The Inventivity Pod

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is hard to detect, and is sometimes called the "invisible injury." Ron Hayes and Nancy Denslow, both scientists at the McKnight Brain Institute and the founders of Banyan Biomarkers, have developed a blood-based test that will make TBI detection and treatment easier and faster.   One potential application is to detect brain injury in newborn infants. *This episode was originally released  on April 1, 2020.* 

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is hard to detect, and is sometimes called the “invisible injury.” Ron Hayes and Nancy Denslow, both scientists at the McKnight Brain Institute and the founders of Banyan Biomarkers, have developed a blood-based test that will make TBI detection and treatment easier and faster.   One potential application is to detect brain injury in newborn infants. *This episode was originally released  on April 1, 2020.* 

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:41

This morning, we have Dr. Ron Hayes , one of the co-founders of Banyan Biomarkers with us. Welcome, Ron .

Ron Hayes: 0:46

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 0:47

So Ron , before we start talking about Banyan Biomarkers and what a biomarker is and what it does, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where were you from? Where’d you grow up and how did you decide to become a scientist?

Ron Hayes: 0:58

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia in the fifties at the time, it was a, quite a conservative time , uh , somewhat isolated, really a classic vision of the old Seth. My undergraduate major at the University of Richmond was classical languages. And , uh, then I did some graduate work in philosophy. So it’s surprising sometimes to find myself , uh , here today. But if we want to elaborate at some point, I think it’s been a benefit for me to have a liberal education.

Richard Miles: 1:30

Tell us a little bit about what you’re like as a kid where you were very curious, sort of interested in everything. And when did you sort of know you wanted to gravitate towards a scientific field

Ron Hayes: 1:39

As a kid, I didn’t know. I read voraciously wasn’t , uh , much of a sports person. I, although I ultimately ended up playing competitive tennis later in life, but at that time I was really quite focused on reading

Richard Miles: 1:57

Really? Okay. Did you have a teacher that stood out or were either of your parents? So what did they do, were they scientist engineers, doctors?

Ron Hayes: 2:07

No, I was the first person in my family to go to college. They, they encouraged reading. Uh, they , uh, certainly liked to see me do it, but , uh, as I reflect, it was sort of a self-taught environment. And I read anything put in front of me.

Richard Miles: 2:25

Tell us a little bit now , uh, let’s talk about biomarkers , uh, for folks who don’t know what that means, what is a biomarker? How does it work?

Ron Hayes: 2:34

It’s an indicator of , uh, the organic state of an individual or an animal that provides in a medical situation information on the health or the disease state of the person. And a biomarker can be a variety of different things. It could be information from the blood such as we use in, in, in our, or it could be an image of the body. It could be a recording of bodily activity, such as heart rate, but any of these things collectively are referred to as biomarkers and they’re used to assist in the diagnosis of health and disease.

Richard Miles: 3:16

So in, in the case of Banyan Biomarkers, you’ve come up with the specific use here, dealing with traumatic brain injury, explain how the biomarker net instance works or indicates what you want it to indicate.

Ron Hayes: 3:30

I think the best analogy would probably be a heart attack. Okay. So all of us today, I think can understand if we have very severe chest pain and persistent chest pain, we’ll go to an emergency room. And the first thing they’ll do is draw blood and they’ll look at the level of a protein in the blood called traponin, but it happens to be a protein that’s in muscle cells of hearts. And if the muscle cells are injured or dying, of course, that protein escapes into the blood and if there’s a lot of it, you know, you’re having a heart attack. In many ways it’s a similar process for the brain. If the brain is injured and brain cells, neurons are supportive, cells called golia are injured or dying they shed proteins that can show up in the blood. For a long time people didn’t believe that was possible. There was a blood-brain barrier that whatever went on in the brain stayed in the brain, but every search helped discount that prejudice. So we measured those proteins in the brain. If they’re elevated, you have some form of brain injury in this case, traumatic brain injury.

Richard Miles: 4:39

So is the real breakthrough here. The fact that we can do that now through blood, as opposed to, I guess, an MRI would be the next best way of diagnosing a traumatic brain injury. Is that correct?

Ron Hayes: 4:50

In essence, yes. I mean , it was , uh , a violation of orthodoxy that in some ways had prevented people from just doing it. And it’s far cheaper, a blood test obviously is far cheaper than what’s called a computerized tomographic scan or a CT scan or an even more expensive MRI. In fact, magnetic resonance imaging isn’t used in clinical practice. It’s primarily , uh , in acute clinical care, it’s primarily a diagnostic tool reserved for neurodegeneration or elective processes. But if you show up at an ER, you’ll get a CT scan, not an MRI.

Richard Miles: 5:29

So I’m guessing there’s a , there’s a whole range of applications out there in which you might have some sort of brain injury, but it would simply be too complicated, costly, complex to actually do a CT or MRI. Is that really a now the main advantage of , of being able to do it by blood?

Ron Hayes: 5:46

That’s one important advantage is that you can triage or you can stage people and tell them whether or not they need to CT. And you really would like to avoid that if possible for a number of reasons,

Richard Miles: 6:00

Avoid the CT.

Ron Hayes: 6:00

Avoid the CT scan. Absolutely because they’re of course expensive. They increased the time in the emergency rooms, which is always critical, but even more importantly, there’s a lot of radiation exposure to CT scans. And you certainly don’t want to do that unnecessarily.

Richard Miles: 6:20

Tell me a little bit about the formation of the company. So you, you and Nancy, and were others involved in the original invention?

Ron Hayes: 6:28

Uh , one other founder, Kevin Wang.

Richard Miles: 6:31

So after you hit upon the idea, or you figured out that you could do this, did you just get together and say, Hey, let’s form a company and see if we can market this, or tell us a little bit about how that happened.

Ron Hayes: 6:41

Uh , those kinds of events are sort of like , uh , a marriage. You know, you never quite know what the precipitating moment was , uh, in a long chain that leads to , uh , that union. But I would say it was a perfect storm of time and place and people. And I had been asked by NIH to look at a technology related to biomarkers and got interested in it, talked to Nancy Denslow because she knew a lot more about protein chemistry than I did, and was also collaborating with Kevin Wang who had some interesting ideas about brain injury processes. So in that stew , the company was gridlocked. Yeah.

Richard Miles: 7:26

What year was that again Ron?

Ron Hayes: 7:27

We formed Banyan in 2002,

Richard Miles: 7:30

2002. Okay. And how’s it doing now? Do you have big clients or who is buying the process?

Ron Hayes: 7:37

That’s a very interesting story. And I think for young entrepreneurs, I would advise them to be nurtured by their naivety, because if they knew what they were doing from conception, they might’ve been less bold, but Banyan it take, which I didn’t understand at the time, between about $150 to $200 million dollars to bring a biomarker through the FDA. And we were fortunate,

Richard Miles: 8:02

So let me stop you, $150 $200 million dollars?

Ron Hayes: 8:05

Yes. Well, and that’s chump change compared to a therapy, which is multiple billions of dollars.

Richard Miles: 8:13

So for our listeners who aren’t familiar with FDA approval process for drugs and pharmaceuticals and treatments, why does it take that long, and that much money?

Ron Hayes: 8:22

That’s a subject of obvious controversy. And when I entered into the process, I entered into it with the same kind of concerns and skepticism that people often bring to the FDA process. That said having lived through it, a lot of the time is justified. And the process of diagnostics, if you want to generate data that influences potentially a life or death medical decision, you have to be absolutely certain of the technologies’ performance and reliability in the case of medical devices that take some time.

Richard Miles: 9:00

I see. So it’s not like a, a drug that you have to make sure is , uh , safe and won’t hurt somebody. But the fact that these tests will be used to make those types of decisions. That’s why the FDA steps in and says, we really need to make sure this works.

Ron Hayes: 9:14

In fact, the FDA , uh, has become, I think at least in my own experience, very responsive. The FDA offered and executed, an expedited review. So we got to review and feedback in six months on the basis of what they called their breakthrough technology. So that’s really not a very long period of time.

Richard Miles: 9:35

Ron, you’re experienced in this company , uh , you know, a start startup and it sounds like it’s doing well, but as anyone who’s done, a startup knows there are good days and there are bad days. Tell us about one of your best or best day. And tell us if you’d like to one of your worst or the worst day you’ve had in this experience.

Ron Hayes: 9:54

There’s a term, an image I often invoke. I was a fighter pilot, and we often describe our missions as long periods of boredom, punctuated by terror or ecstasy as the moment may be. So terror. We were meeting a short there , the company was formed and we had secured some money. And we had a consulting CEO who advised us blandly that we were out of money and with no warning and no mea culpa.

Richard Miles: 10:27

So in the jet fighter, now your , your engine just shut down.

Ron Hayes: 10:31

Well, I was waiting to light the burners and blow some stuff up, but it was very, very disconcerting, very discouraging and we survived it.

Richard Miles: 10:40

How did you turn that around? You went, you had no money and what happened how’d you keep going?

Ron Hayes: 10:46

Well, we were very fortunate to get congressional support from the Florida delegations, actually, Congressman Bill Young, who’s passed away in Tampa as well as Congressman Sterns who’s no longer here. And we got some congressional support through the DOD, which ultimately morphed into sustained support because a department of defense really pioneered interest in this technology because of the Wars, unfortunately in Afghanistan.

Richard Miles: 11:14

I see because this is a , a much easier way to assess traumatic brain injury on the battlefield, I’d take it.

Ron Hayes: 11:20

Yes. And of course, having a CT scanner in a far forward medical, environment’s extremely difficult. And you could say, get this person back for a CT scan or not. Got it.

Richard Miles: 11:31

So, Ron, tell us about some of the future applications of the Banyan biomarkers.

Ron Hayes: 11:37

Well, there are many applications I’ll focus on one that is particularly close to my heart, and that is assessing in a diagnosis and the treatment of brain injury that occurs during birth.

Richard Miles: 11:51

Birth?

Ron Hayes: 11:52

During birth. This is the kind of injury that can result in cerebral palsy, where at birth, the blood flow to the baby and the brain is interrupted at a very critical period. So the brain is quite vulnerable. This can lead to minimally delayed development, and of course, death to that extreme my own son, aspirated meconium at birth, and he had an event. And of course, any parent can understand confronting that at birth. So by rapid diagnosis from even your umbilical cord blood, you can intervene quickly and appropriately. There is in fact, a treatment where you cool the baby’s hypothermia, so you can quickly determine the baby’s need, and whether they’re a good candidate for the treatment and working closely with a very dedicated neonatologist at the University of Florida, Dr. Mike Weiss has done a marvelous job of leading this effort.

Richard Miles: 12:49

So absent of using the biomarkers, Ron , if I understand correctly, would the brain injury go undetected until later? Because are there no necessarily obvious signs of that event?

Ron Hayes: 13:01

There are signs, but it’s not as rigorous and as definitive as a blood test. So the blood test would provide a very rapid and definitive test. It’s just like a concussion

Richard Miles: 13:15

Right.

Ron Hayes: 13:15

A brain injury, the what’s called a Glasgow coma scale is quite subjective. You want a hard number quickly.

Richard Miles: 13:21

Right. And so, and in a blood test, of course, the standard at right after the baby’s born. So it would be something that would be picked up in all babies potentially right?

Ron Hayes: 13:29

Ultimately , uh , I would look at it as every parent wants to know, is my baby. Okay? And short of what’s called the app guard test a very crude test. You don’t know that. And of course you wouldn’t know if the brain’s okay. So this could be available to everyone once it’s , uh, of course, FDA approved, it could be available.

Richard Miles: 13:48

That that is exciting. Um , Ron, if , if somebody , uh , uh , a young scientist or entrepreneur came to you and said, I’ve got this brilliant idea, and I’m going to form a company and I hit the big time, what would your advice be to that person?

Ron Hayes: 14:02

Don’t do it for money. I think that’s a huge mistake that people make, of course, very broadly in life, but most conspicuously in startups, people labor, I think under the illusions of IT, I’m going to make a what’s up dude app and make a billion dollars and rockstar. In fact, I think it takes a good deal, more maturity, and a willingness to give up ego and a commitment to whatever you’re doing. That’s deeply rooted in your own sense of purpose.

Richard Miles: 14:39

Excellent words of advice. Uh , Ron, thank you very much for joining us this morning on Radio Cade.

Ron Hayes: 14:44

Thank you.

Outro: 14:48

Radio Cade would like to thank the people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating inventor interviews, Bob McPeak of Heartwood soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcast and music theme, Tracy Collins for the composition and performance of the Radio Cade theme song, featuring violinist, Jacob Lawson and special, thanks to the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida.

Is Bitcoin a store of value during a financial crisis? What role does it play in a portfolio? Scott Melker, a successful trader and one of the leading voices of Cryptos discusses the origins of bitcoin, its uses, and what the future may look like. 

Dr. Richard Melker holds 69 issued US Patents, with others pending, as well as hundreds of foreign patents.    A University of Florida Professor Emeritus of Anesthesiology, Melker has invented everything from disappearing sunscreen to a new type of oxygen saturation sensor.  His first invention was an emergency airway, which is used primarily by the military and by EMT’s.   

Dr. Richard Melker holds 69 issued US Patents, with others pending, as well as hundreds of foreign patents.    A University of Florida Professor Emeritus of Anesthesiology, Melker has invented everything from disappearing sunscreen to a new type of oxygen saturation sensor.  His first invention was an emergency airway, which is used primarily by the military and by EMT’s.   

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:38

Serial inventors, I’m not talking about people who invented Cornflakes and Wheaties , but people who have lots and lots of ideas and patents, and today I’m pleased to welcome one such person, Richard Melker, a University of Florida, professor emeritus of anesthesiology who holds 69 issued U.S. patents with many others pending as well as hundreds of foreign patents. Welcome to Radio Cade, Dr. Melker. -Thank you so much for having me. Ok if I call you Richard? -Please, two Richards in the room here, what could go wrong? So Richard, you hold patents for everything from disappearing sunscreen to a new kind of oxygen saturation sensor. So, first thing I got to ask you are patents like kids, do you even have a favorite or do you just have to love all of them equally?

Dr. Richard Melker: 1:20

Patents are like kids. I have to love all of them equally. But, the reality is is that the patents that have resulted in medical devices are the most satisfying to me. Obviously, when you find out that you’ve invented something that a company starts to manufacture and people use it and it affects people’s lives, particularly when it’s saved somebodies life, that’s the most satisfying thing of all. And over the years, I’ve gotten letters from people in the fields where I’ve invented technology thanking me, and there’s nothing better than having that.

Richard Miles: 1:55

That’s an interesting point, and I think maybe of interest to people who aren’t as familiar with this world is that there may be a popular misconception that an inventor, when they get a patent, they already know exactly what that thing is going to be used for and how it’s going to be applied. But very often the case is you’re patenting a new process or a new technology or a new insight. And the end use of that may not be clear for quite some time. Is that more or less accurate?

Dr. Richard Melker: 2:18

I would think that somewhat accurate, in my case, usually when I conceive of a product and when you’re inventing something, it’s called the conception. When I conceive of it, I’ve already found out that there’s something lacking in the medical field that there’s a need for. So in my case, I think that I tell people that I get frustrated when I can’t do something or help somebody. And therefore I conceive of something. And then we eventually develop the product and it’s commercialized.

Richard Miles: 2:49

You usually have a fairly good idea in mind and what the end use is going to be when you’re actually filing the patent?

Dr. Richard Melker: 2:54

In my case, I think that’s true, of course, with many of my products once they’re on the market, somebody else does , I can use this for something else or I have a better way or a different way of using it. So, I would say that I conceive of a way of using it frequently, that’s what happens. It’s used as I conceived of it, but there are a lot of really bright people out there. And they’re always thinking of very good ideas, particularly in the medical profession. -Right. And I’m sure in other scientific professions as well.

Richard Miles: 3:23

So let’s talk about a few of those ideas that you’ve had. Your background is anesthesiology, you see problems that gee, I wish there was a solution, and that was kind of the starting point, right? For some of these inventions. What was your first patent? Why don’t we start there?

Dr. Richard Melker: 3:35

My first issued patent on my first attempt that happened, there are quite different. So my first ideas came out when I was a intern and a resident out in California, and I would be involved in taking care of a child and there was something that I wanted to have available that wasn’t available. So at that point being a resident, I was able to file my own patents. I wasn’t really working for somebody who had rights to that technology. And I took our meager savings and I spent it on my patent attorney and it turned out that both of the ideas I had had already been patented, so my wife put a stop to me filing for patents. When I became a faculty member at the University of Florida, I conceived of the first product that ended up being patented. We found a company to license it from the University of Florida. They developed the product and it was extremely successful, -and what was that product? The first product I developed was an emergency airway. So normally, in an emergency situation, an anesthesiologist or a , an ER physician or an EMT , will put a tube down the throat of the patient so that they can breathe for the patient. Under certain circumstances, particularly with facial trauma or other unusual situations, you’re unable to put that tube in. So, I developed a emergency airway that could be inserted in the area of the trachea to ventilate those patients, and the predominant use today is in the military. Although, it’s used outside the hospital in what we call pre-hospital care, emergency care fairly frequently as well.

Richard Miles: 5:17

Interesting. So have most of your patents been in the same general realm of breathing, or how would you characterize most of the , your ideas?

Dr. Richard Melker: 5:25

Right. So early on, I specialized in one area, and so most of my patents were related to that. I became very interested in ventilation, which is a big topic right now with the Coronavirus, is how we’re going to bend where all these people who have pneumonia. And there were ventilators, very sophisticated, expensive ventilators that are used in the hospitals. But what do you do outside the hospital? Well, what they were doing at the time is just squeezing a bag, and so my collaborators and I, and I think it’s very important to point out that a lot of times, it’s not by yourself, you work with other people. So my collaborators and I started looking at ways of making small ventilators that could be used outside the hospital.

Richard Miles: 6:08

Interesting. So one thing that just occurred to me, there are a lot of really good doctors out there that see patients every day, they know what they’re doing, they’re a lot of good researchers out there, but they don’t all become inventors. So the question is, why? What distinguishes you in the fact that not only are you there in a clinical situation, you say, well, here’s a problem, and gosh, I wish we had this, you actually then take that extra step and invent. Why don’t other people do that? Right? Cause they see the same things presumably, and they had the same frustrations and problems. So why doesn’t every doctor working in a clinic, also an inventor?

Dr. Richard Melker: 6:37

So, you made an extremely important observation. I believe that doctors all the time are jury rigging or working with technology that they could make better, but they’re so busy and they don’t understand, or they haven’t been taught all the steps that are required to take the idea of how they would improve that product to the point where it becomes a commercial product. And at the university of Florida, at one point, I actually taught a course to the faculty in the college of medicine on how to protect their ideas, because it’s very important that you protect the idea, how you disclose the idea to the university and then how the steps after that, that are required for commercialization.

Richard Miles: 7:23

That’s a great point . If I understand you correctly, essentially these doctors are inventors, they just don’t know it. They’ve come up with shortcuts that they’re actually employing, but that extra step of thinking, okay, what would this look like as an actual product? They either don’t have the time or the knowledge to do that.

Dr. Richard Melker: 7:36

Exactly. So, yes, I think the knowledge part is extremely important. I will take one quick aside and tell you that, at one point we put together a course for people in industry who actually commercialize the products, brought them into the hospitals and let them see how their products were being used. And their engineers in particular, recognize improvements in their products when they saw how the doctors were having to use their products and work around problems with the products. So, to me, the perfect world is where engineers and physicians in my field get together and jointly understand what the needs are.

Richard Miles: 8:19

That reminds me of a story I heard several years ago, I want to say, it’s the University of Arizona, maybe Arizona State University, in which their school of entrepreneurship decided that instead of just sort of taking a bunch of business students or future MBAs say, okay, be an entrepreneur, think of a company idea and market it. What they found when they did that is the quality of the ideas was actually not that great. You’d have business students go , okay, we’re going to do a tee shirt shop, you know, there was no revolutionary breakthrough, but what they did is they paired them with, I think nursing students and the nurses had all sorts of ideas, exactly what you’re talking about, having been in the environment in which you’re trying to get something done, and you’ve got to modify this or jury rig that, they had the actual insights into what could be commercially successful. And those people paired with the business people got great entrepreneurs or at least entrepreneurial projects for school in a way that just telling somebody think of a great idea, didn’t yield those sort of results.

Dr. Richard Melker: 9:09

Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head. And one of the courses I taught was a course in the college of engineering, where we got engineers and students from the business school and we would have people come in and tell them what their ideas were. And we would put teams together so that we could do a business plan, we could figure out how to commercialize the product. You need, all those different people. And the course was on product development and intellectual property. So they had to learn about patent law to protect the idea and then they had to figure out how to take this idea and turn it into a commercial product. So that’s a wonderful way to work and if you look at many of my products, there are a lot of inventors on them. Many of them are engineers. Some of them are physicians and occasionally we even have somebody from the business school.

Richard Miles: 10:01

Occasionally you’ll let them in right? Okay, so that kind of sets up my next question. And that is sort of the overall process. I mean, you have a lot of experience in this and been doing this for awhile and in general, I would say the United States does this pretty well, certainly in the last three to four decades, getting those research ideas out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. And that involves a cast of hundreds if it’s done, well. But as you said, the universities tend now to give much more help and assistance to the researchers, whether it’s filing a patent or doing a licensing. Do we have a system now that is, perfect is not the right word, but works fine? Or are there other things that universities in combination with government and in combination with the market need to be doing better to keep this round of innovation going and that whole cycle of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Dr. Richard Melker: 10:47

Right. So, the interest in intellectual property and product development really got its seed with the Bidell act in 1981, where federally funded research, if new intellectual property came out of it, the universities were allowed to exploit it. They didn’t have to turn it over to the federal government. And so offices of technology licensing under a variety of names have flourished at many schools. And if there’s a medical school or an engineering school, that’s the predominant locations in the university where that type of technology is developed. So my answer to your question is things are far better than they used to be, a lot more intellectual property is being managed and commercialize . But I still think that somewhere during medical education or engineering education, people need to know that when they have a good idea, how to get that through the system and eventually commercialized.

Richard Miles: 11:47

Right. And we went to an interesting presentation last night and the subject, it was actually some new venture fund concentrating on Florida, and he rolled out some stats there, and one of the issues of course is financing, right? Because you’ve got this great idea, you’ve tested it, technology is solid, but you’ve got to do some more hurdles before it gets to market. And one of those is raised a lot of money. And to this day, even though Florida is like fourth largest state in the country, lots of technologies coming out , the universities, most of the venture capital still on the West coast and Seattle and LA area and or the upper Northeast corridor and not a whole lot in Florida. Which I think still comes as a surprise to us because I knew that was the case 10 years ago. But I would have thought by now, surely there’d be a lot of firms wanting to capitalize on these ideas coming out of Florida. Have you seen any change in the time that you’re doing this in terms of financing available for new ideas?

Dr. Richard Melker: 12:37

There have been several attempts to increase the amount of funding into the state of Florida, but as you pointed out, it still predominates on the West coast and in the Northeast, I, as you know, started a company in 2005 here in Florida, and that not only for us, but other companies that have started out of products that were developed at the University of Florida or technologies that were developed at the University of Florida has always been the issue is getting venture capitalists to come to Gainesville, or you have to go see them. And many of the companies, as you’re probably aware, have actually moved to locations in the United States, which are much more favorable for raising venture capital and where the people who have that interest to concentrated. We just haven’t in the state of Florida have been able to attract that as yet.

Richard Miles: 13:28

Let’s go back and talk about your company that you started at Exhale, right in 2005, was that your first entry into sort of full fledge in the business world? Or have you started companies before that at all?

Dr. Richard Melker: 13:38

That was the first company that I founded, where I was a founder in the company and decided to make the leap from being full time at the University of Florida to part time at the company and part time at the University of Florida. And I could only do that because I moved that of academic medicine and patient care into the research realm. So being in the research realm, the University of Florida, even though I had to jump through some hoops, was willing to allow me to spend part of my time developing this new company and part of my time as a faculty member at the University of Florida.

Richard Miles: 14:13

So a number of guests on the show have done something similar. They’ve gone from academia to starting their own company or being involved at a senior level. Tell us what that was like for you. It doesn’t always go swimmingly that transition cause they’re two really different worlds, right? Academia, and then startup are , or are they, what was it like for you?

Dr. Richard Melker: 14:29

It was interesting. I think that’s the way to put it. I mean, you had to go out and raise money and you always underestimate how much money and how much time it’s going to take to develop a technology and find somebody to actually manufacture it. So, on the one hand I had to learn a whole new discipline, but fortunately there were people in Gainesville with business experience who we partnered with. So they were founders of the company as well, because I had taught these courses at the University of Florida. And because many of my prior inventions had already been commercialized, I had the opportunity to not only be a physician, but to work with engineers and the business school. And in many cases I knew what company would be most interested in commercializing the product, so I had a lot of interactions that probably most physicians didn’t have at that point.

Richard Miles: 15:24

It wasn’t exactly a cold start. You had a front row seat to see the process and how it’s done. -And I did it anyway. Right. That’s good point. Yeah, yeah, I have seen some examples, unfortunately, of academics and particularly doctors, who don’t make the transition quite so well because they treat the business world and investors as students who don’t quite get their brilliant idea and you probably learn VC types don’t really like to be talked down to, right? You can’t patronize them that you have to explain your technology, but not in a way that someone might, if they were say in a lecture hall with a bunch of freshmen.

Dr. Richard Melker: 15:57

Right. So one of the things I think is my strong suit is the ability to talk to people who are, non-physicians, not in the medical world, in the language that they understand what it is that we’re trying to do. Right. And I think that is extremely important because I’ve been to many presentations where they are to venture capitalists or to people who are not from the medical world where the doctor just had a really difficult time getting them excited because they never really grasp the potential of the technology.

Richard Miles: 16:30

I’m sure. You’ve probably been to some of these pitch competitions. And again, I hate to pick on doctors, but I remember seeing when it was like four doctors, it was slide after slide as if they were at a medical conference with nothing but a regression analysis and all this data up there, and you can do maybe one of those slides. Right? But after that, you got to talk, like you said, how it’s going to solve your problems where its position in the market, et cetera, et cetera, and not just more data. Right?

Dr. Richard Melker: 16:51

Exactly. So if I worked with a physician who is planning or was involved in a startup company, the first thing I did is took their slide deck and turn the 60 slides into five slides. And I said, you have got five minutes.

Richard Miles: 17:05

And I’m sure they argued that every one of those 60 slides was absolutely essential . Right?

Dr. Richard Melker: 17:09

Exactly. But the elevator pitch, can I sink the hook into somebody, get them interested later on, there will be people who may be interested in 30 of the 60 slides. And a lot of it has to do with when they see how excited you are, how invested you are in the technology, but you have to remember they’re business people. They want to know how they’re going to make money. And I think shark tank is a perfect example for most people when you look at them and it’s a yes or a no, particularly, Kevin O’Leary who says, how am I going to make money? And that’s what the real world of capitalism is about.

Richard Miles: 17:48

And I remember, I got a really Interesting insight from a VC. I think we were both judges in the competition and he said, look, our company’s going to do due diligence, et cetera, but when I hear pitch, I assume that the technology you described to me works as you describe it. Now tell me how it’s going to make me rich. Right? But instead, the doctors sort of like working through a geometry proof , if A then B being the BBC , what you would do at an academic conference, proving your idea. And they’re like, no, no, got it, idea works. Now, how are we gonna make money off it?

Dr. Richard Melker: 18:13

Exactly. And I think what happens is good. VCs have their own people who will come in and analyze the potential of your technology. So you tell them what you think it’s worth. And then they decide, okay, this probably could be commercially successful. And then they’ll bring in their own experts. Although, in my experience, that’s been a two sided coin because, one of my most successful products, I took to several companies and they had scientific advisory boards and it was turned down by two of the largest medical device manufacturers in the world. And the third company, I went to had a totally different philosophy if you’d like to talk about it. And the product has been one of the most successful products I ever developed. -So you’ve seen it all? Yeah,yeah.

Richard Miles: 19:00

Let me ask a little bit about you, like many of the folks on our show, you originally hail from New York city, but you grew up in Florida. I am seeing your dad started his own company, was a stockbroker. How old were you first of all, when you moved to Florida?

Dr. Richard Melker: 19:11

Well, I love living in Florida obviously, and I went to the University of Florida for two years after I graduated from high school, but then I moved to New York and I didn’t initially have any idea of what I was going to do. So if I could take a quick aside, the worst question in the world for me that I get asked and medical students get asked and people get asked in every interview is what do you want to be doing in five years and ten years from now? And my answer is I don’t have the slightest idea. And I think at least for me, I just kept growing and moving off into different directions as I found things that were interesting and exciting and had potential. And so when you’re young, you may answer that question because you’re being interviewed. But I think the reality is keep an open mind. Don’t focus too early on what you want to be. Just absorb everything around you. Certainly the son of a physician may have parents who moved them in that direction or the son or daughter of a lawyer may move them in that direction. But in general, my advice is when you go to college, just absorb as much as you can. And that’s what happened to me. I didn’t like this, I didn’t like this and then one day I enrolled in a course, and then I knew what direction I would be moving in.

Richard Miles: 20:32

Richard as a kid or early in your schooling, do you ever remember having these ideas that other people didn’t have? Was it sort of evidence of that future inventor there? Were you a tinkerer? Did you like working in a garage or whatever? What age did you realize that you could come up with ideas that other people couldn’t come up with?

Dr. Richard Melker: 20:48

So I can’t pinpoint an age, but I can tell you why I became an inventor. And that is I would work with things, this was long before I was involved in medicine and I just said, this could be done better. And my maternal grandfather, all the time I was with him, he was always talking about the limitations of some technology limitations of some product and always saying how we could make it better. But of course he never knew how to make it better. He would tell me. And then I realized that the reason I became an inventor is that when I used existing technology, I realize that it could be improved. And I think if you hang around doctors, and that’s why we brought the engineers into the medical school, that doctors would sit there and while they were doing something, they would literally tell you how to make it better. Now they didn’t know all the steps that it would take, but I started very young, just being a malcontent with the way things were. And for some reason, I started to realize that it was possible to improve upon them and very early on, when I filed one of my first patents, I said, will I ever file another patent? Will there ever be another idea? And then you realize as you keep your notebook, you never get to get all your ideas out. And so what happens is you start picking the ones that are most likely to be successful and commercialized. And I think if you’re an inventor, you’re an inventor your whole life. You’re always have some level of discontent with what’s out there. And you think you have that ego that you can make it better.

Richard Miles: 22:31

We actually have an idea of the Cade Museum, I don’t know if we’ll ever implement it, but we thought, wouldn’t it be cool to maybe have a day where we open up the museum and the park and invite people to bring basically their DIY inventions. In other words, an existing product that they have somehow modified to do something different or better or whatnot, and to see what we get, I think it’d be a lot of fun. And I think we got the idea because we were talking, I think it was a group of farmers. I think it was actually when we did something with 4H and IFAS, and they said, farmers are among the most innovative in the world because they need the sprinkler to do something differently or the hose to irrigate differently. And they do these modifications. And that is actually how a lot of agricultural technology gets developed, as the manufacturers see what the farmers have done with their products go , Oh, that’s what we need to do. And it sounds very similar in a medical field, right? Where the practitioners actually start using those existing inventions or products differently, and then you get a new product

Dr. Richard Melker: 23:22

It’s virtually the same thing. So once I was at the university long enough that I had some success with patenting and commercialization of ideas, people would call me up and they were totally unrelated to medicine. And the most important thing I could tell those people is if you have intellectual property, if you have an idea that could be commercialized before you go around telling everybody about it, you have to protect it. So I would say, don’t tell me, or I would sign a confidentiality agreement,

Richard Miles: 23:52

March them down to the lawyers . Right ?

Dr. Richard Melker: 23:55

Well , actually I teach people to use the U.S. PTO United States Patent Trademark Office website, and do a search. And a lot of the people would come back and they say, well, somebody already patented that. And I’d say, fantastic. You are an inventor, just so happens that the first one you thought of somebody beat you to, but you’re going to be an inventor because they’ve had, that same ability to keep coming up with new ideas. When there’s 6 million patents, you go there can’t possibly be anything new out there for me to invent. And it turns out no, look at all the companies in Silicon Valley and in the Northeast, and all over the world and it never stops and that’s what you learn. So I think when we have our bring your own invention day, the Cade , whatever we call it, I think we’re going to put you in charge. Richard is giving all this advice, but this has been a fascinating conversation. Thanks very much for coming on the show. And I tell you what, once you’ve issued what you’ve issued 69 now? So once you’ve issued 150, we’ll have you back, right? That’ll probably be a couple of years from now. Right? That sounds good, and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. This has been fun.

Richard Miles: 25:01

Thank you, I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 25:04

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates, inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist, Jacob Lawson.

“Super tasters" are people who experience more intense sensations than others. Dr. Linda Bartoshuk is a University of Florida researcher who figured out how to identify super tasters by using “cross-modality” testing. For example, subjects are asked to compare the sweetness of a soft drink to the intensity of various sounds. Linda attributes her interest in taste research to the experience of seeing her father and brother suffer from cancer, which prevented them from being able to taste or enjoy most foods.  

“Super tasters” are people who experience more intense sensations than others. Dr. Linda Bartoshuk is a University of Florida researcher who figured out how to identify super tasters by using “cross-modality” testing. For example, subjects are asked to compare the sweetness of a soft drink to the intensity of various sounds. Linda attributes her interest in taste research to the experience of seeing her father and brother suffer from cancer, which prevented them from being able to taste or enjoy most foods.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965 my name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:37

Welcome to a bittersweet episode, also a sour and salty episode in which you will get a taste of a new method invented by a psychologist at the University of Florida. I’m Richard Miles. My guest today is Linda Bartoshuk, a researcher who discovered the concept of supertasters. Welcome to the show, Linda.

Linda Bartoshuk: 0:52

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 0:52

So Linda, I was going to offer you some Radio Cade coffee, but I’m suddenly afraid it will not measure up to your standards. So tell me, are people afraid when you come to their house for dinner? Do they order out all of a sudden? Is that a problem?

Linda Bartoshuk: 1:05

No, I never stopped to think about that. People do want to know if I’m a super taster and I have to tell them no, I’m not only not. I’m at the opposite end of the distribution.

Richard Miles: 1:15

So, so any listeners thinking of inviting Linda to dinner, you can relax and she won’t show you up. So Linda, we usually start out each show by asking the inventor, entrepreneur or researcher to explain what the what is of what we’re talking about. So why don’t you give an explanation of what is a supertaster and how did you find out that they even exist?

Linda Bartoshuk: 1:35

Supertasters are people who experience more intense taste sensations than do others. That’s the simple original definition of them. Then of course, we started to learn a lot about these people and one of the first things we learned was that they have more taste buds. Not surprising, I suppose more taste buds. They experience more intense taste , but not only do they have more taste buds, because of the anatomy of the tongue and because they’re pain fibers in baskets around tastebuds , they also feel more pain in their mouth. And because the structures that hold the taste buds have touched fibers, they feel more touch. And one of the most important components of food is fat. And we perceive fat by touch. It’s viscous, thick, creamy, oily. These are all touch sensations.

Richard Miles: 2:22

Do these people self identify? I mean, did you give surveys? How does somebody even know that they’re super tasted ? Like most people think the way I taste or look as normal? How do they know that they’re not normal?

Linda Bartoshuk: 2:32

That’s an extremely good question because it gets to the heart of what was special about this work. How do we know if someone’s a supertaster for that matter? How do I know what you taste? If you and I try to compare a taste experience, we use ordinary language. Like I say, Hmm , this lemonade is very sweet to me. Is it very sweet to you? And it doesn’t matter what you say, we haven’t communicated a thing because you don’t know what I’m experiencing that I described as very sweet. So the first question is how can we compare sensations across people? Unless you’re a mind reader, it’s obvious. It’s impossible. So what did we do? Well, we came close. We didn’t solve the problem when it came close. Consider the following. If I can think of something that’s independent of taste and let’s start maybe with sound and I hear a sound as loud or soft and I can match that sound to a taste intensity. If the perception of loudness and the perception of taste are not related, then I can use perception of loudness as a standard and use it to compare taste . And that’s exactly what we do.

Richard Miles: 3:38

Interesting. Okay, so you sort of triangulate your way into this in terms of finding these people who have these extremely intense reactions to taste .

Linda Bartoshuk: 3:46

You came to my lab, I put up a set of earphones on you and I’d play you a pure tone and I’d allow you to adjust the loudness of that tone with a knob. And I’d give you something to taste and I’d say taste this. Think about how intense it is and match the intensity of the taste to the loudness of this tone. Now that’s called cross modality matching and a very, very interesting psychologist, SS Stevens at Harvard. In the 1950s and sixties designed this technique. Humans are extremely good at it. You may not think about it, but you can compare intensity across sensations, no matter what the modalities are. So we pick a modality not related to taste and we use it as a standard. So for example, if I study genetic variation in taste and we use a compound called prop, P. R. O. P., It’s very bitter if you’re a super taster. To me, I’m a non taster, I don’t taste it at all. Now that’s an extreme difference. But how would you measure lesser differences? Well, suppose I took an ordinary Pepsi. I want to know how you experienced the sweetness of Pepsi. I want you to set the sound loudness to the sweetness of a Pepsi. Now a supertaster will turn that knob up to 90 decibels, which is the loudest of train whistle. And somebody like me will turn that knob down to 80 decibels, which is the loudness of a telephone dial tone. Now we know a lot about sound. We know a lot about hearing. We know that 10 decibels is a factor of two. So we now can say that a supertaster you get it.

Richard Miles: 5:20

Yea, you can quantify it.

Linda Bartoshuk: 5:20

P epsi i s twice as sweet to the supertaster because to match it, they u se a sound that was twice as loud.

Richard Miles: 5:26

So I’m surprised marketers haven’t caught on, this wouldn’t be great to say these are loud fries or soft asparagus. Right. Okay. So if you’re a super taster , you experienced these tastes much more intensely. Is that across the board? I mean, every time you put something in your mouth you just sort of like, Oh my God. Or is it nuanced? Even for a supertaster ,

Linda Bartoshuk: 5:43

It’s every time, a factor of two is average. So imagine there are some two supertasters out there to experiencing three, four times as intense taste . Now how do they know that it’s the world they live in? They think it’s ordinary, but it’s not same as the world I live in and the world I live in I think is ordinary. And what’s fascinating is to think about how many experiences out there like this.

Richard Miles: 6:06

So just give me an idea of what rough percentage of the population is super tested?

Linda Bartoshuk: 6:10

That’s an interesting question. In the United States, we probably have about 15% of the population are supertasters.

Richard Miles: 6:17

Oh, that high. Wow .

Linda Bartoshuk: 6:17

But more women than men.

Richard Miles: 6:19

Interesting.

Linda Bartoshuk: 6:19

And it varies by race. So as you start to go around the world and you get to non-Caucasian groups, they have more supertasters. So in fact male Caucasians are the least likely to be supertasters of anybody in the world.

Richard Miles: 6:34

Interesting. Okay. So nobody has to buy me dinner. Right? So what do supertasters do with this superpower? Do you find more of them gravitating to being cooks ? Do they tend to congregate in certain professions or what would I do with this if I had it?

Linda Bartoshuk: 6:49

You know, I was asked this question some years ago and I just sloughed it off and I said, nah, that couldn’t be any connection. What do you like? What you do is too complicated. Actually to my amazement, I’ve done tests in a lot of different professions and there is a connection. A wonderful group of professional cooks invited me to a conference some years ago and they let me test them. There were several hundred people there, there were too many supertasters in that room. And most of those cooks were Caucasian men. So here I am finding all these supertasters in this group and I don’t understand this. I truly do not know why cooks would tend to be supertasters. It’s gotta be more complicated than just tastes . If anything, you think that the cooks would be the non tasters who are less opinionated about hating strong taste . Cause supertasters can get very upset about some things.

Richard Miles: 7:39

Because in addition to being able to enjoy something more they’d probably irritated by.

Linda Bartoshuk: 7:42

Well enjoy it. It’s interesting you said that because we actually did something recently which shows a connection there that I wasn’t expecting. We are measuring, and remember I told you how exciting it was to find this cross modal match technique to find supertasters. We’re doing something similar with pleasure. So we can measure the pleasure of food in supertasters and others. And I can tell you that supertasters get more pleasure from the foods they like a lot.

Richard Miles: 8:10

Interesting. So I joked earlier about marketers getting a hold of this, but there is a serious component here.

Linda Bartoshuk: 8:15

Very serious .

Richard Miles: 8:16

Is there, there’s gotta be, I’m assuming work being done. Maybe you’re doing it on synthetic version of the apparatus and allow supertasters to taste. Can that in some way be reduced to some sort of additive or a new GMO that would give you the same effect as if you were a supertaster ?

Linda Bartoshuk: 8:31

I have no idea because most companies don’t share what they’re doing. They consider it proprietary and they’re not going to tell me what they’re doing. Even if they ask me for help, they’re not going to tell me what the results are.

Richard Miles: 8:42

I see . Okay. But is it possible in theory to do this?

Linda Bartoshuk: 8:46

I’m not sure. I once had a phone call from a fellow in California who owned a vineyard. I’d given a lecture in California and he wanted me to send him prop papers. These are little bitter circles of paper that have a compound on that is particularly good at picking out tasters. Supertasters non tasters. And I had demonstrated it at a lecture and apparently he was there and he wanted to test all his employees and I said, why do you want to do that? And he said, I’m going to fire any of them that aren’t supertasters. I said, I’m not sending you papers at all. And I said, that’s the wrong thing to do. What you need to do is think about how you’re going to use these different specialties. A supertaster is going to be fantastic at picking up an off flavor, but they’re going to pick up bitter that shouldn’t be there in your product. Those are the people you hire to be the specialist to go out and check. But you’re selling wine to , most people are not supertasters and you want to know how they feel about the wine you’re selling.

Richard Miles: 9:40

Exactly. So I imagine back in the days of old, the supertaster would be the guy who tastes the food for the King right?

Linda Bartoshuk: 9:46

Exactly.

Richard Miles: 9:46

And he’s gonna know uh oh, something’s wrong with this, you know, send it back. Oh , that’s fascinating. So how did you sort of end up looking at taste it’s just somebody asks you a question, you got curious. Tell us the path from psychology to an expert on super tasting.

Linda Bartoshuk: 10:00

The first time I heard a question like that I would have answered by saying, well, when I was an undergraduate, the chairman of my department of the psyche department had done his PhD on taste and when I was ready to go to graduate school, he sent me to his mentor, Carl Hoffman, Brown university and I did my PhD with him also. But the truth is I don’t think that was it at all. I think what really did this is my father got lung cancer when I was a junior in college and I remember what was the most disturbing to him was that his sister made him a canned beef. He was a farm boy and this was one of his favorite foods and he tried to eat it and it tasted metallic and it put him off and was one of the main things he talked about when he was ill and I didn’t think about that consciously. But it’s interesting that I ended up working on that problem, on taste, Phantoms , what produces them, how you can treat them. And I didn’t learn this in time to help my father, but many years later my brother developed colon cancer and he had a phantom also and I went to see him, evaluated him and I could tell him what caused it. I still couldn’t fix it. Now I’m working with a friend in Canada, Miriam Griskha, we can actually treat these phantoms. I think that experience with my dad really made this salient and made me want to work in this field.

Richard Miles: 11:18

I hadn’t even thought about the medical aspect and I should have because I recall that my father-in-law, Dr. Cade , one of his inventions apart from Gatorade was a drink called go and it was a high protein milkshake and they were testing it on athletes, but some of the early consumers of that were cancer patients because they really liked the taste of it and it was the only thing that they would want to eat and keep down. And of course it was good for them because everything in milkshake. At the time, he was mostly focused on building up proteins like that and it just happened. It tastes good, but because it tastes good, it was their only.

Linda Bartoshuk: 11:48

Right.

Richard Miles: 11:48

Thing that they wanted to have, right. Linda, so you grew up in a small town in South Dakota and your original love I understand was astronomy correct?

Linda Bartoshuk: 11:55

Yes.

Richard Miles: 11:55

So tell me about some of your early influences. Uh, what was it like to grow up in South Dakota? I, what like five people that live there. Who were some of your early influences? You mentioned your father or did you have other teachers or friends or mentors? What was that like pre-professional before you became a psychologist, what was your life like?

Linda Bartoshuk: 12:12

No, I remember my teachers as being absolutely wonderful, but it’s interesting. I can recount to you some anecdotes and it’s going to sound like I grew up an angry young woman. That is not true because those events didn’t make me angry at the time. They make me angry looking back on them. We had a career day in junior high and each one of us was supposed to write what we wanted to do on a three by five card. A school would get us somebody in that field and we’d interview them. So I wrote down, I wanted to be an astronomer and they had me interview a secretary and I should have begun to catch on then. And so I get the high school and I want to take physics and chemistry and trig and algebra. And my guidance counselor told me these were unrealistic choices for me and he wouldn’t approve my schedule. So I bargained with him and I agreed to take typing and bookkeeping in return for being allowed to take these other subjects. And I should tell you, I think there was one other girl in chemistry. And other than that, it was the only girl in those courses. I gotta tell you though, the typing came in handy. I’ve got to admit that. But the teachers who taught me those subjects, I think were delighted that a girl wanted to take these subjects and they treated me just like the rest of the people in the class. So I don’t have any bad memories of that at all.

Richard Miles: 13:26

Did you enjoy chemistry? Did you find it difficult? Challenging? What was your reaction?

Linda Bartoshuk: 13:30

It’s interesting.

Richard Miles: 13:31

If it tends to be one of those classes to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you don’t like it, you’ll take the basics and you’re out right?

Linda Bartoshuk: 13:36

I didn’t like it much, and yet I’m in the chemical senses and chemistry is really important. And what can I say about that? I don’t think maybe the teachers made us like it enough. I think they didn’t expect us to like it either. And that’s a mistake. And wow. If there’s one thing that kids should be helped to like it’s science and math because it’s gonna help you everywhere, right? It’s going to help you think.

Richard Miles: 13:59

But then you chose to go into psychology. You went to high school in South Dakota, right? And then where did you go do your undergrad?

Linda Bartoshuk: 14:04

Well, I was going to go to South Dakota school of mines and technology and that was my home state school. And my parents took me for a visit and I would have been one of three women in a class of a hundred freshmen. And I said, uh-uh , I do not want to do this. So I went to Carlton college and the thing that made it so wonderful is that my family couldn’t afford to let me stay there for four years, but they were willing to let me go and try it out. And I was walking through the reception line with the president of the university shaking the hand of every freshmen , Lawrence Gould, the great Explorer. It was very exciting and he whispered in my ear, you’ve just been awarded a merit scholarship. Ooh, wow. It paid for my school. I could stay at Karl for four years. So I was all set. They had an observatory. I was going to be an astronomer. I took the math and the science absolutely loved it. And I get to my junior year, and lo and behold, I find out that women aren’t allowed to use the big telescopes we’re considered, I guess, too fragile. Now I’m getting pissed off and my college roommate and I sat, went through the catalog and looked for any major I could switch to that would give me credit for all that math and science. Guess what? Psychology would give me credit for all that math and science. So I could spend the last two years at Carlton taking all the psych courses and catching up with that and graduate with an astronomy, math, and psych. But what happened in my first class, I took it from John Bear, wonderful teacher, and I encountered the study of the senses and I never looked back I just loved it. Wow.

Richard Miles: 15:41

And so the rest is history. How did you end up at Florida? That’s a missing link.

Linda Bartoshuk: 15:45

Florida. Oh boy. I might as well tell you the truth because I’ve written it. I was at Yale for 30 years and I was mad. Yale didn’t treat women well and they didn’t treat me well. I hate to think back on all of the things that happened there. Well let me give you an example. I had an appointment at the Pierce foundation, which is a research Institute affiliated with Yale. And when I got pregnant with my first child, the director, Dr. James Hardy , ex Admiral from the deep South, sorry to say, said to me, we’ll be really sorry to lose you. And I really didn’t know what he meant. And I said, I don’t understand. And he said, well of course you’re going to resign and take care of your child. And I said, no, I’m going to keep working. And he said, women like you are going to destroy Western civilization. And he made my life miserable after that. And eventually it was more than I could stand at . And I actually moved to Yale full time and left the Pierce foundation and went into a clinical department, department of surgery. Now in surgery, they do operations on people that cut the taste nerve. If they can’t help it, it’s in the way certain kind of operations in ear, nose and throat. And I could study those patients before and after. They had a nerve cut and it opened incredible vistas.

Richard Miles: 17:00

Right.

Linda Bartoshuk: 17:00

Why did I eventually leave Yale 20 years? I’m really getting tired of it all. I served on sexual harassment boards. I was on one committee after another. I worked very hard for these causes. My husband was a professor in physics. He’s a theoretical physicist and he loved Yale and I didn’t want to leave while he loved it, but when he retired he said, you know, I’ve had my way all this time. Let’s go where you want. Well, the university of Florida has a smell and taste center. It was set up by Barry Ache and I wanted to be a part of that.

Richard Miles: 17:32

Great story. Linda, I’m sure you probably get asked to talk to students and other groups and they probably ask you or you dispense some advice. What would you share, say with an up and coming researcher or even a budding entrepreneur? Do you look back on anything and say, gosh, I wish I’d done a little more of that and a little bit less of that? Think of a 21 year old version of yourself, what would you tell yourself now that you didn’t know then.

Linda Bartoshuk: 17:55

I would tell them to do what you love because when everything else settles out, the fact is you want to get up in the morning and go to work and do something you love every morning I go into work and I can’t wait to get there. And there is just nothing that can substitute for that.

Richard Miles: 18:11

I agree. It’s probably the most common advice that we hear on the show.

Linda Bartoshuk: 18:13

Take a lot of math too.

Richard Miles: 18:17

Love what you do, but study up in the math. Yeah, I was going to mention earlier when my daughter graduated from college, very, very few people had double degrees in both math or science related field and humanities related field. Out of all the graduates, there’s either one or the other and occasionally you saw somebody like my daughter got a degree in math and in Spanish. It’s a very unusual combination and so I think it just sort of shows the breadth of your interests that you went from a love of astronomy to chemistry to psychology. So you must enjoy what you do. I imagine when you’re doing it.

Linda Bartoshuk: 18:49

I do very much.

Richard Miles: 18:50

Linda, thank you very much for coming on the Radio Cade. Hope to have you back at some point and find out about loud steaks or soft potatoes.

Linda Bartoshuk: 18:58

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 18:58

From Radio Cade, Richard Miles signing off.

Outro: 19:01

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates, inventor interviews podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist, Jacob Lawson.

What is it like to grow up with an inventor as a dad? Phoebe Cade Miles, co-founder of the Cade Museum and daughter of Gatorade lead inventor Robert Cade, talks with James Di Virgilio about her father, his creative spirit, and what his creative legacy has inspired. Phoebe also explains the neuroscience of creativity, and how everyone - but especially kids - can wire their brains to be more inventive in life. 

What is it like to grow up with an inventor as a dad? Phoebe Cade Miles, co-founder of the Cade Museum and daughter of Gatorade lead inventor Robert Cade, talks with James Di Virgilio about her father, his creative spirit, and what his creative legacy has inspired. Phoebe also explains the neuroscience of creativity, and how everyone – but especially kids – can wire their brains to be more inventive in life. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro:   0:01Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

James Di Virgilio: For Radio Cade, I’m James Di Virgilio, and today we have a very special guest. Joining us in studio is Phoebe Miles, the co-founder and board president of the Cade Museum. Phoebe, welcome to your own podcast.

Phoebe Miles:   0:50Thank you, James. It’s a pleasure to be here.

James Di Virgilio:   0:52 And it’s gonna be great. We have so many interesting to talk about. Let’s start with the beginning for you because this really shapes your story. You grew up obviously with what became a very famous father, but I want to hear what it was like to grow up during what a lot of was a struggle with his innovation story. It was not a rosy success story. What’s it like to grow up with an inventor as a father? especially one that was so influential.

Phoebe Miles:   1:17Growing up with an inventor of as a father for me was an incredible experience, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I just always grew up, and my father had invented Gatorade at the University of Florida, or he led the team that invented a Gatorade at the University of Florida. I grew up thinking everybody had access to this creativity and this energy, and this excitement about problem-solving in my childhood memory was as if every day my dad came home and there was something exciting that happened. I’m sure it wasn’t like that in reality, but he would come home excited and motivated by problems and his ideas of how he is going to solve them. And by the time I came along, I’m the youngest of six children and a large family he had already investigated, and he had established his reputation of the University of Florida, and he had more flexibility, I think, with his time. And at that point my mom was very happy if I went with my dad to the lab or to research he was conducting at the University of Florida, track field So I was constantly surrounded by ideas and Just an excitement in a passion for science, for history, for creativity. My dad was the most creative person I’ve ever met.

James Di Virgilio:    2:21Now, at this time in your life as a child, was your dad a celebrity? Were you sort of known in places you wonder? Or did you have a little anonymity?

Phoebe Miles:   2:29I can’t really answer that question because I was three years old when my father invented Gatorade, and I don’t really ever remember a life when he hadn’t done that. So certainly at that point it was already a known quantity here in Gainesville. But it was many years before became a national product and then an international product that it is today.

James Di Virgilio:  2:48So at that point in time, you’re just growing up like any other child with a father who does something.

Phoebe Miles: 2:52Yes.

James Di Virgilio: 2:53And what you see is what they do and you’re not a

Phoebe Miles: 2:54My father invented things.

James Di Virgilio: 2:56Correct.

Phoebe Miles: 2:57And I thought everybody had a father that was like that. I found out much later that his mindset, his approach to life was actually indeed very different than what you would expect.

James Di Virgilio: 3:06Yeah, that’s really hard, that you just grew up with your parents. That’s your normal. You don’t really know what it looks like. When was it that you began to realize? So my dad was a really unique thinker or problem solver or person? When did that really dawn on you?

Phoebe Miles: 3:19I don’t think I actually understood the implications of how he was as a person until I was much older and raising my own children, and we were living overseas for many years. My husband is a retired foreign service officer, so we were stationed overseas. And every time I came back to the United States, two things happened. I thought the United States is an innovative country full of entrepreneurs. This innovative entrepreneurial spirit is indeed what I think is the American culture, which did not exist in many of the countries we lived. I love the countries we lived in, but they didn’t have that spirit. And then I would come to my home and realized this kind of thinking is at the epicenter of the American experience. This idea that I can create, I can invent, I can solve problems and I can take it to market. It’s this whole ecosystem of innovation that exists here in America that doesn’t exist in other places. And it circles around people like my father that are innovative thinkers

James Di Virgilio:  4:17Let’s talk about your father for a second. What was his background growing up? How did he get this creative mindset that he had to solve these problems?

Phoebe Miles:  4:24Okay, so my father grew up in San Antonio, Texas, to a German family. He was actually a horrible student. Like many inventors entrepreneurs I encounter, they’re not necessarily traditional learners. He was constantly getting in trouble, constantly skipping school, going fishing in the San Antonio creek. One of our cherished possessions at the Cade Museum is a letter written by one of his high school teachers saying that she could not teach class with Bobby and it anymore. If you would just pay attention, maybe he might make something of his life. My father didn’t even actually graduate from high school. He enlisted in the Navy at the tail end of World War Two on a Navy ship. He was a pharmacist, mate. He began memorizing poetry. He loved to travel, he was a musician as well. I mean, he has a child, had started musical instrument violin practice, and he became an accomplished musician. So all of those things kind of came together and when his finally came online, his mind finally came online and he on the G.I. Bill, got into college, still without a high school degree, went to the University of Texas on a dare went to medical school. Somebody said you’ll never be able to go to medical school. He goes, Oh, yeah, watch me. So he got into medical school, went to medical school and the rest is history. He was recruited to the University of Florida to develop the division of renal medicine at the brand new medical school. Back in 1960 it was a brand new Medical School. He came in to take on the graduating class of medical students who wanted to become kidney doctors. And that’s the origins of the Gatorade story. The kidney regulates sodium and water in the body. When people sweat, they lose sodium and water. There’s a connection there between the kidney and sports. So when my dad made friends with the coach and the coach asked why are my football player is going into the infirmary after practice, my dad, after just a short conversation, realized well because they’re extremely dehydrated. They’ve lost all of their sodium and they’re in beginning stages, a kidney failure. And he said it more than that. I think I know what to do to solve that problem

James Di Virgilio: 6:15And quite the problem he solved. At that point in time, a lot of football players were taught not even to drink water as a baseline, right? So there was this massive problem to solve of hydration, and he went like 500 steps further, right, so ahead of the game to say, well, there’s a basic hydration problem, but there’s also an actual depletion going on here beyond just water.

Phoebe Miles: 6:34 Right. Water deprivation was actually the preferred method back in the sixties, which is just crazy to think of. So coaches withheld water because they thought that that would cause cramping. They also thought it was a sign that you were a sissy and that if you’re really tough, you would just tough it out. And the tougher you were, the meaner you were in the meaner you where the better you were. So my father put an end to that. He was like, This is really dangerous. You need to replace the fluids, but you can’t replace the fluids unless you replace the sodium. And how do you do that? You have to pair it with glucose. And then through this whole complicated intestinal cellular level, the sodium is transported into the body and ushers in 300 water molecules at the same time. So he knew that from his basic research and created the first sports beverage in the nation

James Di Virgilio: 7:16Which has changed sports forever.

Phoebe Miles: 7:18It changed the rules of sports. What was really interesting to me, growing up, Asai came into conversations with my father. He was much prouder of the fact that he had solved the problem of dehydration worldwide, especially infant dehydration, cause that used to be the leading cause of death worldwide. And unless you had access to a hospital where you could get IV’s, it was deadly. Gatorade changed that overnight. It was an oral rehydration beverage that could quickly rehydrate a sick infant or adult. And that, in fact, is the treatment now is Pedialyte or other types of electrolyte replacement beverages. But they are, in fact, copies of Gatorade or very similar. They use the same scientific concept, but his was the first,

James Di Virgilio: 7:57Which is amazing. So Now you’re in college. You’re going to study. You’ve grown up with this Father has invented this momentous world-changing thing. What are you studying? What are you thinking about? What you want to do? What were your dreams at that point?

Phoebe Miles: 8:09Okay, so I went to college at the University of Washington in Seattle, and my original intention was to study medicine. I still love medicine. I adore science. I’m a science nerd. Although I did not finish my degree in chemistry, I ended up getting a double degree, one in German language and literature and one in European history. I got married in college to my high school sweetheart, Richard, who’s the co-founder of the museum. We open the museum together, and he at that point was joining the military. We lived in Germany first, and then he joined the Foreign Service. So we spent many of our adult years living overseas in different world capitals. So I was unable to finish the medical degree. That was not possible. But I did a lot of teaching. We raised three kids overseas. They went to, I think five different school systems, three different kids, and five different school systems, and I was just astonished at how different the school systems were. But more importantly how differently my Children responded to the school systems. Our son, the oldest one, he was much like my father, a very poor student. Always getting in trouble hated school, especially the British school system. My daughter loved it. Then our third was different again. It’s why it became fascinated by why they learned so differently. And I started reading a lot about neuroscience, of learning and creativity. And I quickly ascertained that my Children learn differently because they were wired differently. So that led to this interest in creativity and education.

James Di Virgilio:   9:31And this would lead to where we really are today. How did the idea for the Cade Museum come about?

Phoebe Miles: 9:38So my father was again very creative, had many hobbies. He was the violinist, the poet. He grew roses, but he also restored Studebaker’s, loves Studebakers. When I look back in the past, I think he loved violins and Studebakers because they are a perfect blend of art and science. Art you can drive, aren’t you can play, but with the science behind it as well. So he had originally wanted to do a museum about innovation, American innovation through the eyes of Studebakers. So was always going to be centered on this creativity, the creativity, and entrepreneurship behind Studebakers and the whole American century from 1860 to 1960. Studebaker started with the Gold Rush. They made wheelbarrows. They transitioned into horse strong wagons. They’re the only wagon company that transitioned into automobiles. And he wanted to tell that whole story. But tie it to patents during that time, who the famous inventors were, how Studebaker fit into this innovation story of America. So that was the original concept. We quickly ascertained, like mini entrepreneurial startups, that we couldn’t support that story in this market and that the true story was actually about innovation. What’s behind Violins, Studebakers and Gatorade is actually creativity. All of them are expressions of human creativity, and we realized over time that that was the true game-changer in this community to tell that story of innovation. But not just a story. Connect people to that story of innovation. Not just other people are creative, but you have the ability to be creative and how best to step into that creativity is to have practice at it meet people that are creative. Work with them, be inspired by them. Much like I was a child. I had a seat at the table of an inventor as a father, incredibly creative, stimulating conversations. How do we create an institution that does that? For every visitor that comes in? That was the challenge. That’s where we have ended up the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention, giving everybody a seat at the table of invention.

James Di Virgilio:   11:36Now, to your knowledge, when you embark on this journey, was there anyone else doing this? Is there another museum or place in the entire world that does something similar?

Phoebe Miles:   11:45There are museums that do similar things, Technology Museums, of San Jose Technology Museum, a patent museum that talks about inventors. We differ in that at the center of our museum, is humanity, humans intersecting with science and problems create inventions. So we’re more inventor centered than technology-centered. Yes, we teach the technology in the science, but it’s always through the lens of a problem that a person, a real person, came and solved for the benefit of humanity. And we’re very much also talking about the entrepreneurial after story. You could have an invention, but without the entrepreneur, it stays an invention on a shelf. To get it out into the market, you have to have that entrepreneurial team. It’s part of the story. So, to my knowledge, were the only invention that has the whole arc, from creative idea to product to the market, in telling that with humanity at the center,

James Di Virgilio:   12:42it’s interesting as you’re telling me that story. What I can’t help but think about is art. When you look at art, I was in Milan this past summer, and I got to see the Last Supper, which is painted on the wall of her church. It’s amazing it’s Divinci, but you don’t just look at the art on the wall and not know who did it. The person who did it is such a significant impact and art and any art museum you go, too. It’s the same thing. It’s the art and who did it when they did it? Why they did it. And what you’re saying is interesting, because I think a lot of the technology achievements are disassociated from who did it, why they did it, how it happened right, and the Cade under your vision is to connect all those things. Look, here’s how it happened. Here’s why they did it. And that, in a way should encourage others to say if they did that and they solved that problem what are some of the things I may be able to solve because these they’re just people solving problems is that part of the desire and motivation is to get people to think creatively. People that may not think their creative?

Phoebe Miles:   13:35Absolutely. Because I believe that every person has that ability to be creative or to adopt an inventive mindset. And then what do I mean by an inventive mindset? It’s what you just explained, an inventive mindset to somebody who is not overwhelmed by problems but inspired by a challenge and to approach it in a creative manner and not to think in a zero-sum mentality or that every setback is catastrophic. That’s not the case. If you have an inventive mindset, failure is not only an option, it is the way failure is a step in the right direction because you learn from it, what not to do, and it’s a very different mindset. It’s very optimistic, not pessimistic. that’s very proactive, not reactive. It’s very community-minded because an inventor is always service-minded in creating a product that people need or want or that brings a better quality of life. So it is very other people-centered. Where is a pessimistic mindset is usually self-centered. So I think that whole mindset, it’s at the pinnacle of what it means to be human and inventive mindset. And you can have it. Whether you’re a scientist, an artist, a child, a grandparent, it really is what makes us thrive as a species humankind.

James Di Virgilio:  14:44Now architecture drives a lot of inspiration. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my travels, architecture makes a huge difference in how we feel and interact with the world. The Cade Museum, perhaps his best known right now in the city of Gainesville for its stunning and very unique architecture, what was the drive behind that? Is there a deeper meaning, or was it just a cool looking building?

Phoebe Miles:   15:04Well, first of all, this is the third iteration of a building so back to the point of learning through mistakes. Not that the first two were mistakes. They had their characters but they weren’t perfect. They were either overdesigned into expensive or didn’t fit into the space. So this was our third attempt. But it was perfect. It has a special meaning in the meaning is a perfect blend of art and science, which to me I often tell people the difference between a scientist and an inventor is training in the arts. If you have adopted this inventive mindset, you think like an artist, and artists develops things over time. They see hidden connections. They see patterns that other people don’t see, so inventors think much in the same way they see patterns and science that no one else has ever seen. And voila, a new invention pops out. So the architecture is based on what’s called the Fibonacci sequence, and the Fibonacci sequence is seen throughout nature, art, and also famous architecture. It’s a sequence for you add each number to the one before, 1 + 1 is 2, 2 + 1 is 3, 3 + 2 is 5 + 3 is 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, into infinity, and you see it all throughout nature, so pine cones have 8 spirals one way, 13 another, sunflowers have 21 and 34 spirals that are interlocking. DNA is a spiral that has 8×21 angstroms, it’s er 13×21. You see it in nature, these Fibonacci numbers. What’s astonishing is when you divide Fibonacci numbers, you get 1.618 which is called the golden mean or the divine proportion, and it’s a perfect proportion of beauty. Everybody knows pi. Pi is a irrational number, but it’s mostly associated with measurements and efficiency and mathematics. Fi is 1.618 that’s been associated with beauty since ancient times, So it was just us important in ancient times as pie. But this was fi. Scientists have proven, if anybody looks at something of the golden proportion, they can. A media identify that has pleasing proportions, it’s more beautiful than something that doesn’t have that proportion. So what’s more beautiful than nature? You divide Fibonacci numbers, you get 1.618 The human face has over 21 divine proportions of that proportion that we perceive this being beautiful. So the architecture we chose, we thought, were a museum for the future, not one of the past, but were built on the past. Every success of modern-day life is built on the shoulders of giants that came before us. We build on what came before, and hopefully, we make it better. So we wanted something that honored the past but looked forward, so we based it on the golden proportion of ancient architecture. But rather than a temple that square with the golden architect, we based it on a Fibonacci spiral, a nautilus shell grows on a Fibonacci spiral. So it has the same divine proportion, but with the movement of a spiral. So that’s the architecture that we have. And it has, Ah, Oculus in the very center that replicates the eye because we are a part of everything we’ve met and seen in what you take in through your experiences shapes who you will become. So that’s also part of the story. I am apart of all that I have met and that shapes who you become, so we want to be a part of this community and be a part of what shapes people to become, what they want to become, what they need to become, what they will become.

James Di Virgilio:   18:19And that’s really a beautifully summed up by you there, right, starting with some architecture, moving all the way through the meaning to the end goal. When someone walks through the doors of the Cade or they encounter a program that Cade offers, that is the goal to stir up within them this desire to be creative and innovative and overcome challenges and defeat problems. And instead of looking at a setback, say, If that didn’t work, that’s just one step closer to something that will work. How will the Cade succeed in doing this? If there’s no other museum that does this, you’re truly pioneering this. How does the Cade make this happen?

Phoebe Miles:   18:52Well, we have developed a proprietary curriculum that’s under development now called the Building Blocks of Invention, and the basic concept was that similar to the alphabet, which has 26 letters. But you conform billions of words with just 26 letters that if they were 32 building blocks of invention, you could combine them in any way and make billions of inventions. So we went through hundreds of inventions and isolated. What are the building blocks of those, For instance, any invention that’s based on a wave technology would be acoustics, optics, oscillations, diagnostics. There’s all have at their basis on understanding of how waves work, whether the mechanical waves or electromagnetic waves. Every invention has its portfolio of building blocks. We have tied to those, curriculum that helps explain the science of the building block. But the beauty is it’s interchangeable. So every Saturday you can come to the museum and you have a different experience. It’s not a static experience. Every Saturday there’s a different inventor or visionary or artists that you can meet, personally, interact with and see how they’re understanding applied to their invention, that scientific building block, that invention building block, how you see that intangible inventions. Then we thread that theme through the creativity lab and the fab Lab, where any visitor can actually do further hands-on experiments. Try out new things, and maybe we combined them in ways that they hadn’t thought of before. So it’s a way of having that dynamic excitement again. Back to my childhood, I was exposed to music, art, science, really incredible opportunities, but it was ongoing and changing all of the time, so we wanted to create that in this institution, but you have to have a structure. There’s a structure behind it. It’s not random. There is a structure, and that is the building blocks of invention.

James Di Virgilio:   20:38Let’s talk about funding for a second because this is an interesting one. A lot of museums will exist off large grants from important families. State funding universities may support them. The Cade, most people assume, is heavily supported by the mercy of Florida financially, but that is not actually the case. The Cade is financially supported primarily through who?

Phoebe Miles:  20:59The general public. We are a public foundation, and it’s been a blessing and a curse from the beginning because of the name Dr. Cade, of course, it opens doors. You can make things happen in some ways you have access that you might not have otherwise. But on the other hand, people think it’s supported primarily by the Cade family. Therefore, we don’t need to be a part of this. My dad did set aside a foundation that funds probably 1/5 of the operations now, but never enough to build the building that we had, and we realized early on that that wasn’t ever going to be possible. We were never going to have in our funding mechanism enough to build the museum. So we very early on started reaching out to people and bringing on small supporters. Supporters that would give $100 or $10 or $1000. But more importantly than the money we did partnerships. We did programs with partners and started demonstrating the model. And over time we were able to bring in over 2000 individual supporters to build the building that we have now and now we’ve blown past that, and we were able to become a public foundation, not a private family foundation. It’s really like, they say, in the radio announcements were supported by people like you, which is true, and we are grateful for every single donor because it does count towards that public status there many ways that they decide whether you’re a public foundation or private foundation. But one is the number of supporters you have that are non-family that are small donors. They don’t want any one family to control the mission and therefore you have to prove that you have support from thousands of people.

James Di Virgilio:  22:28It’s a very modern story of crowdfunding.

Phoebe Miles:   22:31It was like crowdfunding. I didn’t know to call it that at that time. But I am grateful that we did not have one major supporter, because then I feel we were able to develop much like a nautilus shell or a sunflower more organically and we were small, but we grew organically where we could sustain it. And it was still a beautiful project at the beginning, as it is now because it was organic and it was not one big thunder saying, This is the way it’s going to be that is not creative. If you have one person who controls the purse and the idea, creativity happens from a fertile intersection of hundreds of people really

James Di Virgilio:   23:07And the freedom to be able to go where you need to get this process started officially in 2004. And here we are in 2020. And for most people, the Cade became something they were aware of within the past couple of years. So it’s an example of the organic build you talked about looking into the future. What is the vision for the Cade when someone in the year 2030 says, Oh, I’ve been to the Cade or I think of the Cade. What would you want them to associate with that experience?

Phoebe Miles:   23:32What I envisioned for the future is that the Cade becomes a resource for other communities, other centers, other townships across the world that are really struggling with this problem of how do we leverage all the creative potential in our community? It’s there. We just can’t bring it together. Because if Florida could go from an export of produce to an exporter of ideas and inventions, specifically Gainesville, we can demonstrate how you bring it all together and how you can leverage what you already have to become more than the sum of your parts. And I think if we could export anything, it would be that idea that communities are transformed through a community, each person using the creative abilities, pulling in the same direction. And I think over time, by necessity, we had to expand our partnerships in that way, and it’s hugely exciting to see how we became better than the sum of our parts and better than I could have imagined because it wasn’t my idea. It was many people coming together, and we developed in a different way than I had thought but in a better way than I could have envisioned. I would love to share that inventive mindset with the curriculum to other communities. How do you pull in partners to do this?

James Di Virgilio:   24:44We talked a lot indirectly about a lot of words of wisdom here that you have been sharing in your story. You work a lot with entrepreneurs. They encounter what’s going on, there is the Cade Prize every year of innovation. So much of your time is spent with inventors and entrepreneurs. What is a piece of wisdom that you would give to them that may apply to every entrepreneur or inventor, regardless of what they’re doing or what’s happening? Given your experiences.

Phoebe Miles:   25:08My big advice would be to create your plan, have a plan. Have a vision, more vision than a plan. But hold the details of the plan lightly because you will encounter roadblocks, you will encounter pitfalls, and your original plan may not be flexible enough to deal with that. So hold your plan, but hold it lightly. Don’t take no for an answer, but be smart and listen to what people are saying and make adjustments. Don’t be afraid to iterate because you have to iterate. Don’t be afraid to fail because failure is truly a part of success. I look at every big success it’s using on the heels of a big disappointment, so be resilient. That’s a huge thing. The difference between success and not being successful is that ability to be resilient and to keep going forward and just keep your eyes on the vision.

James Di Virgilio:   25:57Well, Phoebe, on behalf of everyone that’s interacted with you, been to the Cade, had a chance to get to know you and Richard, Thank you for doing what you’ve done. A lot of the work has been done behind the scenes. Most people have no idea what a labor of love this was. I know myself involved now in the pod and as a board member. Your vision for not only Gainesville but for innovation and humanity and creativity to intersect together is unique, and it’s encouraging and inspiring. And thank you for spending all this time doing this, right. It goes on notice, but it’s really thank you for that and thank you on this podcast for sharing all these stories. They’re certainly illuminating. Thanks for being a guest today.

Phoebe Miles:   26:33Thanks so much, James. It was my pleasure.

James Di Virgilio:   26:35And for Radio Cade, I’m James Di Virgilio.

Outro:Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention, located in Gainesville, Florida. This podcast episodes host was James D. Virgilio and Ellie Thom Coordinates inventor Interviews. Podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.

James Di Virgilio talks to Daniel Barousse, the founder of Slice, a company that makes components for 3D printers that help improve their performance. Daniel and his co-founder Chris Montgomery literally started in a garage, tinkering their way to solutions to problems they encountered with 3D printers at work. In just over a year of existence, Slice is now distributing its product in 12 countries.