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Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's easy to think that technology is just about ideas, words, numbers, math, algorithms,

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Speaker 1: But of course technology is and always has been, about stuff,

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Speaker 1: and in particular, it's about combining ideas with that stuff.

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Speaker 1: It's about figuring out how to use copper to send

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Speaker 1: electricity around the world, how to turn sand into glass

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Speaker 1: and cement and chips. It's about coming up with clever

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Speaker 1: ways to make cheap steel so that we can build

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Speaker 1: basically anything we want. And looking at technology and the

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Speaker 1: history of technology through the lens of those essential materials

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Speaker 1: of that stuff turns out to be a really interesting

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Speaker 1: and surprisingly useful way of thinking about the world. I'm

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Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's your problem. My guest

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Speaker 1: today is Ed Conway. He's an economics journalist and he

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Speaker 1: wrote a book called Material World, The Six raw Materials

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Speaker 1: that shape Modern Civilization. I talked to Ed about three

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Speaker 1: of the six materials. We talked about iron, because the

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Speaker 1: story of iron really is the story of the industrial revolution,

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Speaker 1: and for that matter, the story of the wealth and

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Speaker 1: poverty of nations around the world today. We also talked

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Speaker 1: about copper, which is of course the story of electricity

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Speaker 1: and the energy transition we're going through now. But copper

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Speaker 1: is also a story about humanity's ability to be very

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Speaker 1: clever in getting the thing that we need, even when

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Speaker 1: it seems like we're going to run out of that thing.

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Speaker 1: So those two materials, copper and iron, they are the

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Speaker 1: second part of the show. In the first part of

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Speaker 1: the show, Ed and I talked about sand, sand, which

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Speaker 1: after reading Ed's book, I have come to think is

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Speaker 1: a highly underrated material. Sand, of course, is essential for

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Speaker 1: making chips and making cement, both of which we have

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Speaker 1: covered on other episodes of this show. So Ed and

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Speaker 1: I focused on another material made out of sand, glass,

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Speaker 1: And as Ed explains, glass really was central to the

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Speaker 1: emergence of the modern world starting around the sixteenth century

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Speaker 1: the Venetians.

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Speaker 2: That was really the first moment where they were able

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Speaker 2: to create a truly clear, perfect type of glass, of

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Speaker 2: the type that we could recognize these days. Roman glass

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Speaker 2: was often beautiful, but it was a bit cloudy. The

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Speaker 2: Venetians really mastered it, and part of the trick to

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Speaker 2: that was obviously expertise and bringing in people who knew

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Speaker 2: how to do it. And they were based on this island,

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Speaker 2: the island of Murano, which is.

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Speaker 3: Just an off Venis.

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Speaker 2: They were forbidden to leave so that there was this

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Speaker 2: in the same way that people making silicon chips in

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Speaker 2: Taiwan these days are not allowed to go to China.

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Speaker 3: It was a same thing with morano.

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Speaker 1: And it's like like a trade secret basically, like the

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Speaker 1: Venetians are traders. This is like a competitive advantage essentially

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Speaker 1: a technological advantage they have and they're logging it down exactly.

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Speaker 2: It's really analogous to what, you know, what we have

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Speaker 2: these days with silicon check, I mean silicon technology as well.

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Speaker 3: That's also sad.

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Speaker 2: They cracked it, and partly they cracked it because they

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Speaker 2: found a really good source of sand. Actually it's little

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Speaker 2: quartz chips that they found in the rivers just kind

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Speaker 2: of on the Swiss Italian border, and because they cracked it.

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Speaker 2: You know, if you look back, like one of my

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Speaker 2: favorite kind of stories, it's kind of theory, but to

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Speaker 2: me it's a really compelling theory, is that the Renaissance,

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Speaker 2: you know, there's great flowering of artistic kind of ability and.

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Speaker 3: Where painters discovered how to use perspective.

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Speaker 2: You know, there's this moment where it goes from being

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Speaker 2: really two D kind of Giotto, medieval style paintings of

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Speaker 2: Christ and all of these different kind of icons to

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Speaker 2: being something that's three D and something's more recognizable as

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Speaker 2: a painting of the Renaissance. The prevailing theory is basically

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Speaker 2: what happened there, There was just this moment dawning realization,

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Speaker 2: and people worked out how to do perspective. And it's

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Speaker 2: this enlightenment to me, a much more compelling explanation.

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Speaker 3: It's one that David Hockney and a few other theorists

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Speaker 3: have posited.

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Speaker 1: David Harckney the artist, David Hockney.

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Speaker 2: The artist has wrote a whole book on this a

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Speaker 2: few years ago and actually did this great documentary which

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Speaker 2: you can find on YouTube about this, basically saying, no,

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Speaker 2: what happened was they worked out how to use lenses.

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Speaker 2: They worked out how to make glass lenses that enabled

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Speaker 2: them to make camera obscurers and other different types of

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Speaker 2: contractions that enabled them to basically trace out the outline

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Speaker 2: of what was happening in a studio or in a

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Speaker 2: picture or whatever. And there are artifacts of this because

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Speaker 2: if you look at certain pictures, particularly from those early

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Speaker 2: kind of medieval, well early Renaissance paintings, and also some

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Speaker 2: from the Dutch Golden Era. You see, for instance, that

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Speaker 2: parts of the painting go out of focus and something

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Speaker 2: going focus. The human eye doesn't really go out of

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Speaker 2: focus in that way, but through a lens things do

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Speaker 2: go out of focus. And so Hockney points out, and

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Speaker 2: like I say, I think it's a really compelling case

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Speaker 2: that the places that where you had this flowering of

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Speaker 2: you know, enlightenments and beautiful paintings that use perspective also

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Speaker 2: happened to be close to the great places where glass

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Speaker 2: was being manufactured, so Venice, in the Netherlands, in England

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Speaker 2: as well to some extent, although our painting wasn't quite

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Speaker 2: so great, wherever there was great glass making there also

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Speaker 2: happened to be great enlightenment leaks forward.

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Speaker 1: The Renaissance is sort of following, and so you need

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Speaker 1: the glass to be able to make the lens, and

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Speaker 1: in Hockney's argument, you need the lens to project the

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Speaker 1: world onto a two dimensional surface. Except from that projection

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Speaker 1: then you can learn perspective.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, Then you learn perspective, and obviously in the same

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Speaker 2: way that you have enabling technologies throughout history. You know,

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Speaker 2: right now we're thinking of AI.

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Speaker 1: So was Leonardo t Yeah, yeah, he was.

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Speaker 2: He was, and so were you know, so were many

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Speaker 2: of these artists. And I don't think there's anything kind

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Speaker 2: of to be ashamed of here.

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Speaker 1: No, especially if you discover tracing. If you're like, wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, I can trace.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and then suddenly it's a lot of as every

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Speaker 2: kid knows, it's a lot easier suddenly, And that's what

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Speaker 2: they were doing. But they were doing it with great

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Speaker 2: panashion style, and we've kind of, I think, forgotten that.

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Speaker 2: But there's there's a very material explanation.

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Speaker 1: In a similar thing. You also talk about the relationship

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Speaker 1: of improvements in glass technology to the scientific revolution, which was,

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Speaker 1: you know, around this same time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean if you look and again, I find

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Speaker 2: this kind of mind blowing.

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Speaker 1: And that one seems clearer. Again, no pun intended that one.

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Speaker 1: That argument seems less tenuous.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't know, I don't know, I don't

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Speaker 2: know if it's okay, respectful.

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Speaker 1: How about this? That argument seems more compelling. That's a

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Speaker 1: nicer way of saying less tenuous.

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Speaker 3: It's even more compelling, isn't it. Yeah, it's even more compelling.

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Speaker 2: It's it's if you look at basically I think the

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Speaker 2: vast majority of scientific discoveries that were made in that

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Speaker 2: period of the great you know, the Enlightenment, the kind

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Speaker 2: of eighteenth nineteenth century, seventeenth some excent.

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Speaker 1: Even earlier, right, like Galileo, right, Like, you don't even

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Speaker 1: have to leave galileanly.

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Speaker 2: So telescope, I mean, how do we pair into space?

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Speaker 2: And this was all thanks to our ability to harness sand,

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Speaker 2: turn it into glass, and then turn it into you know,

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Speaker 2: kind of sand that down into beautiful lenses that enabled

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Speaker 2: us to see further or indeed see kind of deepest,

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Speaker 2: so microscopically, that was glass.

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Speaker 1: You don't discover the cell until you have a microscope,

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Speaker 1: and you don't have a microscope until you have really

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Speaker 1: good glass. Right. And I feel like tools, like this

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Speaker 1: is the story of tools, right, and tools are underrated

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Speaker 1: in scientific.

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Speaker 3: Discovery, right, like totally.

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Speaker 1: Once you have a telescope, then somebody is going to

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Speaker 1: see the moons of Jupiter. Once you have a microscope,

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Speaker 1: somebody is going to see a cell. The hard part

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Speaker 1: is getting the telescope and the microscope.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and yet the thing we celebrate and understandably is

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Speaker 2: we celebrate the Galileos and the van Luveruk, who's one

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Speaker 2: of those first great people looking down into microscopes. But yeah,

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Speaker 2: they needed the contractions and also they needed to rely

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Speaker 2: on people to make really good glass for them, because

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Speaker 2: you could you needed really clear glass to be able

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Speaker 2: to peer down into this. And the funny thing I've discovered,

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Speaker 2: you know, looking back through that history of the Enlightenment,

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Speaker 2: what you kind of notice if you look through lots

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Speaker 2: of the stories and the accounts, is that so many

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Speaker 2: of the people who were scientists and renowned actually as

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Speaker 2: scientists for something else.

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Speaker 3: Michael Faraday is a really good example, you know.

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Speaker 1: Electoral magnets, electromagnets, basically the electricity.

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Speaker 2: He's the electricity guy. He was also totally obsessed with glass,

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Speaker 2: so he used to make his own glass. Actually one

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Speaker 2: of the earliest recipes for something called boris silicate glass,

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Speaker 2: which is like these days what we use for test

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Speaker 2: tubes and the vials that you get your kind of

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Speaker 2: vaccines and medicines in.

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Speaker 3: There's really hard type of glass.

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Speaker 1: So is that related to pyrex to the glass you

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Speaker 1: can put in.

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Speaker 2: The oven is Boris silicate glass. It's just you know,

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Speaker 2: the trademark. But Faraday, he I don't know if invented

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Speaker 2: to the right word. But he was a tinkerer with glass,

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Speaker 2: and he made an early form of boris silica glass

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Speaker 2: because everyone was doing it. And if you look back,

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Speaker 2: there's this great book Making of the Atomic Bomb by

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Speaker 2: Richard Rhodes. I was reading it after having written this book,

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Speaker 2: and I was struck by how many times within the

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Speaker 2: discovery of how to split the atom, people were waylaid

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Speaker 2: by getting hold of the right glass. Because you need

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Speaker 2: a glass within which to do your experiments, because glass

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Speaker 2: is very inert, obviously, and it's the inertness of glass

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Speaker 2: that makes it really important, you know, for doing chemical experiments,

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Speaker 2: for making vacuums, all of these things. So if you

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Speaker 2: look at pretty much I think the vast majority of

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Speaker 2: different scientific discoveries during the Enlightenment, and some authors did

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Speaker 2: a survey of here are the great discoveries, how many

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Speaker 2: of them depended one way or another on glass, whether

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Speaker 2: it's a test ubes, vacuum chambers, or indeed lenses.

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Speaker 3: It's the majority of them.

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Speaker 2: And so our scientific world is built on glass as well.

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Speaker 2: So we think this stuff is kind of historic. And

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Speaker 2: that goes by the way for even right now, because

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Speaker 2: there are when we're making silicon chips, and maybe we'll

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Speaker 2: come onto this. When you're making a lot of kind

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Speaker 2: of advanced equipments, you still need optics. And for great optics,

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Speaker 2: you still need excellent glass.

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Speaker 1: Well, fiber optics you talk about in the book, right right,

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Speaker 1: talk about fiber optics. That seems like the obvious contemporary yeah,

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Speaker 1: glass case.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: Fiber optics I think is a really good example of

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Speaker 2: the underlining of our forgetting of the materiality of our world.

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Speaker 2: Because when people think about the Internet, I think, because

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Speaker 2: we have Wi Fi, just.

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Speaker 1: That last twenty feet is just the last twenty feet

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Speaker 1: that's going through the air.

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Speaker 2: But that's the twenty feet that we're familiar with, you know,

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Speaker 2: That's what we're aware of.

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Speaker 1: So what's the rest. What are the other I'm talking

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Speaker 1: to you, three thousand miles away, four thousand miles away,

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Speaker 1: what's going.

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Speaker 2: Through The majority of all of the bits that they're

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Speaker 2: enabling us to talk are going on fiber optics. They're

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Speaker 2: going on fiber optics. In our case, underneath the Atlantic Ocean,

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Speaker 2: there's only a teensy tiny bit where things are traveling

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Speaker 2: through the air. The World Wide Web is a physical

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Speaker 2: structure with loads of fiber optics, loads of service centers,

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Speaker 2: and each of those fiber optic cables is a tiny

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Speaker 2: little strand of glass. It's actually two types of glass,

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Speaker 2: kind of one inside the other. Which again, that's our world.

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Speaker 2: Our world depends on glass. We can't have the Internet

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Speaker 2: without glass. And again we forget that, we're kind of

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Speaker 2: encouraged to forget it.

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Speaker 1: Not anymore. I want to make one more stop on

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Speaker 1: glass before we move on, because it was truly surprising

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Speaker 1: to me, and I'm happy that I know it tell

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Speaker 1: me about the shortage of lenses in the UK in

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Speaker 1: World War One.

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Speaker 2: I think this is actually a great story because it

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Speaker 2: tells you quite a lot about what we're going through

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Speaker 2: right now with period of you know, de industrialization in

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Speaker 2: the US, Europe everywhere else and wondering like how on

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Speaker 2: earth do we turn this around. So for a long time,

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Speaker 2: England was kind of at the cutting edge of glass

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Speaker 2: technol A lot of the great lenses were made here.

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Speaker 2: You've got Michael Faraday obsessing over glass and Crown glass.

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Speaker 2: A lot of achievements that then led to really good

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Speaker 2: optics happened in England. And then they decided the governments

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Speaker 2: as they often do needed to raise money for the

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Speaker 2: wars against France, and they decided to tax glass making

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Speaker 2: and they also tax windows.

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Speaker 3: So in England you have lots of older.

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Speaker 2: Houses, particularly ones that are kind of Georgian and Queen

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Speaker 2: Anne's so kind of going back like two three hundred

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Speaker 2: years where if you look at them, suddenly some of

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Speaker 2: the windows have been bricked up. And the reason they

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Speaker 2: bricks up is because the government decided to impose a

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Speaker 2: tax on however many windows you had, you would have

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Speaker 2: to pay more tax.

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Speaker 1: It's a sort of seeing like a state thing. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's like what can somebody walk down the street and

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Speaker 1: count from the street, right, Yeah the legibility, Yeah, legibility

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Speaker 1: is good, right yeah.

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Speaker 2: Counting windows, but also actually chimneys was another thing.

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Speaker 3: Uh.

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Speaker 2: So the government wanted to tax glass, they wanted to

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Speaker 2: raise lots of money, and they did, and they raised

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Speaker 2: leads of money and that was great for them. But

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Speaker 2: partly as a result of that, a lot of the

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Speaker 2: innervation in glass shifted elsewhere.

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Speaker 3: And actually Germany, which was.

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Speaker 2: Beginning to engage in what you today call industrial strategies,

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Speaker 2: so the government governmental organizations starting to introduce kind of subsidies.

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Speaker 2: They really focused on glass because it was you know,

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Speaker 2: this was an opportunity. This is eighteen hundreds and you've

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Speaker 2: got actually Gerte, the kind of famous statesman poet, was

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Speaker 2: really heavily involved in this, to the extent that in

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Speaker 2: what is now kind of towards the.

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Speaker 3: East of Germany it became East Germany.

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Speaker 2: You had in a town called Jenna, there was a

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Speaker 2: university that a lot of money went into which encouraged

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Speaker 2: investigation and also kind of manufacture of glass. And out

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Speaker 2: of that that hub of manufacturing came some names that

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Speaker 2: we will probably.

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Speaker 3: Recognize today, like Seis. A guy called Carl Seiss.

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Speaker 2: Became a really big kind of manufacturer of glass, indeed

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Speaker 2: of lenses. And the long story short is that Germany

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Speaker 2: became really dominant in the manufacture of really good, quite

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Speaker 2: cheap optical glass, and the English industry basically withered away.

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Speaker 2: France had slightly withered away as well, and in Germany's

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Speaker 2: Seiss binoculars and telescopes and sniperscopes became totally dominant, to

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Speaker 2: the extent that come nineteen fourteen, England is importing about

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Speaker 2: sixty percent of all of its binoculars from Germany's Zeiss binoculars.

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Speaker 2: So when war breaks out, then all of a sudden,

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Speaker 2: it is a terrible crisis. They call it the glass famine.

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Speaker 2: You've got people, you know, going to the trenches in

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Speaker 2: France and Belgium equipped with binoculars and opera glasses.

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Speaker 3: That they've had to borrow off people.

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Speaker 2: There was an appeal that was launched for people to

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Speaker 2: donate their used binoculars to troops because England didn't have

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Speaker 2: enough of them, and you know, people were getting killed

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Speaker 2: because the Germans had the better snipers. This was kind

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Speaker 2: of the First War. Really, the First World War was

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Speaker 2: the first war where you were able to fire your

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Speaker 2: weapons far further.

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Speaker 3: Than you could see.

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Speaker 2: So your ability to see and your ability to see

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Speaker 2: far was the matter of difference between life and death.

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Speaker 2: And the Germans had by far and away the upper

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Speaker 2: hand on that. And it culminated in nineteen fifteen in

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Speaker 2: this extraordinary deal where Britain actually sent spies to meet

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Speaker 2: with their German counterparts in Switzerland to do a deal

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Speaker 2: to buy binoculars off the Germans so that they could

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Speaker 2: kill them better. The most extraordinary thing is the Germans

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Speaker 2: said yes.

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Speaker 1: Like why would the Germans agree to it?

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Speaker 2: They said yes, And the reason they agreed to it,

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Speaker 2: and it comes back to materials again, is that they

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Speaker 2: were short of rubber. So Britain controlled most of the

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Speaker 2: global rubber supply, and you need a rubber obviously for

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Speaker 2: fan belts in your engines, for tires, for everything else.

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Speaker 2: And so the Germans were short of rubber, we were

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Speaker 2: short of glass. And rather than saying, okay, well this

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Speaker 2: is a bit of a pretty pass here, let's just

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Speaker 2: stop the war, they said, okay, we'll do the deal,

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Speaker 2: and then we can carry on killing each other a

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Speaker 2: little bit more effectively.

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Speaker 1: Let's make a deal, swer you could keep killing each other. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And it happened, in fact, and.

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Speaker 2: It's a great story and it did actually happen. But

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Speaker 2: what's even more interesting is that in the following years,

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Speaker 2: and this I think a lesson for where we are now.

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Speaker 2: In the following years, England did manage to increase its

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Speaker 2: glass manufacturing massively and really fast. And it just goes

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Speaker 2: to show so by the end of the war they

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Speaker 2: were producing more more binoculars than they needed. They were

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Speaker 2: sending some of them to America, and it just goes

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Speaker 2: to show you can do it. Like if you need

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Speaker 2: to try and create an industry. It is possible to

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Speaker 2: do it, but often you need a wartime situation to

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Speaker 2: encourage you to do it. The catch is you do

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Speaker 2: need a bit of a base to start from.

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Speaker 1: Well, And it's complicated, right, I mean, we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about this later, but we can talk about it now.

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Speaker 1: Like there is a set of trade offs, right, Like

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Speaker 1: at certain margins, you know, comparative advantage, it makes sense

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Speaker 1: to do what you're good at and let other countries

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Speaker 1: do what they're good at, and you get more material

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Speaker 1: prosperity that way, right. But the asterisk is if Germany

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Speaker 1: is making all the lenses and you go to war

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Speaker 1: with Germany, that's going to be bad, right, And so

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Speaker 1: that is a hard We shouldn't try and make everything

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Speaker 1: like that seems clear, I mean, I guess there is

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Speaker 1: a big question which is like can you abstract lessons?

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Speaker 1: What should we try and make and what should we

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Speaker 1: not try and make for me?

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Speaker 2: And I'm kind of thinking about this a lot, so

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Speaker 2: I'm kind of working on what might be in another

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Speaker 2: book on this kind of topic. Like comparative advantage, it's

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Speaker 2: not set in stone, you know, it is something you

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Speaker 2: can change and something you can influence sure.

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Speaker 1: Presumably you don't believe in autarchy. You don't think that

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Speaker 1: just because the country is a country, it should make everything.

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Speaker 1: Presumably you don't believe in like pure comparative advantage. Right.

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Speaker 1: The hard questions are at the margins, like how many

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Speaker 1: chips should we try and make in the United States?

363
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Speaker 1: Like that's a weird hard question.

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Speaker 2: Completely, and what are the trade offs there? And what

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Speaker 2: are you foregoing in order to do that? And I

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Speaker 2: think again, we are living through an exercise in that

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Speaker 2: right now.

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Speaker 1: Right, the pendulum is swinging back. Right, the pendulum is

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Speaker 1: swinging back toward domestic production.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I think that's some more new

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Speaker 2: an interesting conversation than it's often made out to be.

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Speaker 3: I think that's the thing.

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Speaker 2: I think when you when you start looking at some

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Speaker 2: of the history of technologies, you kind of realize this

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Speaker 2: stuff it didn't just come down from the sky. You know.

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Speaker 2: Most of the reason that things happen in particular countries

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Speaker 2: is because of various interventions. And some of those interventions

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Speaker 2: worked and some of those didn't.

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Speaker 1: Still to come on the show, Iron and Copper, we'll

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Speaker 1: be back in a minute. Let's do Iron.

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Speaker 3: So you're navigating this in a I have a plan.

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Speaker 1: And it's going basically to plan. Yeah, tell me about

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Speaker 1: how iron production in the UK helped lead to the

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Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution. Okay, you need to break you get some water.

386
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Speaker 3: No, I'm just wondering where you were taking me.

387
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Speaker 1: I feel like that was a very straightforward turn right revolution.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I mean so the industrial revolution really, you know,

389
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Speaker 2: it's kind of a two part thing. First of all,

390
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Speaker 2: came the moment where in England there's it's kind of

391
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Speaker 2: a semi environmental story. We were taking that iron out

392
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Speaker 2: of the ground, or taking the iron ground, smelting it

393
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Speaker 2: down into iron and burning a lot of charcoal along

394
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Speaker 2: the way to make that happen, and we cut down

395
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Speaker 2: a lot of trees to make it happen. This is

396
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Speaker 2: around the kind of fifteen sixteenth century, one of the

397
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Speaker 2: first kind of early ecological panics. Everyone started to panic

398
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Speaker 2: that we were running out of trees and that if

399
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Speaker 2: we carried on making as much iron as we wanted to,

400
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Speaker 2: not just iron, because it was other things like making

401
00:19:49,996 --> 00:19:52,636
Speaker 2: beer and glass and salt and things like that. For

402
00:19:52,676 --> 00:19:54,276
Speaker 2: all of these things, you kind of need to burn

403
00:19:54,316 --> 00:19:59,076
Speaker 2: a lot of charcoal and create your kind of industrial process.

404
00:19:59,516 --> 00:20:00,236
Speaker 3: But people panics.

405
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Speaker 2: Everyone thought, we're going to run out of trees, and

406
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Speaker 2: as a result, the Royal Navy was going to have

407
00:20:04,036 --> 00:20:05,636
Speaker 2: to be shut down and you wouldn't have enough trees

408
00:20:05,676 --> 00:20:08,236
Speaker 2: for the masts that you need on the great ships

409
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Speaker 2: of the line. And what the first great kind of

410
00:20:10,996 --> 00:20:15,116
Speaker 2: innovation on this was this guy, Abraham Derby, who worked

411
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Speaker 2: out in the kind of the turn of the kind

412
00:20:17,196 --> 00:20:20,916
Speaker 2: of seventeenth eighteenth century, who worked out how to make

413
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Speaker 2: coal the fuel sauce rather than charcoal, and that meant

414
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Speaker 2: you didn't have to burn down trees. You could use

415
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Speaker 2: coal that you dug out of the ground. And it

416
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Speaker 2: was actually quite hard thing to do, but he managed

417
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Speaker 2: to do it, and that was the moment that the

418
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Speaker 2: fossil fuel world that we know it began. That's why

419
00:20:37,876 --> 00:20:40,836
Speaker 2: you can kind of like date the climate change story

420
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Speaker 2: in a way from that moment in the midlands of

421
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Speaker 2: England where he was like, okay, let's use coal. And essentially,

422
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Speaker 2: as a result of that, you're no longer bound by

423
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Speaker 2: the kind of organic constraints of how many trees you

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Speaker 2: can actually plant and cut down.

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Speaker 1: In particular, because England happened to have abundant, relatively accessible coal, right,

426
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Speaker 1: an important piece of it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so two things in a way.

428
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Speaker 2: It's this kind of this perfect coincidence, a coincidence having

429
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Speaker 2: quite a lot of coal in the ground. It's quite

430
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Speaker 2: good coal like anthracites, so it's kind of rich coal

431
00:21:11,196 --> 00:21:14,156
Speaker 2: that's good. But as well as that, we didn't have

432
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Speaker 2: enough trees. So France, which had far more forests than England's,

433
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Speaker 2: actually never really got onto this because they had enough

434
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Speaker 2: forest that they could turn those trees into charcoal and

435
00:21:25,876 --> 00:21:28,276
Speaker 2: then use them to carry on making steel or iron

436
00:21:28,356 --> 00:21:30,396
Speaker 2: the way they wanted to, whereas in England we just

437
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Speaker 2: didn't have enough trees because we just didn't have as

438
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Speaker 2: much land mass, and so that pushed us towards coal.

439
00:21:36,236 --> 00:21:38,916
Speaker 2: And by being pushed towards coal, then we started to

440
00:21:38,956 --> 00:21:40,516
Speaker 2: discover other things along the way.

441
00:21:40,876 --> 00:21:44,356
Speaker 1: Yes, you make the point that it was work in

442
00:21:44,396 --> 00:21:47,836
Speaker 1: the coal mines that led to the invention of the

443
00:21:47,836 --> 00:21:51,596
Speaker 1: steam engine, which is this sort of signature invention of

444
00:21:51,636 --> 00:21:54,916
Speaker 1: the industrial revolution in some ways, you know, the modern age.

445
00:21:55,236 --> 00:21:59,436
Speaker 2: Yes, steam engines were initially there not to move trains

446
00:21:59,876 --> 00:22:02,716
Speaker 2: or anything else. They were there just to pump water

447
00:22:02,796 --> 00:22:08,156
Speaker 2: out of coal mines basically, and from that then other

448
00:22:08,156 --> 00:22:11,636
Speaker 2: innovations happened. But I mean the second thing with iron

449
00:22:11,756 --> 00:22:15,116
Speaker 2: is so you can make your iron, but still really

450
00:22:15,116 --> 00:22:17,356
Speaker 2: hard to turn it into steel. And like I say,

451
00:22:17,436 --> 00:22:21,076
Speaker 2: steel is just so much better than different types of iron,

452
00:22:21,116 --> 00:22:23,236
Speaker 2: whether it's kind of cast iron or raught iron, it

453
00:22:23,316 --> 00:22:26,036
Speaker 2: is just so much stronger, it is much more resilient.

454
00:22:26,236 --> 00:22:28,556
Speaker 2: You can build big buildings out of it. And so

455
00:22:29,076 --> 00:22:33,476
Speaker 2: the real moment that everything changed and provided us with

456
00:22:33,676 --> 00:22:37,356
Speaker 2: the materials we need to make skyscrapers, for instance, was

457
00:22:37,396 --> 00:22:39,516
Speaker 2: the Bessemer process, and that was kind of later on.

458
00:22:39,596 --> 00:22:41,916
Speaker 2: That was in the kind of mid eighteen hundreds where

459
00:22:42,756 --> 00:22:44,836
Speaker 2: Henry Bessemer and there was another guy who was kind

460
00:22:44,876 --> 00:22:47,716
Speaker 2: of working on this as well, I think in the

461
00:22:47,996 --> 00:22:50,956
Speaker 2: States at the same time, worked out how to use

462
00:22:51,076 --> 00:22:53,516
Speaker 2: oxygen basically kind of to puff a lot of oxygen

463
00:22:53,836 --> 00:22:57,516
Speaker 2: into the to the mix of this molten iron, which

464
00:22:57,876 --> 00:23:01,036
Speaker 2: again is just getting rid of more of the carbon

465
00:23:01,076 --> 00:23:03,396
Speaker 2: and getting it down to just the right amount of carbon.

466
00:23:03,716 --> 00:23:07,236
Speaker 2: What was so revolutionary about Bessemer is up until then

467
00:23:07,476 --> 00:23:09,996
Speaker 2: it was just really hard to make and so just

468
00:23:10,396 --> 00:23:13,276
Speaker 2: you couldn't really make it in large quantities. After Bessemus,

469
00:23:13,276 --> 00:23:16,476
Speaker 2: suddenly you're able to make steel in massive quantities, and

470
00:23:16,516 --> 00:23:20,396
Speaker 2: so something that was incredibly expensive became cheap.

471
00:23:20,716 --> 00:23:22,836
Speaker 1: It goes from being artisanal to being.

472
00:23:22,676 --> 00:23:25,676
Speaker 2: In dust exactly. And that's like with all of these technologies.

473
00:23:25,716 --> 00:23:28,196
Speaker 2: That's the moment the world changes. It's the same, you

474
00:23:28,236 --> 00:23:30,836
Speaker 2: know with salt, it's the same with with glass. The

475
00:23:30,836 --> 00:23:33,356
Speaker 2: moment that you can make something, make a process that

476
00:23:33,476 --> 00:23:35,476
Speaker 2: enables you to turn it out at scale of there's

477
00:23:35,516 --> 00:23:38,076
Speaker 2: a great economic paper on this, can't remember the author,

478
00:23:38,316 --> 00:23:39,996
Speaker 2: but I talked about it in the book about the

479
00:23:40,036 --> 00:23:42,316
Speaker 2: price of nails and how nails used to be one

480
00:23:42,316 --> 00:23:44,716
Speaker 2: of the most expensive things. We used to spend more

481
00:23:44,796 --> 00:23:47,516
Speaker 2: as an economy on nails than we do today on computers.

482
00:23:47,996 --> 00:23:50,276
Speaker 2: And because nails are now so cheap, because you can

483
00:23:50,316 --> 00:23:52,916
Speaker 2: turn out metal and steel in such great quantities and

484
00:23:52,956 --> 00:23:55,756
Speaker 2: they're better as well, that the world has changed. If

485
00:23:55,836 --> 00:23:59,796
Speaker 2: the Titanic had steel nails of the kind that we

486
00:23:59,836 --> 00:24:02,956
Speaker 2: have today on it rather than the rivets they were

487
00:24:03,036 --> 00:24:06,116
Speaker 2: using back then, just the quality of the metal that

488
00:24:06,236 --> 00:24:08,516
Speaker 2: it probably never would have been sunk by the iceberg,

489
00:24:09,476 --> 00:24:10,516
Speaker 2: history would have been different.

490
00:24:11,396 --> 00:24:15,436
Speaker 1: A comfort to a comfort to cruisers everywhere exactly. So

491
00:24:15,476 --> 00:24:18,476
Speaker 1: you also read about how today making steel is this

492
00:24:18,676 --> 00:24:23,076
Speaker 1: incredibly large share of global carbon emissions. Just talk about that.

493
00:24:23,036 --> 00:24:23,556
Speaker 3: For a minute.

494
00:24:23,916 --> 00:24:26,996
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's the blast furnace stage. I had this

495
00:24:27,076 --> 00:24:28,956
Speaker 2: kind of striking moment where I stood in front of

496
00:24:28,956 --> 00:24:31,116
Speaker 2: a blast furnace in the UK and that one of

497
00:24:31,116 --> 00:24:34,916
Speaker 2: the people working there looked at me and said, you know,

498
00:24:34,996 --> 00:24:38,236
Speaker 2: actually the main product of this blast furnace is not iron,

499
00:24:38,836 --> 00:24:40,916
Speaker 2: it's carbon by weight.

500
00:24:41,516 --> 00:24:45,036
Speaker 3: By weight, that.

501
00:24:44,916 --> 00:24:48,916
Speaker 1: Figures the carbon is carbon dioxide gas. Just to be clear, right.

502
00:24:48,836 --> 00:24:51,356
Speaker 2: Exactly, But if you weigh it, which you could, you know,

503
00:24:51,436 --> 00:24:53,076
Speaker 2: which I think you can do in theory but maybe

504
00:24:53,116 --> 00:24:55,556
Speaker 2: in practice. But if you weigh it, there is more

505
00:24:55,596 --> 00:24:59,116
Speaker 2: carbon dioxide gas, more carbon being produced in tons than

506
00:24:59,156 --> 00:25:02,676
Speaker 2: there is the equivalent amount of iron. And that's because

507
00:25:03,876 --> 00:25:05,956
Speaker 2: in order to you know, when you chuck this stuff in,

508
00:25:06,236 --> 00:25:09,116
Speaker 2: you're chucking iron ore inside that furnace, an extraordinary chemic

509
00:25:09,196 --> 00:25:12,316
Speaker 2: or reaction is happening where the carbon, which is an

510
00:25:12,316 --> 00:25:16,236
Speaker 2: amazing molecule, is ripping the oxygen off of the iron ore.

511
00:25:16,356 --> 00:25:17,796
Speaker 1: It's sort of derusting it.

512
00:25:17,916 --> 00:25:20,116
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, because if you see iron ore, it's

513
00:25:20,196 --> 00:25:22,916
Speaker 2: kind of it looks like rust. And you know, there

514
00:25:22,916 --> 00:25:24,956
Speaker 2: aren't that many blast furnaces left in the world. There's

515
00:25:24,956 --> 00:25:27,116
Speaker 2: only I don't know, there's like four left. In the US,

516
00:25:27,156 --> 00:25:30,756
Speaker 2: We've only got one, or there's a pair of them

517
00:25:31,196 --> 00:25:33,796
Speaker 2: left going, and they were very nearly shut down recently.

518
00:25:33,836 --> 00:25:34,236
Speaker 3: In the UK.

519
00:25:34,676 --> 00:25:36,676
Speaker 2: There's not many of these places left in the world.

520
00:25:36,876 --> 00:25:42,356
Speaker 2: But each of these sites is invariably the single biggest

521
00:25:42,356 --> 00:25:45,196
Speaker 2: producer of carbon in what whatever country it is the

522
00:25:45,276 --> 00:25:47,596
Speaker 2: single biggest one. So I was there in this place

523
00:25:47,636 --> 00:25:51,436
Speaker 2: in Wales is the single biggest producer of carbon dioxide

524
00:25:51,516 --> 00:25:53,956
Speaker 2: in our country. And now that's been shut down, and

525
00:25:53,996 --> 00:25:55,996
Speaker 2: so there's the other one over on the other side

526
00:25:55,996 --> 00:25:56,476
Speaker 2: of the country.

527
00:25:56,556 --> 00:25:57,756
Speaker 3: It'll be the same in America.

528
00:25:58,196 --> 00:26:01,876
Speaker 2: And the only way of making still in large quantities

529
00:26:02,116 --> 00:26:04,756
Speaker 2: at a relatively cheap price that makes this stuff worthwhile

530
00:26:05,196 --> 00:26:08,716
Speaker 2: is in a blast furnace, and that creates crazy amounts

531
00:26:08,756 --> 00:26:12,156
Speaker 2: of carbon dioxide. And this is the massive, big black

532
00:26:12,196 --> 00:26:13,676
Speaker 2: hole at the heart of many of the kind of

533
00:26:13,676 --> 00:26:15,676
Speaker 2: models you see about how this is how we get

534
00:26:15,676 --> 00:26:18,676
Speaker 2: to that zero. No one is quite accounted for the

535
00:26:18,676 --> 00:26:21,276
Speaker 2: fact there's a lot of people who just want to

536
00:26:21,276 --> 00:26:23,516
Speaker 2: see their living standards increase, and in order to do so,

537
00:26:23,556 --> 00:26:25,116
Speaker 2: they want to burn some iron ore and turn it

538
00:26:25,116 --> 00:26:25,756
Speaker 2: into steel.

539
00:26:26,196 --> 00:26:27,196
Speaker 3: So it's a quandary.

540
00:26:27,636 --> 00:26:30,516
Speaker 1: Did you look at people working on green steel do

541
00:26:30,596 --> 00:26:35,476
Speaker 1: you have a view on Yeah, yeah, probability of that

542
00:26:35,556 --> 00:26:38,476
Speaker 1: working at scale in an economic way.

543
00:26:38,836 --> 00:26:42,076
Speaker 2: The main truly green steel kind of method people talk

544
00:26:42,116 --> 00:26:46,076
Speaker 2: about is hydrogen dri so direct reduced iron. Using hydrogen

545
00:26:46,156 --> 00:26:48,716
Speaker 2: as your kind of adjutant, you kind of add it

546
00:26:48,796 --> 00:26:52,396
Speaker 2: to the to the mix. It's so expensive, it's so

547
00:26:52,396 --> 00:26:54,636
Speaker 2: so expensive to make iron that way. So for some

548
00:26:54,716 --> 00:26:56,836
Speaker 2: of us, you know, it's it's Sweden is big in it.

549
00:26:56,876 --> 00:26:59,156
Speaker 2: They're trying to make volvos using this stuff. You know,

550
00:26:59,396 --> 00:27:01,156
Speaker 2: for many of us who want to have green steel

551
00:27:01,356 --> 00:27:04,476
Speaker 2: and are able to afford a bit more, that's that's fine.

552
00:27:04,356 --> 00:27:06,356
Speaker 1: But that's not the one we care about, right. We

553
00:27:06,436 --> 00:27:09,596
Speaker 1: care about green steel that is pray competitive with whatever

554
00:27:09,636 --> 00:27:10,716
Speaker 1: you call it, round steel.

555
00:27:11,116 --> 00:27:15,796
Speaker 2: I fear that's a long time coming, maybe never. And

556
00:27:16,076 --> 00:27:18,356
Speaker 2: there's the electric arc furnaces. So in the US you

557
00:27:18,396 --> 00:27:21,836
Speaker 2: get eighty percent of your steel from electric arc furnaces,

558
00:27:21,876 --> 00:27:24,676
Speaker 2: which is recycling steel, which actually is really low carbon.

559
00:27:24,956 --> 00:27:27,756
Speaker 2: But again, you've got the steel. Think about it. You've

560
00:27:27,756 --> 00:27:30,396
Speaker 2: got your fifteen tons of steel, and you can keep

561
00:27:30,436 --> 00:27:33,436
Speaker 2: on recycling that, you know, not forever you need to

562
00:27:33,516 --> 00:27:35,516
Speaker 2: every so often, you need to add a bed of UI.

563
00:27:35,476 --> 00:27:36,036
Speaker 3: Into the mix.

564
00:27:36,356 --> 00:27:39,556
Speaker 2: But we're kind of okay, We've got enough steel around

565
00:27:39,636 --> 00:27:42,356
Speaker 2: us to keep on recycling it. The issue is like,

566
00:27:42,476 --> 00:27:45,596
Speaker 2: it's sub Saharan Africa, it's parts of Asia, that it's

567
00:27:45,636 --> 00:27:48,236
Speaker 2: parts of South America. They want more steel and they

568
00:27:48,236 --> 00:27:50,076
Speaker 2: want better living standards, so they want to use more

569
00:27:50,196 --> 00:27:53,756
Speaker 2: energy and why not. And I think there's this clash

570
00:27:53,796 --> 00:27:57,876
Speaker 2: at the moment between our understandable concern about climate change

571
00:27:58,196 --> 00:28:01,156
Speaker 2: and other parts of the world which just want to

572
00:28:01,236 --> 00:28:03,276
Speaker 2: have better standards of living. And in order to get

573
00:28:03,276 --> 00:28:06,316
Speaker 2: those standards of living, pretty much every process you can

574
00:28:06,356 --> 00:28:09,476
Speaker 2: do to get there is going to create more carbon.

575
00:28:10,516 --> 00:28:11,636
Speaker 1: Let's talk about copper.

576
00:28:13,636 --> 00:28:14,956
Speaker 3: Let's talk about copper.

577
00:28:15,116 --> 00:28:21,276
Speaker 1: So tell me about copper as the secret story of

578
00:28:21,316 --> 00:28:24,636
Speaker 1: the Second Industrial Revolution. Tell me about copper as the

579
00:28:24,716 --> 00:28:27,916
Speaker 1: secret story behind electrification of the world.

580
00:28:28,076 --> 00:28:30,996
Speaker 2: Okay, I think of all of the different kind of

581
00:28:31,316 --> 00:28:34,356
Speaker 2: materials in our relationships with them, maybe this is kind

582
00:28:34,356 --> 00:28:37,116
Speaker 2: of like the most intuitive because if you have a

583
00:28:37,156 --> 00:28:39,636
Speaker 2: power cut, you know you're screwed.

584
00:28:39,996 --> 00:28:42,036
Speaker 3: And copper is electricity.

585
00:28:42,676 --> 00:28:44,476
Speaker 2: I think you're conscious of that a bit more, and

586
00:28:44,476 --> 00:28:47,636
Speaker 2: you're conscious that electricity is of all the life support

587
00:28:47,676 --> 00:28:51,516
Speaker 2: systems for civilization. You know, we could probably survive without

588
00:28:51,556 --> 00:28:55,436
Speaker 2: the internet. If we don't have electricity, then we're truly scoppered.

589
00:28:55,556 --> 00:28:58,236
Speaker 1: Well, and so I mean speaking of electricity, right, part

590
00:28:58,236 --> 00:29:01,436
Speaker 1: of the reason I wanted to talk about copper. Among

591
00:29:01,476 --> 00:29:05,276
Speaker 1: the things he wrote about is we need a lot

592
00:29:05,316 --> 00:29:07,796
Speaker 1: more copper in order to electrify the world, which is

593
00:29:07,836 --> 00:29:10,356
Speaker 1: like a good thing, right, we want to electrify the world.

594
00:29:11,596 --> 00:29:13,756
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. Asterisk. Well, we got to get

595
00:29:13,796 --> 00:29:19,036
Speaker 1: a bunch more. And so there is this recent history

596
00:29:19,436 --> 00:29:21,916
Speaker 1: of wondering are we going to be able to get

597
00:29:21,956 --> 00:29:22,396
Speaker 1: more copper?

598
00:29:22,476 --> 00:29:22,556
Speaker 3: Right?

599
00:29:22,636 --> 00:29:27,036
Speaker 1: There's this famous bet from the seventies, Right, it was

600
00:29:27,036 --> 00:29:32,196
Speaker 1: in the seventies between the biologist Paul Erleck and the

601
00:29:32,236 --> 00:29:35,796
Speaker 1: economist Julian Simon. Tell me about that bet in the

602
00:29:35,836 --> 00:29:36,716
Speaker 1: history of copper.

603
00:29:36,876 --> 00:29:42,116
Speaker 2: So, Paul Olik was this incredibly charismatic scientist who, I think,

604
00:29:42,276 --> 00:29:44,276
Speaker 2: like a lot of people, particularly in the nineteen seventies,

605
00:29:44,356 --> 00:29:47,516
Speaker 2: was very worried about the rise in global population. He

606
00:29:47,556 --> 00:29:50,916
Speaker 2: wrote a very famous book called The Population Bomb, which

607
00:29:50,916 --> 00:29:53,356
Speaker 2: contained a lot of forecasts that turned out to be

608
00:29:53,516 --> 00:29:55,516
Speaker 2: kind of nonsense.

609
00:29:55,916 --> 00:29:59,316
Speaker 1: And they were very high conviction right Like in this book,

610
00:29:59,356 --> 00:30:02,236
Speaker 1: he doesn't say like we should be worried. He says, like,

611
00:30:02,476 --> 00:30:05,036
Speaker 1: we are screwed already. There are so many people that

612
00:30:05,356 --> 00:30:08,116
Speaker 1: there are going to be famines. It's a certainty because

613
00:30:08,156 --> 00:30:10,556
Speaker 1: we won't be able to grow enough food to feed everybody.

614
00:30:10,636 --> 00:30:12,236
Speaker 2: I think one of one of the predictions was that

615
00:30:12,276 --> 00:30:15,676
Speaker 2: England wouldn't exist as a country in like two thousand

616
00:30:15,916 --> 00:30:16,556
Speaker 2: or something.

617
00:30:16,316 --> 00:30:19,996
Speaker 3: Like that you showed and here we are still not almost.

618
00:30:20,316 --> 00:30:22,956
Speaker 2: But the point is, yeah, I think people who can

619
00:30:23,316 --> 00:30:28,076
Speaker 2: can say somewhat outrageous things with great conviction are compelling

620
00:30:28,436 --> 00:30:29,916
Speaker 2: and they get listened to.

621
00:30:30,276 --> 00:30:34,356
Speaker 1: Indeed, there is abundant evidence for that fact, for that claim.

622
00:30:34,796 --> 00:30:36,596
Speaker 2: But it turns out actually when you kind of peel

623
00:30:36,636 --> 00:30:39,476
Speaker 2: away stuff, I mean, doubt is not super fashionable, but

624
00:30:39,516 --> 00:30:40,876
Speaker 2: it turns out, you know, it's quite it's kind of

625
00:30:40,916 --> 00:30:44,876
Speaker 2: important within the scientific you know, the Enlightenment is kind

626
00:30:44,876 --> 00:30:48,636
Speaker 2: of about doubt. And so all Erlik was basically saying

627
00:30:48,676 --> 00:30:52,116
Speaker 2: we're going to hell in a handcock to some extent,

628
00:30:52,196 --> 00:30:57,356
Speaker 2: reprising some of Thomas Malthus's prognostications from the nineteenth century,

629
00:30:57,556 --> 00:30:59,796
Speaker 2: saying that the population was rising too fast, We're going

630
00:30:59,796 --> 00:31:02,076
Speaker 2: to run out of stuff, and there's kind of two

631
00:31:02,116 --> 00:31:03,476
Speaker 2: ways this is going to be manifested.

632
00:31:03,556 --> 00:31:05,676
Speaker 3: We're going to run out of food, but we're also.

633
00:31:05,516 --> 00:31:07,636
Speaker 2: Going to run out of the materials we need to

634
00:31:07,756 --> 00:31:11,996
Speaker 2: make stuff, and so he was very pessimistic. This guy

635
00:31:11,996 --> 00:31:14,436
Speaker 2: called Julian Simon, who was a slightly obscure economist but

636
00:31:14,796 --> 00:31:18,116
Speaker 2: you know, kind of somewhat libertarian economists, heard Alic talking.

637
00:31:18,116 --> 00:31:20,356
Speaker 3: He got absolutely infuriated that this guy was.

638
00:31:20,356 --> 00:31:21,956
Speaker 2: Getting all the attention, that he'd go on all of

639
00:31:21,996 --> 00:31:24,996
Speaker 2: the Tonight Show and so on, because he was entertaining,

640
00:31:24,996 --> 00:31:26,556
Speaker 2: you know, that was the thing he was entertaining, and

641
00:31:26,556 --> 00:31:27,236
Speaker 2: he had conviction.

642
00:31:27,836 --> 00:31:29,356
Speaker 3: Simon never went on.

643
00:31:29,316 --> 00:31:33,036
Speaker 2: The Tonight Show, but he certainly got the attention of

644
00:31:33,036 --> 00:31:35,196
Speaker 2: Paul Erlik because he basically wrote him a few letters

645
00:31:35,676 --> 00:31:38,876
Speaker 2: in journals saying this is nonsense. You're totally wrong.

646
00:31:39,636 --> 00:31:42,316
Speaker 1: So why did Simon think Erlic was wrong?

647
00:31:42,636 --> 00:31:46,636
Speaker 2: He just thought that human ingenuity has throughout history been

648
00:31:46,876 --> 00:31:50,756
Speaker 2: able to come up with solutions to our problems, and

649
00:31:50,796 --> 00:31:56,636
Speaker 2: that economics and the market are a profoundly powerful way

650
00:31:57,156 --> 00:32:01,436
Speaker 2: of resolving issues of shortage. And he thought that listen,

651
00:32:01,596 --> 00:32:04,916
Speaker 2: if we were to run short of copper, we'd come

652
00:32:04,996 --> 00:32:07,956
Speaker 2: up with some other material that would enable us to

653
00:32:08,036 --> 00:32:12,356
Speaker 2: create electrical network. And so as a result of that,

654
00:32:12,396 --> 00:32:14,916
Speaker 2: he just thought there was something instinctively wrong about what

655
00:32:14,996 --> 00:32:17,596
Speaker 2: Erleck was saying. But I think there's something instinctively within

656
00:32:17,756 --> 00:32:20,956
Speaker 2: humanity because we know that the planet is finite, it's there,

657
00:32:20,996 --> 00:32:23,796
Speaker 2: we can see it. That makes maybe the Erlick view

658
00:32:23,876 --> 00:32:24,636
Speaker 2: quite compelling.

659
00:32:24,796 --> 00:32:28,396
Speaker 1: I think zero some thinking is intuitive and positive some

660
00:32:28,556 --> 00:32:32,076
Speaker 1: thinking is not. Yeah, And I think in this debate,

661
00:32:32,556 --> 00:32:36,516
Speaker 1: Erlic is very much zero side totally, and Simon is positive.

662
00:32:36,716 --> 00:32:37,116
Speaker 3: Yeah.

663
00:32:37,156 --> 00:32:40,676
Speaker 1: So Simon challenges publicly challenges I believe in science and

664
00:32:40,756 --> 00:32:44,636
Speaker 1: the journal science. Right, he challenges Eric to a bet.

665
00:32:44,716 --> 00:32:45,476
Speaker 1: What is the bet?

666
00:32:45,916 --> 00:32:48,116
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's worth saying Erle Erlick was by far

667
00:32:48,156 --> 00:32:51,516
Speaker 2: and away the more prominent person. Erlik is famous and

668
00:32:51,796 --> 00:32:54,396
Speaker 2: Simon No one's heard of Simon, and so he punches up.

669
00:32:55,116 --> 00:32:57,596
Speaker 2: Erlik takes takes notice of him and says, okay, right,

670
00:32:57,636 --> 00:32:59,956
Speaker 2: we're going to do a bet. Actually I can't I

671
00:32:59,956 --> 00:33:02,196
Speaker 2: can't remember whether Simon's just bet. I think maybe Simon

672
00:33:02,236 --> 00:33:04,676
Speaker 2: suggested the bet, and Eerlic says, okay, you're on. And

673
00:33:04,836 --> 00:33:07,116
Speaker 2: the bet is basically, we're going to pick a date

674
00:33:07,156 --> 00:33:09,796
Speaker 2: in the future, and we'll look at the price of

675
00:33:09,836 --> 00:33:13,556
Speaker 2: all of these a selection of different commodities. One of

676
00:33:13,596 --> 00:33:18,156
Speaker 2: those materials was copper, and to work out whether at

677
00:33:18,196 --> 00:33:20,796
Speaker 2: the end of a decade or so, whether they went

678
00:33:20,876 --> 00:33:23,316
Speaker 2: up in price or down in price. And if their

679
00:33:23,316 --> 00:33:25,836
Speaker 2: price has gone up, then it's a sign that there

680
00:33:25,916 --> 00:33:30,076
Speaker 2: is scarcity and the people were potentially running out. And

681
00:33:30,116 --> 00:33:32,796
Speaker 2: if it's gone down, then the opposite. If it gets

682
00:33:32,796 --> 00:33:34,996
Speaker 2: the price goes up, Erlick wins the bet. If the

683
00:33:34,996 --> 00:33:37,796
Speaker 2: price goes down or stays the same, Simon wins the bet.

684
00:33:38,156 --> 00:33:42,996
Speaker 2: And so the years pass and lo and behold Erlck loses.

685
00:33:43,076 --> 00:33:46,396
Speaker 2: Simon wins. The prices don't go through the roof of

686
00:33:46,436 --> 00:33:46,996
Speaker 2: this stuff.

687
00:33:47,516 --> 00:33:48,716
Speaker 1: What does it mean that he won?

688
00:33:49,316 --> 00:33:53,116
Speaker 2: I think, in hindsight, a powerful reminder that the world

689
00:33:53,236 --> 00:33:56,556
Speaker 2: is not zero sum, and that we are really good

690
00:33:57,156 --> 00:34:00,676
Speaker 2: at devising solutions for things that seem like they are

691
00:34:00,796 --> 00:34:05,316
Speaker 2: runaway problems. And that also, I think there's another deeper

692
00:34:05,356 --> 00:34:07,916
Speaker 2: thing which I don't think Simon ever, he wasn't thinking

693
00:34:07,916 --> 00:34:10,276
Speaker 2: as a geologist, and I'm not, but I've come to

694
00:34:10,316 --> 00:34:14,316
Speaker 2: think a bit more like a geologist. The world of

695
00:34:14,516 --> 00:34:17,676
Speaker 2: minerals is far more plentiful than we might think. Even

696
00:34:17,676 --> 00:34:19,356
Speaker 2: though we're down to the kind of you know, the

697
00:34:19,436 --> 00:34:22,236
Speaker 2: junk stuff, there is still a lot of it out there.

698
00:34:22,476 --> 00:34:27,636
Speaker 2: And the human ability to devise ever more ingenious ways

699
00:34:27,956 --> 00:34:31,236
Speaker 2: of squeezing let's say copper, because we're talking about it,

700
00:34:31,316 --> 00:34:34,316
Speaker 2: copper out of rock that might previously have been seen

701
00:34:34,556 --> 00:34:38,236
Speaker 2: as junk rock. That ability is amazing, and to me

702
00:34:38,396 --> 00:34:41,996
Speaker 2: it's one of the great triumphs, totally unsung triumphs of

703
00:34:42,076 --> 00:34:45,836
Speaker 2: the last kind of fifty years. Is that far from

704
00:34:45,836 --> 00:34:48,196
Speaker 2: actually running out of copper? Because copper, of all of

705
00:34:48,196 --> 00:34:51,116
Speaker 2: the materials that I look at and that we use

706
00:34:51,116 --> 00:34:54,356
Speaker 2: on an industrial scale, copper is perhaps the most scarce.

707
00:34:54,636 --> 00:34:56,876
Speaker 2: You know, there's lots of iron in the Earth's cross,

708
00:34:56,916 --> 00:34:59,596
Speaker 2: there's lots of you know, alumino, which we use to

709
00:34:59,636 --> 00:35:03,556
Speaker 2: make aluminium. There's loads of these things. There's not that

710
00:35:03,636 --> 00:35:08,236
Speaker 2: much copper. And yet over that period we have produced

711
00:35:08,276 --> 00:35:10,676
Speaker 2: an incredible amount of copper. You know, I felt tall

712
00:35:10,756 --> 00:35:12,796
Speaker 2: about this because, on the one hand, this period in

713
00:35:12,796 --> 00:35:14,756
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, you know, when the bet was kind

714
00:35:14,756 --> 00:35:18,076
Speaker 2: of happening, was this dawning moment, this dawning realization, you know,

715
00:35:18,156 --> 00:35:20,116
Speaker 2: Earth Day and all of these things were happening.

716
00:35:20,356 --> 00:35:23,516
Speaker 1: And real legislation, right the key environmental legislation in the

717
00:35:23,596 --> 00:35:25,196
Speaker 1: United States was passed around this time.

718
00:35:25,356 --> 00:35:26,676
Speaker 3: Yeah, like all the EPA stuff.

719
00:35:26,756 --> 00:35:28,556
Speaker 2: So there are many kind of positives that have come

720
00:35:28,596 --> 00:35:30,916
Speaker 2: out of this, and our water courses much better, the

721
00:35:30,956 --> 00:35:33,476
Speaker 2: air quality is so much better in most of our

722
00:35:33,476 --> 00:35:36,556
Speaker 2: countries as a result of I think that dawning consciousness

723
00:35:36,636 --> 00:35:39,676
Speaker 2: that we needed to do something. But at the same time,

724
00:35:39,716 --> 00:35:42,556
Speaker 2: because there was so much catastrophism about it, I think

725
00:35:42,556 --> 00:35:44,636
Speaker 2: a lot of people got kind of overly freaked out

726
00:35:44,676 --> 00:35:47,556
Speaker 2: by it. And there were certain things like copper that

727
00:35:47,596 --> 00:35:50,876
Speaker 2: we never came close to running out of. And like

728
00:35:51,276 --> 00:35:54,396
Speaker 2: I say, one of the greatest unsung achievements is we

729
00:35:54,516 --> 00:35:56,636
Speaker 2: have not run out of this stuff. Far from running out,

730
00:35:56,796 --> 00:35:59,156
Speaker 2: we have got more than ever before. Yes, there are

731
00:35:59,156 --> 00:36:02,276
Speaker 2: big environmental questions about how much of the ground we're

732
00:36:02,396 --> 00:36:05,876
Speaker 2: churning up to get it. But China was able to urbanize.

733
00:36:05,956 --> 00:36:07,956
Speaker 2: China wouldn't have been able to urbanize. You wouldn't have

734
00:36:07,996 --> 00:36:11,076
Speaker 2: been able to have as many, you know, eight billion people,

735
00:36:11,236 --> 00:36:13,196
Speaker 2: you know, getting toward nine billion people in the world

736
00:36:13,316 --> 00:36:16,356
Speaker 2: were it not for the discovery of clever ways to

737
00:36:16,436 --> 00:36:17,676
Speaker 2: get copper out of the ground.

738
00:36:17,836 --> 00:36:21,876
Speaker 1: So there is the environmental question right of we've dug

739
00:36:21,876 --> 00:36:23,716
Speaker 1: giant holes in the ground to get copper out. And

740
00:36:23,756 --> 00:36:28,876
Speaker 1: there is a particularly i don't know, fraught environmental question now,

741
00:36:28,956 --> 00:36:31,076
Speaker 1: which is in order to do the energy transition, in

742
00:36:31,156 --> 00:36:34,756
Speaker 1: order to shift from fossil fuel to electrification, which is

743
00:36:34,836 --> 00:36:37,516
Speaker 1: good and I think good on net, we need a

744
00:36:37,516 --> 00:36:40,676
Speaker 1: lot more copper. Like you have gone and looked at

745
00:36:40,716 --> 00:36:44,476
Speaker 1: giant copper minds, seen the cost of it, Like how

746
00:36:44,516 --> 00:36:47,316
Speaker 1: do you think about copper and the energy transition?

747
00:36:48,316 --> 00:36:52,276
Speaker 2: When standing on the lip of one of these big

748
00:36:52,316 --> 00:36:55,276
Speaker 2: mines in Chile, I went to this mine called Chicki Kamata,

749
00:36:55,796 --> 00:36:58,916
Speaker 2: which is this This is one that's been going since,

750
00:36:59,476 --> 00:37:01,796
Speaker 2: you know, for one hundred and twenty years or so.

751
00:37:02,316 --> 00:37:04,596
Speaker 2: This is like one of the minds, the big minds

752
00:37:04,756 --> 00:37:09,556
Speaker 2: that we got the copper for the early Edison electrical age,

753
00:37:09,676 --> 00:37:12,676
Speaker 2: and we're still getting copper out of it. Is a

754
00:37:12,796 --> 00:37:16,316
Speaker 2: hole that is the biggest man made hole on the

755
00:37:16,316 --> 00:37:19,316
Speaker 2: planet in terms of it's just the amount of earth

756
00:37:19,316 --> 00:37:21,716
Speaker 2: that's been displaced from it. You stand on the edge,

757
00:37:21,916 --> 00:37:24,196
Speaker 2: you look down, it's like looking at the Grand Canyon.

758
00:37:24,276 --> 00:37:26,276
Speaker 2: You know, it's one of those moments of like whoa,

759
00:37:26,356 --> 00:37:29,876
Speaker 2: because this is this is so deep, and yet we

760
00:37:29,916 --> 00:37:32,116
Speaker 2: made that. We made that hole in order to get

761
00:37:32,116 --> 00:37:35,716
Speaker 2: the copper out. You need, in order to fulfill all

762
00:37:35,756 --> 00:37:38,236
Speaker 2: the promises that we have made for the energy transition,

763
00:37:38,676 --> 00:37:41,716
Speaker 2: you need another three or four of these mines to

764
00:37:41,756 --> 00:37:46,676
Speaker 2: be built every year between now and twenty fifty, and

765
00:37:47,396 --> 00:37:51,276
Speaker 2: right now we're basically not really building any And on

766
00:37:51,316 --> 00:37:53,876
Speaker 2: the contrary, you know, there are minds that the famous

767
00:37:53,876 --> 00:37:56,756
Speaker 2: example is a mine in Panama, copper mine which has

768
00:37:56,756 --> 00:37:59,356
Speaker 2: basically been shut down because the government is you know,

769
00:37:59,636 --> 00:38:02,396
Speaker 2: concerned about the environmental impacts and the impacts on the

770
00:38:02,436 --> 00:38:03,156
Speaker 2: local community.

771
00:38:03,436 --> 00:38:05,756
Speaker 1: Which is reasonable, right, Like, that's why this is such

772
00:38:05,796 --> 00:38:08,076
Speaker 1: a hard It's ablutely reasonable. I don't want to live

773
00:38:08,076 --> 00:38:08,956
Speaker 1: next to a copper mind.

774
00:38:09,396 --> 00:38:10,876
Speaker 2: And to be honest with you, what happens. I'll tell

775
00:38:10,876 --> 00:38:12,676
Speaker 2: you what happens if you live next to a copper mine.

776
00:38:12,836 --> 00:38:14,956
Speaker 2: Eventually the copper mine gets so big that your house

777
00:38:14,956 --> 00:38:17,316
Speaker 2: gets covered in the waste rock for the copper mine,

778
00:38:17,436 --> 00:38:19,876
Speaker 2: and you know, you're you're covered and you're covered in rock.

779
00:38:19,916 --> 00:38:21,836
Speaker 2: Because that's what happens at this place. There was a

780
00:38:22,036 --> 00:38:23,556
Speaker 2: there was a town next door. It was like a

781
00:38:23,556 --> 00:38:26,556
Speaker 2: pretty advanced town. It had the most advanced hospital in

782
00:38:26,596 --> 00:38:32,396
Speaker 2: Latin America. It is now abandoned and half covered in

783
00:38:32,516 --> 00:38:34,396
Speaker 2: the waste rock from the mine. They had to they

784
00:38:34,396 --> 00:38:37,316
Speaker 2: had to move everyone out because the mine just got

785
00:38:37,356 --> 00:38:40,396
Speaker 2: so big. But this is the point that there aren't

786
00:38:40,396 --> 00:38:43,276
Speaker 2: many of these places, but where there are, they are big,

787
00:38:43,516 --> 00:38:47,636
Speaker 2: and there's environmental implications and all around that particular mine

788
00:38:47,676 --> 00:38:50,396
Speaker 2: in Chile, the copper mine. You know, you've got more

789
00:38:50,476 --> 00:38:52,636
Speaker 2: arsenic in the air than in most other places, partly

790
00:38:52,676 --> 00:38:55,516
Speaker 2: just because there's arsenic in the earth and it's being displaced,

791
00:38:55,556 --> 00:38:59,156
Speaker 2: and the particular the nature of that Andean soil is

792
00:38:59,156 --> 00:39:01,036
Speaker 2: is it's got more arsenic than you would normally find.

793
00:39:01,196 --> 00:39:04,236
Speaker 2: The tailings down Okay, so where the toxic waste is put.

794
00:39:04,596 --> 00:39:06,596
Speaker 2: And bear in mind they used to just chuck this

795
00:39:06,676 --> 00:39:08,756
Speaker 2: stuff into the rivers and into the sea. Now it

796
00:39:08,796 --> 00:39:11,276
Speaker 2: goes in this damn system. So you've got all of

797
00:39:11,316 --> 00:39:14,516
Speaker 2: this quite nasty stuff in a damn system. It's basically

798
00:39:14,556 --> 00:39:16,956
Speaker 2: a big block of earth, and I drove alongside it

799
00:39:16,996 --> 00:39:20,556
Speaker 2: with damn walls all around it. This total size of

800
00:39:20,596 --> 00:39:23,516
Speaker 2: the tailings down at this single mind chew Kikumata in

801
00:39:23,596 --> 00:39:27,796
Speaker 2: Chile is bigger than Manhattan just for one mind, and

802
00:39:27,876 --> 00:39:31,436
Speaker 2: so the amount of impact that these places have is enormous.

803
00:39:31,436 --> 00:39:34,196
Speaker 2: But now a lot of these places, including Chile, are

804
00:39:34,196 --> 00:39:36,036
Speaker 2: starting to ask, well, hang on, is this actually what

805
00:39:36,116 --> 00:39:36,476
Speaker 2: we want?

806
00:39:36,556 --> 00:39:38,476
Speaker 3: And you've got a lot of governments.

807
00:39:38,196 --> 00:39:41,276
Speaker 2: Like I say, including in Santiago, who are saying, okay, now,

808
00:39:41,316 --> 00:39:42,956
Speaker 2: actually we want to shut down some of these places

809
00:39:42,956 --> 00:39:46,596
Speaker 2: because local communities have been affected by pollution and it's unacceptable.

810
00:39:46,836 --> 00:39:49,596
Speaker 2: So for me, one of the biggest challenges for the

811
00:39:49,716 --> 00:39:53,636
Speaker 2: energy transition it's not necessarily the technology, it's not necessarily

812
00:39:53,676 --> 00:39:55,916
Speaker 2: the kind of enthusiasm that it's a lot of politics

813
00:39:55,956 --> 00:39:58,876
Speaker 2: going on, But actually it's are we actually going to

814
00:40:00,116 --> 00:40:02,876
Speaker 2: manage to persuade people who live where all of these

815
00:40:02,916 --> 00:40:05,956
Speaker 2: resources are that it is right to get this stuff

816
00:40:05,956 --> 00:40:08,716
Speaker 2: out of the ground. It's it's human willingness rather than

817
00:40:09,196 --> 00:40:11,596
Speaker 2: techle logical or geological constraints.

818
00:40:14,716 --> 00:40:16,996
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round,

819
00:40:17,356 --> 00:40:28,516
Speaker 1: of course, m m okay, we're going to finish with

820
00:40:28,556 --> 00:40:31,716
Speaker 1: the lightning round. If you were to add a seventh

821
00:40:31,796 --> 00:40:35,316
Speaker 1: material to the book, what would it be?

822
00:40:35,676 --> 00:40:38,116
Speaker 2: I was actually going to have a seventh material, which

823
00:40:38,156 --> 00:40:41,356
Speaker 2: was going to be wood. I would wood is great,

824
00:40:41,796 --> 00:40:45,916
Speaker 2: like we can use word as an amazing construction material

825
00:40:45,956 --> 00:40:50,636
Speaker 2: these days. Obviously there's all the history about woods, you know, fire, humanity, fire, charcoal,

826
00:40:51,076 --> 00:40:51,756
Speaker 2: all that stuff.

827
00:40:51,916 --> 00:40:55,276
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the first energy transition arguably was fine, right.

828
00:40:55,196 --> 00:40:57,276
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, the first and the greatest in a way.

829
00:40:57,636 --> 00:40:58,036
Speaker 1: Yeah.

830
00:40:58,116 --> 00:40:59,436
Speaker 3: Yeah, So wood, it was gonna be.

831
00:40:59,356 --> 00:41:02,316
Speaker 2: Wood, and wood is great because also, like I say,

832
00:41:02,396 --> 00:41:04,276
Speaker 2: you can you can build skyscrapers out of wood. You

833
00:41:04,276 --> 00:41:05,996
Speaker 2: still need a bit of steal, to be honest with you,

834
00:41:05,996 --> 00:41:07,956
Speaker 2: but you can build skyscrapers out of wood. You can

835
00:41:08,036 --> 00:41:10,996
Speaker 2: use word as a kind of ingreen for making chemicals

836
00:41:10,996 --> 00:41:14,076
Speaker 2: as well. So it was going to be words. But

837
00:41:14,596 --> 00:41:17,356
Speaker 2: the book you've read the book, it's long. It's too

838
00:41:17,396 --> 00:41:19,796
Speaker 2: long already, And so it was going to be seven.

839
00:41:19,996 --> 00:41:21,356
Speaker 2: Like seven is a great number, isn't it.

840
00:41:21,396 --> 00:41:24,156
Speaker 1: Seven's a better number than six. Let's be honest. You

841
00:41:24,196 --> 00:41:25,396
Speaker 1: could have gone down to five.

842
00:41:25,716 --> 00:41:27,396
Speaker 3: It's the fault of like glass.

843
00:41:27,516 --> 00:41:29,876
Speaker 2: Glass was too interesting, and you know, so I just

844
00:41:29,956 --> 00:41:32,436
Speaker 2: I overdid it, basically, I overcooked it.

845
00:41:32,516 --> 00:41:35,196
Speaker 1: Well done. What's your least favorite material?

846
00:41:35,796 --> 00:41:37,036
Speaker 3: Do you mean in the book or do you mean

847
00:41:37,076 --> 00:41:41,356
Speaker 3: and no, in the world. Oh my god.

848
00:41:41,796 --> 00:41:45,916
Speaker 2: I mean, like, I'm not an enormous fan of polyester.

849
00:41:46,676 --> 00:41:48,916
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have any like running shirts

850
00:41:48,996 --> 00:41:52,036
Speaker 1: or workout shirts. Like, they don't call them polyester, they

851
00:41:52,076 --> 00:41:55,356
Speaker 1: call them whatever, Capeline or whatever brand name, but they're

852
00:41:55,396 --> 00:41:57,716
Speaker 1: basically polyester. Polyester is amazing.

853
00:41:57,796 --> 00:42:00,436
Speaker 3: Now, that's the thing. That's why I have states saying this.

854
00:42:00,676 --> 00:42:02,956
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean plastic, polyester is plastic.

855
00:42:03,236 --> 00:42:05,156
Speaker 3: Blast is plastic. It's a petrochemical.

856
00:42:05,396 --> 00:42:07,076
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a petrochemical, and.

857
00:42:07,076 --> 00:42:10,236
Speaker 2: I think we, the English, we invented it. We basically

858
00:42:10,316 --> 00:42:12,556
Speaker 2: we invented a lot of the bad stuff we invented,

859
00:42:12,836 --> 00:42:15,956
Speaker 2: you know, the using fossil fuels. But that's also kind

860
00:42:15,996 --> 00:42:17,596
Speaker 2: of there's been many benefits from that.

861
00:42:17,956 --> 00:42:21,996
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Industrial Revolution. I'm unbalance grateful for the Industrial Revolution.

862
00:42:22,036 --> 00:42:24,276
Speaker 1: It's a complicated legacy, but I appreciate it.

863
00:42:24,516 --> 00:42:29,356
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we invented polyethylene, which is like the plastic

864
00:42:29,396 --> 00:42:31,076
Speaker 2: that you make plastic bags out of. Again, I don't

865
00:42:31,076 --> 00:42:32,636
Speaker 2: think we should be ashamed of it in the slightest,

866
00:42:32,636 --> 00:42:34,356
Speaker 2: but we are. You go to the place where they

867
00:42:34,356 --> 00:42:38,356
Speaker 2: invented polyethylene and there's a little plaque they've kind of

868
00:42:38,436 --> 00:42:40,036
Speaker 2: hidden on a building.

869
00:42:40,516 --> 00:42:43,156
Speaker 1: I mean plastic bags I feel more ambivalent about than

870
00:42:43,156 --> 00:42:44,156
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution.

871
00:42:44,276 --> 00:42:48,076
Speaker 2: Weirdly, polyethylene is not just plastic bags. It's basically, you know,

872
00:42:48,116 --> 00:42:49,956
Speaker 2: it's kind of everything. It's also you can make like

873
00:42:50,036 --> 00:42:52,636
Speaker 2: bulletproof fests out of it. You can make it is

874
00:42:52,636 --> 00:42:54,636
Speaker 2: the most adaptable of all of the plastics. It is

875
00:42:54,636 --> 00:42:58,716
Speaker 2: by far and away the most the biggest. I'm used

876
00:42:58,716 --> 00:43:01,516
Speaker 2: to kind of shitty old polyester, like you know, the

877
00:43:01,596 --> 00:43:04,436
Speaker 2: old kind of shirts like yeah, that make you sweat,

878
00:43:04,676 --> 00:43:08,436
Speaker 2: that make you sweat. These days, I think, particularly the Chinese,

879
00:43:08,476 --> 00:43:10,756
Speaker 2: this is kind of a thing. The Chinese have become

880
00:43:10,876 --> 00:43:14,116
Speaker 2: incredible at making really good fabrics out of polyester. And

881
00:43:14,156 --> 00:43:17,836
Speaker 2: so actually the polyester, like you saying of twenty twenty five,

882
00:43:17,996 --> 00:43:20,196
Speaker 2: is such a different thing, and that's I think largely

883
00:43:20,236 --> 00:43:23,116
Speaker 2: thanks to the Chinese being really clever about weaving it,

884
00:43:23,156 --> 00:43:26,636
Speaker 2: and also just particular types of glens. So I would

885
00:43:26,676 --> 00:43:29,756
Speaker 2: say polyesta, but then then I'd go back on myself,

886
00:43:29,836 --> 00:43:30,596
Speaker 2: just like I am now.

887
00:43:36,836 --> 00:43:40,076
Speaker 1: Ed Conway is the author of Material World, the six

888
00:43:40,196 --> 00:43:44,356
Speaker 1: raw materials that shape of modern civilization. Please email us

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00:43:44,436 --> 00:43:47,836
Speaker 1: at problem at Pushkin dot FM. We are always looking

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00:43:47,876 --> 00:43:51,916
Speaker 1: for new guests for the show. Today's show was produced

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00:43:51,916 --> 00:43:55,356
Speaker 1: by Trinamnino and Gabriel Hunter Chang, who was edited by

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00:43:55,356 --> 00:43:59,756
Speaker 1: Alexander Garriton and engineered by Sarah Bruguier. I'm Jacob Goldstein

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00:43:59,796 --> 00:44:01,876
Speaker 1: and we'll be back next week with another episode of

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00:44:01,876 --> 00:44:02,436
Speaker 1: What's Your Pop