Introduction

The transition to electric vehicles is coming along at a good clip, but there's a speed bump ahead. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died in a hospital in Moscow, aged 91. The rising demand for batteries may outstrip the capacity to manufacture them or even the capacity to mine the materials they require. And a full 50 years ago, an artist named Michael Heiser started working on City, a vast sculpture carved into the landscape of the Nevada desert.