Podcasts offer a great way to stay current on issues and learn new things. Whether you’re driving, working out or just relaxing, you can try various types of podcasts to see what matches your interests.

If you care about a greener future, then check out these 14 green podcasts recommended by GreenBiz.com.

Biomass offers so much promise for cleaner burning fuel because it’s renewable and plentiful. But thus far, the established chemical processes used to extract the sugars from biomass have been very expensive and required considerable energy.

In this report from 60 Minutes, we learn that an eccentric inventor named Marshall Medoff may have come up with a groundbreaking process to solve this problem:

What Masterman helped implement was Medoff’s novel idea of using these large blue machines called electron accelerators to break apart nature’s chokehold on the valuable sugars inside plant life – or biomass. Machines like these are typically used to strengthen materials such as wiring and cable. Medoff’s invention was to use the accelerator the opposite way – to break biomass apart.

The result isn’t just cleaner fuel, but they’ve also unlocked a sugar with fewer calories that won’t harm your teeth, along with plastics that are biodegradable.

Watch the report, and you may witness a glimpse into a brighter future for clean energy.

The number of cellphone subscribers is now more than six billion globally. This figure is quite large because recycling rates in a majority of the regions are low. A mobile handset has an average life of 18 months, which compounds the problem further when you think of the sheer number of gadgets that have to be disposed of everyday.

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Is the concept of roads made of plastic realistic? It seems like a cool idea as we could have a new way of creating roads while also recycling tons of plastic waste.

Well, this concept was introduced last July to much fanfare, but we haven’t seen any articles about it since.

We’ll see . . .

Here’s an excellent interview with Tony Fadell of Nest where he discussed the ways Nest can help consumers save energy. Even more interesting is how Nest is being paid by electric power companies to help smooth out power spikes.

Kevin Rose does an excellent job with the interview and it’s worth checking out. They discuss a wide variety of topics including outsourcing to China, Kickstarter and other challenges facing hardware startups. You can follow Fadell on Twitter here.