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