Episode Transcript: #1914 - Siddharth Kara
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The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
Thank you very much for coming here, man.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you for inviting me, Joe.
My pleasure.
This subject, first of all, the title of your book?
Cobalt Red.
And it is out January 31st.
And how did you, please detail the journey that you went on to write this book and why it's of concern to you?
Yeah, okay.
Well, I started traveling to the Congo five years ago.
I've been doing research on slavery and child labor for about 20 years, traveling all around the world, documenting slaves and child labor as human trafficking.
And this came across my radar maybe seven years ago.
People started talking in the field about cobalt, cobalt's in the batteries, it's in the Congo, the conditions are horrible, and I had no idea.
I never heard of this.
So I started planning to take trips to get down there.
And I took my first trip back in 2018.
My plan was I thought I would try to lay the groundwork to do some academic research.
And the things I saw there were so appalling and heart-wrenching and urgent that I changed my approach.