Ed Conway has written widely on the use of resources that creates our material world. This is connected to our Year 8 topic on consumption and the geography of our 'stuff'...
As Ed says in the introduction to the podcast - stuff matters:
The pitch behind it is each week we take an object - for the most case an everyday product you probably have inside your home - and ask a few seemingly obvious questions that turn out to have not-at-all-obvious answers. Where did it come from? How was it made? And, most intriguingly of all, what can it teach us about the world.
I’ve long had a feeling - something you’ll have picked up on if you’ve read Material World or watched much of my output for Sky News - that there are marvellous, magical, sometimes-disturbing stories just beneath the surface of the everyday items we mostly take for granted. Ponder concrete and you understand the bizarre underbelly of sand production. Consider copper and you look at the world of power afresh.
Well, to some extent that’s the idea behind Stuff Matters. Every episode is a journey deep into the rabbit holes you sometimes find yourselves swept into (well, I do at least) when considering the objects around you. So we’ve spoken to Nobel-prize winning scientists, businesses making missiles, the world’s greatest experts in how to ripen fruit, and a few other folks as well. If there is a subtitle to this effort (possibly also my entire career), it is that supposedly boring stuff is often actually tremendously interesting.
On Sunday for example he posted an episode about Apple Airpods.
That satisfying snap when you close an AirPods case is powered by one of the most important materials in the modern world.
Hidden inside are tiny magnets made from rare earth elements: obscure minerals that help power everything from smartphones and wind turbines to fighter jets and electric cars. They’re also at the centre of one of the biggest geopolitical struggles of our time.
In this episode, Ed Conway follows the story of rare earths from an obscure Swedish town and the Manhattan Project to modern China, where decades of industrial strategy have given Beijing extraordinary control over a resource the rest of the world depends on.
Along the way, he explores the strange economics of rare earth mining, the environmental costs hidden behind modern technology, and the growing fear that global supply chains can be turned into weapons.
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