Stuff You Should Know - How Gold Works

Episode Date: January 31, 2013

Only 161,00 metric tons of gold has been mined in the entire history of the world. Considering about 85 percent of the precious mineral is recycled, there's a chance your jewelry may once have been part of an Incan headdress or Mycenaean face mask. Learn the ins and outs of this metal that humans have killed over for millennia. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're doing this again. It's been a little while. Been a little while. But it's still Stuff You Should Know. I thought the name had changed since we took our little

Christmas break. Oh, don't you remember our race to the Patton office at the trade market again at the 11th hour? Yeah, that was a close one. Boom, and they stamped it. Yeah. S-Y-S-K. Actually, they said S-N-S-K. Right. No, wait. S-Y-S-N is what we get from people a lot. Sometimes. And I'm like, you know, no starts with a K, people. One of them does. One of them. Yes. It's not Stuff You Should Know. Right. No. You're right. Because it doesn't make any sense. How you doing? Oh, I'm great, man. Are you? Uh-huh. Okay, good. You want to do this one? We're talking about gold. Yeah, man. I've got a little bit of an intro. It might be a stretch. We'll find out, okay? Let's hear. Today's January 15th. Okay.

Tomorrow's January 16th. Big Newton Day. It is Big Newton Day. And also on this day in history, in 378, the Mayan general fire is born conquered the Mayan city Tikal, which was recently rediscovered. Okay. Well, not recently. It's been rediscovered. They rediscovered a new one. And what this did was it enlarged the kingdom of King Spearthrower Owl. The Mayans had the best names. That's a great name. And all of this was going on in the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula. If you went just a little to the north, you would run into another group of people called Aztecs, which were actually the triple federation is what they're really called. But if you were to stumble northward and run into the Aztec Empire and ask for gold, what they would give you is what they would call

excrement of the gods. Do you want to try to pronounce it? Yeah, I'm going to go with Teo Q. I think that's pretty close. I think you may have done it, Chuck. Yeah, I think the last part is laudal. I love that language. It's similar to like some of the native languages we heard in Guatemala. That's because they're Mayan. Yeah, exactly. But it's got that same like, I don't know, it's very staccato. It's kind of cool to hear, I think. Right. Like the Mayan city, the heart of King Spearthrow or Owl's empire is Teotoktan. Yeah. Which sounds pretty close to that word. Teo Q. Laudal, which means excrement of the gods. And that's what the Aztecs considered gold. It was a holy metal, a very, very precious metal in every sense of the word. And by 378 AD,

they weren't the only ones to have loved gold for a very long time. Q. No, Egyptians were all over it. They thought it was also divine. Q. Wait, hold on. How would you rate that intro? Q. I would say that was on a scale of what? 1 to 10? Q. Let's see 1 to 20. Q. 1 to 20. I would give it a solid like 16. Q. Wow, thanks, Chuck. Q. Higher than you thought?

Q. Way higher. I thought I was going to get a 10. That's why I extended it to 20. Q. No, no, no. So the Egyptians, like I said, they also thought it was divine of the gods, indestructible. And they called it, I guess, Nub, N-U-B. And if you know the African region in northeast Africa, Nubia. Q. Or if you're a fan of the rap group, Brand Nubians. Q. Oh, sure. Q. You would have heard of this. Q. I was, actually. Q. Yeah, they were good.

Q. Yeah, they were. And that name still holds today because of the original Egyptian word for gold. Q. And Africa, of course, has always been a major supplier of this stuff. Q. Yeah, one of the first. Well, Nubia was, I guess, like the first heavily mined area for gold. Q. And then on the periodic table, the shorthand for gold is AU, which I've never understood until I realized that it's Latin. Q. Right. Q. Which makes a lot of sense. Q. I thought it would be G-O or G-D. Q. Right. Or you had something like that. No, no. We had to go with the Latin, Orem, which means shining dawn.

Q. That's nice. Q. Yeah. And we say all this to say that people have loved gold for a very, very, very, very long time. Q. Can I drop one of the stats of the show for me? Q. Right when I saw this, I was like, just going to say this is the fact. Q. I think it's pretty good. I told Emily this last night, and she was not as impressed as I would hope she would have been. Q. For ever and ever, all the gold we've ever mined from the beginning of time is only 161,000 tons, which sounds like a lot. Q. Yeah, that's a lot of gold, right? Q. For all of time, that's not a lot of gold. They compare it to something like aluminium.

Q. We get a 5.6 million tons a year in the United States alone of aluminum. Q. And again, 161,000 tons of gold is all that's ever been mined. Q. Yeah, and the secondary stat that comes later, which I'll go ahead and ruin now, is that 85% of all the gold we've ever found is still around. We've only lost or cannot account for 15% of the gold since the beginning of time. It's pretty good. Q. It is pretty good, and it suggests two things that William Harris points out. Q. One, that means that if you are wearing a piece of gold jewelry, it may have belonged to somebody else a very, very long time ago. Q. Yeah.

Q. And two, where exactly did they get that? Where are they getting these gold masks and headpieces and stuff from each time and then melting them down and reselling them? Q. Yeah, I don't know. Q. I mean, it's efficient, and it's good because gold is really bad for the environment, as we'll see later on. Q. Sure. That's really recyclable, though. Q. It makes me wonder, how are they acquiring that? Q. Yeah, what is your wedding ring, sir? Q. My wedding ring is platinum. It's lovely, isn't it? Q. It's very nice. What is yours?

Q. Mine is, I think, titanium. It's very cheap. It's like $50. Q. You could take it too, though, with that thing. Q. I could, and this is actually my second one. I lost my first one. Q. And inside of a turtle? I have no idea where it is. Maybe it's inside of a turtle. Q. But luckily, I had the old email, and I just sent the same order for the same ring, and boom. Q. I'm married all over again, so this is my second time. Q. Did you guys have another mini ceremony? Q. No, Emily's just like, you need to buy another damn ring.

Q. Right, yeah. All right, so that's a lot of gold stats. And as we've been trying to hammer out people of gold for a really long time, let's talk about the history of gold, shall we? Q. Speaking of hammering out, though. Q. Man, I knew it. Q. One more cool little fact. Gold, one ounce of gold. One ounce of gold can be drawn out into a 50-mile wire, or hammered into a sheet, five millionths of an inch thick. So it's really, we'll get to all this,

but it's not only a beautiful thing for jewelry, but it's super handy, and malleable, and chemically inert, and all these great things you can do with gold because of its properties. Q. It also makes it kind of ironic that the Egyptians considered it indestructible, because it's one of the more malleable metals around. It's so malleable that it has almost no practical purposes as far as hammering things go. Like you make a gold hammer, you're a dummy, you know? Q. Yeah. All right, so element number 79. Let's get in it. Q. Okay, so gold, again, people go back to the Egyptians because they were the first ones to

have gold fever. But we've actually found evidence of gold being smithed, I guess. Q. Yeah. Q. During the transition from the Stone Age, the Neolithic Age, to the Bronze Age, which is the first metal age, before bronze even. Q. Right. Some places that had easy access to gold, like Bulgaria, I believe, in 4000 BC, were already working with gold, long before the Egyptians ever got their hands on it. Q. Yeah, and the Egyptians, like you said, they really had an appetite for the stuff. Hyroglyphs, as early as 2600 showed gold, and by 1500 BC, it was like currency, basically, in Egypt. Q. Yeah, very much so. I don't know, did they actually mint it as currency?

Q. The Egyptians? Q. Yeah. Q. I don't know if they minted it. I don't think the minting came until the Greeks and Romans. Q. Actually, King Crocius, the ruler of ancient Lydia, which is a lost civilization. Q. Really? Q. He was the first to mint gold currencies, gold coins, in widespread use in 640 BC. But it was the Greeks and then the Romans that really started to mint. Q. About 100 years later, though. So that's a pretty nice jump on things he got. Q. Yeah. He was like, hey, I like the look of this stuff. Q. I'm going to put my face on it. Q. Exactly. And you guys are going to use it.

Q. Yeah. By 550, the Greeks were doing it. And then the Romans, of course, with their more sophisticated ways followed suit. Q. The Aureus coins. Q. Is that what they were called? Q. Yeah. They produced millions of them. Those are the ones that they find, like, to some farmer in, like, Devonshire in England. Q. We'll still find one of these. Q. We'll dig up, like, a chest filled with these things. Q. Wow. Q. Yeah. Q. Because the Romans were everywhere. Q. They were. Q. And they minted a lot of these coins.

Q. So as they're doing this, the same thing is going on about the same time in South America, because they have a lot of gold there as well. Q. Yeah. Q. And what's it called? The Middle Sikhan era? Q. Yeah. I couldn't tell if it was Sikhan or Cisan. Q. I bet it's Cisan. Q. Cicin. Q. I bet it's not Cicin. Q. 8,900 to 1,100. And this is modern day Peru. Q. Yeah. Q. There has been a lot of gold artifacts found in that region. So they were used like crazy. Q. Oh, yeah. For sure. The Peruvians were crazy about it, the Inca. Q. Like masks, ornaments, chalices, all that good stuff.

Q. And their specialty was hammering gold into sheets and like wrapping stuff in it. Q. Oh, really? Q. Like creating gold leaf. Q. Interesting. Q. Yeah. They were pretty good at that kind of thing. And then, you know, there's already a certain amount of gold fever over in Europe. Q. Yeah. Q. I think the English minted their first gold coin in the mid-13th century. Q. All right. Q. The same with the Florentine duket. Q. Yeah, yeah. Q. Those were both about the middle of the 13th century. Q. That was a popular coin. Q. It was. Q. Yeah.

Q. Still is. Q. Is it? Q. Among collectors, sure. Q. Oh, I bet. Q. So there was, people in Europe were exposed to gold. They liked gold. They wanted gold. Over in Central and South America, over in Asia, they also had a thing for gold. But the Europeans were one of the first to say, hey, let's see where the edge of the earth is and if there's gold there. And one of the first people to do that was Marco Polo. And strangely, a lot of people hate Christopher Columbus or think he was one of the more evil characters in history, possibly rightfully so. But you can actually trace the infection that Columbus released, literally and metaphorically, back to

Marco Polo. Because apparently there's evidence that Marco Polo directly inspired Christopher Columbus to set sail in search of gold. Q. Yeah, growing up in history class, you always learned about the great explorers. And the more you learn about it, like the real histories as you get older, the more you learn that many times they weren't just sailing upon the shore with like a bouquet of flowers to deliver. Q. Most of the time, I would say. Q. You know, it was usually in, they were in conquer mode. Q. Yeah. Q. For one reason, to spread Christianity as the Spaniards really wanted to do. Q. Yeah, that was the cover story. Q. The cover story, but King Ferdinand in 1511 also sent word,

quote, while you're there, well, I added that part. While you're there, then start, quote, get gold humanely if you can, but by, but at all hazards, get the gold. Q. Right. Q. So I mean, that was definitely a charge. And thanks to the travels of Marco Polo, the book that he wrote where he talked about palaces of silver and gold, you know, people thought it was just like the streets were lined with this stuff. Q. Right. Q. In the New World. Q. And I mean, imagine though, if you were one of the conquistadors who started sailing west and you ran into the Maya or the Aztecs or the Inca and you saw that they had all this gold, you would think,

well, this is all very much true in this place. Gold city. Q. Sure. Q. So let's kill all these people and take their gold. Q. And there was actually a famed gold city in El Dorado. Q. Sure. That's what they're all looking for. Q. Exactly. Like everyone was looking for El Dorado. And apparently every time a conquistador would find a significant seam of gold, they found El Dorado. Q. Right. Q. And everybody else would come and it become like a boom area. Q. But of course, it was a mythical city, right?

Q. Yeah. Q. It was just like legend. Q. Yeah. And probably the closest thing to it, it obviously not a city built of gold, but the closest thing to it is in Brazil in the Minas Gerais region. Q. Okay. Minas Gerais? Q. That looks good. Frickie Gerais. Q. Oh, we've been doing this like five years and our pronunciation is maybe even worse rather than better. Q. Actually, we have a listener mail today where someone lauds us just for taking a chance and being willing to be corrected.

Q. I'm glad to hear that. Q. I'll read that one at the end of this one. Q. Yeah, that was in 1700 in Brazil and there was a lot of gold there and they were the largest gold producer by 1720. Q. Yeah, 20 years they became the world's largest gold producer in Brazil because of this area. Q. Using, of course, slave labor, panning for gold in sort of rudimentary ways. Q. Yeah. Q. Not good. Q. No. We're not too far removed from that now. Q. No. So, on to America, North America, California, the gold rush, like the point here is, is that gold has rewritten history and how we form societies

because of the search for gold. Q. Yeah, it's like spread people out over the world and intermixed and intermarried and interdid it and, you know, like we have entire groups of people, ethnicities who are the result of gold. Q. Yeah, the gold rushes. Q. Yeah. California gets a lot of press, obviously, because by the end of the first year of the gold rush, afterwards discovered in 1848, 5,000 people were mining there. By the end of the second year, 40,000 people were mining there. But North Carolina actually was the first American gold rush. Q. Yeah, and like you're saying, California gets all the attention. San Francisco 49ers are named after the gold rush.

Q. Yeah. Q. There was that great Scooby-Doo episode with the minor 49er, remember him? Q. Yes, I do. Q. Big scary guy. Yeah, when you think of gold rush, you think of California. Or I also think of DeLoniga. Q. Yeah, he was in Georgia. Q. Yeah, the mayor of DeLoniga was the one who said, there's gold and then Darhills. Q. Oh, really? Q. Yeah, it was the mayor of DeLoniga. Q. I had no idea. Q. It seems Todd's something, I think. Q. Have you ever pan up there in DeLoniga? Q. Yeah. Q. Yeah, I did that when I was a kid.

Q. Yeah. Q. And, you know, it's fun if you're a little kid. Q. Right, right. Q. You think you're going to find a little gold flak? Q. Exactly. And be rich. Q. Yeah, or you just might find a little gold flak. Q. And if you do, you won't be rich. Q. Yeah, you're going to find it doesn't buy you virtually anything. But you were saying North Carolina doesn't usually get much attention, and that was the first gold rush? Q. Yeah, up until the 1830s, in fact, they supplied all of the domestic gold that was coined here at the U.S. Mint in Philly, came from North Carolina, or North Kaka'laki, is what we like to call it.

Q. Who calls it that? Q. You never call it that? Q. Have you ever heard it called that? Q. I have. There's a tribe called Quest Tongue. Q. Oh, really? Q. I can't remember what it is, but somebody calls it North Kaka'laki and Compton. Check it, check it, check it out. Q. No, I didn't make that up. Q. Well, it just wrapped. Q. You did. You're J-Tip. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. Q. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. Q. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. Q. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds tomorrow

one. Q. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Q. With any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that, and I'm the prime example of a tax. Q. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. Q. The property is guilty, exactly. Q. And it starts as guilty. Q. It starts as guilty. Q. The cops, are they just, like, looting? Are they just, like, pillaging? Q. They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jack move, or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Q. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast, Therapy for Black Girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the Therapy for Black Girls podcast for five years running, and over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy

Award-winning artist Michelle Williams, and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood, and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, yeah, we talked about the gold rushes in the U.S. There was also a big one in Oz. Yeah, we can't leave out our Ozzy mates. No, hello, Australia. Yeah, they're like, we got tons of gold. They're like, it's so hot. I watched Mad Max the other day, by the way, all the way through. Yeah. The original. Yeah, that was good. It was, and it was,

I don't know, Road Warrior got most of the attention because it was bigger than more of an action adventure, but Mad Max was a really dark kind of a revenge-y exploitation movie. Yeah, it was really good. Osploitation. Osploitation. So, was that the one where the guys in the personal helicopter, is that Road Warrior or Mad Max? That's Road Warrior. Oh, the nuts. I don't think I've seen Mad Max then. It's like, I mean, it was when Mel Gibson was still a cop, and he was, you know, there was this biker gang led by the toe cutter. And you know what, something cool? What? You know, Justin, my friend. Yeah. His uncle was the toe cutter. In Mad Max. Wow. His, man, I can't remember his name now. Uncle

toe cutter. No, I didn't call him that. That's what it says on his Christmas stocking. Oh, I can, no, he just sends toes every year in the little card. Oh, man, I can't remember his name now. Uncle, yeah. Uncle toe cutter. I think that's the better name. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah. So, Australia has this huge gold rush in the, what, 1850s? Yes, 1850. Edward Hammond Hargraves found gold in New South Wales. Bam. Gold rush. Yep. A few years later, South Africa steps onto the scene, 1868. George Harrison, he uncovered gold in South Africa. Yeah. And what, how many contributions has that man made to humanity in his 160 years? I mean, he wrote, here comes the sun. He discovered gold like 100 years before he was born.

Not 100, but 100 years before he was famous. Right. About the same time, about a full century. But now South Africa is the leading gold producer in the world. Oh, today it is. Oh, wow. Followed by the United States. That surprises me. In the United States, Nevada is the number one gold producer these days. You mean Nevada? Nevada. Okay. All right. So let's talk about how you get gold onto your finger. It's not as easy as you would think. Yeah. But it's, well, it's at times rudimentary and at times a little more sophisticated, the whole process. Yeah. And it complex to say the least. Yeah. I mean, like, it really shows how much we want gold. Yeah. It's sort of like fracking in a way too, the one method. Yeah. All right. So what you got to do, there's different,

you got to start by prospecting, which is the act of looking for gold. Right. And that's what you would call an old grizzled dude with a pack mule up in the hills in California, a prospector. Yeah. That's what you call a geologist who finds gold today too. They're still called prospectors. And I guess the idea is that what are the prospects for finding gold? I'm sure that's where it came from, right? Maybe. So they're prospecting. That makes a lot of sense. I never thought about that. So back in the day, there was a lot of luck involved looking around for it, basically, where you think it might be. These days, it is way more precise. They have equipment that can tell you if there is likely gold there. And then, well, here's the thing, is there's gold

everywhere, but it's just not concentrated enough to be worth mining. Yeah. That's an excellent point. Yeah. In most cases, it's invisible, but it's still present in the soil. Isn't it crazy? Invisible gold in dirt and rocks. Yeah. Or it's in Goldschlager. That's crazy too. It's like they're just throwing it away. Yeah, throwing away. You're drinking it for a premium price. It's crazy. That's gross. Yeah. That was like a college thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, give me a Goldschlager. Goldschlager, Jaegermeister. Anything that sounded like vaguely Germanic. Yeah. That was a college thing. Meisterbrow. Right. So where they find gold in heaviest concentration is when they will say, all right, you know what? It's worth setting up a mining operation here. There may be other

metals there like silver, which is great. Yeah. A lot of times gold is combined with silver in an ore, which I'm sure you're just like, okay, great. That's fine with me. That's twice the value. Right. Well, not twice the value, but one and three quarters times the value. We could figure it out. So they drill down to obtain samples, analyze it, see if there's enough gold. If there is, they're going to set up a mining operation there. If there's not, they're going to move on and look at another place that they think they might have a lot of gold. Yeah. And then depending on how the gold is present in the area, there's basically two ways. One is the load, a load deposit, which is it's combined with rock or ore, and it can be at the surface or underground. Yes.

And with a load deposit, basically you just want to blow things up when you find gold like that. If it's at the surface, you're going to use what's called an open pit method, which is basically just drill a bunch of holes into the ore, the gold ore, put some explosives in there and blow it up and then haul the ore out. Yeah. I mean, your goal here is just to make, I mean, if they could load up that huge boulder and take it and do it neat or somewhere else, they might, but they're just trying to make smaller rocks. Excellent point. For transport. Yeah. And then if it's underground, if the load is underground, they'll dig a shaft down to it and add it. Yeah. They go down to it and this is a big shaft. I'm sure. They go down to it and drill holes all the way through that

ore rock. Yeah. And those holes are called stoves, and they pack those full of explosives and blow it up. So it's basically like the open pit method, but underground, because then they just truck that ore out and off to the extractor. That's right. If you're in DeLonica, Georgia, or maybe at a river in Utah, why not? Why not give a Utah shout out? You might look for something called a placer deposit. And that is when you find the loose gold in a stream bed, the little flakes or the little chunks or little nuggets in a mountain stream or a beach. And this is where you would pan and you scoop it up in a pan and you shake it. There's a lot of water. Yeah, a lot of water, because gold is more dense. So it's going to sink and collect at the bottom of your little screen

that separates everything. And then you got a little bit of gold, hopefully. And then the six graders are all very happy. That's right. Or I imagine if you were a prospector in California back in the day, you could do quite well as a planner. Yeah, you'd look around and be like, it's mine. It's my gold. All right. So then you have to extract it. That's the next step. Right. So you've got all these big rocks that you've blown up. Yeah, I guess this is mostly the first couple steps are from load deposits. You have a bunch of rocks. You put them on a conveyor belt and they go into a machine that's appropriately called the crusher, which breaks the ore into gravel. Yeah. Then you take that gravel and you put them into drums with a bunch of little

steel balls, spin it around real quick. The steel balls collide with that gravel, and they turn it into basically like a powder. Yeah. And you add water to that powder, you form a slurry, add cyanide to that slurry and expose it to oxygen. And all of a sudden, you're starting to extract gold from ore. Yeah, the pulp basically, the gold in the pulp dissolves with that chemical reaction, the cyanide and O2. Yeah. And throw a little carbon in there, like tiny little carbon grains. Sure. And the gold is going to adhere to it. They like each other very much. So they're going to get together and party for a little while. Then you filter that and you have gold bearing carbon at this point,

still not pure gold. Right. So it's gold with carbon. Then you move that to something called a stripping vessel. They put another solution, a caustic solution to separate the gold from the carbon. Right. Have more filters to filter out the carbon. And so now you have actual a gold bearing solution, but you're still not done. No. And this is my favorite part. Yeah. This is pretty cool. It's called electro winning. Yeah. Which thank God, Charlie, she never heard of this. Yeah. Because this whole thing would be even more annoying. But you put gold into a cell with positive and negative terminals. Pass an electrical current over it. And the gold separates from the carbon solution or the gold bearing solution

and is attracted to the negative terminal. So much so that I get the impression that basically becomes embedded in the negative terminal. Yeah. I kind of wondered because the next step is to actually melt that negative terminal along with the gold. Right. And then you begin to separate the two. Basically you pour off the negative terminal metal, maybe steel or something like that. It's called smelting, by the way. Right. Exactly. So when you smelt, and I thought smelt was just melting. Yeah. I'm like, why did they add the S? Because it's not melting. It's smelting. Exactly. So when you pour off the steel, I guess maybe that comes off first. And then what you have left is

relatively impure gold, but as close as you're going to get it in the extracting process, you pour that into bars called dorae bars. Yeah. And then you ship them off to the refiner. Yeah. And that's not the bar that you will see in diehard 3. Oh man. This is a more impure dorae bar. Right. Sure. Still nice to have one. Yeah. I'm sure you can be like, look at me. That's right. Okay. And then you need to refine gold from that point once you have it in its purest, impure form. Right. So imagine the process that we just went through. It was like add this, subtract this, remove that, but add this. And then like the gold adhere to this. And let's burn the whole thing up until it gets melty and still impure. It still has to be refined. So when

refineries get gold dorae bars, they also frequently when you sell your gold to JD Wentworth or whoever, they take all this gold scrap and send that off also to these refineries, which also serve as recycling centers too, basically. That's like the saddest shipment. Yeah. Just full of people's like lost hopes and dreams and memories, wedding rings and gold bracelets, anniversary bracelets, all just sent back to be melted down. Yeah. Because of the economy. Yeah. So when they throw all this into the same pot, they add a little bit of soda ash, a little bit of borax. And honestly, what can't borax do? And the soda ash and borax basically filters out impurities. And then what you have left most of the time, and they use a say tests to figure out the

purity, but they you have about 99.9% pure gold. And that's usually what they stamp on the bar that they pour. And those bars are called ingots. Yeah, those are the ones you'll see in the heist movies. Yes. And if you have ever seen die hard three and you see them loading up these ingots into big gym bags and then throwing them over their shoulder and running out, that is not possible because each one of those bars weighs 27 pounds. So if you have 50 of those in a bag, like Jeremy Irons might. Jeremy Irons is not a strong man. You're not going to throw that on your back like 300 pounds of gold and like go running up a bunch of stairs and out of the New York. Where is it? The New York Federal Reserve Federal Reserve Bank. Yeah. Supposedly there in

Fort Knox is where they have all the gold. Yeah. Emily was talking last night about that. She's like, well, that doesn't sound very safe to have all this gold in one place. Yeah. I was like, well, that's why they say like it's built like Fort Knox. It's like super secure. She's like, yeah, but what if you know some terrorists just bombed it? She's like, you could just bomb it and then sneak out of there with the gold and I went, you just wrote die hard three. She's like, is that what happened? That's exactly what happened. But I think she makes a good point. I was thinking last night too, like if we have all this gold and if it is all there, just keeping it in two places, it seems, I don't know, it seems unusually like tempting fate. I

think I agree with Emily. Yeah. $6 billion worth of gold at Fort Knox. No, no, my friend. How's that more now? Dude. So when when Harris wrote this one, it gold was $42.22 an ounce. Oh, okay. $42.22 cents an ounce. Right now it's $1,667 and 49 cents an ounce. What? So that means that if Fort Knox holds 147.3 million ounces of gold, the gold is worth $245.6 billion dollars. Wow. Just sitting there in Fort Knox. When did he write this article like 1935? No, I think gold went up like that much in the last couple of years because of the economy. Everybody flocked to gold, demand increased, and so the price did. It's so amazing to me after all these years. Gold is still like people hoard it. Yeah. I mean, when gold prices are low,

you're very smart to invest in gold because there's always going to be another economic downturn and the prices are always just going to skyrocket. You got a couple of ingots in your closet. I have them. I have them strapped to my leg. That's why I have a limp. Is that why you walk funny? Yeah. All right. So during the refining stage, we should point out that a lot of times they will, because gold is so soft, pure gold is, they will combine it with other metals to form alloys. And that's why you will get something like white gold, which is gold combined with nickel or silver or palladium. Red gold is golden copper. That's pretty. And I've never seen red gold on them. You've seen rose gold, surely? Have I? Sure. At all my fancy parties.

I mean, it has like a, just a slight pink hue to it. It's very pretty stuff. Yeah. I'm not big into gold, like as far as jewelry. Yeah, no, I'm with you. And then, of course, you have to talk about carats, caratage, and that is how much gold is in the object compared to like silver, nickel or whatever else is in that alloy. And interestingly, different countries have different preferences here. You always hear about 14 karat gold in the United States, which is only 58.5% gold. Apparently in India, they're partial to the 22 karat, and which is 91.75% gold. And the Europeans like to take that middle road and hit 18 karats. Yeah, that's very strange. And I don't understand what it is. I can understand price being a factor,

but maybe it's very odd to me that like cultures prefer it. So 24 karats is 100% gold, obviously. Yeah. And 14 or 12 karat is 50% gold. Yep. And about two thirds of all the gold is jewelry. Yeah, which makes sense. Sure. And what's interesting about the jewelry is that it's still basically produced as it has been for hundreds or thousands of years, using the same techniques, virtually the same tools. I mean, I'm sure they're manufactured much differently, but they are kind of the same thing. Yeah. And while jewelry accounts for, would you say two thirds of all the gold in use? Yeah, nearly two thirds. There's a lot of other pretty interesting uses for gold, too. Yeah. Electronics use a lot of gold and a lot of other

rare earth minerals like apparently gold is very, very conductive. It's more conductive than any metal except for copper and silver. But it has a leg up on copper and silver in that it corrodes. It's very difficult for gold to corrode. Yeah. So that means that if you want something that's going to last a very long time and be conductive, you might as well use some gold. So they do. And things like processors and hard drives and that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, you might see gold on your headphone plug. Your headphone jack might be gold plated because if it's higher end, they might use gold. Yeah. Conducts electricity. Oh, yeah. Therefore sound better. I have seen that. I just thought it was like fancy high end or something. Here's a cool stat because they use

it so much in electronics and microelectronics. NASA use more than 40 kilograms, 90 pounds of gold on the construction of the Spatial Columbia. Right. That's pretty cool fact. Electronics and they used it as a reflective surface. They use gold film. Remember, you can be on the sheets into like a 0.15 millimeter thin sheet. It's amazing. So it's light at that point, highly reflective, effective against radiation. Yeah. So that's pretty awesome. You also use it for crowns. Yeah. They still use gold crowns, don't they? I guess. I imagine because it's not reactive. Because when things are reactive, especially with cooking, it'll make things taste terribly. Yeah, that's true. Like there was something called a fish fork.

And it was made of silver. And apparently, if you had this thing, it was like a status symbol or whatever in the Victorian era. But it also did have a practical use in that silver didn't react with lemon juice, which is often used to serve with fish. So it didn't affect the taste. I imagine that's probably one of the reasons why they use gold and crowns. So that everything doesn't just taste bad because it's not reacting with anything because it's chemically inert. That's a good point. Yeah. Because you don't want to be eating something and think, oh man, my new gold tooth makes this tilapia taste like squid or poop. Tastes like squid. I don't know. That's not so bad. No, I like squid. But if you're eating

tilapia, you don't want to eat squid. Do you eat squid? Will you eat octopus? I mean, I'll eat all that stuff to a certain degree. I mean, like Emily, when it comes to calamari, she will only eat the things that look like little onion rings. Right. As soon as it looks like the little miniature creature, she's like, that's for you. Yeah. And I pop that in my mouth. I will eat both. I'll especially eat squid. Yumi won't eat octopus because of, remember, one of our friends had a friend, they told us a story that their friend was a cook for some couple down in the Caribbean and a couple like caught an octopus and was going to cook it or they gave it to their cook to cook and the

cook was going to put it in the pot alive and the octopus was wrapping its tentacles around the woman like, please don't kill me. Oh my God. And she said it was like one of the worst things that ever happened to her because she did it anyway. Like when you literally have to fight to put the animal to their death. Yeah. And so that combined with, I think, being inspired to go research octopi and finding that they are very intelligent, Yumi's like, I just can't eat those anymore. Which is sad because they pop up some pretty delicious dishes. I imagine. But they're a very smart animal. She's like, I'm just going to eat them animals. Just stupid ones. Right. Right. Yeah. I could see that. I would be traumatized. Oh my God. Yeah. Cause it was like, no. Yeah.

I would just walk slowly into the ocean until it released itself and swam away. Yeah. You'd be like the woodsman in Snow White. Like, I don't know what happened to it. But then you start to walk back and the octopus reaches up with one hand and holds your hand. He's like, I want to be your pet. I don't want to go back to the sea. Just don't cook me. Don't cook me. All right. Where did we leave off? Food and beverage. You can get it in Goldschlager. Yeah. In certain jellies. Gold, by the way, not octopus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's all just for marketing and making things of fancy. It really is. You know, they have like the world's most expensive Sunday or the world's most expensive salary. It's always got gold flakes. It does. So much so that I think we talked about

this. They have another category for world's most expensive non gold. Cause it's like any smoke can, you know, spit out a hot dog and relish and then put gold flakes on and be like, world's most expensive hot dog. Yeah. And that doesn't really count, you know. Yeah. So then that means some of the gold that we've lost, that 15% has been pooped out. Yeah, I guess so. That's sad. Is it? I think so. Since it's, you know, so limited in supply and bad for the environment. Yeah. To get. Well, I guess we should talk about that. Yeah, we probably should because I was very surprised. I mean, I'd heard that gold was bad for the environment, but I didn't realize this. You want to, you want to tell one of the facts of the podcast? Yes, it is like most mining

operations. Not great for the environment. In order to get just one ounce of gold, you have to get out 250 tons of the rock and ore. Yeah. And a lot of times, well, of course, there's the cyanide, which is never great when you're introducing those kind of chemicals. No. And apparently they take this affluent, right? Yeah. Or affluent. And they dump it out in the ocean. Oh, really? Which probably affects octopi. Yeah. It's like, Hey, here's a bunch of cyanide water. I'm sure the ocean will eventually like even things out. But for that local area where it gets dumped, that can't be good. Of course not. And that's why there's a group, a nonprofit called Earthworks that runs a campaign called No Dirty Gold. Yeah. So I imagine if you have a

gold wedding band and a blood diamond on your finger, then you're just like, you're, that's a double whammy against the world. That's the hat trick. Yeah. Well, no hat trick would be three. Not in this, not in this case. Okay. That's as good as you can get, or as bad as it gets. So we should talk a little bit about gold, although I think we should do a full podcast on the gold standard at some point. I know we've touched on it at some point. Let's do it. But the gold standard was, wasn't it like every dollar amount, like was that you could print? There was a certain amount of gold that had to be in reserve that matched that? Yes. Is that what it was? Yes, exactly. And if you had a bunch, if you had enough money, you could go up to, you

know, the Federal Reserve and say, I want to cash this money out for gold. And they had to give it to you by federal law. And that was from 1900 to 1971 when didn't we just start printing more money than gold and said we should abandon the gold standard? Yeah. And I think when you detach your currency from gold, it becomes a fiat currency. Right. To the whims of the market. I seem to remember discussing this some in one of our econ podcast way back when. Yeah. Maybe even audio book. How the economy worked. The super stuff got into the economy. That's what it's called. It was a good one. So 236 tons of gold are being so called hoarded by people and governments. Is that all 236 tons? Yeah, it seemed like if there was still 85% of

the 161,000 tons, that doesn't seem like much, but it doesn't. It's a lot of jewelry being worn. Yeah. But they think there is actually gold out in outer space, you know, and some of these big asteroids flying by that are chock full of minerals and other metals. Yeah. There was a, in 1998, the near earth asteroid rendezvous spacecraft passed close enough to the asteroid Eros to actually send back data. And they think the Eros might have as much as 20 billion tons of gold, which would probably really drop the value of gold here on earth. If anyone ever got their hands on that. How do you go about capturing an asteroid, I wonder? We did a podcast on asteroid mining, remember? Is that the same thing? Okay. That's what they would do. Well,

I retreat then. We should just do that. Could do that. I thought it would send Bruce Willis up with a lasso, a golden lasso. Yeah. Writing a jackalope. Yeah. And attach it to the jackalope's tail and just ride it back to earth. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads.

During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award winning artist Michelle Williams, and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you

get your podcast. You got anything else? No, I don't. Well, that's the Oh, I have one more thing. I want to recommend Harris didn't mention this. One of the other really bad environmental impacts of gold is illegal gold mining. Apparently, Guiana has a lot of illegal gold mining. Oh, really? And one of the things that you if you're an illegal underground gold miner, you're not going through this elaborate extraction and refining process. You are basically taking your ore and you're refining or extracting on site using mercury. Mercury is what they use. So there's not only a lot of like illegal, horrible for the environment gold mining going on. Yeah, there's also a lot of mercury mining and a lot of mercury like runoff. So there's mercury poisoning

all over Guiana right now. Wow. And there's a really great article. It may have one appealed to I found it on Peelzer.org. But it was originally in Harper's. That's why I read it. Gold guns in Guarampieros. That is G A R I M P E I R O S. And it's by Damon Tabour. Good stuff. Awesome article is so engrossing. One of those that makes you want to like not ever use gold for anything. It has that effect a little bit, but it's it's more just completely fascinating. Like you just can't believe that people are doing this. Wow. Yeah. And child labor too, right? Isn't that a big problem? I think that's part of it. But more it's just you are you really risk death in these like they're called wildcat camps, these illegal gold mining operations because I mean, if somebody

designed it in the explosives, so in the mercury and the guns and, you know, people staking other people's claims beds, bad news. Wow. So there you go. Gold gold. If you want to learn more about gold, you can type that word into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this the 10 Commandments of Chuck and Josh, although there's only eight. And this is from Professor Tom. Guys, I teach a communications course in an area community college and in universities. I often recommend your podcast in my classes, especially to students that seem to love learning, but may have not been encouraged by family or friends. I'm hoping that they may pick up a few important life lessons from you guys,

as well as interesting facts. Here are a few life lesson highlights that I think you guys displayed. Number one, normal guys can talk about something other than sports. It's true. I know I like sports. Number two, good presentations begin with an attention getting introduction. Josh will tell you this is sometimes easier said than done. Yes. No, that's absolutely correct. If you don't know something, look it up. And if you're looking it up on the internet, check more than one source. Life lessons. This guy's really paying attention to what we're doing. Yes. Learning involves mistakes. Number four, take a shot at pronouncing a new word. If you get it wrong, venture a guess, share a new hypothesis, then invite feedback,

which is the important part. Jerome Pierros. Number five, you don't have to make fun of people to be funny. If you absolutely must mock someone, mock yourself and you're good at that. Number six, it's okay for guys to have a variety of emotions. There's nothing unmanly with being sensitive or expressing emotions other than anger. It's even healthy for guys to talk about their emotions. You're like the new Rosie Greer. Number seven, it's worth the effort to be respectful of others. Sometimes you have to stop yourself before you make an offhand joke, which we do. Sometimes you have to use a term that is more accurate or up to date, which we try and do. Sometimes you have to remember what it feels like to be seen as different and see if your

language can be more inclusive or encouraging. Even if only one person in your audience notices the efforts, it's worth it. Man, is this my conscience writing in? Number eight, curiosity can last a lifetime. And that was the last one. And he said, guys, there's a lot to be said for teaching by example, whether you realize it or not, you're doing it every week. And he goes on with an interesting PS from Professor Tom. PS, if you have my gay male friends, and I got talking about your show, we tried to figure out which type you would be if you had been born gay. It was unanimous. Chuck is clearly a bear. If you have a gay brother, Chuck, I have a few friends who would like to meet him. I do have a brother, but he's not gay,

and he would not be a bear. He's prettier than me. He is very pretty. He would actually love my brother. Yeah, he's got great hair. I thought you guys would know, would like knowing that you were being stereotyped by a bunch of gay guys standing around drinking beer at a bar called the whole performing Stuff You Should Know podcast analysis. What a world. Thanks, Professor Tom. Yeah, that's a great email. That was a great email. We got to print that one out, frame it. If you ever do analysis of Stuff You Should Know, we want to hear what you've concluded. You can tweet to us if it's a short conclusion at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us at facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com,

and you can join us on our website, Always, the home of Stuff You Should Know, that is stuffyoushouldknow.com. Hey, and don't forget to watch our TV show, Science Channel, Saturdays at 10 p.m. Eastern. That's exactly right.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the 2012 Toyota Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed.

They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kerman. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Borey, and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson, and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays, where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the

iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.