The Bloody Reality of the DRC Cobalt Mines That Power Our Phones

From smartphones to electric vehicles, all lithium-ion rechargeable batteries made today require cobalt, a unique mineral that is almost exclusively mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Siddharth Kara, author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, joins the show to explain the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining and the numerous layers of multinational supply chains that serve to erode accountability for the absolute exploitation for absolute profit.