Business for Good Podcast

Paul Shapiro
  • 4.9 (159)
  • BUSINESS
  • UPDATED SEMIMONTHLY

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. Whether it's climate change, unsustainable agricultural practices, cyber threats, coral reef die-offs, nuclear waste storage, plastic pollution, or more, many of the world's greatest challenges are also exciting business opportunities. On this show, we feature business leaders who are marrying profit and purpose by inventing solutions to both build a better world and offer investors a bang for their bucks.

  1. Using Wildlife Intelligence to Prevent Animal Collisions with Sára Nožková

    3D AGO

    Using Wildlife Intelligence to Prevent Animal Collisions with Sára Nožková

    Episode Summary:  What if AI could help prevent bird strikes, train collisions, and livestock attacks by communicating with wild animals in ways they already understand? In this episode of Business For Good, Paul Shapiro speaks with Sára Nožková, CEO and Co-founder of Flox Intelligence, about building AI systems designed to detect wildlife and guide animals away from danger.   Sára explains how her company combines machine learning, wildlife science, and real-world infrastructure applications to reduce human-wildlife conflict across airports, train tracks, roads, farms, and other critical areas. Rather than relying on blunt deterrents, Flox develops species-specific audio responses and adaptive systems that learn from animal behavior over time.   Things You Will Learn: How Flox Intelligence uses AI vision, sensors, and species-specific audio to keep animals away from dangerous infrastructure. Why airports, rail systems, farms, and public agencies have economic incentives to reduce human-wildlife conflict. How wildlife communication research is shaping a new category of AI-powered biodiversity solutions. Why solving physical, measurable problems may be one of the strongest long-term applications of AI. How mission-driven founders can combine software, hardware, and science to build practical climate and conservation businesses.   Tools & Frameworks Covered: Wildlife Intelligence: A practical AI category focused on detecting, interpreting, and influencing animal behavior to reduce conflict with human infrastructure. Adaptive Species-Specific Playlists: Tailored sound interventions matched to species, context, landscape, and behavior, then improved through repeated interactions. AI for Real-World Physical Systems: A framework for applying AI beyond software-only use cases by combining data, hardware, and scientific expertise to solve measurable problems in the field. #BusinessForGood #SustainableBusiness #FutureOfFood #AlternativeProtein

    36 min
  2. Turning Green Leaves Into High-Performing Protein with Ross Milne

    MAR 15

    Turning Green Leaves Into High-Performing Protein with Ross Milne

    Episode Summary:  What if the most abundant protein on Earth has been hiding in plain sight inside green leaves? In this episode of Business For Good, Paul Shapiro sits down with Ross Milne, CEO of Leaft Foods, to explore how a new approach to food production could unlock massive amounts of high-quality protein directly from plants.   Instead of feeding crops to animals or waiting for plants to produce seeds, Ross explains how his team isolates Rubisco, a highly digestible protein found in every green leaf, through mechanical fractionation processes that separate proteins, fiber, and carbohydrates.   The conversation explores why Alfalfa is uniquely suited for this system, how Rubisco compares nutritionally to whey and egg proteins, and why leaf-based protein could become a fourth pillar of global protein production alongside meat, dairy, and seed proteins.   Things You Will Learn: Why Rubisco is the most abundant protein on Earth, and why humans rarely consume it directly. How isolating protein from green leaves could dramatically increase food system efficiency. Why Alfalfa is a powerful crop for scalable protein production. How Rubisco compares nutritionally with whey, eggs, and plant proteins. Why leaf-based protein could become a fourth pillar of global protein production.   Tools & Frameworks Covered: Leaf Protein Extraction: A mechanical fractionation process that opens plant cells and isolates protein, fiber, and carbohydrates for different food applications. Rubisco Protein: A highly abundant plant protein involved in photosynthesis that offers strong amino acid profiles and high digestibility for human nutrition. Systems Thinking for Food Production: Reframing the food system by removing unnecessary conversion steps (like feeding plants to animals) and extracting nutrients directly from plants.   #BusinessForGood #FutureOfFood #AlternativeProtein #SustainableBusiness

    41 min

  3. MAR 1

    Vasectomies, Family Planning, and Environmental Pressure with Dr. Douglas Stein (The Vasectomist)

    Episode Summary:  What if one of the highest-leverage climate and poverty interventions isn't a new technology, a policy mandate, or a venture-backed breakthrough, but simply making permanent contraception easier for men to choose?   In this episode of Businesses For Good, host Paul Shapiro sits down with Dr. Douglas Stein, a Florida physician known as "The Vasectomist," who has performed 45,000+ vasectomies and taken his work internationally, including providing free procedures and (in some cases) small cash offsets for travel and missed wages. Their conversation moves beyond the clinic into systems: fertility rates, infrastructure strain, unintended pregnancies, cultural and religious resistance, and the practical barriers that keep men from sharing the family-planning burden.   You'll also hear an honest debate about incentives, the limits of government policy, and the bigger question underneath it all: if we believe human ingenuity can solve hard problems, what would it look like to proactively reduce pressure on the planet through voluntary family planning?   Things You Will Learn: Why vasectomy adoption is less about medicine and more about behavior, trust, and access. How Dr. Stein thinks about incentives, and why he frames them as cost offsets. What policy and infrastructure gaps keep family planning from scaling in lower-income regions, even when demand is high.   Tools & Frameworks Covered: No-Scalpel Vasectomy Model: a simplified, low-instrument approach that enables portability and scale. Access + Friction Framework: why adoption depends on availability, education, and practical logistics (time, travel, wages). Systems Lens on Population & Biodiversity: connecting fertility trends to infrastructure strain, resource use, and biodiversity outcomes.   #BusinessForGood #SustainableBusiness #FutureOfFood #AlternativeProtein #FamilyPlanning

    50 min
  4. Feed the People Authors on Abundance, Food Policy, and Meat Demand

    FEB 15

    Feed the People Authors on Abundance, Food Policy, and Meat Demand

    Episode Summary What if the global food system isn't "broken" in the way sustainability debates usually claim, and treating it that way leads to worse decisions?   Paul Shapiro sits down with Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel Rosenberg, authors of Feed the People, to unpack how industrial scale and trade created unprecedented food abundance, why "eat local" and small-farm nostalgia collapses at 8 billion people, and what practical policy levers can improve outcomes without fantasy. They explore a clear framework, more food, less feed, no fuel, why animal agriculture remains an inefficient use of land and protein, and how public policy can reshape meat demand by changing incentives instead of accepting forecasts as fate.   You'll leave with sharper systems thinking, grounded tradeoffs, and a clearer view of what scalable food system decarbonization can actually look like.   Things You Will Learn How to evaluate food system claims using systems logic instead of slogans. Why meat demand rises, and how policy can bend the curve without moralizing. What "more food, less feed, no fuel" implies for land use, emissions, and investment priorities.   Tools & Frameworks Covered More food, less feed, no fuel. Prioritizes crops for human food over animal feed and biofuels. Incentives over narratives. Shows how policy choices shape production, prices, and demand. Democratic hedonism. Meets people where they are, then reduces harm at scale.   #BusinessForGood #SustainableBusiness #FutureOfFood #AlternativeProtein #FoodSystemDecarbonization

    50 min
  5. Bruce Friedrich (Good Food Institute) on Taste, Price, and What It Takes to Scale Alternative Meat

    FEB 1

    Bruce Friedrich (Good Food Institute) on Taste, Price, and What It Takes to Scale Alternative Meat

    Alternative meat looks like it is collapsing. Startups are shutting down, funding is drying up, and headlines are calling the category finished, but that reaction may reflect a misunderstanding of how technological revolutions actually unfold. Bruce Friedrich, President of the Good Food Institute and author of Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity's Favorite Food and Our Future, explains why most people will not change behavior for values alone, why price and taste are the real adoption gates, and why "only" $3 billion in cultivated meat funding is far smaller than it sounds when spread across years and companies. Paul and Bruce discuss what it will take to reach taste and price parity, why governments increasingly view alternative protein as food security and national security infrastructure, and why today's failures can be a normal feature of early-stage category formation rather than proof the model will not work. You will leave with a clearer, more evidence-driven view of what is happening now and what progress actually looks like. Things You Will Learn: How taste and price parity shape S-curve adoption in food, regardless of ethics or intent Why $3B in cultivated meat investment may be insufficient relative to comparable industrial innovation cycles How food security, geopolitical risk, and economic competitiveness are driving government interest in alternative protein Tools & Frameworks Covered: S-Curve Adoption – helps evaluate whether setbacks are normal in scaling technologies Eliminating the Green Premium – helps frame what it takes for sustainable products to win at mass-market scale B2B Enablement Strategy – helps identify leverage points that unlock category-wide progress   #BusinessForGood #SustainableBusiness #FutureOfFood #AlternativeProtein #PrecisionFermentation

    58 min

  6. JAN 15

    Modern Mill's Chris Guimond on Upcycling Rice Hulls Into Low Maintenance Building Materials

    Episode Summary A rice field does not look like the starting point for a scalable building materials company until you understand the economics behind it.   In this episode of Business For Good, Paul Shapiro sits down with Chris Guimond, Founder and CEO of Modern Mill, to explore how discarded rice hulls are being transformed into ACRE, a wood like siding, decking, and trim product designed to replace old growth lumber. Chris explains why deforestation is a supply and demand problem, how Modern Mill cracked the manufacturing and adoption challenges that derail most composites, and what it takes to raise significant capital to build real infrastructure in the United States. The conversation covers circular economy manufacturing, competing with billion dollar incumbents, and why climate solutions scale only when they outperform existing systems on cost, durability, and ease of use.   Things You Will Learn Why most sustainable materials fail at adoption and how to avoid that trap How supply chain location determines whether upcycling works economically What it takes to scale a hard tech manufacturing business in a legacy industry   Tools and Frameworks Covered Supply chain proximity strategy to control logistics costs and reliability Adoption first product design for builders and contractors Capacity planning to scale manufacturing without breaking trust   Episode Timestamps 05:10 – Why rice hulls present a hidden opportunity in building materials 08:56 – Cracking the code on turning agricultural waste into scalable products 13:20 – Why most composites fail to replace wood 25:20 – How logistics and location shape upcycling economics 35:10 – Scaling capacity before demand fully arrives   #BusinessForGood #SustainableBusiness #CircularEconomy #ClimateSolutions #FutureOfFood

    40 min
  7. Deep Fission: Using Boreholes to Cut Nuclear Costs and Deliver 24/7 Clean Electricity

    JAN 1

    Deep Fission: Using Boreholes to Cut Nuclear Costs and Deliver 24/7 Clean Electricity

    What if the fastest path to reliable clean electricity is not a new reactor design, but a new place to put one?   In this conversation, Paul Shapiro speaks with Elizabeth Muller, CEO of Deep Fission, about a plan to place a conventional pressurized water reactor roughly a mile underground to use geology, gravity, and groundwater for containment, pressure, and emergency cooling, potentially cutting total nuclear costs by as much as 80%. They unpack how a narrow borehole reactor could serve always-on demand from data centers and industrial users, what "proven tech combined in a new way" really means, how safety and groundwater concerns are handled through regulation and engineering practices, and the practical milestones from pilot to commercial operation so listeners can evaluate what it would take for underground nuclear to scale.   Things You Will Learn How putting a conventional reactor in a mile-deep borehole can replace major above-ground systems and cut nuclear cost drivers. How Deep Fission thinks about worst-case scenarios, groundwater protection, and regulatory proof points. What milestones convert LOIs into power purchase agreements, and what timelines look like for early deployment. Tools & Frameworks Covered Geology-as-infrastructure – Uses rock, gravity, and water to replace containment and pressurization systems. Mature-tech recombination – Combines proven reactors, drilling, and geothermal heat transfer to speed time to market. Pilot-to-commercial pathway – Separates "go critical" demonstration from commercial electricity generation milestones.   Episode Timestamps 04:55 – Why a mile underground could cut nuclear costs by about 80% 08:47 – Borehole size, reactor dimensions, and how the hardware fits 09:31 – Replacement strategy, sealing, and stacking long-term operations 19:45 – Groundwater and safety concerns, what regulators need to see 21:43 – Timeline to power, DOE pilot program, and moving toward commercialization   #BusinessForGood #CleanEnergy #NuclearEnergy #EnergyInnovation #ClimateSolutions

    33 min
  8. The Incredible, Edible… Pea? How Meala is Using Biotech to Render Eggs Obsolete

    12/15/2025

    The Incredible, Edible… Pea? How Meala is Using Biotech to Render Eggs Obsolete

    If you've ever checked the ingredients on a baked good, you know how ubiquitous eggs are. They bind, they lift, they emulsify, they hold moisture — they're simply the structural engineers of cookies, cakes, and muffins everywhere. But they're also volatile: prices spike, supply chains break, and for anyone with an egg allergy or who's avoiding eggs for animal welfare or environmental reasons, eggs aren't exactly a welcome ingredient to find on the ingredient deck.  Enter Hadar Ekhoiz Razmovich, CEO and co-founder of Meala FoodTech, an Israeli startup that's figured out how to make peas do what eggs and hydrocolloids do, and has consequently raised several million dollars in venture capital so far. Meala's breakthrough lies in taking simple pea protein and using advanced biotechnology to unlock its hidden abilities — creating a single-ingredient powder that they say can whip, bind, and gel just like an egg in baked goods and alternative meat. No multi-ingredient formulations, no methylcellulose, no animal inputs — just plants doing some biochemical magic.  In this episode, Hadar shares how her background in R&D led her to tackle one of food science's toughest challenges: replacing eggs and hydrocolloids without sacrificing texture, taste, or cost. We talk about how Meala's technology works, what it takes to convince industrial bakeries to swap eggs for peas, and why she believes clean-label ingredients like this are the future of food.  Hadar is not just rethinking what we eat, she and her team are rebuilding the food system from scratch, one cookie, cake, and croissant at a time.  Discussed in this episode  Meals is backed by The Kitchen Food Tech Hub, DSM's venture arm, Milk & Honey Ventures, Lasenor, and EIT.  Our past episode with Milk & Honey Ventures' Beni Nofech.  More on Meala's egg replacer, GroundBaker, is here.  You can see two pending patent applications of Meala's here and here.    Get to know Hadar Ekhoiz Razmovich  Hadar Ekhoiz Razmovich brings over 12 years of leadership experience in the global food industry, with a strong focus on driving innovation and R&D across traditional food sectors. Throughout her career, she has led complex, multidisciplinary projects from early concept development to full commercial launch, consistently bridging technological capabilities with real market needs.  In 2021, she founded Meala FoodTech with a mission to transform the food industry. Under her leadership, Meala is pioneering clean-label functional protein that deliver superior texture, bite, and mouthfeel—without compromise and without undesirable additives. Her work empowers food manufacturers to create simpler, more natural, and better-tasting products, setting a new benchmark for next-generation of food.  Hadar is widely recognized for her strategic vision, deep industry insight, and ability to translate scientific innovation into scalable commercial solutions.

    29 min
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4.9
out of 5
159 Ratings

About

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. Whether it's climate change, unsustainable agricultural practices, cyber threats, coral reef die-offs, nuclear waste storage, plastic pollution, or more, many of the world's greatest challenges are also exciting business opportunities. On this show, we feature business leaders who are marrying profit and purpose by inventing solutions to both build a better world and offer investors a bang for their bucks.

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