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Selects: Blacksmiths? You got that right! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi guys, it's Josh, and for this week's Select, I'm
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: going with our 2020 episode on blacksmiths. Growing up, there
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of smithing going on around me. Pretty
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: much zero smithing, actually. So I wasn't very familiar with
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: this topic. But I found very quickly that I really
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: enjoyed researching it and talking about it, too. And I
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: came to admire all the blacksmiths. on the videos that
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I watched. It's just kind of mesmerizing. And if you
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: think about it, there are many things that people do
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: today that are essentially unchanged over the last few thousand years,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. So I hope you like listening
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to this one as much as I liked researching it.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's out there somewhere,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and this is Stuff You Should Know.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Did I tell you about my new hobby that started yesterday?
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I'll bet I can guess.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Watching blacksmithing videos.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say the same thing, man. Like,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have any desire to blacksmith myself.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I just like watching these videos. There's something really amazing
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: about them.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one. I don't know if you watched. It's
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: on YouTube. It's called Blacksmithing Forging a Bearded Axe.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't see that one. Oh, God.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: It just reminds me of the sort of the lulling
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: of that show, how it's made. But I watched this video,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: and most of them have some sped up stuff, too,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: because blacksmithing takes so long that a 30-minute video, I mean,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: half of it is in fast motion, so it just
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: goes to show you, and it's edited.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: And they always put it to Yakety Sachs.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: But it's just crazy, though, when you see how long
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: it takes to make this one axe. And then you
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: think about outfitting armies. Yeah. It just feels like it
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: was every other person a blacksmith. And did they just
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: do that 24-7?
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I get the impression there is a Walt Whitman
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: poem about blacksmiths. And he's basically like they were the
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: most important people in any community. Everybody loved them. They
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: owed no one anything because they never had any debts
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: because they were so vital that anything they did probably
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: was worth 10 times what anybody else could do for them.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: They seem to have been pretty amazing people on the whole.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, and we'll talk about this more, but
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: when you think about just nails. Yeah. And how many
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: nails built this country and the world.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Those nails had to be forged.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, when you watch some of these blacksmith videos,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and like you're saying, when you do see how long
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: it takes to just make an average thing that you
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: would like buy in a second these days, it really
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: gives you an appreciation for just what a sea change
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the industrial revolution was.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: To where this was automated and made, converted to mass production.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It just could have never happened before. And it didn't
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: happen before, but it was up to the lone blacksmith to...
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: equip their entire communities with all this stuff. It's pretty cool.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: So are we going to do blacksmith history first or
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: the metal history first?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: We'll do blacksmith history first, I think. Okay.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I guess we've got to look at the name because
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: if you look at other smiths, they were all a
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: little more specific. They were called bronze smiths. Blacksmiths are
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: not called iron smiths. No.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: No.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Even though they work with iron, and most of the
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: other smiths were named for the metal that they work with.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Silversmith, that's a good one.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, God, good silversmith.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: It's worth their weight, and it's gold.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Silver. Don't bring up gold to those guys.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, no. But black comes from, well, we're not positive,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: but one explanation is blacksmith comes from the hammer scale,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: or these scales. If you're watching these videos, you'll see
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: when they're hammering this stuff, these little tiny, chunky scales, thin,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: not chunky actually, just little chunks of thin scales are
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: falling off every time they hammer it. That's the hammer scale.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: And it is black, and your hands get all black,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: and your face gets black. Or it might have just
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: been because iron is black.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Typically, yeah, it's pretty dark. It's dark enough. Especially wrought iron,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: it tends to be black. So that's why they think
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: one of those two reasons is where blacksmith came from.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And the name Smith itself, we actually talk about this
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: in our book that's coming out, you know, In the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: episode on keeping up with the Joneses.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: We talked about. You mean the chapter?
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: The chapter. In our book, we talk about how keeping
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: up with the Joneses could have very easily been keeping
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: up with the Smiths because the two names are so prevalent.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And in fact, Smith is the most prevalent name in
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the United States. And it's all derived from blacksmiths and
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: just how many blacksmiths there were because every community needed one.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And then if you were in a large enough community,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: you had multiple blacksmiths all working. Because one blacksmith had
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to do all this work to supply this one community
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: with all this stuff. And they could only keep up
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: with a certain size community, you know?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you had an on-site thing that you
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: were doing, you had a blacksmith with you. If you
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: were out at war in battle, you had blacksmiths there
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: because not only do they create these weapons and the armor,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: but they have to fix stuff. You know, after a big,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: long day of battle, you go in and trade in
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: your sword and say, fix this thing.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And those smithies got to be working around the clock.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they have, like, apprentices and help and all
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But, yeah, I mean, like, you
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: get the impression that the community could come to a
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: standstill when the blacksmith was sick for a week or something.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were blacksmiths doing all kinds of work
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: all over the place, so many that they eventually, and
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: this makes sense, would become a little more specialized.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: And horses were a big deal back then. We still
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: love horses today, but back then they did a lot
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: more for humanity. They just look pretty and run around
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: in fields now. So they had to make horseshoes, and
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: it was a very specialized set of equipment for making
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: horseshoes as opposed to just regular blacksmithing. So that was
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: a very busy job. They were called farriers. And even
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: when blacksmithing as a whole kind of went away, there
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: were still farriers working because— It's not like a shoe
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: store where one size fits all. Well, shoe stores aren't
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: one size fits all, but it's very specific to your
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: foot size or your hoof size as a horse.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So you can't just throw any old shoe that's close
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: enough on there. You got to make them a la carte, basically,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: made to order, I think, in the fashion world. What's
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: it called?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Pret-a-porter?
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  Speaker 2: Bespoke.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. That's the opposite of pret-a-porter.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: And so farriers continue to work for years and years
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: and years, and I think they're are people that still
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: do farrier work today, aren't they?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Sure. Sure. Just to show off.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Right. Sure.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: But I guess you kind of spoiled the ending. Blacksmiths
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: aren't really around much today because of industrialization. But they were.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: They're around now. They're in Brooklyn, New York. I guarantee it.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. For about 2000 years, they were extraordinarily
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: important to society. But, you know, society was around for
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a very long time before blacksmiths came around. So there's
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: this this really important window in the historical development of
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: of human society that blacksmiths you know existed in um
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: prior to that you know we had tools but they
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: were mostly made of stone and then at some point
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: somebody said hey if you put tin and copper together
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: you can come up with this stuff called bronze and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: it's pretty great you can make some pretty neat things
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: with it and one of the things about bronze is
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that it has a fairly low melting point something like
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: um 1,742 degrees Fahrenheit, 950 degrees Celsius, which you could
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: get a hot campfire to that temperature to melt, melt
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: into molten liquid bronze, which means that you can create
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: casts and molds and you can pour that molten bronze
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  Speaker 1: into it. And as it cools, you've got a handy
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: sword that you can make over and over and over again.
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  Speaker 1: So bronze fulfilled this purpose for tools for many thousands
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: of years. So much so that— and these metals were so
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: important that we go back and call these historical ages
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: by the name of the metal tools that were being produced.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: So you get the Bronze Age, and then that was
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: eventually followed by the Iron Age. And one thing that
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: stuck out to me, Chuck, I hadn't realized before, is
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that you think of history as progressing, you know, constantly. Yeah.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: But the Bronze Age, even though it was followed by
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the Iron Age, the Iron Age marked a period of
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: cultural decline. where the Bronze Age, which had come previously,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: was a period of cultural blossoming. But for the first
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: several centuries of the Iron Age, it was a step backwards.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: A lot of the classical or antiquity societies kind of
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: crumbled at about the same time. They think possibly because
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: of climate change or mass droughts and starvation, kind of
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: like the Maya.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not like the iron caused that, but iron,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: like really good bronze is, probably superior to iron in
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways. I think iron is a little softer.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: It might rust a little quicker.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: It depends on what kind of iron you have, for sure. Right.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: But the iron that they were using, basically, they started using, and,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: you know, there's not like a demarcation line. Then there
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: is some overlap, and no one knows exactly when the
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: big switch happened. But it was cheaper, and it was
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: more readily available than bronze.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Was.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: So they just started using iron, basically, and it surpassed bronze.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Greeks pin a semi-mythical group called the Chalabes,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: who supposedly were absorbed by the Hittites in Anatolia and Turkey,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: and that they were the ones who figured out how
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: to mine iron. Because originally there was iron stuff, like
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: King Tut was found with a dagger made of iron.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And it would have been even more highly prized than
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: anything made of gold in his entire tomb because iron
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: was so rare at that time. Yeah. Because the only
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: source of iron on Earth, as far as humans knew,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: came in the form of meteorites.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: So you had to find a meteorite above ground to
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: find your deposit of iron. Yeah, totally. making a dagger
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: out of that would have been, that would have been
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: a very special dagger. And then eventually they say, the
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Calabese figured out, no, there's actually iron like in rock
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: in the earth. And people started figuring out that you
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: could take that rock and heat it to some pretty
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: high temperatures considering and then hammer it. And you can
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: hammer the other stuff out, the ore out or hammer
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the iron from the ore. And you have something approaching
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: what you would consider iron, something called bloom.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they just couldn't get the fire hot enough
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: basically at first to get to the iron point.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: But they could make it hot enough to get to
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: the bloom, and they would put it in an oven
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: known as a bloomery, and it would kind of just
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: roast out those impurities. It had iron, it had slag,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: which is sort of a glass-like byproduct that you, you know,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: it's so funny that you can just hammer this stuff out.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: But bloom would eventually, when they, I mean, it worked okay.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: You could heat it up, you could hammer it, and
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: it would get a lot of the slag out And
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: it was useful enough for tools. But when the blast
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: furnace came around, when you really got larger furnaces and
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: hotter fires that incorporated bellows to really get that oxygen
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: in there and get it super, super hot, that eventually
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: allowed them to get that ore to pig iron. And
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: pig iron was a pretty big advancement because from pig iron,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: you could hammer that slag out to eventually get to
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: wrought iron.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Right. I want to give a shout out to Harold DeSmith, H-A-R-A-L-D.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: He wrote an intro to iron smelting that talks all
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: about making bloom himself with pictures. It's pretty cool. It's
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: worth checking out for sure.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And the Grabster helped us with this one, right?
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, big time. Thank you, Grabster. But with pig iron,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: that was like a, it was like you said, like
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: a pretty big change in that, like you could suddenly
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: make much purer iron because we had a much hotter
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: furnace that we were working with. And the thing about
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: pig iron is, In very much the same way as bloom,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: you've got to hammer out those impurities. And so to
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: make pig iron into wrought iron, you would take this
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: pig iron, which is pretty impure, heat it up and
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: hammer it with a sledgehammer over and over again. Heat it,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: hammer it, heat it, hammer it. Very much the same
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: process as bloom, but at higher temperatures and producing a
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: much purer iron. And then eventually you would have wrought iron.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And they say that they figured out how to use
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: water hammers, like water-powered hammers. In part because of the
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: plague of the 13th century, it killed so many people
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that they didn't have the human power any longer that
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: they needed to hammer pig iron. So it made people
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: devise water hammers.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, water hammers, steam hammers. You know, if you look
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: at these videos today, these people and their and their
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: shops and their sheds that they have behind their house have,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: it looks like hydraulics, I guess, that are pounding this stuff.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: And at first when I saw that, I was disappointed.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, man. But that's just the big
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: initial work. Like there's still tons of hammer work by
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: hand because there are many, many, there's a lot more
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: to it than that initial hammering to get to the
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: wrought iron stage. But I was, at first I was
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: kind of like, oh, man, what? They don't like swing
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: a hammer anymore?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Right, no. No, there's definitely— It's very smart.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: They don't need to swing a hammer.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Right. It's called work smarter, not harder. But there are
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: traditionalists who are like, no, I want to use a hammer.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: But so the different types of irons that humans have
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: come up with over the ages— and this is a really
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: important point I think we should point out here, Chuck.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Like blacksmithing— And all of the information and knowledge and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: like ways of working with different types of iron, different
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: techniques and actually coming up with different types of iron.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: All of that started with those people who figured out
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: that you could take rock from the earth and hammer
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the iron out of it.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: And just more and more people over the ages as
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: it spread and continued to be around for hundreds and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: thousands of years. All the people working with metal contributed
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to that body of knowledge. And so that's, I think,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: one of the things that's so appealing about blacksmithing is
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: that it is a genuine human technology that was created
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: by humanity. You know, not just like a couple of
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: people who had a really good idea. It was this
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: group of humans, countless humans all working together over thousands
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of years, contributing to one another's knowledge to create this
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: body of knowledge. And I think that's what makes it
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: so neat to me.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: So cool. And like such a brute way of doing it.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: You know, the finesse comes in for sure. And maybe
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: that's what I like about it is both. Like it's
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: swinging the heavy hammer. But it's also doing this really
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: beautiful finesse work later on in the project.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Really cool. So if we're going to– well, maybe let's
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: take a break and then talk about the types of iron.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: How about that?
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Let's. All right.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: We promised you talk of iron types. There's Iron Maiden.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Sure. There's Take Your Iron Supplement. That's right. What else?
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: There's really just Iron Maiden.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: That's all. That's all you need to know. Iron types,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: they're based on the carbon content of the iron. So-
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: If you hear wrought iron, you might just think that's
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: like the cool thing that your staircase spindles are made
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: out of.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: They are not made of wrought iron.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: They aren't made out of wrought iron anymore, at least.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: They used to be back in the day.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: But this is also called bar iron. It's about 0.08%
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: or less carbon. And this is sort of, from what
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I saw back in the day, just the main— iron
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: that they would mainly use for the most part.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: The wrought iron?
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the difference, the big difference between wrought iron
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and steel is that wrought iron has silicates in it
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: that kind of ends up as like these fibrous filaments
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that get hammered into order, basically, by the blacksmith from
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: pig iron, which gives it a certain structure. With steel... Steel,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: like you said, all types of iron are basically based
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: on their carbon content. Steel has a much higher carbon
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: content than wrought iron does. And so it doesn't need
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to be hammered like wrought iron does because it doesn't
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: have these iron silicates that need to be arranged just
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: so or else it'll make it brittle. Instead, because of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: this carbon in it, it forms this kind of crystalline
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: structure in the iron that makes it hard and durable material.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: way harder and more durable than wrought iron. The problem is,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: is because that durability and the strength and hardness, it
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: makes it more difficult for a blacksmith to work with
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: down the line than it does wrought iron. But it's
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: also a much more effective, say, battle axe than a
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: wrought iron battle axe.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And like you said, it's not what we use
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: on our staircases and wrought iron these days. It's not
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: wrought iron and the production of that in like a
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: big way went out in, you know, the 20th century
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: pretty much altogether.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Went out with disco.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, I wish it lasted until the 70s.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: So one thing we should say also, Chuck, is we
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: tend to think of steel as like a modern invention.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Steel was perfected in the modern times. It was like
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: basically the thing that kicked off the Industrial Revolution, if
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I remember from our robber barons episode. But that's not
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: to say that people weren't experimenting with steel long before that.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: It was just the scientific understanding of it was lacking. Instead,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: that was replaced by an intuitive understanding among blacksmiths of,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: you know, what fuel did what to iron to make
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: it stronger. They weren't saying like, oh, if I use
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: charcoal or coke, it's going to make this a better
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: steel than say, you know, coal or something like that.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: That's right. Then you've also got cast iron. If you
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: have a nice cast iron collection in your kitchen, it's
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: going to be 2% carbon or more It's very brittle,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: so you're not going to hammer cast iron.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: No.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: It is formed into shape by casting it. That's why
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: it's called cast iron. And use a mold while it's
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: molten and pour it in there. And it's a great
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: thing to cook with.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we would have never been able to make
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: anything out of cast iron until those bellows were introduced
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to the forge to really bring that temperature up. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: has a very high melting point.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're going to pour it, it's got to
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: be super, super hot. And we'll get to these temperatures
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: and the different kinds of hot later on, which is
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: very interesting stuff.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So we've got, like, the blacksmiths are working with this.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: They're figuring out that if you add, like, carbon or
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: if you do this, like, if you... Heat the iron
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: to a certain temperature and then take it off and
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: hammer it and then let it cool on its own.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: It's going to form one type of finished product. If
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: you do something that's called quenching it, which is cooling
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: it down in a bucket of water and usually mineral
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: oil these days, it's going to cool differently. So its
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: structure is going to form differently. And again, they didn't,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: they were passing this knowledge on, but they weren't using
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: terms necessarily that we were using. What's interesting to me
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: is we use terms that they came up with, like
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: quenching and slag and scale and that kind of stuff.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Like those are all still very much around and it
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: makes sense still. Even after having made the transition to industrialization,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: they still use words very much like that, if not
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: those same words.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Now, do you mean quenching as in how a human
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: might quench their own thirst?
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Kind of. Kind of, but rather than turning up a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: bucket of water and mineral oil, you would plunge the iron,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the hot iron, into that bucket of mineral oil and water.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: That's right. Very cool stuff.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Were you making a joke that I just missed? A reference? No. Okay.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't know if you were saying the etymology
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: of the word quench was from smithing.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, maybe.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: And that when we quench our thirst, it's taken from that.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe. It's possible. All right. I mean, smite, they think
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: that the words smite and smith are from the same word.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Right, because smite means very biblical meaning, or not meaning,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: but they use a lot in Bible times to hit something, right?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to strike it, to smite something.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: That's right, and that's what a smith does.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Smithies.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Should we talk about tools?
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I think so. One of the cool things about blacksmiths
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: is that when you get good, you just start making
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: your own tools. Oh, man. Isn't that neat?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Tools to make tools. You got to start somewhere, though.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to lay down a little bit of
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: money first. But I saw this one blog post by
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: a blacksmith who's like, look, if you're just starting out,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: just get the bare minimum stuff. Get some used things.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: See if you like it first. And then eventually when
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you get good, you can invest a little money. And
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: then you can just start making your own stuff.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Right, which is very cool. I did see there was
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: one YouTube video that was like how to get going
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: for less than $ 100.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'll bet, yeah.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Some very basic stuff.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: So if you're going to be a smithy, you're going
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: to need some things. It might be less than $ 100
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: to start. You're going to need a forge, which is
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: the heat. There are different kinds. You know, the one
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: that I saw, the axe, this is sort of a,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's old-timey, but it was actually
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: using coal. And that's very appealing to the eye if
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: you're watching on YouTube. It seems like the backyard smithy
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: these days uses a gas-powered oven, a gas powered forge.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Were they using coal or charcoal? Because there's a big difference.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: It was coal.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Okay. I didn't know much about charcoal until this. We'll
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: talk about it later.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: But it seems like these days the gas powered forge
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: is kind of what you use. They're not very big.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like a double size of a bread
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: box because when you're making something, you're not making, you're
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: not building a car out of iron. You're making a tool.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: You're making a a dagger or an axe head, like
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: they're all kind of small, something you can just sort
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: of stick in there. You're going to have your anvil.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Very key, very key piece. Yeah. You're going to have
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: a lot of other tools for like the more finesse work,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: grinders and files and stuff like that. And you're going
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: to have a nice collection of hammers, of course.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you definitely, there's different hammers for different things. And
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: like we said, you know, Hammering pig iron into wrought iron,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: people don't do that these days. So you're not using
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: a sledgehammer. And so you're using like a little more
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: finesse and precision to kind of strike what's called the workpiece.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Whatever you're working on is called the workpiece. That's one
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: thing that really stood out to me watching some of
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: these blacksmith videos is like these guys do not miss.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: At least if you're at the level where you're doing
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: close-ups of your work on video and posting them to YouTube,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: your hammer is not missing. It's going exactly where you
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: want it to every time, which is pretty cool too. Yeah.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: It is, but I also, and this is not to
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: knock the Smithies, it seems like a bit of a
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: forgiving craft and art.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: So where you can sort of like if something didn't,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: if you did strike in it and it kind of
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: did something you didn't quite like, you can change that.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: You can restrike it. You can reheat it.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there's a lot of trial and error involved
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: when you're first getting started, you know.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure too. And then, you know, as you
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: keep advancing, you're figuring out new techniques and all that
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. But like you were saying, the anvil,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. I didn't realize all the different parts
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: to it. Anybody who's seen a Wile E. Coyote cartoon
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: can recognize an anvil and probably draw one from memory.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: And you'd probably be pretty close. And that's a pretty
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: accurate image of what an anvil does. But all the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: little different details from the point on the front to
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the feet of it, all of those serve this kind
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: of group of purposes that come up pretty frequently in blacksmithing.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the anvil is super heavy. It is very hard, obviously.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: You don't want the anvil itself to be dented or
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: start falling apart when you're swinging this heavy hammer on
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: metal on this thing or on iron. And so you
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: also want it so it doesn't, like, just absorb the
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: hammer blows too. So it's got to be the right
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: amount of hardness. It can't be breaking. It can't be shattering.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: You've got a horn on the front. You talked about
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: the pointy thing.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: That's what's on the front of it. And usually in
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: all the anvils I saw when I looked them up
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: to buy one just to have, although they were way
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: too expensive, it's got a little dip right before the
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: horn where the horn juts out. So the horn isn't
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: exactly level with the regular base of the anvil. It's
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: down just a bit. And it's not by accident. That's
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: very much one of the big uses of the horn
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: is that little step down.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the neat things about anvils is
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: like each little detail has a purpose, a larger purpose
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that's hidden until you understand what you're looking at or
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: what it does.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: What about those holes?
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: There's like two holes in every anvil pretty much. One's
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: round and one's square. And the round one is called
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: a pritchel hole. And it is basically a hole so
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: that you can punch holes into whatever workpiece you're working on.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I saw that if you're punching a hole, you actually
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: want to punch it on the face of the anvil,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: which is the top. Punch it on one side, almost
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: all the way through. Flip it over, punch it on
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the other side, almost all the way through. And then
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: you move it to the pritchel hole. And then that's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: when you widen it to the shape you want. So
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: it just allows you to punch a hole all the
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: way through without harming the face of your anvil, really.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts of the
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: video I saw because that was where the axe head
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: hole went where you would, you know, put the axe handle.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: So I was like, how are you going to do that?
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: And just to see it happen in front of your eyes,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: it was pretty awesome.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: And then what's the other hole, the hardy hole?
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the hardy hole is actually square.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: With the D?
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, H-A-R-D-Y.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's not hardy because it's very tough, although it
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: is very tough. Sure. But it is a square hole,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: which sounds counterintuitive, but it's not. And you can put
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: tools in there that allow you, like you might stick
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: something in there and then use that to then bend the,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: the hot iron around to make different bends and cuts
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: and shapes and things.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw this one tool in a couple of
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: different videos that fit into the hardy hole. The hardy
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: hole is almost like a Dremel tool, right? So like
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: there's all these different things you can put in that
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: square hole that hold it in place. But the difference
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: between them is what tool is attached to that square peg.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Square peg, square, square peg. That's right. And one of
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the ones that I saw looked like a tuning fork.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: It's like two rods that are very close together.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: I saw that.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And you could put like a hot workpiece in between
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: them and then, you know, bend it so you can
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: make like an S hook. It's used for like very tight,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: creating very tight curves in the workpiece.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Yes. Very, very cool.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: You got to have your tongs. Oh, and I think
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: we should have mentioned, too, the anvil, it doesn't have
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: a sharp edge. Like the edge all the way around
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the main work base of the anvil is a little
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: bit round because, you know, if you've got something super
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: sharp and you're hammering away, it's going to make little
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: creases in the iron. You don't want that.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I think the step is the sharpest edge of the
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: whole thing between the horn and the face, the top
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's where you need it to be sharp.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: One other thing I saw that I thought was really
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: interesting is when you buy an anvil, you want to
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: actually fit it to a block of wood. And traditionally,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: people will use like a good tree stump of wood
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that doesn't split very easily. And like, man, you fasten
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: it to that wood, that tree stump, and then you
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: bury the tree stump whenever you can about three feet
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: into the ground. So that the anvil becomes part of
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: the tree stump, becomes part of the ground. Yeah. So
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: it distributes that extra energy that gets lost rather than
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: back up at you down into the ground where it's absorbed,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: which I just find absolutely fascinating. But you make it
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: so well fastened to the stump that the stump and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the anvil become basically one.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the anvil is essentially connected to the
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: earth at that point.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: So nice. This just, man. I just keep thinking of
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Thor and Led Zeppelin.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: I know all the things J.R.R.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: Tolkien yeah the smithy you gotta have those tongs and
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: these are not like grill tongs that you have on
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: your back porch these are those big thick metal.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Iron they look like like like Gussied up nail clippers almost.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And that's what you're going to use to put stuff
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: in the forge and that fire and pull it out.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: It's funny here. Ed says that pretty much no one
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: wears gloves. I didn't see that. I saw plenty of
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: videos with people wearing gloves.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I saw both.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: And I saw some where they didn't. I guess sometimes
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: if you're working really near the heat, you might want
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: your gloves on, but you might also want to have
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: the hand feel during that finesse work.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because, and I think it's worth saying one more
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: time that, that, that, um, forge where the fire is, it's,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is very small. I saw as little
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: as like a six by six inch, um, like little
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: area of extraordinarily intense heat. So it's a small area
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of heat, but the heat that is there is so hot,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: it can turn iron white hot. So yeah, you want
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: to not get too close to it. And even when
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: you're wearing tongs, it's smart to wear gloves from what
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I saw. Yeah.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: We, we never really talked much about the fuel, um,
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Like I said, these days they power it with gas mainly.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Back in the day, they would use charcoal. That was
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: the first thing. And charcoal, apparently, if you're going to
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: be a Brooklyn hipster, you want to work with charcoal
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: because that is the superior product and the superior fuel.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: But it's really messy.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Very wasteful.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: It's very wasteful. It's expensive. It takes a lot of
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: wood to make charcoal. So then coal comes rolling around.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: And there was a lot of coal, and it was
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: super cheap. And they had to kind of rebuild their forges.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: But coal, even though it has some impurities like sulfur
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: and stuff in there, they basically kind of made the
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: big switch to coal at a certain point in time.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And even better is if you can get your
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: hands on coke, which is a derivative of coal, just
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: like charcoal is a derivative of wood. It's just wood
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: with the sap and the water burned out. So it's
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: a really energy dense form of it. Coke is the
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: same thing with coal. It's got the impurities generally burned out.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: So it's an pure energy-dense form of coal. But both
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of them play a really important role in that they
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: produce really high temperatures, but they also introduce a lot
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: of that carbon that gets absorbed into the iron at
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: those high temperatures, which produces better, harder, stronger steel.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Can you cook with that stuff? Can you cook with Coke?
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Cook with Coke? I don't know.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Like in a Kamada, like egg-type cooker?
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That's one thing that I saw in
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: one of these blog posts about different types of fuel.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: I think it was like the no BS, but they
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: spell out the word BS, which I'm not going to
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: say here. Because they're blacksmiths. The no BS guide to
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: different kinds of fuel. They said one of the things
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: to consider is what kind of environmental impact is your
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: fuel having? Right. So that's a good question. If you're like,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I should be cooking with this. Don't forget,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: you're going to be in a small enclosed room that's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: your blacksmith shop. with that same stuff. And you probably
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: have a pretty high-efficiency chimney, but some of it's still
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: coming back. So that's definitely a consideration to think of,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: your own health and the health of Mother Earth, who
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: is absorbing the blows from your anvil.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: That's right. You do need good ventilation in your workshop,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: eye protection. Sometimes if you really want to kick it
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: old school, you might have one of those leather aprons,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: like a leather face. And then your quench. You know,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: we talked about quenching. It's called a quench or a
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: quench bucket. And that is the bucket with the water and,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: like you said, sometimes mineral oil these days where you'll
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: plunge it in there just like on TV and in
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: movies when it makes that great steamy sound and the
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: steam rises everywhere and they pull out a beautiful battle
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: axe or long sword.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Apparently, so it's not that surprising when you consider samurai,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: but the Japanese were really, really good at creating high
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: carbon steel blades. Yeah. And there's one guy named Goro, G-O-R-O,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: who is like, well, widely considered the greatest Japanese swordsmith
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: of all time from back in the 13th century.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: So he can throw together a katana, no problem?
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: No problem.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break?
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All right.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: We're going to take a break and talk a little
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: bit about and get quite a bit wrong probably about
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: techniques right after this.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Know.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: All right. Let the parade of misinformation begin.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: You know, these worry me more than other episodes that
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: we do when it's something very technical and very specific.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Because these guys make battle axes. Yeah.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: And anytime it's a very specific craft or something that
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: you haven't done, like we haven't done, you can research
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: it and watch videos and do your best. But Until
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: you've actually done it, you can't get it 100% right.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I will say, though, the videos help tremendously.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: If, like, this is even remotely interesting to you, and
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: hopefully it is if you're, you know, this many minutes,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: 33 minutes or so into this podcast that it is,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: go watch some videos. There's a bunch of them on there,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: and I think you're going to be like, oh, okay,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: I get what they were saying there. Oh, that makes sense.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Forging a bearded axe. That's the one.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I've got one, Black Bear Forge.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: This giant man with a giant beard and a tiny
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: little leather cap.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: And his name is Black Bear Forge?
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Which is adorable, yeah. The video I watched is called
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Scarf Theory and Making Chain, which we'll talk about that
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: in a minute. But it's just amazing.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: So cool. And like you said, I don't want to
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: do it. I want to have a friend that does it.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: I want to come over to their house and watch
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: them do it.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Like, let's see if we can get John Hodgman into it. Yeah, Hodgman.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Although, he's got very strong forearms.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: He does, freakishly, like Popeye.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: All right, so here's some of the techniques. What you're
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: doing if you're a smithy is you are shaping hot metal.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: That's what it comes down to. And this is where
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: the temperature of the metal becomes really important because certain
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: metals have to be at certain temperatures to do certain things.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: These days, like I said, if you've got your gas-powered forge,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: you can set that baby on whatever exact temperature you want.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: And it's not quite as– it's still very impressive. But
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: back in the day when they were using coal and charcoal,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: there was, I feel like, much more intuition and trial
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: and error and actually looking at the color temperature because
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: the metal will turn different colors at different temperatures.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Right. So there's white hot, orange hot, yellow hot, red hot,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: different kinds of gradients of orange and yellow and white too.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: There's glowing white, which is the hottest.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Those aren't just expressions people say. No.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: And that's, again, that's the etymology of blacksmith lingo, basically,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: that has made it into.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: White hot.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Red hot.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Those abs of yours are white hot. Oh, wait, that
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: was a different episode. Yeah, that's right. But apparently blue-white-hot
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: is the hottest of all, but you don't typically see
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: that in blacksmithing. White-hot is about as hot as you get.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: And how hot is white-hot?
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: White-hot, from what I saw, is 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit, which
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: is super high in Celsius.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Okay. Yellow, I think, is just below that. Yeah. And
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: then you've got orange. Right. And then you've got lame-o red-hot,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: which is only 1,400 degrees.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: 760 Celsius.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: And you can't do anything with red-hot.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: That's actually not true. You can do some very limited stuff.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: But at that point, the iron is, I mean, it'll
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: probably bend a little bit. I saw good old Black
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Bear Forge was making some chain with what looked to
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: be red-hot iron at the time. And he was bending
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: it pretty good. But, I mean, I'm not the best
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: judge of color.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: He was making chain?
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Yes. I'm just going to, I'm not going to wait
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: any longer. This guy made a chain, a length of chain. Perfect.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Each length was exactly the size of the last. Oh, God.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: He was making them like in threes and then connecting
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: those threes to other threes. And he was using the horse. Chuck,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: are you about to.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Climax or something? No, it's just so satisfying. It touches
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: these parts of my body. You know, it's not sexual
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: at all.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying?
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know what you're saying. I know exactly what
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: you mean.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: Although I haven't seen it. You never know what might happen.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Right. But this guy, so you know the horn of
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: the anvil, right?
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, do I?
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: He would make like, he would bend the chain initially
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: on kind of like a thick, about the middle part
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: of the horn. And then he would bend it even further,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: moving it a little up the horn. And this guy
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: just so expertly put it exactly where he needed it
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to be. I think one of the things I like
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: about Black Bear Forge guy is that he doesn't seem
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: the least bit pretentious. I'm pretty sure he lives in Minnesota.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: He's not wearing his little leather cap, ironically. He seems
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: very helpful. He was born in that cap. He's making
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: these videos to help. Yeah, I think you might be right.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: And with a white beard. I think he was born
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: with a white beard as well.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Well, when you watch this bearded axe thing, what this
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: guy does is he starts with a block of iron
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: and then eventually makes an axe head. But he's hammering
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: this thing out. He's using this little rolling tool and
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: hammering that as he's kind of rolling it forward. And
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: it's almost like, kind of reminded me of baking, like
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: the way you would use a rolling pin to smooth
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: out dough. And then when it came time to actually
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: make the sharp part, I guess what he was doing
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: was forge welding. And we're kind of jumping around, but
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: this is one of the techniques. And it's also called
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: fire welding. And that's when you combine different grades of
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: iron and steel, and you're joining these things together in
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: multiple shapes together. I think that's what was going on
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: because what he did, he had this axe head and
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: the sharp part he split. And I was like, well, dude,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: what kind of an axe is that? That's crazy looking.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: I thought he messed up. But then he put some
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: other kind of metal in between and would use this.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: And from what I gathered, it's, where is it? Flux?
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Is that what it is?
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Flux. Yeah. Like sand. Did it look like sand?
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Well, it was in a bottle and it looked like
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: a little sandy chemical. So I guess that's what it was.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: And he would. heat it up, and then spray this
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: stuff on it and hammer it together, heat it up,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: spray some of this, and hammer it until that metal
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: becomes one. And the really, you know, the super specific
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: metal that he needed for the sharp axe blade was
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: melded with the rest of that iron to where you
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: couldn't even tell. It was just like they became one
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: with one another.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: He was probably reinforcing the axe head with a stronger...
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: a stronger type of iron. Totally, yeah. So there's slightly
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: different carbon content. And then the outside was a harder kind,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: so it resisted surface deformities. But the interior stuff was strength,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: was strong, so it resisted breaking. Probably, but he was
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: making these two one. I saw Black Bear Forge do
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the same thing with the chains. Yes. He was using
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: a scarf weld where you make one end angled and
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: then you make the other end that it's going to
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: join to angled in the opposite direction so they kind
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: of fit tightly together. And then he would heat it
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: up and hammer it together and it just became one.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: But he used flux as well. And from what I
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: could tell, when you use flux like sand or borax,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I think is something you can use, it prevents that
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: joint from oxidizing, which makes it a stronger... a stronger joint,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: a stronger seam rather than kind of a compromised seam.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was also interesting to see how this
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: guy would, sometimes that block was out for quite a
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: long time of hammering and shaping and hammering and shaping.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: And then it looked like when he got into the
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: little more detailed work as it became an axe head,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: he would put it in the fire and he would
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: turn around very quickly and start hammering. You could tell
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: he wanted to do it very fast.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: And he would hammer it for like 10 seconds and
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: then put it right back in the fire.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: And then pull it out and hammer it really fast
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: for 10 seconds. So whatever he was doing at that
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: point required a super, super, super hot piece of, what
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: do you call it, ground piece?
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Work piece.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Work piece.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But, I mean, so most blacksmiths, you'll notice in
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: their shops, they set the forge and the anvil up
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: within just twisting distance.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Like you're standing in one place moving from one to
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: the other so that you can lose as little heat
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: as possible when you transfer it out of the fire.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: You don't walk across your shop.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: No, you don't stop and like make a sandwich or anything.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: There's also drawing, which is drawing that metal out into
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: a longer, thinner shape. You might be shaping something into
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: a rod or a block into a blade like I saw.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: And that's sort of lengthening it without flattening it out.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Because you can also flatten it. That's another thing. That's
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: called peening. Peening.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's also upsetting, which is the opposite of drawing,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: where you shorten the length of iron or steel by
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: hammering it. And that's what happens when you make a nail.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Would you want to talk about making nails here?
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, we kind of mentioned earlier, you know,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: the foundation. I mean, there were things that were built
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: with dovetail joints and corn cobs to keep logs together.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: And there were technologies like that. But If you really
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: want to talk about the building of the world, you
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: got to talk about iron nails and how many millions
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: and tens and millions of iron nails that were made
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: in the world by hand, by people.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, before industrialization, they were all made by hand.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: And it's apparently harder to make them than you would think.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: I watched a video by a blacksmith named Nick Kimball
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: on Instructables. And I guess his brother writes for Instructables
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and interviewed him. And he's like a blacksmith at one
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: of the colonial model farms. Yeah. I think maybe Mount Vernon.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: They didn't say. No, I met that guy. So he
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: looks like it too. He looks like a cool dude.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: But he showed how to make a nail. And he
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: says he can make one a minute. And this guy
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: is an advanced blacksmith. Like he has a job as
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: a blacksmith. That's how advanced this guy is in the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: 21st century. And he can make one a minute. Apparently,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: blacksmiths of yore could make 10 to a dozen of
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: them a minute. And it's very involved. You actually have
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: to make the tool first to make the nails. So
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you take an iron bar, flatten that, punch a hole
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: in it using your pritchel hole and a punch. And
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: then you take nail rod, little strips of the iron
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: that's going to be nails, heat it up. hammer a
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: shoulder into it on the edge of the anvil so
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: that there's like a, it's narrower for the bulk of it.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: And then up top, it just kind of is a
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: little wider and boxy. And then you put it into
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the hole of the tool that you made and then
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: you heat it up and you hammer the head a
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: bunch of times to flatten it. That's what you have
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: to do to make one single nail. And some blacksmiths
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: in the days of yore could make a dozen of
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: those in a minute. That's how good they were at it.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: I would have charged so much for nails, it would
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: have been astronomical. I would have been like, no, I will, like,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: let's make you some chain mail instead. What do you
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: need nails for? Let's do something cool. And they'd say,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I need to build a second story in
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: my house. I'd be like, all right, it's going to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: cost you.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: The Josh nail?
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: The Josh Clark special?
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Because it would not be fun to make nails, for sure.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: No, but boy, they made a lot of them.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: They did.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: There are also some other techniques. There's bending we've kind
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: of already talked about when you're creating curves and things.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: I mentioned the staircase irons, how they're twisted around. That
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: is done with a square bar, which is a bar
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: with a square hole in it. And that's placed over
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: a square rod of hot iron. And then you turn
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: that square. You basically, sort of like that Dremel you
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: were talking about, you stick that hot thing into the hole.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: And you twist it around and you create those little twists.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, every time it's a blacksmith tradition, you say,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: et voila. You got anything else?
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: I don't have anything else. I know we got stuff
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: not quite right, but hopefully the Smithies, hopefully our enthusiasm
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: won them over.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's hope so.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Are they coming after us?
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: It cloaked our ignorance. Also, there's like a ton that
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: we didn't talk about. It's a really, I mean, this
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: is a countless human, thousands of year long body of
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: knowledge that we just tried to do in 45 minutes
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: and failed at that. But there's a lot to it.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: So if you're interested in it, go check it out.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: At the very least, go watch some videos. And since
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I said go watch some videos, everybody, it's time for
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Listener Mail.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to call this Olympic Torchbearer.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Hey, guys. I was a torchbearer for the Winter Olympics,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: and it was a lot of fun. The amount of
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: logistical coordination that went into it was incredible. I was
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: told four months in advance when, down to the minute,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: I'd be carrying the lit torch, and it wasn't off
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: by more than a few, actually. A guy came to
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: our hotel with a bunch of toys, vehicles, and action
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: figures and modeled exactly what would happen. That's so cool.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: I had to be reminded by my handlers to ensure
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: that I kept it very high, high enough so as
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: to not light my hat on fire. The torch is
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: pretty light but fairly top-heavy. I'm sure we were wearing
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: mittens to make it impossible for any of us to
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: make any finger gestures, even accidentally, that could be seen
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: by the world on the live feed. Didn't even think
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: about that. One term you didn't use that I thought
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: you'd appreciate, when one torchbearer passes the flame to another,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: it's called a torch kiss. We went through training and
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: practiced just this part. On the street, we did a
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: little dance after we kissed, and then I and whoever
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: just finished got back on the bus. As you mentioned,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: a guy took my torch and extinguished it right afterward,
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: and since it was still hot, they stored it in
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: a rack on the bus. When we got back to
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: the starting point, they removed the fuel cell and gave
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: it back to me.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Broke it in half.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: And that is from Matt Jones. We had quite a
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: nice little exchange about this. He said he did get
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: it through work, but he was not a C-level executive.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: He won it through a drawing at his work.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's totally great.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: That's great. He might as well have gotten it from
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: contributing to society, as great as that is. Man, I've
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: got to thanks for that, Matt. Also, I knew it
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: was called The Kiss. I thought I said it was
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: The Kiss. And if I left that out, that drives
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: me crazy, man. when there's a fact that I know
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: that I failed to put into the podcast that somebody
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: then comes and says you left out this really awesome
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: fact and I just drop to my knees like the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Liberty Mutual guy in the elevator and go.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: No you know how much that bothers me when that
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: happens to me.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: How much none man it's like it'll ruin my week
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: My week's just toast now, thanks to Matt.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: There's the difference between you and I.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want to ruin my week and have
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: a neutral effect on Chuck's week, maybe even make it
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: more positive, you can email us. Go ahead and type
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: it out. After that, wrap it up. After that, spank
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: it on the bottom and then send it off to
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.