Tamar Haspel and Mike Grunwald

Tamar Haspel and Mike Grunwald are the co-hosts of Climavores. Follow Tamar on Twitter here. Follow Mike on Twitter here. Follow Climavores on Twitter here.

How did you two come together to make this podcast?
T: Mike gets all the credit! He was working with Post Script Media on a food & climate podcast, and was looking for a co-host. We’re Twitter friends and he happened to be reading my book at the time, and the little lightbulb went on over his head that we’d be good together. 

M: What made the lightbulb go on was I realized she was hilarious. I already knew she was my kind of journalist, but reading her book made me think we’d have a fun dynamic.

How are you alike and how are you different? What do you each bring to the table?
T: We’re alike in that we’re both hard-assed empiricists. We spend an unconscionable amount of time sifting through evidence and talking with experts trying to get at what’s true. But we have different areas of expertise. I’m food – not just environmental impact, but also nutrition and diets and all the baggage that comes with those things. Mike’s also deep into the climate impact of food, but he’s also policy and politics, which play an integral role on the podcast. 

M: Yeah, I’m the climate dork - I’ve got solar panels and an electric car, and I’m writing a book about how to feed the world without frying the world. Tamar is more the general food dork - she thinks about how our diets affect our bodies and animals and workers and all kinds of things I tend to forget about. But we’re both fact people. She’s nicer about it, but neither one of us like lazy assumptions that aren’t backed by evidence.

What do you wish you would have known about podcasting before you started the show?
T: How great it is to have podcast professionals producing and editing!

What do you hope the show does for people?
T: I hope it informs their choices. I want listeners to walk away with a clearer idea of climate and diet than they came in with.

M: I hope it gives them some information they didn’t have before, and I hope they find it entertaining. I guess if I’m honest I also hope it persuades people to eat a little better for the planet, but that’s up to them - all we can do is try to be interesting and persuasive and fun.

Why are you the perfect hosts for Climavores? 
T: Mike and I agree on the basics of diet & climate, but we disagree about a lot of the peripheral issues (just listen to the episode on local food!). I hope that makes for a show that’s interesting and engaging, but also genuinely helps readers make sense of all the complexities involved in feeding 8 billion people responsibly.

M: I start with the idea that we’re evidence-based nerds. I know a lot of people don’t trust journalists–well, they should trust us. We’re trustworthy! We’ve dedicated our careers to facts. But we’re not robots - we’re also storytellers, and we have strong feelings about what’s right, not always the same feelings, which hopefully adds a nice twist to the show. Tamar also brings a warm energy that probably contrasts nicely with my curmudgeonly snark. 

What has making the show taught you about the world?
T: That people really seem to care about these issues! The calls and e-mails we get with questions are so interesting, and reflect a deep concern about how what we eat affects the planet we share.

Fill in the blank. You will like Climavores if you like ______.
M: Food and a habitable planet.

What’s one thing people can do to eat better for themselves AND the planet?
T: We say it all the time: eat less beef.

M: And waste less food! But mostly eat less beef. Which sucks, because beef is delicious, but I guess we’re not in the business of telling people what they want to hear.

Thanks, Tamar and Mike!