Fire is cathartic. It allows you to start over. And not just in the figurative sense. The Nature Conservancy‘s Zach Prusak came on right before Christmas to discuss the purpose of fire in nature and quite a bit more.
Just like a lot of people, Zach took a circuitous route from having an interest in ants to helping nourish the environment through burning it. It started in Daytona (like I did), involved a lot of comedy albums (like the ones I had), and then going to UCF (which I also did). Are we the same person? Is this a Tyler Durden situation? Listen and find out!
I couldn’t let a chance to talk about the wildfires of 1998 go, and before Bad Business Ideas™, I pitch myself to head up Visit Florida. Because who do you trust more? Me or Pitbull? Well, Pitbull, obviously, but I don’t think he wants the job.
0:00 – Zach is here, comedy and learning will ensue. First up, Hot or Bothered.
4:21 – “You have to terraform it, then you have to grow some trees, so I can burn them down.”
8:57 – “Manatee jerky would be amazing. And you’d have it on the boat while you’re on the river.”
13:07 – “In the back of your head, are you ever thinking, ‘God, I just hope we find a yeti today?’”
15:27 – Controlled burns to revitalize the environment. That’s Zach’s jam.
21:49 – “Fire is a process. It is not something that is either bad or good. We put the labels on that.”
32:31 – It’s a pop (culture) quiz! What isn’t considered pop culture these days?
38:08 – “Now the bad news. We’ll never know who they were going to contract next to promote Florida.”
40:24 – Before Bad Business Ideas™, I pitch some ideas to Zach about how I would run Visit Florida.
45:52 – “I’m not one for hyperbole, but it’s literally the biggest and most important thing in the global entertainment industry in the universe.”
49:27 – “Let’s say you’re in that meeting and you need to jazz things up a bit, get people involved. Smash, now you’re standing there with what seems like a jagged broken bottle as a deadly weapon.”
54:16 – Music. Where Zach listens, how he listens, and what comedy albums mean to him.
1:00:59 – “I did standup one time in a club, and it was agonizing. It was difficult. I like improv better, because I like playing off what is given to me.”
1:06:57 – We get logical. Biological. Zach’s degrees are in biology. So that happened.
1:11:33 – “What drives me really is collaboration. All of these things I want to pursue involve collaboration with other folks to achieve this larger creative goal.”
1:15:20 – The show is at an end! How can you get involved in the Nature Conservancy? Find out!
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