Jarrod Luxton, Senior Lead at the Finnish Innovation Fund (Sitra), Board Member of Finland's Sustainable Investment Forum (finsif) and Founder of First Arrow discusses what a best-practice sustainability strategy looks like in 2025! The key player? Nature! We delve into the topic of valuing nature-based solutions and compare and contrast between Australian and Nordic contexts, especially Finland's priorities and motivations for the practice. Jarrod and I also reflect upon our times in Australia and the transition to Europe.

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro & Nordic Summers and reconnecting via Podcast
4:36 Missing Australian Rules Football ("Footy")
6:14 Jarrod's own podcast creation journey
7:29 Jarrod's interest in ESG
12:58 NBS and Terminology
17:13 Valuation of NBS, Sitra and Jarrod's perspective
34:41 Finland's Adoption of NBS - current status
37:25 Green gentrification and being equitable with NbS
39:55 The role of spatial data
41:36 What does a best practice sustainability strategy look like in 2025
48:22 Unpacking the importance and thinking of circular economy
51:00 The TNFD-LEAP Framework for financing
55:01 Jarrod's current endeavours
56:34 Investing in nature - are nature credits a thing?
58:24 The importance of communication and Jarrod's new company
1:02:18 Q&A Start
1:02:39 What does innovation mean to you?
1:05:28 Key event, person, book
1:08:20 Time Management
1:10:43 Favourite childhood memory
1:11:39 Biggest Challenge to Date
1:14:02 Advice for young professionals
1:15:56 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:17:35 Where can people reach you?
1:18:31 Final Message
1:18:46 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Welcome to this Mini-Series on The Grand Challengers Podcast! The topic of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been in all our minds over the past few years and is gaining even more momentum with rapid advancements in text, audio and video. Google recently released NotebookLM, a powerful research-support AI that can generate not only summaries of sources that we feed it, but also entire podcast episodes. This Mini-Series will explore the power of NotebookLM, our live reactions to its outputs... and a deep dive into some of the topics that we have covered on the show. We feature previous guests, who are here to join in on the fun!

Episode #4 delves into "Water sensitive urban design as part of the urban form" - Martijn Kuller (ep3) first reacts to how NotebookLM produces a heavily prompted deep dive discussion (my work of art) of an older review we co-authored, highlighting the ease with which prompting can get dangerous and misleading if not in the right hands. We then both react to an Audio Overview of the same review produced by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, the LLM upon which NotebookLM is based - shorter and more concise.

Full Reference to the Paper: Kuller, M., Bach, P.M., Ramirez-Lovering, D. and Deletic, A., 2017. Framing water sensitive urban design as part of the urban form: A critical review of tools for best planning practice. Environmental modelling & software, 96, pp.265-282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.07.003

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Funky Fortune by Danny Shields (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7vRFEGMyTTfeCtc8qiUB82?si=dygdqu9IQLSFYNvVzPNu5w)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:26 Guest Intro and what's happened since Episode 3
4:39 How this experiment works
5:44 Guest's prior experience with AI
9:59 Martijn's critique of current thoughts so far
12:25 The Experiment Structure
13:07 The human summary
16:43 Live Reaction - Prompted NotebookLM
31:52 Post-Discussion - Prompted NotebookLM
36:57 Live Reaction - Gemini Audio Overview
52:01 Post-Discussion - Gemini Audio Overview
55:16 Thoughts on the future of AI
57:50 Wrap-up
59:10 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Thomas Young, Associate and Blue-Green Infrastructure Specialist at The Environment Partnership (TEP) in the UK shows us his journey from the technical side of green roofs to the more holistic broader planning of sustainability and blue-green infrastructure. His incredible journey is supported by many seemingly unrelated topics, travels and passions that have all contributed to the impact he is creating in the UK. Find out how beer, mushrooms, cowboys and community among many others are linked to this intricate story!

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Starsky by Alex Keren (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vZ3lENfDLjkln8scBJ8mW)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro and a house tour
4:09 Origins of Tom's Ecology Inspiration
7:13 Sheffield and Tom's PhD side project
12:59 Green Roofs 101
22:30 Fungi to help Green Infrastructure
28:12 Writing the British Standards for green roofs
32:20 Blue-Green or Green-Blue Infrastructure? Return of Terminology
35:10 Venturing into Sports Turfs
41:56 Joining TEP and thinking about golf courses
53:08 The Nuffield Farming Scholarship and Tom's world travels
1:03:52 Learning for the UK's future cities and sustainability
1:07:40 Tom's current endeavours
1:12:47 Q&A Start
1:13:14 What does “innovation” mean to you?
1:13:53 Key event book person
1:14:43 Time Management
1:16:56 Favourite childhood memory
1:17:36 Biggest Challenge to date
1:18:37 Advice for young professionals
1:19:42 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:20:27 Where can people find you?
1:21:08 Final Message
1:21:36 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/