Sure, Siddharth Kara is an absolute warrior, man. He really dove deep into this whole cobalt mining nightmare in the Congo with his book, "Cobalt Red". Some of the things he said in our conversation were haunting.

He said, "About the whole history of slavery, I mean, I'm going back centuries, never, never in human history has there been more suffering that generated more profit and was linked to the lives of more people around the world ever, ever in history than what's happening in the Congo right now."

What's even more gut-wrenching is that we're all complicit in this in a way. Kara made it clear when he told me, "The cobalt that's being mined in the Congo is in every single lithium ion rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today. Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop, and crucially, every electric vehicle."

It's like, you look at your smartphone and you never think you're holding a piece of someone's suffering, right? But he painted a real picture. He said, "If you go to a cobalt mine in the Congo and you see a 19-year-old woman with a baby on her back mining for cobalt and inhaling toxic fumes, you're like, okay, well that's the apocalypse."

Like Kara, I think it's crucial for us to recognize that our comfort and lifestyle is directly connected to the suffering of these people in the Congo. It's a messed up world, man. But it's thanks to real boots-on-the-ground journalists like Siddharth Kara that we can even begin to glimpse these truths.