You're listening to the reversing climate change, podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change podcast. I'm Ross Kenny and I'm the creative editor at Nori's carbon removal Marketplace.
Today I have with me, John Sanchez, John you re Harvard student on a gap year, you created the carbon removal Academy, With are minors, you built up their boot up program which some Nori knots have been going through. You also do a thing called Problem packs, you're all over the place. This is a busy Gap year for you couldn't you've just gone to Machu Picchu or something. No, at a lot of this is based on the fact that we're in
quarantine mode. So that's a lot of the Genesis of these programs is because I was locked down and looking for stuff to do. Really well. Yeah. How did you get into the the climate world and how did this all happen?
Yeah, it's kind of a cool and funny story before the pandemic, I guess, in my first year of college, I came in as a Computer Science Guy, picked up an interest in chemistry along the way, interested in entrepreneurship, but feeling a little bit directionless, but as my virtual spring semester, once the koban pandemic it finished off about a year ago.
Now, I was trying to come up with interesting ways to spend a quarantine socially In summer, you know, something to work on whatever, but I came up with 50 topics. That sounded cool to me things that I want to explore further from, you know, coding projects to literature and reading to trying out stand-up comedy, just a whole grab bag of things and put them on scraps of paper in a jar.
And literally each week of this crazy system, I set up for myself, just pick something out of the jar and try to do it that week and week 2, for me, was explore the climate Tech startup
ecosystem. Which I literally knew basically nothing about and yeah, that week, I listen to a lot of podcasts including this one did a lot of reading was intrigued and very slowly fell down the rabbit hole, eventually ran into are minors and the carbon removal world and that sucked me in further as I sort of became a member of the community and made
a bunch of friends there. And I guess at some point, I stop the cycle because I realized I was onto something with climate and wanted to keep building stuff. There is there, an alternate Reality where you're doing stand-up right now. So many alternate really I think about that all the time where like every Monday morning at like pick something out of the jar and then put it back without looking at it and pick something else and that would be what I
opened. But like the very specific sequence of things that came out of that process is very likely to Define my next year's life. I don't know. It's just kind of fun to think about. It's a beautiful and terrifying thing. I think it multiplies as you get older. Order to think about how much contingency exist within your life and how many random things have shaped its outcomes. What if you had picked a different thing? What have you gotten into like artificial intelligence?
That one came up first, you know, like oh the world's active carbon removal would be different John. I hope. So if I'm doing things that make an impact. But yeah, a I was in there so it could have happened. Did you end up doing an open mic or anything? Now I did but One day maybe when I go back to campus will be part of their stand-up comedy club.
You should do it this it's sort of like has a Tim Ferriss vibe to it you're like there's like a little bit of a dilettante approach but you also were really good and I almost feel like you're going to put me out of a job sometimes because you're also really into literature and the creative something. If you do that and you're better at the technical stuff than me. John what am I supposed to do? You have to take take food out of my family's mouths?
How could you do that now? Reversing climate change it. So unique experience, the people come here for a reason, it was diplomacy also on one of those little. Yeah, that's one of the things I could have picked a nice. Okay, that's a good. Well, we should, I Define all of these different programs. I don't even know how do you, how do you describe them? Overall experiences learning experiences. Is there's a bit of a mooc kind
of quality to them. Yeah, so well for me a lot of what I've done during the past year sort of revolves around the question about like, you know what? It Takes to actually transition into the climate World from the
ground up right now. And there are a bunch of people working on this but to me the way I see it is like, you know if someone's beginning with like a vague interest maybe in climate broadly or maybe with an inkling about a particular space like CDR and then the end space is now I have a job in climate. I starting a company, whatever that goal is.
Then for a lot of people I don't think it's as easy as immediately going to reply to a bunch of seemingly, relevant job postings to your skill set, like I think. There's a real exploration process required to find your specific, Affinity your specific interest, gather knowledge, and then ultimately choose something, right? And even within the CDR space, that exploration process is real. Because the CD, our space is interesting in that it's like a cool.
Grab bag of a lot of seemingly, unrelated areas that ultimately come together to all remove carbon from the atmosphere. But the two projects and initiatives that I've got going are sort of related to the different ways that that exploration might look and are also sort of community focused. And Community-based learning in community based exploration and we've been interested in the topic of climate communities. And we'll get into your thinking on how you've been building
these out. But the first one, I think you started. You came out of nowhere. One day, I just woke up and there's a thing called carbon removal Academy that existed and I was like, oh, who is this? What is this? So what exactly is carbon removal Academy? Is it still active, or has it been supplanted by these other efforts?
However, Evil Academy is active. I just recently revamped the whole curriculum with, you know, the latest news and the latest policy coming out with the Biden Administration startups that have weren't around when I first created it. But essentially it's a curated list of resources that take you through carbon removal sort of from the ground up starting with, you know, what is this field? What scale do we need? And what is it going to require?
And then, you know, module by module, it presents, sort of a linear sequence of accessible Resources that, you know, somebody who doesn't have a science background and doesn't want to go through the 500 page PDF National Academy of Science report or something that requires a lot of willpower. But rather you know just trying to ease people in get them
hooked with content. That's already out there and be that source of exploration where you can go through the modules, explore the different spaces, and go as deep into that linear sequence of resources as people want, if someone's listening and they wanted to go. Through it. Is it something that they join as a member of a cohort? Or is it something that they do on their own?
How does it work? Well, the cohort is where are minors boot-up comes in. The are minors boot-up, is a learning program to sort of get introduced to the CDR space,
very rapidly. It's a four-week program that goes through a lot of content, but the goal is there to, you know, help people understand the basics of each approach and Technology to learn the common vocabulary that everyone in the space seems to have like, what the hell additionality There's something who the major players are the companies and all the while sort of making a close group of friends in the climate
space, in the process. And what the people do in, there is go through the carbon removal. Academy curriculum, sort of module by module. So we're recording this in early to mid-april how many cohorts have gone through boot up so far. There's been two, we did one in March and we're just starting April 1. The slag has about 200 people in it right now but it's not like one. Ass, you know, learning experience where everybody's joining some, giant Zoom call or something.
The way we have it operating is it's subdivided into eight to ten person discussion groups that each meet twice a week for a small more intimate, Zoom call discussion and you know each of those smaller calls is scheduled to discuss a new CD, our topic and is pre-assigned resources for it. Having people be intellectually stimulated and engaged in important thinking is itself valuable.
I don't mean to diminish that but has has there been anything of consequence beyond that that you've noticed or any outcomes that you've been seeing? Yeah, I mean the goal of the boot up is really just that people find what they want their next step to be. So like, you know, I am a person who's interested in CDR and after going through this giant experience now I have an idea that I actually really like the Bayou HR space and I'm a True Believer now.
And I want to go do a problem pack on it or go explore the companies in the space or pursue it further somehow. So I really like this idea of affinity to a particular topic that people seem to be developing throughout the
program. And, you know, I think that idea of these smaller communities that are built into the larger world are really valuable, because a lot of them, as we were shutting down the private, slack groups for each of the mini, the mini discussion groups for the first cohort, They were desperate to find other ways to stay in touch and it seems like
people really made connections. So for me, that's goal achieved with the boot up. There been any startups that have gotten founded out of it yet? Or are you still waiting desperately for your first one? Not for the boot up, we're getting there with the problem pack World, which we can talk about.
But again, I think the boot up is more a learning experience where the problem packs are like, well, actually, let's get a team together to come work on a problem that could ultimately spin out to be something like that. I love that. They always catch my eye to whenever you post about them. Like, dang it. I already working carbon removal. I have enough problems in front of me at a normal job.
So I'm not looking for extra right now, but they always catch my eye and they're always very thoughtful. What exactly is a problem pack and maybe what are some examples of them? Sure. Yeah, so the problem pack sort of spun out of after I had done the first big discussion group, with carbon removal Academy, I've sort of learned from the people who are going through it.
That lots of people feel like they Know how to learn about climate change and build up the knowledge that you'd sort of get coming out of the boot up. But maybe they haven't managed or figured out quite how they want to turn that learning into more concrete action, that might stand a chance to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, do something positive for the
climate. So what the problem packs are sort of rather than taking like a learning and producing a bunch of content to consume based approach. The problem packs are a different way of exploring by being three weeks. Sort of fun. Of climates prints. Most of them are focused on CD are right now, but you deep dive with a team of five to six people into a single tangible climate problem.
And at the end of the three weeks, you're held accountable to produce a solutions-oriented deliverable, whether that's a business model or a report or some new tactic to influence the industry, maybe by the end that you present publicly. I saw one about handheld spectrometry and little carbon. I've seen some about carbon markets. Give me give me an example of one in particular here. Yeah sure. So one that I think was a lot of
fun that. Okay, this is right now we're in the second round of problem packs as well. In April, I ran the first full round in February and for the February round, there were four problem packs going and I was actively involved in leading all of the for, so it was quite as quite a month, but it one of the packs in that first round was having the goal of figuring out whether it made sense to install a pyrolyze, ER, at Sawmills to produce biochar. Are from The Sawmill waste. Hmm.
So that was an interesting topic. Saw mills are kind of like, you know, just one possible source of biomass that could produce the biochar. But the way that that group proceeded was we literally ended up calling like a dozen Sawmills to talk to them about what they're currently doing with their waste. What their revenue streams look like with that whether they've heard of biochar and could potentially be interested, we
talked to a lot of biochar. Researchers companies, installing paralyzers in different places and like ultimately after a bunch of Manning and thinking about well, how does it make sense to structure all these ideas that are coming together? The group produced, a really interesting report, synthesizing all this knowledge and, you know, thinking about whether actually very what conditions, it makes sense to actually do this at a sawmill.
So it's an example, I think that stakeholder discussion process where you like, go all out and really talk to a lot of people who are working on this right now, has been really effective and a lot of the problem packs, that sort of distilling, where the problems are where people's heads.
Our at those who are actually in the field right now and then, you know, taking that knowledge and doing some interesting brainstorming with the team having fun while you're doing it. But coming up with something at the end, I like that. You sort of split this between the more passive consumption learning habits and then problem packs being a different more active approach because I can imagine there probably is a linear progression, right?
You join our miners, you do the boot up, and that's where you do carbon removal Academy. And then you graduate, You problem packs or is that even the right way to see it? That's definitely in line of how we thought about things, especially since with the Buddha, people sort of figure out where their Affinity is and what they want to explore more and then after getting that breath, the problem tax. Really provide a source of depth where you can sort of more
actively pursue. This make connections do some networking but also ultimately come up with an idea that might become your next thing. But the beauty is that it's also only three weeks. So like if at the end of the three weeks you realize, this wasn't for me. Then you didn't sign up for some really long term commitment. You didn't get a job that you find out, you're not interested. You just had an interesting time and you can try something new the next time. Yeah, I think that's really
valuable. Maybe this is a good place to talk about your thinking on how these climate communities which are proliferating wildly right now, there's so many of them. I just joined work on climate. The other day I saw have another work on climate. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't really stuck my neck out in there and Hello yet. But I've been poking around and there's so many different things, my climate journey and there's a bunch of specialized slack communities.
And there's probably a whole bunch of things. I'm not even aware of, and of climate base, is trying to do a lot of work on how you actually do this in a scalable productive way. How should we be thinking about climate communities and where their value lay?
Yeah. Well for me, the main takeaway that I've started to get from running the boot up and the problem packs and similar ways, is that At a lot of times when maybe you're in one of these big climate communities, one of the ones with like a thousand plus people in it that are posting in
specific channels. And there's conversation going on but I think Ross actually at one point you put it to me is feeling like a member of mass Society where you're contributing and you're maybe you can post a link at some times. But there isn't really some close friend meeting or it's hard to find Connections in that scenario. But the way we do things at the boot up, as I sort of describe is that we These smaller sub communities that exist within the larger structure.
I think part of the beauty of that is that you sort of get the best of both worlds, where we do this fun thing in the boot up, where we have a random Channel and with every meeting we have each team submit like a fun, you know, a haiku or an image or something funny to represent their team and sort of establish some sort of Team Pride among this group of like 8 to 10 people who are meeting twice a week but what we've seen is It's like there are still interactions that are happening
outside of the smaller group settings. You can preserve that at scale but there's still needs to be in order for a community to be valuable, especially for me, from what I've seen is, you need to have some sort of, like, human interactions where you get to meet people, you build your own set of connections, you build your own set of friends. And those are the times when I've always have the best, like when I joined are minors, there may be only like 10 people last June. Regularly posting.
And when I popped in and introduce myself, all those people reached out to me and we had really good conversations for as it's grown a little bit now. And I don't think if I had joined now I would have quite the same experience in terms of, you know, immediately finding that people with my similar interests who I can become
friends with immediately. So I think for a climate Community to be successful, it's important to have these sort of smaller, subcultures within the full thing, so that people can find connections. It's the whole. Hmm, I definitely think that's the case. I have posted another slot groups before, not in SL promotional way. It wasn't like, hey, everyone here should come check out this amazing podcast, I just did and here's why I posted something else.
I posted it like things, I thought were relevant to the community at large and it had a little bit of a cricket's, kind of reaction to it. Am I doing this wrong or or or is this more of a sort of like a status hierarchy game? And I don't have enough status to attract any emojis or what is happening that is I've clearly have done something wrong or maybe it's just objectively boring and no one cares about
what I'm posting about. That's also possible but being able to actually interact with people on a old-school. One-on-one basis, I think it's nice to like one thing I did God I'm going to say this on the podcast, I'm closing this up for now because it was too much, but I just opened my calendar on are minors, like, hey guys, I've decided that slack is a bad use of my time for the Most part I have.
I'm just too busy but I'll gladly take meetings with anyone if they want to. And so I've just had, I don't know dozens of random meeting. Like all of them were pretty fun, and interesting, some of them didn't have a direct call to action or something we could do as a Next Step, but I did feel like it was good to take the Pulse of the entire carbon removal Community or at least that small subset as feels like
there's value there. I prefer that over text or something about text that I find really inhospitable someone. I was reading, maybe you interpersonally. It's just different. Yeah, I mean I definitely know what you mean. Definitely. Sometimes when you post something and you're seeing how many thumbs up you get feel like a popular, huh? Yeah. Some experiments in the small problem pack groups. When you post something, they
read. There's a whole interesting discussion that can often emerge because it's relevant to the brainstorming that's going on. And I think it's ultimately even when there's so many fewer people that are actually there and that little private community. Within the larger thing, I think more interesting discussions often emerge in that setting because people are more willing to engage and more willing to put themselves out there on that
smaller scale. I think that Personal Touch makes sense and maybe it's also got John, you're so much younger. So maybe this doesn't even make sense to you the like differences between terrestrial versus digital satellite radio. Do you know much about that? Yeah that's I think before my time. There used to be a radio waves that were beamed by towers and
something with electromagnetism. You probably know more about this than me John but it happened and there was a tendency I think to rush towards a lowest common denominator within a certain genre. So at least when I started listening in probably like the 90s or the early aughts. There was a like a classic rock station, there was an alternative station. There is a Kiss FM pop kind of station but they all basically play the same things.
You can find that in basically any city in America as far as I know, and XM came along, and it's like you want. Howard Stern. Here's 24/7. Howard Stern. You want Grateful Dead bootlegs. We got that, you want Outlaw country. So, whatever. Genre it just got more and more specific nowadays, a Spotify. It's, it's a, your own exact personal, but it was a gradual process of it happening in a big group. I think there's a tendency to sort of like, converging among uncontroversial.
Shoulder or things that are almost kind of banal. And in some cases potentially present, a smaller group, there's, there's more of a tendency to want to dig in, or it's more Niche. Maybe, maybe that's the difference between like, the mass Society versus The Core group or something. Yeah, I think it is. Partially this, like, I don't know, I wouldn't want to be wrong in the, my climate Journey carbon removal Channel.
With several hundred people, there watching me be wrong, but if I was just testing out an idea, it's much easier to do. So If there's, you know, a friendly group of seven people that I've talked to 10 times before and I can say like, oh yeah, I'm just thinking about this. Anyone have any thoughts? Like it just feels more comfortable. I think. And more productive maybe for that reason. Dang, I've never thought about it in that way.
But yeah, if you say something in public, as a member of a company, there's this whole is this canonical is this a Nori thing Mike and I just is there not a space where I can noodle on an idea and not have a sort of what? Trying to get out though, right? Like you wanted to be explorative and creative and you don't want someone to come screenshot and like, well, John last week you said this when now hypocrite. Yeah, I feel like that's fine.
Once you have your thoughts together, maybe and, you know, your, maybe your you have a friendly group of people. You know, is in that bigger channel so that it's less scary to post their. But yeah. Ultimately, I think it's about creating me and fostering these environments, where that level of creativeness and that level of Of, you know, this is very, very tentative, I'm just noodling but like here's a thought, anybody want to take it further? Who might?
We talked to, in order to develop this idea? Anybody have further thinking on it. Hmm. And you think that's primarily a feature of just the scale, you think? Maybe if it's a people are maybe Kinder and smaller groups or something else? Yes, Gail is part of it.
But I think it like if I knew every single one of those 300 people and like, It builds relationships before then I think I'd have a different feeling whereas I think it's just something about context and something about feeling like that's the type of thing that belongs in this space versus and in a bigger space also it's worth mentioning that for the
problem packs. One major feature of it is that whenever people go to sign up they have to click a checkbox that says they're willing to commit to 10 hours per week, commitment for every week of the three weeks that it actually
runs. And so that's definitely like there to be a filter for people who are not just going to sit it out and wait on the sidelines while other people actually attend the meetings because I think as soon as those you know, slack Channel start piling up with people who are less active and less motivated as the other people in the group, maybe then it sort of drags the energy level down, or the creativity, level down to some extent, the meeting start getting less and
less attendance and then the project Falls to Pieces, Maybe And I've seen that happen in some bigger learning group style, things where, you know, everybody is welcome and then the meeting comes and there's three people there out of 100 people in the channel or something. So fostering that right mindset where people are committed and this is a real project that you signed up to do I think is really important to me. That's a great way to put it. I've thought a lot about that too.
In particular on that episode I did with Evan Hines of climate based not long ago. About what does our patreon book Would look like if it, you know, air quotes scales like for instance, we had Kim Stanley, Robinson common, hang out with
are like 40 book club members. And I could have advertised that and be like if you want private time with this world, renowned science fiction, author, pay this amount and come hang out with us. And then we have just been crowded in with with newcomers who don't actually care. It would have taken away from the experience of people who have been there month after month. Does this have to Skill. Why does everything have to
scale? Is that a, is that a way that teca in Silicon Valley has invaded our brains and everything needs this? How sad about this? I mean, I'm very much looking to get a lot of people to do the boot up and to do the problem pack. So, that is a scaling exercise, but I think by preserving these small communities within the bigger Thing by, you know, you guys, this is a cluster friends. This is a cluster of people who
care about this other topic. Like you can still scale while and maintaining that small community feel. I think that Difference with the book club is that Ross Canyon or Kim? Stanley Robinson or finite resources that aren't going to go meet with like all 50 mini teams of book club members at the same time. So maybe there's some scarcity in that, you know, people are signing up so that they could talk to you specifically or talk to an author specifically that's there.
But I think scaling can still happen within larger communities, under the condition that the small groups of friends and connections are maintained Hmm. I started thinking about whether or not I'm a finite resource or not. Well, you have finite time. Yeah, that's true. But okay.
Well how do you scale is? It seems difficult to have well, for you to administer multiple of these problem pack groups is there some point where you're like, I can't do more than five of these at a time, or what happens? Yeah, well, the way I'm thinking about it right now is, like I said in February, I was the team leader for all of the problem packs. Found it hard. Yeah, given that it's a 10 hour per week. It meant for every problem pack and I was doing four of them
that was intense. But this one, we're running six, so slowly moving up. But I'm not actually participating in any of the problem packs. Instead, I had people on the signup form ranked how interested they were in being a team leader on, a scale from 1 to 5 and the people who are on the higher end of the spectrum, ended up being sort of taking on the roles that I did during the February round by, you know, setting up the meetings. Facilitating brainstorming and driving towards that end
deliverable. But I've been meeting a lot with those team leaders in order to, to help them learn the lessons that I learned the first time and the effective, at whatever it means to run a problem pack. So that's sort of one level up.
I can I can sort of have team leaders who run those packs, but then, the next question is, like, is there someone who can take over my role as person who helps the team leaders figure out what they're doing when they start running the problem packs and how sort of team leader managers for maybe a particular
topic. So somebody who's really interested in regenerative agriculture wants to be sort of a little bit apart of several regenerative agriculture packs without having to commit 10 hours per week per any one of them so they can help the team leaders and be in those slack groups but maybe not be full participants and still be, you know, managing on the sidelines. So the question becomes, you know, what are all those topics that people can come into and
how do you create this? Chain of people, people being leaders at different areas but definitely still in flux and I have a ways to go in terms of building that out. Why do this? Is it some sort of you want to see more people in carbon removal and for you personally, what are you getting out of it? The something accusative I didn't I didn't mean it that way, you better.
Okay. So in terms of why do this like on a climate perspective, I think there is like You go into work on climate or my climate journey and just everyday, there's an influx of people who, like I said, are like, where do I get started? How do I pursue this topic? I'm new to the space. I want to, I want to get going on, direct air capture but don't know where to start.
So like, you know, this whole time with carbon removal Academy in the boot up and problem packed, it's always been like how do you provide more structured opportunities to get
involved? A lot of times when I was talking to people about this topic at the beginning, they were telling me that like Like oh, we need to find more ways to connect people with jobs that are relevant to them but what ultimately popped out the other side of that discussion is like there aren't that many structured jobs out there for people to sign up for and the ones that exist are not looking for the person who knows the most about, you know,
regenerative agriculture. But they're looking for the best software engineer to come build their product or something. So it's their skillset that matters more than the knowledge about the topic often. So, for me, it's like, okay, so, if there aren't that many structured opportunities, that exist to plug into the climate World, especially for people who don't want to be Founders, then how can we create?
More structured opportunities that maybe aren't jobs, but are interesting ways to, you know, make a dent, do that creative brainstorming and come up with what your next PATH is find that Affinity. So you know what you want to go, apply your skill set to but you know, again on a short-term basis, so it's not Like you have to go through the grueling job hunt processed first only to find out that they were an impressed by your software engineering skills, yet, maybe
that's a question we Face hiring at Nori a fair amount to wear. What does easier to teach software engineering or sort of enough about agriculture, right? I could Envision a world though. We're, you know, you would want to optimize probably for the person who's a better software engineer because they're going to be the ones building your product.
But that companies like Nori would send people through either a boot up or maybe problem packs, that send them deep into the particular problems, that Nori is working on. And then all of a sudden they've got their their brain full of ideas about how to shape their regenerative, add space with that combined with that software, engineering skill set that they came in with. No, that's absolutely right.
There's also something really valuable about people being because we have hired people who have found us through the podcast. We have either had interns or projects that that have come through in that way. And that's also really valuable having people love what they do and are passionate about it. Mostly people that I think we've hired, they came through a climate check sort of Journey of their own where I care about climate change. Like, where do I even look. What do I do?
I think that part of it is really important but if we were still sending people through boot up, which we have like a couple of knots have been through at this point and I'm sure we'll continue using this valuable resource. And if you're listening and you want to get involved, you should join, are minors and go. Without that are minors dot-org? That's pretty good. Sign up.
There you go. I think having that level of interest and passion is really important, but if they weren't also good at their core duties, I think we'd have a hard time figuring out a role for them. Right?
Which is why for the way I've begun to think about this is steering people who have skill sets to help figure out where their climate Affinity is. I think that's one of the value-adds because, you know, if I'm a really really talented so Software engineer, who wants to go work on climate change? There's tons of problems. I could go work on and like the right decision for them. Probably isn't to just go find all the software engineering jobs and apply and apply and
apply. It's like okay well do I actually you know, am I intrinsically more interested in the cement world or in the regenerative, a girl door in the transportation world or something? And as you start to explore and figure out where your Affinity actually is that will inform for that person where they want to apply their skill set and which companies Go work for where they want to spend their time. What are you excited about in the next couple of years with carbon removal?
Yeah, sure. Well, I actually spend time one of my other smaller projects that I've been building is carbon Visions, which is a slack another slack Community for college students, who are interested in the space. And, you know, we haven't done very much active Outreach to students at this point. But it's just, you know, people seem to find us one way or another who are interested in
this space. And we have, you know, regular Allure discussions about papers and talk about new ideas, but I think maybe it's just being a young person and seeing a lot of other young people getting into the climate world, but it's just really inspiring. As like a new wave of people comes in to help meet climate deadlines and make the carbon removal space and the climate space, more, broadly, bigger and better. I think it's super exciting to as much as we /. Mostly me were a little less
comfortable in these bigger man. Society kind of spaces. It is nice that I don't know many of the people in are minors or other places at this point and it keeps growing like we need this so badly. If it's everyone can fit in a single room it's not going to do anything of import probably. Well, I feel that I feel that way sometimes about the carbon
removal like academic ecosystem. Because like, when you look at some of the papers, most of the Papers written about carbon removal, they often have one like this, they may be 15 authors that you could, you could pick out and You know, a lot of those authors were also part of the CDR primer and like, it's great to have a tight-knit academic Community, but like between the startup side and the academic world and the NGO space. Like I would love to start
seeing a lot of new faces. As I know, a lot of people are starting to get phds and carbon removal or climate related fields and the number of voices talking about the space continues to increase. Do you have a strong opinion on? I see it. Go back and forth almost like the tide. Of the ecological carbon removal, only or only industrial, or geological sequestration. It goes back and forth. I see someone credible on me on every side of that seemingly
every week. So how should someone think about that debate? I know, it gets kind of useless sometimes because like their post, sometimes that talk about like why this form of carbon removal or carbon removal the field as a whole is overrated or people shouldn't be talking about it or we need to Focus on other things, it can be frustrating and you know, on a policy level. Maybe there is a need to prioritize based on like where
that federal budget goes. And that's a conversation that's worth having, but I don't know if I really like when people sort of loudly scream into the public discourse, that what a whole group of people who's working on and trying hard to build out, you know, for climate change is invaluable or a waste of time just because There's a lot of exploration and a lot of innovation and still needs to happen and calling people out
for doing good work. Doesn't seem to be very productive often why I feel pretty. Similarly, and one of the things I really like about all of your work and all of these programs that you've been developing, is that I might be reading too much into this and correct me if I am, but there's a sense of genuine, curiosity and not having a final answer already built into the curricula. That is refreshing because there are many places. You can go, that will be all too happy to tell you the exact
right answer. And it doesn't seem like you have that John and I think that's actually a good thing. Yeah. Well that some of those debates are even built into the carbon removal Academy curriculum itself like in the regenerative, agriculture module.
I don't know if you remember this but back in I think June 2020 World Resources Institute put out a blog post that said soil carbon sequestration is not nearly as effective in mitigating climate, as people think it is, and then a bunch of the The like Keith Houston and a bunch of other big soil, scientists, put out a letter of response, sort of hammering home their argument for why actually is valuable and has Merit.
So both of those the blog post on the response are in the curriculum so that people can sort of see this back and forth and appreciate that. A lot of these things are open for debate and have discourse and have a lot of nuance, more than any one side of an argument would like you to think there is so that's definitely a value for sure.
I have said this in a previous show, forgive me if you've heard this one, but I think the phrase teach the controversy without sort of ruined by the intelligent design, Scopes trial kind of like 20th century fall out but I like that a lot. My undergraduate degrees in history and a lot of the ways. History is practice in universities tends to be. You be like this school of historiography approaches the problem this way. And this other, School of thought approaches it this other way.
You're like God there's good insights from all these different angles. I don't know how to make sense of them all at the same time, but I usually think of it as approaching a problem. Kaleidoscopic lie. And if you can switch between lenses that usually makes you a better thinker in my humble opinion. And I think the more people are able to do that. I think it would help us break out of some of these really
intense fights that we have. Sometimes it also makes me a little more charitable than I should be or less willing to commit to a position firmly. Which also makes me really annoying to debate against because I'm like, I don't know. This is an interesting question. I was asked to give a presentation recently and I was like, I don't know. I'm like, kind of okay, at asking questions, I don't know that I have any definitive answers to give you Nori the one
way to reverse climate change. My I don't know, like I can give that presentation in good faith. Sorry. Got an idea. This might like we're trying, dang it, but yeah, right. Yeah, now I Three. I think being intellectually humble is really important, especially when we're talking about topics is important and often as heated as climate change, maintaining that attitude serves you well, I think.
Yeah, I think so. It probably at least keeps it interesting for me and I'm sure for you to that sort of like the more you think about these things or the more you look at them the more angles you discover, he keeps you coming back for more. You could have been doing stand-up, you could have been doing what else was in that that hat? I got it. What else is in there? As lot of Music guitar playing there was a whole section of just random one.
So actually the way, the way that I found carbon rule specifically and actually delve into the space, was that the week after explore the climate Tech startup ecosystem. There was read five Shakespeare plays but after that, there was complete a one week internship. So I do this, I was trying to find people to reach out to for this one week internship and during That climate Tech exploration week. I found Tito's YouTube channel as he talked about the carbon
removal space. So I sent him a quick email saying, hey, I'm happy to do stuff for are minors. Maybe produce a YouTube video, who knows, but he responded and we set up a call and that's how I fell into the carbon removal world could all Tita. Yeah, that's that's a great story. I'm really happy that you found your way in and such a strange way. One week internship, that's just like a stage in a restaurant or Things barely even there. That's creative though.
Yeah. Okay. Books Shakespeare, you're one of the people that whenever we hang out we always end up talking about books and they're always the books that you get to be like, oh yeah, some I was reading Moby, Dick, the other day and you get to Pat yourself on the back a little bit, but I think those books are important. I like reading them. I think books, that are still being read, either stand the test of time for Quality reasons, or are at least part of the arc.
Common cultural mapping of the universe and sort of make sense to read at least. Why our book school. Why our book school? It's a tough question. Yeah, but I think that is true that like reading a funny scene from Moby Dick or my favorite book is 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia, Marquez, great one. And I used to sort of snob Ali. Tell people after I read that that like, all of life, and every human emotion can be found within this book. And so this is my bitch.
You know, for me I turned up some people feel like that anymore, but still it's like I think there's I think there's something that you know, you can find ways to tie things in your own life or or laugh about these particular particular characters or connect them with the way that you view. Other people that really helps me and that I get a lot of enjoyment from I think that's that's pretty close to it
solving this. If you grew up in Europe or America, Erica. Especially it's probably true in other places, too, but they're just our sort of stock images and idioms that you can pull off the shelf. And people kind of like, oh yeah, I recognize that scene. Yeah, but I like, for me, it's even that cultural context is important. I think, but even funnier for me, like, in One Hundred Years of Solitude. They're like all of these one-off references that like,
never come back. Like, I think, at one point one character mentions like and that was the biggest The Ring of the community since Big Mama's funeral Carnival and it's like, what we never get any reference to that, but sometimes like that. That one line will stick in my head and come up as a frame with which I've used some other situation that I find myself. He was just thinking of how to set up the prequels. That's where all the real money is made. Yeah?
Right. Yeah, not that's interesting. I sort of wouldn't have pegged you as a magical realism appreciator, I just started reading Midnight's Children for the first time that Salman Rusty Saundra. I am utterly Blown Away. It is, they just packed so much in there. Like every sentence is just crafted in such a way that it feels like it captures some essence of an idea and you know, some people like magical realism
for the Magical elements. But I feel like for me that's sort of an aside to the atmosphere that they put you in and how dense and how much they get into a single chapter, that just flows from One Mini story to the next. Then each one is like its own interesting window into a life or a? No, I like it a lot. You're looking around. Are you looking for a book? Heather? I was just looking at myself. So, yes, you were, you're reading the Bible to, right?
How's that going? And well, you know, the, the interest there spun from one of my favorite podcasts, which is called literature and history. This is by a guy named Doug Metzger who has undergone an apple super and is Continuing a super intense project of creating these to our Mega episodes. That sort of March through anglophone literature starting with like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Mesopotamia. And I think anticipating moving
towards the 21st century. But there was a whole series on the Bible that you know, I still have it totally sunk my teeth into but it's a project I'm looking forward to in which he has 10 episodes on the Old Testament and a full series on the, the New Testament. And I think by now that podcast Like 1.6 million words written total for it. So it's crazy projects. But yeah, looking forward to that one, too. That's neat. You've pitched this shit out of me so many times and I've, it's
so good. It's like, I don't I don't need more reasons to have headphones in. But yet, for me, it matches, my aesthetic of trying to build some element of Whimsy and fun into the learning process because at the end of every episode, he has a A comedy song that reflects on or makes fun of some of the material from the previous episode, as someone who appreciates the art of the comedy song and someone who initially came to, to Tito pitching him on my one week internship saying that I can
make an error miners theme song. A lot of it, a lot of that sort of style and the material itself as well really goes goes well with my personality you think you can go toe-to-toe with Baba, Brinkman for his are minors Write a grant Faber produced a song recently to, that was pretty good. So, fighting against some some high Talent here we'll see. Is there any connection in your head beyond our personal proclivities for literature and art and the humanities and
carbon removal. Do you think so, or are we just looking for ways to connect them? Yeah, I mean, you know, this is going to sound cliché, but I think when I read these books, I often think about carbon room. Evil, because the things that I do in my day-to-day, like, boot up and problem pack work, sort of layer themselves on top of the happenings in the book and I feel like, wow, yeah, that makes
sense. This character also was thinking about a problem of scaling up like we're talking about or thinking about running up against the limits of some ecosystem, may be. So even if it's like it's sometimes hard to say that like, you know, we can use the lessons taught to us by the Those karamazov to solve climate change because it is nothing that direct I find that the work that I do to build out carbon removal and problem tax, and
boot up, and whatever it is, is often in my mind and my own mental web. Very interlayer, do with the books that I read and you know for me that enhances my experience gives me new ideas and helps me build out solutions that are better I think. Yeah I'm having a hard time seeing that in Dusty of ski. They already feel like raskolonikov and solar radiation management like an analysis. By John Sanchez. Yeah. That'd be, they little be my senior thesis in college.
Yeah. You like you like, okay, not everything is connected. Sometimes a thing is just a thing. Yeah. But you know, a lot of dealing with climate is interacting with real people and convincing people to behave in a certain way and you know, observing What it will take to get people to appreciate something, or to commit, to some proper to commit to some process. And like the human insights,
that you can get from reading. These books are definitely real and Dostoyevsky. I read Brothers, karamazov earlier, my Gap year, which is why I'm thinking about him. But like I think, when you look at how like, alyosha or Ivan or some of these characters behaves on a regular basis, it sort of helps me map onto the other people that I'm interacting with Again, I think it's just a frame that then becomes a way of conceptualizing. Those interactions.
I have that less from dostoievski personally but the one that I do think about probably more than any others.
Don Quixote you ever read that one I haven't it's on my list for eventually getting there but yeah I've heard good things I really like the Edith Grossman translation to and she did a bunch of Gabriel García márquez's and Mario Vargas llosa's translations but Don Quixote is so funny because The musical Man of La Mancha portrays him as being this noble man out of step with a the corrupt world. But in the book he's he's like dangerous.
Like like if Don Quixote comes your way in the book, it's not like a cute old man. It's like, oh God, there's a crazy guy with a lamp and he's trying to stab me just because I'm hurting my sheep and he thinks it's an invading Moorish Army. There's a bunch of stuff like that. Yeah, well people running it windmills. Sometimes attracted, the only
thing. But I like the idea of for instance there's a there's a bookstore I went to and Guatemala City Once Upon a Time and it was named after Don Quixote and it was a sort of like leftist bookstore, I don't know that you want to link your politics is guy because in the book He's a guy who constantly misinterprets the world and acts upon it and makes it worse. So is that that's not clearly.
Not how you see your politics? Maybe he isn't just like a noble, noble guy in a corrupt world, but you can see that like that the Christian bed, you know, that famous Parable from Greek mythology. It's like the, like a cyclops or Giants. And if you stay with him, he has a bed that he'll either stretch your limbs to match or I'll cut off. Your limbs may seem to love loves this story as being a case of ideology blinding people. You feel like a bit whatever though?
Well, yeah. Well, for me, like, it's one thing to like, have somebody tell you that ideology, blinds people, right? Like, I feel like most people sort of have some sense of that to some degree. Read. But then to see it unfold in those different ways and to hear what might be like a wrote lesson that like could be some Maximum that some Silicon Valley Guru might present to you. Like that's one thing.
But then it's another thing to like, witness the events of the novel unfold and like, have all of the context and, you know, have that lesson framed in a way where for me at least it hits home, much harder. And like, rather than thinking about the ideology blinding, I have a whole narrative in my Head. That becomes a map for that particular maximum. Yeah, I think that's true. There's other cases of that were. Yeah. Ideology blinds you.
It's sort of something like maybe like a 18 year old with a Bob, Marley poster over their dorm couch, might say, but if you read something like A Confederacy of Dunces, which have you ever read that one? Yeah, I love it. Okay, so well in 8th grade. I read that for a book report and for the book report I brought there's this In Confederacy of Dunces where Ignatius de Riley's becomes a hot dog cart manager, that he's Wheeling around.
So for my book report, I brought in a prop which was a set of boxes stacked, on top of the skateboard, that was my hot dog cart. And I think he's just as a visual prop, I guess for, for presenting my, my take on the book, most precocious thing I've ever heard, John Campbell your little pull that off. Ignatius is a great example of this. Right.
Like he's always talking about but we Theus and The Wheel of Fortune and the corrupt modern world and and he's just like lives with his mom and is a slob and always telling people that they're completely lacking in Theology and geometry which it's perfect. He's like extremely delusional and like lives in this made-up world. And yeah, you could picture some of like the hardcore nature-based CDR people. Yet the technology see are people that they're all lacking in Theology and geometry?
Yeah, there's there's maybe maybe you can apply it there if you'd like, but yeah, you don't ever want to be that guy. And I really do, which is I saw great article in the New Yorker recently about how like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and Ignatius. J. Riley are oftentimes found as protagonist that young men in particular look up to was like these people are Is a satire that you're not supposed to like these people.
They're clearly the Bad Guys. Don Quixote is the bad guy of Don Quixote Achilles is the bad guy or like one of the bad guys of The Iliad? You're not supposed to go with it. Yeah, well I'm sure we could just goof around talking about books forever. Maybe one of the final things we should start wrapping up on though, is Your Love of memes. What is happening in the world of carbon removal? Me Murray.
Yeah, so funny in my newsletter, which everyone listening should sign up for especially if you want to hear about the next problem packs as they get released, the bottom of every issue comes stocked with a the latest and greatest in the carbon removal meme space. So I definitely feel very plugged into the Zeitgeist of the memes that are going around, but yeah, it's exciting. I like I like to see people thinking about carbon removal in a way that Take itself.
So seriously all the time and where people are happy to just goof around and have a connection on that level, where, you know, there's more levity, more laughs and yeah, I'm a big fan of the work that's being done and not very dignified area, the a dignified, memory signified, me Marie, I'm all for it. Yeah, well John, if someone wants to follow your work and get involved in any of this, where should they go? Yeah, totally.
Well, problem packs is beginning to be built out and I'm working on a website for it'll be more official than what exists now, but definitely subscribe to the sub stack where I post most announcements at Carbon travels dotsub stack.com. You can also check out carbon removal, academy.com, to see all those resources and like we said before, boot up dot are minors, dot-org is where you could sign up for that but also would love to talk to people about all these things.
If you want to get involved with any of those things or have ideas. It's about how to make them better. I'm on are minors. I'm on most of those climate communities. So, feel free to DM me, we love to chat. Great Links. All those things are in the show notes, and thanks so much for being here, John. Yeah, thanks, Ross. This was fun. Fun for me to get in the Gap about books. That's always a pleasure and if you like, also gabbing about books, you should join the patreon for Nori's.
We have a book club which is fun John's in it. You can come and hang out and talk to John about book. Sometimes I don't have you mind me saying that John but it's It's been a lot of fun. We have authors come out and chat with us sometimes, and we have a really nice community of people talking about climate books and things that Jason. And if you like what we're doing here, please rate and review our show in iTunes, or apple podcast, it makes a big
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