingenuity to say, hey,
Speaker 1: let's move this island over here and make this other
Speaker 1: island bigger. Yeah, can we do it? Yeah, we can
Speaker 1: do it. It's neat much so as far as this
Speaker 1: nourishment goes, though, it's called a soft soft armoring technique
Speaker 1: as opposed to hard armoring like building a sea wall.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing with beach nourishment is I mean
Speaker 1: it sounds great, like, hey, the beach is eroding, let's
Speaker 1: just add a bunch of sand and now the beach
Speaker 1: is back. But think about everything on that beach. Just
Speaker 1: dumping tons of sand on the beach, is I mean
Speaker 1: they use a word like nourishment, I think, very purposefully
Speaker 1: to make it sound like, oh, this is so good,
Speaker 1: we're nourishing something. But which when you dump you know, tons,
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of tons of sand on something, you're
Speaker 1: gonna kill a lot of stuff underneath it. Yes, so
Speaker 1: they're figuring out that beach nourishment in particular, if you're
Speaker 1: going to do it, it's preferable to building a sea wall.
Speaker 1: They're saying, like everyone agrees with that, And the reason
Speaker 1: why is because once you build a sea wall, you're
Speaker 1: actually preventing erosion so that the beach can never replenish itself.
Speaker 1: And you're not necessarily affecting your own beach. You're affecting
Speaker 1: beaches down the coast where your beach is being moved
Speaker 1: down to that beach, and now that beach is not
Speaker 1: being replenished because you build a sea wall. So bringing
Speaker 1: in imported sand is preferable to building a sea wall.
Speaker 1: But the problem is, like you're saying, you're dumping a
Speaker 1: bunch of sand h and a place where it wasn't before,
Speaker 1: so you're killing everything in there. And then we humans
Speaker 1: tend to think of beaches is just a deposit of sand.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely not correct. There is a lot of life
Speaker 1: and ecosystems going on in the sand that we can't see.
Speaker 1: Just because we can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
Speaker 1: Um that are really vital to an area. And it
Speaker 1: has a chain reaction when you dump an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of sand onto a beach and that it kills the
Speaker 1: stuff that was already there, which means that higher and
Speaker 1: higher up the food chain, that the chain is broken
Speaker 1: or the food web is broken, and so you have
Speaker 1: a lot of animals that just move out of the
Speaker 1: area because you've just created a literal food desert in
Speaker 1: the area by by dumping this stuff. So they figured
Speaker 1: out that there's best practices on how to nourish a beach,
Speaker 1: and part of it is to do it in smaller,
Speaker 1: incremental projects rather than one huge project that just kills
Speaker 1: everything off. That's a big step one to doing it right. Sure,
Speaker 1: they also say, you know, maybe do it at the
Speaker 1: time of the year where there are um maybe fewer seabirds.
Speaker 1: And because this is this has a ripple effect on everything.
Speaker 1: It's not just the creatures you're dumping the sand on,
Speaker 1: it's birds that feed on the things down there because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they're going to different parts of
Speaker 1: the beach. It affects the you know, if they're dredging
Speaker 1: it from the ocean, you're not just scooping sand and
Speaker 1: everything's fine. You're you're creating like these big mud zones
Speaker 1: offshore that it's going to affect the sea life out there,
Speaker 1: creating construction projects on the beach, which is never fun,
Speaker 1: never good. Um. So they're saying, maybe do it at
Speaker 1: the time of year where they're are there are less
Speaker 1: like seabirds around. Um, you sand that has a similar
Speaker 1: composition to the natural sand, like try and match like
Speaker 1: sand with like sand at least. Yeah, because again like
Speaker 1: we think, well sand is sand, that is utterly incorrect.
Speaker 1: Like it really depends on the size, the composition. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of different factors are involved. And when you
Speaker 1: when you introduce a different sand into a native sand area,
Speaker 1: you've just utterly changed the habitat and that has a
Speaker 1: huge effect too. So they say, you need to sample, um,
Speaker 1: what your borrow source sand is going to be before
Speaker 1: you use it, to make sure it matches what you're
Speaker 1: putting on shore. And it's all they say, to plow
Speaker 1: it afterward because that helps. But here's the thing, like,
Speaker 1: none of this is some kind of permanent solution anyway,
Speaker 1: because you're not stopping the erosion process. It's just a
Speaker 1: stop gap measure. I guess that over time is just
Speaker 1: wasted time and money. Really, well, it depends. I think
Speaker 1: they're figuring out that there might be a a useful
Speaker 1: least harmful way to do this, and it seems like
Speaker 1: going out and getting the sand that you put back
Speaker 1: that was washed out to see last time and bringing
Speaker 1: it back is probably the best way to do it.
Speaker 1: Although even no matter when you do it, every time,
Speaker 1: it's going to have some sort of impact just from
Speaker 1: the dumping the introduction of all this new sand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I wonder how much of this has to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that um generally like wealthier people on
Speaker 1: this beach front property and they you know, they're not
Speaker 1: having it, so we got to do something about it.
Speaker 1: That's a huge, huge part of it. So there's there's
Speaker 1: a third option to building sea walls and replenishing the
Speaker 1: beach um. It's called managed retreat, which is basically saying
Speaker 1: don't develop up on the beach, like give it way
Speaker 1: more space than we give it and let the beach
Speaker 1: handle itself. And everyone just laughs at whatever. Ecologists brings
Speaker 1: that up every time. Yeah, when I go to uh
Speaker 1: Isle of Palms, their houses, some people I think don't
Speaker 1: like it because the houses don't sit on the sand.
Speaker 1: They're they're way back. They're like, you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred yards back, which makes them you know a
Speaker 1: little bit safer obviously from from tropical storms and hurricanes.
Speaker 1: But other beaches along the coastline, you know, some of
Speaker 1: them have water splashing up onto the porches. You know,
Speaker 1: they're so close, right, And yeah, you want to build
Speaker 1: behind the dunes. But the thing is, if you remember
Speaker 1: from the Sand Dunes episode, sand dudes move further and
Speaker 1: further inland, so eventually you're going to be in front
Speaker 1: of the dunes even though you built way behind the dunes.
Speaker 1: So that managed retreat is saying like, dude, build even
Speaker 1: further back than that, Like you have to basically drive
Speaker 1: to the beach from what I gather. Yeah, and most
Speaker 1: of the ones that I've seen that are have the
Speaker 1: waves splashing up on you are behind big rock and
Speaker 1: wood sea walls, right, which is not good for the
Speaker 1: coast down coast, you want to take another break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. So. Um we talked about chuck, Like
Speaker 1: when you go out and get sand and replenish your
Speaker 1: beach or nurse sorry, um, your beach. Um, the you're
Speaker 1: actually going out and vacuuming it up. That's one form
Speaker 1: of what's called dredging. You also have huge things with
Speaker 1: enormous buckets, um that go out and scoop the sand up,
Speaker 1: just like a vacuum would, uh or the vacuum dredges would.
Speaker 1: And then you also have like really low five versions
Speaker 1: to where people just take buckets and shovels and start
Speaker 1: digging up the beach. And if you get enough people
Speaker 1: working and enough um dump trucks in a line that
Speaker 1: are just getting filled up by hand, you can have
Speaker 1: the same effect as using a really fancy you know,
Speaker 1: trailing suction hopper dredge. Yeah. About half or more of
Speaker 1: this stuff is usually illegally mined. So when you see
Speaker 1: uh humans um diving, which they will do. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: you know. I think in Morocco about half the sand
Speaker 1: is illegal from the coastline, and when you see these boats.
Speaker 1: There's a great article and Wired called the Deadly Global
Speaker 1: War for Sand written by Vents Bassier in two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend people read this one because they get into
Speaker 1: the black market for sand and the illegue sand trade
Speaker 1: and the fact that you know, there's this one farming
Speaker 1: village where this man was straight up murdered because for
Speaker 1: ten years he'd been campaigning to authorities to get what's
Speaker 1: called the sand mafia shut down, so they will straight
Speaker 1: up murder people. In India, the sand mafia is has
Speaker 1: killed hundreds of people. Yeah, including like cops, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: government officials. The bribes. I think in two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: dozens of Malaysian officials, Um, we're charged with accepting bribes,
Speaker 1: sexual favors. Um. Even if you have a permit. I
Speaker 1: think in some of these places, I think um Bali,
Speaker 1: for instance, seven percent of sand mines have no permits.
Speaker 1: And even if you do have a legal permit, you're
Speaker 1: using bribes and kickbacks to dig deeper and wider. So
Speaker 1: there are at least a dozen countries where illegal smuggling
Speaker 1: is just perpetually going on. Right, like sand, we're talking
Speaker 1: sand here. We didn't accidentally trapes into like heroin. We're
Speaker 1: talking about sand. Yeah, that's how much of a demand
Speaker 1: there is for it, and what's crazy is it's still
Speaker 1: relatively cheap. I saw as low as ten dollars a
Speaker 1: ton um ed has in here up to I think
Speaker 1: has twenty a ton, And granted sand is very very heavy,
Speaker 1: um so like a ton is something like a cubic yard,
Speaker 1: I believe. But still that's a lot of work and
Speaker 1: a lot of murder for something that you sell for
Speaker 1: ten dollars a ton. But even at that price point,
Speaker 1: that's still something like a seven increase in the price
Speaker 1: of that commodity since the nineteen seventies. And the reason
Speaker 1: why it's been skyrocketing and value is because we're using
Speaker 1: so much of it and locking so much of it
Speaker 1: up in construction projects and and using it also to
Speaker 1: create artificial islands. Yeah. This one UM article though I
Speaker 1: think it was a Wired one that was talking about Morocco.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, parts of Morocco now looked like
Speaker 1: the surface of the moon, whereas years ago there were
Speaker 1: you know, sandy beaches, and now they're rocky. So the
Speaker 1: irony is they're there, you know, they don't have any
Speaker 1: more beaches because they're taking all the sand to use
Speaker 1: to build hotels and fake islands to attract people to beaches, right,
Speaker 1: So it's just basically a shuffling of sand around the
Speaker 1: globe in that sense. But river sand that's different. And
Speaker 1: no matter how you how you extract center where you
Speaker 1: extract it from, you are deeply impacting the local ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Like turning a beautiful beach of Morocco into the surface
Speaker 1: of the Moon is going to have some negative effects.
Speaker 1: Same thing goes for river dredging as well. Um, the
Speaker 1: biggest sand mine in the world is uh Po young
Speaker 1: Po p O y n G Lake, which is south
Speaker 1: of Shanghai, which is helping fuel Shanghai's enormous construction boom
Speaker 1: right now. And there's also sand mining basically everywhere you
Speaker 1: everywhere there's a river, there's probably somebody mining it, including
Speaker 1: in the u US there's sand mines. Um, there's one
Speaker 1: and along the San Jacino River. Is that how you
Speaker 1: say that san Jacinto? Yeah? Okay um. And it's the problem.
Speaker 1: One of the problems, aside from just impacting the local wildlife,
Speaker 1: that that the sand, this silt and sand is part
Speaker 1: of like the the ecosystem. Is when you take out
Speaker 1: part of the river bed, you expand that river's potential
Speaker 1: for flow. And they think that Hurricane Harvey in Houston
Speaker 1: was really exacerbated from this sand mining along the San
Speaker 1: Jacino River that allowed way more flood and storm water
Speaker 1: to flow through it, way more quickly. Yeah, and here's
Speaker 1: the other thing is, you know we've talked about besides
Speaker 1: the fact that we are you know, naturally sand isn't
Speaker 1: being produced nearly enough to account for what we're um
Speaker 1: stealing and locking in. But six of the world's rivers
Speaker 1: are interrupted by dams. So even if we're in a
Speaker 1: in an ideal case like producing enough sand to kind
Speaker 1: of be equal, it's not getting down to the mouth
Speaker 1: of the river where it all wants to eventually go. No,
Speaker 1: but I did see that. One one thing you can
Speaker 1: do is like, if you're a sand mining company, you'd
Speaker 1: be very smart to make a contract with a dam
Speaker 1: operator and say you need the sand like out of
Speaker 1: your dam, Right, I can get it out, Just let
Speaker 1: me take it for free, and you've you've solved two problems. Right.
Speaker 1: But because we're consuming sand at about double the rate
Speaker 1: of production for river sand, about half of that sand
Speaker 1: you get out of a dam should be brought back
Speaker 1: up to the river and basically spread through like the
Speaker 1: head of the river. Um. But they're not going to
Speaker 1: do that because they can sell it instead. But yeah,
Speaker 1: as I puts, like our our ecological disasters are creating
Speaker 1: problems for other ecological disasters. Yeah. And but going back
Speaker 1: to the ocean sand, which is can be illegally mine
Speaker 1: from the ocean floor by people diving, they're also exploiting
Speaker 1: people and workers because there's I looked up. I was
Speaker 1: trying to get a pay rate and this one guy
Speaker 1: forty one years old dives two hundred times a day.
Speaker 1: This is from that Wired article, and he makes sixteen
Speaker 1: dollars a day. And like you know, their families are
Speaker 1: all at work, and they're literally diving off of boats
Speaker 1: with buckets and then swimming back to the top like
Speaker 1: John Steinbeck style and putting sand in a boat right
Speaker 1: with a bucket of sand, which is not exactly light.
Speaker 1: It's a really dangerous thing to do. Yeah, in India,
Speaker 1: you know where I think it's got the worst problems.
Speaker 1: They're trying to do stuff. But from what I've gathered,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a lot of it is for show,
Speaker 1: Like anytime someone knew is elected or there's a new
Speaker 1: person in power. They make a big show about stopping
Speaker 1: the you know, the sand wars and the sand trade.
Speaker 1: But it's a country of a billion people and it
Speaker 1: is got hundreds or probably thousands of illegal operations going on.
Speaker 1: And you shut one down, another pops like ten more
Speaker 1: pop up, and it's so corrupt and violent that it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's looking pretty grim as far as like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's really stop this from happening. Yeah, but also don't
Speaker 1: don't forget the fact that like these mafia have proven
Speaker 1: that they will like murder people, including government officials. So
Speaker 1: that's a really intractable problem. It seems like over there,
Speaker 1: people in smaller villages are doing you know, they will
Speaker 1: like block off roads with cars and stuff to stop
Speaker 1: or with trees to stop the cars and trucks, but
Speaker 1: then they will get attacked. So it's really grim. And
Speaker 1: this is sand, right, it is sand. So if you
Speaker 1: wanted to address this, you have to think of it
Speaker 1: in just the same way that you think of something
Speaker 1: like um, Like anytime there's an organized crime involved, you
Speaker 1: have to think of it just like you're dealing with, say,
Speaker 1: like the flow of cocaine. Do you go after the
Speaker 1: farmers who produced the cocaine. Do you go after the
Speaker 1: cartels who are smuggling the coke cane or do you
Speaker 1: go do you try to um keep the end user
Speaker 1: from wanting it? Do you do you affect demand? And
Speaker 1: there's some proposals that seem to say, well, we're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to do anything about production, let's
Speaker 1: try to see what we can do about demand. And
Speaker 1: one of the first things to do is to say,
Speaker 1: don't use so much concrete, Like, let's figure out some
Speaker 1: other materials that that that we can use for like
Speaker 1: smaller construction projects that really don't necessarily need concrete, and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll use those instead and save concrete for this
Speaker 1: stuff where it is really needed. Yeah, like if you're
Speaker 1: building a nuclear power plant, you need the concrete. But
Speaker 1: if you're building an average home, there are probably ways
Speaker 1: to get around this. Sure, you can use things like
Speaker 1: panda claws or condor feathers as building materials rather than
Speaker 1: precious sand. Well, there's glass, and you know we talked
Speaker 1: earlier about sand as uh is glass to a certain degree,
Speaker 1: and you why don't you just crush that down, grind
Speaker 1: it up again. Um, there is also artificial sand because
Speaker 1: you know, sand is just rock. You can technically, you
Speaker 1: can grind down rocks down to sand, but all of
Speaker 1: that stuff is I mean, no one's gonna do that
Speaker 1: because it's so expensive for now, for now. But that's
Speaker 1: the whole idea is is to get these kind of
Speaker 1: get these things in place, and the more scarce real
Speaker 1: sand becomes than people, you know, the equal the cost
Speaker 1: might equal out and people might turn to artificial sand, right.
Speaker 1: But the unfortunate thing is is that implies that we
Speaker 1: need to keep waiting and just abide this kind of
Speaker 1: ecological disaster that is sand mining, until sand becomes so
Speaker 1: scarce that artificial sand becomes a viable alternative. Which sucks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, hopefully this falls under the under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of people who want to have best practices
Speaker 1: for the environment. Put this is on the radar now,
Speaker 1: you know, along with like solar power and everything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need somebody to come along and figure out how
Speaker 1: to create artificial sand from gravel very easily, although gravel
Speaker 1: extractions not exactly environmental impact free. We need to figure
Speaker 1: out how to turn trash into vastly superior river sand.
Speaker 1: That would be great. Okay, can someone get on that.
Speaker 1: Can we divert one of our multiple ventriloquists who are
Speaker 1: apparently not doing anything useful in Chuck's opinion, to figuring
Speaker 1: out how to convert trash into river sand. You know what,
Speaker 1: we didn't get one angry letter from a ventriloquist. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, you seem to have a You
Speaker 1: enjoy wide support in your opinion of ventriloquists, You really do.
Speaker 1: Most people don't like them apparently. So, uh, are you
Speaker 1: got anything else about ventriloquists or sand? No? I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think this is a good one to
Speaker 1: put on people's radar during Well, I guess this is
Speaker 1: sort of the tail end of summer beach season. But
Speaker 1: you know, when you're out there with the sand and
Speaker 1: you're just look around and think about a little bit.
Speaker 1: I know that ocean sand isn't what they're using for construction.
Speaker 1: But next time you go to a lake or a river,
Speaker 1: just kind of keep this in the back of your head. Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: let it like depress your experience and watch your back case.
Speaker 1: Josh is nearby with a candlestick, right. Uh, Well, I
Speaker 1: think that's it for sand for now. If you want
Speaker 1: to know more about Sand and Sand to please and
Speaker 1: go check it out. There's a lot of ink that's
Speaker 1: been spilled over it. And since I said that it's
Speaker 1: time for the listener mail, that's right before listener mail, though,
Speaker 1: we want to do a couple of things. Um, I
Speaker 1: know we had the at the onset of this show,
Speaker 1: we probably had a little little pre role for our
Speaker 1: upcoming shows. But we're just a couple of weeks out,
Speaker 1: by my math from being in New Orleans and Orlando
Speaker 1: for live shows. So we'd love to just encourage people
Speaker 1: to go out there. We're gonna be in Orlando a
Speaker 1: Plaza live on October night, in New Orleans the next
Speaker 1: night on t Then I don't know if tickets are
Speaker 1: going to be around, so you hopefully you can you
Speaker 1: can still get him at this point, yes, I would
Speaker 1: skidaddle over to the internet and try to get your
Speaker 1: hands on some right now. And then our friends at
Speaker 1: co ED, the Cooperative for Education many years ago, they
Speaker 1: took us down along with Jerry to Guatemala and we
Speaker 1: went on one of their tours and it was great. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was. Um that the stuff you should know Guatemalan
Speaker 1: Adventure Parts one and two you can still go listen
Speaker 1: to those and they want to encourage people to come
Speaker 1: out again for some tours. They've had stuff you should
Speaker 1: know members members, Army members, I guess yeah, Army members,
Speaker 1: listeners go down to these tours because of us mentioning
Speaker 1: on the show, and it's really life changing. They're still
Speaker 1: doing this kind of work down there. They're breaking the
Speaker 1: cycle of poverty in Guatemala through education, and they're still
Speaker 1: hosting people just like they did us on these week
Speaker 1: long trips. Um, it's a lot of fun, it's very
Speaker 1: eye opening, it's very meaningful. It's all the things put together. Um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna make some lifelong friends, I guarantee it. And
Speaker 1: there you know, we just can't encourage you to enough
Speaker 1: to go on one of these tours. Yeah. Co Ide
Speaker 1: really knows how to take care of their guests too,
Speaker 1: Like they really get across what they're doing and they
Speaker 1: take you to the places that are being helped. But
Speaker 1: they also I mean it is a lot of fun
Speaker 1: as well, and they take you some very beautiful spots. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's all these great things wrapped up into one great
Speaker 1: opportunity coming up in November. In February, you can learn
Speaker 1: more about these tours at Cooperative for Education dot org
Speaker 1: slash tours. Chuck. Now finally a listener mail. Alright, lay
Speaker 1: it honest, Chuck, because speaking of live shows, we just
Speaker 1: finished up our shows in Boston, Portland, Maine and they
Speaker 1: were great. And this is from an attendee. Okay, I
Speaker 1: wanted to write in to tell you guys how much
Speaker 1: fun your live show in Portland was. I am from Connecticut,
Speaker 1: but my sister just started as a freshman at the
Speaker 1: University of New England and Biddeford, which is just south
Speaker 1: of Portland. I was already planning on coming up to
Speaker 1: visit her after her first week in school, and I
Speaker 1: was listening heard you were coming to Portland and it
Speaker 1: couldn't have been more perfect timing wise. Coming to one
Speaker 1: of your shows was. It was a bucket list item
Speaker 1: for me and it's cool that I got to explore
Speaker 1: a new place, even though I myself was um never
Speaker 1: big into topic redacted. You guys always know how to
Speaker 1: make all of the topics so interesting and reach different audiences. Plus,
Speaker 1: it was really cool just to be around so many
Speaker 1: stuff you should know fans. Even better, my wife, who
Speaker 1: was not even a listener. It was a great sport.
Speaker 1: Came to the show. It was amazed to see how
Speaker 1: many people were there and had a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Although you hear it all the time, I want to
Speaker 1: say again thank you what you and the other podcasters
Speaker 1: out there due uh to cultivate learning and creativity for
Speaker 1: all ages and communities is awesome. And that is from
Speaker 1: Alex and thank you. Boston and Portland, Maine. Great great
Speaker 1: time on those shows. Yeah, but that was an amazing time.
Speaker 1: And driving between Boston and Portland was really awesome too.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. Uh. Emily and my daughter came up
Speaker 1: and we spent the weekend in Portland and I went
Speaker 1: out to can A bunk Port and Cape Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: Peaks Island and it is a pretty magical place there
Speaker 1: in the summertime, it really is. It's crazy. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: thanks everybody for having us out and we'll see you
Speaker 1: again soon. Well, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, you can go on to Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know and uh follow us on our social stuff, and
Speaker 1: then you can also just send us a good old
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