I want you to do something with me for a second.

Grab your phone. Hold it in your hand.

Truly, hold your phone in your hand and just look at it for a second.

Look at this strange sleek device that holds a decent chunk of your life.

Tap on the glass, look at the little metal bits in the charging port,

feel the smooth plastic that keeps it from shattering.

Every single piece of this object

was once buried deep in the earth. It struck me like a little, I don't know how to make anything. I don't really understand how the world around me is actually kind of constructed. I don't Conway. He's a journalist and the author of a book called Material World,

the six raw materials that shape modern civilization.

And at this point, Ed has thought a lot about his phone.

We think that when we're talking on our phones that everything is just passing through the

ether and then we just have a conversation as a result of it.

But in practice that's not the way the world works. You know,

when we're having a conversation remotely, that is thanks to lots of

fiber optics, it's thanks to lots of servers, it's thanks to physical stuff, it's thanks to copper that's been pulled out of the ground,

it's thanks to sand that's been turned into glass, that's been turned into fiber optic cables.

It's thanks to this physical infrastructure that so much of the activity that we think is important in the world

actually can take place. It just felt to me like, wow, there's this whole other universe, this whole

other world I hadn't really kind of explored or thought about.

I'm Doolanthearis and this is Atlas of Skira, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today Ed and I are going to talk about three materials that our entire civilization depends on, salt, copper, and sand.

We'll visit the biggest man-made hole on earth.

...