Bay Area Innovators

What does it mean to be the son of refugees who fled communism, and how does that shape the way you see California? Steve Hilton grew up in London, the son of Hungarian refugees who left after the Soviet crackdown on the 1956 anti-communist revolution. He went on to advise a British prime minister, then moved to Silicon Valley, studied at Stanford, and later joined Fox News. Today he is running for governor of California.In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Hilton to talk about his family’s history, including the story of his stepfather, who he says ran for the Austrian border as a young man and climbed barbed-wire fences before ending up in a refugee camp. They also discuss his move to the United States, his views on COVID-19, the issue of homelessness, and the experiences that shaped the perspective he is bringing to his campaign.We also reached out to Hilton’s opponent, Xavier Becerra, for an interview. As of publication, we have not received a response. The invitation remains open.

What is the state of journalism today, and where is it headed?

At the Epoch Times Insider Forum, Bay Area Innovators host Steve Ispas caught up with past guests from the show, gathered under one roof like a small reunion, and asked each of them the same three questions.

How do they see the state of journalism in the United States right now? What are they working on? And what do they think of The Epoch Times?

Guests talked about political polarization, the shift from advertising and subscriptions to clicks, and the rise of podcasts and independent voices.

They also shared their latest projects, from books and investments to community work, and heard from an Epoch Times leader on how the organization began in a basement in Atlanta in 2000.

Bay Area Innovators was built on one idea: Find the people shaping our society and let them tell their stories in their own words. This special edition looks back at some of those voices, and at what they think about the news today.

Where do you get your news, and what would you want from journalism in the years ahead? Let us know in the comments.

A teenager spent 26 hours straight on TikTok during summer break. Natalie Boll said that isn’t an accident. It’s the design.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Boll, founder and CEO of Tribela, to unpack what’s really behind social media addiction in kids, and why most current fixes fall short.

Natalie breaks down Meta’s $18 billion settlement, the shift in litigation from content moderation to product design, and why she’s skeptical the new guardrails will work. She also explains the push for digital ID verification and the free speech risks it creates.

She shares how her daughter’s experience with cyberbullying led her to research the problem for over a year, the rise of sextortion targeting minors, and why she built Tribela instead, a platform without autoplay, infinite scroll, or public metrics, such as likes and comments.

She also explains why banning kids from social media outright could backfire, and why she believes the real fix has to come from companies building safety in from the start.

Watch the full episode for a close look at the design choices behind the apps kids use every day.

Alan Dershowitz campaigned for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Sixty-five years later, he says the Democratic Party he supported no longer exists.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus and author of 63 books, to discuss his newest release and why he left the Democratic Party. Dershowitz explains why he believes the party of JFK, Bill Clinton, and Lyndon Johnson has shifted toward positions he can no longer support, and he shares his experience being banned from speaking at public libraries and schools after publicly changing his political affiliation.

The conversation also covers birthright citizenship and how he believes Congress could legally narrow it, what he sees as judicial overreach in American courts, the state of anti-Semitism on college campuses since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and why he calls the current environment on free speech “selective.”

At 88 years old, Dershowitz also reflects on his decades representing high-profile clients, the accusations he has faced throughout his career, and what continues to motivate his writing and advocacy today.

He sat down in Tiananmen Square, took off his shoes, and meditated for 30 seconds. It cost him a beaten face, a dislocated jaw, and a lifetime ban from China.In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Leeshai Lemish, the longtime emcee of Shen Yun Performing Arts, who has introduced audiences to classical Chinese dance and music at nearly 2,000 performances worldwide. Leeshai shares what led a former Israeli national baseball pitcher to a meditation practice called Falun Gong, why he flew to Beijing in 2001 with 34 strangers from 12 countries to stage a 30-second protest, and what happened when Chinese police surrounded them within seconds.He describes being beaten so badly his jaw was dislocated, being handed a state newspaper the next morning claiming he had been treated well and sent home, and what that moment taught him about how propaganda actually works. He also recounts a hunger strike in a Paris airport after being blacklisted from a country for the first time, and how Icelandic citizens fought back on his behalf.Twenty-five years later, Leeshai has documented more than 200 cases of the Chinese Communist Party targeting Shen Yun, testified before Congress on transnational repression, and continues introducing the same show around the world every year.Watch the full episode for a firsthand account of what happened, and why he’s still telling this story today.

Every day, people type sensitive information into free artificial intelligence (AI) tools without thinking twice about where that data actually goes.

In this episode of “Bay Area Innovators,” host Steve Ispas sits down with Dustin Stout, founder and CEO of Magai, to unpack what really happens behind the scenes when you use an AI chatbot. Stout explains that most AI tools reserve the right by default to use your prompts, files, and conversations as training data for future models, and that opting out often means digging through settings most users never find. He shares an experience of turning off data training on one app, only to find it silently switched back on a week later.

The conversation covers why free AI tools aren’t really free, how personal and proprietary information typed into a chatbot could resurface in ways users never intended, and the gap between what AI companies promise about privacy and what they actually build into their products.

Stout also shares his own path to founding Magai, including two failed startups, $65,000 in losses, and the moment ChatGPT changed the direction of his career.

Why would the Chinese Communist Party bother trying to bribe an IRS agent over a dance company's nonprofit status?

In this episode of “Bay Area Innovators,” host Steve Ispas sits down with Steve Lance, NTD's Washington bureau chief and executive producer of the documentary “Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun.” What began as a look into the New York Times' unusual amount of coverage of Shen Yun became an in-depth look into how foreign influence operations can work through American institutions.

Lance walks through the protest outside Lincoln Center where demonstrators couldn't explain what they were handing out, the man in the shadows resupplying their signs, and how that trail led to a leaked Chinese intelligence memo, a bribery attempt on an undercover FBI agent, and the case that was ultimately linked to the indictment of a sitting California mayor.

He also discusses related events he sees happening in Silicon Valley today, from university associations to algorithmic influence.

Watch the full episode for the story behind “Unbroken” and what it revealed about a much larger operation.

They met as dancers sharing the same stage. Years later, they are still telling stories together—just from different sides of the curtain.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Andrew Fung and Alison Chen, two classical Chinese dancers who came to the art form from opposite directions. Alison grew up in San Jose and left California as a teenager to train at Feitian Academy. Andrew was studying biomedical engineering at UC Davis and had never danced at all.

Now, 18 years later, Andrew is still a principal dancer with Shen Yun. Alison, a gold medalist at the NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition, serves as Dance Department Chair at Fei Tian College Northern Campus, training the next generation.

They talk about the audience moment that changed why Alison dances, why perseverance became the lesson that outlasted everything else, and what innovation means inside a tradition with strict boundaries. They also discuss the documentary “Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun,” screening in San Francisco.

Escaping North Korea is not necessarily the hardest part. Many refugees must then escape China.In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Dan Chung, cofounder of Crossing Borders and author of “Hard Freedom,” who has worked with North Korean refugees in China and South Korea for over 20 years.China does not recognize North Korean refugees, grant them rights, or publish numbers on them. Chung explains what that means in practice: a trafficking industry that sells women crossing the border, a zero-tolerance policy that sends those caught back to prison camps, and surveillance so complete that refugees report having to send police a daily photo of themselves with their husbands.He also walks through the second escape, a 3,000-mile route through China, Laos, and Vietnam to Thailand, where refugees are told the fastest way to gain legal protection is to get themselves arrested.Watch the full episode for a firsthand account of what escaping North Korea actually costs.

How much water does AI actually use, and what happens to it afterward? Data centers, water scarcity, and wastewater pollution are becoming one of the most urgent stories behind the AI boom.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with David Gory, founder and CEO of Airbuild and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, whose startup uses microalgae to treat wastewater and recover nutrients at the same time. David explains how data centers using evaporative cooling draw water from aquifers and rivers, lose roughly 80 percent to evaporation, and are left with a concentrated remainder that can push waterways past legal nutrient limits.

His own path started in Nigeria, where he relied on well water because the sources around him were too polluted to trust. He immigrated to the United States at 16.

The conversation covers how Airbuild's BioPod technology works, why small cities hosting new data centers often lack the treatment infrastructure to handle them, and what it takes to raise money for a water company when nearly all the capital is chasing AI.