Climate Future Makers is a new monthly series from The Young Ike Project spotlighting people actively building real-world climate solutions. The goal is to move beyond the doom-and-denial cycle that often defines environmental discourse and instead tell the stories of builders, innovators, and leaders shaping a more sustainable future right now.

Our first guest is Bill Brady, a veteran industrial executive turned climate entrepreneur. After decades leading global chemical businesses, Brady shifted his career toward solving large-scale environmental problems and has since helped launch ventures in clean fuels, low-carbon cement, and sustainable agriculture.

In this episode, we explore Brady’s latest venture, Kula Bio, which is developing biologically based nitrogen fertilizer as an alternative to the century-old Haber-Bosch process. We discuss how synthetic fertilizer helped feed the modern world, but also contributes heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and soil degradation. Brady explains how Kula’s technology uses naturally occurring microbes to deliver nitrogen in a cleaner, more regenerative way.

We also dive into the realities of climate entrepreneurship—breaking into markets long controlled by established industry players. Brady closes with a broader vision for the future: that the nexus between energy and technology will define the next century and beyond.

Andrew Odlyzko is a mathematician, technology historian, and professor at the University of Minnesota who has spent decades studying the relationship between innovation, finance, and technological manias. His research spans everything from the railway booms of the 19th century to the dot-com bubble—and what those earlier episodes can teach us about the AI buildout happening today.

In this episode, we zoom out from the day-to-day politics of data centers to ask a bigger historical question: what happens when a transformative technology collides with hype, speculation, and the promise of world-changing progress? Odlyzko explains why AI fits into a much longer story of technological booms, why bubbles often form around real breakthroughs, and how past manias sometimes left society with useful infrastructure even when investors got burned.

We also talk about why he believes the current AI moment is becoming more dangerous. As improvements in large language models begin to look more incremental, the scale of spending on chips, data centers, and infrastructure keeps rising. Odlyzko argues that the real warning sign is financial: once the buildout moves beyond hyperscalers spending their own profits and starts drawing in outside investors through increasingly creative financing, the broader risks grow.

This is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclubThis is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclub

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Carrie Jennings is the Research and Policy Director at the Freshwater Society and a geologist by training. She’s one of Minnesota’s leading voices on groundwater and water policy. A past guest from last season, we’re thrilled to have her back on the podcast.

In this episode, we talk about the rise of hyperscale data centers and what they could mean for water in Minnesota and across the Great Lakes region. Jennings explains why groundwater is often misunderstood as “infinite,” how data centers can function like adding a new small city’s worth of demand to the edge of a metro-center.

We also dig into the governance problem: non-disclosure agreements, limited public data on actual water use, and how municipal hookups can effectively let data centers “jump the line” during scarcity—despite statutory water-use priorities. Jennings closes by outlining where Minnesota’s system is breaking down and what it would take to build clearer rules before the next wave of high-volume water users arrives.

This is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclubThis is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclub

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Kathryn Hoffman is the CEO of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), where she leads legal and policy efforts to protect Minnesota’s water, air, and natural resources.

In this episode, we talk about the rapid expansion of data centers and AI infrastructure — and the growing tension between economic development, environmental protection, and democratic transparency. Hoffman explains how data centers are currently reviewed and approved in Minnesota, why MCEA is challenging opaque environmental reviews and non-disclosure agreements, and what stronger guardrails could look like to ensure communities understand the water, energy, and environmental tradeoffs before these projects move forward.

This is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclubThis is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclub

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This episode is a special break from our current season on data centers and the environmental trade-offs of the AI infrastructure buildout. Instead, we return to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for a clear-eyed, one-year-in assessment of what has actually changed under the second Trump administration. When I first spoke with Becky Rom just before the 2024 election, much of the conversation was shaped by uncertainty. A year later, a lot has changed. Or has it?

Recorded on January 21st—the morning the House voted on H.J. Res. 140—this conversation walks through the concrete policy mechanics behind the fight to undo federal protections for the Boundary Waters: the 20-year mining withdrawal, the Congressional Review Act, and what’s at stake if Congress succeeds. Rom, National Chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, explains what change is tangible versus symbolic, how federal and state protections intersect, and why this moment feels both like a culmination of the past year—and another critical chapter in the decades-long battle over America’s most visited wilderness.

Articles Mentioned:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/02/11/an-ely-group-agrees-on-the-value-of-the-boundary-waters-but-they-cant-agree-on-mining?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/public-lands-and-waters/protecting-the-boundary-waters-is-a-test-of-leadership-for-americas-public

Learn more about SAVE at: savetheboundarywaters.org

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Minnesota State Senator Nick Frentz chairs the Senate Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate Committee and authored Minnesota’s landmark 2023 law requiring 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. He represents Senate District 18 in the Mankato area.

In this episode, we talk about the rapid growth of data centers and AI infrastructure — and the real tension between economic development and environmental limits. Frentz walks through what Minnesota’s data center law actually does (including water-use reporting, permitting guardrails, and protections for ratepayers), why some communities see data centers as transformational for local tax bases, and why he draws a hard line on ensuring data centers can’t undermine the state’s 2040 clean energy target.

This is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclub

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Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we live, work, and communicate—but the digital world runs on physical infrastructure. This season of The Young Ike explores the rapid expansion of data centers across the United States and the environmental, economic, and civic trade-offs that come with them.

As demand for AI and cloud computing explodes, data centers are popping up in communities large and small, reshaping local energy grids, water systems, and land use plans. They bring investment, tax revenue, and jobs—but also raise serious questions about sustainability, transparency, and long-term environmental goals.

This season is not about AI chatbots themselves, but about the infrastructure underneath them—and how communities, policymakers, environmental advocates, and industry are responding.

Featured Voices This Season:

Across this season, Griffith speaks with five guests approaching the data center buildout from different perspectives:

- Kathryn Hoffman, CEO of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, on legal and regulatory challenges surrounding data center development

- Carrie Jennings, Research and Policy Director at Freshwater, on groundwater use, water governance gaps, and the hidden risks of data center development.

- Senator Nick Frentz, Chair of the Senate Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate Committee, on balancing economic development, energy policy, and climate goals in the data center boom

- Gary Brown, grassroots organizer and Izaak Walton League member, on local resistance movements and community-level organizing

- Andrew Odlyzko, technology historian at the University of Minnesota, on financial manias, infrastructure booms, and historical parallels to today’s data center surge

An industry perspective was actively sought for this season but could not be secured. That commitment—to engaging all sides of complex environmental issues—remains central to The Young Ike and will continue in future seasons.

How This Season Works:

Episodes will be released weekly over the next four to five weeks. Listeners are encouraged to follow along and participate in Podclubs—community-led discussion groups modeled after book clubs—designed to take these conversations off podcasts, off algorithms, and into the real world.

To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit:

theyoungike.org/podclub

Carrie Jennings has spent her career piecing together how our landscapes came to be—and what’s happening to them now. A geologist by training and now Research and Policy Director at Freshwater, she’s spent decades mapping Minnesota’s glacial past, teaching at the University of Minnesota, and turning science into action to protect our rivers and groundwater.

In this episode, Carrie takes us deep into the story of the Minnesota River Basin. We start with the glaciers that carved it out thousands of years ago and then fast forward to today, where farming practices, drained wetlands, and tiled fields have transformed it into what she calls “an agricultural drainage ditch.” The result? Rivers running brown, biodiversity wiped out, sediment loads ten times higher than historical levels, and small towns struggling to keep up as floodwaters rise and infrastructure strains.

Carrie helps us connect these dots—how the choices we’ve made on the land ripple through everything from water quality and fish habitat to the cost of raising highways and dredging navigation channels. And she shares how her work has pushed past research into real change: new state programs to hold more water on the land, restore wetlands, and rebuild soil health; support for perennial crops that keep living roots in the ground year-round; and a growing recognition that this is a “Dust Bowl moment” for Minnesota, one that demands systemic change.

This isn’t just a conversation about rivers—it’s about how we live on the land, how federal farm policy shapes our choices, and what it will take for Minnesota to chart a different path. Carrie’s perspective brings both deep time (glaciers and plate tectonics) and an urgency grounded in the present: if we don’t act, we risk doubling down on the very patterns—corn, soy, and now biofuels—that are driving the problem.

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Kathy Zeman has seen agriculture from every angle: growing up on a dairy farm, working in animal genetics and feed, and now running Simple Harvest Farm, her 20-acre certified organic, direct-to-consumer farm in Minnesota. Today, she also leads the Minnesota Farmers’ Market Association, representing more than 10,000 local food vendors across the state.

In this episode, Kathy helps us unravel the tangled web of industrial farming, policy, and local food. We talk about how agricultural policy—from crop insurance to the Farm Bill—has systematically favored Big Ag and commodity crops while leaving local food farmers underfunded and unsupported. Kathy shares how these inequities ripple through our food system, shaping not only what we eat but also how we treat our soil, our water, and our rural communities.

Kathy lays out her vision for building resilient local food systems through practical, unglamorous solutions: commercial kitchens in town halls, shared food storage and transport, micro-insurance programs for small farmers, and policies that level the playing field between industrial agriculture and the “little ag” food farmers.

Support Kathy’s farm: https://simpleharvestfarm.com/

Join the conversation:

🎟 Live Event (Aug 28): Sign up here
🌐 Website: theyoungike.org
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📧 Contact us: [email protected]
🤝 Support our partner:Minnesota Valley IWLA

Call to Action:

If you enjoyed this episode, please add the show to your library, download it, share it with a friend, and leave a review. It’s a small thing that makes a huge difference in helping us grow and keep these conversations going.

Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman from Bluffton, Georgia, and the force behind White Oak Pastures—a farm his family has run since 1866. For decades, Will managed it under the conventional industrial model. But in the mid-90s, he made a radical pivot, transforming White Oak into one of the nation’s most respected regenerative farms. His work is about far more than food—it’s about healing land, water, and rural communities through farming that works with nature instead of against it.

In this episode, we talk about the century-long shift from small, local food systems to today’s industrial agriculture, and why Will believes reviving local “food sheds” is key to restoring both ecosystems and rural economies. We dig into how regenerative practices can rebuild soils, reduce runoff, and even revive dying watersheds downstream. Will also reflects on what it takes for consumers, communities, and policymakers to break Big Ag’s grip and reconnect farming to its natural cycles.

This conversation isn’t just about farming—it’s about rethinking how we feed ourselves, and what it will take to build a food system that sustains both people and the planet.

Order Will’s book, “A Bold Return to Giving a Damn” : https://whiteoakpastures.com/pages/a-bold-return-to-giving-a-damn?srsltid=AfmBOorGzEzcxS0fFkWENnXSkKCupy_MPw6rM9cG-DBCA4vVsy_bMpWB

Join the conversation:

🎟 Live Event (Aug 28): Sign up here
🌐 Website: theyoungike.org
📷 Instagram:@theyoungike
📧 Contact us: [email protected]
🤝 Support our partner: Minnesota Valley IWLA

Call to Action:

If you enjoyed this episode, please add the show to your library, download it, share it with a friend, and leave a review. It’s a small thing that makes a huge difference in helping us grow and keep these conversations going.