A podcast from Ridwell member Molly Wood: Everybody in the Pool
Molly Wood says if you want to solve a problem, be like a hummingbird.
“I have three hummingbird feeders and I’m mesmerized by them because they just don’t stop moving all day,” she says. “That’s how you get stuff done.”
Molly is definitely like a hummingbird. She gets a lot of stuff done (and her friends and family joke that she doesn’t know how to sit!).
After two decades as a media creator and podcast co-host for outlets like CNET/CBS, the New York Times, Marketplace, and The Atlantic, Molly has turned her attention to telling the stories of innovators who offer climate solutions.
She says she became obsessed with looking for ways to solve climate problems in 2016. That’s when she launched the How We Survive reporting series and narrative podcast at Marketplace.
After five years covering climate solutions, she wanted to take more direct action. So, after twenty years reporting on technology and business, she pivoted to venture capital, becoming an early-stage climate tech investor.
Most recently, she founded Everybody in the Pool, a podcast and newsletter, to bring it all together. She explores climate solutions from an entrepreneurial perspective—what are businesses doing?—and from a personal one—what actions can people take today?
Why call her platform Everybody in the Pool? Because together, we can solve the climate problem.
“Magic is happening,” she says. “I want this podcast to show people that solutions exist, everything from frontier tech startups to things that you can do right now. I break it up into bite-sized chunks that are easy to grasp onto and hopefully everybody who’s listening will hear something that they want to do.
Molly’s ethos is about realizing that every human can make a difference, whether they make a career of it or simply adopt small habits that add up to contribute to bigger solutions.
She describes the podcast like a buffet, a bunch of solutions people are intrigued by—like hydrogen-powered airplanes—and ones people can participate in—like joining Ridwell (listen in to hear her talk with our founder Ryan).
The best part? Hearing about solutions, especially ones you can be part of, feels good. It’s a reprieve from bad news.
“It’s not the old style of journalism where you just put ideas out there,” Molly says. “The best outcome here is that people either think differently or behave differently in a small way. If you hear about something you can easily adopt, do it. ”
Does that mean changing all your habits, all the time? Nope.
“Nobody has to be perfect. I’m not doing everything perfectly,” she says. “But if everybody does something, a drop becomes a flood.”
One of the things Molly does: recycle more with Ridwell. She joined to do the right thing with plastic film and multi-layer plastic, and has grown to love the Threads bag, too.
“It makes me feel so good, genuinely,” she says. “With something like climate, you want to do something that gives you a feeling of satisfaction as opposed to a feeling of just flossing. It feels awesome to put my stuff in that bag and then put it out and say, ‘Yes, I did it!’”
Molly wants everyone to get that feeling from doing things that work for them. When a friend heard her episode about reusable gift wrap and texted about buying it, that text made Molly’s day.
Another episode introduces Matt Rogers, who previously co-founded Nest connected thermostats after more than a decade working at Apple. His new company, Mill, makes a kitchen gadget that processes food waste into odorless grounds that you mail away to become chicken feed.
On our favorite episode (we’re biased, admittedly), hear Molly and Ridwell founder Ryan talk about how Ridwell started, why recycling right is hard, and how our partners use the things our members fill their bins with.
