Making Protein from Air

In this episode, Daniel Epstein sits down with Dr. Lisa Dyson, co-founder and CEO of Air Protein and Caverity. Lisa has a PhD from MIT in string theory (her thesis was on rotating black holes, cosmology, and time travel) and she's now applying that same willingness to think beyond what seems possible to the future of food. Air Protein makes ingredients from air. Using cultures similar to those in yogurt, the process takes in CO2, water, and energy, and produces protein and other nutrients in a matter of hours, continuously, day and night, rain or shine. A soy farm the size of Texas would be needed to match the output of an Air Protein facility the size of Walt Disney World. The technology was originally developed by NASA for feeding astronauts on long space voyages, then shelved when the Apollo program ended. Lisa and her co-founder found it in the research literature and picked up where NASA left off. The conversation also goes into Lisa's childhood, 14 schools by age 14, a father who modeled both resilience and the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, and the moment at an Unreasonable retreat where a mentor told her to stop carrying the weight of the world and let her team inspire her instead.