In 1971, my custom, hand-built Spanish guitar was destroyed by a baggage claim belt in Dallas. The man who rebuilt it is one of the best examples of passion and curiosity I know. But there’s a lot more to this guy than meets the eye. I could ask the question, how did an engineer become a guitar repair guy? Even that’s only half of the story. You’ll enjoy this one.

Language, they say, is the window into the soul of a country or a culture. Based on what we talk about in this episode, souls and cultures must be pretty funny places.

Sometimes, looking at something from different perspectives can change the way we think about it. In this episode, we look at the origins of genetics, a little botany, and ultimately, turn our attention to genetically-modified organisms, or GMOs. Things are not always what they seem.

This is the third Podcast in a series of three about one of the technology ecosystems that’s profoundly changing the world. In our first episode of the series, we talked about the technologies that live in this ecosystem: The Internet of Things, Big Data, Analytics, Cloud, machine-to-machine communications, and artificial intelligence. In the second episode, we looked at one application of this ecosystem that’s truly planet-changing: the protection of fresh water.

In this third and final episode, we’re going to talk with a few people who have deep insights into the advantages and challenges that new technologies bring to the table.

1968: What a culturally iconic period in America. On the one hand, the Summer of Love, the Monterey Pop Festival, and the Civil Rights Law of 1968 were happening, and the astronauts of Apollo 8 saw the far side of the moon for the first time. But dark things were happening, as well: Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy fell to assassins, riots fractured the country, Vietnam was in full swing, and young people began to question the old school thinking that ran the country. A great migration began, as thousands of people headed west to California. One of them was Jim Driscoll, a musician intent on becoming a rock star. He had no money, so planes, trains, and buses were out; they were too expensive. And he had no driver’s license, so he couldn’t drive west. His only option? The Gray Rabbit. And that’s where our story begins.

A high-speed train designed in the shape of a kingfisher. Paint colors based on hummingbird feathers. Water purification systems designed by a beetle. Photosynthesis that creates plastic. All these and more are real--we're actually doing these things--because we're paying attention to nature.

The Earth's most precious resource is water--yet we waste a HUGE percentage of it because of leaks in municipal water systems, inaccurate agricultural watering practices, and other practices. In fact, 60% of the water pumped out of the ground worldwide for agriculture never reaches the plants. Yet Deep Sky Vineyard, a tiny (by agricultural standards)vineyard, in the dry heat of Arizona, saved more than 1.5 million gallons in 2018 alone, because of sophisticated field monitoring practices, thanks to the technology created by nioLabs. In this episode we show how they did it. It's quite a story. This is part two of a three-part series.

There's a family of technologies emerging on the scene that will change the way we think about the role of technology in our lives. They include Internet of Things, Big Data, Analytics, and a few others. Technology is remarkable, but even more so when we assign it to a specific challenge, then stand back and watch. In this episode, we see what happens when we pair a small business--Deep Sky Vineyard in Arizona--with technology offered by nioLabs in Denver. The results are staggeringly important. This is the first in a series of three episodes about emergent technologies.

Climate change, or global warming, or whatever you want to call it, is one of the most emotion-charged topics on the table today. It has become politically weaponized, yet it shouldn’t be, because it’s one of the greatest threats we face as inhabitants of this planet. If you believe that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the problem, you’re partially correct—but only partially. There’s another challenge, and it’s a far bigger problem—it’s called entropy.

When I first decided to dig into this topic, I thought I understood climate change. I didn’t, as it turned out, so I took the time to let my curiosity get the best of me until I really DID understand it. You should do the same. And that’s what this episode is about.

On February 26, 1975, disaster struck in lower Manhattan when the AT&T switching center that served the area was consumed by fire. 104,000 customers and 170,000 telephones were out of service. A restoration of that magnitude should have taken a year, but the Bell System marshaled its resources and service was restored in 22 days--a true Miracle on Second Avenue. This is the story. You can see a documentary of the recovery here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_AWAmGi-g8.