Speaker 1: Justin how was the weekend for you? How?
Speaker 2: How how caught in the in the Drake Kendrick ship
Speaker 2: did you get into?
Speaker 3: I got annoyed after the third song, like too much homework.
Speaker 3: I love the discourse, but I also like, as much
Speaker 3: as I love Kendrick, I'm like, enough is enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like I can never totally forgive Kendrick
Speaker 2: for making me think this much about Drake. Yeah, read
Speaker 2: read deep like multi level theoretical analysis of yours about Drake.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I looked up the lyrics same as everyone else, but
Speaker 3: by the third song, I was like, oh boy, uh
Speaker 3: and then and then and then I heard someone say
Speaker 3: who's in Kendrick's campus, Like he's not even close to
Speaker 3: fucking done yet?
Speaker 4: And I was like, oh god, yeah, like all of us,
Speaker 4: I know that's what I'm saying, Like that's why this one.
Speaker 4: I was like, I'm exhausted, Like there's only so much
Speaker 4: combing of genius I can do before I'm like, you
Speaker 4: know what, I'm just gonna go with whatever I literally understand.
Speaker 4: In the moment he says it, people go like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's a bar. I'm like, I'm pretty sure that that
Speaker 4: was a bar, Like you gotta really think about that word.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I don't know, bro, Like, I'm just going
Speaker 4: for what I can understand.
Speaker 2: That one's a reference to something a guy who was
Speaker 2: like an uncle to Drake said at a family reunion
Speaker 2: in the late sixties. Six sixteen is that six sixteen
Speaker 2: is the time of death? Nicole Brown Simpson. She was
Speaker 2: announced dead by the lapd. I looked at him like,
Speaker 2: that's not even true. We're saying that shit. Hello the Internet,
Speaker 2: and welcome to season three thirty seven, Episode two of
Speaker 2: Daly's Like.
Speaker 1: I Say, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This is a podcast where we take a deep to
Speaker 2: dive into America's shared consciousness. It's Tuesday, May seventh, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. We've never had to prepare a guest more
Speaker 2: for how stupid we are than on today's episode. It happens,
Speaker 2: It happens, It happens.
Speaker 4: But hey, May seventh, though, National Packaging Design Day, National
Speaker 4: Roast leg of Lamb Day, Okay, National Barrier Awareness Day,
Speaker 4: National Foster Care Day, National Tourism Day, National paste up Day,
Speaker 4: And I don't know what that is. It looks like
Speaker 4: someone is using an exact ow knife to chop up
Speaker 4: headlines and paces.
Speaker 1: It looks like almost like a ransom note.
Speaker 4: But anyway, Oh, it's just remembering the day, the time
Speaker 4: before desktop publishing and computerized digital imaging, when many publications
Speaker 4: were composed and completed by hand.
Speaker 1: So shout out to the hand.
Speaker 2: It feels like a lot of people just you know,
Speaker 2: look at package designers, a lot of people who don't
Speaker 2: get a lot of credit, you know, sneaking in a day,
Speaker 2: and exactly more power to them, you know, because that's
Speaker 2: ther wars. Everybody's a little tired of international days. Let's
Speaker 2: take some time to honor the people who used to
Speaker 2: glue headlines together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like in my mind, I'm like, they didn't
Speaker 4: do that, nah, And I'm like, there's no other conceivable
Speaker 4: boy for that to have nah.
Speaker 1: Probably not.
Speaker 2: Anyways, my name is Jack O'Brien aka and Delay and Delay.
Speaker 1: They're using AI AI.
Speaker 2: Oh oh the music shitty.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: That is courtesy of nobody on the discord. No body,
Speaker 2: in reference to the fact that I've yet to hear
Speaker 2: AI music see AI art that could exist outside of
Speaker 2: the context of Hey man.
Speaker 1: You believe it. I believe it. Computer made this? Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: it's not like I.
Speaker 4: I wept when I saw that AI generated image of yeah,
Speaker 4: of Michael J. Fox, but in the Lord of the
Speaker 4: Rings franchise, such a I asked. So I asked myself
Speaker 4: so many questions and I didn't realize I could be
Speaker 4: trusted like that.
Speaker 1: No, not happening. Lean into the computer of it all.
Speaker 2: I'd say, there's that one Share song where her voice
Speaker 2: has like that computer warble.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that it's fun?
Speaker 2: Maybe lean into the computer instead of trying to convince
Speaker 2: us that it's like not a computer. Right right, Anyways,
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to be joined as always buy my co host,
Speaker 2: mister Miles.
Speaker 5: Yes it's Miles Gray.
Speaker 2: Akaa Gray not like us, Gray, not like us.
Speaker 4: I shout out to the Kendrick Lamar and Drake Beef
Speaker 4: that had absolutely melted down my phone and my all.
Speaker 2: My attention span, and that was just sitting in my
Speaker 2: brain all weekend. So an AKA from me to me.
Speaker 2: Every time a new one drops your batteries, just like
Speaker 2: eighty now it's at forty now it's it.
Speaker 1: My phone is off. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: People are sending like screencaps like going at this part.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, I don't have time to if I don't,
Speaker 4: if I don't understand what he's saying immediately, I don't
Speaker 4: have the time anymore to go on genius to figure
Speaker 4: out what he said, what he meant.
Speaker 2: The privilege of nobody giving a shit what you think
Speaker 2: about a rat beef that I that I love with.
Speaker 2: I only got a few texts every time a new
Speaker 2: one draft, mostly on text chains with you, with people
Speaker 2: asking you what you thought anyways, Miles, Yes, we are
Speaker 2: thrilled to be joined by a magazine and newspaper journalists
Speaker 2: who has written for magazines like The Nation and a
Speaker 2: small regional publication that we've mentioned a couple of times
Speaker 2: on the show called The New Yorker. He's been contributing
Speaker 2: to The New Yorker since he was twenty five and
Speaker 2: is currently working on a book about the global cobalt industry.
Speaker 2: Please welcome, Nicholas Stavros, New Yorkers.
Speaker 1: What's welcome.
Speaker 5: Thanks very much for having me. It's very kind. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: on the show.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's more where that came from.
Speaker 1: There's more where that came from. Yeah, So yeah, we're so.
Speaker 1: We're big fans of cobalt here.
Speaker 2: As mentioned before we started recording.
Speaker 1: I'm a big Musk guy.
Speaker 2: I just think, you know, anytime you can have a
Speaker 2: real world iron man just an inventing our way out
Speaker 2: of problems. Let's just see where he's going with this thing.
Speaker 2: Let's give him three four decades without any oversight, to
Speaker 2: just see see where he's going.
Speaker 1: That's kind of it's kind of my pitch. But you
Speaker 1: know or not.
Speaker 5: I mean to be fair to wait, to be fair
Speaker 5: to Elon Musk, though, I mean in the end of
Speaker 5: the day, very very early on, for very different reasons
Speaker 5: that we're not to do with. You know, some of
Speaker 5: the human rights apaces that we're going to get into
Speaker 5: did actually switch over from cobalt. Let's not say they
Speaker 5: ab of the you know, cobalt mind in this kind
Speaker 5: of artismal way, so I don't want to completely trash Tesla, okay,
Speaker 5: but they did foresee this.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I see that out. Yeah, well that's why
Speaker 2: we put him in charge of everything. No, but anyways,
Speaker 2: I also had some cryptos that don't want to pitch you.
Speaker 1: But before or.
Speaker 2: We get into cobalt mining, just generally the overall conversation
Speaker 2: around you know, we're moving off of fossil fuels, We're
Speaker 2: moving towards electric vehicles, is like, that's one of the
Speaker 2: big solutions that I feel like it's taken hold in
Speaker 2: the popular consciousness. And there are some problems with these
Speaker 2: battery powered cars that you've done some in depth reporting
Speaker 2: on son. We're gonna dig into that, but before we
Speaker 2: dig into it, we do like to get to know
Speaker 2: our guests a little bit better and ask you, what
Speaker 2: is something from your search history that is revealing about
Speaker 2: who you are, what you're up to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess I've been Look, I've been covering the
Speaker 5: campus protest quite a bit for the nation, and I've
Speaker 5: been suching all kinds of things about the NYU. Making
Speaker 5: this twenty twenty deal about cattling protest is you know,
Speaker 5: I think for me, what's really important is that people
Speaker 5: are allowed to exercise their their rights to free speech.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm not one of those free speech
Speaker 5: absolutists who says that, you know, you can say everything
Speaker 5: that you want all the time. But frankly, I've been
Speaker 5: a lot of these student protests and and a lot
Speaker 5: of the things that the kids are saying and not
Speaker 5: hate speech, right, So I find yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 5: not to bring it down a notch.
Speaker 2: But no, we're going about cobalt mining. Yeah in a second. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to keep it fun and late and talk
Speaker 2: about yeah but no.
Speaker 1: But yeah.
Speaker 2: Now I'm been googling the campus protests, like who's funding
Speaker 2: those things?
Speaker 1: Am I right? Like it's got to be Soros? Right?
Speaker 1: What's so weird? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That was in Political Politico And you're like.
Speaker 1: What what are you saying?
Speaker 5: Are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, I think there's there is this, there is this,
Speaker 4: uh A lot of more reckless reporting on it is
Speaker 4: sort of trying to mischaracterize these protests of being anything
Speaker 4: other than like outraged students over the state of things
Speaker 4: in Gaza. And it's funny because as I like, I remember,
Speaker 4: I've like talked to my mom like she's watching CNN
Speaker 4: or something, but she's a little bit more critical. She's like,
Speaker 4: is it really because of like TikTok? I'm like no,
Speaker 4: She's like, yeah, that's what I thought. She's like, but
Speaker 4: why do they keep saying that? I'm like, because they're
Speaker 4: trying to completely obscure what the motivations are of people
Speaker 4: that people couldn't just you know, cast their gaze upon
Speaker 4: what is happening there and say I think that's horrific, right,
Speaker 4: and nothing more. But yeah, that seems to be where
Speaker 4: we're at right now.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't have TikTok, so.
Speaker 1: Wait, but I thought you were a journalist.
Speaker 2: How are you reporting on any what's your sources?
Speaker 1: Man? Yeah, TikTok and.
Speaker 5: Try to use four Chan Reddit.
Speaker 2: Good to know he's a Capital Jay journalist. Yeah, okay, yes,
Speaker 2: this guy, this guy's serious.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean as somebody who you know, you have
Speaker 2: written features for the New Yorker. You worked in the
Speaker 2: fact checking department of the New Yorker. You know, you
Speaker 2: delivered a ted talk on the importance.
Speaker 1: Of fact checking. How are you viewing kind of what.
Speaker 2: We're seeing in the mainstream media right now with just
Speaker 2: a lot of yeah, just just kind of some of
Speaker 2: the tropes that we're talking about, where it seems like
Speaker 2: there's a desire to kind of discredit and diminish what's
Speaker 2: happening with student protesters.
Speaker 5: Look again, I think that there's a very real debate
Speaker 5: that you can have with student protesters, Like I mean,
Speaker 5: as a journalist, you have to remain objective, sure, but
Speaker 5: the way it's being portrayed, I mean I saw this
Speaker 5: guy who was whose Instagram I think it was Facebook
Speaker 5: Live or something was the viral Patriot, and you know,
Speaker 5: he'd come over to look at Jahaddas University, Columbia University,
Speaker 5: and he was sitting there and a bunch of students challenging.
Speaker 5: You know, maybe don't agree with what they're chanting, but
Speaker 5: the fact is they're standing on the sidewalk. They're not
Speaker 5: you know, they're not like they're not saying anti Semitic
Speaker 5: things or you know that it's you know, very very
Speaker 5: political slogans. That's disclosed. Diverst all these things again, Like
Speaker 5: you can disagree with that, you can debate that, you
Speaker 5: can even you can even say that the students aren't
Speaker 5: debating it and that there's there's little room for debate
Speaker 5: in the student movements. But to simply just send in
Speaker 5: heavily on police is just as to me, completely crazy
Speaker 5: and not really what the US is all about.
Speaker 1: Ryeah, well starting to be well now yeah, yeah, with.
Speaker 5: With any caveats, yeah yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it all depends on what you're protesting, right, because
Speaker 4: I think there's that stark imagery between like like a
Speaker 4: police escort for white supremacists exercising there for you to
Speaker 4: first Amendment rights and then and being kettled, beaten, pepper
Speaker 4: sprayed when you're out here trying to, you know again,
Speaker 4: protest against something as simple as being like, I'm trying
Speaker 4: to stop indiscriminate killing of people. That's that's really what's
Speaker 4: bringing me out here today.
Speaker 5: It's nuts, you see. I mean, you see it when
Speaker 5: you go to these protesters. There's one side and another
Speaker 5: and one side is being contained by the police, and
Speaker 5: the other side is kind of wandering around, you know,
Speaker 5: on the edges of the edges of the protest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, screaming you stand no chance, old lady. In one case,
Speaker 2: you see it, just like Cobra.
Speaker 1: What they're not allowed to celebrate?
Speaker 4: Come on, I know it's wild, but yeah, it just
Speaker 4: shows again like how we have such a skewed version
Speaker 4: of who is able.
Speaker 1: To exercise what right at what time in this country.
Speaker 4: And I think, I don't know, it feels like more
Speaker 4: people are just seeing that slowly, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, hopefully it reaches some kind of tipping point
Speaker 4: where the administration is something that is t TBD.
Speaker 2: At the moment, it feels like they're closer to doing
Speaker 2: something more in line with the status quo than doing
Speaker 2: something to protect the people who are currently being kettled.
Speaker 1: But based on the Biden kind of address.
Speaker 5: I look, I think that in the end of the day,
Speaker 5: like as as reporters, as journalists, you have to be
Speaker 5: very very clear that like you are just trying to
Speaker 5: tell the truth. I mean, there's a different there, you know,
Speaker 5: there's an opinion writing, there's But again, I think it's
Speaker 5: important as a journalist to look at the fundaments of
Speaker 5: what a society claims to stand for and what's actually
Speaker 5: happening in practice. And I do think that people should
Speaker 5: be able to debate and discuss freely, and I think
Speaker 5: that we've really lost that as a society in a way,
Speaker 5: and this has kind of this is once again sort
Speaker 5: of shown to shown to the world how how lacking
Speaker 5: we are in some of those kind of qualities from
Speaker 5: back in the day. Well, maybe something there was I
Speaker 5: don't know, maybe I look back to some sort of
Speaker 5: maybe I'm sort of looking back to some dream dream
Speaker 5: time when people were able to debate.
Speaker 2: But I think in retrospect, people tend to view the
Speaker 2: protests as something that like the protests of the seventies
Speaker 2: or the sixties is something that people that were more
Speaker 2: popular at the time than they actually were. And yeah,
Speaker 2: they were met with police violence also, and that I
Speaker 2: think written about in the same way that these protests
Speaker 2: are being written about in a lot of cases.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a good piece in the in Foreign afairsm
Speaker 5: this's actually that they dug up from the archive that
Speaker 5: I was Oh really, I was reading earlier today.
Speaker 1: What is something you think is underrated?
Speaker 5: I think that the novel Spring Torrent is very underrated
Speaker 5: by Taganyev. For me, it was this kind of like
Speaker 5: wow moment, you know, one of those books like I
Speaker 5: Want to be a writer mm hmm, depiction of kind
Speaker 5: of like obsessive love and kind of and also just
Speaker 5: like what love means between different generations and how that
Speaker 5: can be kind of exploited and not and how people
Speaker 5: can kind of ruin themselves through love. And I thought
Speaker 5: that was incredibly powerful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love Yvonne Sergeyevitch Turgenev was a Russian novelist,
Speaker 4: short story writer poets.
Speaker 2: We remember we said to cut off after that's okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: his name, that's yes, the Wikipedia pitch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm when I was not familiar with I'm not
Speaker 4: familiar with his work at all, but I'm also not
Speaker 4: uh you know, I think my like my limits are
Speaker 4: like Tolstoy and like Dostoyevsky when it comes to Russian novelists,
Speaker 4: and it's sort.
Speaker 5: Of basic same period you have to think of, you know,
Speaker 5: Dostoyevsky and Kenya basically around the same time.
Speaker 1: I saw a photo of him. He passed away when
Speaker 1: he was sixty four.
Speaker 2: The oh of God, living living life back then was hard.
Speaker 4: This guy looks like time and this is like sixty
Speaker 4: four years old, and I'm like, God, we're.
Speaker 1: There's a photograph. Oh yeah, look at him. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: he is weathered, weathered.
Speaker 2: There's pictures of like the old explorers who are like
Speaker 2: in their twenties and thirties and they look like they're
Speaker 2: like in their sixties.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They What just shows you what a little bit of
Speaker 4: like the things we've learned through science and stress and
Speaker 4: diet and things like that have done for the faces.
Speaker 4: Because like even look at like, you know, like the
Speaker 4: kids at the turn of like the nineteenth that you
Speaker 4: were going to the twentieth century, and you're like, like,
Speaker 4: is that a is that like a three foot eight
Speaker 4: for like fifty year old, right, and it's just life
Speaker 4: is just was fucking harder than and still kind of
Speaker 4: hard in many other parts of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thinking of the mountain climbers of like the eighteen
Speaker 2: hundreds like that, you look at pictures.
Speaker 1: They didn't know what SPF was, No, they did not.
Speaker 5: That's sure to bring the turn down again, which I
Speaker 5: don't want to be doing all the time. But it's
Speaker 5: during the course of working on cobalt mining, you know,
Speaker 5: I met a lot of these kids who were who
Speaker 5: were mining some of the metals that go into your batteries,
Speaker 5: and they looked so small but also so old that
Speaker 5: you know, they just lived such difficult lives and hadn't
Speaker 5: eaten properly essentially, So it was this kind of this
Speaker 5: this really physical thing that you could see. And there
Speaker 5: was one fifteen year old kid who I interviewed, and yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean he looked he had the sort of frame
Speaker 5: of a ten year old basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the really upsetting details from your New York
Speaker 2: A piece is that they give the kids drugs to
Speaker 2: suppress their hunger so that they can just kind of
Speaker 2: work through the day without having to be fed. Which yeah,
Speaker 2: pretty horrifying.
Speaker 1: All right, Hey.
Speaker 2: Bring it up with an overrated Nicholas please, Okay, well.
Speaker 5: The overrated I guess I was just thinking about, you know,
Speaker 5: in terms of dichotomies. I'm there's another novel by gen
Speaker 5: your Fathers and Sons, and it's about this kind of
Speaker 5: like son that comes back to the family estate with
Speaker 5: with this kind of dostyev skin radical figure in toe
Speaker 5: and in a way he's kind of a model for
Speaker 5: some of these Dostyev skin nihilist characters. And I think
Speaker 5: he's called Yevgeny, but not one hundred per central because
Speaker 5: it was a long time ago that I read it,
Speaker 5: and I just I don't know, I didn't I found
Speaker 5: I found the characters in that book kind of annoying
Speaker 5: in a way, and they just kind of sort of
Speaker 5: prattled on anyway. Spring Torrent is very good, First Love,
Speaker 5: very good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and sons for their Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Watching anything on Netflix, man, you know what you ever
Speaker 2: seen that?
Speaker 5: I've been watching Tokyo Vice Okay, Oh yeah, on HBO.
Speaker 4: I think it's actually sorry yeah, no, no, no, I mean
Speaker 4: it's I I've only caught the first couple episodes of
Speaker 4: the second season. I read the book when it came out,
Speaker 4: and I was really the book was really eye opening
Speaker 4: because as someone who's half Japanese, just like the idea
Speaker 4: of an American person because it's so it's like my
Speaker 4: mom's a journalist and it was written in Japan and
Speaker 4: stuff like that. It's it's such a hard life and
Speaker 4: it's so rigid the way like the tests you have
Speaker 4: to take to even get in there. Like the idea
Speaker 4: of a Westerner being like yeah, I'm gonna learn Japanese
Speaker 4: to that level like blows my mind.
Speaker 1: But yeah, at the show just to be pretty popular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's that's the story of Tokyo Vice as
Speaker 2: a Westerner trying to figure out life in Tokyo on
Speaker 2: the on the Vice Squad.
Speaker 4: Well, it's him writing about like what the Vice Squad
Speaker 4: is doing, so like you learn all these different things
Speaker 4: about Tokyo through his interactions with police. And then with
Speaker 4: this one is sort of centering around this yakuza guy
Speaker 4: who in the books telling was like having like renal
Speaker 4: issues with his kidneys and was going to the United
Speaker 4: So it's like a kind of a huge kind of.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah it was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, it's a really good book, Yeah, because I
Speaker 5: read it when I was in Japan a couple of
Speaker 5: years ago, and it was it was also very eye opening,
Speaker 5: and I remember just thinking, where are the yaks? I mean,
Speaker 5: it's not really something that you have a experience of,
Speaker 5: but I guess friends of mine who work there say
Speaker 5: that it's kind of on the periphery of quite a
Speaker 5: lot of the things, especially people who work in the
Speaker 5: restaurant industry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like nightlife, Yeah, you can, it's definitely it's
Speaker 4: a presence.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's uh, let's take a quick break
Speaker 2: and we'll come back and we will get into cobalt
Speaker 2: mining and other forms of mining that kind of make
Speaker 2: a lot of the wonder technologies of our modern life
Speaker 2: possible and kind of some dark things that are up
Speaker 2: the supply chain behind your phone. We'll be right back,
Speaker 2: and we're back and yeah. So you talk a lot
Speaker 2: about the kind of cognitive dissonance that happens where people
Speaker 2: buy an electric vehicle and think they're buying something that
Speaker 2: is kind of redeeming, almost, like it's not just that
Speaker 2: it's like the less bad option. It's like that every
Speaker 2: time I drive this, like I'm kind of saving the world.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 2: Is like there's even this like well known stat that
Speaker 2: like when you drive an electric car for thirty thousand miles,
Speaker 2: that like that gets you to carbon neutrality. Like it's like,
Speaker 2: so like the more you drive an electric vehicle, the
Speaker 2: more you're saving the future.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're absolving yourself of your carbon sense, but you
Speaker 4: have to get to thirty thousand miles or else it's
Speaker 4: all for.
Speaker 5: Not that's right, But that's a Yale study. I think
Speaker 5: that that came out a couple of.
Speaker 2: Years ago that said the thirty thousand that gave us.
Speaker 5: That said the thirty thousand miles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: But in a lot of ways, it feels like you're
Speaker 2: reporting reveals that we're replacing one form of pollution that
Speaker 2: I think people are pretty familiar with with global climate change,
Speaker 2: and we're global heating. I guess we learned climate change
Speaker 2: was actually something that was concocted by the Republican Party
Speaker 2: years ago because it's like nice and value neutral. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's changing. Yeah, global heating. People kind of know
Speaker 2: about that one at this point, and there were placing
Speaker 2: that with another form of pollution and human rights abuses
Speaker 2: that affect poorer parts of the world and are easier
Speaker 2: for people to ignore. Maybe, like you mentioned in an
Speaker 2: interview last year, like an Indonesian mind that is actually,
Speaker 2: you know, it's behind some of the technology we use
Speaker 2: all the time and don't think of as necessarily polluting.
Speaker 2: But it's this Indonesian mind that's actually like the mine
Speaker 2: is coal powered, and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the refined, the refinery and the mine, and you
Speaker 5: know it's it's it's nickel, which is like there are
Speaker 5: different types of nickel, but it's a type of nickel
Speaker 5: called laterit nickel. It exists in a type of soil
Speaker 5: called laterite soil, and that refining that nickel is incredibly
Speaker 5: energy intensive. So if you were to do it with
Speaker 5: like solar power, wind power or something like that, you know,
Speaker 5: perhaps you could create green nickel. That I'm very suspicious
Speaker 5: of everybody calling things green or green. But yeah, in
Speaker 5: the end of the day, like all of that nickel
Speaker 5: is made through burning huge amounts of coal, and nobody
Speaker 5: really looks at that. I mean, people talk about Scope one,
Speaker 5: Scope two emission, so Scope one emissions of the emissions
Speaker 5: that produced Scope two emissions are you know, like again
Speaker 5: the tailpipe and then Scope three emissions are everything that
Speaker 5: went into the production, shipping, etc. Of that vehicle, And
Speaker 5: I think that we look at scope three, we realize
Speaker 5: that there are all these kind of unseen externalities. Now
Speaker 5: they also exist for non non electric cars as well.
Speaker 5: So I'm not saying that electric cars are net worse
Speaker 5: for the planet or anything like that. What I'm saying
Speaker 5: is more that we haven't really thought about the way
Speaker 5: that these supply chains have been constructed and the people
Speaker 5: that they affect, And we don't think about the really
Speaker 5: really complex issues around sovereignty, resource sovereignty, and how people
Speaker 5: are relating to the minerals in their ground. So one
Speaker 5: of the really interesting things. Sorry to jump right right in,
Speaker 5: but that's okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I've found basically most of the steps along the way
Speaker 5: some kind of like autonomous or separatist movement or some
Speaker 5: kind of group of people who are saying, listen, like
Speaker 5: this is our land, these are our resources, and some
Speaker 5: central government far away is coming to exploit it. Now,
Speaker 5: that's partly because this you know, these materials are found
Speaker 5: in fairly remote areas. Congo has this kind of geological
Speaker 5: fluke that it sits on seventy percent of the world's
Speaker 5: known cobalt reserves. But it's also partly because people don't
Speaker 5: want to mine directly on the cities. I mean, if suddenly,
Speaker 5: you know, another seventy percent only whatever, another forty percent
Speaker 5: of the world's covert resources were found under New York City,
Speaker 5: I mean, people wouldn't want to mind it. So I mean,
Speaker 5: I think there is there's also something happening there. But
Speaker 5: I think that, you know, with this kind of rush
Speaker 5: for minerals and these this kind of like valorization of
Speaker 5: and like becoming critical of these metals, which is something
Speaker 5: that I am documenting in this in this book that
Speaker 5: I'm writing, it has also kind of put into play
Speaker 5: some of these really complicated, complicated questions around sovereignty and
Speaker 5: who owns what right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think when when I first heard that
Speaker 2: okay and these things that people view as a solution
Speaker 2: are actually polluting, my initial instinct was exhaustion and being like,
Speaker 2: so there's like no, no, it's no whin. We're just
Speaker 2: we're fucked no matter which way we go. And I
Speaker 2: think there are two ways to respond to that, and
Speaker 2: I don't think that's right, right, But I think I'm
Speaker 2: just trying to like get my mind around what people's
Speaker 2: response is going to be to this information. And I
Speaker 2: think one way people might respond is just like you know,
Speaker 2: the Marxist critique of this consumption engine will not stop
Speaker 2: until the world is empty, and like just like a
Speaker 2: spent husk, And the problem is not in the specifics,
Speaker 2: it's in the DNA of the system, and like you know,
Speaker 2: just the software's corrupt like one way or another. But
Speaker 2: then you like here and specifically, like in your reporting,
Speaker 2: like how badly and obliviously the people involved are acting.
Speaker 2: Like there's a detail in the story about Apple catching
Speaker 2: some heat for some of their supply chain practices exploiting
Speaker 2: underage workers. I think going away from that specific supplier
Speaker 2: for a moment and then going back once the heat
Speaker 2: died down. So it presents I guess this second solution
Speaker 2: of a version of the system where companies and the
Speaker 2: actors within the system are actually held to account and
Speaker 2: like forced to work within the rule of law. And
Speaker 2: I don't I don't need your answer on this necessarily
Speaker 2: like up top, but just want to lay out like
Speaker 2: kind of the big picture question in people's minds.
Speaker 1: As we've been on.
Speaker 2: This show talking about you know, the global climate crisis
Speaker 2: and how we move forward and what the future looks like.
Speaker 2: And you know, we did an episode on a ministry
Speaker 2: for the Future and all the different solutions kind of
Speaker 2: put out in that book. But I think before I
Speaker 2: dug in a little bit and like read your reporting,
Speaker 2: I think it seemed a little more bleak to me
Speaker 2: because it was like, well, there's no there's no win here, right,
Speaker 2: there's no scenario here. And then to read that it's
Speaker 2: basically like nobody's trying like to you know, that that
Speaker 2: like the companies are just acting without impunity and it's
Speaker 2: this like version of capitalism that's completely unregulated. Like maybe
Speaker 2: gave me a little sliver of hope that like there
Speaker 2: is something that can be done on this front.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, I've got this five volume work
Speaker 5: on how to Restructure the World that I'm currently writing.
Speaker 5: That's a joke.
Speaker 2: Manifesto. It's given manifesto. Vibes Nicholas, No, no, no.
Speaker 5: Look this thing with Apple saying that they don't use
Speaker 5: handmne cobalts and then they and then they went back
Speaker 5: and started buying off of why you again. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's a really important point. It's a point that they
Speaker 5: will you. And since I've written the piece, it's it's
Speaker 5: been true and not true. So so it's it's quite interesting, right,
Speaker 5: And I don't know why that is. That's one of
Speaker 5: those sort of questions that's that's hung there. So if
Speaker 5: any of your listeners do know why, please get in
Speaker 5: touch know why.
Speaker 2: What's true that that Apple use.
Speaker 5: Them to know why. You know why companies will make
Speaker 5: plasures to say we're not going to use hand mine cobalt,
Speaker 5: which is cobalt that comes from these very rudimentary minds
Speaker 5: where there are a lot of human rights issues and
Speaker 5: then they sort of reneg on their on their promises.
Speaker 5: But you're totally right, Jack, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 5: it's an issue that kind of frustrates me because we
Speaker 5: know how to mine this stuff effectively. Now a lot
Speaker 5: of people will talk to me. Somebody talked to me
Speaker 5: the other day about deep sea mining and say, oh, well,
Speaker 5: it's the solution because you're sucking these things off the
Speaker 5: bottom of the sea. And now there's some environment problems
Speaker 5: with that because people say that you're killing forms of
Speaker 5: wildlife that we know very little about and so on
Speaker 5: and so forth. But at the same time, there's just
Speaker 5: an economic argument. There's this kind of you know, how
Speaker 5: come we can't actually get a mine on the surface
Speaker 5: to operate correctly? How come how come we're in a
Speaker 5: situation in which these minds, which are you know, only
Speaker 5: one hundred or a couple of hundred meters deep, are
Speaker 5: so difficult to work out the financing for and so forth.
Speaker 5: And people in the mining industry have told me that,
Speaker 5: So I think there should be more focused on mining correctly,
Speaker 5: mining ecologically, and making sure that a significant portion of
Speaker 5: the revenues from mining go back to the people in
Speaker 5: the areas when mining happens, and you know, improving the
Speaker 5: life the lives of those people. It's not that complicated,
Speaker 5: but it is complicated in places in which corruption has
Speaker 5: unfortunately become very, very entrenched. And it's also complicated in
Speaker 5: which it's are in industries where people are always striving
Speaker 5: to be you know, ten dollars cheaper than the competition
Speaker 5: because they think that it makes a huge impact on
Speaker 5: somebody's likelihood of buying an iPhone versus a Samsung or
Speaker 5: whatever it is. And I was at a product unveil
Speaker 5: by Stilantis for one of their new evs and actually Cicroin,
Speaker 5: which is a stillantis company, and they were talking about, like,
Speaker 5: come the EV being twenty three thousand euros and it's
Speaker 5: much more like likely that people would buy a twenty
Speaker 5: three rather than twenty four thousand, and so on so forth,
Speaker 5: because European consumers are very price conscious. But I think
Speaker 5: that the question is, wouldn't consumers be happier, especially if
Speaker 5: they're buying evs, especially they're the type of people who
Speaker 5: want to buy uvs, who are presumably concerned with what's
Speaker 5: happening in the environment. Wouldn't they be also happier to
Speaker 5: know that the resources in their battery have not come
Speaker 5: from situations in which there's you know, conflict or human
Speaker 5: rights abuses. I will note very quickly that that that
Speaker 5: cita and uses a something called a lithium iron phosphate battery,
Speaker 5: which is some people call it like iron powered batteries
Speaker 5: or something like that. That was reading an article today
Speaker 5: which called them that. But they also contain phosphate, which
Speaker 5: is which is a mineral which is linked to a
Speaker 5: conflict in the Western Sahara as well. So you know,
Speaker 5: there are all kinds of supply chain issues, and I
Speaker 5: think that traceability tracking is key, and also just kind
Speaker 5: of a commitment to improving the lives of the people
Speaker 5: around those minds is also key. The question is where
Speaker 5: that comes from. Does it come from regulation, does it
Speaker 5: come from the companies themselves, does it come from pledges.
Speaker 5: There are plenty of like NGOs that do try and
Speaker 5: enforce the stuff, but I think they often get either
Speaker 5: sort of pushed out on the outside or they get
Speaker 5: kind of sort of brought in by by by industry
Speaker 5: in order to provide a kind of a reason for
Speaker 5: them being there, and they say, listen, we're doing all
Speaker 5: this wonderful stuff through these these alliances and NGOs, But actually,
Speaker 5: you know, those alliances allow for other kinds of abuses
Speaker 5: for example.
Speaker 4: Right, it feels like kind of similar to sort of
Speaker 4: like when there's conflict diamonds, where people would be like,
Speaker 4: and we can proclaim these are one hundred percent conflict
Speaker 4: free diamonds, but a lot of experts are like, it's
Speaker 4: a very difficult thing to be able to guarantee people
Speaker 4: a lot of the time, and it sort of becomes
Speaker 4: this way to you know, calm people's fears around like
Speaker 4: a problematic product or or material or whatever, while also
Speaker 4: continuing to be able to just sort of continue with
Speaker 4: like business as usual. So I completely understand that like
Speaker 4: part of this too, And you've said yourself like a
Speaker 4: lot of the reason why this issue is important to
Speaker 4: you to report is because there needs to be more
Speaker 4: scrutiny to be able to kind of create these sort
Speaker 4: of safeguards around how to make these supply chains a
Speaker 4: bit more equitable. But is that you know, like like
Speaker 4: as we like look at everything, it's like where does
Speaker 4: where does that will come from? Because I've read that
Speaker 4: some people like, well, why don't they nationalize all of
Speaker 4: the minds, But then there's a whole issue of probably
Speaker 4: companies that have had their operations taken away, how to
Speaker 4: re like to pay them for their loss and things
Speaker 4: like that and everything. It feels like it's so many complicated,
Speaker 4: like that doesn't seem to be like a clean solution.
Speaker 4: So is in that sense, is there even anything that
Speaker 4: seems like an efficient way or is there like what's
Speaker 4: like the most important thing to consider first, not saying
Speaker 4: that there's a silver bullet, but like, what's one dimension
Speaker 4: of this issue around corruption and these terrible like child
Speaker 4: labor practices that at the very least to begin sort
Speaker 4: of begin to put people's attention towards that in a
Speaker 4: way that feels like it can maybe render some kind
Speaker 4: of change.
Speaker 5: Look, I think it's about it's about seeing people in
Speaker 5: other parts of the world as people. I think that's
Speaker 5: the key.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, sorry, I'm America, So that's I do have
Speaker 4: trouble with that at times.
Speaker 5: Yes, and understanding that they have needs and they that
Speaker 5: they have wants and desires, and and that they they
Speaker 5: feel that, you know, that they should benefit from from
Speaker 5: from the land that they live on. Also recognizing the
Speaker 5: really really complicated history in these parts of the world
Speaker 5: is key. But the nationalization argument, to me, doesn't really
Speaker 5: hold much water. Because if a country like the DRC
Speaker 5: were to have full control of its government without without
Speaker 5: you know, these issues of corruption and so on, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe there would be a maybe there would be a
Speaker 5: case for nationalization. But the fact is that you know,
Speaker 5: they've been there have been just so many, so many
Speaker 5: examples of people abusing the system there. And it's made
Speaker 5: wise by the fact that there are you know, tons
Speaker 5: of international interests, not just US interests. I mean there
Speaker 5: are actually very few US interests that I mean, they
Speaker 5: us interests start buying sort of later in the supply chain,
Speaker 5: and that's not right.
Speaker 2: They're buying like enriched cobalt like at the end of
Speaker 2: the like American customers come into it exactly.
Speaker 5: But you know, I mean it's really an issue for
Speaker 5: the Chinese to think about as well, because they're they're
Speaker 5: you know, they own a lot of the mining companies,
Speaker 5: and they have a lot of you know, they have
Speaker 5: a lot of the refineries, they do a lot of
Speaker 5: the trading so on. So I think it's I think
Speaker 5: it's an issue that is incredibly knotty and complex, and
Speaker 5: there is no solution to it. It's just something that
Speaker 5: on a mind by mind basis, you know, needs to
Speaker 5: be worked on diligently. And I think that there are
Speaker 5: just so many examples of minds these days that do
Speaker 5: provide for the local population. And I think that you know,
Speaker 5: in the US, for example, there's a there's a robust
Speaker 5: series of regulations that people say, oh, it's very difficult
Speaker 5: to build a mine in the US. But the minds
Speaker 5: that do operate operate very well. So and you know,
Speaker 5: they they don't have major well we hope they don't
Speaker 5: have a major environmental sues and they don't have major
Speaker 5: issues around labor rights and so on. But I think
Speaker 5: that you know, you've you've got to you've got to
Speaker 5: both regulate and put pressure on business on business to
Speaker 5: improve their practices because at a certain point, you know,
Speaker 5: everybody's going to lose out and it's going to lead
Speaker 5: to all kinds of it's going to lead to all
Speaker 5: kinds of issues. It's going to lead to again the
Speaker 5: renewal of these septist movements which are gaining in popularity
Speaker 5: and power in different parts of Africa or in Indonesia.
Speaker 5: The kind of that these sort of Chinese company towns
Speaker 5: where Indonesian workers don't you know, don't really have the
Speaker 5: right to.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 5: You know, the unions are treated incredibly poorly and there
Speaker 5: are very few labor rights. So I think that there's
Speaker 5: this kind of sense that if you're buying these minerals,
Speaker 5: you have to kind of see it through from the
Speaker 5: bottom to the to the top. But also be putting
Speaker 5: pressure on companies that are buying and doing the refining.
Speaker 4: Right because they have the most gravitational pull when it
Speaker 4: comes to these sort of operations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean for the companies, isn't it more
Speaker 2: profitable for things to remain chaotic and abusive on the
Speaker 2: ground because that allows them or the companies or you know, China,
Speaker 2: whoever it is, who is the buying side of this
Speaker 2: or the extraction side of this, like it just it
Speaker 2: feels like that force for regulation is going to need
Speaker 2: to come from outside of the people who are doing
Speaker 2: their best to get these resources as cheaply as possible, right,
Speaker 2: which seems to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't think. I don't actually think. I think
Speaker 5: it's going to obviously require much more investment and probably
Speaker 5: more time spent thinking about these things. But actually I
Speaker 5: think that there's plenty of evidence that once you sort
Speaker 5: of put in good governance and people, if people feel
Speaker 5: like being listened to and interacted with, you know, you
Speaker 5: get rid of a whole bunch of other problems, which
Speaker 5: which do and I think, in the long run balance
Speaker 5: out some of the negative effects. And again, things can
Speaker 5: only get so bad. I think that, you know, you
Speaker 5: have so many people down in Katanga or the ex
Speaker 5: Katanga province, which is the south of the DRC, south
Speaker 5: of Congo, who are just so dissatisfied that the sense
Speaker 5: that one gets when one's down there is that something
Speaker 5: at some point is going to is going to break
Speaker 5: and at best there will be mass disruptions, which which
Speaker 5: could never be good for for for for a company
Speaker 5: doing business down there.
Speaker 4: Right right, Yeah, that's the other because I mean, I think,
Speaker 4: you know, backing up, you were talking about just the
Speaker 4: legacy of congo, right, and I think for people who
Speaker 4: aren't aware, like you know, it's a huge supplier of
Speaker 4: slaves to Brazil, and you know, then it became like
Speaker 4: rubber and you know, which is another you know, he
Speaker 4: needed those for tigers. Yeah and yeah, and now we're
Speaker 4: at cobalt and you know, for and I feel like
Speaker 4: maybe I should have said, should have said this earlier.
Speaker 4: But you know, the big reason why cobalt has become
Speaker 4: so popular is because it's such a such a massively
Speaker 4: important material in creating lithium ion bat lithium ion batteries
Speaker 4: and makes it sort of you can't get the same
Speaker 4: energy density without cobalt. So we're kind of stuck in
Speaker 4: this place where we're relying on this material that is
Speaker 4: extracted problematically. But also it's in literally everything around you
Speaker 4: that you know, for the most part, that has any
Speaker 4: kind of battery, you know, and when you for people
Speaker 4: who haven't seen what the conditions are, you know, in
Speaker 4: some of these minds, you know, especially with child labor,
Speaker 4: you're looking at kids just from the moment they are
Speaker 4: able to walk and carry something, are working barefoot, not
Speaker 4: using sometimes like you're saying, hand using their hands, not
Speaker 4: using tools, and the amount of suffering. That's just why,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just sort of it's just mind boggling
Speaker 4: to think of all of these things that are so
Speaker 4: essential or seen is so essential, has this massive human
Speaker 4: cost behind it, And like to what Jack was saying
Speaker 4: at the beginning, the thing that we're all you know,
Speaker 4: seems to be the most popular sentiment when talking about.
Speaker 2: Like how do we you know, how are we to
Speaker 2: combat the carbon emissions? Like we'll just swap out gas
Speaker 2: burning cars for evs. And that makes sense for people
Speaker 2: who are running these industries because it's just essentially saying like, hey,
Speaker 2: buy this new thing.
Speaker 1: This is the answer.
Speaker 4: You give a shit about the earth, This is the
Speaker 4: big thing that you can do to help buy them.
Speaker 1: Your way out of the problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, buy this thing.
Speaker 4: And it comes at a time when many analysts and
Speaker 4: experts alike are saying just switching engine types or combustion
Speaker 4: types is not the like the end all be all.
Speaker 4: We also need to plan our cities better. We need
Speaker 4: to make public transportation more effective. We need to create
Speaker 4: infrastructure for things like bicycles and so people don't necessarily
Speaker 4: have to rely on vehicles. That's one sort of column
Speaker 4: of this. Then there's the energy generation part, where talked
Speaker 4: in the past about how the fact that the United
Speaker 4: States electrical grid is one of the reasons why we
Speaker 4: can't get a lot of cleaner sources of energy sort
Speaker 4: of distributed or transmitted to more people. But then and
Speaker 4: there are municipalities that are beginning to engage with these ideas,
Speaker 4: but it still feels like the main theme around the
Speaker 4: world is still evs and efficiency just sort of isn't
Speaker 4: as profitable then creating a new product for everyone to buy.
Speaker 4: So we're just caught like in this thing, Like to
Speaker 4: Jack's point, even like it feels like we're sort of
Speaker 4: stuck where if okay that if we're burning dinosaur farts
Speaker 4: to move our cars around, then the other side of
Speaker 4: it is the human suffering on all of these technological
Speaker 4: goods that are supposedly going to help us out of it.
Speaker 4: And I don't know, I'm I that was that overly cynical,
Speaker 4: But it does feel like just kind of where sort
Speaker 4: of the discourse is taking us is like what's the
Speaker 4: new thing to buy, rather than like a more holistic
Speaker 4: response to this that isn't just sort of emphasizing like, well,
Speaker 4: how many evs can I sell?
Speaker 2: The United States government kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think the electric car is a
Speaker 5: response to smog. It's a it's a response. I think
Speaker 5: you know it. This is going Bob Aaronson in the US,
Speaker 5: who's this kind of forgotten pioneer of the electric car
Speaker 5: in the sixties and the seventies, and he was a
Speaker 5: newspaper boy, and he used to sort of cycle around
Speaker 5: I think Los Angeles, not one hundred Central or I
Speaker 5: need to double check, but he used to cycle around
Speaker 5: the city that he lived in in California and get
Speaker 5: sort of stuck behind vans and traps and things like
Speaker 5: that and be sort of sparted with smoke. And you know,
Speaker 5: obviously California. The Clean Air Act really was pushed by
Speaker 5: a lot of activists from Los Angeles in California who
Speaker 5: in the sixties and seventies had kind of had it
Speaker 5: with the sort of levels of toxic smog. So a
Speaker 5: lot of the impetus for at least early electric cars
Speaker 5: and also electric cars in China, because you have to
Speaker 5: remember that China is really the country that is pushing
Speaker 5: this and has pushed electric vehicles to where they are
Speaker 5: today as much as any Elon Mask or whoever else,
Speaker 5: you know, Rivian or whatever in the US. And these
Speaker 5: are issues of localized pollution. So if you think about
Speaker 5: if you're going back to the Indonesian example that we had,
Speaker 5: you know, these big smoke stacks and these kind of
Speaker 5: pristine environments, you're thinking about displacing pollution from a city
Speaker 5: to a rural area, and oftentimes a area that is heavily,
Speaker 5: heavily undeveloped. So I think that there's this kind of
Speaker 5: interesting kind of reasoning behind the electric carn't. Now. I
Speaker 5: do think that it is something that would be beneficial
Speaker 5: if it was done correctly. I'm sure, I'm sure it
Speaker 5: would be something that would be beneficial in the climate fight.
Speaker 5: But as you say, Miles, you know, there are all
Speaker 5: these other issues that need to be sorted out. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, transport, there are issues of power generation and
Speaker 5: construction and so on which are not going to be
Speaker 5: solved with letian byan batteries alone, right, And so I
Speaker 5: think that that needs to be I think that that
Speaker 5: needs to be taken into account. And yeah, I think
Speaker 5: that people who see it as a silver bullet are
Speaker 5: unfortunately miss misplaced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's uh, let's take a quick break. We'll come back.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about just a little bit of what what
Speaker 2: cobalt mining looks on it looks like on the ground,
Speaker 2: and and kind of what your overall goal is for
Speaker 2: what once people know about this, what what are you
Speaker 2: hoping the future looks like.
Speaker 1: So we'll be we'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 2: And the world of cobalt mining is kind of a
Speaker 2: strange one that does not look like anything that I
Speaker 2: had really conceived of in my mind. You open your
Speaker 2: New Yorker store with the story of a guy who
Speaker 2: goes to dig an outhouse and finds cobalt in his backyard,
Speaker 2: and then he starts he goes into his house and
Speaker 2: starts digging this like underground local mine into the floors
Speaker 2: of his house and like under his neighbor's house to
Speaker 2: kind of conceal that he's struck gold. A little you know,
Speaker 2: struck cobalt, but it's just this more kind of one
Speaker 2: off unregulated kind of reminds you of the old timey
Speaker 2: like gold rush where you use the word artisanal a
Speaker 2: couple of times, where it's like just you know, one
Speaker 2: person finds a chunk of this and then kind of
Speaker 2: starts digging, and then there are these one off people
Speaker 2: who are unaffiliated mine workers, and it just I guess
Speaker 2: it makes sense to me why this current system would
Speaker 2: appeal to people who want to exploit cheap labor, because
Speaker 2: it's really the least unionized like a workforce can be.
Speaker 2: It's really just these like one off actors in a
Speaker 2: lot of cases. But you just talk about what it
Speaker 2: looks like on the ground, what cobalt mining looks like
Speaker 2: on the ground.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that there are various different forms of
Speaker 5: cobalt mining. And when we say cobalt mining, we have
Speaker 5: to remember that cobalt is usually a byproduct of copper,
Speaker 5: and copper mining is kind of the the thing behind
Speaker 5: cobalt mining, and all these mines were kind of or
Speaker 5: many of these mines, if not all of these mines
Speaker 5: were built by the Belgians to take copper out of
Speaker 5: the ground in Congo, and some existed you know for
Speaker 5: almost who are for since about four hundred a d
Speaker 5: as copper mines because copper was a very important trading
Speaker 5: good for the people in that area. People found copper
Speaker 5: from that area all over Africa because it was used
Speaker 5: to make these crosses which were used as currency. So
Speaker 5: in a way, what we're talking about specifically, there are
Speaker 5: two types of minds. About eighty percent eighty to ninety
Speaker 5: percent of cobalt mining has done in big industrial minds
Speaker 5: these days, those industrial minds look like mines basically in
Speaker 5: anywhere else in the world. There has been a report
Speaker 5: recently by a UK based NGO called raid Rights Accountability
Speaker 5: in International Development. I think that's what stands for. And
Speaker 5: they have talked about polluting practices that some of these
Speaker 5: big industrial miners have engaged in. It hasn't been studied
Speaker 5: particularly well, but basically you have to think about these
Speaker 5: industrial miners as large companies which come in some of
Speaker 5: them even like London Stockish Change listed companies, and some
Speaker 5: of them the biggest companies in China and so on,
Speaker 5: and so these are large companies that London Stock Exchange
Speaker 5: in some cases and listed companies. There's also another company
Speaker 5: called China Molly Simoc and those companies generally had hit
Speaker 5: international standards. Again, there are a lot of big Chinese companies,
Speaker 5: so again we know a little bit less about those companies.
Speaker 5: I was actually denied a visit to one of those
Speaker 5: Chinese owned minds, but I have been to the Chinese
Speaker 5: own mind north of a city called Lava Bashi, and
Speaker 5: you know, it's a sort of modern feeling work environment.
Speaker 5: And then you have on the other end of the
Speaker 5: spectrum the artisanal mindes, which are as you say, you know,
Speaker 5: people digging into their backyards, the essentially neighborhoods with big
Speaker 5: holes in the ground, and people will be digging and
Speaker 5: mining at all hours of the day, apart from sometimes
Speaker 5: miners don't mine on Thursdays for some reason, and they
Speaker 5: have a sort of superstition about it. And you know,
Speaker 5: you'll see all kinds of people going down in very
Speaker 5: unregulated ways, people who don't even have shoes going down
Speaker 5: to mine. And that's really where the kind of worst
Speaker 5: human rights abuses seem to congregate. Not to say that
Speaker 5: there aren't human rights abuses in other parts of the
Speaker 5: supply chain. And then there is this huge sort of
Speaker 5: gradation between the two minds. You'll have sort of semi
Speaker 5: artisanal minds. And the reason I use artismal mind is
Speaker 5: it's a term that's become adopted by industry to describe
Speaker 5: these small scale miners. It is not the best term,
Speaker 5: but it is the generally accepted term, and it is
Speaker 5: the term as well used in Congo. They also use
Speaker 5: the word diggers, which is clusa, which I use quite
Speaker 5: a lot in the piece.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's definitely takes a bit of edge, like for
Speaker 4: someone who's like, oh, it's an artisanal mind and it's like, no,
Speaker 4: it's actually unregulated, and yeah, there's not a lot of
Speaker 4: you know, structural support for the actual minds that are
Speaker 4: being dug.
Speaker 1: And it's very very scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just in terms of how like we've noticed a
Speaker 2: like overall, the mainstream media will occasionally like pick up
Speaker 2: these stories that are overall like counter profitability, but eventually
Speaker 2: we'll get the story of how, oh, like DEI or
Speaker 2: like environmental investing ideals are now like a bad word
Speaker 2: on Wall Street, or you know, they've they've become less
Speaker 2: popular like over time, and it just like it feels
Speaker 2: like it's a little bit harder for stories that go
Speaker 2: against the grain of profitability and consumerism to get picked up.
Speaker 2: So I'm just curious, from your perspective as somebody who
Speaker 2: is has been reporting on this for a while, like,
Speaker 2: how have you been happy with like the pickup from
Speaker 2: the mainstream media. Have there been specific challenges and sort
Speaker 2: of what do you ultimately hope are the effects of
Speaker 2: your reporting on this story.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean one of the people that I interviewed
Speaker 5: quite early on for The New Yorker was Rick Ross,
Speaker 5: And I think that's how you have to be as
Speaker 5: a journalist. Every day. I'm hustling because it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: you have to just you have to be constantly pitching
Speaker 5: and going after editors and so on. It is an
Speaker 5: immensely time consuming thing on this specific topic. I was
Speaker 5: really lucky to have the interest of amazing editors at
Speaker 5: The New Yorker who were very supportive and also got
Speaker 5: picked up as a book idea. So that was great.
Speaker 5: And I've had quite a lot of interest specifically on
Speaker 5: these sort of profitability you know, on this what you
Speaker 5: call a counterprofitability story. Again, I don't think it's necessarily
Speaker 5: a counterprofitability story. I think it's just I mean, if
Speaker 5: you think that cowboy capitalism is the only way to
Speaker 5: make a killing in these industries, than yes. But actually,
Speaker 5: so many of the people at mining companies that I've
Speaker 5: spoken to, and so many of the people who work
Speaker 5: at electric vehicle farms and battery firms and so on,
Speaker 5: are actually concerned about these issues and they are trying
Speaker 5: to slowly work to make them better. I think that,
Speaker 5: like the question is due to very very large corporations
Speaker 5: care about these things, and that's a very good question.
Speaker 5: And sometimes yes, and sometimes it doesn't seem to be
Speaker 5: of particular concern, but again it is this you have
Speaker 5: to look at it within the geopolitical context as well,
Speaker 5: like people are vying the control of these resources right
Speaker 5: between the US and China and Europe as well, don't
Speaker 5: forget Europe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it seems like even through like the Cold War,
Speaker 4: this this place has always just sort of unfortunately been
Speaker 4: at the center of this kind of geopolitical tug of war,
Speaker 4: where in a way, like I think just in Western media,
Speaker 4: there's just this thing where the exploitation, especially on the
Speaker 4: African continent, is just seen as a norm. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: with this kind of like historical momentum of what's been
Speaker 4: happening in the DRC just over centuries. Now, it just
Speaker 4: kind of it's like this one spot where like even
Speaker 4: the Pope is like, this is a I think you
Speaker 4: called it a forgotten genocide, and it was like like
Speaker 4: suddenly people are like, oh, what's happening there that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think on some level would just the awareness around
Speaker 4: it is obviously like the first step. But there's part
Speaker 4: of me that's sort of just cynical about what that
Speaker 4: enthusiasm is to create something a little more equitable, because
Speaker 4: as we've seen that those sort of values don't seem
Speaker 4: to intersect, especially with this region of the world, and
Speaker 4: especially when it comes to things like you know, technological
Speaker 4: supremacy that countries are vying for via these materials. So
Speaker 4: it's like it feels very multi leveled, and yeah, like
Speaker 4: it is. It feels like something that the Biden administration
Speaker 4: only recently was like, oh, that's a ah that maybe
Speaker 4: we need to actually focus on this as well, because
Speaker 4: it seemed like this has been something that's been emphasized
Speaker 4: at least in China and other places and to a
Speaker 4: much larger extent, and now like the Americans.
Speaker 2: Are like oh we're are we are we falling behind here?
Speaker 2: Then now this is another place for us to figure
Speaker 2: out how we can you know, vy for some kind
Speaker 2: of supremacy or advantage, and yeah, it's at the cost
Speaker 2: of people. So it's like, yeah, there's like this consumer level, well,
Speaker 2: there's a geopolitical level, there's an ecological level, and it's
Speaker 2: just so multifaceted that Yeah, I think it's just it's
Speaker 2: a story that I think most people we really do
Speaker 2: have to keep in mind because they're whether or not
Speaker 2: we like it, we are we are intersecting with just
Speaker 2: sort of this practice, obviously not directly, but something for
Speaker 2: us to keep in mind as we think about, like
Speaker 2: what are the the outcomes that we're looking for and
Speaker 2: what makes the most sense, because certainly right now, the
Speaker 2: way things are going, it's it's it's it's not it's
Speaker 2: not the ideal. Well, Nicholas New Yorkas, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining us on the Daily Zeitgeist. Yeah, where
Speaker 2: can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
Speaker 5: You can follow me on Twitter at pern in Ajia
Speaker 5: which is p e r n e I n A
Speaker 5: g y r E and on Instagram at a postcard
Speaker 5: from the volcano, which is as it sounds. Those are
Speaker 5: two references. Sorry, I created.
Speaker 2: Them, and I of course got them, but I'm not
Speaker 2: going to take the time to explain them to anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll just have to look them up yourself. Guys,
Speaker 1: come on, you should get those.
Speaker 5: And then you can always find me on the Trump train,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: Cool? Yeah, nice? Nice? Yeah? What are you patriot?
Speaker 2: What was it a patriot livestream?
Speaker 5: Uncensored viral viral patriot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, viral, viru viral patriot.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, brother, love to hear it.
Speaker 2: Great work on that on that front, amazing. Is there
Speaker 2: a work of media that you've been enjoying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Actually, there's a really good piece by James Pogue
Speaker 5: that was published in Granta magazine recently about Vagner mercenaries
Speaker 5: and Soecul African Republic. That's really interesting from the geostrategic
Speaker 5: angle in Africa. And also I've been watching with absolute
Speaker 5: horror at what is happening in Sudan and Duff for
Speaker 5: there is an ethic lensing and a potential genocidal attack
Speaker 5: about to happen. And a very good friend of mine
Speaker 5: at Human Rights Watch has been producing some very good
Speaker 5: reports with this team there, and I have been following
Speaker 5: that sort of quite carefully because of course, yeah, there
Speaker 5: are there, there are many depressing situations in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, well thanks again for joining us.
Speaker 5: Not to enter on a low note.
Speaker 4: Sorry, yeah, no, I mean appreciate, but these are part
Speaker 4: of I mean, that's the thing is to be aware
Speaker 4: in this world and that it's current state is to
Speaker 4: have to intersect with these things. But I think, at
Speaker 4: least for me, and I think for many of the listeners,
Speaker 4: it helps to know because you can, you know, you
Speaker 4: can try and make decisions in the best way you
Speaker 4: can when those opportunities arise. So yeah, otherwise, yeah, pretty
Speaker 4: much everything could be a fucking bummer for sure. You
Speaker 4: can find me at Miles of Great on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 4: and Jack and I on our basketball podcast, which.
Speaker 1: Is definitely not as much of a bummer.
Speaker 4: Well, depending on which NBA team you support, I'm out
Speaker 4: and jackot Mad Boosty, And you can also find me
Speaker 4: talking about frivolous reality television on four to twenty Day
Speaker 4: Fiance talking about ninety Day Fiance a tweet.
Speaker 1: I like just so much of this.
Speaker 4: Kendrick Lamar and Drake Beef there's a picture of like
Speaker 4: Steve Karnaki at the board on election night. You know,
Speaker 4: if you watch like CNBC or NBC news coverage, he's
Speaker 4: always like at a board and it just says it's
Speaker 4: him gesturing to like this map and says Drake has
Speaker 4: no path to two hundred and seventy. And it's just
Speaker 4: a stupid meme. And I'm hopefully I can put these
Speaker 4: memes to bed after this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, mostly most of my likes on
Speaker 2: Twitter are just about that feud. Andrew Marzoni tweeted a
Speaker 2: literary feud involving two men named Kendrick Lamar Duckworth and
Speaker 2: Aubrey Drake Graham is giving nineteenth century Chase Mitchell wrote,
Speaker 2: mostly jealous of how well Kendrick can write on a deadline.
Speaker 2: So yeah, roht tak a Doombi tweeted Kendrick shouldude net
Speaker 2: and Yahoo next. So yeah, anyways, you can find me
Speaker 2: on Twitter at Jack Underscore Brian. You can find us
Speaker 2: on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at the Daily Zeikeist
Speaker 2: on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a
Speaker 2: website Daily Zeikeist dot com. Or we post our episodes
Speaker 2: and our footnotes, we're the link off to the information
Speaker 2: that we talked about in today's episode, as well as
Speaker 2: a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, what
Speaker 2: song do you think people might enjoy?
Speaker 4: Let's just vibe out on some psychedelic rock from down under.
Speaker 1: This is like you know, it's.
Speaker 2: An old King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard track, but
Speaker 2: still a banger none less.
Speaker 1: It's called hot Water.
Speaker 4: If you I feel like for a lot of people
Speaker 4: who may listen to like and like CACRW kind of
Speaker 4: morning comes Eclectic Radio, you've probably heard this song there.
Speaker 2: But anyway, hot Water, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
Speaker 2: All right, we will link off to that in the footnotes.
Speaker 1: The Daily Zeikeis is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcast from my Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio Wrap,
Speaker 2: Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. That's going
Speaker 2: to do it for us this morning, back this afternoon
Speaker 2: to tell you what's trending, and we'll talk to you
Speaker 2: all then Bye bye,