The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people, so why not invite some of these folks out to brunch, where we’ll have an informal conversation about their work, and then we’ll turn those brunches into a podcast?

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

For this special bonus episode, host Ted Fox changed things up a bit. Rather than interviewing someone on the Notre Dame campus, he made the two-hour drive to Purdue University, where he talked with Luciano Castillo, Purdue’s Kenninger Professor of Renewable Energy and Power Systems.

Castillo is leading a consortium of some 30 scientists, researchers, and engineers—including two from Notre Dame—that has proposed an extensive energy- and water-producing industrial corridor along the United States-Mexico border. That proposal was the subject of his and Fox’s conversation over breakfast sandwiches in the cafe at the Purdue Research Park.