Things you can’t live without podcast
Agencies: Studio of Art & Commerce, Listen
Have you ever thought about the items you can’t live without? Water bottles, bicycles, salt, to name a few. What about the materials that go into producing them? How did they become so vital to modern society? What is the impact to the planet – today, now and in the future?
These are the questions that global resources group Rio Tinto attempts to answer in its corporate podcast. It explains how everyday items that people take for granted come about, and Rio Tinto’s crucial role in producing them.
In doing so, Rio Tinto hopes to raise awareness of the contribution that science, metals and minerals make to today’s necessities. But it also knew that, in a world where everybody has a podcast, and where the subject matter could be quite dry, it needed to stand out.
It first recruited Dr Anna Ploszajski, an award-winning materials scientist and stand-up comedian, as host along with experts at Rio Tinto who chat with guests from the worlds of entertainment, sport and food about the items they cannot live without, explaining how they are made.
For example, well-known wordsmith Susie Dent and star of Countdown, revealed in the first episode of the ten-part series that she cannot live without the Oxford English Dictionary.
The podcast then revealed the role that copper has played in the evolution of printing to digital data storage for an electronic dictionary. Nigel Stewart, chief scientist at Rio Tinto, shared insights about the sustainable extraction of copper, and the role of the circular economy.
Similarly, singer songwriter Cerys Matthews, explaining that she can’t live without her climbing equipment, learned about people climbing mountains in the 14th century for religious purposes. Rio Tinto’s chief technical officer Mark Davies joined to discuss the transition from iron to aluminium in making the equipment, as well as an explanation of how aluminium is mined.
Another episode explained the two sources of salt, how it is extracted and the fact that archaeologists found evidence of salt manufacturing dating back 6,000 years.
The podcasts, which are targeted at 25 to 60 year olds, with an interest in science, sustainability or Rio Tinto, have been downloaded more than 200,000 times, and over its first season was in the top one per cent of podcasts worldwide based on downloads.