54. Money, Molecules, and Mind-Benders: Seth Yakatan Returns, Nuff Said

[00:00:00] Karl: What's going on around?

[00:00:01] Erum: I say this all the time, but what an amazing time we are experiencing here at grow everything and at messaging lab. We've come up on a year of the podcast, a few years working together and we've been learning a lot, meeting a lot of people.

[00:00:15] Karl: Yeah. So this episode is going to be a little bit different because what we're going to do is we're going to reflect on the past year, and some of the things that we've learned, I want to just make a mention,

[00:00:24] Karl: we've written a long blog post, about a year of podcasting, which we're going to probably put on LinkedIn and the website. But interestingly, and this has been something that you and I have not exactly been a hundred percent in agreement on is what the podcast has accomplished for us.

[00:00:40] Karl: And last night we were at an event and we sat across from someone and tell me, what did they say to you?

[00:00:45] Erum: They were like, Wait, are you Carl and Iran from grow everything? I'm like, yeah, she's like, oh, I could tell by your voice. and she was just like, Oh, You guys are people that I've been listening to and here you are right in front of me. that was really cool I was like, Oh, how did you find out about us? And she's like, I just searched sin bio podcast on, forget what she was searching on Spotify. And she was like, you guys came up and.

[00:01:11] Erum: I was like, Oh, well, what prompted you is just kind of telling us about her career path. And, she, came from the sciences, works in advertising now, but wanted to freshen up on her, knowledge of what's going on in industry, because she came from deep science.

[00:01:24] Erum: She's working in advertising, but she knows that there's a lot going on in the market. And we do present all the startups and companies and investors perspectives. And it's been really helpful for her. also she was saying that her husband is a meat eater and she wanted to give him a perspective of alternative proteins.

[00:01:41] Erum: So she recommended some of our podcast episodes with, or billion, for example, they do cultivated meat. I think she also did better meat cos, mycoproteins. We have a episode on that. So it's great to hear that feedback live over dinner. And I was like, wow, this is really cool.

[00:01:57] Karl: Yeah, and it's kind of funny.

[00:01:59] Karl: First of all, we live in New York city, which is its own bubble in Brooklyn, which is even it's more bubble. And then we work in this bubble of the biotech industry. but over the course of the year, we have run into people, not huge numbers, but people who have complimented us on the podcast or have listened to the podcast, or for example, I met a guy

[00:02:19] Karl: I had gotten off the ferry at governor's Island and started talking and he's like, Oh, you're Carl. You host this podcast. So it's kind of cool, that people are listening where we really appreciate you, the listeners. We appreciate the feedback we get.

[00:02:33] Karl: And it's just this random thing that I didn't really expect. To have ever happened really based on this podcast. It is about this, growing, very important industry.

[00:02:43] Erum: yeah. And the voice, being recognized by your voice. I was like, Oh, crazy. Yeah, that is pretty crazy. I think it's a combination of a bunch of things.

[00:02:51] Erum: I think we also mentioned, have a podcast and then she put all the things together and was like, I know you guys,

[00:02:58] Karl: right? So we've been doing it for a little bit more than a year now. And I feel like we've learned a lot about podcasting. We've learned even more about biotech, but let's talk about podcasting for a minute.

[00:03:12] Karl: What would you say your biggest lesson is about podcasting? podcasting,

[00:03:17] Erum: there are a few, I would say the biggest, that, we both agree on is it's a lot of work. and it's a lot of work cause you have to be consistent about having a podcast, people tune in just like, watching a television series.

[00:03:30] Erum: I know binge watching is the thing now, but people come to expect a podcast at a certain time. So being consistent on when you're posting, your frequency. and since we produce this podcast weekly, it's always going on, So, I think that's kind of biggest thing. I know that a lot of people that I met like, oh, we're starting a podcast Actually, people that I met before we even started this podcast, we're starting podcasts and I'm like, okay, well, you know, they're doing it and I think it might be a good medium for us. And it was on your mind I noticed that some of my friends that didn't pursue it or just dropped off, their own podcasting journey so that they weren't doing it consistently.

[00:04:05] Erum: It is a lot of work. They had other things coming up that took priority, but we had a very specific. Reason to start this podcast. We wanted to share the conversations we're having with people in the industry. So that keep us really going. Cause we have a really clear North star and we're just committed to it.

[00:04:21] Erum: So we don't waver from never posting an episode. So just the hard work. yes, it's there, but we are very happy to do it because we're very passionate about

[00:04:30] Karl: it. Yeah. and I would say, thank you, Iram. Because you're the one who was the champion for consistency, and I've often been like, well, we could just skip a week or we don't have anybody.

[00:04:42] Karl: Let's just, not post this week, but from the beginning, you're like the algorithm wants us to post regularly. We must post regularly. I, commend you for being the consistency champion. and, that translates into the way that we record our commentary.

[00:04:57] Karl: It's every Tuesday for those who listen. and we have two days a month where we're looking at and. reviewing who we might interview. and we've really created a very consistent schedule that we stick to, to make sure that we do publish every week on Fridays. So it is a lot of work. I mean, look, that's the reason why people are like, Oh yeah, let's start a podcast.

[00:05:20] Karl: Cause it sounds really interesting. All you have to do is hit record, but they don't realize the amount of work that goes on in the background, especially when you're bringing in that third person. for the interview and you want to have a good conversation with them. So I would say that for me, the biggest lessons are, yeah, the amount of work it is, and also.

[00:05:38] Karl: being very consistent, but then the other question is, what do you feel like we've really learned about biotech in the past year?

[00:05:46] Erum: So much, there's been so much that we've learned and continue to learn and share with people that we meet on a regular basis, which that we share with people on this podcast, because that's the reason we have this podcast, but I'd like to ground learnings in an example, and for me, I want to talk about the concept of terraformation because I had an idea years ago, before I met you, Carl, or really dug deep into the biotech space, and it was very simple, something that I talked to with a few people the idea was, okay, sea level's rising.

[00:06:22] Erum: How do we reduce the sea level rise? jokingly, my friend, Daniel Bennett, he was like, oh yeah, let's just, dig a canal through the Sahara and I was like, what, that's so funny. And it stuck with me. This conversation was 10 years ago and I'm like, I didn't really think much about it.

[00:06:35] Erum: And I was like, okay, that's really funny until I. Started working with you, Carl, and talking to all the people we've had on this podcast and understanding how biology is core to terraformation. and there's so much to spin off from this concept. And so much complexity that people that we met would help check off a box of understanding how to terraform.

[00:06:58] Erum: I think the first thing, that came to my purview was when we went to buy a fabricate and that was like second week that joined you, Carl, like a year ago and to buy a fabricate, which is a year

[00:07:09] Karl: and a half.

[00:07:10] Erum: A year and a half, and Suzanne Lee runs that Biofabricate. We have an episode with her.

[00:07:14] Erum: Definitely check it out. But there was someone on the Biofabricate stage that was talking about going to Mars and what that meant they were going to shoot rockets that just had a foldable tent that was lined with algae. That would unfold soon as it landed on Mars and like the algae would help create an environment within this, inflatable tent would unfold.

[00:07:37] Erum: And then that way, when people got there, it would be a community already set up there. And I'm like, that's interesting. But That exploration also led to very practical, materials or products that they were going to make here on earth and I just like the whole concept was very fascinating, but there were a lot more.

[00:07:54] Erum: so I think what we learned and biotech grounding it and this idea. I think it's really helpful. And, I talk about it a lot. sometimes we just want to riff, which we do a lot on this podcast. And when we riff on ideas, I think that's the idea of chair formation is one that we riff on a lot.

[00:08:08] Erum: What about you?

[00:08:09] Karl: Yeah, I think the podcast and the people that we speak to, just continue to reinforce. And I've never doubted it, the complexity of biology, not only complexity of biology, but really the complexity of the biosphere, the planet that we live on, like how complex it is and that complexity translates to, how complex a forest is to how complex the human body is.

[00:08:32] Karl: To how complex a single microbe is each of these incredibly complex systems

[00:08:37] Erum: there's complexity but then there's diversity. There's so much out there Yeah, and that's what I Learned more when we were speaking with cultivarium.

[00:08:46] Erum: So we had nearly from cultivarium here on the podcast and cultivarium, their whole mission is to domesticate non model organisms. So, we talk about a lot in this podcast cause there's like five workhorses to create biomolecules and it's usually like E. coli or yeast, we know yeast makes, alcohol and a bunch of other products, but there's a lot of.

[00:09:07] Erum: Microbes and other multicellular organisms that make all sorts of interesting molecules naturally. And how do you harness that? I think what cultivarium is doing is so fascinating. What exists out there is so fascinating. we don't talk about it enough.

[00:09:23] Karl: Yeah.

[00:09:23] Karl: That's another thing is like, not only is there this incredible complexity, associated with biology and the planet, but. There is this incredible diversity, biodiversity, and unfortunately, that biodiversity is being diminished. I mean, we are living through this Anthracene and when something is gone, it's gone and we don't even know how many microorganisms, we're killing off permanently.

[00:09:45] Karl: I mean, I remember our conversation with Stephanie Culler of Persephone. Which is a microbiome company. And she said something like half of all kids born today are missing essential microbes in their guts. to me, that was terrifying because if you're missing essential bacteria in your gut, it sets you up for all sorts of problems.

[00:10:03] Karl: And we still don't even really understand how complex the gut is. And even though I'm talking about complexity, and I'm fascinated by it, I also think that. we're getting so much smarter about being able to engineer biology and do interesting things with it and discover things weren't possible that I'm just constantly in awe of, the people that we interview and the things that we see around us and the things that are being, discovered and talked about every day.

[00:10:28] Karl: Yeah,

[00:10:28] Erum: the whole missing microbes, we brought that up with Aaron Schacht of Biomedit and he was like, That's interesting, but I wonder what new microbes were introduced or how the microbes that remain fill in the gaps of the missing microbes. So it's really interesting to hear that perspective too.

[00:10:46] Erum: I mean, and he's living this and breathing this every day is like, okay, there's missing microbes. And yes, the rate at which they're missing is I'm sure astonishing. And there's some type of fallout from it. What are the new microbes, which microbes came on the scene, like the past 20, 100 years since, humans been doing stuff, breaking things, like which microbes are like, all right, damn humans.

[00:11:07] Erum: Like I'll just evolve to do this now.

[00:11:10] Karl: you mentioned this, you didn't mention it on the podcast, but you mentioned it in conversation. or maybe you did mention in the podcast, this idea of going to Mars, the rocket is the easy part, that made me think, the sci fi series, The Expanse, where, humans have basically colonized Mars and then also the asteroid belt.

[00:11:27] Karl: But that kind of colonization requires a lot of microbes to be taken with us for us to stay healthy. We have these microbes that live and in our bodies. We interact with them all the time. so, creating these sterile environments. which we do in labs and really high security labs, you have to have these sterile environments do the work, but You can't live in a sterile environment.

[00:11:48] Karl: it needs to be dirty. It needs to have microbes, and those are necessary to keep us, healthy. so much of what we talk about with people here is about engineering microbes or working with plants and mycelium and fungi. But, like said with cultivarium, discovering these microbes that are out there that, haven't been used, or, haven't been leveraged to do anything like that.

[00:12:08] Karl: Super interesting too.

[00:12:09] Erum: Yeah. Cause they do so many things. They're just so many things like, even talking about again, going outer space, but this could also just be here on earth, but you we like to use. Space because it has certain parameters around it. So it forces us to think in a very specific way.

[00:12:24] Erum: but microbes are responsible for so many things and our interview with a Zara summers. One of the things she mentioned, which really helped me think about microbes and biology much more differently was. Oftentimes people think that when earth became more livable, it was because of the microbes that were in the ocean, spitting out oxygen in to the atmosphere.

[00:12:45] Erum: that is what really helped create the environment that we live in today, that to create the atmosphere that we breathe, , people often think it's the plants. But it was actually the microbes that really brought about more oxygen. I'm sure plants have a role. Maybe they maybe they kicked it Yeah, maybe they kicked it over maybe they kicked it over the goal line, but it was definitely the microbes so it's our summers Episode.

[00:13:09] Erum: I really recommend people listen to it. And if you've listened to it already re listened to it, because it was chock full of such good biotech perspective, and it's really something that. People should listen to and live by. such insights to share.

[00:13:23] Karl: Yeah. And then, what's interesting too, I mean, having done this a year, and I'm looking at our top 10 episodes. What I find fascinating is still the number one episode as of right now is the dreaming in biology episode with Cass Smith of Ginkgo Bioworks. Most played has remained at the top for a time.

[00:13:40] Karl: No one's unseated him. However, our friend, Kristin Ellis came up really quick. she talked about the Venn diagram of climate and biotech being a circle. is right behind Cass in terms of number of plays, has been number two on the list.

[00:13:56] Karl: our fourth most played episode is the episode that we just had on. And Seth is our first repeat guest great episodes.

[00:14:04] Karl: That's a great guy. I'm looking forward to having him. Him back, but there's other people who we've already invited to come back. not everyone, sadly, we can't have all 50 people come back. but there's a few people who their episodes are very popular and they are friends of ours, so we want to have them back on the podcast.

[00:14:19] Erum: Well, we can't have them back they're still working on things. Maybe not this year, but we'll have them back the following year as things progress for them. But isn't it so special that the top episodes are people that you've known for a long time. Yeah. I think it's pretty cool.

[00:14:32] Erum: And like Cass, Kristen Ellis, Seth, versus some of the people we just met because of the podcast and we're not doing anything special for them, their episodes stand alone. it's very good at what they do, or do these have very everybody gets,

[00:14:46] Karl: yeah, everybody gets the same treatment from grow everything.

[00:14:49] Karl: We market every episode the same way. and, we promote on social, we give everybody the tools to promote their episode. We haven't seen anybody do any outsized marketing in addition to what we do. But, it is interesting that those are the top, Four episodes. The fifth episode is super interesting, too, because the fifth most played is, Charles of checkerspot who, I've not known as long, but admire greatly.

[00:15:12] Karl: And I mean, you've gotten to know checkerspot as well. Really super great company. Charles is a great guy.

[00:15:17] Erum: Yeah. And I wonder, like how people are discovering those episodes in particular, what they are searching. or when we Had dinner across from our listener yesterday. She searched sin bio. it could also be that they just have bigger networks or maybe they're raising money and investors are like doing their due diligence, trying to, see how they're talking about the company or in the Case of Kristen Ellis, maybe they're just trying to find her cause she's always all over the place.

[00:15:43] Erum: And they were trying to see like, where is she? What's she doing? What's she up to? Oh, so she's a podcast episode. let me see if I can get any clues. I'm kidding, Kristen. I don't think you're listening to this episode, but.

[00:15:56] Karl: Yeah. I don't know if this person who we met last night, if she said, Oh, you guys always talk about distributed biological manufacturing.

[00:16:02] Karl: Did she say that to us? I feel like someone just said that. And I was like, do we really talk about distributed biological manufacturing all the time? Maybe actually it was. Uh, yeah, Tram, Tom Tex mentioned it to me in a conversation we had that she really liked that we talk about distributed biological manufacturing a lot, and that is something that we're a big fan of.

[00:16:23] Karl: And we said that's going to be forthcoming. we've seen companies that are, doing it. Like you mentioned Lanzatec, Sarah Summers of Lanzatec. They're an example of a company that is taking biology to multiple places. And adding a biological system to electricity generating plants to produce usable biodegradable product.

[00:16:43] Karl: it is one of those things we talk about a lot. And just like I say, you know, we need every solution everywhere all at once. I'm going to keep saying that. And I think it just speaks to the idea that, we need more radical thinking and biotech continues to be something that is fairly radical.

[00:16:57] Erum: Yeah, yeah. And then often we see the challenges of biotech and what are the challenges that everyone has been talking about? And we are part of these conversations. I was talking to venture fund based out of India yesterday and they were asking me like, Oh, so what companies or processes are you seeing that reduce the cost of by production drastically?

[00:17:19] Erum: So it becomes economically viable. And I was like, Hey, if I knew the answer to that, I'd be building that company and talking to you in a different capacity than just sharing knowledge and what we do at messaging lab, but,Then we started talking about the challenges We started going down a thought experiment and what's actually happening, like, okay, well, if people are taking the formal model and applying it to commodity biotech, it's not going to work. The economics are just not going to work because the farmer model is still on the ground.

[00:17:46] Erum: It's very, very high, high tech. So. We need to just think about it completely differently. You can't just borrow from what exists and try to shoehorn it into different industry that serves a different market that creates a different type of product that commands a different type of price. So what is completely different?

[00:18:05] Erum: it comes to fermentation in particular, yes, we have breweries, technically those are kind of low value products, right? Just beer, beer in a bottle. We have something that exists, but I think for very different types of ingredients, it requires a little bit more process.

[00:18:21] Erum: I we don't get too deep into the nuts and bolts of how specific fermentation works. What type of equipment people are buying to do what type of things, maybe we could do that next year, but scaling up fermentation, especially precision fermentation is like the big challenge that everyone's trying to figure out.

[00:18:40] Erum: but usually it's like a bioreactor. We do have a company that we should have on. I think maybe it's a good idea to have them on. it's called melon frost and they're doing like many bioreactors, so you can kind of figure out what type of culturing system would work for you, but maybe it's something completely different.

[00:18:55] Erum: Maybe it's not. Steel vats and yes, you need a sterile environment. So you reduce contamination, but can you go into some type of lake and have some type of natural process that you introduce into land that can make the product and have the microbes.

[00:19:11] Erum: spit out the product and there's a different type of way of filtering that product that's cheap, leveraging all sorts of biology in like a pool or

[00:19:20] something.

[00:19:20] Karl: Yeah, I mean, it's true. So you're up a bunch of points and it's funny when you were talking about the bioreactors and like, what could be the alternative?

[00:19:27] Karl: My thought went to the taco chronicles on Netflix and there's an episode about the production of, I'm pretty sure it's a pork carnitas episode, but the pork carnitas are made in these big, giant copper frying pans or stew pans, and I'm sure that copper imparts some kind of flavor to them, but that's one of the traditional ways that, pork carnitas are made in this region of Mexico.

[00:19:51] Karl: You put the pork into these. big, huge copper pans that are heated with wood fire and you make the stew for a day before you pull out the meat and then, you crisp it and put it into tacos and it's amazing. So that was where my mind went, but then as you're talking about other infrastructure, I mean, fermentation is only one way to produce biomolecules and I'm thinking also about during the biofuels rush back in the early 2000s.

[00:20:19] Karl: people were very much using algae and there are a lot of places in the world where they grow algae in these above ground pools. actually, I saw some really interesting pictures of a place in India where they do this and how they move the water around so that the algae continues to be aerated.

[00:20:35] Karl: algae is a fast growing, organism. I'm not going to say plant. I don't think it's a plant. what's fascinating about algae to me, and I've always thought it was like the perfect. cellular factory is that it has three genomes. And so if you could imagine leveraging those three genomes, you've got a photosynthetic genome, which is feeding the algae.

[00:20:53] Karl: You've got mitochondria, which is also producing energy for the algae. And then you've got the nucleus that has all the instructions for the algae. and if I got that wrong, please someone correct me. But if you could leverage all of those, then you could grow algae at room temperature, and you could probably create a very complicated molecules using algae.

[00:21:12] Karl: I know we had Elliot of Spira on. And last night I actually met another algae producer who sells. spirulina, to individuals and to restaurants and people who want to increase, the amount of green and phytonutrients in their diet. But there is a lot of ways that we can leverage biology, to grow things.

[00:21:31] Karl: So it's very exciting. Fermentation is just one.

[00:21:34] Erum: Yeah, we would definitely be remiss and we'd probably get an angry email, no we wouldn't, from Alex Rosay of Cascade Biocatalysts, which completely looks at a different process, it's not fermentation, it's using cell free Enzyme stabilized process.

[00:21:50] Erum: So it's very, very exciting to hear. that's an episode that I need to re listen to. anytime I speak to Alex, I'm learning more and more about a different type of way of making, I think there's, he's focusing on smaller molecules at this time. maybe more simpler than, like protein. but it's really interesting to see how they have another process, how they have another process to make products where they take the machinery of a cell and.

[00:22:13] Erum: Take it out of the cell. So you don't have to worry about the fermentation process, things being contaminated, and you have Continuous flow versus batch processing, which can yield higher volumes and reduced risk of contaminated batches. So it was very interesting to hear how he and his partner, James, are creating this company.

[00:22:32] Karl: Yeah. you know, we've been at it for a year, we've already started our second year of the podcast. what are you looking forward to Iran? not only is it the end of our first year as a podcast, but we're almost at the end of, I don't know if I should say at the end of 2023, What are you looking forward to in 2024?

[00:22:49] Erum: I'm looking forward to keeping consistency and publishing weekly now, but I'm looking forward to your guests, of course, um, from different countries. I think we're going to be looking at people from around the world, seeing who's out there, leveraging biology to grow different things in different parts of the world.

[00:23:07] Erum: You mentioned India and this episode, I've been a part of, an India biotech group that I was introduced to a few. Months ago, it's it's a WhatsApp group. Shruti Singh runs that. Shruti, if you're listening, hello. but I've been meeting a lot of companies in India that are doing fascinating things, so we might have a couple people from there come on.

[00:23:23] Erum: I'm also looking forward to having some of our guests come back and seeing how they've progressed in their endeavors. so I'm excited to get them back on. And then I think the final thing that I am looking forward to, and we should look into more, is getting people that are not directly in the biotech industry, but can Benefit from it and are exploring it. So people that work at bigger companies, whether it's the big CPG company or like, PNG or Pepsi or some other big company, and they're looking at it from a different angle because they need that scale. they want to grow everything, they have to grow it big.

[00:23:59] Erum: So if you can get someone from there, or actually when you and I first started talking about the podcast, you mentioned. It'd be cool to have someone from the New York Waste Management Organization come on the podcast and talk about how to deal with waste. That was really interesting. Yeah,

[00:24:14] Karl: I think

[00:24:15] Karl: We need to get the sanitation czar on here. so if you're listening or if you know someone who knows her,

[00:24:20] Karl: we really want to get Jessica Tish on the podcast. Jessica is the current commissioner of the New York City department of sanitation. And as we know, waste is the failure of the imagination as our friends at Elonia say, and waste presents an incredible opportunity.

[00:24:37] Karl: So Jessica, if you're listening, or if someone knows Jessica. Let her know. We want to get her on the grow everything podcast. think that should be one of our goals for 2024.

[00:24:46] Erum: Yes. All right. We're on it. We're on it.

[00:24:49] Karl: Yeah. All right. Well, I wanted to say thank you to our listeners. You guys are great.

[00:24:53] Karl: We love hearing from you. We love, the questions we get on the hotline. we do this for you as much as we do it for us. This, helps us satisfy our insatiable curiosity and to let more people know what is going on in the world of growing everything. Cause there is a lot to be done.

[00:25:10] Erum: Yeah, and if you submit any questions or you can leave a voice message. We'll throw it on the pod. We had that a couple of times, during this first year. and we'll give you credit. Of course, we want to have this conversation.

[00:25:23] Erum: This is a platform not just for Carl and I to talk to amazing biotech leaders, but for our listeners to also participate. We would love to, have this platform be an open one, an open. Nonprofit that we will then for profit.

[00:25:36] Erum: Uh, hopefully you guys kind of got that joke, but yeah, this is so great. I'm so happy that we did this Carl, and we stuck with it and we're going to continue doing it. It's just so much fun to be able to do this every week.

[00:25:50] Karl: Awesome. Well, that's the pot. See you later. Bye.