Helium - 51 minutes

This episode explains the strange economic reality of helium. You rely on this gas for MRI scans and semiconductor manufacturing. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, yet it remains incredibly rare on Earth. Our planet loses roughly 90 tonnes of helium into space every single day. We detail how the United States government stockpiled massive amounts of the gas and then flooded the market at artificial discounts due to a 1996 law. This decision depressed global prices and encouraged decades of waste. The federal government officially sold the last of its reserves to private industry in 2024 for 423.35 million dollars. You need to know this history to understand why your costs for this exhaustible resource will rapidly increase as the market finally adjusts to true physical scarcity.