Written By Will Grant
 

Asbestos. Do you feel like coughing just thinking about it? Most of us shudder to hear the word - it’s a substance that has caused hundreds and thousands of horrible, painful deaths. And yet it’s one of the most goddamn amazing things on the planet. 


We’ve all heard about the horrors of asbestos. But what about the miraculous side of it? Think about it - it’s a rock that you can make clothes out of, and banknotes for that matter. It’s wild. A weaveable, fire-resistant, rot-resistant rock. There’s literally nothing else like it on the planet. With all our advances in science and modern manufacturing techniques, we still haven’t been able to come up with something to match it. 


The use of asbestos skyrocketed in the industrial era, but there are actually signs of this magical rock being used all the way back in 4000 BC. Some people even found asbestos fibres in

stone age debris, dating back some 750,000 years ago (but that could be just coincidental - there were a lot of rocks being used back then amirite). 


For ancient peoples, asbestos was so magical that it seemed to belong more to the realm of fairy tales than to real life. Some believed that it was derived from the wool of the mythical fire-resistant salamander or the feathers of the phoenix. Others confidently claimed that it was spun from the long, silky fur of rats that lived inside volcanoes. Okay, the stories are a bit far-fetched, but they were onto something. Asbestos is freaking magical. 


In the Middle Ages, asbestos was considered the party trick of kings. Not only did it protect against medieval spells, but it helped with magic tricks too. King Charlemagne apparently had an asbestos tablecloth, and when his guests had finished eating, he would rip the tablecloth off and throw it in the fire. In the blaze, the cloth would turn fiery red, but not burn. He’d take it out and say (in medieval French), “Look, clean!” Now that’s a party trick. And apparently, it was so impressive that it even stopped a war from happening. Nobody messes with King Charlemagne and his magic tablecloth. 


Now we all know the boring modern uses of asbestos such as building materials, roofing, fireplaces etc. Boring. We want to know the more creative uses for this magical rock. Well, how does asbestos toothpaste sound to you? Or an asbestos cigarette for that extra lung-scarring flavour. And if you’re working with asbestos and are worried about inhaling the fibres, not to worry - just pop on a face mask… made out of asbestos.


To really get the Christmas season going, perhaps these holidays, you could decorate your tree with fluffy asbestos artificial snow! (Don’t do this.) So much fun for the kids (for now). 

 
 
 

  • [00:00:00] Will: Where can I find some of the fun uses for asbestos that are miraculous but not practical and boring? So heart surgeons would use asbestos thread to sew up your heart. Christmas trees were decorated with asbestos artificial snow. So, you know, there it is coming out of the packet. It's, this is basically the loose, fluffy asbestos.

    [00:00:19] A brand of toothpaste was marketed, it has asbestos fibers in it to be extra abrasive. Asbestos soles for your shoes if you work in a hot environment.

    [00:00:28] Rod: Serious foot odor.

    [00:00:29] Will: Yeah, it could be. As we've said before, asbestos theatre curtains, asbestos table mats, oven gloves, I like this one, baking paper.

    [00:00:36] Rod: That makes sense.

    [00:00:36] Will: Asbestos jackets for firefighters back to the 1850s, asbestos helmets, asbestos umbrellas. I did like this, for firefighters. Asbestos ironing board covers.

    [00:00:45] Rod: Well, that makes sense.

    [00:00:45] Will: Asbestos jewellery. It's a polished form of the rock, I think.

    [00:00:49] Rod: So anything shiny can be jewelry.

    [00:00:50] Will: But here's my two favorites. Asbestos face masks. So if you're working in a dusty environment, you could get some asbestos face masks to protect you. There were some working in asbestos mines who put an asbestos face mask on.

    [00:01:04] Rod: To protect me from asbestos.

    [00:01:06] Will: And here's my favorite. There was a brand of cigarettes that had asbestos filters in them. Asbestos was a miracle product. You could use it in so many ways. But as I said before hundreds of thousands of deaths. this comes from an ancient Roman piece of advice one should never buy asbestos quarry slaves as they often die young

    [00:01:33] some people reckon that Mike Todd Was always destined for greatness. He was the kind of kid who was making more money than his dad at the age of 10 running these awesome complicated, I think his dad might've been poor, but he was running a whole bunch of different schemes. Like one of them was he told the local theater, Hey, kids are sneaking into your theater, I can guard the door for you. So they paid him. And then. The kids had come up to him and say, how am I to get into the theater? And he'd say, all right, it's a nickel. So he's making money on both sides. He's got a whole bunch of these things.

    [00:02:02] Rod: It's a juniorpreneur.

    [00:02:04] Will: He was the kind of teenager who helped the local pharmacy sell illegal alcohol during prohibition

    [00:02:10] Rod: helps the local pharmacy sell booze during the prohibition

    [00:02:12] Will: he was the kind of youth who had made two multimillion dollar fortunes and lost them both. Before he was 21, he'd made, I think 2 million and then lost it all and then made another million dollars and lost it all by the age of 21.

    [00:02:25] Rod: This is when people were only what, 10 bucks a week

    [00:02:27] Will: something like that. So all I'm saying is he's a can do kind of guy. He's a go getter. He was the kind of man who much later on could make all of Hollywood, and in particular, his third wife, Elizabeth Taylor, sit up, pay attention and sob.

    [00:02:44] Rod: It's what every wife looks for in her husband.

    [00:02:46] Will: But I want to focus on just one moment in Mike Todd's life. The moment of his breakout hit the moment when a lot of people say he found his true calling. It was the Chicago world's fair 1933. It was called the flame dance and it wasn't super complicated at all. In fact, some people described it as one part burlesque and one part daredevilry. So basically, it was a hot lady dressed up like a moth. And she would do her burlesque dance.

    [00:03:16] Rod: To the flame.

    [00:03:17] Will: Closer and closer to a giant gas jet. It was in the shape of a candle. But it's this giant flame on stage. And she's dancing closer and closer

    [00:03:25] Rod: is this pessimism or optimism that I'm expecting her to burst into flames?

    [00:03:28] Will: Well, look, it wasn't terribly complicated. Look here's a photo here. This is her dancing along and she's got two muscular gentlemen breathing flames and stuff like that to jazz it up. But basically the whole point is she's like a moth to a flame. How close can we dance? And the final moment she catches fire.

    [00:03:46] Rod: Of course

    [00:03:46] Will: her moth costume bursts in flame when she comes too close, her wings catch fire and the whole thing just burns off her and turns to ash.

    [00:03:54] Rod: Part of the act?

    [00:03:55] Will: All part of the act, all deliberately part of the act. She turns completely appearing naked to the audience, all shocked and runs off stage. The audience are like, whoa, how the fuck do you just burn off all of her clothes?

    [00:04:07] Rod: I saw beave in the thirties. That's what they're thinking.

    [00:04:13] Will: Todd made a joke to the reporters. He was like, well, I I burned up four girls before I got it right.

    [00:04:17] Rod: That's hilarious.

    [00:04:19] Will: I know he's terrible, but what was the magic? What was the bit of Hollywood show bizarre that kept Muriel the moth alive while her costume burns off her? Well as later advertisements from a building company show.

    [00:04:36] Rod: Oh, fuck.

    [00:04:37] Will: It was a flesh colored linen suit, a body suit made entirely of what was considered then and had been for a very long time, a magical, miraculous substance, a substance I'm going to tell you about today. It was asbestos. Welcome to the wholesome show.

    [00:05:02] Rod: The podcast that sits sobbing. The podcast that dances naked next to the flame of science.

    [00:05:08] Will: I'm Will Grant.

    [00:05:09] Rod: I'm Rod lamberts

    [00:05:11] Will: how does the word Asbestos make you feel?

    [00:05:13] Rod: I feel like coughing. Honestly, whenever I hear Asbestos now I imagine fibers in my lungs and I go... But now at least I imagine a semi naked lady from the 1930's as well as choking. And I think of James Hardy, not the man, the company.

    [00:05:29] Will: Look to me as well it's yes, coughing, but also that little bit of horror, like there's this thing, this substance that we've got this whole mystique of terror around.

    [00:05:39] Rod: To be fair, when I was younger, before we became aware of it, when I was quite little and I was became aware of asbestos at all. I thought, Whoa. Like it blew my mind as a kid, it blew my mind and I'd saw demonstrations. I just thought this is fucking amazing.

    [00:05:51] Will: Good. Good. Because in another episode coming soon, I'm going to tell you about the monster that is asbestos. What we've all come to know about this horrible thing that has contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths and still does today. Heaps and heaps of deaths. But before we get there, I want to turn to the miracle. To the other part of asbestos that is like this stuff is just something from another planet.

    [00:06:16] Rod: Fuck yeah. I couldn't agree more.

    [00:06:17] Will: All right. Question one, what is asbestos?

    [00:06:20] Rod: A substance that doesn't burn easily.

    [00:06:23] Will: Yes, that is true. You are accurate there. Asbestos is a generic name for a group of mineral silicates. Long chains of silicon and oxygen atoms locked together with various other metals like magnesium or iron or calcium, and it forms into long, skinny little crystals, little hair, like crystals.

    [00:06:43] Now, I mean, this is the interesting thing about how it forms. So it's a rock, it's a rock and it forms in the cracks of otherwise soft rock. So you imagine you've got some bedrock and inside, inside there, there's a crack and over a long period, I don't have like it's over geological ages, little tiny crystals reach out and connect in between.

    [00:07:04] And so it's made of the same rock around it, but it's these tiny little crystals that are joining across the crack.

    [00:07:10] Rod: It's made of the same rock.

    [00:07:11] Will: Made of the same rock

    [00:07:12] Rod: just in different formation.

    [00:07:14] Will: Yeah. Sometimes the crystals can grow like up to 15 centimetres. So like six inch sort of thing. Mostly they're a fair bit shorter, like they're sort of one centimetre. There's six types of asbestos that normally come up, I'm only giving you these because one reason I like one name, but also there is, it is worth learning the difference between, you don't need to know these, but there's

    [00:07:35] Rod: is there going to be a test halfway through?

    [00:07:36] Will: Actinolite, amosite, anthophyllite, tremolite, Chrysotile, that one's different, it's not a light, it's a tile.

    [00:07:43] Rod: There's always an odd one out. In large families, one of the kids doesn't look like the others, and you know it's because someone was infidelious.

    [00:07:49] Will: It is the odd one out as well, and I'll come to it in a second. But there's also crocidolite..

    [00:07:53] Rod: Of course there is.

    [00:07:54] Will: Because I like that name and crocidolite looks like Croc's teeth, it looks...

    [00:07:57] Rod: I figured it was, not because it's green or eats meat

    [00:07:59] Will: the thing that makes asbestos a miracle is it's described as a physical paradox. It's combined properties of silk and rock, like it's a rock

    [00:08:10] Rod: that you can make clothes out of

    [00:08:11] Will: that you can make clothes out of and there's nothing else like it. Like, I mean, there's a couple of types of asbestos, there is no, no other weavable rock, like the idea of a rock that you can weave. Ancient names for it often pointed to this, they call it stone silk or stone wool or, you know, these kinds of things. Now within those six different types, most of the crystals are rigid but there is also a bendy crystal which I just how you get a bendy crystal I don't know.

    [00:08:40] Rod: This proves that physics will always end up being wrong. Always. Sorry physicists.

    [00:08:45] Will: So the fact that it's weavable rock is the thing that really makes it so unique and the thing that For a long time has made it so miraculous. Like, it's fire resistant, it's electricity resistant, it's rot resistant

    [00:08:59] Rod: and you can make socks out of it.

    [00:09:00] Will: Almost goddamn indestructible. How long have we been using asbestos?

    [00:09:04] Rod: Four and a half million years. Oh, you mean people? 2000.

    [00:09:08] Will: No, it's a lot more than that. There's some evidence like they've found asbestos in stone age debris back 750, 000 years, like, but there's not much more there. There's a suggestion that maybe people have found it back then

    [00:09:21] Rod: but that could have been happenstance, right? Like they're stone age. They just grab rocks. What do you work with? Rock? Which rock? Demrock.

    [00:09:27] Will: So we don't know much more, but there's hard evidence for a bunch of things that are like 6, 000 years ago. So 4000, 3000, 2000 BC. So there's things in Finland that we've had that in Egypt. In fact, there's a whole bunch of different places around the world where.

    [00:09:42] Rod: And clearly deliberately used, not just happening.

    [00:09:45] Will: No, absolutely. Well, so in Finland. 2, 500 BC. So 5, 000 years ago, or best part of, they found it in clay pots. So it's included in clay pots probably to make them more fire resistant. There's lamps and candles. I don't know what evidence there is for this but there may have been lamps and candles using asbestos 5, 000 years ago

    [00:10:05] Rod: but as in like a container that would hold oil, that would be the thing or

    [00:10:08] Will: no, an unburnable wick. So one place I said, you know, when you have one of those eternal flames. One great way to do it is to have an asbestos wick that never burns down and then you can add oil or something like that. 2000 - 3000 BC, the Egyptians were using it as well wrapping their pharaohs in asbestos cloth to protect the bodies from deterioration.

    [00:10:27] Rod: Okay. I mean, wax will work.

    [00:10:30] Will: Yeah, well, this is way more fun.

    [00:10:32] Rod: One of the things that normally doesn't happen to a corpse is it gets incinerated over the millennia. But if it's fancy and it's rock, it's like wrap me in rock. Go on.

    [00:10:40] Will: I would like it. There's some early written references. Herodotus. 456 BC, he talked about asbestos shrouds wrapping the dead before their bodies were tossed onto the funeral pyre. But it keeps all of the ashes separate from the wood ashes.

    [00:10:51] Rod: So it bakes.

    [00:10:52] Will: Yeah, you must burn on the inside, but it keeps all of your ashes together. So that you know you're not mixing with the wood or something like that. Because if you're taking your family's ashes, you don't want to just have a pile of wood in there.

    [00:11:01] Rod: You don't know. Also, I've got to say the name Herodotus, I've been thinking about names recently. Yeah. And the old name is the best one so I was going to change my name to Agamemnon.

    [00:11:08] Will: I like Agamemnon I pitched that as a potential name for one of my children.

    [00:11:12] Rod: And what? She said no? And your parents and the rest of your family, but come on.

    [00:11:17] Will: All other advice said no. Oh, here's another one. Theophrastus,

    [00:11:20] Rod: fuck yes. Theophrastus, because he got called Fras for short.

    [00:11:28] Will: Well, he was one of Aristotle students and he wrote a book called on stones, which I just but he said there's one particular stone that looks like rotten wood yet was not consumed with doused in oil and ignited.

    [00:11:41] Rod: So it looks like wood and doesn't burn.

    [00:11:43] Will: Yeah. They're talking about it. Pliny the elder in Rome in the first century AD, he said, yeah, asbestos is pretty good. It's quite indestructible by fire. Also affords protection against all spells, especially those of the Magi.

    [00:11:54] Rod: Oh, that's cool. So it's magic proof.

    [00:11:56] Will: He was the only one claiming it's magic proof

    [00:11:57] Rod: So Pliny of the younger went, dad, you're an idiot. It's not magic.

    [00:12:01] Will: So look, you can understand like, like the ancients knew a bit about this and they absolutely used it. Well, it was not rare, but it was sort hard to get. It was unusual and noteworthy. Yeah. So you get, you know, it's, it often became you know, something that's like the realm of fairy tales and stuff like that.

    [00:12:16] Rod: It looks like wood, it's made of rock. You can weave it into a cloth. You try and burn it. And it says no

    [00:12:22] Will: it literally won't. But I like but that absolutely is like, it's a magical cloth and.

    [00:12:27] Rod: Unambiguously, you know what we ought to do? We ought to crush it up and breathe it. Cause think how invulnerable we'll become. Part two. We'll talk about part two later.

    [00:12:35] Will: They thought it was the wool of the fire resistant salamander or the feathers of the Phoenix. And yeah that's where a bunch of the names from it sort of came.

    [00:12:43] Rod: Feathers of the Phoenix sounds a lot cooler than asbestos.

    [00:12:46] Will: But what I wanted to do here is just sort of give a chance to listen to and think about the sorts of uses that asbestos was put to. I'll go through a bunch that the ancients did. And then I'll come to some of the more moderns. So number One, the Romans seem to have made both towels and napkins out of napkins. I don't know why. Well, well, I do know why, but well, partly

    [00:13:08] Rod: I'm guessing if you wash them, they're pretty resilient.

    [00:13:11] Will: No, there's a great story. And I'm jumping ahead here to the the middle ages. What are they? The, I think it's late medieval period, like charlemagne, big king of France. He would have a lot of banquets and stuff like that, but he'd have a tablecloth made out of asbestos. Everyone's finished eating and they've made a big fricking mess. And he's like, wait. And he rips the tablecloth off the table, throws it in the fire, throws it in the fire and it glows red for a bit. And then he plucks it out and he goes clean.

    [00:13:35] Rod: Fucking great. I mean, come on

    [00:13:36] Will: apparently that stopped a war. I don't know how. Like you know, there was some warring factions and they came to have dinner and and he said magic tablecloth and they were like, holy fuck, this guy's wild. He's like, how could we fight against this guy and his magic tablecloth

    [00:13:48] Rod: there was power in this. What's his name? Charlie?

    [00:13:51] Will: Yeah. Charlie. Yeah. Okay. So what else we got? Ancient Egyptians put their Pharaohs in it. Scandinavians mixed it with pottery and sealed cracks in their log huts with it. The Persians imported their stone wall from India to burn the bodies of the dead.

    [00:14:03] There's some more of the magic trick type stuff. Medieval merchants would sell asbestos crosses and they show they can't burn so they must be the true cross. So it's like they're using it for a bit of fakery. Like Charlemagne, there was a Chinese general once who had a jacket made out of asbestos and in a dinner party, he deliberately spills some wine on himself. Oh, rip his jacket off, throw it in the fire. And then take it out again. It's all clean. It's a very elaborate trick and you're not putting it on straight away. Cause I don't know.

    [00:14:40] Rod: It doesn't retain heat that well. I thought,

    [00:14:43] Will: no, I think, no, it's actually good. It sheds it fast. I mean, that's why one of the few places that is still used today is in fire suits and things like that. It is very heat resistant

    [00:14:54] Rod: And heat repulsant, like throwing it, it sheds fast, right? It doesn't, it doesn't maintain heat.

    [00:14:58] Will: I think so. I think so. It's still a miraculous

    [00:15:01] Rod: it is fucking wild. Just don't breathe it.

    [00:15:03] Will: So getting a bit later Benjamin Franklin had a wallet made out of asbestos. In case you fall into a fire and your money gets burned. I don't know. Apparently the French. No, the Italians in the 1800s, they were weaving their banknotes with asbestos to protect them from burning. I assume

    [00:15:21] Rod: a real hazard. Yeah. My money always falls in the fire.

    [00:15:24] Will: It feels like a dumb thing to do.

    [00:15:25] Rod: Yeah. Showing off.

    [00:15:26] Will: But of course. Throughout most of the period, it was sort of a party trick of Kings like that. Like it was a cool material, but none of this is really a use. Like it's a, an interesting magical thing. I think the closest thing to a use is where you're putting it on the funeral pyre. If you want to keep it separate, but everything changed in the industrial era.

    [00:15:45] Rod: So didn't it though?

    [00:15:46] Will: Oh, look, I think two things here. One is they worked out pretty quickly how to mine it. Not safely, but how to do it. And they also they discovered fuck loads of uses for it. Now there's a whole bunch of boring things, building materials you know, roofing, great for roofing, a whole bunch of other sort of hot places, like a fireplace, you know, boring. Boring. I went out there and I thought, where can I find some of the fun uses for asbestos that are miraculous, but not quite as practical and boring. So heart surgeons would use asbestos thread to sew up your heart. I don't know why. I don't know why.

    [00:16:27] Rod: I suppose it doesn't melt.

    [00:16:28] Will: It doesn't rot. I think their point was it doesn't rot.

    [00:16:30] Rod: And other things. Nothing else doesn't rot.

    [00:16:33] Will: This might be before they had like titanium and wires, thin wires.

    [00:16:37] Rod: And the silky goodness that doesn't come from a spider's bum.

    [00:16:40] Will: Here's a good one. Christmas trees were decorated with asbestos artificial snow. So, you know, there it is coming out of the packet. It's, this is basically the loose, fluffy asbestos where you can sort of fluff it around your house.

    [00:16:51] Rod: Which kind do you want? Oh, can I have a big bag of the worst one? Kids, this would be fun. Not in 15 years, but right now, look at the snow.

    [00:17:00] Will: A brand of toothpaste. iT was marketed. It has asbestos fibers in it to be extra abrasive.

    [00:17:06] Rod: Well, that's not untrue. It's a rock.

    [00:17:09] Will: Asbestos soles for your shoes if you work in a hot environment. As we've said before, asbestos theatre curtains to stop the fire there. Asbestos table mats. You know, in case, uh, oven gloves, I like this one baking paper.

    [00:17:23] Rod: So that makes sense.

    [00:17:25] Will: Use the baking paper now to keep your trays clean and things cook a little bit better.

    [00:17:29] Rod: Well, we currently use a Silicon one that doesn't, so you don't have to keep throwing it away and I'm waiting for the day where people are going to go, Oh, you're Silicon baking paper, right? That gives you every cancer that exists. Look, it's coming, you know,

    [00:17:40] Will: anytime now that I hear the word miracle.

    [00:17:43] Rod: Run, duck under the desk

    [00:17:44] Will: like, this is the new miracle substance, the new myth, you know, and science does come out with these every so often. But it's like all of those properties where you hear, Oh, it never breaks down. Then you go, Oh, okay. Why? And what does that do to me? Asbestos jackets for firefighters back to the 1850s asbestos helmets, asbestos umbrellas. I did like this for firefighters

    [00:18:04] Rod: for volcanoes.

    [00:18:05] Will: Well, I don't know. It must be. So like, here's a bunch of firefighters hiding behind this little umbrella asbestos ironing board covers. Well, that makes sense. Asbestos jewelry.

    [00:18:15] Rod: No

    [00:18:16] Will: actually, asbestos jewelry is probably not the worst. It's a polished form of the rock I think

    [00:18:20] Rod: so anything shiny can be jewelry

    [00:18:21] Will: but here's my two favorites. Asbestos face masks. So if you're working in a dusty environment, you get some asbestos face masks to protect you. And so as I'll come to, you know, when we talk about the dangers of asbestos, there was some working in asbestos mines who put an asbestos face mask on

    [00:18:40] Rod: to protect me from asbestos.

    [00:18:42] Will: And here's my favorite. There was a brand of cigarettes that had asbestos filters in them. So I don't know what they're filtering out, but as we've said all the way through, asbestos was a miracle product. You could use it in so many ways. It's actually something that is totally unique. There is there's nothing else like it. And we haven't made in science in our modern manufacturing techniques, something that does the same sorts of things as asbestos could do. It really is, you know, halfway between living and rock.

    [00:19:16] Rod: Yeah, no, it's unambiguously fucking wild. I agree. Like I'm racking my brain to come up with some smart ass coin about what about product X? I don't have one. Like I said, when I was a kid, when I first heard about asbestos and I saw demonstrations of asbestos paneling and stuff blew my mind because it wasn't metal, only metal could resist fire.

    [00:19:34] Will: This is living soft.

    [00:19:35] Rod: And you finished burning it and you can touch it. Like it's ridiculous.

    [00:19:39] Will: But as I said before, hundreds of thousands of deaths. They're still going and they're all horrible. Yeah, so Next week I'm gonna tell you about how we learned that asbestos was bad How long we've known that asbestos is bad and how many people tried to cover it up. I'll just give you one clue

    [00:19:59] Rod: just a taste

    [00:20:00] Will: one clue. This comes from an ancient Roman piece of advice. One should never buy asbestos quarry slaves as they often die young

Will Grant
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