Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Asbestos

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/podcaster Matt Kirshen (Probably Science, The Jim Jefferies Show) and comedian/podcaster Andy Wood (Probably Science, 4-Time 'Jeopardy!' Champion) for a look at why asbestos is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. See NordPass Business in action now with a 3-month free trial here nordpass.com/sifpod with code SIFPOD.

Asbestos. Known for being deadly. Famous for being removed. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why asbestos is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmitz, and I'm not alone. Matt Kirshen and Andy Wood are back on the show today. Wonderful guests. They are also co-hosts of a great podcast called Probably Science. And Probably Science is about the latest science news, why it's surprising, why it's strange, and why it's a lot of fun to think about. Also, they're both stand-up comedians and comedy writers. And Andy Wood, by the way, is a four-time Jeopardy! champion,

which is a status I find very relatable and love. He was amazing on that show, and so always good to get together with him and with Matt, too. What a perfect pair of guests for this very science-y, very, I guess, delicate topic. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Matt and Andy each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode,

and today's episode is about asbestos, which is a top patron pick. Thank you very much to Max Martin for that suggestion, and to everybody else at CifPod.fun for selecting it in the polls. And I think this topic, this episode, there's a very particular tone because we are having fun. And this is a topic that has a lot of negative attributes and negative valences. And the recent episode about barbed wire is probably a pretty good comp. Because to be clear, asbestos is bad for humans. None of that has changed. We're not going to like somehow debunk that very clear fact or something. The basic way it works is asbestos is made of lots of tiny fibers. Those can get breathed in or can get lodged in the lining of human organs, in particular the lungs, usually from breathing.

And once those fibers are in there, they interrupt the normal cell cycle. That causes uncontrollable cell division, which leads to tumor growth and cancer and other lethal conditions. cell division, which leads to tumor growth and cancer and other lethal conditions. I am really excited about this kind of topic because I think it's the kind of thing everybody's heard of and everybody knows is dangerous. We can confirm that it is dangerous, and now you'll know exactly why. You'll also know exactly what it is and where it comes from, and also a lot of astounding stories about it too, just ways that you've never thought about it, never known to think about it at all. So please sit back or check your local regulations as far as asbestos remaining in construction or being around,

because that's something I can't answer for you. You all are so spread across the country and across the globe. You have to check that for yourself. Either way, here's this episode of secretly incredibly fascinating with matt kershen and andy wood i'll be back after we wrap up talk to you then so andy matt it is so good to have you both on. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it.

Either of you can start, but how do you feel about asbestos? I'm pretty sure that we used to have asbestos mats in chemistry at school. Maybe we didn't. I do know for a fact that for the last, I don't know how many years, I've been trying to persuade my mom to throw away her old ironing board that has an asbestos mat on the end of it. Like, you know, the bit that you rest the iron on when you're not mid-ironing. That's asbestos. I think I brought it up on our podcast once and then someone did write in to say that form is less dangerous and less likely to cause issues than, you know,

the stuff that's in roofs and that kind of thing. But apparently it's a very good ironing board. I don't think an ironing board can be that good that it's worth having asbestos in your house, but who am I to argue? Oh, and also I grew up in England where we would eat it for, we'd sprinkle it on our breakfast cereals every morning just to you know just to give yourself some ruggedness in your constitution hardiness but other than that no relationship that feels very typical with like that ironing board story matt of like

a lot of asbestos is in older things and then sometimes people are like i've had this forever i can't just junk it you know right and and now i like the more i think about it the more i think i i'm pretty sure in chemistry when we were at school it wasn't asbestos anymore and it was just our teacher telling us like this used to be asbestos by the way but the ironing board my mom's ironing board definitely says asbestos in on it so i have a longer story uh that was one of the biggest financial mistakes of my life i i decided in 2006 to buy a house with a fellow comedian um with the purpose of flipping it and i mistakenly or was led to believe this person had experience in renovation and construction and things and turns out not really he would just drive to home depot every day ask

how to do something like hang drywall then come back and act like he was an expert on that thing in the course of our project. One of the worst parts of it was renovating the kitchen, which had just like, just sedimentary layer after layer of flooring on top of flooring that we had to, we wanted to get back to the hardwood underneath. So I was tasked with using one of these giant scraper tools to get these tiles off of the kitchen, which took, uh, geez, the better part of a week. I feel like just chipping away at it. Cause they would never come up in full pieces. They would splinter off. And I was only halfway through doing that, that, um, someone who came over must've told me, Oh,

those are asbestos tiles. Right. And I'm like, what's this now? I'm not wearing any kind of mask or anything. I don't know if that's how you can run into problems with it from just breaking apart tiles that you're nearby on the floor. And if that is the case, I don't know if I'm too late to file some kind of a mesothelioma class action suit or something. I really should have done more. As a person who also hosts a science podcast, I probably should have done some more due diligence in whether I was putting myself at risk by trying to renovate this kitchen. But that's my closest interaction with. I don't mean to just breeze past it, but Andy, I hope you're okay. And I'm glad that story was a long time ago.

I feel like maybe you would have noticed something if it affected you. Again, I should have done more Googling right away, but I'm going to assume, even though it was breaking apart into small chunks, they weren't like really small chunks. And who knows? It's been 16 years. I knock on wood. I think I'm okay. But yeah, not smart. You know, before you do any kind of demolition, I guess, do some, do some research. That's just my advice to any wannabe house flippers out there. Yeah. This is a material that people need to be safe about.

And we're not doctors and we're not construction crew managers or from OSHA or nothing. So be careful if you're like, as Andy said, demolishing a building. No, I think, I mean, I've Googled a bit. So I think everything I say on this podcast should be taken as 100% accurate. Me too. But we can all agree that lead paint chips are delicious, right? Oh, and they really, really help with all that thinking.

Yeah. How do you guys feel about the taste of mercury? It's like chicken, kind of. Yeah. Whenever I'm eating chicken, I'm like like why isn't this a shiny liquid that's appealing to the eye and then that i have mercury it's great right i don't know but i i think i had mainly heard of asbestos as a punchline in dilbert comic strips like there would be dilbert comic strips where they would joke like and the walls of this office probably have asbestos ha ha ha which is not funny but is like a true thing about many buildings all over the world they used to have asbestos or still do right because asbestos

apart from the fact that it kills lots of people is an incredibly good material i guess yep i mean like that that aside isn't it i i believe it's sort of remarkably good at thermal insulation and fireproofing. And it's like really, really good, but also really, really bad. It used to be nicknamed the miracle mineral because it could do so many things so well. It's just that unfortunately it's lethal. So can't do it. Yeah. well it's just right unfortunately it's lethal so can't do it yeah that's why i'm wary of anything that has this miracle miracle berries miracle mile none of them are to be trusted it's the

construction material doctors don't want you to know about but for good reason doctors hate him and the hymn is just a big asbestos mine in the world. And that's true. It is true. Don't just do hate. Yeah. Well, I got a lot of stuff here about this stuff, asbestos. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics.

This week, that's in a segment called, I have these stats where I count numbers and then become wiser and introduce them all with tunes. When listeners submit ideas for to start up the segment, it feels like they're here in the room. It's me. Hi, I'm Alex Schmidt. It's me at stats time. Everybody agrees. I'll stare directly at numbers because they're interesting.

It must be fascinating to be a stat on the SIF podcast. That was submitted by Willow Tanager. Thank you, Willow, Taylor Swift fan. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a Massillion Wacking Bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. And the first number here is six. And six is the number of kinds of asbestos. It turns out there are six kinds, and this gets us into what it is. According to Mosaic Science Magazine, the word asbestos is a general term for all six

and they are all minerals made of thin fibrous crystals so they're minerals but the crystals are shaped sort of like a textile material and one variety called white asbestos is particularly easy to like weave almost like a yarn or a wool okay and am i right in thinking that they vary in dangerousness which i think is the correct term yeah apparently they vary but they are all still highly carcinogenic like there's not a actual better better one um okay and the the most dangerous situation is any time asbestos is being like sawed or even beaten or anything that like could spray tiny fibers into the air because then the fibers cause diseases and cancers in humans by especially inserting into the lining of organs okay so they're they're all bad but apparently

there is slight variation yeah and just watching andy's face just sort of darken over the course of this i'm sorry i'm trying not to read ahead but i'm like oh wait should i be uh quick googling here i'm gonna assume yeah 16 years it's been fine but um it says here that symptoms normally take around 16 and a half years to develop i knew it i knew it i knew it I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I didn't realize that it's so a mineral, but textile ish. Like if you went to an asbestos mine and picked up a chunk of something, it would look fibrous. Yeah. I'll, I'll link pictures of it for folks. And then if you guys just want to Google them rapidly too, but it looks almost sort of like a gray fur. And the next number for this is 95%, because 95% is how many of the human uses of asbestos are specifically the white asbestos type.

It's also called chrysotile, but it's almost all of human applications are that one kind, because it has curly fibers that are relatively easy to manipulate. The others are much more needle-like fibers, much harder looking. But the white asbestos in particular, like some ancient people or people in the past would mistake it for the fur of a mystical animal that they hadn't seen. Like, oh, this must be an animal byproduct because it's so like furry looking. Okay. So it can actually be sort of woven? Yeah, so it can be turned into like part of or all of cloth or textiles. It's like you said,

it's an amazing material except that it's poisonous. It's really cool. And a lot of times it's to make something fire resistant. Popular Mechanics says the English word asbestos comes from ancient Greek. It was an ancient Greek word that translates to inextinguishable because the Greeks would make candle wicks out of it for like eternal flame type candles because it was too fire resistant to ever burn down and it would just keep burning. Oh, well, now I'm doubly worried about childhood exposure. Is this also what the party trick birthday candles that won't go out are made of? Because I also blew out a lot of those as a kid. No, it isn't. Surely it's not. Okay.

No. Those are made of... No, I try to remember what those are made of, but that's not asbestos. Okay, good. A piece of good news in a lot of this research is there are a lot of stories of, we used asbestos for this, and then all of chemistry and industrial design found something else as a replacement and then did that instead like asbestos still gets used in a lot of countries for a lot of things mainly because it's cheap and you can mine it but there

are alternatives for pretty much everything yeah okay so the the relighting candles use magnesium uh shielded from oxygen and cooled by liquid paraffin but it gets hot enough that it then reignites the paraffin vapor okay okay phew and the greeks hadn't thought of that yet i feel like we all easily wonder like is everything asbestos and increasingly no so that's good am i asbestos yeah but yeah and that's it's a pretty short number section because there's a couple real big takeaways for this and the first one is takeaway number one since ancient times humans have done asbestos stunts and invented wild myths about asbestos they didn't know it's dangerous to people and especially ancient people would mine like very small amounts for very special applications and they also wondered a lot about it because

it's this weird mineral that's sort of made of fibers almost like like a fur. But stunts, I'm picturing like Archimedes jumped a moped over like a dozen asbestos. Yeah, that's exactly it. He was the first daredevil. He's frequently considered the first daredevil. I know they didn't have motorcycles back then, but I assume they had mopeds. Yeah, but he'd get into a bath that was already at a dangerously high level you know there's all sorts of very

exciting stuff that our comedians would do back in the day i'm our comedies and this is ancient greek jackass yeah yeah these stories are kind of that wacky. It was mainly like wealthier people had access to asbestos because the whole thing and so what he would do at dinner parties is he would like pretend to spill wine on his jacket by accident like oh whoops and then he would pretend to get really angry about it to the point where he threw his jacket in the fire but then he'd just pull it out of the fireplace and it had burned off the wine and was clean again. That's pretty cool. Actually. It's a whole thing.

You're really talking me back into this asbestos thing. Like now I want an asbestos jacket. Let's not, let's, let's put all the death bit aside now. And this feels like a pretty cool party trick. Also, this guy sounds like an ancient Ron Pope. You'll kind of,

this has big infomercial energy to it. Like he first sells telev, and then from there, he can sell everything else. That's the secret. There's also an incidence of parallel thinking, because there's a similar story about Charlemagne. Charlemagne was a European king in the 700s and 800s. Humane was a European king in the 700s and 800s, and apparently he used to hold banquets on a sparkling white tablecloth made entirely of white asbestos. And then, quote, after his guests had eaten their fill, the king would pluck the tablecloth off the table and fling it into the hearth. In the blaze, the cloth turned fiery red but did not burn.

When it was plucked out, it was cleaner than ever, with the debris of the meal roasted away pretty cool yeah so wouldn't you look charred it would look clean it would like zero burning of any kind took place and i think it is because it was made out of like 100 asbestos in a way that probably most modern products are not because that's not quite how we use it or used to use it so i don't want to get ahead oh so go ahead matt i was just what what item of clothing would you most want to be made out of asbestos if you had free choice i feel like a hat is good for all kinds of tricks yeah hat solid yeah boots little asbestos booties i was thinking boots but now you got me sold on hats because yeah toss, tossing your hat in the fireplace, then pulling it out again is a pretty cool move. Just putting it straight back on your head.

Yeah. So I don't want to get ahead of this in case you're getting this, but like these people who used it in ancient times for these stunt purposes, did they encounter any negative consequences health wise? encounter any negative consequences health-wise or that's that's the great question because like the short answer is we don't know partly because everything in ancient times could often be unhealthy or undiagnosed or whatever else right but also because there's going to be a point in like the late 1800s where people start industrially mining asbestos and that's when we really find out how bad it is because just so much of it is being dug up for so many things like these these small uses of it may have been dangerous and also they were small and kind of limited right right like i joked about us

having it for breakfast and stuff but there was there did used to be like kids would play in like mounds of asbestos because it was like snow yeah and no no that is like near asbestos mines before people knew how incredibly dangerous it was they would just let you know kids would like run around and like throw it up in the air and stuff and oh no yeah yeah like if you had asked me before researching to, like, draw a picture of asbestos, I don't know what I would have drawn, but I would have not drawn this, like, fluffy stuff. It's a very fluffy rock for being a rock. And I can see, again, why people thought it was so fun and cool. Like, it's not, but it is.

But it's not. But it's fascinating. Yes. And fascinating, yeah. Because the other kind of prank use of it was actually for scamming in medieval Europe. What they would do is they would make fake holy relics and mainly use the fire-resistant attribute to appear to be a miracle. Oh! Make a little solid chip of asbestos and then pretend that's a piece of the

true cross because it won't burn and also some people wove asbestos fibers into like fake shrouds that jesus wore and you know and anything where the fire resistance can appear to be a miracle they were like and it's just a poisonous mineral they found. But it is sort of miraculous. It has a seemingly miraculous quality to it. I can see how it's great for a religious grifter. Yeah, once you're grifting, grift. Go all the way. Grifter's going to grift.

If I was a grifter and i found out about this whole asbestos thing i'd be i'd be very happy about that i'd be delighted with myself yeah and then like even when people were just looking at asbestos apparently european thinkers came up with a lot of essentially myths and guesses about it according to cornell university historian racheles, the reason was that, you know, almost all natural fibers in Europe before industrial times were either from animals or from plants. And so a lot of people just decided this must be from an animal that we don't see because it's like hard to find or, you know, it must be leaving this behind some way.

So like guesses included phoenix feathers and the mythological version of salamanders, where they're fireproof. They were like, that's probably from magic animals. That makes sense. Makes the most sense, yeah. Yeah. My favorite guess is that they thought, this is like a whole nother mythical animal I'd never heard of. They thought there was a species of fireproof rats and that the rats live inside volcanoes and so then like when they briefly leave the volcano they shed asbestos and then go back so where do the rats actually live

in my private zoo code sif gets you into my crazy private zoo this is a patriot this is your patreon only zoo yeah this theory sounds very l ron hubbardy if i if i may say oh the volcano theory is asbestos just tiny phaetons is that the possibility it's not good when you have them in you i know that so yeah no you need to get those out it does it seems like the kind of belief a cult would try to corner is that asbestos is good you know like that's just out there for somebody to pick up and say like nobody wants you to know that it's actually great yeah it's probably not quite as impressive as snake handling but i guess i could see asbestos handling as a thing that a cult leader would do they go to town to town asbestos huffing yeah especially because asbestos

is just in a lot of parts of the world it's just a mineral out there it's actually a type of silicate mineral and then yeah people just were like this is so cool and does so many things like even the ancient greeks they weren't just using it for candles. They used it for pottery, napkins, insulation, special clothing. And there's also like monasteries in the Mediterranean where it was used as a finish for wall paint. Like there would be murals on the walls and then asbestos finishes on them to give them a shine. I really thought it was a recent couple decades industrial products, and it turns out it's been used for thousands of years to do all kinds of stuff.

Crazy. And then it's bad that it was used for stuff, which leads us into the next takeaway for the main show. Takeaway number two. People and companies learned asbestos is dangerous almost immediately after they started using it industrially. Okay. This is kind of busting a myth. I had assumed we didn't know until relatively recently that asbestos is dangerous, but it turns out that many Europeans and colonizing North Americans who started mining it and using it industrially, a lot of the people running businesses or authority figures

learned pretty quickly that it's dangerous, mainly because they noticed that people kept dying of it, who worked closely with it every day all the time. So when was this that this started to happen? Key Source is an amazing piece for Mosaic Science magazine. It's by journalist Nick Fleming. He says that large-scale mining started in the late 1800s, in particular in Canada and also in the US and in Italy. And it got used for a whole bunch of products. But then by the 1920s or so, there were many studies all saying,

hey, this is dangerous to humans. I really thought it started like in the 90s, if I had to guess. But as early as the 1920s, many companies handling this knew. And is it like with cigarettes where they would cover it up and pretend that they didn't know it's danger for many, many years? Exactly right, yeah. And according to Mosaic, in the 1960s, when the asbestos industry was trying to handle this, they even hired a PR firm called Hill and Knowlton to run the spin. And that's the same firm that the 1960s tobacco companies were using for the same purpose, same thing. Oh, God. Okay. And are they the ones who now do climate change? Because I know that's a thing where they

hired the film Merchants of Doubt that goes into how the oil companies basically hired the same tobacco company prs to do exactly the same playbook a few deck a decade or two later i think i think i'm realizing i did not want to know if hill and nolten is still operating i just hoped they vanished uh it was slick it sounds like a bad bad company i hope it's gone and long gone no they're probably still going yeah i'm gonna google them rapidly yeah they have a website and everything they're still going great uh so they're a thing i and this is this it's a pretty humongously dark takeaway and also i think the details are very very interesting you know as especially people running mining towns for this

they started to notice that it was an issue. Right. Like the earliest time people noticed is apparently in 1879, a British firm called Turner and Newell in Greater Manchester, they became like the first industrial company to weave asbestos into cloth and garments in a factory. And by 1899, the British government inspected this, linked asbestos to worker illnesses and deaths, and made a push for new ventilation rules and to try to solve it. These businesses noticed pretty fast that if they had people in a cramped room with asbestos all of the year, all of the time,

it was bad for them. And did anybody have, even now, do we know the exact mechanism by which it damages your lungs? Is it just the fact that the particles are ridiculously small or what else is magically bad about this? It's pretty much that, yeah. It's a specific process where they're very, very thin fibers and they get lodged in the lining of human organs, especially the lungs, and then that causes uncontrollable cell division and tumors. And so it's a pretty direct cancer-causing system. I feel so bad telling you this.

It's just very out of my mind. I mean, I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't think it was funny. And I don't think, you know, I was being a little maybe too cavalier about that. But I don't think I've done any. I think just the one week hopefully you're fine but yeah like it's all it's all a numbers game isn't it like you right right yeah you can get lung cancer from smoking one cigarette but you're significantly more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke 40 a day for 40 years right exactly yeah but i wouldn't and yeah i guess i'm trying to picture when it's particulate like even though there are particles small enough you can't see them in the course of that work like

if you were in one of those factories i wonder if you would still see some larger particles like if it would be kind of obvious that like we are causing this to be airborne even though the smallest particles that i can't see are the most dangerous ones right you know would you also see some larger ones in the course of that work? I wonder. And I think you're wondering, right. Yeah. Like especially apparently the most dangerous as best as situation is sawing of it or cutting

of it or dividing of it. Cause that it's like sawdust, like it goes everywhere and you can see the amount that's going somewhere. So I wasn't sawing it. I was scraping it as I continue to try to make myself feel better about this dumb choice, but yeah. Like Matt says, numbers game. We don't know it's, but low chance. And then when people were working with this stuff all the time, the companies noticed immediately, Hey, like young workers are getting sick very fast because asbestos, once people figure out there's an industrial use for it,

they use it for everything from building material like concrete pipes, cement bricks, tiles, insulation. They also use it for car parts, protective clothing, mattresses, cigarette filters, a lot of military equipment in both world wars. So this was like a celebrated material. And even some of the places where they mined it named their town after asbestos because they were like proud. It's like almost like a Silicon Valley type name. Like, look what we can do with this stuff. It's got the word best right in the middle there. Yeah. Yeah, you can't spell asbestos without best.

asbestos without best and like the the maybe strangest town pride story about it is there used to be a whole canadian city in quebec just called asbestos because it's the site of the jeffrey mine which was the world's largest asbestos mine for many years wow and they closed the mine in 2012 and then in 2020 held a referendum to change the name. And it's now called Val de Sauce, which is French for Valley of the Springs. They've really moved away from the branding. It's a good rebrand, yeah. I would be willing to bet any amount of money, though, that Andy, that you hit on a genuine advertising campaign.

I bet almost... Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure somewhere you can picture those kind of like hand-painted old adverts uh that would say sort of like asbestos best for building best for the best is capitalized in the word yeah best is yeah and then like in the same font like best for building best for uh clothing best for you, best for baby. Hey, folks, it's me, Tina Turner. You know, a lot of people ask me what the best thing is,

and let me tell you. Simple ass bastards. She never did that. I made that up, to be clear. We don't know. We don't know what she would have done in her downtime for a paycheck. This is an audio-only podcast, so we should let the listeners know that that was actually Alex and Andy both doing Tina Turner's voice. That wasn't an actual recording of Tina Turner, as you may have thought as you were on your daily commute just listening passively to this show.

But that was the impersonation skills of the other two people on this show but no that was uh that that was the that was the impersonation skills of the other two people on this show on the mic also taylor swift was not on earlier it turns out i just found out yeah and uh this this town originally named asbestos apparently it was like such a mining boom town all of a sudden when they opened this mine that it was British Canada and the Royal Mail said, like, we need a town name for postal delivery purposes. So let's just call it asbestos because that's what they mine here. It's an entire company town for it. And there are a bunch of other places like that, too.

There's a Russian town called Asbest. And then there's also just other towns in the world that were asbestos mines and are now public health crises. Like, apparently the town of Libby, Montana, you can pretty rapidly get on Medicare just by showing the government that you've had asbestos exposure. There's a town in Australia called Wittenoom that is no longer a town. It's like a condemned region of Western Australia because they did so much asbestos mining. Oh my God. Wow. So it's found just everywhere.

It's found on every continent, basically. Yeah. Another example is a place called Bonobah Island in the Pacific Ocean nation of Kiribat, which is a bunch of tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean. There's not really just one place in the world where you can find this. Hey, it's not asbest me, it's asbest us. There's another advert for you. Oh no. A little more of a

stretch. Okay. I think this word has too many positive syllables. That's what I think. A lot of them light up the good parts of my brain and I don't like it. It's not a good thing. It feels, it feels like Ralph Nader might've written a book called as worst us or

something. Off of that, we are going to a short break followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience one you have no choice but to embrace because yes listening is mandatory the jv club with janet varney is available every thursday on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcasts thank you and remember no running in the halls and yeah and so then the like process of studying this there were many studies especially starting in the 1920s in the uk and the us and south africa finding hey this is bad for people most were industry funded most had the results suppressed the the creepiest story is probably

that in the 1940s and 50s there were some u.s asbestos companies that secretly collected the lungs of deceased workers for further study at a private lab like they got a hold of the lungs and then sent them up there and it seems like they were hoping the lab would say it's anything else that killed them but the lab said it's asbestos and then they just covered up the findings so if they hadn't done that last step they would have been doing some useful research it's just the part where they didn't then reveal we found this thing out ah you're really making me think less of evil corporations yeah how about that? and like that's the real problem and some of them probably were smokers because like people did both but uh that has been one useful form of spin for asbestos companies is to say like no it's those

other guys the the goal of those same publicists who are spreading that light are also publicized to also yeah cast doubt on the idea that smoking causes cancer like this isn't asbestos this is caused by smoking which also doesn't cause illness right yeah and then and another spin they did is related to those different types of asbestos because in particular they tried to make white asbestos which is the main industrial kind sound like it's better in particular because it's called white asbestos because it's white colored but like we have positive valences about the word white like we think it's clean or or laundered or something and so they you know they've tried a lot of different spins to try to make this product seem better than it is they could just go with the uh is it dove or ivory

soap and just say it's it's 99.44 pure pure asbestos but uh it's it's pure it's like all i heard was 99 point something and i'm in yeah great yeah yeah i presume a high number's good otherwise they wouldn't have said it yeah and yeah and so there are places especially countries that are in europe where they have either strict or total bans on the use of asbestos in products now. And in construction, as far as you, the listener, you need to check kind of your local jurisdiction if you're in the U.S. as far as how strict or not strict the laws are, because there's a major international treaty banning asbestos, but the U.S. has not signed it. Major international treaty banning asbestos, but the U.S. has not signed it. And we've banned asbestos mining in the U.S., but it can still be imported and be used in limited amounts. So the U.S. is in a little bit of limbo with that.

And there are like cities and groups that inspect and remove asbestos in construction. That's been going on for a long time. So was there any big leap forward in other kinds of fire retardant technologies that allowed, because it seems like if this was the only thing that did certain things, we still would have found a way to keep putting it out there at the risk of public safety. But was there something else that's like, oh, now we of your walls use case is so dangerous that people were like, we just have to take it out and try not to start fires, I guess. Yeah. Quit smoking for that reason. We won't have asbestos, but, uh, just don't have open flames everywhere in your house. I, I feel like I talked about this one time. I've never smoked cigarettes. And I think one of the things that turned me off of them was reading a Mark Twain essay where he talked about constantly smoking cigars in bed and occasionally almost falling asleep and lighting himself on fire. And I was like, that doesn't seem good at all as a practice. I don't want to do that. don't want to do that yeah having seen cool hand luke i know you're not the no smoking in the prone position i know that was a big part of the prison rules and it makes sense yeah yeah that also that's

put you off eating many many eggs right never never more than 49 yeah yeah that's that's a strict rule that andy has and i i never realized that was because of that film but i guess that that is why you don't do that. That's why I always stop just before you guys do. And then you make fun of me. Yeah, because we have our annual egg party. Alex, sorry, I should have invited you. I feel bad now even bringing this up, knowing that you've never had an invitation.

And I will rectify that next time. We have our annual egg party where we get together. Yeah, I go to Costco and I buy all of it. Is that when you texted me 100 egg emojis that that makes sense now yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry that's what that was that was uh that was unfortunately that was after the fact that was when i've gone what we call egg blind and uh egg blindness comes just after the egg frenzy and anyway there's there's a moment where andy always cops out and we're like okay here he goes i always say when it comes to hardball eggs just know your limits you know you don't have to cater to peer pressure you can stop at a reasonable number

i feel like if if we just like loaded up amazon and put up a self-published book called The Cool Hand Luke Diet, I don't know what's in the book, but it would sell so fast. People would be like, I love that movie. Bye. And then they find out there's nothing in there. All I eat is 50 hard-boiled eggs a day. Is 50 even the number? It's what comes to mind, but I can't remember really if that's accurate. 50 feels right. Yeah. 100 would have been. Don't remember yet? 50 feels right. Yeah.

100 would have been excessive. By which I mean 50 feels right. Right. That's why we do it. Yeah. Yeah. That's how you frenzy. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, there's one more takeaway for the main show here, and it gets us way into the world of pop culture. Because takeaway number three asbestos perform multiple roles in the wizard of oz oh it turns out a lot of parts of the movie were made of like pure asbestos and that's mostly an accident of where hollywood technology was in 1938 like what sort things? The main one is fake snow, which fits in with that story Matt was telling about like kids outside asbestos mines being like this fluffy and fun. There was a period, especially in the thirties when Hollywood was using asbestos as fake snow.

And, and one of the main movies we still watch from then as the wizard of us before that, they would tend to use stuff like cotton and then they realized that cotton's highly flammable huge fire risk and basically every other part of early hollywood was also flammable and there were constant fires and then later on they realized they could use fomite which is the stuff in fire extinguishers they could use that and mix it with some other stuff so they started doing that in the 1940s but in between the like king of fake snow was asbestos wow and were there any negative consequences to that on the wizard of oz set or that one it's almost like the ancient uses of it where we we it's a specific case and they're all huge smokers and drinkers and we don't know. We don't know of anyone getting sick,

like from filming immediately from that. Yeah. Right. Right. Um, by the way, it was 50, 50 eggs in an hour.

Yes. Perfect. I shouldn't, it's way less cool than I questioned myself ever about it. They're just like some, somebody at home was shouting that that really is good for them. Okay. Excellent. It was George Kennedyedy who's a long-time listener and and yeah and that was so that was like the big fake snow in the movie was um asbestos

apparently the other 1930s option for fake snow was cornakes like they would spray paint cornflakes white and then drop cornflakes but the problem with that is they're super loud and so any scene where they shot it that way they had to redo all of the dialogue later and just do totally new sound for everything love the sound of walking on new fallen cornflakes yeah clear december. Just massive crunching sounds, yeah. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I think Hollywood, it seems like, was very excited about this fomite alternative. In 1946, when they were filming It's a Wonderful Life,

they used over 6,000 gallons of fomite mixed with soap flakes and got the snow in It's a Wonderful Life looks good. It really works. So they moved on from this as quickly as they could. But, uh, you know, during that window of making the wizard of Oz, uh, Dorothy's covered in it. Wow. And it w it was also apparently a product of moving all film production because they, they shot most things indoors, but before the 1910s, the center of U.S. movie making was Fort Lee, New Jersey, which has winter. But in the 1910s, they started building the Hollywood studios and it's too sunny, too little winter in California.

Well, I want to hear a SIF episode about this proto-Hollywood in the middle of Indiana. That's crazy. I've never heard of that. New Jersey. Yeah. Fort Lee, New Jersey. Oh, New Jersey. I'm sorry. You just said it. I already forgot what the state Indiana. That's crazy. I've never heard of that. New Jersey. Yeah. Fort Lee. Oh, New Jersey. I'm sorry. How did I, you just said it. How do you figure out what the state was? That's crazy. Yeah. How, why, why, why there? It was apparently close to Thomas Edison, but that's also why they moved because he, he was like, I make the gear to make movies and people were like, great.

And then he was like, and you have to pay me forever if you want to use that. And people were like we're moving where he won't find us and they moved to california okay yeah plus it's harder to call fort lee people what is the hollyweird equivalent if you want to make fun of the film industry of fort lee all these uh fort leard fort leaders yeah yeah we need a better metonym for the entertainment industry but yeah so that that was one use of it and then also in the movie the scarecrow character the entire outfit was made of asbestos lined fabric don't i don't know that it needed to be like

heat resistant or anything that's just what they used the other other use was the wicked witch's broomstick because they wanted to light that on fire without destroying it and so her whole broomstick was asbestos too wow wow it's like heavy on asbestos it's it's more than you would think you would think zero times but they used it a lot i wouldn't have thought this episode would make me so badly want to play with just a little asbestos. Is there a safe amount? Because I want to do some of these fire tricks. You want to cast a cloak into the fire, for sure. It's pretty cool. The hat trick is a good, again, great party trick if you can pull it off safely.

Trick is a good, I mean, again, great party trick if you could pull it off safely. I am. I think I thought of hats because I had just seen that sketch from I Think You Should Leave where he tries to do the Fred Astaire role of his hat with safari flaps. So I want to do that with an asbestos hat into the fire. Oh, my God. If any of your listeners don't already watch that show, it's the absolute best. Yeah. Stop the podcast and go watch it. It's great. And with Wizard of Oz, there's separately a worse health crisis that also happened on the set, which is part of why we don't have any information about asbestos effects on the crew.

Because at the same time, they almost killed two different guys to do the tin man makeup which is maybe yes a more famous story i did know that one but this was not an asbestos issue at all it was powdered aluminum and it was very deadly how did that what's the mechanism by which that's deadly and it's weird because it's mainly a lungs thing too but the the issue was first they cast a guy named buddy ebsen who would later be famous in the beverly hillbillies as jed clampett on the beverly hillbillies but they gave him makeup made of powdered aluminum which got into his lungs and caused an allergic reaction his lungs failed he was put in a hospital oxygen tent he almost died

and then they got a next actor named Jack Haley and they were like, don't worry. It's a paste based aluminum makeup. And then what happened is that got in his eye and gave him a major infection and they had to do emergency surgery to save his vision. Uh, and so like all of this was going on and they were like, the asbestos is fine. We're like killing 10 men left and right. We need to focus on that. Crazy.

Yeah, there was definitely a period in Hollywood when, not that there aren't still serious accidents on sets, but they were ludicrously reckless back then. Just like, yeah, we'll just paint this guy and see what happens. Yeah. Paint him more. guessing yeah yeah exactly this works on my roof sure it'll work on a man especially i feel like on some level it's because like oh he's playing a character made of metal great let's just coat him in metal like yeah it's because, like, oh, he's playing a character made of metal. Great, let's just coat him in metal. Like, it's fidelity to the source material. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. But, like, no. Couldn't it be something metal-colored? No. Yeah. Can we plate him? No, that would be... That sounds dangerous.

Let's just paint him with this instead, rather than dipping him in molten metal. Yeah. Just like, oh, you're here to play the Tin Man? Head down the welding department it's like no no you're not welding anything no like it's a car go down to you go to makeup and you go to vehicle maintenance because we've got a plan for you strip naked and hold your breath here we go but if i hold my breath i can't continue smoking cigarettes that would be terrible here put this cigar to block up your fat your mouth put a cigar in your mouth and two cigarettes in your nostrils for safety folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks to matt kershen and andy wood for among many things permitting me to be very taylor swift about the stats and numbers today anyway i said

that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is three bizarre connections between asbestos and Donald Trump. And if you're a new listener, to be clear, Donald Trump very rarely comes up on this podcast. He does when there is just an amazing enough reason to bring him up. And the guy loves asbestos. Wouldn't think so, but he does. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of 10 dozen other bonus shows,

and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring asbestos with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, since ancient times, humans have done asbestos stunts and invented wild asbestos myths. Takeaway number two, people learned asbestos is dangerous almost immediately after they started using it industrially. And takeaway number three, really. And takeaway number three, asbestos performed multiple roles in The Wizard of Oz. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Matt Kirshen and Andy Wood are the hosts of an excellent podcast called Probably Science. Also, Andy is a four-time Jeopardy! champion, and both of them are wonderful stand-up comedians and comedy writers. If you've heard of stuff like The Jim Jefferies Show or the Bridgetown Comedy Festival you have

heard of or hopefully experienced their work, I'm just gonna have a bunch of links for, again, Matt Kirshen and Andy Wood. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones, and this is sort of a special week for that because I'm grateful to these sources for also being great journalism, right? Like, we need great journalism to be aware of the dangers of asbestos and not fall for spin by the asbestos companies. So thank you to journalist Nick Fleming for an amazing piece he did for Mosaic Science Magazine. Also lean on a piece for The New Yorker by Casey Sepp. And then more work from Popular Mechanics, JSTOR Daily, TDM.co, The Smithsonian. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun.

And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.