How Concrete Built the Modern World

Tonight, we lie down on top of a story. After water itself, concrete is the most used substance on Earth - and there is a fair chance it is holding up your room right now. We begin beside a volcano, where Roman builders mixed lime with the ash of Vesuvius and poured harbours that grow stronger in the sea, and a dome in Rome that has carried itself, without a single bar of steel, for nineteen centuries. Then the recipe vanishes for a thousand years, until a lighthouse, a Leeds bricklayer and a gardener's flowerpot bring it back to build the modern world. Along the way: a kiln hotter than lava, mixer trucks racing a ninety-minute clock, a dam still quietly curing after ninety years, and concrete that is learning to heal its own cracks, just like the Romans'. Settle in. The floor has a story to tell.

Settle in. There’s nothing you need to remember.