Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Stainless Steel

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer Joey Clift ('Spirit Rangers' on Netflix, short film 'My First Native American Boyfriend') and podcaster Nnekay FitzClarke ('Minority Korner' podcast) for a look at why stainless steel is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Stainless steel, known for being shiny, famous for no stains. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why stainless steel 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 wonderful guests this week. I'm joined by Joey Clift and Neneke Fitzclark. Joey is a frequent guest on the show. You may remember him from one of the first ever episodes about microwave ovens. He was also on a more recent episode about Antarctica, and he also contributed some

research to that one, which was great, really helpful. And Joey is a writer for the upcoming Netflix animated show Spirit Rangers. That's a fantasy adventure show mainly aimed at kids, has an all-native writer's room, and it just looks really good. Like, the art looks amazing, and I can't wait to see it. I hope you check out Spirit Rangers later this year, 2022. And then Aneke Fitzclark is a new guest. She was a longtime co-host of Minority Corner, which was a great podcast. It's Corner with a K. It's on the Maximum Fun Network, and they did 350 episodes just wrapped recently. She's also a professional librarian in her, not spare time, just career time, and an absolute blast to talk to.

Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledged Joey recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledged Neneke recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and K'iche and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Neneke recorded this on the traditional land of the Muwekma and Ohlone 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 stainless steel, which is the top patron chosen

topic for the month of July. Many, many thanks to friend of the show, Roger Sobey, for that wonderful suggestion. Thank you, Roger. Yet another great idea from you folks. We have all heard of stainless steel, and I barely even knew what it was before researching this, right? It's all over my world. Now I get to know what the heck is going on. Right? It's all over my world. Now I get to know what the heck is going on with it and why it is the title of this podcast. So please sit back or stare at your reflection in the shiny tines of a fork because you want a very challenging reflection situation. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Joey Clift and

Neneke Fitzclark. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Neneke, Joey, it is so good to have you both. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start. But how do you feel about stainless steel? Okay, so my opinion of the topic is I don't like it one bit.

You think you're too good for stains? What's your problem, steel? You big shot metal, you. My connection to stainless steel, I had to think about this one a little bit. And I think that where I landed after looking at the Wikipedia page is stainless steel. There was some involvement between stainless steel and Sheffield, England. I think that might have been a prominent origin location for stainless steel. And, um, when I was wrapping up college, I was one of those jerks that decided that I wanted to do like a study abroad. So I, um, so I,

you know, took out $20,000 worth of student loan debt just to do this study abroad in the financially prominent and great times of 2009. So that was probably a bad move. And my parents, like, you know, I love my parents, but they're not very, like, traveled people. They haven't traveled around the world. They haven't been to a ton of countries outside of the United States. So I think that this was like a stressful thing for them that, you know, their little, I'm the youngest, their little baby boy for them that, you know, their little, I'm the youngest, their little baby boy was leaving the country. So I remember the day that my dad was driving me to SeaTac airport in Washington to drop me off in his work truck, you know, with my backpack and my passport, you know, ready to leave

the country for a couple months after we hugged, said we loved each other. I started walking toward the terminal and then he stopped me and then he gave me like a Sheffield pocket knife. Oh, and I have no idea why he gave this to me other than him just being like, you're going to need this in Europe. So defense, man. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't it was one of those things where it's like where it's like, OK, dad. And then I like put it in my backpack and was like, oh, cool. I guess I have this pocket knife in England. It's like not a it's like a little baby it's like an inch and a half or something like that um but it's like i pretty much just i didn't really use it for

anything when i was in england other than just like opening cans of soda because i have baby fingers that bruise easy yeah that's such a european connection right like here's a european knife for going to europe you'll need one of their weapons yeah yeah yeah yeah it's definitely like oh yeah this this thing does like plus two damage against the queen or something hey yeah final boss yeah i still need i need to ask my dad like why did you give me that knife? Did you want me to, like, fight the queen or something? I don't know. What was this for? Maybe pass down, you know?

Could have been, like, your ancient, maybe you are the direct heir to stainless steel. You never know. That pocket knife could be. I wish. I'm a Native American, so I don't think I'm the direct heir to stainless steel. But I, look, they owe us. They owe me for taking my people's land they owe me just like five percent ownership over this garbage metal one pocket knife at a time

yes exactly i have no relation i mean like wow how do I follow that? I was just going to say pots and pans and cheap jewelry. That's the only thing that I remember. Wait, can you buy stainless steel jewelry? Is that a thing? All the backings to earrings, like the ones that aren't going to turn your ears green, from what I remember. You got to look and it's like stainless steel. And you're like, OK, this is going to last me at least two months from Claire's, you know, like it's, that's the kind of thing that

you look for is like a stainless steel kind of at least dipped in or covered in or something like stainless steel is going to keep you protected from the green and then pots and pans. Always. I noticed with stainless steel, they do get stained like water droplets on stainless steel. Like I'm never like pulling out a stainless steel pot and being like, wow, this flash is so bright. My eyes, I need sunglasses. Like, no, they get drippy too. And as a librarian, I wanted to be surprised. I've listened to the show. I want to hear all the facts. So I did look at the Wikipedia page quickly, very quickly. All right.

And then shielded my eyes. And I was like, I'm going to go in and be surprised by Alex. Oh, thank you both for being so interested in like a little background and also surprise. I love it. It was great. Yeah. I got to say to stainless steel getting stained what what a what a garbage metal this is stainless steel is trash what are you doing

stainless steel lies that and that that makes so much sense the earrings application i did not know that like of course this is a perfect model for that. Because I think I basically had no relationship to it going into this. And also discovered early on in the research that basically stainless steel was a more sellable name than rustless steel. Some of the first people selling this called it rustless steel. And that's like accurate. But I think people don't like thinking about rust. So they came up with this cool kind of not accurate name instead. Oh, right from the beginning.

Deception. Yeah. Now I got to say, what's this steel's problem with rust? Tetanus? I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah, tetanus, I guess. maybe yeah i guess that's yeah tetanus i guess yeah that's a fair thing reason to not want rust yes just a thought all medicine is political now half of people are just like i guess i'm pro tetanus i don't know seems seems like we gotta divide everything so yeah for all rest yeah yeah yo penicillin what's your problem with germs

get out of my mold penicillin yeah what's your problem with mold yeah and also i have begun to think about this substance because it was a patron pick for this week thank you patrons and in particular And in particular, Roger Sobey. And he lives in a town in Indiana that's a center of stainless steel cutlery. But then also, I think a lot of people voted for this because we recently did an episode about Swiss army knives, which ties back into Joey's connection to this. I think this is one of the famous applications is like a cool, fun pocket knife. Question about Roger Sobey's name.

Is it spelled S-O-B-E? And if so, is he an heir to the Sobey fortune? It's not spelled that way. And he is the heir. He grappled his way to the top of the family. That's a whole game of thrones. Yeah. I'm very curious. Did Rogerger soby did he invent those

glass gecko bottles for soby green tea i feel like people who were born after 2000 do not know what soby is so we might have to oh no yeah they're they're parched and they're missing out that's what i think missing out on the milky pink liquid in a gecko bottle. I guess I'll just tear up my 20 minutes on surge soda. Yeah, time to retire that. Don't eat this. They're low energy and they're missing out. That's what I think.

They're not surging. But yeah, and thank you both for thinking about this stuff, because I am very excited to dive into it. And usually we start with a set of fascinating numbers and statistics. But I think like with this topic, we should do a takeaway right away to get into just what it is. Like, I didn't really know. I had just heard of it. So let's get into takeaway number one. Oh, I had just heard of it.

So let's get into takeaway number one. Stainless steel is a kind of steel with chromium in it. That's the chemistry here. Just right away, there is an exact definition of what stainless steel is, and it is chemically different from other steels. So this is not a made up product. This is a real thing. What is chromium? Yeah, chromium is an element.

And it's, let's see here. It's number 24 on the periodic table. It's a metallic element. It's gray. It's a shiny color. And the super basics of steel, which I also did not know very much about, like steel is an alloy. It's a combination of metals.

It's usually a bunch of iron and then something else. And if you add chromium to the steel making process, you get a steel that has a lot of iron in it, but doesn't rust very easily. It's very, very hard to make stainless steel rust at all. Cool. I'm just like really into the name Chromium. I want to be Chromium Man or something. It just sounds really cool to me for some reason. Very futuristic, right? Yeah. I don't know a ton about Chromium, but I do know a ton about 2002 electro-funk duo Chromio.

Last concert I went to before the pandemic. Was Chromio? Wait, really? No joke. It was Chromio. Wow. Okay. At any point, how many of their songs are about stainless steel?

I have not listened to much Chromio. Sadly, very little. A lot about funk and love and legs, but not a lot about stainless steel. But I think that they might, you know, it's an opportunity. Okay. Let's see. Opening up an email. Dear Chromio.

Is the email address chromio at gmail.com? Yeah, probably. Is the email address chromio at gmail.com? Yeah, probably. So my question, and Alex, you might have an answer for this, about the creation of stainless steel. I feel like they're stronger metals and alloy metals. I think the origins of them are really interesting because so much of this was just kind of figured out by accident like i believe like uh like alloyed or strengthened iron or something like that was actually originally um originally created like you know thousands of

years ago when regular old iron was being made and then like some sort of food or organic matter something like that was added to it for like ceremonial reasons and then it actually strengthened the iron because like the carbon in whatever was kind of put in the iron actually just created some sort of alloy iron thing that like was 15 stronger or whatever so the creation of stainless steel was it like a similar deal where they just like dropped something in steel and they were like wait a second this doesn't rust at all or what's the how did they was it purposeful or accidental the creation of of stainless steel? Yeah, and Joey, that's exactly right. And the answer is really the second takeaway.

So we'll get to that in a second, because the first thing is super interesting too. Like steel, as you say, is thousands of years old, which a lot of us have like modern Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in our head for steel. But, you know, like a big factory with big forges or something. in our head for steel, but you know, like a big factory with big forges or something. But like you say, steel in particular, carbon is often the thing getting mixed with iron and basic steel. And people have accidentally or on purpose made that for a long time all over the world. And one of the big limiting factors on just making steel in general was getting pure iron. And they think that some of the first pure iron people used was meteorites, like iron from space because it was hard to get out of the ground, you know?

Yeah, that's it. That's what I've heard is like people would add, like, I want, I mean, I want to credit this to indigenous people because I want to credit everything to indigenous people. But I think it was, it was something like that where it was like somebody added meteorites to you know yeah like to set to iron or some kind of metal it was like kind of for ceremonial purposes as opposed to like for scientific purposes and then it just made it stronger and created steel sort of accidentally love this yeah it's fascinating yeah it's a lot of like there there's no clear date when somebody developed steel, but it could have been anybody across the world. And it's just a situation of having those materials together and assembling them. And there's one article from the New Yorker I'm going to link because they, among other things, describe steel as being like high school chemistry.

as being like high school chemistry. Like the actual process is relatively simple. It's just getting the stuff and doing it like skillfully is the tricky part. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, and thanks for like bringing that in. Because yeah, that's amazing. And yeah, Native people or other people in the world, like somebody somewhere was the first steelmaker. But it's happened at least in small amounts everywhere.

Yeah, that makes sense. You know, I think we can kind of combine everything. I'm just going to jump straight into takeaway number two, because this all adds up. Takeaway number two. Stainless steel was invented about 100 years ago, unless it was invented about a thousand years ago. Wait, so it's either really new or mediocre,

kind of halfway new a thousand years ago. Cause we've been around for humans have been around for way longer than that. So like, yeah, I mean, what? That's right. I mean like everybody on this, everybody on this podcast, we're all like a hundred, right? Like like steals,, barely our age. Yeah, my middle name is Bethusala,

so he... That's a good 100-year-old person middle name. Mine is Surge. I invented Surge. I'm that old. And I did it way back when. My middle name is Joey.

Teddy Roosevelt is currently alive and president, Clift. Oh, very factual naming. Yeah, my parents, they were like, my parents also, my dad, when he gave me that knife was 150 years old. Yeah, yeah. He was just like, what? Like, he opened up the newspaper and was like, this will be our child's middle name. Wow. What if everybody's middle name was a topical event at the time?

I was born at night in March, and apparently part of the story is that people in the hospital were watching March Madness on the TVs. So then my middle name is like, Kentucky's on a run, huh? No, no. Just basketball bit. Yeah, my middle name is, we miss the Seattle Supersonics. So yes, I get it, yes. Every time my name's said in Seattle, people get sad. Supersonics.

Supersonic. Joey, your dad gives you the knife he's like go to Oklahoma City get them back bring them back it's like Avengers and I was just like you know I'm you know I'm flying to England right and he's just like I don't care he's like give it back give me that knife back. Well, and so stainless steel. Yeah, I want to know, when was stainless steel? What's this thousand years versus 100 years business? Yeah, so there's like conventional wisdom about the invention of modern stainless steel

in a mass-produced way. And then also there's a new study about an older origin of a similar substance and also being manufactured the way things were manufactured a thousand years ago. So we'll talk about both stories, because I think there's a lot of parallel invention here is sort of the gist, and applies to regular steel too. Cool. Hell yeah, let's do it. And one of the sources here is the City Museums of Sheffield, England,

because, hey, stainless steel. Bringing it back. Yeah. Another one is the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan, and then a piece for The Guardian by Mark Miodenich, and then also a study in the Journal of Archaeological Science from 2020. Can I just interject really quickly as a librarian? I just love the fact that you state the sources up front.

Thank you for that. That's like, you know, that's huge in this day and age. It really is. Thank you. Yeah. Well, thanks. It just feels easier to do. And yeah, people should get credit for all this research that I found.

Yeah, it adds validity to like, you know, what you're saying. feels uh easier to do and yeah people should get credit for all this research that i found yeah it adds validity to like you know what you're saying instead of just being like hey i read a headline and i you know yeah according like so i think i might have read on twitter a few days ago yeah yeah who tweeted it out i't know. You ask too many questions. Sir, this is a deposition in court. You should know this stuff. Sir, are you scrolling your phone below the little wooden thing that people sit in in the witness packs? Are you scrolling your phone?

No. What phone? No. The witness box. Are you scrolling your phone? No. What phone? No.

Q just, you know, he talks to me through my brain. So, you know. Man. Good old Q. Shout out Q. Friend of the show. Friend of the show. Oh, yikes.

I gotta go. Yeah, I was never here. Smash my microphone. Yeah, I was never here. Smash my microphone. Yeah, so these stories. The modern story, there's two main people who are separately credited with coming up with stainless steel and they did not work together. One of them was in Sheffield, England. His name's Harry Brearley, and he was a British metallurgist. His name's Harry Brearley, and he was a British metallurgist. In 1913, he was working at the Firth Brown Steel Company in Sheffield and discovered this one leap that if you include chromium in steelmaking, you get a steel that does not rust.

And that company was one of the first companies to initially call this rustless steel and then switch to the name stainless steel because it sold better so around 1913 that's when this one guy of many uh invented it oh i mean that makes sense rustless steel now that you've said it that does feel like rust to me feels like a 1913 problem like i feel like they were having a lot of problems in 1913. And the biggest of all, rust. No, I guess it's just once again, this is probably not a good way to look at how I view the world. But it's just like, look, my friends don't talk about rust at all. But if we were alive in 1913, it would have been at the tip of our tongue every day. It was the talk of the town in the 1910s. Now we're talking about bitcoins.

Seriously, you guys didn't have like rust panic as a kid. Like I feel like I would be out playing and if I picked up any nail, my parents would freak out that I was going to get tetanus or something if it was rusty. Like I was going to get tetanus or something if it was rusty like I was gonna like eat it or whatever but I swear it was like drilled in me to avoid rust at all cost yeah I feel like I remember that with punctures mainly and then rust was like a secondary warning yeah that was a big thing like you'll immediately need a tetanus shot if if anything causes any piercing on your body which is probably safe that's probably a

good thing to do but yeah i think that's probably a good idea yeah i think that for me like i feel like tetanus was like the secondary thing that it's sort of like oh if you stepped on a nail or something like that it was like uh like oh is that rusty oh you should probably get a tetanus shot as opposed to a general fear of all things rust. I guess I just had some very cautious parents. Or I lived in a very rusty house. No stainless steel where I lived. Just a rusty tin can. Yeah, you lived in a pile of rust.

Yes. I'm Oscar the Grouch. If you guys didn't know, it. Just me and my rusty garbage can. But here's the thing. Why didn't they call it chrome steel? Like, that sounds cool. Yeah, I think that is cool. Maybe they just thought stainless was even cooler. Like, it does sound like it's invincible or

impervious in a way that is positive but yeah like chromium is such a cool word i am surprised i never hear it in the context of this thing yeah but i also wonder like how much in the in the public consciousness was chrome in 20 or in 1913 like i feel like chrome like i understand chrome is a concept of what chrome is in 2022 but like would it be would it was it something like plastic or plutonium or whatever where it's just like oh that sounds so futuristic to 1913 that it just doesn't have meaning you know that's true that's true i feel like chrome had its heyday in the 50s meaning you know that's true that's true i feel like chrome had its heyday in the 50s yeah yeah right yeah like it it was quietly laboring as cutlery and then people were like you're promoted to cars you did it yeah get up there going to the bigs yeah like i like i get stainless because

stainless sort of like stainless to me is i think something everybody could understand in that it's just like oh it's like it's a pot or a pan that doesn't stain got it you know yeah but it does yeah that's the thing though is that was that's the big lie i'm fighting forget january 6th it's that stainless steel it stains i think your next guest jfk jr will have something to say about this oh man i also think there was partly a sort of anarchic process of stainless steel coming becoming the name for this because so many people were coming up with it at the same time because then the other modern person here takes us to Kokomo, Indiana, which is a town in Indiana where inventor Elwood Haynes right around that same year, 1913, is trying to develop metal alloys for car parts that will not rust. And he develops a couple of them, including stainless steel. And both Brearley and Haynes go on to earn fortunes from stainless steel production, especially for cutlery, like forks, knives, spoons.

allergists who also parallel invented this. And there were also previous people in the 1800s who came up with it, but did not mass produce it or did not like manufacture anything made of it. So kind of throughout the 1800s, early 1900s, this one idea keeps coming up. Interesting. I wonder if those people that refused to make more stainless steel, if they were like morally opposed to it or if they were just big rust fans and they were like the world can't know about this big rust you mean like like big pharma big rust is out there preventing stainless steel from gaining popularity yeah

they were just yeah rust invented it and they, yo, the world ain't ready. Yeah. And now I'm thinking, like, along with that Rust panic idea, I feel like I've never heard a good word about Rust in my entire life. No one has ever been like, oh, sick, Rust. It's never been positive, ever. Well, I hate to tell you guys, but I am going to be a bridesmaid in a wedding next month, and we are wearing rust. Surprisingly. Wait, really? Yes.

Oh, like the color. The color. We're not wearing rusty gowns, just the rust color. It's like everybody has necklaces made out of rusty nails. Can you imagine? I mean, I guess I'd want to meet that bride and groom. It's a steampunk wedding. No, it's like literally we're wearing the color rust.

It's like a burnt orange type of thing. That's a great color. That sounds really good. Yeah. It's a pretty color. It is. I mean, actual rust is not that great looking, but, you know, the color is nice. I mean, I think for me, rust is I think that rust has its value in breaking down material that is foreign to the environment that it's in. So I know like the Titanic, which is, you know, the Titanic from the movie.

It's currently in the process of. Yeah, you get it. The famous one. It's it's currently in the process of collapsing due to, like, rust eating it. And the thought is that, like, you know, once it collapses, it'll, like, return a lot of those materials to, you know, the bottom of the seafloor where, like, it can actually be used productively by, like, plants and animals down there in a way that, like, a big hulking ship probably couldn't be, you know? Right. Yeah. Like, it's all circle of life stuff how okay

here's this this may be a silly question but what is rust and how does how does stainless steel with chromium prevent it from happening that's a perfect question yeah so thank you rust is a thing where any amount of iron reacts with oxygen or water, and then it degrades and corrodes. And it turns out that chromium as an element, like when it's added to steel, it very, very easily creates a protective film around the iron, and so that's a barrier between the iron and any oxygen or water that's trying to get to it and oh so it's coated yeah and one of in the first takeaway one of the sources is it's a piece for

scientific american by metallurgical engineer michael l free from the university of utah he says that chromium forms this very very easily it only takes a few atomic layers to reduce the corrosion to super low levels so this is like like stainless steel is not just flashy branding or something it is actually like a useful process and cool apparently for something to be called stainless steel it has to be at least 10 chromium like there's even an official level that you have to reach to be the real product. Oh, wow. Okay. So looking into it, um, cause I'm a big dummy, uh, like, you know, like I assumed that it was, yeah, like, like a living creature or something like that, like a bacteria.

It's a chemical reaction actually. So, um, so yeah, rust. All right. Sorry. I should have, sorry. I didn't mean to swear. Sorry. But wait, no, so shouldn't rust be...

And it's, yeah, it is easy to think of it as, like, biological decay. It's just chemical. It's sort of like chemical decay, if you want to call it that, but for iron. Oh. Yeah, and this, like, this leap, people were very excited about it, because, like, with steel production, the most standard kind is a steel that's like 98 or 99% iron and then a tiny bit of carbon. But you can add all kinds of other stuff. And so stainless steel, this big, very purposeful addition of chromium made it a totally different thing.

According to UC Berkeley materials science and engineering professor Thomas Devine, the most popular stainless steels are 18% chromium, 8% nickel, and then a few other things like manganese or silicon or molybdenum. These are all various elements, but there's a lot of chemistry going on there. And, you know, good for them. Yeah. My question about stainless steel with multiple people inventing it at the same time, did they all call it stainless steel? Were there any cute subnames that people were trying to push to brand themselves as different, like diet steel or something like that? Clear. Clear steel.

Yeah, clear steel. Crystal steel. Steel crystal. Yeah, steel steel. Steel crystal. Yeah, steel extreme. Man, off of crystal steel, you're not going to believe this, but most of the bonus show is about Pepsi, for real. We'll talk about it. Oh, nice. Yeah, we'll tie in.

Yeah, the main one was Rustless Steel. And it seems like in particular, these Sheffield England companies, like they it was and is a center of stainless steel production. And so they, you know, through their success selling it, they seem to have really made stainless steel a thing. I'm also fascinated. Why 1913? Like what was is it just because it's industrial age and everybody's working with steel? So they're just trying to, everybody's just has their hands in the pot. It feels like it's weird that it's that year in particular that all these

people are coming up with stainless steel. Yeah. It's, it's everything you said. And then also if people have heard the episode about car horns, we talk about the right around 1910 being the start of a huge ramping up of car production. And so inventors like Elwood Haynes are saying, how can I come up with better car parts all of a sudden? That makes sense. Yeah. And then like beyond the relatively recent people, about 100 years ago, there's also a new study that says some people in what's now modern Iran might have been making it about a thousand years ago. There's a study, it was published September 2020 in the Journal of Archaeological Science,

was a team from University College London and the University of Cambridge. And West Asia was a big center of steel production before the Andrew Carnegie steel mill type era. Like the city of Damascus was famous for steel and there were other steel makers there. And archaeologists read about a place called Chahak in modern Iran, where they produced a mysterious compound called rusaktaj, and that translates as the burnt. And so they went there, they studied what they could find. They did radiocarbon dating and scanning electron microscopy analysis. And they found small amounts of chromium in the waste charcoal from the 900s, the 10 hundreds, the 11 hundreds. So they think, you know, stainless steel of some kind might have been made there like a thousand years before these other people.

Wow. Way better name too yeah what we got now let's get rusek taj going yeah shoot yes i mean i would love those pans give me a rusek something i'm always excited about is i feel like we we have like a really big recency bias as like a people of assuming that like the current present day everybody's a genius and hundreds of years ago everybody was dumb as hell and uh and it's like that's for sure true in a lot of ways but i think that like things like this that point to like yeah for sure they figured this out like they figure out the chemical reactions in biology or biology isn't the right word for it, but the, the chemistry of this, yeah. A thousand years ago, clearly. I mean, I think that like, um, we're still learning things from like Roman

aqueduct builders that clearly like knew how to do this stuff on a high level. And I'd figured the science of it out. It's just that like the books where they wrote this down and didn't survive or something like that. You know, I think that. 100. Yeah. Like, I think that we don't give, we don't give the past enough credit for being full of, you know, super intelligent people that directly already invented things that we consider

modern marvels, you know? That's dead on. Right. I mean, everybody, there's been studies that show human anatomy has not changed. Like once we became Homo sapiens, we haven't changed. So literally ancient humans were just like us in a hut somewhere. So it's like, why wouldn't we come up with this back then. So I 100% agree that like, due to wars, and maybe environmental disasters, and, you know, bias of like, he who won the victory, we lose a lot. So it makes total sense

that stainless steel was created 1000 years ago, and then, you know, some catastrophe happened and then it was lost and then we had to figure it out again. Yeah, absolutely. Any, and even with this specific process, raw materials are such a necessity. So like you've also got people who maybe would have thought of this, just didn't have chromium on hand. Like this, this discovery was always sort of on the tip of our brains and then various people kept coming up with it yeah good for us as a society yeah we did it humans yay

now i kind of want to just take i mean if that's how we're if that's how like we're going to play as a species now i kind of want to just take old inventions and just say i invented them just like yeah hey everybody you know what the wheel is check out the wheel too and everybody will be like and everybody will be like oh whoa the 2022 wheel is out no we gotta do it with things that like Gen Z doesn't know, you know, like like Sobe, invent Sobe again, you know. Look, then listener of the show, Roger Sobe will be very mad that I stole his idea of his family's livelihood. Yeah, his father gives him a knife. You two meet. It's a battle.

And then, you know, we see what happens. A battle for a battle for the creation of a knife. You two meet. It's a battle. And then we see what happens. A battle for the creation of Sobe. I'd do that. That sounds fun. That's a great Highlander spin. Yeah. You bring your knife and your family's recipe of Sobe and I'll bring mine. I'll be hopped up on cool sweet green tea and with a knife. I'll be on the side with my Arizona watching.

Yeah, the true wonder is how those are still 99 cents, right? How? How do they do it? How? Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the and NPR. 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.

I think I'm going to do the last takeaway for the main episode, and then we'll finish with some numbers and stats, because this flows very nicely. Takeaway number three. Stainless steel changed the whole flavor experience of cutlery based eating what okay wait you gotta unpack that we can taste it what's happening yeah so the the this is a pretty simple story and the the main source is a guardian piece by mike miodenik from the previous takeaway but stainless steel is something we don't

taste when we're eating our food and a lot of the previous metal cutlery you know the metal and like a tangy or weird flavor from the metal would get into your food as you ate so once we had stainless steel cutlery people were like oh this is incredible my food just tastes like the food this is so cool that makes a lot of sense because i got some like silver like actual silver silverware and from like you know heirloom heirloom type of stuff yeah and i try i tried to eat with it once in my 20s trying to be fancy and I hated it. Cool. And that makes a lot of sense. Like stainless steel is literally like a nothing. Like it's not even that it has a good weight, you know? Yeah. And it doesn't taste like anything. Whereas like that, that silver, I was like, what, why do people, I... I never put two and two together.

That's amazing. That is. I've never eaten with silver, like actual silverware before. I was curious if either of you had. Yeah. It ain't great. Okay, I've only eaten with silver when I was afraid of werewolves. I'm just like, oh, I gotta eat with silver just in case.

I'm just like, oh, I gotta eat with silver just in case. You're trying to eat a food made of werewolf and it keeps dissolving or burning away or whatever. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the reason I was afraid of werewolves is I ate a werewolf baby and I was just like, oh, the mom's really not going to be happy about this. But you were hungry. But yeah, that is really interesting. That's something that I'm definitely like a newbie when it comes to cooking and fine dining. But something that I really love are like all the little things that can influence how a food tastes how it tastes and

you know i think that there is something to like you know if you eat something that was entirely prepared for and served on like wooden tools and wooden instruments and stuff like that it definitely has just like the slightest woody taste like um you know i feel like there's in some uh i think specifically like a lot of like european cultures there is a a feeling of you don't you don't like wash your cutlery because the, you know, the fats and things like that that have like baked into it over the times you've eaten it are like part of what influences the taste of the next things. Like a cast iron skillet. Yeah, like a cast iron skillet. Like I think that there is there is definitely something to like, you know, stainless steel is like, oh oh this is the food without any of that being

added to it but i do think that there is something like cool and special about like you know eating food that was only that was only uh cooked and produced using like stone tools and stuff like that you know it's just it's just a different like way to kind of enjoy food and it's like part of the process of you know eating and tasting good stuff yeah And yeah, that really fits into the whole history of this too. Cause, cause also if folks remember the episode of this show about spoons, we talked a little bit about early spoons being like the early, early, early version being like a piece of wood someone found or a seashell or, or, you know, just some item that could scoop this, this story is pretty specific to the history of people using metal to be a food-eating implement.

And the biggest example of that taste getting into stuff is actual silverware. Even though I was raised using the word silverware for cutlery, I never had any made of silver. And apparently that gives food like a sour taste or a tang from the metal. And in 1743, cutlers in Sheffield, because it's been a big metal production place, they made the first major batches of silver plated cutlery. It was popular because it was so beautiful, but it also added that taste to food. And from then inventors were trying to figure out, hey, what's a metal we can use that won't make the food taste different. And stainless steel was the first big breakthrough

that was popular and well-liked. And, you know, a lot of stainless steel stuff looks silvery in the color sense, partly because it's sort of imitating that funny tasting, but still beloved version of cutlery from before. I'm just really tripped out how i've never thought and put two and two together that when you eat with a metal fork it doesn't taste metal yeah that's like something that i've never like i guess just have always taken for granted because like i would never just like lick you know the side of like a computer or like you know something else that's metal because I don't want that metal taste. And that's weird. But here I am, like I go to eat my like ramen and I grab a metal fork and it doesn't taste metal. That's something that my brain literally has never connected.

I think it's also acknowledging that like a metal taste is a taste like there is. And like, yeah, that is something that like you just don't pick up on if you're like you know like licking a fork after eating a really good meal or something like that is that like yeah there's just no taste to it it's not like sterile it's just nothing right i guess that is yeah yeah and that was when the and when that first came out as a thing people were like this is science fiction this is incredible incredible. How did this happen? Because they had searched for something that could do that for a long time. And apparently the one other metal that was a candidate before stainless steel was aluminum.

And especially the mid-1800s in France. The French emperor, Napoleon III, he tried to popularize aluminum cutlery, and it does not really give you too much flavor, but it becomes discolored pretty quickly. And so people thought that was just way less appealing of an experience than silver, and they stuck with silver for a while. Oh, wow. Bougie. stuck with silver for a while oh wow um bougie uh aluminum cutlery i'm just gonna say aluminum cutlery is the zune of the 1800s i remember microsoft zune everybody remember the ipod replacement microsoft tried to make a thing this is this is how, that's your invention. Nobody remembers Zune. So now you can come back with the new Zune. I guess that I wonder, I wonder if people, I mean, I don't know.

It's like you kind of look at technological advancements now as like, you know, something like the iPod or the iPhone where there's clearly like copycats that come out around the same time that are trying to like kind of swap up the smartphone market while it's becoming a thing, but they don't totally take off like hd dvds would be another example of that that like tried to be a competitor for blu-ray i wonder if they and like i feel like as a dork i would like see hd dvds and be like bah that'll never last uh i wonder if they had a similar attitude in the 1800s with like aluminum cutlery where they were just like. You know, they did.

You know, you know, you go into somebody's house and you go, oh, Nancy doesn't have stainless steel. She has aluminum. And people like, oh, my God, Nancy. It's like somebody backed the wrong horse. nancy it's like somebody backed the wrong horse yeah i think there were like sets of these various things yeah people were it really reminds me of my friend's dad who continued to have a massive laser disc collection because he had just invested and he had like custom wooden shelves to display all the different laser discs on one wall

you know and so once you're in that far the rest of the people have the thing that they use and then you're just like no i still like aluminum cutlery it's great i bought a thousand of it so i'm still into it i decided that's for me sticking to it napoleon said so so i am sticking to it yeah there's yeah i'm sure there was like one family that was just like, we're an aluminum cutlery family. Get that stainless steel spoon out of my house. The most embarrassing. Like one kid snuck in some stainless steel, but they're faking. So they're like, yum, yum, aluminum, yum, yum.

Like they're trying to eat it in an aluminum looking way, you know? Yeah. I can't wait until this stains. Yeah. And the dad snatches it out of the kid's hand and is just like, wait a second. There's no green stains here at all. This is stainless steel, isn't it? No, dad, it's aluminum.

Yeah. isn't it no dad it's aluminum yeah the craziest thing is my brain just keeps imagining how light it is because that's all i think about with aluminum is like aluminum foil so i'm just imagining these utensils just crumpling in hand yeah that's the thing too is yeah you go to like cut something with aluminum and the knife just collapses yeah right and and kind of with that then um according to mark miyotonek and i it makes sense to me the other like big rival that came along for stainless steel was after it was invented which was plastic like around the mid-1900s they were making so much stuff out of plastic apparently for a while it looked like plastic cutlery would take over. But that stuff was considered to be less attractive looking than stainless steel.

And also over time we've become more concerned with the environmental impact of plastic. Not that steel is great, but plastic is tough too. And so there hasn't really been a big rival other than like the very newest, like, you know, you can get reusable cutlery made out of bamboo and to like carry around with you. There are alternatives, but stainless steel is still on top for now. I don't see it going anywhere, honestly. But I know in like 10 years, I'm going to sound like, hopefully, gonna it's gonna age poorly like my my tweets being like calm down guys

this covet thing is whatever yeah just like just like it's a well this is gonna be a weird two weeks everybody as you tweet in march of 2020 right how is everybody gonna pass the next 48 hours of this being a thing and yeah yeah, that was not how it went. So, you know, I don't see stainless steel going anywhere. Who knows at this point. Virtual forks. That's true. Oh, yeah.

I do. Look, I do with a metaphor. A metaphor sounds fun. Look, I'd eat with a metaphor. A metaphor sounds fun. You know the prongs would be a little M shape, like a letter M shape, just to be cute. You know it. You know they would do it.

It's that infinity symbol where we can't pick up anything with it. Look, I'm just saying, I'm retaining my thought that stainless steel is a garbage metal for jerks. So I can't wait until it's replaced. Go to pick up your wooden pot. Oh, man. I also I I like that we're closing with the stats and numbers this week because there's just a couple of them and they're all about the future or, you know, very modern stuff. So this is very exciting. And the closing segment this week is a set of fascinating numbers and statistics.

This week, that's in a segment called Hey, CivPod listeners, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats and numbers style. That was to the tune of Gangnam Style, while we're referencing things. That was submitted by Alex Wade. Thank you, Alex. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. This week is at the end.

Okay, so I'm trying to think of how does the rest of that go? The Gangnam Style. Hey, stats and numbers. Stats, stats, stats, stats. O I'm trying to think of what, how does the rest of that go? The Gangnam style? Hey, stats and numbers, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats and numbers. Yeah. It's like, well, how does the rest of that song go to continue that? Yeah, quite. I believe quite a bit of it is in Korean and I don't know it. So, uh, yeah, that would be very challenging for me. But yeah. What is your favorite stats and numbers parody that you've done so far? Oh, no, I can't choose. And shout out to listener Xander. He made a Spotify playlist of all the actual songs they reference. So I really appreciate that. Well, it's linked for people.

Yeah. But there's just a couple numbers here. The first one also ties to music. The first number is 200,000. 200,000. That is the number of stainless steel pint glasses purchased by the 2016 Glastonbury Festival in the UK. What? At the festival, they have stainless steel glasses?

Yeah, they do. Fancy. That's like wow so my initial thought when you said that they bought 200 000 stainless steel cups for the glass and berry festival is i thought you said they bought 200 000 stainless steel cups for the glass and berry festival so i was just like, whoa. Why don't they have glass cups at the Glass and Berry Festival? You got to put the glass and the berries into something. And it's a stainless steel cup.

Here's your cup of glass and berries. Together at last. For a festival like that, the world is your oyster. But okay, I do have to say, whenever I, and the only places that I've ever gotten a stainless steel tumbler cup have been Korean food restaurants, like a Korean food barbecue. I will go and I'll get a frostyy stainless steel cup and i feel like it's the highest of luxury luxury because it is cold and frosty it really retains the the coolness of the beverage so get me to europe to get out of that festival yeah yeah i just think about mud and like people with like cool shag haircuts walking around in mud those are the only pictures that i see of that festival so it's nice to know

that they have a little bit of right a little bit of something else going on my takeaway which i have not uh partaken in a while is uh like a denny's shake if you get like a strawberry shake at denny's they give you like the leftovers in like a steel cup yes that's good stuff yeah yeah yeah and this festival i think they oddly did it not for like it's the the nicest way to keep a drink cold kind of reasons and. And this is a massive music and arts festival in the UK. It's called Glastonbury. It usually runs about five days. And in the run up to the 2016 fest, they ordered 200,000 stainless steel pint glasses instead of plastic or whatever else.

And the two reasons they did that, one is sustainability. People at the festival, they were allowed to buy a glass for just five pounds british pounds and then they could swap that glass for clean glasses for their next drinks they could also keep or return the the glass like they just wanted to not use a bunch of plastic so that was one reason and then the other reason is they wanted to support the British steel industry. Like the festival director explicitly said, we're doing this to boost like steel production in Birmingham. This was designed in Sheffield. We hope other businesses and events like join us in promoting British steel production. So it's like an economic pride thing they did.

I'm kind of into that, especially the first one. It's cool. Yeah, it's neat. Yeah, that's dope. I don't hate that. Yeah, it just seems great. Yeah, I've never been to that festival, but it's yeah, it's I think it's as you described in that, like, like people in fields with a lot of weird clothes for an entire week.

Like Sienna Miller, like walking around in mud. Oh, yeah. Listening to like the drums or whatever i don't know that's what i yeah every event to be seen at in all of britain i do imagine sienna miller specifically hanging out there wow yeah she's there she's there and the british tabs can't get enough they can't get enough they're freaking out sienna oh wow they can't get enough. They can't get enough. They're freaking out. Sienna. Oh, wow. They can't. What is she up to? Yeah.

Wait, what's that? What's that glass she's drinking out of made of? That's not plastic. Steel, you say? Stainless steel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Flash photo, flash photo, flash photo. Ah, I'm being blinded because steel is reflective.

Oh, yeah. photo flash photo flash photo ah i'm being blinded because steel's reflective oh yeah when the speaking of shininess next number is two thousand eight hundred dollars u.s two thousand eight hundred dollars that is the price one homeowner in the new york city borough of queens paid to add a stainless steel fence, handrails, door, and awning to his home. Spent close to three grand on a bunch of stainless steel for the exterior of the home. Someone thinks they're fancy. You know what I call that price?

A steal. Just kidding. He overspends. Paying stainless steel. Just kidding. He overspends. Stainless steel. Why would why is my question. And the thing is, and I live in Brooklyn currently, I haven't been here a long time, but I feel like this has been happening without me noticing. Apparently, this is a major trend in specifically the Flushing neighborhood of Queens and the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is not my

neighborhood. But apparently, specific communities there are buying stainless steel fencing as a status symbol. That's a relatively recent phenomenon. And it's in particular, it's in particular Asian American american migrants they also tend to be middle class immigrants to the u.s and then this is also spread to caribbean american communities like there's specific oh no my people oh yeah okay there you go yeah i gotta ask i'll ask around my family i'll be like what are your thoughts on stainless steel? Have you gotten a fence? I mean, yeah, maybe I'll put a fence in in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. I'll put a stainless steel fence.

I'll bring it over here. Could represent Jamaica. There you go. Apparently, people like the shine. And also, it's like both a cool almost futuristic looking thing and also it needs less upkeep than other kinds of fencing and uh this like could have happened at any time in the past hundred years it's just lately it's been a trend and a thing that's going on with specific communities in these parts of new york. That makes sense. I mean, yeah, because like iron fences rust, whereas this does not. It's like apply the cutlery thing to your entire

exterior fence of your home. Great. Yeah, you're all set. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I am tired of... Time to lick some fences. Yeah, I was about to say, I'm tired when I lick a fence and it has a metal taste. So this just solves that problem. Yeah, you know. When I'm serving my jerk chicken on my fence, I don't want the metal taste to come through. Yeah. And there's one last number for this main episode here. Last number, it's another amount of money it's 130 000 us 130k that is the auction price that was paid for one fireproof copy of the book the handmaid's tale

by margaret atwood oh i saw this in the news that was made out of stainless steel partly yeah the binding a lot of it was aerospace grade stainless steel wow for a book and as a like fundraiser that was what they did oh neat that's interesting yeah now i'm just kind of googling unburnable copy of the handmaid's tale there's like there's like a badass picture of her of margaret atwood like using a flamethrower oh i see that that's dope yeah i guess the only we'll have a link for it's amazing yeah yeah i guess the only burn proof book that i've heard of before this is like i think fahrenheit fahrenheit 451 there's like a couple of burn proof copies of that floating around that's dope ah very on the nose very on the nose. Very on the nose. Yeah, it's like, so on the nose doesn't even count as a metaphor.

It's just the thing. I know, we get it. Like, Handmaid's Tale I get because, like, yeah, you know, it's like that does make sense. It's a book that you really want to preserve. But it's like, Fahrenheit 451, it's like about that. So, yeah, it's like, shut up, dude. Yeah, it's not explicitly about it. Yeah, yeah. about that so yeah it's like shut up dude yeah it's not explicitly about like if uh they should

make they should go the other way with fahrenheit 451 and make an make a hyper flammable copy of it that yes because then it really i love that actually because then you actually have to preserve it as well as you it's just like made at a kindle yeah and you have to like put it in the wettest moisture rich place in your house yeah it's like if the temperature goes over 96 degrees that book's just gonna violently explode yeah i know right that one is called fahrenheit 96 it's like look out here's the wording yeah yeah yeah if you hold it in your hand too long be careful because your body temperature is over its burning point yep you are now a part of that fireman reading it with tongs and stuff that's fun

to me just like imagining that uh that's funny it's a good one but yeah yeah and this this was like a charity stunt that went very well this was was a super recent. This was June of 2022. Sotheby's auctioned the copy and the proceeds went to PEN America, which is a writer's organization. And they wanted to highlight recent book banning in the United States that they oppose. Penn says that just in 2021, over 1,500 titles got banned. That was across 86 school districts in 26 U.S. states. And so they got together with Margaret Atwood and they said, hey, let's do a thing for it. And people can see the picture that we'll have linked, which is from a video of 82-year-old Margaret Atwood operating a flamethrower and dousing this book in fire. And because it's made of aluminum and nickel and aerospace-grade stainless steel, it does not burn. That's awesome. I love it.

It rules. So cool. Okay, so this is probably the wrong conversation sidetrack to take off of this. But Alex, if you could pick one state that this podcast would be burned, would be banned in, which state would it be? Spicy, spicy topic, spicy, hot topic. Speaking of which. As you scroll through the analytics of like,

which state doesn't listen to this podcast that much? Man, I'm going to, I i'm gonna look up the number later because like long long ago i did a little membership drive right when it started and i i did little stats on how many u.s states there was a patron from and there were a few that had no patrons and i kept it to myself but i was like that's what you get on small state there were usually small states with not a lot of people but yeah you know come on montana you can pony up yeah montana's not that small but i mean in terms of population not in terms of like size yeah this is true okay this is true yes yes yes yeah out to, I mean, this was more than a year ago. There are probably more now, but at the time there were two people whose addresses were armed forces PO boxes.

So shout out to you folks. That rules. Good job. Ah. Keep it up. Yeah. Nice. And yeah, Montana, we have a vendetta. Back to Joey's question. Chosen Montana. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Joey Clift and Nenake Fitzclark for having a surprisingly strong relationship to stainless steel knives and to literal silverware. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now.

If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Pepsi Soviet Relations. That's right, Pepsi Soviet Relations, and that has more to do with steel than you might think. relations, and that has more to do with steel than you might think. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than eight dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. If you've heard recent episodes, you know we've finished up a membership drive in the run-up to episode 100. There's still a bunch of great stuff coming, kind of all the time, and a bunch of stuff you can get from that drive. So still a need, still a wish. Please give it consideration at SIFpod.fun. And thank you for exploring

stainless steel with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, stainless steel is a kind of steel with chromium in it. Takeaway number one, stainless steel is a kind of steel with chromium in it. Takeaway number two, stainless steel was invented about 100 years ago, unless it was invented about a thousand years ago. And takeaway number three, stainless steel changed the whole flavor experience of eating with metal cutlery. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests.

They're great. You can follow Joey Clift on Twitter, at Joeytainment, or follow him on Instagram, at Joey Clift. That is Clift with many, many I's. Both of those are going to be linked in the show links. You don't need to spell anything right now.

Joey is also a writer on Spirit Rangers, a new animated show coming to Netflix later this year, 2022. And then his short film is called My First Native American Boyfriend that is currently screening at film festivals all over the place. And then Neneke Fitzclark was recently the co-host of Minority Corner with main host James Arthur M. That was on Maximum Fun, Amazing Network, Amazing Podcast, 350 good episodes for you to check out right there. And follow Nneke on Instagram. She is at Nneke. That is spelled N-N-E-K-A-Y, just like Joey's handles that's linked in the show links. Follow Nneke there for new updates and more. Many research sources this week.

Here are some key ones. And probably the most key source was Scientific American, wonderful magazine and website. In particular, pieces there by University of Utah metallurgical engineer Michael L. Free and by UC Berkeley materials science and engineering professor Thomas Devine. Also got a lot of background from a book called Steel from Mine to Mill that's by writer Brooke C. Stoddard. And then more stuff from NPR, the New York Times, Atlas Obscura. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band.

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