Kai Risdahl

Stepan Sveshnikov wrote about it for Off-Range.

He's also a PhD candidate in history at Yale.

Stepan, welcome to the program.

Good to have you on.

Good to be with you.

I'm just going to read you the first line of this piece, which you know, of course, since you wrote it.

But then we're going to talk about it because it contains multitudes here.

The U.S.

wool industry, you write, is staging a comeback.

So where are all the sheep?

First of all, talk to me about wool and this comeback, because clearly I missed that.

Okay, here comes the second part then of your first question.

Where are all the sheep?

You actually said there's not enough sheep in the world to meet all of our demand now.

The catch, of course, is that, and look, I don't know much about sheep procreation, but I imagine it takes, I don't know, a couple of years for a sheep to get to the point where it can be sheared and wool can get into the supply chain.

There's another part of this infrastructure that you talk about, and it's not just the livestock.

It's it's mills and places where you can go to get your wool.

What is it combed and spun?

And I mean, I forgot, you know, all my fifth grade history stuff, but it's you got to do stuff to get wool to a place where it can be used.

Well, all right.