Aarati Asundi (00:12)
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Smart Tea Podcast where we talk about the lives of scientists and innovators who shape the world. I'm Aarati.

Jyoti Asundi (00:20)
I'm Jyoti, her mom.

Aarati Asundi (00:21)
So mom, I know that you have been privy to this, but I wanted to share this with the audience, a little podcast update. I have been working with a graphic designer who has been creating a new version of the logo for us. And I'm really, really excited. It's coming along really wonderfully. Her name is Brittany Nieves and creativity that she's putting into the logo is so amazing and I'm really excited to be finally able to unveil it soon.

Jyoti Asundi (00:54)
I'm seeing the works in progress. I'm truly excited. It's going to be beautiful.

Aarati Asundi (00:59)
Yeah, Brittany has just been I met her actually because, as you know, I've previously done a lot of work with climate tech and sustainability And so naturally, kind of started meeting people in a similar space who are also doing communications, marketing, graphic design.

And Brittany was just one of those people. She's very young and just getting started in her career, but she has a really amazing insight. And it's very rare that you meet someone who has the same vision as you or can execute your vision. She just really understands exactly what I'm driving at. And the colors that she chose are amazing. and her attention to detail is just on another level. So yeah, highly recommend her. So I just wanted to say we're going to be having a new logo, new thumbnail coming soon. I'm really excited for it. So stay tuned for that.

Jyoti Asundi (01:56)
Yes, I have seen Brittany's the Smart Tea podcast and seen some of the draft versions for the climate tech people that she helped you with. And yeah, she's truly talented. like, she's remarkable.

Aarati Asundi (02:09)
Yeah I'm like, I can take care of the science part. You take care of making it look beautiful and gorgeous. And she does an excellent job every time. But speaking of climate change and sustainability, today's person that we're going to be talking about is... he is a climate change person, although he didn't start out that way. So his name is Mario Molina. 

Jyoti Asundi (02:32)
Okay.

Aarati Asundi (02:33)
And he actually won the Nobel Prize for figuring out that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were depleting the ozone layer.

Jyoti Asundi (02:41)
Oh wow! 

Aarati Asundi (02:41)
You remember this was like a big story back in like...

Jyoti Asundi (02:42)
Oh my God! That's a very interesting story. This was huge. This was huge. There is so much. Oh my God! I'm already excited.

Aarati Asundi (02:52)
Yeah, even I remember it like in the 90s, I was just a little kid. But even I remember like picking it up on the news, like something's happening with the ozone layer, you know, 

Jyoti Asundi (03:02)
Yes, exactly. 

Aarati Asundi (03:02)
I hope they fix it.

Jyoti Asundi (03:05)
And I have to say I hadn't heard of Mario Molina in context with CFCs. I've heard of other names, but not Mario Molina, but my gosh, yes.

Aarati Asundi (03:15)
This was definitely a group effort. There's gonna be a lot of names coming your way. I know how much you love that, but I'll try to keep it straight for you. But There's a lot of people involved in this story. 

Jyoti Asundi (03:28)
Yeah this is a story heroes of climate change, actually. These were the game changers for climate change. These people who are involved in the CFC story. So yeah, let's go forward.

Aarati Asundi (03:39)
Ok. I mentioned that Mario Molina didn't start off as like a climate change activist or anything. And so I wanted to go a little bit through his background, kind of understand where he came from and how he got to the point being on the forefront of this environmental crisis that he helped solve.
So he was born on March 19th, 1943 in Mexico City, His father, Roberto Molino-Pascal, was a lawyer and a Mexican ambassador. His mother, Leonor Henriquez de Molina passed away when Mario was just three years old.

Jyoti Asundi (04:17)
Oh, oh, oh! lost his mom very early on.

Aarati Asundi (04:20)
Yes.

Jyoti Asundi (04:21)
That's very hard.

Aarati Asundi (04:23)
Yes, very hard. He was the fourth and last child from his mother, but his father later got remarried to an elementary school teacher named Luz Lara, and he gained three more half-siblings. So family of like seven.

Jyoti Asundi (04:36)
A large family. Those days it was quite common I think.

Aarati Asundi (04:41)
Yes, and he did say Luz Lara his own mother, like very loving and, you know, he basically looked up to her as a mother.

Jyoti Asundi (04:50)
That's nice actually.

Aarati Asundi (04:51)
As a child, Mario liked to read pirate novels, watch TV, and listen to classical music with his family. His interest in science also developed very early on. His family had a lot of books, and he happened to come across some biographies of famous scientists. And he was particularly fascinated with Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's story. who is commonly referred to as Yes.

Jyoti Asundi (05:14)
The microscope guy!

Aarati Asundi (05:16)
Yes. He's commonly referred to as the father of microbiology because he was one of the first scientists...

Jyoti Asundi (05:21)
He's the one who saw them through his... yeah. I think he called them the "little beasties" or something. 

Aarati Asundi (05:27)
Oh that's cute.

Jyoti Asundi (05:28)
Yeah. he was terrible. He was, he get people to come in and biofluids from them, like saliva or something or the other, and put it under the scope and show them and they will all be grossed out. 

Aarati Asundi (05:40)
Yeah, like that thing is living in my mouth. Ew.

Jyoti Asundi (05:42)
Yeah, exactly. He would do weird stuff to people.

Aarati Asundi (05:46)
So he's like, yeah, unlocked this world of microbes.

Jyoti Asundi (05:51)
Yes. You ate that apple? Do you know what else you ate with that apple? You know, that kind of thing. 

Aarati Asundi (05:54)
Yeah, all the microbes that live in and around us and we don't even see them. Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (05:59)
Yes, you thought you drank a glass of water. Let me show you what was in it. You know, that kind of he had that morbid fascination for microbes. 

Aarati Asundi (06:07)
Oh, that's so funny. I'm going to have to story one of these days because I was really excited when I read this part of the story because was Mario was inspired by reading this biography to pursue science himself. And I'm like, Yes! Love it. So Mario himself became fascinated with you know, science and looking at bacteria through microscopes and just doing experiments.
His family supported his scientific interest, particularly his aunt Esther Molina, who was a chemist. And with her help, when he was about nine years old, he was able take over the spare bathroom in his house and convert it into a chemistry lab. 

Jyoti Asundi (06:50)
Oh wow. First of all, to have a spare bathroom that can be converted into a chemistry lab. But that openness to having a chemistry lab inside the house and not having that fear he could set the whole house on fire with this. Don't do it in the house. Go to that shed in the back. No, they were willing to let him do all this in the house.

Aarati Asundi (07:12)
Yes, his family was very supportive and he was under the supervision of his aunt. So his aunt was like teaching him actual sophisticated experiments and showing him exactly how these chemicals reacted so that he wasn't like messing around in the way that a lot of other people that we've covered on the podcast, you know, maybe were like messing around with explosives and making things, setting things on fire.

Jyoti Asundi (07:36)
But you know, it makes me extremely curious to know more about his aunt actually... 

Aarati Asundi (07:42)
Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (07:42)
...that she was able to design sophisticated experiments in those days. You said he was born in 1943 and that's not a time where women were prominent in science. Not that easily.

Aarati Asundi (07:52)
Yeah, but apparently she was a practicing chemist. 

Jyoti Asundi (07:56)
Wow!

Aarati Asundi (07:56)
And so she knew about all of this stuff. And she was able to obtain chemicals, like actual chemicals that he would not have been able to obtain as a nine-year-old. You know? Like, she was able to order them and get them and bring them to him and show him.

Jyoti Asundi (08:10)
So those experiments were elevated to the next level then.

Aarati Asundi (08:14)
Yeah, he was like literally doing university or college level experiments in his bathroom with his aunt. 

Jyoti Asundi (08:18)
Wow, what a lucky guy.

Aarati Asundi (08:19)
So he really, really enjoyed this. This was just like his favorite thing to do. In contrast, though, he did not enjoy science class in school at all because his teacher, his elementary school teacher was obviously not a scientist. And so science class just became kind of boring memorization. And if he asked any like more in-depth questions, the teacher didn't know, you know? So he was like, well, this is boring. ⁓

Jyoti Asundi (08:48)
Yeah, so that tells you, right? mean, we have talked about this before, ⁓ Aarati, you and I about the various types of learning and how person is adapted to a different learning style. And some people learn just by listening. Some people learn by reading. Some people learn by doing and some people learn by a mixture of all three.
So just some teacher who is completely uninspired by science and therefore uninspiring themselves about the subject definitely would not had any comparison to these true to life scientific experiments being done with real life chemicals. Makes a difference.

Aarati Asundi (09:26)
Yeah, he was very much a hands-on kind of guy. And then obviously because of this, his friends that he played with were also not interested in science at all. So he didn't really have any one of his peers or any friends at his level or at his age.

Jyoti Asundi (09:40)
He didn't have co-conspirator in crime.

Aarati Asundi (09:43)
Yeah. By the time he was 11, though, he was pretty sure he wanted to go into science and chemistry. Once he finished with elementary school, it was decided that, just like his older siblings, Mario should be sent abroad to boarding school. And for some reason, I'm really not sure about the connection here, but his family decided that German was an important language for a chemist to know. And so they sent Mario to a boarding school in Switzerland.

Jyoti Asundi (10:15)
I think there was a bit of a race for world domination at that time. And there are, still... I don't remember the complete details, but there was a time where it was a toss up whether German was going to be the world dominating language or English.

Aarati Asundi (10:32)
Interesting.

Jyoti Asundi (10:33)
Yeah. So German, especially in 1943, this you're talking about just the ending of the World War II and all that. Maybe because they had lost in World War II, maybe they lost their position, but there was strong thinking, especially with a lot of science coming out of there.

Aarati Asundi (10:51)
Yeah, I think it was very much tied to chemistry. Like if you're going to be a chemist, you need to know German. 

Jyoti Asundi (10:58)
Yes,

Aarati Asundi (10:58)
So initially he was really excited thinking that surely the kids in Europe are going to be much more interested in science than his friends in Mexico. But he was disappointed to find that all kids everywhere are exactly the same. 

Jyoti Asundi (11:12)
Kids are kids.

Aarati Asundi (11:12)
They were not interested either. Yeah. So he didn't really have any like very inspired friends who are like, yeah, science class is my favorite. So they were fun to play with for other things, but not for science.

Jyoti Asundi (11:27)
Yeah.

Aarati Asundi (11:28)
But at the boarding school, he did appreciate that the science and math teachers knew a lot about the subject they were teaching. So he spent a lot of his extra time and extra hours with his chemistry and math teachers.

Jyoti Asundi (11:39)
Nice.

Aarati Asundi (11:40)
For high school, Mario returned to Mexico where he was briefly double checking his career options. Because of his love for classical music, he started learning the violin. But then some family friends told him that if he wasn't willing to practice at least eight hours a day, he should just give it up entirely.

Jyoti Asundi (11:58)
Wow, wow, okay, okay, That's what you need to do in order to be a maestro. 

Aarati Asundi (12:04)
Yeah, in order to be professional. But I think he kind of regretted it later on. He was like, you know, yeah, maybe I wouldn't have been like a professional violinist, but I could have kept up with it just for my own pleasure. But his family friends kind of convinced him to ditch it completely. So he did have that little bit of a regret.

Jyoti Asundi (12:24)
That was the one thing that is sad in that generation, actually. And I remember feeling the pangs of it, where it was really very straight-laced, the path sometimes. Some families, I'm not saying everybody, but at least I encountered it, where reading was for studying. That was the purpose of when you read for pleasure, it was not valuable at all. 

Aarati Asundi (12:48)
It's a waste of time. Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (12:49)
It's a waste of time. Why are you doing this? If you want to read, read your next year's science books or math books, that kind of thing. So same thing. You know, art? Oh my God, what are you going to do with it? Are you planning to be an artist and why are you going to do an art? I do remember still, I wanted to learn typing.

Aarati Asundi (13:07)
Oh!

Jyoti Asundi (13:07)
When I was very young, I wanted to learn how to and that was strongly vetoed by my dad. 

Aarati Asundi (13:15)
They were just like, you're never gonna use that?

Jyoti Asundi (13:17)
Are you planning to be a typist? 

Aarati Asundi (13:19)
Yeah, are you planning to be a secretary or something? Because if not... 

Jyoti Asundi (13:22)
Yeah, are you planning to be a secretary? What the heck? 

Aarati Asundi (13:24)
You're never going to use this.

Jyoti Asundi (13:25)
You're never going to use... So can you imagine? 

Aarati Asundi (13:27)
Yeah. Little did they know.

Jyoti Asundi (13:28)
See, see? Yeah, little did they know. Little did they know. Seriously. Yeah, so.

Aarati Asundi (13:35)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Make time for your interests and hobbies. You never know how it's going to come back.

Jyoti Asundi (13:38)
Yeah, you never know. It's not just, it's not just... Those things are may or may not be useful, but it is important for the enrichment of the soul.

Aarati Asundi (13:49)
Yeah, your mental health.

Jyoti Asundi (13:52)
Yeah, exactly. Your soul is more at peace. You feel more grounded. You're more balanced. So you should. Yes, please incorporate the violin in your life. I agree. ⁓ man. Sad.

Aarati Asundi (14:03)
Yes, yeah, so he did have that bit of a regret.

Jyoti Asundi (14:05)
Absolutely.

Aarati Asundi (14:07)
He also explored biology, but he ended up really liking the mathematical nature of chemistry more, and he was really drawn more to physical chemistry than anything else. For college, he enrolled in the National Autonomous University of Mexico to pursue a bachelor's degree, but he couldn't major in physical chemistry because that wasn't an available major. 

Jyoti Asundi (14:28)
Oh okay.

Aarati Asundi (14:30)
So he did the next closest subject, which was chemical engineering. A couple of things, though were different about his college experience than maybe you would think typical. First of all, again, his science classes were not taught by research experts. They were practicing scientists or engineers who were teaching on the side. And so, again, because of this, a lot of the classes were just rote memorization. There was not any like no passion, no hands-on experimentation.  And if you asked a question that was outside of the curriculum, they likely didn't know or didn't care.

Jyoti Asundi (15:07)
Yes. yes. Wow. That's the low level of value that was given to these classes and bringing up the next generation. All right.

Aarati Asundi (15:16)
Yeah. Also, most of the students also worked to earn a living while attending college. So the class structure was intentionally built with a lot of free time incorporated so that you could use that free time to go work your job. However Mario and some of his friends were like, you know what, instead of working random jobs, we should do something bigger and better. We should start our own company.

Jyoti Asundi (15:42)
Wow, visionary, all right.

Aarati Asundi (15:45)
And their plan for this was pretty brilliant, too. So one of Mario's friends was working in a plastic foam which used a specific catalyst to make the foaming reaction happen. And they had to import that catalyst from outside of Mexico. At the time, though, Mexico had a trade law that said that if you can get something from within Mexico, you have to buy it in Mexico. You can't import it. So Mario and his friends were like, if we can make that catalyst, then the plastic foam company will have to buy it from us because we're in Mexico.

Jyoti Asundi (16:20)
Yes, yes!

Aarati Asundi (16:22)
So it was a bit tricky, but they were able to borrow a lot of the equipment they needed. And so with Mario focusing on the chemistry and his friends focusing on the more business aspect of things, they were able to successfully produce enough of this catalyst to close the border. 

Jyoti Asundi (16:40)
Oh got it. SO that, yeah, the import of that was shut down.

Aarati Asundi (16:44)
He said, quote, "Ultimately, we had all the foam industry depending on these garage experiments we were doing. But it was great. We had a very good experience, first with research because we really had to do something that worked, and second, just seeing how a business in Mexico runs."

Jyoti Asundi (17:03)
Yes, yes. Oh wow, nice.

Aarati Asundi (17:07)
After finishing his undergraduate studies, he wanted to continue on and do his PhD in physical chemistry, but this was a bit of a challenge because he had majored in chemical engineering. So although his chemistry was good, he was missing knowledge about some basic topics in quantum mechanics and stuff that you would need for studying physical chemistry. So he applied for a scholarship to the University of Freiburg in Germany where Hermann Staudinger, who was a Nobel Laureate for his work on polymers. 

Jyoti Asundi (17:38)
Okay.

Aarati Asundi (17:39)
And he applied there to do his master's degree to study polymerization kinetics, or in other just understanding exactly how these molecules in a reaction change to make the product and how fast they do it and exactly what's going on there.

Jyoti Asundi (17:55)
Okay, okay.

Aarati Asundi (17:57)
So while he's waiting for his scholarship application to come through, he got a job teaching at the National University, so at his same college. And he helped establish a master's program in chemical engineering there, which would allow students to do more research-based experiments.

Jyoti Asundi (18:14)
Yes. Wow these were great minds thought of like, my bitter experience should not be the same for somebody else. Let me improve life for others because they are going to come across the same roadblocks, the same hurdles. And I know what the problem was. Let me fix it.

Aarati Asundi (18:35)
Yes.

Jyoti Asundi (18:37)
That's the noble way of looking at life, yes.

Aarati Asundi (18:39)
Yeah, "Nobel" way of looking at life. Ha ha ha. 

Jyoti Asundi (18:41)
⁓ wow, what a clever little pun.

Aarati Asundi (18:45)
Yes. So in order to do this, he invited professors from all over, including Germany, and a professor from Berkeley, UC Berkeley, named Ted Vermeulen, to help advise and contribute lecture material to this new curriculum he's building.

Jyoti Asundi (19:04)
Okay.

Aarati Asundi (19:05)
And so because he's interacting with all these people, doors started opening for him. He did end up getting that scholarship to the University of Freiburg to do his master's in polymerization kinetics. Maybe in part because he was communicating with all these German professors who were impressed by him and were like, you applied to this, you know, like....

Jyoti Asundi (19:23)
Yes, he's already, yeah, he's only applying to be a student, but he's already making waves there.

Aarati Asundi (19:31)
And then same afterwards, after he did his Master's, he applied to the physical chemistry PhD program at UC Berkeley and spent a few months in Paris studying mathematics while he was waiting. And again, he got accepted probably in part because of his connection with Ted Vermeulen.

Jyoti Asundi (19:48)
Yes, So he's really already connecting to the big names of the day there.

Aarati Asundi (19:54)
Yes, When he gets to UC Berkeley, it's 1968 and hippie culture is in full swing. 

Jyoti Asundi (20:01)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (20:02)
Mario is able to pick up speaking English pretty quickly because he had been able to read papers like scientific papers in English. He just hadn't been able to really converse before. So now it's just a matter of putting into practice what he read. For his thesis work, he joined Dr. George C. Pimentel, where he worked on chemical lasers. I'm going to go briefly into how lasers work, just so that you kind of get a quick understanding. ⁓

Jyoti Asundi (20:32)
Okay.

Aarati Asundi (20:33)
So one example of a chemical laser, and probably the one that Mario himself worked on, is a hydrogen fluoride laser. Unlike other lasers that use electricity or light energy to create the laser, hydrogen fluoride lasers and other chemical lasers use the energy released by a chemical reaction to power the laser. 

Jyoti Asundi (20:56)
Okay.

Aarati Asundi (20:57)
So in this kind of laser, we have hydrogen gas and fluorine gas that react with each other to form hydrogen fluoride. And that hydrogen fluoride is in an excited state, so it has a lot of energy. So now you have a lot of these excited molecules of hydrogen fluoride, but you know the saying, what goes up must come down. So they're not going to stay in this excited state forever.

Jyoti Asundi (21:23)
That's right. Mm-hmm.

Aarati Asundi (21:25)
So when one hydrogen fluoride molecule drops back down to a less excited state, it releases that extra energy in the form of a photon, which is a small unit of light. 

Jyoti Asundi (21:37)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (21:38)
The photon is then bouncing around this area, and it passes by other hydrogen fluoride molecules, which prompts them to also release photons.

Jyoti Asundi (21:49)
Okay, yeah, yeah.

Aarati Asundi (21:51)
So you're starting to build up the light. And now if you trap these photons between mirrors within the laser, they bounce back and forth, reflecting off the mirrors. The hydrogen fluoride molecules keep on releasing photons. And so then you have like all of these photons that all built up in this space. And then you just give them a small hole which to escape. And that's your laser beam.

Jyoti Asundi (22:18)
Oh very clever.

Aarati Asundi (22:21)
So chemical lasers were a relatively new technology at the time. And although Mario wasn't really studying its various applications, he was more interested in what exactly is happening with these photons, how are they interacting with the hydrogen fluoride atoms, and all of that kind of thing, how's the reaction happening. So he's not really looking at applications of chemical lasers, but he did learn there were potential military applications for this. And this being in the 1960s and 70s in Berkeley, that did not sit well with many anti-war and all of these protests.

Jyoti Asundi (22:59)
Absolutely. Yeah that was the height of counterculture actually. Especially, you know, in that time frame, was a lot political assassinations as well. There was MLK, there was the Kennedy brothers, and then shortly thereafter there was Harvey Milk in San Francisco.

Aarati Asundi (22:19)
Oh yeah, in San Francisco, yep.

Jyoti Asundi (23:21)
So there's a lot of assassinations, political assassinations happening, the wars going on, you know, the counterculture due to the war culture of America at that time. People were anti-war, That's why the hippie movement started to begin with. Yeah, so I can imagine that something that would help the army would not be very well received. 

Aarati Asundi (23:43)
Yeah. And while he's doing his PhD, there were sometimes student protests that nearly shut down his lab just because people are like, you're working on chemical lasers, which can be used for the military? No way. And he's like, I have nothing to do with the military. 

Jyoti Asundi (24:00)
That's right.

Aarati Asundi (24:01)
I'm not building this for the military. We are not funded by the military.

Jyoti Asundi (24:05)
This is sad, actually. It is so easy to rile up a bunch of people who are passionate about something, give them half-baked information and then set them loose and then watch and cackle with a box of popcorn in the background having fulfilled some weird agenda that they had. Very sad.

Aarati Asundi (24:24)
I mean, that's what they're even today, like all of this, Democrats versus Republicans, and everybody's fighting with everybody. And meanwhile, the powers that be like the government and their administration are quietly passing laws, but everyone is so intent in fighting each other that they're not paying attention to what's happening at the highest level of government and what bills are being passed and what the Supreme Court is doing. And they're just quietly getting away with all of this

Jyoti Asundi (24:55)
It's kind of flipped around, but it reminds me of the Lord of the Rings where the Eye of the Sauron is watching all the time. And in order to make sure that the Eye of the Sauron is not seeing Frodo, they create these huge distractions while Frodo is quietly going away towards the crater to throw that ring into it.

Aarati Asundi (25:14)
Yeah, exactly. It's like we're going to cause a big distraction over here so that you're not watching the quiet thing.

Jyoti Asundi (25:16)
Yeah, then that's exactly... Yeah. So you're not seeing the quiet things that are going on in the background.

Aarati Asundi (25:24)
Yeah. Okay, so got a little off topic, but that's okay. Come back, come back to Mario. So while he's doing his PhD, he was working alongside another student named Luisa Tan, and they got married in 1973, which was one year after Mario graduated, and they had a son named Felipe in 1977.

Jyoti Asundi (25:48)
Okay.

Aarati Asundi (25:49)
During his PhD studies, Mario also met several times with Dr. Frank Sherwood Rowland. So that's an important name. He went by Sherry, and he was a professor at UC Irvine. And he was also working on some similar questions as to how molecules are interacting with each other in these chemical reactions. But he had a different way of approaching the problem than Pimentel's group did. But they would talk to each other at both of these labs and Mario founded a lot of fun to talk to Sherry Rowland. And so after he graduated, he went to do his postdoc with him. 
Sherry was interesting because he took a very multidisciplinary approach to science. He was always looking for opportunities to work with scientists outside of his immediate field. And because of this, he got involved in a collaboration between the American Chemical Society and the American Meteorological Society. Basically, they were saying, hey, what if we team up a meteorologist with a chemist and the chemist can help analyze stuff that's happening in the atmosphere, and maybe we'll discover something interesting. Who knows?

Jyoti Asundi (26:59)
Yes,  and his detectoryes.

Aarati Asundi (27:02)
So around this time, a scientist named James E. Lovelock had invented a device called an electron gas chromatograph, which is a highly sensitive device that he could use to accurately detect the concentrations of certain compounds in the atmosphere. And among other chemicals, one of the things that he detected was a class of molecules called chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs.

Jyoti Asundi (27:30)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (27:31)
So chlorofluorocarbons, as their name suggests, contain chlorine, fluorine, and carbon atoms. And they were widely used in industry as refrigerants and aerosol propellants in products like hairspray, spray paint, insecticides, or in foam production. So they were used pretty widely across the board.

Jyoti Asundi (27:54)
Absolutely. hailed as the next best thing when they first came out.

Aarati Asundi (27:58)
So Dr. Rowland became interested in CFCs in the atmosphere because they interact with a lot of different types of molecules that he was interested in studying. And he asked Mario if he would be interested in studying them for his postdoc project. Mario wasn't particularly interested in CFCs, to be honest, but he figured, you know, since he was familiar with halogens fluorine from the hydrogen fluoride chemical lasers, he kind of knew how fluorine interacted in some of its basic behaviors. And fluorine is a component of CFCs. So he was like, yeah, there's some overlap there. It won't be too much of a leap. I'm not starting from zero.

Jyoti Asundi (28:43)
Yes, yes.

Aarati Asundi (28:45)
And also Mario realized that it was a very open-ended project with a lot of potential for furthering our scientific knowledge, not just in chemistry, but also in biology and physics, because so little was known about CFCs and how they interact in our atmosphere, how they interact living things and their physical behaviors. People didn't know anything. And even Sherwood Rowland, who is technically his mentor, doesn't really know anything.
So they first start looking at how long can CFCs stay in the atmosphere and how do they get destroyed? And as he's studying more about molecules in the atmosphere in general, he learns that the molecules will eventually break apart at high altitudes where they have higher exposure to UV radiation from the sun. So that's not just CFCs. That's like every molecule does this. Carbon dioxide, oxygen, hydrogen, And once the molecule breaks apart, they're able to recombine and sometimes form different molecules and you know, come back down to lower levels. And so you kind of get this like cycle, this moving cycle of molecules in the atmosphere.

Jyoti Asundi (29:56)
And a mixture of molecules too, because it's not just the original molecules anymore. They have combined with other random things. Other molecules have broken up, leaving out free radicals. And those now random free radicals from multiple molecules are now combining in the high altitudes and coming back down as something else entirely. Oh interesting. Okay.

Aarati Asundi (30:16)
Yeah. So sure enough, CFCs do get broken apart by UV rays, and they result in chlorine atoms, these free radical chlorine atoms, which stay for a really long time in the atmosphere. And then they're like, OK, so now we have these chlorine atoms. What do they do? How do they interact with other molecules? And it turns out that the chlorine atoms interact with ozone, which is a naturally occurring gas composed of three oxygen atoms bonded together.

Jyoti Asundi (30:47)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (30:48)
So normally, the ozone that exists naturally in the stratosphere, which is the upper layer of our atmosphere, forms a protective layer around the Earth the sun's harmful UV rays.

Jyoti Asundi (31:01)
Yes, and that is so important for life.

Aarati Asundi (31:05)
Yes, absolutely crucial for life. But when chlorine atoms interact with the ozone, they break it apart to form chlorine monoxide and oxygen gas. And what's worse is that a single chlorine atom can destroy up to 100,000 ozone molecules before becoming inactive.

Jyoti Asundi (31:27)
Horrible, truly horrible. A single chlorine molecule can do this. So imagine all the chlorines coming off of the CFCs. 

Aarati Asundi (31:35)
Yes, exactly.

Jyoti Asundi (31:36)
My God. What horrible stuff we did to our environment.

Aarati Asundi (31:40)
Yeah, and so unknowingly and, you know, ignorantly. SO Mario and Sherry shared this information with a research scientist named Dr. Paul Crutzen at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Paul had previously been at the University of Stockholm where he had done some work modeling how nitrous oxide, which a stable gas that is produced naturally by soil bacteria gets converted into nitric oxide. And that could also deplete the ozone layer. This a natural process that happens, so nothing dangerous per se. But when Mario and Sherry shared their work on CFCs, Paul Crutzen was able to take that information and create a model which predicted a severe depletion of the ozone layer if CFCs continued to be emitted into the atmosphere.

Jyoti Asundi (32:35)
Wow.

Aarati Asundi (32:36)
In 1974, Mario Molina and Sherry Rowland published a paper in Nature called "Stratospheric Sink for Chlorofluoromethanes: Chlorine Atom Catalyzed Destruction of Ozone". In the paper, they lay out their ozone depletion theory and warn that "It seems quite clear that the atmosphere has only a finite capacity for absorbing chlorine atoms produced in the stratosphere and that important consequences may result. This capacity is probably not sufficient in steady state, even for the present rate of the introduction of chlorofluoromethanes."

Jyoti Asundi (33:17)
My God. Ominous. That is ominous. 

Aarati Asundi (33:18)
So they're saying we cannot keep doing what we're doing. 

Jyoti Asundi (33:23)
Yeah. Yes. Please, please halt.

Aarati Asundi (33:26)
Shortly after this, in 1975, Sherry gave Mario his support in becoming a professor, a full professor at UC Irvine so he could continue working on this issue, both independently but also still collaborate in some cases.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Aarati Asundi (33:45)
Hey Mom! Did you know that Galactic Polymath Education Studio is holding the first ever MySciJourney competition?

Jyoti Asundi (33:52)
Yes! It's so exciting! I heard you could win up to $500 for sharing your science story.

Aarati Asundi (33:59)
Yep! Just make a short video describing your scientific career path and the importance of your research and upload it for your chance to win.

Jyoti Asundi (34:07)
Eligible videos will also become part of an online resource to show the public a glimpse of the real people and work done in science.

Aarati Asundi (34:16)
The MySciJourney competition is open to everyone from highschoolers to tenured college professors and is a great way to flex your science storytelling muscles.

Jyoti Asundi (34:25)
Upload your submissions by September 30, 2025. For more competition rules and resources, including beautiful slide templates to help you get started, visit galacticpolymath.com. G-A-L-A-C-T-I-C-P-O-L-Y-M-A-T-H.com.

Aarati Asundi (34:43)
That's galacticpolymath.com

Aarati Asundi & Jyoti Asundi (34:46)
We can’t wait to hear your stories!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Aarati Asundi (34:49)
Hi everyone, Aarati here. I hope you're enjoying the podcast. If so, and you wish someone would tell your science story, I founded a science communications company called Sykom, that's S-Y-K-O-M, that can help. Sykom blends creativity with scientific accuracy to create all types of science, communications, content, including explainer videos, slide presentations, science, writing, and more. We work with academic researchers, tech companies, nonprofits, or really any scientists. To help simplify your science, check us out at sykommer.com. That's S-Y-K-O-M-M-E r.com. Back to the story.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Aarati Asundi (35:35)
So at this point, Sherry and Mario both realized that they couldn't just publish this paper and be done. 

Jyoti Asundi (35:43)
Yes, the implications are too ominous. It cannot just be one of the papers that gets archived, like multiple publications that come out every year. There needs to be some more of a spotlight on it.

Aarati Asundi (35:56)
Yes, they need people to pay attention. So they had to effectively communicate this problem to a wider audience for any action to happen.

Jyoti Asundi (36:03)
Yes, yes, science communication.

Aarati Asundi (36:07)
Yes, it's so important. And so Mario and Sherry spent a lot of time coming up with strategies on how to communicate the magnitude of this problem without sensationalizing it, but also still accurately educating people about the risks of continued use of CFCs.

Jyoti Asundi (36:24)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (36:26)
There were a few things working in their favor, though. They were able to draw on the fact that refrigerants and hairspray and spray paint were common items that people used every day. And so this was a familiar topic to them

Jyoti Asundi (36:39)
Yeah

Aarati Asundi (36:39)
They were also able to leverage the fact that this was a nearly unprecedented problem that affected the entire globe. So it wasn't just one country or one group of people. 

Jyoti Asundi (36:49)
Yes, ubiquitously used.

Aarati Asundi (36:52)
And it doesn't even just affect people. It would affect all life on Earth if the ozone layer disappeared.

Jyoti Asundi (36:55)
Yes. I mean forget about people who, where if you don't have the ozone layer, people start getting cancers and skin diseases and all that. But then the phytoplankton, is underlying substratum of the oceanic life, that gets destroyed. And so now you're messing with large ecosystems, oceanic ecosystems.

Aarati Asundi (37:17)
Yeah. But also they made it very clear that they were not some sort of like rah-rah hippie environmental extremists. They were like saying "We are chemists who just happened to find out about this thing that is affecting the ozone layer. We did not go looking for a problem. We have no hidden agenda here. But we found this thing that's really important in our natural course of studying the atmosphere and chemistry."

Jyoti Asundi (37:43)
Yes, yes.

Aarati Asundi (37:45)
Pretty soon, environmentally politicians began to take notice of this finding and called him in to testify at hearings. So that was another form of communication that he had to really quickly get familiar with because talking to the media is different than talking to a legislative committee. Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (37:57)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Know your targeted audience. Science communication is about that.

Aarati Asundi (38:04)
Yeah. Throughout his story, I felt that there was this underlying current of like, how does he communicate? Because, you know, he started in Mexico, obviously learning Spanish. And then they were like, well, German is the language of scientists. You need to learn that. 

Jyoti Asundi (38:19)
Yes, then he picked up English. But don't forget Paris. 

Aarati Asundi (38:22)
Yes, where he was doing a bit of French.

Jyoti Asundi (38:25)
wow, yeah. No, that is one dexterity with various languages is one aspect, but then also that ability to modulate message to his target audience, that also played a big role.

Aarati Asundi (38:37)
Yeah. So there's this underlying current throughout the story of like, how are you communicating this problem? How are you talking to people?

Jyoti Asundi (38:44)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (38:45)
So Mario and Sherwood published this finding in 1974, and by 1978, the US had banned non-essential CFCs in aerosols.

Jyoti Asundi (38:56)
Oh!'78 that is pretty quick.

Aarati Asundi (38:59)
so they moved pretty quickly, but just for a minute because once that happened in 1978, things stalled a bit because there was no obvious urgency for fixing this problem. And I think that's a problem that like climate activists face today is that you can't just look up in the sky and be like, there's a problem. I changed this one thing. It got fixed and I can see it. You know, you can't, you can't tell is the ozone layer healing? No idea. So,

Jyoti Asundi (39:26)
That's right.

Aarati Asundi (39:27)
So Mario hoped that by doing more research and continuing to gather data on this problem, hopefully he would be able to convince people to keep at it. Make stronger restrictions, go worldwide with this. Unfortunately, as a professor at UC Irvine, he didn't have much time to do his own research because he was spending so much time teaching and attending meetings.

Jyoti Asundi (39:48)
Yeah. Correct.

Aarati Asundi (39:50)
So in 1982, he decided to leave academia and move his family to Pasadena, California, where Mario joined the Molecular Physics and Chemistry Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL.

Jyoti Asundi (40:03)
Okay, JPL, yes, yes.

Aarati Asundi (40:06)
So serendipitously around this time, There was a British geophysicist named Joe Farman who worked for the British Antarctic Survey. He and his team were measuring the ozone layer in Antarctica and they found that there was practically no ozone over Antarctica at all. There's a literal hole in the ozone layer.

Jyoti Asundi (40:28)
Oh wow, that's scary stuff.

Aarati Asundi (40:33)
Yeah. So it took them several years to be sure of their findings because it's such a finding. They were like, is this real? And then they thought, well, OK, it is real. Maybe it's just a natural occurrence. Like maybe there just naturally is no ozone over the Antarctic. 

Jyoti Asundi (40:53)
Oh my goodness.

Aarati Asundi (40:53)
So they weren't really connecting it immediately to CFCs. 

Jyoti Asundi (40:55)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (40:56)
⁓ But eventually they teamed up with some atmospheric chemists named Jim Anderson and Susan Solomon, who went on expeditions to measure the amount of chlorine, chlorine oxide, and ozone levels over the Antarctic. And they confirmed that this hole was caused by CFCs.

Jyoti Asundi (41:16)
Wow, what an important link. Those experiments would have been really hard to design because like you said, how do you, you can just say that, that's a natural phenomenon. That's nothing to do with anything. To actually prove that there was supposed to be ozone here, but there isn't, and the cause is CFC, that is a very difficult experiment to prove all those little links.

Aarati Asundi (41:44)
And not just that, like it would be hard enough to do that in a lab or something, but they're in the freaking Antarctic. They're like... these expeditions are not for the fainthearted. They're not just some cushy thing. 

Jyoti Asundi (41:56)
Absolutely. Storms. Yes. Yes.

Aarati Asundi (42:56)
They're going in these really treacherous conditions to study this. So once they had this information, they sent the research to Sherry and Mario. And they got funding from NASA to keep studying this. 

Jyoti Asundi (42:12)
Oh that's nice!

Aarati Asundi (42:13)
I think JPL had to NASA. Obviously, they're the Jet Propulsion Lab. So Mario was able to convince them, like, hey, we need to go study this.

Jyoti Asundi (42:23)
Yeah.

Aarati Asundi (42:24)
Soon it became clear that international action was needed on CFCs. It was decided that experts from various countries working on the ozone hole needed to meet regularly and write a report summarizing the latest findings. And they could use that to communicate to the public and to legislators around the world.

Jyoti Asundi (42:44)
They are doing everything they can to ring the alarm bells.

Aarati Asundi (42:48)
Yes, And this was actually kind of one of the predecessors of the International Panel on Climate Change, because it was being driven by the United Nations Environmental Program, as well as scientific organizations like the World Meteorological Organization. So, you know, it's very much this worldwide group effort needs to happen.

Jyoti Asundi (43:09)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (43:11)
Mario was not super heavily involved in this, but he did attend some meetings and contributed to the scientific reports.  I think this consortium was more bent on changing policy and negotiating with legislators, and he was more interested in the science, like do the science. And so he'll....

Jyoti Asundi (43:25)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's two different, it's two different things. You know, he is telling you, here is an action that is causing the consequence and this consortium is about mitigating consequences.

Aarati Asundi (43:40)
Yeah. So he contributes to the reports. They take the report and go talk to the people that need to create some sort of legislation to make this stop.

Jyoti Asundi (43:48)
Yeah.

Aarati Asundi (43:49)
So because of all of these efforts, in 1987, the Montreal Protocol was signed, which was an international treaty to reduce CFC use by 50% by 1999. So a step in the right direction,

Jyoti Asundi (44:04)
But it's a giant step though.

Aarati Asundi (44:06)
And by the way, Mexico was the first country to ratify the agreement, in part thanks to Mario's strong ties to the Mexican government. But data kept coming in, the consequences of not taking action became clear. Soon, it almost became like a competition between countries to see who could get rid of CFCs faster.

Jyoti Asundi (44:28)
Oh what a wonderful concept.

Aarati Asundi (44:30)
Right? Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (44:32)
Oh my God.  Where is that thought process in today's life?

Aarati Asundi (44:36)
Yeah, they're like, there's this problem, who can solve it faster? 

Jyoti Asundi (44:40)
Who can solve it faster?

Aarati Asundi (44:41)
Whereas today we're like, is there a problem? I don't believe there's a problem. It's like...

Jyoti Asundi (44:45)
Yeah, let me be the first to race down the drain hole. That's what we are doing today. But here, they are actually competing with each other to say that a major problem has been identified and we want to be first in line. We want be the people are proactive in solving it as quickly as we can.

Aarati Asundi (45:05)
Hurrah for us. 

Jyoti Asundi (45:05)
Fantastic. That's the kind of goals to aim for as a country. Yes, lovely.

Aarati Asundi (45:09)
Yeah, I think so. I don't know where this sentiment has gone. I have no idea how it's got flipped around.

Jyoti Asundi (45:13)
Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand where this has gone.

Aarati Asundi (45:16)
Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (45:17)
You know, I came to America in 1986 as a first generation immigrant. And 1987 is when this Montreal Protocol got approved and signed and everybody got... ratified it together. But the spearhead for that, was a Republican President, Ronald Reagan.

Aarati Asundi (45:37)
I know, shock and awe, right? Shock and awe.

Jyoti Asundi (45:39)
Right? And he faced a lot of skepticism and he faced a lot of backlash against him. But he pushed on. He went and talked to people. Of course, he had charisma and he used it for the right purpose. And he went and convinced the people who were unwilling to sign on, talked to other countries to bring them on board. It is unimaginable to me that such a wonderful environment existed where the scientists come out and say, here is a huge problem, guys. 
You can say, you know, the CFC is destroying the ozone layer. So what? like, well, that is going to increase UV radiation to the Earth, and that is going to cause problems people getting cancer, people getting skin diseases, the temperature is going up, and like I alluded to before, the ecosystem of the ocean would have been destroyed. So these politicians get right on board. They don't sit there dissing the scientists for giving them bad news. They say, "Oh. There is a serious problem. Our extremely revered and respected scientists have come up with these findings. And they absolutely must be addressed as fast as we can. What can we as politicians do? And they're all working in synchrony and harmony with each other. What a wonderful time.

Aarati Asundi (47:07)
Yeah, and there was glory associated with passing the bill that solved this problem. The public concern was also there. People were like, what are you doing about CFCs? I heard about this on the news. And if the politician was like, I don't believe they exist, the public is like, are you kidding me? It's on the news.

Jyoti Asundi (47:25)
Yeah, correct.

Aarati Asundi (47:27)
So the public was also holding them accountable.

Jyoti Asundi (47:27)
No, but then the public gets divided because there is a group who will believe the scientists and there's a group who will believe the politician.

Aarati Asundi (47:35)
And that's what's happening now. And I was listening to an interview by Mario Molina, he was actually comparing and contrasting what happened to CFCs versus what happened in climate change or what's happening today in climate change. And he was saying there are a couple of reasons that the problem with CFCs got solved more quickly or had more support behind it.
And first, like we were saying, there was just never time for this problem of CFCs to become politically polarized. And it also just didn't fit into anyone's agenda. And so because of that, there were no interest groups campaigns that were pushing the opposite narrative.

Jyoti Asundi (48:18)
Which is strange because if you think about it, it was a huge industry that was being disrupted.

Aarati Asundi (48:23)
Yes. So that's the other thing that he talks about is that these industries that made refrigerants and sprays, a lot of these companies that they were talking to, like DuPont and Monsanto, they were funding internal scientific research themselves within their own company. And so they were very accepting of science in general.

Jyoti Asundi (48:44)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (48:44)
And so, of course, then these internal scientists at these companies did their own research to verify what Mario and Sherry are saying, and they came up with the same thing that this is accurate.

Jyoti Asundi (48:54)
Yeah, same answer. Yeah. And there was no suppression of the data, which is, which is amazing.

Aarati Asundi (49:02)
Yes. And then because they had their own research departments, they were able to research and come up with replacements for CFCs in their own products fairly quickly.

Jyoti Asundi (49:11)
Yes, they were able to pivot. Yes.

Aarati Asundi (49:15)
And as we were mentioning, unlike today, international cooperation became a huge part in solving this problem. And in fact, financial aid was offered wherever countries faced difficulties phasing out their CFCs. 

Jyoti Asundi (49:31)
Can you imagine this scenario where all nations of the world are united against the common enemy, the CFC? 

Aarati Asundi (49:38)
I know.

Jyoti Asundi (49:39)
Today we are so busy pointing our fingers at each other, pointing our guns at each other.

Aarati Asundi (49:44)
And now it's like we're trying to make the argument that these developed countries, these industrialized countries have a responsibility to help under developed countries solve climate change or stop relying on carbon emitting energy, all these developed countries are like, we don't have that responsibility. Why should we help? And it's like, why should you help? It's the world. We need to help each other.

Jyoti Asundi (50:08)
There's only one world and we need to protect it.

Aarati Asundi (50:11)
Yeah. So the early 2000s, the Montreal Protocol was strengthened, setting a timeline to completely phase out CFCs by 2010. 

Jyoti Asundi (50:22)
Nice.

Aarati Asundi (50:22)
And thanks to this, scientists have seen that the ozone layer is indeed healing. 

Jyoti Asundi (50:27)
⁓ that's such good news.

Aarati Asundi (50:29)
It's expected to get back to pre-1980 levels by 2040. A full recovery is expected by sometime in the 2060s. 

Jyoti Asundi (50:39)
Okay, so let's say another 35 to 40 years, okay.

Aarati Asundi (50:43)
Yes.

Jyoti Asundi (50:43)
But think about that, I don't long the CFCs were used?

Aarati Asundi (50:47)
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Let me see when... OK so CFCs were first used, first started being used in the 1930s.

Jyoti Asundi (51:00)
so CFCs are used first in 1930s and then 40 years into their use, people say, hey, they're a real problem. This is a real problem. We are losing our ozone layer. We are losing that beautiful protective layer that the earth is surrounded. Everybody gets on board. What a shocker. Scientists say it, people believe it, politicians use their clout to bring everybody on board to say, we need to solve this problem. Businessmen who have a stake in using CFCs get on board as well. And so then they finally, they start implementing solutions and the entire healing will occur a hundred years almost after we first identify the problem. So 40 years of use, you need another hundred years to fix it. 

Aarati Asundi (51:57)
Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (51:58)
So this is why we are trying to catch these problems early and say the earlier we can catch the problem, the faster we can fix the problems that are being created in the climate.

Aarati Asundi (52:09)
Yeah, and I want to just be clear that it's not like he didn't face any naysayers. There were some people who were like, you're blowing this out of proportion, or you're just trying to get your 15 minutes of fame by stirring up this problem. But they were able to very effectively communicate and get more people on their side.
In 1989, Mario decided he was satisfied with the amount of research he had been able to do at JPL and he would again in an academic setting. And he thought that also as a professor, he would have a team of students and postdocs and stuff that he could rely on to help him make larger contributions to science rather than just singly working on his own research projects.

Jyoti Asundi (52:57)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (52:58)
So he joined MIT to continue working on atmospheric chemistry. He also at MIT got involved in a program where they gave masters and PhD students in science training on how to use their knowledge to work practically on society's problems. So students could get familiar with working with public health officials, policymakers, economists, and other scientists from different fields.

Jyoti Asundi (53:26)
What a fantastic... that is translation of knowledge into practical applications.

Aarati Asundi (53:32)
Yeah. Just kind of don't stay in your own little scientific bubble. Get out there and work with people who can enact change.

Jyoti Asundi (53:38)
Let me figure out what does it mean for the world and make it happen.

Aarati Asundi (53:43)
And so Mario and his wife, Luisa, who by now has become one of his closest collaborators on all of these projects, because she was also in his PhD lab, remember, they got together with MIT, Harvard School of Public Health, and other international institutions to start the Integrated Program on Urban, Regional, and Global Air Pollution with Luisa as the director of the program particularly received a lot of support from the Mexican government with many students becoming environmental leaders in Mexico who went through this.

Jyoti Asundi (54:20)
Wow! He maintained his very strong ties to his home country.

Aarati Asundi (54:24)
Yeah. Remembered his roots.

Jyoti Asundi (54:26)
Lovely.

Aarati Asundi (54:27)
So in 1995, Mario started hearing rumors that he was on some sort of shortlist for the Nobel Prize. But he didn't take it too seriously because the Nobel Prize had never been awarded for environmental work. Most Nobel Prizes are awarded for figuring out something really fundamental in science, like some sort of universal rule as to how molecules behave or like... 

Jyoti Asundi (54:54)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (54:55)
...some fundamental component of life. Something like that. And he was like, I'm not going to win just for helping figure out CFCs deplete the ozone. Like... 

Jyoti Asundi (55:04)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (55:04)
It's not big enough. But sure enough, shortly after, he got a call from Sweden, from the Nobel committee, telling him that he was going to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Mario still didn't believe it, though. He thought it was a prank. 

Jyoti Asundi (55:18)
So cute! ⁓

Aarati Asundi (55:21)
Yeah, it's like no way. It was only when a good friend of his, Dr. Henning Rodhe, who is an atmospheric scientist, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences got on that phone call and told him, like, no, this is for real. 

Jyoti Asundi (55:38)
This is real, we are not pranking you.

Aarati Asundi (55:38)
This is coming from Sweden. Yeah. I'm sitting here with the Nobel committee right now. It's for real that Mario finally got the message.

Jyoti Asundi (55:50)
I would love to have been a part of that conversation. It's like, who is this really? Tell me. Tell me who are you really? 

Aarati Asundi (55:57)
Yeah. Ha ha, funny joke, yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (55:59)
Very good. I know I'm not falling for this one.

Aarati Asundi (55:57)
So Mario shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry three ways with Dr. Sherwood Rowland and Paul Cruzten the guy who did the modeling, quote, for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone, end quote.

Jyoti Asundi (56:23)
But what happened to Joe Farman? Didn't he get acknowledgement on that one?

Aarati Asundi (56:30)
No, Joe Farman and Susan Solomon did not. But I think this becomes the thing of where do we draw the line for the Nobel Prize? there's so many people. So Joe Farman discovered the hole in the ozone layer. Susan Solomon was the one who said maybe it's CFCs that are making that hole, that it's not a natural thing. And then there are so many people who are involved verifying these results, making... 

Jyoti Asundi (56:55)
Creating those links. 

Aarati Asundi (56:57)
Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (56:58)
Tying all these pieces together and saying, okay, the ozone layer is not there. It could be CFCs. Yes, it is CFCs. And here is the proof, all of that required. That was a behemoth effort on its own.

Aarati Asundi (57:11)
Yes. So when you're awarding the Nobel Prize, then you have to be like, okay, who is the original? The original, original people were Mario Molina, Sherwood Rowland, and Paul Crutzen.

Jyoti Asundi (57:22)
And the did ring the alarm bells first and try to wake people up and say, no, no, we cannot be going on like this.

Aarati Asundi (57:29)
Yes, they did. Mario was thrilled and honored to receive the prize, but he also understood that getting the Nobel Prize also meant accepting a huge responsibility because now he's been given this power. People look up to him even more. so, yes.

Jyoti Asundi (57:46)
Spiderman said that, you know that? Spiderman said, with great power comes great responsibility.

Aarati Asundi (57:52)
So he wanted to harness this power that's been given to him to do more than just pursue his own interests in the lab. So he used some of the money from the Nobel Prize to start a scholarship and some also to continue his work in Mexico. He also became more involved in politics. He joined the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, or PCAST, under President Bill Clinton, working very closely with Vice President Al Gore. 

Jyoti Asundi (58:23)
Yes, he was another major climate guy.

Aarati Asundi (58:29)
Yeah, he's the one who produced An Inconvenient Truth and a lot of other environmental advocacy that he did.

Jyoti Asundi (58:39)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (58:40)
However, when George W. Bush was elected, PCAST became much more heavily focused on industry rather than anything environmental. Mario was not invited to join PCAST during this administration, and he was an outspoken critic of Bush's environmental policies and was particularly upset when the administration withdrew the US from the Kyoto Protocol, which was a treaty for industrialized nations to reduce their carbon emissions.

Jyoti Asundi (59:10)
Yeah, so that's where it started to go the other direction. Okay.

Aarati Asundi (59:14)
Yeah, under Bush, mostly, you started to see that this issue is starting to become polarizing. 

Jyoti Asundi (59:20)
Polarizong. Yeah.

Aarati Asundi (59:21)
Yeah. During this time ⁓ of the Bush administration, though, Mario was also getting more and more involved with environmental projects in Mexico, especially through the students he's teaching in the integrated program at MIT. And he comes up with the idea for starting an organization with the mission of connecting, quote, "practical solutions between science and public policy on energy and environmental matters to promote sustainable development and rigorous economic growth. 

Jyoti Asundi (59:52)
Basically again bringing multiple pieces together. He recognizes science alone on its own has its place. Politics is on its place, but then you need a marriage between science and politics to actually make big changes happen. 

Aarati Asundi (1:00:10)
Yeah, and I think he also kind of realized like, I'm not really making or I'm not going to be able to make any headway here in America under the Bush administration. So let me put my efforts in Mexico where I can actually do something.

Jyoti Asundi (1:00:24)
Yeah, that's sad.

Aarati Asundi (1:00:25)
There is cooperation to make it happen. Yeah.

Jyoti Asundi (1:00:27)
So right there we lose some, Americans lose some clout, right there. Big scientific minds take their game elsewhere and that itself is a big loss for America then.

Aarati Asundi (1:00:38)
Yes. So he wants to set up this organization. But in order to set it up, there was no way that he could continue to be a full-time professor. Just there's not enough hours in the day. 

Jyoti Asundi (1:00:52)
Yes, correct.

Aarati Asundi (1:00:53)
And although MIT didn't want to let him go, they also weren't willing to let him work part-time in Mexico either.
So Mario turned to the University of California, San Diego, who were willing to take him part time. So they did...

Jyoti Asundi (1:01:07)
Makes sense.

Aarati Asundi (1:01:08)
Yeah, they compromised with him.

Jyoti Asundi (1:01:09)
They're like what 15 miles away from Mexico, right? The border... 

Aarati Asundi (1:01:12)
Yeah, something like that.

Jyoti Asundi (1:01:12)
...is 15 miles away from it's a bike ride away.

Aarati Asundi (1:01:16)
Yeah, and they were like, okay, good deal for us. I mean, ideally we would love you to come full time, but we'll take a Nobel Prize laureate part-time. Great. 

Jyoti Asundi (1:01:24)
Absolutely! Makes very good sense.

Aarati Asundi (1:01:27)
So in 2004, Mario and his family moved to San Diego. And in 2005, Mario founds the Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico and a second center in La Jolla, California, where Luisa still currently serves as president and lead scientist.

Jyoti Asundi (1:01:46)
Fantastic.

Aarati Asundi (1:01:48)
One note I have to include here is that in 2005, Mario and Luisa got a divorce. And I have no idea why. They were married for over 30 years and had worked side by side scientifically throughout that time. So I don't really know what happened. Couldn't find any information.

Jyoti Asundi (1:02:08)
Sometimes human beings are strange. Strange emotions.

Aarati Asundi (1:02:13)
Yeah. But in February 2006, Mario got remarried to Guadalupe Alvarez. And I actually couldn't find anything about her, so... Don't know who she was, what she did, no idea. As time went on and climate change became more and more of an issue, Mario threw his efforts into helping find solutions to reduce carbon emissions and find better, more efficient energy technologies. In 2009, Mario was invited back to join PCAST under President Barack Obama. But by now, the environment was a hot button topic and had become very politically divisive.

Jyoti Asundi (1:02:53)
Yes, it's a very polarizing point at this point.

Aarati Asundi (1:02:56)
And also Obama is trying to work with a Republican Congress. And so again, there's not much that they can do in terms of helping. 

Jyoti Asundi (1:03:07)
Gridlock, absolute gridlock.

Aarati Asundi (1:03:09)
Yeah, and so Obama puts more of his focus and therefore PCAST's focus, on health rather than the environment because that was something that just had more of a chance of making some progress. However, in 2013, Obama recognized Mario's work by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions as a "visionary chemist and environmental scientist."

Jyoti Asundi (1:03:34)
Oh wonderful. Well deserved.

Aarati Asundi (1:03:37)
Mario continued to be a strong advocate for climate policy for the rest of his life. His work contributed to the Paris Agreement in 2015, which required all countries to work together to limit global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius and preferably under 1.5 degrees Celsius under pre-industrial levels.
He also worked with the International Panel on Climate Change and contributed to their reports. He kept working to educate the public, driving home the message that like 99 % of climate scientists agree that climate change is manmade. And if we open ourselves up to creative solutions, we can not only find ways to use energy more efficiently, but also create much more economical technologies. So we could save money, you know?

Jyoti Asundi (1:04:28)
Sustainability absolutely.

Aarati Asundi (1:04:30)
And he continued to spend much of his time in Mexico City working on reducing air pollution and developing more efficient ways to use the Earth's natural resources. In fact, the day before he died, he signed a petition advocating for wider bike lanes in Mexico City.

Jyoti Asundi (1:04:47)
So nice. He's thinking about it from every angle. What a champion of the climate.

Aarati Asundi (1:04:52)
For real, even though he didn't start out that way. On October 7th, 2020, Mario died suddenly in his home from a heart attack at the age of 77.

Jyoti Asundi (1:05:03)
Oh okay.

Aarati Asundi (1:05:05)
Throughout his lifetime, he was given numerous awards and honorary degrees, which I cannot possibly list here. If you're curious, go look at his Wikipedia page. It's all there. But a couple of fun ones are that he had an asteroid named after him. And in 2023 on what would have been his 80th birthday, the Google Doodle honored him. 

Jyoti Asundi (1:05:28)
That is wonderful. Oh my goodness. What a beautiful story and such positive energy where people come together for the greater good, whether they are scientists or politicians, it doesn't matter. Various countries, various industries, industry leaders, scientific leaders, they all come together and they say, let's protect the earth. Such beautiful times. I wish we could find a way to those good sentiments again.

Aarati Asundi (1:05:58)
Well, I think what struck me also he did some interviews like with the Nobel Prize committee and things like that. And I was listening to them for researching this podcast. And what struck me about him is that he was so unerringly positive and optimistic that, you know, we could do this because he was like, we've done this once before. We figured out CFCs were a problem and we all came together and stopped using them, found alternates and solved the problem. And lo and behold, the ozone layer is healing. 

Jyoti Asundi (1:06:33)
Yes.

Aarati Asundi (1:06:33)
And so we did it. We can do it again. That was like an underlying message whenever he was talking about climate change now, he's constantly optimistic about, there's so many creative solutions out there. There's so much that we can do. We can absolutely work together. We are getting some support from the Republicans. We are changing minds. We can just keep pushing forward. We can do it. We can do it. And I feel like whereas I myself and I think many others would have just given up and been like, this is too hard. I can't, like no one's listening to me. I can't do this. He was just so positive that like, we can make this happen, guys. Let's keep educating the public. Let's pushing the message, keep finding ways to communicate. you know, even until his last days, he was fighting for that. So very inspirational.

Jyoti Asundi (1:07:25)
It's funny to me that... funny/sad actually that a person of his stature observed the change in political support for climate change within a very few short years. So Reagan is fully in support getting rid of the CFCs, protecting the earth. He's going out there, getting everybody on board. That is 80s. And Bush was in 2000. 

Aarati Asundi (1:07:53)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jyoti Asundi (1:07:54)
And so in about less than 20 years... 

Aarati Asundi (1:07:58)
Yes.

Jyoti Asundi (1:07:54)
...the climate has changed.

Aarati Asundi (1:07:59)
Yes. 

Jyoti Asundi (1:08:00)
The political climate has changed, I mean. I mean, the real climate has of course...

Aarati Asundi (1:08:02)
Yes. Be specific.

Jyoti Asundi (1:08:05)
So why did that... Why did it happen so quickly? ⁓ It almost feels like somebody weaponized it.

Aarati Asundi (1:08:14)
Yeah, I think so.

Jyoti Asundi (1:08:16)
They wanted to make it a platform for political clout. And without looking at the far reaching consequences of making something as important as the survival of humanity. They're rolling the dice on that, actually.

Aarati Asundi (1:08:32)
So first of all, think you just have to watch where the money is coming from. That is always a big thing. And so with CFCs, there was no like, big refrigerants or big hairspray. There are all these companies making these different products. All of them had their small agendas, but they were able to all pivot pretty easily. But here we have big oil, we have big energy, you know, And so I've actually seen articles saying that, big oil knew what carbon emissions could do to our environment for a long time. They've known this. They paid scientists to figure it out. And they then suppressed the data that the scientists that they themselves paid  to figure out.
And it's very similar to what the big tobacco industry did with cigarettes for a long time. They were like, know, smoking's fine for you. It doesn't affect your health. Even though they knew otherwise, they knew that it was detrimental and could cause cancer and have all these, you know, ill health effects. And so then big tobacco got sued and, like, we're you lied deliberately to the public in order to sell your product.
And so I think a lot of environmental lawyers are now going after big oil kind of the same way, saying, you know, you know what carbon emissions are doing. And yet in order to protect your profits, you are rather than trying to put money into fixing the problem, you're putting money into these public media campaigns and paying off politicians and lobbyists to tell everyone that there is no problem so that you don't have to change anything.

Jyoti Asundi (1:10:17)
And the stakes are much higher than their profit margins. It's the survival of humanity at stake. So please, please, you know, look at the bigger picture. And look at what's happening in the world around you.

Aarati Asundi (1:10:28)
Yeah, I really hope we can come back get everybody on board again. I really hope that Mario Molina's optimism pays off and that he's right and that we can continue to get people on our side and continue figure out creative solutions to this problem.

Jyoti Asundi (1:10:48)
Fantastic. This was a fantastic story, Aarati. Thank you so much for sharing with me. I loved it.

Aarati Asundi (1:10:54)
Thanks for listening. If you have a suggestion for a story we should cover or thoughts you want to share about an episode, reach out to us at smartteapodcast.com. You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky @smartteapodcast and listen to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave us a rating or comment. It helps us grow. New episodes are released every other Wednesday. See you next time.