Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Coal!

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why coal is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5(Alex’s old podcast hosting service required a minimum of 5 characters per episode title, and he's keeping that going for fun. So that’s why this episode’s title has an exclamation point)

Cole, known for being sooty, famous for being a naughty kid gift. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some holly jolly fun. Let's find out why Cole 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 because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of coal? In my stocking every year because I'm a bad person. I don't know a whole lot about coal. It is a fuel source, I know that.

You give it to naughty children. It is a fuel source. I know that. You give it to naughty children. And it is, when you mine for it, it can be dangerous. Yeah, that's about where I was. And I also want to thank listener. This is their username.

Their username is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you, you. It's a great username. That's them on the uk version of apple podcasts they left us a very nice review recently and asked for a holiday episode so i hope you can hear this yeah yeah yeah yeah you you and i hope you enjoy a colon stocking and otherwise episode i remember being a smart kid and you hear the trope of Santa puts coal in people's stockings. And then me and other nerds would be like, but actually coal is valuable as power. And that's basically money. And, you know, like you flip the interpretation of it. And so you'd go around punching teachers right in the stomach to get your coal. So you would like look directly at the elf on a shelf and give it the middle finger. And then he reports back to the big man at the North Pole.

Right. Who is, I think, routing through NATO a lot of the information. Yeah. Right. It's a global surveillance state, these elves on the shelves. It's very insidious. Yeah. surveillance state, these elves on the shelves. It's very insidious.

My one other knowledge of it was that it is the first power plant you can build in the SimCity games. Oh, interesting. Because it's old and highly polluting, but it makes a lot of power. So you just start there and then do something better later. Yeah. I always, when I think about coal, I think like industrial revolution, I think urchins, like kind of like smoke covered urchins. That's, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Yeah. It's almost like the Monty Python peasants, but for the industrial revolution, they're just covered in coal instead of mud. Right. Exactly. And they're going oikov and trying to retain their fingers from the threshing machines and the mechanization that is chopping off children's fingers left and right during the industrial revolution. Don't be precious about fingers, okay?

The economy needs fingers. They had chimney sweeps and then they had finger sweeps who would just go along the street sweeping up kids' fingers. That would get caught up in textile machines. You know, Tiny Tim is perfectly proportioned to squeeze into small mine shafts and collect coal. So I don't know what he's complaining about. You should send that tiny Tim to work, pull himself up by his little crutch straps. You know what I mean? Yeah. Maybe he was an early winner at personal branding. He was going into job interviews like, I'm the tiniest, hire me. And then there's bidding. Right. You're the only tiny Tim in town. You're the only Tim who's tiny.

Right. No, it's just good branding. He's the only tiny Tim with SEO is what he is. And folks, we're going to save stats and numbers for later. We're going to dive into Cole with a holiday focused takeaway number one. a coal with a holiday focused takeaway. Number one, there is a range of winter holiday traditions involving gifts of coal. And in one of them, the coal is positive. Oh, okay. Positive coal. That's nice. They're pretty much all European traditions and for the range of dates between Christmas and early January, especially a holiday called Epiphany. But it turns out there are many mythic figures who give coal to naughty children. And then there's a New Year's tradition in the north of Britain where there are positive gifts of coal.

So there's a lot more than just this one Santa trope I heard of. Yeah, I don't even know where the Santa trope originated from. You give kids coal if they're naughty. It's a strange thing, right? Like, why not just give them nothing? Why is coal such an insult? All of the Santa stuff is just perceived and hearsay. Coal isn't tied to the chimney situation. If he's coming through a chimney or near a coal stove, even though chimneys are for wood fireplaces, it seems to just be a thing where he's near the heating elements of an old house. And so that could make coal accessible to him to stick in a

stocking. It just sounds like it's a last minute thing. Like, ah, I forgot your gift. Ah, coal. minute thing like, ah, I forgot your gift. Cole. Right. Like this wasn't one of a couple of wine bottles we had laying around. We picked this gift when we came over is the vibe. Yeah. Yeah.

Also, I thought Cole was like used for a snowman. Like you put it as buttons or as the face. Yeah. So there's there's some positivity to Christmas coal. I feel like coal, along with like sleighs and having a lot of horses around, that's in all the Christmas stuff and none of us ever do it. It's never accessible or available. We didn't even have full carrots in our house. We had baby carrots, so we didn't do carrot noses for snowmen.

We didn't do coal buttons. Forget it. Yeah. We didn't even have full carrots in our house. We had baby carrots, so we didn't do carrot noses for snowmen. We didn't do cool buttons. Forget it. Yeah. We didn't have snow, so that was kind of our main impediment to building snowmen. Southern California. Really grim winters. Just sunny and boring. I hated it.

Sunny and boring. I hated it. And so for Gifts of Coal from all sorts of figures, we have a lot of sources. A piece for Bustle magazine by Lara Rutherford Morrison. Also Mental Floss, the newspaper The Scotsman. And a piece for La Cucina Italiana. Hey! By food historian Francine Sagan.

This first story is extremely Italian, and I'm curious if you have heard of it. It is a mythic figure called La Befana. Yeah, La Befana. She's around. I've seen her a lot. Just kind of wandering around, getting her cafe normale from the coffee shop. What's cafe normale? It's an espresso. Oh, okay,'s cafe normale it's an espresso it's just in italian it just means normal coffee normal so like you wouldn't say if you want an espresso in italy you don't say espresso you say cafe normale because it's just normal coffee here that's

get it together get your head in the game amer Americans. But yeah, Bufana, she's like a friendly witch-like lady, a good witch. She has something to do with Christmas and or New Year's. That's the extent to which I understand her. I've seen little Bufanas around. She looks like a sweet, sweet little old lady, which sometimes she's got like a broom. Sometimes she's just kind of like got a little witch hat, sort of witchiness. But yeah, it's cool. I'm so glad because this also seems like one of those Santa things where, you know, some people put him holding a bottle of Coke and others do not. And there's little variations on the key stuff.

And apparently some La Befana lore can involve her giving coal to naughty children. Ah. In addition to giving candy mainly to a lot of nice kids. Okay. Yeah. Now that makes sense. I feel like it would be realistically her giving very dry biscotti to naughty children and then biscotti and cafe normale to good children. Because if you just have the biscotti, it's not good.

You need something to dunk it in. I like this universe you're building where she is so common in Italy. She's just an elderly neighbor who you see around the coffee shops and like, oh, what's in my purse? Hard caramels. Here you go. I don't know. Yeah. I can't tell you how many times I've been offered hard caramels by my neighborhood, Bufana. And yeah, as far as her part of the year, Apparently she is particularly popular with Catholics in Northern Italy. So in a place like Turin. Yeah, no, there's, I've, I've seen this doll. It's, there's usually like a doll that you would like hang in your house and I've seen it around like everywhere.

That's way better than an Alfana shelf. I want a flying La Befana. Yeah. La Befana on the, uh. What? No. I don't know. And you're working across languages. I really appreciate it. I think you thought about Italian and English at the same time. It's hard. I'm struggling, but no, it is, it is like a little, I think in the U S there's like these little like kitchen witches that you can get and put in your kitchen. They're like little friendly looking witches. It looks, it looks.S. there's like these little like kitchen witches that you can get and put in your kitchen. They're like little friendly looking witches. It looks it looks like that.

She's like kind of she's like ugly, sweet looking like she's kind of got like an uglyish face, but it's cute. It's like ugly, cute. Probably because it's just Italian stuff. I thought of the children's book, Strega Nana. It looks like that lady, but a witch. It does. Yes. Like that face and stuff.

So it's nice. Yeah, no, exactly. Like she's not meant Streganana. It looks like that lady, but a witch. It does. Yes. It's like that face and stuff. So it's nice. Yeah, no, exactly. Like she's not meant to be scary. She's not like the Krampus, which is not Italian, but she's not supposed to be scary. I think she's supposed to be kind of like, you know, sort of sweet, but a little like a little ugly, but sweet. Yeah. And she is apparently key around the holiday of the Epiphany. If folks have kind of only heard of Christmas, they may not know about the many further Catholic holidays around it. But the Epiphany is January 6th, and it is in the lore and in the story, it's the time when the three wise men, also called the three magi, get to the baby Jesus. Three wise men, also called the three magi, get to the baby Jesus. So Jesus born December 25th in the lore, and then it takes all the way till January 6th for the guys to get there with the gifts.

And apparently in one La Befana mythology or lore, the three wise men asked her for directions to get to Bethlehem. They were like, we kind of know where we're going. There's a star, but like, can you help? Our Uber got lost. Went to the wrong Bethlehem. It's a camel with a smartphone on it. Yeah, yeah. Went to Bethlehem, Illinois.

And so, yeah, so the three wise men asked Labifana for directions and she was cranky and did not help. Oh. After they left, she later felt bad and was like, I just go find jesus too and give him gifts and then she wasn't able to find him but so now every year she flies around giving all sorts of kids candy and treats as a way of like honoring jesus's whole deal are you j Jesus? Are you Jesus? Where are you? You want a caramel? It's a hard caramel. I wanted to give it to Jesus, but I can't find him.

What about you, young lad? Are you baby Jesus? Yeah, but this version of the story, she does sound confused. Like, it sounds like she's still looking for him for thousands of years, which does not make sense. No, that's so Befana, though. That's so La Befana. Right. If folks knew her, as Katie does, they would be like...

Right. That's totally her. That's so Befana. And yeah, and then her tradition really got going in the early 1900s. And yeah, and then her tradition really got going in the early 1900s. The city of Urbania has a national festival for La Befana in Italy, draws about 50,000 people a year. There's also a annual Regatta della Befana in Venice, where people race gondolas to the Rialto Bridge dressed as La Befana. Wait, is the people dressed as La Befana or is the gondola dressed as a Befana? In the picture, it's people in witch outfits and then pretty normal gondolas.

Yeah. Okay. Because I was imagining like a gondola where like the, what's like the head of it. What's that called when it's like the lady at the front of a ship? But a Bafana. Yeah, I just call it that. Lady at the front of the ship.

It's got to have a name. Bafana della Franta of Da Bota. Bafana della Barca. Becoming insulting to Italian people very rapidly from me. Anyway. Bafana la Franta. Yeah, and there's also special candy

associated with La Bifana in some places. It's called Carbone de la Bifana, which will really fit the coal we'll talk about later. Carbone de la Bifana is a black colored chunky candy that's supposed to resemble coal. Oh, cool. Yeah. So it still tastes good, but it's like, like simulating coal narratively. I've never actually had this. Is it like licorice flavor or is it just like sort of a black sort of sugary whatnot? A sugary chunky rock candy, like maybe a little more powdery than rock candy,

but they're really going for a coal visual, which is not what most candy makers are going for, but this is a La Bafana thing. So they do. I think I remember seeing that in some kind of catalog when I was a kid and being really into it. I think like Sharper Image or the kind of catalogs you'd take in the potty with you. And I remember there was like one where it was like coal that was like candy. And I was like, I think I wanted that for Christmas, but it didn't. I was too good. That's true. We're both so upstanding.

This topic is really foreign to us. Very deferent to the rules and regulations of childhood. Very deferent to the rules and regulations of childhood. Yeah, and so La Befana is going on and is one of an entire set of like Santa Claus-ish characters who also do this pretty specific thing of coal is for naughty kids in the lore. Right. The super Dutch version of Santa is named Sinterklaas. Either that character or an opposing Krampus character gives coal to bad kids in the Netherlands in old tradition. I thought Krampus' deal was kidnapping children.

Krampus really varies. It seems like Krampus is either a joker to Santa's Batman or just a whole separate fear all over Central Europe. Krampus was very confusing. I thought about it a little as a topic and it's too confusing and also kind of famous. I'm just imagining Santa holding up Krampus and Krampus going, you'll never kill me, Santa man. It's not in your nature. You're too jolly. And Batman's belt has Krampus repellent. I spray that. We'll get him. Jolly. And Batman's belt has Krampus repellent. Spray that.

We'll get him. And yeah, in France and Belgium, there's also a kind of similar character who reminds me of a Dwight Schrute joke in The Office. Oh, no. Yeah. I know what you're going to say. Starting in the 1100s, St. Nicholas would summon a henchman called Pfuitard, which translates to the whipping father. And the whipping father would give misbehaving children coal and birch branches and beatings. Yeah. Yeah. This is the weird one, too, that it's like it's people painted black, right? So that one is separate, it turns out.

I thought it might be coal on their face, but that's like a henchman of Dutch Sinterklaas. I shouldn't call them henchmen when they're just friends. Hench friends. He's called Black Peter or the Dutch language for that. They're supposed to be racially black, not covered in coal. I see. That's a big oof. That's a gigantic oof. And they did that on The Office, too, which is, I think, why you were thinking of it when I said that.

Right. That's why I was... Yeah. Yeah, because that was an Office thing. It's a big... That's going to be a big oof for me, folks. What I have read about it, there are, like, Dutch defenses of it, sort of, but it's not something I'm interested in doing. You gotta let it go, guys. Just let it go. Forget it. Let it go.

But yeah, in The Office, there's also a Belschnickel character who beats people. And that's a French and Belgian thing called Père Fouettard, who hits people and also gives them coal. It's hard who hits people and also gives them coal. And then also nearby in Germany, St. Nicholas will summon Necht Ruprecht, who does one big action of beating children with a sack of ashes. A sack of ashes. So like you're like using coal-ish stuff to hit the kids is Necht Ruprecht's move. So I've never been hit with a sack of ashes. Is it meant to be gentle like a pillow or does that hit hard like a sock full of pennies? Like what's the what type of weapon is a sack of ashes?

It sounds bad. And it also sounds like some kind of really expensive modern spa treatment that you would hear about as a trend or something. Right, it sounds like a goop thing. Yeah. Sounds like a goop thing. Yeah. Like, honor your yoni by smacking yourself with a sack of ashes from Birch Elm. Nothing says the holidays at Santa like honoring the yoni. Folks, it's very important.

There's no season that you shouldn't honor your yoni. And so that's a lot of characters doing coal-related punishments or grimness or other stuff. And then beyond all that, there is a separate positive tradition of people giving each other coal, mainly in Scotland and also the Isle of Man and parts of Northern England. Okay. Is this like a Scrooge McDuck situation where he finally gives Bob Cratchit some more coal? I'm only ever going to refer to Scrooge as Scrooge McDuck and you're going to have to get used to that. The only Scrooge as scrooge mcduck and you're gonna have to get used to that the only scrooge in my mind charles dickens cannot compete you know and and the scottish thing it's new year's stuff okay and it's similar to like epiphany where it's like uh

it isn't it's not it's not on christmas but it's somewhat Christmassy themed. Yeah. And so it's on New Year's. It's timed to the moment the ball would drop in New York City, but a clock would go off there. And it's a New Year's tradition possibly dating back to pagan Gaelic times. It's called first footing. And first footing, the goal is that when the clock strikes midnight and it's January 1st, you want the first person to cross the threshold of your home and enter your home. You want that to be a tall and dark man carrying specific gifts. And if that happens, it's good luck. Huh. Like for everyone, this isn't just for people who are romantically interested in a tall and dark man.

There is definitely a start the year with a bang kind of vibes, but no, it's for everybody. And apparently the practice at New Year's parties where they're doing this is send a guy outside at 1159 and then he comes back in after midnight and we did it. How tall has he got to be? They don't specify. Are you talking about like 5'9"? So if you're a short king with the right vibes, I think you count too. You're tall in your heart. Yeah, because that feels discriminatory.

Yeah. The real discrimination is apparently it's bad luck if a fair-haired person is the first person into your house. Well, now that's just true. is apparently it's bad luck if a fair-haired person is the first person into your house. Well, now that's just true. Sorry, Alex. Yeah, I'll just be out on the moors not getting let in anywhere for New Year's this year.

It's going to be tough. Yeah, and so they want a tall and dark haired person. One source I read claimed that the anti-fair hair thing might date back to Viking invasions, like Norse people being upsetting to the Scots because they were, you know, invading. Right. But yeah, the thing is a tall and dark man is supposed to enter with gifts. Apparently, tall, dark, like dads will often get recruited for this. Like kids will remember that as being part of their new year. And quoting the Scotsman newspaper here, traditionally, they would arrive loaded with a coin, bread, salt, a lump of coal, and whiskey. It's a great cocktail. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because coal's good. It's power. So, that's...

It's great. Yeah, yeah. There's no downsides to it. It's 100% just free energy. We don't have toides to it. It's 100% free energy. We don't have to think about it. Just burn those babies. Yeah, inhale it if you can. It's great. Close all your doors and windows.

Make sure there's no airflow in or out so that you can get the full coal flavor. Don't get carbon monoxide poisoning, friends. Don't do it. But yeah, I love that people in Scotland were like geeks in the modern day where they're like, actually, coal would be a positive gift because like it is if you want home heat in the 1800s. So that's out there too. And it's not just Santa at all. I really thought it was the Santa specific thing. Right. I mean, it is interesting where you have some iterations of it of like, oh, it's a bad thing. Cause it's boring, I guess. But yeah, it's, it is weird that it's like a bad thing because it'd be like, I guess in the modern sense, like, ah, if Santa's mad at you, you get batteries. It's like, batteries are super useful. What do

you mean? Right. And also your toy needs batteries. Go get some batteries. Right. Right. You get a toy, it doesn't come with batteries. Now you got a sack of batteries because you were naughty last year. Yeah, exactly. And since the industrial revolution, people have been using coal aggressively as a battery all the time. We'll talk about that more later. Right now, we're going to swing into some scientific theories in natural history with takeaway number two. The Earth formed almost all of its coal a little more than 300 million years ago, and there's a few theories about why. A bunch of dinosaurs fell into the same hole and died.

It's like almost the opposite. It helps that there weren't dinosaurs yet when all of this coal started forming. Yeah, because I thought a lot of it was like actually plant matter. Yes, coal is made of plants that die usually in marshes or swamps or bogs. I thought this was also like I thought a lot of like sort of oil was also like plant matter because like we think of it as like it's all dinosaurs and stuff. But it's a lot of it I thought was like plant matter because like there was a huge amount of plant matter on Earth.

Yeah. Apparently oil tends to be from marine life, which can be plants. And then like algae. Yeah. Yeah. Coal is from plants on land. Those two fossil fuels, that's the biggest difference in their origin. Interesting. Which I had never, ever thought about. I just figured the earth gave us these things and who knows. Right. It's poop. It's earth poop that we collect.

Yes. Decay and waste. Yes. Yeah. Yet it turns out almost all of the world's coal that's available today is from a specific period of about 60 million years, which I know sounds like a lot of time, specific period of about 60 million years, which I know sounds like a lot of time, but geologically that's super specific. And we're just beginning to figure out why only one era created almost all the coal. And it turns out the period is called the Carboniferous Period, which ended about 300 million years ago and started 360 million years ago. So 300 million years ago, but the coal was created, the matter that created the coal was like, it was a process over 60 million years.

Yeah. All the plant death happened in a 60 million year period. Right. And then more millions of years leading up to now was the pressure that turned it into coal. Yeah, that's right. And then other eras before and after that didn't do that, which is weird because technically it turns out coal is forming all of the time. It takes millions of years, if not hundreds of millions of years. But any plant that dies today can decompose a specific way and receive pressure

and heat to become coal. That situation has not ended. It's just that a bunch of it happened at one time. Right. So that's interesting. Was there this Carboniferous Period full of plant life and not that many things to eat it? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Nice. And there's a few sources here, especially a piece for National Geographic by Robert Krolwich, also an interview with Judy Bailey, geologist at the University of Newcastle. of Newcastle. National Geographic says 90%, 9-0 of the coal we use today comes from the Carboniferous Period, which was 360 million years ago to 300 million years ago. I know those numbers don't mean anything, but the closest thing they mean to me is that the dinosaurs died about 65 million years ago, first started evolving and thriving about 250 million

years ago. So if coal is at least 300 million years ago, it's more ancient than dinosaurs in most cases. Right, right. Yeah. And so you don't have a ton of herbivores munching on these things. Yeah. So that's, that makes it easier for the plants to just dominate. That's right. We call it the Carboniferous period because we're basically naming it after coal. A bunch of things were alive that became coal later. Coal is made of carbon and full of carbon. Right. There was one source I read that said, it's cute, but they were like, in the movie Jurassic Park, there's the visitor center, there's a banner that says when dinosaurs ruled the earth and the Carboniferous is basically when plants ruled the

earth yeah there were gigantic plants and not a lot of things eating them there was a Carboniferous park but it was just fine it was a beautiful botanic garden and nothing happened. No kids died. She's like, wow, this plant is cool. Right. And the main characters do not decide to form a family at the end. They're like, let's focus on our careers. Those are very important. We can help the world that way. Yeah. It's like Jeff Goldblum is still really upset that you're playing God with plants, but then it's just like, Jeff, it's plants. Calm down. Right. Like everything is fine, but somehow Jeff Goldblum is mostly shirtless laying down halfway through.

Like what happened? You're okay. What's going on? What's going on? And yeah, and this was a really astounding time for plant life. In particular, a species we don't have anymore of giant, delicate, warm weather trees. According to Caltech geobiologist Joe Kirschvink, there were vast forests of tall, thin, almost fern-like trees reaching 160 feet in height, which is nearly 50 meters. One name for these is arborescent lycophytes.

Hmm. Are these true trees or are these sort of like proto-trees? Proto-trees and more like ferns. Right. And they have very small, root systems and what would happen like this is not so theoretical we're pretty sure that there were huge forests of these especially in warm moist places when they died and piled on top of each other that was perfect raw material for coal so that almost definitely is one reason that this era made a bunch of coal. Right. Yeah. And like, because I thought that this was a period of time before trees made it big. I mean, I'm not a I'm not a botanist, but I thought it took a little while for trees to really make it on the scene in the plant world.

It seems to derive from the thing where ferns are super ancient and this is sort of a riff on ferns it's a riff on ferns if i can call evolution that i'm thinking of that scene in back to the future where marty is like uh playing music in the past that's like ahead of its time it's like well your grandkids are gonna love this you know you ferns may not get it, but your kids are going to love being a tree. I think we're discovering that Hollywood has not made very many movies about just a lot of trees. There's really a lot of space for us to explore and play with, you know? The closest plant movies we've gotten were Little Shop of Horrors and The Happening. And both of them plants were the enemies, which I think is interesting.

This is almost spooky how giant and huge it is. And the thing that happens over millions of years after these weird fern trees is the formation of coal. To be specific about how coal forms, what happens is a plant dies. The best environment for this is a swamp, a marsh, a wet boggy area where the plant starts to rot but is too waterlogged or too cut off from oxygen to totally decay. And then that gets compacted over time. The first thing it becomes is something called peat, P-E-A-T, which we also have around today. And in places like Ireland, people cut it up and use it for energy. But if peat stays in the ground for a long time, it keeps compressing. The warmth of the earth will also heat it over time. And that process is called carbonization.

And then we get a few grades of coal that are more and more dense and compact. One of the densest is called anthracite coal. That is one of the best for power. There's a lot of it in Pennsylvania. I think when people think of coal, they think of like a kind of like lump of black sooty rock-like thing, but it's like maybe a little porous, maybe a little bit light. Are the different, like are the higher, like the more energy rich ones like denser and heavier?

Like do they change in appearance? Yes. Yeah. They essentially get darker in color and heavier. That also changes how much or little they pollute. Like anthracite is apparently relatively energy efficient as coal goes. And then there's what's called soft coal. The newest coal is called brown coal, which is not even black yet. And you can see bits of plant matter

in the look of it still. And so is the newer stuff less energy efficient? Yeah, it has less carbon in it and it doesn't burn as powerfully. Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, I can see nothing wrong with digging up the most energy crampacked things in the world and burning it over a period of a few hundred years, given that it's been down there many millions of years. That seems fine to me. Yeah, and there is a theoretical situation where every era of natural history is generating relatively equal amounts of coal.

It's weird that only one time made all of it. Even with these proto-fern trees that we talk about, those are big, but we have huge trees in swamps today. Like real trees could also die and get compacted and be amazing coal. But there's two kind of competing theories about why that specific Carboniferous period made all the coal and made more than 90% of what we use. Theory number one, giant Santa T-Rex used all the coal that would be produced in later eras. I think that movie pitch will beat our look at a bunch of trees movie. I think that's a better idea for Hollywood. I like trees. Stop being mean to trees. No, what are the theories, Alex?

Stop being mean to trees. Now, what are the theories, Alex? One of them involves fungus. Even more thrilling. I love a fungus. This is very plant evolution stuff. Because around the start of the Carboniferous period, plants evolved to make lignin. And lignin is a tough crosshatch of carbon-based molecules.

And this theory says that once plants had those tough molecules, they could get a lot bigger, and the existing fungi didn't know how to eat it. And so the plants didn't really rot, and that means they just sat around becoming coal worldwide. And that would explain how we got so much coal. Okay. So this sort of burst in plants that were harder to decay would become coal instead. Yeah. Instead of what happens to so many plants where funguses eat them and devour them, they just sat around getting eventually

compressed and compacted and heated and that that would explain a humongous burst in coal generation by the earth i don't want to call it coal production but you know what i mean little gnomes underneath the ground making coal um but so like did plants yeah yeah did plants uh lose so plants lost this quality where they they became i guess the idea is that after this like 60 million year period like over 300 million years ago plants became they lost this trait of being harder to digest by fungus? Pretty much, yeah. The theory claims that the plants kept having lignin, but fungi eventually evolved to eat that too. I see. And then returned things to a situation where a lot of plants get decomposed and then do not lay around becoming coal. You just had this period of time where fungi were just like, what the hell is this stuff?

And that's also kind of a possible flaw in the theory, which is that not all plants in the Carboniferous were making lignin. And it's just somewhat unlikely that fungus couldn't figure this out for 60 million years. Like even on an evolutionary scale. Right. Something would probably start eating that at some point. Yeah, I can see that. Maybe it's just sort of a combination of different factors. Yeah. Things that are doing any kind of selective pressure on, say, the plants or the fungus system, maybe you do have some relative stability for a while until you do start to get more selective pressures.

Yeah, because we do know that's another reason these plants thrived is there weren't brachiosauruses. There weren't bigger bivouac dinosaurs yet. And so, yeah, they just kind of got to grow and the earth had not developed things to devour that. Right. I mean, there were, there were like arthropods at this point, insects at this point, but just not, you know, they wouldn't require the same amount of like biomass as say a brachiosaurus. Yeah. And, and this fungus change, it's often called the white rot theory. People have just named it a white rot fungus. But the other competing theory is basically just plate tectonics and the movement of continents.

So you get kind of a squish phenomenon going on where you're compressing the plants more. It's actually less that and more continents forming mountains and forming valleys. And if there's a bunch of high places like mountains, that's a lot of water running down to make swamps and bogs and marshes. Oh, interesting. And so they think that during the Carboniferous, multiple separate continents mashed together into a supercontinent called Pangaea. And then when these collide is the way we think of it, that makes big mountains. As the water runs down, that makes a lot of bogs and swamps. And the thinking is that was just a geographically prime time for the sort of ecosystem that falls and decomposes into coal effectively. So then if that's the case, wouldn't you expect to see some like geographic evidence of like where you see these this coal production seeing sort of evidence of continental collisions, but then also continental

like separation, things like that? Yeah, the proponents of this theory say we have that evidence and that basically Pangea forms, but then re-separates and the resulting coal in North America and Europe and Asia in particular, those three continents. I know that sounds like most of the world, but they say that the locations of coal in North America, Europe, and Asia indicate that geography of the Carboniferous period was conducive to marshes for coal. And then once Pangea separated, are they saying that there was no longer this like a high amount of like bogs and marshes yeah and then that becomes a little bit of a flaw in the theory because we still had a bunch of worldwide bogs and marshes so this is still being argued over a bit like we we know

some reasons you see what i've seen me a bog mummy i know've seen what? I've seen me a bog mummy. I know there's bog mummies. I know there's bogs. Think I haven't seen bogs? I've seen bogs. I think my mind forgot bog mummies exist because they are scary. So I could not hear you say the words. They are a little scary.

I used to be so scared of them as a child. It was like my number one most frightening image was the bog mummy. And then recently I went and I saw some in Copenhagen and it was actually really like, I don't know, I guess deeply profound kind of thing because like I don't have the childhood fear of them. And being able to like, a body of someone who was like clearly a person wearing sort of clothes that they were wearing, you know, having like some preservation of their facial expression. It was not scary. It was moving, I think, because it's this feeling of connection to people who are so

chronologically distant from us. And then seeing like, oh, yeah, this is like a person with an expression and interesting clothes. Like it's moving. It's like it was not as scary as, you know, little 12-year-old Katie had built it up to be. I really like that. I guess they're so well-preserved. They feel like part of our lives. They're not an Egyptian mummy wrapped in a lot of cloth and feeling more alien.

Right. There's something to me, at least touching to be able to see someone's face. I mean, some of them may have suffered, like they were were certainly bog mummies that were sacrifices. And so they basically had their throats cut. And so it's like, that seems scary. And I'm still freaked out by the plaster casts of the Pompeii victims, just because that seems so scary. They seem really like, I don't know, obviously a volcano erupting and then having someone in a fetal position is scarier. This is a holiday episode. Anyways, but yeah, seeing like, there

were some of these like these bog mummies where it's like, it's a much more peaceful situation. And so seeing like their face is to me like more profound than it is scary. Yeah, man, it's very human that we have had bogs and oddly coal around forever. And the timeline of that is a lot of our stats and numbers. We're going to hit those after a short break and then do some holly jolly stats and numbers. It's a holly jolly bog mummy. It's the best mommy of the year. And it sings along like the Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein.

Hey, folks, I have a hot tip for you because it is almost Christmas and it is always almost time to get somebody a gift. Birthdays, anniversaries, anything. An instant gift that you can get from your internet device right now is a Maximum Fun membership. Maximum Fun is the wonderful employee-owned co-op of artist-owned shows that we get to be a part of. And that's an absolute dream in so many ways. One of them is that they offer gift memberships. And MaxFun is the best at gift memberships that I've seen in all of podcasting or really media. You can set the email to arrive at a specific time. or really media. You can set the email to arrive at a specific time. You give them 12 months of membership, which immediately gives them over 500 hours of bonus content. Also, our show does a bonus show every week. So if they're supporting our show, they get that every week for the entire 12 months of that membership. So this is basically just a hot tip. I know it helps me and helps us

and makes the show possible. And I hope that's exciting. But mainly, this is just a hot tip. I know it helps me and helps us and makes the show possible. And I hope that's exciting. But mainly, this is just a really good idea. If you have somebody who you haven't thought of a gift for yet, you can immediately end at the exact timing you want. Give them a MaxFun membership. So that's a holiday tip. MaximumFun.org slash join. And then there's a gift tab to do it. And in the meantime, enjoy the rest of the show. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the

next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The J 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 and we are back after a little musical break and speaking of music our next fascinating thing about

the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics in a segment called bing bong bing bong it's the most wonderful stats of the year there we go thank you that name was submitted by albert kennedy thank you albert we have a new name for this segment every week Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com. And thank you, Katie. That was great. I did my bings and I did my bongs. I'm so grateful to listeners for everything. And one of the things is that I get to send professional emails where I say stuff like,

can you do a bing bong bing bong when we tape? Dear Alex, yes, I can do a bing bong bing bong for our next recording. Looking forward to it. Yeah, that comes back on letterhead. I insist on professional corporate letterhead for bing bong communications. Just a few fast numbers this week. The first one is 3,600 years ago. So no longer geological natural history timescales. This is around 1,600 BC. That's when people in ancient China burned coal. Oh, okay. So we figured it out.

There are seams of coal all over the world, and some of them are either near the surface of the ground or totally visible as a rock outcropping. And that last thing was the case at a Bronze Age settlement in what's now modern China. And the journal Science covered a new study of this in 2023. A team from Lanzhou University found that there was evidence of coal for heat and cooking and smelting metal. And there have probably been a lot of early human communities where people just had coal available and grabbed it and burned it and used it for stuff. It's impacts of it and the big use are all from the Industrial Revolution. But some very small scale, not that big of a deal, coal burning has happened all over the world. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, if there is some resource that we can exploit,

I feel like we're going to do it at least modestly until we develop the technology to take it to a whole new level. Yeah, that's right. And that's the story of coal is pretty much that we used it a little and then around the mid 1700s, starting in Britain, people said this should just power everything we ever do. Trains, factories go for it. Right. So what was like the technological innovation that really brought about coal into big use? Was it like the steam engine? Was there some, like, what was sort of the moment, coal's big moment? Yeah, it was the steam engine and primarily invented by a guy named James Watts. And so you, you burn coal that turns something or moves something from the steam and then you

have power. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And, And then we burned it and nothing bad happened. The bad things, just kind of very brief numbers, touching on them a little bit. One number is 1812. 1812 is the year of a massive mining disaster in the UK. It was in a town called Felling, where one explosion killed 92 people. Oof. Yeah. where one explosion killed 92 people. And the British Industrial Revolution, from 1750 to 1850, Britain started mining more than 10 times as much coal as it had before. Many other countries mined coal like crazy, too. And it wasn't as dangerous as a job. Coal is something that burns well for energy, and the coal or the things around it or the air around it can explode or collapse.

And it's a hard job. Yeah. Yeah. It's and like in order to make at the time like coal affordable, it's not like they're paying people well to go risk their lives and get coal. One source this week is the book Energy, A Human History by National Book Award winning writer Richard Rhodes. He quotes a Victorian era mining engineer who says that in early coal mining, there was a frequent situation

where people would be shot out of pits into the air by explosions. And if you worked in coal, that was just sort of a thing you would see around. And it's still a dangerous job, but in some places, some situations we've moved beyond that, which is good. Yeah. I think, so there's like a family story about my grandpa in some kind of, I don't know. He wasn't, no, no, he was fine. I mean mean, he's he's dead now, but not because of this. He was doing some work in a type of mine and there was like an elevator down.

He was supposed to sort of get get on this this lift, this elevator down into the mine. And then like the he there's too many people on it. So he had to go the next time and then the lift broke and like a bunch of people got like i don't know if they were they died but they were at the very least severely injured so there's just there's like so many things that can go wrong in a mine especially a mine full of a flammable highly flammable substance yeah i i encourage people to go to like a coal mining museum or something if it's anywhere near you, because it's going to be bonkers. I promise. Whatever it is, everything from people using canaries as a signal of gases to horrendous elevator collapses to everything. And people did this with so little in terms of scientific knowledge. And so it's amazing as an industry. And the last couple numbers here, one of them is 2022, because that's the latest annual U.S. government data.

They said we hit an all-time high for carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. Climate change could be a thousand episodes, but coal is a major contributor to that issue. coal is a major contributor to that issue. It feels like Santa shouldn't be giving the coal to naughty children then, because they're less likely to be responsible with it. You know, like Santa, you've been giving it to all the naughty children and then they grow up and then they run the oil companies. What are you doing? Ultimately, Santa's fault.

We solved it. Let's bring him in. Ho no throw the book at him yeah oh no and last number is 2023 because in the first five months of 2023, that is when U.S. wind power and U.S. solar power produced more energy than U.S. coal power stations. And that is the first chunk of time that has ever happened. That's great. So are we going to start giving wind to naughty kids? That or natural gas, I guess, which is a fossil fuel but yeah according to scientific american in 2020 we reached a point where wind and solar and hydroelectric outpowered coal together but hydro is is pretty old like damn technology you know 2023 is the first year where... Damn technology. The kids on my lawn are building a dam.

I can't stand it. And 2023 is the first year where the relatively newfangled technologies of wind and solar were bigger than coal. It's a result of us shutting down coal plants and also a drop in natural gas prices. And it is a sign that the U.S. is probably moving beyond coal. There are other countries kind of just starting to burn a lot of coal. And so we need to balance that out, too. But the U.S., after thriving and benefiting from coal for many years, is starting to get over it. Marginal progress. I'll take it.

to get over it. Marginal progress. I'll take it. That's usually how progress is. It's great. Yeah. And one very last takeaway for the main show, and it's pretty fast, but takeaway number three. As recently as the mid-1800s, people in the U.S. considered coal a suspicious and newfangled form of energy. There was a time when coal seemed like cutting-edge tech, and so cutting-edge it was a threat to our United States' way of life, as recently as the mid-1800s. Like as what, witchcraft? Or just people going like, I don't trust it. I think it's the government trying

to put chips in my brain. There were definitely like, this will mess up our health concerns that seem very normal today. Which is actually correct, but you know. Yeah. And then, and then the biggest concern seems very hilarious. It was people thought we're moving away from the proud United States tradition of burning wood in a fireplace and losing the important things of that, even though this was a time when the U.S. was like brand new as a country and concept. This is like Hank Hill and not wanting to grill burgers with coal versus propane. Amazing. Just like, I will burn coal the day I die because wood or bust. Yeah, pretty much. That's incredible. The two key sources are a piece for

Smithsonian Magazine by Clive Thompson and a piece for JSTOR Daily by Livia Gershon. It turns out that there are four reasons that in the early U.S. people just relied on wood and did not use coal, which was known technology. Britain was already using it a bunch. Bob Cratchit, yeah. Yeah. Right, the influencer Tiny Tim.

Yeah, sure. So four reasons. One is the early U.S. didn't have much in terms of factories and heavy industry. So we just needed fuel for houses. Second reason is that coal burning stoves were hard to use and it was easy to accidentally spill all the fumes into your house and kill everybody. I am. You know how that is. So this is so weird because there were such good reasons and such

silly reasons to not use coal like some of them still make sense yeah the third reason Americans mostly cut down wood is they didn't care about deforestation I was like let's just go for it it seems like there's infinite wood in North America we'll just keep cutting down everything. It's cool. Yeah, that's, man, poor trees. First, they don't get a break in movies. And finally, when we make movies about trees, they're like evil and trying to kill Mark Wahlberg. And then we chop them down all the time. Do you know if burning wood is dirtier than burning coal?

Because it's less efficient. Like even though burning coal is still bad for your health and environment, I thought it was like less bad maybe than burning wood. That's exactly right. Yeah. Smithsonian quotes a few experts who say that other than the big exception that wood is renewable, it's like astoundingly inefficient to have a wood burning fireplace. And these coal stoves were more efficient for everything. Right. I finally have a fireplace that I can actually use if I wanted to. But I haven't. Partially because like once I burn wood in it, it's like, how am I going to clean it? It's going to be a bunch of ashes there. I'm going to have to sweep them up in a sack to beat naughty children with.

So I just put some candles in there. But I feel it feels weird. I feel like I should burn wood, but then I feel bad because burning wood is dirty. So it sounds like what I should do is burn a bunch of coal in my fireplace. That's right. Each of us has a choice to make. Will we become the German folklore figure Nekt Ruprecht and beat children with ashes? Or will we have a blazing lovely fire?

And it's hard to pick. Right. Hard to pick. Yeah, so Americans said, we don't have factories, we don't like stove technology, and we have infinite trees, so let's just cut down wood.

The fourth and last reason is that there's a lot of coal in even the early United States, mainly in Pennsylvania, but people didn't want to lug it from there to the rest of the country. Fair enough. It's heavy. Ironically, coal ended up powering the distribution of coal with trains. It sort of needs itself. How do you even get that started? How do you even start that, right? Because you need the coal to transport the coal,

but the coal, you need it for the transportation of the coal. Yeah. Man, it's like running a train and putting down train tracks in front of the train. Yeah. And so other than rural central Pennsylvania, where you don't have to be Gromit putting the model train tracks in front of yourself in Wallace and Gromit. I like how you knew exactly what I was saying. Exactly. Yes, thank you. This is great. So rural central Pennsylvania, people had coal stoves, but basically everybody else in the early United States, as they colonized everything, used the different technology of a wood-burning fireplace. People didn't really get into coal stoves until the 1860s.

Coal wasn't more popular than wood until 1885. And even then, it took active promotion from the coal industry to make that happen. In Smithsonian, they write about rich people who owned coal mines paying other rich Americans to spread the word about how much they like their coal burning stove. And they compare it to Instagram and TikTok influencers today being like, I love this tummy tea or this lotion. Being like, I love this tummy tea or this lotion. Hello, Timmy heads. It's Tiny T here with your new coal updates. Coal, is it the new wood? See, now I do want a TikTok for Tiny Tim where his head is so far below the frame, you know?

Like it's just the top of his forehead because he's small. Tiny Tim TikTok. Tiny Tim TikTok. Tick tock. Tiny Tim Talk. Tim Talk. Welcome to Tim Talk. Tiny Tim. And yeah, and this change was a big deal economically. Like coal was often cheaper for families and would work out that way. But in the mid-1800s, as it started, there were

famous writers saying that coal was a threat to our way of life socially. In an 1864 essay, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and was massively famous, criticized coal stoves. She said, quote, Would our revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to defend airtight stoves and cooking ranges? I believe not. She felt like a fireplace was more traditional and positive as like a social and cultural part of your house. That's really interesting and weird. Technology does change culture and the fabric of society, obviously. Roads, cars, internet, smartphones, all these things do significantly change the fabric of society.

I don't know that I see it with going from a fire to a coal burning stove. But it's really interesting that she felt so strongly about that. Exactly. Like to us, that's just two old things and it doesn't matter. Yeah. But to them. Two old hot things. One of whom is Harriet Beecher Stowe.

beats your stow. Yeah. And there was an eventual transition of most people getting on a power grid and using a utility company. And so most of us just don't handle the stuff that heats our home at all. Like, why would we? But back then people were picking which of these tasks they're going to do. And my favorite weird example of anger about Cole, in 1843, Nathaniel Hawthorne, famous writer, he writes an essay called Fire Worship, and he argues that if we get rid of fireplaces, we will kill social interaction. Quote, social intercourse cannot long continue what it has been now that we have subtracted from it so important an element as firelight. While a man was true to the fireside, so long would he be true to country and law, end quote. That's so interesting.

I mean, like, were they saying that it's like harder to gather around a coal burning stove? Like gathering around the fire is a more social kind of like engaging activity. Exactly. It's almost like worrying about screen time or something. Like they said, if you have this little black machine, this coal stove, instead of a roaring hearth that lights up everybody's faces, your family will function differently and our social fabric will fall apart. I mean, they're not, that's an interesting thing because I don't, I can't say

that's like a hundred percent wrong, right? Like if you, if you have a harder time seeing people's faces and it's not, it's not as easy to like gather around in this way, maybe it did change these social dynamics. That's very interesting. Yeah, it could be true. It's sort of like, if we add a TV to the house, do we stop talking to each other? It's so long ago, we don't know. It's not apocalyptic, but it might change things somewhat. Yeah. Yeah. So it was like a big fight. And in the end, most people just adopted coal anyway. They said, either way, this is the new technology.

Right. And in Smithsonian, the writer Clive Thompson, he argues that this story about coal is great news for green energy technology. Because there's people today who say, oh, a wind farm looks bad, or solar panels on a house look too futuristic. If this is any indication, they'll get over it and we'll set that stuff up. That's great.

Yeah. Got to put solar rays into naughty children's stockings. It's like, what did Santa bring me? My eyes. That makes me imagine Santa shooting beams of light out of his eyes, and I'm pretty into it. Now that's the movie. Like a Kryptonian. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways.

Takeaway number one, there's a range of winter holiday traditions involving gifts of coal, and in one of them, the coal gifts are positive. Takeaway number two, the Earth formed almost all of its coal a little more than 300 million years ago, and there are a few theories about why. Takeaway number three, just a few hundred years ago, people in the U.S. considered coal a suspicious and newfangled form of energy. And then a ton of numbers about the ancientness of human coal use and an incredibly brief look at coal mining and global warming. Those are the takeaways. Those are the takeaways. Also, 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 at MaximumBun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we

explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is a weird U.S. government plan to flood the Grand Canyon. That's right, flooding the Grand Canyon. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 14 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of max fun bonus shows. It is special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include all sorts of wonderful La Befana material, in particular from La Cucina Italiana, amazing digital resources from places like National Geographic and Scientific American,

an Australian broadcasting company interview with Dr. Judy Bailey, geologist at the University of Newcastle, plus the book Energy, a Human History by Richard Rhodes. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life.

There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 69. That is about the topic of water towers, which pairs perfectly with this episode and also especially with the bonus. I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. 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. Special thanks to the Beacon

Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. Thank you to all our listeners. And I truly, truly mean that. I'm going to reiterate that in particular next week. We're airing a holiday message in your feed. It's a tradition every year, instead of a full episode, we do a holiday message on the Monday closest to Christmas, which will be Christmas this year, 2023.

I'll save my main thank yous for then, but I hope you enjoy that. And then the following Monday, New Year's Day, I hope you enjoy a full new episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. How about that? Talk to you then.