Podcasts about Caltrain

What's it like to live in San Carlos, California — “The City of Good Living”?In this series, we explore the most desirable communities across the Bay Area — giving you an insider's look at where locals live, work, and play. Whether you're relocating, investing, or just exploring your options, this is the BEST vlog series for understanding the lifestyle, real estate, and amenities in top Bay Area neighborhoods.This week, we're heading to San Carlos, one of the most charming and well-connected cities on the Peninsula. With top-rated schools, a vibrant downtown, and stunning hillside views, San Carlos blends small-town comfort with Silicon Valley convenience — earning its official title as The City of Good Living.

What's it like to live in Burlingame, California?In this series, we explore the most desirable communities across the Bay Area — giving you an insider's look at where locals live, work, and play. Whether you're relocating, investing, or just exploring your options, this is the BEST vlog series for understanding the lifestyle, real estate, and amenities in top Bay Area neighborhoods.This week, we're heading to Burlingame — “The City of Trees”. Just 17 miles south of San Francisco and under 30 minutes to Silicon Valley, Burlingame is one of the Peninsula's most convenient and charming towns. With walkable downtowns, highly rated schools, and a mix of historic homes and modern estates, it's one of the most desirable places to live in the Bay Area.

This week we're joined once again by Sam Sargent of VTA for part 2 of a conversation about transit agencies and special projects and programs. Sam chats with us about Austin's light rail plans, Caltrain electrification and moving diesels to Peru, and gives some thoughts on visionary transit leadership such as Randy Clarke at WMATA. YouTube video of Caltrain heading out on the boat. +++ Get the show ad free on Patreon! Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, Substack ... @theoverheadwire Follow us on Mastadon theoverheadwire@sfba.social Support the show on Patreon http://patreon.com/theoverheadwire Buy books on our Bookshop.org Affiliate site!  And get our Cars are Cholesterol shirt at Tee-Public! And everything else at http://theoverheadwire.com

This week on Talking Headways we're joined by Sam Sargent of VTA, formerly Caltrain and Capital Metro, for part 1 of a conversation about transit agencies and special projects and programs. This week Sam chats with us about VTA's history, current projects and future prospects in the South Bay. +++ Get the show ad free on Patreon! Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, Substack ... @theoverheadwire Follow us on Mastadon theoverheadwire@sfba.social Support the show on Patreon http://patreon.com/theoverheadwire Buy books on our Bookshop.org Affiliate site!  And get our Cars are Cholesterol shirt at Tee-Public! And everything else at http://theoverheadwire.com

Escucha aquí la opinión de Glatzer Tuesta, conductor del programa No Hay Derecho. En esta edición de No Hay Derecho abordaremos, entre otros temas: - La Corte IDH alertó 13 incumplimientos de sentencias durante el Gobierno de Boluarte. - Dina Boluarte es blindada nuevamente por el Congreso, SAC archiva denuncia constitucional por muertes en protestas. - Gino Ríos: presidente de la JNJ fue elegido pese a contar con sentencia firme por violencia familiar. - JNJ abre investigación preliminar a Delia Espinoza por no reponer a Patricia Benavides como fiscal de la nación. - PJ rechazó recurso de Patricia Benavides por excluir a la fiscal de la nación, Delia Espinoza, de investigaciones en su contra. - Alcaldes que visitaron la oficina de Juan José Santivañez se beneficiarán con un crédito suplementario sin acudir al MEF. - Revelan chat grupal entre Jorge Montero y mineros informales: apoyaba extensión del Reinfo. - Contraloría detectó que el último mantenimiento de los trenes Caltrain se realizó 18 años antes de lo informado por la MML. - César Acuña dice que le gustaba las matemáticas, pero no responde cuánto es 7x8. - Diversas organizaciones convocan a movilizaciones los días 23, 27, 28 y 29 de julio contra el gobierno de Dina Boluarte. - Exclusiva: Descontrol en Sucamec.

Email Us:dbahnsen@thebahnsengroup.comwill@calpolicycenter.orgFollow Us:@DavidBahnsen@WillSwaim@TheRadioFreeCAShow Notes:Before Juneteenth was widely known, here's how Black Angelenos celebrated emancipationBrian Wilson, Pop Auteur and Leader of the Beach Boys, Dies at 82Inside Trump's Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration RaidsThe Padilla Incident and the Greater PerilGavin's Last GaspPresident Trump Has Legal Authority to Suppress the Siege in L.A.How Trump Is Bypassing Los Angeles's Sanctuary City HurdlesThe Public-Sector Union Behind L.A.'s Immigration AgitationNewsom's Speech: It's About The 2028 Democratic Presidential PrimaryNEW DATA: California's $20 Wage Law Cost Restaurant Workers 7 Weeks Worth of WorkHow Chinese Intel Infiltrated LA Mayor Karen Bass' CampOakland Mayor Barbara Lee's new staff may receive budget increase amid city's financial woesWhy do so many people outside California hate the Golden State?2 ex-Caltrain employees sentenced to jail for building secret apartments inside train stationsLance Christensen:California lawmakers approve $325 billion budget ‘passed on hope'Lance's favorite budget document: Schedule 6Julie Hamill:Julie's X thread on Newsom v Trump on boys in girls sportsTeen athlete targeted by Trump's anti-trans attacks: ‘I know how hard I've worked. That's what matters'

Looking for walkable charm, great schools, and Silicon Valley convenience — all in one neighborhood?Welcome to Sunnyvale's Heritage District — a rare blend of historic character, downtown energy, and family-friendly living, right in the heart of the Bay Area.In this series, we spotlight the best neighborhoods across the Bay — so you can explore what it's really like to live like a local. Whether you're relocating, investing, or just dreaming about your next move, this is the place to start.

Folks, on this week's episode we hear about a guy who bought a fake hard drive with weights, a lawyer who put a weird watermark on all of his legal documents, a Corgi police dog in China who is bad at his job, a Caltrain employee who built a secret apartment in a train station, and a guy who has been ingesting snake venom for yearsBecome a patron for weekly bonus eps and more stuff! :⁠⁠www.patreon.com/whatatimepod⁠⁠Check out our YouTube channel: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/whatatimetobealive⁠⁠Get one of our t-shirts, or other merch, using this link! ⁠⁠https://whatatimepod.bigcartel.com/whatatimepod.com⁠⁠Join our Discord chat here:⁠⁠discord.gg/jx7rB7J⁠Theme music by Naughty Professor⁠: ⁠https://www.naughtyprofessormusic.com/⁠@pattymo // @kathbarbadoro // @eliyudin// @whatatimepod©2025 What A Time LLC

The majority of commuter trains in the U.S. are powered by diesel fuel.  This is despite the fact that electric trains are quieter, more reliable, and produce fewer greenhouse gases than diesel locomotives.  A new study has found that electric trains are healthier for passengers as well. Caltrain carries millions of passengers a year along […]

EXCLUSIVO: La sospechosa empresa gringa del caso Trenes Chatarra. Creada durante las negociaciones de la Municipalidad de Lima con Caltrain... y de un extrabajador de esa empresa. MIENTRAS TANTO: Choteada del Vaticano: Dina no irá a los funerales del Papa pero la razón no es política sino de vagancia congresal. ADEMÁS, AMPAY: Defensor de Dina y Defensor del Pueblo (son dos personas distintas) juntitos en un avión. Y... Este es el partido que aglomera casi LA MITAD de todas las denuncias de afiliaciones bamba: Nueva Gente. ¿Quiénes son y qué otros partidos están en nuestro ránking? ATENCIÓN: Nuestro WhatsApp de denuncias +51 977 573 189 **** ¿Te gustó este episodio? ¿Buscas las fuentes de los datos mencionados hoy? SUSCRÍBETE en http://patreon.com/ocram para acceder a nuestros GRUPOS EXCLUSIVOS de Telegram y WhatsApp. También puedes hacerte MIEMBRO de nuestro canal de YouTube aquí https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP0AJJeNkFBYzegTTVbKhPg/join **** ¿Qué es Canal YA? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy2_VgBo8zQ *** Únete a nuestro canal de WHATSAPP aquí https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAgBeN6RGJLubpqyw29 **** Para más información legal: http://laencerrona.pe

Guest: Ben Chestnut, Former CEO and Co-Founder of MailchimpIf you find yourself selling your startup, then Mailchimp co-founder Ben Chestnut has some important advice for you: Get a dog. When Intuit bought Mailchimp in 2021 for $12 billion, the company asked Ben if he wanted to stay on as CEO, but he chose to “walk off into the sunset” and let the new owners take over. After that, he estimates it took 6 to 12 months before he stopped checking his email, social media, and calendar with the same level of stress a CEO might have. Adopting a dog, he discovered, forces you to “get OK with the voices in your head."“After the acquisition, that's all I do, I walk the dog,” Ben says. “And the dog was good therapy ... No judgments from a dog.”Chapters:(01:09) - Growing slow (03:06) - The long journey (07:48) - Is money a burden? (09:35) - Building globally in Atlanta (11:22) - Ben's upbringing (12:59) - The first 10 years (17:58) - Scaling to one billion emails (19:22) - Freemium (23:32) - No equity (26:00) - Deciding to sell (33:55) - “I'm a sunset guy” (35:29) - Stress and support (37:25) - Time with the parents (39:07) - Get a dog (42:24) - The voices in your head (46:03) - Serial and “Mailkimp” (53:00) - Hiring interviews (57:14) - Fitness routines (59:27) - Lights off (01:01:46) - AI & reinvention (01:06:30) - The worst days (01:09:15) - What “grit” means to Ben Mentioned in this episode: Intuit, Wolt, DoorDash, LinkedIn, Dan Kurzius, Salesforce, ExactTarget, Pardot, Constant Contact, Rackspace, Free by Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine, Charles Hudson, the Freemium Summit, Drew Houston, Dropbox, Evernote, Phil Libin, TechCrunch, Brian Kane, Catalyst Partners, Georgia Pacific, Scott Cook, Bing Gordon, Vinay Hiremath, Loom, Joe Thomas, Caltrain, Flickr, Saturday Night Live, Droga5, Cannes Film Festival, Strava, Twitter, LinkedIn, Nvidia, Glean, Rubrik, Amazon AWS, and Mechnical Turk.Links:Connect with BenLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Thinking about moving to the Bay Area or just curious about what it's like to live in one of the most dynamic regions in the world? This video is your ultimate A-to-Z guide to living in the Bay Area, covering everything you need to know before making the move!

Guest: George Kurian, CEO of NetAppFor almost 10 years, George Kurian has been CEO of the data infrastructure firm NetApp, overseeing its pivot to cloud services. After he  took the job — a surprise promotion dropped on him just days before it was announced — he had to learn on the job how the job could be.“ There are a lot more stakeholders that a CEO has to deal with than a chief product officer,” George says, referring to his previous role. “There's also a lot more external commitment ... It was a really all-consuming effort to get the company turned around.”He said the CEO job can be “fairly lonely” because you may want to be peers or friends with your team and your board — but in fact, they are sometimes your subordinates and your superiors, respectively.“ We wouldn't be here without others having contributed significantly on the journey,” George says. “[But] there are times when you have to step back and say, ‘I see a pattern that my team is not seeing,' or ‘Do I think that we can do a better job than we are doing?'”Chapters:(01:10) - Commuting to Sunnyvale (04:49) - Growing up in India (08:04) - Protect the child (09:33) - Raising kids in Silicon Valley (12:44) - Money motivation (15:04) - NetApp's renaissance (21:39) - Writing new chapters (23:15) - Culture shifts (26:38) - Coming to NetApp (29:41) - Surprise! You're the CEO (32:41) - Making sacrifices (35:04) - Work vs. family tension (37:18) - Doubt & lonely decisions (42:38) - The data wave (45:27) - Enterprise AI (51:36) - Starting your own company (53:33) - Navigating difficulty (56:28) - Who NetApp is hiring (57:11) - What “grit” means to George Mentioned in this episode: EMC, OpenAI, DeepSeek, CalTrain, the San Francisco 49ers, Princeton University, Subway, Vons, Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud, Stanford University, Brian Cox, Oliver Jay, the Quakers, Jay Chaudhry, zScaler, Manmohan Singh, Oracle, IBM, Sun, Amazon, Microsoft, Glean, Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, McKinsey, Akamai, Cisco, Gwen McDonald, and the San Francisco Friends School.Links:Connect with GeorgeLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

All-aboard as Blake guides you to an abandoned double-decker passenger train in the middle of the California desert. While wandering the ruins of the great American railway industry, join Blake as he reflects the evolution of transportation, the unraveling of corporate greed, and his lifelong love of trains, deserts, and making music.This episode features:Omen Sade“American Train” written and performed by Macabre Americana:Willy CoonLaura DadapJohn GilmartinLacey MaddenBlake Pfeil(Note: For the best immersive experience, we strongly suggest you wear headphones

All-aboard as Blake guides you to an abandoned double-decker passenger train in the middle of the California desert. While wandering the ruins of the great American railway industry, join Blake as he reflects the evolution of transportation, the unraveling of corporate greed, and his lifelong love of trains, deserts, and making music.This episode features:Omen Sade“American Train” written and performed by Macabre Americana:Willy CoonLaura DadapJohn GilmartinLacey MaddenBlake Pfeil(Note: For the best immersive experience, we strongly suggest you wear headphones

Diesel trains are becoming more and more obsolete. So today we'll hear about Caltrain's journey into the future with a fully electric fleet. Then, what does climate activism look like in an uncertain environment? And, the winding but promising story of the Klamath Basin. And to take us out, we'll hear an episode of On Repeat. Caltrain jumps into the future, from diesel trains to electrification Bay Agenda: Climate action in an uncertain environment New edition of Stephen Most book tracks Klamath dam removal On Repeat: Margarita Azucar, "Your physiology knows you're ok when you're singing"

Listen closely, and you might catch the faint whistle of the 3:58 Caltrain arriving at Burlingame Station – that's because this week, we're coming at you from our usual Burlingame home, but under the Northern California sunshine in Topper's brand new Biergarten, courtesy of our friends at Glashütte Original. And speaking of this amazing German maker, we're sitting down with Glashütte Original North American Brand President Stephen Kounas to learn about some incredibly cool easter eggs wrapped up in two incredibly cool watches. As always, you can reach the boys for questions and comments at podcast@topperjewelers.com. Thanks for your support, and thanks for listening! Follow the boys on Instagram:  • Russ: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@russcaplan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Rob: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@robcaplan_topper⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Zach: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@zachxryj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Stephen: @stephen_kounas Wrist check, topics, and watches discussed on this week's episode: - Zach: Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Chronograph Titanium - Rob: Glashütte Original SeaQ Chronograph 'Silver Screen' - Russ: neo-vintage Glashütte Original Senator Navigator Panorama Date - Stephen: Glashütte Original PanoMatic Calendar Red Gold on an orange textile strap Oh, and by the way: • Zach: Cervelo Aspero-5 gravel bike • Russ: Re-watching Pulp Fiction • Rob: Midsommer (trailer only for the horror-squeamish) • Stephen: Topper Jewelers Dot Com

In this episode, I interview Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, a legendary leader in the Bay Area. In her 32 years in Congress, Congresswoman Eshoo has passed over 70 bills, benefiting not only the Bay Area but the entire country. Congresswoman Eshoo joins us on Straight To It to reflect on some of her biggest accomplishments, like securing over a billion dollars to electrify CalTrain. We also discuss how to change our current political climate. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did!

Officials from three of the largest transit agencies operating in San Francisco said Tuesday that time is of the essence to determine the best ways to close a forthcoming combined $700 million budgetary shortfall while preserving service. Representatives from BART, Caltrain and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spoke in Tuesday front of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority board, telling members they have recovered between 40% and 70% of pre-pandemic ridership. Martin Reyes, the SFCTA's principal transportation planner in government affairs, said “ridership is really varied from operator to operator.”

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Mike recalls more memories from living in New York City and San Francisco in late 1999. Topics discussed include: Working at East Side Inc, staying with Nalla, Zoe, freelance writing, The Vault, Dom scene, Barmacy and Beauty Bar, Deb Parker, Saoirse, Henna patterns, subletting apt on Grand Street in Williamsburg, after hours club, artist John Copeland, Juice Design, Bob Kissinger, Jason Noto of Morning Breath, sleeve on older fellow, solidarity with granddaughter, martial arts instructor, evidence of personal exploits, hand/throat tattoos, Mormon hardcore kids, The Cock, dance contest winner, Stars girl, client love connection, Elio's art night, huge Eddie Deutsche snake tattoo, fully suited, Chris Garver, Kaz, weekends in Poughkeepsie, reconnecting with an ex-gf, Pepe Rosso, Two Boots pizza, Benny's Burritos, MaryAnne's, Indian Row, Polish diners, Bliss Cafe, return to 214 Clara Street, Paco Excel, weekends at Newskool tattooing walk-ins, commuting to San Jose on CalTrain with a bicycle, Adrian Lee, Jason Kundell, Ron Earhart, Adam Barton, Eric Ross, Brent Patten, Frankenstein bong, buck-toothed panthers, finger waves, being the least skilled tattooer in a shop, Ron's bagged dually, Uneekbilt box truck, South First Street, Cholas, fist fights, Iguana's, Michelle, Eklectik, rock climber, tattooing Charles (Charles Atlas) and Xmas tattoo trip to NYC.

April 3, 2024  Hour 2:  A jury on Wednesday found former L.A. Deputy Mayor Raymond Chan guilty of racketeering conspiracy, bribery, honest services fraud and giving false statements to investigators. According to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office, a former Caltrain manager and a contractor allegedly used $50,000 in taxpayer money to build secret apartments inside two stations. Lisa Archbold, A woman who was pulled off a Delta Air Lines flight for possibly not wearing a bra is demanding the airline change its policy.  The Ray Appleton Show   Weekdays 11-2PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ  Follow on facebook/  Listen to past episodes at kmjnow.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CalTrain are pressing ahead with their completely bizarre obsession with hydrogen as a means of powering commuter and intercity trains. It is completely baffling. And it isn't the only nonsense that's been going down over the last few weeks! Join us as we chat about ROSCO profits, devolved mayors talking big, Euston station's big horrible LED billboard, London Overground's new line names, corruption on Greece's railways, progress on Levenmouth's rail link and a quick mention of the demise of Great British Railways (more next week)... Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railnatter at https://patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis. Merch at https://garethdennis.co.uk/merch. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord.

The Beyoncé Renaissance World Tour was more than ticket sales, metallic outfits, horses in outer space, and a showcase of a timeless album. In this special in-person episode, Nimo and Jas discuss the tour's impact on urban planning and local economies. The Renaissance World Tour influenced ten countries, with 56 shows in total. As the highest-grossing tour for any female artist and the highest ever of any artist per show, averaging $10.3 million per show. The New York Times estimated the tour generated $4.5 billion dollars for the US economy. As our listeners know, places and spaces don't come together without resources. Press play to hear: A closer look at a few cities and their transportation plans for the concert, including Santa Clara, DC, and Houston, to accommodate the influx of visitorsThe importance of addressing urban design and providing safe and equitable transit options for all riders during eventsAn Urban Planning Renaissance: Recommendations for planners and policymakers based on the economic impact of Beyoncé's concerts on local economies and the direction of the field in 2024You can watch this full episode on our YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe! Thank you for listening and tune in every other Tuesday where Nimo and Jas keep it Four Degrees to the Streets.Follow us on X and Instagram @the4degreespod.Or send us an email to connect with us!Resources:Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour Has 'Inconsistent' Hotel Impact From Market to MarketHotel performance standouts during Beyonce's world tour | STR Beyoncé's "Renaissance World Tour" nears Olympic success with its multibillion-dollar impact on the US economy Beyonce at Levi's Stadium: VTA, BART, Caltrain to have extra service - CBS San FranciscoMetrorail Ridership Summary | WMATAWho Rides Public TransportationTransit Score MethodologyThe Beyoncé Bump

Bill says dinner in the city with Samantha was great, and they both rode CalTrain to their homes on the peninsula afterwards. He thought the convo and the energy was great, but now she's totally disappeared on him.

#TSGMultimediaPodcast #HistoricPreservation #ModelRailroading #Trains #RailroadsThis month's TSG Podcast includes:0:31 Welcome1:13 San Benito Southern Prep Day4:03 Fern Creek & Western Prep Day7:52 Fern Creek & Western Open House9:32 You Never Know Who You'll Run Into 111:07 San Benito Southern Open House14:31 Fern Creek & Western Op Session20:08 You Never Know Who You'll Run Into 222:32 Fern Creek & Western Layout Tour Shoot25:05 Ohio & Little Kanahwa Op Session28:45 Santa Susana Layout Shoot Day 130:06 A Moment Of Self-Indulgence31:18 Santa Susana Layout Shoot Day 231:48 You Never Know Who You'll Run Into 333:52 Hiking With The Bee Guy https://www.hikingalonetogether.com/37:07 Santa Susana Depot Museum https://www.santasusanadepot.org/39:17 Another Moment Of Self-Indulgence40:09 Gary Siegel's L&N Layout Tour Shoot41:03 A Quick Message About Safety42:03 Talking Trains43:18 Caltrain's Electric Train Open House48:40 You Never Know Who You'll Run Into 450:31 You Never Know Who You'll Run Into 552:02 Scale Trains Road Trip Comes To SBHRS52:37 You Know Who You'll Run Into - Shane Wilson56:27 Catches Of The Month58:37 Special Thanks1:00:11 Fans Of Talking Trains On Facebook1:00:32 TSG Train Crew / ConclusionHere are some of the ways you can support the content you love:https://www.patreon.com/TSGMultimediahttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/tsgmultimediahttps://tsgmultimedia.com/shop/https://tsg-multimedia-swag.creator-spring.com/Please share: If you enjoy this content, please hit the "like" button and share it with your friends on social media!You can join TSG Multimedia on these other social media channels:FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/tsgmultimediafaceInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tsg_multimedia/Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TSGMultimedia©2023 TSG Multimedia. All Rights Reserved.

Oncology is a rapidly evolving medical field. So how do you keep up with all the advances and updates that are delivered through publications, conferences, and social media? This ASCO Education podcast explores how three oncologists in various settings and stages of their career manage this issue. Our moderator Dr. Adriana Alvarez, a medical oncologist at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio is joined by Dr. Sharad Goyal, a professor and division chief of Radiation Oncology at George Washington University in Washington, DC; Dr. Shruti Patel, an oncology fellow at Stanford University in California; and Dr. Banu Symington, a medical oncologist at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County in Wyoming, and adjunct professor in the University of Utah College of Nursing. Each will describe what they do to keep up to date on research advances and guidelines (3:25), how they find time to stay current in their field (7:25) and how they follow developments outside of their area of concentration (13:57).  The speakers have no relevant disclosures.  Resources: Podcast: Cancer Topics - Burned Out? Here's What You Can Do About It (Part 1)  Podcast: Cancer Topics - Burned Out? Here's What You Can Do About It (Part 2)  Podcast: Cancer Topics - Burnout in Oncology: Trainee Perspective  If you liked this episode, please follow the show. To explore other educational content, including courses, visit education.asco.org. Contact us at education@asco.org. TRANSCRIPT Disclosures for this podcast are listed on the podcast page.  Dr. Adriana Alvarez: An oncologist recently described that while sitting on a couch to write an article, by the time he finished his first paragraph, he received six notifications on his iPhone from WhatsApp, Twitter, and other messages. He knows what the dilemma is; you can shut down your phone, but you become worried about missing an urgent call or important update. The oncologist knows that social media is a place to follow friends and colleagues, to discover new presentations, and even debate about them. However, he understands the overload of information that is part of the rapidly evolving field of oncology. On any given day or week, there are research advances and updates in the management of cancer being shared through journal publications, conference presentations, newsletters, social media, and other methods. How does one keep up to date with these advances in oncology?  I'm Dr. Adriana Alvarez, a medical oncologist at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. In this ASCO Education Podcast, we will examine what various oncology professionals at different stages in their careers and working in different practice settings, namely academic versus community and urban versus rural, are doing to manage the large amount of information influx regarding advances in oncology.  Joining me are Dr. Sharad Goyal, a professor and division chief of radiation oncology at George Washington University in Washington, DC; Dr. Shruti Patel, an oncology fellow at Stanford University; and Dr. Banu Symington, a medical oncologist at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County in Wyoming, and adjunct professor in the University of Utah College of Nursing.  Let's start. One of the first questions I have here is how you can describe your current field of focus in oncology. Dr. Patel? Dr. Shruti Patel: My current clinical focus in oncology is in thoracic and gastrointestinal malignancies, while my research interests include clinical trials, liquid biopsy, and diversity, and equity and inclusion.  Dr. Sharad Goyal: My current clinical and research focus is on breast cancer, radiation therapy, as well as radiation therapy with respect to neuro-oncology in the neuro-oncology space. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: What about you, Dr. Symington? Dr. Banu Symington: I'm a general oncologist, medical oncologist, in an extreme rural, I'm considered a frontier practice. I have a special interest in eliminating the social disparity that is represented by rurality, and I'm interested in clinical trials. We are the only Wyoming Cancer Center that opened clinical trials. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Well, it's all wonderful to hear about you and know a little bit about what your focus of work is, and we come from a variety of backgrounds. How do you feel like you keep up to date with the clinical practice, the research parts with new drugs approval in oncology? You are still in training Dr. Patel. How do you do that? Dr. Shruti Patel: As a millennial, it may come as no surprise that I primarily stay up to date on clinical practice guidelines via Twitter on my phone. I find Twitter to be the best place to learn new information. Just because you don't just get information about the new approvals, but typically experts in the field will weigh in on the trial design, their thoughts on whether it truly will replace the current standard of care or what situations they might use the new approval for, which can really be helpful, especially as a fellow in training. It's helpful context beyond just the information that you get from the approval itself. And then, I also learn about the applications of these new guidelines in the clinic with my mentors, because I am, of course, lucky enough to still be in training where I can gather that information from my attendings. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Dr. Goyal, what is your preferred method of keeping up to date and learning more about the new treatments and research in your area of interest?  Dr. Sharad Goyal: As opposed to Dr. Patel, I am not part of social media in medicine. Actually, I'm not a part of any social media, whether it's personal or work-related. So I tend to be a little more “old school” with respect to how I ingest information. So, in terms of clinical practice guidelines and new drug approvals, which is somewhat peripheral to my field in radiation oncology, I tend to rely on NCCN guidelines and attendance at tumor boards to receive that information from my colleagues in medical oncology. I believe that with any patient that I see with a malignancy, I do tend to refer to the NCCN guidelines on a regular basis. And if it's a malignancy that I do not see, I have to reference PubMed, UpToDate, and the NCCN guidelines to determine the best course of treatment for that patient. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: What about you, Dr. Symington? Being in the rural area, I can see that you have a variety of situations. How do you keep up to date? Dr. Banu Symington: I guess I'm midway between Doctors Patel and Goyal. I do not follow Twitter, but I belong to a 5000-member online hematology/oncology support group, and we post questions, and local thought leaders will reply. I am in such an isolated location. I don't get the stimulation or the benefit of walking down the hall to a colleague to say ‘What would you do?' So I am affiliated with the Huntsman and the University of Utah. I've made an effort to join every organ-specific tumor board so that I can hear discussions by disease thought leaders about how they're going to take care of each type of cancer and hearing that week after week, I do absorb it.  Medical oncology is a challenging field because things move so rapidly. I took an 18-month, mostly Sabbatical, as I functioned as a chief of staff at a larger hospital. And in that 18-month period, where I volunteered in a clinic, immune checkpoint therapy arose, and targeted therapies for lung cancer arose and I felt like Sleeping Beauty. I went to sleep in one world, and I woke up in a completely different world of oncology. And it was hard to get back into the drift until I connected with colleagues. I'm an avid reader. I don't sleep much. So I am a member of AMA, ASCO, and ACP, so I get all the print journals. And I have a disorder, an obsessive-compulsive disorder, that makes me have to look through every single journal I get. So print and tumor boards and colleagues.  Dr. Adriana Alvarez: So we are very busy, and the work that we do, the clinical work, trying to keep up to date and training and all that, how do you schedule time to do this, to learn about the research advances and to keep going? Dr. Goyal, how do you find the time? Dr. Sharad Goyal: In general, I do think that in my realm, in my head, I think that there are three processes that have to occur when I incorporate research into my practice. So number one, I have to learn about it. Number two, I have to determine if that's going to help change my practice. And then number three, if I do end up changing practice, I have to implement it. And that involves dealing with my staff. So I'm going to delve into each of those in a little bit more detail. So learning about the advance typically, I learn about things through CME activities. So in one of my roles in our cancer center, I help organize our grand rounds and some oncology-specific courses. Being involved in the organization, helping find speakers really keeps me engaged not only in the organization process, but also in the learning process because I have a vested interest in making sure that the trainees and other faculty that attend my courses are learning and are happy.  Dr. Adriana Alvarez: To organize all these, do you schedule time during your job, outside work hours? Dr. Sharad Goyal: Yes, that is part of my job, which extends outside of work hours. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Sounds good. Dr. Symington, well, you mentioned that you don't sleep much, you keep up to date, looks more at night. But do you find the time in between patients or during your workday to keep up to date, or is more like a solitude type of time?  Dr. Banu Symington: I forgot to mention a resource that I feel like people should know about, MedNet, which is presented daily with three clinical cases and thought leaders mentioning what they would do. They often introduce research ideas that are not adopted into practice. Since I read, I read about new innovative treatments, but I am not an early adopter, so I wait until they become an NCCN guideline before I would adopt it. So that might be different from Dr. Goyal, who's in an academic center. But I see patients five days a week, 10 hours a day, so it has to be all scheduled outside of those hours. It's fortunate that my kids are grown, and I don't sleep much.  Dr. Adriana Alvarez: What about you, Dr. Patel? On the go, I can imagine. I remember not long ago, being fellow and a millennial, so I guess on your iPhone. Dr. Shruti Patel: Even though I'm a fellow, I do like sleep. And now that I'm in my research years, I actually get sleep, which is lovely. I can't say that I schedule time to learn about research advances, but rather it's– Usually, I take the train to work, and so I'm scrolling on my Twitter on the Caltrain down to Palo Alto, monitoring for medical news or updates. Really, that's how I gather information. I also partake in CME activity, creating CME educational materials on Twitter as well. And so that's another way in which I learn because if I'm creating the information, then I have to go through the trials and go through all of these things, side effects. And so it's a really great way, additionally, for me to learn. But none of that stuff is really scheduled. It's kind of really when I have time, on my to-do list, usually outside of business hours. Part of the job is staying up to date with things outside of business hours. And I think we all knew that when we signed up for the job. And it's only gotten more as all of these advances are kind of coming out at us like drinking out of a fire hydrant. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: The most recent moment that you found new information related to your practice, how did you learn about it? Not about everything that you do, but the last time, the most recent one that you did that. Dr. Goyal? Dr. Sharad Goyal: I recently referenced the NCCN guidelines. I was treating a gentleman with male breast cancer, and he told me he had some half-brothers and that they were going to get tested, but he was inquiring about the screening guidelines for men with BRCA mutations, and I had to look that up. I knew what they were for women, but I actually did not know what they were for men. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: What about you, Dr. Symington? Dr. Banu Symington: So last Thursday morning at 7:00, I joined the Huntsman Tumor Board for Breast. And one of the breast-specific oncologists actually said something that defies the NCCN guidelines, but it sounded like it made sense. He said he regularly gets PET scans for staging lymph node-positive HER2-positive breast cancer because he finds, and apparently the breast cancer community finds, that other scans can give you a false-negative result. And there are enough patients with metastatic disease in the lymph node-positive setting that he recommended PET scans for staging of HER2-positive breast cancer patients but not for ER-positive breast cancer patients. So that was just five days ago. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Wow. And what about you, Dr. Patel? When was the most recent time that you found something that was good information for your practice?  Dr. Shruti Patel: Yeah, as a fellow, I love learning about new information when I'm able to learn how to integrate it into the practice with someone that's more experienced than I am. So, of course, I've already mentioned that Twitter can be a great place. But also a few weeks ago, I was attending GI ASCO up in San Francisco, and they presented the latest results from NAPOLI-3, which was a phase 3 study looking at first-line liposomal irinotecan 5FU and oxaliplatin versus gem-Abraxane. And they presented that it was shown to improve overall survival compared to gem-Abraxane in first-line metastatic pancreatic cancer. And I was actually sitting next to my clinic mentor at the time, and during the break, I got to hear about his thoughts on whether this is going to be integrated into clinical practice, given that the control arm was gem-Abraxane, and not FOLFOXIRI. And we ended up discussing it again during our weekly GI trials meetings, just when we're thinking about opening new trials and what the control arm should be. And so I just thought that was like a new piece of information. Thought about it in the clinic, thought about it in the trial meeting, and it was pretty cool. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Great. So different settings, different ways to gain information. So, Dr. Symington, you have to see a little bit of everything. So you have to be an expert in everything. And I wonder how you, Dr. Goyal, and Dr. Patel, that you are kind of more subspecialized. How do you usually follow advances in other cancers that are not in your particular area of interest or just focus on your disease group? I'm going to let Dr. Goyal go first. Dr. Sharad Goyal: Thank you. So I find that I tend to go to conferences to learn about advances outside of my disease focus. I prefer going to the educational sessions at major conferences like ASTRO or ASCO to keep up on things. On a more local level, I do find when I cover tumor boards for my colleagues that I do have to prep their patients and learn about different treatment paradigms within those disease sites. And in doing so, I feel like I'm able to gain really a deeper understanding about oncology in general, and I do very much appreciate that. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: And Dr. Patel, well, you're in training, so you have to see a little bit of everything, even though you have the focus of your specialty that you are looking forward to do. But do you follow those too, as well? Other areas that might not take your interest right away but you want to be updated? Dr. Shruti Patel: That's exactly it. I have to have a working knowledge of all the areas of oncology that are not my focus area. But really, for the most up-to-date information, the reality is that there are so many new advances in all of these disease types that I find myself leaning on my colleagues. If I come across a lymphoma patient on consults, I'll usually reach out to my lymphoma specialized colleagues, whether that's my co-fellows or attendings, just to kind of run the patient by them, get their insight, get their input, because they're just a lot more up to date on those things than I am. But really, regardless of the subspecialty within oncology, I do think that understanding the basics of all the oncology subspecialties is important in medical oncology. Because most of us will, or are, will for me because I'm a fellow, will be spending time on the inpatient service, which is not tumor type specific, and you really do have to make decisions for patients. And while, of course, you always have your colleagues to rely on and call on, some of those decisions are being made in the middle of the night. And so having a working knowledge of all of them, I think, is important. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: We are lucky to live in a time that we have so many options, right? As a practicing oncologist myself, I rely also on all the resources that you're mentioning. The fear I have sometimes is, okay, I'm relying on the NCCN guidelines, but what if I'm missing something? The fear of missing something, right? It's like if I'm not on Twitter or in another social media; I'm missing the most recent data, that may affect my patient care or things like that. But if I have to ask one of you, if you have to pick one, what would be your preferred method or format of receiving updated information if you have to decide where you could go for it? What about you, Dr. Symington? Dr. Banu Symington: So, although I have made the case that I love reading, I actually absorb information better if someone is talking to me. So if I had the freedom to take time off, I would prefer to hear it at one-day specialty seminars where a thought leader is describing their work. That is not what I do in practice, but that would be my preferred way of getting new information.  Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Dr. Goyal? Dr. Sharad Goyal: I'm very much aligned with Dr. Symington in that. I prefer a less active role in the learning process, and I prefer to be spoken to. My preferred method is via podcast, but I also do prefer the in-person or virtual learning through a conference as well. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: What about you, Dr. Patel? Dr. Shruti Patel: I promise you that Elon Musk is not paying me to say all of this because I've probably mentioned Twitter in every single answer. But my preferred method, as you guys probably can guess, is Twitter. It doesn't require too much dedicated time. Information is delivered in small doses. Like I said, I do it on my commute, so it makes me feel like my commute is actually part of my work, which is just wonderful. I do like to attend these smaller meetings to be kind of, like both Dr. Symington and Dr. Goyal said, to be spoken to and really learn additional information. I would say that I don't necessarily always get that experience at the bigger meetings where the focus is more networking. But ‘Best of ASCO', those are kind of some types of meetings where the information is kind of told to you. It's distilled down into bite-sized pieces and really understandable. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Well, all amazing experiences. And I'm glad that we have different points of view, different settings, different career paths. Someone mentioned before is that we're always learning. I feel like here; everybody's very humble to recognize that we're on the learning curve all the time and that we have a real interest in our patient care. Because we are trying to catch the moment, try to make sure that we deliver the best care to our patients, like keeping up to date and listening to the new information. Dr. Goyal, any advice for your colleagues in terms of how to best keep up to date? Dr. Sharad Goyal: My personal philosophy is that as a physician, the learning never stops. And if you do stop learning, maybe you should find a different field. During the pandemic, I started scheduling time with colleagues, friends in my field, and I would set up a meeting with them via our assistants every two or three months. And we would not only socialize but we would kind of catch up on the current state of affairs in our field. And it was an opportunity to also network, and it was very helpful, especially during COVID. It really helped me gain some normalcy and kind of keep me attached to the field of radiation oncology during that time. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: How do you navigate clinic work, keeping up to date, and work-life balance? Dr. Goyal? Dr. Sharad Goyal: Like Dr. Symington, I probably work about 50 hours a week in the office, so I tend to work from 7:00 to 5:00, and I'm out of the office at 5:00 on the dot. I have two small children at home, and I want to see them at least for two hours in the evening before they go to bed. As a radiation oncologist, we take HomeCall, and there are very few emergencies, so I have the weekends to not only spend time with my family but also catch up on any work that needs to be done.  Dr. Adriana Alvarez: I'm so glad to hear that. Congratulations on your family.  Dr. Symington? Dr. Banu Symington: Well, I rescue small dogs, so at the moment, I have five small dogs, and they get a walk a day when weather permits. We're in the middle of a blizzard in Wyoming, so weather hasn't been permitting for the past four days, so the love and attention of those dogs keep me grounded. I also regularly go to the gym. I dread it every time I go, but I go at least four times a week, and I leave the gym and leave some of my problems behind. When I was younger, people would comment on the fact that I was slender and didn't need to go to the gym and would ask me why I did it, and I would say it's so I don't beat my children. That was obviously a joke, but I could shed the problems of the day by running on the treadmill or using the StairMaster. So I guess that's how I keep work-life balance.  Dr. Adriana Alvarez: What about you, Dr. Patel? Dr. Shruti Patel: I would say that my work-life balance has improved greatly in the last eight months since I started the research portion of my fellowship. I'm not writing papers at 2:00 a.m. anymore, so that's like a huge upgrade. But really, I think, prioritizing when you're at work, you're at work, but then when you're at home, really trying to prioritize the things that are important to you. I am currently in my parents' home, while I'm recording this podcast, I get to spend time with them. I get to spend time with my family, my friends. I like to make time for those things because they provide me joy. I think a huge part of our work is being there for people in really, really tough times in their life, and that can be extremely emotionally draining, even though it's exactly what we want to do. And I think making sure that you have things outside of work that really provide you a lot of joy is extremely important. And so I think now that I have the time to do it, I really am trying to capitalize on it. Dr. Adriana Alvarez: Well, I really want to thank you, all of you, Dr. Goyal, Dr. Patel, and Dr. Symington, for a lively discussion. I learned a lot from you and a little bit about your personal life. Thank you for sharing that and sharing how you navigate to be a physician in oncology.  So this ASCO Education Podcast is where we explore topics ranging from implementing new cancer treatments and improving patient care to oncology well-being and professional development. If you have an idea for a topic or guest you would like to see on the show, please email us at education@asco.org. To stay up to date with the latest episodes and explore other educational content, visit education.asco.org. Thank you very much.   The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.              

In this special collaboration,  I had the great pleasure of guest hosting on the Commuter Rail Coalition's Commuter Rail Conversations for an interview with Sam Sargent, Caltrain's Director of Strategy and Policy. We had an awesome conversation about taking leaps. First, Sam's big leap from Austin Texas to California's Bay area and then Caltrain's leap into electrification of its commuter rail service. Sam brings Caltrain a fresh perspective from his many years working with the greater Austin community as CapMetro's Director of Government Affairs. He recently joined Caltrain, just five months ago, and has hit the ground running!

In this episode, Melissa Boyles, Vice President of Diversity and Development for Stacy and Witbeck and host of the Moving Arizona podcast serves as our special guest host. She interviews Sam Sargent, Caltrain's Director of Strategy and Policy, and they talk about taking leaps. First, Sam's big leap from Austin Texas to California's Bay area and then Caltrain's leap into electrification of its commuter rail service. Sam brings Caltrain a fresh perspective from his many years working with the greater Austin community as CapMetro's Director of Government Affairs. He recently joined Caltrain, just five months ago, and has hit the ground running!

Caltrain and a property developer are set to lay out plans for 20 acres of railyard that sits between San Francisco's South of Market and Mission Bay neighborhoods. KCBS Radio's Patti Reising, Bret Burkart and Phil Matier talk about what to expect for the site.     

Stretching from San Francisco to Gilroy (the garlic capital of the U.S.), Caltrain follows the spine of the Bay Area peninsula and straight through Silicon Valley. Having been around since the 1860s, Silicon Valley grew up around Caltrain. And unlike most commuter rail lines, Caltrain doesn't serve a single city center with traffic going one way in the morning and back in the afternoon; people travel up and down the peninsula in both directions getting to work. This is, as Michelle says, a blessing and a curse. She needs to plan for a constant flow of people north and south, no matter what time of day. The pandemic has had its challenges for Caltrain, but Michelle and her team have adapted service throughout the day, nights, and weekends. Caltrain is coming back, but like all commuter rail lines, no one is quite sure what that's going to look like long term. One thing is for sure--electric trains! The first four trainsets have arrived ahead of full revenue service in 2024 and the trains look pretty amazing. Learn more in this week's Transit Unplugged In-Depth. Next week on Transit Unplugged News and Views Paul's guest will be Lisa Walton, CTO of SFMTA. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter and if you have a question or comment, email us at info@transitunplugged.com.

Suhair Al Khatib knows safety. After years at Baltimore MTA, he's now a Commissioner for Maryland on the Washington Metro Rail Safety Commission and his job is simple. Keep passengers safe. Safety isn't just about ticking boxes or enforcing rules, it's a mindset. It's knowing that putting safety first sometimes means disrupting service. Sometimes it means inconveniencing the traveling public. Because if you don't make those tough calls and let things slide, bad things can happen. Join Paul and Suhair in talking about safety including Suhair's plans that won awards and are a model for how to make repairs with the least amount of disruption possible.  Also in this episode: Updates from Paul on upcoming events Transit news of the week Mike's Minute with Mike Bismeyer And Julie Gates sitting in for Elea Carey Tune in and enjoy. Next week we have Michelle Bouchard Acting Executive Director of CalTrain to talk about the seventh largest commuter rail line in the U.S. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter and if you have a question, comment, or would like to be a guest on Transit Unplugged, email us at info@transitunplugged.com.

In this latest episode of the Commuter Rail Conversations podcast series, Hatch's Dave Genova hosts a conversation with Caltrain's Michelle Bouchard and MBTA's Ryan Coholan on  Alternative Project Delivery Methods in the Commuter Rail Industry.

In this podcast, Isaiah Powell (Part 1/Part 2) catches us up with what's been going on since his Storied: SF episodes back in the summer of 2020. Between the land he and Danielle stewarded at Florence Fang Community Farm and today, they were at Adam Rogers Park. The philosophy behind Dragonspunk has always been that they go where the help is needed; it's never been about a single location. That brings us today and the place we recorded—Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary on Palou in the Bayview. The spot lies above a Caltrain tunnel in the southeast side of San Francisco. Looking north from this beautiful space, with The City's skyline as backdrop, multiple smokestacks, construction cranes, and the Bay Bridge pepper one's view. Isaiah talks a little about what he's been up to and their gaining access to the land where we talked. Then he hands the mic over to Danielle. She describes her vision of the space, which spawned from an idea she had 10 years ago when she lived in New York and would regularly visit gardens and green spaces around the city. She says her decade-long dream was to have a botanical garden of her own, one that begins the process of healing the damage humans have done to the natural environment. Danielle takes us all on a tour of the sanctuary, listing off the mostly native plants, trees, bushes, and shrubs that live there. And we end this episode with Danielle's vision for the future of the space, which includes community gathering and events. ​Check back Thursday for Part 2 and the story of Danielle's life. We recorded this podcast at the Calibird and Bee Pollinator Sanctuary in the Bayview in March 2022. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Dr. Brian Arthur and I talk about how technology can be modeled as a modular and evolving system, combinatorial evolution more broadly and dig into some fascinating technological case studies that informed his book The Nature of Technology. Brian is a researcher and author who is perhaps best known for his work on complexity economics, but I wanted to talk to him because of the fascinating work he's done building out theories of technology. As we discuss, there's been a lot of theorizing around science — with the works of Popper, Kuhn and others. But there's been less rigorous work on how technology works despite its effects on our lives. Brian currently works at PARC (formerly Xerox PARC, the birthplace of personal computing) and has also worked at the Santa Fe institute and was a professor Stanford university before that. Links W. Brian Arthur's Wikipedia Page The Nature of Technology on Amazon W. Brian Arthur's homepage at the Santa Fe Institute Transcript Brian Arthur [00:00:00]  In this conversation, Dr. Brian Arthur. And I talk about how technology can be modeled as modular and evolving system. Commentorial evolution more broadly, and we dig into some fascinating technological hae studies that informed your book, his book, the nature of tech. Brian is a researcher and author who is perhaps best known for his work on complexity economics. Uh, but I wanted to talk to him [00:01:00] because of the fascinating work he's done, building out theories of technology. Uh, as we discussed in the podcast, there's been a lot of theorizing around science, you know, with the works of popper and Kuhn and other. But there's has been much less rigorous work on how technology works despite its effect on our lives. As some background, Brian currently works at park formerly Xerox park, the birthplace of the personal computer, and has also worked at the Santa Fe Institute and was a professor at Stanford university before that. Uh, so without further ado, here's my conversation with Brian Arthur.  Mo far less interested in technology. So if anybody asks me about technology immediately search. Sure. But so the background to this is that mostly I'm known for a new framework and economic theory, which is called complexity economics. I'm not the [00:02:00] only developer of that, but certainly one of the fathers, well, grandfather, one of the fathers, definitely. I was thinking one of the co-conspirators I think every new scientific theory like starts off as a little bit of a conspiracy. Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. This is no exception anyways. So that's what I've been doing. I'm I've think I've produced enough papers and books on that. And I would, so I've been in South Africa lately for many months since last year got back about a month ago and I'm now I was, as these things work in life, I think there's arcs, you know, you're getting interested in something, you work it out or whatever it would be. Businesses, you [00:03:00] start children, there's a kind of arc and, and thing. And you work all that out. And very often that reaches some completion. So most of the things I've been doing, we've reached a completion. I thought maybe it's because I getting ancient, but I don't think so. I think it was that I just kept working at these things. And for some reason, technologies coming back up to think about it in 2009, when this book came out, I stopped thinking about technology people, norm they think, oh yeah, you wrote this book. You must be incredibly interested. Yeah. But it doesn't mean I want to spend the rest of your life. Just thinking about the site, start writing this story, like writing Harry Potter, you know, it doesn't mean to do that forever. Wait, like writing the book is like the whole [00:04:00] point of writing the book. So you can stop thinking about it. Right? Like you get it out of your head into the book. Yeah, you're done. So, okay. So this is very much Silicon valley and I left academia in 1996. I left Stanford I think was I'm not really an academic I'm, I'm a researcher sad that those two things have diverged a little bit. So Stanford treated me extraordinarily well. I've no objections, but anyway, I think I'd been to the Santa Fe Institute and it was hard to come back to standard academia after that.  So why, should people care about sort of, not just the output of the technology creation process, but theory behind technology. Why, why does that matter? Well[00:05:00]  I think that what a fine in in general, whether it's in Europe or China or America, People use tremendous amount of technology. If you ask the average person, what technology is, they tell you it's their smartphone, or it's catch a tree in their cars or something, but they're, most people are contend to make heavy use of technology of, I count everything from frying pans or cars but we make directly or indirectly, enormously heavy use of technology. And we don't think about where it comes from. And so there's a few kind of tendencies and biases, you know we watch we have incredibly good retinal displays these days on our computers. [00:06:00] We can do marvelous things with our smartphone. We switch on GPS and our cars, and very shortly that we won't have to drive at all presumably in a few years. And so all of this technology is doing marvelous things, but for some strange reason, We take it for granted in the sense, we're not that curious as to how it works. People trend in engineering is I am, or I can actually tell you that throughout my entire life, I've been interested in how things work, how technology works, even if it's just something like radios. I remember when I was 10, I like many other kids. I, I constructed a radio and a few instructions. I was very curious how all that worked and but people in general are not curious. So I [00:07:00] invite them quite often to do the following thought experiments. Sometimes them giving talks. All right. Technology. Well, it's an important, yeah, sort of does it matter? Probably while I would matter. And a lot of people manage to be mildly hostile to technology, but there are some of the heaviest users they're blogging on there on Facebook and railing about technology and then getting into their tech late and cars and things like that. So the thought experiment I like to pose to people is imagine you wake up one morning. And for some really weird or malign reason, all your technology is to super weird. So you wake up in your PJ's and you stagger off to the bathroom, but the toilet, [00:08:00] you trying to wash your hands or brush your teeth. That is no sink in the bathroom. There's no running water. You scratch your head and just sort of shrugged in you go off to make coffee, but there's no coffee maker, et cetera. You, in this aspiration, you leave your house and go to clinch your car to go to work. But there's no car. In fact, there's no gas stations. In fact, there's no cars on the roads. In fact, there's no roads and there's no buildings downtown and you're just standing there and naked fields. And wondering, where does this all go? And really what's happened in this weird Saifai set up is that let's say all technologies that were cooked up after say 1300. So what would that be? The last 700 years or so? I've disappeared. And and you've [00:09:00] just left there and. People then said to me, well, I mean, wouldn't there have been technologies then. Sure. So you know how to, if you're a really good architect, you might know how to build cathedrals. You might know how to do some stone bridges. You might know how to produce linen so that you're not walking around with any proper warm clothes and so on. But our whole, my point is that if you took away everything invented. So in the last few hundred years, our modern world or disappear, and you could say, well, we have science, Peter, but without technology, you wouldn't have any instruments to measure anything. There'd be no telescopes. Well, we still have our conceptual ideas. Well, we would still vote Republican or not as the case may be. Yeah, you'd have, and I'd still have my family. Yeah. But how long are your kids gonna [00:10:00] live? Because no modern medicine. Yeah, et cetera. So my point is that not only does technology influence us, it creates our entire world. And yet we take this thing that creates our entire world. Totally. For granted, I'd say by and large, there are plenty of people who are fascinated like you or me, but we tend to take it for granted. And so there isn't much curiosity about technology. And when I started to look into this seriously, I find that there's no ology of technology. There's theories about where science comes from and there's theories about music musicology and theories, endless theories about architecture and, and even theology. But there isn't a very [00:11:00] well-developed set of ideas or theories on what technology is when, where it comes from. Now, if you know, this area is a, was that true? On Thur, you know, I could mention 20 books on it and Stanford library, but when I went to look for them, I couldn't find very much compared with other fields, archi, ology, or petrol energy, you name it technology or knowledge. It was, I went to talk to a wonderful engineer in Stanford. I'm sure he's no longer alive. Cause this was about 15 years ago. He was 95 or so if I couldn't remember his name it's an Italian name, just a second. I brought this to prompts. Just a sec. I'm being sent to you. I remember his name and [00:12:00] make it the first name for him. Yeah. Walter VIN sent him. So I went to see one it's rarely top-notch aerospace engineers of the 20th century had lunch with them. And I said, have engineers themselves worked out a theory of the foundations of their subject. And he looked, he sort of looked slightly embarrassed. He says, no. I said, why not? And he paused. He was very honest. He just paused. And he says, engineers like problems they can solve. It's. So compared with other fields, there isn't as much thinking about what technology is or how it evolves over time, where it comes from how invention works. We've a theory of how new species come into existence since 1859 and Darwin. [00:13:00] We don't have much for theory at all. At least. This was 10, 15 years ago about how new technologies come into being. I started to think about this. And I reflected a lot because I was writing this book and people said, what are you writing about? I said, technology that is always followed by Y you know, I mean, I could say I was maybe writing the history of baseball. Nobody would've said why, but Y you know, what could be interesting about that? And I reflected further that and I argue in my book, the nature of technology, I reflected that technology's not just the backdrop or the whole foundation of our lives. We depend on it 200 years ago, the average length of life, might've been 55 in this country, or 45. [00:14:00] Now it's 80 something. And maybe that's an, a bad year, like the last year. So, and that's technology, medical technology. We've really good diagnostics, great instruments very good methods, surgical procedures. Those are all technology. And by and large, they assure you fairly well that if you're born this year in normal circumstances, Reasonably the normal circumstance through born, let's say this decade, that's with reasonable, lucky to live, to see your grandchildren and you might live to see them get married. So life is a lot longer. So I began to wonder who did research technology and strangely enough maybe not that strangely, it turns out to be if not engineers, a lot sociologists and economists. [00:15:00] And then I began to observe something further in that one was that a lot of people. So wondering about how things change and evolve had really interesting thoughts about how science, what science is and how that evolves. And so that like Thomas Kuhn's, there are many people speculated in that direction, whether they're correct or not. And that's very insightful, but with technology itself I discovered that the people writing about it were historians associates, which is an economist and nearly, always, they talked about it in general. We have the age off the steam engines or when railroads came along, they allowed the expansion of the entire United States Konami that connected his coast and west coast and [00:16:00] so on. So they're treating the technology has sort of like an exogenous effect sent there and they were treating that also. I discovered there's some brilliant books by economic historians and sociologists add constant is one. He wrote about the turbo chapter, super good studies about Silicon valley, how the internet started and so on. So I don't want to make too sweeping the statement here, but by and large, I came to realize that nobody looked inside technologies. So this is if you were set in the 1750s and by ology certain biologists, they would have been called social scientists, natural philosophers. That's right. Thank you. They would have been called natural philosophers and they would have been interested in if they were interested [00:17:00] in different species, say giraffes and Zebras and armadillos or something. It was as if they were trying to understand these from just looking outside. And it wasn't until a few decades later, the 1790s, the time of George cookie that people started to do. And that to me is, and they find striking similarities. So something might be a Bengal tiger and something might be some form of cheetah. And you could see very similar structures and postulate as Darwin's grandfather did that. There might be some relation as to how they evolved some evolutionary tree. By time, Darwin was writing. He wasn't that interested in evolution. He was interested in how new species are formed. So I began to realize that in [00:18:00] technology, people just by and large looking at the technology from the outside, and it didn't tell you much. I was at a seminar. I remember in Stanford where it was on technology every week. And somebody decided that they would talk about modems. Those are the items that just connect your PC. The wireless internet. And they're now unheard of actually they're built into your machine. I'm sure. And we talked for an hour and a half about modems or with an expert who from Silicon valley who'd been behind and venting. These never was the question asked, how does it work? Really? Yeah. Did, did everybody assume that everybody else knew how it worked? No. Oh, they just didn't care. No, no. Yeah, not quiet. It was [00:19:00] more, you didn't open the box. You assume there was a modem who is adopting modems. How fast were modems, what was the efficiency of modems? How would they change the economy? What was in the box itself by and large was never asked about now there are exceptions. There are some economists who really do get inside, but I remember one of my friends late Nate Rosenberg, superb economist of technological history here at Stanford. Rude poop called inside the black box, but he didn't even in that book, he didn't really open up too many technologies. So then I began to realize that people really didn't understand much about biology or zoology or evolution for that matter until this began to open up or can [00:20:00] isms and see similarities between species of toads and start to wonder how these different species had come about by getting inside. So to S set up my book, I decided that the key thing I was going to do, I didn't mention it much in the book, but was to get inside technologies. So if I wanted to talk about jet engines, I, wasn't just going to talk about thrust and about manufacturers and about people who brought it into being, I was going to talk about, you know heat pumps, exactly Sur anti surge systems for compressors different types of combustion systems and materials whole trains of compressors. Oh, assemblies of compressors the details of turbines that drove the compressors. [00:21:00] And I found that in technology, after technology, once you opened it up, you discovered many of the same components. Yeah. So let me hold that thought for a moment. I thought it was amazing that when you look at technologies from the outside, you know, see canoes and giraffes, they don't look at all similar legs. Yeah. But they all have the same thing, basic construction there. And then their case, their memos, and they have skeleton their vertebrates or et cetera, whatever they are or something. And so in technologies, I decided quite early on with the book that I would understand maybe 25 or so technology is pretty well. And of those [00:22:00] I'd understand at least a dozen very well, indeed, meaning spending maybe years trying to. Understand certain technologies are understanding. And and then what I was going to do is to see how they had come into being and what could be said about them, but from particular sources. So I remember calling up the chief engineer on the Boeing 7 47 and asking them questions personally, the cool thing about technology, unlike evolution is that we can actually go and talk to the people who made it right. If they're still alive. Yes. And so, so, so I decided that it would be important to get inside technologies. When I did that, I began to realize that I was seeing the same components [00:23:00] again and again. So in some industrial system, safe for pumping air into coal mines or something, fresh air, you'd see compressors taking in their piping, it done. And and yeah. Again, and again, you see piston engines or steam engines, or sometimes turbines powering something on the outside. They may look very different on the inside. You are seeing the same things again, again, and I reflected that in biology and say, and yeah, in biology save mammals we have roughly the same numbers of genes, very roughly it's kind of, we have a Lego kit of genes, maybe 23,000 case of humans slightly differently for other creatures. [00:24:00] And these genes were put together to express proteins and express different bone structures, skeletal structures, organs in different ways, but they were all put together or originated from roughly the same set of pieces put together differently or expressed differently, actuated differently. They would result in different animals. And I started to see the same thing with technology. So again, you take some. You take maybe in the 1880s some kind of a threshing machine or harvester that worked on steam summer inside. There there'd be a boiler. There'd be crying, Serbia steam engine. If you looked into railway locomotive, you'd see much the [00:25:00] same thing, polars and cranks, and the steam engine there be a place to keep fuel and to feed it with a coal or whatever it was operating on. So once I started to look inside technologies, I realized it was very different set of things that there's ceased to become a mystery. And so the whole theme of what I was looking at was see if I can get this into one sentence. Technologies are means to human purposes normally created from existing components at hand. So if I want to put up some structures and Kuala lumper, which is a high level high rise building, I've got all the pieces I needed. Pre-stressed concrete, whatever posts are needed to create. [00:26:00] Fundations the kinds of bolts and fasteners the do fastened together, concrete, high rise, cranes, and equipment et cetera. Assemblies made of steel to reinforce the whole thing and to make sure the structure stands properly. It's not so much of these are all standardized, but the type of technology, every technology I thought is made with pieces and parts, and they tend to come from the same toolbox used in different ways. They may be in Kuala, lumper used in Seattle's slightly different ways, but the whole idea was the same. So it's technology then cease to be a mystery. It was matter of combining or putting together things from a Lego sets in M where [00:27:00] I grew up in the UK. We'd call them mechano sets. What are they called here? Erector sets or, well, I mean, Legos are, or, but like, I mean, there's, there's metal ones, the metal ones. I think the metal ones are erector sets. There's also like the wood ones that are tinker toys. Anyway, I like Legos, like, like I'm kinda like, okay. Okay. So, and that goes and yeah. And then you could get different sorts of Lego sets. You know, a few were working in high pressure, high temperature, it'd be different types of things of you're working in construction. There'd be a different set of Lego blocks for that. I don't want to say this is all trivial. It's not a matter of just throwing together these things. There's a very, very high art behind it, but it is not these things being born in somebody's attic. And in fact [00:28:00] of you were sitting here and what used to be Xerox park and Xerox graphy was invented by not by Mr. Xerox. Anyway, somewhere in here, but xerography was invented by someone who knew a lot about processes. A lot about paper, a lot about chemical processes, a lot about developing things. And shining light on paper and then using that maybe chemically at first and in modern Sarah Buffy. Electrostatically. Yeah. And so what could born was rarely reflecting light known component of marks on paper, thinking of a copier machine focused with a lot of lenses, [00:29:00] well-known onto something that was fairly new, which was called a Xerox drum. And that was electrostatically charged. And so you arranged that the light effected the electrostatic charges on the Xerox drum and those electrostatic as the drum revolved, it picked up particles of printing, ink like dust and where being differentially charged, and then imprinted that on paper and then fused it. All of those pieces were known. It's and it's not a matter of someone. I think mine's name is Carlson by the way. It's not a matter of what's somebody working in an attic that guy actually, who was more like that, but usually it's a small team of [00:30:00] people who are, who see a principal to do something to say, okay, you know, we want to copy something. Alright. But it could, you know cathode Ray tube and maybe it could project it on to that. And then there might be electrons sensitive or heat sensitive paper, and it could make her copies that way. But certainly in here Xerox itself for zero park, the idea was to say, let's use an electrostatic method combined with Potter and a lot of optics to ride on a Xerox drum and then fuse that under high heat into something that, where the particles stuck to paper. So all of those things were known and given. So I guess there's sorry. There's, there's so many different directions that I, that I want to go. One. [00:31:00] So sort of just like on the idea of modularity for technology. Yeah. It feels like there's both I guess it feels like there's almost like two kinds of modularity. One is the modularity where you, you take a slice in time and you sort of break the technology down into the different components. Yeah. And then there's almost like modularity through time that, that progresses over time where you have to combine sort of different ideas, but it doesn't necessarily, but like those ideas are not necessarily like contained in the technology or there's like precursor technology, like for example there's you have the, the moving assembly line. Right. Which was a technology that was you originally for like butchering meat. Yup. Right. And so you had, you had car manufacturing [00:32:00] and then you had like a moving assembly line. Yep. And then Henry Ford came along and sort of like fused those together. And that feels like a different kind of modularity from the modularity of. Of like looking at the components of technology, M I D do you think that they're actually the same thing? How do you, how do you think about those sort of two types of modularity? I'm not quite sure what the difference is. So, so the, the Henry T I guess like the, the, the, the, the Ford factory did not, doesn't contain a slaughter house. Right. It contains like some components from the slider house. And some components, I guess. Let's see, I think, like, [00:33:00] this is like, I, I was like, sort of like thinking through this, it feels like, like when, when you think of like the sort of like intellectual lineages of technology the, like a technology does not always contain the thing that inspires it, I guess is and so, so there's this kind of like evolution over time of like, almost like the intellectual lineage of a technology that is not necessarily the same as like the. Correct evolutions of the final components of that technology like for yeah. Does that, does that make sense? Like th th th or am I just like, am I seeing a difference where there, there is no difference which could be completely possible? Well, I'm not sure. I think maybe the latter, let me see if I can explain the way I see it, please stop me again. If it [00:34:00] doesn't fit with what you're talking about. I could fascinated by the whole subject of invention, you know, where to radically new technologies come from, not just tweaks on a technology. So we might have we might have a Pratt and Whitney jet engine in 1996, and then 10 years later have a different version of that. That's a good summer different components. That's fine. That's innovation, but it's not ready. Invention invention is something that's quite radical. You go from having air piston engines, which spit like standard car engines, driving propellers systems, 1930s, and you that gets replaced by a jet engine system working on a different principle. So the question really is so I've [00:35:00] begun to realize that what makes an invention is that it works in a different principle. So when Cox came along, the really primitive ones in the 12 hundreds, or a bit later than that are usually made up, they're made with their water clocks and are relying on this idea that a drip of water is fairly regular. If you set it up that way and about the time of Galileo. And in fact, Galileo himself realized that the pendulum had a particular regular beat. And if you could harness that regularity, that might turn into something that can measure time I clock. So, and that's a different principle that the principle is to use the idea that something on the end of a string or on the end of a piece of wire, give you a regular. [00:36:00] Frequency or regular beat. So the country realize that inventions themselves something was carrying out unnecessary purpose using a different principle before the second world war in Britain, they in the mid 1930s, people got worried about aircraft coming from the continent. They thought it could well be terminated and and bombers coming over to bomb England and the standard methods then to detect bombers over the horizon was to get people with incredibly good hearing, quite often blind people and attach to their ear as the enormous air trumpet affair that went from their ear to some big concrete collecting amplifier, some air trumpet that was maybe 50 or a hundred [00:37:00] feet across to listen to what was going on in the sky. And a few years later in the mid thirties, actually the began to look for something better and then. Made a discovery that fact that being well-known in physics by then, that if you bounced a very high frequency beam electromagnetic beam of say piece of metal, the metal would distort the beam. It would kind of echo and you'd get to stores and see if it was just to adore three miles away, made a word, wouldn't have that effect, but it was metal. It would. So that that's different principle. You're not listening. You're actually sending out a beam of something and then trying to detect the echo. And that is a different principle. And from that you get radar, how do you create such a beam? How'd [00:38:00] you switch it off very fast. Search can listen for an echo or electronically how do you direct the beam, et cetera, et cetera. How do you construct the whole thing? How can you get a very high energy beam because needed to be very high energy. These are all problems that had to be solved. So in my, what I began to see, she was the same pattern giving invention guidance began usually an outstanding problem. How do we detect enemy bombers that might come from the east, from the continent, if we need to how do we produce a lot of cars more efficiently and then finding some principle to do that, meaning the idea of using some phenomenon in the case of ear trumpets, it was acoustic phenomena, but these could be greatly amplified for somebody's ear. If you directed them into a big [00:39:00] concrete here, right? Different ways to put out high frequency radio beams and listen for an echo of that. Once you have the principle, then it turns out there's sort of sub problems go with that in the case of radar, how do you switch the beam off so that you can, things are traveling at the speed of light. I just switched it off fast enough that the echo isn't drowned out by the original signal. So then you're into another layer of solving another problem and an invention. Usually not. Well, I could talk about some other ways to look at it, but my wife looking at an invention is that nearly always is a strong social need. What do we do about COVID? The time that [00:40:00] says February, March 20, 20 oh, cur we can do a vaccine. Oh, okay. The vaccine might work on a different principle, maybe messenger RNA rather than the standard sort of vaccines. And so you find a different principle, but that brings even getting that to work brings its own sub problems. And then if with a bit of luck and hard work, usually over several years or months, you solved the sub problems. You managed to put all that in material terms, not just conceptual ones, but make it into some physical thing that works and you have an invention. And so to double click on that, couldn't you argue that those, that the solution to those sub problems are also in themselves inventions. And so it's just like inventions all the way down. [00:41:00] No great point there. I haven't thought of that. Possibly the, if they need to use a new principal themselves, the sub solutions. Yeah. Then you'd have to invent how that might work. But very often they're standing by let me give you an example. I hope this isn't I don't want to be too sort of technical here, please go, go, go, go rotate. Here we go then. So it's 1972 here in Xerox park where I'm sitting and the engineer, Gary Starkweather is his name, brilliant engineer and trained in lasers and trend and optics PhD and master's degrees, really smart guy. And he's trying to [00:42:00] figure out how to how to print. If you have an image in a computer, say a photograph, how do you print that now at that time? In fact, I can remember that time there. There are things called line printers and they're like huge typewriter systems. There is one central computer you put in your job, the outputs it was figured out on the computer and then central line printer, which is like a big industrial typewriter. And then it clanked away on paper and somebody tore off the paper and handed it to through a window. Gary, Starkweather wondered how could you print texts? But more than that images where you weren't using a typewriter, it's very hard to his typewriters and very slow if you wanted to images. So he [00:43:00] cooked up a principle, he went through several principles, but the one that he finished up using was the idea that you could take the information from the computer screens, a photograph you could use computer processors to send that to a laser. The lasers beam would be incredibly, highly focused. And he realized that if he could use a laser beam to the jargon is to paint the image onto the Xerox drum. Then so that it electrically charged the Xerox drum, right then particles would stick to the Xerox, strung the charge places, and the rest would be zero graphy, like a copier machine. He was working in Xerox park. [00:44:00] This was not a huge leap of the imagination, but there were two men's sub-problems in as well. We want to mention, if you look at it there's an enormous two huge problems if you wanted. So you were trying to get these black dots to write on a zero extremity to paint them on a zero Ekstrom. I hope this is an obscure. No, this is great. And I'll, I'll, I'll include some like pictures and this is great. All right. So you suppose I'm writing or painting a photograph from the computer through a processor, send to a laser. The laser has to be able to switch on and off fast. If it's going to write this on a Xerox Trump, and if you work out commercially how fast it would have to operate. Starkweather came to the conclusion. He'd have to be able to switch his [00:45:00] Lezzer on and off black or white 50 million times a second. Okay. So 50 megahertz, but nobody had thought of modulating or doing that sort of switching at that speed. So he had to solve that. That's a major problem. He solved it by circuitry. He got some sort of pizza electric device that's kind of don't ask, but he got a electronic device that could switch on and off. And then he could send signals to modulator for that to modulator, to switch on and off the laser and make a black or white as needed. And so that was number one. Now that kind of, that in your terms acquired an invention, he had to think of a new principle to solve that problem. So how do you, how do you write images on a computer? Sorry, on [00:46:00] how do you write it? How do you write computer images? Print that onto paper. That's required a new principal switching on a laser and. 50 million times the second required a new principal or acquire a new principal. So those are two inventions. There's a third one and another sub problem. The device, by the way, he got to do this was as big as one of these rooms in 1972. If I have my if I have the numbers, right a decent laser would cost you about $50,000 and you could have bought a house for that in 1978 here. And it would be the size, not of a house, but of a pretty big lab, but not something inside a tiny machine, but an enormous apparatus. And so how do you take [00:47:00] a laser on the end of some huge apparatus that you're switching on and off the 15 million times a second and scan it back and forth. And because there's huge inertia, it's an enormous thing. And believe it or not, he, he solved that. Not with smoke, but with mirrors. So he actually, instead of moving the laser beam, He arranged for a series of mirrors under evolving a piece of apparatus, like actuate the mirrors. Yeah. All he had to do was 0.1 beam at the mirror, switch it on and off very quickly for the image. And then the mirror would direct it kind of like a lighthouse beam right across the page. And then the next [00:48:00] face of the mirror exactly little mirror would come along and do the next line. So how do you do that? Well, that was easier. But then he discovered that the different facets on this mirror you'd have to, they'd have to line up to some extraordinarily high precision that you could not manufacture them to. So that's another sub problem. So to solve that he used ope optics if there was so here's one facet of mirror here is the beam. So directs the beam right across the page, switching it off and on as need be. Then the next facet of the mirror comes round switches. The same beam that you want to line up extraordinary. Precisely. Couldn't do it manufactured. [00:49:00] In manufacturing technology. But you could do it with optics. It just said, okay, if there's a slight discrepancy, we will correct that. He did agree and optics. He really knew what he was doing with optics in the lab. So using different lenses, different condensing lenses, whatever lenses do he solved that problem. So it's took two or three years, and it's interesting to look at the lab notebooks that he made. But for me let me see if I can summarize this. There is no such thing as Gary Starkweather scratching his head saying, wouldn't it be lovely to wouldn't it be lovely to be able to print images off the computer and not have to use a big typewriter. And and so he sits in his attic, a star of some self for three months comes up with the solution, not at all. What he did was he envisaged a [00:50:00] different principle. We're writing the image, using a highly focused laser beam onto the Xerox drum. The rest then is just using a copier machine fair. But to do that, you have to switch on and off the laser beam problem. So that's at a lower level to invent a wedge to that. And he also had to invent a principle for scanning this beam across the Xerox strung, maybe whatever it would be 50 times a second, or maybe a hundred times the second without moving the entire apparatus. And the principally came up for that was mirrors. Yeah. And so, and then I could go down to another level, you have to align your mirrors. And so, so what I discovered and see if I can put this in a nutshell [00:51:00] invention, isn't a sort of doing something supremely creative in your mind. It finishes up that way. It might be very creative, but all inventions are basically as problem-solving. Yeah. So to do something more mundane imagine I live here in Palo Alto let's say I work in the financial district in San Francisco and let's say my car's in the shop getting repaired. How am I going to get to work? And or how am I going to get my work done tomorrow? I have no car. The level of principle is to say, okay, I can see an overall concept to do it with. So I might say, all right, if I can get to Caltrain, if I can get to the station I'll go in on the train, but hang on. How do I get to the station? So that's a sub problem. [00:52:00] Maybe I can get my daughter or my wife or her husband, whatever it is to, to drive me. Then the other end, I can get an Uber or I could get a a colleague to pick me up, but then I'd have to get up an hour earlier, or maybe I'll just sit at home and work from home, which is more of the solution we would do these days. But how will that work? Because I et cetera. So invention is not much different from that. In fact, that's the heart of invention. If we worked out that problem of getting worked when your car is gone nobody would stand up and say, this was brilliant yet you've gone through exactly the same process as the guy who invented the polymerase chain reaction. Again, I can't recall his name. Getting older. I can't [00:53:00] eat there, but anyway so what's really important in invention. I think this goes to your mission. If I understand it, rightly is the people who have produced inventions are people who are enormously familiar with what I would call functionalities. Yeah. How do you align beams using optical systems? How do you switch on and off lasers fast? And so the people who are fluent at invention are always people who know huge amounts about those functionalities. I'm trained as an electrical engineer. You're, what's it I'm trained as a mechanical engineer robotics. Oh yeah. Brilliant. So what's really important [00:54:00] in engineering, at least what they teach you apart from all that mathematics is to know certain functionalities. So you could use capacitors and inductors to create, and also electronic oscillations or regular waves. You can. Straighten out varying voltage by using induction in the system, you can store energy and use that in capacitors. You, you can actually change a beam using magnets. And so there's hundreds of such things. You can amplify things you can use using feedback as well to stabilize things. So there are many functionalities and learning engineering is a bit like becoming fluent in this set of functionalities, not learning anything that's semi [00:55:00] creative. What might that be? Yes. Paint learning to do plumbing. Yep. Learning to work as a plumber. Good. A true engineer. So it is a matter of becoming fluent. You want to connect pipes and plumbing. You want to loosen pipes. You want to unclog things you want to reduce. The piping systems or pumping system, you want to add a pump you want, so there's many different things you you're dealing with. Flows of liquids, usually and piping systems and pumping systems and filtration systems. So after maybe three to four years or whatever, it would be a for rail apprentice ship in this, not only can you do it, but you can do it unthinkingly, you know, the exact gauges, you know, the pieces, you know, the parts, you know where to get the parts, you know how to set them up and you look at [00:56:00] some problem and say, oh, okay. The real problem here is that whatever, the piping diameter here is wrong, I'm going to replace it with something a bit larger. So Lincoln's whatever. And here's how I do that. So, you know, being good at invention is not different people. Like Starkweather, Starkweather new, I think is still alive. Knows all about mirrors, but optical systems above all, he knew an awful lot about lasers. He knew a lot about electronics. He was fluent in all those. So if we don't, if we're not fluent ourselves, we stand back and say, wow, how did he do that? But it's a bit like saying, you know, you write a poem and French, let's say I don't speak French. French and support them and it worked, how did he [00:57:00] do that? But if I spoke French, I might, so, okay. Yeah, but I can see, so this actually touches on sort of like an extension of your framework that I wanted to actually run by you, which is what I would describe what you were just describing as talking about almost like the, the affordances and constraints of different pieces of technology and people who invent things being just very like intimately familiar with the, the affordances and constraints of different technologies, different systems. And so the, the question I have that I think is like an open question is whether there is a way of sort of describing or encoding these affordances and constraints [00:58:00] in a way that makes creating these inventions easier. So like in the sense that very often what you see is like someone who knows a lot about. One like the, the affordances in one area, right. When discipline and they sort of like come over to some other discipline and they're like, wait a minute, like, there's this analogy here. And and so they're like, oh, you have this, this constraint over here. Like, there's, there's like a sub problem. Right. And it's like, I know from the, the affordances of the things that I'm, I'm really familiar with, how to actually solve the sub problem. And so like, through that framework, like this framework of like modularity and constraints and affordances, like, is it possible to actually make the process easier or like less serendipitous? Yeah. In, in a couple of ways. One is that I [00:59:00] think quite often you see a pattern where some principle is borrowed from a neighboring discipline. So Henry you were saying that Henry Ford took the idea of a conveyor belt from the meat industry. Right. And and by analogy use the same principle with manufacturing cars. But to get that to work in the car industry, the limitations are different cars are a lot heavier, so you could have a whole side of beef and it's probably 300 pounds or whatever. It would be for a side of beef, but for the car, it could be at 10 and a half. So you have to think of different ways. Yeah. And in the meat industry to do conveyor belts, there's two different ways. You can have a belt standard, rubber thing or whatever it would be just moving along at a certain speed, or you [01:00:00] can have the carcass suspended from an over hanging belts working with a chain system and the carcass is cut in half or whatever and suspended. And you could be working on it pretty much vertically above you both. It was that second system that tended to get used cars as, so things don't translate principles translate from one area to another, and that's a very important mechanism. And so if you wanted to enhance innovation I think the thing would be to set up some institution or some way of looking at things, whereas. They're well-known principles for doing this in area in industry X, how would I do something equivalent in a different industry? So for [01:01:00] example blockchain is basically let's say it's a way of validating transactions that are made privately between two parties without using an intermediary, like a bank. And you could say, well, here's how this works with a Bitcoin trading or something. And somebody could come along and say, well, okay, I want to validate art sales using maybe some similar principle. And I don't want to have to go to some central authority and record there. So maybe I can use blockchain to do fine art sales, in fact, that's happening. So basically you see an enormous amount of analogous principle transfer of principles from [01:02:00] one field to another. And it's we tend to talk about inventions being adopted. At least we do an economic. So you could say the, the arts trading system adopts block chain, but it's not quite that it's something more subtle. You can get a new principal or new, fairly general technology comes out, say like blockchain and then different different industries or different sets of activities in conjure that they don't adopt it then countries. Oh, blockchain. Okay. No, I'm saying the medical insurance business let's say so I can record transactions this way and I don't have to involve a room or, and I particular, I don't have to go through banking systems and I can do it this way and then [01:03:00] inform insurance companies. And so they're encountering and wondering how they can use this new principle, but when they do, they're not just taking it off the shelf. Yeah. They're actually incorporating that into what they do. So here's an example. A GPS comes along quite a while ago. I'm sure. 1970s in principle using atomic clocks. Satellites or whatever. Basically it's a way of recording exactly time and using multiple satellites to know exactly where they are at the same time and allowing for tiny effects of even relativity. You figure out you can triangulate and figure out where something is precisely. Yeah, no, that just exists. But by the [01:04:00] time, so different industries say like Oceanwide Frazier shipping and you conjure it exists. Okay. And by the time they encounter it, they're not just saying I'm going to have a little GPS system in front of, in the Bennett code it's actually built in. And it becomes part of a whole navigational system. Yeah. So what happens in things like that is that some invention or some new possibility becomes a component in what's already done just as in banking around the 1970s, being able to. Process customer names, client names, and monetary months you could process that fast with electronic computers and there most days they were [01:05:00] called and data processing units that we don't think of it that way now, but you could process that. And then that changed the banking industry significantly. So by 1973, there was a, the market and futures in Chicago where you were dealing with say pork belly futures and things like that because computation coming home. Interesting. So the pattern there's always an industry exists using conventional ideas, a new set of technologies becomes available. But the industry doesn't quite adopted it, encounters it and combines it with many of its own operations. So banking has been recording people in ledgers and with machinery, it has been facilitating transactions, [01:06:00] maybe on paper unconscious computation. Now can do that. Yeah. Automatically using computation. So some hybrid thing is born out of banking and computation that goes into the Lego set and actually sort of related to that, something I was wondering is, do you think of social technology as technology, do you think that follows the same patterns? What do you mean social technology? I, I think like a very obvious one would be like for example, like mortgages, right? Like mortgages are like mortgages had to be invented. And they allow people to do things that they couldn't do before. But it's not technology in the sense of, of built. Yeah, exactly. It's not like, there's no, like you can create a mortgage with like you and me and a piece of [01:07:00] paper. Right. But it's, it's something that exists between us or like democracy. Right. And so, so I feel like there's, there's like one end, like, like sort of like things like new legal structures or new financial instruments that feel very much like technology and on the other end, there's like. Great. Just like new, like sort of like vague, like new social norms and like, yeah. Great question. And it's something I did have to think about. So things like labor unions nation states nature. Yes, exactly. These thing democracy itself, and in fact, communism, all kinds of things get created. Don't look like technologies. They don't have they don't have the same feel as physical technologies. They're not humming away in some room or other. They're not under the hood of your [01:08:00] car. And things like insurance for widows and pension systems. There's many of those social technologies even things like Facebook platforms for exchanging information. Sometimes very occasionally things like that are created by people sitting down scratching heads. That must have happened to some degree in the 1930s when Roosevelt said there should be a social security system. But that wasn't invented from scratch either. So what tends to come about in this case, just to get at the nitty gritty here, what tends to happen is that some arrangement happens. Somebody maybe could have been a feudal Lord says, okay, you're my trusted gamekeeper. You can have a [01:09:00] rather nice a single house on my estate. You haven't got the money to purchase and build it. I will lend you the money and you can repay me as time goes by. And in fact, the idea that so many of those things have French names, more, more cash. You know, it's actually, I think the act of something dying as far as my, my school friends would go, I don't know. But a lot of those things came about in the middle ages. There are other things like What happens when somebody dies the yeah. Probate again, these are all things that would go back for centuries and centuries. I believe the way they come about is not by deliberate invention. They come about by it being natural in [01:10:00] to something. And then that natural thing is used again. And again, it gets a name and then somebody comes along and says, let's institutionalize this. So I remember reading somewhere about the middle ages. They it was some Guild of some traders and they didn't feel they were being treated fairly. I think this was in London. And so they decided to withhold their services. I don't know what they're supplying. It could have been, you know, courage, transport, and along the streets or something. And some of these people were called violets. We were, would not be valet again, very French, but so they withheld their services. Now that wouldn't be the first time. [01:11:00] It goes back to Egypt and engineered people withholding their services, but that becomes, gets into circulation as a meme or as some repeated thing. Yeah. And then somebody says, okay, we're going to form an organization. And our Gilda's going to take this on board as being a usable strategy and we'll even give it a name that came to be called going on, strike or striking. And so social invention kind of should take place just by it being the sensible thing to do. The grand Lord allows you. It gives you the money to build your own house. And then you compare that person back over many years [01:12:00] and and put that, put that loan to to its death and mortgage it. So the I think in this case, what happens in these social inventions is that sensible things to do gets a name, gets instituted, and then something's built around it. Well, one could also say that many inventions are also the sensible thing to do where like it's someone realizes like, oh, I can like use this material instead of that material. Or like some small tweak that then enables like a new set of capabilities. Well, I'm not, yeah. In that case, I wouldn't call it really an invention that the, the vast majority of innovations, like 99 point something, something, something 9% or tweaks and, you know, [01:13:00] w we'll replace this material. Well, why doesn't that count as an invention? If, if, if it's like a material, like it's a different, like, I guess why doesn't that also count as, as a new principal, it's like bringing a new principal to the thing. The word to find a principal is it's the principles, the idea of using some phenomenon. And so you could say there's a sliding scale if you insist. Up until about 1926 or 1930 aircraft were made of wooden lengths covered with canvas dope. The dope, giving you waterproofing and so on. And and then the different way of doing that came along when they discovered that with better engines, you could have heavier aircraft, so you could make the skeleton out of [01:14:00] metal, right? And then the cladding might be metal as well. And so you had modern metallic aircraft. There's no new principal there, but there is a new material and you could argue, well, the new materials, different principle, then you're just talking about linguistics. So, so, so you would not consider the, like the transition from cloth aircraft to metal aircraft to be an invention. No. Huh? Not got another, I mean, sure might be a big deal, but I don't see it as a major invention going from air piston Angeles to jet engines. That's a different principle entirely. And I, so I, I've a fairly high bar for different principles. But you're not using a different phenomenon. That's my that's, that's my criteria. And if you have a very primitive clock [01:15:00] in this 16, 20 or 16, Forties that uses a string and a bulb on the end of the string. And then you replace the string where the wire or piece of metal rigid. You're not really using a new phenomenon, but you are using different materials and much of the story of technology isn't inventions, it's these small, but very telling improvements and material. In fact jet engines, weren't very useful until you got combustion systems where you were putting in aircraft fuel. Yeah. Atomizing that and setting the whole thing and fire the early systems down. When you could better material, you could make it work. So there's a difference between a primitive technology and [01:16:00] then one that's built out of better components. So I would say something like this, the if you take what the car looks like in 1919 0 5, is it a very, is it a different thing than using horses? Yeah, because it's auto motive. There is an engine. It's built in. So it's from my money. It's using a different principle. What have you changed? What if you like took the horse and you put it inside the carriage? Like what have you built the carriage around the horse? Would that be an automotive? Well then like, like what if I had a horse on a treadmill and that treadmill was driving the wheels of the vehicle with the horse on it, then I think it would be it would be less of an invention. I don't know. I mean, you're basically say I find it very useful to say that if [01:17:00] that radar uses a different principle from people listening, you could say, well, I mean, people listening are listening for vibrations. So is radar, you know, but just at a electro magnetic vibrations, what's different for my money. It's not so much around the word principle. All technologies are built around phenomena that they're harvesting or harnessing to make use of. And if you use a different set of phenomena, In a different way, I would call it an invention. So if you go from a water wheel, which is using water and gravity to turn something, and you say I'm using the steam engine, I would regard that as you're still, you [01:18:00] could argue, well, aren't you use a phenomenon phenomenon of the first thing you're using the weight of water and gravity, and the fact that you can turn something. And then the second thing you are using the different principle of heating something and having it expand. And so I don't see, I would say those are different principles. And if you're saying, well, there's a different principle, I'd go back to, well, what phenomena are you using? So, yeah, I mean, if you wanted to be part of a philosophy department, you could probably question every damned thing because yeah. I'm actually not trying to, to challenge it from a semantic standpoint. I think it's just actually from like really understanding, like what's going on. I think there's actually like a, sort of a debate of like, whether [01:19:00] it's. Like, whether it's like a fractal thing or whether there are like, like multiple different processes going on as well. Maybe I'm just too simple, but let's start to look at invention. The state of the art was pathetic. It wasn't very good because all papers, well, all the versions of invention, I was reading, all of us had a step, then something massively creative happens and that wasn't very satisfactory. And then there was another set of ideas that were Darwinian. If you have something new, like the railway locomotive that must have come out of variations somehow happening spontaneously, and might've been sufficiently different to qualify as radically new inventions. It doesn't do it for me either because you know, 1930 you could have varied [01:20:00] radio circuits until you're blue in the face. You'd never get radar. Yeah. So what the technology is fundamentally is the use of some set of phenomena to carry out some purpose. The, there are multiple phenomena. So but I would say in this maybe slightly too loose speaking, that's the principal phenomenon you're using or the, the key phenomenon constitutes the concept or principle behind that technology. So if you have a sailing ship, you could argue, well, you know, it, displaces water it's built to be not have water intake. It's got a cargo space, but actually for sailing ships, the key principle is to use the motive, power of wind in clever ways to be able to propel a [01:21:00] ship. If you're using steam and take the sails down you're using, in my opinion, a different principle, a different phenomenon. You're not using the mode of power of wind. You're actually using the energy that's in the, some coal fuel or oil and clever ways and to move the ship. So I would see those as two different principles you could say, well, we also changed whatever the staring system or as does that make it an invention. It makes maybe that part of it, an invention, but overall The story I'm giving is that inventions come along when you see a different principle or a set of phenomena that you want to use for some given purpose and you managed to solve the problems to put that into reality. Yeah. I completely agree [01:22:00] with that. I think the, the thing that I'm interested in is like like to, to use is the fact that sort of, again, we go back to like that modular view then, you're you sort of have like many layers down you, the, the like tinkering or, or the, the innovations are so based on changing the phenomena that are being harnessed, but like much, like much farther down the hierarchy of, of the modularity. Like, like in, in S like sailing ships you like introduce like Latin sales, right? Like, and it's like, you change the, into, like, you've invented a new sale system. You haven't invented a new kind of ship. Right. So you've changed the phenomenon, but yeah, I think the distinction you're making is totally on target. When you introduced Latina sales, you have invented a new. Cell system. Right. [01:23:00] But you haven't invented a new principle of a sailing ship. It's still a sailing ship. So I think you're getting into details that are worth getting into at the time I'm writing this. I I was trying to distinguish, I'm not trying to be defensive here. I hope, but I was just, I'm not trying to be offensive in any way. Wait for me to, I haven't thought about this for 10 years or more the I think what was important in yeah, let's just in case this whole thing that said innovation happens. Nobody's quite sure what innovation is. But we have a vague idea. It's new stuff that works better. Yes. In the book I wrote I make a distinction between radically new ways to do something. So it's radically new to propel the ship by a [01:24:00] steam engine. Even if you're using paddles versus by wind flow. Okay. However, not everything's right. Radically new. And if you look at any technology, be it computers or cars the insides, the actual car Bratcher system in the 1960s would have been like a perfume spray or a spraying gasoline and atomizing it, and then setting that in light. Now we might have as some sort of turbo injections system, that's, that's working, maybe not with a very different principle, but working much more efficiently. So you might have an invention or a technology that the insights are changing enormously. But the, the, I, the overall idea of that [01:25:00] technology hasn't changed much. So the radar would be perfect examples. So be the computer, the computers kept changing its inner circuitry, the materials it's using, and those inner circuits have gotten an awful lot faster. And so on. Now that you could take a circuit out and you could say, well, sometime around 1960, the circuit cease to be. Certainly it seems to be trialed, vacuum tubes and became transistors monitored on boards. But then sometime in that deck, could it became integrated circuits, was the integrated circuit and invention yeah. At the circuit level, at the computer level better component. Yeah. So hope that, that absolutely has I guess as, as actually a sort of a closing question is there, is there like work that you [01:26:00] hope people will sort of like do, based on what you've written like, is, is there, is there sort of like a line of work that you want people to be, to be doing, to like take the sort of the framework that you've laid out and run with it? Cause I, I, I guess I feel like there's like, there's so much more to do. Yeah. And so it's like, do you have a, do you have a sense of like what that program would look like? Like what questions, what questions are still unanswered in your mind? I think are really interesting. I think that's a wonderful question off the red cord. I'm really glad you're here because. It's it's like visiting where you grew up. I am. I'm the ghost of, of books. Oh, I don't know. I mean, it's funny. I was injured. This is just, yeah. I was interviewed a month or two ago on [01:27:00] this subject. I can send you a link if you want, please. Yeah. I listened to tons of podcasts, so, yeah. Anyway, but I went back and read the book. You're like, wow, I'm really smart. Well, it had that effect. And then I thought, well, God, you know, it could have been a lot better written. It had all sorts of different things. And, and the year this was produced and free press and New York actually Simon Schuster, they put it up for a Pulitzer prize. That really surprised me because I didn't set out to write something. Well-written I just thought of keep clarifying the thing. And it went to come back to your question. Yeah. My reflection is this the book I wrote the purpose of my book was to actually look inside technologies. So [01:28:00] when you open them up, meaning have you look at the inside components, how those work and how ultimately the parts of a technology are always using some, none, you know, we can ignite gasoline and a, in a cylinder, in a car, and that will expand rapidly and produce force. So there's all kinds of phenomena. These were things I wanted to stay at. And yeah, the book there's that book has had a funny effect. It has a very large number of followers, meaning people have read that and I think of a field for technology and they're grateful that somebody came along and gave them a way to look at technology. Yeah. But having, let me just say it carefully that I've done other things in research [01:29:00] that have had far more widespread notice than this. And I think it's something tech the study of technology, as I was saying earlier on is a bit of a backwater in academic studies. Yeah. It's eclipsed. Is that the word dazzled by science it's? So I think that it's very hard to we, if something wonderful happens, we put men on the moon, we put people on the moon. We, we come up with artificial intelligence. Some are vaguely. That's supposed to be done by scientists. It's not, it's done by engineers who are very often highly conversant, both with science and mathematics, but as a matter of prestige, then a [01:30:00] lot of what should have been theories of technologies, where they come from, it's sort of gone into theories of science and I would simply point out no technology, no science when you can't do much science without telescopes crystallography x-rays systems microscopes. So yeah, it's all. Yeah. So you need all of these technologies to give you modern science. Without those instruments, we'd still have technology. We'd still have science, but be at the level of the Greeks, which would

In this episode of Commuter Rail Conversations we're talking about pivoting:  taking over a multi-modal agency during COVID while staying focused on core principles and preparing to host major international events in a five-year horizon.Just as she took the reins at SEPTA last year the COVID pandemic upended life in Philadelphia. The framework Leslie Richards brought with her was revised during an unpredictable first year as general manager. But throughout, she maintained focus on her core values to deliver for her employees, for Philadelphia, and her UPenn students.Joining us for the conversation is Caltrain's incoming executive director Michelle Bouchard, who is linked to Leslie as a fellow Brown University alumna and Woman in Rail awardee. You won't believe these two dynamic women started the conversation as strangers. Key takeaway: SEPTA and Caltrain both are in good hands with Leslie and Michelle at the helm during these extraordinary times.

In this election edition of "Back on Track," Ken highlights the passage of the Peninsula's Measure RR, along with statewide Propositions, Board of Directors results from BART and AC Transit. Plus, transit headlines this week, which include fare collection beginning on AC Transit's Line 1T and the closure of Caltrain's weekend-only Atherton Station. "Back on Track," hosted by KZSU News Director Ken Der, takes a deeper look at how Bay Area transit agencies are recovering from the wide range of issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

VTA has a new map highlighting 99 polling places in Santa Clara County with the closest bus and rail lines to each one, plus Marin Transit is offering free transit service on local routes in Marin County in an effort to get out the vote. Plus, this week's latest transit news, including Caltrain's proposals to improve off-peak and weekend service levels by mid-December. "Back on Track," hosted by KZSU News Director Ken Der, takes a deeper look at how Bay Area transit agencies are recovering from the wide range of issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. President Donald Trump and Joe Biden hold separate televised town halls in lieu of  debate. President's plan to send $200 prescription card to seniors ahead of election, criticized. Peninsula voters to decide fate of Caltrain with Measure RR, a tax to fund the service. Poll finds Californian's of both political parties say more funding needed to reopen schools safely. The post Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett appeared first on KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. President Donald Trump and Joe Biden hold separate televised town halls in lieu of  debate. President's plan to send $200 prescription card to seniors ahead of election, criticized. Peninsula voters to decide fate of Caltrain with Measure RR, a tax to fund the service. Poll finds Californian's of both political parties say more funding needed to reopen schools safely. The post Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett appeared first on KPFA.

This week, Ken takes a look at how the ballot's Measure RR is attempting to (literally) get Caltrain back on track by proposing a 0.125% sales tax for San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties. Plus, headlines from this week's transit news, including service changes on VTA. "Back on Track," hosted by KZSU News Director Ken Der, takes a deeper look at how Bay Area transit agencies are recovering from the wide range of issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jordan Grimes has been live-tweeting Livable California calls over the last year, and comes on the show to share his insights into the ideology and political framework of California's NIMBY conspiracy. Learn more about Joel Kotkin, Jeffersonianism, what 'WIMBYs' are, and what the left should do about it. Also some brief updates on anti-eviction bills and whatever the hell was going on with Caltrain.

Riders are skittish. Cleaning costs are soaring. Some, like the Bay Area's Caltrain system, face an existential crisis.

The latest on the early results from the Iowa Caucus, flights in and out of China have been reduced in wake of the Coronavirus, a bill aims to integrate Bay Area transit, Berkeley could move forward with more changes to Telegraph avenue, and Caltrain will have six weekend service closures later this month. Local people. Local stories. From the KCBS Radio Newsroom, this is "The All Local" for the evening of Tuesday, February 4, 2020.

In this experience Vinny and Geoff share more of their experiences when, try as they may, the situation just went badly. First of all, we want to send a shoutout to fellow podcasters Plane Talking UK. We're lining up co-hosting in an upcoming episode of theirs. Stay tuned for more info. By popular demand, we're sharing more of our travel experiences – good, bad and ugly – and how we worked at resolving them or made the best of the situation. Shoutout to Sam Chui for his review of the Air India (AI) Dreamliner business class experience. Vinny shared a rant about the security experience at MAA in Experience 021 from his RTW trip in the summer of 2019. The rant is back in this experience with full force for his experiences with Air India (AI) – both for in-flight experiences from SIN-MAA-CMB, and one of the top three worst ever lounge experiences he ever had at MAA. You might need a cold lassi after listening to the rant. Geoff shares his multiple ground travel experiences trying to get from Penang to Kuala Lumpur in July 2019. First the train Google says he should take didn't exist, and then there was a ticket circus with the bus ride that he took instead. Vinny pulls out a story from his vault of crazy experiences – this time in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2003 hitchhiking to make a train connection to get to Helsinki. But what happens when he missed the connection? (Hint – he got to Helsinki and experienced a Tupolev Tu-134). Geoff shares his overnight ground transport experience at SIN from his summer 2019 RTW trip. Where was the shuttle that was supposed to leave every 15 minutes? Sometimes waiting ends up being worth it – thanks to a great family from Perth who shared sightseeing advice. Vinny shares a recent experience from autumn 2019 at SFO. How to get to the Caltrain station to take him into the city, with minimal signage and lack of directions from Google transit. Not only that, where and how did he have to pay for the ticket? Geoff shares a terrific airside tour experience he had in October 2019 at YYZ. Thanks to Russ, Mark and Haaz for their great work and wealth of information. News Items: Independent (UK) article "Airline passenger stuffs laptop down her jumpsuit and pretends to be pregnant to avoid excess baggage charge" Associated Press article "TSA finds gun-shaped toilet paper roller in bag at airport" If you have a story of when your situation just went bad, a question or other experience that you would like to share, please email us at stories(at)seat1a.org or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Patreon. Show notes are available online at http://podcast.seat1a.org/

Caltrain expansion, Santa Clara County worker strike continues, reaction pouring in to San Francisco DA's resignation. From the KCBS Radio Newsroom, this is "The All Local" for the morning of Friday, October 4, 2019.

Open the Uber app in downtown San Francisco, and you'll discover you can do a lot more than hail a ride. You rent a bike, thanks to Uber's recent acquisition of Jump Bikes. You can rent a car, courtesy of a partnership Uber has struck with the startup Getaround. In a test version of the app, which I saw when I reported on Uber last January, a train schedule popped up if you hailed a ride to Caltrain.

Podcast By the Bay sits down for an exclusive interview with current City of Millbrae Mayor Gina Papan as part of our Mayor on the Peninsula Series.  Gina and Patrick have an in-depth discussion as she highlights the current projects and solutions to some the issues of the day including housing and transportation where Millbrae is a hub between Samtrans, Bart, Caltrain, and the SFO International Airport.  Interviewed in March 2018.  This episode also features music by Andre and Leo DeVito.  Stay Tuned! Website-  www.podcastbythebay.comTwitter-  https://twitter.com/@PodcastbythebayFaceBook-  www.facebook.com/podcastbythebay

We're spending this season at North Shoreline Boulevard and Space Park Way in the middle of Google's HQ in Mountain View. But first we have to get there. Over the course of this season, we'll break down how history, culture, money and politics come together—and apart—at this one dot on the map. Want to know more? Go to www.theintersection.fm Produced by David Boyer with KALW. Editor: Ben Trefny / Engineer: Chris Hoff and David Boyer / Music: Erik Pearson