Breakthrough Dialogues

Electricity Makes the World Go Round

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Episode notes

Rehena Jamadar, a 44-year-old woman living in a small Indian village, has only had electricity for the last 14 years of her life. If she had been able to have the lights on earlier in her life, she says, she would have gone to university. This isn’t a rare story; roughly 4 of 10 people today use less electricity per year than a modern refrigerator. Robert Bryce has been researching and writing on these issues for a long time, most recently in his documentary “Juice” and book “A Question of Power.” He argues that electricity makes the world go round, determining the fate and wealth of people to the same extent that guns, germs, and steel used to shape our stories. On today’s episode: the generator mafias in Lebanon, the soaring demand for energy by the marijuana industry, and what the pandemic has taught Robert about the grid.