399) Vince Beiser: The global sand trade and how it remade 'modernity'

“Hundreds of people have been murdered over sand in the last few years. Even though most of us barely ever think about it, sand is actually the most used natural resource in the world after air and water.”

In this episode, we welcome journalist Vince Beiser, the author of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization. Vince guides us in an exploration of sand as a natural resource and the ways in which its extraction and exploitation, quite literally, upholds structures of modern civilization. Exposing the multi-layered histories, uses of, and even violence that ensues around sand as a resource, Vince calls for an exploration of diverse, plural models that include but are not solely dependent on sand as an infrastructural material.

How does unveiling the economy of sand, in turn, speak to landscapes of injustice, where the clearness of glass as end products juxtaposes the outsourced pollution that exits their factories? And how might our questioning of “how and why” sand is culled into our lives turn our attention to the literal and metaphorical cracks that splinter the seemingly indestructible foundations of the project of modernity?

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(The musical offering featured in this episode At the Edge of It by Oropendola.)