1. Why degraded coral reefs often cannot recover on their own, even when water quality improves, because the physical habitat structure is already gone.
2. How 3D printed clay structures restore hydrodynamic conditions that allow coral larvae to settle and invertebrate communities to establish within months.
3. Why clay outperforms natural reef rock in acidifying oceans, since calcium carbonate dissolves while clay does not.
4. How rrreefs generates revenue through corporate biodiversity contracts, hotel partnerships, and an emerging coral credit model.
5. Why rrreefs chose open-source principles for its reef design and is pursuing a social franchise model instead of traditional patent protection.

1. Hydrodynamic Habitat Design: An approach to artificial reef construction that prioritizes water flow patterns, cavity diversity, and larval settlement conditions rather than simply providing shade and structure for fish.
2. Coral Credits (Emerging Model): A biodiversity offset framework in which corporations prepay for reef restoration projects and receive quantified impact data, functioning as a precursor to standardized tradeable reef credits.
3. Social Franchising for Conservation: A scaling strategy where proprietary methods for reef construction and anchoring are shared through trained local operators under brand and quality standards rather than locked behind patents.

1. Why buying local food does not significantly reduce your carbon footprint compared to choosing lower-impact foods from anywhere in the world.
2. How the carbon footprint of keeping a dog compares to the average American's total annual emissions.
3. Why nuclear energy has caused far fewer deaths per unit of electricity than fossil fuels over its entire history.
4. Why cement production and air conditioning represent some of the most neglected opportunities for climate innovation.

1. Food Miles vs. Production Emissions: A data-driven framework showing that transportation accounts for roughly five percent of total food system emissions, while on-farm production and land use change dominate the footprint of most foods.
2. Land Sparing vs. Land Sharing: Two competing approaches to balancing agricultural production with biodiversity conservation, where intensive farming on less land is weighed against lower-intensity farming spread across more land.
3. Per-Unit Safety Comparison for Energy: A method of evaluating energy sources by calculating deaths per unit of electricity generated, which consistently shows nuclear and renewables are far safer than fossil fuels.

1. How putting a conventional reactor in a mile-deep borehole can replace major above-ground systems and cut nuclear cost drivers.
2. How Deep Fission thinks about worst-case scenarios, groundwater protection, and regulatory proof points.
3. What milestones convert LOIs into power purchase agreements, and what timelines look like for early deployment.
   

1. Geology-as-infrastructure – Uses rock, gravity, and water to replace containment and pressurization systems.
2. Mature-tech recombination – Combines proven reactors, drilling, and geothermal heat transfer to speed time to market.
3. Pilot-to-commercial pathway – Separates "go critical" demonstration from commercial electricity generation milestones.

If you follow the meat or the alt-meat industry closely, chances are high that you've read Lisa Keefe's work. As the editor-in-chief of both Meatingplace magazine and now Alt-Meat magazine too, Lisa has been both reporting on and editorializing on all things meat for the past 15 years. She's also the creator of the Meatingplace podcast and is a frequent commentator on everything from trends to controversies and more in the meat space.

While she's not a meat company executive, as a meat media (meat-ia?) executive, Lisa's spent much of her career watching what's happening as far as plant-based and cultivated meat goes, as well as animal welfare changes occurring in the ag industry too. As you'll hear, she certainly views animal agriculture as a desirable industry worth keeping around, yet she's very open-mined about animal-free proteins, as evidenced by the existence of her newest creation, Alt-Meat magazine.

In this interview, Lisa discusses her latest trip to Israel where she tried various cultivated meat products, her views on why plant-based meat hasn't taken as much market share as plant-based milk yet, why the pork industry hasn't advanced cage-free animal welfare changes like much of the egg industry has, and more.

I always learn from reading Lisa's work, and I learned even more by chatting with her for this episode, and I'm confident you will too. So, if you've ever wondered what meat industry insiders think about the alt-protein and animal welfare worlds, now's your chance. 

Our guest in this episode, Dr. Esgar Guarin, is on a crusade to promote vasectomies, and even gave up his previous medical career to focus on simply being a full-time vasectomist as part of his commitment to making the world a better place. That's right: his entire business is one thing and one thing only: helping men take greater responsibility in their reproductive lives and averting unwanted pregnancies.

Many already believe that fostering an alt-protein industry in the US is important for helping the environment, but is it also going to protect American national security? We're already importing much of our clean energy tech from Asia, but will we soon be importing our clean protein from other parts of the world, too? 

Congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California representing Silicon Valley, doesn't want that to happen. He's not only called on USDA to invest in alt-protein, he's recently introduced a bill in Congress calling on the Director of National Intelligence to submit an intelligence report on the effects of increased production and consumption of alternative proteins on American national security. The bill even calls for the DNI to explore whether, and to what extent, progress in the production and consumption of alternative proteins made by foreign countries like China constitutes a competitive threat to American economic interests.

While it's a charity, Family Empowerment Media tries to run like a business in that it relies heavily on measurable, evidence-based strategies that produce a significant return on their investment. Though the return they're seeking isn't a financial one, but rather is in the form of the social change they're working to create, mainly by empowering the use of family planning by families that are seeking to have fewer children in developing African nations. 

Started in 2020, the sole mission of the group is to create radio content featuring Nigerian families talking about their positive experiences with family planning. Not only are donors backing these social entrepreneurs, so is the Nigerian government. Why? 

On average fertility rates in Nigeria stand currently at more than five children per woman. Generally speaking, the poorest countries tend to have the highest fertility rates while wealthier countries have lower fertility rates. So while in many African countries each woman often has on average more than five children, in wealthier parts of the world, like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, each woman has on average less than two children. The US is also at less than two children per woman, though immigration to the US prevents the country's population from shrinking.

If you've been listening to the show for some time, you know that replacing animals in the food system is a topic very close to my heart. While the meat and egg industries in the grand picture have still been largely unaffected by plant-based competitors, that's not the case in the milk industry, where the explosion of plant-based milks has very tangibly cut into demand for cow's milk. Gone are the days when almond milk and soy milk were for vegans—now they're for everyone. 

But just a few years ago, a new entrant into the plant-based milk world emerged. In 2015 oat milk was far less than 1 percent of the plant-based milk world. In fact, people hearing the term "oat milk" were probably more likely to think they'd heard people talking about "goat milk."

Not anymore. Thanks largely to one company, Oatly, oat milk is now the belle of the alt-milk ball. After three decades of toiling away far out of mainstream consciousness, Oatly has boomed, leading to its mega-successful 2021 IPO.

I try to read any new book that comes out on the topic, and that includes Richard Munson's new book Tech to Table: 25 Innovators Reminaging Food. I really enjoyed reading this book by someone who's far more well-known for his deep-dive biographies of visionaries like Nikola Tesla and Jacque Cousteau, but now has written a new book featuring dozens of entrepreneurs seeking to create a more sustainable food system. And they're doing this not by returning to 19th century agriculture, but by embracing 21st century food and agriculture technology.

In this interview 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. It's a wide-ranging conversation about a book with a wide-range of topics and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

For those of you who've been enjoying Business for Good for some time, today's guest may sound familiar. That's because Kim Le is not only our guest on Episode 85, but she was also our guest on our 49th episode back in 2020. If you've not heard it, I do recommend you go back and check it out, which will be helpful in seeing just how much has changed for this young startup which was cofounded by undergrads and has raised $20 million so far. 

As you'll hear in this episode, Prime Roots is undergoing quite a transformation as it settles into its new 20,000 square foot production facility in Berkeley. I was fortunate enough to visit the Prime Roots HQ, which is where we taped this episode in person, right after I'd enjoyed their new products, which were truly phenomenal.

One of the most common questions I get from listeners is: how can I invest in companies you feature on the show? Well, most of them are startups backed by VC dollars, and that means the average retail investor isn't typically going to be able to invest in these early stage private companies. 

But what if there were a way to invest money in an index fund that only included companies actively working to replace the exploitation of animals in our economy? It turns out that there is now such a fund, and it was co-founded by Elysabeth Alfano. Perhaps most well-known as the host of Plant-Based Business Hour, Elysabeth has now started the VegTech™ Plant-based Innovation & Climate ETF, which is traded on The New York Stock Exchange as EATV. 

Think of it like the S&P 500, but instead more like the Plant-Based 40. That's because this Exchange-Traded Fund is a collection of 40 publicly-traded companies up and down the animal-free supply chain. This isn't companies that simply don't use animals, but rather companies actively involved in actually replacing animal use. That includes well-known players like Beyond Meat and Oatly, but also the ingredients companies that supply them and more. The basic bet is that over time, the inefficiency of animal use will drag down the companies that are  dependent on it, while animal-free companies will thrive.

Humanity's relentless demand for seafood is emptying the oceans with little end in sight. Does the path to freeing fish from us run through fungi fermentation?

That's exactly what Anne Palermo is betting. 

As you'll hear in this interview, Anne is a former asset manager at Morgan Stanley who decided mid-career that she wanted to start her own chocolate company. After growing her first startup to millions in revenue, this mom of three got hooked on the need for animal-free protein and pivoted to start a new company focused on saving the oceans.

Anne began growing mycelium—the root-like structure of fungi—on wet cardboard in her kitchen and to her pleasant surprise, she found that she could tune the mycelium into various kinds of whole muscle seafood mimicry. Soon, Aqua Cultured Foods was born.

Fast forward to today, just one year later, and Anne has raised millions of dollars, hired staff, filed provisional patent applications, partnered with a major food company, and more. Anne's vision involves turning the tide on the war that humanity is waging on oceanic animals while still allowing seafood lovers to enjoy their favorite foods, but just made via fermentation rather than fishing.

You know when you get a food product like those Beyond Meat sausages and see that instead of plastic, it's in one of those biodegradable trays or bowls? Have you ever wondered how they do that? I mean, that bowl needs to repel oil and water from its surface without getting soggy, but still be actually biodegradable. Seems impossible.

Well, it turns out that this feat isn't only a great technological innovation that helps replace plastics; it's also a great business, as Troy Swope has proven. 

Founded in 2014, Troy's company Footprint grew from humble roots to now having 4,000 employees, $50 million in annual revenue, and production facilities around the world. 

With all this success, the company is seeking to go public later in 2022, reportedly with a valuation of $1.6 billion.

It's quite a story, and one that proves that some of humanity's most pressing problems, like plastic pollution, are also some of our best business opportunities. 

If you've ever checked the ingredients on a baked good, you know how ubiquitous eggs are. They bind, they lift, they emulsify, they hold moisture — they're simply the structural engineers of cookies, cakes, and muffins everywhere. But they're also volatile: prices spike, supply chains break, and for anyone with an egg allergy or who's avoiding eggs for animal welfare or environmental reasons, eggs aren't exactly a welcome ingredient to find on the ingredient deck. 

Enter Hadar Ekhoiz Razmovich, CEO and co-founder of Meala FoodTech, an Israeli startup that's figured out how to make peas do what eggs and hydrocolloids do, and has consequently raised several million dollars in venture capital so far. Meala's breakthrough lies in taking simple pea protein and using advanced biotechnology to unlock its hidden abilities — creating a single-ingredient powder that they say can whip, bind, and gel just like an egg in baked goods and alternative meat. No multi-ingredient formulations, no methylcellulose, no animal inputs — just plants doing some biochemical magic. 

In this episode, Hadar shares how her background in R&D led her to tackle one of food science's toughest challenges: replacing eggs and hydrocolloids without sacrificing texture, taste, or cost. We talk about how Meala's technology works, what it takes to convince industrial bakeries to swap eggs for peas, and why she believes clean-label ingredients like this are the future of food. 

Hadar is not just rethinking what we eat, she and her team are rebuilding the food system from scratch, one cookie, cake, and croissant at a time. 

Discussed in this episode 

• Meals is backed by The Kitchen Food Tech Hub, DSM's venture arm, Milk & Honey Ventures, Lasenor, and EIT. 

• Our past episode with Milk & Honey Ventures' Beni Nofech. 

• More on Meala's egg replacer, GroundBaker, is here. 

• You can see two pending patent applications of Meala's here and here. 

Get to know Hadar Ekhoiz Razmovich 

Hadar Ekhoiz Razmovich brings over 12 years of leadership experience in the global food industry, with a strong focus on driving innovation and R&D across traditional food sectors. Throughout her career, she has led complex, multidisciplinary projects from early concept development to full commercial launch, consistently bridging technological capabilities with real market needs. 

In 2021, she founded Meala FoodTech with a mission to transform the food industry. Under her leadership, Meala is pioneering clean-label functional protein that deliver superior texture, bite, and mouthfeel—without compromise and without undesirable additives. Her work empowers food manufacturers to create simpler, more natural, and better-tasting products, setting a new benchmark for next-generation of food. 

Hadar is widely recognized for her strategic vision, deep industry insight, and ability to translate scientific innovation into scalable commercial solutions. 

This is a story about how one man entered startup life, rose to great prominence, got battered in the press and endured a very public downfall, and then got back up again and kept pushing his life's mission to improve public health forward.

When it comes to food, we often hear that switching to organic, local, non-GMO production methods are what's best for the planet. But, what if the preponderance of scientific evidence doesn't support such claims, and that actually both the planet and public health are better off with the synthetic fertilizer banned by organic standards; that buying local may not be better for the planet; and that it's perfectly safe to eat genetically modified plants?

This is indeed what the science shows, says author and Harvard professor Rob Paarlberg in his new book, Resetting the Table: Straight Talk about the Food We Grow and Eat. Paarlberg doesn't claim that so-called industrial agriculture is good for the planet, but he does argue that such 21st century food production methods are far preferable for the planet than if we were to try to return to the more extensive, pastoral systems of humanity's past.

For real: What were you doing during your sophomore year of college? Probably not what Jessica Schwabach was doing, which was starting her own plant-based meat company. Two years later, Jessica has gone through two prestigious accelerator programs, created products that have been sold in dozens of stores, and just raised a $4 million seed round, including investment from food giant Nestle.

Just what is this new founder CEO doing that has so many people so interested? Well, she and her team at Sundial Foods have created some alt-chicken wings, with skin and all, that are apparently knocking people's socks off.

Well, those pundits turned out to be right, as Eric Adams eventually announced his mayoral candidacy, dispatched his Democratic rivals in the primary, including far better known candidates like Andrew Yang, and then overwhelmingly beat his Republican opponent on Election Day. Now, Adams is about to be inaugurated as the first vegan mayor of America's largest city, and his plant-based diet isn't incidental to his platform. He has big food policy plans, some of which he foreshadows in this interview, which we're re-releasing here as Episode 78 now that Eric is virtually a household name due to his successful mayoral bid.

In this interview, Adams talks about how his experience of being beaten by the police while in custody as a black teenager led to him become a police officer himself for two decades, and then ultimately to a life in politics. 

After serving in the police force, Adams was elected as a state senator in New York where he championed police reforms, including opposition to the then-stop-and-frisk policy, he served two terms as the chief executive of New York City's most populous borough, Brooklyn, and of course is now set to become mayor, with many pundits calling him the future of the Democratic party and even a potential future presidential contender. 

In addition to discussing technologies from the private sector he believes could be helpful in preventing lethal use of force by police, we also discuss how Adams' adoption of a plant-based diet reversed his diabetes, gave him back his health, and what he thinks private businesses can do to advance public health. And yes, he talks about what he thinks government should be doing to promote better health outcomes through diet, so maybe this interview will serve as a nice foreshadowing of things to come as Adams prepares to take the reins of power in the Big Apple. Who knows, maybe they'll be eating more apples!

Welcome to our first-ever episode taped before a live audience! That's right, episode 77 was taped on-stage at the Cultured Meat Symposium in San Francisco before a live audience, and now you get to be a part of it.

This is a story of two people who despite not having experience in the cultivated meat space felt so strongly about building a community around it that they started their own podcast, called Cultured Meat and Future Foods, their own conference, the Cultured Meat Symposium, and are now working on a children's book about cultivated meat together as well.

There's already plant-based pet food, but what about growing actual animal meat for all of our carnivorous best friends? The company featured in this episode, Because Animals, is trying to do just that. And they're starting with cultivated mouse meat for your cat.

That's right: cats have been eating mice for millenia, but just maybe they're about to start eating cultivated mice. Because Animals debuted what they call their Harmless Hunt Mouse Meat Cookies at a recent pet industry conference, and in this episode, we hear all about those very special cookies.

In 2019, two friends were both working in the alt-protein sector, one at the Good Food Institute and the other at Eat Just. Even though Aylon Steinhart and Thomas Bowman were both doing great things to advance the animal-free protein movement, they wondered if they should try their own hands at co-founding a food tech start-up that would put cows out to pasture and mimic dairy with plants. After serious deliberation, they both left their secure jobs to team up and found Eclipse Foods.

A couple years and $15M of investment later, Eclipse is expanding, is now in Northern California Whole Foods Market locations, and is pushing the boundaries of what counts as great dairy-free ice cream. They're pushing so hard, in fact, that as you'll hear in this episode, a recent blind taste test of more than a dozen people at The Better Meat Co. found that a plurality preferred Eclipse over two other brands: Oatly and Forager.

It's a compelling tale of how two friends banded together to create something out of nothing in their effort to build a more humane and sustainable food industry that's just as sweet—without relying on the exploitation of animals.

It's not every day that hard-nosed financial journalists write about our ethical obligations to animals, let alone do they devote an entire book to the topic. Yet that's exactly what Financial Times journalist Henry Mance has done.

In his new book, How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World, Henry takes his readers on a wild ride through our relationship with animals, including getting a job working at a slaughterhouse himself. Henry repeatedly weaves personal experiences like this one into his narrative, while also making prescriptions for a bold reshaping of the parts of our economy that currently involve animal exploitation. 

In this episode we chat about everything from whether moral persuasion can work without technological advances, what can be done to reduce demand for animal-based meat, what the financial implication of Henry's prescriptions would be, and more.

Whether we like it or not, one fact of modern living is that every day we're creating greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution. But should our final act on the earthly stage also necessitate one last pollutive hurrah? 

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.

After founding Recompose, Katrina helped change laws in three states now (Washington, Oregon, and Colorado) to allow her method, and has already opened an operational human composting facility in Seattle. In addition to dozens of composts completed, they have nearly 1,000 paying customers who've already pre-ordered their own composting, just in the same way you might pre-order a plot in a cemetery. 

So far Recompose has raised about $12 million from investors (including author Margaret Atwood!) and is just getting started in their effort to empower you to give nutrients back to the planet when you're done with your body.

Sure, diamonds—including lab-grown—may be forever. But does plastic also have to be? Not so, according to Kristin Taylor, CEO of Radical Plastics.

After a multi-decade career in the plastic industry, including working at a small company you may have heard of called ExxonMobil, Kristin decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge and form her own startup, Radical Plastics, to help plastic manufacturers make their conventional plastics actually biodegradable. 

Radical Plastics is essentially asking the question: what if all that plastic lining our highways or floating in the ocean would actually biodegrade? That's the promise of the technology that they're pioneering. They've discovered a mineral concoction that when added during the manufacturing of conventional plastic—at even less than one percent—will eventually convert that plastic into food that microbes will recognize and eat. In other words, they can make conventional plastic, once it's in the environment, actually biodegrade.

It's an exciting story, and one that just might reduce humanity's footprint on the rest of the planet.

What if planting trees could be not just good for the planet, but also a profitable business?
In this episode, I'm talking with Ben Dell, the founder and CEO of Chestnut Carbon — a company that's raised nearly $400 million, including $250 million of that in 2025, to turn farmland back into thriving native forests across the United States. And he's already forging major carbon removal deals with the likes of Microsoft and Mercedes F1.

Ben's journey is a fascinating one: he began his career in oil and gas private equity, helping fossil-fuel companies optimize their operations. But during the pandemic, he had what you might call a carbon epiphany. Seeing how few trustworthy carbon-removal projects existed, he decided to create his own — one that would make measurable, verifiable, and permanent carbon storage not just possible, but investable.

In our conversation, Ben explains why carbon is a commodity, and how to prove you've really stored it. He talks about how Chestnut buys up marginal cattle-grazed land and restores it into biodiverse forests — with already more than 17 million trees planted. And he goes over why he proudly calls Chestnut "conservation for profit" — a business model that needs no subsidies, just land, good science, and a lot of patience.

Ben also talks about the challenges of scaling a nature-based startup, the importance of grit over glamour, and why he believes restoring forests can be one of America's most investable climate solutions.

So if you've ever wondered how capitalism might actually reverse deforestation — not cause it — this episode will give you a hopeful, grounded look at what that future could look like.

Discussed in this episode

• Ben is a managing partner at Kimmeridge.

• Business Insider profile and a Wall Street Journal profile on Ben's work.

• Our past episode with author Mike Grunwald.

• You can see Chestnut's patent, "Systems and methods for forest surveying," here.

• Chestnut's offtake partnership with Microsoft and a similar agreement with Mercedes F1.

• Ben recommends podcasts such as Lex Fridman's and Invest Like the Best.

Get to Know Ben Dell

Ben Dell is a Managing Partner of Kimmeridge and oversees investment activity across the firm. He is closely involved in the screening of new geological opportunities and in the negotiation and execution of investment strategies. 

Prior to founding Kimmeridge, Mr. Dell was a Senior Equity Research Analyst for Oil and Gas Exploration and Production (E&P) at Sanford C. Bernstein, where he was ranked first three times in the Institutional Investor Research Survey for coverage of E&Ps. Mr. Dell was also ranked for Natural Gas and for Oil Services and Equipment coverage. Mr. Dell joined Sanford C. Bernstein in 2003. Prior to joining Bernstein, Mr. Dell was employed at British Petroleum (BP) in its M&A and finance group. Before moving into the finance field, Mr. Dell also held positions as an exploration geologist and geophysicist across several of BP's regional business units. 

Mr. Dell is currently CEO of Chestnut Carbon, a nature-based carbon removal developer and is on the Board of Caturus HoldCo, LLC., a large private natural gas producer in South Texas. He previously held positions as Chairman of the Board and interim CEO of Civitas Resources, Inc. ("Civitas"), a company that formed from the merger of Extraction Oil & Gas, Inc. and Bonanza Creek Energy, Inc.  Mr. Dell earned an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in Earth Sciences from St. Peter's College, Oxford.

Doni Curkendall was born and raised in Mexico, came to the US as a seven-year-old, and when she entered the workforce started as a receptionist at Goodwill. As the years went on, Doni was continually promoted, got her MBA, and eventually was a Vice President at Goodwill overseeing more than 200 employees. But two and a half years ago, as fate would have it, Doni and I began exploring whether Doni could help run my own then-one-year-old, The Better Meat Co.

For the past 2+ years, I've often said that I may be the face of our company, but Doni is the backbone, serving as our Executive Vice President and overseeing all of our operations and logistics. She's truly integral to the enterprise, and in this episode, Doni shares her secrets about what she's looking for in job applicants, what the transition from nonprofit exec to scrappy startup has been like, how she thinks about compensation packages in Startupland, and more.

It's a compelling insider look at startup life, so listen up, and I'm sure you'll be as impressed with Doni as I am.

Discussed in this episode

• Past episodes with Goodwill Industries, Your Choice birth control, and Toni Okamoto.
• Doni has been inspired by Maurice Hilleman.
• Doni recommends both How I Built This and Radiolab.

More about Doni Curkendall

Doni's driving passion in life is to use the power of business to help solve social problems. Before serving as the Executive Vice President of The Better Meat Co., as VP of Operations of Goodwill Industries of Sacramento Valley and Northern Nevada, Doni worked to help people with disadvantages achieve self-sufficiency. By the end of her nine years at Goodwill, she was managing operations for $10 million in annual revenue and oversaw a team of 250 employees. She earned her MBA from California State University, during which time she also served as a career mentor for Women's Empowerment, an organization helping homeless women gain meaningful employment. In her spare time, Doni reads Spanish literature, hikes with her dog Penny Lane, and, as her dog's name implies, loves listening to The Beatles.

You've probably heard of Beyond Meat's big IPO and their success as a publicly traded company. Sure, they were the first plant-based meat company to go public, but are you aware that The Very Good Food Co. is the second? 

As you'll hear in this episode, what started just a few years ago as a dude selling his own plant-based concoctions at a farmers market on a Canadian island has turned into a publicly traded company with a $300M market cap. In between was a kickstarter, a plant-based butcher shop, an appearance on the Canadian version of Shark Tank (Dragon's Den), and more.

The Very Good Food Co is now selling a wide array of butcher-type plant-based meats throughout North America, they acquired a plant-based cheese company, they just opened a new production factory in California, and recently posted their first million-dollar month.  

Their CEO Michelle Scott here discusses their journey, when they'll be at price parity with conventional meat, labeling challenges, and more. It's an impressive story, and one that just might inspire you to follow in their footsteps.

Discussed in this episode

• Mitchell discusses books like The Lean Startup and Clean Meat.
• Paul recommends Shoe Dog, Conscious Capitalism, and The Charisma Myth.
• Paul discusses his plant-based turducken, the Fieldyondible!

More about Mitchell Scott

Mitchell Scott is the CEO of The Very Good Food Co., the world's second plant-based meat IPO. The company has seen substantial success since its flotation in the Canadian stock market in 2021. The Very Good Food Co. designs, develops, produces, distributes, and sells a variety of plant-based meat and other food alternatives. Mitchell has a passion for building world class companies that leave a positive impact on the planet. His mission is to employ plant-based food technology to create products that are delicious while maintaining a wholesome nutritional profile. They've launched the Very Good Cheese Co with more lines of products coming in the near future. 

So often you hear about start-ups that raise millions or even tens of millions of dollars from venture capitalists before beginning to generate revenue and start making a dent in the marketplace. That is very far from the story of our guest in this episode.

Meet Deborah Torres, founder and CEO of Atlas Monroe, a start-up making plant-based fried chicken. As you'll hear, a chance encounter with a stranger in a supermarket led Deborah to become vegan, which ultimately transitioned her whole family into a plant-based lifestyle. Pretty soon Deborah was making her own plant-based fried chicken, and people really liked it, leading her to offer it as a one-off at a VegFest in Chicago. Well, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know Atlas Monroe won the best chicken at the National Fried Chicken Festival. That's not just best vegan fried chicken--that's the best fried chicken of all the fried chicken offered at this festival. 

As the company's fame grew, Deborah found herself on Shark Tank being offered a million dollars to buy her newly formed company, an offer she promptly rejected. Today, just a couple years later, Atlas Monroe operates its own factory, is on track to bring in $5M in revenue in 2021, and just keeps expanding. 

Amazingly, Deborah has achieved all this without ever taking outside investment, and she continues to own 100% of her company. It's an inspirational tale of an entrepreneur bootstrapping her way to success. 

Discussed in this episode

• You can watch the Atlas Monroe pitch on Shark Tank (best viewed at 0.5x speed since this clip is sped up)
• Deborah recommends exploring Small Business Association loans and Lendistry
• The Simply Raw documentary had a profound impact on Deborah's family
• Paul ate Atlas Monroe chicken from Pure Soul in Sacramento
• Clean Eating magazine's interview with Deborah Torres

More about Deborah Torres

Deborah Torres is the founder and CEO of the world's largest vegan fried chick'n manufacturer - ATLAS MONROE. Atlas Monroe was the first and only vegan company to be invited to the National Fried Chicken Festival and was named best fried chicken dish out of all the conventional chicken by Time Magazine's Extra Crispy. Atlas Monroe was also featured on ABC's hit show, Shark Tank, in a viral episode where Ms. Torres turned down $1 million dollars from Mark Cuban and Rohan Oza. Atlas Monroe has been featured on Yahoo!, Black Enterprise, NBC, VegNews, AfroTech, Clean Eating Magazine, Medium, Forbes, Plant Based News, LiveKindly, and more. Now this plant-based production company has recently acquired a multi-million dollar manufacturing facility and their products are sold and shipped nationwide. In addition to delectable plant-based fried chick'n products the company also specializes in all vegan, non-gmo, plant-based bacon, apple wood-fired ribs, deep fried and stuffed turkeys, signature sauces, decadent cakes, and much more mouthwatering items.

How often do you use Google's services? If you're like me, it's many times per hour. So you may think you know all about Google.com. But how much do you know about Google.org?

In short, Google.org is the company's foundation that gives away $200M a year in grants both to social enterprise startups and to nonprofit organizations seeking to use technology to advance their missions. For all you startup founders out there, note that these are dilution-free non-equity grants, or essentially free money as opposed to investments, so listen up.

And in this episode, we've got Google.org's director of product impact, Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink. In it, she tells us about what kinds of companies and charities they support and why, and she discusses what kinds of grant applications she wishes they saw more of.

For example, we hear about Google.org's work to collect emissions data and make it public, to put up eco-acoustic sensors in rainforests to help catch those who are poaching or deforesting, and even just to give money to those in developing countries who need it the most.

So take a listen and just maybe you'll be working with Brigitte and Google.org yourself in the near future.

Discussed in this episode

• WattTime: Tech solutions to automate emissions reduction.
• Carbon Tracker: Aligning markets to shift investment away from fossil fuels.
• Climate Trace: Publicizing the sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Rainforest Connection: Using eco-acoustics to prevent poaching and deforestation.
• Give Directly: Giving money directly to those who need it.
• Brigitte recommends reading both Just Mercy and Chasing the Flame.
• Google.org's climate podcast, which you can find here.

More about Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink

Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink is Head of Product Impact at Google.org, where she leads initiatives that leverage emerging technologies and Google's expertise to address global challenges. She is currently focused on how AI can be used for social impact through efforts like the $25M Google AI Impact Challenge. 

She previously led programs focused on how technology can improve global education, innovation for people with disabilities, and crisis response. 

Prior to Google.org, Brigitte was a strategy consultant for nonprofits and foundations at The Bridgespan Group and worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and International Relief and Development, focusing on innovative approaches in post-conflict transitions. She has an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

You've likely noticed that there's been an explosion of investment into the animal-free food space, with producers of alt-meat, milk, and eggs advancing weekly. But why isn't there anything comparable happening in the animal-free materials space?

Sure, we've had plastic-based leather alternatives (aka pleather) for a long time, but in terms of products not derived from animals or fossil fuels, what's out there on the market at scale? Turns out, just not that much. 

Enter the Material Innovation Initiative, a relatively new nonprofit organization started by veterans of the animal welfare and animal-free food space. Their goal: to be the Good Food Institute of animal-free materials, helping to attract investment and entrepreneurial activity to build a new industry of animal-free fur, leather, silk, and more. And we've got their CEO Nicole Rawling on this episode to regale us with the importance of building such an industry, and how there's a massive white space there just waiting to be filled.

So, are you thinking about starting your own company to help animals and the planet? If so, after listening to Nicole, you just may think you'll have a more open field if you go into alt-materials. With that, let her make the case to you herself. 

Discussed in this episode:

• Consumer research finding that among those who prefer animal leather, 80% are open to purchasing leather made from plants or grown from animal cells in a factory. 
• The RethinkX report and Dr. Liz Specht's GFI blog about it.
• Our past episodes with Pinatex (pineapple leather), Mycocycle (construction waste bioremediation), Bolt Threads (fermentation-produced silk and leather), and Goodwill (used goods).
• This episode is sponsored by the great folks at The Very Good Food Co.

More about Nicole Rawling:

Nicole is an experienced attorney and nonprofit executive. She co-founded the Material Innovation Initiative after identifying the rich potential of the next-gen materials market through her work catapulting plant-based foods into the mainstream. In her previous role as director of international engagement at the Good Food Institute, Nicole worked with key audiences around the world including companies, entrepreneurs, scientists, investors, and government officials to promote the development of alternatives to animal products. Her expertise in the field and in bringing together stakeholders made her a sought after speaker at conferences and high profile meetings in locations like Israel, Estonia, Poland, London, Brazil, India, and across the U.S.

It's often that we hear about some really cool and promising new technology that's allegedly going to change the game, but only once that tech is scaled and commercialized. In this episode, however, we're featuring a start-up that not only has a very cool technology, it's already commercialized it with hundreds of customers, including some very big names in the fashion world. 

Mélanie Broyé-Engelkes is the CEO of Ananas Anam, makers of Piñatex. For those of you not fluent in Spanish, "piña" means pineapple, which gives you a sense of what Melanie and her team are doing with their B2B materials start-up.

When it comes to leather alternatives, most are made from fossil fuel-derived plastics. Aside from the obvious environmental concerns, there are functionality concerns with such plastic products, too. We often hear about really encouraging new sustainable materials like mushroom leather, cactus leather, and even leather from collagen that was grown in a controlled environment. But as promising as those solutions are, they aren't yet really commercialized in any meaningful sense yet.

Enter Piñatex. It's a leather alternative that's made from the leaves of the pineapple plant, which are typically considered an agricultural waste product. These upcycled leaves are converted into a functional and luxurious-feeling material that can be used for everything from shoes to handbags, and more. 

And indeed, that's already what's happening. Today brands like Hugo Boss, H&M, and hundreds of others, are using Piñatex in their designs, setting Ananas Anam apart from many other alt-materials makers.

In this episode, Melanie shares the company's origin story, telling us where they've been and where the pineapple revolution is going.

Discussed in this episode 

• Brands currently using Piñatex. 
• What pineapple plant leaves look like.
• Melanie recommends Lean In, Shoe Dog, and The Ride of a Lifetime.
• Our past episode with Bolt Threads on mushroom leather

How often have you wished that more billionaires used their money to do good in the world? Well, you're in luck, because in this episode we talk with British billionaire Jim Mellon.

In recent years Jim's been most well-known for his work on human longevity research, which we discuss. But he's also become fixated on ending the factory farming of animals. As a result, Jim has learned an immensity about alternative protein and has invested in dozens of start-ups in the space via his fund Agronomics. He's even just published a book on the topic, Moo's Law, in which he discusses his views on the industry, which companies he thinks will be winners, and yes, which he thinks won't make it. 

As you'll hear in this interview, Jim has little hope that humans will give up eating meat, so he's betting instead on simply making meat without the animals. 

In this conversation we discuss when he thinks such clean meat will be price comparable to conventional meat, whether price parity is sufficient, where he sees white spaces, and more. 

So enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with a truly interesting person who's given a lot of thought to just how he can use his role as an investor to solve some of the most pressing problems we face.

Discussed in this episode

• Our past episodes with philosopher Peter Singer, BlueNalu's Lou Cooperhouse, and Shiok Meat's Sandhya Sriram.
• The Good Food Institute Startup Manual.

More about Jim Mellon

Jim Mellon's investment philosophy is underpinned by his ability to recognize emerging trends that give rise to new industries or major shifts in markets. This includes the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, as foreseen in the first book Jim co-authored entitled Wake Up!, and subsequently in the new science and technologies detailed in Cracking the Code and Fast Forward. 

More recently Jim has established himself as a thought leader in the nascent field of aging research and longevity as well as a key investor in alternative proteins, through his company Agronomics. He is interested in keeping the world healthy and properly and ethically fed and forecasts great investment opportunities in both these areas. 

Jim Mellon also runs Master Investor to provide tips and forecasting insights to the investor community. His wealth of knowledge and vast experience allows him to capitalize on sound investments upon which he has built a worldwide business empire. Jim is serially amongst the top 10% in the Sunday Times Rich List and holds a master's degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford.

Our oceans are in dire trouble, and a big part of the reason is because we're killing so many aquatic animals for food. But if you want hope, look no further than Monica Talbert, whose story is sure to inspire.

Monica was born into the seafood industry, and for years has been running her family business, Van Cleve's Seafood, from the Eastern Shore of Virginia. But as you'll hear in this conversation, a series of events led her to start experimenting with plant-based seafood recipes. And while it's no longer major news for conventional meat companies to develop plant-based lines since so many are admirably already now doing that, Monica announces in this episode something far more inspirational. 

What started as a supplemental form of business has now become a passion for Monica so much that she's personally essentially gone plant-based, and announces in this episode that she's phasing out the legacy conventional seafood side of her business entirely to focus exclusively on growing the Plant Based Seafood Co. If anything, they might keep Van Cleve's Seafood around but rebrand it as Van Cleve's Seaweed, selling only, as you can guess, delicious sea vegetable products. 

So far the Plant Based Seafood Co. is winning innovation awards, earning investment from venture capital funds, and is rolling out products nationwide. Monica's goal is to grow it not just as big as Van Cleve's Seafood, but to go much bigger, and produce enough sustainable seafood, ie, plant-based seafood, to feed the world and save the oceans in the process. 

Discussed in this episode

• Netflix's mega-popular documentaries Seaspiracy and My Octopus Teacher
• Patagonia's film Unbroken Ground 
• This American Life episode on pig rectums being passed off as calamari
• Crustastun technology for rendering lobsters unconscious prior to boiling
• Monica found Daring Greatly by Brene Brown useful, and is inspired by Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena speech

Landfills are, well, filling up. We're running out of places to put our trash, and the trash we've landfilled won't decompose for centuries. 

But, what if we could take a lot of trash and seed it with fungal cultures that would eat it and render it no longer toxic within just a few weeks rather than having to wait centuries? That's exactly what Mycocycle is planning to do, and we've got their CEO, Joanne Rodriguez, on the show to talk about it.

After a decades-long career in construction, Joanne founded Mycocycle and with her team has been training fungi to eat construction trash, especially asphalt, and plan to sell that service to municipalities and landfills. As if that weren't enough, she then plans to take the fungi mycelium they've grown and sell it as a biodegradable packaging material. Pretty cool, huh?

Well, what might be even cooler is that you yourself can invest in Joanne's company right now! Normally, startups on this show are only seeking funding from deep pocketed venture capital firms. But Mycocycle is taking a different approach, seeking to raise their first round from hundreds of individuals via StartupEngine.com, with a minimum investment of only $262. 

So take a listen to the company and the mycelium that Joanne is growing. It's an impressive story, and one that might even involve you!

Discussed in this episode

• You can invest in Mycocycle here!
• Mycocyle went through the LatinX incubator.
• Mycocycle's pending patent application.
• Joanne was inspired by Daniel's story.
• Joanne recommends books like Mycelium Running and Radical Mycology
• We reference past episodes with Coral Vita, Ecovative, and Bolt Threads.

More about Joanne Rodriguez

Founder and CEO of Mycocycle, Joanne Rodriguez has worked across the construction products industry for 30 years. She is a subject matter expert in sustainable technologies–like zero waste and the circular economy, and she has experience leading diverse teams to unprecedented growth. Leading the sustainability efforts for a major roof manufacturer, Joanne discovered the issue of the unsustainable and growing problems related to disposing of construction and demolition materials. A frequent national speaker, she carries a vast network of contacts across manufacturing, architecture and design, government leadership, and sustainability. She has served on boards with the US EPA, the Constructions Specification Institute, the US Green Building Council, and has served as a subject matter expert at convenings of the United Nations, Clinton Global Initiative, ecoAmerica, GreenBiz, and Resilient Cities Summits. Joanne is a Certified Permaculture Designer, a Construction Documents Specialist, holds a Professional Certificate from Cornell University in Climate Change Communications, and is a LEED Accredited Professional through the US Green Building Council.

Typically on this podcast, we showcase entrepreneurs and business titans alike who are using the power of commerce to try to solve serious social problems. Occasionally we've had on nonprofit leaders, and in this episode, we've again got a very special guest who also is not a grinding entrepreneur. But this guest is someone who's inspired many mission-oriented entrepreneurs, myself included, along with millions of others trying to do good in the world.

In fact, it's hard to think of many people on the planet who've led a more impactful life than this episode's guest. 

Peter Singer is an author and ethicist, and has been routinely called the most influential philosopher alive. He's widely credited with kickstarting the modern animal protection movement with his 1975 mega-bestseller Animal Liberation, and with popularizing what's now called the effective altruism movement through his early writings on poverty and more recently with his 2009 book The Life You Can Save.

Many of the business leaders we feature on this show, especially those in the animal-free protein space, are motivated by philosophical underpinnings to their work that are likely related to or even directly stemming from Peter Singer's writings.

In this interview Peter doesn't disappoint nor does he shy away from tough subjects. We discuss a wide range of topics, including his views on the role technology and entrepreneurship play in helping animals along with the role charities play, too. We get into whether he has any regrets over publicly taking certain views in his 50-year career. And we discuss whether he thinks animals are better off today than when he first wrote Animal Liberation in 1975.

Peter offers his views on the ethics of eating oysters, adoption of children vs. procreation, colonizing other planets, and more. And now that he's in his mid-70s, he also talks about what he hopes his obituaries will say, which hopefully won't be written for a long time.

Whether you agree with Peter on a particular issue or not, there's no doubt you'll come away from this interview with a great appreciation for his commitment to doing the most good he can in the world. 

Discussed in this episode

• We discuss some of Peter's books, including Animal Liberation, The Life You Can Save, How Are We to Live?, The Most Good You Can Do, Practical Ethics, and a new book Peter edited called The Golden Ass. The latter led us to discuss the Biblical story of Balaam and his donkey.
• We also discuss The Three Body Problem, a mega-popular Chinese novel in which Animal Liberation plays a role.
• Peter Singer and Paul Shapiro have jointly published two op-eds (in 2006 and 2012 respectively) about the cage confinement of animals on factory farms. 
• When it comes to animal-saving technology, Peter personally invested in Gourmey, a cultivated foie gras start-up, and he donates to The Good Food Institute.
• Speaking of technology advancing ethics, we talk about Susan B. Anthony's 1896 view that bicycling "has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."
• Peter is an editor of the Journal of Controversial Ideas.
• Peter recommends Better Angels of Our Nature, Moral Tribes, and The Precipice.
• A Chinese fast food company swapped eggs from its menu for plant-based Just Egg.
• Peter recommends donating to charities recommended by The Life You Can Save.
• Peter hopes there'll be more investment in fusion nuclear energy.
• Our past episodes with nonprofit leaders  New Harvest's Isha Datar and Goodwill's Lori Dearwester

More about Peter Singer

Peter Singer is often referred to as the "world's most influential living philosopher." He's best known for his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals, he's often credited with starting the modern animal protection movement, and he's had a major influence on the development of effective altruism.  He's also known for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics in bioethics.

Several key figures in the animal movement have said that Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, led them to get involved in the struggle to reduce the vast amount of suffering we inflict on animals.  To that end, Peter co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country's largest and most effective animal organization. His wife, Renata, and I stopped eating meat in 1971.

Peter is the founder of The Life You Can Save, an organization based on his book of the same name.  It aims to spread his ideas about why we should be doing much more to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty, and how we can best do this. You can view his TED talk on this topic here.

His writings in this area include: the 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" in which he argues for donating to help the global poor; and two books that make the case for effective giving, The Life You Can Save (2009) and The Most Good You Can Do (2015).

Peter has written, co-authored, edited or co-edited more than 50 books, including Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, Rethinking Life and Death, One World, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason) and The Point of View of the Universe (with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. His writings have appeared in more than 25 languages.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, Peter was educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford.  After teaching in England, the United States, and Australia, in 1999 he became Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.  

What if one solution to fashion's waste problem is literally growing on our own heads?

Every day, salons around the world toss out millions of pounds of freshly cut human hair — a clean, protein-rich, renewable resource that mostly ends up in landfills or incinerators. But what if that so-called waste could become the next sustainable textile?

My guest on this episode, Zsofia Kollar, is the founder and CEO of Human Material Loop, a Netherlands-based startup turning salon hair waste into a high-performance fibre that behaves like wool — but with 43 times lower CO₂ emissions, 20 times less water use, and none of the animal cruelty or plastics. Their branded fiber, called Adara, is already being spun into things like carpets, curtains, and acoustic panels — and it's made from something we all grow ourselves.

In this conversation, Zsofia and I talk about how she got the idea to build an entire materials company out of human hair, how her technology works, why hair is such a strong and versatile material, the "ick" factor of human-derived fibres, and how she's scaling her model so that salons and HML benefit alike.

If you think using human hair in textiles sounds strange, stick around — because by the end of this episode, you might just want a carpet made from your own cut-offs.

I'll let Zsofia make the case.

Discussed in this episode

• Washington Post coverage of Human Material Loop's work.

• Vogue and CNN have covered their work, too.

• Zoroastrians sometimes practice sky burial on a Tower of Silence, in which vultures are allowed to consume a recently deceased human.

• Our past episode on human composting with Recompose.

Get to Know Zsofia Kollar

Zsofia Kollar is a forward-thinking entrepreneur passionate about sustainable innovation. Science and design are crucial in the company's development. After her experience running an independent design studio, Zsofia was driven to reimagine waste management, focusing particularly on hair waste. Her goal is to foster collaboration and innovation for a more sustainable future. Human Material Loop demonstrates that sustainability and economic growth can coexist. Zsofia's dedication extends beyond her CEO role—she's also a published author and university lecturer, inspiring others in design and sustainability. Her vision entails holistic sustainability, where science, design, and collaboration reshape waste management and drive innovation. 

Did you know that two of every five births in America are unplanned? 

That's not to suggest that an unplanned baby is going to be an unloved baby, of course, but family planning does tend to offer advantages, especially for families with fewer means, since high birth rates make it particularly difficult for children to escape a vicious cycle of poverty. (See more from the charity Having Kids.)

Smaller family sizes not only are helpful for poverty reduction, but they also have environmental benefits for a planet currently experiencing exponential growth of the human species and all the associated concerns that come along with it, from climate change to deforestation and more.

Unfortunately, despite major revolutions in science and technology in recent decades, innovation in contraception just hasn't kept pace, making it harder for both men and women to more thoughtfully decide when or even whether to procreate. Admittedly, women have lots of contraceptive choices, but they tend to have some pretty unsavory side effects, especially those that are hormonal in nature. Men, on the other hand, basically have two choices: condoms, which aren't always the most popular, or vasectomy, which can be daunting for obvious reasons. 

As a result, the burden of pregnancy prevention has typically fallen disproportionately on women.

Enter Your Choice Therapeutics, an early-stage contraception start-up developing non-hormonal, non-permanent methods of contraception for both women and men to use. As you'll hear from company CEO Akash Bakshi, Your Choice started as an idea in a UC-Berkeley lab, ended up going through the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator program, and is now a funded startup aiming to bring new contraceptive categories to market. One is a contraceptive gel that's both effective at reducing the risk of pregnancy and STDs, and the other is an oral, non-hormonal pill that men can take to render their sperm temporarily unable to impregnate a woman's egg.

Considering how high the stakes are, it's about time contraception innovation is featured on this show. So enjoy hearing the story of one startup seeking to make it easier for us to make fewer of us.

Discussed in this episode

• History of contraceptives
• History of vasectomy in particular
• Akash recommends NSF I-Corps 
• Our past episodes on direct air carbon capture and water filtration

More about Akash Bakshi

Your Choice Therapeutics CEO Akash Bakshi completed his undergraduate work in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at UC San Diego and then went on to pursue his graduate degree at the University of Queensland. Upon completing his research career he began his professional career in the commercialization of research at various organizations including UniQuest, UC Davis, and most recently at UC Berkeley. His work has resulted in numerous collaborations valued at over $10M. ​

Founded in 2017, New New Age Meats is practically old school when it comes to cultivated meat companies. 

In mid-2018, the nascent startup debuted its first sausage made with cells from a living pig who the company biopsied at a nearby farm. Rather than being made entirely of animal cells, that historic sausage was part animal and part plant, and that's the point, according to co-founder and CEO Brian Spears. 

In this episode, Brian argues that you don't need to make cultivated meat products entirely from animal cells. He argues instead that you can not only control costs by combining plant proteins with animal cells, but you can actually create novel and superior culinary experiences when you're not simply relying solely on animal cells to do the job alone.

In 2021, having already raised $7 million, New Age Meats is opening a Series A round to help it build a pilot plant and ready its hybrid meat products for actual commercialization.

In this episode we hear about Brian's journey from leaving another startup he founded and ran for eight 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 of New Age Meats' products. 

And yes, we even talk about Brian's passion outside of the clean room: on the ballroom dance floor.

Discussed in this episode: 

• New Age Meats' 2018 sausage debut
• Indiebio accelerator program that incubated New Age Meats
• Sam Harris' episode with Uma Valeti of Memphis Meats was influential in Brian's decision to start New Age Meats
• Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
• New Harvest and the Good Food Institute
• Brian recommends reading Thinking Fast and Slow
• Paul recommends reading Shoe Dog
• Paul's book Clean Meat

More about Brian Spears:

Brian Spears is the founder and CEO of New Age Meats -- making meat from animal cells instead of animal slaughter. Previously, he spent eight years as co-founder of Sixclear, creating software and products to automate the research labs and production environments of customers such as NASA, Cisco Systems, Sandia National Labs, and GE Healthcare. He is a chemical engineer with 12 years of industry experience in laboratory and industrial automation.

If you've ever heard of Bolt Threads, you may know them as one of the OGs in the space of growing animal products without animals. After all, since they were founded way back in 2009 they've been creating spider silk via synthetic biology and fermentation.

But the company's headlines these days typically don't relate to spider silk at all, even though it's still an important part of the company. In a turn of events that they'd never have predicted at the outset of their startup, Bolt Threads has dove headfirst into growing mycelium (root-like threads of fungi) that can be harvested within days and turned into eco-friendly leather alternatives. 

The result? Bolt Threads recently inked a deal with Adidas to commercialize its mycelium leather with the first shoes hitting the market in 2021.

What was started as a project more than a decade ago by some students who applied for government grants is now a VC-backed startup that's raised more than $200 million, has celebrity endorsements, and is on the verge of entering its first major commercialization 11 years later. It's a wild ride they've been on, and Bolt Threads co-founder David Breslauer has some important insights for anyone seeking to use business to solve social problems. 

Discussed in this episode

• Bolt Thread's mycelium-based leather, Mylo.
• Bolt's partnership with Adidas to use mycelium-based leather.
• A spider silk tapestry made with the silk of one million spiders.
• Bolt marketed 50 spider silk neck ties.
• Fungi that consume plastic and even radiation in the Chernobyl reactor.
• Steve Jobs' famous insult response.
• The book Clean Meat briefly discusses Bolt Threads' work.

About David Breslauer

David Breslauer is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Bolt Threads. He leads technology innovation at Bolt, creating and incubating biomaterials for improved consumer products. His obsession with biomaterials began with graduate research on silk during his Bioengineering Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and UCSF. David has an orange belt in Krav Maga and is a great admirer of stencil graffiti.

Of all the major meat companies, none has embraced plant protein in the way Canada's largest meat company, Maple Leaf Foods, has. Not only has the company acquired two well-known plant protein brands—Field Roast and Lightlife—but it's dramatically expanded those brands' reach, enabling more meat consumers to enjoy these products. 

In fact, Maple Leaf has put nearly a billion dollars so far into acquiring and now growing their plant-based protein lines. Part of that includes building a $100 million tempeh plant along with a $310 million plant-based meat plant, both in Indiana.

These are the kinds of numbers that even the biggest alt-protein start-ups dream of, yet it's a meat company that's making it happen.

In this episode, we talk with Adam Grogan, an executive at Maple Leaf's plant protein division Greenleaf Foods. We're also joined by the company's Chief of R&D, Jitendra Sagili, a meat industry veteran who's in charge of a team of 90 food scientists, many of whom are working to innovate the best new alt-proteins for the meat-eating consumer.

We talk about a lot of things, including whether Maple Leaf sees plant-based meat as cannibalizing their core products or merely as supplemental to them. We discuss their efforts to put plant protein not only into the meat aisle, but also into the meat itself. We learn that ironically, Lightlife was a vegetarian but not vegan brand pre-acquisition, and it took a meat giant like Maple Leaf to convert all their products to be animal-free. And we learn that in just a few years since acquiring Field Roast, Maple Leaf has tripled the size of the business.

And yes, we also touch on the controversial ad that Lightlife placed criticizing fellow plant-based meat purveyors and get their thoughts in retrospect about it. (Here's Impossible Foods' response.)

It's a riveting conversation offering a window into the world of a major meat company that's trying to diversify its protein portfolio as a way to reduce its footprint and win the consumers of the future.

Discussed in this episode

• Maple Leaf is spending $100 million on a new tempeh plant and $310 million on a new plant-based meat plant.
• Jitendra recommends books like Mind-Gut Connection and Food Foolish.
• Adam is a fan of Veganuary, and he recommends books like The Wicked Healthy Cookbook and The Noma Guide to Fermentation.
• Our episode with Irina Gerry of Change Foods.
• Our episode with Kristie Middleton of Rebellyous Foods.
• Our episodes on plastic alternatives with Notpla and Outlander Materials

You've heard the old adage: Humans plan, and God laughs.

That truism could nicely describe Irina Gerry's life, which has been pretty remarkable so far. She started out growing up in communist Russia, but with fate helping to defy odds, Irina ended up coming to the US and attending Harvard Business School. She eventually worked at one of the biggest symbols of capitalism on the planet: Procter & Gamble. But soon, Irina was in the dairy industry, working at milk product behemoth Danone, or sometimes known as Dannon in the United States, managing their plant-based brands Silk and So Delicious.

After years of spending time advancing alt-dairy within the walls of one of the world's biggest dairy companies, fate struck again in Irina's life. Following a chance virtual meeting on Linkedin during the pandemic with the CEO of a brand new, pre-revenue, animal-free dairy start-up, Irina decided to leave the comfort and safety of a good job at a major company to try her hand at entrepreneurship. 

So she left Danone to become the Chief Marketing Officer of Change Foods, a company recently started by Australian plant-based entrepreneur David Bucca that's using microbes to brew real dairy proteins without the use of a single cow. So far they've raised nearly $1 million and are seeking an additional $5 million in 2021. Change Foods has already brought on other heavy hitters from major food brands, and their first product, they claim, will be cheese that melts and performs just like conventional cheese. 

In this episode we discuss Irina's journey from corporate Goliath to start-up David, just what makes Change Foods different from other precision fermentation start-ups, and what Irina thinks are examples of great—and not-so-great—marketing in the plant-based space. 

We also get into why plant-based milk has become so much more successful than plant-based meat, at least so far. And we discuss the vexing question: is real dairy brewed from microbes vegan or not? After all, it's real dairy protein, so if you're allergic to cow's milk, you'll be allergic to this. But no animals were used, so how should marketers describe this kind of food?

So enjoy learning about the brave new world of sustainable protein and a remarkable life journey so far in this episode!

Discussed in this interview:

• Our past episode featuring Perfect Day's co-founders.
• Forks Over Knives had a big impact on Irina.
• Irina recommends The Tipping Point by Malcomb Gladwell.
• Paul's article on how cheese consumption is increasing even while milk consumption is declining.
• The RethinkX Report on the future of animal agriculture.
• Irina praised companies like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Miyoko's. She also questioned Lightlife Foods for its ads attacking fellow plant-based companies.

If you're a regular listener of the show, you likely already know that reducing humanity's reliance on animals for food is one of the most pressing challenges the world faces at this moment. But meat demand just keeps rising and we're raising more animals for food today than ever before.

One thing keeping meat alternatives merely as alternatives is that plant-based meat is still sold at multiples over the cost of animal-based meat. In other words, lowering the cost of meat alternatives seems like a true business and moral imperative.

Kristie Middleton has spent her life trying to move our food industry away from animal usage and toward plant proteins. She knows as well as anyone just how critical price is when it comes to influencing institutional purchasing decisions. After spending two decades working for animal welfare charities, including authoring a book on meat reduction, she's now left the life of a nonprofit animal activist behind and embraced an executive role at an early-stage plant-based chicken startup called Rebellyous Foods. 

Their goal is very simple to understand but incredibly difficult to achieve: compete on cost with commodity chicken.

In this episode we talk about Kristie's transition from the world of charities to the work of building a company aimed at helping animals. We also discuss how Rebellyous Foods intends to bend the cost curve of plant-based meat and what they're doing with the $12 million they've raised from venture capitalists so far.

It's an inspirational tale for anyone interested in making the world a better place for all animals, human and nonhuman alike.

Discussed in this episode

• Kristie's book MeatLess: Transform the Way You Eat and Live — One Meal at a Time
• Meatless Mondays in LA schools, which Kristie helped implement
• Great by Choice by Jim Collins
• Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
• Christie Lagally, the founder and CEO of Rebellyous Food
• Our past episodes featuring Toni Okamoto and Colleen Patrick Goudreau.
• Food Biz Wiz podcast with Alli Ball
• Startup CPG

More about Kristie Middleton

Kristie Middleton is vice president of business development for Rebellyous Foods and the author of MeatLess: Transform the Way You Eat and Live—One Meal at a Time. Prior to joining Rebellyous, Kristie was Managing Director of Farm Animal Protection at the Humane Society of the United States, where she built and led a team of foodservice professionals working with foodservice management corporations and institutions across the U.S. to help them reduce meat purchases and incorporate more plant-based options into their menus.

Kristie has partnered with the nation's biggest school districts including Los Angeles, Detroit, and Boston and some of the world's largest food companies to implement plant-based initiatives such as Meatless Monday.

We may hear a lot about solar power and renewable energy, but sadly, our civilization is still voraciously addicted to fossil fuels. Even in a technologically advanced country like America, nearly all — about 90 percent — of the energy we use still comes from non-renewable sources. This not only causes serious environmental damage to extract from the earth, but also is a leading cause of climate change that's driving countless species to extinction, including possibly own our species if we don't get our act together.

The effort to collect energy from the sun's rays has come a long way, but it's still largely dependent on finding roofspace or large tracts of land to put unappealing blue-grey solar panels. But what if we could collect solar energy through crystal clear film that we could affix to virtually any surface, including the windows of skyscrapers?

By making it possible to invisibly turn outdoor objects like windows into solar energy-collecting devices, we could transform the ways our cities and homes get their power.

That's exactly what Ubiquitous Energy is seeking to do. The start-up has raised $30 million to commercialize technology that began in an MIT lab that uses invisible film placed on windows to harvest solar energy. And we've got their CEO, Susan Stone, on this episode to tell us all about it. 

It doesn't look like humanity's energy needs are going to subside any time soon. If anything, we're going to need more power, not less. And that's why innovations like Ubiquitous Energy's are so important: since they allow us to have our energy and eat it too, or maybe have our energy, and heat our homes, too. 

Discussed in this episode

• Our past episode on Ornilux bird-friendly glass
• Statistics about solar and other renewable energy in the U.S.
• Our recent episode with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market
• Susan recommends Play Bigger by Al Ramadan
• Susan recommends a Fast Company story by Andrea Kayal about how to hire nice people
  

More About Susan Stone

Susan Stone is CEO at Ubiquitous Energy. She has been a longtime board member and investor in the company. Prior to joining Ubiquitous, she was the founder and CEO of Sierra Wasatch Capital, an early stage venture capital firm, and managed early stage investing for Riverhorse Investments, Inc. Susan has also worked at JPMorgan in New York and Houlihan Lokey in Los Angeles as an investment banker focused on mergers & acquisitions. Stone holds an MBA from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and a bachelor's degree from Yale University.

Most start-ups fail. Many that don't fail still don't have spectacular results. Chris Bryson, however, defied the odds by founding and running a company that was so successful Instacart acquired it for a reported $65 million.

Rather than retiring to a tropical beach with regular daiquiri service, Chris charted a different course for his new life. Instead of leisurely enjoying the financial fruit of his labor, Chris has decided to use his wealth to invest in alternative protein start-ups seeking to displace animals in the food industry's supply chain. Convinced that the most good he can do in the world is help divorce meat production from animal farming, already he's seeded a number of plant-based and cultivated meat start-ups with cash to hopefully drive them to the same kind of success he had as a start-up founder.

Additionally, Chris has also decided to try his hand at serial entrepreneurship and is starting his own alt-seafood venture himself, too. 

Will Chris be like Lebron and bring home another championship for a different team? Will he be like Jordan and move from being a player to a coach for his investees? How did becoming a multimillionaire change his life?

Hear his inspirational tale in this podcast about Chris' wild ride to try to do good in the world. 

Discussed in this episode

• Unata, the company Chris founded and sold to Instacart
• Rebellyous Foods, Plantible Foods, Avant Meats, Cultured Decadence, four startups in which Chris has invested
• Paul's review of A Traitor to His Species, a biography of ASPCA founder Henry Bergh
• Chris says Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk was inspirational to him. 
• Christie Lagally's analysis showing that plant-based meat is still less than one percent of the total meat market.
• I am an Animal, HBO's documentary on PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk
• The Good Food Institute, a charity helping advance sustainable protein solutions

More about Chris Bryson and Unata

Chris Bryson served as the founder and CEO of Unata, an enterprise software provider (acquired by Instacart in 2018) that powers the eCommerce & digital experiences for major grocery chains. Recognized as the 52nd Fastest Growing North American Tech Company (PROFIT 500 2016), Canada's #2 best small business workplace (Great Place to Work 2017), and one of Canada's Top 20 Most Innovative Companies (CIX Awards 2016). He holds a bachelor's in commerce from Queen's University. 

Meat from a cow who's eaten an entirely grass-based diet is typically called "grass-fed meat." So when you're making plant-based meat with wood as your feedstock, is it called "wood-fed meat"? 

No matter what you call it, Arbiom has raised about $30 million to produce it.

Arbiom CEO Marc Chevrel is taking wood and subjecting it to a yeast-based fermentation that allows him to, within just one week, produce a high-protein food which can be used both for human and animal purposes. Just think about how long it takes to raise an animal for food, yet Marc harvests his protein in just one week.

Right now, billions of wild fish are killed and fed to farmed fish, farmed land animals like pigs, and to our pets in dog and cat food. What if Marc's yeast could replace the need for all those fish to be taken from the sea? Even more, he's turned his wood-fed yeast into plant-based meat which he asserts is quite tasty, and he says, very affordable. 

So, is wood-fed meat the future of sustainable protein? Marc Chevrel thinks so. Enjoy this episode and you the judge.

Discussed in this episode

• Feedstuffs: "Arbiom achieves milestone in scale-up of 'wood-to-food' technology"
• The Spoon: "The Latest Ingredient For Alt-Protein? Wood."
• Food Ingredients: "Arbiom's alternative protein product has 'lowest impact on climate change'"

More about Marc Chevrel of Arbiom:

Marc Chevrel has been a manager in industrial fields for more than 20 years, with a varied experience in energy, chemistry, manufacturing, engineering and services. He was the head of the regional office for industrial environment in Northern France before working for the French Energy Regulatory Commission as head of the electricity markets. He then joined the nuclear engineering and manufacturing company Areva, where he held various management roles, including leader of industrial business units with a work force of several thousand people, and sales of about 1 billion dollars. 

Marc has a wealth of international experience and he has worked and lived in four countries (France, Germany, Japan and the USA). Marc is a graduate from both École Normale Supérieure and Mines ParisTech and holds master's degrees in mathematics and engineering.

This is of course a historic election for many reasons, one of them being that there's very high concern about how the votes will be counted. We're just days away from the final day to vote and we've got news stories about the Russians and Iranians gaining access to certain voter records in the US — it's crazy!

One need look no further than 20 years ago when disputes over how to count the ballots in Florida led the US Supreme Court to step in and end the state's recount, handing, by a 5-4 ruling, George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore.

Well, the events of 2000 may seem tame compared to what could happen on election night 2020 and the following days. This time we have not only a pandemic gripping our nation, but a president who regularly rails against mail-in voting as allegedly fraudulent and who assuredly will claim that the election results are fake. Recall that even after his electoral college victory in 2016, president-elect Trump maintained, without providing any evidence, that his loss in the popular vote was only made possible by millions of so-called fraudulent votes.

Turns out, however, that there's one thing everyone should be able to agree on: We need better technology to improve the security of our elections, from the news people are seeing during election season to the counting of the actual votes on election day and beyond.

In this episode, we have one of the nation's foremost experts on cybersecurity, Dr. Aaron Brantly, the founder and director of the Tech4Humanity Lab at Virginia Tech. In addition to having worked at the U.S. Army Cyber Institute and at West Point, Aaron has written four books on cybersecurity and has traveled the world to promote democracy and protect elections abroad. Few people understand the cyber threats we face better than Aaron, and the opportunities for businesses to create technology that can help safeguard our electoral processes and therefore our democracy. 

As you'll hear, Aaron and I talk about everything from what threats he sees as the most serious, to why we don't yet have secure online voting, to how other countries handle their election security. And at the end of our conversation, Aaron gives his wish list of startups he hopes will be founded that could be both financially lucrative while also protecting the integrity of our voting systems.

So if you care about protecting our democracy's electoral process and how digital innovation can help, this is the episode for you.

Discussed in this episode:

• Aaron Brantly's personal site
• Aaron's four books on cybersecurity
• The Tech4Humanity Lab at Virginia Tech
• Aaron recommends both Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society by Ron Deibert and Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow
• Two documentaries: The Social Dilemma and All-In: The Fight for Democracy

More about Dr. Aaron Brantly

Aaron Brantly, an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech, has worked on issues related to cybersecurity from multiple angles, including human rights and development, intelligence and national security, and military cybersecurity. His interests span the political science and computer science divide. He is currently working on a yearlong project on cyber deterrence funded by OSD Minerva R-Def. He also is the founder and director of the Tech4Humanity Lab at Virginia Tech.

Aaron holds a PhD in political science from the University of Georgia, and his principal areas of research include cyber conflict and security, terrorism, intelligence, big data, and Internet governance.

When you hear the word nuclear, does your mind flash to mushroom clouds, Chernobyl, or maybe the glowing three-eyed fish from The Simpsons? Well, what if nuclear electricity — far from being an environmental villain — is actually one of the safest, cleanest, and most land-efficient energy sources we have?

It turns out that former fashion model Isabelle Boemeke is on a mission to change how we think about nuclear energy. When she and I met a few years ago, in Italy of all places, she was known by many simply as Isodope, her online persona that blends fashion, futurism, and fission to make nuclear cool again. And now, in her new book Rad Future, Isabelle argues that nuclear power isn't just misunderstood — it's essential to solving climate change, land preservation, and numerous other important concerns.

In our conversation, Isabelle details:

• Why fear of nuclear power stems more from cultural trauma than from science,

• Why nuclear electricity is safer and environmentally-friendlier than not just fossil fuels, but also solar and wind,

• What's fact vs. fiction when it comes to the world's biggest energy disasters,

• And why, despite all the excitement about fusion and modular reactors, maybe the smartest thing we can do right now is simply pick a proven fission design — and start building them fast.

I always love when it turns out that the thing we thought was the villain is actually a hero, or at least better than what we thought. If you do too, this is the episode for you, as this episode may challenge your assumptions about what's truly "green" and is actually safe.

Discussed in this episode

• The 2019 Amazon Rainforest fires and Australian fires that decimated massive amounts of wildlife habitat helped inspire Isabelle to focus on environmental concerns such as climate change.

• The 1975 Baquiao dam collapse killed hundreds of thousands of people.

• Isabelle recommends checking out www.whatisnuclear.com and the Decouple Podcast.

• Commonwealth Fusion recently raised $863 million.

• The US military is investing in small, mobile nuclear reactors.

• Paul recently read a sci-fi book about nuclear-powered wildlife called The Kaiju Preservation Society.

Get to Know Isabelle Boemeke

With her signature mix of humor, sharp research, and optimistic vision, her debut book, Rad Future, makes the case for nuclear electricity as one of the best tools to solve the climate crisis. Boemeke is also known as Isodope, the irreverent digital persona on a mission to make nuclear cool. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Save Clean Energy and board member of Nature is Nonpartisan and Nuclear Scaling Initiative, where she works at the intersection of policy, culture, and technology to accelerate pragmatic solutions. She delivered a TED Talk that has been viewed nearly 2 million times, led a grassroots campaign that helped delay the closure of California's Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and is a TIME Magazine "Next Generation Leader."

This is a special episode, because the guest holds many interesting titles for our purposes: Toni Okamoto is the founder of Plant Based on a Budget, a successful author, the creator and former co-host of this podcast, and...she happens also to be my wife. And Toni has a new book coming out! This is her third cookbook, entitled The Friendly Vegan Cookbook, which is coauthored with Toni's business partner and friend Michelle Cehn.

Now, before you think this is just some act of nepotism to promote my wife's new book (which is certainly worth promoting, nepotism or not!), as you'll soon hear, Toni has a fascinating tale to tell about her success as an entrepreneur. In this episode we chat about what led her to leave the comfortable life of a paycheck and benefits to take a bet on starting her own company based on her passion: helping people save money by eating plant-based. 

With no outside investment and just by bootstrapping with revenue she's brought in, Toni has built her company into a powerhouse, providing jobs for six people (plus herself) and reaching vast numbers of people with a potent message about how to live more sustainably each day. It's normally taboo to talk about how much money someone makes, but Toni gets into the specific numbers here to offer details about her business' various revenue streams.

So if you've ever wondered how social media influencers actually make a living and what their lives are like, including the barrage of both encouragement and criticism they receive online daily, this episode will answer that plus a whole lot more. 

Discussed in this episode

• Toni's three books
• Plant-Based on a Budget's meal plans
• Smart Passive Income Podcast and the Startup Podcast
• Alfonso Revilla Photography
• Reynaldo's Soy Chorizo
• Eddie the Pittie on Instagram

About Toni Okamoto

Toni Okamoto is the founder of Plant-Based on a Budget, the popular website and meal plan that shows you how to save dough by eating veggies. She's also the author of the Plant-Based on a Budget cookbook, The Super Easy Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook, and the Friendly Vegan Cookbook. She's also the co-host of The Plant-Powered People Podcast. 

Okamoto's work has been profiled by NBC News, Parade Magazine, and she's a regular presence on local and national morning shows across the country, where she teaches viewers how to break their meat habit without breaking their budget. She was also featured in the popular documentary What the Health. When she's not cooking up a plant-based storm, she's spending time with her husband Paul Shapiro and dog Eddie in Sacramento, Calif.

When this podcast was first launched in 2018, the very first guest was Whole Foods Market CEO and co-founder John Mackey. In that episode, we talked about his book Conscious Capitalism. Well, John has a new book out now, Conscious Leadership, and to commemorate our 50th episode, he rejoins the podcast for a second conversation and rest assured, John does not disappoint.

In this episode we cover a wide range of topics:

• What did John learn from an attempted (unsuccessful) coup at Whole Foods to oust him from the CEO position?
• In which cultivated meat company did both Whole Foods Market and John personally take an investment position?
• What does he think future generations will think about our treatment of animals?
• Why does plant-based cheese sell better when it's not located in the dairy section?
• Will there be a post-Whole Foods chapter in John's life?

Enjoy the full episode, and all of these questions (plus more!) will be answered. 

Discussed in this episode

• Several books by John Mackey
• John's 2018 interview Business for Good 
• Seth Goldman's 2018 interview on Business for Good
• Paul's book Clean Meat
• Paul's definitely-not-repulsive immune-boosting covid concoction
• World Wildlife Fund's report showing humans that have decimated nearly 70% of wild animals in half a century.
• John's book recommendations: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, Essential Spirituality by Roger Walsh, and Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield

Whole Foods Market History

Whole Foods Market was founded in Austin, Texas, when four local businesspeople decided the natural foods industry was ready for a supermarket format. Co-founders included John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy, owners of Safer Way Natural Foods, and Craig Weller and Mark Skiles, owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery. The original Whole Foods Market opened in 1980 with a staff of only 19 people. It was an immediate success. At the time, there were less than half a dozen natural food supermarkets in the United States.

In 2017, Amazon purchased Whole Foods Market for nearly $14 billion. As of 2020, the company operates more than 500 store locations.

Think about how many plants there are: hundreds of thousands of different species. Yet when you look at plant-based meats, nearly all are made of one or more of just three of those plant species: soy, wheat, and pea. And there's good reason for it: those plants are relatively cheap and plentiful, they taste good, and they function quite well as alt-meats under certain conditions that have been studied at length. 

But what if it were possible to make meat alternatives with a different species than one of those three? In fact, a species so different it's not even a plant at all. That's exactly what Kimberlie Le of Prime Roots is doing.

Instead of seeking to build a supply chain for a new kind of plant protein, Kim is creating her own supply chain for making animal-free protein, brewing a fungus called Aspergillus oryzae into whole food meat alternatives. For those of you not familiar, fungi are not plants nor are they animals: they're an entirely different kingdom of organisms. We typically associate fungi with mushrooms, but mushrooms are just the fruiting body of a fungus, kind of like an apple on a tree. And in fact, most fungal species don't even produce mushrooms anyway.

But back to aspergillus: It's also known as koji, and humans have been enjoying this particular fungus for centuries in the form of soy sauce, miso, sake, and more. But rather than using it as a processing aid, Kim's start-up Prime Roots is simply using fermentation to collect the biomass of the fungus itself and turning it into animal-free meat. 

As you'll hear, the idea for the company came to Kim while in a college course. Three years later, she's now raised millions of dollars, is operating a 12,000 square foot production facility, and has already released a flagship product, bacon made from koji.

So enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with an entrepreneur who's betting that the next big thing in plant-based meat isn't going to be plants at all. If Kim has her way, just maybe the next big trend among advocates for local, artisanal protein won't be farm to table, but rather will be fermenter to table, with Prime Roots brewing the way forward. 

Discussed in this episode:

• Prime Roots job openings
• Rebellyous Foods CEO Christie Lagally's thoughts on plant-based meat industry
• Paul's thoughts on just how much alt-meat is out there.
• My Food Job Rocks podcast interview with Hodo Foods CEO Minh Tsai
• Past Business for Good episode with Perfect Day's co-founders
• Quorn mycoprotein products
• The Choice by Edith Eger
• Pathfinder family planning efforts