Grainy

We often take for granted just how important some pieces of our world are. Today's curious tales should shed a bit of light on that.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Geoffrey Chaucer is a

(00:37):
name that many have heard, but few actually know about.
Chaucer is incredibly well-respected by English scholars who consider him
the father of English literature, because he quite literally wrote
some of the first English literature at the time when
poets and storytellers were more likely to use French or Latin.
But he lived hundreds of years before Shakespeare, so his

(00:59):
curious history has mostly fallen into legend. It's truly ancient history,
with some details that are almost impossible to believe. Chaucer
was likely born around 1330, and by his late teens
or early 20s, his life was already dark and exciting.
As he traveled with his lord, Duke Lionel of Antwerp,

(01:20):
to fight in the Hundred Years' War in France, King
Edward III aimed to claim the French throne, and Chaucer
was duty-bound to help. You can see how from an
early age, the very idea of England was central to
Chaucer's life. In this case, the conflict was to decide
whether France was also England. One cloudy morning in 1360,

(01:41):
Chaucer's battalion was ambushed. Before he could raise his sword,
he was surrounded and taken prisoner. The French didn't kill him, though,
but rather they ransomed him and the other men back
to the English. Edward needed every man that he could
to siege Paris, and so he gladly paid the ransom
and Chaucer was free. And lucky for him, this phase
of the Hundred Years' War finally came to an end

(02:02):
a few months later when Edward failed to take Paris.
It turned out that France is, in fact, France and
not England. After that, Chaucer went from serving the duke
to serving the king directly. He also married his wife
Philippa around this time, likely the year 1366. And they
were essentially castle servants to the royal family. But Chaucer

(02:23):
was entrusted with more than just making beds. Between the
years 1373 and 78, he was sent to Italy on
an important mission for the king during a time when
the violence of the Hundred Years' War had resumed. The
nature of Chaucer's mission to Italy is still not fully known,
but it's theorized that he was meeting with French diplomats
to arrange a marriage between the royal families that might

(02:45):
put an end to the war. What is known is
that during this time, Chaucer met Petrarch, an Italian poet
who He was another influence on Chaucer, sharing local folklore
with him and helping him to expand his.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Repertoire of stories. In particular, Chaucer learned the story of Griselda,
a famous tale about a woman who is tested by
her cruel husband when he divorces her and takes away
their two children. And it seems that Chaucer was successful
in his mission to Italy because he received a curious
gift from the king once he returned, a pitcher of
wine every day for the rest of his life. And

(03:21):
if this doesn't sound practical, well, it wasn't. He had
to go to the port of London every day to
retrieve it. A few years later, when Richard II, the
heir that Chaucer had potentially arranged a marriage for, became king,
he commuted this gift to a more convenient annual sum
of money. Richard continued to reward Chaucer with land and

(03:41):
titles over the years. It seems that he continued to
travel on important secretive missions for the king, the nature
of which have still been lost to time. but we
can only imagine that he picked up more and more
stories along the way. By the 1390s, life was catching
up to Chaucer, who was in his 60s at this point.
His wife had passed away, and the king he'd spent

(04:02):
most of his life serving was embroiled in conflicts with enemies.
Chaucer thus ran out of money, but poverty can breed creativity.
Scholars believe that Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales during this
time of his life, collecting all of the folklore he
learned from his travels in Europe, and synthesizing it into
a uniquely English collection. This remains his most famous work

(04:24):
to this day. When Henry IV came to power in 1399,
the king was happy to help the elderly Chaucer and
provide him with an annual stipend in gratitude for his
long service to England. Chaucer died the next year. This
was an auspicious time for him to pass away, too.
The 1400s would see the end of the Hundred Years'
War and the rise of the Tudor dynasty. England was

(04:47):
coming into its own, and Chaucer, through his endless curiosity,
had helped to lay the foundations. In July of 2008,

(05:08):
the world witnessed one of the strangest crimes ever reported.
It was in Coral Beach, Jamaica, at the site of
a future resort. The gorgeous white sand beach was one
of the main draws to this location and what made
it perfect for a vacation getaway. Then, before anyone realized
what was happening, the beach just vanished. It wasn't washed

(05:31):
away by the natural ebb and flow of the tides.
Every grain of sand, which would have amounted to about
500 truckloads, was stolen and It was assumed at the
time that it was sold to a rival hotel chain
for millions of dollars. The previous year, another beach heist
had occurred all the way over in Hungary. The perpetrators
were not the same people, though, but they did point

(05:53):
to a growing market, the market for sand. Because, and
I know that this is going to sound crazy, but
sand is one of the most sought-after natural resources on
our planet. Up to 85% of all global mining operations
go toward dredging up sand. It's used in building materials,
mixing concrete, making glass, electronics, and to extract oil. When

(06:17):
an island country wants to expand its landmass or guard
against rising sea levels, they will dump tons of sand
into the sea to make it happen. Singapore, for instance,
has been consistently doing this since the 1960s. The sand market, therefore,
is enormous, and the dirty secret is that there's not
enough of it to go around. We use 50 metric

(06:39):
tons each year, enough to build a nine-story wall around
the whole planet. According to certain studies, we'll run out
of construction-grade sand by 2050. And yes, I said construction-grade
sand because there's actually a lot of different kinds of sand.
Beach sand is just too soft to get the job done.
Replacements exist, but they require much more effort to create

(07:01):
and source. And beach sand usually doesn't work for concrete
mixing because it creates less structurally sound buildings thanks to
the shape of the grains. Now there's desert sand, but
it's often too smooth. No, the ideal is river sand,
which has larger, sharper grains, and it sticks together more tightly.
And this is why to build the Burj Khalifa, the

(07:23):
tallest building in the world, they needed to import Australian
sand to the desert of Dubai, a desert that has
plenty of sand on its own. There may be sand
everywhere there is a coast, but it's still a sacred resource.
Which leads us back around to the story that we
started with, sand thieves. The illegal sand trade is far-reaching

(07:43):
and extremely lucrative. It was also easy to get away with,
since there's no international governing body to regulate the global
sand trade. The illicit sand trade is worth hundreds of
billions of dollars, more than gold mining or fishing, and
far less traceable, too. Past a certain point, nobody can
tell whether a specific load of sand was legally or

(08:05):
illegally mined. And this leads to the circumstances like that
in Morocco, where it's estimated that half the sand sold
for construction in that country is mined illegally. In India,
whole organized crime units, known as sand mafias, have sprung
up to meet increased construction demands. They keep a tight
hold on the market and make legal sand trading difficult.

(08:28):
And when they need to, they've bribed politicians to get
their equipment where it needs to be to get the
sand they need. There have been token efforts to address
the corruption and the environmental damage caused by sand theft,
but it's still a relatively obscure problem. And the reason? Well,
if I had to guess, it's because sand is one
of those resources that feels endless. If you want to

(08:51):
paint a picture of a vast number of something, you
say that there are as many as there are grains
of sand on the beach. In other words, to us,
sand is a seemingly endless resource, when in fact, it
is not. So maybe it's time to begin to think
differently about the world we live in. Because if we don't,
we run the risk of allowing our natural beauty and

(09:13):
resources to vanish and reappear in some billionaire's bank account.
But of course, that would require going against the grain.
I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet
of Curiosities. This show was created by me, Aaron Manke,
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the

(09:36):
Grim & Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn
more about the show and the people who make it
over at grimandmild.com slash curiosities. You'll also find a link
to the official Cabinet of Curiosities hardcover book, available in
bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And
if you're looking for an ad-free option, consider joining our Patreon.

(09:57):
It's all the same stories, but without the internet. And
until next time, stay curious.