Salt, Cod and Commodities at the Center of History with Mark Kurlansky

Summary

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The HC Commodities Podcast:

Salt, Cod and Commodities at the Center of History

Guest: Mark Kurlansky (award-winning author)
Host: Paul Chapman (HC Group)
Date: October 14, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this engaging conversation, Paul Chapman welcomes renowned author and journalist Mark Kurlansky to explore how essential commodities—such as salt, cod, and paper—have shaped human history, international relations, and modern society. The episode delves into the powerful role commodities play in trade, cooperation, conflict, and innovation, drawing connections to contemporary issues like tariffs, globalization, and the energy transition. Kurlansky also discusses his philosophy on free trade, offers historical anecdotes, shares thoughts on technological change (including AI), and teases his upcoming book on lobsters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Commodities as a Lens for History

• Commodities Define Society and Trade:
  • Trade is fundamental to the story of civilization; commodities drive trade, thus shaping nations, power, conflict, and cooperation.
  • "Trade defines the world...relations between nations, peace and war and everything else is directly related to trading commodities." – Mark Kurlansky [02:05]
• Salt as an Example:
  • Before refrigeration, international trade in food was impossible without salt, making it critical for economies and the locations of towns (e.g., “-wich” as in Norwich, near salt pans).
  • "You didn’t have an international economy at all if you didn’t have salt. That’s how fundamental it was." – Mark Kurlansky [02:05]

Commodities as Connectors and Dividers

• Trade as Foundation for Cooperation:
  • Global commodity trade has historically built cooperation and international institutions.
  • The Crusades, while often framed in religious terms, also opened Europe and the Middle East to each other's products and markets.
    "People rarely look at the Crusades in that way, but the whole relationship started with the Crusades and learning about these things." – Mark Kurlansky [04:45]
• Commodities and Conflict:
  • While commodities connect nations, competition for scarce resources frequently fuels conflict, as with the "cod wars" between Iceland and Europe.
  • Free trade can promote cooperation; tariffs and competition often lead to animosity or war.

Free Trade, Tariffs, and Globalization

• Free Trade vs. Protectionism:
  • Kurlansky, like Chapman, supports free trade as a force for global cooperation and prosperity. "Free trade works." – Mark Kurlansky [12:48]
  • Tariff impositions are causing major disruptions in commodity and fish trade, changing decades-old relationships and increasing uncertainty.
  • Historically, protectionist policies (e.g., Richard III's attempts to ban imports) have been detrimental and swiftly reversed. "There is this tie in between nationalism and opposing imports, which is a historic thing that’s gone forever." – Mark Kurlansky [10:49]
• Current and Coming Impacts:
  • The full effects of current and proposed tariffs have yet to be realized, with unpredictable impacts on both producers and consumers. "We haven’t felt the full effects yet...everyone...has not yet figured out how they’re going to deal with it." – Mark Kurlansky [08:52]
  • Trade agreements like NAFTA did not devastate U.S. jobs as often claimed; jobs would likely have moved regardless, but free trade enabled continued U.S. supply to manufacturers abroad.

Resource Extraction and Environmental Change

• Resource Extraction's Dark Side:
  • Historical overexploitation: "What New York did to its oyster beds..." [14:47]
  • Kurlansky sees rising despair regarding resource management due to climate change, which has upended assumptions about fisheries and resource management. "I felt more optimistic 10 years ago. I feel in complete despair today." – Mark Kurlansky [15:38]
  • Fisheries are especially impacted by complex changes in ocean conditions—overfishing is only one part of a more intricate ecological puzzle.

Commodities, Technology, and Innovation

• Paper as Both Commodity and Technology:

  • Paper differs from cod/salt: it's technology-based, widely producible, and not resource-constrained. "The nice thing about that is that anybody can have paper." – Mark Kurlansky [17:39]
  • The "technology fallacy": New technology rarely eliminates old; rather, it increases choices (e.g., ebooks didn't replace physical books). "Technology at its best expands the possibilities. It doesn’t limit them." – Mark Kurlansky [18:18]

• Technology’s Societal Role:

  • Adoption depends on needs; innovations only take off if they solve real problems (the case for paper, AI, or the printing press).
  • AI and other advances may unlock new productivity (legal work, information synthesis), but can be overhyped or misapplied (e.g., poor translations). "AI translations are terrible." – Mark Kurlansky [22:55]

• Declining but Persistent Commodities:

  • Commodities like paper may shrink in total use but remain valuable—especially for those who endure in the trade. "There'll be four of us left, but we'll do just great." – Mark Kurlansky (quoting a paper trader) [27:23]
  • Paper remains vital for privacy, resilience, and secure communication, as evidenced by public figures like Snowden or Vladimir Putin relying solely on it. "Paper is the safest communication. If you want to do something safely, don’t do it on a computer." – Mark Kurlansky [28:55]

Commodity Life Cycles and the Energy Transition

• Commodity Booms, Busts, and the Lobster Phenomenon:

  • Lobsters are booming now in North America (USA, Canada), partially due to the decline of cod (predators) and climate shifts, but future sustainability is uncertain. "If cod comes back, that would be sort of bad news for lobsters. But unfortunately, cod isn’t coming back." – Mark Kurlansky [24:37]
  • All fisheries and species are affected by unpredictable environmental and ecological changes.

• Energy Transition and Geopolitics:

  • As energy becomes more local (rooftop solar, nuclear, renewables), traditional interdependence from fossil fuels may wane, leading to profound global shifts.
  • New energy technologies will alter the global competitive landscape; regions that fail to innovate risk losing their economic edge.

Free Trade, Labor, and the Environment

• Progress and Pitfalls:
  • Trading with nations with poor labor or environmental standards gives leverage to improve those standards—boycotts remove influence. "By trading with them, you’re putting yourself in a better position to get them to do something about it. If you boycott their goods, you have nothing to say about what they do." – Mark Kurlansky [14:12]

The Future of Commodities and Society

• Optimism about Trade—Despite Setbacks:

  • Despite short-term pain from tariffs or disruptions, Kurlansky believes free trade will endure because it's economically and socially necessary. "One of my big flaws is that I tend to be an optimist...this tariff system is going to be a disaster, and everybody’s going to say, no, let’s stop this." – Mark Kurlansky [31:33]
  • However, restoring lost international trust and trade relations can take years.

• Societal Change and Technology Adoption:

  • Innovations leading the energy transition (like solar or wind) are more about technology than new fuels. Places that do not embrace or innovate may be left behind.
  • The shift toward “compute power” (AI, data centers) may become more significant than traditional manufacturing outputs.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Salt and Trade:

  • "You didn’t have an international economy at all if you didn’t have salt. That’s how fundamental it was." – Mark Kurlansky [02:05]

• On Free Trade and Tariffs:

  • "No, we haven’t felt the full effects yet...the whole relationship has changed." – Mark Kurlansky [08:52]
  • "There is this tie in between nationalism and opposing imports, which is a historic thing that’s gone forever." – Mark Kurlansky [10:49]
  • "Free trade works." – Mark Kurlansky [12:48]

• On the Technology Fallacy:

  • "Technology at its best expands the possibilities. It doesn’t limit them." – Mark Kurlansky [18:18]

• On Fisheries and Climate Change:

  • "I felt more optimistic 10 years ago. I feel in complete despair today." – Mark Kurlansky [15:38]
  • "Scientists can’t really say for sure why lobsters are booming right now...you also can’t say how long it will last or what it means for the future." – Mark Kurlansky [25:39]

• On the Endurance of Paper:

  • "Paper is the safest communication. If you want to do something safely, don’t do it on a computer." – Mark Kurlansky [28:55]

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Highlighted Segments & Timestamps

• [02:05] The role of salt and commodities in the foundation of trade and civilization
• [04:45] The Crusades as an underappreciated driver of East-West trade and cultural exchange
• [08:52] Tariffs, trade disruptions, and their impacts on modern commodities markets
• [10:49] Historical cycles of free trade and protectionism; Richard III's restrictive import policies
• [14:12] Trade, labor, the environment, and international influence
• [15:38] Despair over resource management in the face of climate change
• [18:18] The technology fallacy and why some innovations succeed, others fail
• [24:37] Lobster booms, cod busts, and the unpredictability of the food web
• [27:23] The resilience of commodities, the “last merchant standing” theory, and why it’s flawed
• [28:55] Paper as a secure, durable technology in the digital age
• [31:33] Kurlansky’s optimism about the eventual restoration of free trade
• [33:22] The energy transition as technological, not just resource, disruption

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Books & Forthcoming Work

• New Book:
  • Mark Kurlansky is working on a forthcoming book about lobsters, drawing on personal experience from his New England upbringing.

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Tone & Style

Kurlansky’s tone is conversational, thoughtful, occasionally wry, and informed by deep historical context. Chapman navigates with curiosity and openness, prompting both practical analysis and broad philosophical reflection.

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This episode is a rich exploration not just of commodities but of the complex web of trade, technology, ecology, and human behavior that shapes our world. Essential listening for anyone seeking to understand where we've been—and where we're headed.

Transcript

[Mark Kurlansky]

Foreign.

[Paul Chapman]

Welcome to the HC Commodities Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the commodities sector and the people within it. I'm your host, Paul Chapman. This podcast is produced by HC Group, a global search firm dedicated to the commodities sector. Today we're joined by the award winning author, Mark Kurlansky, whose books such as the Big Oyster Paper, Salt and Cod tell us how commodities have shaped history and how they've shaped the present day. Mark shares his views on the books and how they fit in with the current world, his views and philosophy on free trade and how that might be in jeopardy and what his future books might be. We had a little technical difficulty, so the audio is not quite up to the usual standard, but I hope you enjoy nonetheless. And as always, please do leave us a positive review on the platform you're listening on or simply follow or give us a like on YouTube or Spotify as it really does enable us to continue to grow the show and get great guests. And as always, I hope you enjoy the episode. Mark, welcome to the show.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Thank you.

[Paul Chapman]

You're well known to our audience, you're a prolific author and journalist and obviously many of the books you've written, or the ones we're talking about here specifically are, have been dedicated to commodities and using them as a lens to tell history, but also human behavior and so on. You know, and, and I guess when you, you read the, the corpus, you get both the sense that, you know, how commodities have shaped the world and how actually, you know, they have. How the nature of what commodities are important has changed over time, but I guess it just seems that they are, you know, if you take salt for example, and it, that has absolutely defined how humanity has decided to spread itself around the world. Right. I mean, can you, can you just give us some sense of, I guess, why you chose to use commodities as a lens to talk about the world and give us some sense of, you know, how powerful they are in determining even locations.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Well, I mean, let's just talk about trade because that's what commodities are really about and trade defines the world. I mean, as we're about to see the entire world being disrupted because trade patterns are being disrupted. The relations between nations, peace and war and everything else is directly related to trading commodities. We are involved with other countries, the extent to which we buy and sell commodities with them, you know, something really fundamental to international relations and, and always has been. So that when you look at something like salt, you go back to a period before the Industrial Revolution. Trade was mainly about food. And food, by and large, couldn't be traded unless it was salted. So you didn't have international trade unless you had salt. So you didn't have an international economy. So you didn't have a very large economy at all if you didn't have salt. That's how fundamental it was. Of course, today you could have a very good economy without salt because we can refrigerate food and because we trade a lot of commodity besides food.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah.

[Mark Kurlansky]

And.

[Paul Chapman]

And I guess, you know, talking about sort of. We'll come on to that. And kind of one of the central thesis of, I guess this podcast in some ways has been that the global commodity trade has been foundational to cooperation and creating some of the institutions that, you know, have set up how countries. Yeah, right. And we, and there's a, you know, we think about COD and COD wars recently and how the EU effectively stopped that. But before we move on to kind of the competition for resources, you know, you think about not only has salt defined where, you know, towns that end in which Right. Are based on sort of near salt pans or whatever it might have been, but also talking about, you know, commodities roles in discovery from obviously COD and driving the discovery of North America, but also then you think about kind of the modern Middle east, you know, and ventures there in. In, well, the UAE sort of that whole region has been at the center of global commodity trade. Right. In a different trades, pearls and. And cloth and so forth. But it's just, it's fascinating how much the world is shaped by. By both current but also historical commodity trading.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah. And, you know, if you just look at different periods in history, like if you look at the Crusade. The Crusades opened up Europe and the Middle east to each other's products and each other's markets. People rarely look at the Crusades in that way, but the whole relationship started with the Crusades and learning about these things from the Crusades.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I guess, you know, you move on to the competition for those resources. So at the same time, they've been this force for connectivity. They've also been, you know, at the center obviously of. Of competition leading to a war. Whether that's at the tribal level, at the state level, and so forth.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah, I mean, that's a. That's an interesting issue also because there's two things that can happen with trade. It can be competition, which leads to war, or it can be international cooperation. I mean, the whole idea of free trade was for international cooperation. That things would be manufactured in Mexico and the Mexican manufacturers would buy components from America and Everybody makes money. That was the whole idea of free trade. Controversial, not always accepted. But I think it's a pretty solid argument that it's better than competing and having, you know, hostile relations rather than cooperative relations.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, one of the things.

[Mark Kurlansky]

I don't know if you want to talk about tariffs, but.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, Well, I think, like, you know, this is. This is the complication. Right. Obviously, this is very topical, and we can. You can feel free to say what you want.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right.

[Paul Chapman]

There is obviously, you know, there's the economic argument for free trade. And obviously, when it comes to commodities, it's quite easy because some commodities just aren't present in some locations where they are in others. Right. And that's true of salt, that's true of cod, that's true of oysters, you know, and therefore, that necessitates trade. There has always been, throughout history. And let's use the cod wars as an example. Right. Where there isn't free trade in. So the cod wars. Well, maybe you can describe the genesis of those. And fundamentally, that's where kind of free trade comes a bit of awry. When it comes down to we're facing that today with mechanized fleets. You know, they're allowed within a certain radius of your country. That's very impactful on local fishermen.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Well, yeah. I mean, when you're talking about natural resources and who gets to take them and who gets to profit by them, you know, then you get into the whole history of Africa. You know, the cod wars were about Iceland becoming independent. And then do the fisheries profit Iceland or they profit Europe? An issue that all came about from Icelandic independence. You know, when you talk about fisheries, nobody's very, very big on international cooperation in terms of taking fish. In terms of trading fish, they are. I mean, the fish trade has become this huge international thing, which is also right now being very disrupted by tariffs. And if you talk to people in the first trade, which I do from time to time, I mean, they're really trying to figure this out right now because the whole relationship has changed.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. You've obviously built long relationships in much your workspace on global trade. What is your view on.

[Mark Kurlansky]

On.

[Paul Chapman]

On the tariffs? Is this, you know, to me. Well, I mean, I'm an advocate for free trade, basically, you know, and. And believe that the market solves things a lot more efficiently than government distortions. And obviously, the world that we've created over the last 20 years, 30 years, has been predicated on ever more free trade and globalization. Have we felt the full effects of the tariffs Is this just, you know, what's going on?

[Mark Kurlansky]

No, we haven't felt the full effects yet. And we have it. Producers have not. I mean, not just producers, consumers, everyone. It's not yet figured out how they're going to deal with it. The Canadian government is considering, you know, funding exporters so that, you know, basically covering the tariffs for them. You know, the question with tariffs is who pays and who gets the money. And the way the US Government has it set up right now, everybody is supposed to pay and the US government gets all the money. The US consumer. So the US consumers pay for the tariffs.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, I mean, 100%. That's how they work. And not only do you. And you're also dealing with the uncertainty about whether the tariffs will be there or not, which is causing a lot of absolute disruption itself. Right. And that's. We see that the. And commodity traders have to date been able to manage it to some extent. You know, over time, your ability to do that is going to diminish.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right. And beyond that, it's the whole issue of international relations. I mean, the whole relationship between the United States and Canada, which has been a fairly happy one, has been based on free trade and not on competition. Relations with Mexico, which are a variety of historic reasons, have been always very difficult, have greatly improved in the past 30, 40 years because of trade. And what will happen now? I don't know. Yeah. Well.

[Paul Chapman]

And. Yeah. And on the big sweep of history, right. We've seen this in the United States history. We've seen this globally as well. You have periods of increasing government intervention in markets and periods of decreasing. You know, there is a bit of a pendulum swinging between free trade and mercantilism. And usually they're kind of shocks either end that cause a reverse.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah. And there is this tie in between nationalism and opposing imports, which is a historic thing that's gone forever. I was researching something recently. Richard III tried to stop imports to England, which is very detrimental to replaced England and Europe. And. And was undone as soon as he was undone.

[Paul Chapman]

Was this the wool? Was this the wall trade? He tried to stop importing. What was it? Was it wool or was it grain? I can't remember.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Both. Everything. He made an exception for books because he was friend. He was friendly with a guy named William Caxton, who was the first English printer and depended on books from France. And so he said, okay, well you can bring him a French book. But just about everything else he tried to stop.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. And it ended up with him being under a car park. So not. Not didn't work too well. I mean, one of the, one of the things there that is fascinating and, and, and, and has been raised by a few people. When you take that, that nationalism piece to this and you know, the unintended consequences or perhaps the starkly intended consequences of the energy transition is from China's point of view and Europe as well, is that they no longer become dependent on foreign hydrocarbons. Right. And more broadly, in a, in an energy transition world, the, the power, the energy is made locally, you know, on your rooftop or you know, in a nuclear power plant next door and solar and you know, wind and so forth. And actually that could create a starkly different world to the one where everyone kind of has to get on because if the oil doesn't flow, the spice doesn't flow, you know, all starts to fall apart quite quickly.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah, but if you look at the history of oil, you could not really argue that it's brought peace to the world. Yeah, fair.

[Paul Chapman]

It just sort of one of the.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Political problems with all this is a belief that if you are buying something from a foreign country, you're taking jobs away locally. In most cases this isn't true, but it's widely believed and it's great political fodder for nationalists. The truth is that the NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement probably did not take jobs away from the U.S. there was some manufacturing that had been going on in the US and moved to Mexico, but it probably would have moved to Mexico without the trade accord. With the trade accord, the US was supplying these manufacturers. I'm sorry, free trade works.

[Paul Chapman]

We had Edward Chancellor on the podcast highlighting the fact that actually what's caused the incredible inequality and, and essentially sort of zombification or financialization of GM and GE and so forth, or G, you know, in particular has been ultra low interest rates. And actually that's what's created sort of the imbalance between assets and labor and also has meant that these companies have been far better off buying their own stock and having taken on lots of, you know, low cost debt than they have actually been working on products.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right. But if you just look at the issue of labor or environmental issues also for that matter, you know, you can bring this up in an issue you're buying from a country that is not treating workers fairly, that it's not taking care of the environment, but by trading with them, you're putting yourself in a better position to get them to do something about it. If you boycott their goods, you have nothing to say about what they do.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah, we're seeing that sort of play out. Just the, I guess, the, the sort of. You kind of got this commodities in. In. If I think about the broad body of work.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right.

[Paul Chapman]

You've got how commodities define with the modern age today. Right. Where our towns and cities are, what, you know, the various wealth of each nation, you know, each country to certain extents. Right. Their natural resource endowment and, you know, whether they had lots of coasts, so they had to rely on trade. In the case of the uk. Fascinating that, you know, there's that piece in the competition and trade. Then there's also the. And again, you've actually highlighted the distinction between trade and resource extraction. Because on the resource extraction side. Yeah, it's got a pretty dark history when you think about kind of what New York did to its oyster beds. You know, what. What happened to Wales. Right. You know, and. And can you just talk a little bit about that? And I guess specifically, do you feel more optimistic today than you did a while, you know, 20 years ago? I guess, or when you, you know, as to how we're treating those resources?

[Mark Kurlansky]

I felt more optimistic 10 years ago. I feel in complete despair today. I mean, if you look at fisheries, for example, fisheries are such a complicated thing. People don't realize it. People think that, you know, it's overfishing and if you just get those fishermen to stop taking all that fish, everything would be fine. But the truth is that climate change has caused incredible changes in the ocean and in the food web and what's there and what. You know, there's actually some species that have profited by climate change and others that have declined. And so if you're in the business of managing a fishery, you got to figure out what this means five years from now, and it's almost impossible to do so. It's a far more complicated thing than just being conservative on how we use resources.

[Paul Chapman]

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[Mark Kurlansky]

Right. And it's not a natural resource.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. And this is where I was, I.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Guess, where, you know, the nice thing about that is that anybody can have paper. You always find something to grind up into fibers and make paper.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. And it, it is what's sort of powerful about you having done so much thinking about paper and written its history, which I highly recommend to people, is of course. Well, can you just tell us about the technology fallacy? And, and I'd love to get your thoughts on, on what that means for AI because I think we're at another sort of inventing paper moment, or perhaps we're sort of, you know, you can tie up the Internet and AI all together kind of thing. But what is the technology fallacy and how does it relate to paper? And then I'd like to talk about AI.

[Mark Kurlansky]

The fallacy is that technology, as they like to say, is taking over. I mean, I suppose it takes over, but it doesn't eliminate, you know, the idea that, look at ebooks, for example. When ebooks first came out, everybody said, oh, that's it for books. Everybody's going to get the ebooks and books are going to be gone. And then it turns out that some people like ebooks and some people like regular books and that some people like both. They take an E book on an airplane but read a regular book at home. You know, technology at its best expands the possibilities. It doesn't limit them.

[Paul Chapman]

There's also this idea with paper where you, you write in the book like, you know, you kind of have this, this idea that, oh, China invented paper 2,000 years ago, then the Arabs have it and then, and eventually the sort of, the Europeans had it. Like, and, and it was as though like the first European to pick up a piece of paper was like, wow, this is amazing, let's use it. And I guess the way that you use that fallacy in your book as well is to say actually the Arabs had paper. Everyone had access, there was relatively known about thing, but the Arabs adopted it when they went deeply into mathematics. And obviously the, you know, the n. The way the Islam went in terms of, you know, scholarship and so forth, it required just lots of paper. And it was only when sort of the Europeans got to, well after the Crusades and all that transfer of information and knowledge came back to Europe. And at the same time you had sort of the Renaissance.

[Mark Kurlansky]

They didn't need it.

[Paul Chapman]

Exactly. They didn't need it.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right. Hardly anybody read. You know, what really turned things around, speaking of technology, was printed, because printing meant that you could put out a lot of material, and that meant you had to have less expensive material. I mean, you couldn't do massive printing on parchment or vellum. Not enough animals around. So the, the advent of printing is when Europeans really first got interested in paper and when they got interested in reading, because all of us, and they're producing all these books and I mean, the biggest library in Europe in the Renaissance was in the Vatican. And it was pathetic compared to the libraries in the Arab world. The Arabs needed paper because they were doing all these things. And when Europeans started doing those things, a lot of which they adapted from the Arabs, like mathematics, they too needed paper. So, you know, a technology that isn't needed doesn't go anywhere, you know.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah.

[Mark Kurlansky]

If you, if you, if you look at the history of inventors, you know, inventors have some winners and some losers. The losers are the things that nobody wants. Yeah. I wrote a book about Clarence, Clarence Bird's Eye, who developed the industrial frozen frozen food process. And he had lots of other inventions, most which didn't take off. My favorite of which was he invented this fishing reel where if you get a bite from the fish, you push this button and up it goes. No, nobody wanted that. It wasn't any fun.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, and that's kind of the bit where I, I guess where it got me thinking about AI, which is, you know, you could argue the same thing.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right.

[Paul Chapman]

There were plenty, you know, the last 10 years, I think, you know, I've been shown lots of large language models and all the rest of it, it's chatgpt kind of comes along and it's a confluence of actually, you know, it's needed today in certain fields. Right. Because there's just so much information out there, so much data, it's hard to find. You know, along comes a pretty simple tool that synthesizes things or indeed, actually, let's talk about useful things. You can now draft a legal document and your lawyer will tell you you shouldn't. And it's a terrible. You can draft, you can sort of this guild like knowledge out there about like, you know, it has to be structured this way to be admissible. Suddenly chat unlocks loads of that, those capabilities where we've been paying people lots of money for sort of rope memorization and, and sort of esoteric skills. So I can see circumstances where the technology is needed. And it actually unlocks lots of human potential. And I'm quite bullish and positive about that change. And I think there are other bits where people are saying at the same time, it's kind of like the blockchain bit where it's such a great technology, it should change. You know, we should use it in everything. And in the end now, apart from Bitcoin and a couple of other things, we haven't really use it at all.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Well, yeah, I mean, it's something that. It's great for some things, but it's overused. It's used for things where it doesn't work. Well, I'll give you an example. Translation. AI translations are terrible. I mean, I often do things where I'm translating French, I'm fluent in French, but sometimes there's something I'm stuck on, or I sort of want another opinion about it, and I'll go online for translation. Whoa. No, this is just completely off.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, I don't think my Spanish is good enough to really know the difference at the moment. But are there, you know, what other commodities are you drawn to at the moment? Are there any other books in the. In. In the works? Like, what are the stories you, I guess, you wish you told, but you haven't yet?

[Mark Kurlansky]

Well, I have a book coming out next year about lobsters, which is almost a personal thing to me because I'm from New England and worked on commercial lobster boats when I was a kid.

[Paul Chapman]

Is it true, my wife tries to tell me, that they used to serve prisoners in New England, used to basically riot over the fact that they were given lobster because it was sort of seen as a cheap and terrible food.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Is that myth or trick that that is not true? And it's also sometimes said about salmon, but that also is not true. And what happened was, after these things became scarce, these stories were made up from 100 years before to illustrate a point. But this is all supposed to be taking place in Massachusetts, which has always been meticulous about recording all its laws and statutes, and there's no such thing in the books.

[Paul Chapman]

Ah, that's somewhat of a shame. So. So tell us about lobsters.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Well, lobsters, you know, they had their ups and downs. Right now they are the most commercially successful fishery in the United States and in Canada, way ahead of any fin fish. And so first, the question. Anybody who deals with fisheries knows that if something is looking good, you got to look out for being bad, turning bad in the future. That's how it always seems to work. So there's a lot of questions about what the future of lobsters is and why it's so booming. Now, part of the reason it's booming is that there's so little cod. Cod used to eat a lot of lobsters. You know, let's talk about if cod comes back. If cod comes back, that would be sort of bad news for lobsters. But unfortunately, cod isn't coming back. I mean, there's. If you just look at the North Atlantic, there's just this huge change from fish to crustaceans.

[Paul Chapman]

Because of the temperature change.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah, largely. Largely because of temperature change and because of the changes in the. In the food web, which are also to some degree about temperature change and also chemical change. The oceans are less salty and more acidic, and there's all sorts of things going on, and we don't know where all this is going is leading. So, you know, scientists can't really say for sure why lobsters are booming right now. And there's lots of theories on why, and there are certain things you can point to, but no serious scientists can say with certainty what this is all about. And you also can't say how long it will last or what it means for the future. And, you know, you just go back to Darwin and when species diminish, it affects other species. When species expand, it affects other species. It's all interrelated and has almost unpredictable changes.

[Paul Chapman]

One of the. One of the sort of the themes as well of your book and you mentioned at the start, is kind of like the long tail of some of these commodities. Right. And, you know, salt now had a bit of a resurgence since the nadir of the 1970s, where people are getting more interested in quality salt. You know, paper obviously has. I think you say in the book. Right. There's been a gradual decline in paper and there have been fewer and fewer traders and merchants of it. But actually, if you can become one of the last merchants of some of these commodities, it can be quite. I think one of the paper trader in the book says there'll be four of us left, but we'll do just great.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Which is why that won't happen, because there's more than four people thinking about that plan, you know?

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah.

[Mark Kurlansky]

And paper. Paper has a lot of things. What was that. What was that movie about? Oh, you know, the guy who exposed. I think it was Clinton for spying on people and he was run out of the country and they did a movie about this.

[Paul Chapman]

Was this the. The guy with.

[Mark Kurlansky]

I'm not thinking of his name right now.

[Paul Chapman]

Was this post 9 11. The guy who did the whistle you got? Yes, well, not Snowden, but the. There was another guy that the, the spy.

[Mark Kurlansky]

No, I think this is Snowden, isn't it?

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, Snow. Yeah. Snowden was the, the sort of young, slightly sort of feat and crazy NSA worker who was. By protesting the US government gave all of our secrets to China and Russia in a. In a sort of bizarre protest. I mean, but yeah, yeah, I can't remember what the movie was called. I'll Google it.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah, but in this movie he knows that the government is spying on him and all his communications are being watched and read and he comes up with all these devices and encryptions and ways of communicating to try to outsmart the government. And at the end of the movie you have these two guys sitting in a hotel room and you know what they're doing? They're passing notes on paper.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah. Well, Vladimir Putin doesn't have a laptop or computer and only uses pen and paper.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Oh, really? Yeah, well, you know that, that's a way of getting around all this stuff. You know, paper is the safest, it's the safest communication. If you want to do something safely, don't do it on a computer.

[Paul Chapman]

Hello, I'm David Hunt, founder and managing director at Hyperion Search. Founded over a decade ago, Hyperion Search has helped organisations from major utilities to startups recruit their leadership teams and key individual contributors to accelerate both their growth and the energy transition. Our three main verticals are renewable power, energy storage and E mobility. The energy transition and the talent that delivers it has been our passion since day one. To find out more, visit hyperionsearch.com or.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Listen to my Leaders in Clean Tech.

[Paul Chapman]

Podcast, available on all platforms. Again, it's that interplay of. I mean, one of the things we haven't talked about at the moment is kind of that the role of innovation in all of this. Right. Like the, the sort of the life cycle of a commodity in some ways is obviously the, the discovery and how it, you know, it riches some and doesn't others, the, the massive competition for it. But at the same time as that competition there is that the global trade and bringing people together. But they also, you know, innovation, right. The story of cod, you know, it's sort of an inexorable rise from sort of, you know, Vikings and, and fishing lines, you know, all the way through to like behemoth factory ships cruising around, you know.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Well, well, fishing is a, is a great example of how technology is sometimes not a good thing really. What fisheries need to do to become more primitive and less efficient. You know, that's a hard thing to sell. Yeah, yeah. Fishermen have always been focused on how can I catch the most fish, but really the problem for a fisherman today is how can I catch a small amount of fish and earn a good living?

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah. As you say that that kind of requires that global cooperation rather than competition to pull something like that off. We are obviously, we, you know, the, the backdrop to this at the moment. Right. Is obviously there's profound change going on. It's quite worrisome for people who, who sit at. In a, In a. In a world where free trade is a net positive and has, you know, brought people out of poverty and has also dramatically decreased the, the volatility in the world. You know, is there, I guess, is there sort of, you know, what, what can be done to sort of win that narrative back that free trade is a positive thing, and every time we put tariffs on stuff in, the tariffs typically don't work unless you are very specific circumstances about trying to get a new industry off the ground.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Well, you know, I mean, one of my big flaws is that I tend to be an optimist. And I think how that argument will be. One is that this tariff system is going to be a disaster, and everybody's going to say, no, let's stop this. Let's not do this anymore. I really think that'll happen in a painful sort of way. I think it's going to be disastrous and everybody's going to see it.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. But then the other thing that we know is that it takes a very short amount of time to undo international trust. It takes a long time to build it back up. Right.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah. And after everybody realizes this tariff thing is bad and they want to go back to something else, it'll still take many years before you can go back to the kind of successful free trade negotiations that were going on a while ago.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah. And at the same time, obviously, we're going through profound technology change because, you know, the energy transition is a technology, not a fuel. Right. If, you know, a photovoltaic cell is, Is more like paper than it is to say like, it's like oil. These are technologies. We're going through a massive change there. That, that actually means some of the old relationships are unraveling. You know, I mean, there's almost an argument for Russia's Ukraine. Invasion of Ukraine is kind of one of the, the early ructions of a decarbonizing world, you know, and trying to sort of consolidate and control what's left of. Of sort of fossil fuel burning and so on. That might, that might look more sensical in 100 years time when people look back. But it's, it seems like there's a lot of change. You know, you've got lots of pieces of change going on that all are impacting and affecting commodity trade flows. And that as your books has a big impact on countries and how they do.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah. I mean I think that there is a move away from fossil fuel and it's going to get stronger and stronger and wind turbines, solar cells and all of these things are going to become more important commodities of trade than fossil fuel. I think it's going to be a huge change. I don't know if it'll be quick enough to save us, but the change is going to happen.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah. With kind of profound.

[Mark Kurlansky]

And there again you see the problem of short sightedness and some people that think that they move towards renewable energy, you know, that this is bad for the economy. You know, it's turning away from coal and oil and all these things that people made money on. And these people who are saying this fail to see that the new stuff will create other jobs.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. And, and the other thing to say is like the other thing we know is that we'll still be using oil in 100 years.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right.

[Paul Chapman]

We're just talking how much, you know, they're still.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right.

[Paul Chapman]

Bits of the whale are still used in, in very, very sensitive lubricants. They're used in perfume. You know, it's like it, it takes, you know, the, there's a long tail to these commodities. But yes, typically, typically innovation and trade has led to an overall raising of people's incomes and all the rest of it. Right.

[Mark Kurlansky]

I mean, you know, so, and when you talk about competition, if we let Europe and Asia dominate renewable energy products, that will be at great expense to the U.S. the U.S. will no longer be a dominant energy supplier. Yeah. It amazes me that they don't worry more about that.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. Well, and also if you think about one of the arguments that's been made in the commodities world is whoever wins kind of the energy transition, which means essentially very cheap power. Okay. We sold for intermittency, there's nukes involved and so forth. But it's cheap power in a world where suddenly rather than your sort of steel output being the greatest measure of your, you know, country success is going to be compute power. Right. It's, it's how many data centers and how, you know, who's got the best AI apps and how goes. Right. That's going to dominate that because that's actually going to be the thing that wins you, you know, that wins in the future. And so there is a significant long term risk that is being thought about. But obviously the current administration is not, is not thinking that way.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right. If you talk to fishermen, you know, the fishermen realize that there's a problem with fossil fuels. Although they've been very reluctant to power their vessels with anything else if they just don't trust new things. Basic characteristics of fishermen not trusting new things. But when they look at renewable energy, they don't like wind energy because what they see in wind energy is they see a corporation building something in the ocean. What they like is solar energy because solar energy is this thing that you don't need a big company, any individual can do it and solve it themselves. Very much in line with the fisherman's mentality.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. The other thing to say is the countries that don't keep up with innovation that sort of bet on the old commodity if you'd like, you know, that typically doesn't work out too well for you. Or indeed actually, you know, when the ones that break off in free trade or trade in general has kind of profound.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right.

[Paul Chapman]

You can see that on a, a micro level if you, you know, over relied on oysters and then your, the oyster fields went and you know, or like you, you look at the towns in the north of England that you know, became very rich over fishing and then suddenly as a consequence of 200 mile offshore bands and all this, all the, and technology and so forth, you know, our, have become pretty challenging places these last couple of decades.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right, right. And you know, and one kind of sad thing that you see is that poor countries made the argument you guys all got rich doing this, so now we're going to do it. The problem is that now you don't get rich from doing it.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah. And actually, you know, yeah, you're seeing sort of those technological leaps as well. Right. Where you know, you actually the, the path, the modernity doesn't go through. For example in telecoms, you know, they're not going up putting landlines in every home in Africa. Right. Everyone's just gone straight to the cell phones. Right. And we might see the same with, with how, you know, with future fuels and so on. Well.

[Mark Kurlansky]

By the way, we don't know where all of that technology is going. I don't know what the future is. I have a 25 year old daughter. She lives in a world very different than mine. Almost never has the cell phone out of her hand and spends lots of time on social media. And I think a lot of that's going to change. I think increasingly people are seeing what's wrong and what's problematic about that. Already a lot of school systems are banning cell phones. I think that in time we will look differently. And some of the things that are now. New technology.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah, yeah. There's a sort of a regulatory lag on some of this stuff, but as you say as well. Right.

[Mark Kurlansky]

The.

[Paul Chapman]

I know from our kids experience, the minute they got cell phones banned in schools was like the best thing that ever happened. Right. You know. Really?

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah, yeah, they thought so too.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. Yeah. I think, like, because you're all on the same level playing field and you don't have someone distracting you, you know, so it's. I think it's all generally perceived as very positive in there as well. I mean, the world is certainly getting. Getting more rapid in that stuff. And you talk about books as well, right? I think I was definitely in the camp of thinking, you know, I was actually on a charity, a foundation for a public library at the time who were very worried about what they would do, that they make lots of their, you know, charity. They make income by selling off used books. Right. It turns out that in a library system that books can only get you checked out a certain number of times before they have to be disposed of. And you can dispose of those by selling them. And they're very worried about what would happen to libraries themselves and that income stream in particular when it came to ebooks. And yet here we are, you know, 12 years later, and Barnes and Noble is doing better than ever. And, you know, people, as you say, do like the, you know, the. Ultimately, the ebook is not as a satisfying technology and wasn't solving as many problems as people thought it would compared to a good old book that doesn't need charging.

[Mark Kurlansky]

No. I remember once, early in this game, my agent said to me, do you know that ebook sales increased 100% this year? And I said, well, you know, if you sold one last year and you.

[Paul Chapman]

Sold two today.

[Mark Kurlansky]

And that's what happened. It got to. It got to a certain point. Point and didn't grow beyond that.

[Paul Chapman]

Yeah. Well, I'm allowed one last wild card question, which is I always thought the. A book that I'd like to read on is on the. Is it the cochineal shell that led to all the. The dyes that basically kicked off the Phoenicians and meant that to wear the purple was because a purple robe was about the most expensive dye you could get in the ancient world, have you? Just to put that bug in your ear in case you. You're looking for ideas.

[Mark Kurlansky]

I think somebody did a book on the Color Purple.

[Paul Chapman]

Oh, did they? I'll have to search it out, but it wouldn't stand up to a Mark Kalansky book. I think my, my listeners would agree, but. Well, it's been a real pleasure having you on the show and yeah, it's as you say. I, I mean, I recommend, I certainly recommend. I think everyone's read Salt, but I really enjoy paper as a foray into how a technology both does and doesn't change the world and some of the, some of the lessons there and from a, I guess from an AI perspective about. Yeah, it might. It will take off if it's solving an actual problem and useful.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Right. Well, thank you. It's nice talking to you. And speaking of technology, I'm sorry that minus doesn't work.

[Paul Chapman]

No, no, yeah, we've had, we've had trouble sort of getting this together, but yeah, no, I really enjoyed it and hopefully we can have you back on in a year and talk lobsters.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Yeah, I'd be very happy to.

[Paul Chapman]

Fantastic. Okay. Well, thanks, Mark. That's great.

[Mark Kurlansky]

Okay, thanks for talking to me. All right, you too. Bye.

[Paul Chapman]

Bye. Thank you for listening. To find out more about HC Group, our global offices and our expertise in search within the commodities sector, please visit www.hcgroup.com.