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