How to get what Greenland has, with permission
Planet Money
NPR
4.6 • 30.5K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it can’t even legally sell Greenland. And at a security conference in Munich over the weekend, U.S. lawmakers spent a lot of time trying to walk back some of President Trump’s recent threats to try to buy, or even take over, the territory.
But whether Trump can or will or should try to control or purchase a territory that doesn’t want to be sold is not the interesting question. What is interesting is how we got to this moment. And, how we might gracefully get out of it.
Greenland is valuable for its minerals and because of its physical location in the world. (It’s easy to keep an eye on other countries from Greenland).
Our latest: How the U.S. dropped the ball on the rare earths race. And one way the U.S. gets strategic locations without threatening to buy or take over an entire territory.
Further listening:
- Is Greenland really an untapped land of riches?
- Add to cart: Greenland
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Planet Money from NPR. |
| 0:21.4 | Listen, I have never worked so hard to get someone on the phone. I'm eating beans out of a bag. That's how bad life is today. She's eating refried beans out of a bag. Not even out of a can. It's out of a bag. Just cold out of a bag? Like, not even a spoon. Like, it's like, I've, like, cut a corner edge and I'm, like, squirting them in my mouth on my break. |
| 0:26.3 | Yeah, I know. Grace Lynn Baskerin has had some long, busy days. I mean, you've been busy |
| 0:33.8 | because you're, like, one of very few experts on, among other things, Greenland. |
| 0:41.2 | And minerals. It's a very small nexus. |
| 0:43.5 | Grace Lynn is a mining economist who has worked in rare earth minerals globally. |
| 0:48.6 | She's the director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. |
| 0:54.0 | Where are these rare earths? Like how deep into the ground. Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. |
| 0:59.8 | Where are these rare earths? Like how deep into the ground? What do they look like? Have you seen them? Is it sparkly? Is it shiny? Like what does it look like? You know, it's funny for how |
| 1:04.4 | valuable these rocks are. They look like they're very gray. So they just look like gravel, |
| 1:10.3 | like little gray rocks? Kind of. They're not golden sparkly. They're very gray. So they just look like gravel, like little gray rocks? |
| 1:11.9 | Kind of. |
| 1:12.6 | They're not golden, sparkly. |
| 1:14.2 | They're not shiny like a diamond. |
| 1:16.4 | But they're incredibly valuable. |
| 1:18.3 | Yeah, rare earth minerals are little rocks that are very, very critical for everything from military fighter jets, missiles, and nuclear submarines to the display on your phone, |
| 1:28.5 | the hard drive on your computer, the seatbelts in cars. |
| 1:31.7 | You have presidimium and neodymium, you have dysprosium, terbium, homium. |
| 1:38.8 | Grace Lynn knows all 17 of these minerals. |
| 1:42.0 | She's been in mines, touched rare earths, tried to smell them once. |
| 1:46.2 | And then I ended up snorting them. And my colleague was like, you know, you're like snorting metal |
| 1:51.5 | right now, right? Sorry, one second. What's up? Everyone wants Grayson's attention right now. |
... |
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