(water rushing) - And... That could be something. (twangy guitar music) Today, I'm on a very amateur hunt for a very unique material. Gold. It's one of humanity's oldest treasures but it keeps reinventing
itself with the times. It's been a status symbol,
a currency, a garnish, a future material, and a lot more. It came from outer space and ends up locked away in vaults. It lasts forever. I've always thought about gold as this rarest of rare treasures, but I also found out recently that it's apparently not that
hard to find around here, which completely messes with my whole idea of what gold's about. So welcome to my latest obsession. I'm gonna try to understand
what makes gold so valuable and find out whether it's
actually all that rare. I think I might have something. (water rushing)
(twangy guitar music) It is tiny. (subdued water rushing) So if I wanna find some golden myself, I need to understand the
journey that it goes on. A lot of wild stuff happened
to get gold here to Earth. Cosmic explosions that
chucked metals like gold out into the universe. A massive shower of metal-rich meteors that may have pounded the early Earth. It's all surprisingly controversial. What we know is that there's
currently gold peppered throughout the Earth's crust and mantle. It collects in areas called veins. Basically, super hot water
dissolves gold deep underground, brings it closer to the surface, and drops it in veins as the water cools. If a vein surfaces via erosion, the gold is weathered
away into little bits and carried downstream by rivers. This is known as placer gold, and it's what we're after. The key to finding placer
gold is its density. Gold is about 19 times denser than water, meaning only quickly-flowing
water can carry it. So you can expect to find gold
wherever a river slows down, like here, along an inside bend, or here, where water
deflects around a big rock. In either case, the current eases up, and the gold drops to the river bed. Which river to look in,
that part's anyone's guess. Gold has been found all over the mountains here in Washington, but with the help of
a local amateur miner, I got a tip. And just pass the bridge,
there's a turnoff to a park? Okay, good enough for me. So let's talk about why humans
want gold so desperately. According to the Gold Council,
which is a trade group, its biggest single use
historically is jewelry. It accounts for almost half
of all gold ever mined. That's about 93,000 metric tons. Then there are the industrial
or practical uses for gold. Gold's great for dentists because it can be shaped
into long-lasting fillings. It's also used as a
conductor in electronics. There's an arthritis
medicine made of gold. There are coronavirus tests that use gold. It really runs the gamut. So what's up with that last 35, 40%? Right now, there's about
75,000 tons of gold that's just being used as
a thing that has value. It's formed into bars or coins and accumulated by governments
and banks and investors. It's not being used
for anything practical, but it holds value, largely because we all
just agree that it does. Out in the field, it's time to
put my research to the test. Hey, buddy. - [Alex] Good morning. - Ready to go get some gold? - [Alex] Yes. (water rushing) - Okay. The whole river is kinda
arcing widely this way. So we're on the inside
bank, which is a good thing. I think we just start
digging and see what happens. Now, ideally, we want to get as close to the bedrock layer as possible. As the gold moves through here, it sifts down through
all this later material until it hits that bedrock layer. So for us, that either means
finding exposed bedrock or it means digging. (subdued mellow guitar music) We filter out the biggest stuff. Okay. (subdued mellow guitar music) So what I'm doing here just to start is getting all of this gunk
suspended in a layer of water so that I can start to filter
out the lightest stuff, the really light stuff
is gonna be the stuff that kind of dissolves in the water. And then I can start to let
the lightest rocks tip off. And the heavier stuff will
sink to the bottom of the pan so that eventually all that's
left is the heaviest stuff. That's gonna be some black sand. It's made of different kinds of irons. And then it's gonna be gold. The point of this last step
is to get it as spread out as possible across the bottom of the pan, so even the tiniest
little flake will show up. (water rushing) Nope. (disappointed vocalizing) Clean plate club. Back to it. This process is fun, but it
does not capture the scale and stakes of the modern gold industry. Most gold comes from hard rock mining. That means digging up and
processing the veins of gold while they're still in the earth. It's difficult and dangerous work. And it's too easy to do poorly. The chemicals used, like
cyanide and mercury, can leak and pollute groundwater. Mining can scar the
land for years to come. Butte, Montana sits next to a former mine that's now a massive toxic lake. The area is one of the
largest Superfund sites in the nation. What's more, the demand for
gold drives millions of people around the world to
engage in smaller scale, often unregulated mining. This exposes countless
workers to mercury poisoning, many of them children. Accidents and other dangers abound. Overall, it's an industry
with a reputation for crushing work and very long odds. (water rushing) Late in the afternoon,
a possible breakthrough. I'm looking for any little sparkle. Wait, wait, what's that? Our little sparkly guy there, you see it? - [Alex] Oh, now I see it. - That's about the size
we're likely to find. I don't know. I can't even tell what I'm looking at. It might not be. That is gold mining in a nutshell. After a day of digging and sifting, hundreds of pounds of earth moved, we've got this one tiny
little fleck of maybe gold. Got it. Which gets at the other side
of why gold is so valuable. It's not rare per se, but it's hugely difficult
to mine at any real volume. For every ton of rock processed
at an average deposit, you can expect about
3/100 of an ounce of gold. That works out to about
one part per million. So the gold supply is
often more about economics than geology. Mining companies today have a lot of what they call gold resources. It's gold they've got earmarked,
but are avoiding for now because mining it will literally
cost more than it's worth. And that's what gold
scarcity really means. We know where it is and how to get it. It's just costly in
every sense of the word. (contemplative guitar music) There are ongoing efforts
to improve gold mining. Campaigns like No Dirty Gold fight for better labor standards,
environmental protections, and oversight. International mining
agreements have come online as have stronger guidelines
within mining companies. And, in theory, there are more exotic ways to feed our gold habit. There are gold deposits
across the sea floor and some early efforts to mine them. Or there's outer space. Asteroids in our own solar
system contain troves of precious metals if we can get at them. But, again, gold isn't
valuable unless you can sell it for more than it costs to get it. For now, that math says to just dig some more holes in the ground. After tearing up half a riverbank, I kept thinking about the
why of the gold industry. Most gold is dug up
for beauty, for status, or just for abstract value. It's basically mined for
the sake of a metaphor. And it's a metaphor we
clearly still believe in. With the onset of the pandemic, gold shot up in value, like it often does when
times are uncertain. That's us betting against
the modern economy, against our governments, and our leaders and our future. It's a vote for this thing that we all like that never changes. That'll be around long after we're gone. (contemplative violin music) The next morning was
38 degrees and hailing. We were cold and wet, but the campsite was
right next to the river. So we took one last crack at panning. (contemplative violin music) Wait, wait, wait. That is a little piece of gold. That's fricking ridiculous. Yeah. We got some gold. We found gold in a hailstorm. And, sorry, I gotta do it. Eureka. (subdued contemplative violin music)
