The New Yorker Radio Hour
One Environmental Journalist Thinks that the U.S. Needs More Mining
14 Jan 2025
Full Episode
From the online spectacle around Leo XIV's election to our favorite on-screen cardinals. This week on Critics at Large, we're talking all things Pope.
The Catholic Church was made for this moment. I think 2,000 years ago, the Catholic Church basically anticipated TikTok, Instagram, X. You don't have those little Swiss guard outfits and think they're not being photographed. Oil painting is not enough.
I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts for an episode on what can only be described as Pope Week. New episodes of Critics at Large drop every Thursday. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Given how much Donald Trump says he loves mining, you would think the blood of every environmentalist in the world is now running cold. One possible exception may be the journalist Vince Beiser.
Beiser's recent book is called Power Metal, and it's about what's called rare earth metals, elements you've possibly never heard of but that power every device you own. Vince Beiser spoke with The New Yorker's Elizabeth Colbert, herself an environmental journalist of great renown and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Vince, you've written that to make that iPhone in your pocket, 75 pounds of ore had to be pulled up, crushed, and smelted, which is kind of an astonishing figure. And you also note that a cell phone can contain as many as two-thirds of the elements on the periodic table. Can you pick maybe one of the more obscure elements in there and trace its journey for us?
Sure. One of my favorite super obscure metals in your phone is probably europium. There are tiny, tiny amounts of europium in your cell phone screen that make it capable of showing the color red. So what in the world is europium? Europium is one of 17 metals, this basket of metals that are called rare earth metals. There's 17 of them. They're all like down in this corner in the periodic table.
They've all got weird names. And all of them are incredibly important for renewable energy across the board, for electric vehicles, in addition to our cell phones and pretty much all of our consumer electronics. The thing to know about rare earths, about europium and these other rare earths, is that almost all of them, one way or another, come through China.
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