Shows
James and Ashley Stay at HomeAn early Christmas present - what we've read in 2025It's that time of year again! (Well, almost … it's actually a bit early.) Collected here is a varied selection of 2025's 'What Are You Reading' book recommendations, nice and early so you can get your Christmas shopping started sooner rather than later! Books and authors discussed in this episode: From ep. 110 Translations by Jumaana Abdu (Michelle See-Tho) The Profound Benefits of a Stint in Prison by Andrew Hamilton (Ashley) The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgård (James) From ep. 111 Everyone and Everything by Nadine Cohen (Ashley) My Dream Time by Ash Bar...
2025-11-111h 12James and Ashley Stay at HomeWhere's my 'Menopause: What's Happening to Me?' book with Jay Martin, author of 'Boom Town Snap'How did Jay Martin go from an award-winning memoir to a fiction manuscript she ultimately abandoned? And what did she learn that helped her craft her debut novel, Boom Town Snap? Jay talks with Ashley and James about what toxic workplaces have in common with abusive relationships, and how we get trapped in toxic relationships at the community level as well. Ashley is in conversation with Jay Martin to launch Boom Town Snap at Better Read Than Dead on Sunday 18 May, 3pm Jay Martin's first book, Vodka and Apple Juice: Travels of an...
2025-05-1347 min
New Food Finance PodcastDecibel Bio: Disrupting a $100 billion industryIt was a great privilege to connect with Travis Bayer, founder of the recently launched biotech crop development company, Decibel Bio, and previously, founder of the hugely successful microbial biostimulants company, Sound Agriculture.Some highlightsBiggest driver for startup success: identify the unique business approach, the value proposition, including how to reach consumers, and then fit the science around that.Sound Agriculture: Core focus is using small molecule chemistry and natural products to signal to microbes for a more efficient and productive crop.How Decibel Bio is different: This is a nucleic acid, biotech platform, aiming to disrupt t...
2025-04-0825 min
New Food Finance PodcastBringing food and farming to the forefront of UN climate talksMinisters and leaders from around 200 countries gather at global climate talks, this week and next, in Baku, Azerbaijan.These UN-sponsored talks have been going for 29 years. As emissions continue to rise, and CO2 continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, heating the planet, you may rightly wonder about their role or usefulness. But there is no other event on Earth yet to replace them with. And at least they spark debate! Which is what we do, in our 18th episode of the New Food Finance. This week, I spoke with Serhat Cicekoglu, founder of the venture capital fir...
2024-11-1223 min
RE:SpawnEpisode 96 - Spawn 23 and Scorched 28The Malebolge beckens you to c'mon in and have a good time!
This week the boys are talkin' a lot about our good buddy, Overtkill! So Much Overkill! First, TOdd McFarlane brings you a talk of Overtkill beatin' up on Terry Fitzgerald! How rude! Then, Jon Layman and Stephen Segovia follow that classic up with a tale about Jason Wynn doing nepharious things with a beaten and battered Signor Rocca!
Gerard is a cool guy we like on insta, and he's got some dope art in the Spawning Grounds of Scorched 28! Be sure to spread...
2024-07-191h 28
New Food Finance PodcastJerry Nelson - Can AI help write the next IPCC climate report?I interviewed Jerry Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. His research career has spanned climate change and food security, as well as agriculture policy, trade and development. He is one of the world’s greatest experts on the economics of food security in an era of climate change. What he has to say on this really matters. My three top takeaways from this week’s podcast were: A very interesting idea by Jerry for uniting two very topical issues – AI and climate change. Regarding the next IPCC report, due out by 2029, Jerry made an interesting connection between the rec...
2024-04-3030 min
New Food Finance PodcastCan farmers reap biodiversity market benefits?My key takeaways from this podcast were: Trinity Agtech believes that carbon is just one part of the story, that farmers have much more to offer in terms of environmental benefits Their accounting tool is called Sandy, as “another person on the farm” The tool is used to measure changes in soil carbon, as well as farm impacts on soil, natural capital, biodiversity and waterCarbon is still a big part of what they do. They measure changes in soil carbon – which farmers can monetise via offset markets – using a combination of soil sampling and modellingThey find that farmers can use Sand...
2023-11-2231 min
New Food Finance PodcastCan peptide-based bio-pesticides displace synthetic chemical pesticides?Here are my main learning notes from this podcast, an interview with Anna Rath, CEO of Vestaron, the peptide-based pesticide company:Vestaron’s product focus is peptides, or short-chain proteins. Anna says that they have the same reliability and efficacy as chemical pesticides, but more precision targeting, and therefore safer use.Vestaron’s products are based off naturally occurring toxins such as spider and scorpion venom. That poses a challenge for product manufacture. Spiders inject venom, but clearly injection is not an option for commercial products. So, Vestaron has developed oral products, which, when mixed with another substance, can reac...
2023-09-2830 min
New Food Finance PodcastAre viruses the next weapon against crop diseases?Here are some of my main learning points from this podcast, with Guy Elitzur, CEO of EcoPhage, a company which is enlisting viruses to fight bacteria that cause diseases in crops:Bacteriophages are bacteria-eating viruses. These viruses were discovered in the nineteenth century, but have only really been studied more intensively in the past couple of decades.Guy’s company has licensed the same technology, from Israel’s Weizmann Institute, as licensed by the Nasdaq-listed BiomX, a pharmacological company looking to tackle bacterial diseases in humans. In that sense, this makes an interesting example where the agriculture sector is appl...
2023-09-1224 min
New Food Finance PodcastComing soon: the world's first hybrid potatoHere’s some of my main learning points from this podcast, with Charles Miller, director of strategic alliances and development at Solynta:Solynta is the first company able to hybridise potatoes. Hybrid breeding is used extensively in many crops, such as maize/ corn, tomatoes, sunflowers. The idea is to cross two in-bred, so-called elite lines each with highly desirable traits, to achieve what is known as hybrid vigour, achieving highly targeted improvements by combining both sets of attractive traits in a single line.To explain Solynta’s breakthrough, an initial requirement to achieve hybrid breeding is first to make plan...
2023-06-0527 min
New Food Finance PodcastCan gene editing fast-track food security?Here are some of my learning points from this podcast, with Ponsi Trivisvavet, CEO of Inari, the seed design company.The goal of the company is to design seeds for crop varieties that consume fewer resources, such as land, water and chemical inputs. The focus crops are corn, soybeans and wheat.Inari’s three specific target products at present are, first, to increase yields significantly, without an increase in use of nitrogen. Further down the pipeline are goals to reduce nitrogen use without sacrificing yield, and to reduce water use.Inari aims to achieve these goals by targeting changes to...
2023-05-0930 min
New Food Finance PodcastHow computer vision can halve farm weedkiller useHere are some of my learning points from this podcast, with Nadav Bocher, CEO and co-founder of Greeneye, the precision spraying company:Greeneye’s mission is to transform the present, broadcast approach to spraying herbicides –where farmers spray an entire field, regardless of weed incidence.Greeneye wants to spray only actual weeds, using AI-enabled cameras first to detect weeds, and then turn individual spray nozzles on and off accordingly. The company estimates that actual weed infestation in an average U.S. Mid-West field is around 10%, indicating the scale of possible savings.The system comprises, on a 36m spray boom, some...
2023-04-2331 min
New Food Finance PodcastCan AI make farm practice smarter?Here are some of my learning points from this podcast:Agmatix is trying to consolidate agronomic field trial data, through digitalisation, to make this data more available, to agricultural researchers, agronomists and farmers.Agmatix has two main activities. First, the digitalisation of agricultural R&D, focusing on agronomic insights and especially field trial data, and second, interpreting and applying those data, to develop prescriptions for agronomists to share with farmers.Both activities rely heavily on the use of smart algorithms, under the company’s Axiom platform.Regarding the digitalisation of field trials, Agmatix has first had to standardise crop re...
2023-04-1221 min
New Food Finance PodcastIs it green? the UK's newest vertical farmHere are some key points from this podcast interview with James Lloyd-Jones, CEO of the Jones Food Company (JFC):The main differences between a vertical farm and a high-tech greenhouse are – no glass; multiple layers; and a more controlled environment, which allows a higher output per sqm of growing area.James is about to launch his new “JFC2” farm, which will add to an existing farm at Scunthorpe, and R&D facility in Bristol. The new farm structure is a 15,000 sqm factory. The farm is presently being commissioned, and will start operation on May 1.“It’s a beast. It’s a monster...
2023-03-2019 min
New Food Finance Podcast"Biological solutions will dominate" - the EU's head of pesticidesThis week, we heard from a senior European Union policymaker involved in one of the biggest drivers of change in the agriculture sector today, namely pesticide regulation. I spoke with Klaus Berend, head of the EU’s pesticide unit, in the EU’s health and food safety directorate.What I wanted to understand was just how big the pressure is on chemical pesticides; over what time frame the portfolio of pesticides available to farmers will fall; any news on specific product bans, including very widely used active ingredients such as glyphosate (aka Roundup); and finally how the EU is w...
2023-03-0634 min
New Food Finance PodcastSo what is precision ag, anyway?One of the most talked about technologies to reduce the environmental impact of conventional agriculture is so-called precision agriculture or precision-ag. Precision-ag means using GPS-enabled sensors, including drone-mounted cameras, to generate spatial data, which can help tell farmers what is happening across a farm or field in real space and time. In theory, these insights can then be used to vary an application of chemical fertiliser or pesticide across a field, according to where these are needed most, for example, to stop the practice of just spraying everything, or to save money.I talked to Tyler Nigon, principal...
2023-02-1723 min
New Food Finance PodcastWhy meat substitutes are "just not good enough"So far, on this podcast, we’ve discussed issues including digitalisation, soil carbon and alternative proteins. This week, I wanted to broaden out, and discuss the whole range of technologies connected with a low-environmental-impact transition in global agriculture.I interviewed two global research strategists at Rabobank’s food and agribusiness division, Cyrille Filott and Cindy van Rijswick, with a downstream and upstream focus respectively.Rabobank is a Dutch cooperative bank. It is the biggest lender to farmers in its home market, the Netherlands, but has a large market share in food and agribusiness across the value chain in mult...
2023-01-2025 min
New Food Finance PodcastCan insect farming solve the global food waste crisis?In this episode, I talked with Fotis Fotiadis, founder and CEO of the insect protein manufacturer, Better Origin. The company produces feed for poultry from the larvae of black soldier flies, in its AI-automated shipping containers.Like the alternative protein space more generally, the insect protein sector has exploded over the last two years, as witnessed by the hundreds of millions of dollars of VC financing for start-up companies, like Better Origin, as a sustainable transition in agriculture rises up the policy, investor and corporate agendas, driven by concern around damage to nature, and climate change.First of...
2022-12-1624 min
New Food Finance PodcastBen Goldsmith - Why the U.S. and EU will follow England's approach to farm supportIn this fifth episode of my podcast, Agriculture Reinvented, I talk with Ben Goldsmith, investor, environmentalist, enthusiastic re-wilder, and farmer, about his investments, in and outside agriculture, the future of farming, and one of his favourite themes, re-wilding. Regarding innovation, Ben expects "precision fermentation" to replace a whole bunch of animal protein commodities, such as protein powders which are presently extracted from milk or eggs, for use in processed foods, and that could equally be derived from fermentation, with consumers unable to spot the difference. For Ben, the drivers include not only lower cost, but displacing the “worst, cheapest en...
2022-12-0230 min
New Food Finance PodcastA new microbe-based protein factory - worth 250,000 beef cattleIn this podcast, I discuss the alternative protein space with Geoff Bryant, Chief Technology Officer at microbe fermentation company, Calysta. Alternative proteins are all about sourcing protein with less impact on livestock, people and the planet. These alternatives include insect-based protein, plant-based protein, cellular protein made in a lab from animal cells, and microbe-based protein, Calysta’s own speciality.It was a good time to catch up with Geoff. This week, the company is commissioning its first commercial-scale production unit, at Chongqing in China, a unit it turned on three weeks ago. The unit will produce up to 1,000 kg...
2022-11-1626 min
New Food Finance PodcastU.S. organic agriculture: is 3% annual growth enough?This week’s episode is about the U.S. organic agriculture market and industry. In this episode, I talked to Ryan Koory, Vice President of Economics at the U.S. organic agriculture analytics firm, Mercaris. Organic agriculture is a long-established but minority segment of the global food industry. In this episode I wanted to understand recent market trends, focusing on the U.S. grains and oilseeds market – both compared with conventional markets, and considering market havoc since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – both massive grain producers. As a non-expert, I found it very interesting to hear how U.S. organ...
2022-11-0332 min
New Food Finance PodcastWhy soil carbon is "not there yet"In this episode, I talked to Prof Pete Smith, one of the world’s renowned academics on soil carbon sequestration.In this podcast, Pete gets into the details around soil carbon – what it is, how to measure it, and whether it’s all it’s cracked up to be, as a solution to climate change.Pete tells us that the science is settled on the agricultural practices that increase soil carbon. But he explains why it’s “not quite there yet”, as an investable asset, and why the big opportunity will be in arable soil, not grasslands. He also explains...
2022-10-1927 min
New Food Finance PodcastWhy agriculture is going digitalIn this first episode of my new podcast, Agriculture Reinvented, we explore what digitalisation and big data have to offer agriculture, in conversation with Richard Tiffin, Chief Scientific Officer at the UK agri-food data company, Agrimetrics. Richard first described in big picture terms what it is that data can bring to farming. So he describes how we can access a whole lot more data than ever before, across whole fields, farms, landscapes, regions and countries, for example using satellite technology. Advances in new analytical methods, such as AI and ML, can then get to work to analyse those data...
2022-10-0721 min
The Children of Room 561.07: Bloodlust (Part 1)Do not approach. We repeat: please stay in your homes and await further broadcasts.Content warnings: discussions of death and murder, strong language, conflict and arguments, blood (mentioned), animalistic imagery, body horror (references), moth noises, abusive and absent parents (implied), Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-R1JA887zRVK9mHYR9J4PJaDdXhqjwsmpQD6VDAxRrM/edit?usp=sharingWritten by: Alex Abrahams and Grey Kilgour.Script editing by: Lark Peterson and Jordan Hendrickson.Directed by: Alex Abrahams.Edited by: Alex Abrahams.Music by: Jordan Hendrickson.P...
2022-07-0520 min
Energy Insiders - a RenewEconomy PodcastCarbon price takes toll on coal generators in EuropeThe rising carbon price is starting to have a real impact on coal generation in Europe, with coal output down sharply this year. Analyst Gerard Wynn paints the picture.
2019-11-1440 min
The Bat-Jar PodcastSHAZAM!This week, the guys are approached by a wizard offering them amazing powers, should they be worthy. Oh wait, that's actually the plot of the new film they are talking about this week, "Shazam!". How did the original Captain Marvel stay obscure for so long? Why have most people never heard of him? How does this more comedic film fit into the DC Film universe? Is Zachary Levi convincing in the role? To avoid SPOILERS for "Shazam!", please skip over 57:02-1:17:42 of the episode. Music and audio from "Superman/Shazam: The Return of...
2019-04-081h 22
CUNY TV's Theater TalkJeremy Gerard on his book "Wynn Place Show"Drama critic and entertainment reporter, Jeremy Gerard, discusses his new book "Wynn Place Show: A Biased History of the Rollicking Life & Extreme Times of Wynn Handman and the American Place Theatre" on Theater Talk.
2014-01-1926 min