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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re diving into one of the biggest bottlenecks in the clean energy transition: critical minerals—the lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, and precious metals we need for EVs, batteries, and the grid. The problem isn’t that we’re running out. It’s that extraction and refining are expensive, polluting, and increasingly constrained by geopolitics.
My guest is Adam Uliana, co-founder and CEO of Chemfinity Technologies, a startup spun out of UC Berkeley that’s building a modular “metal-selective Brita filter” for refining. Chemfinity’s system takes messy inputs—like e-waste, catalytic converters, industrial wastewater, and even mine tailings—and separates out high-purity metals one at a time using tunable “nano-sponge” materials. In other words: a potential way to recover critical minerals with dramatically fewer steps, less energy, and a much smaller footprint.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking about one of the biggest blockers to real climate action: amazing solutions that never scale because no one pays for them. My guest is Grant Canary, founder and CEO of Mast Reforestation, a company rebuilding forests after catastrophic wildfires — and reinventing carbon credits so that reforestation can actually fund itself.
Mast takes the most expensive part of post-fire recovery — dealing with hundreds of dead, unstable, methane-emitting trees — and turns it into a high-integrity carbon removal credit. The fire-killed biomass gets buried in engineered clay “vaults” that lock away carbon for centuries, and the revenue pays for restoring forests with native seed, nursery-grown seedlings, and good old human labor. It’s the super-sexy carbon accounting we desperately need.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re starting in full aspirational mode (with one of my least climate-friendly obsessions) — with iconic classic cars rebuilt as state-of-the-art EVs. Think: vintage Porsches, Land Rovers, Pagodas, even a GT40… all stripped to bare metal, fully restored, and reborn as clean-air electric machines. Yeah, I’m dying over here.
My guest is Justin Lunny, founder and CEO of Everrati, a company that electrifies beloved classic cars while also building a cutting-edge EV powertrain platform used by new low-volume automakers around the world.
It’s a story about craft and circularity — giving existing cars a new, zero-emission life — and about how aspiration drives climate adoption. Wealthy early adopters (and their garages) help prove what’s possible, push down cost curves, and build social permission for the EV future.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking about one of the least-visible but largest waste problems in the world: food processing waste. Every time fruits or vegetables are peeled, chopped, juiced, or processed, mountains of perfectly good plant material get thrown out or sold for pennies. It’s expensive, it’s inefficient, and it’s a huge climate problem.
My guest is Michelle Ruiz, founder and CEO of Hyfe, a company unlocking the massive value hidden in this “waste.” Hyfe has developed a clean, water-based technology that can deconstruct food waste into high-value ingredients—like natural antioxidants that can replace carcinogenic petrochemical additives, fibers for gut health, and eventually the bio-based molecules that could power the broader bioeconomy.
Instead of paying to get rid of waste, food processors can turn it into a whole new revenue stream — while reducing emissions and building real circularity into the food system.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, more power, right beneath our feet. Even as the United States has been attempting to stop or divest from renewable energy sources, there’s one kind of baseload power that doesn’t make anyone mad: geothermal.
So this week we’re talking not just geothermal, but next-generation geothermal.
My guest is Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems, a company developing flexible, modular geothermal systems that can provide both baseload renewable power and incredible long-duration energy storage—all using the existing skill sets and drilling expertise of the oil and gas industry.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re examining the seemingly humble—but absolutely critical—piece of hardware that could accelerate electrification, unlock virtual power plants, and save homeowners thousands of dollars: the electrical panel.
My guest is Arch Rao, founder and CEO of Span, a company building smart electrical panels that replace your old breaker box with real-time power management, whole-home circuit-level visibility, and the ability to electrify without a costly service upgrade.
If you’ve ever been told you need a new 200-amp panel before installing a heat pump, EV charger, induction stove, or home battery… Span thinks you don’t. And utilities are starting to agree.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re rethinking how clothes, shoes—and even car interiors—get made without plastic. My guest is Maria Intscher-Owrang, CEO and co-founder of Simplifyber. Her innovation takes plant fibers + water, then forms finished 3D shapes in a single step—skipping spinning, weaving, cutting, and sewing.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking about one of the biggest hurdles in the clean energy transition — how to make electric vehicles as fast and easy to refuel as gas cars.
Our guest is Will Fitzhugh, co-founder and CEO of Adden Energy, a Harvard spinout developing self-healing solid-state lithium metal batteries that could charge fully in under ten minutes. These next-generation batteries promise longer range, faster charging, and safer performance — all using existing manufacturing lines. It’s a fascinating look at the next leap in energy storage — and what it’ll take to make 10-minute charging a reality.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking water — and the invisible pollutants hiding in it. Microfibers from textiles are one of the biggest sources of microplastics in our oceans, choking marine ecosystems and undermining the ocean’s role as the planet’s carbon sink.
Our guest is Adam Root, founder and CEO of Matter, who shares his insane founder story, from £250 and a shed to a budding Japanese street food empire to Matter, which is helping major textile manufacturers keep millions of liters of water cleaner every day. It’s an epic founder story with big implications for clean water and healthy oceans.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re geeking out on money. Because even the best climate solutions won’t scale without serious capital behind them.
Our guest is Dawn Lippert, founder of Elemental (a nonprofit investor) and founding partner of Earthshot Ventures (a venture fund). She’s basically building an all-terrain vehicle for climate finance — covering philanthropic, project, and venture capital — to bridge the “valley of death” that stops too many good ideas from reaching the market.
We talk about:
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re heading to Napa Valley... sadly not literally. This time, anyway! David Pearson, president of Joseph Phelps Vineyards, has spent his career in wine, but he’s now leading a transformation that’s as much about climate solutions as it is about Cabernet. It’s a story about farming, philosophy, and, yes, some really good wine.
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Now for something fun — that can also be electricity generating infrastructure, if need be. My guest is Toby Kraus, co-founder and CEO of Lightship RV, the first American company to build all-electric RVs. The Lightship isn’t just a camper — it’s a battery on wheels, with solar on the roof, a pop-up design for aerodynamics, and its own motor to cancel out towing drag. That means you can take it off-grid for a week … or park it in your driveway and use it as backup power.
We talk about:
It’s the clean energy transition, with a side of camping.
👉 Next week, we’ll step away from the grid and hit the trails — stay tuned.
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We’ve been talking storage, reliability, and the grid … but what if we could just make more clean energy in more places? This week on Everybody in the Pool, we look at solar in a whole new way.
My guest is Anthony Letmon, co-founder and CEO of Kardinia Energy, which makes ultra-lightweight, recyclable printed solar. Imagine solar that looks more like a concert poster than a heavy panel. You can roll it up, ship it anywhere, and stick it where traditional solar could never go.
We talk about:
It’s the solar solution you didn’t know we needed — and it could open up whole new markets for clean energy.
👉 Last week, we looked at grid stability with Wärtsilä. Next week, we’re going camping — with the future of RVs.
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We’re wrapping up the Smart Grid Series with a rocket scientist who thinks the next big thing in batteries might actually be … zinc.
My guest is Mike Burz, co-founder and CEO of Enzinc, which is commercializing a zinc “sponge” anode developed with the U.S. Navy. The breakthrough: solving the dendrite problem that has historically killed rechargeable zinc batteries. The result? A safe, recyclable, low-cost chemistry that could power everything from scooters to data centers — and replace lead-acid or nickel-cadmium in millions of applications.
We cover:
Smart Grid Series recap:
Next week, we shift gears — from storage to deployment — with printed solar that could go just about anywhere. 🌞
Together, we can get this done.
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This special episode is brought to you by RE+—North America’s largest gathering of clean energy professionals, developed by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
On Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, I gave the opening keynote at RE+ in Las Vegas about where the energy transition is headed—followed by a panel with two leaders building it at scale:
This special drops in the middle of our Smart Grid mini-series:
Subscribe to the newsletter and find every episode at everybodyinthepool.com. Want an ad-free feed and to support the show directly? Tap the link in your podcast app. And send your thoughts—or a voice memo—to in@everybodyinthepool.com.
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Continuing our Smart Grid Series, we zoom in on reliability — because building more solar and wind doesn’t matter if the grid itself can’t stay stable. We’ve seen what happens when it fails: blackouts in Spain and Portugal earlier this year, near misses in Texas, rolling outages in California.
My guest is David Hebert, VP of Global Sales & Business Strategy at Wärtsilä Energy Storage. Wärtsilä is a 190-year-old company that now builds integrated storage systems combining hardware + software to keep grids reliable — even in moments of stress.
We dive into:
Smart Grid Series lineup:
Together, we can get this done.
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For the next few episodes, we’re digging into the wild world of energy and the aging global electricity grid. This week, we start where reliability begins: utility-scale storage. The grid we have was built for one-way power plants; the grid we need has to juggle rooftop solar at noon, heat waves at 6 p.m., EVs, and data centers galore.
My guest is Tom Sisto, founder & CEO of XL Batteries. His team is commercializing a pH-neutral, aqueous organic flow battery — a non-flammable, salt-water system using carbon-based molecules instead of vanadium. Think: safer, long-life storage you can scale for hours to days, without sulfuric acid or scarce metals.
We get into:
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re celebrating our 100th episode with a look at what matters most: your actions.
Since this show began a little over two years ago, the goal has been simple — to spotlight innovation, ingenuity, and capital coming together to tackle the climate crisis. Hope is stronger than fear, but hope alone isn’t a plan. This milestone episode is about agency — the choices we make in our own lives, and how together, those choices add up to systemic change.
Listeners wrote in and sent voice memos sharing the climate actions they’ve taken:
Along the way, we revisit powerful clips from past episodes and highlight the ripple effects of these solutions — from decarbonizing finance to building circular food systems.
Thank you to everyone who has listened, shared, and taken action. This episode is a reminder that we are not helpless — our feedback, votes, purchases, and investments all send signals that drive change. Drops become a flood.
Thanks to Mill for sponsoring this week’s episode! Get $75 off yours with my custom link! https://www.mill.com/lp/mollywood?utm_source=newsletter-sponsorship&utm_medium=partnership&utm_campaign=everbodyinthepool &utm_content=mollywood
Please subscribe and tell your friends about Everybody in the Pool! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com!
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re diving into ocean intelligence. Despite covering more than 70% of the Earth, the ocean remains one of the least understood parts of our climate system — and that knowledge gap has huge consequences for weather prediction, global commerce, and climate resilience.
Our guest is Tim Janssen, co-founder and CEO of Sofar Ocean, a company building the world’s largest privately deployed network of ocean sensors. Their inexpensive, solar-powered Spotter buoys collect real-time data on waves, weather, and water conditions — information that fuels better climate models, safer shipping routes, and more sustainable ocean economies.
We talk about:
From global trade to Pacific Island communities, ocean intelligence has the potential to save money, reduce emissions, and protect vulnerable coastlines. Janssen explains why data may be the most important climate solution of all.
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This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re talking ocean tech — in a slightly roundabout way. Nano-bubbles are a tiny but powerful technology that’s helping to make a big climate impact across wastewater treatment, irrigation, aquaculture, and more.
Our guest is Nick Dyner, CEO of Moleaer, a company that manufactures systems to produce nano-bubbles — microscopic bubbles that can enhance chemical, physical, and biological processes. The applications range from improving crop yields to cleaning food without chemicals, reducing energy use in wastewater treatment, and even building a nearly chlorine-free Jacuzzi.
We talk about:
From salmon farms in Norway to backyard spas, Nick explains how nano-bubbles could be a critical tool for climate solutions today — and the sci-fi breakthroughs of tomorrow.
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