Welcome to How to Save a Planet. I'm Alex Bloomberg, and this is the podcast where we talk about

what we need to do to address climate change and how to make those things happen.

Today we are bringing you an episode that we first aired a little more than a year ago, February of 2021.

So it features my former co-host and friend, Dr. Ianna Elizabeth Johnson.

And it starts with a friend of hers, a Canadian fisherman. a fisherman who decides one day that he wants to do something different. He wants to stop being a fisherman. He wants

to become a farmer, and he wants to help address climate change. But he doesn't want to leave the

water. I don't want to spoil too much more of the episode for you, so let's just get into it.

Here you go.

So, Alex, back when we were first discussing this podcast, when it was but the barest idea of a seed in our minds, I knew that I definitely wanted us to interview this fascinating fisherman, Bren Smith.

And I was like, fascinating fishermen, I'm in.

This is not a hard sell. He's so much fun to talk to. He's got an amazing life story,

and we got him to share it with us. Bren told us he grew up in Newfoundland, Canada,

in a small town called Maddox Cove. It's the most eastern point in all of North America.

You know, our houses were bolted to the cliffs up above the ocean.

And you imagine they were red, green, yellow, orange houses, all painted with leftover boat paint.

And, you know, the saying around town was that we paint them bright colors so we can find our way home drunk in the fog. And it was just like the idyllic town. It was, you know, fishermen's co-op next door, kids growing, selling cod tongues door to door. It's squid runs, Kaplan runs. It was just sort of, you know, when we think of that artisanal small-scale fishery, that's where

I grew up.

I think I did like, I also think cold in the winter.

Well, if you're a coward.

Which I am.

No, I mean, definitely, you know, like, I remember one year the snow was above our doorway, and we had to, like, open it and dig from the inside.

So, yeah, and we'd put out, you know, jeans and towels, and they'd crack in the ice.

...