Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Bricks

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writers/podcasters Conor Lastowka and Michael J. Nelson (Rifftrax, '372 Pages We'll Never Get Back' podcast) for a look at why bricks are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Bricks. Known for being solid. Famous for and mortar. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why bricks are 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 Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined today by Connor Listoka and Michael J. Nelson. Amazing duo, they're the co-hosts of a great podcast called 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back. That's a podcast where Connor and Mike read a book that they do not anticipate enjoying. It's not necessarily a bad book, they just figure they won't like it. The title refers to Ready Player One, and then they've done

many other books from there. Really great show. They're also both part of the amazing movies and comedy operation that is Riff Tracks, which I hope you know, just an institution. Great thing. I am so glad both of them, Connor and Mike, are here for BRICS, a topic it turns out they have strong feelings about, which is awesome. 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 Connor recorded this on the traditional land of the Monahoke people. Acknowledge Connor recorded this on the traditional land of the Monahoke people. Acknowledge Mike recorded this on the traditional land of the Oceti Chicoene people.

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 bricks. That is a patron-chosen topic. Many, many thanks to Amber DeBardy-Laban for that suggestion. And it's episode is about bricks. That is a patron chosen topic. Many, many thanks to Amber DeBardy-Laban for that suggestion. And it's also a suggestion that's very personal to Amber. She has a story to share about Savannah gray bricks that I'm just going to relate directly because she's a national park ranger at the park she used to work at in Savannah. The buildings were made out of Savannah gray bricks. That was the kind of brick that was cheap back in the 1800s. It's super expensive now because it's so rare. It turns out Savannah gray bricks were made on one very specific plantation in pre-US Civil War Georgia,

right, Savannah? And so they were made by enslaved people and they were handmade in pairs. And because that plantation went away, and that slavery went away, the bricks are rare now. They're sort of collector's items, even though they were considered a cheap and regular brick back in the 1800s. Amber also says that a hurricane came through that area in 2016. She and other rangers working at the park were able to discover fingerprints of the enslaved folks who made the bricks by analyzing them. Because the hurricane kind of scattered things, and then they got a look at the bricks. Amber says it was a life-changing thing to see. I'm sure it was. And I'm really glad patrons picked this topic, because we're going to talk about

many, many other kinds of bricks and some special mortar and go all over the world in the story of this, you know, ubiquitous construction material that, like those Savannah Gray bricks, you may not look twice at if you don't know what's going on with them. Please sit back or completely miss a shot in basketball because you want to be on theme. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Connor Listoka and Michael J. Nelson. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Connor, Mike, it is so nice to have you here. And of course, 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 bricks? I'll start. I have a generally unfavorable opinion of bricks. Whoa. Wow. Stemming from a childhood. I guess it was like junior high or something. My dad told me to go put the lawnmower away in the middle of, you know, roughly it was

nighttime. That was an unforgivable sin to leave a lawnmower out, you know, at night. And so I dashed out of my bedroom wearing only underwear because it was and it was down the driveway and I put the lawnmower away and ran back as fast as I could. And my brother had left bricks in the driveway that I did not see. And I hit them at full force, exploding my toe and sending me to the pavement where I then ground like 30 pounds of gravel into my flesh. And I walked in apparently and I was in shock. And my parents were like, how did you screw that up? Putting the lawnmower away.

and my parents were like, how did you screw that up? Putting the lawnmower away. Like, I looked like I was going to die. So that's my negative memory of bricks. I've never heard a single story about your dad that, like, involves going out for, like, frosty chocolate milkshakes or something. It's always, like, bodily injury, like, you know, not wearing a lot of clothes for some reason.

That is unfair. Yeah. And you said it's your brother who left the bricks so all the nelson men here are just just ganging up yeah we're not looking good we're not looking good my brother jeff got in a great deal of trouble for it though you're not supposed to leave bricks in the driveway so they although they felt like i was a moron for running into bricks it was the middle of the night and And so they did blame my brother. The type of household where you can like point to the house rules on the wall and be like,

not supposed to leave bricks in the driveway. It's right there. So negative opinion, but I don't know. We'll see where that goes. Fair. Earned it. Yeah. I have a positive, positive opinion that I think is mostly informed by moving back to Northern Virginia about a year ago. And if either of you are familiar with the blog, McMansion Hell, there was a blog, very popular about five years ago that cataloged like what defined a McMansion and like what

the unforgivable sins of them were. And the epicenter of McMansion-dom is Northern Virginia. So you drive through the sort of the town I grew up in and very normal looking houses have been just raised to build McMansions out to within a centimeter of the property line. And they all use the standard McMansion trope of having like four different surfaces on one house. So there'll be like fake stones, stucco, you know, linoleum siding, all, you know, that don't go together, but they're presented as if they do. So it looks like you, you know, built a mansion and civilization the game, but then be like, this part's European and this part's Egyptian and this part's, you know, Stonehenge. drive past the next house, which is just a very charming, normal brick house from the 1960s. And you're like, that looks like a house should look like, you know, that looks like a kid's drawing of a house. So based on that, my opinion of brick has become positive over the past year, just because it's, it's more expensive, I'm sure, but it looks like a nice way to have a house.

I can't wait to see the house is built out of linoleum siding. That's something I had not heard of so i'm i'm intrigued just the floor of a malt shop on the building maybe that's just i don't go up and like inspect it yeah but that's just that's the key thing that and windows of different sizes are what defines a mcmansion for these for these people okay Different size windows. And the brick becomes like a demarcator of a better era. That's so meaningful. Wow. Yeah. I don't know Virginia very well. I feel like with Northern Virginia, I almost want to jump to like, are any of them colonial or from like the distant past? But it sounds like these are like just mid 20th century, nice brick houses.

Yeah. Yeah. You probably get some of that and and there are some people who preserve that classic look so that stands out even more but yeah um yeah the the towns yeah i'm not up on the history so i think there is a lot of old stuff that probably isn't mad at a brick but the the stuff that like the house type of house i would have grown up and would have been made of brick and we like to just find damn it how do you feel about the the funk song brick house do you have any opinions on that i'm not a no yeah less a fan of that than of actual brick houses okay yeah i'm with you on that yeah it's it just it's it screams very much like you got the fourth least expensive wedding band oh right like you did the commodore's tear and the catalog.

And that was that's what they could provide. Yeah. Yeah. You shelled out for that, but it's not going to be good. And that they transitioned that into play that funky music. And, you know, the bride's dad gets very happy about that. Yeah. Bricks as a structure like it can mean both very nice and also very gritty. Like my, my main brick

memory, cause I did not live in a brick house. We did not have bricks around, but I should have said I did not live in a brick house. I did not live in that. But, uh, it was called jest.com. It was a comedy website. That's no longer longer a thing but i wrote a whole blog of crime novelist author photos where they're wearing a leather jacket in front of a brick wall and there were dozens of them because it turns out that just leather jacket and brick wall evokes like he knows the streets but it's like an like an author they're not like that gritty looking, you know. Right. An outside brick wall or interior? Usually outside. Yeah.

That was the vibe. Yeah. That's a new window into a world I would have never thought about. I think my first, I had a friend who was a photographer and I was doing comedy way back in the day. And I thought, well, I need a photo, but I'm not just going to get the headshot. So we went out to an alley with a brick wall, and I probably like propped one leg up on it and then leaned back with my leather jacket on to show that I was up the street. Yeah.

And so we just, I recently saw where that photo was taken, and I sort of cringe like, remember that? Oh, that would have been fun to recreate. Yes. Because the brick wall was the standupup trope for a while, too. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, this was more like a, yeah, this was not a stand-up brick wall.

It was more like a, yeah, you could kind of see that it was an industrial outside wall. But nevertheless, I don't know if it got me any gigs or lost me gigs. I'll never know. My other tack was going to be talking about i decided not to go with it because i didn't have the guts to try to pull it off but talking about how big a fan i was of ignatz mouse who used to throw bricks bricks at crazy cat's head so if there's any 120 year olds out there who are disappointed that it didn't go in that direction i apologize that's the one person in your town in a brick structure still is 120

years old ed was waiting for that they're like i'm moving i give up raise it build a mcmansion damn it puts down his pogo comic and picks up crazy cat sure we know the type father knows best yes yeah gasoline alley i think from here we can get into the the stats and numbers of the show and there will be some big takeaways from there but 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 hello numbers my old friend I've come to learn from you again. In this podcast softly creeping into my feed while I was sleeping. And the knowledge that was planted in my brain will remain. It is the sound of numbers

wow that's that was great you you got that falsetto you pulled it off yeah scared me for a moment but then he landed stuck the landing nice i i think i started that like an octave higher than i planned and uh boy that was a real scramble. We've got to get in on that. Letting our Patreon people, you know, not I would say humiliate because you pulled it off. But, you know, humiliate us for their share of the funds. Sure. It came up over the break just because I put the album on, but on the Simon and Garfunkel album where they sing Silent Night and then it plays like clips of the announcer talking about like all the unrest in Vietnam. The most pretentious thing ever put to wax in the history of recording.

If someone released it now, it would just be the most laughable thing. Like if Sufjan Stevens did that. Do you know what I'm talking about mike uh i don't although that that sounds completely plausible exactly what it is yeah yeah right it's because get it that doesn't sound silent at all yeah it's or restful or peaceful makes you think makes you think No, I couldn't think that without you doing this. It's not that hard to understand. Well, that name was submitted by Katie Lynn Kochka and Will Lee. Thank you both. We have a new name for this every week.

Please make him as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. But we got some stats and numbers here. And the first number is 9,600 years old. here and the first number is 9,600 years old. 9,600 years old is the age of the oldest bricks that have been found by archaeologists. So we've been making bricks at least that long as people. Source is Tim Harford. He says that archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon led a team that found bricks at Jericho, which is in modern Palestine. It's in the Bible. And that's been an inhabited location for over 10,000 years. These were mud bricks there.

Damn. Yeah. Basically, as soon as we've had civilizations, speaking of Sid Meier, am I right? But basically, as long as we've done that, we've had bricks. So were those from the walls that came a-tumbling down? Not clear. You mean when Joshua fit the battle? Sure, yes.

Yeah. Do not grill me on more than one line from that. Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho, Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the walls that come a-tumbling down. All right. Well, there you go. Evidence. A concise history.

Yeah. It is a funny place to find pieces of a wall, the spot where maybe the most famous destruction of walls happened. Maybe that's why they were around. They were scattered, you know, loose bricks. Yeah. But of all the places you could go and like make off with pieces of a scattered wall, you know, that and then Berlin Wall have to be at the top of your list. Yeah. All the, all the top busted walls of the world. Go on a tour, see them all. Put it next to your chair from the Metrodome and you're all set with your relics of things that are super important. Oh, I, I thought you were going to say stuff that collapsed. I have

a very vivid memory of that time when the Metrodome ceiling fell in because of a bunch of snow. There was a video of it online. Oh, it did. It did. Yeah. I think it routinely collapsed for a couple of years. People would go hoping it would collapse on their heads. It would be fun. But yeah, with the ancient structures beyond the Metrodome. yeah, these bricks are from at least 9,600 years ago, maybe over 10,000 years ago. And mud bricks are bricks where you make them by just molding clay, leaving it in the sun.

Later, people developed fired bricks where you bake it in a kiln. And we'll talk about futuristic bricks later. But mud bricks are still made today, especially in the developing world. It's still a way to do this that we've had for 10 millennia. Man. Well, another biblical thing, Pharaoh famously took away the, the straw to make the bricks, you know, in for, for Moses and Aaron and, and, and all of them making the bricks. So I guess he's punishing future generations of his own people by taking their straw away. I don't know what the point of that is theologically. Right.

But yeah, the straw would strengthen the brick. And then he said, well, now you're going to have to even make more bricks and you don't get any straw. Like, who are you punishing with that? Before there were good things to take away from people to punish them. That was like what you invented, you know? There wasn't like no TV or like I'm going to ban alcohol type of thing. It was like, well, you know, no straw for bricks, I guess. Like that's the best thing you got.

And a little less straw for your sleeping mat as well. How do you like that? It's not that much difference, actually. It's still painful and hard to rest speaking of governments the next number here is 1784 1784 that is the year when the british government instituted a brick tax in the uk and i sent you guys a picture of a modern british wall because they accidentally just changed the sizes of bricks in the UK because people did the obvious thing. They said, oh, there's a tax per thousand bricks in my

building. Let's just use huge bricks. And so if you are around the UK, you'll see situations where the building have buildings have very different brick sizes. Oh, wow. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's genius. both genius and something that like you would think of i mean that picture says high street but like that's a very like high high theory to put out after you know smoking weed is that we'll just i mean make the bricks bigger man like it's a simple solution or if you gave that fact when everyone was high right that would be you know there'll be one guy that goes, no way, man. It didn't have anything to do with taxes.

And then another guy would look at that picture and claim he was unable to see the difference between those two sizes of bricks. Yeah. It's the mortar. That's what's filling in the cracks there. It's like one of those illusions. The brick tax is not one you hear about in elementary school, though. Right. In American school, we get T-taxes and stamp taxes and stuff.

And 1784, that's that same era. I guess the British government was just like, how can we make money by doing weird taxes on things? I guess earlier in the 1700s, they taxed windows and then people just started breaking up their windows. It's all just like they tried to do object-based taxes all over the world wow and yet it didn't make it into the beatles taxman song where they list things that i'm going to tax and it seems like i'll tax your bricks would have been a nice rhyme yeah come on george come on yeah come on but like bricks if they were making them in the pharaohs and in jericho like that seems like the one thing that like the colonies could have been like, well, of course we can make those ourselves. Yeah.

We just leave some mud out to dry. Like, you know, on that King George. I'm all muddy now. I'm at the king. Didn't I take their straw away? What is happening over there? Oh, yeah. When the last number for the numbers section here, this is another date.

It is June 28th, 1969. Nice. June 28th, 1969. Yeah, nice year. It's true. And that is the date when a protester threw one piece of a brick at New York City police outside of the Stonewall Inn. Oh, wow. harassing gay people. Morning of June 28th, 1969, cops raided the Stonewall Inn, started hauling people out.

People there fought back and the initiating moment of that fight was somebody we don't know who throwing a piece of brick at a cop. It was Ignat's mouse. Yes. A piece of a brick. Yeah, really.

I'm only half mad about this. Here, here's half a brick well they were concerned about the taxes maybe that's true yeah but yeah yeah and we we truly don't know who threw it and like the brick was never preserved you would think it would be in a museum or something but um there's also we'll link a great article from the atlantic by brandonley. He talks about there being like a modern, funny joke that people in the gay community do, where if there's just somebody or something that is like valuable and important to the gay community, they'll joke that it threw the first brick at Stonewall. And it can even be like Judy Garland or the song Party for One by Carly Rae Jepsen. Or just like it's like a camp fun thing that people do as a meme right huh it's always good to know about

memes that I had no idea what they uh that they existed it's always fun to gain insight into that but yeah that's interesting I used to do uh I would do improv practices at the pride center in Burlington Vermont and they had under glass like a brick that was thrown through their window one time um like in its early days so that was sort of a reverse reverse type of thing oh through the pride center like yeah i see yeah yeah yeah no it wasn't a good brick but i feel like homer simpson probably had at least one brick go through his window and or through a number of bricks through other people's windows yeah with notes taped to them attached it is like other than rocks it's just sort of a loose potential weapon that is all over the world i find it very fascinating that way but it's the man-made one like it's just yeah okay we made all

these grabbable throwable painful things that are around well that was that's what makes it even more interesting there was a piece of a brick just because it is such a nice compact you know football sized object to like you know wheel back and huck but maybe that's what they had at their disposal then yeah but there's not a bunch of there's not a bunch of guys or you know people claiming that they were the ones who did it. Cause like, you know, there's controversy over who invented the high five. So you'd think that if there was something like that, there would have been someone who would have like identified themselves. Yeah.

You would think so. And, and isn't a, isn't it Glenn Burke with the high five and that he was gay and that's, that's interesting. Yeah. I guess it's not real controversy. It's just that like, you know, there's, it just shrouded. Right. Like who was first. How can you invent this type of thing? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm surprised. But apparently, as far as people can tell, there was probably a brick thrown. Like, it's even a little bit apocryphal that this specific brick was the thing at all. But yeah, nobody's, like, come forward or tried to be the person. But they're hugely important like it's a it's a like first shot of lexington and concord kind of thing for this whole rights for lgbtq people in america so good for bricks they did a good job there uh but uh yeah that's the numbers for this one and then we got a couple big takeaways for the main

show so let's get into another first one takeaway number one bricks might become our go-to construction material on mars this is mostly based on one study but it's an amazing potential thing that we could do you know when we colonize the planet mars make bricks there when not if there's no question that we'll be colonizing mars these three little pigs are already there um bricks work is that because the soil will just work as making bricks out of it yeah pretty much this uh this one study it was done by a team at u UC San Diego, and they published the study in 2017. But they simulated a batch of the soil.

They didn't use the actual stuff from the planet. But they found out that it is really easy to make that into bricks if you use a compression type system. There's a few different ways to make bricks. And one thing that we can do with dirt on Earth is to just compress it with as much force as possible until it's like a solid object. And they found that if you do that with Martian soil, using flattened pistons, not only does it compress into a brick, but also the iron oxide, which is the stuff that makes it look red, is really good for binding it together. And so you get like an even stronger brick than steel reinforced concrete just by pressing Martian soil. I'm claiming taxing rights on those bricks, however. So

if you do make one, please just mail me a check. It's honor system. The guy who, the guy who worked on the theoretical Martian soil compression, like probably went to the water cooler and like ran into another guy from UCSD and it was like, Hey, so, uh, what did you do today? And the guy was like, uh, discovered the, uh, coronavirus vaccine. And the guy was like, well, I'm not going to tell you what I did today because that's, that's not, that's not as important. I, it was, it was, it was cool though. It's top secret. I can't tell you, but it's way, way cooler than what you did. What is that red thing? Why are your hands red?

Like, ah, ketchup. Like, he so wants to hide what he did. He's like, I killed a guy. I killed a guy. You know, it's whatever. It's cool. But yeah, it's I think this is something that it also kind of fits in with a broad, surprising-to-be interest in just innovating bricks in general. Because apparently there are a lot of different teams trying to find ways to do it that are not this clay thing, especially firing it in a kiln.

In 2014, a different team of scientists built a tower using bricks made from fungus. You can grow a mycelium fungus into a very, very solid object. And then they exhibited the tower at an art museum and then composted the tower. Which is a pretty elaborate way to make a brick, but you can do it, you know? Can it get wet? Apparently. Your mushroom brick? I guess it just like holds together yeah but i there i couldn't find any evidence of people like making regular buildings out of this it was sort

of an art project at moma ps1 in new york gotcha it's a good way for most art installations to end up as well anyhow there's other researchers somebody made bricks out of recycled paper compressed together there's also people using what are called bio solids which is sort of a nicer term for like human waste and sewage if you press and bake that you can get a brick wow you know it's just all going on but there's like so much clay on earth we're just mostly using that and then on mars it turns out the available soil there is like even better which is a nice piece of news i remember tuning into like a conspiracy theory talk show where a guy would like debunk like conspiracy theories and like the one of the guys called in and said that the that was the

reason for the iraq war they had to go to Iraq or maybe Afghanistan to get the red soil which lord knows would only be available there so that they could like Stanley Kubrick fake you know man walking on Mars at some point in time like that was the whole reason for wow yeah the WMDs were up front they just needed the perfect backdrop I guess to to emulate the atmosphere of Mars is this like a guy who goes to a terrible bar just because there's regulars at all the other bars? So it's like, I'm going to stake out one of the stupidest things ever. And that's going to be my thing. Nobody else try this one. I mean, you know, yeah, more power to an insane new original, you know, conspiracy theory that doesn't really hurt anybody, I guess.

You know, we're going to fake the Mars landing in the future is sort of benign. There's a special effects guy standing behind him with a wheelbarrow full of easily produced fake Mars. Yeah. There's a guy streaming on Twitch that has like 35 subscribers who has a green screen that can do that. Like I, you know, I'm not going gonna be hauling this back on an aircraft carrier because also you could you can get red dirt in north carolina you can see it from the plane coming to rdu like it's really simple to anyway i'm sure i i'm sure i shouldn't break down his theory. It's otherwise unclad. Yeah, you might unleash his now like 3 million followers upon the podcast's feed.

He's calling me right now. Oh, he heard you. Oh, boy. Yeah, he's also Connor's emergency contact, folks. He's really close with him. If a brick gets thrown through my window, it's going to that guy i think in the next in the next half hour he was concerned you got a couple of the facts slightly wrong big picture you're doing great spreading the word my friend but listen yeah there's his corrections well i look forward to the brick houses on mars like going up and then being uh supplanted in 40 years by the, uh, vinyl siding

houses. That's what I, yeah, the Mars mansions are linoleum. That's, that's what I claimed. Yeah. And, and, uh, we're about to get into it, but like bricks are such a worldwide material that it almost like makes sense that even if it's this futuristic city that in science fiction art would be all steel domes or whatever, you know, I think they've really felt this experiment was worth doing because maybe we'll just want to throw together some bricks at some point in our Martian setup. I assume that bricks and cement are mortal enemies but cement you know mars cement houses could that be could you you know then you could have like a curved wall give you a little more

curb appeal make it more of a drive-by cutie than the brick one i don't know like a little concrete you'd have to probably have a form that you'd have to you know then you'd have to pressurize that whole form so i'm working on it i'll patent it i'll get back to you guys you just have to get one of the billionaires to tell the other one that they're doing like bricks and then elon musk will want to do cement type of thing to you know build the first you know crude structure on mars so whichever one you want you've got to convince him someone else is doing the other one. You know what?

I think we could do a slight bonus number here because the bonus number is 2018. That is when Elon Musk sent a snippy tweet to my friend about this guy, Cody Johnson. Had he done something really heroic and rescued a bunch of people from a cave in thailand or something like this it relates so like uh cody johnston great guy he makes a show called somewhere news he just tweeted like a set of screenshots of elon musk wasting time on twitter like saying he was going to start a candy company and stuff and then cody captioned it like uh engaging with the really important ideas, Elon Musk, you know. And then Elon replied that actually he was going to use dirt from boring company tunnel projects and then turn the dirt into dirt compressed bricks for low income housing. But that was 2018 and he hasn't done it since. So I think my friend's right.

I think Elon didn't come through. Wow. That's strong. Like I've volunteered once energy coming from Elon Musk. These could be theoretical bricks for theoretical low income housing. Checkmate. Yeah. He's turned to charity.

It's true. Yeah. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. 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. Anyway, that's a bonus number there. And let's get into takeaway number two for the main show. Takeaway number two. The Great Wall of China is a shrinking combination of bricks and limestone and rice.

It's one of the most incredible bricklaying achievements ever, and it's also made in an interesting way, including rice. Huh. Oh, do they, like, make a porridge out of it so you could just sort of eat and grout as you went? Oh. How did that work? They really could have had two pots going, I guess, one for the wall and one for, like, some wonderful kanji.

You know, that'd be great. Yeah. What did you say was shrinking? Yeah. So the Great Wall of China, it's shrinking for a few reasons. And one is just like erosion, disrepair, you know, et cetera. But also there have been a few different ways of people stealing the bricks. And it will take a long time if they want to remove that. I couldn't find a solid estimate of how many bricks are in the different total sections of the wall, but it's in the billions, apparently, is just what they think.

Because the total length is over 12,000 miles long, which is almost 20,000 kilometers. It's also several sections of wall. It's not just one thing. But a lot of the sections were made out of brick. there were some early ones made out of rammed earth there were some late ones made out of stone that are especially famous in pictures but there's billions of bricks there and since the 1800s tourists have been like stealing one brick as a souvenir and to this day this is happening like the the chinese government's trying to prevent it and uh in 2016 they put in like extra supervision and checks for people

leaving the wall to try to catch this wow but that's part of what's taking it down as tourists just stealing one brick so they can have like that at home when they get back that seems like something that is is like taking a stop sign out of an intersection or something, you know, just like, how many Budweiser's did you have, you idiot? Or, you know, just hanging a shotgun out the window and shooting a sign, you know, like, come on, man, we all got to use that. It just doesn't seem like you'd get all hammered and steal something from the Great Wall, but I don't know. from the Great Wall, but I don't know. At least with the stop sign, then you've got a stop sign like in your man cave or whatever. This is like, you know, I came back from China. What did you bring me, Daddy? Yeah, it's a loose brick,

and it's been partially chiseled off because I had to get it small enough that I could hide it on my person as the Chinese government frisked me. You risked jail for it. Yay. Yeah, right. That makes it more valuable yeah well also i'll link there's a australian museum that has one brick on exhibit and they have a really good picture of it on their website and it just looks like a brick like it's not magical or special like once

you take it out of that context it's just a brick it's not like that cool, I think, but oh well. We did this thing, like a family member, like, you know, recently, but like a person who was doing tours shifted to do like virtual Zoom tours, like scavenger hunts almost. And she got us this to do it with my family. And it was not a great experience because it wasn't very interactive. It was just sort of not interesting. But one of the things she talked about was like, she's like, now we're going to this place in Las Vegas or something. And in this bathroom, they have, you know, the urinals are backed by pieces of the Berlin Wall.

And she's like, but it's not offensive, like blah, blah, blah. And she kept insisting that it was not offensive. And yeah, but it was like, the fact that you're saying this, you know, like this, it's sort of like the fact that you even feel compelled to address this before we've even brought it up, which we weren't going to, makes it sort of saying this, you know, like this, it's sort of like the fact that you even feel compelled to address this before we've even brought it up, which we weren't going to, uh,

makes it sort of seem like, you know, that maybe you, you realize this isn't a good idea or a thing to be like bringing up on a lighthearted chat here. So if they started selling bricks, stolen bricks from the great wall of China next to the, uh, next to the Berlin wall at the urinal, then, uh, then they'll be really into something. And my dad was like, I actually do find it offensive. And I was like, well, you've brought the vibe down, Dad.

Yeah, once you're looping back to it's not offensive for like the third time, maybe? Is that the threshold where it doesn't count anymore? Yeah, right. Exactly. Two, maybe they didn't hear you the first time three okay and also apparently the one other big wave of bricks being taken from it on purpose is that in the 1960s and 1970s in the cultural revolution under chairman mao officials encouraged local people to dismantle the wall near them and use those bricks to build

houses and like modern buildings and so that was like a government sponsored go ahead and take some of this down we have plenty of wall like that's we've announced a new government policy it's going to result in housing for you that sounds terrific so get to disassembling the great wall of china and then uh you know, start stacking. And in five years, like, welcome home. And then when the tourists come by, you know, stand outside with a shotgun. Get away! Right.

Don't you touch my bricks! We're here because of SifPod. We want your brick. It's a new thing. Listen to this podcast you've never heard of do. They take a picture and they send it back. Again, satire parody. Satire parody.

Oh, boy. Yeah, because people still really go for it with the thefts. There's a link, a story from Newsweek in 2019. Two men from China, from Hebei province, they went to a section of the wall and tried to steal bricks and apparently ended up trapped on a cliffside in freezing temperatures for several hours until they were rescued. Because they like climbed too high to try to find a secluded part of the wall to steal from. This is just an epidemic, I guess, going on. Wow. I guess going on. Wow. That's like one time when I was really young and a friend goaded me into it at a bar that was like the Excalibur bar or something, there was a broadsword on the wall.

He's like, you can get that off of there, you know, and we're several pictures in. So I start trying to take it off the wall. So she's coming, watch out, you know, and then I'd stop and got it like halfway off the wall. And it was like, what am I doing? We're done. And I woke up the next morning and my hands were just like cut to shreds. Oh, God. Yeah. It was like a legitimate sword.

Didn't notice in my zeal to get it off the wall. Oh, man. If that was behind you in your Zoom background right now that would be so amazing because well i i don't know if people out there are like arthurian scholars or whatever but i believe excalibur was supposed to be taken by the strongest dude ever and then this is a bar like calling it excalibur come on it's the bar's fault. Yeah, really. Now remember, if anybody steals this, that makes them really cool. So don't do it. Don't. All right.

We trust you. The Chinese guys could have just been like lazy. You know, they could have gotten word from the 60s and be like, go tear down the wall and build your own house. And then, you know, after 50 years, they were like, well, fine, I'm going to go do it. They're just busy. We're not allowed to do what now, I'm going to go do it. They're just busy. We're not allowed to do what now? I'm grandfathered in. I'm taking this very popular section.

It's also definitely something where you'd come back and be like, you know, when their wives are like, what on earth happened? Why do you have frostbite on your hands? They're like, we heard there was a missing kid. So we went out to that high part of the Great Wall to look for that missing kid, and we couldn't find him. But then we came back. We were out there. It was heroic. That's why we did it. It wasn't very stupid. It was definitely heroic. Right. He must have climbed down. He's fine. We're heroes. Don't worry about it. Did you look up to see whether people are selling bricks from the Great Wall of China on eBay? I did not.

And it's because I didn't think to. But it would also feel illegal to even search it. Yeah. It's mostly people selling banknotes of the Great Wall of China or a Lego set of the Great Wall of China that contains 1,500 bricks. Whole bonus show's about Lego. It's going to be exciting. And this wall, it's also apparently just in disrepair in a lot of spots just because there's so much to maintain.

You know, you can see why people are grabbing them. And then the other interesting, like, wall construction thing is that the bricks are bricks. They're made of fired clay. But there was a recent study in 2010 of the mortar that's bricks are bricks. They're made of fired clay. But there was a recent study in 2010 of the mortar that's holding them together. And a lot of mortar is made out of lime, which is heated limestone, and then you put something solid in like sand. But the study by Zhejiang University in Eastern China, scientists there found that about 1500 years ago, great wall builders developed a mortar

made of lime and glutinous rice, which we usually call sticky rice in the US. But they compared this like sticky rice mortar to regular mortar and found that it's stronger and more water resistant. So they came up with like an amazing way to do the mortar. And that's part of why we still have a great wall, know the sections we have wow that seems like uh i wonder how that presentation went uh you know oh emperor uh we're changing the structure of our grout we're using glutinous rice and then like the first three guys presenting it get killed and like finally like no no seriously let me finish the demonstration. I didn't like the way this presentation ended for those first three guys, but I believe in this experiment enough that we've got to keep it going.

It's a commitment, yeah. How many universities out there are studying bricks? Apparently a lot. It sounds like too, too many. The last takeaway will feature more universities. Yes, actually. All right. Nice.

So. Well, but just like it's a rare thing to just, I mean, you said the other stuff. What's the other mortar made of? It's, yeah, they're both made of like heated limestone and then mortar. It's sort of like cement where it's sticky stuff and an aggregate. So it's sticky stuff, the lime, and then an aggregate, which is anything hard and crumbly. So usually people use something kind of useless like sand. So I do admire them making the leap of taking very valuable rice and spending it on an experience.

You know, it's cool. It's not like, I mean, you have to imagine lots of, wherever you were in the world 1,500 years ago, food was hard to get. So to start burning it like that is just, shows how ahead of their time they were in terms of wasting food and taking it for granted. Americans tip their hat to them. It prompts another one of my dad's stories. I know you love these stories. Once when I was a kid, I was helping him pour cement.

Okay. See, see, and I said, we, we finished it all up. And I said, dad,

so how long does it take until, till it dries? And he just sighed hands on hips and his head hung down. He's like, son, cement doesn't dry it sets oh my god wow you know what i meant i'm eight come on wow your dad was a reply guy just the disappointment though oh he was just like come on when it is set is the cement dry or wet answer me that as a follow-up so wow you got um actually that's an eight-year-old yeah for sure

and then frosty chocolate milkshakes or nope strip my shirt off and started working some more. Yeah, well, and then as far as other ancient bricks, the last takeaway, the main episode here, takeaway number three. Humans do so much brick recycling across time. Builders used an ancient Roman brick in the Pacific Northwest. Really? On what? What was the structure? Yeah. And so the structure was called Fort Vancouver, and it was a British colonial fort in what's now Vancouver, Washington, which is across the river from Portland, Oregon. It's not Vancouver, Canada. But it was built by the hudson bay company and they used a brick made by roman british people in probably like the 200s a.d and i i have to assume this is not the

most efficient way they could have lived but they did it this way there's the main source here is an amazing atlantic piece by alexis c madrigal. Throughout the early British colonization of America, they tended to not bring bricklayers or people who knew how to make bricks. All the materials are in North America. You can just do it. But in the early operations of a lot of colonial ventures, they would import bricks from Europe.

Even though in the case of getting it all the way to what's now Oregon and Washington, it took about two years to bring a brick from England to there. But that was how they did a lot of their construction. They would like do that first and then bring people who could just locally make a brick second. Wow. Well, me and Mike constantly argue about whether things were like funny a hundred years ago, but I think we can all agree that people were much stupider. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That long ago, if they were going through that process, that's, you know, that's like dumb and dumber driving with extra gloves all the way across the country. That's, you know, we've got to find a better way to get bricks for 3000 miles across the world. No one here knows how to compress Earth. Come on, man. Yeah, like because like it's kind of hard to build a kiln, but nobody was down to just make a mud brick, like leave some clay in the sun. They were like, no, we're going to ship bricks, some of them recycled from England in a time of like horses and sailboats.

You know, it's the craziest thing. Well, you still hear about like when you go to an Irish pub, everyone's always like, you know, they they actually had this shipped all the way from this bar was shipped all the way from Ireland. And it's always like, really here, like at the Tam O'Shanter in Reno? Like, I have my doubts. Exactly as it was in, you know know within some small village in ireland like nah it's like yeah well great then i will have an eight dollar guinness and i'm going to ignore like the construction of the bar for the rest of the time i'm here so i mean that would be something that if you were if you were like they need so when was that wall built in vancouver

it was in the 1800s. Okay. The British, they did a lot of colonization through capitalist corporations. And so the Hudson's Bay Company, for some reason, also is in the Pacific Northwest. And they built a headquarters on the Columbia River called Fort Vancouver in the 1800s. Got it. But so some guy was just like, honey, see you in three and a half years. Like this brick needs to be, uh, outside of Portland, Oregon so that it could be part of a,

uh, you know, some guy's house is going to be torn down from a McMansion in 2003. Right. And then if you're, but if you're the main contractor and then you, you come up short, contractor and then you you come up short like that's really got to be embarrassing yeah like what there's supposed to be six pallets you brought five okay i'll put in a requisition order yeah i'll go back man that's incredible i mean that's just like yeah i i there was no other way to do things i guess but you know you think the second least efficient way might've been a, a, uh, someone could have made a case for it. That the saying, teach a man to fish, uh, and he'll, he'll feed himself.

That wasn't invented yet. So nobody had any idea. Could we make bricks? What are you talking about? No, they didn't have the brick schoolhouse to teach people adages like that. Right. Yeah, I think it's because it's especially this it's this Hudson's Bay company. Like, like, it's not like a government run colonization effort.

It's like a business. And I think it was all like startup guys, basically, who were just like, I'm here to make money. And they didn't think through, like, did we bring anyone who can do the basics of building a structure? Oh, OK, we'll just import bricks from England. Great. Fine. Like, we're flush with so much peril at that point in time to do it like carrying a whole bunch of bricks behind you is a... Man. And then you're seeking out one of those shipwrecks and you're like, we finally made it to the hold with our little robot. Oh. Come on, gold. Ah, it is a load of bricks

yeah and like snacks they like that they don't know how to cook just like a bunch of stuff that they're not grown up enough to do yeah but the snacks were like hardtack then too so it was like they were snacks were also bricks essentially i don't know when they stopped eating hardtack but in my mind like that was yeah everything before i was born people they stopped eating hardtack, but in my mind, like that was everything before I was born. People were just eating hardtack. Yeah. But and so then these Roman bricks or at least the one Roman brick. Yeah, it was made by the Romans and probably recycled a lot in construction in the British Isles and then shipped to this fort. And then the reason we know about it

is that it got stepped on by a cat when the Romans made it. And I sent you guys a picture of this brick. If you look at it, you'll notice a couple of cat paw prints on it. And the only reason we know this whole story is that a group from Sonoma State University, there was a grad student named Kristen Converse. They were all studying this. And then she just noticed, oh, that's a cute brick. It has cat paw prints on it. That's all I'm thinking about it when I'm looking at it initially. And then when she looked closer, she said, oh, this is like very strange composition. And other people analyzed it, figured out it's probably Roman. But the whole genesis of knowing this story that a Roman brick ended up

in modern Washington state is that a cat stepped on it when the Romans made it. Wow. Wow. That's cool. So good for that cat. They did a great job. Yeah. That's, I mean, that makes the hang in there baby cat look like a chump in terms of his influence. I don't know, know man a lot of people would not have been hanging in there without it yeah and and uh bricks now i'm thinking of tenacity bricks are tenacious folks and uh there's so there's lots and lots of other examples of them being reused one is that great wall story we're talking about. Also in the 2010s,

the European Union as a government, they started a program called ReBrick, where they will like inspect and certify a used brick to be reused in construction. They say that we save half a kilogram of CO2 each time we reuse a brick instead of firing a new one, which is a lot if you think about how many bricks are in a building that's meaningful how do you keep up your enthusiasm in brick inspection i mean first 10 bricks like yeah this one will work oh hell the second one looks good too this third one is great all right yeah yeah i'm bored lunch yeah there's no cats in here at all this is stupid stupid catless bricks well and and also last last brick reuse story here is an amazing one from south africa

because in post-apartheid south africa they built a new building for the new constitutional court it's like it's roughly analogous to the US Supreme Court. It's the main judicial thing. And they built them a new building in Johannesburg. And they built that on the location of a former military fort, but really segregated prison. And it was where Nelson Mandela was held there at one point. British South Africa put Gandhi there at one point. Like it was this horrible prison of all this racist history. And so they demolished the prison partly to make space for the new constitutional court. And what they did is they reused prison bricks for interior walls of the

court as like a reminder to, you know, avoid this horrible thing that happened before and do a new legacy. So, you know, it can be a really meaningful thing, too, the reuse of the bricks. So, you know, the brick inspector on that one has got to be talking to his friends like he's buying the beers, yeah, for everyone. You did a pig's house today? Huh, all right, cool.

Put up a brick that Nelson Mandela touched, so that's pretty cool. I did a McDonald's bathroom. Yeah, we don't want to hear about you, Chad. We know. I don't know, Mike, are you walking back here? A brick stance at this point in time, you came out of the gate pretty negative. And, uh, now we've gotten Gandhi in favor of bricks, Nelson Mandela, cat bricks. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of has cheeseburger cat was a big brick proponent uh so that would have been the prison where nelson mandela died in prison right while reading a berenstain bears book

the thing we all learned from the internet yeah that's right yeah yes i swear i remember it and then a cat walked on it everything's just confused everything's confused now I swear I remember it. And then a cat walked on it. Everything's just confused. Everything's confused now. It's all chaos. How, Amiya, of all the Mandela effect being named after something that was obviously easily disproved, but was of worldwide significance to then be applied to, I thought there was a movie with sin bad that was actually a movie with shack is just like all right like we really just unplugged

the whole system at this point in time right how has no one gotten sin bad to like do a sketch about that you know like that i think there is one i think there is okay. I think there is. Yeah. Probably a funnier guy or something. Yeah. Connor just exposed himself as not being on top of Sinbad stuff. And pretty embarrassing. I can cut this if you want because of the shame, you know. Please. Yeah.

My other podcast, which is, you know, Connor knows everything about Sinbad. The audience would eat me alive if they heard this. Yeah. bad the audience would would eat me alive if they heard this folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks to connor listoka and michael j nelson for laying in the bricks of the wall of the information. It doesn't really work as a metaphor. I'm glad they're here, is the point. 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 the strange relationship over time between Legos and violence. We will talk about Lego bricks there. That's the brick there. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than six dozen other bonus shows, including a whole nother Lego bonus show, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring bricks with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, bricks might become our go-to construction material on mars takeaway number two the great wall of china is a shrinking combination of bricks limestone and rice and takeaway number

three humans do so much brick recycling builders used an ancient Roman brick in the Pacific Northwest. Plus, like, extra bonus takeaway there, we only know that because a cat walked on it. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Connor Listoka and Michael J. Nelson are the co-hosts of 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, a very, very fun podcast about books they are pretty sure they're going to hate. If you go to 372pages.com, you will find, you know, the Ready Player One episodes and then so much more about so many other books, such as Antigua. And lots of other links about these guests there, too, such as just everything going on with Riff Tracks, which is the funniest way to watch a movie, just straight up.

Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. An amazing article for The Atlantic by Alexis C. Madrigal. Another great piece from Smithsonian Magazine by Lorraine Beausenoir. by Lorraine Beausenois, plus tons more research from National Geographic, 99% Invisible, NPR, and some other great organizations. 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 about Lego bricks, and there's a whole other bonus show about Lego bricks too. It was bonus show nine, if you want to just go find it. Either way, 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.