Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 28, 2025, and this is a special episode of the excerpt.

Most electronic devices you use, your phone, laptop, earbuds, to name a few,

requires certain materials called rare earth minerals to function.

These minerals also power a wide range of other things critical to our lives,

like cars, aircraft engines, medical equipment.

The U.S. imports most of its supply of rare earth elements from China, which given the current climate of global trade, has led experts to wonder, any way we get more of these minerals here at home?

We're diving into the question today with Scott McWhorter, a distinguished fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Thanks for joining me on the excerpt, Scott.

Thank you, Dana. Glad to be here.

Can we start by explaining to those of us who aren't familiar?

What are rare earth minerals and why are they so important in modern life?

Rare earth minerals are just a group of minerals that are naturally found,

but they have certain properties, typically magnetic properties or strength or performance

properties, that really enhance what we do in certain products. That's really the importance of these minerals that we find every day.

They're cold rare earth minerals.

Are they in fact rare?

That's a misnomer.

They're found just about in most soils that we have.

They're not found in places that we can go dig up and extract.

And so that's why they're typically rare.

Scott, where in the country have we started mining rare earth minerals? And generally,

can you tell us more about the process being utilized?

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