Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Cardboard

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians Caitlin Gill (stand-up album 'Major.', shirt store GuaranteeShirts.com) and Blake Wexler (stand-up album 'A Lifetime Of Laughter', podcast 'Blake's Takes For God's Sakes') for a look at why cardboard is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Cardboard. Known for being brown. Famous for being boxes. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why cardboard 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. Two wonderful returning guests today, Caitlin Gill and Blake Wexler. They are also both wonderful stand-up comedians. Caitlin Gill's latest album is titled Major. Blake Wexler has multiple number

one stand-up albums, and his latest is A Lifetime of Laughter. There are many other things as well. Blake Wexler is a podcaster. His show is called Blake's Takes for God's Sakes. And Caitlin Gill has her own t-shirt business. It's called GuaranteeShirts.com. Great site and also provides some insight into today's 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 Caitlin recorded this on the traditional land of the Yuhaviatam and Marengayam peoples. Acknowledge Blake recorded this from Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Leni Lenape 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 cardboard. Cardboard is a patron chosen topic for this month. Thank you to Samuel Ross for that suggestion. Thank you to Ryan Huffman for supporting it in the threads at cifpod.fun. And a really fun whole community groundswell around that one that has been a suggestion before. And I'm not surprised. It's

an absolutely perfect, absolutely self-explanatory topic that fits the podcast like a glove, perhaps one you receive from online shopping in a cardboard box. Also, two other heads ups for you. One is about Caitlin's microphone. There were issues with the mic. There were issues with the audio. So you're going to hear her backup like Zoom call Internet audio. It's totally legible. It's totally still a good experience. I also find that like a few people always want to know if there's any non totally normal podcast microphone audio. So there's your heads up for those folks. Now, you know, other heads up is a whole nother show for you. At least if you're listening in the free public feed, there's a little treat for you because last year, Jason Pargin and I taped a bonus show that has only been for patrons so far. It was about Halloween candy and about dangers around that and really overblown myths around the dangers around that. Anyway, I decided to do a free release of that old bonus show because it's still incredibly relevant, and also, tis the season. So if you look

in your public free podcast feed, there's this cardboard episode, and then also there is a bonus show from last year about Halloween candy. And please enjoy. So please sit back, or, oh no, it's the wrong size of glove. Time to begin to process a return and get yet another cardboard box to send it on back. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Caitlin Gill and Blake Wexler. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. feel about cardboard i tell you what i'm i'm not bored i'm excited right card excited that's right

card hype live way out um so it's shipments come all the time cardboard boxes are always a very exciting site uh we're composters those boxes that's gold and they're just kind of fast how do they do that they hold a lot until they don't at all so i am kind of fascinated by the like the strength to weakness snapping point what's the roach limit of a of a cardboard box when do you get it it's so close its power just fails entirely incredible when you get too close to something that's gravity rips you apart it doesn't apply at all but it still felt right there's some point at which cardboard is damp and still strong and then suddenly all your stuff's everywhere there is a line with cardboard where it had great integrity and suddenly has not i find it fascinating yeah it's it's such a funny time

where i i'm a huge fan of your podcast a Alex. We were talking before and it does like you do for a moment sometimes forget how talented you are and how good you are at this. Where when you get the topic cardboard, it's almost insulting. Like when you read it on paper, it's like wild. It's like paper is more exciting on paper than the topic of cardboard but it's so but then i listen to every single episode of yours and that's the genius of the podcast you do make it very interesting and i think um to your point even when it gets wet it's still quite strong where you know when uh before the recycling comes we'll keep uh we just got i just got married a month or two ago and no way to tell for sure thank you and we were fortunate enough to get

like nice you know like uh kind gifts from our friends and stuff and many of them come in cardboard boxes so we've just had piles and piles of cardboard and we'll leave them outside until the recycling comes and it pours here every once in a while. And then but they would still hold their integrity, both metaphorically and literally. And, you know, I was always shocked when I would take them, you know, out to the front of the house and it's like, oh, no, they're not shredding or like falling apart in your hands. It is a deceivingly strong medium, if you will. Yeah, we here in here in the New York City area, same thing. Like we're among the trashes of the street and the rain does not sweep the cardboard away. It's just still there and somehow more powerful.

I like it just it like gains a grudge against us and is like, I'm staying, staying now. Forget it. And like, that was very nice. And also, congratulations. Amazing. Thank you very much. Because we are in the process of approaching a wedding and cardboard is my life. The Internet and the magic of the mail, it's just bringing it to us all the time.

Exactly. Yeah, you're familiar. I feel like I'm about to learn like that. I didn't know how much cardboard changed that the solutions that cardboard presents have solved problems that are so long absent from my life that i can't imagine a world without the solution cardboard provides yeah yeah yeah on most episodes we start with stats and numbers the structure of this one is one giant takeaway and then stats and numbers is the whole rest of the main show. Because the first takeaway is the history of cardboard. Let's go into takeaway number one. The modern cardboard box comes from the whole

history of paper, and from an invention for men's hats, and from an accident at a paper bag factory. I know that's a lot of things, but we got the cardboard box from, other than the general invention of paper, there was initially an invention for holding up men's hats, like stovepipe hats. And then also there was an accident at a paper bag factory where they figured out how to make the boxes. I know that it's an industrial environment where real accidents to real people's bodies can happen and yet the only image in my

mind of an industrial accident of a paper plant is sort of adorable just kind of slip it on too much paper throwing paper at each other just i don't know why it's confetti. It's just, it's got a confetti vibe. Still too fun. I got to dial back the fun from the term industrial accident at the paper factory. It's more of a mess than a horrific accident, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. No one was harmed. Yeah.

You know, one step short of industrial accident at the cupcake sprinkle factory, which is somehow more ominous than paper. I don't know. Someone got full. Someone got very full during the accident. Someone's bird kicked up. So we're shutting down for the day. I just, I added in like a dark true crime show soundtrack and I'm just like,

his tum tum was stuffed. His tum-tum was so stuff-a-rooney. By the way, shout out to patrons Samuel Ross and also Ryan Huffman for suggesting this and everybody for voting for it. Because really, I'd really never thought about, hey, where did we get cardboard? Because like technically cardboard is just any thicker paper. And so there's a few stages that are way better documented than I expected that got us from nothing to cardboard boxes are what everything is in. A bunch of sources for this story, especially some museum collections, the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York,

the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and then also the New York City History and Culture website, sixsquarefeet.com, which is abbreviated at 6SQFT. But yeah, this starts with where did cardboard come from in general? It's a durable type of paper. And some of the world's very first paper was used the way we use cardboard now a lot, to pack stuff and contain stuff. It turns out that Han Dynasty China made the first modern style paper in the 100s BC. And they first used it not for writing

things or for books. It was for wrapping stuff, either like wrapping up tea leaves or wrapping up bigger objects that were going to get moved. Interesting. That makes a kind of sense. I suppose the process of making it in bite-sized pieces, like individual pieces of paper, would have to be a further along the line dimension, right? I imagine the first paper was sort of a lot of pulp squished into sort of a giant shape. Yeah. I just, for some reason, think of sheets first. Like, we wanted paper to write something down on, and like, you know, I don't think it worked backwards that way. I think we realized paper was something we could write on

probably after we made paper for summaries. It is interesting to think too, that that sounds like a better invention to use paper in that way, slash cardboard, than like packing peanuts of now. You know, like somehow we went worse. Like we screwed it up. It's like, how now, you know, like somehow we went worse, but we screwed it up. It's like, how did you know the Han dynasty nail this on the first shot?

And then we add this, this disaster, this absolute disaster that like affects the property value of your home. If you open up a package with that stuff in it, I almost swore, but I didn't. And let the record state. didn't but yeah no it's that's really yeah yeah your your true real good fury against packing peanuts was butting up against

the format it was like i must defeat these you'd be surprised yeah there uh there's also there's a recent episode about surnames where we talked about early writing in China and they were writing before they had paper for it. Like they would inscribe stuff into bamboo or metal or like weave it into silk. There were all kinds of ways to write already. So. So, yes, a writing paper came along kind of later. They started with the bluntest, heaviest paper for packing stuff. Real cardboard vibe, you know?

Like, feels like it. Not yet, but yeah. Yeah. And yeah, there's a huge range of other paper types across history. There was Egyptian papyrus about 5,000 years ago, which was made from reeds in the Nile. There was also a parchment called vellum. Vellum was made from the skin of baby calves and like other little mammals. And that started about a thousand years ago in Europe.

And wood pulp starts becoming more and more common as a paper material worldwide. Then we get the name cardboard before like modern boxes and stuff. And it kind of comes two ways all at once, the name cardboard. One of them is that in 1500s France and 1500s England, they used thick paper to make some playing cards. So it's like a board for cards. Great. No way. But the other.

No, I. For some reason, that blows my. What? It came backwards from games. Yeah. Because it has such a formal name. Cardboard feels like a name made by committee. A name made around a table by people who debated other options and decided they were unsuitable

or perhaps patented by some ancient process. Just has a very... I did not know that. And it's weird because there's like that origin and then there's a whole separate ancient one that is not even related to what it is. Because according to Merriam-Webster, word origin wise, the English and French words for card originated from the old Italian word carta, which means a leaf of paper. And then that comes from the Latin word chartaarta which means a leaf of papyrus so so we've got both playing cards in medieval times and also like ancient papyrus are both coming together to make the word covered all bases yeah thorough yeah and then at some point everybody just agreed

yeah i think maybe a product so ubiquitous as paper, like globally popular, and the words around it that have evolved are reflective of that. That it must be sort of a pastiche of the global use of paper. That the way we talk about it or refer to it, I suppose, must kind of be a mixed bag of every kind of cultural influence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with like globalization on the internet and English language spreading a lot.

I think it's just cardboard now, but you know, there was probably debate and discussion before either, either by the boring people or other people. I don't know who. Yeah. And yeah. And so that's that name. And then there's a separate development for modern cardboard like

the the playing cards are very different just the basic flat type for stuff like board games we start getting that in the 1800s what's considered like one of the first cardboard board games was made in 1817 it's a german game called the game of besieging and victoria of course yeah it couldn't be anything else yeah but they're union back end it's all just one word and so there's this increasing history of like thick paper that's tough and can be just like a something that holds up to everything from game playing to stress. And then the real leap that gave us cardboard boxes was corrugated cardboard. And I think people have heard of this.

Like if you look at especially the edge of any of your cardboard boxes, you'll see that it's like kind of two flat pieces with a hollow section with like a wavy third piece of paper in between. That's corrugated cardboard that's what i wanted to know about the most i think from this podcast is that i would always it's just one of those things where i don't know if it's willful ignorance or just like the lack of intellectual curiosity that i have but like so so thank you for spoon feeding the information which is how i need to take it in um or else i choke but it's i mentally uh choke and asphyxiate but um it i've always looked at cardboard and saw

that you know wavy thing and i'm like i wonder is that what makes it so so powerful i imagine it gives a little cushion to it if you were to bounce on it that's probably not why they did it but yeah i've always wondered what that what that is yeah it's like it's both lighter and stronger than a regular cardboard yeah like and it is sort of automatic cushioning for stuff we ship in it and it's like a very quiet miracle of modern life that like cardboard can be stronger and lighter and we put all our stuff in it and it holds up pretty well now it's amazing it is yeah it's that wavy arch structure right it's like a bunch of weird like structural tiny miracles yes it turns out those are technically called flutes the like the little gaps and arches in the cardboard inside the cardboard they're flutes vibes i get it

sorry just deep and great stuff so yeah instantly i just went to like go put it man with a piece of coordinated cardboard like vertically turned under his mouth just was was pan different from dionysus or am i mixing up yes they are i believe they hung out i recall a couple instances where their names appear together again at roland about my misdesignations of greek uh figures comporting with one another but no dionysus uh made one and pan was just as far as i can tell pan is just like that's like his whole thing they have similar vibes yeah yeah i feel like the two of them were literally at the same parties in stories right like wherever there's wine flowing in a clearing they're both there pans around pan liked wine

with the goat legs it sort of says that pans a little bit earlier than dionysus he's like yeah maybe a half or one full generation yeah if you got goat legs you're straight out of gaia like you're just you're born to earth if you're a mismatch if you're all smushed up you are either directly born of the dirt or some some real god got his eyes on something else and but that's early it's early days it's a first draft edition right they hit publish a little too quick on on that fella the siren made the horse and apparently there were drafts that include the hippo the zebra and a couple other animals that just seems so rude to insult them he just tried to make something as good as the horse which seems so rude like the greeks just

looked at like well the horse is good that's perfect none of these are like a horse they must have been the early ones you know the first pancake of the horse i guess i've always loved hippos for you know despite their personalities but i guess if you do compare them if you're trying to make a horse and you made a hippo, I do understand the self-hatred Poseidon probably had for himself. Or he did. Yeah, he didn't hit the mark quite on that one. Hippos are so cool. I like the idea of a horse being like a hippo after too many notes from the client or the studio or whatever. You know, like they really overnoted this thing.

We had it at the hippo yeah the writer's assistants in the corner just like i didn't delete the hip you wanted to put out the hippo anyway we can still make it let's shoot the hippo let's just see what happens when we shoot that right we'll get two takes uh yeah can we fix the hippo in post can we can we can we fix it in post yeah these boxes like they're hiding flutes you know that's how we got on the bed stuff like amazing they're full of flutes it's a whole thing and it turns out like not only is that a relatively recent innovation to have fluted walls of boxes but that was not developed for boxes first so at the start of the takeaway i said one of the things was an invention for men's hats

and it turns out that in 1856 so less than 200 years ago 1856 there were two english hat makers named edward allen and edward healy and they developed corrugated paper so they came up with like just the flutes and they used that for the insides of tall stovepipe hats like the the style of an abraham lincoln hat i don't know if he used this specifically but like they they were like what will hold up this very tall stupid hat uh this kind of paper is the good idea so bizarre to me this is like making drones to hunt tuna. You know, the initial idea for a product is so often so, so far away from its final application. How narrow, how narrow is that market?

Right. How narrow is that hat? Yeah. I mean, at first it's just men and then it's only men who wear stovepipe hats. That's your whole market. Fedora guys, they're out. Derby guys, no business. Gone.

You're making an invention solely to suit the needs of the stovepipe hat preservers market. Right? Lucrative. And that product goes on to change everything. That product is in the, I have it all over my shelves. I can spin my phone and point at cardboard. That's out of control. So funny.

Yeah. We're surrounded by it now. I just have to try to solve as narrow a problem as possible. And then maybe that'll expand to change the whole world. But aren't they, aren't they, don't they make up like cardboard, the like bills of like ball caps now as well like isn't that like can you imagine how angry the two edwards were when they found out that it was bastardized until like like no this is for a fancy stovepipe hat not that proletariat garbage those bros are wearing

on their heads why does the hat not go eight feet up into the air why is it just around the head then the dude with the if you can read this she fell off hat comes by they think it's funny suddenly that guy's in a photo with the president i don't know i just wore that hat that said she fell off my wagon and suddenly i met grover cleveland i have no idea of the timeline i got nothing i really have to do some googling before i made that actual deal yeah yeah and like it was this basically hat component and then it took a pretty long time for it to spread beyond that the strong museum they say that it took about 10 to 15 years for

a second use for corrugated paper and it was for shipping but what they did is like they had wooden crates of stuff and then there would be corrugated paper inside the crate between things. Like, especially if it was glass objects, there would just be some paper stuck in the middle. But no one had made this next step of, like, ship the whole thing in it. Interesting. It's like lighting your house with fire and then realizing 10 years later you can cook with it. Yeah, and then, like, there was this whole era of shipping everything in wood, very heavy, very taxing on the environment. Not that it doesn't take trees to make cardboard, but you need less.

And then in 1879, a Scottish immigrant to the United States named Robert Gare invents the modern cardboard box. And he does it in 1879 in New York City. Sorry, I'm Scottish. We're very we have to take we need to take pride at every given opportunity. invents the modern cardboard box and he does it in 1879 in new york city sorry i'm scottish we're very we have to take we need to take pride at every given opportunity take what you can get yes for those at home caitlin was dancing in celebration and literally not the children's term, actually flexing muscles into the camera. I'm 41. If I flex like the children did, you know the term is over. That's the notice.

Yeah, and this guy, serves in the Union Army in the Civil War, and then settles in New York City and co-founds a factory making paper bags. Also, everyone just did a few about which side of the Civil War. Yeah. Woo, okay. You can go either way. I flexed on that one. That was my flex.

It was the North. Yeah. Yeah, we got him. We got him. Yeah. Yeah, we got that W up here in New York and Ph We got him. Yeah. Yeah, we got that W up here in New York and Philly and elsewhere. Yeah, we did it. And yeah, and so he builds a factory in Manhattan to make paper bags.

This was early enough that you could put up a factory in Manhattan. And then they developed machines that could crease paper to make a flat-bottomed paper bag, which made it a very popular bag. And then one day at the factory, there was an accident with the creasing machine. And what happened is it started slicing through thousands of thick paper bags instead of just creasing them. And then Gare realized he could make one machine that both creased and cut paper. And then from there, he built the machines that make, if you've ever gotten like flat stacked cardboard boxes that have not been set up yet, you know, it's like sliced into a shape. And then there's also creases where you're going to fold it. And so in 1879, he builds the first machine that does that.

And then from there, it was suddenly like cheaper and easier to make cardboard boxes and he made them corrugated shortly after that and and there we are very cool and again a thing that i never imagined creasing needs a machine to do of course it does and it's very very important like turns out there's such cool machines it's one of those like youtube posts to fall into because such it like oh you don't think about it but getting all those angles it's just in the planning of a box that folds into one shape from one you know without individual pieces it's just some adorable geometry um yeah they're very neat very cool yeah and i and i really assumed it would be a thing where like we didn't know who did it.

You know, like several people think of it and it's just all over the place. But we actually know who got fired for it. I'm sure it's the accident. Like, you know, it's the factory owner that's like, I'm like, winds up developing a new product. But it is the worker that did ruin that paper that probably went home with their lunch pail that day, never returned. That's one of those cruel twists of fate. The actual inventor of cardboard works at the hot dog factory across the street now, looking across the way at his old factory, getting fuller and fuller and busier.

Right. Like, what was your heroic moment of invention like? Well, I got chewed out by an angry military veteran with a scottish accent so not great uh pretty tough actually well i lost out on any profit from inventing cardboard but i have most of my fingers so pretty good paper factory speaking of paper plans that there is growing up we would drive by a area that smelled so bad when i was a kid and i hated that area i didn't know why it smelled so bad and it was because it was a paper factory there which i think notoriously have i don't i don't know if it was sulfur or like what the smell was but it was a smell where and i think in that

area depending on the winds of that day like depends on whether or not you're gonna have a horrific day in your neighborhood and not be able to play outside um but yeah just i think uh paper plants for some reason the smell that they give off is is terrible it must be chemical treatment of it there's a town in the midwest and if this is you robot caitlin me because I've been there. And on one side of the town is a dog food factory. And on the other side of the town is a cereal factory. So what way the wind blows determines whether or not you're smelling dog

sausage or crispies. Like it's either way. You're getting the toasty grain aroma, or you are getting the meat we didn't use aroma. Which one would you pick? Cointos. It is a Cointos. Yeah, right. Kind of along with that, the other last step here that really popularizes cardboard boxes is Robert Gare invents this.

He builds a huge new factory in Brooklyn in what's now the Dumbo neighborhood. invents this, he builds a huge new factory in Brooklyn in what's now the Dumbo neighborhood. And it says, hey, I have these mass produced corrugated boxes. And it succeeds because he manages to get an order for 2 million of them from the National Biscuit Company. And so that also that becomes Nabisco. It's still a company today. Like this box technology was one of the first business secrets of Nabisco was that they had an incredibly cheap, useful way to ship everything. What Simpsons writer wrote this report? Because the cardboard box factory is a masterful joke. Who's Dana Gould?

Oh, probably. Yeah, it could have been. Dana, we're giving this to you. Hi, Dana. Followed up by Allied Biscuit, Table Time, and every other biscuit company represented in the Simpsons universe. I don't recall saying good luck uh it's just such an excellent it feels like it's already been it's part of me since i watched those original airings on sunday nights yeah and yeah and then from there according to architecture critic alexandra lang corrugated cardboard boxes kind of took over the world overnight starting around the 1880s because it was cheaper than wood lighter than wood and then also it was really easy to print on

and so before the end of the century you have every company saying like what's the best art to sell this to other like stores and manufacturers or what's the best art that can directly hook a consumer like this is also the birth of most of the packaging ideas that we think of today like the graphic design and the the hook of capitalism yes because before that it's just wood it's like here's your wooden crate and then you get the thing i'm gonna give the nod to apple boxes i think the cardboard box people look to the fruit distribution community and like, man, that's some high art. It is easy to print on. It's fun to print on.

And you can print on it unlike wood in a more industrial process. So very natural step. Unfortunately, the capitalism ate alive and spat back at us. But nonetheless, it's a cool process. Yeah. And it's how life works now. But up until about the 1880s that's science fiction it was just not a thing you would have even imagined unless you were a big futurist but uh but let's get into a bunch of other stories the whole rest of the show an astounding set of

stats and numbers and this week that's in a segment called oh wow what a coincidence. Okay. Statistics. Statistics. Statistics. Statistics. Statistics now out. We're just talking about The Simpsons. That's freaky.

This name was submitted by AtSherMikeman on Twitter. Have a new name for this segment every week. Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to Sipod on Twitter or Sipod at gmail.com. But the first number here is a fraction about cardboard. It is almost half. And almost half is the amount of cardboard boxes in the

modern U.S. that are used to pack and ship food. Like, specifically food. Almost half of our cardboard boxes go in it. And that's to pack food on farms and then hold it for shipping to industrial facilities or to grocery stores. That is interesting. dollars of debt i think of shipments to me with clothes in them you know as the primary uh conduit for cardboard but it is and then you're like oh like actually when you go to the grocery store the oranges are sitting in cardboard you know and more more fruit and you know like they're in

they're in my stovepipe hats like there are so many applications of it that are just like hiding in plain sight. Yeah. And that step we don't see like getting to the grocery store before it winds up and everything has to move in it. And I suppose the quality of cardboard's like regeneration, you can turn cardboard into more cardboard, definitely lends itself to that sort of process. And it's amazing how long a cardboard box will last. Like if you have one of those jobs where you are behind what customers see, you use stuff until not when it's visually unappealing, but when it's literally useless. And a cardboard box has a really long life between visually unappealing and actually useless,

which it does a lot of work. Yeah. I i it was only a few years ago i went to costco for the first time oh wow and costco just lets you see all the boxes and like gives you back boxes to put your stuff in and like the other grocery stores are very secretive about it they're like don't go back there where we have all the boxes that everything came in don't think about it it's like a museum that they charge admission. And yeah, and then along with that number, there's like, this isn't quite quantifiable, but Mental Floss points out that basically cardboard has permanently improved the food system for the whole world. Like all shipping of food is cheaper, lighter weight, easier to do. And so we don't have a number, but in general, we just feed a lot more people on Earth because of cardboard.

It's really exciting. That's great. Next number is related to recycling. It is 96.5%. 96.5% is a recent estimate of how many corrugated cardboard boxes in the U.S. get recycled, which is like almost all of them. And it's according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That is so many of them.

I suppose cardboard boxes don't often enter our hands when we are not, as one person, we're usually near our recycling. We're opening a thing and then we put the box down. And then if we recycle the thing in the box that's a wild card baby but the box itself usually it's a pretty natural step that's interesting yeah i'm that made me feel good about humanity just now which is which is like a rare gift to get so yeah you gotta take it where you get it 100 yeah i'm accepting that like readily yeah that's that's really great what was what was the number one more time was it 96 96.5 amazing let's round it up to 97 right as a treat yeah it's a little extra treat yeah and that's and

the epa they have a lot of other stats for other recyclable items. Apparently, like paper in general, including this cardboard, we recycle 68.2%, which is still pretty good, but a lot less. And then aluminum only about 34.9%. Glass under 31%. So it's a real standout in the recycling system is corrugated cardboard boxes. We do great with it. It's interesting. Aluminum, if I'm not mistaken, again, I'm pretty sure that's also a very recyclable product. It's interesting that we have.

And most aluminum products are just made of aluminum. Some cans might have some kind of less recyclable wrap around them. But for the most part, you can just go can to new can. There's nothing in between. Very easy. It's a very involved process. recyclable wrap around them but for the most part you can just go can to new can just there's nothing in between very easy it's a very involved process but uh it's just interesting that cardboard reigns supreme as the most recycled product when other competitors in that race are also very recyclable like glass yeah so for me if i'm feeling lazy i've been guilty of okay i'll throw this can in the trash because it fits in there where a cardboard box traditionally does not fit into a trash can you know so even if you

like pack it down and break it down so i wonder if that's part of it where it's so large it doesn't fit into a traditional you can't be a naughty person because it doesn't fit into a traditional you can't be a a naughty person because it doesn't fit into the trash can if that that's my that's my theory at robot caitlin if you don't like that you can say that as well i wonder though if that includes stuff like pop-tarts boxes and like you know little ramen covers because i corrugated cardboard i'm on board but i'll speak for my own behavior because if it does include stuff like your cereal box being recycled then i am responsible for the three percent that is not being recycled that is just me and all of you have been doing a great job so not every piece of cardboard that's a good point passes my hands does make it to the

right receptacle but just about every coordinated box does that's right yeah yeah according to these stats like the regular paper even a cereal box much lower rate but i think there is something to like the bigness of the boxes even like i don't know about you guys but we have the trash cans on the different recycling cans and then like a slot where I put folded up boxes until I bring them out later because they're just so big. Sometimes they don't fit in a thing. I think a lot of people do just like put them aside in a stack and then deal with them later properly. Not living in cities is a thing. I have five acres.

I can just let a box. I could just have a box. I can just build a box world. I could just build a box environment. I could, yeah. 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. The next number, this is a bit of a flip side of cardboard. Next number is October 2021. So a year ago when this comes out october 2021 that's when the guardian in the uk they covered a spike in uk grocery stores putting up cardboard cutouts on their shelves as fill-ins for foods that are out of stock the uk especially tesco grocery stores

they started people started like just posting on social media. Hey, my Tesco is out of, let's say, asparagus. And they put up and I'll have a picture link for people and put one in the chat. But they would just like put up a cardboard reproduction of the item that is not in the store instead of leaving the shelf empty. Oh, I don't know if I love that or hate i think i love it you can't have people panicking on an island if if food shortages england yeah are gonna stress people out you need to let's keep it cool because there's not a lot of room wait can i eat this can i eat this

eventually that's what happens is that you just go shopping for the cardboard asparagus Wait, can I eat this? Can I eat this? Eventually, that's what happens. You just go shopping for the cardboard asparagus. Exactly. Yeah, there was a whole rash of this. The picture I just shared is a Tesco where in between real apples and real cauliflower, there is a bunch of sheets of cardboard with asparagus drawn on it. Adorable. Shoppers also found cardboard pictures of oranges and of grapes at a

store in milton keynes they found cardboard pictures of detergent bottles in a store in cambridge the the funniest one to me because i'd never heard of this town name is that there were cardboard pictures of carrots at a store in the norfolk town of fakenham, which is like, sounds like a fake town. It's great. On brand. Good job. Prankingham was another town. At Robot Caitlin, if it's something like Frakingham. And we've said it wrong.

But there's kind of two takes on why this is happening. According to Tesco, the grocery chain, they said that they are shrinking their range of different products. And so they and it's just to compete with discount grocers like Aldi. And so because of the empty shelves, they decided to put up pictures instead of nothing. But like everything's fine with Tesco, they say. But also the Guardian said it's probably a combination of the COVID pandemic and the Brexit decision, because this is October 2021. This happened like stuff's just hard out there right now. Yeah, everything's fine with me. I just sleep 13 hours and then I'm sad all day because I'm recharging.

Yeah, it's not a big deal. I'm actually doing great. But it is funny to picture Tesco being like, I'm not empty inside. I'm full. It looks like I'm actually doing great, but it is funny to picture Tesco being like, I'm not empty inside. I'm full. It looks like I'm full. What, our competition doesn't have pictures of food where the food should be? This isn't a normal industry standard. Oh, so the competition doesn't offer you art? You don't get to see art on this website?

I like that. It's just food? Oh, fine. art you don't get to see art on this i like that it's just food there's another number here this is definitely pandemic related this is 300 to 400 percent the range of 300 to 400 percent that was the year 2020 increase in sales for jigsaw puzzles which are usually made of cardboard with stuff printed on them yeah and you know it's because it's partly because people were home and they were like i'd like a jigsaw puzzle so there you go yeah that's the inverse of the rest of the history where what a 41 year old does at home is suddenly the most wildly popular thing to do that those of us invisibly

with our quiet little lobbies are suddenly all the rage yeah that's like what anybody who was already adapted to doing stuff at home quietly they they really handled the start of it well i think yeah right including me i'm pretty adapted to it you just want a hybrid like michaels and abercrombie environment where the craft stores like the club only for the most popular kids be very funny heavily scented with the musk of like day kapow glue or something well and also there's I'm going to link an amazing article from j store daily it's like the whole history of puzzles and jigsaw puzzles and they and puzzles could be a whole episode but as far as the cardboard element goes and it will

be yeah if people vote for it i would be really excited um but the first first puzzles came around in england in the 1760s but they were usually made of wood like pieces of wood uh because 1760s it's a little before cardboard is more and more common. And then, according to JSTOR Daily, there have been two big booms in puzzle sales in the US, and one is COVID. But the other was also not a great time, the Great Depression in the 1930s. But the big, big reason for that one was cardboard. Because right then in the 1930s, the Great Depression is happening, but also more and more puzzles are being made of cardboard. And that super dropped the price of puzzles. And so it became a really handy, cheap entertainment as people like dealt with that situation.

So puzzles were very helpful back then. Nice. There is, I find puzzles very entertaining. I enjoy puzzles. I find them quite satisfying. But there's a juxtaposition between solving a puzzle in the middle of the great depression that seems on the nose. Everything before you is in pieces. It's all very unclear what the right process would be to get your life or excuse me, I'm sorry, this puzzle together

in the right form, desperately searching for the borders of your life i mean this puzzle uh yeah you try to assemble it in an ever darkening room i just don't know if in the middle in like dust bowl kansas if i could look down at a at a broken picture and feel inspired by putting it back together again oh yeah i have to go attach a chain to my car to drive it around or else the static electricity will knock all my electronics up this is to me this is this was a secretly incredibly fascinating fact to learn that during gospel days and if you were in that part of the west you uh shaking hands fell out of favor because the static was so intense that people would just knock each other over i thought people just didn't want to see one another we're just too angry

but i don't know if i could go from like the rage you know that moment where you'd have to take a break from your puzzle to get up to just touch a metal object and be knocked over that's that's just it was a bleak time and i i puzzles, but I don't know if puzzles necessarily made it. I don't know if that was the toy for the era. Yeah, it is. I guess the puzzle would be Salas because it's like the cardboard of this won't knock me across the room. That's good. It's my friend.

It's kind of nice to have a problem that doesn't matter at all when your life is full of problems. That's fun. Yeah. Because even like the scale of things then, there's another number here because JSTOR Daily says a 300-piece puzzle costs about 25 cents in 1930s money. And I don't totally trust like inflation calculators online, but apparently that's around $5 today. So even by Great Depression standards,

that was a reasonable price for entertainment like that was that was something most people could afford so like you know puzzles came up big uh despite all the static electricity and societal collapse it was really good you could you could get a puzzle or see blake wexler in a 40 seat black box theater for the same price so whatever where my time got cut because the owner wants to do a spot so you can see that well uh let's uh let's jump to a another part of the past uh this is and it's the last number of the main episode but uh last number is 62 500 and there's going to be an amazing picture with this too but 62 000 i want you to say minutes oh this i just pivot to auditioning for broadway like i'm here i'm ready uh

see yeah 62 500 is the number of like thin cardboard punch cards that it took to operate one of the early national defense computer systems run by the u.s government whoa and i'll have a picture link for people of a lady like standing with the enormous pile of punch cards that you would use if you wanted to run like a pentagon computer in the 1950s or early 60s how does she look so cool like she looks like really cool in that picture like the confidence pretty rad yeah i'm gonna study that picture so i can achieve just 60 of the the self-confidence that person has that's incredible and the punch cards are great yeah she's really put together lady in terms of just her whole aspect it's like i could defend

the nation by inserting and taking back out these cards in a big like that's what the energy is that's exactly you just said it perfectly. That's exactly their energy. Yeah, and not all punch cards were the same for early computers. I'm talking like huge mainframe ones or whole room ones. But a lot of them were a thicker paper, so they were more durable, and they're definable as cardboard. thicker paper, so they were more durable, and they're definable as cardboard. And according to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California,

the U.S. government built one of its first computers for national defense in the late 1950s. It was called SAGE, which stood for Semi-Automatic Ground Environment. And that computer was run on a system of 62,500 different punch cards that you would put in and take out. And those 62,500 cards contain the equivalent of five megabytes of data. Unbelievable. Which is not a lot of data. Like that's a fraction of this episode that you're listening to is five megabytes. Yes. Too many cards.

That's too many cards. I'm going to say too many cards that's too many cards i'm gonna say it also it's too many cards and if you have a problem with that hit up k1 is too tall robot it's just filling me with a unique kind of service industry stress where like i would get home from that job and pull off my coveralls and like in it would be like one car you know like i would just find one on there like i'm walking to the coffee maker and it's just like wait is that a car over here because i was i got coffee because i was done this is what is that what is where yeah i just I would never sleep. I like imagining just one fraction of the army turning off because they don't have that.

I don't know what it would be like. One guy just falls over, you know, one coast, one garter of the Guardian of the Coast. Yes. Early computing whole giant topic, but like so much data had to be stored on paper still like like pieces of cardboard that you would put in and out of a thing i i like thinking of cardboard and all these like massive changing all our lives ways like it helped us ship way more food than ever before it helped us invent computers like it's it's incredible really good for sure it was to hold up some pipe hats yeah like we got here because of the needs of the modern tall hat wearer exactly and name one need more important i feel like it was abe lincoln and industrialists

it was like the best american and all of the worst Americans. JP Morgan. JP Morgan, which is war it on his nose. It's like alcohol filled nose. Um, I don't know why I'm taking shots at old JP. It's pretty easy. That's not,

that's a pretty good target. You don't got to worry about that one. You can just go ahead and fire. If he took less shots, his nose wouldn't have looked like that. He can take it. He can take it. He can take it. He's fine. folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks to caitlin gill and blake wexler for being

as enthusiastic about the flutes as i am right now we know they are flutes that's what's on the edge 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. obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is three weird recent stories about cardboard cutouts of people. Right, fake people made of cardboard. Not groceries, people. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than nine dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. By the way, like I said in the

intro, there is a free upload of one of those bonus shows in your public feed today. If you're hearing this, it's me and Jason Pargin talking about Halloween candy and myths around that and dangers around that, but really, really mainly 99.9% of the time myths around that. So I hope you enjoy that. I hope it helps you realize how many amazing other bonus shows await you if you do start supporting this podcast. And also that makes the entire podcast possible at all. So please consider it. And thank you for exploring cardboard with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaway plus numbers. big takeaway, plus numbers. Because takeaway number one out of one, the modern cardboard box comes from the whole entire history of paper, and from an invention for men's hats, and from an

accident at a paper bag factory. I know there's a lot there, but whole history of paper, stovepipe hat support, and that accident at the Scottish guy's paper bag factory. There we go. And then the whole rest of the show piggybacks on that incredible story. Got everything from recycling to puzzles to massive computers to novelty fake British groceries. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests.

They're great. We joked about their socials and also CaitlinGill.com, BlakeWexler.com. Those websites lead you to these stand-up specials of both of these very funny stand-up comedians. Caitlin Gill's new special is called Major. Blake Wexler's latest special is A Lifetime of Laughter. Both fantastic. Hurry up and check those out. On top of that, Blake Wexler has the podcast Blake's Takes for God's Sakes. Caitlin Gill makes t-shirts at GuaranteeShirts.com. So many great guest links this week. I hope you check them out.

Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. I lean out a lot of digitized museum collections this week, in particular the Strong National Museum of Play, which is in Rochester, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Lots of other sources from there, including SixSquareFeet.com, The Guardian, JSTOR Daily, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 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. 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. you