Hello out there I'm Ross Kenny and I'm the host of reversing climate change. This is a climate podcast unlike any other climate podcast that's out there and I'm going to tell you why the show was started in the summer of 2017. It was an effort of a company I Co founded called Nori, which is one of the world's first carbon removal companies very early in the days of commercial carbon removal.
So the podcast is a big effort in trying to communicate to people why carbon removal existed at all. It was literally that early where people didn't know about it, how carbon markets work, which they're to this day still pretty confusing and hard to understand. And in those early days, I was concerned that we're going to run out of things to talk about and somehow never did.
And I attribute that to just getting more and more connections that were unexpected with climate change until essentially everything can connect to climate seen through the right set of eyes. And I've really made it my job to find as many, as many intersections as I possibly can that are interesting to me. When you do something creative like this, it's actually really hard to know if a show is good
or not. The main way that I can tell if a show is good, as if I can get excited about it, it's basically the only way I know if it's good or not. So I try to only produce those shows that have my attention, that keep me interested and are fittingly interesting, unlike other things that I've seen in other places for the most part. And that even happens when there's guests that are on other
climate podcasts that same week. I often try to ask them questions that are might throw them for a loop a little bit, might make them think, might break them out of the out of the shtick that they often need to respond with. Because they do this so often, they oftentimes need to have questions that are weird that make them think about something new and answer in a new way. So that's my commitment to you as a listener. I am going to always try to find
a strange show to make. I'm going to find things going to be entertaining to me and it's going to make connections that are maybe less common in other climate podcast. And why do I do that? Just I've been doing this for so long, I don't want to just keep repeating myself and doing the same kinds of shows over and over again. Tom Waits, one of my favorite musical artist, has a line where he says 1's hands are like dogs. They're always going back to
what they know. It's from his VH1 Storytellers album. It's really good. And I think it's the same here too, where if you're only doing shows that are right over the plate, carbon removal companies, climate tech, climate policy, I think at some point you can give updates on those things, but that's not enough that that becomes utilitarian. You're there for an explicit
purpose. There's not a lot of joy or or strangeness or, or other things that make life interesting and worth living to focus on. So I often times I'm trying to find these connections, the things that, you know, I've done a lot of shows on theology and literature, history, war, geopolitics, the long term arc of history, the teleology of the human species, critical theory, the conservative intellectual tradition, and a lot elsewhere. Maybe this just isn't taking
place. And if for no other reason, it's because I'm interested in all those things and I can see their application to a field like climate change. I did the year of PhD work in political philosophy before deciding it wasn't the right fit for me. And I had a career in filmmaking because I still was very passionate about ideas and I found my way into climate tech
entrepreneurship through there. But I've always been interested in the humanities and some of these intellectual disciplines that are maybe left common in this space because climate tends to be hard science oriented. A lot of STEM folks, scientists, engineers, and I don't want it to only be that because we also need people who come from lots of different traditions to make us more robust, to help us think, to approach things in a more holistic and humanitarian kind of way.
I'm not even sure that's the correct adjective to approach it from a humanities and social science lens, which is frankly less common. So that's what I do, That's why I'm here. It's very fun for me to do it this way. I almost ended up in carbon removal just by historical accident. That's how it happens with life sometimes. But I'm really grateful to be here. I pull my share of guests from all of the fancy places, too.
We've got winners of the Oscar, Grammy, Pulitzer, James Beard, MacArthur, genius Pulitzer. Did I say Pulitzer? All of the big fancy things that, you know, we get them on too. That's, that's fine. But what I'm really looking forward is to make shows that are different. That's what I want to leave you with it. This is a show that is trying to find stories that would be unlikely to be told, ideas that would be unlikely to be explored in other climate podcasting
venues. So thanks for being here. I hope you like it. If you like the show, please consider becoming a subscriber right now. This is now an independent effort. Reversing climate change needs financial support. I need to make sure this is financially and temporally justifiable. I could be doing other things with my time. I really love this. I want to share it with people. So if this is something that you care about, if you've gotten value out of this show, please
consider becoming a subscriber. It's $5.00 a month. It's less than a cup of coffee these days with inflation, it's a pretty good deal to show your support. To make sure this is worth continuing, I'm exploring various ways to add features for subscribers. I have various episodes that are going to be published that will not be available to the general listenership.
It's a certain extended moment. Sometimes people will we'll get into a a topic on a podcast that is a really interesting, but it actually breaks the flow of the episode. And I'm trying to cut those and produce those as stand alone little segments. So if you want more, I will make sure you get more. I'm trying to find ways to limit or even eliminate the use of ads on subscriber feed. So if that is important to you, please subscribe. I'm trying to figure out a way to make that work.
I also did this really fun thing for the philosophy of science show I did with Anu Khan and Holly Jean Buck. We talked about Paul Faye, Robin and Thomas Kuhn, but we launched into the discussion so quickly that it was clear that the audience would not be able to follow without an intro. So I recorded a 15 minute quasi freestyle intro about the philosophy of science and and how these ideas work and why they're important. It was a lot of fun.
I I want to do more monologuing. I want to do more explaining. So if there are things that you want me to address or explain or riff on in the kind of way that I like to do, that is something that I will be making available for subscribers. And I'm trying to get that going now too. But there's topics that you'd like to see, feel free to comment here. Let me know. You can do that on Spotify. I'm trying to just put more video content out, which is also typically available on Spotify.
Whatever. I'm just trying to say, if you like the show, please subscribe. It means a lot to me. It'll help us get going, and I will try to keep building out features that make it worth your while. So will you please subscribe if you're listening? I would be so grateful if you would. Thanks so much for listening. In any case, I'm really excited about the direction of this show and the kinds of shows I'm able to publish right now. So thank you again.
I hope you enjoy and thank you so much for your support.