Now There's a Helium Shortage and It Affects More Than Balloons

Nicholas Snyder (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Tracy, one of the things that I've been learning over the last few weeks is that a lot more than oil comes through. No, for real. Like, so, you know, if someone said, okay, there's war breaking out in the Middle East, you just think about oil, right? And then, that's probably actually where my mind would typically stop, what's the price of oil? And we all are watching the price of oil, but there are a lot of other things that are sourced from the region that are of critical importance. I'm not joking, like I'm just saying.

Tracy Alloway (0:51)

I'm laughing because we have one of those things floating between us. So speaking of stuff that comes out of the Gulf region, here's one of those things.

Joe Weisenthal (1:02)

Listeners can't see it.

Tracy Alloway (1:03)

Not the aluminum itself, although probably aluminum also comes out of the Gulf, but helium.

Joe Weisenthal (1:09)

Tracy's holding a helium balloon, she went out and got a prop.

Tracy Alloway (1:11)

I didn't, one of our lovely producers did. I have to say, I haven't held a balloon for a long time, and it's surprisingly entertaining.

Joe Weisenthal (1:20)

So, okay, while you hold on to it, I'll go a little bit further, which is, I feel bad for the people on helium because my understanding is that the helium has some pretty important industrial properties. There's not a lot of substitutes for it, but someone says helium and they're like, oh, the clowns are going to be able to make their funny voices, et cetera.

Tracy Alloway (1:37)

Any chance we have to actually bring one of the commodities that we talk about on the show into the studio, I'm going to seize. So here is some helium.

Joe Weisenthal (1:46)

Well, look, the fact that the balloon is floating is an indicator of the fact that it must have some interesting properties as an element that perhaps have other applications. I don't know. I mean, it tells you something about it as an element.

Tracy Alloway (1:58)

Well, it's funny you mentioned that because initially I was going to take this balloon and do the thing where you breathe in the helium and have the funny voice. Well, I thought for an audio medium, maybe it would work. But then in the course of researching on helium, I read about apparently it comes partially from radioactive decay. And so I thought, well, maybe I don't want to be breathing in the helium. Although I also read that it's non-toxic. So I don't know. We need to talk about what helium actually is, clearly.

Joe Weisenthal (2:23)

That's right. And we've been getting requests for a helium episode ever since. There was a headline out today, some helium production that is not going to... It's not one of those force measures or something like that. I don't know. Whatever. Or something not coming out. Anyway, there's been a lot of requests for a helium episode. We've never done one. Incidentally, years ago, I used to lift weights with this guy. He's from the East Village. He's sort of an entrepreneur and stuff like that.

Tracy Alloway (2:47)

Helium-filled weights?

Joe Weisenthal (2:48)

No, but he was in helium. Among other things, he's one of these guys that has his fingers, hands and everything. He also had a helium venture. He's like, oh, you gotta talk to my friend. One day, you guys should do an episode on helium. Then I got connected with our guest, who we're about to introduce in a second. I said, hey, do you know this guy in the East Village? Because maybe not everyone in Canada knows each other, but everyone in the helium industry almost certainly knows each other. He's like, oh, yeah, of course I know that guy who used to live in Wade-Swiss.

Tracy Alloway (3:16)

It does seem to be a small concentrated industry, which is why we're talking about it today.

Joe Weisenthal (3:21)

Which is why we're talking about it today. Anyway, what is helium? Why is it important? Where do we get it? Why is it impaired right now? Many questions that people want answered. Very excited to say we do have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Nick Snyder, founder and CEO of North American Helium, which mines and sells helium out of Canada. So Nick, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Nicholas Snyder (3:41)

Joe, Tracy, thanks for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (3:43)