GOLDEN, Colorado — A few weeks ago, we first introduced you to Sam Beskind, Mines basketball star who is playing his final year of college basketball after transferring from Stanford last season.
If you take a look inside Beskind’s college room, it’s normal. Basketball shoe rack on the floor, posters on the wall. But on the table, a microphone?
The basketball star is also a podcast host. He has his own show called Built For Earth, which focuses on climate change. When he’s not driving to the basket, he’s driving conversation, “I started this because I became really passionate about energy and the environment,” said Beskind. “That’s what I’m studying in school. I love spending time outdoors, and I’m like, we need to protect the world we live in.”
Beskind has two degrees from Stanford and is pursuing a third at Mines, in Humanitarian Engineering. He talks with executives of climate change based companies, like Brian Hassin, CEO of Dexmat ,a company that “intends to drive the next industrial revolution by making metals and materials that negatively impact the environment obsolete.”
“People really do enjoy it. I think they learn something,” said Beskind. “I even had a couple coaches and players within the league after games come up to me and say ‘hey not to be weird but I listened to your podcast’ and I love it. That’s something that I take pride in.”
When you watch Sam record his podcast, he is constantly taking notes. He is not just the host. He’s a student, “Learning in a different way was something that I was really excited about. Throughout the episode, I’ll be typing notes, helping myself jot down what he’s saying, then I’ll go back and edit those episodes and that’s where even more of the learning happens.”
With three degrees, anything will be possible for the fifth year guard, and he has a plan, “My goal hopefully is to start a company. We take that minimal individual impact, to a gigaton scale of carbon impact and help protect the natural beautiful world we live in.”