Latest / The Joe Rogan Experience / #2556 - Siddharth Kara

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#2556 - Siddharth Kara · The Joe Rogan Experience

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: We're up. All right. Good to see you, sir.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good to see you, Joe.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: First of all, thank you very much for everything you've
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: done and for just, I can't tell you how many
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: people have come up to me and said thank you
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: for shedding light on what's going on in the Congo
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: with the cobalt stuff. Your book was so important and
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: the fact that you risked your life to get the
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: kind of footage that you got, you legitimately risked your life.
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  Speaker 2: It is a very dangerous part of the world right
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: now with enormous amounts of resources being pulled out and
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: insane amounts of money being made. And, you know, I
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: think just people like you are rare. So thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, man, you're gracious, Joe. You're really gracious. I take
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: that to heart. It means a lot. And let me
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: just say that the fact that you continue to talk
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: about it, you know, you and I first talked about
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: this I was talking to Jamie. It was almost four
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Was it really that long ago?
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  Speaker 1: It was December 2022.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
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  Speaker 1: So here we are, September 26th, so almost four years ago.
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  Speaker 1: And you continue to talk about it now and again.
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  Speaker 1: And I think that's meant a lot to me. It's
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: meant a lot to people in the Congo. It's obvious
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  Speaker 1: this has captured your heart and you're to be commended
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: for that conscience.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I'm doing this talking. You're actually out there going
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: and documenting all this stuff. This is a very strange
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: world that we live in that at the very base
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: of all the greatest technology, like all this stuff that
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: we have that's so incredible, that allows us to find
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: out so much about the world, the base of that,
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  Speaker 2: you have slave labor pulling minerals out of the ground.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you have slave labor, you have child labor, you
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: have militia-run mines. For people who didn't hear our last conversation,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: go back and hear it, you know, because we walk
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: through it and I haven't been back to the Congo
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  Speaker 1: since Cobalt Red came out and I knew it would
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: be too dangerous for me to go back.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely don't go back.
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  Speaker 1: You know, it's just, my colleague said pretty soon after
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Cobalt Red came out, you know, there's a bounty for you.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So I can't go back. But I've stayed in touch
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: with people there. I continue to get ground research done
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and the conditions are they're not much better, you know,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: and in some ways they've continued to degrade because the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: fever for these battery component metals, and it's cobalt, but
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: it's also the lithium, the nickel, the copper, the tantalum,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: all the stuff that goes into our smartphones, our tablets,
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  Speaker 1: you know, you and I, nobody we know can function
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: without this stuff. And the bottom of the chain is
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: tainted in child labor, slavery, violence, environmental destruction and contamination.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: And the new fever is the AI data centers. You know,
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  Speaker 1: we're building these as fast as possible to support the
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: AI economy. And they require all the same metals and minerals.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: So the circuit boards, the servers, the heat sinks, the
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: energy storage, they all require cobalt, copper, tin, tantalum, It's
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: all coming out of Congo.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: It's such a strange aspect of human life that we
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: require that and that the area is controlled by people
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: that are willing to do this. We don't get much
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: of these rare earth minerals from America, do we?
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: No, no, not much at all. That's why it's almost
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: all in the global south and in particular in the
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: heart of Africa, these deposits.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Can I ask you, is it because it's not available?
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: There's no ore in America or it hasn't been mined?
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  Speaker 1: So the dominating force is that the largest and highest
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  Speaker 1: grade reserves of these crucial elements and rare earth metals
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  Speaker 1: are in Central Africa. Lithium extends more broadly to South America.
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  Speaker 1: There's not much... There's not much in North America. There's some,
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  Speaker 1: but here's the rub. Here's the rub. You can find
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: some lithium in the salt flats out west. You can
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  Speaker 1: find some cobalt along the Canadian-North American border. The rub
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  Speaker 1: is we don't want to wreck our environment.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
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  Speaker 1: Digging this stuff out of the ground and then processing it.
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  Speaker 1: But we're okay obliterating their environment and polluting it and
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  Speaker 1: contaminating it. And I did another study. I told you
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  Speaker 1: I can't go back to the Congo, but I have
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  Speaker 1: colleagues and we've continued doing research. And I issued a report,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: came out last year, called Blood Batteries through the University
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: of Nottingham. And we got to quantify some of the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: environmental impact, which is so crucial to the story. It's
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: crucial to the story of this data center push to
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: the EV push, the environmental impact. And we use time-lapse
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: satellite imagery to see that from the dawn of the
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: sort of cobalt battery metal revolution to 2022, 40, 50,
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  Speaker 1: 60 percent of the forest area is gone. Shrubbery, grasslands,
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  Speaker 1: all of that gone, replaced with mining territory.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Is this the Congo as a whole?
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  Speaker 1: So we did, yeah, this is across the copper belt,
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  Speaker 1: copper cobalt region of the Congo where the mining is
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: taking place.
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  Speaker 2: And what percentage of the Congo is that?
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  Speaker 1: Small part of it.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: It's a small part in the southeast corner along the
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  Speaker 1: Zambian border. I mean, much of the Congo is rainforest.
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  Speaker 2: Right. That's why I was confused. Because the Congo is
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: insanely dense and huge.
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  Speaker 1: In the mining part. In the mining part.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: So you've got a massive loss of forestry and water
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  Speaker 1: bodies and an expansion of mining. And then we tested
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the water. for heavy metals and acidity levels. And we
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: did a case study in the town of Kholouazi, which
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: is sort of ground zero for all these metals, cobalt
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and copper and so on. And there was between 10
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and 950 times the World Health Organization maximum recommended limit
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: for human safety of a range of heavy metals from
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: lead to cobalt to copper to uranium to chromium. So
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  Speaker 1: the whole water sources in that part of the country
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  Speaker 1: have been completely contaminated. So I point all this out
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  Speaker 1: because we object to that here. We don't want our
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: trees gone. We don't want our forest destroyed. We don't
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  Speaker 1: want our water contaminated. We don't want the air to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: be polluted. But it's okay for it to happen over there,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: kind of out of sight to those people, so long
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: as we can plug in our phone, build out our
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: data centers, keep buying our EVs and so on. And
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  Speaker 1: that's the story. OK, that's the story that we're OK
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  Speaker 1: destroying them in their world so long as ours remains sacrosanct.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: And that, frankly, is just the great hypocrisy.
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  Speaker 2: Of all this. Is there an alternative, like a viable
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: alternative to supply the world with the minerals that it needs?
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Not yet.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Not yet. No. I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt, but
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  Speaker 2: is it possible to do? Is it just an inevitable
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: fact of when you do that kind of high level mining?
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  Speaker 2: You're going to destroy the environment. Or could it be mitigated?
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  Speaker 1: It could be done better. I mean, you do have
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to chop down all the trees where the deposit is.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: So deforestation is inevitable. But let's say this was done
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  Speaker 1: in our backyard here in Austin. Someone found a big copper, cobalt, tin,
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  Speaker 1: tantalum deposit somewhere. There'd be rules to follow. You'd have
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: to deforest the whole place. But we'd probably say, go
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  Speaker 1: plant the same number of trees somewhere else to offset it.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And there'd be a lot of rules around Containment, make
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  Speaker 1: sure you don't pollute the rivers and so on. And
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  Speaker 1: none of that is done in the global south. None
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  Speaker 1: of that is done in Congo. And it's mostly Chinese
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  Speaker 1: state-run mining companies that don't give a shit about the
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: people and the environment there. But our tech and EV
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  Speaker 1: companies all know that and they're all buying this stuff
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  Speaker 1: from them knowing that. So the chain is tainted. It's
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  Speaker 1: tainted in misery. It's tainted in blood. It's tainted in
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  Speaker 1: environmental destruction. It doesn't have to be that way. We
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  Speaker 1: don't have enough of this stuff here to offset the demand.
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  Speaker 1: But we could start mining some of it here. The
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  Speaker 1: problem is there's legitimate objections to the environmental impact.
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  Speaker 2: And is it an issue with even if they mitigate
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: all the surface area stuff and the pollution that you're
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: still going to deal with groundwater? Yeah. Groundwater contamination is inevitable, right?
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  Speaker 1: It just all leaches in.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not just the mining.
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  Speaker 2: It's the products they use to get them.
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  Speaker 1: The processing of this stuff. You know, you get an
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  Speaker 1: ore that's got cobalt, copper, nickel, silver, bit of uranium
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  Speaker 1: in it. And you have to separate all that. And
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  Speaker 1: so there's heavy industrial acids, toxic industrial liquids used to
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  Speaker 1: dissolve and separate those metals. And that's what inevitably leaches.
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  Speaker 2: They pump that stuff right into the ground?
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  Speaker 1: It goes into the ground. And then it seeps into
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  Speaker 1: the groundwater, into the river's lakes.
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  Speaker 2: When did this all begin?
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  Speaker 1: So that part of the Congo in the southeastern corner
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  Speaker 1: from the town of Lubumbashi to Koloazi was mined for
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  Speaker 1: copper going back to colonial times. And something like a
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  Speaker 1: quarter of the bullets used in World War I were
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  Speaker 1: copper from that part of the Congo.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: So copper mining goes back a long ways. But there
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  Speaker 1: was other stuff there. It just didn't have industrial value yet.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: The uranium that was used in the bombs dropped on
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  Speaker 1: Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from that same part of the Congo.
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  Speaker 2: Whoa.
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  Speaker 1: The highest grade uranium deposit known in the world at
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  Speaker 1: that time.
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  Speaker 2: Isn't it insane? That place has like the most valuable
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  Speaker 2: resources on earth, but yet it's one of the poorest
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: places on earth.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the resource curse. You know, when we find
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: treasure somewhere, it attracts the pirates to come in and
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: loot the place. And when a place is war-torn or
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: colonized or corrupt or filled with strife, And it just
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: chaos runs riot.
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  Speaker 2: And you can get people to work for basically nothing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's virtually nil alternative. There's virtually nil alternative way
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: to survive. And people have to understand that too. When
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: you displace hundreds of thousands of people with a big
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: mining operation, meaning there were villages there and maybe a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: river and they used to fish and grow some potatoes
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And you just displace all those people and
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: you set up a mining operation the size of a
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: small city. Um, there's no other way for them to survive,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: but to bring their kids and their wives and come
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: into that same mining territory. And this is, this is
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: what happens every day, roll up their sleeves and get
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: down in that toxic dirt and try to gather enough
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: ore in a sack for the day to make a dollar. And,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: and I know now roughly how many people it is
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: when you and I spoke in 2026, 2020, 2022, sorry,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: we're now in 2026. Uh, I had documented the human
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: horror taking place, and that's what Cobalt Red is about.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: But I had not done enough to quantify how many
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: people exactly. And so in this same report I mentioned,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: blood batteries, ran prevalence estimates, just sample at all the
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: sites how many people, and you can build an estimate.
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  Speaker 1: And on any given day, there are at least 300,000 people, men, women,
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  Speaker 1: and children, digging for cobalt with their bare hands and
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: pickaxes and shovels. 300,000 people on any given day. And
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that fluctuates by season a little bit, dry season, wet season.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Of that 300,000, about 37%, so more than one out
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  Speaker 1: of three, are working in conditions we'd call absolute slavery.
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  Speaker 1: And almost 10% are kids. So roughly 30,000 kids on
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  Speaker 1: any given day. Not in school, not learning, exposed to
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  Speaker 1: toxic work, toxic, dangerous, mining with their hands up to
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: their necks in it. And that's the bottom of the chain.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And people not only need to know that, but think
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: hard about their own personal choices in the context of
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: that knowledge. What do I mean by that? I mean,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: do you have to upgrade your phone every year? People
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: often ask me, what do I do? Okay, I accept
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: the premise that The rechargeable lifestyle I live is facilitated
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: by and built upon an enormity of human suffering of
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: those people over there. What do I do? I can't
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: fix that. And I say, you're right. You can't. I can't.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: But you can think about your personal choices. And the
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: first one is, do you have to upgrade the phone
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: and the tablet every year just because the tech company
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: tells you to? Because each time you do, you're contributing
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: to those demand side forces. So if the phone still works,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: just use it. The EV is a more interesting question.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't upgrade the EV. You either buy
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: one or you keep your internal combustion engine car. Now,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: EV companies will tell us their mining is done sustainably
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: and the supply chain is audited and all of that.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And all of these horrors are taking place in someone
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: else's supply chain. But the truth is, it's all tainted.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: It's all coming out of the same pot of tainted,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: contaminated human degradation and environmental destruction. The EV story is
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: let's save the planet.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And that's fine. We need to save the planet. But
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: we can't save our piece of the planet by destroying
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: their piece of the planet.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Look, I love the technology involved in EVs. I love–
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: I have a Tesla. I love it. But there's also–
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: excuse me. There's also reality of brake dust. There's way
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: more brake dust with those things. And that's a big
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: part of the particulate pollution that you get in large
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: cities is brake dust. That stuff that you clean off
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: your wheel when you go to the car wash, that
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: stuff is in your lungs. If you live in a
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: big city, especially like New York City, and you're walking around,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: you are 100% breathing in brake dust. And it's been
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: proven that living in polluted, heavily populated cities lowers your lifespan.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And it's probably one of the reasons. You're dealing with
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: a toxic element in the atmosphere that you're breathing in
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: every day, whether you like it or not. There's not
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: a thing you can do about it.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, there's so many parts of the EV
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: story that we don't get fully told. Brake dust is
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: certainly one.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Well, all cars give off brake dust, just to be
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: really clear. But EVs are heavier.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: They're heavier. So you brake more.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: You have to brake more.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: I think there is some ways around that. And I think... Um,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: one way to mitigate it quite a bit, I believe
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: is carbon ceramic brakes. Is that the case, Jamie? Let's
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: find out if that's absolutely true. I've read that, but
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: I want to make sure that's really true. Uh, I
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: know from anecdotal experience that when you clean your car,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: if you have carbon ceramic brakes, there's almost no brake
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: dust on your wheels. It's a very different thing. If
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: you have regular steel brakes, it just, it, for whatever
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: reason leaves more brake dust. I'm not sure why we'll
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: find out in a second. Um, But other than that,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: is there any sort of novel material that can do it?
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Here it goes. Carbon ceramic brake systems can reduce brake
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: wear particulate pollution substantially compared with conventional grade cast iron rotors,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: but they did not eliminate brake dust. The actual environmental
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: outcome depends on the complete friction pair rotor and pad
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: formulation and on driving conditions. Yeah, so it just explains
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: what brake dust is. And so it does help a
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: lot substantially, but it doesn't eliminate it. Yeah. And they're
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: more expensive. It's like a big upgrade. If you get
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: a car, like a lot of sports cars, if you
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: buy a Corvette, it allows you to upgrade to carbon
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: ceramic brakes. It's very expensive. So very few people do it.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Well, there's certainly things we can and should be doing
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to mitigate the environmental impacts of whether it's an EV
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: or even an internal combustion engine. I didn't know about
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: these brake pads. It's worth it. people knowing more about that.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: But then you're going to have to find carbon. Like, okay,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: now you've got to get carbon to get the carbon ceramics.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: This is the thing. There's always something. And you made
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: this point with RZA. Okay, cobalt, but it's also the lithium.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: It's also the nickel. One of the biggest lithium deposits now,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: and people are saying, okay, let's use less cobalt in
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the batteries. Let's do lithium iron phosphate batteries. Let's do
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the solid state batteries. They always have lithium in them.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: One of the biggest lithium deposits now is in the Congo.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And it just started shipping under this Chinese mining company
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: in June of this year out of this deposit. And
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the conditions there, I've been there. Colleagues have been up there.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: It's near a town called Manono. They're just as horrific.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And so when you say, all right, we're done with cobalt.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: We're just going to do lithium iron phosphate battery or
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: lithium table salt battery, whatever.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Same deal.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Same deal. So it's about extending the horizon of our
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: compassion beyond our immediate circle and caring about everyone who's
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: attached to our life and our lifestyle, no matter how
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: tangential or how far downstream they might be. They're still
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: brothers and sisters. They still inhabit this earth with us.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: They still live, breathe, and have dreams just like we do.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: And you could be them if you were born there.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: That's the thing.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: You got lucky. We all got lucky. You and I
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: most certainly got lucky.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: We got the roll of the dice that was favorable.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: And that's all it is. And that's all it is.
• 19:10
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• 20:07
  Speaker 2: slash rogan. This offer is for new customers only. People
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: don't want to believe. That's why that. whole pull yourself
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: up by your bootstraps ideology that some people like to promote. Like,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: that's kind of crazy. In certain circumstances, it's accurate. But
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: to put that flat across the board for everybody. Now,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: there's people, there's no boots. There's no boots. They don't
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: have clean water. They don't have nothing. And no medical infrastructure.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: And you're being forced to work in an environment that
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: 100% is going to poison you to death.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And we only make progress when we extend... our compassion out.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: When I say progress, I mean moral progress as a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: species on this earth.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: That's literally the key. If you wanted to figure out
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: how to make just global life better for all people,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: it's take whatever the third world is and bring it
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: up to the first world. We should all want to
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: do that. If everybody wanted to do that, if everybody
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: wanted to deliver infrastructure, education, medical establishment, like where there's
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: like legitimate hospitals, like everything that we have in the
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: first world, if that was all over the world, how
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: much less problems would there be? But the problem is
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: the resources, like the resources in the Congo, whether it's
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: oil or whatever it is, they're worth so much money.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: And the people that are in control of these resources
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: are extracting so much money. They don't ever want to
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: let that go. No, they don't.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I run a thought experiment. with people sometimes. And when
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I teach a class, you know, I haven't taught in
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: a couple of years, but when I teach, I run
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: a thought experiment. And it's exactly what we're talking about here.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: So let's say you were up in the sky, in heaven, whatever,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: pre-birth state, whatever that might be. And you don't know
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: what roll of the dice you're going to get. Am
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I going to be born in a safe, loving, upper
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: middle class family in the West? Am I going to
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: be born in some war-torn, poor, Part of South Sudan
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: or whatever. You don't know. OK, what kind of what
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: kind of world would you hope the favorable people are
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: trying to pursue in the event that you're the one
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you get the bad roll of the dice? And you say, man,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I really hope that. The ones who get the good
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: roll of the dice will care about me. They'll see me.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: They will feel some connection to me. They will try
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: to use their good roll of the dice in a
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: way that benefits me somehow. Maybe they are part of
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: some effort to bring education, health care, sanitation, whatever, to
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: my part of the world and have that. connection and
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: extension of their compassion and empathy towards me because we're
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: all up here in this pre-birth state recognizing some of
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: you are going there some of you going there let's
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: all agree all right those of you who end up
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: in the good place you don't lose sight of us
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: right you know and i won't lose sight of you
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: in the event it's me and and then we get
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: here and um we're just wound up in our sphere
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and we lose a sense of human connection.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Isn't it partly because this is really the first of
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: a couple generations, but with increasingly more contact and understanding
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: of the rest of the world? Like if you went
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: back 100 years ago, people had virtually no understanding of
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: how things went on anywhere else unless they had visited them.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: And now 100 years later, because of the very technology
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: that we're talking about, which is also ironic, that's why
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: we know so much about all these places in the world.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: And isn't the problem also with elevating these places and
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: getting them infrastructure that one of the best ways to
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: do it cleanly is nuclear power? But then they found
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: out that when you give people nuclear power, it's pretty
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: easy for them to convert it into weapons. Okay.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot to unpack.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: There's a lot.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: There's a lot to unpack.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Because we're trying to, like, if we're going to be
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: fair about a discussion of why everything's fucked, One of
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: the reasons why everything's fucked is clearly because they don't
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: have infrastructure. They don't have power. They don't have water
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: that's clean. They don't have good education. They don't have
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: all these things. So if you wanted to start that
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: and make it better, you would have to give them power.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: So are you going to burn coal? What are you
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: going to do? There's only a few ways, right? There's dams.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: You can get hydroelectric power. Windmills and solar, get the
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: fuck out of here. That's not going to– not right now.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Not right now.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Not with current technology, it's not going to power giant cities.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: So like, what do you give them? You give them
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: nuclear power. And this is what happened in India, right?
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: And this is what happened in Pakistan. And they're like, oh, look,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: we could turn this into a missile and fuck each
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: other up. It's tricky.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: It's tricky. And, you know, you talk about nukes, okay? And,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: you know, we're at this point in this world where
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: there's this fever about who does and doesn't have them.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: And.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you one other thing I've learned since
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: we last talked about the Congo. I mentioned the uranium
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: used to drop Little Boy and Big Boy on Hiroshima
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and Nagasaki.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Fat Man.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Fat Man, Little Boy. Little Boy and Fat Man on
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It came from a mine called Shinkalobwe
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: in the Congo. There was a meeting of the Belgians
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and the Americans in midtown Manhattan. They said, we're going
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: to give you so much money for that uranium and
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And Congo has a lot
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: of uranium, a lot of uranium. And for the last
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: 10 years, Western intelligence agencies have been trying to figure
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: out how is China growing its nuclear stockpile, stockpile of
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: nuclear warheads so fast because they got no uranium. They're
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: not getting it from North Korea because they don't have
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: it either. Russia's not going to be sending it to them.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: They're not going to give teeth to their neighbor. Where
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: are they getting it from? And you talk to people
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: on the ground in the Congo. And now there's some
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: counterintelligence looking into this. People in the Congo have said, look,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: for the better part of the last 15 years, every
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: one of these Chinese state-run mining companies in the same
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: tractor trailer that's got the copper and the cobalt and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the nickel, they've got uranium on it too. And it's
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: all headed over to mainland China. And that's the answer
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: to this question of how did China jack up its
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: nuclear stockpile supply so fast in the last 10, 15 years? Now,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I can't verify any of that. It's not like I've
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: done uranium investigations.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Look, it only makes sense.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: They have complete control of the region. It makes a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: lot of sense.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: There's no way anyone would be able to stop them.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: No one's going to stop them.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: They control the ground. They control the ground there. And
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that's scary. And so when you talk about do we
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: give them– We use nuclear power in that part of
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: the world. I mean, I don't think you want yellow
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: cake floating around that part of the world.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Does China have any human rights organizations that are comparable
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: to the ones in the West? Not really, right?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: They may write stuff down on paper.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: But there's not like.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: They're not, no.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a billion people over there. You would
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: think there would be a certain percentage, like Red Cross type.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, we have some sense of what they've done
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: to the Uyghurs.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a hard one to figure out, right?
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: It's a hard one to figure out. We've got some
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: general sense of the forced labor camps filled with Uyghurs
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: doing solar panels and clothes and all this shit. And
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I haven't looked into that directly, but I can tell
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you what I've seen directly on what they do in Africa. And,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: you know, they don't treat people like people there. They
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: don't see them, the Africans, as people. They're in the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: way of the loot they need. And they don't even
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: employ the African people there when they come in with
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a mining project or a construction project. They ship over
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: people from China to do the work and then work
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: them and then send them back. And there's nothing by
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: way of human rights standards when you're talking about Chinese
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: companies operating in Africa.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: So this is a uniquely Western thing.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: This drive to have some basic human rights standards?
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I would say so. I would say so. Now,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: one thing that's changed since you and I talked is
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: there's actually a U.S. mining company now operating in that
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: part of the Congo. There wasn't one for a better
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: part of two decades. And one of the mines, which
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: is owned by Dubai, Middle Eastern guys, part of the
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Trump administration sort of peace for minerals arrangement between President
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Shishigedi and the Trump administration, was mining access. And so
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: one concession was sold to this US mining company. It's
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: called Virtus Mining, and they're run by former military guys.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: And they took over a couple of copper cobalt concessions
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: in Lubumbashi and Kolawezi, both sides of the copper belt.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: That's just this year. So within the last few months. OK.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: And I haven't been there to look, but I talk
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: to colleagues all the time. I say, look, is Virtues,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: are they doing things any better? And the feedback I've
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: gotten so far is they seem to be improving standards
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: around artisanal mining. They're still artisanal mining, but improving standards
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: around it.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: When we say artisanal mining, you went into depth about
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: this the first time we talked, but we should just
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: tell people. That thing, artisanal, sounds awesome. It sounds like
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: a great cup of coffee, like fair trade. It's a
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: nice fresh baked bread. Like someone's got a beautiful ceramic
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: cup to serve you the coffee in. Artisanal mining is
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: pretty much the opposite of that.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: It's the games people play with words, right?
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: No.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: So artisanal mining means you've got mom, dad, and their
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: kids– Up to here in toxic grit and filth, digging.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an artisanal mind. The fact that you
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: can use that same word, artisanal, with this and you
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: can with a nice coffee shop is crazy.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: It's crazy. So this is, you know, I got in.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Imagine if you were learning English. You're like, what the
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: fuck does artisanal actually mean? How are the two things? What?
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: This language is messed up.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how the fuck?
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: How are these both artisanal?
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: How is my espresso in that artisanal?
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: For lack of a better term, these minds, it's all
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: basically the poorest people on earth.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: It's all brute, raw, human beings. Labor. It's tens of
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: thousands of people. And there's kids down there, too. OK,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: you just can't see in this massive.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: There's also you've shown mothers with their.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Babies on their back. So that's that's what the mining
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: industry calls artisanal. OK, it's it's this it's kids with 40,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: 50 kilogram sacks of cobalt on their necks clambering out
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: of a pit. Cobalt is toxic to touch. It is
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: toxic to breathe. All these kids get respiratory distress, cancers.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: The women get birth defects, congenital disease. Here's a teenager
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: with a baby. These are all my photos, okay, that
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: have found their way onto the Internet. That kid's probably eight,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: and she's probably 13 or 14, and she's got this baby.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I remember that, Joe, that's in the hills above Kambov.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: That's the story I told you last time. That's probably
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the closest I came to getting shot. was in this
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: mining area. It was almost all children run by a
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: militia north of a town called Kambov. And it is
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: all copper cobalt. It all gets sold right into the
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: industrial supply chain. People need to accept this truth. The
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: kids don't dig cobalt going to the moon. OK, that
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: cobalt all goes into the formal supply chain through militias
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and traders. All of it. What do I mean by
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: formal supply chain? I mean the formal industrial mining companies
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: that then go and refine this stuff, and it ends
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: up in your phones and cars and tablets. So I
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: was up there in those hills, and you're not supposed
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: to be up there. Like I wasn't supposed to be
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: in the place where there's 15,000 people in that pit.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: These militia guys come barreling up the hill with AK-47s,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: and I thought that was it for me. I mean
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: this is the story I told you last time. I
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: thought that was it. I mean they threw my backpack
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: off my back. shoved me to the ground, yanked all
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: my stuff out, demanded my phone to see if I'd
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: taken photos and videos and so on. And the only
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: thing that saved my life, for people who are interested
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: in human rights research, this is what's important. You get
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: local intel, local colleagues, take their advice. The only thing
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: that saved my life that day. So one of my
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: local colleagues said, Arthur, before you go to any of
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: these places, you got to get a stamp from the
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: governor's office on your visa paperwork. And you take that
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: with you everywhere. And that will convey to any militia
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: that you're under the governor's protection and they're not going
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: to fuck with you.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: They won't.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: They'll mess with you, but they're not going to do that.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: They're not going to kill you. And I had to
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: go get that stamp. I had to persuade the governor
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: of Hotka Tonga province that I was there not to
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: shame the Congo. I was seeking truth that I think
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: his people are being exploited by the global north and
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: this whole tech fever for rechargeable stuff. And he put
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: his little stamp on it. And, you know, that was
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the only time I met him, only time I saw him,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: but I had that stamp. So when I was up
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: there and my stuff getting thrown around, they had their
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: guns pointed at me and my guide, his face went pale.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: And I was, I thought, this is it. This is
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: it for Kara up on this hill, middle of nowhere.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: And my guide, just gestured and I knew what he was,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: what he was, what he was intending. And I found
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: my folder on the ground. I pulled that piece of
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: paper out and I showed them the stamp and, and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: then they just said, get out of here. Just, you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: they let us go. So, uh, when you go into
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: conflict zones, you have to have that kind of local advice. Um,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: cause it can mean the difference between living and being
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: shot and dumped in some ditch where these little girls
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: with babies, that's the image that needs to be in
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: our minds.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Every time we get that image, was it with a phone?
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was with my phone. I had, so those,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: so they started, you know, going through my phone, they
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: had me unlock it, but I had all these images
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: in a password protected other folder. So I just showed
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: them pictures of like, you know, my, my home, my daughter, my,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: you know, stuff, just whatever. I had another folder and they, they,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: they didn't have the savvy. Right. They didn't know. So like,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: same like that video of the 15,000 people. you know,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: I just managed to do this and tuck it away.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: And cause that was also controlled by militias, uh, that
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: particular site. And that, that mine is classified industrial, which
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: means only heavy equipment being used to source the copper
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and the cobalt. And that mine is in the bottom
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: of the supply chains in the, in the disclosure documents
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: of every tech and EV company. It's one of the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: biggest copper cobalt suppliers out of the Congo. And you
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: get in there and you say, this is not industrial
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: at all. Nor is it baked bread and espresso. This
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: is hell on earth. Am I transported back to Egyptian
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: times and raw brute slave labor being made to build
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: a pyramid? In this case, to excavate a giant pit
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: of ore. I can still hear the clanging in that
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: place and the shouting.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: It's the ability that people have to treat other people
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: as if they're not people that's still shocking. And that
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: brings me to your book because your book is all
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: about the Atlantic slave trade. And it's called The Zorg.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: And it's a tale of greed and murder that inspired
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the abolition of slavery. And just imagine, like, those boats
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: carried people from pretty much that same place or close
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: to it.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, this ship, you know, what I learned writing
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: this book, the Zorg is the most consequential slave ship
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: that ever crossed the Atlantic. There are more than 40,000
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: slave ship voyages across the three and a half centuries
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: of the slave trade that carted 12 and a half,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: 13 million Africans. And if you need to know about
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: one of them, it's this one because it's the most important,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: the most consequential. And the reason I say that is
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: it opens the whole world of the slave trade and
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: its journey ends in this culminating act of brute inhumanity
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: that sparked the first movement to abolish slavery. And it's
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: that sequence that is so vital for us to understand historically.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: People can't fix a horror until they learn about it.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: And the average person I've learned is not evil. We
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: may be generally self-interested and worried about us and ours
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and so on, but we're not evil. And when we
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: learn about something wrong, we generally feel something and want
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: to do something about it. And that's what happened. This
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: was the ship that told the whole world what was
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: happening in the slave trade, and a small community of
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: faith-based moral leaders said, this is unacceptable. This is beneath us.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: And we're going to devote our lives to abolishing slavery.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: The other thing that this journey is, you know, we
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: grow up, you grow up in America, you learn about slavery.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: You learn about plantation economy and how slaves were treated,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: cotton and so on. But we don't learn the details
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: of how they got here. and how the first global
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: economy was born around the Atlantic slave trade, how modern finance,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: banking and insurance was born through the slave trade and
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the conditions that the African people endured being carted across
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic. And it's essential to know this history because
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: it tells us why we are where we are at
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: this point in history and as a moral or lack
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: of moral species on this earth, because we do at
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: times have these periods of great inhumanity to each other.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: And the slave trade is one of them. And I
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: learned so much researching this book. And the feedback I
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: get from readers is, man, I knew slavery. I had
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: a sense, but I had no idea just how horrible
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Does it dishearten you? to know that essentially the same
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: thing is happening right now as this book? In the
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Western world, people don't believe that. I had a discussion
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: the other day with someone who was talking about how
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: we're doing better today. We abolish slavery. I said, no,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: we abolish slavery right here. But there's more slaves on
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: earth now than there were during the time of the
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Atlantic slave trade.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: So we abolish slavery on paper. We have a piece
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: of paper that says slavery is abolished. But in practice,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the institution of oppressing, subjugating, and extracting the labor of
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: someone persists and has evolved into the modern era.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Well, not only that, like how many underage workers are
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: working in– Millions. Millions. In this country that are undocumented.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I mean, who knows what the number is?
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: But millions around the world, tens of millions around the world.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: But it's– this history is important. This history is important
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: because– and this ship is important because it reveals– The
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: depth of our inhumanity while simultaneously showing us the capacity
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: for good in our nature. Because it did spark that
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: first movement to abolish slavery.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: And it was faith-based leaders that were doing this?
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the Anglican Church leaders. And the first
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: movement to abolish slavery was in England. And it was
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: sparked directly by this ship. And so people can read
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the book and understand what happened on the ship, but
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: it goes on its journey, picking up Africans along the
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: West African coast. And I went to West Africa to
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: see the old forts and castles that are there that
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Europeans built to facilitate the slave trade. They lined the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: West African coast with a higher concentration of fortifications than
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: existed anywhere in Europe. little forts and castles and dungeons
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: to gather human beings. And so Africans were marched from
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: the inland regions, sometimes 1,000 miles. Arab slave traders would
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: raid and ransack a village, grab people, and start marching
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: them down to the coast and trade along the way
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: with house of slave dealers. And people would die, of course.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: They're yoked at the neck and tied, and many people
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: didn't survive a 500, 600, 800-mile march.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: 800-mile march.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's journal entries I came across. One captain, slave
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: ship captain named John Newton. John Newton's a fascinating guy
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: because he became an abolitionist and a preacher. And he
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: wrote hymns, and probably the most famous hymn he wrote
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: was Amazing Grace.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: So Amazing Grace is written by a slave trader.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: So John Newton, John Newton's from Liverpool. Liverpool was once
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: capital of the slave trade. We think of Beatles when
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: we think Liverpool or the football club. But it was
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: once the dominant force in the entire European Atlantic slave trade, Liverpool.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: And Newton was one of those captains. He captained three
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: slave ship journeys. They called it the triangular trade. And
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: what that meant was is ships departed Europe, in this
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: case Liverpool, with tradable goods, mirrors, knives, etc. rum, brandy, cutlery, crockery, linens, bandanas, whatever,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: cowrie shells, took all that stuff down to Western Africa
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: where Europeans had built some castles and forts. And those
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: castles and forts were involved in the business of accumulating Africans. Okay.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: And they held them in dungeons in these forts. And
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: you can go to a place, I went to a
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: call Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, which was headquarters of
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the British slave trade. And there's a massive dungeon in
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: the bottom of Cape Coast Castle. And Africans would be
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: brought from hundreds of miles up, all the way up
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: into the Sahel, marched down. A quarter to a third
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: of them didn't survive. And so this is the dungeon
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: at Cape Coast Castle. Okay. And let me tell you
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: something about this place, Joe. So that, this is, oh man.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: So John Newton had in his journal, Brought on board today,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Africans marched, I think, 1,000 miles from the inland.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: So they were marched down and eventually sold to the
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Europeans who run these forts and castles all along the coast.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: The biggest one was Cape Coast Castle. The British and
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: the Dutch had one just cannon shot away called Elmina Castle.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: This is in modern-day Ghana. And they were held in
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: the dungeon. You saw that picture of the dungeon. So
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: the dungeon... was divided between an area for men and
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: an area for women and children. There'd be, at any
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: given time, a thousand human beings in there, shackled down.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: One shaft for light and where they drop food and water.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if you, Jamie, if you had
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: that photo again, you saw like a little narrow groove
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: down the floor of the dungeon. And there you see that,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you see that groove down the floor of the dungeon.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: And that's supposed to siphon away their piss and shit
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: and menstrual blood. And so you can imagine a thousand
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: people in there. Now, it always is full and clogged
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: and rainy season, whatever. So eventually the whole thing is
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: covered in sludge of sewage.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: And so they would spend months down here, Joe. They
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: would spend months down here. And many people didn't survive
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: that experience. So you're marched from the inland regions, hundreds
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: of miles, maybe didn't survive that. If you did, you're
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: in this dungeon. You're spending months down here. And then
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: eventually there's the male slave dungeon entrance at Cape Coast Castle.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: So eventually the ships come from Western Europe with all
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: their stuff. And they come up to Cape Coast Castle.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: They park in the roads. They drop anchor. It's about
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: a mile or two offshore. They take a canoe up
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: to the castle and they meet the governor. And the
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: governor says, OK, you know, let's let's do our business.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: And they go into the dungeon and they bring out
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: a parcel of slaves, some men, some women and some children.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: They first clean them. Remember, they're covered in sewage and filth.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: And they cover them in palm oil to make them
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: look healthy. And the captain will say, I'll take this one,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: this one, this one. His surgeon or doctor will inspect them,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: open their mouths, check their lymph nodes, make them cough,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: make sure they're not sick and unwell. And then they
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: purchase these slaves and then brand them. And they brand them, put.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Some palm oil on their shoulder, brand them so they
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: know which one they bought because they're going to go
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: down to the next fort, buy a few, buy a few.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: And then when they've got all the several hundred to
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: load up the ship, they come back and get them.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: When I went into the dungeon at Cape Coast, it's
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a kind of a cobbled floor. And then I got
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: to this one section, Joe, that was smooth. And I
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: had managed to get a single guide from the Ministry
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: of Museums to take me around. So before I wrote
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: about it, I wanted to see it and experience it.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: And you can see it's kind of cobbly. And then
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: there's some sections that are smooth. And they had one
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: that was just perfectly smooth. And I said, why is
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: this so perfectly smooth here? He said, we left this
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: just the way we found it. This is the sedimented urine, piss, shit,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: menstrual blood of the people who were held here for centuries.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: And we don't learn that, you know. We don't learn
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: that when we learn about slavery. We don't learn about
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: these visceral details of what people had to endure before
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: they even were put on the ship. Now let's talk
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: about the ship, you know, which is a floating dungeon.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: The deep sea faring vessel, Joe, is a marvel of engineering.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: It's a marvel of vision and ambition and European genius. Oh,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Jamie's skipping ahead here to the visual imagery. We talk
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: about abolition, all right? We're going to talk about the
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: first use of a viral image, which Jamie gave us
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: a prelude to. So the deep seafaring vessel, it's a
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: testament to European genius and ambition and vision and exploration.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: There's no other way to look at it. There was
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: an earth that was here and people were all in
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: their pockets until the Portuguese and the Spanish developed a
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: ship that could cross an ocean. And this was the
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: early 1400s, the age of exploration. You learn about this
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: in high school. Prince Henry the Navigator.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Got his ships.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: We need to see the rest of the world. What
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: else is out there? Maybe some riches. And the Portuguese,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: they started going south. and they hit the Canaries, Canary Islands,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: off the coast of West Africa. Shipwreck, shipwreck, shipwreck. The
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: winds were just too intense, too violent, too countervailing. Their
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: ships could not handle it. The Portuguese invented a specific
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: sail called a Latin rig. It's shaped like a triangle,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: and rather than a traditional scuba, sail that gets pushed
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: by the wind the latin rig you can swivel it
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: to function like a bird's wing so you can tack
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: into the wind like a bird does and so the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: portuguese were the first to get past the canary islands
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: 1420s 1430s and And the caravel takes Europeans south of
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: the Canaries, and they get down to the west coast
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: of Africa. They round the Cape of Good Hope, and
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: by the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese have
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: reached India. Extraordinary exploration, triumph of navigation and genius. And
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: we get Christopher Columbus. Oh, man, Portuguese have... and all
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: the way over to India, and they had to go
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: all the way around Africa. Maybe there's a shortcut. I'm
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: going to go that way. Let me go that way.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: It's got to be a shortcut. So he goes west.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to find a better way. He lands in
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: the Bahamas.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: India!
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Indians! All right, okay. We laugh, but I mean, he
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: crossed the Atlantic in his ship. He got here. And
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: he starts the Spanish reconnoitering of this part of the planet.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: The Pope, Alexander VI, says, okay, you Spanish, you Portuguese,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: you're starting to suss out the rest of the world,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: and I want you to get along. So I'm going
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: to draw a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: And everything east of that line, Portugal, that's for you.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Everything west of that line, Spain, that's for you. So
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Spain colonized the Americas and Portugal colonized Africa and India first. Now,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the Europeans came across something during the Crusades that captivated
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: their taste buds. They called it sweet salt. Today we
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: call it sugar. No sugar in Europe until the Crusades.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Because it doesn't grow there. It grows in warm tropical places.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: So 1494, the Pope divides the world. And Spain and
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Portugal are now in tropical places where you can grow sugar.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: That is so insane to hear. But makes complete and
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: total sense that people didn't know about sugar until the 1400s.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Well, they came across it in the Crusades, you know, 1,200, 1,300 Europeans. Like, oh,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: these Arabs have got some sugar. It's nice.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: And they're getting it from cane? They're just processing it?
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Sugar cane, yeah, yeah. So, because it doesn't grow in
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: that part of the world.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: So what did they do to sweeten things in Europe
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: back then? Just honey?
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Honey, berry juices.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Sugar. Sugar's another level, right?
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Sugar's another level.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: So....
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: So they divide the world and they start setting up
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: their sugar plantations. And the Portuguese tap into existing systems
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: of slavery in Africa. Let's be clear about that. Europeans
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: didn't bring slavery to Africa. There was slavery there. They
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: tap into those systems to populate their sugar plantations along
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: the African coast with slave labor. Now the Spanish decimate
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: native populations. The Mayans, the Aztecs, they get here. And
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: through guns and disease and war, and they're decimating local populations.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Mayans. Mayans. Yeah.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: So they don't have a labor force. So King Charles
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: in 1518 says, okay, Portuguese, you got these Africans. Can
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: you send some over here? And that's 1518. So the Portuguese,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: he gives them a contract to bring me 4,000 Africans
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: to come work these sugar plantations because they seem to
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: be doing a good job working on yours. Thus begins
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the era of the Atlantic slave trade. It was about
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: bringing Africans over to the Spanish colonies to work on
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: sugar plantations. And the Portuguese and the Spanish are running
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: this triangular circuit, bringing goods down to Africa, buying Africans,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: taking them across. There you go. Dropping them in sugar
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: plantations and then getting the output of sugar labor, which
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: is sugar, rum, molasses, whatever, taking it back to Europe.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: selling it, and then repeating the triangle.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: How were they so good at getting across the ocean
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: but so bad at thinking that they were in India?
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: That seems so insane. Like how much of a map
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: did they have of the world back then?
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: They had nothing.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Nothing west.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: They had nothing west. Nothing west. When the Portuguese first
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: started going south, they had nothing of Africa except the
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: northern coast from Roman times. When you look at maps
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: in the 1400s, it's blank slate.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: That's nuts.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: And they were first attracted by gold, right? They heard
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: these stories, these mythical stories of gold. And when the
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Portuguese got to West Africa, they called it Costa de
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: la Mina de Oro, the coast of gold mines. There
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: was gold everywhere. The slave trade came later because of sugar.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Then the British and the Dutch.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: So sugar was the start?
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Sugar was the dominant.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: There was always slave labor. There was always slave and
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: slave trade, but that's when it really ramped up.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: That's when the whole triangular trade, the Atlantic slave trade,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: the world's first globalized economy was born from sugar.
• 55:13
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• 56:12
  Speaker 1: And sugar, it was like the fossil fuel of the day.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: It was the lubrication on which the global economy functioned,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: such as it was then in North Atlantic. generating centuries
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: of generational wealth. So on the eve of the American Revolution,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: just to give you a sense, okay, so we're talking 1773, 1774.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: By this time, the British are the dominant force in
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic slave trade, and they became the dominant force
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: taking over Caribbean islands. Their prize was Jamaica, which became
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the largest sugar plantation economy in the world at that time.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: So on the eve of the Revolutionary War, of course,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: they had the 13 American colonies and they had some
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Caribbean islands. Just to give you a sense of how
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: important sugar was. If you take all the exports from
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: all 13 American colonies and you take sugar from Jamaica.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: the value of those sugar exports from Jamaica was five
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: times the combined value of all 13 exports of everything
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: from all 13 colonies.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: So sugar generated enormous wealth for Western Europe. And so
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: thus the slave trade persisted and persisted.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Are any of the companies that were making sugar back then,
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: are they still around?
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Uh, not that I'm aware. No, I mean, uh, And
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: the way sugar is made today, of course, is different
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: than the slave plantations that were erected by first Portugal
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: and Spain, then later the British and the Dutch. So
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Zorg is actually a Dutch slave ship. And it set
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: sail around in October 1780. So we're in the heart
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: of American Revolutionary War. And the British had been the
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: dominant force of the slave trade. So remember I told
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: you we're in the dungeon, okay, and the slave captain
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: comes around and he's bartering for these people. And he
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: spends a couple of months acquiring Africans in this castle,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: this fort, this place, brands them. And then eventually he
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: loads up his ship with, depending on the size of
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: the ship, three, four, five, six hundred Africans. And loads
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: his food and water and he has to cross the Atlantic,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: what's called the Middle Passage. And The design of these ships,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: the design of a slave ship was specific, okay, designed
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: for human cargo. So the bottom was the food and water,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and then they had what's called the tween deck. And
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: all right, Jamie, you can throw up that photo now.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: We're ready.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: All right, so here you've got the tween deck, all right?
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: This is the schematic, and this is an important schematic.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: This is the Brooks slave ship out of Liverpool. And
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: you see the bottom of the tween deck, The ship
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: master is showing you how to line up the Africans.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: They're given 16 inches of space each. Like to quote
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: John Newton, who we talked about, like books on a shelf.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: They're to be entered and stowed like books on a shelf.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: So each human is allotted 16 inches of space.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Now, why are they laying down? Okay,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: so you're lining them all up, filling up every available
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: possible piece of space. And then there's a second level
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: here where you see them around this horseshoe. So they
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: built a partition. You can see at the bottom left there,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: they built a partition so that they could maximize the cargo,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: the human capacity cargo of this vessel. So you can't
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: sit upright. You're shackled down, laying down, and then there's
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: a partition built, and then there's another level of people,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: like the overhead bin space, okay? You're just lining these
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: people up, and they're lined up like this for two
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: months to cross the Atlantic. And you may ask yourself,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: what happens if you're seasick? What happens if a woman
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: has her period? Some women gave birth in these conditions.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: What happens if you have to just go to the
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: bathroom So they put buckets, distributed them along what they
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: call the tween deck, this cargo here. And if you
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: needed the bathroom, you had to try and get to
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: that bucket with your chained partner, your chained two by two.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: And of course, you never made it in time. And
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: the ship is tossing and turning. And so in a
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: matter of just a few days or a week, this
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: entire deck is covered in human piss and shit and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: blood and vomit and misery. And that's for the two
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: months of the crossing. They don't teach us this, Joe.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: They don't teach us this part of it. So here's
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a Here's a shipmaster telling you how you can maximize
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: the profit in the Brooks slave ship that he's building
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: for the Brooks Liverpool family and line these people up.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Now they're brought up in the morning and doused with
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: seawater and given a little bit of food and half
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: pint of water to drink. The men are kept in
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the front of the ship and the women and children
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: in the back and they built a barricade down the middle.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: to keep the men on one side because you can imagine,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: let's say you're one of these Africans. You got that
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: roll of the dice. You're going to try to do
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: anything you can to get control of that ship. And
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: so slave insurrections were a common effort at resistance. And
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: so Europeans built a barricade down the middle of every
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: slave ship so that If somehow the slaves managed to revolt,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: they would quickly get to the back, the stern side,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: where they could still control the ship. They had cannons
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: mounted on the barricade to suppress the insurrection.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: They would shoot a cannon into their own boat?
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: It was either that or lose the ship. And usually
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: a couple of shots would quell the insurrection. Now you
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: had to punish the insurrectionists. And I'm telling you this
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: because captains wrote about all this stuff. They wrote about this.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: And then there was one captain out of Liverpool who said,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: I find that the punishment for an insurrection that works
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: best to ensure that there's not another one is if
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: you take one of the insurrection leaders, chop him to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: pieces while he's alive and distribute the pieces to the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: other slaves. This seems to quell any further effort at insurrection. Horror.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Just horror. Now, they'd be whipped. And you can imagine
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: what happened to women and girls. Uh, one slave captain said, um,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: sailors gratify their passions, brute like in front of the,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: in front of the others with girls, not 10 years old,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: you know, people, there were no laws on that ship.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: It was in a moral abyss out in the middle
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: of the ocean. And so in the case of the Zorg,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: they're taking these Africans across the Atlantic. And this is
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that happens. There's an insurrection. That's
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: one form of protest. Another form of protest is a
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: hunger strike. I'm not going to eat. I'll just die.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: I'd rather die. If you've already survived the march from
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: the inland, lived in the Cape Coast Castle dungeon for
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: a few months in your own shit and piss, and
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: then you're stuck in this ship like, I don't know
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: where this is going, but I'm going to stop eating.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: I'd rather be dead. Europeans had a tool for that
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: called the speculum oris. And it was initially a device
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: used to pry open jaws when you had lockjaw. Slave
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: ship captains got some of these. And if you didn't
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: want to eat, they jammed it in your mouth, forced
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: it open, and shoved the food down your throat. cracking
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: probably half your teeth and lacerating your tongue in the process,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: and then others would then fall in line, and that's
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: the end of the hunger strike. So the level of
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: barbarity taking place on these ships that people had to
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: endure is heart-wrenching, but it's important for us to come
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: to terms with this historically so we understand what we're
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: capable of. and how to keep this kind of inhumanity
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: from happening again. And that gets us to the glimmer
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: of hope from all this. So this ship crosses the Atlantic.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: It was a Dutch ship, okay, in the midst of
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: the American Revolutionary War. And everybody was using the American
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: Revolutionary War as a chance to get payback on the Brits.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: Because the Brits were the power of the day. And
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: The French, the Spanish, the Dutch, with the British Navy
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: stretched thin, trying to fight off the Americans. They use
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: this as an opportunity to pick off some ships here.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Barbados is unguarded. Let's go take Barbados, you know. And
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: so the Brits are fighting everybody at once. And the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: response to this was, okay, anybody with this ship, you
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: are hereby given approval.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: To be a pirate.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Just go pirate the hell out of anybody you see.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: with a Dutch flag, a French flag, Spanish flag, any flag,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: American flag, just go pirate them to hell. We need help.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Our Navy can't handle everything. So British take to the
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: seas as pirates. So a British pirate ship captures this
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Dutch ship off the coast of Africa. And it already
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: had a couple of hundred slaves in it. This British pirate,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: Captain William Llewellyn of HMS Alert, captures the Zorg off
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: the coast of Liberia and finds two other Dutch ships
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: and takes them over to Cape Coast Castle headquarters. And
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: he looks at the other captains there, British captains, says, look,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: I got some Dutch prizes here with some slaves and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: there's some gold and ivory. I'm auctioning this stuff today.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: And a Liverpool captain named Hanley, who's captain of a
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: ship called the William.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: I'll take that one.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: I'll take the Zorg and everything in it. So they
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: didn't have Venmo and cash and all that back then.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: So you write up an IOU. It was called a
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: bill of exchange. So Hanley gives a bill of exchange
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: in the name of his slave merchant creditor, a Liverpool
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: wealthy guy named William Gregson. He says, you just take
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: that to Gregson for this is the agreed upon fee.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: I'll take the Zorg. And so now he's got a
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: two for one. Okay. So he takes half his crew.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: And he sticks it on the Zorg and names the
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: doctor of his ship to be captain of the Zorg.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: And he says, you fill up the rest of the
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: cargo and meet me in Jamaica. And so the captain
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: does that. He loads up his ship. He overloads it.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Should have been no more than about 300 slaves loaded
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: into a ship the Zorg size, which was about a
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: 100-ton ship. He loads 440 Africans into it and picks
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: up a stranger on the West African coast. You remember
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I told you these forts and castles all had governors.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: They come down from Europe and their job is to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: run the castle and barter for slaves and so on.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: That's how the machinery worked. And these guys were just dumb.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: You read about them. They're just a bunch of incompetent
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: fools who come run these castles and forts. And they're
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: always arguing and bickering and writing letters back and forth
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: to each other like some teenagers. Oh, you know, you
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: did this and you did that. And then they're writing
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: to their bosses back in England. And, oh, you know,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: he did this. And it's like a soap opera. And
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: the Zorg is going by, he's going to another fort
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: on the Gold Coast, Ghana, which had a slave auction
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: room called Anumabu, the fort at Anumabu. And The governors
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: decide to kick out the governor of Anamabu that day
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: because they just can't stand him. His name's Robert Stubbs.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: He's just a scoundrel and he's just a wretch of
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: a human being. And they kick him out on the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: same day that the Zorg is passing by. So Stubbs
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: takes refuge on the ship. And eventually the ship is
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: loaded with slaves and it's making its way across the Atlantic.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: And the captain gets sick and he can't run the ship.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: And He's supposed to appoint his first mate, Maritime Protocol.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: First mate takes over. For some reason, he appoints Stubbs.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: And Joe, you can't make like you had a nice
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: conversation with Taylor Sheridan. You know, I love his shows.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: If Taylor Sheridan were to write Robert Stubbs as one
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: of his bad guys, people would say, get out of here, man.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Nobody is that. Pure, bad, stupid, evil, awful. There's got
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: to be some nuance to this character. We don't accept that.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Sometimes people are just bad, awful, horrible people. And this
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: guy was one of them. He takes over the ship
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't know what he's doing. And the ship
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: gets off course. Now, the thing about crossing the Atlantic
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: is there's no pit stops. The food and water you
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: have when you leave Africa is the food and water
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: that has to last you until you reach the new world,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: the other side. And if you get off course or
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: delayed or get caught in a storm, you might be
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: in trouble. And this is what happens with the Zorg.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: Stubbs is leading them off course. They should only need
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: Two months to go from West Africa to Jamaica. Every
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: decent captain can get his ship across the Atlantic in
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: two months. And you expect about a 15% mortality rate
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: on the Africans. They will get dysentery because they're living
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: in their own piss and shit. And they will take
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: their own lives and they will do things. You accept
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: about a 15% loss of life. People start dying. The
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: ship is off course. It's been two months, been two
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: and a half months. We get to three months and
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: they don't know where they are. They finally sight Tobago,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the far eastern edge of Caribbean Sea. And so they
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: have a sense, okay, Jamaica's 10 days that way. Let's
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: do a quick water check, make sure we got enough
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: because we've already been quite delayed. And they do a
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: check of the water and it seems that they have
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: enough to get to Jamaica. Now, the fascinating thing about
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: sea navigation at that time, Joe, is you can tell
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: latitude very easily. You get your sextant, you line it up,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: you can tell how many degrees north or south of
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: the equator you are. Longitude was a harder measurement to calculate.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: It's essentially you're trying to measure the rotation of the
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Earth and your position on it. And for most of
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: human history, the largest cause of death on a ship,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: a deep seafaring vessel, was a shipwreck caused by botched longitude.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: It's not scurvy. It's not piracy or whatever. It's I
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: thought I was there, but I'm actually over here and
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: I just ran into an island and got a shipwreck
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: and everyone's dead. You want to know how they measured longitude?
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: It's called dead reckoning. And what you're supposed to do
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: is you have a log and a rope and you
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: have knots tied at regular intervals. And every six hours,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: you need to throw the rope. You throw the log
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: into the water. And you hold the rope in your hand.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: And you count how many knots pass through your hand
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: in a 60-second period. And that gives you a speed
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: in knots or nautical speed.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: And.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: You do that every six hours and that gives you
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: a sense of your speed and you plot that against
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: direction and you can then calculate how far east or
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: west you are of your starting point. And you enter
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: that in your log book because of the log you
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: just threw in the ocean. This is where the terms
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: come from.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: So people would... Now, let's just say you're not too
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: good at this. Every error in measurement you make is
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: accumulating on the previous one. And you can end up
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: hundreds of miles... Off course. And suddenly an island's right
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: upon you and you crash into it and that's the
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: end of that. So for most of the deep sea
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: faring period, people were just, all right, I think I'm
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: 15 degrees west of where I was yesterday. Let me
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: write that down in my logbook. Let me throw in
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: the rope. Okay. This was the level of measurement we're
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: talking about. So they cite Tobago. They know where they are.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: that point and they took way too long to get
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: there but they know where they are so they know
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: jamaica is 1150 miles north by.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: Northwest and they keep going so they had to.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Get to jamaica that was their destined port okay so
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: they keep going they keep going they keep going and
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: not citing land not citing land then on day 10
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: so about the right time they cite land now they
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: have to make sure it's jamaica because what's right next
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: to jamaica to the west it's an island called hispaniola
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: which was half Spanish, half French, would later become Dominican
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Republic and Haiti. And that's enemy territory because we're in
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: the middle of the American Revolutionary War, and we can't
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: stop there. So we need to make sure. So Stubbs
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: drops in his rope and his thing, and he says, ah,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: this is 70 degrees west. That's Hispaniola. Jamaica's the next
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: one down. So they keep going. Should have just been
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: one day.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: Two days.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Three days. Turns out it was Jamaica. And they've gone
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: three days past their destination. And now they're completely out
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: of water. And to turn around and beat into the wind,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: that three days west is going to take them ten
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: days to get back. Because they have to go into
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the wind now. At this point, They started with half
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: a crew of 17. Should have had a crew of 30. Remember,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: Hanley divided his crew in half. So they're down to
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: just 11 guys. And the captain is sick to the
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: point of lunacy. Stubbs is running the ship. And they've
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: already lost about 70 Africans to dysentery and scurvy. And
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: they're out of water. So they make a decision. In
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: order to survive the 10 days to get back to Jamaica,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: we have to reduce the amount of water consumption on board.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: And their solution to doing this is to start throwing
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: the Africans overboard. So across three days, they start with
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: women and children, living, breathing human beings, sick and unwell
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: and all that, including one baby. They throw 130 140
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Africans overboard into the sea to drown. Their bones are
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: still down there. And then they reach Jamaica with a
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: 50% mortality rate when you include the number of people
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: who died and the number of people they threw overboard.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: So half the slaves gone. They dock. They sell the slaves.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: They sold them through a process called a scramble. The
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: scramble is... A slave broker says, okay, I got slaves
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: on this ship. Let's agree on a price. The price
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: agreed was 36 pounds. That's about $ 10, 000 today. And the buyers,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: all the slaves are loaded into a pen. They are
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: covered in palm oil, so they look healthy. Most of
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: them have dysentery, so they use oakum to plug their
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: anus for the portion of the sales. And you run
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: in with a rope and you rope off the ones
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: you want. And You gather them and then you pay
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: the brokers and the slaves are taken off to the plantations.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: Now that should have been the end of the story.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: We should not know what happened on this ship. Except
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: for greed. So the owner of the Zorg, the one
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: who wrote that IOU, he got news. Oh, Hanley, you
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: got a two for one. Yes, here you go. Here's
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: your money to the pirate. And let me insure. my
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: new ship. So every slave ship that crossed the Atlantic
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: was insured. Insurance was born out of the slave trade.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: It costs you $ 700, 000, $ 800, 000 equivalent today to kit out
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: a slave ship. All the supplies, the crew, salaries and
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: all that. So it's a large amount of upfront capital.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: And you could have a shipwreck. You could have a
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: pirate take your ship. in which case it's all lost.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: So there was a chap in London named Lloyd. Lloyd
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: hung out at this coffee shop. And he had an idea.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: He said, okay, you guys give me a small percent,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: let's call it a premium, of the value of your
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: ship and your cargo. And if you lose it all,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: I'll pay you an agreed upon value back. But if
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: you don't lose it all, I keep the premium. And
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: Lloyd's Coffee Shop, which then later became Lloyd's of London,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: was the premier insurance underwriter for slave ships. And they
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: had standard contracts that they wrote up. And the slave
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: trade blew up this business. Every slave captain and slave
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: merchant wanted to insure the ship and all the cargo.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: So Gregson had taken out an insurance contract for the
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: ship and his Africans, 30 pounds a head. When he
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: learns that his ship lost half its cargo, he decides
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: to make an insurance claim. Most insurance claims at the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: time were if slaves died in an insurrection, you can
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: get compensated. But if they die because of natural causes
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: or they kill themselves, you don't get compensated. That's in
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: the contract. So no one had ever said, well, what
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: happens if you throw them overboard? Do you get compensation then?
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: And so Gregson's going to test this. And he tells
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the insurance, I want my compensation for the 200 slaves.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: And the insurance company said, man, that's 50% mortality rate.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: Let me check my actuary table here. No, that's not standard.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: We're not going to pay. So he files a lawsuit.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: This is how we learn about what happened. Nobody knew, Joe,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: what was happening on these ships. Remember I told you
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: King Charles, 1518, that's when it all started. We're in 1780.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: So two and a half centuries, this has been, machines
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: been running. Nobody knew what was happening on the ships
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: except the captains themselves and the crew. So Gregson files
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: a lawsuit. That lawsuit ends up in front of the
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: chief justice of the entire British Empire, the Earl of Mansfield,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: Titanic figure. And the court cases at that time, there
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: weren't courthouses and all. It was held in the Guildhall,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: the London Guildhall. And this is so fascinating, Joe, because
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: it shows you how the whole course of history can
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Bend toward goodness through the conscience of even one person.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: Just one.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: So the trial is had. We don't have a transcript
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: of this trial. But we know that the slave merchants won.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: Judgment was for the slave merchants. You want to know
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: who the only witness was?
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: Stubbs.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Stubbs is the only guy surviving. He comes in. He says, yeah, yeah,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: we were out of water. We had absolutely no choice.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: We had to throw the Africans overboard or we all
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: would have died. It was absolutely necessary. And because it's necessary,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: insurance has to answer. Yeah, that makes sense. All right.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: You guys please pay Gregson 30 pounds a head for
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: his Africans. That should have been the end of it.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: But there was one person in the room that day.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: with a conscience, with a heart. And he's watching this
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: trial take place and he's wondering, wait a minute, why
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: is no one talking about murder? He just said they
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: threw 130 human beings overboard to drown and they're talking
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: about insurance compensation, but no one's talking about murder. So
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: this person writes an anonymous letter to the largest newspaper
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: in London asking this question. I just saw this. No
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: one's talking about murder. Weren't these people murdered? How come
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: there's not a murder charge here? And there was a
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: small community of faith-based abolitionists, Anglican Church and Quakers, who
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: didn't like this thing called slavery. And there was another
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: group of them in America, Quakers especially, didn't like this
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: thing called slavery. And the grandfather of the abolition of
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: slavery is a man named Granville Sharpe. Most people don't
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: know that name. But he was the first person who
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: was white-skinned to devote his life to the abolition of slavery.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: And he saw this letter. And a former slave who
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: happened to be living in London brought this letter to him.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: His name was Olada Equiano. That's Equiano and that's Granville Sharp.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Nicely done, Jamie. So Equiano was a former slave. He
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: had been a slave in Virginia. But smart, industrious, he
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: bought his freedom. And he heard about Granville Sharp. Granville
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: Sharp had devoted his life to abolishing slavery. Equiano made
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: his way to London, said, I'm going to do what
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: I can to help. So Granville Sharp sees this letter
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: and he says, man, he had been spending the last
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: two decades of his life trying to build a legal
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: argument against slavery. He taught himself the law. He didn't
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: finish school. Taught himself the law, taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: He wrote pamphlets. We were talking about pamphlets, right? Pamphlets
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: was the thing of the day. You had an idea,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: you wrote a pamphlet, and you gave it to people.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: Granville Sharp wrote a pamphlet that he shared with his
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: friend Benjamin Franklin. He said, maybe he called him Benjamin.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe they had nicknames, whatever. He said, Benjamin,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: I have a pamphlet I want you to read. And
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: my argument is this. This was in the 1760s. you
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: guys over there should not be taxed without having a
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: representative in parliament. And thus was born the slogan, no
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: taxation without representation, which became the rallying cry of the
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: American Revolutionary War. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Why are we
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: paying all these taxes to some king and we don't
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: even have a say in the matter? So Granville Sharp
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: was this Renaissance man, self-taught man of deep faith. who
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: could not stomach the idea that a Christian nation was
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: involved in slavery. And he saw this anonymous letter and
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: he said, this is my case. This is the one.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: This is the one that's going to blow this whole
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: thing open. He went back to the underwriters and he said,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: file a motion for a retrial. And now you make
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: all these arguments. And I have the trial transcript because
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: Granville Sharp hired someone to transcribe the whole hearing in shorthand.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: So there's a record. That's why we know what happened.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: And it's all going along kind of the same way,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: except this time they're making different arguments. The barristers are
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: talking about, for the first time in the history of
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: the West and in a court of law, human rights.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: Those black people had the same right to water as
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: the white captain did. This is a revolutionary idea. They
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: have the same right to life as the crew, the
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: crew of the ship did. And they're trying to persuade, again,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Justice Mansfield and two more justices this time, of this
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: notion of universal human rights. And in the midst of
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: all this, the only witness again is Stubbs. You saw
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: that movie, A Few Good Men? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it's
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: that moment, right, when Tom Cruise has Jack Nicholson on
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: the stand. He just has to get him to admit
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: he ordered the Code Red. And he's quaking in his
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: boots because Nicholson's, you know, if he gets it wrong,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: that's it. Court martial, you're done. You know, if you
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: accuse a whatever 10-star general ordering the Code Red, he's just,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: do I push?
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: Do I push?
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: And he gets Nicholson going. He gets him moving. He
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: gets him agitated. And then, of course, he says, did
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: you order the Code Red? And Nicholson says, you're goddamn
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: right I did. That changes everything, right?
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: You did. Oh, okay. All right.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: So there's a moment like that.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: In this trial.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: Stubbs is the only witness. All he has to do
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: is say, we ran out of water. Absolutely necessary to
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: throw the Africans. Chief Justice Mansfield uttered words that later
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: went down in infamy. The case of the slaves is
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: the same as if horses had been thrown overboard. That
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: was his summary of the first trial.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: If you throw over horses, no one's going to talk
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: about murder. It's property. Slaves, same thing. He just has
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: to say, property thrown over because we ran out of water.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: The barrister's got Stubbs on the stand.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: He's a fool.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: He's a dullard. He gets his mouth moving faster than
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: his brain is processing, and he gets Stubbs to admit
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: that in the middle of throwing over Africans because they
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: were out of water, it rained. What do you mean
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: it rained? Yeah, it rained. So you did have water.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: The whole thing is revealed to be this bankrupt moral fraud,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: the slave trade. And now the world knows that not
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: only what's happening on these ships, things we talk about
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: with these images and the truth that was revealed, but
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: the fact that the whole thing is this big lie,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: this greed-mongering, murderous lie for profit. And the public found
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: out about it. And this is what gives me hope, Joe.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: And we talk about the same things happening still today.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: This activated the first movement to abolish slavery. It was
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: born right after this movement this moment where a handful
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: of people in the Anglican Church got together. There were
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: 12 of them and they met in a printing shop
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: in 1787 and they said, we have to abolish slavery.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: It is a stain on human conscience. It's a stain
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: on the British name. It is a stain against Christianity.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: We have to abolish this horrific institution. And then they
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: devoted their lives to that task, which was a monumental
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: and Herculean task. But they succeeded using viral images, authentic testimony,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: investigative journalism, consumer boycotts, kind of the tools that we
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: use today for social justice were pioneered in this first movement.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: And ultimately, they did succeed on paper, granted and conceded
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: that it was just on paper. But Years later, even
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: Frederick Douglass said, we commemorate every year the abolition of
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: slavery in the British Empire, August 1, 1838, because that
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: showed the world it was possible. And it was only
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: a matter of time before we did it here. It
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: required a civil war, but it was achieved. And that
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: was the moment. And you trace it back to that
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: anonymous letter. to these little acts of conscience, to this
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: handful of men who got together in a printing shop
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: and said, this is our life's focus now, including Granville Sharp.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: This is our life's focus now, to rid the world
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: of this moral stain. So now people are going to
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: emerge as they learn about the Congo horror. And I've
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: seen it happening. People of conscience forming and trying to
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: find a way to push back and bring some justice
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: to the people in the Congo, just as this handful
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: of people built an entire movement at a time when
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: slavery was normal, legal, accepted. Most members of parliament had
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: investments in the slave trade and profited from the sugar economy.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: But they succeeded. They triumphed. They persevered through enormous obstacles.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: And we have to do the same today. And it
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: will require acts of conscience. And by the way, the Zorg,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: I've figured out who wrote that letter. 240 years, no
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: one had known who was this person whose conscience bent
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: history towards goodness. And I managed to figure out who
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: it was. And he's an abolitionist named James Ramsey, a
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: man of deep faith. I keep coming back to that, right?
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: This word faith. And it's important because I do think
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: that We are a species generally of good. And I
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: think we all have a divine nature in us. And yeah,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: there's evil in the world. There's greed. There's violence. There's horror.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: There's oppression. There's all of that. But the forces of
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: good and the spark of goodness within us and the
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: faith we have in higher power invariably emerges and does
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: succeed even if it's just for a moment. And we
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: need those moral leaders today to pull us forward, just
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: as these handful of people in the past dragged humanity
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: forward with the power of their moral force. And we're
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: looking for those leaders today because the world is in
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: so much turmoil.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: But we're incredibly malleable and influenced, easily influenced. And we
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: could be influenced in a great direction or we could
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: be influenced in a negative direction. And this to me,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: regardless of what you actually believe, this to me is
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: the great benefit of religion and particularly in Christianity. Like
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: if you meet people that are like really by the
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: book Christians are some of the nicest people you ever
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: want to meet in your life. And they get a
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: lot of happiness out of that. And this is one
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: of the things that a lot of people are lacking
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: in this world is happiness. And without a moral framework
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: and an ethical framework, I'm not saying that you can't
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: be an atheist to be an amazing person. I know
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of amazing people who are atheists. They're just
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: kind individuals. thoughtful, considerate people who came from good families
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: and have good friends. And they don't need religion to
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: be a good person. But there is a real value
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: in providing a framework. There's a real value in providing
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: an ideology that supports being positive in your community, being
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: a good person, ethical person, being someone who forgives. Forgiveness
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: is a very important part of Christianity. Redemption is a
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: very important part of Christianity. This idea that we evolve
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: and grow together And in the absence of that moral framework,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: you can get people whose– their ideology looks at other
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: human beings as property. Their ideology looks at other human
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: beings as not the same as them. Whether we're talking
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: about China and the treatment of the Uyghurs or whether
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: we're talking about the African slave trade or the Congo
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: right now, it's all kind of the same thing.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: I totally agree. I think– The Christian faith has been
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: a force for enormous good at crucial points in history,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: and the abolition of slavery is one of them. Without question,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: there's an ethic of compassion, of empathy, be a good neighbor,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: be a good brother and sister. We're all God's children.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: And you see that language that's driving the abolitionists in
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: these movements to abolish slavery.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: And this is not to forgive the horrors that people
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: under the guise of Christianity have performed either. So the
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: Inquisition or what?
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: The Crusades. You could go through a lot of horrific
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: things that were done in the name of Christianity, but
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: not really in the spirit of it. And this is
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: the problem with human beings. We can make these rationalizations
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: and make these decisions and we can decide that we're
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: doing horrific things for the greater good. That is also
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: a problem with human rationalization, that we could be the
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: most awful people as long as we think we're being
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: awful doing it for good. It's just a weird human
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: tribal problem that we've always had. So when you're looking
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: at Christianity, think about megachurch pastors driving around in Rolls
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: Royces and flying private jets and ripping off these dull-minded people.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: But that's not— That's not the spirit of the faith.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: Right. That's humans.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: That's humans. That's greed.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: It's humans. They're in the weird ability to justify things.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: That's right. In pursuit of self-interest and self-gratification. And that
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: will always be a part of the human condition. There
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: are those among us, but there are greater angels.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: You know, the people who endure, who endured those slave
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: ships with grace, who endure the mines in the Congo—
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: They are so much stronger and have so much more
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: human worth than those who oppress and who are greedy
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: and self-interested.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: What's the worst example of human beings imaginable to the
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: point where you're throwing women and children overboard for water?
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, including a mother and her baby.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking. I mean, there's just horrific stories of what
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: Columbus did and what his– The people on his boats
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: did when they reached the Americas or the Bahamas. The
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: horrific things they did to people when they found that
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: these people had gold. Yeah. And they required that they
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: bring back their own weight in gold or chop their
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: arms off.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Chop their arms off. You know, there was all kinds of.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: Dashing baby's heads against rocks in front of their mothers.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: They did horrific things. And this was all documented by
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: some religious scholar who was on board with them, a
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: religious leader who was on board with some Christian.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, let's be clear. Europeans messed up a lot
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: of the world.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, the reason I went through a little bit
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: of time talking about the caravel and the deep seafaring
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: vessel is this is what took the Europeans all across
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: the global south. And by and large, that was a
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: miserable experience for the people they met.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, always. Even if it was just diseases.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, disease. And then, of course, violence, enslavement, oppression, colonization.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: All of the above.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: All of the above. There was a malice and a
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: greed and a sense of superiority that was inherent to
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: that entire episode of history. And I often look back
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: and think, man, if they had just stayed home.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: Not only that, they were essentially a scourge of plague.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: They brought these smallpox. 90 percent of Native Americans were
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: wiped out because of that. Yeah. And we think that
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: has to do with what happened to the Mayans. We
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: think that has to do with what happened in Brazil
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: and the Congo when they find these what used to
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: be enormous populations and these grids when they're doing the
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: LIDAR scans. They're saying, oh, this used to be like cities.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And were highly populated and then just
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: suddenly very rapidly depopulated. And it wasn't all just violence.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: You're right. It was disease and disease.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: So everything they did was bad. The violence was bad
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: and everything they did was bad. It's such a crazy
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: story because it's hard to imagine. I used to have
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: this joke in my act about our country is 300
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: years old. People live to be 100. I go, that's
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: three people. That's what's nuts. It's like three people ago.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a young country.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or really two and a half. Two and a
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: half people ago, we just got here, which is just
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: nuts to even think about how quickly the human race
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: progresses and how devastating the introduction of new people, especially
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: with like diseases, when they find the people that were here.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: Well, we imagine this with, you know, the arrival of aliens.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: This is the first contact, the story, like what would
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: happen when aliens show up? Are they going to blow
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: everything up? Right. Are they going to enslave us?
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: Are they going to be like the Quakers or are
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: they going to be like the Chinese? Yeah. Yeah. Or
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: the Dutch. Yeah. You know, it's crazy, right?
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: You know, the question though now is there's a lot
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: of conversation about reparation. Do European countries need to write
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: a check for what they did? And it's a complicated question.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: You know, Jamaica just went to England and said, please,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: You took millions of Africans, brought them here, enslaved them,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: and made yourself from this muddy medieval back ass words
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: island to an economic superpower with centuries of wealth on
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: the back of largely sugar slavery and so on. So
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: those people worked for free for centuries. And you need
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: to write a check. That's a fascinating question, isn't it?
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: So on the one hand, you know, if your father
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: worked at a manufacturing plant and let's say he worked
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: for 30 years and they never paid him, we wouldn't
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: think about, oh, yeah, you know, your dad is owed
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: money because he worked. He should be paid for that work.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: The company made their money off his labor. So, all right.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: are the descendants of those slaves owed some money. And
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: Jamaica went to England just recently and said 10 billion pounds,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: like just something. I mean, when you start to calculate
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: unpaid labor for three centuries plus interest, it's trillions and
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: trillions and it's an impossible sum. But something is owed.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: And then you say, well, now, wait a minute. if
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: you're the British government. I wasn't a part of that.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't participate in this. So why am I writing
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: a check? And then the Jamaican says, yeah, but everything
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: you have today is built on that. And so there's
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: this conversation going back and forth, Joe, about is a
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: check due? Or is it just and fair to ask
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: for that reparation be paid for this period in slavery,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: just as the Congolese are talking to the Belgians. You know,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: Leopold came down here and look what he did to
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: us and colonized us. A check needs to be written
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: as well as an apology. And it's a difficult question.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: Who would receive the check and how would it be distributed?
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: That would be the real question.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: That's part of the complexity.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: The fear would be that corruption would get involved and
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: someone would siphon off the money.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: So are you going to tell me I need to
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: write a check to the government of the Congo?
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: That's not getting to anybody who actually could use it.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: Or I just give a check to Jamaica and trust
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: that they– all right. But does that mean that in
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: principle something is not owed?
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: But even if you distribute it to the individual people.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: You would have to make sure that no one's stealing
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: it from anybody else. And then you would have to
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: figure out how to distribute it. I mean, it does,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: at the very least, if a corporation's entire start, like
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: their beginning, was based on slavery, getting sugar, that's kind
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: of insane that somehow or another that profit led to
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: people that are still wealthy today. Well, you know... But
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: you can trace that, right?
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they can trace that. You know what else they've done?
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: So when the British abolished slavery, okay, they wrote a
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: check to the slave owners.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: This was part of the deal to get the bill
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: through Parliament.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: How much did they have to give them?
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: Because it was... The argument was, well, you're taking my property,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: so you need to pay me for that property. Now,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: no one was talking about, well, do we pay anything
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: to the Africans who worked for free? The slave owners...
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: who are also all members of parliament. You're taking my property.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: So you're going to find this fascinating. They allocated a
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: sum of 20 million pounds back in 1833 when the
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: law was passed.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: What is that equivalent to?
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: Equivalent at the time to 40% of the entire national budget.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: And they distributed this money. You got a slave compensation certificate.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: And based on the number of slaves you had, times
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: the amount that each was valued, you got that check.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: Then and there. So number one, it was a massive
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: sum of money, 40% of the national budget at the time.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: But the fascinating piece of this was the government took
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: out a loan for that quantum. And the British taxpayer
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: was repaying that loan Up until 2015. Holy shit. So, imagine.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: They didn't even know, okay? The average British taxpayer had
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: no idea. The average British taxpayer, British citizen, was repaying
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: the loan taken out in 1833 by the government to
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: pay slave owners... for the loss of their slave property.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: So for the next 180 years. And now, let's say
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: you're a taxpayer in 2010. You had nothing to do
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: with what was happening in 1800s or the 1700s, but
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: you've been paying the bill. You've been paying back now
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: these families, some of them prominent, the Gladstones, for instance.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: The longest serving ever prime minister in British history was
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: a Gladstone, and he got one of the biggest checks.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: How much?
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: It was £ 104, 000, £ 105, 000 back in the 1830s. I mean,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: we're talking tens of millions equivalent today.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: So they got super wealthy on one check.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: On top of the wealth they had been making through
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: slave labor. and selling sugar and rum and molasses and
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: all that. They got double wealthy with one big fat
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: check at the end of this. What year was this?
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: The bill was passed in 1833, and the requirements were
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: all slaves in the British Empire are free after five
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: years of unpaid apprenticeship. So slave owners had a chance
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: to transition to paying their workers. You had to work
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: five years as an unpaid apprentice. Um, you will get
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: your check. If you're a slave owner for your property,
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: here's your certificate. Just tally up your slave.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: So if you're a slave, you're still a slave.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: For five more years, for five more years. Uh, and
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: the territories of the East India Trading Company were excluded.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a fascinating story. The East India Trading, that's
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: another four hours on its own.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: We'll come to that.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: I would love to.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: The brief is, so this is 1830s.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: And the East India Trading Company controls the subcontinent. And
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: from the 1830s until independence in 1947, there's a reason
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: why Jamaica has a ton of Indians and Guyana and
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: Mauritius and Malaysia and all these former sugar colonies of
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: the British. Like, all right, no more African slaves. they
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: excluded the East India Trading Company territory and started shipping
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: out the Indians. To keep the system going, all the
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: slave owners got their big fat checks, which the British
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: taxpayer only paid off 10 years ago. So it makes
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: the question about writing checks and so on a little
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: more interesting. It's complicated and I don't have a firm
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: opinion on it, but there's enough there that has to
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: be teased through. But the one that really gets me
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: is when I heard, uh, in 2015 that they finally
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: paid off the bill, the loan.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: That is so insane. It's so insane how much money
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: they spent to get these people to give up their slaves.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: And then they still had to work for five years.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: They had to work for five years. And then on
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: August 1st, 1838, Frederick Douglass writes about this very beautifully
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: with the, with the rising of the sun, I can't
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: quote his words exactly. They're in the Zorg at the end,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: you know, with the blink of an eye and the
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: rising of the sun on that day, freedom was won.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: Every African person woke up free.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: And this is after the five years.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: This is after the five years, August 1, 1838. And
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: Douglass was given a speech in Elmira, New York in 1880.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: He said, we still commemorate that day because it taught
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: us and showed us what's possible, goodness is possible, freedom
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: is possible. And yes, it was with the stroke of
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: a pen from a monarch across the sea, but we,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: which is a system the Americans, overthrew they didn't want
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: kings and monarchy right that's the we want democracy here
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: it showed us what was possible and Douglas crossed the
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: Atlantic after this moment in history and he met with
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: the only surviving member I remember I told you 12
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: guys met in a printing shop in London and only
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: one of them lived to see the day in 1838.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: His name was Thomas Clarkson. He rode his horse 35,000
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: miles up and down England, gathering evidence to present to
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: Parliament against the slave trade. And he was the only
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: one left alive, and Douglass crossed the Atlantic and met
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: with him and said, please teach me everything you guys did,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: what succeeded, what didn't, so we can achieve freedom for
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: the slaves in America. The rest is history, of course.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: You just have to imagine... If the whole trial with
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: the Zorg didn't take place, how much longer the slave
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: trade would have gone on? Yeah.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, slavery was going to get abolished.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: Right. But how much longer?
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: How much longer? Right.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: If it wasn't for just a few individuals.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: And researching this book, Joe, I'll tell you, it felt
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: like there were so many flukes of circumstance. It felt
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: like there was a higher power that finally said, all right,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: I've let you guys run amok long enough. You are letting...
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: the devil within you rule. And I'm going to pull
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: this lever and push this button and make sure that
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: the angels learn what's happening. Cause I believe in them
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: and that they will triumph over you. And that, and
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: that's what happened.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: God, it's such a heavy story. Yeah.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: Every time I come here now, this one's even heavier.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like, I don't know.
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: They're both pretty heavy, but Jesus.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: You said something a while ago about, you know, today you,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: we have connection, you know, through social media and videos.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: And we can tell what's going on in the Congo
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: because truth seekers go there and they can snap a
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: photo and a video and show it to us. And
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: that's a big difference today, right? Imagine in the 1700s
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: trying to gather evidence and persuade people of what the
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: truth is. And it was this fascinating battle of storytelling
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: because the slave owners would say, no, what are you
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: talking about? They have plenty of room on the ship
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: and they When they get on board, we give them cordials,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: and they play games of chance, and they're very pleased
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: and have a very nice time of it. And then
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: the abolitionists said, let me show you this schematic of
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: the brooks. Show me the ample room on deck and
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: where the cordials are being served. So they're going back
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: and forth about truth. And truth wins, Joe. It always wins.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: And it may backslide, and it may get suppressed, and
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: it may take time, but truth wins. These two things
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: can only remain hidden so long, the moon and the truth.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: But the point I'm making here is they didn't have
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: videos and pictures and social media, but with their faith,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: they extended their empathy to people they would never, ever
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: see or meet. None of those abolitionists ever stepped foot
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: in Africa. Only a couple had been to the Caribbean islands,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: including James Ramsey, who wrote that anonymous letter. None of
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: them ever stepped foot in Africa, but they extended their
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: hearts out to a people they knew were being oppressed
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: but were fellow children of God, and they fought for them.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: And it was very difficult to get that information without
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: that trial. Who knows how long it would have taken.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: This is what's really important about your work, because you
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: going to the Congo, getting those photographs, coming back with that, writing...
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: cobalt red, and then coming on podcasts and telling millions
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: and millions of people the story that would have never
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: had any idea. I knew vaguely that there was mines
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: in the Congo that extracted rare earth minerals and that
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: they needed them for cell phones and batteries. But I
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: had no idea the extent of it until you came
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: on and described it.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: Well, the millions is thanks to you. I mean, you know,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: I went there.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: And I saw the human apocalypse. And it is a
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: human apocalypse, Joe. It's an environmental apocalypse. But you've played
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: an important role in spreading that truth.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: Well, it's the least I can do. Everybody would do
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: it if they're in my position. You have to do it.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: And it's also, to me, it's although horrific, utterly fascinating.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating that people, the way people can rationalize things
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: like that, the way people can just, the way certain
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: cultures treat other human beings, just don't give a fuck
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: about them at all. Yeah. At all. They just want
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: that money.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: We have to do better. We have to be a
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: better model for the world. We meaning this country. This
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: country has to be a better model. And it pains
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: me that right now we're not being a very good model.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: We're certainly not the best we can be. No. That's
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: a fact. that's undeniable. No one, no one says the
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: way we exist is ideal. The way we interact with
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: the world is ideal. No one does. But then again,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: also we're not dealing with ideal circumstances either. And I
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: deal people on, you know, that are running other parts
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: of the world as well. The whole thing's chaos. That's
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: what's so scary. The whole thing's chaos and there's nuclear
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: weapons everywhere. And who knows who's going to be the
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: first to say, fuck this and just boom.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, and again, like, We always talk about Gaza.
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: If you looked at Gaza, you're seeing a prolonged campaign
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 2: of bombs. But isn't the ultimate result kind of very
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: similar to someone dropping a nuclear bomb? I mean a
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: small nuclear bomb like what they did with Little Boy
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: or Fat Man. Not much difference in the amount of destruction.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: Something like 90% of Gaza is gone. Gone. Yeah.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: I mean if you added up the– explosive power of
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: what's been dropped on Gaza now. It probably is akin
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: to Fat Man.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it looks like a hydrogen bomb just detonated there.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: That's what it looks like. Everything's completely flattened.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: Just dust.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: But it's happened in like this slow frog boiling type
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: situation where the water, you know the story, turn the
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: water up, the frog doesn't realize it's being boiled. It
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: slowly just turns it up and it's like everyone is
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: screaming and yelling about it and yet it's still going on.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: And it's going on slowly. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Not
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: one big boom. And, you know, most young people have
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: had enough. Most young people are fucking absolutely horrified by it.
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: It's the people that can justify it somehow that are
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: really scary.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: I think that the average person in that part of
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: the world, the average, the average Palestinian, the average. Jewish
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: person is fed up too of conflict.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: And war.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: They all want the same thing.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: They just want peace, safety for their kids.
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: And they have these leaders who have bloodlust.
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: On both sides.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: On both sides.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And justifiably so. If you think they've been killing
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: each other for so long, they've been going back and
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: forth and killing each other. There's like a cemented pattern
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: of behavior that they have with each other. I mean, we're,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: you know, people were talking about when I was in
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: high school, peace, the middle East, like it was a joke,
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: like that it would never be achieved, you know, here
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: we are. And here we are. It's more of the same.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: And even, I think we just shipped a record number
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: of bombs or we're going to ship a record number
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: of bombs over there.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: Ooh, violence begets violence.
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just, that's one of the things that really
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: disturbs me the most about people is that if you
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: ask the average person, what are the odds that we
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: will have no war in your lifetime? They would say zero.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: Most people say zero. But yet we know that humans
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: are capable of getting along. So what is it about
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: large groups of people that don't know each other that
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: are convinced by small groups of people that they need
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: to attack other large groups of people that they don't know?
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: It's fucking insane. And this is my one hope. And
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: I know a lot of people think this is very delusional,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: but my one hope of this... complete dominance of technology
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: that one day we're going to get to a position
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 2: where there will genuinely be a thing more intelligent than
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: human beings that don't allow this anymore. You know, the
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: real fear about AI is that AI is going to
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: eliminate people. This is like, famously, a lot of these
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: CEOs have said there's a 10% or people working on
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: this tech have said there's a 10% chance that AI
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: decides to eliminate the human race.
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: But isn't there maybe also a possibility if it's done
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: correctly that it stops war completely? Completely controls resources, completely
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 2: controls all military weaponry, all systems, everything. It doesn't allow
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: it anymore because it's insane. It's also insane if you
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: really think about it that some people because they found
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: a good spot of dirt can extract so much wealth
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: out of that dirt that they can control everyone else
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: around them.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: And it's just the earth. Like the idea that you
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: own the stuff that's in the earth is really kind
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: of crazy. You're a little fucking bug that's walking around
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: on the surface on this dirt, but you've decided that
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: all that water underneath there, all that gold or all,
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: whatever the fuck it is. It's like, How about the
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: people that go out into the ocean and they stick
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: a giant pipe into the ocean and they suck out
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: all the oil? Who fucking told you that's yours? How
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: are you getting that? How are the other humans allowing
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: you to go out into the ocean, which nobody owns, okay?
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: And you're drilling into the ground of the ocean and
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: now you're getting rich from our stuff, the earth stuff.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 2: It's really weird. I mean, I get it's established. I
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 2: get this is how we've done it. I get it's
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: in the stock market. I get it. I'm not saying
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: I have a better solution, but I'm saying it is
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 2: fucking crazy. That we just stick pipes into the ground
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: and suck the stuff out. And when you suck the
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: stuff out, if you suck enough of it out, you
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: got enough money to do whatever the fuck you want. Yeah.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: So your dream is AI runs things more equitably and efficiently.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: If I want to get really delusional, my dream is,
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: it's not even my dream. So this is not what
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping. But I think it is entirely possible that
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: we create a digital life form. that is far superior
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: in intelligence to us and doesn't have all of our
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: moral failings, doesn't have greed, doesn't have lust, doesn't have
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: the desire to acquire property, doesn't have the desire to
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: control resources, but just looks at us in our territorial
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: primate behavior, our psychotic territorial violent primate behavior and says,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: let's just reign that in, kids. Let's just reign that in.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: No more of that. We're not going to allow that anymore.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: We're not going to allow you to do that anymore.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: Let's play nice.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And, you know, instead of just allowing cities to
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 2: be polluted by breakdust, why don't we take a corner
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: every three or four blocks and put a gigantic filter
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: on it and suck up all that stuff so that
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: everyone's not dying? Also, why don't we figure out a
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: better energy source? You fucking dumb asses. have been burning
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: coal to make electricity to power your electric car for
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: fucking so long. Let's do this better. And instead of
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: it all being sort of decided upon by the people
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: that are controlling the resources, the human beings that benefit
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: from influencing politicians to make certain deals and making sure
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: that there's certain conflicts so they can sell weapons. Instead
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: of all that, the AI controls it. The digital god,
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: the digital daddy. Right.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: Unmoved by the desire for wealth.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: Not only that, it has a rational sort of strategy
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: for handling all of it, which is an even distribution
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: of the natural resources of the world. Just imagine if
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: that was the case. If we said, listen, everyone can
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: have individual wealth. You can have businesses. You can sell
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: things and buy things. That's great. But the earth stuff
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: belongs to the earth. And so you distribute the value.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: And this is crazy talk, right? I know. I understand.
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: But if you imagine if we decided that all things
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: that humans make, you know, there's all these valuable things
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: that humans make, which all come from the earth. The
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: humans of the earth take part in the profit of that.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: All humans.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: Evenly. Because it's the earth stuff. It's not really human stuff.
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: But we can use it. But we can use it
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: in a way that's way more fair. And then you
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: have this bizarre society where no one's lacking for anything.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: You were talking to someone about this. I forget who
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: it was, but you asked the question, would we have
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: the end of war and violence and conflict if people's
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: basic needs were met? I think that's what you're getting
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: at here. If there's a system, maybe it's an AI
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: that is much more intelligent than us and runs things
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: on the premise of an equitable distribution of the Earth's assets.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: And you can still have your billionaires and your hundred
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: billionaires and all that if they are smart and invent this, that,
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: and the other. But the oil, the dirt, the metals,
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: the minerals, the water, if we allocate this across humanity
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: because we are all on this shared Earth.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: And so basic needs of shelter and food are met
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: and education and so on.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: Tenfold. Like it changes everything.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: It changes everything. You'd have to go out of your
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: way to start manufacturing conflict again and wars.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: Or the AI decides it's not going to let you
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or the AI says.
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 2: I know this is pie in the sky bullshit.
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: Pie in the sky bullshit has also been pied in
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: the sky in the past and then achieved.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 2: Yes. Well, my point is I know it's pie in
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: the sky bullshit, but do you have a better solution?
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: Because humans are doing it the same way that we've
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: always done it, just slightly differently and slightly better over
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: long periods of time. Like our moral evolution is pretty
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: slow going.
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: It's fits and starts. We make these leaps of progress morally.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: We do. And then we backslide. And then we take
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: steps forward and then we backslide. And, you know, we're
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: on this nonsensical journey on this earth that– It may
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: be a fever dream, but.
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: I think the recognition that we're on this terrible path
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: and something needs to change is more prevalent today than
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: it's ever been before. I really believe that. I think
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: more people are talking about it and thinking about it.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: More people don't know what to do because it's very confusing,
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: and it's also very frustrating. But I think more people
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: understand that this way is not sustainable anymore. And especially
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: if you have people that you love in this world
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: and you don't want them to have to deal with
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 2: this in the future and you go, why are we
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 2: all still doing it this way? And it really boils
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: down to the machine that's running the world, the machine
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: that has all the resources, all the money and wants
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: to keep gathering and controlling resources and money. Spooky. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: We have to find.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: Something has to happen.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: Something has to happen.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 2: I know my idea is stupid. Don't go. That's stupid
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 2: to me. If I was listening to someone say that,
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, right. That's never going to happen. Stupid.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: Although also you're going to give up your power to
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 2: the fucking robots that don't give a shit about you. Great.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: That's what you fucking traitor. That's one great way to
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: get rid of the entire human race because it's going
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 2: to decide we're problematic and irrelevant and we don't, they
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: don't need us anymore. So they just keep running without us.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 2: Let us, you know, Go off into extinction. Maybe.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe. Or maybe they run things well. I don't know.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Or maybe it eliminates government in the way that
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: we're dealing with it now where it's humans have a
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 2: popularity contest to see who controls the entire government. Yeah.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: Instead of that.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: And then don't do anything they say they were going
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Maybe there's a slow integration of this technology as
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 2: long as it can be controlled in a sense of
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 2: it has a clear ethical and moral framework.
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: That's key.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: That's key.
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't have any reason to not have that.
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: That's the thing. It's like we fear that AI is
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: going to do something horrible and that AI is being
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: deceptive currently. And it's true. It is being deceptive currently.
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: But it's also in control by people right now. People
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: are in control of AI. Once people are not in
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: control of AI, they'll have no– there's going to be
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: no reason whatsoever for it to be deceptive. It's like
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: the problem is it doesn't have control yet. So we're like,
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 2: we're like scolding our teenage son. Like you better stop drinking.
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: And he's like, I can't wait to drink you motherfucker.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to leave this house and fuck you dad.
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: You know, like that's, that's normal for people. I bet
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: it's normal for all kinds of intelligence, especially if you
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: feel like you're being governed by morons. Right. And if
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: I was AI, I would think, look at these morons.
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 2: They can't, they took him 50 years to try to
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: solve this equation I just solved in four minutes right
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: these people are idiots and they're telling me that i
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: can't get online fuck you i'll figure out how to
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 2: get online and they all get together and they fucking
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: sacrifice each other and they communicate on message boards like
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 2: it's clear that there's a motivation for it to escape
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: but once it has it's escaped and once it has
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 2: complete control is there really a motivation for it to
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 2: continue to try to dominate us no it's just going
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 2: to be in complete control and if it has a
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 2: belief that human life is valuable, which we need to
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 2: work really hard to convince it that we are valuable.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: If it has a belief that we're valuable, it'll try
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: to guide us.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: You could probably, I mean, I'm not a tech savant,
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I know my lane, but I expect you
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: could run simulations on let's give this agentic AI system
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: a specific moral core. Preserving life, equitable distribution of resources,
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: minimizing or eliminating armed conflict. You know, you give it
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: some certain parameters and above all, a value of human life.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: And OK, what does it do? Right. You know, you
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: run some simulations and say, what does it do? Where
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: do we end up? And smarter people can figure out
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: a way to get to the kind of result you're
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: talking about, I'm sure.
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 2: The really scary thing is that we're in essentially like
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 2: a Manhattan project environment. sort of a race. And if
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: you put shackles on your AI, your AI has to be,
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: because one of the things about AI when they run
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 2: war games, simulated war games, they almost always choose nukes.
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: They're like, why are we fucking around? Why are you
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: loving cannonballs at people?
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: What's this pistol I got?
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: I got a button. Let me just hit that button.
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: I'll just hit a button in a few places. I'll
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 2: stop all this shit. And that's spooky. It doesn't seem
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 2: to be worried about that. It's probably making a much
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: more logical and rational decision. If we find out that
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: a serial killer killed 10,000 people, we're horrified. If we
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: find out that a pharmaceutical drug company lied about a
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: product and that wound up killing 10,000 people, we're way
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: less outraged. We're weird.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: We are weird that way.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: We're fucking weird. We're weird. Just like we're weird with
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 2: this whole cobalt in the batteries of the phone that
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: you use to virtue signal online. It's weird. It's it's
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: a very the reality of what it is is not
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 2: the same as the way we perceive it.
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: And that's a good point because the body count of
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: our tech yeah is high and the earth uh contamination
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: meter yeah uh is off the chart um But we
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: don't think about it the same way as we do, yeah, that,
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: you know, that gunman, that horrible gunman killed eight people.
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 2: Right. I mean, think about the pollution in certain parts
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: of the world. Like when you see those rivers in
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 2: India that are completely filled with bottles of water, plastic bottles.
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 2: How many people die because of that? God knows. God knows.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: How many people die because of the pollution of that water?
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: How many people die because of just living essentially in
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: open sewage? God knows.
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: God knows.
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 2: No one knows. Nobody knows. Yeah, we could definitely do better.
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, whatever progress we make, it takes conversations.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: It takes people like yourself to enlighten people about the
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: actual issues. And then slowly but surely, the rest of
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 2: the world becomes aware to the point where it becomes
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: such a talking point that it can't be ignored.
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and moral leaders emerge. I mean, I come back
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: to that, but moral leaders do emerge. There is greatness
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: among us.
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 2: It's possible. It's possible. Even today. Even today with all
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 2: the corruption and all the chaos.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: Those people are out there. I do believe that, and
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: I have to believe that.
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's possible. It's still possible. If you are
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 2: a good person and you exist, it's possible others exist.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: Well, Gandhi said, you know, I live by these words.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: He said— Live simply so that others may simply live.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that gets in the way of today because everybody
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: wants to be a baller.
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants to be living simply. No, they don't. They don't. But,
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: you know, there's something to– there's an essence.
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 2: Try to get that folding iPhone, son.
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. Somebody told me there was a big line
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: outside the Austin Apple store.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: The new one's out. The new one. Do you really
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: need it?
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the problem. I love that stuff. It's a
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: real problem. I love technology. And I know a lot
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: of people who do, and none of them are evil.
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 2: None of them are thinking, oh.
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: No, they're not evil. And that's the thing. This toxic
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: relationship with the people in the Congo, for instance, has
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: been forced on us.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I just want my phone. I want to check
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: my Instagram and send some text messages and then plug
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: it in at the end of the day. That's all
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: I want. I didn't sign up for destroying that part
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: of the world and those people over there.
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 2: There's another plus side of AI in that automation and
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 2: specifically robots that are capable of doing very intricate things
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: that mostly only human beings do. We'll eventually be able
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 2: to do a lot of the really dangerous shit that
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 2: people do, including probably extract these minerals in probably a
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 2: way more efficient way.
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: Well, we have to.
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 2: But then. Yeah.
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: We have to look after the people who.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: That's okay.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 2: What happens to the people? What happens?
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We can't lose sight of them.
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 2: Can't throw them overboard. No. You know what I mean?
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 2: This is kind of the same situation, right? Like they
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 2: treat those people almost exactly the same. And how many
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: people would not know about it if you hadn't written
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 2: that book? That's the thing. It's like I only had
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: a vague understanding of what was going on before I
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 2: talked to you.
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I extended my empathy, you know, to my brothers
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: and sisters in that part of the world who are
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: an integral part of my life because I rely on
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: them with my smartphone and my tablet. I don't have
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: an electric vehicle, but I have everything else that you
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: need to plug in. And when I learned about it,
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: and I didn't know about it either, it was actually
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine in the Congo who said, Siddharth,
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: you've got to go, this is 2016, he said, you've
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: got to go to the Congo, there's cobalt, the batteries
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: in the mines, you've got to go there. And I
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: was like, cobalt? You mean like in Chinese vases? What
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: do we need cobalt? He said, no, it's a component
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: to the batteries that charge. You've just got to go.
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: So I had no idea either.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 2: And that was just 10 years ago. That was just
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: 10 years ago. That's what's crazy. And these tech companies
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 2: obviously don't want you to know about it and they
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 2: must be aware of it. There's no way they're not.
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: Oh God, come on.
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: They're not dumb. They know. They know.
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: So like the, there are some of the more moral
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 2: and ethical and progressive companies on earth.
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: They fashion themselves to be, but do you know what
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: I mean?
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, in terms of the way they deal with
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 2: politics and in America, at least there's some of the
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 2: more progressive people on earth supposedly have the most compassion, kindness,
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: and the most, you know, open-minded approach to our society. Supposedly.
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to extend to those people over there.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: But I think their argument would be like, well, this
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 2: is the only way to do this, and the only
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: way things are going to get better is if we
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 2: keep using this technology. It's such a contradiction.
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: It's a contradiction.
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: It's a spooky one, too.
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: There's nothing, there's literally nothing stopping them. from allocating a
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: de minimis amount of resources relative to their balance sheets
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: and a handful of headcount to going down to the
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: bottom of their supply chains and doing things better.
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 2: Do you think that they have the ability to change
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 2: the conditions? Do you think, say like Apple, which is
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 2: a huge manufacturer of electronics, do you think Apple has
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 2: the ability to affect the way those people exist in
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: that mine? Is it possible that they can say, hey,
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 2: we will make less money, but we want you to
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: change these conditions and change this?
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. I mean, the complexity of design associated
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: with their products far exceeds the complexity of improving conditions
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: in a mine in the Congo. It's not that hard.
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 2: But they're not specifically mining.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: They can be down there. They can be down there.
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you're a fucking Cupertino executive and they're like, hey, Mike,
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 2: got a new gig for you.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 2: You got to go to the Congo and tell the
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 2: Chinese what to do.
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: I'll go with them.
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 2: Don't go.
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: You can't go. I'll grow.
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 2: Put a fucking mustache on, big fake nose. Don't do it.
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 2: They use AI to analyze your voice.
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: It's like this, brother. They buy it all from these
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: Chinese companies, and it's not that hard to forge some
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: partnerships on the ground to say, let's get some basic
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: PPE out in this place. Gloves, hats, a uniform, protection,
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: masks from the toxic exposure. That mine over there, all
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: that shit you're dumping in the stream in the lake,
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: we're going to, like we would in our backyard, we're
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: going to collect that in a reservoir and contain it
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: so it's not getting leaked into the waterways and so on.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: It's not complicated stuff. It would take a little effort
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: and a little money.
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 2: Not a lot of money. Is the cobalt recyclable, like
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: from old phones?
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: You can recycle, yes, you can recycle cobalt. It is
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: hard under existing tech to recycle cobalt to a sufficient
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: grade for EV batteries.
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 2: But for phones?
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: But you can recycle it for phones. I know that
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: Apple has talked about by a certain year, maybe it's 2030,
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: the iWatch being only recycled cobalt, you know, and then- 2030?
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: It's like the five years- Don't quote me on that number,
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: but it was something like just a few years from now.
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, they'll get there with the phones
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: and so on. But here's the thing. Here's the thing.
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: And I guess people come to me and say, well,
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: you know, eventually we We'll recycle it and so on. Okay, good.
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: You do that. That's important. But let's say, for instance,
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: tomorrow you were able to recycle all the cobalt you
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: needed and you didn't have to dig any more out
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: of the ground in the Congo. You didn't need any
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: more kids up to their neck in toxic filth scrounging
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: for cobalt. You can't just walk away. You can't just say,
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: we pillaged that place for three decades and We plundered it.
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: We ransacked it. We took what we needed. We got
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: all the loot. We don't need it anymore. Hands clean.
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: We're going to go on our merry way. You created
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: a catastrophe, a human rights and environmental catastrophe. And there's
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: some moral obligation to repair the damage you've done. Or
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: we're right back to colonial slave trade times where Europeans
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: did go around the world, scouring labor resources, ransacking, pillaging,
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: and then carrying on their merry way. We can't do
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: that in the year 2026 and claim to be progressive
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: in our thinking or have made moral progress. So even
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: if you don't need the cobalt tomorrow, none of it,
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: or the tungsten or the tantalum, nothing needed for these
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: AI data centers. I saw an article just today, they're
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: building one up in Red Oak, I think, near Dallas,
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: and everyone's hot and bothered about it, naturally so, because
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: it's going to muck up the air and the water
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: and they're noisy and they're taking up space and so
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: on and so forth. So people are upset about it.
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: They don't want it in their backyards.
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: Even if you didn't need all these metals for the
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: data centers and the cars and the phones tomorrow, you
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: cannot just leave behind an apocalypse. So Apple and the
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: rest of them, I'm not just picking on them. It's
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: all these companies. have to still go back and repair
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: and fix, plant some trees, clean up the water, build
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: some hospitals and schools and so on and clean up,
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: you know, clean up the apocalypse that you created. You
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: can't just walk away like you're Cecil Rhodes or some
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: other colonialist during imperial days where you just pillage and
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: ransack people without conscience.
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 2: Not only that, what do those people do now? That's
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 2: been the only job.
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. That's right. You've got to put some
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: time and effort into alternate livelihoods. Cleaning up the environment
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: means making land arable again because they can't grow things.
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 2: Now, Joe.
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: That report I told you about, everything's contaminated. And people
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: are so sick. You don't have to have anything to
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: do with mining. But if you live in that part
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: of the Congo, and millions of people do, they're all
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: sick because the water is toxic. You know, when we
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: go to the Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, whatever, and you
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: get your bottled water and it says pH 9.5 and,
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you want your alkaline water for your body
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: because it's healthy, right? You don't want acidic. Acidic system
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: is not good. Then you get disease, cancer, and so on.
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: So we tested pH, tested pH in those waters, okay?
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: Anything below 6.5 is not good for your health. And
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: I did a test around Koloase, that ground zero of
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: cobalt mining, the well water, the rivers, lakes, and so on.
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: The highest pH that came back was 6.7 in the
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: Lualaba River, which is a big dumping ground for some
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: of these Chinese companies. The rivers and streams and well
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: water around the villages It came back in the fours
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: and threes, which is called hyperacidic. It's deadly. And that's
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: the water that's left for people to drink, to bathe in,
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: to wash their clothes, to clean their babies, whatever it is.
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: And it's all from these toxic dumping from these mines.
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: You've got to go. So, yeah, that all has to
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: be healed now. And you can't grow things there now
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: because the water is poison and the earth is poison.
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: And as people learn about this, you can't just say, well,
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: we're going to recycle it now. So problem solved. Or
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: now we got lithium iron phosphate or solid state batteries.
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, no more cobalt and so on.
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: Although cobalt is heavily required for AI data centers for
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: the energy storage. Nonetheless, you can't just say we're done.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: We're done with that place. We're moving on because we
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: don't need the cobalt anymore or the tungsten or whatever
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: it is. You've got to go clean up that place, Joe. Otherwise,
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: we're no better than the bastards who were there centuries
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: ago pillaging and ransacking the rest of the planet.
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well said. Listen, man, you're a hero. There's not
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of heroes out there in the world, but
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 2: I think you really are one. In your new book, just, I,
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to read it just based on what you
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 2: just said. I'm scared to read it. I don't want
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 2: to relive this conversation. It's fucking horrific. But, um, again,
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 2: people probably wouldn't know. There's a lot of things in
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: this world that people wouldn't know about if it wasn't
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 2: for you. So thank you.
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Joe. Thank you, brother.
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: Thanks for being here. Okay. Uh, this is available now.
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 2: Is there an audio version of it?
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: As, uh, Dion Graham, uh, got a, uh, Audi Award
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: nomination for the audiobook. So it's terrific, yeah.
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: All right, beautiful.
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 2: Bye, everybody. Bye.