Summary
Kristen Blankenship discusses whether coatings manufacturers can truly impact product sustainability – minus the greenwashing. Then, we learn whether she sees molecules The Queen's Gambit style.
Timestamps
Click to follow along with the transcript:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 02:16 – The purpose of protective coatings
- 04:27 – When sustainability impacts coatings
- 08:00 – Addressing pollution as a chemical company
- 18:47 – Water-based coating claims
- 32:56 – Where do we go from here?
- 36:47 – Kristen's four questions
Transcript
Introduction
Toby Wall: Is paint sustainable? Can coatings manufacturers make their products sustainably? Why should anyone take us seriously on this subject? On this episode of The Red Bucket Podcast, no greenwashing allowed. Sometimes when two separate, decent ideas collide, you end up with one really great one. And that's what's happening in this episode, because one idea was that I wanted to have today's guest on the podcast, and it wouldn't have mattered what the subject was. And the other idea was to accept the challenge of having a smart discussion on sustainability, and specifically how we can achieve greater sustainability through selecting inorganic coatings for corrosion protection.
So, to help us understand this is Kristen Blankenship, who I am pleased to have introduce herself now.
Kristen Blankenship: Well, thank you very much, Toby. This is my first time on this podcast and I'm excited to be here. I have been in this industry for over two decades going on three, which is mind boggling. I have been, most of my career, uh, behind a bench, a laboratory bench, formulating many different types of paint and coatings.
Recently I joined Carboline. And I am our Global Product Line Manager for atmospheric coatings. So, these are all the paints and coatings that see the sun, the wind, the rain, um, and keep our structures intact. I have a Bachelor's of Science in chemistry. So, I know a little bit about molecules. Not a lot, but a little bit. And I have spent my career in all different types of paint and coatings, uh, anywhere from UV-curable coatings, powder coatings, water-based coatings, solvent-based thermoset coatings, uh, for markets ranging from cosmetic packaging to automotive OEM, to architectural, uh, curtain wall and coil coatings.
And of course, where I am today, which is really heavy-duty industrial coatings for steel and concrete.
Toby: Before recording, we plotted out how we wanted this conversation to unfold, and where we landed might sound silly when I say it out loud, but it was to begin from the beginning. So, Kristen, what is a protective coating supposed to do?
The purpose of protective coatings
Kristen: Excellent question. And it's, uh, one of the things that I have peppered into some of my presentations, depending on the audience, when they wake up in the morning and find out that they're going to sit through an hour-long discussion on paint, doesn’t really get them that excited. So, I have to try. And Sometimes I start with just talking about the earliest types of paint, which actually our ancestors that lived in caves, used. So, if you think of old cave art, that was usually a red ochre type pigment.
And in the very early stages, uh, they probably put that in a little bit of water and what they found is that, wow, my drawing or my message or whatever, wasn't there very long because water evaporates and what you're left with is a powder that just falls off the wall or blows away. So, they got a little smarter.
And they started putting it in animal fat. Animal fat is composed primarily of organic material, carbon-based material, and it doesn't evaporate away. So, all those particles of pigment are stuck in that sticky animal fat, and they stay around for quite a long time, as we know. As we walk into these old caves, and we see these drawings that are ancient.
So, humans have used paint and coatings to express themselves for as long as we've probably existed, which I think is kind of cool. When you get into the world of protective coatings, it's a whole different ball game. You are actually trying to use those coatings functionally. And primarily it's to maintain what we would call the substrate or the material of construction from degradation.
Toby: I want to bring sustainability into the conversation now. I realize it can be frustrating for folks who care about this subject because so often they're hearing people make sustainability noises without any substance. I'm one of those people. I care about it. I know you are too. So, we, we don't want to just add to that noise.
When sustainability impacts coatings
With that said, Kristen, where does sustainability enter the picture in relation to protective coatings?
Kristen: Protective coatings protect substrates from degradation. And we have to think about what those substrates are. And they could be, um, something as small as a component of an automobile. They could be the shell of an aircraft. If the, if the aluminum alloy that's used to construct the aircraft starts corroding, and of course it's corroding underneath the paint, it's hard to see. And, uh, bolt or a rivet comes loose. Well, paint and coatings actually keep paint, uh, planes from falling out of the sky. So, it's a pretty big deal. When it comes to sustainability, though, the way I look at this is a 60-story tower in Manhattan. That building, we want to stay up for a very long time.
And the reason, primarily, the carbon footprint of constructing that building is significant. I'll just say that. That way, the architectural community, which has really taken the lead when it comes to looking at the sustainability of the materials that they use, had a pretty much an awakening, probably 10 years ago. They spent a lot of time trying to reduce the operational carbon of the structures they designed. So that was all the stuff when you look at Energy Star and you look at, um, optimizing your temperature and your climate control in your building so that you're not cooling it down is more than you really need to. And, and letting it stay too warm.
It's an optimal climate condition. So, you're not using more energy than you need. So, all those things are the building's construct. You turn the lights on, that's the operational carbon. And they thought, wow, we did a great job. We've got energy efficient windows, so they don't leak, right? What they discovered is, almost half, if not more, of the carbon that's released to the atmosphere in the form of CO2 actually is created in just constructing that building. So, wow, we've got to go back, and we've got to look at what they call embodied carbon. So, if you think of a building, half of the carbon that's emitted is in the construction of that building.
So, if the building has to be reconstructed, that’s a significant impact. If you can apply a protective coating, to the shell of that building so that it lasts twice as long. That's a significant impact of savings from CO2 emitted to the environment compared to the small amount of CO2 that'll be emitted in the production and application of the paint.
So, one of the things we talked earlier about how I’ve been in this business a long time. And sometimes when you think about being in the paint industry, that's certainly not sexy. When you think about why paints are still around and why they are still used, it's very simple. It's a very, very thin film of a material…
that can protect enormous structures. So, it’s very little material that can have an enormous impact on protecting a very large structure from degradation. So, it's very efficient in its ability to protect. And that's why they're still around and that's why we still keep making them.
Addressing pollution as a chemical company
Toby: It makes sense at this point to let everyone know that we're not going to gloss over the fact that there is a negative environmental impact associated with collecting and processing the raw materials that we use to make coatings, or the impact associated with our manufacturing processes. And of course, downstream from there, there's all the transportation of our products and the application of our products, characteristics of our products that release compounds into the atmosphere.
So, look, we do things that pollute earth. Let's be straightforward about it.
Kristen: I do think that's what my advice has been is that instead of trying to turn Carboline into this granola crunchy company, we have to accept what we are. We're a chemical company.
And we use toxic materials all day, every day, but we use them to make assets withstand the elements, so they don't have to be replaced. And the carbon footprint of replacing a large structure is astronomical compared to the impact of just repainting it.
And I will tell you, there's been a magnificent shift from when I started in the late nineties in the paint lab versus today. In the late nineties, most paint companies were not proactively moving away from VOC.
They were reactive. So, the government would mandate. You know, one state couldn't use a certain solvent. Well, they would wait until the very last second and they would make a special paint for that state, and they would still make the solvent based materials for all the other states that is changing. And honestly, it's because there's a market for that.
Toby: So, a couple of remarks come to mind for me based on what you've just said. First, I think the more that anyone digs into the technical or materials aspect of sustainability, they'll realize that it's a game of tradeoffs. Rarely will anyone simply be able to crank the dial down from I am polluting to I am not polluting.
So, I think somebody, somebody would set themselves up for disappointment if they hold onto that expectation, right? We in the coatings industry might ask you, well, what do you want us to do? Do you want us to just never make a coating? Do you want us to stop coating assets? Go ahead and see what would happen. And the other point that I want to toss in, as we study internally the impacts of our products or their raw materials have on the environment, it's come as a pleasant surprise to me to see how many of those products that have been around a long time end up being quite sustainable. We wouldn't have described them that way two or three or four or even five decades ago. In some cases, some of these products have been around that long. We wouldn't have described them that way because we didn't have the vocabulary, and we didn't have the ways of measuring that like we do today.
Kristen: Consider really how a lot of our modern paint systems came to be, you really go back to World War II and all of the efforts in manufacturing weapons of war.
Um, and one of those is a lot of rubber for rubber tires and rubber tires use something called latex, so that's a carbon-based material that's immersed in water. And so, during the war, we were making a lot of tires for planes and all kinds of vehicles. And then thankfully the war ended and then, well, these manufacturing facilities, what do they do now?
And so honestly, a lot of modern resin technology actually got its start from those materials. So, in life, I think we all know that there's a lot of happenstance and right place, right time. It's not necessarily that we all sit around and have the time and luxury to come up with what is ideal and what is best.
We use what is available and we work with what we know.
So, as we got better at making these protective coatings more resilient, um, one of the ways we did that is we had them react with each other. So, part A, part B, you get a cross-link system.
And we also found that those resins that we were creating, they were very soluble in solvent. And these are organic solvents, not water. And those solvents allowed us to have very easy application with a very smooth finish. And if you think about where a lot of paint was used many years ago, well, cars, automobiles, big boom there and an application for paint.
And we want our cars to look really nice and no orange peel and all of that. So, a lot of the resin technology was centered around that. To your point, there are some old materials. And I always think of alkyds. As a paint formulator, alkyds are very old. But when you think about them from a sustainability piece, they’re made partially based on plant oils. So, they have this renewable feature built into them, even though they are a very old technology.
So, sometimes what's old is new. Um, And I would also say to that when you think of building materials, there's kind of been this, um, renaissance of using the natural material. And so, there are some architects that think, they have this, uh, romance with, I want to use the real wood through a sustainably farmed forest, and that might be okay with wood, but if you think about a stone, for example.
Stone's very heavy. It's very hard, um, to machine. It takes a lot of energy to do that. So, if you actually look at the embodied carbon of using real stone versus a facade that gives that effect, you might be surprised that the embodied carbon of the real stone may actually be higher. I don't know that to be true in all cases.
Um, but those are the questions that are being asked every day, all day in the building world, in the materials world. Another area where something that is quite old has actually seen a little bit more of a renewed interest is in the actual resins that are used to make protective coatings themselves. So, as I, I said earlier, um, a lot of organic polymers are traditionally what we think of when we think of paints.
You've heard of acrylics, you've heard of polyesters, I've mentioned alkyds. But back in the 60s, and actually prior to that, I would say, as early as the 30s, I even found a reference to it in the late 1800s out of the, England. Um, but really the thirties and beyond there’s a resin system based on silicate chemistry.
So not really carbon based, but, uh, more inorganic in nature. And it has been around for, as I said, the thirties, uh, really gained an increase of usage in the sixties and has been used for some time, uh, even up to today. But now, because again, there's a changing focus on the materials that we're using and how impactful they are, there is this idea that these inorganic silicates, if you have a structure that's offshore, say you have a windmill or you have an offshore drilling rig and you're trying to protect that steel. It's a very harsh environment, a lot of salts, a lot of wind. That's very abrasive and erosive to the coating.
And a lot of those structures are coated with a three-coat organic system. They'll have a zinc rich primer. They'll have an epoxy midcoat and usually a urethane or even a polysiloxane topcoat. But most of the time it's a urethane. And it's a very high-performance protective coating system. It lasts usually 20, 30, 40 years, but over the course of its life, it will see some erosion, which means that the photochemical degradation process will occur. It really starts with the carbon-carbon bonds. The UV light will attack them. And at a microscopic level, you start getting breakage of those bonds and that yields itself to micro cracks and pores.
And then it's a cascading effect where you actually loose particles of the paint film. And where do those particles go? They go into the ocean and they're polymers. So, one of the areas where we're looking at trying to avoid that is in offshore, and a silicate resin system that does not have carbon in the final film is one approach to that.
Essentially you could call it sand, uh, that's finding its way back to the ocean.
Water-based coating claims
Toby: Can you talk about water-based coatings? Because, as I understand it, if we're talking from a sustainability perspective, if a manufacturer wants to seem like they're sustainable, but not really work hard at being sustainable, then they might say, hey, look, look at these water-based coatings.
Kristen: Uh, so when you think about something as simple as water-based coatings, which is something that for probably the last 15 years, if you have any children, you know, you're always concerned.
Okay. I want to keep them safe. How do I paint the nursery? And you see these lovely commercials say zero-VOC paint, and they have the little, you know, the, the baby bed and the baby, and you think, okay, this is safe, right? You know, zero-VOC, sometimes there's an asterisk. Uh, sometimes there are things in there called plasticizers. You do have to be, you really do have to educate yourself. And the great thing is we have something called the internet now where even a lay person can reasonably get a decent answer if they're really curious about what something means.
Um, so again, back to the water-based coatings, that was going to be the end all be all, and now everything is safe and it's green. Well, water takes a long time to evaporate. Takes a lot of heat if you want to make it evaporate quickly, or it just takes a long time out in the field. And so, there is an energy component to water.
A lot of water-based coatings, uh, because of their nature and because you're putting oily things into them, they don't always protect as well. And so, anybody that stained their deck with a water-based stain, I think hopefully they've made those a little better, uh, what's really the point of using a water-based stain?
If you have to redo it within a year because it's falling off and, and what's falling off is organic material that is basically plastics. So again, these are all things that we're trying to learn. We're trying to understand. I was in college, and I took a class called industrial and environmental chemistry and I'll never forget.
It was, uh, populated, uh, half were biology majors and half were chemists. And in class, it seemed as though the biology majors always looked at us chemists as the evil mad scientists that were polluting the earth. The funny part, the ironic part is they were all drinking coffee out of their plastic mugs.
Neither side was evil, right? We're all, we were all doing what we knew to do when we were doing it. And we just have to be open that we don't know all the answers. We don't have all the answers. So again, water-based coatings, not as green as they may seem. And at the same time, when you think of an industrial three-coat protective system and you think, you know, you hear the word inorganic zinc-rich primer, well, that doesn't sound very green.
Um, but when you actually look at what's behind it, again, inorganic zinc-rich primers actually are based on silicate resins. And those are those resins that don't have those carbon bonds. We talked earlier about the erosion, and if the silicates do break down, they return basically as sand to the ocean.
But the other thing to keep in mind is that silicates, that bond, so that's a silicon oxygen bond, so there's your chemistry for the day, that bond is actually resilient to UV degradation. So, it actually will stay there longer. so sometimes things sound scary and they sound worse than they actually are.
And so, I think what we have to come to as a society, especially in the materials world, and the good news is I'm seeing this, I am seeing as more industry gets involved in the regulatory bodies and the decision-making process when it comes to sustainability. Um, now we're having more sober-minded conversations, less hysterical conversations, less pointing fingers at all the evil scientists in the room that are polluting the earth and appreciating that we're all trying to do what we need to do.
We used organic solvents for years because they actually save time and energy. They made us, you know, produce paint and, and apply it to the part and get it off the assembly line faster, and that's what everybody wanted. It wasn't because we all sat around at the table and thought, how am I going to, you know, pollute the earth and harm people?
Of course we didn't think that. Um, we learn that as we go, and we do our best to try to find new ways of doing things when we learn that something isn't as good as it should be. Um, and sometimes, it’s sitting right beneath their feet. And we didn't even realize it. And, and that's kind of what's been going on in the world of resin chemistry.
When we think about these silicate resins, um, most paint formulators, they know epoxies, they know acrylics, they know alkyds. But when it comes to silicate chemistry, it's kind of this little-known animal that hasn't really been studied much. Um, my prediction is that that will change as people realize that this is a viable option.
Um, you know, there are some tradeoffs. I think you mentioned that earlier. There's always tradeoffs. Silicate chemistry usually comes in a matte or low-sheen finish, and for those of us that really enjoy bright and shiny, well, you're not going to get that with these types of resins, at least not so far that we know of.
But again, those are things that we have to think about. I know in the bridge community, there's, you know, we've, we've kind of gotten used to these shiny bridges where we can have color, but when we think about the impact of, of repainting, what that entails, uh, usually that entails blasting old paint off, which means we have to have containment.
Because again, we don't want to pollute the river below the bridge. So, we know that that's a bad thing. We have to have containment. Well, we also have to shut down traffic lanes. So that means cars sitting idle, emitting carbon dioxide. So, the bridge community, definitely the DOTs, they know we want corrosion protection systems that last longer. We don't want to mobilize painting crews out there, you know, every five to 10 years to touch up and maintain these bridges. If that means that we need a different finish or a different aesthetic, you know what? It's worth the tradeoff.
Toby: You'll have to take my layman's opinion for what it's worth, but I share that mindset. Especially in the context of sustainability, where you've pointed out there are coating solutions out there that last longer, and that reduce the impacts on environmental and human health, not to mention these can save a truckload of money.
And then when somebody says, oh, but it doesn't look as nice and shiny. I am so tempted just to say, cry me a river because it's not a beauty contest. Again, that's my layman's opinion. But it does lead me to ask that if we've had these longer lasting resin technologies for as long as you said that we've had them, I heard you say the 1930s, 1920s, maybe even late 1800s in some cases, then why didn't those gain the traction that from my vantage point here and now, I think that they should have?
Kristen: Well, that also might go back to a little bit of where the feedstocks come from. So, if you think about organic binders, the feedstocks primarily go all the way back to the oil that we pump out of the ground. And so, when we were in an oil boom, there were a lot of companies that popped up because they had, you know, a downstream, byproduct that they could leverage.
So, all these processes, you know, when you're processing oil, there's all these byproducts. Well, what do you do with those, right? You try to make money off of it somehow. And so that's where all these companies popped up. So, a lot of the raw materials that are used in organic paints really came from that.
Um, I know there were a few chemical companies in the coatings industry that had a lot of, um, history in glass and still do to this day. And that's, um, Again, there's related downstream and upstream byproducts. And so that's typically how these raw materials come up is we've got this byproduct. What do we do with it?
We don't really want to just, you know, if we throw it away, we're not making any money on it, right? And a lot of times we have to pay to throw it away, especially these days. So that's where a lot of these materials kind of came up and in the coatings industry you have a bunch of chemists and formulators and that's what they're focused on.
And so, it's versions upon a theme. So, when you think about epoxy chemistry, there's all kinds of different iterations. Uh, novolac epoxies, there's phenalkamines, um, polyamides. When you think about alkyds, there's long oil, short oil. I think that is a lot of why we see so much in the area of organic materials because of the feedstock itself. Uh, when it comes to silicates, it's a different, it's a different, production mechanism, a different synthesis. So that to me is why you really didn’t have a lot of focus on those raw materials, but now, because of the pressures that we see, uh, when it comes to sustainability and impact, uh, these are materials that are being looked at again.
I know, uh, for our company, we've, we do environmental product declarations, um, on many of our products, and we know that the products with the silicate resins, um, compared to, you know, a zinc-filled silicate system versus an epoxy-based zinc system. There is a, a notable difference in embodied carbon. So, it's, it's kind of early days on this topic.
Uh, but I think it's nice to be at the forefront of it.
Toby: You mentioned the pressure that's on folks in the industry right now, causing them to take a second look at silicates, for example. So, it's no surprise that organics have become so well understood and that there's so much apparent flexibility regarding what we can do with these waste streams.
Everyone who was involved found a way to profit from those, or we could say it another way, everybody who was involved found a way to reduce a disposal cost. So, what I gather from this conversation is that non-petroleum based feedstock processes are at a different stage of their maturity.
They are influenced more and more by external pressures, market pressures, and social pressures. So, my question is, are we advancing? Are we finding new ways to process these feedstocks or to redirect these waste byproducts?
Kristen: So, yes, a resounding yes. The, the emphasis on using green or sustainable or non petroleum-based feedstocks has been an area of research for quite some time. It's primarily been at the university level, but I will tell you at the American Coating Show this year, uh, most of these coating shows, they will have a, um, poster session. And the poster session is for university students to present their research. And it, it ranges from undergraduate to graduate-level research.
And this year of the, let’s see, 36 poster sessions, I've counted at least 14. So, getting close to half, but over a third are focused on more renewable materials. Um, you know, I'll give you an example, uh, corrosion resistant soybean extract containing fluoropolymer coatings, vegetable oil based waterborne non-isocyanate polyurethane coating, uh, reprocessing ability of cottonseed-oil based UV-curable coatings.
So, this work is ongoing. Um, as I said, it's being done primarily at the university level, and it's right now mostly focused on, uh, bio renewables. I mentioned several oils, right? Um, so it's this idea of using oils, so using a natural organic material, instead of a synthesized organic material from oil.
What you don't see a lot of is inorganic coating systems. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Uh, you know, organic chemistry is primarily what I studied. There's a lot you can do with it. It's highly reactive. For lack of a better term, you play with it a lot. You can create a lot of new, different, unique synthetic materials.
Inorganic chemistry is a little bit different. It's a lot different. Um, it's just not the same type of reaction chemistry and the materials, a lot of times, don't have the properties of organic materials. So, we talked about the silicates, they really do cure hard, and they have some degree of flexibility, but nothing like you would expect from say, uh, you know, an elastomeric coating, for example.
So, so the answer to this question, as I said earlier, is not simple. It's not black and white. Um, but I always say, you know, lean into what we know and what we can do. And these inorganic silicate materials have been around for a long time. They've worked, they've protected structures against corrosion. In some cases, over 60 years, they’re not bright and shiny.
They're not high gloss. They don't allow corrosion to occur when they're used in an inorganic zinc system. So, that's a great place to start and we shouldn't overlook those types of things. I do think it would be interesting to see the silicate chemistry, um, studied more. Because as I said, I don't think any of those poster sessions that I can tell, um, were studying silicate chemistry.
But, um, you know, I think there is, there could be a move to that, and it would be interesting to see what comes out of it.
Where do we go from here?
Toby: It feels like a natural stopping point right here, so maybe you could tie a bow around all of this and please make it a pretty shiny, glossy, organic resin bow. Somebody making a material selection or specification decision might hear this episode and wonder where they should go from here. Or wonder what questions they should be asking en-route to sustainable corrosion protection.
Kristen: I think one of the most impactful things and most impactful questions to ask is what do I need the coating to do?
If it is protective, what is it protecting? And then seek out the highest-performing protective coating. If you can keep a structure lasting and in use as long as possible, that is going to help your carbon footprint the most. So sometimes there is fear of, you know, terms like fluoropolymer.
Fluoropolymers do last a very long time in the realm of organic coatings. There is a lot of concern around the materials that go into them, but I would caution anybody who is dealing with those types of materials that there is a lot of complexity and very few people globally that really understand the chemistry.
So seek out the knowledge, ask the questions, and certainly avoid trading off a coating that could last decades for a coating that lasts, say, 10 years, that's going to have to be repainted, say in a 60-year life cycle, a fluoropolymer honestly could withstand 60 years and inorganic coating could withstand longer than 60 years.
Most urethanes. I would say acrylics obviously, alkyds 10 to 20 effectively, maybe 30. But if we go with 20, well, that's three painting cycles. So that's an impact and you really have to think about what your impact is going to be. So, I think leaning in and really focusing on how to keep that asset functioning and in service with the least amount of maintenance required is, is the biggest impact you can have. And so that's a shift. That's a shift away from the old days of, I want the cheapest, most available paint to, I want the best paint that lasts the longest. And if you look at most structures and most assets, the cost of the paint…
is, is pretty small. So, it's just a way of rethinking something. And what it really is doing is it's forcing the industries that rely on paint, this thing that, as I mentioned earlier, bores, most people, most people would rather maybe even go to the doctor than listen to a discussion on paint. It really forces them to recognize what it actually is providing, you know, construct that steel bridge without a protective mechanism against corrosion, without a protective coating that protects against corrosion.
A lot of problems, right? So, paint does a very important job. And it's just something, you know, we're not cheerleaders for what we do, right? That's why we're here. We're, we're trying, we're trying to make it exciting. I don't know if I've succeeded in that today. What I would leave you with is, think about what you need for your asset, the life cycle that you want for that asset and think long, think big, think, the best and try to find a coating system that will get you there.
Kristen's four questions
Toby: And on that encouraging note, we should transition now to the time-honored The Red Bucket tradition, Four Questions. Kristen Blankenship, are you ready?
Kristen: No, but I'll do it.
Toby: You watched The Queen's Gambit TV show, which is about a chess player. There are scenes in which the protagonist lulls herself to sleep by playing imaginary chess matches on the ceiling of the room she's sleeping in. And I wonder, do you do that with molecules?
Kristen: hate to admit that I kind of do see molecules. Uh, it's like the movie. Um, I see dead people. No, I, when I think about paint and coatings and I think about, you know, I hear the word urethane, I see long chains of carbon, um, cause I always think of aliphatic urethanes cause they weather better. So, I'm not going to lie.
Um, I, yes, admittedly I do.
Toby: Second question, and this one is a repeat of one that I asked Paul Atzemis on our episode on surface-tolerant epoxy mastics. Go listen to that if you haven't. But if you were given a superpower based on your character traits, what superpower would that be?
Kristen: I like to think I'm very collaborative. I, I like everybody to be on a team and work together. Fun fact, I was not only a cheerleader for many years as a youngster, but I was the captain of our cheerleading squad. I was the one telling my girls to cheer when we were 20 points down in the fourth quarter.
But I'm enthusiastic and I like people to work together, and I like to figure out how to get everybody else to find their superpower. So that kind of can be tough sometimes and frustrating, but, um, it's also very rewarding.
Toby: I admire that. I admire that. I don't know that that's gonna be the next Marvel film, but it is commendable.
So, here's question number three. Would you rather water ski behind a cruise ship or stand on the wing of a biplane in flight like a barnstormer?
Kristen: Stand on the wing of a biplane.
Toby: Okay, why?
Kristen: Just sounds awesome. I mean, I'm sure I'll die either way. So, I'd rather be up in the sky.
Toby: That's as good a reason as any. And finally, question number four. It shouldn't surprise anyone that I'm asking a food question, but does ketchup belong on a hot dog?
Kristen: No.
Toby: That's the only correct answer.
Kristen: Well, to me, where do hot dogs really, to me, at least they come from my German ancestors and sausage, and I don't think the Germans were putting ketchup. They were putting mustard. So that's just me. I don't know. I'm going to get in trouble, but...
Toby: Look, it's important to stand for what we believe in, and on that note, I believe this has been a great conversation. Kristen Blankenship, thank you for joining The Red Bucket. Come back and talk about molecules anytime.
Kristen: Thank you. It was fun. I'd love to do it again.
