The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1104 - Boyan Slat

00:00:02.000 Three, two, one.

00:00:05.000 Yes.

00:00:06.000 Hello, Boyan.

00:00:07.000 Hi there.

00:00:07.000 Welcome.

00:00:08.000 Thank you.

00:00:09.000 Thanks for doing this.

00:00:09.000 I really appreciate it.

00:00:10.000 And I love what you're doing.

00:00:11.000 I've seen your TED Talk.

00:00:13.000 I've seen numerous conferences that you've appeared at and discussions you've given on this.

00:00:19.000 For people to jump into this right now, what you've done is think long and hard and devise a method to try to clean up some of the plastic that we have floating around in the ocean, famously the Pacific Garbage Patch, which is an enormous patch of garbage that's between California and Hawaii.

00:00:38.000 How did you get involved in this?

00:00:42.000 You're a young guy.

00:00:43.000 How old are you?

00:00:44.000 23 already.

00:00:45.000 23 already?

00:00:46.000 You sound like, oh my god, I'm so old.

00:00:49.000 How old were you when you started this?

00:00:51.000 I think I started thinking about this when I was 16 and founded this organization when I was 18. That's crazy.

00:00:57.000 All you lazy fucks out there that are 16 years old that aren't doing shit with your life, just think about this kid. 1.00

00:01:03.000 That's amazing. 1.00

00:01:04.000 I'm so happy there's people like you in the world.

00:01:07.000 Thank you.

00:01:07.000 Yeah.

00:01:08.000 So you started thinking about it when you were 16, and, you know, this is something that is extremely disturbing to anybody that's paid attention, especially when you see the birds that have died with all these plastic bottle caps inside their bodies, and, you know, you see their carcasses with these multicolored caps in them,

00:01:24.000 and they thought these things were food.

00:01:26.000 It was just one of the...

00:01:29.000 Many, many, many problems that occur when you have plastic floating around in just enormous numbers in the ocean.

00:01:38.000 Sure, yeah.

00:01:38.000 I mean, there's really three problems with this plastic.

00:01:40.000 First of all, obviously, the ecosystem damage.

00:01:43.000 I think there are around about 800 species that actually could go extinct because of this plastic pollution.

00:01:49.000 Then there's the economic threat in terms of damage to fisheries, damage to tourism and things like that.

00:01:57.000 I think it's around $13 billion a year, according to the UN. And then thirdly, there's the health impact or the potential health impact because these tiny plastic pieces, they actually also end up in the fish we eat that take chemicals with it and that ends up on our dinner plate as well.

00:02:15.000 So what was it that prompted you to dedicate, essentially dedicate your young life to this?

00:02:22.000 Sure.

00:02:22.000 Yeah, so I've always been very passionate about technology and just building things.

00:02:28.000 I think sort of having an idea in your mind and then seeing that become reality and being able to touch it and things like that.

00:02:34.000 I think there's literally no better feeling in the world than that.

00:02:37.000 So I've been building my own thing since I was two years old, I think.

00:02:42.000 First starting with things like tree houses and zip lines, but then going into sort of computers and explosives and rockets and things like that, which was...

00:02:50.000 A lot of fun, but it wasn't very useful, I would say.

00:02:54.000 So I was kind of looking for something real to work on a real problem.

00:03:00.000 And that's what I then came across.

00:03:02.000 When I was 16 years old, I was scuba diving in Greece.

00:03:05.000 And I came across more plastic bags than fish.

00:03:08.000 And I wondered, why can't we just clean this up?

00:03:10.000 And that question sort of kept circling around in my head.

00:03:15.000 And I sort of thought about, how could we do this?

00:03:18.000 The ocean is pretty big.

00:03:19.000 I then eventually came up with this idea to use these natural ocean currents to let us collect the plastic.

00:03:26.000 Do you have many different prototypes that you started with and you eventually wound up with what you have now and have you started implementing them yet?

00:03:36.000 Oh, yeah.

00:03:36.000 I mean, so the concept that was presented back in 2012 with my first TEDx talk, and if you compare that to where we are right now, it's sort of day and night of a difference.

00:03:50.000 So, yeah.

00:03:52.000 Through testing and through all these prototypings, obviously there has been a lot of development there.

00:03:58.000 But the key idea has stayed the same, that instead of going after the plastic with boats and nets, which will take around about 79,000 years to clean up just this Great Pacific Garbage Patch, instead of doing that, we let the plastic come to us.

00:04:12.000 So we use basically a network, a fleet of very long floating barriers, which are oriented in a U-shape, I think?

00:04:37.000 And has this started yet?

00:04:39.000 So we were founded around four years ago.

00:04:43.000 In that time, on one side, we did the reconnaissance.

00:04:46.000 So we mapped the patch with 30 boats and an airplane at the same time to really understand how much is out there, which turns out to be 1.8 trillion pieces floating in this great Pacific garbage patch.

00:04:58.000 And on the other hand, we've done all the testing.

00:05:00.000 So we've done hundreds of scale model tests.

00:05:03.000 We've done prototypes back in Europe on the North Sea.

00:05:06.000 And actually right now we're manufacturing the first real cleanup system, which is scheduled to be launched from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in around two or three months' time.

00:05:19.000 So has anything been used?

00:05:21.000 Is there a proof of concept?

00:05:24.000 Have you done real large scale testing where you've shown that you can actually do this?

00:05:29.000 Well, I mean, we've done a lot of subsystem testing.

00:05:32.000 So the prototypes in the North Sea, for example, were these 12-meter sections, and we managed to keep that in one piece.

00:05:40.000 But then also the plastic capturing, that worked very well in the lab.

00:05:45.000 But, yeah, the real proof, of course, has to come from this one real system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch collecting plastic.

00:05:53.000 And that's what we really hope to achieve this year.

00:05:56.000 So this is the big one, right?

00:05:57.000 The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest.

00:06:00.000 Between California and Hawaii.

00:06:03.000 So there are five areas in the world where plastic concentrates.

00:06:07.000 This is by far the largest one.

00:06:08.000 There are four others, but they combinedly contain less plastic than this one in the North Pacific.

00:06:17.000 Do we know why that is?

00:06:18.000 Probably because of Asia. 0.93

00:06:20.000 So Asia has quite a big problem in terms of that they use a lot of plastic, but they don't have a good infrastructure.

00:06:27.000 So by far the largest source of plastic flowing into the ocean is also this one continent.

00:06:33.000 And what's being released there, naturally, because of the currents, ends up in this North Pacific patch.

00:06:38.000 It's such a strange problem.

00:06:41.000 Because it wasn't something that was discussed in the 80s or the 90s.

00:06:45.000 It was nothing.

00:06:46.000 And then all of a sudden, somewhere in the year 2000, I remember hearing about the massive amount of plastic we have in the ocean.

00:06:52.000 And it just made sense.

00:06:53.000 I was like, oh, well, of course.

00:06:54.000 Of course it's going to wind up there.

00:06:56.000 But the sheer size of it is staggering.

00:06:59.000 Yeah, and I think that, to me, the worrying thing is that it's a persistent problem.

00:07:03.000 So with many other kinds of pollutions, when you sort of turn off the tap, it will be solved by itself.

00:07:09.000 Think about, for example, the ozone hole with the CFCs.

00:07:13.000 But with this, like if you turn off the tap, the problem is still there, and in 100 years it will still be there.

00:07:19.000 So I think to really solve it, you need to do two things.

00:07:22.000 On one side, we have to close the tap.

00:07:24.000 On the other hand, we also need to clean it up.

00:07:26.000 Jamie just pulled up a...

00:07:28.000 A size comparison where it shows 1.6 million square kilometers, an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France.

00:07:38.000 Yeah, so this was a study we published a few weeks ago.

00:07:42.000 So this was the result of that reconnaissance effort.

00:07:46.000 It's kind of funny, like every other news outlet used a different size comparison.

00:07:51.000 So I think it was CNN that says it was the size of Mongolia.

00:07:55.000 We always use Texas.

00:07:57.000 Yeah, Texas is good.

00:07:58.000 We're America.

00:07:58.000 We use Texas for everything.

00:08:00.000 Four times California as well.

00:08:02.000 So yeah, it's a pretty big area.

00:08:04.000 It's insane.

00:08:05.000 And it's getting bigger, I'm sure.

00:08:07.000 Yeah, so the area doesn't really change.

00:08:10.000 It's more the concentration.

00:08:12.000 When did we realize that this was an issue, like collectively scientists, geologists?

00:08:17.000 Yeah, so there have been sort of small sampling efforts since the 70s.

00:08:23.000 Back then, it was the first time plastic was described as being something that floats in the ocean.

00:08:28.000 But it really only entered the public consciousness, I think, in the late 90s.

00:08:32.000 There was this Captain Charles Moore who was sort of sailing through it.

00:08:38.000 And he saw this plastic and he was like, well, we need to describe this.

00:08:42.000 And then he did a scientific paper on it.

00:08:44.000 And actually, I think he was the one that termed the term Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

00:08:50.000 So he was riding his boat through it for a long period of time, I guess.

00:08:55.000 Yeah, I think he was participating in some sailing race and he went through it and then he just saw that stuff.

00:09:02.000 So he was sort of the canary in the coal mine?

00:09:05.000 I guess, yeah.

00:09:06.000 So is it one of those things where it's hard to get different governments to act on this because, you know, who's responsible for the ocean?

00:09:17.000 Yeah, I think it's sort of this tragic tragedy of the commons, right?

00:09:21.000 Where it's international water, it's sort of everyone's problem, but at the same time, legally, it's no one's problem.

00:09:27.000 So, yeah, and besides that, what I really felt when I started the Ocean Cleanup was that I think everyone wanted this problem to be solved, but at the same time, we didn't really have a way to do it.

00:09:40.000 There simply wasn't any technology to do that.

00:09:43.000 So that's why I thought, well, perhaps this is an opportunity to combine my interests of A, solving this problem, but B, also developing technology, which is what we did.

00:09:53.000 Is there anyone else doing this?

00:09:55.000 So there are many organizations working on the prevention side, right?

00:09:59.000 So educating people, thinking about policies, those kind of things.

00:10:04.000 Which is very important, I think.

00:10:06.000 But yeah, unfortunately, we're the only ones that sort of do the hard technology side of it.

00:10:11.000 And yeah, I wish more people would do it.

00:10:15.000 If somebody else would clean the ocean, that would be fine with us as well.

00:10:20.000 But until somebody else does it, yeah, we're kind of the ones that have to do it.

00:10:24.000 That's so fascinating to me, that out of the 7 billion people on the planet, sometimes it really does just take one person.

00:10:32.000 To act.

00:10:33.000 One person do something about something that, I mean, I'm aware of.

00:10:36.000 Many people are aware of.

00:10:37.000 Many people listening have heard about this.

00:10:39.000 And it's sort of one of those things that's in the back of your mind that doesn't affect you on a daily basis.

00:10:44.000 So you say, well, that's a tragedy.

00:10:45.000 That's a terrible thing.

00:10:46.000 But it's not my problem.

00:10:48.000 I have my own problems.

00:10:49.000 But you, this one person, decided to do something about it.

00:10:53.000 And the fact that you did when you were 16 is so fascinating to me.

00:10:58.000 And someone has to do it, right?

00:11:00.000 Right.

00:11:00.000 But isn't that weird?

00:11:01.000 Someone has to, but nobody was doing shit until you came along. 0.94

00:11:06.000 That's very interesting. 0.97

00:11:08.000 Yeah.

00:11:09.000 Yeah.

00:11:09.000 I sometimes wonder, yeah.

00:11:12.000 Sometimes people ask me, like, why do you do it?

00:11:15.000 And my answer would be, like, why not?

00:11:19.000 Why isn't everyone doing this?

00:11:21.000 One thing that I was thinking was, and this is my same feeling about air pollution, is that once they figured out a way to use whatever is in the particulates in air pollution as a resource and make it valuable, then people are going to be running to extract it out of the skies.

00:11:39.000 And I felt the same way about the Pacific Garbage Patch and all the other ocean.

00:11:43.000 Currents where they have this issue.

00:11:45.000 So is it the currents bring everything together collectively into one area just because of the way the ocean moves?

00:11:52.000 Exactly, yeah.

00:11:53.000 So you have these sort of the current at the equator and then you have these boundary currents and it sort of acts like the sink in your bathtub, right?

00:12:04.000 So it's sort of where all the plastic wants to go.

00:12:07.000 Now, is it possible to take that stuff, all those disgusting particles, and use it for something?

00:12:15.000 Yeah, I mean, sure.

00:12:17.000 Actually, I have a few examples with me in my bag, but it's not here right now.

00:12:21.000 You can go grab it.

00:12:22.000 Do you want to go grab it?

00:12:23.000 No, I'll do it in a bit.

00:12:25.000 I can describe it.

00:12:26.000 It's a podcast, anyways.

00:12:28.000 So what we do is we take the plastic out and we recycle that.

00:12:33.000 We've developed a process for this.

00:12:36.000 And we can turn it into new products.

00:12:38.000 Actually, the pair of sunglasses that I've finally been able to wear after a dreaded Northern European winter, we already made that out of plastic that we took out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 0.94

00:12:49.000 So you're wearing sunglasses that are recycled from the ocean?

00:12:52.000 Exactly.

00:12:53.000 And the idea is that we can do anything with this, right?

00:12:55.000 So you can imagine sort of a part of your next car or your chair or whatever.

00:13:01.000 You can make that out of ocean plastic.

00:13:04.000 And what we think is that the material itself isn't valuable enough, but it's really the story behind it.

00:13:09.000 So the fact that you can say, well, it's made out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which we think will add value.

00:13:14.000 So it's like the difference between a normal pebble and the piece of the Berlin Wall.

00:13:21.000 One is worth...

00:13:30.000 I think that's a fantastic idea, and I think that'll be a huge value for people.

00:13:35.000 I mean, I think people really want to buy something that they know is recycled out of something that was choking fish and birds to death.

00:13:41.000 Yeah, and not only that.

00:13:44.000 Adidas is turning plastic from the ocean into $200 shoes.

00:13:47.000 The sportswear maker is teaming up with something to sell three new shoes made with plastic pulled from the ocean.

00:13:53.000 Wow, that's awesome.

00:13:55.000 That's the kind of stuff you can do.

00:13:56.000 So, I mean, in this example, Adidas actually didn't use plastic from the ocean.

00:14:01.000 I think they just said that for marketing reasons.

00:14:03.000 They make that from plastic that was sort of, they call it ocean bound. 1.00

00:14:08.000 Oh, those lying motherfuckers? 1.00

00:14:10.000 God damn it. 1.00

00:14:12.000 They got him. 1.00

00:14:13.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:14:14.000 That's bullshit. 1.00

00:14:15.000 So it's on the way to the ocean? 1.00

00:14:17.000 Yeah, which I guess could be anything. 1.00

00:14:19.000 Fuck you! 1.00

00:14:20.000 It was like, we were gonna throw it out, but we decided to make sneakers. 1.00

00:14:22.000 Right.

00:14:23.000 Oh, that's horrible.

00:14:24.000 I mean, it's still...

00:14:25.000 They got Jamie!

00:14:28.000 Yeah, I have some of those.

00:14:30.000 Do you have some of those?

00:14:31.000 They're very cool.

00:14:32.000 I like them and I like the people that work on it.

00:14:36.000 That's all cute and everything, but that's a lie.

00:14:38.000 Yeah, well, yeah, a white lie.

00:14:40.000 A little bit?

00:14:41.000 Yeah.

00:14:43.000 The composition of the plastic that we'll be pulling out of the ocean is pretty unique.

00:14:48.000 It's quite degraded because of the decades of UV light hitting it.

00:14:54.000 So we really had to develop a new process to do this.

00:14:57.000 So probably, maybe in a year or so, we'll actually be able to launch the first line of products made out of the real deal, the plastic actually coming out of the ocean.

00:15:06.000 That's excellent.

00:15:07.000 So you're going to sell raw plastic?

00:15:10.000 And is there an issue of who owns the plastic?

00:15:13.000 Because it is in the commons of the ocean, international waters.

00:15:17.000 I think it'd be hilarious if somebody would sort of raise their hand and say, oh, that's my plastic.

00:15:22.000 I put it in there.

00:15:23.000 I think then we have another kind of legal issue.

00:15:25.000 Yeah.

00:15:26.000 But if it becomes a resource like oil, right?

00:15:29.000 Yeah.

00:15:29.000 I think there's some, there's like these salvage laws that say if you sort of salvage something from the international oceans, you can actually keep it.

00:15:38.000 So that doesn't appear to be an issue.

00:15:42.000 But yeah, definitely it will be, yeah, sort of closing the circle will be a fun project too.

00:15:47.000 Yeah, I mean, it sounds like an amazing thing, and I guarantee people would be very, very interested to buy things that they know were made out of something that was really a horrible side effect of civilization.

00:16:03.000 Yeah, I think if you have the choice between a normal, well, let's use the sunglass example again, a normal pair or a pair coming out of the ocean, I think 9 out of 10 people would choose the latter.

00:16:14.000 Oh, for sure.

00:16:15.000 I mean, I think it would be giant for companies, too, to advertise that we only use 100% recycled from the ocean plastic.

00:16:22.000 That would be gigantic.

00:16:24.000 How long do you think it would be before this could be a reality?

00:16:28.000 So the first system is currently being assembled.

00:16:32.000 So we are renting a former naval base at the San Francisco Bay, where it's currently being put together.

00:16:39.000 It's still a relatively small system.

00:16:41.000 It's 2,000 feet in length.

00:16:42.000 So eventually there'll be almost double the size.

00:16:45.000 But this one will be launched in pretty late June, early July.

00:16:52.000 Then we'll take it out.

00:16:53.000 The first deployment will not yet be directly in the patch, so we're just deploying it around 300 miles of the coast just to make sure that it works well, sort of a final rehearsal.

00:17:04.000 If that goes well, then by probably around August, we should be ready to take it all the way to the patch.

00:17:09.000 And hopefully soon after that, collect the first plastic.

00:17:12.000 And then we hope to have the first shipment of first plastic back in port before the end of the year.

00:17:20.000 And we think that will be such a symbolic moment for 60 years.

00:17:24.000 Man has been putting plastic into the ocean, and from that moment onwards, we're also taking it back out again.

00:17:29.000 That's amazing.

00:17:30.000 And you feel like you can get 40% of the garbage patch in 10 years?

00:17:34.000 It's actually, so with a fleet of 60 of these cleanup systems, we should be able to clean up half this Great Pacific garbage patch every five years.

00:17:42.000 Wow!

00:17:43.000 Which, of course, the more...

00:17:45.000 Yeah, I mean, and you can do it faster if you want more, if you put in more systems, of course.

00:17:50.000 Where are you guys getting funding from?

00:17:52.000 So, so far we've been very generously supported by mostly individuals, actually.

00:17:58.000 So, ranging from people that just donate 50 bucks to people like Mark Benioff, who's the founder of Salesforce, and a couple of other very high net worth individuals.

00:18:09.000 If someone wanted to donate, how would they do so?

00:18:11.000 Yeah, just go to the website, theoceancleanup.com, and feel free to get in touch with us.

00:18:17.000 So mostly individuals, mostly wealthy philanthropists?

00:18:21.000 Yeah, so that has gotten us to around $35 to $40 million right now, which has been enough to fund all these years of research and development, the whole mapping of the patch, as well as the construction of this first system right now.

00:18:35.000 So that should get us to the point where it's proven technology.

00:18:39.000 And then for the scale-up, the idea is that basically any company can go and fund their own system.

00:18:44.000 We estimate the cost of every system to be around $5 million.

00:18:48.000 Basically, the system will be around a kilometer.

00:18:52.000 There's plenty of space for logos.

00:18:54.000 The world is watching.

00:18:55.000 So it's like this massive billboard floating out there.

00:18:58.000 So the idea is that any company can sort of fund, or individual even, can fund their own system. 1.00

00:19:03.000 So Nike can be like, fuck you, Adidas. 0.99

00:19:05.000 We're actually doing this. 1.00

00:19:06.000 For real.

00:19:06.000 Yeah.

00:19:07.000 Just kidding, Adidas.

00:19:08.000 That would be hilarious.

00:19:09.000 Yeah, it would be hilarious.

00:19:10.000 Yeah.

00:19:11.000 So what is the process in taking the plastic from the ocean and converting it into usable plastic like that you would use in sunglasses?

00:19:21.000 The first thing you do is you wash it, you sort it, you scrub it to get these very clean fragments of the plastic.

00:19:34.000 There's a process called compounding where you sort of remelt it and add some additives.

00:19:40.000 And make it into what you call pellets.

00:19:41.000 So these are sort of these bead-sized particles which can be fed into any machine in the world.

00:19:48.000 So say an IKEA machine for furniture or a Tesla machine for cars.

00:19:54.000 And that process we kind of had to custom develop tailor-made for our feedstock because it's such a unique composition.

00:20:03.000 That's amazing.

00:20:04.000 It's really fascinating because I think that that will be a hugely desirable form of construction.

00:20:13.000 Like if you can prove that the plastic that you use was made and is actually, it's a benefit to get that plastic and make things out of it.

00:20:24.000 Yeah.

00:20:25.000 I mean, it's still more expensive, obviously, than just normal plastic because we have to collect it from 1,200 miles offshore.

00:20:34.000 But on the other hand, so just by selling it as plastic, I don't think that would be a good business.

00:20:40.000 But making it into sort of going further in the value chain up to the consumer, I think that can make sense because, again, to use the sunglass example, it's probably around 100 grams of material.

00:20:53.000 So that would take about maybe a dollar to collect.

00:20:57.000 And, you know, what's a dollar on a $120 pair of sunglasses, right?

00:21:03.000 So I think that really going all the way up to the value chain, that's where you can really add the value.

00:21:09.000 Well, you know, one of the things that was shocking to me when I was investigating plastic is that I didn't know that plastic, you can make plastic out of hemp.

00:21:18.000 That hemp plastic is actually biodegradable.

00:21:21.000 Yeah, and sugarcane, and there's many sort of bio-based types of plastic.

00:21:26.000 The thing is, though, that this is a very sort of complicated and controversial world of sort of the bioplastics because you have something called bio-based and you have something called biodegradable.

00:21:38.000 So you can make plastic out of, say, sugarcane.

00:21:42.000 Which is chemically exactly the same as plastic that was made from crude oil.

00:21:47.000 And it would take the same amount of time for it to degrade.

00:21:51.000 So biobase doesn't necessarily mean that it's biodegradable and vice versa.

00:21:58.000 It's a very complicated world that even sometimes are experts on plastic pollution being confused about it, let alone the general population.

00:22:10.000 In short, there isn't yet the holy grail of this type of plastic that On one hand, it's very good in terms of performance in its usable life.

00:22:21.000 And then when it, for example, enters the ocean, just degrades in a matter of days or months.

00:22:27.000 But I think that would be a great innovation.

00:22:31.000 Is the quality of biodegradable plastic inferior to biobased but non-biodegradable?

00:22:37.000 Yeah, and it's mostly limited in the terms of applications, so you can't really do everything with it.

00:22:44.000 The actual physical plastic, does it feel different to the touch?

00:22:48.000 Yeah, so it usually makes more noise.

00:22:51.000 It's more sort of crumbly.

00:22:53.000 Oh, so it's brittle or something?

00:22:56.000 Right, right.

00:22:56.000 Interesting.

00:22:57.000 Well, that makes sense, right?

00:22:58.000 So if you're going to make water bottles out of biodegradable plastic, they're probably going to leak everywhere.

00:23:03.000 Yeah, that's not possible yet.

00:23:06.000 So they're compostable.

00:23:08.000 That's another thing.

00:23:09.000 You have compostable plastic, which you can use for water bottles.

00:23:13.000 But then the only way for it to degrade would be to be in sort of this industrial composter where you have a temperature of 100 degrees and pressure and things like that.

00:23:24.000 And it wouldn't degrade in the ocean.

00:23:25.000 So it's a very complicated area of Yeah, and I know that I had Paul Stamets on, who's a mycologist, and he was talking about all the different fungus that could be potentially engineered to eat plastic.

00:23:42.000 This is another thing that they're working on.

00:23:45.000 Yeah, so that, of course, would be great to have on landfills and things like that. 0.65

00:23:49.000 And actually, it's a process that we're also investigating for recycling because one thing you could do is you could take that plastic and then using either enzymes or indeed fungi and things like that, you could turn it back into biomass.

00:24:03.000 And from that biomass, you could make anything else again.

00:24:07.000 So you could make bio-based plastic, for example.

00:24:10.000 So, does this change your relationship with plastic? 0.98

00:24:13.000 I mean, when you sit there and you're drinking out of this plastic bottle, do you think, I might have to clean this fucking thing up someday? 0.98

00:24:19.000 Yeah, a bit, yeah. 0.98

00:24:22.000 It must, I mean...

00:24:23.000 Yeah, but on the other hand, I'm also not against plastic because I realize that without plastic, say, modern medicine would be very difficult.

00:24:32.000 Without plastic, a lot more...

00:24:34.000 Food waste would be produced, and without plastic, we wouldn't be able to clean the ocean.

00:24:38.000 Actually, a lot of the components of our cleanup system...

00:24:41.000 Actually, maybe you can pull up an image of the thing being built right now.

00:24:45.000 Yeah, please do.

00:24:46.000 So that's actually...

00:24:47.000 A lot of the parts of that are made out of plastic.

00:24:52.000 That's kind of ironic.

00:24:54.000 Yeah, or poetic.

00:24:55.000 Cannibalism.

00:24:56.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:56.000 Here it is.

00:24:59.000 Solving fire with fire.

00:25:00.000 So, yes, I don't think we can live without plastic and I don't think we should want to.

00:25:07.000 I think it's really just about managing the material in a way that it doesn't end up in the ocean, which means that it either comes back to the material being valuable enough at the end of life, because if it's cheaper to recycle than to not recycle, well then obviously it would happen.

00:25:23.000 And there needs to be good infrastructure for that.

00:25:25.000 And then I think as a final safety net, we need technologies like this to sort of intercept it in river miles, as well as sort of clean up the legacy of the 60 years that we're having in the middle of the ocean.

00:25:39.000 But I don't think we can live without plastics.

00:25:41.000 No, I don't think so either.

00:25:42.000 Not yet.

00:25:42.000 And when you're looking at the water and you see the plastic that is in this specific garbage patch and all the other four patches, how deep does that plastic go from the surface?

00:25:54.000 So most of the plastic really stays on or near the surface.

00:25:59.000 So we've done expeditions for that to measure it.

00:26:03.000 And that's actually why our system only goes three meters deep, because below that there's virtually no plastic anymore.

00:26:10.000 Interesting.

00:26:11.000 So it's only about nine feet.

00:26:12.000 So when you see the little tiny itty-bitty pieces, it seems like as the plastic breaks down over decades, it becomes almost like a gelatinous sort of chunky thing.

00:26:26.000 It's different.

00:26:26.000 Yeah, it's called microplastics.

00:26:28.000 So you have sort of these particles that look almost like grains of sand, really, which are really small.

00:26:35.000 Even those we measured are primarily in those top three meters, or nine feet indeed.

00:26:41.000 So, another surprising finding, I think, from those expeditions was that still more than 99% of the plastic is larger than a millimeter, so larger than those very tiny pieces, which means that on one hand,

00:26:57.000 I think that's good news because that means it's not too late because obviously the smaller they get, the more harmful they get.

00:27:04.000 They end up in the food chain, but they also are harder to clean up, right?

00:27:08.000 So, So on one hand, it's not too late, so that's the good news, I think.

00:27:13.000 But on the other hand, it also means that there's still 99% of plastic out there that over the next few decades will become microplastics as well if we don't clean it up.

00:27:25.000 So there's sort of this ticking time bomb out there that if we just leave it there, the amount of microplastics could increase over 100-fold over the next few decades, and then we would be in a much worse situation than we are today.

00:27:38.000 So have marine biologists done studies on the impact in that particular area in terms of populations of fish and marine life?

00:27:47.000 Yes.

00:27:48.000 So there's many species that are being affected on one side due to ingestion, on the other side through entanglement.

00:27:58.000 So actually another finding of our study was that almost half of the plastic by mass is things like ropes and fishing nets, which of course are disastrous.

00:28:08.000 Well, first of all, for propellers, for boats that go out there.

00:28:11.000 Oh, God.

00:28:12.000 Look at that photo.

00:28:13.000 Indeed.

00:28:13.000 This is a terrible photo of a turtle that looks like it's caught in a bush.

00:28:20.000 It's just this massive net that this thing is swimming around with this thing attached to its body.

00:28:26.000 That's one of the things that I was going to ask you about is cleaning up the nets.

00:28:30.000 Because we had talked to someone that was explaining that every time they fish, A lot of times they'll cut the nets loose.

00:28:38.000 Yeah.

00:28:38.000 So it's probably a combination of accidental loss and intentional loss.

00:28:44.000 But yeah, I mean, the amount of nets really was quite staggering.

00:28:50.000 Do you remember who was bringing that up, Jamie?

00:28:53.000 Somebody brought that up that they just released the nets and that it's commonplace.

00:28:58.000 And it was stunning because we were like, what?

00:29:00.000 Every time they do that?

00:29:02.000 Yeah, the nets get cut and they get damaged, so they just cut the nets loose.

00:29:06.000 Yeah, and the nets are plastic too.

00:29:08.000 But that's insane that that's legal, that they do that, that they don't have...

00:29:11.000 Yeah, it's not legal.

00:29:12.000 It's not legal.

00:29:13.000 No.

00:29:15.000 So there are laws for this, but obviously, how do you know that people do this?

00:29:19.000 It's very hard to monitor in the middle of the ocean.

00:29:22.000 Yeah, I mean, I guess.

00:29:24.000 You should probably have some sort of a GPS tracking on your net.

00:29:27.000 Yeah.

00:29:28.000 I mean, that could be one thing.

00:29:29.000 Or you could think about, we need market-based solutions where there would be a financial incentive if they bring their nets to shore.

00:29:37.000 Yeah.

00:29:37.000 And some sort of a penalization if they don't.

00:29:41.000 What is this, Jamie?

00:29:42.000 The impact on abandoned ocean fishing nets on marine life.

00:29:45.000 I think it might have been Chris Ryan or Duncan.

00:29:46.000 Ah, okay.

00:29:47.000 That makes sense.

00:29:48.000 That's what Google says.

00:29:49.000 Oh, man.

00:29:51.000 That is just so...

00:29:52.000 It's so sad that it's such a wasteful...

00:29:57.000 Dismissive sort of thing to do.

00:29:59.000 Just cut it loose and it's gone.

00:30:02.000 It's in the ocean.

00:30:03.000 No worries.

00:30:04.000 Sure.

00:30:05.000 So that's a very obvious kind of impact.

00:30:08.000 And then another thing, there was also a study done by us recently.

00:30:12.000 So we looked at the concentrations of plastic versus naturally occurring marine life.

00:30:18.000 In this garbage patch, and then what we saw was that there is 180 times more plastic at the surface than sort of natural food for birds and for turtles and things like that.

00:30:30.000 So you can imagine if you are a turtle at the surface of this garbage patch and you sort of take a bite to eat, there is 180 times larger chance that you eat plastic rather than a piece of plankton, right?

00:30:42.000 Right.

00:30:43.000 And what we found was that this concentration is so high that it can actually have this chemical impact where these chemicals have a potential health impact on these organisms as well as species further up the food web,

00:30:59.000 including us humans.

00:31:00.000 So have we noticed that, have people been tested and shown to have ingested plastic that they've gotten through eating tuna or something like that?

00:31:11.000 So the plastic itself isn't the thing that...

00:31:14.000 The chemicals.

00:31:15.000 Yes, so it's chemicals that attach to the plastic.

00:31:18.000 And, for example, what you see is that, for example, in Greenland, the native communities that really rely on fish, they have much higher cancer rates, they have much higher concentrations of mercury, so other heavy metals,

00:31:34.000 as well as these persistent organic pollutants, these things that attach to the plastic.

00:31:39.000 In Greenland?

00:31:40.000 Yeah, like these native communities that rely on fish and other sea life to eat.

00:31:48.000 So this is a recent trend that they have higher rates of cancer?

00:31:51.000 Yeah, I don't know how recent it is, but probably in the past few decades, I can imagine.

00:31:56.000 But yeah, that's really linked to their consumption of marine sources.

00:32:03.000 Yeah.

00:32:04.000 But obviously it's hard to say, well, how many percent of that is just...

00:32:08.000 Heavy metals.

00:32:09.000 Yeah, versus what's coming by plastic.

00:32:11.000 But sure, if you look at the kind of chemicals and you look at the lab tests that they've done with that, those chemicals, yeah, they are not very good for you.

00:32:21.000 Now, I've heard that if you leave a water bottle like this in your car and it gets hot out, that the plastic will leach into the water.

00:32:31.000 Is that correct?

00:32:31.000 Yeah, so I think it depends on the kind of plastic, but you have, I think with this, you probably have a liner that contains phthalates and things like that.

00:32:41.000 So yeah, I wouldn't do that.

00:32:44.000 So when you look at those chemicals, you have two kinds of things you should, I think, worry about.

00:32:49.000 One is the chemicals that are actually in the plastic, and secondly, there's these chemicals that just float around in the ocean.

00:32:55.000 And then can attach to the plastic when they, yeah, because they sort of act like this chemical sponge.

00:33:03.000 The plastic wants to repel water and there's chemicals too, so they kind of act like a magnet towards each other.

00:33:09.000 And especially the latter one, it's well studied and we see that a lot on the plastic.

00:33:15.000 But the former one, yeah, I mean, it's even an issue here in your car, for example.

00:33:21.000 It's an issue in your car?

00:33:22.000 Like how so?

00:33:23.000 Yeah, well, if you leave it like in a hot car.

00:33:25.000 Oh, right, right, right.

00:33:26.000 Now, my question was, even if you're scooping out all that plastic out of the ocean, is it still leaving chemicals that we'll never be able to get out?

00:33:39.000 So I think the chemicals mostly...

00:33:41.000 Actually, it collects more chemicals than it sort of leaches out.

00:33:45.000 So because of those sort of legacy chemicals like the PCBs and DDT... So those things that we use for insulators and pesticides back in maybe the 40s to 60s.

00:34:03.000 So these actually, the plastic attracts those chemicals.

00:34:09.000 So in a way you kind of also remove a bit of those chemicals and we actually have to wash them out before we do the recycling because you don't want those in your products.

00:34:17.000 So there's actually some sort of a benefit to having those plastics in the water?

00:34:21.000 I mean, not that you would encourage people to put plastic in the water, but there is some natural benefit?

00:34:27.000 Yeah, I mean, it's sort of, yeah.

00:34:29.000 I mean, I cannot really say how many percent of those legacy chemicals we would be pulling out with the plastic.

00:34:36.000 But, yeah, I mean, you could say, you could argue it's sort of an added benefit to removing it, not to having plastic in the ocean.

00:34:43.000 Now, have you extended this line of thinking to some of the other problems in the ocean, like these heavy metals?

00:34:52.000 What I really hope is that the Ocean Cleanup can become a symbol of how we should use technology to solve problems of our time.

00:35:04.000 I think a lot of it comes down to that we shouldn't protest what we shouldn't agree with, but we should build a future that we do agree with.

00:35:14.000 So, when you look at the past few hundred years of modernity and our civilization, what we see is dramatic positive trends in terms of health, wealth, education, violence.

00:35:30.000 I mean, you had Steven Pinker on your show, right?

00:35:32.000 So I think that's really positive trends, and we've done a good job in that.

00:35:39.000 And that all comes down to our ability to sort of imagine things that don't exist yet, so sort of technology and innovation, and being able to work together in an effective way, which is think about the corporation.

00:35:56.000 So I think those have been very good trends.

00:36:00.000 And I think what we should do is we should also think about how to apply those to the area outside of our own species and to the rest of the environment.

00:36:10.000 Because when you look at all those positive trends over the past few hundred years, that's all good.

00:36:16.000 But there's one very big exception, which is the impact to the environment.

00:36:20.000 It's almost like we've...

00:36:22.000 I had all the success at the cost of the environment.

00:36:25.000 But I think that instead of, there are some people that have sort of a more reactionary feel to this, and they say, well, look at all these problems.

00:36:35.000 It was created by businesses and by technology, so we should stay as far away from those things as possible. 0.99

00:36:42.000 And I think that's sort of stupid. 0.98

00:36:46.000 I think that it really just shows that these are very powerful ways of getting things done. 0.98

00:36:53.000 And I think a much more effective way was to apply that what has worked in other areas and then also apply that to the area of the environment.

00:37:01.000 So I don't think...

00:37:03.000 For example, I think that the car problem is not going to be solved by banning cars.

00:37:07.000 I think it's going to be solved by electric cars.

00:37:09.000 And I don't think...

00:37:11.000 The meat pollution problem is going to be solved by everyone becoming vegan.

00:37:15.000 I think it's going to be solved by things like lab-grown meat and other kind of alternatives.

00:37:22.000 That's why I also think that the plastic pollution problem is not going to be solved by people trying to do their own little bit and trying to live without plastic or things like that.

00:37:35.000 I think it's going to be solved by You know, things like plastics that do not harm to the environment as well as technologies like the ocean cleanup to sort of clean up after itself.

00:37:47.000 So, yeah, and I hope that the ocean cleanup can be sort of a symbol of that approach.

00:37:53.000 I like what you just said there because I've always thought that technology will most likely sort out most of these issues if we apply enough attention to it.

00:38:04.000 And that one of the real issues is when someone creates some sort of a new technology, they really don't have the ability to see 50 years down the line what's going to happen with the side effects, the residual effects.

00:38:16.000 And I think that's a big part of what happened with plastic.

00:38:19.000 And I don't think the solution is, you know, making an axe out of a piece of rock and living in the woods.

00:38:24.000 I think that the solution is trying to have a long-term, comprehensive approach to how we use various technologies and also various resources so that we don't have another Pacific garbage patch and some new technology 50,

00:38:41.000 100, 200 years from now.

00:38:43.000 I mean, if you went to the ocean 200 years ago, you would see none of this.

00:38:46.000 So this is a very, very, very recent issue that's compounding at a staggering rate.

00:38:52.000 Sure, yeah.

00:38:54.000 So I agree with what you say there.

00:39:00.000 I think there's a lot of people that think that technology is inherently neutral, like it's not good or bad.

00:39:08.000 But I think that's not true.

00:39:10.000 If you compare some bioterrorist weapon which you could invent or you could invent a machine to clean the ocean, I would argue those are not equally good things to develop.

00:39:22.000 So when technology isn't inherently neutral, it means it's sort of deterministic, so the inventor kind of puts a certain direction in the product already.

00:39:33.000 And I think that can be used in our advantage or to phrase it differently, I think there is a responsibility with inventors and entrepreneurs to build things that are more good than bad.

00:39:46.000 And actually plastic, I would still argue that plastic is a net positive technology and it was once invented as a solution.

00:39:54.000 It saves a lot of weight.

00:39:56.000 A lot of people got hurt when people use glass bottles and things like that.

00:40:00.000 So Back in the day, this was invented as a solution, but it has this negative side effect.

00:40:07.000 So then I think we should now think about, well, what technologies can we develop to manage that negative side effect?

00:40:13.000 And probably those have, again, a small negative side effect, but you can think about it like a compounding staircase of net positive technologies.

00:40:23.000 I think eventually that's how we can actually solve these problems.

00:40:27.000 So, in this country, there's a tremendous amount of recycling, but how effective is that recycling?

00:40:34.000 Yeah, I think the amount of recycling is actually pretty low in the U.S. compared to other countries.

00:40:40.000 Is it?

00:40:41.000 We always think we do everything better over here.

00:40:43.000 Yeah, I've noticed that now.

00:40:45.000 What country is the best at it?

00:40:47.000 I think Germany or Switzerland, those kind of countries.

00:40:51.000 Really?

00:40:52.000 And what do they do differently?

00:40:54.000 I think they just put more money in it.

00:40:57.000 And I think most of the waste in the U.S. is actually being landfilled.

00:41:02.000 And what used to be recycled actually was sent to China.

00:41:06.000 But now, I think this year or last year, China said, well, no, we don't want your waste anymore.

00:41:11.000 So now I think there will be a lot of investments in new recycling facilities in the U.S., Now, how does that get recycled?

00:41:18.000 Say if you use this water bottle and you empty it and then you throw it in a recycled container, what happens?

00:41:27.000 It very much depends on the location.

00:41:31.000 To just use an example of where I live back in Holland.

00:41:36.000 They collect the plastic separately and it goes to a facility where they sort the different kinds of plastic, they get out all the contaminants and make them into new pellets.

00:41:52.000 The problem there is really the lack of demand for recycled plastic because I think a lot of companies that build products because basically Virgin, so new plastic is so cheap, they'd rather just do what they're used to and they don't want to see any risks with their materials so they just choose for the safe option the new kind of plastic.

00:42:17.000 I think if you want to promote recycling, I would actually say, well, promote the use of recycled material, because as long as there's a demand, then the price will go up, and then automatically more recycling would happen.

00:42:31.000 Yeah, there's very little demand for recycled plastic.

00:42:34.000 It's not something that you hear about on a regular basis, like people that are clamoring to get only recycled plastic.

00:42:40.000 Yeah, and I think maybe that could be another nice side effect of what we do because we can kind of make this sort of recycled plastic a bit more sexy.

00:42:51.000 Yeah, I was going to say sexy too.

00:42:53.000 Perfect word.

00:42:54.000 Yeah, I think that's exactly what it is.

00:42:56.000 Have you extended this line of thinking to other environmental concerns like pollution in terms of chemical spills and pollution in the air and things along those lines?

00:43:07.000 Yeah.

00:43:09.000 I have quite a few more ideas, I would say.

00:43:13.000 But, yeah, I would really...

00:43:15.000 It really wouldn't be good for the ocean cleanup if I would get distracted by...

00:43:19.000 Well, I want you to farm those ideas off to other people because I think guys like you are insanely valuable.

00:43:24.000 Like, that one person really did...

00:43:27.000 Sort of germinate this seed and get this project moving.

00:43:31.000 It's very unusual.

00:43:32.000 Outliers like yourself, you're a very humble guy, I'm sure you don't think of yourself as an outlier, but you most certainly are.

00:43:38.000 It's one of the most valuable things about civilizations, the occasional person who steps out amongst the masses and does something pretty radical that almost everybody around them was aware was an issue.

00:43:49.000 And that's what you're doing.

00:43:51.000 Yeah.

00:43:52.000 I think there could be much more people that do things like that.

00:43:55.000 Yeah, I would think so, but I don't see it.

00:43:57.000 That's what's so fascinating about guys like you, is that this is not a very common thing to do, but it's a very common problem.

00:44:06.000 Yeah. 0.89

00:44:06.000 Well, maybe that's because when you hear about people doing cool shit, it's usually when they're already sort of doing those things, and it's not when they kind of started thinking about this. 0.89

00:44:20.000 Then I guess people could be intimidated. 0.94

00:44:23.000 I don't know how to run a company of 100 people.

00:44:26.000 I don't know how to get these things done.

00:44:30.000 But when I look back at myself four or five years ago, I really didn't have a bloody clue of what I was doing.

00:44:38.000 Well, you were a baby.

00:44:40.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:44:43.000 Five years ago, what were you, 18?

00:44:46.000 Yeah.

00:44:47.000 That's a baby.

00:44:48.000 I wasn't even born yet, no.

00:44:51.000 But that really doesn't matter.

00:44:53.000 I mean, it's just about just getting started and being willing to learn and just being open to feedback and just trying many different things and seeing what works and what doesn't work.

00:45:04.000 Especially at the beginning, I've done hundreds of things that didn't work.

00:45:08.000 The first time I tried fundraising, I sent a cold email to 300 companies to ask for sponsorship.

00:45:15.000 And I think one replied and said, this is a horrible idea.

00:45:18.000 You should go back to school.

00:45:21.000 Just print that one.

00:45:22.000 Yeah.

00:45:23.000 Put that one on your wall.

00:45:25.000 I will do that.

00:45:26.000 It's a good idea.

00:45:27.000 So that was very successful.

00:45:29.000 And then I tried crowdfunding and raised a few million bucks and allowed us to get started.

00:45:34.000 Isn't that amazing?

00:45:35.000 Yeah.

00:45:35.000 So it's just about sort of doing this trial and error.

00:45:38.000 So just like we developed the technology in a very iterative fashion, it's also about developing yourself, I think, in an iterative fashion and sort of just get started.

00:45:48.000 Well, my point being is that when someone like you does make something happen, and once you get the ball rolling, you can be a catalyst for so many other projects getting launched because it's attached to you.

00:46:00.000 Like, you're a person, like, you've got the fire.

00:46:04.000 You've got the fire.

00:46:05.000 So you put the fire over here.

00:46:06.000 Now this fire will start.

00:46:08.000 Here, let me bring an ember to this project.

00:46:10.000 This can start.

00:46:11.000 And it seems to me that getting that fire, getting that initial ember, is one of the most difficult aspects in creating any sort of technology, especially in terms of something so complex where you're...

00:46:25.000 Extracting things that are potentially dangerous from the environment and creating a net positive effect and then using that plastic to recycle.

00:46:32.000 There's so much good karma, for lack of a better word, attached to something like that.

00:46:37.000 And for a person like me, when I hear that your sunglasses are made from the Pacific garbage patch, I get excited. 1.00

00:46:44.000 I'm like, ooh, where can I buy these fucking sunglasses? 0.99

00:46:47.000 Next year. 0.99

00:46:47.000 Yeah, well, I'll buy them. 0.99

00:46:49.000 But that does get exciting to people.

00:46:51.000 Sure.

00:46:52.000 It seems to me that this excitement that you're bringing is contagious, and you could potentially use it to spread other ideas that could also be environmentally positive.

00:47:05.000 Yeah.

00:47:05.000 Well, I certainly hope that other people will think about sort of what kind of the ocean cleanup can I build, which isn't cleaning plastic from the ocean.

00:47:13.000 So I hope people sort of already do that.

00:47:16.000 But yeah, I mean, it's a good point.

00:47:18.000 They should sort of think about sort of what to do with these other ideas.

00:47:22.000 Like, yeah, a few of them I'm sort of so excited about that I kind of want to do them myself eventually, which would not be in the next few years.

00:47:33.000 Do you have like a long-term plan for all this stuff?

00:47:36.000 What are you going to do if the oceans are all beautiful and blue? 0.98

00:47:40.000 You're like, shit, now what do I do? 0.98

00:47:42.000 And the goal is really to help ourselves out of business, right? 0.99

00:47:45.000 So one day we hope we're done.

00:47:47.000 I don't want to be the garbage man of the ocean forever.

00:47:50.000 It's not the best title, anyway.

00:47:54.000 So I think the target that we set for the ocean cleanup was to really get to a 90% reduction by 2040, which I think is achievable, both on the influx side and the stock side.

00:48:10.000 But yeah, so but I think that already before that, I think maybe five years from now, it will just be sort of a steady operation.

00:48:21.000 And then for me, it wouldn't be very exciting anymore.

00:48:25.000 I would be involved until really the end.

00:48:29.000 But maybe at some point in time I would be able to broaden my time over multiple projects.

00:48:37.000 But that's at least years away.

00:48:41.000 Because of course there's still a lot of things that need to happen.

00:48:44.000 We need to First, prove the technology, first and foremost, this year.

00:48:48.000 Then we have to scale up, raise hundreds of millions to build this entire fleet out.

00:48:55.000 Then there are four more patches in the world.

00:48:58.000 We need to make it into a self-sustainable business.

00:49:01.000 And then we also need to think about what can we do on the source side.

00:49:04.000 So there's quite a few pieces of the puzzle still there to be found and put together.

00:49:11.000 Yeah, so I won't be bored for the next few years for sure.

00:49:14.000 You certainly won't be.

00:49:15.000 One of the reasons why I'm asking this about you and what your ideas are with cleaning up other problems in the world is because...

00:49:25.000 There's millions of people listening to this, and there might be another Boyan out there who's a young kid who says, well, why don't we do this?

00:49:34.000 Or how come this hasn't been done?

00:49:35.000 Or why hasn't someone tried this?

00:49:37.000 And next thing you know, there's someone who's figuring out how to extract heavy metals out of the bottom of the ocean.

00:49:42.000 Sure.

00:49:43.000 I think that would be great.

00:49:47.000 I definitely welcome people to just start.

00:49:53.000 What kind of other thoughts?

00:49:55.000 I think another thing that's important when people Try and solve problems is that they actually think about how to solve the problem.

00:50:04.000 I think there's a lot of people that are very well-meaning and they want to get involved, but then what happens is that they So at least I can kind of make a dent and then hopefully that dent sort of grows.

00:50:19.000 But I think what a lot of people forget to do is that when they sort of start tackling a problem, they forget to sort of look at the whole problem first and see, well, sort of what's required to actually solve the whole problem and then sort of reason your way back to,

00:50:36.000 well, what's the first step that I need to take?

00:50:39.000 You know, if you don't do that, well then I think it will be very hard to kind of get the skill you need to actually sort of solve the problem.

00:50:48.000 So, and it's, yeah, I can imagine it can be quite intimidating to think about that.

00:50:52.000 But, yeah, I think that would get us to much more sort of effective solutions to sort of this sort of top-down problem solving, as I would call it, instead of sort of this bottom-up problem solving.

00:51:06.000 So, when...

00:51:08.000 Have you talked to anybody that also had an idea of how to clean up the Pacific garbage patch? 1.00

00:51:15.000 No, I've read about other proposals from the past, for sure.

00:51:19.000 But no one has really actively pursued anything?

00:51:23.000 I don't know.

00:51:24.000 Well, I mean, the thing is, of course, all these other ideas were based on boats and nets that would go fishing for plastic, taking 79,000 years for just one patch.

00:51:34.000 There was one that I saw that looked like some gigantic floating thing.

00:51:38.000 It looked like a spaceship and it was kind of like moving across the surface, sort of skimming it.

00:51:44.000 Is that one of those?

00:51:45.000 That could be actually some artist's impression of one of our earlier concepts.

00:51:51.000 Yeah, I think that's probably what it was.

00:51:52.000 Like a silver sort of entry.

00:51:53.000 Is that what it was?

00:51:55.000 Yeah, that was ours.

00:51:57.000 So what other, I mean, if you don't mind talking about them, what other ideas have you had in terms of like cleaning things up?

00:52:04.000 Yeah, I'm kind of hesitant to joke about them.

00:52:07.000 But I mean, there's plenty of other problems out there.

00:52:11.000 So if you just think about what other big problems are out there.

00:52:14.000 So how about water pollution?

00:52:19.000 Yeah, I usually, so what I do is actually, I try and actively force these ideas out of my head, just because sort of once you have an idea, it sort of starts to grow.

00:52:29.000 And then, you know, sometimes, you know, with any project you're doing, there are these weeks that things don't go very well, and sort of everything seems to be against you.

00:52:38.000 And in those weeks, it's always very tempting to start thinking about, well, I have this other idea, and, you know, and sort of It starts to grow, and you should be careful that it doesn't take over your entire mind.

00:52:49.000 Right, I know what you're saying, getting too scattered and spread out.

00:52:52.000 Yeah, so I think it's of paramount importance for the ocean cleanup to happen is that I stay 100% focused on what we do.

00:53:01.000 If there's one mission, rid the oceans of plastic, and that's what we're doing.

00:53:05.000 So what I usually do is I sort of write them down in my notebook and keep it next to my bed and that's where it stays until, you know, maybe a few years from now.

00:53:17.000 So probably when you were to ask me, like, so what's the top three ideas, other ideas that you have, I wouldn't be able to, wouldn't even be able to say them because, yeah, they're sort of out of my head and I really try to keep it there.

00:53:31.000 But, I mean, what I can say is that they're all sort of technology-based, so they're all things that aren't possible now, but I want to make possible in the future.

00:53:41.000 And they're sort of all connected in terms of negative side effects of civilization and trying to make sure that that doesn't backfire to us.

00:53:55.000 What I always like to do is I try to think Like, if we sort of try to imagine a future in 10,000 years from now, how do we make sure that, well, civilization is there, but zooming out,

00:54:10.000 humanity is still there, and zooming further out, just, you know, general life can prosper.

00:54:17.000 And, yeah, when I look at...

00:54:20.000 If I try to extrapolate the current situation to the next 10,000 years, I don't think we're at that point yet, but I think it's a challenge that we'll have to solve.

00:54:31.000 Well, it's certainly a challenge that we're going to have to solve and a challenge that I would hope more people like you tackle and start approaching these issues with this sort of 10,000-year mindset.

00:54:44.000 A big one, of course, with the ocean is overfishing.

00:54:47.000 Yeah.

00:54:49.000 For sure.

00:54:51.000 Right now you have quite a lot of excitement and a lot of startups in the area of artificial meat, right?

00:55:02.000 Why not artificial fish meat?

00:55:05.000 Because there seems to be this natural evolution from wild hunting to farming to this more lab-grown stuff that doesn't involve killing or all these resources being wasted.

00:55:24.000 And on land, we're kind of in stage two now, going to stage three probably in the next few decades.

00:55:31.000 But if you look at fishing, it's still just hunting, right?

00:55:34.000 So it's still just wild cod, most fish.

00:55:37.000 There's some farm raised, but it's also thought to be not as valuable or as healthy.

00:55:42.000 Yeah, and I think they also use a lot of wild-caught fish as a feedstock for these farmed fish, so that's kind of odd.

00:55:49.000 But that seems to be sort of this natural evolution, so I think that would be a way to kind of solve that.

00:55:59.000 But isn't there a potential, I mean if we're looking at this in terms of long term of what we've done with plastic and the downside, there's potential downsides to even this lab grown stuff.

00:56:09.000 Like we don't know really the health consequences of consuming it yet.

00:56:14.000 We don't know what the side effects are.

00:56:17.000 We don't know what sort of byproducts are created in manufacturing this stuff.

00:56:21.000 Yeah, possibly.

00:56:23.000 And we need to look carefully at this.

00:56:27.000 But I think, at least on paper, it does have a lot of potential of being able to do more with less.

00:56:32.000 Yeah, I'm going to wait for a while.

00:56:35.000 I don't know.

00:56:38.000 It just seems to me like, boy, this could be one of those early adopter things.

00:56:42.000 It could be a giant disaster.

00:56:45.000 Yeah.

00:56:45.000 Well, yeah.

00:56:48.000 I'm sure they do good testing there.

00:56:50.000 I'm sure they do, too.

00:56:51.000 I mean, I'm sure I'm just ignorant, but I'm still paranoid.

00:56:55.000 I would just go, what are you doing?

00:56:57.000 What's going on?

00:56:58.000 How'd you make that?

00:56:58.000 You made that in a lab.

00:57:00.000 Okay, good luck eating it.

00:57:01.000 I'll be over here.

00:57:03.000 It's funny how some things just take a lot of time to get used to and other things once it's there you're kind of used to it in a second.

00:57:15.000 For example, earlier this week I was driving a Tesla on autopilot and I was driving it for five minutes and then already you're kind of doing your emails and And then when you take it off,

00:57:31.000 it just feels like you're back in the Stone Ages and you're just kind of have to drive this yourself.

00:57:36.000 It's so weird.

00:57:37.000 So you do your email while you're driving?

00:57:40.000 You're not even paying attention to the machine to make sure that it doesn't hit some homeless lady who steps out off the median?

00:57:47.000 Like that one thing that did happen?

00:57:50.000 Yeah, with the Uber car.

00:57:52.000 I think things like this will come up more rapidly than people think, and I think people will be very quickly that we're used to it.

00:58:03.000 But you're supposed to look at the road, right?

00:58:06.000 You're not supposed to be staring down at your laptop.

00:58:08.000 Yeah, okay.

00:58:08.000 Just erase everything I said for the past minute or so.

00:58:12.000 Have you ever seen the video of the guy that's falling asleep in San Francisco traffic?

00:58:15.000 No.

00:58:16.000 He's completely asleep.

00:58:17.000 He's behind the wheel of the Tesla like this.

00:58:20.000 And the car's like slowing and going with the pace of traffic.

00:58:23.000 It's really fascinating because this happens so quickly.

00:58:27.000 I remember a buddy of mine got a Tesla a couple of years ago and he's like, dude, I let my hands off the wheel on the highway.

00:58:33.000 I'm like, really?

00:58:34.000 Like that's happening already?

00:58:36.000 But it's not just happening.

00:58:37.000 People plug into their navigator.

00:58:39.000 Here's this guy.

00:58:39.000 Look at him.

00:58:40.000 This guy is stone-dead asleep in his Tesla in bumper-to-bumper San Francisco traffic, and the car is performing flawlessly.

00:58:50.000 I heard there was this Dutch guy who actually just went on the back seat and started changing his clothes.

00:58:57.000 Oh, God.

00:58:58.000 Yeah, and then apparently they now included a safety feature that you kind of have to touch the wheel every minute or so.

00:59:04.000 Oh, that's a new thing?

00:59:05.000 Yeah.

00:59:05.000 Yeah, and BMW, I believe, has a similar system, but you have to have your hand on the wheel at all times.

00:59:10.000 Yeah, it's probably better until it's...

00:59:12.000 Yeah, I would imagine. 0.94

00:59:15.000 Yeah, people are probably doing all kinds of freaky shit in their cars while this thing is on autopilot. 0.93

00:59:20.000 It's really quite... 0.97

00:59:20.000 I don't want to know. 0.97

00:59:21.000 Yeah.

00:59:21.000 It's quite amazing how...

00:59:23.000 I mean, you were just about to show a video of Tesla autopilot crash compilations.

00:59:29.000 It's saving people from crashes is what it's...

00:59:31.000 Oh, I'm sure it does.

00:59:33.000 Yeah.

00:59:34.000 What's unbelievable is how few crashes there are.

00:59:37.000 And they said there have been two fatalities so far.

00:59:39.000 Okay, how many fatalities per capita versus non-autopilot cars?

00:59:46.000 I mean, I would imagine it's far less.

00:59:48.000 Yeah, obviously these cars are also just safer in general, so they're much safer than, I don't know, a 1990s Toyota Corolla or something.

00:59:57.000 In terms of the way of the construction?

00:59:59.000 Yeah, just safer when they crash, so I don't know how they compare the statistics, but yeah, I'm very impressed too.

01:00:09.000 It was fun trying it out.

01:00:10.000 Yeah, I'm impressed and I'm very hopeful.

01:00:12.000 My only concern, I had my friend Matt Farrow was on last week and he's a car expert and they've actually started an organization to save human driving.

01:00:22.000 They're literally going to be like lobbyists to stop laws.

01:00:29.000 Yeah, well that's the concern is that one day they're gonna say you cannot drive your own car and they're really worried.

01:00:36.000 What was the name of his organization?

01:00:37.000 Do you remember?

01:00:40.000 Okay.

01:00:41.000 But they're very serious.

01:00:44.000 He's like, it's going to happen quicker than you think.

01:00:46.000 It's going to be very difficult to drive your own car, and then it's going to be illegal.

01:00:51.000 Yeah.

01:00:51.000 Maybe they should keep areas like the Highway 1 or something like that.

01:00:55.000 It's just something.

01:00:55.000 Some freaky road where people can get crazy.

01:00:57.000 Look at me, man!

01:00:58.000 I'm steering!

01:00:59.000 I'm hitting my own brakes!

01:01:01.000 Woo! 0.99

01:01:02.000 Yeah.

01:01:02.000 I mean, again, these are things that...

01:01:06.000 It's most likely inevitable.

01:01:08.000 I mean, this technology, the way it's progressing, it's going to be safer, it's going to be healthier, lower emissions, all these variables that are going to come into play where people are going to say, no, the benefit of driving your own car is not worth the detriment to society.

01:01:21.000 Yeah, and next to that, just if you think about the normal rate of converting the entire car fleet to electric, it would be around 20 years, because that's sort of how long cars last, and you only produce a few hundred million cars a year,

01:01:37.000 and there's billions of cars, so...

01:01:39.000 So, you know, if you don't want that to take 20 years, well, I think autonomy then really has to come into play because if you have autonomous cars, you need much less cars out there than you would if you would have to drive themselves.

01:01:53.000 Because obviously cars are just driving maybe 3% of their time.

01:01:57.000 Most of the time they're just being parked so they can drive themselves.

01:02:02.000 I think the utilization of the number of cars would be much higher.

01:02:06.000 And I think that whole transition to electric cars would happen much faster.

01:02:10.000 The Human Driving Association is what it is.

01:02:15.000 Here, pull it back up again so you can look at it.

01:02:20.000 Yeah, the war on driving is here.

01:02:22.000 A little paranoid.

01:02:23.000 They're a little paranoid, but you've got to remember Matt Farah is an automotive journalist, so his livelihood depends on talking about cars, and he's a real legitimate car nut.

01:02:34.000 What is this wrong answer?

01:02:36.000 What is that?

01:02:37.000 I picked the electric car.

01:02:38.000 Oh, you clicked it?

01:02:40.000 It says wrong answer.

01:02:41.000 Oh.

01:02:41.000 You go there, it takes you to the shop.

01:02:43.000 Well, why is this...

01:02:44.000 It would be a shame.

01:02:45.000 It's just a joke.

01:02:46.000 Oh.

01:02:46.000 I get it that it's just a joke, but why would it be the wrong answer?

01:02:50.000 It's just an answer.

01:02:52.000 Do you drive?

01:02:53.000 I do, yeah.

01:02:53.000 Do you drive an electric car or a regular car?

01:02:55.000 Actually, I don't have a car.

01:02:56.000 You don't?

01:02:57.000 No, in Holland you don't really need cars.

01:02:58.000 You just have a bike. 0.98

01:03:00.000 But it's fucking freezing there. 0.99

01:03:02.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:03:03.000 You have a coat.

01:03:05.000 You just put a coat on and just drive?

01:03:08.000 Yeah.

01:03:08.000 Wow, okay.

01:03:09.000 Hardcore.

01:03:09.000 Listen, I'm a big fan of Holland because I kickbox.

01:03:12.000 So you guys have some of the greatest kickboxers of all time.

01:03:15.000 Came from this one small place.

01:03:17.000 Yeah.

01:03:17.000 It's very unusual.

01:03:18.000 Yeah.

01:03:19.000 Why is that?

01:03:21.000 I have no idea. 0.98

01:03:22.000 We just have to punch people, I guess, when they cut you off with the car. 0.98

01:03:29.000 Oh, is that what it is? 0.95

01:03:30.000 But Holland is a very unique place, isn't it?

01:03:32.000 I mean, it's a very unusual country.

01:03:36.000 I mean, yeah.

01:03:38.000 Sometimes people wonder, why do you think this, you know, the ocean cleanup is based in Holland or sort of came out of Holland?

01:03:44.000 And for us, it makes a lot of sense in that we live below sea level, so we're, like, we have, per capita, the highest number of hydraulic engineers and maritime engineers around the world.

01:03:56.000 So it's just very good access to human capital.

01:04:01.000 And...

01:04:02.000 Yeah, so it really makes sense for us to be there.

01:04:05.000 There's a lot of offshore engineering companies that support us and are involved with as contractors.

01:04:13.000 So for us, it's not really very strange, but I don't know about the other things.

01:04:18.000 There's quite a lot of innovation coming from such a small country.

01:04:21.000 Yeah, a lot of innovation and really unique, intelligent people.

01:04:25.000 I've met a lot of people from Holland and just really fascinating people.

01:04:29.000 Wim Hof, do you know Wim?

01:04:30.000 Yeah, I've never met him, but... 0.99

01:04:31.000 Fucking guy's the best. 0.99

01:04:33.000 He's so lovely. 0.99

01:04:34.000 He's just such an amazing person.

01:04:35.000 Every time you're around him, you feel better, like somebody gave you some coffee.

01:04:39.000 Like, ooh!

01:04:39.000 Yeah.

01:04:39.000 You know, he's just, he's very contagious.

01:04:42.000 And, I mean, I have quite a few friends from Holland.

01:04:45.000 You gotta check your watch.

01:04:46.000 You gotta take off soon, right?

01:04:47.000 No, it's still fine.

01:04:48.000 You okay?

01:04:49.000 It's just, I am fascinated how...

01:05:04.000 Yeah.

01:05:15.000 Yeah.

01:05:17.000 Sure, yeah.

01:05:18.000 I mean, I kind of feel the same way about the U.S. West Coast as well.

01:05:23.000 It's just, yeah, I mean, I'd definitely be able to live in a place like San Francisco, maybe just because of the high percentage of engineers and entrepreneurs that kind of makes me feel at home.

01:05:38.000 But, no, but I mean, U.S. in general, I feel like, yeah, people are very friendly. 0.80

01:05:44.000 I could take you some spots that suck. 0.97

01:05:46.000 Okay. 0.99

01:05:47.000 There's a few spots that suck.

01:05:48.000 But yeah, you're in a good spot right here and San Francisco is a fantastic spot in terms of innovation.

01:05:55.000 How well has this been received in America and particularly in California?

01:06:01.000 I mean obviously you're here to do some business and talk to some people.

01:06:04.000 Is this something that people are very excited about and you feel like there's a lot of momentum behind it?

01:06:08.000 Actually, U.S. is the number one group of supporters for us. 0.83

01:06:13.000 Because we know we fucked up a lot with the ocean, and it's right there. 0.72

01:06:16.000 Well, maybe. 0.92

01:06:17.000 I mean, that's your guess.

01:06:20.000 But no, I think people are very supportive.

01:06:24.000 Maybe it's also because the geography of the patch, it's right between two U.S. states.

01:06:29.000 It's like Canada, but different.

01:06:32.000 So, yeah, so it's...

01:06:35.000 I think we've received a lot of support from the US. Our biggest support group is from here and everyone I talk to here, they really want to get involved.

01:06:51.000 We're kind of lucky that it's next to the US, I guess.

01:06:54.000 So you've raised all this money.

01:06:55.000 Is this going to be a profitable business?

01:06:58.000 Actually, we're a non-for-profit entity.

01:07:01.000 So we're not even allowed to make profit.

01:07:04.000 But eventually, the idea is that this plastic business would be sort of a separate thing, and that would then create the funding for the cleanup.

01:07:15.000 So everything would be reinvested in the cleanup.

01:07:17.000 Oh, that's fantastic.

01:07:18.000 So do you have a name for the plastic business?

01:07:22.000 No.

01:07:22.000 Right now it's just under the Ocean Cleanup still.

01:07:25.000 We're actually thinking about some kind of brand name, but see you next year.

01:07:29.000 Yeah, please let me know.

01:07:31.000 I mean, we'll promote the hell out of that.

01:07:32.000 I think that's a fantastic idea, and I'll try to buy as many things out of Ocean Plastic as they can sell.

01:07:37.000 I think, yeah, I mean, think the more things you can buy, maybe PlastiCell.

01:07:42.000 Get this guy in on it.

01:07:44.000 Fong, where are you, buddy? 1.00

01:07:45.000 The guy makes these.

01:07:47.000 This guy carves all these himself, and then makes these molds, and then hand paints all of these.

01:07:54.000 Wow.

01:07:55.000 Yeah, he's a little wizard.

01:07:57.000 I don't know if he's little.

01:07:58.000 He's a wizard.

01:07:59.000 Maybe he's a big wizard.

01:08:00.000 Is this his actual size?

01:08:02.000 Me?

01:08:02.000 I'm a little taller than that.

01:08:04.000 But my head's not that big either.

01:08:06.000 But yeah, these things are...

01:08:08.000 I mean, to have a line made completely out of ocean plastic would be amazing.

01:08:13.000 Maybe he'll do a Boyan version.

01:08:15.000 That'd be creepy.

01:08:16.000 I wouldn't buy that.

01:08:17.000 It's a little creepy looking at me over there.

01:08:19.000 Yeah, that's a weird face, too.

01:08:23.000 But, yeah, I mean, there's really...

01:08:26.000 The sky's the limit in terms of applications of your plastic.

01:08:30.000 And, again, I just think it'd be so attractive to people.

01:08:33.000 I mean, especially out here.

01:08:35.000 California, at least...

01:08:38.000 Posing, you know, as being environmentally conscious.

01:08:40.000 There's a lot of environmentally conscious posers out here, for sure.

01:08:43.000 I mean, they would like to just be able to say that, you know, like, oh, my dog's leash is made out of environmentally conscious plastic that we put from the ocean.

01:08:51.000 I was actually a part of the expedition.

01:08:52.000 I was there.

01:08:54.000 That was a good idea.

01:08:56.000 Yeah, I mean, really, it's just, I just think the sky's the limit in terms of just the attractiveness of that kind of plastic.

01:09:05.000 Yeah, and on one hand, it's a problem that everything is made out of plastic, but it does give huge potential for alternative materials like this ocean plastic.

01:09:14.000 Yeah.

01:09:14.000 What do you feel you're going to be doing when this is done?

01:09:18.000 Like, say, if you get to this point where most of the stuff's pulled out of the ocean, what do you plan for the future?

01:09:23.000 You're 23 years old.

01:09:24.000 I mean, you could really basically do anything you want.

01:09:27.000 Sure.

01:09:28.000 Maybe go on a holiday for once.

01:09:31.000 And then I'll probably just be working on the next one.

01:09:36.000 I think this is what I love doing and I hope I'll get the opportunity to work on many more problems like this in the future.

01:09:46.000 So you feel like you will be a problem solver?

01:09:49.000 Like that's your thing?

01:09:50.000 That'd be...

01:09:51.000 I should put that on my business card.

01:09:53.000 Problem solver?

01:09:54.000 Yeah.

01:09:54.000 Why not?

01:09:55.000 I mean, that's essentially what you are, right?

01:09:58.000 Yeah.

01:09:59.000 I think there's just nothing more fun than sort of solving a problem.

01:10:02.000 And when you think about a project like the Ocean Cleanup, sure, you're solving part of a massive problem, but just the whole road to it is just like one little problem after another little problem.

01:10:16.000 And I think it's just very intellectually satisfying to be confronted with this new weird problem, and then you have to think how to solve them.

01:10:30.000 As the CEO, you're the accumulation zone, the garbage patch, as it were, for problems within your own organization.

01:10:40.000 Everything that other people cannot solve ends up with you.

01:10:45.000 Yeah, I kind of like that.

01:10:49.000 It's just fun thinking about things.

01:10:51.000 So, for example, just this week, we had, I think it was last week.

01:10:57.000 So on Monday, we have this assembly yard, and there was a fence that was seven meters too far to the left.

01:11:06.000 And there was just this...

01:11:09.000 This email from the government saying, well, if you don't move it within 10 days, you have to stop your operation. 0.98

01:11:14.000 I'm like, oh shit. 0.93

01:11:16.000 But yeah, I mean, it's a little problem and you just have to do a few calls and think about, well, how can we now arrange the assembly yard in a way that it's still big enough so we can assemble this 2,000 feet thing? 0.97

01:11:27.000 And then the next day, it turned out there was sort of a slight misalignment of one of the connection strips on one of the flotation elements of the system.

01:11:36.000 And you kind of have to figure out, well, how can we still attach it while sort of working with this?

01:11:42.000 And, you know, there's sort of just details, but there are details on a daily basis.

01:11:46.000 And, yeah, that's kind of what makes it fun for me.

01:11:49.000 If it would all go flawlessly, it would, yeah, be pretty boring, I think.

01:11:52.000 Well, that's what's fascinating about a guy like you, is that your personality perfectly aligns with this kind of problem.

01:12:00.000 I mean, and that's a very unusual thing.

01:12:03.000 Did you...

01:12:03.000 Were you a puzzle solver when you were a kid?

01:12:05.000 Were you into, like, mysteries?

01:12:07.000 Like, what is...

01:12:09.000 Not really, I was just building things.

01:12:10.000 So actually, one of the things that I, a funny anecdote, is that when I was, I think I was about 13 years old, I had this idea of doing, getting into the Guinness Book of Records with launching model rockets.

01:12:26.000 So I was really into those kind of things and I built them myself and they shoot up like 300 feet in the sky.

01:12:32.000 And what I then did was sort of organize this whole thing.

01:12:37.000 There was media, we had sponsors, and we had the university collaborating, and we just had this sports field with 300 people who would all at the same time, they would all launch their rocket.

01:12:48.000 And actually, I think we launched like 213 of them at the same time and actually got in the Guinness Book of Records.

01:12:54.000 So I always had my projects, let's put it that way.

01:12:57.000 Have you thought about potentially working with companies that produce environmental waste?

01:13:05.000 Like maybe a company brings you on as a problem solver for some sort of an issue that they have a residual issue of something that they produce?

01:13:16.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't think it would be very interesting to be a consultant or anything, but yeah, I mean, definitely sort of after this, I want to do sort of solve more or work on more big challenges like this.

01:13:31.000 Yeah, like oil spills, things along those lines.

01:13:35.000 Yeah, I mean, you can keep guessing.

01:13:38.000 Yeah, you'll see.

01:13:41.000 You'll see.

01:13:41.000 Well, I'm sure we will see.

01:13:43.000 Well, listen, man, I'm so happy that you exist.

01:13:46.000 I'm so happy that there's someone out there that's actually doing something about this.

01:13:50.000 And I've seen, like I said, I've seen many of your talks.

01:13:53.000 I think it's a comprehensive approach.

01:13:55.000 I think it's amazing.

01:13:56.000 And I really hope that something comes out of this and it really works.

01:14:00.000 Thanks so much.

01:14:01.000 Thank you.

01:14:01.000 My pleasure.

01:14:02.000 And thanks for doing this, please.

01:14:03.000 And tell people one more time how they can get to your website.

01:14:06.000 Yes, it's theoceancleanup.com.

01:14:09.000 We're also on social media, just at The Ocean Cleanup to follow us as we launch the first system this summer.

01:14:14.000 And your social media accounts are?

01:14:17.000 Boyan Slat.

01:14:18.000 S-L-A-T. Yes, B-O-Y-A-N-S-L-A-T. That's Twitter, Instagram.

01:14:23.000 Everything.

01:14:23.000 All of the above.

01:14:24.000 Yes.

01:14:24.000 Thank you, Boyan.

01:14:25.000 This was a lot of fun.

01:14:26.000 I really appreciate it.

01:14:26.000 Thank you.

01:14:30.000 Yay.

01:14:31.000 Alright.

01:14:31.000 That was great, man.

The Joe Rogan Experience - April 16, 2018

Joe Rogan Experience #1104 - Boyan Slat

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