Alex Blumberg
Today's guest is Alex Blumberg, who is most recently the co-host of the climate change-focused podcast, How to Save a Planet. Alex was co-founder and CEO of Gimlet Media, which was acquired by Spotify in 2019.
Alex has a history of unpacking incredibly complex systemic issues and making them digestible for mass audiences. Prior to Gimlet, he was co-host of the podcast Planet Money, which had its origins in unpacking the intricacies of the financial crisis of 2008 and the role of the housing market, therein.
Planet Money went on to do investigative work on a myriad of economic and financial stories. And then Gimlet Media emerged with a similar focus on broader cultural topics. On this pod, we've talked to a few different entrepreneurs who've tackled the challenging problem of climate communications, from Climate Town's comedy to Pique Action’s positivity to The Cool Down’s attempts to hook new audiences into caring about climate via individual choices. The How to Save a Planet podcast, focused on helping people find their personal agency on the Venn diagram of the intersection of "What brings you joy, what you are good at, and what work needs doing."
Alex and Cody have a conversation about how his own Venn diagram has changed as his skills have shifted from being good at podcasting to being experienced a company building. And they talk about how the broader narrative on climate change has changed over the last few years and why. They also cover the intersection of money and climate and the role of policy and politics therein. This discussion has great takeaways for those who are thinking about plugging themselves into climate-related efforts while leveraging their own skill, and for those working on communicating complex climate issues.
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Episode recorded on December 13, 2022.
In this episode, we cover:
[3:11] Overarching thoughts about the housing crisis and the climate crisis
[8:41] Public opinion and general awareness of climate change and the issues
[13:10] The action side of climate communications and how Alex approached it on How to Save a Planet
[17:10] Listener stories inspired by the podcast
[19:00] Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's Climate Action Venn Diagram
[22:39] How Alex used his skills in podcasting to drive climate action
[24:57] His background in radio and narrative storytelling
[32:44] How Gimlet Media came to be and an overview of Startup Podcast
[38:28] Learnings from Alex's journey starting Gimlet through its acquisition by Spotify in 2019
[43:45] How to harness personal agency while building a company
[47:11] Situations where using climate change or climate benefits actually hurts business
[51:39] Alex's thoughts on ESG and corporate action
[57:26] What's next for Alex
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Jason Jacobs (00:00:02):
Hello everyone, this is Jason Jacobs.
Cody Simms (00:00:04):
And I'm Cody Simms.
Jason Jacobs (00:00:06):
And welcome to My Climate Journey. This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (00:00:16):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Jason Jacobs (00:00:27):
We appreciate you tuning in, sharing this episode, and if you feel like it, leaving us a review to help more people find out about us so they can figure out where they fit in addressing the problem of climate change.
Cody Simms (00:00:41):
Today's guest is Alex Blumberg, who is most recently the co-host of the Climate Change Focus podcast, How to Save a Planet. Alex was co-founder and CEO of Gimlet Media, which was acquired by Spotify in 2019. He and I spoke shortly after his recent departure from Spotify. Alex has a history of unpacking incredibly complex systemic issues and making them digestible for mass audiences. Prior to Gimlet, he was co-host of the podcast Planet Money, which had its origins in unpacking the intricacies of the financial crisis of 2008 and the role of the housing market, therein.
(00:01:17):
Planet Money went on to do investigative work on a myriad of economic and financial stories. And then Gimlet Media emerged with a similar focus on broader cultural topics. On this pod, we've talked to a few different entrepreneurs who've tackled the challenging problem of climate communications, from Climate Town's usage of humor, to Pique Action's, efforts to be anti doomerism, to The Cool Down's attempts to hook new audiences into caring about climate via individual choices. How to Save a Planet, focused on helping people find their personal agency on the Venn diagram of the intersection of "What brings you joy, what you are good at, and what work needs doing."
(00:01:55):
Alex and I have a conversation about how his own Venn diagram has changed as his skills have shifted from being good at podcasting to being experienced a company building. And we talk about how the broader narrative on climate change has changed over the last few years and why. We also talk about the intersection of money and climate and the role of policy and politics therein. For those of you who are trying to think about how to plug yourself into climate, leveraging your own skills, hopefully hearing Alex's story will be helpful. And for those of you thinking about how to communicate complex climate issues and to get people to care, hopefully you'll have some useful takeaways as well. I'm always heartened to hear of people with Alex's background and profile deciding to go all in on the climate space, and I'm grateful to Alex for taking the time to share his story and learnings with us. Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex Blumberg (00:02:42):
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Cody Simms (00:02:44):
You hear this all the time. I've heard your voice in my ear so many times, so to sit here and talk to you is pretty exciting. And I'd love to dive in just with a first sort of question about, you've spent the last couple years going deep in climate change. You spent many years before that being all of our guide through what in the world was happening with the housing crisis back when you were at Planet Money.
Alex Blumberg (00:03:10):
Right.
Cody Simms (00:03:11):
And so before we dive, we're going to get into your backstory, we're going to get into all that good stuff. But before we do that, I just want to start out with your overarching thoughts of these are two of the biggest systemic issues to have rippled through the globe in our lifetime, in my lifetime for sure.
Alex Blumberg (00:03:29):
Right.
Cody Simms (00:03:30):
How has learning about them and covering them felt similar and different in your mind?
Alex Blumberg (00:03:38):
That's a good question. Well, I think there's a couple of things that feel similar. The first thing that feels similar, so basically the quick backstory to my introduction to finance and the housing crisis, I was basically a general interest reporter at This American Life, and in 2004, 2005, I got really interested in... Well, basically a colleague of mine had bought a house and I was like, "I can't buy a house." The last I'd looked, which was five years earlier, you needed a big down payment that I didn't have. And so I was like, "Okay, checking, buying a house that's in the can't do now and maybe ever bucket." And then all of a sudden, this colleague of mine was able to buy a house and I was like, "Wait, how did you raise the down payment?" And she was like, "I didn't need to put a down payment, they gave me the loan."
(00:04:32):
And I was like, that's weird. How did that happen? What changed? Because it was just a couple years earlier where they were just checking everything and doing security checks and calling up all the people you went to school with. And so I got really interested in why that was happening. And that interest coincided with the creation of one of the biggest housing bubbles in history. And so I was just learning all about the system whereby banks were lending out money without any down payment and to people without really even checking whether people were going to be able to pay them back to buy houses. And so it started with a question of just what changed, why.
(00:05:17):
And so the first similarity is once you start to ask why, follow the money is cliche, and often people use it to find the bad guy, the bad guy is the one with the money. But in this case, I don't mean to find the bad guy by following the money. I simply mean we have a gigantic global financial system, it's the size of it, and the scope of it, is sort of impossible for regular myrtles to understand, but the way that money flows through that system is often the answer. And so there was just all this money chasing investment for various macroeconomic reasons, there wasn't a lot of things to invest in.
(00:05:53):
And so the world sort of created housing assets for this money to invest in. And once I figured that out, it was like, "Oh, that explains everything." And I think, so the similarity I think with between the housing crisis and our current crisis is that it is the result of a huge socioeconomic system. And that has been driving a lot of the investment and that has driven all the factors that have gotten us to where we are today and the way out is going to require changing that system ultimately.
(00:06:31):
And everything else that we do, changing public opinion and all that sort of stuff is our necessary parts of it, but ultimately we have to change the incentives and change the systems in order to get the change that we need. And very recently, up until 15, 20 years ago, that looked impossible because we're like, how are you going to keep compete with cheap fossil gas? How is that going to work? Now, the economics are finally on our side, so I think that's why we're starting to see the change. But I think, so that's a big similarity. I think the other similarity is how people approach it and maybe the media approached it too. I remember early on in the housing crisis, there was a lot of flurry banks, sort of subprime lenders were starting to collapse and the world hadn't fully gone to hell yet, but there was a lot of turmoil and Bear Stearns had collapsed and big financial institutions were failing, nobody sort of knew why. People were all of a sudden having to foreclose, get for foreclosed on stuff like that.
(00:07:27):
And I think there was a pretty big desire to find a villain. It seems like a bad thing is happening, somebody must be causing it. And I think that desire exists. Sometimes there is villain, sometimes there's certainly always people who are thinking pretty narrowly in their own self interest, but probably they have kids that they tuck into bed at night as well. So often I feel like the... I'm not saying to hold no one accountable, but I think the hunt for the villain often obscures us to actually what's happening. And what was happening was a system was created that everybody that played on certain instincts that exist in everyone. The desire for comfort, the desire for a house. That it was in all of us and the system sort of fed those desires that all of us have and that's why it got so big because it was addressing all of us. Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:08:26):
Yeah. Interesting. And climate change, it's sort of a tragedy, the commons issue. On the individual level, it's a search for comfort, and if everyone does it, then you end up over optimizing in a bad way that creates systemic problems.
Alex Blumberg (00:08:41):
Yeah, exactly.
Cody Simms (00:08:41):
Kind of the same tidal wave of issues. I would imagine one of the differences is, the housing crisis was very complex and felt very opaque. The average person had no idea what a mortgage backed security was or derivatives in the financial system. Climate change also feels very big and very difficult, and yet scientists have been talking about this for decades now. This isn't some secret backroom thing that's been happening. This has been in front of all of us and we still haven't made progress. Well, we are starting to make progress now, but for decades we didn't make a lot of tangible progress in public opinion at least. So I'm curious to hear your thought on what has changed their recently, from a public opinion and just general awareness perspective.
Alex Blumberg (00:09:36):
Well, I think the other thing about climate change is that it's just much bigger, much more complicated system of what's going on. You've got the weather system interacting with the global financial system, interacting with individual sort of, it's global. So even the financial crisis was gigantic and huge. It was much easier. And I think, I don't know, I think there's something in people's minds. I think it was easy to... People discount the future and everybody has a different discount rate of how bad a thing that's going to happen in the future. My personal discount rate is horrible. If I'm like, "Oh, that's next week..." I literally am like, "Oh, that's next week. I don't have to worry about it." And my wife is like, no, next week is right around the corner. We have to worry about it right now. And I think it's almost like an emotional, everybody has their own personal discount rate.
(00:10:32):
And I think with climate change, I think a lot of people could be like, "Well, that's later. I'm going to keep it on... I'm going to keep it low on my list of priorities." So I think one thing that's changing is it's not later. It's very clear. If you were a biologist, you were seeing effects already many years, decades ago. But if you were a regular person, it's only recently that you're like, "Oh, a lot more rain or a lot dryer or forest fires or no more snow in the winter." Or whatever. You are seeing all this stuff now. So-
Cody Simms (00:10:59):
Yeah, it's not just the early warning signs that are making the scientists nervous, but each of us are actually seeing the issues.
Alex Blumberg (00:11:07):
Yeah. And that was the same with the housing crisis. And the housing crisis just happened much more quickly. There was a buildup of three years, people warned... During that time there was lots of people who were warning this is all going to come crumbling. And then people didn't really pay attention and then something fell and then all of a sudden people were looking. So it just was a different timeframe though. That's the thing about climate change, it's really hard, I think for people. It hits people where cognitively we're the weakest in so many different ways. We can't conceive of big numbers, we can't conceive of long crime horizons. We're Really bad at all the things that climate change requires us to be good at.
Cody Simms (00:11:50):
So on that point, I feel like you're now the fourth interview I've done with someone who has been focused on climate communications, recently. We talked to Rollie Williams of Climate Town, who's doing funny YouTube videos on climate change, funny and climate change-
Alex Blumberg (00:12:06):
Yeah, I know Rollie.
Cody Simms (00:12:06):
Obviously, it's an oxymoron.
Alex Blumberg (00:12:07):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:12:07):
But we talked to Pique Action who were doing inspiring videos about climate tech and science and then engaging folks on TikTok around the topics trying to be the anti dommerism. And we've talked to The Cool Down, which is Dave Finocchio formerly of the Bleacher Report and Anna Robertson. And they're focused on how do you actually pull in maybe people who aren't thinking about climate change to realize there are reasons and ways that they can engage. I'm interested with you because you kind of came at it from the perspective of, "How do we inspire people to take action?" At least that's my understanding of what you were trying to accomplish. The name of the podcast says it all, How to Save a Planet. And maybe diving into that side of communication sort of action. And sorry about my dog barking in the background.
Alex Blumberg (00:13:00):
That's fine.
Cody Simms (00:13:01):
But hey, this is podcasting. The action orientation side of communication and what you've learned from that.
Alex Blumberg (00:13:10):
Sure. I mean, I think my theory when I started the podcast, so we started the podcast How to Save a Planet and I mean started thinking about it in 2019, I think I met my co-host in 2019, 2020, and now I'm forgetting the timeline, but it was sort of before the pandemic we were meeting, I know were meeting in person, so it was before the pandemic. My theory was that a lot of the climate media was in this, "We have to convince people." And so we have to convince people by showing how bad it's going to be, showing where it's actually happening, which is on the poles and places like that, islands.
(00:13:55):
And what was happening was over the course of all that climate reporting, which is really, really important, and that's incredibly, incredibly important that all that reporting was being done. But what I think happened was that over time, more and more people started to become aware of climate change and in fact very worried about it. And then there was a bunch of people that dug in their heels and were always going to have their fingers in their ears and be like, "La, la, la, I can't hear you."
Cody Simms (00:14:22):
This sort of explainerism, right? We've all had those kitchen table conversations where we try to be like, "And then this and this and this." It just, people get turned off, right?
Alex Blumberg (00:14:30):
Yeah, exactly. And so weren't going to win the people with the fingers in their airs, no matter what you said. And then the people that were most likely, I think, to actually want to do something, were just getting too bummed out and we're just like, "Oh my God, we're, the world is watching. We're all doomed." And the more sort of apocalyptic the reporting got, the more, I think the sense of hopelessness about what we need to do. And so I felt like maybe there's a role for a media project where it's for the people who believe it's going to happen, but just asking the question, "Okay, it's happening. What do we do and what do we do beyond just eat a veggie burger now and then?" You know what I mean? I think all the solutions that people who really, really worried about it were being offered, felt pretty weak tea compared to the size of the problem.
(00:15:30):
And I think there was a lot of people who were like, "Well, I recycle. I bring a cotton tote everywhere I go. And then I read an article that maybe the cotton tote is worse than a plastic bag. And so now I'm paralyzed with... I don't even know what to do." But there's other things to do besides recycle and bring a cotton tote. Do that, that's great, but there's other things that we can do and there's other things that other people are doing. And so our whole theory was like, let's just actually just roll up our sleeves and ask the question of what can we do? Because it's a big problem. Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:16:05):
I'm hearing a little bit of, "Sure there's consumerism habits you can change, but really what else can you do to leverage your personal agency to push for change bigger than yourself?" Right?
Alex Blumberg (00:16:17):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:16:18):
Is that sort of what you were going for?
Alex Blumberg (00:16:19):
Sort of, yeah. And I think even, but it doesn't even... When you say push for change, sometimes that sounds like advocacy, and it doesn't even mean that you have to go and start writing letters. I don't know. I hate doing that. It makes me nervous. I'm not very good at it, whatever. I'm not a big activist, I don't think of myself that way. But I have skill skills and talents and I want to figure out where I can bring those skills and talents to bear where they'll have the biggest impact. And everybody's that way. Everybody has the things that they can do that they're good at. And if you're a lawyer, there's like certain things, you can go to public utility commission meetings and sort of follow along the fine print and figure out what happens here. Because there's just always ways to bring your own talents to bear in a much more effective and much more highly leveraged way.
Cody Simms (00:17:10):
You all did an episode, I think it was on your second birthday, where you recounted or you played back stories of your listeners and things that they had gone and done.
Alex Blumberg (00:17:20):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:17:21):
And I'm curious if any of those, to just put your memory on the spot, but if any of those jumped to mind that you found to be like, "Oh, wow, I can't believe someone went out and did this after listening to our little podcast."
Alex Blumberg (00:17:32):
Well, yeah. I remember there was a couple that I remember. There was one, a woman who'd started a sort of a store. There was a guy who'd gotten on the local cooperative, who'd gotten on, I think the board of his local electric utility cooperative. And then there was a student group that had gone to all these, the relevant meetings and pushed back against the proposed pipeline along the Pacific Coast Highway. And I was inspired by all of them. Because I think that was the other thing that became pretty clear, and it was a thing that became sort of a thing we hammered a lot, which is, there's always a room where a lot of stuff is happening, and it's a room you can get into, you just don't know about it and it sounds pretty boring, but if you show up at that room where certain decisions are being made, you can have so much more impact than if you're just posting on Facebook or just worrying about it privately or... You have all this energy, go to the right room.
Cody Simms (00:18:45):
I appreciate the Hamilton reference.
Alex Blumberg (00:18:47):
Exactly.
Cody Simms (00:18:48):
Just so you know.
Alex Blumberg (00:18:48):
But the room where it happens, it's not like you have to get a personal invite from the president, it's just the public utility commission meeting or whatever. I mean, you can show up there and you have a much bigger... Your voice is much more amplified there.
Cody Simms (00:19:00):
Your co-host from the pod, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, I've seen that she published this Venn diagram that I presumed you're familiar with about your climate action, "What brings you joy, what are you good at, and what work needs doing?" And your climate action is in the middle of that. Maybe you want to unpack that a little bit more for us and just explain how you all thought about that in terms of the types of conversations you would host.
Alex Blumberg (00:19:25):
Well, this is an idea that came to Ayana basically, because she's a very public figure and she's out there giving talks, TED Talks, et cetera. And people would always ask her, "What can I do? If there's one thing that I could do to help, what would it be?" And Ayana's point was like, "Well, there's not one thing that we could all do, if there were, that would be simple. But there's so much that needs to be done."
Cody Simms (00:19:53):
No, whole, "There's no silver bullet in climate change." I think all of us have certainly learned that.
Alex Blumberg (00:19:58):
There's no silver bullet, but the flip side of that is that we can all be, all of us can be making really meaningful contributions to changing it. And so I think she came up with this Venn diagram to talk to people about, not, "What's the one thing I can do?" We can always whatever, write a letter to our congressperson or go to a march or whatever. And those are always good things to do. But "What are you personally really good at? What do you love doing? And then what is a thing that needs to be done?" And there's so much that needs to be done. Public opinion has to be shifted, sure. But also we need to be converting our grid from fossil fuel to renewables as quickly as possible. And the barriers to converting the grid from fossil to renewables are myriad and all over the place and different in each and every single city in town across America. And so you can be involved in that on so many different levels. And so go to your public utility commission meeting and try to get involved there.
(00:21:15):
The private sector has a huge role to play in this transition, find a business that needs to be done that would actually be part of this transition and try to start that. So I think depending on who you are, the answer is very different. And so she started this climate Venn diagram to help individuals answer the question for themselves. And I mean, I think it's very similar to what is happening at MCJ and the MCJ community. It's just all these people like, "I want to help, how do I do it?" And a bunch of people come into this community and they meet people and they're like, "Oh, you're doing that? I could help with that." And that's an amazing thing. Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:21:54):
Yeah, it's learning how to leverage your own skills and interests with a climate lens. Right?
Alex Blumberg (00:21:59):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:22:00):
I mean, I was thinking about the Venn diagram from myself. It's like "What brings you joy?" I love learning about new innovation, I love learning about how technology can change things in the world. "What are you good at?" I've been working with startups now for a couple decades. I feel like I'm pretty good at helping startups and, "What work needs doing?" These startups need resources, they need support, they need help, they need capital, they need talent, they need exposure. These are things I know how to lean into, and that's my Venn diagram.
Alex Blumberg (00:22:28):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:22:29):
And I feel like you went through a similar sort of exploration of that when you decided to leverage your experience in media and podcasting to cover the topic of climate change with the pod yourself. Have you laid out the Venn diagram for yourself in that regard?
Alex Blumberg (00:22:44):
Oh yeah. I mean, I was very squarely. I mean, what am I good at? Nothing but making podcasts. That's literally my one skill. What do I love doing? Thank God I love making podcasts. And what needs doing? Is hopefully, our theory was that what we needed was like was a podcast with a slightly different message that would sort of make it easier for people to take action. So that was the theory. And yeah, I didn't know about Ayana's Venn diagram when I came up with the idea of the podcast, but once I ran it out myself, I was like, that's exactly what I've done.
Cody Simms (00:23:22):
We're going to take a short break right now so our partner Yin can share more about the MCJ membership option.
Yin Lu (00:23:29):
Hey folks, Yin here, our partner at MCJ Collective. Want to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have since then grown to 2000 members globally. Each week we're inspired by people who join with differing backgrounds and perspectives. And while those perspectives are different, what we all share in common is a deep curiosity to learn and bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change.
(00:23:58):
Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, nonprofits have been established, a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made, as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly Women in Climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more. So whether you've been in climate for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and then click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (00:24:30):
All right, back to the show. Well, let's go into the wayback machine and figure out how you got there. So you were early in podcasting. I think that's another sort of secret part of your story that doesn't get enough attention, which is not only have you been successful in it, you were one of the pioneers of the medium and actually created your platform somewhat yourself, because you jumped in early to the medium. So maybe start there. Back when you were engaging with NPR, what about podcasting jumped out to you as a thing that, "Oh wow, this is an opportunity that we should be pursuing?"
Alex Blumberg (00:25:14):
Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, think to start there, I think I have to start a little earlier, which is when I got my start working at a show called This American Life back in the late 90s, which was a radio show. And it was a very unusual radio show in that it was appointment listening. It was like there wasn't just... Most terrestrial radio at the time, it was just like sports reader or whatever. It was, whatever was on the drive. You tuned on, you listened, and then you got to your destination, you stopped listening. This American Life was slightly different. It relied on people because it came out at different times in the weekend. And so it relied on people knowing their individual station and actually tuning in when it was on. And therefore it relied on being really good. That was the only way that people were going to listen, is it was an appointment listening sort of experience where that didn't really exist in radio.
(00:25:57):
And so I learned how to make that kind of radio, that kind of radio that was just like, we tried to make it as engaging as possible. And there's all these tricks that you learn about how to move a story along, how to hook people, all these narrative tricks. And I just went... It was basically narrative bootcamp. Working in Ira Glass, the host of This American Life is I think one of the few people that I've ever encountered that I think is a true genius, a visionary. He sort of invented that show and launched a thousand thousand chips, and so ours was one of them. So I'd been working there for a long time and that that's where I first came across the idea of looking at the housing market. It was my colleague at This American Life who bought a house that got me involved and sort of started on that whole journey.
(00:26:50):
And so we did this big hour long thing on This American Life called the Giant Pool of Money. And I did it with my friend who was a economics correspondent for NPR, Adam Davidson. And it was this big, it was an hour, but if you actually looked under the hood, it was an hour on mortgage finance because that's what we did. We told the story of this crazy system, but we made it... We'd used every single narrative trick in the book that we had, we had engaging characters, we told great stories. And it was a huge hit. And then based on that, Adam and I basically got the idea to... It was mostly Adam's idea, frankly. I was like, "I don't think people want to hear more about that." But he was like, "No, no, no, they do." So he convinced me to come and start Planet Money with him.
(00:27:34):
And so Planet Money was sort of the first foray into taking This American Life narrative approach and applying it to a subject area. So we started a podcast inside NPR called Planet Money, and it was all about business and finance and economics, but we tried to use the same tricks that we used at This American life, which was trying to talk in narrative, having characters, trying to bring humor, just using all the tricks of engagement that we used for our stories about dysfunctional families or falling in love or whatever we were talking about at This American Life.
(00:28:13):
And that coincided, I'm not sure if it was because of our skill at doing that, or the fact that the world blew up and all of a sudden every single person in the world wanted to know about business and economics. I think was more the latter than the former. But anyway, we had very lucky timing and the financial system nearly collapsed, we nearly got plunged back into the next great depression. We were on the air every day. And so it was a very good timing, and that's how sort of Planet Money got launched, but even after the financial crisis has subsided, things went back to normal.
(00:28:48):
There was still a pretty big appetite for this kind of storytelling. So then by about... And we did a bunch of really cool projects. We did this project where we followed a t-shirt around the world as it got made and just told the story of your simple t-shirt, of just all the different countries, why is the yarn bung in, I think it was Malaysia, why is the fabric sewn in Columbia? It was just like, how did all this stuff happen? And we met all the people who were participating and making that and told their stories as well. So we did a bunch of really cool projects there, and it became clear that, "Okay, this works. And so we should just keep doing this. "We did the narrative show about business to money. Let's do the narrative show about technology. Let's do the narrative show about cars. Let's do the narrative show about... Obviously we should just repeat this trick.
(00:29:44):
So I tried to get everybody in inside NPR to do it, and it was just hard in within an institution, and I tried to get other people to do it, I tried to be like, "Yeah, you guys should raise some money and launch some other shows like Planet Money." And it was just hard. There's just a bunch of institutional bureaucratic reasons that are all born to get into that make that hard. So then I was just like, "Well, I guess, maybe I'll just do it myself. How hard could it be to raise money and start a company?" And I was so naive, but that was what I did. I don't know if I knew now, if I had a gut level, even it's worked out more perfectly and beautifully than I could ever have imagined. But if I had the gut understanding of how hard it is, I don't know. It's [inaudible 00:30:33]
Cody Simms (00:30:32):
I'm pretty sure that is what every founder says always, ever.
Alex Blumberg (00:30:35):
Yeah. Exactly. You have no idea. Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:30:39):
You certainly don't remember this, I would imagine. But we're going to get into, then you started a company called Gimlet Media.
Alex Blumberg (00:30:45):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:30:45):
And you created a podcast called Startup, which I mean, it reminds me... I mean, we're just at this tiny little thing, but it does remind me of how Jason first started MCJ, which is learning in public, right?
Alex Blumberg (00:31:00):
Yes.
Cody Simms (00:31:00):
I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm going to be totally transparent with the world about what I'm doing. And that was startup podcast. And what I was about to say is, you probably don't remember this, but as you were building Gimlet Media, and I definitely want to talk about Startup Podcast in your experience there, and you were one of the first people who exposed me to Chris Sacca, who's now one of the biggest climate investors out there, because he was on your show early on and all this. We'll talk about that. But I actually had reached out to you when I was at Techstars running Disney's Accelerator program to ask if Gimlet Media would want to participate in that. So you and I had this history 10 years ago when you were this budding entrepreneur yourself, which is kind of funny. You declined me of course. But anyway-
Alex Blumberg (00:31:46):
I'm sorry.
Cody Simms (00:31:46):
Okay.
Alex Blumberg (00:31:46):
That's so funny, I was talking to people, there's so much... I remember these formative moments in one's career. I remember almost every day when I first started working at This American Life, it was such a big turning point in my career. I wasn't really doing much. This felt like the thing, I'd finally discovered the thing, I was soaking everything up. It was just like I was just, all my senses were open. And I just remember so much about that time, those two or three years early on. And then Gimlet, I don't remember hardly anything. It just feels like it was just yesterday. I'm like, how did all this time... It was almost 10 years ago, but I think it was because you're so stressed and you're not forming memories as much. You know what I mean?
Cody Simms (00:32:33):
So was Gimlet a... I mean, given the whole learning and public journey and startup podcast, things were unraveling as not unraveling, unspooling as you went.
Alex Blumberg (00:32:43):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:32:44):
It felt like a ready shoot, aim type of scenario from the outside that worked out incredibly well. Did it feel that way on the inside, or did you have a grand plan that you really were putting together and you were actually puppeteering it more than all of us watching, listening to the pod would recognize?
Alex Blumberg (00:33:04):
Oh, no, no. No, no. The podcast is a hundred percent, I mean, obviously I edited it and I selected stuff. And if anything, I probably, I favored the most bumbling moments because I had to make it clear that I was bumbling. And if I'd heard the whole thing, you would've been like, "This isn't that bad." But it wasn't good. You know what I mean? Everything was real. And it was-
Cody Simms (00:33:31):
Describe Startup Podcast for us. Just as-
Alex Blumberg (00:33:33):
Yeah, so I basically decided, "Okay, I'm going to start this company. Nobody else is going to do it. The opportunity is just sitting there. We should obviously do it." And so I knew Chris Sacca because I'd interviewed him for a story that we did on Patents for This American Life, sort of a Planet Money Patent, This American Life team up. And I'd interviewed Chris Sacca, and he was a big fan of This American life, and I knew he was a big... So I was like, "All right, well, I know that guy. He likes me. I probably know a couple other people with money. I'll just ask them for money and I'll just start this company." It was literally, I don't think it was that much more sophisticated than that. I just didn't really know. And then I was like, "And then I'll hire some people and we'll start making some podcasts."
(00:34:17):
And then I knew about the podcast market. I knew you needed a certain level of audience to support, get yourself through ads. And I felt like most of the podcasts that I'd made had well exceeded that level of audience. And I knew that there were third party ads sellers who were popping up, who were selling ads for podcasts. And so there was this evolving ecosystem in the podcasting to supply a business model basically for what I wanted to do. And so I knew that, and so I was just like, "Yeah, I just needed some money to hire some folks to start making the podcast, and then we're off to the races." But I was also leaving these two huge platforms with millions of listeners a week. And I didn't even have a Twitter account. I had no personal brand whatsoever.
(00:35:05):
So I was like, "Well, I have to do something to draw attention to myself." So I was like... This story of trying to start a company is actually pretty interesting when you look at it from the inside. And I was having all these feelings that I just had never heard anybody describe when talking about business formation and all these feelings of, "Is this going to work?" I couldn't sleep. I was all these conversations with my wife about what we were doing. And so I just decided to record all of those down to what do you wear to an investor meeting?
(00:35:36):
Even these things that probably most people don't think about. But I was like, "Wait." Literally, the first episode of the first Startup starts with me trying to decide which shoes to wear to my first investor meeting. And that was a real question. I was looking at my closet and I was like, "I don't know what shoes to wear." And then I was like, "I got to record. I'm sure I can't be the only person who's ever worried about how they're going to look showing up at their first investor meeting." So I just went and got my recorder, and then I went back and I was like, "What shoes do I wear?" And that became-
Cody Simms (00:36:09):
It's so real.
Alex Blumberg (00:36:10):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:36:11):
I mean, I attend a lot of startup events and this, that and the other. There's always someone there who is either way overdressed. There's not really such thing as way underdressed in startup land, but depending on the person you're meeting with, there could be, and-
Alex Blumberg (00:36:22):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:36:22):
...it's a real thing for sure.
Alex Blumberg (00:36:24):
No, and then when I first met Chris Sacca, I had this amazing suit that I bought for my wedding, which was my one suit, not a lot of suits in public radio. So I had this one very beautiful suit, and I was like, "I guess, I'm going to wear that. He's a billionaire, I guess that's what you wear. Don't they always wear suits? I don't know." So then I showed up in this beautiful Italian suit that I wore at my wedding and these super uncomfortable shoes, and he's wearing his cowboy shirts that he always wears that I didn't know it was the thing back then. Yeah, it was an ongoing question.
(00:37:03):
And then the self-doubt and no's and all that. So I just recorded everything. So I just brought my recorder around and I would record every single pitch that I made to every single investor, words and all. I would record them shooting me down, I would record sort of talking to my wife afterwards. And the feelings were all very real. And so in some ways, it became sort of a nice thing because I was like, "Well..." Because every time I got shot down, I was like, "Ah, this feels horrible, but at least it's going to be a good episode." The producer part of my brain was like, that's good tape.
Cody Simms (00:37:40):
Oh man. You laying it on the line for your audience there. So you ended up with a great outcome. I don't know if you expected you would have a mega acquisition as part of the company you were building, or if you were just trying to support yourself and be able to do what you loved and pay the bills?
Alex Blumberg (00:37:58):
Yeah, no, I mean, we ended, so we started the company eventually, Chris Sacca invested, other people invested. We raised a seed round, we got up and running, we launched some shows, they got traction. We grew and within five years we were at 160 people. We raised a couple rounds, we were bringing in a bunch of revenue, and we got acquired by Spotify in 2019 for a lot more money than I ever dreamed possible.
Cody Simms (00:38:28):
Just again, our focus today is on climate, not necessarily the podcasting space, but what did you learn as part of that journey about anything else that sort of changed your trajectory from a communications perspective, from talking about lots of different topics, engaging different audiences, perspective as you went?
Alex Blumberg (00:38:50):
Oh man. I mean, I learned so much Cody, I mean, I don't even know where to begin. I think mostly, I learned a lot about scaling and about how as organizations grow, it's almost a different... You need to be a bunch, you need to be different person almost with at each different phase of the company's growth. In the beginning, I thought I was a really good boss because I'd been the boss at Planet Money and people liked me and I liked them, and it was pretty. And mostly I was the editor and people trusted me because I generally made their stories better.
(00:39:36):
And it was fun. So it was very collaborative and it was much a team. I was like the team captain. I wasn't like the boss, but I thought I was the boss. But then as a CEO of a growing company, you can be that for 10 people, 20 people, but once you get past 20, people need more structure. And I'd always been sort of anti structure. I was like, who needs rules? Who needs... What do we got, an org chart? And then I woke up and I was like, "Holy shit, we need an org chart."
(00:40:10):
And I was just always behind how big we were and also how I looked and how the company looked from the outside. In the very beginning, people come into the office and it was this dusty crap hole with broken furniture. And it was a startup incubator in downtown Brooklyn that was basically looked like the attic of a used furniture store. It just all this old furniture everywhere. And we had a table at one of these places. And so you couldn't walk into that and not know that we were a startup. We had a studio that Matt built himself, my co-founder Matt, built himself with his bare hands. So it smelled of glue and adhesive and stuff. And then we raised another round and moved into a different building and then all of a sudden we look like, oh, we look like a real company. But in my mind, we're the same exact startup that we've always been, but we look different. And I just wasn't aware of that and how that sets an expectation that I as a leader have to deliver now to the staff that are coming on board. And-
Cody Simms (00:41:25):
And you got to the point where the staff was unionized. It was a full on management sort of function at a certain point.
Alex Blumberg (00:41:33):
Yeah. And we hired, we had a head of HR and stuff and we were trying to stay ahead of it. But for me, I think my big mistake was not realizing how careful I really should have been to try to make sure that as people came on board, there was a place for them, they understood what the mission was and we tried, and I think we did an okay job, but I found it sort of impossible to stay ahead of, and I didn't realize how important that was. I didn't realize how I can't get by with the same, "It's all cool dude." Mentality that I had, that's just, that doesn't cut it. And what people needed out of me was different than what I was delivering.
Cody Simms (00:42:29):
And I feel like one of the interesting parallels also to climate is, you presumably had a very impassioned workforce. People who were there realizing they had a platform, they had a mission, they had a reason for coming into work every day that was maybe bigger than themselves. And much like people who work in climate, again, kind of pulling, grabbing your own personal agency and doing something sort of bigger than yourself around it. You all had some challenges there as well. And there was some history with the Reply All Podcast and some backlash of the staff on various practices.
(00:43:06):
Anything you can share about that you feel sort of harnesses that sort of personal agency and personal empowerment feelings within a mission-driven organization that you think is applicable for people building climate companies to have thought through? Because I mean, the reason I ask that question is we've seen founders in climate tech companies also dealing with some of the, I think, similar issues to what I have at least read about with Reply All that I think is really important for mission-driven companies to understand when it comes to the employees that they work with.
Alex Blumberg (00:43:45):
Yeah, I mean, think it's a lot of things. I think there's an excitement that is hard to describe when you first join an organization and you're doing this work together and, "Holy shit, it's working." And that can be super intoxicating and that can paper over a lot of issues that are going to come up once that excitement fades, which it has to, you can't always just be that. At a certain point it's going to become the young staff that you hired are going to be burnt out from working out those late nights and meet somebody and want to start a family and all these things that... People grow up. And I remember that personally, when I first started working at This American Life, it was just like, I remember I was the administrative assistant and I came and I was really just wanted to be a producer.
(00:44:51):
I really wanted to work on a show. And then Ira gave me this opportunity to work on the show. It was, he wanted to do an episode about Harold Washington, who was the first black mayor of Chicago. And so I had this book that I was reading and I was calling all these, trying to book all these, and I'd done all this research, but he was so busy because it was just three of us at that point. And he was like, "I'm going to have some time over Christmas break. We're going to do a rerun over Christmas," So I can meet. I can't remember how it worked, but somehow the rerun went out on December 31st and late at night on December 31st. And then he was like, "Okay, I'm ready to work on this now with you. You want to just meet you here tomorrow at 08:00?"
(00:45:30):
And I was like, "Yeah, absolutely." And so I got off the train in downtown Chicago on January 1st at 08:00 in the morning and I was thrilled. And that was thrilling to me, and that was one of my happiest moments. But if I had done that three years later, I would've been like, "Fuck no, I don't want to work on January. For what? Are you crazy?" And so understanding that that's a thing that happens. And I understood that, of course, intellectually, but I think you just have to replace that with something else. And that something else, it's not just buying... You still have to maintain the mission, but I think the mission, I think, and this is a theory, I don't know. If I started another company which years ago, I would've told you, two years ago I would've been like, "There's no way."
(00:46:26):
But now I'm like, "Well, maybe. I learned a lot. I should probably do it." But I don't exactly know how you maintain that feeling. But I think it has a lot more to do with just being more intentional about, "Here's what we're doing, here's the deal that we have. We get to work on this thing." Being much more intentional about reminding people why they're doing it. That's the other thing, when you're small, you don't need to remind people, you're all in the same room. They can see it, they can feel it. As you get big, you need to remind people, this is what our mission is. Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:47:00):
Alex, I feel like your next podcast instead of being Startup Podcast should be Scale Up Podcast, where you talk about all the issues you run into as you grow, right?
Alex Blumberg (00:47:11):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:47:11):
The challenges, you're too busy to do it at that point probably, but it really is a different sport, I think. And I've seen this, as I mentioned in particular in climate, there's such a mission orientation to the people who are working in this space that it's not just personal motivation, it's also personal plus mission motivation. And those two things can come to loggerheads sometimes. And I've seen it be challenging for founders who are trying to steer a company through that.
Alex Blumberg (00:47:45):
Yeah. I think the way it can come up maybe in climate, and I can imagine this happening, is your staff is probably going to care more than your customers, probably. Because your customers haven't changed everything to go work for a climate startup. They're your customers, whatever they are. And so this is the thing about messaging that I'm always thinking about a lot lately, is that the thing that your staff might feel is the most important and the thing that put forward, which is the climate aspect of something, maybe it might not be the thing that you want to show your customers, or maybe it's like, in fact, sometimes mentioning climate hurts your business or hurts what you're doing, hurts the actual solution more than it helps. We did a episode about this on How to Save a Planet, where this guy had this amazing startup that he'd started where he was, he and a partner, basically they learned that all this old refrigerant, all this old Freon was sitting in canisters, the canister was going to rust, all the Freon was going to evaporate.
(00:48:55):
And it's like this super potent greenhouse cast like hundreds to maybe a thousand times more potent than CO2. So he was just like, "If we could just find all this old refrigerant that's just like moldering in people's garages and warehouses and stuff and dispose of it properly, we'll be doing a huge climate benefit." But if he told people that he was collecting their... And he would buy it, he would buy it and he'd get paid in sort of carbon credits. So he'd buy canisters from people, but if he told them he was buying it for the climate, they wouldn't sell it to him. He just had to be like, "Yeah, we just have a business where we reuse your old..." I don't remember what word he used because he didn't lie, but he wasn't saying, "I buy it and just burn it because it's good for the environment." That's not what he was saying.
Cody Simms (00:49:40):
Was it political pushback, he was getting? Certain people who, depending on their political beliefs, didn't want to support a climate cause or what was the...?a I'm curious what the rationale there was.
Alex Blumberg (00:49:51):
I think the rationale is some people just thought it was a hoax and just didn't want to do business with somebody that they thought was destroying America by propagating a dangerous hoax that was going to destroy our way of life. Some people just, it's not their thing. And they had this stuff and they want to see it... In their minds, I think partly it's like it feels wasteful, I think to them.
Cody Simms (00:50:19):
Yeah.
Alex Blumberg (00:50:20):
They want to see it reused. Yeah.
Cody Simms (00:50:22):
I mean, I think the sort of message to startups that sometimes on the personal mission, which your mission might be climate, that's not necessarily your customer's mission. You might have an ally inside the customer who cares about that, but at the end of the day, the customer has to make a business decision. A number of startups I've interviewed on this pod have said something similar, which is like if they're selling home electrification, they don't sell climate change, they sell comfort. And figuring out that not... And this is actually a chapter in a startup book that I co-wrote with a few folks. One of the topics in the chapter is, "What are your customers buying? Not what are you selling?" Right? And those two things are different, sometimes-
Alex Blumberg (00:51:07):
Very different.
Cody Simms (00:51:09):
I think interesting that you're identifying that from also an employee motivation perspective. And just as an employee, how are you not just selling your mission, not necessarily selling what's driving you, but selling what your customer needs to be buying. Anyway-
Alex Blumberg (00:51:24):
Yeah. And not emphasizing that can seem like a cop out.
Cody Simms (00:51:27):
Yeah, for sure.
Alex Blumberg (00:51:28):
It can seem not trying to sell the thing that feels important can feel like a cop out. And who cares if it actually gets bought or not.
Cody Simms (00:51:39):
So now, trying to tie a lot of this together, you've done all this reporting on follow the money and the changing financial system. You've spent a few years now going deep into climate change and these two things are coming together in real time right now in very big political debate around the topic of ESG. And I am super interested to hear your thoughts on the ESG sort of backlash in the financial world as it relates to political orientation and whatnot. And we just saw Vanguard just pull out of a large scale ESG pack as an example. How do you see that sort of playing out over the next few years?
Alex Blumberg (00:52:26):
I don't know very many of the details, and I don't know, I'm not an expert on ESG regulations, I don't know what they are. So my broad hundred yard view of it is that, anytime there's a precise... I don't know, sitting in business and economics first as long as I did, you definitely come away with an appreciation of how hard it is to pass an effective rule. Because so much of what we studied were the unintended negative consequences of people who thought they were doing a good thing. And so I have a lot, I'm much more a very liberal person, probably politically I was raised very liberal. And I think most liberals don't see the problem with regulation. They think it's great, the government's protecting us. And because I studied this so much, I feel like, "Oh yeah, there's like ways where it can go really wrong and it can actually cause a lot of harms. And those harms are hard to see because they're masked. And the people who are now in favor of the regulation know how to gain the system."
Cody Simms (00:53:33):
An exam example of that, we just had a pod episode, I think last week it aired, won't have been last week when this pod airs, but recently aired with a company called Forum Mobility. And they're grappling with trucks at ports that California's passing regulation that says these trucks have to become electrified in zero emission vehicles, which all of us in the climate world are like, "Yay, that that's awesome. That's great." And yet the reality is, most of those companies are owned by small businesses who own one or two trucks who are now going to have to make multi hundred thousand dollars investments in upgrading their trucks. And you can see the political lines being drawn in real time with that, and the alienation that likely will happen if there isn't further support to help those truckers, those truck companies make that leap themselves.
Alex Blumberg (00:54:25):
Yeah. So I think that's a really... Yeah, exactly. And I think if you look at any... So much of the way things are, and if you look at something where you're just like, "Why is that happening?" A lot of times there's some sort of weird rule or law or regulation or something that is creating a weird situation. So I've always been... Broadly, I think it seems to me that broadly the corporate, leaving aside the fossil fuel companies who created a problem and knew that there was a problem and lied about it and funded disinformation, et cetera.
(00:55:06):
Just leaving aside that, but broadly right now, a lot of the action that seems to be taking place to actually address the climate crisis, it seems like a lot of it is coming from the corporate world. In terms of just even solar that gets developed, a lot of the solar, big, huge solar developments, they need a power purchase agreement to get the financing necessary to build the project, the power purchasing agreement often comes from a big corporate who has certain ESG goals or certain decarbonization goals or net zero goals that they're trying to meet in a real way. And so they're buying the solar, they're creating the solar, and that's a real thing.
(00:55:41):
So I think and on and on, I think there's many... We know that the direct air capture, carbon capture market is being driven in large part by a couple of big committed tech companies that are trying to be the buyers. So all that is great. And I think even on Wall Street, I think you see certain board shareholder activists sort of actions taking place, like at Exxon, we did a big episode about this, where basically there was a big action on the part of the shareholders of Exxon to redo their board to make it more forward looking.
(00:56:17):
And I think that all that stuff has real power. I think a lot of companies can just be like, "Oh yeah, we're ESG, and I think probably plenty of that that's just BS or not that helpful or doesn't really do much. So I don't know, I think it doesn't really... You can't force... I think you can design good policy that will sort of force companies to take certain actions in their best interests. You can't force them to care. So if they can take an action that's in their best interest and it is actually in line with the goals of the policy of the planet, that's great.
(00:56:59):
But they're either going to care or not care. And hopefully Vanguard cares, and in this particular place, they're not going to choose this battle. I'm all for picking the battles you can win and not dying on every hill. So if they are like, "Okay, this state, whatever, we'll just leave it as is and we'll lift to fight another day, but we're going to keep on doing other things." If they're doing that, that's great. And I think that flexibility is important. So I don't know, I think it's really hard to craft good legislation.
Cody Simms (00:57:26):
So what's next for Alex? Is there a story that is burning in you that you want to go dig into? Is there a company you want to go build? Are you in learn and explore mode? Is climate going to be part of what you do next? Help us. What's the roadmap look like right now?
Alex Blumberg (00:57:47):
Yeah, we got acquired by Spotify. I was inside Spotify now sort of working at Gimlet inside Spotify for the last couple of years. And I just recently left. And so I've basically been, for the first time in my life, for the first time in, I don't know, 20 something years, I'm not on a daily making a podcast schedule. I don't have a calendar that's filled with meetings every day. So that's been like, that's now six weeks old, that new phase of my life. And so I'm still exploring that. But my theory about how I can be useful now is, unlike when I started my last company and now because of the sale, I have some capital. And so I'm thinking that I learned a lot starting a company and it's really hard one knowledge that it's very hard to acquire. It's really rare. People don't have that experience very often.
(00:58:53):
And it seems like you can do a lot of good if you do it right. And so maybe, I'm thinking that I might want to try to put at least some of those lessons to work. I know so much now that I didn't know the first time and it seems like a shame to waste all that knowledge. So I've been thinking, but mostly what I'm doing is, I'm sort of doing some angel investing, just being part of every community that I can be a part of. There's this community, and there's obviously MCJ, but there's this community in New York called the Distributed Energy Resources Task Force, which is a big, it's like you guys have got a big Slack channel.
(00:59:40):
I'm part of that, I go to the meetups, I go to all the different events and forums and panels and stuff that I can go to. I meet as many people as possible. And I'm just trying to be helpful. I've been working, I've been advising startups in all sorts of spaces and making small angel investments different places, and I'm looking around to see how I can be most useful. And if that means maybe at some point starting a company, maybe that will be it. Maybe it can just be advising, but I definitely want to bring whatever I have to offer to this transition my next... The next many years of my life are going to be part that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Interesting. So thinking of your prior Venn diagram, it was, "I know podcasting, I know how to make podcasting. That's my one skill." And what I'm hearing you say now is actually you've developed a whole new set of skills around entrepreneurship and company building, and maybe that's the future of your Venn diagram and it's not even media in the future. Maybe you go into building a solution perhaps, is what I'm hearing you potentially explore.
Alex Blumberg (01:00:51):
Yeah. I think what I do have is an understanding of narrative. And what I'm been finding is that understanding of narrative does actually have more application outside of podcasting than I thought. But I've helped people with their pitch decks, I've helped people with their marketing materials, I've helped people... And it feels very similar. Whatever the tools that I developed editing podcasts, feel like they're sort of the same neurons are firing when I'm doing all that stuff. And then yeah, I have this other sort of skillset set now, which is sort of like, I know what it's like to launch and build and scale a company. And I know how all, a lot of the mistakes you can make and I know sort of like... So I feel like I could be maybe useful there too.
Cody Simms (01:01:40):
Well, Alex, I can't wait to see how that Venn diagram plays out for you in the coming years ahead, though. Hopefully you are amply enjoying your lack of scheduled calendar and inbox in at least, in the near term.
Alex Blumberg (01:01:52):
Yeah.
Cody Simms (01:01:53):
I can't thank you enough for joining us today on My Climate Journey, and it's been awesome hearing your own climate journey as part of it.
Alex Blumberg (01:02:00):
Thanks, Cody. It's great to be here. It was really fun.
Jason Jacobs (01:02:04):
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey Podcast.
Cody Simms (01:02:07):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. To do this, we focus on three main pillars, content like this podcast and our weekly newsletter, capital to fund companies that are working to address climate change and our member community to bring people together as Yin described earlier.
Jason Jacobs (01:02:30):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at www.mcjcollective.com. And if you have guest suggestions, feel free to let us know on Twitter at MCJ Pod.
Cody Simms (01:02:44):
Thanks and see you next episode.
