Planet Money helps you understand the economy.

We find the people at the center of the story.

Garbage in New York, that was like a controlled substance.

We show you how money influences everything.

Tell me what you like by telling me how you spend your money.

And we dig until we get answers.

I had a bad feeling you're going to bring that up.

Planet Money finds out.

All you have to do

is listen. The Planet Money podcast from NPR. It's Curious City, where we take your questions

about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore from WBEZ.

Hi, I'm Chris Bentley, a reporter with Curious City.

And I'm Jen Mason-Garb of the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Today we're teaming up on a question we're both geeked about.

Yeah, it jumped out at me when I read through the hundreds of Curious City questions about architecture.

Me too. I'm a casual geology nerd, and I've actually

got a geologic time scale pinned to my wall. Wow. Okay. Okay. So our question asker is Mike Vendell,

and he works as a programmer in Chicago's Loop. Mike doesn't usually give much thought to how skyscrapers

stay standing, but when I'm outside enjoying the lakefront at the beaches or other park areas, you know,

you see the sand and you see these huge skyscrapers in the skyline and you think like, you know,

how do they stay stable in that structure?

So he asked Curious City how it all came to be.

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