Catalyst with Shayle Kann

The episode contains several genuinely non-obvious technical points - particularly that sulfate background levels in the stratosphere (~hundreds of thousands of tons) make small-scale testing impossible, and that sulfates heat the stratosphere by absorbing outgoing infrared - but the second half on governance devolves into vague platitudes and hand-waving that dilutes the density considerably.

“the smallest scale experiment you can do is more or less 1 million ton, which is not an experiment, it's deployment”

“one of these particles, which we call this core shell particle, is much better in the sense that it does not hit the stratosphere”

The silica/calcite particle design and the clinical-trial ramp-up framing are genuinely fresh angles, but the governance discussion leans heavily on well-worn analogies (Montreal Protocol, moral hazard) that both host and guest explicitly acknowledge as obvious, and the broader SRM concept is presented as entirely inherited.

“We didn't invent the concept”

“There is a moral hazard... There is also a moral imperative”

Yanay Yadvab is a genuine technical founder building something real and novel at the frontier, with published papers and a working particle design, but the company is early-stage and most claims remain unvalidated, placing him solidly as a credible practitioner rather than a proven at-scale operator.

“we just released a series of eight papers”

“we have developed a unique tagging technology which enable us to track in real time each batch of particles”

The episode offers some concrete anchors - $10 billion per million tons, ~0.5°C of cooling, ~$20 billion annually to stabilize current warming, named materials (amorphous silica, calcite) - but many technical claims are hedged with 'we believe' and 'lab tests show' without citing actual findings from the published papers.

“for every million tons of particles that will be dispersed, the cost will be roughly $10 billion and you'll get half a degree of cooling”

“you'll need or less, I would say 2m million tons of our particles”

The host sets up questions with genuine context and asks the right structural questions (side effects, cost, governance, why a company), but consistently accepts vague or PR-safe answers without follow-up probing - the governance section in particular is let off with non-answers about 'plural governments' and 'we should be careful not to shape it.'

“Who should be setting your path, first of all? And second of all, who should be determining whether we inject at the million ton scale”

“I'm not sure what should be this, this, this governing body”