The Inventivity Pod

Probiotics for plants? Paul Zorner, CEO of Locus Agricultural Solutions in San Diego, explains how bacteria and fungi help plants grow faster and pull more carbon dioxide out of the air. Even better, agricultural companies that use probiotics see a 200% return on investment in crop yields and use fewer fertilizers. Paul grew up on a farm and “hated it” but later began to see the beauty in the natural world.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade and 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

Probiotics for plants, they make plants healthier, more productive, and better able to take carbon out of the atmosphere. I’m your host Richard Miles today on Radio Cade . My guest is Paul Zorner, CEO of Locus Agricultural Solutions based in San Diego. Welcome to Radio Cade, Paul.

Paul Zorner: 0:54

Thank you, Richard. It’s a pleasure.

Richard Miles: 0:55

So Paul, before we talk about plants, let’s talk about probiotics. I think most people have heard of them and know in a vague way that they are somehow good for us, but explain what probiotics actually are and what their function is.

Paul Zorner: 1:09

Great . Well , I , most people have seen lots of information on probiotics for humans. They occupy our intestines and they regulate all kinds of things from our immune health to our nutrient status, to even our mood and plants are no different. But in this case, probiotics for plants are our live organisms, bacteria and fungi that live in the roots of plants and they perform the same function for that plant, that microbes in our intestines serve for us. They make the plant’s immune system better. They help it take up nutrients from the soil and they allow it to grow faster, better produce more food. And in this particular case to turn the plant into an increased carbon pump, a stronger carbon pump in terms of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turning it into sugars that ultimately get turned into carbon down in the soil, which is a wonderful thing, especially in this day and age where we’re so worried about global warming.

Richard Miles: 2:00

So Paul, is there a way to precisely measure the increase in all these good things like the increase in the plan , how the productivity and the ability to take carbon out of the air ? I imagine that you can do a before and after without probiotics and nose width. Is it that refined?

Paul Zorner: 2:15

Absolutely . And generally when we put trials out, we focus on, on agronomic performance owners. We work with growers and we work in Florida with , with citrus growers, for example, and we’ll generally put this out to their micro sprinklers and drip irrigation systems to get it out of the root. Then we compare a treatment with our probiotic against what we call grower practice, whatever the grower is doing. We bolted onto that and we take a look at the increased growth of the plant, more leads, greener leads. And then ultimately what’s important is the yield of the, of the citrus. None of the disease, getting more cases of citrus growers is more pound solid, more fruits and more sugar and things that are valuable to him. So that part is pretty easy. It takes time, of course, but then in terms of carbon, many people around the world are working on, okay, you take a soil sample and pull it up and you can send it off to a lab and you can measure the amount of organic carbon that’s been deposited around the root system again, compared to grower practice. So there are standard techniques for measuring just about anything. It’s just a matter of using the right one. And of course our major focus is economic yield for the grower. But again, what we found was really fascinating that as we did that and focused on a more productive plant , the salvage remarkable increase in carbon soil , carbon sequestration as well.

Richard Miles: 3:26

Was that kind of an accidental finding or did you know, it might have this effect from the very beginning?

Paul Zorner: 3:30

Science tells you that you should see something like this, but what we were doing, especially in Florida, citrus, as we’re trying to show the grower, what might be happening between the time he applied our material , which would be early and then your nine months later, 12 months later, when he was actually determines how much yield increasing might’ve got . And so we’ll measure root mass increase, and we get like a double , another fibrous with mass and increased canopy and increased food set. But we also thought let’s take a look at the soil in terms of its physiological characteristics. So I was brief , you know as a kid, I grew up in a farm and my mom used to take a handful of soil at different places in the farm and literally smell it. This is good or that’s bad. So wells are aligned they believe they’re like little fermenters themselves. So I thought, well, let’s take a look at the soils breath, if you will all be emissions and sure enough , we went out there, there are techniques you can use to measure things. And we saw a reduction in carbon dioxide, emission and nitric oxide, which is 300 times the global warming gas, the carbon dioxide idea. So obviously we were changing to us the microbial population, cause that’s what we’re doing. So those types of edmissions. And so then we thought, okay, we’re seeing those types of reductions. Let’s go measure the soil carbon. And sure enough, reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was clearly associated with increased carbon sequestration in the soil. So a bit of a surprise, but also when you thought about it , and okay, this, make sense.

Richard Miles: 4:48

You mention the citrus industry, have you found, there are certain types of crops that it’s more effective on and then others in which you don’t get, maybe the results you’re looking for on both counts in terms of crop yield, but then also the carbon sequestration piece is it’s got a uniform across crops or do you see big differences depending on what crop you’re talking about?

Paul Zorner: 5:07

Yeah, that’s a good question. And it’s not so much differences across crops as it is a class. So all types, the time of year, in other words, how cold or warm the soil is, how much moisture the soil has generally soil health. And we kind of used the term agricultural probiotics , but we hear a lot of people talking about microbial soil health as well. It’s important for all crops. And what we have found is two particular organisms that seem to work very well across the multitude of crops and conditions, but we think we can optimize it for grain to Northern , compared to citrus in Florida as well that we might have a good base case. We do have an excellent kind of base mechanism that we may find that we can add additional materials that will improve it even further as well, but we get good yield across multiple crops.

Richard Miles: 5:51

So that leads me, I guess, to that follow up question. So if it is soil based and not necessarily crop base , do you find regional differences? I mean, is this something that works really well in Florida types of soils and not so well in Texas or the Midwest or?

Paul Zorner: 6:04

No , we see good results. Like for example, in potatoes, we see as much as a 40% increase and potato fields , you might see differences. We see a 5% increase in field corn, but that’s not so much a function of the microorganisms in the soil types. It’s a function of the genomics of the crop and what kind of stress it might be under a variety of other factors in general, when you think about it, probiotics for crops are important with Ellis whatsoever, but region what crop, you need a very active microbial population and the roots of those crops for a plant to truly express its full yield potential.

Richard Miles: 6:38

So it sounds like a great idea with a great business potential. Let’s talk about that. About the business side of it. Did you start out as the primary investigator, primary researcher of this technology, or when did you come along and then what is the contrast between that side of it and then developing the company itself, finding those customers, closing those deals, hiring staff, growing the company, describe a little bit of what that’s been like.

Paul Zorner: 7:00

Well, number one, I’ve worked in agriculture my entire life. So I’m 65 years old, right? So I’ve had a more than a 40 year career and I’ve worked on both the agricultural chemical side, but also I have worked extensively in microbes as well. And the founders of the company and friends that I’ve had for 20 years, Andy Lefkowitz and Shawn Filer had a company called Canadian bio-sciences that made human probiotics and actuality, that company became the largest seller and developer of human probiotics in the world outside of the dairy case. And so they had a lot of knowledge there and we kept in touch over those 20 years and thought, wow, we , Hey, we really liked each other. We had, what can we do to be meaningful and agriculture while we all thought that this would be something that would be very good to do because it’s has a limited effectiveness. People look at probiotics for plants as sometimes inconsistent at best. And we felt that it wasn’t necessarily the fact that the work microbes that you’ve applied to soil . So it would make the crop more productive, but deployment, you put a live microbes in an agricultural supply chain . It’s nine to 12 months long and it’s they’re live organisms. They had to go back to the yogurt analogy. It’s like, if you took a cup of fresh yogurt and put it through a supply chain for nine to 12 months , you wouldn’t think you could eat it. Or at least you wouldn’t enjoy eating at 12 months later. And so what we have done is we’ve created a technology that I would refer to as like a microbrewery for agriculture and what that does allow us to set up distributed fermentation facilities, or just local regional fermentation facilities, where we can grow these materials up at very high concentrations, very inexpensively, and deliver them to the grower no more than let’s say 10 to 12 weeks after they’ve been produced. And we have a very unique culture chain, whether it’s kept cold the entire time up to point at time to deliver . So we’ve kind of taken a different tack to it based upon our belief that microbes are going to be important part of proven productivity, but then thought about a business model whereby we could make sure we could deliver the consistency and the efficacy of these materials that at reasonable prices and serve it in the way that actually helped him increases on farm profits.

Richard Miles: 8:59

Growers is using the microbes or the probiotics. Is that an, a significant upfront investment for them? And how much does it add to their overall costs ?

Paul Zorner: 9:08

Well, it depends. It’s not a real answer, but let me explain that it’s not a significant investment. Let’s take like corn in the Midwest, basically nine to $10 per acre for our treatment to the grower. And they may get anywhere from a 10 to a 13 bushel increase in yield. And even corn at $3 per bushel, which is remarkably low price. That’s 30 bucks against $10 investment that generally the rule of thumb in agriculture is if I make the grower three bucks, he’ll turn around and give me a dollar. You want that three to one return. So that pencils out, what he’s after is I want to return it , our investment. Now, it gets even better at over time. And that what we have begin to show is that we can also reduce the amount of fertilizer that they need to use, which is good. Not only in terms of taking some costs out of the bucket to allow them to pay for ours, but also helps with environmental services. People are really worried about moving to other environments, right? And then, so that’s the above-ground part of it. Then the input part of it, we’re also working to monetize the below ground carbon, where there are markets where you can trade carbon credits and grower would produce them. Then somebody like the United airlines or Amazon or other companies that are trying to reduce their carbon footprint, we’ll buy those credits from the growers . So it’s kind of a triple bottom line if you will, both environmentally, socially and economically, but triple in terms of increased yield, decreased inputs and potentially carbon monetization as well.

Richard Miles: 10:35

It sounds like the perfect solution. There’s something in here for just about everyone to like, right. You’re not just appealing to one group is this is a win-win when , as you said for a lot of people.

Paul Zorner: 10:44

Yeah , certainly one thing as a company too, we’re dedicated to that a week ago, we received our B Corp certification, which is a big deal. A B Corp as a special group of people is 2,500 beneficial corporations around the world. We’re the first ag input company in North America, Europe or Asia to receive a B Corp certification. What it means is a third party audit that basically certifies that as a company, you’re paying attention, balance economics, but also social purpose and how you treat your workforce, how you interact with your customers, you get attention to both profit and purpose in terms of what you’re trying to do as a company. In other words, not only am I sitting here talking about this, we actually are doing it as well. And we’re very proud of that.

Richard Miles: 11:23

So Paul one sign of success for new technology is when people start copying it right, and competing with you. So what does your market space look like right now? Have other competitors offering similar services jumped into the market, or you had this all to yourself?

Paul Zorner: 11:36

Uh, no, there are many good companies out there. We have a very unique platform in terms of our ability to directly impact carbon sequestration. Our fermentation platform is really unique , but there are probably 50 significant companies globally out there doing things like this. And it’s around for many years, in some cases, or people will do compost or what they call compost teas. Compost is basically a mechanism of taking organic matter and getting it to begin to degrade , which is building up microbes. And it’s a way of putting microbes back into the soil. But what we’re doing is just doing it very efficiently, a very concentrated material in order to drive more of that, that population increases and those microbes that are important for plant yield .

Richard Miles: 12:19

So at what point will your method specifically be the new best practice? Can you already foresee a point where no farmer in their right mind wouldn’t do this?

Paul Zorner: 12:27

Well, growers, like I said, they look at them somewhat skeptically right now because of lack of consistency. And I think as we show that we’ve developed a process that eliminates that lack of consistency, yes. Growers will adopt this right now. It’s just that their growers are show me, they’ve got to have the increase in on-farm, profit’s gotta be at least preempt to do this. Right. But I will tell you though, growers are natural stewards of the land. They understand us instantaneously. It’s a complex physiological process. Most growers understand that like I need to live healthy soils. So if you can show me, you can deliver that to me on a consistent basis and allow me to invest in your product and get a return on that investment. They’re all in .

Richard Miles: 13:09

So let’s talk now about you, Paul, as you mentioned, you’ve been in the agricultural business for basically all of your adult life. And before that actually growing up, you’re a West coast guy, right? About 30 years in San Diego. And then before that you grew up in Oregon and San Francisco Bay area, and then you also grew up on a farm. Is that correct?

Paul Zorner: 13:26

We grew up on a farm, spent the early part of my life and the Bay area , and then an Oregon to college that bounced around, I’ve lived in Kentucky, North Carolina. I spent three years in Africa, three years in the Hawaii , but basically had home base here at San Diego for 30 years.

Richard Miles: 13:41

You could only handle so much east coast. Right? And then you had to beat feet back the west coast?

Paul Zorner: 13:45

I love the east coast. I’ve actually have an adjunct professor of horticulture at North Carolina State University, 32 years.

Richard Miles: 13:53

So you grew up on a farm. How obviously shaped you in some way in your choice of career, but are there specific memories you have of thinking like, I feel called to do this, or this is really what I want to do professionally. And what were some of the influences on you growing up? I mean, like pre-academic self as a child, as a teenager, parents, teachers, what else sort of shaped you in that time period?

Paul Zorner: 14:12

Well, okay. I’ll give you the answer that you might not expect to start with, but you know, I grew up on a moderately sized horticultural nursery. We grew laceleaf Maples rather than the new zelias things like that. And we also have 30 acres of raspberries and I will tell you, I hated it at the time, it’s work. I don’t know if you’ve ever prude , raspberry bushes, like gosh, right. Or gone out and fed the chickens at four in the morning, you know, and had all your chores to do before school then had to get back from school in order to help with that. But it did get my blood. I went off in college and studied biology in high school and I wanted to be a doctor, but I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. So yeah .

Richard Miles: 14:50

Yeah thats a show stopper right there.

Paul Zorner: 14:52

Yeah. But ultimately my memory i s i n my work on our farm and even listening to my mother, I never did my father. My mother was a single parent. She worked hard and she certainly taught us a lot of stuff as well. I could name just about any plant species in Oregon on site i t’s scientific name as well. But again, to understand, once I was in school, what was going on in the farm and what had natural biologist or ecologist, my mom was terms of taking care of the farm and its soil and everything else. And t hat’s fascinated me. I t’s like a big puzzle. And also it’s, it’s beautiful, but in a relationship between species that we share this beautiful blue globe that we occupied a wonderful thing. And so I was smitten, and I didn’t necessarily think in college, I was going to go work in agriculture a gain, but then it became apparent i n when I was studying systems, ecology, agriculture i s a great place to do this. Also when I went to graduate, I wanted to get an advanced degree and the only person that offered me an assistantship, so I could afford to go to college was a lead scientist, Bob Ziptal at C olorado State University. So it was to work on agricultural ecology. So i t s et like a g love. I was working on seed populations. And that just grew from there. It just s ucks you in, in terms of the beauty of the relationships, but then ultimately also then you realize, well, wow, agriculture truly is a pathway to peace that rural communities can, can produce food. And you can also produce energy from agriculture and you can have a stability in terms of food and energy, which translates to economic stability. If you have economic stability, you have political stability. So I truly believe that agriculture is the foundation of a free society. A nd so t hat pulled in from that respect as well. It’s been 40, 45 years of pure joy in terms of trying to bring innovation to agriculture, to h elp growers be more productive for unit of land or make a liter of water. And most importantly, it took f or dollar t hat i nvested capital.

Richard Miles: 16:46

So Paul, you’re the CEO of a successful company and you’ve had a great career. You’re probably asked to speak from time to time, maybe to students or professional groups. What sort of words, you know , particularly sort of the students, someone just recently graduated from college, what sort of wisdom or advice do you give to those folks? If they’re trying to figure out what sort of career do I go to? What kind of choices do I make? Are there things that you tell them? We definitely do this and definitely stay away from that.

Paul Zorner: 17:13

Two things. One is I always say, do what you love and never take a job that pays you more money over something that you’re absolutely going to be in love with . That’s a recipe for disaster, because if you love doing something, the problems are going to just be challenges. There’ll be excited and you’ll be able to excite other people as well. And then secondly, once you land somewhere focus on doing your own job well, but mind to appreciate other people. And this is a team sport, people are different, you know, you’d might as break or I’m an ENTP or 16 of them pitching, followed by us break was I learned very early on in my career that wow, some people they’re different. I wonder why I have no idea. And he just think about things differently and it’s not because they’re wrong. It’s because they look at the world through a different prison. If you can begin to appreciate that they’re also, you know, know yourself, but know them. Wow. It really opens up great possibilities for teamwork in terms of things being even more productive and fun than they were otherwise. As you get people with all these different ways of looking at things and really remarkable innovation could occur in a situation like that. So do what you love and appreciate, and respect yourself and appreciate and respect the people that you work with. And then lastly, never let the perfect idea get ahead of you. There’s no such thing as perfection get going , and don’t expect perfection from yourself and don’t expect perfection from the people you work with because innovation happens one messy step at a time. And oftentimes it can be one step forward, two steps backwards, three steps forward a step to the side, not a straight line from idea to success. It looks like a tossed bunch of spaghetti on a plate, You move from one side of plate together. That’s innovation.

Richard Miles: 18:51

Interesting. I asked this question of almost all of our guests in terms of what was their journey like then there seems to be a correlation between the folks who’ve been around a little bit longer. They almost always use the exact same line and you just use it that it’s not a straight line. Whereas some of the younger entrepreneurs I talk to say, well, it’s all about hard work and , and is both right. But I think the ones who’ve been through an entire career realized that sometimes hard work won’t get you the immediate results you need. And you take, like you said, a step to the side or even a step back sometimes .

Paul Zorner: 19:17

And you know, also about resilience. Yeah . Hard work and resilience. And I often tell people I have close to 40 patents and I will tell you great. Majority of those are patents on things that I didn’t start to do on purpose. They were observations from starting a process and realizing that, wow, that’s not what I would have thought. Let’s explore that. That’s what came up with innovation, right ? So ideas are very hard. Work is great, but it’s resilience and being aware of your surroundings, trying to look for things that aren’t obvious.

Richard Miles: 19:46

Paul, this has been a great conversation. Appreciate you taking the time and congratulations on the success of your company, Locus Agricultural Solutions, and look forward to having you back on the show at some point.

Paul Zorner: 19:57

Richard, thank you so much for taking the time to put me on your show. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Richard Miles: 20:01

Great.Thank you.

Paul Zorner: 20:02

All right . Bye- bye.

Richard Miles: 20:03

Bye – bye, I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 20:06

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts 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.

How do ranchers know if their cows are healthy? One way is to use a quick and easy blood test to measure the strength of cows’ immune systems, a method that avoids the overuse of antibiotics. The test was invented by Treen Huo, a professor at the University of Central Florida and twice a Cade Prize finalist.  Treen, who grew up on a farm in China said she was a very curious kid.  “To keep me out of trouble, “ Treen recalls, "my father had me learn music, painting, and Kung-Fu. I run my research like a piece of art, and my training in these things taught me to be tough and persistent.”

How do ranchers know if their cows are healthy? One way is to use a quick and easy blood test to measure the strength of cows’ immune systems, a method that avoids the overuse of antibiotics. The test was invented by Treen Huo, a professor at the University of Central Florida and twice a Cade Prize finalist.  Treen, who grew up on a farm in China said she was a very curious kid.  “To keep me out of trouble, “ Treen recalls, “my father had me learn music, painting, and Kung-Fu. I run my research like a piece of art, and my training in these things taught me to be tough and persistent.”

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

Is your cow healthy? Not a question most people ask themselves, but if you own a lot of cattle, you think about it every day. If only there were a blood test to measure the strength of your cows immune systems, spoiler alert, there is. I’m your host, Richard Miles, and today on Radio Cade, my guest is Treen Huo, a professor at the University of Central Florida and the founder of Nano Discovery. Welcome to the show, Treen.

Treen Huo: 1:02

Hi Richard, Uh , thank you. Uh, it’s a real pleasure to be here.

Richard Miles: 1:06

So Treen, we usually start out each show by asking the inventor or the entrepreneur to explain the actual technology, what it is and what it does. And maybe you’ve heard the phrase that person’s all hat and no cattle. Well, I don’t have a hat or any cattle, so you really have to start with the basics for me. Um , why don’t we start with what kind of diseases do cattle get and , and how do ranchers currently deal with that problem?

Treen Huo: 1:31

So basically , um, I always say infectious diseases, they infection by bacterial viruses, parasites , uh, is the biggest problem for the cattle health. And because animals are not like a humans, so they don’t talk, so when they’re sick, we don’t know. So how do you find out that ? I mean, by the time you find out one or two calves or cows are dead, you know, there’s something wrong with your herd . So that’s when the farm owners started to suspect that there’s a disease because they’re all all together in the ranch, or in the farms. So they basically spread of the diseases are very fast . So now there are a couple of things is the ones that are sick, how can you identify them as quick as possible? So we can treat the sick ones and the prevented the disease to further spread to the other cattle. And the secondary thing is just like a human, and so just like us and the animal was a better immune health. They’re going to be more disease resistant. So infectious disease , basically pretty much any infectious disease, it has everything to do is with immune health. And if you have a good immune health, you’ll be better, you’ll be more resistant to the disease. So really what we are trying to do is to help the farmers to , uh , look at the immune activity and also the status of the animal, so say we from the data, we would know, Oh yeah, this kind of this cow, this calf has a better immune system or the other calf currently has an active immune response. So we suspected the calf is sick right now. So this is what we are trying to have a test. And then the next question is how do you actually detect or measure the health activity of an animal? Well, you have many ways to do it, that in the lab, very complicated, the equipment to techniques by the , in that farm, in the small , uh , veterinary clinics, your choice is I would say almost nonexistent. They’re really, really limited. So that’s what our technology, our product comes in. So we have a very simple blood test, which you can be done in the farm or in the veterinary small clinics, pretty much any farm, any size you can do it there. And you have a quick test, so you have a good idea about the immune health and the status of the cattle .

Richard Miles: 4:04

So a couple of questions. One, I imagine up until now, a lot of farmers will deal with the problem with the use of a lot of antibiotics, right?

Treen Huo: 4:11

Yes.

Richard Miles: 4:11

So they’re getting the antibiotics and just hope , okay. Just like a parent immunizing, a child or a sick child go , okay, hopefully that’ll take care of the problem, right?

Treen Huo: 4:19

Yes. Once you have a real sick animal, of course you should have used antibiotics to treat them.

Richard Miles: 4:25

But that’s after the cattles are to become sick. Right? So in a sense, it’s already a problem.

Treen Huo: 4:29

Yeah. But the issue is even a small farm, small cattle ranch. You probably have a hundred or 250 or something. The question is, do you treat them all? You want to trade the ones to sick? How do you know this one gets the sick? And the other one is not the same?

Richard Miles: 4:47

You don’t have to give a hundred cattle antibiotics if only three of them are sick? Right?

Treen Huo: 4:51

Exactly. So even for the farmer fields is the biggest threat. They want to give a more aggressive treatment. The public will treat them all. And then you have a budget to issue as well. When saying your treatment is expensive as well. And then some farmers say , well, I just treat this a few for now, but then you realize, Oh no. And then the more lost more deaths . So it’s really a difficult, hard situation for them. That’s why I say, if you have a simple test and a low cost, it has to be low cost. Quickly allow them to test it immediately. No , which you say 10% and 20% at which ones are safe . You only treat those. You don’t treat the others.

Richard Miles: 5:30

Well , let’s talk about the test itself. So you said it’s , it’s relatively simple. Does a farmer need specialized machinery to do these tests? Or is it literally like a veterinarian going out to each cow and jabbing them with a needle and drawing a sample blood? Or how does it actually work?

Treen Huo: 5:44

Yes, they do need to draw the blood, but they’re drawing. Blood actually is quite easier because it will pretty much, he even a small operation, it will have a veterinarian . They usually will have a one to serve them. So if they need them to call them to draw the blood , uh , lots of ranches and pharmacy , they have their own technician that could do the blood draw as well. So once the blood is draw, they do our test , our test , actually this couple versions, they can send it to our company for the testing, but they can also do a day in around two , which he is using very low costs . That equipment is not really expensive.

Richard Miles: 6:20

I see, so the mechanics of drawing the blood is not really a problem, or not costly. And then if they test it there at the ranch, does this involve a specialized machine that then analyzes the blood and gives them the results? Or is it, do they still have to send something to a lab somewhere?

Treen Huo: 6:36

No, they don’t have to. We are only just saying they don’t have the manpower, the technician to do it , the staff, they can just send it to us, but they can do it if they have a person there, if it doesn’t require much training at all, it needs a little bit of equipment, but very similar equipment to it or suitable for the farm testing.

Richard Miles: 6:56

And I imagine you don’t need any specialized training to interpret the results, right? Does it give you a fairly clear results ? Anybody could say, okay, the cow is sick or it has this or that condition?

Treen Huo: 7:05

The , the basic instruction will be all provided to them. Yeah.

Richard Miles: 7:10

So again, I’m not a farmer, I’m not an ag expert, but that strikes me as a pretty good idea. And if we’ve learned anything on this show, we know, however that good ideas don’t sell themselves, right? Even the best idea in the world usually has to be marketed. It has to be developed, has to be produced and investors have to provide early financing. That sort of stuff. You’ve been trained as a researcher. You still are a researcher. Of course, you’re a professor at the University of Central Florida, but you’ve also now gotten involved on the business angle in terms of forming a company, looking for customers, all those sort of things that you need to do. Tell us a little bit, what has that been like making the transition or at the same time, I guess being both the researcher and owner or co-founder of your own company and developing that and all the things that come with that,

Treen Huo: 7:57

Richard, that’s extremely interesting, good question. I would say we have been doing this for last 10 years since we initially develop the platform technology to itself. And it was quite a long journey. It takes us so long really to put something in that market as, you know, I studied as a researcher, as a faculty. So our job is to develop a new technology. I want, once we find a one newest, Oh, we’re very excited that we think EG can be used for such as such as such, as we initially saw. The naturally is a full , our technology basically is a nano-technology based approach. So we were using this approach for basically to develop a blood test or for human diseases, like a cancer, like a infectious diseases. So we were working this one for quite a while . And then this agriculture animal business, it was actually brought to me by other people. They said, well, you a working on human infectious disease and cancer. I think that might be a really a bigger need from agriculture animal industry, like a cat or like a sheep, like a goat . That’s when I started to learn, you know, I’m like you, I’m not a cattle man. You know? So I didn’t have much experience there. But then I said , Oh yeah, sure. And we started to work with people from Australia, from the U.S. I started to reach out to doctors, the ranch owners, they’re all extremely interested. So they are actually very, very cooperative. They say , please do come do your study in our operation. And as a matter of fact, that we have actually a number of, very close to collaborate of the ranch owners feed a lot to owners. I can also tell you, there’s a very big feed , a lot to you , Florida. We were working with, to do our study. So what I want to say is, the problem is brought by these totally our potential customers . So that make it a little easier, right ?

Richard Miles: 10:01

So you didn’t even have to go out and find the problem. The problem found you.

Treen Huo: 10:05

Yeah, exactly because I had the problem find me and they it’s much easier. I can tell you anyone. We talked about the big ranch owners, farm owners. When you have a such a, a test, let me know when you’re ready.

Richard Miles: 10:19

You don’t have to spend a lot of time convincing them that this is a good thing. They know it’s a good thing.

Treen Huo: 10:24

Yes, they know they have the problmem. Yes, yes.

Richard Miles: 10:25

Tell us about that process of you’re in your lab. As you said, you were working on technology that you thought probably does have an application for humans, but that was the direction you thought the market would respond to.

Treen Huo: 10:37

It is a still.

Richard Miles: 10:38

It’s still there, it still is.

Treen Huo: 10:38

It just requires a lot of more investment in the timing.

Richard Miles: 10:43

Is that because of the safety issue that before we can start actually doing it, FDA has to get involved?

Treen Huo: 10:49

Even to do a study, it’s difficult because you have to get the IRB approval. I’m not complaining, but it’s a lot of people and you would not start your study anytime soon. So we have actually at the university, I have quite a few projects related to still with so prostate cancer and also infectious disease . But it takes a long time, not a like the agriculture animal industry.

Richard Miles: 11:15

You can do this, faster.

Treen Huo: 11:16

Faster, yes.

Richard Miles: 11:17

It’s like a lot of universities, University of Central Florida actually helps its researchers along this path. Right. There’s a team there very good team, right. That sort of gives you advice on patents and licensing and commercialization did some of this advice come also from University of Central Florida, like, Hey, maybe look at this or look at that?

Treen Huo: 11:35

I would say for the research itself or for the technology itself as the principal scientist, of course you are, the one will lead the team. But usually you take a lot of suggestions. Otherwise. I mean, why do we collaborate? I mean, I’m a chemist. I’m not an MD. I’m the email knowledgist but certainly I have a open mind that you must loosen to your collaborate. Cause you don’t know immunology, but that yes, but your collaborators are so they tell you, Oh yeah, they should weigh that way. We should do this. We should do that. And you eventually, you come up with a nice test that it works. So in terms of technology, because I’ve been in this research for a long while , so I know how to protect the IP, what the ideas can’t be protected there . So because I’m a university faculty, so all my IP intellectual property belongs to the university, but the company Nano Discovery, licensed that technology. So the university, yes, they have administrative stuff to help us to put the pattern together. I have a more than like a 10 granted the patents. And also after a few, you actually know how to write the writing yourself, but then you have the IP lawyer to help you to really make it professional. Yes.

Richard Miles: 12:55

So Treen, let’s talk now about yourself, your pre-academic version of you, right? So you were raised in China on a farm?

Treen Huo: 13:02

Yes, yes.

Richard Miles: 13:03

So that is an experience that most people in the United States have not had. So tell us, what was it like growing up in China? I imagine you still family there. And then as an add on to that, what were your first impressions of the United States? But let’s start first. What was it like growing up in China on a farm and then tell us what it was like coming United States . Say for the first time.

Treen Huo: 13:23

Yeah. My husband is American. Okay . I often talk to him. I said , I would have never imagined when I was young, I would have come to U.S. and, study be a doctor. I mean, live in this country , uh , married in America . And so I would never thought about this because I live in a really poor village in China before six years old. I wasn’t living with my grandparents. So basically village grow a rice field.

Richard Miles: 13:55

What province of China?

Treen Huo: 13:56

Hunan Province.

Richard Miles: 13:57

And that’s?

Treen Huo: 13:59

In the mountains. In the south in the mounside. Yeah. Grew rice, peanuts and all this. And so we didn’t have a lot of farm animals cause that’s not allowed, but you do have your chickens. So, you know, you have one or two Buffalo in the same . So I had a great time. Of course it goes to, all we do is to play outside, nothing else to do. And I always loved animals. That’s for sure. I have a brother and it was very clear. I was the animal lover and he was not. So I took care of the chickens and dogs in the farm . And then when I started to go to school, my parents picked me up because it will be easier before. Well, that’s why I was staying with my grandparents. It’s common in China. And then I started to go to school.

Richard Miles: 14:44

Were your parents researchers as well or scientists?

Treen Huo: 14:47

My parents actually were college graduates very unusual in that the years of China, they graduate college from the 1960s. And then that’s it . So, you know, the back of China, it just show so small number of people go through college.

Richard Miles: 15:04

And that was a very difficult period in the sixties and seventies.

Treen Huo: 15:07

Yeah. But I always had a good education and I was a good student, do my homework. And I , I always was actually a very good student, but my parents, I have to be be honest with you. They never really pay a lot of attention about my grades and what did I do. They were really asked to go, Oh, what’s the homework have you done yet? I always did it myself anyway. So my parents who were scientists, they were agriculture scientists .

Richard Miles: 15:33

Now you’ve come full circle right?

Treen Huo: 15:34

Yes, their specialty was orange trees.

Richard Miles: 15:40

Oh wow and here you are in Florida, and in Orlando.

Treen Huo: 15:43

They took me to orange farms because they were the ones who go around, teach the farmers how to take care of their own orange trees. So it was just a few years ago, now my mother passed away three years ago. They both came here, visit me. So I intentionally took them to visit the Lake Wales area. We went to Bok Tower,

Richard Miles: 16:05

To the citrus area.

Treen Huo: 16:10

Yes because for a long time they changed their job. They later became a government Delfi shows . So they never really do the farm work, but they were very excited as Oh, so many orange trees. And I was very happy to show them.

Richard Miles: 16:25

So did you completed your undergraduate studies in China and you studied chemistry or what did you study?

Treen Huo: 16:32

Chemistry. Chemistry. Yes .

Richard Miles: 16:34

So tell us about coming to United States. Was it for a fellowship or to do a graduate program?

Treen Huo: 16:40

The graduate study, because from a university I graduate University of Science Technology of China. They do have a lots of connections. It was a U.S. so many of my classmates came to U.S. and so not just say , Oh, I’ll give it the trial as well, because maybe I’ll get the PhD degree. It’s just a natural, once you’re in the chemistry field, you know, you’ll have to go to the highest or degree point if you really want to do well. So I applied to a couple of places and I was actually accepted by University of Miami and the Tulane University, then others . Oh yeah, Miami sounds like a really fun the city next to the ocean. So I’ll go to University of Miami. So that’s how I came to University of Miami. I just remember the many people asking me a question. Are you scared going there by yourself? And then people say, I said that, no, I said what’s fall. I said , I was nervous yet, however though , uh , it was only for like a few seconds after landed in Miami airport . Oh my God. I don’t know anyone here. So strange place . Did I make a mistake? Should I go back now? And then, after a few minutes I said, no, no , let’s go. And after that, I just never thought about oh yeah what a strange place that I immediately kind of like fell in love with it . People say Miami’s not that typical America .

Richard Miles: 18:06

Right. Well, the joke is it’s a great city because it’s close to the United States, right?

Treen Huo: 18:10

Yeah. Yeah. No , but I love the culture in Miami. I had a great time. Being by myself. I never felt like many others do that and say, Oh, I have a difficult to adapt, but I didn’t have a friend. I feel lonely. And so and so. I never felt lonely.

Richard Miles: 18:26

I take it you already spoke pretty good English before you came?

Treen Huo: 18:30

Oh no, no.

Richard Miles: 18:30

So you got in Miami, and,

Treen Huo: 18:31

Yes. In China, we learn how to read and a write, but really no one was there to teach us how to speak and our teacher barely speak anything themselves. So we find the, oh, no, I said, I really didn’t understand it too much. But of course I was raised into the radios to tapes to them . But that was not enough. I guess it’s also related to personality. I like to talk to people in a very quickly, I pick it up, my English, I was able to handle my teaching assistant the job actually very well.

Richard Miles: 19:07

That’s great. So you’re in Miami for how long?

Treen Huo: 19:10

I did in my PhD, four and a half years. But that was the date of my post-doc . Yeah , because I like it there. So I did a total sevens years.

Richard Miles: 19:19

Seven years. And then , uh , eventually ended up in Orlando. Was it straight from Miami to Orlando?

Treen Huo: 19:25

No , I got my first faculty job in North Dakota state.

Richard Miles: 19:28

In North Dakota? Wow.

Treen Huo: 19:28

In Fargo, that’s where I met my husband.

Richard Miles: 19:32

Well, I was about to ask that, but before I ask about North Dakota, I have to say for the record, North Dakota is the only state in the United States. I’ve never been to . So, you know , I have to punch that ticket at some point.

Treen Huo: 19:43

In terms of that. Yeah. Wonderful sometime it’s all, you know, Miami, Fargo is so different. I guess when I was at that stage, you need to know for me, is it doesn’t matter where it has a job, present the job, but I should take it even though I don’t really have many choices. So I took it there. I like to Fargo in many ways, but the very soon I do notice difference, November, October.

Richard Miles: 20:09

Yeah right, as soon as you step off the plane , it’s like, Oh my gosh. I’m not in Miami anymore.

Treen Huo: 20:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They made that lots of his joke about me, you know, for my winter.

Richard Miles: 20:18

You’re probably one of the few people that voluntarily moved from Miami to Fargo. And that’s where you met your husband? Is your husband also a scientist as well?

Treen Huo: 20:25

He’s a mathematician. He’s a mathematical professor. Yes . It is a matter of fact that he was in the math department. I was in the parliament, the coding department in North Dakota . And then when we moved to UCF, that was 2005, So he becoming a faculty in math department and now become faculty in the chemistry department.

Richard Miles: 20:46

Great story . Let me close with a couple more questions. You’ve had the unique experience of you were raised in China. You have Chinese relatives, you know that system very well. And at the same time, you are increasingly knowledgeable about the United States and the American system. What is the one thing you wish Americans knew about China? And then what is the one thing you wish Chinese knew about the United States?

Treen Huo: 21:09

Oh, that’s a such a great question. I was thinking about maybe after I retire, I would write a book to fund your book or something to talk about this to aspect to particularly knowing the differences .

Richard Miles: 21:26

I have to say. One of the reasons I asked that question is because Americans by and large know European countries and cultures fairly well, the same thing with Latin America, increasingly since so many Americans come from Latin America, whether it’s Mexico or other countries, they pretty much have a basic understanding, but still to this day, even despite all the trade and everything for most Americans, China is just an unknown. And I’m guessing that for a lot of Chinese, the United States is still this very strange country.

Treen Huo: 21:51

I actually, I put in a painting. I think actually the Chinese people, American people are very much alike.

Richard Miles: 21:59

Interesting.

Treen Huo: 22:01

Yes, in many ways. They’re all hard working people. They’re all capitalistic, ambitious . They’re all like make money. They work hard , make the money. And then they’ll all more or less are very open-minded people. However , the big gap really here , the misunderstanding , the bridge is really the , each lack of understanding on their history political system, because they did not know each other, like the American state. They don’t know what the Chinese people have gone through, what happened in the past because past and the present, they’re all connected together. Nothing happens overnight. So they don’t see this.

Richard Miles: 22:48

It’s a very Chinese way of looking at history, right? American , since we’re still such a young country, we tend to undervalue the role of history in our own development and around the world.

Treen Huo: 22:58

Yeah. And then the Chinese people. Of course, they’re always that really the , my America is such a powerful country. I’m talking about the normal Chinese people. We’re not going to go beyond the that. They , they, they always say, Oh yeah, reach a country. American people seem very friendly. Funny on the other hand though, they’re Chinese people, to my opinion, lack of understanding on the West history political system. So this is a mutual, why the Americans who don’t understand Chinese political too much and the Chinese people do not understand it. Appreciate it. I mean, American history is not that long. However, it is pretty much inherited from the European history and the culture and everything. So the Chinese, you do not have enough understanding why things are done this way. Why the Americans values things see in this away, we’ll do this away. So that’s the gap where it is, I think.

Richard Miles: 23:59

So Treen, I’m looking forward to, after we reach a point where we have nothing but happy, healthy cows stretching from Fargo to Miami, you can do a career change. You can come a political scientist and a historian and look at U.S. Chinese relations. Thank you very much for coming on the show today. This has been fascinating for me and I hope to have you back at some point.

Treen Huo: 24:17

Oh, thank you so much for having me here. It’s a real pleasure.

Richard Miles: 24:21

I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 24:23

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts 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.

Microbiologist Phillip Furman is the inventor of AZT, an anti-HIV drug, and other antiviral drugs for Herpes and Hepatitis B and C. He talks about his breakthrough moments, the difficulties of taking “miracle” drugs to market, and the culture shock of moving from New York to Florida as a teenager. Furman’s interest in science was fueled at age 8 with the gifts of a microscope from an uncle and a chemistry set from his parents. His advice to researchers: “Follow the data. Negative results give you as much information as positive results."

Adam Kinsey is the founder of Verigo, a technology that uses smart sensors to track and monitor fresh produce during its journey from farm to truck to warehouse to store to table.  New technology like RFID chips has gotten dramatically cheaper, making the business model viable. A former engineer at Texas Instruments, Adam saw a new communications platform there that he knew could be adapted for fresh produce supply chains. A year later, no one else had adapted the technology, so Adam jumped in. “It was boldness or stupidity,” he says, that motivated him to enter a market he knew nothing about.  

Running shoe technology hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years.   Cyle Sage of On shoes, a 2011 Cade Prize finalist, explains how On shoes “roll and stop,” offering both vertical and horizontal cushioning. Cyle, a former triathlete and coach, partnered with a Swiss engineer in 2003 to design and market the shoes to take on the shoe industry giants.  In the last few years On also has become the “it” shoe among celebrities, turning up on red carpets as well as running trails.  

Running shoe technology hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years.   Cyle Sage of On shoes, a 2011 Cade Prize finalist, explains how On shoes “roll and stop,” offering both vertical and horizontal cushioning. Cyle, a former triathlete and coach, partnered with a Swiss engineer in 2003 to design and market the shoes to take on the shoe industry giants.  In the last few years On also has become the “it” shoe among celebrities, turning up on red carpets as well as running trails.  

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

Some are going to have their head in the clouds and it turns out they can have their feet there as well. Here to join me in the cloud is Cyle Sage, one of the first employees of On, a running shoe company and also the person who brought On to the United States. Welcome to Radio Cade . Cyle.

Cyle Sage: 0:53

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 0:53

So, Cyle, I think the last time I saw you was in 2011, when On, or the shoes from On was named a Cade price , sweet 16 finalist.

Cyle Sage: 1:02

That’s right.

Richard Miles: 1:02

Like just yesterday. Right? So before we get too far into this, let’s start for our listeners talking about the technology itself in On, and as we said, it is a running shoe. And so I think most people are familiar with running shoes or traditional running shoes. You know, it’s , it’s extra padding, it’s a bigger heel. It’s basically meant right? To cushion the blow from running. So how is On different from those types of shoes that have been around now? What, since the early seventies, the Nike’s and the Adidas’s and why are they better than say a Nike?

Cyle Sage: 1:32

That’s a great question. And running shoe technology hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years, and yet you would think it would, but running injuries are not decreasing either. So because it’s all based on a traditional solid midsole and the Swiss engineer that I came in contact with in 2003, he was down in Florida, he was running on a beach side of the road and he noticed his legs weren’t as tired when he ran on the beach side of the road is when he ran inland and it was running in a regular pair of shoes. And he thought, well, I must be rolling on those sand grains and coming to a stop. So if I can come up with a cushioning system that rolls and stops, in other words, it cushions vertically and horizontally two directions. He might have something that people would love. So that’s the start of it. So seven years later On started, and it’s a cushion landing and affirm takeoff , but it cushions in two directions. And it also the shoe of lets your foot roll naturally heel to toe.

Richard Miles: 2:34

So you have a pair in the studio here and we’re , we’re both looking at it and , um, I’ll do my best to describe it for listeners without benefits of a visual. The best way I could describe it, visually is almost looked like a tank tread except without the wheels in the middle. So it’s sort of the shape of a tread. And then they’re on the bottom of the shoe. So you had this pocket right? Of empty space there. You said it cushions both vertically and horizontally?

Cyle Sage: 2:56

Yes. We call them clouds because they look like clouds. The early test runners, myself and other athletes when they ran them, wow, It feels like I’m running on clouds. And so, because there was actually air there , Swiss engineered, you could call these little Swiss balls. And so when you’re standing in the shoe, you’re not actually touching the ground. So, it’s activating your foot, it’s turning your foot on. That’s why we call it On. And then when you go to run, they collapse and they’re firm . So not energy return or a bounce shoe , but it’s a cushion landing and a firm takeoff and the, you know, it provides a new sensation, right?

Richard Miles: 3:34

The sensation is interesting. It’s not a bouncy sensation. It’s more of just a better cushion? Or?

Cyle Sage: 3:40

Yeah you feel light. You feel faster. We did studies. There’s actually less ground force impact. We actually did a study on that. Your ground contact time is reduced and it gives you a new sensation. We wanted to put the fun back into running.

Richard Miles: 3:54

Right . And you mentioned it also decreases injuries or does it have some sort of effect on preventing or mitigating traditional running injuries?

Cyle Sage: 4:02

So the latest biomechanical research shows that the best shoe for you is probably the one that you feel the most comfortable in. I mean, we have orthotics and inserts and they have their place and shoes with different mid-sole technologies that help for pronation and super nation have their place. But the latest research and the trend is let your foot move the way it wants to naturally that’s the best in art . The cushioning technology allows for that to happen, to move with your foot, to move naturally heel to toe.

Richard Miles: 4:33

I think it’s fair to say that the shoe industry is fairly competitive, right? This is a , an industry in which there are a lot of very, very big companies. And it’s fascinating to me, you started out with this startup company in roughly 2003 to 2008 period with the development of the company?

Cyle Sage: 4:50

So I met the Swiss engineer in 2003. So from 2003, until 2005, we were gluing these elements, clouds on the bottom of our shoes, whether we ran on Adidas or Asics or Nike , we were, yeah. On existing shoes, we did about 150 pairs during that timeframe. And then in 2008, we came out with an entire shoe. I was a professional triathlete training here in Gainesville and introduced the Swiss engineer to a professional triathlete, Olivia Bernard , over in Switzerland. And they started working on the development process over there. And then 2010 on started Olivia with two of his friends, Casper Colepethy, and David Allerman. One had a marketing design background, one had a sales background, and then that kind of formed on that.

Richard Miles: 5:38

It’s been pretty daunting. Describe what it was like to enter this highly competitive market where you have already by 2010. I’m guessing Nike probably is the dominant. In addition to Nike, you’ve got a lot of other big, big shoe companies out there. What gave the founders the courage to enter in a market that has be brutal, I imagine.

Cyle Sage: 5:58

In 2010, we took the shoe to the Ispo show in Europe. It’s the largest sports exposition in the world. And this technology won that year, 2010 and the brand new award for the best innovation in sport. And then from there, we were kind of a player. We were on the map, but very, very small percentage and people are resistant. They’re like, Oh, it’s a fad. It’s this it’s that it’s not going to work. And that was tough to overcome in the early years. And then we just kept at it. More retailers came on board and Olympic Gold Medal was one. And then now we’re the fastest growing, running brand in the United States. We’re still seven, 8% of the market share, but we’re growing very fast.

Richard Miles: 6:40

As you mentioned, you yourself were a competitive triathlete. And a lot of it seems like your early success was kind of in that market for the high performing iron man triathlete crowd. Was that sort of a deliberate decision to go after that elite athletic crowd and then hope that that would filter into a broader market or did that just sort of happen because of your connections and that’s who you knew?

Cyle Sage: 7:02

Right. Olivia was a world champion do athlete and six time Ironman, Switzerland. And I was involved professionally in triathlon. So it was premium product with performance and function. And that’s our DNA is that we are a performance running shoe company. Everybody said, Hey, this looks really cool. I can wear it with jeans. And so we’ve now we’ve branched out into, if you could wear your shoes all day, every day, all the time, what would that look like well you’ve got trail, you’ve got the comfort world or the fashion world, and you still have the performance running world. So we have now developed models for those different categories.

Richard Miles: 7:40

And so it seems like one of the nice side effects of being a premium product, because you’ve now starting to acquire premium clients because all of a sudden On jumps from that world of elite triathletes to movie stars and celebrities.

Cyle Sage: 7:53

We’re spotted on the runway and the Oscars and the front cover of vanity.

Richard Miles: 7:57

Tell me, how did that transition happen? And what did it start with? Like one celebrity, all of a sudden just started wearing them or was that again, a strategy, a marketing strategy?

Cyle Sage: 8:07

We weren’t doing ads. We weren’t doing TV commercials. We felt that it was going to be an organic growth, grassroots word of mouth. That’s the way we wanted to market it. And sure enough, one day, some movie star who was wearing them and then another, and then that just kind of got the ball rolling, but we didn’t see movie stars or anything like that to get started.

Richard Miles: 8:27

Tell me about the future plans of on, in terms of the growth and development. Is there a strategy to gain a significant portion in the, in the U.S. market? And then what does that look like? I assume you want to grow your market share, right?

Cyle Sage: 8:39

We’re growing at 70% a year, year over year growth, which is unheard of in a market. That’s basically flat for a lot of companies, but we like our niche and we’re just going to let the customers dictate how big we get. And if we just stick to what brought us to the table that put the fun back in the run, that sensation that everybody loves when they first put the shoe on, right. That’s going to continue the growth.

Richard Miles: 9:04

Let’s talk a little bit about your personal background. We’ve mentioned that you were a triathlete and swimmer and runner. Um , let’s go back before that. Where were you raised? What did you like to do as a kid? Were you a good student? All that good stuff.

Cyle Sage: 9:16

Iowa, so I learned the value of hard work. My aunt had a farm and I was out there on the weekends. And then , um , we moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico and then Oak Ridge, Tennessee. So Iowa and Tennessee is where I, my formative years, you know, kindergarten through high school. Oak Ridge, because my parents were involved with the national lab.

Richard Miles: 9:37

Where they both scientists, your parents?

Cyle Sage: 9:38

Yes. And they instilled the whole scientific process. So the Iowa gave me those early roots in the value of a dollar and hard work to the scientific processes. I mean, our math teacher at my high school wrote the SAT math questions. Then I got into swimming, loved the water, love , collecting everything in the water, alligators and snakes things that probably shouldn’t have been collecting. But I did. So I was very adventurous, outdoor, spontaneous.

Richard Miles: 10:05

When did he start the swimming? Cyle? Was that in high school or prior to that?

Cyle Sage: 10:08

10 years old.

Richard Miles: 10:09

10 years old. Okay . Competitive swimming or?

Cyle Sage: 10:11

Competitive swimming in Iowa. We didn’t have an indoor pool. So I could only swim outdoors for three months, but I , I go to the pool when it opened at 10 in the morning and I come home at nine o’clock at night, so.

Richard Miles: 10:22

Your parents encouraged you to do that. Did you just decide you wanted to join the swim team?

Cyle Sage: 10:27

Yeah. My sister was swimming and I watched her swimming a few meets and I thought that’s pretty cool to go from one side of the pool, the other faster than everybody else. And so that got me into competitive swimming and I learned swimming in Tennessee start in high school. We were doing nine miles a day and I learned the value of a second. I would train 20, 30 hours a week just to drop a second in my event, over the course of a year. So I learned the value of a second consistency. And then I got interested in exercise science, exercise physiology. How can I be more efficient? That brought me here to Gainesville to study exercise physiology.

Richard Miles: 11:05

Was for undergraduate, or when did you come to Gainesville after your undergraduate degree?

Cyle Sage: 11:08

I got my undergraduate degree actually in Marine science. Because I had a love of the ocean and the water and critters reptiles fish, and then came to graduate school here at the University of Florida. And that at the same time I was getting into triathlon and racing and then came across Dr. Cade.

Richard Miles: 11:27

One of our few guests on the show who actually worked with or knew Dr. Cade. So tell me some stories. What was that like working with him or getting to know him?

Cyle Sage: 11:33

You know, my quest to become a better athlete was all about efficiency. And , uh , of course that was the premise when Gatorade, how can these football players, they’re losing these electrolytes? And if we put them back in, we can make them last longer and more efficient. So that process was very exciting to me. And so when I got to meet Dr. Cade and I tested some early products, not Gatorade.

Richard Miles: 11:58

This is like early to mid eighties, roughly?

Cyle Sage: 12:00

Early nineties.

Richard Miles: 12:01

Early nineties. Okay. Got it.

Cyle Sage: 12:02

And you know, he just had that creative zest. You just wanted to be around it.

Richard Miles: 12:06

Did you do some of those experiments on the treadmill?

Cyle Sage: 12:09

Yes.

Richard Miles: 12:09

I did some of those as well. I was a runner, not a swimmer. And I remember doing bicycle experiments. You probably did a few of those where you’re poking and prodding you. And the mission I remember clearly was pedal at top speed for two hours until you pass out, whichever comes first until you exhausted the whole time they’re drawing blood. And I remember we were paid $50 an hour, which I thought was just an enormous sum until you get off the bike and then you realize you’ve been had. Right , right.

Cyle Sage: 12:34

But you got a lot of free product. It was good. Yeah. The whole process of scientific nature and that whole process coming into the athletic world was very exciting to me.

Richard Miles: 12:46

When you’re doing those experiments with Dr. Cade, was that your first inkling of the value of sports science or sports performance medicine, physiology, that sort of world.

Cyle Sage: 12:56

And then there’s that at the human level, like how you can go faster, further, longer. And then of course there was the gadget world. How can we take technology and sport performance and put it into running shoes, into swimming paddles into bike seats. I did a lot of experimentation. I was known as the gadget guy when I was early on in the triathlon career.

Richard Miles: 13:18

One of the things we’d like to concentrate on or talk about on Radio Cade is not just the original invention, original technology, but the development in particularly the path that a startup takes to get from day one in the lab or in the garage to the marketplace. It’s tell us a little bit what that has been like to start very, very small. And then all of a sudden you’re looking at much, much bigger things. Almost every entrepreneur we talked to that’s followed that path. There are some great days, and there are some terrible days. Describe for us if you’d like to, what do some of the great days look like? And what do some of the really bad days look like in that startup process.

Cyle Sage: 13:53

With running shoes, it’s pretty black and white. Yeah. And we had some pretty big competitors out there and people are very loyal to their brands. And once they get a brand, they’re not getting out of it. So a great day was when someone would try our shoe, it’s a new technology, it’s different. And they would run down the street and come back and come back with that. Aha. Wow. I didn’t expect that. And that moment right there, you’re changing someone’s life. You’re maybe going to get inspire them to do things that they thought they couldn’t do. So we put the fun back into run. That’s what one of our early mottoes was and still is. And so that’s a great day. And then of course the other end of the spectrum is people didn’t like it. They hated it. Oh, I’m going to trip. And this is not for me. And that kind of really lets you down, but you got another day.

Richard Miles: 14:41

One of the things that we found in just developing the Cade Museum is that there are at least two types of criticism, right? There’s kind of the wacky off base that you dismiss , but then there’s another part, although you don’t really welcome it. And it’s a little bit painful. You recognize there’s some truth there. And the trick is, can you use that to improve the product, even though you didn’t want to hear it. Is there something in here that I need to listen to because that’s the market talking back to you, right? There’s some markets saying, here’s what we don’t like about your product.

Cyle Sage: 15:08

And we’ve come out with now three different iterations and we’re coming out with updates of other shoes. And yeah, if you don’t listen to the consumer in the feedback, you’re going to get left behind in the dust. So to speak, you’ve got to take that feedback, whether it hurts or not, you’ve got to grow with it. And usually it’s been working out for the better.

Richard Miles: 15:25

Yeah. I got to say with the increase now in platforms like Google reviews and Yelp, it’s both easier, but also pain comes a lot more quickly. If somebody doesn’t like your product, we still struggle with that. The museum, I’m a first reactions . I want to go find that person and give them a good talking to, for the one or two star reviews. But on the other hand, sometimes the comments you don’t enjoy reading them, but they’ve got a point. Maybe we need to fix this or that or tweak this or that. So Cyle, we always offer each guest the opportunity to dispense wisdom from on high, the mountain top that you’ve climbed. If you were meeting someone yourself say 20 years ago, and they’re trying to decide, gee, what do I do with this opportunity? I have. Are there any words of wisdom that you would give that person, things that you’ve learned that you wish you had done or not done?

Cyle Sage: 16:09

Three words, three words, simplicity, simplicity. We have 24 hours of the day, eight to sleep eight to work an eight to play. If you organize your day like that, you’re going to cultivate your creativity. And you’re going to keep that motivation going diversity. We wake up every day and we’re kind of bookend by these two thought processes. So you can learn more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. Or you can learn less and less about more and more until you’ve know nothing about everything. So somewhere in the middle is each individual’s sweet spot. We wake up, we’d have these experiences. And it’s very important to find what our experiences are daily and to share those with others. So diversity, because we all have something to offer to someone else. And then the last one would be consistency. We’re not guaranteed tomorrow. So make every day count every second count. My mom always said, if it weren’t for the last minute, a lot of things wouldn’t get done. And my dad said, if you can’t figure it out or you can’t fix it, duct tape it.

Richard Miles: 17:18

Great advice. Your second one diversity reminded me of , I was a diplomat and I used to tell people the job description diplomat is I would tell them , I look, I don’t know very much, but I don’t know very much about a lot of things. So that’s kind of the secret to surviving Cyle, thank you very much for coming on radio Cade and enjoyable discussion and wish the best to you and to and to On.

Cyle Sage: 17:35

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 17:37

I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 17:39

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts 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.

Once known as the “most beautiful woman in the world,” film star Hedy Lamarr also received a patent in 1942 for a “secret communications system” to safeguard U.S. torpedos from German radio jamming. The technology was the forerunner of “spread spectrum" which is now used in GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi. She was recently inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame, an award accepted by her son Anthony Loder, who talks about her life’s triumphs and sorrows.  

Once known as the “most beautiful woman in the world,” film star Hedy Lamarr also received a patent in 1942 for a “secret communications system” to safeguard U.S. torpedos from German radio jamming. The technology was the forerunner of “spread spectrum” which is now used in GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi. She was recently inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame, an award accepted by her son Anthony Loder, who talks about her life’s triumphs and sorrows.  

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: 0:36

What do Hollywood, the German Navy, And the Cuban missile crisis have to do with each other? Turns out they’re all linked by one person. Hedy Lamarr known in the 1930s and 1940s as the world’s most beautiful woman and recently inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame. Welcome to Radio Cade, I’m your host Richard Miles today. My guest is Anthony Loder , the son of Hedy Lamarr. Welcome to the show, Anthony, and congratulations.

Anthony Loder: 1:00

Thank you very much.

Richard Miles: 1:01

So Anthony, your mother was both a famous actress and an inventor, and I’d like to talk about the actress part, but I’d like to begin actually with the scientist part, many people do not know, although recently it’s become more public through books and movies and documentaries that she was a scientist and an inventor. So why don’t we start and talk about what her invention was or what her patent was and what it’s been used for and so on.

Anthony Loder: 1:25

So Hitler invaded, Austria Hedy’s Homeland, and she grew up very happy there. And she had to flee because of all the negativity that was surrounding her. So she actually dressed up like the maid, escaped her possessive husband and left Vienna for Paris and then Paris for London. And then she bought a ticket on the Normandy to go to New York where she met Louis B. Mayer , who was in Europe, looking for fresh talent, fresh meat, for his stables, for his race horses back in Hollywood. And Hedy became a race horse, and she had to run fast in order to keep on board. And when she started, her look started to fade, they kind of threw her out. But early on when she was there, World War II was raging. And she always knew about munitions and problems with radio guided torpedoes because she was with her husband who sold munitions to the Germans. And she always knew about this problem about radio guided torpedoes, and it always stuck with her. And she always wanted to help defeat Hitler and help the allies and United States win the war. She was very patriotic. She loved America. She loved being safe. She loved being in tropical Hollywood and she wanted to pay back. So she always thought about what can I do to help win this war? And then she at home and she probably thought of frequency hopping because she had one of these Philco magic radios where you turn the dial on your Philco magic dialer. And it changed the radio station on the radio in the next room. So she , well look, I’m changing radio frequencies constantly here. What if we send a signal to a torpedo and not send it on one frequency, but send it on multiple frequencies in sync with each other. So only the transmitter and the receiver will know the pattern, frequency hopping it’s called and the enemy can only touch one frequency at a time and they won’t get the whole message of just bits and pieces. And all these frequencies jumping around will be secret. And so she thought of frequency hopping and she got a patent in 1942 for a secret communications system. She came up with a way to do radio transmissions secretively.

Richard Miles: 4:06

So the U.S. Navy during world war II, did they use this technology?

Anthony Loder: 4:08

No, no. Hettie asked her friend George Antile, who was a musician who sinked 16 player pianos on a symphony. And he was Hungarian and spoke German, and my mother did, and his brother was shot out of the skies by the Germans and he too wanted to help win the war. So she went to him at a party and she said, look, can you help me figure this out? I have an idea, but I don’t know how to put it into realistic terms. So he said, well, I can help you. Let’s transmit the radio frequencies. And let’s use player piano rolls to hop around in sync with each other.

Richard Miles: 4:49

He was a musician. He was not a scientist.

Anthony Loder: 4:52

No and she was an actress, not a scientist. So a musician and an actress got together and they came up with this patent and he drew his part according to piano rolls . And by the time they got it to the Navy brass, they thought it was a joke player, piano rolls, and a torpedo and a submarine . Good luck. Just go back to Hollywood, make movies, sell war bonds. She was already a very well-known actress at this point, famous movie star 39 Algiers came out and all of a sudden, overnight she was a huge star, but all that movie stuff didn’t really satisfy her. She was kind of bored when everyone said , Oh, you’re so beautiful. You’re so beautiful. Oh , ms . Lamar, it’s so beautiful. It was all about the way she looked. And she had nothing to do with that. She was born with that face, but she did like the challenge of being creative and inventive. And she actually wanted to leave the movie business, go to Washington D.C., work at the inventor’s council and look at all the patents that came across their desk and try to enhance it or improve it. She said, well, let me look at these patents. Maybe I can make them better and Oh no. Oh no. You go back to Hollywood and be a nice actress and inspire the troops that way.

Richard Miles: 6:09

So she got the patent, the Navy sat on the technology and it eventually was used, but not until like 20 years later, right? During the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Anthony Loder: 6:17

Yeah. They shelved the idea. They actually did give the patent to the Sauna Boy Project, which was in the sixties. And actually it was used, but nobody knew that it was used and Hedy should have been paid, but she wasn’t paid. I mean, we’re $30 billion that idea. But at least now with people watching the movie bombshell, which is on Netflix and a wonderful film, very well-made film about her life. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should watch it. It’s very impressive.

Richard Miles: 6:50

And just one more question about the technology, Anthony. So the Spread Spectrum, This kind of became the basis for a lot of technologies that we all use today. Everything from what wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, I mean really fundamental.

Anthony Loder: 7:06

Right? It’s part of your smartphone . You break up all the radio frequencies and a little bits and pieces. Just your device has that pattern. So everyone’s sharing the same limited radio frequencies because they’re all cut up. Cause they’re all moved around, moving around and different patterns from the source to the phone or the computer basically. And this frequency hopping is widely used in all military wireless things. Like I put on a helmet, 150 miles away, someone else is wearing the helmet. And we’re just talking like we’re talking now and we’re listening to each other, like we’re sitting on the porch having a conversation. So weapons have it. Laser guided bombs use it. Cordless phones use it. Wifi uses GPS use smartphones use it. It’s everywhere. So had at the very least deserves gratitude thought now, and then thank you, Heidi, for coming up with this idea so we can have all of this.

Richard Miles: 8:07

So I read somewhere that her patent has been cited in at least 62 other patent applications as sort of a preceding or predicate technology. So just shows you how important this insight was as a building block, to all these other things. If we could go back to your mother and her upbringing, did she ever talk about later in life? Did she want to be a scientist as a young girl? She was raised in a fairly well to do family, right?

Anthony Loder: 8:31

President of a big bank. Oh , I never knew about this, but it turns out that Hedy’s family was, or is Jewish. I’ve seen the family tree go back a few hundred years. There’s Moses the tailor and Isaac, the banker and things like that. So we are Jewish and had Hedy’s very bright and she always comes up with solutions and inventors come up with solutions there’s problems and they find solutions and Hedy had a problem. There’s a war going on and what can I do to help the allies win this war? And she knew that there was a problem with radio guided torpedoes. She stuck on that. She said, if we break up all these frequencies, then no one can latch onto a frequency and jam it or interfere with the direction of the torpedo. So I’m going to do frequency hopping. That’ll solve that problem down. We’ll make it a secret communication system. So 20 years later, when the integrated circuit was invented, things can downsize and become small enough where they could incorporate that idea. And they did incorporate Hetty’s idea on torpedoes and radio communications. And 20 years after the patent was invented, the patent was 1942. 1962 was the Cuban missile crisis. And us warships had had his invention on their radios during the Cuban missile crisis. I don’t know whether they used it, but it was on board warships. And now it’s on board. Every ship, every plane, every computer it’s like $30 billion worth of invention is floating around. And Hedy actually never got any money nor credit. But with this movie coming out with you and I talking like this there’s ears that’ll pick it up. And they’ll know that this most beautiful woman in the world that she was known as, and all the accolades came from the way she looked. And she used to say my beauty is my curse because I can’t sustain it as a teenager. And in my twenties, that’s when I peak out. And then it’s all down here from there. And she had nothing else to latch on to for accolades or for attention. But there’s other things she thought of. She wanted to devote her life to invention. And she asked permission to leave the movie business and just focus on being an inventor. And they said, no, no, no, go back. Do movies, do what you know how to do. She didn’t have a close friend or a partner or someone to guide her and to encourage her to feed that wolf on her shoulder, that intellectual smart, quick minded solution-oriented person, she was Dayjah said, be pretty look good, being the movies, be superficial.

Richard Miles: 11:26

And Anthony, let me interrupt for our younger listeners who may not be aware of your mom. I’m trying to think of a comparison in today’s terms. I mean, she, wasn’t just a pretty woman for a time. She was the top of the A list in Hollywood. She was probably one of the most recognizable faces in the world. She’s today’s equivalent, Nicole Kidman or Angelina, Jolie , uh , you know, very, very recognizable. What’s fascinating to me is if you look at the subset of people who are inventors, very, very small subset of people who are famous Hollywood actors, very, very small to have them combined in one person. I mean, she’s gotta be a subset of one or two. I don’t think I’ve no of any other story like hers. And as you said more than once that she felt like in some ways the beauty was a curse because you were in the movie business for a while , right? Your actor and a producer, your father was also an actor. What was it like growing up in that environment? I’m sure. From day one, right? You had to get used to having a famous mother. How did she want you to grow up? Did she want you to set aside fame and glory? What do you think her takeaway from her own life was in terms of how she wanted you to grow up?

Anthony Loder: 12:33

Being a little boy with this movie star I didn’t know she was a movie star. She was just my mother. So my life was normal the way it was, but it was extremely abnormal. I mean, nothing was normal about it.

Richard Miles: 12:47

At what point did you realize that you had a famous mother? How old were you?

Anthony Loder: 12:51

Somewhere and people stopped her on the street map your autograph. And when we went somewhere for ice cream at Will Wrights in Beverly Hills, like 10 people used to come up to the table as for her autograph always being interrupted. I knew that all of these equities , my mom didn’t really care about all that. It was kind of like a nuisance. You know, she spoke seven languages fluently. She could join in on any conversation about anything.

Richard Miles: 13:17

She’s sounds like she was a brilliant woman.

Anthony Loder: 13:19

She loved playing charades. She was on the movie making, movie star path and it kind of bored her. She didn’t really want to be a movie star and,

Richard Miles: 13:30

She started very young, like 15 or something?

Anthony Loder: 13:33

Yeah. She started for young , uh , in Sasha studios and in Vienna , Austria . And she started as a script girl and then got a little part here, a little part there. And then she made Ecstasy the famous Czech movie where she was naked and romp naked. And she was like the first woman in the movies to have an orgasm on screen.

Richard Miles: 13:54

That movie was banned in the United States?

Anthony Loder: 13:56

Yeah it was. So it was and made her a household name overnight. And she kind of had to hide all that from the United States audiences who were kind of prudish.

Richard Miles: 14:06

Anthony, what point did you realize the invention side of your mom? When did you know about the patent and their scientific?

Anthony Loder: 14:13

They’re married , uh, oil man and we moved to Texas and we lived in River Oaks and Houston and , and big old mansion that Howard Lee built for Hedy actually. And we were living in a house in Beverly Hills when I was born. My mother divorced John Loder, who was an actor. That was my father, right when I was born. So I never met him. And we moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel. And then we moved down to Mexico where she married the man who she met on her honeymoon, seven years prior, Teddy Stauffer, who owned the Laverday and La Gila, which was this bar on the hillside where divers dive off the mountains into the water below. And we lived there for two years. And then we went back to the United States and we went off to boarding school at that time when I was young. So we cried and missed our mom. And we went from boarding school to summer camp, to boarding school, to summer camp. So she never really had the patience to be a mom anymore because the movies were actually giving her uppers and downers and Dr. Feelgood. So she became erratic and impatient and short-tempered, and we were actually scared of our mother. So she went through a lot of transformation. I feel sorry for her because she was a single mom trying to earn her way, taking care of us, taking care of a career that wasn’t on track because they were used to gold, but they didn’t have porcelain. And Hedy was specials . She stood out and they didn’t know what to do with her. They didn’t write special parts for her like they did for Betty Davis , for example. So she kind of was, well, we need a pretty girl for this movie, so well let’s use Hedy, let’s put her in. So they didn’t really care about her film career. They didn’t nourish her nurture good parts for her. So she wasn’t really a huge superstar.

Richard Miles: 16:10

So even as an actress. She didn’t really get to develop her talent in the acting. The beauty was just sort of overwhelmed everything.

Anthony Loder: 16:17

So she was disappointed and bored and , and let down by the parts that she had. And this one thing kept sticking in her mind. She wanted to be an inventor. She wanted full time. Let me think of things to improve society. And she came up with little cubes that you put in a water glass and it turned into fizzy Coca-Cola, but there was different types of acid water and this and that. So the water wasn’t the same. So that didn’t work out at one point Hedy even dated Howard Hughes though. He was the worst partner she had. He was the best partner she had intellectually because he did loan out his scientist that helped her develop that Coca-Cola cube. And she encouraged him to make faster airplanes. She bought a book on fish. She bought a book on birds and she found the fastest bird and the fastest fish. She merged the two together. She said, look, Howard, your airplane, wings, go straight out. Why don’t we bend them back and see what happens? I think the plane will go faster. She said, you’re a genius. And he started doing swept wings. So Hedy actually came up with that idea as well. So she was a smart cookie and I would’ve loved to been with her as a scientist mom, instead of as a cookie movie star mom who had no platform to stand on. I mean, the better you look, the more we’re going to love you that nothing to do with science and the science and the inventive nature is what’s real. And what’s important. What people can really hang their hats on. And Howard Hughes hung his hat on Hedy and Hedy helped Howard and Howard help Hedy and,

Richard Miles: 18:03

That’s a great story.

Anthony Loder: 18:04

There’s a lot of little stories like that in their life. So she didn’t have a friend to encourage her to go down the path of a scientist as inventor. So she kind of let it go. And she was resigned to be a famous movie star. And the fame part of it was she was known as the most beautiful woman in the world. And how long can that last, when gravity is pulling your beauty, making wrinkles and becoming not a young firm, pretty beautiful actress anymore. I mean, her life was kind of sad in a way that she didn’t have anyone to encourage her bright mindedness. And she was very inventive and she didn’t know how to add two plus two, really, but she was very bright minded and she knew of the problem. There’s a problem though . Torpedo gets interfered with, by the enemy, it’s a radio guided torpedo, but the enemy takes over the signal and changes the direction or jams your transmission controller. How can I fix that ?

Richard Miles: 19:08

You know , Anthony, that almost captured perfectly the essence of a true inventor, this intellectual curiosity in which you’re wanting to know the answers to questions or wanting to find solutions to problems that don’t even directly concern you. I mean, she was an actress. This was not really in her orbit, but yet she had that intellectual curiosity. And I was struck by something you said earlier, Anthony, in which you said, if all my mother was, was just a beautiful woman and a famous actress, no one would really remember her past a generation, right? Cause actors and actresses come and go depending on the generation. But because of this, the invention part of her, her reputation and her memory is going to live much, much longer. That’s why we’re talking about her. Now. We wouldn’t really be talking about her, except for she had this inventive part of her mind.

Anthony Loder: 19:54

When she was alive and active in the forties. All everyone clamored about, Oh, you’re so beautiful. And it was a short term superficial thing that everyone focused on and raised her up on a platform of superficiality. And now the science part of her is a long term , significant, not a shallow, but a deep understanding where it reaches out to millions of people helping improve their lives. So Hedy, without people knowing it is touching most everybody’s life on the planet. And in ways we don’t even know of that,

Richard Miles: 20:31

Like that time we pick up our cell phone, right?

Anthony Loder: 20:33

Right, like in the future, you’re going to walk into a store and the store is going to recognize you with your electronic cell phone device as being, Oh, this person’s still lives at the same place. Their credit is good. They’re welcome to the store, and they go and take everything they want put it in a bag and they walk out of the store. And immediately everything you took is charged to your cell phone because of the little transmitters that are in all the products for inventory control, for charging people. So there’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s not even happening yet. That will happen with this idea. Most all military wireless things have it . The satellites have at TRW, Lockheed Martin they sends signals to satellites that are frequency hopping. So nobody can listen to it or jam it or interfere with it. And it’s controlling the communications with the onboard computers on these $38 billion satellites that are going on around the planet.

Richard Miles: 21:34

And this is truly a revolutionary idea. And it’s reminds me of the phrase, beauty fades, but ideas lasts forever.

Anthony Loder: 21:40

That’s a good point.

Richard Miles: 21:41

I got to say of all the guests I’ve interviewed. I think this story really captures the imagination because again, you just sort of see this pure intellectual pure inventiveness coming out, but yet from a woman who was so gifted in other ways, and maybe didn’t get to capture that talent in many different aspects.

Anthony Loder: 21:57

She, she was living in a time where women weren’t taking seriously. They were just pieces of meat. They were just like a human adornments that men had and men ran the world and women were just put in the background, but how do you have to fight to be heard and had to fight to get good parts and at the fight to be taken seriously. And she wasn’t, and she didn’t have anyone on board on her side when she was going through all that, to respect her or to give her the encouragement she needed to keep going down that path. So the hot end people, the inventors who come up with the ideas, it seems that the flow of ideas go in one direction to the marketing people and the developers into the people who buy the product and the money comes back upstream and it stops to the inventor. But if we fed the inventor, the inventor might come up with more ideas. So we have to encourage inventors and support inventors and pay inventors to do more. We have to like include the hot end in the gratitude payments and into the monetary payments. We have to be grateful to all of these people who enhance our lives, Steve Jobs, Isaac Newton, Howard Hughes, whoever it is, we need to wake up in the morning and be grateful to all these individuals who helped enhance our lives. Because without all this stuff, we would be horrible. Imagine not being able to flush a toilet or do the basics. So many people thought of so many things to make our life better. We better be grateful human beings, because if we’re not grateful, we can’t be happy. One of the formulas to be grateful is to enjoy what you’re doing. Look forward to doing something that you’ll enjoy in the future.

Richard Miles: 23:48

That is a great way to sum up this episode, Anthony, thank you so much for joining me this morning, telling your story.

Anthony Loder: 23:54

There’s so much more to say,

Richard Miles: 23:56

We could go on for quite a long time.

Anthony Loder: 23:58

Hopefully people get a chance to see Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr Story.

Richard Miles: 24:01

Right, Bombshell it’s on Netflix. Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr story, Netflix, encourage listeners to look that up.

Anthony Loder: 24:08

And your website’s important too, because you basically are making a platform for inventors to stay alive and for people to understand what inventors went through, to bring their idea to market and your museum and your idea of promoting invention and inventors and keeping that whole stream alive with youngsters that come and see you. I’m just very touched by what you’re doing to keep the ball moving.

Richard Miles: 24:39

Well, thank you very much. Anthony, I think we’re going to put you on the Cade Museum marketing team because And we encourage listeners to come visit the Cade Museum in Gainesville. What’s that website it’s cademuseum.org.

Anthony Loder: 24:52

How do you spell that ?

Richard Miles: 24:53

C A D E museum.org. And in fact, we do feature an exhibit on Hedy Lamarr, an audio tour on your mom. So I think people will enjoy seeing that. Thank you very much.

Anthony Loder: 25:03

Thank you, it’s been fun. I mean, there’s so much more to say and we had such little time, but I hope you got something out of this.

Richard Miles: 25:10

Absolutely. Thank you very much.

Anthony Loder: 25:11

Thank you, Richard.

Richard Miles: 25:13

I’m Richard Miles.

Outro: 25:14

Radio Cade would like to thank the following people for their help and support Liz Gist of the Cade Museum for coordinating and vendor interviews. Bob McPeak of Heartwood Soundstage in downtown Gainesville, Florida for recording, editing and production of the podcasts 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.

James Clement conducts research into anti-aging technologies. He has studied people over 110 years of age and has found a strong genetic connection to their super long lives.  Yet, periodic environmental signals such as fasting and certain dietary supplements will prompt human cells to effectively cleanse themselves and recycle materials for energy. This causes cells, and thus bodies, to live longer.