Lisa Reisman has spent her entire career in the metals business. She began as an aluminum trader, and after stints at other firms, she founded MetalMiner. Her clients are primarily original equipment manufacturers, including automakers, who buy a wide range of metal products. In this episode, she explains how her firm forecasts prices and why she is a "price purist." She also explains how China became a dominant player in strategic elements like antimony, neodymium, gallium, and other metals. Please note that this episode was recorded on December 12, 2024. Reisman and I discussed the then-pending purchase of US Steel by Nippon Steel. Reisman said the US government should allow that deal to happen because Japan is a key US ally. On January 3, the Biden administration blocked that takeover. We also talked about copper, a metal that is getting lots of attention due to its critical role in the electricity sector. Reisman believes that the relatively weak copper prices over the past year are due, in part, to softer-than-expected demand for electric vehicles.

Five years after a fire nearly destroyed Notre Dame in Paris, the famous cathedral has reopened. In this episode, I talk to essayist Emmet Penney, who writes the Nuclear Barbarians Substack, about the cultural significance of the cathedral, nuclear plants as our industrial cathedrals, and the electric grid as our industrial commons.

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And I am super pleased that the first guest on The Robert Bryce Show is one of my favorite people, Matt Ridley. Matt is a birdwatcher, essayist, and a prolific writer. He’s the author of ten books. His most recent one, which he co-wrote with Alina Chan, is Viral: The Search For the Origin of Covid-19. In this episode, we talk about Britain’s insane energy policies, the closure of the country’s last blast furnace, his investigation into Covid, why he now is convinced the pandemic was caused by a lab leak, and much more.

Stay tuned.

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