Jun 2, 2022 · 42m · how-i-built-this
HIBT Lab! Wildtype: Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This Lab, host Guy Raz interviews Wildtype co-founders Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck about developing slaughter-free, cell-cultivated salmon. They detail the biological breakthroughs, engineering hurdles, and environmental urgency behind creating sustainable seafood to combat ocean overfishing and pollution.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 31.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.2 Guest teaching 3.2 Guest disagreement 0.1 Guy pushing back 0.5
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 40:26 Rejecting total industry displacement
Aryé explicitly rejects Guy's suggestion that cultivated seafood should replace wild fishing entirely, advocating instead for supporting responsible ocean stewards.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 22:54 Probing technical turnaroundsGuy presses the founders on how they overcame a completely tasteless, failed initial prototype to build an edible product.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 19:46 The credit card microplastic statJustin educates Guy on seafood contamination, citing the startling statistic that humans ingest five grams of microplastics a week.
Guy holds their own ▶ 5:43 Contextualizing stem cell historyGuy demonstrates domain knowledge by detailing how cellular cultivation progressed from controversial embryonic sourcing to adult skin cell reprogramming.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divergent Backgrounds and Meeting at Yale | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz demonstrates detailed knowledge of the guests' resumes, noting Aryé's cardiology background and Justin's diplomatic service. Aryé elaborates on the revolutionary shift in stem cell research using skin cells rather than embryonic tissue. | |
| Brainstorming Startup Concepts and the Schnozzle | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | A lighthearted narrative exchange about their early ideation sessions, including prototyping a modernized neti pot called the 'schnozzle'. Both guests share amusing anecdotes collaboratively with the host. | |
| The Inspiration for Cultivated Meat and Dietary Ethics | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Aryé and Justin explain their initial ethical and environmental motivations for cultivated meat. Guy Raz validates their views with personal reflections on dietary conflict. | |
| Mid-Episode Break and Station Identification | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Aryé and Justin explain why they initially attempted foie gras due to cellular homogeneity before realizing it lacked broader planetary impact, prompting Guy to ask why they pivoted away. | |
| Launching in a Shared Lab and Ocean Crisis Realities | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Justin provides alarming facts about microplastic ingestion equivalent to a credit card per week, FDA restrictions for infants, and wild fish depletion, educating the host on seafood system vulnerabilities. | |
| Overcoming the Tasteless Prototype and Scaling Insights | 2 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Aryé candidly describes how disappointing the first prototype tasted, explaining the necessity of scaffolding structures for cellular alignment. Justin highlights their structural yield advantage over conventional fish processing. | |
| The 2019 Public Tasting Debut and Early Media Feedback | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Justin discusses their 2019 public tasting debut and recalls a Bloomberg reporter's critique of their early salmon prototype. | |
| Bioreactors, Scaffolding, and Culinary Refinements | 3 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Guy Raz asks whether cultivated salmon looks and smells like conventional fish. Aryé explains the role of scaffolds and clarifies that ultra-fresh salmon has a surprisingly subtle flavor profile. | |
| Technical Setbacks, Business Scaling, and Ocean Conservation Urgency | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Justin recounts a three-month contamination setback with a custom cultivator and relays an urgent anecdote from First Nations fishermen about dwindling salmon runs. | |
| Regulatory Roadmaps, Product Expansion, and Future Vision | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | When Guy asks if cultivated meat should entirely replace traditional fishing, Aryé gently rejects the premise, arguing instead for a pluralistic model that rewards sustainable fishers and increases consumer choice. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Elfenbein: Skin-to-stem-cell reprogramming bypassed ethical hurdles in biology
“Prior to that, there was a moratorium on research in the United States on stem cells, and the future of understanding how these incredible cells grow, develop, and communicate with each other was really in question because of this, and so this incredible disco…”
Elfenbein: Mark Post created the world's first cell-cultivated hamburger
“And one in particular, Dr. Mark Post in the Netherlands was somebody who actually, you know, about 15 years before that, I had worked in the same lab with also doing cardiac research. And he had gone on to create the world's first hamburger in this way, and he…”
Kolbeck: Current global meat and seafood consumption rates are unsustainable
“It was clear that at some point, eating meat and seafood at the rate we are is not going to work anymore, right? For all the reasons you mentioned, there's environmental reasons, there's sort of humane reasons. There's economic reasons.”
Elfenbein: Foie gras is predominantly comprised of a single cell type
“And the reason is because it's relatively homogeneous in terms of its texture, and it's actually also predominantly one cell type. So it's not sort of fat cells and liver cells. It's mostly liver cells that have just been exposed to a lot of fat.”
Kolbeck: Wildtype prototyped a cell-cultivated foie gras in mere months
“So we were able to make some foie gras, like a, you know, a fairly small amount and people, people tried it. I remember the first person that we invited to try it was a friend of ours in San Francisco. And, you know, it was tiny amount, like so small that it w…”
Elfenbein: Wildtype abandoned cultivated luxury foie gras to maximize environmental impact
“We started to realize that what we didn't want to be creating was a company that just made fine food for fancy people. And instead we wanted to stay true to what the mission was, which was to use this method of growing seafood and growing meats to actually hav…”
Kolbeck: Humans ingest a credit card's worth of microplastics weekly
“The number that I can't get out of my head is five grams or the equivalent of a credit card worth of microplastics that Going to our bodies every week.”
Kolbeck: Nutritious wild seafood will become increasingly inaccessible to most
“Strongly rising demand with pinched supply means some of our healthiest, most nutritious seafoods are only going to become further and further out of reach of many people.”
Elfenbein: Cultivated cells require structural scaffolding to mimic meat texture
“Cells on their own they don't know how to spontaneously kind of organize into, you know, a piece of sashimi, for example. Right. They need structures. And they need to follow cues from their environment to organize in this way, to create all the complexities o…”
Kolbeck: Roughly half of a caught fish's weight is discarded
“Half of, roughly, half of a fish's weight gets thrown away or discarded between the time it's caught and the time it shows up on your plate, right? Things like fins and bones and so on that we don't consume.”
Kolbeck: Wildtype's 2019 debut cultivated salmon lacked visual appeal
“Looking back on those pictures today, I mean, I can't help but cringing because it just didn't have the same visual appeal and structure that people would expect from salmon.”