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People talk these days about rare
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earths, mostly without entirely
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understanding what they are. Dare I say
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including some people at the top of the
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White House. These things are really
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important, a set of 17 elements, really
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important, without which you can't make
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the motors in in many of the most
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advanced electric cars. You can't make
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wind turbines work. You can't make the
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advanced alloys you need that go into
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turbines. You can't make the steel and
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the various other other components you
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need just to make the world work. And
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you can't make AirPods. So, you know, in
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in one of our episodes we look at
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AirPods and we ask that question, you
0:30
know, how did rare earths become such a
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big deal? How did they become ubiquitous
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without us even knowing, I think?
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>> point where they've become so important
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that SpaceX looks to IPO for one of the
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biggest IPOs of all time because they
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need to reach the moon and Mars cuz it's
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full of rare earth metals.
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>> There's a lot of this stuff still on
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The main The main thing stopping us from
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getting rare earths in like, you know,
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in the United States or in Europe isn't
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that there's a lack of rare earths in
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the ground. You dig up, you know, grab a
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a chunk of earth out of the ground in in
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your garden or in the park near nearby
1:01
you, there will be some rare earths in
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there. Not maybe not many, but the
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challenge is not the availability of the
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stuff. The challenge is our willingness
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to do the refining to take those ores
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and turn them into into actual metals
