Taken from JRE #1953 w/Duncan Trussell:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oo4MlJePmtWvQcMvQOyNQ?si=e0edd41d586142a4

Have you ever seen like the numbers of people that are working in chocolate?

That are working in like horrible conditions?

Someone was telling me that chocolate in many ways I have to be careful about this because I'm not sure if they're right let's look up what it is, but they were connecting we were talking about cobalt mines and They said have you ever looked into chocolate and chocolate production?

It's like Here it is Mars Wrigley factory find after 2 workers fall into chocolate vat.

I think they're talking about cow farming and that he was, I think he was Insinuating that they used slave labor at some of those places.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure I mean, that's the God who was I talking to man?

Child labor and slavery in the chocolate industry.

Okay, can you make that larger for my shitty eyes?

Chocolate is a product of the cacao bean, which grows primarily in the tropical climates of Western Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The cacao bean is more commonly referred to as cocoa So that is the term that will be used throughout this article Western African countries mostly Ghana and the Ivory Coast supply about 70% of the world's cocoa Though is it coca or cocoa?

I always say cocoa like cacao cacao Coa, but it's not cacao because the cacao bean and then it's cocoa Okay, the cocoa they grow Sorry, everybody chocolate they grow and harvest is sold to a majority of chocolate companies, including the largest in the world.

In the past few decades, a handful of organizations and journalists have exposed the widespread use of child labor, and in some cases, slavery on cocoa farms in Western Africa.

Child labor has been found on coca farms in Cameroon, Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, although since most of Western Africa's coca grown in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

The majority of child labor cases have been documented in those 2 countries.

In recent years, evidence has also surfaced that both child labor and slavery on Cocoa farms in Brazil cocoa workers there face many of the same abuses as those on cocoa farms in Western Africa.

And then Latin America too, they're saying.

1 dollar per day, a Kit Kat's 4 days work.

Isn't it crazy that chocolate is like love and there's chocolate.

There's like chocolate stores, come in and buy chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

Like if you walk by a chocolate store, you never say, oh, child labor.

A lot of kids died for that fucking chocolate you're giving for your-

a lot of little tiny Unformed bodies are being forced to dig holes in the ground.

It calls just get Harry shit getting malaria yeah, you you the the this this is the This I'm sorry.

Whoever told me this they were They went on a tour of the Colosseums in Italy and the person giving the tour was talking about how the horrible shit the Romans used to do in the Colosseums.

And the guide says, but it's just as brutal now, but in a different way.

It's like, yeah, we don't have Colosseums where we're like throwing Christians to lions and laughing as they get eaten by a lion, but most things that you are indulging in is just something fun.

A little bit of chocolate, your fucking iPhones, the Cobalt, whatever it is, is just soaked in misery and violence and suffering like the whole thing still

I mean now that being said, what are you supposed to do about that?

Are you gonna Stop eating chocolate or using your phone.

It's like they've got us addicted particularly Well chocolate would be an easier 1, but phones We are all willingly addicted to these things.

and Posting stuff and you know using it for our podcasts and yeah, you're using it.

to cobalt mining which is 1 of the most horrific things is happening right Now on planet earth and if people in the cities in America were forced to live like that Everyone would be up in arms But yet people were tweeting about letting people through the border crisis.

We have this border problem We need to help these people.

They're tweeting it on a phone made by slaves.

And like this is in Buddhism, there's 3, like the root of suffering, 1 of them is ignorance.

And ignorance is not like you're ignorant, you're a dumbass.

Like, you know, this is 1 of the nightmare weed situations is when you've been ignoring some shit in your life.

And even though you know it's there, you've just been ignoring it, and then you get high.

And it's like, I'm not gonna let you ignore this for a little bit.

And then you have the bad weed trip, because now suddenly you're looking at a relationship that is shitty in your life that needs to improve, or you're looking at how you don't exercise or whatever the thing is.

So you've been actively ignoring that and thinking that it's gonna make the situation better, even though when you're actively ignoring something, you feel it.

You might not, it might not be top of mind, but You're like feeling it and it's heavy.

It's a heavy thing when you're procrastinating.

So I think collectively that's what we're doing here is this active ignorance of the reality that these things don't pop out of thin air.

That if we're gonna have this level of luxury, some people are gonna have to suffer for it.

It's not like you couldn't figure out a way where the company profits slightly less, the people live far better, and phones cost reasonably close to what they cost to now.

Look at a company like Apple, just the amount of money that they've generated from devices, and what percentage of it is phones?

What percentage of what they sell involves cobalt?

I mean, most of their lithium ion battery products, cobalt is like some sort of a stabilizer or something.

Siddharth Kaur, who wrote that book on cobalt, who came on the podcast and had this it was 1 of the most Heavy podcasts I've ever done because you just like you're sitting here and He's exposing how these people are living how these 19 year old mothers have babies on their backs and they're digging into these hills to get cobalt and the dust is coming up and it's Horrific horrific for the terrible health consequences.

They're being poisoned and they're making no money and they have no electricity.

Yeah and don't forget that those cobalt mines are not even owned by Africans.

Yeah and if you just imagined that instead those people lived in an economically thriving town like Detroit was when they were putting together automobiles.

Like Detroit at 1 point in time was 1 of the richest country or richest cities in the country.

America was making these cars and they were selling like crazy.

The industry was booming and then they pulled it all out.

Like if you went to Detroit during when did Detroit fall apart?

Manufacturers pull a giant chunk of their their production out of Detroit.

Because it's a very stark cliff Economically, it's like Roger and me when when when he made that documentary.

Oh, yeah 1960s What a building boom pushed people to the suburbs population plummeted to?

700,000 With the highest unemployment rate more than 16% in any major American city Yeah So it started with the building boom push back people into the suburbs, but I think the big 1 was the autumn Oh, so what is Detroit's downfall?

Yeah it's the heavily automobile centric industrial landscape of Detroit established in the first half of the 20th century led to rapid declines in population and economic output after automotive Decentralization

that means that they took their factories to other countries with regulation

And it makes you think, like, man, what did you do?


Speaker 0: The Jorogun experience. Have you ever seen like the numbers of people that are working in chocolate? That are working in like horrible conditions? Have you ever heard of this? Jamie, find out about chocolate.

Someone was telling me that chocolate in many ways I have to be careful about this because I'm not sure if they're right let's look up what it is, but they were connecting we were talking about cobalt mines and They said have you ever looked into chocolate and chocolate production? It's like Here it is Mars Wrigley factory find after 2 workers fall into chocolate vat. Well, that's not it. I think they're talking about cow farming and that he was, I think he was Insinuating that they used slave labor at some of those places.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I'm sure I mean, that's the God who was I talking to man? God damn it. I've such a Soggy brain. Oh man, they were talking about how they

Speaker 0: Child labor and slavery in the chocolate industry. This is it. Jesus Christ. Okay, can you make that larger for my shitty eyes? Chocolate is a product of the cacao bean, which grows primarily in the tropical climates of Western Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The cacao bean is more commonly referred to as cocoa So that is the term that will be used throughout this article Western African countries mostly Ghana and the Ivory Coast supply about 70% of the world's cocoa Though is it coca or cocoa? How do you say that?

Speaker 1: Yeah, cuz

Speaker 0: I always say cocoa like cacao cacao Coa, but it's not cacao because the cacao bean and then it's cocoa Okay, the cocoa they grow Sorry, everybody chocolate they grow and harvest is sold to a majority of chocolate companies, including the largest in the world. In the past few decades, a handful of organizations and journalists have exposed the widespread use of child labor, and in some cases, slavery on cocoa farms in Western Africa. Child labor has been found on coca farms in Cameroon, Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, although since most of Western Africa's coca grown in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. The majority of child labor cases have been documented in those 2 countries.

Speaker 1: Fuck. Fuck. Yeah. You just, you don't like the...

Speaker 0: It says Brazil too. Scroll up a little bit.

Speaker 1: You just don't think that, do you? No. When you're eating a Kit Kat.

Speaker 0: In recent years, evidence has also surfaced that both child labor and slavery on Cocoa farms in Brazil cocoa workers there face many of the same abuses as those on cocoa farms in Western Africa. Fuck. And then Latin America too, they're saying.

Speaker 1: 1 dollar per day.

Speaker 0: Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 1 dollar per day, a Kit Kat's 4 days work.

Speaker 0: Isn't it crazy that chocolate is like love and there's chocolate. There's like chocolate stores, come in and buy chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. Like if you walk by a chocolate store, you never say, oh, child labor.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. A lot of kids died for that fucking chocolate you're giving for your-

Speaker 0: a lot of little tiny Unformed bodies are being forced to dig holes in the ground.

Speaker 1: It calls just get Harry shit getting malaria yeah, you you the the this this is the This I'm sorry. Whoever told me this they were They went on a tour of the Colosseums in Italy and the person giving the tour was talking about how the horrible shit the Romans used to do in the Colosseums. Like, it was just pure brutality. And the guide says, but it's just as brutal now, but in a different way. And that's what she's talking about.

It's like, yeah, we don't have Colosseums where we're like throwing Christians to lions and laughing as they get eaten by a lion, but most things that you are indulging in is just something fun. A little bit of chocolate, your fucking iPhones, the Cobalt, whatever it is, is just soaked in misery and violence and suffering like the whole thing still

Speaker 0: is interconnected.

Speaker 1: Interconnected, yeah. I mean now that being said, what are you supposed to do about that? Are you gonna Stop eating chocolate or using your phone.

Speaker 0: That's what's crazy. It's like they've got us addicted particularly Well chocolate would be an easier 1, but phones We are all willingly addicted to these things. We are all checking our email

Speaker 1: Yeah,

Speaker 0: and Posting stuff and you know using it for our podcasts and yeah, you're using it. It's a device You have to have it

Speaker 1: you have to have

Speaker 0: but it's all connected

Speaker 1: Right

Speaker 0: to cobalt mining which is 1 of the most horrific things is happening right Now on planet earth and if people in the cities in America were forced to live like that Everyone would be up in arms But yet people were tweeting about letting people through the border crisis. We have this border problem We need to help these people. They're tweeting it on a phone made by slaves. Which is the wildest thing ever.

Speaker 1: It's very odd. It's very odd. Rarely discussed. So it's ignorance. And like this is in Buddhism, there's 3, like the root of suffering, 1 of them is ignorance.

And ignorance is not like you're ignorant, you're a dumbass. It's like you're actively ignoring shit. Like, you know, this is 1 of the nightmare weed situations is when you've been ignoring some shit in your life. And even though you know it's there, you've just been ignoring it, and then you get high. And it's like, I'm not gonna let you ignore this for a little bit.

And then you have the bad weed trip, because now suddenly you're looking at a relationship that is shitty in your life that needs to improve, or you're looking at how you don't exercise or whatever the thing is. So you've been actively ignoring that and thinking that it's gonna make the situation better, even though when you're actively ignoring something, you feel it. You might not, it might not be top of mind, but You're like feeling it and it's heavy. It's a heavy thing when you're procrastinating. That's active ignorance.

So I think collectively that's what we're doing here is this active ignorance of the reality that these things don't pop out of thin air. That if we're gonna have this level of luxury, some people are gonna have to suffer for it.

Speaker 0: But that's not necessarily true. They don't have to. They just are. It's not like you couldn't figure out a way where the company profits slightly less, the people live far better, and phones cost reasonably close to what they cost to now. Look at a company like Apple, just the amount of money that they've generated from devices, and what percentage of it is phones?

What percentage of what they sell involves cobalt? I mean, most of their lithium ion battery products, cobalt is like some sort of a stabilizer or something.

Speaker 1: No idea.

Speaker 0: Siddharth Kaur, who wrote that book on cobalt, who came on the podcast and had this it was 1 of the most Heavy podcasts I've ever done because you just like you're sitting here and He's exposing how these people are living how these 19 year old mothers have babies on their backs and they're digging into these hills to get cobalt and the dust is coming up and it's Horrific horrific for the terrible health consequences. They're being poisoned and they're making no money and they have no electricity.

Speaker 1: Yeah and don't forget that those cobalt mines are not even owned by Africans. They're usually owned by like Chinese.

Speaker 0: Yeah and if you just imagined that instead those people lived in an economically thriving town like Detroit was when they were putting together automobiles. Like Detroit at 1 point in time was 1 of the richest country or richest cities in the country. Detroit was a huge hub. There was beautiful cars everywhere. America was making these cars and they were selling like crazy.

The industry was booming and then they pulled it all out. And then the city imploded. Like if you went to Detroit during when did Detroit fall apart? When did you when did the auto? Manufacturers pull a giant chunk of their their production out of Detroit.

What year was that? Because it's a very stark cliff Economically, it's like Roger and me when when when he made that documentary. Oh, yeah 1960s What a building boom pushed people to the suburbs population plummeted to? 700,000 With the highest unemployment rate more than 16% in any major American city Yeah So it started with the building boom push back people into the suburbs, but I think the big 1 was the autumn Oh, so what is Detroit's downfall? Yeah it's the heavily automobile centric industrial landscape of Detroit established in the first half of the 20th century led to rapid declines in population and economic output after automotive Decentralization

Speaker 1: that means that they took their factories to other countries with regulation

Speaker 0: exactly what they did. It's exactly what they did. And it makes you think, like, man, what did you do? What did you do? Like, how much more profit?

I'm sure it's a lot of money. A lot. But what did you do?

See all PowerfulJRE transcripts on Youtube

The Brutality of the Chocolate Industry, Parallels to Cobalt Mining for Phones