My name is Lee Hawkins. I've been a journalist for over 25 years. On my new

podcast, What Happened in Alabama, I get answers to some of the hardest questions about how things

came to be for many black Americans and the truth that must come before any reconciliation can

happen. I investigate my family history, my upbringing in

Minnesota and my father's painful nightmares about growing up in Alabama. What happened

in Alabama is a new series confronting the cycles of trauma for myself,

my family, and for many black Americans.

Listen now.

When clean technology means mining the bottom of the ocean.

I'm David Brancaccio in New York, General Motors has its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow,

one item up for discussion, whether the automaker should take a stand on the use

of metals mined from the floor of the sea.

Tesla faces the same question at its shareholder meeting later this month. Under the sea holds a lot of potential to extract metals needed for electric vehicles

and the clean energy transition, but there are many unanswered environmental questions.

Companies are under pressure from some shareholders to follow unanswered environmental is Daniel Ackerman reports. Carmakers are facing more and more scrutiny about where the metals they use are coming from.

Gerard Barron, CEO of the metals company, says he has one solution.

Here we are with an alternative supply a thousand miles from the nearest

living human, 4,000 meters below sea. His firm is looking to collect millions of tons of

cobalt and nickel ore from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, far from any

rainforests or drinking water, and then sell that metal to car companies.

But this type of extraction has never been done at commercial scale. Andy Whitmore with the nonprofit Deep Sea Mining campaign

says it could permanently damage ocean habitat.

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