Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Rhodium

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Rhodium is one of the most valuable precious metals on Earth, though it has dropped in value by about 80% in the last year. Learn why by clicking play.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join former 90210 star Brian Austin Greene, along with Dancing with the Stars fan favorite Sharna Burgess and Hollywood air-turned-life coach Randy Spelling as they navigate life, love, and the quest for happiness in the new podcast, Oldish. After a few high-profile relationships and a very public divorce, have I finally found the secret to happiness and the key to a successful relationship? That's harps our, because that is what it is with me. Listen to Oldish on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh and there's Chuck.

And let's take it back to Christmas Eve, the year is 1800, and I'm an English scientist named William Hyde Walliston. Who are you Chuck? I guess that would make me your colleague Smith's Intinent. Neil Tennant's great great great great great grandfather. I don't believe you have enough phone for anything anymore. Okay. So what are we doing on this Christmas Eve 1800? Well, we're, we're unwrapping a very special thing, precious metal, platinum ore. That's right.

We paid a stop there. We paid a pretty penny for it too. It came from what we would call Columbia today, what Walliston and Tenant Us called Nueva Granada, which is fancy, but they paid something like 795 pounds for it, which in 1800 there be a thousand dollars and today it'd be like 23,000 dollars. I would have thought inflation would have made that way more, but still that's a decent amount of money to pay for a hunk of platinum, even back then. The reason why they paid so much for it and

why they had to smuggle it out is because it was essentially pure platinum, which is very, very hard to find. And one of the reasons that Wallace and Juan did it was because he was trying to figure out how to create a chemical reaction that could make platinum malleable and therefore even more useful than it already was. That's right. He's like, I think I can do it. I'm pretty smart. And I think we can get a lot of uses

out of valuable platinum. And so he worked on it for a few years, or rather you worked on it for a few years. And you helped? I helped a little bit. I got your tea and stuff like that. Latched at your jokes. Kind of like this podcast.

Aw. Here's your tea, by the way. Thanks. And he eventually would, by the way. Thanks. And he eventually would, or you eventually would get that chemical process down pat and isolate that platinum. And it was, in fact, malleable. But what he noticed was, was like, wait a minute, there's something left over here, these reddish salts.

And like, what in the world could this be? And it turns out that Walliston and Tenet had also discovered not just one other precious metal, but two, we're gonna focus on Rhodium, but they also discovered palladium. Yeah, pretty neat stuff. That's a big bang for your buck. And the reason they called it Rhodium

is after the Greek word for rose, which is rhodon, right? Which sounds like kind of like a robot that assembles from different parts and fights. I was gonna say the same thing. So, and the reason why is because those salts are kind of like a reddish rose color. So that's pretty cool. That's a great name right off of the bat.

But even more than that, they figured out that Rhodium and palladium were related to platinum. They're part of what's called the platinum group metals Don't know if that's a band name or not. I was waiting for it. It may be like a prog rock like a all-star prog rock band Yeah, that's not metal. No, not at all. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, it's one of the noble metals It is the Rodeum as it has a metals. It is the roadium has a chemical It's a chemical element with a symbol RH atomic number 45 and It is in the group with iridium and ruthenium and platinum pladium. What else?

Don't forget iridium and osmium. Yeah, so it's a pretty big deal that they found this And also obviously golden silver, also precious metals. And it turns out that Rhodium is super valuable today and very useful today. Yeah, one of the rare. It is rare. It's incredibly rare actually. It's I guess almost never found or never found in pure form.

It's found in alloys with other stuff. And it's usually found in just minuscule amounts. So it's rare, it's scarce. And it was until very recently in really high demand, so much so that the price of an ounce of rodeo in April of 2021 was approaching $30,000 in ounce. Yeah, that was the peak. That rodeo peak. That's one of the most expensive commodities on the planet. If not the most expensive, I'm not sure. What's interesting, Chuck, though,

is that it's now down to about $4,000 an ounce and I say we don't tell anybody why until we come back for a message break. Sounds good. Our first call is Mary in Lexington Kentucky. Mary, welcome to the middle. Hello and thanks for having me. If you really want to know what's going on in this country heading into the 2024 election, you have to get away from the extremes and listen to the middle. Hi, my name is Venkat. I'm calling you for Atlanta Georgia.

On the new podcast, The Middle with Jeremy Hobson, I'm live every week taking your calls and focusing on Americans in the middle who are so important politically, I'm live every week taking your calls and focusing on Americans in the middle who are so important politically but are often ignored by the media. I did a lifetime democratic voter, however I was raised by moderate Republicans from Michigan. Creating space for a civil conversation about the most contentious issues we face, from climate change to artificial intelligence, from abortion rights to gun rights. I consider myself to be conservative, cis-colled, but politically independent. Listen to the Middle with Jeremy Hobson on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Hillary Clinton back with a new season of my podcast, You and Me Both.

On this show, I'll be talking to people I admire about many things, including one of my favorite subjects, Getting Things Done. We'll hear from folks and positions of power like Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries, but also writers and actors, community organizers, really anyone who shows up every day and keeps doing the work. There's so much out there to distract us, but all of my guests bring tremendous passion and commitment, an ability to block out the noise, and I should probably warn you lots of sports metaphors.

You stay calm and focused on releasing the ball, getting it to a receiver, and hopefully getting it into the end zone on behalf of the American people. So join me for this conversation and more. Listen to you and me both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we left quite a cliffhanger, a rodeo and peaked at about close to 30, thousand dollars, not too long ago and just March and April of 2021.

Now it's bound down to about four grand. I saw like 39 today, 4200 yesterday in that area and the forecast is for it to be about the same, which is still one of the most valuable metals in the world. More than gold for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's like still twice as much as gold. So it's still very, very valuable. But like anything, it's all about supply and demand. And while the supply is still low because it's still rare, it's not like they found some huge supply of it somewhere, the demand has gone way down for a lot of reasons that are pretty boring if you're someone who talks about things like financial instruments, then you might really enjoy hearing about like the 12 reasons that I found that it's not a demand. But one of the big reasons that everyone can understand is that Rodeum is one of the biggest uses is that it's used in catalytic converters, which is one reason why catalytic converters are stolen because they contain palladium platinum and rhodium and people can cut them off very easily and sell them for a lot of money.

But catalytic converters are on the decline because of the rise of electric vehicles, so thus rhodium, the demand is down. Isn't that interesting? Like just the price of rhodium indicates that the world turned a corner and it's like, yep, electric vehicles are here to stay and we don't really need catalytic converters like we used to. Yeah, it'll go back up though because the other 11 reasons are much more volatile

and not as locked in. Okay, but still, it's not, it's just not in demand. I think something like 80% of the use or the demand for rodeo was with the automotive industry, largely for catalytic converters. The reason why they use it for catalytic converters is because it is just aces at converting nitrous oxide emissions. It's crazy.

It'll some that comes out of your tailpipe, but nothing like it would without a catalytic converter. Like we would not be breathing basically right now with all the cars on the road if there weren't catalytic converters featuring rodeo. And the solution to that is not more rodeo. It's fewer catalytic converters turns out. Yeah, I wrote the catalytic converter article years ago at Hellstuff Works. How was it?

It was a slog, my friend. Oh, best. Yeah. a year ago, it helps stuff work. How was it? It was a slog, my friend. It was a bad. Yeah, as someone, you know, I think for both of us, we're not super car guys, so, or at least how cars work, so it was tough. Well, can you take 10 minutes and explain how they work real quick? I have no memory of it. But what I do remember is you said 80%

as far as their use in catalytic converters, also 80% That's how much rhodium South Africa is putting out about 80% of the world supplies coming from South Africa Russia is number two on that list Zimbabwe is number three and there's also a and again these aren't Rhodium mines. I think they're generally platinum mines for the most part, right? But there's a platinum mine in Montana that is producing some Rhodium as well. Pretty neat. Not bad.

One of the cool things about Rhodium is that it's super shiny. It's got a beautiful, silvery white sheen to it. So it makes it very luring like Momo. Yeah, exactly. It has like a lot of like attractiveness. It also is very hard, which is a double-edged sword for jewelers. It makes it really hard to make jewelry out of, but if you can figure out how to plate rodeo on to other kinds of jewelry, it will make it super shiny and super hard and durable. And that's one way that they have figured out how to use rodeo as they plate it.

And to plate it, you actually have to dissolve it in certain kinds of acids and that causes fumes. And you do not want to breathe those fumes. But if you can successfully avoid breathing the fumes, you can plate jewelry with rodeo and you'll be pretty happy with the result afterwards I hear. Yeah, it is actually one of the least toxic of those precious metals, but it is that the fumes that are harmful for sure,

so they have found ways to work on it as jewelers to avoid those fumes. Another great part about rodeo among jewelry is that it's hypoallergenic. Sometimes if you wear bracelets and rings and things that will turn your skin a different color, this avoids that. That plating of Rodeum will not turn your skin different colors. So that's another big plus. And it's also because it's hard, it's very scratch resistant, it's corrosion resistant, it's pretty hardy, but they have to do it in such a thin layer, it will wear down.

So they say if you do have a rodeo implated piece of jewelry or something, they say that you should probably not do it on like a ring, you should probably do it for like ear rings or a necklace or something that doesn't get rubbed around a lot in your skin. And you might want to think about getting it replayed every few years. And it sounds like, oh my gosh, it's the most expensive thing in the world. Why would I do that? They need so little of it to plate your jewelry that it's apparently isn't that much money.

No. I'm sure that's relative, but it's not like you would think, like, oh, it costs like 10 grand to get this thing replayed. Right, because you don't need an ounce of this stuff. No, you don't need a little tiny bit. And that's all it takes. That's all it takes. There's one other use for it that I think we should end on.

All right, let's hear it. Not only does it catalyze nitrous oxide until less harmful stuff, it is the catalyst for the reaction that produces menthol. Yeah. So if you like chewing gum or cools, you can thank Rhodium for that. Aren't they getting rid of menthol cigarettes?

They should. I thought I just saw something about that recently. I don't know, but I could definitely see us reaching that point final. I'm not sure why I would something about that recently. I don't know, but I could definitely see us reaching that point finally. I'm not sure why I would have dreamed that up, even though I had the weirdest dream ever last night, so you never know. But I thought I saw something, so anyway,

I'm sure we'll figure that out. You're not gonna share last night's dream. Oh, no, no, no, no, but it involved Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. Not some. So if you want to know more about this wonderful topic, Oh no, no, no, no. But it involved Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. Not so much. So if you want to know more about this wonderful topic, Roadium, you can go on to House Stuff Works because that's where we got this article.

And that means short stuff is apt. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are where every listen to your favorite shows.