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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Who Decides What Gets Built? Data Centers, Democracy, and Environmental Law ft. Kathryn Hoffman
Kathryn Hoffman is the CEO of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), where she leads legal and policy efforts to protect Minnesota’s water, air, and natural resources.
In this episode, we talk about the rapid expansion of data centers and AI infrastructure — and the growing tension between economic development, environmental protection, and democratic transparency. Hoffman explains how data centers are currently reviewed and approved in Minnesota, why MCEA is challenging opaque environmental reviews and non-disclosure agreements, and what stronger guardrails could look like to ensure communities understand the water, energy, and environmental tradeoffs before these projects move forward.
This is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclub
Follow us on Social Media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theyoungike/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Young-IKE-61579184976598/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-young-ike/
The Politics of Data Centers—and Whether Minnesota’s Landmark 2040 Clean Energy Law Will Hold ft. Nick Frentz
Minnesota State Senator Nick Frentz chairs the Senate Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate Committee and authored Minnesota’s landmark 2023 law requiring 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. He represents Senate District 18 in the Mankato area.
In this episode, we talk about the rapid growth of data centers and AI infrastructure — and the real tension between economic development and environmental limits. Frentz walks through what Minnesota’s data center law actually does (including water-use reporting, permitting guardrails, and protections for ratepayers), why some communities see data centers as transformational for local tax bases, and why he draws a hard line on ensuring data centers can’t undermine the state’s 2040 clean energy target.
This is apart of The Young Ike’s Live Series. To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: theyoungike.org/podclub
Follow us on Social Media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theyoungike/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Young-IKE-61579184976598/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-young-ike/
Introducing: Data Centers, AI, and the Environment
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we live, work, and communicate—but the digital world runs on physical infrastructure. This season of The Young Ike explores the rapid expansion of data centers across the United States and the environmental, economic, and civic trade-offs that come with them.
As demand for AI and cloud computing explodes, data centers are popping up in communities large and small, reshaping local energy grids, water systems, and land use plans. They bring investment, tax revenue, and jobs—but also raise serious questions about sustainability, transparency, and long-term environmental goals.
This season is not about AI chatbots themselves, but about the infrastructure underneath them—and how communities, policymakers, environmental advocates, and industry are responding.
Featured Voices This Season:
Across this season, Griffith speaks with five guests approaching the data center buildout from different perspectives:
- Kathryn Hoffman, CEO of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, on legal and regulatory challenges surrounding data center development
- Carrie Jennings, Research and Policy Director at Freshwater, on groundwater use, water governance gaps, and the hidden risks of data center development.
- Senator Nick Frentz, Chair of the Senate Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate Committee, on balancing economic development, energy policy, and climate goals in the data center boom
- Gary Brown, grassroots organizer and Izaak Walton League member, on local resistance movements and community-level organizing
- Andrew Odlyzko, technology historian at the University of Minnesota, on financial manias, infrastructure booms, and historical parallels to today’s data center surge
An industry perspective was actively sought for this season but could not be secured. That commitment—to engaging all sides of complex environmental issues—remains central to The Young Ike and will continue in future seasons.
How This Season Works:
Episodes will be released weekly over the next four to five weeks. Listeners are encouraged to follow along and participate in Podclubs—community-led discussion groups modeled after book clubs—designed to take these conversations off podcasts, off algorithms, and into the real world.
To find a Podclub event near you or start your own, visit: