Before Fervo Energy was a company, there was a flood in Houston, a Stanford class project, and a young engineer convinced fracking technology could crack geothermal energy wide open. Ground Truth traces Fervo’s decade-long climb from that grad-school hunch to a multibillion-dollar IPO, told not as corporate history, but as a human one. Host Olivia Johnson, new to the company herself, talks to the founders and early team about the years nobody believed them, the breakthrough in the Nevada desert, and what is expected to be the largest next-generation geothermal project on Earth rising in Utah.
In the Utah desert, Fervo's Cape Station is among the largest next-generation geothermal projects on earth. Hear from the town and the crew that built it, why Fervo thinks of geothermal like a Lego set, and what it means to be part of something that outlasts you.
29 Oct 2026
Under Contract
Building Fervo has been a roller coaster, with big highs, daunting lows, and a team doing things that should be impossible. Dawn Owens and David Ulrey share the ins and outs of the deals behind it all.
22 Oct 2026
The Proof is in the Pilot
Dawn Owens wasn’t looking for a job, and Sarah Jewett had walked away from a sandwich with Tim Latimer without a second thought. Both ended up joining Fervo Energy, where the team took risks and bet on itself to get Project Red, its first commercial pilot, up and running in the Nevada desert.
15 Oct 2026
A Class Project
Tim Latimer, a drilling engineer, came to Stanford to start a geothermal company using techniques from the shale boom. As the lone MBA in engineering classes, he won over a skeptical professor, who pointed him to Jack Norbeck, a PhD with expertise in the field and the co-founder Tim had been looking for. Just as the two got started, a stranger’s conference paper proposed bringing shale techniques to geothermal. “We’ve been scooped,” Tim told Jack. But the stranger, Christian Gradl, didn’t see a rival. He saw a team.
8 Oct 2026
Twenty Feet of Water
Tim Latimer grew up next to the last coal plant built in America. As a drilling engineer, a string of heat-damaged motors led him to geothermal energy and the realization that oil and gas technology could unlock it. Then a 2015 flood brought climate change into his own life. Episode one follows Tim from Riesel, Texas, to a Stanford application essay with a plan: no company, no investors, just an idea.
5 Oct 2026
Ground Truth: A Fervo Energy Podcast
Fervo Energy delivers 24/7 carbon-free geothermal energy. But before there was a company, there was a flood, a broken motor, and a class project. Join Olivia, a Fervo newbie, as she asks the people who built it how it all happened.
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Apple Podcasts (US)
4.8 / 5
18 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
11 ratings
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