A former Weyerhaeuser executive told Josh Dorfman his company would never matter. Now the largest homebuilder in America just ordered 10 million of his panels — made from grass, not trees.

Josh Dorfman is the founder and CMO of Plantd, a building materials company using perennial grass that grows 10x faster than trees to make structural panels for homes. He's also the creator of The Lazy Environmentalist (Sirius Radio show, two books, a Sundance Channel TV series) and host of the Supercool podcast.

What you'll take away:

• Why the material your house is built from is literally "the most crappy thing that meets code" - and what replaces it
• How a SpaceX life-support engineer, a Craigslist treadmill, and a pickle barrel became the origin story of a climate tech company
• The reframe that changed Josh's entire career: selling environmental solutions by never talking about the environment

🔗 Links mentioned:

• Plantd: https://plantdmaterials.com
• Supercool podcast: https://getsuper.cool
• Book: Codename Helene (historical fiction / leadership)

📬 Follow Curiosity Class:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• LinkedIn

Interested in sponsoring? [email protected]

A nutritional therapist tells his clients to stand in a mirror and say "I love you" ten times. Most of them can't do it. That's when the real coaching starts - because if you can't love yourself, no macro plan or fitness routine is going to stick.

Justin Nault is a certified nutritional therapist, entrepreneur, and content creator with nearly a million followers. He built his first supplement company from a baby formula he made in his kitchen for his niece who was given three years to live — after a Vanderbilt neurologist admitted he'd never thought to check the ingredients in her formula.

What you'll take away:

• Why "trauma-based ambition" keeps the goalpost moving no matter how much you achieve - and how to tell if yours is healthy or not
• The reason 75% of the American food system qualifies as metabolic toxins, and what Justin eats instead (it's simpler than you think)
• How unconditional self-love is the actual foundation of lasting health changes - and why the mirror test reveals more than any blood panel

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open

00:01 Justin's background - from fat kid to body dysmorphia

03:13 Savannah - his niece's terminal diagnosis and the formula that changed everything

09:38 How Savannah is doing today

10:37 From music career to content creator

16:43 Self-love as the real foundation of health change

19:01 The mirror work exercise that breaks people

21:20 Trauma-based ambition vs. healthy ambition

26:41 Shadow work, the mirror method, and non-duality

33:00 People pleasing as anti-self-love

38:40 Energy - interpersonal and metabolic

43:22 What metabolism actually is and what Justin eats

52:21 Justin's daily routine - sunrise, 20-minute workouts

55:28 Nault Systems - Justin's AI operations company

🔗 Links mentioned:

- In Search of the Perfect Human Diet (documentary)

- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

- Clovis Nutrition: clovisnutrition.com

- MedChoice supplements (Amazon)

- Nault Systems (AI operations)

- Justin on Instagram: @justinnaultofficial

📬 Follow Curiosity Class:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CuriosityClass1
• Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/7B5EEc3jGs8t9dbDIEW8hD?si=ab1e2920dd484cb0
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/curiosity-class/id1753587331
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-albaum-pe-21288b142/

Interested in sponsoring? [email protected]

Freddy Brick's job is to find the companies that are lying to investors - and then bet against them before the truth comes out.

Freddy is a partner at Muddy Waters, one of the most well-known activist short-selling firms in the world. They've exposed frauds across Asia, Europe, and the US, including companies that turned out to have Russian intelligence connections.

What you'll take away:

• Why the companies most likely to be frauds are often #5-25 in a hot industry - and how to spot the pattern
• The difference between a melting ice cube and an actual fraud, and why shorting frauds is paradoxically one of the hardest ways to make money
• How Freddy went from complete AI skeptic to daily Claude user in under 3 months - and what that tells us about the next wave of white-collar disruption

Books mentioned:

• Fatal Risk by Roddy Boyd
• The Big Short by Michael Lewis
• Greatest Trade Ever by Greg Zuckman

📬 Follow Curiosity Class:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CuriosityClass1

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-albaum-pe-21288b142/

Interested in sponsoring? [email protected]

Ben Hindman spent a decade building Splash, a venture-backed event marketing software that powered events for Salesforce, Facebook, Amazon, and Spotify. He sold it to Cvent/Blackstone last year. Now he's selling lollipops.

This is the story of why a successful software founder walked away from bits and is building with atoms - starting with the world's first functional candy: Le Lick.

What you'll take away:

- Why the move from software to CPG is a "full 180-degree flip" - and why 45-day iteration cycles change everything about how you build

- The shadow side of being an "empath CEO": when people - pleasing quietly becomes bad leadership, and how Ben's wife became his sharpest advisor

- A counter-intuitive lesson: 60% of people don't like cherry, 25% don't like honey, 50% don't like coconut - and why building a product means accepting that "your purple is not my purple"

- How a self-described dyslexic/ADD learner built three regularly-scheduled book clubs to hack his own brain

- Why Ben thinks momentum - not strategy, not product - is the single most important thing a founder has

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open - "I am a recovering tech CEO"

00:30 Splash: from event planner to software CEO, and what it looked like at its peak

04:50 Selling to Cvent/Blackstone - and why the sale was actually a relief

06:20 Treating business like a full-body art project (blessing and curse)

09:55 Introducing Le Lick: the world's first functional candy

12:45 The flavors - and what they taught Ben about taste buds

17:40 The CPG reality check: $11K in sticks from China and 45-day iteration cycles

21:50 Building the team: equity, no cliff, and hiring for mission

23:50 Momentum as a superpower ("I call it Benergy")

27:20 The shadow side of being an empath CEO

28:45 Why his wife is his best advisor - and why it took until 38 to learn

30:00 The hack: making your life and your work indistinguishable

32:00 Fatherhood lessons (from someone who didn't want kids)

34:30 A learning system for a brain that hates reading

36:15 What Ben's changed his mind about recently

🔗 Links:

- Le Lick: https://enjoylelick.com

- Ben on Instagram: @bennydotevents

- Le Lick on Instagram: @enjoylelick

📬 Follow Curiosity Class:

YouTube

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Interested in sponsoring Curiosity Class?

[email protected]

In this solo episode, I break down some of my biggest takeaways from Runnin’ Down a Dream by Bill Gurley.

I’ve always loved reading, and I really believe books are one of the highest-leverage things you can invest in. You’re basically getting decades of someone’s thinking for the price of a book.

I share a story from the book that really stuck with me, along with one of the core ideas: instead of trying to “find your passion,” just follow your curiosity.

If you’re thinking about your career, feeling a bit stuck, or just want to hear a different way to think about it - I think you’ll enjoy this one.

💡 What You’ll Learn:

• Why books are one of the most asymmetric bets you can make
• The mindset shift from “find your passion” → “follow your curiosity”
• A powerful perspective on time, life, and doing work you actually enjoy

📚 Honorable Mentions:

• How small daily habits (like reading) compound over time

• Brandon Turner on books being an amazing investment
• Tim Ferriss on always having a “budget for books”

Link to buy the book

Adi Neumann brings a perspective shaped by years in entrepreneurship and two decades of Kabbalah study.

She offers a space where this mystical wisdom becomes a living guide for inner clarity, ethical strength, and spiritual growth. Her work is grounded in sustained learning, a deep personal practice, and a lifelong search for knowledge within as without.

I built something I’ve wanted for a long time… and in this video, I’m finally unveiling it.

Introducing Renovate Hub - a tool designed to make managing renovation projects, properties, and finances actually simple.

In this solo episode, I walk through:

• Why I decided to build this in the first place
• The problems I kept running into with existing tools
• A full demo of Renovate Hub in action
• What’s working, what’s not, and what’s coming next

This is the early version - but it’s real, it’s live, and it’s already changing how I manage my projects.

If you’re into real estate, building products, or just curious what it looks like to create something from scratch… this one’s for you.

Let me know what you think - and if this is something you’d actually use.

👇 Try Renovate Hub

www.renovatehub.co

In this week's episode of Curiosity Class, I sit down with Max Sacher, a PhD candidate in Finance at UT Austin McCombs School of Business, to talk about how economies actually work. We dive into growth, GDP, private credit, private equity, national debt, healthcare, taxes, and why some countries seem to create a better quality of life than others. Max does an awesome job breaking down big economic ideas in a way that’s thoughtful, practical, and easy to understand.

Dusty Breeding is a financial coach and founder of the Skull and Bones Society, a financial coaching practice that helps clients build integrated wealth. He works with people from all walks of life to clarify their vision for the future and develop financial plans that support a meaningful and values-driven life.

In this episode, I share my experiment of trying to get 1% better at podcasting every single week.

No shortcuts. No viral hacks. Just small improvements that compound over time.

We talk about why focusing on inputs instead of outcomes can change everything, and how tiny, consistent habits can quietly build serious momentum.

If you're building something - a podcast, a business, or even just a better version of yourself - this episode is a reminder:

You don’t need massive breakthroughs.

You just need to get 1% better.