Tracy Allaway

Are there rope celebrities?

So we're talking about the basic design of rope.

Walk us through, I guess...

The technological breakthroughs when it comes to designing rope, was there a moment, you know, when the fourth cord was added or I don't know, they were twisted in a different way where someone was like, aha, I have invented the better rope that will now allow us to accomplish some great thing.

If I could fast forward about 50,000 years or so, Joe started this conversation talking about the importance of rope when it comes to whaling.

And if you think about a time period like the 1800s, sort of marked by the expansion of the British Empire, lots of ships sailing around all covered in rope in one way or another.

All right.

But you know the kind of ships I mean.

How important was being able to manufacture rope at a sort of industrial scale in the 1800s?

Because, I mean, we're talking about a lot of rope.

I think you have a stat in your book about how much rope it took just to, you know, get a whale.

And it was a lot.

Can you talk to us about the supply chain that created rope?

So I guess rope in the 1800s was made out of jute or hemp or something like that.

Where did that material come from and how did it get to the dockyards in a place like London?

Oh, my God.

I was going to ask that same question, but I was saving it for the end.

Dude, we've been doing this for so long.

That we're morphing into the same person, I guess.

No.