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SYSK Selects: How Gold Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Good afternoon, folks, Happy weekend. You ever wanted to know
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: how gold works? You're thinking that does gold work? It's
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: just gold, It just is. Well, there's a lot more
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: that goes into it, and we talk about all the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: history of gold, very very fascinating stuff from February first,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, How Gold Works. Welcome to Stuff you
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant. We're doing this again. It's been a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: little while. It's been a little while, but it's still
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know that. I thought the name had
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: changed since we took our little Christmas break. Don't you
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: remember our race to the patent office, right, trademarket again
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: at the eleventh hour. Yeah, that was a close one.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Boom and they stamped it. Yeah, that's y s K.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Actually they said s N s K right now. Wait,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: s Y s N is what we get from people
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: a lot sometimes, and I'm like, you know, no, it
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: starts with a K. One of them does one of Yes,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it's not stuff you should know is because it doesn't
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: make any sense. How are you doing Oh, I'm great man.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Are you okay? Good? Um? You want to do this one?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: We're talking about gold. Yeah, man, I've got a little
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: bit of an intro. It might be a stretch. We'll
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: find out. Okay, let's here. Today's January. Okay, tomorrow's January
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: fig Newton Day. It is Big Newton Day. And also
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: on this day in history in the Maya in general,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: fire is born. Uh. Conquered the Mayan city to Call,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: which was recently rediscovered, well not recently, it's been rediscovered,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the rediscovered a new one. Uh. And Uh. What this
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: did was it enlarged the kingdom of King spear thrower Owl.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: The Maya's had the best names. That's pretty great name. Um.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And all of this was going on in the heart
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of the Yucatan Peninsula. If you went just a little
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: to the north, you would run into another group of
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: people called Aztecs, which were actually the Triple Federation, is
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: what it's what they're really called. Um. But if you
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: were to stumble northward and run into the Aztec Empire
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and ask for gold, what they would give you is
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: what they would call excrement of the gods. Do you
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: want to try to pronounce it. Yeah, I'm gonna go
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: with do. I think that's pretty close. I think you
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: may have done it, Chuck. The last part is I
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: love that language. It's similar to like the some of
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the native languages we heard in Guatemala. The that's because
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: they're mine, yeah, exactly, but it's got that same like,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's very staccato. It's kind of cool
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: to hear, I think, right, like the Mayan city, the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: heart of King, spear thrower, owls um empires, tetoto acton right,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: which sounds pretty close to that word teo quilt, Yeah,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: which means excrement of the gods. And that's what the
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the Aztecs considered gold. It was a holy metal, a
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: very very precious metal in every sense of the word.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And by three sev a d. They weren't the only
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: ones to have loved gold for a very long time. No,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Egyptians were all over it. They thought it was also divine. Wait,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: hold on, how would you rate that intro? I would
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: say that was on a scale of what one to ten,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I still one to one to twenty. I would give
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it a solid like sixteen. Wow, thanks, Chuck, higher than
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you thought, way higher. I thought I was going to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: get a ten. That's why I extended it twenty. No, no,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: no um. So the Egyptians, like I said, they also
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: thought it was divine of the gods, indestructive and uh
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: they called it uh, I guess Nube and ub And
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: if you know of the African region in Northeast Africa Nubia,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: or if you're a fan of the rap group Brand Nubians,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: sure you would haven't heard of this. I was actually yeah,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: yeah they were, and um that that that name so
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: holds today because of the original original Egyptian word for
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: gold and um. Africa, of course, has always been a
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: major supplier of this stuff. Yeah. One of the first well,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Nubia was I guess, yeah, like the first heavily mined
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: area for gold um. And then on the periodic table,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the shorthand for gold is a U, which I've never
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: understood until I realized that it's Latin, which makes a
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: lot of sense. I thought it would be g O, right, right,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: you had something like that. No, No, we had to
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: go with the Latin or um, which means um shining dawn.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: That's nice. Yeah, And we said all this to say
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: that people have loved gold for a very very, very
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: very long time. Can I drop one of the stats
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: of the show for me? Right when I saw this,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I was like just gonna say this is this is
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the fact. I think it's pretty good. I told Emily
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: this last night, and she was not as impressed as
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I would hope she would have been. Um forever and ever,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: all the gold we've ever mined from the beginning of
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: time is only a hundred and sixty one thousand tons, yeah,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of gold,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: right for all of time. That's not a lot of gold.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: They compare it to something like aluminium. We we get
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: a five point six million tons a year in the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: United States alone of aluminum. And again, a hundred and
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: sixty one thousand tons of gold is all that's ever
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: been mined. Yeah. And the secondary stat that comes later,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: which I'll go ahead and ruin now, is that of
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: all the gold we've ever found is still around, we've
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: only lost or cannot account for fifteen percent of the
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: gold since the beginning of time. It's pretty good. Well,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: it is pretty good. And it suggests two things that
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: William Harris points out. One UM that means that if
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: you are wearing a piece of gold jewelry, it may
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: have belonged to somebody else a very very long time ago.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Uh And two, where exactly did they get that? Where
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: are they getting these like um gold masks and headpieces
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and stuff of ancient time and then melting them down
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: and reselling them? Yeah? I don't know. I mean it's
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: efficient and it's good because gold is really bad for
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the environment, as we'll see you later on. But it's
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: really recyclable though. Yeah, it makes you it makes me wonder, like,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: how are they acquiring that? Yeah? What is your wedding ring? Sir?
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: My wedding ring is platinum? Platinum. It's lovely, isn't it.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: It's very nice? What did yours? Oh? Minus, I think titanium.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: It's very cheap. It's like take too though with that
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I could. And this is actually my second one. I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: lost my first one and inside of a turtle, inside
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: of a turtle. I have no idea where it is.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's inside of a turtle. But I luckily I
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: like had the old email and I just sent like
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: the same order for the same ring, and boom, I'm
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: married all over again the second time. Did you guys
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: have another mini ceremony. He's just like you need to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: buy another damn ring. Yeah alright, So, um, that's a
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: lot of gold stats. And as we've been trying to
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: um hammer out people of like gold for a really
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: long time, let's talk about the history of gold show.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Speaking of hammering out, though I knew one more cool
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: little fact gold. One ounce of gold. One ounce of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: gold can be drawn out into a fifty mile wire
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: or hammered into a sheet five millions of an inch thick.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So it's really well, we'll get to all this, but
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: it's it's not only, you know, a beautiful thing for jewelry,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: but it's super handy and malleable and chemically and nert
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and like all these great things you can do with
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: gold because of its property. It also makes it kind
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: of ironic that the Egyptian is considered it indestructible because
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: one of the more malleable medals around. It's so malleable
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: that it has like almost no practical purposes as far
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: as like hammering things go, Like you make a gold hammer,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: you're dumb, you know. Yeah, alright, so element number seventy nine,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: let's let's get in it Okay, so uh gold again.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Uh was people go back to the Egyptians because they
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: were the first ones to have like gold fever. But
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: we've actually found evidence of gold being um smithed i
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: guess um during the transition from the Stone Age, the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age, which is the first
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: metal age before Bronze even right, some some places that
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: had easy access to gold, like Bulgaria, I believe in
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: a four thousand BC. Um, we're already working with gold
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: long before the Egyptians ever got their hands on it. Yeah.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: And the Egyptians, um, like you said, they really had
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: an appetite for the stuff um hira glyps as early
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: as gold, and by b C they were it was
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: like currency basically. Yeah in Egypt, well yeah, very much so,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Um it was not the I don't know if do
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: they actually minted is for is currency? Uh the Egyptians, Yeah,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they minted it. I don't think
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the minting came until the Greeks and Romans. Actually King Crosius,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: the ruler of ancient Lydia, which is a low civilization,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: really he was the first to mint in mint gold
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: currencies gold coins um in widespread use in sixty b C.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: But it was the Greeks and then the Romans that
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: really started to to mint about a hundred years later though. Yeah,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: so that's that's a pretty nice jump on things he got. Yeah,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: he was like, hey, I like the look at this stuff.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my face on it exactly, and you
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: guys are going to use it. Yeah. By five fifty
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the Greeks were doing it, uh, and then um, the
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Romans of course, with their more sophisticated ways, followed suit.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: The orious coins they were called, Yeah, they produced millions
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: of them. Those are the ones that they find, like
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: to some farmer and like Devon Shy in England will
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: still find we'll dig up like a chest filled with
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: these things. Yeah, Because the Romans were everywhere they were
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and they minted a lot of these coins. So as
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: they're doing this, the same thing is going on about
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the same time in South America because they have a
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: lot of gold there as well. And what's it called
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the Middle Skon Era. Yeah, I couldn't tell if it
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: was Cicon or Cissan. I bet at Cissan Sisson, I
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: bet it's not. Um a D nine to eleven hundred
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and this is modern day Peru. They there has been,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: there's been a lot of gold artifacts found in their region.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: So they were usually like crazy for sure. The Peruvians
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: were crazy about the inca like masks, ornaments, chalices, stuff,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and their specialty was hammering gold into sheets and like
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: wrapping stuff in it, like creating gold leaf. Interesting. Yeah,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: they were pretty good at that kind of thing. Um.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: And then you know there's already a certain amount of
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: gold fever over in Europe. Yeah. I think the the
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: English minted their first gold coin in the mid century,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the same with the um Florentine du get. Those were
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: both about the middle of the thirteenth century. That's a
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: popular coin, it was still is is it among collectors? Sure? Um,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: so there was. People in Europe were exposed to gold.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: They like gold, They wanted gold. Over in Central and
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: South America, Over in Asia they also had a thing
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: for gold. But the Europeans were one of the first
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: to say, hey, let's see where the edge of the
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: earth is and if there's gold there. And one of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the first people to do that was Marco Polo. And strangely,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of people hate Christopher Columbus or think he
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: was one of the more evil characters in history. Possibly
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: rightfully so. Um, but you can actually trace the infection
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: that Columbus released literally and metaphorically back to Marco Polo,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: because only it was evidence that Marco Polo directly inspired
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus to set sail in search of gold. Yeah.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Growing up in history class, you always learned about the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: great explorers, and the more you learn about it, like
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: the real histories, as you get older, the more you
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: learn that many times they weren't just sailing upon the
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: shore with like a bouquet of flowers to deliver most
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of the time. I would say, you know, it was
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: usually and they were in conquer mode. Uh, for one reason,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: to spread Christianity, as the Spaniards really wanted to do. Yeah,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: that was the cover story, the cover story. But King
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Ferdinand in fifteen eleven also sent word quote while you're there.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Well I added that part while you're there then start
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: quote get gold humanly if you can, but by but
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: at all hazards get the gold. So I mean that
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: was definitely a charge in thanks to the travels of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Marco Polo, the book that he wrote where he talked
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: about palaces of silver and gold. Uh, you know, people
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: thought it was just like this. Treets were lined with
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: this stuff in the world. And I mean imagine though,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: if you were one of the conquistadors who started sailing
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: um west and you ran into the Maya or the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Aztecs or the Inca, and you saw that they had
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: all this gold, you would think, well, this is all
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: very much true in this place, gold city, So let's
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: kill all these people and take their gold. And there
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: was actually a famed gold city, El Dorado. What they're
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: all looking for exactly like everyone was looking for Eldorado.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And apparently every time a conquistador would find a significant
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: seam of gold, they found El Dorado, and everybody else
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: would come and it become like a boom area. But
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: of course it was a mythical city, right, Yeah, it
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: was just like legend. Yeah, and probably the closest thing
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to it, obviously not a city built of gold. The
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: closest thing to it. It was in Brazil, in the
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Minat Gurai region, Minas Gerais. That looks good, freaky Gervais. Oh,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: we've been doing it's like five years in Our pronunciation
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: is maybe even worse rather than better. Actually, we have
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: a listener mail today where someone lauds us just for
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: taking a chance and being willing to be creative. Corrected,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: thank you, I'm glad to hear that. I'll read that
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: one at the end of this one. Yeah, that was
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: invent in Brazil, and uh, there was a lot of
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: gold there and they were the largest gold producer by sea.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Twenty years. They became the world's largest gold producer because
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: of this area, using of course slave labor painting for
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: gold in sort of rudim entry ways. It's not good. No,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: we're not too far removed from that now. No, so
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: onto America, North America, California. The the gold rush, Like
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the point here is is the gold has rewritten history
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and how we form societies because of the search for gold. Yeah,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: it's like spread people out over the world and intermixed
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and inter intermarried and inter did it. And you know,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: like we have entire groups of people ethnicities who are
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the result of gold the gold rushes. Yeah. Um, California
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: gets a lot of press obviously because by the end
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: of the first year of the gold rush, afterwards discovered
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: in eighty five thousand people were mining there. By the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: end of the second year, forty people were mining there.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: But North Carolina actually was the first American gold rush. Yeah,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And like you're saying, California gets all the all the attention.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: San Francisco forty Niners are named after the gold rush. Um.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: There was that great Scooby Doo episode with the minor
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: forty Niner remember him, Yes, a scary guy. Yeah. When
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: you think of gold rush, you think of California, or
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I also think of Delonaga. Yeah it was Gei. Yeah,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: he was the mayor of del on Goo was the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: one who said there's gold and then our hills. Oh
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: really yeah, it was the mayor of Delanica. I had
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: no idea. There was todd something. I think. Have you
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: ever panned up there in Delana Huh? I did that
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid. And you know, it's fun
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: if you're a little kid, right, you think you're gonna
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: find a little gold flak and it would be rich.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Or you just might find a little gold flak and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: if you do, you won't be rich. Yeah, you're going
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: to find it doesn't buy you virtually anything. But you
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: were saying North Carolina doesn't usually get much attention, and
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: that was the first gold rush. Yeah, up until the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: eighteen thirties. In fact, um, they supplied all of the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: domestic gold that was coined here at the U S
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Mint in Philly came from North Carolina or North Kakaaki
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: as we like to call it. Who calls it that?
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: You never called it that? Uh? Have you ever heard
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: it called that? I have. There's a tribe called quest Song.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Oh really, I can't remember what it is, but somebody
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: calls it North Kakillaka and Compton check a check it out. No,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't make that up. Well I just ran you
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: did your j tip so uh yeah, we talked about
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the gold rushes in the US. There was also a
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: big one in oz. Yeah, we can't leave out our
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Ozzie mates. No, um, hello Australia. Yeah, they're like we
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: got tons of gold. They're like it's so hot. I
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: watched Mad Max the other day, by the way, all
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the way through the original it was and it was, um,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Road Warrior got most of the attention
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: because it was bigger and more of an action adventure,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: but Mad Max was a really dark kind of revenge
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: ee exploitation movie. Yeah, it was really good ozploitation. Osploitation.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: So was that the one where the guys in the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: personal helicopters, that road Warrior Mad Max. That's road Warrior.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen Max. Then. It's like I
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: mean it was when Mel Gibson was still a cop
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and he was you know, there was this biker gang
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: led by the toe Cutter and you know what it
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: was something cool, you know, justin my friend. Yeah, his
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: uncle is that was the toe cutter in Mad Max.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Wow is uh? Man, I can't remember his name now, uncle,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Uncle toe Cutter. I didn't call him that, that's what
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: it saysn't as Christmas talking. Oh, I can know. He
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: just sends toes every year in a little guard. Oh man,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I can't remember his name now, Uncle. Yeah, Uncle toe Cutter.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I think that's the better day. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: So Australia has this huge gold rush um in the
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: what eighteen fifties, Yes, Edward Ham and Hargraves found golden
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: New South Wales Bam gold brush. A few years later,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: South Africa steps onto the scene eighteen sixty eight. George Harrison,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: he uncovered gold in South Africa and what how many
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: contributions has that man made humanity? In his hundred and
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: sixty years. I mean he wrote here comes the Sun.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: He discovered gold like a hundred years before he was born. Yeah,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: not a hundred, but hundred us for he was famous
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: right about the same time, about a full century. But
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: down South Africa is the leading gold producer in the world.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Oh today it is, oh wow, followed by the United States.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: In the United States, Nevada is the number one gold
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: producer these days. You mean Nevada, Nevada. All right, So
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: let's talk about how you get gold onto your finger.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: It's not as easy as you would think, but it's well,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: it's at times rudimentary and at times a little more sophisticated.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: The whole process. Yeah, and it complex to say the least. Yeah,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, like it really shows how much we want gold. Yeah.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like fracking in a way to the
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: one method. Yeah, alright, So what you gotta do there's different.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: You gotta start by prospecting, which is the act of
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: looking for gold, right, and that's what you would call
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: an old grizzled dude with the pack mule up in
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the hills in California prospect or. Yeah, that's what you
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: call a geologists who finds gold today to still called prospectors,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and I guess the idea is that, what are the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: prospects for finding gold. I'm sure that's where it came from,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: right maybe so their prospecting. That makes a lot of sense.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I've never thought about that. So back in the day,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of luck involved, uh, looking around
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: for it basically where you think it might be. These
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: days it is way more precise. Um, they have equipment
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: that can tell you if there is likely gold there
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and then well here's the thing is there's gold everywhere,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: but it's just not concentrated enough to be worth mining. Yeah,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: that's an excellent point. In most cases it's invisible, but
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: it's still present in the soil. Isn't it crazy? Invisible
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: gold in dirt and rocks? Yeah, or it's in gold Schlagger.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: That's crazy too. It's like they're just throwing it away,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: throwing away. You're drinking it for a premium price. That's crazy.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: That's gross. That was like a college thing. Oh yeah, slager, yegger,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: maister anything that sounded like vaguely Germanic. That was a
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: college thing, maister brow. Um, So where they find gold
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and the heaviest concentration is when they will say, all right,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: you know what it's worth setting up a mining operation here. Um,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: there may be other metals there, like silver, which is great. Yeah.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: A lot of times gold is combined with silver in
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: an ore, which I'm sure you're just like, okay, great,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that's fine with me. That's twice the value, right, well,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: not twice the value, but one in three quarters times
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of valid. I don't know, we could figure it out.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: So they drill down to obtain samples, UM, analyze it,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: see if there's enough gold. If there is, they're going
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: to set up a mining operation there. Right, there's not,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: They're going to move on and look at another place
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: that they think they might have a lot of gold. Yeah.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: And then depending on how the gold is present in
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the area. UM, there's basically two ways. One is the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: load a load deposit, which is it's combined with rock
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: or or and it's UM. It can be at the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: surface or underground. UM. And with a load deposit, basically
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: you just want to blow things up when you find
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: gold like that. If it's at the surface, you're gonna
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: use what's called an open pit method, which is basically
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: just drill a bunch of holes into the ore the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: gold ore, put some explosives in there and blow it
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: up and then haul the ore out. Yeah. I mean
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: your goal here is just to make I mean, if
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: they could load up that huge boulder and take it
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: and do it need or somewhere else, they might, but
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: they're just trying to make smaller rocks. Excellent point for transport. Yeah. Um.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: And then if it's underground, if the load is underground,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: they'll dig a shaft down to it and add it.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: They go down to it, and this is a big shaft.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they go down to it and drill holes
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: all the way through that ore rock um, and those
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: holes are called stops. Then they pack those full of
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: explosives and blow it up. So it's basically like the
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: open pit method, but underground because then they just truck
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: that or out and off to the um extractor. That's right.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: If you're in Dlonaga, Georgia, or maybe at a river
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: and Utah, why not why not give a utash shout out.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: You might look for something called a placer deposit, and
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: that is when you find the loose gold um in
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a stream bed. You know, the little flakes or the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: little chunks of little nuggets in a mountain stream or
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: a beach, and uh, this is where you would pan
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and you you know, you scoop it up in a
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: pan and you shake it in the yeah, a lot
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: of water because gold is is more dense, so it's
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: going to sink and collect at the bottom of your
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: little screen that separates everything. And then you've got a
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: little bit of gold hopefully, and then the sixth graders
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: are all very happy. That's right. Or I imagine if
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you were a prospector in California back in the day,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: you could do quite well as a panner. Yeah. You
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: look around and be like, it's mine, Yeah, it's my gold,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: all right. So then you have to extract it. That's
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the next step. Right, So you've got all these big
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: rocks that you've blown up. Uh, yeah, I guess this
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: is mostly The first couple of steps are from load deposits.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: You have a bunch of rocks, You put them on
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: a on a conveyor belt and they go into a
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: machine that's a pally called the crusher, which breaks the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: ore into gravel. Then you take that gravel and you
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: put them into drums with a bunch of little steel
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: balls spin it around real quickness. Steel balls collide with
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: that gravel and they turn it into basically like a powder.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: And you add water to that powder. You form a slurry,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: add cyanide to that slurry, and expose it to oxygen,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you're starting to extract gold
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: from ore. Yeah, the pulp. Basically, the gold in the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: pulp dissolves with that chemical reaction. The side and side
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and O two and uh the little carbon in there,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: like tiny little carbon greens, and um, the gold is
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: gonna adhere to it. They have. They like each other
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: very much, so they're gonna get together in party for
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: a little while. Then you filter that and you have
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: gold bearing carbon at this point still not pure gold, right,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: so it's gold with carbon. Then you move that to
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: something called a stripping vessel. They put another solution, acoustic
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: solution to separate the gold from the carbon, have more
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: filters to filter out the carbon, and so now you
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: have actual gold bearing solution. But you're still not done.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: And this is my favorite part. Yeah, this is pretty cool.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: It's called electro winning, which thank god, Charlie she never
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: heard of this, because this whole thing would be even
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: more annoying. But um, you put you put the gold
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: into a cell with positive and negative terminals, pass an
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: electrical current over it, and the gold separates, uh from
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the carbon solution or the gold bearing solution, and is
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: attracted to the negative terminal so much so that I
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: get the impression that basically becomes embedded in the negative terminal. Yeah.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: I kind of wondered, because the next step is to
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: actually melt that negative terminal along with the gold, right,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and then you begin to separate the two. Basically, you
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: pour off the negative terminal metal metal, maybe steel or
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: something like that, by right exactly. Um, so when you
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: smell and I thought smelt was just melting, Like why
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: they add the s because it's not melting, it's smelting exactly.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: So when you pour off the steel, I guess maybe
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: that comes off first, and then what you have left
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: is relatively impure gold, but as close as you're gonna
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: get it in the extracting process. You pour them into
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: bars called door a bars, and then you ship them
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: off to the refiner. Yeah, and that's not the bar
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: that you will see in die Hard three. Um, this
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: is a more impure do a bar. So you're still
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: nice to have one. Yeah, I'm sure you can be
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: like look at me right, um, okay, and then you
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: need to refine gold from that point once you have
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: it in its uh purest impure form. So imagine the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: process that we just went through. It was like add this,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: subtract this, remove that, but add this, and then like
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the gold that here, this, and let's burn the whole
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: thing up until it gets melting. Still impure, it still
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: has to be refined. So um, when refineries get gold
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: dory bars. They also frequently when you sell your your
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: gold to J. D. Wentworth or whoever, um, they take
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: all this gold scrap and send that off also to
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: these um refineries, which are all which also serve as
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: recycling centers. To basically, that's like the saddest shipment. Yeah,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: it's just full of people's like lost hopes and dreams
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: and wedding rings and gold bracelets, anniversary bracelets I'll just
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: sent back to be melted down because of the economy. Um.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: So when they throw all this into the same pot,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: they add a little bit of soda ash, a little
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: bit of borax, And honestly, what camp borax do? Um,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and the soda ash and borax basically filters out impurities
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and then what you have left most of the time,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and they use essay tests to to to figure out
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the purity. But um, they you have about ninety nine
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: nine percent pure gold and that's usually what they stamp
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: on the bar that they pour. And those bars are
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: called ingots. Yeah, those are the ones you'll see in
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the heist movies. And um, if you have ever seen
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Diehard three and you see them loading up these ingots
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: into big gym bags and then throwing them over their
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: shoulder and running out, that is uh not possible because
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: each one of those bars weighs twenty seven pounds. So
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: if you have fifty of those in a bag, like
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Jeremy Irons, might Jeremy Irons not a strong man. No,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna throw that on your back, like three
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: pounds of gold and like go running up a bunch
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: of stairs and out of the New York Uh where
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: is it the New York Reserve Bank? Yeah, supposedly they're
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: in Fort knox Is where they have all the gold. Yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Emily was talking last night about that. She's like, well,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: that be summary safe to have all this golden one place.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I was like well, that's why they say, like it's
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: built like Fort Knox, it's like super secure. She's like, yeah,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: but what if you know some terrors just bombed it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: She's like, you could just bomb it and then sneak
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: out of there with a gold and I went, you
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: just wrote die Hard three. She's like, is that what
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: upen out? That's exactly what happened. But I think she
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: makes a good point. I was thinking last night to like,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: if we have all this gold, and if it is
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: all there, just keeping it in two places, it seems
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems unusually like tempting fate. I
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: think I agree with Emily. Yeah, six billion dollars worth
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: of gold at Fort Knox. No, No, my friend was
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that more? Now? Dude? So when when Harris wrote this
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: one gold was forty two twenty two an ounces and ounce.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Right now it's sixteen hundred and sixty seven dollars and
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: forty nine cents and ounces. So that means that if
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox holds a hundred and forty seven point three
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: million ounces of gold, the gold is worth two hundred
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: forty five point six billion dollars just sitting there in
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Fort Knox. Art No, I think gold went up much
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: in the last couple of years because of the economy.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Everybody flocked to gold. Demand increased, and so the price
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: did so amazing to me, after all these years, gold
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: is still like people hoard it. Yeah. Man, when gold
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: prices are low, you're very smart to invest in gold
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: because there's always going to be another economic downd turn
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and the prices are always just gonna skyrocket. You got
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: a couple of and gets in your closet. I have them.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: I have them strepped on my leg. That's why I
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: have a limp. That's how you walk funny um alright,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: So during the refining stage, we should point out that
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of times they will um because gold is
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: so solift pure gold is, they will combine it with
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: other metals to form alloys, and that's why you will
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: get something like white gold, which is gold combined with
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: nickel or silver pladium. Red gold is golden copper. That's
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: pretty and I've never seen red gold on they seen
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: rose gold surely at all my fans. I mean it
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: has like it has like a just a slight pink hue. Two.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: It's very pretty stuff. I'm not big into gold, like
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: as far as jewelry, Yeah, I know, I'm with you. Uh.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: And then of course you have to talk about carrots carritage,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: and that is how much gold is in the object
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: compared to like silver, nickel or whatever else is in
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: that alloy. And interestingly, um, different countries have different preferences here.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: You always hear about fourteen carrot gold in the United States,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: which is only fifty eight point five percent gold. Apparently
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: in India they're partial to the twenty two carrot and uh,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: which is ninety one point seven five percent gold, and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the Europeans like to take that middle road and hit
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: eighteen carrots. Yeah. That's very strange, and I don't understand
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: what it is. I can understand price being a factor,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: but it's very odd to me that like cultures, yeah
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: prefer it. So twenty four carrots is percent gold obviously. Yeah.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: In in fourteen or twelve carrot is fifty percent cold
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and about two thirds of all the gold is uh jewelry. Yeah,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: which makes sense. And what's interesting about the jewelries that
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: it's still basically produced as it has been for hundreds
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: or thousands of years, um, using the same techniques, virtually
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the same tools. I mean, I'm sure they're manufactured much differently,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: but they are kind of the same thing. Yeah. Um,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: And while jewelry accounts for what do you say, two
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: thirds of nearly two thirds, there's a lot of other
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting uses for gold to electronics use a lot
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: of gold and a lot of other rare earth minerals
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: like um. Uh. Apparently gold is very very conductive. It's
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: more conductive than any metal except for copper and um silver.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: But it has a leg up on conference olver and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: that it corrodes. It's very difficult for gold to corrode.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: So that means that if you want something that's gonna
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: last a very long time and be conductive, you might
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: as well use some gold. So they do in things
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: like processors and hard drives and that kind of stuff. Yeah,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: I mean you you might see gold on your headphone plug.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Your headphone jack might be gold plated because it's if
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: it's higher end, they might use gold. Yeah, conducts h
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: electricity therefore sound better that I just thought it was
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: like fancy high end or something. Here's a cool stat
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: because they use it so much in electronics and microelectronics,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: NASA used more than forty kilograms ninety pounds of gold
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and the construction of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Right, that's
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. Fat electronics, and they used it as a
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: reflective surface. They use gold film. Remember, you can into
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: like a point um point one five millimeter thin sheet.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. So it's light at that point, highly reflective,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: effective against radiation. Yeah, so that's pretty awesome. Um, you
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: also use it for crowns. Yeah, they still use gold
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: crowns cuddenly, and then I imagine it because it's not reactive,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: because when things are reactive, especially with cooking, it will
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: make things taste terribly. Yeah, that's true. Like there was
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: something called a fish fork and it was made of silver,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and apparently if you had this thing, it was like
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: a status symbol or whatever in Victorian the Victorian era.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: But it also did have a practical use in that
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: silver didn't react with um lemon juice, which is often
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: used to serve with fish, so it didn't affect the taste.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I imagine that's probably one of the reasons why they
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: use gold and crowns, right, so that you everything doesn't
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: just taste bad because it's not reacting with anything because
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: it's chemically inert. That's a good point. Yeah, because you
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: don't want to be eating something and think, oh man,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: my new gold tooth makes this telapia tastes like squid,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: tastes like squid. I don't know, that's not so bad. No,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I like squid. But if you're eat in telapia, you
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: don't want to eat squid. Do you eat squid? Will
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: you eat octopus? I mean I'll eat all that stuff
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: to a certain degree. I mean, like Emily when it
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: comes to calamari, she will only eat like the things
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: that look like little onion rings. Right as soon as
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: it looks like the little miniature creature, she's like, that's
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: for you, and I pop that in my mouth. I
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: will probably eat both, especially eat squid. You we won't
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: eat octopus because of Remember one of our friends had
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: ad and they told us a story that their friend
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: was a cook for some couple down in the Caribbean,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: and the couple like caught an octopus and was going
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: to cook it, or they gave it to the to
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: their cook to cook, and the cook was going to
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: put it in the pot alive, and the octopus was
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: wrapping its tentacles around the woman, like, please don't kill me.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: And she said it was, you know, like one of
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the worst things that ever happened to her because she
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: did it anyway, like you literally when you literally have
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: to fight to put the animal to their death. And
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and then so that combined with I think being inspired
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: to go research octopi and finding that they were very intelligents,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like I just can't eat those anymore, which is said
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: because there's they pop up. It's some pretty delicious dishes,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: I imagine, but they're a very smart animals, and he's
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: like the animals just stupid ones. Right, Yeah, I could
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: see that I would be dramatized, Oh my god, yeah,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: because it was like no, yeah, I would just walk
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: slowly into the ocean until it released itself and swam away. Yeah,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: you'd be like the Woodsman and snow White, like I
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: don't know what happened to it. But then you start
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: to walk back and the octopus reaches up with one
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: hand and holds your hand. He's like, I want to
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: be your pet. I don't want to go back to
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the sea. Just don't cook me. Don't cook me, all right,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: where do we leave off food and beverage. You can
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: get it in gold Schlagger in certain jellies gold by
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: the way, not octopus. Yeah yeah, yeah, um, And that
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: that's all just for marketing and making things fans. It
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: really is. You know. They have like the World's most
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Expensive Sunday or the world's most expensive salary always got
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: gold flakes. It does so much so that I think
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: we've talked about this. They have another category for World's
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: most expensive non old because it's like any smoke, can
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: you know, spit out a hot dog and relish and
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: then put gold flakes on and be like world's experienceive
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: hot dog and that doesn't really you know. So then
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: that means some of the gold that we've lost that
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: has been pooped out. Yeah. I guess that's sad, is it.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I think so, since it's you know, so limited and
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: supply and bad for the environment to get well, I
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: guess we should talk about that. Yeah, we probably should,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: because I was very surprised. I mean, I'd heard that
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: gold was bad for the environment, but I didn't realize this.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: You want to you want to tell one of the
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: facts of the podcast. Yes, it is like most mining operations, um,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: not great for the environment. In order to get just
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: one ounce of gold, you have to get out two
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: and fifty tons of the rock and ore and a
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: lot of times. Um. Well, of course there's the cyanide,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: which is never great when you're introducing those kind of chemicals. No,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: and apparently they take this affluent, right yeah, or a
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: fluent and they dump it out in the ocean. Oh really,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: which probably affects OCTOPI. Yeah, it's like, hey, here's a
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: bunch of cyanide water, and I'm sure the ocean will
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: eventually like even things out. But for that local area
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: where it gets dumb, that can't be good. Of course not.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: And that's why there's a group, a nonprofit called Earthworks
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: that runs a campaign called no Dirty Gold. So I
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: imagine if you have a gold wedding band and a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: blood diamond on your finger, then uh, you just like
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: you're that's a double whammy against hat trick. Yeah, well no,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: hatrick could be three. So not in this not in
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: this the case. Okay, that's as good as you can get,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: as bad as it gets. So we should talk a
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: little bit about gold. Although I think we should do
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a full podcast in the gold standard at some point.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I know we've touched at some point, let's do it.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: But um, the gold standard was, wasn't it like, Uh,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: every dollar amount like was that you could print, there
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: was a certain amount of gold that had to be
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: in reserve that matched that. Yes. Is that what it was? Yes? Exactly.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: And if you had a bunch, if you had enough money,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: you could go up to you know, the federal reserve
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: and say I want to catch this money out for gold,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: and they had to give it to you by federal law.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: And that was from nineteen hundred to nineteen seventy one.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: When didn't we just start pretty more money than gold
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: and said we should abandon the gold standard? Yeah? And
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: I think when you detach your currency from gold becomes
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a fiat currency right to the whims of the market.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: I seem to remember discussing this sum in one of
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: our econ podcasts way back when maybe even audiobook man,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: how the economy were uh the super stuff guidet to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the economy, that's what it's called. Um. That was a
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: good one. Um. So two d thirty six tons of
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: gold are uh being so called hoarded by people and governments? Um?
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Is that all twoty six tons? Yeah? It seemed like
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: if if there was still of the hundred and sixty
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: one thousand tons. Yeah, if that doesn't seem like much,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't. It's a lot of jewelry being worn. Yeah.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: But um, they think there is actually gold out and
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: outer space, you know, and some of these big asteroids
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: flying by that are chuck full of minerals and other metals. Um,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: there was a near Earth asteroid rendezvous spacecraft passed close
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: enough to the asteroid arrows to actually send back data.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: And um, they think the arrows might have as much
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: as twenty billion tons of gold, which would probably really
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: drop the value of gold here on Earth if anyone
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: ever got their hands on that. How I mean, how
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: do you go about capturing an asteroid? I wonder we've
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: we did a podcast on asteroid minding. Remember is that
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: the same thing? Okay, that's what they would do? Well,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I retreat, Then we should just do that. I could do.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: That would send Bruce Willis up with a lasso, a
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: golden lasso, riding a jackalope and attach it to the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: jackalop's tail and ride it back to Earth. You got
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: anything else? No? I don't. Well that's uh. Oh, I
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: have one more thing I want to recommend. Um, Harris
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: didn't mention this. One of the other really bad environmental
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: impacts of gold is illegal gold mining. Apparently, um Guiana
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: has a lot of illegal gold mining. And one of
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: the things that you if you're an illegal underground gold miner,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: you're not going through this elaborate extraction and refining process.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: You are basically taking your ore in. You're refining or
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: extracting on site using mercury. Mercury is what they use.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: So there's not only a lot of like illegal, horrible
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: for the environment gold mining going on, there's also a
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: lot of mercury mining and a lot of mercury like runoff,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: So there's mercury poisoning all over Guiana right now. And
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: there's a really great article may have one of peels.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: I found it on peels or dot org, but it
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: was originally in Harper's that's where I read it, gold
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Guns and Gumpiers. That is g A R I M
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: P E I R O S. And it's by Damon Tabor.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Good stuff. Awesome article is so engross, one of those
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: that makes you want to like not ever use gold
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: for anything. Uh. It has that effect a little bit,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: but it's it's more just completely fascinating, like you can't
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: believe that people are doing this. Yeah, and child labor two, right,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: isn't that a big problem? I think that was part
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: of it. But more um, it's just you are you
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: really risk death in these like they're called wildcat camps,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: these illegal gold mining operations, because I mean, if some
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: in the mercury, in the guns, and you know, people
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: staking other people's claims, bad bad news. So there you go,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: gold gold. If you want to learn more about gold,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: you can type that words into the handy search bar
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And since I said that,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail Josh, I'm gonna call
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: this the ten Commandments of Chuck and Josh, although there's
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: only eight. Um, and this is from Professor Tom uh Guys,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I teach a communications course at an area of community
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: college and UH and in universities. I often recommend your
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: podcast in my classes, especially to students that seem to
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: love learning but may have not been encouraged by family
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: or friends. Um, I'm hoping that they may pick up
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: a few important life lessons from you, guys, as well
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: as interesting facts. Here a few life lesson highlights, So
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I think you guys, display number one, normal guys can
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: talk about something other than sports. That's true, I know
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: I like sports. Number two. Good presentations begin with an
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: attention getting introduction. Josh. Josh will tell you this is
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: sometimes easier said than done. Yes, that's absolutely correct. Um.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: If you don't know something, uh, look it up. And
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: if you're looking it up on the internet, check more
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: than one source. Life lessons this this this guy is
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: really paying attention to what we're doing. Yes, learning involves mistakes.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Number four. Take a shot at pronouncing new word. If
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: you get it wrong, venture a guest, share a new hypothesis,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: then invite feedback, which is the important part. Jerem Pierro's
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: number five. If you don't have to make fun of
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: people to be funny. If you absolutely must mock someone,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: mock yourself and you're good at that. Number six, it's
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: okay for guys to have a variety of emotions. There's
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: nothing unmanly with being sensitive or expressing emotions other than anger.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: It's even healthy for guys to talk about their emotions
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and to chuckle. Do you like the new Rosy career? Yeah.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Number seven, it's worth the effort to be respectful of others.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to stop yourself before you make an
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: off hand joke, which we do. Um Sometimes you have
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: to use a term that is more accurate or up
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: to date, which we try and do. Sometimes you have
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: to remember what it feels like to be seen as
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: different and see if your language could be more inclusive
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: or encouraging, even if only one person in your audience
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: notices the efforts. It's worth it, man, this is my
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: conscience writing. And number eight, curiosity can last a lifetime.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: And that was the last one, and he said, guy,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said. We're teaching by example,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: whether you realize it or not. You're doing it every week.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: And he goes on with an interesting ps from Professor Tom. Yes,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: if you have my gay male friends and I got
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: talking about your show, we tried to figure out which
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: type you would be if you've been born gay. It
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: was unanimous. Chuck is clearly a bear. If you have
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: a gay brother, Chuck, I have a few friends who
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: would like to meet him. I do have a brother,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: but he's not gay, and he would not be a bear.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: He's he's prettier than me. He is very pretty. You
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: would actually love my brother. Yeah, he's got great here.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: I thought you guys would know with like knowing that
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: you were being stereotyped by a bunch of gay guys
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: standing around drinking beer at a bar called the Whole
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Performing Stuff you Should Know podcast analysis. What a world,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Thanks Professor Tom. Yeah, that's a great email. That was
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: a great email. We gotta print that one out frame. Um,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: if you ever do analysis of stuff you should Know,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: we want to hear what you've concluded. Um. You can
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: tweet to us if it's a short inclusion at s
• 46:01
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• 46:07
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• 46:10
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• 46:13
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• 46:19
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• 46:20
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