Welcome to Pluripotent — it’s Thursday, June 18th. It’s going to be a short edition of the newsletter this week as Billion Dollar Burger officially published on Tuesday and I’ve been running full-speed since its release. If anyone has had a chance to dig into it, would love to hear what you think! Send feedback and news tips through direct message and follow me @chasepurdy.
NEW YORK — Whew. It’s publication week, and it’s been a big one. Billion Dollar Burger was positively reviewed by several outlets, including The New York Times (which also ran an excerpt from Chapter 1), National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail, The Financial Times, and The Deal.
It got some play in National Journal, Slate, and Marker. And if you wanted even more, I had fun conversations on a couple podcasts, including The Meaning Movement and Into the Impossible. I also got to chat a little bit about it on Yahoo! Finance:
Conversations around cell-cultured meat and the book will continue next week. On Tuesday, June 23, I’ll be chatting with Christopher Leonard (author of The Meat Racket and Kochland) as part of a discussion hosted by New America. If the panel hosted by WeWork Food Labs this week serves as an indicator, it’ll be a lot of fun. So RSVP!
There are a couple non-book related items that’re on my brain this week. The first is a searing hot Twitter thread brought to my attention by Isha Datar, the executive director of New Harvest. There’s so much to unpack! Check it out:
The second item is a question posed by a friend who’s curious about cell-cultured meat nomenclature. He asks:
“Has anyone tried adapting the genderless-X (like Latinx / folx) into this space?”
His idea was MEVT (an attempt to use an inverted “A”). I’m not aware of anything like this. Is anyone else?
That’s all for now. I’ve got some interesting items to share in coming weeks, including some updates on the US regulatory landscape for cell-cultured meat, an answer to a great reader question, and the results of a fun bet I made with a prominent cultured meat scientist during the course of reporting out the book. Until then, feel free to drop me a line.