Carol thats right. From fighter jets, electric cars, lasers, and the marks it market for nitrous oxide cold brew. Jason here is joel weber on the elements. Joel what we decided to do was to cover every single element on the periodic table because it ultimately, these are all business stories. This is the story of business. Carol you took us places that were a lot of surprises for us. We think of it as developed a long time ago. And, it is such a bigger, broader thing and means a lot today. Joel and is the wrong way to think about it. If you associated with High School Chemistry class and you get anxiety. Things like helium, party city was Closing Stores because there is a helium shortage, and there are entrepreneurs trying to solve the problem. Or lithium, and you think about Battery Technology and what electric vehicles will be possible, or hydrogen. So everyone of these things, these are things we take for granted, like a computer chip and how many elements are required to make this. So they are kind of hidden in plain sight, and yet they are absolutely fundamental to the modern economy, and the future of business. Jason right. So put this in the perspective of a year of businessweek, how does this fit into the broader Editorial Mission . Joel a lot of what we do is try and get behind the stories. Right . One of the ways that i think this has played out is the trade war. Rare earths, for example, have come up as a hot button topic because china happens to control a lot of the supply chain for them. There has been this great concern about what does it mean when rare earths might only come from china, where else can we get these things . We talking about when we talk about rare earths . We are talking about the periodic table of elements. Greenland, Donald Trumps preferred acquisition, it is so resource rich that one of the reasons that i think it become such a fascinating topic is because it is packed with the future of where we think these rare earths will come from. Carol i was thinking about how it was the Building Blocks for so much. But we think about it differently, especially in this Climate Change environment world. We look at it in a different way. Joel carbon is one of those elements as well. Carbon is an absolute war course. There are a lot of elements that are totally useless or that we do not have uses for it yet, but there is carbon which has more potential in terms of how we are able to sequester it and build things in the future. So, yes. Carol not done with it. Jason one of the ways that this is the joel weber businessweek, it is very character driven. You have people through which you tell these stories, entrepreneurs, people who you are not quite sure whether they are on the up and up, but clearly these are people with a lot of ambition. Joel there is one who thinks he has the next great jewelry. Right . And it is a little pricey, will it become the next big thing . There is a guy who basically hordes elements, that he thinks that there will be a market for in 20 years time. You suddenly need something to make a photocopier with new material, and he is the guy who cornered the market. You will have to be dealing with the middleman, effectively. It really speaks to we think about how do we tell stories that stick to you long after you have read them. Oftentimes, one way that we do that is by finding characters, who once you start reading about them and learning about them, you cannot look away because of how fascinating they are. And that gets us back to the table, because it is endlessly fascinating. How it came into being, and that it continues to resonate. Jason well, and i was going to say, there is is a character behind the creation of the table. Joel dimitri mendeleev. He was the guy who actually created it. Ultimately, he created the org chart inl business history. Carol we are spreading the coverage over a couple of weeks, it is a double issue. I know i cannot ask you to pick a favorite, but is there a story , you saw it and you thought, oh my god, this is exactly what i envisioned. Joel they are all special, but peter coys opening remarks on why matter Still Matters is incredibly illuminating about why this is crucial for business. I think austins story about the jewelry guy is amazing. One more than any other element, we had pitches for helium. Everybody loves helium. Carol it was describing the existential crisis of party city. Joel your balloons will not be hanging on the ceiling, they will be on the floor. Jason the special elements issue is interactive online. Carol that is where you can search for stories by elements on the table. This is where you can find a virtual peter coy with his remarks on why periodic table elements are more important than ever. Peter hello, im peter coy. You might has well thought about the Bloomberg Businessweek magazine know about the periodic table of elements . It turns out there is a strong connection between elements and business, not just gold and silver, but also silicon, lithium for batteries, uranium for nuclear energy, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Carbon is both vital for life, and a huge pain in the climate neck. You may think we live in a Virtual World where value is created by ideas, that it takes dozens of elements to make the computers that house all of those ideas, and the more technology advances, the more elements we find uses for. That is why, on the 150th anniversary of the formulation of the periodic table matter will matter. Jason up next, rare earth in the u. S. , china hits back. Carol why greenland is trumps treasure island. Jason this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am jason kelly. Carol i am carol massar. Join us every day on the radio starting at 2 00 p. M. Wall street time, and catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast on apple podcast, soundcloud, and bloomberg. Com. Jason you can find us online and our mobile app. We are breaking down businessweeks elements issue, including how rare earths are part of that neverending u. S. China trade war. Carol thats right, jason. The metals are necessary for all kinds of consumer and industrial includes and that smartphones, solar panels, and defense technology. And check this out, china accounts for at least 70 of the global supply. Jason so taylor riggs is helping us break it down in a bloomberg way. Taylor we know there is a rare earth metal etf, because that is the way we do things. This gives us a good gauge of where we are. As you know, march 2018, we will call it the start of the trade fight. In white on top, we are looking at the trade prices falling that make a lot of Consumer Electronics and batteries. Very interesting on the bottom, in blue. You have the fund flows into the etf. So you are seeing investors really buying into this hoping fight will ber resolved if they do not see tariffs on rareearths. Carol a good illustration especially with the trade war. Rareearths also explain why president is interested in taking greenland off denmarks hands. We break that down. From the greenland perspective it is important for them to develop these Mining Operations because they have trying to become independent from denmark for a long time. They achieved a big step in that in 2008, they passed a referendum that move powers from denmark to greenland. And now, they need to develop the economy, which is agricultural and small. And since there is so much International Interest in rare earth metals, that is a big part of their plan. Carol ok, but it has not happened so far. Jillian development has been slow because of the hostile environment. But as International Attention picks up, the momentum in the interest picks up, and that might accelerate. Carol what i also thought was interesting is that china has investments there. Jillian they do, and the u. S. Geological survey has been on the ground for months. This sort of announcement by thisdent trump, or admission by President Trump that he was interested in buying greenland was interesting. Did not quite make sense. Jillian and yet we have had a Diplomatic Mission there on the ground. Talk about the pictures. You guys sent a photographer there and got a bunch of pictures. You look at the wilderness and see how it is a tough territory in terms of developing. You took pictures of some of the rare earth minerals. The potential, it seems like there is an awful lot. Jillian one of the images we n image where we have rocks that are glowing fluorescent under black light, and this mineral that we are seeing that is glowing indicates the presence of rare earth metals. You can see a lot of them going and theres a lot of potential for mining. Carol what is interesting is that there has been mining in the past. Jillian denmark banned uranium mining as part of a Nuclear Nonproliferation action, and that was, to be overturned , but that operation has not gotten started. Carol there is one town that everybody is focusing on. Jillian the area around it is particularly rich in these minerals. Carol you guys are working on stories. You have been working on this for a while. Just over the last couple of weeks we are talking about greenland because of President Trump and his interest in it. Jillian it fell into our laps. Carol what do you think in terms of our audience, viewers, and listeners, the takeaway. Jillian it does sort of bring the global interest in greenland and the global interest in these metals into perspective. The extent to which they are used, the extent to which they are found in greenland, and all of the various claims kind of brings it all together. Jason more from our special issue, the elements. How one mans passion help build the Digital World. Carol speaking of digital fitbit expands a chip from , hardware to software. We sit down with james park. Jason this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am jason kelly. You can also listen to us on the radio. 1061 in boston, 9091 fm and washington, d. C. Carol on the 150th anniversary of the periodic table, businessweek explores why it is greatest org chart in history. Jason it is part of the elements issue that covers all of the elements including germanium and one mans passion for it helped build the Digital World. Here is dan. Dan he was obsessed, and other people were working on silicon, he was trying to say no, germanium is the stuff. His particular passion was creating a form that had incredibly high quality and purity. Carol Perfect Place to be doing this, although he had a pushy to push his case, make his case. They were pushing him off the side and finally he was like, go work on it. He had to work on a lab, kind of cloak and dagger, office hours, in the middle of the night and clean up before he left. Tell us about that. Daniel he was obsessed with the use of germanium while the people with slightly higher prestige were working with silicon, and he said you guys are missing it. And his superiors allowed him to basically shift his work schedule so he worked overnight to work on purifying the germanium crystal and there was a moment where he got it right and they said, ok, you can come work in the daytime and we will use this product, and it changed the approach. Carol in doing this story, what is it that stuck out . I feel like this is not an individual that we talk about. It is not one of those scientists that is a household name, but what he did was dramatic. Daniel i think people who know the history of technology, they do know his name. He is just below that level where he is a household name. But his contribution was really very significant. Carol well, they ended up having a dedicated lab to him in particular. Daniel think of that. What is it like to grow germanium crystals for a living. . It is an odd thing to perfect, but that was his passion. Carol he eventually by the end of 1952, he went to Texas Instruments and they were focusing on transistor technology. Tell us about his time there. Daniel at bell, they had been doing germanium, but it became evident that silicon would be a superior product for certain kinds of applications, specifically, it was for applications that produced a lot of heat, as in military applications. This was during world war ii. So there was a shift to silicon, and he did that work. Despite his passion for germanium, he led in the shift to silicon, and the shift the production of the early silicon transistors, which became this big phenomenon. There is an anecdote about him wowing the crowd by pulling a silicon transistor from his pocket. Because that is the kind of wows thatt crowd. Carol everybody was like we are going to do this, but as a matter of fact. Daniel he said that is now. Carol i feel like with any kind of scientist, the work they do in the past and the work that they did on germanium helped them in terms of what they were able to do. He was at an advanced level because of what he had learned. Daniel he was all about making perfect crystals, so he switched materials, but he was a germanium man. Carol he was a germanium man, but it just reminds you that these individuals who brought this on, in science or looking at the periodic table, just think about what it has brought us to where we are today. Daniel what is also fascinating, when you think about bell labs, full of amazing orple who are collaborating, in some instances, not getting along. Jason and from the start of the Digital World to what is next, a lot of elements in this. Issueoutside this weeks to our sit down with fitbit chairman, james park. Carol the company had struggled to compete against Bigger Companies such as apple and samsung. Shares are down 85 from its ipo price. Jason in an effort to convince investors, fitbit is launching a new Subscription Service called fitbit premium. It is part of a new lineup announced earlier this week. James we have a lot of exciting announcements across services, as you mentioned, and devices as well. It is all too and support of our companys mission which is to make everyone healthier and to make Health Accessible to everybody. That is important for us. At the same time we are in the middle of transforming our company from being a purely company to being more a services and Device Company with more recurring Revenue Streams. Premium is an important step in that transformation. What we announced is an allinone comprehensive Health Service that takes data from your wrist, and turns it into actionable guidance and coaching that helps you get more active, eat better, and sleep better. It has programs, content, coaching, motivation in the form of health games, a Health Report that you can take to your doctor. Carol heres Something Else you can do. You did this, now heres can help. Else that james it is beyond the metrics and the data. So how do we actually coach and guide you to the next app, and that is important and what we have been hearing. Jason tell us more about that, because clearly this is a response to the market. What did you specifically hear previous products that got you to this . James it is not so much from the market, but from the customer. Data from a lot of our users. We also see how well that they are doing, how much weight they are losing, and we felt that focusing more on software and services aspect of health was the next step in getting our users to become healthier. I think we had taken to the limit of what we could do with giving people a metric and they needed to understand what to do with the data. Carol i agree. Jason and i talk about this a lot. We think that the health care area, almost everybody has some kind of device tracking their this youre metrics at point. Are competing with big players, apple, and samsung among them. Have significant market share. They have significant market share. How do you compete . James we are the number two wearable brand. People know the fitbit brand on being focused on health and fitness rather than 100 other things as well. So the way we design our products reflects that. For instance, our hardware has a lot of battery life, which allows us to do things like sleep tracking. R devices 24 7, and sleep is such an important part of your overall health. In versa 2, there are a few more features that we are launching. Sleep score tells you how well you have slept throughout the night. We are launching smart wake, which tries to wake you up at the right moment in the morning. Carol i love those kinds of devices. It really does give you a better nights sleep. James we are trying to solve peoples problems. If we stay focused on that carol you are not worried about the other guys . James we are. Obviously, it goes without saying, you have watched the price closer than we do. They have driven the price down, help us understand what they are saying and you are saying back to them in terms of how this transformation and transition may portend that a revenue in the future. James i think investors have a wait and see attitude, and i think we acknowledge that and understand it. We had challenges earlier, being very upfront with the launch of light product. That being said, we learned a lot of lessons that we will carry forward. We are continuing to execute on our transformation, and i think what investors have to look forward to is, for instance, with the launch of premium that we are hitting important milestones. The launch of premium is going to accelerate our transformation into a business that has much more predictable Revenue Streams and we are doing things that even accelerate that. So for instance, we announced a deal with singapore. Carol you beat apple to get that . Is that true . James we cannot talk about the competitive element. But the government of singapore is a very forwardlooking nation. We are happy to work with them to try and improve the health of their citizens. The next step is with the launch of premium and versa 2, we are bundling them together at retail and trying to transform the idea of fitbit not as a hardware company, but a Solutions Company that includes both hardware and software. Carol you can listen to more of our interview with james park. Find that on our businessweek extra podcast. Jason get that whatever you get your podcast. Still ahead, we speak to the editor behind the special elements issue. Plus, in the boom and bust game of Precious Metals, things start to mask for one of the rarest metals on the planet. Jason that is next on Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am carol massar. Jason and i am jason kelly. Still ahead, more from our elements special issue. It is the 150th anniversary of the periodic table. Carol and its not your normal issue, it is also not your normal take on the table. Jason a huge relief to me. [laughter] carol thing you would say that. It is also more on chemistry in business and how its getting stronger. Jason it covers all of the elements, including those the Power Electric cars. Carol and turning seawater into a cult culinary following. Jason for more on how this special issue devoted to the elements and their significance to the world came together, here is the editor behind it all, jeremy king. Jeremy last year, we started talking about doing Something Like this. We wanted to focus on metals and things bloomberg does really well. Then we thought, why not do it around the periodic table . Then we found out it was the 150th anniversary, and it just felt like it had to happen. Carol tell us about coming up with stories. Jeremy the head of the Commodities Team was our first stop, asking people to send ideas of what is going on in the world of Precious Metals. And was sent out to our network of writers and we said, hey, we are doing the entire table. That means we need a lot of ideas. They dont need to be take, some can be long, some can be short. We did silver and gold, we had our photo editor who just loves this stuff, so she found some amazing photography to do with it and it all took off from there. Jason how did you sort through that . I almost feel like there is a matrix area you start with a table, then you have to matrix over how you tell the stories. Jeremy right, what will be most important six months from now. At the time we were discussing it, the helium shortage, everybody was talking about the party city balloons story and we are have ideas sent to us. We decided, weve got one, how is this going to be resolved . That was the approach we decided we wanted to take. We had a writer who had an idea tanzania, geologists suggest that there could be helium reserves othere. Jason what was the toughest one to get your head around . Jeremy oh boy. In some ways, there were two. One was uranium because it is such a powerful symbol of the table. There is the bomb, there is nuclear power, all these byproducts that come out of the production of uranium. It took us quite a while to decide that we wanted to look at china and nuclear reactorbuilding. They are one of the only countries who are still gung ho about nuclear power. And the other is carbon. As you would expect, there are so many we could have looked at Climate Change, diamonds, we could have looked at anything. Carol everything, right . Jeremy thats what we ended up doing. Looking at carbon and special and how, especially in the last couple hundred years, in the era of industrial chemistry, how we have used it to create this material that we can build on these products around. Carol i think thats the slogan, living better through chemistry. Its going to one era and a different one today. Chemicals, putting chemicals in everything. And then maybe we think about it in cleaner fuel and energy and different types of Building Blocks. Jeremy i think there is a lot of awareness now that we have era,through this virtual all this excitement about Silicon Valley and the ideas and things you can experience through our phones, that sort of thing. People are starting to think more about the ethics about the where is the global that goes into the batteries from, where due to rare earths we need to make solar panels come from and can we resolve the ethical issues around them . Jason in some stories, you get into this notion of diamonds, maybe they are not so cool. [laughter] carol i love that story. Jason that was a twist i did not see coming. Jeremy yeah, and how do we prescribe diamonds to some things . They are cool, but there also a story about marketing. So we have this German Institute that is like, well osmium is , rare and it can be made beautiful. Lets get on it. So we follow him or he tries to pitch his osmium. Jason we spoke with reporter austin carr. Carol who traveled to nevada to meet with an eccentric entrepreneur who is betting big on the element that could disrupt the diamond industry. There is a wizard behind the story, a crazy german guy. His name is inge wolf. I thought it was a fake name at the beginning. [laughter] he has been working on what we described as alchemizing one of the most Precious Metals on earth and trying to make it a sort of the next generation environment. I dont know what you guys wear, wedding bands or rings, but hopefully if you are wearing diamonds, he thinks that market in the next couple of years, and his bet is to replace it with osmium. Jason who is he . He has a unique past. He describes himself as everything from a rockabilly singer to a serial entrepreneur to someone who has started 14 , ventures. Everything from an electric car company to an online tv company. He grabbed in germany and had this long career in the Business Space let eventually got interested in commodities, got , thened in all firms that eventually in 2017 at a commodities conference in europe, he met this guy we cant name him, we promised we would not name him who developed this crystallization process to turn raw osmium, which can cause damage to your lungs and stain your corneas black, so that you can see anymore carol highly toxic. Austin highly toxic. so taking that crystallizing , that, rendering it harmless, and turning it into something incredibly shiny. If youve seen them in person, they have this bluish, beautiful finish and they do sparkle more than diamonds. You just have to balance their cost, whether this is a longterm investment. There was only 38 kilograms of u. S. Lastorted to the year, compared to 60,000 kilograms of platinum. Jason diamonds are overhyped, they estimate there are trillions of diamonds buried many years surface. Diamonds are forever . No, they can burn. Diamonds are unique . No. And synthetic diamonds are naturally cheaper than their natural counterparts. He really has not done sorry to your hands the entire diamond market. [laughter] carol they were brilliant in terms of creating a marketing machine to get everyone to buy diamonds. Austin i think that is one of the compelling parts of this. The subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that focuses on Precious Metals, the cmo of that company said, you cant just take shining rocks and throw the jewelry. You have to develop an emotional marketing story. It was only 100 years ago that debeers started selling the idea of an Engagement Ring as something synonymous with commitment that did not exist. The idea is you have to do that with osmium. It is one thing to have a natural element of, it is harder, it has the higher abrasion resistance, it doesnt burn, its harder than a diamond. But you actually have to sell it as, hey, this is something that symbolizes my love to you, and that is how you are going to turn it from a rock into a longterm symbol of love. Carol i love that you brought up Berkshire Hathaway, your precious metal subsidiary, they are looking into this. Boston that is what i was told. The cmo told me he was very this guy with the talk gave in reno, and he is looking into it. Other people were skeptical. We talked to a geochemistry professor who was concerned about the claims they make about toxicity and whether it is completely immune for humans. Jason up next, the elements that drive electric cars. Carol plus, a frothy update to your cup of coffee. Jason this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Im jason kelly. Carol and i am carol massar. Join us for bloombergs best route every day on the radio starting at 2 00 p. M. Wall street time you can also catch. Up on our daily show. Check out our podcast. Jason and you can find us online at businessweek. Com and through our mobile app. Back to our special elements issue. It is the 150th anniversary of the periodic table we have an indepth look at why matter Still Matters. Carol and the elements of the Power Electric cars and the ethical concerns. If the 20th century was the age of the internal combustion engine, the 21st century will belong to the battery. By 2040, the majority of cars will be powered by batteries, they will admit far fewer pollutants and gas guzzlers. But the elements used in batteries provide their own environmental challenges. Lithium is a water guzzler. If prices stay low, it may not be worth the cost to mine. The industry may opt for the more environmentally riskier method of pumping saltwater underground. Nickel is used in lithium ion batteries, boosting Energy Density to let electric vehicles travel faster and farther. But it is not clear whether miners in indonesia should keep nickeldy stream of ne coming. Cobalt presents an ethics problem. There are terrible conditions for miners in congo, the worlds top producer. Some of the workers reporters re are asd the young as four years old. For more on mining cobalt jason we caught up with the writer behind the story in london. About two thirds of the worlds supply comes from the drc. And you established Mining Companies there working with ron do the same kind of Industrial Mining practices that you would see elsewhere in the industry, but there is also a large chunk of supply that comes from much more informal mining methods commitment have workers exploiting deposits by hand and often in very dangerous working conditions. And that is something that really, up to this point, the industry has really focused on how to solve the cobalt problem. Is at anhe industry early stage in working out how to tackle this problem. To theind of similar s difficultytry with blood diamonds, for example. Or coffee. It is something everyone loves and cant do without, but there has been a very concerted effort in the Agricultural Industry to kind of reassure consumers that they can buy coffee from sustainable sources. Vw, bmw, etook at cetera, in the early stages of developing different sources, assuring systems to say there may be problems but we are certifying our cobalt to make sure that it is coming from reputable and sustainable sources. Carol smart, but i do wonder about this. I am thinking about people listening, we all know that with batteries everywhere, especially with electric vehicles. Are they easier to make, are they able to be recycled . I think we need to think more about the environment. I know that you dig into some of that, where are we going when it comes to that . Mark if you look at the demand projections for electric vehicles, people expect them to take off in the way mobile phones did, in the way microwaves or fridges did. So the question now is, considering the size of the batteries that go into these vehicles, the industry as a whole and consumers, too, are looking with greater focus at what kind of told that would take on the resources that go into these cars. For instance, looking at lithium, for instance, it is perhaps very beneficial to be using it, because it can be recycled, the batteries can be recycled, but in terms of the way it is produced now, a large majority of it comes from the atacama desert in chile, one of the driest races on earth. You need to extract the lithium by evaporating it from brine water and extracting water from the water table in one of the driest places on earth perhaps isnt an ideal alternative to the gas and oil industry we are leaving behind. Jason coming up, more from our business make special elements issue, why matter Still Matters, especially when it comes to food. Carol we talk about the power of salt and nitro brew. This is Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am carol massar. Jason and i am jason kelly. You can also listen to us on the radio, on sirius xm channel 119, and on a. M. 1130 in new york, 106. 1 in boston, 99. 1 f. M. In washington, d. C. Carol a. M. 960 in the bay area, over in london on dab digital, and of course, through the p. Oomberg business ap back to our special double issue, a look at how the periodic table shaped and continues to shape business 150 years later. We turn now to sodium. Jason heres our contributor in d. C. With Dassault King of america you had ben runs his own salt operation on the coast of oregon. He pumps in seawater from a bay, and through a series of processes, evaporation, boiling, hydrating, he makes his own flaky sea salt. This is what he does now and what he has for almost the last 10 years, after bouncing around some Tech Companies and leaving Silicon Valley. Jason why salt . There a great origin story here. Carol Silicon Valley to salt. Jason is not a natural straightline. Andrew no, it is not. He was living in europe and going to business school. He had some extended family there. At one point, he was making a dinner of canned mackerel and findla, whatever you could cheaply at the store, and he said his girlfriend at the time handed him some sea salt. He put it on his meal and he said it was one of the best meals hes ever had. When he came back to the states, he started looking around for other brands of sea salt and just couldnt find anything aside from maldon. Then he embarked on trying to make his own salt, and i think his first attempt was he bought one of those inflatable kiddie pools, filled it up with seawater and just plunked it in his backyard. After month, it was still seawater. Carol i was doing that the other day. What is interesting is, and you put the stats in your story, the Global Market for gourmet salt is 1. 1 billion in 2016, expected to 1. 5 billion in the next decade. We are talking about a pretty decent market. Andrew yeah, and its only growing. There is this interesting evolution of it. Many did not think too much about sea salt but i spoke to someone from the show americas test kitchen. He was telling me that more and more chefs at restaurants are thinking about what sorts of salt they are using and this has trickled down to mainstream america. Instead of just buying normal table salt, you go to the store and find different see salts. You can find pink himalayan salts, these flaky salts, all of these different varieties. Carol what is interesting is this pursuit of refining the taste. He talked labout the waters in there, and the oysters right, and how it had a positive impact. Andrew yeah. There is this great story of him driving around in his car with his great portuguese water dog, filling up the markets full of water, he lands on the spot on the bay because there are thousands of oysters that are already pulling stuff like calcium out of the seawater. Because this is how they make their shells, and that in itself begins refining the seawater, so to speak, so that once jacobsons facility starts pumping it in, you already have seawater that is on its way to becoming good salt. From what we eat, to what we drink. We have how the big names in the Coffee Business are using nitrous oxide to mix up your morning cup of joe. Coffee is just beans that have been picked, roasted, and brewed. There is not that much you can do historically to change a cup of coffee, and yet, nitrogen, ta da here comes nitrogen. Some certainly know it from beer, but what it does if you pump nitrogen gas which has no color or odor, if you pump it in, it creates soft bubbles and gives it a creamy flavor and slight sweetness. Carol different than a cappuccino machine . Kate yeah, its not Strong Enough for hot coffee. I think the pressure of the boiling water adds a texture of its own and then you add milk and thats creaminess. But for a nitro cold brew, there is generally not milk in it. You dont have to add milk. More spoiler alerts coming up in inute [laughter] nitrogen ads it is coming out of the tap and there is this gentle cascade of bubbles and it will form a foam on the top. Carol like a beer. Kate yeah. A good nitro brew coffee will look like a beer. Carol where was it that somebody was sitting around with their cup of ice coffee and said wait, we can do something different. Where did this come from . Kate it blew up and exploited in seattle, and there are different urban theories. According to one source, it might have started in queens as an experiment, i think, with a beer keg. Supposedly, the most popular theory was that it started in austin around someone with too 2012. Much time, probably over caffeinated, hacked, took his nitro tap and put it in coffee, and the result captivated everybody. Carol lets talk about this. There are a couple companies that are pretty big players. One of them is out west, in portland, oregon. Talk to us about stumptown. Kate exactly. Seattle, everyone thinks of seattle as the coffee capital this town has been a major player in the coffee scene, and it has really, really come up in a big way. So stumptown was also an early startedto this, they playing around with kegs and nitrogen. By 2015, i think they introduced their first cans. What is really cool about them is to have created these cans with a tiny widget that you can put nitrogen in. Through force of nature, when you pop open the can, the pressure from the gas explodes. So when you pour it out, you get that satisfying cascade of bubbles and everything. Jason Bloomberg Businessweek is available on newsstands now. Carol yes indeed, it is also online on businessweek. Com. It is also on our mobile app. Jason what is your mustread . Carol peter coy, i love it. Taking a look at the periodic table, it has been around 150 years, it takes us back to our chemistry class all the but itents in chem lab, is an important table even more than ever before, and peter explains that so well. Jason there was a character behind the periodic table, one of my favorites coming courtesy of austin carr. Osmium, the details in the tory, so rich, and, who knows, maybe thats what you will be wearing. Carol maybe its not diamonds anymore. Jason you can find more stories online over the weekend. Can check out our podcast, available on apple podcast, spotify and anywhere you get your podcast. Jason more Bloomberg Television starts right now. At comcast, we didnt build the nations largest gigspeed network just to make businesses run faster. We built it to help them go beyond. Because beyond risk. Welcome to the neighborhood, guys. There is reward. Beyond work and life. Who else could he be . There is the moment. Beyond technology. There is human ingenuity. Every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected, to do the extraordinary. Take your business beyond. David so you started your own company at what age . John i was 24. David and where did you get the money to capitalize it . John my mom gave me everything she had that was liquid. My dad gave me what he thought he could afford to lose. David one of the boards you are on is mcdonalds, and it is said that you eat mcdonalds every day. Is that true . John it is just about every day. David so in chicago, did you ever play basketball with barack obama . John yes, several times. David and is he that good a player . John hes a very good player. Would you fix your tie, please