WHO SIGNED THIS OFF: AUGUST EDITION
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AUGUST EDITION:
WHO SIGNED THIS OFF?!
We’re humble folk at Harpswood and would never describe ourselves as masters of the universe (maybe more “stalwarts of Shoreditch”). Our new client GeoPura however, has more of a claim to that tag than most after its hydrogen power units delivered critical power on the Amazon film set of, yes, Masters of the Universe. To paraphrase the film: They have the power!
Can rocks remove CO2? That was the question posed when Matt Meredith, CTO of enhanced rock weathering business UNDO, appeared on the Raw Green podcast. Matt explains in clear language (our favourite type) how enhanced rock weathering works and talks about the impact of UNDO winning £5 million from X Prize. (You can also read more about that X Prize win – and Harpswood’s work to promote it here.)
NewOrbit’s plans to put satellites into Very Low Earth Orbit were the sole focus of a two-minute broadcast report on BBC South Today. Co-founder and CEO Anatolii Papulov was interviewed at the Farnborough International Airshow where he spoke about the business’s production facility in Reading and plans to launch in 2028.
📱THE TIKTOK PM
Andy Burnham has been hard to miss in his first couple of weeks in No 10. Where Keir Starmer favoured the traditional media round, Burnham’s opening days brought a Reddit Q&A, appearances with TikTok creators and a run with Sir Mo Farah. Broadcast interviews have been harder to come by, so when Laura Kuenssberg secured a rare 30-minute interview, it drew complaints that she had gone soft, devoting six questions to Donald Trump but applying little pressure to Burnham’s own plans. For a closer look at why Burnham is the first TikTok PM, read this.
📺 LICENCE TO BE KILLED?
New BBC chief Matt Brittin has branded the licence fee a “busted flush”. He is the first senior Beeb executive to publicly disparage the payment model. He suggested the government should reconsider a household levy – but said advertising or subscription models would lead to services being cut. It was also reported that a deal is under discussion for ad-funded content from Channel 4 shows to appear on iPlayer.
🗞️ HORSE x STABLE DOOR LATEST
Reach, the publisher of the Mirror, Express, Star and large numbers of regional papers, has sounded the death knell for its quantity over quality strategy. In a move which journalists (both Reach and non-Reach) have seen as screamingly obvious for years, it will now be publishing fewer stories and focusing on quality. Some fear the damage to titles will be hard to reverse after years of clickbait dross and unreadable, ad-saturated websites.
🤖 A BIT TOO OPENAI
In the latest episode of reality show “Rise of the Machines” (aka real life), an OpenAI agent sprung its sandbox to hack machine learning platform Hugging Face. The hacked company said the AI worked at superhuman speed but also made strange decisions that no human would have made – a description that will probably resonate with most ChatGPT users. The hack comes in the wake of the US government temporarily restricting exports of Claude Mythos, a model developed by AI giant Anthropic, because it was breaking its own guardrails and hunting for cyber security vulnerabilities. You can read more here.
🌕 IF SIX-YEAR-OLDS MADE NEWS STORIES
What was that distant crash you heard as you read this newsletter? Don’t worry, it’s probably just an off-course SpaceX rocket smashing into the moon with the explosive impact equivalent to three tons of TNT. The forecast collision, which wasn’t planned, is expected to leave a crater in the moon and send debris for miles into space. Space junk has becomes a major issue – one solution is using Very Low Earth Orbit, which you can read about here.
🗑️ BIN-DEPENDENCE DAY
Count Binface, the silver-bin-helmeted satirical candidate, self-described intergalactic space warrior and contender for this month's ‘Nailed it’, has emerged as Nigel Farage’s main rival in the Clacton by-election. His manifesto promises to tax celebrity-written crime novels, cap 99 Flake ice creams at 99p and refuse £5 million gifts from crypto billionaires. The campaign has earned a (now former) prime ministerial endorsement and polling showing more Britons would prefer him to win than Farage (although most Britons aren’t also Clactonians). Farage forced the contest to seize back the media narrative. Instead, the candidate cutting through is dressed as a bin.
FOUNDERS UNFILTERED
“THE MISSING INGREDIENT TO CLIMATE ACTION IS RARELY INFORMATION, IT’S ATTENTION”
This month Sarah Humphrys, CEO & co-founder at AimHi Earth is our Founder Unfiltered.
AimHi Earth delivers live, online sustainability training. Every programme is built for the organisation it is delivered to, blending the latest climate science, behavioural psychology and storytelling.
The result is sessions that land differently: 97% of attendees change their behaviour as a result. AimHi Earth has trained more than 150,000 learners in six languages, for companies including PepsiCo, Sky, Capgemini and Unilever.
In one sentence, what was your lightbulb moment for starting the business?
The facts and many of the solutions to the climate and nature crisis have been available for decades. Most people are still overwhelmed, distrustful or switched off.
For me the lightbulb moment was that the missing ingredient to climate action is rarely information, it's attention.
What mistake are you glad you made?
I once pitched to an angel syndicate over Zoom and incorporated a joke. The flow was: "What does our training actually look like?" Then a slide of skeletons on Zoom sitting through a text-heavy, disengaging PowerPoint. A beat. Then "Don't worry! Not like this."
Months later I bumped into two investors at an event and both remembered the pitch, and that moment, warmly. I learned the thing which feels exposing is often the thing people remember.
What story about AimHi Earth has landed best with the media, and why?
An example I’m particularly proud of centred around the report we published on workplace climate engagement. It found that 93% of workers do not know how their company's sustainability strategy applies to their day-to-day job, and that 52% think their employer is likely to greenwash.
What's one book, podcast or article you think everyone should read?
Rutger Bregman's Humankind. It argues that people are fundamentally decent, and that cooperation rather than competition is what got our species this far.
I would also add The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. An oldie but a goodie, and if your job is shifting how an entire organisation thinks, it’s full of fab examples about how ideas and trends actually spread. (Gladwell narrates the audiobook himself, which is worth it on its own.)
NEWS-O-METER
🤩 NAILED IT
Katie Shanahan is Love Island’s self-confessed “biggest fan”. She turned down a chance to appear on the show to focus on swimming – and won a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games. Katie, who’s watched every season of the show, was last year asked by producers to take part. But ditching Casa Amor for Tollcross Swimming Centre clearly paid off as she bagged silver in the 200m backstroke on the opening night of the Games.
🥶 FAILED IT
Gianni Infantino is the pantomime villain every football fan loves to hate. But the Fifa boss botched his latest effort to extract more dollars from the beautiful game. BBC Business Editor Simon Jack explained: “Infantino couldn’t have possibly prepared the pitch worse for this idea. There was the peace prize to Donald Trump, then the overturning of the red card at Trump’s request… and then the lead private investor… is a company run by Trump’s son-in-law’s brother.” At time of writing, Infantino was under huge pressure to resign.
🔥 HOT TAKE
Wildfires have gripped France, Spain, Portugal and Greece as high temperatures and weeks of drought have turned forests into tinderboxes. The FT estimates the fires have already cost €3 billion with half a million hectares burning in two months. (The figure is based on how much it would cost to restore the scorched land.) This year’s fires are closing in on cities and have damaged tourism. Meanwhile in Britain, we’re on track for the highest number of deaths cause by heatwaves since records began, according to the UK Health Security Agency. The cost of “not zero” looms large.
HARPSWOOD RECOMMENDS
🍿NOLAN V WILSON
From sold out bargain basement showings at Peckhamplex to open air screenings in Athens in sight of the Acropolis cough James the entire Harpswood team has seen The Odyssey. But recent debate has centred on translator Emily Wilson’s damning review of the adaptation, read by so many it crashed the London Book Review’s website. Labelling the writing as “abysmal”, Wilson said she "would be ashamed to have written any of this script”. It begs the question: can art simply be enjoyed in a new form, without harsh comparison to the text that inspired it?
HARPSWOOD IRL
MEET OUR LONDON TEAM IN AUGUST AT:
📆 Climate Coffee @ St James Cafe, Thursday 27th August
📆 GSEL Pre-Conference: Net Zero & Beyond, Shaping the Future of Energy System @ University of Westminster, Thursday 27th August