Thomas Young, Associate and Blue-Green Infrastructure Specialist at The Environment Partnership (TEP) in the UK shows us his journey from the technical side of green roofs to the more holistic broader planning of sustainability and blue-green infrastructure. His incredible journey is supported by many seemingly unrelated topics, travels and passions that have all contributed to the impact he is creating in the UK. Find out how beer, mushrooms, cowboys and community among many others are linked to this intricate story!

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and a house tour
4:09 Origins of Tom's Ecology Inspiration
7:13 Sheffield and Tom's PhD side project
12:59 Green Roofs 101
22:30 Fungi to help Green Infrastructure
28:12 Writing the British Standards for green roofs
32:20 Blue-Green or Green-Blue Infrastructure? Return of Terminology
35:10 Venturing into Sports Turfs
41:56 Joining TEP and thinking about golf courses
53:08 The Nuffield Farming Scholarship and Tom's world travels
1:03:52 Learning for the UK's future cities and sustainability
1:07:40 Tom's current endeavours
1:12:47 Q&A Start
1:13:14 What does “innovation” mean to you?
1:13:53 Key event book person
1:14:43 Time Management
1:16:56 Favourite childhood memory
1:17:36 Biggest Challenge to date
1:18:37 Advice for young professionals
1:19:42 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:20:27 Where can people find you?
1:21:08 Final Message
1:21:36 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Mashael Yazdanie, Group Leader, Scientist and Lecturer at the Urban Energy Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Materials Science & Technology (Empa) traces her journey across the renewable energies towards more holistic thinking around energy, sustainability, society and sufficiency. We cover her projects in both the global north and south, key concepts such as planetary boundaries, sufficiency, efficiency and doughnut economics as well as the need to learn, unlearn and relearn if we want to become more adaptive and resilience in the face of the climate crisis.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and Solar Racing
5:58 Nature and energy?
9:50 Sufficiency, planetary boundaries and doughnut economics
20:31 Mashael's early renewables journey - Biogas Energy in Pakistan
29:58 Mashael's early renewables journey - Wind Energy
33:37 Mashael's early renewables journey - Tidal energy and the rest
36:35 Is there a favourite renewable?
38:01 Energy grid centralization vs. decentralization
42:30 Planning-support modelling & optimization
44:48 Understanding the breadth of modelling tools
46:49 Energy in West Africa - The Measures Project
54:28 The concept of 'Regret' in decision-making
1:01:56 Coming full circle to sufficiency
1:04:06 Learning, unlearning and relearning for the climate crisis
1:10:06 Mashael's future trajectory
1:14:30 Q&A Start
1:14:50 What does "innovation" mean to you?
1:16:00 Time management
1:20:34 Favourite childhood memory
1:21:26 Biggest challenge to date
1:23:45 Advice for young researchers
1:27:57 What would you most like to be rememnbered for?
1:30:16 Where can people find you?
1:30:58 Final message
1:33:06 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Welcome to this Mini-Series on The Grand Challengers Podcast! The topic of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been in all our minds over the past few years and is gaining even more momentum with rapid advancements in text, audio and video. Google recently released NotebookLM, a powerful research-support AI that can generate not only summaries of sources that we feed it, but also entire podcast episodes. This Mini-Series will explore the power of NotebookLM, our live reactions to its outputs... and a deep dive into some of the topics that we have covered on the show. We feature previous guests, who are here to join in on the fun!

Episode #3 delves into "Different perspectives on urban nature-based solutions" - Veljko Prodanovic (ep13) and I react to how NotebookLM produces a deep dive discussion on an opinion piece around human, ecological and AI perspectives of urban nature based solutions, this time guided by a focus prompt.

Full Reference to the Paper: Prodanovic, V., Bach, P.M. and Stojkovic, M., 2024. Urban nature-based solutions planning for biodiversity outcomes: human, ecological, and artificial intelligence perspectives. Urban Ecosystems, 27(5), pp.1795-1806. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-024-01558-6

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Funky Fortune by Danny Shields (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7vRFEGMyTTfeCtc8qiUB82?si=dygdqu9IQLSFYNvVzPNu5w)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:26 Guest Intro and callback to main series
3:31 How this experiment works
4:31 Guest's prior experience with AI
9:50 The human summary
11:20 Live Reaction
49:18 Post-discussion
53:40 Potential Future of AI
55:54 Wrap up
57:21 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/