What if we could grow nutritious, sustainable protein—not in months or weeks—but in just one day? This episode’s guest is doing just that. Rather than going big with animal agriculture, MicroHarvest is going small with microbial agriculture. A huge number of animals are used to feed both our pets and the animals we raise for food. Kate Bekers, the CEO and co-founder of MicroHarvest , is seeking to change that. She’s running a fast-rising European biotech startup using fermentation to produce hig...
Jul 15, 2025•45 min•Season 7Ep. 170
In this episode, I’m joined by one of America’s most thoughtful national journalists: Mike Grunwald. You may know him from his work at Time, Politico, or The Washington Post, or from his critically acclaimed books about the Obama administration and the history of the Everglades. He’s also now a contributing columnist at the New York Times. But for the purpose of this episode, Mike is here to discuss his third book, We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate . I...
Jul 01, 2025•59 min•Season 7Ep. 169
What if we could turn the mountains of food waste we generate every day into high-value chemicals that replace fossil fuels and palm oil—two of the most environmentally destructive inputs in our economy? That’s exactly what this episode’s guest is doing. Marc den Hartog is the CEO of ChainCraft , a Dutch biotechnology company using fermentation to convert agricultural waste into medium-chain fatty acids—essential building blocks for everything from fats for foods to lubricants to bioplastics and...
Jun 15, 2025•39 min•Season 7Ep. 168
This episode’s guest is someone who’s spent her career studying—and championing—entrepreneurs who don’t always fit the Silicon Valley mold. Dr. Lori Rosenkopf is the Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School and the author of the new book Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: 7 Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value through Innovation . In this short guide, Lori explores how success doesn’t have to mean dropping out of college to start a venture-backed unicorn in your garage....
Jun 01, 2025•38 min•Season 7Ep. 167
You’ve heard of carbon capture machines, but what if one of the most powerful tools for removing CO₂ from the atmosphere isn’t high-tech at all—just crushed rock and rain? Meet Ana Pavlovic, CEO of Eion and the self-described “Crazy Rock Lady.” Her company is pioneering a process called enhanced rock weathering, which uses the natural properties of a green volcanic mineral called olivine to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it away—permanently. The best part? They do it on farmland, re...
May 15, 2025•40 min•Season 7Ep. 166
In the restaurant world, infant mortality is the norm. Nearly two-thirds of new eateries shut down in their first year. Only one in five lives to see its fifth birthday. So when a restaurant—not just any restaurant, but a plant-based fine-dining spot—thrives for decades, it’s not just impressive. It’s almost mythic. Enter Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby, the married duo behind Vedge , the acclaimed Philadelphia restaurant that’s helped redefine what plant-based food can be. With nods from Bon Appéti...
May 01, 2025•46 min•Season 7Ep. 165
Nick Cooney is one of the most prolific investors in food and ag tech. As the founder of Lever VC , he’s helped deploy nearly $80 million from his first fund and has now closed more than $50 million toward his second $100 million fund. He’s backed companies across the spectrum of sustainable protein—plant-based meat, cultivated meat, fermentation-derived proteins (including, in full disclosure, my own company, The Better Meat Co. ), and more. But despite his deep roots in venture capital, Nick’s...
Apr 15, 2025•50 min•Season 7Ep. 164
Palm oil is everywhere—from food to cosmetics to biofuels—but its production is a leading cause of deforestation, habitat destruction, and greenhouse gas emissions. What if we could have all the benefits of palm oil without the downsides? Enter NoPalm Ingredients , a Dutch biotech startup using fermentation to produce a sustainable alternative to palm oil—without the need for palm trees. Instead of chopping down rainforests, they’re upcycling agricultural waste, feeding it to their specialty yea...
Apr 01, 2025•37 min•Season 7Ep. 163
What if the fat in your butter, cheese, or even burger could be made without animals, without plants, without fermentation, and without agriculture at all? That’s exactly what Savor is doing. Using a groundbreaking process that transforms compounds like CO₂ and elements like hydrogen into rich, animal-free fats that can mimic what animal fat does, this California-based startup is rethinking how we produce and consume one of the most essential ingredients in food. In this episode, I sit down with...
Mar 20, 2025•49 min•Season 7Ep. 162
We spend about 90 percent of our lives indoors, yet the air inside our homes and offices is often far more polluted than the air outside. Volatile organic compounds—better known as VOCs—are constantly emitted by furniture, cleaning products, and even the very walls around us. Formaldehyde, benzene, toluene—these chemicals sound like something you’d find in an industrial park, but they’re actually in the places where we eat, sleep, and work. Well, what if nature could give us a hand here? What if...
Mar 01, 2025•49 min•Season 7Ep. 161
It’s no secret that the alternative protein startups are struggling these days. A combination of lower revenue, intense competition, and less available venture capital is leading to a contraction in the sector, with countless alt-meat and dairy companies conducting layoffs, declaring bankruptcy, and even folding altogether. Enter Ahimsa Companies , a newly formed investment group acquiring promising but distressed plant-based brands. This isn’t charity, though. Ahimsa's belief is that, with thei...
Feb 15, 2025•53 min•Season 7Ep. 160
Did you know that it takes 140 liters of water to make a single cup of coffee? Turns out that coffee, as far as plant crops are concerned, has a fairly heavy footprint on the planet. And it’s getting harder to farm, with climate change altering where and how many coffee beans can even be grown. You’ve heard of making meat without chickens, and milk without cows. Well, you can also now get coffee without beans. This episode’s guest is the CEO of Minus , a startup reimagining how you enjoy your da...
Feb 01, 2025•34 min•Season 7Ep. 159
In this episode we’re diving deep into the fascinating world of carbon recycling with a trailblazer who’s reshaping how we think about waste and sustainability. Our guest is Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech —a company on a mission to transform our biggest environmental challenge into an economic opportunity. LanzaTech is pioneering a process that takes industrial emissions—the kind of harmful gases that typically contribute to climate change—and recycles them into valuable products like f...
Jan 15, 2025•37 min•Season 7Ep. 158
In this episode we’re taking you on a journey to some of the most remote corners of West Africa, where energy access is scarce, and innovation is changing lives. Our guest is Nicole Poindexter, the founder and CEO of Energicity , a company that's bringing clean, reliable solar power to off-grid communities in countries like Sierra Leone, Benin, and Liberia. Nicole and her team are doing something extraordinary: building solar mini-grids that provide electricity to tens of thousands of people who...
Jan 01, 2025•35 min•Season 7Ep. 157
Most plant-based meats in the US have centered around American staples like hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and sausages. But there’s a world of meat consumption out there, and some of the most popular meat dishes are ones many Americans may have never even tried. In recent years, South Korea has seen great success exporting its culture around the world, with mega-popular K-dramas like Squid Game and The Parasite , K-pop like BTS , and yes, K-food like bibimbap . Now, South Korean plant-b...
Dec 15, 2024•50 min•Season 6Ep. 156
Imagine trying to run a small business without a constant supply of energy. With electricity intermittency, you may not have access to wifi, a phone, a computer, a way to service your customers and more. One way to solve this problem is to have constant access to fossil fuels to run diesel generators, but this is an expensive and dirty way to operate, creating unsustainable costs for the business and the planet. Enter I-G3N , a South African company specializing in the design and production of a...
Dec 01, 2024•37 min•Season 6Ep. 155
Eric Schulze loves the intersection of science and food so much that after many years as an FDA regulator, he decided in 2016 to leave the federal government to join the then-nascent Memphis Meats (now UPSIDE Foods ). He’d go on to spend the next seven years working to advance the cultivated meat pioneer’s science, technology, communications, and ultimate regulatory approval by the agency for which he used to work. Now, Eric’s charting a new path for himself, founding GoodHumans , a consultancy ...
Nov 15, 2024•49 min•Season 6Ep. 154
We all know chocolate is sweet. The way that it’s made—not so much. From deforestation and climate change to child labor and heavy metal contamination , cocoa farming leaves a lot to be desired. But what if we could make cocoa powder without having to chop down the rainforest and engage in so many other unsavory practices? That’s what California Cultured is working on now. The Davis, California-based startup has raised $16 million to grow cocoa cells inside of bioreactors and has already produce...
Nov 01, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 153
If you follow the world of cultivated meat, you probably know that a few companies have gotten historic regulatory approval and have sold some limited quantities of product both in the US and Singapore. But earlier this year, Meatly —a company founded only in 2021 and with just a few million British pounds in their pocket—succeeded in getting regulatory approval to start selling its cultivated chicken meat…in pet food. This was the first-ever European approval for a cultivated meat product, and ...
Oct 15, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 152
Around the time his son was born in 2011, Beni Nofech saw a video that changed his life. After listening to an argument about the need to move away from the view that animals are mere commodities for humanity to use however we like, Beni adopted a vegan diet and soon found himself attending animal movement and alt-protein conferences. From there, he began making angel investments in food tech startups that could help animals, eventually leading him to leave his career in the medical device world...
Oct 01, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 151
You’ve heard of fruit leather, but what about making leather from fruit? Or more precisely, feeding fruit waste like mango pulp to bacteria which then convert those sugars into a leather-like material that can be useful for all types of purposes? That’s exactly what Polybion , a startup in Central Mexico, is doing. Co-founded in 2015 by two brothers with a passion for using biology to save humanity from ourselves—as CEO Axel Gómez-Ortigoza puts it—Polybion has pioneered methods of turning the fr...
Sep 15, 2024•54 min•Season 6Ep. 150
Alt-meat today is typically made from soybeans, yellow peas, wheat, or some combination of those three crops. But there’s a whole world of plants out there, and maybe some of them can be harnessed to widen the world of ingredients available to manufacturers, perhaps even offering better functionality and flavor. One of the problems though, is that making protein isolates from most beans or lentils can be pretty expensive, since these crops usually aren’t that high in protein to begin with. One r...
Sep 01, 2024•48 min•Season 6Ep. 149
Seafood consumption is going up around the world, including in the US , with salmon being the fish species Americans love to eat the most . (The only seafood Americans eat more is shrimp, who of course are crustaceans, not fish.) The biggest wave of alt-meat so far has focused on beef replacement like burgers and sausages, given how many consumers already view red meat as bad for their health. But the perception that salmon is a healthy food is widespread, meaning that any effort to entice consu...
Aug 15, 2024•48 min•Season 6Ep. 148
Not everyone gets a second chance of life. But Inna Braverman got just that, and is using her second chance to try to solve one of humanity’s most pressing problems. Born in Chernobyl, Ukraine, Inna was only two weeks old when the nuclear disaster nearly took her life. When her mom found Inna blue and unresponsive from the pollution spewed from the damaged reactor, she used her nursing skills to revive her baby and miraculously keep her alive long enough for paramedics to arrive. A few years lat...
Aug 01, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 147
Imagine thinking it would be a good idea to try to help people eat more fruits and vegetables, so you start making whole foods smoothies for your friends and family. Soon you’re selling them to more people than you personally know. Next thing you know, you’re running an all-vegan frozen meal company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, a billion dollar-plus valuation, and hundreds of thousands of customers all enjoying your whole foods plant-based meals. That’s the true story of Rach...
Jul 15, 2024•46 min•Season 6Ep. 146
If America’s roughly 180 million meat-loving dogs and cats formed their own nation, they’d reportedly be the fifth biggest meat-consuming country in the world. As pet-keeping has exploded in the developed world, so too has demand for all the chickens, fish, pigs, and cows to feed those pets. There’s even been a trend toward human-grade meat in pet food, meaning pet food isn’t simply the meat that would have gone into lower end uses. This is of course a major environmental and animal welfare prob...
Jul 01, 2024•51 min•Season 6Ep. 145
Maisie Ganzler has never worked at an animal welfare charity nor an alt-protein company. Yet she’s in the upper echelon of effectiveness when it comes to reducing the suffering of farmed animals. That’s because she’s served as an executive of a national food management company supplying 1,000 schools and corporate dining facilities, Bon Appetit Management Company , for decades. In her career, Maisie pioneered some of the first-ever corporate policies to require suppliers to stop using battery ca...
Jun 15, 2024•52 min•Season 6Ep. 144
Many listeners of this show will be familiar with precision fermentation, or turning microbes into factories to produce proteins like those proteins that have historically been produced inside of chickens and cows. Think of companies whose founders we’ve had on, like Perfect Day and The Every Company . But, what if instead of using microbes as protein factories—and all the associated costs of bioreactors and other capex—you could simply turn plants into protein factories, and make actual animal ...
Jun 01, 2024•36 min•Season 6Ep. 143
Upon reading his obituary, Mark Twain reportedly wrote that “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Whether Twain actually wrote this or not, the reality remains that today the reports of the death of cultivated meat are indeed quite real. Yet Bruce Friedrich, the president of the Good Food Institute , is here to tell you that he believes such reports are not based on science and are indeed greatly exaggerated. Few people have done more to inspire others to pursue alternative protein—...
May 17, 2024•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 142
If you follow the cultivated meat sector, you know that the last couple years have been tough. Some companies have gone under, others have gone into hibernation, and others have shed staff in cash-conserving layoffs. Major publications have published opinion column obituaries for this industry, yet the work goes on. Part of that work is that of Obillion Bio , a B2B cultivated meat company which successfully raised capital in 2024 , surely a Herculean feat. Having now brought in $15 million, whil...
May 10, 2024•48 min•Season 6Ep. 141
