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Speaker 1: Pushkin.

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Speaker 2: When I'm just walking around the world day to day.

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Speaker 2: They're all the obvious we need to solve this problem

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Speaker 2: to deal with climate change kinds of problems that I

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Speaker 2: notice that everybody notices, you know, all the cars people

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Speaker 2: are driving, all the old buildings using heating oil, all

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Speaker 2: the airplanes flying overhead. But on top of those in

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Speaker 2: my face, in our face things, there are other things

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Speaker 2: that are less obvious but also very big and very important, like,

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Speaker 2: for example, the fertilizer that's used to grow the food

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Speaker 2: we eat. Turns out, the standard way to make fertilizer

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Speaker 2: is to take natural gas, which is basically just carbon

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Speaker 2: and hydrogen, use the hydrogen to make ammonia, which makes fertilizer,

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Speaker 2: and essentially release the carbon into the atmospe sphere in

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Speaker 2: the form of carbon dioxide.

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Speaker 1: A huge amount of carbon.

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Speaker 2: Dioxide goes into the atmosphere every year because of fertilizer,

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Speaker 2: which means that even the most goody two shoes vegan

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Speaker 2: plant based meal can contribute to climate change.

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Speaker 1: Unless you probably see where this is going, we.

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Speaker 2: Could figure out a way to make fertilizer without that

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Speaker 2: very annoying part where we release tons of carbon into

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Speaker 2: the air as carbon dioxide. We would never notice the

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Speaker 2: difference in our daily lives, but it would be a

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Speaker 2: really big deal for the world.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and this.

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Speaker 2: Is What's Your Problem, the show where I talk to

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Speaker 2: people who are trying to make technological progress.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is Rob Hanson.

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Speaker 2: He's the co founder and CEO of a company called Monolith.

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Speaker 2: Rob's problem is this, how do you separate hydrogen from

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Speaker 2: natural gas without emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and

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Speaker 2: how do you do it at scale in a way

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Speaker 2: that makes economic sense. What is the sort of basic, cheap, mass,

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Speaker 2: industrial scale way to get hydrogen.

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Speaker 3: Now, you take steam and you take methane, and you

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Speaker 3: heat them up together really hot, and the oxygen from

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Speaker 3: the water in the steam reacts with the carbon in

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Speaker 3: the methane to make CO two, liberates a bunch of energy.

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Speaker 3: All the rest of the hydrogen is converted to free hydrogen,

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Speaker 3: and so you get hydrogen from both water and methane.

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Speaker 3: But the energy that's being put into that chemically is

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Speaker 3: the carbon reacting with the oxygen form CO two.

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Speaker 2: So the basic idea here is you've got methane, you

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Speaker 2: get natural gas, which is essentially hydrogen and carbon, and

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Speaker 2: you want to find some way to separate the hydrogen

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Speaker 2: and the carbon without sending that carbon into the atmosphere. Right,

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Speaker 2: That's what you're trying to figure out. And at some

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Speaker 2: point you discover the work of this French scientist named

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Speaker 2: Laurent Foucherie, and he has an idea for how to

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Speaker 2: do so tell me about that. How do you wind

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Speaker 2: up working with him?

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Speaker 3: And so I just emailed him. I mean, I still

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Speaker 3: I look at that email everyone. I just emailed him

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Speaker 3: from the email address on the scientific paper and he responded,

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Speaker 3: and then Pete and I flew to France and we

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Speaker 3: met him, and the moment was we've done lots of this, right,

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Speaker 3: We met lots of professors or researchers, and usually they'd

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Speaker 3: have a paper and maybe they'd have like a poster

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Speaker 3: of what they did. And Laurel started there. He described

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Speaker 3: his work and then he's like, do you guys want

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Speaker 3: to see the reactor?

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Speaker 1: Ah?

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Speaker 3: And we're like, what do you mean the reactor. He's like, well,

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Speaker 3: I'll go show you the reactor. So we go and

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Speaker 3: it's like this thing out of a science fiction movie.

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Speaker 3: It's in a room, it's maybe six feet tall. It's

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Speaker 3: got wires and tubes coming out of it, and we're like, whoa,

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Speaker 3: this is incredible. And then he says, do draw me

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Speaker 3: to turn it on, and we're like sure, and so

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Speaker 3: it gives us had you know, earplugs and dark glasses,

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Speaker 3: and this like flurry of French researchers kind of comes around.

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Speaker 1: So he gives you the glasses. Why when he turns

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Speaker 1: it on? What happened?

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Speaker 3: So he turns on? So what drives this process? Right?

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Speaker 3: Using electricity to heat methane too incredible temperatures. Well, the

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Speaker 3: way you do that is with what's called a plasma

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Speaker 3: torgu sounds cool. Yeah, imagine a like a combustion burner,

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Speaker 3: like a flame, even a gas stove right where you're

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Speaker 3: burning a combustion. It looks like that, but instead of

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Speaker 3: being fire, it's a plasma generated by an electric discharge.

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Speaker 3: And he has a view hole through that you can

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Speaker 3: actually see it, and so it's like lightning inside of

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Speaker 3: this reactor. And it's purple because it was a nitrogen plasma,

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Speaker 3: and it's loud and bright and incredible, and it's doing

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Speaker 3: the thing you want to do. Yeah, it's heating you know,

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Speaker 3: gas to very high temperature using one hundred percent electricity

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Speaker 3: with no combustion.

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Speaker 2: And what you get out is hydrogen and carbon black. Yep,

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Speaker 2: that's right, So tell me about carbon black.

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Speaker 3: All right, So it's solid carbon, but as most people know,

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Speaker 3: not all solid carbon is created equal. You've got graphite,

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Speaker 3: diamonds are pure carbon, very different than graphite, and then

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Speaker 3: carbon black is another form of pure carbon. And when

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Speaker 3: you zoom in on it with an electron microscope, it

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Speaker 3: looks like a bunch of grapes. So there's these spheres

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Speaker 3: of carbon that are nanometers maybe ten to fifteen nanimeters,

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Speaker 3: and then they fuse together into what looks like a

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Speaker 3: bunch of grapes. And that's really important because that structure,

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Speaker 3: when you mix it, and they discovered this around World

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Speaker 3: War One, if you mix that carbon structure into rubber,

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Speaker 3: it dramatically reinforces it. And so if you think of

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Speaker 3: a pencil eraser, that's rubber without any reinforcing carbon black,

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Speaker 3: and then if you think of the tread of your tire,

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Speaker 3: that's got highly reinforcing carbon black. And you couldn't really

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Speaker 3: make a modern car tire out of erasers, but you

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Speaker 3: absolutely can out of carbon black filled rubber.

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Speaker 1: So is Laurent part of the company.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I talked to Laurn every week pretty much.

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Speaker 3: He has for ten years, been a big part of it.

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Speaker 3: We have a research partnership. Still run that pilot reactor

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Speaker 3: in his lab doing kind of experimental work because it's small.

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Speaker 3: Our commercial reactor in Nebraska is one hundred feet tall, okay, giant,

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Speaker 3: you know, Laren's is six feet He's, you know, an

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Speaker 3: equity holder in the company. Just an awesome guy. Like

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Speaker 3: I said, we were right, we got super lucky and

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Speaker 3: he was the real deal.

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Speaker 2: So how did you turn Lauren's idea? How did you

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Speaker 2: turn this thing you saw in his lab into Monolith

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Speaker 2: into this company you have now?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So we have a saying at Monolith, which is,

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Speaker 3: we don't do things because they are easy. We do

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Speaker 3: things because we thought they would be easy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And so his system operates at three kilograms per hour

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Speaker 3: of production. And now we've spent the last eleven years

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Speaker 3: going from three kilograms per hour up to fifteen hundred.

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Speaker 3: We literally just hit the fifteen hundred kilograms per hour

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Speaker 3: in the last couple of months, so five hundred x

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Speaker 3: increase in scale and that was really hard. And then

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Speaker 3: it's not just fifteen hundred, you know, for a minute

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Speaker 3: or an hour, it's you have to be able to

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Speaker 3: do it all the time. It's got to be commercially

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Speaker 3: viable manufacturing process. It's the classic head We known it

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Speaker 3: was going to be this hard, we probably would have

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Speaker 3: never started, but we did, and we've got the other side.

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Speaker 2: So I want to talk about where you are now.

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Speaker 2: I want to talk about being on the other side.

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Speaker 2: But before we do that, I want to go back

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Speaker 2: because I've heard you talk about sort of figuring out

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Speaker 2: how to found the company. Because I've heard you talk

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Speaker 2: about founding the company, and in particular the frame you

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Speaker 2: took in figuring out what to do, like what company

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Speaker 2: to found? That frame seems really interesting and really useful.

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Speaker 2: Talk about that a little bit.

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Speaker 3: We had this basically founding philosophy, and that is that

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Speaker 3: what clean tech really needs to be is it needs

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Speaker 3: to be both clean and economically advantaged.

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Speaker 2: Meaning cheaper or better then other products in the marketplace.

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Speaker 3: Right now, your your your value proposition minus your cost

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Speaker 3: structure is better than everyone else's and you can win

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Speaker 3: on both sides to be a better business.

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Speaker 1: It's a better business in some way.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, it's really easy to do something just cheaper

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Speaker 3: if you have no regard for the environment. Right, we've

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Speaker 3: seen that, and it usually is in the you know,

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Speaker 3: most disadvantaged communities that bear the burden. And the other

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Speaker 3: side's also quite easy. And you see this. The media

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Speaker 3: loves these. It's a cleaner way to do something, but

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Speaker 3: the second sentences, it's going to cost way more and

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Speaker 3: it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work at scale.

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Speaker 3: If that's your value proposition. Now it's okay to be

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Speaker 3: more expensive or have a less total value proposition early

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Speaker 3: on with a pathway to becoming. And I think you know,

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Speaker 3: PD solar is an example of that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, started out more expensive and then got cheaper.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's okay. Those you got to be skeptical

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Speaker 3: because it's quite rare that that's actually the story. Much

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Speaker 3: more typically, it starts out more expensive, it ends more expensive. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: but look, that's what we were searching for.

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Speaker 2: Presumably, it's hard to find something that is both cleaner

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Speaker 2: and cheaper, because if it existed, somebody'd.

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Speaker 1: Already be doing it. Right, It's like a twenty dollars

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Speaker 1: bill lying on a sidewalk.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and so The third part is the reason that

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Speaker 3: it hadn't been done, Todate. That's what we were searching for,

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Speaker 3: was it was cleaner, it was cheaper, and the reason

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Speaker 3: it hadn't been done is that the technology had not

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Speaker 3: been advanced sufficiently to make it happen.

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Speaker 2: In a minute, Rob talks about where Monolith is today.

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Speaker 2: Spoiler alert, It includes the biggest plasma torch ever built

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Speaker 2: in the history of the world.

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Speaker 1: Now back to the show.

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Speaker 2: So, how big is your plasma torch?

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Speaker 3: Biggest p my torch that's ever been built.

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Speaker 1: What's it look like? How big is it? How tall

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Speaker 1: is it? I don't know. I don't even know a task.

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Speaker 3: It's measured in tons. It almost looks like a like

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Speaker 3: a big rocket engine. You could say it's you know,

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Speaker 3: thousands of parts, it's maybe twenty feet tall and use

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Speaker 3: cranes to move it around.

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Speaker 1: Let's actually talk about how it works.

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Speaker 2: So you have a reactor now, right, and you said

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Speaker 2: it's commercial scale, meaning you're are you selling hydrogen and

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Speaker 2: carbon black.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, we're selling the carbon black to the existing market.

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Speaker 3: There's a number of things in our public but one

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Speaker 3: that is public was with Goodyear, right, big American iconic

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Speaker 3: tire manufacturer, so we collaborate with them, and they included

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Speaker 3: our carbon black in their electric drive GT tire, which

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Speaker 3: is the Tesla Model three replacement tire. Okay, and that

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Speaker 3: was a bit of a demo tire for them. I

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Speaker 3: think that one was ninety percent sustainable materials. So right,

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Speaker 3: tire are made up of all different types of things

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Speaker 3: and the big push is to get them to be

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Speaker 3: one hundred percent sustainable over time. And so that was

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Speaker 3: a nice step along the way. And then we're working

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Speaker 3: with other tire companies as well to reduce the carbon

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Speaker 3: footprint of their tires.

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Speaker 1: And what about the hydrogen.

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Speaker 3: The hydrogen which I'll get into, we're sadly not selling

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Speaker 3: yet and that's because even though it's a commercial scale plant,

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Speaker 3: it wasn't big enough to justify investing and converning that

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Speaker 3: hydrogen into ammonia. It would have been like the world's

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Speaker 3: smallest ammonia plant. So this is the first unit. And

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Speaker 3: then now that we're reaching success, and this is you know,

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Speaker 3: the Department of Energy stepping in for the next stage,

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Speaker 3: which is to build twelve more of those identical units

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Speaker 3: at the same site. Then we'll have thirteen total. Once

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Speaker 3: we have thirteen total. All the hydrogen from the thirteen

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Speaker 3: will go into a normal kind of world scale ammonia plant.

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Speaker 2: So let's talk about what you still have to do

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Speaker 2: and then what you still have to figure out to

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Speaker 2: do the things you want to do. Right, so you

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Speaker 2: have this proof of concept plant essentially that is like,

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Speaker 2: you know, you're not quite to true industrial scale yet.

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Speaker 3: That's exactly nailed it. So we are full industrial scale reactor.

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Speaker 3: But carbon black plants never have one reactor. They have

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Speaker 3: ten or in our case, we're going to do.

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Speaker 1: The same with hydrogen.

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Speaker 2: Right, you're not making enough hydrogen to that's rery make

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Speaker 2: it worth.

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Speaker 3: So in fact, while our plant is you know commercial

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Speaker 3: and operating, it's the world's smallest commercial carb black plant

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Speaker 3: right now, right, And so the next step is to

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Speaker 3: build it out, and it's that modular buildout, and we

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Speaker 3: decided to do twelve reactors next in two groups of six,

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Speaker 3: and we're hoping to break ground on it next year.

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Speaker 3: It's you know, over a billion dollar project. We did

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Speaker 3: get a conditional commitment from the Department of Energy to

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Speaker 3: fund a billion dollars of debt into that project, and

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Speaker 3: then we're going to raise equity from our existing shareholders

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Speaker 3: as well as probably some new ones in the new year,

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Speaker 3: and that's the next step, and that plant will then

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Speaker 3: be a true world scale manufacturing facility. And we think

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Speaker 3: that's you know, the next five years is what's going

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Speaker 3: to take us to do that?

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Speaker 1: What are the what might go wrong?

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Speaker 3: I think probably the biggest risk is you know, it's

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Speaker 3: a megaproject.

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Speaker 2: You say megaproject, I think over budget and takes forever.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the challenge, right, is how do you

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Speaker 3: mitigate that risk? But that's the risk, and you nailed it.

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Speaker 3: It's it's just mega projects don't have a great track record,

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Speaker 3: and we're doing everything we can to mitigate it. But

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Speaker 3: that's the one that keeps me awake at night is

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Speaker 3: you find yourself with you know, unseasonably cold winters or

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Speaker 3: unseasonably wet summers and all of a sudden, it just

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Speaker 3: you've slipped on schedule.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, if the weather can screw you over, that's terrifying.

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Speaker 3: But that's big construction, right, And that's the challenge of

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Speaker 3: the energy transition that few people talk about is it's

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Speaker 3: always just the technology. And like, don't get me wrong,

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Speaker 3: I've spent a decade in the technology realm, I understand

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Speaker 3: how hard it is. But then you've actually got to

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Speaker 3: build out infrastructure, and if.

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Speaker 2: We're serious, billion dollar projects that no one has ever

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Speaker 2: built before anywhere ever.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and if we're serious about tackling climate like, we

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Speaker 3: have to rebuild a major portion of our infrastructure, our

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Speaker 3: energy infrastructure and industrial infrastructure, materials infrastructure, And of course

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Speaker 3: there's risk in that. I think what we offer, and

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Speaker 3: I think this is an important model, is you need

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Speaker 3: to have returns that are commensurate with that risk.

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Speaker 2: So okay, so there's the megaproject. That's kind of the

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Speaker 2: medium term challenge. I mean there's also hydrogen, right, Like

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Speaker 2: we've been talking about hydrogen and sort of where it

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Speaker 2: is now, and hydrogen has this really essential input for

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Speaker 2: ultimately fertilizer. But there's sort of a couple sides of

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Speaker 2: hydrogen that we haven't talked about yet that seem like

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Speaker 2: big and interesting. Like one is where the hydrogen is

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Speaker 2: coming from, or where the natural gas I should say

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Speaker 2: is coming from, and then the other is other potential

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Speaker 2: uses of hydrogen. Right, those both seem like big ideas

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Speaker 2: that you could potentially be at the center.

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Speaker 3: Off that's right. Yeah, So you know, we intentionally because

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Speaker 3: we didn't want to have that risk of chicken and

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Speaker 3: egg on a new hydrogen market, we started with an

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Speaker 3: existing end use that's not going away now. Going beyond that,

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Speaker 3: I think there's going to be lots of growth in hydrogen.

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Speaker 3: If we're a hundred million tons today, you know, I

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Speaker 3: think the bulls have it at five hundred million tons

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Speaker 3: by pick your date, and maybe not quite that optimistic.

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Speaker 3: But you know, do we have a couple hundred million

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Speaker 3: tons of hydrogen probably?

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Speaker 2: What are the big drivers of growth for hydrogen demand

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Speaker 2: for use of hydrogen in the next ten twenty years.

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Speaker 3: I think heavy transportation is interesting. So think of like

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Speaker 3: big ships, maybe class eight trucks, which is like you know,

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Speaker 3: long haul trucking.

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Speaker 2: Basically transportation that is so energy intensive that it will

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Speaker 2: be very hard to electrify, and so then you'll want

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Speaker 2: some alternative clean source of power.

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Speaker 3: Yes, if you imagine a container ship going from Long

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Speaker 3: Beach to Shanghai, the whole thing would be batteries. If

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Speaker 3: you wanted to do it with batteries, and so you

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Speaker 3: need a liquid fuel and you can burn ammonia. But

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Speaker 3: I think there'll be some applications there, and then I

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Speaker 3: think there'll be other chemical applications. The big one that

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Speaker 3: could be huge is steel. Right, So steel is typically

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Speaker 3: reduced with carbon, the iron ore is reduced with carbon.

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Speaker 3: You make CO two lots of it. You can reduce

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Speaker 3: steel with hydrogen and that way you only make water

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Speaker 3: instead of CO two. You know that, that's kind of

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Speaker 3: you got to be the cheapest possible hydrogen to play

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Speaker 3: in that world because there's not any margin in the steel.

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Speaker 2: Steel is just a brutal commodity business, right, Yeah, that's right,

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Speaker 2: Or you need some kind of subsidy, you need a policy.

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Speaker 1: Lever would be the other way to do it, right,

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Speaker 1: that's right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So you know if a couple of parts of

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Speaker 3: those two part of steel, part of heavy transportation, I mean,

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Speaker 3: you'd see hydrogen demand double over today's Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Planes, I mean, I know it's kind of a dream.

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Speaker 2: But like people are, you don't buy it. You're wincing

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Speaker 2: at what I say.

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Speaker 1: No, I don't not buy it.

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Speaker 3: I think I think the most likely root for hydrogen

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Speaker 3: getting into airplanes is through synthetically produced liquid hydrocarbons, which

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Speaker 3: you can like CO two plus hydrogen, you can convert

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Speaker 3: into jet fuel, and so that I believe pure hydrogen.

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Speaker 3: I think for shorter haul maybe big planes, long distances,

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Speaker 3: it's a hard problem. You need a lot of energy density.

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Speaker 3: I mean you have when you want a lot of

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Speaker 3: energy density, it's it's hard to beat, Like kerosene, just

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Speaker 3: really hard to beat it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it is interesting, you know, given

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Speaker 2: that your input is a fossil fuel, right, like methane,

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Speaker 2: like oil is under the ground and it's from whatever

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Speaker 2: one hundred million years ago, like the sun grew plants

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Speaker 2: and then they died and then they sat under the

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Speaker 2: ground and they turned into methane.

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Speaker 1: Like.

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Speaker 2: Fossil fuels are amazing in that way, right, They're like

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Speaker 2: this incredible store of energy that you can use whenever

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Speaker 2: you want.

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Speaker 3: And yeah, and it's uh, I spend too much time

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Speaker 3: thinking about deep time.

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Speaker 1: When you think about deep time, what do you think about.

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Speaker 3: So I'm working on this project where I'm just trying

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Speaker 3: to do the geological timescale in the basement of my house.

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Speaker 3: And so I've got this line that is, you know,

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Speaker 3: forty five meters long, right, And if you have a

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Speaker 3: line that's forty.

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Speaker 2: Five going around the sort of the whole perimeter. Yeah, Like,

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Speaker 2: help me picture. This is like a finished basement. It's

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Speaker 2: like a rumpus room.

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Speaker 1: That's what's going on in your basement.

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Speaker 3: Okay, right, that's right, and so right, the age of

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Speaker 3: the universe is four point five billion years.

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Speaker 1: You said the universe. I think you mean Earth.

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Speaker 3: And so if you've got forty five meters, which is

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Speaker 3: forty five thousand centimeters, it means that each centimeter of

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Speaker 3: that line is one hundred thousand years. Each millimeter, right,

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Speaker 3: a millimeter, which is like the stroke of a pen, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: is ten thousand years?

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Speaker 1: Love it? All of human history basically? Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So you can then like look at this thing

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Speaker 3: and be like, all of human history is the stroke

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Speaker 3: of a pen on this line that extends around the

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Speaker 3: entirety of the room. But your point is exactly right.

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Speaker 2: Anything, I don't I'm not ready to leave your basement yet.

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Speaker 2: What motivated you to draw this line?

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Speaker 3: I wanted to explain to my kids how how long

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Speaker 3: geological time was. That's nice anyways, that was what I

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Speaker 3: was trying to do, is try to explain to my

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Speaker 3: kids how deep time is. But in the energy one

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Speaker 3: it's right.

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Speaker 1: Wait, did it work?

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Speaker 2: Do you think your kid's got a better understanding.

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Speaker 3: Let's ask him in like five to ten years.

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Speaker 2: And so do you think about deep time in relation

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Speaker 2: to your work?

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Speaker 3: Yes? I mean this is the point is you made

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Speaker 3: the point of what fossil fuels are is a transfer

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Speaker 3: of energy through deep time that we as a species

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Speaker 3: has accessed, right, and we first access to transfer of

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Speaker 3: energy through time with like fire. Right when you burn

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Speaker 3: wood you get to access one hundred years of stored

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Speaker 3: energy that the treated. When you burn coal you get

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Speaker 3: to access hundreds of millions of years of stored energy.

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Speaker 3: And that's been incredible. It's changed our society, our planet,

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Speaker 3: our way of life. And that's because transferring energy through

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Speaker 3: deep time is net positive. The problem is is that

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Speaker 3: when you transfer energy through deep time with combustion, you

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Speaker 3: also transfer the CO two from the ancient atmosphere that

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Speaker 3: was over hundreds of millions of years drawn down in

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Speaker 3: a balanced way into the atmosphere now over hundreds or

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Speaker 3: a couple thousand years. And that's the challenge. And so

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Speaker 3: what monolith is at its core? Right, we're still transferring

401
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Speaker 3: the energy through deep time, but we're not transferring the

402
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Speaker 3: CO two because the carbon doesn't end up in the atmosphere.

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Speaker 2: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round. Here.

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Speaker 1: That's the end of the ads. Now we're going back

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Speaker 1: to the show. Let's close with the lightning round.

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Speaker 2: What's one thing everybody should do when they visit Lincoln, Nebraska?

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Speaker 3: Go to a Nebraska Cornhuskers football game or a Nebraska

408
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Speaker 3: corn Huskers women's volleyball game.

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Speaker 2: I didn't see women's volleyball coming. Yeah, tell me about

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Speaker 2: a Nebraska corn Huskers women's volleyball game.

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Speaker 3: So the big news this happened just a few months ago.

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Speaker 3: It's one of the greatest volleyball programs in the country.

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Speaker 3: But what's cool is they have a huge fan base.

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Speaker 3: It's the most expensive ticket in Lincoln.

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Speaker 1: More expensive than a football game, and.

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Speaker 3: Earlier this year they decided that they were going to

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Speaker 3: do a game at the football stadium and put over

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Speaker 3: ninety thousand attendees, which made it the most live watched

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Speaker 3: female sporting event in history. Full stop, all sports, all countries,

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Speaker 3: all times.

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Speaker 2: Which element do you like better, Hydrogen or carbon?

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Speaker 3: I mean probably hydrogen because it's in our name. Often

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Speaker 3: people say what's monolith named after? And Mono is one,

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Speaker 3: which is kind of the point and so but with

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Speaker 3: the stone, and that's to represent the solid carbon. So

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Speaker 3: maybe hydrogen was first, but carbon is right behind it.

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Speaker 2: Okay, kind of like on the periodic table. As a

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Speaker 2: mechanical engineer, what do you understand about the world.

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Speaker 3: I think I probably understand about the second law thermodynamics

430
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Speaker 3: more than the average person, and that's entropy. And that's

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Speaker 3: that you know, So you've got the first law, which

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Speaker 3: is conservation of energy, and a lot of people can

433
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Speaker 3: intuitively get that it's neither creater are destroyed. But entropies

434
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Speaker 3: are more interesting one where it's what sets up time

435
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Speaker 3: in the era of time and that there actually is

436
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Speaker 3: no such thing as true circularity because we get older

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Speaker 3: every year.

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Speaker 2: And to be clear, it's that entropy or disorder increases.

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Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, that's right, but by law it increases,

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Speaker 3: and that's actually really powerful and it comes to play

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Speaker 3: in a lot of parts of real life.

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Speaker 2: Well, I feel like at some level it's what you're

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Speaker 2: fighting trying to build a billion dollar, first of its

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Speaker 2: kind megaproject, Like you're trying to create a tremendously large

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Speaker 2: ordered system in the face of a universal law that is.

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Speaker 1: Fighting against you.

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Speaker 3: That's excellent. Anything else you want to talk about. No,

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Speaker 3: this has been wonderful, very much, appreciate it. Likewise, not

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Speaker 3: many people go this deep. I don't think I've ever

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Speaker 3: told the story about my basement before, so you pulled

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Speaker 3: that one out of me.

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Speaker 2: Rob Hanson is the co founder and CEO of Monolith.

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Speaker 2: Today's show was produced by Edith Russello, edited by Karen Schakerji,

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Speaker 2: and engineered by Sarah Bruger. If you like the show,

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Speaker 2: please tell somebody about it, or review it on whatever

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Speaker 2: podcast app you use. If you don't like the show,

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Speaker 2: don't review it, but email us and tell us how

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Speaker 2: we could make it better. You can email us at

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Speaker 2: problem at Pushkin dot fm. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and we'll

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Speaker 2: be back next week with another episode of What's Your

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Speaker 2: Problem