Ep. 136 - Flying Cars or Electric Cars? Isha Datar’s Thoughts on Where Cultivated Meat Tech Stands Today
Isha has been pioneering cellular agriculture since 2009, driven by a passion to see transformative technology create a better world. In 2010, Isha published "Possibilities for an in-vitro meat production system" in Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies; thus began her quest to establish the field of cell ag.
Ep. 135 - Mark Post, A Decade After the First Cultivated Burger
In 2013, Dr. Mark Post shocked the world when he debuted the world’s first-ever burger grown from animal cells. Weighing in as a quarter-pounder, the burger carried a price tag of a mere $330,000—all of which was funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. A decade later, what does Mark think about the movement and the industry he helped birth?
Ep. 128 - Making Alt-Meat Research More Intelligent: GreenProtein AI & Noa Weiss
In this episode, I talk with Noa about how she thinks AI can be harnessed to make better-textured alternative meat, why she started GreenProtein AI, and where she plans to go next in her promising career. We even talk about sentience, from insects to machines!
Ep. 124 - Robots as a Service to Turn the Tides for Our Oceans: The Reefgen Story
Reefgen CEO Chris Oakes, a marine biologist turned venture capitalist turned entrepreneur talks about the company’s trajectory, its pilot trials in Hawaii, California, Indonesia, and Wales, and how it’s going to scale in order to turn the tides for our planet.
Ep. 122 - Cementing a Better Future: Leah Ellis and Sublime Systems
In this episode, we talk with Sublime Systems co-founder Leah Ellis about her effort to decarbonize cement production for which she’s already raised $50 million.
Ep. 120 - Microbes to the Rescue: Lisa Nunez Safarian and Pivot Bio
Lisa Nunez Safarian leads commercial, manufacturing, and product development at Pivot Bio. Dedicating her career to advancing agriculture and helping farmers achieve better outcomes, Lisa oversees the day-to-day operations to ensure we are meeting the nitrogen needs of our customers.
Ep. 119 - Swapping Leaves for Leather: Biophilica’s Mira Nameth
After getting a grant from the UK government, Mira’s new company Biophilica was born. Converting leaves and even agricultural byproducts into a plastic-free alt-leather, Biophilica’s material creation process uses less than 1 percent of the water needed to make cow-based leather, all while being both animal-free and petrochemical free, too.
Ep. 117 - Is the Future of Plastic Fungi? MadeRight Is Working on It
Rotem Cahanovitc is a mycology enthusiast innovating the use of fungi, the great recyclers of the planet, to support the transition to a flourishing, sustainable circular economy.
Ep. 116 - From Villain to Hero: Rubi Labs’s Quest to Make CO2 Work for the Climate
What started with a small grant from the National Science Foundation to two twin scientist sisters is now a startup employing dozens of people that’s so far raised more than $13 million to decarbonize how we make materials.
Ep. 115 - The Most Controversial Plan to Cool the Planet: Make Sunsets
Luke Iseman is cofounder of Make Sunsets, a startup that launches reflective clouds to fight global warming. They have deployed over 3000 ton-years worth of cooling for paying customers, and their mission is to Cool Earth by 1C before 2030.
Ep. 114 - A Packaging Revolution: TIPA is All in on Compostables
In this conversation with TIPA’s founder and CEO, Daphna Nissenbaum, we chat about her journey from a software engineer to a plastic revolutionary, what the difference between biodegradable and compostable is, what her alt-plastic is actually made of, and more.
Ep. 111 - From Cultivated Meat to National Security: The Journey of Jason Matheny
As you’ll hear in this interview, Jason shifted from his work on cultivated meat toward national security as he became convinced that technology can vastly improve both human and animal welfare, and that the only real threat to technological advancement is an apocalyptic catastrophe like a synthetic virus or asteroid.
Ep. 110 - Some Help from Kelp: How Keel Labs is Reimagining Sustainable Materials
Aleksandra Gosiewski is the Co-Founder & COO of Keel Labs, an innovation platform expanding the potential of the ocean to accelerate the planet’s development towards a more sustainable future.
Ep. 105 - Fermenting Methane into Meat! The String Bio Story
In this interview, Dr. Subbian and I talk about how she started the company, why she moved it from Silicon Valley to Bangalore, India, where they get the methane to feed their microbes, and much more.
Ep. 104 - Is the Road to the Future Paved with Upcycled Plastic? Shelly Zhang and Molten Materials Thinks So
As you’ll hear in this episode, the death of Shelly’s father led to the birth of her company, Molten Materials. Armed with her PhD in engineering, Shelly has pioneered a method of taking plastic waste and upcycling it into pavement sealers, asphalt rejuvenators, and more.
Ep. 102 - The Deepest Hole Humanity’s Ever Dug: The Quaise Energy Story
Our guest in this episode is Quaise Energy’s CFO, Kevin Bonebreak, a guy who spent most of his career in the conventional energy investment world, and is now working to bring about a cleaner, safer, and saner way to power human civilization.
Ep. 86 - From Tech to Table: Richard Munson and the Food & Ag Tech Revolution
In this interview with author Richard Munson, we discuss everything from how new tech can displace old jobs, why some environmentalists don’t seem that down with new tech that could benefit the environment, and what the future of food and ag may bring.
Ep. 82 - Engineering Our Way Out of Single-Use Plastics: Troy Swope and the Footprint Story
Footprint Co-founder and CEO Troy Swope leads world-class engineers, scientists, environmentalists and designers on a mission to create a healthier planet, with step one to provide sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics.
Ep. 80 - Is What You Believe About Food Sustainability Wrong? Robert Paarlberg Thinks So.
In this interview, Rob makes his case for more technological innovation in food, not less, including finding ways to reduce the number of animals humanity is raising for food. I found his book eye-opening and hope you’ll enjoy hearing his perspective on food sustainability in this new interview.
Ep. 73 - From Dust to Dust...or to Soil: Katrina Spade and the Recompose Vision for an Eco-Friendlier Death Industry
Katrina Spade is on a mission to offer a better way to deal with human corpses, and it involves a process called natural organic reduction. It’s essentially a fancy way of saying she’s invented a method of accelerated composting for your body. Rather than cremating your corpse, which involves substantial pollution, and rather than burial, which typically means sealing your body off from nature with concrete liners, hermetically sealed caskets, preservatives in your body, and more, Katrina wants to turn your body into healthy, rich soil, within just one month.



