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Join host Paul Shapiro as he talks with some of the leading start-up entrepreneurs and titans of industry alike using their businesses to help solve the world’s most pressing problems.

Dec 15, 2019

Plastic is amazing at doing so many things—except going away. As the planet increasingly swims in humanity’s plastic garbage (nearly none of which gets recycled and virtually all of which will last for centuries), Lori Goff is betting that biotech will be part of the solution to creating functional plastic...


Dec 1, 2019

In the 29 previous episodes of this show you’ve heard about pork without pigs, milk without cows, diamonds without mining, and even wood without trees. Well, on this 30th episode, we’re exploring the brave new world of coffee without the bean.

Turns out that there’s a lot of deforestation for coffee growing, and...


Nov 15, 2019

What do  you get when you combine a Google leader, a dairy industry executive, and an engineer? Apparently, if you’re in Singapore, you get a new startup producing real cow’s milk-- without the cow: TurtleTree Labs.

Rather than trying to turn plants into milky beverages like many alt-dairy companies are, and rather...


Nov 1, 2019

You’ve heard the folklore time and again: a group of young idealists starts a company in their garage with dreams of one day changing the world. In the case of Fenix International, they too started in a garage, but this garage happened to be in Uganda, and those idealists happened to be a group of ex-Apple engineers.


Oct 15, 2019

You know the story: there’s a bright college student who drops out of an Ivy League school to embark upon an entrepreneurial journey, founding his own company and building it into a major success along the way. No, we’re not talking about Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates here. 

Instead, we’re talking about Tom Szaky,...