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Calista Scribner, 9, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Winchester, with Jennifer (mom), Paul (dad), Caleb (brother, 13), Calen (brother, 11), Calex (brother, 7)· Calista had aches and pains in her legs, lower back, and shoulder. In July 2023, she developed a fever which continued for a week, accompanied by fatigue, severe lower back and stomach pain and difficulty lifting her arms. She had lab work done to rule out viruses and infections. Her family took Calista to the emergency room where lab work confirmed acute lymphoblastic leukemia in July of last year.· Calista began chemotherapy treatment. During one cycle in October 2023, she was “off,” and her family reported this to her team. Doctors discovered a blood clot in her brain due to a rare side effect from one of her chemotherapies. Calista is still in treatment and undergoes chemotherapy, a lumbar puncture every nine weeks, and medications. She is expected to finish her treatment in August/September 2025.· Calista is a huge hockey fan and used to be a goalie. She hopes to return to the ice soon. She loves to craft, cook, swim, go to the beach, and spend time with her three dogs: Charlie, Cocoa, and Cleo.
The finale to our first Starfinder adventure! Our junker heroes must defend themselves against The True Warrior gang... and their fearsome leader Do'Trulu. Featuring: Joseph as the GM Mark as the Kobold Operative "Kyjak" BoomCow as the Human Soldier "Ila" Brice as the SRO Engineer "Bolts" Calex as the Dragonkin Solarian "Wolf" Enjoy! Podcast: https://anchor.fm/lfrogdnd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/josephblanchette Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrogCAdventures Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/legendaryfrog
Our junker heroes explore the derelict starship, The Stellar Flare, in search for their ultimate prize. Featuring: Joseph as the GM Mark as the Kobold Operative "Kyjak" BoomCow as the Human Soldier "Ila" Brice as the SRO Engineer "Bolts" Calex as the Dragonkin Solarian "Wolf" Enjoy! Podcast: https://anchor.fm/lfrogdnd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/josephblanchette Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrogCAdventures Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/legendaryfrog
It's a full on JUNK WAR as the leaders of the Trashunters and Unbrood fight our heroes for control of the Outer Junkfields. Featuring: Joseph as the GM Mark as the Kobold Operative "Kyjak" BoomCow as the Human Soldier "Ila" Brice as the SRO Engineer "Bolts" Calex as the Dragonkin Solarian "Wolf" Enjoy! Podcast: https://anchor.fm/lfrogdnd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/josephblanchette Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrogCAdventures Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/legendaryfrog
Our heroes venture deep into enemy territory to haggle / kill for the scrap parts they need to enter the Stellar Flare. Featuring: Joseph as the GM Mark as the Kobold Operative "Kyjak" BoomCow as the Human Soldier "Ila" Brice as the SRO Engineer "Bolts" Calex as the Dragonkin Solarian "Wolf" Enjoy! Podcast: https://anchor.fm/lfrogdnd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/josephblanchette Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrogCAdventures Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/legendaryfrog
The junkers learn of their prize awaiting them in the Outer Junkfields... an ancient crashed starship with technology that could change the universe... and make them rich! Featuring: Joseph as the GM Mark as the Kobold Operative "Kyjak" BoomCow as the Human Soldier "Ila" Brice as the SRO Engineer "Bolts" Calex as the Dragonkin Solarian "Wolf" Enjoy! Podcast: https://anchor.fm/lfrogdnd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/josephblanchette Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrogCAdventures Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/legendaryfrog
Our junkers travel to the Caryards to find their missing Android contact... but unfortunately the local trash eating wildlife are in a frenzy! Featuring: Joseph as the GM Mark as the Kobold Operative "Kyjak" BoomCow as the Human Soldier "Ila" Brice as the SRO Engineer "Bolts" Calex as the Dragonkin Solarian "Wolf" Enjoy! Podcast: https://anchor.fm/lfrogdnd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/josephblanchette Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrogCAdventures Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/legendaryfrog
Oh my! We're playing our first Starfinder game! Join us as our heroes have a very junk filled adventure! Featuring: Joseph as the GM Mark as the Kobold Operative "Kyjak" BoomCow as the Human Soldier "Ila" Brice as the SRO Engineer "Bolts" Calex as the Dragonkin Solarian "Wolf" Enjoy! Podcast: https://anchor.fm/lfrogdnd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/josephblanchette Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrogCAdventures Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/legendaryfrog
Fortnite, vous connaissez? une action collective contre le concepteur Epic Games pourrait aller de l'avant afin de permettre aux parents dont les enfants sont dépendants au populaire jeu vidéo Fortnite d'être indemnisés. Entrevue avec Me Jean-Philippe Caron, avocat au cabinet Calex et responsable de l'action collective.Pour de l'information concernant l'utilisation de vos données personnelles - https://omnystudio.com/policies/listener/fr
La semaine nationale de lutte contre l'exploitation sexuelle des mineurs | La cérémonie des César n'échappe toujours pas à la controverse | Epic Games et Fortnite face à une action collective. Dans cet épisode intégral du lundi 27 février 2023, en entrevue : Christine St-Pierre, ancienne ministre de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine. Rachel Binhas, journaliste indépendante en France Me Jean-Philippe Caron, avocat au cabinet Calex et responsable de l'action collective contre Epic Games. Une production QUB radioFévrier 2023Pour de l'information concernant l'utilisation de vos données personnelles - https://omnystudio.com/policies/listener/fr
Rafa Gregori recebe Calex Guimarães! Publicitário de formação, está presente no mundo do empreendedorismo desde a época que vivia no Brasil, contudo, uma viagem a Portugal despertou no empreendedor uma grande ideia. Vivendo nos Estados Unidos há mais de 10 anos, Calex fundou a WeTrek, um aplicativo que inova no segmento de turismo ao oferecer explicações e curiosidades sobre pontos turísticos em diferentes idiomas, em outras palavras, um guia turístico digital no seu telefone! A inovação conta com importantes parceiros do Brasil e do mundo, além de grande potencial para crescimento e escala. O empreendedor fala sobre a inspiração para o desenvolvimento da WeTrek, as parcerias firmadas, e compartilha os planos da startup. Quer saber mais? Me siga nas redes: @madeinusa_podcast https://www.youtube.com/c/MadeInUSAPodcast Conheça o nosso convidado nas redes sociais: @calex_ @wetrek_app Produção: Voz e Conteúdo – www.vozeconteudo.com.br | @vozeconteudo
In this week's episode of BOAT Briefing, Sophia reports back from the first ever Experiential Yachting Forum in Monaco, we discuss why the shared ownership model has never taken off and learn more about the out-of-this-world refit of 56 metre Galaxy. We also bring you news of a brand new superyacht shipyard on the South Coast of the UK, and the fascinating history of the boat it's currently restoring, TT Calshot, and we ask the question: how long can the superyacht boom last? In the headlines this week are Benetti's newly launched Calex, Southern Wind's 32 metre Sorvind and Numarine's baby explorer, the 22XP. Experiential Yachting Forum: www.boatinternational.com/luxury-yacht-events/first-experiential-yachting-forum Galaxy refit: www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/benetti-yacht-galaxy-emerges-from-extenstive-refit-with-njord-by-bergman Dream Symphony: www.boatinternational.com/yachts/editorial-features/dream-symphony-sailing-yacht 67m Benetti Calex: www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/67m-benetti-motor-yacht-calex Numarine 22XP: www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/numarine-22xp-superyacht-launched Southern Wind Sorvind: www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/southern-wind-sailing-yacht-sorvind-delivered Pajot & Wider catamaran: www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/wider-pajot-reveal-new-24-metre-hybrid Subscribe: www.boatinternational.com/subscriptions BOAT Pro: www.boatinternational.com/boat-pro Contact us: podcast@boatinternationalmedia.com
Welcome to Cannabis Daily - Your daily guide to cannabis news, industry trends, and trade ideas in under 5 mins.Episode Summary:Neptune Wellness Solns (NASDAQ: NEPT) was granted a 180 day extension to meet NASDAQ's minimum bid requirement of $1 per share. The deadline for this requirement is August 29th, 2022. Neptune's new partnership with Walmart and Cocomelon is super promising it could be a great one to put on your watch list.Wells Fargo maintains an equal weight rating on GrowGeneration (NASDAQ: GRWG), but does a lower the price target from $9. Two $8.Harborside(OTCQX: HBORF) Completes Acquisition of Urbn Leaf.Audacious (OTCQB:AUSAF) reports Q3, 2022 earnings.Their total revenue was around 2.37 million. It is up 2623% YoY.Former President Bill Clinton speaks at Impact Forum in Orlando, Florida, yesterday in massive support of CBD. Elliot's Stocks To Watch TodayVerano Holdings(OTCQX:VRNOF)Harborside(OTCQX:HBORF)Audacious (OTCQB:AUSAF)Hosted & Produced By:Elliot LaneAaron ThomasContact us at: cannabishour@benzinga.comFollow Benzinga Cannabis On Social MediaInstagramTwitterYouTubeLinkedInSubscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts at https://www.benzinga.com/podcastsSubscribe to the Cannabis Insider Newsletter to get more cannabis news and trending links delivered to your inbox.Tune in weekly to Cannabis Hour at 4 pm ET every Thursday for Cannabis News & Executive Interviews at bzcannabishour.comHit us up at https://www.benzinga.com/cannabis/ for more news today, tomorrow, and everyday.Access All The Cannabis Daily Episodes HereFor Top Gainers & Losers Cannabis stocks of the day check out https://www.benzinga.com/cannabis/stocksNOT FINANCIAL ADVICEThe Information Contained on this Podcast is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, financial adviceUnedited Transcript:This is cannabis daily. This is your host Elliot lane. Thanks to Aaron Thomas and Asli for helping us make this happen. And Benzinga for the platform. This show brings you your daily cannabis insights and news on the cannabis industry and markets. We're going to talk, we're going to start off the day with politics said nobody that ever wanted to have a good day ever. But we're going to start there anyway. So last night there was a pretty important annual happening called the state of the union address. I'm sure you know about it, president. Did not mention cannabis in the state of the use and surprise. Not really. I know a lot of people are upset about it this morning.I'm not going to lie. Did not think he would mention anything about it. Anyway, there was a lot of discussion about mental health though, and fighting the opioid crisis. And I think it is important for us to remember how cannabis can help that fight. But hopefully this administration will verbally discuss that in the near future.Next up, we're staying on the political sidelines here with bill Clinton comes out at impact forum in Orlando, Florida, yesterday in massive support of CBD. He did mention with a small amount of THC saying he probably gets more calls about CBD than anybody else alive. I somehow feel like that was an exaggeration, but that being said, it's good to see.Former mainstream politicians come out and support of the. Neptune wellness solutions in EPT on the NASDAQ was granted a 180 day extension to meet NASDAQ's minimum bid requirement of $1 per share the new. For them to meet this requirement is August 29th, 2022. I do believe in Neptune. I think they are a fantastic company.They're a new partnership with Walmart and Koka Mellon is super promising. But with that being said, of course there's a lot of work to do so let's keep an eye on them. However, if they are successful in getting it up, this could be a great one to put on your watch list. Now audacious brands, a U S a reporting, some promising numbers in their Q3, 2022 earnings.Their total revenue was around 2.37 million. It is up 2623% year over year. I believe it was around 90,000 at this same period. Last year, their gross profit was around 1.8, 4 million. From a loss of 166,000 in the same period last year, prox to that team. That's Terry Booth led Terry Booth. Of course, one of the founders of Aurora cannabis.Now leading the audacious team. This is turning into a very promising company. Internationally Wells Fargo maintains an equal weight rating on grow generation, but does a lower the price target from $9. Two $8. Hexo H E X O on the NASDAQ, seeing an up and down free market. They were up at one point around 8.7%.I believe now it's around 1% increase pre markets at the time of recording. Needham does maintain a buy rating on green thumb industries. That's GTB I F on the OTC. I believe the price target is around $33. Tomb C H O F is a pretty well-respected Canadian retail company. Think of them as somewhat of a competitor to high tide fire and flower Nova cannabis. They announced their Q2 highlights revenue was 4.2, 1 million down from four points. 4 million from the last quarter, however, their expenses were down and their gross margin did increase. So moving in a few different directions there, I think that's a watchlist or at most right now, but that being said, I like them increasing their margin Juva life.That is J U V a F on the OTC. This is a cool piece of news which I think I might check out today. They are offering a journaling app for personal health and wellness tracking this app. We'll assist new consumers and just probably current consumers with insights into how cannabis products affect their health and wellness.Super cool. I'm going to try this out. I will report back what I think, but that being said, perhaps check it out. That's Juva life Harbor side, HBO RF completes their urban leaf acquisition and appoints ed Smoltz as CEO of the combined. Company, this massively supports Harbor side's footprint in Southern California for them to be one of the main players in the state, they'll be fighting the likes of glass house, riding the lights of the parent company.But I think Harborside, this is an important acquisition for them. And ed I think is a very cool. Addition to their C-suite team, former CEO of FAO shorts and wild things. Also the former COO of Patagonia. He also led the cannabis company Calex peak I believe for a few years. And was a part of JP Morgan or no, I'm sorry.Goldman Sachs investment banking. So he has a long history. Of working in finance of leading companies, I think Harborside is going to see a nice aggressive push here. Sugar bud SBU, DD announces their preliminary Q4 2021 earnings. They are predicting record revenue of 750 to 850,000 for the quarter and around two and a half million.For the year of 2021, a couple more here, Verano holdings draws an additional $100 million from an existing credit agreement to fund further expansion and growth initiatives. This to me is pretty obvious that they're preparing for some more M and a on the horizon. They did just acquire goodness growth.That's Judy NSF on the OT. What's reported the best increase in terms of stock performance in February. So perhaps Verano is about to do it again. They did just join us on cannabis insider yesterday, check out Benzing as YouTube for that video, talking about their MNA strategy and what we can expect.And. For from them and from cannabis in 2022, we talked to their chief investment officer. Aaron Miles, definitely check that video out last but not least. We can't get through the day without talking about tilt holdings, T L T F loved this company. Love what Gary Santo and team is doing over here. They sign an exclusive partnership with timeless refinery for manufacturing and distribution for the brand in Ohio.Timeless is a vaporized. Maker in Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, California. And of course now Ohio via tilt. Another bit of news for tilt. They did just sign Lynn Ricci who led I R for true leave up until recently. And I believe, of course, whenever you have mergers and acquisitions, some shuffling will happen.I think this is a massive For investor relations for holdings. And I think that's something to keep an eye on for a company that is fighting for tier two. And I think eventually tier one levels in this market that being said, if I'm looking at winners today, all you got to talk about Harbor side, you gotta talk about, I'm definitely keeping Verano on my watch list.That's a must. And I think it's worth mentioning audacious for sure. They really over-performed, in my opinion, that being said, this is Elliot lane. Thanks so much BZ cannabis.com. We want you in Miami. Come see us then. Thanks so much. I'll see you tomorrow. Investors. Thanks so much for tuning in to Benzing.As cannabis daily stock picks and news podcast everyday pre-market once again, this is not financial. Please do your own research. We hope we bring you the best and most efficient news for your investing. Continue to find us on benzinga.com/cannabis, spending a.com/podcasts or on YouTube on Benzing channel.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/cannabis-daily/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Informação de qualidade através do áudio, curiosidades, atrações e troca de experiências com outros viajantes, essas são apenas algumas das várias possibilidades permitidas pelo WeTrek, aplicativo focado na experiência dos viajantes independentes. E para sabermos mais sobre esse guia tecnológico, o Seu Podcast de Turismo recebe, neste episódio, Calex Guimarães, CEO e fundador do WeTrek. Calex Guimarães, CEO e fundador do WeTrek. Criado em 2020, o aplicativo, disponibilizado em 3 idiomas, foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de oferecer experiências personalizadas para os viajantes, que poderão expandir seus destinos e vivenciar momentos que até então eram desconhecidos, já que uma das ferramentas do app é o Local Hacks, que dá sugestões via GPS para os turistas de pontos que podem ser visitados na região onde estão, além de tours por Miami. “O WeTrek maximiza a experiência do viajante independente, sendo o seu guia para descobrir lugares que até então são poucos conhecidos, que só os moradores locais sabem”, diz o CEO, Calex Guimarães. E para agregar valor à viagem dos seus usuários, o WeTrek busca nas regiões moradores locais diversos, que tragam pluralidade para os pontos indicados, abrindo o leque para todos os públicos. "São diferentes pontos de vista geralmente sobre o mesmo lugar, o que traz muita diversidade e enriquece a experiência", destaca Calex. Confira a entrevista completa através do Seu Podcast de Turismo, nas plataformas Spotify, Google Play e Apple. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3X6gBVTfLNzfDlXRJvx1U4
Informação de qualidade através do áudio, curiosidades, atrações e troca de experiências com outros viajantes, essas são apenas algumas das várias possibilidades permitidas pelo WeTrek, aplicativo focado na experiência dos viajantes independentes. E para sabermos mais sobre esse guia tecnológico, o Seu Podcast de Turismo recebe, neste episódio, Calex Guimarães, CEO e fundador do WeTrek. Calex Guimarães, CEO e fundador do WeTrek. Criado em 2020, o aplicativo, disponibilizado em 3 idiomas, foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de oferecer experiências personalizadas para os viajantes, que poderão expandir seus destinos e vivenciar momentos que até então eram desconhecidos, já que uma das ferramentas do app é o Local Hacks, que dá sugestões via GPS para os turistas de pontos que podem ser visitados na região onde estão, além de tours por Miami. “O WeTrek maximiza a experiência do viajante independente, sendo o seu guia para descobrir lugares que até então são poucos conhecidos, que só os moradores locais sabem”, diz o CEO, Calex Guimarães. E para agregar valor à viagem dos seus usuários, o WeTrek busca nas regiões moradores locais diversos, que tragam pluralidade para os pontos indicados, abrindo o leque para todos os públicos. "São diferentes pontos de vista geralmente sobre o mesmo lugar, o que traz muita diversidade e enriquece a experiência", destaca Calex. Confira a entrevista completa através do Seu Podcast de Turismo, nas plataformas Spotify, Google Play e Apple. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3X6gBVTfLNzfDlXRJvx1U4
BENZINGA CANNABIS CAPITAL CONFERENCEThe premier gathering of cannabis entrepreneurs and investors in North America returns for a 2-Day Hybrid Event on October 14-15.Speakers will include $SNDL and other major Cannabis Companies, for more information visit https://www.benzinga.com/events/cannabis/Welcome to Cannabis Daily - Your daily guide to cannabis news, industry trends and trade ideas in under 5 mins.Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts at https://www.benzinga.com/podcastsSubscribe to the Cannabis Insider Newsletter to get more cannabis news and trending links delivered to your inbox. Tune in daily to Cannabis Hour at 4:30 p.m. ET for Cannabis News at bzcannabishour.com.Hit us up at https://www.benzinga.com/cannabis/ for more news today, tomorrow, and everyday.Episode SummaryFlorida activists file another bill to legalize adult cannabis use.Tilray's Stock Could Be In For A Ugly Move If It Can't Hold Above A Key LevelStocks we talk about on the podcast:OTC:$TLLTFOTC:$STMHNASDAQ:$TLRYNASDAQ: $HEXONYSE:$SMGHosted & Produced By: Elliot LaneAaron Thomas Contact us at: cannabishour@benzinga.comFollow Benzinga Cannabis On Social MediaInstagramTwitterYouTubeLinkedInAccess All The Cannabis Daily Episodes HereAlso Join us at the Benzinga Cannabis Hour Podcast, weekly on Thursdays at 4 PM EST.For Top Gainers & Losers Cannabis stocks of the day check out https://www.benzinga.com/cannabis/stocksNOT FINANCIAL ADVICEThe Information Contained on this Podcast is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, financial advice.Unedited Transcript:Friends investors, zingers it's Elliot lane with cannabis daily. Hope you all had a wonderful Monday and are having an even better Tuesday so far as always. Thanks to Benzinga and the producer here, Aaron Thomas. He is the man a little lighter news morning than yesterday, but definitely some items to touch on.Let's get started, Florida activists file another bill to legalize adult use. I think they do this once every other month, uh, to no avail. Uh, I'll have hope when it makes it through, but it definitely would be a huge bit of news for those such as TCN and F truly air wellness, Ayr, WF consortium, that's C and T M F a.So keep an eye on that news. If it does legalize opens up opportunity for those that are already, uh, have a monstrous footprint there, Gary Santo, he is the head man, the head hunter. Over at tilt. That is T L L T F tweets about 30 minutes ago. Uh, that they're opening a second to dispensary in Massachusetts, soft opening October 1st, grand opening, October 16th.Exciting news for Gary. They've been a bit quiet lately, but, uh, overall love tale, love what they do. They work with everybody massive player in this industry. And I think setting themselves up to be a long time. A staple of the cannabis space. So keep an eye on T L L T F a in all the conversations we have here, as they work with MSOE in a wholesale capacity, uh, they have, uh, uh, Jupiter, uh, they have tons of ways they can work with people, including medical cannabis, S TMH that's driven by stem or stem holdings acquired artifact extracts yesterday, an extractor in Oregon, known for its award-winning concentrates, along with two dispensers.Now Oregon is nothing to write home about when you expand into Oregon, just due to how much opportunity there is to be an Oregon. Uh, but it is important for stem to expand further into the west coast. Uh, they are a big old brand portfolio, but I believe they are farm to table vertically integrated. Uh, I love their acquisition of driven deliveries a while ago, and I think they'll be around for a little bit, but, uh, stem is one of those where they, they could be an M and a target, or they could continue to grow organically.A little bit of an underdog in this industry right now until they, uh, start duking it out with the tier one operators, a little down the line per new cannabis ventures, three anciliary stock showing good entry points at a Scott's miracle grow, uh, and their investment arm Hawthorne, uh, grow generation and hydro farm.Uh, so keep an eye on the anciliary plays in this industry. I think that also holds over to. K E R N urban gro UGR oh, perhaps Leafly, uh, when they do spec, but overall, the anciliary site has always been important to the cannabis capital markets. Connecticut patients can grow their own marijuana, medical, marijuana, excuse me, medical marijuana, starting October 1st, I check out a new Tilray article T L R.Uh, on benzinga.com/cannabis needs to hold above a key resistance level. This is very important for their stock. Uh, this is an incredible article by Javier and his team. So please head over there to check that out. I, I P are the leading REIT, uh, in Canada. Uh, enters the Missouri market via 28 and a half million dollar deal with Calex peak.Count's peak is a very large private operator, private MSO in this space been very quiet this year. Uh, but this could be a very interesting entrance point there as Missouri has been a talking point recently with heritage. Uh, and the several others taking a extensive looks into that market last but not least after looking at a lot of charts this morning of the major stocks like CGC, like OGI like, FLDC like Yolo.Uh, like Hexo, uh, they have a very similar pattern, uh, with a small dip, a recover and a long depth, longer depth and a recovery yesterday or over the past two days. But really yesterday, uh, I'd love to see, uh, that continued to rise. Um, obviously I, I do believe it will fall a little bit upon opening, but, uh, hopefully we see that, uh, trending up today.And w I think overall it's a reflection upon the. And the sentiments on the market, which alas, as we all know, has little to do with the technicals of the cannabis space. This is Elliot lane with cannabis daily, uh, bringing you stock news and picks in the cannabis industry every weekday morning as always.Thank you all for listening. We'll do this again tomorrow.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/cannabis-daily/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
On today’s show, Emily is talking about why talking during sex is just as important as talking about sex, as well as taking your calls. She gives tips on how to work around the dreaded lockjaw issue you may be having while performing fellatio, ways to introduce masturbation & fantasies to your lover, and how to get out of your head and into a climactic orgasm. Thank you for supporting our sponsors who help keep the show FREE: Womanizer, CalEx Pave, Magic Wand, Good Vibrations, SiriusXM Follow Emily on all social: @sexwithemily For even more sex advice, tips & tricks, visit sexwithemily.com
On today’s show, Emily is bringing you a mash-up of some of her favorite interviews with different stars in the Adult Industry – that’s right – Porn Stars! She covers everything from all the Oral Sex tips – from someone who likes to give fellatio AND cunnilingus, what it really means to explore polyamory and non-monogamy, and what it’s like to be in the adult industry and the differences between on and off screen sex. Thank you for supporting our sponsors who help keep the show FREE: Woo More Play, Calex Jopen, SiriusXM, Apex For more info on the people in the show, click HERE. Follow Emily on all social: @sexwithemily For even more sex advice, tips & tricks, visit sexwithemily.com
On today’s show, Emily is talking about the most common fantasies we all have and what makes them so hot– plus, she’s taking your calls. She breaks down a few fantasies – from bondage to group sex, what to do when you love your partner – but are dangerously close to crossing the infidelity line, you think your husband has the “madonna/whore” complex – but it’s actually a lot deeper than that, and opening up about your love for wearing thongs when your wife buys you boxers. Thank you for supporting our sponsors who help keep the show FREE: Womanizer, Good Vibrations, SiriusXM, Calex Jopen Follow Emily on all social: @sexwithemily For even more sex advice, tips & tricks visit sexwithemily.com
Host Ali Nazar interviews Shawn Lani, Director for the Exploratorium's Studio for Public Spaces, on the Bay Area institution's founding story, outreach programs, and preparations for their 50th anniversary.Transcript:Ali Nazar:You're listening to KALX Berkeley in 90.7 FM and this is Method to the Madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex celebrating the innovative spirit of the Bay Area. I'm your host, Ali Nassar, and today I got with me Shawn Lani, he's the Director for the Studio for Public Spaces at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Hey, Shawn, what's going on?Shawn Lani:Hey. Nothing. Just here, jabbing this morning.Ali Nazar:Yeah, thanks for jabbing.Shawn Lani:Yeah, my pleasure.Ali Nazar:Appreciate you coming in. So we're going to talk about a few things. Exploratorium, obviously, is a beloved institution in the Bay Area, but I always ask people when we first start out about organizations like the Exploratorium, they're very unique and they start out with a kind of a problem statement in mind. What is the problem statement that Exploratorium is trying to solve?Shawn Lani:That's a good question. A lot of people think of the Exploratorium as a science museum that was formed in the way that a lot of things were formed, but the culture institutions tend to be a product of their times. They're responding to a need, and at the time, there was an educational reform movement going on in America and the 60s were happening. This is 1969, it was founded and Frank had spent many years-Ali Nazar:Frank Oppenheimer?Shawn Lani:Oh, yes. Frank Oppenheimer had spent many years as a teacher on a ranch kind of perfecting a hands-on method of learning and was convinced that people really needed a place where they can get their hands on things and figure things out for themselves. One of the things he used to do is take his kids out to a junkyard and a very non-traditional approach, take things apart, find out how they work. It was definitely a sense of the authentic was always a driving force and also a trust that people were naturally curious and could be inspired to kind of explore their own inquiry. And that turned out to be a very powerful model for teaching and learning.Ali Nazar:Yeah, and I think any of us have been to the Exploratorium totally get that feeling because that's what the place is all about. But taking just one more kind of step down memory lane, can you tell us a little bit more about Frank Oppenheimer, who he was and how he came to found the museum?Shawn Lani:Yeah. Frank Oppenheimer was Robert Oppenheimer's younger brother, he's sometimes called the Uncle of the Atomic Bomb. He worked on the Manhattan Project, and for many years after that he was ostracized from universities and ended up in a ranch in Colorado. He was a natural teacher. He was very much a humanist, and so as he spent many years out there kind of basically, surviving, he ended up coming to San Francisco. He still had a lot of contacts, a lot of people knew who Frank was and started the San Francisco Project and found the Palace of Fine Arts. He wrote up a rationale for a science museum and ended up stomping around the City Hall drumming up support for it and got a 30-year lease for a dollar a year at the Palace of Fine Arts. Ali Nazar:Wow.Shawn Lani:Yeah. That's not a bad deal.Ali Nazar:Wow, yeah, pretty good. San Francisco real estate.Shawn Lani:Yeah, exactly. Well, the funny thing is even at the time when Frank walked in that behemoth of a building, he already thought, "This isn't going to be big enough," and, in fact, we added onto that building some years later, a second floor. And then eventually, we outgrew the building altogether and moved to Pier 17 just five years ago, Pier 15, sorry, in San Francisco.Ali Nazar:Well, Great. So thank you for that story and understanding kind of where it came from. So we're almost 50 years into the Exploratorium's founding. What's the journey been like? Where are we today?Shawn Lani:Well, the Exploratorium is, I think, necessarily evolving and I think this is true of any cultural institution. They need to evolve with culture in order to respond to it and be relevant. And as we started as a science museum with exhibits that quickly grew into a explainer program that integrated teens on the floor explaining and working with visitors. We started professional development of teachers very early. We were one of the first 600 websites when that started to evolve. And so the museum's always been kind of a slowly growing institution with new feature-sets and more and more of those have become interrelated over time.And so when I think about the Exploratorium, I went there as a child, three and four years old, you kind of fall in love with the place. And even all these years later, I walk through and there's something familiar about the way that we respect humans as learners. And in everything that we do, the way that we approach the work is very much in support of somebody's own sense of wonder and inquiry and to enable people to ask questions of the world and find those questions useful and even to question the answers they get back when they ping the world. We want them to know that they are active learners, they're in control of what they understand. And so that's always kind of been a thread throughout all of our work.Ali Nazar:Yeah, and it's so fascinating to me, as I'm listening to you talk, and think about many times in this show, we have people who have started an organization six months ago or eighteen months ago. They had this dream and this vision and I've been part of founding teams too and I think one of the things that a founding team dreams of is to have something be sustainable and go on for a long time and now, we're sitting with something like that in the Exploratorium. We're almost 50 years in. How does the governance work? How do you guys keep the mission vibrant and alive and even though Dr. Oppenheimer has long since gone?Shawn Lani:Yeah, he passed in 1985. He used to say that the Exploratorium was anarchy and Frank was the anarch and there was a certain kind of a glue that he could bring just through kind of force of personality and his intellect was somebody once said, "Walking through the Exploratorium was like walking through Frank's mind," but in fact the places evolved a lot since frank has passed. And I think that was also by design because just like we've always treated visitors as part of the equation, staff has always felt like it was part of their job to generate new ideas and to figure out new ways of engaging with audiences increasingly diverse and in new ways and on subject matters that are important to them. When I first got there in '93, we were doing some work with the National Science Foundation, which is a long-term supporter.But I was kind of surprised at the number of people doing things that I didn't think at all were related to the Exploratorium. And eventually, we had a Body Show, we had shows about memory, we looked at our Light and Color and Sound exhibitions, we renamed them Seeing and Hearing, thinking more about how people are not only sensing the world but perceiving it and the acts of perception is active. You're construing, you're making sense of the world as you find it. And so reframing the world is actually a really powerful tool for allowing people to see things in a new way, and then from that moment forward, carry that with them. It's not something that happens in the museum for that moment, which is static, it's dead when you leave. You might pick up some information, but that's just information. A way of seeing the world is far more influential I think.And actually, it's far more respectful because what we don't do is say, "This is the right way to look at the world." What we do say is, "Have you thought of it this way? Have you thought about how when you look out at the Bay, say it just all looks like a bunch of water," right? But the long story behind that is where it comes from, the push and pull of the saltwater and the ecologies that live there. And once you tell that narrative, for a lot of people, I think it builds an appreciation for a way of looking at the world that's more animated. It's more animated and it's actually, it's much more fun. It's much more interesting. And so I think that's the way that we've drifted over the years as we added more and more program is how do we do that more? How do we connect with people in such a way that they feel like they're a little different from after they've brushed up against us? And likewise, I think the museum needs to feel like, "Hey, we're being changed by our visitors as well because we're in conversation."Ali Nazar:Yeah. And it's so appropriate. I think for the spirit of the Bay Area because I always think of us being kind of like the furthest on the west of the Western civilization and kind of able to question everything. That's kind of where we're at and just geographically we're the most newest of all the cities to come. And so we can kind of look back and say, "Well, should we think about it this way? Should we be thinking about it that way?" And Exploratorium really embodies that kind of spirit.Shawn Lani:Yes. It's easy to take for granted, especially if you grew up here and I know you're raising some children and once you have kids you start to realize like, "Wow, we are in the middle of so many things." We watch movies, there we are. You hear stories or you see movements come out of the Bay Area that are global. And I've been lucky enough to travel a lot because of the Exploratorium. We have a lot of global influence from the Bay Area and the Exploratorium itself. We do global consulting, we do a lot of professional development. We train over a 1,000 teachers a year. We've trained over 30,000 teachers since the inception of the Teachers Institute. And that's the kind of influence that that continues on. So those 1,000 teachers teach 15,000 students, right? There're 30,000 teachers. Think about all the kids they've reached. And all we've done is given that teacher a new tool, a way of using inquiry and informal approaches to learning about the world, and then they take it and move that forward.So that's the kind of impact I think the Exploratorium, for me, in my mind, when I think of it, I don't think of it as a place as much as a kind of movement and I think it's continuing to be a kind of movement. We occupy space in people's minds sometimes because they went there as a kid or because they bring their kids or they ... But there's something about the place that just glows, and the more we can export that glow, the better. Right?Ali Nazar:Yeah. Bottle it up.Shawn Lani:Bottle it up. Yeah. But don't commercialize it. There's that beautiful blend of sharing. It's a kind of sharing.Ali Nazar:Yeah. And the amplification effect is so much what's so special about founders in my mind is someone has this idea in their brain and if they're successful, like Dr. Oppenheimer was, look at the amplification effect and how many lives he's touched just because he pursued that thought in his brain of, "Well, people should have experiential learning."Shawn Lani:That's right.Ali Nazar:And look what's happened since 50 years later.Shawn Lani:That's right.Ali Nazar:And it's really amazing. So we're talking to Shawn Lani, he's a Director for the Studio for Public Spaces at the Exploratorium in San Francisco right here on Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. Shawn, so let's talk a little bit about the Studio for Public Spaces. So there're lots of programs there, but before we get into that, I want to just get a little bit of your background. Tell us about yourself.Shawn Lani:Well, I grew up in the Bay Area primarily. I was born in San Leandro, lived in Oakland and so definitely a Bay Area person. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time out on a ranch in eastern Nevada and was inspired by just the raw nature of that landscape. And, in fact, it brought a lot of that work into the Exploratorium and that way of seeing those landscapes. And I studied at Davis and really enjoyed English and art history. I studied a lot of things. And the funny thing was I wasn't a science guy. I was handy and I could fix things on the ranch, but mostly when I was supposed to be digging holes, I was staring at springs or watching birds and so it wasn't a great rancher either.So somehow I landed up, ended up at the Exploratorium. I got a Masters in Museum Education and Design at John F. Kennedy University. And I just never thought I could work in a place that wonderful. I didn't even think to apply and it popped up, but it seemed faded. I lived only three blocks away from it. I was just extremely lucky to find it and that place changes over time. We've gotten a lot bigger and its mission has shifted not unnecessarily. And I was able to slot into a place and then move through the museum and experience what the global impact is like, what it's like to work locally. And then in 2008, we opened a show at Fort Mason. It was an outdoor Exploratorium and rather than introducing phenomenon like we do in the museum, we capture it out there.We framed it and we looked at the landscape as kind of a subject matter and tried to do these conceptual framings that allowed people to see the world in a new way and was really hooked, really fascinated with the idea that you didn't have to go inside the museum to have a really poignant experience. And, in fact, I was struck by how different it was. I wouldn't say better, but having it be a part of your daily life seemed to make it much more accessible and far more interesting as a developer, as a designer because then it's like you're in the ultimate a flea market, right? Like, "What's that? How did that happen? What the?" All these questions come to mind and sometimes when you dig a little bit, you find the most amazing answers. We're curious, Pete Richards, a senior artist at the museum, he'd heard the Golden Gate Bridge moved up and down because of the heat.So we put a GPS tracker on it. We talked to Leica. We really did our research and it turns out, sure enough, it moves up and down a foot or two depending on the temperature of the day. And there's kind of a mean temperature in the middle. So we put a scope on the bridge from a mile and a half and actually, it's three miles away with a little line in the middle. And we called it a bridge thermometer if it was a hot day, the bridge would be low and it was a cold day, the bridge would be up. And it was just such a lovely kind of observation that Pete had brought along. And then we were doing evaluation later and a runner came by and she stopped and she looked at it and she took off and our evaluator chased her down and said, "Well, that's usually not a good sign if somebody just does a glancing blow."And she said, "No, I just like to see where the bridge is every day when I went by, I want to see what the bridge is doing." So it was such a wonderful thing to think of reframing that big static thing in the distance, not as kind of a thing that doesn't move, but a thing that's being responsive to temperature. When the sunrises, it takes a couple hours for the bridge to heat up and sag. So there's all these beautiful thermodynamics going on and it's that kind of animation that really caught our attention.Ali Nazar:That's super cool. I mean it reminds me of just in such a hyper-creative environment of almost in I would think like Saturday Night Live where you have all the writers around pitching ideas. There're like lots of ideas. How does it work? Because I would think that the staff there is super-creative and comes up with all sorts of interesting thoughts like that.Shawn Lani:Yeah.Ali Nazar:How does the process of getting something approved and funded go?Shawn Lani:Well, we prototype a lot and you might have an idea, but if you don't test your idea, nobody's going to believe you. And the ultimate test is how the public responds to it in the final form. And so one of the things we do, we utilize evaluation in a more formal way but also in an informal way. We tinker about, we try things. And that's true of most subject matters. Even as we move into the social sciences and thinking about stereotypes and thinking about how do you exhibitize some of those experiences? You don't really know until you go out and you try it with people. And the beautiful thing about that isn't that there again to prove or disprove what you thought was right they're most likely going to inspire you to do something that you wouldn't have otherwise thought of. That collaborative effort extends far beyond your immediate development team. I mean we might beat each other up about whether we think it's a good idea or not, but that kind of healthy criticism can only really be verified by the end-users.Ali Nazar:Sure, which is very much part of the spirit of San Francisco tech life. Lean startup and 20th-century design, hi-tech.Shawn Lani:Starting in '93 there was no tech, there was no ... I didn't have a computer on my desk. If you wanted something, you called the old guy that worked at the part shop and you told him what you needed, right. But the language started to come from tech eventually started to seep and some of it was familiar and some of it sounded kind of, I wouldn't say naive but there was the beginnings of that ... Because that kind of iterative culture, the prototyping culture takes a long time to get good at. Not 20 years, but a few years, and the lessons that tech learned sometimes it's in this much shorter cycle so they'll learn part of the lesson. But the full lesson really is, I think, it goes to the maturity of an organization and as a creative person and who's able to work with others and also listen, it's not an easy thing, but when you get it right, you understand why it works.Ali Nazar:Yeah. Well, so back to your story, so you joined in 1983. It sounds like you just lucked into the perfect job for you, which is congratulations.Shawn Lani:Yeah. Yeah.Ali Nazar:You've been there for a long time now, so that's awesome. So you're right now on this Studio for Public Spaces project. So tell us about that and how it came to be.Shawn Lani:Yeah. So as an exhibit developer, back then, you would develop exhibits for the floor for people have experiences they learn from those. It was something that you learned. It took about five or seven years I got my chops. And that project at Fort Mason was interesting because we had this kind of instrumented landscape, right? You can walk through and experience it, but what I think we missed, I found out later with subsequent projects, is that places have people in them and those people are part of that landscape. That social landscape is also the raw material of future experiences, future exhibits, you can instrument the landscape, but you can also help instrument people's behaviors and how they're moving through the world. And so after we opened Pier's 15, 17 we did the first living innovation zone on market street.And that was through the Mayor's Office of Innovation with Mayor Lee. And we worked with Neil Hrushowy over in city planning and Paul Chasan and others. And it was a remarkable experience because we put a pair of listening vessels, which are eight-foot-tall dishes done by Doug Hollis on Market Street. At the Yerba Buena Lane and nobody really knew what to expect, including us. But we had this notion that that inquiry's a natural kind of social lubricant and that there were lots of rules on Market Street. We know this, right? You don't look people in the eye, you don't talk to anybody, you don't put your bag down. It's like a human freeway. Right? So we put these listening vessel's kind of diagonal to that freeway and people really responded. I think they responded in a better way than I had even hoped.They were willing to talk to strangers. They were kind of joyous and celebratory. They would watch each other play and figure this thing out. They tried to find out where it was plugged in. So these dishes, you can whisper in these dishes and hear each other from 50 feet away very clearly. And it's also very intimate because it sounds like somebody's just in your ear because the way the sound is focused with the parabolic dishes. And so after that, the Studio for Public Spaces was founded with the goal of bringing more of these inquiry-like experiences to public spaces because the audience is vast. The impacts are amazing really in terms of how it shifts people's behavior in real-time, in real space in cities. And so since then, we've done many projects throughout the Bay Area, San Leandro. We're working on a project currently on Fulton Street between the Asian Art Museum and the library across from City Hall.And to bring this methodology work the way they explore terms work traditionally the prototyping, the integration, the respect for the learner to a public space. And I think especially with social sciences, understanding how we construe the world, what science can teach us about how we understand things and how and why we process the world. Exploring that in a public space, especially when it challenges you in Plaza and The Civic Center, it's improving. There're a lot of things going on there now, but there's also a lot of friction. It's right in the middle of it. I mean you had to put a pin in San Francisco and say, "Where's the middle of it?" It's right there. And it's a powerful medium to be in. And I'm exploring topics like how do we categorize it? Why do we so immediately categorize people? Why do we stereotype folks? What biases are driving ourselves? This is all a way of thinking about the human mind.What you know of the world is directly proportional to what you know of yourself. And to understand how we're thinking on a meta-level is incredibly empowering because it allows you not to be a victim of your own fast-twitch thinking. You can slow down and you can reconsider. You can look for the options when you look at a scene. Not only, "This is what I think about what's happening," but, "Why am I thinking that and what other alternatives might there be?" So it's been fascinating and I think also humbling to have such a dynamic mix of emotions, cultural issues, and then trying to do this place-making maneuver in the middle of a place that is kind of inherently inhospitable.Ali Nazar:We're speaking with Shawn Lani, he's the director for the Studio for Public Spaces at Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco here on Methods of the Madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. I'm your host, Ali Nassar, and Shawn, so you're talking about different projects that you might be doing in different municipalities across the Bay Area. So take me through how does that work? I mean, this sport team can't just parachute in, "Hey, we're going to do this," right. "Get out of the way."Shawn Lani:That's the worst case, man. You never go where you're not invited. That's the rule.Ali Nazar:How do you guys build these projects?Shawn Lani:Yeah. They're very complex networks of partnerships. So that city is one level, but we also have formal relationships with the Gladstone Institute, NASA, the Smithsonian, UC Davis, UCSF. We've worked on the Resilience by Design design challenge with Tom Leader through the Bay Observatory. And so those networks have been forming over the last 50 years, literally. And I think the last 30 and even 20 years, we've really accelerated that partnership. There're strategic partnerships, meaning that we have partners where we benefit from each other's expertise. And we've always brought in a lot of Ocher Fellows, which is a program where we have visiting scientists who've had Nobel laureates, we've had Poet Laureates, right? We've had MacArthur Geniuses, four or five of those coming through the program in order to do enrich the work.And I think that's the natural mode for the museum now is to have many, many receptors. Because what we can do, I think, is make some of that really important work, especially when it comes to the environment, environmental issues. We can provide a platform for people to understand that the complex issues that are going on around them, and a way of sorting through the information and figuring out what they think is important and not telling them what's important. It's not that kind of advocacy. It's advocacy for the visitor to feel like they understand what's happening. So they could make a more informed decision, which is very much about one of the tenants of Frank's founding, the Exploratorium was we need an informed citizenry to have a healthy democracy. You can't have it without that.Ali Nazar:Now, more than ever.Shawn Lani:Now, more than ever. And I think the need continues to increase. It's never gone away. And the notion of learning is what the body of work that we learn about is a bunch of facts. That's not true. It's the cultural pursuit of what we collectively value and that shifts over time. So only through partnerships and only through this way of thinking can the Exploratorium remain relevant. So with our work in the Studio for Public Spaces, we're working with urban planning. We work with the mayor's office, we worked with REC and Park, we work for the Trust for Public Land. We work with other people that are invested in public spaces. So oftentimes there're community groups, groups like Green Streets over in Buchanan Mall, Citizen Film.They're smaller nonprofits, but they play an incredibly important role as guides in how to make this work. And guess what? Mayor Lee used to say for the first [inaudible], "We're going to make this a bureaucracy-free zone, so you guys going to come in and do ... So it turns out it was actually bureaucracy-light. There was still a lot of bureaucracy.Ali Nazar:Yeah, that was aspirational.Shawn Lani:Yeah, it was aspirational, but you got to reach and it got us in, right? It got us the gig. But to be able to go through those permitting processes with DPW or with MTA and have a good working relationship and even watching those departments bend a little when they're not totally sure it's going to be okay. I think it's really a hopeful sign. I mean there are so many good smart people working in city government. I know that sounds crazy, but I am shocked at how dedicated they are and how willing they are to bend a little and to help things that might not be known as this is going to be a total success. But the way we work is two-year pilot projects very often. It's worth the risk to find out does this help? Are we prototyping a way for the city to work in the future and what can we learn from this lesson? It's heartening to see how many people will support that kind of activity.Ali Nazar:Yeah, I think so much as to do with the vision. So we had Ben Davis on the program who was the thought leader behind the Bay Light Shore Bay Bridge. He had to get a few different municipality organizations together to make that happen. But the vision was so strong and everybody loved that bridge. So they were like, "Yes." Like, "I get it, we want to do it," and I think you guys have that power too because you have a vision that people, like you said, you feel it's not just about when you're at the museum, it's about the next day or that night.Shawn Lani:Right.Ali Nazar:I feel that with my kids when we take them there because we're members of the Exploratorium and they talk about it for a few days afterwards, "Remember that thing? Remember that thing?" And it's a vision that's so powerful that I think is galvanizing for people to get behind.Shawn Lani:Yeah. I always joke, "It's almost a cheat when you come into a situation that's in a public space." The Exploratorium comes and like, "Oh, you guys are here." Oh, he's always so happy to see you. Like, who's going to fight with Exploratorium? Like, "We don't fight. We just want to come here and have some fun and talk about things," and so it really is a leg up to build on that many years of goodwill and tradition and I think that's super important. When it comes to brand value, people don't want a brand the Exploratorium has always striven or strived, striven? Stroven?Ali Nazar:Strove? [inaudible].Shawn Lani:Thank you. To be authentic, it doesn't lie to people. I mean, I remember, this is how crazy we can get. If you have a box of wires, it's always a question whether or not you could make it out of plexi or you should make it out of wood because if you can't see it, you might not trust that it's not just going through or connecting up. So oftentimes we'll reveal the back of an exhibit just so people can kind of test it. And I wish government was like that actually, that radical transparency, right? "Is it doing this?" And like, "I don't know, try it out." I mean if you can't tell, that's not a good exhibit. Right?That's not a good experience if you're wondering, you're scratching your head and wondering if somebody just put one over on you. And so we have always tried to have that kind of relationship and that really pays off when we go for partnerships. They sense that we're not going to get between what it is that they think is important and what they're trying to show and what the visitors are going to take in. We're all about facilitating that understanding.Ali Nazar:Well, it's, it's super cool work that you're doing and thanks for coming in this morning. I do want to ask you just next year's the 50th anniversary?Shawn Lani:Yeah.Ali Nazar:So it's such an amazing institution that we're all proud of in the Bay Area. What can we expect for next year to happen at Pier 15 or across the Bay Area?Shawn Lani:Well, we'll be opening the Social-Psychology show in July of 2019 and so that is going to be 12 to 14 exhibits outside Public Space Installation and that's going to be paired with a show about identity at the Exploratorium. This is a really interesting move I think for the museum to move into the social sciences because they're not traditionally easy to approach. But I think they are incredibly relevant, given the time. And so those are going to be two peak ... Now, we also have a lot of ongoing programming about the environment and ecologies. So we have conversations about landscapes, we have Lab and Lunch.We just hosted the climate summit, several talks about the climate summit, so we're going to be continuing that work moving forward. And also our After Darks, are every Thursday nights and those are heavily programmed. So we're kind of like a piece of broccoli in that way. You have the broccoli sprout but then you have a lot of other little things going on and then you have a lot of other things going on. But those are some of the big lobes but there's lots of other stuff going on as well.Ali Nazar:Okay, I'm sure everybody knows how to get ahold of the Exploratorium, so how about for the Director, for the Studio for Public Spaces? If people want to learn more about that, how would they learn more about it?Shawn Lani:Well, just type in Studio for Public Spaces at the Exploratorium, and you'll see the website that has a list of our projects and also a lot of the thinking and the framing of the work. We have some publications there as well, and an ongoing blog.Ali Nazar:Okay, well, great. Well, we've been talking to Shawn Lani this morning, the Director for the City for Public Spaces at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Shawn, thanks for coming in.Shawn Lani:Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much.Ali Nazar:And you've been listening to Method to the Madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM, University of California, a listener-supported radio. I'm your host, Ali Nazar. Thanks for listening everybody and have a great Friday. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Host Vishwanath Bulusu interviews brothers Ari and Andrew Cohen, creators and co-founders of Mr. Dewie's cashew milk ice cream. Started in 2011, their mission was to make a creamy, rich and delicious ice cream that also met their personal needs for being free of dairy, gluten and soy. Born and raised in Berkeley, CA, Ari and Andrew talk about how it was important for them to keep their brainchild local, and to use only natural, organic and healthy ingredients without any fillers, additives, preservatives, gums, or oils - truly homemade.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. Speaker 2:Welcome to method to the madness and [inaudible] Berkeley 90.7 FM. This is your weekly public affairs show where we celebrate the innovative spirit of bay area. I'm your host Vishwa and our guest today, our brothers already in Andrew to help clear this and Co founders of Mr Dewey suction milk ice cream [00:00:30] like the studio guys. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here. So let's start with what is Mr [inaudible]? Mr [inaudible], Speaker 3:you eat well, you said it in the, in the beginning is that is a cashew milk based ice cream that was created in my kitchen in Oakland, California. I should mention that Andrew and I were both born and raised for brothers and were born and raised in Berkeley. Went through the Berkeley school systems and uh, and I actually went to UC Berkeley, uh, as a graduate student in a Master's program here, um, back in the 90s. That's the past. [00:01:00] Currently Mr Deweese is, as you said, as a cashew based ice cream cause dairy free, gluten free, soy free, peanut free. And it is a like a Gelato, a rich, creamy, dense, intensely flavorful, uh, ice cream and gelato like ice cream. How did the idea come about? Um, the idea came out of it, you know, Andrew and I always talk about the, uh, we sort of joke that the necessity is the mother of, of, of invention. Speaker 3:In this case it was my own dietary issues that I found [00:01:30] back in, uh, the late nineties that I was lactose intolerant and also gluten and soy intolerant as well. And um, Andrew, uh, if I can speak for him as also like an intolerant and though he doesn't like to admit it as also probably Clinton sensitive as well, I'm slowly coming around. Um, and as a result of that I changed my diet and uh, and I, um, I started actually using nut milks, um, rather than dairy milk for say cereal and other things. And [00:02:00] um, started looking at that. The networks are actually really great. It was a Pecan and date nut milk that I put over hot cereals, which was really nice. Andrew, I have no background at all in, in business. And Andrew's a fantastic business person and salesperson and that's, that's his history. He started talking, we started talking about, uh, potentially packaging something like this and coming to realize fairly quickly that it really wasn't a viable product. Speaker 3:But what we both realized and, and I was very, very curious about was that it looked like it could make a really great [00:02:30] ice cream. So we started, I started sort of playing with that, doing research on it to talking to people, um, actually getting an almond milk ice cream from another state because I was so curious about it, to just study it and started making them. And as you can imagine, the first batches of these things were actually really pretty cruddy. But Andrew being a, a lactose intolerance individual who was Jonesing for good ice cream and that's this si where I jumped in was Ari was sort of the Speaker 4:[00:03:00] genius in the kitchen getting this concept invented really, because what I had found, I think what our, we had realized also is that the alternatives for ice cream in the stores, they weren't cutting it. They, they, they didn't feel that, that need, that w that I missed for ice cream. I won't name any names, but you know, some of these, um, well known brands that, not that they weren't good or couldn't have been good, some are better than others. Of course they, they didn't, um, say she ate the way ice cream did. And so the daunting [00:03:30] tasks that Ari had was to make something that was that good. And even though his first iterations seem to do, and I loved them, maybe I was just Jonesing so much, I didn't care what it was. They're, they're really bad. And yeah, he just, he couldn't get enough of them. Speaker 4:And, and we joke because I knew they weren't right. I knew they weren't, they weren't good. And it sort of drove him crazy, but right. Cause the entrepreneur in me was like, okay, let's take it to market. Let's hurry up because someone else is going to be doing this. So that's good enough. [00:04:00] Every time I would say to him, this is, this is great. Like don't mess with this because I don't want this to change. This is too good to be true. He would mess with it and it would be better. And this was during the time when he was making alternative ice cream out of almonds that has since changed over to cashews. Yeah, there's a story behind that. But um, I'll let rd continue with what he was saying in the kitchen. Well, I just want to add to what Andrew was saying, which is that for the first two years at Mr Dewey's was an existence. Speaker 4:[00:04:30] We were an almond milk ice cream. Oh, okay. That, and that's part of our story. So we started out as an almond milk ice cream. And as Andrew said, it took me about probably a year and a half of, uh, from, from the very beginning of just trying this out to getting to a point where we felt like this is, this is it, we can take this one to market. Um, and again, you know, I read all the ice cream books and, and, and tried to learn all the chemistry and really there's only three really elements that you can, you can pick up on in terms of how to make ice cream. And then I threw the book out [00:05:00] and after that, it was really just experimentation that we really, yeah, it was probably close to seven flavors. I want to ask something also that shouldn't, that one of the elements of this is that we had to make this, Ari had to make this, uh, without preservatives, without any additives, without stabilizers, without emulsifiers, with all those things that most about any gums was most other alternatives require, at least they claim to require, um, [00:05:30] to make it appear as if it is a creamy, like ice cream substance. Speaker 4:So to make his, uh, task even more daunting was that he had to make it resemble ice cream without any of those elements as well. And that also I should just say is that that's also was part of the mission, which was that as I said, the, the impetus for this, at least the very beginning was, uh, my own health and the health of my family and Andrew, you know, as part of my family as well. And so for me it really was about, um, the mission was about making a [00:06:00] great ice cream, but also making a healthy ice cream one that did not have any additives or preservatives or gums or oils or any of those things that many, uh, commercial ice creams tend to have. And as Andrew said, that was, that made the task a little more, um, interesting I should say. Speaker 4:But, uh, but that, that was important to me, uh, and to both of us. But it was really important to me that, that, um, we don't put any of those things in there because I really wanted it to be something that, that we as a family, that our standards are very high for what we added to that. So just to give [00:06:30] you an example of that, I mean, um, I'll pick a strawberry ice cream for example. Um, and this is representative of most of our ice creams. Um, it contains cashews, water, uh, strawberries, organic strawberries, organic vanilla, um, and organic cane juice, sugar. So there are five ingredients in there and that is it. If you've ever tasted ice cream before, you'll know you can, you'll know that they're, they're very flavorful and very rich and creamy. If you use enough cashews and you have the proportions correctly, you can make a great [00:07:00] ice cream without any of those other things, any of those preservatives or anything else. Speaker 4:You started off with almonds. Yes. And then you end to cashew. Why and how did that change happen? We found that to make the, the almond version as um, smooth and creamy as possible. We had to find a way to get the almonds and they had to be, you know, California organic blanched almonds and they had to be crust so fine that when you were to add water to it [00:07:30] and a most of the fire that you wouldn't need to use a cheese cloth or any type of filtration to try to catch any of the other items that might be sort of the fibrous materials inside the almond. So we found a company who, um, satisfied that requirement. They make a nut butters and they also have a, um, an almond paste they can make for us. They take this raw almonds and they crush it into a paste. Speaker 4:Let me just add to that very quickly, and that is to say that, um, when we started out doing this, uh, basically [00:08:00] what you do is you take almonds. I was literally blanching almonds myself, taking the skins off one by one and then putting it through, as Andrew said, a large, what they call a nut milk bag. So that you can so that it catches all the fibrous material. Oh and there was a point, I still remember this where Andrew and I were in my kitchen and we had made a larger batch cause we were going to do it two to do a test batch and so we had, you know you do a pint of it in the bags this big and you sort of bring it out and you get what you need. I found [00:08:30] a nut milk bag that I k the dimensions are probably like two feet by like three feet. Speaker 4:That's how large the bag was. We filled it with milk and it was like, it was like playing the bagpipes. We were trying to squeeze this thing and it took us probably like an hour and a half to get the milk out of this thing. So anyways, the point is that what Andrew is saying is it was a really daunting task and the day that we met with this other, there's nut butter company to talk to them about their machines and other and various other things [00:09:00] to figure out how to do this. We walked out of there that day, they handed us a, a box of their, of their almond butter and I put it through the usual processing and I put it through the nut milk bag and there was nothing in there. Uh, the, the size of it was so small that it just created a perfectly emulsified milk. Speaker 4:There was no fiber in there at all. And it changed our lives. It changed my life more dramatically, so we didn't have to do that anymore. And, and once [00:09:30] we got there is where things really started to take off for us with that. And we had actually just then with that batch, um, I mean almost literally with that batch he's talking about, we then made to, we're doing many things simultaneously while Ari was diligent in the kitchen, coming up with flavors using this, this new found paste or new found butter. Um, we were also working on, um, packaging, uh, our logo or logos and everything because [00:10:00] the idea was to come up with four flavors that we could put into a pint and sell at the supermarket. And we had, um, done some taste tests down at a local Oakland supermarket and they were very willing to give it a try and it was sort of a new thing and they liked it and the taste test went, uh, famously people really liked it. Speaker 4:They liked the almond version. We ended up, um, bringing four skews of our almond [00:10:30] milk to market in order to try to enhance our product line. We ended up deciding to go and add in cashew as an alternative alongside of our almond four flavors and almond and four flavors in cashew. Instantly realized based on sales, that cashew was the way to go because not only were they, uh, selling better and more and tasting better during our demos and all that at the supermarket is, but the almond prices in California to be a [00:11:00] blast organic California almond just went through the roof because of the drought and everything else. And so it was obvious to us right there that we should just pull back on the almond completely and bring those flavors into the cashew line. And I think all other flavors as well came from that as well. Speaker 4:Yeah. And I wanted to just piggyback on what he's saying about that as well is that as I started playing with the cashew paste or butter, um, it became obvious very quickly that it made a much smoother, creamier, better ice cream. [00:11:30] And so as Andrew said, once we went to market with it, it was pretty obvious that, that it was a better way to go. Started connecting to what he said previously. A lot of the things you mentioned in the regular ice creams, it's, I believe it's a lot of it has done also to increase the shelf life [inaudible] right. So how do you meet that challenge and at the same time managing to keep the costs? I want to actually want to comment on that. In that last night I served a [00:12:00] coffee ice cream that was in my freezer and Mr Dewey's come, Mr Mr Dewey's coffee cashew ice cream that was made. Speaker 4:It was manufactured in uh, December of 2014. It was, as I'm telling, I'm telling you, I should've brought it to you can see it. You got it. Yeah. It was as good yesterday. Last night I made a milkshake for my son. He wanted their coffee later in life. So we're all good so far. And Greens. That's good. Also. [00:12:30] So one of the things is, this is, this is just a throw away, but when we, when we were originally um, out there with our, when we were selling our pints, cause w eventually we ended up in about 300 grocery stores throughout the western United States with our pints. Um, one of the things that we chose to do was we wrapped the lid as well in a plastic, it's a safety seal, but it also seals in the air from co seals out the air from coming in. Speaker 4:So the seal is so tight that you have a frozen product that if it maintains it is frozen, you [00:13:00] know, a quality, it doesn't change. And so when I opened it last night, it was as good as it was at first and I'll answer a little more technically as well. The trick to getting an ice cream as fresh as you possibly can, whether it be a cashew or alternative ice cream or a traditional dairy ice cream is you have to go from the ice cream freezer. It's called, makes the ice cream from milk and into a blast freezer to a sub 20 if you can temperature as quickly as possible. [00:13:30] So you don't have crystallization happening inside. I see the more crystallized guests, the more it gets funky. Yeah. And even if some, a lot of it may not be bad for you, it just doesn't taste good. Speaker 4:It doesn't feel it's icy on the mouth and all that stuff. Uh, that's one, two, most ice cream manufacturers make their money off of what's called yield. And the yield is what [inaudible] after you put the ice cream, the dairy ice cream in the machine, it's actually called overrun. And if you're on the ice cream industry is the yield, [00:14:00] which is at, so the overrun is, is based upon how much air you're incorporating into your, um, liquid when you're actually freezing it into an ice cream. And so the more air you have, the more pockets of air you have throughout your ice cream, which can also, crystal light can melt faster and crystallized faster if it's not sealed properly or in this case, most people will have preservatives or, or you know, other stabilizers in there. Um, we don't do that. Ours is just frozen [00:14:30] fast. It's, it holds the proteins in the cashews are so, so much that they don't really even take in much air at all. So it's just a denser, easier to preserve. So one thing I noticed when I visited the store and I had been at night is the spoons with this feed, the ice cream I made of wood, I mean 100% of Speaker 3:the stuff at the store is compostable and you know, so tell me more about that. Speaker 4:That was very important to us. Um, it's, we first [00:15:00] started off with a, um, a quote compostable and quote, a plastic spoon. And we learned very quickly that they really weren't, Speaker 3:what was the city of Albany, Cambridge, you said it takes, it'll break down, but it'll take like five, five months to a year. And they [inaudible] Speaker 4:they won't take them. So I think it was in longer than that. But anyway, the point was was we thought, no, we need to be a green company. And so we found a Birchwood spoons for eating these nice compostable [00:15:30] cups. And we also use both for purposes of reusing and also for experience for the customer. A small metal spoon for tasting every spoon is kept in our freezer so that when you actually get the experience of the taste, it's not a, it's a, it's a cold experience all the way through. Speaker 3:Just a quick reminder, you are listening to method to the madness on your Calex. We are talking in the studio today with Ari and Andrew Cohain about Mr Dewey's cashew milk [00:16:00] ice cream. The name Mr Dewey is, how did that come to be? No. Yeah, no. Well Mr Dewey, well it's a lot of people ask. Many years ago, a good friend of mine and Andrews wrote this song called Mr Dewey. It was actually a great song, sort of an RMB upbeat song. Um, and it was, it was well done. And he decided he was gonna actually make a music video out of it. And, uh, we had been involved with them. Andrew was involved with him on a, on a music basis and he asked us if we would be involved in Andrew. Um, in a previous life [00:16:30] was also a videographer. And mind you, this was at a time in 1996 Speaker 4:when you still had MTV showing mostly videos [inaudible] and local cable stations would have a local music video station themselves or time slots for that. Yeah. And I was shooting, I think, I think I had just gone from VHS to svhs perhaps in my arsenal. Yeah, I know. Speaker 3:So they decided, he decided he wanted to take the song, which was pretty, pretty successful [00:17:00] and make a video out of it. And he said, you're going to be Mr Dewey in the video. And he chose Andrew to be the videographer and I guess editor as well. And yeah, I produced the video. Yeah. And, um, so we filmed this video, um, and it aired and actually believe it or not, people would recognize me as Mr Dewey out on the streets. And it became sort of this silly moniker because I played Mr Dewey and I played against character. So it was very, it was very funny. Um, over time the nickname just became [00:17:30] the sort of the silly thing. And when I was first during the nut milks themselves, somebody jokingly said, we should call it Mr Dewey's not milks. And all these nut jokes came out of that. And, and uh, as you can imagine, it wasn't, it wasn't pretty. But, um, anyways, it led to a point though where it sort of caught. And as we got to the point where Andrew and I were talking about what to name this, we continued on with Mr and Mr Dewey. Speaker 4:And that video is not who Mr Dewey is for this business. But, uh, we liked the name. It's been very catchy. And so yeah, Mr Dewey is just a fictitious character in a music video that the first time I heard of the place, [00:18:00] and this was almost three years or two years ago, I just got caught by the nail. Like, okay, this is a very interesting name. It's complaints. I'm just out of curiosity, I'm just curious, what does it conjure up for you? The named Mr Dewey? I honest, think of this umbrella man, like some guy dancing on the seat. Interesting. Yeah. How can the hat on? I mean that's the picture I get [inaudible] to do it. Yeah, that's cool. I have my own image of Mr Dewey, but it's kind of, oh my image. Mr Deweese is actually a m. He's my wife's first cousin who's in his sixties [00:18:30] and he's just this wise, thoughtful, generous, loving person and who gives to other people. Speaker 4:And to me that, that sort of what I decided Mr. Duke was it. We're a healthy option for people to have great ice cream and we're so we're giving to the community with what we're doing. So all along I thought it was just a logo [inaudible] so you pointed out earlier that you were sort of split out across western us. Yes. Right. From what I remember, you sort of cut it back [00:19:00] down now. Right's very local now. Well, you know, Andrew Hood had alluded to this earlier, that same nut butter company that made the paste. We agreed at a certain point that we would merge together and we saw, we started working with them and it was with them and through them that Andrew and I basically ran Mr Dewey's under that umbrella. Um, we got into, as we said, about 300 stores throughout sort of California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, [inaudible], western states. Speaker 4:And um, eventually we were [00:19:30] actually doing pretty well. We were ascending. It's a really, really difficult game to play. You're making pints and you're putting them on trucks and you have brokers and distributors and you know, the stores actually the antithesis of what Mr do was really stood for. We didn't realize that, you know, we're not this corporate structure. We don't play well with the corporate structure. That arena doesn't make any sense. Uh, it became very painful in a way. There was no control [00:20:00] in Europe. Sort of robotic. Yeah. Your strings chunk turned out. It goes into the pines, it goes on the pallets. Palletize the giant behemoth companies come pick it up and they're giant trucks. They decide if and when they're going to pick it up. They decide how cold frigid and trust are going to be, which scared he and I because our babies are leaving there and we want someone to enjoy that at the other end, and I, we said earlier with the crystallization that things melt and then refreeze that's when you get crystallization. Speaker 4:What kills it. It was not a good fit for us and we hung in there for [00:20:30] quite a while doing this until there were the crossroads and at those crossroads we had the option to take back the company. We ended up purchasing back and re owning our brand asset and really take a big risk because doing that we also took it off all shelves. We were not manufacturing [inaudible] and we decided we would only go and try our hat in a retail shop, which is the one on Salano avenue in Albany. And then also try and get back into our local [00:21:00] grocers, those who are sort of non-corporate who just want us to be on their shelves for their local customers and sort of in the path of, cause I do all the deliveries of where I can maintain, you know, a an easy route. Yeah. Speaker 4:We got, we were completely disillusioned by the whole process and as Andrew said, our manufacturing facilities in San Leandro, one of our shops is an Albany, the other one is in Emeryville. Our distribution is everywhere between San Leandro and [00:21:30] Albany. So we can see it just makes a lot of sense for us to do it that way. It's the main outlet. I at it on that route for the most part. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, um, and I want to just give a shout out to farmer Joe's. Cause farmer Joe's is the store that Andrew was referring to earlier on some. Now given you an at this scale, where do you source your ingredients from? It isn't a giant company or something helping you out with that. Yeah, well actually in the separation from the larger company, what we did continue to do was purchase our cashew butter from them. I think much higher [00:22:00] rate, but yeah, but not a whole lot higher. Speaker 4:So we still have a relationship with them. I see they do a great job of sourcing, sourcing the cashews and breaking them down into the pace that we use to make our ice cream. And what are the biggest challenges you face now? Our biggest challenge I think is not, well, so earlier on it was trying to figure out how to uh, actually sell our ice cream in a retail fashion. Lot of hiccups and lot of hurdles and you learn and you learn. We're still learning, but we kinda got it down now. I will not [00:22:30] speak for Ari. I'll just be for myself on this one, that our biggest hurdle now is how to scale up. Again. We don't want to go back to that other model. We're getting very well known slowly that sort of the circle sort of going outwards very slowly and very methodically. Speaker 4:We were getting requests to have Mr Deweese in every city in other states and and we don't, we're not sure what to do with all that yet. At the same time, we also know that there's other companies or the people who may be [00:23:00] close behind us, so we think we were probably on the floor of the front end of this curve is trend. How do we maintain that front runner seat and not expand so fast or so far that we lose control of its quality and our face being big and fast. It's not necessarily good. And I think we learned that lesson and so as Andrew said, we're very thoughtful about how we do want to grow with this. Recognizing that it's probably a good idea for us to do it, but not at, not [00:23:30] at the risk of us. Again, feeling like we've lost control of this and so we're, we're thinking about it, we're talking about it, we're talking with, we're consulting with other people and, and moving forward with the understanding that we do want to figure out how to grow this. Interestingly enough, you know, when, when I think about Speaker 3:what are the challenges, sort of the day to day challenges. It's funny cause there's, there's a relationship to what Andrew was saying, which is that for me personally, I source all the ingredients for our ice cream and the hot, one of the hardest parts about this is that [00:24:00] we're a very, we went from being a very large company to a very small company, but a company that we're small but we're not that small. And what I mean by that is that, so when we're sourcing sourcing stuff, sourcing ingredients, many of the companies from whom or the vendors from whom we get our, our ingredients, they don't want to deal with us. Would you? So you end up having to compromise. You have to pay a lot of money to get ingredients that you need and you can't meet their minimums. Their minimums are like 10,000 pounds [00:24:30] of, you know, of cashews or cashews isn't a good example. Speaker 3:But like of almonds in our caramel almond crunch, as we scale up, that'll get easier and better. But for right now, I've been working with people for a long time and they keep, you know, I keep getting cut off by them. Like you're not meeting our minimums and so you can't do this. And you know, I was just saying today, uh, we're working with a company now who does huge amounts of of sales with their almonds. So we have an ice cream. Our biggest seller is caramel almond crunch and the almond crunch [00:25:00] is, is a as a dice roasted almond. And I couldn't find them. The company from whom we were getting them was, wasn't getting them anymore. And so I went looking around and anyways, not not to bore you with this, but ultimately we ended up finding this, this small farm that does organic almonds, but they export, I mean, you know, they, they sell in huge amounts and this guy just loved the concept of a organic Vegan ice cream. Speaker 3:And he said, man, I don't care what anybody says, I'm selling [00:25:30] to you guys. And, and I say that because I talked to him today. We're just today we were talking and he said, you know, I get in a lot of trouble with my staff because they don't want to deal with you guys. And I told them, it doesn't matter. We're going to honor this because we love what they're doing. And that, that's, that's the cool side of it. The hard side is that on any given day, we're constantly negotiating to get our needs met with our ingredients. That's what any cool story from, you know, the fact that you had in Walden running and managing it. Right. Are there any, [00:26:00] you know, fun stories from you behind the counter? You know, we feel customers, well I just was going to say that there's a lot of them. Speaker 3:I have to say. I actually, I'll tell you this and not because I'll tell you, I want to tell Andrew also is that yesterday there were two women that came in yesterday. They were eating ice cream and they said, we want to let you know that before we leave we're going to get a 10 pints because we're go, we're taking them home with us. We got to talking and they said when you guys were in Hetero Pints and whole foods, uh, we're from a town [00:26:30] in northern California, a couple of hours from here. So we used to buy your pints there and we loved, it was the only ice cream I can eat. I'm lactose intolerant and I can't do gluten either. And so we just, we now do, we have a, so that every couple of months we drive down, not for anything else. We come down here to get your ice cream. We bring it back home. She had this big container filled with ice to bring it home with. And she was just so thankful that we're at least in existence still not that your own home, but I'm just saying that there's a lot of people [00:27:00] out there who really appreciate the fact that there's an ice cream that is, there is no dairy or gluten or soy and that is Vegan and that, um, that is [inaudible]. Speaker 4:Yeah, it's actually, it's a, it's an emotional thing. We've had a whole lot endless supply of customers coming through, especially in the beginning. Uh, they still do, but who come in with tears in their eyes because then shaking, visibly shaking because they haven't had ice cream for, they can't, for whatever reason, for many, [00:27:30] many years. And here's this oasis of ice cream they can have. We also get one of my favorites, and this happens also very frequently, people will come in almost with scowls on their face because they're just so, they've been dragged in by somebody else. They're averse to the whole concept of anything besides their dairy ice cream, their whatever favorite, you know, a brand they like. They almost always go from very, very reluctant to saying our favorite line, this is better than ice cream. [00:28:00] We get, it became our slogan like Mr Dewey, like ice cream only better. It happens a lot at where people come in. Just not wanting to even try it and leaving with the pint or you know. Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's amazing. I mean I should also mention it happened to me, right? I am a regular ice cream later, but I've never, I literally phased out completely eating regular ice cream. Is there some way more, if our listeners could get to know more about you guys somewhere to contact you or get in touch. Okay. Yeah. Anytime they [00:28:30] can email us for sure. Which is the, can email Andrew or Ari Info you can mail to info at Mr Dewey's dot com? Yeah. Okay. Is there any things to catch all? So anything we'll get through us. They can call the stores the Emeryville public market or the one on Solano Avenue in Albany. Um, you can go to www.mr Dewey's dot com if they want to just look at our website and get an idea of that. And do is, by the way, for your listeners, it's not spelled the way they might think it's spelled. It's spelled first of all, [00:29:00] Mr Mr. Period. Of course. But Dewey, d, e, w, e, s not the e. Why with that, people often confuse it with thanks guys. Thanks for coming today because you don't have a lot of the listeners. Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us. Thank you. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Host Ali Nazar interviews Rachel Taber and Doug Hewitt, founders of 1951 Coffee Company in Berkeley, which is a non-profit focused on providing job training and employment to refugees and asylees in the Bay Area.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:[inaudible], Speaker 2:you're listening to k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM, university of California listener supported radio. And this is a method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Ali Nasar. [00:00:30] And today in studio we have with us Rachel Taber and Doug Hewitt, the cofounders of 1951 coffee company here in Berkeley. Hi Rachel. Hi Doug. Hello. Good morning. Uh, thanks for coming in. Um, and the first question I always ask founders, we've had a lot of founders on the show and we always start with the same question, which is people create organizations for usually cause they see a problem and there's something they're trying to have a vacuum they're trying to fill. So, uh, can you guys [00:01:00] explain to us what is the problem that you're trying to solve with 1951 coffee? Speaker 3:Yeah, I can get started on it. Uh, Doug and I met while working at the international rescue committee, which is a global nonprofit that does humanitarian aid internationally and also has, um, dozens of offices across the u s that help resettle refugees. And I'd always been more on the volunteer coordinating and fundraising and operations side. And Doug was more deeply involved in employment [00:01:30] and resettlement and more of the hands on service and Hawaii office together a ton. And our programs overlapped. And I think for both of us, we, we saw the Herculean effort that resettlement agencies provide and what they're aiming to help with a refugee arriving. And there's just, there's not enough service providers, there's not enough people out there helping refugees. And so when a refugee arrives on the u s the US State Department sets the program [00:02:00] and they set it that the average amount that person will get arriving in the country, it's about a thousand dollars per person to restart their life. Speaker 3:And that amount doesn't really change depending on what city you're in in the u s and as you can imagine, that is not enough. It has to be used to help someone find a new apartment to help with clothing, supplies, transportation. And it has to be some money left over for spending. And so because of how the resettlement program is set up from the u s government, it [00:02:30] makes employment the most critical piece for refugee once they arrive in the u s and that's kind of, that was the crux of where we saw a lot of the needs. Speaker 2:Yeah. So the, the u s government expects for a refugee to be economically self sufficient within six months. Uh, that's the goal. And so that challenge is one that, that we saw that there needed to be a resource in the community, uh, that could help refugees overcome some of the barriers between them and the u s Speaker 4:[00:03:00] job market. And some of the things that we had seen, um, were, you know, not having references, not having verifiable, uh, work experience. And so we began to look and see if there was a way that we could create something in the community that would be a bridge between what the refugee resettlement agencies were doing and what us employers. Uh, we're, we're looking for, uh, in staff members. And so, um, we decided to, to create 1951 coffee company to kind of be that, that bridge between those two. Yeah. That's amazing. [00:03:30] And can you tell us what is 90 51 coffee? Why was it named that? Speaker 3:Uh, Doug came up with it, so I have to give him credit. And for anyone that's worked in the refugee resettlement world, you know, the date. And so there's maybe like 0.5% of the population that understands it, but it's the year that the UN held a convention in Geneva, Switzerland with the well over, I think 140 or 50 nations. And it set forth the definition, a legal definition for refugees and a guideline for their protection. And the linchpin of [00:04:00] that convention is something called [inaudible], which means that a nation that signs on to the agreement of protecting refugees cannot send someone home if they're there seeking asylum and protection from a fear of death in their own country or persecution. And what is the definition of refugee? It is, sorry, this is, I had, I had to memorize this recently for a presentation. Um, it is someone who owing to a well founded fear of persecution based on the reasons of race, religion, nationality and membership [00:04:30] of a particular social group or political opinion is outside of his or her country. And because of such fear they are unable or unwilling to avail themselves to their home country for protection. So it's basically someone facing persecution for these reasons. Race, religion, nationality, political group, social, you know, social group and they fear persecution or death in their home country and so greatly so that they leave and they have to leave. That's part of the definition. Speaker 4:And what is the U N program? [00:05:00] Um, the, I mean I'm assuming that it's not binding. It's a set of guidelines for countries that have signed on to the charter. Is that how it works? Right, right. So initially the, um, in 1951, it was looking at what was happening with World War II and a lot of it focused mainly on, on Europe. Um, later conventions came along and then the 1967 protocols came along that ultimately expanded to a global mandate. Um, but again, it is a, an agreement that people, uh, countries have signed on to, [00:05:30] um, to participate in the, uh, protection of refugees, of people who are fleeing, um, for, for reasons, as Rachel said, for persecution, for fear of death. Um, and a way to protect people in, in dire situations. Yeah. And, um, you know, we want to talk a little bit, I mean, it's, this is a problem that the world has seen for a long time. This is, as you said, in response somewhat to World War II, but right now we're seeing one of the greatest refugee crisis in history. And so I want to get to modern day, uh, the modern [00:06:00] day problems. And what'd you guys do in solving the second? But first I always want to ask founders, cause I think there's such an interesting breed of people who, uh, put things on the line to create something. And, um, so let's hear a little bit about your guys' sells. How about you first, Rachel, how did you come to working with refugees? Speaker 3:Uh, how did I, it was a dear friend of mine that we had met doing fundraising together. Um, I started a nonprofit straight out of college and doing grant writing and social enterprise work. And my husband's Grad school pulled [00:06:30] us out to the bay area. We were in Denver at the time, uh, and we took a day to figure out where to live and we decided it was Berkeley and we've been here for a decade now. And while doing, um, fundraising and development for a nonprofit in Walnut Creek, a dear friend of mine got hired at the IRC and I had been an international affairs major in college at, at UC Boulder. And they had a great program where they would host lost boys of Sudan. Uh, which a lot of people have heard of that documentary or [inaudible] of the fact that there were [00:07:00] thousands of orphan boys because of the conflict in Sudan. Speaker 3:And so families would host them and they would do a work study program. And a lot of them studied political science or international affairs in the hopes of going back home one day and you know, being the future leaders of their country. And so that was my first exposure to it. And so there was an open position at IRC and my friends slowly, um, pulled me back in and it was a great moment to kind of get more on the front lines and reconnect with what had been my collegiate passionate. And can you tell us what, what's IRC? [00:07:30] Oh, it's the international rescue committee and they're the, are they the biggest refugee resettlement organizations in America or, I'd say they're one of the leading, there's nine a, they're called voluntary agencies that are contracted with the US State Department to conduct the refugee resettlement program. Um, and I believe they have 25 30 offices around the U S in a humongous global presence. Okay. And my favorite part of that story, one of my favorite parts took you only a day to figure out live in Berkeley's. Yeah. John. Thank you. Uh, Speaker 4:Doug, what about you? How'd [00:08:00] you get to work with refugees? Yes. So I started working with refugees actually in a very literal sense. Um, I was working at a cafe and, uh, mill valley and there was a young man who had been hired to, to work there while I was, was there and we were, they had two cash registers and we were working side by side. And um, in, in getting to know him, you know, I could just interacting with them, I, I could tell, you know, we were originally was not from the United States. And, um, one day over lunch we had a lunch break at the same time and he, [00:08:30] I just asked, you know, how did you come to the u s and he began to share with me his story about coming from Eritrea and how he fled across borders and eventually boarded a boat to try to cross the Mediterranean, his journey. Speaker 4:Um, through that, you know, while we were sitting or there in that 30 minute break, uh, in mallet mill valley just completely changed, uh, the way that I had seen the world. I had never sat and talked with someone who had been on a journey like that. Um, and hearing his firsthand account and all the he had been through. And then to see that we were both roughly the same age, [00:09:00] both of us love playing soccer. Uh, we were working in the same job. I had come to that position from very, very different, uh, situations. Um, I began, we became really good friends, uh, began to get to know his community more. Um, and at that point it really just inspired me to, to see that there was a place that I had to, to be involved there. And so I also, um, found out about the international rescue committee, one of their offices we're in, we're in Oakland. Speaker 4:And so I began the process of volunteering with them, teaching English, uh, mentoring, uh, [00:09:30] new refugees coming to the country. And then eventually, um, after spending a stent, a roasting coffee for about a year, uh, spend, uh, I began working at international rescue committee and I was really just right, kind of put down my roots. Okay, great. We're talking to Doug Hewitt and Rachel Taber, they're the co founders of 1951 coffee. It's a coffee shop and nonprofit here in Berkeley, um, that is, uh, focused on providing, um, job training and, um, like comically resettling refugees here in the bay area. [00:10:00] Um, and so I think I might have know the answer to this, but I wanted to ask it anyway just by what you just said. Doug, why coffee? So I understand why you guys are trying to create jobs for refugees, but you had to, you could create any business in the world. Speaker 4:Why'd you create a coffee business? Yeah, so I think that, um, one, Rachel and I both love coffee. Even when we were working at our previous jobs, uh, we kinda did a, an informal survey of all the coffee that was around our office. And so we kind of had our [00:10:30] all thing on our whiteboard at work. Um, but I think, you know, as we began to look at the skills that we had, um, both of us had worked in coffee before, had been in Baristas. I had roasted coffee before. Um, we knew that that was something that we could teach and train people. And we also knew from previous experience that the coffee industry here in the bay area is, is huge. Um, everything from the green coffee warehouses that are, that are in Oakland. Um, and because of those warehouses are there, there's a lot of roasters that have a presence here in this area. Speaker 4:[00:11:00] And then, you know, having a massive number of cafes, um, Berkeley is known for having the largest number of cafes per capita of anywhere in the country. Um, and so in places like San Francisco and Oakland are very similar to that. Um, and so we knew that it was an opportunity, you know, if we could help refugees enter into the coffee industry here, especially, um, it could be an opportunity for them to intern, not just into, uh, an entry level job, but something that could be an entrance into a career as well. And just [00:11:30] beyond the fact that it's not only a career economically, it is truly the best position someone can get when they arrive in the u s and I think that as we talk with people more about the challenges that are so unique and inherent to the refugee population, it just, it's, it's eye opening to a lot of people because when you come to the u s you need to find a job. And we had talked about some of the challenges earlier, Speaker 3:but it's just compounded by the fact that a refugee has this economic crisis and they arrive that that resettlement money, [00:12:00] they get get spent so quickly because it's so expensive to live here. And no matter what a person's background, we someone could have been an agriculture their entire life with a couple of years of formal education and now they're here in the u s and another person could have two PhDs and you know, fabulous, you know, high level career and they will both need to get a job within the same amount of time. And that time is so short that there's absolutely zero ability for them to wait for long hiring processes [00:12:30] to go through long job skills training programs. And so vast majority above 90% 95 a hundred percent half, they will find an entry level position. That is all they have the time for and they have the needs so immediately and we felt that there was an opportunity to help someone get a better job and not just economically and economically Baristas make sense. Speaker 3:You know, minimum wage hovers around 1250 right now, you know, it's lb increasing soon in Berkeley and other areas. But a Barista gets hired at about 13 to $15 an hour [00:13:00] so that just hands down is higher. But additionally it's a tipped position and there is a income survey by a coffee publication a few years back and San Francisco and Oakland are the first and third respective highest Barista incomes across the country and tips at around $4 per hour. And so if you're looking, and I was a credit coach that my ended my time at the IRC. And when you're looking at someone that's working, probably one and a half jobs, two jobs, making 1250 an hour versus [00:13:30] $17 an hour is huge. And that's a big difference. In addition to just the economic factor, I think something that Degen I felt very passionate is we would meet incredible people like just spirit and this drive to do something and we would find them in jobs that aren't bad. Speaker 3:I mean not bad jobs at ones that wouldn't push them to integrate in their new community. And that's a lovely thing about the coffee culture in the bay area and in the u s is that becomes your third place. That's that [00:14:00] you have your Barista, you have your drink, you know those names. And so the ability to kind of reach across the bar and create those dignified relationships both with your coworkers behind and with the people that are visiting the cafe is just a level of social integration that is not available in jobs right now. I've always found that the best ideas are ones that seem really obvious after they've been created. One more than the way you talk about it. It means a ton of sense. One thing that doesn't make sense to me is if the resettlement program, [00:14:30] I'll use $1,000 and there's this economic clock ticking. Why would any refugees come to the bay area? I mean it's so expensive. Here's what, how does that work? How do they choose the geography of the country to go to? So there, there is some level of um, study so that a refugee has and where they end up very often during the resettlement they being asked Speaker 4:questions about, you know, do you have family members already located in specific countries? Um, and then there are also, you know, different countries who accept [00:15:00] refugees for resettlement. They have different criteria, um, and they will accept different types of refugees or have priorities toward different types of refugees. Um, and so that can kind of, you know, funnel down who, who goes where. Um, ultimately, you know, there's a, a process that the resettlement agencies go through and the, the u s government goes through, they, you know, they meet together and they talk about each case and they discuss, you know, which case would be a best fit for which location. Now, if a refugee happens to have family member or friends, um, living in a specific area, [00:15:30] you know, that'll be a place where they were more than likely to end up. So very often here in the bay area, that'll, that'll be, you know, a large number of the cases. Speaker 4:They have family members or friends who have already been here, resettled and maybe in earlier resettlement, um, you know, processes or, um, maybe they came, you know, a year, six months before. Um, and then sometimes it is just a process of this seems to be the location where they could be served the best. Um, and yes, it is an expensive process to resettle people here, but you know, all the agencies [00:16:00] are looking at trying to find the best fit for the specific case. They're getting their given details on the case. Um, and they're trying to find the best location to, to help someone get, get started and you know, the bay area for, for its difficulty economically. It does provide an opportunity for people who want to live in a very diverse place to be welcomed. And I think that's, that's one aspect of socialization here. Um, and the welcome for people from very diverse backgrounds, um, kind of balances out that economic hardship in some ways. [00:16:30] Yeah, that's a really interesting point because, Speaker 2:um, of with all the politicization of this issue these days, especially from, uh, he who will not be named as our president, um, I, I wonder what would happen to refugees in parts of the country that have been kind of whipped up in this fear or against refugees, but probably have never met one and have no personal connection to them. It's almost like they would, they would do better to actually interact with the refugee [00:17:00] or someone who's not like them. But that's a lot to ask of of someone who's trying to start a new life. I mean, is there in, in deep red states, are, is IRC or other programs, are they settling refugees there or is it only in places like, like you said, Doug were, there's a little bit more of a, um, a diverse and progressive bias. So Speaker 4:refugee resettlement is taking place in about 200 cities across the country. Uh, which means inevitably it is going to be in places that, you know, some places that are very [00:17:30] supportive, some places that are not so supportive of the process. Um, and you know, refugee resettlement agencies all across the country are, you know, have that key piece in mind. You know, how do we effectively resettle people here in a way that this, you know, this larger community around, they're becoming a part of that larger community and not, you know, creating these two different within one location. Um, and so you'll see that a lot of, a lot of resettlement agencies will, will do as much as they can to kind of pound the pavement and get local buy-in, um, [00:18:00] find, you know, organization groups of people, um, to, to welcome refugees and be a part of that. Speaker 4:Welcoming process. Cause there's a very big difference when, you know, as an agency or a government entity, you come in and be like, we're going to resettle refugees in this location versus going into that community, getting buy in from the community and say, Hey, will you be a part of the welcoming process? You know, it's the same thing going into someone's home. If you just barge in the front door, it's very different than if you, you know, that person invites you into their home. And so that's a role that the refugee [00:18:30] resettlement agencies often play is working with that larger community too, to find a way for them to be involved in that welcome process. Um, and at that point, you know, you then to have, have that more buy in. Um, and I think it kind of eases that process and does create that opening year that you were talking about for people to get to know people Speaker 2:well who are, who are different from them. Yeah. It's a, it's really amazing that the work you guys do in this whole process. I'm learning a lot about this morning, we're talking to Doug Hewitt and Rachel Taber. They are the cofounders of 1951 [00:19:00] coffee company, let's say, nonprofits started here in Berkeley to help integrate refugees into the bay area. Um, so, you know, we talked a lot about the kind of a global or you know, macro issues here, but let's talk about some of the stories. I'm sure you guys have some amazing stories of people who have worked in your shop. You guys started in 2015. Is that right? Speaker 3:Well, the, we quit our jobs to find or launch 1951 in 2015 but at the cafe only opened about four months ago. And [00:19:30] serendipitously we opened three days before the first failed travel again. Uh, so the cafe arm of what we're doing is new. Prior to that, um, you know, 2015 was a lot of business planning and incorporating and curriculum development. In 2016 we started a Barista training program, which Doug teaches and facilitates. And the thought behind it was, you know, when we first we first put our stake in the ground and you know, started meeting in our, you know, small little broken folding chairs, startup office, [00:20:00] um, with the coffee shop and, and it would be not only a place to help the greater community and the refugee community intersect and allow it to be an advocacy moment and provide job opportunities. And as we started getting deeper into it, we're like, great. Speaker 3:Even if it's just the most slamming busy cafe in Berkeley, maybe out of Maxville employ 13, 15 people and each one of those souls and people are important and wonderful, but that is a smaller impact than the number of people arriving and that we were hoping to effect. [00:20:30] And so while we were waiting for the notoriously long Berkley permit process to go, uh, we started at a job turning program and there is a church in Oakland called regeneration, uh, right by lake merit. And they have a coffee shop. It's beautiful and large and they only use it on Sundays. And so they rent it to us for Monday through Friday. And we hold a two week course that provides around 40 hours of job skill training, vocational, English, customer service, US workforce, cultural orientation [00:21:00] and job placement assistance. And so we've had around 50 people graduate from that class in the last year and a half. And we have amazing employment partners including blue bottle, Starbucks, Dropbox, and some other local cafes around the bay area. Speaker 4:So I would assume that most of the people with the refugees going through your program and they're not of the double phd style. Um, is that, is that a good assumption or if you're training them to go into, sorry, be Baristas. Um, are they more of the people who didn't have [00:21:30] a profession from where they're coming from? So we've actually, we've trained, um, quite a few people. Um, we've trained people who, you know, they were, you know, had never really held a job at all before. Um, and we've trained people. We had a medical doctor go through our training. We had, um, an actor, a, I go through our training, we've had engineers go through our training. Um, so we've had the whole, the whole gamut of the varieties of different people going through our training because again, everyone who is arriving in the country, they need [00:22:00] to get a job and they need to get as soon as possible. Speaker 4:And what we are providing through that training is we can be a reference for them. We can be a local us reference that will help them get that initial job. We had a, uh, a guy that worked with us for a while at our cafe before he moved. Um, and he had gone through 15 different job interviews. He was the head of HR for a global hotel in his home country. Um, but he went through 15 different interviews here and needed to get a job very quickly. And very often the response was, it's gonna take some [00:22:30] time to go through this process or you're overqualified, sorry, this isn't going to work out. And so for him to be able to go through our training to get a job, to be able to get started for him was, was huge. Um, and so, you know, that's the situation that, you know, a lot of people are in, you know, they need something just to get moving, just to get started. And the, all the other career pieces, the longterm things will figure themselves out once they get that stabilized. And Are you guys, uh, do you have a plan to track what happens? I mean, are [00:23:00] they, are they part of like a alumni club or, Speaker 3:yeah, we know. And I think the wonderful part about the program is it's, it's two weeks and it's intense and you're there every day and you're highly caffeinated and we provide snacks and we have a, it's really fun. There's a ton of comradery. And so, you know, Justin natural black, we have a fun Facebook group and people come back to the cafe that's now open and grab a coffee and we stay in touch with most people. And you know, to start, we had to be pretty scrappy, um, because starting a nonprofit and a coffee [00:23:30] shop is hyper expensive. And I had done fundraising for a lot of my life. Um, and so that came in to help. But a lot of our foundations do want to see longitudinal outcomes. And we just are coming up at about a year and a half that the program has been running. And we are starting to see some of that. And I think one of the amazing parts of people that are coming in new to this country is, is they want stuff, they want someone to invest in them and they want to invest somewhere. And even if it is for, you know, that year or two or a couple, [00:24:00] um, they'll pop, people stick at those jobs and they love them. And like, we just had one of our early job placements with blue bottle celebrate his first year. And you know, and that's, that's just really exciting. Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a, it sounds like there's going to be lots of opportunity for you guys to have celebrate success stories and, um, and provide even maybe more services. And, um, is the idea that the curriculum that you developed could be something that would be shared across other parts of the country? [00:24:30] And is this something, is that the designs that you guys have? Yes. So we've, we've put a lot of thought into, you know, how we want to grow, you know, 1951 and we realize, you know, from having been in a network, you know, with or with refugee resettlement agencies and knowing that there are 200 cities across the country where refugees are being resettled. And knowing that coffee is something that permeates the u s life and culture. I mean, that's one of the first things we do when we wake up in the morning as find our cup of coffee. Speaker 4:And so we know that there is an opportunity for this training [00:25:00] to, to be taken and expanded into other locations. And so that's something that we're, we're actively looking for those, those partners and other locations that we can, you know, go in and help something get started. Um, that is our, that is our goal right now and we're looking, you know, actively for that. Um, and so yeah, we're, we're definitely open to that and actively pursuing it. Alright, cool. Well, I wanted to ask you guys about world refugee day that's coming up on June 20th I believe. So just in a couple of weeks. Uh, so tell us about what, what that is and what 1951 [00:25:30] doing, uh, in regards to that. Right. So, um, World Refugee Day is on, uh, June 20th. And you know, we have a variety of, uh, events that we have going on. I actually, throughout the summer, uh, one of the things we have going on right now is, uh, a travel with us campaign is actually our, um, one of our senior Baristas came up with the campaign in order to, to highlight the six different countries, uh, that we have people, um, from that work in our, our cafe. Speaker 4:And so each week, throughout the summer, they're taking a different week and they're highlighting either food [00:26:00] beverages, uh, cultural items from, from their countries. So right now, um, we have, uh, Butan as the country this week. Next week will be Burma. And then so on going through our, uh, we have our, our Instagram accounts in our Facebook accounts, we kind of have a calendar of, of all those things going on during world refugee week. Um, we're going to be involved in a few different things. We have some, some groups coming in, uh, to kind of hold some informational things so that they can learn more about refugees and having our, uh, Baristas, uh, she kind of share some of their information and stories. [00:26:30] Uh, and then we also have, um, some programs that are going gonna do kind of throughout that day, um, leading up to the evening. And so, um, yeah, you should definitely come by and check it out. Speaker 3:Yup. It's hard this year at World Refugee Day falls during Ramadan and a lot of refugees that come are Muslim. And so it is a more interesting year to have it because there's not as many, you know, activities for everyone to participate in during the day. So. Okay. Well, um, that sounds like there's lots of ways for [00:27:00] people to get involved and it sounds like, uh, the best way to get to follow you guys as social media on Instagram or Facebook. And I think, you know, we have so many people that reach out to us and say, what can we do? We want to help the situation and what and weave that. I mean once you talk to someone and explain to them who a refugee is, what they've been through and why they are here, I have yet to ever meet someone. Doesn't matter where I am in the country or where they're from that isn't like I support that and I want to help and we wanted to do is make it easier for someone to [00:27:30] feel like they could have an impact on someone's life. Speaker 3:And so by just coming in and doing your regular, no selfish but you know your regular caffeine purchase and you're actually putting money right into the pocket of refugees that are new here and a need, that sort of economic boost. And something that's been really fun for us to see now that we're running into our fifth six month of operation is our payroll is $20,000 a month and that's $20,000 of wages and health benefits and other supports that our staff get. [00:28:00] And as a nonprofit when you come in, you're buying your cup, your milk, your beans, and then you are giving money to people who want a dignified job, want respect and, and love it and want to be there. And so it's just our call to action is like, please just come grab a coffee, make us your regular caffeine fix when you're driving around and are thinking of, or where can I have that meeting? Speaker 3:It's, it's a, it's easy to do. We all buy coffee and there's parking right below the cafe, which is hard to find sometimes in the day area. The cafe [00:28:30] is at 24, 10 chatting way. Uh, so we're right across from unit three housing, uh, right next to Beverly Cleary. Um, yeah. So just a few blocks from here. Yeah. Yep. We're just about half block down from telegraph. Great. And I always close the interview with this. We've been talking to Doug Hewitt and Rachel taper. They're the cofounders of 1951 coffee company right here in Berkeley. A nonprofit that helps refugees, gets their lives started here in America. Um, I always end with this question. You guys have started this thing from scratch [00:29:00] and you're in the heat of the battle right now, getting it launched. That's always fun. Congratulations. By the way, it's not easy to get to where you've gone. Speaker 3:Um, but let's just fast forward five years from now and everything breaks perfectly for you guys. Where would 1951 coffee company B then? I think that we would, you know, as we, as we grow, um, I think that we would, we would really like to see our training program, you know, open in other cities to be able to have an access [00:29:30] and have a flow of, of refugees being trained and placed in the coffee industry and those locations. We've kind of looked at some different cities, Seattle, San Diego, uh, Dallas, Washington, D C But we're also open to Speaker 4:a lot of other places that the opportunities could, could arise. Um, I think in addition to that, being able to, you know, open, you know, one cafe in some of those, those cities as well. Um, it would be something that we would like to do in order to have a, a physical presence there as a representation to the larger business [00:30:00] community of what it can look like for refugees to be, to be working in your space. You know, we run the cafe here. Everyone who works there is a refugee and they're doing a great job. And I think that's important for the business community to see when they're looking to hire one or two or three refugees to, to be a part of their, their work. And so I think that's something we would like to do. And then just having that physical presence as, as an advocacy point. Speaker 4:Um, because you know, when someone says, you know, I want to support refugees, what do I do? They can immediately just walk into the, you know, the office of, you know, one of the resettlement agencies and be like, I'm [00:30:30] here. What do I do? Um, but with a cafe they can walk in, they can immediately purchase that cup of coffee and begin to have an impact right away, get to know the Baristas, learn about the community. And so we would like to continue to have that same impact in other places as well. Doug and I made a deal that if this goes on 10 years, we're going to get a tattoo of our 1951 logo. So that's what I look forward to seeing were tugs. Can you get us down to very practical? Well, that was Doug Hewett [00:31:00] and Rachel tape, one of the cofounders of 1951 coffee company right here in Berkeley. A two, four, four one chanting, is that right? 24, 10 24 10 chanting. And how do they find you on Instagram? Just 1951 1951 coffee, uh, on Instagram. On Facebook. Uh, and on Twitter. Alright, everybody go get your coffee from 1951 coffee. And you've been listening to method to the madness here in Kale, x, Berkeley, 90.7 FM. Have a great Friday. Everybody. 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Comedian Irene Tu co-hosts comedy shows Hysteria, Man Haters, and the Mission Positions around the Bay Area. She was recently named one of KQED's Women to Watch.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness, a weekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators today, UC Berkeley student, and a sterling. We'll interview comedian Irene to about her recent work. Speaker 2:[inaudible] Speaker 3:[00:00:30] so I got this haircut recently. Anna used to have a really long hair and people would come up to me a lot and asked me if I was gran, which I am not. I'm Chinese. And right after it got this haircut, [00:01:00] my mom was like, oh, you look Japanese. Really? I was going for straight and if we didn't get that last joke or how I'm dressed, I'm very stylish. [inaudible] stylish, I mean gay. Speaker 4:Welcome to [00:01:30] the show, Irene too. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Uh, so you live in the East Bay now, but you're originally from Chicago, right? Right. Or nearish, right. And suburbs. So it depends on who you ask for. Sure. Why did you move out here? Um, I actually went to school in Berkeley, uh, here at UC Berkeley. Uh, so that's pretty much the only reason I moved. And when I was a girl, I was like, I wanted, uh, I want to move to California. So this was like my best way to leave Chicago. Yeah. And [00:02:00] what'd you study? I majored in Asian American Studies. So in this building then rev five floors up in Barrows, embarrass hall. Fantastic. So it's Kinda, it's a little bit of a homecoming growing a little, I didn't know Calex was in the basement. I know. We're always, I think we like to like pride ourselves on like, oh, we have a world-class operation, but just stepped into our basement. Speaker 4:But a little creepy, eh, sorry. It's cozy is how I like to think my window. Listen, cozy. What differentiates the bay area comedy scene from [00:02:30] other cities? I would say, well, I started in Chicago and then I moved here. So I did a little bit of comedy there and then I moved here. And, uh, in every comedy scene there's like some, you know, really great comics who've been doing it a long time. And then there's like newer Comedians, I think here, um, people move faster, um, since la is so close, um, like when they get good or they feel like they're good at comedy, they'll move to la right away. And in other scenes, like in Chicago, people stay longer just [00:03:00] because it's so much of a move to go to like New York or to La. Um, so in that regards, I think we have a lot of newer comics or the turnover's higher here. Speaker 4:Um, and definitely more diversity here. A lot of the comics in Chicago are, uh, White, probably 95%. Uh, and here, you know, I'm here, uh, and a bunch of other comics that are, you know, different I guess quote unquote. So to see what you imagine your typical [00:03:30] comedian to be a little less Louie, I know that like Dave Chappelle once set, you know, he did a special here and he kind of said that the audience was savvy or do you notice like a difference in audience? I don't know if we want to self aggrandized a little bit, but, um, I love doing shows here. I'll do, I do a bunch of shows at Oakland and in San Francisco and I feel like, um, I can say whatever I want and there'll be on board for the most part, although sometimes people argue that, um, some of the audiences are like to PC. Speaker 4:Um, like if you [00:04:00] talk about certain topics and you don't do it in a extremely funny way, it might, they might be turned off by it. Um, but for me, I feel like I get to explore whatever topics I want and I'll know if it's good or not based on the reaction. Um, can you give me an example? I've been trying to do jokes about like Anorexia, you know, which is kinda not often talked about. And I feel like if it's funny enough, they'll laugh and if it's not funny enough, they're [00:04:30] just like, nope, I don't want to talk about it. You know, we're like Hitler, it's all we, it always comes down to him. It's like a, is that a good Hitler joke or is that a bad Hitler joke? Qualities of Hitler. Yeah, exactly. Okay, that's good to know. I'll keep that in the, the Noggin. Speaker 4:What made you realize that you wanted to be a comedian? I'm, I tell this in every interview because it's true and I'm hoping it'll get back to her. I love LNG generous. Um, so when I was in high school, I was like, I want to be just like her. And [00:05:00] I looked up on Wikipedia what she did to become famous, it like and beloved by everyone in America. And it turns out she started by doing stand up. So then I was like, oh, I'll do stand up. And I, you know, I liked being able to say whatever I wanted. Like I was like an only child and I don't like to talk to people a lot. I'm pretty introverted, so stand up is my way of like expressing my opinion without actually having a two way conversation with a stranger. Um, so yeah, I just started doing standup and I, you know, [00:05:30] I like to be goofy and that was like my best outlet of expressing myself. Speaker 4:So just started doing more and more stand up and at some point and like I never really wanted to be a comedian. That wasn't like my dream, but at some point I was just like, oh, well I guess I'm doing it so much. And I like it. I guess we'll just do comedy. Um, when I was prepping for this interview, Ellen Degeneres came up enough in the stuff that I was looking up that it's my, uh, my next question. Yeah, no, I, I will literally name drop her every single time until I, her and then even that, I'll probably still do it. So have you ever [00:06:00] moved to la? That's just, that's the first thing. I will probably just be outside her house every day. Don't tell her that. Yeah. Just keep that. I don't know where she lives, but I'm sure it's not that hard to find that. Speaker 4:And uh, any special quality that you like about like her comedy? She is so, um, likable. Just like every single person I've ever met likes Ellen degenerate. And if you don't, I think you're not a human being. Um, yeah, it's just like a, like when she came out, [00:06:30] um, everyone kinda was like, oh, she's gay. And like they weren't on board for that. But like now she's made such a resurgence that everyone loves her. And I just think that's amazing. And that was always surprising cause I grew up with like fourth iteration, Ellen Degeneres. And then if I go, which one was that? The talk show Ellen Talk Show Ellen. Right. And so I was just like, I was always like, it took me a while to figure out that she had been famous for like 20 years at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was like, stand up Ellen and then sit calm. Speaker 4:Ellen. And then the Ellen that disappeared for like three or four years [00:07:00] because people were like, oh, gay people. And then she's like, talk show famous salad. Yeah. Do you have like a fave joke of mine or if someone else's, Oh, let's start with yours. Um, it kind of depends. I think a, I get sick of my jokes after awhile, so whatever is my newest joke is usually my favorite. Um, I'm not gonna tell it on the radio cause I don't think that's gonna land. Great. Uh, and it'll just be me talking [00:07:30] and then like silence, uh, we can add laugh tracks. I don't know. I feel like it'll feel bad for me. Okay. You know, for sure I went for, usually my favorite joke is the newest joke that I've written that I feel, um, you know, most excited about because if you tell a joke for like a year or two, which you know, comedians do, they're not off the top of their head all the time. Speaker 4:Um, you just kinda get sick of it. You know, you have to keep pretending it's the first time you've ever told it, but it's like definitely like the 500th time you've told it. [00:08:00] So. Yeah, definitely new jokes are my favorite. And, um, for a nother comedian, I also love Tig Notaro and uh, I love her. Uh, no molest ago. Uh, I did some shows in Mexico and like everywhere I go, as soon as I check into my hotel room, I immediately hang the do not disturb sign on the door or for the Spanish speaking, no molest day. Speaker 3:[inaudible] [00:08:30] that was kind of a creepy feeling hanging that on my door before bed. [inaudible] nope. [inaudible] not tonight. [inaudible] couple doors down. Speaker 4:Actually after I did that joke, when I [00:09:00] know Maha, this guy came up to me and he's like, just so you know, I'm a Spanish interpreter and molest day means to a noise or bother. Speaker 3:[inaudible] Speaker 4:how would you say that, like your queerness has like influenced your [00:09:30] comedy, if at all? Um, well I definitely, when I first started doing comedy, I was not out and I was just trying to do, um, comedy, not based on myself at all. So I'd talked about other things and this was like when I was like 16, 17. I like, yeah, I was like, let me start doing, stand up. I did not know what I was doing. I don't even remember what my first joke was. It was probably about Allen. I don't know. Uh, just a straight Ellen said, just talking about how much I [00:10:00] love Ellen. Yeah, I dunno. It probably was true. Um, and then, uh, it was in college and I was like trying to do more stand up and I was like, oh, I guess I'll come out now. And I think I came out in my standup before really came out in real life, which is kinda how I feel about standup. Speaker 4:But a lot of times I share more talking on stage then, uh, like interpersonally. Like if we met on the street and we talked, I would probably tell you like very little about me. But if you see me on stage for like 10 minutes to learn, like way too [00:10:30] much about me. Why do you think that is? Cause I, when you, when you're on stage, you don't really know everyone in the audience. It's kind of just like an a morphous blob of like, oh, these are other people and I'll never meet them again. Go, you know, you might, but in, in your brain you're like, these are just random people. But if I like see you, I feel like I kind of know you and you're judging me when we're talking. So then I'm like, ah, I don't know. But if I'm just talking to a random blob of people, I'm like, I don't care what they think. So, uh, then I just [00:11:00] feel like I can share whatever and then I go home and I'll never see them again. I like the idea of just calling like a group of people that blob. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to do that from now on, just like crowds. Those are blobs and just to just a big ole friendly blogs, like an Amoeba. I know, Speaker 1:beginning of life. And if you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness, a weekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators [00:11:30] today. Anna stir law is speaking with comedian Irene too. Speaker 4:And so let me ask, how has being a person of color influenced your comedy and kind of follow up your desire to create like man heaters in hysteria? Um, yeah, it's definitely harder of course. Uh, as a person of color to do comedy, you know, people are so racist. [00:12:00] Uh, you know, people are like, oh, you know, it's not that right now. It's still comedy, so racist. A lot of people of color will do race jokes that sort of make fun of themselves in like a traditional stereotypical way, which I kind of hate. And I always try and do comedy as a person of color when I talk about, you know, the issues. Uh, but you know, try and put a spin on it or be like, you know, this is how I feel about it. Instead of just being like, you know, Asian people [00:12:30] can't drive or like something dumb like that. Speaker 4:I don't even know where that stereotype came from. Um, yeah. Yeah. I know like Hari Kondabolu has like a rule that he doesn't, he'll like make jokes about his mom, but like, we'll never use an accent or I don't think I can also, number one, I'm bad at accents and also I will not do an accent. I can't even pretend to be like a dude, you know, like I can't do any kind of accent whatsoever or change my voice, so I'm not gonna totally butcher [00:13:00] it. So it's nice to have a layer of excuses of just like, yeah, yeah. If I did my mom, like her voice would just be my, also my same voice, but I'll just like turn the other direction, I guess. I don't know. I was also, I was wondering how has that changed at all, that kind of personal, being personal on the stage as you've kind of made a name for yourself and we, that was the question in the CME. Speaker 4:Uh, I was just like, what are we talking about blobs? Um, yes. So I've started talking more about myself, um, [00:13:30] and like my point of view on life and things that I go through. And uh, you know, as I've done more and more comedy, sometimes people will come to the show to see me specifically, which I'll always like baffles me. I'm like, oh, I would never get to that. I never thought I'd get to that point where people would come and actually want to hear what I had to say and not just comedy in general. So weird. Um, yeah, super weird. Especially the ones like I work in Berkeley at East wind and sometimes people will stop by and they'll be like, hey, you're that comedian. Right. [00:14:00] And I was like, yeah, like I'm at, I'm at work and I didn't think that someone would recognize me while I'm sitting at the cash register and they're like, oh, I'm going to come to your show. Speaker 4:And I was like, okay. So strange. Your famous in the bay area for no. Okay. Okay, good for, for, for a hysteria and man heaters, the shows that you cohost. Yes. Yes. Um, and can you walk me through [00:14:30] why you chose those particular names? Um, sure. So, uh, hysteria is a women in queer comedy open mic that I run every Tuesday at Martinis from six to eight ish. Uh, and we chose the, as me and Jessica Seeley, who's a great comedian, she moved to La. Um, but I still run the Mike now. Dom, Joanne, who's a friend of mine and really great comic. Um, and we chose the name hysteria because, uh, you know, people [00:15:00] historically have called women like hysterical. You're just like, oh, like, you know, she's like crazy, you know, so we took that name to kind of be like, yeah, we're just gonna, you know, reclaim it. Speaker 4:So that's why we call it hysteria. I would knew it had something to do with like that down there, situation down there just, and I was like, that just sounds like a great name for an open mic. Let's do it. Yeah. And then, man, haters of course, uh, are, you know, it's very a direct name for the show. So me and [00:15:30] Ashley should run that show in Oakland every fourth Thursday at the white horse. And we named that because, uh, we're both queer. So, and you know, sometimes like, you know, lesbians or you know, Queer people, but we'll be called like, man haters. Um, because they're like, oh, you guys hate men, right? It's like, no, we don't hate men, but we hate like patriarchy and all that. And we decided you'd be like, yeah, you know what? Let's just call the show man haters and just be like all out. Speaker 4:Cause like people will know right away, this show is like going to be very queer and, [00:16:00] uh, you know, anti, uh, not men, but you know, like not patriarchal. We wanted our comedy show to be like, Hey, let's showcase, um, w again, women and Queer Comedians, you know, people that are not generally seen as quote unquote comedians and people who get, you know, offered less stage time or opportunities. So we're just going to call it man haters. Uh, and it got very popular. I don't know, I thought we were going to get vilified for the name, but people kind of love it. It made little buttons that say, man hater. [00:16:30] Then, you know, they'll wear them outside in the street. So just it, just the name. Just put it out there. First off. Yeah. We're just like, it's gonna be called man haters. And I think we call it like, man haters, women, queers, comedy on the Facebook thing. Speaker 4:So they're not just like, oh, what's man haters? Like a secret organization's like, no, no, no, we just, it's a comedy show. It's fine. Why did you make a space for Queer and feminist? Like women oriented comedy? Um, if you go to a lot of open mics or shows, you'll notice they're sometimes very aggressive [00:17:00] and a lot of, uh, terrible jokes that, you know, kind of hate on women or it's like, ah, my wife sucks. We're like, ah, like terrible rape jokes. You know? And it's not really welcoming and say for especially newer comedians like newer female comics to, you know, try to find their voice cause everyone's just trying to figure out what they want to talk about in comedy. And if you don't feel comfortable when you start out, you don't really want to do it anymore. So we were like, hey, let's do a show where, you know, you feel like you can actually participate in doing comedy. Speaker 4:[00:17:30] And then after a while you can do the other shows that have like seven dudes in like one token female. But, uh, you know, it's, it's definitely like a, it's Kinda like training wheels. But you know, at this point our shows like super great that I think it's like arguably the best show in the bay. So I'm like, I feel good about it. You know. How do you just make it that space where you're performing maybe for the first time? Welcoming? I think La has a lot to do with, um, like the hosts. So like when we host the show, [00:18:00] we, you know, emphasize like it's a women and queer comedy show or like, you know, these are all the comics. Like we just try and make it seem like, oh we, you know, it's more like I put myself out there and like, Hey, I'm like a woman, a queer comic and then I'll tell like my jokes and, you know, we're very open. Speaker 4:Uh, and I think our openness allows the comics. Uh, a lot of the audience will be like, Hey, you know, we're on board for this journey and they feel comfortable. I've never felt like it was super hard to make the space welcoming. Um, cause sometimes [00:18:30] if you go to an open mic, like the host themselves are kind of real aggressive and negative and like that that vibe is hard to overcome cause you know, the host sets the tone for the show. So I think if, you know, your hosts are like, hey, you know, these are, it's not really like rules, but these are kind of like, you know, these are Kinda the ground rules. Like, Hey, you know, be cool. Uh, these are all women comics. It's not quote unquote a safe space. Meaning we don't talk about, you know, certain topics, but it's like we are all female comics or queer [00:19:00] comics talking about these things. Speaker 4:And you know, if you want to laugh, laugh, um, if it's not funny, well sometimes some couple of things we say will not be funny, but this is what we've got. Yeah. And what impact do you think this is had on the bay area comedy scene? Um, I think, uh, we've had definitely more women in queer comics starting comedy. I've seen a lot of newer comics I've never seen before. Uh, and our show has gotten very popular [00:19:30] that, you know, even the dude comics were like, hey, that's a really good show. And I'm like, yeah. Uh, so it's definitely just like, it feels like, uh, we ha we've marked like our place in the comedy scene. It's not just an outlier. It's like, hey, we're an integral part of the scene. And also we get a lot of audience members that wouldn't go to like, quote unquote regular comedy shows, you know, a lot of, um, you know, people from the queer community to come to our show exclusively. Speaker 4:Or people would be like, hey, this is our first comedy show ever because we're afraid to [00:20:00] go to like a comedy club in case we're like picked on are people like, say, homophobic stuff. So that's pretty cool. Um, yeah. Huh. That's nice to hear. And are, what are some of the kind of up and coming comedians that you've seen sort of pass through, uh, man heaters or hysteria? Um, um, that like are my favorite comics, basically local comics. Okay. I love, uh, Corinna Dobbins. Jessica Seeley, who I did hysteria with. Um, [00:20:30] I like Shea Belle, uh, dom Jelan, you know, Ash Fisher, my other cohost, uh, in dams, one of my cohost, you know, this, this seems like nepotism now, but like there are like, you know, when you're working with people that are also funny, you're like, well, they're my friends and they're funny. Um, your friends for a reason. Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly. Like we get each other right, right. Ah, who else is super funny? I don't know. That's just what came to mind immediately and I hope that someone doesn't listen to this. Like, hey, why don't you say my name? I just forgot. We can just add that on. If you think of anyone afterwards, [00:21:00] just recording and you can just record like 55 minutes at the, yeah, the whole entire like scrubbed this interview. It's just 50 names of committees, which you know is great. You know, when they do those lists on the Internet, it's like, oh, like 50 the best comics you should know or like blah, blah, blah. Every, all like, every comedian kinda hates those lists cause they look like leave off great comics, but they're good publicity. Yeah. You can't. So now, you know, if I did do two hours of just naming names, I would feel okay about it [00:21:30] and be helping everybody. Speaker 4:I'm helping everyone out. Right. Uh, you were recently honored by Kqbd as a woman to watch. Yeah. I'm just going to stare at you for a little bit. Uh, yeah. Creepy. Uh, what's it like to see your face on a bus? Oh yes. That was insane. Yeah. They put up some ads on the Muni buses and some of the Muni trains in, in the bart stations. I don't know if I had one in a bard station. I did check all the stations, so they took them down. I know it's just cause I checked most of them except for, I think if mine [00:22:00] was at a Bart station would have been at Montgomery and I never take that station. And I was like, I'll get to it. And the, by the time I got to it, they were taken down and replaced with like ads for some tech thing and I was very upset by that. Speaker 4:Oh, that's a nice problem to have. Yeah. Mean, I remember when I actually saw my fit cause people were telling me, I knew they put the ads of it. I didn't see it yet. And then people are like, oh my God, I saw your face in a bus. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And I didn't see it. And then I was just in like downtown, uh, in the financial [00:22:30] district. I was walking around and I was like, Oh hey, that's me on a bus. And then I ran to the bus cause I wanted to take a photo with it and it stopped like briefly at a red light. And I was like trying to take a selfie with it and then it just like drove away and I did get the selfie. That was one. That's nice. Yeah. That's very nice. That's crazy. Speaker 4:Um, what advice would you give to a young female and or queer comic kind of coming up through this area? Um, just keep doing it. You might not be funny at first, but you know, you'll find your voice eventually. [00:23:00] So it's definitely more of a perseverance game, I think. I think the funniest comedians honestly, are not even Comedians, uh, because if you do comedy, you have to actually, you know, do all that work, doing comedy. And some people are so funny, they just don't want to go to an open mic or show every night. Um, so basically just keep doing it, keep writing. Uh, don't get discouraged and uh, you'd come to my open mic. We're very fun and friendly. If you want to, you know, try your first album might get something that people will sort of pay attention to and [00:23:30] you know, laugh at. Speaker 4:Uh, yeah. And then, you know, just make friends with everyone. Um, what are some shows that are coming up? Um, I just did man haters yesterday, but our next show is going to be the third Thursday of November, since Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday. And I don't think anyone's going to come on thanksgiving, so it'll be November 17th. And that one's real fun. Let's see, what else do I have? I also have a show in San Francisco every month called the mission position that's at the Alamo Drafthouse, which is that awesome movie theater. In [00:24:00] the mission. How did you get your start in comedy? Um, so I took a class when I was, I think I was 16 in, uh, Chicago at the second city. It's a standup class. And uh, I was like me and like I think it was one of like one or two other people, very small class. Speaker 4:And I just go every week and you know, write jokes with the teacher and then, you know, do it for the other two people in the class. So it was kind of awkward for the, you know, your first four to stand up. Uh, and then, you know, we had a graduation show and that was [00:24:30] that. And I was still in high school so I did like sat up very periodically. So there was that cause for most open Mike's, they're at bars so you have to be 21 or older or at least the bars that card. Um, so I didn't really do a ton of open mikes unless they were like at a cafe. Um, and I did a lot of Improv instead cause that's a very like high school, college thing. It's like, I know group comedy, very fun. You can do it with your friends. Speaker 4:So did a lot of Improv in high school. Uh, and then, uh, I went to, I actually went to Northwestern [00:25:00] before I transferred to Berkeley, so I, there was a new stand up group on campus. So I joined that cause my friend was in it. And, uh, I really liked that cause you know, uh, my friend was in it and the other people were funny and I was like, oh, maybe I can just start doing standup again. So like started writing, uh, they would have a show every couple months. So I do that showcase and it was just, you know, like a snowball effect or of like, oh, more and more cavity and my friends are doing it and like it. Uh, and then I took a class at when I was a sophomore, [00:25:30] I think at, uh, in college, uh, with Cameron Esposito, she did a female standup class in Chicago that I took. Speaker 4:And I was like, oh, this is great, you know, uh, another awesome, you know, a queer female comic. And then I was like, oh yeah, I can do comedy too. So I just like, you know, did more comedy after that. And then, uh, I did a lot of comedy in college. I don't know why I finished doing college cause at that point I was like I'm done with school. I just want to do stand up. [00:26:00] Uh, and the, yeah. And then I graduated and now I'm just doing comedy and like I have a day job but like mostly comedy. And so where do you see yourself in five years? Um, ideally I would have my own Sitcom. That is what I want, but I will also take a small role in a movie if someone wants to offer me that, I will, sure. I'll host a talk show that I don't think I would be really good at that cause I'm not as uh, extroverted [00:26:30] as I think you would need to be to be a talk show. Speaker 4:But you know, who knows, they have like writers and stuff. I could, you know, I could wing that. I think in the city, I'm like snarky, so it's not if they're okay with like a snarky talk show host who like roast people sometimes that I could do that. Just low key, just like picks people in the audience and just like sometimes that like kind of mean. So I'm like, if you're okay with that at a, you know, maybe it's not on like network television, maybe it's on like some, some other cable channel on, on. Yeah. Number 699 right. You're right. Exactly right. [00:27:00] But I would love to have like a Sitcom on like ABC, NBC, something like that. That'd be cool. And would I feel like with a Sitcom would like then Ellen degenerate generous, would she be like, wow, okay. So if I had a sitcom it would be, I would love it to be like Ellen Sitcom in the 90s, which was great. Speaker 4:It was like based off of her sort of, you know, her character, but like, you know, uh, they took some liberties but it's like mace, but mostly based on me or like Roseanne. That was a great sitcom. And I also like the Carmichael show. It's a great, uh, like families who come, they talk [00:27:30] about the issues. So, you know, something where it's like based off of me. So I don't have to really be a great actor cause I don't think I'm an amazing actor. But I could be funny if it's based off of me. People be like, that's fine, you know, like as, and sorry. It's like, okay. No, it's kind of like him. Yeah. Persona. Yeah. It's just like him, but you know, 10 times heightened, you know? Yeah. What's your life philosophy? Whoa, that's a big question. What is my life philosophy? Uh, I think it's just to [00:28:00] be a better person every day that you, you know, uh, you know, make every day better than the day before. Speaker 4:Um, whether that be, you know, write a better joke than the joke that I did yesterday or, you know, try and go to the gym one more time. I haven't done this, like, this is my philosophy. I will will out say I've actually followed through on it, but, you know, try and be a better person in the day before. And, uh, you know, don't, don't be racist. And, uh, I think, you know, give opportunities [00:28:30] to people who haven't had them, like women or people of color, especially in comedy or like other things. Uh, give them opportunities that you, you know, even if you don't think they're ready right now, but if you think they will be ready soon, I would just give them the chance because a lot of times, uh, you won't get that opportunity. And I think you only get better if you get to fail. Speaker 4:So, you know, give people a shot. Even if you're like, hey, they got potential, just give them a shot. No one's gonna if you give someone [00:29:00] a spot on a show and they're like, almost like, it's fine, you know, and your show's going to be fine. No one gets hurt. Yeah, exactly. Just let people get more stage time. All right. And I think that's it in life. And I think that's interesting because it seems like comedy can kind of be a cutthroat world, just yes. And so it's interesting that you, you have more of that community trying to yeah, yeah, yeah. Approach. You know, I mean, if everyone does, it's Kinda like socialism. I don't know. But like not really cause there's no money involved, but you know, if you help everyone up, [00:29:30] eventually you'll all succeed. Supposedly. I live in a coat, man. That speaks to me. Hey, thank you. I mean to you for coming on our show. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great time. Speaker 1:You've been listening to method to the madness, a weekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes university. Tune in again next Friday at noon. Speaker 2:[00:30:00] [inaudible] okay. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Alex Lofton, co-founder of San Francisco startup Landed, discusses why he started the company and how he thinks they can use the power of crowdsourcing and community to help teachers own homes in the upscale urban core's where they teach.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Hello, this is KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM and you're listening to Metta to the madness public affairs show here at Calex that celebrates the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Tallinn Huizar and today we have Alex Lofton [00:00:30] with us. He's a cofounder of landed. Hey Alex. How's it going? It's great. How are you doing? I'm good. Alex joins us by phone today. He's traveling on the road, so thanks so much for joining us today, Alex. Of course. And uh, we have a, a kind of a standard question we always start this show with and it is, um, you know, you're an entrepreneur, you're on a journey to change the world or solve a problem that you see. Can you tell us kind of about your problem statement of what, what are you trying to solve? [00:01:00] We're trying to make home ownership more affordable and accessible and really expensive cities, which is pretty relevant in a place like the bay area. Speaker 1:Um, there's just a lot of, there's kind of two problems when people think about affordability in homes. One is how much it costs to pay on a monthly basis, which is a whole bunch of problems there. Um, and another one is just how expensive it is to actually access home ownership in the first place. To have enough money to get a down payment to get that [00:01:30] first house. And that is what we are trying to address. And we think that if we match people who want to invest in real estate on one side with people who want to buy a home, my other, we can solve that problem. Okay, great. Thanks for letting us know about that. And can you give us a little bit of a background about how you came to see this problem? Well part of it was a personal and another was just hearing reflections of how difficult essential people like teachers were having to, [00:02:00] uh, you know, were, were having when they thought about trying to live in a place like the bay area. Speaker 1:Personally, the problem came to be when I thought about moving to be up from a renter in San Francisco to eventually being a homeowner one day. I'm wanting to settle down just like everybody else and not coming from a family that could afford to give me a bunch of money for a down payment. I just didn't see a way forward to save enough money, fast enough to buy my own house in the bay area. So a big question mark for me was, what am I going to do? And in talking [00:02:30] with people, especially friends of mine who were teachers, uh, in the area, they were experiencing the exact same problem. They were paying all their money in rent, nothing left over to save. So, uh, you know, for, for, for people like us of my generation, the millennial generation that we're thinking about transitioning from, uh, the shoe box in the city to try to find something to live in more permanently. Speaker 1:Uh, there just were a lot of options out there between renting and owning. So I just got myself and my co founder, Jonathan, I met [00:03:00] at graduate school thinking about how it is different out there, what could we create that's different out there that would bridge that gap. Okay. And we can mention it even though this is cow's radio station, we can mention to graduate school you went to unfortunately. But I think I'll stay in school and um, tell us a little bit, you know, I think it's really interesting about how entrepreneurs come to see problems and the problem that you just described for us as something that everybody knows about pretty well. You [00:03:30] know, this, um, difficulty fortunately lead from, yeah. Affordability and it's certainly in the bay area. Utu but tell us a little bit about your background and like where did you grow up? Speaker 1:How did you, um, get to Stanford Business School? Sure. Well, I grew up in the Great Pacific northwest, uh, just outside of Seattle and, uh, from college, uh, onward in my early career, I worked in politics, uh, specifically on national campaigns, [00:04:00] uh, traveling around the country, um, focusing on setting up organizations that could, that could win elections. And through that process also learned a lot about how incredible, uh, American cities are, how exciting they are, but also how many problems they have. And just kinda real big passion and curiosity around solving issues in urban spaces. Um, and, uh, you know, a big part of that for, for, for me was thinking about, uh, [00:04:30] the way that we use space, who, who gets to decide how we use space, where we live. And a lot of that comes down to who gets to be a part of the ownership community in cities. Speaker 1:Um, and that is becoming, I noticed increasingly harder in places like San Francisco, New York, Seattle, a lot of, um, major urban centers in the u s and so to me, there was a tie between, uh, experiencing all of the beauty that is, that exists in [00:05:00] urban spaces, but also all of the challenges that could, you know, committed me to doing something, uh, like we're doing now with, with, with landed. Um, I, you know, I also, I grew up in a household with a school teacher as a mom and a social worker as a dad. And I really appreciate it. How, um, valuable, um, people how valuable the lots of different, um, professionals are for [00:05:30] thriving cities. And when you think about those people not being able to stay in those, in those thriving cities, there's a big question mark what the future looks like for where we all live. Speaker 1:And so that's kind of what really motivated me to kind of work in this space and find a way to build a business that was going to be sustainable and successful that also, um, was meeting real a real need. So when you applied to a business school, this was the kind of, you already kind of thinking about urban [00:06:00] housing issues. You got it. Yup. Yup. And a lot of it was with, was accelerated by work. Um, I had been exposed to, uh, with organizations like, um, therapy and B, Lyft, um, a lot of these sharing economy companies that were thinking differently about how we use space and how we, um, rent stuff, but they're, but the conversation around ownership, um, and how do we think differently about ownership [00:06:30] was, um, would missing there in my mind. And to me that's where the question of, you know, shared ownership or co-investment if that was to be applied to problems like housing and a more efficient way. Speaker 1:Um, now that we have technology that can connect people more quickly, connect to people with capital more quickly, um, can, can, can help us set and, um, make, you know, make decisions more quickly, uh, that there could be a possibility to rather [00:07:00] than offering people more debt to borrow from banks. And otherwise, if you pair people up as a coinvestment, maybe there's a solution there. And that's where we, where we started headed. Yeah, we're talking to Alex lofty, the Co founder of land. It's a San San Francisco based startup that's looking to solve the problem of affordability of home ownership and urban areas. And this submitted to the Madison KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM. Um, Alex, I can't agree with you more. I think that the sharing economy has been so revolutionary in so many [00:07:30] ways, but it kind of passes on this idea of ownership and wealth building. And I think that's a problem longterm for the people who really embrace that sharing economy. Um, so I think what you're doing is really interesting to find a fill this hole of rethinking and what ownership means. Um, so when you were, um, in a year in business school and you kind of have this thought of you want to attack this problem, can you take us from there to how you kind of formulated the idea for landed? Speaker 1:[00:08:00] Sure. Um, so sorry, sorry, could you, could you repeat that question one more time? Yeah, I'm just asking, once you're, uh, you're in business school and you already have kind of an own a concept of you want to figure out how to solve this problem of, um, ownership in urban centers. How did you go from there to constructing the company and the actual, um, method through which you want to solve that problem? [00:08:30] Great question. So one of the first thing that we, you learn about when you start a company, it's just you got to go out there and find out what's out there already. And, um, as much as you can start prototyping and start creating some sort of example of what you want to do and see how people respond to it. One of the first things that we thought about as a team was, hey, if we're going to be thinking, asking people to think differently about home ownership, that's a pretty big leap to the, to ask [00:09:00] of consumers. Speaker 1:So what if we, you know, what if we focused on creating a brand, uh, that people trusted in the realm of homeownership and eventually get to asking them about, uh, changing their mind about home ownership. So I thought about that was, well, let's go and create a business that focuses on helping renters who are having bad experiences as renters, have a good experience as a renter and really be a po. The best property manager that's out there for the best property manager that's out there that people will trust us and they'll, [00:09:30] they'll, they'll want to do what we, we, we suggest they do like co-invest with other people. Well you can tell that, you know, that was a pretty long leap or pretty long chain of things that would have to happen for, for us to be able to directly influence how people are buying homes today. Speaker 1:And so, uh, you know, we, we, we found that out by throwing this idea out there, starting to build a property, a property management company, but quickly realized that if you wanted to get to people thinking differently about ownership, we've got to start. We actually got to start [00:10:00] there. And so, um, what does the first thing that we did was go and just match investors that were interested in our concept with home buyers. We actually did that first with the home in Berkeley, so right down the street where you are, um, uh, with, uh, some homeowners that were there trying, trying to preserve, uh, the house they were living in as renters with an investor who really wanted to be invested in property in the area, just to get experience of what that's like can match to match people. Um, and, and, and [00:10:30] that kind of has ballooned and blossomed into, uh, us working more generally with communities that care a lot about, um, both, uh, the people that are living and want to live in their community, but also that their own opportunity and making money, investing in real estate and matching those with people actually who are going to be the homeowners. Speaker 1:Okay. So that first deal that you guys did in Berkeley, it was, you weren't necessarily looking for a, a, [00:11:00] a match between renters in a potential investors, just those who are in your network and you guys are trying different things. And that's what kind of came out, is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. Yeah. You got it. I mean, we, we, we, we knew that in the future we'd have to, you know, um, do more marketing, do more outreach to find new, um, new potential home buyers to match with, uh, new investors. But to start, we just used our own, you know, our own network and, uh, the people who were interested in what we're doing, um, and wanted to be a part of it themselves [00:11:30] and made the ask to them to be a part of this with us early on. And I think that's one of the things you learn really early on. Speaker 1:We were starting something is you can't be afraid to ask and asking can be not just something that is, um, a one way street where, where you're asking somebody to do something for you and they get nothing out of it. You know, you, you ask an investor to be a part of this set up, they're going to get a out of it. You ask a home buyer to trust us to help them figure out a way to stay in their house and a and B [00:12:00] be a homer homeowner that, you know, they get the benefit of home ownership at the end of that. So, um, being an aster in that way is, is a, is a good thing. Yeah. I mean, I can't agree with you more. As someone who I've done startups and interviewed a lot of founders, um, you know, there's that kind of a little bit of bravado that everybody has to have to not be afraid to go and ask. Speaker 1:And what's great about, um, the bay area is that people are used to being asked. It's a, it's a very collaborative place and it's one of the special things [00:12:30] about why our region has done so well over the years is because people are willing to help. If someone has a new idea that sounds a little bit maybe crazy or whatever you want to call it, people are open to it as long as it makes sense. So I'm glad to hear that Berkeley Berkeley was a first deal you guys take, they represented. That's great. Berkeley is treating us well and we're talking to Alex Loft and he's a cofounder of landed to San Francisco based startup. It's kind of rethinking how we can make home ownership affordable for urban [00:13:00] centers like the bay area. So let's talk about, let's fast forward to where you guys are today. So well, how long ago did you start the company? Speaker 1:We started just over a year ago. Okay. So in that year, a lot has happened and I was reading through your website and I wanted to, um, have you take us through your model a little bit. You have, um, and the website is landed.com if anybody wants to check it out. Um, great. Great URL by the way. And thanks if you got a, so it starts, you asked the [00:13:30] question, how do we help? And the first step it says is create community funds. So what's a community fund for landed? Community Fund is basically a pot of money that, um, individuals who have money to invest in real estate have capitalized. They put the money into the pot. Um, and their expectation is that money is going to be going to be, it's going to be invested in several [00:14:00] different homes, um, in and around, uh, a community that they care about. Speaker 1:That community can be defined geographically, but also more, um, more relevantly today is, is, is defined as, um, say a school where their kids go to school or maybe, um, they graduated from in the past. Uh, and they will really want to see a quality education to continue at that school. Um, that money is going [00:14:30] to be invested in people who are making that community great. So in the case of the school, but the people who make the community great oftentimes have great teachers and preserving those teachers, making sure those teachers stay in their own community requires people feeling like they had some hope to settle down. They have hope to, in this case, buy a, and so in turn, uh, the money that these individual investors that put into a fund that's offered up as down payment help to these teachers [00:15:00] who can go ahead and cover half of their down payment with landeds support with this fund support and in the future they pay back, uh, some of the appreciation of the, some of the growth of the value of the home to that fund when they sell. Speaker 1:So, if I'm a, um, I'm a resident of Berkeley and I have a little bit of extra money to invest and I am not necessarily have enough to go buy a bunch of apartments to rent out to people, [00:15:30] but I really want to be invested in real estate. And I also, uh, really want to help my community, cause my kids go to Berkeley Unified School district. And I could potentially give that the chunk of change that I have to invest into a fund that would be specifically for Berkeley unified schools versus waivers. You got it? Yup. You got it. Okay. And you know, and, and we, we like to emphasize this gives people more choice in ways that they can invest [00:16:00] their money. So people may already be investing elsewhere with rental properties. This is a, a is another option for them to do that. It could be the first time somebody decides to invest in real estate period. Speaker 1:Um, but, you know, it gives people a more diversified way to, uh, have their money, uh, w grow their wealth basically. Yeah. And how do I, um, uh, do you, is there like a annual kind of dividend [00:16:30] type payment that comes or how does, if I'm the investor, how do I get that money back? You get that money back when the home buyer, uh, sells or refinances in the future so that they sell the home and they get, you know, paid for that transaction. Then, um, for every dollar that the house grows in, in value, um, used an investor would get 25 cents, uh, back. The same thing would happen if the dollar, if the house goes down in value can don't look so good. [00:17:00] Um, you would, uh, as an investor sharing that loss with that home buyer buyer and that's why why this is very much not, um, debt is not loaning out money. Speaker 1:This is a co-investing in the equity and the value of the home because it depends if the value goes up and goes down. There's not a dividend. It's not that the home buyer is not paying you rent on a regular basis. Um, that they, you know, cause the home buyer has responsibility, the mortgage already, if they've gotten with the bank, they already have payments, they're servicing that whole time that they're in the house. The time that you get paid [00:17:30] as an investor is in the future when the home is sold or refinanced. Okay. So it's um, I'm, if I'm the investor, I'm completely betting on the appreciation of the home. That's how I get my money. That's correct. Okay. And um, the, um, the assisting of the home purchase. So when landed, so when I asked you guys have on this, on your website, this question, how do we help? Speaker 1:So the first step it says create community funds. [00:18:00] I think I understand that. Then number two is assist home purchases. So, um, that's when you were talking about half of a down payment would come from a, like a school teacher and half from the landed fund. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. So, and for those who are familiar with the home buying process, this will be old happen. I know a lot of people, including myself, when I started to really dig into what the process of home ownership entails, are buying home entails, don't always realize this, but [00:18:30] you know, there's a process of getting all the money that you need in order to buy a home. That's kind of what you need to figure out first. And that's where we sit in getting the money that you need to buy a home usually involves getting big loans or bank a mortgage. Speaker 1:Um, in places like the bay area where home prices are so expensive, but even just generally to get the best rates for mortgage, to, um, make sure that, um, you're not having to pay for extra things like private insurance, etc. You want to try to get to 20 or 20% [00:19:00] down payment, which means a, just to make math really simple on a $1 million house, you need $200,000 up front. And that's just, that's just a, a hill, that's too steep decline for most people. So in this case, even though it's still a lot of money, if you're going to buy a million dollar house, you're, you're expecting a home buyer to save half of that down payments, $100,000 and Landon puts in the other a hundred thousand dollars that comes from one of those funds that's been capitalized or been filled [00:19:30] up by, um, a bunch of, uh, investors from the community who care about that community. Speaker 1:And then once that money is, oh, sorry, then once that money is actually provided to the home buyer, so the home buyer can go to a real estate agent that we work with. They find a home that they really are excited about buying. They turn around, get the mortgage from the bank, buy the home and Bam, they're off to the races. Okay. Well, um, I have to ask then, cause I, for someone [00:20:00] who has bought a home before, I know that the biggest stumbling block is sometimes that other, the $800,000 that's coming from the bank and they have to feel comfortable about the, um, homeowners potential ability to pay that mortgage. And many times, you know, that 20% they're asking for is really just, uh, that, that they have the right kind of person. So how do they feel about this whole pro program or how do you get around them knowing that the, [00:20:30] this school teacher in this example we're kind of using is only giving 10% if we don't get around it. Speaker 1:We, one of the most important players at the table for us is our banks who are willing to work with us. And that's a large part of also when we talked about trading this company in the early days, we started off just doing one off transaction between investors and home buyers was to prove out what this actual model looks like. So that, so that we could find banking partners and get banks comfortable with what we're working with. [00:21:00] Um, you are absolutely right. And one of the things that we want it, we always emphasize is we are not interested in putting people into home ownership that shouldn't afford home ownership. And we, we saw what happened, uh, around that, uh, most dramatically, uh, in 2008, 2009. And what's really important is making sure that people can afford, you can afford the home ownership. And so a big part of that is what you can afford on a monthly basis. Speaker 1:What does your income look like compared to all of that standing debt that you have? And that's what [00:21:30] our banking partners look at. Um, when they first, the first one, the first thing they look at is to make sure someone can actually afford, I'm on a ship. And then they want to make sure that the person who's getting in the house has skin in the game, has, um, you know, enough invested in the home that they won't walk away if the market starts to change. And that's where at home prices, as expensive as they are in places like the bay area, um, banks are comfortable with, um, you know, looking at a home buyer that's putting in 10% of their own equity and saying that looks, you [00:22:00] know, that, that that's basically enough to to make that person feel committed to that property. And then by having another 10% put in by another entity like landed, that's great because that just means there's more equity, there's more money in the beginning in the home rather than it being a, a, a mortgage for 90% a mortgage that is covering the entire rest of the value of the home and no home buyer only puts in 10%. Speaker 1:Instead. There's actually a whole lot more money as 10% [00:22:30] more in the house already. That's, that's um, that's equity and that for the bank makes them very comfortable to loan money because in the long run, um, that arrangement can withstand the ups and downs of the housing market more than if somebody took out a, a jumbo loan where they're putting down only 5% or 3% a to buy a home. Yeah. And I guess you guys are, you're almost underwriting it in some ways where you're, you, you're a very interested [00:23:00] and motivated to make sure that this home doesn't go into foreclosure or anything because you guys only get paid or the where the advisors only get paid if home a gets three into this are sold. So you got anchors. Yep. And so I guess you're providing more than just a 10% down payment. Sounds like you're providing an agent in banks that are unfamiliar with this. Speaker 1:You kind of have an ecosystem around the transaction. Is that right? Can we got, yeah, we've got to create an ecosystem, make it work. Um, and that's the challenge of building a company in this space [00:23:30] is that it's not, um, just one player or, uh, one dimension plug and play. Um, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people who, uh, do have skin in the game in this transaction and we see ourselves as a coordinator that as an organizer of this, um, ecosystem so that it just works better for everyone, especially the home buyer. Okay. Yeah, we're talking to Alex Loft and he's the cofounder of landed in the San Francisco [00:24:00] based startup that's attacking the problem of an affordable home ownership in the bay area and urban centers beyond. Um, and so in this kind of central question you have on your website, how do we help? Speaker 1:We talked about you first create community funds, then you assist the home purchases, and then this number three is make sure things go right. So, so it sounds like you stay kind of involved for a while. What does that mean? Where there, you know, we really see ourselves as a partner to the home buyer. So whether it [00:24:30] be questions around, uh, you know, after they've entered this arrangement and moved into house, they have questions about, well, what happens if I renovate the home or what happens if, uh, you know, some things changes, um, with my circumstances and I now have a lot more money than I thought I did. And I wanna I want to buy you out. I want to just be the sole owner or what do I do? Um, all those kinds of questions, whether it be related to this physical house and it changing or the arrangement that, [00:25:00] uh, the financial arrangement with us where, you know, we're there for, for the home buyer to, um, kind of be a concierge service to them to answer those questions. Speaker 1:Um, but kind of come up with the best path forward are, you know, we, we ultimately will thrive as a company if we are a really good partner. So we don't, um, you know, cheat any of our, any of, uh, any of any either side of this transaction, whether it be the investor or the home buyer. And so, and, and that we've actually provided a really good [00:25:30] service to that home buyers in the house. So they feel confident in the process of, of being the kind of Stuart of the home. Well that's great. I can see so many different angles for you guys to help them with making decisions and renovations and what will help the value of the home more than other places. And I'm sure over time you guys will get lots of great data to be able to help people make really good decisions. Speaker 1:So that's very exciting. Can you give us this, um, a little bit of sense of, uh, what's happened in this first year? [00:26:00] How many transactions have you done or investors interested in this? It's a little bit of a different type of model for investors. So how are you Howard? What kind of reception are you getting out there? Great question. So today, um, we've only done a handful of transactions that, uh, are anywhere from people who are in the process of putting out bids right now for homes to actually purchasing homes to get that experience, uh, of what, what the actual product is when you bring two people together around the house and an investor on a home buyer. [00:26:30] And it's only been about six months now that we're really been focused on partnering and Building Partnerships with Public School districts, independent schools, charter networks in the bay area, um, to, uh, just to help them, help their teachers stay in the area and recruit new ones, uh, by offering this benefit for their employees, for these teachers who in staff, members of these schools who want to stay here. Speaker 1:And so right now we're, uh, about to launch with our first, um, five pilot, [00:27:00] um, pilot schools and those schools each have their own fund. So we have been, um, working with their communities to capitalize those funds. Those funds are ready to go to offer to teachers. Um, so this fall is a big one for us. And going from the process of starting a fund to providing the benefit to, to, uh, to our first home buying teachers. I needed those funds in Berkeley. Um, well one of the, one of the school, [00:27:30] uh, school networks we're working with has schools in Berkeley. So, uh, it's not with the Berkeley School district yet. Uh, but, but hopefully soon. Okay, great. And, um, how do people, if people listening want to understand what funds there are, aren't if they want to invest or are getting involved, how would they get involved? Speaker 1:They'd check out, check out our website, landed.com, and that's where we're, we're, we're updating it on a regular basis. That's where, um, all the information will be, uh, about how to get ahold of [00:28:00] us. If you're interested, either as someone who is looking for a house and thinking about creative ways to, to afford it. If you're interested in supporting your community and you, um, you know, our accredited investor, that money to invest in, in your, in your neighborhood, that's great. And especially if you're a school or school district, um, employee or, or administrator who wants to help out your community, get a hold of us. Okay, great. And Alex, I always ask this last question of entrepreneurs like, [00:28:30] and we're speaking with Alex Lofton co-found over landed San Francisco based startup. Uh, this is the last question and it is, everything went totally right on your entrepreneurial journey, uh, over the next five years, where would you see landed be? What would, what would, what would it be doing five years from now? Speaker 1:I really want to get to the point where this is just the default way people think about buying their first home. So if the millennial generation especially, but anybody who is a new home buyer is thinking [00:29:00] about how do I make that leap that I've been thinking about making myself in San Francisco but feel very little hope to do so, had landed to have that hope to move from a, from a renter today to an owner in the future and landed helps me get there. Uh, I'd be really proud. Okay, great. Well, a great vision from a great young entrepreneur. Really appreciate your time today, Alex. Um, and as I mentioned, we've been speaking to Alex last and he's the cofounder of landed. It's a San Francisco based startup trying to [00:29:30] solve the problem of the home ownership affordability issue in the bay area. Uh, you can check them out@alanded.com. My name is Eileen is our, I'm the host of method to the madness yarn, k, Alex Berkeley, Speaker 2:90.7 FM. Thanks everybody for joining and have a great Friday. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Host Lisa Kiefer interviews documentary film producer Joe Inderhees about his "Bay Area Revelations" series that examines the brave, brilliant, and eccentric visionaries of the Bay Area. By focusing on a particular movement, theme, or event that transformed the Bay Area into one of the most vital and innovative regions in the country, these ten one-hour documentaries tell the untold stories of the people, places, and moments that have shaped the Bay Area into the unique region it is today.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. Speaker 2:You're listening to method to the madness at biweekly public affairs show k a l x Berkeley celebrating the bay area innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer. And today I'm interviewing documentary producer Joe Inder. He's the executive producer and co-writer behind the popular bay area revelations series. [00:00:30] Welcome Joe. You're the executive Speaker 1:producer and co-writer of bay area revelations. And these are one hour episodes narrated by Peter Coyote that tell the untold stories of the people, places and moments that help make the bay area such a special and unique place. You are not from here, you're from Cincinnati, Ohio. What was your first experience here? Speaker 3:My first bay area experience was running Beta breakers and right. [00:01:00] So I didn't realize all that it entailed, but now you've got, you know, a guy in a gorilla suit and then next to naked guy. Well we don't, we don't have that in Ohio. And you know, you start running and you'll see everything that's going on and then you hit golden gate park and I mean that park is remarkable. There's a waterfall in it and then you look over and there's bison in the park. And literally I stopped and I thought to myself, totally, you ain't in Kansas anymore here son. This is a really [00:01:30] cool place. And from that point forward, I have just fallen in love with the bay area and [inaudible] Speaker 1:I'm from Illinois originally and I had the same experience here when I moved out it was, it was rev Latori sure. So good name. Speaker 3:Sure. And, and so when we decided to come up with some content, who's we? The station. So here's, here's kind of the, the genesis of how it, well, how, how it happened. We were in a room probably a little bit bigger than this studio [00:02:00] and there were a group of four or five, six station thought leaders. Okay. The general manager, the news director, I'm the brand director, those kinds of folks. And the idea was put on the table, what content could we do that no one else is doing? That could be an original proposition. And as with most things in the bay area, you start throwing out ideas and it's just pop. And Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa, papa, silly potty, right? Like that's how things happen [00:02:30] here. And so that's Kinda how it happened here. Well, I don't know if it's just here, but I know that it feels like it's here more frequently and with greater passion. Speaker 3:And then I think what really happens here that is unique is not only do you use then say silly potty, but then you go do it. I think in a lot of places they have the big idea, but then somewhere along the way the execution falls off. Um, either people [00:03:00] run out of time, run out of money, run out of support, um, run out of the runway to fail. May Be afraid. Exactly. Yeah. Um, obstacles get put up in place and I think in the bay area, those obstacles are taken down more than they're put up. So we, we come up with this idea of doing a documentary series and they say, ah, so how many episodes do you think you can do? They, so how about six in the first year, six hour long documentaries in the first year I say, oh, [00:03:30] okay. It's pretty ambitious. Speaker 3:And pretty ambitious. And the goal is, our goal for this is Ken Burns meets 30 for 30, which is the ESPN series. And if you are not watching that you can, you can dislike sports. It's just great storytelling. I watched the one on the OJ Simpson. They did a great job. Remarkable. You'll look at the credits at the end of those shows and they go on for days and bay area revelations. It's, you know, it's a very spartan crew. [00:04:00] Um, but we do try to hit that, hit that mark. And um, we developed a couple of different show ideas. Um, you know, big themes. We had the first one kind of land in our lap. And what was that? That the first one was the super, the super seven and this was on the seven Superbowl winning teams. NBC had the Super Bowl that year, so it was natural, right? Speaker 3:We're going to air the Superbowl and then we're going to air the super seven. And so that was very natural. And then the other thing that, that came right to the [00:04:30] top was political and social movements. When you think about the things that the bay area exports, political and social consciousness is at the top of that list. And again, these were things that being an outsider, you just becomes obvious. It becomes obvious. It's like as, as these are not so much about the people but about the movements. Well th they're the people behind the movements, but one of the best parts about the first one was everybody knows the score of the Games, right? Everybody knows how the game [00:05:00] played out. But Jerry Rice told this story of before his first Superbowl, he fell asleep on a training table. He was in that space. He was that prepared. Speaker 3:And that was the point that we were trying to make was that if you're prepared for something, if you're readied for it, if you've been training your whole life to be there, then yeah, you're scared cause it means something to you. And that's exactly what Jerry said, but there's this calm that can wash over you. And I think that that was illuminating. [00:05:30] The ones I watched, what I liked about it was, it's not the obvious people all the time. You get these, the smaller, I call them smaller, they're not small people, but people I hadn't heard of. Right. It's how do you find them there? There's some things that obviously immediately come to mind there. Some people that obviously immediately come to mind when we did the political and social movements piece, but you've got to go after him. So we went and you go out and get these people or do you have a team? Speaker 3:Researchers? So not me. It's you. It's me [00:06:00] and, and um, my editor and photographer, Alex [inaudible] and my co-writer and co-producer, Jim Gaughran that it's the three of us. And you're the one that goes out and gets the people. Yeah, I am the chief fishermen. So that requires a lot of research to get to the bottom of things, you know, research and then really some salesmanship. You have to get people to give of their time. We don't obviously pay for interviews. It helps when you're selling something to believe in the product, I believe in the product. How did you get Peter Coyote? Which [00:06:30] in and of itself to me was impressive. Well, first of all, anything that you write that then Peter Coyote reads sounds 10 times better than it is. Literally. I agree 100% he's from here and he's like the west coast distributor of involved in the bay area. Speaker 3:There is nothing that the guy hasn't experienced or isn't it somehow some way connected to, so he's our first audience. He was the first outside person to read the script and one of our goals [00:07:00] is to, while he's reading the script, say something along the lines of, I was there for that and I didn't know that to surprise him to, to have him learn something because he was so involved. So he read your script and immediately said, well, I want to be a part of know. In the beginning we didn't have anything. We had nothing. We had an idea, we have an idea and a promise that the thing was going to be good. And I contacted his agent, who's a great guy by the name of Jeff Dannis, uh, down in southern California. And I pitched him [00:07:30] the idea and I just kept selling it. Speaker 3:What turned Peter on originally was the fact that it was locally produced content about the bay area. And that's unusual, isn't that there aren't that many locally produced documentaries from a network television network perspective or a network television perspective. I don't see anybody else doing it in this market, so I can say no, no one else was doing it in this market. There was independent filmmakers, what network television [00:08:00] or what television that work invests an executive producer and a world-class photographer and editor and a world-class writer to this sort of product that isn't on television every day. Now. It's not an everyday newscast, which is our core business. NBC Bay area decided that they would invest, that it would invest serious resources to bring this project to bear. And that included Peter Coyote on the head. He actually was part of many of the movements. Yeah, so he, he [00:08:30] loves it here and he knows what he's talking about. Speaker 3:So that's how we got Peter. We can, I was able to watch half of these and I want to talk more about those, but how do you watch this? If you don't have cable or you don't pay for cable? Let's say you're a student at cal and you hear about this, how would, how would I watch it? Can you watch past episodes somewhere? We're trying to get them up on demand, but you'd have to have cable for that. They don't live online. And here's why. [00:09:00] The rights fees for photos and music, the licensing go through the roof. As soon as you start putting them online. At this point we're not going to see them. They're going to be on demand on infinity, on come on Comcast. Exactly that going to happen. We're in the process of figuring that out as we speak. Okay. So hopefully soon the shows have shelf life. So even the food episode, right? The culinary journey episode. Every year our bay area restaurants are awarded [00:09:30] the beard award and you know, a new restaurant opens by Michael Mina or Alice Waters gets honored by the president or some such thing. Well these people were all in our episode. Yeah, that was a good one. So it would be great for us to be able to post on Facebook, hey look at this thing that happened and if you want to learn more about that person, watch this episode on demand search bay area revelations. Speaker 1:Well it's good that you guys are going to do that because I know there are a lot of people like me in the bay area that don't necessarily watch TV. [00:10:00] Right. And so being able to watch that, I'm telling you I really enjoyed it and I want to talk specifically about two towers. Okay. Which just aired. Sure. And it is about the rivalry and friendship between Stanford and Berkeley. And in fact calyx is mentioned in that because the Oakland A's team owner, Charlie Finley made a deal with calyx way back in the day, 1978 to air their baseball games for a short while. But it was actually run out of Calex at by a couple [00:10:30] of students. And Larry Bear being one of them who was a junior at the time and he's featured in there. And the a couple of other guys back to the roots, Alex and Nikau, who were on our, our method to the madness show early on when they were just getting started. So let's talk about the genesis of that. What is the difference between Stanford and Berkeley? Speaker 3:Here's how we framed the episode. Every time we would do another piece, we kept finding that things had roots at either Stanford or cow [00:11:00] or ucsF or San Francisco state or San Jose State. It happens in news stories. There's a huge news story. The president has a shortlist for Supreme Court nominees. There's three people on it and two of the three have some sort of bay area tie. It can be the most random stuff. Nobel prize winners. Some guy that did this incredible research project in Israel. Well he got his phd at Bay Area University name it, right? So we thought about this idea [00:11:30] of the bay area being an educational nirvana. And then inside of that, right beneath that was this idea that you have one of the top private institutions and the top of public institution in Stanford, in cal. So let's tell their stories. We named it the two towers because of the two iconic towers say their tower and Hoover Tower. Speaker 3:What we did not want to do, what we avoided purposefully is this rivalry idea because it's not that the two universities [00:12:00] live in their own unique spaces and they are outstanding in and of themselves. And there's a lot of collaboration. Yeah. And, and, and you don't have to compare yourself or measure yourself against one another. You are outstanding on your own. And what I learned as we were writing the thing as we were researching, as we were digging into what do we want to talk about, I had this con, this idea from the minute you wake up and turn on [00:12:30] your, your smartphone and you look at Google news and then you look at the wais app to see how long it's going to take you to. Well, Google Stanford Ways app Berkeley from them. From that moment forward, all that you touch is informed in some way by one of the two universities. Speaker 3:And that was the sense that we wanted to give the viewer. And you gave it a beautiful sort of connection too, by showing the organs that have played in each and I didn't know that you could slitter [00:13:00] that they can see each other and also what was inside. If you can talk about what was, what's inside each tower that was really interesting. Sure. At Hoover they have the, the library of war, revolution and peace. And these are, this is memorabilia. Ephemera was the word that we used, this collection of documents, propaganda related to war. We told the story of Herbert Hoover as a Quaker being so anti war that he wanted [00:13:30] to create a library that kept people from committing war. Please see the outcomes of not peace and aim for peace. And that's what's in the Hoover tower. In addition to their marvelous bells that are played by Timothy and um, who is a tremendous character and they've been played for generations back. Speaker 3:And then in say their tower are these bones prehistoric tarpon from the labrea. Tarpits you know, you want [00:14:00] to talk about every diggers dream. There are all of these bones, saber tooth tigers and mastodons and you name it, the creatures that roamed California before man was walking upright, exist floors of them, dozens of them inside say their tower. So y'all walk by it every day and they have amazing organ concerts. Oh yeah. And, and those guys that [00:14:30] play those bells are something else, man. They're fantastic people. One of the things I noticed about the episodes I saw is that many of them started with the gold rush. And I wanna talk about that because that seems to be the starting point for a lot of innovation and ideas in your series. 1849 is kind of the, I mean that's the launching point of the state. Speaker 3:People were coming out here, but not in the way that they did once they realized that there'd be gold in them there hills. So it was a natural [00:15:00] launching point and it brings that sort of gravity, if you will, that sort of gravitational movement brings so many different people. You've got, you know, the guy that's down on his luck and then you've got the, the wealthy prospector and then everybody in between. And a lot of diverse ethnic groups. Exactly. Which created the different food movements. It really did make me think a lot more about that as a, as a jump off point, right? It's its own social movement. And I will be, you [00:15:30] know, just just frank with you and pull the curtain back a little bit. It got a little formulaic, we got a little, I'm kind of stuck in that, that we would launch from there and each of these episodes and if somebody is going to watch the series one after the other and it's like, oh my God, we're starting at the goal by the third time. Speaker 3:Like if they're starting at the gold rush again, um, you know, come on guys, come up with something different and we felt that and you don't as a, as a creator, you know this, right? As a creator, you don't want to fall into just a formula. You want to keep [00:16:00] pushing yourself, even if it's working. You kinda want to try to break it. Yeah, it did work for the ones I saw actually because you drew a line from that point and a very clear line. And so that that worked. I watched passion to preserve, which is about the environmental environmental movements here. That was great because you didn't talk about all the big names. Well John Muir you talked about, but you talked about people I didn't know. Who did you like? I really liked the Monterey Aquarium people. I had [00:16:30] no idea how that got started. Speaker 3:Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. What I wanted and what we wanted was the thing that is accessible to folks. So one of the things that you do when you moved to the bay area new is you hear, Oh, you got to do this, you gotta do that. You gotta go here, you gotta go there, and then all of a sudden your weekends for the next six months are full of all this stuff you got to do. The Monterey Bay aquarium is one of those things that everybody tells you to go do. I remember going there the first time with my mom and [00:17:00] my wife and just being blown away by the thing like this is super cool. So when the idea for an environmental show comes up, I thought we got to tell the story of the aquarium. Everybody from here goes there and you take your kids and then they take their kids and it's this generational thing at this point that was the idea was to give people something to give the viewer something that they could access in their own personal life. Speaker 3:Relate to that. There is a bay area connection and you talk about, absolutely. Steve Webster was our interview subject and he was one of the cofounders. [00:17:30] He's a character. Yeah, he's a great guy. But he said about Kelp. Oh yeah. I've got to think like a calc was saying, how did you design this? He said, you've got to think like you gotta learn. And he got that from wheeler north who was a scientist that they collaborated with. The story goes that Steve Webster and a couple of his classmates were sitting outside of the, their classroom, their, uh, the Stanford annex down there at Monterey Bay and they're looking across at this defunct cannery [00:18:00] and they think to themselves, well, it'd be nice to turn that into a little aquarium, maybe put some fish tanks in there and that'd be cool. And they're having a couple beers on a Friday night and one thing turns to the next. Speaker 3:And one of Steven's buddies happened to be dating Nancy Packard and Nancy was a marine biologist and they start chit chatting and then all of a sudden, Nancy's dad, David gets involved and says, well, you know, if you're going to go, go big, all of a sudden they had means. [00:18:30] So now they had a dream and now they had means. And the two things came together and the Monterey Bay aquarium was the result and it was by magnitudes larger than their greatest estimate. They funded a study, you know, research project to see how many folks would come through there. And it blew the doors off of that estimate and has been going strong ever since. And it's a real jewel. Yeah it is. You're from Cincinnati, Ohio. Do you think being a, so to speak, outsider [00:19:00] has helped you to see these icons, movements people a little easier than someone who's grown up here? Speaker 3:I think that the things that maybe someone who was from here takes for granted, you know, as just always being there. Someone from the outside looks and goes, well I wonder how that got there. How'd that happen? I wish, I wish my hometown had that. The real thing that being an outsider has and I definitely am one. The thing that that has allowed me to do is be ignorant. It [00:19:30] has given me license to ask very simplistic questions about origin, about start, about inspiration. And I talked to the interview subject and you know, I'll say, you know, I'm not, I'm not from here. So I may ask you a question that may be just you would think is so apparent, but if I ask one of those, just know, please go, go with me. And what ends up happening is they're more relaxed. They don't feel like they need to prove something to me. Speaker 3:They're teaching, they're teaching me something [00:20:00] and then I get to be the curious student, which I am by nature. My Mom's an educator, she's taught English, her whole, her whole life and so she taught me to be, you know, really curious about things. I listened to the interviews back in order to transcribe them. You sounded like a boy, like a child. You, some of you know, 39 year old man and I sounded like there's this little boy, but that's usually the feedback out of that is where the, the untold story comes and openings occur. Yeah, exactly right. And you get people, [00:20:30] Lisa, out of their programmatic answers and into this more personal space. I've got an example of that. The story of, of how gay marriage came to be in San Francisco. So we're interviewing Kevin Newsome in the front part of the interview. Gavin is definitely the former mayor and the lieutenant governor and I'm getting programmatic. Speaker 3:Gavin. And which of your programs was, this was in rebels and revolutions. Somehow something turned. You could just see it happen in [00:21:00] his appearance and his tone of voice. We started chit chatting a little bit about family and about membranous his of his grandfather, and then I asked him what was the spark for this idea? And he tells the story that Nancy Pelosi had an extra ticket to George W bushes, state of the Union address when Gavin had just been elected mayor. Mrs Pelosi Calls Gavin and says, Hey, I've got this extra ticket. Would you like to come? Absolutely, that sounds great. So when you go into the house, [00:21:30] you have to check your cell phones, much like a coat check. So get checks. A cell phone goes, watches the speech. President Bush gives in Gavin's words I half-hearted support of quote unquote traditional marriage speech finishes. Gavin gets in line to get his cell phone and behind him he hears these two women say the words. Speaker 3:It's about time we did something with those homosexuals and Gavin looks at me and he says, for the first time in my life I didn't say anything. I just listened and I listened to the rest of their conversation. And [00:22:00] I thought to myself, this has to end, and I got my cell phone and I walked out the steps of the capitol. Pitch-Black cold, fairly lost, and I called Steve Cava, my chief of staff and said, I'm getting on a plane tomorrow we're going to land and we're going to do something about this. And that's what started it. To hear that story and then to hear the back and forth between Gavin and Steve Who's gay and Steve was against this idea, not only from a political perspective but from a personal one, and he tells the story. He says, to get in, the hardest thing I've [00:22:30] ever done is come out and now you're telling me I have to find a spouse and oh by the way, it not working out so great for you there brother. Speaker 3:That story that doesn't get told that people don't know that the smallest thing that's the match strike. Right. Your next one coming up and it's going to air on August 4th is called the Olympians. In a nutshell, what is that gonna Cover? The Bay area. We're a country. In the last summer games, it would have placed in the top 10 in metal count in a word that's real. It's [00:23:00] really remarkable how many Olympians and then Olympic champions come out of the bay area. So we focus on a couple of them. We focus on some names that you know and remember very, very well. You know, Kristi Yamaguchi, uh, Brian Boitano, uh, Johnny Moseley, and then maybe some names that have gone a little bit forgotten like a Matt Biondi who went to cal, a guy by the name of James Gorin who played a water polo on the 56 Melbourne team [00:23:30] and went to Stanford and coached swimming at Stanford. Speaker 3:And then of course we talked to Terry McKeever who is a coach because all these athletes, all these athletes need coaches. And the Olympic coach is really something else. And Her story is remarkable. Remarkable. Loses her dad at the age of four in a car crash ends up becoming, is a part of a, uh, her mom remarries and becomes the oldest of 10 kids. And a story that unfortunately just hit the cutting room floor yesterday is she gets her [00:24:00] first head coaching job at Fresno state and the head men's swimming coach is trying to tell her when you take your team out on the road, you know, these are the things that you need to do. Now she had 14 swimmers, she's the oldest of 10 she calls her mom and says, this is a piece of cake. This is a family out here. This is easy. Speaker 3:She's remarkable. And then we interviewed Nathan, Adrian as well who's great and is on his way to Rio training out of cow. So that's what it's about. So in 2015 you did six, you have four slated for this year and [00:24:30] there's an episode coming up after the Olympians on Bay area music. And what are you going to be talking about? That's an excellent question. We are literally in right now the outlining stage of the music episode. So you have to talk about Calla. We are still, well, you know what we're talking about is we're talking about radio that will be discussed in the underground radio and campus radio plays such a huge role in that idea and getting new music out there to people. This is a continuing series. [00:25:00] The goal is for it to continue. Yes. You could almost do this in any major metropolitan area. Speaker 3:I'm thinking of specifically New York City. I'm thinking of Boston, Cambridge, mass. You've got MIT, Harvard. Have you guys thought about expanding this series to other cities? Sure. Comcast NBC owns 13 stations across the United States and I've been in conversations with another market who's interested. Their newsroom is interested in doing a series like this there. You know? That's the fun part is when you get a call from a [00:25:30] colleague that you respect who says, hey, how did you guys do this? And then to get them excited about it and to tell them, you're going to come to this fork in the road, don't go left. We went left. It was terrible. Stay, stay right. They kind of guide them. As an aside, I watched the artists, which is all about the bay area art movement, but I was inspired and I just went to the Derosa museum because of what you talk about in your film and it's an amazing museum in Napa that is full [00:26:00] of s of the best northern California art in the nation, probably the world. Speaker 3:It is such a beautiful place. First of all, thank you for that. And um, that means the world. It really does. To hear someone who's lived here for a long time say that they're learning something about their community. That's the goal. And in every episode that my question, my challenge to myself is what do I want the viewer to feel at the end of this? But I want them to feel it [00:26:30] at the beginning. What do I want them to learn in the middle and what do I want them to feel at the end? Your, for instance, passion to preserve the environmental one. My goal for what you would feel at the end is why in the hell did I just spend an hour inside television when I should be outside exploring and doing? I have to say after watching all of them, I felt almost, I'm not even from here originally, but I felt a pride. Speaker 3:Yeah. You know like getting rid of plastic bags, which is another part of your environmental segment. The people who started that w [00:27:00] you know, they were just regular people and I just feel like there's so much of that here. I am glad I'm living here and I felt like everyone should see this, the power of a person with an an idea, you know, that's the real, the power of one is a real, is a theme that rolls through this series. We are invested in storytelling. Hopefully you enjoy, have schools approached you to use this as a curriculum aid? There's a lot of pressure on a lot of documentarians today to [00:27:30] have an action plan and funding is often tied to that. So that hasn't come up at all? No. Our funding comes from our company so we don't have to revisit something you might be interested in doing? Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, because I think that I thought that immediately when I watched them. David Talbott who we interviewed for the uh, second piece, rebels and revolutions, his book, seasons season of the witch, his book was I think used by San Francisco unified [00:28:00] as there, I think they give one book to the district to read for that school year and we thought that it would be a good companion to this point. We haven't been contacted by anybody, so I think that it would be, I think that it's a natural, you, like you say, once it's on demand, perhaps it will become more of a curriculum aid. Maybe you should talk about how you got started. I got my start out of Ohio University, which is a midsize liberal arts school. I'm in the southeast corner of Ohio, kind of its own [00:28:30] little Atlantis in the middle of Appalachia. I got a phone call from a, an alum who said that there was a sports gig opened in as TV station that was about a mile drive from campus. Speaker 3:So I hopped in my car and I took my resume tape to do the TV station and handed it to the news director who said, well, this looks great. How about an audition? I said, yell whenever you would like to do it. She said, how about now? And so I hopped on the desk and got an audition and got a job before I graduated college, which was really [00:29:00] unique. I just kept saying yes. So that's my, my first piece of advice to people is just keep saying yes. When someone asks you to work a holiday, say yes. When someone asked you to work overtime, someone asks you to learn a new skill. Just keep saying yes and the doors will continue to open for you. You just gotta be passionate about it and not foe passion. I mean the kind of passion that allows you to wake up at six o'clock in the morning, go do a shoot, write your story, [00:29:30] Edit your story. See your story on television and then go bartend down the street in order to make ends meet because you're not making any money. I don't know that it's ever been more important to be good at what we do as journalists than it is right now. If somebody wants to communicate with you, email or otherwise, it's just Joseph Dot Inter. He's at NBC uni.com. All right, Joe. Well, thank you for coming on method to the madness. Speaker 3:[00:30:00] You've been listening to [inaudible] Speaker 2:method to the man. Tune in again in two weeks at the same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Explains the founding and mission of the interdisciplinary Berkeley Food InstituteTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening to KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And this is method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Ali Nasar and today we have Anne threat with us. Hi Anne. How are you? I'm great, thank you. And she is the executive director of the Berkeley Food Institute. A really interesting organization here on campus or really happy to have your insight, have her here with us in studio. Um, so again, you know, we have a lot of, uh, founders and new organizations [00:00:30] on to talk about, um, their, um, problem that we're trying to solve. So that's the first question I always ask is why was this organization created and what's the problem statement of you're trying to solve? Well, thank you very much for having me. And yes, I'm, the Berkeley Food Institute was formed purposefully with the intention of addressing some of the very large challenges in society that have to do with food and agriculture systems. Speaker 1:So it's not purely foods specific, but also the way our food is produced all the way from farm [00:01:00] to fork. And you're probably aware that there are a lot of environmental concerns as well as social concerns about the current food system that are really contributing to some major problems for society. Um, those include, um, issues of climate change, uh, toxic chemical exposure and the environmental side on things like soil erosion, uh, water depletion. So those are really large environmental challengers. And there's also, there are also very large challenges in terms of the social issues. Um, both, [00:01:30] uh, food insecurity. And um, also on the flip side, obesity are major public health issues. Um, and very often actually food security insecurity goes hand in hand with obesity curiously enough. So those are just some of the major problems. Um, we also have major problems with farm worker exposure to pesticides, um, and inequitable systems of payment of wages in, in the food system, which is very clearly illustrated both in the farm work in agriculture, but also in restaurants. Speaker 1:[00:02:00] So those are just some of the many, uh, array of problems that we're facing in society that really cross cut a hole. Um, you know, just many different topics. And the, the fortunate thing is that at Berkeley we had many different people working on these issues, but they're often in different departments in different disciplines and not always collaborating together. So the Berkeley Food Institute was founded about three years ago with the idea of bringing many people together to solve these very difficult [00:02:30] questions and to come up with innovative solutions, which brings this issue of innovation and finding entrepreneurial and unique policy ways to, you know, and also, um, scientific elements together to solve complex problems so that, um, yeah, the, the institute was brought together about three years ago with the involvement of the College of natural resources as well as the Goldman School of public policy. And then we also got on board the School of journalism with Pollan who was very [00:03:00] involved from the beginning and the school of law and school public health, which has become increasingly involved and very actively involved. Speaker 1:So they're really, we have the fortune of getting people from multiple disciplines. There's also the college of environmental design has many people working on food and agriculture issues. We also have people in, in letters and sciences. So it really brings together people. It's food has really become a catalyst to generate lots of, lots of concern. And there are many, many students as well as faculty members [00:03:30] interested in the topic. Oh, how amazing. I mean, there's so many different people involved. And to create an umbrella organization in, in a, um, on a campus that's so high caliber with so many different really smart people must be a really fun position for you to be and to really harness this power and attack this huge problem set that you're talking about. Exactly. Yeah. It's very exciting because we're really being able to bring together serving as a hub to have this interaction amongst so many [00:04:00] people who care about this issue deeply. Speaker 1:Um, and you know, we're fortunate again at Berkeley because Berkeley is an epicenter of innovation in this field, in both in the natural sciences and the social sciences. And a lot of people don't know that. I mean Berkeley is known for what are his actually at land grant college where the classic universities that has a connection to agricultural production and you know, being a land grant colleges has leadership in agriculture, but people don't think of it that way because we're not in a rural setting [00:04:30] yet. There's so much work going on here that has to do with food and agriculture. So I think the Berkeley Food Institute is not like we're reinventing anything that's happening at Berkeley, but just bringing people together to create greater visibility and also to help facilitate cross disciplinary interaction. So I can talk a little more about that, but I should mention that we right now have 110 affiliated faculty members from across the university and we welcome more, we're happy to have more faculty members join us. Speaker 1:And we also have many, many students [00:05:00] who are engaged and interested in this. And we've had the fortune of being able to upload employee, a number of students as well as provide some fellowships for students. So I understand and we're talking to anthrop, the executive director of the Berkeley Food Institute here on method to the madness on k, Alex Berkeley. And um, I'd like to understand first, you know, the founding of this organization. It sounds like it sounds so complicated, so many organizations you just walk us through. How does something like that happen on such a made big campus like this and [00:05:30] first from kind of the genesis of the idea to actually kind of getting it implemented in, in off the ground has to have to get its own slice of funding or how, how does this whole thing work? Well, great question. There are a number of, you probably know many institutes and centers on the university campus and some of them are within specific disciplines. Speaker 1:Um, but as I mentioned, the Berkeley Food Institute is highly interdisciplinary. And what happened actually initially, one of the sparks that made this happen was that there's a person is an alum from Berkeley, um, and he [00:06:00] was a, he's a philanthropist and very interested in environmental issues. Um, his name is Bob Epstein and Bob, um, was very interested in, in the idea of, of developing an institute, um, uh, three years ago that really Dell went beyond environmental issues that he was very interested in previously. I mean, it's still obviously food systems relate to environment, but he developed an interest that went beyond that. And um, Bob has a phd from, [00:06:30] uh, from cow in engineering and he came to the College of natural resources, Dean, um, named Keith Gillis and the dean of the Goldman school public policy. And Bob was actually on the advisory board for the Goldman school and expressed his interest. Speaker 1:He also got Michael and, and involved early on to talk about this idea of bringing people together at, at cal to really help make a difference in food systems. Um, Bob, as many of us share the, the notion that it, that food [00:07:00] systems really is an crucial issue that intersects with some of the very critical issues of our time. So, you know, again, these social environmental, economic marketing policy issues across the board. So he felt that there was a great prospect of bringing together many people to leverage the research that's going on here collectively to effect policy change and to affect practical change. So that's what Berkeley Food Institute was founded on the basis of really wanting to [00:07:30] leverage research and bring researchers together with practitioners and policymakers to affect change. So it has a very outward facing mission, which is to support transformative change and food systems and to promote diversity, justice, resilience and health and food systems. Speaker 1:Is there anything else like this in the world? You know, there are other institutes, um, at other campuses and in fact, food systems has gained great attention, uh, throughout the [00:08:00] nation and in fact the world. But I think on the Berkeley Food Institute is, is somewhat unique and, or is unique in the sense that there we have so many disciplines involved. We have done sort of an analysis of, of different institutes that have some similarities and um, some of them are interdisciplinary indeed, but they don't necessarily involve the policy elements and the cultural and the sort of journalism. So we have, you know, the assets of having multiple dimensions that aren't quite covered as much [00:08:30] as other institutes. So I think we have a great promise in that way of really effecting change. Like, you know, you had a great momentum in the founding story of having someone with a vision and having some, some introduce disciplinary leaders involved. Speaker 1:Right. So how, tell us a little bit about your background and they had this idea and then they needed someone to actually run it. So how did you get involved? Well, I should also say before I've personally got involved, um, the deans involved, um, [00:09:00] decided to, uh, appoints faculty co-directors to get it going. And so we have two faculty co-directors, um, named Claire Kremen and Allister Isles, both from the College of natural resources. And they had already been very active in developing what we call the diversified farming systems center. So that also had to do with sort of diverse and ecologically sound agroecology methods that are used mostly in organic production systems. So that was something that they were already doing research on. And, um, the Dean and [00:09:30] others felt that they were be good co-directors, Dick Chair to get the ideas going and they formed a committee to help get that going as well from multiple disciplines. Speaker 1:Um, and then held a, a sort of a founding symposium to get ideas from external stake holders as well. So all that, that first sort of year was really focused on kind of getting ideas and figuring out where it was going to go. And then they announced the executive director position. I applied for that and I was unfortunate enough to receive the position after [00:10:00] many interviews and discussions with the group. So yeah, it was a no loss and practically, yeah. Well I have a background, it's very interdisciplinary, which is appropriate for this job. Um, I, um, it actually was years ago, a postdoc here at Berkeley, so I know Berkeley quite well and have had interaction for many years with, um, with people who work at Berkeley. Um, but I have a background in both the natural sciences and the social science is mainly in sustainable agriculture. Speaker 1:And, um, [00:10:30] I did work internationally in Latin America on the intersection of environment development and food systems. So I was very interested and did a lot of work on, uh, social issues having to do with the impacts of, of unsustainable farming in developing countries, uh, and in the United States, but mostly in Latin America. And then I worked for some years in research, but then I worked in a policy institute called the World Resources Institute as the director of sustainable agriculture for many years. Um, and [00:11:00] then I worked for a short time and the government actually to, um, providing a grant program to sustainable agriculture programs. Um, and then I was in the private sector. I actually was a sustainability director at a, at a organic vineyards up in Sonoma county for many years. And I worked very closely with growers and with cooperative extension. Um, but my, my background really touches on a lot of areas for quite a while. Speaker 1:Actually my early work in my dissertation for my phd was, um, on farm worker issues, um, and exposure [00:11:30] to pesticides and the banana industry. So that was in Costa Rica. So I, yeah, I really have addressed a lot of different issues, but my passions are really about justice and, uh, sustainability in, in food systems and broadly. So I was really excited about this because I think that BFI brings together so many different, um, interesting people topics and it just seems like a great fit too to create help to create this building of partnerships. I, my own background [00:12:00] has really always been cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral. So even though I have worked in a number of different jobs, it's been similar themes that help to bring together multiple parties to the table to help to make significant changes in society. Okay. We're talking to anthrop today. She's the executive director of the Berkeley Food Institute, a new ish organization here on campus, interdisciplinary. Speaker 1:We're talking about, and this is methods to the madness on KL expertly. I'm your host. Tallinn Huizar and um, [00:12:30] so, and you, you were given this like, uh, after a year's worth of idea generation by the, the, the faculty co-chairs, um, your committee members, the committee members, you were, uh, handed over this kind of, you know, grand idea with lots of different ways it could probably go. So I'm interested to understand how it's been a couple of years now. How did you decide what the initial projects or where you're going to invest the [00:13:00] institutes time initially? Because the problem statement that you started off the show with is huge and you could go a million different ways. So how did you decide where to, cause I'm, I'm assuming you want to move the needle on a few different things and really make an impact. Definitely. Well, so even before I joined the group involvement, the, our faculty co-directors and others involved in the initial executive committee, um, had identified a few areas where they felt, you know, important work needed to be done and in particular, um, people were interested [00:13:30] and I was very interested in, in greater utilizing the existing research on campus and to be able to leverage that more effectively, communicate that more effectively to policymakers and also to engage in public education that can help raise awareness of not only the strengths of the university professors and researchers, but also connect with community people. Speaker 1:As you know, again, Berkeley is known for some of the leading work, like um, leading innovations and not from Alice Waters and Chez Panisse and all that, but [00:14:00] also food justice activism is very strong in this area. So we really was an interest in connecting the work of the university with that broader community. And some of that was definitely already happening. Absolutely. But the idea was to give greater visibility and strength and support to those efforts. I mean, another example would be a lot of education was going on by a motivated by students and initiated by students like the student organic gardening association. And again, we just wanted to be able to give greater strength and visibility to those kinds of opportunities. So [00:14:30] when I came on board, um, we realized that one of the first things that we could do is develop, uh, a small seed grant program, uh, for projects that were innovative, cross disciplinary and aim to effect change. Speaker 1:So we put out a request for proposals to all faculty members on campus, um, to uh, come with projects that were cross disciplinary in nature and aim to address some of the major issues that were of concern in food systems. What is the seed [00:15:00] grant proposal? Well, a proposal. What basically what it meant is that they put together project ideas that were about different issues, um, ranging from urban farming issues to nutrition and health challenges and then their small projects. And we had small amounts of funding and like $25,000 for each grant. Um, but they were going to be doing research on these topics. It proposed research to us that, um, were going to affect these, these, you know, help provide information that [00:15:30] could solve these issues or come up with new innovations. So we had 24 applications in the first round, which involved literally dozens of people across the campus cause they weren't just alone applicants. Speaker 1:They were working in partnership. Um, so we only could pick five out of those 24 are, we're expecting maybe 12 or dozen or so, but we're really excited. So I have to say this was, the development of this program was done in collaboration. Of course [00:16:00] with our faculty co-directors, it wasn't just me, but we came up with the search committee and, and we were just really delighted at the quality, um, and the array of things that were proposed. Um, great projects. And unfortunately we can only choose five. Um, but then we did a second round of those, those research projects, um, are the requests for proposals in the second year too. And we'll do the first one was in 2014 as one of the first things that I was involved in doing when I came on board. And of course that, that great for me to [00:16:30] learn more about all of what's going on on campus. Speaker 1:I already knew some of what was happening here, but part of my initial orientation was just to meet lots and lots and lots of people to learn about what's going on here. And then people applied to this program, which advanced my learning too. So can you tell us what are some of the grants that were awarded? Well in the first, yeah, so in the first round we have one that's very, very unique. We received a lot of attention. It's unique. It's on, um, urban foraging that is basically hunting around for interesting. [00:17:00] Um, you know, uh, plants that are edible that are underrepresented and people don't realize that these kinds of plants are actually edible, but they actually can provide good nutrition. Um, when you go to the farmer's market or to a grocery store, now you can buy Dandelion Greens that are grown, but it actually, there'll be available in your own backyard for many people in their own backyard. Speaker 1:But they're also located often in kind of urban lots. And so this project did an analysis, kind of a mapping analysis of all of these places where they could find so-called [00:17:30] weeds, but which actually could be foraged plants. Um, so that was one of the interesting projects and it actually morphed into a more complex project that involves also identifying in farms in rural areas, these types of weed. Um, you know, weeds that have always been considered weeds on farms are marketed very small quantities, but they're trying to explore the opportunity for further market potential by getting upscale restaurants involved in others. So I mean, there was a concern about how these weeds could [00:18:00] be used in so-called food deserts. You know, in areas where there's a lack of nutritious food. Um, and certainly there are some prospects for, for these weeds in those areas, but there also are opportunities in other areas to greater utilize these. Speaker 1:So that's one area. Another one of them was on, um, on, uh, urban agroecology. So similar urban farming areas. We have one that has to do with um, farm workers and farm small farmers in Salinas Valley [00:18:30] that are interested in land access to develop their own farms and still another one on nutritious and healthy making, um, snap this food stamp recipients, um, considering, uh, healthy beverage purchases as part of a package of Ben or opportunities and potential restrictions on unhealthy beverages for snap recipients. So those are just some of the kinds of things that we're, that we're supporting. Um, and in this we also have one on on, on labor conditions. [00:19:00] So that's another area and it's really important in the restaurant workers industry. So it really spans quite a range of issues. Um, and we also continue that program this year. We are continuing the program this year. Speaker 1:Um, so yeah, that's a really interesting, a lot of great ideas. So, um, exhilarating to mind this, you know, very fertile ground for ideas. It is. Yeah. And it's also been interesting cause the scope ranges from very local [00:19:30] to global. Um, I think people have had the impression that most of our work is focused on California and local, but we are very interested in many faculty are doing international work and we've even had a chance to delve into that. So basically research is one of our main areas of work, but linking that to policy into practice. So if you notice most of the topics I mentioned do have a link to affect change. So we're really trying to encourage these kinds of projects that really have prospect to communicate results that can help lead to change. [00:20:00] And we're speaking with anthrop here. She's the executive director of the Berkeley Food Institute here on campus. Speaker 1:And this is KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM method to the madness. I'm your host Ali in his are. And so we were talking about the seed grant program, but you guys also do a lot of other things. We do, yes. So tell us a little bit about a lot. There's a lot of educational things there are. Yeah, we sound like they're both for the community and at large on campus. Tell us a little bit about that. Well. Um, we've been really doing a lot of public education events. Um, we have had [00:20:30] for the past, uh, two years, um, of forums, monthly forms that we call the food exchange forum, but also hosted every other public education events. And that brings together, it's usually a forum that involves internal speakers or Berkeley speakers, but also people from other sectors of society like, like Ninjas, nongovernment organizations or um, government agency representatives and or, um, farmers in some cases who come [00:21:00] to speak on critical issues. Speaker 1:And we've covered a huge array of topics in that ranging from climate change and agriculture to livestock issues and animal agriculture. Um, also issues of farm, you know, farm worker issues. Um, and let's see a number, oh, we also did a really interesting forum on innovative businesses that are exploring innovative business models. So there really has been a whole array of different topics. We also did a really great forum that attracted more than 300 people [00:21:30] or about 300 people last spring on justice and food systems that had some really excellent speakers. Um, talk, talk about that very important issue on all different levels. So, um, yes, those public education events are free and they've been available to the public. Um, and we've continued them this year we were doing, um, fewer just because of, we don't have the capacity to do too many, but we're doing an event that's going to feature Marianne Nessel who's a very well known speaker and [00:22:00] writer, um, talking about her new book on Soda Politics and it's actually going to be focused. Speaker 1:That book is focused or one of the main issues is focused on the Berkeley soda tax. So that will be on November 4th. Um, and we also have a speaker who is the secretary of the California Department of Food and agriculture who's coming on November 9th. And we're very excited about that too. She's going to be featured in it in a public, in a public forum. So those kinds of events have just raised attention to these, to [00:22:30] these issues. And also again, enable this kind of cross-fertilization between different people who are working on these issues from different perspectives. And for people who want to really see the full calendar where they go to food. Dopper Clinton Edu. Yes, that's our website. Yep. food.berkeley.edu and the events, um, section has, has our calendar and also information on these featured events. We also publicize events for other people. So there are many other events that are happening on campus that have to do [00:23:00] with food and agriculture. Speaker 1:So we are happy to post those events on our calendar and that goes right into the cal calendar. So, um, and also community events in the bay area, we sometimes publish publicize those as well. So it's a great place for people to go who just want to learn about what's going on with food systems. Okay, great. So I'm going to say in addition to doing those public education events, we've been very involved in facilitating a committee that has developed a minor in food systems. And some [00:23:30] people, especially from the community might want to know what does that mean. So basically, um, as you know, when you're, when you're in college you can get a major in something. Well you can also get a minor in a topic and many, many people are interested in food as a minor. So they may have a major in like in like ecology or in pest management or in um, let's say, um, anthropology, but they might want to minor in food systems because they have a particular interest in let's say food and culture. Speaker 1:So they might have a major in anthropology and a minor [00:24:00] in food systems and then focus on that same thing with like nutrition. They may focus as their major in nutrition sciences, but they won't want to do food systems more broadly as a minor. So we're really excited that, um, that Berkeley has now, UC Berkeley has now launched a new food systems minor and the Berkeley Food Institute played a role in enabling that to happen by facilitate facilitating a committee that helped to put together the curriculum. So now any student, any undergraduate can minor in food systems, which is a [00:24:30] needed topic. Definitely. That's my next question for you is as we come towards the end of the interview is, um, one of the fundamental issues we have as a race now is just the explosion of the populations. We've got the same earth, but we've got a lot more people that we've got to feed. Speaker 1:Right? So as that, you know, supply and demand equation and starts to change fundamentally. What do you, from your seat and someone who studied this your whole career and is now at the nexus of all this innovation, what do you think is the biggest [00:25:00] kind of levers that we need to push to really create a, uh, a system that is just, and, and healthy and like where, where are the really big bets that have to be placed? I mean, I know my big super progressive friends are always like anti Monsanto. Like either if we get rid of them, we'll have everything solved, but I'm sure it's much more complex on that. What's your opinion on that? Well, it's very complicated of course, and it'd be very difficult and just a short interview to kind of characterize the complexities. [00:25:30] But I do think one thing we really need to stress is that often the problem or the issues of food access and food security internationally are posed as one of just a technology question of feeding the planet by increasing yields, increasing productivity. Speaker 1:But in fact, so much of the challenge has to do with distribution and access. I'm not saying that there's not a production problem because there isn't many places, but in some parts of the world, including the United States, there's actually overproduction of some [00:26:00] goods and products. So I think part of the challenge is to reframe the question of feeding the world as one of, you know, how do we enable access to healthy and nutritious foods, affordable foods for everybody in the on the planet, and to overcome these great discrepancies in inequities that we have and where people do have incredible abundance and over abundance of food and in other places where they have great scarcity of food or scarcity of good food. So it has to do with income issues. [00:26:30] It has to do with poverty, it has to do with policy, it has to do with control of food systems. Speaker 1:So it's very complex issue, but we're trying to address those issues in a holistic way. This really, we believe at the Brooklyn Food Institute that solving these issues and coming up with innovations really requires a multi-sectoral, you know, systems approach. And we've focused in on a few key key topics or themes. Um, and we're trying to hone in on more of those. And, um, I'm actually say focus even more of our efforts [00:27:00] in those areas. But one of the areas is, does have to do with, um, ensuring that all people have access to, um, nutritious and affordable food. And another area that we think is really crucial when there's a great gap of work has to do with ensuring healthy and fair, uh, labor conditions, which is often something that's not addressed that much in food systems. Um, but as key to sustainability of food, food provision and food access. Speaker 1:And then the third areas is accelerating [00:27:30] the adoption of what we refer to as agroecology, which is the integration of agriculture, antiques or ecological principles in agriculture, but also addressing the social issues in agriculture. So people refer to that sometimes as sustainable agriculture. But agroecology has a particular meaning that has been actually really, there's a lot of innovation and pioneers in agroecology here at the University of California at Berkeley. And we really feel that that, you know, accelerating the adoption of agroecology is crucial, um, at a [00:28:00] global scale. So those are some of the key areas, but there's a lot more to be done. Of course, market issues, consolidation in the food system, you know, there really are a multiplicity of, of challenges but also opportunities. And I think the excitement that has been generated at Berkeley in this area is just one reflection of promise actually. Speaker 1:And um, you know, real potential to bring about change. And we're, I mean to me it's exciting at this point in my career. I've been working on this for many years, always in partnership [00:28:30] with lots of people. But I think right now I've just feeling an accelerated element of, of, of interest in and enthusiasm on the part of many, many people from multiple sides. So that's great. So I always like to end the interview with asking you, um, if everything was to go exactly right, what would happen five years from now, what would you think? What would be, if I Berkeley Food Institute, you check it out everybody, whole lot of food.berkeley.edu what kind of impact, what would the organization look like five years from now? [00:29:00] Well, I do think that our, our vision is really to, to achieve, you know, some elements of transformative change in food systems. Speaker 1:And it's hard to know exactly how that will be characterized, but I think we can put ourselves on the map by achieving, you know, really greater equity in access to nutritious and healthy food. And that has to come about through policy change. I didn't get a chance to talk too much about our policy program, but really we need people on board from, you know, the government, [00:29:30] all government agencies to really place this on the forefront of healthcare. Um, you know, really food is can be an entry point to health. Um, and also for assuring, um, the wise use of natural resources and mitigation of climate change can happen through effective agriculture practices. So I think we really want to put ourselves on the map and you know, really, um, uh, develop this organization so that we can leverage the research and really effect these changes through policy and through practical changes. Speaker 1:[00:30:00] So I think the, the possibility is in reach and we just need to focus in on a few key issues. So. Okay, great. Well there you have it. That's an through up the executive director of the Berkeley Food Institute and Interdisciplinary Institute here on campus. Go check them out of food.berkeley.edu. They got a lot of great events coming up this fall. You should get involved if this speaks to you, if you're a student, consider getting a food systems minor. It sounds like a really interesting topic. You can check out our programs and our events to, yeah, there you go. [00:30:30] So thanks a lot for listening everybody. Uh, this has been method to the madness on KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM. I'm your host selling his art. Thanks for joining and have a great Friday. Everybody. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Host Lisa Kiefer interviews Desi Mundo, aerosol artist and founder of the Oakland-based non-profit Community Rejuvenation Project (CRP). CRP has emerged as one of the most prolific mural arts organizations in the East Bay, transforming the role of the "aerosol writing" culture from neighborhood scourge to community benefactors through public projects like the ALICE STREET mural, the Funktown Arts District at the Parkway Theatre, and the San Pablo Cultural Arts corridor in Oakland.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness. A biweekly public affairs show on k a l s Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Kiefer and today I'm interviewing Desi. Muno does, he's the founder of the Community Rejuvenation Project and Oakland nonprofit that cultivates healthy communities through public art, [00:00:30] beautification, education and celebration does. He has produced over 150 murals and is a leading policy advocate for public arts. Welcome to the program. Desi, you're cofounded or were you the founder of community? Speaker 2:I'm the founder of the community Juvenalian project in Oakland, CRP Bay area.org. Um, we're primarily based in Oakland, but we do murals throughout the bay. And [00:01:00] even throughout the nation we've done about probably closer to 200 murals in the past five years, primarily in, um, visible spaces, you know, and some murals in like schools and some murals that are not as visible to the public in general, but the majority community rejuvenation project. So I think in the beginning we were trying to find ways as aerosol riders to connect to the community and make our work be sort of respected [00:01:30] by the community for graffiti artists. Uh, yeah, the, I mean, graffiti is a derogatory term. Graffiti was a term given to us by the media in the 70s, uh, by people I, Norma mailer who wrote the original, well one of the first books called the faith of graffiti and I think that that's where they started applying that name to us. Speaker 2:But writers never said that. Writers called themselves writers because they were writing [inaudible], you know, I choose not to use that term. Um, because I've been taught by some of the older guys in New York that that's a derogatory [00:02:00] term to them. I grew up calling myself, you know, graffiti writer, where did you grow up in Chicago? And I always felt like we didn't want to kind of soften our identity and we wanted to hold down the, the rebellious side of our work, um, by calling ourselves graffiti and not calling ourselves aerosol artists or things like that. In fact, we were, we would say that I still somewhat believed that we were there first. You know what I mean? The writing was there before art was we, we're the descendants people [00:02:30] putting the artwork on the walls came way before it was put in a frame and kind of limited to the bourgeois. Speaker 2:And so we've always been artists for the people and we've been, you know, we connect back to the caves, we connect back to the Egyptians and the Aztecs and the, and the Celts. And they're always a message in your art. There's always a purpose. I think the, I mean writing is a culture. We definitely write different things in relationship to different time periods in lives. You know, people [00:03:00] pass away, people are born, we may do pieces that are dedicated to those people, but a lot of it is also personal identification and expression, personal definition of who we are. So I feel like sometimes there's like a, a demand from the outside that we create something that is, can be connected to by the larger public. And that's not always the purpose from the inside. The more political, yes. You know, they're trying to get something that they can understand. Speaker 2:And My, my brother and my [00:03:30] teacher Raven would always talk about, you know, this is like jazz. You don't have to understand it to know that it's beautiful. We actually do a lot of work to in our lettering to, to hide the true meaning for people that don't understand or are not willing to take those steps to decipher it. For us, the continued elaboration of the letter, sort of like the illuminated manuscripts, the infinite possibility of what the letter can be to continue to push the style to continue, continue to develop [00:04:00] who we are. We continue to elaborate and make it more and more complex, more and more advanced versus you know, Helvetica nation that we live in where everything is kind of homogenized and everything is very readable and everything is very palatable and everything does not have any, you know, cultural context within it. Speaker 2:You know, everybody's supposed to, you know, merge into this one culture instead of celebrate the diversity of all the cultures. You've been involved in projects that pose significant questions about the role of public art. Right. [00:04:30] Can you talk about your art in context of that? Say in Oakland? Right. The community rejuvenation project is a pavement to policy organization. So what that means is that we've been on the ground painting murals throughout the bay area for a long time. We've been, you know, involved in this art form for the past 20 plus years. We've been looking at it from kind of a holistic standpoint, from a public art policy standpoint, and we've been advocating to get more public art [00:05:00] onto the streets and into our communities and we've been creating best practices. We've been helping to advocate for specific legislation battling against the prejudice against the aerosol aesthetic, which is that literally stuff that's done with spray paint is treated differently than any other medium in Philadelphia. Speaker 2:It's illegal to do murals with spray paint in Chicago. It's illegal to sell spray paint within the city limits. So can you imagine [00:05:30] what it would be like if they banned the brush? They paint in acrylics or they said that you couldn't use your tool? That which is what we use to to survive, to sustain ourselves as professional artists. It doesn't matter. Again, in Philadelphia if the mural is commissioned, if it's permission or or if it's illegal, it doesn't matter. Anything though with spray paint is automatically illegal. We saw that even closer to home in Richmond, California where there was a group of artists that painted a [00:06:00] commissioned work on Paul's paint, decide the fact that they were paid to do this project. A local neighbor labeled it graffiti and because it was under that label, they were required to paint it out. Paul himself was actually threatened with a fine despite the fact that he had paid these guys to do this work on his business, which was probably his private business. Yeah. Which is probably, you know, helping to deter illegal vandalism on his property. We have a lot of these backwards laws that CRP has been calling out and challenging [00:06:30] and putting out alternative best practices that you know, city governments can look at and can consider when developing their approach to working with artists. Speaker 1:What is the proof? Is there any proof that it has actually stopped crime in areas or lessened crime? How are you proving that? Speaker 2:The the what we're, what we are looking very directly at is the role of murals in abatement. And what we realize is that murals actually do a deter ongoing [00:07:00] vandalism. So how do you know this will? Because when you paint the murals don't get vandalized as much. So you've been watching this for, so we use, we have, we have tons of case studies, but also the Department of Justice has actually come out with a report which recommended murals as part of an intelligent strategy for so-called graffiti abatement. From our perspective as aerosol riders, the top quality work is intended to go over lower quality work where we're supposed [00:07:30] to continue to push the envelope of our development with better and better work. So if you have less developed work, higher quality work is allowed to go over that. That's part of the unwritten culture, so it makes sense from both the aerosol standpoint and from the public art standpoint and we believe that murals are more cost effective than the ongoing abatement. Speaker 1:If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness. A biweekly [00:08:00] public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. Today I'm interviewing artist Desi Mondo. He's the founder of the Oakland nonprofit community rejuvenation project, and there are some facts that we can point to. Worst. We do know a couple of things. Speaker 2:In 2000 the national abatement industry was $4 billion a year. That's across all the cities in America in 2015 it's a $17 billion industry. [00:08:30] So we have to consider how is it possible that you're actually deterring an activity, but the cost of you doing it is steadily on the rise. If the activity was being deterred, the cost would either stay the same or go down over time. But the abatement industry, despite being in effect since the 1980s has never conducted a study to determine whether or not it's actually [00:09:00] deterring people writing on the wall over the longterm. And what instead you have is a lot of these private consultants coming along and kind of acting as rainmakers. They, they tell you that they have the solution and we're gonna organize all these volunteers and we're going to have these big paint outs and vandalism will go down. Speaker 2:And it does for the short term that the people are organized, but you're not paying anybody it. The only way that this is cost effective at all is to, is to rely [00:09:30] on volunteer work. And then on top of that, as soon as the volunteers disperse it, things come right back up. So it's not actually cost effective over time. And basically what you're doing is pouring money into this black hole of lift paint off the wall that's painted again. Let's paint it again. And these laws are based on this prejudice against the aerosol aesthetic, which is a prejudice against people of color because it's assumed that the people that are doing [00:10:00] the writing, our young adults, our young people of color, there's a natural prejudice that assumes that those folks are involved in gangs rather than just being top quality. Speaker 3:And so your experience has shown otherwise. Speaker 2:Absolutely. There's some, obviously some aerosol riders that are gang members, but it's not a requirement, you know, and it's is not even the majority of the people that are doing it. Everyone's going to be an individual so you can't speak for an entire group and put a blanket statement. Basically what the current laws are saying is that if there [00:10:30] is some writing on your property that is illegal, but there's no requirement beyond that. So if you paint out a little orange square on a red wall, that's legal, you can even kind of paint everything out in the shape of what was written there before it. That's legal. The colors don't have to match. It can look completely ugly. It's obviously that there's been that there's been vandalism there in the past, but as long as the aerosol name is not on that wall, it is considered legal and [00:11:00] acceptable by the city government. So it's not a question of like quality of the aesthetic is long as the name is gone. Again, we see those extreme cases of Philadelphia and Ri and Richmond where you know, you literally are, even if it was permission and commissioned, it's still illegal. It's still not allowed. Speaker 3:Well, let's talk about some of your projects. Okay. I've seen your Alice Street project in Oakland. It's gorgeous. Can you talk about how you go about doing something like that? How do you produce a project like [inaudible]? Speaker 2:It's a very, [00:11:30] it's a very long and extended process. Alice street connecting back to our conversation started as an abatement strategy. So we talked to district three. Lynette McElhaney is office and they pointed us at some of the most problematic walls in their district, which were these walls at 14th and Alice Street. You know, I'm not from Oakland, but I've lived here for a long time. I looked around when I went over there and I was like, man, this is, there's [00:12:00] some really powerful organizations or some really deep history around here. I want to be very careful in terms of how we approached this project because there's not necessarily a requirement to engage the community in these mural projects, but there's so much important history in that area that to not engage the community is doing a disservice to the community. So we went back and we got some funds to film some interviews. Speaker 2:We take your money [00:12:30] primarily from the city at the beginning. Um, but then we went out to some private foundations, East Bay community foundation, and then later to Zellerbach Foundation and the ochin naughty foundation and East Bay community foundation has a, a one to one match requirement and it cannot be matched by another organization. It has to be matched by individual donors. So we reached out, we created a Indiegogo campaign, which is a crowdfunding platform and [00:13:00] we matched $8,000 from over a hundred contributors who are excited to see us both create this evolving documentary. Did you start to meet our project? Always knowing that you were going to do a documentary film about it. We knew that we wanted to talk to the community members and get, get their history and get their perspective and really make sure that this, this piece reflected the history with the cultures of the people in that area. Speaker 2:Because we knew that it was a powerful place. So [00:13:30] when you went to get your funding, your request was that you were going to film this as well? We were going to film interviews and it was very small. It was not like we did not see the scope of the project at that point. It was not fully fleshed out. Once we started talking to people in the community, you know, we knew it was big. We didn't know how big it was. So what are those communities? So there's two primary locations that we were, you know, kind of working with, and that's the hotel Oakland, which [00:14:00] has had many different kind of identities throughout the years. It's one of the oldest hotels in Oakland that had just had his hundredth anniversary in 2013 so it was built in 1913 it's housed presidents. It's, you know, it was a hospital during World War Two, uh, and now it's home to low income Chinese seniors. Speaker 2:It's a senior home and it's really a unique model because it's, they've created all these village groups to keep the seniors connected together and builds the [00:14:30] community and it makes people have those connections and have a happy kind of violate of their, their days, autumn of their days. And it's also at the edge of Chinatown. 14th street was always kind of the border for Chinatown, although we found out that Chinatown had moved three times and I think Chinatown was burned down once and people were just forced out the second time. It ended up, you know, below Broadway and towards the estuary at 14th all [00:15:00] the way to Jacqueline and square. Then the Chinese exclusion act happened in 1882 folks were not allowed to move out of that area all the way until actually the 50s or the 60s. It was in the African American community also experienced something like this with red lining. Speaker 2:So folks were actually forced to live in West Oakland and banks would not give them mortgages to buy their own property. So it was, it was really difficult for people to actually accumulate property and that type of wealth that that property brings with it [00:15:30] until those laws were also found to be illegal around the, around the same time. And we in that connects back because the other building that we were really looking at was the former Alice arts center, which is now the Malonga Casquelourd center for the arts. And that's kind of kitty corner to Hotel Oakland. And that's home to a lot of drumming groups. And yes, African jamming. It's, yeah, a lot of, I mean a lot of different artistic groups, primarily African and African American from contemporary to [00:16:00] traditional. Um, but it's also Ho home to access dance and Leeka, which is a Filipino dance group and it's just so many other amazing groups. Speaker 2:It started out as a women's building, I believe around 1927 and it's also had a lot of different lifetimes. And it was actually the eighties before it was converted to the Alis Art Center and it started to how's all these different artistic groups? And so we talked to a lot of different community members. We got a little bit of the story [00:16:30] of the pre Alice arts days with everybody's dance center and history of how uh, these master drummers and dancers came to America. How they were brought here by Catherine Dunham, how they kind of created the center for African culture in the United States. The stories are just really those two major stories to Chinese and the African American cultures right next to each other and not necessarily always connecting because there's these language [00:17:00] barriers because it's just two completely different cultures. They have connected in in many ways. Um, but not, uh, not a huge overlap. Speaker 2:We wanted to do something that reflected both of those communities. So you got the stories, we, and then we do actually that did the art or that was primarily myself and my painting partner, Poncho Pescador. But the story we tried to, we had to look for where's the common thread. And so the common thread was [00:17:30] displacement and cultural resiliency against that displacement. How do you maintain your culture? How do you keep things active in the face of constantly either being forced into a location and not allowed to move out of it, or once you're allowed to move out of it being forced out of it. As we saw in west, as we saw in Chinatown with the building of the eight 80 freeway, the uh, Lake Merritt Bart Station, Laney College, and now there's all this new development. Exactly. So w w you know, we're, [00:18:00] we're seeing another displacement happening through gentrification and that's kind of the unifying theme. Speaker 2:And, and that's what connects it to what's happening right now. Oh, of course. We had to go back to the original people. The first people to be displaced were Aloni people. So we also incorporated some more Loney images into the mural, but we haven't actually gotten a chance to interview Tony Serta who's on the wall, but he's actually the chief of the Aloni tribe that actually came from Oakland and was displaced all [00:18:30] the way down to Pomona. We did get to speak to his grandchildren who came by the wall through one of our friends, a Luther kind of Lariya and they all did interviews at the mural in front of the picture of Tony that we had painted. So there's this kind of ongoing displacement of peoples in this kind of cycle of displacement and then connecting to the gentrification that's happening in Oakland now, and that was kind of the theme that we saw connecting folks is the attacks, but also the resistance to those attacks and what, [00:19:00] what's that meant to the community and of course we wanted to focus more on the celebration of the resiliency versus the destruction of you've completed this film. Speaker 2:We're at the end of production, but we're not done producing, so we're still shooting some interviews. We're still collecting some footage and then we're going to go into full on post production. Speaker 1:It sounds like your goal is to get this out to a wider audience where this same thing is happening in other cities. Right, Speaker 2:because gentrification is definitely not limited to Oakland. [00:19:30] We see this in Brooklyn, we see this in the Bronx. We see it in Detroit, Chicago, just so many communities are being uprooted and pushed out by various forces in Chicago is the University of Chicago buying up all the land and renting it out to students and, and developing it for kind of a more affluent community in Oakland. We're seeing the tech industry moving in here in Brooklyn. We're seeing, you know, the traditional African and you know like Chicano communities, but Puerto Rican, Dominican, all [00:20:00] of these different people descended from indigenous communities throughout the Americas being pushed out in favor of more affluent people. Um, more white people in general. And so this theme of gentrification and the stories of, of displacement are happening throughout the United States and happening throughout the world. That is really what connects the story of this location to everything. Speaker 1:How much wider problem you're listening to method to the madness on k a l x, Berkeley. How does a mural really [00:20:30] change anything? Speaker 2:One of the things that we experienced at the wall was that people were buying up properties route us, including one of the walls that we were painting on and kind of thinking that they were going to move into an empty space, not recognizing that there were established cultures and established communities already there. Folks are showing up like we're going to do this great benefit for the community by creating artists lofts and a gallery and it's like you're right next to one of the largest artists communities and the Malonga Casket Loris [00:21:00] that includes artists housing. So you're not, you know, you're not doing anything new. You're sort of attempting to reinvent the wheel because you don't know that the wheel already exists. By having a mural there, we were able to tell these folks, listen, there is a community here and you need to come in respectfully and make relations with the existing community rather than showing up and kind of pushing an agenda that, you know, sounds really great, but at the same time [00:21:30] doesn't acknowledge that there's already things going on. Speaker 2:I mean, you know, it's great to create artists housing and places for arts to create their work. That's, you know, that's a noble idea, but you need to recognize that there's all that's already happening. Trying to educate people about diversity of culture. I think we're trying to put people in contact with the people who are creating that art and acknowledge that there's a history there. I think that the people that should be doing that education are the people who [00:22:00] are there themselves, that we're hoping to create a bridge between that so that when people, we understand that there's these waves of people that are going to come in, but it's how you step into a community. That is the big issue right here that we want to see people show up respectfully, show up, humbly show up and want to connect with what's existing versus displace what's existing. Speaker 2:And a lot of that displacement starts with a lack of acknowledgement that it's even there. In the act of gentrification, [00:22:30] there's this obliviousness, oh, I see an abandoned lot where this, these walls that are kind of, you know, not well taken care of. I could do whatever I want here because it looks like it's run down and that's so that's kind of this connection to, again, the perception of blight, the perception of things not being maintained as an excuse to come in and and put whatever you want. The film is just asking the questions, but overall I think as an organization we want to ask the question around can [00:23:00] we have development without displacement? How do we build up communities from within rather than pushing folks out? I mean I've had conversations with folks where they really feel like the only way to reduce crime is to kick people out, is just to move people away. Speaker 2:The only way to to beautify neighborhoods is to move the people I know. I just, I can't believe that. I don't agree with that. We need to create infrastructures and we need to create support systems for the people that lived there in relation to the Malonga center [00:23:30] and all these incredible organizations that exist within their, all these incredible communities that that reside there is that is not fully acknowledged by our city. The city has taken some steps to support and keep those folks there on some level. But this is the first mural that I've seen in Oakland that's acknowledging a lot of the people that are on that wall. And those people are internationally [00:24:00] recognized. Um, they've had made a huge contribution both of their culture but also to the culture of the city of Oakland. And they don't get that recognition here. I really feel like the men, that, the stories and the, the, the work that's been done in Oakland needs to be celebrated on such a larger level. Speaker 2:And the people who've already done that work, the, the, the Dia Monte Chorus, the access dance, the dimensions, dance theater, people like destiny Mohamed, [00:24:30] the, the whole Somba community, the Sama funk community, the, the full gonna Rope Oz. All of these people that, when you think about the bay area, you kinda like, you remember these images of carnival, of drumming and all that stuff. But those folks really need to be kind of put out there, remembered, acknowledged and, and yeah, remembered but remembered in the presence still here. They're still doing, I mean dimensions, dance, theater had like four generations of people that have been passing through it that you're seeing great-grandmothers dropping off their great [00:25:00] grandchildren to keep doing what they've been doing. And it's, it's incredible. Speaker 3:You sound so passionate about all of this and I wonder, did something happen in your life around gentrification or displacement where you grew up in, you grew up in Chicago, I mean, where, where did you get this passion to do something to such a difficult thing? Speaker 2:We are going through gentrification in my neighborhood and my neighborhood was already somewhat middle-class, but because um, Obama kind of built up his, [00:25:30] you know, legacy out of my neighborhood in Chicago, you're seeing a displacement of any of the working class aesthetics in favor of university aesthetics. Um, in Hyde Park work, which is where I'm from, they're talking about building the Obama presidential library there and there's literally not even the, there's like a private police officer on every corner for anything suspicious and it's really kind of a, a sterilization of my neighborhood and it's really sad. I don't think that that really drove me [00:26:00] as an artist though. I mean it's, it's sad to go home and, and see the landmarks that you grew up with changing and being taken away, especially in favor of what they're putting in there, which is a lot more corporate, a lot more cookie cutter and a lot less personal. Speaker 2:It doesn't have that history to erasing that history is always difficult to witness in the places that you grow up and they're just building over your memories. And all of my murals that I didn't growing up in Chicago have been destroyed. Some of them destroyed [00:26:30] illegally and that's difficult to, to deal with those early works that I worked on and developed and trained on because when I was a kid I would, you know, get together with older artists that and very intentionally ask them to train me. Those works lasted for a long time. Um, but they're gone now. Coming from a movement that began on the subways and every single subway has been painted out, you know, we would lose works that we did the same night that we did them. So we have always had a sense [00:27:00] in the aerosol community that nothing is permanent. At the same time, you still kind of hope to see some of those works. Speaker 2:Particularly like the more elaborate pieces, the more monumental pieces you wish that they would stay. I think part of that expectation that you're gonna be erased, no one comes from the rebellious nature of doing it without permission. But at the same time it comes from the fact that that folks are constantly being attacked and expected to be [inaudible] in the battle against extermination. [00:27:30] And that's particularly true for the communities of color that pioneered this artwork. You know, as you know, a white person, I have a lot more privilege around that. But nonetheless, being involved in this particular art form, you know, like there's that mentality that things are gonna be erased. So on some level I think that's kind of where the fight to, to maintain ourselves. And I think also that we really want to sustain ourselves. The bigger picture is that we want to continue to be able to create new works [00:28:00] and we want to actually have the capacity to to Redo old works instead of just having them erased and removed from the collective memory. Speaker 2:If something's fading or something's damaged or even if someone happens to vandalize a mural, which does happen, we want to be able to come back and create new works on top of that and we believe, and I think that we can prove that it's actually more affordable to do it that way. It might be cheaper to paint out those walls again and again and again on some level, but you're not getting [00:28:30] anything for it. Imagine the person whose job is to paint out these walls. What do they show their children at the end of the day? A bunch of blank walls. And so investing in the culture, investing in telling the stories of our community has value by itself. And we've seen, one of the interviews we conducted with Roy Chan is that it's actually these, these projects have actually been used to protect the existing communities, not just the work that we're doing, but he was telling us about how the Oakland Chinatown oral history project used its, its stories [00:29:00] to connect the Tai Chi community at Madison Park, which is right across the street from the Bart Station. Speaker 2:And those folks, once they connected, they rallied and helped stop the development of a new Bart headquarters right there, which would have displaced that incredible Tai Chi community that so many people you know, think about when they go by Lake Merritt Bart station. So I think that there's a capacity within our work to really support and maintain communities in the face of the ever present threat of displacement. Does he help with people [00:29:30] get a hold of you? Do you have a website where the organization is community rejuvenation project? And we're at CRP bay area.org facebook.com/crp bay area or Twitter. We also see our p Bay area, Instagram, CRP, Bay area. We kind of keep it, you know, the same. Um, Speaker 1:well, thank you for being on the program. We're looking forward to seeing your film about Alice. All right, awesome. You've been listening to method to the madness. You can find [00:30:00] links to this and previous podcasts on the Calex website. Tune in again in two weeks at the same time. Have a great weekend. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Host Lisa Kiefer interviews Colin Pape, CEO and Co-Founder of ShopCity.com. Located in Berkeley and Canada, ShopCity.com helps local businesses leverage the Internet to compete against online retailers like Amazon.com and other global chains. Its mission is to create thriving local communities with strong, prosperous economies - places where bustling local shops and vibrant downtowns are filled with proud local shoppers happy to support their friends and neighbors as they shop locally first!TRANSCRIPT Speaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You are listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k a l ex Berkeley celebrating the bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Kiefer and today I'm interviewing Collin Pape, the Co founder and CEO of Shop city.com. [00:00:30] Welcome to the program, Collin. Thanks Lisa. So what is shop city? Speaker 2:A shop city. It's basically a platform that enables communities to build a stronger, more sustainable local economy with a platform that's similar to amazon.com. Okay, so you're located in Berkeley and also in Canada. You just opened in Berkeley? That's correct. Oh, we're in the, we work a coworking facility corner of Shattuck and university. Okay. So I want to understand this better. What is the problem you're [00:01:00] trying to solve with Shoppe city.com? Yeah, so, uh, the Internet, uh, to date has really been a tool to drive globalization, global commerce. It's kind of been breaking down and geographic and boundaries and unfortunately that's really been to the detriment of local economies. But we really see a huge opportunity to enable local businesses to use the internet to reach local customers. And to decrease their marketing costs and to make it easier to shop locally first. And so [00:01:30] that's the platform that we've built. Speaker 2:Okay. So tell me about how you're doing this. Sure. So, uh, basically each community gets its own local site, so there's a URL for each community. So, and how did you get those? It's been a long process. We've been at this for about 15 years and so we secured a about 8,000 domains starting in 2000. Okay. And so once you got those domains, what happened? Yeah, so, so there's a URL for just about every community, about 85% of the ones across [00:02:00] the u s so we have big ones like shop New york.com, shop boston.com down to a smaller shop, sf.com we effectively provide at, at Turnkey model to a local entrepreneur. Could be a municipal government, could be a local business group. And, uh, so we provide them with the URL and then a, a platform that enables them to do the marketing out in the community and then, uh, to use the internet to basically drive local commerce. Speaker 2:Can you give me, walk me through an example from [00:02:30] the point of view of a small business or medium sized business? Sure. Yeah. So, so there's, yeah, really a, a multiple stakeholders that we serve. So, so the top is the partners, but uh, effectively it's about the businesses and so we provide them with the ability to create an online storefront. They can do email marketing and they can update their social media accounts and they can have their content published on a trusted local domain like shop SF dot conference. Who manages that shop domain? Is it the city of San Francisco? [00:03:00] It could be a city. We've got a couple of city governments that are running the platform, but generally it's a local entrepreneur, somebody who's got a, an interest in the local business community. And what has been the reaction of cities to this sort of chamber of commerce like, right. Speaker 2:Well it's a, it's something, especially here in California because there is a sales tax that's, that's fed into the city coffers. We don't really have that up in Canada. So they've got a pretty strong interest in ensuring [00:03:30] that purchases happen within their borders. And so they're very supportive. A lot of them are already running shop, local campaigns, shop city campaigns and a, so this is a way to really activate those campaigns and enable people to take action online. Uh, we give them a, a brand that they can market all through the community, drive people to a destination where they can find all the products, services and business available locally. So you're trying to create strong economies, it sounds like local economies. That's right, yeah. Using the Internet. [00:04:00] What was your inspiration to do this in the first place? Yeah, so it started in my hometown, which is a Midland, Ontario. Speaker 2:It's a recreational community, about 20,000 people. My parents had a retail paint store for 28 years and a around the turn of the Millennium, uh, home depot came to town. Walmart came to town and, uh, I'd started building small business websites. A lot of the local merchants were really fearful that they were going to be forgotten as these flashy new stores came into the community. And so [00:04:30] a thought that there had to be an opportunity to use the internet to provide the community with information about what was available locally. And then it was really just about marketing and getting it out into the community so we could hit home your own family. Big Time, big time. Definitely they were concerned. I mean paint is a competitive industry. There were probably six, seven places where you could buy paint already in the small town. And then yeah, you've got the Walmart and home depot during the outcome of you creating this local platform there. Speaker 2:It [00:05:00] was really well received. So, so it was really about the marketing. Uh, we, we did a bit of a grill and marketing campaign. We, we went out to, we put core plus signs all over the community. Two foot by one foot shot, midland.com support your community signs and a did it on a Sunday night. Everybody came into work on Monday and all the street posts had signs. And, uh, so that then we started getting businesses really getting behind us, uh, wanting to put signs in their windows. A Chamber of Commerce wanted to get involved. The, the town of Midland asked us to do a deputation. [00:05:30] And so, uh, everybody really, uh, just saw the value in, uh, supporting local. And what is the cost to a local business to become part of this local community? Or is there a, yeah, there's a, a range of different, uh, uh, opportunities. Speaker 2:Uh, everybody has the ability to create a profile page. They can tell their story. Uh, but if they wanted to use some of the more advanced features, the shopping carts, uh, the ability to send email newsletters, uh, they would pay. It's anywhere from 30 to $400 per month. At the high [00:06:00] end, they're getting a dedicated account manager. So if somebody, uh, if they don't really have the time or the technical capabilities, they can hire somebody to do it. It's your background in technology, is that how you yeah, exactly. I started building small business websites and then develop the platform and now we've got a team. But, uh, yeah, yeah. A lot of people have written about the value monetary economic value of small communities versus the big box stores like Michael Schumann. Had you been reading some of these books in college or I mean like when did you [00:06:30] I get inspired about this. Speaker 2:I just intrinsically understood it growing up in a, a small business environment. My parents, they'd come home and we'd have dinner every night and we talk about just the trials and tribulations of running a local business. We really understood intimately the need to have reciprocal relationships. So you're spending money with somebody, they're spending money back with you and just that, that every dollar that you spend is really a vote for what you want to see more of in the community. And [00:07:00] uh, it's, it's a way to support the people who are doing good things in the community but also creates a lot of intangible benefits. You know, like you can see in the u s especially in the Midwestern areas, the small cities, there's nothing there. They're just a shell of their former self. Yeah. And they have a lot of problems. They have a lot of problems with young people and people leaving and Yep. Speaker 2:Yeah, they, they, they've really been gutted. And it is an unfortunate because I think the, the small community model is actually one that's a [00:07:30] little bit more sustainable and a little bit more connected. You're, you're closer to your local food producers. Uh, you end up having stronger relationships. You have less of the financial nightmares created by Wall Street. And uh, it is unfortunate that things have not gone in their favor over the past, uh, 30, 40 years. But I, I think you're going to see, uh, the tide turning and we're certainly hoping to be a part of that. Speaker 1:If you're just tuning in, you're listening [00:08:00] to method to the madness on k a l x Berkeley. Today I'm interviewing Collin Pape, the CEO and founder of Shop city.com. Where are you now in the process here in the u s I know that you, you started in Canada, you were successful with shopping and this is your next forum. So where are you in that process? Speaker 3:Yeah, it started in Canada with shop midland.com. We've got about 25 markets up there that [00:08:30] are currently in operation, but one of our founding partners, Speaker 2:he is from the bay area, born and raised in San Jose. What's his name? His name's Jim Terry. Great Guy. And uh, so now, uh, what we're doing is a kind of a, a master franchise if you will, and we've kind of, uh, sectioned off the 430 California communities. So we, we've got a new company called Shop california.com. Uh, it has the rights to all those different territories. We're doing a direct public offering through a company cutting edge capital [00:09:00] and we're, we're now actively, uh, working with people who are interested in bringing the model to their community. And we're going to do the expected, it's going to be up and running. Uh, so we're, we're launching a pilot project in September, so, uh, we've got a couple of different communities that are on the shortlist, right? We're right now down to three. Uh, so, uh, it's going to depend on the order, but a shop, sonoma.com shop, alameda.com shop pleasanton.com. Speaker 2:So as a consumer I [00:09:30] can instead of local can mean many different things. Let's say I, I'm loyal to a town in New York, maybe out in upstate New York, so I could search online potentially someday in the future and shop locally and in that small town versus going to Amazon for a product that, that maybe previously carried it. Yeah. Ultimately the model is actually going to funnel up to shop locally.com. So it's basically going to be an aggregator so that, uh, for instance, if you wanted to buy Michael Schumann's new book, uh, you could go onto [00:10:00] a single page that has that a book and then you could buy it from wherever is closest to you. And what are the statistics about local? If I buy a book in my local bookstore versus on Amazon, do you know the statistics on the benefits? Yeah, and there's a, a lot of different ones out there. Speaker 2:Uh, but one that we, uh, have have found to be fairly valid is a 45 cents return to your local community with an independent store versus 15 with a local chain store. If you're shopping on Amazon, odds are there's zero [00:10:30] return to your local community. Where's that money going? Yeah, it's uh, it's going, going to corporate headquarters in somewhere. You interface to city government if they want to. That's right. What do they get from it? Do they get anything? Uh, yeah, so, so for instance, we're working with, uh, the city of Corona in southern California Shop corona.com and uh, for, for them it's really just the kind of more intangible longterm benefit of enabling their local merchants to be more competitive online. Uh, they're trying to, again, keep the tax dollars local and they're trying [00:11:00] to ensure that they don't have vacancies and they're just trying to build a more vibrant economy. Speaker 2:Uh, so we're kind of helping them do that. It seems like you could disrupt Yelp and all the chamber of Commerce's and become like the new 21st century chamber of commerce slash she helped because you could also have rating systems. You have local companies, right? Or are you already planning yet? We do have that and yeah, certainly we're, we're looking to disrupt Yelp. We'd like to disrupt Google. We'd like to disrupt Facebook, we'd like to disrupt Amazon. It's all [00:11:30] the big guys and it's about putting all that money back into the community. Uh, chambers of commerce. We actually work with them. They're one of our partners. So we've got a way for any local organization, but in particular chambers to get their own business directory that's powered by kind of the master, uh, shop city directory and a, they can get mobile apps, they can get lots of tools to basically minimize their costs and improve their online experience. Speaker 2:I think it would make them better actually. Yeah, we work so in, in Midland, [00:12:00] uh, it's a huge benefit for the local business. They can update their shot midland.com profile and it automatically updates their chamber of commerce profile if they're in the downtown BIA, it updates that it'll update the business directory and the town of Midlands website. And that's really the model that we're looking to build out all throughout. Uh, the communities that we operate in. There is the opportunity for rev share so that these partners can actually earn money through the system. So, yeah, it's a pretty holistic offering. Everybody can win. That's right. Except the big, big companies. [00:12:30] Exactly. That's right. I wanted to talk to you about redundancies in the system. Yeah. You know, with drought and there's so many problems and there are more stresses on the planet as we go forward. Speaker 2:So people are talking about creating redundant food systems, redundant financial systems, and this feeds right into that. It does. Yeah. It's, it's all about resilience. And, and so you asked earlier about, did I read Michael Schulman's Book Smart Revolution for instance? Uh, I didn't at the time, but, uh, the more [00:13:00] that that we've studied it, the more we see that this is extremely relevant to, yeah. The future of, of the world environment. It's a about building a stronger, more resilient economy that is not so susceptible to these, uh, systemic shocks. Uh, like what happened in 2008. And it's really just a, about enabling people to focus on their own backyard and not so much to worry about what's happening in the rest of the world. So they have an impact locally. Then it feeds up to uh, [00:13:30] uh, the global level. So what are your challenges in this process? Speaker 2:Have you encountered anything unusual in the u s that you did not encounter in Canada? Uh, what we, we had, uh, some challenges with Google actually back in 2011. And, uh, they, they ended up blocking our sites and, uh, they just didn't like the business model where we are running multiple domain names. We're enabling each community to have their own site. They, uh, wanted us to all do it through one domain, one brand, which was really, uh, not the strongest model for communities. [00:14:00] And so we, we ended up, uh, going to battle with them and we were involved with the FTC investigation. We connected with, uh, a lawyer, Gary reback, who was the man who was responsible for the antitrust regulations against Microsoft with windows and Internet explorer back in the day. And, uh, we actually made some progress with them. We were on the, the front page of the San Jose Mercury News business section and Google ended up actually building it with a whole bunch of processes around some of the complaints that we had. Speaker 2:So that was probably the big one, [00:14:30] sort of one that we did win that one. Yeah. Yeah. It was a, a big challenge and uh, certainly I, I, it was unprecedented. Nobody really had done it, but, uh, yeah, we came out on top. I mean, in general, um, yeah, we're, we're going against all the, the largest companies in the world. And so, I mean, there's, there's, uh, a lot of, just overall resistance to the model, but at a local level, everybody is really supportive of it. Everybody intrinsically kind of understands it. It's a message that the merchants and the local [00:15:00] stakeholders, the people in the community want to see promoted. And so we've got this kind of dichotomy where on the larger level, I mean raising capital from a venture capitalist for instance, that's really not something that a, we're, we're, you know, seeing success with or not even anything that we're pursuing at this point because they want to steer us in a direction that is contrary to strong communities. Speaker 1:Food comments has been on my program and one of the things that they say is, um, it kind of helps getting the message out that they aren't competing head to head with these large systems. [00:15:30] They think of themselves as another alternative track running alongside them. And then over time that track gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But there's room for both. That's right. And so people can digest it a little bit better I think. Speaker 2:Yeah. We've, we've, we've slowly been shifting our message from, you know, shop local to shop local first and trying to just give people that, that choice and make sure that, that the merchants are represented and that the community is represented and ultimately it is up to, [00:16:00] uh, to the consumer, the person spending the money. Speaker 1:Yeah. Cause you know, you can go on Amazon and order vacuum cleaner bags, but there's a little store down the street and I don't know what people would prefer to do now. So that to me is a challenge. A certain we've gotten used to not having to deal face to face or look for something or walk down the street and find something Speaker 2:that's right. And yeah, I think that's really where we can play a role in. And Yeah, there is just, there's a disconnect because nobody wants to live in a holiday community that has vacant storefronts that [00:16:30] doesn't have the services immediately available and accessible when you do want them. Everybody wants the best of both worlds. They don't want to have to support local, but they want it there when they need it. And it really is. Speaker 1:And they want to see people walking down the sidewalk and the restaurants open. Yeah, Speaker 2:that's right. You want it. You want to be in a, in a vibrant community. Um, and, and so there is this kind of dichotomy, but I think that is where we can, can really have an impact, uh, enable people to have that convenience shopping from home in their pajamas in the middle of the night whenever they want, but still have that money [00:17:00] feed back into the community and enable that merchant to thrive and maintain a storefront and, and provide the infrastructure and the support to the community that Speaker 1:they are small businesses provide the same amount of money into the economy. I think it's $7 trillion as the big corporations, right? I mean, I didn't know it was 50, 50. I think if that, the word gets out about that, people will look at their communities a little bit differently. Speaker 2:People don't realize that there's a, something called the local multiplier effect, which we've actually got a website, local multiplier.com [00:17:30] with some information, some statistics. Uh, but it, it's, there's really two components to the economy. There's the, the volume, and then there's the velocity and the velocity is equally as important as the volume. So how quickly money is spent, uh, has as much of an impact as the amount that's spent. Everything that we've statistically shows that small businesses actually spend money a lot more rapidly than the big companies. If you look at apple for instance, they've got about $170 billion in the bank that is not being spent. [00:18:00] So it's not circulating, it's not creating a wealth and enabling people to offer products and services. Whereas most small businesses, they run extremely lean and they're spending that money pretty much as soon as they get it in and it's actually creating a stronger, more prosperous local economy. And so it's about how quickly that money is spent as well. Speaker 1:So Colin, you have a son, what kind of future are you envisioning for him with what you're doing right now? Speaker 2:Right. Yeah. So Jackson is, [00:18:30] uh, just over two years old. I'd love for him to have a future. Certainly we're where we've addressed a lot of our environmental challenges. I think those are all all looming. And then from an economic standpoint, I'd love to see just a fairer, more just systems, something that is a little bit more focused on the producers and the people that are really adding value to the economy versus the financial architects that are figuring out how to extract money. So I'd love to see a future where he and his friends [00:19:00] can, can start up their own local businesses to find the money to do it. Exactly. Community capital, just to have that support from the community where people recognize the value of the services that they're offering and the fact that they are local. Just a bit of a more connected world as far as where we all, I think idealistically believe things should go. And then where we're actually spending, Speaker 1:I'm on it. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness on [00:19:30] k a l x Berkeley. Today I'm interviewing Colin [inaudible], CEO and founder of Shop city.com. Do you think generally speaking, Canada leans more toward community than the u s Speaker 2:I I think actually it's, it's, it's fairly similar. Uh, I think there is really a, a strong pull to community. I think, uh, ultimately everybody supports it. It's just a, again, these, uh, these big brands [00:20:00] have, have made it so frictionless to, to go in and to, you know, spend your money in. And I mean, local merchants need to do a better job as well. I mean, it's hours of operation, it's a just selection. It's all those different types of things. And, uh, so I, I think intrinsically everybody wants to shop locally, support their community. It just needs to be, if not as easy, very close to, as easy Speaker 1:to do that. When you, as a business person, beyond marketing help marketing my business, [00:20:30] do you provide other things too, like say business analysis tools or is that something you guys are staying away from? Speaker 2:Uh, so that, that's definitely on the roadmap. What we'd like to do at some point is, is be able to share the statistics across comparable. So there's always just that challenge of, uh, of data integrity and you know, sharing information that's too personal, uh, within a competitive environment. But if you have a, a similar community and [00:21:00] you can show them what's happening in another community, then there's, there's an opportunity to improve Democrat study, demographics, trends, and, and if this community to this, this was the, the outcome. Uh, I think internally within our community, there's a huge opportunity to help businesses and nonprofits close gaps. So identify places where there's a lack of service and an abundance of demand, and then the city could benefit from that. Definitely know your data says [00:21:30] you're lacking a pub or you're lacking a restaurant on this corner and it looks like it could be really successful. Speaker 2:That's right. Definitely. Yeah. And then ultimately we, we'd actually, local currency is something that's very interesting as well. So enable people to create and circulate a local currency. I mean, all that stuff's pretty far down the track, but I think in the next 10 years, things are gonna they're going to be so many stresses that we're not seeing. Right. That's right. That's what at least the futurists are saying. Yup. Do you involve students at all here? We haven't yet, but that is the plan. Yes. There's [00:22:00] a, I think, a big opportunity to build a community for the creative, uh, economy. So, so people who are building websites here in graphic design, social media, marketing, these are all services that local businesses use and need. And a lot of the challenge is really just, it's around the sales side. It's around the operational side as far as just, you know, billing goes and customer support. Speaker 2:But we, we'd really like to create a bit of a marketplace so that all of those services are fulfilled locally [00:22:30] by local creatives. And so we can, uh, help them on the sales side, connect them with the businesses that need their services, help them on the invoicing side and just maintaining customer relationships but enable them to actually fulfill the work. Right now we've, we've got, you know, people in, in Midland, we've got a couple of different satellite offices where, where people are doing that work, but ultimately we'd like it all to be done at Berkeley for the Berkeley businesses for instance. And uh, that will definitely require tech savvy, creative [00:23:00] students. I would say fulfill that demand. And how would they reach you? We've got a couple of different websites you can go to shop city.com that's got some information on the company, kind of the opportunity to open up a local market. Speaker 2:And then we've got, right now it's just a landing page woodshop california.com, which is really just more specific to the opportunity, uh, in California. And uh, he'll be able to find all the different, uh, local communities, the 430 that are, that are on there. And uh, ultimately it will aggregate all of that content [00:23:30] that's put into the California communities. They can, uh, find me on that site. All the contact forms. I uh, I'm on those lists that, that those go into a, so you could just fill out the contact form and it'll come across my awareness for sure. Creative idea. And I wonder if anyone else in the world is doing some type of in Europe or do you know of any other examples? Generally people end up doing it with a, a, a single brand. And so it doesn't become really local in the same regard that [00:24:00] our platform enables that to happen. Speaker 2:Our, our sites are only about that community and they're, they're very specific and it's really a, a grassroots bottom up approach. And it is about marketing it out in the community. That's how you drive local awareness and you drive participation. And it's difficult to do that if you don't have that local brand. And so we were fortunate that we recognize the opportunity back when domain names were a little bit more plentiful and we've certainly spent a lot of money acquiring them and, and we've taken some risks, uh, you know, dot com bust everything [00:24:30] everybody's getting out. And uh, Jim Terry for instance, he went all in one day, he bought a $50,000 worth of domain, 750 of them dropped and he bought them all. So yeah, so we've got them. Yeah. And uh, and yeah, nobody that we know of is really doing it in that same way. Speaker 2:Well, I can envision somebody like, let's say Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Amish community where they sell their quilt. I only think they would love something like, you know, little communities like [inaudible] you can go in and, and it almost becomes a tourism draw. Yeah, that's right. [00:25:00] I think that the, the world is, is changing and, and uh, we've gone through different waves. Uh, you know, used to be a very localized world. And then, uh, ever since mass transportation, airplanes and mass communication with the television and phones, things will become more globalized. But I, I think there were really, I'll, I'll, there's a lot to be said for the original local model and then layering some of these newer technologies and opportunities on top, but to just create that stronger [00:25:30] core where we are more connected to a community, uh, I think everybody's is really longing for, for more of a connection. Speaker 2:And, uh, and I think local is really the, the, the way to do it where it's a true, authentic connection. A lot of the stuff that's just online, if it, if it's Facebook, uh, you know, some of the other, you know, channels, Twitter for instance, uh, you can reach a lot of people and you can have a frequent connection. But, uh, you know, it's not [00:26:00] the same as, as walking into a store and bumping into somebody that, you know, who intimately knows that all the same things that you do, the areas, the businesses, uh, the people, uh, the politics, all those different things. I mean, ultimately everything is still local here. You're still getting all of your services locally. And, uh, I think that that, that's where things are going over the next, uh, you know, 10, 20 years because it's, it's a lot more sustainable people. Speaker 2:Honest. I [00:26:30] think it does, you know, you're seeing people that in doing business, spending your money with them and they are with you as well. It's sort of this, that that's right. It's, it, it really is. Uh, it's, it's a lot deeper as far as the, the connection goes. I think it, it just builds a better world when people are more authentically connected to community. I saw you came in here with a book. What are you reading? It's by Michael Shuman. It's called the local economy solution. Uh, we were actually featured in the, in the book, which I'm really excited about and [00:27:00] very proud of. And, uh, it's, it's, yeah, it really, it's a, a practical book. It's a different economic and technological and business models. He calls them pollinator businesses that, uh, that really do a great job of, of building up a local economy and they're, they're sustainable financially, so they're, they're profitable models. Speaker 2:I, I did some research over the past 10 years and I've looked at the history of money. Basically. There's, there's a one documentary that really influenced my thinking, uh, called money masters. [00:27:30] And it talked about, uh, the role of money throughout the, the past millennium basically. And, uh, I think we have a really distorted view of money currently versus what it really is. Well, ultimately money, it's, it's just a, a way to account for things. It's really a debit and a credit system and we've distorted it so that it's all about finances and about, uh, kind of shifting the responsibility [00:28:00] and the control of money to the centralized organizations when it's really in the age of Bitcoin, for instance. Uh, it's really not, not going to be necessary in the future to, to delegate that control. And so, uh, by doing that, you can build just a, a tighter economy where those, those debits and credits are a lot more aligned than they aren't now. Speaker 2:Right now we've, we've got a whole bunch of leaks in the system. Really. We're, we're entrusting the control of, of that accounting [00:28:30] system basically to somebody who has the, the right and the ability to create their own debits and credits at will. And I think that that, that really does a huge disservice to the people that are actually producing things and, uh, particularly locally. And, uh, so, so yeah, really excited to, to prove out the community capital model where the, the money that comes to fund this, this operation is from the community, the, the money that is generated, returns to the community. And ultimately, yeah, to look at a, [00:29:00] a different type of accounting system that returns things a lot more freely to the community. It's a huge, huge subject. It's, it's all very recent. A lot of these new mechanisms that have been put into place. Speaker 2:And I mean they, they're not working. If you look at quantitative easing, how much money is being pumped into the economy just to keep things going at kind of the snail's pace that they are. It is a system that's broken and it needs a, a solution that that is more sustainable. That's what is really intriguing about small business. Growing up [00:29:30] in that environment, we knew where all of our dollars were going and we were very aware of the connection and of the power of spending and you would know that, okay, if I spend money with guy, he's got a project coming up to to supply it and so you just start building that. Really, I would say it's a, it's a relationship and it's an awareness and I think that's lacking in a lot of the models today. The community itself has basically been replaced with all these different networks that don't ultimately work for [00:30:00] the greater good and work for the community as a whole. Speaker 1:Colin, I really wish you luck on this and I want to thank you for being on this program. Thanks for the opportunity. Lisa, you've been listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show onK , a l ex Berkeley, celebrating bay area innovators. If you have questions or comments about the show, go to the Calex website, find method to the madness and drop us an email. You'll also find a link to previous podcasts. [00:30:30] Tune in again in two weeks at the same Speaker 4:[inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Host Lisa Kiefer interviews President & CEO of New Resource Bank in San Francisco, Vince Siciliano, about running a bank with purpose and rethinking what capitalism stands for by achieving environmental, social, AND financial returns for local communities - the bank as an agent of change.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. Speaker 2:And Speaker 1:you're listening to in [00:00:30] method to the madness of biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Kiefer and today I'm interviewing Vince Sicilian [inaudible], the president and CEO of new resource bank in San Francisco. Speaker 3:Okay. Speaker 1:Welcome to the program. [00:01:00] Thank you, Lisa. Hi. Nice to be here. Yes. I don't typically think of a bank as something that we would, uh, organization that we would interview. It's just not, you know, when you think of innovation, I don't think of that, but I've heard a lot about new resource bank. I understand that you coined the term where does your money sleep at night? You think of a bank as an agent of change. So why should our listeners in the bay area think of your bank as an innovator? Speaker 4:Because actually your money doesn't sleep [00:01:30] at night. Your money spends the night somewhere. Uh, in other words, you put your money unless it's in your mattress. It's in a bank and it's not living in the vault. It's actually out somewhere. So if you could imagine your dollar bill was a little miniature magic carpet and you could sit on it and fly around the world and see what your money is doing at night where it's spending the night, you might not be so happy. And we, we believe that money in banking can be used to do good in the community. Tell me some of the examples of where money can be that you're saying that we wouldn't be very happy about, [00:02:00] uh, open, open pit, uh, coal mining in West Virginia, blowing off the mountaintops of West Virginia or going down and producing palm oil in Indonesia. A lot of trade finance from the American banks will, we'll do that sort of thing. Speaker 4:Or if you get away from the loan side, there's another whole activity called the financial economy as opposed to the real economy. And a lot of banks really spend most of the life in that financial economy. And what is that? What are you talking about? The financial kind of me means that banks will invest their deposits and there are other sources [00:02:30] of funds in a speculating in commodities and foreign exchange. And buying bonds and stocks and hedging activities. Some small fraction of which may be really legitimate, but most of which is just trading for trading sake to make profit. And when you hear some of the big catastrophes that have happened over the last couple of years, it's usually been around the the financial economy where those catastrophes have happened. Speaker 1:Okay. This is really an unusual thing to hear from a bank. I think maybe I'm wrong, but I mean is there anyone else, this kind of thing, but you, Speaker 4:[00:03:00] well there are a couple kinds of banks that I would say are doing good things. So in general, the community bank, the more local regional banks that are headquartered in the community, if you look at their balance sheet, you're going to see that most of their funds are invested in loans that help the community grow. So the start with that would be there. Some banks are what are called community development financial institutions, and they are really focused on the inner cities and generating jobs. But as far as the bank like us that's trying to achieve wellbeing for the community and the planet, there's really only a handful of us in [00:03:30] the country. And you have one location in San Francisco, one location downtown who your clients are? I've, I've read some of them. Cowgirl creamery. So you know, a lot of small companies. Tell me about some of them. Speaker 4:So we lend to companies that we think are helping to build this or achieve this wellbeing in the community. So one whole sector would be organic food for example. So a cow girl, a hog island, Strauss creamery, alter ego, companies like that are all our clients and we're very good at helping young and not so young middle-sized [00:04:00] organic food companies grow. Another area would be having to do with clean energy. So solar energy, bio gas digesters, a lot of energy efficiency. We do a lot of lending in that whole area. A third area would be in the real estate world. A buildings that are built, uh, to be energy efficient. What's called lead construction or retrofits for those buildings. That would be another area for us. In the fourth area, a very large area is working with nonprofits. We have a lot of nonprofit clients, many of whom don't borrow. Speaker 4:They may deposit, [00:04:30] but some of whom do borrow. But beyond all that, anybody can be a sustainably minded business, a triple bottom line business, a business that's looking to achieve not only financial but also social and environmental returns. And that's the kind of client we want. And speaking of that though, you said that you want to go even beyond that, you want to go beyond the triple bottom line and talk about the difference that purpose and values make from an individual perspective. How do you go beyond triple bottom line and as a banking institution? Well, in the [00:05:00] end I think that everyone has a sense of purpose and should, should connect with that. And that's not something that's often talked about in the marketplace. Businesses have a purpose, but it's usually to maximize shareholder value. But if you really step back and look at your life, work and businesses, just a part of it. Speaker 4:And I guess the question is where do you get your sense of wellbeing from? Where do you get your sense of purpose in life from? And it's not normally from work, it's not really from the marketplace. But as we, as we grow up in this country, we're really pushed into marketplace. [00:05:30] A definition of self worth that comes from our job. It comes from the approval of others. It comes from, you know, what you own, what you're doing, what other people think of you. And, and really what we're saying is that's not a sense of wellbeing. It doesn't come from the marketplace. It should come from your values, your sense of purpose. You're your family, your, your work. Those are things that your sense of spirituality, your connectedness with nature. That's where your sense of wellbeing, you should come from, not from the marketplace. I'm kind of shocked [00:06:00] to hear this coming from a banker. Speaker 4:What do your peers in this industry think of what you guys are doing? Well, I think a lot of them think we're nuts. Uh, that, uh, really as the Wall Street Journal would say, yeah, if you deviate from profit maximization pushing to the very edges of the boundaries of into the gray zone of what's legal, if you deviate from that, you're really being inefficient and ineffective in your use of capital. And so we really call that unconscious capitalism, unconscious, capitalistic conscious [00:06:30] capital conscious conscious capitalism says, well, what are the values that we should bring into the balance sheet? What is, what about thinking about the future? For example, you know, most businesses have a discounted analysis of whether they'll do an investment or not. And if you look at the future that way, uh, frankly the value of the future is, is nothing that doesn't have a seat at the table. Speaker 2:[inaudible] Speaker 1:[00:07:00] if you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness. A biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. Today I'm interviewing Vince [inaudible], the president and CEO of new resource bank in San Francisco. Speaker 5:[inaudible] Speaker 2:[00:07:30] okay. Speaker 4:You didn't found the bank. So tell me what was the impetus for the founding of this bank? Did you change the mission or was it always what you're talking about? The bank was founded with the mission of being a Green Bank and there were a couple of different groups that came together that were working [00:08:00] around that. Peter Lou was the, the fellow that really put the bank together and got it off the ground. The bank grew somewhat rapidly in the first couple of years. It ran into the recession and it really wasn't exclusively focused on this mission. There was a lot of what we would call classic community banking loans that were being made, but when the bank ran into its problems back in 2008 it was a chance to really in a way restart or refocus the bank and at that time I came in, new chairman, came in a number of new board members and new executives. Speaker 4:Then as [00:08:30] we refocused the bank we said, yeah, this is our mission. It's to be a green and sustainable bank, focused on a new idea model for banking and really helping change the way people think about banks and all of our lending needs to be mission oriented and compatible with that model. That's great that you took something that was bad for most everyone in the industry and made that an opportunity. And I understand that Al Gore and his investment group got interested generation investment capital, original investor. They are no longer an investor, but they did come in at the founding of the bank. I think they definitely [00:09:00] felt an affinity. But I think that banking is not a growth industry. It's a much harder industry than many investors realize. Tell me what, what the mission of numerous resource bank is now that you are, their mission very simply is to help achieve wellbeing for people and the planets. Speaker 4:And you might say, well, what is wellbeing? And I would ask you that everybody has a sense of what wellbeing is. And uh, and that's the nice thing about using the phrase wellbeing. Obviously it has to do with basic minimums of housing and schooling and education. And, [00:09:30] and, uh, but it goes beyond that. It goes, goes to problem solving problems. Are you solving? Well, we're really, we're really helping a lot of young companies get bigger companies that are triple bottom line focus that are trying to make a difference in the community that are not just profit oriented but worry about wellbeing. So how do you screen for these companies? I mean, you know, they have to be, they have to have the financials, but they also have to have this other ideal that you're talking about. Yes. So we have had our own, uh, internal survey that we would use with companies, a little questionnaire that helps [00:10:00] us understand what is their perspective on, on financial versus social versus environmental issues. Speaker 4:And we are now actually converting that over. There's a company called B lab and there are benefit corporations that are of triple bottom lines. They came up with this. And so we're now using their survey, uh, beginning next month. But, but really this is a journey in the woods. Somebody can come to us and they may be financially motivated, economically motivated and so they're redoing their building for energy efficiency and they're redoing their, looking at their product [00:10:30] line and they're changing their supply and they're using recycled materials and they all, that all may be just an economic motivation and that's fine. We're not here to pass judgment, but they are moving along that journey of sustainability. We talk about the the the, the newer comers actually being learners and then they become achievers and leaders and champions as they progress, as they're both commitment and competency to the idea of triple bottom line grows. Speaker 4:They move along this journey and we say we don't really care if you're a learner or a leader, [00:11:00] just that you're on this journey towards triple bottom line business. Speaking of triple bottom line, you got an award last year, best for the world. What does that mean and how many other banks, if any, were given that award? So actually it was all across all B Corp's. There are around 1500 B Corp's in the world, most of them in the u s and everybody is tested every year or two to say [inaudible] manufacturing and everything among all companies. The top 10% of all companies are called best for the world. [00:11:30] So that was quite an honor for us. It really is our DNA. It's really who we are. It's how we run internally. Uh, our values of transparency and community and sustainability and teamwork. All of these are internal as well as external practices. Speaker 4:I'm interested in your employees. I read that not only are your employees familiar with banking, but they're all doing, it sounds like pretty things outside of the bank that have to do either with community or sustainability. Can you talk about that? How you screen [00:12:00] for that kind of person? Because some of the challenges in banking, I would think we would be finding entrepreneurs who also understand sustainability. Our biggest challenge when people ask me what, what is our biggest challenge? It is finding financially oriented people, bankers that are also mission-oriented. Uh, at the beginning of the bank we found a lot of mission oriented people, but they didn't have the financial background. When you say missionary you mean your mission? This mission about triple bottom line sustainability. Then we found more bankers, but they weren't particularly [00:12:30] as mission-oriented as we wanted. And so really now we've gotten very, uh, thorough and narrow about finding people that are both financially oriented and, and get our mission. Speaker 4:There's an expression, you know, get it wanted and can do it. And that's what we want people to get it, want it and can do it and therefore they'll fit into the bank. Well, but wellbeing as a personal concept too. So we want everybody to be achieving wellbeing. And that means how do you look at their life and how do they look at what they do outside of out of their work life? In fact, we've [00:13:00] started a process, we call career conversations, which is to really crack open the, the, the pretend belief that someone's gonna work at a company for the rest of their life. They're really not. Uh, so let's not pretend they are. And let's, let's open the door to where do you want to be in five years and how can we help you get there. It's a different way to interact with your employees. Speaker 4:And I think at first people don't believe it. They feel like it's, no, I'm, maybe I'm being a trader if I, or they think you're just trying to find out if they, if they're going to leave. But that in fact, you know, we had an example of an employee who came and said, well, [00:13:30] I'd eventually like to have my own little business that services nonprofits does the back office for nonprofits. But in order to get there, I'm going to need to understand accounting better. And I'd love to spend a couple of years in the banks finance department that would help prepare me for that. Terrific. I mean, I would welcome that. And then eventually they'll, they'll leave and they'll start their own business and there'll be a raving fan and that'll be terrific. How many employees do you have? I think about 42 employees. So that's small enough that you could actually know everyone. Speaker 4:Oh yes. Absolutely. So I understand that one of them works for Amazon Watch. [00:14:00] One of your vice presidents is on the climate panel of San Francisco City of San Francisco. I mean they're doing all these really interesting outside things that aligned with your mission aligned that happened after or did you pick them because there was there? I would say a lot of that came after they were already employees, but they certainly did bring their own interests and their own passion for the mission with them. But we promote that. We want them to be involved with these, these community building activities that it's great and we want [00:14:30] them to discover all the skills and passion they have in life and be able to, to exercise that. You talk about helping small businesses. Tell me why an individual would want a bank at your bank. Like let's say myself, what would be my motivation? Speaker 4:Well, we go back to the question of where does your money spend the night? And so do you know what your money is doing? And so at a bank like new resource bank, we're saying that you can see where your money spends the night. We, we have reports that show quite clearly what our loan [00:15:00] portfolio looks like, how much money we've let into organic food or alternative energy or nonprofits. And uh, that's all our lending is, is mission oriented. It has been for the last six years. It's pretty transparent. You can see what we do. So as opposed to saying, I'm putting my money in one of the big banks. In fact, I like to ask the question, not only where does your money spend the night, but does your bank have convictions? If you think about that word, convictions for a moment, it's double edge sword there. Speaker 4:One kind of conviction, which means values. The other kind of conviction [00:15:30] means have you been convicted of a crime? So if you look at all the banks that have recently been convicted of rate fixing for international funds or many of the other crimes that, that they've pleaded no, not guilty to now they've actually pleaded guilty to, yeah. Well, even finding a local bank, quote unquote is kind of difficult because you find out that your local bank is actually owned by a big French bank or a, you know, it's, it's not so easy to know, but there are 30 or 40 local banks in the bay [00:16:00] area and you can usually pretty easily find out what you're right. Sometimes they have a foreign parent, but most of the time, uh, you can make it more difficult to know where your money sleeps. That's right. And credit unions are another good place to go because they lend exclusively in the community so they, they would be a good place too. Speaker 2:[inaudible] Speaker 1:if you're just tuning [00:16:30] in, you're listening to method to the madness of my weekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. Today I'm interviewing Vince Sicilian, the president and CEO of new resource bank in San Francisco. Speaker 5:[inaudible] Speaker 2:[00:17:00] okay. Speaker 4:Does this mission that you have for new new resource bank, does it come back from your early years, say at Stanford, getting a biology degree, getting a master's here in Berkeley and environmental planning? Are you hearkening back to your early values and, and that's what you've brought to banking, or did you always have that? I was an accidental banker. I had no desire [00:17:30] to be a banker. I don't know if anybody grows up wanting to be a banker. Actually. And a, my wife also went to Stanford and Berkeley. She studied Chinese history and language. She wanted to continue that in Taiwan where Stanford has a program. I needed a job, like we couldn't just move to Taiwan. And my father, uh, called someone he knew at Bank America to say, hire my wonderful son. And so I did not have their normal MBA sort of profile. Speaker 4:And when I was hired at Bank of America, I remember, and we were sent right [00:18:00] to Asia to go to Taiwan, which was, which was the plan. And I remember being hired and on the way to Taiwan, we stopped at the divisional office in Tokyo. And I was told I was a legacy hire. Uh, which meant I was someone who was hired. You really wasn't qualified. It was more because of what the Chinese would call Guangxi or connections. And, uh, but I ended up spending 10 years, 10 very good years with Bank of America, seven years in Asia. And I discovered that the most interesting part of banking is that you're supporting other companies. You're really involved. [00:18:30] It's really the business of everyone else's business. So eventually I left B of a and became the CEO of a local bank in San Diego and I've never looked back. Speaker 4:I've been a banker for the rest of my life. Uh, but it was accidental and I've always been values oriented. And this opportunity here in the bay area when it came up was an opportunity to bring back in not just values of integrity and transparency, but also the values around environment and community and the future. And it's perfect cause it's San Francisco. I mean you, you've got a great audience [00:19:00] there and people who really understand the concepts, it is perfect. People do understand. And I think one of the, one of the great, uh, weaknesses of capitalism is not only that, it doesn't price in a lot of these values we're talking about, but it really discounts the future. Meaning that, uh, we don't give much weight to the future. We really are so present oriented. And what I like to do is ask a question. Uh, if I were to give you with $1,000 right this moment or $5 million in a hundred years, which would you take? Speaker 4:And [00:19:30] uh, and don't worry about your, the credit risk. It's going to be with the u s treasury, unless you think the government's going to fail. It'll be there, it'd be bitcoin or whatever, but you'll get your $5 million in a hundred years or a thousand dollars now. And, uh, most people I should ask you, what would you, what would you take? I'd take the thousand dollars now. So most people will take the thousand dollars now. And when I asked them why, it's because while I'm out around in a hundred years. Well, that's true. And that's the very point. You're not around in a hundred years, but what would the, what's the value of [00:20:00] the lives of your grandchildren in a hundred years? And most people will say, well, that's priceless. So what's the present value of priceless? Well, it should be priceless. But in fact, in our economic system, the present value is really nothing. Uh, the net present value of any future number after a hundred years is very little. Speaker 4:5 million in a hundred years is only worth 1000 bucks a day. That does not buy you a seat at the table. So we aren't making decisions for the long run because our economic system doesn't encourage us to. It discourages us from that. So what do we [00:20:30] do about that? That brings you back to conscious capitalism, that it also brings you back to the need for the government to take that longer term perspective. And frankly, that's at the heart of the climate change debate. I hate to call it a debate, but that small fraction of people that doubt climate change, because if you admit that there is climate change caused by man, then you have to admit that the marketplace can't handle that. It's not pricing that into goods and services. So that means the government has a role to play in order to recognize the value of a hundred years from now in today's [00:21:00] transactions. Speaker 4:B Corp and Saxby and groups like that are putting, I mean I think that they're accelerating that conversation that certainly a CSB and and uh, the FASBI as well. They're all beginning to require disclosures. That type of valuing companies that do take into consideration. Yes. Triple bottom line. And part of the, uh, part of the divested invest movement with respect to fossil fuels. The argument is that a lot of the so called reserves of the oil companies really are valueless [00:21:30] because if we really do want to control climate change, we're never going to be able to spend that much carbon into the economy. So you have one location in San Francisco and I assume that in the future you want to have more than one location, maybe you don't. So what does the future bring for new resource bank and how will you scale up if you are going to grow to be something across the nation? Speaker 4:Maybe we would like to scale it up. We are now lending outside of the bay [00:22:00] area. Outside of California. We have clients up and down the west coast. We have clients in other states and even some on the east coast with electronic banking. It's the idea of a lot of locations is unnecessary. So in the bay area for example, one branch will do, but we will look at other cities. We will look at southern California. We'll look at some of the obvious cities around the western half of the u s that how about farther out, what about New York City and and Massachusetts, places that are in like mindset about sustainability [00:22:30] and certainly like mindset, but I think we want to start with something that's geographically closer so that a, I mean bank skin can get in trouble when they go across the country and open offices and they don't really know the area very well. Speaker 4:So we would want to stay in the western half of the United States for now, but go to communities that are like minded, that share the values, that have an infrastructure and an economy that's already moving in this scale that like how do you finance that kind of expansion? Well, we have capital and we're basically, it's about leveraging our capital, so we have raised capital [00:23:00] several times. We have very supportive shareholders and we will go back for more capital or or bring a new shareholders as we go to some of these other locations. You talk about your mission helping business clients meet the challenge of operating sustainably and profitably, but how do you actually help them? I know you know you can give them money, but I assume you're talking about a different kind of help. Yes, money. We help our clients. Sure. People need money as they grow for what's called working capital, but [00:23:30] let's take a young organic food client that has achieved some sales and now they're beginning to sell into whole foods or the beginning of the sell into a Costco. Speaker 4:We have lots of clients that sell into whole foods and Costco and so there's certain tricks of the trade if will. There are certain challenges that come to come about when you're signed at Costco or whole foods. Um, we have a network of these organic clients, so our, our folks are able to advise our younger companies, our newer companies, uh, and provide them with some [00:24:00] expertise. That's nonsense. Like industry consultation, non right industry consultation, strategy ideas, networking ideas, marketing ideas that are different from just providing a line of credit free. Absolutely customer service. You can compete, we can compete on the basis of being experts in finance, but lots of banks are experts in finance. That's not really the goal. The idea is not to be promoting ourselves, but really is to promote, is to be promoting our [00:24:30] clients. So get to the other side of the table and understand what the client is passionate about, understand what they want to be best in the world about, understand what their economic engine is and then be supportive on, on a much broader set of dimensions. Speaker 4:Before we were running out of time now, but I want to give you a chance to talk about how you got personally invested in the idea of community sustainability and working in a place that aligns with your personal mission. [00:25:00] That's a great question and it's a little bit more philosophical. Uh, I think that, you know, we're brought up to one to achieve business success. How high can I go? How much money can I make, what kind of house in car while I have, et cetera. The problem is it's never so simple and you went ends up with failures. So I've had failures in my life. I've been fired from jobs and when I've been fired, I feel bad about myself, which means that my sense of significance and security has been totally wrapped up in my work [00:25:30] rather than in something else. And you know, we have this expression here in the bay area that people say, I want to do good, but I want to do well and uh, I don't want to have to compromise on my investment return while I'm doing good. Speaker 4:So really what they're saying is, I want to do well and maybe I get to do some good. Or actually I think what they're saying is I want to do well, just do well and then I can make a lot of money and then I can be a good partner and do good later on. And I think that's the really the wrong dimension. It's really not about, uh, about [00:26:00] doing good and doing well. It's really about being well, how am I as a human being? How can I live my life in a way that's centered in my values and community and sense of purpose and connection to nature and spiritual life? How can I be well and then go out into the world and work and do good. And I think it's, you think that will follow. That's a much different perspective. And then we, you're rooted, you're centered, you're going to be stronger as life goes up and down. Speaker 4:You will do good in your life. And um, you obviously you need to make money and survive and be able to retire, [00:26:30] but it's a whole different kind of passion and focus. Uh, and, and connectivity with community. It's really moving from ego to eco, from, from ego being edging good out to Eco, which is embracing the or embracing community. It's a whole different way to live your life. And I've learned the hard way that that's where I want to live my life. One thing people don't realize is the power they have to use their money to do good. In other words, they think of themselves as, oh, I'm just a small person. I don't have that much in the bank. But they go out [00:27:00] and they buy organic food. They go out and buy organic peanut butter. So why don't you use an organic bank? Speaker 4:Why don't you see that your money carries your values and your money can be used as an agent of change in every single buying decision you do, whether it's your bank or the foods you buy or the clothes you buy. And that's, I want to encourage people to think of it that way. They have real economic power to do good with their money. No matter how much money that is, no matter how much money that is. My daughter told me about a study. People are actually much happier if they are [00:27:30] making a certain amount of money. Well with the study says is that once you make over you only need to make a certain amount and once you, once you go over that amount of money, which is remarkably small, it's in the 50 to 75,000 a year maybe per person a year. Not Happier if that's at all. Speaker 4:Yeah, that's what it was. Anyway. That was pretty interesting. So if um, any of our listeners here in the bay area would like to get ahold of you, do you have a website or an email address where they can contact you directly or yes, the bank, yes there is. [00:28:00] We do have a website, new resource bank.com I'm on that website. My email addresses visa silvano@newresourcebank.com where people can call into our main number and they can ask for on the lending side a Gary Grof or on the depository side they can ask for for a Mary Resendiz or, or Janiece. Uh, so there are lots of people they can ask for, but you can feel free to email me as well. Well, thank you for being on the program. Fit is a great pleasure. Thank you. Speaker 1:[00:28:30] You've been listening to method to the madness of biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators Speaker 5:[inaudible]. Speaker 1:If you have questions or comments about this show, go to the Calex website, find method to the madness and drop us an email. You'll also find a link [00:29:00] to previous podcasts. Speaker 5:[inaudible] Speaker 1:tune in again in two weeks at the same time. Speaker 3:Great. Nicole. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Sleep education and awareness to prevent sleep deprivationTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening to k, Berkeley 90.7 FM. And this is method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host [inaudible] and today we are lucky to have with us in studio, Karen Schwartzback, founder of pivotal sleep. Hey Karen, how's it going? Hey, great. Thanks for having me. So A, we're going to talk about sleep today. Yes, we are. And it's, it's something that we all do a lot. It is yesterday's gone quite a bit of our, uh, nights sleeping. Yeah. It's [00:00:30] amazing because it's something we all do a lot, but we probably don't give a lot of thought to it. Right, right. So, um, so I'd like to start off by asking you about, you founded a company dedicated to sleep yes. And sleep education and awareness. So I want to get into that and what you guys teach. But first let's talk about the problem statement. I always ask this a founder's. Yeah. Why did you start this organization Speaker 2:way back when? I was interested in helping new families actually with the sleep that they were not [00:01:00] getting because their young children weren't sleeping. Uh, once children were sleeping, parents were sleeping better. And what I realized were, was that a lot of my clients had jobs that were, um, very vital to the wellbeing of the community, the world at large. I had pilots and doctors and nurses and firefighters who were the parents of these children. And I often wonder to myself with me being in the hands of a sleep deprived [00:01:30] adult, what might that you know, do in terms of compromising my health and wellbeing? And so not only for their own health and the health of their families, but also just in the world. Uh, people walking around, sleep deprived, driving around, sleep-deprived, flying around, sleep deprived. It really became clear to me that this was, um, sort of epidemic. As a matter of fact, the Center for Disease Control, um, says that sleep is considered a national epidemic. Speaker 1:Okay. So, um, you saw an opportunity [00:02:00] yes. To, um, to address adult sleep issues and make yourself safer, it sounded like. Yes. In part, yeah. Okay. So tell us about your background. Like how did you, uh, you obviously had some, some angle here that made you think of this. How did what, tell us about how you [inaudible]. Great question Speaker 2:came to. So, um, after the birth of my children, I have twins that are almost 19 now with different sleep worries now than when they were babies. Um, I was, um, contracted as an educator at a, [00:02:30] a bay area hospital to educate new and expectant parents. And as a subset of that, I launched a company to support new parents. And the only thing these new parents wanted to really talk about, no matter what I wanted them to talk about was how do I get two babies to sleep and just the impact of sleep deprivation on their own health and wellbeing. And so I sort of toyed around with the idea of helping people with their sleep and um, a client [00:03:00] approach me and ask if I could help her out. She was my Guinea pig. That was 12 years ago and found that I, from a lot of research and personal experience had dialed in a little bit to some sleep solutions for young children. Speaker 2:And so I began to work with families in earnest, um, as sort of a byproduct of my workshop and education programs and, um, never looked back. Actually. I realized I had a knack for it. I was able to drill down into what makes people tick [00:03:30] in terms of achieving or not, um, good sleep. And people used to ask me a lot if I would work with adults. And I used to say once they're walking and talking, you know, I don't want them anymore because they, you know, there's a lot of pushback because, um, we want to do what we want to do in our days, in our evenings and sleep sometimes get short shrift when there's so many other things that we want to do further along. Doing more research, reading Harvard School of sleep medicine, [00:04:00] the Centers for Disease Control, um, uh, the national sleep foundation, seeing the epidemic proportion of sleep deprivation amongst Americans, 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from some degree of sleep loss. Speaker 2:Some it's medical in nature, but I would say probably the majority, it's behavioral. And what I realized was that the behaviors of children aren't that different than the behaviors of adults in terms of structuring sleep in a way to [00:04:30] achieve optimal arrest. Um, and so I started, took the angle of, okay, this is what I do with young children. How different is it for adults and the difference between adults and children's that parents show children or dictate to children what they should do. We as adults or college students or high school students, we have our own minds. And so it's sort of at will to change behaviors to improve sleep health. And so that was really what launched this new entity for me. And the response has been [00:05:00] really remarkable. Speaker 1:AndW when did so the company called pivotal sleep? Speaker 2:Yes. As you launch it. So pivotal sleep is about two years old. Okay. And, um, my other entities started in 2003, so I've been in the sleep world for about 12 years. Okay. Now, uh, let's just [inaudible] Speaker 1:let's try to establish, and we're talking to Karen shores, back of pivotal sleep. She's the founder here on method to the Madison k Alex Berkeley. And let's talk about, I was looking through your website, let's educate a little bit on our listeners. So the, you talk about the three [00:05:30] elements of good sleep. Yeah. Duration, continuity and depth. Can you kind of define for us a little bit about those three? Like what, how do those three things work together to provide good sleep? Speaker 2:Right. And so when you look at those three elements as important, are the precursors to, um, getting a good depth of sleep for a proper duration and good quality. So duration, how many hours of sleep do we need? People always that question. There are people that say, I'm great on five hours sleep. [00:06:00] There are people that say, I get eight hours and I could use more. So there really isn't a magic number. Um, the national sleep foundation and most entities you speak with will say approximately seven to eight hours of sleep for adults. Teenagers, ironically, can't go to sleep as early as adults or younger children because of the onset of Melatonin, which we can get into or, or not. Um, but in terms of the duration of sleep, there is some degree of variability. Uh, there was a recent, not [00:06:30] maybe not so recent study by the University of California, San Francisco, and they found that there's about 3% of the adult population that can sustain themselves well on six hours or less of sleep. Speaker 2:But for the 97% of the rest of us, six hours isn't really adequate sleep. So let's say you get seven hours of sleep. What about the quality of your sleep? There are a lot of apps out there. There are fitbit's and misfits and all these different tools that you can use. It can actually measure the kind [00:07:00] of sleep that you're getting. Am I getting deep sleep? Am I getting light sleep for the duration I'm in bed? How many hours am I actually sleeping? There really isn't a magic number in terms of how many hours of rem sleep versus non rem sleep. You get rem sleep and non-rem sleep together. A sleep cycle is about 90 to 120 minutes for adults. And so, um, there's a sleep specialist that calculates about five hours of five cycles of, um, of total sleep [00:07:30] to get restorative sleep, which turns out to be about seven and a half hours of sleep. Speaker 2:People wake up in the middle of the night and people complain that they can't go back to sleep. So broken sleep isn't as restorative as continuously, but the truth of the matter is a sleep cycle is only 90 to 120 minutes. So we all actually wake up in the course of sleep, but go back to sleep. It's those people that wake up and can't go back to sleep that then have compromised, uh, total restorative rest. So when they wake [00:08:00] up in the morning, they're not ready to get out of bed because they're still tired. Um, but their day begins and they have to get up and, you know, get on with her day. Speaker 1:Yeah. So, um, have you talked about in terms of the three elements, the duration, um, given the fact that everybody's unique and you can't prescribe for everybody, but right. The general guidelines is between seven and eight. Correct. And then, um, the two other factors, continuity. So you're, I think what I heard you say every 90 to 120 minutes, [00:08:30] you're gonna kind of rouse and reposition. Exactly. And then that's the second component and a third is depth. Right? And that's where you could get a fitbit or something like that to measure that. Is that Ram when we hear rem sleep depth, Speaker 2:right. So, so there are, you know, rem and non rem sleep are both important elements of the sleep cycle. So, um, when you're in rem sleep, your body is oddly in a state of paralysis. So your body doesn't, that's how the fitbit actually measures it. It's measuring movement. [00:09:00] So my body's not moving. I'm in my deeper state of sleep, but wrap, my brain is active, but my body's very still. When I'm in a lighter phase of sleep, my brain is in a lighter phase. But my body is more active. So how many cycles of rem or non rem sleep you might be getting, um, is variable as well. So it's not like I have to get six people ask me, well how can I ensure that I get more cycles of Rem Sleep? Well 90 to 120 minutes is both of your four stages of lighter sleep, [00:09:30] non rem sleep and then one stage of, of rem sleep. Speaker 2:So it's your non rem cycles cumulatively are longer than your rem cycles. Um, but cumulatively it creates the restorative nature of your total sleep intake. So it's hard to kind of explain what it is I'm trying to say. But not everybody is getting full cycles because they're waking up from precursory reasons, which I'd be happy to go into and explain to you why people are waking up half way [00:10:00] through the night and they don't know if it's a rum or non-rem cycle that they're waking out of. Right. Okay. Why are they waking up? So not dissimilar to young children. What happens during the day is impacting how you're sleeping at night? So things that people don't think about as impacting the depth of their sleep or the quality or duration of their sleep are things that we might do before we go to bed. For example, low blue light exposure, the smart phones, um, I iPads [00:10:30] computers that is emitting a low blue light, which actually suppresses the body's capacity to produce Melatonin and it can actually impact and disrupt our sleep. Speaker 2:So for those of you out there who are on your computer until you shut it off and turn out the lights, you may fall asleep, but you wake up and you're not sure why you're tired, but the low blue light exposure is actually suppressing the body's ability to produce Melatonin. That's one. Another might be alcohol. A lot of people [00:11:00] have their glass of wine. It sort of sends them off to sleep. But when the body metabolizes wine, it can be dehydrating and there's a sugar content and so it actually can wake people up. So there's things that are happening in the earlier part of our day that's actually impacting why we're waking up in the middle of the night or not being able to fall asleep. And I did a talk over at Lawrence Livermore national labs about a month ago. There are about a hundred people in the room and I asked the question, how many people have a hard time falling asleep? Speaker 2:And maybe 20% of the audience raised [00:11:30] their hand. And the next question was, how many of you have a, you can fall asleep but wake up. And the vast majority of people raise their hands. So that led me to believe that for many people, it's not the falling asleep part, it's the staying asleep part. I'm awake at three o'clock in the morning and I can't go back to sleep. So what do I do? I look at my clock and now I'm doing math and the light is red and stimulating and suddenly I'm awake. And then I'm thinking, okay, if I can fall back asleep, I've got three more hours until I have to get up and be in class or whatever [00:12:00] it might be. And so we're now disrupting our body's ability to go back to sleep because now we're in an active state of thought Speaker 1:and stress and stress. It's, it's like a downward cycle of it. Yeah, Speaker 2:exactly. And a lot of people also think they should stay in bed until they fall back asleep. And most experts will say, if you're laying in bed awake and you can't fall asleep within 15, 20 minutes, you should actually get out of bed and go to a quiet dimly lit place. Not Look at your iPhone or your computer. Don't watch TV. Um, and [00:12:30] um, have a, maybe a light behind your head and read quietly or listen to some relaxing music or play guitar or something that's very relaxing. And when you start to tell drowsy to go back to bed. Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. Well, we're talking to Karen shores, Bach of founder of pivotal sleep here on methods of the magnets. KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And we're talking about sleep. So, um, thank you for going over kind of the basics. I did want to ask them. Alec Melatonin. Yes. I'm not very familiar [00:13:00] with it. Can you just explain to how, what is it, how does it get created and how does it relate to sleep? Speaker 2:Great question. So, um, I like to call Melatonin the body's natural sleep drug. And so in between our eyebrows, if you will, we have the pineal gland and the pineal gland secretes Melatonin. Melatonin is the sleep hormone that our bodies use. Melatonin onsets around nine o'clock at night and, um, allows us, you know, seven to nine hours of peak melatonin [00:13:30] production. And so without Melatonin, there are some people that take synthetic Melatonin. There's probably some part of the population that doesn't produce adequate Melatonin. But in essence, if we allow ourselves to utilize the Melatonin within our system and not compromise it by the low blue light or other things that we might be doing that as suppressing it, that should be enough to help asleep. For a lot of people they'll use melatonin because they're doing other things that are compromising Melatonin's function. And [00:14:00] so synthetic Melatonin or other sleep aids that they may use is sort of taking the place of what we can actually create [inaudible] nature has created for us. Speaker 2:Nature has created for us and Melatonin is Melatonin and it's not like it's changed. Circadian Rhythm is 24 hours in a few minutes. And so the body functions before the industrial revolution, before light bulbs, when it got dark, man went to sleep and when the sun came up the man woke up and our bodies are still in that rhythm and Melatonin is actually [00:14:30] stimulated by darkness. And so the low blue that I was talking about earlier is suppressing that about the body's capacity to produce it. But ironically, being out in sunlight, which actually stimulates cortisol, which is sort of the stress or a fight or flight chemical, our bodies produce can actually serve later in the date to expedite Melatonin when we move into darker light or sunset or what have you. So melatonin and cortisol, if I can use a biblical sort of term of David [00:15:00] and Goliath. So I like to think of Melatonin as David, you know, kind of this, you know, groovy, scruffy beard accounting guy and cortisol being Goliath. This big hairy monster, well Melatonin can't bring down cortisol but cortisol can sort of squash Melatonin. And that's how I describe it to folks that I'm working with because it is a very visual that you can see that if I'm doing things that are going to actually compromise the body's ability to suppress Melatonin, Melatonin can't get up and over whatever it is that's [00:15:30] getting in the way. Speaker 1:Yeah. It's interesting. You know, I have a three year old and uh, putting her to sleep is a tough yeah. And um, we've been trying to find the right time and we were debating this. My wife was debating, well, when there's an optimal time, the Melatonin is being released yet we don't quite know what it is. I mean, we're putting her to bed too late. You think the later you put the child to bed, the more tired there'll be, the more they go to sleep. But there's this window of opportunity. Yeah. Right. So how does that work? Speaker 2:Totally counterintuitive. And, and [00:16:00] I've worked with over 500 clients privately. Um, and I've seen time and time and time again the resistance of an earlier bedtime. But the truth of the matter is if a child's put down after their Melatonin window has closed, so let's say your daughter is in the bath and she's having a great time and she comes out of the bath, her Melatonin that was peaking because she was in warm water and elevated body temperature crashes when the body temperature drops and cortisols are at takes over. And so she's zipping around and [00:16:30] full of energy and you think, well that's going to tire her out and she's going to go to sleep. But her, you can't like lift the head and spin around and get the Melatonin, you know, come to the top like cream. And so it's ironic that an earlier bedtime is actually more productive and yields an easier put down than a later bedtime, which is sort of counterintuitive to folks. Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is. So I wanted to go down, I wanted to go down that path for a little bit. So, um, kind of best practices. [00:17:00] Yeah. So, uh, I wanted to talk about kind of different types of people's. Let's talk with babies. Okay. That's more you started your extra money. So, um, given we know all babies are different and all people are different, but you've been doing this for awhile now it sounds like, was it 12 years, 12 years? So, uh, what are some of the top tips for a new parent that you can give to help them, you know, deal with this stress of having this little person who wakes up all the time and cry? Speaker 2:I love that question so [00:17:30] much because some of the things I'm going to tell you are also applicable to adults. And so again, once again, the things that we do before we put the body to bed can impact the body's ability to sleep. So for children, and I can also say most of these things for adults, room environment. So National Sleep Foundation, um, talks about having optimal room environment and most sleep experts will talk about optimizing the room environment. Once again, the body reads, light is awake, [00:18:00] dark is asleep. So for little children and for adults having a room that's dark, cool and quiet, that's really information gathering on the body's part that says, oh, I see it's dark. It's telling my body Melatonin production time and the white noise if you will use it or no noise at all. But having a quiet room environment can also calm the mind. Speaker 2:If there's a white noise element, it's sort of, um, I call it ps noise. It's sort of in the distance, but it just a very settling and relaxing to the subconscious. [00:18:30] There actually some white noise players that have been, um, designed by, um, scientists or they're using the brainwaves as um, sort of the rhythm of the white noise. Um, the temperature. Cool. I say cool is the rule. A cooler room is much more conducive to sleep than a warm room. 65 to 72 degrees peak, whether they be little children or adults. So a cooler room is more optimal, a dark room, a quiet room. Um, if you have clocks or [00:19:00] stimulating day decor or a video camera that has a light shining in the baby's face, that can be very distracting as either as a stimulating element if it's red or if it's green or blue as a low blue light element that's suppressing Melatonin. Speaker 2:So having a room environment that's conducive to sleep, having a routine. And this goes for adults too. It may seem strange to have a ritual around sleep. So we're doing these three things, four things before we go to bed, whether it be a little child who's [00:19:30] having a bath, a diaper change into pajamas, a final feeding, a story, a poem, prayer, whatever it might be. Those elements are conditioning at the body receives at the same way in the same order each and every time the body starts to expect it and anticipate it for adults as well. There's a lot of adults, many adults who have ritual around their sleep. So they may turn off their electronics an hour before they go to sleep. They may take a warm bath, they may do deep [00:20:00] breathing, relaxation, yoga, whatever might be relaxing for them. Perhaps they have a, a chair that they go to and they write their worry list. Speaker 2:So they take out of their mind that things they have to do tomorrow or the worries that they have on their mind so they can sort of cleanse the palate, if you will, to then move into a sleeping phase. So I have a colleague that calls it the sleep room, not the bedroom because parents, people have a tendency to do a lot of things in their bedroom, TV, computers, Bill Paying, [00:20:30] reading, I'm moving it or perceiving it as a place to sleep. It can oftentimes be soothing and relaxing for people because they're not stimulated by all the other things that might go on in a room. So for children to have these routines and, um, environmental, um, triggers, the same applies for adults. The third thing I would say this is really, really important for children and a lot of parents miss this is nutrition. [00:21:00] Um, I call it fueling the car for the body to be able to drive the distance like the car drives with gas net, we need to optimally fuel it. Speaker 2:So a lot of times a three year old might be very carb-heavy crackers, fruits, vegetables, which can be wholesome. You could grow them in your backyard or get them at whole foods or wherever you might get them. But the carbs are carbs, protein sources are more sustainable and can actually help the body fuel itself for more prolonged, more productive sleep for adult, spicy foods, [00:21:30] alcohol, obviously a lot of liquids, red bowls, um, uh, heavy meats. Um, there are a lot of foods that can actually impact the body's ability either to fall asleep or stay asleep either because of the metabolizing in the system or the spicy foods can be disruptive to the digestive process or what have you. Surfing Kathleen's huge. Um, I had a cup of coffee on my way in here and I'm one of those people that can turn off the lights after coffee later in the evening. Speaker 2:But for most people having [00:22:00] coffee, um, after three o'clock, so maybe five hours before you go to bed, for most people not having caffeine, whether it be a soda, a Red Bull, uh, coffee and even decaffeinated beverages still have a degree of caffeine in them. Um, so that's another, um, no, no, if it, if it bothers you. And that's what I say to everybody, whether it be an adult or a child. Just to your point, we're all different and caffeine may not bother me, but my computer might and the computer [00:22:30] may not bother you, but caffeine might. And so when I'm working with um, adults, I have them actually keep a baseline sleep diary. So I'm not going to give you any solutions. I just want you to observe yourself, take yourself into the laboratory, track your behaviors. This is what I did today and this is how I slept tonight. Speaker 2:So in the morning, reflecting back, here's what I did today. And then the morning that I wake up in the middle of the night, did I have a hard time falling asleep in the middle of the night? I'll look at that. I did. What did I do the previous day? That may have been that trigger. [00:23:00] Let's see what happens if I turn off my computer 90 minutes before I go to bed. Let's see what happens if I don't have that glass of wine, whatever it might be, and slowly but surely we can start to pull out the triggers and leaving the things that really aren't disruptive to our sleep. Well, Speaker 1:we were speaking with Karen Schwartzbach, she's the founder of pivotal sleep and she's given a great tips on how to manage your sleep. But I have a question for you. You were talking about babies and a little bit about adults, but you know this, this show, I've interviewed a lot of people who would have startups in. Then we're also on [00:23:30] the UC Berkeley campus and Vlade students and students and people working in startups. They have weird schedules and it's very difficult to have the routine that you're talking about. So how do you prescribe better sleep habits for people in that situation where they can't always control and they might Speaker 2:have to stay up until one o'clock in the morning and doing something and yeah, they've on their on deadline and that just happens in their lives. I think one of the greatest challenges I have working in or near the silicon valley is that we're dealing with a lot [00:24:00] of high tech companies and a lot of very busy executives or startup folks or what have you. They're burning the midnight oil and if they understood the longterm impact, because if I'm tired tomorrow morning, I'm going to grab myself a triple Cappuccino and I kind of good to go. I may start to fade around three o'clock, I just grab another one and I continue to go. But if folks understood the longterm impact of sleep deprivation, whether it be heart disease, obesity, depression, [00:24:30] um, eh, the ailments that can be a result of extended and prolonged sleep deprivation is pretty scary. Speaker 2:But people don't look forward that way there. There are sort of in the moment. So what can I do now to preserve the sleep that I am getting? I had a law firm in New York. Um, the um, wellness director said our attorneys sleep four hours a night and they're not going to get more sleep than that. So please don't come here and tell them to sleep eight hours because that's not gonna, that's not the prescription for them. So what can they do? So it's to make the sleep that they [00:25:00] get count. And I'm not advocating four hours of sleep, so don't miss quote me here. But for students who have finals, for folks that are in startups and maybe are talking to folks in India and they have to be up in the middle of the night for con for conference calls or what have you, there's been some research, there's a doctor in San Diego who actually has done some research around the optimal timing for physical, restorative repair. Speaker 2:So I'm not talking about the optimal time to sleep. It's the optimal time for your body to get its physical [00:25:30] and psychological cellular repair and those hours between 10 and 2:10 PM and 2:00 AM so I have almost 19 year old twins and um, I've had many conversations with them about should I go to sleep at 11 o'clock and get up at three and study or should I stay up till two and then go to bed? So we sort of have an agreement that rather you go to bed between 10, 10 and 11, and then you get up pre-dawn and do your studying because you're actually going to be more alert and you're gonna retain more information [00:26:00] than if you burned through and then just collapse it three to get up at six and start all over again. So that's just one example. It may not work for everyone, but it's just a suggestion. Speaker 2:And, um, this doctor in San Diego feels like she's really onto something. I don't have her name to give you. Um, but I've been very curious to see really the longterm impact on the body's, um, ability to say healthy sleeping that way before the industrial revolution. People actually slept in two, four hour blocks, they'd go to bed when the [00:26:30] sun went down, got up to milk, the cows, went back to bed and slept till six or seven o'clock. So it's really the advent of the light bulb that has really changed the way we function in the work world. Yeah. You know, Speaker 1:it's interesting, there's so many different tactics. Like my, um, you know, when I started to learn a little bit more about sleep and, and I would push myself in sleeping Ivers like five hours a night. But, um, when I started doing is, that'll still happen during the week sometimes. But then I'll, I won't let that happen [00:27:00] more than a couple of days in a row and then I'll try to do that catch up. Right. So it's not, we're not on the long term. Like in a short term, if there's a window I have to do it, I have to do it right. But I'll always try to catch up. Right. And that seems to have made me feel happier and better. And Speaker 2:so people ask that question a lot. Can I catch up? If I have a sleep debt, can you race the sleep debt in the short term? You can probably reduce it, but if that's your lifestyle year upon year upon year and you're sleeping till noon on Saturday and then you're back on [00:27:30] track, you know, Sunday night at late hours, there may be longterm impact. So if I can share just a small anecdote. Um, um, a friend's wife is an executive at Walmart and she gets about four hours of sleep and she's in her early thirties and has never really valued sleep. She's hard charging, very goal oriented, what have you. She had a doctor's appointment and the doctor said that he saw some precursory heart disease. First question he asked her was how well do you sleep? [00:28:00] And she said not well, and you know, before we start medicating you, I want you to start focusing on your sleep. Which was really a surprise to her because she didn't realize that that could potentially be the antidote for her longterm health. Speaker 1:Well also, I think at that age we all feel a little bit indestructable sleep. You know you're trying, there's a lot of people you're trying to serve and sleeps and easy one to sacrifice and it's only for you. Yes, that's the way I used to look at it as I've caught a lot of different people, a lot of different masters. I can just cut that out and I can serve all these different masters [00:28:30] but you know we're finding out more and more as a science comes out that that's a bad idea because you won't be around to serve all this. Speaker 2:Exactly, and I would like to just mention to the Harvard School of sleep medicine talks about the three pillars of health. It's physical activity, nutrition and sleep. So I like to think of it as a tripod. If the one leg on the tripod is missing, that tripod can't stand and so people could just visualize that, yes, I eat well, I get my daily jog but I'm completely sleep deprived. At what point is [00:29:00] that going to catch up with me? I want to give just an a comment to your question about students have to stay up late and folks that are working long hours, just in terms of the low blue light, if being on the computer or our other devices is your device, you can actually download, um, a program that will start changing the backlight of your computer from blue to yellow as the day goes on onto it's set to the clock and um, one's called Pango bright and the other f flux and [00:29:30] I may not be exactly spot on, but if you Google it, you can find, um, a program that you can download that will actually help, um, change the lighting so you can be on the computer longer at night if you, and of course your brain still active, but at least your melatonin production isn't being compromised by that low blue light. Speaker 2:There's also a company called low blue lights.com, founded by two, um, uh, professors at John Carroll University in Ohio. And, um, they worked for GE light bulbs for 30 years, making the brightest light bulbs they could [00:30:00] until they realized in their older age that that was actually compromising people's, uh, sleep quality. So they founded low blue lights and they're about 80 something years old. And I tease them and say, is their pennants for stealing less people asleep for so long? And so they have a whole line of products that are scientifically designed, low blue light glasses, um, screens that can go over your iPhone, your iPad, your computer, your TV, and it's just a sheet of amber plastic. But it's not [00:30:30] just you go to a tap plastics and get a piece of yellow plastic that's very scientifically designed to help preserve Melatonin production while you're, um, on these devices that otherwise could impact. Speaker 1:Well, great tips from our guests today. Karen Shores Bach, the founder of pivotal sleep. So thanks for coming into studio design, Karen, and to learn more about her work and how you can get in touch with her. You go to pivotal sleep.com. Is that right? Any, any other way they should get into contact? That's the best way to reach me. Okay, great. And you've been listening to a method [00:31:00] to the madness day on KLX Berkeley. I'm your host. Selling is our, thanks for joining everybody and have a great Friday. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
AshEL Eldridge, founder of Urban Farmacy and Oakland–based food justice activist and community organizer, discusses the connections between climate, food, and health.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness of biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Keefer and today I'm interviewing ash l Eldridge, the founder and co-director of Urban Pharmacy, the wellness entrepreneurship and education organization that provides personalized food production programs for schools, businesses and communities. [00:00:30] As Shell is an Oakland based food justice activist and community organizer connecting the dots between climate, food and health. Welcome to the program Ash Shell. First of all on to you about urban pharmacy. Tell me what urban pharmacy is and what's going on with that. Speaker 2:Yeah, well urban pharmacy is a wellness entrepreneurship and education organization. Essentially we operate in schools and in the community to produce food grind systems for the community or for [00:01:00] the school, for the school. We do the curriculum with them, um, around mindfulness, stem education, the job repairing this career preparedness stuff. But in the community we are looking vertically at creating some opportunities for people to do value added products. What grows in their community in general, where are you located? Where, I mean we're project Earth Island Institute. So we here in Berkeley and in that sense, but we have projects from in Oakland. Y'all start projects in Sacramento. And when did you start this? Ask Years? So I had an organization called SOS juice started in 2012 system ID system juices. We did [00:01:30] discount juice cleanses. So we'll probably have juices, smoothies, elixirs tonics at farmer's markets where low income youth in Oakland. And um, that sort of branched out into a deeper awareness around how the community healing and killing product and entrepreneurship and the community. And I created urban pharmacy, um, back in 2014. Speaker 1:Well let's go back to SOS juice because I was reading that you are working with some high schools in Oakland, I believe around climate change issues and health issues. It wasn't enough and it led you to think about doing [00:02:00] something else. Speaker 2:Yeah, well I was working at Alliance for climate education, a great organization, National Organization. I'm inspiring activating young people around climate change, doing presentations around the country. And um, I was doing, you know, was northern California, um, media and leadership manager for that. And then what I realized I was going in, I was doing a presentation, I was getting inspiring young people. We were setting up groups in the schools, young, you know, young folks who are getting leadership skills on how to create and organizing our school around, you know, recycling or whatever they wanted to focus [00:02:30] on. And I started focusing on food climate and health in general. Um, just based on the personal stuff that I was doing, SOS juice simultaneously, they work in the ace and then so essentially I saw that the, the deeper impact that needed in communities specifically like a, like black and brown communities, low income communities was the energy of the SOS juice, which involved more like a, like a spiritual aspect as well. And also a need to look at deeper traumas and seeing how those internal workings were creating an external world [00:03:00] and was looking at that as a form of activism and also wanted to set up some sense of self empowerment in looking at what type of solutions we can create. And in that sense as well, Speaker 1:didn't the Trayvon Martin thing kind of trigger that too? At that time. Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean it was, I mean it was a lot of things going on. That was, um, in a, I remember Fruitvale station came out, which was talking about Oscar grant and that film came out I think the same time. And Aaron in Oakland, like the week after it at day or something, actually, the verdict came down around a Trayvon Martin Zimmerman case. So in the movie theater, literally people [00:03:30] were bawling and crying. And it was like the most intense movie out I seen, which is, you know, we want to do a lot of multimedia stuff too because the media really, really hits, hits home. But from that moment I was like, wow, it'd be opportunity to be here. It's actually utilized this, you know, my training is in transpersonal psychology. So I was training at a second in shamanism and healing arts in general. So my view was like, wow, this created a cathartic moment opportunity for, for deeper healing, which is, um, what I saw when I was in the schools. Speaker 2:You know, a, [00:04:00] we give people information but um, it's sorta topical. You know, when you look at some of the deeper, you know, working. So you know, from that moment I was like, you know what, we gotta do a event focused on, you know, Trayvon Shama and reconciliation. So I did SOS juice, Savannah United roots. We, here's what we're doing. Our events are events that in Oakland 2071, telegraph your native roots and um, had a community come together and you had a process and in dialogue and people who are on Diet dyads had ceremony around and passed out juices [00:04:30] that we prayed over that actually had some drops in it from a group that I work with called flora alive. They have a trauma releasing flowers like high-frequency flowers. Speaker 1:Like what kind of flowers and medicinal, Speaker 2:I forget exactly this. It's like a formula of a bunch of different flowers, like amazing flowers. [inaudible] this guy, he finds flowers in sacred places like the Andes, all these different places he collects them. And the way he makes it is really different. It takes more like the energetic essence versus he doesn't cut them. So sometimes you find it that cut or or things like that. So you make sure they have [00:05:00] the whole energy field of the plant. And what it does and what I've seen personally in myself and also in the community is that it removes like actually some emotional blockages, just the the flower. So really we were looking at, so sadly the whole thing is like looking at plants as ally, looking at an allies for humanity as we go through this transition and shift of awakening. And you know, so urban pharmacy came out of that as well. It was like, okay, well economics, we definitely economics and economic empowerment but we also need, this is sorta like this wellness aspect, [00:05:30] this health aspect and come prescriptions, right? Yeah. So we, we look at it like everything is holistic. It's holistic healing. So I mean financial healing, yeah, the community is really important. But also just ability to look at some of the things that that block ourselves from, you know, fully being fully self expressed and fully actualized in the world. So that's to me that that was something just as important because, Speaker 1:well it makes sense because the injustices caused stress on body and then if you're eating crappy food [00:06:00] on top of that, then you're, you're never going to get rid of, be able to get rid of the toxins that are, the stress is causing. Correct. I mean, you are what you eat. Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. I work with that this organization called soul shop and they do anti bullying and stuff in, in schools. Really powerful what they're doing because they're seeing that, you know, everyone has a lot of stuff in their balloon and how do we lease that balloon? Right. So in that sense, the same thing's happening in Baltimore on the same thing's happening in every one. Speaker 1:I feel like there's a ground swell. Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. People need to up that. I mean, on both [00:06:30] ends, like there's, so you'd be sent of domestic abuse offenses in the country are by police officers. So there's some trauma they're dealing with, right? They have this over aggression as well. So on all ends of and ending when people are like, you know, crying out for it. You mean in protest? Since it's the same thing, it's like, wow, they don't want to be heard. People want to be hurting. Like, wow, how is this not being accounted for? How are people not recognizing this pain? Speaker 1:If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness of biweekly [00:07:00] public fair show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. Today I'm interviewing as Shell Eldridge, a founder and co-director of urban pharmacy. He's an Oakland based food justice activists and community organizer connecting the dots between climate, food and health. Speaker 2:You ever been pharmacy? Is this a smallest that they're looking at? Okay, well let's look at the assets and the community first and foremost. In terms of like the, the plant, like we look at, you know, the allies of the plants [00:07:30] and then the food and then the medicines and herbs and things like that let and also the people where I'm in. Castlemont high school, Sustainable Urban Design Academy, Suta and Castlemont. So we actually transformed a gun range into a hydroponics garden, goes the guns to gardens campaign you have over there, Tim. Um, Eric's over there with urban pharmacy. He's over there is rocking out. So they actually getting design build skills, stem skills. Folks are saying like, Hey, you know, I didn't, I don't do math. And they're doing, you [00:08:00] know, advanced calculus, you know, to create and design the hydroponics. What do you grow? Right. Well, right now is this, cause we just started, we started with them. Speaker 2:We just go on like simple things that you'd probably fast like a Rugala. That's something you just, some people can get a sense like, oh, this can grow and this can happen, but we plan on expanding it into different medicinals, native plants, um, something for, uh, specialty crops, culinary herbs, things like that. If, what for the hydroponics. Um, but also we're in the k through five school right now in West Oakland that has an afterschool garden program. So [00:08:30] we, we're doing that to working with the little ones around mindfulness and things like that. So we just, we just, it was sort of just, you know, prototyping, getting our feet wet in there and then developing some curriculum and the next steps for us are making sure that curriculum is tight, making sure it all tied in terms of getting people's certifications that they need, food handles, car, whatever he needs to actually do that. Speaker 2:We want to get that part settled. And then the next thing is this, these shipping containers, we were excited about transforming shipping. Actually it's a storage containers and culinary kitchens. Oh excellent. [00:09:00] So such that they come Mobi Monica cooperative exercise and the community were folks who if you're growing, whatever you're growing in your backyard, we can sort of harvest that and glean from the community, especially after some of these laws are changing and shifting foraging, foraging. Right. And I'm working within a system and in that sense, and also some of the laws are changing around what can be forged and what type of property. You can sort of get stuff to go for comers, but we're grabbing that stuff and then saying, hey, west process, all that stuff in his food hack space where we can make our tinctures [00:09:30] are our juices, are our, you know, our jams, our butters, all that, whatever that is in this particular space. And that's the community can take ownership of that. Speaker 3:So they're learning about soil too, right? Like you know, if the soil is not clean, the produce isn't going to be clean and yeah, that's, yeah, Speaker 2:Ralph was, so that whole permaculture, the education is a holistic education in itself because it has to do with the self, like in, in our soils, essentially we do this, it's three parts. One is the nonprofit part [00:10:00] or find an institute. So we're in the schools and we doing education and Amy doing the build and be doing the curriculum I mindfulness in, in nutrition education. Then the second part essentially was just, is this more like the LLC, that business part, which then she does consulting, bringing into all the folks I know who do installation of Aquaponics, hydroponic soil base to sort of find some stuff you do in the schools. Wherever we can we can put them at. And essentially we utilizing actual space, you know, green space, creating greenhouses at locations and having conversations with lot of different companies. Even Speaker 3:are you working [00:10:30] with cities too? Because there's a lot of empty lots that could be great growth spaces. Right. Speaker 2:One thing I just created in sac is that there's a huge opportunity in Sacramento. There's a a guy, I'm really great guy, the uh, Yisrael farms up there and he has maybe like half acre sort of compound, if you will, on his property. And it's his family. His family lived there and he, he was just like, Yo, if I can't get mom able to grow food, they make, you know, value added products as well. You know, so [00:11:00] our, our focus, you know, so the nonprofit aspect, the, the LLC aspect and also the cooperative aspect for the communities. It's really looking at this, this value added product space. I've done that with SOS juice and in a Eric Hagar with um, farm x a hydroponic, our business he has out in Richmond is done at as well. So we're looking at, it's the whole ecosystem of urban agriculture and seeing how we can come in and adding value to the whole thing. And I think it looks like, you know, these value added [00:11:30] products in actually bringing in all the, the resource that foraging, all that stuff is out there, needs to be accounted for and actually redistribute it or sold even instead of wasting instead of wasting. So that's the, that's what we're looking at on pharmacy. So we're looking at, you know, making medicines and making food for the community, but also looking at, Speaker 3:I mean is there a place people can go that would Speaker 2:be amazing. I mean I think that's like some steps down. I mean one thing I will stopped when I stopped doing SLS, I'm just doing the deliveries for SOS. Did you stop it at farmer's market and I just doing deliveries, I was like, [00:12:00] well we just need a brick and mortar space. Right. And I was thinking, wow, we need this, this urban pharmacy cafe, you know, type of thing. Speaker 3:But that is something on your radar? Yes, Speaker 2:definitely on the radar. Definitely on the radar. Yeah. Speaker 3:Yeah. I read that you, you would camp out yourself in front of fast food places and sell your SOS juice. Is that a correct story there when you were starting out with, they sort of like a guerrilla like, hey, you don't need to eat that stuff. You need to eat this stuff. Speaker 2:Right. Well it w w this saw like we just camped out like you got occupied in McDonald's. It [00:12:30] was more like, um, you know, we would just out in the neighborhood, I mean, and then when you're out in the neighborhood and in West Oakland or you know, different places, right across the street, there's a KFC or right across the street there's a liquor store or whatever it is, shelling, um, you know, flaming hot Cheetos or whatever that is. So we sort of just had the music pumping and we were just giving people food. You're giving people, did you serve any juice to people? That's the, that was the most fun actually being you done. I mean, he started just giving direct one thing. We chose the Jews [00:13:00] because it's just the, it's immediate. You have, did you actually experience it right then and there you experienced the difference as well. So, yeah. So that's what we did in any medium. People had different reactions to it, but it was, it's all like sort of disruptive but very fun and very enrolling for people. Speaker 3:So going even back a little bit farther, you've worked with Van Jones, you are green for all fellow. What does that mean when you're agreeing for all fellow? Speaker 2:Yeah, well th like back in 2008, um, I was a part of the, the public launch of green for a, with Allie star. She was [00:13:30] the campaign, the event chair and um, a bunch of great group of people. We're, it was a transition from Ella Baker Center to create this new organization because van was sort of transitioning to this like green space and looking at green jobs and putting that meme into the national nomenclature. So I was really super inspired and we know, we said we created this national event in Memphis on April 4th Martin Luther Kings, a commendment of assassination date. That time it was a 40th that that was a public and ourselves event spotlight organizer for that. [00:14:00] And then eventually it was organized for that. The innovation came back and me an event spotlight organizer for before the 2008 presidential elections. So did I want just stuff around the country, just look into different communities and really just looking at what was actually happening on the ground and bringing the stakeholders together to have an event, bringing those folks together and to see what can happen after that. Speaker 2:So just organizing basically around green jobs and for the communities and look different, different places. From there I sort of stepped away, but then it was this whole [inaudible] green frog fellowship [00:14:30] organization, not organization, but group that was being formulated from people all around the country. Amazing people who were starting green initiatives in our communities but needing more support or felt siloed or felt like, wow, they don't even want to talking about this. Making these connections between economics, climate change, environmental justice, you know, trying to figure out to put those pieces together. And in, so from that point the green foul fellowship came to birth and we had meetings with Ben actually when we did [00:15:00] the artists story telling things like this. And he talked about, you know, it's just not a narrative. And then really like how do you actually go out and row your community? And actually actually enroll the stakeholders to actually create this shift that we need to have happening. So we've got a lot of training on how to organize it, how to create solutions, Speaker 1:how can you get people even interested in climate change if they don't have jobs. Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean one thing when SOS we were excited about was, you know how we did SOS shadows out of juice bars or whatever popping up. But we did it solo. We did solar power. [00:15:30] In order to to talk about that conversation, you talk about solar power and talk about what we were doing as Wes you, you had to have awareness of our climate change. We talked about, we had localized food, organic food. That's a very big conversation in terms of climate. We actually are a VI veganic organization, SOS that directly relates to climate change. You know, so a lot of stuff we were just doing, we just cute it in and just framed it in such a way that while this is sort of a trend sort of thing, but [00:16:00] also this economic viability in this, but also it adjusts these issue and there's some money like you can make at the end of the day around it. So it was just being creative. Speaker 1:What are some of your challenges in, in the communities you go into? Speaker 2:For example, can, the first time I s we, we, a lot of this started, I remember I was working with people's grocery like years ago. It was going door to door and I'm selling the grub boxes and I was doing the $24 boxes if we you that outside of West Oakland. But in West Oak you can get a 12 bucks organic produce. And I remember once at a door and I was like, wow, this [00:16:30] guy was like, yeah, I see you trying to do some good, but you know, I ain't really gonna eat that. You know, I, you know, I, I got to go down to corner. I get my chicken wings and my whatever, whatever. Right. He was being real. He was like, yeah, I'm not not gonna eat it. Don't even waste your time. Right. What sold me was like, wow, that needs to be a little more education. Speaker 2:That's how I got into more education and I was like wow, they sent me education around the case for it. But all of a sudden needs to be more like sort of detoxification and more like healing [00:17:00] like mentally and just sort of more like self awareness work needs to happen. So dealing with the self needs to be a focal point. Same thing that I went to, I was working on Ace, I was working, I was in a school once school in Vallejo, I was leaving school and my phone got stolen in a school. So I'm trying to say it was a really hard day cause I'm trying to talk to him about everything I was talking about. Climate is the hardest audience that had had and the teachers weren't caring and the students were in caring and it was one of those moments, it's like what am I doing? Speaker 2:Why am I doing this? This isn't insane. Like I can't [00:17:30] even have this come in. I had to step three steps back to the view. None. What am I counting? It was just like, so what's going on with you? What's going on at home? Like talk like this. Let's see how we can, in a 45 minutes that I have, we can have another conversation about why we can't even focus right now. I'm like, what's underneath all that? So what I saw, I was, wow, okay, we need to have a deeper conversation. So a lot of this came out of that, you know, came out of, of looking at not feeling fulfilled at ever enabled to deliver [00:18:00] the real education that was needed, that makes the long lasting shifts and changes that we need on this, on this planet. And especially in these communities. So Speaker 3:you're from Chicago originally. How did you make your way out to California? Speaker 2:From Chicago? I went to University of Rochester. I got, you know, some scholarship money and you're gonna need Musu Rochester, upstate New York. And I graduated from there for double major in music management. I created a major actually in music management. They didn't have that at the time. And then, um, psychology and then a minor in creative writing. I was upstate New York and I have a lot of friends from New York who was going [00:18:30] to school there. So I ended up going to New York right after that, just for a short spell. Did some music, make this album a solo stereo. And I was like, wow, I want to go out west. I want to stay you this transpersonal psychology. I was looking at this spiritual psychology stuff. I was like, that's the next step I want to go in. I had a choice, either work with my uncle in Jersey or go to California. Speaker 2:So I picked up everything and I went to California and went to the check out CIS and then I checked out instead of transpersonal psychology. So I just went to ITP. And where is that? In Palo Alto. And then so I ended up getting, I think it's called Sophia University [00:19:00] and I had a name, had a name change, but then I'm getting really into like indigenous wisdom, shamanism, sound healing, vibrational therapy, that whole world dow is, I'm like really deep into that space. And simultaneously I was touring, I was doing work with wisdom at a time hip hop reggae band. I was also doing, Speaker 3:yeah, when did Earth amplified happen? This is your four piece. Is it still going on your four piece band? Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it's still going on. This was when I was going around the country working at green frog and I was a musician and I noticed that what was really [00:19:30] bringing these communities together was the food and the music. Right. And is this essential part of organizing to be able to have that skill. It was a skill. I noticed the how's like wow, can I actually people come together with this and let's figure out how to budget that into our organizing such day are always included. And also I was working at rd and action. Um, Abby started David's Sonia if you know them on an action on revolution. So I was always looking at art in activism, right. And looking at the power, art and music to to create change and get people enrolled and get people listening. From that point I was like, wow, we need to have like an official gree [00:20:00] hip hop album. Speaker 2:There's no album that's like all the tracks are dealing with. The whole album was jelly with this conversation. Like socially conscious is socially conscious and super like, yeah, we're going to talk about climate change. You're going to talk about food deserts, all this stuff. GMOs are that. We're going to talk about that in the music. You know, it was going back and forth to New York. I was in New York a punch. Um, some in Baltimore actually I made accord a lot of that in Baltimore. And so you it show, yeah. So dimension again, you know, earth amplified. The album came out. Then I met my crew and he was like, wow, that should be the name of the whole group. Speaker 3:Yeah. You had a video [00:20:30] that went viral all over the world. Food fight. And we're going to listen to that. What year was that? This is like 2010 yeah. Speaker 4:Let's see. Property [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:21:00] bombs. [inaudible] guys speak to control [inaudible]. Speaker 5:That's what that feeds them. It's the same way. Now what that and that got [inaudible] until you could shop the same way. [inaudible] [00:21:30] from DDTS PCB. That'd be cornering the hood. Getting KFC make these tracks beat like red bull is the pulpit. So Cat pee kick a like causing genes being get the [inaudible] xe GMO ms gene to the SOPs to gangs. The street sign sold with Rambo. Roundup with Amo would have known [00:22:00] you. Dot Dot, dot. BTC audits in [inaudible] the same way as what? That pin that got us [inaudible] but Diana, don't you get dropped the same way [00:22:30] they shoot? You made you look at the labels on the food that you cook. Just say no to the cocoa box. Do we do Google [inaudible] see Mikey got his, he built corn trucks. Does that contain Speaker 2:right? And also I had done this plastic state of mind, which has, and we also went viral with Benzoni Ono was working with him and that it has like 900,000 views or something that's around plastic pollution. Yeah. Speaker 3:And what are you still doing it now? Speaker 2:Yeah, we're still, yeah, check me out. [inaudible] amplify.com you can definitely SOS juice at Gmail and hit me up. We definitely come [00:23:00] out and perform. Speaker 3:You've played with bands like Sinai Bassnectar Blackalicious yeah. And Michael Franti. Yes. Speaker 2:So I think different situations like you know, on tour with wisdom, we opened up for Fran t or if amplified opened up for Blackalicious bass neck to actually do music with him in the studio and perform with him. So we've got a show coming up May 29th and red rocks in Denver actually in Colorado, also performed with Dogan Lights. I started working with them maybe eight months ago. [00:23:30] Yeah. I sort of tried to get out there and do some music a lot because it's, it's just really so full. But Yeah, Zion eyes on the album on earth amplified album killer police and blue tangs on the album. Speaker 3:So this music is all about the, it's kind of backs up what you're doing at urban, isn't it? It's that same idea of educating people. Speaker 2:Yes. Education. But it's also, you gotta be dope, you know, it's dope. So I mean I might, I may break away and just do some love songs, but it just seems there's a lot of topics [inaudible] Speaker 3:I heard you do a beautiful Japanese [00:24:00] champ spoken word piece. I would love for you to do something right now. Yes. Give us an example of your spoken word. Speaker 2:Yeah. So that might sooner got though, just to say that that's from a [inaudible] and that's an indigenous Japanese channel that it's really about like the purification of humanity. Yeah. So this is, again, this is the motto. Nobody got thought. This is out through Suki, my Cottey group. Gooby g sue [inaudible] coming to you. Come on somebody he knew. Ed Moody g come with [inaudible] [00:24:30] buttons. ITTO it don't know him. You and your Komatsu Son [inaudible] how do you do it all? Come on the [inaudible]. How did he geo me music? Eat the money they committed Chicora you mean gave receipt the money Tomo too. Cause then she'll catch any cash more MTSU [inaudible] memory to me. Sickie I e to my 8 million [inaudible] you and [00:25:00] me can mean memory to me. Sicky high. He to my gum N***a to my EEG high. He Montse Gum N***a to my age. [inaudible] Speaker 3:what is the message there? What are you saying? Speaker 2:Essentially it's, it's calling upon an infancy. Small particles at a universe to come together is actually a also forgiveness and it's like, you know, please forgive me for, I tried my trespasses, you know, forgiving myself for, to be humanity, for any impurities that we've incurred. And may we please bring in [00:25:30] the age of light? Can you please bring in and welcome the age of, of, of spiritual enlightenment. Speaker 3:How do your students respond to this? Do they must love it? Speaker 2:It depends on what I do. I don't want to say do depends on who I'm talking to and what I'm doing. Um, this other chat indigenous chance I do too from different cultures and I work on Peruvian. Speaker 3:Do you do any native American? Yeah. Cause they need some work. I mean I was just reading in the paper today is terrible amount of suicide. Teenagers, Speaker 2:yeah. A lot of the native community [00:26:00] and has there's that gone on as you know, it's a lot of um, you know, just to, you know, just uh, what folks have been through. Um, and this country, a lot of that sort of manifest in a generation. It's usually innovations and illnesses and also, you know, the isolation and disconnection from these indigenous practices and healing practices, you know, creates a lot of uh, just illness in general. So, but yeah, there's a lot of people working in these areas and chanting and praying. I didn't actually, [00:26:30] we worked up in Alaska with some, the indigenous, I'm asking you do, um, Alaska environmental action network and really amazing. We taught people how to make beats, you know, there would have been their songs and doing the songs to it. And you know there's other is awakening as a tribe called red that is doing some stuff like that. Amazing where you know, audio pharmacy doing a lot of amazing work with indigenous communities, medicine for the people you know, so there's a lot of folks out there. They're doing it with the music and doing the culture and bringing a culture as medicine. Speaker 3:[00:27:00] You were going to do a spoken word piece as well. Yeah. Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to the event horizon. The one in the mirror when we open up the eyes, when one rapes one souls, one thinks unfolds dotted from one second get blown off the mountain. No air for one moment that left off the island. The tone is silence. The tone is Zion Uno newest fee without a fee. One holographic spear wonder. Wow. War Warrior PA's everywhere. One don't zone out. We scaled out galactic [00:27:30] to let the phone home and crop circle the masses under the Buddha tree with Islamics and baptists you add the IME verse. Remember Moon is the practice six four grade isometric vector metric yet got lives on leg, leg, arm, head. A lot is symmetrically reflected. At a single fast spin at a on a half his ribs. One, one world, one invoice, one one choice, one movement, one one people will play together. [00:28:00] We for remember one [inaudible] one one [inaudible]. Speaker 3:I would think all these students and young people would really respond to that kind of invitation almost to think about other things. Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been in best way is really just to go and do a project, a music video or do actual like song writing process, you know. So we do that too. We work with young people around [inaudible]. Speaker 3:Is that at the a alliance for climate education or, Speaker 2:and then at roots does more like the estimate. Bruce has [00:28:30] hacked the hood. They have UFC youth entrepreneurship organization at music studios there. Speaker 3:And you're working there too. You're doing so much [inaudible] Speaker 2:one of the founders there but I'm not actually working in everyday life type of thing. But I'm saying like I've went in there for workshops there so I do a lot of, I go here and go there. Speaker 3:Well, I think your work is important. And I, I, it's nice to meet an activist from Oakland. And I understand you had a, was that your aunt was a, was a black panther back in the day. Yeah. So it's kind of running in the blood, that kind of activism for community. Speaker 2:Yeah, my [00:29:00] family Emmy with as a, you know, black panthers or just pictures. They are all about, you know, the strong individuals who you, they either pray or they protest. You know, I think what's happening now though is we're moving more into like this prayer space. My, my aunt is doing more stuff in, in preschools now. She's in a Montessori school in Atlanta and she's working, doing juicing with young people and she's in this whole tip of, of actually working with the little ones. And I think that's a really powerful form of activism. Like really taking care of my mothers and really taking care of my babies. [00:29:30] I mean, what happens in these formative years is a real, um, impact on the world that we have tomorrow. So, Speaker 3:yeah. Well, I wanted to just, if you can repeat for the audience how they to get hold of you about Speaker 1:urban pharmacy. What's your website and yeah. Speaker 2:Yeah, so to get a hold of us urban pharmacy for workshops, education, food system installations, go to ww dot the urban pharmacy dot. O R g e n s t h e f a r [00:30:00] m a c y.org pharmacy that got fun for music. Just ww.earth amplify.com and again, all this is on Facebook and other social media as well, but definitely check us out. Speaker 1:All right, I shall thank you for being on the program. You've been listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. If you have questions or comments [00:30:30] about the show, go to the Calex website, find method to the madness and drop us an email. You can also find the link there for past programs. Tune in again in two weeks at the same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Lawyer, TV host, playwright, and author Wajahat Ali joins Method to the Madness to talk about how he went from UC Berkeley undergrad to becoming one of the most well known and well respected voices of moderate American Muslims.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. Speaker 2:You're listening to KLX Berkeley at 90.7 FM and this is method to the madness and shove coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your [00:00:30] host, Elliot Huizar and today we have UC Berkeley's own or Jihad Ali, which Ah, Ali is a lawyer, a playwright, an essayist, a. He's appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian Salon Atlantic. He's a consultant to the USD department. Uh, and currently also his hosts of Al Jazeera, America's social media driven talk show of the stream. And [inaudible] joined us via phone, myself and my partner Lisa Kiefer over phone to talk about the Muslim [00:01:00] American experience in America. And first off we talked about how he grew up as a Muslim American in the bay area. Speaker 3:You know, I was, I am essentially a multi hyphenated multicultural kid, born and raised in the bay area, who, you know, I'm an American Muslim of bucks I need to send and it very much, I am a product of both old school and new school America, right? Old School, American music, traditional immigrant story, new school America, you know, having to danced the [00:01:30] fault lines of this man, a minority majority country, which I think, uh, is the major cultural shift that we are kind of embracing and rejecting as a country right now, which will really speak volumes about how we evolve or devolve as a nation in the next 20 years. And for me, you know, growing up as awkward a fact and in our tradition of South Asian tradition, you never say fed said quote unquote healthy. I was a very, very, very healthy, [00:02:00] awkward, a set of bucks. Speaker 3:Any immigrants whose parents thought it'd be hilarious to teach them only three words of English. And you know, I had tumeric and lentil stands on my shirt. And um, you know, I ended up going to all boys Bowerman Catholic high school. And then I went to UC Berkeley where I ended up, ironically graduated with an English major. So if to actually kind of look at my background, it is very an American background, but totally very culturally specific lens of an American that, uh, is seen right now in [00:02:30] this moment in history as an outsider, as an other, as a threat, as an antagonist. You know, the Muslim boogeyman. And I think what's interesting is this is nothing really new. If we kind of look back in American history, this has happened before to the LGBT community still happens. Mexican immigrants, African-Americans, Japanese Americans, Irish Catholics and Jewish Americans. And for me, just by virtue of growing up, I had a decision to make whether or not I was going to share my story and engage with people or whether I was going to compartmentalize these different aspects of my t my right, [00:03:00] yes. Speaker 3:Shamed my brown Nester or be ashamed of my mostly mean this or be ashamed of my Americanist. And then, you know, I just decided early on, I think that by virtue, by early on, I mean like eventually you grow up and you realize, I'm always going to be a Dorky outlier. Like, I'm never going to be like that dude who gets like Jessica though. Like you know the hot white girl and he gets invited to like join the all star track team or football team. I'm always going to be that awkward multi-syllabic healthy kid. And I think somewhere in college [00:03:30] I made peace with the fact that I'm never going to fit into this model, a narrative of a quote unquote America that didn't represent me and I was just going to be myself and let my freak flag fly. And the reason why I mentioned that is kind of, this was a gradual evolution, right? Speaker 3:Cause I was always an outlier, but I was always this guy who wanted to share my stories, my culture, my identity, my experiences with my classmates and I always did. And growing up in the bay area, like you guys know, it's such an ethnically diverse community [00:04:00] that you're forced to interact with people who are different than you. And I kind of was innately, if you will, a storyteller without me realizing it. And I did it purely for the joy of doing it, number one. Number two being an awkward, Dorky fat kid usually would for survival because anyone who's run on fatness listen to this. You know, elementary school every day is like world war three and you literally are not the fastest kid on the block cause you're like fat, but you can be them the sharpest can you do. The [inaudible] school was also good survival survival tool and it's uh, you [00:04:30] know, to win over my bullies. Speaker 3:And number three, I just kind of really enjoyed it. I, I, you know, I could make people laugh. I could tell stories and kind of this innate trait that I had growing up in childhood, you know, just telling stories, making movies with my friends, uh, writing small sketches, uh, was the DNA essentially without me realizing it, of what I do now as a profession. And I think storytelling is the key way for us to kind of bridge the divide that exists not only within America, but actually what's happening, quote unquote, between [00:05:00] the West and Islam. I have a question about your impetus because I know Ishmael Reed and I understand that he really should be getting a little credit here for getting you kind of on the right path to your real passion. When he asked you to write a play for his class about a Pakistani American experience after nine 11. Speaker 3:I think that's a great story. And um, and then it led to your play. Can you talk about the play that came out of that? [00:05:30] So I've been very lucky and privileged in my life for, for many reasons, but one of the privileges I've had as I've had great mentors and also my parents have not been stereotypical South Asian immigrant parents. They've also, they've always encouraged me, uh, since my childhood they spotted a talent and they always told me to write issue. I'll read those of you who don't know MacArthur Genius Appeal that your prize nominated Titan who was living in Oakland with his family. Uh, Carla Blank. Also his partner in crime for the past 40 years. He was my English professor, [00:06:00] uh, back in the day when I was at UC Berkeley as an English major. And in fall, September, 2001, I happen to be in a short story writing class and after the two towers fell, he took me aside and said, you know, I've never, I've never really heard about the Pakistani American experience or the Muslim American experience, even though this is a short story writing class. Speaker 3:I think you are actually a natural playwright. I think dialogue and characters are your strengths. Don't waste your time on this class. I'm going to take you out of this class. [00:06:30] You're gonna have 20 pages of a play to pass the class. Okay, great. Go write it. And I was like, oh my God, please let me do anything except this. And the play that came as a result of him quite literally forcing me to write it as the domestic crusaders, which is an old school kitchen drama in the form of American dramas. Like you know, Long Day's journey into night, death of a salesman, fences one day in the life of three generations of a Fox. Any American Muslim family, six characters, uh, that grandfather, the immigrant parents who have achieved the American dream. [00:07:00] And there's three American born children all forced to reconvene in the house for before the youngest son's 21st birthday. Speaker 3:And Ishmael literally kept at it for like a year telling me to, you know, to, to, to finish this place. Start it from my 21st birthday in the fall of 2001, I submitted my 20 pages to pass the damn class. And then I finally finished it for my 23rd birthday again after I graduated from college. And Ishmael kept at it and then he handed it over to his wife, Carla Blank, who became [00:07:30] the director and dramaturge at this plate and this small little play that has origin and UC Berkeley in the bay area. And then Adam Heran Indian restaurant and Johnny restaurant in Newark, California. And then, you know, Oakland Library. Then went onto Berkeley repertory theater, then went on to New York, then I went up to the county center, then I went to London and got published, uh, [inaudible], which is again a bury a staple, uh, in 2000, I think 10 or 2011 as the first major and Muslim American play they got published. Speaker 3:So that type of [00:08:00] mentorship was key. And the story behind the play I truncated like 13 years is one minute is really kind of remarkable and uh, you know, we, you know, just to show you how sometimes it can be a little bit ahead of the curve. Each model has always been a bit ahead of the curve in spotting kind of thing and it's finding trends. And he always told me to, that was a bit discouraged on 2003, 2004, I'm like, man, I thought the play would picked up and it didn't. He said, he said, listen, America isn't ready yet, but just wait and watch all these other plays are coming out and now they're going to fade. There'll [00:08:30] be talking about your plan 10 years from now just to just your weight. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever. You know. Sometimes he can be very hyperbolic, the people that he praises. And then just one a month ago, university of Maryland tweets out a photo, a professor from the English Department without a photo like teaching and performing, which has all these domestic visitors' with all these white actors playing the box, any American family members as part of the curriculum at University of Minnesota, Peter, that each year and then like London is doing it. You know what I'm saying? Speaker 2:[00:09:00] You're listening to method to the madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. This is an interview over the phone with [inaudible] Ali, the host of Elijah Z or America's the stream social media driven talk show. He's also a author in playwright, a bay area native and UC Berkeley Grad. Uh, we continued our conversation, myself and Lisa keeper with him talking about him getting his play publish and pilot shopping in Hollywood Speaker 3:just to get it published [00:09:30] was based on the promise I made to an Egyptian budding scholar in 2009, this Egyptian scholar with getting her phd. Then she says Alan write about domestic crusaders, specifically American Muslim art and respond to post nine 11, you know, when it comes to cultural creation, but I need all my works that I write about to be published. And that for some strange reason that said, don't worry like 2010, I'll get it published and then like fast forward. So, but yeah, so the play's getting published, right? I'm like, Oh crap. And so that led to my, you know, friendship with Dave Eggers [00:10:00] and McSweeney's, you know, on a whim, emailing them, saying that they wanted to publish to the play. And I made a vow to myself. I remember when I was like 25 and I said, I'll get the pig to play published. Speaker 3:By the time I turned 30 and mixed, [inaudible] called me and said to come over. And I held the copy, the first copy of the domestic crusaders a day after I turned 30, November 2nd, 2010. So somehow, you know, it was interesting like it took an Egyptian scholar, uh, and I think there was also [00:10:30] an Algerian scholar in London who have written about and under thesis on it to kind of get me off my ass to get it published. It gets published here in mixed Sweeney's and the barrier and get get being taught now kind of across America and across the Atlantic. So it's, it's a wild story but probably probably the TV show pilot that you've written with Dave. It's based on the domestic crusaders, correct? No, it's completely original idea that we had. And um, I read that Atlantic article [00:11:00] and it sounds like you've pulled back from HBO because you didn't, it didn't really, they were taking it in to an area that you didn't want to go. And I wanted to ask you about that. Like how is your story different from the TV show all American Muslim and why did you guys feel that maybe America isn't ready for it yet or I don't know. Speaker 3:We still think Americans ready for it. We think America domestic, we actually were ahead of the curve because I think the TV shows about Yemeni American Muslims. [00:11:30] It's about the American Muslim community of the bay area and the lead character is MJ and [inaudible], yet many American immigrants who becomes one of the fastest rising detectives of the SFPD. Now we get over this idea like three and a half years ago, anyone who's been paying attention to international news, there's a country which is in all the headlines Right now. Yemen and HBO was a fantastic partner and they really dug the idea that we pitched. However, we wrote this kind of during the Heyday [00:12:00] of homeland and walking down and in and, but we kind of realized prior second draft that I think HBO just creatively wanting to go into more John [inaudible], John Rhe driven shows and ours was, remains a very unique different type of beast. Speaker 3:It has its own pace. It has its own tone as his own sense of humor. It's not, it's something deliberately unlike what you've seen on television, right? Like television, HBO would go for something like that. They do choose [00:12:30] odd, you know, they're, you're kind of ahead of the curve in that way. So I'm still maybe, you know, look, two things could have happened. Maybe this was their cup of tea. They pass on good shows all the time and good people pass on good shows or B, maybe they started, it sucked. And so Dave and I are like, maybe our pilot sucks. And, but secretly, secretly, deep down we knew it did it. You know, it's one of those things, you know, if it's good or not. And so I'm kind of a stubborn piece of crap, if you will. And if I believe in something, and same of the day [00:13:00] we don't, we don't let it die. Speaker 3:And so we've been pushing it and once we finally publish it on [inaudible], I think two months ago that I wrote an essay about in the Atlantic, it just seems like anyone who's read the piece, right. But even in Hollywood, I got some meetings with Hollywood agents. We all liked the pilot. That's the funny thing. No one says the [inaudible]. Everyone digs it. The question remains, is there a quote unquote market for us? And I think that's the problem with mainstream media and mainstream Hollywood is that there's this fear as this hesitation that, [00:13:30] okay, if you have a, I'll do an example, a totally different story, but I was pitching another pilot and basically all these, you know, studio heads and agents, par agents met and they're like, great idea, but we can't find a bankable Arab American lead. And I'm like, you'll need a bank of oil Arab American lead. Speaker 3:You just need someone who's good. But that just goes to shoot the mindset of not only Hollywood but also Wall Street. You know, the color of the matters in the end is green. So right now they're like, they kept pitching some names, which was hilarious. Like how about as these, I'm sorry, I'm like, I love these. [00:14:00] I'm sorry. Is it really a San Francisco police detective? You really listen to this? I got nothing again through these. I'm sure you can pull it off, but the point, I'm trying to say that it came down to that bankability and so Dave and I to this day, I'm like, just have faith in it. Make a pilot. Anyone who's read the script, like everyone has read the ship, knock on woods. This is dope. This is unique. This is needed. This was necessary. This is really good. [00:14:30] So I'm going to still push it. And now we finally have the interest a couple of years after it was written. So let's hope that let's cross our fingers. I just want to get up, get out of it. Speaker 2:You're listening to method to the madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM and we're speaking with, with Giachali, a author, lawyer, playwright, s e s in places like the Washington Post and the Guardian Salon Atlantic. He's a expert in Muslim American affairs and host of Al Jazeera America, social media driven [00:15:00] talk show the stream and Lisa keeper. And I interviewed him over the phone and we talked about how did he take the leap from graduating with a law degree to becoming a commentator on TV. Speaker 3:I, I graduated from law school, uh, I think I was about 26. It was 2007. And you guys remember what happened in 2008 and that was right at the cusp of this, you know, this, this great recession and I could not find a job to save my life despite [00:15:30] my best efforts. And despite like all these big companies taking a lot of interest in. So I moved back to my, my house, which was my parents house. And I'm like literally sitting in my college bedroom broke as a licensed attorney. You know, she just turned 27. And my father every day used to put $5 in my wallet cause he said, no man should be without $5. You know, I'm getting South Asian groceries from my mom and I'm feeling miserable and like I'm feeling pitied. And essentially I spent the first half of the day, like [00:16:00] cranky out resumes. Speaker 3:I really worked hard, just nothing stuck, nothing stuck. And, uh, on a whim and just like, you know, madness, I'm like, I just crank out an essay. And at that time, if you guys remember, the Blackwater scandal was all and used in 2007, and Blackwater was a private military contractor, uh, still has that, had committed a lot of atrocities in Iraq. And I'm like, wow. In my second year of law school, I actually wrote a paper on private military firms in Iraq and the legality of such firms in Iraq. So I said, since I know about this [00:16:30] one, I transformed my 30 page paper and look at five page essay. I wrote the essay, I sent it to counterpunch on a whim counter punch, published it and said this was really good. You know, anytime you get something else, send it our way. I said word. Speaker 3:I said, okay. So then next week I send them something else. I said, fantastic. Send us something else. The next week I sent him something else. And then there was another website started from a UC Berkeley Grad Shahad the amount of the Altima, muslim.com he saw domestic crusader as in its first incarnation at the open public library. [00:17:00] And he followed my career and he said, hey, if you ever want to write for us, write for us. So I did in the period of about six months on a whim, I think I ended up cracking down like 50 pieces. I was at the Tasmanian Devil owes a man possessed and I didn't know what I was doing right? Like I just literally had a broken yellow Ethan and cable attached to a dying Fujitsu Laptop in my bedroom of my parents' home with two months fans on my shirts. And I, I literally crank out article after article interview after interview and I bought six [00:17:30] or seven months in, I got this invitation at the UC Berkeley, not the Berkeley one. Speaker 3:Once I graduate theology center right by UC Berkeley. Right. GTU and they're like, hey Carnegie has given us a funding to host like something on journalism and can you come as a new media journalist and talk about new media to these old school journalists? I'm like, who am I? Why are you inviting me? And they're like, oh cause you're a new media journalist. I'm like, I am. Okay. I have no idea. So they started referring to me as a new media journalist and as an interviewer and as [00:18:00] a SAS. And then, you know, at that time I was like, who am I? I'm just one guy living in Fremont. I'm not going to do commentary pieces. But on a whim, on the whim, asa foleys, who became elected president, what was chosen as president does the party one in Pakistan, he hugged, if you remember Sarah Palin, it's like 2008 and so I was sitting there and I'm like, I've got to write something. Speaker 3:So on a whim, I cranked out kind of Jericho, but serious, a thousand word essay. [00:18:30] And I had this one contact from the Guardian. I sent it to him. I'm like, he's never gonna respond to me. Richard Adams from the Guardian response back within two hours. So I love this essay, I'm going to publish it tomorrow, send me any other pitches you've got. So I'm like, okay. And so now I became a commentator. And so one thing led to another and then I made the leap to like SAS to national team. And then I'm curious, what was your seamless, my theme was basically I used this very awkward social interaction [00:19:00] as a metaphor for the dysfunctional volatile relationship between the United States and Pakistan, and I just kind of put it in the context of modern history and I kind of had some tongue in cheek comments about us. Speaker 3:I believe there was already and Sarah Helen as political neophytes, who somehow might be able to control nuclear nations. It was a terrifying prospect for the future of the world, both the United States, Canada, Pakistan, and a little bit tongue in cheek, but it was grounded in reality and in facts. And so [00:19:30] as this was happening, I ended up, I was also a solo attorney paying my bills as this was happening. I also made the vow, this was 2008 that by 2009 nine 11 I would premiere my play, the domestic crusaders in New York. And the reason why I said that it was as if there's a dude named Barack Hussein. Obama might become president and maybe that play I wrote six years ago might be more valuable at a topical now than ever before. So sitting there like literally with my broken [00:20:00] fcoe Ethernet cable, I somehow plotted this ambitious vision and long story short, you know I ended up merging these three or four careers into one and everyone at that time laughed at me. Speaker 3:They're like, you can only be one thing. You can only be an attorney or you can be a writer or it can be a journalist or a blogger or a playwright who can be any of the above. It can be all of the above. And I really rejected that and said, I think I'm going to try all of the above and below. You hold those people and [00:20:30] that's why I kind of made the leap. It wasn't necessarily a leap, Ali, it was like this long lonely uphill trudge towards the tour, the synthesizing, if you will, all these interests, we can kind of think about it. It's all anchored in storytelling as well. How we start off this conversation and that's how I made the condition. Took a couple of years, I finally pulled it off. You wrote your short, credible, you wrote this incredible report that really called out some people that it called Fear Inc roots of the Islamophobia Network [00:21:00] in America. Speaker 3:That was, I guess that was more political than, well it's all political, but that put you in the spotlight. That was something that happened as a result of all this crazy stuff that I just described for the past five minutes of history. How the world works out. Center for American progress is a, you know, a think tank in Washington d C and many people call it, you know, quote Unquote Obama think tank. It's very, you know, progressive, Democrat friendly. And I knew [00:21:30] some of those folks who were following my storyteller, SAS playwright career and in the summer, excuse me, in the spring of 2011 they're like, hey, we want to think outside of the box. Would you be willing to lead the research on this project that we have of exposing what we call these [inaudible] phobia network in America? You know, part of my essays and cometary, they knew that I was kind of exposing these anti Muslim memes and bigots were trumpeting scapegoating and fear-mongering, especially after the 2010 [00:22:00] ground zero mosque controversy that was neither a ground zero nor a mosque. Speaker 3:And they said, you know, you're a non DC guy, maybe you should lead it. And I said, sure. It sounds like an interesting project. I've never done it before. Why not? And it's small little report that was supposed to be a 20 page expo a I ended up, it was just supposed to take me two months that have taken me six months and my first draft was like 180 pages and center for American progress. Looked at it and they're like, you're crazy. Like they literally looked at it like I've mapped it out right. They're like, you're nuts. We don't believe you. And they did an audit of [00:22:30] it for two months. Like okay, okay, you're right. And then report, it ended up being this hundred and 38 page report investigative report called Fear Inc the roots of the Islamophobia network in Americans. That was published in August, 2011 and you, knock on wood, I'm very proud of it. Speaker 3:It ends up ended up being a seminal report, kind of a very foundational report. A lot of people still use to this day resource everywhere you had exposed a lot of these players we can name in a second. And a lot of these means that have unfortunately come from the fringe [00:23:00] that have been mainstreamed, especially after the election of Barack Obama. And especially after like, you know, the 2010 guns or moss controversies such as, you know, Sharita as a threat to America. Uh, you know, uh, mosques are Trojan horses. There's no such thing as peaceful Islam. Uh, traditional Islam is radical Islam. If you're a practicing Muslim, you cannot be a loyal American. You know, these fringe means. Uh, we saw, we just saw recently 2012, uh, elections in nearly every single Republican presidential [00:23:30] candidate ran with the Anti Sharia mean for both money and votes. Speaker 3:We just saw, like last month, governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, he followed the lead of an Islamophobe though we, uh, outed Steve Emerson and said, there's go zones in America. These Shiria infested sounds were Muslims have taken over and they've like, you know, like apparently sprayed their Shiria everywhere and non Muslims are not allowed to come. And you know, he's doubled, you know, he's doubled down on this rhetoric and he knows better, but he's doubling [00:24:00] down on this river because he knows it plays to his base. And you know, President Obama is a Muslim and, and so forth and so forth. So what we did is I mapped it out. Uh, we made it very digestible, connected the dots, traced the funding, and showed the genesis quite clearly the genesis of how a very few interconnected incestuous group of people, very few people were able to create. And then mainstream, uh, these fictitious threats that to marginalized, [00:24:30] uh, American Muslims from America's political civic and social sphere and how it is ultimately dangerous knowledge to America's cultural fabric, but also threatens our national security. And as you, and we've seen example after example and thankfully that has become a foundational resource for not just Americans but also in Europe right now. You see what's happening. Speaker 2:So I'm very glad about that. I'm talking about the report you're listening to KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM and this is method to the madness. We're interviewing [inaudible] [00:25:00] Ali, UC Berkeley graduate and lawyer, playwright SAS and host of Al Jazeera as social media driven talk show the stream. He joined us via phone bridge from Washington DC to talk about the Muslim American experience in America. And we asked him about what he thinks the biggest challenges are facing Muslim Americans today. I want to put this in proper context. I think American Muslims really look at it. Speaker 3:Birds [00:25:30] eye view. It's a success story. And like we have tremendous privileges, uh, unlike other minority groups that have gone through the similar hazing. Yes, we have deep, unique problems and you know, this lot of phobia, anti Muslim bigotry, especially the fact that now it's at a global scale, the local becomes a national becomes, you know, the global story with a tweet or a youtube video. But at the same time, you know, we're the most diverse religious community in America. American Muslim women are the most educated women of any religious group, right behind Jewish American women, [00:26:00] uh, as a group where, you know, educated, uh, above average income, uh, you know, quote unquote moderate mainstream, whatever that means. That's good words. Uh, you know, renounce audit volume extremisms so many of us have achieved, if you will, the American dream. I think the problem internally for American Muslims is whether or not we choose to be spectators or participants. Speaker 3:And what I mean by that is oftentimes, especially with immigrant communities, there was a, don't rock the boat, keep your head down, have a checklist [00:26:30] of success and follow the safe path. Um, and often times we kind of, if you will, have helped this marginal marginalization of American Muslims happen by not investing in storytelling. 90%. It's a American Muslims. And when they did a pull it like 2001, we're either doctors, engineers, or business. So that leaves me about 10, 11% for teachers, activists, politicians, journalists, directors, uh, you know, and so forth. And I think [00:27:00] if you deprive yourself of the opportunity to be a cultural creator, if you deprive yourself of the opportunity to become a participant, if you deprive yourself of becoming a protagonist of not only your own narrative but the American narrative, at the end of the day, you can kind of only blame yourself for being on the margins or being a footnote or being a sidekick or being an antagonist. Speaker 3:And I think it'd be the, the major struggle for American Muslims is how to not lose hope in, uh, themselves and not to lose hope [00:27:30] in America, especially when they are facing an uphill challenge where it seems that they seem besieged by so many palms. I forget. It's like an avalanche every, every step. Uh, everywhere you go, you want to get out of the muck and then isis they want get out of the muck and all kinds of the Arabian peninsula you want to get out of the muck and some loans radical. And then you're always defensive, right? You're always interrogated and you're always asked to prove that you're a moderate. You're always asked to prove your loyalty. And I think it can be easily exhausting for an American Muslim and it [00:28:00] could easily be defeating. And I think that struggle is to have faith in the best, best aspects of ourselves and the best aspects of this country, of the best aspects of our community members to kind of unite in solidarity over shared values and really invest proactively as storytellers. Speaker 3:And sometimes that requires bum rushing the show and doing things on your own, right? If cold, cold, mainstream media or mainstream politics does not have you as a protagonist, where are you going to do? Are you [00:28:30] going to drink your chat as a spectator whine and complain? Or are you gonna use your village's privileged to throw down and bum rush the show? And it might take a little bit of time, but at least you move forward. I think that's something that is very pivotal, not only for a sense of identity and only first sense of swagger and only person's confidence, not only first month of wellbeing, the only sense of creating a positive proactive narrative for this generation, future generations, but also think for honoring this anti Muslim bigotry that [00:29:00] it's poisonous for our national security. And I also think it provides a microcosm of what America will have to do if it wants to emerge as the best version of itself as it approaches a minority and majority country, the way America treats us minorities and the way we treat our marginalized communities, it will be the fault line of how we will either emerge or fail. Speaker 3:I think as a nation, I think that's a big test. Speaker 2:That was what Jihad Ali on Calyx is method to the madness. Now, 30 [00:29:30] minute talk show every other Friday that explores the innovative spirit of the bay area. Well, John is a UC Berkeley graduate, a lawyer, a playwright, essayist consultants, the U S State Department and host of Al Jazeera America's social media driven talk show the stream. Very proud of the work he's doing to communicate the Muslim American experience in America. If you want to follow more of which odds work, follow him on Twitter with his handle at YJ hot Ali. That's w a j. A. H. A T, a. L. I [00:30:00] on Twitter. That's it for our program today. Thanks for joining and special thanks to my partner in crime, Lisa Key for setting up this interview and making it all happen. With that, we'll turn it back over to the music. Have a great Friday. Everybody. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Professor John T. Clarke discusses the goals of the Mars Maven Mission.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening to KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM, university of California listener supported radio. And this is method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex, celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area and beyond. I'm your host. Eileen is r and today we're lucky enough to have with us professor John Clark from Boston University. Hello professor. How are you? Speaker 2:Hello. Good, thanks for having me on. Speaker 1:And Professor Clark, uh, happened to be here in Berkeley and so we got him on the show to talk about, um, [00:00:30] and innovation of his that is now, um, orbiting the planet Mars. The is shell spectrograph. So we want to talk about this and learn a little bit more about it. But first, um, I always start the show talking to someone who's invented something with the same question. What was the problem statement that you trying to solve? Speaker 2:Uh, okay, so this goes back quite a ways. Um, I trained as an astrophysicist and I built experiments to fly in space and try to analyze the data to answer particular [00:01:00] questions. Uh, the system that is flying now at Mars addresses one question, but it started about 25 years ago. Um, I was using another telescope to look at the atmosphere of Jupiter and there was something that we didn't understand and we used that instrument in an unusual way that it wasn't designed really to do. And we were able to figure out what was going on there. So I got the idea and then I built a prototype for this, a shell [00:01:30] spectrograph, um, to fly basically on a test bed on a rocket that just goes up in the space and comes right back down. You only get about five minutes of data. That's called a sounding rocket. Speaker 2:So let me back up a step. A spectrograph is a device that disperses light into the different wavelengths, the spectrum of colors and a usual, a normal spectrograph would have a certain resolution that refers to how much the light is spread out in wavelength. And a shell was a particular [00:02:00] kind of system that uses a different kinds of dispersing optic called an a shell grading. And it spreads the light out a lot more than a usual system. And to do that, you only get a look at a small part of the color spectrum, but you'd get a very good resolution on the different colors or wavelengths. Speaker 1:Now are there different, um, can you see all parts of the spectrum, just basically what it's trained on or is it only a certain part of the spectrum that it can see? Is there a specific thing you're looking for with the magnification [00:02:30] it gives you, Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I can do an analogy here. If you are up on grizzly peak looking to her mouth, Tablo Pius low resolution system would see from Mount Tam to San Francisco and Michelle was zoomed in on the peak of Mount Tamela pious and get good resolution on that, but not be able to see anything else. Speaker 1:Ah, okay. So the problem statement of the shell spectrograph is to get deeper into the analysis of certain parts of the atmosphere by magnifying it. Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. It actually magnifies spectrum, [00:03:00] the color spectrum rather than the atmosphere itself. Speaker 1:So as a, as a scientist, um, when you, you recognize the need for this, um, how do you go about, you know, starting to build something like this and now you started this 25 years ago. So I want to kind of go through the story and understand how we've gotten from there to here. But when you first understood, wow, there's a need for this, how do you go about, do you have to go get grant funding or how does that work? Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you start out writing a proposal and maybe calling the person at NASA who would be able to find you, have [00:03:30] a conversation about whether they would be a light to see this kind of a, of a proposal. And I did that when I was assistant professor back in the late eighties and they agreed and then it took several years to develop the system and fly it. And it flew several times on these sounding rockets before we had the opportunity to propose it for this mission to Mars. Speaker 1:Hmm. So, uh, taking a step back real quick. So let's talk a little bit about your background. So your astrophysicists, where did you do your studies? Speaker 2:[00:04:00] Well, I went undergraduate at Denison University in Ohio. I went Grad School in Physics at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And from Hopkins I came out to Berkeley to the space sciences lab up on the hill for my first job after Grad school. What were you doing up there? I was doing the same general kind of thing I'm doing now, but I was doing it from ground-based telescopes. I spent a lot of time at Lick Observatory and Mount Hamilton in the South Bay. Speaker 1:Okay. And so, uh, from that point you got, did you became an assistant [00:04:30] professor and you saw you were working with a, uh, a telescope that was looking at Jupiter, is that right? Speaker 2:Yeah, so this was a NASA facility. There was an, a very high orbit around the earth. It's called the international ultraviolet explorer. And that's where I got the idea from Jupiter and then I realized I could apply the same kind of instrument to other planets and other problems. Speaker 1:And so, um, you started to build it, you did some space flights or I'm sorry, some, um, some tax space test space flights [00:05:00] to test the feasibility of it. And um, and this seems like it was a, it's like all kind of a lifetime project, right? You're, you're going to balance it, you know, teaching and doing your regular stuff. And this is a long term project. So take us from the time that you start doing the sample flights to now it's on the, this latest, um, mission to Mars who, tell us about that process. How do you get from kind of the samples to actually getting it onto, I'm sure lots of scientists are trying to bolt things onto something that's going to get orbit Mars. Speaker 2:Yeah, [00:05:30] it's very competitive. Um, and this is not the only thing I was doing research wise, but it was one thing kind of on the back burner for awhile. Um, in 2005, I joined the small group of people from University of Colorado and from Berkeley who were planning to propose for a small, relatively small mission to Mars. Um, so we started meeting in 2005. Uh, it was accepted in 2008 and it was launched in 2013 and it arrived at Maurice this past September and [00:06:00] we're now getting data back. So it's a long process. There's no guarantee it's going to go and there's no guarantee it's going to work even if it's funded. And, and they agreed to launch it. Speaker 1:So what is this? It's called the Maven, right? The via in it. Exactly. What is the a, the Mars Maven Maven Speaker 2:as a mission that stands, it's an acronym. Stands for Mars atmosphere. Volatile evolution experiment. So this is basically a global climate change mission for Mars to try to learn about how Mars has evolved [00:06:30] over its lifetime. In what ways have may be similar to the earth or have been similar to the earth when it was young. And in a nutshell, we think that Mars started out like the earth oceans of water. There is a lot of evidence on the surface of Mars today. You can see what looks just like river channels in flowing patterns, but it's dry. It's very dry today. Any water that's there is locked up in the polar ice caps or maybe into the surface itself like a permafrost. So the purpose of Navan [00:07:00] is to not land. There's no, um, rover a maven. It's orbiting around and through the atmosphere of Mars and trying to figure out the detailed physical principles by which the atmosphere of Mars is changing today. And then we could extrapolate back in time and understand what Mars was like in the past. Speaker 1:So is the hypothesis that, um, we can, um, try to understand better how to head off our own potential losing our oceans [00:07:30] by studying Mars or what, what's the, is it, is there that much of a analog that we can draw between that planet and our planet? Speaker 2:Well, you're painting a very particular picture there and worth looking more at a big picture. If we went to understand how planets in general work, we'd like to understand Mars that could teach us something about the earth. We're not really trying to save the Earth by sending a mission to Mars. Uh, we'd like to understand more of these principles to understand these exoplanets that are being found today around other stars. Speaker 1:[00:08:00] Yeah. And tell us about those exoplanets. What are, what are those that are being found today? These new discoveries, right. Speaker 2:There are new discoveries. The, um, technique by which these are found is the reflex motion of the star response to the gravity of the planet. So the first ones that were found were giant planets that were very close to the star. And now as the method improves, we're finding smaller planets farther away. We're not yet at the point of finding an earth, but it's getting close. Speaker 1:So we're, we're speaking with Professor John Clark, uh, [00:08:30] um, from, uh, Boston University who's, uh, luckily here in Berkeley to talk to us about, uh, the shell spectrograph that he has developed that is on the Mars Maven, um, and is, uh, helping to analyze the atmosphere of Mars. So I have one, you know, as a layman who knows nothing about this stuff, there's one thing I don't understand at all is the time lag between information gathered by Maven, right. And coming back to Earth, like how long does that take? Speaker 2:[00:09:00] Uh, well, it's minutes. It's not hours. Um, it's, uh, on the order of maybe 10 minutes. It varies a lot depending on where nick, the, uh, Mars and the earth are in their orbits around the sun. The distance can change dramatically, um, from one time of the year to another. Speaker 1:What's the mechanism through which the information is sent? Speaker 2:It's just a radio transmitter, just like Cadillacs, a little more, well, not probably not more powerful, but it's beamed back toward the earth and their large dishes on the earth, they pick up the signal. [00:09:30] So we send commands to the spacecraft and we get the data down. Speaker 1:Same Way. Wow. So it's, it's, it's, I'm much faster than I would've thought I would have. Like you hear about like these telescopes that go into deep space and, and you know, they're sending images back, but you don't even know if that telescope still exists. But I guess this is totally different because some closer away. So, um, what are the, it's, it's been orbiting Mars for the last six months or so, right? Correct. So what, what are, what are, what are you guys finding? Speaker 2:[00:10:00] Um, we're just, uh, still in the early phases of, of learning about Mars. When you first get a mission to another planet, like this one, the first thing you do is turn everything on and test it out. And you test your ability to command it, to have the onboard computer, do things in the right order and at the right time. And there's always a process of a few months where you understand how it works and, and, and fix things basically. Um, fortunately Neva is working very well. There've been some little hiccups, but basically everything's working. [00:10:30] Uh, we then get getting data back and we're now getting into more of a routine mode where we do the same thing every orbit around Mars. And then we can build up measurements over the course of a Mars year, a Mars orbit around the sun, and start to understand some of these physicals, Speaker 1:the principles. So, um, the, uh, and how long has a Mars year? Last year was about two or three years to earth years. So, and is there a, an expected lifespan of the Maven? Um, uh, is, [00:11:00] is it just called? It's, it's a satellite spacecraft. Yeah. Speaker 2:Yeah. It is a satellite. Um, it's expected to last for five to 10 years. It's built to last a long time. The prime mission for Maven is one earth year around Mars, but we expect that it would be continued for a second earth year to get one full Mars orbit around the sun. And the science team would like to go longer than that. Speaker 1:And so how did, like your involvement, cause you have one part portion of it. Yeah. Um, how, um, how does it work? Is [00:11:30] Do you have like a, I don't, I suppose you have like an iPhone app that's giving you data. I mean, where do you guys collect the information and is it, can you be constantly harvesting the information from your computer or is there different feeds coming from my phone? It's on air book. Nice. Speaker 2:Um, I mean the data come down, they go to the Lockheed's plant south of Denver and then they come to the science centers. And I would like to point out that the lab at Berkeley, the space sciences lab built several of the instruments that are on maven and several of the instruments were built, the University of Colorado. [00:12:00] And I have one channel of one instrument building Colorado. Speaker 1:Okay. And so your, your channel is, the shell spend should respect it is which is a sending back data. And what exactly in the atmosphere as the shell spectrograph looking at in Mars? Speaker 2:That's a good question. The shell spectrograph was designed to measure the ratio of deterioration to hydrogen in the upper atmosphere of Mars. So deterioration is like heavy water. It's a proton with a neutron in it and it has twice the mass of [00:12:30] a hydrogen atom. Um, the, the quick picture here is that when Mars was young, we think it had a lot of water. We think a lot of that water boiled off in the space. The gravity of Mars is only about one quarter of the gravity of the earth. So we think it lost a lot of its atmosphere. They just floated away. Well, it didn't float. Some of the atoms have enough velocity in their head pointing up. They can escape the gravity. It's a small fraction. But if that happened and water was lost water, we break up into hydrogen and oxygen [00:13:00] and about one and a 10 or a hundred thousand of those hydrogens would be deterioration. Now the hydrogen would boil off faster than the deterioration because it's half the mass. So if you lost a lot of water over time, there'd be more deterioration. And the ratio of those two gives you an idea of how much water was lost over the history of the planet. How long do you Speaker 1:thank you? It'll take to, to um, collect enough data for you to have enough to do your extrapolation that you want to make? Speaker 2:Well, we have [00:13:30] a quick look. Now we know that it's working. We're measuring deterioration and hydrogen. Now we get down into the gritty details of exactly how you analyze that and how accurately you can pin down, um, the numbers. But we don't want to just measure it to turn into hydrogen at one time. We want to look at Mars at different latitudes over the course of its seasons and find out if there are variations in the amount of deterioration in the atmosphere. Speaker 1:Now as an astro physicist, um, what is your, um, opinion of, you know, it seems like [00:14:00] the NASA has shifted years under the Obama, one of his big access to stop the space shuttle program and focus on, uh, more of these types of scientific endeavors. Is this the right move for, for us to be doing right now is going further out and looking at Mars and potentially further exploration? Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean if you ask a scientist, they'll say that robotic exploration is the way to go. It's much less expensive. You don't put anybody's life at risk and we can build very [00:14:30] good instruments to send to the other planets. But a lot of people also believe in and support, um, human space flight and getting away from low earth orbit. And that's another thrust of the current, uh, NASA space program. Speaker 1:So, uh, and so the robots like those rovers on Mars and, and Maven is communicating with those rovers. Right? Speaker 2:Uh, it's not, it's just with the earth. Speaker 1:Oh, okay. I thought that there was a relay is there's an ability for it to really, Speaker 2:ah, right. So you're ahead of me here. So maven was built by NASA [00:15:00] with a relay, so that in the future, after the maven science is more or less complete, they will change the orbit and then use the maven spacecraft to relay data from landers on the ground back to the earth in both Speaker 1:after it's kind of primary or first mission is complete. Right. So tell them, tell me a little bit, you know, and we're talking to professor John Clark from Boston University who is a part of the, uh, Mars maven team about the mission to Mars and the Michele spectrograph, [00:15:30] which he invented to help, uh, understand the atmosphere of Mars and climate change on Mars. So tell us a little bit about, um, just the, the scale of building something like a satellite that goes to Mars to figure out this problem. Like, we talked a little bit about it, but how long does it take? How many people are involved? Seems like a really big endeavor. Speaker 2:It is a big endeavor. We started out in 2005 with maybe a dozen, 15 people around the table thinking about how [00:16:00] we'd write the proposal. Um, it ended up with probably at one point a a hundred, 200 people. I'm working on developing the spacecraft and the instruments and testing them. Uh, the instruments were built at different labs around the country. Um, and then they were put together at Lucky's plant, south of Denver. The whole thing was tested. Um, and there's a lot of testing that goes on, um, with these missions cause it's, uh, you know, you launch these things, you can't go back if anything goes wrong. It's like building a car to [00:16:30] last for 10 years without ever changing the oil or filling the gas tank and you know, things can go wrong. Um, so there's very thorough testing on these things. Speaker 1:What's the failure rate of these types of, I mean, I'm sure that the level of testing is beyond what anybody could really imagine, but is what's the failure rate of these types of missions? Speaker 2:Well, if you run it long enough, something will fail 100%. What you want to do is make sure that it's built to last longer than what you need it to do. And this [00:17:00] has gotten very good at this. Um, Lockheed builds very good spacecraft. NASA builds very good instruments. The, um, so you think about a timeline for these things and how long they're going to go. And, um, I'm thinking of a, of an anecdote. I worked for NASA when I was younger and I was at the space flight center in Huntsville, Alabama where Wernher von Brown worked and they still told stories about him and they asked him, how do you make these, these rockets, you know, how do you make them work? It's very risky. Hard [00:17:30] to do. He said, well, we design it and we build it and then we tested until it breaks and then we figure out what went wrong and we tested again and we do that until it doesn't break and then it's ready to fly. So it's the testing program that's more important than trying to figure out everything that can go wrong. Speaker 1:Yeah. And so I'm, I'm a software, so I understand testing software and coming up with, you know, unit tests and system tests and really, really running through that rigor. But I would think that the level of rigor on something like this [00:18:00] must be much, much, um, greater than, than I could imagine. Is there a certain protocol that, you know, NASA puts everything that's going to go into space through that, you know, it has to pass, you know, 50 million checklists or whatever it is, or how does that work? Speaker 2:Right. There is a protocol. You will test it by vibrating the instrument, simulating the vibration of launch. You'll put it through a temperature cycle, hot and cold, more than the range you think we'll experience in space. You have to put it in a vacuum [00:18:30] to simulate the vacuum of space. There are all kinds of things like that. But the other trick that the aerospace industry and NASA use is to try to use things that have flown before that worked and not try something that's brand new, you know, improve the technology gradually and not just start from scratch. Speaker 1:So there's this, there's learnings from the 1960s missions that are kind of baked into, we just continually improve, improve, improve. Speaker 2:Yeah. But there's probably not much left from the 60s, I hope. [00:19:00] But it is Speaker 1:gradual process. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well, um, you know what, one question that I wanted to ask you about is, uh, the, there's a certain, um, it seems like the, you know, our, um, humanities race into spaces evolved quite a bit. You know, if I Harken back to the 60s, you had a big competition, but now it seems like there's a lot more collaboration. Is that, is that from an, from a layman's perspective, that's the way it looks. Is that accurate or, we have this, you have just one [00:19:30] international space station and everybody kind of shares. And, um, so is there other other countries involved on the Maven or is it this is a NASA, Speaker 2:we have several European co-investigators. Scientific co-investigators. That's correct. Yeah. And A, we have a couple of people from Japan who are participating in the science, uh, but there's still somewhat of a competition between nations. Okay. The, uh, the Chinese who are trying to do things on their own without getting help from other countries. And, uh, I think that if China landed [00:20:00] on the moon, that might help us in terms of getting this country behind, going back and doing more things in space. Speaker 1:So do you think that there's still much to explore on the moon? We've, we've kind of given up that, uh, before we, we've given up that mission before you really figured out everything and we should've, Speaker 2:well, to me, we've learned a lot about the moon and we should be moving on and doing other things. Um, but I support, um, human space flight. Um, I personally suspect that the future of human space [00:20:30] flight is more in private companies. It might be space x, Elon Musk going to Mars, um, before the government does. And partly I say that just because companies are willing to take on more risk and do things less expensively than the government is. Speaker 1:Yeah. And, and uh, and be more disruptive but potentially be, um, more dangerous. You know, that, that's the scary part of that too. Is that what kind of, there's probably no regulation of space level or maybe there is, I don't know. Speaker 2:Well, the more risk [00:21:00] you take, the more accidents there will be. I think that's true and I expect that things will go wrong. Um, but we know a lot already in terms of building rockets and flying things, launching things into space. And private companies today can take advantage of that history of knowledge and hopefully things will go well. But in the early days of aviation, there were accidents and people got hurt, but they kept going. And that's, I think, the kind of spirit that you need to have. Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. I mean, all great explorers. [00:21:30] They're all gonna eat to cat or yeah. Serious risks with a life and limb. Yeah. I'm the worst. We're speaking with Professor John Clark from Boston University here. Kayla likes Berkeley 90.7 FM. He's a part of the Mars maven team. Uh, it's a satellite that's now orbiting Mars that is, um, uh, sending back information about the atmosphere and climate change on that planet. Um, and Professor Clark also teaches, uh, actively teaches at Boston University. What, what are you teaching there? Right now? Speaker 2:I'm in the department of astronomy. [00:22:00] I teach planetary science, uh, intro astronomy all the way from non-science major undergraduates to advanced Grad students. Speaker 1:Okay. Well I wanted to ask you about, um, you know, as someone who's studied this as a career, what is the, um, you know, in our lifetime we were to say like the next 50 years, what would you say are the big milestones in terms of space exploration that are attainable for us as a race? Speaker 2:Wow. 50 years is kind of a long horizon. Um, [00:22:30] and it's hard to predict. I th I expect that robotic missions will continue to fly over that time period. Um, I think that human space flight will develop, there are a lot of people who have decided that Mars is the place for human beings to go next. It's, um, it's very risky. There's a lot of questions about radiation, about keeping people healthy. Um, it's not going to be an easy thing to do, but I can see that happening in less than 50 years. Yeah. Now, another thing that I find [00:23:00] more interesting in the shorter term, like 10, 10 ish years, is these, um, these things like virgin galactic where they're building ways to take people up into space and come right back down. And I think that, um, a lot of people alive today will have the choice of the cost will come down as they do it more and more. I think they'll have the choice of buying a car or flying in space. It'll be at that cost level. Speaker 1:But flying is patients on a Lark just to experience zero gravity or to actually [00:23:30] go from one part of the planet to the other. Speaker 2:So when I go into a room with a bunch of students, I ask them if you could spend 20 k and flying the space, how many of you would do it? And I wait about three seconds. And then I say, if your hand isn't up, you're not going to do it. If you're thinking about whether it's a idea, yeah, you're not the ones who will be on these first slides. Speaker 1:So it's going to be some kind of a, a something for the Uber rich kind of like to say, Oh yeah, I've been in space. That kind of thing. Speaker 2:A lot of people can afford to buy a car and they might prefer to ride the bus and have the experience [00:24:00] of flying in space. Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Um, what about, um, as we find these more exoplanets, um, what is your, what is your feeling on what's out there? Is there, is there life out there that we're going to be, um, able to, I know it's the million dollar question by you, someone who's studied this your whole career probably. So what's your feeling? Speaker 2:Um, well I don't, I won't give you any feelings, but I thought about it. We see so many other stars, so many other galaxies and now we're finding so many planets [00:24:30] around nearby stars. It's become clear that most stars have planets around them. They're very common. They're just, if you look at the numbers that are going to be so many of them out there, that there have to be a lot of them that are similar to the earth. And there may be forms of life that we have not dreamt of that could be on other kinds of planets. So if you just look at the numbers, the Azar, there's life all over the universe. So that's the good news. Now the other news is that as far as we know, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light [00:25:00] and at that speed there may be life all over the universe and we'll never find it just because of the distance. It's going to be hard. It may be close by. Okay. I'm not saying it's impossible, but most of it we will probably never be in contact with. Speaker 1:Do you think we'll ever be able to really know? You know, explain it. I mean this is the big question. You know, you have like religion versus science and there's this big leap of faith. You kind of have to take it either way. Like you're saying there, it's probably out there, but how are we ever going to know [00:25:30] unless they come? Someone does can travel faster than the speed of light and show up in our doorstep. Speaker 2:Well, what I described is what we understand today. Now I'm willing to change my mind that the drop Speaker 3:you're a scientist, Speaker 2:it's been, you know, very dangerous to assume that you know too much, uh, throughout history. Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, I always think about 'em, um, as again, someone who is not an astrophysicist about star trek, which is a lot of my understanding of this. And they have the, um, the premise that there's [00:26:00] higher, um, forms that are watching us waiting for us to be able to unlock some secrets of interstellar travel. And once we do, then they show up and say, okay, you know, now you have to learn how to responsibly travel. And you know, perhaps that's uh, that's out there cause there's potential to have so many different kinds of life forms up there. So Speaker 2:it's fun to think about and there's a lot we don't know. But another thing that scientists talk about is a thing called the Thermi paradox. And Rico fare made decades ago said, if there's other life in the [00:26:30] universe, where is it? How come we don't know about it? Why haven't they come here and contacted us? And that's a different way of looking at the same question. Speaker 1:Yeah. So, um, uh, in closing the professor John Clark here from Boston University and on KLX Berkeley in 90.7 FM, if you were to kind of wave your magic wand and get your wildest dreams from this maven exploration and the shell spectrograph that you put on it, what would you, what would you find out? What would be the big, you know, victory for you? Speaker 2:We would learn everything we need [00:27:00] to know about the escape of water into space from Mars to be able to go back 3 billion years and know what Mars was like when it was young. Was Mars earth-like and for how long was that earth-like? Long enough for life to begin on Mars, a questions like that. Speaker 1:All right, well hopefully we'll find that out and it's not, it's going to be pretty quick like in the next couple of years. Right. This is the great, well, best of luck. Thanks so much for the exploration you're doing for all of us. Hopefully we'll all get to learn about it. And you can follow, um, [00:27:30] the Mars may even, there's a page on NASA I believe, that you can find. You can just Google a maven and you will see that. And thanks so much for joining us, professor. Speaker 2:It's a pleasure. Thank you. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Interview with Krazy George, possibly the first professional cheerleader who began appearing at Oakland Atheletic's games in the 1980s.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:[inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 2:you're listening to KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM, university of California and listener supported radio. And this is method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex dedicated to celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host, Allen Huizar. And today we are honored. Speaker 3:I have [00:00:30] crazy George with us. Hey, crazy. George was out. You said my name. I like that last stop. Let's talk. Let's talk. So we have crazy Georgians studio. Crazy. George is famous for a lot of things, but the number one thing I think you're famous for is being the world's first and longest tenured and only full time cheerleader is, I like your title. You gave it. It's perfect. Yes, right. Summed it up perfectly. I am the only person probably in the world that makes [00:01:00] his job, makes his living cheering for teams, getting people to cheer for the team. That's what I do. And they'd pay me enough to make living. Nice. So let's talk about how you get started as a professional cheerleader. You were a sent, you went to San Jose State, is that right? That's right. Mighty San Jose state test. So what, what started to draw you to cheering? Speaker 3:Like was it something that you had always done or was it in college? How did you get started now? I was pretty quiet person but my best friend don bogged and brought a drum and a bugle to a [00:01:30] football game and I couldn't play the bugle cause that takes talent. So I started playing the drum and started pounding on it and all the students at San Jose state started following me and him. And by the end of the football season, I was just sitting in the stands. Everybody was following me. So the cheerleaders asked me to go out. So I went out and they elected me cheerleader the next year and I was a pathetic cheerleader cause I couldn't remember the routines and the words at the same time, I was really bad. So I went off on my [00:02:00] own. I started doing my own little thing with my drum, not everybody following me. Speaker 3:And over the years I just started branching out to pro teams. They loved it. They started hiring me and in 1975 after teaching for four years, I quit teaching. I had to quit those four kids. I was warping their minds. Yeah, you'd probably, screaming on a field is a little bit more of a appropriate place for you and that's right. Well, I want to ask about a lot of things, but you said that the cheerleaders, you couldn't remember [00:02:30] their kind of traditional attorney, you're like a disruptor. You're not like a normal chiller. You call yourself a cheerleader, but you weren't doing the cheerleading routines. How did they take that when you went off on your own? Well, that was the good part. I'm, since I couldn't really fit in with a squad, it was better I worked by myself or off to the side where I could get all the students and the alumni involved in the game. Speaker 3:And so that's how he sort of honed my style. And then from then, then on I was invited to go do an Oakland seals game for [00:03:00] the NHL years ago and I did one game for, for the fun of it. I was invited by a hockey team, a baseball team, went up with them and I got the whole crowd screaming. Nobody knew me. And at the end of the game, um, everybody was, was talking about me. And the next day in the paper, it was a big article on me. Nice. And one of the players said, if he comes back, I'd give him a ticket. So I called him up, he gave me a ticket. I went to another game producer and I was a regular at the Oakland Seals, [00:03:30] hockey games, Oakland seals. Where did they play? They played there in the coliseum where the warriors play a, it was great. Speaker 3:So you, um, so you were at San Jose state where you kind of found this passion. It sounds like you went, you diverted for a teaching for a little while. What were you teaching? I dumb murdered. Where were you teaching? I was teaching very little. Those poor sleep problems. The subject matter I taught wood shop, metal shop and electronics. Oh, okay. I see what shops make sense. So, um, you, uh, [00:04:00] you came back at San Jose state, you did a little Oakland schools, but wasn't it like the big place you got discovered was that the earthquakes? Is that, yes, that was, that was the first pro team I ever worked for except the open seals, which weren't paying me. They weren't paying you. So you got, when you got to check out the earthquakes. Yes. I went in there and they actually called me up and they said, would you like to open up the season for us and be with us for some of the Games? Speaker 3:And I said, well, sure, I'd love it. And in essence he said, well, how much do you want to get paid? And I said, well, how about 35 bucks a game? [00:04:30] And yes, they gave me 35 bucks a negation asked for more. Well, I did. After about three days, I'm realizing maybe I should ask for more. This crowd reaction was the greatest crowd reaction you could ever see in your life. It just revolutionized soccer up until that point. That was nobody growing over 7,000 people. A game for professional soccer. That game first game 16,000 and they were mayhem there. The fans became fanatics and like [00:05:00] one, well it's not quarters in there, but before the first half everybody was going nuts and I was on full time with that team. Who was, what year was that? 1974 first year. The quakes that I started, I'm still with the earthquakes and I'm opening up their new stadium on the 22nd of March. Wow. Did you say 1974 74 that is for those guys to the math. That's 40 plus years I scares. Yes. Yeah. That's amazing. So your first professional gig of 35 bucks a game. [00:05:30] It was for the earthquakes and then I think I read somewhere that Lamar Hunt. Yeah. [inaudible] Speaker 3:Kansas City chiefs know this is the NFL. The big boys, big boys. He saw you whip this crowd into a frenzy. I see that he saw me doing this earthquake game. The first game. He couldn't believe the reaction that it was his league there. Earthquakes were part of his league. This was not the mls. This is an old league. Right. What the name of that [inaudible] I think what a memory guy. [00:06:00] Yeah, it's amazing. So he saw me there and somehow over the next year he said, I would really like to see George at a football game at Kansas City. And the manager were arranged it and I went in and this was a greatest. And now I'm actually with a really glamorous team. The Kansas City chiefs. Yeah, I'd go in unannounced. Unknown. Nobody knew me. Arrowhead was, it was arrow. It was, wow. It was 60,000 people, 60 70,000 people. Speaker 3:[00:06:30] I went in before the first quarter. I started working the crowd. By the first quarter I had shares going anywhere. By the first half I had back and forth. Kansas City. Oh No. Casey Gay. See back and forth across the stadium. They couldn't believe it. The whole game. They stayed off. Seven 60,000 people stayed and they lost 45 to nothing and wow. And they still stayed in Lamar? I couldn't believe it. He said, when we have a game like this, nobody's here [00:07:00] at the end of the game. And they stayed. I want you full time. Wow. So you got hired full time, full time for the whole season for them. Wow. So you had a $35 per game and in the soccer, what would you be? Well now it went up to 500 a day. Wow. That was good. And that's pretty sweet. Yes. So you're starting to see, you're like, wow, I can, is this the first time when you're like, I could do this for a living? Speaker 3:Well, it started off a little earlier than that. When the [inaudible], the St Louis Blues called me back in like 1972 [00:07:30] and offered me a full time contract. This guy was like a renaissance guy. He owned the blues. He saw me at the, at the Oakland Seals Games. He thought it was so great. He wanted to hire me, he wanted me to quit teaching, come there, and he was going to pay me 12,000 bucks to do the 40 home games. I was making 9,000 a year full time. [inaudible] Lau. I couldn't believe it. So he made the offer, but it had to be in, can it only would it go [00:08:00] out and the offer would be effective if the Oakland seals folded? They were folding my, they were kept there for two more years. And both years you made the offer? Third Year came around, I was ready to go. I was ready to quit teaching and he got ill. Speaker 3:And you stopped working with the, uh, St Louis Blues. So I lost out of that, but it gave me the idea that somebody might pay me that much. So how'd you get to the first kind of, did you ever get a gig where it was like a whole season? Like after the Kansas [00:08:30] City? That was, was that for the chiefs? Did you do the whole, and the Kansas Cassidy, she's already the same time. The Colorado Rockies ice hockey hired me. The BC lions, Canadian football hired me. And that was all in 1975 76. So I was making enough money. I could quit teaching. Nice. So we're talking to crazy George who is the world's only full time professional cheerleader here on [inaudible] at professional male model. I like to think of myself like that. I'm sorry, I forgot that part. Okay. This is a method to the medicine. Speaker 3:KLX Berkeley 90.7 [00:09:00] FM. I'm your host deleon Huizar and so George, you got this crazy idea that you could do this for a living. Now I have a question. First of all, you've talked a lot about different sports. Is there a different tactics that you use in different sports? Actually not really. I act like a fe and wants to react. That's why I'm successful when I go into a game. Well maybe it wasn't that 45 and nothing Kansas City chiefs game that I've did [00:09:30] first, but I do the as many fan cheers as the fans want and I react like a fan wants to. I just stand up. The secret is I stand up, I turn around, I look at the feds, they look down and say, Hey, must be our leader. Cause I'm looking at them and said in the field, well you also have a loud drum that helps. Speaker 3:Well, I don't want to admit it, but 90% of my success is my drum. Don't give away all the secrets right here is the secret. Actually, without the drum getting people's [00:10:00] attention, I would have never been affected. That's my, my secret. I hit that drum. Everybody looks down at me. I wait for the action to die down so I can make them do what I want to do. They understand what I want to do. I get totally attention. I wait for the moment when the cheer should be done. I do that. Your everybody reacts. How do you get, I get like 99% reaction from the fans. So, um, you, you say that the, it's really, it sounds like it's like, um, you're locked into kind of like a vibe with [00:10:30] the fans. It's like it doesn't matter what the sport is, you're kind of playing back for them. Speaker 3:What they want to do. Right. And every sport is pretty similar except for the basketball. It's a tough sport for me to work because the action never stops. It's just up and down up there and they score like every 20 seconds. So with every 20 seconds, if I had to do a cheer, I would die at the end of the game. So basketball's a little tough for me to work. But all the other sports, they are just great. There's a lot of stoppage of the action, [00:11:00] you know, the, in the huddles, whatever they're doing, baseball, they're warming up. It's just great. So I can get in the cheers I need to get in. So what about um, the cheers themselves or is it more, are you like a like, um, you know, a improvisational master of just coming to you or do you come and prepare? Speaker 3:Like you have some cheers you're going to do no matter what? No matter what, I never practice. I never think about it. That was great. From the time I started that first game at San Jose State [00:11:30] with my drum and that my partner handed me. It was just a natural sense, I think. I don't know why I had it. I'm a fan, I guess, of sports, but you know, I just knew when to cheer, when not to cheer, what type of chairs, and I just made 'em up, never think about him. I'm watching the game. I'm thinking about the game. I'm looking at the action. I go, what type of shirt do we need here? And it just comes to me. I do the, it's always the right chair. It's always appropriate, never off colored. I've never done it off cover cheering my life. And, and [00:12:00] another secret why I'm successful is most of these other people that have come along and that in the later years, they get to these outlandish outfits. Speaker 3:They look like they're from Mars sometimes. Well, people don't want to cheer from a guy from Mars. They want to cheer. For me, a human know who that guy, he looks human and not, well maybe not quite human, but close. So they go, oh Geez, George is one of us. And He, they see me sweating. They, they see I'm working harder than the players, man. I get comments from the [00:12:30] fans the third quarter they'll go, George, you're working harder than the players. You're sweating. I sweat so much during the game. So I do see like the Jean shorts seem to be the signature look for you. Is that, is that like a, it had a signature is my signature and I had my Levi shorts on for the last 50 years. I think cheering, always wear the same old raggedy cutoff shorts. Yup. Nice. Okay. Speaker 3:So, um, let's talk about, you know, this [00:13:00] show's about innovation and of course being the first full time mail filtering cheerleader in the world is innovation enough, but you also created maybe the signature crowd move. Now I know it's a linear contention. We don't have to go there, but I'm going to accredit it to you. You, yes, I have it accredited by s, what is it called? New York Times credited me when they credited the paper of record is accredited. Crazy George the way ESPN. ESPN. So the wave [00:13:30] you invented, the way that I invented, the way I gotta die, the way my boat I invented at the Oakland A's, New York Yankee playoff game, October 15th, 1981. When Billy Martin was the manager, I literally bought the building longer. So you were there as a playoff game. People were excited. A's Yankees. Now, how'd you, how'd you come up with this idea of coordinating these like 50,000 people in the stadium? Speaker 3:There was 47,000 fans [00:14:00] and unfortunately for the other places that I actually was doing a pre wave, I was doing waves at other places. Fine. Fortunately there were smaller practice with national TV. There wasn't a lot of witnesses, so I don't, I really could take credit even earlier than that. But the Oakland A's game, I have it on video three separate times. Billy Martin was here, but Joe Garagiola was the Nancy announcer who's famous announcer and he, uh, he had testifies that was the first and best [00:14:30] wave he's at, he's ever, ever saw. So that's why I say that's the day I invented. But it took a process of about four years starting with a three section shear of San Jose state. Okay. Each section of the student body would stand up and just sell San Jose state. And from that idea, as as the years went by as a professional cheerleader, I had a lot of opportunity to do these three section chairs at different places, changing the name. Speaker 3:And finally I got to the Colorado Rockies [00:15:00] and I had to go Rockies, go chair three sections and it was looking good and a section over there wanting to get involved a little. So I tried to do go Rockies, go Rockies four sections and the first section wanted to do it and it kept going a little bit. And from there I said, well it's too complicated going, go Rockies go. So I just say stand up and yell, go. Yeah. So back then I was thinking of it more like the goat share, but they just go, go in. And when I started that and went all the way around the [00:15:30] Colorado Rockies arena, and so that really was about as close as to a wavy she'd get. Unfortunately. And it was, they loved it. But the Colorado Rockies only drew about 5,000 people in a 15,000 seat arena. Speaker 3:So it was very few opportunities to do it in. It was never televised. I never had it on video. So that's the idea of where it started. But the color from there I came, I brought it back and started to Oakland. That's the day I invented. [00:16:00] So at the A's game, um, how hard was it to communicate to the fans? Cause you now everybody knows how to do away. That's right. How did, how did you like telepathically tell 47,000 people to stand up at the right times? A lot of coordination involved in a wave. Yes. See, I know the power of booing. Okay. So I went to three sections and got them organized and by then I'd already been doing the wave at high school rallies. What was continuous, they didn't have, they didn't have aisles, so I had to just [00:16:30] do it continuously. So I knew what I wanted. Speaker 3:So I went to these three second, I said, well you guys stand up. And as they, as it comes around the next day, I want you to stand up. Then I went to the next section. I was screaming and yelling and then I went back to them and said, they understand what you're going to do. You stand up. Then you guys stand up. Then you guys, while I'm yelling so loud at him and I'm preparing this and this all started like in the fourth inning, but I hadn't started yet, but I told him what I wanted, but then I said, when we start this people down there, [00:17:00] we'll not know what they're supposed to do or even see it coming so when it dies and it will die, boom. And so they are already, and I waited for a break of the action and you had to wait for a foul ball or something to give a couple of, you know, 30 40 seconds of break. Speaker 3:So it came and I don't know what the break of action was, but I got the three sessions going, I they started, it would've been since I was yelling so loud at these three to get them organized. I'd say the next four or five could hear me and they sort of got [00:17:30] the idea what they wanted to do. So I started, went about seven, eight sections and died right out. And I had my three or four sections blue and it was a great bu I started a second time. This time it went all the way around. I started way out in the left field and I started it. It came around and went all the way to behind home plate and died again. Now everybody booed and this was a great book. Now everybody in the state have figured out, [00:18:00] oh, we see what he wants. Speaker 3:Started the third time. And it just started rolling and all three decks did it. It was marvelous. They kept coming around with all the way to the outfield all the way back, gets back to upstanding. Everybody in the three sections stands up in unison and applauds. And I'm going, no, you don't get some times to this. It's supposed to gave going. So I started the fourth time, all three deck scape and when it came by, my section [00:18:30] was like a locomotive. I mean it just ripped on by kept long going, went around about seven, eight times. Cloud Whitten nuts. Joe Garagiola was up there and the booth going crazy. Get that on video, that thing. And they didn't know how to film with all the cameraman. The first couple of shots you see the wave all you see as a couple of people, the far right of the screen sort of sitting down. Speaker 3:Everybody else is just sitting cause they're behind it. But they finally got a good shot of it. Nice. [00:19:00] So we're the, we're talking to crazy George here on Kale expert cleans method to the madness. I'm murals telling Huizar and he's telling us about how he invented the wave as the first glorious appearance of the wave on this planet. And now it's pretty much all. Everybody does it everywhere. Oh, everywhere. Everything. Everywhere is the world and the world calls it the Mexican wave. What? Yes, the whole world. It's not the crazy wave. And I have a Seattle trying to claim it, but they did it two weeks. They don't. I finally have them shutting up most of the time, but it's hard to take on [00:19:30] the world. But it went down to the World Cup in an 86 a Mexico had it and they'd already seen the wave up here. Speaker 3:They took it down and they were doing it. All the venues in Mexico for the World Cup game, the whole world saw it. Now the whole world calls it the Mexican wave. So in the A's game, what did the players do as a playoff game? Was like a really high pressure game and all of a sudden the crowd goes nuts. Been for nothing on the field today. Did, was there any comments afterwards? Oh, I mean, the fans loved it. I mean, I, I think I've had 50,000 [00:20:00] fans come at me. Say they were there when it was only 47,000 week. Oh, I was there George. And we saw it. It was the greatest thing. Cool. Well, um, that's like your probably your signature cheer. Like [inaudible]. Everybody knows it, but it's not my signature cheer for when I know I've had the fans in my hand and I know I've succeeded. Speaker 3:That's my back and forth cheer across the stadium with I do KC if it's Kansas City and [00:20:30] I the first, the first Houston oil game I ever did, but Adams hired me because he saw how great I was in Kansas City and he said, George, he says, how long is it going to take you to get Houston Oilers back and forth the game? How many games? And I said, I'll do it the first game. No. And then he says, he says, well, I'm going to get a microphone for you so you can tell everybody. I said, I don't use a microphone. How's it asked you? Have you used a bullhorn or anything? No, not until the last couple of years. [00:21:00] I use a Mike some of the time up till like five years. I never used a microphone. Just your disappear, my voice. But then I says, he said, oh, the advertise you. Speaker 3:I want to advertise. Everybody knows you're here. And I said, no, I don't need advertising. I'll come in unknown. I don't want any microphone. Why? What, how? What do you think about it that way? What? Well, you don't want any help. What does it more way? No, it's, it's, maybe I'm a coward because I don't want the burden of everybody expecting something from me and [00:21:30] I just go in and they really, they don't know who I am. They're just sitting there and all at once, or is this crazy guy in this thing? There's a crazy psi in the next session and an hour later I've hit 40 sections and everybody's going, who is this guy? And they're not thinking about following me yet. Maybe for the first 2040 minutes I'm getting each little section cheering, but every, every section I do, I get a chair. The next section I get allowed to cheer. Speaker 3:Next session allowed a chair next to the point where I can now tie in four or five [00:22:00] sections to a really loud share for the third of the place. And I keep getting work in every section everywhere. So I'm up close and personal. I'm threatening their lives and then it gets to the point, I tell one side, I'm going to the other side and I'm going to yell, Kay, what do you think you're supposed to say? And I, and about 20 minutes later on the other side of the Sam setting up, we're yellingK , but of course not that many people on the c sides ready to go. But once I do, theK is [00:22:30] so loud and then like pointed the other side, I'm waiting, it doesn't come back very loud. The boom comes here and they all boom. When the next one I do k when I point to that, see it's twice as loud as the k and they go nuts over. Speaker 3:But once it starts, it just adds energy to each side. They want to outdo each other's competition in the stands and then I know the team is going to bring me back. All right. So that's, that's the victory you've got. Um, [00:23:00] the wave is the signature thing, but it's really the call and response when you feel like you really oh yeah. Once I rated that back and forth share across the state, they've never, nobody's ever, ever even saw something like that ever. I mean, and now they're seeing this huge, massive response from all the fans and the owner of the team usually comes up after the game says, Oh, want to hire you? Well, let me ask you about, that's like the height. What about like as a professional cheerleader, you've probably had some lows. Like what was, can you give us a story of [00:23:30] you tried something you thought it was like the greatest idea ever? Speaker 3:I know. Just like you couldn't get them to do it and nope. Nope. Never happened. Really. I, I've had one out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of games I've done, uh, over a teams, well over a hundred teams, but some of the teams I've done 50, 60 times. So I don't know what that multiplies out to, but I have been lots of games. I just never added them up. But I did add up. I've appeared in front of 25 million [00:24:00] fans in front of them. Wow. Out on TV. So it's been a bit more TV. I mean, you've been to playoff games and lots of people have seen you. Right? Wait, I lost track. What was I answering? A quick question. Was I answering well, you said I stumped you. I asked you, have you ever flopped to say, oh well I did have one bad experience and w I still want to kill the group. Speaker 3:It was a, I don't know what the team was. It was a football team and they're bringing me in. I'm going in the same way. I always go in on announce unknown, no microphone. [00:24:30] And some PR guy comes up to me before the game says, you know what, we get George, we've got a big ad campaign going and we're gonna have 12 lookalikes like you carry in drums and then we're going to give them a ward. Who's the, who's the best crazy George. So they got 12 guys looking like me running around and nobody's ever, ever saw me work to start with. I've never been there and I could have killed this guy. Bad idea. It was a terrible idea. And I at the end of the game, [00:25:00] the only solace I have is a, say they awarded some guy, you know, the prize for being the best crazy George look like. Speaker 3:And I had like 10 people standing by me when they awarded. They said, Whoa, crazy George, you're better than them. Why didn't you, you should have got the award. They were pathetic. They were great and I wasn't great. That was so much distraction. That was me. A failure. You're, you know, you're an artist. You can't, they shouldn't be trying to mess with your process. But that was one game out of thousands I've done. Okay, well let me ask a [00:25:30] different question. What's the most dangerous cheer you done? I was looking at some videos of you like balancing and like have you, seems like you're pushing the envelope a little bit. Is there any anyone that's a dangerous thing that got dangerous was my entrances. I made a lot of entrances when I got with the San Jose earthquakes. Um, I started doing, uh, working with Dick Berg, the general manager. Speaker 3:He says, well, want you to bring the ball in the first game? Our opening game in 74 so he had me come, coming in, the ambulance hitting in the back and the whole, the whole crowd [00:26:00] went dead silent years. This ambulance coming in, pulls up in front of the player's bench. They think some player, it died. It's the first day and they didn't know what was going on. They pull a Gurney out, I'm under the blanket. I pull it off and they go nuts. And that's how the game started. Then I had to topic, yeah, every game on a helicopter. One day it's a copter was fun and I'd belt the buckle, but I'd stand on the outside rail. But it was like us standing out you that I came in and Ferrari's. I came in, I came in with a lie and now this is why it gets [00:26:30] absurd. Speaker 3:I came in with a full grown for 150 pound lion and the trainer we get to, we'd get the center field that trainer trips a lion attacks him. No, this, she has life long friends. There are earthquakes. No, no. This was in Dallas, that Dallas Tornado, and now underneath the line he is bleeding. He's getting mauled. I'm 10 feet from an old in my drum and I, when I was with the lion trainer, he told me, never, ever hit your drum around [00:27:00] the lion. I said, good advice. Well, now he's underneath me, underneath the lion and out from underneath that line, I hear the stupidest comment I ever heard. He yells, damn off me. He can't be talking to me. I thought, and I look around the only other guy on the field, and then he had the gall to say it again, get him off me. Speaker 3:Well, what could I do? I took my drum and I went and the lion stopped eating him to try to eat you. This spun right [00:27:30] around and looked at me. I did not like this, but I had to do psych. I don't know if I had to do it, but I hit it when it took like four or five seconds. And by the end the other lion trainer that was off the saw what was happening and by the time that all happened he had already come to the seat and grabbed the other line and helped the guy off and he had to go to the hospital cause he was bleeding well. So you're also, we'll add that to the resume line line trainer nine Tamer. I was a very good line train for four seconds. All right, so [00:28:00] we're talking to crazy George here on KLX Berkeley. Speaker 3:You've got a couple more minutes. So we talked about the earthquakes. So it's coming full circle. You're starting the New Year of Christening the new stadium, right? What's going on with a lot of things going? Yes. I'm Chris sitting in the new stadium on March 22nd that's their first game at home. We're going to christen that. I'm going to be the Grand Marshall of the Rose White and blue parade in San Jose with 35,000 people on the 4th of July. Nice. Yeah, they asked me to be the Grand Marshall. [00:28:30] I'm an, I'm practicing my queen wave and I've been doing corporate meetings. I've been, and my gut, my book, God, you got to talk about my book. So how did this book come about? Oh, my book, my book is called Crazy George. Still crazy after all these cheers and all the fans, just Kevin asking me to write it. And then I did have a controversy with the Seattle about the wave and I wanted to document that in the book. Speaker 3:So I documented that. And then also from writing the book, I found [00:29:00] out I was a huge factor in the 12th man factor for the Santos, for the NFL Seahawks ball for the Seahawks. So I had that strand. But yeah, I, I've loved the book. I took it. I, in fact, I don't know if I'm prejudice, but I think it's maybe the greatest sports book ever written. It could be. It's likely excellent cover. I have it in my hands here. And thankfully, you know, you've cheered for a lot of teens, but you kept it real with the A's or that's who you're representing on the cover. So thank you. [inaudible] [00:29:30] because I invented their wave there and a lot of the articles are about the wave where a lot of book is about the waivers. And so I thought that was very appropriate. I had the greatest time with the A's, the Haas family. Speaker 3:Kepi just treated me great. It was fabulous. So it's called crazy George, the inventor of the wave still crazy after all these cheers. Can you find it on Amazon or something like that? That's on Amazon and it's on a kindle and it's on my website. Crazy. george.com and if you don't look at my website, I'll slash your tires. Yeah. [00:30:00] So there you have a threat from one and only crazy George. It starts with a k. That's how you spell a z. Y. That's right. She's never been a teacher. Yeah. Well you're a shop teacher, so, right. So crazy. george.com yes, that's my website. And then it just like it in the book. I have a lot of pictures on it. Yeah. And lots of pictures. There's videos, there's some really great stuff up there. And so I really wanna thank you for coming in today. Speaker 3:Crazy. George was great to meet you and hear the stories about your 40 plus years of being [00:30:30] the world's only full time professional cheerleader. I like that they got myself professional male model and professional [inaudible] and nominee from people's sexiest man alive, self nominated. And um, that's all the time we have for today. Um, and it's going to be the 35th anniversary. Actually, just a mention of the wave being created this next summer. You can go to the ace and love to go to the ace 35th anniversary. So Mr. Wolf, if you're here, [00:31:00] if you're listening to this, let's get on that. Get Crazy George out to the Colosseum and you are listening to methods of madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. Thanks again for coming in and crazy Jordan. Everybody have a great Friday. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Lisa Kiefer interviews co-founders Tim Jahnigen and Lisa Tarver. Their project is to enable play in the most destitute communities for its health benefits. They have designed a nearly indestructable ball, which they give away, to aid the effort.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. It to the madness is next. Speaker 2:Okay. [00:00:30] You listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Kiefer and today I'm interviewing Tim Yon again and Lisa Tarver, cofounders of one world football now one world play. Speaker 3:Okay. Speaker 4:[00:01:00] Berkeley innovators, Tim again and Lisa Tarver launched oneworld football during the 2010 world cup from a vision that Tim had after seeing new stories about the plight of children in war zones, refugee camps, and harsh inner city environment around the world, research has shown that whether you're a child soldier, [00:01:30] sex slave, or gang member, the only therapy that helps us rediscover our humanity is to simply play. Tim found that although there are plenty of organizations that offer play therapy to refugee camps and inner city youth, there's nothing to play with because the environment is so harsh and inflated. Ball has an average life span of about an hour and remote locations or lack of resources mean it can take months to find replacements to solve this problem. Tim and Lisa started the oneworld football [00:02:00] project and created the world's first ultra durable ball with their B Corp status, meaning triple bottom line of people, planet and profits, and through the help of founding sponsor Chevrolet as well as a global network of partners and they're buy one give one customers. Speaker 4:They have managed to distribute over a million balls to communities around the world after assessing the impacts of their efforts. Tim and Lisa have found that regardless [00:02:30] of geography or culture play forms stronger individuals, builds better communities and create a much more positive future. The oneworld football project, it's just the first step toward realizing a larger goal more than just equipment. They now want to help bring the transformative power of play into people's lives. Thus, they are changing their name from one world football project to one world play project, changing the name to expand the mission products, services [00:03:00] that enable play in all of its forms anywhere and everywhere around the globe. I was lucky enough to have Tim and Lisa join me here in the calyx studio. Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about Speaker 4:the international challenges you've had, getting this ball out and then we're going to talk about where your next evolution is to one world play. [00:03:30] Sure. One world football project works with organizations all over the world. And actually I'd love to talk not just about the challenges but about how amazing it is, um, to be working with a network of, uh, you know, hundreds of larger organizations and literally thousands of small organizations. You know, we work with everything from, um, save the children and United Nations, you know, UNICEF and Unh cr, everything from that to tiny little organizations that [00:04:00] work in one community with 50 kids. Like even here in the u s Oakland maybe or Berkeley. Exactly, exactly. It's worldwide. I mean, we've, we've delivered one real footballs to over 70 countries in large quantities, meaning 5,000 or more balls in some cases. Um, you know, 50, 60,000 to a country. Speaker 4:We, in September, we delivered our millionth ball in South Africa together with Chevrolet, which was a huge milestone because we, we don't give [00:04:30] balls to individual children. They all go to organizations that work with disadvantaged communities. We average about 30 children per ball, which means that over 30 million children and young people are having the opportunity to play your evolution now is going from one world football to one world play. What is that all about? When we started out and when Tim had the idea for the ball, we just saw that it was the ball and we knew the ball was a tool and that we needed to [00:05:00] get it out to kids and children in all of us. I mean, we all need to play. So it's not just limited to children all over the world and particularly in the harshest environments. And that's really what it was designed for. Speaker 4:What we've realized and learn through the process is, um, you know, we knew play was important, but we hadn't realized the depth of that concept and how important it really was. You know, children having the opportunity to play when they faced trauma of, you know, [00:05:30] being coming orphan, seeing their parents killed in a war situation or ending their families ending up in refugee camps. Play is so fundamental to recovering not only physical but mental and psychological health, spiritual health and to becoming whole again and not only for the individual but for communities as well. So as we've expanded our understanding of play, we're becoming the one we'll play project we see not Speaker 5:only delivering the football, but [00:06:00] being a vehicle for all kinds of opportunity for play. So whether that's other balls or sports products, whether that's play spaces, supporting play in lots of different ways and [inaudible] and encouraging dialogue about play and supporting other people who are doing work around play. I mean we see even in our, you know, in schools in the u s play has been almost virtually eliminated sports programs, music, which is another form of play, afterschool programs, they're all just being cut out. Kids don't learn if they can't play. What's your [00:06:30] first initiative as one world play? We have several things in the pipeline. For example, the second most played sport on earth after football or soccer is cricket. Most people have no idea, you know. So we've gone on the ground. In fact, our, my director of product development who helps take my brain dump and turn it into reality. Speaker 5:He's in India right now doing the final testing on this ball. This ball looks and function. It looks just like a traditional cricket ball, but everything about it's engineering [00:07:00] has nothing to do with what we, what we know of as a cricket ball because cricket balls are rock hard about the size of an American hardball and they're made for playing on big open space. But hundreds of millions of people, 700 million people play cricket in India. Uh, hundreds of millions of people around the world play this sport in little alleyways and courtyards. So it's small children and old folks standing around watching the game. And if they got hit with a ball like that, it could hurt them very badly or damage the small cardboard shacks [00:07:30] that these people are living in as well. So we had to, we had to see what they were actually playing with, which is like a tennis ball, but that bounced too high. Speaker 5:So we had to make it a little heavier than a tennis ball. And take some of the bounce out and so on. So we actually went on the ground around the world and saw with the majority of humanity's actually in reality playing with, that's the same with the soccer ball and we're working on several other things. So you'll see things coming up. Some of the things I'd love to be shouting from the rooftops about right now, but okay. So, um, where do you do your manufacturing for [00:08:00] all of this equipment? We would have done it right here at home in the states, but there was no real machinery any longer in the states that works with this particular material. We started off with our closest neighbor. There was a, there was a company in Canada that, uh, had a machine that was, had some knowledge of how to work with this material, but we found we needed to evolve to a higher level of actual knowledge and innovation expertise. Speaker 5:We ended up moving production to an extraordinary group of, uh, to an extraordinary manufacturing partner [00:08:30] that we work with in Taiwan. But it actually costs us more to make the ball there than it started off with. In Canada, we weren't concerned about bringing down the price per se because first of all, this is the first change in ball technology in nearly a thousand years. Therefore, there is no comparison. You cannot compare the two. It's apples and oranges. The only thing it has in common with the common inflated ball is the Word Ball and the shape. Everything else about it is different. Therefore, it just costs what it costs and [00:09:00] the purpose. This ball out of context, even though it's the first really high tech version of that, one of the oldest objects in our, in history, in our evolution, it is. It's an entirely different process and we're only competing against ourselves. Speaker 5:If we were to just be a commercial product, we would have to spend an extraordinary amount of money and fight for shelf space, but this is something entirely different. We don't look at this as a nice to have. This is fulfilling a biological imperative. We call this [00:09:30] ball social nutrition when it hits the ground. In order for us to meet the global population, the need for play on a social nutrition level worldwide, which is as important as food and medicine and shelter, which people 25 and under who live in abject poverty and war zones and gang territories, inner city right here in the u s and so on, worldwide 25 and under down to infants is two and a half billion people and at 30 people per ball, it's more than 80 million balls are needed just to fulfill a basic human need. [00:10:00] This is not even about rights rights can be negotiated. There is no gray area here. In order for us to fulfill that through partnerships, every major corporation who can sponsor and so on, everybody gets to be the hero for that, for the rest of our generation. Speaker 4:So now that we're not just one real football project but one role play project and we're branching out beyond the, the initial idea of the soccer ball or football into other products, other types of activities and play spaces and other ideas of [00:10:30] how to provide opportunity for play. Um, with the idea of reaching that much more quickly on that much more of that population that globally that needs to have the opportunity to play. It's interesting that you say it's manufactured in Taiwan because I was reading that the, the earliest ball that they have found was what is now China, but it's something like 8,000 years ago they found evidence of a playing ball in China that is exploring what is now China. Yeah. And so when you talk about the theory of play, [00:11:00] I mean, you know, we've, we didn't really start analyzing it until Socrates actually, and um, Aristotle had writings about play, the, the, the idea play and its importance, but to evolve, as you guys probably know over the years, it wasn't really until the 1990s that it became known that it was used, usable for conflict resolution. And now of course the um, the data is amazing saying that the entire neocortex lights up during [00:11:30] play for not just us, all mammals and that it is necessary for evolution, particularly for social animals, pro social. So I'm sure you guys have done a lot of this kind of academic research. Who are you working with in the theory of play today and what do you, what do you know about the science of play? Speaker 5:We are reading and studying as much of the best work that's out there. There, there are some really seminal works that go back 30 or 40 years, but more recently the [00:12:00] work of Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the, uh, National Institute for play is an extraordinary source and a resource for us. And we are privileged to the early days of discussions of collaborations with him and his work directly. But there are so many incredible people around the world on the ground whose knowledge and ideas haven't even been put on paper yet. And that's the privilege for us. I mean, play is used for not just conflict resolution and [00:12:30] Lisa can speak more to the all the variety of ways, uh, with all these incredible organizations. They're doing some of the most important social impact work on the planet today, but they're anonymously doing it in a way that the people on the ground in the Congo, in Palestine and is real letting children Palestinian-Israeli children mixed together and so on. Speaker 5:It only takes about 20 minutes of play to actually break down all the barriers of assumptions about race, gender, religion, [00:13:00] culture, language, all of those things go away. This just happens to be the centennial of the Christmas Day. Truths of the first Christmas Day, truce of World War One happened. It's an extraordinary phenomenon among other things. One of the final things that happened on that incredible day is about 40 or 50 combatants from the allies, the British and the and, and the Germans kick a, an old leather ball around in the no man's land for about all of half an hour. And that's all it took. So the next day when [00:13:30] the war was supposed to start again at dawn, those 40 to 50 guys could not shoot at each other. They had to replace them on the front in order to get the war going again. And that's a profound historic fact. You know, we have historic evidence of even going back to the truces that were called for the earliest Olympics. They used to call a halt to hostilities so that they could go home and, and compete. And that was what the Olympics used to be about. He actually is a standing statute that they're supposed to be a cessation of violence during the Olympics. Speaker 4:Yeah, I think in the [00:14:00] 19th century they actually thought play was a precursor to learning how to fight in battle. So we've come completely in an opposite direction as to what the real reason behind play is. Evolutionarily we do, as Tim said, we, you know, work with Stuart Brown. We're part of the U s play coalition. You know, we are certainly doing our own theoretical research, but really a lot of what we feel that we bring to the table is the on the ground experience with all of the organizations [00:14:30] that we work with. And um, the, the, you know, we not only provide the ball, which is really just a tool for them to use in their programs. So we work with organizations, for example, in Haiti together with the Tony Sana Foundation, Tony Sauna being a former u s soccer player, his foundation working with a group called the Haitian initiative and we've provided balls to them. Speaker 4:They're working in [inaudible]. It's the largest, one of the largest slums in the western hemisphere. Uh, just goes on for miles and miles and miles. [00:15:00] It's somewhere between 350,000 and 500,000 people live there. Incredibly dangerous, no running water, no electricity, gang warfare, um, drugs. Just really, really very challenging circumstances. What Haitian initiative is doing is working with young people. They have to stay in school in order to participate in the program. They come after school every day and they get soccer training and they get quite high level training. Um, Tony and other people are there, [00:15:30] you know, he's there periodically and, and they've received training for their coaches. They get tutoring if they need it. The directors of the program, if they, they have to turn in their, their report cards and if they're have, if they're struggling in school, they get home visits, they get tutoring, they get a hot meal, which is sometimes their only meal of the day. Speaker 4:I had the opportunity to visit the program in, in May and they are so engaged and grateful for the opportunity that they're having, [00:16:00] but they're learning so much through it that these kids all talk about how, um, how they want to give back. The kids there in the program are becoming the coaches and they're staying in school and they're graduating and they're going to college and they're getting, having new opportunities all through this, what's at the core, apparently a soccer program. And so that this is just in the four years since you've started this, I assume you're measuring the success so that you have a body of research [00:16:30] to fall back Zackly right, exactly. So we have, we not only deliver the balls, but then we work after the fact to see where they are, what's working, what's working. Um, what kinds of programs, what, you know, testimonials, all kinds of documentation. Speaker 4:And through the monitoring evaluation, are you reaching places that are hard to reach, like Iran and North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Are you in those areas or can you be, and how do you get into these challenging areas [00:17:00] with these balls? Yes, as many of them as possible. We can't ship to countries that are on the, unfortunately on the u s you know, no trade lists. So, um, Iran and North Korea have not been possible, although we have partners that are very interested. We could, if it was, you know, legally possible, but other places, you know, we, Tim and I just visited Chad. We have containers that are balls about 15,000 balls that are on their way there right now. Um, we visited the, the [00:17:30] [inaudible] refugee camps on the border with Sudan and talk about remote locations. I mean, there is nothing, you just fly for hours in a little plane over desert. And these camps are in the middle of nowhere. No roads, no roads, no, I mean it's just, you know, the, the vehicles you're just driving across the sand. Speaker 5:There is nothing there but it with armed convoy to get out there. But we're working with the UNH CR who takes in all their materials and so we get the containers [00:18:00] to country and they said, no problem. We'll get them to the camps. So you know, the ball's always go to the places your balls are shipped to? No. On the ground. No. In fact, at the, at the beginning it, you know, when we were operating on a shoe string, you know, we'd hear stories from everybody, but we were pretty much just based here and, um, and not getting out into the field. And it takes a lot to get there and we couldn't go every place. So we also have, you know, we have a regional office in Kenya and in Thailand [00:18:30] and Brazil. So our regional people are out in the field as well. Speaker 5:And indeed you start the regional thing or have you always had distribution? Like I guess we started our second year just in Kenya and then we added the other offices as we went along. We'd managed to get balls for example, using common sense and trusted freight forwarding partners and so on. There was an NGO that helped us get balls into Mogadishu, into Somalia. A country that has no functioning government, they're [00:19:00] still doing business, right. Goods are coming and going. So there are ways and we've gotten balls into eastern Congo, some of the harshest places on earth. Gosh, I can imagine that you guys would be great guests at the u n sometimes speaking. Had they ever asked you to come out and speak about this? Oh, actually bragged that my wife, I already spoke at the UN, but she was at a conference that was happening in at the facility, but it wasn't, it wasn't a UN conference addressing the cause. Speaker 5:It's the very thing that they are always trying to do is find ways to bring reconciliation and peace. [00:19:30] Well they actually have their own, the UN has its own conference on sport for Development and peace and so you know, we attend and we're part of that movement. Sport for peace and development is likely the single largest, one of the largest movements on earth that really nobody knows about. But there's so many governments and celebrities and powerful organizations doing it right now, right under our noses. We just don't know the term for it. And why do you think so many people don't know about this? What is the barrier there? That's [00:20:00] a good question. Isn't the news picking this up? The news doesn't cover the good things to cover the catastrophes and the murders and everything else and you and we don't have a culture of celebrating play and celebrating the positive and celebrating the growth. Speaker 5:So it's people like you who are giving us the opportunity to talk about it and how important it is. There's so many new brain studies now about play that that. I'm just curious why that hasn't been more out in the forefront, but it will be asked to do with, I think [00:20:30] our enculturation, Western values are based on, you know, work and children shall be seen and not heard and things like that. It's true. And the puritans believed that play was sinful, so they separated it. Right? And so you know, we're about celebrating every form of play. And the fact is play is so important of the top 10 things you must do. You can find this in the UN literature. When you're setting up a refugee camp, you have to, you know, you have 10 things you have to do. The first three things most westerners focus on, which is food, medicine and shelter. Speaker 5:[00:21:00] They triage that immediately. But school doesn't come til six or seven on that list of top 10 things. The fourth thing that you have to do, not separately but simultaneously, is play. The minute you bring a ball into a situation where you have what they call an improvised community in chaos because even a refugee camp, it may be the same country like uh, in Syria, but they may come from different neighborhoods. So it's not like you can just throw them all together and they may practice different religions or different sects of religion. It's not a homogenous thing. So [00:21:30] people whose lives have been turned upside down, they're so stressed. As soon as you put a ball on the ground, immediately structure and normalcy, it keeps them grounded in honorable conflict resolution, which they know how to do through the play and it gets stress relief and all that creativity, everything. So you must do those things simultaneously. That's how important it is. Speaker 4:You've told me about your inspiration for this company and now I'm curious, how did you two find each other? Cause you obviously have similar aspirations. Well we actually met when we were 16 [00:22:00] but didn't get together until we were 40 42. Yes. Speaker 5:Journeys of our own. That led us on very quite different geographies and different paths, but very similar outcomes. Speaker 4:You were both in El Salvador for some time, is that correct? I lived, I lived in El Salvador for five. Tim has visited, but the, when you were in El Salvador you were working on a lot of projects for people in need of help, but can you talk about that just a little bit, what you were doing there? Sure. I mean my, my background is in the Israeli, in [00:22:30] primarily the nonprofit work and both in the u s and in El Salvador. I lived there for more than five years before that. I spent a lot of time there, traveled there extensively, including during the war and at some of the most intense times in the war and you know, was working with, and as part of the u s solidarity movement at the time, we took delegations and groups down that provided, uh, not only support but a physical presence in support of trade unions and farm worker [00:23:00] organizations and displaced communities that were displaced by the war, internal refugees having a presence there would many times keep those people safe. Speaker 4:So it was very, it was a very direct form of support, not theoretical. It's like our bodies are in this office, maybe it's not going to get bombed today. We're in this demonstration, we're marching down the street with you. We're showing our solidarity, keeps the National Guard from opening fire on the delegation, you know, so that direct connection and, and then I [00:23:30] ended up moving to El Salvador and I lived there for five and a half years. You know, living in, you know, a country that's has, that's very resource poor with tremendous poverty. You know, you're directly connected with and seeing on a day to day basis how, how most of the world lips so can see where Speaker 5:your evolution to this kind of a concept would happen. And I had traveled the world, I lived in Europe, in north, in Norway for years, but I worked on a cruise ship when I was in my twenties that went around the world five times in the four years that I worked on it. So I got to see firsthand [00:24:00] how really the most of the world lives, which is in abject poverty. I just came from that direct experience. The truth of the origin of the the ball too is that, you know, I had the vision after seeing this story, but we were not financially able to pursue it at the time. We have another startup at the time and based on another technology that I'd come up with. And so we were focusing on that and we just couldn't, there was no way to do it. And, but I also work in the music business as a lyricist and producer and two years later during an amazing breakfast that we were invited to with [00:24:30] somebody that I helped work with in production for staying, uh, one of the most extraordinary people on earth. Speaker 5:He and his wife are just amazing people. Anyway, we were, Lisa and I were invited to breakfast and we were having just a random rambling conversation about things that we were thinking about and wanting to do when he shared with me a story about how he and some friends had helped finance the building of a soccer field in Gaza because he knew that it was important for children to have someplace to play in these places. And I went, wow. Well that's interesting because two years ago I saw this [00:25:00] news story that broke my heart, but inspired me to use this material someday to make a ball that will never go flat. And that was it. And all of a sudden he stopped. He goes, wait a minute, did you just tell me that you know how to make a ball that'll never go flat? And I said, well, yeah, I think so. Speaker 5:It's a theory. He goes, you need to do that right now and if you will, I'll finance that. I mean, it was, you're not even, not even 60 seconds. He didn't even, this was not planned. This was all just serendipity. We were just invited to breakfast and we were talking about, you know, literature and family and children [00:25:30] and you know, anything but music. And um, and we've even donated some of the balls to their, the projects that they're working on because wherever children are a ball should be. So we were very open about who delivers it. So he later he gave the ball the name that it has one world because I had all these other names and I wouldn't have been so bold to say one world, which is, you know, it's a pretty bold name, but I sent him this list of names and he, I said, what would you call it? Speaker 5:You understood what it was, you tell me. And he said, how about one world? And I said, fine, but you got [inaudible] give [00:26:00] me license to use your song. Did He, I guess he did. He said, fine. You know, boom. So that's our theme song. Oh, that's really great. Yeah. Congratulations. I mean, and it's so natural and organic and it's so human. What an extraordinary thing. And I think the first thought that went through my head conscious after I've almost passed out hearing that he wanted me to do this, you know, I wasn't, it was just mind blowing. The first actual thought that I was able to conjure was, please God make this so successful that I can do for someone else what he just did [00:26:30] for me. Yeah. That's Nice Tim and Lisa, I really appreciate you being on this program. So glad you're in Berkeley and I know you're about to leave the country for or this project. I know there's a lot of listeners out there are going to want to get ahold of you or look at your website. Can you give us some information where Speaker 4:people should go if they want to either help out or just read about you, what should they do? Of course, our website is one world play project.com and that's where they can find us. There's lots of information, there's lots of great stories and videos and what the impact [00:27:00] is that we're having already. Um, with the one role football and we are all about collaboration. You know, we welcome ideas and initiatives and uh, you know, the ball is available for sale as a buy one give one. So for everyone that's purchased, we donate a ball to one of the organizations that we work with. And we also work with lots of different kinds of organizations on campaigns. So for example, if there's an organization that wants to do something, a great way to become involved is to reach out to their supporters and, and let them know what [00:27:30] we're doing and encourage people to either buy a ball for themselves and we donate one or to just give a ball. We have that option as well. We can host that campaign on our website and it's, it's a fun way to work together and a great way to get started. So in lots of other ways to become involved too. So we welcome all kinds of initiatives. Speaker 5:I just want to encourage all entrepreneurs out there who have vision that have a belief that they can do something that actually helps people to, to really look into how you can be a B corporation [00:28:00] and how you can find a way to do well and do good at the same time. Also to realize that it's, it is a team. We have an extraordinary team. Everything that we do from shipping to, you know, sales, everything. Because it's such a new world of doing business this way. We actually have to make it up as we go along. We have to use best practices, but we have to make a hybridization. We're learning as we go. There is no template. There was nobody, you know, there's, we're throwing bread comes behind us and we're, we're available to answer questions and to [00:28:30] encourage people, but our time is so limited as well. So we can't always respond quickly. But the point is that the need is there. The opportunity, especially when we put play in its pride perspective, I believe that there's a, there's a future that has a, an opportunity for innovation that would make the innovation of Silicon Valley and the dotcoms almost insignificant compared to the, when you actually take play into consideration when you're developing and moving forward. Thank you for being on the program. Speaker 1:[00:29:00] [inaudible] Speaker 2:you just heard Berkeley innovators, Tim Yon again and Lisa Tarver Co founders of one world play contract. I'm Lisa Kiefer and I have been your host for method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k a l [00:29:30] x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. If you have questions or comments about this show, go to the Calex website, find method to the madness and drop us an email. Speaker 3:Tune in again in two weeks at the same time, have a great weekend. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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Slides Here: https://defcon.org/images/defcon-22/dc-22-presentations/Hecker/DEFCON-22-Weston-Hecker-Burner-Phone-DDOS-UPDATED.pdf Burner Phone DDOS 2 dollars a day : 70 Calls a Minute Weston Hecker SR SYSTEMS SECURITY ANALYST/ NETWORK SECURITY Phone DDOS research. Current proof of concept is dealing with Samsung SCH-U365 QUALCOMM prepaid Verizon phone custom firmware was written that makes it into an anonymous DOS systems It Does PRL list hopping and several other interesting evasion methods. The new firmware allows two features one, you text it a number and it will spam call that number 70 times a min. till battery dies. All for 2 dollars a day. And second feature is that if a number that is in address book calls it, automatically picks up on speaker phone. Also ways to mitigate this attack with load balancing Call manager and Captcha based systems. Weston is a Systems Network Analyst/Penetrations Tester/President of Computer Security Association of North Dakota, Tons of computer security certs, Studied Computer Science/Geophysics, 9 years Computer security experience, Disaster recovery, attended DEF CON since DEF CON 9 Tools. Weston has developed Custom plug ins for Scanning tools that are specific to ISP Gear ex. Calex, brocade more obscure ISP gear. Made custom “iPhone” enclosures for teensy 3.0 that I use on pen tests. Custom Arduino board RFID scanner attachment that mounts under workers chair and scans wallet. twitter: @westonhecker
Save the Frogs is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness of the world wide to amphibians die off.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening to k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM. And this is method to the madness, a show coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex dedicated to exploring the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Ali Huizar and today we have Dr. Carey Krieger Krieger with us. Thanks for letting me know the pronunciation and thanks for joining us. Yeah, it's great to be on. Thanks for having me. And I'm, Carrie is the founder of save the frogs. So we want to talk about your organization. But first, um, [00:00:30] I always like to start the program off with talking about kind of the problem statement. So someone will start an organization because they see an issue. What's the issue that you saw? Speaker 2:Yeah, the problem is that frogs and other amphibians are rapidly disappearing around the world. So there's about 7,000 known species of Amphibians, of which at least 2000 of them are threatened with extinction. And a couple of hundred species have gone completely extinct in recent decades. And this is an extinction, uh, [00:01:00] rate several thousand times faster than normal. And when I started save the frog, very few people knew that there was even an issue. So to me this was one of the world's most significant environmental issues, most rapidly disappearing group of vertebrates. And if people don't know that there's a problem, then it's extremely difficult to fix the problem. And Amphibians are extremely important for a variety of reasons. They're eating ticks and mosquitoes and flies that spread bad diseases. We don't want a frogs are very important [00:01:30] in the food chain if they disappear than other animals have problems. A lot of our pharmaceuticals and medical advances come from research on Amphibians. I amphibians are bio indicators. They're sensitive to environmental change. So they're an early warning system of environmental degradation. And also frogs are really cool people like frogs. It's our ethical and moral duty to protect them. So I started save the frogs because there was no nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting amphibians and there was a lot that [00:02:00] needed to get done that was not getting done. Okay. Thanks for, uh, I think that explains the problem pretty well. So, um, Speaker 1:before we get into that kind of the starting of the organization and what it does. Um, can you tell us a little bit about your back? Speaker 2:Where, where do you get your education and how did you come to notice this problem? I grew up in Virginia. I grew up on about 20 acres of land when I was seven. My parents built a pond on the property, which has attracted at least seven different species of amphibians. [00:02:30] And I spent a lot of my childhood and a lot of my um, adult time when I visit my parents, going down to the pond and hanging out there and being exposed to frogs and wildlife and just being outdoors. And then in my teens I started hiking and camping a lot. And eventually when I finished college, actually studied mechanical engineering in college, but was never too into that. And I'd never thought of environmental science as a potential career or environmental conservation. And by the [00:03:00] end of college I realized that was a possibility. Started traveling around the world a lot and camping, going to national parks. I really liked being out in the wilderness, but I noticed that there was a lot of environmental destruction all around and I wanted to do something about that. So eventually he went to Australia and spent four years there doing my phd in environmental science, studying the ecology of Kitsch Radio Mycosis, which is an amphibian disease that's causing trouble for amphibians here in California and all around the [00:03:30] world. So I learned all about amphibians when I was in Australia. And also I learned what was not getting done that needed to be getting done to save them. Speaker 1:Okay. So you're doing your phd in Australia and you're studying an amphibian disease. And then I like to talk about this kind of moment of inspiration, that Sundar bolt that hits and a a, uh, entrepreneur or social entrepreneur like you who decides, Oh wow. You know, I have now seen this issue. I'm going to take the leap. Am I do something about it? Can you describe [00:04:00] for us, when was that, did you have that kind of moment of inspiration? Speaker 2:Yeah, there are probably a couple. Uh, I'll first make it clear. When I was in Australia, I was definitely in the world of academia and it's a lot different than being in nonprofits and not many people who are doing their phd go down the path that I have gone. So before I did my phd between um, college and do my phd, I took many years off and one of the main ways that I supported myself was tutoring, private tutoring, uh, math and chemistry and [00:04:30] a couple of other subjects. So I was essentially working for myself and I really liked working for myself. And during my phd it was very independent research as well. So it was kind of like I was working for myself and I wanted to continue doing that. Also when I was at the University of sell out of bureaucracy. And I also figured that working for government would have at least as much bureaucracy. Speaker 2:So I wanted to work for myself. And at the end of my first year of doing my phd, even though I'd had very little prior amphibian experience, [00:05:00] I got two large research grants, one from the Epley Foundation for research. And one from the National Geographic Society's Committee for research and exploration. And being that I had, uh, very little experience up to that point and did not even yet have my phd, I figured it must be incredibly easy to raise money to do this kind of work. So even though that was a false belief, I went with that. And eventually when I finished my phd, I was, I was, my original plan [00:05:30] was to continue doing research and to do a postdoc for a couple of years, but I could not think of any postdoc that would be as important as starting a nonprofit. So, uh, I had had the idea for save the frogs in my head for probably four years, but never put too much thought into it. Speaker 2:And then, uh, about nine months after finishing my phd, the thought just hit me that now's the time I need get a webpage going and you know, at least [00:06:00] get this thing started a little bit. I was not, I did not yet have any full time position from after my phd. So I had time to start doing what I thought needed to get done. Step one was build a website so that other people in the world would find out what the problem is and know that I was out there trying to do something about it. And what I, what was the timeframe for that? When did the webpage get built? Well, I started save the frogs in early 2008. So we've been [00:06:30] around for about six and a half years. So I built a minimal website and then I've always been adding to it. I add to the website, saved the frogs.com, uh, you know, several times a week. So it's now got several hundred pages of um, free, freely accessible information. Okay. Speaker 1:And we're talking to Dr Kerry Krieger of uh, save the frogs.com here on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And this is method to the madness. And we are talking about how he started this organization [00:07:00] to save the frog. So let's talk about what saved the frogs does. So that's a little bit of how it got created. You started out with a web page and we'll get a little bit more to where you are today. I actually, I found you because you have a retail store front. I'd love to understand a little bit more about the strategy behind that. But let's talk about what is the focus of save the frogs? How are you going out and trying to execute your, your mission of saving the frogs? Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to protect amphibian populations and to promote a society that respects and appreciates [00:07:30] nature and wildlife. As I said, uh, back in 2008 for certain, very few people knew that amphibians were in trouble and rapidly disappearing. And for the first 18 months of our existence, all we did was environmental education. So creating free educational materials for download from our website, giving live presentations, inspiring other people to go out into their communities around the world and [00:08:00] educate people about amphibians. So one of the first things that I did was start save the frogs day, save the frogs. Jay has become the world's largest day of, uh, Amphibian Education and conservation action. The first year and saved the frogs. They always takes place for the last Saturday of April, first year that we had it, we had about 40 educational events in 15 countries and I was the only employee of Save the frogs back then. Speaker 2:Did Not have a much funding at all, but we still got events happening in 15 countries. I thought that sounds like it's [00:08:30] pretty successful program. Let's keep going at it. And uh, since that time, we've had almost a thousand educational events take place in 59 countries. And so what I do is provide education, materials and ideas to people and provide them inspiration so that they will go out into their community, do something beneficial for amphibians that may be giving a presentation to their students or taking people out into, uh, the field to see wild frogs in their native habitats. We've had protests, [00:09:00] we've had rallies, um, 5k events and other things to get the community involved. So that was, um, our main focus in the early days, save frogs was all environmental education. Since then, we've also had, uh, campaigns to get bad pesticides, bands such as atrazine. And, uh, UC Berkeley has a long history of atrazine research. Speaker 2:Atrazine is one of the most commonly used herbicides on the planet. It's been banned in the European Union since 2004. Uh, it's [00:09:30] produced by the world's largest pesticide companies and Genta who's actually based in Switzerland where it is illegal, but we use about 80 million pounds of this herbicide here in America, primarily on corn. It's an endocrine disruptor that can turn male frogs into females at two and a half parts per billion, most commonly detected pesticide in us groundwater, rainwater and tap water. So we've been working to get that band. We've delivered about 25,000 petition signatures to the U S Environmental Protection Agency. [00:10:00] I've spoken there on several occasions. We've had a rally, a saved the frogs, a rally at the steps of the EPA and anyone who wants to learn more about that, save the frogs.com/. Atrazine A. T. R, a. Z. I. N. E. We've also had campaigns against frog legs. We've gotten frog legs out of about 77 supermarkets and two restaurants gotten dissect frog dissections out of about 18 schools. Speaker 2:And, uh, we've gotten habitat protected. [00:10:30] We stopped the construction of a 12 story condominium complex that was destined or slated to be built on Fowler's toad habitat in Canada. And, uh, more recently we've gotten into building wetlands. So we started building wetlands at schools and we planned to be continuing that program and, uh, have a goal of building a thousand wetlands over the next 10 years. California, about 90% of our wetlands have been destroyed or modified. So a lot of times when you go [00:11:00] out, um, walking or driving around, you're looking around, you may see dry fields and not even realize that that used to be a wetland. So one of the best ways we can help amphibians is to, um, create habitat for them or fix their old habitats that got drained. Oh, congratulations. Sounds like there's a lot of action that you've, you've generated to save the frogs. Speaker 2:And, um, but one thing I, when reading your website that struck me was, um, you know, the danger that the frogs are in and, and kind of their place in our ecosystem [00:11:30] gains a little bit about that because I don't think people really understand a critical, they are to the whole kind of, you know, the diversity on, on earth and how long their history is. So how, how much in danger are the frogs? Yeah, I am Fabian's have been around for in more or less their current form for 250 or 300 million years. So all life that's currently on earth is evolved. I'm on a planet that has amphibians. So amphibians are very important in [00:12:00] the food web. As I said before, they're eating flies, ticks, mosquitoes, uh, tadpoles are filtering algae out of the water. Most of us depend on community, um, filtration systems to clean our water. Speaker 2:So Tadpoles are actually keeping the cost of our water down by doing a lot of that filtration work. And, uh, birds, fish monkey, snakes, even dragon flies and beetles eat frogs, tadpoles and frog eggs. So a lot of animals depend on amphibians and if the amphibians disappear than lots of [00:12:30] other animal groups have trouble. And uh, let's see, I think your question was how threatened are they? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, about 48% of all amphibian species are thought to be on the decline in numbers and about a third of them are already considered threatened with extinction. What threatened with extinction means is that if we don't do anything to mitigate those threats or to remove those threats, then we can expect those species to go completely extinct in the near future. [00:13:00] So that's a couple thousand species that could go extinct and the human population continues to grow. We're the cause of most of the problems that frogs face. And if people don't change their ways, then as the human population continues to grow, these threats will actually increase in the rate of extinction will increase. That's why we need drastic action to save the frogs. Speaker 1:And, um, another thing that struck me about when I was reading your website, we're talking talking to Dr Kerry Krieger, [00:13:30] the founder of save the frogs and you can check out more@savethefrogs.com. This is KLX Berkeley's method to the madness I'm here installing is, are one thing that struck me when I was reading your website, Carrie was um, that kind of symbiosis between frogs and humans. And specifically you talked about how they can be a leading indicator of major environmental issues because of the, is it the, um, Speaker 2:well frogs are bio indicators for a few reasons. They have permeable skin. [00:14:00] Their skin is a lot different than ours. Our skins meant to protect us by keeping things out, but amphibians can drink and breathe through their skin. That also means that bad pollution and pesticides can go straight through their skin and everything eventually makes it down to the waterways cause gravity's going to bring all those bad chemicals from factories, from people's houses, from cars down to the water. Even if it went up a smoke stack and went into the clouds, eventually it's going to come down in the form of rain, get into the water bodies where the amphibians live and breed [00:14:30] and they have that permeable skin. So bad pollutants can go straight into their skin. So, uh, that's one reason they're considered bio indicators. Another is they're amphibious. That means they have two lives, one on land and one in water. Speaker 2:And if something goes wrong in either the terrestrial or aquatic realm, amphibians have trouble. Another problem is that they're slow to move. They can't just fly off like a bird could. If it's forest got chopped down, something happens to the frogs forest or the swamp where it's, it lives, then [00:15:00] it's very slow to move. Uh, it may get run over on roads, picked off by predators, uh, could dry up in the sun. And also a lot of amphibians are just not genetically predisposed to traveling long distances once they're an adult. A lot of them just stick to their pond where they're at. Speaker 1:Okay. So, um, yeah, it's, it's a really, um, as you said, as the, all the kind of pollutants flowed down into the frogs watching what's happening to them could be a leading indicator of what's going to happen to us. That's another [00:15:30] reason for us to really be worried about their ecosystem. Sure. Humans are Speaker 2:disconnected from our relationship with the natural world, but we've evolved here. It's only in very, very recent history such as less than 1% of the time that we have existed that we have had modern day conveniences. But everything that we use comes from the natural world. All the minerals, fresh water, clean air, all of our natural resources for clothing [00:16:00] and building homes, all comes from the natural world. If we disturb our ecosystems, then we're going to have serious problems in the future. And you know, we can, we can coast by humans. They're doing pretty well in general right now, but it's at a major expense of driving wildlife species to extinction. We were in the middle of a mass extinction right now. So even if humans are waking up and being able to get our food really easily, do we want to live in a world where we're driving lots [00:16:30] of animals to extinction? Um, we've, you know, we all live on the planet. We have a right to exist. Frogs have a right to exist. Future humans have a right to exist on a planet with healthy ecosystems and wildlife. Speaker 1:Yeah, I find it really interesting about how you, you're talking about a major, major issue, but you're focusing on, you know, frogs is almost like a symbol of that issue, which is a really great tactic for lots of, um, people who start organizations to really be focused on one particular problem that really is representative of [00:17:00] a, of a bigger problem. So, Speaker 2:yeah, I think in saving frogs, we save a lot of other wildlife species and make a better world for humans. A lot of the actions that it takes to protect amphibians make the world a better place in general. And I do agree when I started, say the frogs, I didn't think of it as I'm going to do something different and focus on one species. But I did quickly noticed that most environmental groups are focused on, um, a type of action such as, [00:17:30] um, restoring habitat or a geographical location such as save some valley or something like that. And it has been really good working with frogs, uh, because people did not know a lot about them. And it does allow us to focus in on one, uh, one topic and really get into, yeah. Well, let's talk about your organization. So you started at, you had said you got to a fun from our grant, from the National Geographic that was actually during my phd and for my phd research. Speaker 2:[00:18:00] So when I started saving the frogs, uh, no, we did not have any funding. I had about $3,000. That was my, uh, life savings pretty much, and dedicated that towards getting saved, the frogs going paint off initial costs. And I actually, um, worked unpaid for 18 months before there was enough money to give me any kind of salary. So, uh, starting a nonprofit definitely is not easy. Um, certainly if you don't have wealthy financial connections and it takes, just takes a lot of hard work. [00:18:30] But we are able in this day and age to get a lot done based on having great technology and you know, you can start a website, it doesn't cost much. You can go out and give presentations, you can give free education, you can get people involved, you can use social media to get people involved. So there's lots of ways to run an organization on a low cost though, you know, it's certainly not ideal. Speaker 2:And if we did have a lot more funding we could get a lot more done. Currently we've got a myself [00:19:00] and two part time employees in the USA. We also have two full time employees in Ghana, west Africa where we have an international branch. But you know, we have so many campaigns that we could be working on. I could easily have a staff of 20 if we had funding available. And what is the primary funding sources? Just grants that you, you go after a, generally it's been donations from individuals. So just people who like what we do donating. And we also have memberships and I encourage everyone out there [00:19:30] to go to save the frogs.com/members become a member of say the frogs. We also have merchandise. We have an online store, uh, where people can buy organic cotton tee shirts, tote bags made of recycled plastic bottles and other eco-friendly fraud themed merchandise that helps us raise funds, help spread the word, gives people a easy way to start a conversation about frogs and educate their friends about frogs. Speaker 2:And we also, as he said, have a retail store slash education [00:20:00] center in Berkeley at San Pablo Avenue at the corner of Dwight. Uh, it's near cafe tree s in the Sierra Club and ecology center. And so people are invited to come by there. We actually, um, have occasional events of interest there too. And we have an events page on saved the frogs.com. And yeah, we also do occasionally get some grants. We just received a $24,000 grant from lush cosmetics. So sometimes those grants are from corporate donors. We've gotten fund [00:20:30] funding from nature's path, Inviro kids cereal, frog tape, chase bank. And we recently got a $20,000 grant for our habitat restoration efforts in west Africa from Disney worldwide conservation fund. Interesting. What does a, what does it make up company care frogs? Speaker 2:Well, yeah, we've actually gotten funding from the body shop also in the past. And I think some of these, a cosmetics company, they're into um, animals and that they don't do animal testing so they have some [00:21:00] inherent interest in animals. And also one thing I've noticed through the years is that a lot of our donors tend to be females and so perhaps females have a more caring side of them, I'm not sure. But that kind of goes along with it. So, uh, the body shop and lush cosmetics definitely have environmental giving programs, which I think, I personally think that all corporations should have environmental giving programs cause all corporations have an effect on the environment. Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, we're talking to doc, Dr Carrie Krieger, the founder [00:21:30] of save the frogs.com and you're listening to KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM. This has meant to the madness and carry you the one thing we have, you know, people who listen to this show who might be students who are thinking about, you know, some of the thoughts that you had as you knew you had some passion around this topic or you took this leap and now it's six years later after you took the leap and you know, you've established yourself and you know, you're the brand. If you will have saved the frogs and you've done so many education and so many actions, um, what kind of advice would you [00:22:00] give to a young person who wants to, who has it passionate about a topic like you have, um, and taking action against that passion? Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll start by saying that we're working on forming a save the frogs chapter at UC Berkeley. So if you're a student and you want to get more involved with save the frogs and definitely contact us, you can send an email to contact@savethefrogsdotcomorjustgotothesavethefrogs.com website or stop by our save the Frogs Education Center [00:22:30] at 25 24 San Pablo Avenue. And you can probably even talk to me when you're there in general, if you're interested, certainly in environmental issues, then I think the key is just learn as much as you can. Study hard, try to volunteer at most universities, there are graduate students doing wildlife research. You could probably use your help and you will learn a lot doing that. And also I think it's important too to volunteer at nonprofits. It's [00:23:00] a completely different set of skills you will learn. Then you generally learn while in the university and it's relevant and applicable to everyday life and professional life and broadens your perspective. Speaker 2:So the key, you know, with, with any career when you're starting out, you have to do your work in school, but you also have to volunteer, find an internship. Um, find a men mentor if possible and just work on getting all the experience you can, uh, try to [00:23:30] stick with things that inspire you. If you're doing some volunteer work and it's not interesting, then it's probably not what you should be doing. So I would just keep, um, keep finding things that interest you and keep working with people who, um, you like they do. And then you'll build up a skill set and get ideas of your own with whatever path forward you want to pursue. Speaker 1:And then taking that idea, like you started your own organization, what would you, what would be your advice for starting an organization like you did? Speaker 2:Yes. [00:24:00] Only start an organization. If you are extremely passionate about your mission and you really want to, um, get that mission accomplished because it takes a lot of time and effort and dedication and there's a lot of difficult times and in the nonprofit world there's a very high chance, especially if you start your own nonprofit that you will not be getting paid for some of that time. Certainly in the early, um, weeks, months, possibly even years. So [00:24:30] yeah, start an organization if there's a need for it. And if you're, if you really enjoy the work that you're doing and you really think that it's important. Speaker 1:Okay. Thanks. And the last question I like to ask people sitting in your seat right now is, you know, you've put so much energy into creating this new organization that has this really amazing mission to save frogs. It's like everybody knows frogs are, we loves frogs and you're trying to save them and it's something everybody can get behind. Um, if you were, if everything wants [00:25:00] to cope it completely right for you and your organization five years from now, what would save the frogs look like? Speaker 2:Yeah, we'd have a lot of people trained in how to build wetlands and we'd have a lot of schools, uh, and private land owners, building wetlands. And I would have an entire staff dedicated to building wetlands. Uh, that's, and I bring that up first topic because that's one of our major new focuses. Uh, we [00:25:30] now, um, have the ability to go out and fix land that was previously destroyed. And we've been, we've already started building wetlands at schools and it's really amazing educational opportunity for the students and teachers who are in, who are involved and it's great for the amphibians. And that school then gets an outdoor classroom for hopefully decades to come where they can spend time outside, which is something that in this day and age, a lot [00:26:00] of students certainly in America don't get the opportunity to do just based on the society that we now live in. So yeah, that's one of our huge focuses is building wetlands. And then I also want to have lots of chapters all around the world, whether they're university student chapters or just community chapters in lots of different countries. Speaker 1:Okay, great. Well, there's the vision from Dr Carrie Krieger, the founder of save the frogs. Um, a a Berkeley based [00:26:30] organization that has a worldwide vision to help our amphibian brothers and sisters survive into the next, uh, centuries and millennia or however long they've been. They've been around what, 300 million? So another 300 million years healthfully. So a, and you'd been listening to KLX Berkeley's method to the madness. My name is Ali [inaudible]. If you want to learn more about Carrie's work, you can go to save the frogs.com and uh, thanks for listening everybody and have a great Friday. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Bruce Ames Sr Scientist at CHORI, and Prof Emeritus of Biochem and Molecular Bio, at UC Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick Ph.D. biomedical science, postdoc at CHORI in Dr. Ames lab. The effects of micronutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage, and aging.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show [00:00:30] on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hi there. My name is Renee Rao and I'll be hosting today's show this week on spectrum. We present part two of our two interviews with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Dr Ames is a senior scientist at Children's Hospital, Oakland Research Institute, director of their [00:01:00] nutrition and metabolism center and a professor emeritus of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick has a phd in biomedical science. Dr. Patrick is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Children's Hospital, Oakland Research Institute and Dr Ames lab. She currently conducts clinical trials looking at the effects of nutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage and aging. In February of 2014 she published [00:01:30] a paper in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal on how vitamin D regulates serotonin synthesis and how this relates to autism. In part one Bruce and Rondo described his triage theory for micronutrients in humans and their importance in health and aging. In part two they discussed public health risk factors, research funding models, and the future work they wish to do. Here is part two of Brad Swift's interview with Dr Ames [00:02:00] and Patrick. Speaker 4: Is there a discussion going on in public health community about this sort of important that Rhonda, that one, Speaker 5: I think that people are becoming more aware of the importance of micronutrient deficiencies in the u s population. We've got now these national health and examination surveys that people are doing, examining the levels of these essential vitamins and minerals. 70% of the populations not getting enough vitamin D, 45% [00:02:30] population is not getting enough magnesium, 60% not getting enough vitamin K, 25% is not getting enough vitamin CS, 60% not getting enough vitamin E and on and on, 90% not getting enough calcium testing. It's very difficult to get. So I think that with these surveys that are really coming out with these striking numbers on these micronutrient deficiencies in the population, I'm in the really widespread and with triage, the numbers that tell you may be wrong because the thinking short term instead of long term, really what you want to know Speaker 6: [00:03:00] is what level [inaudible] indeed to keep a maximum lifespan. And our paper discussed all at and uh, but I must say the nutrition community hasn't embraced it yet, but they will because we're showing it's true and we may need even more of certain things. But again, you don't want to overdo it. Okay. Speaker 4: So talk a little bit about risk factors in general. In health, a lot of people, as you were saying, are very obsessed with chemicals or so maybe their risk assessment is [00:03:30] misdirected. What do you think are the big health issues, the big health risks? Speaker 6: I think obesity is like smoking. Smoking is eight or 10 years off your life. Each cigarette takes 10 minutes off your life. I mean, it's a disaster and smoking levels are going down and down because people understand. Finally, there's still a lot of people smoke, but obesity is just as bad years of expensive diabetes and the costs can be used. [00:04:00] Whatever you look at out timers of brain dysfunction of all sites is higher in the obese and there's been several studies of the Diet of the obese and it's horrible. I mean it's sugar, it's comfort food and they're not eating fruits and vegetables and the not eating berries and nuts and not eating fish. And so it's doing the main and the country is painful. Speaker 5: I think that the biggest risk in becoming unhealthy and increasing your [00:04:30] risk of age related diseases, inflammatory diseases comes down to micronutrient intake and people are not getting enough of that. And we know that we quantified it, we know they're not getting enough. And so I think that people like to focus on a lot of what not eat, don't eat sugar and that's right. You shouldn't eat a lot of sugar. I mean there's a lot of bad effects on, you know, constantly having insulin signaling activated. You can become insulin resistant in type two diabetic and these things are important. But I think you also need to realize you need to focus on what you're not getting as opposed to only focusing on what you should not [00:05:00] be getting. Yeah, Speaker 6: a colleague, lowest scold, and I wrote over a hundred papers trying to put risk in perspective. That part to been in pesticide is really uninteresting. Organic food and regular food doesn't matter. It's makes you feel good, but you're really not either improving the environment or helping your health. Now that you're not allowed to say that, things like that in Berkeley. But anyway, it's your diet. You should be worried about getting a good balanced time. So if you put out a thousand [00:05:30] hypothetical risks, you're lost space. Nobody knows what's important anymore and that's where we're getting. Don't smoke and eat a good diet. You're way ahead of the game and exercise and exercise. Right.Speaker 4: And in talking about the current situation with funding, when you think back Bruce, in the early days of your career and the opportunities that were there for getting funding vastly Speaker 6: different. [00:06:00] Well, there was much less money in the system, but I always was able to get funded my whole career and I've always done reasonably well. But now it's a little discouraging when I think I have big ideas that are gonna really cut health care costs and we have big ideas on obesity and I just can't get any of this funded [inaudible] but now if you're an all original, it's hopeless putting it at grant, [00:06:30] I just have given up on it. Speaker 5: Well the ANA, the NIH doesn't like to fund. Speaker 6: Yeah. If you're thinking differently than everybody else you do and they're only funding eight or 9% of grants, you just can't get funded. I didn't want to work on a 1% so I'm funding it out of my own pocket with, I made some money from a biotech company of one my students and that's what's supporting my lamb and few rich people who saw potential gave me some money. But it's really tough [00:07:00] now getting enough money to do this. That's an interesting model. Self funding. Well, Rhonda is trying to do that with a, she has a blog and people supporting her in, Speaker 5: I'm trying to do some crowdfunding where instead of going to the government and then all these national institute of cancer, aging, whatever, which essentially uses taxpayer dollar anyways to fund research. I'm just going to the people, that's what I'm trying to do. My ultimate goal is to go to the people, tell them about this research I'm doing and [00:07:30] my ideas how we're going to do it and have them fund it. People are willing to give money to make advances in science. They just need to know about it. What did you tell him what your app is? So, so I have an app called found my fitness, which is the name of my platform where I basically break down science and nutrition and fitness to people and I explained to them mechanisms. I explained to them context, you know, because it's really hard to keep up with all these press releases and you're bombarded with and some of them are accurate and some aren't and most of the time you just have no idea what is going on. Speaker 5: It's very [00:08:00] difficult to sort of navigate through all that mess. So I have developed a platform called found my fitness where I'm trying to basically educate people by explaining and breaking down the science behind a lot of these different types of website. And it's an app, it's a website that's also an app can download on your iPhone called found my fitness. And I have short videos, youtube videos that I do where I talk about particular science topics or health nutrition topics. I also have a podcast where I talk about them. I'm interviewing other scientists in the field and things like that. And also I've got a news community site [00:08:30] where people can interact posts, new news, science stories or nutrition stories, whatever it is and people comment. So we're kind of building in community where people can interact and ask questions and Speaker 6: Rhonda makes a video every once in a while and puts it up on her website and she has people supporting at least some of this and she hopes to finally get enough money coming in. We'll support her research. Speaker 5: No, I think we're heading that way. I think that scientists are going to have to findSpeaker 6: new creative ways to fund their research. Uh, particularly if they have creative ideas [00:09:00] is, Bruce mentioned it because it's so competitive to get that less than 10% funding. The NIH doesn't really fun, really creative and risky, but it's, you need somebody who gets it. If when you put out a new idea, right, and if it's against conventional wisdom, which I'd like to do with the occasion arises, then it's almost impossible anyway. Speaker 4: Even with your reputation. Speaker 6: Yeah, it's hard. I've just given [00:09:30] up writing grants now. It's a huge amount of work and when they keep on getting turned down, even though I think these are wonderful ideas, luckily I can keep a basal level supporting the lab. I found a rich fellow who had an autistic grandkid guy named Jorgensen and he supported Rhonda and he supported her for a year and she was able to do all these things. Yeah, my age, I want to have [00:10:00] a lot of big ideas and I just like to get them out there anyway. We shouldn't complain. We're doing okay. Right. It's a very fulfilling job. There's nothing more fulfilling than doing science in my opinion. Yes. Speaker 7: You're listening to spectrum and k a Alex Berkley. Today's guests are Dr. Bruce Ames and Dr Rhonda Patrick of Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. [00:10:30] Oh, Speaker 4: the ames test. When you came up with that, was that, what was the process involved with?Speaker 6: Well, how do you devise that? Well, I was always half a geneticist and half a bio chemist and I thought you Taishan is really important. And nobody was testing new substances out there to see if there were mutagens. And so I thought it'd be nice to develop a simple, easy test in bacteria for doing that. That [00:11:00] was cheap and quick. And then I became interested in the relation of carcinogens to mutagens and so I was trying to convince people at the active forms of carcinogens were muted. There were other people in that area too, but I was an early enthusiastic for that idea and anyway, it's just came from my knowledge of two different fields, but that's a long time ago. I'm more excited about the brain now. The current stuff Speaker 4: doing obviously is it's more [00:11:30] exciting. Yeah. Do you both spend time paying attention to other areas of science? Speaker 6: I read an enormous amount and every 10 or 15 years I seem to change my feel of and follow off something that seems a little hotter than the other things and I've been reasonably successful at that, so that's what I liked to do. I am constantly Speaker 5: about all the latest research coming out. I mean, that's like pretty much all I do is I'm very excited about the new [00:12:00] field of epigenetics, where we're connecting what we eat, our lifestyle, how much stress we are under, how much exercise we do, how much sleep we get, how this is actually changing, methylation patterns, acetylation patterns. In our DNA and how that can change gene expression, turn on genes, turn off genes. I mean how this all relates to the way we age, how it relates to behavior, how it relates to us passing on behaviors to our children, grandchildren, you know, this is a field that's to me really exciting and something that I've spend quite a bit of time reading about. So for both of [00:12:30] you, what have been in the course of your career, the technologies, Speaker 6: the discoveries that have impacted your work the most? Well obviously understanding DNA and all the things it does was a huge advance for biology. And I was always half a geneticist, so I was hopping up and down when that Watson Crick paper came out and I gave it in the Journal club to all these distinguished biochemists and they said very speculative. [00:13:00] I said I was young script. I said, you guys be quiet. This is the paper of the century. And it made a huge difference. And there's been one advance after another. A lot of technical advances, little companies spring up, making your life easier and all of that. So it's been fun going through this. Speaker 5: I think, you know, in terms of my own research, which got me to where I'm at now, a lot of the, the technological advances in making transgenic mouse models, [00:13:30] knocking out certain genes, being able to manipulate, doing, inserting viral vectors with a specific gene and with a certain promoter on it and targeting it to a certain tissue so you can, you know, look specifically at what it's doing in that tissue or knock it out and what it's doing and that tissue. That for me is a, been a very useful technology that's helped me learn a lot. In addition, I like to do a lot of imaging. So these fluorescent proteins that we can, you know, you use to tag on, look at other proteins where they're located both tissue wise and also intracellularly inside the cell. Doing [00:14:00] that in real time. So there's now live cell imaging we can do and see things dynamically. Like for example, looking at Mitochondria and how they move and what they're doing in real time. Like that for me is also been really a useful technology and helping me understand Mitochondria. And how they function, dysfunction can occur. So I think a, those, those have been really important technologies for me. Speaker 6: And then computers change biology. Google made a huge difference. You can put two odd facts into Google and outcome Molly's paper. You'd spend years in a library [00:14:30] trying to figure all this stuff out. So Google really made theoretical biology possible. And I think this whole paper that Rhonda did, she couldn't have done it without Google. That's was the technology that opened it all up. This is so much literature and nobody can read all this and remember it all that we need the search. And so is this kind of a boom in theoretical biology? Well, [00:15:00] I wouldn't say there's a boom yet, but there's so much information out there that people haven't put together. Speaker 5: Yeah, people have been generating data over the years. There's tons of data out there and there's a lot of well done research that people haven't put together, connected the dots and made big picture understanding of complex things. So I think that there is an opening for that. And I do think that people will start to do that more and they are starting to do it more and more. Speaker 6: So in the past there really wasn't a theoretical biology that was certainly Darwin was [00:15:30] theoretical you could say and lots of people had big ideas in the unified fields, but it was rare. Speaker 5: I think we have more of an advantage in that we can provide mechanisms a little easier because we can read all this data. You know people like Darwin, they were doing theoretical work but they were also making observations. So what we're doing now is we're looking at observations other people have made and putting those together. Speaker 8: [00:16:00] [inaudible] and [inaudible] is a public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. This is part two of a two part interview with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Speaker 6: Are there, are other scientists active in the longevity field whose work you admire that you would love to collaborate with? [00:16:30] Well or associated with? Always collaborates. So science is both very collegial and very competitive. You think somebody might get their first. But one of the tricks I like in my lab is we have half a dozen really good people with different expertise and we sit around a table and discuss things and it's no one person can know all medicine. And so [00:17:00] anyways, that helps. Yeah. And it might be collaborating with this guy now because both of you contribute something that the other person doesn't have a technique or whatever. And in three years we might be competing with them, but that's why it's good to keep good relations with everybody. But business is the same way companies compete and collaborate. Yeah. Speaker 5: I, I personally am in terms of the field of longevity. Uh, I admire the work of Elizabeth Blackburn [00:17:30] who discovered, uh, won the Nobel prize for be playing a role in discovering the enzyme telomerase Speaker 6: that was done at Berkeley, by the way. Speaker 5: Yeah. And she's now a professor at UCLA. So I would be really excited to set up a collaboration with her. Speaker 6: Well, what are the lab's research plans going forward now? Uh, well, other than Ryan Reinders next two papers. Yeah. Rhonda has these papers to get out. And I'd like to get the whole business [00:18:00] of tuning up our metabolism on firmer ground, convince nutrition people who are expert in one particular environment or most people studied B six for their whole lives or study Niacin for their whole lives or magnesium. And I buy it at the experts in a particular field to think about triage and what protein do we measure that tells you you're short a not getting enough, the vulnerable ones and get that idea [00:18:30] out and do a few examples and convince people that RDA should be based on long term effects rather than short term. And then Rhonda and I were talking the other day and we both got excited about drugs. This money to be made. Speaker 6: So pharmaceutical companies compete on getting new and better drugs and they can be billion dollar drugs but nutrition, nobody can make money out of it. And so there, [00:19:00] do you want to do a clinical trial on Vitamin d the way you do with the drug? Food and drug wants a double blind randomized controlled clinical trial. That's the gold standard for drugs. But it's not for nutrition is nutrition. You have to measure if 20% of the population is low on vitamin D, you don't want to do a study where you don't measure who's low and who's high because otherwise it's designed to fail. So you have to measure [00:19:30] things. Now, vitamin D actually many more deficient, but a lot of vitamins, 10% of lower 20% is low and you can't just lump them in with all the people have enough and do a randomized on one clinical trial and think it's going to mean something without measuring something. Speaker 6: Rhonda has one of her videos on our website to [inaudible] all these doctors who saved the vitamins are useless. They're all based on clinical trials that are designed for drugs [00:20:00] and they don't measure anything. So you have to know who should deficient and then taking that amount of value and makes you sufficient. I think, uh, some interesting re ongoing research in our lab is also the cornea bar. Yeah. So yeah, Joyce mechanical amp is directing a project on the Corey bar. We were deciding how do you get vitamins and minerals into the poor and we made a little bar, which is kind of all the components of a Mediterranean diet that people [00:20:30] aren't getting enough vitamins and all the vitamins and minerals and fish oil and vitamin D and soluble fiber and insoluble fiber and plant polyphenols and we can raise everybody's HDL in a couple of weeks and this is the mass of people aren't eating, they think they're eating good tide aren't and obese people or have their metabolism all fouled up and you were even learning how to make progress there. So Speaker 5: cool thing about it is that you can take a population [00:21:00] of people that eats very unhealthy and they are obese, meaning they have a BMI of 30 or above and you can give them this nutritional bar that has a variety of micronutrients. It has essential fatty acids and some polyphenols fiber and give it to them twice a day on top of their crappy diet. You don't tell them to change your diet at all. It's like keep doing what you're doing, but here, eat those twice a day on top of what you're doing and you can see that, you know after a few weeks that these changes start to occur where their HDLs raise or LDS lower. I mean there's, there's a lot of positive effects, you know, lower c reactive protein. So [00:21:30] I think this is really groundbreaking research because it's, it says, look, you can take someone who's eating a terrible diet completely, probably micronutrient division in many essential vitamins and minerals and such are eating a bunch of sugar and crap and processed foods and on and on and on and yet you can give them this nutritional bar that has a combination of micronutrients in it and you can quantify changes that are positive. Speaker 5: I think that's a really exciting ongoing project in our lab, Speaker 6: Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick, thanks very much [00:22:00] for being on spectrum. It's a pleasure. Absolutely a pleasure. Thanks for having us. Speaker 7: Aw. [inaudible] to learn more about the work aims and Patrick's are doing. Visit their websites. Bruce seems.org and found my fitness.com spectrum shows are archived on iTunes yet we've created this simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/k a Alex spectrum Speaker 3: [00:22:30] and now a calendar of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kreisky joins me to present the calendar on Sunday July 13th the bay area meetup, random acts of science will host an event to do science with paper papers, one of the most commonly available materials with a variety of science applications. Everything from the dynamics of classic paper airplanes launching paper rockets and building structures in [00:23:00] Origami will be discussed. The group will also learn about fibers and paper and how to create their own homemade paper. Raw materials will be provided, but attendees are also welcome to bring their own. The event will be held July 13th from two to 3:00 PM outside the genetics and plant biology building on the UC Berkeley campus. It is free and open to anyone interested in coming basics. The Bay area art science, interdisciplinary collaborative sessions. [00:23:30] We'll have their fifth event on Monday the 14th from six 30 to 10:00 PM at the ODC theater, three one five three 17th street in San Francisco. Speaker 3: The theme is monsters. Professor John Haffer. Nick, we'll introduce the audience to a peracetic fly that turns European honey bees into zombies, author and translator, Eric Butler. We'll explain how literature and film have made the Vampire [00:24:00] a native of Eastern Europe into a naturalized American with a preference for the Golden State Marine biologist David McGuire. Well, disentangle the media fueled myth of the shark from its true nature and Kyle Taylor, senior scientist for the gluing plant project will show off plants that glow in the dark. Admission will be on a sliding scale from absolutely nothing. Up to 20 bucks. Visit basics.com for more info. [00:24:30] That's B double a s I c s.com. On Saturday, July 19th you see Berkeley molecular and cell biology Professor Kathleen Collins will host the latest iteration of the monthly lecture series. Signs that cow Professor Collins will discuss the connections between the seemingly incontrovertible fact of human aging. A fascinating enzyme known as telomerase and malignant cancers. Speaker 3: While cancer cells can grow indefinitely [00:25:00] all normally functioning human tissues will eventually die out. This is because with each success of cell division, the protective cap or a telomere at the end of each chromosome is gradually degraded while the enzyme to limb arrays or pairs this damage in embryos. It is not fully active in adult human tissues. Perhaps to prevent the uncontrollable growth of cancer cells. Professor Collins will discuss telomeres and telomerase function and how they affect the balance of human aging [00:25:30] and immortality. The free public talk will be held July 19th in room one 59 of Mulford Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. The lecture will begin at 11:00 AM sharp science need is a monthly science happy hour for adults 21 and over the pairs. Lightning talks with interactive stations on the back patio of the El Rio bar at three one five eight mission street in San Francisco. Speaker 3: [00:26:00] The theme for July Science Neat is backyard science and we'll feature the science of things right here in the bay area from plants to plankton and beetles. Two bikes. Admission is $4 and the event will be on Tuesday, July 22nd from six 30 to 8:30 PM and now a few of our favorite science stories. Rick's back to present the news. The rocky planets that are closest to our son generally have an iron core [00:26:30] that makes up about a third of their mass that is surrounded by rock that makes up the other two thirds. Mercury is an exception and is the other way around. With a massive iron core that takes up about percent of the planet's mass. This has been difficult to explain. If mercury had been built up by collisions the way that Venus and earth and Mars where we'd expect it to have a similar composition in a letter published in nature geoscience on July six Eric s [00:27:00] fog and Andreas Roofer of Arizona State University report their simulations that suggests that collisions may have stripped away Mercury's mantle, some moon and planet sized rocks would bounce off of each other, sometimes knocking one body out of its orbit while the impactor and the leftover debris coalesced into a planet. Speaker 3: This model is consistent with Mercury's high abundance of [inaudible] elements that have been observed recently by NASA's messenger spacecraft [00:27:30] in their so called hit and run model. Mercury is missing metal would end up coalescing onto Venus or in your report compiled by UC Berkeley. Scientist has definitively linkedin gene that has helped Tibetan populations thrive in high altitude environments to hit or too little known human ancestor. The Denisovans, the Denisovans along with any thoughts when extinct around 40 to 50,000 years ago about the time that modern human began to ascend [00:28:00] and Aaliyah is a version of a gene in this case and unusually of the gene e p a s one which regulates hemoglobin production has been common among Tibetans since their move several thousand years ago. John Habit areas at around 15,000 feet of elevation. Well, most people have Leos that caused them to develop thick blood at these high elevations, which can later lead to cardiovascular problems. The tobacco wheel raises hemoglobin levels only slightly allowing possessors [00:28:30] to avoid negative side effects. So the report, which will later republished in the journal Nature details the unique presence of the advantageous aliyah. Among Tibetans and conclusively matches it with the genome of the Denisovans. This is significant because as principle author, Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology writes, it shows very clearly and directly that humans evolved and adapted to new environments by getting their genes from another species. Nielsen added that there are many other [00:29:00] potential species to explore as sources of human DNA Speaker 8: [inaudible].Speaker 4: This show marks the end of our production of spectrum. I want to thank Rick Karnofsky, Renee, Rau, and Alex Simon for their help in producing spectrum. I want to extend a blanket thank you to all the guests who took the time to appear on spectrum over the three years we have been on Calex to Sandra Lenna, [00:29:30] Erin and Lorraine. Thanks for your guidance and help to Joe, Peter and Greg. Thanks for your technical assistance and encouragement to listeners. Thanks for tuning in and Speaker 7: stay tuned to Calico [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Bruce Ames Sr Scientist at CHORI, and Prof Emeritus of Biochem and Molecular Bio, at UC Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick Ph.D. biomedical science, postdoc at CHORI in Dr. Ames lab. The effects of micronutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage, and aging.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show [00:00:30] on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Hi there. My name is Renee Rao and I'll be hosting today's show this week on spectrum. We present part two of our two interviews with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Dr Ames is a senior scientist at Children's Hospital, Oakland Research Institute, director of their [00:01:00] nutrition and metabolism center and a professor emeritus of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California Berkeley. Rhonda Patrick has a phd in biomedical science. Dr. Patrick is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Children's Hospital, Oakland Research Institute and Dr Ames lab. She currently conducts clinical trials looking at the effects of nutrients on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage and aging. In February of 2014 she published [00:01:30] a paper in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal on how vitamin D regulates serotonin synthesis and how this relates to autism. In part one Bruce and Rondo described his triage theory for micronutrients in humans and their importance in health and aging. In part two they discussed public health risk factors, research funding models, and the future work they wish to do. Here is part two of Brad Swift's interview with Dr Ames [00:02:00] and Patrick. Speaker 4: Is there a discussion going on in public health community about this sort of important that Rhonda, that one, Speaker 5: I think that people are becoming more aware of the importance of micronutrient deficiencies in the u s population. We've got now these national health and examination surveys that people are doing, examining the levels of these essential vitamins and minerals. 70% of the populations not getting enough vitamin D, 45% [00:02:30] population is not getting enough magnesium, 60% not getting enough vitamin K, 25% is not getting enough vitamin CS, 60% not getting enough vitamin E and on and on, 90% not getting enough calcium testing. It's very difficult to get. So I think that with these surveys that are really coming out with these striking numbers on these micronutrient deficiencies in the population, I'm in the really widespread and with triage, the numbers that tell you may be wrong because the thinking short term instead of long term, really what you want to know Speaker 6: [00:03:00] is what level [inaudible] indeed to keep a maximum lifespan. And our paper discussed all at and uh, but I must say the nutrition community hasn't embraced it yet, but they will because we're showing it's true and we may need even more of certain things. But again, you don't want to overdo it. Okay. Speaker 4: So talk a little bit about risk factors in general. In health, a lot of people, as you were saying, are very obsessed with chemicals or so maybe their risk assessment is [00:03:30] misdirected. What do you think are the big health issues, the big health risks? Speaker 6: I think obesity is like smoking. Smoking is eight or 10 years off your life. Each cigarette takes 10 minutes off your life. I mean, it's a disaster and smoking levels are going down and down because people understand. Finally, there's still a lot of people smoke, but obesity is just as bad years of expensive diabetes and the costs can be used. [00:04:00] Whatever you look at out timers of brain dysfunction of all sites is higher in the obese and there's been several studies of the Diet of the obese and it's horrible. I mean it's sugar, it's comfort food and they're not eating fruits and vegetables and the not eating berries and nuts and not eating fish. And so it's doing the main and the country is painful. Speaker 5: I think that the biggest risk in becoming unhealthy and increasing your [00:04:30] risk of age related diseases, inflammatory diseases comes down to micronutrient intake and people are not getting enough of that. And we know that we quantified it, we know they're not getting enough. And so I think that people like to focus on a lot of what not eat, don't eat sugar and that's right. You shouldn't eat a lot of sugar. I mean there's a lot of bad effects on, you know, constantly having insulin signaling activated. You can become insulin resistant in type two diabetic and these things are important. But I think you also need to realize you need to focus on what you're not getting as opposed to only focusing on what you should not [00:05:00] be getting. Yeah, Speaker 6: a colleague, lowest scold, and I wrote over a hundred papers trying to put risk in perspective. That part to been in pesticide is really uninteresting. Organic food and regular food doesn't matter. It's makes you feel good, but you're really not either improving the environment or helping your health. Now that you're not allowed to say that, things like that in Berkeley. But anyway, it's your diet. You should be worried about getting a good balanced time. So if you put out a thousand [00:05:30] hypothetical risks, you're lost space. Nobody knows what's important anymore and that's where we're getting. Don't smoke and eat a good diet. You're way ahead of the game and exercise and exercise. Right.Speaker 4: And in talking about the current situation with funding, when you think back Bruce, in the early days of your career and the opportunities that were there for getting funding vastly Speaker 6: different. [00:06:00] Well, there was much less money in the system, but I always was able to get funded my whole career and I've always done reasonably well. But now it's a little discouraging when I think I have big ideas that are gonna really cut health care costs and we have big ideas on obesity and I just can't get any of this funded [inaudible] but now if you're an all original, it's hopeless putting it at grant, [00:06:30] I just have given up on it. Speaker 5: Well the ANA, the NIH doesn't like to fund. Speaker 6: Yeah. If you're thinking differently than everybody else you do and they're only funding eight or 9% of grants, you just can't get funded. I didn't want to work on a 1% so I'm funding it out of my own pocket with, I made some money from a biotech company of one my students and that's what's supporting my lamb and few rich people who saw potential gave me some money. But it's really tough [00:07:00] now getting enough money to do this. That's an interesting model. Self funding. Well, Rhonda is trying to do that with a, she has a blog and people supporting her in, Speaker 5: I'm trying to do some crowdfunding where instead of going to the government and then all these national institute of cancer, aging, whatever, which essentially uses taxpayer dollar anyways to fund research. I'm just going to the people, that's what I'm trying to do. My ultimate goal is to go to the people, tell them about this research I'm doing and [00:07:30] my ideas how we're going to do it and have them fund it. People are willing to give money to make advances in science. They just need to know about it. What did you tell him what your app is? So, so I have an app called found my fitness, which is the name of my platform where I basically break down science and nutrition and fitness to people and I explained to them mechanisms. I explained to them context, you know, because it's really hard to keep up with all these press releases and you're bombarded with and some of them are accurate and some aren't and most of the time you just have no idea what is going on. Speaker 5: It's very [00:08:00] difficult to sort of navigate through all that mess. So I have developed a platform called found my fitness where I'm trying to basically educate people by explaining and breaking down the science behind a lot of these different types of website. And it's an app, it's a website that's also an app can download on your iPhone called found my fitness. And I have short videos, youtube videos that I do where I talk about particular science topics or health nutrition topics. I also have a podcast where I talk about them. I'm interviewing other scientists in the field and things like that. And also I've got a news community site [00:08:30] where people can interact posts, new news, science stories or nutrition stories, whatever it is and people comment. So we're kind of building in community where people can interact and ask questions and Speaker 6: Rhonda makes a video every once in a while and puts it up on her website and she has people supporting at least some of this and she hopes to finally get enough money coming in. We'll support her research. Speaker 5: No, I think we're heading that way. I think that scientists are going to have to findSpeaker 6: new creative ways to fund their research. Uh, particularly if they have creative ideas [00:09:00] is, Bruce mentioned it because it's so competitive to get that less than 10% funding. The NIH doesn't really fun, really creative and risky, but it's, you need somebody who gets it. If when you put out a new idea, right, and if it's against conventional wisdom, which I'd like to do with the occasion arises, then it's almost impossible anyway. Speaker 4: Even with your reputation. Speaker 6: Yeah, it's hard. I've just given [00:09:30] up writing grants now. It's a huge amount of work and when they keep on getting turned down, even though I think these are wonderful ideas, luckily I can keep a basal level supporting the lab. I found a rich fellow who had an autistic grandkid guy named Jorgensen and he supported Rhonda and he supported her for a year and she was able to do all these things. Yeah, my age, I want to have [00:10:00] a lot of big ideas and I just like to get them out there anyway. We shouldn't complain. We're doing okay. Right. It's a very fulfilling job. There's nothing more fulfilling than doing science in my opinion. Yes. Speaker 7: You're listening to spectrum and k a Alex Berkley. Today's guests are Dr. Bruce Ames and Dr Rhonda Patrick of Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. [00:10:30] Oh, Speaker 4: the ames test. When you came up with that, was that, what was the process involved with?Speaker 6: Well, how do you devise that? Well, I was always half a geneticist and half a bio chemist and I thought you Taishan is really important. And nobody was testing new substances out there to see if there were mutagens. And so I thought it'd be nice to develop a simple, easy test in bacteria for doing that. That [00:11:00] was cheap and quick. And then I became interested in the relation of carcinogens to mutagens and so I was trying to convince people at the active forms of carcinogens were muted. There were other people in that area too, but I was an early enthusiastic for that idea and anyway, it's just came from my knowledge of two different fields, but that's a long time ago. I'm more excited about the brain now. The current stuff Speaker 4: doing obviously is it's more [00:11:30] exciting. Yeah. Do you both spend time paying attention to other areas of science? Speaker 6: I read an enormous amount and every 10 or 15 years I seem to change my feel of and follow off something that seems a little hotter than the other things and I've been reasonably successful at that, so that's what I liked to do. I am constantly Speaker 5: about all the latest research coming out. I mean, that's like pretty much all I do is I'm very excited about the new [00:12:00] field of epigenetics, where we're connecting what we eat, our lifestyle, how much stress we are under, how much exercise we do, how much sleep we get, how this is actually changing, methylation patterns, acetylation patterns. In our DNA and how that can change gene expression, turn on genes, turn off genes. I mean how this all relates to the way we age, how it relates to behavior, how it relates to us passing on behaviors to our children, grandchildren, you know, this is a field that's to me really exciting and something that I've spend quite a bit of time reading about. So for both of [00:12:30] you, what have been in the course of your career, the technologies, Speaker 6: the discoveries that have impacted your work the most? Well obviously understanding DNA and all the things it does was a huge advance for biology. And I was always half a geneticist, so I was hopping up and down when that Watson Crick paper came out and I gave it in the Journal club to all these distinguished biochemists and they said very speculative. [00:13:00] I said I was young script. I said, you guys be quiet. This is the paper of the century. And it made a huge difference. And there's been one advance after another. A lot of technical advances, little companies spring up, making your life easier and all of that. So it's been fun going through this. Speaker 5: I think, you know, in terms of my own research, which got me to where I'm at now, a lot of the, the technological advances in making transgenic mouse models, [00:13:30] knocking out certain genes, being able to manipulate, doing, inserting viral vectors with a specific gene and with a certain promoter on it and targeting it to a certain tissue so you can, you know, look specifically at what it's doing in that tissue or knock it out and what it's doing and that tissue. That for me is a, been a very useful technology that's helped me learn a lot. In addition, I like to do a lot of imaging. So these fluorescent proteins that we can, you know, you use to tag on, look at other proteins where they're located both tissue wise and also intracellularly inside the cell. Doing [00:14:00] that in real time. So there's now live cell imaging we can do and see things dynamically. Like for example, looking at Mitochondria and how they move and what they're doing in real time. Like that for me is also been really a useful technology and helping me understand Mitochondria. And how they function, dysfunction can occur. So I think a, those, those have been really important technologies for me. Speaker 6: And then computers change biology. Google made a huge difference. You can put two odd facts into Google and outcome Molly's paper. You'd spend years in a library [00:14:30] trying to figure all this stuff out. So Google really made theoretical biology possible. And I think this whole paper that Rhonda did, she couldn't have done it without Google. That's was the technology that opened it all up. This is so much literature and nobody can read all this and remember it all that we need the search. And so is this kind of a boom in theoretical biology? Well, [00:15:00] I wouldn't say there's a boom yet, but there's so much information out there that people haven't put together. Speaker 5: Yeah, people have been generating data over the years. There's tons of data out there and there's a lot of well done research that people haven't put together, connected the dots and made big picture understanding of complex things. So I think that there is an opening for that. And I do think that people will start to do that more and they are starting to do it more and more. Speaker 6: So in the past there really wasn't a theoretical biology that was certainly Darwin was [00:15:30] theoretical you could say and lots of people had big ideas in the unified fields, but it was rare. Speaker 5: I think we have more of an advantage in that we can provide mechanisms a little easier because we can read all this data. You know people like Darwin, they were doing theoretical work but they were also making observations. So what we're doing now is we're looking at observations other people have made and putting those together. Speaker 8: [00:16:00] [inaudible] and [inaudible] is a public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley. This is part two of a two part interview with Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick. Speaker 6: Are there, are other scientists active in the longevity field whose work you admire that you would love to collaborate with? [00:16:30] Well or associated with? Always collaborates. So science is both very collegial and very competitive. You think somebody might get their first. But one of the tricks I like in my lab is we have half a dozen really good people with different expertise and we sit around a table and discuss things and it's no one person can know all medicine. And so [00:17:00] anyways, that helps. Yeah. And it might be collaborating with this guy now because both of you contribute something that the other person doesn't have a technique or whatever. And in three years we might be competing with them, but that's why it's good to keep good relations with everybody. But business is the same way companies compete and collaborate. Yeah. Speaker 5: I, I personally am in terms of the field of longevity. Uh, I admire the work of Elizabeth Blackburn [00:17:30] who discovered, uh, won the Nobel prize for be playing a role in discovering the enzyme telomerase Speaker 6: that was done at Berkeley, by the way. Speaker 5: Yeah. And she's now a professor at UCLA. So I would be really excited to set up a collaboration with her. Speaker 6: Well, what are the lab's research plans going forward now? Uh, well, other than Ryan Reinders next two papers. Yeah. Rhonda has these papers to get out. And I'd like to get the whole business [00:18:00] of tuning up our metabolism on firmer ground, convince nutrition people who are expert in one particular environment or most people studied B six for their whole lives or study Niacin for their whole lives or magnesium. And I buy it at the experts in a particular field to think about triage and what protein do we measure that tells you you're short a not getting enough, the vulnerable ones and get that idea [00:18:30] out and do a few examples and convince people that RDA should be based on long term effects rather than short term. And then Rhonda and I were talking the other day and we both got excited about drugs. This money to be made. Speaker 6: So pharmaceutical companies compete on getting new and better drugs and they can be billion dollar drugs but nutrition, nobody can make money out of it. And so there, [00:19:00] do you want to do a clinical trial on Vitamin d the way you do with the drug? Food and drug wants a double blind randomized controlled clinical trial. That's the gold standard for drugs. But it's not for nutrition is nutrition. You have to measure if 20% of the population is low on vitamin D, you don't want to do a study where you don't measure who's low and who's high because otherwise it's designed to fail. So you have to measure [00:19:30] things. Now, vitamin D actually many more deficient, but a lot of vitamins, 10% of lower 20% is low and you can't just lump them in with all the people have enough and do a randomized on one clinical trial and think it's going to mean something without measuring something. Speaker 6: Rhonda has one of her videos on our website to [inaudible] all these doctors who saved the vitamins are useless. They're all based on clinical trials that are designed for drugs [00:20:00] and they don't measure anything. So you have to know who should deficient and then taking that amount of value and makes you sufficient. I think, uh, some interesting re ongoing research in our lab is also the cornea bar. Yeah. So yeah, Joyce mechanical amp is directing a project on the Corey bar. We were deciding how do you get vitamins and minerals into the poor and we made a little bar, which is kind of all the components of a Mediterranean diet that people [00:20:30] aren't getting enough vitamins and all the vitamins and minerals and fish oil and vitamin D and soluble fiber and insoluble fiber and plant polyphenols and we can raise everybody's HDL in a couple of weeks and this is the mass of people aren't eating, they think they're eating good tide aren't and obese people or have their metabolism all fouled up and you were even learning how to make progress there. So Speaker 5: cool thing about it is that you can take a population [00:21:00] of people that eats very unhealthy and they are obese, meaning they have a BMI of 30 or above and you can give them this nutritional bar that has a variety of micronutrients. It has essential fatty acids and some polyphenols fiber and give it to them twice a day on top of their crappy diet. You don't tell them to change your diet at all. It's like keep doing what you're doing, but here, eat those twice a day on top of what you're doing and you can see that, you know after a few weeks that these changes start to occur where their HDLs raise or LDS lower. I mean there's, there's a lot of positive effects, you know, lower c reactive protein. So [00:21:30] I think this is really groundbreaking research because it's, it says, look, you can take someone who's eating a terrible diet completely, probably micronutrient division in many essential vitamins and minerals and such are eating a bunch of sugar and crap and processed foods and on and on and on and yet you can give them this nutritional bar that has a combination of micronutrients in it and you can quantify changes that are positive. Speaker 5: I think that's a really exciting ongoing project in our lab, Speaker 6: Bruce Ames and Rhonda Patrick, thanks very much [00:22:00] for being on spectrum. It's a pleasure. Absolutely a pleasure. Thanks for having us. Speaker 7: Aw. [inaudible] to learn more about the work aims and Patrick's are doing. Visit their websites. Bruce seems.org and found my fitness.com spectrum shows are archived on iTunes yet we've created this simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/k a Alex spectrum Speaker 3: [00:22:30] and now a calendar of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kreisky joins me to present the calendar on Sunday July 13th the bay area meetup, random acts of science will host an event to do science with paper papers, one of the most commonly available materials with a variety of science applications. Everything from the dynamics of classic paper airplanes launching paper rockets and building structures in [00:23:00] Origami will be discussed. The group will also learn about fibers and paper and how to create their own homemade paper. Raw materials will be provided, but attendees are also welcome to bring their own. The event will be held July 13th from two to 3:00 PM outside the genetics and plant biology building on the UC Berkeley campus. It is free and open to anyone interested in coming basics. The Bay area art science, interdisciplinary collaborative sessions. [00:23:30] We'll have their fifth event on Monday the 14th from six 30 to 10:00 PM at the ODC theater, three one five three 17th street in San Francisco. Speaker 3: The theme is monsters. Professor John Haffer. Nick, we'll introduce the audience to a peracetic fly that turns European honey bees into zombies, author and translator, Eric Butler. We'll explain how literature and film have made the Vampire [00:24:00] a native of Eastern Europe into a naturalized American with a preference for the Golden State Marine biologist David McGuire. Well, disentangle the media fueled myth of the shark from its true nature and Kyle Taylor, senior scientist for the gluing plant project will show off plants that glow in the dark. Admission will be on a sliding scale from absolutely nothing. Up to 20 bucks. Visit basics.com for more info. [00:24:30] That's B double a s I c s.com. On Saturday, July 19th you see Berkeley molecular and cell biology Professor Kathleen Collins will host the latest iteration of the monthly lecture series. Signs that cow Professor Collins will discuss the connections between the seemingly incontrovertible fact of human aging. A fascinating enzyme known as telomerase and malignant cancers. Speaker 3: While cancer cells can grow indefinitely [00:25:00] all normally functioning human tissues will eventually die out. This is because with each success of cell division, the protective cap or a telomere at the end of each chromosome is gradually degraded while the enzyme to limb arrays or pairs this damage in embryos. It is not fully active in adult human tissues. Perhaps to prevent the uncontrollable growth of cancer cells. Professor Collins will discuss telomeres and telomerase function and how they affect the balance of human aging [00:25:30] and immortality. The free public talk will be held July 19th in room one 59 of Mulford Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. The lecture will begin at 11:00 AM sharp science need is a monthly science happy hour for adults 21 and over the pairs. Lightning talks with interactive stations on the back patio of the El Rio bar at three one five eight mission street in San Francisco. Speaker 3: [00:26:00] The theme for July Science Neat is backyard science and we'll feature the science of things right here in the bay area from plants to plankton and beetles. Two bikes. Admission is $4 and the event will be on Tuesday, July 22nd from six 30 to 8:30 PM and now a few of our favorite science stories. Rick's back to present the news. The rocky planets that are closest to our son generally have an iron core [00:26:30] that makes up about a third of their mass that is surrounded by rock that makes up the other two thirds. Mercury is an exception and is the other way around. With a massive iron core that takes up about percent of the planet's mass. This has been difficult to explain. If mercury had been built up by collisions the way that Venus and earth and Mars where we'd expect it to have a similar composition in a letter published in nature geoscience on July six Eric s [00:27:00] fog and Andreas Roofer of Arizona State University report their simulations that suggests that collisions may have stripped away Mercury's mantle, some moon and planet sized rocks would bounce off of each other, sometimes knocking one body out of its orbit while the impactor and the leftover debris coalesced into a planet. Speaker 3: This model is consistent with Mercury's high abundance of [inaudible] elements that have been observed recently by NASA's messenger spacecraft [00:27:30] in their so called hit and run model. Mercury is missing metal would end up coalescing onto Venus or in your report compiled by UC Berkeley. Scientist has definitively linkedin gene that has helped Tibetan populations thrive in high altitude environments to hit or too little known human ancestor. The Denisovans, the Denisovans along with any thoughts when extinct around 40 to 50,000 years ago about the time that modern human began to ascend [00:28:00] and Aaliyah is a version of a gene in this case and unusually of the gene e p a s one which regulates hemoglobin production has been common among Tibetans since their move several thousand years ago. John Habit areas at around 15,000 feet of elevation. Well, most people have Leos that caused them to develop thick blood at these high elevations, which can later lead to cardiovascular problems. The tobacco wheel raises hemoglobin levels only slightly allowing possessors [00:28:30] to avoid negative side effects. So the report, which will later republished in the journal Nature details the unique presence of the advantageous aliyah. Among Tibetans and conclusively matches it with the genome of the Denisovans. This is significant because as principle author, Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology writes, it shows very clearly and directly that humans evolved and adapted to new environments by getting their genes from another species. Nielsen added that there are many other [00:29:00] potential species to explore as sources of human DNA Speaker 8: [inaudible].Speaker 4: This show marks the end of our production of spectrum. I want to thank Rick Karnofsky, Renee, Rau, and Alex Simon for their help in producing spectrum. I want to extend a blanket thank you to all the guests who took the time to appear on spectrum over the three years we have been on Calex to Sandra Lenna, [00:29:30] Erin and Lorraine. Thanks for your guidance and help to Joe, Peter and Greg. Thanks for your technical assistance and encouragement to listeners. Thanks for tuning in and Speaker 7: stay tuned to Calico [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Toody Maher, founder of Pogo Park, discusses her project to help Richmond’s tough Iron Triangle neighborhood by redesigning a park and creating a safe area to foster free play for the neighborhood’s childrenTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening to KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM, university of California and listener supported radio. And this is method to the madness. I show coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here on Calex that is dedicated to celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host [inaudible] and today we are lucky to have 2d Mara with us. Hi Judy. Hello Ali. Uh, and today is the founder of pogo parks coming out of Richmond, California. So to the, um, welcome to the show. Thank you. And um, the first question I always ask [00:00:30] entrepreneurs like yourself is, give me the problem statement. You know, entrepreneurs are all about solving problems. What problem are you trying to solve? Speaker 2:Probably is all about children in play. I mean to, um, in order for children to be happy, they ha, oh, in order for children to be healthy, they have to play. And um, so I go into so many of these city parks and they're just so boring and so dull and homogenous and they all look the exact same. And when you really [00:01:00] break it down, there's very few opportunities for children to actually play in, in, in wild ways, which, which is how kids need to be playing. So kinda my first thought was just play leads to health. Speaker 1:[inaudible] define wild way. It's an interesting term. You just use. What's, what's wild? Speaker 2:Well, always, I mean the, I think back into my own childhood, you know, I think that if you look at every entrepreneur, anyone who's done well or has been successful creatively, [00:01:30] they've started a company, they've created a product, they've made a movie. If you look deep into their childhood, they all had rich play ex experiences. So for me, um, I mean I started a s uh, um, uh, block newspaper. I, um, created a, um, play inside our garage and sold the tickets to people in the neighborhood. Um, we, we, we built forts in dark rooms and um, [00:02:00] you know, all sorts of things. So, um, rich play experience, kind of this wild play where you can, um, build whatever comes in to your mind, set up games. I mean with no adults to come in and tell you what to do and not do. Um, yeah, that's wild play. Speaker 1:Okay. Thanks for that definition. Um, and so that's a really, you know, um, exciting and noble cause and I believe you went to cal, right? Yeah, Speaker 2:I did 1978 [00:02:30] to 83 and I took one year off and I lived in Switzerland, but I also actually was a part of the UC Berkeley, the volleyball team. So I was the first wave of scholarship athletes. So I like saying that I got into Berkeley, not because of my brains, but my Bronx. Speaker 1:Was that, is that all because of the title nine stuff? Correct. Speaker 2:So first wave of, um, scholarship athletes at cau. Speaker 1:Wow. Okay. So, um, so you were a volleyball player [00:03:00] was, um, and then you graduated, you probably didn't graduate with the intent to go and, um, champion wild play. So give us a little bit about your background and your story and how you arrived at this kind of problem you wanted to solve. Yeah. Speaker 2:Um, so I graduated in 1983 and the funniest thing is I had never first second thought what I was gonna do next. I never even thought about a career. And suddenly that I was out and I had no clue. Like, now I've got to earn money and what am I going to do? [00:03:30] So I knew somebody who owned a bond firm in La and my job was sitting in this back room with absolutely no windows with four men who smoked. And my job was to type up the transfers on bonds. If someone would buy a bond from the bank that I would actually type up the transfer slip. And, um, so, uh, they made me wear nylons. My nickname is 2d, but my given name is Susan. But I've never been called Susan my entire life. [00:04:00] They insisted they put a plaque on my desk saying Susan. Speaker 2:So they took away my name. They may be wearing nylons. I was stuck in a room with four men smoking. And I just, um, so it turned out that I had played volleyball in Switzerland and one of my, uh, teammates cousin was the inventor of the swatch watch in Switzerland. So I just thought, wow, man, I mean, um, could I import the swatches into the United States? So you'd seen them before they'd come. And so I had seen them when they had [00:04:30] just come out in Switzerland. They hadn't come to the United States yet. So what I would do is I'd go to the bond from each day, from eight til five. I had my hour lunch, then I'd get on a bus and go to the, um, I'd go to the, uh, business library at UCLA and started to look up how to import, export, how to start your company, what is cashflow, what's a balance sheet. And then I contacted swatch and just happened to get the head guy who, uh, who asked [00:05:00] me to do a business plan. And I said, sure, I'll do one. Then I went straight to the UCLA Library to figure out what is a business plan. And I wrote it. So when I did the presentation that he'd said, you know, your, your plan is, is bold, but, um, I like your Chutzpah. And he gave me the starting capital to, to found swatch watch in the 11 western states. Speaker 1:Wow. So, um, you're the reason when I was [00:05:30] in school, like I was in school in the 80s that everybody had swatches in California. Is that right? Yeah. So that, that was my main thing is just getting sweat and swatch was so creative and, and uh, so for our younger listeners who maybe don't know what, what was watching, it was a huge craze in that time. What was it? W I made it so cool Speaker 2:was that, um, they took a Rolex watch, which was one of the, you know, the, the greatest, the watches in the world. And they took, they figured out how to slim the amount of part parts down by a third [00:06:00] and then have a robot make the entire thing. So they were very cheap, inexpensive wrist watches from Switzerland for $30 at retail. And then they got all these incredible artists to come and make them really a design. Um, statement and this, um, kind of formula of just inexpensive, high quality, but high design just took off and swatch became a phenomenon. Like we started with zero in sales in 1983 [00:06:30] and then, uh, and then in our region in 1986 that the watch sales were 30 million. Wow. In three years, three years since swatches became a phenomenal 30 million in $86. It's a lot more right now. So part of it, and then one of our most, uh, the most successful product at swatch was the clear swatch watch. Speaker 2:Um, so what I did was I started another company called fun products and we made the world's first clear [00:07:00] telephone with lights. So, um, that was a fortune magazine's product of the year in 1990 and then in 1990 then I was also, um, awarded inc magazine, um, entrepreneur of the year. So kind of my thing was taking an idea and making it happen. So anything that you can think of, Oh, you know, why don't we make it clear telephone? Why don't we sell these watches all over California? Just give me idea. And I can make it happen. So that's kind of my specialty. But my goal was always [00:07:30] like, I'm going to get one day, I'm going to get so rich. And as soon as I get rich, I'm going to open a city park. Cause the city parks have always been my passion. Just like there's so much good can come from great city parks. Speaker 2:I mean, it's a watering hole for the entire community. You know, it's where everyone, the one thing that everyone loves is to just go places and sit and watch other people. You know, that's kind of like some sort of a town square and you can go and get, um, food [00:08:00] and your children can play and you, you don't know what neighbors that you're, you're gonna see. And, um, you know, just, uh, so I'd always wanted to, you know, that I've kind of like, uh, yeah, really excited to Kinda create these public spaces that are just incredibly vibrant. Speaker 1:Speaking with a Tutee Mar, the founder of pogo parks out of Richmond, California here on method to the madness on k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM. I'm your host deleon is, are. So that's a good transition [00:08:30] to talk about, you know, you went on this entrepreneurial adventure, I'm assuming you didn't have to wear nylons anymore and you could use your name that you wanted to use. Correct. So, um, you start out on this path, you learned that you had the power to do whatever you wanted, you built companies, sold a bunch of products, and then somehow you ended up in Richmond and you started to actually execute on your passion of, you know, helping parks be something Speaker 2:that are the vibe part of a vibrant community. So take us through that story [00:09:00] of how did you transition from this kind of, you know, very entrepreneurial, but a more, um, private company focused, uh, type of efforts to what you're doing now? Yes. So, uh, when it turned out in 1987 that I wasn't getting rich, uh, my partner just said, look, you know, rather than waiting to get rich to do your part, just do it. You know, I never even thought about that and just doing it. So I was living in Richmond and I just started going to every single park in Richmond. [00:09:30] I, I w that Richmond has 56 parks and I went to all of them and probably the ones that I was most taken with are eight little small pocket parks that the city calls play lots and uh, two of the best play lots. Speaker 2:It was one Salono play lot right by my house. Then I fell in love with. And the second one was elm play a lot, which is a little pocket part lose in the middle of the iron triangle neighborhood in Richmond that's known throughout the Bay of just being [00:10:00] a really challenged, violent high poverty, um, inner city neighborhood. And um, so I kind of, uh, I just, um, started doing a lot of research and I looked at all like the greatest parks around the world. Like, what made them work, what were parks used for? What are the, who are the leading thinkers on parks, what are the history of parks and basically took all the best ideas from, from, from around the world and then applied it to creating this model [00:10:30] in Richmond. I'm calling Pogo Park, you know, where'd you come up with the name? Let's suppose apart from, well we've tried, I mean I'm from the business world. Speaker 2:Everything's branding, you know, so we got brand all things. So what is the name of this different kind of place space? You know, we wanted to have something that wasn't, if people were speaking English or Spanish or Vietnamese that everyone could kind of say it. It wasn't like a boy or a girl. So we were just, you know, again, sitting around one night and my partner Julie was thinking like play [00:11:00] opportunities, something po and then it just suddenly come up. Pogo. So it's a good little name, Pogo Park. It's pretty catchy. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys just were recognized by Google. That's actually how I found you about um, this, uh, grand bearer giving. And you got, I think you guys, we got a part of the top tag. Yes. So, um, of a thousand nonprofits that applied that they selected 10 finalists and the 10 finalists all got 250,000 and then ongoing [00:11:30] technical support from Google. Speaker 2:That's great. So branding's working people are finding you guys and recognizing you. That's so exciting. So, um, today I wanted to kind of, I was looking on your website and there's some elements of, of parks, uh, and it's probably from your research and now your experience and how many parks have you at this point kind of touched and, oh, just like hundreds. I mean now, once he's, I mean now all I do is when I go around, I look at parks I or look at any kind [00:12:00] of spaces that could be children's play spaces, airports, hospitals. I mean, so our thing is just creating like a different kind of play space that is really focused on letting children experience different kinds of play. There's creative play, there's physical play, linguistic play, social, emotional play. Um, so how do we create these spaces that give children the most wide variety of play opportunities? Speaker 1:Okay. So, um, [00:12:30] you're, you're always looking for the opportunities to create these play spaces. And it sounds like you've now in your research and your experience, gotten some best practices that you've published. And I'd like to kind of talk about some of these. I think there's some interesting insights here. You have. So one of them is that you use community designers and builders, which I think is really interesting because there's other models out there for doing in a neighborhood beautification. But a lot of times it's bringing a bunch of outside people in. Right. So tell me a little bit of how [00:13:00] you came to that principle of Pogo. Speaker 2:Yeah, probably if I was operating in a different, in a high income neighborhood, I would have a t a a different approach like that way, like good design can be brought in from people from, from the outside. And the people who are living there have such respect for quality that they're not gonna trash it. But in inner city neighborhoods, the only way is to build from the inside out. I mean you got to engage people who live right there. So they are a part of the whole [00:13:30] transformation of the neighborhood. And the transformation of these city parks is the vehicle for the transformation of the neighborhood. Um, so that is what I realized when my little shit blew into elm play lot, uh, in the iron triangle, I had no intention of starting to work out in a neighborhood like this is just fate had it. I got on my ship and the ship started sailing and I landed in the city park and this is where I had to start my work. So it had, it demanded a different [00:14:00] kind of approach. Speaker 1:And, um, in a place of the iron triangle, which has a lot of gangs and all, and not a lot of, um, I wouldn't think that there's a lot of, you know, um, interior designers who are experts in play are, I know who a kind of designer you have, but how did you find this community partners in this neighborhood that you were in? Speaker 2:The community partners? Yeah. Well, so, um, we've just been so blessed with kind of who we've met. So the first thing is I just started going and knocking on doors of all the neighbors that live there and [00:14:30] started getting to know them. And it took, maybe it took about four years of just constantly showing up for people to actually start acknowledging me, talking to me because it's just so much distrust of, uh, you know, a tall, white liberal person coming in to try and change things. And everyone's seen this procession of failed experiments that everybody comes in and in time that everybody leaves. So [00:15:00] it's really been like a trial by fire to get to know all these different folks. And, um, now we've really become this kind of this real family. And um, and uh, what I just started doing is like every time that I would raise money, I'd, I'd hire somebody or keep pumping money into the community so people were getting a job and their job is we have to transform this park and your job is [00:15:30] to help us make this park work and you're going to be running it, you're going to be in charge and we're gonna. Speaker 2:So we really have like this wonderful band of, of rookies who have learned to do everything that you could possibly think of. So, um, but one of the main things is we have learned a new language how to do the design, how to create the park on site. So rather than handing it over to a designer who comes in, give, get some input from the community [00:16:00] and then goes and does a design for the community, the community's actually generating the entire design themselves and it's like been working fantastically. Then the, we were blessed of connecting with this company called scientific art studio. They're a fabrication shop, really famous for and known for building the Mitt at the giant's Ballpark, that big million in left field. And they just finished a three point $5 million renovation of the [00:16:30] zoo at the playground, at the San Francisco Zoo. And so, um, the owners, Ron and Marin husband and wife are, are just, um, their businesses in the iron triangle. Speaker 2:So they're eight blocks from our park. So they'd been like, our key partners is teaching and training local people how to turn their ideas into reality. So Ron and Marin are basically like our master trainers of help us build and they've got incredible confidence [00:17:00] with the c. The city of Richmond is confident in these folks as well for helping us now that we've got this wonderful partnership going is the neighbors are building the park themselves and it's all passed all the certification and the Ada and the whole thing. So, and the, the money that we're raising to redevelop this park is in large part being directed back into the community, the community. So the community is getting jobs [00:17:30] to actually do the work themselves. So as everybody walks by, everybody knows somebody who's working there. So it's been, I mean in the few years we've occupied this one park that we've not had a single incident of graffiti or tagging or anything because that's just such a respected place. Speaker 2:The of the park again, elm play lot. Ellen play lots of trees. Yeah, this was the first kind of flagship first juggle park. This is the first pilot and it's really like right now [00:18:00] if, and just come down to eighth street in Richmond and see it. It is spectacular. So you were talking about you starting kind of getting involved with parks in the 80s but pogo park itself started relatively recently, it sounds like. Yeah, it started in that January, 1997 so it's been like a seven year journey of getting here. Okay. And I'm listening to today Mara, the founder of Poco Park here on Calex and this is method to the madness, a show dedicated [00:18:30] to the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host, Ali and his are, and some of your other design principles I think were really fascinating. You talked about dedicated staff, which I think is a big part of what you do, right? Speaker 2:As you, you feel like the transformation can't just be the park, you have to have someone there who's helping to facilitate the freed, the play. Is that right? You're right. I mean the one innovation with Pogo Park, which isn't really an innovation, it's just what we're doing is ripping off the idea of the great ideas from, from around the world. There's many countries [00:19:00] now that have people that are trained in something called play work and they are trained. How do you use play to foster the healthy development of children? So in Norway, in Denmark for for instance, and also in England play that you can get a degree in play work. So these folks come into the playground and they seed the playground each day for high, high quality play. Like if it's a hot day, they're going to put out water or some sort of water play. Speaker 2:If it's a, [00:19:30] um, they'll put out, um, things called loose parts of sticks and stones and natural materials and fabric and boxes of, so children can kind of can create their own environment rather than having the environment in posts like, OK, here's a slide and you've got a slide on this mean kids can, you know, turn a log into a spaceship and they can. So, uh, so what we want to do is install play workers at Allen play lot is just have people there all day long that their job is create [00:20:00] this incredible mansion, uh, imaginative, high quality place space for children that is your job and create a safe and welcoming environment for all the families. So you're, you know, you're like the vibe master make, make everyone come in and have a good vibe and give kids a place to play. And this becomes the watering hole of the entire community. And even now people are starting, they're trying to buy houses around our park because [00:20:30] they all just want their kids to run outside and go to the only safe green space in the iron triangle right now. Nice. I think that I want that job title, vibe master prejudism. Uh, okay. Here's another, a w of your design principles I found. Um, interesting cause Speaker 1:you know, this is your kind of feels like you're building your template cause you want to do this a lot of places. So, um, you talk about, um, having basic amenities, there's must have amenities that must be there. [00:21:00] Um, comfortable places to sit, shade, drinking fountains and restrooms. So how did you arrive at that conclusion? Speaker 2:Well, if you ask anybody in the entire world, if you go to a playground, what, what do you want? And everyone's gonna have that same thing. Like first of all, you know, you gotta have a drinking fountain. You know, if kids are playing the, you know, you gotta get some water. Second, you gotta have a bathroom cause you, you, you don't want to go to the playground with your four kids. You got one kids kind of go to the bathroom or where are you going to go? And then, um, parents, the whole thing [00:21:30] about going to the park is you want to sit in the shade, chill, talk with your, talk with the other parents. Oh, watch your children plays. You don't have to deal. You know, I mean this is the good, it's supportive of the parents. Right? And then if you ever want to make a public space come to life, bring food in and bring music, you know, so, uh, we manage and our first pogo park at Allen play a lot in Richmond of getting all those things in. Speaker 2:And um, [00:22:00] the a snack bar was really tough cause I went to the city of Richmond, said, hey, look, the community would really like to have a snack bar and we want to cook our own food and we want to serve it. And the city said, hey, today, great idea. The only problem is we have an ordinance that prevents the sale of foods from city park. So no go. Um, so we worked with, um, a group of nonprofit attorneys in Oakland to come in and work and it took us two years to work with the city to overturn [00:22:30] the ordinance to allow the sale of food from a city park. So Pogo Park in Richmond is the pilot. So we've got food, we've got bathrooms, we've got cool places to Shay to, to sit in the shade and we've got just an outrageously great play environment. Speaker 1:Wow, that's a, that's amazing. You're actually overturning laws to get what you, what you want and that I guess, you know, we'll definitely engender the, the trust that you talked about building with the [00:23:00] community. They see you as a major partner in getting stuff done, which is really exciting. Uh, what occurs to me though is how would you, how would you be able to, this is a long project. How would you think about replicating this in other places when you know, the timeframe? I want to be shorter to actually make the impact. Sounds like it's been a years long project. Yeah. Speaker 2:Well, we got kind of have like the pogo park and big Taj Mahal pilot ship. And then we also have these little, the little tugboat pogo park where we can go [00:23:30] in to any kind of unclaimed forgotten land and quickly and rapidly build a children's play space and then put a shipping container in for $3,000 that doubles as an office and just put somebody there in a hat with a badge and a radio that looks official. And suddenly in two, three months you've got a playground. So, uh, that could run these high quality play experiences for children. So there's, that is kind of where I see as the [00:24:00] future of Pogo Park is we kind of have an all a cart, um, items that we, but, but um, the, we can go two ways of doing like this deep community transformation by reclaiming and doing it like big time or do these small little, um, guerrilla tactics. Speaker 2:Like just go out there and set it up and get it occupied, which by the way, that we're already, that we've been doing. Um, so we've had that we have a couple of parks that are, are pop-up [00:24:30] parks that we've just gone into and claimed and operated that were low in cost and deepen impact. So two ways. And that's exciting. Um, and you know, because one of the keys is having a staff, uh, there, it seems like that's a big question for the organization is how do you fund that? If you're going to have be hiring people, which I think, you know, objectively outside that seems like a brilliant move because then you have a community member whose livelihood [00:25:00] is tied to the park success or they're going to be much more motivated to actually, you know, drum up the support and get things going. Speaker 2:But how do you view that in terms of, you know, making that a long term sustainable position that you're creating? Yeah, so I mean I, I've sat and thought about this many, many a night. Uh, cause this is the, the key thing is how do you sustain the funding for the staffing? And you know, it really just looking from a business perspective, you have to have the diversified income [00:25:30] stream. So it could be quarter of the funniest going to come from the government. So it could be the city of Richmond is coming in with city staff on certain days. So that cuts part of our staffing down. It could be then it's also gonna be, um, contracts with, um, uh, you know, our earned income, um, that we've got, um, you know, and then, uh, foundation. So it, it's, it is going to be a diversified income stream through multiple [00:26:00] ways of, of raising the funding for staffing. Speaker 2:Okay. All right. Um, and we know one more question I want to ask and kind of the, um, you know, w intrigued me was this idea of the oasis of safety. And I know that the staff is a big part of that, but um, that's, you know, really when you talk about transformation, like a place like the iron triangle from, at least from an outsider perspective, all you hear is, oh, it's so dangerous. You know, you don't want to be there. You don't want to be there in a night. Falls. [00:26:30] You're talking about an oasis of safety in the middle of that. It. Tell me a little bit about how you think about that. Well, our little Park Allen play lot has become that. I mean it is become the one place that all good guys who want to do bad things now don't go and do it there. Speaker 2:Cause the community's really has taken it back. And the beautiful thing around this one park is there's all the houses that face it look right over the park. And everybody who's living there is totally investing in keeping [00:27:00] out it, add it up. And um, the way that it's become safe is it's busy all the time and somebody's always there. So if you're going to go do your s your bad thing, everyone knows, go do it over there. And uh, so there's been tremendous respect from the community and also a lot of people doing the bad things are relatives of people or people who are at our park know all their families. So, um, it does feel like there's some [00:27:30] sort of code to not touch it, you know. And, um, the main thing though is to take, to keep that there is to you know, is to keep investing in having this staffing cause really that you think about at work, we're spending $72 million on the police in Richmond, somebody too. Speaker 2:And that it might cost 100,000 in staffing time to just create this oasis for literally thousands of kids. Cause the iron triangle is one of the most densely populated com has [00:28:00] more kids per square foot than any other neighborhood in Richmond. When we looked at the census would, I'll tell you the numbers are low because there's a lot of families don't report. Um, there's something like 3,500 children within a five minute walk of elm play a lot from age oh to 11. So there are thousands of kids all locked inside watching video games, just blowing their mind, drinking sugary drinks, and suddenly here's this place that they know if your school's not doing well, if you're [00:28:30] not doing wallet home, that you can always walk outside Monday through Friday, there's an adult at the park, you're going to go to an environment that's safe, where people care about you. Speaker 2:And it's just been, a lot of kids were having problems at home cause their parents are just, you know, out. They're just coming there all day long. So it's really become, you know, it's safety comes in numbers. The more people are there occupying it and using it, the less problems that we're having. So that's really exciting. We're talking to Tutti Mar, the founder of Pogo Park [00:29:00] out of Richmond. Um, and um, today we have about 30 seconds left. Give me five years from now, if everything goes exactly the way you would want it, would pogo park, you're doing pogo park would be sending teams out to help communities build these little pop up parks all over the country that we'd be sharing all of our best prac practices at no charge to all with the underlying goal is like, let's as a country become known as a place that is creating [00:29:30] great magical places for children that would play cause with high quality play is the way to really build healthy and innovative and managed of children. Well, that's a great vision Speaker 1:from a great entrepreneur and one of cal zone and alumni. So thanks for coming back on to campus and talking to us. Thank you. Um, and this has been method to the madness on KALX Berkeley. You can learn more about pogoPark@pogopark.org. Is that right? D correct. And you can learn more about us by going to the calyx website and searching for method to the madness. [00:30:00] Uh, thanks for joining and have a great Friday. Everybody. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Interview with Cal student Ben Einstein about his venture VapeSecret, which is an e-cig company that is focused on helping smokers quit smokingTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. Speaker 2:[inaudible] Speaker 3:you're listening to Kale expert, clear 90.7 FM. This is the method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex, dedicated [00:00:30] to the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host aliene Huizar. And today we have the founders of vape secret with us. We have Shawn Linehan. Hey Sean. How's it going? Good, how are you? Good. And Ben Einstein. Yeah. What's going on? What's up man? And then we got Dave, you lead. Thank you for having us. Hey, thanks for coming on the show. And this is really exciting cause we have three entrepreneurs with us who are actually cal students. That's right, right? Yeah. Okay. So two of your seniors and Davey, you are a junior. The Junior. Okay. [00:01:00] This is very exciting. And um, we reversed the first question we usually ask on this show is your, you've created something out of thin air. It's came from your brain, right? So give me, why don't we start with you, Ben. Give us the problem statement. Why did you, what is, what is the problem that you're trying to solve? Speaker 1:Hi Ma, I'm actually glad you asked me that because, uh, I think the problem that we had was mine. Um, Sean and I were actually working on a different project, [00:01:30] um, and we're working on the 11th floor of a building and every 20 minutes he would leave to go smoke. And it's really hard to develop any software if you're a coder is leaving every 20 minutes. Um, and so I said, why don't you try e-cigs and he said I did and they all suck. And I said, okay, let's make a good one. And 44 days later we did. What was the project you guys were working on? Yes, so we were [00:02:00] still working on, on that project as well. We're kind of doing two simultaneous things. It's crazy, but it actually is managing to work. Um, the other project is einstein.com which is an intelligent product recommendation Speaker 3:software. It's a mobile app that we're working on and is also making significant progress. Okay, great. So maybe we'll get to that later on in the day of the program. So, um, so you wanted to make an e cigarette cause you saw your friend Ben not be able to Sean not be able to [00:02:30] work for more than 30 minutes in a row, although a lot of coders have the same problem. Speaker 1:Yeah. Um, it was also the scent, um, the owner that, you know, smokers have, we're working in a small space and that was obviously, uh, not pleasant for everyone else. Um, but most of the Burton Lee's my friend, I didn't want him to die. So a good friend. Yeah. Smoking smoking's really bad. My grandfather died from smoking. I've always been pretty against it. And so I didn't really know much about the e-cig business. Sean [00:03:00] did a little bit of research and tried a couple, a couple of products and didn't like them. And so we figured out what the problems were with the existing product on the market. And what are those problems? Um, the most popular electronic cigarette is called blue. Uh, it's a little cigarette looking device, um, lights up blue at the end and it's very small and it doesn't produce a lot of vapor and smokers required a large amounts of smoke or in our case [00:03:30] vapor in order to be satisfied. Speaker 1:So it's not satisfactory. Um, it's also limited in that it's small in size, which means the battery's small, which means that you can't use it all day straight. Um, and we wanted to create a product that, first of all, it delivered the experience of smoking, uh, while simultaneously being able to do that all day while simultaneously being able to be affordable to people like us college students. Um, [00:04:00] and so we looked around and there were similar products that we wanted to create on the market, but there were being marketed for over 60 bucks. And that's out of the price range of most college students. And it's definitely out of the price range of putting entrepreneurs who are going broke. So, um, on here slash students, some students who are, who are on a student budget and spending all their extra money on trying to build, build the company. So, um, it came down to quality, um, [00:04:30] and affordability and, um, you know, we, we were hoping, we were luckily able to, uh, go through the entire product development, um, stage in, in just, uh, 40 days. And, uh, we were proud to have developed a pretty good product. Speaker 3:So what I want to get to your product development, we wanna tell that story. Um, but first tell me a little bit more about, it seems like from someone who's not really into this industry, that the e-cig market and in vape [00:05:00] market has exploded over the last few years or kind of they're everywhere, where you didn't used to see them very often. Tell us a little bit about the, the kind of macro backdrop again of the industry that you guys are trying to disrupt. Speaker 4:Yeah. So the industry has been around for a good number of years. Five to six years was actually invented by a dentist and in Asia, which is interesting, but you know, it, it, it's one of those products that sounds too good to be true. [00:05:30] You know, you get all of the benefits of smoking without any of the, the bad things. Right. And so for the past couple of years, um, you know, people were using them, they were being sold online, but there was so much pessimism about the product because nobody had ever really done any studies on them. Uh, so, you know, more, more and more research was done on the products. Uh, basically we find that although they're not perfectly safe, they are so Speaker 3:much safer [00:06:00] than traditional cigarettes, but they started to gain mass appeal. Um, and you couple that with companies like blue, who we, we don't really like, and they don't think they're that good of a product, but them having a lot of money in their bank accounts has, has really fueled the distribution of e-cigs. So you're 100% right in saying that they've totally exploded recently. Um, you know, it's interesting though because the products that have exploded are, are not the best products on the market. They're just the companies that have the most [00:06:30] money to have a blue, which is, you know, funded ridiculously. And then you have the other guys which are actually owned by big tobacco trying to keep people smoking. And I think they caught the realization that these products weren't going to go away and people were going to use them and people did want them and they joined the bandwagon. Speaker 3:So you're talking, you're listening to Shawn Linea and one of the founders of vape secret and all three founders are here helping us to learn more about the [00:07:00] product that they've come to market and they're also cal students to seniors and juniors. This is very exciting to have some cal local entrepreneurs on the program. So you guys are telling the story about, and this program by the way, as method to the madness on KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And so you were telling us about, you guys were building this software program, einstein.com and um, and Ben, you realize that Shawn was going [00:07:30] out and smoking every 30 minutes. Like, Hey, let's do another project to building a e-cig. And I would assume this is my belief. But you were not at e-cig expert when you came up with the idea. Is that right? I'm not at all. Speaker 1:I, uh, I, I was not an expert at then, but I can pretty confidently say that I'm an expert. Now. Tell me Speaker 3:about like when you, you had the idea, and I'm always interested in this kind of, this spark of innovation, like the thunderbolts hits, you're like, Whoa, [00:08:00] that's an idea. I know nothing about it, but it's an awesome idea as to take us from that moment to how you 44 days later, whatever it was, had a product. Speaker 1:So, uh, so first of all, Sean and I are not, uh, engineers in the sense that we don't, we're, we're primarily business guys. Um, we're primarily nerds and second, secondly, we're primarily business guys. And, um, the electronic cigarette idea kind of came about, um, for, for two reasons. First [00:08:30] of all, obviously it was practical because, you know, I didn't want John to smoke cigarettes anymore. But also, um, starting a company with no profitability in forecast is very difficult. Um, especially if you don't have much money. And so we saw this as an opportunity to solve a problem that we had and we assumed that other people had, but also to make money, um, so that be able to find that through our lives so that we can actually work on einstein.com. Um, [00:09:00] electronic cigarette industry is huge. And what we noticed is that aside from there not being a good product for this specific type of, of, of use case that we envisioned, it was also very complicated. Speaker 1:Many people didn't know about this. Um, it's almost as if, you know, you take an alien and introduced an iPhone too. I mean, you wouldn't really understand how to use it or how to, how to get, how to, how to get the value out of it. And a lot of electronic cigarette e-tailers are websites, um, had many, many products and it's very, [00:09:30] very confusing and overwhelming for someone to go through that and figure out what to use. So we saw our space as being the simplest electronic cigarette you can buy in that it literally takes 30 seconds to go through our entire website and fully customize an electronic cigarette. You get to choose from 20 different flavors. It's all done in a very, um, user friendly and beginner focused, uh, way so that people [00:10:00] who know nothing about electronic cigarettes can successfully purchase from us quickly, easily, and with confidence because we explain everything in such simple terms. Speaker 1:And so we sell one product, we have one unit, it's available in six different color combinations. Um, we literally walk you through the process. We tell you exactly what you're getting wide good, what's good about it. Um, and we're really focusing on the people that have been thinking about it. I've [00:10:30] heard about it, but haven't really pulled the trigger on getting electronic cigarettes. And we kind of want to be that first step, that stepping stone, taking them away from smoking these dangerous cancer causing traditional cigarettes and moving them on to this new, this new type of, of electronics of electronic cigarette so that they can get all the benefits of smoking without dying young or through the business car talking. I get that you are a good business guy. He's just giving [00:11:00] me exactly the problem and what you're trying to do to make it easy to solve. Speaker 1:But it take us a little, a little detour here and talk about the engineering side of it. So you guys have, you wanted to build an actual product that like does some stuff right? That creates more of a vapor and is cheaper. And so how did you go about the manufacturing process of coming up with the actual product? Um, so from a, from an engineering perspective, the electronic cigarette [00:11:30] consists of three components. First of all, as a power source, which is a battery, uh, second of all is what's called an atomizer, which actually, uh, takes the vapor, takes the liquid and vaporizes it. And the third component is the liquid that you're actually uprising. What we did is we did a huge amount of research into various manufacturers of these components. Um, we did a huge amount of testing on these products. I would get prototypes, give them to Sean, he'd smoked [00:12:00] them for a couple of days, tell me what was wrong with them. Speaker 1:And we work with suppliers all around the world who made this stuff to put together the unit that we have today, which is basically a collection of components from a bunch of different places. And the way we selected each part was first of all, for again for quality, which is our core. And second of all, for affordability, we wanted a product that was sub $30. Um, and so the, for example, our [00:12:30] liquids, um, they're made with food grade, all food grade materials. Um, our flavorings come from Italy. They're, they're food based flavorings. Um, again, we're trying to move away from the general idea of electronic cigarettes as being dangerous and trying to attach some sort of, of tangible, um, healthfulness though as much as we can in this type of product. So that we can actually say that we've [00:13:00] done our, our, our, our, our, our best effort in terms of trying to make this product as good for you as possible. Speaker 1:So, um, you know, the, the battery we selected was, was selected with, with people like Shawn in mind, people that smoke all day, they need a product that lasts all day. A battery can't die because that's my biggest fear. That's our biggest fear is that someone's battery dies and then they go to seven 11 to buy another pack of cigarettes are real vision is helping people quit. And we've done that very successfully. [00:13:30] And the way we do that is by, by creating a product that lasts all day, it's got a USB charger in the bottom so you can literally plug it into your, your phone charger or your laptop and use it while it's charging, which is a very unique feature. Um, our atomizer is some, one of the simplest on the market. And most importantly in terms of, in terms of, of, of, of our, our consciousness towards the environment is [00:14:00] everything about our product is rechargeable and we fill up. So unlike most of the products on the market where you buy a product and then you have to keep on buying the refills and cartridges and all sorts of new components, which you then throw out. Our product is fully rechargeable and we fillable. So not only is it more affordable for the customer, but in our opinion it's also better for the environment. Um, so yeah, that's basically the, the, the focus that went into the engineering side of what we were doing. Speaker 3:Okay, thanks. [00:14:30] You were listening to Ben Einstein, one of the founders of vape secret, a new company formed here on the UC Berkeley campus dedicated to helping people soft smoking by creating a affordable high quality e cigarette. Um, and I have the founders with me here, Sean Linehan, Ben ice, the name Davey Lee. Um, so 44 days. That's a quick time. So how did you get, it sounded like you had to test some different components and stuff. So how, [00:15:00] how did you get the capital to, go ahead. I'm Shawn you and tell me about how, how did that process work? How were you, how many atomizers did you have to buy before you found the right way? Speaker 4:Yeah, so it's, it's, it's actually really interesting. So we didn't take sort of the bottom up approach to engineering our product. Like you might imagine some companies do. We didn't go into cad and, and mock up all of these individual components that we then have to tool ourselves. We recognize that we [00:15:30] only really had a couple thousand dollars of our personal savings left and we needed to make due on that limited bandwidth. So what we did is exactly what Ben was saying was like, we, we went to factories with premade components and figured out how can we put them all together. Right? Um, so the, the capital constraint was pretty significant. We, we took some of the money from our other company, which we also completely self-funded just from our savings accounts, um, and bought [00:16:00] dozens of dozens of these atomizer components and just kept testing them and when they wouldn't work, uh, and some, some of them just outright didn't work, which is ridiculous. Speaker 4:You know, you're getting samples from companies that were trying to become our main suppliers for these components and they chest were broken, um, and cross them off full list. Yeah, exactly. Those guys we don't even have to worry about, even if their first sample doesn't work, you know, it's just not worth that. Um, so, you know, Ben Ben took the efforts in terms of [00:16:30] getting all of the different sample products and the, the engineering components of it. Um, and he did all of these different pieces simultaneously. So it wasn't like, okay, now we've got to find the perfect this, finished that and then find the perfect that and finish that. No, he, he sourced batteries and clear misers and liquids and atomizers and all of these different pieces concurrently so that we could, you know, test all the different configurations. Um, and you're right, 44 days was, it was a sprint. Speaker 4:So, you know, we had [00:17:00] this other company that we didn't want to ignore for too long. So Ben, while he was doing that, I then went with Davey to work on the website. I don't, we're primarily an ecommerce driven product. We don't sell in stores, we sell exclusively through our website. And so Davie and I worked on trying to perfect a beautiful design for our site, making it sleek, making it intuitive, making it the type of experience that I would feel comfortable having my mom on. [00:17:30] Right. And funny story, she actually did, did quit using our product, which I'm really proud of for my mom, my stepbrother, my brother and my stepdad and my best friend all quit using my product [inaudible] and myself. Quit, quit using it. So you know, that that was the aesthetic that we set out to do. And you know, luckily between Davey and I and Ben's input as well on the design, we were able to make something that, that we're really proud of. Um, Speaker 3:that, that's amazing. Congratulations. I mean, your [00:18:00] return on investment right there is huge. If you have your whole family quit complete smoking cigarettes and you have to, I mean when you say quit, I mean you still smoke, you smoked a e-cigarette. Right? And I've, I've been interested in this. I've seen like people and I was in an airport last week and it's like guys smoking and E-cigarette in the airport. And I was wondering like, what's the, um, there's no actually no second hand smoke issues or bathe second hand vapor issues [00:18:30] with an e-cigarette. Speaker 4:No. So, uh, at least according to the most recent studies, and I'd cite the name if I can think of it off the top of my head, but, uh, basically the, the deal is the only detrimental piece of the second hand vapor is exposure to nicotine. Now to your average healthy adult, non infant adult, like, you know, anybody 10 and up, um, and 80 and down, this has absolutely no problem. Or like, if you're pregnant or you're an infant, [00:19:00] I still would not recommend, you know, having vapor blown directly in your face. It's just, there's no proof that it's very bad for you, but you know, nicotine is in a high enough quantity, not good for you. Um, but for your average person, I mean this, this really has very little health health side effects. The, the vapor itself is comprised of a, of a thing called propylene glycol. It sounds scary, but honestly it's one of the most heavily researched [00:19:30] just components, um, over the past eight years. And it's found to be completely safe. It's in inhalers, it's in food. I mean, it's literally in a significant portion of the products we use on a day to day basis. Um, and that's what makes it visible, the vapor visible, um, and it's safe. So, Speaker 3:so when, when smoking is bad for you, it's not necessarily the nicotine that Speaker 4:creates a lung cancer. It's the smoke, certainly not the, the, the deadliness [00:20:00] of, of cigarettes is significantly, significantly not associated with the nicotine. Nicotine is a chemical is bad for you in high doses, like very high doses, but in the dose, that level that you're using cigarettes, it's not the component that's hurting you. The component that hurting you is the smoke itself, right? Like you're literally burning plants. There's thousands of other chemicals added to cigarettes and that's what kills you. Yeah. Speaker 3:Okay. [00:20:30] Very interesting. So we're talking to Shawn Lenahan, then Einstein and Dave, you either the founders of vape secret. It is a e-cigarette company founded here on the UC Berkeley campus. They're all students here at cal and have launched this new enterprise. When did you guys launch? Speaker 1:We launched a late July, late July, July. We, uh, we, we actually launched a website and a, it's funny, we actually got, um, interviewing by cvs in [00:21:00] San Francisco, um, on television and that was kind of the jumpstart for our business. And um, the, the core for what we're doing is not you selling your product today. We put you on a regimen where we wean you off of nicotine completely, which is kind of backwards. Our business professor theta sort of this, Speaker 4:yeah. Basically we, we aim to lose our customers over time. And the way we do that is [00:21:30] we, Speaker 1:you start you off at at a certain nicotine content and we slow you month to month. We send you new liquids every month that lower at, at increasingly lower nicotine contents. Shaun started off at 18 milligrams, I think. Yup. Um, and he, and now he's, what are you smoking now? Speaker 4:Three. And it's funny because for the first two months I actually was at the 18, um, for a longer period of time than I should have been. Cause I didn't want to, we were running out of inventory. Right. We had a very little capital. So we kept having to [00:22:00] continue to buy small quantities, smaller quantities, bigger quantities at a time. Um, so I was using the 18 cause we had a lot of that and I didn't wanna use the inventory that we were going to sell to our customers to help them quit. So, you know, somebody, somebody that we would, that we would have as a customer starting today would quit much faster than the 10 months that it's taken me. They would quit over a period from lot of nicotine to no nicotine, three to four months, just for frame of reference, 18 milligrams. Speaker 4:So you said, yeah. [00:22:30] What does that equate to? Like how many packs a day is that? It's about, uh, between like three quarters of a pack to a pack a day. Um, it's depending on how often you actually use the device. It works for somebody who's up, even up to two packs a day. It's really the strongest, uh, levels that we recommend using. And how does the, so the, it's almost a years of a service. It's not just a product. Correct. Cause you're sending people the lick, the smokeable liquid, if that's the right term. So a Cho, what are the economics [00:23:00] on our liquid versus packs of cigarettes? Yeah. So one, one liquid, which we sell for $5 is equal to about three packs of cigarettes in terms of time spent using it. Um, so one, one liquid lasts an average person. I'm a little bit under two, a little bit more than a week, which is about the same that somebody would have about three packs of cigarettes. Um, unless they're very heavy smokers. But with the vape it's about a week with the one bottle. So we're [00:23:30] literally saving lots of money. Right. I mean I was a smoker for 15 years, but that was years ago when I quit cause I'm an old guy. So what was the, uh, what are the packs of cigarettes go forward today? The ones hours I was, were Speaker 1:about $7 on the average in Berkeley. Wow. So just right there just to save money, you should, you should buy vape secrets, right, man, we actually have a calculator on our homepage where we can tell you exactly how much you'll save this year. [00:24:00] Uh, if you switch, if you switched to electronic cigarettes. Nice. Um, okay, so you guys started in July, so you've been around for about three quarters now and you, you're showing your whole family as quit basically. It's not a like, yeah, you're on the road to quitting. Tell us some more, like how many have you sold? How many stories do you have of people quitting? Um, we, we try to keep in touch with all our customers. Some people it's easier. Some people it's harder. We actually have discovered [00:24:30] that we appeal more to older people because of the simplicity of the site. Speaker 1:Um, because of the simplicity of the product. And older people are generally not as, uh, into communication, especially the email and things like that. Um, so there's been a little bit difficult for us to, to keep track of those numbers. Exactly. Um, we've taught, we've helped dozens of people quit and we've sold hundreds of units. Um, so, um, the business is growing and our only constraint right now is [00:25:00] really, um, is just, you know, getting the word out there. Um, getting, getting people to learn about it and word of mouth has proven to be our strongest marketer. Uh, we hope maybe this, this presentation might help us also a little bit. Um, but the, the important thing for us is that we want to be able to maintain this experience, this personalized experience, um, without getting that diluted by, by getting [00:25:30] too many customers too quickly. Speaker 1:And so, you know, every package we s we ship out is hand packed by us. There's, you know, we, we hand write a note to every customer and we try to develop a really strong personal connection and relationship with them because smoking is an emotional thing. It's a very personal experience. And we're, you know, who are a bunch of kids that come into someone's life who's been smoking for 30 years and tell them, hey, we can help you quit. Um, it's, it's a very bold statement for us to make and it's something we don't take lightly [00:26:00] and we try as hard as we can to make that experience as pleasant and as professional as possible. So it's only, you guys have two businesses, but you're also seniors. A cow. What majors do you guys have? A, I'm a business major. We've mastered the art of, of being good students while simultaneously, uh, trying to be good entrepreneurs. So you are your business as well then? I know I'm not a business major, I'm just the business guy. Um, I [00:26:30] uh, I made development studies major. Um, I learned about developing economies and things like that. Um, but I read a lot about business and uh, Shawn teaches me everything that's important to know that he learns in Oz. You Speaker 3:guys are, uh, it's April. So graduation is staring you in the face and you have two businesses. Yeah. Is that the plan, you guys are going to go full force after May. Speaker 4:That's, that's the plan. Yeah. And we're not, not gonna [00:27:00] not gonna hesitate, you know, actually can't wait to graduate so we can really sit down and focus. Right? Like focused is the biggest issue. Um, with school you, you have varying schedules all the time. You have different wake up days every day, right? Sometimes you have class at eight, 10, 1112 and we're, we're ready to be able to, to truly dominate. Speaker 3:Yeah. So did tell me about the path to domination you felt like your, and we're speaking with the founders of vapes, secret hearing methods [00:27:30] of the Madison on KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM, Ben Einstein, Sean Lennon and David Lee. These guys who started this business while trying to graduate from cal, they're about to do that. So I want to know now you're going to graduate. The shackles are off. You can drink from the capitalist Downton as much as you want. So what, what's the difference? How are you going to get from where you are today to selling thousands of these helmets? How big a market did you save? This was Ben Speaker 4:big, is it? [00:28:00] So last year it was a one point $3 billion industry and it's projected to hit 15 billion over the next 10 years. Speaker 3:Okay. So if you can get half, half of a percent, you're doing well, how are you going to get there? Speaker 1:Um, we were really working on trying to get our, um, our supply chain in place so that we can actually, uh, produce these products in, in really high quantities. Um, right now we're kind of doing small dots [00:28:30] runs, which keeps our costs higher than they should be or merged. Immersions are still fairly healthy. Um, but we can always do better in that sense. Um, but again, it's in test. This is, um, this is something that we started out of necessity and we realized that this was an opportunity to really help people quit smoking. And so we're actually passionate about it. We really care about this. And you know, anyone we meet who smokes weed, you try and convince them to quit, not just so [00:29:00] we can get a customer, but also cause we, we think smoking's bad. Shawn is in better shape than he's ever been. Speaker 1:He, he doesn't get tired running up and down stairs anymore. Um, not that programmers do that much, but he actually goes to the gym more than any of us do. Um, but you know, for us the, the important thing was, um, you know, what did Winston Churchill said, don't let your school and getting in the way of your education. Um, we, we've learned more in the past year working together than we probably have [00:29:30] in all four years of college. And so at this point, um, where we're going to go, just in terms of the time commitment. Also for me, I'm putting myself through school. So, um, you know, the financial and the financial responsibilities of paying for college, um, have been, have been, uh, pretty serious on my family and you know, the opportunity to be finally be able to work full time, um, on what we're trying to do. Um, the ability to dedicate not only all [00:30:00] of our physical time, but our mental capabilities. I mean, if we're studying for a test until three in the morning and then we try to come into work the next morning, we're not 100%, whereas if we don't have tests anymore, we can actually dedicate our entire, you know, she be you in our brains to, um, to building new businesses Speaker 3:and thanks to you guys for coming on today and telling your story about how you sorted vape secret. We'll have to have you on another time to talk about Einstein. Um, but you've been listening to the band, Einstein, Sean Lenahan [00:30:30] and David lead of the founders of vapes secret. They're a seniors here on campus about to graduate and go full force into this, um, e-cigarette company that I've created. Um, and to learn more that you guys can go to vape secret.com right. That's the URL to check out. Speaker 1:That's correct. And actually there's a, a special cow promotion for Berkeley students. Uh, if you place an order, you put into words, go bears into the coupon code and you'll get 10, 10% off of your [00:31:00] sale. Speaker 3:Alright, we got a plug in at the aunt's, a nice word fan. And uh, thanks for coming on guys. You've been listening to KLX Berkeley's method to the madness. Have a great Friday. Everybody. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Steven Glaser is the Intelligent Infrastructure team leader for CITRIS and a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Glaser talks about wireless sensor networks, geothermal energy testing and his earthquake simulation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Brad Swift. Today's interview is with UC Berkeley Professor Steven Glaser. Stephen is a faculty member of the Department of Civil and environmental engineering. He's currently [00:01:00] the intelligent infrastructure team leader for citrus, the center for information technology research in service to society. He has also a distinguished affiliated professor at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. In our interview, Stephen Glaser talks about engineering education, his research and field projects Speaker 4: onto the interview. Steven Glacier, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Thank you for having me. With increasing frequency, [00:01:30] I hear engineers suggesting that engineering education needs to engage students imaginations and provide more opportunity for them to design and build things from day one when they start an education in engineering. What are your feelings about the future of engineering education? Well, it's in a way, it's two pieces. So what kids aren't doing nowadays is playing with physical things when they're young. So they're not necessarily running around [00:02:00] in the woods with their friends tearing stuff up. They're not working on cars, they're not building radios. So when they want to go out and do things in a laboratory or do things in the field, it's very difficult for, so that would be something good to bring back another hand if they want to do computery things, everything's fine and dandy because they have the experience doing that. Speaker 4: Then my lab, I have my own machine shop. I have a lays and bandsaw and mill and whatnot. I'm lucky to have students. I have [00:02:30] to up now, they're very good machinists, so my students all have to be able to do things with their hands. I've been lucky enough to attract them. Is it too late to sort of introduce that into the curriculum in college as an undergraduate? Would engineering benefit from a studio? Oh, I think it would, and I think you're starting to see that. I guess it's the maker movement. It's sometimes called our dean. Sastry is very into that now and do you feel that a unconventional Speaker 3: [00:03:00] path to becoming an engineer as an advantage Speaker 4: in a way, but it's not cost effective? Everybody has an unconventional path. I think you'd gain a lot. I think you see engineering more broadly and I think we see different types of solution. With a broader background, Speaker 3: how would you characterize the conventional path in engineering? Speaker 4: The conventional path would be somebody who you know who's good in math and science. Hopefully [00:03:30] somebody who was interested in things and they've taken math and science in high school. They'd come in, they'd do their engineering, which is quite focused because we have so much to learn and go off to work and they're going to be better at certain things. When I finished high school, I was going to go off to become a philosophy major, which I did. I didn't take math senior year. I didn't need it. I was going to be a liberal arts students, so the students that [00:04:00] do have this better background, they're always going to be better than math than me because they learn the fundamentals. When they were young, instead of me having to pick it up when I was 30. Speaker 3: Your path, the choices you made going into philosophy and then pretty radically altering even from that into being an operations engineer. How were you thinking about engineering at that point? Speaker 4: I'd never followed a path. I kind of followed what I was interested in and [00:04:30] things led to another. So I always read from a very, very young age and you know, literature, technical pieces. I always worked on things, whether it was building models when I was very young or go carts, fixing cars and whatnot. So I'm always was a very good mechanic, studied philosophy and that whole time I was working construction. I got an operating engineer's union and while I was still in college, so I went through the apprentice program. They're learning [00:05:00] to operate heavy equipment, fix heavy equipment, then worked as a driller for about eight years. So I goes fixing things, working with soils. Then I worked for a year in Iraq. My boss there, uh, had a background of being a operating engineer and then going to school and him and his wife talked me into, oh, you need to become an engineer. Speaker 4: And I don't know, one thing led to another and here I am. I never planned on being a faculty member. In fact, when I finished [00:05:30] my phd I didn't want to be a faculty member. Pieces just happened. And here I am at Berkeley. What sort of drilling were you doing? A, we are drilling deep foundations, so uh, might be a five foot diameter hole, a hundred foot deep, which we then use for foundations, for buildings, for retaining walls, for subway excavations of subway stations. I did a lot of work on the red line in the subway in Washington DC. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:06:00] our guest today is Stephen Glaser and the next segment he talks about two of his research projects, one in the lab and one in the field. This is k a l X. Berkeley. Speaker 4: Can you give us an overview of your research? We have a number of projects [00:06:30] different yet they have some fundamental similarities. One of the projects laboratory earthquakes. I designed and make a particularly fine nano seismic sensor. So I can measure displacements down to a pico meter that's tend to the minus 12th is very, very small and I can measure signals that accurately for very wide frequency band from about 10 kilo hertz to two megahertz. So I got like the ultimate seismometer. [00:07:00] So then I can set up experiments in the lab where I can control the geometry. So I know all the mathematical descriptions of the system. I have my perfect sensors, I can load in conditions that I know what's going on. And then when I pick up the signals from the small earthquakes we, cause I can start looking at very small details like what are the little motions that lead up to large sliding. Speaker 4: So I have a block of plexiglass on a very big plate of plexiglass. [00:07:30] So my earthquake is when the whole block moves. But something has to happen before we get frictional movement. And I believe you keep looking small and smaller. You have these small little contact disparities. You have to have little pops at these small areas. And then when do you get a chain reaction? Each pop releases a little energy to the contacts around it and you know at some magic point, enough energies released that all the contacts start popping and you [00:08:00] get an earthquake. And from the lab to a real world setting, how are you translating that kind of work into something that could be in the field? Good question. And it's not universally accepted that material we're using, we're not using rock, we're using plexiglass, but at the stresses we're working with at models ductal rock very well. Speaker 4: So rock that might be on parts of the San Andreas. There's theories [00:08:30] and lots of work that shows that the way the geometry of contacts is fractal, so it scales self similarly, so might surface on a small slider block actually can scale in terms of geometry to a very large fault. We just had a paper in nature that certain earthquakes have lots of high frequency shaking, so the ground shakes more rapidly. The higher frequencies are more dangerous because it reaches, the [00:09:00] resonant frequency is structure. So there's more damage to Hoku. Earthquake was particularly rich and high-frequency. How do you explain it? So my student had some ideas and it turns out it has to do with how long the fall teals between earthquakes. So we could show the mechanism, the lab, the mechanism to fields and now we have an explanation of what's going on in the field instead of strictly an observation. Speaker 4: But I can control things in the laboratory and see that yes, it was due to this [00:09:30] factor. So the healing is the time between earthquakes when the stasis is stable, right? Cause the surfaces, chemical reactions, they start to melt together on some level. Even simply putting a block on a table, the longer it sits, the frictional resistance does go up because it's chemical reactions that are giving us a sheer strength. And then some of your other research, [00:10:00] a big project looking at snow hydrology and the Sierras. This important because the state gets about 65% of the water from snow in the Sierras. And it turns out we don't know beans about how much snow is in the Sierra. So you have Frank Gerkey goes out a few times in the winter. He goes to let's say 40 sites and the Sierra sticks this pole in the ground and that really isn't giving us much information about how much snow there is. Speaker 4: So what we do is we go into a basin, [00:10:30] we'll pick a patch, approximately a square kilometer, put in let's say 20 sensing stations, each one measuring snow depth, temperature, humidity, solar radiation, soil moisture at four depths in the soil and matrix suction at four depths in the soil. We report back the data every 15 minutes. And then we might put like an American river basin, which we're working on now. We'll have 18 such [00:11:00] networks right across the basin and we end up with the network of networks. So each of these local networks sends back to our selves here. They're by cell phone, modem, or satellite modem. The data will come back here. So then you can correlate all that and create real time. We have real time data and our application we're working on now is hydroelectric generation. So we're working with the state, [00:11:30] with the Department of Water Resources. Uh, we're starting to work with PG and nee and southern California Edison. Speaker 4: On doing demonstration projects and ultimately then with the success of these, you would want to see this proliferate across the Sierra. So then I'll do the whole Sierras and we'd like to take these pieces and make a larger system, which would be a water information system for the state where we would also bring in groundwater information around water, isn't it regulated and we [00:12:00] know really little about the ground water situation, but the general project would be through citrus, our center for information technology research for the interest of society. That's one of the CIS psi four centers that were started by Grey Davis and were interdisciplinary in the building. We have people from law, from art production, from various engineering, all working together, sitting together to look at societal problems. And part of the goals [00:12:30] of the CIS PSI institutes, the four across the state is to take the knowledge from campus and put it in a form that it will help the financial wellbeing of the state and the physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, the state Speaker 7: [inaudible]. You're listening to spectrum oil expert. [00:13:00] Our guest today is Stephen Glaser. In the next segment, he talks about his geothermal project. Speaker 4: Let's talk a little bit about your geothermal research you're doing and Oh, we have an interesting experiment because we can blow ourselves up. First, we'll start with the idea of enhanced geothermal systems. So we usually think of a geothermal [00:13:30] system like that, the geysers up by Santa Rosa where there's natural water and you stick a straw on the ground and steam comes up and runs your generator. But that's exceedingly rare. I think that geysers might be the only field in the world that's making profit without any kind of subsidy. So what we do have as lots of hot, dry rock, there's hot rock everywhere. So the ideas, you would drill two wells, you would connect them through fractured rock, you'd [00:14:00] pump cold water down one well, push it through the fractured hot rock and pull hot water out of the other and make a cycle. Run that through the generator, then pump it back down. Speaker 4: There's been a lot of work. We're slowly moving towards that becoming a reality. But there's this idea that you could use super critical CO2 so that CO2 under very high pressure, that it's not quite a liquid. It's not quite a gas, but it has good heat carrying capacities, but very low [00:14:30] friction, very low. A Dutch would say viscosity cause it's a fluid. However, nobody has done any measurements with the heat capacity, the state behavior of super-critical CO2 going through hot pours media. So that's what we're doing. The models show one thing, but is it true? We're running experiments in the lab and we can go up to 5,000 PSI pressure and 200 degrees centigrade. So fairly extreme conditions. [00:15:00] We run the Sea of two through a pressure vessel filled with sand and then the vessels heated and we can do all sorts of measurements inside, outside the vessel. Speaker 4: The volume flowing through the mass, flowing through how the heat is taken from the sand into the fluid as it moves through the column. And we can then verify the models, help the modelers improve their program. And we've just written a paper where what we noticed [00:15:30] is that there's a change in the conductivity of the CO2 as it changes temperature that's large enough that it causes problems in the model because the model doesn't take it into account. So this will give us a more realistic view, whether the scheme actually is so much more efficient than using water. Now that we're talking about geology, do you have any comments about fracking? It's become sort of the controversy does your, yeah, I think the New York Times [00:16:00] is kind of responsible for that in and of itself. Fracking's just fine. I think what we've seen with gas production, there's a loophole in the EPA laws and in a lot of states they're very strict with fracturing for oil production and you don't hear horror stories about oil production fracturing and has done all the time. Speaker 4: So the gas, the problems is that they don't take proper care with the fracking fluid. They're not careful with how they cement in their pipes. [00:16:30] A variety of pieces like that. So it's the way the operations are done. It isn't inherently a problem with fracking. And by being careful, you're probably meaning spending money to do it right. Money. Right. And that's the motivation to do it haphazardly is you can do it cheaply, right? Cause in, in the end you need to do something with the fracking fluid and if you just dump it on site, that's obviously cheaper than trucking it away and treating it. If you think about it, the fractured you're growing or [00:17:00] on the order of meters, tens of meters, and they're taking place a kilometer deep, they are not affecting the surface, they're not effecting the awkward aquifers. The problems would be that the pipe which you're pumping the pressurized fluid down, if there's leaks there that would affect the near surface water, you're pulling the gas out. Speaker 4: Well, if the pipe isn't cemented in very well, then you would have leakage of gas, but it can be done totally safe. So it's really a matter of getting the regulation right and getting the [inaudible] in place [00:17:30] and right, exactly. That's the physical makeup of the shale. Make the fracking process, uh, do you need to be more cautious in that environment or there are some side effects to that that don't happen in other geological formations. Each formation is going to be different. What you would watch out for in your design and operation in general, you know, if we leave out the poor operation is that you don't want to damage your petroleum reservoir. So think [00:18:00] of it as a layer of rock that has the gas and then you'd have a cap and then a cap beneath it. And if you run your fractures through your cap, then you might lose your natural gas to some other formation. The chance of it going kilometer and a half to the surface is pretty insignificant. And from a given fracture, there isn't that much gas coming out anyway. You've got to have lots and lots of fractures because shales pretty well in permeable. That's why we thought we'd never get any [00:18:30] kind of patrolling production out of the shales. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: Mrs KALX Berkley, the show is spectrum. Our guest is professor Stephen Glazer, the civil environmental engineer Speaker 4: [00:19:00] with smart infrastructure, kind of a focus of citrus. Is there growing concern that the internet is being seen as not so secure? There's a tremendous amount of work being done now on, on cyber security. One way around it might be to have, you know, like a private internet cause actually to have communication system with let's say water and [00:19:30] power utilities. There is no reason to also be able to access Facebook off of that. In a way. Our telephone system is a pretty complex system, wide ranging system that is much more secure. So the military has their own system but does lots of work being done on that. We're not worrying about it. We can use, you know, the encryption that's available now. Uh, does it mean that the Chinese government can't hack it? Yeah, of course they can, but they don't care how much [00:20:00] snow is at big creek. Speaker 4: If the Internet becomes a means for people to do political action by denial of service and then everybody's kind of shutdown, slowed down, right. Things aren't operating. That's the more broadly based concern that I would hope is being worked on. But you're pulled in two directions cause one by making the Internet so democratic and open, it's open to people who want to make mischief as well as people who want to use it legitimately. [00:20:30] You know, the more freedom you have, the easier it is to take advantage. And you kind of then have to say, well yeah, like our legal system, it's worth a couple of guilty people getting away with a crime than having an innocent person go to jail. So I think a society, we have to decide where we want to be on this and it's certainly not an easy question to look at. Speaker 4: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? Oh, maybe the fine quality [00:21:00] of our students here at cal. I think we sometimes forget, but then I talk with friends at other schools and it's pretty amazing with the quality of people we have here and it makes my life tremendously easier. What is it about the students that you uh, notice in terms of their capabilities or their personalities? They're really interested in what they're doing. They're interested in understanding what they're doing. They're interested in doing new things. They're interested [00:21:30] in enhancing knowledge and they're interested in working hard. Sounds like a, a good environment to be a teacher. Your teaching responsibilities are what now? I teach a graduate class on sensors and signal interpretation. I teach an undergraduate class on geological engineering. Great. Stephen Glaser. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Brad, thank you for having me. Speaker 7: Aw. [00:22:00] Oh, spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a short leap to the spectrum Harker type, tiny url.com/kalx spectrum. That's tiny URL, [inaudible] dot com [00:22:30] slash Calex spectrum. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Speaker 3: Rick Karnofsky and I present the news nature news reports that UCLA Chemistry Professor Patrick Heron well stand trial for three counts [00:23:00] of violating health and safety standards over the 2008 death of one of his research assistants. She heard Bono songy suffered third degree burns after the term butyl lithium. She was drawing from a vial caught fire. She was not wearing a lab coat. Heron could face four and a half years in jail. The UC regents made a plea agreement for their own role in the accident last year. President of the Laboratory Safety Institute, Jim Kauffman, because the case [00:23:30] a game changer that will significantly affect how people think about their responsibilities. fuse.org reports a study that began during the postdoctoral work of northern Arizona's universities. Gregory Cup Barrasso is shedding light on how adults and their dogs and kids share a microbial communities cup. RSO and assistant professor biology says, what we've been learning is the microbial communities that live in and on our [00:24:00] bodies can play a big role in our health. Speaker 3: What was exciting about this study was how cohabitation effected microbial communities. It's a unique data set. We all have bacteria in our digestive tract, but cup RSO explained that while any two humans are 99% identical in their genomes, their gut communities of bacteria may be up to 50% different. It's those differences that interest researchers who seek to link them to the origins of obesity, malnutrition or [00:24:30] even colon cancer cup also asks what factors are driving the difference between the microbial communities in my gut and your gut? This study was an attempt to see if who you're living with is one of the factors. As it turns out, individuals from the same household, particularly couples, share more of their microbiome than they do with other individuals, and having a dog resulted in an even greater similarity because of shared contact with the animal Speaker 7: [00:25:00] [inaudible]. No. We also mentioned a few of the science and technology [00:25:30] events happening locally Speaker 3: for the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar later today. Physicist Fabiola is your naughty co-discoverer of the Higgs Boson at the large Hadron collider in Geneva, Switzerland. We'll deliver a free public lecture titled the Higgs Boson and our life. The talk is part of a three day celebration of the work of University of California Berkeley physicist Bruno's Zunino, whose theory of supersymmetry [00:26:00] has emerged as a possible explanation for the number and variety of fundamental particles seen in nature. That's today, Friday, May 3rd 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Chevron Auditorium International House, 2199 Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley spectrum airs at the same time as NPR is science Friday and we thank you for choosing us. But next week you'll have two chances to catch their team in the bay area, the [00:26:30] Jasper Ridge biological preserve and celebrating their 40th anniversary science. Fridays I ref Lado. Well discuss reviving the science statecraft dialogue with professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford Christopher field, cofounder of method Adam Lowry and Noah director Jane Lubchenco. Speaker 3: On Thursday May 9th at 5:30 PM this event takes place at the Synnex Auditorium, six for one night [00:27:00] way in Palo Alto. Then on Friday, May 10th there will be a live broadcast of science Friday at 10:00 AM at the lead ka-shing center at Stanford. These events are free, but will be first come first serve for details. Go to j r DP. Dot stanford.edu best selling author Mary Roach returns to the bone room, presents for a talk in signing of her latest book, Gulp Adventures on the elementary [00:27:30] canal in Gulp, America's funniest science writer. So says the Washington Post takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour of our insides. That's Thursday, May 9th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM it's a free event at the bone room. 1573 Solano avenue in Berkeley. Wonder Fest is having a free event, the Soma Street food park, four to eight 11th street in San Francisco. [00:28:00] On Tuesday May 14th at 7:00 PM Elliot portrait professor of astronomy and physics at UC Berkeley. We'll be discussing the modern origin story from the Big Bang two habitable planets. He'll describe how the university evolved from its smooth beginnings to its current chunky state. Emphasizing how gravity reign supreme and builds up the planets, stars and galaxies required for biological evolution. [00:28:30] Visit Wonder fest.org for more Info. Science at the theater presents eight big ideas. Eight Berkeley lab scientists present eight game changing concepts in eight minutes each. That's Monday, May 13th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley. This event is free. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 3: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show is written and produced by Alex Simon Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 8: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is [inaudible] spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Steven Glaser is the Intelligent Infrastructure team leader for CITRIS and a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Glaser talks about wireless sensor networks, geothermal energy testing and his earthquake simulation.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Brad Swift. Today's interview is with UC Berkeley Professor Steven Glaser. Stephen is a faculty member of the Department of Civil and environmental engineering. He's currently [00:01:00] the intelligent infrastructure team leader for citrus, the center for information technology research in service to society. He has also a distinguished affiliated professor at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. In our interview, Stephen Glaser talks about engineering education, his research and field projects Speaker 4: onto the interview. Steven Glacier, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Thank you for having me. With increasing frequency, [00:01:30] I hear engineers suggesting that engineering education needs to engage students imaginations and provide more opportunity for them to design and build things from day one when they start an education in engineering. What are your feelings about the future of engineering education? Well, it's in a way, it's two pieces. So what kids aren't doing nowadays is playing with physical things when they're young. So they're not necessarily running around [00:02:00] in the woods with their friends tearing stuff up. They're not working on cars, they're not building radios. So when they want to go out and do things in a laboratory or do things in the field, it's very difficult for, so that would be something good to bring back another hand if they want to do computery things, everything's fine and dandy because they have the experience doing that. Speaker 4: Then my lab, I have my own machine shop. I have a lays and bandsaw and mill and whatnot. I'm lucky to have students. I have [00:02:30] to up now, they're very good machinists, so my students all have to be able to do things with their hands. I've been lucky enough to attract them. Is it too late to sort of introduce that into the curriculum in college as an undergraduate? Would engineering benefit from a studio? Oh, I think it would, and I think you're starting to see that. I guess it's the maker movement. It's sometimes called our dean. Sastry is very into that now and do you feel that a unconventional Speaker 3: [00:03:00] path to becoming an engineer as an advantage Speaker 4: in a way, but it's not cost effective? Everybody has an unconventional path. I think you'd gain a lot. I think you see engineering more broadly and I think we see different types of solution. With a broader background, Speaker 3: how would you characterize the conventional path in engineering? Speaker 4: The conventional path would be somebody who you know who's good in math and science. Hopefully [00:03:30] somebody who was interested in things and they've taken math and science in high school. They'd come in, they'd do their engineering, which is quite focused because we have so much to learn and go off to work and they're going to be better at certain things. When I finished high school, I was going to go off to become a philosophy major, which I did. I didn't take math senior year. I didn't need it. I was going to be a liberal arts students, so the students that [00:04:00] do have this better background, they're always going to be better than math than me because they learn the fundamentals. When they were young, instead of me having to pick it up when I was 30. Speaker 3: Your path, the choices you made going into philosophy and then pretty radically altering even from that into being an operations engineer. How were you thinking about engineering at that point? Speaker 4: I'd never followed a path. I kind of followed what I was interested in and [00:04:30] things led to another. So I always read from a very, very young age and you know, literature, technical pieces. I always worked on things, whether it was building models when I was very young or go carts, fixing cars and whatnot. So I'm always was a very good mechanic, studied philosophy and that whole time I was working construction. I got an operating engineer's union and while I was still in college, so I went through the apprentice program. They're learning [00:05:00] to operate heavy equipment, fix heavy equipment, then worked as a driller for about eight years. So I goes fixing things, working with soils. Then I worked for a year in Iraq. My boss there, uh, had a background of being a operating engineer and then going to school and him and his wife talked me into, oh, you need to become an engineer. Speaker 4: And I don't know, one thing led to another and here I am. I never planned on being a faculty member. In fact, when I finished [00:05:30] my phd I didn't want to be a faculty member. Pieces just happened. And here I am at Berkeley. What sort of drilling were you doing? A, we are drilling deep foundations, so uh, might be a five foot diameter hole, a hundred foot deep, which we then use for foundations, for buildings, for retaining walls, for subway excavations of subway stations. I did a lot of work on the red line in the subway in Washington DC. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: [00:06:00] our guest today is Stephen Glaser and the next segment he talks about two of his research projects, one in the lab and one in the field. This is k a l X. Berkeley. Speaker 4: Can you give us an overview of your research? We have a number of projects [00:06:30] different yet they have some fundamental similarities. One of the projects laboratory earthquakes. I designed and make a particularly fine nano seismic sensor. So I can measure displacements down to a pico meter that's tend to the minus 12th is very, very small and I can measure signals that accurately for very wide frequency band from about 10 kilo hertz to two megahertz. So I got like the ultimate seismometer. [00:07:00] So then I can set up experiments in the lab where I can control the geometry. So I know all the mathematical descriptions of the system. I have my perfect sensors, I can load in conditions that I know what's going on. And then when I pick up the signals from the small earthquakes we, cause I can start looking at very small details like what are the little motions that lead up to large sliding. Speaker 4: So I have a block of plexiglass on a very big plate of plexiglass. [00:07:30] So my earthquake is when the whole block moves. But something has to happen before we get frictional movement. And I believe you keep looking small and smaller. You have these small little contact disparities. You have to have little pops at these small areas. And then when do you get a chain reaction? Each pop releases a little energy to the contacts around it and you know at some magic point, enough energies released that all the contacts start popping and you [00:08:00] get an earthquake. And from the lab to a real world setting, how are you translating that kind of work into something that could be in the field? Good question. And it's not universally accepted that material we're using, we're not using rock, we're using plexiglass, but at the stresses we're working with at models ductal rock very well. Speaker 4: So rock that might be on parts of the San Andreas. There's theories [00:08:30] and lots of work that shows that the way the geometry of contacts is fractal, so it scales self similarly, so might surface on a small slider block actually can scale in terms of geometry to a very large fault. We just had a paper in nature that certain earthquakes have lots of high frequency shaking, so the ground shakes more rapidly. The higher frequencies are more dangerous because it reaches, the [00:09:00] resonant frequency is structure. So there's more damage to Hoku. Earthquake was particularly rich and high-frequency. How do you explain it? So my student had some ideas and it turns out it has to do with how long the fall teals between earthquakes. So we could show the mechanism, the lab, the mechanism to fields and now we have an explanation of what's going on in the field instead of strictly an observation. Speaker 4: But I can control things in the laboratory and see that yes, it was due to this [00:09:30] factor. So the healing is the time between earthquakes when the stasis is stable, right? Cause the surfaces, chemical reactions, they start to melt together on some level. Even simply putting a block on a table, the longer it sits, the frictional resistance does go up because it's chemical reactions that are giving us a sheer strength. And then some of your other research, [00:10:00] a big project looking at snow hydrology and the Sierras. This important because the state gets about 65% of the water from snow in the Sierras. And it turns out we don't know beans about how much snow is in the Sierra. So you have Frank Gerkey goes out a few times in the winter. He goes to let's say 40 sites and the Sierra sticks this pole in the ground and that really isn't giving us much information about how much snow there is. Speaker 4: So what we do is we go into a basin, [00:10:30] we'll pick a patch, approximately a square kilometer, put in let's say 20 sensing stations, each one measuring snow depth, temperature, humidity, solar radiation, soil moisture at four depths in the soil and matrix suction at four depths in the soil. We report back the data every 15 minutes. And then we might put like an American river basin, which we're working on now. We'll have 18 such [00:11:00] networks right across the basin and we end up with the network of networks. So each of these local networks sends back to our selves here. They're by cell phone, modem, or satellite modem. The data will come back here. So then you can correlate all that and create real time. We have real time data and our application we're working on now is hydroelectric generation. So we're working with the state, [00:11:30] with the Department of Water Resources. Uh, we're starting to work with PG and nee and southern California Edison. Speaker 4: On doing demonstration projects and ultimately then with the success of these, you would want to see this proliferate across the Sierra. So then I'll do the whole Sierras and we'd like to take these pieces and make a larger system, which would be a water information system for the state where we would also bring in groundwater information around water, isn't it regulated and we [00:12:00] know really little about the ground water situation, but the general project would be through citrus, our center for information technology research for the interest of society. That's one of the CIS psi four centers that were started by Grey Davis and were interdisciplinary in the building. We have people from law, from art production, from various engineering, all working together, sitting together to look at societal problems. And part of the goals [00:12:30] of the CIS PSI institutes, the four across the state is to take the knowledge from campus and put it in a form that it will help the financial wellbeing of the state and the physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, the state Speaker 7: [inaudible]. You're listening to spectrum oil expert. [00:13:00] Our guest today is Stephen Glaser. In the next segment, he talks about his geothermal project. Speaker 4: Let's talk a little bit about your geothermal research you're doing and Oh, we have an interesting experiment because we can blow ourselves up. First, we'll start with the idea of enhanced geothermal systems. So we usually think of a geothermal [00:13:30] system like that, the geysers up by Santa Rosa where there's natural water and you stick a straw on the ground and steam comes up and runs your generator. But that's exceedingly rare. I think that geysers might be the only field in the world that's making profit without any kind of subsidy. So what we do have as lots of hot, dry rock, there's hot rock everywhere. So the ideas, you would drill two wells, you would connect them through fractured rock, you'd [00:14:00] pump cold water down one well, push it through the fractured hot rock and pull hot water out of the other and make a cycle. Run that through the generator, then pump it back down. Speaker 4: There's been a lot of work. We're slowly moving towards that becoming a reality. But there's this idea that you could use super critical CO2 so that CO2 under very high pressure, that it's not quite a liquid. It's not quite a gas, but it has good heat carrying capacities, but very low [00:14:30] friction, very low. A Dutch would say viscosity cause it's a fluid. However, nobody has done any measurements with the heat capacity, the state behavior of super-critical CO2 going through hot pours media. So that's what we're doing. The models show one thing, but is it true? We're running experiments in the lab and we can go up to 5,000 PSI pressure and 200 degrees centigrade. So fairly extreme conditions. [00:15:00] We run the Sea of two through a pressure vessel filled with sand and then the vessels heated and we can do all sorts of measurements inside, outside the vessel. Speaker 4: The volume flowing through the mass, flowing through how the heat is taken from the sand into the fluid as it moves through the column. And we can then verify the models, help the modelers improve their program. And we've just written a paper where what we noticed [00:15:30] is that there's a change in the conductivity of the CO2 as it changes temperature that's large enough that it causes problems in the model because the model doesn't take it into account. So this will give us a more realistic view, whether the scheme actually is so much more efficient than using water. Now that we're talking about geology, do you have any comments about fracking? It's become sort of the controversy does your, yeah, I think the New York Times [00:16:00] is kind of responsible for that in and of itself. Fracking's just fine. I think what we've seen with gas production, there's a loophole in the EPA laws and in a lot of states they're very strict with fracturing for oil production and you don't hear horror stories about oil production fracturing and has done all the time. Speaker 4: So the gas, the problems is that they don't take proper care with the fracking fluid. They're not careful with how they cement in their pipes. [00:16:30] A variety of pieces like that. So it's the way the operations are done. It isn't inherently a problem with fracking. And by being careful, you're probably meaning spending money to do it right. Money. Right. And that's the motivation to do it haphazardly is you can do it cheaply, right? Cause in, in the end you need to do something with the fracking fluid and if you just dump it on site, that's obviously cheaper than trucking it away and treating it. If you think about it, the fractured you're growing or [00:17:00] on the order of meters, tens of meters, and they're taking place a kilometer deep, they are not affecting the surface, they're not effecting the awkward aquifers. The problems would be that the pipe which you're pumping the pressurized fluid down, if there's leaks there that would affect the near surface water, you're pulling the gas out. Speaker 4: Well, if the pipe isn't cemented in very well, then you would have leakage of gas, but it can be done totally safe. So it's really a matter of getting the regulation right and getting the [inaudible] in place [00:17:30] and right, exactly. That's the physical makeup of the shale. Make the fracking process, uh, do you need to be more cautious in that environment or there are some side effects to that that don't happen in other geological formations. Each formation is going to be different. What you would watch out for in your design and operation in general, you know, if we leave out the poor operation is that you don't want to damage your petroleum reservoir. So think [00:18:00] of it as a layer of rock that has the gas and then you'd have a cap and then a cap beneath it. And if you run your fractures through your cap, then you might lose your natural gas to some other formation. The chance of it going kilometer and a half to the surface is pretty insignificant. And from a given fracture, there isn't that much gas coming out anyway. You've got to have lots and lots of fractures because shales pretty well in permeable. That's why we thought we'd never get any [00:18:30] kind of patrolling production out of the shales. Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 6: Mrs KALX Berkley, the show is spectrum. Our guest is professor Stephen Glazer, the civil environmental engineer Speaker 4: [00:19:00] with smart infrastructure, kind of a focus of citrus. Is there growing concern that the internet is being seen as not so secure? There's a tremendous amount of work being done now on, on cyber security. One way around it might be to have, you know, like a private internet cause actually to have communication system with let's say water and [00:19:30] power utilities. There is no reason to also be able to access Facebook off of that. In a way. Our telephone system is a pretty complex system, wide ranging system that is much more secure. So the military has their own system but does lots of work being done on that. We're not worrying about it. We can use, you know, the encryption that's available now. Uh, does it mean that the Chinese government can't hack it? Yeah, of course they can, but they don't care how much [00:20:00] snow is at big creek. Speaker 4: If the Internet becomes a means for people to do political action by denial of service and then everybody's kind of shutdown, slowed down, right. Things aren't operating. That's the more broadly based concern that I would hope is being worked on. But you're pulled in two directions cause one by making the Internet so democratic and open, it's open to people who want to make mischief as well as people who want to use it legitimately. [00:20:30] You know, the more freedom you have, the easier it is to take advantage. And you kind of then have to say, well yeah, like our legal system, it's worth a couple of guilty people getting away with a crime than having an innocent person go to jail. So I think a society, we have to decide where we want to be on this and it's certainly not an easy question to look at. Speaker 4: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? Oh, maybe the fine quality [00:21:00] of our students here at cal. I think we sometimes forget, but then I talk with friends at other schools and it's pretty amazing with the quality of people we have here and it makes my life tremendously easier. What is it about the students that you uh, notice in terms of their capabilities or their personalities? They're really interested in what they're doing. They're interested in understanding what they're doing. They're interested in doing new things. They're interested [00:21:30] in enhancing knowledge and they're interested in working hard. Sounds like a, a good environment to be a teacher. Your teaching responsibilities are what now? I teach a graduate class on sensors and signal interpretation. I teach an undergraduate class on geological engineering. Great. Stephen Glaser. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Brad, thank you for having me. Speaker 7: Aw. [00:22:00] Oh, spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a short leap to the spectrum Harker type, tiny url.com/kalx spectrum. That's tiny URL, [inaudible] dot com [00:22:30] slash Calex spectrum. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Speaker 3: Rick Karnofsky and I present the news nature news reports that UCLA Chemistry Professor Patrick Heron well stand trial for three counts [00:23:00] of violating health and safety standards over the 2008 death of one of his research assistants. She heard Bono songy suffered third degree burns after the term butyl lithium. She was drawing from a vial caught fire. She was not wearing a lab coat. Heron could face four and a half years in jail. The UC regents made a plea agreement for their own role in the accident last year. President of the Laboratory Safety Institute, Jim Kauffman, because the case [00:23:30] a game changer that will significantly affect how people think about their responsibilities. fuse.org reports a study that began during the postdoctoral work of northern Arizona's universities. Gregory Cup Barrasso is shedding light on how adults and their dogs and kids share a microbial communities cup. RSO and assistant professor biology says, what we've been learning is the microbial communities that live in and on our [00:24:00] bodies can play a big role in our health. Speaker 3: What was exciting about this study was how cohabitation effected microbial communities. It's a unique data set. We all have bacteria in our digestive tract, but cup RSO explained that while any two humans are 99% identical in their genomes, their gut communities of bacteria may be up to 50% different. It's those differences that interest researchers who seek to link them to the origins of obesity, malnutrition or [00:24:30] even colon cancer cup also asks what factors are driving the difference between the microbial communities in my gut and your gut? This study was an attempt to see if who you're living with is one of the factors. As it turns out, individuals from the same household, particularly couples, share more of their microbiome than they do with other individuals, and having a dog resulted in an even greater similarity because of shared contact with the animal Speaker 7: [00:25:00] [inaudible]. No. We also mentioned a few of the science and technology [00:25:30] events happening locally Speaker 3: for the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar later today. Physicist Fabiola is your naughty co-discoverer of the Higgs Boson at the large Hadron collider in Geneva, Switzerland. We'll deliver a free public lecture titled the Higgs Boson and our life. The talk is part of a three day celebration of the work of University of California Berkeley physicist Bruno's Zunino, whose theory of supersymmetry [00:26:00] has emerged as a possible explanation for the number and variety of fundamental particles seen in nature. That's today, Friday, May 3rd 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Chevron Auditorium International House, 2199 Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley spectrum airs at the same time as NPR is science Friday and we thank you for choosing us. But next week you'll have two chances to catch their team in the bay area, the [00:26:30] Jasper Ridge biological preserve and celebrating their 40th anniversary science. Fridays I ref Lado. Well discuss reviving the science statecraft dialogue with professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford Christopher field, cofounder of method Adam Lowry and Noah director Jane Lubchenco. Speaker 3: On Thursday May 9th at 5:30 PM this event takes place at the Synnex Auditorium, six for one night [00:27:00] way in Palo Alto. Then on Friday, May 10th there will be a live broadcast of science Friday at 10:00 AM at the lead ka-shing center at Stanford. These events are free, but will be first come first serve for details. Go to j r DP. Dot stanford.edu best selling author Mary Roach returns to the bone room, presents for a talk in signing of her latest book, Gulp Adventures on the elementary [00:27:30] canal in Gulp, America's funniest science writer. So says the Washington Post takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour of our insides. That's Thursday, May 9th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM it's a free event at the bone room. 1573 Solano avenue in Berkeley. Wonder Fest is having a free event, the Soma Street food park, four to eight 11th street in San Francisco. [00:28:00] On Tuesday May 14th at 7:00 PM Elliot portrait professor of astronomy and physics at UC Berkeley. We'll be discussing the modern origin story from the Big Bang two habitable planets. He'll describe how the university evolved from its smooth beginnings to its current chunky state. Emphasizing how gravity reign supreme and builds up the planets, stars and galaxies required for biological evolution. [00:28:30] Visit Wonder fest.org for more Info. Science at the theater presents eight big ideas. Eight Berkeley lab scientists present eight game changing concepts in eight minutes each. That's Monday, May 13th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley. This event is free. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 3: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show is written and produced by Alex Simon Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 8: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is [inaudible] spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
A discussion between two physicists on the Higgs Boson and Super Symmetry. Simone Pagan-Griso, Postdoc Chamberlain Fellow at LBNL, works on the ATLAS team at CERN. Will Johnson, a Physicist at Sandia National Lab in Livermore CA, has worked on the Collider Detector at Fermilab.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm your host today. In today's interview, Rick Karnofsky talks with two physicists about the search for the Higgs Boson and supersymmetry at cern, Simona Pagan. Greece is a postdoctoral Chamberlain fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. [00:01:00] Some money first appeared on spectrum on September 23rd, 2011 you can listen to that show online at iTunes u soon after that appearance, somone moved to Switzerland to work in close proximity with the atlas team at cern on among other things, the search for the Higgs Boson. Rick is also joined today by will Johnson, a physicist at Sandia national laboratories in Livermore, California during will's Phd Studies in physics at UC Davis. [00:01:30] He worked on the collider detector at Fermi lab in Illinois. Somani was visiting Berkeley recently and we invited him and will for a followup interview. During the interview you will hear mention of GE v which stands for Giga Electron volt. Speaker 2: The Electron volt is a unit of mass and energy head to Wikipedia for more on the electron volt. Now the interview, welcome back to spectrum. Thank [00:02:00] you. Thank you. Glad to be back. Let's get to it. A few months ago it was widely reported in the media that scientists have discovered the Higgs. Can you walk us through exactly what people found and what bearing that has? Yes. Just a reminder. We look for coalitions of protons at the very high energy in this accelerator in Switzerland, and so what we really look at these, the products of these collisions and we tried to reconstruct for what to see what happened at the very [00:02:30] smallest Cade few months ago. We helped enough data and our analysis of the data got to enough refined to be able to distinguish from the existing of expose explosive with that mass and the not existence. And so we actually found it. Speaker 2: So that was awkward of success in the official masses and efficient mass is around 125 GV GVU is the unit information that we use for the mass. So is a roughly equivalent to the mass of a, [00:03:00] and what detector was this all? So we have two main detectors. General purpose for these kinds of searches are the large Hadron collider. One is called atlas, which is the detector I'm working on and other trees called the CMS. So both experiments had independent analysis on independent at the samples and they confirmed the existence of the heat disposal. So we had two different experiments confirming the same result, which of course is always good, right? And now [00:03:30] what's next? Now? Next, our first call is to measure more accurately the property of this new particular we found to really establish if it is fully the he exposed on or fetus any deviation. Speaker 2: There are several reasons why we may expect some deviations, but up to now I have to say everything looks like he exposed to as predicted by the most simple theory what kind of deviations would, so you can have several things if you want precision measurement that are ongoing [00:04:00] to determine if this is really the particle we were expecting. But on top of that there is a full harder program looking for other different products of these collisions which may show deviations from what we expect. We mentioned I think last time, very briefly one today, which is really popular in the last decades, which is called supersymmetry. This is probably the very next big thing that we are hunting for. Stepping back a little bit, in [00:04:30] the months that interceded are for sharing with you and the report of the Higgs, what if any big steps in data analysis or the way that you guys were running experiments had to change? Speaker 2: Since we talked? One big step came from data. When we're collisions that almost doubled the amount of data we had since we talked and that discovery was announced. One collision happens, but you may have multiple collision happening at the same [00:05:00] time and you need to disentangle them from what you see. A lot of work was put into actual decent tankers, these interactions, and this was really a key to be able to analyze efficiently. So enormous progress was made. Just to give you a rough ideas in our detector, one part of it try to track charged particles transverse in our detector. What you end up having are different points in different [00:05:30] layers of Europe. Sub detectors are you need to connect them to actually track the particles. So this seems easy to have one or two particle, but then you end up having more than a thousand of particles and you need to disentangle who belongs to whom. Speaker 2: Right? So this for example is an area I've worked a little bit hard to to be able to make sure that we actually can efficiently distinguished different particles and not be confused [00:06:00] by our connecting points, which are actually belonging to different particles. Tens are there still improvements being made to the data analysis? Of course, improvements are always ongoing. We worked very hard on that. Right now the larger collider is shutting down for a two years period and on February it will actually shut down and work will be made on the accelerator itself for two years almost. [00:06:30] And we expect to be back in taking data for physics analysis the first months of 2015 and the reason we do this works not only as maintainers, but actually to improve one big thing is that we will be able to raise the energy of the collision of disc pratum's almost double it a little bit less. Speaker 2: So right now we are working at around 8,000 GV. After the shutdown and improvements, we [00:07:00] will be able to collide protests around the 13 thousands GV. So why is that important? Increasing the energy. It actually also increased the probability of producing rare phenomenon like the he exposed in production or particular that predictably supersymmetry theory. In all this theory, the likelihood of producing such particles increased dramatically with an edge. The higher energy we can probe, the higher [00:07:30] are likely to produce those particles. And this is also because they may be heavy, even heavier than the Higgs and not only rare but also with a heavy mass and so the more energy you have the more likely is that you can produce them and what kind of work will be done besides this upgrade, what are all the staff scientists going to do with their time for two years? Speaker 2: We will keep us busy. I'm sure the detectors themselves will be upgraded as well. The [00:08:00] trust, etc. I'm working on has a big project of trying to replace one of its inner most part. I mentioned these detectors to detect charge particles. These are based on silicon and they suffer radiation damage. With all this collision happening, we have a lot of tradition which can damage all the electronics and the censor themselves. A new detector was made and we'd be inserted in addition to the existing ones in order to improve [00:08:30] the detection of discharge particles. This is probably the biggest project which will be ongoing doing shut down for our experiment. There are also several other minor maintenance and other upgrades which are ongoing and in the meantime we easy our analysis strategy, our software in order to be ready when we come back to put in practice what you've learned, analyzing the past two years data and to be even more efficient. So with these [00:09:00] new detectors it'll be detecting even closer to the points of collision? That's correct. In fact, I mentioned things happen very close to where the protons collide. So when I mentioned that particles decay to other particles and so on, that usually happens in a small space like way less than half a millimeter. So it's important to note that you never actually see the particles you produce. You only see the decay products from them. [00:09:30] That's correct. Exactly. Having a detector which is close to where the protons collide will allow us to differentiate even better. Yeah. Speaker 1: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our guests today are Simona and Pega and will Johnson both are physicists. In the next segment they discuss supersymmetry. Speaker 3: [00:10:00] It may not be obvious, but so actually one of the main goals for High Energy Particle Physics is actually defined a single equation. And from this one equation we can drive everything we could possibly need to know about how particles interact, what particles exist, how everything works. So the goal is one grand equation, a grand unified theory right now we have a great equation called the standard model that takes [00:10:30] care of all forces. Everything we know about how physical objects interact and how they exist can be described by this one equation with the exception of gravity. We can't combine that in with this one equation. And also there's some parts to the equation that we think could be a little bit more elegant and we want to combine it with gravity and also possibly take care of some of these ambiguities. Going to supersymmetry allows [00:11:00] us to do that. So one of the big questions is we haven't seen supersymmetry yet. I know when the LHC turned on, everybody was hoping that it would just be very obvious and we would just see supersymmetry. But that hasn't been the case so far. Has there been any hints or signs that people are looking for that supersymmetry is most likely to be hiding? Speaker 2: We were hoping to see signs of the supersymmetry in a couple of years of running of the large Hadron collider. [00:11:30] The large Hadron collider started with an energy which was slower than what is designed and only after this shutdown we will get to the energy which was designed for, so we really hope that is increasing energy, which can shed more light on the natural supersymmetry and why we didn't see it so far. For sure. The data we analyzed so far already poses a slight challenge to the theory itself. It might be good to explain why supersymmetry is such an attractive theory. People who have been looking for it for [00:12:00] 30 years now, we've seen no hints of it yet. Still very convinced. Yes, supersymmetry can explain a lot of the unexplained feature that we see up to now. Supersymmetry will give us from the practical point of view, the door to unify also gravity with the other forces. Speaker 2: A lot of people think that this is the right way to go to be able to actually describe gravity together with the other forces in our single tier. People have already [00:12:30] heard about the string theories and so on. The all implicitly assume that supersymmetry exists in some form of it. So it's very important for us to find any sign of it or this theory, we lack a fundamental part of it. And so actually what happens if it turns out we don't see supersymmetry, the Higgs bows on looks exactly like the standard model predicts and we see no other hints of supersymmetry. Well certainly this is something that we need to consider, right? [00:13:00] There are open questions that we hope supersymmetry can answer if supersymmetry is not found still we need to answer those questions so we need to keep looking. There are several other theories which may predict and explain the same scenarios, just had not the more simple ones. Speaker 2: So just means that probably the most simple solution we found was not the correct one. So we still need to look for other sign of it. I we do it already in parallel. So we consider [00:13:30] the possibility of supersymmetry is not the right answer. It's just the one that we think is most likely we will keep looking even if we had no sign of it, so we really expect to find some sign of something. Maybe supersymmetry may be something else, but we really hope that with the next data we will find a sign of something else beyond what we know. If that doesn't happen still we need to find a mechanism to explain what we see, which is different from what we have taught so far [00:14:00] and that for sure will require big synergy between the theoretical part and the experimental one trying to work together towards a new different solutions. Speaker 2: There are people actively working on data from the LHC looking for other theories. Technicolor is one of the other big ones, but the detectors aren't designed specifically to look at supersymmetry. They're designed to try to catch as wide of possibilities as possible. [00:14:30] Yeah, this is actually a very good point. We perform some generalist searches which do not depend on a specific models, but just look for consistency between the given theory that we have. The standard pondered and what we see. So any hint of it can be used, at least as our guidance in watch theory can predict this kind of phenomenon. So we keep looking also for unexpected as much as possible. Speaker 1: [inaudible] [00:15:00] this is k a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guests are Tsimané, Pegol Rizo and Bill Johnson in the next segment. The detailed useful byproducts of high energy particle physics. Speaker 3: Can you think [00:15:30] of any good examples of the technology developed our hundred [inaudible] physics or maybe the announced techniques designed for high energy physics and invented for it have affected people in common everyday life. Speaker 2: This research is really targeted in fundamental research, understanding how nature works, so the effects of it are usually a very long term, so it's very hard to predict what will happen. However, the means that we use to actually [00:16:00] perform these searches, they may have a more direct impact. If we go back a bit in the history, all the nuclear science that was used to start this particle physics in general decades ago is, for example, used to treat cancer. Here in alifornia is for example, very advanced in what is called heartland therapy, so try to treat cancer with protons and they have sidebar advantages with respect to the common radiotherapy, particular for inner most tumors. [00:16:30] In this way you can reach and try to kill the tumor burden, the size of the tumor without having to burn whatever is in the meter. All these kinds of the tactful with a lot of r and d of course on top of them but were taken from what was developed for nuclear physics in the past. Speaker 2: This is a very good example of how technology that we may use for our scope can actually be bring vented and adapted for other scopes in other very big challenge that we face every day [00:17:00] is that the amount of data we collect and the computing power we need to analyze it is huge. In order to cope with this, we had since several years our projects for distributed computing in order to be able our to analyze data everywhere using computing that are located everywhere in the world, sharing computing resources, sharing disc. This was a necessary step for us. In order to be able to carry on and having physics results. However, that can have [00:17:30] also an impact to everyday life. What we see now is our all the cloud computing increasing faster and faster in our everyday life. This is a slightly different version of this distributed computing that we've been developed and worked so far. Speaker 3: The web as we know it today from Speaker 2: what was created at cern. So if you actually see some of the photos of the very irst web browsers, they actually have design specifications and pictures [00:18:00] of the atlas detector at certain it was created for the scientists to communicate, but then it was such useful technology it felt to the rest of the population. So an interesting story is that even today that when you press and you don't find the page, you get these set of [inaudible] and this was actually the room at cern where the irst web server was hosted. A lot of the physics analysis that we do is [00:18:30] really from a statistical point of view, decent target. These huge amount of data that we collect and trying to find a rare phenomenon. It's usually trying to find a handful of events of collisions which have the characteristics you want among the billions that happened. Speaker 2: So these techniques are very similar and are in common to other challenges where you have a huge amount of data and you to find a specific [00:19:00] ones on a slightly different level. But it's what Google needs to find when you put some keywords and you can find what are the relevant pages for you. And there are few. So even in this case, what you need to do is basically try to find the most appropriate few pages among the billions that exist, which match what you're looking for. In many senses, this is not very different from what we try to do. And in fact, some of the technologies [00:19:30] with very big differences are actually in common. Well, ne question of course, is with the shutdown or from your lab, do you see the need for more accelerators besides certainly I strongly think these accelerators are big and they take a lot of resources of our community, not only in terms of the money you need to build them, but also as intellectual power of our community. Speaker 2: Run random and analyze data, but [00:20:00] having a new accelerator right now is not worth the investment in both their mind, intellectual power that we need to put on it, so the larger other collider will run at least up to the end of the Deca. Then probably up to the end of the next tech ad and this will be enough to give us data to answer most of the questions we actually build it for. Of course, people are already thinking of what's next. They're thinking [00:20:30] of new accelerators. They're thinking what is the best choice? I want to build it. If we have the technology, if we need to develop something that we are missing and people are actively working already on this and the LSE is a giant machine. It's hundreds of feet underground in miles Speaker 3: and miles across. So building a bigger tunnel is a very, very expensive proposition. Yes. And there's just fundamental limitations on how strong magnets can be. So a lot of people are investing [00:21:00] a lot of effort into finding other ways of accelerating particles or studying phenomenon that doesn't necessarily need accelerators. Is there anything particularly promising? There's the plasma wave accelerator. Um, there's cosmic sources, so some of the highest energy collisions we get are actually from particles from outer space. And a lot of people are using the atmosphere itself as a detector. So you can look at the interactions in the atmosphere [00:21:30] and then decay particles from those interactions to see what happened. There's also a lot of work going into just looking to see if you can study these processes with a lower energy. So maybe you won't be able to see what particle you're looking for, but you'll be able to see some very slight effects on other particles or another process. Very, very slight effects, which if you're very careful and you study it, it might tell you information about these much heavier particles than you can produce. So there's, there's a lot of ways of finding supersymmetry [00:22:00] yes. Or other further beyond the standard model. Yeah. These are complimentary ways in many senses. As you mentioned, there is a lot of work on going and it's very promising, so we really look forward to these [inaudible] well, thanks for joining us. Thank you Rick as thank you Rick. Cool Speaker 1: background [00:22:30] is archived on iTunes university. To find the archive, do a search in your favorite browser for iTunes Dash u space Calex space spectrum. Speaker 3: We'd like to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next wo weeks. [00:23:00] Rick Kaneski joins me for the calendar. The theme for the Spring Open House at the crucible is the science of art. The Criswell is located at welve sixty eventh street near West Oakland, Bart and mission on Saturday April ix it's free from leven am until our pm the open house seeks to highlight the scientific principles, inquiry and exploration behind the industrial arts processes. Taught and practiced at the [00:23:30] crucible. Highlights include the science of fire, the gravity of mold making, mysteries of steel made visible bicycle physics. Yeah. Surfing the solar flares with science at cal recycled glass processing and more. Speaker 4: There will be demonstrations, tuition discounts, food and bikes for sale. Visit the rucible dot org for more info. In April of wo thousand and twelve a small asteroid impacted [00:24:00] close to home in alifornia at Sutter's mill. The site where gold was irst discovered in ighteen forty eight media are astronomer. Peter Jenniskens of the Seti Institute started a tally of fines and mobilized NASA Ames research center into leading the recovery effort from the air and the ground. eventy seven media rights were found. He will summarize research results reported in a recent eventy author science article and also discuss a econd meteorite fall that happened in [00:24:30] Nevato and Sonoma last October. The presentation is Monday pril eighth at the Academy of Sciences. Planetarium. Tickets for the even hirty event can be purchased nline at Cal Academy Dot Org San Francisco Science Museum. The exploratorium is reopening in their new location at peer ifteen on Wednesday pril seventeenth to celebrate. They will offer free outdoor programming from ine am until en pm [00:25:00] the new museum offers ix galleries on human behavior, living systems maker culture, observing the landscape scene and listening as well as an outdoor space. Speaker 4: More nformation at exploratorium dot edu also on pril seventeenth UC Berkeley is holding its monthly blood drive. You can make an appointment online but walk-ins are also welcome. You are eligible to donate blood if you are in good health, weigh at least ne hundred and ten pounds [00:25:30] and are eventeen years old or older. You can also check out the eligibility guidelines online for it and initial self screening if you are not eligible or you prefer not to donate blood. There are other ways to support campus blood drives through volunteering, encouraging others and simply spreading the word. The blood drive will be on Wednesday, pril seventeenth in the alumni house. On the UC Berkeley campus. It [00:26:00] will last from noon until ix pm you can make an appointment or find more information at the website. Red Cross lood dot Org using the sponsor code you see B. We also like to bring you several news stories that we find interesting. Once again, Rick joins me for the news and Red Alax died of cancer in ineteen fifty one but her immortal cell line called Hela cells derived from her cervical cancer is the oldest and most [00:26:30] commonly used human cell line. Speaker 4: The cells were used to test the polio vaccine and have been used in the research of over eventy thousand scientific papers since lar Steinmetz and others in ermany published the genome of Heela and the journal g hree in March. However, the team has since removed the data from public databases because of privacy concerns expressed by family members and other scientists. Blacks did not give her a consent for the line [00:27:00] to be used and some are concerned that it may disclose genetic traits shared by her descendants. However, no law required that kind of consent in ineteen fifty one and even current regulation differs widely as to what consent would be required to sustain a modern cell line due to the extensive documentation of the cells. The privacy of the healer line may have already been broken with literature already published. Harvard medical school researchers have assembled a draft genome and [00:27:30] a team of University of ashington researchers have spoken about not only the heela genome, but also the more specific information about individual haplotypes at the American Society for Human Genetics Conference in San Francisco. Speaker 4: A recent UC Berkeley study on the lives of wild bees find that the insects thrive better within diversified farming systems. While you might consider the insects yellow nuisances, bees actually play a crucial role in the life cycle of cross pollinated [00:28:00] crops, which account for ne hird of our caloric intake. The mysterious decline in both honeybee and wild bee populations in recent years has prompted many scientists to study the buzzing insects more closely. This study found that crop yield generally increased with wild bee population, but also linked to the recent decline in bee populations to heavy pesticide or fertilizer use. Typically in large scale monoculture agriculture, a number [00:28:30] of alifornia beekeepers seem to agree. They recently sued the federal EPA for failing to ban wo pesticides, widely regarded as harmful to wild bees and honeybees. The wo insecticides named in the lawsuit known as [inaudible] and Simon Foxen have already been found to pose an unacceptably high risk to honeybees by the European food safety authority. Speaker 1: [inaudible] the music heard during the show [00:29:00] is by Louiston at David [inaudible] help on folk make available at creative Commons license hree point zero after music production and editing assistance by Renee Brown. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l xat Yahoo Dot com [00:29:30] join us in wo weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A discussion between two physicists on the Higgs Boson and Super Symmetry. Simone Pagan-Griso, Postdoc Chamberlain Fellow at LBNL, works on the ATLAS team at CERN. Will Johnson, a Physicist at Sandia National Lab in Livermore CA, has worked on the Collider Detector at Fermilab.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad swift and I'm your host today. In today's interview, Rick Karnofsky talks with two physicists about the search for the Higgs Boson and supersymmetry at cern, Simona Pagan. Greece is a postdoctoral Chamberlain fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. [00:01:00] Some money first appeared on spectrum on September 23rd, 2011 you can listen to that show online at iTunes u soon after that appearance, somone moved to Switzerland to work in close proximity with the atlas team at cern on among other things, the search for the Higgs Boson. Rick is also joined today by will Johnson, a physicist at Sandia national laboratories in Livermore, California during will's Phd Studies in physics at UC Davis. [00:01:30] He worked on the collider detector at Fermi lab in Illinois. Somani was visiting Berkeley recently and we invited him and will for a followup interview. During the interview you will hear mention of GE v which stands for Giga Electron volt. Speaker 2: The Electron volt is a unit of mass and energy head to Wikipedia for more on the electron volt. Now the interview, welcome back to spectrum. Thank [00:02:00] you. Thank you. Glad to be back. Let's get to it. A few months ago it was widely reported in the media that scientists have discovered the Higgs. Can you walk us through exactly what people found and what bearing that has? Yes. Just a reminder. We look for coalitions of protons at the very high energy in this accelerator in Switzerland, and so what we really look at these, the products of these collisions and we tried to reconstruct for what to see what happened at the very [00:02:30] smallest Cade few months ago. We helped enough data and our analysis of the data got to enough refined to be able to distinguish from the existing of expose explosive with that mass and the not existence. And so we actually found it. Speaker 2: So that was awkward of success in the official masses and efficient mass is around 125 GV GVU is the unit information that we use for the mass. So is a roughly equivalent to the mass of a, [00:03:00] and what detector was this all? So we have two main detectors. General purpose for these kinds of searches are the large Hadron collider. One is called atlas, which is the detector I'm working on and other trees called the CMS. So both experiments had independent analysis on independent at the samples and they confirmed the existence of the heat disposal. So we had two different experiments confirming the same result, which of course is always good, right? And now [00:03:30] what's next? Now? Next, our first call is to measure more accurately the property of this new particular we found to really establish if it is fully the he exposed on or fetus any deviation. Speaker 2: There are several reasons why we may expect some deviations, but up to now I have to say everything looks like he exposed to as predicted by the most simple theory what kind of deviations would, so you can have several things if you want precision measurement that are ongoing [00:04:00] to determine if this is really the particle we were expecting. But on top of that there is a full harder program looking for other different products of these collisions which may show deviations from what we expect. We mentioned I think last time, very briefly one today, which is really popular in the last decades, which is called supersymmetry. This is probably the very next big thing that we are hunting for. Stepping back a little bit, in [00:04:30] the months that interceded are for sharing with you and the report of the Higgs, what if any big steps in data analysis or the way that you guys were running experiments had to change? Speaker 2: Since we talked? One big step came from data. When we're collisions that almost doubled the amount of data we had since we talked and that discovery was announced. One collision happens, but you may have multiple collision happening at the same [00:05:00] time and you need to disentangle them from what you see. A lot of work was put into actual decent tankers, these interactions, and this was really a key to be able to analyze efficiently. So enormous progress was made. Just to give you a rough ideas in our detector, one part of it try to track charged particles transverse in our detector. What you end up having are different points in different [00:05:30] layers of Europe. Sub detectors are you need to connect them to actually track the particles. So this seems easy to have one or two particle, but then you end up having more than a thousand of particles and you need to disentangle who belongs to whom. Speaker 2: Right? So this for example is an area I've worked a little bit hard to to be able to make sure that we actually can efficiently distinguished different particles and not be confused [00:06:00] by our connecting points, which are actually belonging to different particles. Tens are there still improvements being made to the data analysis? Of course, improvements are always ongoing. We worked very hard on that. Right now the larger collider is shutting down for a two years period and on February it will actually shut down and work will be made on the accelerator itself for two years almost. [00:06:30] And we expect to be back in taking data for physics analysis the first months of 2015 and the reason we do this works not only as maintainers, but actually to improve one big thing is that we will be able to raise the energy of the collision of disc pratum's almost double it a little bit less. Speaker 2: So right now we are working at around 8,000 GV. After the shutdown and improvements, we [00:07:00] will be able to collide protests around the 13 thousands GV. So why is that important? Increasing the energy. It actually also increased the probability of producing rare phenomenon like the he exposed in production or particular that predictably supersymmetry theory. In all this theory, the likelihood of producing such particles increased dramatically with an edge. The higher energy we can probe, the higher [00:07:30] are likely to produce those particles. And this is also because they may be heavy, even heavier than the Higgs and not only rare but also with a heavy mass and so the more energy you have the more likely is that you can produce them and what kind of work will be done besides this upgrade, what are all the staff scientists going to do with their time for two years? Speaker 2: We will keep us busy. I'm sure the detectors themselves will be upgraded as well. The [00:08:00] trust, etc. I'm working on has a big project of trying to replace one of its inner most part. I mentioned these detectors to detect charge particles. These are based on silicon and they suffer radiation damage. With all this collision happening, we have a lot of tradition which can damage all the electronics and the censor themselves. A new detector was made and we'd be inserted in addition to the existing ones in order to improve [00:08:30] the detection of discharge particles. This is probably the biggest project which will be ongoing doing shut down for our experiment. There are also several other minor maintenance and other upgrades which are ongoing and in the meantime we easy our analysis strategy, our software in order to be ready when we come back to put in practice what you've learned, analyzing the past two years data and to be even more efficient. So with these [00:09:00] new detectors it'll be detecting even closer to the points of collision? That's correct. In fact, I mentioned things happen very close to where the protons collide. So when I mentioned that particles decay to other particles and so on, that usually happens in a small space like way less than half a millimeter. So it's important to note that you never actually see the particles you produce. You only see the decay products from them. [00:09:30] That's correct. Exactly. Having a detector which is close to where the protons collide will allow us to differentiate even better. Yeah. Speaker 1: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our guests today are Simona and Pega and will Johnson both are physicists. In the next segment they discuss supersymmetry. Speaker 3: [00:10:00] It may not be obvious, but so actually one of the main goals for High Energy Particle Physics is actually defined a single equation. And from this one equation we can drive everything we could possibly need to know about how particles interact, what particles exist, how everything works. So the goal is one grand equation, a grand unified theory right now we have a great equation called the standard model that takes [00:10:30] care of all forces. Everything we know about how physical objects interact and how they exist can be described by this one equation with the exception of gravity. We can't combine that in with this one equation. And also there's some parts to the equation that we think could be a little bit more elegant and we want to combine it with gravity and also possibly take care of some of these ambiguities. Going to supersymmetry allows [00:11:00] us to do that. So one of the big questions is we haven't seen supersymmetry yet. I know when the LHC turned on, everybody was hoping that it would just be very obvious and we would just see supersymmetry. But that hasn't been the case so far. Has there been any hints or signs that people are looking for that supersymmetry is most likely to be hiding? Speaker 2: We were hoping to see signs of the supersymmetry in a couple of years of running of the large Hadron collider. [00:11:30] The large Hadron collider started with an energy which was slower than what is designed and only after this shutdown we will get to the energy which was designed for, so we really hope that is increasing energy, which can shed more light on the natural supersymmetry and why we didn't see it so far. For sure. The data we analyzed so far already poses a slight challenge to the theory itself. It might be good to explain why supersymmetry is such an attractive theory. People who have been looking for it for [00:12:00] 30 years now, we've seen no hints of it yet. Still very convinced. Yes, supersymmetry can explain a lot of the unexplained feature that we see up to now. Supersymmetry will give us from the practical point of view, the door to unify also gravity with the other forces. Speaker 2: A lot of people think that this is the right way to go to be able to actually describe gravity together with the other forces in our single tier. People have already [00:12:30] heard about the string theories and so on. The all implicitly assume that supersymmetry exists in some form of it. So it's very important for us to find any sign of it or this theory, we lack a fundamental part of it. And so actually what happens if it turns out we don't see supersymmetry, the Higgs bows on looks exactly like the standard model predicts and we see no other hints of supersymmetry. Well certainly this is something that we need to consider, right? [00:13:00] There are open questions that we hope supersymmetry can answer if supersymmetry is not found still we need to answer those questions so we need to keep looking. There are several other theories which may predict and explain the same scenarios, just had not the more simple ones. Speaker 2: So just means that probably the most simple solution we found was not the correct one. So we still need to look for other sign of it. I we do it already in parallel. So we consider [00:13:30] the possibility of supersymmetry is not the right answer. It's just the one that we think is most likely we will keep looking even if we had no sign of it, so we really expect to find some sign of something. Maybe supersymmetry may be something else, but we really hope that with the next data we will find a sign of something else beyond what we know. If that doesn't happen still we need to find a mechanism to explain what we see, which is different from what we have taught so far [00:14:00] and that for sure will require big synergy between the theoretical part and the experimental one trying to work together towards a new different solutions. Speaker 2: There are people actively working on data from the LHC looking for other theories. Technicolor is one of the other big ones, but the detectors aren't designed specifically to look at supersymmetry. They're designed to try to catch as wide of possibilities as possible. [00:14:30] Yeah, this is actually a very good point. We perform some generalist searches which do not depend on a specific models, but just look for consistency between the given theory that we have. The standard pondered and what we see. So any hint of it can be used, at least as our guidance in watch theory can predict this kind of phenomenon. So we keep looking also for unexpected as much as possible. Speaker 1: [inaudible] [00:15:00] this is k a l x Berkeley. The show is spectrum. Our guests are Tsimané, Pegol Rizo and Bill Johnson in the next segment. The detailed useful byproducts of high energy particle physics. Speaker 3: Can you think [00:15:30] of any good examples of the technology developed our hundred [inaudible] physics or maybe the announced techniques designed for high energy physics and invented for it have affected people in common everyday life. Speaker 2: This research is really targeted in fundamental research, understanding how nature works, so the effects of it are usually a very long term, so it's very hard to predict what will happen. However, the means that we use to actually [00:16:00] perform these searches, they may have a more direct impact. If we go back a bit in the history, all the nuclear science that was used to start this particle physics in general decades ago is, for example, used to treat cancer. Here in alifornia is for example, very advanced in what is called heartland therapy, so try to treat cancer with protons and they have sidebar advantages with respect to the common radiotherapy, particular for inner most tumors. [00:16:30] In this way you can reach and try to kill the tumor burden, the size of the tumor without having to burn whatever is in the meter. All these kinds of the tactful with a lot of r and d of course on top of them but were taken from what was developed for nuclear physics in the past. Speaker 2: This is a very good example of how technology that we may use for our scope can actually be bring vented and adapted for other scopes in other very big challenge that we face every day [00:17:00] is that the amount of data we collect and the computing power we need to analyze it is huge. In order to cope with this, we had since several years our projects for distributed computing in order to be able our to analyze data everywhere using computing that are located everywhere in the world, sharing computing resources, sharing disc. This was a necessary step for us. In order to be able to carry on and having physics results. However, that can have [00:17:30] also an impact to everyday life. What we see now is our all the cloud computing increasing faster and faster in our everyday life. This is a slightly different version of this distributed computing that we've been developed and worked so far. Speaker 3: The web as we know it today from Speaker 2: what was created at cern. So if you actually see some of the photos of the very irst web browsers, they actually have design specifications and pictures [00:18:00] of the atlas detector at certain it was created for the scientists to communicate, but then it was such useful technology it felt to the rest of the population. So an interesting story is that even today that when you press and you don't find the page, you get these set of [inaudible] and this was actually the room at cern where the irst web server was hosted. A lot of the physics analysis that we do is [00:18:30] really from a statistical point of view, decent target. These huge amount of data that we collect and trying to find a rare phenomenon. It's usually trying to find a handful of events of collisions which have the characteristics you want among the billions that happened. Speaker 2: So these techniques are very similar and are in common to other challenges where you have a huge amount of data and you to find a specific [00:19:00] ones on a slightly different level. But it's what Google needs to find when you put some keywords and you can find what are the relevant pages for you. And there are few. So even in this case, what you need to do is basically try to find the most appropriate few pages among the billions that exist, which match what you're looking for. In many senses, this is not very different from what we try to do. And in fact, some of the technologies [00:19:30] with very big differences are actually in common. Well, ne question of course, is with the shutdown or from your lab, do you see the need for more accelerators besides certainly I strongly think these accelerators are big and they take a lot of resources of our community, not only in terms of the money you need to build them, but also as intellectual power of our community. Speaker 2: Run random and analyze data, but [00:20:00] having a new accelerator right now is not worth the investment in both their mind, intellectual power that we need to put on it, so the larger other collider will run at least up to the end of the Deca. Then probably up to the end of the next tech ad and this will be enough to give us data to answer most of the questions we actually build it for. Of course, people are already thinking of what's next. They're thinking [00:20:30] of new accelerators. They're thinking what is the best choice? I want to build it. If we have the technology, if we need to develop something that we are missing and people are actively working already on this and the LSE is a giant machine. It's hundreds of feet underground in miles Speaker 3: and miles across. So building a bigger tunnel is a very, very expensive proposition. Yes. And there's just fundamental limitations on how strong magnets can be. So a lot of people are investing [00:21:00] a lot of effort into finding other ways of accelerating particles or studying phenomenon that doesn't necessarily need accelerators. Is there anything particularly promising? There's the plasma wave accelerator. Um, there's cosmic sources, so some of the highest energy collisions we get are actually from particles from outer space. And a lot of people are using the atmosphere itself as a detector. So you can look at the interactions in the atmosphere [00:21:30] and then decay particles from those interactions to see what happened. There's also a lot of work going into just looking to see if you can study these processes with a lower energy. So maybe you won't be able to see what particle you're looking for, but you'll be able to see some very slight effects on other particles or another process. Very, very slight effects, which if you're very careful and you study it, it might tell you information about these much heavier particles than you can produce. So there's, there's a lot of ways of finding supersymmetry [00:22:00] yes. Or other further beyond the standard model. Yeah. These are complimentary ways in many senses. As you mentioned, there is a lot of work on going and it's very promising, so we really look forward to these [inaudible] well, thanks for joining us. Thank you Rick as thank you Rick. Cool Speaker 1: background [00:22:30] is archived on iTunes university. To find the archive, do a search in your favorite browser for iTunes Dash u space Calex space spectrum. Speaker 3: We'd like to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next wo weeks. [00:23:00] Rick Kaneski joins me for the calendar. The theme for the Spring Open House at the crucible is the science of art. The Criswell is located at welve sixty eventh street near West Oakland, Bart and mission on Saturday April ix it's free from leven am until our pm the open house seeks to highlight the scientific principles, inquiry and exploration behind the industrial arts processes. Taught and practiced at the [00:23:30] crucible. Highlights include the science of fire, the gravity of mold making, mysteries of steel made visible bicycle physics. Yeah. Surfing the solar flares with science at cal recycled glass processing and more. Speaker 4: There will be demonstrations, tuition discounts, food and bikes for sale. Visit the rucible dot org for more info. In April of wo thousand and twelve a small asteroid impacted [00:24:00] close to home in alifornia at Sutter's mill. The site where gold was irst discovered in ighteen forty eight media are astronomer. Peter Jenniskens of the Seti Institute started a tally of fines and mobilized NASA Ames research center into leading the recovery effort from the air and the ground. eventy seven media rights were found. He will summarize research results reported in a recent eventy author science article and also discuss a econd meteorite fall that happened in [00:24:30] Nevato and Sonoma last October. The presentation is Monday pril eighth at the Academy of Sciences. Planetarium. Tickets for the even hirty event can be purchased nline at Cal Academy Dot Org San Francisco Science Museum. The exploratorium is reopening in their new location at peer ifteen on Wednesday pril seventeenth to celebrate. They will offer free outdoor programming from ine am until en pm [00:25:00] the new museum offers ix galleries on human behavior, living systems maker culture, observing the landscape scene and listening as well as an outdoor space. Speaker 4: More nformation at exploratorium dot edu also on pril seventeenth UC Berkeley is holding its monthly blood drive. You can make an appointment online but walk-ins are also welcome. You are eligible to donate blood if you are in good health, weigh at least ne hundred and ten pounds [00:25:30] and are eventeen years old or older. You can also check out the eligibility guidelines online for it and initial self screening if you are not eligible or you prefer not to donate blood. There are other ways to support campus blood drives through volunteering, encouraging others and simply spreading the word. The blood drive will be on Wednesday, pril seventeenth in the alumni house. On the UC Berkeley campus. It [00:26:00] will last from noon until ix pm you can make an appointment or find more information at the website. Red Cross lood dot Org using the sponsor code you see B. We also like to bring you several news stories that we find interesting. Once again, Rick joins me for the news and Red Alax died of cancer in ineteen fifty one but her immortal cell line called Hela cells derived from her cervical cancer is the oldest and most [00:26:30] commonly used human cell line. Speaker 4: The cells were used to test the polio vaccine and have been used in the research of over eventy thousand scientific papers since lar Steinmetz and others in ermany published the genome of Heela and the journal g hree in March. However, the team has since removed the data from public databases because of privacy concerns expressed by family members and other scientists. Blacks did not give her a consent for the line [00:27:00] to be used and some are concerned that it may disclose genetic traits shared by her descendants. However, no law required that kind of consent in ineteen fifty one and even current regulation differs widely as to what consent would be required to sustain a modern cell line due to the extensive documentation of the cells. The privacy of the healer line may have already been broken with literature already published. Harvard medical school researchers have assembled a draft genome and [00:27:30] a team of University of ashington researchers have spoken about not only the heela genome, but also the more specific information about individual haplotypes at the American Society for Human Genetics Conference in San Francisco. Speaker 4: A recent UC Berkeley study on the lives of wild bees find that the insects thrive better within diversified farming systems. While you might consider the insects yellow nuisances, bees actually play a crucial role in the life cycle of cross pollinated [00:28:00] crops, which account for ne hird of our caloric intake. The mysterious decline in both honeybee and wild bee populations in recent years has prompted many scientists to study the buzzing insects more closely. This study found that crop yield generally increased with wild bee population, but also linked to the recent decline in bee populations to heavy pesticide or fertilizer use. Typically in large scale monoculture agriculture, a number [00:28:30] of alifornia beekeepers seem to agree. They recently sued the federal EPA for failing to ban wo pesticides, widely regarded as harmful to wild bees and honeybees. The wo insecticides named in the lawsuit known as [inaudible] and Simon Foxen have already been found to pose an unacceptably high risk to honeybees by the European food safety authority. Speaker 1: [inaudible] the music heard during the show [00:29:00] is by Louiston at David [inaudible] help on folk make available at creative Commons license hree point zero after music production and editing assistance by Renee Brown. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l xat Yahoo Dot com [00:29:30] join us in wo weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Past Engineers of KALX talk about the development of the station and its challenges. Features Sam Wood, Ron Quan, David Josephson, and Susan Calico. Also, past Music Director and Station Manager Doc Pelzel provides his insights.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We have a special show this week to highlight the [00:00:30] 50th anniversary of calyx and the kick off of the fundraiser. We look back over the 50 years by talking with past engineers of Calyx, those key people who made it possible for radio to happen. Our guests, our previous engineers, Sam Wood, Ron Kwon, David Josephson, Susan Calico, and to pass station manager Dr Pell Cell. We wanted to give you an idea of how Calex struggled and evolved into its current form through the eyes of the engineers that made it happen on with the show. Rick and I [00:01:00] are here with doc pell, Zelle and doc. What was it like early on in the 60s here at Calex? Yeah, I started it. Yeah. Speaker 3: [inaudible] about six months after it became an FM station and about um, oh six and a half years after it was an am station as usually a case with a college radio station. A bunch of engineers get together and decide, hey, let's do a radio station. And they put Patti page records in the library and they want you to play [00:01:30] music to study by. Okay. And then they go and fiddle with the wires, everything and get the stuff going. And then the, uh, then the firies come in and uh, and radicalize everything musically and, and make the engineers all nervous and depressed and then start building an audience. So Speaker 1: we have a phone interview with one of those early engineers from Calex Sam wood, let's go do that. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 5: Sam Wood, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well thank you for having me. Speaker 5: And [00:02:00] what years were you at cal? Speaker 4: I was actually there from the fall of 1963 through the spring of 1968. Speaker 5: And how did you get interested in radio at cal? Speaker 4: Well, actually I lived in the unit one residence hall, which was actually called Putnam Hall. Down the hall from me were two double e's who basically a hung out with for a while. And they took me over and introduced me to the founders of radio cow. Speaker 5: [00:02:30] And what did you find there? You know, what was on the ground engineering wise?Speaker 4: Well, at that point the station actually had a small studio and a little control room and a shop area. This was all in the basement of unit two residence hall. The actual original work that was done by Marshall and Jim started in 1961 everyone talks about 62 well that's about the time that they finally got some of the equipment working, [00:03:00] but they actually put this together in 1961 Speaker 5: and what were the engineering challenges for you back then? Speaker 4: Well, the challenges were that we had no time and very little money, so we ended up having to build much of what we had. We got some surplus gear from some of the commercial stations and we'd modify some of that, but we ended up building most of the stuff on our own. In fact, the transmitters that we [00:03:30] had for the carrier current station were actually built out of food service trays for the chassis. And then surplus scrap wood for the frame. The transformers came out of the physics department and the tubes came out of, I think it was the chem department, so really this is literally built up from scraps. We spent a lot of time and very little money Speaker 5: and that carrier system that you talked about, describe that a bit. Speaker 4: That was basically an a m transmitter. [00:04:00] It operated in the am radio band and it coupled into the power lines of the residence halls and it started out in unit two and then they expanded it to unit one and eventually into unit three and students who wanted to listen to the station could tune it in on an am radio. Speaker 5: And who were some of the key people that were in the engineering group back then? You've mentioned a few names. Do you want to sorta run down? Who was who? Speaker 4: Sure. John grilly worked with me. [00:04:30] He became chief engineer a later on, another guy, Bob Tasjan, who was an engineer and he helped out also Lee fells and Stein who later became one of the homebrew computer network people. John Connors, Scott Loftus, us, mark Tendus, Charlie Bedard. These were all engineering people who helped out in various ways. Speaker 5: How much time and impact did this have on your studies? Speaker 4: Oh, it was, it was interesting shoehorning [00:05:00] everything together because it, I spent far more time than I probably should have down there. I did all right, but mainly because once I got into upper division, the double e part of it, I had a natural ability to be able to work through the problems. And I think some of my experience at radio cow actually helped me in some of my w classes. Speaker 5: Do you want to tell some stories about uh, pulling cables? Speaker 4: Oh, the cables? Yes. We were in a very interesting situation with the university. [00:05:30] We got friendly with some of the top people at the university and were able to therefore have a general attitude toward us of, we don't care how the cable gets into the conduit, but once it's there, you can use it. So we ended up having little wire pulling campaigns, typically about two or three in the morning where we'd pull cable and we called it midnight wire and cable. And we wired up. Much of the, one of our biggest accomplishments was [00:06:00] the studios in the basement of Dwinelle Hall that we built up. Didn't have any real connection with the telephone network or any of the other university cable networks that we needed to be connected to. So we, uh, ended up pulling approximately 200 feet of 75 pair cable all the way from the grounds and buildings part of Darnell all the way to the studios. Speaker 4: And we figured out a really neat little trick using a vacuum cleaner [00:06:30] and a sponge and some fishing line so we could get a pole wire into a conduit that normally you couldn't. So we pulled this cable in that gave us our connectivity into the network at one l hall. One of the things also, I hadn't mentioned, we needed a lot of wire and cable to build the station. So the way we got that was, Marshall talked his way into getting access to the Republican convention at the Cow Palace. This is a 1964 [00:07:00] Republican convention, so we went over as the convention was winding up and we sqround miles and miles of cable off the ground that people didn't want. So we were able to get enough cable to wire much of our requirements for the station. So some of these outside activities were really quite exciting. Speaker 5: What sort of impacted all your work at cal radio and then Cadillacs have on your personal and professional life? Speaker 4: Well, [00:07:30] it gave me a different dimension because I had pretty much just focused on engineering and I like building things and that's why I went into engineering. The radio cow experience gave me a taste of what else you have to be able to do. You know, not that I have a good aptitude for it, but at least I have an appreciation for issues regarding organization and how to be able to put something together and get it through the system. [00:08:00] We really had to have an organization that we've built from the ground up to make this viable to do something like this in an environment where there's basically nothing available to you unless you know how to go and get it. It taught me how to go and get it, which was really useful. I consider that the experience that I got at radio cow far more important than the courses that I took. I mean I took a lot of interest in courses but the station gave me experience. You can't [00:08:30] get any other way. And that helped me and startups and it helped me in understanding how to make things work, not just from the technical end but from the other end too. Speaker 5: Any reflections on uh, what the station meant to the university community? Speaker 4: When we actually built the station, people really liked it and got involved and things were going unfortunately later, uh, into the 70s, there turned out to [00:09:00] be a number of problems. The station basically it shifted from being run by the engineering people to being run by others in the university who had different agendas. The stations really had its ups and downs and it's come back really well and with a lot more community efforts now than it had originally. So it is really important that you have a continuing set of goals and a continuing purpose and someone to build the structure into [00:09:30] running the station. Initially when it was starting from scratch, it was ad hoc, so clearly by definition there was no embedded structure that was suitable. Now that the station especially has got structuring, it's important to maintain the functionality and maintain that the way it operates and everything from one class to the next. Because by definition students come and students go and that doesn't lend itself for the kind of structure you need for an ongoing activity. The station [00:10:00] has had a long growth cycle here and I'm glad to see it's still around. Speaker 1: Sam would, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking with us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me. Speaker 1: You're listening to the spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our topic this week is the 50th anniversary of Kelex. We're talking to engineers about how Calex got started. It's also fundraiser week. Call us in the five and dime. That's six, four, two five, two five, nine. We're back now with [00:10:30] duck pell sal and doc. Next up is Ron Kwan. What are your insights into him? Speaker 3: Uh, Ron Kwan came in later on and he, he really did a, an amazing job with nothing. I mean we were still in a s ASU c funded club, which was a budget of few blue chip stamps was how much they gave us each year. And uh, so the fact that we were even able to, to function at all was truly amazing. But yeah, to Ron, Ron knew his stuff. In fact, he's, um, he's even still doing that macgyver kind of thing [00:11:00] of building like a lie detector with a, with an old cigarette butt and a rubber band. Speaker 1: Ron Quan, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you. How did you get interested in radio? Speaker 6: Well, in radio I build crystal radios when I was like nine or 10 years old through my brother. Getting into broadcast was actually kind of a fluke. What had happened was one of my friends got his FCC license, he had his third class license [00:11:30] and he was trying to get a second class license. Back in those days you would have your third, your second and your first class. And nowadays I think it's only like third class in general. So what happens is he's kind of like almost daring me to do it as well. And he had taken the test, the second class [inaudible] about two or three and had failed. And how he would do is he would take these questions and answer booklets and just try to memorize [00:12:00] the answers. So I did it the hard way. I, I got this book called Electronic Communication by, by Robert Schrader, who, who taught at Laney College back here in the East Bay. Speaker 6: And it's a thick book. It's almost like half of a telephone book. So I spent 150 hours and six weeks studying it. Between the time I enter cow and after I just graduated from high school and I passed the tests, but just barely I thing. But I got [00:12:30] it. And then when I entered cau back in 72 I heard that there was a radio station here. And so I said, where is this place in this as well? It's a, I think 500 Eshleman hall. So I went there I think during my second quarter. So that would be like the winter of, yeah, 73 and ran into a few people and one of them was Henry Chu who was the station manager and they said, yeah, we [00:13:00] have somebody outside getting the transmitter, a room ready to work, but we, we always can need help in the studio and elsewhere. Speaker 6: So for about three or four months I worked with this outside engineer and then I think by the time I had finished my first year, then I became the chief engineer, which then I found out was a very strange job in itself because you get called a lot [00:13:30] sometimes I'd 11 o'clock in the evening like, Hey, a, the photo preempt went out. And I say, well, what did you do? Uh, well everything was working just fine. Instead, I picked you, kicked the switch underneath it based back in those days we were so poor, we didn't even mount the damn thing. We stuck this funnel pre-amp deer off to the corner, but it was on the floor. Instead of this jockey would be moving his or her feet around it and kicked the switch off. And so I would have to come back [00:14:00] and deal with that. Speaker 6: So it was a very good job though. I lasted for about roughly a year. Uh, some of the crazy things that, that we did were that we did remote broadcasts and one of them was the famous UCLA cow game. Uh, when Bill Walton and John Wooden came to town, Dick was broadcast at the Oakland Coliseum or someplace like that. And so I had to whip up some kind of like a conso and a backup [00:14:30] in case of, you know, everything else failed in. Fortunately all that worked. And the backup amplifier was this heath kit Hi-fi amplifier that I found at a, I think in Norton Hall where the, all the equipment was, was being stashed at the time. And so, so it worked out fine. And I was, you know, actually sitting on top of instrument hall that night, uh, listening to the game, making sure everything was okay. So the radio part was sort of like, I just kind of fell into this thing. I didn't really [00:15:00] intend to work in radio, but it turned out to be a very good experience. So, so I took a nosedive in my grades and then I came back during my junior and senior year. Speaker 3: Did you learn anything from [inaudible] that helped you with your career? Speaker 6: The coolest thing about working at cow ax and also in broadcast, I got to see how people actually work the equipment and people don't always read the manual. People will use whatever [00:15:30] they have to get the job done and nobody really cares, you know? Well we have to use specific headphone or a specific something to this. You know, you have to design a thing to be idiot proof. And so that was the biggest lesson. I learned a work in broadcasting. And it was actually a great advantage because, uh, most people who work for an Ampex or a Sony when they get out of college, they have absolutely no practical knowledge of how [00:16:00] the users use their equipment and, and how they might configure it. So, so that, that, that part was good. Great. Ryan Quan, thanks very much for coming on. Spectrum. Thank you. Speaker 3: It's fundraiser week call (510) 642-5259 to pledge. We are back with doc pell cell and doc the 70s were a turbulent time. What was it like here at Cadillacs during that upheaval there was a lot of different factions at the stations that were sort of vying [00:16:30] for either control of it. And as a result, whoever won didn't really do anything except their own particular little fiefdom of area they wanted to work in and everything else sort of fell apart. So the station fell off the air a few times in the 73 74 period. Uh, there was a time in the early seventies when, um, the station studio equipment was stolen. There was no chief engineer. Our license was up for renewal. [00:17:00] The student government had had a war with the politics of the station, so we had no budget, so we had literally like nothing left. We were off the air for a period of time. Speaker 3: It looked pretty bleak. Then it's about in the 73 and four period tell a person named Andy Reimer who was, had been a student at UC Irvine, transferred up here for his last few years and he showed the university that their lack of oversight might cause them to lose their license and he outlined a program for [00:17:30] how he would build a station in a management team and have some accountability, but how the university would have to pump some money and some oversight into it. He pretty much pull the station out of the ashes and sort of Phoenix like it was resurrected and came back and began what is probably on its current path to where it is. David Josephson Speaker 7: was the chief engineer at that time and we just happened to have David Josephson in here. Excellent. Thanks for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to come back and visit Berkeley. [00:18:00] How did you get started in radio? Well, I had the good fortune of landing in Berkeley at age, about nine or 10 when, uh, all sorts of experiments were happening. My mother was involved with KPFA and I was an electronic tinkerer experiment or I had a pirate radio station and the under the stairs in our house and she was doing some promotion work for KPFA. And I said, well, Gee, maybe I can get involved with a real radio here. They were very, uh, open [00:18:30] to that idea. So I started immediately then learning about production recording program, uh, editing and so on. So I got my, uh, third class license when I was 10 and read board shifts at Kpmj, but we moved away from Berkeley, uh, right after some of the worst of the people's park riots up to more rural northern California. Speaker 7: And, uh, finished high school there and decided that I really wanted [00:19:00] to stay involved in radio and electronics and audio broadcasting, uh, design and stuff like that. So came back to Berkeley and uh, was intent on being an engineering student when there was a, a note on the chalkboard of the Amateur Radio Club that the radio station was looking for an engineer as far as I knew the station was off the air and gone, which it was at that point, but I was part of the crew then that, uh, resurrected it. What was the time period? You were a chief engineer? [00:19:30] I was chief engineer from 75 through 79 I was here the four years. What were the main technical issues at the time? Just the resurrecting of cal. Yeah, building the station from scratch. The challenge was to build something that we could put on the air, making it work, making it illegal. Speaker 7: I started in the spring quarter of 75 and I think we started working on it toward the end of spring. I think we [00:20:00] were working on it for most of the summer. I was here all summer and I think we went on the air before school started again in the fall. What's important is that there was a crew of people who came together at that time who most of whom had a background in radio. The general manager, Andy Reimer, uh, had been manager of the UC Irvine Station when he was there for a couple of years. The other cluster of people were mostly involved in a record business. [00:20:30] You know Tim divine who went on to be out of an art at a and m I guess doc Pelz l of course. It was kind of keeping the continuity of things from the older time and running the music department. So we had a couple of months to figure out what could be patched together. A of my friends from KPFA helped staff and technicians from the w department provided test equipment, parts access to bits and pieces. So we just kind of pulled it together from that. [00:21:00] The next step was to be some thing a little bit more accessible and reliable than this closet up on the the roof of Dwinelle and that's when Andy got to doing the political thing and got us space in Lawrence Hall of Science. We moved the studios up there first Speaker 1: and you moved the transmitter up on the hill? That was next? That was stage two. So the first two, yeah. I think first phase was to get the studio to Lawrence Hall because we were being booted out of to know [00:21:30] and then the transmitter followed. How long after that? That was a year, more than a year after that because there was a lot of construction that was secondary to the studio operations. Back in the early days of Calex, a lot of the engineers were students at the time. Speaker 7: All of the engineers were students or former students or part time students. That was actually fairly common in college radio around [00:22:00] the country. There were more radio engineers out there because of the small radio stations around everywhere needed more engineers. The equipment was less reliable, transmitters needed work all the time. There were a lot more people who, as teenagers were working in radio and so they were a lot more engineers and there were a lot more people who were familiar with the technical requirements of, of an audio chain and a transmitter and studio transmitter, [00:22:30] links and antennas and things like that. So, uh, yeah, I was a student part time during that time. I, I think I got it about two years during my four years here, I said I graduated from colleagues. Most of the other engineers were also students or community people. There weren't any staff engineers while I was there except me. I mean, if they finally got a kind of a stipend salary for the chief engineer. Speaker 1: How did your time at Calyx influence your career? Speaker 7: [00:23:00] Most of the people I know who had solid college radio experiences when they were in school refer to them throughout their lives as a defining experience in enabling experience. That was, I mean, I don't know how many of them consider that they learned more from the radio station than they did from classes like I do, but I'm sure it's a significant fraction. The real challenge that drove what I was able to [00:23:30] feel confident in doing in later years was dealing with something that had to work all the time with limited resources and patching together things to make a system work and that that whole discipline of able to see a system come together and allocating limited resources to fitting that all together. That's the engineering challenge of doing the engineering of a radio station. At least it was then when things were not reliable, not stable, [00:24:00] not dependable, and things were being fixed all the time. And that applies to any technology that's in kind of development, I think. [inaudible] Speaker 1: David Josephson, thanks very much for coming on spectrum talking with us. Very welcome. Thanks for inviting me. K, a l ex Berkeley doc pell sal. Thanks very much for your help getting the context of the sixties and seventies squared away and it's fundraiser week here at Calyx fundraiser. So give us a call. [00:24:30] We need your donations. (510) 642-5259 back to spectrum. We're going to talk with Susan Calico, who took over in the 80s as chief engineer. Susan Kaliko. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about Calex. Speaker 8: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. It's nice to be back at the station and see how nice it looks. Speaker 1: I wanted to find out from you how you got interested in radio in the first place. Speaker 8: Well, I have to go back much further than my time at Calex. I [00:25:00] got out of school and I was very interested in writing and got involved at the daily cow. So I was a journalist for a little while and then I became a copy editor and somehow that wasn't enough. So I went down to KPFA, which is also in Berkeley and volunteered there. I got involved in first in women's news and then during that time, which was in the mid to late seventies, there were almost no women who knew anything technical at that station. So, [00:25:30] um, when I was at KPFA, I took advantage of the fact that you could do pretty much anything kind of like here I got my third class license, which was required to actually run the board on the air and learned how to do that. And again, was always teaching people. And I was there for probably about 10 years, everything overlapped with everything else and I had just studied for and gotten my first class radio license, which was in those days required to be the responsible [00:26:00] engineer at a station and the job of Calyx came up. So I applied for that and got in and well the work began. Speaker 1: What were the years you were a chief engineer at Calex? Speaker 8: Oh, I was engineer at Calex starting in 1981, I believe in the late, late in the year through uh, early 1995. So it was about 13 years altogether. Speaker 1: While you were the engineer, there [00:26:30] was a move from Lawrence Hall of science down to bondage. What was that like? Speaker 8: As I recall, we managed to get the honors studio down and settled and on the air and the newsroom was about to move from over in the student union and I got pneumonia, so I was at home in bed for two weeks with a fever. Well, the engineering volunteers basically put in the new studio. So it's, you know, as usual there's, there's never enough money to [00:27:00] do what you need to do, so you just have to do what you can with what you've got. And we were lucky enough to have some good volunteers who could really take care of business. Speaker 1: The next big technical challenge you had was increasing the power from 10 watts to 500 watts. How did that go? Speaker 8: We had to get a new transmitter, which was huge compared to our one that we had. And so we had to sort of rearrange things up at the transmitter shad and I'll patch all the leaks because I mean, when you get new [00:27:30] equipment, you want it to be good. Uh, we had to have a new cable running up the transmitter tower, which I think it's, it's not quite a hundred feet. I think it's something like 80 or 85 or something like that. I do remember, um, being up on the tower with the surveyors down below, because in such a crowded market, as Calex is in, in the bay area here, there are many FM stations. You have to be careful not to step on anybody else's frequency. So we had to have a very directional [00:28:00] and oddly shaped signal, the antennas crafted so that it directs the signal in the way that you want. Speaker 8: But if your antenna isn't pointed exactly where you want it, you're going to not be, you know, I mean, the FCC is not gonna like you being out of line there. So I went up on the tower, loosen the bolts on the, uh, on the antenna and the surveyors down below, going all over this way, you know, and I'm like whackwhackwhack no, no, no, a little, little bit back. But those [00:28:30] were expenses we couldn't avoid because it had to be certified. But eventually it all got done and in our case it was 500 watts, which isn't a whole lot. That transmitter could have done a lot more, but that was what we were allowed to do, so we had to keep it pretty close. Speaker 1: What was the culture like at Calex during your years? Speaker 8: I learned that no matter how weird people looked, most of them or really good people, they were sweet people. They, you know, a lot of our djs [00:29:00] were just really nice people. They were pretty easy to work with. They were considerate and I wouldn't always be able to tell by looking at them Speaker 1: Cadillacs. How did it affect you professionally? Speaker 8: I spent 13 years here and I really, really learned a lot more electronics and a lot more transmitter information and so I really understood why everything worked. Speaker 1: [00:29:30] Susan Calico, thanks very much for coming in and talking with us. Speaker 8: Well, it's been a pleasure to see that the station is still here and that the equipment still works. Speaker 1: The card during the show. It was by law, Stan and David for these help on folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 attribution. Please do donate to the calyx fundraiser and we'll see you in two weeks with another edition of spectrum at the same time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Past Engineers of KALX talk about the development of the station and its challenges. Features Sam Wood, Ron Quan, David Josephson, and Susan Calico. Also, past Music Director and Station Manager Doc Pelzel provides his insights.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We have a special show this week to highlight the [00:00:30] 50th anniversary of calyx and the kick off of the fundraiser. We look back over the 50 years by talking with past engineers of Calyx, those key people who made it possible for radio to happen. Our guests, our previous engineers, Sam Wood, Ron Kwon, David Josephson, Susan Calico, and to pass station manager Dr Pell Cell. We wanted to give you an idea of how Calex struggled and evolved into its current form through the eyes of the engineers that made it happen on with the show. Rick and I [00:01:00] are here with doc pell, Zelle and doc. What was it like early on in the 60s here at Calex? Yeah, I started it. Yeah. Speaker 3: [inaudible] about six months after it became an FM station and about um, oh six and a half years after it was an am station as usually a case with a college radio station. A bunch of engineers get together and decide, hey, let's do a radio station. And they put Patti page records in the library and they want you to play [00:01:30] music to study by. Okay. And then they go and fiddle with the wires, everything and get the stuff going. And then the, uh, then the firies come in and uh, and radicalize everything musically and, and make the engineers all nervous and depressed and then start building an audience. So Speaker 1: we have a phone interview with one of those early engineers from Calex Sam wood, let's go do that. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 5: Sam Wood, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well thank you for having me. Speaker 5: And [00:02:00] what years were you at cal? Speaker 4: I was actually there from the fall of 1963 through the spring of 1968. Speaker 5: And how did you get interested in radio at cal? Speaker 4: Well, actually I lived in the unit one residence hall, which was actually called Putnam Hall. Down the hall from me were two double e's who basically a hung out with for a while. And they took me over and introduced me to the founders of radio cow. Speaker 5: [00:02:30] And what did you find there? You know, what was on the ground engineering wise?Speaker 4: Well, at that point the station actually had a small studio and a little control room and a shop area. This was all in the basement of unit two residence hall. The actual original work that was done by Marshall and Jim started in 1961 everyone talks about 62 well that's about the time that they finally got some of the equipment working, [00:03:00] but they actually put this together in 1961 Speaker 5: and what were the engineering challenges for you back then? Speaker 4: Well, the challenges were that we had no time and very little money, so we ended up having to build much of what we had. We got some surplus gear from some of the commercial stations and we'd modify some of that, but we ended up building most of the stuff on our own. In fact, the transmitters that we [00:03:30] had for the carrier current station were actually built out of food service trays for the chassis. And then surplus scrap wood for the frame. The transformers came out of the physics department and the tubes came out of, I think it was the chem department, so really this is literally built up from scraps. We spent a lot of time and very little money Speaker 5: and that carrier system that you talked about, describe that a bit. Speaker 4: That was basically an a m transmitter. [00:04:00] It operated in the am radio band and it coupled into the power lines of the residence halls and it started out in unit two and then they expanded it to unit one and eventually into unit three and students who wanted to listen to the station could tune it in on an am radio. Speaker 5: And who were some of the key people that were in the engineering group back then? You've mentioned a few names. Do you want to sorta run down? Who was who? Speaker 4: Sure. John grilly worked with me. [00:04:30] He became chief engineer a later on, another guy, Bob Tasjan, who was an engineer and he helped out also Lee fells and Stein who later became one of the homebrew computer network people. John Connors, Scott Loftus, us, mark Tendus, Charlie Bedard. These were all engineering people who helped out in various ways. Speaker 5: How much time and impact did this have on your studies? Speaker 4: Oh, it was, it was interesting shoehorning [00:05:00] everything together because it, I spent far more time than I probably should have down there. I did all right, but mainly because once I got into upper division, the double e part of it, I had a natural ability to be able to work through the problems. And I think some of my experience at radio cow actually helped me in some of my w classes. Speaker 5: Do you want to tell some stories about uh, pulling cables? Speaker 4: Oh, the cables? Yes. We were in a very interesting situation with the university. [00:05:30] We got friendly with some of the top people at the university and were able to therefore have a general attitude toward us of, we don't care how the cable gets into the conduit, but once it's there, you can use it. So we ended up having little wire pulling campaigns, typically about two or three in the morning where we'd pull cable and we called it midnight wire and cable. And we wired up. Much of the, one of our biggest accomplishments was [00:06:00] the studios in the basement of Dwinelle Hall that we built up. Didn't have any real connection with the telephone network or any of the other university cable networks that we needed to be connected to. So we, uh, ended up pulling approximately 200 feet of 75 pair cable all the way from the grounds and buildings part of Darnell all the way to the studios. Speaker 4: And we figured out a really neat little trick using a vacuum cleaner [00:06:30] and a sponge and some fishing line so we could get a pole wire into a conduit that normally you couldn't. So we pulled this cable in that gave us our connectivity into the network at one l hall. One of the things also, I hadn't mentioned, we needed a lot of wire and cable to build the station. So the way we got that was, Marshall talked his way into getting access to the Republican convention at the Cow Palace. This is a 1964 [00:07:00] Republican convention, so we went over as the convention was winding up and we sqround miles and miles of cable off the ground that people didn't want. So we were able to get enough cable to wire much of our requirements for the station. So some of these outside activities were really quite exciting. Speaker 5: What sort of impacted all your work at cal radio and then Cadillacs have on your personal and professional life? Speaker 4: Well, [00:07:30] it gave me a different dimension because I had pretty much just focused on engineering and I like building things and that's why I went into engineering. The radio cow experience gave me a taste of what else you have to be able to do. You know, not that I have a good aptitude for it, but at least I have an appreciation for issues regarding organization and how to be able to put something together and get it through the system. [00:08:00] We really had to have an organization that we've built from the ground up to make this viable to do something like this in an environment where there's basically nothing available to you unless you know how to go and get it. It taught me how to go and get it, which was really useful. I consider that the experience that I got at radio cow far more important than the courses that I took. I mean I took a lot of interest in courses but the station gave me experience. You can't [00:08:30] get any other way. And that helped me and startups and it helped me in understanding how to make things work, not just from the technical end but from the other end too. Speaker 5: Any reflections on uh, what the station meant to the university community? Speaker 4: When we actually built the station, people really liked it and got involved and things were going unfortunately later, uh, into the 70s, there turned out to [00:09:00] be a number of problems. The station basically it shifted from being run by the engineering people to being run by others in the university who had different agendas. The stations really had its ups and downs and it's come back really well and with a lot more community efforts now than it had originally. So it is really important that you have a continuing set of goals and a continuing purpose and someone to build the structure into [00:09:30] running the station. Initially when it was starting from scratch, it was ad hoc, so clearly by definition there was no embedded structure that was suitable. Now that the station especially has got structuring, it's important to maintain the functionality and maintain that the way it operates and everything from one class to the next. Because by definition students come and students go and that doesn't lend itself for the kind of structure you need for an ongoing activity. The station [00:10:00] has had a long growth cycle here and I'm glad to see it's still around. Speaker 1: Sam would, thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking with us about the early days of Calex. Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me. Speaker 1: You're listening to the spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Our topic this week is the 50th anniversary of Kelex. We're talking to engineers about how Calex got started. It's also fundraiser week. Call us in the five and dime. That's six, four, two five, two five, nine. We're back now with [00:10:30] duck pell sal and doc. Next up is Ron Kwan. What are your insights into him? Speaker 3: Uh, Ron Kwan came in later on and he, he really did a, an amazing job with nothing. I mean we were still in a s ASU c funded club, which was a budget of few blue chip stamps was how much they gave us each year. And uh, so the fact that we were even able to, to function at all was truly amazing. But yeah, to Ron, Ron knew his stuff. In fact, he's, um, he's even still doing that macgyver kind of thing [00:11:00] of building like a lie detector with a, with an old cigarette butt and a rubber band. Speaker 1: Ron Quan, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you. How did you get interested in radio? Speaker 6: Well, in radio I build crystal radios when I was like nine or 10 years old through my brother. Getting into broadcast was actually kind of a fluke. What had happened was one of my friends got his FCC license, he had his third class license [00:11:30] and he was trying to get a second class license. Back in those days you would have your third, your second and your first class. And nowadays I think it's only like third class in general. So what happens is he's kind of like almost daring me to do it as well. And he had taken the test, the second class [inaudible] about two or three and had failed. And how he would do is he would take these questions and answer booklets and just try to memorize [00:12:00] the answers. So I did it the hard way. I, I got this book called Electronic Communication by, by Robert Schrader, who, who taught at Laney College back here in the East Bay. Speaker 6: And it's a thick book. It's almost like half of a telephone book. So I spent 150 hours and six weeks studying it. Between the time I enter cow and after I just graduated from high school and I passed the tests, but just barely I thing. But I got [00:12:30] it. And then when I entered cau back in 72 I heard that there was a radio station here. And so I said, where is this place in this as well? It's a, I think 500 Eshleman hall. So I went there I think during my second quarter. So that would be like the winter of, yeah, 73 and ran into a few people and one of them was Henry Chu who was the station manager and they said, yeah, we [00:13:00] have somebody outside getting the transmitter, a room ready to work, but we, we always can need help in the studio and elsewhere. Speaker 6: So for about three or four months I worked with this outside engineer and then I think by the time I had finished my first year, then I became the chief engineer, which then I found out was a very strange job in itself because you get called a lot [00:13:30] sometimes I'd 11 o'clock in the evening like, Hey, a, the photo preempt went out. And I say, well, what did you do? Uh, well everything was working just fine. Instead, I picked you, kicked the switch underneath it based back in those days we were so poor, we didn't even mount the damn thing. We stuck this funnel pre-amp deer off to the corner, but it was on the floor. Instead of this jockey would be moving his or her feet around it and kicked the switch off. And so I would have to come back [00:14:00] and deal with that. Speaker 6: So it was a very good job though. I lasted for about roughly a year. Uh, some of the crazy things that, that we did were that we did remote broadcasts and one of them was the famous UCLA cow game. Uh, when Bill Walton and John Wooden came to town, Dick was broadcast at the Oakland Coliseum or someplace like that. And so I had to whip up some kind of like a conso and a backup [00:14:30] in case of, you know, everything else failed in. Fortunately all that worked. And the backup amplifier was this heath kit Hi-fi amplifier that I found at a, I think in Norton Hall where the, all the equipment was, was being stashed at the time. And so, so it worked out fine. And I was, you know, actually sitting on top of instrument hall that night, uh, listening to the game, making sure everything was okay. So the radio part was sort of like, I just kind of fell into this thing. I didn't really [00:15:00] intend to work in radio, but it turned out to be a very good experience. So, so I took a nosedive in my grades and then I came back during my junior and senior year. Speaker 3: Did you learn anything from [inaudible] that helped you with your career? Speaker 6: The coolest thing about working at cow ax and also in broadcast, I got to see how people actually work the equipment and people don't always read the manual. People will use whatever [00:15:30] they have to get the job done and nobody really cares, you know? Well we have to use specific headphone or a specific something to this. You know, you have to design a thing to be idiot proof. And so that was the biggest lesson. I learned a work in broadcasting. And it was actually a great advantage because, uh, most people who work for an Ampex or a Sony when they get out of college, they have absolutely no practical knowledge of how [00:16:00] the users use their equipment and, and how they might configure it. So, so that, that, that part was good. Great. Ryan Quan, thanks very much for coming on. Spectrum. Thank you. Speaker 3: It's fundraiser week call (510) 642-5259 to pledge. We are back with doc pell cell and doc the 70s were a turbulent time. What was it like here at Cadillacs during that upheaval there was a lot of different factions at the stations that were sort of vying [00:16:30] for either control of it. And as a result, whoever won didn't really do anything except their own particular little fiefdom of area they wanted to work in and everything else sort of fell apart. So the station fell off the air a few times in the 73 74 period. Uh, there was a time in the early seventies when, um, the station studio equipment was stolen. There was no chief engineer. Our license was up for renewal. [00:17:00] The student government had had a war with the politics of the station, so we had no budget, so we had literally like nothing left. We were off the air for a period of time. Speaker 3: It looked pretty bleak. Then it's about in the 73 and four period tell a person named Andy Reimer who was, had been a student at UC Irvine, transferred up here for his last few years and he showed the university that their lack of oversight might cause them to lose their license and he outlined a program for [00:17:30] how he would build a station in a management team and have some accountability, but how the university would have to pump some money and some oversight into it. He pretty much pull the station out of the ashes and sort of Phoenix like it was resurrected and came back and began what is probably on its current path to where it is. David Josephson Speaker 7: was the chief engineer at that time and we just happened to have David Josephson in here. Excellent. Thanks for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to come back and visit Berkeley. [00:18:00] How did you get started in radio? Well, I had the good fortune of landing in Berkeley at age, about nine or 10 when, uh, all sorts of experiments were happening. My mother was involved with KPFA and I was an electronic tinkerer experiment or I had a pirate radio station and the under the stairs in our house and she was doing some promotion work for KPFA. And I said, well, Gee, maybe I can get involved with a real radio here. They were very, uh, open [00:18:30] to that idea. So I started immediately then learning about production recording program, uh, editing and so on. So I got my, uh, third class license when I was 10 and read board shifts at Kpmj, but we moved away from Berkeley, uh, right after some of the worst of the people's park riots up to more rural northern California. Speaker 7: And, uh, finished high school there and decided that I really wanted [00:19:00] to stay involved in radio and electronics and audio broadcasting, uh, design and stuff like that. So came back to Berkeley and uh, was intent on being an engineering student when there was a, a note on the chalkboard of the Amateur Radio Club that the radio station was looking for an engineer as far as I knew the station was off the air and gone, which it was at that point, but I was part of the crew then that, uh, resurrected it. What was the time period? You were a chief engineer? [00:19:30] I was chief engineer from 75 through 79 I was here the four years. What were the main technical issues at the time? Just the resurrecting of cal. Yeah, building the station from scratch. The challenge was to build something that we could put on the air, making it work, making it illegal. Speaker 7: I started in the spring quarter of 75 and I think we started working on it toward the end of spring. I think we [00:20:00] were working on it for most of the summer. I was here all summer and I think we went on the air before school started again in the fall. What's important is that there was a crew of people who came together at that time who most of whom had a background in radio. The general manager, Andy Reimer, uh, had been manager of the UC Irvine Station when he was there for a couple of years. The other cluster of people were mostly involved in a record business. [00:20:30] You know Tim divine who went on to be out of an art at a and m I guess doc Pelz l of course. It was kind of keeping the continuity of things from the older time and running the music department. So we had a couple of months to figure out what could be patched together. A of my friends from KPFA helped staff and technicians from the w department provided test equipment, parts access to bits and pieces. So we just kind of pulled it together from that. [00:21:00] The next step was to be some thing a little bit more accessible and reliable than this closet up on the the roof of Dwinelle and that's when Andy got to doing the political thing and got us space in Lawrence Hall of Science. We moved the studios up there first Speaker 1: and you moved the transmitter up on the hill? That was next? That was stage two. So the first two, yeah. I think first phase was to get the studio to Lawrence Hall because we were being booted out of to know [00:21:30] and then the transmitter followed. How long after that? That was a year, more than a year after that because there was a lot of construction that was secondary to the studio operations. Back in the early days of Calex, a lot of the engineers were students at the time. Speaker 7: All of the engineers were students or former students or part time students. That was actually fairly common in college radio around [00:22:00] the country. There were more radio engineers out there because of the small radio stations around everywhere needed more engineers. The equipment was less reliable, transmitters needed work all the time. There were a lot more people who, as teenagers were working in radio and so they were a lot more engineers and there were a lot more people who were familiar with the technical requirements of, of an audio chain and a transmitter and studio transmitter, [00:22:30] links and antennas and things like that. So, uh, yeah, I was a student part time during that time. I, I think I got it about two years during my four years here, I said I graduated from colleagues. Most of the other engineers were also students or community people. There weren't any staff engineers while I was there except me. I mean, if they finally got a kind of a stipend salary for the chief engineer. Speaker 1: How did your time at Calyx influence your career? Speaker 7: [00:23:00] Most of the people I know who had solid college radio experiences when they were in school refer to them throughout their lives as a defining experience in enabling experience. That was, I mean, I don't know how many of them consider that they learned more from the radio station than they did from classes like I do, but I'm sure it's a significant fraction. The real challenge that drove what I was able to [00:23:30] feel confident in doing in later years was dealing with something that had to work all the time with limited resources and patching together things to make a system work and that that whole discipline of able to see a system come together and allocating limited resources to fitting that all together. That's the engineering challenge of doing the engineering of a radio station. At least it was then when things were not reliable, not stable, [00:24:00] not dependable, and things were being fixed all the time. And that applies to any technology that's in kind of development, I think. [inaudible] Speaker 1: David Josephson, thanks very much for coming on spectrum talking with us. Very welcome. Thanks for inviting me. K, a l ex Berkeley doc pell sal. Thanks very much for your help getting the context of the sixties and seventies squared away and it's fundraiser week here at Calyx fundraiser. So give us a call. [00:24:30] We need your donations. (510) 642-5259 back to spectrum. We're going to talk with Susan Calico, who took over in the 80s as chief engineer. Susan Kaliko. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum and talking to us about Calex. Speaker 8: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. It's nice to be back at the station and see how nice it looks. Speaker 1: I wanted to find out from you how you got interested in radio in the first place. Speaker 8: Well, I have to go back much further than my time at Calex. I [00:25:00] got out of school and I was very interested in writing and got involved at the daily cow. So I was a journalist for a little while and then I became a copy editor and somehow that wasn't enough. So I went down to KPFA, which is also in Berkeley and volunteered there. I got involved in first in women's news and then during that time, which was in the mid to late seventies, there were almost no women who knew anything technical at that station. So, [00:25:30] um, when I was at KPFA, I took advantage of the fact that you could do pretty much anything kind of like here I got my third class license, which was required to actually run the board on the air and learned how to do that. And again, was always teaching people. And I was there for probably about 10 years, everything overlapped with everything else and I had just studied for and gotten my first class radio license, which was in those days required to be the responsible [00:26:00] engineer at a station and the job of Calyx came up. So I applied for that and got in and well the work began. Speaker 1: What were the years you were a chief engineer at Calex? Speaker 8: Oh, I was engineer at Calex starting in 1981, I believe in the late, late in the year through uh, early 1995. So it was about 13 years altogether. Speaker 1: While you were the engineer, there [00:26:30] was a move from Lawrence Hall of science down to bondage. What was that like? Speaker 8: As I recall, we managed to get the honors studio down and settled and on the air and the newsroom was about to move from over in the student union and I got pneumonia, so I was at home in bed for two weeks with a fever. Well, the engineering volunteers basically put in the new studio. So it's, you know, as usual there's, there's never enough money to [00:27:00] do what you need to do, so you just have to do what you can with what you've got. And we were lucky enough to have some good volunteers who could really take care of business. Speaker 1: The next big technical challenge you had was increasing the power from 10 watts to 500 watts. How did that go? Speaker 8: We had to get a new transmitter, which was huge compared to our one that we had. And so we had to sort of rearrange things up at the transmitter shad and I'll patch all the leaks because I mean, when you get new [00:27:30] equipment, you want it to be good. Uh, we had to have a new cable running up the transmitter tower, which I think it's, it's not quite a hundred feet. I think it's something like 80 or 85 or something like that. I do remember, um, being up on the tower with the surveyors down below, because in such a crowded market, as Calex is in, in the bay area here, there are many FM stations. You have to be careful not to step on anybody else's frequency. So we had to have a very directional [00:28:00] and oddly shaped signal, the antennas crafted so that it directs the signal in the way that you want. Speaker 8: But if your antenna isn't pointed exactly where you want it, you're going to not be, you know, I mean, the FCC is not gonna like you being out of line there. So I went up on the tower, loosen the bolts on the, uh, on the antenna and the surveyors down below, going all over this way, you know, and I'm like whackwhackwhack no, no, no, a little, little bit back. But those [00:28:30] were expenses we couldn't avoid because it had to be certified. But eventually it all got done and in our case it was 500 watts, which isn't a whole lot. That transmitter could have done a lot more, but that was what we were allowed to do, so we had to keep it pretty close. Speaker 1: What was the culture like at Calex during your years? Speaker 8: I learned that no matter how weird people looked, most of them or really good people, they were sweet people. They, you know, a lot of our djs [00:29:00] were just really nice people. They were pretty easy to work with. They were considerate and I wouldn't always be able to tell by looking at them Speaker 1: Cadillacs. How did it affect you professionally? Speaker 8: I spent 13 years here and I really, really learned a lot more electronics and a lot more transmitter information and so I really understood why everything worked. Speaker 1: [00:29:30] Susan Calico, thanks very much for coming in and talking with us. Speaker 8: Well, it's been a pleasure to see that the station is still here and that the equipment still works. Speaker 1: The card during the show. It was by law, Stan and David for these help on folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 attribution. Please do donate to the calyx fundraiser and we'll see you in two weeks with another edition of spectrum at the same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Nicholas McConnell, PhD candidate in Astrophysics at UCB summer 2012, and Jeff Silverman, PhD of Astrophysics from UCB in 2011, part one of three, talk about their work with supernovae and black holes. To help analyze astronomy data go to www.galaxyzoo.org or www.planethunters.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm joined today by a spectrum of contributors, Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Katovich. Our interview is with Jeff Silverman, a recent phd in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and Nicholas McConnell, a phd [00:01:00] candidate unscheduled to be awarded a phd in astrophysics by UC Berkeley this summer. Jeff and Nicholas have generously agreed to help spectrum present a three part astronomy survey explaining the big ideas, recent experiments, collaborations and improvements in observation technology that are transforming astronomy. This is part two of three and in it we discussed Super Novi and black holes. Jeff, would you please start part two explaining Super Novi [inaudible] Speaker 4: observations [00:01:30] of exploding stars. These supernovae have been going on for thousands of years. Whether or not we knew what we were looking at for most of that time, we now know that those were exploding stars. Something that I did my phd thesis work on as well. I want to talk about a two exploding stars in particular that were found in 2011. The first one I'll talk about was found in late May, early June last year. It was founded by a handful of amateur astronomers, which is they find maybe hundred supernova per year. This has been going on for about a decade [00:02:00] or so. Uh, this one in particular, however, was so young and knew that somebody had emailed somebody who had emailed somebody who had actually tweeted about this new supernova. And so I got forwarded a tweet that said there's a new supernova in this very nearby galaxy and I happen to be using the Keck telescope, one of the biggest optical telescopes in the world, controlling it from UC Berkeley. Speaker 4: Saw this in my inbox. And we pointed at this supernova. We were the first ones to classify what kind of exploding start was confirmed that it was indeed [00:02:30] an exploding star and not some other, uh, asteroid that was just along the line of sight in the way or something else. Uh, and so that was as far as I know, the first time that a supernova was ever classified based on a tweet. The other Supernova, I want to talk about sort of the opposite end of having amateurs looking at a handful of galaxies. I'm part of a large international collaboration known as the Palomar transient factory PTF. And this collaboration uses a telescope down in San Diego to automatically monitor a bunch of these galaxies, [00:03:00] run these big computer programs to try and find if there is a new supernova, new bright spot in any of the images. Speaker 4: And this has been running for about two years now and we've been tweaking the algorithms to get faster and faster detections of these new spots. And so in August of last year there was some images taken in San Diego. Dr Peter Nugent, a professor in the astronomy department, was going through some of the newest candidates of what the computer program spit out and saw what looked like a very good supernova candidate and another very nearby galaxy, [00:03:30] a different one, but about the same distance, 20 or so million light years. We had an image from the night before that was very good and there was absolutely nothing at that position. So this clearly looked like a brand new spot. It couldn't be that old. So he immediately gets on the email list for this international collaboration. This was sort of the afternoon in California, but it was already nighttime in the eastern hemisphere. And we have collaborators who use telescopes in the Canary Islands. Speaker 4: So they point to it. They got not a great observation, but an observation that confirmed there was something there. And it was probably one of these [00:04:00] exploding stars by the time that they had worked on their data and emailed us. It was already nighttime in California and Hawaii. So we had the lick observatory telescopes out in San Jose as well as the Kecks in Hawaii pointing at this and absolutely confirming that it, it was a supernova. And within a few weeks we had already written a bunch of papers looking at the data very carefully. And we had actually found this supernova 11 hours after it exploded. So one of the earliest detections of an exploding star ever. People had speculated what you might [00:04:30] see that early and we actually got to throw out a lot of people's models saying we didn't see these things that you predicted possibly confirming some other predictions at this early time. Speaker 4: And this thing is still bright at its brightest. You could see it in a small backyard telescope are good binoculars from the Oakland hills. Uh, I saw it with my own eyes through a telescope, which was awesome. I think just an amazing, amazing proof of concept or success story of this huge collaboration without the the algorithms to, to run this quickly, we wouldn't have realized it was there until [00:05:00] days later without an international collaboration of friends expanding the globe. We wouldn't have been able to track it and confirm that it was the supernovas so quickly and so early and easily. So if I can ask, what's the biggest mystery about the way stars explode that you help solve by knowing about a supernova? Just a few hours after an explosion is actually happened. We'll solve as a strong word in science, but we can at least help get towards the truth. Speaker 4: As my advisor likes to say, this one that was discovered by the Palomar transient [00:05:30] factory in August is a specific kind of supernova that should have very consistent amount of energy. Sort of, you can think of it as a a hundred watt light bulb. It has the same amount of energy output always basically. So if you see it's very, very faint, it must be very, very far away. If you see it's very, very bright, it must be very, very close because it's sort of each of these objects has the same amount of light coming out of it and so we can measure very accurately how bright they are. We can compare to what we know they should be, how bright they should be, and we get a very accurate distance measurement to [00:06:00] all of these different supernova and figure out very accurate distances. How that distance has changed with time, and this is in fact how the accelerating expansion of the universe was discovered in the late nineties using these types of supernovae, which I will plug did win the Nobel Prize last year for physics and we're all very proud of that. Speaker 4: Saul Perlmutter up at the Berkeley lab was one of the winners and many of our group here at Berkeley and other places have collaborated on those projects over the years. So one thing that we aren't quite sure of, even though these are very, very consistent [00:06:30] explosions, we've observed them for a long time. We don't actually know the details of what stars are involved in the original explosion. We have some idea that a very dense star called a white dwarf made of mostly carbon and oxygen is blowing up. What exactly is around that star that's helping it blow up by actually feeding it some extra material and then pushing it over a limit to explode? We're a little bit unclear and so since this star that is feeding the mass to the white dwarf should be very close by. [00:07:00] They should be right near each other. One of the best ways you're going to observe it is right after the explosion, the explosion goes off. Speaker 4: The light and energy from that explosion could interact with the donor star that's right next door and then very quickly the explosion has expanded much further beyond that neighboring star and then it's sort of just hidden until either much, much later or perhaps never. And so by observing this supernova back in August 11 hours after the explosion and then taking subsequent observations sort of for the following few days, [00:07:30] we could rule out certain ideas of what that other star could be. There are very strong predictions. You should see some extra light in certain ways. If you had a certain type of star sitting there and we didn't see that, so it must be a very small star. Maybe something like the sun, maybe something like two times the mass of the sun. Speaker 2: Nope. This is spectrum k l x Berkeley. And you boys have been talking with Jeff Silverman [00:08:00] and Nicholas McConnell about supernova and black holes. So the Supernova is an issue. Speaker 4: Delusion of carbon and oxygen. You were saying that's great. What's the relationship of those explosions? Supernova to the black holes that were now discovered to be at the heart of every galaxy. So black holes come in a few different flavors, a certain kinds of supernovae uh, not the, the white [00:08:30] door of carbon oxygen ones. I was talking about a different flavor of Supernova that come from very massive stars that have 10 times the mass of the center bigger. They do explode as the different kinds of supernova collapse on themselves and can create black holes. The black holes end up weighing something like a few times the mass of the sun, maybe up to 20, 30 times the mass of the sun at the most. But those are sort of just kind of peppered throughout galaxies. What we've found over the past few decades and did a lot of work on lately is the supermassive black holes that can get up to hundreds of [00:09:00] millions or billions of times as massive as the sun. And those are found in the cores of galaxies as opposed to kind of peppered throughout them. And so there probably is a different formation mechanism that's still a very open question, how you make these giant black holes. But there are many, many orders of magnitude bigger than the ones that come from supernovae. Uh, and, and I'd actually say this is possibly a good segue that some interesting observation, right? Speaker 5: Progress is being made on which the most likely mechanisms are for forming these so-called seed [00:09:30] black holes that eventually grew into the monsters that we now observe at the senators of most galaxies in our own universe, in our current universe. Speaker 4: So was that a big shift then the, the idea of these supermassive black holes, Speaker 5: there's possibly a, a complicated relationship between the black hole at the center of the Galaxy and the galaxy itself, the black holes. Gravity is not sufficient to hold the entire galaxy together even though it is an extremely massive object and very near [00:10:00] to it. There's extremely powerful gravitational forces. Galaxies are so large and so extended that out in the the normal regions of the galaxy out near where the sun orbits in the Milky Way Galaxy. The fact that our Milky Way has a central black hole doesn't have any direct impact on our lives as the sun orbiting in the galaxy. On the other hand, if you consider the life cycle of a black hole starting from when it is formed from some seed object or birth process relatively early in the universe and evolving all the way toward [00:10:30] our present day universe over more than 10 billion years, black holes have very interesting variations in what they're doing over the course of their lifetimes. Speaker 5: In particular, when a black hole comes into proximity with a lot of gas, the gas spirals down and is funnel basically into the black hole and whereas some of the gas goes into the black hole and has never heard from again and increases the mass of the black hole. A lot of the guests on its way down heats up and releases tremendous amounts of light [00:11:00] because it takes time for light to travel. The distance between the object of meeting the light and us some of the furthest and therefore youngest things that we see of corresponding to very early times in the universe are in fact black holes that are swallowing tremendous amounts of gas. And some interesting discoveries that have happened recently is astronomers have been using different observational techniques to push further and further back into the universe's past, finding more and more distant black holes, swallowing [00:11:30] gas and learning about the universe at earlier and earlier times based on these observations. Speaker 5: And I think the current record holder now is a black hole that lived about 800 million years after the big bang, which translates to almost 13 billion years, 13,000 million years before our present day now. So looking that far back in time, we can no, first of all that these tremendous black holes exist that early in the universe. And we [00:12:00] can actually using techniques that follow up on the initial discovery and try to get more detailed analysis of them, we can make estimates of how massive they are. And in the case of the one that occurred when the universe was only 800 million years old, we learned that that black hole is far more massive than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy bowed as massive as some of the most massive black holes that we've observed today. Um, so at least in some cases, black holes appear to have been seated by things that were relatively small, bigger than the tens of solar [00:12:30] masses that Jeff mentioned, but maybe a few thousand solar masses. And yet in the very earliest stage of the universe, they were able to grow tremendously fast and actually gain a ton of mass early in the universe. And then may have lived more peacefully throughout most of the duration of the universe. Speaker 2: You're listening to spectrum on k a l x, Berkeley, 90.7 FM. Today we're talking with Jeff Silverman and [00:13:00] Nicholas McConnell, both astrophysicists. We're discussing supernova. I am black homes. This is part two of a series three. Speaker 5: Another interesting outcome of looking at supermassive black holes early in the universe is it's often easier to see them far away than it is nearby because when they're far away and we see them, that's because they're swallowing a lot of gas. Many of the galaxies in today's universe [00:13:30] don't have gas near their black holes of the black holes are quiet. Uh, and in fact, you have to make very, very precise measurements of stars orbiting in their gravitational field to even know that a black hole is there. So one of the mysteries that had been going around for awhile is if you believe the masses of black holes very early in the universe, and you see these tremendously early things, but you want to know where are they now? They've had 13 billion years to evolve. What kind of galaxy is do these black holes live in today? Speaker 5: [00:14:00] Then you need to look in the nearby universe and try to find their quiet, ancient remnants. And recently, along with a couple other researchers at UC Berkeley, some other researchers around the country, my team discovered the two most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe. Black holes more than 10 billion times the mass of our sun, more than 2000 times the mass of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And because these are the most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe, [00:14:30] and they're roughly correspond to the estimated masses of the most massive black holes that we observe very, very early in the universe. We think we're beginning to answer the question of what kind of environment do these very young black holes actually end up in after the entire history of the universe between them. If I could ask a question, do you other properties of the galaxies that are now hosting these most massive black holes that are different than other nearby galaxies [00:15:00] that may have less massive black holes, something like the Milky Way size. Speaker 5: One interesting thing about the galaxies that we looked at is that they're also anchoring large galaxy clusters. And so specifically we found the most massive black holes at the centers of galaxy clusters. Now that's not a perfectly robust result because to be perfectly honest, we started by looking in the centers of galaxy clusters. And so we haven't done a wide sample of other galaxies and other environments, but it's possible that there is an environmental effect [00:15:30] based on not only the galaxy that the black hole resides in, but the overall neighborhood of how many galaxies are around that central object that may have something to do with the final massive its black hole. And where do you go with this research now, Nicholas, are there specific experiments? Are you relying on certain data? Where are you drawing this information from? And so we use data from a few different telescopes because these galaxies are distant and we're trying to look at stars in a very [00:16:00] small region of space. Speaker 5: We rely on very large telescopes to give us good light collecting power and good spatial resolution. So we use the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. We also use the Gemini telescopes in Hawaii and Sheila and there is a telescope in Texas that we've done some work with and we are trying to use these telescopes to find black holes in as many galaxies as the telescope committees will allow us to look at. Uh, so each semester with the generosity of, of getting, observing time, we're able to look at [00:16:30] two or three more galaxies and hopefully over a few years we'll have a good dozen or so objects that we can search directly for the most massive black holes in addition to a few dozen that have been discovered by other teams throughout the world over the last 10 years or so. And that really is one of the big limiting factors, isn't it? Speaker 5: The access to the equipment because there's so much going on in astronomy. Everybody's in the queue. Yeah, that's right. A, just like most scientists apply for amounts of funding from [00:17:00] various organizations, astronomers do that. In addition to applying for telescope time, the oversubscription rates for many of the biggest telescopes, the Hubble space telescope, the Keck telescopes is something like eight to one 10 to one. So the total number of requested hours is something like eight or 10 times the number of nighttime hours. There are in a semester or in a year, so it's, it's very much like a funding situation and there is so many nighttime hours and there's so many telescopes in the world. It's very competitive and we're very lucky when we do get access to [00:17:30] these huge telescopes with amazing instruments and computing power. How does that allocated time work when you want to make observations within a couple of hours of something that you've just heard about? So that's a great question. There's been something that has been used by astronomers over sort of the last decade but really a lot in the last five years called target of observations Speaker 4: too is as we call them and it's sort of in addition to or separate from your standard classically scheduled nights where you will use the telescope on this night. You can [00:18:00] also apply if you have a good science case, which many of us do, especially for these kinds of exploding stars that go off and we want to look at it very quickly, you can apply for time that is allocated through this t o program. And basically what it is is the telescope committees have said, okay, you get so many times to interrupt any observer and say you have to go look at this. And as an observer at that observatory, you know that that's part of the program and that at any point somebody could call you and say, drop what you're doing and go move over to [00:18:30] this. And many times people want to do the best science and are very happy to help out. And oftentimes there'll be offered co-authorship or at least acknowledged to, you know, thanking them for their help. Uh, certainly for these two Supernova I spoke about earlier, we definitely used our target of opportunity and they did turn out to be these very interesting supernovae Speaker 6: [inaudible]. That concludes part two of our astronomy series. Be sure to join us in two weeks [00:19:00] when we discuss dark energy or dark matter. Part three a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening in the bay area over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Kovich join me for the calendar. Speaker 7: The fix-it clinic will be held on Sunday, March 25th at the Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley from one to 4:00 PM bring your broken non-functioning [00:19:30] things, electronics, appliances, computers, toys, and so on. For assessment, disassembly and possible repair. We'll provide workspace specialty tools and guidance to help you take apart and troubleshoot your item. Whether we fix it or not, you'll learn more about how it was manufactured and how it worked. This is a family friendly event. Children are hardly invited. This event is included in admission to the Lawrence Hall of Science. Speaker 3: The Mount Diablo Astronomical Society [00:20:00] holds its general monthly meetings the fourth Tuesday of each month, except for November and December. At the March 27th meeting, UC Berkeley Professor Jeff Marcy will speak about the future directions in extra solar planet investigations. The meeting begins at 7:15 PM and lasts until 9:30 PM the event will be held at the Concord Police Association facility. Five zero six zero Avi Law road in Concord. The society website is m [00:20:30] d a s. Dot. N. E. T. The computer history museums Speaker for March 28th will be New York Times magazine writer John Gardner who will talk about his book, the idea factory bell labs and the great age of American innovation to cake. Speaker 8: You edis Dave Iverson Bell labs was the most innovative production and research institution from the 1920s to the 1980s at its peak, bell labs employed nearly 15,000 people. [00:21:00] 1200 had PhDs. 13 would go on to win Nobel prizes. These ingenious, often eccentric men would become revolutionaries and sometimes legends, whether for inventing radio astronomy in their spare time and on the company's dime, riding unicycles through the corridors or pioneering the principles that propelled today's technology. Bell labs combined the best aspects of academic and corporate worlds, hiring the brightest and usually the youngest minds creating a culture and even architecture that [00:21:30] forced employees in different fields to work together in virtually complete intellectual freedom with little pressure to create moneymaking innovations in Gartner's portrait. We come to understand why both researchers and business leaders look to bell labs as a model and long to incorporate its magic into their own work. The talk starts at seven at the Computer History Museum, 14 Zero One north shoreline boulevard and mountain view. Visit www.computer history.org to register Speaker 7: [00:22:00] Thursday April 4th from three to 4:00 PM Andy Grove, Co founder and former CEO of Intel will speak on the UC Berkeley campus. His talk is titled of microchips and Men Tales from the translational medicine front. Andy Grove had a major influence on the ascent of micro electronics. Can a similar technological advance be achieved in medicine? He will discuss how we might open the pipeline to get life changing technologies to market without increasing the cost of care. [00:22:30] This event will be at the Sibley auditorium in the Bechdel engineering center. On the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 8: The Marine Science seminar brings local engineers, physicians, computer programmers, and research scientists to speak to high school students and other interested people. It happens six Wednesdays per semester, seven 30 to 8:30 PM at the Terra Linda High School in San Rafael in the physiology lab. Two zero seven the guests for April 4th to meeting is the lead [00:23:00] of Pixars research and future spectrum guest, Tony rose. He will present on math in the movies. Film making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer technology, computational physics, geometry, and approximation theory. Using numerous examples drawn from Pixars feature films. This talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the role that math plays in the revolution. Visit www.marinescienceseminar.com [00:23:30] now news with Rick, Lisa and myself last September, the opera experiment located under the Grand Sazo Mountain in central Italy reported measuring neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light from cern in Switzerland. Speaker 8: The Icarus experiment located in meters away from opera has published a preprint on the archive on March 15th showing that neutrinos move at speeds close to the speed of light, but that there is no evidence that they exceeded [00:24:00] opera is measurement was conducted with 10 microsecond pulses while Icarus was conducted with pulses that were only four nanoseconds, 2,500 times shorter. This led to far more accurate timing measurements. Opera head claim neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds before it would be predicted, but scientists had remained skeptical in part due to issues with timing [inaudible], Icarus, LVD, and opera. We'll all be making new measurements with pulse beams from cern in May to give us the final verdict Speaker 7: [00:24:30] according to technology review.com and the I a. E. A website. The disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant a year ago prompted nations that generate atomic power to reexamine the safety of their reactors and even reevaluate their nuclear ambitions. Several countries have completely changed course. Japan has taken offline 52 of its 54 reactors and the future of nuclear power there is extremely uncertain. Germany shutdown seven reactors, [00:25:00] also elected not to restart another that had been down for maintenance and plans to decommission its remaining nine reactors by 2022 Italy, Switzerland and Mexico have each retreated from plans to build new nuclear plants and Belgium's government which took over in 2011 wants to make the country nuclear free by 2025 several other economically developed countries including the u s the United Kingdom and France are still generating roughly the same amount as they were before the Fukushima disaster and maintain [00:25:30] modest plans for future construction of additional reactors. But the future of nuclear power in the developing world is a different story. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency or I, a 45 countries are now considering embarking on nuclear power programs as Vietnam, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Belarus are likely to start building this year and Jordan and Saudi Arabia following in 2013 as of this week, the I a report [00:26:00] 63 new reactors under construction in 15 countries. The top constructors are China with 26 Russia with 10 India with seven and South Korea with three. The remaining 11 countries are building one or two reactors. Speaker 3: Technology review.com reports that researchers at Microsoft have made software that can learn the sound of your voice and then use it to speak a language that you don't. The system could be used to make language tutoring software more [00:26:30] personal or to make tools for travelers. In a demonstration at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus in early March, Microsoft research scientist Frank soon showed how his software could read out text in Spanish using the voice of his boss, Rick Rashid, who leads Microsoft's research efforts in a second demonstration soon used his software to grant Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, the ability to speak Mandarin. [00:27:00] Frank soon created the system with his colleagues at Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research lab in Beijing, China. The system needs around an hour of training to develop a model, able to read out any text in a person's own voice. That model is converted into one able to read out text in another language by comparing it with a stock text to speech model for the target language. Individual sounds used by the first model to build up words using a [00:27:30] person's voice and his or her own language are carefully tweaked to give the new texts to speech model, a full ability to sound out phrases. In the second language, someone says that this approach can convert between any pair of 26 languages including Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Italian Speaker 8: nature. News reports that researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Howard Hughes Medical Institutions Janelia Farm Research Center [00:28:00] near Ashburn, Virginia. I found that male fruit players are more likely to choose to consume alcohol if they have been sexually rejected by females. The key seems to be in Neuropeptide F, which is generated as a reward for either sex or alcohol consumption. When fly's denied of sex are given neuropeptide f they avoid alcohol and mammals. No transmitter y might act similarly for more information. You can see their article in the March 15th issue of Science Speaker 6: [00:28:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] spectrum shirts are gradually being made available online at iTunes university. Go to itunes.berkeley.edu and click through to Berkeley on iTunes. Then search for Calex 99.7 FM to finer the spectrum podcasts. [inaudible] [00:29:00] music heard during the show is from a low stone at David's album titled the Folk in Houston made available by creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum [00:29:30] dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nicholas McConnell, PhD candidate in Astrophysics at UCB summer 2012, and Jeff Silverman, PhD of Astrophysics from UCB in 2011, part one of three, talk about their work with supernovae and black holes. To help analyze astronomy data go to www.galaxyzoo.org or www.planethunters.orgTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm joined today by a spectrum of contributors, Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Katovich. Our interview is with Jeff Silverman, a recent phd in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and Nicholas McConnell, a phd [00:01:00] candidate unscheduled to be awarded a phd in astrophysics by UC Berkeley this summer. Jeff and Nicholas have generously agreed to help spectrum present a three part astronomy survey explaining the big ideas, recent experiments, collaborations and improvements in observation technology that are transforming astronomy. This is part two of three and in it we discussed Super Novi and black holes. Jeff, would you please start part two explaining Super Novi [inaudible] Speaker 4: observations [00:01:30] of exploding stars. These supernovae have been going on for thousands of years. Whether or not we knew what we were looking at for most of that time, we now know that those were exploding stars. Something that I did my phd thesis work on as well. I want to talk about a two exploding stars in particular that were found in 2011. The first one I'll talk about was found in late May, early June last year. It was founded by a handful of amateur astronomers, which is they find maybe hundred supernova per year. This has been going on for about a decade [00:02:00] or so. Uh, this one in particular, however, was so young and knew that somebody had emailed somebody who had emailed somebody who had actually tweeted about this new supernova. And so I got forwarded a tweet that said there's a new supernova in this very nearby galaxy and I happen to be using the Keck telescope, one of the biggest optical telescopes in the world, controlling it from UC Berkeley. Speaker 4: Saw this in my inbox. And we pointed at this supernova. We were the first ones to classify what kind of exploding start was confirmed that it was indeed [00:02:30] an exploding star and not some other, uh, asteroid that was just along the line of sight in the way or something else. Uh, and so that was as far as I know, the first time that a supernova was ever classified based on a tweet. The other Supernova, I want to talk about sort of the opposite end of having amateurs looking at a handful of galaxies. I'm part of a large international collaboration known as the Palomar transient factory PTF. And this collaboration uses a telescope down in San Diego to automatically monitor a bunch of these galaxies, [00:03:00] run these big computer programs to try and find if there is a new supernova, new bright spot in any of the images. Speaker 4: And this has been running for about two years now and we've been tweaking the algorithms to get faster and faster detections of these new spots. And so in August of last year there was some images taken in San Diego. Dr Peter Nugent, a professor in the astronomy department, was going through some of the newest candidates of what the computer program spit out and saw what looked like a very good supernova candidate and another very nearby galaxy, [00:03:30] a different one, but about the same distance, 20 or so million light years. We had an image from the night before that was very good and there was absolutely nothing at that position. So this clearly looked like a brand new spot. It couldn't be that old. So he immediately gets on the email list for this international collaboration. This was sort of the afternoon in California, but it was already nighttime in the eastern hemisphere. And we have collaborators who use telescopes in the Canary Islands. Speaker 4: So they point to it. They got not a great observation, but an observation that confirmed there was something there. And it was probably one of these [00:04:00] exploding stars by the time that they had worked on their data and emailed us. It was already nighttime in California and Hawaii. So we had the lick observatory telescopes out in San Jose as well as the Kecks in Hawaii pointing at this and absolutely confirming that it, it was a supernova. And within a few weeks we had already written a bunch of papers looking at the data very carefully. And we had actually found this supernova 11 hours after it exploded. So one of the earliest detections of an exploding star ever. People had speculated what you might [00:04:30] see that early and we actually got to throw out a lot of people's models saying we didn't see these things that you predicted possibly confirming some other predictions at this early time. Speaker 4: And this thing is still bright at its brightest. You could see it in a small backyard telescope are good binoculars from the Oakland hills. Uh, I saw it with my own eyes through a telescope, which was awesome. I think just an amazing, amazing proof of concept or success story of this huge collaboration without the the algorithms to, to run this quickly, we wouldn't have realized it was there until [00:05:00] days later without an international collaboration of friends expanding the globe. We wouldn't have been able to track it and confirm that it was the supernovas so quickly and so early and easily. So if I can ask, what's the biggest mystery about the way stars explode that you help solve by knowing about a supernova? Just a few hours after an explosion is actually happened. We'll solve as a strong word in science, but we can at least help get towards the truth. Speaker 4: As my advisor likes to say, this one that was discovered by the Palomar transient [00:05:30] factory in August is a specific kind of supernova that should have very consistent amount of energy. Sort of, you can think of it as a a hundred watt light bulb. It has the same amount of energy output always basically. So if you see it's very, very faint, it must be very, very far away. If you see it's very, very bright, it must be very, very close because it's sort of each of these objects has the same amount of light coming out of it and so we can measure very accurately how bright they are. We can compare to what we know they should be, how bright they should be, and we get a very accurate distance measurement to [00:06:00] all of these different supernova and figure out very accurate distances. How that distance has changed with time, and this is in fact how the accelerating expansion of the universe was discovered in the late nineties using these types of supernovae, which I will plug did win the Nobel Prize last year for physics and we're all very proud of that. Speaker 4: Saul Perlmutter up at the Berkeley lab was one of the winners and many of our group here at Berkeley and other places have collaborated on those projects over the years. So one thing that we aren't quite sure of, even though these are very, very consistent [00:06:30] explosions, we've observed them for a long time. We don't actually know the details of what stars are involved in the original explosion. We have some idea that a very dense star called a white dwarf made of mostly carbon and oxygen is blowing up. What exactly is around that star that's helping it blow up by actually feeding it some extra material and then pushing it over a limit to explode? We're a little bit unclear and so since this star that is feeding the mass to the white dwarf should be very close by. [00:07:00] They should be right near each other. One of the best ways you're going to observe it is right after the explosion, the explosion goes off. Speaker 4: The light and energy from that explosion could interact with the donor star that's right next door and then very quickly the explosion has expanded much further beyond that neighboring star and then it's sort of just hidden until either much, much later or perhaps never. And so by observing this supernova back in August 11 hours after the explosion and then taking subsequent observations sort of for the following few days, [00:07:30] we could rule out certain ideas of what that other star could be. There are very strong predictions. You should see some extra light in certain ways. If you had a certain type of star sitting there and we didn't see that, so it must be a very small star. Maybe something like the sun, maybe something like two times the mass of the sun. Speaker 2: Nope. This is spectrum k l x Berkeley. And you boys have been talking with Jeff Silverman [00:08:00] and Nicholas McConnell about supernova and black holes. So the Supernova is an issue. Speaker 4: Delusion of carbon and oxygen. You were saying that's great. What's the relationship of those explosions? Supernova to the black holes that were now discovered to be at the heart of every galaxy. So black holes come in a few different flavors, a certain kinds of supernovae uh, not the, the white [00:08:30] door of carbon oxygen ones. I was talking about a different flavor of Supernova that come from very massive stars that have 10 times the mass of the center bigger. They do explode as the different kinds of supernova collapse on themselves and can create black holes. The black holes end up weighing something like a few times the mass of the sun, maybe up to 20, 30 times the mass of the sun at the most. But those are sort of just kind of peppered throughout galaxies. What we've found over the past few decades and did a lot of work on lately is the supermassive black holes that can get up to hundreds of [00:09:00] millions or billions of times as massive as the sun. And those are found in the cores of galaxies as opposed to kind of peppered throughout them. And so there probably is a different formation mechanism that's still a very open question, how you make these giant black holes. But there are many, many orders of magnitude bigger than the ones that come from supernovae. Uh, and, and I'd actually say this is possibly a good segue that some interesting observation, right? Speaker 5: Progress is being made on which the most likely mechanisms are for forming these so-called seed [00:09:30] black holes that eventually grew into the monsters that we now observe at the senators of most galaxies in our own universe, in our current universe. Speaker 4: So was that a big shift then the, the idea of these supermassive black holes, Speaker 5: there's possibly a, a complicated relationship between the black hole at the center of the Galaxy and the galaxy itself, the black holes. Gravity is not sufficient to hold the entire galaxy together even though it is an extremely massive object and very near [00:10:00] to it. There's extremely powerful gravitational forces. Galaxies are so large and so extended that out in the the normal regions of the galaxy out near where the sun orbits in the Milky Way Galaxy. The fact that our Milky Way has a central black hole doesn't have any direct impact on our lives as the sun orbiting in the galaxy. On the other hand, if you consider the life cycle of a black hole starting from when it is formed from some seed object or birth process relatively early in the universe and evolving all the way toward [00:10:30] our present day universe over more than 10 billion years, black holes have very interesting variations in what they're doing over the course of their lifetimes. Speaker 5: In particular, when a black hole comes into proximity with a lot of gas, the gas spirals down and is funnel basically into the black hole and whereas some of the gas goes into the black hole and has never heard from again and increases the mass of the black hole. A lot of the guests on its way down heats up and releases tremendous amounts of light [00:11:00] because it takes time for light to travel. The distance between the object of meeting the light and us some of the furthest and therefore youngest things that we see of corresponding to very early times in the universe are in fact black holes that are swallowing tremendous amounts of gas. And some interesting discoveries that have happened recently is astronomers have been using different observational techniques to push further and further back into the universe's past, finding more and more distant black holes, swallowing [00:11:30] gas and learning about the universe at earlier and earlier times based on these observations. Speaker 5: And I think the current record holder now is a black hole that lived about 800 million years after the big bang, which translates to almost 13 billion years, 13,000 million years before our present day now. So looking that far back in time, we can no, first of all that these tremendous black holes exist that early in the universe. And we [00:12:00] can actually using techniques that follow up on the initial discovery and try to get more detailed analysis of them, we can make estimates of how massive they are. And in the case of the one that occurred when the universe was only 800 million years old, we learned that that black hole is far more massive than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy bowed as massive as some of the most massive black holes that we've observed today. Um, so at least in some cases, black holes appear to have been seated by things that were relatively small, bigger than the tens of solar [00:12:30] masses that Jeff mentioned, but maybe a few thousand solar masses. And yet in the very earliest stage of the universe, they were able to grow tremendously fast and actually gain a ton of mass early in the universe. And then may have lived more peacefully throughout most of the duration of the universe. Speaker 2: You're listening to spectrum on k a l x, Berkeley, 90.7 FM. Today we're talking with Jeff Silverman and [00:13:00] Nicholas McConnell, both astrophysicists. We're discussing supernova. I am black homes. This is part two of a series three. Speaker 5: Another interesting outcome of looking at supermassive black holes early in the universe is it's often easier to see them far away than it is nearby because when they're far away and we see them, that's because they're swallowing a lot of gas. Many of the galaxies in today's universe [00:13:30] don't have gas near their black holes of the black holes are quiet. Uh, and in fact, you have to make very, very precise measurements of stars orbiting in their gravitational field to even know that a black hole is there. So one of the mysteries that had been going around for awhile is if you believe the masses of black holes very early in the universe, and you see these tremendously early things, but you want to know where are they now? They've had 13 billion years to evolve. What kind of galaxy is do these black holes live in today? Speaker 5: [00:14:00] Then you need to look in the nearby universe and try to find their quiet, ancient remnants. And recently, along with a couple other researchers at UC Berkeley, some other researchers around the country, my team discovered the two most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe. Black holes more than 10 billion times the mass of our sun, more than 2000 times the mass of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And because these are the most massive black holes that we know about in today's universe, [00:14:30] and they're roughly correspond to the estimated masses of the most massive black holes that we observe very, very early in the universe. We think we're beginning to answer the question of what kind of environment do these very young black holes actually end up in after the entire history of the universe between them. If I could ask a question, do you other properties of the galaxies that are now hosting these most massive black holes that are different than other nearby galaxies [00:15:00] that may have less massive black holes, something like the Milky Way size. Speaker 5: One interesting thing about the galaxies that we looked at is that they're also anchoring large galaxy clusters. And so specifically we found the most massive black holes at the centers of galaxy clusters. Now that's not a perfectly robust result because to be perfectly honest, we started by looking in the centers of galaxy clusters. And so we haven't done a wide sample of other galaxies and other environments, but it's possible that there is an environmental effect [00:15:30] based on not only the galaxy that the black hole resides in, but the overall neighborhood of how many galaxies are around that central object that may have something to do with the final massive its black hole. And where do you go with this research now, Nicholas, are there specific experiments? Are you relying on certain data? Where are you drawing this information from? And so we use data from a few different telescopes because these galaxies are distant and we're trying to look at stars in a very [00:16:00] small region of space. Speaker 5: We rely on very large telescopes to give us good light collecting power and good spatial resolution. So we use the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. We also use the Gemini telescopes in Hawaii and Sheila and there is a telescope in Texas that we've done some work with and we are trying to use these telescopes to find black holes in as many galaxies as the telescope committees will allow us to look at. Uh, so each semester with the generosity of, of getting, observing time, we're able to look at [00:16:30] two or three more galaxies and hopefully over a few years we'll have a good dozen or so objects that we can search directly for the most massive black holes in addition to a few dozen that have been discovered by other teams throughout the world over the last 10 years or so. And that really is one of the big limiting factors, isn't it? Speaker 5: The access to the equipment because there's so much going on in astronomy. Everybody's in the queue. Yeah, that's right. A, just like most scientists apply for amounts of funding from [00:17:00] various organizations, astronomers do that. In addition to applying for telescope time, the oversubscription rates for many of the biggest telescopes, the Hubble space telescope, the Keck telescopes is something like eight to one 10 to one. So the total number of requested hours is something like eight or 10 times the number of nighttime hours. There are in a semester or in a year, so it's, it's very much like a funding situation and there is so many nighttime hours and there's so many telescopes in the world. It's very competitive and we're very lucky when we do get access to [00:17:30] these huge telescopes with amazing instruments and computing power. How does that allocated time work when you want to make observations within a couple of hours of something that you've just heard about? So that's a great question. There's been something that has been used by astronomers over sort of the last decade but really a lot in the last five years called target of observations Speaker 4: too is as we call them and it's sort of in addition to or separate from your standard classically scheduled nights where you will use the telescope on this night. You can [00:18:00] also apply if you have a good science case, which many of us do, especially for these kinds of exploding stars that go off and we want to look at it very quickly, you can apply for time that is allocated through this t o program. And basically what it is is the telescope committees have said, okay, you get so many times to interrupt any observer and say you have to go look at this. And as an observer at that observatory, you know that that's part of the program and that at any point somebody could call you and say, drop what you're doing and go move over to [00:18:30] this. And many times people want to do the best science and are very happy to help out. And oftentimes there'll be offered co-authorship or at least acknowledged to, you know, thanking them for their help. Uh, certainly for these two Supernova I spoke about earlier, we definitely used our target of opportunity and they did turn out to be these very interesting supernovae Speaker 6: [inaudible]. That concludes part two of our astronomy series. Be sure to join us in two weeks [00:19:00] when we discuss dark energy or dark matter. Part three a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening in the bay area over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa Kovich join me for the calendar. Speaker 7: The fix-it clinic will be held on Sunday, March 25th at the Lawrence Hall of science in Berkeley from one to 4:00 PM bring your broken non-functioning [00:19:30] things, electronics, appliances, computers, toys, and so on. For assessment, disassembly and possible repair. We'll provide workspace specialty tools and guidance to help you take apart and troubleshoot your item. Whether we fix it or not, you'll learn more about how it was manufactured and how it worked. This is a family friendly event. Children are hardly invited. This event is included in admission to the Lawrence Hall of Science. Speaker 3: The Mount Diablo Astronomical Society [00:20:00] holds its general monthly meetings the fourth Tuesday of each month, except for November and December. At the March 27th meeting, UC Berkeley Professor Jeff Marcy will speak about the future directions in extra solar planet investigations. The meeting begins at 7:15 PM and lasts until 9:30 PM the event will be held at the Concord Police Association facility. Five zero six zero Avi Law road in Concord. The society website is m [00:20:30] d a s. Dot. N. E. T. The computer history museums Speaker for March 28th will be New York Times magazine writer John Gardner who will talk about his book, the idea factory bell labs and the great age of American innovation to cake. Speaker 8: You edis Dave Iverson Bell labs was the most innovative production and research institution from the 1920s to the 1980s at its peak, bell labs employed nearly 15,000 people. [00:21:00] 1200 had PhDs. 13 would go on to win Nobel prizes. These ingenious, often eccentric men would become revolutionaries and sometimes legends, whether for inventing radio astronomy in their spare time and on the company's dime, riding unicycles through the corridors or pioneering the principles that propelled today's technology. Bell labs combined the best aspects of academic and corporate worlds, hiring the brightest and usually the youngest minds creating a culture and even architecture that [00:21:30] forced employees in different fields to work together in virtually complete intellectual freedom with little pressure to create moneymaking innovations in Gartner's portrait. We come to understand why both researchers and business leaders look to bell labs as a model and long to incorporate its magic into their own work. The talk starts at seven at the Computer History Museum, 14 Zero One north shoreline boulevard and mountain view. Visit www.computer history.org to register Speaker 7: [00:22:00] Thursday April 4th from three to 4:00 PM Andy Grove, Co founder and former CEO of Intel will speak on the UC Berkeley campus. His talk is titled of microchips and Men Tales from the translational medicine front. Andy Grove had a major influence on the ascent of micro electronics. Can a similar technological advance be achieved in medicine? He will discuss how we might open the pipeline to get life changing technologies to market without increasing the cost of care. [00:22:30] This event will be at the Sibley auditorium in the Bechdel engineering center. On the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 8: The Marine Science seminar brings local engineers, physicians, computer programmers, and research scientists to speak to high school students and other interested people. It happens six Wednesdays per semester, seven 30 to 8:30 PM at the Terra Linda High School in San Rafael in the physiology lab. Two zero seven the guests for April 4th to meeting is the lead [00:23:00] of Pixars research and future spectrum guest, Tony rose. He will present on math in the movies. Film making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer technology, computational physics, geometry, and approximation theory. Using numerous examples drawn from Pixars feature films. This talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the role that math plays in the revolution. Visit www.marinescienceseminar.com [00:23:30] now news with Rick, Lisa and myself last September, the opera experiment located under the Grand Sazo Mountain in central Italy reported measuring neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light from cern in Switzerland. Speaker 8: The Icarus experiment located in meters away from opera has published a preprint on the archive on March 15th showing that neutrinos move at speeds close to the speed of light, but that there is no evidence that they exceeded [00:24:00] opera is measurement was conducted with 10 microsecond pulses while Icarus was conducted with pulses that were only four nanoseconds, 2,500 times shorter. This led to far more accurate timing measurements. Opera head claim neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds before it would be predicted, but scientists had remained skeptical in part due to issues with timing [inaudible], Icarus, LVD, and opera. We'll all be making new measurements with pulse beams from cern in May to give us the final verdict Speaker 7: [00:24:30] according to technology review.com and the I a. E. A website. The disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant a year ago prompted nations that generate atomic power to reexamine the safety of their reactors and even reevaluate their nuclear ambitions. Several countries have completely changed course. Japan has taken offline 52 of its 54 reactors and the future of nuclear power there is extremely uncertain. Germany shutdown seven reactors, [00:25:00] also elected not to restart another that had been down for maintenance and plans to decommission its remaining nine reactors by 2022 Italy, Switzerland and Mexico have each retreated from plans to build new nuclear plants and Belgium's government which took over in 2011 wants to make the country nuclear free by 2025 several other economically developed countries including the u s the United Kingdom and France are still generating roughly the same amount as they were before the Fukushima disaster and maintain [00:25:30] modest plans for future construction of additional reactors. But the future of nuclear power in the developing world is a different story. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency or I, a 45 countries are now considering embarking on nuclear power programs as Vietnam, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Belarus are likely to start building this year and Jordan and Saudi Arabia following in 2013 as of this week, the I a report [00:26:00] 63 new reactors under construction in 15 countries. The top constructors are China with 26 Russia with 10 India with seven and South Korea with three. The remaining 11 countries are building one or two reactors. Speaker 3: Technology review.com reports that researchers at Microsoft have made software that can learn the sound of your voice and then use it to speak a language that you don't. The system could be used to make language tutoring software more [00:26:30] personal or to make tools for travelers. In a demonstration at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus in early March, Microsoft research scientist Frank soon showed how his software could read out text in Spanish using the voice of his boss, Rick Rashid, who leads Microsoft's research efforts in a second demonstration soon used his software to grant Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, the ability to speak Mandarin. [00:27:00] Frank soon created the system with his colleagues at Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research lab in Beijing, China. The system needs around an hour of training to develop a model, able to read out any text in a person's own voice. That model is converted into one able to read out text in another language by comparing it with a stock text to speech model for the target language. Individual sounds used by the first model to build up words using a [00:27:30] person's voice and his or her own language are carefully tweaked to give the new texts to speech model, a full ability to sound out phrases. In the second language, someone says that this approach can convert between any pair of 26 languages including Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Italian Speaker 8: nature. News reports that researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Howard Hughes Medical Institutions Janelia Farm Research Center [00:28:00] near Ashburn, Virginia. I found that male fruit players are more likely to choose to consume alcohol if they have been sexually rejected by females. The key seems to be in Neuropeptide F, which is generated as a reward for either sex or alcohol consumption. When fly's denied of sex are given neuropeptide f they avoid alcohol and mammals. No transmitter y might act similarly for more information. You can see their article in the March 15th issue of Science Speaker 6: [00:28:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] spectrum shirts are gradually being made available online at iTunes university. Go to itunes.berkeley.edu and click through to Berkeley on iTunes. Then search for Calex 99.7 FM to finer the spectrum podcasts. [inaudible] [00:29:00] music heard during the show is from a low stone at David's album titled the Folk in Houston made available by creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum [00:29:30] dot k a l s@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Discuss the first Farsi immersion pre-school in the country, located in West Berkeley, which runs as a non-profit and also has outreach programs to help other communities create similar schoolsTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening toK , a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM university and community sponsored radio. And this is method to the madness and show from the public affairs department at Calex that explores the innovative spirit of the bay area. And we're always happy to see data about the bay area because we love it. So we want to understand it more. And of course the 2010 census data just came out and I thought, I read you a few statistics that are interesting about [00:00:30] our diversity. We have three and a half million white people in the bay area. That's a slim majority, 52% congratulations to you. 1.2 million Asians, 1.3 million Hispanic, half million black and a million didn't change of the rest of us. The rest of the world population all thrown together here and experimenting with the American dream for many barrier residents whose families immigrated relatively recently. The challenge of adapting to [00:01:00] America while preserving a link to your heritage is a tricky task. But one local woman has made it her mission to create a new model for how to pass culture down to future generations. Please stay with us to hear her story. And uh, today we have with us [inaudible] y'all, them and Deb are from Gulistan kids, a preschool in west Berkeley as the first preschool of its type in, is it the country? Yeah, in the country. It's a Farsi immersion program. So welcome y'all to thank you. [00:01:30] And so y'all know, we'd like to start off the program about, um, talking through the problem statement. So you, you kind of came to this realization that there was a problem and you wanted to start, you started a nonprofit to solve the problem. So give us the problem statement. Speaker 2:Well, it happened organically actually. Um, I had my first child. Um, I am married to an American man and I live in Berkeley and I don't have any local family prisons speaking [00:02:00] family. So I um, uh, I was working, um, but after a while it was hard to manage working and I needed childcare for him and I couldn't find anybody. I couldn't find the daycare, school nanny, I was looking everywhere. So they are out there, the nannies. But um, I put a posting in the Berkeley parents network listserv here and um, the only other person that responded was another parent looking for the same thing. Speaker 1:And you were looking for a Persian speaking to any, [00:02:30] is that right? Speaker 2:Anything, any type of childcare that would be person speaking. Okay. I asked, you know, I said and nanny, daycare, co-op preschool, anything. And that was the only response I got. So she told me why I'm looking for the same thing. Will you share with me what you find? And um, we ended up meeting and from there started a playgroup. Um, and the people in that playgroup, they are all looking for the same thing. They, and basically what we was support [00:03:00] and teaching our children our language and passing down our culture. I think we all lived in this sort of vacuum. We didn't really know many run INS locally with kids. And um, and from there it became the subtle, uh, regular weekly gathering and then it became a co op and had a life of its own, but we weren't even incorporated yet. Speaker 1:So, um, a lot of the, I consider you an entrepreneur, right? Really you're really starting a new thing from scratch and a lot of the entrepreneurs that we speak with on the show have this moment [00:03:30] of inspiration where you mentioned you kind of had competing professional things in your life and you had to make this choice that how did did, was there this moment, this magical moment where like, yes, this is what I'm going to do because that's a big cliff to leave leap off of. Right? Speaker 2:Yeah. No, it sounds crazy as far as I can remember. I don't think there was a magical moment. I think it really did take a life of its own by the time, by the time that I, we made this [00:04:00] decision because we did it as a group. I wasn't the only one involved. We had that playgroup, original playgroup was very involved in the co op. Um, but by the time we got to that juncture, um, I was working my butt off and I had a newborn child and I was just in survival mode basically. Um, and it was really, I got to a place where I had to make a decision, which one did I have to stop either my work or the school and I couldn't give up [00:04:30] to school because I felt like it was too important. We were all really intertwined in it. By that point, our kids were just really thriving and w they began to have strong identities as Iranians. And it was amazing. It had exceeded all of our expectations in terms of the impact that it had on our kids. Speaker 1:Now, one of the things that I think is really unique about it is that you are, you're teaching your kids Iranian culture, but you guys all [00:05:00] were born and raised here or raised here. You're mostly American, right? So you're first generation, is that they're right? Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Some of us have lived there a little bit. Most of us. It depends. We have a little bit of everything. Yeah. Some of us lived here our whole lives. Speaker 1:Okay. So you all had this very strong desire to teach. And was it Iranian culture or was it Farsi? What was the act? Was it the language mostly? Speaker 2:I think for me it was the language and I think it was more than that. [00:05:30] It wasn't even, it was about our kids, but it was a lot. It was about us too. It was, you know, when you, as you know, when you have a child, um, especially for young mothers, but for both parents it's very isolating. And so here you are in this phase in your life where you feel very isolated. You're just, it's a whole other world that you'd send this little bubble and you're already feeling a little bit uprooted before you have children, when you're by cultural, but then you have a kid and you're just like, what? Where [00:06:00] do I belong in this world? So I think it gave us a sense of, of rootedness or you know, gave us some, some like a place where we, we could connect with people that were similar. Speaker 2:So that was as a, from a parent's perspective, um, and for kids, I think it was more about language. I think so. I mean language and culture are really very intertwined as well. Very connected. Um, this original playgroup was [00:06:30] meeting, were you guys meeting in the same place every time? We are meeting weekly in a park, so you'll see the natural progression. We'd meet weekly in a park and then the rays, rainy season started and they're like, well, what are we going to do now? We didn't want to stop. So we contacted the person center, one of our founders, um, her sister was involved with the pre one of the founders of the person center in Berkeley and they let us use their space. I went to a week and then we were like, well this is great. But I personally, I was like, well, I still need the childcare. Speaker 2:This [00:07:00] is really fun. But you know, so we brought in a teacher and then the parent would rotate with the teacher and then eventually brought in a teacher's aide who's actually still with us now. And um, and then we made a daily, a daily program is starting to rent the space of the person center and then we outgrew the person center very quickly. My kids were there when you guys were just at the Persian center. We had, I think about eight different kids had different schedules. So I think we're about eight to 10 kids total that were involved. [00:07:30] Um, but we had a waiting list at that point. We weren't even anything, you know, word of mouth. People found out about it. Yeah. Yeah. And then even then people would email me and ask me, people from other cities would ask me if there was anything similar in their area. Speaker 2:And that's when I did the research. I found out there wasn't anything anywhere. And very early on as we decided to take it to the next level, it was clear that we needed to help [00:08:00] other people create some of the programs because they were coming to me for advice and guidance. And I, I didn't want to turn anybody away. Um, so when we were filing our five, a one c three applications, we made that as part of our mission to help other communities and to be a resource for families, other schools and educators and communities to say, Oh, I want to talk about that a little bit later in the show. This is method to the madness [00:08:30] on KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM to university and community sponsored radio. Thanks for listening. My name's Eileen is art. And today we're interviewing Yalta Middelburg, executive director of Goldstone kids. And I wanted to ask, so you, um, you started to have these eight kids at the Persians Center and you did the research and found there's not really any program like the one you're trying to create. So the next step I would guess would be to create a curriculum. Speaker 1:Is that right? So how, how do you go about creating [00:09:00] one out of thin air? Speaker 2:Well, we did everything all at once. Um, there were a lot of moving pieces at the time. First we had to find, um, well actually when we're at the Persian center, the curriculum was very teacher directed, um, because we didn't have a big picture in mind. But then when we moved into our current building, we started to, once we started to settle in more, we started to develop a much more rich curriculum that was, [00:09:30] you know, just much more developed. And now it's actually quite unique and, and um, robust, I guess I don't know what the right word is, but, uh, so to answer your question, there were, it wasn't like, you know, let's sit down and tackle the curriculum. It was, okay, we got to fill the space. We've got to fill now. We had extra space, we had to get more kids, we have to figure out scheduling and, um, how are we going to deal with invoicing and, um, of the logistics that go [00:10:00] behind running a nonprofit and all the logistics of running a preschool program. Speaker 2:Um, and an afterschool program. We're not just a preschool, but also an after school program. That was starting then because some of our founding kids were going to kindergarten. Um, and so in the beginning it was just sort of winging it, but then as things started to settle in the school, then we could really put our, a lot of work can do it. And it's, um, it was a collaborative process with the teachers and, [00:10:30] um, various teachers in various stages of our development. And now it's almost complete. Like we run on an annual, um, we have an annual curriculum and it's a monthly theme, and though it's going to continue to evolve and become richer, it's pretty much set. We've, we, we came back full circle in September, so that's great. Now we're repeating. That's wonderful. So what are some of the themes? Like what do you guys go over with the kids? So we start, [00:11:00] um, in September we start with me, myself and my community. And then, and October it's me and my body. And so unit on health and hygiene and your senses as well. Um, and then in November, it's, um, different careers and vocations and how they relate to community. Then we move on just in December, we take a little bit of break and we talk about seasons [00:11:30] and holidays and cultures. Um, and we have a Speaker 1:all, is it all [inaudible] like, um, it related to Persian culture or how you're, it's just, you're talking about you're teaching the kids. He's are, and what ages are the kids? It's Speaker 2:so the kids are two to five in the preschool program. And then after school we use the same themes for the whole school. After school it goes up to fourth, fifth grade. So you're teaching a kid some universal things that they need to understand, but it's all in Farsi. [00:12:00] Right? That on the same sentence. This is Farsi English. But um, to answer your question about culture, uh, we do have a social cultural day on Fridays for the morning programs where we learn. Um, we basically teach them about one culture every week. It's actually, we used to do it just basically pick a culture out of a hat, um, every week. And then it felt like they didn't have much context. They learn about Japan and then France next week. So now it's uh, [00:12:30] over a two month period we cover one continent and every week on Fridays they're, their food relates to that culture, the projects that they have that they relate to that culture so that they have an idea of the whole world. Speaker 2:So what I tell people is that this is a program that's um, that's like if you imagine your ideal preschool or afterschool program, whatever it is, it's just ideal program that just happens to be in Persian. It's not, the focus is not teaching kids Persian. They happen [00:13:00] to learn it just by being there and being immersed in it. Yeah. And to that point, you guys have non Persian children who are now attending or on the wait list, is that right? Yes. Yeah, we do. We do. We can't bring them in all at once because when you've children who don't respond in Persian, then the, it affects the dynamic of the class. So we bring in a few at a time, one at a time per class. So you sorted out with eight kids in the playgroup, the person center, and now you guys have evolved to, [00:13:30] uh, how many kids? Speaker 2:We've over 55 55 kids and you no longer in the prison center now and we have a waiting list to 2014. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. School's good business. If you can figure out that it's actually, you know, people say that. And I do think with, uh, with a more traditional model it can be, but with our model, it's actually not, we operate at a deficit every month. Um, and the reason being [00:14:00] is that in order to ensure that the children are fully immersed in Persian and they're not all speaking English all the time, we have a really low teacher rated child to teacher ratio. So our staffing costs are much higher than any other school. What is the ratio? It's one to three for toddlers and one to four for preschoolers and for afterschool kids, which kind of, what's the standard ratios for preschoolers? Preschool is going [00:14:30] to be one to four to windows eight. And, um, oh, preschool one to four is actually very rare. Sorry, toddlers, it's one wonderful. Anyway, um, for preschoolers legally one to 12, but I think most people, it's about one to eight. For most schools when to 10, they'll have like a class of 20, sometimes with two teachers. Speaker 1:Wow. So the reason that you do that is, and the reason that you've, you're configured as a nonprofit, which is, that's unique in their preschool [00:15:00] world, right? Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. There are some there. It's not rare, but it is, it's not, it's not the most common. Speaker 1:And what's the reason that there's a, there's a, there's a vision behind it, right? Speaker 2:Yeah. The couple of reasons. One is that, um, I wanted all the decisions that were made for the organ, for the school to be based on what's best for the school and not to be, um, [00:15:30] influenced by, by profit. Uh, the other, um, is that I wanted the school to become, um, lasting organization that if I were to leave, that it would come, it would still be here. And, um, and also I'm just not a business person, wasn't my thing. But, uh, and, and also, um, practically speaking, knowing that we were going to have a deficit, we'd need to fundraise and it would be very difficult to do that as a for profit [00:16:00] organization. We thought we figured that out after we made the decision to be a nonprofit. Speaker 1:And you were planning the deputy because you wanted the load ratios to be able to get the kids to speak for us. Yeah. Yeah. You're listening to k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM streaming on the worldwide web a k alx.berkeley.edu. This is method to the madness I show from the Public Affairs Department of Calyx that explores the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Ali Nasar and that was an old [00:16:30] Iranian folk song by the name of you who are like the long moon in the sky. And I played that because today we're talking to Yeldon Metabo, the executive director of Gulistan kids, the first Farsi immersion program for preschoolers in America located in west Berkeley. Back to our conversation. And uh, I wanted to ask you about, um, some success stories. So you see all sorts of kids coming in with varying levels of [00:17:00] exposure to Farsi. Right. Can you share maybe a story or two of, of kids who have come in and really, cause you know, everybody always says, oh, kids are sponges at that age. You tried it, you see that? Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah, they are. Yeah. Um, boy, I wouldn't know which one the [inaudible] there's one in particular that stands out. Um, is actually a college friend of mine has, uh, three kids. [00:17:30] Yeah. Three kids and lives in Pleasanton, Pleasanton and has two older girls. I think they are about seven or seven and nine, something like that at the time. And a little boy who, Amir, who is, who was five at the time. And uh, he's to a Tunisian woman, adorable, wonderful woman who, who's learned to speak prison and their kids didn't speak Persian. Um, I think the older girls understood a little bit, [00:18:00] but then really not a lot. And uh, at one point my friend was like, this is, this is like our only chance we gotta get these kids to learn Persian. And so I told them, well, bring Amir here. It was his last year of preschool and I'm your did not understand a word. Speaker 2:I'm like, you would just need to say hello. How are you to him? Any kind of like, yeah, I have this look on his face. I'm such a sweet boy too. So he, he uh, he decided, okay, we're going to do, I was like, if you [00:18:30] do it, he has to come here a lot to get full exposure. So they made the commitment and they drove to Berkeley from Pleasanton every day and he worked in the South Bay. So it was a, it was insane for them, was hard. And they had two older girls that were in school in pleasant and we'd get out of school, right, like half an hour before I'm here, we'd get out of school. There's a lot of driving involved. Um, within a month I'm your understood everything. And then within, by the time the second month ended, he [00:19:00] was fluent and he was with us his whole last year of preschool. And by the time he left, he was just this totally fluent kid. And one day Allie came to my office and um, he just, he came in and he just just choked up and teared up and he's like, it's changed our relationship. I was like, I told you, but it did. It was just changed the dynamic of their relationship because they connected in a different way. It was really special. Speaker 1:Yeah. That's what's so special about what you're doing is that, um, [00:19:30] you know, people who speak multiple languages understand that there's concepts that can be talked about, ideas that can be talked about in another tongue that you can't really talk about it in English. This is different level of connection. It's not just cause English is lacking. It's every language has its own words. It's culture. That's true. I never thought of it that way. Um, and so I think one thing that's I wanted to talk about with you is that you have a program as part of goalless on kids or it's separate and um, [00:20:00] organization, the Colab, Speaker 2:it's part of the same organization, but it's like a, it's a department, I guess you would. Speaker 1:Yeah. So a part of your organization that is dedicated to helping other communities and not just Persian, Farsi, speaking communities, anybody, anyone embraced this idea of, of creating immersion programs, preschool immersion programs. So talk to us a little bit about the, the Colab, Speaker 2:the colab. We used to call it the resource center and people [00:20:30] weren't apparently the resource center and just do and doing it for anybody. So we did a little bit of brainstorming and came up with the name, the heritage language collaborative and it's exactly what that is. It's, it's collaborating with people, be they families or other or communities who want to promote their heritage language in the next generation of kids. Um, so we work with families with any background. I just worked with an Taiwanese [00:21:00] family and helping them maintain the bilingual home in different, you know, that we all have different challenges in doing that and helping them overcome those challenges. And then working with educators of different immersion programs. Um, our hope is to host workshops for starting off with local immersion schools, but then eventually national schools and developing best practices, cause they don't really exist in that field. Speaker 2:[00:21:30] Excuse me. And it is an emerging field. And then finally working with other communities. Um, and that involves both helping other communities, start schools, be they small co-op programs all the way to like a real school, um, and also producing teaching materials and books and audio books and some music cds. And, um, so right now we're in the beginning phases. I've been doing this [00:22:00] work for the last three years that we've been in our new building and we became a nonprofit. Um, but it's been hard to do that and run the school and the afterschool program, um, and tried to keep a nonprofit afloat in this economy and have two kids. Speaker 1:Yeah. Yo, by the way, you have two kids. I do that too. Yeah. Um, so okay. My native tongue is Ooredoo. Okay. So let's say I came to you and I said I want to start or do language school. You refer to best [00:22:30] practices. What are like top three best practices for listeners out there? We hopefully have dozens and dozens of languages listening to us right now. So what are the best practices that you can give people? Just, just, you know, a few choice nuggets. Speaker 2:Well, as a parent I can, would you like to know as a parent? Sure. As a parent it would be to um, work, be consistent and um, enable your children to develop the muscles and the habits to [00:23:00] speak to you in your native tongue. Um, damn, one technique uses like a sang, it's called the sandwich method. If you have to use English, then you use your native tongue first than English than the native tongue. So if you, you're speaking about a ball and the child doesn't know what a ball means, you would say TUPE in person, ball, TUPE. And um, another one is to really prompt a child to respond to [00:23:30] you in that language. Um, if they insist on speaking English and they always, every child will get to a point where they'll want to speak English to their parent. Don't. My second child hasn't gotten to that yet. It's interesting. Um, you, you just have them keep repeating it and in my case in person and prompting them to repeat it and you just keep doing it over and over again until they do it sounds painful and terrible. And it sounds like you have a terrible relationship with your kids, but it's just, it's just [00:24:00] a little bit of effort. Like everything else in parenting that eventually becomes very natural and it's actually less work than if you were to be a little bit looser about it in the beginning. Less disciplined about it. Speaker 1:Okay. Good tips. Thank you. Um, so last question I have for you is, I love to ask this of innovators, entrepreneurs, what's the vision? So you're working real hard. It's been three years and you've come a long way. You 55 kids that you're, [00:24:30] you're giving this amazing experience too. So five years from now, what will it look like? And both from the Goldstone perspective but also from colab. Speaker 2:Well, in five years we will have helped build, why are we say 10 years, 10 schools? So not sure it's five years in five schools cause it's, yeah, 10 years is easier for the colab. Um, so yeah, we'd have schools [00:25:00] all over the country, not us personally, but there would be schools that we will have helped establish however we can through consulting and sending them materials. Thanks. Um, and we'd have books published, several books published and audio cds and music cds, and we'll have an annual workshop where we host people coming in from different parts of the country [00:25:30] and brainstorming together and the school, oh, I shouldn't even say this school. There are some, there been discussions and requests from parents and other educators talking to me about, um, starting a charter school k through eight. And I've been, you know, I, this, it was, it was a big, big challenge to get to where we are now. Speaker 2:My family paid a price for it and my [00:26:00] husband was very patient with me. Um, so it's, it's hard to say yes, but it's really hard to say no to. So we're, we're exploring that and my hope is that in 10 years we'll have a team that can do that. And I can help and we'd work, we'd collaborate and it could be a Gulistan school locally. Um, I'm not into having call stands outside of the local area, um, because it's hard to manage all of that. But yeah, maybe there'd be a k through eight school in Berkeley. Speaker 1:[00:26:30] I'd like to thank Yelderman Debra for being on the show today. To learn more about Gulistan, you'd go to Gulistan kids.com. That's g o l e s t a n kids.com. This has been method to the madness on care Berkeley 90.7 FM. You can learn more about us@methodtothemadness.org and to take us out today, we're going to let a kid from Goulston give us a little Persian nursery rhyme, said to Beethoven, oh, humans in life, be kind to each other here on [00:27:00] Kale x, Berkeley. Speaker 3:Bye. See you. Bye. [inaudible] mine. And I need that. [00:27:30] Bye guys. A need. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Interview with Lisa Frasier of The Bay Citizen, a new paradigm for Journalism in the Bay AreaTRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Okay. Okay. Okay. In 2009, the San Francisco Chronicle admitted that they were losing the battle against the Internet and that the only way forward would be massive cuts in staffing. Google and Twitter had replaced it for news, craigslist for classifieds and local blogs for local civics and politics. A 144 year old institution in the land of innovation had found itself kind of date and out of touch with the future today on method to the madness, we interviewed the CEO [00:00:30] of base citizen.org. Hey, bay area news organization that's attempting to redefine how the bay area gets its news. Stay with us. Speaker 2:[inaudible] Speaker 3:um, my name is Lisa Frazier. I'm president and CEO of the base citizen. The Base citizen is a [00:01:00] new nonprofit news organization. It's an independent organization. Uh, and our mission is to foster and foster civic engagement. We've got by providing fact-based news, uh, really in the core civic issues. Speaker 1:Oh, one of our interview is about what the Internet did to newspapers. Speaker 3:I think the, the Internet has been around now for quite, quite some time, even though it's really a short period and it's impacted a lot of industries in particular the news industry and phenomenally that's been led [00:01:30] by, uh, is driven by consumer behavior. So in reality, what's happening is consumers today, uh, uh, actually read more news or listen to more news or watch more news than, uh, they did before. And that is really a, um, an outcome of the Internet being available, right? Because people are reading news during the day at lunchtime, uh, on smartphones now on tablet devices such as the iPad and what that has, uh, shifted those, those eyeballs, [00:02:00] if you will, to those digital formats for news, which has left people from, uh, subscribing to newspapers. And so what's happening in the industry as eyeballs and people have shifted to the digital, uh, consumption of news. Speaker 3:Uh, the core, uh, economic model of the newspaper has been in decline and predominantly because that is the loss of subscription, uh, which is I e the circulation of the newspaper in towns across the country. And then on top of that, therefore the advertising [00:02:30] revenues also fall, right? Because if as an advertiser, they wanna have the most return on their investment for their advertising dollars. And those audiences in the paper have shifted now over the last few years. That has led to actually a real shift in a real decline in journalism jobs. And in fact, uh, according to, uh, organizations such as Pew, we're at a point now where, um, less than half the states have a newspaper covering Washington DC and therefore [00:03:00] covering their representatives here in the bay area. The work that we did in preparation to starting the base an an, and this was back in 2009, we show that there had been a 50% reduction in journalist jobs. Speaker 3:Um, and what we found is when we looked at the content production of those newspapers in our local area, over time, there was a disproportionate amount of reduction in the civic beats. And those civic beats are governance and policy or you know, City Hall Education, [00:03:30] health, uh, transportation, the environment, justice, social justice and arts and culture. And so that's what the Internet has done in intimate as enable consumers to, uh, to consume news in different places. And that has put a pressure on the previous economic model of the newspaper, [00:04:00] a number of citizens here in the bay area, including, uh, Warren Hellman, uh, chairman of the board of the base citizen, also myself and, and a handful of others, uh, you know, started the conversation about what would this mean in the bay area. And originally, uh, this, the kind of the catalyst for it was an announcement, uh, by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009. Speaker 3:So, and they will likely to close. [00:04:30] Now obviously they didn't do that, but that's the catalyst for the analysis that then took place, uh, through 2000 and I to really understand what had been lost here in the bay area. And those are some of the statistics I just referred to. And what happened from there is a real in depth view, right, of not only in the field of journalism here, but what would, what innovations are happening across the country. And from that, uh, through 2009, we bet began to put together, um, the blueprint, [00:05:00] if you will, for the Bay citizen. And what we're trying to do on a day to day basis here is to continue to be leading edge. And by that I mean staying up with the trends, uh, of what's happening in innovation in news. Also pushing those frontiers ourselves. Um, and so that we're not only supporting, uh, the citizens of the bay area by providing them the civic news. But we're also doing innovation in the field of journalism [00:05:30] at the same time. And that's what we felt was really important part of the work that we did in 2009 to so not only are there, not only is that the job loss is important because of that important watchdog role that journalists play has, has declined, but also the fact that there is not enough innovation in this field for, you know, for news in a digital era. Speaker 1:The watchdog role of the press was indeed a core concept of the founding fathers of this. Speaker 4:Thomas Jefferson once said, if once [00:06:00] the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I and Congress and assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature in spite of individual exceptions. But to continue shedding light on public affairs, today's news organizations must innovate. I asked Ms. Frazier how they tackle this problem. Speaker 3:So we're a small organization, so it's, it's not that we can have a, for one r and d if you will, whether you're a pharmaceutical company. Um, but what we have done [00:06:30] is, is, uh, structured a couple of key relationships to foster the innovation. One is actually, uh, an important, uh, group within the chain I'm sure you're very familiar with, which is, uh, the Graduate School of journalism that journalism at UC Berkeley. Um, and this was an arrangement and agreement. We may early in 2009, because of his innovation. So working with faculty and students to stay abreast of what's, uh, you know, what's happening in their fields and what things they're trying to do, but also extending [00:07:00] out into the computer science school and the Information School. Uh, because what's happening today is news needs to be more interactive, right? And there are folks over at UC Berkeley in the, those various faculties who are working on, whether it's graduate student projects or some of the professors who are actually working on ways to either look at information and data differently and so and so such that a consumer can actually interact with it. Speaker 3:So adding comments or enabling a dialogue on a database [00:07:30] or, you know, some of the things that they've been doing is, uh, investigating the use of lobbyists, language in legislation, you know, things like that. And we're talking really help transparency in government. It also helps around the innovation of just what our news experience is. Because today it has traditionally been, you know, one way you read a newspaper, you listened to the radio with the, where you can actually change that and so that it becomes interactive. And so one of the investments, you know for what we're doing [00:08:00] is actually really around what we call our data library. And the data library is really a building around data applications so that a story becomes alive to that person. And so there are a couple of examples that um, know I pointed to and perhaps your listeners. Speaker 3:One is bike accidents, right? Safety. We created the bike accident tracker. We just launched it a us our second version last week and I max out bike accidents as reported in the police department over the last five years, the last five [00:08:30] years of available data. And what that tells you is just what are the hazardous roads and safety issues in, you know, for biking in the bay area. And so people are emailing us saying, I'm riding my bike differently in a different way to work. And then other cities are now asking us, you know, for the backend so they can replicate this, um, across, you know, for their cities. And so the way this innovation happens is somewhat testing and trial different things here. For example, that data library becoming very interactive [00:09:00] in the, in the bike accident area and then other, and then as it becomes viral on social media and people read about it through either Facebook or Twitter, then others like us are picking that up and we'll want the support or the ability to do that. Speaker 3:Um, another example is really the whooping cough or pertussis epidemic last year, uh, where um, there was an occurrence of the disease or high parents is, and yet this was not broadly recorded in public media, uh, or commercial media I should say. And then, [00:09:30] and then what happened is we put a database together, we meshed together the data from the um, the current of the disease and the non immunization rates of kids in schools. And so parents actually could look up their school to understand what was the non immunization rate and therefore exposure to the school for this disease. And you know what, I actually, the analysis showed us something like almost 8% of children in the kindergarten year of 2009 [00:10:00] 2010 were not immunized in Marin county. And yet they had a 10 x occurrence of the disease. And this led to conversations not only in parents groups but inside having conversations in city hall about well what do we do in times of epidemic now the growing population of non immunization children. And so that's the innovation of the news in a digital kind of era, which is what we're doing here. Speaker 4:You are listening to k a l x Berkeley in 90.7 FM university and community sponsored radio. [00:10:30] This is method to the madness of 30 minutes show about the innovative spirit of the bay area. And I'm your host. Tallinn is our, we're speaking with the CEO of the base citizen. A local nonprofit news organization launched in 2009 as a response to the decimation of the newsrooms of the bay. I asked Ms. Frazier how the base citizen has used technology to gain competitive advantage and innovate. Speaker 3:We have a, another relationship with the assistant on profit news organization [00:11:00] of ours. Um, the call the Texas Tribune and the Texas Tribune covers our politics for the state of Texas. And in our analysis through 2009, what we found is they were really the only other nonprofit news organization who was, um, fostering, uh, innovation in technology. And so we've merged our tech teams together. And as part of the innovation, what we're, um, we announced in March, we've created at an open source, are we creating an open source technology platform for content [00:11:30] management of a newsroom, um, and then integrating into that all the various business elements. So what this means is while we started with open source technology, uh, to create what is our functioning newsroom, we didn't want to, you know, recreate the wheel here. So we worked with our friends in Texas. We've created this common platform, that common flood platform is now being open source. Speaker 3:We've had over 300 inquiries about people wanting to come onto the platform. The first few fields will come on in [00:12:00] at the end of someone. And what this really means is a real step change in the ability for organizations like us in co, in cities and towns across the country. So the people that come to see me or talk to me, the two people in Raleigh, North Carolina, the person up in the middle of Massachusetts technology is often a barrier. And so this, uh, our ability open sources platform with the support of the Knight Foundation is enabling these organizations to be able to serve [00:12:30] their communities by providing this nonprofit independent, fact-based news. And so in some cases these organizations will be for-profit cause it'd be truly open source technology. And that's exciting. Right. There are now 50 or so nonprofit news organizations yes. Across the country. Is that a relatively recent trend? Yes. Yeah. So I would have said, you know, five years. Yeah, yeah. They'd be lucky to be a handful. And there was some core, you know, folks like the Center for Public Integrity has been around for 20 years. Uh, one of the earliest versions of the base [00:13:00] citizen is actually the voice of San Diego down in San Diego and they're probably in their fifth or sixth year of operation. Speaker 4:Perhaps just as important as the innovation on the technical side of the news organization. The industry now needs innovation. On the economic side as well. The base citizen is run as a nonprofit organization. And I asked Ms Frasier about their model. Speaker 3:So we are, um, you're right, it's absolutely the hardest challenge of sustaining original journalism, uh, in this, in this, you know, this time where we [00:13:30] are today is, um, is the economic model. And interestingly, uh, and importantly, it's not unique to us, right? Meaning not unique to the bay area. It's not only, um, across the country that this is a problem, but it's actually now, you know, it's also a concern globally. And in fact, we've had, uh, over 30 different countries, uh, visit us, uh, organizations, whether they be from the general side or the business executive side on media coming to understand about this model. And so [00:14:00] what we are is really, we're trying to forge forward on a, on a number of things, a number of models taking elements and ingredients of, uh, traditional public broadcasting as well as traditional commercial media. Uh, and so what it is, it's around major donors and foundations. Speaker 3:So, um, so the support we're getting from individuals here in the bay area is, um, a seed funding, if you will. We don't have an endowment. We have a seed fund to get to sustainability by 2014. [00:14:30] It's about the foundation support for the key projects that are donor enabled journalism. Original call it original content journalism to go forward. And like the Knight Foundation, it's around corporate underwriting. So we haven't done much of this today, but enabling corporate, uh, corporations that are here locally be part of the base citizen, be enabling this civic dialogue to underwrite, if you will. Uh, our efforts here. Um, then it's around membership by is the individual contributors, which I just mentioned. [00:15:00] Yeah. And membership is defined as, you know, someone who becomes, makes a donation at the membership level, which is typically wrapped $50 a year, uh, to support our, our organization. Speaker 3:And we're thrilled that, you know, we've actually had quite, quite the momentum around individuals supporting us from the community. And then the last part is around content royalties. And so the New York Times pays us for the content to be a, which is more the traditional content licensing, uh, part of the revenue model, um, to pays us to [00:15:30] produce, uh, the bay area section. And so the reality is we have to address a number of potential revenue streams. We need all of those right to get to sustainability in 2014. Right now we are far more dependent on the individual giving, um, because it takes time to grow a business as you understand. And so for us growing, our organization is really about the community and membership support and the corporate underwriting support. And as that grows right, we've come very less dependent on [00:16:00] a major donors and therefore, uh, the organization's able to sustain itself, meaning it brings in and earns its money through those, the membership and corporate underwriting contributions, uh, to sustain its expense level. Speaker 4:You are listening to k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM. This is method to the madness, a 30 minute show about the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Ali Nasar and we're speaking with Liza Frazier, CEO of the base citizen. Speaker 1:There's this [00:16:30] kind of idea of, of the filter of WHO's, who's the one who I trust to tell me the news. Does anybody can put anything out there? Um, do you think that there is somewhat of a land grab happening or some kind of race to determine who's going to be the new trusted voices in this kind of new millennium of information being everywhere? Or do you think there's room in the landscape of, like you said, people consume news constantly these days? Is [00:17:00] there room for everybody to get involved? Speaker 3:Um, it's probably in between. I don't know that there's room for everybody to get involved. Um, I think that, I don't think I would agree that there's a land gram. I actually think that we have what one would call, um, essentially a media literacy challenge. Um, just like we have a civic literacy challenge with, uh, folks. Yeah. Civics being not as predominant in his school. [00:17:30] Um, uh, curriculum these days, media literacy is becoming, uh, more and more of a topic of discussion. And the reason being is because it is very difficult to desegregate, you know, what was original reporting versus what is an opinion on opinion, on opinion. And uh, you know, and in fact, Pew Research did a study that said, uh, that 80% of blogs start with a piece of original content news coming [00:18:00] out of a professional newsroom. So when you think of that shrinking newsroom, right, that, that, that kind of, that initial source of content, which is where all the bloggers are feeding off originally, not all, but some that are a large proportion of them, um, that Kinda kind of shows you it's very, very difficult and can have a feel of what the land grab. Speaker 3:Um, but in reality, what we also have is in combination of that is the impact of Facebook [00:18:30] and Twitter, particularly Twitter, where, you know, news is now disseminated right through those, through those channels. And yet it's not necessarily the in depth read, right? It's this, the snippets. And so there is this whole fragmentation of the, there are the, um, the reading behavior. And so what happens is when people really want to know something, they're going to dig down. I believe back into brands [00:19:00] that they know. I mean there's a reason people go to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or s you know, if it's CNN, whatever their preference is, right? They're very well established news brands and here and that's what we're trying to generate here for local in the bay area, we don't do international news, we don't do national news, we only do local news. Speaker 3:And that, that even though there's a plethora of channels and there is a fragmentation of the consumer and where sometimes we'd predominantly competing with [00:19:30] people to spend time on civic news versus going on Facebook or TMZ or whatever their favorite thing is. And that's what, that's what I think will always, you know, truly come out. Right? Cause when you, we see no, when there are big issues, whether it's pension reform, whether it's the elections, you know, the mayor's election coming up, people actually want the deep, the depth. And that's why the, I believe that organizations like the Bay citizen in cities across the country can be successful if they're producing that quality of depth [00:20:00] and the original fact-based reporting. Speaker 1:And it was the disappearance of the capabilities of the bay area newsrooms to do original fact-based reporting across a wide variety of civic Peet's that spawned the base citizen. And it came from the mind of Warren Hellman, who is the chairman and cofounder of San Francisco based Hellman and Friedman, a private equity investment firm that he founded in 1984. The firm has raised over $5 billion in capital in invested [00:20:30] in over 45 companies. Um, helmet has deep ties to Wall Street. He's a director of the Nasdaq. Uh, he worked for Lehman Brothers. Um, he also graduated from cal. Uh, he went to the Harvard business school. He's on the advisory board of the Haas business school, a real power broker who also may be better known to Calex listeners as the funder of hardly strictly bluegrass in San Francisco. The festival that turn 10 last year, [00:21:00] uh, he invests hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to run that festival every year as a gift to the city of San Francisco in the world. And now Mr Hellman is trying to give a different gift to the city of San Francisco in the bay area in general, the gift of news. And I asked Ms. Frazier, the CEO of base citizen what the other news organizations, specifically the chronicle thinks about their endeavor. Speaker 3:Um, I haven't spoken to them, so it's pretty hard for me to really answer that. I mean, some people have commented that, [00:21:30] you know, the competition has been good because of the quality of reporting is, has been [inaudible] has raised. And if that's the case, then I think that's great. Right? Cause I mean, that's the reality of what we want. We want quality news, right. For the local area. And if that's the impact the bases and had on our competitors, then I applaud that. I think that's great. And, and, and competition is very healthy, right? I mean, I think that's an important part of who we are, uh, in any industry and that what inspires us to do more [00:22:00] and keep on going and, and essentially try to do the best that we can. And so, um, I'm not sure what their, their reaction would be to your question, but yeah, that's what the tidbits that I've heard. Speaker 3:What about advantages of nonprofit in the kind of new world of, of journalism? I think we have an advantage because we don't have any legacy, right? I think that, uh, whether a nonprofit or for-profit, I mean someone, some that argue that the news organizations today are truly nonprofit, [00:22:30] even though they're a for profit entities because that's the reality of the economics. But I think our biggest advantages that we started from scratch in January, 2010, um, we don't have legacies or, you know, having to print a paper. We don't have those costs. We don't have to do truck rolls, you know, all those sorts of things. And to us, being able to start with a clean piece of paper, right, is truly, uh, is truly an advantage. Um, and, and I think the other benefit that [00:23:00] you know, we've had is that we're not trying to create a product that people don't understand, right? People have asked us to do this. People have thanked us for doing, for providing this new sores. And, and that is also an advantage, right? So people have missed something. They're thrilled that the BCIT is in, is here and doing it in the, in the ways that we are and, uh, in encouraging us to continue. And so that's to me the two, the two biggest advantages of what we're doing here at the base of Islam. Speaker 1:You're listening [00:23:30] to KALX Berkeley and 90.7 FM. This is method to the madness, a 30 minute show about the innovative spirit of the bay area. And we're speaking with CEO Lisa Frazier of base citizen.org. The base it isn't as a nonprofit news organization founded in 2009 started in 2010 as covering the bay area news scene in a new and innovative. Yeah. Speaker 3:Well we're trying to do here is be very mission driven. I mean, this is about the civic news, the fabric of the community. [00:24:00] Um, it's how we make decisions, whether it's about health issues too, who gets voted into city hall to various propositions. And what we're trying to do is become in a world where there is a plethora of information available on the web that is becoming more and more difficult for consumers to really understand what's an opinion piece versus what is a fact based reported piece. And what we're trying to create here is that the base citizen is a trusted [00:24:30] brand and a name for individuals in the bay area about that civic news. Right? And so that's what this is about. It's, it's very mission-driven. We can't feel the void, right. That has been lost because of the newspaper economic model and, and we're not trying to do that. Speaker 3:And which is why collaboration is an important element of the base citizens model. Because there are, there is great work happening in various, uh, parts of the bay area. And so we have, [00:25:00] as a, to your point, we have 27 different content partners, um, who are working with us. We provide us content, we'll publish as part of the base citizen. They're part of our partner program. And what happens is that they're doing, you know what some people really call very local or hyper local news. And so in Berkeley, you know, Berkeley side is one of those institutions who's one of our partners. And what we're doing is enabling a discussion and a dialogue or at least awareness of issues in the various pockets across [00:25:30] the bay area. Um, does the news rooms themselves, you know, I was just reading last night, the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000 were over a thousand people, just the newsrooms themselves then now to get a lesson 300 and so, you know, a nonprofit news organization like the base citizen with 32 people, 20 of those, you know, in the editorial function is not gonna replace that. Speaker 3:But in the world today, because our, you know, the folks, [00:26:00] there are people doing various pieces in their neighborhoods, we can come together and collaborate, which is why the relationship, you know, with what the students are doing. I'm at UC Berkeley in know in their various um, you know, mission local and things like those, uh, those news sites to, you know, KGO radio, uh, to what we do. Would you print news in the New York Times every Friday and Sunday, the bay area section, which is what we only produce that there is a way right, to work together to enable that civic news. And [00:26:30] that's what we are doing. We will only be successful if we do that, if, if our news is available to the community. Right? Cause what we're about is not so much as building an institution, but it's about serving the community. And if we serve the community both for our definition, that means provide a news and fact based analysis on issues that are important to the community. If we do that well, the community will sustain us by becoming members of the base citizen, uh, by making a donation [00:27:00] and similar to what people do, whether they're a member of an arts institution or a member of public broadcasting. That's, that's what we're trying to do. So we're really serving the communities what the base it isn't as about, Speaker 1:and of course serving the public good has always been one of the core tenants of a free and open press that does fact-based reporting. And we've had one in this country since its inception. I asked Ms. Frazier was she thought about journalism and what it will look like 10 years from now. Speaker 3:It could be very [00:27:30] different. Um, I think, uh, you know, a lot of people have been saying, uh, you know, I'm to asking years, right, that newspapers will be gone in 10 years. Some people said 20 years and I don't have that crystal wall. But, uh, I really am questioning the longevity of newspapers, especially with the fast adoption, uh, and the depth of adoption of the iPad and tablet devices. I mean, even though that tablet market is not shaken out yet, right, there's still a lot as you know, [00:28:00] like kind of people rolling out various devices at different pricing levels and people are trying to trial and different things. But the people like, uh, the people that s you know, studying the usage of these devices show that, you know, people will read a newspaper the night before, right? Or they've already read it in the morning before it's been delivered on their doorstep. Speaker 3:And so it's just a very interesting, you know, kind of accelerator. I think I probably have the decline for demand in newspapers. [00:28:30] Um, and then what's going to play in is how consumers pay for that, right? Because I mean, obviously there's a, you know, there is now, um, pay walls, um, there's needed pay at the New York Times there. Um, there are, there are some city newspapers and you know, have got put paywalls up. Um, and you're one of our reporters reportedly the chronicles are going to do that. And the chronicles rolled out their iPad app, uh, just this week, I think, or last week. And so there's [00:29:00] going to be just a shift in, in behavior again, right? There was like, your first question was about, well, what is the impact of the Internet? And now I think you're going to be, what is the impact of devices, right? Especially as you know, children today are, are operating, you know, our phones and iPads, you know, with a flicker thing fingers at three, three years of age. So what do you in 10 years, I mean, why would they ever pick up a newspaper Speaker 1:if that's truly the case that in 10 years nobody will ever pick up a newspaper. It's really important for us as a society [00:29:30] to see projects like the bay citizens succeed so that we can have an open and transparent government. I like to think CEO, Lisa Frazier of the bay state is in for talking to us today. I've method to the madness. You can learn more about the base. It is. Am I going to base it as in.org we'll link to it from our site and method to the [inaudible] dot org you can go there also to contact us and see older show archives. Hi Mylene is our thanks for listening. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Shalene Jha Postdoctoral Fellow and Hillary Sardinas College of Natural Resources grad student at UC Berkeley discuss their research in native bee populations, landscape genetics, foraging ecology, ecosystem services. They talk about research funding and collaboration.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Hmm Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Shalani Sha, UC president's, postdoctoral fellow and Hillary Sardinia graduate researcher. They're both members of the environmental science policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. We talk about their research of native bumblebees and bee habitat [00:01:00] during the interview, colony collapse disorder as mentioned, but not explained. Colony collapse disorder is a still unsolved mystery that since 2006 has killed approximately 50% of kept European honeybees in North America. The disorder is characterized by the complete disappearance of all the bees in a colony. The kept European honeybees are essential pollinators of many commercial scale fruit and nut crops throughout the world. The suspected causes of colony collapse disorder include fungus, [00:01:30] viruses, pesticides, Mites, diet, antibiotics, and whether the breakthrough mentioned in the interview is not a solution, but possibly a forward step to a solution. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Speaker 3: My guests are Shalani jaw and Hillary seediness. They're both at the college of natural resources. And why don't you, shall any describe the research that you're currently doing together? Speaker 4: [00:02:00] Sure. So Maria and I are both in Claire Cremins lab and this particular lab group actually has very diverse interests, mostly related to conservation, biology and ecological interactions between people and animals. And our work is related to pollinators. So how do you conserve pollinators in agricultural habitats? That's sort of one of our research closed side and we worked and some of the farming communities [00:02:30] in northern California around Yolo, Solano in Sacramento County, looking at native bees and how agricultural landscapes and regions impact the way bees move and nest disperse across agriculture tools. Speaker 3: Is there also an element of working with, or at least understanding the, the beekeeping community in those, those very same areas or is there an overlap and interface that happens? Yeah, so a lot Speaker 4: [00:03:00] of the farms that we work in manage TVs as well that managed European honeybee colonies provide pollination services in addition to native bees. So, um, the other portion of our outreach has to do with working with land managers and farmers. We're interested in promoting native bee diversity. These are farmers that often have some incentive from the USDA or have some resources that they can use for restoration. So we kind of [00:03:30] provide some of the research based tools to inform restoration does this, if that's sort of where we hope our work is moving towards. No one in our lab right now is currently working on honeybees, but we do work with a number of labs at Davis that have at UC Davis [inaudible]. Speaker 5: However, previous work that Claire has done with a former student of her, Sarah Greenleaf did look at how native bees and honeybees interacted and was able to show that the presence of native bees actually [00:04:00] enhanced honeybee pollination of certain crops that where they did their study was in sunflowers. And I'm working in some flowers too, and one of the things we do, we do collect honey bees and our studies and are able to see how much they're utilizing hedgerows and whether or not they're actually hedgerows linear strips of native plants. These restorations that were moving entire cultural landscapes. If they're actually providing additional resources that are important to honeybees. And [00:04:30] by looking at their movement, we can see if the honeybees are going into the hedgerow and then into the crop or different distances to try and understand a bit about their biology as well. [inaudible] Speaker 4: some of these landscapes only have five, five or less percent of their natural habitat still maintained. So we've got places where restoration or nightmare would be necessary in order to bring back native communities and some of our other sites sort of as a comparison, we have more complex landscapes like [00:05:00] a in the k value where, um, some of these farmers are just surrounded by natural habitat. And we're also trying to get a sense of what landscape features are important for native bees for honeybees and sort of what does that mean in terms of pollination services that farmers receive from the fields. Speaker 3: Are there other pollinators besides visa, you're, you're studying as well. Speaker 4: Many of the people in the lab, um, have more expertise with these. But definitely, uh, in a lot of these [00:05:30] surveys they're looking at, you know, butterflies surf with flies, Wasp. So organisms that aren't primarily pollinators, maybe they serve other ecological functions, like some people are understanding pest predators. And how can these natural habitats not only support pollinators, but also support the organisms which control pests. Speaker 3: Hillary, tell me about when you wanted to become a scientist. Speaker 5: When I wanted to become a scientist, Speaker 1: or when did you [00:06:00] first start to think about it and say, this is interesting and I could see myself going this direction? I guess Speaker 5: when, what really sealed it for me? I went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, and within the first few weeks I found this garden called the Alan Chadwick Garden, which is very magical and has been there since the 60s. Um, and I started interning and then working there. And so that's what got me really interested in agriculture and native plant propagation and just in botany in [00:06:30] general. So after graduating from college, I decided to work in native plant nurseries and ecological restoration cause that seemed to be a place where you could kind of garden with nature. And in doing that, discovered that a lot of plants when I would go to collect their seeds and propagate them, there didn't seem to be a lot of seeds. And when we were doing these restoration projects, we weren't considering the pollinators at all. So after kind of digging more deeply, finding that there is this major disconnect in [00:07:00] that I found I really wanted to go study this for some reason. Um, and the university just the whole academic setting was fascinating. Speaker 4: Inshallah. Any hip hop for you. Right. So, um, my experience also started when I was an Undergrad. I was working on a project related to plant populations and understanding how weather and soil attributes, etc. Effectively as, [00:07:30] and then separately also working on blossoms. And so, uh, I was really interested in both of these systems and then started thinking about the really important connection between insects or animals that provide these pollination services, um, and the plants that require them in order to reproduce. And I just thought it was a really magical interaction that this, this, this, this interconnectedness between plant communities and pollinators. It's really fascinating. And [00:08:00] in order to have a really holistic understanding of plants or pollinators, you really have to understand both. But especially also like Hillary said, because of pollination is so important for our agricultural system, nuts and berries and all that, you know, all the wonderful things that we appreciate it on our kitchen table. I thought what better place to study pollination in an agricultural system? Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:08:30] a lot of clean water focus and interest in the agricultural realm is in creating spaces between rivers and farm lands, Speaker 3: which would be natural areas for your pollinators to live in. [00:09:00] Is their activity in trying to blend the research Speaker 4: [inaudible] that's one thing that many biologists complain about is that there are many of these projects taking place, but we need to work on communicating and making sure that multiple projects can potentially meet multiple needs. And so we do have members in our lab that are working in or plan on working in that right now are being conserved for the [00:09:30] Berman out. We'll actually Abram, UC Davis. So these are conservation areas that people have, have managed in order to promote the bird but potentially could also provide support for pollinators. So definitely what we're trying to look at restoration in many different of many different uh, ecological systems. So whether that's water systems or you know, mammalian systems or working at conserving birds and thinking about how we can do Lilly also conserve native [00:10:00] pollinators are pest creditors.Speaker 5: I would say that the term for this, it's often uses multi-functionality and it seems in a lot of ways in agricultural areas. Europe is very much with the vanguard kind of preserving their agricultural areas for biodiversity, for cultural heritage of the size as well as nutrients. Like lame, preventing, you know, water from entering waterways. And that's one of the things we need to talk to farmers about. The benefits of a hedgerow for example, you can say it has the advantage of being a wind break [00:10:30] and preventing, um, soil from moving across. And so there's all of these different benefits that it has, but there's also some, you know, this services, if we're talking about ecosystem services that has roads could potentially create, and so trying to show the entire spectrum of what they can and cannot do. And often a single lab doesn't look at every aspect, but when you try and present it to the public or even write it up in a p in a journal, you want to try and pull [00:11:00] from all of those bodies of knowledge on, on it to create a holistic picture. Speaker 3: So it's, it's somewhat difficult and problematic to try to add your level, bring all of this information together Speaker 4: in the sciences or you're talking just strictly about research. It is often necessary to kind of focus because there's just so much that, so many factors that play a role in understanding the communities or understanding water filtration systems or hydrology. [00:11:30] I think you're right. You know, we definitely need collaboration across institutes, but I think even within research people are trying to make connections between labs that work on range land, plant conservation and lots of work on these are our pollinator conservation. So there's those kind of within um, institute cross collaboration that's necessary and across as well with these. Who would be Sangiovese and some of these funding agencies? Speaker 5: No, it does seem like [00:12:00] at least here at Berkeley, there's this group that's arisen called the diversified farming round table round table and the diversified farming round table. And basically they're, they bridge a lot of these gaps. Do they bring a professor like Claire Who's really interested in conservation biology with somebody who's much more in touch with agro ecology like Miguel LTE, Arie and a lot of their Grad students and create this forum to talk about a lot of different issues and from [00:12:30] that can come review papers where we look at some factors say pesticide use in Agora ecosystems and how that would affect all of these different organisms, not just the one that we're focused on. And it also creates opportunities to build those research associations. Speaker 3: [inaudible] you mentioned applying for grants and so ongoing. Do you have things you're looking to a present? Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. I mean I think that's the [00:13:00] challenging and exciting thing about research is every question that you start to answer leads to more questions and, and so you know, with my work, so I focus on the native bumblebees. I'm looking at how these agricultural landscapes or whether they can actually support native bees or not and how these bumblebees are moving across agricultural landscapes. When I first began this work, the question was just, well, you know how many bees does a certain landscape support? And the more you dig into it and you realize [00:13:30] that, well not only is that important, but if you want these populations to be healthy and to persist in the landscape, they have to be able to reproduce and move and colonize new areas, etc. So now understanding their dispersal processes becomes the next big challenge. Okay, we know how many they are. We know we'd have 50 colonies in a particular landscape, but are they integrating I, they, um, are they moving across the landscape? Are they able to reproduce successfully? [00:14:00] So those are some of the next steps. And understanding how the landscape affects these ecological processes or these reproductive processes is very important if we want to conserve these native bees. Speaker 3: Did you, uh, see recently the, the information about the, or the breakthrough, I guess you could call it in the colony collapse research, that was kind of impressive. Did that surprise you that the, those two organizations got together to work on at the U s army, and [00:14:30] I guess it was the University of Montana. Speaker 5: The military is actually using honeybees for a lot of different purposes. There's a professor in the geography department, j Co sac, who's really looking at using them for looking at unexploded ordinances and how they can put honey bee colonies all over the world and their honey to see if there's radioactive material to see if there's, you know, nuclear testing going on. So for me, I was actually shocked when he had [00:15:00] spoken that there wasn't more looking at colony collapse disorder because if they're thinking about, you know, food security or threats, I would think, well this is a major threat to our, you know, national security. And so when I read that they'd been working out, I was like, oh, I'm so glad. Right. I mean, I think Speaker 4: it comes back to this question of if you have multiple agencies working on, whether it's persistence of 10 populations or ecosystem services or conservation of our natural [00:15:30] resources, having multiple agencies working on the same problems but not working together can be a big barrier. And so it would be great if there was more of these cross collaborations and yeah, the military apparently has been interested in a lot of social insects for a number of reasons. So there are entomologists that work very closely with the military, you know, to understand how insects communicate with each other and navigate unknown landscapes. And so [00:16:00] there's a lot of potential for core collaborative work just about stepping out of your comfort zone. Maybe, you know, talking to people in other agencies, Speaker 5: there are more and more grants offered through the Department of Defense and Department of Energy that I'm ecologists are becoming really interested in their offering them as fellowships to graduate students that I know a number of people in SPM have applied. And it's true, like in some ways you wonder kind of how this research will be [00:16:30] used and the knowledge. But at the same time it's creating this large pool of money to study all of these incredibly valuable things. And I think with this increasing interest in food security in all of these global crisis taking place right now, and there's really just such a great opportunity for collaboration across people who study food systems or study biological systems and government agencies who are really interested in conserving [00:17:00] and then making sure that people have access to good food and are not Melanie [inaudible] are not starving. So that's a really important overlap that we should be capitalizing. Speaker 6: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley [inaudible] Speaker 3: [00:17:30] is there an international element to the research that you read? Are there good sources out there that you did you go to or Speaker 5: yeah, they, I think just the nature of the world right now is so global as therapy people, you know, say in Germany there's m k has sharky like in his lab looks at a lot of the same systems and so we kind of try and compare like our systems to [00:18:00] their systems. And that's not just in Germany but in [inaudible] Speaker 4: Zealand and all over. So every little bit that you learn from one place, you want to see if that's happening in your system. To be able to draw conclusions and just the nature of journals now and the quality of science. And there's a lot of these, I mean there should be more, but there was, for example, the national center for ecological analysis and synthesis as quad as NZ is. It was this federally funded institution [00:18:30] where basically they funded people to come from all over the world who were studying similar problems but just didn't have the chance to synthesize it information come up with a general model or general understanding of these processes. So in many of these systems you find that the rules are the same regardless of your, your bioregion or maybe the rules are totally subverted, but it's really essential to understand ecological systems or ecological and [00:19:00] human interactions at this global scale. So we definitely need more institutes like NCS or like these international synthesis groups. But it's happening a lot. And I think with, um, especially with connections like the Internet and international conferences, etc, you can really bridge across nations and get a better understanding of what's happening on a global scale Speaker 5: in a sense to challenge your assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. By seeing [00:19:30] other people's work. Absolutely. But also I think there are some efforts to try and frame your research within some of these larger international contexts. There's been the millennium ecosystem assessment, which was done by the UN or Speaker 4: red. So that was, yeah, it was done by the UN and I think there were a lot of people at Columbia also that are also working on that. But yeah, it was this international project where they had separate villages as millennium ecosystem villages [00:20:00] where they were monitoring ecosystem services, impacts ecological and the relationships between ecological systems and humans and in these different villages. And trying to come up with what the general governing principles are for how humans and ecological systems interact and sort of what ecosystem services humans can obtain from their ecological surrounding college or the system. So things like water infiltration and pollination service and um, [00:20:30] erosion control, etc. In order to come up with a general framework like this is these are the essential components of a sustainable society. Speaker 5: And I think just in terms of when you do your research, you want it to touch upon, you know, these touchstone theories in to be able to examine those or connect to these bigger global issues that people are constantly examining and considering is important to policymakers to just people's basic livelihoods on a day to day basis. [00:21:00] So knowing that even though you have your local system that you're looking at, it has wider implications that you want to be able to tie it into. So it doesn't just exist in a bubble. Speaker 3: Is your relationship to science changed as you've gone from high school to college to postgraduate work? Speaker 4: Well, I think, you know, definitely as you spend more time working on science and writing papers, you get [00:21:30] a better understanding of how much work it takes to come up with a particular understanding of a system. And you, you start to realize that a lot of times when a certain theory or a certain principle finally gets public understanding of public public acknowledgment, it's because hundreds of scientists have worked on it and have really put all their efforts together. It really just takes that last a hundred and first [00:22:00] study to really have a strong feeling. This is the pattern that we see. Um, so I think one of the things that you learn or you gather as a scientist is that it's really a multi year multi person, you know, Multi University or multi research institute effort to understand the processes and that it requires a lot of collaboration. Speaker 4: And I think the other thing is that you get a better understanding of uncertainty because in science there's always uncertainty. It's [00:22:30] never black and white. And so if you're looking for a true false answer to your question, you're just not going to get it because that's just not how nature works. There's always a gradient to things and there's always exceptions to the rule. And I think as a scientist you have to understand that there's always going to be a little bit of uncertainty, but you have to be okay with that. And you have to say that, well, there's a lot of power and there's a lot of value in saying that we are very sure about something. [00:23:00] You don't have to be 100% in order to take a certain management action or take a certain conservation or restoration action. Speaker 3: How about for you Hillary? What's, what's changed in your, your view of it? Speaker 5: I think a lot of people, like he said, they can, you see science is kind of this monolith that has the scientific process and it creates these results and that's what it is. But really it's this very iterative process that [00:23:30] is constantly reevaluating hypotheses. And in a lot of ways what you choose to focus on is based on what other people have seen. But it's also, I'm noticing a product of the social, political, economic Speaker 4: paradigms of whatever time you're in that helps you decide on what to study, what questions to ask, what features did incorporate. So not that it's subjective because they're, you know, these standards that you can kind of incorporate to try and find out. But that [00:24:00] I do think it's very much driven by probably a lot more processes than we kind of give it credit for it and that it's not as sometimes when I talked to other people who are not scientists, they see it as very divorced from the rest of our social ecosystem. And I think it's very much embedded in it. And I think it comes back to her whenever our first discussion topic. So where do we get our funding to do the science? And so when we are applying to these different agencies, [00:24:30] we really have to think about, well what is it that they're interested in? Are we, are we meeting their target objectives? And those agencies write up those objectives based on the public and based on what you know, the public thinks is important.Speaker 2: Woo. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: thanks to Shalani Shai and Hillary Sar Danios for joining us today. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:25:00] irregular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks in San Francisco. Tomorrow. There is a big splashy free Earth Day event being put on by a group named sustainable living road show. It is from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM they bill it as a carnival was [00:25:30] simultaneous events, a mixture of music, workshops, exhibits and speakers. The event is being held at the civic center and it is free. The website is Earth Day s f.com the art technology and culture colloquium presents a lecture titled Pure Engineering, decoupling technical innovation from utility and consumerism. The Speaker is Raphaelo deondrea professor of dynamic systems and control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [00:26:00] in Zurich. This event will take place at [inaudible] Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in the Beneteau Auditorium. April 25th, 2011 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale Is April 29th and 30th Friday the 29th is for members only and will run from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM the public sale is April 30th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM the garden is located at 200 centennial [00:26:30] drive that is in Strawberry Canyon, east of Memorial Stadium. Speaker 1: Steven squires and astronomer at Cornell University will present the Hitchcock lectures over two days. In May, the first lecture will be held at International House on the UC Berkeley campus in the Chevron Auditorium. May 2nd, 2011 at 2:00 PM Steven Squire's, his first lecture there. We'll describe his odyssey with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. The second lecture [00:27:00] is the following day, May 3rd at the same location, international house, and the same time 2:00 PM the second lecture, we'll discuss the future of solar system exploration to news stories of interest. The Messenger spacecraft successfully entered the orbit of the planet Mercury March 17th, 2011 this is the first spacecraft to orbit mercury. It has taken six and a half years for messenger to reach mercury. It is now sending back images of [00:27:30] mercury than you can view on numerous websites. The home site for Messenger is Messenger Dot j h u a p l.edu. Those initials stand for Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. The Messenger mission is designed to answer six broad scientific questions. Speaker 1: Why is mercury so dense? What is the geologic history of mercury? What is the nature of Mercury's magnetic field? [00:28:00] What is the structure of Mercury's core? What are the unusual materials that Mercury's poles? What volatiles or vapors make up the thin outer layer of the atmosphere? Messenger will gather data to answer these questions over the next year. Then the spacecraft will eventually fall out of orbit several years later and crash on mercury. Surface Messenger is part of NASA's discovery program. The agencies low cost, scientifically focused planetary missions. [00:28:30] The New York Times blog, the sixth floor on March 31st, 2011 speculated as to who designed the radiation symbol that is now ubiquitous. The Times attributed the design to Nell's garden and the health chemistry group at UC Berkeley in 1946 on April 1st in a reader comment to the blog, PJ Patterson of Berkeley offered up Cyril Orally, a mechanical engineer at the Lawrence radiation lab as the symbol designer or least version of the symbol hand painted on wood [00:29:00] is said to be on display at the Lawrence Berkeley lab. Does anyone in the radio audience have more information to further clarify the origin and evolution of the radiation symbol? If you do let us know, send an email to spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com Speaker 2: Musa character shows by the stone of David from his album, folk in acoustic, made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attributes. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear [00:29:30] from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot Calex and yahoo.com and join us in two weeks at the same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Shalene Jha Postdoctoral Fellow and Hillary Sardinas College of Natural Resources grad student at UC Berkeley discuss their research in native bee populations, landscape genetics, foraging ecology, ecosystem services. They talk about research funding and collaboration.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Hmm Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Shalani Sha, UC president's, postdoctoral fellow and Hillary Sardinia graduate researcher. They're both members of the environmental science policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. We talk about their research of native bumblebees and bee habitat [00:01:00] during the interview, colony collapse disorder as mentioned, but not explained. Colony collapse disorder is a still unsolved mystery that since 2006 has killed approximately 50% of kept European honeybees in North America. The disorder is characterized by the complete disappearance of all the bees in a colony. The kept European honeybees are essential pollinators of many commercial scale fruit and nut crops throughout the world. The suspected causes of colony collapse disorder include fungus, [00:01:30] viruses, pesticides, Mites, diet, antibiotics, and whether the breakthrough mentioned in the interview is not a solution, but possibly a forward step to a solution. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Speaker 3: My guests are Shalani jaw and Hillary seediness. They're both at the college of natural resources. And why don't you, shall any describe the research that you're currently doing together? Speaker 4: [00:02:00] Sure. So Maria and I are both in Claire Cremins lab and this particular lab group actually has very diverse interests, mostly related to conservation, biology and ecological interactions between people and animals. And our work is related to pollinators. So how do you conserve pollinators in agricultural habitats? That's sort of one of our research closed side and we worked and some of the farming communities [00:02:30] in northern California around Yolo, Solano in Sacramento County, looking at native bees and how agricultural landscapes and regions impact the way bees move and nest disperse across agriculture tools. Speaker 3: Is there also an element of working with, or at least understanding the, the beekeeping community in those, those very same areas or is there an overlap and interface that happens? Yeah, so a lot Speaker 4: [00:03:00] of the farms that we work in manage TVs as well that managed European honeybee colonies provide pollination services in addition to native bees. So, um, the other portion of our outreach has to do with working with land managers and farmers. We're interested in promoting native bee diversity. These are farmers that often have some incentive from the USDA or have some resources that they can use for restoration. So we kind of [00:03:30] provide some of the research based tools to inform restoration does this, if that's sort of where we hope our work is moving towards. No one in our lab right now is currently working on honeybees, but we do work with a number of labs at Davis that have at UC Davis [inaudible]. Speaker 5: However, previous work that Claire has done with a former student of her, Sarah Greenleaf did look at how native bees and honeybees interacted and was able to show that the presence of native bees actually [00:04:00] enhanced honeybee pollination of certain crops that where they did their study was in sunflowers. And I'm working in some flowers too, and one of the things we do, we do collect honey bees and our studies and are able to see how much they're utilizing hedgerows and whether or not they're actually hedgerows linear strips of native plants. These restorations that were moving entire cultural landscapes. If they're actually providing additional resources that are important to honeybees. And [00:04:30] by looking at their movement, we can see if the honeybees are going into the hedgerow and then into the crop or different distances to try and understand a bit about their biology as well. [inaudible] Speaker 4: some of these landscapes only have five, five or less percent of their natural habitat still maintained. So we've got places where restoration or nightmare would be necessary in order to bring back native communities and some of our other sites sort of as a comparison, we have more complex landscapes like [00:05:00] a in the k value where, um, some of these farmers are just surrounded by natural habitat. And we're also trying to get a sense of what landscape features are important for native bees for honeybees and sort of what does that mean in terms of pollination services that farmers receive from the fields. Speaker 3: Are there other pollinators besides visa, you're, you're studying as well. Speaker 4: Many of the people in the lab, um, have more expertise with these. But definitely, uh, in a lot of these [00:05:30] surveys they're looking at, you know, butterflies surf with flies, Wasp. So organisms that aren't primarily pollinators, maybe they serve other ecological functions, like some people are understanding pest predators. And how can these natural habitats not only support pollinators, but also support the organisms which control pests. Speaker 3: Hillary, tell me about when you wanted to become a scientist. Speaker 5: When I wanted to become a scientist, Speaker 1: or when did you [00:06:00] first start to think about it and say, this is interesting and I could see myself going this direction? I guess Speaker 5: when, what really sealed it for me? I went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, and within the first few weeks I found this garden called the Alan Chadwick Garden, which is very magical and has been there since the 60s. Um, and I started interning and then working there. And so that's what got me really interested in agriculture and native plant propagation and just in botany in [00:06:30] general. So after graduating from college, I decided to work in native plant nurseries and ecological restoration cause that seemed to be a place where you could kind of garden with nature. And in doing that, discovered that a lot of plants when I would go to collect their seeds and propagate them, there didn't seem to be a lot of seeds. And when we were doing these restoration projects, we weren't considering the pollinators at all. So after kind of digging more deeply, finding that there is this major disconnect in [00:07:00] that I found I really wanted to go study this for some reason. Um, and the university just the whole academic setting was fascinating. Speaker 4: Inshallah. Any hip hop for you. Right. So, um, my experience also started when I was an Undergrad. I was working on a project related to plant populations and understanding how weather and soil attributes, etc. Effectively as, [00:07:30] and then separately also working on blossoms. And so, uh, I was really interested in both of these systems and then started thinking about the really important connection between insects or animals that provide these pollination services, um, and the plants that require them in order to reproduce. And I just thought it was a really magical interaction that this, this, this, this interconnectedness between plant communities and pollinators. It's really fascinating. And [00:08:00] in order to have a really holistic understanding of plants or pollinators, you really have to understand both. But especially also like Hillary said, because of pollination is so important for our agricultural system, nuts and berries and all that, you know, all the wonderful things that we appreciate it on our kitchen table. I thought what better place to study pollination in an agricultural system? Speaker 6: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:08:30] a lot of clean water focus and interest in the agricultural realm is in creating spaces between rivers and farm lands, Speaker 3: which would be natural areas for your pollinators to live in. [00:09:00] Is their activity in trying to blend the research Speaker 4: [inaudible] that's one thing that many biologists complain about is that there are many of these projects taking place, but we need to work on communicating and making sure that multiple projects can potentially meet multiple needs. And so we do have members in our lab that are working in or plan on working in that right now are being conserved for the [00:09:30] Berman out. We'll actually Abram, UC Davis. So these are conservation areas that people have, have managed in order to promote the bird but potentially could also provide support for pollinators. So definitely what we're trying to look at restoration in many different of many different uh, ecological systems. So whether that's water systems or you know, mammalian systems or working at conserving birds and thinking about how we can do Lilly also conserve native [00:10:00] pollinators are pest creditors.Speaker 5: I would say that the term for this, it's often uses multi-functionality and it seems in a lot of ways in agricultural areas. Europe is very much with the vanguard kind of preserving their agricultural areas for biodiversity, for cultural heritage of the size as well as nutrients. Like lame, preventing, you know, water from entering waterways. And that's one of the things we need to talk to farmers about. The benefits of a hedgerow for example, you can say it has the advantage of being a wind break [00:10:30] and preventing, um, soil from moving across. And so there's all of these different benefits that it has, but there's also some, you know, this services, if we're talking about ecosystem services that has roads could potentially create, and so trying to show the entire spectrum of what they can and cannot do. And often a single lab doesn't look at every aspect, but when you try and present it to the public or even write it up in a p in a journal, you want to try and pull [00:11:00] from all of those bodies of knowledge on, on it to create a holistic picture. Speaker 3: So it's, it's somewhat difficult and problematic to try to add your level, bring all of this information together Speaker 4: in the sciences or you're talking just strictly about research. It is often necessary to kind of focus because there's just so much that, so many factors that play a role in understanding the communities or understanding water filtration systems or hydrology. [00:11:30] I think you're right. You know, we definitely need collaboration across institutes, but I think even within research people are trying to make connections between labs that work on range land, plant conservation and lots of work on these are our pollinator conservation. So there's those kind of within um, institute cross collaboration that's necessary and across as well with these. Who would be Sangiovese and some of these funding agencies? Speaker 5: No, it does seem like [00:12:00] at least here at Berkeley, there's this group that's arisen called the diversified farming round table round table and the diversified farming round table. And basically they're, they bridge a lot of these gaps. Do they bring a professor like Claire Who's really interested in conservation biology with somebody who's much more in touch with agro ecology like Miguel LTE, Arie and a lot of their Grad students and create this forum to talk about a lot of different issues and from [00:12:30] that can come review papers where we look at some factors say pesticide use in Agora ecosystems and how that would affect all of these different organisms, not just the one that we're focused on. And it also creates opportunities to build those research associations. Speaker 3: [inaudible] you mentioned applying for grants and so ongoing. Do you have things you're looking to a present? Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. I mean I think that's the [00:13:00] challenging and exciting thing about research is every question that you start to answer leads to more questions and, and so you know, with my work, so I focus on the native bumblebees. I'm looking at how these agricultural landscapes or whether they can actually support native bees or not and how these bumblebees are moving across agricultural landscapes. When I first began this work, the question was just, well, you know how many bees does a certain landscape support? And the more you dig into it and you realize [00:13:30] that, well not only is that important, but if you want these populations to be healthy and to persist in the landscape, they have to be able to reproduce and move and colonize new areas, etc. So now understanding their dispersal processes becomes the next big challenge. Okay, we know how many they are. We know we'd have 50 colonies in a particular landscape, but are they integrating I, they, um, are they moving across the landscape? Are they able to reproduce successfully? [00:14:00] So those are some of the next steps. And understanding how the landscape affects these ecological processes or these reproductive processes is very important if we want to conserve these native bees. Speaker 3: Did you, uh, see recently the, the information about the, or the breakthrough, I guess you could call it in the colony collapse research, that was kind of impressive. Did that surprise you that the, those two organizations got together to work on at the U s army, and [00:14:30] I guess it was the University of Montana. Speaker 5: The military is actually using honeybees for a lot of different purposes. There's a professor in the geography department, j Co sac, who's really looking at using them for looking at unexploded ordinances and how they can put honey bee colonies all over the world and their honey to see if there's radioactive material to see if there's, you know, nuclear testing going on. So for me, I was actually shocked when he had [00:15:00] spoken that there wasn't more looking at colony collapse disorder because if they're thinking about, you know, food security or threats, I would think, well this is a major threat to our, you know, national security. And so when I read that they'd been working out, I was like, oh, I'm so glad. Right. I mean, I think Speaker 4: it comes back to this question of if you have multiple agencies working on, whether it's persistence of 10 populations or ecosystem services or conservation of our natural [00:15:30] resources, having multiple agencies working on the same problems but not working together can be a big barrier. And so it would be great if there was more of these cross collaborations and yeah, the military apparently has been interested in a lot of social insects for a number of reasons. So there are entomologists that work very closely with the military, you know, to understand how insects communicate with each other and navigate unknown landscapes. And so [00:16:00] there's a lot of potential for core collaborative work just about stepping out of your comfort zone. Maybe, you know, talking to people in other agencies, Speaker 5: there are more and more grants offered through the Department of Defense and Department of Energy that I'm ecologists are becoming really interested in their offering them as fellowships to graduate students that I know a number of people in SPM have applied. And it's true, like in some ways you wonder kind of how this research will be [00:16:30] used and the knowledge. But at the same time it's creating this large pool of money to study all of these incredibly valuable things. And I think with this increasing interest in food security in all of these global crisis taking place right now, and there's really just such a great opportunity for collaboration across people who study food systems or study biological systems and government agencies who are really interested in conserving [00:17:00] and then making sure that people have access to good food and are not Melanie [inaudible] are not starving. So that's a really important overlap that we should be capitalizing. Speaker 6: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley [inaudible] Speaker 3: [00:17:30] is there an international element to the research that you read? Are there good sources out there that you did you go to or Speaker 5: yeah, they, I think just the nature of the world right now is so global as therapy people, you know, say in Germany there's m k has sharky like in his lab looks at a lot of the same systems and so we kind of try and compare like our systems to [00:18:00] their systems. And that's not just in Germany but in [inaudible] Speaker 4: Zealand and all over. So every little bit that you learn from one place, you want to see if that's happening in your system. To be able to draw conclusions and just the nature of journals now and the quality of science. And there's a lot of these, I mean there should be more, but there was, for example, the national center for ecological analysis and synthesis as quad as NZ is. It was this federally funded institution [00:18:30] where basically they funded people to come from all over the world who were studying similar problems but just didn't have the chance to synthesize it information come up with a general model or general understanding of these processes. So in many of these systems you find that the rules are the same regardless of your, your bioregion or maybe the rules are totally subverted, but it's really essential to understand ecological systems or ecological and [00:19:00] human interactions at this global scale. So we definitely need more institutes like NCS or like these international synthesis groups. But it's happening a lot. And I think with, um, especially with connections like the Internet and international conferences, etc, you can really bridge across nations and get a better understanding of what's happening on a global scale Speaker 5: in a sense to challenge your assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. By seeing [00:19:30] other people's work. Absolutely. But also I think there are some efforts to try and frame your research within some of these larger international contexts. There's been the millennium ecosystem assessment, which was done by the UN or Speaker 4: red. So that was, yeah, it was done by the UN and I think there were a lot of people at Columbia also that are also working on that. But yeah, it was this international project where they had separate villages as millennium ecosystem villages [00:20:00] where they were monitoring ecosystem services, impacts ecological and the relationships between ecological systems and humans and in these different villages. And trying to come up with what the general governing principles are for how humans and ecological systems interact and sort of what ecosystem services humans can obtain from their ecological surrounding college or the system. So things like water infiltration and pollination service and um, [00:20:30] erosion control, etc. In order to come up with a general framework like this is these are the essential components of a sustainable society. Speaker 5: And I think just in terms of when you do your research, you want it to touch upon, you know, these touchstone theories in to be able to examine those or connect to these bigger global issues that people are constantly examining and considering is important to policymakers to just people's basic livelihoods on a day to day basis. [00:21:00] So knowing that even though you have your local system that you're looking at, it has wider implications that you want to be able to tie it into. So it doesn't just exist in a bubble. Speaker 3: Is your relationship to science changed as you've gone from high school to college to postgraduate work? Speaker 4: Well, I think, you know, definitely as you spend more time working on science and writing papers, you get [00:21:30] a better understanding of how much work it takes to come up with a particular understanding of a system. And you, you start to realize that a lot of times when a certain theory or a certain principle finally gets public understanding of public public acknowledgment, it's because hundreds of scientists have worked on it and have really put all their efforts together. It really just takes that last a hundred and first [00:22:00] study to really have a strong feeling. This is the pattern that we see. Um, so I think one of the things that you learn or you gather as a scientist is that it's really a multi year multi person, you know, Multi University or multi research institute effort to understand the processes and that it requires a lot of collaboration. Speaker 4: And I think the other thing is that you get a better understanding of uncertainty because in science there's always uncertainty. It's [00:22:30] never black and white. And so if you're looking for a true false answer to your question, you're just not going to get it because that's just not how nature works. There's always a gradient to things and there's always exceptions to the rule. And I think as a scientist you have to understand that there's always going to be a little bit of uncertainty, but you have to be okay with that. And you have to say that, well, there's a lot of power and there's a lot of value in saying that we are very sure about something. [00:23:00] You don't have to be 100% in order to take a certain management action or take a certain conservation or restoration action. Speaker 3: How about for you Hillary? What's, what's changed in your, your view of it? Speaker 5: I think a lot of people, like he said, they can, you see science is kind of this monolith that has the scientific process and it creates these results and that's what it is. But really it's this very iterative process that [00:23:30] is constantly reevaluating hypotheses. And in a lot of ways what you choose to focus on is based on what other people have seen. But it's also, I'm noticing a product of the social, political, economic Speaker 4: paradigms of whatever time you're in that helps you decide on what to study, what questions to ask, what features did incorporate. So not that it's subjective because they're, you know, these standards that you can kind of incorporate to try and find out. But that [00:24:00] I do think it's very much driven by probably a lot more processes than we kind of give it credit for it and that it's not as sometimes when I talked to other people who are not scientists, they see it as very divorced from the rest of our social ecosystem. And I think it's very much embedded in it. And I think it comes back to her whenever our first discussion topic. So where do we get our funding to do the science? And so when we are applying to these different agencies, [00:24:30] we really have to think about, well what is it that they're interested in? Are we, are we meeting their target objectives? And those agencies write up those objectives based on the public and based on what you know, the public thinks is important.Speaker 2: Woo. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: thanks to Shalani Shai and Hillary Sar Danios for joining us today. Speaker 7: [inaudible]Speaker 1: [00:25:00] irregular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks in San Francisco. Tomorrow. There is a big splashy free Earth Day event being put on by a group named sustainable living road show. It is from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM they bill it as a carnival was [00:25:30] simultaneous events, a mixture of music, workshops, exhibits and speakers. The event is being held at the civic center and it is free. The website is Earth Day s f.com the art technology and culture colloquium presents a lecture titled Pure Engineering, decoupling technical innovation from utility and consumerism. The Speaker is Raphaelo deondrea professor of dynamic systems and control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [00:26:00] in Zurich. This event will take place at [inaudible] Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in the Beneteau Auditorium. April 25th, 2011 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale Is April 29th and 30th Friday the 29th is for members only and will run from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM the public sale is April 30th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM the garden is located at 200 centennial [00:26:30] drive that is in Strawberry Canyon, east of Memorial Stadium. Speaker 1: Steven squires and astronomer at Cornell University will present the Hitchcock lectures over two days. In May, the first lecture will be held at International House on the UC Berkeley campus in the Chevron Auditorium. May 2nd, 2011 at 2:00 PM Steven Squire's, his first lecture there. We'll describe his odyssey with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. The second lecture [00:27:00] is the following day, May 3rd at the same location, international house, and the same time 2:00 PM the second lecture, we'll discuss the future of solar system exploration to news stories of interest. The Messenger spacecraft successfully entered the orbit of the planet Mercury March 17th, 2011 this is the first spacecraft to orbit mercury. It has taken six and a half years for messenger to reach mercury. It is now sending back images of [00:27:30] mercury than you can view on numerous websites. The home site for Messenger is Messenger Dot j h u a p l.edu. Those initials stand for Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. The Messenger mission is designed to answer six broad scientific questions. Speaker 1: Why is mercury so dense? What is the geologic history of mercury? What is the nature of Mercury's magnetic field? [00:28:00] What is the structure of Mercury's core? What are the unusual materials that Mercury's poles? What volatiles or vapors make up the thin outer layer of the atmosphere? Messenger will gather data to answer these questions over the next year. Then the spacecraft will eventually fall out of orbit several years later and crash on mercury. Surface Messenger is part of NASA's discovery program. The agencies low cost, scientifically focused planetary missions. [00:28:30] The New York Times blog, the sixth floor on March 31st, 2011 speculated as to who designed the radiation symbol that is now ubiquitous. The Times attributed the design to Nell's garden and the health chemistry group at UC Berkeley in 1946 on April 1st in a reader comment to the blog, PJ Patterson of Berkeley offered up Cyril Orally, a mechanical engineer at the Lawrence radiation lab as the symbol designer or least version of the symbol hand painted on wood [00:29:00] is said to be on display at the Lawrence Berkeley lab. Does anyone in the radio audience have more information to further clarify the origin and evolution of the radiation symbol? If you do let us know, send an email to spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com Speaker 2: Musa character shows by the stone of David from his album, folk in acoustic, made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attributes. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear [00:29:30] from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot Calex and yahoo.com and join us in two weeks at the same time. 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