Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

What if the most important step you can take for biodiversity is simply… noticing?

Species are disappearing far faster than we can track, and for many of them, our entire scientific record amounts to a handful of specimens scattered across museum shelves.

My guest today, Scott Loarie, has spent the last decade building one of the most hopeful counterforces to that trend: iNaturalist. What started as a simple idea — “What if anyone could help record the living world with their phone?” — has grown into one of the largest biodiversity datasets on Earth. Most of what scientists now know about many species comes not from elite field research, but from millions of everyday people noticing what’s around them.

We talk about how climate change scrambles ecosystems, how citizen science has outpaced some traditional biology, and why biodiversity may be one of the last unpolarized environmental spaces left. iNaturalist works not because it’s high-tech, but because it taps into something deeply human: curiosity. A butterfly in your backyard becomes a datapoint for global science. A moment of noticing becomes a contribution that actually matters.

In a world where climate action often feels abstract and distant, biodiversity offers something intimate: a reason to look closer.

If you want to start, download the iNaturalist app, step outside, and snap a photo. It’s a tiny act that scales surprisingly far.

Referenced:

• iNaturalist — iOS | Android

• Seek — for under 13

• IUCN Red List

• How many species are there?

Get connected:

• Scott Loarie — iNaturalist | LinkedIn

• Ben - LinkedIn | Climate Papa

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch by emailing ben@climatepapa.com

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

How do you make decisions for the next hundred years based on evidence you only know today? That’s the question Gary Yohe has spent more than four decades wrestling with. One of the first five economists in the world working on climate change back in the early 1980s, Gary served as the Coordinating Lead Author for multiple IPCC report chapters, including the Fourth Assessment that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. His research has shaped how the world understands climate risk, bridging economics, science, and policy. Instead of chasing a perfect century-long plan, he argues we should treat climate as a risk management problem—act, learn, adjust. It’s an idea that changed the field: policy as an iterative process rather than a single bet on the future.

We talk about how this shift happened and what it means today, from San Francisco’s sea-level strategy—where most of the city plans for a two-foot rise, but why the Embarcadero prepares for six—to the limits of insurance as climate risk becomes unpriceable. Gary channels John Holdren’s line that “we can abate, we can adapt, or we can suffer,” and explains why the catastrophic tail risks will never be fully insurable. He shares lessons from decades of human behavior research: how Florida’s hurricane-proof houses paradoxically increased deaths as people stopped evacuating, and how Outer Banks homeowners started building intentionally ‘disposable’ beach houses when insurance vanished. Along the way, he reflects on the communication gap that dogs climate science—how misinformation can be careless, but accuracy must be flawless—and the discipline it takes to keep public trust.

Now in his seventies, Gary calls himself “a foot soldier in the climate wars.” What keeps him going isn’t blind optimism but something sturdier. Quoting Václav Havel, he distinguishes hope from optimism: optimism expects things will work out; hope believes your actions might make a difference. That’s what motivates him when he imagines his nine-year-old twin granddaughters asking, “Papa, what did you do when all this was happening?” His answer: “I was doing everything I could. And I really thought I might make a difference. And that gave me enough hope to think it was worth the time to do it.”

Referenced:

• IPCC 4th Assessment

• Climate Cafe

Get connected:

• Gary - Wesleyan | Climate Cafe

• Ben - LinkedIn | Climate Papa

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch by emailing ben@climatepapa.com

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

Agriculture, forestry, and land use together account for nearly 24 % of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet somehow land sits in a weird blind spot: ignored by climate conversations focused on energy and transport, underanalyzed by markets, and mispriced by farmers and timber investors alike. That’s the problem, and opportunity, we’re going to discuss today.

I sit down with Danan Margason, founder and CEO of Aarden, to explore how AI can help land owners understand their options. Aarden sits at the center of a messy, trillion-dollar decision problem—enabling landowners and capital allocators to evaluate a single parcel across radically different paths: timber harvests vs. solar fields, carbon projects vs. housing, restoration now vs. monetizing later.

We dive into the systems thinking behind land use and why this is such a massive market that’s been underserved by technology.

Along the way, Danan shares his journey from crew boats in Seattle to Booking.com, through Carbon Direct’s push for high-quality removals, and into company-building back with his original crew buddy.

Referenced:

• Aarden.ai

• Jobs

• Land use

• Stepchange Show

Get connected:

• Danan - LinkedIn | danan@aarden.ai

• Ben - LinkedIn | Climate Papa

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch by emailing ben@climatepapa.com

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

🎧 Listen to the full episode:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• YouTube

• Substack

• Any other podcast player search: ‘Stepchange’

Today’s Climate Papa episode is a quick teaser from my other project, The Stepchange Show.

Anay and I spent months digging into the hidden backbone of our modern world: data centers. These warehouses of machines quietly power everything from your email to AI — and now use more electricity than some countries.

This short preview pulls back the curtain. If it sparks your curiosity, head to the full episode on the Stepchange Show through the links above.

Climate Papa Playground Meet-up

Sunday, 7/20, 9:30am-11:30am @ Madison Park Playground

Coffee, snacks, and climate chatter while the kids burn energy on the playground. A relaxed way to meet other climate-minded parents and friends (kids not required to come hang!). RSVP → https://lu.ma/8j30oips

Playdate RSVP

Stepchange Climate Software + AI Builders Hangout

Wednesday, 7/23, 2–4 p.m. @ Stoup Brewing - Capitol Hill

A mixer for founders, engineers, investors, and product folks building software, fintech, or AI for climate. Co-hosted with Stepchange portfolio companies Bayou Energy & Aarden AI. RSVP → https://lu.ma/jg956o9m

RSVP

If you’ll be around please register at the links above, I would love to see you! I also recommend poking around the various events of the week as there's a lot of fun stuff going on.

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

What happens when you take the two biggest sources of emissions in the US—transportation and electricity—and smash them together at breakneck speed?

I chat about this collision with Apoorv Bhargava, the co-founder and CEO of WeaveGrid. We explore the massive, unfolding challenge and opportunity of integrating millions of electric vehicles onto a grid that wasn't built for them. WeaveGrid sits at the very center—building the critical software layer to orchestrate this transition, turning EVs from a potential liability into a powerful asset for a cleaner, more resilient energy system.

We dive deep into the systems thinking required to solve climate change, busting common memes around EV charging, and discussing why the real bottleneck isn't just charging stations, but the grid itself. Apoorv shares why he’s wary of buzzwords like "Virtual Power Plants" (VPPs) and makes the case for building trust and genuine partnership with the massive incumbent industries—like utilities and automakers—that are central to the energy transition.

Along the way, Apoorv opens up about his personal journey: from a childhood seeing the impacts of energy and water scarcity firsthand to the all-consuming life of a founder, and why focusing on the human side of the work is essential for the long haul.

Referenced:

• WeaveGrid

• Volts podcast by David Roberts on “enshitification”

• Making sure electric vehicles help rather than hurt electricity grids on Volts

Get connected:

• Apoorv - LinkedIn | apoorv@weavegrid.com

• Ben - LinkedIn | Climate Papa

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch by emailing ben@climatepapa.com

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

I sit down with Michael Leggett—former Google and Facebook design leader turned climate entrepreneur—to explore the invisible but essential machinery behind the clean energy economy. Michael is the co-founder and Head of Product at Ever.green, a startup working to democratize access to high-impact renewable energy deals.

Michael and I go deep into the world of renewable energy credits (RECs), power purchase agreements (PPAs), and the shifting landscape of carbon accounting. Why is it that only ~1,000 companies today participate in the kind of long-term clean energy contracts that actually help bring new solar and wind projects online? What happens when companies buy cheap, after-the-fact RECs and claim 100% clean energy? And how might emerging standards like 24/7 carbon-free energy reshape what counts as climate impact—for better or worse?

Along the way, Michael shares his own journey from Big Tech to climate, how becoming a parent shaped his urgency, and why he remains (cautiously) optimistic that Team Earth can get it right—if we keep the focus on real-world outcomes and the systems and incentives that guide those outcomes.

Referenced:

• Ever.green

• Rethinking Scope 2 Accounting by Ever.green

• Stepchange Show: Coal Part II

Get connected:

• Michael - LinkedIn

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch, by emailing ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

You can also watch the video version here:

In this live crossover episode of Climate Papa and Volts, I sit down with renowned climate journalist David Roberts for a conversation bridging the personal and the planetary. David traces his unlikely path from doctoral philosophy drop out into journalism—and how his early love of systems thinking shapes his work today.

We dive into the puzzle that is the energy transition. With clean energy solutions now tangible and increasingly affordable, David sees his role not just as a reporter, but as a guide through the nested challenges of decarbonization—from grid reform to housing to the politics of permitting.

We dive into David’s approach to writing (“talk like you’re at a bar with a smart friend”), his current obsessions (electricity and land use), and why abundance, not austerity, should define the climate movement. Along the way we try to answer if humans might be smart enough, as a species, to outrun the fate of the protozoa.

David was thoughtful, funny, and full of hope—with very little room for BS.

Referenced:

• Stepchange Show: Coal I

• 9Zero Seattle

• In defense of Ethical Naturalism

• Is humanity smarter than a protozoan?

• What's up with electric aviation?

Connect:

• David - Volts

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch, by emailing ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

What if the biggest climate impact from companies like Google wasn’t in their operations, but in how they shape the decisions of billions of people?

In this episode of Climate Papa, I sit down with Travis McCoy, Director of Product for Sustainability at Google. We talk about his journey into climate, the pivotal moment that pushed him to make the leap, and how Google is leveraging its massive distribution to help individuals, businesses, and governments make lower-carbon choices.

Travis shares why he believes climate action isn’t just about reducing emissions—it’s about changing systems at scale. And we have a mini product-jam on what it could mean for tech leaders and product builders to build climate native products.

Referenced:

• Electrify by Saul Griffith

• Google’s sustainability work: Google Sustainability

• Project Sunroof by Google: Project Sunroof

• The Stepchange Show

Get connected:

• Travis - LinkedIn

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch, by emailing ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

The next episode of Climate Papa is being recorded live later today (3/19)! If you’re in Seattle come join, otherwise you should be able to join via YouTube stream here at 1pm PT.

We’re doing our first live show! I’ll be interviewing long-time journalist, podcaster, and energy-puzzle-master David Roberts, the man, myth, and legend behind Volts. This will happen this coming Wednesday, March 19th at 1pm at 9Zero Seattle.

Would love to have you there! Sign up: https://lu.ma/6w8jfijm

Join us for a special live recorded interview of David Roberts, the journalist and founder of Volts, a leading podcast and newsletter on clean energy and climate policy. Hosted by Ben Eidelson, of Climate Papa, this episode dives into David’s journey from Grist to Vox to Volts, the evolution of climate reporting, and the role of independent media in shaping the climate conversation.

​We’ll explore the intersection of technology, parenthood, and climate work—discussing how being a dad influences David’s perspective and work (or doesn’t), his thoughts on Seattle as a hub for climate innovation, and what’s next in the fight for a clean energy future. Expect a candid, insightful conversation about the state of climate action, the psychology of the climate movement, and the power of storytelling in driving change.

​We will have a section for live Q&A, but feel free to submit questions in advance here: https://forms.gle/Ynr6MsB6EE9hNtdCA

Today I'm excited to introduce a new project, the Stepchange podcast, where we share the stories of human progress. Like Climate Papa, it's driven by a curiosity about the systems that shape our world, but focuses on the historical innovations and moments that got us here and the transformations happening now.

The show is a long-form conversation hosted by me and Anay where we unpack the technologies, systems, and infrastructure that underpin modern life. Our first episode explores coal's role in the Industrial Revolution - a story that echoes through to the many fuel debated today. You can listen by searching for "Stepchange" on your preferred podcast platform (here on Spotify and Apple Podcasts).

Climate Papa email subscribers will be added to the Stepchange email list so that you don’t miss future episodes. If the show is not for you, you can always unsubscribe and your Climate Papa updates will not be impacted.

Stepchange

Stories of Progress

By Ben Shwab Eidelson

Coal is the story of a step change—a transformation so profound that it reshaped the course of human history. The rise of coal reshaped economies, societies, and the very way we live. It became the foundation of the Industrial Revolution and powered a new era of progress, but this leap forward came at a tremendous cost.

Coal’s story begins with ancient plants that captured sunlight and locked away carbon over millennia. These deposits, buried deep in the Earth, would one day drive empires and fuel industries that transformed the world. Yet, behind this transformation lies a complex and often difficult legacy.

Even as coal has faded from the forefront of our energy landscape, its fingerprints remain everywhere. The technologies it spawned, from steam engines and the rail to industrial manufacturing, continue to underpin our modern world. At the same time, coal’s legacy is inseparable from many of the challenges we face today, from labor abuse and environmental degradation to global climate change.

In this debut episode, we explore the first chapter of coal's story, from its early discovery and use through the dawn of the 20th century.

Thank you for joining us for the first episode of Stepchange. Don’t forget to subscribe and share your thoughts by emailing us at hi@stepchange.show.

Hosts: Ben Shwab Eidelson and Anay Shah

Timestamps

00:00 - Welcome to Stepchange
03:37 - The Birth of Coal
09:39 - Coal's Early History
17:01 - Britain's Coal Transformation
25:49 - Reshaping Home & Hearth
34:49 - The Iron & Coke Revolution
44:28 - The Steam Engine Breakthrough
1:03:37 - The Railway Revolution
1:19:50 - The Rise of Industrial Cities
1:38:57 - Life in the Mines
1:54:37 - Coal Comes to America
2:24:11 - Themes & Reflections

Episode sources:

Key books

1. Freese, Barbara. Coal: A Human History

2. Goodman, Ruth. The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything

3. Paxman, Jeremy. Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain

4. Sinclair, Upton. King Coal:a Novel (fiction)

Interviews

Barbara Freese, 12/12/24

Johnston Suter, 1/6/24

Key Links

Geological History

• The Carboniferous Period

• Earth's Historical Timeline Visualization

• Coal-Bearing Areas of the United States

• USGS: Coal Resources and Historical Production

• Coal Mining in Ancient China

• Coal Mining Regions

Industrial Development

• British Population Growth (1100-Present)

• The Industrial Revolution

• Evolution of Steam Power

  • History of the Steam Engine

  • Newcomen Atmospheric Engine

• Key Industrial Figures

  • Abraham Darby I

  • James Watt

  • Matthew Boulton

  • John Wilkinson

  • Franklin B. Gowen

  • The Lunar Society of Birmingham

  • The Grand Allies

  • George Stephenson

Social Impact and Labor History

• Friedrich Engels

• Coal Mining Labor Practices and "Hurrying"

• Lord Ashley and Labor Reform

• The Great Smog of London (1952)

• The Centralia Mine Fire

• Pennsylvania Anthracite Mining History

Modern Context

• Global Coal Consumption Trends

• Emissions by Fuel Type

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

There was a fire that burned for 29 hours. It destroyed over 17,000 buildings, killed over 300 people, and left more than 100,000 homeless. This was the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Out of the ashes, Chicago rebuilt itself into a global model of resilience. The disaster spurred major changes, including the use of fire-resistant building materials, stricter safety codes, the expansion of the fire department, and the modernization of water and sewer systems. It ultimately set the conditions for Chicago to become the birthplace of the skyscraper and a leader in architecture and urban planning.

The fires in Los Angeles are still burning. The devastation is immense and heartbreaking. To grasp for some meaning, I’ve been reflecting on the history of Chicago—not as a direct analogy but as a beacon of hope. Hope that something long-lasting and transformative can come from this disaster. That we can be collectively catalyzed not just to rebuild, but to rebuild smarter—with better tools, better systems, and to rebuild resiliently. That is my hope for Los Angeles and its amazing people.

To help process and understand the fires—how we got here and where we might go next—I reached out to our friends at Convective Capital. Jay Ribakove is a Principal at Convective Capital—a venture firm investing in solutions to combat and adapt to the growing threat of wildfires.

We unpack how wildfires have changed over time—from the low-intensity fires of the past to today’s massive, catastrophic events. Jay explains the critical factors at play in the Los Angeles fires and the tools we have to increase our defenses.

Referenced:

• Portfolio companies mentioned: BurnBot, Fire Aside, Overstory, Rhizome

• Firetech Job Board

• Red Sky Summit
  

Get connected:

• Jay - LinkedIn | Convective Capital

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

Feedback? Guest ideas? Get in touch, by emailing ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

This is the current draft of the Stepchange podcast, Episode 1: Coal Part I. Please do not share without asking Ben or Anay.

We are hungry for feedback from early listeners. Please don’t hesitate to give your thoughts—it’s a gift.

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

On this show, we’ve explored how people can make infrastructure changes in their lives that have long-term positive climate impacts—whether it’s upgrading your furnace to a heat pump or switching from a gas car to an EV. Food is on the other end of the spectrum. It’s the ultimate behavioral challenge: the average person has three meals a day, 21 meals a week. That's over 1,000 meals a year or 5,000 decisions over five years. Compare that to the one-time choice of a car you may drive for five years. Each of these meals—and how we prepare them—has a major impact, both on our personal health and on the health of the planet.

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Joel Gamoran—a fellow Seattle papa, chef, culinary teacher, and founder of Homemade Cooking. Joel’s journey has taken him from teaching as the head chef at Sur La Table to hosting the cooking show Scraps, where he turned food waste into culinary masterpieces (and published a cookbook as well).

We discuss staggering truths about the waste in our food system—and how culinary medicine is a key unlock for our health, our communities, and the planet. Joel generously opens up about his own health journey and how that connects to his life’s work.

If after this conversation you want more of Joel’s amazing energy, you can cook with him via his site Homemade Cooking, watch his PBS show Homemade Live, and follow along via his Instagram.

Referenced:

• Food Waste - ReFED

• Land use data - Our World in Data

• Seattle not among nation’s vegan/vegetarian hot spots - Seattle Times

Get connected:

• Joel - Instagram | Homemade Cooking

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

To get in touch, email ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

06:40: Joel’s Journey to Becoming a Chef and Connector

13:01: Food Waste in America: Shocking Stats

21:03: Tracing the Life of a Loaf of Bread

28:25: Culinary Medicine: Food as Health and Connection

42:38: Ozempic, Weight Loss, and Societal Implications

58:09: Joel’s Personal Journey: Loss, Resilience, and Calling

1:03:13: The Connection Between Health and Climate Action

Trying something new by sharing a transcript. This was autogenerated and edited with LLMs. Please be aware that there may be mistakes or typos.
Joel Gamoran 00:00:00

In cooking school, they teach you, you cannot waste anything. That's all margin down the drain.

I'm teaching this class and I'm looking around and the garbage bowls are filled to the brim. I'm like, we teach chefs to not waste anything, but we don't teach each other like home cooks, to not waste anything.

I'm sure if you're listening to this and you have a grandparent that went through the Great Depression, they waste nothing. Our generation missed that. So I went on a mission to basically wake people up and say, you're throwing away so much food.

I started to dig into the analytics. Here's some of the crazy stuff, right, Ben? In America today, we throw away 40% of the food that we produce. Welcome to Climate Papa. This is a show about climate change, technology, and parenthood.

Ben Eidelson 00:01:10

Welcome to episode 22 of Climate Papa, a show about the intersection of climate change, parenthood, and technology. I'm your host, Ben Eidelson. I'm based in Seattle and I invest in climate companies with my fund Step Change. I'm also a papa to three kids, a six and a half year old girl, an almost four year old boy, and a seven-month-year-old boy.

On the show, we talk about the many ways that people and businesses can make infrastructure changes that, from that point onwards, have a clear, positive climate impact, as well as usually being just an upgrade to their life. This could be upgrading your HVAC to a heat pump or changing from a gas car to an EV.

Food and what we eat is on the other end of the spectrum. It's the ultimate behavioral change and system challenge. The average person has three meals a day or 21 meals a week. That's over a thousand each year.

That choice you might make about what type of car to drive that lasts five years is instead 5,000 individual meal decisions you need to make. Each of these meals and how we prepare them has a major impact on both our own health and the health of the planet.

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Joel Gamron, a fellow papa, a chef, a culinary teacher, and the founder of Homemade Cooking. Joel's journey has taken him from teaching cooking classes and becoming the head chef at Sur La Table to hosting the cooking show Scraps, where he turned food waste into culinary masterpieces.

Joel and I discussed staggering truths about the waste in our food system and how culinary medicine is a key unlock for our health, our communities, and the planet. Joel generously opens up about his own health journey and how that connects to his life's work.

We explore how cooking can be a force for connection. As you get to know Joel over this next hour, you'll quickly sense how special he is at connecting. Welcome, Joel.

Joel Gamoran 00:02:58

I'm Joel Gamoron. I'm a father to a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old boy. I have an amazing partner, Angelina. We live in Seattle, Washington. I'm a chef that is also on TV.

I teach cooking for a living, and I own a company called Homemade, which teaches free interactive cooking classes. I am here to inspire you to cook more, because I think it will better your life.

Ben Eidelson 00:03:21

All right, Joel, Ben. Very excited for this. This is fun to have you in our little makeshift home studio. Next time we'll do it at the proper home studio.

Joel Gamoran 00:03:30

This is the way I want to do it.

Ben Eidelson 00:03:32

The couch conversation.

Joel Gamoran 00:03:33

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:03:34

To lean back and get more cozy. Speaking of which, what's going on with the kids?

Joel Gamoran 00:03:38

They're awesome, as you know. The five year old is like taking a turn of just like a little bit of tude, but the right amount and I'm loving it.

Ben Eidelson 00:03:48

It's like a respectable amount. You're into that. It's a little.

Joel Gamoran 00:03:52

Sassy, a little sass. I kind of love that he's throwing it back at me. Number three is just a cuddle bear, but every once in a while, a grenade. You just don't know if you're cuddling a mine, something that's about to explode. Every day is on our toes at our house, but we're having so much fun. Everything is broken, everything's soaked in urine, and it's great.

Ben Eidelson 00:04:14

What is the dynamic between the two of them?

Joel Gamoran 00:04:18

What I'm learning is, and Ben, I don't know if you feel like this with your kiddos, but I see this common thread with firsts and seconds. That's all I have, so I think about that.

First is so measured, so reserved, so respectful, sweet. Second is so brave, so crazy, and just goes out on a limb. They fight so much, and everyone's like, who instigates? I'm like number two, not even close. Is that how your kids are?

Ben Eidelson 00:04:46

Not really, for some reason. I think that's the general trend.

Joel Gamoran 00:04:50

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:04:50

I think we maybe have the exception.

Joel Gamoran 00:04:52

To the trend? Really?

Ben Eidelson 00:04:53

Our eldest, she's coming up on seven, and she's a little bit more like, cool. I hear that's the rule. That's a suggestion. You're suggesting that I go downstairs and put on my shoes.

Joel Gamoran 00:05:08

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:05:08

The older one comes out and the whole house is like boom, boom, boom. I can't get comfortable. I can't get comfortable. Whatever it is, I can't go to sleep.

The middle one is almost four. He tiptoes like a ninja. He tiptoes silently out and asks, “Papa, are you gonna come say goodnight to me?” He can whisper phenomenally well.

Joel Gamoran 00:05:46

Okay, I have a theory.

Ben Eidelson 00:05:47

It's not even a boy-girl thing. It's.

Joel Gamoran 00:05:49

My theory is that the second looks at the first and is the opposite. They're like, I'm going to carve my own lane. So if your oldest is playing this card of holding the line, number two is like, I'll be the opposite of that. I get my attention and I carve my lane.

Ben Eidelson 00:06:09

That holds up and matches what I've seen in my family.

Joel Gamoran 00:06:13

Did we just discover that on Climate Papa? Does that like, is there research that needs to go into that? I think we just nailed that.

Ben Eidelson 00:06:18

I think there's a book to publish. What do we call it? The Flip? There's some catchy name. What would Malcolm Gladwell call this book?

Joel Gamoran 00:06:26

Literally, it's like the Anti-Mirror. Something like that.

Ben Eidelson 00:06:29

The coin flip.

Joel Gamoran 00:06:31

Exactly, right.

Ben Eidelson 00:06:33

So what does that mean for our third? He's seven months.

Joel Gamoran 00:06:35

I don't know. I think it's going to be the same. Everyone needs to carve their niche.

Ben Eidelson 00:06:39

Was the third always a jokester? Do they not care as much because the parents are broken down? My parents were a little broken down. Hold on one second, someone's at the door.

Joel Gamoran 00:06:49

Guess it was just FedEx. More coffee?

Ben Eidelson 00:06:53

A coffee subscription.

Joel Gamoran 00:06:54

Ben made me a cup of coffee, which, by the way, being a Jewish, anxious human, coffee for me is a newer thing. I avoided all caffeine because it made my anxiety jump.

I really avoided it. Then having kids, someone's like, just taste it, just give it a little. Now I get it. So I'm a newbie to the coffee world. Coffee subscriptions, grinding, tamping, different machines, fascinating to me. It's new.

Ben Eidelson 00:07:28

What changed? Is it not making you the same anxious trigger, or you're getting decaf, or you're just tired?

Joel Gamoran 00:07:35

I think I'm okay with the anxious trigger because the other side of it is I'm awake and alert and can actually get things done. I'd rather have an anxiety attack but actually be productive than literally not be able to function.

In cooking school, they teach you, you cannot waste anything. That's all margin down the drain.

I'm teaching this class, and I'm looking around, and the garbage bowls are filled to the brim. I'm like, we teach chefs to not waste anything, but we don't teach each other like home cooks to not waste anything.

I'm sure if you're listening to this and you have a grandparent that went through the Great Depression, they waste nothing. Our generation missed that. So I went on a mission to basically wake people up and say, you're throwing away so much food.

I started to dig into the analytics. Here's some of the crazy stuff, right, Ben? In America today, we throw away 40% of the food that we produce. Welcome to Climate Papa. This is a show about climate change, technology, and parenthood.

Welcome to episode 22 of Climate Papa, a show about the intersection of climate change, parenthood, and technology. I'm your host, Ben Idleson. I'm based in Seattle and I invest in climate companies with my fund Step Change. I'm also a papa to three kids: a six and a half year old girl, an almost four year old boy, and a seven-month-year-old boy.

On the show, we talk about the many ways that people and businesses can make infrastructure changes that, from that point onwards, have a clear, positive climate impact as well as usually being just an upgrade to their life. This could be upgrading your HVAC to a heat pump, or changing from a gas car to an EV.

But food and what we eat is on the other end of the spectrum. It's the ultimate behavioral change and system challenge. The average person has three meals a day or 21 meals a week. That's over a thousand each year.

That choice you might make about what type of car to drive that lasts five years is instead 5,000 individual meal decisions you need to make. Each of these meals and how we prepare them has a major impact both on our own health and the health of the planet.

In this episode, I sit down with my friend, Joel Gamron, a fellow papa, a chef, a culinary teacher, and the founder of Homemade Cooking. Joel's journey has taken him from teaching cooking classes and becoming the head chef at Sur La Table to hosting the cooking show Scraps, where he turned food waste into culinary masterpieces.

Joel and I discuss staggering truths about the waste in our food system and how culinary medicine is a key unlock for our health, our communities, and the planet. Joel generously opens up about his own health journey and how that connects to his life's work.

We explore how cooking can be a force for connection. As you get to know Joel over this next hour, you'll quickly sense how special he is at connecting. Welcome, Joel.

I'm Joel Gamron. I'm a father to a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old boy. I have an amazing partner, Angelina. We live in Seattle, Washington.

I'm a chef that is also on TV. I teach cooking for a living, and I own a company called Homemade, which teaches free interactive cooking classes. I am here to inspire you to cook more, because I think it will better your life.

All right, Joel. Ben. Very excited for this. This is fun to have you in our little makeshift home studio. Next time we'll do it at the proper home studio.

This is the way I want to do it. The couch conversation.

Yes. I'm gonna lean back and get more cozy. Speaking of which, what's going on with the kids?

They're awesome, as you know. The five-year-old is like taking a turn of just like a little bit of tude, but the right amount, and I'm loving it.

It's like a respectable amount. You're into it. It's a little sassy, and I love that he's throwing it back at me. Number three is just a cuddle bear, but every once in a while a grenade. You just don't know if you're cuddling a mine, something that's about to explode. So every day is on our toes at our house, but we're having so much fun. Everything is broken, everything's soaked in urine, and it's great.

What is the dynamic between the two of them?

Dynamic is really what I'm learning. Ben, I don't know if you feel like this with your kiddos, but I see this common thread with firsts and seconds. That's all I have, so I think about that.

First is so measured, so reserved, so respectful, sweet. Second is so brave, so crazy, and just goes out on the limb. They fight so much, and everyone's like, well, who instigates? I'm like number two, not even close. Is that how your kiddos are?

For some reason, I think that's the general trend. I think we may have the exception to the trend. Our eldest is coming up on seven, and she's just a little bit more like, cool. I hear that's the rule, that's a suggestion. You're suggesting that I go downstairs and put on my shoes.

The older one comes out, and the whole house is like boom, boom, boom. I can't get comfortable. Whatever it is, I can't go to sleep. The middle one is almost four. He tiptoes like a ninja. He tiptoes silently out and asks, “Papa, are you gonna come say goodnight to me?” He can whisper phenomenally well.

Okay, I have a theory. It's not even a boy-girl thing.

I have a theory now and want to see if it checks out with you. My theory is that the second looks at the first and is the opposite. They're like, I'm going to carve my own lane. If your oldest is playing this card of holding the line, number two is like, I'll be the opposite of that. So I get my attention and I carve my lane.

That holds up and matches what I've seen in my lineup in my family. Did we just discover that on Climate Papa? Is there research that needs to go into that? I think we just nailed that.

I think there's a book to publish. What do we call it? The Flip? Like there's some catchy name. What would Malcolm Gladwell call this book?

It's like the Anti Mirror. Something like that. The coin flip.

Exactly right.

So what does that mean for our third? He's seven months.

I don't know. I think it's going to be the same. I think everyone needs to carve their niche.

Was the third always a jokester? Like the parents are broken down? My parents were a little broken down. Hold on one second, someone's at the door. Third guest. It was just FedEx. More coffee?

A coffee subscription.

Ben made me a cup of coffee, which, by the way, being a Jewish, anxious human, coffee for me is a newer thing. I avoided all caffeine because it made my anxiety jump.

I really avoided it. Then having kids, someone's like, just taste it, just give it a little. Now I get it. So I'm a new newbie to the coffee world. Coffee subscriptions, grinding, tamping, different machines, fascinating to me. It's new.

And what changed? Is it not making you that same anxious trigger, or you're getting decaf, or you're just tired?

I think I'm okay with the anxious trigger because the other side is I'm awake and alert and can actually get things done. I'd rather have an anxiety attack but actually be productive than literally not be able to function.

Ben Eidelson 00:07:45

That fits. In my 20s, I was just an anxious Jew. As I get into my late 30s, now I'm a tired, anxious Jew.

Joel Gamoran 00:07:52

That's right.

Ben Eidelson 00:07:53

So, the caffeine becomes a little less optional.

Joel Gamoran 00:07:56

I do what's called microdosing. I just do half a cup or something like that.

Ben Eidelson 00:08:03

Alright, well, we've now established that you're an expert in birth order.

Joel Gamoran 00:08:07

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:08:07

You've now conquered caffeine.

Joel Gamoran 00:08:08

Not an expert in caffeine. Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:08:11

What do you do?

Joel Gamoran 00:08:13

What do I do professionally?

Ben Eidelson 00:08:14

Professionally. Let's go straight into what you do, and then let's talk about how you got there.

Joel Gamoran 00:08:18

Let's talk about.

Ben Eidelson 00:08:19

Or whatever way.

Joel Gamoran 00:08:20

Who's Joel?

Ben Eidelson 00:08:21

Who is Joel?

Joel Gamoran 00:08:21

Who's Joel?

Ben Eidelson 00:08:22

Who's Joel?

Joel Gamoran 00:08:24

I think what I do professionally really ladders into where I've come from. I grew up in a family where my mom was an awesome cook, as I'm sure so many of us have, or a parent is a great cook.

We would have the most amazing gatherings. I didn't realize it at the time because I was a kid, but what was magical was that the food was the glue. I got nicknamed the glue in high school.

As a human, I love connecting people with one another. I was always the guy that was not in the popular group, not in the nerd group, not in the theater group, not in the sports group, but kind of floated groups. Food became this ultimate connector to me.

I started to cook for my own prom. I didn't take her out to dinner. I cooked for her. It became an interest around the time that Food Network was coming about in the late 90s, and cookbooks became friends to me. People read sports books or had pictures of their favorite models or stars on the wall. Mine were chefs. Mine was food.

I spent all night thinking about composing dishes and what kind of restaurant I would be.

Ben Eidelson 00:09:33

This is in high school.

Joel Gamoran 00:09:34

It's in high school.

Ben Eidelson 00:09:35

Wow.

Joel Gamoran 00:09:35

I was cooking for my friends, which a lot of the time led to food poisoning and them throwing up in my house. They were like, "Great job, it was a little salty." I was blowing up the kitchen.

Then my parents got divorced, and food stopped hitting the table. You start realizing what it did for the family and for my life, so I felt like I had to double down on cooking. I started to get even more into cooking because when my mom wasn't cooking, I came from a family of four, we were kind of dispersed.

When I put food on the table, we got back together again. It's very sticky. It's this glue. That led to a passion for food. I thought I wanted to be the next big chef.

I started to cook in restaurants and got really sad and depressed, and I didn't know why. Food was half the equation, but there was another half.

Ben Eidelson 00:10:31

It sounds like it was the glue function, which if you're behind, if you're not gluing the people together directly.

Joel Gamoran 00:10:38

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:10:39

As a chef, you're not a hugger.

Joel Gamoran 00:10:40

I'm a hugger.

Ben Eidelson 00:10:41

You might not get that on video clips of this. They're certainly not gonna get a Joel hug.

Joel Gamoran 00:10:48

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:10:48

You're glue.

Joel Gamoran 00:10:49

I'm squishy. I'm a squishy glue. When you're in the back of a restaurant, also in the business called the back of the house.

Ben Eidelson 00:10:58

Not a huggy place.

Joel Gamoran 00:10:58

Not a huggy place. You don't get to interact with people. So how do I have this food thing, but this huggy thing? That led to a life in food media, which is what I do today. You want me to go into that?

Ben Eidelson 00:11:11

Yes. There's a lot to unpack that we just went through. I think few people have the clarity of that weave-through of something that was important to them in childhood.

Joel Gamoran 00:11:26

Yeah.

Ben Eidelson 00:11:27

And then the direct role it played in giving you some autonomy to bring that back in a time of challenge.

Joel Gamoran 00:11:40

Yeah.

Ben Eidelson 00:11:41

And like darkness.

Joel Gamoran 00:11:43

I went to college in Connecticut, which is 3,000 miles away from my home. I grew up in Seattle. I didn't know anyone, which was on purpose because it was during that divorce. I just wanted to get out. We didn't have a kitchen in our dorm rooms. I was so bummed and so sad.

We had one communal kitchen in the whole dorm, like four levels, and probably 80 dorm rooms. It was never used.

I made challah one time. Half the kids in my dorm didn't know what that was. It's a Jewish bread we eat on Shabbat on a Friday night. It smelled the entire dorm. I was instantly home.

I ate it and remember just feeling like it was a hug. It was so warm, and I'm 3,000 miles away from it. People that I didn't even know were coming down asking what the smell was and asking to try it. Whether it's in despair or trying to meet with people, food connects us.

Ben Eidelson 00:12:47

Yeah.

Joel Gamoran 00:12:48

I love being connected. We're connecting over coffee right now, and I wanted to devote my life to that, and whatever I do in my life has to include that aspect.

Ben Eidelson 00:13:00

Let's talk about where you went from there.

Joel Gamoran 00:13:04

Yeah.

Ben Eidelson 00:13:04

You knew, way earlier than most and certainly way earlier than myself, that food was the central thing.

Joel Gamoran 00:13:12

You didn't know early on, what did you know?

Ben Eidelson 00:13:14

A venture capitalist and podcaster.

Joel Gamoran 00:13:17

Yeah. You had to.

Ben Eidelson 00:13:19

I did have an early iPod and enjoyed it.

Joel Gamoran 00:13:22

Ben, I know you. We've talked about this, but you did have some early premonitions about your abilities and your ability to take in information, and your curiosity around business. You were doing the same thing.

Ben Eidelson 00:13:32

I would say some of the foundational skills were there, but maybe what makes food so connective is the simplicity of the end satisfaction.

The creation of it to the hug, to the success of the thing. What you're doing now layers on complexity, which we'll get into. But for me, the dots do connect, but you have to hop through multiple dots to go from liking math and physics and engineering.

Joel Gamoran 00:14:07

Did you like to build growing up?

Ben Eidelson 00:14:10

Yeah, a decent amount. Even more than that, I liked to take things apart and understand how they worked.

That was something I did with my dad: take apart, build computers. He'd go to a garage sale or flea market, and we'd come back with an old stereo that was broken. He'd buy it for 50 cents, and we'd take it apart. There were all these good parts in there that we could save for whatever, put them in the garage. That was a weekend.

Joel Gamoran 00:14:39

That's so cool. That's so interesting. I think about Legos when I think about cooking.

You get a Lego box and there's a picture on the box with instructions to make that picture. Usually, you make the picture, but after that, I always destroyed it and wondered what else I could make with those same blocks.

Ben Eidelson 00:15:04

Yeah.

Joel Gamoran 00:14:58

I think building and cooking are kind of the same. It's like you have these blocks. In cooking, they're ingredients. You can make the recipe, you can make the picture, or you can use them and make your own thing. I love building too, not to that level. It's different. I didn't have the patience.

What's cool about cooking is it's the only thing I think that you build to destroy immediately. It's so short lived. It's not a product that takes a ton of planning. To your point, we were just talking up in the kitchen. Sometimes it's good just to whip it up.

Ben Eidelson 00:15:30

Yep.

Joel Gamoran 00:15:31

But then instantly it's gone.

Ben Eidelson 00:15:32

And destruction is tasty.

Joel Gamoran 00:15:34

The tasty destruction, I love that part of it. So I think we're both builders in some ways.

Ben Eidelson 00:15:39

Yes.

Joel Gamoran 00:15:39

You probably just have a lot more attention to detail and patience, and we probably saw that from an early age. But okay, so where did that lead? I wanted to be a chef, went to restaurants, hated it. I needed to find this marriage of both. So I did have a job outside of restaurants at a farmer's market in San Francisco where I was making smoked salmon sandwiches.

Ben Eidelson 00:16:01

At the Ferry Market.

Joel Gamoran 00:16:03

Yeah. Have you been there?

Ben Eidelson 00:16:05

Anna and I lived in San Francisco for nine, ten years. I mean, there are tourist attractions and the Ferry Building and all this, but the farmer's market's great.

Joel Gamoran 00:16:15

It doesn't feel touristy, does it? It feels so neighborhoody still, even though it is touristy.

Ben Eidelson 00:16:20

That's right.

Joel Gamoran 00:16:21

But it's a scene. If you've never been, it's a scene. It's like wall-to-wall traffic. The food and ingredients are probably the best in the country. You're seeing citrus that you've never heard of. You're eating a tomato that you've never had explode like that in your mouth. You're eating tamales that were rolled by someone. It's just on a different level in terms of a farmer's market.

I worked there because I just wanted to be close to the vendors as a chef. And they were like, we don't have any jobs, but there is one hippie that smokes salmon and you can make sandwiches. So I made smoked salmon sandwiches and became really close with this hippie. Her name is Sally. She became really my mentor.

I loved this job. This job was cooking. I was assembling sandwiches, but it flew by, and it was so much more fun than the restaurant. It wasn't back of the house; it was in front of the house. I was talking to people, seeing kids, seeing repeat customers, engaging. So it was a total awakening for me. People need to be half the equation and food needs to be half the equation. It was clear to me that I had to figure out a job that did that.

That's what led to a life of teaching to cook. I realized it's not about the food for me. It's about getting people excited about the food for me. Hopefully if you're listening to this pod, you're getting excited about cooking, and that's my job. That's what I evangelize. I want people to cook more because of what it did for me, because of what it did for my divorce and my family, because of what it did for me at college, and what it continues to do for me. Food is medicine. Cooking is medicine, and that is my mission in life.

Ben Eidelson 00:17:59

That's amazing. So why are you on Climate Papa?

Joel Gamoran 00:18:03

So I had to find a job that married those two things. There's a company here in Seattle that I'm sure some of your listeners have heard of called Sur La Table. They have cooking schools. They're like Williams Sonoma. They're a cook shop. You buy pots and pans, but they have schools inside them.

Ben Eidelson 00:18:21

That's a pretty innovative idea, right?

Joel Gamoran 00:18:23

It's a cool idea.

Ben Eidelson 00:18:24

It's very cool.

Joel Gamoran 00:18:25

Yeah. It's so smart. Like, Lululemon now has yoga classes. They had cooking classes. From a business perspective, it's genius. I ended up teaching part time. Then, I could not love it any more than I did. I was begging for shifts. To me, these were reps.

I couldn't believe people were paying to listen to me, to teach them how to cook. I couldn't believe people would walk in. I'd have, like, three customers, and they paid money to hear me spiel. Unreal. So I did ten years of this.

I ended up becoming their head chef after ten years, moved to New York, and I started to get really well-known people to come into my classes. I got well-known as a chef instructor. That led to some awesome opportunities, a TV show, a cookbook, and now I have another TV show.

What happened one night, and this is where it leads to Climate Papa, was I was teaching a class, and I went to culinary school. In culinary school, they teach you you cannot waste anything. That's all margin down the drain.

I'm teaching this class, and I'm looking around and the garbage bowls are filled to the brim. I thought, we teach chefs to not waste anything, but we don't teach each other, like home cooks, to not waste anything. I'm sure if you're listening to this, and you have a grandparent that went through the Great Depression, they waste nothing. Our generation missed that.

I'd love to dive into that with you, Ben, like the history of the Industrial Revolution, and fast food, movie night dinners. Trash just became normal. I went on a mission to basically wake people up and say, you're throwing away so much food. I started to dig into the analytics.

Here's some of the crazy stuff. In America today, we throw away 40% of the food that we produce. Let's just talk about that for a second. That means when you see you're driving on a road trip, and you see a cornfield, almost half of that is just going to get trashed. At the same time, one out of eight people in America go to bed hungry.

Fundamentally, we are throwing away half the food almost that we produce, and people are still going to bed hungry. What does that do to the climate? Let's just pause there for a sec. Think about how powerful that is.

Ben Eidelson 00:21:02

Yeah. I mean, it hits at multiple layers. As soon as you see that, I start seeing the inputs and outputs before and after that. To grow that food, there are exceptions, but the vast majority of our food is grown with fertilizer inputs. To create that fertilizer is an ammonia process called the Haber-Bosch process. It's a highly emissive process, and it's very important. We would probably only have half the food on the planet if we didn't have fertilizer. It's an essential process, and it's one of the most emissive things that we do because it's important. It's not to say we should turn that off. I think about food waste as, first of all, what are all the emissions and effort and materials and water that went into growing the strawberry, the corn, or the tomato.

Joel Gamoran 00:21:50

Yep. Or raising the cow, whatever.

Ben Eidelson 00:21:54

Yeah. The beef conversation.

Joel Gamoran 00:21:56

We can assemble that.

Ben Eidelson 00:21:57

Yeah. The land use. Croplands and grazing lands cover 40% of the Earth's land surface. About 40% of the land on Earth is now used to grow food in one way or another. Put that in perspective. All the cities and suburbs where people live cover less than 1%. Just from a land use perspective, it's also one of the big climate issues. If you look at agriculture, it's also the fact that that's not land where we can grow trees, because we're busy growing blueberries or corn, or most significantly, grazing animals. Those are all these inputs.

Joel Gamoran 00:22:33

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:22:33

Then when we say we throw it away.

Joel Gamoran 00:22:35

Yes.

Ben Eidelson 00:22:36

Well, where does it go, and what happens to it? Even in the US, the vast majority isn't going into organic compost.

Joel Gamoran 00:22:44

No.

Ben Eidelson 00:22:44

Which means it's getting buried underground in a landfill. That means it's turning mostly into methane emissions, which are very potent greenhouse gases.

Ben Eidelson 00:22:54

At a base level, there is all of that. There are also issues with nitrous oxide, which comes out as a byproduct of the fertilizer. There is a lot. I sit in this tension. I think the modern agricultural system is amazing and has saved many lives. One in eight is way too many, and it's much better than history used to be, where the majority of humans would have food scarcity.

It is because we figured out fertilizer and the industrial food system that we can feed everyone, but we're still radically inefficient. I'll stop my rant there.

Joel Gamoran 00:23:30

I learned so much about what you just said. That's incredible. I didn't know about the 40%, the 1%. All of that is so interesting. As a chef, I thought we were just wasting the food, but when you hear stats like that, you're like, no, there's so much that's being wasted.

Ben Eidelson 00:23:47

We chop down a tree to grow that food. We're not storing the carbon in the tree as a result.

Joel Gamoran 00:23:52

Yeah.

Ben Eidelson 00:23:52

So it's.

Joel Gamoran 00:23:53

Let's break this down for a second. Let's talk about the chain. If you guys are listening to this podcast, you'd be willing to kind of go through this. Let's take one food and follow it. Okay?

We can do this from the farm or the ocean. You come up with the food. What food should we follow through the chain?

Ben Eidelson 00:24:12

Let's do a loaf of bread.

Joel Gamoran 00:24:14

A loaf of bread. Okay, I love that because it feels simple on the surface.

Ben Eidelson 00:24:17

It sounds so simple on the surface.

Joel Gamoran 00:24:21

It totally does. Alright, so a loaf of bread, which we all love, I'm trying to avoid because I'm trying to lose some pounds. So it starts as wheat, right? A lot of things in the field, there is no place to sell it, so they just grow as much as they possibly can.

The waste starts in the field. Sometimes not in the case of the wheat, but if you're growing peppers, if they don't look right or if their color is blemished or the sun hit them at a wrong time or they fell on the ground, even though it is so edible, there are rules in this country that do not allow farmers to sell those.

Those become waste even though they're edible and great. So that is the first place food is wasted. In the case of wheat, if it looks wrong, if it didn't grow to a certain height, if it's too small or too big, it will not be ground into flour. Anything to add there in the first step?

Ben Eidelson 00:25:19

No, I think that's right.

Joel Gamoran 00:25:20

These are ridiculous. The first issue is that we have these regulations on food here in America that are too tight. In other countries, they don't have this, and they waste less. It's too crazy. Everything has to be uniform. Why does everything have to be uniform? Let's go to the next step.

If everything is not uniform, if a pepper doesn't stack correctly, then you can't pack it correctly on the truck. So it won't fit in the boxes. If it won't fit in the boxes, that's the first reason why it can't go, so it gets wasted.

It has to fit in the box, and it has to look a certain way. When we go to the grocery store, we shop with our eyes first. That's why you see huge stacks. You're like, how many avocados does this place need? It needs a lot. There's a lot of psychology around it looking bountiful, looking huge. That is a big reason that an avocado has to be a certain shape, a certain size, a certain spec, certain acidity.

When you go to other markets in other places of the world, you see small avocados, big avocados. We are doing wheat, but my point is, it looks different. Now we're at the grocery store, and everything looks the same. It looks the same because it's got to fit on the shelves.

At midnight at every grocery store, they go through and start picking. This piece of bread is past due. I'm not following the bread at all, but you get the idea.

Ben Eidelson 00:26:49

Do peppers.

Joel Gamoran 00:26:50

Yeah, we're going peppers, avocado. But they'll go to the bread and they'll say this is stale.

Ben Eidelson 00:26:54

Let's make avocado toast.

Joel Gamoran 00:26:55

Yeah, there you go.

Ben Eidelson 00:26:55

With a little pepper on top.

Joel Gamoran 00:26:57

There we go.

Ben Eidelson 00:26:58

Do the whole thing.

Joel Gamoran 00:26:59

They'll go through all this food and say, this is overripe. They'll go through the bread and say this is expired. They'll go through the milk and say this is past due, and they just start trashing. If you go in the back or have ever seen or youtubed what the back of a grocery store looks like, you would be on this mission with Ben and I right now because it's crazy. It's psychotic. Anything to add there, Ben?

Ben Eidelson 00:27:24

Keep going.

Joel Gamoran 00:27:25

So we're just going through the chain. We're wasting in the field. We're wasting to get to the grocery store. We're wasting at the grocery store.

Ben Eidelson 00:27:31

That's right.

Joel Gamoran 00:27:32

Finally, you buy some food, right? You take it home, and you probably overbuy because it's not your fault, but this is how things happen. That piece of bread goes stale, and you don't want to toast it anymore. It's half the loaf, and it's not your fault. You were traveling, you were working hard, and the bread went bad. So it goes into the compost.

Like Ben said, you think compost is great. It's no problem. No, compost stacks on top of each other, it allows no oxygen to get in, and that piece of bread is really bad for the environment. In every step of this chain, there's waste.

In most chains, there is waste. For me, as a chef, I wanted to be like, where can I have the most impact? It was the last step. How do I empower people to look at that loaf of bread and see that stale piece of bread and say that's not trash yet.

Ben Eidelson 00:28:24

I mean, you probably didn't want to hug the cold truck.

Joel Gamoran 00:28:29

Yes, that's right. I wanted to connect. As a chef, what can I do? Can we teach that person to make that bread into breadcrumbs? Can we make that bread? Now there's all these companies. I don't know if you've heard of these companies. There's one called Toast who makes beer out of stale bread, and they collect stale bread from all the restaurants and they ferment it instead of wheat.

Ben Eidelson 00:28:49

That's great.

Joel Gamoran 00:28:50

The answer is not only does not throwing away this food save the planet, it saves you money, and it is unbelievable flavor. There is so much opportunity. The coolest part about this is that it's a win-win. It's great for the planet, great for your pocketbook, and awesome for flavor, culinary-wise, if that makes sense.

Ben Eidelson 00:29:17

Yeah. I want to go back to the moment for you when you're there in these cooking classes. When you saw all that, where did you go with it?

Was it that there's this knowledge inside the restaurant industry that has never jumped? So, you're like, I already knew this because I've seen the restaurant industry and I was taught that. Let me see if I can have it jump over.

Joel Gamoran 00:29:42

Yeah. If I'm going to say some terms to you, you tell me if you know these terms. Okay. What does "mise" mean?

Ben Eidelson 00:29:49

I don't know.

Joel Gamoran 00:29:50

What does uncrute mean? I don't know exactly. These are all restaurant terms that you would know if you went to culinary school or worked in restaurants. Restaurants speak a language, just like any business sector does, that doesn't reach the home cook. So my job was, how do I take these restaurant tips and how do I translate them for home cooks so that they can understand them?

So it was about recipes and content, and that's why content became so important. This is a TV show, a phenomenal way to speak the language of the end consumer. Let's inspire them by telling a story around that. And that launched Scraps, which was my first TV show. It’s obviously, if you can't tell by the name, all about saving the scraps of food.

Ben Eidelson 00:30:34

Amazing. So how long ago was this?

Joel Gamoran 00:30:35

That was six years ago, seven years ago. It was on A&E networks. I went to Food Network. I pitched this idea to every network in the history of the world. I went to History Channel. I went, like literally, Discovery, Nat Geo. I've sat in every room. I had agents you can't imagine. And everyone's reaction was, "We are not going to produce a show that is about cooking garbage. That is a dumpster diving show. No one wants to see you cook stale bread, Joel."

Sorry. And so I became friends with Katie Couric, long story short. She came to some of my classes, we became friends, and she got on board as an executive producer because she saw the issue, the 40% and the one out of eight. She marched me in and got me on the channel. If it wasn't for Katie, there would not have been a Scraps. And I've got to give A&E Networks the credit for putting on a dumpster diving show.

It was an awesome show. I traveled in this little van called Pippi. It's a VW van and it was a piece of garbage. We found it in a dump and it represents the ingredients. It represents this idea that garbage can be something more. So we went on a road trip from city to city, collecting what we would typically see as local ingredients that would normally get thrown away. We'd go to Charleston and get shrimp shells, and we'd cook that. We'd go to Montana and get trout bones, and we would cook a big feast for people and turn them on to all this crazy stuff.

Ben Eidelson 00:32:04

So it almost had, it was like, a travel cooking food waste show.

Joel Gamoran 00:32:09

Yeah.

Ben Eidelson 00:32:10

I love it.

Joel Gamoran 00:32:11

I can't believe it worked, but it's a great show. You can watch it on Amazon now. That led to the cookbook, which is awesome. Food waste, I did not create this idea of cooking scrappy, waste-free cooking, which is so in vogue right now. Go on Instagram; there's a million cookbooks like this.

I am not the first, and Jacques Pepin, who's a very famous chef, wrote in my book, "Joel is not inventing a new way to cook. He is showing you the right way to cook." That is all this is. We've been just cooking a little bit off; we've been wasteful. So this is just the right way to cook. You've got to be thoughtful about your ingredients and not be so quick to throw them out.

Ben Eidelson 00:32:54

I think we're just in a weird moment in history that is unprecedented, so it's not intuitive. So much about the food system, I think, plays with the fact that our brains are not wired to have infinite choice, piles of avocados in front of us. On one hand, food can sometimes seem expensive, but I believe Americans spend a lower percentage of their income on food than ever before.

Joel Gamoran 00:33:19

Is that right? Okay, interesting.

Ben Eidelson 00:33:21

The industrial food system is efficient and it keeps getting more efficient, and so that is material abundance. On one hand, that's amazing and a way of progress. On the other hand, I think we haven't yet figured out how to live with that. We haven't yet figured out that just because you can doesn't mean you should be so wasteful.

It also doesn't mean that everyone has material abundance, it's still not distributed. And it doesn't mean there's not a lot to learn from both the past, whether that's our grandparents and great grandparents and what they cooked and how they cooked, or what happens in restaurants that are really thinking about this from a larger volume perspective, so they probably just feel and think differently about it.

Joel Gamoran 00:34:10

Yeah.

Ben Eidelson 00:34:10

So all of this, it's psychology. We're going to look back at this period of time. It kind of reminds me of cars without seatbelts. There was a long stretch there where cars were going 60 miles an hour on the freeway and kids were sitting in the back with no seatbelts.

You look at the rates of death and they were wild, which makes sense because you'd hit a car and kids and adults would fly through the windshield and die. Now you're like, "Yeah, your kid better be in a car seat or a seatbelt or a booster seat." That's just what it must be because we've realized it's not that natural for the human body to go 60 miles an hour and then stop. It's also not that natural for us to have towers of peppers and every food from around the world imported into Seattle at a scale that no one human could ever eat. We haven't really worked through it as a society.

Joel Gamoran 00:35:03

I think you're so right, Ben. Social media is like that too. I'm not going to go on a rant on that, but these things are trying to be regulated, but they're not regulated. I'm so interested. You're right, in 50 years, are people going to be like, "Do you know what grocery stores used to be like? That was insane."

Think about 50 years ago. I talked to my grandma. I did a report on what grocery stores used to be like when I was in college; that's how nerdy I am. I called her and asked, "Where did you go grocery shopping?" She said, "The market." I asked, "What would you get at the market?" She said, "Oh, like, pantry stuff. We didn't have fresh meats." I said, "Then where did you get chicken?" She said, "The chicken guy. Where'd you get milk?" The milkman. Okay, it was just different, and it wasn't always in their face.

In 50 years it's going to be 100% different. It feels like grocery stores can sometimes be like a casino. I have this amazing partnership with Safeway, who is committed to food waste, which is rare and cool, but I was shooting a video in a Safeway, and I wasn't there to shop. I don't know the last time you went to a grocery store and you weren't there to shop. I said to the video cameraman, "I feel like I just need to buy groceries. It's the casino." I felt like I needed to bet.

Ben Eidelson 00:36:21

Yeah.

Joel Gamoran 00:36:22

It's built for us to feel this way. Of course, these stacks and these labels and the lights and the way it's set up, it is built for us and it's confusing.

I think this leads into kind of where we want to also talk about, which is I am. You said it's confusing and it's hard to kind of navigate. I would say that I have tried to navigate the best I can, but from a health standpoint, I've done a really poor job. So I'm overweight, I was prediabetic.

I've lost 50 pounds over the past couple of years, but my relationship with food has been really hard. I lost my sister to food and drugs, which were kind of coincide, and you can think of food as a drug. But to your point of, like there's no seatbelts, that's kind of, you know, we've never been more obese as a culture. Diabetes, one out of three people are either prediabetic or have full-blown diabetes.

We have more medicine, more research than ever before, more technology, yet we are sicker than ever before. We have more processed foods than ever before. We are eating more processed foods than ever before. So we are in this kind of crazy wild west time. It doesn't feel like that to us because it's normal, but it's very hard to navigate. It's very hard.

By the way, as a chef, as someone who does culinary education, I want to just go out and say, it's hard to navigate for me personally. I'm having a hard time navigating it.

Ben Eidelson 00:37:49

What is our way through this?

Joel Gamoran 00:37:51

What do you think? I'm curious. You're very good at solves and thinking of building in products and businesses around it. But what are your initial thoughts?

Ben Eidelson 00:38:00

There's a real tension in my mind because I think that the food system, like everything else, exists in these different categories across society. There are people who can afford a home chef to come and produce the meal plan and dial all this in. And those same people might be turning to medicine to dial all of this in and create this perfect thing.

That might be personally interesting, but it's not that interesting to me when I think about the system and I think about society at large. And when I think of society at large, it feels like it's these bigger cultural currents. I think that food is tricky because sometimes it is that ideal family meal at the table.

Sometimes it is I have five minutes on a lunch break and just eat something, and McDonald's happens to be there. That's a real thing, and it's cost-effective. I used to think, before I started doing more in climate and studying food scarcity, "Oh, well, we should just all eat the local, regenerative, organic thing from the farmer's market." Then I started to think about the price of that and the convenience of that.

That's a limited way to look at the scale that this whole system needs to operate at, and the fact that everyone needs bread. Not just the $12 loaf of sourdough that's at the farmer's market. So we need to take that as a real thing. I've just become more interested in more large scale systemic changes.

I look at things like expiration dates. That's an area where you could actually have massive climate impact, economic impact, and food scarcity impact if you had a different, more intentional framework around expiration dates. That's the type of thing that you play with. You could move the needle a lot if this had more nuance to it.

Joel Gamoran 00:39:57

We're an interesting time for that.

Ben Eidelson 00:39:58

Tell me about it.

Joel Gamoran 00:39:59

I want this episode to be evergreen, but we're sitting here with a new administration coming in. I don't want to get into politics, but it wasn't an administration that I was particularly supportive of.

RFK has gone on a rant around the FDA and about food as medicine and about how corrupt these things are. I don't know how much is true. But we are about to go into a time where things are going to get shook up. When you talk about expiration dates, when you talk about what's passable from an FDA standpoint. Do you know that potato chips and french fries count as a vegetable serving for our kids' school lunches?

Ben Eidelson 00:40:43

It's absolutely ridiculous.

Joel Gamoran 00:40:44

That's ridiculous. So it's gotten out of hand. And you're right, I wonder if some of these levers need to be pulled. I'm not saying I'm spouting for RFK here, but I do think some things need to be shook up a little bit.

Ben Eidelson 00:41:01

The system has not been working over the last few decades, and it's not generally evolving. Michelle Obama did do a big focus on this at some point.

Joel Gamoran 00:41:13

I think the core of what she was trying to get to, and what I took away from it, was we as a society need to be eating more whole foods, real food. I'm going to full stop there.

If you're listening to this podcast, if there's any actionable thing, if you eat more whole foods, your life will improve and also the planet will improve. It's the ultra-processed. Anything that comes in a bag or has a nutrition label, those are becoming more and more. As they become more and more in our lives, they're fast, they're convenient, they're salty, they're lab tested, they're everything ultra-processed foods are. It's a drug, and it's an unregulated drug.

This is what Michelle was saying. She wanted to get away with ultra-processed foods and get back to a place. That's not realistic, but that is where I'm getting extremely interested. It's that space of it's not getting back to our roots, I hate saying that, but we need to cook more, we need to eat more vegetables, we need to eat more whole grains. We need to eat food in the way that it was supposed to be eaten. That will have a trickle-down effect not only for our health, but for the climate. They go together.

What are your thoughts on that?

Ben Eidelson 00:42:38

I think that lands. It makes sense.

Joel Gamoran 00:42:41

I'm not saying it's the solvent.

Ben Eidelson 00:42:42

These things are also not, you know, one thing that's interesting about food is, unlike heat pumps and electric vehicles, which are one-time infrastructure decisions in your life. If you convince a house to go from a gas furnace to a heat pump, you've done it. It's locked in.

Food is the ultimate challenge because it's the opposite of that. You're making those choices at the grocery store every single time you go weekly. Then you're making choices daily, multiple times a day, what to put into your mouth and put in your kids' lunches.

That makes it a behavioral thing, a cultural thing, and a societal thing. I may have referenced this in a past podcast episode around these types of changes, but you look at the data around which cities have the highest rates of plant-based diets. You would think Seattle must be up there, but it's actually not that high up there. It's pretty middle of the pack. Turns out the primary relationship between a plant-based diet and a city is what percentage of the population is Hindi.

Ben Eidelson 00:43:56

So if you want to track through large scale kind of cultural changes, it's, you know, religious or cultural restriction and constraints on food. That actually is very sticky.

You know, we come from Jewish tradition. I don't know what your food policy is. I don't keep kosher, but people that do will spend their whole life kosher. They'll spend their whole life never eating certain foods because they've been told that's their tradition, and that is kind of cultural infrastructure. Right. So, you know, not saying that we start a religion, Joel, but I'm not not saying.

Joel Gamoran 00:44:32

I'm putting what you're putting down. There's a cult that's being cooked up right now. I'm so blown away by what you just said, and I think it's so true. I've never looked at it through that lens of, you know, we've got 21 decisions. Right. Three meals a day, seven days a week that, to your point, are sometimes you have all the time in the world, sometimes you have no time in the world. And you're so right. It's like it has to be ingrained in you for those decisions to be automatic.

Beyond religion, beyond culture, there is one more thing that I believe could change someone's check it off, which is, this is going to get dark, which is death. And like, you go to the doctor and the doctor says, you are going to have a heart attack if you don't change the way you eat. Guess what? They change the way they eat. Okay?

So if you want to change behavior, tell them that they're not going to be here anymore. And I get it. You're right from a cultural standpoint, but you will change behavior if you have to change behavior. And the problem is doctors aren't nutritionists. They get no nutrition training. They don't know. They literally get less than eight hours out of eight years. They don't know anything about cooking.

So all they know is this is a pill that will help you. So we don't have a source of inspiration for people who have diabetes, who have cancer, who have all these. By the way, 60% of cancers are avoidable with lifestyle changes, exercise, and healthy eating. How many trillions of dollars have we put into cancer treatments? How many zeros of dollars have we put into teaching people with cancer how to cook? I am on a mission with what I'm calling culinary medicine. It is medicine, but delivered not through a pill, through food that I believe is untapped in this country and will actually move the dial from an environmental standpoint, and it will extend people's lives and better people's lives. We are totally overlooking it, and we are putting so much thought into the pill, the injection, the easy, quick fix, and almost zero thought. I went to the gastrodoctor. He had no idea I was a chef. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, you got to change. You got to eat more fiber. And I played dumb. What has fiber? He's like, oh, things like beans, cruciferous vegetables. I'm like, okay, cool. He's like, my receptionist will give you, like, the layout.

Ben Eidelson 00:47:04

The printout.

Joel Gamoran 00:47:04

The printout. Gave me a printout. It looked like it was from the library I grew up in in 1994. I mean, it was like black and white. You could barely make out the picture, the grossest recipe. This is supposed to be.

Ben Eidelson 00:47:13

It was not a cookbook. It was not a recipe.

Joel Gamoran 00:47:16

It's supposed to be what changes my behavior? I don't, there's zero inspiration, zero reason for anyone to change their behavior. And so, I think with all this in this system, we need, I don't know, man, we got to invest more in this. I think it's possible. I don't think you have to be Hindi. I think that you have to be there. I definitely think there has to be a driver. But just that's like anything, don't you think? Or no, maybe I'm wrong.

Ben Eidelson 00:47:43

No, I know. I do think so. I think that one of the consistent challenges with food and exercise is the narrative is always the personal. It reminds me a lot of the general carbon footprint thing. I don't know if you know this historically, but the concept of a personal carbon footprint was created by an oil company.

Joel Gamoran 00:48:00

No way.

Ben Eidelson 00:48:00

Right. Because, hey, it's not the fact that we're pumping the oil out of the ground. It's the fact that you're not tracking your carbon footprint.

Joel Gamoran 00:48:06

It's on you.

Ben Eidelson 00:48:07

It's on you. Like you could fly less. You don't have to drive a car. Meanwhile, that's the society we live in.

So, I think that the medical, I think about a person making a series of decisions, and it's like, you know, if you have a gambling addiction and you live down the street from the casino, it's going to be very hard. If you go through the casino to get to work, it's going to be very hard to make it to work.

And food is so challenging. I don't know if you know this, but Anna, my wife, her core training as a therapist was in eating disorders.

Joel Gamoran 00:48:41

I did not know that.

Ben Eidelson 00:48:42

She worked in an outpatient residential eating disorder facility. So this was teenagers who were discharged directly from the hospital because they were near death and at that state of either binging or extreme anorexia or bulimia. I think it is one of the most challenging areas of addiction because there's no avoiding it.

Like you're restricting what you eat, or you're sneaking and eating too much or whatever it is. Like it is nefarious and there's no hiding from it. I think it's one of the most impactful of diagnosable mental health disorders for teenagers. I think it's the leading cause of death.

Joel Gamoran 00:49:23

It's the most disorders are.

Ben Eidelson 00:49:24

Yeah, it has scary rates of impact.

So, what I'm getting to is the medical profession and the institution around that is a powerful example of a system we have in society to give people direct guidance. There's a lot of economic flow through the health insurance system, through pharmaceuticals, to try and do what the system is trying to do. I think religious institutions are another example of institutions. I think school lunches, where kids are going to spend their days and learn everything from how to play on the playground to healthy eating.

Looking at it through the institutional lens and then echoing that back in the personal is how you get long term decadal change that we need. This is one of those things that we put it on the person and not the community so much. We put it on the person and not the grocery store. So how do you get the Safeways to work with the medical institutions, to work with the school, and think about it as a holistic conversation around, and maybe a new identity label per the Hindi point, to say, hey, you know what, I am a blah. What does that mean? I don't need ultra process stuff anymore. And you're going to help me, because when I go to the doctor's office, they have me check a box that says I'm a blah or I'm.

Joel Gamoran 00:50:40

Going to save money because I'm a blah.

Ben Eidelson 00:50:41

I'm going to save money because I'm a blah. Whatever it is. I'm fascinated by this interplay between all these things.

Joel Gamoran 00:50:46

It's really fascinating. Well, one of the things that you said that resonated with me is the carbon footprint piece made by the oil companies, which blows my mind. They obviously reframed it. It's a marketing gimmick so they don't take the onus. Let me tell you what happened. I went to the doctor 50 pounds ago, and he told me that I was morbidly obese. I had at that time a three year old and a one year old, and you have kids, and that's scary. That's like being like you're not going to see your kids graduate, right? So there's my wake up call. There's a moment, and I started to cry to him, and I'm like, I'm a chef. And you just mentioned, gosh, like we have to do this all the time, and if you live across the street from a grocery store, that's like being a gambling. So I told him, Doc, I'm a.

Ben Eidelson 00:51:30

Chef. I work in the casino.

Joel Gamoran 00:51:31

I work in the casino, and I'm a gambler. It's like being an alcoholic and being a bartender.

I have to do this to your point; I have to eat. I was sitting there crying and kind of yelling at him, and he was just being silent. Then he turned around and said, "Joel, you are the solve."

He's like, "You have the knowledge and the tools to make a Brussels sprout, a broccoli, a piece of fish. These things can be satiating, accessible, and possible. You have the opposite. You have the least amount of excuses out of everyone. You know how to do this."

That moment is when I thought, "I'm going to dedicate my life to not just doing it for myself. I have to learn it for myself first, but then help other people."

I want to say, the first thing to learning about this is admitting that I have this problem too. We all have this problem. It's no one's fault. You shouldn't feel sad about it. It's the way our society is. But I think there needs to be personal ownership. I just don't believe America works in a place where the institution talks to the grocery store, which talks to the school. We have to take this one on. My doctor had to say, "Joel, it's no one else, it's you."

Ben Eidelson 00:52:44

Yeah.

Joel Gamoran 00:52:45

And it's like, you have to dig in. The reality is, if you want your kids to eat healthy, if you don't want to be addicted, if you don't want to be a statistic, this is on you. We can create the tools, we can create the space, and it will be ready for you, but something has to drive you to go.

That's my personal story. I had a wake-up call, and I hope that people don't have scary wake-up calls like that. I think that without a life-threatening wake-up call, people are starting to get into it. You're seeing these nutritionists on Instagram. I'm seeing whole food talks. Processed foods are the new cigarettes, and I love it, and I'm all about it. I am on a mission to just eradicate it.

Ben Eidelson 00:53:27

That's humming. So I think we'd be remiss in 2024 to talk about all of that, the medical establishment, and not talk about Ozempic.

Joel Gamoran 00:53:37

Let's talk about it.

Ben Eidelson 00:53:38

I think there's a belief that this is going to be a big part of the story.

It's going to change markets because people's behaviors are going to shift here. We're not creatures made for this modern grocery store casino. If we give you this, you're not going to want to spend the time in the casino, so where are you at in thinking through how to weave that in?

Joel Gamoran 00:54:02

First of all, I was on Ozempic, Manjaro, and Zepbound. I did them all. That was part of the first step of my doctor giving me this advice.

The first thing it does to you personally is it shuts down your want to eat, which to me shuts down my passion for life.

Ben Eidelson 00:54:28

It takes off your glue. Your glue is not sticky anymore.

Joel Gamoran 00:54:31

Yeah, it is very interesting. It's like relearning myself. I'm off of it because I had really bad side effects. It was bad for me.

I realized you can't just take a shot and eat chips. You have to take a shot, and you still have to eat well. Otherwise, it doesn't work. I like this drug. This is going to be controversial, but I think drugs are important. I don't think we'd live as long as we did without penicillin.

Ben Eidelson 00:55:04

Our babies are born in hospitals. The first thing that happens is to stop them from dying, because they used to really die very often. In some places, they don't get vitamin K immediately, and things happen. So we're very lucky that we have figured some of these things out.

Joel Gamoran 00:55:22

Yes, 100%. I am not anti-vax or anti-drug. I am for it. I think it's important.

It needs to be paired with nutrition and education. That is my stance on it. I think that if you want to look at what's going to happen economically, business-wise, the world is going to be a lot trimmer, a lot healthier. It's going to change the types of cravings, because I know it does. You're going to see that you can't eat super oily foods; it makes you nauseous. When you're off these drugs, you'll see less of that. You're going to see smaller portion sizes, and many different things as a trickle-down effect.

The biggest thing from a business side is that there needs to be a solve for people to get off of it. There is no solve right now. It's a deep prescription solve. That's the space I'm getting into. You could be on it forever, but right now, it's super expensive. I don't think people want to be on it long term. Eventually, people will reach a goal weight and want to sustain it without a shot every week. I want to get off medicine if I could. But if it gets me to a certain level, I'm all for it. What is your take?

Ben Eidelson 00:56:41

I agree with 100% of everything you said. I think there's an interesting dance around people's level of openness about their experiences with it.

Joel Gamoran 00:56:53

It's a stigma thing.

Ben Eidelson 00:56:55

It feels very early days on that. Big picture, I'm a pro-progress person. If it helps people live longer and live a more fulfilling life, I want that for them. What is with the stigma of it?

Joel Gamoran 00:57:15

What do you think that is?

Ben Eidelson 00:57:16

I think it's connected to the personal willpower bootstrap American story, which is you're supposed to be thin, beautiful, healthy, and wealthy because you earned it yourself. That's the societal American lie. So when there's a shortcut, people think, "Well, they didn't work for that. That's kind of unfair." There are also real access issues. In your scenario, you were in a medical category where things might be very different.

Joel Gamoran 00:57:52

I paid out of pocket, and I was lucky enough to be able to afford that.

Ben Eidelson 00:57:56

That's right.

So I think that's a real issue around it. It's a very limited access thing right now. Maybe it'll change when it's more accessible.

Joel Gamoran 00:58:08

It's definitely going to become more accessible and important. I agree with everything you just said.

I think it's a miracle drug. If there's a drug that can keep alcoholics from being alcoholics or people who want to commit suicide from committing suicide, we wouldn't look at it as a shortcoming. We'd look at it as a medical advancement. I hope that people look at it not as a crutch, but thank God we have this. It's going to extend lives. You're going to have that much more time with your loved ones. I think there's so much about the human brain we don't understand that this solves for. It was not a physical thing in my stomach; it was a mental thing.

Joel Gamoran 00:58:51

I mean, this your life, the shutdown of that.

Ben Eidelson 00:58:53

We'll talk through how your life wove through with food, and does this connect or not with your sister and her relationship to food?

Joel Gamoran 00:59:00

Yeah, it was so. My sister died from a drug overdose. She died just a couple of years ago. She’s my best friend. I love her.

She was morbidly obese in middle school. She was probably 300 pounds in sixth or seventh grade. She was the fat girl. She had all the cute friends that I had crushes on. She was the total center of attention because she had to be. When you're that big, you have to be the goofy one, you have to be the whatever. Everyone loved her and still does love her. She's the type of person when she left the room, you felt it. One of those people. She got a gastric sleeve in high school. For those of you who don't know, it basically means they turn a sleeve into your stomach and it's a much smaller stomach so you can't overeat.

Almost two months later, you lose 80 pounds. You go from being the fat person to being the really, really skinny person. She was super skinny. It was interesting to see the mental shift. How do you go from the person that didn't have any attention to one that's now getting attention? You never got asked to the dance, but now you are. You never got to shop in the normal shops, but now you get to. It's really confusing and hard. I think there's a similarity here with what we're seeing with this drug and this time. It's so mental, and it's so hard to navigate by yourself. We need help. I don't know the answer. I'm trying to figure out the answer, but she's a big reason why I think I'm called to this.

Being obese is a mind fuck. It's confusing and hard. One of the things that used to be stigmatized is mental health. I've got a therapist. By the way, if I said that 10 years ago, I think people would have been like, “He must be depressed.” Everyone I know in the world has a therapist now. In Brazil and in Portugal, they all have nutritionists. It's very normal in that culture to have a nutritionist. I don't know why it's not normal here.

I see a nutritionist now. I talked to him this morning. His name is Matt, and he helps me with my relationship to food. I need that help. I need to solve it. I think, just like we need help sometimes in our relationships to ourselves and to our careers, to our loved ones, I don't think the world's going to get any easier in terms of food, but I do think that we can get more inspired, more educated, more excited. I think you'll see more businesses in this space. You'll see more innovation in this space, and I couldn't be more excited.

I think we're on the precipice and the crest of a really big wave. For the first time in modern history—I don't want to you would know this more than I would, Ben—but our life expectancy is lowering. We're going the opposite direction until this year. It's starting to turn a little bit, and that to me is the crest. Something's changing.

This is a climate podcast, so I want to bring it back to climate here. How can we take care of the Earth if we don't take care of ourselves? Anything you talk about, anyone you talk about on this podcast, if they're not healthy, any solution out there, if they're not run by healthy people, if someone is not healthy, they're not going to be able to think of a solve of how to help get our climate in a better place. If we are not healthy, we can't be good dads, we can't be good partners, we can't be good businessmen. We can't do anything if you're in a hospital.

The best thing we can do for the Earth is to take care of ourselves, period. As a country, the biggest killer is heart disease, cancer, diabetes. I can list the top ten killers. Six of them are avoidable by changing the way we eat. If there's anything that I could say is good for the planet, it's the thing that we do 21 times a week, which is what are we putting on our bodies?

Ben Eidelson 01:03:12

Okay, I'm hyped up. I agree. Hyped up.

Joel Gamoran 01:03:15

Let’s get you an apple.

Ben Eidelson 01:03:16

I'm pumped up. I just want more Joel at this point.

Joel Gamoran 01:03:18

You want more Joel?

Ben Eidelson 01:03:19

I want more Joel. This is not enough.

Joel Gamoran 01:03:22

Go to homemadecooking.com and sign up for a free class and come cook with me in the kitchen. Number one, no matter where you are in the world, it's all online. Two, follow me on Instagram @joelgamron. That's it. There's no dot com there.

The last thing I would say is don't get hooked in with me. Get hooked in with your body. Michael Pollan said to eat more whole foods, lots of vegetables, and not too much. If we can do those things, you'll be in a good spot.

Ben Eidelson 01:03:52

Yeah. All right. Thank you, Joel. Thank you for being here. This is lovely.

Well, that's a wrap on episode 22 of Climate Papa. I'm releasing this in the holiday season, and I hope all of you are getting some quality time with your loved ones as we close out 2024 and look ahead to 2025. We did our first big travel as a family of five and made it back home in one piece. The kids actually all traveled great, so I'm feeling extra thankful for that. If you enjoyed this episode and want more, please subscribe or follow in the podcast player of your choice or directly via climatepapa.com, and we'll send you an email when the next episode comes out.

On that note, I've been working on a deep dive on some climate infrastructure topics, and the first episode in that series is queued up next. I cannot wait to share it with you. And with that, Happy New Year, and here's the Balkan Bump remix of Mellow Kind of Hype by Lazy Syrup Orchestra as usual to take us out.

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

I sit down with Kathy Hannun--the founder of Dandelion Energy, a geothermal heat pump comany that she spun out of Google X. What is a geothermal heat pump? Well, if you go outside and drill a hole a few hundred feet below ground you would get to a stable temperature--somewhere in the 50-60 degrees range. This earth is a fantastic place to transfer heat to and from. You can then cycle a fluid (like water) down there and use the transfer of heat to very efficiently heat or cool a home via a heat pump (explained in detail back in episode 10 for air source heat pumps). In fact, a geothermal heat pump should be the most efficient way to heat and cool any building.

We unpack all of that, and also discuss how Kathy made major career decisions—optimizing for each step along the way. Of course, we chat about kids, Halloween costumes, and more.

After the election, I was reflecting on Kathy's timeline--she spun this business out of Google X in 2017. She raised a Seed round then--proving out the product and model until growing significantly over the last 3 years. It's interesting to realize that the product, team, and company were really formed in the early days of a very pro-fossil fuel administration. I suspect Kathy's story will have many analogs today. Many of the most impactful and successful companies will be formed in 2025 by founders just as relentless and thoughtful as her.

Referenced:

• Ebb Carbon

• Episode #10: The magic devices that cool (and heat) our homes and how to perfect them with Bill Kee

Get connected:

• Kathy - LinkedIn | Dandelion

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

To get in touch, email ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

A bit over a year ago Ben met Anay Shah. Something clicked and Anay and Ben spent hours, then days, then months bringing forth Stepchange. Anay has not only become a fund co-founder and close friend—he’s also shared in the joy of parallel newborn parenting—both he and Ben had new babies less than a month apart over the summer.

Together, they explore Anay’s journey from his early days at the State Department to leadership roles at global fintech startups (Remitly and Tala), focusing on financial inclusion in emerging markets, and how that path led him ultimately to climate tech and venture investing. Anay accidentally coined the idea of “techno-obligation,” the belief that we have a responsibility to use technology for solving urgent global challenges, particularly climate change.

The conversation dives into how loss, the birth of their children, and an awareness of the finite nature of time have shaped their perspectives on life and work, and how those experiences influenced the founding of Stepchange.

Referenced in the episode:

• On Children, Meaning, Media and Psychedelics - Ezra Klein and Jia Tolentino

• Image of Earth’s atmosphere

  

• Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War by Tom Steyer

• Speed and Scale

• #16 - Introducing Stepchange, our new venture fund

Get connected:

• Anay - LinkedIn | anay@stepchange.vc

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

To get in touch, email ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Sheeba Marie - Persephone

Intro Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

How do we get the money from climate legislation into the hands of someone buying a heat pump or solar? Between passing legislation, like the Inflation Reducaiton Act (IRA), and a homeowner getting new devices to run their homes there is a major coordination, paperwork, and financing problem to orchestrate. In this episode, Ben interviews Jeff Coleman, founder and CEO of Eli Technologies, and fellow climate dad. Jeff’s career has a theme of building digital infrastructure to drive systemic change. He worked on the 2008 Obama campaign, numerous non-profits, and built the digital tools behind Access Clean California. This all led to founding Eli—a startup on a mission to make home decarbonization more equitable and affordable at scale.

Side note—Eli is exactly the type of company that Stepchange is focused on--finding places where software-based products can accelerate the deployment speed of climate solutions. We're lucky to be investors in Eli and as always, nothing in this conversation is investment advice.

Referenced:

• Node Collective

• Eli Technologies

• Hot Buttered Rum (Jeff’s Bluegrass band)

Get connected:

• Jeff - LinkedIn | Eli

• Ben - LinkedIn | ⁠Climate Papa⁠

To get in touch, email ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Today’s outro music: Hot Buttered Rum - No Reason Why

Show theme music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

02:20 Jeff's Musical Background and Family Life

06:03 Jeff's Journey: From Musician to Climate Advocate

10:11 The Obama Campaign Experience

17:24 Transition to Climate Solutions

21:12 Challenges in Solar Installation

22:52 Building Access Clean California

26:51 Government's Role in Program Funding

27:48 Program Administration and Challenges

30:03 Equity and Incentive Structures

32:21 Decentralization and Local Needs

34:29 Eli's Mission and Approach

41:20 Building a Multi-Sided Platform

44:19 The Role of Software in Climate Solutions

50:15 Balancing Startup Life and Family

56:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In other fun news—

Two weeks ago we had the inaugural Bloomberg Green Festival come to Seattle. I had the privilege of a participating on a panel about careers in climate where we hit on everything from the labor market to the economics of working in climate tech. It was fun to reunite with Jessyn Farrell from a prior Climate Papa episode.

If you’re interested you can watch the panel here:

I was also really moved by the first TED talk on Thursday evening by Johan Rockström if you want a snapshot of where we are in the overall journey of climate impacts on the planet.

While I’m still deep in new baby mode (7 weeks in with #3!), I’m helping host two events next week along with Arthur and we’d love to see you there!

Friday 9:30-12PM: Climate Software Builders Coffee with Stepchange

For existing and aspiring climatetech founders, engineers, designers, and product people looking to leverage software, fintech, and AI for climate impact.

​Come grab a coffee, meet co-conspirators, and schmooze. ​Stepchange will pick up the caffeination and pastry tab. Exact location TBD based on size, but I promise good coffee. RSVP here for details.

RSVP for Coffee

Saturday 9:30-12pm: Climate Papa Meetup + Playdate!

​​Looking to talk heat pumps and parenthood? Decarbonization and summer camps? Solar and baby slings? Home electrification and nap schedules? Batteries and bottles? Come to the Climate Papa meetup hosted at the Bloomberg Green Festival Race Village at Myrtle Edwards Park. There will be games, pop-up street food vendors, an ice cream cart, cookie station and face painting.

For those interested, you can sign up for the family fun run benefiting the Seattle Parks Foundation. The Bloomberg Extra Mile will donate $30,000 for local programming, advancing its mission to partner with community to champion thriving and equitable parks and public spaces.

​​​Come and meet other climate motivated parents, friends, and their kiddos. Non-parents are welcome as well!

RSVP here to let me know you’re coming and get updates. Last meet up was a blast!

RSVP for Playdate

If you’re going to Bloomberg Green Festival, shoot me a note so we can try and meet up! I’ll be on a careers in climate panel Thursday evening and otherwise attending a number of sessions, events, and maybe even an afterparty.

Climate related reading and listening recommendations:

• The history of coal is ten times more fascinating than I would have ever imagined. Coal: A Human History does a riveting job of telling the story of coal and the immense roll it played in human history. Coal sits at the center of the British Empire, American power, the rise of labor unions, the Industrial Revolution, and so many deep environmental harms. Coal has powered China’s rise and caused millions of deaths due to air pollution. While coal feels very much on the decline in climate tech conversations, the world burned more last year than any time before in history (chart). It deserves continued attention and understanding.

• I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook of Tom Steyer’s new Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War. His framing and language resonated deeply with how I think about my own path. He has some of the crispest articulations I’ve heard about the joy of choosing to become a “climate person.” I was also impressed with how directly Tom goes after big oil and gas throughout. Thank you Sam for the recommendation!

• I loved this Volts episode with Jay Inslee. We’re so fortunate to have such a climate focused governor leading WA state. I can’t wait to see what Inslee does to focus on climate after his governorship wraps.

• I just started reading Hannah Richie’s Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. I love her writing (she’s behind Sustainability by the numbers) and all of her talks so I’m excited to dive into this one. Book club it with me?!

Listen here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching for ‘Climate Papa.’

This episode is a bit more papa and a bit less climate. Ben shares some family news and processes it with his 6-year-old and 3-year-old. They hit on some climate topics, the purpose of ants, and what was in the universe before earth. Kids are the best.

Happy Father’s Day to all the fellow climate papas out there.

Referenced in the episode:

• Last year’s Father’s Day special

• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

To get in touch, email ⁠ben@climatepapa.com⁠

Music: Slynk & Lazy Syrup Orchestra - Mellow Kinda Hype (Balkan Bump Remix)

Special thanks to Anna and Julia for edit notes.

In other fun news, I made Bloomberg Green’s “13 Most Influential Climate Leaders to Watch in 2024”

Hope to see many of you at the Bloomberg Green Festival in July in Seattle. Shoot me a note (ben@climatepapa.com) if you’re planning to make it. We may have some special Climate Papa meetups in the works!

-Ben