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How Gold Works · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
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  Speaker 1: We're doing this again. It's been a little while, been
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  Speaker 1: a little while, but it's still stuff you should know.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: But I thought the name had changed since we took
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  Speaker 1: our little Christmas break. No, don't you remember our race
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to the Patent Office trademarket again at the eleven That
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  Speaker 1: was a close one boom and they stamped it. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: s Y s K. Actually they said s N s
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  Speaker 1: K right now. Wait, s Y s N is what
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  Speaker 1: we get from people a lot sometimes, And I'm like,
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  Speaker 1: you know, no starts with the K. One of them does,
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  Speaker 1: one of Yes, it's not stuff you should know? Is right?
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. How do you doing? Oh?
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  Speaker 1: I'm great man? Are you okay? Good? Um? You want
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  Speaker 1: to do this one? We're talking about gold? Yeah, man,
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  Speaker 1: I've got a little bit of an intro. It might
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  Speaker 1: be a stretch. We'll find out. Okay, that's here. Today's January,
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  Speaker 1: tomorrow's January Day. It is Big Newton Day. And also
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  Speaker 1: on this day in history, in the Mayan general, fire
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  Speaker 1: is born. Uh conquered the Mayan city to Call, which
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  Speaker 1: was recently rediscovered, well not recently, it's been rediscovered, the
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  Speaker 1: rediscovered anyone. Uh and Uh. What this did was it
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  Speaker 1: enlarged the kingdom of King spear thrower Owl. The Minas
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  Speaker 1: had the best names, great name um. And all of
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  Speaker 1: this was going on in the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula.
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  Speaker 1: If you went just a little to the north, you
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  Speaker 1: would run into another group of people called Aztecs, which
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  Speaker 1: were actually the Triple Federation, is what it's what they're
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  Speaker 1: really called. Um. But if you were to stumble northward
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  Speaker 1: and run into the Aztec Empire and ask for gold,
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  Speaker 1: what they would give you is what they would call
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  Speaker 1: excrement of the gods. Do you want to try to
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  Speaker 1: pronounce it? Yeah, I'm gonna go with teo would. I
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  Speaker 1: think that's pretty close. I think you may have done it, Chuck.
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  Speaker 1: I think the last part is I love that language.
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  Speaker 1: It's similar to like the some of the native languages
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  Speaker 1: we heard in Guatemala. The that's because they're mine, yeah exactly,
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  Speaker 1: but it's got that same like I don't know. It's
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  Speaker 1: very staccato. It's kind of cool to hear, I think, right,
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  Speaker 1: like the Mayan City, the heart of King, spirit thrower
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  Speaker 1: owls um empires tetotactan, right, which sounds pretty close to
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  Speaker 1: that word tilt, which means excrement of the gods. And
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  Speaker 1: that's what the the the Aztecs considered gold. That was
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  Speaker 1: a holy metal, a very very precious metal in every
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  Speaker 1: sense of the word. And by three sight a d
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  Speaker 1: they weren't the only ones to have loved gold for
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  Speaker 1: a very long time. No, Egyptians were all over it.
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  Speaker 1: They thought it was also divine. Wait, hold on, how
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  Speaker 1: would you rate that intro? I would say that was
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  Speaker 1: on a scale of what one to ten, I was
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  Speaker 1: one to twenty. I would give it a solid like sixteen. Wow,
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  Speaker 1: thanks Chuck, higher than you thought, way higher. I thought
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  Speaker 1: I was gonna get a ten. That's why I extended it. No, no, no, um.
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  Speaker 1: So the Egyptians, like I said, they also thought it
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  Speaker 1: was divine of the gods, indestructible and uh they called
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  Speaker 1: it uh. I guess Nube and ub and if you
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  Speaker 1: know of the African region in Northeast Africa, Nubia or
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: if you're a fan of the rap group brand Nubians,
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  Speaker 1: sure you would have heard of this. I was actually yeah,
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  Speaker 1: yeah they were and um that that that name so
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  Speaker 1: holds today because of the original original Egyptian word for
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  Speaker 1: gold and um. Africa, of course, has always been a
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  Speaker 1: major supplier of this stuff. Yeah. One of the first
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  Speaker 1: world Nubia was I guess, yeah, like the first heavily
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  Speaker 1: mined area for gold um. And then on the periodic table,
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  Speaker 1: the shorthand for gold is a U, which I've never
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  Speaker 1: understood until I realized that it's Latin, which makes a
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  Speaker 1: lot of sense. I thought it would be g O right, right,
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  Speaker 1: you had something like that. No, No, we had to
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  Speaker 1: go with the Latin or um, which means um shining dawn.
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  Speaker 1: That's nice. Yeah, And we said all this to say
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  Speaker 1: that people have loved gold for a very very, very
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  Speaker 1: very long time. Can I drop one of the stats
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  Speaker 1: of the show for me? Right when I saw this,
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  Speaker 1: I was like just gonna say this is this is
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  Speaker 1: the fact. I think it's pretty good. I told Emily
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  Speaker 1: this last night, and she was not as impressed as
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  Speaker 1: I would hope. She would have been Um forever and ever,
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  Speaker 1: all the gold we've ever mind from the beginning of time,
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  Speaker 1: time is only a hundred and sixty one thousand tons, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of gold,
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  Speaker 1: right for all of time. That's not a lot of gold.
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  Speaker 1: They compare it to something like aluminium. We we get
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  Speaker 1: a five point six million tons a year in the
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  Speaker 1: United States alone of aluminum. And again, a hundred and
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  Speaker 1: sixty one thousand tons of gold is all that's ever
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  Speaker 1: been mined. Yeah. And the secondary stat that comes later,
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  Speaker 1: which I'll go ahead and ruin now, is of all
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  Speaker 1: the gold we've ever found is still around, We've only
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  Speaker 1: lost or cannot account for fifteen percent of the gold
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  Speaker 1: since the beginning of time. It's pretty good. Well, that
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  Speaker 1: is pretty good. And it suggests two things that William
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  Speaker 1: Harris points out. One, Um that means that if you
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  Speaker 1: are wearing a piece of gold jewelry, it may have
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  Speaker 1: belonged to somebody else a very very long time ago. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And two where exactly did they get that? Who are
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  Speaker 1: they getting these like, um, gold masks and headpieces and
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  Speaker 1: stuff of milking anch of time and then melting down
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  Speaker 1: and reselling them. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's
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  Speaker 1: efficient and it's good because gold is really bad for
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  Speaker 1: the environment, as we'll see you later on. But it's
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  Speaker 1: really recyclable though. Yeah, it makes you It makes me wonder,
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  Speaker 1: like how are they acquiring that? Yeah? What is your
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: wedding ring? Sir? My wedding ring is platinum. Platinum. It's lovely,
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  Speaker 1: isn't it. It's very nice? What is yours? Oh? Minus?
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  Speaker 1: I think titanium. It's very cheap. And it's like that
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  Speaker 1: I could. And it's actually my second one. I lost
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  Speaker 1: my first one and inside of a turtle, inside of
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  Speaker 1: a turtle. I have no idea where it is. Maybe
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  Speaker 1: it's inside of a turtle. But I luckily I like
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  Speaker 1: had the old email and I just sent like the
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  Speaker 1: same order for the same ring, and boom, I'm married
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  Speaker 1: all over again. It's it's a second time. Did you
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  Speaker 1: guys have another mini ceremony? He's just like, you need
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  Speaker 1: to buy another damn ring? Yeah? Alright. So, um, that's
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  Speaker 1: a lot of gold stats. And as I've been trying
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  Speaker 1: to um hammer out people of like gold for a
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  Speaker 1: really long time, let's talk about your gold shower. Speaking
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  Speaker 1: of hammering out, though I knew one more cool little
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  Speaker 1: fact gold one ounce of gold. One ounce of gold
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  Speaker 1: can be drawn out into a fifty mile wire or
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  Speaker 1: hammered into a sheet five millions of an inch thick.
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  Speaker 1: So it's really well we'll get to all this, but
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  Speaker 1: it's it's not only, you know, a beautiful thing for jewelry,
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  Speaker 1: but it's super handy and malleable and chemically inert and
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  Speaker 1: all these great things you can do with gold. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: because of its property. It also makes it kind of
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  Speaker 1: ironic that the Egyptian is considered it indestructible because one
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  Speaker 1: of the more malleable medals around. It's so malleable that
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  Speaker 1: it has like almost no practical purposes as far as
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  Speaker 1: like hammering things go, Like you make a gold hammer,
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  Speaker 1: you're dummy, you know. Alright, so element number seventy nine,
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  Speaker 1: let's let's get in it. Okay, So gold again, uh?
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  Speaker 1: Was people go back to the Egyptians because they were
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  Speaker 1: the first ones to have like gold fever. Well, we've
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  Speaker 1: actually found evidence of gold being um smithed i guess
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  Speaker 1: um during the transition from the Stone Age, the Neolithic
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  Speaker 1: Age to the Bronze Age, which is the first metal
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  Speaker 1: age before Bronze even right, some some places that had
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  Speaker 1: easy access to gold like Bulgaria. I believe in a
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  Speaker 1: four thousand BC. Um, we're already working with gold long
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  Speaker 1: before the Egyptians ever cut their hands on it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And the Egyptians, um, like you said, they really had
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  Speaker 1: an appetite for the stuff um Hira glyphs as early gold,
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  Speaker 1: and by b C they were it was like currency
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  Speaker 1: basically in Egypt. Well, yeah, very much so, Um, it
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  Speaker 1: was not that I don't know did they actually minted
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  Speaker 1: is for is currency? Uh? The Egyptians, Yeah, I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if they minted it. I don't think the menting
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  Speaker 1: came until the Greeks and Romans. Actually King Crosius, the
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  Speaker 1: ruler of ancient Lydia, which is a loss of list A,
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  Speaker 1: really he was the first two mint in mint gold currencies.
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  Speaker 1: Gold coins um in widespread use in sixt but it
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  Speaker 1: was the Greeks and then the Romans that really started
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  Speaker 1: to mint about a hundred years later though, So that's
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  Speaker 1: that's a pretty nice jump on things. He got. He
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  Speaker 1: was like, Hey, I like to look at this stuff.
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my face on it exactly, and you
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  Speaker 1: guys are going to use it. Yeah. By five fifty,
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  Speaker 1: the Greeks were doing it. Uh and then um, the
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  Speaker 1: Romans of course, with their more sophisticated ways, followed suit.
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  Speaker 1: The orious coins called Yeah, they've pro used millions of them.
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  Speaker 1: Those are the ones that they find, like just some
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  Speaker 1: farmer in like Devonshire in England, we'll dig up like
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  Speaker 1: a chest filled with these things. Yeah, because the Romans
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  Speaker 1: were everywhere they were, and they minted a lot of
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  Speaker 1: these coins. So as they're doing this, the same thing
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  Speaker 1: is going on about the same time in South America
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  Speaker 1: because they have a lot of gold there as well.
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  Speaker 1: And what's it called the Middle Cicon Era. Yeah, I
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: couldn't tell if it was Cicon or Cissan. I bet
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  Speaker 1: a Cissan Sisson. I bet it's not unleven hundred And
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  Speaker 1: this is modern day Peru. They there has been, there
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  Speaker 1: have been a lot of gold artifacts found in that region.
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  Speaker 1: So they were usually crazy, for sure. The Peruvians were
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  Speaker 1: crazy about it. The Inca like masks, ornaments, chalices, stuff,
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  Speaker 1: and their specialty was hammering gold into sheets and like
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  Speaker 1: wrapping stuff in it, like creating gold leaf. Interesting. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they were pretty good at that kind of thing. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and then you know there's already a certain amount of
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  Speaker 1: gold fever over in Europe. I think the the English
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  Speaker 1: minted their first gold coin in the mid century, alright,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: the same with the Florentine du get. Yeah, those were
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: both about the middle of the thirteenth century. That's a
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  Speaker 1: popular coin. It was still is it among collectives? Um,
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  Speaker 1: So there was people in Europe were exposed to gold.
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  Speaker 1: They like gold, they wanted gold. Over in Central and
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  Speaker 1: South America, Over in Asia they also had the thing
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  Speaker 1: for gold. But the Europeans were one of the first
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  Speaker 1: to say, Hey, let's see where the edge of the
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  Speaker 1: Earth is and if there's gold there. And one of
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  Speaker 1: the first people to do that was Marco Polo. And strangely,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of people hate Christopher Columbus or think he
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: was one of the more evil characters in history. Possibly
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: rightfully so. Um, but you can actually trace the infection
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  Speaker 1: that Columbus released, literally and metaphorically back to Marco Polo,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: because apparently there's evidence that Marco Polo directly inspired Christopher
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  Speaker 1: Columbus to set sail in search of gold. Yeah. Growing
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: up in history class, you always learned about the great explorers,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and the more you learn about it, like the real histories,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: as you get older, the more you learn that many
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  Speaker 1: times they weren't just sailing upon the shore with like
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: by a bouquet of flowers to deliver most of the time,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I would say, you know, it was usually and they
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  Speaker 1: were in conquer mode. Uh, for one reason, to spread Christianity,
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  Speaker 1: as the Spaniards really wanted to do. Yeah, that was
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the cover story, the cover story. But King Ferdinand in
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: fifteen eleven also sent word quote while you're there. Well
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I added that part. While you're there, then start quote
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  Speaker 1: get gold humanly if you can, but by but at
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: all hazards, get the gold. So I mean that was
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  Speaker 1: definitely a charge. And thanks to the travels of Marco Polo,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the book that he wrote where he talked about palaces
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of silver and gold, Uh, you know, people thought it
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: was just like the streets were lined with this stuff
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: in the New World. And I mean imagine though, if
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: you were one of the conquistadors who started sailing um
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: west and you ran into the Maya or the Aztecs
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: or the Inca, and you saw that they had all
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  Speaker 1: this gold, you would think, well, this is all very
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: much true in this place gold city. So let's kill
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: all these people and take their gold, and there was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: actually a famed gold city, El Dorado. They're all looking
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: for exactly like everyone was looking for Eldorado. And apparently
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: every time a conquistador would find a significant seam of gold,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: they found El Dorado, and everybody else would come and
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: it becomes like a boom area. But of course it
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: was a mythical city, right, Yeah, it was just like legend. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and probably the closest thing to it obviously not a
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: city built of gold, the closest thing to it. It
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: was in Brazil, in the meanest Gurai region, Minas Gerais.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: That looks good, freaky Gervais. We've been doing this like
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: five years in our pronunciation is maybe even worse rather
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: than better. Actually, we have a listener mail today where
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: someone lauds us just for taking a chance and being
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: willing to be creative. Corrected, thank you, I'm glad to
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: hear that. I'll read that one at the end of
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: this one. Yeah, that was in Brazil, and uh, there
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: was a lot of gold there and they were the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: largest gold producer by seventeen twenty years. They became the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: world's largest gold producer because of this area, using, of course,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: slave labor panning for gold in sort of rudimentary ways.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Not good. No, we're not too far removed from that now. No,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: So onto America, North America, California, the gold rush. Like
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the point here is is that gold has rewritten history
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: and how we form societies because of the search for gold. Yeah,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: it's like spread people out over the world and intermixed
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and inter intermarried and inter did it. And you know,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: like we have entire groups of people ethnicities who are
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the result of gold. The gold rushes. Um, California gets
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of press obviously because by the end of
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: the first year of the gold rush afterwards discovered in
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: eighteen eight, five thousand people were mining there. By the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: end of the second year, forty people were mining there.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: But North Carolina actually was the first American gold rush. Yeah,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and like you're saying, California gets all the all the attention.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: San Francisco forty Niners are named after the gold rush. Um.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: There was that great Scooby Doo episode with the minor
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: forty niner, remember him, a scary guy. Yeah. When you
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: think of gold rush, you think of California, or I
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: also think of Delawaga. Yeah. Yeah, he was the mayor
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of Delanaga was the one who said there's golden then
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: our hills. Oh really yeah, it was the mayor of Delnaga.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I had no idea, Stas Todd something. I think have
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: you ever panned up there in Delnah? I did that
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid. And you know it's fun
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: if you're a little kid, right right, You think you're
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: gonna find a little gold flag and it would be rich,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: or you just might find a little gold flag. And
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: if you do, you won't be rich. Yeah, you're going
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to find it doesn't buy you virtually anything. But you
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: were saying, North Carolina doesn't usually get much attention, and
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: that was the first gold rush. Yeah, up until the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: eighteen thirties. In fact um, they supplied all of the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: domestic gold that was coined here at the U. S.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Mint and Philly came from North Carolina, or North Kakaki
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: as we like to call it. Who calls it that?
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: You never called it that? Uh? Have you ever heard
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: it called that? I have. There's a tribe called quest Song.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Oh really, I can't remember what it is, but somebody
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: calls it North Kakillaka and Compton take a check. Check
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: it out. No, I didn't make that up. Well, I
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: just wrapped you did your j tip. So uh yeah,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: we talked about the gold rushes in the US. There
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: was also a big one in Oz. Yeah, we can't
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: leave out our Ozzie mates. No, um hello Australia. Yeah,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: they're like we got tons of gold. They're like it's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: so hot. I watched Mad Max the other day, by
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the way, all the way through the original it was,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and it was, um, I don't know. Road Warrior got
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: most of the attention because it was bigger and more
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: of an action adventure, but Mad Max was a really
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: dark kind of revenge the exploitation movie. Yeah, it was
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: really good oxploitation osploitation. So was that the one where
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the guys in the personal helicopter is that road Warrior
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Mad Max? That's road Warrior? Then it's like, I mean
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: it was when Mel Gibson was still a cop and
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: he was you know, there was this biker gang led
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: by the toe Cutter, and you don't it something cool?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You know justin my friend his uncle is was the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: toe cutter in Mad Max? Wow? Is uh man? I
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: can't remember his name? Now uncle U uncle toe Cutter?
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Now I can call him that it said, it say,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: isn't as Christmas talking? Oh, I can know. He just
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: sends toes every year in the little card. Oh man,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I can't remember his name now Uncle yeah, Uncle toe cutter.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I think that's the better day. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: So Australia has this huge gold rush um in the
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: what eighteen fifties, Yes, Edward, him and Hargraves found gold
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: in New South Wales Bam gold brush. A few years later,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: South Africa steps onto the scene. Eight George Harrison. Uh,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: he uncovered gold in South Africa? And what how many
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: contributions has that man made humanity in his hundred and
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: sixty years? I mean he wrote here comes the Sun.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: He discovered gold like a hundred years before he was born,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Not a hundred, but hundred years for he was famous
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: about the same time, about a full century. But down
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: South Africa is the leading gold producer in the world.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Oh today it is, wow, followed by the United States.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: In the United States, Nevada is the number one gold
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: producer these days. You mean Nevada Nevada? Alright, So let's
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: talk about how you get gold onto your finger. It's
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: not as easy as you would think, but it's well
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: it's at times drudimentary and at times a little more
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: sophisticated the whole process. Yeah, and it come likes to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: say the least. Yeah, I mean like it really shows
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: how much we want gold. Yeah, it's sort of like
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: fracking in a way to the one method. Alright, So
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: what you gotta do, there's diff You gotta start by prospecting,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: which is the act of looking for gold, right, And
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: that's what you would call an old grizzled dude with
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the pack mule up in the hills in California prospect or. Yeah,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: that's what you call a geologist who finds gold. Today too,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: they're still called prospectors. And I guess the idea is
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: that what are the prospects for finding gold? I'm sure
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: that's where it came from, right, So their prospecting, that
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. I've never thought about that.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: So back in the day, there was a lot of
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: luck involved, uh, looking around for it basically where you
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: think it might be. These days it is way more precise. Um,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: they have equipment that can tell you if there is
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: likely gold there, and then well here's the thing is,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: there's gold everywhere, but it's just not concentrated enough to
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: be worth mining. Yeah, that's an excellent point. In most cases,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: it's a visible but it's still present in the soil.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Isn't it crazy? Invisible gold in dirt and rocks. Yeah,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: or it's in gold, schlagger, that's crazy too. It's like
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: they're just throwing it away, throwing away, you're drinking it
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: for a premium price. It's crazy. That's gross. That was
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: like a college thing. Oh yeah, schlagger, jagger, maister anything
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: that sounded like vaguely Germanic. That was a college thing,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: maister brow. Um. So where they find gold and heaviest
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: concentration is when they will say, all right, you know
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: what it's worth setting up a mining operation here. Um.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: There may be other metals there, like silver, which is great. Yeah.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: A lot of times gold is combined with silver in
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: an ore, which I'm sure you're just like, okay, great,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that's fine with me. That's twice the value, right, well,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: not twice the value, but one in three quarters times
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the value. We could figure it out. So they drill
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: down to obtain samples, um, analyze it see if there's
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: enough gold. If there is, they're going to set up
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a mining operation there, right, there's not They're gonna move
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: on and look at another place that they think they
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: might have a lot of gold. Yeah. And then depending
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: on how the gold is present in the area. UM,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: there's basically two ways. One is the load a load deposit,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: which is it's combined with rock or or and it's UM.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: It can be at the surface or underground. UM. And
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: with a load deposit, basically you just want to blow
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: things up when you find gold like that. If it's
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: at the surface, you're gonna use what's called an open
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: pit method, which is basically just drill a bunch of
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: holes into the ore the gold or put some explosives
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: in there and bloat up and then haul the ore out. Yeah.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I mean your goal here is just to make I mean,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: if they could load up that huge boulder and take
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: it and do it need or somewhere else, they might,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: but they're just trying to make smaller rocks excellent point
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: for transport. UM. And then if it's underground, If the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: load is underground, they'll dig a shaft down to it
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and add it. You go down to it, and this
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: is shaft. I'm sure they go down to it and
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: drill holes all the way through that ore rock um
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and those holes are called stokes. Then they packed those
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: full of explosives and blow it up. So it's basically
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: like the open pit method, but underground because then they
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: just truck that or out and off to the um extractor.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: That's right. If you're in Delonaga, Georgia, or maybe at
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a river and Utah, why not, why not give a
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Utah shout out, you might look for something called a
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: placer deposit, and that is when you find the loose
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: gold um in a stream bed, you know, the little
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: flakes for the little chunks of little nuggets in a
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: mountain stream or a beach, and uh, this is where
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: you would pan and you you know, you scoop it
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: up in a pan and you shake it in the Yeah,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of water because gold is is more dense,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: so it's gonna sink and collect at the bottom of
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: you a little screen that separates everything and then you
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: got a little bit of gold hopefully, and then the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: sixth graders are all very happy. That's right. Or I'm egine.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: If you were a prospector in California back in the day,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: you could do quite well as a banner. Yeah, you
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: look around and be like, it's mine, it's my gold,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: all right, So then you have to extract it. That's
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the next step. Right, So you've got all these big
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: rocks that you've blown up. Uh, yeah, I guess this
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: is mostly The first couple of steps are from load deposits.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: You have a bunch of rocks, You put them on
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: a on a conveyor belt, and they go into a
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: machine that's appropriately called the crusher, which breaks the ore
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: into gravel. Then you take that gravel and you put
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: them into drums with a bunch of little steel balls.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Spin it around real quickness. Steel balls collide with that
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: gravel and they turn it into basically like a powder,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: and you add water to that powder. You form a slurry,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: add cyanide to that slurry and exposed it to oxygen,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're starting to extract gold
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: from ore. Yeah, the pulp. Basically, the gold in the
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: pulp dissolves with that chemical reaction, the side and side
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and O two and uh, the little carbon in there,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: like tiny little carbon grains, and um, the gold is
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: gonna adhere to it. They have They like each other
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: very much, so they're gonna get together in party for
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: a little while. Then you filter that and you have
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: gold bearing carbon at this point, still not pure gold, right,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: so it's gold with carbon. Then you move that to
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: something called a stripping vessel. They put another solution, a
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: caustic solution to separate the gold from the carbon, have
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: more filters to filter out the carbon, and so now
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: you have actual gold bearing solution. But you're still not done.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: And this is my favorite part. Yeah, this is pretty cool.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: It's called electro winning, which thank god, Charlie she never
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: heard of this because this whole thing would be even
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: more annoying. But um, you put you put the gold
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: into a cell with positive and negative terminals, pass an
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: electrical current over it, and the gold separates uh from
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the carbon solution or the gold bearing solution, and is
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: attracted to the negative terminal so much so that I
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: get the impression that basically becomes embedded in the negative terminal. Yeah,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I kind of wondered, because the next step is to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: actually melt that negative terminal along with the gold, right,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and then you begin to separate the two. Basically, you
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: pour off the negative terminal metal metal, maybe steel or
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: something like that, Right, exactly. Um, so when you smell,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and I thought smell it was just melting, Like why
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: they add the s because it's not melting, it's smelting exactly.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So when you pour off the steel, I guess maybe
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: that comes off first, and then what you have left
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: is relatively impure gold, but as close as you're gonna
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: get it in the extracting process. You pour them into
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: bars called door a bars, and then you ship them
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: off to the refiner. Yeah, and that's not the bar
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: that you will see in die Hard three. Um, this
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: is a more impure door a bar. Sure, still nice
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to have one. Yeah, I'm sure you can be the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: look at me. Um okay. And then you need to
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: refine gold from that point once you have it in
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: its uh purest impure form. So imagine the process that
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: we just went through. It was like add this, subtract this,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: remove that, but add this, and then like the gold
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: that here this, and let's burn the whole thing up
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: until it gets melty. Still impure, it still has to
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: be refined. So um, when refineries get gold dory bars.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: They also frequently when you sell your your gold to J. D.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Wentworth or whoever. Um, they take all this gold scrap
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and send that off also to these um refineries which
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: are all which also served as recycling centers to basically,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: that's like the saddest shipment. Yeah, it's just full of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: people's like lost hopes and dreams and wedding rings and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: gold bracelets, anniversary bracelets. I'll just sent back to be
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: melted down because of the economy. Um. So when they
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: throw all this into the same they add a little
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: bit of soda ash, a little bit of borax, And honestly,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: what camp borax do, um and the soda ash and
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: borax basically filters out impurities and then what you have
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: left most of the time and they use essay tests
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: to uh to to figure out the purity. But um,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: they you have about ninety nine point nine percent pure
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: gold and that's usually what they stamp on the bar
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: that they pour. And those bars are called ingots. Yeah,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: those are the ones you'll see in the heist movies.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: And um, if you have ever seen Diehard three and
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: you see them loading up these ingots into big gym
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: bags and then throwing them over their shoulder and running out,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that is uh not possible because each one of those
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: bars weighs twenty seven pounds. So if you have fifty
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of those in a bag, like Jeremy Irons might Jeremy
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Irons not a strong man. You're not gonna throw that
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: on your back, like three pounds of gold and like
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: go running up a bunch of stairs and out of
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the New York Uh. Where is it the New York
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: feder Yeah, supposedly they're in Fort Knox is where they
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: have all the gold, and he was talking last night
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: about that. She's like, let in summary safe to have
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: all this golden one place. I was like, well, that's
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: why they say, like it's built like Fort Knox. It's
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: like it's super secure. She's like, yeah, but what if
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you know some terrors just bombed it. She's like, you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: could just bomb it and then sneak out of there
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: with the gold. And I went, you just wrote Diehard three.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: She's like, is that what happened out? That's exactly what happened.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: But I think she makes a good point. I was
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: thinking last night to like, if we have all this gold,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: and if it is all there, just keeping it in
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: two places, it seems I don't know, it seems unusually
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: like tempting fate. I I think I agree with Emily. Yeah,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: six billion dollars worth of gold at Fort Knox. You know,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: my friend, is that more now? Dude? So when when
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Harris wrote this one gold was forty two twenty two
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: an ounces and ounce. Right now it's six hundred and
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: sixty seven dollars and forty nine cents and ounce. What
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: So that means that if Knocks holds a hundred and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: forty seven point three million ounces of gold, the gold
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: is worth two five point six billion dollars just sitting
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: there and Fort Knock this article. Like, No, I think
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: gold went up in the last couple of years because
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of the economy. Everybody flocked to gold. Demand increased, and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: so the price did. It's so amazing to me after
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: all these years, gold is still like people hoard it. Yeah. Man,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: When gold prices are low, you're very smart to invest
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: in gold because there's always going to be another economic
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: downturn and the prices are always just gonna skyrocket. You
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: got a couple of in gets in your closet. I
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: have them. I have them strapped in my leg. That's
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: how I have a limp. That's how we walk. Funny um, alright,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: so during the refining stage, we should point out that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of times they will um because gold is
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: so soft pure gold is, they will combine it with
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: other medals to form alloys. And that's why you will
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: get something like white gold, which is gold combined with
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: nicol or silver pladium. A red gold is golden copper.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: That's pretty and I've ne seen red gold on them.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: They seen roads gold surely all my fans. I mean
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: it has like has like a just a slight pink
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: hue too. It's very pretty stuff. I'm not big into gold,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: like as far as jewelry. Yeah, no, I'm like you. Uh.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: And then of course you have to talk about a
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: carrots caritage, and that is how much gold is in
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the object compared to like silver, nickel or whatever else
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: is in that alloy. And interestingly, um, different countries have
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: different preferences. Here. You always hear about fourteen carrot gold
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: in the United States, which is only fifty eight point
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: five percent gold. Apparently in India they're partial to the
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: twenty two carrot and uh, which is ninety one point
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: seven five percent gold. And the Europeans like to take
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: that middle road and hit eighteen carrots Yeah, that's very strange,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: and I don't understand what it is. I can understand
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: price being a factor, but maybe it's very odd to
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: me that like cultures. Yeah, so it's twenty four carrots
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: is percent gold obviously, Yeah, and in for twelve carried
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: is fift and about two thirds of all the gold
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: is uh jewelry, Yeah, which makes sense. And what's interesting
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: about the jewelry is that it's still basically produced as
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: it has been for hundreds or thousands of years, um,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: using the same techniques, virtually the same tools. I mean,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they're manufactured much differently, but they are kind
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of the same thing. Yeah. Um. And while jewelry accounts
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: for what do you say, two thirds use, there's a
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: lot of other pretty interesting uses for gold to electronics
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: use a lot of gold and a lot of other
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: rare earth minerals like um. Uh. Apparently gold is very
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: very conductive. It's more conductive than any metal except for
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: copper and um silver. But it has a leg up
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: on conference silver and that it corrode. It's very difficult
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: for gold to corrode. So that means that if you
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: want something that's gonna last a very long time, and
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: be conductive. You might as well use some gold, so
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: they do, and things like processors and hard drives and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean you you might
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: see gold on your headphone plug. Your headphone jack might
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: be gold plated because it's if it's higher end, they
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: might use gold conducts electricity therefore sound better. I have
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: seen that. I just thought it was like fancy high
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: end or something. Uh. Here's a cool stat because they
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: use it so much in electronics and microelectronics. NASA use
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: more than forty kilograms ninety pounds of gold on the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: construction of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Right, that's pretty cool.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: FA electronics, And they used it as a reflective surface.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: They use gold film. Remember, you can be gold into
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: like a point um point one five millimeter thin sheet.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. So it's light at that point, highly reflective,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: effective against radiation. Yeah, so that's pretty awesome. Um. You
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: also use it for crowns. Yeah, they still use gold
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: crowns suddenly, I guess, and I imagine it because it's
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: not reactive because when things are reactive, especially with cooking,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: it will make things taste terribly. Like there was something
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: called a fish fork and it was made of silver,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: and apparently if you had this thing, it was like
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: a status symbol or whatever in Victorian the Victorian era.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: But it also did have a practical use in that
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: silver didn't react with um lemon juice, which is often
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: used to serve with fish, so it didn't affect the taste.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I imagine that's probably one of the reasons why they
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: use gold and crowns, so that you everything doesn't just
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: taste back because it's not reacting with anything because it's
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: chemically inert. That's a good point, yeah, because you don't
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: want to be eating something and think, oh man, my
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: new gold tooth makes this Telapia tastes like squid, tastes
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: like squid. I don't know, that's not so bad. No,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: I like squid. But if you're eat in telapia, you
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: don't want to eat squid? Do eat squid? Will you
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: eat octopus? I mean I'll eat all that stuff to
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: a certain degree. I mean like Emily when it comes
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: to calamari, she will only eat like the things that
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: look like little onion rings. As soon as it looks
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: like the little miniature creature, She's like, that's for you,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: And I popped that in my mouth. I will probably both,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: especially eat squid. You we won't eat octopus because of
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Remember one of our friends had a friend. They told
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: us a story that their friend was a cook for
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: some couple down in the Caribbean and the couple like
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: caught an octopus and was going to cook it, or
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: they gave it to the to their cook to cook,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: and the cook was going to put it in the
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: pot alive, and the octopus was wrapping its tentacles around
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the woman like, please don't kill me. And she said
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, like one of the worst things
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: that ever happened to because she did it anyway, like
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: you literally when you literally have to fight to put
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the animal to their death. And and then so that
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: combined with I think being inspired to go research octopi
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and finding that they were very intelligent and just like,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: I just can't eat those anymore, which is because there's
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: they pop up. It's some pretty delicious dishes, I imagine,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: but they're a very smart animals. And he's like, I'm
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: just gonna eat them animals, just stupid ones. Right, Yeah,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I could see that I would be traumatized, Oh my god. Yeah,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: because it was like no, yeah, I would just walk
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: slowly into the ocean until it released itself and swam away. Yeah,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: you'd be like the Woodsman and snow White, like I
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: don't know what happened to it. But then you start
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: to walk back and the octopus reaches up with one
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: hand and holds your hand. He's like, I want to
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: be your pet. I don't want to go back to
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the sea. Just don't cook me. Don't cook me? All right?
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Where do we leave off food and beverage. You can
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: get it in gold slagger, in certain jellies, gold by
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: the way, not octopus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um. And that
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: that's all just for marketing and making things. It really is.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: You know. They have like the World's most Expensive Sunday
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: or the World's most expensive tells always got gold flakes.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: It does so much so that I think we've talked
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: about this. They have another category for world's most expensive
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: non gold because it's like any smoke, can you know,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: spit out a hot dog and relish and then put
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: gold flakes on and be like World's expensive hot dog
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and that doesn't really you know, So then that means
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: some of the gold that we've lost that has been
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: pooped out. Yeah. So that's sad, is it. I think so,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: since it's you know, so limited and supply and bad
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: for the environment to get well, I guess we should
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: talk about that. Yeah, we probably should, because I was
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: very surprised. I mean, I've heard that gold was bad
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: for the environment, but I didn't realize this. You want
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: to you want to tell one of the facts of
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: the podcast. Yes, it is like most mining operations, um,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: not great for the environment. In order to get just
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: one ounce of gold, you have to get out two
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: and fifty tons of the rock and ore and a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: lot of times um well of course, just the cyanide,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: which is never great when you're introducing those kind of chemicals. No,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and apparently they take this affluent, right, yeah, refluent and
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: they dump it out in the ocean, which probably affects OCTOPI. Yeah,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: it's like, hey, here's a bunch of cyanide water, and
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the ocean will eventually like even things out,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: But for that local area where it gets dumped, that
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: can't be good. Of course not. And that's why there's
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: a group, a nonprofit called Earthworks that runs a campaign
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: called no Dirty Gold. So I imagine if you have
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a gold wedding band and a blood diamond on your finger,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: then uh, you just like you're that's a double whammy's hatrick? Yeah?
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: That well, now hatrick could be three, so not in
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: this not in this case. Okay, that's as good as
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you can get, as bad as it gets. So we
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: should talk a little bit about gold. Although I think
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: we should do a full podcast in the gold standard
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: at some point. I know we've touched at some point,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: let's do it. But um, the gold standard was, wasn't
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: it like, uh, every dollar amount like was that you
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: could print, there was a certain amount of gold that
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: had to be in reserve that matched that. Is that
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: what it was, Yes, exactly, And if you had a bunch,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: if you had enough money, you could go up to
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: you know, the Federal Deservance say I want to catch
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: this money out for gold, and they had to give
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: it to you by federal law. And that was from
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: nineteen hundred to nineteen seventy one. When didn't we just
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: start pretty more money than gold and said we should
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: abandon the gold standard? Yea, And I think when you
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: detach your currency from gold becomes a fiat currency right
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: to the whims of the market. I seem to remember
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: discussing this sum in one of our econ podcasts way
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: back when, maybe even audiobook How the Economy Work. Uh,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the super stuff got into the economy, that's what it's called. Um,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: that was a good one. Um. So two thirty six
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: tons of gold are uh being so called hoarded by
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: people in governments. Um, is that all two six tons? Yeah,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: it seemed like if if there was still of the
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty one thousand tons. Yeah, if that doesn't
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: seem like much, But it doesn't. It's a lot of
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: jewelry being more. Yeah. But um, they think there's actually
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: gold out and outer space, you know, and some of
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: these big asteroids flying by that are chuck full of
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: minerals and other metals. Um. There was a near Earth
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: asteroid rendezvous spacecraft passed close enough to the asteroid arrows
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: to actually send back data and um, they think the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: arrows might have as much as twenty billion tons of gold,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: which would probably really drop the value of gold here
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: on Earth if anyone ever got their hands on that.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: How many How do you go about capturing an asteroid?
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I wonder we've we did a podcast on asteroid minding.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Remember is that the same thing? Okay, that's what they
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: would do. Well, I retreat, Then we should just do that.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: I could do that. Senders will us up with a lasso,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: a golden lasso riding a jackalope and attach it to
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the jackalobes tale and ride it back to Earth. You
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: got anything else? I don't, Well, that's uh oh, I
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: have one more thing I want to recommend. Um Harris
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: didn't mention this. One of the other really bad environmental
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: impacts of gold is illegal gold mining. Apparently, um Guiana
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: has a lot of illegal gold mining. And one of
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: the things that you if you're an illegal underground gold miner,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you're not going through this elaborate extraction and refining process.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: You are basically taking your ore in. You're refining or
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: extracting on site using mercury. Mercury is what they use.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: So there's not only a lot of like illegal, horrible
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: for the environment gold mining going on, there's also a
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: lot of mercury mining and a lot of mercury like runoff.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: So there's mercury poisoning all over Guiana right now. And
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: there's a really great article may have one appealed to
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I found it puels or dot org, but it was
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: originally in Harper's That's where I read it. Gold Guns
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: and guaren Pierros. That is g A R I M
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: P E I R O S. And it's by Damon Tabor.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Good stuff, awesome. Article is so engrossing, one of those
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: that makes you want to like not ever use gold
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: for anything. Uh, it has that effect a little bit,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: but it's it's more just completely fascinating, like you can't
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: believe that people are doing this. Yeah, and child labor two, right,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: isn't that a big problem? I think that's part of it,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: but more um, it's just you are you really risk
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: death in these like called wildcat camps, these illegal gold
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: mining operations, because I mean if some in the mercury
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: in the guns, and you know, people staking other people's claims,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: bad bad news. So there you can gold gold. If
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: you want to learn more about gold, you can type
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: that words into the handy search bar at how stuff
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: works dot com. And since I said that, it's time
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: for a listener mail Josh, I'm gonna call this the
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: ten Commandments of Chuck and Josh, although there's only eight.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Um and this is from Professor Tom uh, guys, I
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: teach a communications course at an area of community college
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: and UH and in universities. I often recommend your podcast
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: in my classes, especially to students that seem to love
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: learning but may have not been encouraged by family, your friends. UM,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping that they may pick up a few important
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: life lessons from you guys, as well as interesting guys.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Here a few life lesson highlights that I think you
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: guys display. Number one, normal guys can talk about something
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: other than sports. It's true, I don't know sports. Number two.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Good presentations begin with an attention getting introduction. Josh will
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: tell you this is sometimes easier said, been done. Yes,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: that's absolutely true. Um, if you don't know something, UH,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: look it up. And if you're looking it up on
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: the internet, check more than one source. Life lessons this
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: this this guy is really paying attention to what we're doing. Yes,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: learning involves mistakes. Number four. Take a shot at pronouncing
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: new word to get wrong, venture I guess, share a
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: new hypothesis, then invite feedback, which is the important part.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Karen Pierro's number five. You don't have to make fun
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of people to be funny. If you absolutely must mock
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: someone mock yourself. You're fit at that. Number six, It's
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: okay for guys to have a variety of emotions. There's
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: nothing unmanly with being sensitive or expressing emotions other than anger.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: It's even healthy for guys to talk about their emotions. Chuckle.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Do you like the new Rosy career? Yeah? Number seven,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: it's worth the effort to be respectful of others. Sometimes
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: you have to stop yourself before you make an off
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: hand joke, which we do. Um. Sometimes you have to
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: use a term that is more accurate up to date,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: which we try and do. Sometimes you have to remember
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: what it feels like to be seen as different and
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: see if your language could be more inclusive or encouraging.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Even if only one person in your audience notices the efforts,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: It's worth it, man, This this is my conscience writing.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: And number eight, curiosity can last a lifetime. And that
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: was the last one, and he said, guys, there's a
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: lot to be said for teaching by example. Whether you
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: realize it or not, you're doing it every week, and
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: he goes on with an interesting ps from Professor Tom. Yes,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: if you have my gay male friends and I got
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: talking about your show. We tried to figure out which
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: type you would be if you'd been born gay. It
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: was unanimous. Chuck is clearly a bear. If you have
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: a gay brother, Chuck, I have a few friends who
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: would like to meet him. I do have a brother,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: but he's not gay, and he would not be a bear.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: He's he's prettier than me. He is very pretty. You
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: would actually love my brother. Yeah, he's got great hair.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I thought you guys would know with like knowing that
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: you were being stereotyped by a bunch of gay guys
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: standing around drinking beer at a bar called the Whole
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Performing Stuff you Should Know podcast analysis, What a world,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks Professor Tom. Yeah, that's a great email. That was
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: a great email. We gotta print that one out frame
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: it Um. If you ever do an analysis of stuff
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: you should Know, we want to hear what you've can concluded. Um,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: you can tweak to us if it's a short conclusion
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: at s Y s K Podcast. You can join us
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You
• 45:14
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• 45:17
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• 45:20
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• 45:23
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• 45:26
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• 45:29
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• 45:38
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