The Fun with Foil Expertease

Spelldrunk. Spelldrunk. Spelldrunk. Spelldrunk. I think I've got it. Spelldrunk. Right? Yeah. Spelldrunk. Well, we are excited for the podcast today. Our guest, Danno Sullivan, is an expert in tinfoil. So Danno, we'd like to probe your area. What? Of expertise. Spelldrunk? Naturally. You're listening to Expertise, Spelldrunk, the podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer, Clare Sera, and expert comedy writer, Danno Sullivan, bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Oh my gosh. I am as excited as the listeners today, that is for sure.

And by just crazy coincidence, I needed to use a little bit of tinfoil this morning while I was baking my morning potato. And I thought about, oh, I'm going to learn today everything about, as the Welsh call it, aluminium. Where did this come from? I'm excited to be here with you on Expertise today, Clare. I'm feeling shiny with happiness to discuss this topic, upon which I so often feel reflective. You said aluminium, and now I can't say it any other way. But aluminium, oh, I just proved myself. Is that the proper pronunciation, aluminium? People in the aluminium industry just call it al for short.

We say it so many times per day, it just saves so much time to really shorten it down to al. What I've noticed though, in the effort to save time by abbreviating the word down to al, for some reason, it's become habitual to really elongate the word itself. The syllable that we have remaining is now stretched out to take up the duration of time that we would have used in saying the word aluminium. Well, let's try it. I'm going to say the word, and you say the abbreviation. Okay, no tricks. One, two, three. Aluminium. Oh, gosh, even longer. Mine was actually slightly longer.

Yeah, even longer. Yeah, just by a penny farthing. Yes. So, aluminium has been with us forever. Aluminium paper, in the form that we know it now, that's... Foil. Foil. I want you to take us back to the day that the element of aluminium was stretched and turned into foil. That must have just been a thing of the past. Yeah. So, aluminium has been with us forever. Aluminium paper, in the form that we know it now, that's... Foil. Foil. I want you to take us back to the day that the element of aluminium was stretched and turned into foil. That must have just been a jubilant victory for those scientists.

Aluminium, Claire, is an element. Are you familiar with the elemental table? I am familiar. It's a table that's actually made of all the elements. Boy, I would like to see a coffee table at your house. No, you've misunderstood me. I think maybe intentionally. The table would be made of wood, but upon that table of wood would rest a paper table of elements, where the table is a grid, and the grid is filled with the names of the elements. And one of the elements is, one, two, three, aluminium. What scientists were up against originally was the difficulty of pronouncing the word aluminium.

Mm-hmm. So, the main scientist at the Aluminium Institute was working down at the library one day. And doing some unrelated investigative work into pumpkins, which he had learned were made with not only pumpkin itself, but with seminum. And on his way home from the library, he got chased by a wolf and got hurt so badly that he was picked up by a helichopter, which took him to the hospital. I was not aware of how much etymology was involved in the scientific studies. Oh, yeah. They just love insects. Mm-hmm. So, their daddy was not severely wounded. He just needed some good, healthy food, like some biscuit.

And to get that biscuit home from the hospital, they needed a way to keep it fresh. Right. This was the hospital wing of the Scientific Institute, where a lot of this work was being done. And the scientists started putting their heads together, because this was Dr. Johan Svidberg. Mm-hmm. Great, great Swedish Nobel Prize watcher. You got to watch other people get them. That's right. Dr. Johan Svidberg was beloved around the Scientific Institute, and his fellow scientists wanted to send him home with this health-giving biscuit, so that he would be able to recuperate out of the hospital successfully.

So eventually, the scientists of the Scientific Institute put their heads together. They realized, by golly, boys, we're surrounded by elements. And it was there, a spur of the moment, a eureka moment, as they say in science. Of course, everyone ripped their clothes off and went running down the street, the way good old Archimedes did back in the day. They love a tradition, those scientists. I wish I'd been around in that time. Yeah, yeah. I wondered why, and now you're explaining it. It's a... Yes, that's why I'm here on your interview show. Dano, you have a chapter towards the end of your book that I really found pretty fascinating about where you think aluminum foil, tin foil, is going to go.

Thank you, Claire, for finding that fascinating. What did you find so fascinating about it? Because people often think this is a product from the past, that we're going to move beyond tinfoil. But you... Aluminum foil. Aluminum... We have moved beyond tinfoil. So it's no longer tin. Tinfoil is a product of the past. Now it's all aluminum. Yes. And you claim, with these days of climate change and being responsible for the planet, that aluminum as a mode of transportation, lightweight, reflective of the sun, like some kind of solar-powered... Yeah, they're self-powered, these vehicles.

Yeah. It's an attractive option to think about, but Dano, as you were kind of selling it in your last chapter, The Future of Travel is Aluminum, I just wondered about if you're talking about cars or scooters, I mean, the sun flashing off of those just seems like a hazard going down the street on any sunny day. Yeah. So two things. What you're describing as a hazard, Claire, is actually a built-in benefit. Okay. Tell me. It's not a bug. It's a built-in benefit. Okay. It's not a problem. Is it a built-in benefit? Built-in benefit. One of the things we're doing with aluminum vehicles, Claire, is creating them intentionally shiny, never the dull side up, always the shiny side up.

Reason why? Simple. When something is that shiny, that reflective, it makes it look like it's going really fast. What we're doing, Claire, is we're slowing down the whole transportation stream by giving the appearance of speed. This increases safety, decreases energy consumption. What I found attractive about it, if every car was made of aluminum, every car would absolutely crumple on impact. That's why slow speed is so essential. You can't be going above more than a slow walk in one of these crumpling cars. Wow. That brings up a very important point. This was the second point of my two points that I'd hoped to make in my two-point system.

Safety. Uh-huh. Yeah. That's the first argument that comes up, is that these vehicles are so prone to crumpling. What we're doing, Claire, is we're replacing certain key components of these aluminum vehicles with much sturdier, much stronger components made of iron, steel, wood, lead. In a lot of cases, we're just replacing a part on one of these vehicles with an anvil. You are really addressing the crumpling factor. There's nothing more important than people's safety. We feel like a slow-moving, anvil-based vehicle is really the way of the future. We're decreasing accidents a hundredfold in our experiments.

So you have put them on the road, because I'm interested in what powers it. You claim that they are climate-change friendly, so it's not combustible engines, I'm guessing. Right. Right. Dano, do you mind if I say what it is? I didn't want to expose you, because there's a lawsuit. Claire, I know you've read the book, and you know what it is. Go ahead. So it's straight-up gunpowder. Yeah. You have to reload at every stop. So you basically are shot off to start your errands of the day. At each stop, you run in, you do your little errand, whatever it might be, pick up the kids, and then you're shot off again.

It doesn't sound safe, but it's a minute amount of gunpowder to power something as big as a full-family vehicle with an anvil. A full, aluminum-wrapped, anvil-based vehicle that is powered by gunpowder. Think of a cannon, Claire. It's a lot like you're the cannonball. Right. Right. And you're still in the cannon the whole time. Nope, you're the cannonball. Okay. Shooting through space. That was the accident I was referring to. We lost a whole family that way. Into space? Well, they had stopped at a sandwich shop. They stopped rather suddenly. They had been shot away from home via gunpowder in a crumpling car towards a Subway sandwich shop.

They were going to try to stop at the drive-thru, but when you're traveling at the speed of a cannonball, it is hard to slow down and place an order. Right. That's one of the uglier chapters of the history of aluminum-foiled vehicles. Personally, I cannot get behind gunpowder-powered vehicles. That's probably the only safe place to stand. But even to be behind it, you could be shot by the pellets. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's a scientific fact. Okay. So if you're going to stand behind a car that is being shot by gunpowder, then you've got to understand the science is very likely to harm you.

So the car that's behind you, that's what the anvil absorbs? No, no. I'm sorry if I misled you. It is simply not safe to have a car behind you. This would be a one-car-per-roadway system. Well, that would really decrease the risk. People say it's impractical. I say this is what the world needs. I'm going to say there's a part of me that agrees with the thought of, let's make fuel, not war, with our gunpowder. Gunpowder was not invented as gunpowder originally. It was invented to just blow things up. And I feel like we're using it for its intended purpose. You are blowing up the automobile industry.

I feel like that's worthy of a foil etching of a Nobel Prize. Well, I can't wait to watch you watching the next person to win the Nobel Prize. Daniel, this has been enlightening and fascinating, a little bit dangerous to even just listen to because some images in my mind now are probably going to keep me awake for much of the night. But I highly recommend your book to our listeners. It's available in public libraries. Not available for purchase. It's so scientific. Sure. I'd like to thank you for having me on your program today, Claire. It's always a treat to get to talk science and in particular about the fine craft of foil made from aluminum.

Sometimes we just like to say it. The Expertise, spelled wrong, podcast is free and like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com and follow us in your favorite podcast app like the expert podcast listener we know you are. Thank you, Dano. I hope our listeners learned a lesson. I sure did. Find another podcast. Bye.