business for good podcast episode 60 - Brian spears

Marrying Cultivated Meat & Plant-Based Meat for the Best of Both Worlds: Brian Spears Shares New Age Meats’ Gameplan

Brian Spears: [00:00:00] I kind of came to the uncomfortable realization that when I look at the big problems facing humanity and, and the biggest one I think is climate change and environmental destruction, that I wasn't really reducing the likelihood that, that, that that would happen. I was actually probably accelerating humanity toward that, and I just had to say, well, you know what?

I, I think it's time for me to, to make a change. Welcome

Paul Shapiro: to The Business for Good Podcast to show where we spotlight companies making money by making the world a better place. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, and if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you.

Welcome friends to the 60th episode of the Business for Good podcast. If you listen to the show often, you already know that the planet just is not getting any. But humanity's footprint on the planet is getting bigger, and one of the primary ways that we leave that footprint is through our footprint, principally in the amount of meat that we eat.

It just takes a lot of land, a lot of water, a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, [00:01:00] a lot of animal welfare problems. To produce so much meat for all of us humans. Seems pretty simple then, right? Why don't we humans upon realizing just how many problems we're causing by eating so much meat, decide to enjoy a more plant-based diet?

Well, awareness of the concerns about factory farming of animals has never been higher, and at the same time, meat consumption has also never been higher. Today we eat more meat and raise more animals for food than we ever have in human history before humans, it seems just really want to eat. But what if we could grow real meat without having to raise in slaughter animals?

No, we're not talking here about alternatives to meat. We're talking not about meat substitutes. We're talking instead about real meat. Simply grown from animal cells rather than from animal slaughter. When I wrote the book about this topic called Clean Meat, the number of companies in existence to commercialize this kind of meat could really be counted on one or two hands.

Sadly, NewAge Meats didn't yet exist when I [00:02:00] turned in the manuscript, otherwise I would've happily written about them. But NewAge Meats was one of the first such companies to be founded having gotten its start over three years ago in this space that practically qualifies the startup as part of the old.

And on this episode we've got their co-founder and C E O Brian Spears. In mid 2018, the company debuted its first sausage made with cells from a living pig who Brian's team personally biopsied. We talk in this episode about that experience and what they've been up to since back then it cost them $216 to make that historic burst sausage.

Whereas today, that number of course has been slashed. In 2021, the company is focused like a laser on figuring out how to best marry animal proteins and plant proteins together to create meat that doesn't just mimic conventional animal meat. But it's actually superior to it in numerous ways already.

NewAge Meats has brought in 7 million in venture capital funding, and the company is about to open its series A round to raise millions more. In this episode, we [00:03:00] talk about why Brian feels so passionately about hybridizing meat with plant protein as opposed to just using animal sales alone. We hear about his journey from leaving another startup.

He founded and ran for 12 years to enter the alternative protein space. Instead, we also discuss why Brian uses the term cultivated meat to describe his products and when we can expect to see more NewAge meats products. In more intestines, whether out on the market or just by taste testers like they did in 2018.

And yes, we even talk about Brian's passion outside of the Queen room on the ballroom dance floor. It's an inspirational story about a serial entrepreneur who decided to use his career, not just to make money, but also to solve a serious problem facing humanity. While making that money, I now bring you NewAge meat, c e o, Brian Spears.

Brian, welcome to the Business for Good podcast. Thanks, Paul.

Brian Spears: I appreciate

Paul Shapiro: you having me. I am really psyched to be here. So with you, so let me, uh, just start us out by asking you [00:04:00] the question I'm sure is on everyone's mind. How did it come to pass that somebody with a degree in ballroom dance is running, is running a meat.

Brian Spears: Uh, that's a good question. I have prepared for a lot of questions. I didn't prepare for this one. This is fine. I'll, I'll

Paul Shapiro: answer on the fly. Are, are you, now, you do have a degree in ballroom dance, right?

Brian Spears: So I have a minor in ballroom dance. I don't wanna oversaw myself. Okay, got it. Yeah, so a major in chemical engineering and a minor in ballroom dance.

Nice. But as I'd like to point out, there are so many overlapping classes that it really is not much of a feat, honestly. or, or two feet .

Paul Shapiro: No, that's very good, man. So that's delightful. Are, are you, uh, are you still ballroom dancing? I mean, I know during the pandemic you are unlikely to be, but is it still an interest of

Brian Spears: yours?

It certainly is. I mean, it, social dancing is really, so there are, we, we could make a whole podcast on ballroom dance, but so there, there's more like international style, like a compe in competitive style where you'll go and, uh, perform and compete and such in a very, uh, well standardized way. And [00:05:00] so there's certain figures that you'll be judged on and that type of thing.

And then there's a social dance element where essentially you'll just go to a dance and you'll ask someone to dance, and then you'll just dance together in any number of styles of dance, right? So maybe you're gonna do the Chacha or the Rumba, or maybe you'll do a waltz or a, a tangle or foxtrot. So then it's just really a lead and follow type of thing, much like people do in salsa or swing.

Uh, so it's, it's essentially just that type of lead and follow, but you're doing it with other types of dance. Mm-hmm. . Uh, so I'll still do some that sometimes it really, you, you find that, uh, it attracts an older demographic in most cases. So it, it depends on who I'm, uh, hanging out with. But, uh, I'll, I'll still kind of go and do dance, uh, you know, salsa dance or a swing dance, like I said, cuz those tend to be more people my age, frankly.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and, but I still really enjoy dancing for sure. But during the pandemic it's much more difficult. I do much more dancing alone in my living room, , which, which I also recommend don't need, don't need a minor for that. Very, very

Paul Shapiro: nice. Well, uh, a couple things. One, a colleague of mine is into ballroom [00:06:00] dancing, big time Uhhuh.

And so I'll have to introduce you to him. I'm sure you, in case you don't know him, but he, he's, he's really into it. But second I, who's

Brian Spears: gonna lead? Yeah. Okay. That's fine. We'll figure it out. Uh, I'll, I'll

Paul Shapiro: love that to you guys, but , um, uh, but I didn't know you were into swing dancing because, uh, you know, uh, my wife Tony actually got me into it and before the pandemic, we were going out like twice a week.

Um, and she used to be like, super into it. She was like an instructor. Oh, wow. And like traveled all over the world doing, or at least all over the country, rather doing, uh, various swing dancing competitions and all these events. And then she got me into it more casually and I we're going out before the pandemic twice a week.

But now we do, we do swing dance together, uh, at home during the pandemic. Yeah. Which is fun. And our dog, uh, really, really gets into it, . And he really, he tries to dance with us. So, um, but that's cool. So do you go out swing dancing now?

Brian Spears: Uh, well, I mean, I pre pandemic, uh, so I, it was, I hadn't done it here, so I moved to the Bay Area, I wanna say three years ago [00:07:00] to start this company.

And so it, it didn't allow certainly a whole lot of time in the beginning to, to dance. So I, I don't think I've been out once since I've been mm-hmm. , I've been, I've been salsa dancing a few times, but not swing dancing in the Bay Area. But I, when I lived in Austin and then Denver, I did, uh, a fair amount in both of those places.

All

Paul Shapiro: right, well, we'll, we'll have to compare notes sometime. I'm, I'm sure you were, I'm sure that you are superior to me in, in, in your, uh, dance acumen, uh, given that you have a minor in it. But, uh, someday, we'll, we'll, uh, we'll have to compare some notes here, but we have many common interests aside from swing dancing, and that's what we are really here to talk about.

Um, although, although I do think that dance can help make the world a better place too, but for the purposes of our conversation here, um, you know, NewAge Meats is not your first rodeo, so to speak, that you were actually the co-founder and c e o of a company prior to your life. Uhhuh in the meat industry, trying to grow meat without animals.

So just tell us what [00:08:00] was six clear and what happened with it. Like you ran it for many years, but what was it, first of all, and and what did you do?

Brian Spears: Sure, sure. So my, my, uh, educational background, so I just have a bachelor's in chemical engineering, and then after I graduated I went to work for a company called National Instruments out of Austin, Texas.

And they do kind of broadly, basically, they, they make the hardware and software that. Feeds all kind of frontier technology industry. So they will, they will help research labs, uh, production and like early stage production environments. So moving from research to development and then using those same types of tools to move into, uh, production like manufacturing.

So I worked for them for four years and then after a while, kind of determined that I could do this myself and, and run, run my own company. So myself and another guy co-founded Six Clear, and it essentially worked with a few different types of customers. So we worked with, for instance, some, uh, deep research [00:09:00] customers.

So we worked, uh, so for instance, some, uh, NASA and some US and Canadian National Labs and some universities, uh, were some of our customers.

Paul Shapiro: What did you do for them? Like what did the company actually do?

Brian Spears: Sure, yeah. So we did a few things. So it, we would, the first thing that we did was we taught them how to set up their research in order to essentially, Integrate the hardware and software.

So where's the data come from? Where, what, where are your sensors? Where, and then how do you gather those, that data together? How do you store it together? Then how do you make data based decision? What type of logic are you applying to it in order to determine whether your, your test passes or fails? And how do you design your experiments?

How do you think about, uh, how do you think about what your goals are experimentally? And then how does that actually play into experimental design? Uh, and, and then of course the implementation of all of that. So that was the, that was the whole industry, that that was the, the 12 years of, of being in that industry.

Paul Shapiro: Hmm. And what happened at the end of 12 years? [00:10:00]

Brian Spears: I think that increasingly as the time wore on, on, uh, during that last company started to ask just more questions on, uh, what, what, what's the point of this company, right? What, what, what is it here to do? and those reflecting back to kind of like larger questions that I have, which is, what is my point here?

What's, what's, what's the point of my life? What, what am I trying to do here? When I, when it's all said and done and I'm dead, I have a tombstone. What does it say on the tombstone? Does it say that I help people set up the research labs and I a allowed them to do the research faster and make more products.

That sounds, you know, that's, that's interesting. And it was a very interesting industry, but I didn't feel like I was actually doing anything. I kept asking, what's the whole point of it? What's the point? What, what's, what's this thing? Not just what my company's doing, but what's the whole industry doing?

What am I enabling? Essentially I'm, I'm putting gas in the car of, of, you know, different cars, of all these different cars which are going to their own destination. So I'm helping them get to where they want to go faster, [00:11:00] but, but I'm like, where are they going? Do I want them to go where they're going faster?

There were certainly some industries that I was really proud to work with. Like I said, work with NASA and some, and a lot of renewable energy companies. Um, but then there were some industries which frankly I wasn't as thrilled working at, working with. And I kind of came to the uncomfortable realization that when I look at the big problems facing humanity and, and the biggest one I think is climate change and environmental destruction, that I wasn't really reducing the likelihood that, that, that that would happen.

I was actually probably accelerating humanity toward that, and I just had to say, well, you know what, I, I think it's time for me to. To make a change. Well,

Paul Shapiro: that's certainly very revelatory and it, you know, it reminds me a little bit, I don't know if you have, um, ever heard of or read the short story by toll story called The Death of Yvonne.

I, have you heard of it? I've not, no. Uh, it's a really great short story that I recommend. I'll include a link to it in the show notes. But basically, you know, um, Yvonne Elliot is [00:12:00] leading this life where he, uh, basically is not really contributing a lot to the world and he ends up getting sick and, uh, to make a, a short story even shorter.

Mm-hmm. He, uh, is on his what may be his deathbed and he is, you know, thinking how he's gonna reform his life if he gets better. Uh, so that he'll actually lead a more purpose driven life. And not to ruin the ending for you, but he dies. , , you know, that, that's the end of it there. Um, and you know, you know, many of us don't wanna end up like Yvan, you know, we wanna have a life of, of meaning and of purpose where we actually contribute something meaningful to, to

Brian Spears: the world.

Don't wanna, I don't wanna ruin the ending for all of us, but we're all gonna die.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, that is the ending for all of us. Uh, I, I presume that even in spite of all the longevity, longevity efforts being made by, uh, many of the, uh, venture capitalists in the world, that probably immortality is not gonna be within our reach, uh, anytime soon at least.

So, um, we are gonna die. And so you decided though, that before you died, you want to do, actually try to do something for climate change, I presume, since you're saying that was the, the [00:13:00] motivating factor for you, is that what led you to think, I wanna start a company growing meat without animals? Was it climate, was it animal welfare?

Like, what was the big reason for you that you wanted to shift from your own company that you had founded and run for more than a decade to an entirely new industry for you?

Brian Spears: Yeah, the I. I definitely thought that renewable energy was where I was going to end up. In fact, I had done renewable energy research as an undergrad.

I worked in like biomass, combustion, also environmental chemistry. And so I, I was, I always really cared about it quite a bit and I worked with a lot of companies in that space. And so I was living in Austin, Texas previously, and then I moved to, uh, Denver, Colorado to be near the National Renewable Energy Lab there in Golden Colorado with the idea being that that would be, you know, the new industry that I would get into.

And so I spent a lot of time in that whole ecosystem, uh, with startups and with some of the engineers and, and young businesses. And it really struck me that the, that the, the ecosystem was much more mature. There [00:14:00] were the people that I were working with, they were kind of eeking out these single digit gains in, uh, solar conversion efficiency or battery storage efficiency.

And, and so, The, the industry was mo much of the value that could be derived was actually kind of like in the business implementation of, you know, how, how do you have better, better, uh, rental structures for rooftop solar, for instance, instead of having to a purchaser pay for all the costs upfront, how do you get this onto somebody's roof in a much more efficient way?

And, and that was actually driving more of the change. So while I thought that was interesting in his own right, uh, you know, I'm an engineer, although I've always been interested in science and technology since I was young. And, uh, I thought, well, well what's, what is really the field that's, there's a ton of white space, uh, that really still is underserved And my, my experience in.

In moving a bunch of different industries forward. Uh, I was kind of looking back and say, well, what industries are kind of the dinosaurs? There are a lot of dinosaurs in the industries, and there are any number of reason that an industry would be slower, like it'd be a dinosaur and, and slow to change [00:15:00] as opposed to some of the more fast moving industries.

And food has always been a dinosaur. And there are a lot of

Paul Shapiro: reasons for that. You know, I, I just gotta stop you for one second. Cause I always think it's so funny that, you know, we use this term dinosaur for like, uhhuh, you know, those who like won't change. But the reason that dinosaurs aren't here isn't cuz they refuse to change.

It's just cuz they didn't have a space program basically. Right. like, you know, like, it's so funny how we used the term dinosaur to uhhuh mean like someone whose like head is stuck in the sand and that they're, uh, you know, they're just out rendered obsolete. But in reality, you know, the dinosaurs dominated for such a long time.

Yes. Uh, it's a pretty amazing stretch that they had, uh, far longer than, than mammals have been around. So anyway, I, uh, I, I just have to put in my own little defense of them in, uh, you know, uh, in ab absentia for them that they were actually. Did did, they did pretty well. But yes, I hear what you're saying that yes, you know, there are many industries that are, are, are stuck in the sand For sure.

For sure. Yes.

Brian Spears: Um, so the, the food [00:16:00] industry and, and you being in the food industry, you certainly recognize this, that there are, it's, it's alar. It's a commodity based, it's a commodity industry for the most part. Uh, it's very low margins. Uh, it's tied to agriculture on early in the supply chain, which has very long cycles.

You're out, you're literally growing crops. So it's, it's a slower industry in general. And so when I looked b at the time, this was, this would've been, you know, 20 16, 20 17, uh, some of the earlier players in alternate proteins like beyond an impossible, were really shining. And it was very clear that, I mean the, the U N F A O doing their re uh, coming out with the reports showing that 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions being tied to factory farming, or i'll I'll say actually animal agriculture more broadly, um, that showed and, and there was so little.

Technology being applied to the problem. Uh, whereas again, coming from renewal energy, there's so much technology being applied to the problem. Mm-hmm. , there's almost over techno technologized, uh, I'll, I'll make that a verb. So [00:17:00] in, on the, on the alternative protein side, the more I researched it, the more I was just, in my mind it was just obvious that this industry is just ripe for moving much more quickly.

And so that, um, that, that was the start of it. So that was like 2017.

Paul Shapiro: So, so how did you know about this though? I mean, in 2017 there was nearly nothing. So there was New Harvest, you know, the Good Food Institute had just been founded. Mm-hmm. , Memphis. Mm-hmm. Meats had been founded like a year earlier. So, uh, had you, did you, had you heard of the burger that was debuted back in 2013?

Like how, how did you even know that there was this very embryonic industry of cultivated.

Brian Spears: It's a fun story. I, so I certainly during 20 15, 20 16 had, or even, even before that obviously had heard of, you know, lab grown meat at the time, uh, or clean meat, or in vitro meat or whatever people want to call it.

And, uh, I even recall hearing, uh, um, mati on Sam Harris's podcast in 2016, thinking like, oh, that's pretty cool. Uh, and becoming very interested in it at that time. And then [00:18:00] in early 2017, learning about, uh, the Good Food Institute and they were, uh, I, I saw a job ad actually just, I, I was on courts, uh, like the website and I can't even remember why I saw it, but I saw it and I'm like, what is this, uh, what is this Good food institute?

And just started looking more into what they were championing. And I just fell down a rabbit hole. I, I started reading more and more and more, and I. I was . It was one of those things I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Mm-hmm. and I started telling my friends about it and they're, they just hadn't heard anything about it.

Like, have you heard about this thing? It's, they're, it's, it's a market-based solution to creating meat. And if you create meat in this e essentially what people want is they want the experience of eating meat. They don't really want meat people. They don't wanna s slot rather, they don't want slaughter an animal.

People love meat. They hate the way it's. Right. But if people, if you could make meat a better way, that's what they want.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. And I think that I, that's one reason why I like the tagline that NewAge Meats has so much meat without slaughter. Because Yes, what you're saying seems very true to me, that people eat meat, not [00:19:00] because animals were slaughtered for it, but really in spite of that fact and that Correct.

Many people, maybe not all, but many people, I think would be quite happy to enjoy, uh, meat if it were the same, if not even better, uh, without having to put animals through all of the problems that we put them through. So, um, that seems like pretty compelling to me. But, you know, let me ask you then, you know, now, you know, you fast forward, your company has existed for about three and a half years.

There's now, you know, when you started New age meets, I mean, you could probably have counted the. Of clean meat companies on two hands, uh, that existed back then and now, uh, you know, you would probably need, um, I don't know, a lot of hands. I think there's like over 80 companies in the space now. Um, so you're, you're more of a athlete than I am, but you know, that's a lot of hands.

Right. Um, so what makes you any different than them? Uh, like how, how is New Age meets different from the other companies in the space, aside from having been earlier to the game than most of them? That's

Brian Spears: a great question. So the, the, I think the [00:20:00] biggest differentiator we, we look at is we, we look very deeply at the, and I, I kind of alluded to it just previously is, and I tell the team, I tell the team this is, is we don't, we're not a cultivated meat company.

We're not a plant-based meat company. We're, we're we. What we make is the experience of eating meat. So what is the experience of eating meat? What happens when you see meat, when you smell meat, when you're chewing on it, when you swallow it, when you're digesting it? What does that experience to the human body?

And then what is the experience to the identity? What does it mean to be a meat eater? What does it mean to enjoy meat dishes with your family or cultural occasions? How does that fit into your life? What we're really delivering is that experience, this, the experience to the body, into the experience of the identity.

So we make, for instance, cells, in our case, pork cells will, will make these pork cells because they deliver the experience. And I think that the big difference that I see in with, with us and other [00:21:00] companies and, and I'm not in those companies and, and I'm not even an investor diligence in those companies, so I'm not gonna pretend to know exactly what they're doing, but perhaps from the public narrative least, what I can extrapolate would be that there's kind of a, a broad narrative that the, the experience of meat comes from the cells.

You, you kind of hear this, this, uh, narrative that you can have. That we make, or the cultivated meat companies, or cell-based meat companies or whatever everyone call them, that they make meat down to the cellular level. And you don't have to sacrifice at all because you'll just, you're just gonna eat this cell-based meat, which is exactly the same as the conventional slaughtered meat that you've been eating.

You don't have to sacrifice, you don't have to change. And that's very, that's very compelling. People love that. I think the issue there is a cell by cell replacement, a mass by mass replacement of the product is incredibly inefficient. And it doesn't even get to what the, what the actual experience is you're making the, some, the implicit assumption there is that you need to make a mass by mass [00:22:00] replacement, or in this case, a cell by cell replacement in order to deliver the meat experience.

You, you just have to go look at the existing alternatives in the market, like impossible and beyond, as some of the really good other good plant-based meat options out there. And you can see that they year over year, they're rising by double digits. People are flocking to them because they have these guilty mediators.

As I said before, these guilty mediators who love mepa hate the way it's made, and they're more than happy to give these other products the benefit of the doubt. And for in large part, they like them. And so it's not that necessarily that they, they think that they're, uh, they, they don't want this. They're, they're not out there hankering for the cells.

They're out there hank for the experience. Now, in the case of the impossible and beyond, and, and a lot of these other products, they're really good at some things and they're not so good at some other things. And so if you slap down one of these products right beside a beef burger and blindfold yourself, nobody's fooled to saying they're, they're, they taste exactly.

I mean, a beef patty from Impossible Beyond or whatever, versus a, a beef patty from a slaughtered animal, they do not taste [00:23:00] exactly the same. People aren't prepo aren't fooled because there are certain things that the plant toolkit doesn't have in order to replicate that experience. But there's some things that the plant toolkit provides, which are really good at replicating that experience.

So what I hear perhaps too often from other cultivated or companies or, or sell these companies or kind the, the broad narrative is that the, they're using the, the animal cells in order to replicate the entire experience of, of eating meat. And essentially, why would you use these expensive and difficult to scale cells to solve a problem that's already being solved really well by the plant-based side?

What you really should be doing is kinda using the best of both worlds. So what are the, what are the things that a plant-based toolkit cannot deliver? What are, what things are uniquely left to the. So if you understand what those things are, then you can create a better functioning product. Well, to do that you actually need to study the human experience of eating meat to understand what each of those sides of the equation offer.

And I'm saying sides of the equation as in the, the plant-based side and the the [00:24:00] cell side. And then it's a matter of not just blending them together, but actually integrating them in, into a way that highlights what the cells provide. Cuz again, they are, and anybody who studied this space for long enough recognizes that they're, they're expensive and difficult to scale.

So the last thing you wanna do is to overuse them to solve problems that you don't need to solve. Hmm. So I'd say that would be our biggest differentiator. Got

Paul Shapiro: it. So studying that sensory experience and figuring out how to marry both animal and plant cells together to create a, a great experience. And that leads me then Brian, to this other question that I've had because in other interviews I have heard you talk about how you don't want to just mimic conventional meat that you wanna create new culinary experiences mm-hmm.

that are actually superior to the ones that we have. So Amen. What are the, you're saying amen to yourself? Cause I'm just quoting from these other interviews, so I'm glad you agree with your past statements, . Um, but what are you in fantasizing about? Like what are these novel experiences that you are contemplating [00:25:00] creating for people?

Is it just a burger that tastes better than any other burger you've ever had? Or is it something that is totally novel and that no human has ever experienced this

Brian Spears: before? So the, going back to the ex studying the, I think that studying the experience of eating meat unlocks all of the above. In fact, and you have to study it in order to understand how to make your product better, to even mimic the current experience of eating meat.

Mm-hmm. . And to make a product which really replicates it extremely well, such that at the beginning people will understand that it's meat, will identify it as meat and will replace the meat that they're eating with that product. And then you, you gain their trust that you can do it. And there's, there's an element of, yes, there's an identity there, there's a, there's a recognition of the identity and there's a replacement.

And at that point then you can very quickly lead the consumer to a better place because you have this toolkit, because you've been studying what the human experience is of eating meat. And if you understand what the human experience of eating meat is and then how certain. Factors [00:26:00] within the cells or the plant-based side deliver that.

Well then you can highlight those and you can, you can change those. You can overexpress them. Yeah. You can essentially say like, Hey, humans really like factor X and factor Y. They're not so crazy about factor Z. And so if I can go and create this product, which really highlights X and Y and gets rid of Z, I'll have a product that's way better than the animal.

Mm. There, there. You can't go back to the animal and change the animal flavor very much. You can, you can change the feed into it and you can change the, it's housing and, and, but you, you can't actually change the cell. But we can, can change, we change everything about it. We can go down to the cellular level and beyond.

Paul Shapiro: Yes. And so I, I agree with you that when you have control at the molecular level, that you're gonna be able to create really interesting new experiences. And really what I wonder about is what those experiences might actually be. So instead of just thinking about factors X and Y, which are, are just unknown variables.

Like think about, uh, for example, like if you contemplate the time between when humanity had already domesticated [00:27:00] cows, but before we learned how to cuddle milk to make cheese. During that time people were quite happy to be drinking milk, at least those cultures that were drinking it. But they had never even fantasized about Guda or Bri or Swiss or any of the other types of cheese that people now are, are obsessed with.

And those were culinary experiences that. Had never been enjoyed or even fantasized about by most humans, that now many people claim they could never live without it. Uh, they just think like cheese is just too essential of a part of their diet. It's too pleasurable for them to ever consider living without it.

So do you think that there are other similar types of no, uh, novel culinary categories that don't yet exist, that will exist in the way that cheese now exists, but, you know, a blink of an igo? Historically speaking, it didn't. That cellular agriculture will enable

Brian Spears: hundred, 100%. And I say this, so there are, so for instance, you can go look at some flavor [00:28:00] wheels, um, I wanna say Ji.

Uh, it could be from Anish.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I had to go look it up. Yeah. These are big flavor companies that you're in, the food industry that you're referring

Brian Spears: to Precisely. Right. So, and there, there's the concept of this flavor wheel with this, these complimentary flavors. And in, in certain ethnic cuisines, uh, you may find that there, there's kind of a natural pairing where over time recipes have iterated to kind of deliver these, these complimentary pairings.

Not even, maybe, maybe not even just a pair of two, but then multiple types of taste sensations, which together on the human palette create a very pleasing sensation. And the, the research has shown that there are actually quite a bit more of these that we don't, that that has never been ethnically kind of iterated that you don't find anywhere.

So if you may find that there are certain aspects of the, the taste experience, that if you, you can, you can kind of like look at the flavor wheel and say, well, it looks like, and I'll go back, I'm, I mean, I can actually pull it up and take a look at some examples, if that's interesting. [00:29:00] But I'll, I'll remain with the variables for now.

Uh, that, for instance, X, Y, and Z do really well together. Well, you can, you can pull those out and you can go create a dish which people haven't seen before. So for instance, I used to live in Austin, Texas at South by Southwest. They used to do this. They would have so some, uh, some food trailers during South by Southwest to go and try some of these new novel experiences, which people hadn't like, which sounds extremely weird, right?

So, uh, some candy type of meat, uh, that will have some sort of sour citrus flavor to it. And on the surface you think that's really weird, but you try it and it works. It's, it's some way like, wow, I never thought that would be good, but I, I, I really like it. Hmm. And so. There are any number of, of experiences that we humans can have that just, they're, they're, they're out there.

Uh, and you, there's just, they just haven't kind of been iterated a lo among like the ethnic or the chefs and the restaurants. They haven't yet come upon these, um, tastes. Taste or flavor amalgamations that really give us this experience that we could have. Yeah. But that, that whole space is [00:30:00] so wide open.

Paul Shapiro: And here's, here's my suggestion for you. Um, so I know that you guys are working with pig cells, but mm-hmm. , think about, you know, there's a category of people out there who want a turducken. Now, if you don't, you, you don't know what aucion is. I do. It's a chicken stuffed inside of a duck, stuffed inside of a Turkey, and then you cook them all and you eat the meat of three species of birds all at once.

Now, I don't know why anybody would want to do this, but people like novel experiences and so maybe, maybe that's it. Mm-hmm. , but you know, it's, it's pretty crude. You know, uh, you're just layering one type of meat on top of another. But what if you could grow chicken, duck, and Turkey cells all together and interweave the protein so you have an actual turducken, not just something where it's, you know, one bird stuffed inside of another, stuffed inside of another, but you have a cultivated turducken that you can allow people who have never experienced that to get their own real turducken cellularly speaking.

What do you think?

Brian Spears: Uh, I think, I think you're right. And I, one I'll take slight issue [00:31:00] with one of the ways you said it, which is how could you, how could you marry together or, or interweave a Turkey and a duck and a chicken cell? And going back to what I was saying earlier, it's is not necessarily that you would even need a separate Turkey and duck and chicken cell.

You simply have to know what the Turkey, duck and chicken cell delivers that delivers to you. The experience of this is duck. This is. . And so if you can instead under identify what that is, well then you don't need to make the entire, for instance, you don't need to go make a, you don't need to go biopsy, for instance A or go and do an I P S C on some sort of chicken.

You go make a cell line and chicken to go, then get a media formulation for the chicken cell line, which then goes into a certain bio which is optimized for that, for that cell. And then you do that for the chicken, you do that for the duck, and you do that for the Turkey or whatever. Uh, that's a lot of redundant work.

What you're instead doing is you're saying, okay, what are, what is each of these cells delivering that again, the human pallet identifies as Turkey, ch ducker, chicken, and essentially understand how a cell will make that. And then you make that, that's much more [00:32:00] efficient.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Okay. Well, I, I, I like where you're going with this and, um, please know that if you ever do a tasting of the new age meats turducken, that I, I hope, given that I am the progenitor of this idea, I really hope I'll be, get, get an invite to this.

So, um, now that we're talking about your tastings though, let me pivot here because, um, you guys did a very cool tasting of some sausage, and you even talked about the pig from whom the original cells came from. This pig, Jesse. Mm-hmm. . Tell me about Jesse the pig and what you did with Jesse's cells and, uh, what happened.

Brian Spears: Sure. Yeah. So that was in July of 2018. So that was shortly after we formally incorporated the company and we went to Indie Bio, which is a biotech accelerator in downtown San Francisco. And they gave us the, the, our first pre precede funding on Jesse Street,

Paul Shapiro: if I'm not mistaken, right. It is on Jesse Street.

It amazing. Is it? It was, he was the take named after the street.

Brian Spears: It is. Yes. Ah, okay. Got it. My co-founder, she, she [00:33:00] took the liberty of doing so. Got it. Uh, the factory, I'll say the factory, the farm pigs, uh, weren't named. And so , we, we gave Jesse her

Paul Shapiro: name. Yes. I I wasn't sure if this was like a pig on a sanctuary or, or, or on a farm.

So, uh, you know, anyway, so. Okay. So Jesse is a farm pig who I, I presume, uh, how, how did you get the farmer to consent to giving you some of Jesse's, uh,

Brian Spears: sales, um, payment? Yeah, we just, uh, we said, we, we, we said, we're very upfront about what we were doing. Uh, and luckily the, there was a veterinarian onsite, so the, the veterinarian worked.

Uh, so it, it was a, it was a small farm and they had, um, they tried to be as regenerative as they could, and so they u they had animals in various disciplines, uh, delivering certain. Value to the value chain that humans want. And so she was the, the veterinarian, uh, was on site and so she was able to, uh, anesthetize a pig because the pig doesn't know it's saving humanity.

And so then you can take a [00:34:00] small biopsy of the, the flush

Paul Shapiro: of the pig. Well, and, and saving fellow po signs as well. In the process of the pig, the pig was probably less interested in saving humanity than in, in saving pork. That's true.

Brian Spears: That's true. Uh, it's, it's a, it's a high minded pig in, in all regards, but I, I think you're probably correct.

That was most interested in its, uh, yeah. Fellow species. Yeah. Um, yeah, so, so then we were able to get that biopsy and essentially that point then it's just a matter of cell work, so you're gonna, you're gonna kind of chop up that, that biopsy, and then you separate out the stem cells, and then you grow the stem cells, and then you will separate them and then differentiate them into muscle or fat.

That was the

Paul Shapiro: first. How big is this biopsy? Is it the size of like a sesame seed, the size of a, you know, a, a grain of rice? Like what, what is the size that you're taking here?

Brian Spears: Yeah, it was, uh, I would say slightly larger than a grain of rice. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It was, uh, we wanted to make sure we got, um, we wanted to get it from the, I guess this isn't actually, uh, we, we got it from the [00:35:00] belly.

Uh, at the time we were very, we had a lot of questions like, where on the pig should we get it? Uh, so we're like, well, we kind of wanna make sausage that tastes more like a, like a bacon type of product. Uh, which we came to learn later, isn't really accurate. Like, good sausage comes from the shoulder. Uh, but, you know, we , I don't have a background of meat, neither does she.

So we just kind of said like, well, belly, pork belly, like, that's probably what, that's where the good stuff comes from. So we're gonna take it from the, from the belly. Mm-hmm. . Uh, so we, we took a, a small biopsy. Yeah. About a, a grain of rice. A little, maybe a little larger than the grain of rice from the belly.

Okay.

Paul Shapiro: And so how long before you have this, you know, grain of rice sized. Biopsy. Do you have a

Brian Spears: sausage? So that was about two months, so from mid-July until mid-September. And then we served about three kind of, you know, small, I think one of the reports set egg roll, egg roll size, um, sausages, so small egg rolls.

And they were actually 10% cultivated meat and we use an [00:36:00] equal portion of muscle and fat. Mm. And the rest of it was plant-based.

Paul Shapiro: W what's the plant-based that you're using?

Brian Spears: Uh, soil

Paul Shapiro: soy based. Okay, cool. Mm-hmm. . And w do you think, I mean, I, I presume I know the answer to this question, but just for the sake of anybody listening, so something as 90% plant-based and 10% cells, do you think those 10% animal cells make such a difference?

That if we're a hundred percent, uh, plant-based, it would be categorically different in its sensory experience for the consumer? Is

Brian Spears: that right? Well, that's, uh, I, I guess I would defer to, so we, we invited. , you know, media to, so Business Insider for instance, we invited them. We didn't tell them what to say.

We just said, would you like to try it and write about it? So they came and the quotes were, I couldn't tell the difference between the pork sausage and, and the other. And it tasted like meat, because it's meat. Mm-hmm. . And so the, uh, which is kind of maybe even what I was ear goes back to what I was saying earlier, that it, even when we started the company or started working together in November of [00:37:00] 2017, we, it took us just a few weeks to determine that any type of product that's, that's close to like a hundred percent cultivated meat just will not scale anytime in the fu any time in the short term.

That that's like, there's, there's no point in really trying to do that, which you really wanna do is to understand. Again, what the, what the important part that the cells are providing and then what the important part of the plants are providing, and then make a product which can scale and then taste delicious.

It's better than anything in the market. And the cost can actually compete. You, do you, we are not interested in making it a low volume solution for luxury restaurants. That doesn't, that's not the reason I got into this business. It's not, it doesn't actually return, like none of our investors want that either.

None of the, none of the team wants that. Uh, we we're not trying to make meat for rich people. We're trying to make pork for the, for the people. So we are much more interested in, in making a product that can scale. The one thing that stands, the one there, there are several things that stand in the way, but the biggest being the regulatory.

Yeah. So for instance, in the United States, we actually can't sell it yet, uh, despite there being interest in [00:38:00] purchasing it. So we certainly do need to work together jointly with the U S D A and the F D A in order to. To bring it to market. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. So let's just presume that they give you the green light and that you are legally allowed to sell it.

How long before you actually could sell any meaningful quantity of it. Because I know in the past you've talked about just what a minuscule portion of the meat industry alternative meat is so far. Um, you know, it, it's far less than 1% of all the meat sold, both in America and around the world is coming from non-animal sources like plant-based meat.

Well, 0.0% is coming from queen meat and, you know, probably around maybe half a percent in the US is coming from plant-based meat. So it's a very, very tiny fraction. So there's gonna be a lot of scale up that's needed here. But how long do you think it would be before new age meets would actually be able to, let's just say, offer, you know, not fast food restaurants, but even just any restaurants, the ability to sell your

Brian Spears: products?[00:39:00]

Well, so we. We are gonna be raising shortly our series A, and that is to go to market. So the, and, and that essentially is in the, in the cycle. Well, I'll give a, an answer. Typically, the, the time between investment cycles will be a year and a half to two years. So before the next investment investment cycle, we will be in market.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. So how much money have you raised so far

Brian Spears: for your About 7

Paul Shapiro: million. So 7 million so far. And what's the series A that you're going to be raising?

Brian Spears: Uh, it's still, we're still working that out with our potential investors, so not quite ready to say how much that is yet.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. But presume we sum multiple over that, over the 7 million.

Brian Spears: Of course. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it, it depends, I mean, It depends on the right investor. That's that in my mind, the right investor and then how they marry with the milestones. Right. Uh, so certainly, certainly more than what we've raised so far. Yes, definitely.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Um, well, okay, so [00:40:00] you're gonna be raising millions more and what are you using it for?

And so, you know, one, one thing I read recently and tell me if you think this is true. I read recently that if you were to take all of the bioreactors in the world today that are currently used for mammalian cell culture, every single one of 'em for biopharmaceutical purposes, everything, biomedical everything, um, and repurpose them all to be producing cultivated meat, that it would still not comprise the output of them, would still not comprise 1% of the world's volume of meat that is being produced right now.

You think that's.

Brian Spears: Uh, I haven't done that calculation, but that's, I would say that that is not the product that we're making so that, that falls more in the camp of the mass by mass replacement. Yeah. That I was saying earlier. Okay. Is the losing strategy. Got it. Okay. So for the

Paul Shapiro: winning strategy, what are you going to do?

Are you building your own pilot facility here? And if so, like how, how much do you think that

Brian Spears: that cost to do? Yeah, so we, we definitely are, so we'll be doing our own manufacturing, um, certainly on the, on [00:41:00] the bio side. Uh, it remains to be seen if we'll make the, the entire product together, just, uh, we'll use our funds judiciously.

So the, as far as the output, uh, it's a good question on the output, uh, we're not quite ready to talk about, uh, how much output will be. Uh, serving post series A, but, uh, post series A raise. Mm-hmm. . Uh, but that is certainly, that certainly will be shared. Okay,

Paul Shapiro: cool. Uh, well, I can't wait. You know, there's a lot of folks who are talking about building pilot plant facilities here, um, in the world to mm-hmm.

start culturing animal cells, uh, which is really exciting. And I, I actually violated one of my own rules, which is I, I don't like calling them bioreactors just because that's so, um, you know, it has a little bit of a scary feel to people. Um, you know, calling 'em something like fermentors or cultivators seems to be, uh, a consumer friendlier term.

What do you think? Yeah,

Brian Spears: I mean, I, it's, it's a great question. Some of the other, um, I mean, I chatted with some of the folks in some of the other companies about this very question. Uh, I [00:42:00] think that fermentors, I don't think is in, in entirely accurate. Yeah. Uh, so ferment, you know, fermentation is, it's something that we don't do.

Uh, so it, it would, it would be so cultivators could work. , I think it's an interesting term. Um, it's because we're, because for instance, we hire people who, uh, have experience working in bioreactors. Uh, we can't really say that we're looking for a cultivator engineer because they won't know what we're talking about

So in order for us to actually use the existing technology and the people with experience in that, then we have to use the industry jargon, which is, which is bio. So again, the habit saying that, Yeah, it's

Paul Shapiro: one thing to use it in a job description, and it's another thing to use it in a public facing way, like a, like an interview with the, with the media, um mm-hmm.

uh, I, I doubt that I, I think that there are some people, like perhaps both of us who would be happy to eat, uh, bioreactor to for meals, mm-hmm. . But I have a feeling that, uh, most people, um, you know, would like to envision their food coming from somewhere else. Um, which, [00:43:00] you know, cultivator may work for that, but I, I guess, you know, I can't not ask you then also, cuz you know, during this interview, um, you know, you've used terms like, uh, cultivated meat and cell-based meat.

Do you have thoughts on this? You know, there's queen meat, there's cell-based meat, there's cultivated meat and cultured meat. Do you have, uh, thoughts on, on this topic about what are the most, uh, consumer friendly ways to describe the foods that you're.

Brian Spears: Sure. Yeah. So we, we, we certainly have been keeping up with the discussion, the ongoing discussion, and when we started, we were a clean meat company.

That was certainly what the, the industry was, how the industry was defining itself. And there have been a number of various reports over time on various things around consumer acceptance, but also differentiate ability, uh, essentially like how differentiating is the term between conventional meat, for instance.

Uh, and then you see, you see different types of reports that come out targeting, uh, terrestrial animals versus seafood. Uh, so [00:44:00] we've also done our own work. So we have, uh, talked to some of our own consumers or some of the, some of the go-to-market venues, channels that we're working with. And we've asked them what they prefer.

And so the response that comes back is cultivated. So cultivated is the, the term that we prefer. Mm-hmm. , uh, we, we don't, But I mean, we're a very data-driven organization, and if the data comes back showing later that there is a better term, then, then again, we're, we're data-driven. So we'll follow data.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. I, I, I like cultivated and I, I too use it. And, um, I think it's good. I, I do, as I've, I've shared, I have some concerns that, um, people don't want to eat cells. And so referring to it as, I think referring to it as cell based is a great way to differentiate it, but I'm just concerned that it's in, in a bad way.

Mm-hmm. , that you're, you're differentiating it by, by handicapping yourself because people, you know, have a hard time, uh, really wanting to eat cells. Of course, all the food we eat is comprised of cells. Um, which is another way that it's actually not differentiated since conventional meat is made from cells also and is also [00:45:00] cell based.

And plant-based meat is cell based too. So, um, but I, I understand the desire for it and, um, I, I think that cultivated seems to walk that line. Um, but, uh, either way, you know, it's, I agree like. You know, should let the data actually drive those types of decisions and, uh, see what the best way is to, uh, describe these foods are to make them the most appealing to consumers.

Because there's already gonna be a perception issue that will have to be, uh, battled. And, you know, you wanna start off on the right foot. You only get one chance to make a first impression, you know? Agreed. Yeah.

Brian Spears: Thanks. Very smart. Yep.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Um, well, okay, Brian, so you're gonna go out, you're gonna raise a Series A, you're gonna build a pilot plant, and from there you're hoping that the regulatory piece will fall into play and then you start selling.

Or is it the pilot plant just really to demonstrate what you're capable of doing? Or do you want to actually start selling that product to, let's say, restaurants or grocery stores or caterers or whoever else it would be?

Brian Spears: Oh yeah. We definitely wanna start selling. [00:46:00] Uh, it's, it's. The doing the production, making your own production facility, the first product that's gonna come out of there, though it doesn't go right to the consumer.

So a lot of people may take the idea, you know, I guess being from maybe outside the industry would say that, well as soon as you finish the production facility and, and run it, then you're ready to go deliver to the, to the consumers. And that's not quite the case yet. So you much like, you kind of need to wear in a new pair of shoes you kinda need to wear in your production facility.

And you need to understand how it's, how good it is at consistently making the product that you are gonna be delivering to your customers. Cuz you don't wanna deliver product which is one day soupy and the next day to, to dry. And so you want to first off make product that goes back to your own r and d to determine that it is meeting the quality standards that you want to share with consumers and.

yeah. That's gonna be the first few months after it, after we start producing product. Uh, and then we'll be selling that. Yep. Okay.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I don't think soupy is the adjective that most people want when they think of their meat. [00:47:00] They, they might want novel experiences, but I don't know that soupy meat is, uh, is, is what they're

Brian Spears: going for.

I may have to go back to that flavor will ferment. Like there may be a vector in soupy , but I don't know, memory doesn't serve me at, well tonight.

Paul Shapiro: We'll have to see. I, I look forward to hearing a backer report on that . Okay. So Brian, you have founded two companies and served as CEO of two companies. Uh, so you know, for somebody who's a serial entrepreneur like yourself, there probably are lots of resources that you have relied on in your journey throughout your life here.

Are there any books or anything else for people who look at what you're doing, are like, Hey, that Brian Spears guy, I really like what he's doing. I'd like to be more like him. Are there any books or other types of resources that you would recommend for folks who are interested in trying to start their own business to try to make the world a better place?

Brian Spears: Sure. Yeah. So the a a lot of places to start here. So I think that the, um, books probably the, the [00:48:00] biggest, the, especially for making a, a technology based frontier. So essentially translation of frontier research into market. That's fundamentally very difficult, right? So it, it's, it's certainly non-trivial to say we're going to be doing, we're gonna go into lab, we're gonna try and figure out at a very fundamental level what we don't know already, and then we're gonna go and move into development on that and then move that to production.

So that, so that's the pipeline I've been working with my entire career. And that whole pipeline is very hard to do well, and it's very hard to keep a culture inside of the company, which keeps all the pieces together that does that because the people that work, uh, early stage, the researchers, the research scientists, they think very differently than the engineers who do more of the development and testing.

Then the production people that go and make this at scale and then make it more efficient than make us, and to make it a cost effective enough to be able to deliver to the market. And so being able to maintain a culture which houses kind of big tent, all of those people is, is very difficult. So in the beginning [00:49:00] especially, I think it's important to be really a aware of what you.

What you know and what you don't know. And I am, I think that one of the, the best books that teach you this is, um, like thinking Fast and Slow is, is one of my favorites. Uh, it's by Daniel Kahneman, and it's a, it's a fantastic read, which is really a, a pretty, a pretty, pretty readable, though dense, um, retelling of a, of a lot of, uh, psychological research that shows how the human mind is, thinks it's really good at certain things, at, at assessing certain characteristics, but is actually very bad at it.

Uh, repeatably measurably bad at, for instance, large numbers. Uh, and, and being fooled by bias, by injecting bias. Um, so I think it's a fantastic book, not just to read once, but to just to keep going back to like, I'll pick it up in a start and read a chapter and I'll be like, oh my God, how have I forgotten that?

I've entirely forgotten, uh, this, this whole priming thing and, and how priming has affected me. ,

Paul Shapiro: uh, so yeah, well, the, the [00:50:00] human mind is good at de diluting itself into thinking that it is a good memory too, I guess. . Yeah.

Brian Spears: Well, yeah, I mean, I'm reminded, uh, Richard Feynman has that great quote. He said, the, the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

So, uh, you, you definitely want to be aware of these. You wanna be a aware of these ideas, ideally to inoculate yourself against them. But again, they're, it's difficult to inoculate yourself, so you kinda have to keep doing that. Mm-hmm. . So I think that's a really fantastic one. Um, I, I like to share that early on in, in my career.

I think that the, the rise of kind of long form interview podcast was really instrumental, uh, because it wasn't just kind of a retelling of. Of a entrepreneur or, or some sort of builder moving from success to success. Uh, because if you look back, you can always, you can always draw the, the lines between these certain things that you did to show that you meant to do these things.

But in reality, when it's, when you're actually occurring, you don't know you have, you really have no idea. You're just trying a lot of things. And then the things that didn't [00:51:00] work, you just don't tell the story about, like, people don't hear typically about the things that didn't work. And so the nice thing about some of these longer form podcasts is that, and, and some of the hosts that do a good job with them, is that they bring out the fact that you fail a lot and that you don't know.

And, uh, I think like, so Guy Ross's stuff, he, he did, um, the Ted Radio hour first, and then he did how I built this. And, uh, he, he takes a very concerted approach to understanding not just again, what the entrepreneur or builder did right. But rather also the things he did wrong. And that was so important to me early on because.

I, I all of a sudden realized that these people who are frankly changing the world, they're, they're no smarter than I am, and they don't know anything more than I do. And, and they really just figured it out. They just, they started, they made a mistake, they fixed it. They kept going. They made another mistake, they fixed it.

They, they kept going. So you don't, it's not, it's not just having a lot of experience or knowing or, or having the right connections. It's really just getting out there and going and doing it. . And so I, those types and your, your podcast is a, is a great example. I think,

Paul Shapiro: you know, I, I [00:52:00] have often thought whenever I am listening to those kinds of interviews or reading books by other people, like the things that I value the most are not reading about their successes, but about the times they fell down and got back up.

And if you read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, which is the, the, the, by the autobiography of the founder of Nike, um, you know, he basically spends most of the book talking about all the failures and near death experiences that the company had and, uh, all the ways that they basically screwed up. and, um, it's really inspirational to see that and, and then to see that they still had those types of successes.

So, uh, I share your, your, uh, interest in, in those type of stories for sure. Um, which to me are, are far more inspirational than just stories about people's success. Um mm-hmm. , it feels a much better story. Um, so finally then, Brian, you know, you have had these two companies, and I'm sure you think about other companies that you wish existed that maybe if you weren't doing new age meets, maybe [00:53:00] you would be doing something else.

But are there other ideas for companies that you hope that maybe a listener here who's inspired will start their own company to do something good in the world?

Brian Spears: Yeah, that's a really good question. And when people ask me, I kind of, I, I, I think that the, the types of things that we need to be working on, they kind of broadly fall into three big buckets.

and I am, I'm working in what I like to call is bucket three. It's the one all the way at the end. It's kind of in, in, it's, it's the downstream effects of buckets one and two. And I think that, you know, bucket one, uh, is, is the most important because that is essentially working on humans themselves. It's, it's how we treat ourselves as humans.

It's how we treat the other humans. It's how we treat the other species that share the planet with us. It's how we share the planet. It's how we treat the planet itself. And understanding that they're, that we are connected to all of these, that we are all descended directly [00:54:00] from the earth. And I mean for, for all of the species on the earth to survive, we really needed the earth.

We also, we need the sun cuz it provides that energy. And we're not about to destroy the sun, but we are about to destroy the earth. And so we are literally children of this, this. Star and the, the substrate, this planet that we're on, and we really need to understand that and take care of that. And so that's, that's bucket one.

And the startups that, the startups and businesses that deal with that would be more, I think understanding that we, there is a, I think a really caustic trend toward the idea of this concentrated benefit and diffuse harm. The idea that it's really good to accumulate as much as you can because it's a good signifier, that you are valuable and that's you're worthwhile.

Uh, and I think that's, that that idea is really dangerous. And what we should instead be working toward is making, it's, it's cliche, but it's understanding that when we, when we [00:55:00] help others around us to feel more secure, then we become more secure and we become, and when, when you help people to move up from the bottom rungs of like Maslow's hierarchy, uh, when, when people are very concerned about their.

Where they're gonna get their next meal, or if they're gonna be able to afford a place to live or, or get healthcare. Then they don't care about the planet, they don't care about hurting animals, they don't care about hurting other people cuz they're so intense on themselves. But when you take care of those people, then they can start to care.

Then, then, then their circle of, of empathy expands beyond themselves and be beyond around their, their immediate family and there immediate people around them. And so taking care of each other and un and understanding that we're all connected, then we'll be able to trickle down into bucket number two, which is, I think then an incentive structure reform.

Like how do we actually build a society whereby we're not having those concentrated benefits and diffuse harm that we just talked about? And then bucket three would then be all of the things that are actually right now on fire. So I am, I'm I, I really say like [00:56:00] I'm a firefighter. The, the issue is so bad that we have to go and make meat from cells and from plants that replicates the experience of eating meat because people will not stop eating meat.

That we, that we we're eating so much meat and we're dropping the cost down, expanding, expanding the production of meat so much, even though we know that it's destroying the planet and we know it's destroying our health. And we certainly know this is destroying animal welfare. And so I'm, I'm out there working to put out that fire, but I, I very much know that another fire's just gonna pop up if we don't solve the first two buckets.

So what's, we really need

Paul Shapiro: to change who we're, so what's an example of a company that would be addressing one of those, whether in existence or not in existence that would be addressing who we are?

Brian Spears: So I think that it, it's broadly speaking, a lot of mental, mental wellness. The idea of wellness in general.

The idea instead of fixing things that are wrong, but actually encouraging humans to, to flourish and move up that Maslow's hierarchy. Uh, and, and that [00:57:00] changes it, it changes fundamentally. What we want as species, what we're taught to want. And so I think for instance, the, there's a lot of really good, a lot of good, really good startups working on psychedelics.

And I think psychedelics are really interesting because if there's one thing they teach you, they teach you the connectedness of everything. And they teach, they, they show you where we as species come from, that we come from the planet. Mm-hmm. . And once you understand that, and it shows that you're connectedness with the other, with the other species that we share this planet with.

And so do you,

Paul Shapiro: do you think there is, um, like a causal relationship between, or let's say a causal association between psychedelic users and meat consumption, then, like does one lead to the other? Do you think that like people who use psychedelics are more likely to eat less or no meat?

Brian Spears: That's a really good question.

I, I would be loath to give you just the anecdotal evidence that I've observed. Uh, I mean, I didn't , so, uh, I, there's a difference also in psychedelic, uh, [00:58:00] recreational use versus more therapeutic aspect. So if you've done it recreationally, then, then it may not have the effect that I'm referring to. So there, there's a lot of, so, so for instance, maps, the Multidi Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Sciences does extraordinarily good peer-reviewed research at some of the, some of the most prestigious universities that are able to show that, that people, when they're, when they take some of these, uh, when these, some of these psychedelic assisted therapeutics that they're consistently reporting them to be some of the most meaningful experiences of their lives.

And this is, these are people that a, across a variety of and not, and some of some of them are the, they're well people, but then some of them are dealing with end of life, uh, some terminal diseases. Some of them are dealing with addiction. Um, and so there is a really good body of evidence that shows that an encounter with.

The, the, the finite nature of life and [00:59:00] understanding that we all we have is the time on earth with each other on this planet. And that, that time is actually really important. And, and the most important thing is to treat ourselves and oth each others really well. Then it fundamentally changes your perspective and you start to care less about accumulating, accumulating, um, either wealth or assets to shield you away from the fear you have.

That is someday you are going to pass into oblivion. Mm-hmm. so and so. You want to, you wanna, your, your height, you're, you're trying to take control in the way that you can take control of something you actually, that you feel you can take control of, of something you actually can't con take control of.

Like, you, you, you can't control the fact that you're going to die and you can't control the fact that you, they actually don't, don't have control over. , this really complicated experience that we have the on, on, on this planet, and you can only control so many things in your life. You can't even control the things that, the, the thoughts that come into your head.

And so when you sit with the idea that instead of trying to control everything that you can just be in, in the moment, you can [01:00:00] be with all the other people and beings on this planet and. really enjoy the time that you have together, then your, your thought pattern fundamentally shifts. And then this, the incentive structure that we have as a society that governs our interactions with each other can shift as well.

And then these downstream problems that I'm working on won't happen. , I won't, I won't need to do these things. Mm-hmm. , because we'll fundamentally change, we are to make a better, kinder, more sustainable society and society that, frankly, A humanity that is worthy of us ambitions to be, for instance, an interplanetary species

Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Well, uh, I question whether we are worthy of that now, but I certainly , I certainly hope that we can change. It's, it's tough. Uh, you know, it's, it's one thing to change human behavior. It's another thing to change human nature and, uh, it's, it's, it's hard to do, but Correct. Uh, I certainly am very grateful that you are firefighting Brian, and that you are, uh, working on that third bucket because I have a hard time seeing humanity, uh, giving up its desire to eat meat anytime soon.

Mm-hmm. . And so I'm grateful [01:01:00] that you are working so hard to provide a much better way for humans to enjoy the culinary dewight. That we seek so, uh, so often, uh, without so much of the suffering that is entailed in this production. So I will be cheering on for your success. I look forward to going to your, uh, to your pilot plant when it's built.

Look forward to trying the Absolutely. The new Age meets Turducken and it'll, it'll be a lot of fun. We will, even if you know how to follow, we can, uh, even swing dance, uh, at, at the plant and we'll show you. Uh, I do know how to follow. Yes. All right. Great. All right. I'll really teach you that in the minor.

Yes. . Yeah. Very good. I'll Roy be looking forward to that and we'll make sure not to knock into any of the cultivators that are, uh, that are, that are in, in the plant at that time. Just the bios. Yes. . We'll get rid of the bios. You're not gonna be using those . Alright, Brian. Smart. Well, thanks so much for everything you're doing.

It's really great to talk with you and I'm wishing you all the.

Brian Spears: Thank you Paul, and same to you. I really appreciate it.

Paul Shapiro: Thanks for listening. We hope you [01:02:00] found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you will be in the business of doing good.