Elemental Business: Lithium (long version)
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2014
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lithium is the electro-chemical element - big in batteries and bipolar disorder. Over two decades it has shot from obscurity to become almost synonymous with the way we power our gadgets. Presenter Justin Rowlatt hears from chemistry powerhouse Prof Andrea Sella of University College London about what makes lithium so light and energetic. We hear from Gideon Long in Chile, who visits the world's richest source of lithium in the Atacama Desert, and about how neighbouring Bolivia believes it will dominate supply if demand for this alkali metal continues to see double-digit growth. Justin speaks to Prof Nigel Brandon of Imperial College, an expert on cutting-edge battery research, about whether this week's element can ever realistically hope to challenge a can of petrol as the best way to power a car. And we hear from clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison of Johns Hopkins University about the literally life-saving role lithium has played for sufferers of bipolar disorder - including herself.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a BBC podcast. You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use at BBCworldservis.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:13.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily with me, Justin Rowland. |
| 0:20.2 | It is time to turn up your bunsen burner and polish up your pipettes. |
| 0:24.6 | As once again, we look at one of those atomic taxa, the elements of the periodic table. |
| 0:36.5 | Today we explore the extraordinary properties of lithium. |
| 0:46.1 | And yes, that is Nirvana's classic track of the same name. |
| 0:52.2 | On Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:59.4 | A few decades ago, lithium was one of the more obscure members of the periodic table. |
| 1:06.3 | Not anymore. |
| 1:07.3 | In 1991, Sony introduced the first commercial lithium battery into its devices and since then |
| 1:13.6 | there's been no looking back. As I speak, I'm standing on London's Tottenham Court Road as famous |
| 1:18.5 | for its high-fi and computer retailers as Savile Row is for its tailors. I'm surrounded by shops |
| 1:25.3 | selling smartphones, tablet computers and the latest cameras, all of them powered by today's element. |
| 1:31.5 | Because these days the words lithium and battery are almost synonymous. |
| 1:37.0 | Yet this is by no means the only use for this very special element. |
| 1:42.2 | For an elementary introduction to lithium, I turned as always to our own |
| 1:46.6 | chemistry powerhouse, Professor Andrea Seller of University College London. |
| 1:52.9 | The really crucial thing is the fact that lithium is actually the third element in the |
| 1:58.1 | periodic table after hydrogen and helium, and it's therefore the lightest solid. |
| 2:02.6 | And I've got a jar of it here. |
| 2:04.6 | And the interesting thing, you can see that it actually floats, |
| 2:08.6 | these beautiful silvery grey rods of lithium, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.