Science Friday - Women Athletes, Stem Cell Cornea Repair, Sand. August 18, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Challenging The Gender Gap In Sports ScienceThis weekend, Spain and England face off in the Women’s World Cup Finals in Sydney, Australia.The first Women’s World Cup was in 1991, and the games were only 80 minutes, compared to the 90-minute games played by men. Part of the rationale was that women just weren’t tough enough to play a full 90 minutes of soccer.This idea of women as the “weaker sex” is everywhere in early scientific studies of athletic performance. Sports science was mainly concerned with men’s abilities. Even now, most participants in sports science research are men.Luckily things are changing, and more girls and women are playing sports than ever before. There’s a little more research about women too, as well as those who fall outside the gender binary.SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Christine Yu, a health and sports journalist and author of Up To Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes, about the gap in sport science about women. Using Stem Cells For Cornea Repair Is Worth A LookEach year in the US, over 40,000 people receive transplants of the cornea—the clear front part of the eye that light goes through first. Still more patients with damaged corneas might receive artificial corneas to help restore clear vision. But if an eye has been damaged by a chemical burn or another severe eye injury, neither of those treatments may be possible.Now an early, Phase 1 clinical trial is reporting positive results using a stem cell technique called CALEC. It grows cells from a patient’s healthy eye, and then grafts them back into the damaged eye, either to support corneal tissue regrowth or as a foundation for a traditional transplant. Dr. Ula Jurkunas, associate director of the Cornea Service at Mass Eye and Ear, and   Dr. Jerome Ritz, the executive director of the Connell and O’Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core Facility at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, join Ira to talk about how the process works, and the challenges of manufacturing stem cell tissues in the lab for use in the human body.From Skyscrapers to Sand Thieves—Digging Into The World Of SandWhen you think of sand, thoughts of the ocean and sand castles probably come to mind. But sand can be found in much more than beachfronts. Sand is a key ingredient in concrete for skyscrapers, silicon for computer chips, and the glass for your smartphone.Vince Beiser, journalist and author of the book The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization, traveled to sand mines in India and beach nourishment projects around the world to follow the story of how sand has become a vital resource. He talks about the many uses of sand in our everyday lives and some of the consequences that come from our dependence on this natural resource.To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. And I'm Kathleen Davis. A bit later in the hour, we'll look ahead to the Women's World Cup Finals with a new book about women athletes and look at the world in a grain of sand. But first, each year in the United States, some 40,000 people receive transplants of the cornea. That's the clear front part of the eye that light goes through first. Other people receive artificial corneas to help restore clear vision. But if an eye, has been damaged by, let's say, a chemical burn or another severe eye injury, those treatments may not be options. But now an early phase one clinical trial is reporting positive results

using a stem cell technique to grow cells from a patient's healthy eye that can then be placed back into the damaged one. Joining me to talk about this are two guests involved in the study. Their work is reported in the journal Science Advances. Dr. Uli Yer Kunis is Associate. Director of the Cornea Service at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston. Dr. Jerome Ritz is the Executive Director of the Connell and O'Reilly Family Cell Manipulation Corps Facility at Theta Farber Cancer Institute in Boston also. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you.

Thank you. Nice to have both of you. Okay, let's start with I-101. Dr. Akunis, let's talk about what the cornea is first, okay? So the cornea is the clear dome that is the front layer of the eye. And the reason it is clear is because there are stem cells that reside in the periphery of the cornea. And these corneal stem cells prevent the white part of the eye or conjunctiva from growing onto the cornea and maintain the cornea clarity. Is this just a specialized form of skin? What is it made at them? So they are actually adult like stem cells, believe it on a. our bodies have stem cells even though we are adults.

And they are the source of corneal epithelium or surface of a cornea. There are kind of like skin cells, but they are transparent, unlike skin. There are various conditions that damage those cells, and when that happens, the cornea loses its transparency. But skin cells, some damage. When we damage our skin, the skin grows back, and with a certain amount of damage to the cornea, not a lot, that will grow back too, correct? That's right. Sometimes when we get a scratch on the cornea, that heals right away.

However, if we really deplete those stem cells from severe injuries or infections, then those cells do not grow back. Now, I mentioned cornea transplants, and they often are successful for many patients. Why can some people not get them? So if you don't have stem cells, you can replace the central cornea with a new cornea. but it will never take, as these stem cells will not be there to kind of regenerate the front layer of the transplant. And again, the conjunctyva will overgrow the clear part of the cornea. You know, we've heard so much about transplants. Could you walk me through the basics of how a

transplant works? So the transplantation system is really well developed in our country. We receive a lot of donor corneas that are from grateful families that donate their loved ones corneas. And these corneas are transplanted onto our patients. However, these patients usually have to have very healthy peripheral stem cells, and then the transplant works well. Now, Dr. Ritz, your job is to grow these special stem cells in your lab. It's sort of a manufacturing process, if you will? That's correct. What we do in this process is we get a small biopsy that will it takes in the operating room

from the good eye. There's a small biopsy that contains these stem cells, and they come into our laboratory. And then we use those cells to create what we call this culture, the calic, this cultured, autologous, limbal, stem cell graft. To get the cells to grow properly, you need a kind of template, right? a membrane. What does that look like? So the process that we developed is this two-stage process. One is we take the biopsy and we isolate little pieces of it. And these limbo stem cells grow out on plastic, just in a plastic dish. And then once we get enough cells, and that takes about a week

or a week and a half, then those cells are then transferred onto an amniotic membrane. This is a membrane that is used commonly by ophthalmologists in their surgical procedures. We use it in the laboratory to use as a substrate. And then when the cells grow over it and become confluent, then we're finished. And then we take that and package it up and send it back to the mass Ionear, where Ola and our team will use this and sew it back into the patient's cornea. So you're not actually growing a whole new cornea. Right? Just the cells needed to support the cornea?

Correct. Yeah. So it could be an idea how big it is. Is it a square inch, a square centimeter? Yeah, so actually, when we transplant, the cells come in a little container from Jerry's lab. And then we take them out from these wells of a culture plate. And I usually use a 17-millimeter tree find. So it's almost two centimeter size that is of a membrane. And then we suture it to the eye with very, very thin sutures. They are actually thinner than hair. They call tenon nylon sutures.

Yeah. So what I would add is that the other part of the process is we put the cells on this membrane, but then, and that membrane is used to place the cells in the right position, as you'll have mentioned. But then eventually the amniotic membrane that's used will dissolve. It will actually get resorable over time, leaving only the stem cells. So just to repeat, once these cells are grown by Dr. Ritz, you put them into the damaged eye. Yes, once the cells are grown and come from Dr. Ritz's laboratory, they are transplanted or placed

on the donor eye after careful removal of a scar tissue because a lot of times patients have a lot of scar formation from their injury. And how well does that work? Well, it actually immediately is quite better. It takes some time for the cells to really adhere. here and for the cornea to heal. Our study shows 12-month data, so it's actually very encouraging. And the next step is our longer follow-up data of 18 months that is in the preparation right now. So basically what you've proven is a proof of concept that this can work. Would that be

correct? I think that we showed that it is feasible to employ bodies only. stem cells and to kind of grow them and to place them back in a patient. And it's also safe. The efficacy data is the next step for us to show. And so in your study, how successful were you in actually helping people with their new corneous? I think a lot of times in science, we want to leave the word success until we have a little bit stronger evidence and follow-up and kind of a data analysis. However, by case-by-case report, reports of those four patients have shown an improvement in quite a few parameters and definitely decrease in their pain and symptoms.

And does the cornea heal over these cells itself, or do you need to use it as a substrate for a regular corneal transplant? This is a great question. So out of four patients, two patients actually have improved, and they did not need further transplantation. However, two people did require a standard. transplant in what we call it in the bed of these stem cells. So these stem cells kind of engrafted or started growing and living in that new cornea, so to speak, and then we placed a corneal

transplant on top of it. And the survival of those transplants indicates that the stem cells are indeed there and they are functioning. Very cool. Okay, so give me the timeline for future studies and making this more available because, you know, when people hear you on this program talk about this kind of research, they want to know how to get it for themselves or other people. Well, it's a little bit hard to answer because right now, you know, we are analyzing the data of our larger study, so phase 2A. And then the next step will be to form even larger study, maybe multi-centres trial. This was one center, one manufacturing facility.

Hopefully the next study will be to do many more patients and with several different manufacturing facilities and different surgeons performing the procedures. Interesting. Dr. Ritz, is there something you have learned from this process that you've developed that could let you grow other kinds of eye cells, maybe a new retina, let's say?

Yes, I think these cells, are very different than retinal cells. So I'm not sure it would be applicable to that. But there are other stem cell projects that we're working on in our facility. It is now possible to generate what are called induced pluripotent stem cells from normal cells in the body. And once you've generated these IPS cells, then those cells can be differentiated into a variety of different cell. types. And there are a lot of studies going on in our lab and around the country using these IPS cells to create more differentiated cells. There are studies that are being done using

these cells to generate cells that secrete insulin, for example, for patients with diabetes. There are studies to use these cells to create dopamine-nergic neurons for patients with Parkinson's. So I think we're really just in the very beginning of the field of using stem cells. to create tissues. And I think this project, using limbo stem cells to create this cornea is, I think, one of the areas that I think is going to be very successful. Dr. Yerkunis, do these eye stem cells need to be matched to the donor? I mean, could we get to the point where you could use stem cells taken from someone else's

eye? I think that is the future of this cell therapy. This first proof of concept study showed that it is possible to actually expand stem cells and to regenerate corneas. But definitely the next step is to use allergenic, meaning another person's stem cells to help the other person. Because a lot of corneal blindness and stem cell deficiency is bilateral, meaning in both eyes. And we may not have a source of limbal stem cells in the same individual. I think that the future is really bright. and, you know, with some manipulation, maybe even to altering that immunogenicity, maybe Jerry can work on,

we could potentially provide stem cells for others, from one donor to another. Well, this has all been very exciting. We have run out of time. I want to thank both of you for joining us today. And good luck with your research. Thank you very much. Ira, thank you so much. You're welcome.

Dr. Uliyakurnis is Associate Director of the Cornia Service at Manif. NASI and ear in Boston and Dr. Jerome Ritz, executive director of the Connell and O'Reilly Family Cell Manipulation Corps Facility that's at the famous Thane of Farber Cancer Institute, also in Boston. We have to take a break, and when we come back, Kathleen Davis talks with the author of a new book on the performance of women's athletes, so stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. And I'm Kathleen Davis. This weekend, Spain and England face off in the women's

World Cup Finals in Sydney, Australia. Every four years, I am tuned in watching these amazing female athletes. So growing up playing sports, looking up to athletes like Mia Hamm, I was surprised to learn that the first Women's World Cup wasn't until 1991. I was also surprised to learn that those games were only 80 minutes compared to the men who played for 90 minutes. Part of the Rationale was that women just weren't tough enough to play a full 90 minutes of soccer. This idea of women as the quote-unquote weaker sex is everywhere in early scientific studies of athletic performance. Sports science was mainly concerned with men's abilities. Even now, most participants in sports science research are men.

Luckily, things are changing. More girls and women are playing sports than ever before. And with that, there's a little more research about women, as well as those who fall outside of the gender binary. Here to talk about all of this is my guest, Christine U, health and sports journalist and author of Up to Speed, the groundbreaking science of women athletes. She's based in Brooklyn, New York. Christine, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Kathleen. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

So let's start by talking a little bit about the inspiration for. for this book. Can you tell me what made you decide to write about this topic? Yeah, I think it was really the confluence of two different things. One was back in, I want to say, 2013 or 2014, I was at this women's fitness magazine event and there was a panel and a doctor talking about the female athlete triads. So generally when women lose their periods because theoretically they exercise too much. So it's something that I had heard about, you know, since I was young. but never really thought about. And this doctor was talking about how the menstrual cycle is so important, not just for fertility, but in connection to bone health in particular. And it was just one of those

moments where I just sat there and I was like, wait, why don't I know this information about my own body? I feel like this was important information that I should have had when I was younger during adolescence, during these periods of time when your bone is growing and it's really important. And then, like you said, you know, I report a lot on sports and science. And in my conversations with a lot of elite athletes, as well as experts in the field, they all kept saying almost like as a side whisper, actually we don't really know a lot about female physiology. And again, it was one of those moments where I was like, what do you mean? You know, this was 2018, 2019. And it just sent me down this rabbit hole really trying to understand why is it that we don't study women to the same extent as we study men. And more. More importantly, what are the implications of this gender data gap in sports science research? And how does that affect not only the health and well-being as well as the performance of women who are athletic and performance-driven? I want to talk a little bit about injuries, which I think is something that a lot of female athletes are familiar with. ACL injuries in particular are more prevalent among female athletes than in men.

there are about 20 players in the Women's World Cup who are not playing right now because of ACL injuries. Why are women more susceptible to this type of injury? Yeah, it's absolutely wild when you think about it, the number of high-profile players who have been injured and who've been taken out of this really career-defining tournament, right? It's one of the biggest moments in their career. The thing with ACL injuries is we've known since the late 80s and early 90s that women tend to tear their ACLs more than men. Yet over these past 20, 30 years, that prevalence rate hasn't changed. Women still experience a much higher rate of tears compared to men. Yet for men,

actually, the prevalence seems to have gone down a little bit. The traditional reasons why folks often point to is tied to the female body, right? Because we have wider hips. There's more stress that potentially goes through the knee. There's certain anatomical features of the knee that might make the ACL more prone to tear. There are also things like our fluctuating hormones that might make ligaments more lax. But a lot of those features, like I said, focus specifically on the female body in and of itself. And I can't change the width of my hips. I can't change my hormones, really. It's almost a very disempowering narrative. Like there's nothing you can do. So more recently, researchers have been pulling back the curtain a little bit and looking more at the

factors that surround women, right? Like how we grow up playing sports, whether or not similar athletic resources are dedicated to boys versus girls. Do girls at a young age have the opportunity to play and really learn how to move their bodies in safe ways and develop those good biomechanics, right, from a young age that matter as you get older? And then I think, you know, when we look at the professional level, the game, especially in women's soccer, has grown so much, has intensified so much. the athleticism of these athletes is phenomenal. They're being asked to play a lot more games within a shorter period of time. But are we providing them with the same resources to help them deal with this higher training

load, to recover from this training load, and really to keep them safe? And so I think part of that is this research piece, right, that we haven't really looked into the factors specific to women athletes that, you know, could influence their injury rate that and that could help potentially put them in a better place so that they don't get injured. Another thing you write about in your book is concussions, and there's this disparity between men and women, but the discrepancy is maybe a little more complicated than we may think. Can you tell me about the research that you found? Yeah, so this is another one of these areas where, you know, we see that women may experience more concussion compared to men or may experience worse outcomes compared

to men. And again, the traditional injury model kind of points to the female specific factors, right? What makes women's bodies different or deficient in comparison to men? And so when researchers have dug into this a little bit more, they found that maybe those sex specific factors aren't the only reason. So there's some research that's been done, I believe it was with high school athletes when they looked at boys and girls who had concussion. And again, right, you see those differences in terms of outcomes and prevalence. Yet when boys and girls actually saw doctors or specialists within the same period of time, those discrepancies disappeared. So what this kind of suggested was that boys got to care faster or within a shorter time frame

than girls. So again, it suggests that there might be something around resources or like outside of just those physiological or anatomical differences that might be playing a role here. One of the big issues that you touched on a little earlier here is athletes who miss their periods combined with not getting enough nutrition. And this can be especially harmful to young athletes. So can you tell me a little bit about what's going on here and, you know, possible long-term health ramifications of this? It's a huge factor that I think, you know, thankfully I feel like some sports are starting to pay more attention to. but it's, again, it's this factor that we've long ignored or at least downplayed. The narrative goes that when girls become more athletic, when you are fit, you lose your

period. You know, you have doctors telling girls this. You have parents kind of saying, oh, yeah, that's normal. And you have girls and coaches saying this as well. But really what's going on here is that it's a sign that the body doesn't have enough energy, that you're underfueling your body. And so our bodies are pretty smart. when it senses that it doesn't have enough energy, it starts to shut down systems. And so one of the

first systems that it starts to shut down is the reproductive system. And so we see that in menstrual cycle dysfunction, in irregularity, and absence of menstrual cycle. And while that might not seem like it's a big deal, those hormones that are associated with the cycle, so things like estrogen and progester, play an enormous role in the body's health. The cycle is one of the body's most important rhythms, you know, second to the circadian rhythm. So it influences everything from bone health to cardiovascular health to immunity, gut health, pretty much every system in the body. And yet we often only think about the menstrual cycle in terms of fertility. So I think that for especially girls in adolescence, girls who are going through puberty as their cycle is just getting started, this is

a really critical period for bone growth. And so that's why it's really important. that girls have, they start their menstrual cycle and that they have regular menstrual cycles because you need that surge of estrogen to really lay down bone because you accumulate, I believe it's like around 80% of your adult bone mass by the time you're in your early 20s. One of the central themes in your book is that historically women were largely excluded from sports science. And still most sports science studies focus on men's bodies. Why is there such a gap? I think there are two big reasons.

One is because sports in and of itself has always been developed for men by men, right? That's who the ideal athlete was. That's who was allowed to participate from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. When scientists began to study athletics and, you know, exercise and thinking about how the body adapts and trains, they naturally, that's the population that they naturally looked to and wanted to study. The other piece of it is the scientific research process in and of itself. Scientists in labs are oftentimes when they're conducting experiments concerned with understanding a very specific, say, molecular mechanism or how a specific hormone works or

chemical reaction, right? They're trying to create almost a model to understand these complex, biological processes. So when you have something like a menstrual cycle where the hormones fluctuate up and down pretty unpredictably and not always on the same pattern, that complicates things. It throws a lot of noise into the data, which would mean that scientists would have to take the time and, frankly, money to account for a lot of these changes, right? So that hormonal fluctuation doesn't mess up their data, if you will. So in a lot of ways, it was just easier to not include women. And I think it's one of these oversights that, you know, we didn't really think about

the implications of what that might mean. We just assume that, you know, the findings will apply across the general population. In sports science research in general, there is this binary, men versus women. And I mean, that's not exclusive to science. That's happening, you know, throughout society at large, too. How can we study these physiological differences between bodies without, you know, reverting to this rigid way of thinking about sex and gender. Is there a way to do that, do you think? I think that's definitely one of the biggest challenges, both for sports and for science, because both of these fields are predicated on the binary. I think that it is a challenge that a lot of the scientists are currently grappling with because the tendency is to kind

have put men or male bodies into one bucket and women and female bodies into another bucket and kind of keep them separate. But I think what scientists are realizing more and more is that there actually is a lot of overlap, more so than we acknowledge or give credit to because we've studied men for so long. We've really only studied a very small sliver of the human population. Because a lot of the sports science studies, not only are they men, they tend to be pretty young, like college age men and pretty fit men. Really, if we expand, you know, the diversity of the population that we're studying. So that means including women. That also means including populations from non-Western countries, again, because sports science research tends to take place in a lot of

the westernized countries. We actually learn a lot more about the human population as a whole. So I think that's where we start, right? We have to be studying a more diverse population to be able to understand a lot of the nuances that happen across the board. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Christine You, author of the book Up to Speed, The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. You stress in your book that we should stop comparing women's athletic results against men's standings, because that continues to suggest that women are, you know, quote-unquote,

less than men and only worthy of accolades if they're living up to these male standards. What should we do instead? I think we should be looking at women's sports, women athletes, the women's game, as an entity in and of itself. Because sport has been created really with men in mind, women have constantly been forced to almost like force fit themselves, right, into this world that wasn't designed or made for them. So I think that being able to separate that out, consider the women's gain for what it is in and of itself.

It gives women an opportunity to perform and to succeed and really see what's possible without the weight of all of that expectations of what men have done in the past. I feel like that's not fair because the path that women might take might be the same as men, right? The trajectory of women's sports and performance might be the same as men, but it could be really different. We just have never given women the opportunity to explore, you know, which path makes the most sense. And there are some sports where women actually show an advantage, like in ultra long distance running, right? Yeah. So these ultra events, running events that are longer than a traditional marathon, which is 26.2 miles. You know, these folks are out there running 50 miles, 100 miles, 200 miles, you know, multiple days at a time. You have ultra-distance cycling events too and marathon swimming events.

And what we're seeing in these events is that women appear to do really well. The performance gap between men's and women's performances is smaller than it is in other sports. Women are winning these events outright. And so I think it's an area where it's really interesting to see and to explore what is possible, right? because at these distances, some of the physiological factors that tend to give men advantages in traditional sports. So like speed and power, sort of wash out, frankly, over, you know, 100 miles. They play a little bit less of a role at that distance. So it's really exciting to see what's been going on in that world. Well, Christine, I could talk about this

with you forever, but we have run out of time. So thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Christine U. Health and Sports Journalist and author of Up to Speed, the groundbreaking science of women athletes. She's based in Brooklyn, New York. If you want to read more about the science of women athletes, you can go to science friday.com slash up to speed. Speaking of great reads, are you a member of the SciFry Book Club yet? Next month is the perfect time to join. We are reading afterglow, a collection of stories that envision a radically different climate future. You can find everything that you need to know, including upcoming events, and how to win a free book

on our website, sciencefriday.com slash book club. That is science friday.com slash book club. We have to take a short break, and when we come back, if you're squeezing in a late summer trip to the beach, this is all about the science of sand. Did you know that there are sand thieves? We'll tell you all about it. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. You know, beach season is in full swing

and no trip to the seaside is complete without the sand. But that is just the beginning of the wonders of sand. Sand is all around us. In tall concrete skyscrapers, computer chips, in your smartphones. If you feel the earth move under your feet, it might be sand.

Did you know that not all sand is created? equally, the highest quality sand, the kind used to make computer chips, comes from a special mine in North Carolina. And our need for sand has created sand cartels, black markets for the grain. Sand thieves in Jamaica stole part of a beach right off the island. My next guest says that sand is the most important solid substance on earth and is at the core of our daily lives. He's here to talk about these tiny grains. Vince Beiser is a journalist, an author of the book, The World in a Grain, the story of sand and how it transformed civilization, and you can read an excerpt from this book on our website, ScienceFriiday.com slash beach. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks. It's

great to be here. A fascinating book. I thought we know about sand, but we didn't. I mean, we know about the sand on the beach. There's sand in sandbags and in deserts. What is the definition of sand? So the word itself just means any little bits, grains of any hard substance. It's anything, if you really want to get technical, since this is Science Friday, it's anything with a diameter of between 2 millimeters and 0.0625 millimeters. So it means that sand can be, it can be crushed up shells, it can be crushed up volcanic rock, it can be lots of things, but most sand in the world and the sand that we use so much. of is mostly quartz sand, silicon dioxide.

So not all sand is equal. There are different grades of sand. Tell us about that. What makes the mine in North Carolina so special for making computer chips? So there's a lot of, there are indeed a lot of different kinds of sand that can be used for different applications. So the stuff that we use the most, like I said, is quartz sand, which is very abundant. You find it all over the world.

In fact, it's the most abundant thing on the planet's surface. And that stuff, we can use that stuff for concrete, which is the number one thing that we use sand for by far is concrete. For concrete, you don't need sand that's especially pure. In other words, that has a super high quartz content. The next step up is sand that you use for glass making. And for that, you need sand that's much higher purity. Glass is basically nothing but quartz sand that's been melted down.

But to get nice, clear glass, you need to start with quartz sand that's 95 upwards. of 95% pure. And the very top of the heap, as you mentioned, is what's called spruce pine quartz. And this is the purest quartz that's ever been found on earth. It all comes from this rural, this small county in rural North Carolina. And it's 98, 99% pure. Why is that so different? What was going on in the earth that made it so pure?

It's basically sort of a series of geological accidents. the plates, you know, back when the tectonic plates were moving around to form North America, you had a plate under the Atlantic Ocean coming into contact with the one that sort of underlies the American continent. And at this particular spot, they run into each other at a particular depth, about nine to 15 miles below the ground. They grind against each other and create enormous, enormous heat. And between that heat and the fact that in this particular spot, there was very, very little moisture, it created this incredibly, incredibly pure quartz, which over millennia got lifted up much closer to the surface and is now close enough where we can mine it.

8447248255. If you'd like to talk about sand with the Sandman, Vince Beiser, author of the world, in a grain. Now, let's talk about desert sand. iconic stuff we see in Lawrence of Arabia, you know, in the Sahara. Is that the same kind of sand that we get over here? Is it a different kind of sand? What makes it, is it unique? So it is, again, it is mostly quartz. I mean, sand all over the world is, you know, it differs depending on what the local geology is. Because basically it's just, it's all bits of ground down mountains ultimately. It's bits of rock that have been worn away by by wind and rain over the millennia and then wash down deserts, you know, are usually once upon a time where sea beds or lake beds a long time ago. So again, most of the sand that you find in there is quartz, but it's a mix

of whatever else might be in the local geology, Feldspar, this, that. But the key thing that's different about desert sand is the shape, right? So desert sand, unfortunately, is completely useless to us as human beings for construction. And the reason for that is it's been eroded by wind rather than water. So in the desert, those grains tumble and tumble and tumble over thousands of years, getting smashed into a just banging full force into each other, which rounds off their corners and their angles and makes it quite a bit rounder and smoother than the sand that you find in the bottom of rivers or the bottom of lakes, which tends to be sort of sharper and more angular. So that desert sand ultimately is, it's too round to stick together to build something out of.

It's like the difference between trying to build something out of a stack of marbles as opposed to a stack of little bricks. You mentioned all the things that use sand. And one of my favorite topics of discussion about these things is I'm glad you share it in your book is concrete. I could talk about concrete forever as my listeners know as a yawn as I talk about it. And sand is a major part of concrete, right? Ira, I am so glad to be talking to like one of the only other concrete fans in the world. This stuff is so underappreciated. I mean, you know, like most people, I never even thought about it before I started doing the research for this book.

But, I mean, concrete is literally the foundation of our modern civilization. And it's really, it's nothing but sand and gravel glued together with cement. A lot of people mix up concrete and cement. Cement is just this fine powdery stuff that's basically a glue. You mix up cement plus a whole lot of sand and gravel and let it dry, let it cure, and that gives you concrete. For all these uses of sand, I noticed from reading in your book that people steal it. I had no idea that people steal sand right off a beach.

Yeah, well, so this is the amazing thing, is we need sand. I mean, like I said, concrete is the thing that our modern civilization is really made out of, right? Every building, every shopping mall, apartment block, being built anywhere around the world is made at least partly out of concrete. So that's just huge piles of sand. I mean, thousands of tons of sand go into your average building. Also, all the roads, all the highways that connect all those buildings, also made of thousands and thousands of tons of sand. So what's happening is as the world's population grows and as more and more. people move into cities, there's a huge demand for sand, way beyond anything that we've ever

seen before in human history. And as a result, there's a black market for the stuff such that, indeed, people are stealing sand from beaches, stripping it out of riverbeds, stripping it from lake bottoms, tearing it up from land sources, and causing a lot of environmental damage in the process. So it's like a resource, like oil and gas. There's only so much of it out there. Absolutely. It's the least appreciated natural resource out there. I mean, people think of sand as being infinite. And of course, there's a lot of it. Like I said, it's the most abundant thing in the world. But at the end of the day, there's only a finite amount, right? There's only so much of it. And we are using it at an unbelievable pace. It's the resource that we consume the most of after air and water.

We use about 50 billion tons of the stuff every year. That's enough to blanket the end. entire state of California every single year. And you said you started out your sand journey because you were investigating the illegal sand trade in India, a sand cartel. Yeah, they call them the sand mafia in India, believe it or not, which sounds kind of ridiculous, but in fact, it's, it is deadly, serious business in India. And I mean literally deadly. These are groups of organized criminals who are stealing sand from villages, from fishing areas, and or just mining sand illegally, you know, digging it up from places that are environmentally protected

or that are coastal regions where you're not allowed to mine it because of all the environmental damage. But because there's so much money involved, these criminal gangs have gotten really involved. They're making a lot of money. And they get away with it by doing the same thing organized crime does everywhere. They pay off judges, they pay off police to leave them alone.

And if you really get in their way, they will kill you. Hundreds of people have been murdered over sand in the last few years, mostly in India, but also in other countries around the world. In Kenya, in Indonesia, a bunch of other places, tremendous violence connected with the sand trade. How can we don't hear more about that? It doesn't get a lot of press. It doesn't. I mean, I think there's two reasons for that.

One is that most of the really dramatic stuff that's happening with the black market in sand, I mean, the killings and kidnappings and really severe environmental damage, it's mostly happening in the developing world. There is, you know, considerable environmental damage that happens here in the U.S., but really the worst stuff is happening in the developing world. And unfortunately, these days in particular, the, you know, the media just doesn't have a lot of time for stuff that's happening overseas. That's number one.

Number two is that it's a relatively recent thing. I mean, it's really only in about the last 20 years or so with the tremendous economic growth that's happened in China, in India, and Indonesia, all these places around the world. It's only recently that there's been such a spike in the demand for sand that all these problems have really started to become serious. But I do think that's changing. I mean, I can tell you I get calls all the time now from reporters around.

the world who are starting to become aware of this issue and starting to look into it. Let's go to John in Iowa. Hi John. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. I have a question from Mr. Beiser. Here in Iowa, northwestern Iowa, it was real pretty up in there, called Little Switzerland. There's a controversy over extensive mining of sand for fracking. And I was wondering what was unusual about the sand that they would need for fracking. And I'll take my answer on the air. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. That's a really interesting sort of subspecies. So for fracking, I assume all your listeners know what fracking is. Yeah, we can assume.

To do it, as you all probably know, you shoot a high pressure mix of water, chemicals, and sand down to shatter, to fracture the rock where the oil is that you're trying to get out. Now, you need a lot of very specific kind of sand to do that. It has to be very very very. hard so again very high purity because quartz is extremely extremely hard because it needs to keep those cracks open against the huge geologic pressure that's trying to close them back up again and it also needs to be round if you remember I said most quartz sand is is angular but for for fracking you want it to be round so that those droplets of oil and gas can flow around them easily and get into your well now just so happens that there's a lot of that sand in Western Wisconsin and in Minnesota, and I guess in Iowa, too. I wasn't actually aware of that.

But I did go to Western Wisconsin while I was reporting the book, and there's a big controversy because the fracking boom in North Dakota and in Texas has created a frack sand mining boom there, and they are ripping up hundreds of acres of forests and farmlands to get at that frack sand, which a lot of people in that region are very unhappy about. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Sand's also becoming a geopolitical issue too. You talk about this a little bit. There are countries using it to actually build islands,

extend their boundaries, aren't there? Absolutely. Where's the sand coming from? That takes a lot of sand, doesn't it? It does take a lot of sand, and most of it comes from the bottom of the ocean. So what's going on is, this is, I mean, the idea of using sand

to create new land is actually very old. I mean, the Romans did the same thing. A lot of the, the riverfront in Manhattan is made from sand and silt dredged up from the bottom of the Hudson River. There are artificial islands like we have Balboa Island in Los Angeles, Treasure Island and San Francisco, also totally artificial. What's new is, what's changed is just in the last 10, 20 years, technology has moved ahead so much that we now have much bigger, more powerful dredging ships

that can pull up way more sand much faster than ever before. So lots and lots of countries are getting into the land building business for two reasons. One is to make money. You've probably seen pictures of those famous, those crazy palm tree-shaped islands off of Dubai. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So those are nothing but sand, millions of tons of sand that were sucked up from the

bottom of the Persian Gulf and put into place to form beachfront real estate. So where there used to be nothing but open water, now there is billions and billions of dollars of worth of land where they've built hotels and resorts and luxury housing. So that's one use. The much more disturbing use is where countries are using it to literally change their borders, to create new national territory. And the number one spot to worry about with this is what's called the Spratly Islands. These are just a bunch of rocks and reefs.

Way out in the middle of the South China Sea in this very hotly contested strategic shipping lane. And what's happened there is China seized control of a bunch of these rocks. And just in the last few years, built up, they've built up this enormous dredging fleet, the most powerful dredging fleet in the world, and used it to suck up sand from the bottom of the ocean, pile it up on these rocks, and create new islands, which they have turned into military bases. So they are now, China is now able to land bombers and fighter aircraft

and port nuclear submarines in these places. places that used to be just rocks way out in the middle of the ocean. And that's creating a lot of tension between China and all of its neighbors and also between China and the U.S. Are they ripping up all the life that lives down in the ocean by sucking up all the sand? Yeah. So when you do this kind of thing, there's two, it damages the environment in two ways. One is, you know, whatever was living in that sand before is now obviously dead and gone. also when you suck up that much sand, you stir up a lot of sand and silt and muck, which clouds up the water, which can suffocate fish and coral reefs all around.

Second thing is what you do with that sand. So these Spratly Islands, many of them were active, very vibrant, very rich coral reefs. Those coral reefs have literally been buried. They have just been crushed under the weight of all this sand. And it's been called, it was apparently the most rapid rate. of coral reef destruction ever in history when they built these things. You can read a lot more about sand

in his Jonathan's, Vince's book, The World in a Grain, the story of sand and how it transformed civilization. Vince Beiser is author, and if you want to read first a little bit about it, you can get an excerpt from it on our website, ScienceFriety.com slash beach. Thank you, Vince, for its fascinating book.

One of my favorite topics, you know, sand and concrete. Thanks for that. Adam, Iro. I'll see at the Concrete Fan Club Convention. And that's all the time we have for this week. If you missed any part of this program or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Every day now is Science Friday. You can also say hi to us on social media all week, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

or email us the classic way, SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. Send feedback and tell us what you'd like us to cover to. I'm Kathleen Davis. And I'm Ira Flato. We'll see you next week. Have a great weekend.