https://ripcorp.biz/episodes/2500-and-a-dream-fansteel-and-the-history-of-tantalum new RIP Corp and it is a doozy of an episode!! Tantalum, labor strikes, colonialism, war, a million things. I am nervous about it because there's so much packed in here and also it's based on some of my master's thesis research so it feels kind of precious to me.
So this episode is also pretty weird to release now because an uptick in militia fighting in DRC has drawn media attention back to the issue of "conflict minerals"—I've seen campaigns where people are quitting vaping in solidarity w/people of the Congo? Which, IDK. I hope this deeper dive into the longer history of tantalum mining in DRC is helpful for ppl just now learning about it.
@Wolven !!! Thank you friend that means a lot from a smarty like you
@ingrid Your historical contextualization of the Congo and its range of sociocultural and sociotechnical factors was honestly so clarifying; gonna spread it around a bunch of places
@ingrid This was so so good