Your host continues his journey to the center of the cloud by way of the earth. Rare Earth.  Dr. Alex King leads the Critical Materials Institute in Ames Iowa, and he explains how dependent the cloud is on Rare Earth Elements like Neodymium. If we could get inside a Data Center we would find neodymium in all the custom made hard drives, and companies like Amazon are using giant wind turbines packed with neodymium magnets to power their data farms. In fact most of the devices we use to access the cloud: our ipads, our phones, our personal computers - they all use Neodymium too. Dr. Karl “Mr. Rare Earth” Gschneider introduces us to the other 16 Rare Earth elements and we learn that they are key to most of our advanced technologies, electric cars, medical devices, drones!  When your host discovers that China controls 95% of the Rare Earth market he decides to go, he hopes to see the illegal mines in the Ganzhou region with his own eyes. We also hear from Frank Tang, a Beijing based analyst at the investment bank NSBO, and we visit a Rare Earth Magnet factory. 

The Clouds (2 of 3)

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Radio/Podcast host:
"Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything" a proud member of PRX's Radiotopia collective. http://radiotopia.fm 
"Too Much Information" WFMU (2009 - 2013)
"The Big Ideas Podcast" The Guardian UK (2011 - 2012) 