One fine day in December 2018, Nate Maynard and Emily Y. Wu met over a coffee in downtown Taipei. The two talked about podcasting and sustainability. By Christmas, Nate, Emily, and Emily (Pearson) had recorded the first episodes of “Waste Not Why Not”. 

“Waste Not Why Not” - a sustainability podcast - was the first original show from Ghost Island Media. It debuted on Earth Day in 2019. Since then, it’s been a media partner at the 2020 AAAS Annual Meeting (American Association for the Advancement of Science), a program partner of the American Institute in Taiwan, and received support from Cypress River Advisors. 

We remember interviewing incredible guests:

Season One included Daniel Vickery, then-head of engineering of batteries and energy systems at Gogoro (maker of the world’s first nation-wide electric grid for electric vehicles); Sam Kimmins, then-head of RE100 from The Climate Group; Taiwanese youth climate activist Liang-Yi Chang; and Dr. Nebojsa Nakicenovic (IIASA) on radical change. 

Season Two included Dr. Jane Lubchenco, former head of NOAA; Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol on science denial and disinformation; Christine Bader, former head of CSR at Amazon and BP; and Dr. Enric Sala, National Geographic explorer-in-residence. 

We visited a food lab (thank you, Mattson in California!), a coral lab (thank you Shashank Keshavmurthy at Academia Sinica in Taiwan!), a batteries R&D center (thank you, Antonio Baclig at Stanford University!), a garage of new electric dirt bikes (you rock, Azizi Tucker!).

In Season Three and Four, we walked about solar energy, climate simulation, sustainable menstrual products, green buildings, COP, and we even did a game show.

Thank you to all our listeners and supporters who rooted for us in the past five years. Waste Not Why Not has come to an end (for now!)

Nate Maynard now continues his podcasting career at NETTING ZEROS, a new project Nate launched with David Green. Here’s the show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/netting-zeros/id1739098029

Here’s the show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uEIMDGgCduymAekSiV7zD

Check them out on Substack: https://nettingzeros.substack.com/about

As for Ghost Island Media, we continue producing podcasts and publishing. Please check out our other shows at www.ghostisland.media

EPISODE CREDIT

Host: Nate Maynard (Nature 8, @N8May), a sustainability consultant working on energy, ocean and waste.

Producer: Emily Y. Wu (@emilyywu), executive producer and founder of Ghost Island Media.

Audio Packaging by Wayne Tsai
Show logo by Southwicks Graphics
Theme tune by Dac Chang
A Ghost Island Media production (@ghostislandme)

Support the show: https://patreon.com/wastenotwhynot

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.