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- Out of all the guest video pitches
that I got this year,

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this one had the best title.

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You might recognise
Vanessa from BrainCraft.

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She was on Disconnected,
on this channel, earlier this year.

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She is a behavioural scientist.

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Her channel is about psychology
and self-improvement.

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So, this is not her usual area.

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But I wasn't going to turn down a pitch
about a radioactive beach in New York.

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Full disclosure, this was a
nightmare for her to film.

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It nearly didn't get made,
but the story is worth it.

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Vanessa, over to you.

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- So I'm in New York City,
deep in Brooklyn,

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and just over this sand dune is a beach

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that has recently been
deemed radioactive.

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We can't actually go onto the beach.

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It's been closed by the
National Park Service.

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It's appropriately called
"Glass Bottle Beach".

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It's full of glass bottles,
pieces of the city's history...

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...and radium 226.

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So, to get over there, we're going
to have to get a little creative.

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So we're about 100 feet,
or 30.33 metres away

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from the Glass Bottle Beach,
the slightly radioactive beach.

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It's also as close as our boat
will physically allow us to get.

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While I'm trying to survive at sea,

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you may be wondering how a
beach can become radioactive.

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It all has to do with what
makes this beach so special,

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and that's rubbish, trash.

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There's lots of it,
because Glass Bottle Beach

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was an unofficial dump for decades.
But unlike the modern trash

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that lines New York City
streets, this is very old trash.

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I found a bottle in the
sand dunes from 1929.

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And when trash reaches a certain vintage,
it has some historical value.

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To an archaeologist, it's called "midden".

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And basically, it's a
collection of artefacts

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that tell us something
about a prior human society.

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Maybe to you, it looks like rubbish.

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And yes, a midden is domestic waste.

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But think of it as a resource

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for archaeologists to study
the diets and habits of past civilizations.

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When you think about what an artefact is,
trash plus time equals an artefact.

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That's the equation underlying
the entire field of archaeology!

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Some of these artefacts
are deep in the sand,

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and some get washed ashore.

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It's common to find a glass Coke bottle
from 1918 on the beach,

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and there's lots of stuff
there that can tell us

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about how people in Brooklyn lived
at the turn of the century.

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I think that's pretty cool, but it
might all be getting cleared out soon.

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Earlier this year, radioactive trash
was discovered at the beach;

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two broken Navy deck markers were found.

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Originally, they were used as
a low light source at night,

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because they contained radium 226,

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an isotope of radium at that
has a half-life of 1,600 years

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and decays into radon gas.

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The gas can enter your body
far more easily than radium itself,

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and both the radon gas and
gamma radiation on the beach

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now exceed ambient levels.

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The National Park Service closed the site,

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even though the danger of deck
markers has been questioned.

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And it's earmarked to be cleaned up.

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Meaning a lot of these really
old artifacts will be removed,

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even if they're perfectly harmless.

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So it raises this question of,
what is valuable to preserve?

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Because this isn't about radiation
as much as it's about urban archaeology.

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Let's imagine that in 200 years time,
people find all of our junk mail.

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Junk mail is probably something
that you would throw out.

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But if that comes up in the
future, if someone finds it,

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what would they be able to
tell about our human society

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from the crap that we
get in our letter box?

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Probably quite a lot that you
wouldn't find in official records.

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And we do preserve official
records, no questions asked.

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But what about artifacts?

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When all of our trash
teaches us that something

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about how civilizations live long ago,

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what responsibility do
we have to preserve it?

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I want you to think about that.

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Write down in the comments,
and I will see you there.

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- Check out Vanessa's channel,
it's called BrainCraft.

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Rather than exploring the world,
it's about exploring your own head.

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You could start with her
video on the growth mindset,

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or her video on lucid dreaming.

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And that's it for the guest videos
this time round!

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I am back next week.

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But until then, thank you
to all the guest presenters,

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and to you for watching.

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And I'll see you on the internet.