Today we travel to a future where we try to break up with cement.

Can it be done? How did cement because so ubiquitous? And what’s so bad about cement in the first place?

Full transcript available in site.

Guests:

• Grady Hillhouse: civil engineer and host of Practical Engineering
• Robbie Andrew: senior researcher at CICERO Center for International Climate Research
• Amy Slaton: historian at Drexel University and author of Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building
• David Stone: inventor of Ferrock

Further Reading:

• Practical Engineering: What Is Concrete? (Grady’s YouTube series)
• A Comparison of Six Environmental Impacts of Portland Cement Concrete and Asphalt Cement Concrete Pavements
• Global CO2 emissions from cement production (Robbie’s paper, discussed in the episode)
• Mitigation of climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions in cement industry
• Quantifying CO2 emissions from China’s cement industry
• Carbon dioxide emissions and climate change: policy implications for the cement industry
• Evolution and projection of CO2 emissions for China’s cement industry from 1980 to 2020
• Evaluating the carbon leakage effect on cement sector under different climate policies
• Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building (Amy’s book)
• The Materiality of Cement in the Cultural Matrix of the Middle Cross River Region
• The Materiality of Roads and Public Spaces in Provincial Peru
• Cement citizens: housing, demolition and political belonging in Luanda, Angola
• Concrete and corruption
• ASSEMBLING AND SPILLING-OVER: Towards an ‘Ethnography of Cement’ in a Palestinian Refugee Camp
• Some Thoughts About the Architectural Use of Concrete
• New cements for the 21st century: The pursuit of an alternative to Portland cement
• Sustainability in the EU cement industry: The Italian and German experiences
• Making Concrete Change Innovation in Low-carbon Cement and Concrete
• UA Research Spawns Eco-Friendly Cement Substitute
• This cement alternative absorbs CO2 like a sponge
• Creating Carbon-negative Building Products from Local Recycled Materials
• Tohono O’odham Nation

Actors:

• The Snowglobe Narrator: Brent Rose
• Lenny Haywood: Evan Johnson
• Farah Mousterian: Zahra Noorbakhsh, host of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim
• John Jacob Siwa: Joseph Jones
• Juana Aguilar: Tamara Krinsky, host of Tomorrow’s World Today
• Kevin Macklin: Lawrence Carter Long