My guest today, Asmert Asif al-Buray, is a leading soil scientist and president Biden's

nominee to be the director of the Department of Energy's Office of Science.

If confirmed, she will manage a seven billion dollar research budget.

If you were to think about where the large global reservoirs of carbon are, beyond fossil

fuel deposits and the ocean, the next largest reservoir of carbon on the earth's system

is in soil.

Welcome to people I mostly admire, with Steve Levitt.

I got interested in soil science a few weeks back and I started doing a little bit of reading

and I stumbled onto Asmert and her amazing story, born and raised in civil war-reversed

air trail.

She became a leading scientist and is poised to take over one of the most important jobs

in science.

I knew right away I needed to have her on the show.

Have you heard of a man named Saad Guru?

He's an Indian guru who is currently riding a motorcycle across Europe and the Middle East

to bring attention to soil degradation.

I've seen some social media posts and I've also saw recently the interview he did with

Trevor Noah.

Believe it or not, the idea for having you on this podcast came because his public is

somehow gotten my inbox of my email.

At first I thought it was a joke but then he was on Trevor Noah and I said, well, he

must be doing something serious but it's not very scientific.

...