Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Concrete

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcasters Matt Apodaca (‘How Did This Get Played?’, UCB) and Andrew Ti (‘Yo, Is This Racist?’, Sub-Optimal Pods) for a look at why concrete is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Hey everybody, quick FYI, this episode is our first ever listener chosen topic for Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. First time. People who back the show on Patreon got to suggest topics and then vote on topics and Concrete is the winner. The day after this releases, I'm going to open up submissions for the next round, for the next listener chosen topic. If you'd like to suggest a topic that you want to hear,

head to sifpod.fun, join the community, back the show. There are tons of benefits beyond that voting and that democracy. Also, I depend on donors to make this podcast at all. It's the only way it can exist. So I'm also just like asking you to please back it if you possibly can. Either way, new topic submissions start tomorrow, voting starts Thursday and Saturday, and the newest episode starts right now. Concrete, known for being gray. Famous for being heavy, I guess.

Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why concrete 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 Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Two guests joined me today. Returning guest Andrew T. was on the very first episode of this podcast, the one about U.S. post offices. And between the start of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating and now, Andrew T and his Yo Is This Racist co-host Tawny Newsome launched an entire amazing podcast network. It is called

Suboptimal. And so please hear the many great shows they're doing, such as Yo! Can We Live? You can do that by going to suboptimalpods.com. I'm also joined by Matt Apodaca. He's a producer at the fantastic Earwolf Network that I've gotten to have many wonderful experiences at. He's an improviser at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. You can also hear him on the podcast How Did This Get Played with Nick Weiger and Heather Ann Campbell, or his own podcast Candy Dinner and What's With These Homies Talking About Weezer, and Guesting on Comedy Bang Bang, and many, many other things from there. 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 Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Andrew and Matt each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about concrete. And it's about concrete because of many of you.

This is the first episode coming from the democratic process of Patreon supporters getting to choose a topic every month. Also, not for nothing, I want to thank the listeners for being, like, cool and fun about the vote. Nobody got, like, upset that their thing didn't didn't win or whatever it was a very chill and nice time as i completely expected from from you folks because you're great but also really really fun to see really really fun to participate in i had a wonderful time putting this together i think there's a lot of amazing history and

environmental stuff and modern day stuff and and we're going to get into it, you know, right now. So please sit back or keep scooping volcanic ash into the mix because this aqueduct needs to stand the test of time. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Matt Apodaca and Andrew T. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Matt, Andrew, it's so good to have you on. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of the topic. Either of you can start, this this first fan chosen topic of the show how do you feel about concrete uh i have a little tiny bit of construction going on outside of my house that feels like it is unofficial but it's too big to really be unofficial. Like, like there's a part of the sidewalk is, is fully busted up. And there's one of those like mini bulldozers that's been parked outside.

Yeah. Or like, or it's got like a, maybe it's a crane or it's got the shovel, but the, the shovel head, you know, it's a vehicle with a shovel,

but the shovel head is, you know, not, not that big. Yeah. It's, it's teeny tiny. It's about the size of a a vehicle with a shovel but the shovel head is you know not not that big yeah it's teeny tiny it's about the size of honestly a shovel a regular shovel like a smart car with a shovel on it yeah a little deeper yeah yes yes it's exactly that yeah it looks like a dune buggy with a shovel on it and it's it's it's the city sidewalk so that must be the city but it doesn't feel like real construction if if that makes sense. So I don't know. Anyway, that's the most concrete thing I have going on these days.

That's pretty good. That's what I got. I do like the idea of illicit construction. It's like in Ocean's Eleven when don cheetle's gonna blow that power thing so he sets up a couple cones like you're not you're not for real hold on yeah yes yes yes it feels it feels like that like that adage that like the the one thing that actually can get you in any door is just wearing like a high-vis vest and like a and a construction helmet yeah and people will let you in literally anywhere because they're like okay this is the guy doing we only got one shot at

this we better make it quick yeah yeah it really it really is on that vibe so yeah that's that's what i got going on is like again again, it has to be real. I don't know. This thing's just been sitting outside of my house for like a couple weeks now. So I don't know. Hopefully they get the diamonds or whatever they're going for. It could just be someone's very slow car. Maybe that's their chosen mode.

Yeah, it would be a tight ride. I mean, it's heavy enough that it's got like i'm doing this on video but it's got like four like lander legs that can like come down and hold it into place so so i don't i truly i don't know what it is or what's happening and the building that it is in front of is not like particularly nice so i don't know what's up but someone needs to put some concrete down eventually because that sidewalk is jacked up yeah um i'll say for me matt anything good anything good not as good as that i will say that you know i have um my my dad worked in construction so i feel like i've just i've seen i've seen the process i like i i i've seen it as powder i've

seen it wet and i've seen it dry so like i i've seen a lot of it i've seen it happening and you know i've been a i guess a little scamp my whole life. So anytime I see wet concrete or wet cement, I do get very like, hmm. I guess I should. Yeah. I'm going to put my butt in this. I'm going to put my butt in it. But I don't because I respect the process too much. And I guess I also think about, I always like the,

it's very different, of course, because it's fake, but I think often about the, and I mean often, about the Han Solo frozen in carbonite thing. I always thought that that's how I'd like to be preserved. Oh, wow. That is space concrete, isn't it? like they called it another compound to be interesting but it's it's almost named concrete even yeah everything in star wars is something that he was just like i don't know just call it this yeah he is so weird at naming things that it is like yeah it's all the 50s stuff death sticks death cigarettes death sticks there's yeah the fact that like but but diner stayed it's not

called like something else it is a diner dex's diner that they're at and we're specifically only talking about episode two those are the only ones that andrew and i have seen here's my actual my actual question that i i'm sure someone has answered somewhere before but your audience alex feels like the people who might know this so hit me up on twitter if if you know the answer to this all of the uh rebel fighters are named after letters of the alphabet but they don't use the roman alphabet they use a crazy like squiggly alphabet space alphabet what is an x when they say x wing to y-wing what did they what does a star wars universe person think an x looks like wow right it's not you just made star wars unwatchable like they're not writing in english i just i'm positive this has been answered somewhere but it's x wings a wings b wings

and they all look like the roman alphabet y wings as well of that letter but those are not letters as far as i know in their jacked up language so because on all the screens and stuff it's in like a squiggly galactic standard yeah so it's not the same yeah yeah so what is it what is what is what does lu does Luke Skywalker think a bee looks like? That's my question. That's my genuine question. I'm curious. I don't know.

George, answer the question. George, you don't get to be a patron anymore if you don't tell us what's going on. You can't. You have to unsubscribe and you only. I just feel like someone knows and I feel like the Sith listeners. The Sith Lords. Wow. Oh, shoot.

Have you called them that? I probably have to rename the show due to that evil association now. Oh, boy. No, that's the fandom. Don't put that on Alex uh oh boy no that's that's the fandom don't put that on alex he's too good that's the fandom there you unless unless you have a better name for it you people are the sif lords so think about it just think about it but i just feel like y'all know why what what luke skywalker thinks when he hears Y-Wing. Yeah. Why wing it with this whole bit?

I don't know, but we did it. We did do this the whole time. We're here. So yeah, that's what I think about concrete. I'm sorry, folks. I'm sorry sorry one thing i am wondering man is like like i i did not know that your dad worked in construction that's like i did i wasn't like oh i'm gonna book the people i know with construction ties for this like that that's amazing what did did he really like pour and handle concrete i'm not really sure what he did. He, you know, I feel like in the 90s,

people who, like, at least the people I knew that worked in construction, like my dad and my dad's friends, were all just like, this is what we do while we drink. Like, it wasn't like he, like, was, like, an official, like, foreman or something like that. It was just like, hey, I know,

I need a couple guys with hands. Like, I need, like, someone that can hold a hammer, you know? So, like, a lot of, I need a couple guys with hands. I need someone that can hold a hammer. I feel like under the table construction. But that doesn't mean that the concrete pouring was illegitimate. It happened. For me, I feel like my relationship to concrete is it's handled by the adults, like either the city or the construction workers. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But also, they are regular people. They're just like, well, it's my job. I'm going to handle some concrete. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called, There are no stats in america and the numbers are filled with cheese wow that name was submitted by phil stewart thank you phil we have a new name for it every week please make him as silly and wacky as bad as possible submit to

on twitter or to sifPod at gmail.com. American Tail. We're doing it. It's fun. I love that. It was really... It beautifully sung. What a rendition. The performance is what did it for me, I gotta tell you. Very surprised.

Glenbard South High School Choir, folks. They know what they're doing uh training wise so go raiders look it up so the uh we only have a few there's only actually a few numbers this week because the rest go into the takeaways but the first number here is two two is the basic number of ingredients in concrete uh the the one ingredient is cement and the other one is what's technically called aggregate but that's like rocks sand gravel some kind of solid stuff uh so you make it by mixing cement with solid stuff and you get concrete that's the rest okay so for those of you enthusiasts that want to make your own it's just two things i you can't mess it up i will just say both both of

those feel like when you define it as to have logical errors in them to the layman uh to someone who doesn't know what they're talking about when you say one of the ingredients of concrete is cement that feels like a tautology to me i'm like okay what are you talking about yeah and then um what was what was the other term it's aggregate aggregate aggregate aggregate feels like listing like mixed nuts as your favorite nut like it's just like okay come on yeah like, there's certainly concrete in aggregate. You can't, yeah, you can't use

a collective noun to describe one thing, I feel. Not even a collective noun, but just like a noun that means, well, a bunch of other things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like rocks. That's my, that's my, that is my assault on your proposition that there are two ingredients.

Andrew T. destroys the ingredients of concrete. It's just got a YouTube thumbnail where my eyes are bugging out and his tongue is sticking out. Those really aggressive faces. And I'm like eating popcorn. I'm like, Oh, this is good. Yeah.

We like turned down the contrast on Alex's picture, like 40%. So he's all washed out. My eyes are red. Get on, get on Photoshop people. people get up make it happen yeah folks please that's great i want to see this but it is uh and that's that's very true about like those two ingredients being a lot of things because it turns out and we'll we'll just link it back because it's very technical but there are a lot of ways to get the materials for concrete. Rocks are one.

And then sand is basically broken down rocks. So that can be your aggregate. And then there's a few ways to make cement too. But it's these two things. Put it together. Lego pieces you found under the couch. Kind of, yeah. They can use old plastics.

That's another so it's it's really varied yeah oh yeah okay i was just gonna say what i heard when you said the two ingredients is the two ingredients of concrete are cement and an asterisk that's all that is all sorry there's a the other concrete thing is like in modern times we usually make it reinforced and reinforced concrete is when you put rebar in it rebar is short for reinforcing bar so a lot of modern concrete has like metal bars in it to make it stronger oh that's sort of the other ingredient. I've seen that.

Just like when they're like, I mean, they were just doing construction, like they were making a driveway next door. And it's all these bars. And I was like, what is all that for? I didn't ask because those guys are strong men. I would never ask them a question. But I was like, I'm paying close attention to this to this and the next day it was all filled in it was like whoa it looks great they did a good job yeah there you go

yeah i feel like rebar is only for accidentally impaling your partner if you're a police officer in the first act or impaling a terminator in the third act and there's no like that is as far as i know what you use rebar for yeah there's no other use or it's like a death implement in a final destination movie like it falls it flies yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it like flies it flies through your windshield yeah windshield when you're skidding out, but you missed the tree that you thought was going to kill you. It's always like clickbait. You're like, it came this close to impaling him,

but something amazing happened. One time I want the character to get impaled, and their last words are like, did you know that this is reinforced concrete, actually? That's the thing. They're never actually giving it up for the thing that killed them. That's, I think, a failing of these movies.

Yeah, yeah. It actually gives the concrete a lot of structural integrity. Getting crushed by an elevator. You know, the lubricant must have been dried up on the wires. We really have one more main number for the takeaways. It's a big number, though. The number is 600 degrees celsius which is 1112 degrees fahrenheit so very high that is the temperature at which concrete explodes

whoa and apparently it explodes sort of like popcorn so if you get it that hot oh blows up let me i could tell from the way matt's mouth was shaped. He was going to say, that's hot, baby, when you said 600 degrees. Okay, Andrew. Why are you going to do me like that? What did I do? 100%. Andrew T. destroys Matt Apodaca. It was just...

Okay, to get back to the wait uh is that is that like explodes as in the air bubbles inside expands so much or whatever kind of explodes or it's close it's actually apparently there is water inside most concrete because water is part of making the cements and then that's part of part of the the manyements, and then that's part of the many super ingredients, the two ingredients. Yeah. But at that temperature, the heated water vaporizes and becomes trapped,

and then that explodes the solid stuff around it. Oh. Which is sort of like the water in popcorn kernels that makes them blow up. Oh, right, right, right. I messed up a bag of popcorn the other day in the microwave. It was actually crazy I don't know what happened But like

There must be something wrong with my microwave But there was only a layer of burned at the bottom And then, I don't know Less than 20 popcorn kernels popped So I ended up just throwing the whole smoky mess away. But yeah. We got to leave bagged microwave popcorn in the past. It's stovetop or nothing at this point.

Or pre-popped in a bag. Because I just feel like that's one. I mean, those are my favorite, the pre-popped ones. Because I didn't want to do anything. They're all perfect. But Stove Top, oh, baby, that's hot. He did the mouth shape. Like, we all cheer.

Well, we got three takeaways here for the episode. We can get into them yeah and the first one is all about history takeaway number one the ancient romans were so good at concrete we only recently figured out how they did it we'll talk about how they did it but also it was in the past couple of years we figured out exactly how their formula worked for making concrete. They were amazing at it. What? Wow.

That's wild. I guess I just assumed, you know, as someone who can clearly, you can tell I know very little about this. I guess I just didn't realize there were multiple ways to do concrete. That's me. That's on me. That one's on Andrew. Right here. Sorry about that.

Well, especially it's like, I feel like it's always around us. And also in modern times, you just see it the one way, or at least like in the US, it's just always kind of the same everywhere. But it turns out there are different approaches and different ways. And yeah, it's a whole thing. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I was going to say that like,

this is the most I've ever thought about this. Me too, yeah. Like in this conversation. Because like I walk on it every single day. I look at it all the time. So it is, yeah, you're right. It's pretty cool. Yeah, like we're all probably on top of it right now.

Like a lot of foundations are made of it. Yeah, absolutely. Listeners, you're probably on top of it right now. Like a lot of foundations are made of it. Yeah, absolutely. Listeners, you're probably on top of it. Like surprise. It was in the house the whole time, you know. The concrete's coming from inside the house. But then the history of it, like the Romans are pretty famous for it, but they probably were not the first civilization to invent it. We've got a few sources here.

One of them is A History of Concrete from the Guardian by Nick Van Mead. And he says the quote, while there is some debate over when and where the first concrete was used, there is little dispute that the first people to use concrete in the way we do today were the Romans. They used it in everything from bathhouses to harbors, aqueducts to the Colosseum. They also systematized production and application. And from the 200s BC to 400s AD, built everything they could out of concrete. They really kicked off an era of massive construction with it. And before that, it was sort of like Fred Flintstone would get the rocks out of the quarry and that's just it.

That is true, and that is history. So it's interesting, I mean, not to criticize you, Alex, or anything, but it's interesting that you didn't dig that up as part of your research. And Andrew did know that offhand. So I'm one of what's known as the Flintstone deniers, and what we do is we gather online.

You're a Jetson. My house is concrete and very tall. It's up a really long pole from the rest of the earth. Yeah, they... One of many fun things about it is that we have a modern way of making concrete, but it doesn't last as long as the Roman kind.

According to the sources here, modern concrete can last about 100 years, but usually closer to 50. One of the main things that breaks it up is that the rebar, like the main things that breaks it up is that the rebar like the reinforcement metal that we put in it will rust and then that expands and then that cracks it oh so our concrete breaks much quicker than theirs does but you have these aqueducts and coliseums and stuff that you can just go see from like 2 000 years ago because

they did it differently and without any metal in it. They would probably be like kids these days, not knowing how to set concrete correctly using rebar. We didn't use rebar. We didn't use rebar. We did have a lot of lead somewhere in the aqueducts, right? Wasn't that one of the... I'm asking Alex because it feels like he might know might know this yeah they did a bunch of lead plumbing and it made them very like sick or insane oh right i guess really that's that's right lead pipes is like last last mile

stuff not aqueduct okay i get it i get it and uh the other thing with with concrete building is that there was a huge gap after the Romans where people kind of stopped using it again, according to this Guardian history quote, with only a couple of isolated exceptions around 1,400 years past after the fall of the Western Roman Empire until concrete was used again on any great scale. And it was mostly invented in the UK and France, or reinvented a modern kind of concrete in the 1800s. So there's just this big, like after the Romans, people were like, back to wood and rock, I find and stuff like that.

Let's stick with the classics, baby. that okay so because right so that is like because you need like a big bureaucratic society to make make it someone's job to just mix mud all day yeah that was a big part of it yeah or like several hundred people's job just to be like okay someone else will actually build something out of this but i can get away with just making raw materials yeah totally i feel like part of the british and the french sort of bringing it back first and then the u.s using a lot is that like they were empire building you know like they were like well we have a lot of construction to do right so let's let's reinvent this right right right and a lot of the modern cement is called portland cement because it's named after a place called the Isle of Portland that I did not know about before this.

But it's not Oregon. It's not Maine. It's on like the southern coast of the UK. And the cement kind of looks like stone they pour you there. That's why they call it that. They're not keeping it weird there is what you're saying. No, they're keeping it. Keep Portland extremely normal and build gray buildings.

And uniform. Just cut it dull and gray, baby. Yeah. And so the Roman concrete, like we were saying, it's still here. Especially there's a building called the Pantheon in Rome that has a famous concrete dome. There's a bunch of Roman concrete still standing. And we figured out the full recipe for it in 2017, like A.D., like the past couple of years. So that's pretty cool.

Was it simply that we did not know? Okay, here's my questions in order yeah is it is it was it process only or process and materials that was the mystery or or result the final result that was the mystery that's a great question yeah and did we have an incorrect working theory before 2017 or just someone was like like everyone's like we have no idea and then it was like oh turns out it was this yeah we we figured out the materials earlier than that but but not a ton earlier and we fit we finally figured out the process and the why in 2017 okay yeah that's a great question the prior knowledge is we had like recipes written by

the Romans. There was one from an engineer named Marcus Vitruvius in 30 BC. And he said that you mix volcanic ash with lime. And Italy has a bunch of volcanic ash from like Mount Vesuvius and that kind of stuff. And so you mix the ash and lime, you get cement, and then you mix the cement with rocks in molds, and then that gives you concrete. And the Romans would also immerse their concrete in seawater, which is a weird thing because seawater breaks down modern concrete faster than almost anything, like the water and the salt and everything. It really attacks it. And the other thing about Roman concrete is it tends to get a little bit stronger over time instead of weaker.

And so we were like, we don't know how either of those things work. Exactly. That's a very surprising approach from these guys. Uh, somewhat embarrassing for science because they were so old, you know, it was hard to figure out.

Right. Right. Reading that recipe and being like, what could I use to substitute for volcanic ash? Like, I don't have that just laying around. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got to go to a special store? The volcano store?

I guess I can go there. Yeah, we're out of it. The other thing they knew is that Roman concrete Yeah, we're out of it. The other thing they knew is that Roman concrete gets extra strength from a compound called aluminum tobermorite. And they knew that they can like make it in a lab, but they couldn't figure out how to make concrete with that in it. So the question was like, how do we make concrete that has this aluminum tobermorite in it. So the question was, like, how do we make concrete that has this aluminum tobermorite in it? And a team from the University of Utah in 2017 did, like, drilling into the core of an old Roman harbor near Naples, and, quote, analysis showed that the seawater had dissolved components of the ash, allowing new binding materials to grow one of which was aluminum tobermorite so they figured

out that like a bunch of submerging concrete and seawater was the key roman trick like that was the thing they figured out to do and they also had to use that specific like i think you could use any volcanic ash but the specific italian volcanic ash in seawater was the trick so there's a whole secret we figured it out uh you know recently okay i i think matt is about to say uh you said italian ash and i think he was gonna say butter big that's my guess matt i was gonna say mama mia that's a spicy volcanic ash Matt? I was going to say Mamma Mia. That's a spicy volcanic ash. I'm just going to go ahead and continue attempting to ruin your bitch. No, they're... Let me tell you, Andrew, they're ruined already.

They come pre-ruined. That's the style just matt like every time you're going to do a bit turn your camera off he can't see right and then he's in the dark i really i have a bad bit poker face just getting excited to say something so stupid i i mean it really is it's the zoom and doing enough episodes of of uh the other podcast with matt yeah i just feel like i got a pretty good read i feel like we're starting to starting to get a little uh whatever whatever the the opposite of chemistry is like matt's matt's matt's great at improv and i'm great at ruining his trade no i am sort of like uh like an ed mcmahon you've had enough of you're just like no thank you let's knock that off okay done yeah that's right look i i brought italian ash into this and that's that's

gonna spark some stuff right like that's that's what happens maybe i had no choice what am i supposed to do with that information it was too spicy of a meatball it was too spicy spicy this is about to be a dumb question and i think i know the answer to this but because it's it's the local the local sediment or rocks that that make up the lava on some level or contributes to it i guess what i mean is i guess i assumed all ash from volcanoes was pretty similar, but that's dumb. For concrete purposes, I don't know if we totally know exactly which like ash is best or whatever,

but the reason the Romans used it so much is they had huge deposits of it at the middle of their empire. And then they had the desire to do a bunch of worldwide construction. And then in modern times, we just use whatever we want. A lot of times sand, honestly. And then in between, people just didn't have a pile of ash

and empire building plans all at once. So that's kind of the story of when and where concrete's been used a lot. Right. You're taking people over and you happen to have, you know, the fruits of Hephaestus. Is that what?

Trying to think what a big old volcano is. Something like that, right? Yeah. And as far as like Roman achievements with concrete, one of them is just shipping this ash everywhere. We'll have a link to an NPR article with historian Robert Cortland, and he says that King Herod, who's in the Bible for like trying to catch the baby who would be the Messiah, but King Herod was a client king of the Romans, and they shipped him thousands of tons of volcanic ash to build a harbor. They used, quote, the ancient equivalent of today's super tankers. And Corlin says the logistics were, quote, comparable to the pyramids and in some ways even more complicated.

So the Romans did this like all the time on a scale that basically later societies until ours were like, no, forget it right i'm just gonna i'm just gonna build with right and that's what that's why when you when when people in the middle ages came on roman ruins they were like well these people were magic yeah whatever the hell they were doing yeah some alchemy was at play yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the devil surely usually the devil uh yeah surely this is the work of the devil got to be the devil they also they're still their most impressive building probably it's called the pantheon it's you can go visit it in the city of rome it was dedicated in 126 a.d and it has what is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.

It's 45 meters across, which is more than 147 feet. It's basically something that should have been too dangerous to build, but they figured out how to do it. And it's still standing today. How did they do it? Was it just... I mean, I guess it's also at a time when like human life is cheap so it's like yes yeah and i mean what else were they doing they had time

yeah well link i i read i read through like it's like a big tashan book of roman architecture stuff but they talk about it being this like double layered structure supporting the dome. It's all, it's all very visual. Uh, and then also they used lighter and lighter aggregate as they went up the dome. So the top of it is just made of pumice stone, like the lightest area stone they could get. Uh, so it's all kind of a trick and a lot of architectural skill all at once. I'm looking at it right now because, you know, it's probably been a minute since I've looked at it in a picture, and it's truly amazing just to even see the inside of the dome. Yeah, it's really intricate, right?

It's not an easy thing to do if you just have that dumb Fred Flintstone hammer chisel thing, and that's all you can do. Birds saying it's a living well even even wilder it's like you have you have like some dude in a toga being like here's an inclined plane a pulley yeah behold yeah and then you're like and then they're like but wait what is it what are you talking about a shoe like they never even seen that before but they're somehow like building this like massive thing yeah they're so dumb fools

put a shoe on, ancient Romans. Put on some dope Air Jordans, you ancient Roman jerks. They didn't even have Jordans. Not even Jordan 1? No, not even Jordan 1. Not even. A lot of fun stuff to Photoshop for the listeners today. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break.

We'll be right back. 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. Well, we can go, I think, from here into the next takeaway.

It's all about modern concrete. Takeaway number two. We are pretty much turning the entire earth into concrete. Between digging up stuff to make it and just pouring as much as we can, it's really astounding how much concrete we have created, especially in the last century, and how much we will create if things continue. That's wild to think about. I never considered that.

Yeah. Is that, but of our limiting resources on this planet, rock is not one of them. Like, we'll run out of the water that you need to make concrete before we run out of the rock you need to make concrete, right? That's my guess. It seems like it, yeah. It's like bad. We're obviously strip mining the planet, but it's not worse than the other ways that we are

destroying the planet. Yeah, it's relatively abundant stuff. Yeah, so don't worry, Andrew. There are still plenty of rocks around. It's going gonna be okay i'm just i'm just holding on i'm holding on to this rock i keep on my desk because one day one day when everything else is concrete you're gonna come asking for it be more valuable than no rocks rocks we've taken this to a weird place guys do you have like a percentage of the earth that is

concrete like that's kind of oh yeah i hate to hear it i guess but uh yeah i've got i'd say like four amazing numbers here i don't know that we'll literally turn the entire earth in a concrete but just the rate we're doing it is astounding first thing here is from great guardian article by jonathan watts he says that after water concrete is the most widely used substance on earth well it's water and then concrete which is partly water is number two that's crazy and then the next like stat number here is that the world today builds the equivalent of a new new york city every month wow in terms of construction primarily concrete we're creating a new entire new york city worldwide each month yeah which is not precedented that's not like a thing that happened before right i guess that makes sense because now it's like

china and china's helping africa make new york cities yeah right right right right damn that's wild yeah like everybody who didn't do it when the u.s was doing it right and so it's it's really going very quickly right um what if the next number what if they were actually building new york cities everywhere though i mean china is doing that they have like a bunch a bunch of like fake cities like fake recreate recreation recreations recreations there's like there's like a fake paris in like the middle of nowhere in china i think there's a fake new york also it's a very las vegas mentality wow yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah hey that's nice let's have that here and this this next number is is very concrete specific and this from the Guardian again over the next 40 years from now over the next 40 years the newly built floor area

in the world is expected to double so So we're just going to build, we're just going to take the amount of floor we have. And in 40 years, there'll be twice that. I guess all of this is essentially we're exponential growth. Like people as people grow, obviously we're yeah. That we probably will constantly be doubling until we are very quickly,

not doubling. Yeah. Yeah. In fact doubling yeah yeah in fact we'll be we'll be we'll be doubling floor space until we're having floor space hey we better walk some of this back like like rolling it up like a Looney Tunes red carpet, like woo, like yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's Thanos time pretty soon. I guess he didn't get rid of stuff. He just got rid of people. Yeah, hey. Anyway.

Yeah, fewer people to enjoy all the stuff. But it'll feel like twice as much floor when there's half as many people. That's true. the thing he was thinking about doing it we're talking about 40 years he was gonna do it in one second well the and this last like astounding scale number here that is from national geographic so they say that i don't know if you guys have heard of biomass before, but biomass is like just a measurement of the weight of everything living on the earth. They say that at the start of the 20th century, the man-made stuff on earth weighed about as much as 3% of the biomass. So all the man-made stuff in the world weighed as much as 3% of like plants, animals, everything. And a new study in december of 2020 said that

those are now equal there's about as much man-made stuff as there is living stuff they also say that by far the number one man-made thing is concrete that's number one because it's very heavy that's part of it right right right there's also just a lot of it every Right, right, right. And it's also like, what is man-made? What is, you know, not. Because it's basically like rocks that we have touched. Rocks that we have touched become man-made. Yeah, right. That's true.

Wooden stuff. Yeah, a lot of things work that way. You take a big rock and you break the rock. Just a smaller rock is man-made. It's true. But the rock was there before. Does wooden stuff count as double dipping on biomass versus man-made stuff? Because something made of wood is still biomass, right?

Based on this, they talk about manufactured materials. So I think once we make a wooden thing, it's manufactured. It's man-made now. It's not a biomass anymore. Okay. What about a genetically engineered perfect human weapon? Perfect living weapon? Is that?

Yeah, what about a super soldier? Yeah, Antifa super soldiers. Where do they go in this stat? It doesn't say. It doesn't say. That's a hole. I'm just saying the study is flawed. We can all agree the study is flawed.

It is, like, no joke, it is extremely an estimate. So we don't really know for sure, but it's what they believe is the situation. But a big contributor to that is concrete. Like, once a country starts wanting to industrialize and build up and also when population rises, ever since the 20th century, the main avenue for that has been concrete. In The Guardian, Jonathan Watts talks about the U.S., especially getting into it in the 1930s. This also happens a lot after wars or disasters. Apparently, the post-World War II government of Japan was nicknamed the Dokken Koka, which means construction state, because most of what they were doing for a little

while was handing out construction contracts, in particular for concrete, to rebuild the country of Japan. And then also, we mentioned China before. The current titan of using concrete is China. Apparently, since 2003, China has poured more cement every three years than the U.S. poured in the entire 20th century. And today, China uses half of the new concrete in the world. But they're just kind of next up to, like the article says, that India and Indonesia and a few other rising countries will be next after them. It's what people do, at least the past a hundred years or so. And, and it's not like, like we're going to jump the technological,

like there's no like version of like, Oh, now it's aluminum nanotubes that we use instead of concrete or anything like that. It's just, it's going to be concrete for a while forever. Yeah. They haven't, they haven't invented like a replacement and that's what we're going to be concrete for a while. Forever? Yeah, they haven't invented a replacement. And that's what we're going to do.

Oh, yeah. We got to come up with concrete too, baby, and then we don't have to work anymore. It's named like a movie sequel, yeah. The concretening the the other thing with like the scale of concrete is we were saying before it is it is resources that we have a relatively large amount of but also we are kind of trying to use them up for one thing concrete soaks up almost a tenth of the world's industrial water use every year just goes toward making concrete. And then

the other thing is sand has become a really useful material for making it. And also thank you to listener John Ford for suggesting some resources about this because people knew what the topic is, so they sent me stuff. There's a great article in the New Yorker about how sand is, according to the United Nations, the second most exploited natural resource in the world after water. And then there's also a situation where not all sand is useful for it. And in particular, desert sand is too small and round to be useful for making concrete. So all these huge new concrete buildings going up in places like Dubai, they're bringing in sand from places like Australia. in places like dubai they're bringing in sand from places like australia it's a lot of bring like they have to get sand from somewhere else even though it's dubai to build a concrete building so that's tough that's wild so okay so actually concrete too is going to be figuring out how to

use desert sand to make concrete that would be a really good yeah if somebody knows how to do it that would be huge yeah we gotta figure it out that's a sequel all right get on it yeah now we got a project dibs and dibs by the way now we got a project well and uh and from here we can get into the last takeaway of the show takeaway number three Number three, Trump Tower is made of concrete because Donald Trump wanted closer ties with the New York City mafia. Whoa. If Trump did not want to get closer to the mafia, they would have built it out of something else. But he was and is mobbed up and not great. So that's why it's built that way. This is the first I'm hearing of him being bad.

Yeah, yeah. great so that's why it's built that way this is the first i'm hearing of him being bad yeah yeah well everyone's got a flaw everyone's got a flaw you know that's crazy i think this is the first time he's come up on the show on purpose like like he sort of bled into the world always when i started the show but this is the first actual thing about him. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of the first shows probably you've recorded where he's not necessarily pervasive. Yeah. This is probably one of the second or third show you've recorded in the Trump's not on Twitter era.

Yeah, that's right. For instance. Yeah. So he's got it. You got to bring him up. What? Wait, what else what else what else what else were they gonna make it out of yeah so poop so they uh the history of concrete and skyscrapers it's actually relatively recent that concrete is our go-to for modern skyscraper construction

like the burj k Khalifa that's in Dubai and is in Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, the really tall building, is 163 stories tall, tallest building in the world. Main thing in it is reinforced concrete. But even like a few decades ago, they tended to use steel girders and use other kind of older things. So it's not such a recent thing

where that's just the go-to you would automatically do. Thank you to listener Dennis Hebelman for sending this article in. It's from Esquire. It's called Netflix's Fear City Hints at Trump's Mob Connections, The Real Story Goes Deeper by Gabrielle Bruni. The Trump Tower in Manhattan, it was built 1979 to 1983. And the usual thing at that time would have been mostly use steel girders to put it up. But Donald Trump used ready mix concrete, which was more expensive at the time, and he had to buy it at high prices from the mob because of two reasons. One of them is he wanted to be close with the mob. According to his biographer, Wayne Barrett, Trump went out of his way not to avoid contacts with the mafia, but to increase them.

And then the other reason is the mob controlled concrete and a lot of labor in New York City. And so Trump bought concrete from them so the construction would go smoothly. It was a transactional thing for him. Do you think we could somehow get his building and toss it into the hudson river not unlike a mob victim right wait is is that is that why the the the cement shoes became a thing because of the mob had all the cement i guess it. It could be, yeah. They're construction folks, so yeah.

That would actually make sense resource-wise. They had a lot, the New York City Mafia formed what was called the Concrete Club and controlled it in New York City starting in like the early 1900s. So they actually, it would have been very easy for them to make cement shoes, yeah. Right, right, right. That makes total sense, yeah all right okay cool because also apparently in the 1980s the fbi and the u.s attorney's office led by a lawyer named rudy giuliani no one's ever heard of him those two organizations were like really putting the screws to the mob in New York.

And so most developers were kind of moving away from them. And then Donald Trump was like, no more mafia, please. This is how we're going to build my tower. Like, let's do it. Which is great. Yummy, yummy. Give me some of that mafia. Can't get enough of it.

I hate your Donald Trump impression, Matt, because it's so good. It's too good, I think is the problem. It's just eerie. Oh, yummy. It's me, Donald. Yummy, yummy. And so the mob control of concrete came to light in the late 80s. The city and state and feds put together what were called the Mafia

Commission trials in 1987. They got a bunch of convictions against the five families of New York, which is Gambino, Genovese, Colombo, Luchese, and Bonanno. And among all the like racketeering and murder and stuff, they found out that since the early 1900s, the Mafia Concrete Club had regulated distribution of cement and concrete in the city. They provided workers. They shut down construction if you didn't work with them. And then they also extorted 2% of all the contracts just by controlling. And they did this for decades and decades of New York City massively growing.

This was a huge part of the Mafia's income and business and everything was concrete. You know, it started in Rome and it got all the way to the Italian mob, baby. I was gonna say yeah, it was... Yeah.

I was sort of circling that area myself oh wow yeah matt matt did it better so yeah so italians equal concrete is that i guess so yeah yeah what a what a tradition they did it with the food, too. Very sturdy stuff. That's a spicy concrete, right? Oh, yeah. Give me a freaking lasagna. Straight to the tum.

Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Andrew T. and Matt Apodaca for making ancient Romans and modern skullduggery so fun and so espicy. 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, incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. main episode. This week's bonus topic is the Hoover Dam. Yes, the Hoover Dam, a massive concrete structure and much stranger than you think. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of

more than two dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring concrete with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. And thank you for exploring concrete with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the ancient Romans were so good at concrete, we only recently figured out how they did it. Takeaway number two, we are pretty much trying to turn the entire world into concrete. And takeaway number three, Trump Tower is made of concrete because Donald Trump wanted closer ties with the New York City mafia. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my

guests. They're great. The URL you want for Andrew T is suboptimalpods.com because Andrew and his co-host Tawny Newsome are still making Yo! Is This Racist? And then they launched an entire new podcasting operation. Beyond that, it is highly worth a subscription. Again, that is suboptimalpods.com. And then Matt Apodaca, an amazing improviser. And then podcasting-wise,

you can hear him every week with Nick Weiger and Heather Ann Campbell on the Earwolf podcast, How Did This Get Played? Which is a fantastic video game podcast. They take the worst games in the world. They have fun with them. They share joy about other gaming. There's a lot there. Many research sources this week.

Here are some key ones. One of them is a bunch of great articles from The Guardian. Because in 2019, they did what was called Concrete Week and did a massive set of features and articles about it. Special thanks there to writers and editors Nick Van Mead, Jonathan Watts, and Adam Roberts. Also linking a great interview from NPR Science Friday, where they talked to historian Robert Corland. A great article from The New Yorker by David Owen, all about sand. a great article from The New Yorker by David Owen, all about sand, and then a great article from Esquire, all about Trump's mob connections and how that literally built Trump Tower, and that it's by Gabrielle Bruni.

Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And I thank you for picking

the whole topic. Concrete. What an excellent idea, Dusty's Rad Title and Voters. And I can't wait to see what you come up with next when we do the submissions of the voting this week. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.