The Science of Morbid Curiosity & The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy

Take the next 30 seconds to invest in yourself with Vanguard.

Breathe in.

Center your mind.

Recognize the power you have to direct your financial future.

Feel the freedom that comes with reaching your goals and building a life you love.

Vanguard brings you this meditation because we invest where it matters most in you.

Visit vanguard.com/slash investing in you to learn more.

All investing is subject to risk.

Today, on something you should know, when you really want to connect with someone, what's best?

Email, text, or phone?

Then, we're all morbidly curious.

Serial killers, death, and horror all fascinate us, but in different ways.

When I look at overall morbid curiosity, I don't see a lot of difference between, say, men and women.

When you look at the subcategories, you do find that women tend to be a little more curious about the minds of dangerous people, and men tend to be a little more curious about the act of violence itself.

Also, why teenagers who have friends get benefits for a lifetime and clean green energy.

What could be wrong with that?

But there is a dark side.

Yeah, there's this general assumption that oil and gas companies are bad and therefore the inverse, green energy, must be clean.

But it's not really the case.

I mean, green energy has a lot of dirty parts to it.

All this today on something you should know.

Introducing your new Dell PC powered by the Intel Core Ultra Processor.

It helps you handle a lot, even when your holiday to-do list gets to be a lot.

Because it's built with all-day battery plus powerful AI features that help you do it all with ease.

From editing images to drafting emails to summarizing large documents to multitasking.

So you can organize your holiday shopping and make custom holiday decor and search for great holiday deals and respond to holiday requests and customer questions and customers requesting custom things and plan the perfect holiday dinner for vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, and Uncle Mike's carnivore diet.

Luckily, you can get a PC that helps you do it all faster.

So you can get it all done.

That's the power of a Dell PC with Intel inside, backed by Dell's price match guarantee.

Get yours today at dell.com/slash deals.

Terms and conditions apply.

See dell.com for details.

Something you should know.

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

Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

I bet you've asked yourself this before.

If you want to connect with someone, maybe ask them out on a date or just deepen the relationship a little, is it better to text them, email them, or actually call them?

Well, that's what we're going to start with today.

Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers and welcome to Something You Should Know.

Some interesting research has been done on how we connect with people.

In a study, participants imagined having a conversation with a friend they hadn't been in touch with for at least two years.

and they predicted how awkward or enjoyable that conversation would go and how close they would feel if they connected by phone or by email.

And they also said which medium they'd prefer, phone or email.

Then the participants were randomly assigned to connect with their old friend via phone or email and report back on the experience.

Although most people anticipated that talking on the phone would be uncomfortable for them, those who spoke on the phone were happier with the exchange, felt closer to the other person, and felt no more uncomfortable than those who used email.

According to the lead author of this study, we think it's going to be awkward to talk to somebody, but it just turns out not to be the case.

People form significantly stronger bonds when they're talking on the phone than when they communicate over email, and presumably text.

The finding also held true for people conversing with someone they didn't know at all.

There is real magic in hearing someone's voice and letting them hear yours.

If you want to connect and strengthen the relationship, pick up the phone.

And it's so easy to do.

And that is something you should know.

We humans are morbidly curious.

I mean, be honest.

When you pass a car crash, you look.

Not because you want to see someone hurt, but because well, because you can't help yourself.

That same curiosity fuels our obsession with true crime podcasts, serial killer documentaries, haunted houses, scary movies.

But why?

What itch does this fascination scratch?

And could it actually serve a purpose?

That's what my guest Colton Scrivener is here to explain.

He's a behavioral scientist, a horror entertainment producer, and one of the world's leading experts on morbid curiosity.

He has a book out called Morbidly Curious, a scientist explains why we can't look away.

Hi, Colton.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hey, Mike, thank you for having me on.

So before we get into the details of this, just generally speaking, my sense is that everybody has some morbid curiosity, obviously some more than others, but everybody seems intrigued by gross and morbid things.

Why is that?

You're right that pretty much everyone has had some kind of experience where maybe they didn't want to look.

Maybe they didn't want to hear that information, but they couldn't help but listening and they couldn't help but maybe peeking.

The core reason is that we are fascinated by and curious about potential threats or dangers in our environment.

And it's good to be curious about those things when we can learn about them from a safe perspective.

But I bet you, as much as people have had the experience, well, I can't speak for everybody.

I've also had the experience of deliberately not looking.

Like, I don't want to see that because I can never unsee it.

And so

there are times where I give in to the curiosity and there are times where I say, you know, I'd really rather not.

It is a push and pull, right?

It's a, you can think of it like a brake system and a gas system, right?

So your curiosity is your gas.

And then the brakes can come in a couple of different styles.

You have things like disgust.

You have things like fear,

you know, things that push you away from whatever that thing you're looking at or whatever that thing you might hear.

These disgust and fear primarily push you away and curiosity primarily pulls you forward.

And it really depends on the scenario.

It depends on, you know, the situation you're in.

These things, sometimes the curiosity overwhelms us and sometimes our fear and our disgust overwhelm us.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, and my state of mind, I suspect, and that's what you mean by where we are, but yeah, my state of mind probably,

like, I don't have room for this right now.

And so I just, I'd really rather not.

And other times it's like, ooh, look at that.

That's kind of cool.

What is that?

But

it does seem odd.

And I wonder, do we know, that's a strange question, but I wonder, do other species of animals have this same thing?

Or is this very much a human thing?

It's a great question.

Other animals definitely have a form of morbid fascination or morbid curiosity.

Animal behaviorists would call this predator inspection.

That's the most common form you'll see in animals.

And that's exactly what it sounds like.

It's when a prey animal, rather than running away when they spot a predator, will actually spend some time inspecting that predator.

And just like with humans, it depends on the situation, on their state of mind.

Are they feeling extra anxious or afraid?

Are they further away from the predator?

Are they in a larger group?

Are they younger and maybe have less experience with predators?

and so they're more curious about them?

So you do see predator inspection among most animals.

The thing that makes humans the most morbidly curious creatures of all is that we have stories.

So we can learn about potential dangers, potential threats

from a safe setting.

We can learn about it from our couch, from our bed, from a movie theater.

We can even just imagine it in our minds without ever having to experience something dangerous.

So we remove all the risk and still have all the learning benefits.

When I realized that we were going to talk about this, you know, I was thinking about it.

And just last night I was driving and came upon coming the other way on the freeway, there was an accident on the other side of the freeway.

And it was a really bad accident.

And so much so that all of the traffic had been stopped by the police and the fire department.

And the car was flipped on its side.

I drove by and looked.

And I had this feeling of, you know, oh, those poor people.

And thank God it's it's not me.

That's probably the most common form of morbid curiosity that people experience, or one of the most common forms is that you're driving to work or you're driving to a dentist's appointment or to get groceries or driving home, and you come across a car wreck.

And almost nobody

looks because

they're hoping someone is injured.

right most people are not hoping someone is injured but if there is an injury, you are going to feel curious about it.

Because your mind is asking sort of itself: what are the consequences of the action I'm doing right now, which is driving a car, which is the same thing that person was doing.

So, again, it's a relatively safe opportunity to learn about the consequences of something potentially dangerous, which is driving a car on the freeway.

What about the difference between

real

fake?

You know, a real car accident, a real dead body versus something in the movies?

We like to think of our brains as sort of one just coherent thing, right?

And that it has its own central decision-making

and that it listens to itself all the time.

But our brains are kind of,

you can think of it like a mashup of different parts, right?

There are different parts of your mind that have different functions.

And those different parts, in some ways, have their own goals, right?

So your amygdala is the defense center of your brain.

Its primary function and goal for you is to keep you safe.

Now, that's sometimes at odds with other parts of your mind, maybe your prefrontal cortex that's telling you

what you're looking at is not real, right?

So when you watch a horror movie, for example, or a true crime documentary, your amygdala is activated.

It's telling you, hey, there's something dangerous in front of you.

It's a killer on the screen.

But other parts of your mind are telling you, well,

it is a killer on the screen, but it's on a screen and you're not in any real danger.

And so that's why you get these conflicting feelings when it comes, especially to fiction.

Something that's really common in Morbid Curiosity, which is this sort of,

I'm afraid, I'm maybe disgusted.

but I'm also maybe entertained because I'm in a safe space and it's a good story.

And so our mind can make the distinction between, as you say, a real car wreck and then maybe, you know, a fake car wreck we see in an action movie, for example.

But many parts of the mind that light up and are active in the real car wreck are still active in those fictional scenarios because they're still processing that information that portrays the consequences of something like a car wreck.

Well, I find it interesting, and I'm sure this is probably somehow connected, that in the podcast world,

there are a lot of true crime podcasts, and they're very successful.

People listen to them a lot.

But there aren't as many, not even close to as many fiction crime podcasts.

And there could be.

I mean, people could write stories just like they do for television and movies and things, but they don't.

True crime is more interesting than fiction crime.

Well, yes and no.

In the podcast format, it does seem to be, right?

As you mentioned, there are

probably more successful true crime podcasts than almost any other genre of podcasts.

It's been successful, you know, ever since

podcasting began.

One thing that true crime does that attracts a large audience is that it tells a story about danger without a lot of the blood and guts that come along with, for example,

horror movies or other kinds of even action films or thrillers.

So true crime.

will often tell you very descriptive details of what the victim did when they were, what they were doing, when they were caught, how they escaped or didn't escape,

what the killer was thinking, what they were doing beforehand and afterhand.

So true crime really gives you a lot of descriptive details without a lot of those brake pedals I mentioned earlier, without a lot of the fear, a lot of the disgust.

And that makes it particularly attractive to us, right?

Particularly curious.

We're particularly curious about it.

more broadly so.

So more people are interested in that because there are fewer things that push us away.

Now, when you get to audiovisual formats like movies, true crime is still very popular as a documentary format, right?

Or even as a

as a sort of a reenactment of what happened.

Oh, yeah, like Dateline.

But I wouldn't.

Like Dateline or, you know, those kinds of things.

Sure, sure.

But I wouldn't say that it's necessarily then more in the audiovisual format, it's not necessarily more popular than, say, thriller films or horror movies or other fictional formats.

So I think it's really the podcast format.

The podcast format is really good at storytelling and true crime tend to make really compelling stories.

We're discussing morbid curiosity and we're discussing it with Colton Scrivener.

He's author of a book called Morbidly Curious, a scientist explains why we can't look away.

One thing I've learned about running a business is this.

Just because you can run a business doesn't mean you're good at hiring.

Hiring is a skill all its own.

And if you get it wrong, it costs you time, money, and momentum.

I've been there.

That's why I recommend Indeed because they make the whole process faster, easier, and they deliver better outcomes.

When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.

Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out.

So what happens is your listing jumps right to the top of the page for the right candidates.

so you reach the people you actually want to reach faster.

And the difference is real.

According to Indeed Data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.

I mean that's huge.

And to give you an idea of just how fast it works, in the minute I've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed, according to Indeed Data, worldwide.

No wonder more than 3.5 million employers already use it.

There's no need to wait any longer.

Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/slash something.

Just go to indeed.com/slash something right now and support this show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

Indeed.com/slash something.

Terms and conditions apply.

Hiring, Indeed, is all you need.

I want to tell you about a podcast I listen to.

There's a new episode every weekday, and I believe it can help you uncomplicate the news and better understand what's really going on in the world.

It's called On Point.

On Point is a rare public space where you hear nuanced explorations of complex topics live and in real time.

Host Meghna Chakrabarty leads provocative conversations that will help make sense of the world with urgency, timeliness, and depth.

Each episode episode is a deeply researched, beautifully produced hour.

Listeners will learn, be challenged, and have some fun too.

You can hear episodes of On Point every weekday, wherever you get your podcast.

So, Colton, are there people who this like just doesn't apply to?

Like, they have no interest in this, that this doesn't register on their scale?

Of course.

Yeah.

Morbid Curiosity is a, you can think of it as a personality trait, right?

And just like any other personality trait, it exists kind of on a spectrum and it tends to be normally distributed.

And what that means is that most people have a little bit of morbid curiosity or some morbid curiosity.

Some people have a lot.

Some people are huge horror fans, huge true crime buffs.

And some people have very little to none, just like with, let's say, extroversion.

Some people you know, most people you know, you know, enjoy talking to their friends and maybe going out occasionally.

Some people enjoy going out a lot and talking to everyone.

And some people would prefer to stay at home and not really talk to anyone.

So just like other personality traits, it exists on a spectrum with most people having some mid-level of morbid curiosity.

There's this curious middle ground, especially around Halloween, where people who...

clearly don't believe in ghosts, don't believe in haunted houses and goblins and witches flying around, but around Halloween, they kind of suspend their belief in order to dive in and be part of it and think, yeah, well, okay, this is fun.

Yeah, or I'm willing to put myself in a position to potentially learn about something that I don't think exists, right?

I mean, that's the most dangerous thing of all is for us to be pretty sure that something isn't there and isn't a threat when really it is, right?

I mean, that is the most dangerous situation we can find ourselves in.

And I've been in this situation.

I don't believe in ghosts myself, but I love going on a good ghost hunt.

I love staying in haunted hotels.

And I think the, you know, again, the main driving factor there is I'm not feeling in danger because I consciously don't believe in them.

But what if?

But what if?

And have in any of those things you've done, have you ever had any kind of,

well, I can't explain that.

I've had a few.

I can't explain that.

Usually

you can come up with an explanation, even if it

seems plausible, right?

Even if it seems a little post-hoc, kind of like you're explaining it after the fact.

But there have been a few that I've just been unable to explain.

You know, I was staying in a very famous haunted room at the Crescent Hotel and I was laying in bed and it was nine or 10 o'clock at night.

And one of the drawers on the dresser slowly opened all the way.

It wasn't a top drawer.

It wasn't a bottom drawer.

It was a random middle drawer, nothing in it.

I got up and and closed it, happened again several times that night.

It was difficult to explain.

I've had similar experiences on ghost hunts where we're using really simple instruments to test things, and there's some stuff that happens that I can explain with physics.

And there's some stuff that's happened that I really don't have a good explanation for.

It's either an extreme coincidence or something else is going on.

But it is human nature when you can't explain something, when there's information information missing in the story, where there is no clear reason, humans like to fill in the blanks.

We come up with our own

reason when there is no apparent reason.

It must be a ghost.

It must be a ghost because

it's nothing.

I can't explain it any other way.

So we're going to call it a ghost.

Right.

Yeah.

One of the comments that I get pretty often is, well, isn't it just the mystery that draws us in, right?

Isn't that really what morbid curiosity is about?

And when I get that comment, I usually ask people if they know how their phone works.

Do you know how the inner workings of your phone work or how this microphone I'm speaking into works or how your computer works or your car?

Most people have no idea how most things around them work.

Those things are all mysteries.

But those aren't the kinds of things that pretty universally draw us in.

The kinds of mysteries that universally draw us in are mysteries that involve elements of danger.

Those are the ones we want.

The people who rank pretty high, who are most morbidly curious, do they have other things in common or do they share things like, is it mostly men or mostly women or

what?

When I look at overall morbid curiosity, I don't see a lot of difference between, say, men and women.

They're about the same.

When you look at the subcategories, you do find that women tend to be a little more curious about the minds of dangerous people, and men tend to be a little more curious about the act of violence itself.

You also find that these people tend to be a little bit more curious in general.

Sometimes, and maybe surprisingly, they tend to be a little bit more anxious than general.

So the people who are most interested in danger and threats sometimes score a bit higher in things like anxiety.

Do the people who end up doing horrible things that others are morbidly curious about, serial killers,

that kind of thing,

were they morbidly curious before they actually became violent?

It's an intuitive thing to believe.

And it's true sometimes, it seems like.

So, for example, Jeffrey Dahmer, notoriously morbidly curious individual, even used the words himself to describe himself.

He said he was morbidly curious.

He also was interested in

the bones of animals and sort of collecting bones from animals when he was a kid.

Now, another form of morbid curiosity that got a lot of news related to violence is violent video games, right?

So is an interest in violent video games violent fiction?

Does that make us violent?

Does it lead to violence?

Are people who are violent more interested in them?

And it's not quite as clear there.

You know, if you take a look at school shooters, for example, and you see which ones had an interest in violent video games, fewer school shooters than the average kid have an interest in violent video games.

And you would think it would be the opposite.

So the relationship is not so clear, which suggests to me that there's probably no direct relationship at all.

There are probably a lot of mediating variables.

You know, Jeffrey Dahmer had a lot of other psychological problems going on.

So it probably wasn't his morbid curiosity that made him a killer.

Certainly wasn't that alone.

And the kids who, you know, people who have shot up schools aren't shooting up schools because they shot up something on a video game.

It doesn't seem to be that direct and that clear.

It seems to be, it seems to be that there are a lot of other moderating variables.

But if you can imagine someone who's really morbidly curious and, you know, brags about it, wears it on their sleeve that that's who they are.

I mean, that puts people off.

It seems like

this person has some issues.

Morbidly curious people, in many ways,

even those really high in morbid curiosity, look quite a bit like other people.

They're just as empathetic, empirically so.

They're just as empathetic, just as compassionate as people who are not morbidly curious.

They're not more likely to be dangerous.

So I think the thing I would like people to take away from this is that morbid curiosity is a perfectly normal, widespread feature of human nature.

And it doesn't seem to have pathological effects on our psychology, on our behavior, delinquency, anything like that.

People who are morbidly curious, it seems, need to get their fix.

Like they, that's why people go to horror movies and haunted houses and things, because they want to be scared.

They want to be grossed out.

They like that.

That's right.

And that actually brings up an important point about, again, sort of the empathetic nature of horror fans.

You know, if you think about it, why are you afraid when you go to a horror movie?

Well, it's not because you're in danger, right?

That's not why you're afraid.

Typically, the scare from a horror movie comes from you, the audience, the viewer, empathizing with the protagonist who's in danger.

That's where the fear comes from, right?

So if you didn't have empathy for the protagonist, the horror movie wouldn't really be scary because that's who's in the dangerous situation.

That's who's being frightened.

That's who's ultimately whose

fictional life is at risk.

And so, if you didn't empathize, if you didn't have empathy as a horror fan, if you weren't empathizing with the protagonist, you wouldn't really find horror films that interesting.

You certainly wouldn't find them scary.

Well, I hadn't thought about that, but you're right.

You're empathizing with the protagonist every time you see them going to open the door to go up to the attic or into the barn where you know there's a chainsaw waiting for them.

And you go, no, no, don't go in there.

Don't go in there.

But they always go in there.

Yeah.

And do you know why that is?

Do you know why horror movies tend to do that?

There are two ways to learn things.

Someone can tell you how to do something, which humans are not real good at learning when people tell them how to do something or what to do.

They're really good at learning when they witness something that goes wrong, when they witness someone doing something that is a poor choice.

That's usually how we learn best.

And in horror movies, the main character makes a lot of really poor choices that put them in danger.

So it drives the plot.

It provides the element of danger.

And it shows us what we shouldn't do when someone's in our house or when we're walking through

a new place that seems like it could be dangerous.

Don't split up.

Don't go down into the basement.

Don't go into the forest by yourself.

Don't do this.

Don't do that.

Those are the things that we learn most efficiently.

Well, the next time I see a car crash or some other morbidly curious thing, at least I'll have a better understanding of why it's so hard not to look.

I've been speaking with Colton Scrivener.

He is a behavioral scientist and horror entertainment producer and one of the leading experts on the science behind morbid curiosity.

He's author of a book called Morbidly Curious, A Scientist Explains Why We Can't Look Away.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Colton, thanks for sharing all this.

All right.

Thank you very much, Mike.

As the weather cools, I'm getting clothes that are warm, durable, and built to last.

And for me, the only place to get them is Quince.

They've become my go-to for fall staples.

My favorites, their pants, cashmere sweaters, and their polo shirts.

I mean, the quality is first rate, and I find myself reaching for my Quince clothes more than anything else in my closet.

Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just 60 bucks, which is incredible when you realize how soft and well-made they are.

And their polo shirts, they just have a better fit than any other I've ever tried.

And if you're looking for outerwear, Quince has classic fit denim, real leather, and wool pieces that look sharp and are built to last.

And I've got my eye on this suede trucker jacket.

It's casual, but still really polished, and it's perfect for layering this fall.

Here's what makes Quince different.

They work directly with ethical factories and top artisans, cutting out the middlemen, so you get premium quality at half the cost of similar brands.

And it's not just clothes.

Quince has expanded into bedding, bath, cookware, even travel accessories with the same focus on quality and value.

Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look.

Go to quince.com/slash sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

Now available in Canada, too.

That's quince quince.com slash sysk free shipping and 365 day returns.

Quince.com slash sysk

you chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart choice.

Progressive loves to help people make smart choices.

That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you.

Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Not available in all states or situations.

Prices vary based on how you buy.

We think of clean energy as a good thing.

Solar, wind, batteries, electric cars.

But what if the story isn't so simple?

These technologies may not run on oil or gas, but they do run on something.

Massive amounts of lithium, copper, and other minerals.

Think about it.

Every single cell phone, tablet, and laptop in the world has a lithium battery in it.

That's a lot of lithium.

And getting it and all the other necessary elements out of the ground comes with environmental and human costs that aren't talked about nearly enough.

My guest has been reporting on this global scramble for for resources.

Ernest Schneider is a senior correspondent for Reuters, and he's author of a book called The War Below, Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives.

Hi, Ernest.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hey, it's great to be with you, Mike.

So my sense is that there is a general consensus that moving to clean energy, green energy, is a good thing.

with very little consequence.

But as you point out,

that's not exactly true.

Yeah, there's this general assumption that if we're going to go green, that we're going to be making much better choices for the planet by ways that we produce our energy.

And so people just naturally assume that oil and gas companies are bad and therefore the inverse, green energy, must be clean.

But it's not really the case.

I mean, green energy has a lot of dirty parts to it.

And one of those dirty parts is like the energy has to come from somewhere, from something.

I I mean, you have in your phone, in your laptop, you have a

lithium battery.

Well,

most people probably don't even know what lithium is, where it comes from, and how we get it.

And I think whereas with oil and gas, people might be familiar with the production supply chain with that lithium battery that you just mentioned inside someone's phone.

There's a whole host of critical minerals that are used to make that battery.

Lithium, of course, being one of the key ones.

The reason that lithium is used for that battery is because it is really good at retaining a charge, which is great, obviously, for a battery.

Lithium is also really light.

It's the lightest metal on the periodic table of the elements, if you remember back to high school chemistry.

But it's an extremely complex and in some cases, dirty production process to get it out of the ground and get it into the iPhone that's in your hand.

And where is it?

Where do you find, if I wanted to go get me some lithium, where would I go?

So we might need to nerd out here a little bit.

There's things called source rock, basically,

and that can be found in many different ways.

So

the most common way to produce lithium that people might know of is giant evaporation ponds that are in Chile.

It's extremely water intensive, as you can imagine.

It essentially wastes water.

You also have to do it in a very arid climate.

So the parts of Chile where this is produced is an extremely, extremely arid desert.

The other way that lithium is produced is through traditional hard rock mining.

Lithium can also be found in a type of rock known as spojamine, and that's really common in places like Western Australia, some parts of China, some parts of Africa, and some parts of North America.

And that method is basically you take the rock out of the ground, you crush it, and through various production methodologies, you are extracting the lithium that way.

So those are the two main ways to produce lithium.

Is it hard to do?

Yes, it's very hard to do.

Lithium is a very social critical mineral.

It likes hanging out with other critical minerals.

So it's very hard to sort of tease out.

Lithium is also a salt.

So, what does salt do?

It corrodes.

So, when you've got a lot of pipes and other pieces of equipment that are being part of this production process and it's around salt all the time, well, just think about like if you live in the northern part of the United States and there's salt applied to the road, you're going to get a lot of corrosion very quickly.

So, big companies that produce lithium have to contend with these issues all the time.

And what are some of the other, what are the other minerals, the other sources that we have to go to to produce green energy?

Yeah, so there's a whole host of things that are known as critical minerals.

You may have heard that term before, and it can be a bit of a confusing term because what is critical at the end of the day, right?

I mean, what defines critical?

The U.S.

government, for instance, has actual three different lists of what constitutes a critical mineral.

And there are different methodologies by which different parts of the U.S.

government decide what's critical or not.

But in general, what I tend to think of, if something something is a critical mineral is a mineral that you need that you just don't have

readily accessible to you.

So, for instance, copper is considered critical by the European Union, but it's not considered critical by some parts of the US government.

Copper is another key critical mineral that's used in wiring.

It's used in pipe.

It's used in foil that's inside of a battery.

It's basically used in every single motor that's out there.

So, it's extremely important for this green energy transition.

The United States has some copper mines right now in places like Arizona and New Mexico, but the biggest producers are countries in South America.

Other critical minerals that are extremely important for that battery inside your phone include graphite, as well as some gold and silver in some instances, and cobalt and nickel.

Those are also extremely important.

And now I just mentioned what, five or six right there, very different ways of producing each of them and processing each of them.

And different parts of the world have larger supplies than the other.

The United States actually produces very few critical minerals, which some politicians in Washington are trying to change right now.

Is the mining of these things, the digging up of all these minerals, a fairly new thing?

Or have people been mine, people have been mining copper for a long time, but have people been mining lithium and some of these other things?

Or is this a fairly new thing?

Well, it all depends really on the critical mineral.

I mean, you're right, definitely, definitely, Mike, that we've been mining copper for millennium.

In fact, humanity knew about copper well before it even knew about gold, which is just sort of mind-boggling when we think about how much value we put on gold right now as a species.

But some of these critical minerals were discovered more recently: lithium in the 19th century, rare earths, which are used to make magnets that turn power into motion.

Those were discovered in the 19th century as well in northern Sweden.

We've known about certainly nickel and cobalt going back a little farther in history, but certainly the volume for these critical minerals,

the amount that we mine has increased markedly in the past 100 years, especially as we've been using more to produce different,

let's see, things beyond electronics.

So, for instance, aviation.

You use a lot of nickel to produce stainless steel, obviously used widely in the aerospace industry, as well as your kitchen refrigerator.

We use it in money.

We use copper to make bronze.

And so there's a lot of other instances where we've been using critical minerals for a very long time outside of just this green energy push.

But we do know the amount of critical minerals that we're going to have to produce is going to have to marketly increase even higher over the next 25, 30, 40, 50 years if we're going to go.

green and if we're going to have more electronics.

I mean, you might just think about all of the electronic devices that you you have in your house now that weren't powered by a lithium-ion battery even 20, 30 years ago.

And so it just, it behooves us to be thinking about the production of these critical minerals.

Well, what are some of those things?

Because other than my phone and my laptop and what else in my house is powered by a lithium battery?

You know, a great example that I like to talk about is leafblowers.

Leafblowers is a very common, seemingly innocuous household appliance that increasingly is powered by lithium-ion batteries.

And that's for several reasons.

The main reason is that historically they were powered by two-stroke engines when they first became really popular.

The two-stroke engines though are horrible for the environment.

They emit this noxious plume of pollutants.

So some governments are actually outlawing them and saying if you want to use a leaf bower, you've got to use one powered by a lithium-ion battery.

If you've got kids, they've got, you know, all these electronic game devices that are out there.

Think about televisions in your house.

Think about the microphones with which we're speaking to each other with right now.

Cameras, we're all zooming now more and more.

All of these devices are built with critical minerals and they were not nearly ubiquitous 20 or 30 years ago.

So that just requires a lot more mining.

And indeed, we have seen mining increase across the planet.

And when you say mining, I think in people's minds,

there is an image of mines, like coal mines, and that it's very dangerous.

It scars the planet, it ruins the environment.

Is mining as horrible as people think, or has it gotten better?

The mining industry has definitely gotten a lot safer in the past, let's call it 50 years.

This is not your grandfather's mining industry is a common refrain from CEOs across the space.

And that's true.

Some of the work is increasingly automated now.

And mining companies are using autonomous trucks because they're obviously enclosed spaces and mines and you're not going to have pedestrians walking in the middle so it's a great place actually to test new technologies like autonomy so they have gotten safer they're using really cool biology and chemical applications to tease out more of these critical minerals from rock so basically you get more bang for your butt that being said it is a loud intrusive dirty and disruptive industry there's no way around it i mean if the metal is in the ground you have to dig a big hole to get it out.

There's just no way around that.

My sense is that most people think green energy, that's a great idea.

If you can do it, good for you.

But at the end of the day, most people want their stuff to work.

They want it to be powered by reliable energy that doesn't cost a fortune.

That's what people want.

I would definitely agree with you.

And a great example would be around transportation, electric vehicles.

The average person in the United States might consider electric vehicles too expensive right now.

They are seen in some circles as a tool of the affluent or, you know, sort of a toy rather than a tool of the affluent.

Yes, the price of EVs, the average price, is coming down across the United States and the world.

But there is much more adoption in places like China, places like Norway,

because the models there are much smaller and because the ranges are smaller.

But Americans, we like big cars and we have, especially around transportation, have this idea of range anxiety.

And so we want to be able to go three, four, 500 miles on one single charge because we can do that with one tank of gas.

And to have a bigger battery in order to go that distance, what does that require?

That requires more critical minerals, that requires more mining, that increases the cost.

So the average person in transportation, at least, might say, okay, I'll stick with an internal combustion engine.

What I would say, though, is that it's about so much more than transportation.

It's about all these other devices out there.

And we are seeing the price come down

for a whole host of electronics that are built with a range of critical minerals.

You know, you just scour Amazon and you can see, you know, a bunch of electronics, and they're all made with lithium from South America or nickel from Indonesia or copper from Arizona or cobalt from the DRC.

So for me, it's about a lot more than just what you drive.

Well, solar is a good example of of an energy source that people see all the time.

I have solar panels on my roof.

Lots of people do.

It seems very benign.

The panels just sit up there.

They capture the solar energy from the sun, convert it into electricity.

It seems so harmless and so wonderful.

And even your solar panel, Mike, on your roof, I mean, that's got...

three or four different critical minerals in there that were all mined to come out of the ground.

And then, of course, they all had to be processed in a way that could be put into the panel and then shipped to your house.

And then the wire that connects that solar panel on your roof to the battery or to the inverter in your house is filled with copper.

And if you have a battery there,

like a Tesla power wall or some related device, that is made with critical minerals as well.

It's essentially just a large version of the battery that might be in an electric vehicle.

So yes, like I agree with you that solar is a great way to produce power, but they're still getting back to me that initial question, that identity of choice is, okay, like, yes, we can want to go green, but at the end of the day, we're still tied to a mine.

Since there are so many lithium batteries out in circulation and charging up and eventually dying, are lithium batteries recyclable?

Short answer is yes.

I mean, the beauty of this new green energy transition,

however you define green, is that you can use these critical minerals again and again and again.

When oil or gasoline are burned off in an internal combustion engine, it's gone forever and it contributes to climate change.

But lithium does not lose its ability to retain an electric charge just because it's been sitting in a battery for 50 years.

So, yes, like your old cell phone, you could recycle.

It might be a bit apocryphal, but I love sharing this as an anecdote.

The largest mine in the world is your kitchen cabinet because we just love to take old electronics, especially as Americans, and just shove them in a drawer and forget about them.

And the average person has six cell phones sitting in their house that they don't use that could be recycled and all those critical minerals broken down and used to make new cell phones or new leaf blowers or new electric vehicles.

And so we're going to get to this idea.

of what's called a circular economy at some point.

Scientists and data experts debate when that's going to actually hit.

But some say 2050, some say 2100.

But at some point, we will dig the last mine as a species and be able to recycle all of these critical minerals and all of these electronics again and again.

Well, that's interesting that you said the average home has six phones in it that because we have several cell phones and we'd recycle them.

I wouldn't know where to take them.

I don't know where they go.

Who wants them?

And

in other words, if you don't make it easy, who's going to do it?

You've hit the nail on the head there.

That's a huge, huge problem right now with the recycling industry.

As a sort of a back-ended way of answering your question, Mike, I want to talk a little bit about lead-acid batteries.

So these are the batteries that power internal combustion engine vehicles.

So if you have what's called an ICE-powered car, that's the industry acronym, you've got a lead-acid battery in there.

And when that battery dies, you take it to a dealership or another store and you buy a new one and you replace it.

But what you don't realize is that you are actually paying a small fee when you get that new lead-acid battery that funds this entire

system behind the scenes to recycle lead-acid batteries and create new ones.

Now, it's a nominal fee.

You probably don't even notice you pay it,

but it, as I say, funds this system.

You'll never interact with.

You'll never know the people that work in it.

This whole system is basically set up by a U.S.

law, but there's no sort of parallel for lithium-ion batteries.

That being said, there are several companies out there that are really trying to push into this and encourage more consumer recycling.

One is known as Redwood, Redwood Materials.

It's based in Nevada, and they do have a website where they list many collection facilities across the country for lithium-ion batteries.

You can also mail them a lithium-ion battery, or we can actually go to their site in Nevada.

I've been there before.

It's a beautiful facility, but they take everything from electric toothbrush chargers to cell phones to laptops to televisions and much more, and they recycle them and they break them down.

And when they recycle this stuff, how is it recycled?

Is it melted down?

And what do they do to it?

I'm going to talk a little bit about what Apple does.

And the reason I'll talk about Apple is because a few years ago, I had the opportunity to go to an Apple facility in Austin, Texas, where they have this giant robot they've nicknamed Daisy.

And all Daisy does all day is break apart iPhones, takes the glass off of the phone with a high-powered blast of cold air, and that glass is recycled.

It's made by a company called Corning.

It can be recycled.

Obviously, the outer shell of the iPhone, depending on which model you have, is aluminum or some other metal.

That shell can be recycled.

The lithium-ion battery, though, itself

is shredded into something that's known as black mass.

And then that black mass,

not to sort of get too geeky or nerdy on you here, is sent to a company, and there are several out there that can break it down.

And depending on the chemistry, I would either have cobalt or nickel in there as well with a mixture of lithium and some other critical minerals.

And so, that black mass has a whole market for black mass out there, especially in China, as you would imagine, given how much electronics are produced there,

to basically take this black mass and turn it into parts that can be used to make new lithium-ion batteries out there.

So, a a question I've always had that I've never gotten an answer to.

Well, I mean, I have seen the answer.

I've researched it.

So people want green energy.

They want battery, electric vehicles, but electric vehicles run on electricity.

And an awful lot of electricity is generated from fossil fuels and natural gas.

So

what is the benefit?

I think that's another key thing for the average consumer to really be educated on and to really learn more about just because you buy an electric vehicle does not necessarily mean that you're helping the planet.

Now, there have been several studies that show that the initial carbon emissions from an electric vehicle are just taking it off of the lot, they can be a little bit higher right away than an internal combustion engine.

But over the life of having that electric vehicle, if you're using electricity that's generated by wind or solar or some other renewable source, then yes, then over time, your total carbon emissions will be less than if you had an internal combustion engine.

But it's that generation part that's really, really key.

Are you powering that electric vehicle with a solar panel on your roof or a wind turbine in your backyard or some other type of renewable power, whether that be hydro or some other source or nuclear?

So these are key questions.

Well, clearly, there's a lot more to this story than I think a lot of people realize.

And while the idea of clean energy certainly sounds good, the energy has to be produced somehow.

And it isn't always as clean as I think a lot of people believe it is.

I've been speaking with Ernest Scheider.

He's a senior correspondent for Reuters and author of the book The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives.

And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes.

We have talked several times on this podcast about the importance of having friends, that adults need social connection.

Kids need to have friends.

And friendship, turns out, is also important for teenagers.

If you have close friends as a teenager, you are more likely to be a healthier adult.

In a study, psychologists followed 171 middle school kids up until the age of 27.

Those who had strong friendships and a strong drive to fit in with their peers had better overall health scores by the time they reached 27 years old.

The theory is that social isolation, being a loner, causes low-level chronic stress.

And while humans are pretty good at handling short-term stress, chronic stress takes its toll on our health.

So having strong social connections early in life sets them up to continue later in life and those friends help reduce stress, which keeps you healthy.

And that is something you should know.

Something you should know is produced by Jeff Havison, Jennifer Brennan, and the executive producer is Ken Williams.

I'm Mike Carruthers.

Thank you for listening today to Something You Should Know.

When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kratarakian Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxy's inhabited planets.

The wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake.

Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression.

Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living, but a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy.

The Stone Wolves is season 11 of the Galactic Football League science fiction series by author Scott Sigler.

Enjoy it as a standalone story or listen to the entire GFL series beginning with season one, The Rookie.

Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm often asked, as you might imagine, what podcasts do I listen to?

And I actually have an eclectic taste and I jump around, try different ones.

But I will say that I have a couple I'm very consistent about, and one of them is the Jordan Harbinger Show.

It's kind of a little like something you should know, but Jordan goes in interestingly different directions.

I do know that we share a lot of listeners, a lot of listeners who like this podcast like the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Jordan is really good at getting his guests to open up and share great insights.

Recently, he discussed modern romance scam tactics.

I mean, that's the lowest of the low, but you've got to know about them so you can fight back against them.

And another episode he did was about how society has engineered a generation of lonely men.

The show covers a lot of great topics, which, well, like I said, if you like this show, you're going to like his show.

There's so much here.

Check out the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.