True Stories Behind the Greatest Christmas Songs & The Downside of Renewable Energy

Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, just how good are you at predicting your own future?

Speaker 1 Then, some wonderful stories about your favorite Christmas songs, including White Christmas, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, and Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song.

Speaker 2 What I love about this song, The Origins, is that it was written during the summer. And so, this was written by Mel Tormay and Robert Wells.
And it was a very, very hot summer day.

Speaker 2 And he was like, you know what, writing this Christmas song, maybe this will cool me down. And so they ended up writing the song in like 45 minutes.

Speaker 1 Also, why you're probably not blinking enough. And how the push for renewable energy and digital technology has a serious downside.

Speaker 3 So in a nutshell, renewable energy and digital technology are together causing massive environmental damage, mayhem, and murder.

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Speaker 1 Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today.

Speaker 1 Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. So let me ask you a question.
Do you think you're pretty good at predicting how things will turn out?

Speaker 1 Most of us subconsciously predict how happy or unhappy we're going to be in the future. According to psychologist Art Markman, we usually get that wrong.

Speaker 1 For example, a kid might think his life will be complete if he just gets that one toy for Christmas.

Speaker 1 An adult might think they're going to be so much happier when they get that new car or be devastated if they lose that job or that relationship.

Speaker 1 But our long-term happiness predictions are usually way off.

Speaker 1 Dr.

Speaker 1 Markman says it's probably best to remember that there are a lot of factors that affect how happy we're going to be in the future, and that no one single event will have that big of an influence on that happiness.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 Unlike any other holiday, Christmas brings with it its own music. Lots of music.
Songs and carols that we listen to over and over again.

Speaker 1 Maybe you've noticed how some radio stations switch to an all-Christmas music format and seem to do it earlier and earlier every year. And why do they do it? Because listeners like it.

Speaker 1 People love Christmas music. And while some new songs get added to the mix every year, it is the classics that we're drawn to.
And those classic songs all have stories.

Speaker 1 Joining me to reveal some of the interesting backstories to many of your favorite Christmas songs is Annie Zaleski. She is an author, editor, and journalist with a focus on music and pop culture.

Speaker 1 And she's author of a book called This is Christmas, Song by Song, The Stories Behind 100 Holiday Hits. Hi, Annie.
Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 So let's start with why you like Christmas music so much and why you like going and investigating all the stories behind the songs.

Speaker 2 Christmas music, I've always been a longtime fan ever since I was a small child.

Speaker 2 And I think one of the things that I'm really fascinated by is that you can really see the world history, social movements, and they're all reflected in Christmas music.

Speaker 2 So, when you look at the history of Christmas music across the decades, you can kind of see how American culture has moved forward.

Speaker 1 So, let's start off with White Christmas because it's been around a long time. It's a perennial favorite.
Everybody seems to like it. What's the story with White Christmas?

Speaker 2 You know, so that was written by Irving Berlin. I don't think Irving Berlin needs any introduction.
He's one of the

Speaker 2 greatest

Speaker 2 composers in American history. And he actually ended up writing it for a movie called Holiday Inn.
And that came out in 1942.

Speaker 2 However, White Christmas came out the year before and basically emerged during the Christmas season right after World War II broke out. The song was actually, he played it on his radio show.

Speaker 2 The song was actually shipped to the UK that year, late 1941, to kind of provide solace for troops. And what I just really love about this song is that it's reassuring.

Speaker 2 You know, it's a very, he's very empathetic about it. You know, it's a very kind of longing song.
It's full of nostalgia.

Speaker 2 It's very wistful that with the hope that maybe one day, you know, everyone will be together, Christmas will be better again. And it really kind of summed up the time.

Speaker 2 You know, it was a very anxious time in the world, a very fraught time. Families were being separated and it was sort of a beacon of comfort, I guess.

Speaker 1 Was it written for that purpose? Was it written with soldiers in mind that one day they'll be home for Christmas? Or was it just, it just fit at the time?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it just fit at the time. No, I mean, he wrote this movie.
So Holiday Inn had a couple of other holiday-themed songs that were kind of included on the movie soundtrack.

Speaker 2 And it did not, you know, obviously I think when World War II broke out, it was one of those right place, right time things. The song just really summed up the mood.

Speaker 1 So my favorite Christmas song that I love to hear when I hear it on the radio, I think, okay, it's Christmas time is Net King Cole's The Christmas Song.

Speaker 2 What I love about this song, The Origins, that I did not realize until doing this book, is that it was written during the summer.

Speaker 2 There was actually a lot of Christmas songs that were written during the summer. And so this was written by Mel Tormay and Robert Wells.

Speaker 2 And actually, what happened is that Mel was going to Robert's house just for, you know, a writing session. And it was a very, very hot summer day.
It was excessively hot, as he put it.

Speaker 2 And he happened to see on the piano, there were some lyrics that referenced Christmas carols, roasting chestnuts.

Speaker 2 And he was like, you know what, getting in the Christmas spirit, writing this Christmas song, maybe this will cool me down. And so they ended up writing the song in like 45 minutes.

Speaker 2 They immediately took the song to Hollywood. And Nat King Cole, you know, liked the song enough that he recorded it the following year twice.
Actually, he did two separate takes in 1946.

Speaker 2 But, you know, that just, that song just sums it up right there. You know, the, you know, that came out right as World War II ended.

Speaker 2 And so there were a lot of people that they were getting back together, you know, trying to recover from a very, very difficult four years.

Speaker 2 And so that also really kind of, you know, summed up and really provided a lot of comfort for families sort of in the opposite way that White Christmas did.

Speaker 1 You know, what's interesting to me about that song is there have been a lot of really good covers of that song. I mean, a lot, and some of them are really good, but they just don't quite

Speaker 1 do it the way Nat King Cole did it.

Speaker 2 100%. And I think that's, you know, his voice.
He had such a singular voice. He was so deeply empathetic and he was such a wonderful interpreter.
He really lived the songs that he sang.

Speaker 1 And also, I think it's such a big part of it. He has that, I don't know what that is, that haunting thing in his voice.
You know, Sting kind of has that same thing.

Speaker 1 There's a hauntingness about it that just makes the song. And, you know, another song, when I hear it at Christmas, or when I hear it anywhere, it gets stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 And that is Blue Christmas by Elvis.

Speaker 2 Oh, I love Blue Christmas. Oh, no, absolutely.
You know, and that came out in 1957, you know, and it's funny, he wasn't actually the first one to do it, which I was very interested about.

Speaker 2 That had been recorded many times before he ended up tackling it. But I think this is another one where his vocal performance just nailed it.

Speaker 2 You know, he just nailed the when you're not having to go to Christmas, basically.

Speaker 2 If you're having anyone who's having a melancholy Christmas and not having a great year, you know, he really, he really captured it.

Speaker 2 You know, and it's funny enough, the writer actually was inspired by a gloomy day when he actually wrote it, Jay Johnson. And he was actually known for penning scripts for radio shows.

Speaker 2 He wasn't necessarily a songwriter. He was commuting from Connecticut to New York City, and it was a rainy day.

Speaker 2 And he basically wondered why hadn't someone hadn't written a holiday song with some blues in it. And so he decided to write one himself.

Speaker 2 And he teamed up with a composer friend named Billy Hayes, and they put it together.

Speaker 1 I've certainly noticed, as I'm sure everyone has, that the Christmas classic songs stay forever, and there aren't a lot of new songs that really stick the way White Christmas or The Christmas Song do, but a few have.

Speaker 1 And recently, like Mariah Carey, I mean, she's criticized for that song, her Christmas song,

Speaker 1 but it has stuck and it probably will stick for a while.

Speaker 2 So she actually wrote it with a collaborator of hers, Walter Afonisef, who he also co-wrote Hero and One Sweet Day. And so they were writing a lot of songs together, you know, and she loved Christmas.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think that's obvious if everyone looking at it now, she really leans into it because of this song, but she loved Christmas. And so she basically wrote this song.

Speaker 2 you know, it was big, a silly love song, you know, a whimsical love song, not silly, but whimsical, that she's basically waiting for her beloved, you know, that she's going to be underneath the Christmas tree, you know, waiting underneath the mistletoe, waiting for them to come up, you know, and it's one of these songs that I'm still trying to figure out why it's become so popular and why it is just endured and why that one in particular has become a standard.

Speaker 2 And I think it's probably because, you know, you have her, she really leans into the vocal performance. She really goes for it.
And the instrumentation as well is, you know, kind of old-fashioned.

Speaker 2 You know, you have sleigh bells, you have piano,

Speaker 2 you know, with a little bit of a different production that could have come out in another decade.

Speaker 1 Well, it also seems like, like other songs like Blue Christmas, that when you hear it, it gets stuck in your head for a while

Speaker 1 until some other song comes and bumps it out. But

Speaker 1 it is like infectious in that way. It gets in your head.
And you know what other song that's actually pretty new that I get stuck in my head all the time is Underneath the Tree by Kelly Clarkson.

Speaker 1 I mean, I just, I hear it and I can't get it out of my head. And I like it, but God, I wish I could think of something else.

Speaker 2 You said that and I immediately started singing that in my head because, yeah, it is one of those memorable songs that like her hook with that. And, you know, it's funny.

Speaker 2 She wrote that song with Greg Kirsten and who has a very interesting background.

Speaker 2 He was in a 90s band called Geggita that very few people remember, but he's done a lot of production for mainstream pop. And they conjured kind of the wall of sound production style.

Speaker 2 They kind of modernized it and kind of drew on that. And, you know, basically, true love makes Christmas better.

Speaker 2 You know, I think it's not one of those timeless songs that, you know, they went with the classics and decided to go for it.

Speaker 2 And I think her vocal performance too, you know, she is obviously a big fan of Mariah Carey's, but also some of the other, you know, powerful songwriters and powerful vocalists, female vocalists through the years.

Speaker 2 And there are a lot of women who have sang Christmas songs, you know, Darlene Love, obviously the Ronettes.

Speaker 2 And so that she's kind of in the long tradition of those very powerful women singing Christmas songs.

Speaker 1 Let's get back to some of the classics. Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
I mean, that's been around forever. Well, I don't know if it's been around forever.
Has it been around forever?

Speaker 2 It's been around since the 40s, which feels like forever, I guess, you know,

Speaker 2 depending on your perspective um i you know this was in meet me in st.

Speaker 2 Louis which is you know a Judy Garland so it's very uh connected to her uh post-Wizard of Oz and what was so fascinating about the song is that it almost didn't come to be so the songwriters were Ralph Blaine and Hugh Martin and you know basically Hugh was writing the song and you know played you know played it just couldn't get the song to work and he threw it in the trash and Ralph was like whoa whoa whoa wait a second and he actually you know, said, no, no, no, this is good and made him take it back out of the trash.

Speaker 2 They could finish it. And, you know, even then, you know, obviously it's such a pivotal part of Meet Me in St.
Louis as well.

Speaker 2 And it actually almost didn't end up in the movie, apparently, because they were worried that it was a little bit too, you know, dour.

Speaker 1 We're talking about the interesting backstories to some of your favorite Christmas songs. My guest is Annie Zeleski.

Speaker 1 She's the author of the book, This Is Christmas, Song by Song, The Stories Behind 100 Holiday Hits.

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Speaker 1 So Annie, Merry Christmas, Darling by the Carpenters, when that came out,

Speaker 1 I think it just instantly became a hit and it has sustained for all these years.

Speaker 1 And it's, I mean, it's her voice. It's just...

Speaker 1 The way she sings is like an angel.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And I think, you know, when I was talking about female vocalists, you know, just really nailing Christmas songs, she really did.
And this one as well.

Speaker 2 So, you know, Richard Carpenter handled the music and Frank Pooler wrote lyrics. And people might not necessarily know who he was.

Speaker 2 What's interesting is that he wrote the song, you know, basically as a Christmas gift for a girl with who he had a crush on.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it didn't work out or anything, but he kind of kept the song. And he later became a teacher.

Speaker 2 He was a choral director at California State University, Long Beach and met Richard and Karen Carpenter.

Speaker 2 And basically, you know, they, they asked, hey, do you have any Christmas song they could perform? And he dug out of his lyrics and Richard wrote music to it.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, what a lovely story, you know, and he didn't realize that he was doing it. Richard just kind of invited Frank to the studio and said, hey, I want you to listen to something.

Speaker 2 And he put together this song. And, but, oh yeah, I mean, Karen's performance on this is just so, I mean, there's almost no words to describe how beautiful it is.
And it's just so tender and dynamic.

Speaker 2 And it's really, you know, that was fairly early in their career becoming hit makers.

Speaker 2 And I think it was definitely one of those songs that showed, you know, another side of her and just showed her depth.

Speaker 1 One Christmas song that's fairly popular that I am not a big fan of, because I think it's cute the first time you hear it.

Speaker 1 It's not so cute the 700th time you've heard it is I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.

Speaker 2 I knew you were going to say that because I did not realize what a polarizing that song was. And so this was actually written by a man named John Rocks.

Speaker 2 You know, he basically he had studied music in Vienna. You know, he wrote some Broadway songs.
And the singer was 12. You know, her name was Gayla Peavy.

Speaker 2 And so they, you know, she was kind of on, you know, a child star who was kind of on an upswing. And she sang the song.

Speaker 2 And I think what's most fascinating about this song is that the way they promoted it, I think now it's, it kind of foreshadowed the way music promotion is now.

Speaker 2 You know, so basically the whole story is she wants a hippopotamus for Christmas. And so how they promoted the song was saying she needs the real gala needs a hippopotamus.

Speaker 2 And so they did all of these fundraisers and promotion and they did a fundraiser and they actually donated, people donated $4,000, which in the early 50s, you know, I calculated was more than $40,000 today.

Speaker 2 And they basically found an elephant, Matilda, and they... She went to the Oklahoma City Zoo and she lived there for decades.
So

Speaker 2 it's a weird song and And it's definitely, it's kind of all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. There were a lot of songs like this in the early 50s, you know, the post-World War II baby boom.

Speaker 2 You know, children were music consumers. And I think that was definitely one of the songs too geared toward them.

Speaker 1 Well, and the, and the chipmunks

Speaker 1 Christmas song would fall into that category.

Speaker 1 But it's such a novelty song. Yeah, I guess you still hear it a lot at Christmas time.
But,

Speaker 1 you know, again, here, I can hear it once a year and that's plenty for me.

Speaker 2 That one is so funny because it's one man, and he basically, and so if people know the song Witch Doctor by David Seville, and he put together the chipmunk song, he bought a really real cassette recorder and manipulated the tapes to make the chipmunk voices, which honestly for the time was very forward-thinking.

Speaker 2 And he basically made these characters, these chipmunks. It's funny because he actually almost did not end up on chipmunks.
You know, he wasn't sure if the singer should be them or insects.

Speaker 2 He actually thought of being butterflies, which is, or mice or rabbits. They almost were not chipmunks, which is funny.

Speaker 1 So I want to go back because we talked about White Christmas, which came out in the 40s, Ben Crosby and all that.

Speaker 1 But there's also I'll Be Home for Christmas, which is kind of similar in its theme and its time, and the same guy sings it. So

Speaker 1 sort that out.

Speaker 2 Oh, boy. I mean, and so this came out in 1943, which, you know, obviously was in the middle of World War II.
It was an even more fraught time, I think, than when White Christmas came out.

Speaker 2 And, you know, basically it, it's less optimistic. I mean, I think, you know, even, you know, I'll be home for Christmas.
When you hear the title, you're like, that's a promise. I'll be home there.

Speaker 2 But honestly, it's when you actually kind of listen to the song, the lyrics almost hint that coming home for the holidays is a fantasy, that this is something that might not be possible.

Speaker 2 You know, I think the parenthetical is if only in my dreams is, I think, you know, kind of,

Speaker 2 you know, basically points to that, basically. That, you know, that there's no guarantee.
And I think this is another song that just really, really summed up the time.

Speaker 2 And funnily enough, this song actually has a very complicated backstory because there were lawsuits involved in terms of these songwriters. People had shared this song and there were copyright things.

Speaker 2 And so for a song that is just so melancholy and just, you know, so downtrodden, there was a lot of drama and legal drama behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 But boy, Bing, just really to his performance and his delivery on the song too. You know, he really, really lived this song and leaned into the melancholy.

Speaker 2 But it was very, it was comforting in a way, you know, for people who weren't feeling great at the holidays, who were feeling like, who were feeling hopeless, that things weren't going to work out, you know, he was really the soundtrack to that and really told people it's okay to feel that way.

Speaker 1 So when Rock and Roll showed up, it produced a couple of Christmas songs. like Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree and Jingle Bell Rock

Speaker 1 that said, hey, rock and roll is, you know, part of the culture now.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And, you know, Jingle Bell Rock is another one of those.

Speaker 2 When I mentioned, you know, songwriting credits, that is a fascinating, fascinating one because the songwriters who are credited are Joseph Carlton Beale and James Ross Booth.

Speaker 2 And there's not a lot of information about them. You really have to kind of dig to find out sort of what they did.
Bobby Helms over the years has always claimed,

Speaker 2 you know, he's no longer with us, but when he was alive, he claimed, I wrote a bunch of this stuff. I really rewrote this song and he didn't get credit for it.

Speaker 2 And so, but, but he, and he was in country music. That was so interesting is that he had had a couple of country hits.
So when he kind of came up with this song that was, you know, a little bit.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 it's funny because it's very early rock and roll, kind of easygoing.

Speaker 2 You can tell that he was in country by the way with the instrumentation and the musician Shapang Garland was on it, big country music performer, and just really sort of being laid back and sort of shuffling.

Speaker 2 And it's, it's just, it's one of those feel-good songs when, you know, jingle bell rock.

Speaker 2 Jingle bell rock is basically it's people going, you know, you're going to Jingle Bell Square, you know, so it's, it's, it's kind of playing up the iconography of Christmas and just kind of for teenagers going out and dancing.

Speaker 2 That's very much this. Same thing with rocking around the Christmas tree, you know, and this is Brenda Lee.
first off nailed it. This was another song that she recorded right in the dead of summer.

Speaker 2 And it was written by Johnny Marks, who is notorious because he also wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Speaker 1 And she was only like 13, right?

Speaker 2 No, actually, you know what?

Speaker 2 She was 12 worth. She might have even been 12.
I'd have to look up when her birthday was. She was so young and you wouldn't know it.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think that's what's so incredible about that song is that, you know, she always sounded so much more sophisticated and adult than she actually was.

Speaker 1 And I remember reading in an interview with Brenda Lee that when Home Alone came out and Home Alone features that song, that that was a real shot in the arm for the song.

Speaker 2 100%. You know, and she said that it was a turning point, you know, and that it's really,

Speaker 2 as she called it an interview, it breathed new life into the tune. And, you know, it hit number one last year.
I mean, I think that's what's striking.

Speaker 2 You know, decades after it came out, she, you know, it basically, you know, Mariah Carey's, All I Want for Christmas is You, parentally hits number one around the holiday season, and Brenda Lee did last year.

Speaker 2 Just unbelievable.

Speaker 1 Well, as we were talking about before, you know, the

Speaker 1 all-time great Christmas songs, they don't let many new members into that list very often.

Speaker 1 But sometimes there's like the little flurry, and it happened like in the 80s with Wham and the Eagles.

Speaker 1 Their Christmas songs are now classics.

Speaker 2 And it's funny when you think about it, you know, that was 40 years ago now, you know, and the Eagles was almost 45 years ago.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, when we were growing up, those songs from the 40s and 50s, those were the classics. So yeah, they are now the classics.
Wham's Last Christmas is so,

Speaker 2 you know, unbelievable because I think George Michael especially has been getting a lot more credit for his songwriting and his production, you know, in recent years.

Speaker 2 And that song he basically wrote himself. He was at his parents' house and he was hanging out.
You know, Andrew Ridgely, his Wham bandmate, was also there.

Speaker 2 And he basically got inspiration and he went upstairs and he happened to have a keyboard in his childhood bedroom and started writing the song.

Speaker 2 And then he actually ended up recording it in the studio by himself. There was just an engineer and he played up the instruments on it too, with some synthesizers and a drum machine.

Speaker 2 And, you know, that was basically a George Michael production. And that song is so funny because the interpretations of it vary so wildly.
You know, I mean, I've always said that.

Speaker 2 you know, that it's basically you run into an ex at, you know, at a Christmas time and that you go through a whirlwind of emotions, you know, your anger, you're bitter, you're sad, you know, you're longing and that, you know, you're, you're basically saying, nope, they're, they are no longer worth my time.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm done with you. It's time to move forward.
But people have many different interpretations of that. It's, it's very, very interesting.

Speaker 2 I've had some heated conversations with people about last Christmas, which you would not expect for the way it sounds being such a synthpop classic.

Speaker 1 And the Eagles?

Speaker 2 Oh, the Eagles. And so, and I, you know, this is, it's funny that the Eagles have so many good songs.
And I honestly think this is my, one of my favorite Eagle songs, to be very honest.

Speaker 2 And I think it's, you know, for starters, I think it's the vocal performances. You know, I think obviously their harmonies are unparalleled.

Speaker 2 And I think this one, especially, this really highlights it. This was actually written, though, by Charles Brown.
And so he is, you know, he's a very, very underrated musician, basically.

Speaker 2 You know, he was, he had started playing in the 1940s with Johnny Morris, Three Blazers,

Speaker 2 who actually had a hit with Merry Christmas Baby long before,

Speaker 2 you know, it became very well known. And then he also fronted the Charles Brown trio.
And so he, but he basically recorded this song for King Records, which was a very

Speaker 2 infamous and very influential record label in Cincinnati. And so he basically, the Eagles found it and covered it.

Speaker 2 And so it had been released decades before and they put just a really wonderful kind of R ⁇ B, you know, rock, soft rock spin on it. And like I said, I just, you know, I love this song.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, I think Joe Walsh and Don Felder, they were really, they're such powerful guitar players and they were very, very subtle. And it was actually the first time Timothy B.

Speaker 2 Schmidt contributed bass to an Eagle song, which I think also probably contributes to the sound of it as well.

Speaker 1 Well, I must admit, I always like hearing stories behind popular songs. They're just so interesting to me.
And apologies to anybody if we didn't get to your favorite Christmas song.

Speaker 1 We only have so much time and there are so many songs. I've been talking to Annie Zaleski.

Speaker 1 She's an author, editor, and journalist, and one of her books is called This is Christmas, Song by Song: The Stories Behind 100 Holiday Hits.

Speaker 1 And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Great, Annie, thanks.
Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. This was fun.

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Speaker 1 Over the last several years, we have developed new technologies that reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Solar, wind, batteries.

Speaker 1 And while all that may be a good thing, these new technologies require other natural resources, not fossil fuels, but other things, like metals.

Speaker 1 And this is also a concern and will continue to be a concern as these new technologies use more and more of these natural resources.

Speaker 1 Here to explain what this all means and why we should be concerned is Vince Beiser. He's an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in Wired, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harper's.

Speaker 1 And he is author of a book called Power Metal. The race for the resources that will shape the future.
Hey, Vince, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 Hey, thanks, Mike. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1 So let me first have you explain explain the problem because it's a problem I don't think many people think about.

Speaker 1 You know, we think about fossil fuels and developing new technologies that eliminate the need for fossil fuels, that that's a good thing. But there is another side to the story.

Speaker 1 So go ahead and explain that.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So the issue is it's this great contradiction that in order to save the planet from the risks of climate change, we risk doing terrible damage, other forms of terrible damage to the planet.

Speaker 3 So in a nutshell, renewable energy and digital technology are together causing massive environmental damage, mayhem and murder. But we can do better.

Speaker 1 Mayhem and murder?

Speaker 3 Yes, sir.

Speaker 1 Well, we'll need to hear more about that in a moment.

Speaker 1 But the underlying reason for that, because you would think, well, you put a windmill up and it makes the thing go around and you get energy from that. What could possibly be the problem?

Speaker 1 What's the problem with all of this?

Speaker 3 So the problem is that in order to build

Speaker 3 all of the new technologies, all the machineries that we need for the energy transition, right?

Speaker 3 To build all the electric cars, all the wind turbines, all the solar panels, and also, by the way, all the digital tech that

Speaker 3 we all rely on every day, we need to build those things out of metals. So we need billions and billions of tons of metals like nickel and cobalt and lithium

Speaker 3 and rare earths and copper. In some cases, more, we're going to need to dig out more metals than we have dug in the entire history of the human race to build all that stuff.
And so to get that

Speaker 3 huge demand that's already been sparked by the energy transition, in order to get those metals, we're cutting rainforests to the ground in Indonesia to get it nickel.

Speaker 3 Children are being put to work in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We're endangering a unique desert ecosystem in Chile

Speaker 3 and on and on and on. It's all basically driven by this enormous worldwide scramble for the metals that we need to manufacture the hardware of the energy transition.

Speaker 1 Why have we not heard about this before? I've never heard that this is a concern. I have heard things about, you know, that a lot of technology uses silver and that, you know, we had to mine that.

Speaker 1 But I've never heard murder mayhem and what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I mean, there certainly has been some reporting on it.
I'm not the first person to take a look at it, but I think a lot of it gets obscured because

Speaker 3 most people think of, if you're concerned about climate change,

Speaker 3 most people think like, oh, great. Well, I can switch from my fossil fuel powered car, my gasoline-powered car to an electric car, and then I'm done.
Then I've done my bit.

Speaker 3 That's exactly what I thought. I bought my first electric car about six years ago, back in 2018, and felt all good about myself, all righteous, like I was helping to save the planet.

Speaker 3 But then I really started to wonder, well, where does all this, how is this car actually built that makes it different from my old car?

Speaker 3 And that's when I started looking into the supply chain behind the battery that powers that car, the motor that makes its wheels turn. And that's when I came to find out that

Speaker 3 the sources, many of the sources that we rely on for these metals that we need

Speaker 3 to build this stuff, for all the batteries that we need and all the rest of it, comes from these really damaging sources.

Speaker 3 And I think to some extent, that's a story that folks don't necessarily want to hear because

Speaker 3 we want to believe that that there's a solution to climate change, that we're doing a bad thing and we can just switch to a good thing and everything will be okay.

Speaker 3 Well, I don't want anybody listening to this podcast to think that you should not buy an electric car and don't think that renewable energy like solar and wind is bad. It is better than fossil fuel

Speaker 3 derived energy, but it all comes with its own costs. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Everything has downsides. Everything has trade-offs.
And that includes the push towards renewables.

Speaker 3 That said, we are doing a lot of damage. We're set to

Speaker 3 do even more, but there are a lot of things we can do to minimize that damage, to reduce the harm that we're causing.

Speaker 1 Why don't we just recycle this metal? When your computer is obsolete, you take it down somewhere and they take whatever metal they put in it and put it in a new computer.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a great question. And

Speaker 3 that's what most people go to when they hear about this because recycling also sounds great, right? It's one of those things that we think, oh, recycling is

Speaker 3 nothing but good. It's a solution.
Well, again, recycling is definitely better than digging fresh metals out of the ground. It's much easier on the planet.

Speaker 3 But recycling, too, comes with its own costs.

Speaker 3 When we're talking about recycling metal, it's a really complex, very energy-intensive process that basically doesn't even really happen for a lot of these materials in the United States.

Speaker 3 So when you look at the big picture, recycling is very energy intensive. It uses up a lot of energy, much of which comes from fossil-fueled coal plants, natural gas plants.

Speaker 3 So recycling does create a lot of carbon emissions. It creates a lot of pollution, right?

Speaker 3 When you're melting down these metals at incredibly high heats, all kinds of other stuff, toxic byproducts that get released.

Speaker 3 And also it's often done on the backs of some of the poorest people in the world. So I'll give you a quick example.

Speaker 3 I spent some time reporting for this book in Lagos, Nigeria with e-waste recyclers.

Speaker 3 Because what I'd come to find out is that often what happens, if you drop off your old laptop, your old cell phone, you know, at the at the at the Best Buy recycling bin or your, you know, your local church e-waste recycling drive or whatever, a lot of those, a lot of that stuff winds up in developing countries, in poor countries like Nigeria, where it gets into the hands of people who sit around all day, people earning, you know, three, four dollars a day cracking open those cell phones, pulling out the little bits of valuable metals that are inside them.

Speaker 3 There's little little bits of copper and gold, which they can then sell to

Speaker 3 metal smelters who are usually somewhere far, far away in China or in Europe. And the rest of the stuff, the plastic, the cables just gets dumped or it gets burned in incredibly toxic pits.

Speaker 3 I went and visited this one spot where they

Speaker 3 where they do

Speaker 3 a lot of this kind of e-waste recycling and just burn the cables that all this stuff comes with.

Speaker 3 So there's these like huge plumes of thick, oily, black, toxic smoke coming off of these burn pits, you know, getting into the lungs of everybody nearby, adding to the already incredible pollution of Lagos.

Speaker 3 And then you got to figure what's happening to those little bits of copper and gold? Well, they're getting put onto container ships, power, enormous container ships, powered by diesel fuel.

Speaker 3 They're being shipped halfway around the world to China, where they're going to be melted down in an enormous hot melting smelter furnace.

Speaker 3 So that's the first problem with recycling is that it's not, it is not cost-free. Second problem is there's no way we can recycle all of the metals that we need.
We're not even collecting most of it.

Speaker 3 In the United States, only about one out of every six mobile phones ends up getting collected for recycling.

Speaker 3 And even if we could recycle all the metal that we're using, we'd still need more because demand keeps growing, right? We're building more and more of this stuff

Speaker 3 all the time. There's more of it.
There isn't enough metal above the ground already to build all the stuff that

Speaker 3 we're going to need in the next few years. So, recycling helps.
Again, I don't want anybody to think it's a bad thing. It is a better approach, but all by itself,

Speaker 3 it's not a solution for the problems that we face.

Speaker 1 What is? What's the solution? If you got to get these metals for progress to continue, what's the solution?

Speaker 3 Yeah, well,

Speaker 3 I wish there was just one silver bullet solution, but

Speaker 3 of course there isn't. It's a huge, complex problem and it's going to require a lot of different kinds of solutions.
So recycling is one piece of the puzzle for sure.

Speaker 3 But much better than recycling is the idea of reusing. I mean, it all goes back really, you know, the...

Speaker 3 Most of the answer is in that old slogan from the 70s, reduce, reuse, recycle. It is truer now than ever.
So again, recycling is one part of the puzzle that can help us

Speaker 3 offset some of the demand for fresh metals.

Speaker 3 Reusing things or extending the lives of things that we're already using, that is a much more efficient way to get extra mileage out of the metals that are already in circulation.

Speaker 3 So, for instance,

Speaker 3 there's a lot of our, you know, you've probably had this experience, Mike, like most of us, you know, like your cell phone crack, your cell phone screen cracks or your dust buster, you know, stops working.

Speaker 3 Maybe you take it to a repair shop, of which there are fewer and fewer in this country all the time. And usually, what do they tell you? They tell you, eh, it's not worth repairing.

Speaker 3 You might as well get a new one.

Speaker 3 So a lot of that, the reason that things are difficult, electronic items are difficult to repair, is a deliberate result of the strategy of the companies that make them.

Speaker 3 They deliberately make these things difficult to repair. It's very hard to get spare parts.
It's hard to get the information. Sometimes you even need specialized tools to open them up.

Speaker 3 Like the MacBook that I'm talking to you on, you can't open this thing with a regular screwdriver. You need a special Apple-only screwdriver just to open the thing.

Speaker 3 So there's a push-on, there's a thing called the right to repair movement, which is folks all across the country who are pushing for laws to force manufacturers to make their things, their products easier to repair.

Speaker 3 And just in the last couple of years, they've actually started to notch up some victories.

Speaker 3 Massachusetts, California, a couple of other states have recently passed laws to make their things easier to repair, which is a big step forward, right?

Speaker 3 Because if we can just keep, you know, if you can get another year or two or three out of your fan, out of your Game Boy controller, well, again, you're reducing the demand for metals.

Speaker 1 So I'm listening to you and thinking, why have I not heard about this before? If this is such a problem,

Speaker 1 the hunt for all these metals and the damage that's being done, how come I haven't heard this before? This is like, well, let me ask you this.

Speaker 1 People who may not not agree that this is such a big problem,

Speaker 1 what do they say? The people who disagree that this is this huge problem, what is it they would say?

Speaker 3 Nobody, like,

Speaker 3 it's a fact that there are children working in the mines in Congo. Nobody disagrees with that.

Speaker 3 People disagree about how many and what we can do about it. Nobody, there's no question that rainforests are being bulldozed to get at nickel in Indonesia.

Speaker 3 But the counter argument is, well, we need this stuff, right?

Speaker 3 The biggest threat we all face is climate change. And in order to get around, to stave off that threat, we need to switch over to renewables and we need to get electric cars.

Speaker 3 What I am saying is, though, that

Speaker 3 if we continue on the way that we are,

Speaker 3 if we continue to

Speaker 3 rely on digging all these metals out of the ground with all the destruction that entails, we're going to wind up swapping one set of problems for another.

Speaker 3 And there's no question that we're going to have to do some mining. We are going to have to do some damage to the planet in order to

Speaker 3 make the transition to renewable energy. No question.

Speaker 3 But we can do, as I say, there's a lot that we can do to reduce those harms.

Speaker 1 Why do we have to use those metals?

Speaker 1 It would seem like there would be some sort of synthetic something that could be used instead.

Speaker 1 What is so special about nickel and cobalt that you can't create in a lab?

Speaker 3 First of all, it's a question of volume, right? Anything that you can create in a lab, you have to be able to create on a massive scale.

Speaker 3 I mean, if we're talking about batteries, so let's talk about batteries.

Speaker 3 So there's lithium-ion batteries is a type of battery that powers, it's in your cell phone, it's in your laptop, and it's in most electric vehicles all over the world.

Speaker 3 And these are batteries that use mainly lithium, which is a metal, cobalt, and nickel.

Speaker 3 The reason they use those particular ones is that particular chemistry is really energy dense, meaning you can pack a lot of juice into a very small

Speaker 3 package.

Speaker 3 If you think about like the big old D-size flashlight, flashlight batteries that we used to use, these lithium-ion batteries can pack, you know, much more energy into a much smaller

Speaker 3 footprint just because of the chemical properties of those elements, cobalt, nickel, lithium, the ways they interact.

Speaker 3 And there just isn't, nobody's come up with a good substitute for those. And

Speaker 3 there are alternate chemistries that we can use, right?

Speaker 3 There's a type of battery called lithium phosphate batteries, which also use lithium, but use iron and phosphate instead of that cobalt and nickel.

Speaker 3 Iron and phosphate, there's much more of them around.

Speaker 3 They're much easier to get.

Speaker 3 And China, electric vehicles in China, many, many, about half half of them, half the new ones coming off the line in China right now have these lithium phosphate batteries, which are, like I say, they look like they have a lower environmental footprint.

Speaker 3 So that's promising. That's one of the ways in which I really, when I say we can do better, that's one of the ways that

Speaker 3 we might be able to substitute one material for another

Speaker 3 in order to do less damage. That said, here in North America, people are really concerned about performance, right? One of the big reasons people are nervous about buying an EV is

Speaker 3 you're worried that it won't be able to get you far enough, that the charge won't last long enough. So the lithium-ion batteries, the ones with nickel and cobalt, they've got the most energy density.

Speaker 3 They'll take you the furthest. So those are the ones they're really pushing here in North America.

Speaker 1 As we mine this metal and create these new technologies and manufacture this new equipment to have new alternative energies, are we making a difference?

Speaker 1 Are we using more and more of it?

Speaker 3 The International Energy Agency just put out a new report showing that, well, solar power is on track to become the world's number one source of electricity just in the next few years, and wind isn't far behind.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 1 That sounds pretty impressive.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, it's really, that's a piece of it that a lot of folks don't realize is that the energy transition is happening really fast, much faster than most people realize. That's the good news.

Speaker 3 You know, the bad news is it does come with it with a lot of of significant costs. You know, I think to your point that, you know, that a lot of folks

Speaker 3 maybe haven't heard about this stuff so much is we hear a lot about

Speaker 3 it's not as sexy of an issue. Like, I mean, you hear more about, I would say, wind turbines killing birds, which does happen, right? Birds fly into these things and they get killed.

Speaker 3 And that really upsets people because you have a picture of a dead bird. That is one of the downsides of them.

Speaker 1 Well, it seems a lot of this is about education, that people have to understand the problems that you're talking about with these metals, just as they have to get on board with these new technologies of wind and solar and electric cars.

Speaker 1 And you had said earlier, you know, everybody should get an electric car.

Speaker 1 Well, not everybody wants an electric car, at least not now, because the batteries don't hold a charge long enough or the cars are too expensive.

Speaker 1 People have to want electric cars. They can't be forced to buy them.

Speaker 3 I agree with you 100%, Mike. I mean, the reason to get like, we're never going to get people to switch over to electric cars by wagging our fingers at them, nor should we.
I mean,

Speaker 3 they've got to be competitive with gas-powered cars. I mean, by now, actually, they are.
I mean, you know, you can go further on it, like new electric vehicles.

Speaker 3 You can go three, 400 miles on a single charge. They are more expensive in this country, though.

Speaker 3 which is a problem that I think we can fix. I'll tell you where electric cars, let me actually take a step back and I'll circle back.
This will bring us back to electric cars.

Speaker 3 But when you ask about, you know, folks who, you know, whether folks are aware of this problem, let me tell you one group of people who are very aware of the problem of the critical metals that we need, and that is the Pentagon.

Speaker 3 The United States military is very, very aware of the need for

Speaker 3 these metals. And their concern is basically this.
The supply chains for all these metals that we're talking about, lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, they all run through China.

Speaker 3 To one extent or another, China really dominates the extraction, the refining, the production of these metals, which, by the way, we need not only for renewable energy, but also for many military applications, right?

Speaker 3 They're used rare earth metals, which are what

Speaker 3 EV

Speaker 3 motors are made out of, are also used in F-35 jet fighters, in advanced avionics systems, and all kinds of military applications. China overwhelmingly controls the supply of those metals.

Speaker 3 And they became the U.S. really started taking notice of this back in 2010.

Speaker 3 China and Japan got into a diplomatic spat and China cut off the supply of these rare earth metals to Japan, which needs them for their consumer electronics industry.

Speaker 3 Sent shockwaves through the world economy and really got American policymakers to sit up and take notice.

Speaker 3 As a result of that, there was a bunch of congressional hearings and the Pentagon is now pushing very hard to develop non-Chinese sources for these materials.

Speaker 1 Well, I really appreciate you explaining all this. As I've said a couple of times, I just haven't heard a lot about this, but it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 And we are going to need these medals and it's important for people to understand, you know, they've got to come from somewhere and where do they come from and what happens if we don't get them.

Speaker 1 I've been speaking with Vince Beiser. He is an award-winning journalist and author of the book, Power Metal, The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future.

Speaker 1 There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Vince.
This was very enlightening.

Speaker 3 Well, listen, I really appreciate you, you know, helping me to get the word out about it all.

Speaker 1 Have you blinked lately? You see, thanks to electronic media, cases of dry eye are reaching epidemic proportions.

Speaker 1 Now, it's normal to experience the burning and the dryness associated with dry eyes as we age, but today much younger age groups are complaining of the same symptoms.

Speaker 1 You see, we tend not to blink much when we're on the computer or driving or watching TV, and it's taking a toll on our tear ducts. Dr.

Speaker 1 Robert Latcani, who's author of a book called The Dry Eye Remedy, says we all need to take blink breaks twice an hour during screen time.

Speaker 1 Just shut your eyes for about 10 seconds and roll them around a bit to get them lubricated. Artificial tears can also provide some relief, especially if you keep them in the fridge.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know. If you have not yet become a follower of this podcast, I highly recommend it.
You can follow something you should know on pretty much any podcast app.

Speaker 1 And that way, when new episodes publish, they are delivered right to you. You don't have to come looking for them.
I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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