Antoine Saab is the founder and CEO of E24 Solutions, a company that provides solar and battery installations to homes and businesses in several countries. In this episode, Robert talks to Saab, who appeared in Juice: How Electricity Explains the World, about the “total collapse” of the Lebanese economy, why E24 uses lead-acid batteries instead of lithium-ion, Chinese-made solar panels, and why, as he said in Juice, “microgrids are the future.”

Pamela Ronald is one of the world’s leading scientists on plant genetics, a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, and the co-author (with her husband, Raoul Adamchuk) of Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. In this episode, she and Robert talk about the evolution of pathogens, why nearly everything we eat has been genetically modified, her work on developing flood-resistant strains of rice, CRISPR, and why geneticist Barbara McClintock, the winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is one of her personal heroes.

Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, comes back on the podcast for a second time. In this episode, he talks about the “catastrophe bias” in the latest IPCC report, the media coverage of the report, the need for more “robust science advice” in policymaking, why America’s reaction to Covid-19 was the “biggest policy failure” in modern U.S. history, the Olympics, the suspension of sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, and the “intersection of expertise and democracy.” 

Isaac Orr is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank, where he writes about environmental issues, mining, and electricity policy. In this episode, Orr explains how being raised on a farm shaped his political views, why concerns about “conservation come after breakfast,” mining in Minnesota, the importance of coal-fired electricity, and his forthcoming report on the material intensity of various forms of electricity production.

Alex Epstein is the author of The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels, the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, and an unabashed advocate for the increased use of hydrocarbons. In this episode, Alex talks about the “brazenly irrational” stance of many climate activists, why the costs of using hydrocarbons are “dwarfed by the benefits,” the rise of the energy humanist movement, and his upcoming book, Fossil Future, which will be published in February 2022.

Peter Osnos’ career in journalism and publishing spans more than 50 years and includes, most recently, his memoir, An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen. In this episode, Osnos talks to Robert about his family’s remarkable escape from Warsaw in 1939, his stints as a reporter in Vietnam and Russia, why former Russian dissident Natan Sharansky is his personal hero, media trends, publishing books by Obama, Carter, Clinton, and Trump, and, as he wrote in his memoir, “believing in the power of resilience.”

Kevin D. Williamson is a roving correspondent for National Review and the author of, most recently, Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the 'Real America,' In this episode, Williamson talks about the growing underclass in America, why there’s no such thing as “energy independence” or “clean energy,” China, why “depravity is a luxury good,” and his growing concerns about the cultural and geographic divides in America at the same time we have a “non-functioning central government.”

Emmet Penney is an essayist and co-host of the Ex.haust podcast. In this episode, he talks to Robert about his recent essay in the American Conservative and explains why nuclear plants are “our industrial cathedrals” why we need “a nuclear new deal,” and why there is “no such thing as a wealthy society with a weak electrical grid.”

Robert Hargraves is a co-founder of ThorCon International, a startup company that aims to build thorium-based nuclear reactors. Robert talks to Hargraves about ThorCon’s technology, why shipyards are the best bet for scaling up production of nuclear reactors, the myth of “net zero” emissions, and how companies like Google and Amazon are hiding their carbon dioxide emissions by buying renewable energy credits.

Sally Vance-Trembath, a theologian at Santa Clara University, studies the relationships among the Catholic Church, academia, and society. In this episode, she talks with Robert about environmentalism as a religion, climate change and sin, Christian theology, and the similarities between the indulgences that were sold to build Europe’s cathedrals and modern-day carbon credits.