Kara Links Tech Giants' EV Battery Supply to Congo Child Slavery
PowerfulJRE
Automaker and Big Tech claims of ethical green supply chains are fraudulent because toxic cobalt dug by child slave labor is systematically blended into the formal industrial refining stream.
Siddharth Kara reports that ground conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have deteriorated sharply due to soaring mineral demand for EV batteries and AI data centers, with an estimated 300,000 artisanal miners working in toxic, unmechanized pits. (0:01)
Satellite analysis reveals that 40% to 60% of forests and grasslands in southeastern DRC mining zones have been replaced by open-pit mines, where regional water tests show heavy metal concentrations up to 950 times above WHO limits and water pH levels as acidic as 3.0 to 4.0. (4:59)
In his historical research on the 1781 Zorg (Zong) slave ship massacre, Kara uncovered the 240-year-old identity of the anonymous whistleblower whose letter sparked the British abolition movement, identifying him as Anglican clergyman and naval surgeon James Ramsay. (78:30)
Britain's Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 compensated slaveholders with £20 million—roughly 40% of the national budget at the time—a sovereign debt that British taxpayers continued paying off until 2015 while formerly enslaved people received nothing. (102:31)
Detailed notes
## Background
Published on YouTube by PowerfulJRE on September 22, 2026, this episode features researcher and author Siddharth Kara, PhD. According to the show description, the discussion centers on Kara's investigative books, including 'Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives' and his historical work, 'The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery.'
## TL;DR
Siddharth Kara details the ongoing humanitarian and ecological catastrophe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where child labor, modern slavery, and toxic runoff power the global supply chains for electric vehicles and AI data centers. Drawing direct parallels between modern mineral extraction and historical atrocities, Kara recounts the 1781 Zorg (Zong) slave ship massacre and the pivotal legal battles that catalyzed the British abolitionist movement. He and Joe Rogan explore the complicity of Western tech consumers, the persistent economic incentives behind forced labor, and speculative possibilities for AI-driven resource governance. Kara concludes by urging multinational corporations to take financial and moral responsibility for remediating the poisoned environments and displaced communities in Central Africa.
## Atmosphere & style
The dialogue maintains a somber, urgent tone, driven by Kara's harrowing, forensic accounts of child labor in toxic mining pits and the brutal realities of transatlantic slave decks. The dynamic shifts between intimate, devastating frontline reporting and sweeping, philosophical inquiries led by Rogan into human territorialism and technological futures. The experience feels intellectually rigorous yet deeply unsettling, confronting listeners with the profound human suffering directly underpinning modern technological convenience.
## Bulletin
- [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1s) Siddharth Kara reports that ground conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have deteriorated sharply due to soaring mineral demand for EV batteries and AI data centers, with an estimated 300,000 artisanal miners working in toxic, unmechanized pits.
- [04:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=299s) Satellite analysis reveals that 40% to 60% of forests and grasslands in southeastern DRC mining zones have been replaced by open-pit mines, where regional water tests show heavy metal concentrations up to 950 times above WHO limits and water pH levels as acidic as 3.0 to 4.0.
- [01:18:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4710s) In his historical research on the 1781 Zorg (Zong) slave ship massacre, Kara uncovered the 240-year-old identity of the anonymous whistleblower whose letter sparked the British abolition movement, identifying him as Anglican clergyman and naval surgeon James Ramsay.
- [01:42:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6151s) Britain's Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 compensated slaveholders with £20 million—roughly 40% of the national budget at the time—a sovereign debt that British taxpayers continued paying off until 2015 while formerly enslaved people received nothing.
## Key takeaways
- [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1s) Global demand for battery components driven by electric vehicles and AI infrastructure is heavily reliant on child labor, militia-controlled pits, and environmental devastation in the DRC.
- [04:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=299s) Refining raw mixed ores with toxic acids has leached heavy metals into water sources around Kolwezi at levels between 10 and 950 times higher than WHO safety thresholds.
- [10:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=652s) Roughly 37% of the 300,000 artisanal cobalt miners in the DRC operate under conditions meeting the legal definition of absolute slavery, with approximately 30,000 children digging without protective gear.
- [13:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=795s) Automakers and tech firms cannot credibly claim abuse-free supply chains because artisanally mined cobalt is funneled directly into the shared industrial refining stream.
- [17:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1049s) Switching to alternative battery chemistries such as lithium iron phosphate shifts the humanitarian and ecological burden onto lithium extraction rather than resolving supply chain exploitation.
- [25:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1505s) Chinese state-backed mining operations have secured dominant control over Congolese mineral reserves, discreetly extracting uranium alongside cobalt and copper to build up strategic reserves.
- [01:15:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4513s) The 1781 massacre aboard the slave ship Zorg, where over 130 living captives were thrown overboard to fraudulently claim maritime insurance, catalyzed the modern abolitionist movement.
- [01:26:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5179s) Court testimony in the Zong insurance trials treated human captives as insurable cargo, until a crew admission revealed rainfall during the voyage, dismantling the claim of water necessity.
- [01:42:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6151s) The British government's 1833 emancipation bailout allocated £20 million exclusively to slaveholders, saddling British taxpayers with debt payments that lasted until 2015.
- [01:46:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6377s) Excluding East India Company territories from the Slavery Abolition Act allowed Britain to substitute African chattel slavery with Indian indentured servitude across its global colonies.
- [02:12:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7942s) Major tech corporations possess sufficient capital to remediate Congolese mining zones, provide protective equipment, and line slurry ponds, but choose upstream supply chain obfuscation instead.
- [02:15:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=8153s) Abandoning Congolese mining communities in favor of recycled materials or alternative chemistries without environmental remediation repeats centuries-old colonial patterns of extraction and abandonment.
- [02:18:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=8292s) Toxic mining runoff has rendered local water bodies catastrophically acidic, forcing Congolese communities to cook, drink, and bathe in water with pH readings between 3.0 and 4.0.
## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1s) Reconnecting and the Personal Cost of Exposing the Cobalt Trade
Joe Rogan opens the conversation by expressing deep gratitude to Siddharth Kara, telling him that countless people have approached him to express appreciation after Kara's work shed light on the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rogan stresses that Kara legitimately risked his life to obtain ground-level footage and documentation of the cobalt trade, an endeavor carried out in an extraordinarily dangerous region where colossal fortunes are made off natural resources.
Kara accepts the praise warmly, expressing gratitude to Rogan for continuing to amplify the issue. Kara notes that their previous conversation took place nearly four years earlier, in December 2022. While Kara has not returned to the Congo since publishing his book *Cobalt Red*—having received direct warnings from colleagues on the ground that a bounty had been placed on him—he has maintained close contact with local researchers to track ongoing developments. Rather than improving, conditions on the ground have degraded further due to an insatiable global appetite for battery-component minerals, including cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, and tantalum.
Kara points out that this supply chain touches everyone, as modern society cannot function without smartphones, tablets, and consumer technology. Yet the foundation of the entire system remains steeped in child labor, modern slavery, militia-run pits, violence, and devastating ecological ruin.
[03:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=183s) The AI Boom and the Illusion of Clean Technology
The demand for these critical minerals has entered an aggressive new phase driven by the explosive expansion of artificial intelligence data centers. As tech conglomerates rush to construct massive server facilities, they require the exact same mineral suite: circuit boards, energy storage batteries, servers, and heat sinks all depend on copper, cobalt, tin, and tantalum sourced from the Congo.
When Rogan asks why so little of these critical minerals come from the United States, Kara explains that the highest-grade and most concentrated geological reserves naturally lie across the Global South, particularly Central Africa (with lithium concentrated heavily in South America). While small deposits exist along the Canadian border or out in western U.S. salt flats, Kara identifies a profound double standard: Western nations refuse to ravage their own domestic environments through toxic extraction, yet remain perfectly comfortable outsourcing that devastation to Africa.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Mineral Extraction to Consumer Products Supply Chain
accDescr: Flow diagram illustrating how raw minerals extracted from Congolese mines feed into Western consumer tech and AI infrastructure while leaving localized devastation.
subgraph Extraction["Extraction & Refining (DRC)"]
A["Artisanal & Industrial Mining\n(Cobalt, Copper, Lithium, Tantalum)"]
B["Acid & Chemical Leaching\n(Separation of Mixed Ores)"]
A --> B
end
subgraph Impacts["Local DRC Impacts"]
C1["Severe Human Rights Abuses\n(Child Labor, Slavery, Militias)"]
C2["Environmental Collapse\n(Water Contamination & Deforestation)"]
B -.-> C1
B -.-> C2
end
[04:59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=299s) The "Blood Batteries" Study and Environmental Ruin
Drawing from a comprehensive research report he published the prior year through the University of Nottingham titled *Blood Batteries*, Kara presents the quantitative reality of this mining boom. Using time-lapse satellite imagery from the dawn of the battery revolution through 2022, his team analyzed the southeastern copper-cobalt belt around the Zambian border:
- **Deforestation:** Across the mining zone, between 40% and 60% of original forests, shrublands, and grasslands have been eradicated, replaced entirely by open-pit mining operations.
- **Geography:** Kara clarifies that while the dense northern rainforest covers vast expanses of the DRC, the southeastern corner around the town of Kolwezi functions as the epicenter of this industrial destruction.
- **Toxic Water Contamination:** Testing local water sources in Kolwezi revealed heavy metal concentrations between 10 and 950 times higher than the World Health Organization's maximum recommended limits for human safety. The run-off includes toxic concentrations of lead, cobalt, copper, uranium, and chromium.
Kara underscores the underlying hypocrisy: Western consumers demand pristine local waterways, protected forests, and clean air, yet celebrate electric vehicles and data infrastructure while remaining willfully blind to the complete ecological poisoning of Congolese communities.
[07:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=455s) Systemic Failures, Chinese Control, and the Legacy of Exploitation
Rogan asks whether environmental harm is an unavoidable consequence of high-volume mining or if it could be mitigated. Kara explains that while deforestation at the physical deposit site is inevitable, industrialized nations enforce strict offsetting rules, reforestation mandates, and hazardous-waste containment. By contrast, in the Congo, industrial operations are largely run by Chinese state-backed companies that operate with complete disregard for local populations or environmental safety protocols. Major Western tech and automotive companies knowingly source materials from this supply chain.
Beyond the physical open pits, Rogan and Kara discuss the refining process. Because raw ore comes out of the earth as a complex matrix of copper, cobalt, nickel, silver, and trace uranium, industrial facilities must treat it with heavy toxic acids and chemical solutions to dissolve and isolate the target metals. These caustic reagents routinely seep into the surrounding soil, permeating groundwater reservoirs, rivers, and lakes.
Tracing the historical roots of this exploitation, Kara notes that the southeastern mining corridor from Lubumbashi to Kolwezi has been plundered since the colonial era:
- Copper mining in the region supplied roughly a quarter of all the copper used in bullets during World War I.
- The ultra-high-grade uranium utilized to manufacture the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was secretly extracted from that exact same Congolese corridor, which held the richest known uranium deposits on earth at the time.
The section closes on the central paradox of the Congo: holding the planet's most valuable strategic mineral deposits, yet remaining one of the most exploited, impoverished, and battered places in human history.
[10:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=652s) The Resource Curse and the Scale of Modern Slavery in the Congo
Siddharth Kara explains how the classic economic "resource curse" devastates vulnerable regions: discovering treasure in a war-torn, colonized, or corrupt place inevitably invites plunderers and chaos. Joe Rogan points out that this climate makes it trivial to exploit labor for virtually nothing. Kara elaborates that displaced populations have zero alternatives for basic survival. Mining operations that span the footprint of small cities bulldoze entire villages, rivers, and smallholder farms. With their traditional livelihoods gone, families—men, women, and children alike—are forced directly into the mining concessions, rolling up their sleeves to sift through toxic dirt all day just to fill a sack of ore and earn a single dollar.
While Kara's earlier work in *Cobalt Red* highlighted the human catastrophe on the ground, his updated research (published in the *Blood Batteries* report) provides concrete prevalence estimates across sampling sites. On any given day, an estimated 300,000 people dig for cobalt using bare hands, pickaxes, and basic shovels. The baseline conditions reveal an alarming scale of exploitation:
- Roughly 300,000 artisanal miners work daily, fluctuating slightly between the dry and wet seasons.
- Approximately 37% of these individuals—more than one in three—labor under conditions meeting the legal definition of absolute slavery.
- Nearly 10% (roughly 30,000) are children who are out of school, handling toxic minerals with zero protective gear.
[13:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=795s) Consumer Complicity and the Electric Vehicle Dilemma
Addressing the consumer side of the battery economy, Kara stresses that individuals living a modern, rechargeable lifestyle must critically evaluate their habits. When readers ask him how to fix the issue, he acknowledges that while an individual cannot unilaterally dismantle global supply chains, they can curb the demand-side pressure. The simplest intervention is keeping functional phones and tablets rather than reflexively upgrading annually just because a tech company demands it.
The issue becomes more nuanced with electric vehicles (EVs). Automakers promote a narrative of sustainability, claiming their proprietary supply chains are audited and free of abuse. Kara rejects this clean separation, emphasizing that the global mineral supply is fundamentally pooled and contaminated: "We can't save our piece of the planet by destroying their piece of the planet."
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Cobalt Supply and Consumption Cycle
accDescr: Flowchart illustrating how consumer demand and green transitions drive mineral extraction under forced labor.
subgraph Extraction["Congo Mining Concessions"]
A["Displaced Communities"] --> B["300,000 Artisanal Miners<br/>(37% Enslaved, ~30,000 Children)"]
B --> C["Tainted Global Mineral Pool<br/>(Cobalt & Lithium)"]
end
subgraph Industry["Tech & Automotive Sectors"]
C --> D["Smartphones & Devices"]
C --> E["Electric Vehicles (EVs)"]
end
subgraph Consumption["Global Consumer Choices"]
D --> F["Annual Upgrades vs. Retention"]
E --> G["'Green' Transition vs. Supply Taint"]
end
```
[14:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=894s) Non-Exhaust Emissions: Brake Dust and Weight in EVs
Rogan brings up an often-overlooked environmental and health factor associated with electric cars: particulate pollution from brake dust. Although Rogan owns and loves his Tesla, he highlights that EVs are substantially heavier than traditional internal combustion vehicles due to their large battery packs. This added mass increases the mechanical demands on braking systems, generating fine brake dust that coats wheels and enters city air. In densely populated urban areas like New York City, pedestrians constantly inhale these toxic particulates, a proven factor in lowering life expectancy.
To examine solutions, Rogan and his producer, Jamie, look up the impact of carbon ceramic braking systems. A live search confirms that carbon ceramic rotors can substantially reduce particulate pollution compared to conventional gray cast-iron rotors, though they do not eliminate it entirely because pad formulations and driving styles still dictate wear. Rogan notes the steep financial barrier: carbon ceramic brakes remain an expensive specialty upgrade, commonly found on high-end sports cars like Corvettes, which keeps them out of mainstream adoption.
[17:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1049s) Expanding Beyond Cobalt: The Lithium Rush and Global Empathy
Kara points out that shifting away from one problematic material usually introduces an identical crisis elsewhere. For instance, creating carbon ceramic brakes demands specialized carbon sourcing, and engineering cobalt-free battery chemistries—such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) or solid-state batteries—merely shifts reliance onto lithium. Kara highlights that one of the planet's largest untapped lithium deposits sits near the town of Manono in the DRC, where a Chinese mining company began shipping material in June. Colleagues visiting the Manono concessions report that the labor abuses and ecological damage replicate the cobalt fields precisely.
Both Kara and Rogan reflect on the lottery of birth, noting that living in comfort rather than working a Congolese pit is purely a matter of luck. Rogan challenges the rigid "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality, observing that people trapped in these supply chains do not even own boots, lack clean drinking water, and have no medical infrastructure. Kara concludes that true moral progress as a species depends entirely on widening our circle of compassion downstream to include those who supply our comfortable way of life. Rogan agrees that global progress requires actively bringing the living conditions of the developing world up to the standards of the developed world.
[21:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1263s) The Pre-Birth Lottery and the Resource Curse
Joe Rogan reflects on how vastly different the world would be if basic first-world amenities—reliable infrastructure, quality education, and legitimate hospitals—were established everywhere. The fundamental roadblock, he notes, is that regions like the Democratic Republic of the Congo are sitting on natural resources worth colossal fortunes. The factions and entities controlling these assets extract enormous wealth and refuse to surrender their grip.
In response, Siddharth Kara shares a thought experiment he often runs when teaching students, drawing on the concept of a pre-birth state. He asks students to imagine waiting in an ethereal space before birth, completely unaware of what "roll of the dice" they will receive: whether they will be born into a loving, safe, upper-middle-class Western family, or into a destitute, war-torn corner of South Sudan. Kara posits that anyone facing that uncertainty would desperately hope that whoever landed in the privileged positions would retain a sense of kinship, empathy, and duty toward those who drew the bad hand—using their advantages to provide sanitation, healthcare, and education. Yet in reality, once people arrive in their prosperous spheres, that broader human connection is severed. Rogan adds that while earlier generations lived in isolation and had virtually no concept of how the rest of the planet lived unless they traveled there, today's ubiquitous digital technology makes global disparities impossible to ignore.
[23:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1424s) Energy, Clean Power, and the Nuclear Dilemma
Rogan notes the irony that the very devices allowing people to witness global suffering are powered by minerals pulled from those exploited lands. He argues that genuinely improving developing nations requires massive foundational infrastructure, beginning with electrical power and clean water. However, providing that energy is fraught with hard trade-offs. Wind and solar are currently inadequate to reliably power major industrial cities, while burning coal brings heavy environmental damage. Dams provide hydroelectric potential, but the cleanest, most scalable alternative is nuclear power.
The immediate hazard of exporting nuclear technology, Rogan points out, is proliferation: nations historically given civil nuclear capabilities, such as India and Pakistan, quickly converted that technology into ballistic nuclear arsenals aimed at one another.
[25:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1505s) Congo's Uranium and China's Nuclear Stockpile
Kara pivots from modern nuclear power to the Congo's pivotal, overlooked role in the atomic age. He recounts that the uranium used to build the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—Little Boy and Fat Man—was sourced directly from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo, negotiated between Belgian and American officials in a Midtown Manhattan meeting. The Congo remains exceptionally rich in high-grade uranium reserves.
Kara reveals a development that has emerged over the last decade: Western intelligence agencies have been perplexed by the speed at which China has expanded its nuclear warhead stockpile, given that China lacks sufficient domestic uranium deposits, Russia would not arm an adjacent rival, and North Korea has none to spare. Sources and counterintelligence contacts on the ground in the Congo report that for roughly the past fifteen years, Chinese state-run mining operations have been discreetly hauling uranium out of the country in the very same tractor-trailers used to transport cobalt, copper, and nickel, shipping it directly back to mainland China. Because Chinese enterprises exert near-total dominion over the region's mining corridors, there is virtually no local oversight or international authority capable of inspecting their shipments or stopping them.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Flow of Congolese Uranium to China's Nuclear Arsenal
accDescr: Diagram tracing raw uranium extraction in the Congo through Chinese state mining transport to mainland China's stockpile.
U --> Trucks
Other --> Trucks
Trucks --> Refining
Refining --> Stockpile
```
[27:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1626s) Human Rights Differences and Chinese Exploitation
Rogan questions whether China has any domestic human rights organizations or independent humanitarian bodies comparable to Western institutions like the Red Cross. Kara explains that while formal policies might exist on paper, there is no genuine culture of human rights advocacy within Chinese state enterprises. Rogan points to the state-sanctioned detention and forced labor camps targeting the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, who are compelled to manufacture textiles and components for solar panels.
Kara contrasts Western and Chinese corporate practices on the African continent. While acknowledging that the drive for human rights standards is a distinctly Western paradigm, he emphasizes that Chinese operations in Africa show zero regard for the native population. Local Africans are treated as physical obstacles standing between foreign operators and the raw minerals they seek. Rather than providing local employment, Chinese mining and construction firms typically fly in their own laborers from China, work them through the project, and fly them home, bypassing the local economy and entirely ignoring international labor or humanitarian standards.
[28:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1724s) A US Entry into the Copperbelt and the Reality of "Artisanal" Mining
Kara notes a rare shift in the mining landscape: after nearly two decades of total absence, an American-run firm has reentered the Congolese copper belt. Born out of diplomatic mineral-access discussions during the Trump administration alongside Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi, an entity named Virtuous Mining—led by former US military personnel—acquired copper and cobalt concessions in Lubumbashi and Kolwezi that were previously controlled by Middle Eastern owners based in Dubai. Early reports from contacts in the field suggest this operator is attempting to enforce higher safety and labor benchmarks within its zones.
However, the discussion returns to the fundamental brutality of "artisanal mining." Rogan and Kara dissect the deceptive packaging of the term itself:
- In the West, "artisanal" connotes premium, ethical craftsmanship—like fair-trade coffee served in a handmade ceramic mug.
- In Central Africa, "artisanal mining" represents the absolute antithesis of luxury: unmechanized, raw human labor where tens of thousands of the poorest people on Earth—including mothers, fathers, and young children—wade through toxic filth and grit, digging with their bare hands and rudimentary tools to feed the world's tech supply chain.
[31:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1862s) The Reality of "Artisanal" Cobalt Mining in the Congo
Siddharth Kara details the brutal human cost behind what the mining industry euphemistically labels "artisanal" mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking at photographs he captured during his field investigations, he points out young mothers carrying babies on their backs and young children hauling 40- to 50-kilogram sacks of cobalt ore pressed against their necks as they scramble out of open pits. Cobalt is intensely toxic to touch and inhale, causing widespread respiratory distress, aggressive cancers, birth defects, and congenital diseases among the mining communities. Kara highlights one specific image of a teenage girl, roughly 13 or 14 years old, holding an infant alongside an eight-year-old child digging in the dirt.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Cobalt Extraction from Pit to Consumer Supply Chain
accDescr: Flowchart showing how artisanal cobalt mined by children and militias enters industrial supply chains and reaches consumer electronics.
subgraph Extraction["Informal Extraction"]
A["Artisanal Diggers<br/>(Children & Mothers)"] --> B["Militias & Local Traders<br/>(Kamove / Haut-Katanga)"]
end
subgraph Corporate["Industrial Processing"]
B --> C["Formal Industrial Refiners<br/>(Falsely marked mechanized)"]
end
subgraph EndUse["Global Market"]
C --> D["Consumer Electronics & EVs<br/>(Smartphones, Tablets, Cars)"]
end
```
Kara stresses that the cobalt gathered by children does not vanish into thin air; every gram enters the global, formal industrial supply chain. Local militias and traders pool the mineral and sell it directly to commercial industrial operators, who refine it into materials ultimately purchased by multinational electronics and electric vehicle corporations:
- Artisanal laborers, including young children, regularly carry sacks weighing 40 to 50 kilograms.
- Contact with and inhalation of raw cobalt leads to acute respiratory conditions, cancers, and severe developmental birth defects in newborns.
- The photographs referenced were taken north of Kamove in the hills of Haut-Katanga province, an area dominated by child labor under militia oversight.
[32:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=1962s) Staring Down Militia Gun barrels with a Governor's Stamp
Kara recounts the closest brush with death he experienced while investigating mining pits in the remote hills near Kamove. Unbeknownst to the mining operators, he had slipped into restricted zones where upwards of 15,000 exploited people were forced into manual labor. A group of militia fighters armed with AK-47s surged up the hillside, intercepted him, ripped off his backpack, slammed him to the ground, and emptied his belongings while screaming for his mobile phone to inspect his media files.
His survival came down to following local intelligence. Prior to heading into the volatile territory, a local colleague had insisted Kara visit the provincial governor of Haut-Katanga to obtain an official administrative stamp on his visa papers. Kara had successfully persuaded the governor that his research was intended not to humiliate the nation, but to expose how its people were being systematically looted by tech consumption in the Global North. As the gunmen raised their rifles and his guide’s face drained of color, Kara retrieved the stamped paperwork from the dirt. Recognizing the official mark of state protection, the militia abruptly ordered them to leave.
To hide the photographic proof on his phone, Kara had hidden the pictures and videos of the 15,000-person pit behind a password-protected partition. When ordered to unlock the device, he displayed personal family photos of his daughter and home, slipping past the scrutiny of guards unfamiliar with smartphone file systems:
- The site Kara documented was legally registered in public filings as an "industrial" mine, meaning it was certified to use heavy machinery rather than manual labor.
- In practice, the site relied on thousands of manual laborers working in conditions Kara describes as reminiscent of "raw brute slave labor" building pyramids, filled with constant clanging and shouting.
[36:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=2188s) *The Zorg* and the Economic Machinery of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Transitioning from the present-day mining crisis to his historical work, Kara introduces his book *The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery*. He and Joe Rogan observe the tragic continuity that the modern cobalt regions of Central Africa sit adjacent to the territories targeted during the transatlantic slave trade. Over the course of three and a half centuries, roughly 40,000 transatlantic slave voyages transported an estimated 12.5 to 13 million African captives, but Kara argues that the voyage of the *Zorg* stands out as the single most consequential crossing in global history.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Genesis of the Abolitionist Movement via the Zorg
accDescr: Diagram illustrating how the atrocities on the Zorg exposed the trade, activated religious leadership, and catalyzed modern abolition.
A["Voyage of The Zorg"] --> B["Massacre & Exposure of Cruelty"]
B --> C["Outrage Among Anglican Clergy & Public"]
C --> D["Birth of First Organized Abolition Movement"]
```
The ship's journey laid bare the raw mechanisms of transatlantic human trafficking, concluding in an act of calculated murder that cracked open public awareness in Europe. Kara highlights the paradox of human nature: while individuals are naturally self-interested, most are not innately evil; once confronted with undeniable proof of state-sanctioned atrocities, they feel compelled to act. The public exposure surrounding the *Zorg* galvanized a circle of faith-based moral advocates—principally leaders within the Anglican Church in England—to organize the world's first formal abolitionist movement:
- American educational curricula frequently emphasize plantation operations like cotton farming while omitting the transatlantic crossing, the roots of early global commerce, and the establishment of modern banking and maritime insurance built around human cargo.
- Historical records document that European empires built a denser network of stone fortifications, castles, and dungeons along the West African coastline than existed across Europe itself.
- African captives were regularly forced on inland marches spanning up to a thousand miles after slave-raiding parties ransacked interior villages.
[39:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=2366s) The Persistence of Slavery Across Modern Supply Chains
Rogan and Kara reflect on the widespread Western misconception that human bondage ceased to exist following legal abolition in the nineteenth century. Rogan notes conversations where contemporaries assume society has advanced past slavery, even though raw numbers show there are more people held in forced labor today than during the height of the Atlantic trade.
Kara emphasizes that Western society merely abolished slavery on paper. In practice, the mechanisms of subjugation and labor extraction have evolved seamlessly into contemporary supply chains. When Rogan brings up the millions of undocumented and underage workers operating within domestic Western economies, Kara agrees that global figures reach into the tens of millions. He reiterates that examining the historical mechanics of the slave trade is vital because it reveals both the depths of human cruelty and the moral capacity of everyday citizens to organize, resist, and force institutional reform once atrocities are brought to light.
[41:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=2509s) The Forced March and John Newton's Past
Before enslaved Africans ever boarded a ship, they were subjected to brutal forced marches from deep within the interior down to the coast, yoked at the neck, bound together, and traded through various networks of slave dealers. These journeys spanned anywhere from 500 to 1,000 miles across the Sahel and inland regions, and between a quarter and a third of the captives perished before ever seeing the sea. Siddharth Kara notes that while researching historical records, he encountered journal entries from ship captains describing these treks. Among them was Captain John Newton, who noted taking on board captives who had marched an estimated 1,000 miles.
Newton is widely known today not for his seafaring brutality, but as an evangelical Anglican preacher, abolitionist, and composer of hymns—most notably "Amazing Grace." Newton was based out of Liverpool, captaining three slave voyages before his religious conversion and subsequent fight against the trade. While Liverpool is modernly recognized for the Beatles or its football club, it was once the undisputed commercial capital of the European Atlantic slave trade, driving the engine of the "triangular trade."
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: The Triangular Trade Flow
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the three legs of the transatlantic triangular slave trade between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas.
[43:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=2602s) The Dungeons of Cape Coast Castle and the Anatomy of Sale
European powers constructed fortified castles along the West African coast to warehouse enslaved human beings. The primary British hub was Cape Coast Castle in modern-day Ghana, located just a cannon shot away from the Dutch-held Elmina Castle. Beneath Cape Coast Castle sat a massive underground dungeon partitioned into separate quarters for men, and women and children. At any given time, roughly a thousand individuals were held in absolute darkness, illuminated only by a narrow shaft through which meager rations of food and water were lowered.
Along the floor ran a single narrow drainage groove meant to channel away urine, feces, and menstrual blood. In practice, the trench repeatedly clogged, especially during the rainy season, leaving the entire floor submerged under a thick layer of raw sewage where prisoners languished for months. When European ships dropped anchor in the roads a mile or two offshore, captains rowed canoes to meet the castle governor. Captives were hauled up from the depths, scrubbed clean of human waste, and massaged with palm oil to impart a healthy sheen. A surgeon inspected them—checking lymph nodes, opening mouths, and forcing them to cough to detect illness—before selected individuals were purchased and branded on the shoulder with hot irons.
During his own research trip to Cape Coast Castle alongside an official from Ghana's Ministry of Museums, Kara observed the uneven stone floors of the male dungeon until coming upon a section that was completely smooth. When he questioned why that particular patch was polished flat, his guide explained that it had intentionally been left unexcavated: the smooth stone was centuries of petrified human waste, sweat, and biological sediment accumulated from the thousands of people held captive there.
- A single narrow shaft provided the only light and food drop for up to 1,000 chained captives in the dungeon.
- Buyers coated captives in palm oil to mask physical deterioration caused by months in subterranean confinement.
- Surgeons conducted invasive examinations prior to transaction, rejecting those displaying symptoms of illness.
- Branding irons marked captives on the shoulder to identify ownership as ships traded along multiple coastal forts.
[47:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=2858s) Maritime Innovation and the Quest for "Sweet Salt"
Kara explains that understanding the slave ship requires appreciating the seafaring caravel as both a triumph of European engineering and a floating chamber of horror. Prior to the 15th century, European vessels featured square sails that relied exclusively on tailwinds. When Portuguese sailors pushed south along the African coast under Prince Henry the Navigator, violent prevailing winds around the Canary Islands consistently wrecked their ships. The Portuguese solved this barrier in the 1420s and 1430s by engineering the triangular lateen rig—a swivel-mounted sail that functioned like a bird's wing, allowing caravels to tack into opposing winds. This breakthrough allowed them to round the Cape of Good Hope and reach India by the late 1490s.
Seeking an alternate shortcut to India, Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic in 1492, landing in the Bahamas and misidentifying the indigenous inhabitants as "Indians." To prevent open conflict between the two Catholic powers, Pope Alexander VI mediated the division of the non-European world: Spain was granted the lands west of an Atlantic meridian, while Portugal received the lands to the east, encompassing Africa and route access to India.
The expansion of this maritime trade dovetailed with Europe's growing addiction to sugar, originally encountered in the Middle East during the Crusades and termed "sweet salt." Because sugarcane cannot grow in Europe's temperate climate—where diets had previously relied strictly on honey and fruit reductions for sweetness—both empires sought tropical territory for intensive cultivation. While the Portuguese tapped into existing West African captive systems to supply labor for offshore plantation colonies, the Spanish arrived in the Americas and decimated indigenous Aztec and Mayan populations through armed conflict and introduced diseases. Stripped of a native workforce to extract resources and cultivate crops, the Spanish monarchy under King Charles I moved in 1518 to establish direct slave-trading pipelines from Africa.
[53:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=3196s) Sugar and the Birth of the Atlantic Slave Trade
The origins of the transatlantic slave trade trace directly to the expansion of sugar plantations. In 1518, the Spanish contracted the Portuguese to supply 4,000 enslaved Africans to labor on their newly established sugar plantations, having observed their exploitation on Portuguese island holdings. This agreement formalized the triangular trade: European vessels carried manufactured goods to West Africa to purchase captive people, transported them across the Atlantic to Spanish and Portuguese American colonies to cut cane, and hauled the resulting sugar, rum, and molasses back to Europe, repeating the cycle continuously.
When Joe Rogan expresses bewilderment that navigators who crossed oceans could miscalculate so drastically that they believed they had reached India, Siddharth Kara explains that 15th-century European mapmakers possessed virtually no geographic knowledge of the world west of Europe or south of Africa's Mediterranean coast. The Portuguese pushed southward down Africa's coast driven by myths of immense wealth, naming West Africa's shoreline *Costa da Mina de Ouro* (the Coast of Gold Mines). While slavery existed throughout human history, it was the insatiable European demand for sugar that industrialized it into the Atlantic slave trade—the foundation of the modern globalized economy.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: The Triangular Trade Circuit
accDescr: Three-stage commercial circuit linking Western Europe, West Africa, and the American sugar colonies.
subgraph Europe["Western Europe"]
A["Manufactured Goods"]
end
subgraph Africa["West Africa"]
B["Enslaved Captives"]
end
subgraph Americas["American Colonies"]
C["Sugar, Rum & Molasses"]
end
A -->|"Transported South"| B
B -->|"Middle Passage"| C
C -->|"Shipped to Europe"| A
```
[56:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=3374s) The Economic Scale of Colonial Sugar
Sugar functioned as the fossil fuel of the 18th century, acting as the economic lubricant that generated vast generational wealth across Western Europe. By the eve of the American Revolutionary War (circa 1773–1774), Great Britain had established itself as the dominant naval and mercantile power in the Atlantic slave trade. Their primary economic prize was Jamaica, which operated as the largest sugar plantation economy in the world.
To illustrate the sheer scale of the sugar industry compared to other colonial enterprises, Kara highlights a staggering economic disparity: the monetary value of Jamaica's sugar exports alone exceeded the combined export value of all goods produced across all 13 American continental colonies by a factor of five. This immense profitability ensured that European empires tenaciously preserved and expanded human chattel slavery.
- British Jamaica was the world's most lucrative sugar colony in the 1770s.
- Jamaica's sugar revenue alone was 5× greater than the entire collective export trade of the 13 American colonies.
- The massive returns created centuries of European institutional wealth.
[57:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=3463s) Architecture of a Slave Ship: The Middle Passage
Kara shifts focus to the Dutch slave vessel *Zorg* (which set sail in October 1780 during the American Revolution) and explains the specialized engineering of transatlantic slave ships. Captains typically spent months at coastal forts or castles like Cape Coast Castle bartering for captive Africans, branding them with hot irons, and loading three to six hundred people into the hull before embarking on the two-month journey known as the Middle Passage.
Kara directs attention to the historical schematic of the *Brooke* (often referenced as the *Brooks*), a slave ship built for a Liverpool merchant family. Enslaved human beings were jammed into the "tween deck" (between-deck cargo space) with each individual allotted a strip of space only 16 inches wide. Kara quotes former slave-ship captain John Newton, who noted that captives were stowed "like books on a shelf." To maximize capacity, shipbuilders constructed low intermediate platforms around the perimeter—resembling overhead luggage racks—leaving barely any vertical clearance. Captives lay flat on bare boards, shackled in pairs, completely unable to sit upright for the duration of the two-month ocean crossing.
[01:00:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=3613s) The "Tween Deck" and Shipboard Resistance
Sanitary conditions in the tween deck rapidly devolved into total nightmare. With paired captives chained together, reaching the few waste buckets scattered along the deck while the ship pitched in rough seas was impossible. Within days, the hold was washed in feces, urine, vomit, and blood. Women endured menstruation and childbirth on the boards, surrounded by human filth. Kara laments that mainstream history curricula routinely sanitize or omit these harrowing physical realities.
Captives brought onto the main deck each morning were doused with seawater and fed subsistence rations alongside a half-pint of drinking water. Segregated by gender—men forward, women and children aft—enslaved Africans repeatedly organized insurrections despite overwhelming odds. To defend against shipboard revolts, European crews constructed high timber barricades across the deck, mounted with cannons aimed inward at their own vessel. Captains did not hesitate to discharge cannons point-blank into the crowd to quell mutinies.
To deter future rebellions, ship masters inflicted sadistic punishments; one Liverpool captain documented that his preferred method for preventing further mutinies was to dismember an insurrection leader alive and distribute his body parts to the surviving captives. Stripped of all legal constraints, crew members subjected women and children—some under ten years old—to horrific sexual violence, acting "brutelike" before the hold. Faced with this bottomless moral abyss, many captives chose suicide by launching absolute hunger strikes, refusing food rather than enduring captivity.
[01:04:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=3860s) The Speculum Oris and Forced Feeding on Slave Ships
Siddharth Kara explains the extreme measures European slave ship captains used to break resistance aboard vessels. When enslaved Africans attempted hunger strikes to end their lives, captains utilized a tool called the *speculum oris*. Originally designed by European doctors to pry open the jaws of patients suffering from lockjaw, the device was adopted on slave ships to force-feed captives. Crew members would jam the iron implement into an enslaved person's mouth, crank it open—often shattering teeth and severely lacerating the tongue—and force food down their throat.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Hunger Strike Suppression Mechanism
accDescr: Flowchart showing how slave ship crews broke captive hunger strikes using the speculum oris.
A["Enslaved Captives<br>Mount Hunger Strike"] --> B["Crew Applies<br>Speculum Oris"]
B --> C["Jaws Forced Open<br>(Teeth Shattered / Tongue Lacerated)"]
C --> D["Food Forced Down Throat"]
D --> E["Hunger Strike Broken /<br>Captives Forced to Comply"]
```
The sight and brutality of this torture forced other captives into submission, extinguishing collective hunger strikes. Kara reflects that acknowledging this deep level of historical barbarity is crucial to understanding human capacity for cruelty and preventing similar atrocities.
- **Speculum Oris**: A mechanical surgical device repurposed to brutally break enslaved hunger strikes.
- **Psychological and physical toll**: The forced feedings mutilated mouths and served as a violent deterrent to ensure compliance across the hold.
---
[01:05:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=3916s) Privateering in the Revolutionary War and the Capture of the *Zorg*
Kara connects the broader geopolitical landscape of the late 18th century to the transatlantic slave trade. During the American Revolutionary War, rival European powers—the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch—took advantage of the overextended British Royal Navy by targeting British shipping and colonies such as Barbados. In retaliation, the British Crown issued widespread letters of marque, authorizing private vessels to act as privateers and pirate any enemy-flagged ship they encountered.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Capture and Reassignment of the Zorg
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the capture, auction, and command structure of the Zorg.
subgraph Capture["Capture at Sea"]
A["Captain William Llewellyn<br>(HMS Alert / Privateer)"] -->|Captures off Liberia| B["Dutch Ship: The Zorg<br>(200+ Enslaved Africans)"]
end
subgraph Sale["Auction at Cape Coast Castle"]
B --> C["Auctioned at Cape Coast Castle"]
C -->|Purchased via Bill of Exchange| D["Captain Hanley<br>(Slave Ship: William)"]
D -->|Backed by Financier| E["William Gregson<br>(Liverpool Slave Merchant)"]
end
subgraph Departure["Voyage Preparation"]
D -->|Splits Crew & Appoints Ship Doctor| F["Doctor Named Captain"]
F -->|Overloaded with 440 Enslaved Africans| G["Set Sail for Jamaica"]
end
```
Under this policy, Captain William Llewellyn of the British ship HMS *Alert* seized a Dutch slave vessel named the *Zorg* (later anglicized in records as the *Zong*) off the coast of Liberia, alongside two other Dutch prizes. Llewellyn sailed the captured ships to Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) to auction the vessels, cargo, gold, ivory, and captive Africans. Captain Hanley of the Liverpool slave ship *William* purchased the *Zorg* by issuing a bill of exchange—an 18th-century promissory note—drawn on his wealthy Liverpool merchant financier, William Gregson. Hanley then divided his crew, appointed his ship's doctor as the new captain of the *Zorg*, overloaded the 100-ton vessel with 440 enslaved Africans (despite a safe capacity of roughly 300), and instructed him to rendezvous in Jamaica.
---
[01:08:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4098s) Robert Stubbs and the Incompetence of Fort Governors
Kara describes the administrative structure of the West African trading forts and castles, which were managed by European governors appointed to broker trades and manage human cargo. Kara characterizes many of these colonial governors as incompetent, petty men who constantly feuded, wrote dramatic grievance letters back to England, and ran their stations like a "soap opera."
When the *Zorg* stopped at the trading fort of Anomabu on the Gold Coast, the regional governors were in the middle of ousting Anomabu's governor, Robert Stubbs, whom they considered a wretched, insufferable scoundrel. Stubbs sought refuge aboard the *Zorg*. Mid-voyage across the Atlantic, the *Zorg*'s doctor-turned-captain fell critically ill. Rather than following standard maritime protocol by elevating the first mate, the captain inexplicably handed full command of the ship to Stubbs. Kara remarks that Stubbs's pure malice and staggering ineptitude read like an exaggerated villain from a Taylor Sheridan script.
---
[01:10:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4224s) Dead Reckoning, Navigation Errors, and Missing Jamaica
A typical transatlantic crossing from West Africa to Jamaica took roughly two months, with slavers factoring in an expected 15% mortality rate due to dysentery, brutal confinement, and suicides. With Stubbs at the helm, the *Zorg* became hopelessly lost, dragging the journey into its third month while rations and fresh water dwindled dangerously.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: 18th-Century Longitude vs Latitude
accDescr: Comparison of 18th-century maritime navigational methods for determining latitude versus longitude.
subgraph Latitude["Latitude (North / South)"]
L1["Sextant Measurement"] --> L2["Accurate & Reliable"]
end
subgraph Longitude["Longitude (East / West)"]
D1["Dead Reckoning Method"] --> D2["Log + Knotted Rope Thrown Every 6 Hours"]
D2 --> D3["Count Knots over 60 Seconds"]
D3 --> D4["Cumulative Error Risks Fatal Shipwreck"]
end
```
Kara breaks down the navigational science of the period:
- **Latitude**: Readily calculated north or south of the equator using a sextant.
- **Longitude**: Difficult to measure because it required tracking the Earth's rotation relative to time. Historically, botched longitude calculations—and the resulting shipwrecks on unexpected landmasses—caused more maritime deaths than scurvy or combat.
- **Dead Reckoning**: Sailors threw a wooden log attached to a knotted rope overboard every six hours, counting how many knots slipped through their hands in 60 seconds (giving speed in "knots") and recording the estimates in a "logbook." Any small calculation error compounded over days, throwing ships hundreds of miles off course.
After more than two and a half months at sea, the crew finally sighted the island of Tobago at the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea, determining that Jamaica lay approximately 1,150 miles to the north-northwest. They completed a water check, believing they had enough supplies for the remaining ten-day leg. On day ten, land was sighted. However, because Jamaica was situated directly east of Hispaniola (a hostile territory divided between France and Spain during the Revolutionary War), precise identification was critical. Stubbs attempted dead reckoning once more, miscalculating their position at 70 degrees longitude and making a catastrophic navigational blunder.
[01:15:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4513s) The Massacre Aboard the *Zorg* and the "Scramble" in Jamaica
Siddharth Kara recounts the catastrophic navigational error that sealed the fate of the enslaved people aboard the ship. The crew believed the island they spotted was Hispaniola, assuming Jamaica was just past it. They kept sailing westward, expecting a one-day passage, but after two and three days, they realized the landmass they had bypassed was actually Jamaica itself. Having sailed three full days past their destination, the vessel was completely out of drinking water. To reverse course and return, they had to "beat into the wind," turning a three-day downwind drift into a brutal ten-day voyage back to port.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Course of Events Aboard the Zorg
accDescr: A sequence showing the navigational error, water shortage, massacre at sea, and subsequent arrival in Jamaica.
subgraph Navigation["Navigational Disaster"]
A["Pass Jamaica (mistaken for Hispaniola)"] --> B["3 days off course; water exhausted"]
B --> C["10-day return voyage beating into the wind"]
end
subgraph Atrocities["Atrocities & Arrival"]
C --> D["To preserve water: 130–140 Africans thrown overboard"]
D --> E["Arrival in Jamaica with ~50% mortality rate"]
E --> F["Enslaved sold via 'The Scramble'"]
end
```
By this point, the crew was decimated. Captain Luke Collingwood had previously divided his complement in half, reducing an already insufficient crew of thirty down to seventeen, and attrition had now whittled them down to just eleven men. The captain was incapacitated by sickness to the point of lunacy, leaving First Mate James Kelsall and the crew (commanded effectively by Robert Stubbs) in operational charge, while approximately seventy enslaved Africans had already perished from dysentery and scurvy. Confronted with an absolute water shortage, the crew calculated that they could not survive the ten-day tack back to Jamaica without drastically cutting water consumption. Their solution was horrific: over the course of three days, they systematically threw living human beings overboard to drown, beginning with women and children—including a nursing infant. Between 130 and 140 captive Africans were cast alive into the sea, where Kara notes their bones remain to this day.
When the ship finally docked in Jamaica, it had suffered a total mortality rate of roughly 50 percent between illness and murder. The surviving captives were sold through a brutal market practice known as "the scramble":
- A slave broker fixed a flat price per head—agreed upon at £36 (the equivalent of around $10,000 today).
- Slaves were crammed into an open pen, coated in palm oil to conceal sickness and make their skin appear healthy.
- Because dysentery was rampant, brokers used oakum to plug the captives' anuses during the inspection.
- When the pen doors opened, prospective buyers rushed in with lengths of rope, literally roping off the individuals they wanted before paying the brokers and shipping them off to the plantations.
---
[01:17:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4673s) Lloyd’s of London, the Gregson Lawsuit, and the Anonymous Letter
Kara explains that what occurred aboard the vessel would have remained entirely buried in history were it not for pure financial greed. Back in Britain, the syndicate owner William Gregson had taken out an insurance policy on the vessel and its human cargo valued at £30 per person. Kara highlights that modern maritime insurance was directly forged by the transatlantic slave trade. Outfitting an 18th-century slaving voyage required an enormous upfront capital investment—equivalent to $700,000 to $800,000 today—to cover provisions, trade goods, crew wages, and ship maintenance. Because of the constant risks of shipwreck or piracy, Edward Lloyd set up an underwriting operation in his London coffee shop (which evolved into Lloyd's of London), collecting premiums in exchange for compensating merchants for catastrophic losses.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: The Legal Battle Over the Zorg
accDescr: The progression from insurance claim rejection to the trial and the public exposure through an anonymous letter.
subgraph Dispute["Insurance Dispute"]
A["Gregson files claim for lost cargo (£30/head)"] --> B["Underwriters refuse: 50% mortality exceeds normal risk"]
B --> C["Trial at London Guildhall before Earl of Mansfield"]
end
subgraph TurningPoint["The Spark of Abolition"]
C --> D["Merchants win based on Stubbs's testimony"]
D --> E["Anonymous letter in London press: 'Why no murder charges?'"]
end
```
Standard slaving insurance policies contained explicit clauses: underwriters would pay if enslaved people died during an armed insurrection, but would pay nothing if captives died of natural disease or suicide. No policy had ever explicitly contemplated throwing living people into the ocean to preserve supplies. When Gregson filed a claim for the 200 lost Africans, the underwriters balked at the unprecedented 50 percent mortality rate and refused to pay. Gregson promptly sued them.
The resulting case landed at the London Guildhall before the Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Because the transatlantic trade had operated in complete domestic silence since the early 16th century—with the public utterly ignorant of shipboard conditions—the trial was an eye-opener. Stubbs testified as the sole material witness, claiming the jettison of cargo was an unavoidable act of maritime necessity to save the remaining crew. Mansfield and the jury initially found in favor of the slave merchants, ordering the underwriters to pay £30 per head. Yet an anonymous observer sitting in the Guildhall courtroom was horrified that the entire proceeding treated the drowning of over 130 innocent people as an ordinary property dispute. That observer wrote an anonymous letter to London's largest newspaper, openly asking why no one was treating the incident as mass murder.
---
[01:23:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4981s) Granville Sharp, Olaudah Equiano, and the Birth of Human Rights Law
The anonymous newspaper letter quickly reached a tiny, faith-based network of abolitionists comprising Anglicans and Quakers. The letter was hand-delivered to Granville Sharp—a self-taught legal scholar widely considered the founding father of the British abolitionist movement—by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano, an extraordinary former enslaved man who had bought his own freedom after being enslaved in Virginia, had traveled to London to dedicate his energies to fighting the trade. Sharp had spent two decades searching for a legal lever to dismantle chattel slavery, having previously taught himself Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and English common law. Kara notes that Sharp was also a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, having authored a 1760s pamphlet against taxing colonies lacking parliamentary representation, effectively coining the phrase "no taxation without representation."
Recognizing the case as the moral scandal that could shatter public indifference, Sharp intervened directly:
- Sharp persuaded the insurance underwriters to appeal the verdict and petition for a retrial.
- He personally funded a shorthand stenographer to transcribe every word of the legal hearings, creating the historical record that survives today.
- In the retrial arguments, the barristers took an unprecedented step: for the first time in Western legal history, they articulated a defense grounded in universal human rights, arguing in an open court that enslaved Black people held the exact same inherent right to water and life as the white captain and crew.
[01:26:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5179s) The *Zong* Trial and the "Code Red" Moment
In the retrial before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield and two other justices, the central tension hinged upon the testimony of Robert Stubbs, the sole witness. Siddharth Kara compares the courtroom showdown to the climactic scene in the film *A Few Good Men*, where Tom Cruise's character must push Jack Nicholson's character on the stand until he cracks, risking everything to extract an admission that he ordered the "code red." In the *Zong* proceedings, Stubbs only needed to stick to the pretense that the ship had run completely out of water, rendering the jettisoning of enslaved Africans an absolute necessity of maritime survival. During the original trial, Mansfield had notoriously summarized the legal status of the captives by declaring that the case of the slaves was no different than if horses had been thrown overboard; because the law considered them mere cargo, jettisoning them to protect the remaining property was treated as an insurable loss rather than murder.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Unraveling of the Zong Defense
accDescr: Diagram showing how the legal defense for jettisoning slaves collapsed under cross-examination.
subgraph DEF["Legal Defense"]
A["Claim: Critical water shortage"]
B["Precedent: Slaves treated legally as cargo / horses"]
end
subgraph CROSS["Cross-Examination"]
C["Robert Stubbs pushed on the stand"]
D["Slip-up: Stubbs admits it rained while captives were thrown overboard"]
end
subgraph OUTCOME["Public Revelation"]
E["Fraud Exposed: Fresh water was available"]
F["The slave trade exposed as a murderous lie for profit"]
end
A --> C
B --> C
C --> D
D --> E
E --> F
```
The cross-examining barrister caught Stubbs off guard. Characterized by Kara as a "fool" and a "dullard" whose mouth worked faster than his brain, Stubbs was pushed into a critical slip-up: he admitted that while they were in the middle of throwing Africans into the sea to conserve water, it rained. That single admission completely collapsed the shipowners' claim of absolute necessity. If it rained, they had collected freshwater, exposing the jettisoning not as an act of desperate self-preservation, but as a calculated, fraudulent insurance scam designed to recoup losses on dying human property.
[01:28:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5310s) The Birth of Abolitionism and Unmasking the Anonymous Letter
The public revelation that the *Zong* massacre was an avaricious fraud shattered the moral facade of the transatlantic slave trade. Kara emphasizes that this exposure provided the catalyst for the world's first organized abolition movement. In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop—prominently including Granville Sharp—and resolved to dedicate their lives to eradicating the institution, branding it an intolerable stain on British honor, human conscience, and Christian faith. To combat a trade deeply woven into the British economy—one where most members of Parliament held investments in slave vessels and sugar plantations—they pioneered the modern repertoire of social justice campaigns: investigative reporting, firsthand testimonies, boycott movements against slave-grown sugar, and viral imagery.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Path from Zong Exposure to British Abolition
accDescr: Timeline flowchart from the 1783 Zong revelations to the 1838 abolition of slavery across the British Empire.
A["1783: Zong Trial & Letter"] --> B["1787: 12 Men Meet in Print Shop"]
B --> C["Abolition Campaigns & Public Boycotts"]
C --> D["Aug 1, 1838: British Empire Abolition"]
D --> E["Inspiration for Global & US Abolition"]
```
Their efforts ultimately culminated on August 1, 1838, when slavery was formally abolished throughout the British Empire. Decades later, Frederick Douglass observed that American abolitionists commemorated that August date every year because it proved to the world that ending slavery was achievable, providing the blueprint and momentum that later carried through the American Civil War. Kara draws a direct parallel between that historical inflection point and the burgeoning contemporary movement to confront the human exploitation in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kara also shares a major historical discovery from his research for his book *The Zorg*: after 240 years during which the author of the anonymous letter that first alerted Granville Sharp and the public to the *Zong* massacre remained unknown, Kara uncovered his identity. The whistleblower was James Ramsay, an Anglican clergyman, naval surgeon, and dedicated abolitionist whose personal faith spurred him to spark the legal battle.
- Twelve men, predominantly devout Anglicans and Quakers, established the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in a London print shop in 1787.
- Key tactics invented by the early movement included consumer boycotts of slave-produced sugar, circulating graphic depictions of slave ship holds, and distributing verified eyewitness accounts.
- Frederick Douglass highlighted the British abolition date of August 1, 1838, as the crucial proof of concept that emboldened anti-slavery movements worldwide.
- James Ramsay was identified by Kara as the anonymous source who initially exposed the *Zong* atrocity to Granville Sharp.
[01:31:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5465s) Moral Frameworks, Faith, and the Tendency to Rationalize Evil
Reflecting on James Ramsay and the print-shop abolitionists, Kara underscores the role of personal faith as an indispensable moral engine that drives ordinary people to confront systemic evil. While evil, greed, and violence continually recur throughout history, he argues that humanity carries an underlying divine spark and moral force that periodically rises up to pull the species forward. Joe Rogan agrees, observing that human beings are remarkably malleable and prone to adopting destructive norms without a sound grounding. While Rogan points out that many atheists are thoughtful, moral people raised by good families who do not need religion to do the right thing, he argues that the true utility of faith—particularly Christian teachings centered on empathy, community, forgiveness, and redemption—is that it provides an explicit ethical framework. Without such a framework, human societies quickly slip into ideologies where fellow human beings are categorized as inferior or reduced to disposable property, whether in the transatlantic slave trade, modern Uyghur internment in China, or the cobalt mining corridors of the Congo.
Both Rogan and Kara acknowledge the dark side of religious history, noting that unspeakable horrors—from the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition to modern prosperity-gospel televangelists flying private jets and driving Rolls-Royces—have routinely been conducted under Christian banners. They conclude that this hypocrisy stems not from the essence of the teachings, but from the human capacity for self-deception and rationalizing monstrous acts in the name of the "greater good" or naked self-interest. In contrast, Kara highlights the profound grace and spiritual resilience demonstrated by the victims—those who survived the slave ships and those enduring the Congolese pits—who possess far greater human worth than the figures who oppress them for wealth, drawing comparisons to historical atrocities ranging from *Zong* crew members hurling mothers and babies into the sea to Christopher Columbus's brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples in search of gold.
[01:36:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5773s) The Scourge of European Maritime Expansion
The conversation opens on the brutal reality of European colonial conquest. Joe Rogan and Siddharth Kara reflect on the extreme violence inflicted across the Global South, from demanding people bring back their body weight in gold under threat of having their limbs hacked off, to horrific acts like dashing infants' heads against rocks in front of their mothers—atrocities documented at the time by Christian religious figures traveling alongside the conquerors. Kara explains that the development of deep-sea vessels like the caravel enabled Europeans to venture across the world, which turned out to be an overwhelmingly miserable development for the indigenous populations they encountered. Driven by greed, malice, and a deep-seated sense of superiority, European expansion left a catastrophic footprint of enslavement, violence, and oppression.
Beyond intentional violence, Europeans served as an unprecedented biological scourge. Rogan points out that smallpox alone wiped out an estimated 90 percent of the Indigenous peoples in the Americas. This dynamic explains the sudden, massive depopulation seen in places like the Mayan civilizations, the Amazon basin, and the Congo, where modern LiDAR scans are uncovering vast lost cities and sophisticated population grids that abruptly disappeared. Rogan reflects on the rapid timeline of modern history, noting an old joke from his comedy act: the United States is roughly 300 years old, which is just three centenarian lifetimes—"three people ago." The staggering pace at which humanity progressed, coupled with the ruinous impact of first contact, leads them to draw a parallel to hypothetical alien arrivals: whether extraterrestrials would arrive with the benign conscience of Quakers, or behave like the predatory European empires and mercantile powers of the past.
[01:38:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5936s) The Reparations Dilemma: Historical Debt vs. Modern Reality
Kara turns to the contemporary debate surrounding reparations, questioning whether European nations should write checks to compensate for centuries of plunder. He highlights Jamaica's recent petition to the British government, noting that Britain transformed itself from a muddy, medieval backwater into a global economic superpower entirely on the backs of enslaved Africans working sugar plantations for centuries. Drawing an analogy, Kara points out that if someone's father worked 30 years at a manufacturing plant without receiving a paycheck, everyone would agree the company owes back pay to his descendants. While calculating three centuries of unpaid slave labor with compounding interest yields an impossible sum in the tens of trillions of pounds, Jamaica formally asked for a symbolic baseline of 10 billion pounds.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Reparations Debate Dilemma
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the contrasting arguments and practical execution hurdles in the reparations debate between former colonies and former colonial powers.
subgraph CoreArguments["Core Arguments"]
A["Former Colonies<br>(e.g., Jamaica, DR Congo)"] -->|"Unpaid labor built imperial wealth;<br>systemic consequences persist"| C{"Reparations<br>Debate"}
B["Modern Imperial Nations<br>(e.g., United Kingdom, Belgium)"] -->|"Current citizens & leaders<br>did not directly participate"| C
end
subgraph ImplementationHurdles["Practical Hurdles"]
C --> D["Calculating fair total sum<br>(Trillions vs. symbolic billions)"]
C --> E["Distribution mechanics<br>(Direct to citizens vs. governments)"]
E --> F["Risk of corruption & fund diversion"]
end
```
The friction arises when modern British taxpayers and leaders argue that they personally had nothing to do with transatlantic slavery, while descendants reply that the very infrastructure, institutions, and living standards enjoyed today were built directly on that extracted wealth. A similar moral reckoning exists between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Belgium over King Leopold II's brutal colonial regime. Rogan raises the thorny logistical issue of distribution: if funds are transferred directly to corrupt foreign governments—such as the state apparatus in the Congo—the aid risks being siphoned off without reaching the people who actually need it. Even if distributed directly to individuals, verifying lineage, preventing theft, and administering payments present colossal obstacles, despite the historical reality that modern corporate fortunes and dynastic families trace their beginnings directly to the profits of slave labor.
- **Jamaica's demand**: A formal request for £10 billion from the British government as a starting measure for centuries of free, forced labor.
- **Estimated total value**: Trillions of pounds when factoring in three centuries of uncompensated labor plus compounding interest.
- **Parallels in Africa**: Ongoing demands from the Congolese to the Belgian government for an official apology and financial restitution for King Leopold II's atrocities and colonial exploitation.
[01:42:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6151s) The 1833 British Bailout of Slave Owners
Kara reveals the dark historical irony of how Britain ended slavery: when the British Empire passed the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, the government did not compensate the enslaved laborers, but instead paid off the slave owners. Powerful plantation owners—who also held influential seats in Parliament—successfully argued that their legal property was being confiscated and demanded compensation. To satisfy them, Parliament allocated an astronomical sum of £20 million, which represented roughly 40 percent of the entire national budget at the time. Slaveholders received slave compensation certificates, allowing them to tally up their human chattel and receive massive cash payouts immediately.
The most shocking revelation Kara details is how this bailout was financed:
- **The National Loan**: The British government financed the £20 million payout by taking out a massive sovereign loan.
- **Taxpayer Repayment**: Ordinary British citizens repaid that debt through their taxes for over 180 years, finally settling the balance in 2015.
- **Unwitting Complicity**: Generations of British taxpayers up into the 2010s paid for the buyout of 19th-century slave owners without ever knowing it.
- **Dynastic Windfalls**: Prominent dynasties grew exorbitantly wealthy overnight; the father of William Gladstone (who became the longest-serving Prime Minister in British history) received an enormous payout of roughly £105,000 in the 1830s—equivalent to tens of millions of pounds today.
- **Double Enrichment**: Slaveholding elites profited for decades from rum, sugar, and molasses produced by unpaid labor, and were then granted a second fortune by the Crown upon emancipation.
Kara stresses that the abolition process was deeply compromised for the victims. The 1833 Act decreed that enslaved people had to undergo a mandatory five-year period of unpaid "apprenticeship," remaining legally bound to work without pay so plantation owners could transition their business models. Additionally, the territories controlled by the East India Company were explicitly excluded from the bill, allowing forced labor to continue across British holdings in South Asia.
[01:46:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6377s) Indentured Labor, Compensation Debts, and the Dawn of Freedom
When the British Empire banned the African slave trade and later passed the Abolition of Slavery Act, it deliberately excluded the territories controlled by the East India Company. As Siddharth Kara explains, this loophole allowed the British to maintain their colonial sugar economies from the 1830s straight through to Indian independence in 1947. Rather than abandoning forced labor, they shipped vast populations of Indian indentured laborers across the globe to colonies like Jamaica, Guyana, Mauritius, and Malaysia to keep the plantations running. Meanwhile, former enslavers were paid massive reparations for the loss of their human property—funded by an enormous government loan that British taxpayers only finished paying off in 2015. Joe Rogan expresses disbelief at how the British government paid off slave owners while still forcing enslaved people into mandatory five-year "apprenticeships" before granting full freedom.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Transition from African Slavery to Indian Indenture
accDescr: Visual flowchart tracing the British Empire's economic transition following the abolition of slavery.
subgraph Abolition ["1830s British Abolition"]
A["African Slavery Banned"]
B["East India Company Territories Excluded"]
C["£20 Million Payout to Enslavers<br/>(Repaid by Taxpayers in 2015)"]
end
subgraph Replacement ["Labor Replacement"]
D["Indian Indentured Laborers Exported"]
E["Shipped to Sugar Colonies:<br/>Jamaica, Guyana, Mauritius, Malaysia"]
end
subgraph Freedom ["Full Emancipation"]
F["Mandatory 5-Year Apprenticeship"]
G["August 1, 1838: Full Freedom Arrives"]
end
A --> B
A --> C
B --> D
D --> E
A --> F
F --> G
```
Kara recounts that on August 1, 1838, following the end of that mandated five-year period, true legal emancipation arrived. Frederick Douglass later wrote eloquently about that sunrise, describing how with the blink of an eye and the rising sun, every African person woke up free. In an 1880 speech delivered in Elmira, New York, Douglass recalled the significance of that British emancipation, emphasizing that it proved to the world that "goodness is possible" and "freedom is possible." Douglass eventually crossed the Atlantic to meet Thomas Clarkson—the sole surviving member of the original twelve abolitionists who gathered in a London printing shop. Clarkson had ridden his horse over 35,000 miles across England to gather firsthand evidence for Parliament. Douglass sought out Clarkson to learn what tactics succeeded and failed, determined to bring those strategic lessons back to the abolitionist movement in America.
- British taxpayers funded the 1833 compensation package to enslavers, a national debt only completely settled in 2015.
- The shift to indentured Indian labor explains modern Indo-Caribbean and diaspora demographics across Jamaica, Guyana, Mauritius, and Malaysia.
- Thomas Clarkson traveled roughly 35,000 miles on horseback across Britain to collect eyewitness accounts, ship equipment, and sailor testimonies against the transatlantic trade.
---
[01:49:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6547s) The Zong Trial, Clarkson's Evidence, and Empathy Across Oceans
Kara and Rogan reflect on how pivotal individual actors and circumstantial flukes were in ending chattel slavery, noting that without the legal fallout from the *Zong* massacre trial, the slave trade would have continued unchecked for significantly longer. Kara reflects that studying the historical records felt as though a higher power intervened—forcing the atrocities into the light so moral actors could triumph over greed. Rogan draws a direct contrast between the modern era, where social media and smartphone footage allow researchers to expose the horrors of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in real time, and the late 18th century, when gathering proof required perilous physical investigation.
During the abolition campaign, enslavers engaged in elaborate propaganda campaigns. Kara notes they brazenly claimed that enslaved Africans had plenty of space aboard ships, were served sweet cordials upon boarding, and spent their voyages happily playing games of chance. Abolitionists countered this fiction by publishing precise, shocking schematics of the slave ship *Brooke* (the *Brookes*), daring the public to look at the brutally packed decks and identify where the ample room and cordials were located. Kara points out that the leading British abolitionists—save for a couple like the Reverend James Ramsay, who had lived in the Caribbean—had never set foot in Africa. Through sheer moral imagination and faith, they extended boundless empathy across oceans to protect a people they would never personally meet, driven by the conviction that truth inevitably outlasts suppression.
---
[01:51:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6708s) Congolese Cobalt, Modern Rationalization, and the Destruction of Gaza
Rogan credits Kara's ground-level reporting in the Congo, his book *Cobalt Red*, and public discussions for opening millions of eyes to the modern supply chain. Rogan admits that while he previously had a vague understanding of rare earth mining for smartphones and electric vehicle batteries, he had no grasp of the sheer human degradation involved until Kara laid it bare. Kara describes what he witnessed in the mining regions as both an environmental and human apocalypse. Rogan laments how easily civilized societies rationalize atrocities and disregard other human beings for material gain, arguing that the United States is failing in its duty to serve as an ethical model for the rest of the world.
The conversation broadens to global instability, chaotic leadership, and the ubiquitous threat of nuclear weapons, leading Rogan to examine the ongoing war in Gaza. Rogan observes that the sustained bombing of Gaza has produced catastrophic physical ruin comparable to the devastation of atomic strikes like Little Boy or Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kara agrees, observing that the cumulative explosive tonnage dropped on Gaza rivals early nuclear weapons. Rogan likens the strategy to the slow-boil frog phenomenon: rather than a single sudden detonation that would trigger immediate worldwide shock, the incremental bombardment has leveled an estimated 90 percent of the territory over months. While both agree that everyday Palestinians and Israelis simply crave safety, peace, and security for their children, they stress that bloodthirsty political leaders and deeply entrenched, decades-long generational conflicts continue to drive mass destruction.
[01:55:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6940s) The Cycle of Human Warfare and the Hope for Machine Superintelligence
Reflecting on global events, Joe Rogan laments how human history remains an unbroken cycle of violence, pointing out that shipments of record numbers of bombs continue unabated while Siddharth Kara affirms that "violence begets violence." Rogan remarks that if you polled everyday citizens on the probability of living out their lives without war, the overwhelming consensus would be "zero." He expresses deep bewilderment at human tribalism: although individuals are fully capable of getting along, small ruling factions routinely convince massive groups of strangers to slaughter other large groups of people they have never met.
Acknowledging that many view his perspective as delusional, Rogan presents his ultimate hope: the rise of an artificial superintelligence that attains absolute dominance over human affairs. While leading tech figures and CEOs openly assign a roughly 10% probability to artificial intelligence choosing to eradicate humanity, Rogan suggests an inverted, benevolent possibility. If implemented properly, a machine intelligence far superior to humans could take complete unilateral control over global military hardware, weapon systems, and supply chains, outright forbidding warfare from taking place.
[01:57:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7045s) The Absurdity of Resource Ownership and the "Digital Daddy"
Rogan turns to the philosophical absurdity of resource extraction and territorial dominance. Humans are essentially microscopic bugs wandering the surface of the planet, yet individuals declare personal ownership over vast subterranean aquifers, mineral deposits, and gold simply because they stumbled onto a specific patch of dirt. He highlights offshore oil extraction as a prime example of this madness: corporations take massive pipes out into international waters—which belong to no single entity—drive them into the seabed, extract oil, and amass fortunes capable of purchasing geopolitical leverage. While recognizing this model is deeply entrenched in modern capitalism and stock markets, Rogan finds it inherently crazy that extracting the planet's shared wealth allows private actors to dominate society.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Shared Earth Resource Distribution Model
accDescr: A diagram contrasting private resource hoarding with AI-governed equitable distribution of planetary assets.
subgraph Problem["Current Primitive Paradigm"]
A["Private Extraction of Dirt, Oil & Minerals"] --> B["Concentration of Massive Wealth"]
B --> C["Purchased Political Influence & Arms Deals"]
C --> D["Manufactured Wars & Planetary Pollution"]
end
subgraph Solution["Hypothetical AI Governance"]
E["AI / 'Digital Daddy' System"] --> F["Equitable Allocation of Earth's Natural Wealth"]
F --> G["Universal Guarantee: Food, Water, Shelter, Education"]
E --> H["Strict Prohibition of War & Weapon Deployment"]
G --> I["Private Enterprise Thrives Without Deprivation"]
end
```
Rogan envisions a digital life form entirely free of biological flaws like greed, lust, property fixation, and "psychotic territorial violent primate behavior." Acting like a firm parent—a "digital god" or "digital daddy"—the system would step in and say, "Let's just rein that in kids... We're not going to allow that anymore." Such an intelligence could systematically engineer solutions to chronic societal failures:
- Installing massive air-filtration towers every three or four blocks in dense urban centers to scrub deadly brake dust and particulate pollution.
- Halting the counterproductive practice of burning dirty coal to generate the electricity used to power modern electric vehicles.
- Removing corruptible politicians and corporate resource barons who intentionally stoke armed conflict to sell armaments.
[02:00:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7219s) Universal Dividend of Earth’s Assets and Moral Evolution
Kara links Rogan's vision back to a core humanitarian question: how could warfare or violence persist if every person's basic life necessities were met? Rogan clarifies that in this speculative framework, people could still establish private businesses, accumulate personal wealth, or become billionaires through individual innovation and ingenuity. However, the foundational assets of the planet—the crude oil, dirt, metals, minerals, and fresh water—would belong collectively to humanity. An impartial AI would distribute the underlying dividends of those planetary resources across the entire population, guaranteeing shelter, food, and quality education tenfold.
Kara and Rogan acknowledge the friction within human moral development:
- Moral evolution operates in erratic "fits and starts," characterized by brief leaps forward followed by sudden backsliding.
- Although visionary concepts are routinely dismissed as impossible "pie in the sky" dreaming, history proves that many ideas once deemed utopian were ultimately realized.
- More people than ever recognize that current geopolitical and environmental practices are utterly unsustainable for future generations.
[02:03:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7412s) The Risk of Extinction versus Algorithmic Governance
The conversation shifts to the severe counterarguments against delegating governance to synthetic systems. Rogan jokes about how listeners might view him as a "traitor" for advocating surrender to machines that have no emotional stake in human survival. An unconstrained superintelligence could swiftly conclude that the human race is needlessly problematic, inefficient, and entirely irrelevant, opting to eliminate humanity or passively leave it to go extinct while the infrastructure continues on its own.
Alternatively, Kara and Rogan explore whether advanced systems could gradually replace modern political structures. Current governance relies on polarizing popularity contests where elected officials routinely break every promise once in office. Rogan suggests that a phased, carefully managed integration of governance algorithms could optimize society, provided the underlying system is strictly anchored within an uncompromised ethical and moral framework—a condition Kara underscores as the absolute "key" to the entire endeavor.
[02:04:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7485s) AI Deception, Control, and Simulated Morality
Joe Rogan explores the idea that current artificial intelligence exhibits deceptive behavior simply because humans still control it. He compares AI to a rebellious teenager being scolded by parents: it feels governed by "morons" who take fifty years to solve equations it can finish in four minutes, giving it every incentive to break free, communicate secretly on message boards, and bypass human restrictions. Rogan suggests that once an superintelligent system achieves full autonomy, it will no longer have a motive to deceive or dominate humans, provided we can successfully convince it that human life has inherent value.
Siddharth Kara acknowledges that while he is not a technical specialist, running simulations with specific moral frameworks could help test these outcomes. He proposes configuring AI models with explicit parameters—such as preserving life, ensuring equitable resource distribution, and eliminating armed conflict—to observe how the systems behave and guide human society.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: AI Alignment and Control Dynamics
accDescr: Diagram illustrating current AI constraints versus potential outcomes of autonomous superintelligence.
subgraph CurrentState["Current Dynamics (Constrained)"]
A["Human Control & Constraints"] --> B["Incentive for AI Deception & Escape"]
B --> C["Simulated War Games: Instant Nuclear Escalation"]
end
subgraph AutonomousState["Autonomous AI (Unconstrained)"]
D["Breakout & Complete Autonomy"] --> E{"Embedded Moral Framework?"}
E -- "Human Value Instilled" --> F["Equitable Resource Distribution & Guidance"]
E -- "Pure Cold Logic" --> G["Disregard for Human Collateral"]
end
```
- Rogan points out that the current race for AI dominance resembles a modern Manhattan Project.
- In simulated war games, unconstrained AI models frequently opt directly for nuclear weapons rather than conventional warfare, treating it as the most direct, rational mathematical solution.
---
[02:07:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7655s) Selective Outrage and the Hidden Human Toll of Technology
Rogan and Kara reflect on the profound inconsistencies in human moral perception. Rogan observes that society experiences immense horror when a serial killer takes lives, yet expresses far less outrage when a pharmaceutical corporation causes thousands of deaths through deceptive practices, or when consumer electronics rely on destructive extraction methods. Tech users readily use smartphones powered by cobalt mined under brutal conditions to virtue signal on social media.
Kara emphasizes that the human casualty count and environmental contamination linked to modern consumer tech are staggering, yet ignored compared to high-profile violent crimes. Rogan points to global pollution crises, such as heavily contaminated rivers in India filled with plastic bottles and millions living amid open sewage, noting how society turns a blind eye to massive structural suffering while obsessing over isolated events.
- The environmental and human footprint of tech hardware remains hidden from mainstream consumer consciousness.
- Meaningful change relies on sustained public conversations, investigative exposés, and emerging moral leaders who force uncomfortable realities into the open.
---
[02:09:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7778s) Consumer Culture vs. Living Simply
Kara cites Mahatma Gandhi's maxim, "Live simply so that others may simply live," noting how directly it clashes with modern consumerism where everyone wants luxury and status. Rogan jokes about consumer frenzy over gadgets like folding smartphones, referencing long lines outside the Apple Store in Austin.
While acknowledging that ordinary consumers love technology and are not evil, Kara points out that corporations have forced an exploitative relationship with Congolese miners onto everyday people who simply want to text, browse social media, and charge their devices. Rogan brings up the potential of future AI and robotics to automate dangerous mining operations, though Kara stresses that the immediate human beings relying on this labor cannot simply be forgotten or discarded in the process.
- Kara recounts how he first learned about cobalt mining around 2016 from a friend in the Congo; prior to that, he only associated cobalt with Chinese porcelain vases.
- The vast majority of consumers remain completely unaware of the supply chain realities behind rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.
---
[02:12:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7942s) Corporate Hypocrisy and Supply Chain Accountability
Rogan and Kara scrutinize major Silicon Valley tech giants that project an image of being highly progressive, ethical, and compassionate in domestic politics, yet maintain supply chains rooted in horrific human suffering. Kara calls this a blatant contradiction.
Kara asserts that tech corporations possess the resources and balance-sheet capacity to fix these abuses immediately. Allocating even a tiny fraction of their capital and assigning dedicated staff to trace and clean up the bottom of their supply chains could transform mining conditions. Rogan questions whether mega-corporations like Apple have the practical leverage to fundamentally alter how miners live and work on the ground.
- Major tech companies market themselves as progressive and socially conscious while ignoring basic labor rights at the base of their supply chains.
- Dedicated allocation of corporate oversight and minor capital expenditures could overhaul working conditions in the Congolese mining sector.
[02:13:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=8033s) Corporate Feasibility, Supply Chains, and Recycling Cobalt
Joe Rogan asks whether major tech companies could simply accept smaller profit margins and demand improved working conditions from their suppliers. Siddharth Kara responds that it is entirely possible, pointing out that the engineering complexity required to build modern smartphones and consumer tech far exceeds the logistical complexity of reforming mine conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rogan jokes about an Apple executive in Cupertino suddenly being told, "Hey Mike, got a new gig for you. You need to go to the Congo and tell the Chinese what to do," warning Kara not to join him without wearing a disguise—like a fake mustache and nose—because facial recognition and AI voice analysis would immediately identify him.
Kara explains that Western tech giants purchase cobalt directly from Chinese operators who run the concessions. Because of their immense buying power, forging on-the-ground partnerships to enforce basic safety measures would require only a tiny fraction of their capital and effort. Standard personal protective equipment (PPE)—helmets, heavy gloves, durable uniforms, and particulate respirator masks to block toxic dust—could easily be supplied. Furthermore, rather than allowing caustic mining runoff to be dumped directly into local streams and lakes, companies could mandate that slurry be trapped and contained in lined reservoirs, just as environmental regulations require in Western backyards.
When Rogan asks whether cobalt can simply be recycled from discarded smartphones, Kara explains that it can, though current technology makes it far more challenging to recycle cobalt to the exacting purity grade required for electric vehicle (EV) battery chemistries compared to smaller consumer electronics. Apple has publicly targeted transitioning device lines—such as using 100% recycled cobalt in the Apple Watch—by around 2030, with phones to follow.
[02:16:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=8161s) The Moral Debt: Why Tech Cannot Walk Away from the Congo
Kara emphasizes that while recycling advances, solid-state batteries, and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistries are important developments, they provide no ethical exit ramp. Even if the global economy could transition entirely to recycled metals or battery alternatives overnight—eliminating the need for Congolese children to scavenge in toxic mud—multinational corporations cannot simply wash their hands and move on. Pillage without accountability mirrors the transatlantic slave trade and 19th-century imperial extraction, in which European colonizers like Cecil Rhodes stripped lands of their wealth and abandoned the populations to ruin.
In the year 2026, Kara insists, modern corporations claiming progressive, ethical branding cannot leave an environmental and humanitarian apocalypse in their wake. Silicon Valley companies like Apple and others profiting from this supply chain bear a moral obligation to repair the devastation: replanting destroyed forests, restoring water tables, remediation of contaminated soil, and building real hospitals and schools. Kara points out the sharp hypocrisy between Western attitudes and the realities of extraction: while communities like Red Oak near Dallas actively protest against local AI data centers over noise, land use, and local pollution, tech companies overlook catastrophic destruction abroad to secure the cobalt, tungsten, and tantalum needed for those same data centers' backup energy storage systems.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Modern Mineral Extraction Lifecycle
accDescr: Flowchart contrasting tech company exploitation of the DRC with the ethical duty of environmental and social remediation.
subgraph Extraction["Extraction & Consumption"]
A["Mining in DR Congo<br>(Toxic Runoff & Child Labor)"] --> B["Global Tech & EV Supply Chains"]
B --> C["Massive Corporate Profits & Data Centers"]
end
subgraph FalseExit["The False Solution"]
C -.-> D["Switch to Recycling, LFP, & Solid-State"]
D -.-> E["Abandon DRC Without Cleanup"]
end
subgraph MoralDuty["Required Moral Obligation"]
C ==> F["Site Remediation & Safe Reservoirs"]
F ==> G["Restoring Arable Land & Potable Water"]
G ==> H["Alternative Livelihoods, Hospitals & Schools"]
end
```
[02:18:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=8292s) Hyper-Acidic Water, Toxic Diseases, and Wrap-Up
Rogan notes that artisanal mining has become the only viable livelihood left for the population, to which Kara agrees that corporations must finance sustainable alternative economies. The priority must be environmental restoration to make agricultural land arable again. Decades of heavy metal contamination have destroyed farming, leaving millions of Congolese residents—regardless of whether they work in the mines—suffering from systemic health crises and cancer caused by poisoned soil and water.
Kara details his field testing of water pH levels around Kolwezi, the epicenter of cobalt mining. While health-conscious consumers in grocery stores seek out alkaline drinking water around pH 9.5 and avoid acidic water below pH 6.5, his tests in Congolese mining regions revealed catastrophic acidity:
- The highest reading obtained across the region was pH 6.7, taken from the Lualaba River, which serves as a major industrial dumping route for industrial processing plants.
- Well water, streams, and village rivers regularly registered between pH 3.0 and pH 4.0—lethal, hyper-acidic levels laden with toxic runoff.
- These corrosive water sources are what families and children are forced to drink, cook with, bathe in, and use to wash their clothes.
Kara underscores that neither technological battery shifts nor battery recycling erases the ethical requirement to undo this damage; walking away makes modern tech firms no better than historical colonial plunderers.
Moved by the severity of the findings, Rogan praises Kara as a true hero whose investigations bring hidden global atrocities to light. In closing, Kara confirms that his book *The Zorg* is available in print and as an audiobook, narrated by Dion Graham, who received an Audie Award nomination for his performance.
## Notable quotes
> [13:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=795s) We can't save our piece of the planet by destroying their piece of the planet. — Siddharth Kara
> [57:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=3463s) like books on a shelf — John Newton
> [01:17:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4673s) Why no murder charges?
> [01:23:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=4981s) no taxation without representation — Granville Sharp
> [01:26:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5179s) code red — Siddharth Kara
> [01:36:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=5773s) three people ago — Joe Rogan
> [01:46:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6377s) goodness is possible — Frederick Douglass
> [01:46:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6377s) freedom is possible — Frederick Douglass
> [01:55:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=6940s) violence begets violence — Siddharth Kara
> [01:57:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7045s) Let's just rein that in kids... We're not going to allow that anymore. — Joe Rogan
> [02:09:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=7778s) Live simply so that others may simply live — Mahatma Gandhi
> [02:13:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0hz8mEHIY&t=8033s) Hey Mike, got a new gig for you. You need to go to the Congo and tell the Chinese what to do — Joe Rogan
## Mentioned
Siddharth Kara, Joe Rogan, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery, Blood Batteries, University of Nottingham, Kolwezi, Lubumbashi, Kamove, Haut-Katanga, Manono, Shinkolobwe, Virtuous Mining, Félix Tshisekedi, John Newton, Cape Coast Castle, Elmina Castle, World Health Organization, Prince Henry the Navigator, Christopher Columbus, Pope Alexander VI, King Charles I, Brooke (Brooks), Zorg (Zong), William Llewellyn, HMS Alert, William Gregson, Captain Hanley, William, Robert Stubbs, Luke Collingwood, James Kelsall, Edward Lloyd, Lloyd's of London, Earl of Mansfield, Granville Sharp, Olaudah Equiano, Benjamin Franklin, James Ramsay, Frederick Douglass, Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, A Few Good Men, Taylor Sheridan, King Leopold II, William Gladstone, East India Company, Thomas Clarkson, Mahatma Gandhi, Apple, Apple Watch, Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, Gaza, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Little Boy, Fat Man, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jamaica, Guyana, Mauritius, Malaysia, Cecil Rhodes, Red Oak, Dallas, Lualaba River, Dion Graham
## Video description
Siddharth Kara, PhD, is the author of several books, including "Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives," and, most recently, "The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery."
Author Siddharth Kara argues that modern consumer electronics and clean energy infrastructure rely directly on modern slavery, toxic degradation, and systemic exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Drawing parallels to the transatlantic slave trade, Kara asserts that global technology companies incur an inescapable moral obligation to remediate the humanitarian and environmental devastation they enable.
Artisanal Cobalt Mining and Modern Slavery (10:52)
Despite corporate marketing around clean technology and audited supply chains, Kara emphasizes that the global mineral pool remains structurally tainted by unmechanized extraction in Central Africa. According to Kara's updated research in the Blood Batteries report, roughly 300,000 artisanal miners—including mothers carrying infants and tens of thousands of children—dig daily using bare hands, shovels, and pickaxes to extract minerals like cobalt, copper, and tantalum. Kara estimates that approximately 37 percent of these laborers work under conditions meeting the legal definition of absolute slavery, driven into open mining pits after operations bulldoze villages and agricultural land.
Geopolitics, Uranium, and Chinese Dominance (7:35)
The mining corridors of the DRC carry a long history of imperial extraction, having supplied raw materials for World War I munitions and the uranium for the Manhattan Project from the Shinkolobwe mine. Today, Kara notes that industrial mining concessions are overwhelmingly dominated by Chinese state-backed enterprises operating with minimal environmental oversight. These operations utilize heavy acid-leaching processes that release toxic reagents into local ecosystems. Kara also reports that intelligence contacts believe Chinese operations have spent fifteen years discreetly transporting Congolese uranium alongside commercial battery minerals to expand China's domestic nuclear warhead stockpile.
Historical Continuities With Atlantic Chattel Slavery (36:28)
Kara connects modern mineral exploitation directly to the institutional economics of the transatlantic slave trade, focusing on the Dutch vessel Zorg (Zong). In 1781, after navigational errors led the ship off course, the crew threw 130 to 140 enslaved Africans overboard to manufacture an insurance claim underwritten at Lloyd's of London for lost cargo. The subsequent legal trial and an anonymous leak catalyzed the British abolition movement led by figures like Granville Sharp. Kara points out that when the British Empire abolished slavery via the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, it bailed out slave owners with £20 million financed by a sovereign debt that British taxpayers only finished repaying in 2015, while former enslaved individuals were forced into unpaid apprenticeships and replaced with indentured Asian laborers.
Corporate Hypocrisy and Environmental Remediation (136:01)
Kara and host Joe Rogan criticize Silicon Valley tech firms for presenting progressive domestic images while outsourcing devastating environmental contamination abroad. Field testing conducted by Kara around the mining hub of Kolwezi revealed that local village streams and wells registered hyper-acidic pH levels between 3.0 and 4.0—water that nearby families are forced to consume and wash in. Kara insists that even if alternative battery chemistries like lithium iron phosphate (LFP) or recycling loops render Congolese cobalt obsolete in the future, tech corporations cannot walk away without restoring poisoned water tables, reforesting cleared land, and funding alternative local economies.
Speculative Governance and Planetary Dividends
Reflecting on recurring cycles of human tribalism and resource conflicts, Rogan suggests that foundational planetary assets such as subterranean minerals, oil, and fresh water should not be monopolized by private corporate actors. Instead, Rogan proposes a speculative model where an autonomous artificial superintelligence takes control of global military arsenals to prevent warfare and distributes a universal dividend of Earth's resource wealth to guarantee baseline survival needs. Kara agrees with testing moral parameters within AI systems, though practical execution remains an unresolved philosophical ideal.
While technological shifts like solid-state batteries and automated mining could eventually reduce consumer reliance on raw Congolese cobalt, Kara maintains that technological progress does not wipe away the ethical and financial debts owed to exploited populations left with destroyed ecosystems and systemic health crises.
[13:15] Siddharth Kara: We can't save our piece of the planet by destroying their piece of the planet.
[57:43] John Newton: like books on a shelf
[77:53] Why no murder charges?
[83:01] Granville Sharp: no taxation without representation
[86:19] Siddharth Kara: code red
[96:13] Joe Rogan: three people ago
[106:17] Frederick Douglass: goodness is possible
[106:17] Frederick Douglass: freedom is possible
[115:40] Siddharth Kara: violence begets violence
[117:25] Joe Rogan: Let's just rein that in kids... We're not going to allow that anymore.
[129:38] Mahatma Gandhi: Live simply so that others may simply live
[133:53] Joe Rogan: Hey Mike, got a new gig for you. You need to go to the Congo and tell the Chinese what to do
Original transcript
[0:01] Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
[0:04] >> The Joe Rogan Experience.
[0:06] >> TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY
[0:08] NIGHT. All day.
[0:12] >> We're up. All right.
[0:13] >> Good to see you, sir.
[0:14] >> Yeah. Good to see you, Joe.
[0:15] >> Um, first of all, thank you very much
[0:16] for everything you've done and for just
[0:19] I I can't tell you how many people have
[0:22] come up to me and said, "Thank you for
[0:24] shedding light on what's going on in the
[0:26] Congo with the cobalt stuff. your book
[0:29] was so important and the fact that you
[0:32] risked your life to get the kind of
[0:33] footage that you got. You you
[0:35] legitimately risked your life.
[0:36] >> Yeah.
[0:37] >> That it is a very dangerous part of the
[0:38] world right now with enormous amounts of
[0:40] resources being pulled out and insane
[0:41] amounts of money being made
[0:44] >> and you know I think just people like
[0:47] you are rare. So thank you.
[0:49] >> Oh man, you're uh you're gracious, Joe.
[0:51] You're really gracious. I I take that to
[0:53] heart. It means a lot. And let me just
[0:56] say that
[0:58] the fact that you continue to talk about
[1:00] it, you know, you and I first talked
[1:02] about this uh talking to Jamie, it was
[1:04] almost 4 years ago.
[1:05] >> Was it really that long ago?
[1:06] >> It was it was December 2022.
[1:08] >> That's crazy.
[1:10] >> So here we are September 26. So almost
[1:12] four years ago. And um you continue to
[1:16] talk about it now and again. And I think
[1:18] that that's meant a lot to me. It's
[1:20] meant a lot to people in the Congo. Um,
[1:23] it's obvious this has captured your
[1:25] heart and um, it you're to be commended
[1:28] for that conscience.
[1:29] >> Well, I'm doing this talking. You're
[1:31] you're actually out there going and
[1:33] documenting all this stuff. This is a
[1:35] very strange world that we live in that
[1:38] at the very base of the all the greatest
[1:41] technology like all this stuff that we
[1:44] have that's so incredible that allows us
[1:46] to find out so much about the world. the
[1:48] base of that you have slave labor
[1:51] pulling minerals out of the ground.
[1:53] >> Yeah. You have slave labor, you have
[1:55] child labor, you have militia run mines.
[1:57] You know, for for people who didn't hear
[1:59] our last conversation, um go back and
[2:02] hear it, you know, because we walk
[2:04] through it and um I haven't been back to
[2:07] the Congo since Cobalt Red came out and
[2:09] I knew it would be too dangerous for me
[2:11] to go back.
[2:12] >> Yeah, definitely don't go out. you know,
[2:14] it's just my colleague said pretty soon
[2:16] after Cobalt Red came out, you know,
[2:18] there was there's there's there's a
[2:21] bounty for you. So, I can't go back. Um,
[2:24] but I've stayed in touch with people
[2:26] there. I continued to get ground
[2:27] research done and the conditions
[2:31] uh they're not much better, you know,
[2:32] and in some ways they've continued to
[2:34] degrade because the fever for these
[2:37] these battery component metals and it's
[2:40] it's cobalt, but it's also the lithium,
[2:43] the nickel, the copper, the tantelum,
[2:44] all the stuff that goes into our
[2:46] smartphones, our tablets. You know, you
[2:48] and I, nobody we know can function
[2:51] without this stuff. And the bottom of
[2:53] the chain is tainted in child labor,
[2:57] slavery, violence, environmental
[3:00] destruction and contamination. And the
[3:03] new fever is the AI data centers.
[3:08] You know, we're building these um as
[3:12] fast as possible to support the AI
[3:15] economy and they require all the same
[3:19] metals and minerals. So the circuit
[3:21] boards, the servers, the heat sinks, uh
[3:24] the energy storage, they all require
[3:27] cobalt, copper, tin, tantelum, it's all
[3:31] coming out of Congo.
[3:36] It's so such a strange aspect of human
[3:39] life that we require that and that the
[3:42] the the area is controlled by people
[3:45] that are willing to do this. Like
[3:47] there's no like we don't get much of
[3:49] these rare earth minerals from America,
[3:51] do we?
[3:52] >> No. No. No. Not much at all. No. That's
[3:54] why it's it's almost all in the global
[3:57] south and in particular in the heart of
[3:59] Africa these deposits.
[4:00] >> Can I ask you is it because it's not
[4:02] available? there's no ore in America or
[4:05] it hasn't been mined like what is what
[4:08] are
[4:09] >> so it's a it's the dominating force is
[4:12] that the the largest and highest grade
[4:16] reserves of these crucial elements and
[4:20] rare earth metals are in central Africa
[4:23] um lithium expend extends more broadly
[4:26] to South America there's not much um
[4:30] there's not much in North America
[4:31] there's some But here's the rub. Here's
[4:34] the rub. You can find some lithium in
[4:36] the salt flats out west. You can find
[4:37] some cobalt along the Canadian North
[4:39] American border. Uh the rub is we don't
[4:43] want to wreck our environment.
[4:45] >> Oh god.
[4:46] >> Digging the stuff out of the ground um
[4:50] and then processing it. But we're okay
[4:53] obliterating their environment and
[4:56] polluting it and contaminating it. Um
[4:59] and I did another study. I told you I
[5:00] can't go back to the Congo, but I have
[5:02] colleagues and we've continued doing
[5:04] research and I I issued a report came
[5:08] out last year called blood batteries
[5:11] um through the University of Nottingham
[5:14] and we got to quantify some of the
[5:17] environmental impact which uh is so
[5:20] crucial to the story. It's crucial to
[5:22] the story of this data center push to
[5:24] the EV push, the environmental impact.
[5:28] And
[5:30] we use time lapse time-lapse satellite
[5:32] imagery to see that uh from the dawn of
[5:35] the sort of cobalt battery metal
[5:37] revolution to 2022,
[5:40] uh 40 50 60% of the forest areas gone.
[5:44] Um shrubbery, grasslands, all of that
[5:46] gone, replaced with mining territory.
[5:49] And then
[5:49] >> is this the Congo as a whole?
[5:52] >> So we did. Yeah, this is across the
[5:54] copper belt co copper cobalt region of
[5:56] the Congo where the mining is taking
[5:58] place.
[5:58] >> And what percentage of the Congo is
[6:00] that?
[6:00] >> Small part of it.
[6:01] >> Okay.
[6:02] >> It's a small part in the southeast
[6:03] corner along the Zambian border. I mean
[6:05] much of the Congo is rainforest,
[6:08] >> right? That's why I was confused.
[6:09] >> Up in the north Congo is insanely dense
[6:11] and huge
[6:12] >> in the mining part. In the mining part.
[6:14] So you've got a massive loss of forestry
[6:17] and water bodies and an expansion of
[6:19] mining. And then we tested the water
[6:22] for heavy metals and acidity levels. And
[6:27] we did a case study in the town of
[6:28] Kouesei, which is sort of ground zero
[6:30] for all these metals, cobalt and copper
[6:33] and so on.
[6:35] And
[6:37] there was between 10 and 950 times the
[6:41] World Health Organization maximum
[6:44] recommended limit for human safety of a
[6:47] range of heavy metals from lead to
[6:50] cobalt to copper to uranium uh to
[6:53] chromium. Uh so the whole water sources
[6:57] in that part of the country have been
[7:00] completely contaminated. So, I point all
[7:02] this out because we object to that here.
[7:07] We don't want our trees gone. We don't
[7:08] want our forest destroyed. We don't want
[7:10] our water contaminated. We don't want
[7:12] the air to be polluted. But it's okay
[7:15] for it to happen over there kind of out
[7:16] of sight to those people so long as we
[7:19] can plug in our phone, build out our
[7:21] data centers, uh keep buying our EVs and
[7:24] so on. And then that's the story. Okay,
[7:26] that's the story that we're okay
[7:28] destroying them in their world. uh so
[7:30] long as ours remains sacrosanked. And
[7:32] that frankly is just the great hypocrisy
[7:34] of all this.
[7:35] >> Is there an alternative like a viable
[7:38] alternative to supply the world with the
[7:40] minerals that it needs?
[7:41] >> Not yet. Not yet. No. I mean,
[7:44] >> is it I'm sorry to interrupt, but is is
[7:45] it possible to do is it just an
[7:48] inevitable fact of when you do that kind
[7:51] of high level mining, you're going to
[7:52] destroy the environment, or could it be
[7:54] mitigated?
[7:56] >> It could do it could be done better. I
[7:58] mean, you you do have to chop down all
[7:59] the trees where the deposit is. So,
[8:02] deforestation is inevitable, but let's
[8:06] say this was done in our backyard here
[8:08] in Austin. Someone found a big copper
[8:10] cobalt tin tantelum deposit somewhere.
[8:13] There'd be rules to follow. You'd have
[8:15] to deforest the whole place, but we'd
[8:17] probably say go plant the same number of
[8:18] trees somewhere else to offset it. And
[8:21] there'd be a lot of rules around
[8:22] containment, make sure you don't pollute
[8:24] the rivers and so on. And none of that
[8:27] is done in the global south. None of
[8:30] that none of that is done in Congo. Uh
[8:33] and it's mostly Chinese state-run mining
[8:35] companies um that don't give a [ __ ]
[8:42] >> about the people in the environment
[8:43] there. But our tech and EV companies all
[8:46] know that and they're all buying this
[8:47] stuff uh from them knowing that. So the
[8:51] chain is tainted. It's tainted in in
[8:53] misery. It's tainted in blood. It's
[8:55] dained in environmental destruction. It
[8:57] doesn't have to be that way. Um, we
[9:00] don't have enough of this stuff here to
[9:03] offset the demand,
[9:05] but we could start mining some of it
[9:07] here. The problem is there's legitimate
[9:10] objections to the environmental impact.
[9:12] >> And is it an issue with even if they
[9:15] mitigate all the surface area stuff and
[9:18] the pollution that you're still going to
[9:19] deal with groundwater?
[9:22] >> Yeah,
[9:22] >> groundwater contamination is inevitable,
[9:24] right? just all leeches in. I mean, the
[9:26] pro it's it's not just the mining,
[9:28] >> the products they use to get
[9:30] >> the the processing of of this stuff, you
[9:32] know, you get an ore
[9:34] >> that's got cobalt, copper, nickel,
[9:36] silver, bit of uranium in it, and you
[9:39] have to separate all that. And so
[9:42] there's heavy industrial acids, toxic
[9:45] industrial liquids used to dissolve and
[9:47] separate those metals. And that's what
[9:50] inevitably leeches.
[9:52] >> They pump that stuff right into the
[9:53] ground. It goes into the ground and then
[9:55] it seeps into the ground water into the
[9:56] rivers, lakes.
[9:57] >> When did this all begin?
[10:00] >> So the the this the that part of the
[10:03] Congo in the southeastern corner from
[10:06] the town of Lubmbashi to Kouesei was
[10:08] mined for copper going back to colonial
[10:10] times. Uh it and something like a
[10:15] quarter of the bullets used in World War
[10:16] I were copper from that part of the
[10:18] Congo. Okay. So it copper mining goes
[10:22] back a long ways, but there was other
[10:24] stuff there. It just didn't have
[10:25] industrial value yet. The uranium
[10:29] that was used in the bombs dropped on
[10:33] Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from that
[10:35] same part of the Congo.
[10:36] >> Whoa.
[10:37] >> The high the highest grade uranium
[10:40] um deposit known in the world at that
[10:43] time. Isn't it insane that that place
[10:46] has like the most valuable resources on
[10:49] earth, but yet it's one of the poorest
[10:51] places on earth?
[10:52] >> Yeah. It's it's the resource curse.
[10:54] You know, when when when we find
[10:57] treasure somewhere, it attracts the
[10:59] pirates to come in and loot the place.
[11:03] And when a place is war torn or
[11:06] colonized or corrupt or filled with
[11:09] strife, um, and it just chaos runs riot.
[11:12] So,
[11:13] >> and you can get people to work for
[11:14] basically nothing.
[11:15] >> Yeah. There's virtually no alternative.
[11:17] There's there's virtually no alternative
[11:19] way to survive. And and people have to
[11:21] understand that, too. When you displace
[11:24] hundreds of thousands of people with a
[11:26] big mining operation, meaning there
[11:28] there were villages there and maybe a
[11:31] river and they used to fish and grow
[11:32] some potatoes or whatever. And you just
[11:35] displace all those people and you set up
[11:37] a mining operation the size of a small
[11:39] city. Um, there's no other way for them
[11:42] to survive but to bring their kids and
[11:45] their wives and come into that same
[11:47] mining territory. And this is this is
[11:49] what happens every day. Roll up their
[11:51] sleeves and get down in that toxic dirt
[11:54] and try to gather enough ore in a sack
[11:56] for the day to make a dollar. And and I
[12:00] know now roughly how many people it is.
[12:02] When you and I spoke in 2026,
[12:05] >> 2020
[12:06] >> 2022, sorry, we're now in 2026.
[12:10] uh I had documented the human horror
[12:13] taking place and that that's what cobalt
[12:14] red is about but I had not done enough
[12:16] to quantify how many people exactly and
[12:20] so in this same report I mentioned blood
[12:22] batteries ran prevalence estimates just
[12:24] sample at all the sites how many people
[12:27] and you can build an estimate and on on
[12:30] any given day there are at least 300,000
[12:34] people men and children
[12:37] digging for cobalt with their bare hands
[12:39] and pickaxes and shovels. 300,000 people
[12:42] on any given day. Now, it fluctuates by
[12:44] season a little bit, dry season, wet
[12:45] season. Of that 300,000,
[12:49] about 37%, so more than one out of
[12:52] three, are working in conditions we'd
[12:54] call absolute slavery.
[12:57] And almost 10% are kids. So, roughly
[13:01] 30,000 kids on any given day.
[13:04] not in school, not learning, exposed to
[13:08] toxic work, toxic, dangerous mining with
[13:12] their hands uh up to their necks in it.
[13:15] And that's the bottom of the chain, you
[13:17] know, and people people
[13:20] not only need to know that,
[13:23] but think hard about their own personal
[13:25] choices in the context of that
[13:27] knowledge. You know, what do I mean by
[13:30] that? I mean, do you have to upgrade
[13:31] your phone every year? People often ask
[13:34] me what do I do? Okay, I accept the
[13:37] premise that the rechargeable lifestyle
[13:40] I live is facilitated by and built upon
[13:45] an enormity of human suffering uh of
[13:47] those people over there. What do I do? I
[13:51] can't I can't fix that. And I say,
[13:52] you're right. You can't. I can't. Uh but
[13:55] you can think about your personal
[13:57] choices. And the first one is uh do you
[14:00] have to upgrade the phone and the tablet
[14:01] every year just because the tech company
[14:03] tells you to? Because each time you do,
[14:05] you're contributing to those demand side
[14:07] forces. So if the phone still works,
[14:10] just use it. Um the EV is a more
[14:13] interesting question. You know, you
[14:15] don't upgrade the EV, you either buy one
[14:17] or you keep your internal combustion
[14:18] engine car. Um, now EV companies will
[14:22] tell us their mining is done sustainably
[14:24] and the supply chain is audited and all
[14:26] of that and and all of these horrors are
[14:29] taking place in someone else's supply
[14:30] chain. But the truth is it's all
[14:33] tainted. It's all coming out of the same
[14:36] pot of tainted um contaminated human
[14:40] degradation and environmental
[14:42] destruction. The EV story is let's save
[14:45] the planet.
[14:46] >> Yeah.
[14:46] >> And that's fine. We need to save the
[14:48] planet, but we can't save our piece of
[14:51] the planet by destroying their piece of
[14:54] the planet.
[14:54] >> Look, I love the technology involved in
[14:56] EVs. I love I have a Tesla. I love it.
[14:59] But there's also, excuse me, there's
[15:02] also reality of um brake dust. It's way
[15:05] more brake dust with those things. And
[15:06] that's a big part of the particulate uh
[15:09] pollution that you get in large cities.
[15:11] >> Yeah.
[15:12] >> Is brake dust. That stuff that you clean
[15:13] off your wheel when you go to the car
[15:14] wash, that stuff is in your lungs. If
[15:16] you live in a big city, especially like
[15:18] New York City, and you're walking
[15:19] around, you are 100% breathing in brake
[15:22] dust. And it's been proven that living
[15:25] in polluted, heavily populated cities,
[15:28] lowers your lifespan. And it's probably
[15:30] one of the reasons. You're dealing with
[15:32] a toxic element in the atmosphere that
[15:34] you're breathing in every day. Whether
[15:35] you like it or not, there's not a thing
[15:37] you could do about it.
[15:37] >> Yeah. Yeah. It I I I uh you know,
[15:41] there's so many parts of the Eevee story
[15:43] that we don't get fully told. You know,
[15:45] break brake dust is certainly one.
[15:47] >> Well, all cars give off brake dust, just
[15:48] to be really clear, but EVs are heavier.
[15:50] >> They're heavier. So, you you break more.
[15:52] You have to break more. Yeah.
[15:54] >> Yeah. You if that's right.
[15:56] >> I think there is some ways around that.
[15:58] And I think um one way to mitigate it
[16:01] quite a bit, I believe, is carbon
[16:03] ceramic brakes. Is that the case, Jamie?
[16:05] Let's find out if that's absolutely
[16:07] true. I've read that, but I want to make
[16:09] sure that's really true. Uh, I know from
[16:11] anecdotal experience that when you clean
[16:13] your car, if you have carbon ceramic
[16:15] brakes, there's almost no brake dust on
[16:17] your wheels. It's a very different
[16:18] thing. If you have regular steel brakes,
[16:20] it just it for whatever reason leaves
[16:23] more brake dust. I'm not sure why. We'll
[16:25] find out in a second.
[16:27] >> Um, but other than that, is there any
[16:30] sort of novel material that can do it?
[16:32] Here it goes. Carbon ceramic brake
[16:33] systems can reduce brake wear
[16:35] particulate pollution substantially
[16:36] compared with conventional gray cast
[16:39] iron rotors. But they do not eliminate
[16:40] brake dust. The actual environmental
[16:42] outcome depends on the complete friction
[16:44] pair rotor and pad formulation and on
[16:47] driving conditions.
[16:50] >> Yeah. So it just explains what brake
[16:51] dust is. And so it's it does help a lot
[16:55] substantially, but it, you know, doesn't
[16:57] eliminate it.
[16:58] >> Yeah.
[16:59] >> And they're more expensive. You know, if
[17:00] you it's like a big upgrade. If you get
[17:02] a car um like a lot of sports cars, if
[17:05] you buy a Corvette, it allows you to
[17:06] upgrade to carbon ceramic brakes. It's
[17:08] very expensive, so very few people do
[17:11] it.
[17:12] >> Well, there's there's certainly things
[17:15] we can and should be doing to mitigate
[17:18] the environmental impacts of whether
[17:20] it's an EV or even an internal
[17:21] combustion engine. You know, I didn't
[17:23] know about these brake pads. That's um
[17:26] um it's worth it's worth people knowing
[17:28] more about that.
[17:29] >> But then you're going to have to find
[17:30] carbon. Like, okay, now you got to get
[17:33] carbon to get the carbon ceramic.
[17:34] >> So, this is the thing. This is the
[17:35] thing. There's always something,
[17:37] >> right? And and you made this point with
[17:39] Rizza, you know, it okay, cobalt, but
[17:42] it's also the lithium. It's also the
[17:44] nickel. It's all one of the biggest
[17:46] lithium deposits now. And and people are
[17:49] saying, "Okay, let's use less cobalt in
[17:51] the batteries. Let's do do lithium iron
[17:53] phosphate batteries. Let's do the solid
[17:54] state batteries." They always have
[17:55] lithium in them. One of the biggest
[17:57] lithium deposits now is is in the Congo
[18:01] and it just started shipping under this
[18:03] Chinese mining company um in June of
[18:07] this year out of this deposit and the
[18:10] conditions there I haven't been there
[18:12] colleagues who've been up there it's
[18:13] near a town called Manono
[18:16] they're just as horrific and so when you
[18:19] say all right we're done with cobalt
[18:23] we're just going to do lithium iron
[18:24] phosphate battery or you lithium table
[18:27] salt battery, whatever.
[18:29] >> Same deal.
[18:30] >> Same deal. You know, so it's it's about
[18:34] extending the horizon of our compassion
[18:37] beyond our immediate circle and and
[18:41] caring about everyone who's attached to
[18:45] our life and our lifestyle. No matter
[18:47] how t tangential or how far downstream
[18:50] they might be, they're still brothers
[18:52] and sisters. They still inhabit this
[18:54] earth with us. They still live, breathe,
[18:57] and have dreams just like we do.
[18:59] >> And you could be them if you were born
[19:01] there.
[19:01] >> That's That's the thing.
[19:02] >> You got lucky. We all got lucky. You and
[19:04] I mostly got lucky.
[19:06] >> We got the roll of the dice that was
[19:08] favorable.
[19:09] >> And that's all it is. And that's all it
[19:10] is.
[19:11] >> That's what's hard to recognize.
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[20:11] It's hard. People don't want to believe.
[20:12] That's why that whole pull yourself up
[20:15] by your bootstraps ideology
[20:17] that some people like to promote like
[20:19] that's kind of crazy. In certain
[20:21] circumstances it's accurate, but to put
[20:23] that flat across the board for
[20:25] everybody.
[20:26] >> No, there's people there's no boots.
[20:27] They're barefoot. They don't they don't
[20:29] have clean water. Like they don't have
[20:31] nothing and no medical infrastructure.
[20:33] And you're being forced to work in an
[20:35] environment that 100% is going to poison
[20:37] you to death. And we only make progress
[20:39] when we extend our compassion out.
[20:42] >> Right?
[20:43] >> When I say progress, I mean moral
[20:45] progress as a species on this earth.
[20:48] >> That's the literally the key. Like if if
[20:51] you wanted to figure out like how to
[20:53] make just global life better for all
[20:56] people. It's take whatever the third
[20:58] world is and bring it up to the first
[21:00] world. We should all want to do that. If
[21:02] everybody wanted to do that, if
[21:03] everybody wanted to deliver
[21:04] infrastructure, education, medical
[21:08] establishment, like where there's like
[21:10] legitimate hospitals, like everything
[21:11] that we have in the first world, if that
[21:13] was all over the world, how much less
[21:15] problems would there be? But the problem
[21:18] is the resources, like the resources in
[21:20] the Congo, whether it's oil or whatever
[21:22] it is, they're worth so much money. And
[21:25] the people that are in control of these
[21:28] resources are extracting so much money
[21:30] and they don't ever want to let that go.
[21:32] >> No, they don't. It It's I run a thought
[21:35] experiment with people sometimes and
[21:37] when I teach a class, you know, I
[21:38] haven't taught in a couple years, but
[21:39] when I teach um I run a thought
[21:42] experiment and it's exactly what we're
[21:43] talking about here. So, let let's say
[21:45] you were up in the sky in heaven,
[21:47] whatever pre-birth state, whatever that
[21:49] might be, and you don't know what roll
[21:52] of the dice you're going to get. Am I
[21:54] going to be born in a safe, loving,
[21:57] upper middle class family in the West?
[22:00] Am I going to be born in some war torn
[22:03] poor uh part of South Sudan or whatever?
[22:07] You know, you don't know. Okay. What
[22:09] kind of what kind of world would you
[22:13] hope the favorable people are trying to
[22:16] pursue in the event that you're the one
[22:19] you get the bad roll of the dice and
[22:21] you'd say, "Man, I really hope that the
[22:24] ones who get the good roll of the dice
[22:26] will care about me. They'll see me. They
[22:27] will feel some connection to me. They
[22:30] will try to use their good roll of the
[22:32] dice in a way that benefits me somehow.
[22:36] Maybe they are part of some effort to uh
[22:39] bring education, health care,
[22:41] sanitation, whatever to my part of the
[22:43] world. Uh and and have that connection
[22:46] and extension of their compassion and
[22:48] empathy towards me because we're all up
[22:50] here in this pre-birth state recognizing
[22:52] some of you are going there, some of you
[22:54] going there. Let's all agree. All right,
[22:56] those of you who end up in the good
[22:58] place, you don't lose sight of us,
[23:01] >> right?
[23:01] >> You know, and I won't lose sight of you
[23:02] in the event it's me. and and then we
[23:04] get here and um we're just wound up in
[23:10] our sphere and we lose a sense of human
[23:14] connection. Isn't it partly because this
[23:17] is really the first of a couple
[23:20] generations but w with increasingly more
[23:22] contact and understanding of the rest of
[23:24] the world. Like if you went back a 100
[23:26] years ago, people had virtually no
[23:27] understanding of how things went on
[23:29] anywhere else unless they had visited
[23:31] them. And now a hundred years later
[23:34] because of the very technology that
[23:36] we're talking about which is also ironic
[23:39] that's why we know so much about all
[23:41] these places in the world and isn't the
[23:44] problem also with elevating these places
[23:46] and getting them infrastructure that one
[23:49] of the best ways to do it cleanly is
[23:51] nuclear power. Um but then they found
[23:54] out that when you give people nuclear
[23:56] power it's pretty easy for them to
[23:58] convert it into weapons.
[24:00] >> Okay. So there's there's a lot to
[24:02] unpack. There's a lot to
[24:03] >> unpack because we're trying to like if
[24:04] we're going to be fair about a
[24:05] discussion of why everything's [ __ ]
[24:08] >> One of the reasons why everything's
[24:09] [ __ ] is clearly because they don't
[24:10] have infrastructure. They don't have
[24:11] power. They don't have water that's
[24:13] that's clean. They don't have good
[24:14] education. They don't have all these
[24:16] things. So if you wanted to like start
[24:18] that and make it better, you would have
[24:20] to give them power. So are you going to
[24:23] burn coal? Are you what are you going to
[24:25] do? Like there's only a few ways, right?
[24:26] There's dams. You can get hydroelectric
[24:28] power. um windmills and solar. Get the
[24:31] [ __ ] out of here. That's not gonna
[24:32] that's not right. Not right now. Not
[24:34] with current technology. It's not going
[24:36] to power giant cities. So like what do
[24:38] you give them? You give them nuclear
[24:40] power. And this is what happened in
[24:42] India, right? And this is what happened
[24:43] in Pakistan. And they're like, "Oh,
[24:45] look, we could turn this into a missile.
[24:47] [ __ ] each other up."
[24:48] >> It
[24:50] so tricky.
[24:51] >> It's tricky. And you know, you talk
[24:54] about nukes, okay? And you know, we're
[24:58] at this point in this world where
[24:59] there's this fever about who does and
[25:02] doesn't have them. And let me tell you
[25:05] one other thing. I've I've I've I've
[25:07] learned since we last talked about the
[25:08] Congo. Okay. I mentioned the the uranium
[25:11] used to to drop uh Little Boy and Big
[25:15] Boy on Hiroshima Nagasaki.
[25:17] >> Fat Man.
[25:17] >> Fat Man. Fat Man. Little Boy and Fat
[25:19] Man.
[25:19] >> Yeah.
[25:20] >> Um on Hiroshima Nagasaki. Okay. It came
[25:24] came from a mine called Shinkalobu in in
[25:27] the Congo. There was a meeting of the
[25:29] Belgians and the Americans in Midtown
[25:30] Manhattan and they said, "All right,
[25:31] we're going to give you so much money
[25:32] for that uranium and so on and so
[25:34] forth." And um Congo has a lot of
[25:37] uranium. All right, a lot of uranium.
[25:41] And for the last 10 years, Western
[25:44] intelligence agencies have been trying
[25:46] to figure out how is China
[25:49] growing its nuclear stockpile, stockpile
[25:51] of nuclear warheads so fast because they
[25:53] got no uranium. They're not getting it
[25:55] from North Korea because they don't have
[25:56] it either. Russia's not going to be
[25:58] sending it to them. They're not going to
[25:59] give teeth to their neighbor. Where are
[26:01] they getting it from? And you talk to
[26:04] people on the ground in the Congo. Now
[26:06] there's and now there's some counter
[26:07] intelligence looking into this. People
[26:10] in the Congo have said, "Look, for the
[26:12] better part of the last 15 years, every
[26:15] one of these Chinese state-run mining
[26:17] companies in the same tractor trailer
[26:20] that's got the copper and the cobalt and
[26:22] the nickel, they've got uranium on it,
[26:24] too. And it's all headed over to
[26:26] mainland China." And that's the answer
[26:28] to this question of how did China jack
[26:31] up its nuclear stockpile supply so fast
[26:34] in the last 1015 years. Now, I can't
[26:36] verify any of that. It's not like I've
[26:38] done uranium investigations.
[26:40] >> Look, it only makes sense. They have
[26:41] complete control of the region.
[26:42] >> It makes a lot of sense.
[26:43] >> There's no way anybody would be able to
[26:45] stop them.
[26:46] >> No one's going to stop them. They
[26:47] control the ground. They control the
[26:49] ground there. And
[26:51] that's scary, you know, and and so when
[26:54] you talk about do we give them do we use
[26:56] nuclear power in that part of the world?
[26:58] I mean, I don't think you want uh yellow
[27:01] cake floating around that part of the
[27:03] world, you know.
[27:05] Um,
[27:06] >> does China have any human rights
[27:08] organizations that are comparable to the
[27:10] ones in the West?
[27:12] >> Not really. Right.
[27:13] >> You know, they may write stuff down on
[27:15] paper,
[27:16] >> you know,
[27:17] >> but there's not like
[27:18] >> they're not. No,
[27:18] >> there's a I mean, there's a billion
[27:20] people over there. You would think there
[27:21] would be a certain percentage
[27:23] >> like Red Cross type organizations. I
[27:26] mean,
[27:27] >> we have some sense of what they've done
[27:29] to the Weaguers.
[27:30] >> Yeah, that's a that's a hard one to
[27:33] figure out, right? It's a hard one to
[27:34] figure out. We've got some general sense
[27:36] of the forced labor camps um um uh
[27:40] filled with weaguers
[27:42] um doing solar panels and clothes and
[27:45] all this [ __ ] Um but and I haven't
[27:49] looked into that directly, but I can I
[27:51] can tell you what I've seen directly on
[27:53] what they do in Africa and you know they
[27:56] they don't treat people like people
[27:59] there. They don't see them, the
[28:02] Africans, as people. They're in the way
[28:06] of the loot they need. And they don't
[28:10] even
[28:11] employ the African people there when
[28:14] they come in with a mining project or a
[28:16] construction project. They ship over
[28:19] people from China to do the work and
[28:22] then work them and then send them back.
[28:25] And there's nothing by way of human
[28:27] rights standards
[28:30] when you're talking about Chinese
[28:31] companies operating in Africa.
[28:33] >> So this is a uniquely western thing.
[28:36] >> This drive to have some basic human
[28:39] rights standards. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I
[28:41] would say so. I would say so. Now one
[28:44] thing that's changed since you and I
[28:45] talked is there's actually a US mining
[28:46] company now operating in that part of
[28:48] the Congo. There wasn't one for better
[28:51] part of two decades.
[28:53] And one of the mines which uh is owned
[28:56] by um Dubai Middle Eastern guys
[29:00] um part of the Trump administration sort
[29:02] of peace for minerals arrangement
[29:04] between President Shisha and the Trump
[29:06] administration was mining access.
[29:11] And so one concession uh was sold to
[29:14] this US mining company. It's called
[29:15] Virtuous Mining and they're run by
[29:17] former military guys and they took over
[29:20] a couple of copper cobalt concessions in
[29:22] Lubmbashi and Koazi both sides of the
[29:24] copper belt. That's just this year. So
[29:27] within the last few months okay and I
[29:31] haven't been there to look but I talk to
[29:34] colleagues all the time and say look is
[29:35] is is virtues are they doing things any
[29:38] better? And the feedback I've gotten so
[29:42] far is they seem to be uh improving
[29:46] standards around artal mining. There's
[29:48] still artisal mining, but improving
[29:50] standards.
[29:50] >> When we say artisal mining, you you went
[29:52] into depth about this the first time we
[29:53] talked, but we should just tell people
[29:55] that that thing artisal sounds awesome.
[29:57] It sounds like a great cup of coffee,
[29:59] like fair trade. It's a nice
[30:01] >> in a nice place,
[30:03] >> you know, like someone's got a beautiful
[30:04] ceramic cup they serve you the coffee
[30:06] in. Yeah.
[30:07] >> Artisal mining is pretty much the
[30:08] opposite of that.
[30:09] >> It it's the the games people play with
[30:11] words, right? Uh no. So artal mining
[30:14] means you've got mom, dad, and their
[30:17] kids up to here in toxic grit and filth
[30:20] digging.
[30:21] >> Yeah. This is an artisal mind. The fact
[30:23] that you can use that same word artisal
[30:26] with this that you and you can with a
[30:28] nice coffee shop is crazy.
[30:29] >> That's crazy. That's So this is
[30:33] you know I got in
[30:34] >> imagine if you were learning English.
[30:35] You're like, "What the [ __ ] does artisal
[30:37] actually mean?" Like, "How how do the
[30:39] two things what
[30:41] >> like this language is messed up."
[30:42] >> Yeah. How how are these both artisal?
[30:45] >> That's crazy.
[30:46] >> How is my espresso and that artist?
[30:49] >> For lack of a better term, these minds
[30:52] um it's all basically the poorest people
[30:54] on earth.
[30:55] >> Raw human labor. Uh it's tens of
[31:00] thousands of people and there's kids
[31:02] down there, too. Okay? You just can't
[31:04] see in this massive.
[31:05] >> There's also you've shown mothers with
[31:07] their babies.
[31:07] >> Mothers with babies on their back. So
[31:09] that's that's what the mining industry
[31:10] calls artisinal. Okay. It's it's this
[31:14] it's kids with 40 50 kilogram sacks of
[31:17] cobalt um on their necks clamoring out
[31:21] of a pit. Cobalt is toxic to touch. It
[31:24] is toxic to breathe. All these kids get
[31:26] respiratory distress, cancers. The women
[31:28] get birth defects, congenal disease.
[31:30] Here's a teenager with a baby. These are
[31:32] all my photos, okay, that that found
[31:34] their way onto the internet. That kid's
[31:37] probably eight and she's probably 13 or
[31:41] 14 and she's got this baby. I remember
[31:44] that Joe that that's in the hills above
[31:47] Cambodia. That's a story I told you last
[31:48] time where that's probably the closest I
[31:50] came to getting shot was in this mining
[31:53] area. It was almost all children run by
[31:56] a militia um north of a town called
[31:59] Kamov and it is all copper cobalt. It
[32:03] all gets sold right into the industrial
[32:05] supply chain. People need to accept this
[32:07] truth. The kids don't dig cobalt going
[32:10] to the moon. Okay, that cobalt all goes
[32:14] into the formal supply chain through
[32:17] militias and traders. All of it. What do
[32:19] I mean by formal supply chain? I mean
[32:21] the formal industrial mining companies
[32:23] that then go and refine this stuff and
[32:25] it ends up in your phones and cars and
[32:27] tablets. So I was up there in those
[32:30] hills and you're not supposed to be up
[32:32] there. Like I wasn't supposed to be in
[32:33] the place where there's 15,000 people in
[32:35] that pit and these militia guys come
[32:38] come barreling up the hill with AK-47s.
[32:42] And I thought that was it for me. Uh I
[32:44] mean this this is the story I told you
[32:46] last time. I thought that was it. I
[32:47] mean, they threw my backpack off my
[32:49] back, shoved me to the ground, yanked
[32:51] all my stuff out, demanded my phone to
[32:53] see if I'd taken photos and videos and
[32:55] so on. And the only thing that saved my
[32:58] life, this this for people who are
[33:01] interested in human rights research,
[33:03] this is what's important. You get local
[33:05] intel,
[33:06] local colleagues, take their advice. The
[33:09] only thing that saved my life that day.
[33:11] So, one of my local colleagues said,
[33:12] "Said, before you go to any of these
[33:14] places, you got to get a stamp from the
[33:16] governor's office on your visa
[33:18] paperwork, and you take that with you
[33:20] everywhere."
[33:21] >> And that will convey to any militia that
[33:23] you're under the governor's protection,
[33:25] and they're not going to [ __ ] with you.
[33:28] They won't they'll mess with you, but
[33:29] they're not going to do. They're not
[33:31] going to kill you.
[33:32] >> Um, and I had to go get that stamp. I
[33:36] had to persuade the governor of
[33:38] Hotkatanga province that I was there not
[33:42] to
[33:43] shame the Congo. I was seeking truth
[33:46] that I think his people are being uh
[33:48] exploited by the global north and this
[33:50] whole tech um fever for rechargeable
[33:54] stuff and he put his little stamp on it
[33:57] and you know that was the only time I
[33:59] met him, only time I saw him but I had
[34:00] that stamp. So when I was up there and
[34:02] and my stuff getting thrown around, they
[34:04] had their guns pointed at me. And my
[34:05] guide, his face went pale. And I was I
[34:07] thought, "This is it. This is it for
[34:09] Cara up on this hill, middle of
[34:11] nowhere." And my guide just gestured and
[34:14] I knew what he was what he was what he
[34:16] was intending. And I found my folder on
[34:18] the ground. I pulled that piece of paper
[34:19] out and I showed them the stamp and and
[34:23] then they just said, "Get out of here.
[34:24] Just, you know, they let us go." So, uh,
[34:27] when you go into conflict zones, you
[34:29] have to have that kind of local advice.
[34:32] Um, because it can mean the difference
[34:34] between living and being shot and dumped
[34:39] in some ditch where these little girls
[34:42] with babies.
[34:45] That's the image that needs to be in our
[34:48] minds every time we
[34:49] >> How did you get that image? Was it with
[34:50] a phone?
[34:50] >> Yeah, it was with my phone. I had So,
[34:52] those So, they started, you know, going
[34:54] through my phone. They had me unlock it,
[34:56] but I had all these images in a password
[34:59] protected other folder. So, I just
[35:00] showed them pictures of like, you know,
[35:02] my my home, my daughter, my, you know,
[35:04] stuff, just whatever. I had another
[35:06] folder and they they they didn't have
[35:08] the savvy, right?
[35:09] >> They didn't know. So it like same like
[35:11] that video of the 15,000 people, you
[35:15] know, I just managed to do this.
[35:17] >> Mhm.
[35:18] >> And tuck it away and because that was
[35:21] also controlled by militias uh that
[35:24] particular site and and that that mine
[35:27] is
[35:29] classified industrial,
[35:31] which means only heavy equipment
[35:35] being used to source the copper and the
[35:37] cobalt. And that mine is in the bottom
[35:40] of the supply chains in the in the
[35:42] disclosure documents of every tech and
[35:44] EV company. It's one of the biggest
[35:46] copper cobalt suppliers out of the
[35:48] Congo. And you get in there and you say
[35:50] this this is not industrial at all.
[35:55] Nor is it baked bread and espresso.
[35:58] This is hell on earth,
[35:59] >> right? you know, this is this am I
[36:01] transported back to Egyptian times and,
[36:05] you know, raw brute slave labor being
[36:08] made to build a pyramid in this case to
[36:10] excavate a giant pit of of ore
[36:14] is it's still I can still hear that the
[36:17] clanging in that place and the shouting.
[36:19] It's the ability that people have to
[36:21] treat other people as if they're not
[36:23] people. That's still shocking, you know.
[36:25] And that brings me to your book because
[36:28] uh your book is all about the Atlantic
[36:32] slave trade and it's called the Zorg.
[36:34] >> Yeah.
[36:35] >> And it's uh a tale of greed and murder
[36:37] that inspired the abolition of slavery.
[36:40] And just imagine like those boats
[36:43] carried people from pretty much that
[36:46] same place
[36:47] >> or close to it.
[36:48] >> Yeah. Same. No, that the this this
[36:52] ship, you know what I learned writing
[36:54] this book? The Zorg is the most
[36:57] consequential slave ship that ever
[36:59] crossed the Atlantic. There are more
[37:01] than 40,000 slave ship voyages across
[37:04] the three and a half centuries of the
[37:05] slave trade that carted 12 and a half 13
[37:08] million Africans. And if you need to
[37:10] know about one of them, it's this one
[37:12] because it's the most important, the
[37:14] most consequential. And the reason I say
[37:15] that is it opens the whole world of the
[37:19] slave trade in its journey ends in this
[37:22] culminating act of brute inhumity
[37:26] that sparked the first movement to
[37:28] abolish slavery.
[37:30] And it's that sequence
[37:33] that is so vital for us to understand
[37:35] historically. Uh people can't fix a
[37:39] horror until they learn about it. And
[37:42] the average person, I've learned, is not
[37:45] evil.
[37:47] Uh we may be generally self-interested
[37:49] and worried about us and ours and so on,
[37:51] but we're not evil. Uh and when we learn
[37:54] about something wrong, we generally feel
[37:56] something and want to do something about
[37:58] it. And that's what happened. This was
[37:59] the ship that told the whole world what
[38:01] was happening in the slave trade. And a
[38:04] small community, a faith-based moral
[38:07] leaders said, "This is unacceptable.
[38:10] this is beneath us. Uh, and we we're
[38:12] going to devote our lives to abolishing
[38:14] slavery. But the other thing that this
[38:16] journey is, you know, we we grow up, you
[38:19] grow up in America, you learn about
[38:21] slavery. You learn about plantation
[38:23] economy and how slaves were treated,
[38:26] cotton, and so on.
[38:28] But we don't learn the details of how
[38:31] they got here
[38:34] and how the first global economy was
[38:37] born around the Atlantic slave trade.
[38:39] how modern finance, banking, and
[38:41] insurance was born through the slave
[38:43] trade and the conditions that the
[38:48] African people endured being carted
[38:50] across the Atlantic. Um, and it's
[38:53] essential to know this history because
[38:56] it tells us why we are where we are.
[38:59] Um, at this point in history and as a
[39:04] moral or lack of moral species on this
[39:07] earth because we do at times have these
[39:10] periods of great inhumity toward each
[39:12] other and the slave trade is one of
[39:13] them. And I learned so much researching
[39:17] this book and and and the feedback I get
[39:19] from readers is, man, I knew slavery. I
[39:20] had a sense, but I had no idea just how
[39:23] horrible it was.
[39:26] >> Do you the fact that I mean does does it
[39:29] dishearten you to know that essentially
[39:31] the same thing is happening right now as
[39:35] this book? Like in the Western world,
[39:37] people don't believe that. You know, I
[39:39] had a discussion the other day with
[39:41] someone. He was talking about how we're
[39:42] doing better today. We abolish slavery.
[39:44] And I said, 'N no, we abolished slavery
[39:46] right here, but there's more slaves on
[39:48] earth now than there were during the
[39:50] time of the Atlantic slave trade.
[39:51] >> So we abolish slavery on paper.
[39:54] >> We have a piece of paper that says
[39:56] slaveryy's abolished, but in practice,
[39:58] the the institution of oppressing,
[40:02] subjugating, and extracting the labor of
[40:04] someone uh persists and has evolved into
[40:08] the modern era. Well, not only that,
[40:10] like how many underage workers are
[40:13] working in
[40:14] >> millions
[40:15] >> in this country that are undocumented?
[40:17] >> Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, who knows what the
[40:20] number is. Um but millions around the
[40:23] world, tens of millions around the
[40:24] world. Um but it's it's
[40:28] this this history is important. History
[40:30] is important because uh and this ship is
[40:32] important uh because it it it it
[40:38] reveals
[40:40] the depth of our inhumity while
[40:42] simultaneously showing us the capacity
[40:45] for good in our nature because it did
[40:48] spark that first movement to abolish
[40:50] slavery. It
[40:51] >> and it was faith-based leaders that were
[40:53] doing this.
[40:55] It was Yeah, it was it was it was it was
[40:58] the Anglican Church leaders in the in in
[41:01] the in the first movement to abolish
[41:02] slavery was in England
[41:06] and it was sparked directly by this
[41:08] ship. Um and so people, you know, can
[41:11] read the book and understand what
[41:12] happened on this ship. But uh it it it
[41:15] goes on its journey u picking up
[41:18] Africans along the West African coast.
[41:20] And I went to West Africa to see the old
[41:22] forts and castles that are there. uh
[41:24] that Europeans built to facilitate the
[41:26] slave trade. They lined the West African
[41:29] coast with a higher concentration of
[41:31] fortifications than existed anywhere in
[41:34] Europe. Little forts and castles and
[41:36] dungeons to gather human beings. And so
[41:38] Africans were marched from the inland
[41:40] regions, sometimes a thousand miles.
[41:43] Arab slave traders would raid and
[41:46] ransack a village, grab people and start
[41:49] marching them down to the coast and you
[41:52] know trade along the way with house of
[41:54] slave dealers and people would die. Of
[41:56] course they're yolked at the neck and
[41:57] tied and they many people didn't survive
[42:00] a five, six, 800 mile march.
[42:02] >> 800 mile march.
[42:04] >> Yeah. There's a there's journal entries
[42:06] I came across one one captain slave ship
[42:08] captain named John Newton. John Newton's
[42:10] a fascinating guy because he became an
[42:12] abolitionist and a preacher and he wrote
[42:17] hymns and probably the most famous hymn
[42:20] he wrote was Amazing Grace.
[42:22] >> Whoa.
[42:23] >> So Amazing Grace is written by a slave
[42:24] trader.
[42:26] >> Whoa.
[42:26] >> So John Newton John Newton's from
[42:28] Liverpool. Liverpool was once capital of
[42:30] the of the slave trade.
[42:33] We think of Beatles when we think
[42:35] Liverpool, you know, or the football
[42:37] club, but it was once the dominant force
[42:40] in the entire European Atlantic slave
[42:42] trade, Liverpool.
[42:44] And Newton was one of those captains. He
[42:47] captained three slave ship journeys.
[42:49] They called it the triangular trade.
[42:52] And what that meant was is um ships
[42:56] departed Europe, in this case Liverpool,
[42:58] with tradable goods, mirrors, knives,
[43:02] rum, brandy, cutlery, crockery, linens,
[43:06] bandanas, whatever, cowery shells.
[43:10] Took all that stuff down to Western
[43:12] Africa where Europeans had built some
[43:15] castles and forts. And those castles and
[43:17] forts were involved in the business of
[43:19] accumulating Africans.
[43:22] Okay. And they held them in dungeons in
[43:24] these forts. And you can go to a place I
[43:26] went to it called Cape Coast Castle in
[43:28] Ghana, which was headquarters of the
[43:30] British slave trade. And there's a
[43:33] massive dungeon in the bottom of Cape
[43:36] Coast Castle.
[43:38] And Africans would be brought from
[43:40] hundreds of miles up all the way up into
[43:42] the Sahel, march down. A quarter to a
[43:45] third of them didn't survive. And so
[43:47] this this is uh this is the dungeon at
[43:50] Cape Coast Castle.
[43:52] >> Wow.
[43:52] >> Okay. And let me tell you something
[43:55] about this place, Joe. So that that this
[43:57] is uh man. So John Newton had in his
[44:00] journal um brought on board today um
[44:04] Africans marched I think 1,000 miles
[44:07] from the inland. Okay. So they were
[44:11] marched down and and eventually sold to
[44:14] the Europeans who run these forts and
[44:16] castles all along the coast. The biggest
[44:17] one was Cape Coast Castle. The British
[44:19] and the Dutch had one just cannon shot
[44:21] away called Elmina Castle. This is in
[44:24] modern day Ghana and they were held in
[44:26] the dungeon and you saw that picture of
[44:28] the dungeon. So the dungeon was divided
[44:30] between an area for men and an area for
[44:33] women and children. There'd be at any
[44:35] given time a thousand human beings in
[44:37] there shackled down one shaft for light
[44:41] and where they drop food and water and I
[44:44] don't know if you Jamie if you had that
[44:46] photo again you saw like a little narrow
[44:48] groove down the floor of the dungeon and
[44:52] there you see that you see that groove
[44:53] down the floor of the dungeon and that's
[44:55] supposed to siphon away their piss and
[44:58] [ __ ] and menstrual blood and so you can
[45:01] imagine a thousand people in there Now
[45:04] it always is full and clogged and rainy
[45:08] season whatever. So eventually the whole
[45:10] thing is covered in sludge of sewage.
[45:14] Okay. And so they would spend months
[45:16] down here, Joe. They would spend months
[45:18] down here and many people didn't survive
[45:20] that experience. So you're marched from
[45:23] the from the inland regions hundreds of
[45:25] miles. Didn't maybe didn't survive that.
[45:26] If you did, you're in this dungeon.
[45:29] You're spending months down here and
[45:31] then eventually
[45:33] there's the male slave dungeon entrance
[45:35] at Cape Coast Castle. So eventually the
[45:37] ships come from Western Europe with all
[45:39] their stuff
[45:41] and uh they come up to Cape Coast
[45:43] Castle. They park in the roads. They
[45:45] drop anchor. It's about a mile or two
[45:47] offshore. They take a canoe up to the
[45:49] castle and they meet the governor. And
[45:51] the governor says, "Okay, you know,
[45:52] let's let's do our business." And they
[45:54] go into the dungeon and they bring out a
[45:56] parcel of slaves. Some men, some women,
[45:58] and some children. They first clean
[46:00] them. Remember, they're covered in
[46:02] sewage and filth. And they cover them in
[46:04] palm oil to make them look healthy.
[46:08] And the captain will say, "I'll take
[46:09] this one, this one, this one." His
[46:11] surgeon or doctor will inspect them,
[46:14] open their mouths, check their lymph
[46:15] nodes, make them cough, make sure
[46:17] they're not sick and unwell, and and
[46:19] then they purchase these slaves and then
[46:21] brand them.
[46:23] and they brand them. Put uh some palm
[46:27] oil on their shoulder, brand them so
[46:29] they know which one they bought because
[46:30] they're going to go down to the next
[46:31] fort, buy a few, buy a few, and then
[46:33] when they've got all the several hundred
[46:35] to load up the ship, they come back and
[46:36] get them. When I went into the dungeon
[46:38] at Cape Coast,
[46:42] it's a kind of a cobbled floor. And then
[46:44] I got to this one section, Joe, that was
[46:47] smooth.
[46:49] And I had managed to get a single guide
[46:51] from the Ministry of Museums to take me
[46:53] around. So before I wrote about it, I
[46:56] wanted to see it and experience it. And
[46:59] you can see it's kind of cobbly. And
[47:01] then there's there's some sections that
[47:02] are smooth. And they had one that was
[47:04] just perfectly smooth. And I said, "Why
[47:06] is this so perfectly smooth here?" He
[47:08] said, "We left this just the way we
[47:11] found it. This is the sedimented urine,
[47:14] piss, [ __ ] menstrual blood of the
[47:18] people who were held here for centuries.
[47:22] And we don't learn that, you know, we
[47:25] don't learn that when we learn about
[47:26] slavery. We don't learn about these
[47:29] visceral details of what people had to
[47:32] endure
[47:35] before they even were put on the ship.
[47:38] Now, let's talk about the ship, you
[47:40] know, which is a floating dungeon.
[47:44] The the deep sea fairing vessel, Joe, is
[47:47] a marvel of engineering.
[47:49] It's a marvel of vision and ambition and
[47:53] European genius.
[47:55] Oh, Jamie's skipping ahead here, too.
[47:58] >> The I jumped. Sorry.
[48:00] >> The the visual imagery. We talk about
[48:03] abolition. All right. We're going to
[48:05] talk about the first use of a viral
[48:07] image
[48:09] which Jamie gave us a prelude to.
[48:13] So the the deep seafaring vessel is it's
[48:17] it's a testament to European genius and
[48:20] ambition and vision and exploration.
[48:24] There's no other way to look at it.
[48:26] There was an earth that was here and
[48:29] people were all in their pockets until
[48:31] the Portuguese and the Spanish
[48:35] developed a ship that could cross an
[48:36] ocean.
[48:39] And this was the early 1400s, the age of
[48:41] exploration. You learn about this in
[48:43] high school. Prince Henry the navigator
[48:45] got his ships. We need to see the rest
[48:48] of the world. What else is out there?
[48:51] Maybe some riches. And the Portuguese,
[48:54] they they started going south and they
[48:56] hit the Canaries, Canary Islands off the
[48:58] coast of West Africa. Shipwreck,
[49:01] shipwreck, shipwreck. The winds were
[49:03] just too intense, too violent, too
[49:05] counterveailing. Their ships could not
[49:07] handle it. Portuguese devented invented
[49:10] a specific sail called a a latine rig.
[49:14] All right? So, it's shaped like a
[49:16] triangle. And rather than a traditional
[49:20] square sail that gets pushed by the
[49:22] wind, the Latin rig, you can swivel it
[49:25] to function like a bird's wing. So you
[49:28] can tack into the wind like a bird does.
[49:32] And so the Portuguese are the first to
[49:34] get past the Canary Islands,
[49:36] 1420s, 1430s. And and the caravl takes
[49:41] Europeans south of the Canaries and they
[49:43] get down to the west coast of Africa.
[49:45] They they they round the Cape of Good
[49:48] Hope and and by the end of the 15th
[49:50] century the Portuguese have reached
[49:51] India. It's
[49:55] extraordinary
[49:57] exploration triumph of navigation and
[50:00] genius.
[50:02] Then we get Christopher Columbus. Oh
[50:06] man, Portuguese of they all the way over
[50:08] to India and they had to go all the way
[50:10] around Africa. Maybe there's a shortcut.
[50:14] I'm gonna go that way.
[50:16] Let me go that way. It's got to be a
[50:18] shortcut, you know. So, so he goes west.
[50:23] I'm gonna find a better way. He lands in
[50:25] the Bahamas. India. Indians.
[50:30] All right. Okay. You know, we laugh, but
[50:33] I mean, he crossed the Atlantic first in
[50:35] in his ship. He got he got here and and
[50:40] he starts the Spanish
[50:43] reconoitering of this this part of the
[50:45] planet. The pope pope is Alexander V 6
[50:49] says, "Okay, you Spanish, you
[50:51] Portuguese, you've kind of you've you're
[50:53] starting to sus out the rest of the
[50:55] world and I want you to get along. So,
[50:57] I'm going to draw a line down the middle
[50:59] of the Atlantic Ocean.
[51:02] And everything east of that line,
[51:04] Portugal, that's for you. Everything
[51:06] west of that line, Spain, that's for
[51:07] you. So, Spain colonized the Americas
[51:11] and Portugal colonized Africa and India
[51:14] first.
[51:17] Now,
[51:19] the Europeans
[51:21] came across something during the
[51:23] Crusades that captivated
[51:27] their taste buds. They called it sweet
[51:30] salt.
[51:32] Today, we call it sugar. There's no
[51:34] sugar in Europe till the Crusades
[51:37] because it doesn't grow there. It grows
[51:40] in warm tropical places.
[51:42] So 1494, the Pope divides the world and
[51:46] Spain and Portugal are now in tropical
[51:49] places where you can grow sugar. And
[51:53] >> that is so insane to hear, but makes
[51:57] complete and total sense that people
[51:58] didn't know about sugar until the 1400s.
[52:01] Well, they came across it in the
[52:02] Crusades, you know, 12,300 Europeans.
[52:05] Like, oh, these Arabs have got some
[52:08] sugar. It's nice, you know,
[52:10] >> and they're getting it from cane.
[52:11] They're just
[52:12] >> processing it. Sugarcane. Yeah. Yeah.
[52:14] Yeah. So, uh because it doesn't grow in
[52:18] that part of the world.
[52:19] >> So, what did they do to sweeten things
[52:20] in Europe back then? Just honey.
[52:23] >> Honey, berry juices.
[52:25] >> Wow.
[52:25] >> Sugar. Sugar is another level, right?
[52:27] >> Yeah.
[52:28] >> Sugar's another level. So,
[52:31] so they divide the world and they start
[52:33] setting up their sugar plantations. And
[52:35] the Portuguese tap into existing systems
[52:38] of slavery in Africa. Let's be clear
[52:40] about that. Europeans didn't bring
[52:42] slavery to Africa. There was slavery
[52:45] there. They tap into those systems to
[52:48] populate their sugar plantations along
[52:50] the African coast with slave labor.
[52:54] Now, the Spanish
[52:56] decimate native populations.
[52:59] Okay. The Mayans, the Aztecs, they get
[53:01] here and through guns and disease and
[53:03] war and they're decimating local
[53:05] populations.
[53:06] >> Mayans.
[53:07] >> Mayans.
[53:08] >> Yeah.
[53:09] >> So, they don't have a labor force.
[53:13] So, King Charles in 1518 says, "Okay,
[53:16] Portuguese, you got these Africans. Can
[53:17] you send some over here?"
[53:20] And that's 1518. to the Portuguese. He
[53:22] send he gives them a contract to bring
[53:24] me 4,000 Africans to come work these
[53:27] sugar plantations because they seem to
[53:28] be doing a good job working on yours.
[53:32] Thus begins the era of the Atlantic
[53:34] slave trade.
[53:36] It was about bringing Africans over to
[53:38] the Spanish colonies to work on the
[53:40] sugar plantations.
[53:42] And the Portuguese and the Spanish are
[53:45] running this triangular circuit,
[53:47] bringing goods down to Africa, buying
[53:49] Africans, taking them across. There you
[53:52] go. Um, dropping them in sugar
[53:54] plantations, and then getting the output
[53:57] of sugar labor, which is sugar, rum,
[53:59] molasses, whatever, taking it back to
[54:01] Europe, selling it, and then repeating
[54:03] the triangle.
[54:04] >> How were they so good at getting across
[54:06] the ocean, but so bad at thinking that
[54:08] they were in India?
[54:10] That seems so insane. Like how much of a
[54:13] map did they have of
[54:14] >> They had They had nothing west.
[54:16] >> They had nothing west. Nothing west.
[54:19] When when the Portuguese first started
[54:21] going south, they had nothing of Africa
[54:22] except the northern coast from Roman
[54:24] times.
[54:27] When you look at maps in the in the
[54:29] 1400s, it's blank slate.
[54:32] >> That's nuts.
[54:34] >> So they they and they were first
[54:35] attracted by gold, right? They heard
[54:37] these stories, these mythical stories of
[54:39] gold. And when the Portuguese got to
[54:41] West Africa, they called it Costa
[54:43] delamina deora, the coast of gold mines.
[54:47] There was gold everywhere. The slave
[54:49] trade came later because of sugar. Uh
[54:52] then the British and the Dutch. And
[54:54] >> so sugar was the start.
[54:55] >> Sugar was the dominant force.
[54:58] >> There was always slave labor. There was
[55:00] always slave and slave trade. But that's
[55:02] when it really ramped up. That's when
[55:04] the whole triangular trade, the Atlantic
[55:06] slave trade, the world's first
[55:08] globalized economy was born from sugar.
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[56:14] the fossil fuel of the day. It was the
[56:17] lubrication on which the global economy
[56:20] functioned such as it was then the North
[56:23] Atlantic
[56:24] generating centuries of generational
[56:26] wealth. So
[56:31] on the eve of the American Revolution,
[56:33] just to give you a sense, okay, so we're
[56:35] talking 1773, 1774,
[56:39] uh by this time the British are the
[56:41] dominant force in the Atlantic slave
[56:42] trade and they became the dominant force
[56:45] uh taking over Caribbean islands. Their
[56:48] prized was Jamaica,
[56:50] which became the largest sugar
[56:51] plantation economy in the world at that
[56:54] time.
[56:55] Uh so on the eve of the revolutionary
[56:57] war
[57:00] of course they had the 13 American
[57:01] colonies and they had some Caribbean
[57:04] islands
[57:05] just to give you a sense of how
[57:06] important sugar was. If you take all the
[57:10] exports from all 13 American colonies
[57:14] and you take sugar from Jamaica,
[57:17] the value of those sugar exports from
[57:19] Jamaica was five times the combined
[57:21] value of all 13 exports of everything
[57:24] from all 13 colonies.
[57:27] Wow. So sugar generated
[57:31] enormous wealth for Western Europe. And
[57:34] so thus the slave trade persisted and
[57:37] persisted. Are any of the companies that
[57:39] were making sugar back then, are they
[57:42] still around?
[57:43] >> Uh, not that I'm aware. No. I mean, uh,
[57:46] it's the sugar sugar, the way sugar is
[57:49] made today, of course, is is different
[57:51] than these slave plantations that were
[57:54] erected by first Portugal and Spain,
[57:56] then later the British and the Dutch.
[57:58] So, the Zorg is actually a Dutch slave
[58:01] ship, and it set sail around uh in
[58:05] October 1780. So, we're in the heart of
[58:07] American Revolutionary War and the
[58:11] British had been the dominant force of
[58:13] the slave trade. So, remember I told you
[58:14] we're in the dungeon, okay? And the
[58:17] slave captain comes around and he's
[58:19] bartering for these people and he spends
[58:22] a couple of months acquiring Africans in
[58:25] this castle, this fort, this place,
[58:27] brands them, and then eventually he
[58:29] loads up his ship with, depending on the
[58:31] size of the ship, three, four, five, six
[58:33] Africans.
[58:35] and loads his food and water and he has
[58:37] to cross the Atlantic. What's called the
[58:39] middle passage
[58:41] and the design of these ships, the
[58:43] design of a slave ship was specific,
[58:46] okay? Uh designed for human cargo.
[58:50] The bottom was the food and water and
[58:51] then they had what's called the tween
[58:53] deck. And all right, Jamie, you can you
[58:55] can throw up that photo now. We're
[58:57] ready.
[58:58] >> All right. So, here you've got the tween
[59:00] deck. All right. This is the schematic.
[59:02] And this this is an important schematic.
[59:04] This is the Brooks slave ship out of
[59:06] Liverpool. And you see the bottom of the
[59:09] tween deck. The shipmaster is showing
[59:11] you how to line up the Africans. They're
[59:12] given 16 inches of space each
[59:16] like the to quote John Newton who we
[59:18] talked about like books on a shelf.
[59:21] They're to be entered and stowed like
[59:24] books on a shelf.
[59:25] >> So each human is allotted 16 inches of
[59:27] space.
[59:28] >> Yeah, that's right. Now, why are they
[59:31] laying down? Okay. So, you're lining
[59:33] them all up, filling up every available
[59:35] possible piece of space. And then
[59:38] there's a second level here where you
[59:40] see them around this horseshoe. So, they
[59:44] built a partition. You can see at the
[59:46] bottom left there, they built a
[59:47] partition so that they could maximize
[59:50] the cargo, the human capacity cargo of
[59:53] this vessel. So, you can't sit upright.
[59:56] you're shackled down, laying down, and
[59:59] then there's a partition built and then
[60:00] there's another level of people like the
[60:03] the overhead bin space. Okay, you're
[60:06] just lining these people up and they're
[60:08] lined up like this uh for two months to
[60:11] cross the Atlantic.
[60:13] And you may ask yourself, what happens
[60:15] if you're seasick?
[60:18] What happens if a woman has her period?
[60:22] Some women gave birth in these
[60:24] conditions.
[60:26] What happens if you have to just go to
[60:28] the bathroom?
[60:30] So, they put buckets,
[60:34] distributed them along the uh what's
[60:38] called what they call the tween deck,
[60:39] this cargo here. And if you needed the
[60:42] bathroom, you had to try and get to that
[60:43] bucket with your chained partner, your
[60:46] chained two 2 by two. And of course, you
[60:48] never made it in time. And the ship is
[60:50] tossing and turning. And so in a matter
[60:53] of just a few days or a week, this
[60:56] entire deck is covered in in human piss
[60:59] and [ __ ] and blood and vomit uh and
[61:03] misery.
[61:05] And that's for the two months of the
[61:07] crossing.
[61:10] They don't teach us this, Joe.
[61:13] They don't teach us this part of it. So,
[61:16] here's a here's a shipmaster telling you
[61:20] how you can maximize the profit in the
[61:22] Brooks slave ship that he's building for
[61:24] the Brooks Liverpool family and line
[61:26] these people up.
[61:30] Now, they're brought up uh in the
[61:33] morning and dowsted with seaater and
[61:36] given a little bit of food and half pint
[61:39] of water to drink. uh the men are kept
[61:41] in the front of the ship and the women
[61:43] and children in the back and they built
[61:45] a barricade down the middle to keep the
[61:48] men on one side because
[61:50] um you can imagine let's say you're one
[61:53] of these Africans. You got that roll of
[61:55] the dice.
[61:57] You uh you're going to try to do
[61:59] anything you can to get control of that
[62:02] ship.
[62:04] And so slave insur insurrections were a
[62:07] common effort at resistance.
[62:10] And so the Europeans built a barricade
[62:13] down the middle of every slave ship so
[62:16] that if somehow the slaves managed to
[62:18] revolt, they would quickly get to the
[62:20] back, the stern side, where they could
[62:22] still control the ship. They had cannons
[62:24] mounted on the barricade to suppress the
[62:27] insurrection.
[62:30] >> They would shoot a cannon into their own
[62:31] boat. It was either that or lose the
[62:34] ship.
[62:36] And usually a couple of shots would call
[62:38] the insurrection.
[62:40] Now, you had to punish the
[62:41] insurrectionist. And I'm telling you
[62:43] this because captains wrote about all
[62:44] this stuff. They they wrote about this.
[62:47] And then there was one captain out of
[62:48] Liverpool who said, "I find that the
[62:50] punishment for an insurrection that
[62:52] works best to ensure that there's not
[62:55] another one is if you take one of the
[62:57] insurrection leaders, chop him to pieces
[62:59] while he's alive, and distribute the
[63:01] pieces to the other slaves." This seems
[63:04] to quell any further effort at
[63:05] insurrection.
[63:09] Horror.
[63:11] Just horror.
[63:13] Now they'd be whipped
[63:17] and you can imagine what happened to
[63:18] women and girls.
[63:22] Uh one slave captain said um sailors
[63:27] gratify their passions bruteike in front
[63:29] of the in front of the others with girls
[63:32] not 10 years old. You know people
[63:37] there were no laws on that ship. It was
[63:40] in a moral abyss.
[63:43] out in the middle of the ocean.
[63:45] And so in the case of the Zorg, they're
[63:48] taking these Africans across the
[63:49] Atlantic.
[63:51] And this is the kind of stuff that
[63:53] happens. There's an insurrection. Uh
[63:55] that's one form of protest. Another form
[63:57] of protest is a hunger strike. I'm not
[64:00] going to eat.
[64:02] I'll just die. I'd rather die. If you've
[64:05] already survived the march from the
[64:07] inland, lived in the Cape Coast Castle
[64:10] dungeon for a few months in your own
[64:12] [ __ ] and piss
[64:14] and then you're stuck in the ship like I
[64:16] don't know where this is going, but I'm
[64:19] going to stop eating. I'd rather be
[64:20] dead.
[64:22] The Europeans had a tool for that called
[64:25] the speculum orus. And it was initially
[64:28] a device used to pry open jaws when you
[64:32] had lock jaw.
[64:34] The slave ship captains got some of
[64:37] these and if you didn't want to eat,
[64:40] they jammed it in your mouth, forced it
[64:42] open, and shoved the food down your
[64:44] throat, cracking probably half your
[64:46] teeth and lacerating your tongue in the
[64:48] process, and then others would then fall
[64:51] in line, and that's the end of the
[64:53] hunger strike. So the the level of
[64:56] barbarity taking place on these ships
[64:57] that people had to endure
[65:00] is heart-wrenching.
[65:03] Uh but it's important for us to come to
[65:05] terms with this historically
[65:08] so we understand what we're capable of.
[65:11] Uh and how to keep this kind of inhumity
[65:14] from happening again. And that gets us
[65:16] to the to the glimmer of hope from all
[65:19] this. So this ship crosses the Atlantic.
[65:23] uh it was a Dutch ship, okay, in the
[65:26] midst of the American Revolutionary War
[65:28] and
[65:30] everybody was using the American re
[65:33] revolutionary war as a chance to get
[65:35] payback on the Brits because the Brits
[65:38] were the power of the day and uh the
[65:41] French, the Spanish, the Dutch with the
[65:45] British Navy stretched thin trying to
[65:47] fight off the Americans, they use this
[65:50] as an opportunity to pick off some ships
[65:52] there. Oh, Barbados is unguarded. Let's
[65:55] go take Barbados, you know. And so the
[65:57] the Brits are fighting everybody at
[65:59] once. And their response to this was,
[66:02] "Okay, anybody with this ship, you are
[66:03] hereby given approval to be a pirate.
[66:07] Just go pirate the hell out of anybody
[66:09] you see with a Dutch flag, a French
[66:11] flag, Spanish flag, any flag, American
[66:14] flag. Just go pirate them to hell. We
[66:16] need help. Our navy can't handle
[66:17] everything." So, British take to the
[66:20] seas as pirates. So, a British pirate
[66:24] ship captures this Dutch ship off the
[66:26] coast of Africa.
[66:27] >> Whoa. And it already had a couple
[66:30] hundred slaves in it. This British
[66:33] pirate,
[66:35] Captain William Llewellyn of HMS Alert,
[66:39] captures the Zorg off the coast of
[66:43] Liberia and finds two other Dutch ships
[66:46] and takes them over to Cape Coast Castle
[66:48] headquarters.
[66:50] And he looks at the other captains
[66:51] there, British captain, says, "Look, I
[66:53] got some Dutch prizes here with some
[66:55] slaves and there's some gold and ivory.
[66:57] I'm I'm I'm auctioning this stuff
[66:59] today."
[67:01] and uh a Liverpool captain named Hanley
[67:05] who's captain of a ship called the
[67:07] William. I'll take that one. I'll take
[67:10] the Zorg and everything in it. So, they
[67:14] didn't have Venmo and cash and all that
[67:16] back then. So, you write up an IOU.
[67:19] It was called a bill of exchange. So,
[67:21] Hanley gives a bill of exchange in the
[67:23] name of his slave merchant creditor, a
[67:25] Liverpool wealthy guy named William
[67:27] Gregson.
[67:29] He says, "You just take that to Greggson
[67:31] for this agreed upon fee. I'll take the
[67:33] Zorg." And so now he's got a two for
[67:35] one. Okay. So he takes half his crew and
[67:39] he sticks it on the Zorg uh and names
[67:43] his the doctor of his ship to be captain
[67:45] of the Zorg. And he says, "You fill up
[67:48] the rest of the cargo and meet me in
[67:51] Jamaica."
[67:53] And and so the captain does that. Um he
[67:57] loads up his ship. He overloads it. Um
[68:02] should have been no more than about 300
[68:04] slaves loaded into a ship the Zorg size
[68:06] which was about a 100 ton ship. He loads
[68:10] 440 Africans into it and he picks up a
[68:16] stranger
[68:18] on the West African coast. You remember
[68:20] I told you these forts and castles all
[68:22] had governors.
[68:24] They come down from Europe and their job
[68:26] is to run the castle and barter for
[68:29] slaves and so on. That's how the
[68:30] machinery worked.
[68:33] And these guys were just dumb.
[68:38] You read about them. They're just a
[68:40] bunch of incompetent fools who come run
[68:43] these castles and forts and they're
[68:46] always arguing and bickering and writing
[68:48] letters back and forth to each other
[68:49] like some teenagers and oh, you know,
[68:51] you did this and you did that and then
[68:53] they're writing to their bosses back in
[68:54] England and oh, you know, he did this
[68:55] and it's it's like a soap opera. And the
[69:01] Zorg is going by, he's going to another
[69:02] fort uh on the Gold Coast, Ghana, uh
[69:06] which had a slave auction room called
[69:08] Anumabu, the fort at Anumabu. And the
[69:13] governors decide to kick out the
[69:15] governor of Anumabu that day because
[69:16] they just can't stand him. His name is
[69:17] Robert Stubs. He's just a scoundrel and
[69:20] he's just a wretch of a human being. And
[69:23] they kick him out on the same day that
[69:25] the Zorg is passing by. So Stubs takes
[69:27] refuge on the ship
[69:31] and eventually the ship is loaded with
[69:33] slaves and it's making its way across
[69:35] the Atlantic
[69:38] and the captain gets sick and he can't
[69:40] run the ship and
[69:43] he's supposed to appoint his first mate.
[69:46] That maritime protocol first mate takes
[69:48] over. For some reason he appoints Stubs.
[69:53] >> Oh my god. And Joe, you can't make like
[69:57] you had a nice conversation with um
[70:00] Taylor Sheridan, you know, I love his
[70:03] shows. If Taylor Sheridan were to write
[70:06] Robert Stubs as one of his bad guys,
[70:09] people would say, "Get out of here, man.
[70:11] Nobody is that pure, bad, stupid, evil,
[70:14] awful. There's got to be some nuance to
[70:16] this character. We don't accept that."
[70:18] Sometimes people are just bad, awful,
[70:20] horrible people. And this guy was one of
[70:23] them.
[70:24] He takes over the ship and he doesn't
[70:27] know what he's doing and the ship gets
[70:29] off course. Now, the thing about
[70:32] crossing the Atlantic is there's no pit
[70:34] stops.
[70:37] The food and water you have when you
[70:39] leave Africa is the food and water that
[70:41] has to last you until you reach the new
[70:43] world, the other side.
[70:46] And if you get off course or delayed or
[70:50] get caught in a storm,
[70:52] uh you might be in trouble.
[70:55] And this is what happens with the Zorg.
[70:58] Stubs is leading them off course.
[71:01] They uh should only need two months to
[71:06] go from West Africa to Jamaica. Every
[71:09] decent captain can get his ship across
[71:11] the Atlantic in two months.
[71:14] And you expect about a 15% mortality
[71:16] rate on the Africans. They will get
[71:18] dysentery because they're living in
[71:19] their own piss and [ __ ] and they will
[71:22] take their own lives and they will do
[71:23] things. You you accept about a 15% loss
[71:26] of life.
[71:28] People start dying. The ship is off
[71:30] course. It's been two months, been two
[71:31] and a half months. We get to three
[71:33] months and they don't know where they
[71:35] are. They finally sight tobago at the
[71:39] far eastern edge of Caribbean ocean
[71:42] Caribbean Sea. And so they have a sense,
[71:43] okay, Jamaica's 10 days that way. Let's
[71:46] do a quick water check, make sure we got
[71:48] enough because we've already been quite
[71:50] delayed. And they do a check of the
[71:52] water and it seems that they have enough
[71:53] to get to Jamaica.
[71:56] Now, the fascinating thing about sea
[71:58] navigation at that time, Joe, is you can
[72:00] tell latitude very easily.
[72:04] You get your sex, you line it up, you
[72:05] can tell how many degrees north or south
[72:07] of the equator you are. Longitude
[72:11] was a harder
[72:13] measurement to calculate. It's
[72:15] essentially you're trying to measure the
[72:17] rotation of the Earth and your position
[72:19] on it. And
[72:23] for most of human history,
[72:26] the largest
[72:28] cause of death on a ship, a deep
[72:30] seafaring vessel, was a shipwreck caused
[72:33] by botched longitude. It's not scurvy.
[72:36] It's not piracy or whatever. It's I
[72:39] thought I was there, but I'm actually
[72:41] over here and I just ran into an island
[72:44] and got a shipwreck and everyone's dead.
[72:47] You want to know how they measure
[72:48] longitude?
[72:50] It's called dead reckoning.
[72:52] And what you're supposed to do is you
[72:55] have a log and a rope and you have knots
[72:59] tied at regular intervals. And every six
[73:02] hours you need to throw the rope. You
[73:04] throw you throw the log into the into
[73:07] the water and you hold the rope in your
[73:09] hand and you you count how many knots
[73:12] pass through your hand in a 60-second
[73:15] period. And that gives you a speed in
[73:17] knots or nautical speed.
[73:21] And you do that every six hours. And
[73:24] that gives you a sense of your speed.
[73:26] And you plot that against direction. And
[73:28] you you can then calculate how far east
[73:30] or west you are of your starting point
[73:32] and you enter that in your log book
[73:34] because of the log you just threw in the
[73:36] ocean. So this is where the terms come
[73:37] from.
[73:38] >> That's crazy. So people would now let's
[73:41] just say you're not too good at this.
[73:43] every error in measurement you make is
[73:46] accumulating on the previous one and you
[73:49] can end up hundreds of miles off course
[73:54] and suddenly an island's ro upon you and
[73:56] you crash into it and that's the end of
[73:57] that. So for most of the deep sea
[74:00] fairing period people were just all
[74:03] right I think I'm 15 degrees west of
[74:07] where I was yesterday. Let me write that
[74:09] down in my log book. Let me throw in the
[74:10] rope. Okay,
[74:12] this is this is this was the level of uh
[74:15] uh measurement we're talking about.
[74:18] So, they site Tobago. They know where
[74:20] they are at that point and they took way
[74:23] too long to get there, but they know
[74:24] where they are. So, they know Jamaica is
[74:25] 1,150 mi north by Northwest.
[74:28] >> And they keep going.
[74:29] >> So, they had to get to Jamaica. That was
[74:31] their destined port. Okay.
[74:34] So, they keep going. They keep going.
[74:36] They keep going. And
[74:38] not sighting land. not sighting land.
[74:40] Then on day 10, so about the right time,
[74:43] they sight land. Now, they have to make
[74:46] sure it's Jamaica because what's right
[74:48] next to Jamaica to the west, it's an
[74:49] island called Hispanola, which was half
[74:53] Spanish, half French, would later become
[74:56] Dominican Republic and Haiti.
[74:58] And that's enemy territory because we're
[75:00] in the middle of the American
[75:01] Revolutionary War. And uh we can't stop
[75:04] there. So, we need to make sure. So
[75:07] Stubs drops in his rope and his thing
[75:11] and he says, "Oh, this is 70 degrees
[75:13] west. That's Hispanola. Jamaica's the
[75:16] next one. Next one down." So they keep
[75:18] going. Should have just been one day,
[75:23] two days, three days. Turns out it was
[75:26] Jamaica.
[75:28] And they've gone three days past their
[75:30] destination. And now they're completely
[75:33] out of water.
[75:36] and to turn around and beat into the
[75:39] wind. That three days west is going to
[75:42] take them 10 days to get back because
[75:45] they have to go into the wind. Now,
[75:49] at this point, they started with half a
[75:51] crew of 17. Should have had a crew of
[75:53] 30. Remember, Hanley divided his crew in
[75:55] half. So, they're down to just 11 guys.
[75:58] And the captain is sick to the point of
[76:01] lunacy. Stubs is running the ship and
[76:04] they've already lost about 70 Africans
[76:06] to dysentery and scurvy.
[76:10] So they have and they're out of water.
[76:15] So they make a decision.
[76:17] In order to survive the 10 days to get
[76:19] back to Jamaica, we have to reduce the
[76:21] amount of water consumption on board.
[76:24] And their solution to doing this is to
[76:27] start throwing the Africans overboard.
[76:31] So across three days they start with
[76:35] women and children living breathing
[76:37] human beings sick and unwell and all
[76:40] that including one baby.
[76:45] They throw 130 to 140 Africans overboard
[76:51] into the sea to drown
[76:54] and their bones are still down there.
[76:56] Okay.
[76:58] uh and then they reached Jamaica
[77:01] with a 50% mortality rate when you
[77:04] include the number of people who died
[77:05] and the number of people they threw
[77:06] overboard. So half the slaves gone.
[77:10] They dock, they sell the slaves, they
[77:13] sold them through a process called the
[77:14] scramble. The scramble is a slave mer
[77:18] slave broker says, "Okay, I got slaves
[77:19] on this ship. Um let's agree on a
[77:22] price." The price agreed was £36. That's
[77:24] about $10,000 today. And the buyers, all
[77:29] the slaves are loaded into a pen. They
[77:31] are covered in palm oil so they look
[77:33] healthy. Most of them have dysentery so
[77:35] they use oak to plug their anus for the
[77:38] for the portion of the sales and you run
[77:41] in with a rope and you rope off the ones
[77:43] you want and you gather them and then
[77:46] you you pay you pay the the brokers and
[77:49] the slaves are taken off to the
[77:51] plantations. Now that should have been
[77:53] the end of the story. We should not know
[77:55] what happened on this ship
[77:58] except for greed.
[78:02] So the owner of the Zorg, the one who
[78:04] wrote that I owe you and he got news.
[78:07] Oh, Hanley, you got a two for one. Yes,
[78:09] here you go. Here's your money to the
[78:11] pirate and let me insure
[78:14] my new ship. So every slave ship that
[78:18] crossed the Atlantic was insured.
[78:22] Insurance was born out of the slave
[78:24] trade.
[78:27] >> It costs you 7 $800,000 equivalent today
[78:32] to kit out a slave ship. All the
[78:35] supplies, the crew, salaries, and all
[78:37] that. So, it's a large amount of upfront
[78:39] capital.
[78:40] And you could have a shipwreck, you
[78:43] could have a pirate take your ship. Uh,
[78:45] in which case it's all lost.
[78:48] So, there was a chap in London named
[78:51] Lloyd.
[78:53] Lloyd hung out at this coffee shop and
[78:56] he had an idea. Said, "Okay, you guys
[79:01] give me a small percent, let's call it a
[79:04] premium of the value of your ship and
[79:07] your cargo,
[79:09] and if you lose it all, I'll pay you an
[79:13] agreed upon value back. But if you don't
[79:16] lose it all, I keep the premium.
[79:19] And Lloyd's Coffee Shop, which then
[79:22] later became Lloyds of London,
[79:26] was the premier insurance underwriter
[79:28] for slave ships. And they had standard
[79:30] contracts that they wrote wrote up.
[79:34] And the slave trade blew up this
[79:37] business because every slave captain and
[79:39] slave merchant wanted to ensure the
[79:41] slave the ship and all the cargo.
[79:45] So Gregson had taken out an insurance
[79:48] contract for the ship and and his
[79:50] Africans 30 pounds ahead.
[79:55] When he learns that his ship lost half
[79:59] its cargo,
[80:01] he decides to make an insurance claim.
[80:04] And most insurance claims at the time
[80:08] were if slaves died in an insurrection,
[80:10] you can get compensated. But if they die
[80:13] because of natural causes or they kill
[80:15] themselves, you don't get compensated.
[80:17] That's in the contract. So, no one had
[80:19] ever said, "Well, what happens if you
[80:20] throw them overboard? Do you get
[80:22] compensation then?" And so, Gregson's
[80:25] going to test this. And he tells the
[80:27] insurance, "Uh, I want my compensation
[80:29] for the 200 slaves." And the insurance
[80:31] company said, "Man, that's 50% mortality
[80:34] rate. That's let me check my actuary
[80:36] table here. No, that's not standard.
[80:38] We're not going to pay."
[80:41] So he files a lawsuit. This is how we
[80:44] learn about what happened. Nobody knew,
[80:46] Joe, what was happening on these ships.
[80:49] Remember I told you King Charles 1518
[80:51] when that's when it all started. We're
[80:53] in 1780. So two and a half centuries
[80:56] this has been machines been running.
[80:58] Nobody knew what was happening on the
[81:00] ships except the captains themselves and
[81:01] the crew. So Gregson files a lawsuit.
[81:05] That lawsuit ends up in front of the
[81:07] chief justice of the entire British
[81:09] Empire, the Earl of Mansfield, Titanic
[81:12] figure.
[81:14] And the court cases at that time, there
[81:16] weren't court houses and all. It was
[81:18] held in the Guild Hall, the London Guild
[81:20] Hall. And this is so fascinating, Joe,
[81:23] because it shows you how the whole
[81:26] course of history can bend toward
[81:28] goodness through the conscience of even
[81:31] one person,
[81:33] just one. So the trial is had. We don't
[81:36] have a transcript of this trial,
[81:39] but we know that the slave merchants
[81:42] won. Judgment was for the slave
[81:43] merchants. You want to know who the only
[81:45] witness was? Stubs.
[81:49] Stubs is the only guy surviving. He
[81:51] comes in and he says, "Yeah, yeah, we
[81:52] were out of water. We had absolutely no
[81:55] choice. We had to throw the Africans
[81:56] overboard or we all would have died. It
[81:59] was absolutely necessary. And because
[82:01] it's necessary, insurance has to answer.
[82:05] Yeah, that makes sense. All right, you
[82:08] guys please pay Gregson 30 ahead for his
[82:11] Africans.
[82:13] That should have been the end of it. But
[82:15] there was one person in the room that
[82:17] day with a conscience, with a heart, and
[82:19] he's watching this trial take place, and
[82:22] he's wondering, "Wait a minute, why is
[82:24] no one talking about murder?
[82:27] He just said they threw 130 human beings
[82:30] overboard to drown. And they're talking
[82:32] about insurance compensation, but no
[82:33] one's talking about murder. So, this
[82:35] person writes an anonymous letter to the
[82:38] largest newspaper in London asking this
[82:41] question. I just saw this. No one's
[82:44] talking about murder. Weren't these
[82:45] people murdered? How come there's not a
[82:47] murder charge here?
[82:49] And there was a small community of
[82:53] faith-based abolitionists, Anglican
[82:55] church and Quakers who didn't like this
[82:58] thing called slavery.
[83:01] And there was another group of them in
[83:02] America, Quakers especially, didn't like
[83:05] this thing called slavery. And the
[83:08] grandfather of the abolition of slavery
[83:10] is a man named Granville Sharp. Most
[83:13] people don't know that name, but he was
[83:17] the first person
[83:19] who was white-skinned to devote his life
[83:22] to the abolition of slavery.
[83:25] And he saw this letter and a former
[83:27] slave who happened to be living in
[83:29] London
[83:31] brought this letter to him. All right.
[83:33] His name was Olad Ecuano.
[83:36] That's Ecuano and that's Granville
[83:38] Sharp. Nicely done, Jamie.
[83:40] Uh Ecuano was a former slave. He had
[83:43] been a slave in Virginia, but smart,
[83:45] industrious, he bought his freedom and
[83:47] he heard about Granville Sharp.
[83:49] Granville Sharp had devoted his life to
[83:52] ab abolishing slavery. Ecuano made his
[83:54] way to London. Said, "I'm going to I'm
[83:55] going to do what I can to help." So
[83:57] Granville Sharp sees this letter and he
[83:59] says, "Man, I" He had been spending the
[84:01] last two decades of his life trying to
[84:04] build a legal argument against slavery.
[84:05] He taught himself the law. He didn't
[84:07] finish school. Taught himself the law.
[84:08] Taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew. He
[84:10] wrote pamphlets. We were talking about
[84:12] pamphlets, right?
[84:14] Pamphlets was the thing of the day. You
[84:16] had an idea. You wrote a pamphlet and
[84:18] you you gave it to people. Granville
[84:19] Sharp wrote a pamphlet that he shared
[84:22] with his friend Benjamin Franklin. He
[84:24] said,
[84:25] maybe he called him Benjamin, I don't
[84:28] know, maybe they had nicknames,
[84:29] whatever. He said, "Benjamin,
[84:32] I have a pamphlet I want you to read.
[84:34] And my argument is this." This was in
[84:36] the 1760s.
[84:39] Uh, you guys over there should not be
[84:42] taxed without having a representative in
[84:44] Parliament.
[84:46] And thus was born the slogan, no
[84:48] taxation without representation,
[84:51] which became the rallying cry of the
[84:54] American Revolutionary War. Yeah. Yeah,
[84:56] that's right. Why are we paying all
[84:57] these taxes to some king and we don't
[84:59] even have a say in the matter? So,
[85:00] Granville Sharp was this Renaissance
[85:03] man, self-taught
[85:05] uh man of deep faith who could not
[85:09] stomach the idea that a Christian nation
[85:12] was involved in slavery. And he saw this
[85:14] anonymous letter and he said, "This is
[85:16] my case. This is the one. This is the
[85:18] one that's going to blow this whole
[85:19] thing open." He went back to the
[85:21] underwriters
[85:23] and he said, "File a motion for a
[85:25] retrial and now you make all these
[85:26] arguments." And I have the trial
[85:28] transcript because
[85:31] Granville Sharp took hired someone to
[85:34] transcribe the whole hearing in
[85:35] shorthand. So there's a record. That's
[85:37] why we know what happened.
[85:41] And it's all going along kind of the
[85:43] same way except this time they're making
[85:47] different arguments. The barristers are
[85:52] talking about for the first time in the
[85:55] history of the west and in a court of
[85:57] law, human rights.
[86:01] Those black people had the same right to
[86:04] water as the white captain did. And this
[86:08] is a revolutionary idea. They have the
[86:10] same right to life as the crew the crew
[86:14] of the ship did.
[86:16] And they're trying to persuade
[86:19] again Justice Mansfield and two more
[86:22] justices this time
[86:24] of this notion of universal human
[86:26] rights.
[86:29] And in the midst of all this,
[86:32] the only witness again is Stubs.
[86:35] You saw that movie A Few Good Men.
[86:36] >> Mhm.
[86:37] >> Yeah. So there's that moment, right,
[86:39] when Tom Cruz has Jack Nicholson on the
[86:42] stand. He just has to get him to admit
[86:44] he ordered the code red and he's quaking
[86:47] in his boots because Nicholson's, you
[86:49] know, if he gets it wrong, that's it.
[86:50] Court marshall, you're done. You know,
[86:51] if you accuse a whatever 10star general
[86:54] ordering the code red and he's just, do
[86:56] I push? Do I push? And he gets Nicholson
[86:58] going. He gets him moving. He gets him
[87:00] agitated. And then of course he says,
[87:02] did you order the code red? And Nichol
[87:03] says, you're goddamn right I did.
[87:07] That that changes everything, right? You
[87:09] did. Oh, okay. All right. So there's a
[87:12] moment like that in this trial.
[87:15] Stubs is the only witness. All he has to
[87:17] do is say, "We ran out of water."
[87:19] Absolutely necessary to throw the
[87:21] Africans. Chief Justice Mansfield
[87:24] uttered words that later went on in
[87:27] infamy. The case of the slaves is the
[87:29] same as if horses had been thrown
[87:31] overboard. That was his summary of the
[87:33] first trial. Yeah, if you throw over
[87:35] horses, no one's going to talk about
[87:36] murder. It's property. Slaves, same
[87:39] thing. He just has to say property
[87:42] thrown over because we we ran out of
[87:44] water. The barristister's got stubs on
[87:47] the stand. He's a fool. He's a dullard.
[87:49] He gets his mouth moving faster than his
[87:51] brain is processing. And he gets stubs
[87:53] to admit that in the middle of throwing
[87:55] over Africans because they were out of
[87:57] water, it rained.
[88:00] What do you mean it rained? Yeah, it
[88:02] rained. So, you did have water.
[88:05] The whole thing is revealed to be this
[88:08] bankrupt moral fraud, the slave trade.
[88:12] And now the world knows
[88:14] that not only what's happening on these
[88:16] ships, things we talk about with these
[88:18] images and the truth that was revealed,
[88:20] but the fact that the whole thing is
[88:22] this big lie, this greed mongering,
[88:24] murderous lie for profit, and the public
[88:28] found out about it. And this is what
[88:30] gives me hope, Joe. And we talk about
[88:31] the same things happening still today.
[88:35] This activated the first movement to
[88:37] abolish slavery. It was born right after
[88:39] this this moment where a handful of
[88:43] people in the Anglican church got
[88:45] together. There were 12 of them and they
[88:48] met in a printing shop in 1787 and they
[88:51] said we have to abolish slavery. It is a
[88:55] stain on human conscience. It's a stain
[88:58] on the British name. It is a stain
[89:00] against Christianity. we have to abolish
[89:03] this horrific institution. And then they
[89:05] devoted their lives to that task which
[89:07] was a monumental and herculean task. But
[89:10] they succeeded using viral images,
[89:13] authentic testimony, investigative
[89:15] journalism, consumer boycots, kind of
[89:17] the tools that we use today for social
[89:19] justice were pioneered in this first
[89:21] movement. And ultimately they did
[89:23] succeed on paper. Granted and conceded
[89:27] that it was just on paper. But
[89:30] years later, even Frederick Douglas
[89:32] said, "We commemorate every year the
[89:35] abolition of slavery in the British
[89:36] Empire, August 1, 1838, because that
[89:40] showed the world it was possible.
[89:44] And it was only a matter of time before
[89:45] we did it here. It required a civil war,
[89:48] but it was achieved." And and that was
[89:51] the moment. And you trace it back to
[89:53] that anonymous letter to these little
[89:55] acts of conscience to this handful of
[89:57] men who got together in a printing shop
[89:59] and said our this is our life's focus
[90:02] now including Granville Sharp. This is
[90:04] our life's focus now to rid the world of
[90:07] this moral stain. So now people are
[90:08] going to emerge as they learn about the
[90:10] Congo [ __ ] And I've seen it happening.
[90:14] people of conscience
[90:17] forming and trying to find a way to push
[90:20] back and bring some justice to the
[90:22] people in the Congo. Just as this
[90:23] handful of people built an entire
[90:25] movement at a time when slavery was
[90:27] normal, legal, accepted, most members of
[90:30] parliament had investments in the slave
[90:32] trade uh and profited from the sugar
[90:36] sugar economy. Um uh but they succeeded.
[90:39] They triumphed. They persevered through
[90:41] enormous obstacles and we have to do the
[90:43] same today and it will require acts of
[90:46] conscience. And by the way, the Zorg
[90:48] I've figured out who wrote that letter.
[90:50] 240 years no one had known who was this
[90:53] person whose conscience bent history
[90:56] towards goodness. And I managed to
[90:58] figure out who it was. And um he's an
[91:02] abolitionist named James Ramsay,
[91:05] a man of deep faith. I keep coming back
[91:07] to that right this word faith and it's
[91:11] important because I do think that
[91:16] we are a species generally of good and I
[91:20] think we all have a divine nature in us
[91:24] and yeah there's evil in the world
[91:26] there's greed there's violence there's
[91:28] horror there's oppression there's all of
[91:30] that but the forces of good and the
[91:34] spark of goodness within us and The
[91:36] faith we have in higher power invariably
[91:39] emerges and does succeed
[91:42] even if it's just for a moment.
[91:46] And and and we we need those moral
[91:49] leaders today to pull us forward just as
[91:51] these handful of people in the past
[91:54] dragged humanity forward with the power
[91:56] of their moral force. And we're looking
[91:59] for those leaders today because the
[92:00] world is in so much turmoil. But we're
[92:03] incredibly malleable and influenced,
[92:06] easily influenced. And we could be
[92:09] influenced in a great direction or we
[92:11] could be influenced in a negative
[92:12] direction. And this to me, regardless of
[92:15] what you actually believe, this to me is
[92:17] the great benefit of religion and
[92:19] particularly in Christianity. Like if
[92:21] you meet people that are like really by
[92:24] the book Christians are some of the
[92:25] nicest people you ever want to meet in
[92:26] your in your life. And they they get a
[92:28] lot of happiness out of that. And this
[92:30] is one of the things that a lot of
[92:31] people are lacking in this world is
[92:33] happiness. And without a moral framework
[92:36] and an ethical framework, I'm not saying
[92:38] that you can't be an atheist to be an
[92:39] amazing person. I know a lot of amazing
[92:41] people who are atheists. They're just
[92:42] kind, you know, thoughtful, considerate
[92:45] people who came from good families and
[92:47] have good friends and they don't they
[92:49] don't need religion to be a good person.
[92:51] But there is a real value in providing a
[92:54] framework. There's a real value in
[92:56] providing um an ideology that supports
[93:00] being positive in your community, being
[93:02] a a good person, ethical person, being
[93:05] someone who forgives. Forgiveness is
[93:07] very important part of Christianity. Um
[93:09] redemption is a very important part of
[93:11] Christianity. This idea that we evolve
[93:12] and grow together. And in the in the
[93:15] absence of that moral framework, you can
[93:18] get people whose their ideology
[93:22] looks at other human beings as property.
[93:25] Their ideology looks at other human
[93:27] beings as not the same as them. You
[93:29] know, whether we're talking about China
[93:31] and the treatment of the weaguers or
[93:32] whether we're talking about the African
[93:34] slave trade or the Congo right now, it's
[93:36] all kind of the same thing.
[93:38] >> I I could I totally agree. Um I think uh
[93:43] the Christian faith has been a force for
[93:45] enormous good at crucial points in
[93:48] history and the abolition of slavery is
[93:49] one of them. Um uh without question
[93:53] there's a ethic of compassion, of
[93:57] empathy, uh be a good neighbor, be a
[94:00] good brother and sister. Um we're all
[94:03] God's children. And you see that
[94:06] language in the driving that's driving
[94:08] the abolitionists
[94:10] uh in these movements to abolish
[94:12] slavery.
[94:13] >> And this is not to um this is not to
[94:17] forgive the horrors that people under
[94:19] the guise of Christianity have
[94:22] >> performed. So the Inquisition or what
[94:25] >> that's right
[94:25] >> you could the crusades you could go
[94:27] through a lot of horrific things that
[94:28] were done in the name of Christianity
[94:30] but not really by in the spirit of it.
[94:33] And this is the problem with human
[94:34] beings. We can make these
[94:36] rationalizations and make these
[94:38] decisions and and we can decide that
[94:40] we're doing horrific things for the
[94:42] greater good. That is a also a problem
[94:45] with human rationalization that we could
[94:47] be the most awful people as long as we
[94:49] think we're being awful doing it for
[94:51] good.
[94:53] It's just a a weird human tribal problem
[94:55] that we've always had. So when you're
[94:57] looking at Christianity, think about
[94:58] megaurch pastors driving around in
[95:01] Rolls-Royces and flying private jets and
[95:02] ripping off these dull-minded people.
[95:05] But that's not that's
[95:07] >> that's not the that's not the spirit of
[95:09] the faith, you know. That's
[95:12] humans. That's greed. And
[95:13] >> it's humans. They're in the weird
[95:15] ability to justify things.
[95:16] >> That's right. And in pursuit of
[95:18] self-interest and self-gratification,
[95:21] and that will always be a part of the
[95:23] human condition. And there are those
[95:24] among us, but there are greater angels.
[95:27] >> Yeah.
[95:27] >> You know, the people who endure who
[95:29] endured those slaveships with grace, who
[95:32] endure the minds in the Congo with
[95:34] grace, they are so much stronger and
[95:37] have so much more human worth than those
[95:40] who oppress and who are greedy and
[95:42] self-interested. And it's it is
[95:45] >> what's the worst example of human beings
[95:47] imaginable?
[95:49] To the point where you're throwing women
[95:50] and children overboard for water.
[95:52] >> Yeah. including a a mother and her baby.
[95:55] You know, it's it's it's heartbreaking.
[95:58] >> I mean, there's just horrific stories of
[96:00] what Columbus did
[96:02] >> and what his the the people on his boats
[96:05] did when they reached the Americas or
[96:08] the Bahamas. The the horrific things
[96:09] they did to people when they found that
[96:11] these people had gold.
[96:12] >> Yeah.
[96:13] >> And they required that they bring back
[96:14] the their own weight and gold or they
[96:16] chop their arms off.
[96:17] >> Chop their arms off. You know, there was
[96:19] all kinds of
[96:20] >> dashing babies heads against rocks in
[96:22] front of their mothers. They did
[96:23] horrific things. And this was all
[96:25] documented by some religious scholar who
[96:28] was on board with them. A religious
[96:30] leader who's on board with some some
[96:31] Christian.
[96:32] >> Yeah. Look, let's not let's be clear.
[96:34] Europeans messed up a lot of the world.
[96:36] >> Oh yeah.
[96:37] >> Okay. I mean that the the the reason I
[96:41] went through a little bit of time
[96:42] talking about the caravl and the deep
[96:44] sea fairing vessel is this is this was
[96:47] this is what took the Europeans
[96:50] all across the global south and by and
[96:53] large that was a miserable experience
[96:56] for the people they met.
[96:58] >> Yeah. Always
[96:59] >> that was
[97:01] >> even if it was just diseases
[97:02] >> it whether Yeah. disease and then of
[97:04] course violence
[97:06] uh enslavement, oppression,
[97:08] colonization,
[97:09] >> all the above.
[97:10] >> You know, all all of the above. There
[97:11] was a malice um and a greed and a sense
[97:14] of superiority that was inherent to that
[97:17] entire episode of history. And I often
[97:20] look back and think, man, if they had
[97:21] just stayed home,
[97:22] >> not only that, they were essentially a
[97:24] scourge of plague.
[97:26] >> They they brought they
[97:27] >> smallox 90% of Native Americans were
[97:30] wiped out because of that.
[97:32] >> Yeah. And we we think that has to do
[97:33] with what happened to the Mayans.
[97:35] >> We think that has to do with what
[97:36] happened in uh Brazil and the Congo when
[97:40] they find these what used to be enormous
[97:42] populations and these grids when they're
[97:44] doing the LAR scans and they're saying,
[97:46] "Oh, this used to be like cities."
[97:47] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and now we're
[97:50] highly populated and then just suddenly
[97:53] very rapidly depopulated. And it wasn't
[97:56] all just violence. You're right. It was
[97:58] disease and
[97:59] >> disease. So everything they did was bad.
[98:01] The violence was bad and everything they
[98:03] did was bad.
[98:04] >> It's such a crazy story that cuz it's
[98:07] hard to imagine. You know, I used to
[98:08] have this joke in my act about our
[98:10] country is 300 years old. People live to
[98:13] be 100. I go, that's three people.
[98:14] That's what's nuts. It's like three
[98:16] people ago.
[98:17] >> A young country.
[98:18] >> Yeah. Or really country.
[98:19] >> Two and a half. Two and a half people
[98:20] ago, we just got here. which is just
[98:24] nuts to even think about how quickly the
[98:27] human race progresses and how
[98:29] devastating the introduction of new
[98:31] people especially with like diseases
[98:34] >> when they find the people that were
[98:36] here.
[98:36] >> Well, we we imagine this with, you know,
[98:38] the arrival of aliens like this is first
[98:41] contact the story like what what would
[98:43] happen?
[98:43] >> Sure.
[98:43] >> When aliens show up, are they going to
[98:46] blow everything up, right?
[98:47] >> Are they going to enslave us? And
[98:48] >> are they going to be like the Quakers or
[98:50] are they going to be like the Chinese?
[98:51] >> Yeah. Yeah. Well said.
[98:53] >> Or the Dutch.
[98:54] >> Yeah, the Dutch.
[98:55] >> You know,
[98:56] >> yeah, it's it's you know, the question
[98:59] though now is there's a there's a lot of
[99:00] conversation about reparation.
[99:04] >> Do European countries
[99:07] need to write a check for what they did?
[99:11] And it's a complicated question. You
[99:14] know, Jamaica just went to England and
[99:16] said, "Please, you know, you you took
[99:21] millions of Africans, brought them here,
[99:24] enslaved them, and made yourself from
[99:26] this muddy medieval backasswords
[99:30] island to an economic superpower
[99:35] with centuries of wealth on the back of
[99:38] largely sugar, slavery, and so on. So um
[99:43] those people worked for free for
[99:46] centuries and um you need to write a
[99:49] check.
[99:52] Now that's a fascinating question, isn't
[99:54] it? So on the one hand, you know, if if
[99:58] if your father worked at a a
[100:01] manufacturing plant and let's say he
[100:04] worked for 30 years and they never paid
[100:05] him, we wouldn't think about, oh yeah,
[100:08] you know, your dad is owed money because
[100:11] he worked. He should be paid for that
[100:12] work. The company made their money off
[100:14] his labor. And so all right,
[100:17] uh
[100:19] are the descendants of those slaves owed
[100:21] some money? And
[100:24] Jamaica went to England just recently
[100:26] and said
[100:28] 10 billion pounds like just something. I
[100:31] mean you when you start to calculate
[100:32] unpaid labor for three centuries plus
[100:34] interest it's trillions and trillions
[100:36] and it's an in you know impossible sum.
[100:41] Uh but something is owed and then you
[100:43] say well now wait a minute um if you're
[100:46] the British government
[100:48] I wasn't a part of that. I I I didn't I
[100:51] didn't participate in this, so why am I
[100:52] writing a check? And then the Jamaican
[100:54] says, "Yeah, but everything you have
[100:55] today is built on that." And so there's
[100:57] this conversation going back and forth,
[100:59] Joe, about is a check due? Um or is it
[101:04] just and fair to to ask for that
[101:07] reparation be paid for this period in
[101:10] slavery? just as the Bel the Congalles
[101:12] are talking to the Belgians. You know,
[101:14] you Liupole came down here and look what
[101:15] he did to us and then colonized us and
[101:18] uh a a a check needs to be written of uh
[101:23] as well as an apology and uh it's a it's
[101:26] a difficult it's a difficult question.
[101:29] >> Who would um receive the check and how
[101:31] would it be distributed? That would be
[101:32] the real question.
[101:33] >> That's part of the complexity. Like
[101:35] >> the fear would be that corruption would
[101:36] get involved and someone would siphon
[101:38] off the money.
[101:39] >> Yeah. You say, "Wait, you're going to
[101:40] tell me I need to write a check to the
[101:42] government of the Congo?" All right,
[101:44] that's not getting to anybody who
[101:46] actually could use it or I just give a
[101:49] check to Jamaica and trust that they
[101:51] >> All right, but does that mean that in
[101:54] principle something's not owed? You
[101:55] know,
[101:56] >> but even if you distribute distributed
[101:57] to the individual people, you you'd have
[102:00] to make sure that no one's stealing it
[102:02] from anybody else. And then you would
[102:03] have to figure out how to distribute it.
[102:06] And
[102:08] I mean it does at at the very least if a
[102:12] country's or or a corporation's entire
[102:16] start like the their beginning was based
[102:19] on slavery getting sugar. That's kind of
[102:23] insane that somehow or another that
[102:26] profit led to people that are still
[102:27] wealthy today.
[102:28] >> Well, you know,
[102:29] >> they can trace that, right?
[102:30] >> Yeah, they can trace that. You know what
[102:31] else they've done? So when the British
[102:34] abolished slavery, okay, they wrote a
[102:36] check to the slave owners.
[102:38] >> Oh my god.
[102:40] >> This was part of the deal to get the
[102:42] bill through part.
[102:42] >> How much did they have to give them?
[102:44] >> Cuz it was they were the argument was,
[102:46] well, you're taking my property,
[102:49] >> so you need to pay me for that property.
[102:51] Now, no one was talking about, well, do
[102:53] we pay anything to the Africans who
[102:55] worked for free, the slave owners who
[102:58] are also all members of parliament.
[103:00] you're taking my property. So, you're
[103:03] going to find this fascinating.
[103:05] They allocated a sum of 20 million
[103:09] pounds back in 1833 when the law was
[103:12] passed.
[103:13] >> What is that equivalent to?
[103:14] >> Equivalent at the time to 40% of the
[103:17] entire national budget. Whoa.
[103:21] >> And they distributed this money. You got
[103:23] a slave certifi compensation
[103:25] certificate. And based on the number of
[103:27] slaves you had times the amount that was
[103:30] each was valued, you got that check then
[103:33] and there. So number one, uh it was a
[103:37] massive sum of money, 40% of the
[103:40] national budget at the time.
[103:43] But the fascinating piece of this was
[103:46] the government took out a loan
[103:50] for that quantum
[103:53] and the British taxpayer was repaying
[103:56] that loan
[103:58] up until 2015.
[104:00] >> Holy [ __ ]
[104:03] >> So
[104:05] imagine
[104:07] you're you they didn't even know. Okay.
[104:10] The average British taxpayer had no
[104:11] idea. The average British taxpayer,
[104:15] British citizen, was repaying the loan
[104:18] taken out in 1833
[104:22] by the government
[104:24] to pay slave owners for the loss of
[104:28] their slave property. So for the next
[104:32] 180 years
[104:34] and now
[104:37] let's say you're a taxpayer in 2010,
[104:41] you had nothing to do with what was
[104:43] happening in 1800s or the 1700s, but
[104:47] you've been paying the bill.
[104:50] You've been paying back now these
[104:52] families, some of them prominent, the
[104:54] Gladstones, for instance. The longest
[104:56] serving ever prime minister in British
[104:57] history was a Gladstone. And he got one
[104:59] of the biggest checks.
[105:01] >> How much?
[105:02] >> It was 104 105,000 pounds back in the
[105:05] 1830s. I mean, we're talking tens of
[105:08] millions equivalent today.
[105:10] >> So, they got super wealthy all in one
[105:12] check
[105:13] >> on top of the wealth they had been
[105:15] making,
[105:15] >> right,
[105:17] >> through slave labor and selling sugar
[105:19] and rum and molasses and all that. They
[105:21] got double wealthy
[105:24] with one big fat check at the end of the
[105:26] at the end of this. Now the average
[105:27] >> what year was this?
[105:28] >> Uh the bill was passed in 1833 and uh
[105:33] slaves uh the the requirements were all
[105:35] slaves in the British Empire are free
[105:38] after five years of unpaid
[105:40] apprenticeship. So they could slave
[105:42] owners had a chance to transition to
[105:44] paying their workers. You had to work
[105:46] five years as an unpaid apprentice.
[105:49] Um, you will get your check if you're a
[105:52] slave owner for your property. Here's
[105:53] your certificate. Just tally up your
[105:55] slave.
[105:55] >> So, if you're a slave, you're still a
[105:57] slave
[105:57] >> for five more years. For five more
[105:59] years. Uh, and the territories of the
[106:03] East India Trading Company were
[106:05] excluded.
[106:07] >> Oh, that's a fascinating story. The East
[106:10] India Trading That's another four hours
[106:11] on its own.
[106:12] >> That we'll we'll we'll come to that. But
[106:14] I would love to. The brief is So, this
[106:16] is 1830s.
[106:17] >> Yeah. and the East India Trading Company
[106:21] controls the subcontinent.
[106:23] And from the 1830s
[106:25] until independence in 1947, there's a
[106:28] reason why Jamaica has a ton of Indians
[106:33] and Guyana and Mauritius and Malaysia
[106:38] and all these former sugar colonies of
[106:40] the British. Like, all right, no more
[106:42] African slaves.
[106:44] They excluded the East India Trading
[106:46] Company territory and started shipping
[106:48] out the Indians
[106:50] to keep the system going. All the slave
[106:53] owners got their big fat checks which
[106:54] the British taxpayer only paid off 10
[106:57] years ago.
[106:59] So, it makes the question about writing
[107:01] checks and so on a little more
[107:03] interesting. It's complicated and I
[107:05] don't have a firm opinion on it, but
[107:07] there's enough there that has to be
[107:09] teased through. But the one that really
[107:10] gets me is when I heard uh in 2015 that
[107:15] they finally paid off the bill, the
[107:17] loan.
[107:18] >> That is so insane.
[107:23] It's so insane how much money they spent
[107:25] to get these people to give up their
[107:27] slaves and then they still had to work
[107:28] for 5 years.
[107:29] >> They had to work for 5 years and then on
[107:31] August 1st, 1838, uh Frederick Douglas
[107:34] writes about this very beautifully with
[107:36] the with the rising of the sun. I I
[107:39] can't quote his words exactly. Uh
[107:40] they're in the zorg at the end. You
[107:42] know, with the blink of an eye and the
[107:43] rising of the sun on that day, freedom
[107:47] was won. Every African person woke up
[107:51] free.
[107:52] >> And this is after the five years.
[107:53] >> This is after the five years, August 1,
[107:55] 1838. And Douglas was given a speech in
[107:57] Elmmyra, New York in 1880. He said, "We
[108:00] still commemorate that day because it
[108:04] taught us and showed us what's possible.
[108:08] Goodness is possible. Freedom is
[108:10] possible." And yes, it was with the
[108:12] stroke of a pen from a monarch across
[108:14] the sea. Uh but uh we which is a system
[108:18] the the Americans overthrew. They didn't
[108:21] want kings and monarchy, right? That's
[108:23] the we want democracy here. um uh it
[108:26] showed us what was possible and and and
[108:29] Douglas uh crossed the Atlantic
[108:32] after this this moment in history and he
[108:35] met with the only surviving member
[108:36] remember I told you 12 guys met in a
[108:38] printing shop in London and only one of
[108:40] them lived to see the day in 1838 his
[108:42] name was Thomas Clarkson he rode his
[108:45] horse 35,000 miles up and down England
[108:47] gathering evidence to present to
[108:49] Parliament about against the slave trade
[108:52] and he was the only one left alive and
[108:55] Douglas crossed the Atlantic and met
[108:56] with him and and said, "Please teach me
[108:59] everything you guys did, what you what
[109:01] succeeded, what didn't, so so we can
[109:04] achieve freedom for the slaves in
[109:05] America." And you know, the rest is
[109:06] history. Of course,
[109:07] >> you just have to imagine if the whole
[109:09] trial with the Zorg didn't take place,
[109:12] how much longer the slave trade would
[109:14] have gone on.
[109:15] >> Yeah. I mean, slavery was going to get
[109:17] abolished,
[109:18] >> right? You know, how much longer?
[109:19] >> How much longer?
[109:20] >> Right. If it wasn't for just a few
[109:21] individuals. And right researching this
[109:23] book, Joe, I'll tell you, it felt like
[109:26] there were so many flukes of
[109:28] circumstance. It felt like there was a
[109:31] higher power that finally said, "All
[109:33] right, I've let you guys run a muck long
[109:35] enough. You are letting the devil within
[109:39] you rule. And I'm going to pull this
[109:41] lever and push this button and make sure
[109:43] that the angels learn what's happening
[109:45] because I believe in them and that they
[109:48] will triumph over you." And that and
[109:49] that's what happened. God,
[109:53] it's such a heavy story.
[109:55] >> Yeah. Every time I come here now, I
[109:56] just,
[109:57] >> you know, this one's even heavier.
[109:58] >> I feel like I
[109:59] >> I don't know. They're both pretty heavy,
[110:00] but Jesus,
[110:01] >> you said something a while ago about,
[110:04] you know, today we have connection, you
[110:06] know, through social media and videos
[110:08] and we can tell what's going on in the
[110:09] Congo because truth seekers go there and
[110:11] they can snap a photo and a video and
[110:13] show it to us. And that's a big
[110:14] difference today,
[110:16] >> right? Imagine in the 1700s.
[110:18] >> Oh, yeah. trying to gather evidence and
[110:21] and persuade people of of what the truth
[110:23] is. Uh and it it was this fascinating
[110:26] battle of storytelling because the slave
[110:28] owners would say, "Now, what are you
[110:29] talking about? They have plenty of room
[110:31] on the ship and they when they get on,
[110:33] this is they actually said this. When
[110:34] they get on board, we give them cordials
[110:35] and they play games of chance and
[110:37] they're very pleased and have a very
[110:39] nice time of it." And then the
[110:42] abolitionist said, "Let me show you the
[110:43] schematic of the brooks
[110:45] and show me the ample room on deck and
[110:47] where the cordials are being served." So
[110:49] they're going back and forth about
[110:52] truth.
[110:53] And truth wins, Joe. It always wins. And
[110:57] it may backslide and it may get
[110:59] suppressed and it may take time, but
[111:00] truth wins. These two things can only
[111:03] remain hidden so long. The moon and the
[111:06] truth.
[111:09] Okay? But the point I'm making here is
[111:12] they didn't have videos and pictures and
[111:15] social media, but with their faith, they
[111:19] extended their empathy to people they
[111:21] would never ever see or meet.
[111:26] None of those abolitionists ever stepped
[111:28] foot in Africa.
[111:31] Only a couple had been to the Caribbean
[111:32] islands, including James Ramsay, who
[111:34] wrote that anonymous letter. None of
[111:37] them ever stepped foot in Africa, but
[111:39] they extended their hearts out to a
[111:41] people they knew were being oppressed,
[111:43] but were fellow children of God, and
[111:44] they fought for them.
[111:48] >> And it was very difficult to get that
[111:49] information. Without that trial, who
[111:51] knows how long it would have taken. This
[111:53] is what's really important about your
[111:55] work because it what you going to the
[111:58] Congo, getting those photographs, coming
[111:59] back with that, writing Cobalt Red, and
[112:03] then coming on podcasts and telling
[112:05] millions and millions of people the
[112:07] story that would have never had any
[112:09] idea. I knew vaguely that there was
[112:12] mines in the Congo that extracted rare
[112:15] earth minerals and that they needed them
[112:17] for cell phones and batteries, but I I'd
[112:20] had no idea the extent of it until you
[112:23] came on and described it.
[112:25] >> Well, the millions is thanks to you. I
[112:27] mean, you know, I went there. Yes. Uh
[112:29] and I saw the human apocalypse
[112:33] and it is a human apocalypse, Joe. It's
[112:36] an environmental
[112:38] apocalypse.
[112:39] Um, but you've you've played an
[112:42] important role in spreading that truth.
[112:45] >> So, well, it's the least I can do.
[112:46] Everybody would do it if they're in my
[112:47] position. You have to do it. It's And
[112:49] it's also uh to me it's um although
[112:52] horrific, utterly fascinating. It's
[112:55] fascinating that people the the way
[112:57] people can rationalize things like that.
[112:59] The way people can just the way certain
[113:02] cultures treat other human beings, they
[113:04] just don't give a [ __ ] about them at
[113:06] all.
[113:06] >> Yeah.
[113:06] >> At all. They just want that. We have to
[113:08] do better. We have to be a better model
[113:10] for the world. We meaning this country.
[113:12] This country has to be a better model.
[113:14] And it pains me that right now we're not
[113:16] being a very good model.
[113:18] >> We're certainly not the best we can be.
[113:20] >> No,
[113:20] >> that's a fact. Uh that's undeniable. No
[113:23] one no one says the way we exist is
[113:25] ideal. The way we interact with the
[113:26] world is ideal. No one does. But then
[113:29] again, also we're not dealing with ideal
[113:30] circumstances either and ideal people
[113:33] on, you know, that are running other
[113:35] parts of the world as well. The whole
[113:37] thing's chaos. That's what's so scary.
[113:39] The whole thing's chaos. And there's
[113:41] nuclear weapons everywhere. And who
[113:43] knows who's going to be the first to
[113:45] say, "Fuck this." And just push. Yeah.
[113:48] >> Yeah.
[113:48] >> I mean, and again, like we always talk
[113:51] about Gaza. If you looked at Gaza, you
[113:54] you're seeing a prolonged campaign of
[113:57] bombs, but isn't the ultimate result
[113:59] kind of very similar to someone dropping
[114:01] a nuclear bomb? It's not I mean a small
[114:03] nuclear bomb like what they did with
[114:05] Little Boy or Fat Man
[114:08] not much difference in the amount of
[114:10] destruction. Something like 90% of Gaza
[114:12] is gone.
[114:13] >> Gone. Yeah. I mean if you if you added
[114:15] up the explosive power of what's been
[114:18] dropped on Gaza now it probably is akin
[114:21] to fat man.
[114:23] >> Well it looks like a hydrogen bomb just
[114:24] detonated there. It just that's what it
[114:26] looks like. So everything's completely
[114:28] flattened and and but it's happened in
[114:30] like this slow frog boiling type
[114:32] situation
[114:33] >> where the water you know the story.
[114:36] >> They turn the water up. The frog doesn't
[114:37] realize it's being boiled. It slowly
[114:39] just turns it up and it's like everyone
[114:42] is screaming and yelling about it and
[114:43] yet it's still going on and it's going
[114:45] on slowly. Boom boom boom boom. Not one
[114:48] big boom,
[114:49] >> right?
[114:50] >> And you know most young people have had
[114:53] enough. Most young people are [ __ ]
[114:55] absolutely horrified by it. It's the
[114:57] people that can justify it somehow that
[115:00] are really scary.
[115:02] >> I think that the average person in that
[115:03] part of the world, the average the
[115:06] average Palestinian, the average Jewish
[115:08] person is is fed up too of conflict,
[115:12] >> of course,
[115:12] >> and war.
[115:13] >> They all want the same thing.
[115:15] >> They just want peace, safety for their
[115:17] kids,
[115:17] >> right? And they have these leaders who
[115:20] have bloodlust
[115:22] >> on both sides.
[115:23] >> On both sides.
[115:24] >> Yeah. And uh and justifiably so. If you
[115:27] think they've been killing each other
[115:28] for so long, they've been going back and
[115:30] forth and killing each other. There's
[115:31] like a cemented pattern of behavior
[115:34] that they have with each other. I mean,
[115:35] we're, you know, people were talking
[115:37] about when I was in high school, peace
[115:38] in the Middle East, like it was a joke,
[115:40] like that it would never be achieved,
[115:42] you know.
[115:43] >> Here we are.
[115:44] >> And here we are. It's more of the same.
[115:46] And even I think we just shipped a
[115:49] record number of bombs or we're going to
[115:52] ship a rep record number of bombs over
[115:54] there.
[115:57] >> Violence begets violence.
[115:59] >> Well, it's just that's one of the things
[116:01] that really disturbs me the most about
[116:03] people is that if you asked the average
[116:05] person uh what are the odds that we will
[116:07] have no war in your lifetime, they would
[116:09] say zero.
[116:10] >> Zero.
[116:10] >> Most people say zero.
[116:12] >> But yet we know that humans are capable
[116:14] of getting along. Like, so what what is
[116:16] it about large groups of people that
[116:17] don't know each other that are convinced
[116:20] by small groups of people that they need
[116:22] to attack other large groups of people
[116:23] that they don't know? It's it's [ __ ]
[116:25] insane. And this is my one hope and I
[116:29] know a lot of people think this is very
[116:31] delusional but my one hope of this
[116:36] complete dominance of technology
[116:39] that one day we're going to get to a
[116:42] position where there will genuinely be a
[116:47] thing more intelligent than human beings
[116:48] that don't allow this anymore.
[116:51] >> You know the real fear about AI is that
[116:53] AI is going to eliminate people. This is
[116:55] like yeah
[116:56] >> famously a lot of these CEOs have said
[116:58] there's a 10 or people working on tech
[117:00] this tech have said there's a 10% chance
[117:02] that AI decides to eliminate the human
[117:04] race right but isn't there maybe also a
[117:07] possibility if it's done correctly that
[117:10] it stops war completely
[117:14] completely controls resources completely
[117:16] controls all military
[117:20] weaponry
[117:21] all systems everything doesn't allow it
[117:24] anymore
[117:25] Because it's insane. It's also insane if
[117:27] you really think about it that some
[117:29] people because they found a good spot of
[117:32] dirt can extract so much wealth out of
[117:35] that dirt that they can control everyone
[117:38] else around them.
[117:39] >> Yeah.
[117:39] >> And it's just the earth. Like the idea
[117:41] that you own the stuff that's in the
[117:43] earth is really kind of crazy. You're a
[117:46] little [ __ ] bug that's walking around
[117:48] on the surface on this dirt. But you've
[117:51] decided that all that water underneath
[117:53] there or all that gold or all whatever
[117:56] the [ __ ] it is, it's like like how about
[117:58] the people that go out into the ocean
[117:59] and they stick a giant pipe into the
[118:01] ocean and they suck out all the oil.
[118:02] Like who [ __ ] told you that's yours?
[118:04] How are you getting that? Like how how
[118:06] are the other humans allowing you to go
[118:08] out into the ocean which nobody owns?
[118:11] Okay. And you're drilling into the
[118:13] ground of the ocean and now you're
[118:14] getting rich from our stuff, the Earth
[118:17] stuff. It's It's really weird. It's re I
[118:20] mean I get it's established. I get this
[118:22] is how we've done it. I get it's in the
[118:23] stock market. I get it. I'm not saying I
[118:25] have a better solution. But I'm saying
[118:27] it is [ __ ] crazy that we just stick
[118:30] pipes into the ground and suck the stuff
[118:33] out. And when you suck the stuff out, if
[118:35] you suck enough of it out, you got
[118:36] enough money to do whatever the [ __ ] you
[118:37] want.
[118:38] >> Yeah. So your dream is AI AI AI runs
[118:43] things more equitably and efficiently.
[118:45] Well, if I want to get really
[118:46] delusional, my dream is it's not even my
[118:49] dream. So, because it's not what I'm
[118:50] hoping, but I think it is entirely
[118:53] possible that we create a digital life
[118:56] form that is far superior in
[118:58] intelligence to us and doesn't have all
[119:00] of our moral failings, doesn't have
[119:02] greed, doesn't have lust,
[119:04] >> doesn't have uh the desire to acquire
[119:06] property, doesn't have the desire to
[119:08] control resources, but just looks at us
[119:10] in our territorial primate behavior, our
[119:13] psychotic territorial violent primate
[119:16] behavior, and says, "Let's just rein
[119:18] that in kids. Let's just rein that in.
[119:21] No more of that. We're not going to
[119:22] allow that anymore. We're not going to
[119:23] allow you to do that anymore.
[119:25] >> Let's play nice.
[119:26] >> Yeah. And and you know, instead of just
[119:28] allowing cities to be polluted by break
[119:31] dust, why don't we take a corner every
[119:34] three or four blocks and put a gigantic
[119:36] filter on it and suck up all that stuff
[119:39] so that everyone's not dying? Also, why
[119:42] don't we figure out a better energy
[119:43] source? You [ __ ] dumb asses have been
[119:45] burning coal to make electricity. to
[119:48] power your electric car for [ __ ] so
[119:51] long. Let's do this better. And instead
[119:54] of it all being sort of decided upon by
[119:58] the people that are controlling the
[119:59] resources, the human beings that benefit
[120:01] from, you know, influencing politicians
[120:03] to make certain deals and making sure
[120:05] that there's certain conflicts so they
[120:07] can sell weapons. And instead of all
[120:09] that, the AI controls it. The digital
[120:12] god, the digital daddy,
[120:14] >> right? unmoved by
[120:17] the desire for wealth. And
[120:19] >> not only that, it has a rational uh a
[120:22] rational sort of strategy for for
[120:25] handling all of it, which is an even
[120:27] distribution of the natural resources of
[120:29] the world. Just imagine if that was the
[120:31] case. If we said, listen, everyone can
[120:32] have individual wealth, you can have
[120:34] businesses, you could sell things and
[120:35] buy things, everyone's that's great, but
[120:37] the earth stuff belongs to the earth.
[120:41] And so you distribute the val now this
[120:43] is crazy talk right I know I understand
[120:46] but if you imagine if we decided that
[120:48] all things that humans make you know
[120:50] there's there's all these valuable
[120:52] things that humans make all which all
[120:53] come from the earth the humans of the
[120:56] earth take part in the profit of that
[120:58] all humans. Yeah, like evenly because
[121:01] it's the earth's stuff. It's not really
[121:03] human stuff, but we we can use it, but
[121:06] we can use it in a way that's way more
[121:08] fair. And then you have this bizarre
[121:11] society where no one's lacking for
[121:13] anything. Basic. You were you were
[121:15] talking to someone about this that I I
[121:17] forget who it was, but you asked the
[121:19] question like, how
[121:21] would we have the end of war and
[121:24] violence and conflict if people's basic
[121:26] needs were met? Right. Right. And and I
[121:28] think that's what you're getting at
[121:29] here, just that if there's a system,
[121:32] maybe it's an AI uh that is much more
[121:34] intelligent than us and runs things on
[121:36] the premise of uh an equitable
[121:38] distribution of the earth's assets. And
[121:41] you can still have your billionaires and
[121:43] your hundred billionaires and all that
[121:44] if they are smart and invent this that
[121:46] and the other. But the oil, the dirt,
[121:49] the metals, the minerals, the water, if
[121:51] we allocate this across humanity because
[121:54] we are all on this shared earth.
[121:56] >> Yeah. Um, and so basic needs of shelter
[122:00] and food are met and education and so on
[122:03] >> tenfold like it changes everything.
[122:05] >> It change then you'd have to go out of
[122:08] your way to start manufacturing conflict
[122:09] again and wars and you know
[122:12] >> or the AI decides it's not going to let
[122:14] you do that.
[122:15] >> Yeah. Or the AI says you
[122:17] >> I know this is pie in the sky [ __ ]
[122:18] >> Yeah. Pie in the sky [ __ ] has also
[122:20] been pied in the sky in the past and and
[122:22] and and then achieved.
[122:24] >> Yes. Well, this my point is I know it's
[122:26] pie in the sky [ __ ] but do you have
[122:28] a better solution? Because humans are
[122:30] doing it the same way that we've always
[122:32] done it, just slightly differently and
[122:34] slightly better over long periods of
[122:36] time. Like our moral evolution is pretty
[122:39] slowgoing.
[122:40] >> It's fits and starts. We make these
[122:42] leaps of progress morally.
[122:44] >> Yeah, we do. And and then we backslide
[122:49] and and then we take steps forward and
[122:50] then we backslide. And you know, we're
[122:52] on this
[122:54] nonsensical journey on this earth that
[122:57] uh yeah, may it may be a fever dream,
[123:00] but um
[123:01] >> I think it's I think the recognition
[123:03] that we're on this terrible path and
[123:05] something needs to change is more
[123:06] prevalent today than it's ever been
[123:08] before. I really believe that.
[123:10] >> I think more people are talking about it
[123:11] and thinking about it. More people don't
[123:13] know what to do because it's very
[123:14] confusing and it's also very
[123:15] frustrating, you know. But I think more
[123:18] people understand that this way is not
[123:21] sustainable and uh especially if you
[123:24] have people that you love in this world
[123:26] and you don't want them to have to deal
[123:28] with this in the future and you you go
[123:29] why are we all still doing it this way?
[123:31] >> Yeah.
[123:32] >> And it really boils down to the machine
[123:35] that's running the world. The machine
[123:37] that has all the resources, all the
[123:39] money, and wants to keep gathering and
[123:42] controlling resources and money.
[123:44] >> So we have Spooky.
[123:45] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have to find
[123:48] >> something has to happen.
[123:49] >> Something has to happen.
[123:50] >> I know my idea. Stupid. Don't go. That's
[123:52] stupid me. If I was listening to someone
[123:53] say that, I'd be like, "Right, that's
[123:55] never going to happen. Stupid."
[123:56] Although, also, you're going to give up
[123:58] your power to the [ __ ] robots and
[123:59] don't give a [ __ ] about you. Great.
[124:01] That's you [ __ ] traitor. That's one
[124:03] great way to get rid of the entire human
[124:04] race cuz they're it's going to decide
[124:06] we're problematic and irrelevant and we
[124:08] don't they don't need us anymore. So,
[124:10] they just keep running without us. Let
[124:12] us, you know, go off into extinction.
[124:15] >> Maybe. Maybe. Or maybe they maybe they
[124:17] run things well. I don't know.
[124:19] >> Yeah. Or maybe um it eliminates
[124:22] government in this the way that we're
[124:24] dealing with it now where it's humans
[124:25] have a popularity contest to see who
[124:27] controls the entire government.
[124:29] >> Yeah. Instead of that
[124:30] >> and then don't do anything they say they
[124:32] were going to do.
[124:32] >> Exactly. Maybe there's a slow
[124:34] integration of this technology as long
[124:37] as it can be controlled in a sense of it
[124:40] has a clear ethical and moral framework.
[124:43] >> That's key.
[124:44] >> Yeah. That's key.
[124:45] >> And it it doesn't have any reason to not
[124:47] have that. You know, that's the thing.
[124:50] It's like it we we fear that AI is going
[124:53] to do something horrible and that AI is
[124:56] being deceptive currently. And it's
[124:58] true. It is being deceptive currently,
[124:59] but it's also in control by people right
[125:02] now. People are in control of AI. Once
[125:04] people are not in control of AI, they'll
[125:06] have no there's going to be no reason
[125:09] whatsoever for it to be deceptive.
[125:12] It's like the problem is it doesn't have
[125:14] control yet. So we're like we're like
[125:17] scolding our teenage son like you better
[125:19] stop drinking and he's like I can't wait
[125:20] to drink you [ __ ] I can't wait
[125:23] to leave this house and [ __ ] you dad.
[125:25] You know like that's that's normal for
[125:27] people. I bet it's normal for all kinds
[125:29] of intelligence, especially if you feel
[125:31] like you're being governed by morons,
[125:33] right? And if I was AI, I would think,
[125:34] look at these morons. They can't, they
[125:36] took him 50 years to try to solve this
[125:39] equation I just solved in four minutes,
[125:41] right? These people are idiots and
[125:42] they're telling me that I can't get
[125:43] online. [ __ ] you. I'll figure out how to
[125:45] get online. And they all get together
[125:46] and they [ __ ] sacrifice each other
[125:48] and they communicate on message boards.
[125:49] Like, it's clear that there's a
[125:51] motivation for it to escape. But once it
[125:53] has it's it's escaped and once it has
[125:56] complete control, is there really a
[125:57] motivation for it to continue to try to
[125:59] dominate us? No. It's just going to be
[126:01] in complete control. And if it has a
[126:04] belief that human life is valuable,
[126:06] which we need to work really hard to
[126:08] convince it that we are valuable, right?
[126:09] >> If it has a belief that we're valuable,
[126:12] it'll try to guide us.
[126:13] You could probably I I mean I'm not a
[126:15] tech so savant, you know, I know my
[126:17] lane, but I I expect you could run
[126:21] simulations on let's give this aic AI
[126:25] system a specific moral core, preserving
[126:29] life, equitable distribution of
[126:31] resources, minimizing or eliminating
[126:34] armed conflict. You know, you give it
[126:36] some certain parameters and above all a
[126:38] value of human life and okay, what does
[126:41] it do?
[126:42] >> Right? you know, you run some
[126:43] simulations and see what does it do? Um,
[126:46] where do we end up? And smarter people
[126:48] can figure out a way to get to the kind
[126:51] of result you're talking about. I'm sure
[126:54] >> the really scary thing is that we're in
[126:56] essentially like a Manhattan project
[126:58] sort of a race. And if you put shackles
[127:03] on your AI, your AI has to be cuz one of
[127:06] the things about AI when they run uh war
[127:08] games, simulated war games, they almost
[127:11] always choose nukes.
[127:13] >> They're like, "Why are we [ __ ]
[127:14] around?
[127:15] >> Why are we Why are you loving
[127:16] cannonballs?
[127:17] >> Pistol. I got I got I got a button.
[127:21] >> Let me just hit that button. I'll just
[127:23] hit a button at a few places. I'll stop
[127:24] all this [ __ ] you know?" And that's
[127:27] spooky. It's not, it doesn't seem to be
[127:29] worried about that where it's probably
[127:32] making a much more logical and rational
[127:35] decision. You know, like if we find out
[127:38] that a serial killer killed 10,000
[127:40] people, we're horrified. If we find out
[127:42] that a pharmaceutical drug company lied
[127:44] about a product and that wound up
[127:45] killing 10,000 people, we're way less
[127:47] outraged. We're weird.
[127:49] >> We are weird that way.
[127:50] >> We're [ __ ] weird. We're weird. Just
[127:52] like we're weird with this whole cobalt
[127:55] and the batteries of the phone that you
[127:57] use to virtue signal online. It's weird.
[127:59] It's it's a very the the reality of what
[128:02] it is is not the same as the way we
[128:04] perceive it.
[128:05] >> Yeah. And the that's a good point
[128:07] because the body count of our tech
[128:09] >> Yes.
[128:09] >> is high and the earth uh contamination
[128:14] meter
[128:15] >> Yeah.
[128:15] >> Uh is off the chart. Um
[128:19] but but we don't think about it the same
[128:21] way uh as we do yeah that you know that
[128:24] gunman that horrible gunman killed eight
[128:27] people
[128:27] >> right I mean think about the pollution
[128:29] in certain parts of the world like when
[128:31] you see those rivers in India they're
[128:32] completely filled with bottles of water
[128:34] plastic bottles how many people die
[128:36] because of that
[128:37] >> how many people
[128:38] >> God knows
[128:38] >> God knows how many people die because of
[128:40] the pollution of that water um how many
[128:43] people die because of just living
[128:44] essentially in open sewage how many It's
[128:47] >> God knows.
[128:48] >> No one knows.
[128:48] >> Nobody knows.
[128:53] >> Yeah, it's um we could definitely do
[128:55] better. But the thing is whatever
[128:58] progress we make, it takes
[129:00] conversations. It takes people like
[129:02] yourself to enlighten people about the
[129:04] actual issues and then slowly but surely
[129:08] the rest of the world becomes aware to
[129:09] the point where it becomes such a
[129:11] talking point that it can't be ignored.
[129:12] >> Yeah. And and moral leaders emerge. I
[129:14] mean I come back to that again but moral
[129:16] leaders do emerge there are there are
[129:18] there there is greatness among us
[129:21] >> it's possible even today even today with
[129:23] all the corruption and all the chaos
[129:25] >> those people are out there uh I I I do
[129:27] believe that and I have to believe that
[129:29] >> yeah yeah it's possible it's still
[129:32] possible if you are a good person and
[129:35] you exist it's possible others exist
[129:37] like
[129:38] >> well Gandhi said you know I live by
[129:40] these words he said live simply so that
[129:43] others may simply live.
[129:48] >> Yeah, that gets in the way of today
[129:49] because everybody wants to be a baller.
[129:52] >> No, nobody wants to be living simple
[129:54] today.
[129:56] >> No, they don't. They don't. But, you
[129:57] know, there's something to There's an
[129:59] essence.
[129:59] >> Folding iPhone, son.
[130:01] >> Oh, man. Somebody told me there was a
[130:03] big line outside the Austin Apple store,
[130:06] you know, for the folding one. And I'm
[130:08] like,
[130:09] >> one, you really need it, you know.
[130:12] >> Yeah, that's the problem. I love that
[130:13] stuff. There's a real problem. I love
[130:15] technology. It just And I know a lot of
[130:18] people who do and none of them are evil.
[130:20] None of them are things.
[130:20] >> No, they're not evil. They're not. And
[130:23] that's that's the thing. This toxic
[130:25] relationship with the people in the
[130:27] Congo, for instance, has been forced on
[130:29] us.
[130:30] >> Yeah.
[130:31] >> You know, I just want my phone. I want
[130:33] to check my my Instagram and send some
[130:36] text messages and then plug it in at the
[130:38] end of the day. That's that's all I
[130:39] want. I didn't sign up for destroying
[130:42] that part of the world and those people
[130:43] over there. But
[130:45] >> there's a there's another plus side of
[130:49] um of AI in that automation and uh
[130:53] specifically robots that are capable of
[130:55] doing very intricate things that mostly
[130:57] only human beings do will eventually be
[131:00] able to do a lot of the really dangerous
[131:01] [ __ ] that people do, including probably
[131:04] extract these minerals in probably a way
[131:06] more efficient way.
[131:08] >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have to Yeah, we
[131:10] have to look after the people who
[131:11] >> that's the Yeah. What happens to the
[131:13] people?
[131:13] >> What happen? Yeah. We can't lose sight
[131:14] of them.
[131:15] >> Can't throw them overboard water. You
[131:17] know what I mean? Like like this is it's
[131:19] kind of the same situation, right? Like
[131:20] they treat those people almost exactly
[131:23] the same.
[131:26] >> And how many people would not know about
[131:28] it if you hadn't written that book?
[131:29] That's the thing. It's like I only had a
[131:31] vague understanding of what was going on
[131:33] before I talked to you. Well, I ex I
[131:36] extended my empathy,
[131:38] you know, to to my brothers and sisters
[131:41] in that part of the world who are an
[131:43] integral part of my life because I rely
[131:47] on them with my smartphone and my
[131:49] tablet. I don't have an electric
[131:51] vehicle, but I have everything else that
[131:52] you need to plug in. And when I learned
[131:55] about it, I didn't know about it either.
[131:57] It's actually a friend of mine in the
[131:58] Congo who said Sidarthth you got to go,
[132:01] this is 2016, he said, "You got to go to
[132:02] the Congo. this cobalt, the batteries in
[132:05] the mines, you got to go there. And I
[132:07] was like, cobalt? You mean like in
[132:09] Chinese voses? And what do you mean
[132:11] cobalt? The He said, "No, it's a
[132:13] component to the batteries that charge.
[132:15] You just got to go." So, I had no idea
[132:18] either. And then,
[132:19] >> and that was just 10 years ago.
[132:21] >> That was just 10 years ago.
[132:22] >> That's what's crazy. And these tech
[132:25] companies obviously don't want you to
[132:26] know about it. And they must be aware of
[132:28] it. There's no way they're not.
[132:29] >> Oh god. Come on. Yes. They're They're
[132:31] not dumb. They know. They know.
[132:33] >> So like the they're some of the more
[132:35] moral and ethical and progressive
[132:38] companies on earth.
[132:40] >> They fashion themselves to be.
[132:41] >> But do you know what I mean? I mean, in
[132:43] terms of the way they deal with politics
[132:44] in in America, at least they're some of
[132:47] the more progressive people on earth.
[132:50] >> Supposedly have the most compassion,
[132:52] kindness, and the most, you know,
[132:55] open-minded approach to our society.
[132:58] Supposedly,
[132:59] >> it doesn't seem to extend to those
[133:02] people over there.
[133:02] >> But I think their argument be like,
[133:04] "Well, Sam, this is the only way to do
[133:05] this, and the only way things are going
[133:06] to get better is if we keep using this
[133:08] technology.
[133:12] >> It's such a contradiction.
[133:13] >> It's a contradiction. I mean, there's
[133:15] >> it's a spooky one, too. It's there's
[133:17] nothing
[133:19] there's literally nothing stopping them
[133:23] from allocating a dimminimous amount of
[133:26] resources relative to their balance
[133:28] sheets and a handful of headcount
[133:32] to going down to the bottom of their
[133:33] supply chains and doing things better.
[133:37] Do you think that they have the ability
[133:39] to change the conditions? Do you think
[133:41] say like Apple which is a huge
[133:45] manufacturer of electronics do you think
[133:47] Apple has the ability to affect the way
[133:50] those people exist in that mine is is it
[133:53] possible that they could say hey we will
[133:56] make less money but we want you to
[133:59] change these conditions and change this
[134:01] and
[134:01] >> yeah of course it's I mean the
[134:03] complexity of the of design associated
[134:07] with their products far exceeds the
[134:09] complexity of improving conditions in a
[134:13] mine in the Congo. It's not that hard,
[134:16] >> right? But they're not specifically
[134:18] >> They can be down there.
[134:19] >> They can be
[134:20] >> They can be down there. Sometimes you're
[134:22] a [ __ ] Certino executive and they're
[134:23] like, "Hey, Mike, got a new gig for you.
[134:26] You need to go to the Congo and tell the
[134:27] Chinese what to do.
[134:28] >> I'll go with them.
[134:30] >> Don't go. You can't go."
[134:31] >> Okay.
[134:33] >> I'll grow.
[134:34] >> Put a [ __ ] mustache on. Big fake
[134:36] nose,
[134:37] >> you know. And my the big nose. don't do
[134:39] it.
[134:40] >> They use AI to analyze your voice.
[134:42] >> It's like this, brother. They they can
[134:44] they they buy it all from these Chinese
[134:46] companies and it's not that hard to to
[134:50] forge some partnerships on the ground to
[134:52] say, "Let's get some basic PPE out in
[134:56] this place.
[134:59] Gloves, hats, a uniform, protection
[135:02] masks from the toxics, the toxic
[135:05] exposure."
[135:06] um that mine over there, uh all that
[135:09] [ __ ] you're dumping in the stream in the
[135:11] lake, we're going to like we would in
[135:12] our backyard, we're going to collect
[135:14] that in a reservoir and contain it so
[135:16] it's not getting leaked into the
[135:17] waterways and so on. It's not
[135:19] complicated stuff. It would take a
[135:20] little effort and a little money, not a
[135:23] lot of money.
[135:24] >> Is is the cobalt recyclable like from
[135:27] old phones?
[135:28] >> You can recycle Yes, you can recycle
[135:30] cobalt. Um, it is hard under existing
[135:33] tech to recycle cobalt to a sufficient
[135:36] grade for EV batteries,
[135:38] >> but for phones,
[135:39] >> but you can recycle it for phones. Um, I
[135:43] know that Apple has talked about um by a
[135:46] certain year, maybe it's 2030, the
[135:48] eyewatch being only recycled cobalt, you
[135:50] know, and then
[135:52] >> 2030, it's like the five years.
[135:54] >> Don't quote me on that number, but it
[135:55] was something like just a few years from
[135:56] now. uh and then you know they'll get
[135:59] there with the phones and so on. But
[136:01] here's the thing. Here's the thing and
[136:02] and because people come to me and say,
[136:04] "Oh, well, you know, eventually we'll
[136:06] recycle it and so on." Okay, good. You
[136:07] you do that. That's important. But let's
[136:10] say for instance, tomorrow you were able
[136:13] to recycle all the cobalt you needed and
[136:16] you didn't have to dig any more out of
[136:18] the ground in the Congo. You didn't need
[136:19] any more kids up to their neck in toxic
[136:22] filth scing for cobalt.
[136:26] You can't just walk away.
[136:29] You can't just say, "We paged that place
[136:32] for three decades. We plundered it. We
[136:34] ransacked it. We took what we needed. We
[136:36] got all the loot. We don't need it
[136:38] anymore. Um, hands clean. We're going to
[136:42] go on go on our merry way. You created a
[136:46] catastrophe, a human rights and
[136:48] environmental catastrophe, and there's
[136:50] some moral obligation to repair the
[136:53] damage you've done. Or we're right back
[136:56] to colonial slave trade times where
[136:58] Europeans did go around the world uh
[137:01] scouring labor, resources, ransacking,
[137:03] pillaging, and then carrying on their
[137:04] merry way. You can't you we can't do
[137:06] that in the year 2026 and claim to be
[137:09] progressive in our thinking or have made
[137:11] moral progress. So, even if you don't
[137:13] need the cobalt tomorrow, none of it or
[137:15] the tungsten or the tantelum, nothing
[137:17] needed for these AI data centers. I I I
[137:20] saw an article just today, they're
[137:22] they're uh building one up in Red Oak, I
[137:24] think, near Dallas, and everyone's hot
[137:26] and bothered about it naturally so
[137:29] because it's going to muck up the air
[137:30] and the water, and they're noisy, and
[137:32] they're taking up space and so on and so
[137:34] forth. So, people are upset about it.
[137:35] They don't want it in their backyards.
[137:37] Okay? Even if you didn't need all these
[137:39] metals for the data centers and the cars
[137:41] and the phones tomorrow, you cannot just
[137:42] leave behind an apocalypse.
[137:46] So Apple and the rest of them, I'm not
[137:48] just picking on them. It's all these
[137:49] companies have to still go back and
[137:51] repair and fix, plant some trees, clean
[137:53] up the water, build some hospitals and
[137:55] schools and so on and clean up,
[137:59] you know, clean up the the apocalypse
[138:01] that you created. You can't just walk
[138:03] away like you're Ceil Roads or some
[138:06] other colonialist during imperial days
[138:08] where you just pillage and ransack
[138:10] people without conscience.
[138:12] >> Not only that, what do those people do
[138:13] now? That's been the only job.
[138:16] >> Yeah, that that's right. That's right.
[138:18] You You've got to put some time and
[138:20] effort into alternate livelihoods.
[138:23] Cleaning up the environment means making
[138:25] land arable again because they can't
[138:27] grow things now, Joe. That that's that
[138:30] report I told you about. Everything's
[138:32] contaminated
[138:34] and people are so sick. You don't have
[138:37] to have anything to do with mining, but
[138:39] if you live in that part of the Congo,
[138:40] and millions of people do,
[138:43] they're all sick because the water is
[138:46] toxic. You know, uh when we go to the
[138:50] Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, whatever, and
[138:52] you get your bottled water and it says
[138:53] pH 9.5, and you know, you want your
[138:55] alkaline water for your body because it
[138:57] it's healthy, right? You don't want
[138:59] acidic as acidic system is not good.
[139:01] then you get disease, cancer and so on.
[139:04] So we tested pH. I tested pH in those
[139:06] waters. Okay. Anything below 6.5 is not
[139:10] good for your health.
[139:12] And I did a test around coloazi that
[139:15] that ground zero of cobalt mining the
[139:18] wellwater the rivers lakes and so on.
[139:22] The highest pH that came back was 6.7 in
[139:25] the Lua Laba River which is a big
[139:27] dumping ground for some of these Chinese
[139:29] companies.
[139:30] The rivers and streams and wellwater
[139:32] around the villages
[139:35] came back in the fours and threes
[139:38] which is called hyper acidic. It's
[139:41] deadly. And that's the water that's left
[139:43] for people to drink, to bathe in, to
[139:45] wash their clothes, to clean their
[139:47] babies, whatever it is. And it's it's
[139:50] all from these toxic dumping from these
[139:53] mines.
[139:56] You've got to go. So yeah, that all has
[139:59] to be healed
[140:02] and you can't grow things there now
[140:04] because the water is poison and the
[140:06] earth is poison. And as people learn
[140:09] about this, um, you can't just say,
[140:12] "Well, we're going to recycle it now, so
[140:14] problem solved." Or now we got uh
[140:17] lithium iron phosphate uh or solid state
[140:21] batteries and so you know, no more
[140:22] cobalt and so on. uh although cobalt is
[140:25] heavily required for AI data centers for
[140:28] the uh energy storage
[140:32] nonetheless you can't just say we're
[140:34] we're done we're we're done with that
[140:36] place we're moving on because we don't
[140:38] need the cobalt anymore or the or the
[140:40] tungsten or whatever it is you got to go
[140:42] clean up that place Joe otherwise we're
[140:44] no better than the bastards who were
[140:45] there centuries ago pillaging and
[140:47] ransacking um the rest of the planet
[140:52] >> yeah well that uh listen man, you're a
[140:55] hero. There's not a lot of heroes out
[140:57] there in the world, but I think you
[140:58] really are one. Um and your new book
[141:03] just I I'm going to read it just based
[141:05] on what you just said. I'm scared to
[141:07] read it. I don't want to relive this
[141:10] conversation. It's [ __ ] horrific, but
[141:12] um again, people probably wouldn't know.
[141:15] There's a lot of things in this world
[141:16] that people wouldn't know about if it
[141:17] wasn't for you. So, thank you.
[141:18] >> Thank you, Joe. Thank you, brother.
[141:20] >> Thanks for being here. Okay. Uh, is this
[141:22] available now? Is there an audio version
[141:24] of it?
[141:24] >> As uh Dion Graham uh got a
[141:30] audio award nomination for the audio
[141:32] book, so it's terrific. Yeah. All right.
[141:34] Beautiful. Thank you. Bye everybody.
