Vince Beiser - Power Metal - The Race For The Resources That Will Shape Our Future

An Australian millionaire’s plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing AI to find metals in the Arctic.These people and millions more are part of the intensifying competition to find and extract the minerals essential for two crucial technologies: the internet and renewable energy. In Power Metal, Vince Beiser explores the Achilles’ heel of “green power” and digital technology – that manufacturing computers, cell phones, electric cars, and other technologies demand skyrocketing amounts of lithium, copper, cobalt, and other materials. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals, at enormous cost to people and the planet. Beiser crisscrossed the world to talk to the people involved and report on the damage this race is inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and how we can minimize the damage. Power Metal is a compelling glimpse into this disturbing yet potentially promising new world.

⁠Vince Beiser -⁠ ⁠The World In A Grain - The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization

Did you know that after water and air, sand is our most consumed natural resource? Have you ever realized how deeply sand defines and makes possible our lives? Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every window, computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. This humble material is in everything from light bulbs to glasses - and we are running out of it. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser explains how vital sand is in its many forms, from construction sand to silica to high-purity quartz. Beiser writes, “Sand has become one of the twenty-first century’s most sought-after commodities, sparking violence and destruction around the world."

Vince Beiser in addition to being a favorite, informative guest, a succinct, proficient writer he also publishes a Newsletterwe recommend.

⁠ ⁠Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Destroying Angel

From the album, Black Earth, the German all-instrumental quartet self-describe themselves as “doom-ridden jazz music”. A foreboddin description for such charming music. Originally they were called Bohren (German for drilling), they emerged from hardcore punk and metal bands during the late 1980s, these musicians sought and discovered a new direction that reveled in sheer unhurried lethargy, a music persistently sedate, modally performed, and harmonically minimal. The album was first released in 2004, then rereleased on the important Belgium label, PIAS (Play It Again Sam) in 2016. Definitely worth investigating.