One project. Two series.
The Young Ike Project produces two original podcast series designed to deepen environmental understanding, elevate solutions, and bring these conversations into the real world.
Podclub Series: A quarterly interview series exploring the defining environmental issues, tradeoffs, and tensions shaping our shared future.
Each season features a curated range of voices—experts, leaders, critics, and practitioners—whose perspectives help tell the fuller story.
Those conversations don’t end in your headphones. They continue through live Podclub gatherings, where communities come together to discuss the questions raised in each season.
Deep dives into defining environmental issues on a quarterly basis. Paired with the Podclub model for community groups to further engage with these questions, themes, and tensions, explored in each seasons interviews.
Future-Maker Series: A monthly interview series spotlighting people actively building real-world climate solutions.
From entrepreneurs and engineers to organizers and innovators, Climate Future Makers moves beyond the doom-and-denial cycle of climate news to tell the stories of people creating a more sustainable future right now.
A “Small City” of Water Demand: Why Data Centers Are a Water Governance Stress Test ft. Carrie Jennings
Carrie Jennings is the Research and Policy Director at the Freshwater Society and a geologist by training. She’s one of Minnesota’s leading voices on groundwater and water policy. A past guest from last season, we’re thrilled to have her back on the podcast.
In this episode, we talk about the rise of hyperscale data centers and what they could mean for water in Minnesota and across the Great Lakes region. Jennings explains why groundwater is often misunderstood as “infinite,” how data centers can function like adding a new small city’s worth of demand to the edge of a metro-center.
We also dig into the governance problem: non-disclosure agreements, limited public data on actual water use, and how municipal hookups can effectively let data centers “jump the line” during scarcity—despite statutory water-use priorities. Jennings closes by outlining where Minnesota’s system is breaking down and what it would take to build clearer rules before the next wave of high-volume water users arrives.
This is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclubThis is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclub
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Carrie Jennings: From Glaciers to Farm Fields—the Story of the Minnesota River Basin
Q2 - Food Systems and Water Quality
Will Harris: Taking on Big Ag and Rebuilding Food Systems to Work With Nature
Podclub Series - Q2 2025