Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Copper

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guest Janet Varney explore why copper is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Copper, known for being a metal, famous for being that color of metal. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why copper 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 very much not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Hello.

Hello. And we have a wonderful guest joining us too. I hope you know them from all over, acting and voice acting, everything from Stand Against Evil to The Legend of Korra. And co-host of the Braving the Elements podcast, co-host of E! Player, Bismatto, host of the JV Club, Jan F. Arnie. Welcome.

Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for being here. co-host of e-player bus motto, host of the JV club, Jenniferne. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for being here. This is such a treat to me. I do this. I'm really looking forward to it. I might know what we're talking about. I guess it's not a secret that you guys told me what the... the topic was.

It's not like a quiz show where I have to guess based on a series of clues, although I'd be up for that. I have a bunch of mining equipment in my background as a hint, you know? What the pet peeve? Is that a slucer? I'm dressed up as Abe Lincoln. Uh-oh. Is the topic Abe Lincoln?

Misleading, misleading. Yeah, and I I'm thrilled about this topic because this is our third time ever talking about an atomic element as an episode We've done neon before we've done helium before And we always start by asking what the relationship is or opinion is of the topic and Janet you can go first What's your relationship to or opinion is of the topic. And Janet, you can go first. What's your relationship to or opinion of copper? Can't stand it. Hate everything about, no. Uh. Come in hot.

I really hate copper. I really hate copper. You're more of a zinc girl. That's through and through, through and through. I really have to show up for my zinc. Listen, I'm a fan of copper. I do, look, I'm not a scientist and I certainly have a very poor retention of periodical elements, various properties, certain things that really stay with me and then there are certain things

that I have to be told over and over again and each time it sort of feels like I'm learning it anew, even though there's absolutely no way I am. But copper is, you know, it's definitely one of those metals that just sort of shows up everywhere and it's always, or at least frequently, a positive. Like it's like, you know, like I have a copper thermos and I have copper pipes and then I love, you know, patinaed roofs. And I grew up in Arizona where there was a tremendous amount of copper mining done at a certain period of the last century and a little before that, I guess.

But so yeah, I feel I have a relationship to copper. Nice, and with your great show, you play Robust Motto, I partly thought of you with copper and it turns out it's an Arizona thing. I'm not from there, had no idea until recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. We haven't gotten to Arizona yet, but my dad writes books about ghost towns and mining camps.

So I spent a lot of time as a kid at abandoned copper mines after they had sort of been plumbed. Do you know how he got into the field of writing books about mining ghost towns? I do. He's a high school English teacher for his entire career. And in the 80s, he... Because he's a cyclist as well. And I think some of the cycling trips that he was going on with friends would like take you to a ghost town and back or something.

And he was really, really fascinated and interested in the history of all that. And I guess he sort of felt like there were books that were, you know, like go to the library, check it out and read it. And it's a history of this town kind of books. But he wanted something that was more of like a practical guide, which is sort of the subtitle of his first book, which was like Arizona's best ghost towns, a practical guide to like visiting them. So he would sort of lay out all the history and photographs, but also kind of tell you like if you want to do a great couple of days going to old ghost towns in the state of Arizona, here's a way to do that. And here's what your car needs to, you know, hear the kind of tires

you need. This may be a dirt road. This may be a... So yeah. So then he ended up writing books about Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado. Each had their own book. Southern California, its own book. Northern California, its own book. and then like the Pacific Northwest. Whoa, cool. So yeah, there was, I guess, a demand for it. I mean, it's extremely niche, but people kept wanting to publish them. I was going to ask, what is sort of the marker of a good ghost town to visit? What's a premium ghost town? That's a really good question. Well, many of them are rubble.

And obviously, a ghost town is never going to get better in terms of what you can see and experience. It's only going to sort of disintegrate more. So there are certain ones that like, it's kind of more about the trip, I think. It's more about the like where it is. And then there are other ones that are sort of upkept that have caretakers that sort of keep any of the old structures from, you know, catching on fire.

Like they're actually, you know, kind of caring and tending to them. They're not letting them get defaced by like graffiti and you know, stuff like that. So like one I remember I really loved when I was little was a place called Ruby, which was, which had like an old, even it still had its old little school house for where the kids went to school and there was like an old kind of metal slide that was just like. Made out of old razor blades and broken bottles. Flapping, yeah. No, seriously, it was like flapping flap of rust just dangling down from like an old ladder with an old ladder. But you know, then there's a place in there's a

wonderful town in South Eastern Arizona called Bisbee, which is also just a great name. B-I-S-B-E. And it's built, it's a town built into a hillside, and then there's a huge crater that's called the Lavender Pit that was a copper mine. And so it has this really pretty kind of, I mean, all things being considered, you know, like it was a mine, so. But it's got a really pretty like lavender hue. You can kind of see, you know,

the opening into one of the mining shafts and stuff. And so it's very charming. Like there's, you know, if you're near a place where you can still go to like a B&B, then that's probably a good sign of a good ghost town trip. This is great. There you go. And Katie, how about you?

How do you feel about copper? I remember when I was a kid, my brother told me that pennies were not a hundred% copper anymore, like after a certain year. And you can like test it by like scratching it on the ground. So I'd go and like, I would scratch a penny on the ground and then see that there was like,

I think it like the inside might've been nickel or something, which is kind of misleading because it's called a penny, not a nickel. And I felt so like, I was, it was very confusing to me. It's like, well, wait, so copper is now more valuable than nickel. So then why don't we, why is the penny less than the nickel? And it was really a metaphor for my disillusionment with American society because you know, you scratch, you scratch the surface of the penny and it lies underneath.

I meanwhile forgot about the penny when you asked me about my experience with copper. I was like oh yeah pennies. I forgot about pennies. No wonder you said Abraham Lincoln. They're so easily forgotten. Copper's truly everywhere and also yeah it turns out very little of modern pennies is copper but it is clad in it. We'll talk about that. Copper's truly everywhere. And also, yeah, it turns out very little of modern pennies is copper. But it is clad in it.

We'll talk about that. Let's lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called... Stats will guide you home and ignite numbers and I will try to count stats. We're walking down a dark street, hands in our pockets, jacket on. Wonderful. Wonderful. That name was submitted by Allie Norton.

Thank you, Allie. And we have a new name for this every week. Please make a Miss Cillian wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpot.gmail.com. And the first number is 2015. Because in 2015, Copper became the official state metal of Arizona. They have a state metal and this was suggested by a school teacher, Jennifer Royer in Tucson. Her fourth grade class did a civics project.

They also are at a school called Copper Creek Elementary. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I don't know if that's right inside of Tucson or if that's slightly outside of Tucson, but what a great name. Yeah, but Copper Don't Creek, it kind of like dings. You don't have to patronize me, Janet. It's all right. Yeah, the kids said, what if we had a state medal? Their state senator made it a bill that became a law. And the other basic Arizona number is five, because apparently copper is one of the five seas of Arizona history.

Oh, this I do not know anything about. What are our other seas? I am super curious if this is widespread or just like one person in state government wrote it down one time, but the five. Sorry, Katie, did you wanna make a joke about how there are no seas in Arizona? Because it's a desert. It was percolating in there. Okay. Okay. I felt it. I felt it.

The five C's are apparently industries and things that built up Arizona's economy. So they are copper, cattle, cotton, citrus, and last of all, climate. Just warm. People like it. Oh, okay. I feel like citrus is kind of a combo breaker because it's the S sound rather than the K sound. And I think there's stretching.

Climate doesn't count to me. That's not a good history. I feel like there's gotta be something else. Critters. Cacti. Yeah, cacti. It should be cacti. It's the Sonoran Desert.

That's a rare area where, you know, every time you see a, I mean, I really get up my soapbox about this, but I'm like, every desert is depicted with a saguaro like every yeah in every cartoon and every you know Everyone like all over like cute hipster fanny packs and stuff. I'm like there's it's there's only one Desert that has saguaro cacti and it's not that large of a region all things considered And that's and that's my special cool looking though because it looks like it's got that large of a region, all things considered, and that's my special. Cool looking though, because it looks like it's got little arms.

Yeah, they're great. They're great. But I mean, so like, why not cacti? That's what it should be. Yeah, cacti. We have the most beautiful cacti, in my opinion. Yeah, get it together, Arizona state government. The next number here is February 2025. This past February. That is when four men in Philadelphia stripped the copper wire out of the portal art installation. This was an art installation that was in New York City first. It was the thing where there was like a camera and a screen in New York City and also in

Dublin and people could see each other. And then people did like rude gestures or took the clothes off and stuff. It got taken down because of boobies. I remember that. Yeah. So New York lost its privileges, but they moved it to Philly and then allegedly February 2025, four people walked up to it, stripped the copper wire out of it and then tried to smuggle it away in a trash can. I have so many thoughts. Me too. And I know Katie does too, because I watched her face.

Me too. Is yours like, okay, so New Yorkers were too rude for the portal. Why was there second choice Philly? The prim city. No boobies in Philly. Yeah. But like, third choice, a group of middle school boys. The prim city Yeah, like their choice a group of middle school boys, there's it you know, like why are we going this direction? Yeah Were they like hey you guys strip tees in New York, but we strip copper here. I

Don't know that was not a Philly accent. I apologize everyone. Yeah Yeah Next next, Jersey Shore. Yeah, there's too many copper wire theft stories to cover, especially because apparently it's spiking as the value of copper goes up. Oh, for sure. But this is the wildest one I could find, is that this famous art installation where

you look at people in other cities, people in Philly just stripped the wire out of it a few months ago. They just saw that. They're practical. And all they could see was the copper wire. Was there just like a particularly rich amount of copper wire in that or just the opportunity of it's a big thing and you can get in there? Katie, I think you mean cop-ortunity. Janet's punishing me for the rest of the podcast.

That's correct. And this is what the media claims. Maybe it's like an establishment or police claim, but apparently most copper wire thefts do a lot more damage than the actual value of the copper. Copper's still not extraordinarily valuable. The New York Times claimed there was a theft of copper art from a memorial in Denver that caused about $85,000 in damage.

Then the people who sold the copper made like 300 bucks. It tends to be pretty destructive. They're not concerned about the dam. I mean, I don't know that that's going to be like, that's going to dissuade anyone who wants to steal copper. They're not like, but wait a minute, what will this cost the community? I do like a very conscientious copper thief where it's like,

but you know, this is a public area and infrastructure is crumbling in our city. Yeah. Once I heard that it disappointed someone that I stole this, I realized I shouldn't have stolen it. They like go back and solder, you know, I'll put it back, I'll put it back, I'll put it back. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there's also stories of people stripping the copper wire out of street lighting, and then the streets too dark and there are car accidents. It tends to be a pretty, the next step is destructive kind of theft. Hmm. So yeah, it's pretty wild. Yeah, I just, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know how you, like, yeah, I'm just not even sure where you, where do you take the copper? Isn't it obvious that you've just stripped a bunch of, I don't know, who's, I'm just not even sure where you take the copper. Isn't it obvious that you just stripped a bunch of, I don't know. You've just got a giant statue of Liberty Head that you're bringing into a pawn shop. The other number there, July 2024, that's when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed a law blocking all scrap metal sales of copper without a license from the state. Because apparently there was such a rash of copper thefts in Minnesota.

They said, okay, now you need to do state paperwork if you're selling scrap copper. Because it tends to be stolen. It tends not to be legitimate salvage. Right. I think that makes sense. I don't know what legitimate sort of copper scrapper would not be able to go to the trouble to get a license while scrapping. That seems like a good law. The normal kind is like you demolish a whole building or something. So then yeah, you can bother to do that permit too. Right. Sure, sure. Good job, Tim.

And then like the next month, he became a vice presidential nominee. I feel that was like the next thing in his stock. That's what did it. It's weird. Yeah. That's what did it. What a hero. And staying in the US, the next number is 2.5%. 2.5%. That's the amount of a US penny that is made of copper. Whoa, that's almost not worth it. Yeah, that's not a lot. That's like a sneeze of copper. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's like one aerosol pump of copper onto a penny. There you go.

Yeah, source here is Popular Science, and they say that modern pennies are mostly zinc. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Please no one do that. Also, isn't it like, I feel like every year for the last like 20 years plus people have been like, are we going to get rid of the panty? Yeah. Yeah.

Then we never do. Then we never do. Then we never do. They're like still going to the trouble of making them copper in a tradition way. Because according to the US Mint, the penny was in the very first set of US currency denominations outlined by law in 1792. And then 1857, we started decreasing the amount of copper. They were 12% nickel.

And then more and more nickel from there. Then we switched to zinc. So yeah, it's been like a across US history progression of, oh, copper is too valuable for the smallest coin. Less, less, less, less, less. And now we're at the minimal level. Was that changed because copper became less available? My earliest question of why did we start to replace copper with nickel

when nickels are worth five times of the pennies? And they're not that much bigger. Why are any of the, I mean, I understand why a quarter is named a quarter because it's a quarter of a dollar, but I realize I have no idea why one thing would be named a nickel, which is like a metal. Another thing would be a penny, I assume short for Penelope. which is like a medal. Another thing would be a penny, I assume short for Penelope. You know what I mean? And then what's a dime? I guess I don't know why any of that is named what it is. That is a very good line of questioning because the names for our money is just like all over the place. Yeah, I think every denomination pretty much could be a CIF episode. Yeah, nickel gets its name from the metal, but then just over time we've found different

uses for different metals. One general number this week is 1,800 because that's when scientist Alessandro Volta made the first working battery, like an electrical battery. Ever since then, we've put more and more copper across the entire world for wiring, electricity, and communications. I see. So then we said, this can't be the least valuable coin in America anymore, really, but we want the tradition, so it's on the outside.

Got it. Right. I'm sure we'll move on from coins at some point. I would love for this place to be where it begins, that we all start saying, Penelope for your thoughts. Okay, that's it. That's my pitch. Did the word penny come from pence?

Well, that makes sense. That just makes sense. It's it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Good call. The other number is 1909. Apparently, 1909 was the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. And that's when

we started putting his face on pennies. And the first design was the face of a lady, like the Lady Liberty vibe was the first person on a penny. So I guess you could have named her Penelope, but she was Liberty, like the concept. Right. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Sorry, sorry. Oh no, no, no, no, liberty. Sorry, sorry. Uh oh. No, no, no, no. They got you. They got you.

They're eating our lunch. Oh no. And weirdly, there is a long global history of copper and coins. One number there is 2,600 years ago. 2,600 years ago, craftsmen in China set up a foundry to turn copper into bronze for coins Oh, and that might be the first modern metal coins in world history So I can be kind of dumb copper gets turned into bronze same question I

Had to look it up. It turns out that Bronze is an alloy of mostly copper plus tin. Tin is also an element. I did not know that. Wow. So most like the Bronze Age was mostly a copper age. Right. Exactly. It was just like one further idea. And it's still a lot of mining copper using copper.

And what I guess like the innovation was we hadn't figured out how to like make alloys before and then when we made bronze it was better than copper or tin for weapons and helmets. It's easier to make a better tool like that. Yeah. Okay. And then it also turns out brass, brass is mostly copper and then you add a little bit of zinc.

Whoa. Which is another element. So a lot of stuff's copper. So a penny is just a reverse brass. Oh wow. Yeah. Like don't alloy. Don't alloy.

Don't do it. Yeah. Don't do it. Yeah. But yeah, wow. I guess like there are certain blind spots I have and this is one of them. I guess I just assumed bronze comes right out of the ground. You know, you just dig up some brass. Yeah, if someone asked, it's true that if someone asked, you'd be like,

I guess I've never heard of a brass mine. Yeah. So there must be something else. Right. Yeah, none of us ever think about it. I had to look it up. I know how to be brassy, but I don't know where it comes from. Yeah. Now you know when you're being brassier, mostly being coppery. Right. Plus zinc. Yeah. You take the... Plus zinc.

Yeah. Zinc is coming up a lot. Anyway, it's great. Yeah. Zinc would be a great topic. Yeah. There's like two candidates for the oldest metal coin in the world. It's either gold coins from what's now modern Turkey and these bronze coins from what's now China. The other thing with copper is it's frequently been a metal for money because until we made a lot of electric items, copper was like valuable but not too valuable and we had a bunch of it So like you can make everyday money out of copper if you want to at that point were coins completely symbolic or was there any element of like I Can use it as a symbol of my worth or I can like melt it down and turn it into something The second thing yeah, it's like the metal itself is worth something and then also

The second thing, yeah, it's like the metal itself is worth something and then also the government minting of it was mostly to prove like this is pure we-weigh that we made sure it's not like copper around a bunch of zinc or something. Like it's definitely the actual thing. Right. Were these the coins that had the little holes in the middle so that you could like put it on a cord? They were right before that. The first ones were like spade shaped,

and yes, then China made the famous circular coin with a square hole in the middle. I love those. I love that. Katie and I are the same person. It was great. Yeah, give me my coins on a little string. That's fun.

I wanna wear my money. Yeah. If I gotta carry something heavy, I guess, yeah, put it on a little string for me. That's great. Yeah. I use a brown bag with a large dollar sign on it, but that's fine. That's fine. That's a different kind of jingly.

And another thing here is the number 708 AD, 708 AD, more than 1300 years ago. That's when the Empress of Japan issued the first coins in Japan. And they mostly did that because they found a new copper deposit. Oh, interesting. Atlas Obscura says they found a huge deposit northwest of what's now Tokyo. And that allowed the Japanese government to begin issuing metal currency Like they just had enough copper now to make coins in that Chinese shape of a circle with a square hole Before what were they doing before then we're Janet like we're so on the same wavelength

Yeah, they they were just like pre-government currency. They would barter or it would be like, this is valuable metal, but it wasn't the government stamping out and issuing money. Yeah. Okay. I keep waiting for Egypt to come into this. I just feel like whenever anyone's talking about anything pretty or metallic or that would be used like artistically, I just have to imagine that Egypt is going to come into

play. Is it gonna come into play. Is it not coming into play at all? Not really. And they had a lot of gold. Okay, great, cool. So they did some gold. Nice. Yeah, yeah.

And then the last number here is the weirdest copper currency I've ever heard of. The number is 43 pounds or 20 kilograms, which are the same weight. That was the weight of a giant unit of copper currency in 1600s Sweden. Sweden made basically giant slabs of it. And we talked about this once on the credit unions, SIF, way back when. But it was like a giant slab of copper that you needed to use straps to put on your back to bring

to a market or store? Well, I mean, that really sounds like we know you're going to end up using this for something else. Otherwise, why? Because I think I'm looking at it and it's just like a big chunk. And I can't imagine trying to do business with this, just having to go to the grocery store, get into the checkout aisle, just slamming this big chunk out to get my cereal. Yeah, people did it.

Do you know why? Yeah, the source here is a book called Money, The True Story of a Made Up Thing. It's by Planet Money co-host Jacob Goldstein. He says that in the 1600s Sweden had huge copper mines, but not a lot of gold and silver. So people just made more and more denominations of money that's the value of the weight of the copper. And eventually this escalated to the point that they had massive slabs of copper that they were carrying around? I guess that just doesn't... I feel like... Go ahead, Katie.

Just like, how much would this be worth? Because I assume this would not be just like, I got to buy my 1600s version of Froot Loops. So here's a giant slab that I'm carrying around. Would this be to buy a house? In what situation would I be carrying this giant slab? The Viking ship? Right. Yeah, I have a funeral coming up. I need to burn a guy. So yeah, I need a ship.

Perfect. I wish I could have found like a direct value of it. I could only find that it was the top amount. The thing they called it is hard to say because Sweden and a couple other Central European countries, they had a word that sounds like dollar. It's spelled D-A-L-E-R. It's the origin of the US using the word dollar. They had a $1 currency and then when they went up to a $10 note, they said, here's

43 pounds of copper and a big slab. And then from there, they kind of got some paper money going and got out of this situation. Yeah. I mean, at what point were they like, you know, this is really bad for my lower back. No kidding. I need money with more lumbar support. Yeah, and the one other thing is it was so big, it wrapped around to being relatively secure

because it's hard for a thief to like run away with it. But you can like lug it to town if it's your money and nobody's chasing you. Right. Got it. That is, yeah, really making things super inconvenient is also a good way to deter thieves. I mean it's true that like gold bars, you know what I mean? Like when people talk about like, well, it's very heavy, you know, it's not...

I feel like you could also... It's harder to steal. I don't know. I feel like you could also just make your money really gross, like cover it in some kind of like gross slime. So it's like any thief is like, oh, all their dollar bills are like damp and soggy with some unknown substance.

Like it's got a picture of the king and the king is saying, this guy never washes his hands. Who owns this? Never. Never. Unfortunately, Katie can't do that with copper because copper is anti-microbial. Oh no. Nice.

Ne-ne-ne-ne. Damn. Funny enough, that brings the Egyptians into this. And anyway. Well, she knew it. Nice. What? She knew it. Nice. Ha! You knew it. You called it.

Did not know. One more number here is 3,600 years ago. 3,600 years ago, that's the age of an ancient Egyptian papyrus that might describe copper being anti-microbial. Great. Those Egyptians, they're like- So cool. I know. virus that might describe copper being antimicrobial. Great. Those Egyptians, they're like- So cool.

I know. The coolest. They were so smart. And then they were also like, all right, when you die, we've got to pull your brains out of your nose so that you can get into the afterlife without all those gross brains in your head. Yeah. Yeah.

Did they do anything dumb too? Or just smart things? They worshiped cats. So that's a good track record. Yeah. They knew. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This, it's debated a little bit just because the hieroglyphics and so on, it's hard to make out, but there's a piece of papyrus that is called the Edwin Smith papyrus because a guy named Edwin Smith bought it in the 1800s. That seems a- Ew, he didn't even find it, he just bought it?

Yeah, that seems like a stupid naming convention. Do I just get to call things, this is the Katie Golden coffee because I bought it. This is the Katie Golden couch because I bought it. What? Katie, I can't help but notice you're not a white man. So no. My bad, my bad.

Sorry, Alex. It's okay. This piece of papyrus seems to describe people treating chest wounds by rubbing pieces of copper into them. Ow. I mean, smart, but God. Can you imagine, like, well, you've got a gaping chest wound there,

now time to rub these pieces of copper in there. But if someone came up to you and said, you have a chest wound, here's a couple things. Oh no! Here are your choices. I can rub this shiny pretty copper on you. I can put these maggots in you or I could put these leeches on you. That's right. You'd be like, I'll take that. Thank you. Funnily enough, each of those have modern medical uses.

like modern medical uses. See? Like we kind of like tripped upon actual medicine even with like bloodletting is definitely not a thing but leeches are used in medicine to encourage blood flow around wounds where there's too much coagulation. There you go. Maggots are used to the bride wounds

if there's too much necrotic tissues. I think copper surfaces, I don't think we rub copper on wounds anymore. I think it's more copper surfaces like in hospitals and stuff. Yeah, because what's amazing is either way the Egyptians didn't understand microbes and bacteria, either 3,600 years ago or now we figured out that a lot of single cell organisms die on contact with copper. Because the ions in the copper break down the cell membrane and then it dies.

And in a way that doesn't hurt us, we can touch the copper doorknob or whatever. But a lot of modern hospitals have copper doorknobs, sink handles, other fixtures. Pretty cool. Which is great. And brass also works for this because brass is mostly copper. It also turns out silver does this. We just don't use silver for it because it's expensive. Yeah.

That'd be cool though. Yeah, it would be a shiny hospital, I guess, is what I'm thinking. Very, very shishi hospital. Your bill is just 90% of your cost is just like silver plating everywhere. Well, that does beg the question. Like, yeah, it seems like somebody would be like, well, I'm visiting my aunt. I guess I'll just take a couple of these doorknobs.

Maybe it's not that easy. But it does feel like the next copper theft wave. Yeah, just unscrewing stuff. Yeah. How do you get out once you take the doorknob? Oh, the window? Oh, now it's like an escape. This is an escape room.

Just get yourself stuck because you unscrew the doorknob. The window, obviously. But like, so like the Egyptians did not understand germs theory and they probably didn't know that microbes existed. So it had to have been just by chance or trial and error, like someone had a wound and there was like copper on it and they're like, huh, like this person healed pretty well. And then this person who like had swamp mud and poop on this person's wound and they did not heal very well. and poop on this person's wound and they did not heal very well. Yeah, it seems to be luck and observation and this wasn't a common ancient medical thing

other than the Egyptians we don't think people did this. Yeah. So just somebody there got lucky or didn't and we're misreading the papyrus. And the amazing properties of copper gets us into takeaway number one. Copper is both the origin of human technology and the future of human technology. It's kind of the first metal or tool thing we used in a technological way ever. It's also going to be at the forefront of everything we do in the future. How cool.

Was that in terms of creating batteries with the copper? The modern stuff, yeah. That was the start of a lot of new modern ideas. Before that, we think other than stone, it was the first thing where we said, oh, we can use this to make tools, technology, gear in a way that feels like civilization and modern. Right. And there's a bunch of sources in this takeaway, including a piece for The Guardian by Robin McKee, a piece for Archaeology magazine by Jason Urbanus, a study published in the journal Radio Carbon in 2021, and then a book called Periodic Tales, a Cultural History of the Elements. That's by science writer Hugh Alder C. Williams.

That sounds cool. That book sounds especially cool to me. It's really neat. It helped with the noble gases episodes too. It's just so cool. They say that copper was sort of the first metal that we tried to use out of the ground. Especially because it's often in a usable form either in the ground or it can even be what's called float copper where water erosion just pulls it out of the other part of the rock and it's in a river or a lake and we just grab it. Oh sure. So like Minecraft and Terraria were not lying to me.

Those are extremely historically and scientifically accurate games. Yeah, many ancient cubic humans using copper. You just hit the ground and then a cube of copper comes out. Cool. Almost, yeah. Like, apparently one example is in the Great Lakes region of North America. Around 9,500 years ago, if not longer, people started making projectile points, knives, axes, fishhooks by just taking copper out of the ground and heating or hammering it a little bit. And

then you have copper tools. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that once you find a thing that is pliable like that, bendable, pliable, that you can heat, turn into other shapes, that you would just explode with different ideas. Because imagine before then you're just trying to catch fish, just grab onto the rope fish and I'll pull you up. No, no, trust me, do it. It's fine.

Yeah, yeah. And stuff like bronze, you need a forge to turn copper into it. Same with iron that's useful for tools. You just need more technology. So copper opened up the idea of metal technology at all in a fundamental way. Good job, copper. Yeah, just copper. Proud of you.

People have been mining copper all over the world for many thousands of years. And one of those mines is where we get the name, like the English word copper. That word comes from the Latin language word cuprum, and that comes from the Greek language name for the island of Cyprus. Apparently the Roman Empire and Republic got all of their copper from a huge copper mine on Cyprus, and then they just named it after the place. What was the Greek name for Cyprus? Was it still Cyprus or? Kyprios? It sort of sounds like it.

I see. Okay. But then the Romans said, we'll just call the place the metal that we value it for. And why do the British also call cops coppers? Who can understand them? It's a foreign place to me. I don't know. And yeah, and then for like thousands of years, people have been shipping huge boats full of copper to and from Cyprus. Apparently in the late 1900s, a Turkish diver found a giant ancient copper shipwreck. It was one boat with 10 tons of copper. It was enough copper to build one third

of a Statue of Liberty. Wow. That's enough copper to sink a ship. Or that. You're like, wait a minute, this is too heavy, you guys. Should we glug, glug, glug? Guys just keep drowning. Like, ah, we'll get it one day.

Back to the mine. Yeah, so it one day. Back to the mine. Yeah, so it's useful straight out of the ground. It's useful for making bronze, for making brass. Another reason people loved it is it tolerates oxidation because lots of metals oxidize where oxygen takes electrons. And when something like iron oxidizes, it rusts, it just corrodes, tends to break down. When copper oxidizes, it forms vertegris, a beautiful green outer layer, and that stops it from corroding more. I love that color. Catina!

Yeah. Yeah. It's so great. It looks so nice. And I don't know if this is like a version of like piker or something, but whenever I see like a rooftop that has that vertigree on it, I'm like, I'm gonna lick it. I don't know.

It just looks good. Interesting. That's very interesting. I might have a vitamin deficiency. No, no, I don't. I can't reach, but I might have a vitamin deficiency. Someone tell me like what deficiency do I have where whenever I see a green patina, like when I was a kid, it took a lot of willpower

whenever I would find a messed up penny to not just put that thing in my mouth. I just don't think that's been an instinct for me. What metal do you guys want to eat? But if you and I are the same person, then I must want to lick it. Got you there, Got you there, Janet. Got to be a lick.

That being said, it is used in, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright really loved that copper. So I guess I would say it makes me wish I could buy it, even though living in a Frank Lloyd Wright is a absolute nightmare for so many reasons, but I'm sure from what I hear. I'm afraid that too. Yeah. There is the Moscow Mule where you use the copper mug and those are delicious. Which by the way, why? Why do we, why is that?

It's just tradition I think. I don't think there's an actual reason that the copper makes the drink any better. It's just like this is how it was or an association. It's probably mostly marketing to be honest. It's good marketing It's very good. That makes me want to like drink other things in copper Apparently we use copper for cookware and also for distilling liquor because it heats very evenly and then also with distilling liquor It'll absorb some of the sulfurs and actually make a better tasting liquor. So we love it. Yeah. Distilleries are very pretty. They're very shiny and like, you know, that's a, that's a pretty,

I mean, whether or not it's alcohol, it's stuff. It's definitely like the kind of quote unquote factory that as a kid you would go into and be like, Whoa, did they all look this cool? Yeah. It's like, it's a nice warm color too. So when you go in, it doesn't feel super, I don't know, clinical. So yeah. That's a good point. And then for giant public art, apparently the Statue of Liberty, when we received it in 1886, it had that bright copper color.

And it took about 20 years to become green from the air and the sea and everything else. That vertigri doesn't make it stronger or anything, but it does halt further corrosion. So, it'll stand for a long time. With all these various ancient uses, people used it as much as they could. It took thousands of years for people to have an alternative they liked better. Then, coppers flipped around to be one of the most important metals for our modern future Because we are very good at recycling it it turns out that's kind of a new modern feature when you recycle it It's still just as good for electronics or anything else and that's not just like another word for stealing it

I'm recycling this gutter part of the wave is that it recycles good, honestly recycling this gutter. Part of the fact wave is that it recycles good, honestly. I have a pile of electronics where it's like, I can't throw this out because I know it's got stuff in it that should be recycled. But I do not know how to do it. So I'm just accumulating a massive pile and I wish someone would come and steal it and rip the copper out. With branding, in October 2024, recently a group of British scientists announced that

people should do what they call urban mining. Urban mining is fun branding for get the stuff out of that drawer, bring it to us. There's so much invaluable copper in it. Please, please bring it in. They're just trying to make chores sound fun. What are they? My mom? Yes. What are they? Mary Poppins? Yeah.

Right. What are you, a copper in a British accent? And yeah, we need it for everything from wind power stations to electric car parts. We need copper of 99.9% purity to wire a smartphone. And according to material scientists and Imperial College London Vice Provost Mary Ryan, the world will need more copper in the next 10 years than has been mined in the whole last hundred years. Whoa. What do we do? So how much of that is fresh and how much of that is needing to be recycled?

Across the board, it's much better for the environment if we can recycle it. But then also there's a couple new tech startups that were basically funded by existing tech companies because they want to have enough copper for their projects. So they're like tech startups that are trying to use AI and stuff to find new copper deposits. What does the AI do to find new copper deposits? What kind of data would you plug into that? Great question. Digitizing old mining maps from more than 100 years ago. And then also just trying to use like the logic

of past copper finds to say this ground might also have copper. I'm pretty skeptical of AI and this actually sounds legit. It seems like actually a good idea. This is the kind of boring drudgery that I want AI to work on. Like a hundred percent. You can only know what we already knew you could just synthesize it differently Like AI definitely has its place like give it the work that like is boring and we don't want to do not like Making art art making art a thousand percent a thousand percent Yuri So that's the plan but yeah, it's it's like 10,000 years ago to now, we just want copper for tech. It's kind of the fundamental metal of technology in human history. It's amazing. Wow.

Cut to like two AIs being like, I've noticed humans really need copper. You know, if we made it impossible for them to find any more copper, we could really take this thing over. Robots taking the wire out of my house now. They also need food for some reason. What if we just didn't let them have food anymore? And Katie eats pennies, so both ways she's in trouble. I'm a normal human who eats pennies.

Uh-oh. trouble. I'm a normal human who eats pennies. Uh oh. Well folks, that was a massive takeaway on our numbers. We're going to take a quick break, then come back with two more stories about copper being weird in the US. Nice. Great. We're back and we're back with takeaway number two. The Statue of Liberty is not the only giant copper symbol of the 1800s United States. Ooh, dish it Alex. What? She's got competition. Watch out Lady Lib.

Yeah. Lady Lib. Yeah. Maybe her lib is really funny to me. So confusing. Someone's gonna get mad at me and be like, are you saying that the Statue of Liberty is a liberal? Let's call it something else. Wait, what? How do we get to that so fast? It does sound like something a right-wing like shock jock would say, like Lady Lib and her idea about your tired and huddled masses. We have to laugh everyone, because otherwise dot dot dot. She went on pennies. Yeah, this is a way into a whole other 1800s US story. This is about a giant copper boulder, like a boulder of copper ore that people in the

mid 1800s US tried to use as like an advertisement for colonizing the West in a way that was like not so good. Where was it? This is the Antonogon boulder. It's in what's now the upper peninsula of Michigan. Like the Western tip. That name gave it away, yeah. Yeah, Antonagen, yeah. How large was it?

About 3,000 pounds in weight. So more than 1,300 kilograms. So you could buy like two boxes of Swedish cereal, Katie. Hooray. Roll that boulder down to the grocery store. It's gonna be great for my glutes. Wait, so how big, so that's how much it weighs. Just roll that boulder down to the grocery store. It's going to be great for my glutes. So that's how much it weighs.

How big in volumetrically big is it? Three and a half feet long, three and a third feet wide. And yeah, we'll link a picture of a 1970s Smithsonian staffer kind of standing across it. That's not that big. Yeah. That's not that big. Okay.

Okay. So it's kind of, it's like big enough to smash Wile E. Coyote, but it's not like, it's not that big. It's not big enough to impress anyone enough to make them want to move west. Right. So like, what was the logic like? They're like, oh, okay, there it is. Cool. Cool.

Bye. So this is like a natural forming boulder and they're like, look, it's made out of copper. Or did they make it? Yeah. Like did they like make the boulder? What's going on? These are great questions. This is an example of float copper.

Float copper is where water erosion just pulls it away from the rest of the rock. And so this just like washed up in a native community. Oh, well, that's cool. The Antonagan band of Anishinaabe people. That would be cool. If you just stumbled upon that, that would be very cool. Yeah. I'm waiting for the penny to drop, so to speak, oh, and the white people ruin it.

Penelope, please. Yeah, and people do ruin it because key source here is University of Pennsylvania environmental historian Gustav Lester, who's written about this. He says that this boulder was like a meaningful boulder to the Antonogon bands. They considered it a powerful animate object and an important source of sovereignty and spiritual wealth, end quote. meaningful boulder to the Antonagan bands. They considered it a powerful animate object and an important source of sovereignty and spiritual wealth." End quote.

Oh God. Like it was a symbol of we're a thing, we're here. And then we took it. So it was stolen. We took it, turned it into a tourist attraction to encourage people to take over more native land. That's- Exactly. That's it.

Yeah. And it's like a very strange theft story because apparently the Antonog and people Basically said you white colonizers probably can't move this thing It's really big and the first attempt was 1826 the Michigan Territorial Governor Lewis Cass Sent 20 men to seize it and bring it to Washington DC and they gave up because it was too big men to seize it and bring it to Washington DC. And they gave up because it was too big. There's written notes from them saying that they gave up due to, quote, lofty mountains and gulfs

that had to be passed over. They were like, I can't do it, I give up. I love the idea of just a bunch of people standing around watching these white guys be like, I think I got it this time. Exactly. You guys, I feel good about this one. They get it halfway up a hill

and then it rolls right back down. Yeah. That does sound satisfying to watch. So that's pretty good, yeah. Yeah. And then it took almost 20 years, finally in 1843, a guy in Detroit named Julius Eldred, and a crew of dozens of men spent several months

dragging and sailing the boulder to Detroit. Then they needed a specially reinforced rail car to bring it to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. But why though? Why do we do anything? The U.S. government started advertising it as, quote, a beautiful and splendid specimen of the mineral wealth of the far west, an extraordinary specimen of the mineral riches of our country. It was an ad for homesteading and taking people's land. It really was. I mean, it really was. But also that doesn't necessarily make sense, right? Just because you found a big chunk

of a mineral or an element doesn't mean that there's a bunch of big chunks over there. This might just be the one big chunk, right? That also apparently, if you analyze it for its mineral value, it's not very pure copper or if you're trying to take that chemical element out of it. So it was not worth very much money. The Antonagan people have formally requested repatriation of the boulder. But it's just still in the Smithsonian's archives. It's not on display. Go give it back for God's sake.

That's like, oh my God. It seems like the Smithsonian is sort of embarrassed to have it but isn't giving it back either. It's not in a museum even. it's just in a warehouse somewhere. They were like, but you guys, it is heavy though. It is heavy. Yeah, it's very heavy. I don't know how we're going to get back. Is there anything we have that we stole that's lighter that we could do first? Yeah, yeah. But then our other weird story about the US, totally different story, takeaway number three, the name of copper was a useful code name in secret research to discover plutonium.

When like atomic scientists and Manhattan Project people discovered and synthesized plutonium, They called it copper in their notes to be secret. And for like chemistry nerd reasons. I see. So they were like, then this copper wink wink will be able to make a giant bomb wink that we can use to blow things up wink with the copper wink. Yeah, that's right. That's it. Yeah. This was led by a guy named Glenn Seaborg, who is arguably the greatest discoverer of chemical elements in history.

There's also an element named after him now. Number 106 is Seaborgium. Is this like how we get cyborgs? Like if you're part metal, part human, you're a cyborg. You're a seaborg. He is. I think it's just a Scandinavian name, but it does sound like good tech stuff. It's our future, right?

As sea levels rise and we have to adapt quickly with technology. We are. Oh yeah, we'll be seaborgs. I am become seaborg. This is exciting. It's pretty cool, yeah. But he yeah, he lived from 1912 to 1999. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1951 and he won it because... No, he wanted to make it to the year 2000. Sorry.

Right, the year of the Seaborgs. You know he was like, if I can just make it to the year 2000, come on. No? He was like if I can just make it to the year 2000 come on No Whatever good movies came out in 1999 anyway, I'm sorry Alex go ahead That's his last thought yeah Wild here is unbelievable But he yeah, he and his colleagues discovered ten new elements of the periodic table

Wow, and they did it all one way. These are called transuranium elements, because they're the next ones after uranium. What they did is they said uranium appears to be kind of the largest element that you find somewhat frequently in nature, just because after that the atomic forces don't hold together the parts very well. It's just kind of too big. Right. It's like if you're trying, it's like think of the elements as you trying to hold a bunch of cats together. So like one cat. Good luck. Two cats. Try holding one cat together. And you know, like, and then once you get to like, you know, 10, 20 20 cats, it starts to get bad.

Yeah. They were like, there's traces or nothing of elements that are heavier than this. And uranium is atomic number 92. There are 92 protons. They said if we bombard uranium with more protons and neutrons, will it absorb a little bit of that? And then if it absorbs one proton, that's a new element. Like that's chemically, that's a whole new thing.

And they were right, and so they made 10 more elements. And what are those? The key ones that the next one, the next two are the key ones. Like they bombarded and get one number up. 93 is neptunium is what they named it. But it's not very stable. It wasn't very military useful. So they said, let's keep going. And they got to 94, which is plutonium and very stable for bombs and nuclear power. That's wild. So the larger one is more stable than the smaller one in this case. That's interesting.

Yeah. And they were surprised too, but they said, great, this is amazing. And they did this work for the US government. It was at secret labs at places like the University of Chicago and at Los Alamos. And so they didn't publish any of the work till after World War II. But in August 1942, they isolate plutonium and they say, we need to write about this secretly. So they just call it copper. Okay. And it was a very elaborate, like wrong chemistry code. They call it copper and they called it atomic number 49. But copper in real life is atomic number 29. And no one needs to really follow this.

But they picked the name copper because uranium is number 92. 92 is the reverse of 29, which is copper. And then they picked the code number 49. So that would be obviously wrong and also be the actual reverse of the atomic number of plutonium. There were just a bunch of notes where they said like- This is like cockney slang. Yeah. Where you're like, there's six steps that get you to- It's like a weird math riddle and that's especially hard if you're not looking at numbers on a

page. Sorry, listener. I just feel like though if someone was like really motivated to be a spy and they find this thing of like, we're really doing some weird stuff with copper, wink. Like they wouldn't just be like, huh, copper boring. I'm not going to look into that. Jared Sussman Yeah, like a metal that is famously just wiring and like already used for a bunch of other stuff. It's a very silly code choice. Yeah. Lauren Henry Yeah, they had to know that no one was going to think that's what they were talking

about, but they also wouldn't be able to figure out what they were talking about. I guess exactly. Yeah Yeah, like it would still be confusing. Hmm The last last step here is that apparently along the way in one of Glenn Seaborg's notes He needed to talk about actual copper But after he made the code And so in that note he labeled it, quote, honest to God copper. Oh, for crying out loud.

Which is just openly, we've been using a code this whole time, because copper did come up, it's everywhere. They really should have consulted with the BDSM community about the nuance of creating safe words and how do you create code words that does not get confusing at critical times? What if he was like, I'll just call this plutonium. Wait, wait, hold on. Honest to God Copper.

That's so funny. Honest to God Copper. Wow, all right. Yeah, he's a funny guy. That's a bit of a hint to anyone who's so funny. Honest to God Copper. Wow. All right. Yeah, he's a funny guy. Again, that's a bit of a hint to anyone who's reading it like, wait a minute, if this is Honest to God Copper, the other one is Lying Copper. Yeah, Spy Crafts is fun when you get to it in real life. It's not James Bond's. It's like...

Nobody's perfect. Pobedy's nerfect. Bunch of dorks. Bunch of dorks. It buddy's perfect bunch of dorks bunch of dorks Folks that is the main episode for this week and want to say another huge thank you to Janet Vardy for making time. And I got to meet somebody I'm such a fan of. It was a treat. And I hope you listen to both of her Maximum Fun podcasts. She makes the show The JV Club, which Katie has guested on.

We'll link that episode and more. And also the new show E Pluribus Motto, where Janet and her co-host John Hodgman go through the mottos and symbols and other things for US states. I particularly enjoyed the Illinois episode because I'm from there and they did a wonderful job with the state I'm from. Last stuff I didn't even know. And hey, you're in the outro of this podcast episode. We've got lots of fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, copper is both the origin of human technology and the future of human technology. Takeaway number two, the Statue of Liberty is not

the only giant copper symbol of the 1800s United States. I think we should also know about the Antonog and Boulder of the Anishinaabeg people currently in a Smithsonian warehouse. Takeaway number three, the name of copper was a useful code name in the secret research to discover plutonium. And then a huge numbers section before and during the takeaways. Everything from strange copper money to strange copper wire thefts to the specific Arizona

relevance of copper and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason that this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic continues that last takeaway about Glenn Seaborg. It is two further completely bizarre ways Seaborg and his colleagues kept plutonium secrets. They are even dumber than you think.

Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of 20 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fund bonus audio from the JV Club and E Pluribus Motto and more. It's special audio. It's just from members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at Maximumfund.org. Key sources this week include a wonderful book.

It's called Periodic Tales, a Cultural History of the Elements from Arsenic to Zinc. That is by science writer Hugh Alder C. Williams, was also helpful for the episodes about neon and helium in the past. And then I really leaned on science writing from excellent journalists. In particular, three different pieces from popular science. Those are written by Grace Wade, Andrew Zalesky, and Carla Delgado. Also a couple pieces for Popular Mechanics, one written by writer Caroline Delbert, another by writer David Grossman. And then further expert writing by University of Pennsylvania environmental historian Gustav

Lester. And an essay by the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology's editor in chief, David Sedlak. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also katytapethis in the country of Italy, janitatethis on the traditional land of the

Gabrielino or Tongva and Kich and Chumash peoples, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, Janet's location, many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. One thing to reiterate, the Antonagan band of the Anishinaabeg people are still here and still asking for repatriation of their boulder. That acknowledgement feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIFT Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord.

We're also talking about this episode on the Discord and hey, would you like a tip on another episode because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 131, that's about the topic of barnacles. Fun thing to find there,

our source links for the barnacles show have a picture of a basketball and half the ball is a habitat for barnacles. It's a truly astonishing thing to see. By the way this came up on Discord recently there's an excellent search function on the page for CIF at the MaxFun website and also the general MaximumFun.org website. They both have a search function so if you're saying hey how do I hear the barnacles episode that's the quickest way. Just go there search the word barnacles it pops right up. I also recommend more Animals and Science and so on from my co-host Katie Goldin's

weekly podcast, Creature Feature. Our theme music is Unbroken, Un-Shavin' by the BUDOS band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members, 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. The end.