This is Adam, and I can hear you asking, “What the hell is this, and why aren’t you out there breaking video games for a living or doing something less up its own ass?” Yes, I’ve thought about that. But no matter how many times I tried to envision that future, I felt like maybe there’s something else I can do.
This started a while ago. Aaron (who will inevitably chime in at some point) and I were stumbling through a half-formed plan. We’d made a book together, and there wasn’t really a plan beyond that. I was still getting my life together, pre-ROOK launch, and I just assumed I’d be making podcasts until I was old(er) and gray.
So we tried that, kind of—but like most half-baked ideas, the luster eventually fizzled. Did the world really need another podcast with no real purpose or direction?
Then one day, Aaron called me out of the blue. My heart sank because I assumed the day I dreaded had finally come. He was going to tell me, “It’s not working out,” or, “This isn’t what I want to do right now”—you know, typical breakup stuff.
Instead, he proposed something different and radical. But first, some context:
About a month prior, we spoke to an environmental startup focused on stopping the spread of wildfires with robotics. They wanted some video ideas (which we pitched), but then let us know they were still three to four years away from full-scale deployment. We said our goodbyes for the time being—nothing new, that sort of thing is normal.
Fast-forward to Aaron’s call. He had this idea where we’d work with people like those firefighting robot guys, but like, only that. No random videos—just meaningful work for people trying to do real good in the world.
Now it’s 2025, and we haven’t put out a public video in a really long time, which is a shame because we’ve been making a lot of stuff. It’s just stuff we can’t show due to NDAs and the stage of these environmental startups. So, again, why the hell am I not just playing video games that help people forget that the world is a confusing and scary place?
I have a much longer write-up on that, and maybe Aaron should say something before this preamble wears out its welcome. All I can say is that making jokey content all the time requires a certain amount of willful ignorance about the important things happening out there. At the same time, I don’t have the expertise or credentials to contribute anything as yet another talking head. We want to help people who struggle to communicate their vision—smart, caring folks who, without some help, might never get the attention they deserve.
But I’ll stop there.
Aaron here:
If you’re like me, you skipped down to this part without really reading the stuff above it. That’s okay. The gist is, I had a false start—and Adam and I had a false start together—trying to meld our old way of producing entertainment with our want to do something meaningful. So a couple of years ago we scrapped the old ways and decided to focus all our attention on helping climate-tech and planetary health startups get funding (turns out they needed a lot of help).
It was the right move. Now that the worldly side of Null+Void has momentum, we can work on and release some of the other stories we’ve been cooking. Some of them are written, others are videos, and a select few are wood-fired clay sculptures. Collectively we call it Stuff I like.
We’ll also start showing some of the environmental creative we’ve conjured and talk about it. Will you like it? Who knows. But it will at least give a different view on some interesting ideas that are shaping our world.
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