Method to the Madness

Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:01] This is Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area Innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer. And today, our first show of 2020 will feature Layla Salazar-Lopez, the executive director of Amazon Watch. Most people know what Amazon Watch is, but for some people who may not know, can you review the mission?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:00:31] Sure. Thanks for having me. Amazon Watch is a Bay Area based nonprofit organization. We were founded in 1996. Our mission is to protect the Amazon rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon basin. The Amazon rainforest is the biggest tropical rainforest on the planet. Most people know and think of the Amazon as the lungs of the earth. All those trees, all of that life, absorbing carbon and producing rain for not just the Amazon, but for the world. This massive rainforest, an ecosystem, actually helps to create the weather systems throughout South America and also around the world. So it is a vital organ of the earth's ecosystem. And so we're working to protect the rainforest to avert climate chaos. And our theory of change is that the best way to do that is by working with, standing with, supporting the rights and the voices in the territories of indigenous peoples.Lisa Kiefer: [00:01:44] And is that because they live there, they are on the front lines of i?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:01:48] Of course! indigenous peoples have been living in the Amazon rainforest for thousands of years, over 400 distinct nationalities, groups and even uncontacted peoples. Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and throughout the world are the best protectors of the natural places that we still have left on this planet. Eighty percent of the biodiversity around the world is on indigenous people's lands. So if we are concerned about climate change or chaos, I would say, or if we concern about the extinction crisis that we're facing, one of the best ways that we can do all we can to protect what we have left, is to support indigenous people's territories being protected. Those are the places that have the biodiversity and have the trees that create the much needed rain.Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:43] Well, you just got back from the Madrid climate summit, the 25th summit, and it was supposed to be in Brazil. And Bolonaro nixed that. And there have been many challenges, but it did come off. I wondered if you could give us sort of a a summary of what what you talked about.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:03:00] You know, as you mentioned, COP 25, which is a conference of parties on climate change, world leaders, government leaders, elected leaders, negotiators that represent governments. Nearly 200 governments around the world attend the cops, plus civil society, NGOs, affected communities and also corporations. Unfortunately, the COP for decades has been primarily dominated by governments and corporations. That's why we've had 25 years of inactivity, really, of doing the minimum. And yes, we could praise the Paris Climate Agreement. Amazon Watch was there with indigenous peoples from around the world, from the Amazon to Alaska, to ensure that the voices of of the community that are most affected are heard. Our focus at COP 25 was to amplify the voices of indigenous peoples. There are very few spaces for indigenous peoples, people who are protecting biodiversity on our planet, for them to speak, for them to share their concerns and share their solutions. And so our mission is to ensure that they have a space not only to have space, but they are promoting their solutions and their solutions are heard. And one of those solutions is the Sacred Headwaters Initiative. So we released a report, at COP, a threat assessment on the sacred headwaters. And we spoke to global media and got a lot of attention on this region. It's in Ecuador and Peru, which is the most biodiverse part of the Amazon. It's Yasuni National Park. The scientists, the conservationists who are on the ground in the Yasuni, the indigenous peoples who live there, say that this is the most biodiverse part of the Amazon. It's under threat by massive oil development. This region, the tropical Andes region of the Amazon, is mega-biodiverse. We need our governments and true leaders to really take the action that's needed, right now, which is to make commitments to really take us off fossil fuels.Lisa Kiefer: [00:05:05] So what does the COP 25 conference hold people to?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:05:08] All of the governments, 196 countries have made commitments to reduce emissions. I mean, that's really the language spoken at COP, to reduce emissions, to deal with mitigation, adaptation. Governments have made commitments to reduce emissions. The big elephant in the room is what about stopping extraction? What about a phase out, a full phase out of fossil fuel extraction and a complete commitment to a transition to renewable energies, to renewable energy economies, green jobs? Like what we're talking about in the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is a recipe for what, not just the United States, but world governments can be doing around the world to do what's really, really needed. Because if we only focus on reducing emissions, we are not going to get below 1.5 degrees.  1.5 degrees is really what we need to aim for. We've already surpassed 350 parts per million. We're on a track to go way beyond 2 degrees and way beyond 2 degrees is is what we're seeing. We're seeing the signs of it now. We're seeing Australia. We're seeing California. I mean, right here in our own backyard for three years, for three summers and falls, we have felt the effects of climate change and climate chaos. We have had massive wildfires, massive forest fires. And not just in the forest. Right? They've all also affected communities, you know, from Santa Rosa to Paradise. We're not just seeing fires, you know, in forests in California. We're seeing fires in the Arctic. We're seeing fires in the Amazon. We're seeing fires in Australia right now. It's not 10 years away. It's not 20 years away. It's now.Lisa Kiefer: [00:06:59] I'm curious if Black Rock was at the COP 25 conference. Do they show up?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:07:05] Representatives of Black Rock. Representatives of Exxon. Representatives of agribusiness or the fossil fuel and agribusiness industries? The financiers. I mean, they're definitely there.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:17] And do you feel that you had success this time or is it just sort of a stalemate?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:07:21] I think COP 25 was a major failure for the state of the planet right now. Major failure for global governments, considering the urgency of what we're facing.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:32] We have so many distractions right now, the assassination of Soleimani, the impeachment proceedings, those are attention grabbers. With those challenges of distraction, what is your strategy at Amazon Watch for 2020 to keep you in the news cycle?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:07:48] At the end of August 2019, the world woke up to what was really happening in the Amazon. It's what we've been seeing for decades, which is, the Amazon is under major, major threat by governments, including, you know, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil, by corporations, primarily agri-business in Brazil, and the fossil fuel and mining industries in the western Amazon and also by the banks that invest in these destructive projects and destructive practices. You know, warning after warning, report after report, protest after protest, we were doing everything that we could to sound the alarm. And it wasn't until the news story broke that the Amazon is on fire. And the visuals people saw the rainforest on fire, that people started to say, what is happening? You know, not only the Amazon is on fire, we should stop the fires, but why? Why is Amazon on fire? The Amazon is not on fire because it was an accidental wildfire. The Amazon was set on fire. The Amazon was set on fire by intentional government policies to set the fires, to clear land, to make way for agri-business. And that's why over 3 million hectares of forest burned in Brazil and over five million burned in Bolivia. And while people will say there's always fires, yeah, there's always a dry season and a wet season in the Amazon. But the fires are not like this. And the reason they're not like this is because, one, there is a drought-- for many years. And two, there was an intentional, deliberate, malicious intent behind this.Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:31] If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today, I'm speaking with Leila Salazar Lopez, the executive director of Amazon Watch, an organization that protects and defends the bio cultural and climate integrity of the Amazon rainforest.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:10:00] There's always been fires in in Australia during the dry season and they're wildfires. They're not intentionally set. But why have millions of hectares of Australia burned and are burning at the same time? Because there has been a massive drought caused by climate change. Basically what I'm saying is making the connection between the Amazon and Australia's drought caused by climate change and there's governments behind policies that are ignoring the reality of what's happening.Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:28] Bolsonaro's argument is to the world that 'this is my country. Don't tell me how to run my country.'Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:10:35] Well, he prides himself on calling himself the Trump of the tropics. Bolsonaro is a far right president who was elected last year in Brazil. You know, we're talking about a fascist, a leader, and, you know, I hesitate to say that because I think, you know, a leader should be thinking about all of their people they're representing. People like Bolsonaro were elected on a platform of stability and security. The prior government was deemed corrupt, inefficient. And so what the government ran on was, you know, we need security. We need jobs and we need to better our economy. And under the Lula administration, under the prior socialist, the Worker's Party platform, the government of Brazil was on top. The National Development Bank had money and they were, you know, constructing and building and had plans to have zero poverty, zero hunger, zero deforestation. They had a soy moratorium. They had lots of policies in place. But they also, because there were the Workers Party, they also were promoting jobs that were mostly engineering construction jobs like huge industrial construction, including the Belo Monte Dam, which is the third largest mega dam in the world. And it was built in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. So, you know, while we had many, many concerns, environmental and human rights concerns, with the prior government. They are nothing in comparison to what's happening with this government. The Bolonaro government is in an all out attack on civil society, is an all out attack on indigenous people, on human rights, on women, on Afro-Brazilians across the country, the environment. And we've seen it since day one in office. A year ago when Bolsonaro was elected, he immediately merged ministries, the agriculture, the environment ministry. He defunded the FUNAI, which is like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, de-funded IBAMA, which is the Environmental Agency, like the Environmental Protection Agency. How is IBAMA and FUNAI going to do their work in protecting the rainforest and defending indigenous people's rights if they don't have any funding? And it was intentional, if you defund them yet there's no forest guards, there's no there's no monitoring. I mean, Brazil is the most dangerous place to be an indigenous or human rights activist. And that was even before Bolsanaro. But now it's even worse. On a weekly basis, we're getting reports of indigenous people primarily being assassinated, not only threatened, but assassinated on their lands for protecting their lands, for protecting forests from cattle ranchers, from people paid by agri-business, people paid by corporations, to take their land and land grabbers.Lisa Kiefer: [00:13:29] So what do you, as an organisation, what are you going to do about this?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:13:32] So Amazon Watch has been working since 1996, protecting the rainforest, defending human rights, indigenous rights. And our mission isn't going to change. Our strategies are really to hone in on the major threats and who's causing those threats. So, for example, we are naming and shaming the governments, companies and banks that are responsible. We actually released a report last April with ipb, which is the articulation of indigenous peoples of Brazil, because remember, Brazil has the world's largest rainforest, tropical rainforests, the world's largest tropical savanna and the world's largest wetlands, the Amazon, the Sahado and the Pantanal. It is a massive, interconnected ecosystem protected by indigenous peoples and very threatened by industry and government. And so we are organizing campaigns, organizing actions, coordinating with our NGO allies, with indigenous allies, with human rights organizations around the world to act for the Amazon. And immediately after the news of the fires broke at the end of September, we called upon allies around the world and said, let's all work together. Let's all work together. This is the time to work together.Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:48] And who are those allies?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:14:50] Extinction rebellion, Greenpeace, Avaaz, Rainforest Action Network, and here locally in the Bay Area, Brazil Solidarity Network. Every month, there's an action at the Brazilian consulate since Bolsonaro was elected, there's been actions to respond to the attacks on the rainforest,  attacks on indigenous people, attacks on Afro-Brazilians. Attacks on women. And so if we continue to coordinate actions at the Brazilian consulate, the government, we continue to organize actions at BlackRock, which we have done many times over the last year. And we also engage with the governments and these corporations when possible. We're writing them letters. We're going to their headquarters. During the U.N. Climate Week in September with a delegation of, you know, over 50 people, we went into BlackRock's corporate headquarters in New York and delivered over 500000 thousand letters from around the world to say BlackRock stop investing in the destruction of the Amazon, the destruction of our climate. BlackRock is an asset manager that is the biggest investor in climate destruction around the world. They invest in oil and gas. They invest in mining. They invest in agro business. And so there's a network called "BlackRock's big problem" that we're a part of, that is organizing, you know, writing reports and writing letters to BlackRock and engaging with BlackRock, going to their shareholder meetings. Before two years ago, no one had ever been to a BlackRock Shareholder meeting. It was just 30 people sitting around a table in suits. And over the last two years, they've had to face criticism. They've had to face indigenous peoples in their boardrooms. They've had to face, you know, NGOs and questioning.Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:36] Has this resulted in any changes?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:16:38] Not yet, to be totally honest. You know, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock every January, puts out a letter to clients saying how they're committed to the environment, how they're committed to equality. You know, we're going to continue to call him out on that and hold him to those words, because if you're saying you're committed to the environment and climate change, we don't want minimum action, as Greta Thunberg so eloquently says. You know, we have to act as if our house is on fire because it is. We are responding to the needs and requests of our partners, primarily in the Amazon.Lisa Kiefer: [00:17:18] So how often do you go down there?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:17:20] I go a couple times a year to to meet with our partners and actually be in the forest and get inspiration for, you know, why we're doing this work. And we also lead delegations down to the Amazon. We have field coordinators in the Amazon, in Ecuador and Peru and Brazil. And we're a pretty small organization. And our strength really lies in the partnerships, the long term partnerships that we have with the indigenous communities, organizations, national organization, national indigenous organizations and regional organizations, and as well as our NGO allies throughout the Amazon. So those long term partnerships are what help us define like what we need to do this year. You know, respond to the fires, respond to new oil development projects, respond to China in the Amazon, and then from there develop strategies. Also work with local movements such as the Sunrise Movement that is really led by the youth. The youth right now are really showing the leadership.Lisa Kiefer: [00:18:22] Who do you think of all the candidates is the most, would be the most reliable partner in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:18:31] Amazon Watch doesn't officially endorse, but personally, there's only two candidates that even come close. And that's Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.Lisa Kiefer: [00:18:40] Well, they're the only ones who even talk about the Green New Deal.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:18:43] Yeah. Think about how much energy and resources governments put into war. We invest a lot of our tax money in, you know, it's all in. But when it's time to think about the future of our children, grandchildren, seven generations and all life on this planet, what we need is a war effort to turn, not only turn emissions around, but turn extraction around and a complete commitment by government and civil society and the private sector and companies. If we have any kind of future left on this planet, we need to really turn around the way that we're living our daily lives. And, you know, that may be scary for people to hear. But when I say we need to, we need to change our economy, we need to change our daily way of life. It's not inconceivable to think that civil society can mobilize a new economy, a new way of life, new policies that could protect us and and our future. Nationalism and the rise of nationalism is the opposite of what we need to be doing. You know, we need to be looking at planet Earth like a system. We're all on this earth together. We have no other, even though there's some people who want to build, you know, space stations and think they can get away from our problems. The majority of the people can't. We are the Majority. We're way more than them. We can demand and make the changes that we need.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:20:04] I'm curious how you got involved in the Amazon. Was there a moment where you were inspired to do that?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:20:10] Well, I grew up in Southern California, near the border. My family's from Mexico. I grew up pretty traditional Mexican family. We grew up near the beach. And one summer there was a medical waste spill on our beach. We couldn't go on the beach for a while. And that was my kind of wakeup call to environmental awareness. You know, because the beach was like, oh, you know, it's where we go to to play, to rest, enjoy. And it's free and it should be open and accessible to everyone. And when it wasn't, that was my wake-up call. And then from there, you know, we we started up an environmental group on our high school campus and, you know, started doing beach cleanups. And that was kind of the beginning of activism. We started our environmental group and we started or organizing our own Earth Day festivals and Earth Day events. One of the guest speakers I will always remember because he gave a slideshow about the rainforest and it was so beautiful. And I'd never seen anything like that. And I just thought one day I want to go there. Fast forward a couple years. I'm at UC Santa Barbara and student advisor says, you know, you're going to need to do an internship in your second year. And, you know, you could volunteer at a local environmental organization or a local government representatives office. And I said, well, I wanna go to the rainforest. I said, okay, that's pretty far and pretty expensive. And I said, well, I'll take out a student loan. And I did that. And that changed my life. That changed the path and the direction of my life. Because, one, I'd never been to South America. I'd never seen the rainforest. I'd never seen the beauty and also the destruction and the threats. The summer of 1995 was when I connected with the forest and realized that it was indigenous peoples who were protecting it and that they were a library of knowledge that could not be replicated in any way. You know, just walking in the forest with someone who has lived there all their life and has a spiritual connection to the forest. I mean, you could walk 30 meters and they will know every single plant that you walk by and know what its properties are. Know what it's used for and whether it's used to build a house, or to cook with, or to use as medicine, or to build a canoe. They know how to use everything and they do it with respect. And that, just that, was like a huge lesson in what is really needed to protect the forest. On my way out of the forest, I saw an oil spill. The trans Ecuadorian pipeline had ruptured and crude oil from the north east Ecuadorian Amazon was just spilling into the river, into the main water source of the city of Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. It was my, you know, my second kind of wake-up call to how could this be happening? Who did this? Why is this happening? Who allowed this? Why aren't they shutting it off? Why isn't it stopping? That really enraged me. And I found out that it was Texaco who had set up the infrastructure, who had basically found oil in the Amazon, set up the entire infrastructure, convinced the government in the 1960s to allow them to set up the infrastructure and drill and dump. And there were no environmental or human rights or indigenous rights laws in the country or even in the world. At that time, there weren't conventions on, there was a declaration on human rights, but there wasn't the declaration on indigenous rights. But still, during this time, Texaco drilled and dumped on the indigenous territories of five indigenous nationalities. And also where uncontacted peoples are and created what we called a rainforest Chernobyl. And still to this day, even though Chevron, which Texaco is now Chevron here in the bay, even though Chevron was found guilty in 2012, they still have not paid a dime, and probably have paid more in legal fees in the last 25 years to fight this than to resolve it. They've never denied that they did it, that they drilled and dumped. They don't wanna set a precedent that if you do this, you'll be held accountable. When I got back from the Amazon the first time, I said, I'm going to dedicate my life to doing everything I can to prevent this from happening again. And I will do everything I can to hold this company accountable. And so in 2002, when I first started working for Amazon Watch, we launched a campaign called the Chevron Cleanup Ecuador Campaign. And so we've been doing a lot of.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:34] That was very successful.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:24:34] The Chevron lawsuit was a major, major victory when we heard news of of the judgment. It was one of the proudest moments of...Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:46] We can do this.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:24:47] We can do this. Like this is one of the biggest just a very typical David Goliath story. Right. We're going up against one of the biggest corporations on the planet. We beat them. Also another Oil victory was Occidental Petroleum. Occidental Petroleum did very similar to what Chevron, Texaco, now Chevron did in the Peruvian Amazon. And after seven years of attending their shareholder meetings, also filing a lawsuit against them with the Otwar people of Peru.  We we actually settled a lawsuit with Occidental Petroleum and they agreed to pay a settlement to the Otwar people for the contamination that they had caused in the Peruvian Amazon and also with Oxy, one of the first and most proudest victories of Amazon Watch, is working with the Ottawa and a whole network that wide defense coalition around the world to get Occidental Petroleum out of what territory in Colombia. Many of our victories, the last one I'll mention is in Brazil. Actually, it's the Tapajos dam and we were not able to stop the Belo Monte mega dam construction. The following dam proposal was Tapajos mega dam on one last free flowing blackwater rivers in the Amazon, in Brazil. And just a few years ago, the Brazilian government announced that they were not going to build it. They were actually going to change their dam building policy and begin to invest in renewable energy. That's now all changed with Bolsanaro.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:18] Are the dams back on the table?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:26:20] Everything's back on the table. I mean, their policy is the Amazon is open for business. And I think that's shameful. It's completely shameful.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:28] What are some of your immediate plans as an organization?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:26:32] Funny that you mentioned it. Amazon Watch has been a pretty small organization for the last 23 years. I mean, we've been around 10 people plus field consultants plus, you know, working with our partners across the Amazon. One result of the attention on the Amazon is that there's been a lot more interest in supporting organizations like ours. And so we are growing. There is a lot more attention on organizations such as Amazon Watch and a lot more offers for financial support and a lot more offers for volunteers and people who across the world who want to volunteer, who want to help. And so right now, we're at a moment, we're actually at a moment of strategic planning to really envision what we want the next five to 10 years, the focus of our next five to 10 years, to be. Our mission is to protect the rainforest, defend indigenous rights and advance climate justice. We're going to continue to focus on those strategic areas with campaigns, but we have to do it with more urgency because the Amazon is at a tipping point. Scientists say that the Amazon will reach its tipping point when the deforestation and degradation is over 20 percent. It's about 17 to 18 percent now. And so what we need for the Amazon is a full scale commitment to protect, defend and restore it. Protect means protecting what's left. Anything that's still left standing, whether it be indigenous peoples territories, whether it be protected areas, national parks, private lands, anything that's still left standing needs to be protected and defended. And promote solutions of indigenous peoples, promote on the ground solutions for restoration, for alternative energy. We need to invest and increase the use of solar energy, the use of renewable energy.Lisa Kiefer: [00:28:19] And show some solutions.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:28:21] And show those solutions. And so we are working on promoting indigenous led solutions, promoting protection and defense of indigenous territories with our people in Peru. We're fighting Geo Park to get them off territory this year and in years to come. Our focus really is going to be on protecting and advancing the sacred headwaters and beyond. Who is complicit in the destruction of the Amazon? Let's call them out. Let's engage with them. Let's pressure them. We're also getting ready for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the establishment of the environmental movement around the world. I'm a UC Santa Barbara alumni. It's where the first environmental studies department was in the whole world. And why was that? Because there was a giant oil spill in 1969 in Santa Barbara. And what that sparked was a movement, that sparked environmental studies department at UC Santa Barbara. It sparked environmental laws across this country. It sparked Earth Day. When we reflect on 50 years ago and everything that's happened, we've made progress and we've also majorly rolled back progress with the Trump administration. Here in the United States, we need to defend all of the achievements over the last 50 years. We need to defend our laws. We need to defend our rights and our democracy. And that's very similar to what Brazilians are saying. We're at a turning point, a very important election that, you know, could really turn things around. We have to do everything we possibly can.Lisa Kiefer: [00:29:55] If you could just tell people how they might get a hold of you?Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:29:57] Amazonwatch.org. Follow us on social media for all the latest reports and news and updates and opportunities to get involved. We're located in Oakland. You can call us up, visit us. We would really encourage youth and students and anyone who wants to get involved to make the connections between California and the Amazon. The oil and the Amazon, while it comes from the Amazon, the majority that's exported comes right here to California. We are very connected to the Amazon. It's it's it's real. Learn more. Go to our Web site. We have to do this together.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:36] Thank you, Leila, for coming on the program.Leila Salazar-Lopez: [00:30:38] You're welcome. Thank you.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:41] You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. We'll be back again in two weeks.

TranscriptLisa Kiefer: [00:00:03] This is method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host Lisa Kiefer. And today I'm speaking with Gabriel Zucman Professor of Economics and Public Policy here at UC Berkeley. He has just co-authored a book with Emmanuel Saez  called The Triumph of Injustice --How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay. Welcome to the program, Gabriel.Gabriel Zucman: [00:00:36] Thanks for having me.Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:37] Why did you write this book. What was the problem or problems you were trying to solve?Gabriel Zucman: [00:00:42] So the main problem is the rise of inequality in the US. So if you look for instance at what has happened to income concentration, in 1980, the top 1 percent highest earners in the U.S. earned about 10 percent of total U.S. national income today they earn 20 percent of U.S. national income. Now contrast that with what has happened for the working class for the bottom 50 percent of earners. They used to earn 20 percent of income and now about 12 percent. So essentially the top 1 percent and the bottom 50 percent have have switched their income share. And the reality of the U.S. today is that the 1 percent earns twice as much income in total than the bottom 50 percent a group that by definition is 50 times larger. So you have this huge level of inequality and this big increase in inequality and the tax system is a key institution to regulate inequality. And so we wanted to know OK does it do a good job? Does the tax system limit inequality or does it exacerbate the rise of inequality?Lisa Kiefer: [00:01:58] And as you say in your book all the way back to James Madison the whole point of taxes yes is to raise revenue but the other significant point was to reduce inequality.Gabriel Zucman: [00:02:07] Exactly.Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:08] And that's something that's been kind of forgotten since 1980.Gabriel Zucman: [00:02:11] That's been forgotten despite the fact that it's deeply rooted in American society. The U.S. was created in large part in reaction against the highly unequal aristocratic societies of of Europe in the 18th century and ever since, many people in the US have been concerned about becoming as unequal as Europe. Europe for a long time was perceived as as an anti model, too unequal, at least until the middle of the 20th century. Now it's the opposite, it's funny to see how these beliefs and perceptions have changed over time. Now many people in the US feel that Europe is too equal, but in fact for most of US history it was it was the opposite. The US invented some of the key progressive fiscal institutions designed to limit inequality to regulate inequality. Let me just give one example. In 1943 Franklin Roosevelt goes to Congress. He makes a famous speech. He says I think that no American should have an income after paying taxes of more than twenty five thousand dollars which is the equivalent of a few million dollars today. Therefore I propose to create a top marginal income tax rate of 100 percent above twenty five thousand dollars. And that's the idea of a legal maximum income. That's an American, a Roosevelt invention. And people in Congress they hesitate a little bit you know 100 percent, maybe it's too much, but they agree on 93 percent which when you think about it is that very far from 100 percent. And then the U.S. kept these very high modern 90 percent top marginal income tax rates for a long time. So there is this deeply rooted tradition in the U.S. of using the tax system to limit the concentration of income. The idea being that wealth is a good thing for the working class, for the middle class. It provides safety, provides security. But for the very rich,wealth is not safety or security. Wealth is power. And an extreme concentration of wealth means an extreme concentration of power, of political power, of economic power, which is detrimental to the rest of society and so one key function of the tax system is to prevent such a concentration of wealth and such a concentration of power from happening.Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:52] You've been consulting with Elizabeth Warren and others adopting pieces of some of the ideas that you had. How does Elizabeth Warren's plan, when you plug it into your model in the book, your 1980 model,what was the outcome of plugging in her wealth tax.Gabriel Zucman: [00:05:09] So Elizabeth Warren proposes to create a wealth tax at a rate of 2 percent above 50 million dollars and 6 percent above 1 billion dollars. So just let me explain what this would do. It means that if you have 50 million dollars in wealth or less, you pay zero. One of the things we do in the book we tried to imagine how the U.S. economy would have looked like if such a tax had been in place since 1982. So let me first start with what has happened to wealth concentration since 1982. If you look at the 400 richest Americans, you know Forbes magazine has estimates every year of their wealth. And according to Forbes magazine, the 400 richest Americans owned about 1 percent of U.S. wealth in 1982. And today they own about three point five percent of U.S. wealth. That is their wealth has been growing much much much faster than the economy as a whole and than average wealth in the economy. If the Warren wealth tax had been in place since 1982, inequality, wealth concentration would have increased much less, it would have increased a little bit. That is, today, the top 400 richest Americans would own about one point five percent of U.S. wealth. So a bit more than 82 but that would be much less than the current three point five percent. So this shows something which is very, to me, is very striking, a 6 percent tax on wealth. It's a big deal. You know it means that someone who has a hundred billion dollars has to pay six billion dollars a year in taxes. So it's big. And even if that tax had been in place since 1982, billionaires would still have seen their share of wealth increase.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:00] In other words they'd still be billionaires.Gabriel Zucman: [00:07:02] Not only billionaires but multi billionaires. Some of them would still have tens of billions of dollars because the rise of wealth inequality has been so massive. The growth rate of wealth of billionaires has been so much higher than the growth rate of wealth for the rest of the population that even with a big wealth tax you know it would not have been enough to reduce inequality.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:26] Well you give a good example about Warren Buffett. You know he's always bragging about how "I pay taxes. I pay a lot of taxes."Gabriel Zucman: [00:07:32] Yeah. So Warren Buffett is a good illustration for why we need a wealth tax. He's one of the main shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. His wealth, according to Forbes magazine again, is about 80 billion dollars. His true economic income is his share of Berkshire Hathaway's profits. It's something like five billion dollars a year. That's his income. But what he does is that he instructs this company that he owns, Berkshire Hathaway, not to pay dividends. And so his only taxable income is when he sells a few shares every year of his company, is a taxable income of the order of 10 to 20 million dollars. And on that 10 or 20 million dollars he pays three or six million in capital gains taxes. And now you do the math. His true economic income is 5 billion. His tax bill is something like 5 million. So his effective tax rate is essentially zero percent.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:41] It's lower than his secretary.Gabriel Zucman: [00:08:43] It's not only lower than its secretary, it's it's zero. Essentially you know five million compared to five billion. It's nothing. Then you have a number of proposals such as oh but let's just increase the top marginal income tax rate or let's just increase the tax rate on capital gains.But you see the problem....Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:01] That's what Bill Gates says.Gabriel Zucman: [00:09:03] That's what Bill Gates, Warren Buffett himself, there is this so-called Buffett Rule that was popular at some point among Democrats and the idea was we need to increase the tax rate on capital gains. Fine. You know it's not a bad idea. But you have to realize that the Buffett rule itself would make essentially no difference to Warren Buffett's tax bill, because even if you increase the capital gains tax rate to 100 percent let's say, then Warren Buffett would have to pay let's say 20 million in taxes. 20 million divided by five billion, which again is his true income, would still be zero percent. So if you want to tax billionaires like Warren Buffett or like Jeff Bezos or like Mark Zuckerberg, the proper way to do that is with a tax on the stock of wealth itself, with a wealth tax. Because when you're extremely rich it's very easy to own billions or tens of billions while having very little taxable income. And so you cannot tax billionaires well just with the income tax. You also need a wealth tax.Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:10] Gates also argues estate taxes and I like your argument in the book, you say well you know fine but are we going to wait around all these years? Some of these billionaires are very young.Gabriel Zucman: [00:10:21] Yeah exactly. You look at Mark Zuckerberg you know he's in his 30s. He's not paying much taxes today. Just like the Warren Buffett example because Facebook doesn't pay dividends. Facebook doesn't pay a lot of corporate tax. So is it wise to wait for 50 years or more before some of the country's wealthiest individuals stopped paying taxes. I don't think that's very wise.  You Know, essentially because there are all these needs for revenue for early education, for university, for health care, for infrastructure. These are immediate needs and some billionaires can contribute much much more than they do today. There's no good reason to wait for 50 years to make them contribute.Lisa Kiefer: [00:11:12] If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on K A L X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm speaking with Professor Gabriel Zucman about his new book The Triumph of injustice how the rich dodge taxes and how to make them pay, co-authored by another economics professor here Emmanuel Saez. They advocate for a progressive wealth tax as a solution to global inequality, one that rethinks both evasion and the goals of taxation.Lisa Kiefer: [00:11:48] You talk about labor versus capital and I want you to explain that a little bit because you said for the first time in history labor pays more than capital. Why do the working class pay so many taxes right now. And that has to do with that labor capital crossover.Gabriel Zucman: [00:12:04] Absolutely. So historically the U.S. has taxed capital a lot. The corporate tax was high. The estate tax. Taxes and dividends, on interest. Property taxes. So there is a long tradition of relatively heavy capital taxation in the US.  The main change that has happened since the 1980s is that these capital taxes have been rolled back, have have been cut massively, so the corporate income tax is a prime example. In December 2017, the Trump tax reform slashed the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Another good example is the estate tax which used to generate quite a lot of revenue in the 1970s. Today almost nobody pays the estate tax and even the very wealthy who are supposed to pay it can claim valuation discount and avoid it in many ways so that the revenue generated by the estate tax is extremely small. Dividends are taxed less than wages and so on and so on so capital taxation is essentially disappearing,it has not disappeared completely but has it has been dramatically reduced. And at the same time Labor taxation has increased. So Labor taxation, what is it? Taxes on wages, you know the income tax, but also the payroll taxes. So no matter how low your wage is in the United States today, 15 percent of that wage is paid in payroll taxes, that fund Social Security and Medicare, and these payroll taxes they used to be quite small you know in the 50s-60s, less than 5 percent of income. And they've grown a lot and these are taxes that are essentially only on wage income. And so you have this process where wages have stagnated for the working class for the middle class. In fact at the bottom of the wage distribution, wages have declined a lot because the federal minimum wage has declined enormously since the 1970s. Today it's only seven point twenty five dollars. It's a number of states and and municipalities like Berkeley have higher minimum wages. But if you look at Southern states for instance they only have the federal minimum wage seven point twenty five dollars an hour, much lower than in the 70s, and at the same time as minimum wage workers so their income fall, their taxes have increased because of the big increase in payroll taxes. And I don't think that's a sustainable process.Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:40] And not only that, the cost of childcare, education, I mean when you think about it, they could be considered taxes on the working people. You know you're out of pocket for everything and not to mention medical care and a lot of people do not even have medical care.Gabriel Zucman: [00:14:55] Absolutely. And that's a very important point. When you look for instance at health care, health insurance, it is in effect a giant tax today on working families. If you are lucky enough to work for a firm or an employer that has more than 50 workers, the firm has to provide you with health insurance, that's mandatory. And the way this works is that employers pay premiums to insurance companies and these premiums are enormous, the costs for covered work today on average is thirteen thousand dollars. That thirteen thousand dollars that in effect reduces the wage of employees. Okay. That's something that could be added to their wage for instance if there was a public insurance program, if everybody was covered by Medicare, workers could get thirteen thousand dollars more in wages and it would make no difference for employers. These insurance premiums are in effect a huge tax on labor, a huge hidden tax. There mandatory.Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:04] You call it a poll tax.Gabriel Zucman: [00:16:05] We call them a poll tax or head tax because they are of a fixed amount per head, that is, the employer pays those same essentially for a secretary and for an executive-- thirteen thousand dollars. So it's the most regressive type of tax. It doesn't depend on income, it doesn't depend on your ability to pay. It reduces wages by thirteen thousand dollars for all work workers no matter what their wage is. This is a huge problem.  This is a big part of the reason why wages have stagnated since the 1980s for the working class and the middle class. Their wages have stagnated because employers have to pay more and more to private health insurance companies and so that leaves less and less money that can be paid in wages.Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:56] In the Democratic debates, why are they not explaining this. They seem to defend the choice of a private insurance tax. "Oh let people choose." It doesn't sound like people truly understand what they are choosing.Gabriel Zucman: [00:17:11] I agree. We are trying to explain that in the book and we are trying to explain that to as many people as we can. There are many problems with the way that healthcare and health insurance currently works in the US, but the main problem is how it reduces wages dramatically for the working class and for the middle class. And we have a solution. In my opinion, this is how things should be presented. If you move to a universal public health insurance program let's call it Medicare for all. What would happen the first Year? Employers would be required to convert insurance premiums into wages. That is, an employer that used to pay thirteen thousand dollars for the health care of each employees, would add thirteen thousand dollars to their wages, so this would be the biggest pay raise in a generation. First year of Medicare for all, everybody's wage increases by thirteen thousand dollars. And then of course you need to collect extra taxes to fund Medicare for all. But if these taxes are smart enough, if they are not head taxes or poll taxes that doesn't vary with income but rather if they are taxes based on your income or your wealth or if you tax corporate profits, you can make sure that the new tax would be much lower for the vast majority of workers than the extra wage that they gained. And so you can make sure that 90 percent of workers would benefit from a transition to Medicare for All in the sense that they would have a huge wage boost. They would have to pay a bit more in taxes but the extra tax would be much less than thirteen thousand dollars. Any my way is the proper way to explain Medicare for all. Your wages have stagnated. Big part of the explanation is there so much money that goes to private health insurance. There's going to be a law that says all the premiums are converted back into wages. Part of your wage was stolen. Now we're giving it back to you. You have a huge wage boost. We're going to raise taxes. But in a progressive manner so that the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution has a big net of tax pay increase.Lisa Kiefer: [00:19:33] With a wealth tax, it seems like the taxes for middle class and lower class would actually go down, even paying for Medicare for all.Gabriel Zucman: [00:19:41] Yes that is, if you include current health insurance premiums in your measure of the tax rate which I think is legitimate since these premiums are essentially like private taxes, mandatory payments. And if you abolish these premiums and replace those by progressive taxes, you get a big tax cut for essentially 90 percent of the population.Lisa Kiefer: [00:20:05] That's something no one's talking about.Gabriel Zucman: [00:20:07] Not yet. I'm not losing hope.Lisa Kiefer: [00:20:09] One of your most interesting chapters is on tax evasion and tax competition, which is going to be a challenge to any kind of change to our tax system. Can you talk about what you discovered and actually it goes back to when you were working as a young man at Exane.Gabriel Zucman: [00:20:26] Yes. So many people have that view that in a globalized world it's impossible to tax multinational companies, impossible to tax corporations, because if you do that they would move their profits to tax havens, the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. Or they will move their factories or their headquarters, their production activities, to low tax places like Ireland. And so according to that view, the only possible future is the race to the bottom with respect to the corporate income tax rate. So countries slashing their rates one after another. And we are very much in that situation today where countries are slashing their corporate tax rate. And for a long time I thought OK no this this makes sense. I understand why in a globalized world, countries want to attract some activity by offering lower rate and there's going to be tax competition and it's the huge pressure that pushes towards lower rates. But what we understood by doing research, that the research is summarised in the book is that this view is actually wrong. That is tax competition, just like tax avoidance or tax evasion, these are not laws of nature. These are policy choices. So we've embraced as nations, collectively we've embraced a certain form of globalization, which is characterized by tax competition and tax avoidance. But that's a choice. It's not a very democratic or very transparent choice, not a very well-informed choice, but it's a choice that's been made, and we can make other choices. There's another form of globalization that's possible. There's no tax competition. There's no profit shifting. There's there's much less tax evasion. So the way this would work for instance is this: right now if you are a U.S. multinational company and you book your profits in Bermuda, for instance, where the corporate tax rate is 0 percent, you don't have to pay taxes. Bermuda chooses not to collect taxes and the U.S. essentially doesn't tax the profits booked by its companies abroad. Okay that's that's a choice but we can make another choice. We could say the U.S. is going to tax all the foreign profits of its companies. It's going to collect the taxes that other countries choose not to collect. If Apple for instance, books a billion dollars in profits in Bermuda, taxed at 0 percent, and then the corporate tax rate is 30 percent in the U.S., the U.S. is going to tax that billion dollar at a rate of 30 percent in the U.S.. If Apple Books profits in Ireland taxed at 2 percent in Ireland the U.S. is going to collect 28 percent, so that the total rate would be 30 percent on a country by country basis.Lisa Kiefer: [00:23:12] So that would change everything.Gabriel Zucman: [00:23:14] That changes everything because then it removes any incentive for firms to book profits in tax havens, or to move real activity to low tax places, one. And second, since firms wouldn't have incentives anymore to do these things, it removes any incentive for tax havens to offer low tax rates in the first place. Now they would have incentives to actually increase that tax rate as so you see how you change the race to the bottom into a race to the top.Lisa Kiefer: [00:23:48] Yes and manufacturing might start to happen more in the countries that had previously been taking them offshore.Gabriel Zucman: [00:23:54] Exactly and what might also happen is that instead of competing by offering low tax rates as countries do today, a very negative form of international competition, we would move to a more positive form of competition, where countries would compete by providing the best infrastructure for companies or by having the most productive workforce thanks to good universities, good schools, good hospitals. So that's how globalization could look like. You know it's good to have some competition but the form of competition that we have today, which is you know countries are competing by slashing their rates, a very negative and bad form of competition. We could have a much more positive form of competition once you put taxes out of the picture.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:46] So this would require cooperation amongst countries and just the will to do this.Gabriel Zucman: [00:24:52] Yeah and look there's already a lot of international economic cooperation. We've made a lot of progress. For instance, when it comes to trade agreements, some of that is is unraveling today with the Trump administration. But if you take the longer view. We've made tons of progress. Reducing tariffs in terms of facilitating access Lisa Kiefer: [00:25:14] Access to data which helped you with this book.Gabriel Zucman: [00:25:16] Exactly, in terms of access to data, so does there is international coordination. But the problem is that there's way too little coordination on the tax rates themselves. So for instance when countries talk about free trade agreements these days, these free trade agreements are essentially about property protection, protecting the rights of foreign investors and dispute resolution settlements. So know how to protect the rights of investors, but property cannot come with only rights and no duty, no, property also comes with the duty to pay taxes. And so the way to make progress, to reach an international agreement on taxes, in my view. is to put taxes at the center of free trade agreements, is to say, we are not going to sign any of any new free trade agreement if it's only to guarantee new rights to investors and ignores taxes. Any new free trade agreement should have taxes at the center stage and that's how it would become possible to make quickly a lot of progress in terms of tax coordination.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:19] And that's also true when you think about the constitutionality of any tax reform here in this country, it's going to require the will and the cooperation of our legislatures. It can happen.Gabriel Zucman: [00:26:32] Yeah it can happen because the current situation is is  similar in many ways to the discussion during the Gilded Age in the late 19th century early 20th century. Inequality was rising a lot with industrialized nation, with urbanization, you know huge fortunes were being created. And second, the tax system was very unfair. At the time, the only or the biggest federal tax was the tariff. So taxes that essentially exempted the very wealthy and that that made the price of goods more expensive and so that hurt the working class, the middle class. The situation today is pretty much the same. Inequality is rising a lot, the tax system is less regressive than than during the Gilded Age, but this is much less progressive than what people think it is. During the Gilded Age you have all these debates about the creation of a progressive federal income tax. The 16th Amendment 1913 allows the federal government to levy progressive income tax and it was a huge success. So the income tax very quickly became extremely progressive with rates in 1917 of close to 70 percent. So it's it's a huge change in just a few years. In 1912. There's no income tax. People say it would never happen. It's unconstitutional. You know there's no way this is going to become reality. And then in 1913 the constitution changes. 1917, ,70 percent of marginal income tax rates for the highest earners. So I'm not saying that the same process is actually going to happen for the wealth tax today. But when I look at history, I see dramatic U-turns and changes and reversals and retreats so the history of taxation is far from linear. There is progress and that's what fundamentally makes me optimistic about the possibility for change and for reform.Lisa Kiefer: [00:28:27] Well when 50 percent of the population makes eighteen thousand five hundred dollars a year, it's untenable. You created a Web site. Tax Justice now dot org. That's all one word.Gabriel Zucman: [00:28:40] We developed this website to make the tax debate more democratic, because it's not for economists, it's not for experts, to say what taxes should be. It's for the people through democratic deliberation and the vote. And we want to give the tools, the knowledge, to the people. So it's a tool for the people to simulate their own tax reform. It's user friendly, it's very simple to use. Everything is is transparent. It's fully open source, with all the code you know online  for people who want to dig into this. But the Web site itself is extremely simple. You don't need to be an expert or to know anything about economics. What the Website does is two things. One, it shows how regressive the U.S. tax system is today. When you take into account all taxes paid at all levels of government, the website shows what the effective tax rate for a group of the population and how it has changed over time. And then you can change taxes. You can change let's say the top marginal income tax rate. You can change a corporate tax rate. You can create new taxes like a wealth tax, change the rates, change the exemption threshold. And the website shows how this would affect the progressivity of the tax system, one. And second, it shows how much revenue would be collected. So let's say you want to fund Medicare for All, or free college, or student debt relief. These things have a cost and there's several ways to fund these things. And so the user can very simply say OK, with that combination of taxes, with that tax refund, I can collect enough revenue to do these important policy changes.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:24] Obviously you guys have plugged in all the numbers and come up with the ideal type of tax and you call it the national tax. Can you describe that and how it might be different from or in addition to a wealth tax?Gabriel Zucman: [00:30:37] The idea here is, how do we fund universal public health insurance and more broadly how could the U.S. increase its tax collection in a sustainable manner? The way that European countries do this is with value added taxes which are taxes essentially on consumption, better than sales taxes, but still pretty regressive because they're only on consumption and the rich consume a small fraction of their income whereas the poor consume most or even sometimes more than 100 percent of their income. And so what we are saying is look the U.S. doesn't have to introduce a V A T --A value added tax like other countries, it can leapfrog the V.A.T. and create a new tax which like the V.A.T. can collect a ton of revenue, but can do it in a much more progressive manner. And we call it the national income tax. And so the idea is for instance, if you want to fund Medicare for all. Step one is you convert the premiums into wages and so everybody's wage increases by thirteen thousand dollars. Step two, maybe year or year three. You create this new national income tax, which essentially is a tax on all labor costs and all profits made by corporations. So it's the broadest possible form of income taxation. And the beauty of it is that because it's so broad with a tax rate of only 5 percent, you can generate a lot of revenue, enough to replace all the insurance premiums that employers pay today.Lisa Kiefer: [00:32:20] What about education?[00:32:20] And you can increase the rates,  go to 6 percent or 7 percent and that generates a lot of revenue that can be spent on early education, an area where there's nothing in the US in terms of public spending essentially, something municipalities do spend some money, but the U.S. is at the bottom of the international ranking when it comes to a public child care and early education in general. So that's a high priority. It's easy to collect a percent of GDP with that national income tax to fund universal early education. It's easy to collect an extra 1 percent if you want to make public universities,  much more progressive than than anything else that exists.Lisa Kiefer: [00:33:01] And it's still less than what I would be paying today.Gabriel Zucman: [00:33:03] Of course.Lisa Kiefer: [00:33:04] Way less!Gabriel Zucman: [00:33:05] That's the beauty of it because today you're paying so much in child care, for college, for health, in a way that's very unfair because it doesn't depend on your income. It's the same amount essentially for each individual.Gabriel Zucman: [00:33:22] Essentially what's at stake is the future of globalization and the future of democracy. If globalization means ever lower taxes for its main winners, big multinational companies and their shareholders, and at the same time, higher and higher taxes for those who don't benefit a lot from globalization or sometimes suffer from it, retirees or small businesses, then it's not sustainable, neither economically nor politically. The problem with high and rising income and wealth inequality as as the Founding Fathers themselves understood at the time is that excessive wealth concentration corrodes democracy, corrodes the social contract, and we're seeing this today when you look at, for instance, what has been the main piece of legislation of the Trump presidency so far, it's been a big tax cut for wealthy individuals. So you've had three full decades of rising inequality and then on top of that, a law that adds fuel to that phenomenon. And it's hard to analyze this other than by saying that it reflects a form of political capture of plutocratic drift. That's the reality of the U.S. today and so if democracy is to prevail, and if we want to have a more sustainable form of globalization, we need to tackle this issue of tax injustice.Lisa Kiefer: [00:34:53] Thank you for being on the program,Gabriel.Gabriel Zucman: [00:34:56] Thank you so much for having me.Lisa Kiefer: [00:34:58] The book is The Triumph of Injustice --How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay. The website: TaxJusticeNow.org and you also have a profile in the October New Yorker which is really great reading. So thanks again for being on the program.Lisa Kiefer: [00:35:24] You've been listening to method to the madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today's guest was Gabriel Zucman, professor of economics and public policy here at UC Berkeley. We'll be back again in two weeks.

TranscriptLisa Kiefer: [00:00:06] This is Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K A L X Berkeley celebrating innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer. And today, I'm speaking with Ashley Grosh, the CEO of PIP's Rewards. Thank you for coming on the show, Ashley. What is PIPs?Ashley Grosh: [00:00:36] So PIPs Rewards is an app and it's a technology platform that is owned and operated by our company 3P Partners. We call ourselves an impact tech company. What we really do is we turn a verifiable engagement in beneficial behaviors, things happening daily, riding your bike, bus riding, taking a workout class. All these beneficial behaviors that you might be doing throughout the day, we verify that and we award you our digital currency when you do those things. So Pip's is our digital currency, which stands for Positive Impact Points.Lisa Kiefer: [00:01:09] That's interesting. It sounds complex how you would measure this. So walk me through the application as a user. An example.Ashley Grosh: [00:01:18] Yeah. So from a user perspective, it's actually very lightweight and easy. You just would download the app in the app store for iPhone or Android. You download Pip's rewards. Today we're targeted in higher education, so you would use your university email through a single sign on. We would capture who you are. You'd set up an account and then you'd really begin to start using the platform. It takes you through a quick tutorial of what you need to do. You'd want to have your Bluetooth enabled and it shows you ways in which you can now start going out into the community and around campus and earning the currency. So a day in the life of a Pip's user, you may wake up in the morning, you fill up your water bottle, which has our little QR code sticker on it, which you may have gone to pick up an environmental center on campus. So you carry that water bottle with you. But when you fill it up, you take your phone out, you take a picture of your QR code and then you've earned 10 points. You can only refill your water bottle three times per day. So if you try to do that again, you'll get an error message. And that's really more just the behavior, we want you just to be in the habit of carrying that water bottle.Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:19] You don't want people scamming this system.Ashley Grosh: [00:02:20] That's right. So we set barriers in place to make sure that doesn't happen. So then let's say you're going to a study group in the morning, so you hop on one of the bike shares programs that's here on campus and we are automatically already integrated with that bike sharing platform. So when you check out that bike, we know who you are. We know you're on that bike. And all the sudden immediately our currency goes into your digital wallet with inside the app. And now you've earned for refilling your water bottle. Now you've taken a bike to a meeting and now you've earned again. Let's say you're coming back up to campus for a class in the afternoon and you hop on the bus. Well, now we have either a beacon or an API integration installed with the transit company, and you don't even have to have your phone out for this. In some cases, we might use near-field communication. So we're using a lot of technologies, right, to integrate innovative technologies. If we think about the connected city, smart cities. Right. All these things to track and measure. So you come back up the bus to class and then again in your digital wallet, you see your currency being added for that behavior. :et's say in the afternoon then, there's a speaker coming onto campus that's talking about climate finance on an environmental or health related topic. So let's say you go to that event and that's one of the activities that we award for. We also capture that you've gone to that event and you've earned our currency than you maybe go refill your water bottle again. Then you go into housing and dining. You go have some lunch and let's say you brought your own silverware. So let's say you brought your own bamboo silverware and then let's say you're composting and you're doing all these things. We have different mechanisms to capture that as well within the dining hall. And if if the campus is interested in financial literacy, then students can take EDquity financial literacy modules and earn our currency. I'm giving you kind of a flavor, right, of you go about your day and you're earning all this currency.Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:08] And it's very transparent to the user, it sounds like.Ashley Grosh: [00:04:11] Yeah, it happens in real time. So you can see your digital dashboard in your wallet.Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:15] What is a a data point worth?Ashley Grosh: [00:04:17] So that's a great point. So one pip is worth one cent. And so then we we do this, you know, kind of carbon pricing on your actions. So when you're refilling a water bottle, you may only get 10 pips for that. But if you're riding the bus. Right, that's got a bigger implication in terms of your carbon savings. So maybe you'll get 50 pips, in that case, if you go to volunteer at a tree planning event in the community, maybe that's a thousand. So we work with the university to really put the value behind each of these actions.Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:48] And then is this accumulated reward money, can it pay for education and books and things to do with college?Ashley Grosh: [00:04:55] There you go. That whole secret sauce. So what happens is when you accumulate your your pips in your wallet, well, then the question becomes, what can you do with it? Right. And so there's really kind of three key things that you can do. We have an in app e-commerce platform. And so we screen for green, though, any company that we partner with in there has to be promoting sustainability or have a sustainable product. And so we have some food companies in there. So Whole Foods, Chipotle, Patagonia's an example. Roffey shoes, right? These are sustainable companies and brands. And so you can convert your pip's into either gift cards or discounts with those vendors. It's really cool. So you can, you know, use that in app e-commerce site to redeem your currency. You also could donate your currency. So we work with a number of nonprofits, both national and local. So if you're really interested in a cause, an environmental justice or the Nature Conservancy or something happening right here in your community, you can donate your pip's and we will cut a check to that organization from 3P on your behalf. And then the real secret sauce that we just rolled out last spring is the Pip's for Schools program. So this is where it now you can take the Pip's that you've earned and convert it to pay down tuition, books, school fees. We do that through the Office of Financial Aid and then we have a separate fund called the Pips Education Fund in which we provide a match. So let's say you have $100 that you've accumulated. You put that towards your books. We provide you a one to one match. Now you've gotten a $200 scholarship.Lisa Kiefer: [00:06:27] Who's matching it? Ashley Grosh: [00:06:32] So we have a separate fund and it's a 501 C 3 non-profit. We're raising for that fund separately.Lisa Kiefer: [00:06:34] And so people can donate to that fund. Ashley Grosh: [00:06:36] Absolutely. So, alumni or corporate partners, charitable institutions, community foundations, people that are really interested in supporting education, sustainability, student success and higher ed can make a contribution and donate to that fund. And then we use that fund to make the match. And our goal over time is to get to a two or three to one match. So all the sudden you go about your daily life, you're doing all these good things. You're earning the currency that has real value and you're putting that towards your education. When students are taking those earned pips and converting them to tuition dollars, the money's then flowing back to the university through the Office of Financial Aid. And then we are providing through our separate 501 C-3, the Pip's Education Fund, a match. And so really the university is recouping their initial investment of the subscription back through the Office of Financial Aid. So it's a really great ROI for the university. It's really a win win win.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:33] The technology behind this is mind boggling to me. It seems like there's a lot of tech pieces, a lot of data points.Ashley Grosh: [00:07:40] It is. It is.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:41] It's very I mean, it's transparent to the user. But can you talk to me about the technology that is in place and how that all works?Ashley Grosh: [00:07:49] Yeah. So some of it, you know, we install so there is an infrastructure component. So I mentioned on buses or on transit or if you're going to an event on campus, we may use little beacons or sensors. And these sensors can know that if you're in the building, it's Bluetooth enabled. And so we can pick up on that, that that student ID is there, we verify that you're there.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:10] So do you have to turn that on, the behavior tracking system?Ashley Grosh: [00:08:12] You just turn on your Bluetooth and actually people may or may not know this, but these beacons and sensors are used in retail stores. So if I go into Target, for example, they want to know how long am I spending in each section? How long am I spending in the food, in the women's clothing? I'm a mom. So how long am I spending in the baby section? Right. So beacons and sensors have been used in the retail market too.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:34] From your phones.Ashley Grosh: [00:08:35] From your phones through location based services. Right. If those are enabled on your phone to get data. And now that's a different use case. Right. So we're not using that. We're using it in more of a closed loop system.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:46] There's a lot of talk about giving you back money for your data that you're giving to like, say, Facebook or Amazon. And there are some parallels as far as, you know, verification and the tracking.Ashley Grosh: [00:08:56] You're right on. I mean, this question comes up a lot, but we follow the privacy policy of the university so we don't do anything with that data other than analyze it, look at it and share it with the university. And then the university looks at, wow, look at the impact, look how many bike rides or look how many bus rides. And wow maybe we need another bus station over here because we're seeing so much action and so we only share the data with the university and we use it to measure retention, engagement, a bunch of things related to the platform. We would never sell that data anywhere outside of the campus.Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:34] If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness a bi weekly public affairs show on K.A.L.X. Berkeley celebrating innovators. Today, I'm speaking with Ashley Grosh, the COO of Pip's. Pip's uses a behavior tracking platform to reward positive behavior.Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:00] How do you know that a company or a service that I use as a student is sustainable?Ashley Grosh: [00:10:05] In the case of like Patagonia, for example, who we bring onto the platform,.Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:08] That one's pretty obvious.Ashley Grosh: [00:10:09] That one's pretty obvious, right. But, you know, Rothey's is a good example or Blue Planet that makes sustainable sunglasses. So we really do as a B Corp Right. So we're a certified B Corp. Okay.Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:21] And just so our audience knows, a benefit corporation is for profit, but you are required to consider the society and the environment in addition to profit. Correct?Ashley Grosh: [00:10:31] That's right. So it's that triple bottom line that we hear about where we want to see an environmental return, a social return and then a financial return. Right. So we're looking at the triple bottom line and we screen for other companies and partners to be a part of our ecosystem. You've also got to have those same values. Air BnB is a partner of ours. Again, that's a circular economy. The shared economy. I can convert my pip's to a gift card for AirBnb. You know, we provide gift cards to Wholefoods, which is technically Amazon's the parent company, but Wholefoods is still a wonderful partner of ours and we'd like to see Amazon learn more about our platform and figure out other ways to partner with us and then offer maybe even further discounts. Could we also work with Amazon on other features, you know, other sustainable products? That's a huge area of opportunity for us. So I think Amazon, you know, will continue to have those conversations through the door of working with Whole Foods. You know, we're selectively screened for green companies. And so Panera is one that we just added, Chipotle,right, that are thoughtful about their supply chain. We love to really promote local. So when we come onto a campus, we also will go around to all the local vendors. In Boulder, for example, our flagship university, CU Boulder, there is a store called Refill Revolution where you can fill up bulk laundry detergent, lotion, shampoo, conditioner, things like that. And so they're a partner of ours. They accept our currency as well as you earn. So there are certain sort of a dual partner. But we love to go locally and find partners like that in the community, local stores. And we haven't had anybody turn us away yet in wanting to be a part of the program.Lisa Kiefer: [00:12:10] Where are you happening? You say you're focusing on universities.Ashley Grosh: [00:12:14] CU Boulder, as I mentioned, was our early adopter. They are our flagship university, Univeristy of Colorado Boulder and very similar, a sister campus, I would say, to Berkeley. But so CU is really interested in this technology. When they learned about it really from two aspects from a retention standpoint and from a sustainability standpoint. So they want to be leaders in promoting sustainable actions on campus. They want to measure that. They want to put that into their climate action planning. They really want to better understand that the footprint they're having in the city and then retention, retention is probably the number one buzz word on campuses. Right. If you don't get students to stay engaged and to graduate the four, five plus years, you're leaving big money on the table. There's a lot of reasons why students come to campus and they don't continue. And partly it's the cost. Partly it's food insecurity and then it's mental stress and it's not finding friends. And so those are some of the top reasons that we've we've studied a lot of surveys around retention data. And so our thought is, if we can help with food insecurity. Right. We're helping to offset and subsidize the cost of healthy food by providing more access and more funding to food, healthy food choices, transportation costs. We can help to offset that. Financial aid. Right. If we're now starting to contribute in, you know, a couple thousand dollars per semester that a student could earn. Now, it doesn't seem so overwhelming, the burden of debt and then mental health. We also have mindfulness trainings. We also have financial literacy that we can do through the app and then we make it fun. You can gamify it..Lisa Kiefer: [00:13:44] So you get points for taking care of yourself.Ashley Grosh: [00:13:46] Yeah.Lisa Kiefer: [00:13:46] So how long have you been doing Boulder?Ashley Grosh: [00:13:48] We started a pilot there in the fall of 2017. That was our pilot year. And then we took the outcomes. We targeted just freshman that year and we took all the results back to the university and they really saw the opportunity to scale this. So they in 2018 signed a three year contract with us. And so we're now in that contract. We've we keep adding to it. We're constantly measuring, really working on the user adoption and then adding new actions, adding new partners, building the ecosystem.Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:17] So it's actually working there and it's successful.Ashley Grosh: [00:14:19] Yes, we've got about 5000 users on the platform. We initially set out to get about 10 percent of the student body and now we've exceeded that. Now we've added staff and faculty onto the platform. And what's cool about that is the staff or faculty can donate their pip's to individual student or to the Pip's Education Fund. It's really booming over there. And it's we now just launch refer a friend feature. So if you bring a friend onto the platform, you're rewarded. The origin of this is really around behavior, you know, neuroscience kind of the way that we act. Dopamine, the way that we're engaged, incented. And we know that rewards work. We know that gamification works. And so. We gamify, we do a lot of contests where you can count constantly be earning. And then we make it really fun with our prizes. We also have ski passes. That's what makes us different if you think about the value of these rewards. You know, you're getting food, you're getting Patagonia gear. You're getting tuition. Ski passes.Lisa Kiefer: [00:15:15] And it's not interfering with academic study.Ashley Grosh: [00:15:18] It's actually aiding in helping them with basic needs support.Lisa Kiefer: [00:15:22] What were some of the challenges that, what were your biggest challenges?Ashley Grosh: [00:15:25] There's a lot of different parts of campus that you want to engage. So you want to engage housing and dining, you know, Office of Financial Aid, the communications group, because you want to message this out in any way you can. So you really got to work and integrate with the communications teams on campus. Hey, how can we get included in newsletters? Where can we get some signage? So it really is a collaboration I think, when you're first setting it up, the messaging, how do we fit into the brand in the brand voice on campus? And so it takes, you know, a couple of of different groups to come together on campus.Lisa Kiefer: [00:15:58] Campuses are noisy with groups.Ashley Grosh: [00:16:00] That's right.Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:01] There's a lot going.Ashley Grosh: [00:16:02] That's that's exactly right. So there's clubs every which way. There's a lot of competing interest. That's why the refer a friend. Right. We know that things get sticky when other people talk about it. So if I'm a student and I have my phone out and I'm doing something. It seems like. What are you doing? Oh, well, I'm doing this cool app where I can earn currency and I can pay my tuition. tuition.Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:19] How did you get the word out initially?Ashley Grosh: [00:16:22] The strategy that we used at Boulder was to integrate it into welcome week. And so as students are coming to campus, even before they came to campus, we had a welcome letter that went to the parents and the students. Download this app before you come to campus. And then when you come to campus, we set up a scavenger hunt so that students could really learn, hey, here's the library, here's the dining hall, here's the rec center. And they used our app to go through this scavenger hunt. And then they got Pip's at every place they went. And so we got really clever about welcome week. All the students filed into the football stadium and we got a big P.A. message, hey, have you heard about the Pip's app? And we got thousands of downloads in a matter of a week. And so that, you know, integrating into welcome week, but otherwise you can do it into other events on campus. So there's lots of different ways. But the welcome week one is is really a trick of ours.Lisa Kiefer: [00:17:14] Where are your other applications happening?Ashley Grosh: [00:17:14] Yeah, we're pretty early in our journey. So CU was the early adopter. But now we like to take a systems approach. So we're looking at the University of Colorado system. So we've launched to their second largest campus, which is in Colorado Springs. And then we're looking to roll out at U.C. Denver. And so that would capture the entire system so we're at two of those system wide campuses now and then we've got proposals really throughout the country into large university systems. And so really looking at a systems approach in different parts of the country, but also within Colorado, we've got a handful of other universities coming on in 2020 to help us regionally gain some traction, gain some visibility, get some of the regional transit partners on board, getting a ubiquitous feel to the currency across higher ed in one state, and then we can go regionally and plug and play. But what's really great is we're getting all of these in-bounds now. So people, sustainability officers are talking about this. You know, Forbes did an article on us, hey, turn your actions into tuition money. There's a lot of talk right now around basic needs support, food insecurity. Just this week, I talked to somebody at University of Miami that said, hey, we're on the frontlines of climate change. Our students and our staff and community need to be doing everything we can. Can you please come here and help us? And so that's what's really starting to get exciting is is the inbound buzz that we're getting. So I think we'll continue to really lead in Colorado, but then you'll start to see us regionally as we head into 2020.Lisa Kiefer: [00:18:41] And California is on your map?Ashley Grosh: [00:18:43] California is... all things lead back to California in some ways, just from the leadership standpoint that California has taken, in so many measures. And so, you know, we really would love to be out in California. There's a lot we could do. And even in the UC system, you could imagine two of the two or three or handful, the universities competing. Right. Who could draw down the most carbon. So we have a carbon drawdown challenge. And so that becomes really fun, right? In the storytelling there. We can also integrate into athletics. So we could have a green game, you know, through the PAC Twelve and do some fun things there. But really getting a system on board is a significant goal. And where we're spending a lot of our focus right now, talking to the UC system, talking to the California state system, the community college system, too, if we think about some rural places, Bakersfield and others, you know, how can we promote alternative transportation, how can we promote some of these healthy behaviors in more rural communities?Lisa Kiefer: [00:19:37] You're giving currency back to people, social currency. But how are you as a company making money off of this?Ashley Grosh: [00:19:44] Great question. So I'm a trained banker and I spent my whole career working on businesses, scaling technologies, looking at business models, a program I actually in my former role worked with here on campus at Berkeley is the Clean Tech to Market program, the C-2M Program with Brian Steele and Beverly Alexander, I have to give them a shout out. But really looking at right, how do you take an innovative technology platform and scale it? And so we make revenue in a couple of different ways. So it's a subscription model. So first and foremost, the university pays us a subscription to have the Pip's Rewards platform deployed on campus that unlocks the pool of pips then that we divvy out. But then we also have action partners that pay to join our programs. So that could be ridesharing companies, companies like Zipcar, Car2Go, you know, Lyft and Uber really want to dominate the university place. We've got proposals into both of them. If I come to the university and I pick a ridesharing company, when I leave the university, I'm probably going to use that one. Bike sharing platforms pay to be on our platform. So that's another source of revenue. Within our catalog, our E commerce catalogue, our affiliate catalog, we also earn a small commission. If somebody uses their pip's to buy something, we may have a commission that comes back to us. And then sponsorship is another source of revenue. And this is when I really get excited about too. So I mentioned, Chipotle and some other partners that are on the platform. But thinking about large corporate brands. Right, that spend so much money on marketing, if they have a really strong CSR, corporate social responsibility mission, an initiative, you know, their brands are really working hard across communities to promote sustainability, promote maybe their products. So we really see sponsorship in underwriting as an opportunity. A beverage company, for example, could come in and underwrite the recycling behaviors on our platform. As we know in most California campuses that have divested from plastic. But that takes a little bit of behavior change to think about. What are the alternative sources? CU Boulder just rolled out some new aluminum type refillable cans for their stadiums or cups, I should say. But there's some behavior change that has to happen there so we can use our app to educate. But brands that really want to be associated with an app like ours, we're in front of young people, we're in front of their customers. Sponsorship is it is a big opportunity for us to go and work with large corporate and small corporate brands.Lisa Kiefer: [00:22:01] Tell me how this idea even got started.Ashley Grosh: [00:22:04] So Wendy Gordon is our co-founder. There's several co-founders. And so Wendy has a fascinating history. She's a serial entrepreneur and she's always tackled this riddle of how do we change the behavior? How do we get consumers, you know, to think about smarter products, to think about their footprint? She launched and co-founded Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet with Meryl Streep, which was the original green guide, and that ended up being acquired by National Geographic. And then Wendy was an environmentalist at the National Resource Defense Council, NRDC. And so she's got a really fascinating background all around, you know, sustainability, the sciences in consumer. And so, Wendy, you know, really thought how could we think about rewards points? So if we look at traditional credit card, frequent flyer miles, they sound really good on the surface, but the redemption rates of those are very low. And so, Wendy and one of her college classmates, David Sands, got together. They went to Princeton. And they've kind of been thinking about this riddle of how do we how do we get people to do things, right? It's through incentives and rewards. So they came up with this initial idea and then they were introduced to two developers. So technical folks, Evan and Ynev and Ynev actually has a neuroscience background. And he ran a dopamine lab. So he started bringing in the science and started to look at loss aversion and all these different, you know, scientific ways of the way that we interact in the way that we're, you know, incentivized and what works and what does it what keeps us coming back, what makes things sticky. That's why we bring in gamification. So you had the business side that, you know, Wendy and David were building and then you had the technical side and Evan and Ynev said, think about all the wearables, the wearable market, Fitbit, if you think about the connected economy, that there's so many things that we could plug into. If we build an open source platform with API, we can connect into all these tracking devices and start to verify the actions. We don't want to see greenwashing. We don't want to say, I pledge to do this or I pledge to do that. We really want to verify that you took an action. So the company got formed and then really started to think about where could this application where's the best use case? They tested it in a new enterprise locations, some real estate firms doing fitness competitions and things like that. But then really it was CU Boulder that said, you know, we think this is a higher ed solution. So spend a couple of years.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:24] So they came to you? Ashley Grosh: [00:24:25] Yeah. Yeah. Sue Boulder came to Wendy and said, you know, we really think this is best served in the higher ed space. And so they completely pivoted and decided to focus all the actions, all the technical side on Boulder and in really targeting higher, higher institutions, higher ed.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:44] What are some of your future plans?Ashley Grosh: [00:24:46] So longer term, I think there is absolutely an enterprise solution here. So that's an employee engagement platform. Again, retention is another key issue we know with employers. And so if you could. Offer meaningful rewards for employees. You know, Google we've talked to, they have a problem with transportation. They have too many people driving single occupancy vehicles or this is a case of a lot of employers, right. So how can you change the behavior and get them to carpool or get them to ride the bus system? And then how do you incentivize them to do that? So you could use our rewards platform to do that. And we have proposals into some other large corporates that, you know, see it as a benefit from a fun currency. But if they need to change behavior.Lisa Kiefer: [00:25:26] So are you reaching out to cities, city governments?Ashley Grosh: [00:25:29] We have proposals into municipalities as well. You know, a lot of the team members within municipalities, they want them to be riding buses, going to certain events. And so it's a similar program that you would do at higher ed, but you would change the actions based on what that individual employer municipality would want to do. And then you you can customize the rewards. One day, what if you just had the city of Berkeley and that included the campus and that included and that's actually the goal is to get it to be a ubiquitous currency. So I think to get there right, you've got to start traction and so you start traction among the universities. But then that can lead over into the cities and they adopt it. And then you're right, it just becomes, you know, a taxpayer benefit. So we also have a carbon footprint calculator. And so I can see.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:13] Where's that?Ashley Grosh: [00:26:14] In the app.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:15] In the app.Ashley Grosh: [00:26:15] And it's individualized. So I can see my individual footprint and then I can see my community's footprint. And I can see, you know what? We are making an impact. And so then it doesn't seem so daunting. Right. And I'm doing my part. The other thing is we're building environmental stewards in higher education. We have stories about this, case studies, students that have graduated from C.U. that were on our platform. They've moved to big cities. And their first inclination is to not get into a car or buy a car. They're used to doing public transportation. So Pip's has really led them to those behaviors. And so then they go on and carry them forward.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:53] Do you have competition in this space?Ashley Grosh: [00:26:54] So that's a great question, right? You always want to know kind of who's in the rear view mirror or off to the side. And we haven't come across anybody that's doing exactly what we're doing in the way that we're doing it. And especially from the technology integration, the verification and the scholarship component and the matching. Right. That's really unique. There are a couple other pledge based systems, pledging that you rode the bus or pledging to do a Meatless Monday or something like that. And then they don't have a reward platform. So they might say you get a gold star or or.Lisa Kiefer: [00:27:27] You don't get any monetary.Ashley Grosh: [00:27:29] Right. You might get a badge. They call it. And then two students have five badges and they get eligible for a pizza party or, you know, something. So they don't have the high value rewards into the system, which we know are the drivers to get students to stay on this. And then they don't have all the other bells and whistles that, you know, carbon footprint calculators and all those things, verified actions and the currency. Right. The currency component with the scholarship piece. So that's really what we believe sets us apart. I really think we're on the cutting edge, because if you look at 5G, right. That's getting rolled out. Things are gonna be happening a lot faster, more devices. I'm seeing more wired, you know, clothing and wearable rings that that track your your health metrics and send them to your doctor in real time. So, you know, 5G is really going to enable us to do more of this. And so we're, you know, at the forefront of that. And we're really excited about being able to plug in to the new wearables and the new companies that are coming into the space.Lisa Kiefer: [00:28:30] Tell our listeners how to get your website and what they can expect to find there.Ashley Grosh: [00:28:34] Yeah. So if you go to www.pipsrewards.com and then you won't want to sign in because you're not a user... yet. There's some graphics you can start to see our story. You can get a list of all of our partners. As we mentioned some of them on the show today. The earn, redeem, the donate, the nonprofits that we also support that you can donate to, and then you can reach us that suppor@pipsrewards.com. If you want to learn more or bring this to your campus or if you have any other questions or ideas, we're always open to discussions.Lisa Kiefer: [00:29:09] Are you looking for volunteers or interns at any point?Ashley Grosh: [00:29:11] We are. So we we have two interns right now and we are growing like crazy. So for folks that are interested, reach out to us. You know, the reason this is so important to me, you know, I've worked in climate and sustainability almost my entire career, but I'm a mom and I also spend a lot of time on college campuses. And I think about these students and I think about my own kids and how successful I want them to be, and any boost that we can give them, any head start, if we can help them chip away at their debt sooner, if we can help them really have healthy behaviors and habits, we're going to better equip them when they head out into the into the big, real scary world. Your actions can make a difference and added up together, they can have a really big impact. You know, that's what we want to do. Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:01] Thank you, Ashley, for coming on Method to the Madness.Ashley Grosh: [00:30:04] Thank you.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:06] You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on K.A.L.X. Berkeley celebrating innovators. We'll be back again in two weeks.

TranscriptLisa Kiefer: [00:00:01] You're listening to Method to the Madness. A biweekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators.Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:12] I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer. And today, I'm speaking with Mohamed Shehk, co-director and media and communications director of Critical Resources. Welcome to Method to the Madness.Mohamed Shehk: [00:00:28] Thank you for having me.Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:29] I've been hearing a whole lot with the upcoming presidential election and all the debates, about prison reform. I find it kind of interesting that for the past over 20 years, your organization has said "forget reform, we need to abolish prisons."Mohamed Shehk: [00:00:43] Yes. Critical Resistance was founded in 1998. It was founded in Berkeley. There was a conference called Critical Resistance Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex.Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:53] Yes. And you had a lot of heavy hitters, Angela Davis.Mohamed Shehk: [00:00:55] Angela Davis was one of our co-founders,.Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:57] And, Ruth Wilson Gilmore!Mohamed Shehk: [00:00:59] And we're actually doing an event with Ruthie down in L.A.. Yeah. So we began using a term that was actually coined by Mike Davis, the prison industrial complex. And it was a way to begin thinking about the interrelated systems of imprisonment, policing, surveillance and other forms of state violence and control. Really looking at this system as being built intentionally to control, repress and inflict harm and violence in communities. So if we understand that its purpose is to control communities, then we don't want to fix it. Right. We want to chip away at its power. We want to abolish it. So we really popularized the notion of prison industrial complex abolition. And for the past 20 years, we've been working on various projects and campaigns toward eliminating the prison industrial complex in our society.Lisa Kiefer: [00:01:51] So of all the candidates, who do you think is most onboard or at least understanding of what your strategy is toward prisons?Mohamed Shehk: [00:02:00] It's really interesting with the current presidential candidates that have approached criminal justice reform in a variety of ways. I mean, you just had Bernie Sanders release a platform that actually picks up a lot of some of the concepts and community based approaches rather than continuing to invest and waste millions and millions and millions of dollars into the system of policing, into imprisonment. What are the reforms that appear to be liberal or progressive but are actually entrenching the system?Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:36] Right. They're kind of co-opting.Mohamed Shehk: [00:02:37] Yeah. After the death of Mike Brown and Eric Garner back in 2014 with the, you know, upsurge of Black Lives Matter and the enormous amount of attention being focused on policing, and you had an array of reforms being discussed, such as body cameras, such as, more training for police officers. And we see that these kinds of reforms are actually pouring money into the system of policing. They're expanding the role of policing. We're giving surveillance technology to policing. Right. So these reforms aren't actually chipping away at the power, but actually legitimizing and entrenching the system of policing itself. So these are the kinds of reforms that we want to be cautious of and use this framework of thinking about abolitionist reforms vs. reformist reforms. What are the reforms that are actually cutting away resources from the systems that we're fighting rather than continuing to waste investments into these systems.Lisa Kiefer: [00:03:36] And so what are some of the strategies that you are using in your organization? And you're located in four cities. You're headquartered in Oakland in the Temescal. You're in New York City, L.A. and Portland.Mohamed Shehk: [00:03:48] Yes. Our national office is based in Oakland. We are a nonprofit organization and we function primarily through our chapters and our chapters, the ones that you named, our volunteer members really make up the bulk of the organization and we work with them and they decide what local projects and campaigns are most relevant to the political geography that they're operating in, to attack the prison industrial complex. So, for instance, in Portland, we started a campaign called Care Not Cops. Initially, that campaign was really focused on cutting policing away from mental health crisis response. We want to divest resources away from policing, take money away from the police budget and put that into community based and user determined mental health resources. One strategy is to really focus on the city budget and to use that as a method to organize communities and to say these are actually where we want our resources going, not continuing to go into the Police Bureau's budget. We use a variety of different strategies and tactics, so we do a lot of media and communications work to kind of shift how we understand safety, how we understand what strong and healthy communities actually look like. We do a lot of work around the legislative realm. We work with decision makers and also put pressure on decision makers to put forth policies that are actually in line with what we're advocating for.Lisa Kiefer: [00:05:28] So let's talk about what you're doing in the Bay Area... Urban Shield, for one thing. Can you talk about that a little bit and some of the other successes you've had locally?Mohamed Shehk: [00:05:36] Yeah. Thank you for raising that. Critical Re sistance along with a number of other organizations, including the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Chicano Moratorium Coalition, the American Friends Service Committee. We're part of a coalition called the Stop Urban Shield Coalition. And we came together to put an end to Urban Shield, which was the world's largest SWAT training, and also included a weapons expo. That organizing happened for five plus years. We built a grassroots campaign to essentially pressure and empower the Board of supervisors in Alameda County to say to the sheriff, no, we do not want this kind of program anymore. Urban Shield was justified under the guise of emergency preparedness. Right. And so the sheriff would say, well, we need this kind of program because of all these different kinds of emergencies. But obviously, just as with many programs that came after 9/11, it was funded through and bolstered by the logic of militarization and counter-terrorism and was effectively a program that endorsed war on black and brown communities. So last year, the Board of Supervisors made a decision to end Urban Shield. They said after this year, Urban Shield is no longer. Then this year, a gain, after some kind of foul play by the sheriff to attempt to kind of reverse their decision and even just ignore that it actually happened. Earlier this year, they reaffirmed their decision and Urban Shield was effectively defunded.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:08] Does that money then go to the programs that you are backing?Mohamed Shehk: [00:07:12] Yes. So we have been working alongside various city and county agencies to really put in place what emergency preparedness and disaster response looks like. So one of the things that we did with the Alameda County Board of Supervisors is part of their decision to end Urban Shield was to put together a task force to say, okay, let's actually look at how this money could be funded. And they adopted a number of recommendations, which was about 60 recommendations that called for things like no more SWAT centered scenarios. You know, we want inclusive programs and transparency that include community members in the planning and the implementation. And so these recommendations were adopted. We also took them to San Francisco because San Francisco is the fiscal agent of this money that's coming from the federal government. And they also looked and adopted many of the recommendations. And so for what comes next, we are hopeful that it really embodies the kind of program, the kind of framing that we were after.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:23] Can you tell me also about the project called Oakland Power Projects?Mohamed Shehk: [00:08:27] So there was a coalition, the Stop the Injunctions Coalition, that put an end to gang injunctions in Oakland. It was the first instance of a city in the United States ending gang injunctions as a result of grassroots mobilization and pressure. And so after that, we said, OK, we ended gang injunctions. This is tremendous. What do we want to do next? So we started surveying and interviewing Oakland community members around things like what does safety look like to you? Do you have instances where you feel like you need to call the cops? What kind of investments do you want to see in your community? And so we compiled all of these interviews. We started picking through them and found a common theme which was around health related emergencies and people saying, when these emergencies happen, I don't want to call the cops, but they're the only options that I have.Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:19] Give me an example of something like that.Mohamed Shehk: [00:09:21] So it could be someone gets in a car accident. Someone is having a or experience as someone else, having a mental health crisis or someone just badly cuts themselves or injured themselves. They have to call 9 1 1. And in many instances, the police show up and either don't really help in what's often the case or exacerbate the situation.Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:45] By criminalizing it.Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:46] Exactly. What we did is we got together a number of health workers from counselors to kind of traditional like EMT as doctors, nurses, acupuncturists, the whole range, right? Street medics and we said, okay, now we want you to come up with different resources and come up with a number of different workshops that you can provide to communities on knowing your options when situations occur. They did exactly that and it was really powerful. They came up with three different tracks. One was acute emergencies. Another was mental health and behavioral crises. And another one was chronic illnesses and also tied in opiate overdoses. And so we began to offer these workshops to different community organizations, to places of business, to community groups, neighborhoods. And the workshops are really geared toward ending our reliance on policing by building up our know how and our capacity to be able to respond to situations in our communities.Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:54] You must've gotten a lot of resistance because it sounds very radical when you say abolish prison.Mohamed Shehk: [00:10:59] We really want to understand the root causes of harm and violence. Right. Because oftentimes what the status quo has been is that when something happens, we're reactive and we respond. And oftentimes what that looks like is targeting black and brown people and putting them in cages. So if we really are to want to address harm and violence in our communities, social injustices, we have to understand the root causes. And we have to begin to see how we can transform the underlying conditions that gave rise to harm and violence in the first place. When we say prison industrial complex and when we say prison industrial complex abolition, we know full well that just taking the prisons away from society is not going to be the end of the game. Right. We have to understand that prisons don't exist in a vacuum. Policing does not exist in a vacuum. That we're gonna have to also look at the ways that different dynamics in society are integral to the prison industrial complex. And so changing social conditions and transforming the ways that we relate to each other is fundamental to understanding and achieving abolition.Lisa Kiefer: [00:12:21] If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K A L X Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today, I'm speaking with Mohammed Scheck, the media and communications director of Critical Resistance.Lisa Kiefer: [00:12:43] And you've been successful. You're stopping a prison from being built locally here in San Francisco, is that correct?Mohamed Shehk: [00:12:49] Yeah. So one of our one of our campaigns here in the Bay Area is the No New S.F. Jail Coalition. What that essentially is, is the sheriff back in 2013 or so or even a little bit before, but that's when the coalition really came together. The sheriff wanted to build a replacement jail to one that already exists at 850 Bryant Street, which is known as the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. The interesting thing about the Hall of Justice is that nearly all of San Francisco, it's it's unanimous that that building needs to be torn down because it's seismically unsafe, it's decrepit, it's falling apart. And the sheriff wanted to build a replacement saying that that was his only option. What we did was we formed a coalition with a number of other organizations and effectively put a halt to that plan. So in 2015, we got the supervisors to vote unanimously and say we don't want to build a new jail. We actually want to look at alternatives. We want to look at ways to reduce the jail population while building up resources and looking at investments that actually support people coming back home and can support communities in need where we don't have to respond by criminalizing.Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:08] So you guys are active participants in this new solution?Mohamed Shehk: [00:14:12] Yes, absolutely. And so right now, our effort is to actually close the jail at 850 Bryant Street. That's that's kind of the main thrust that we're working on right now. We do have one supervisor who has stepped up and is willing to put forward legislation toward shutting the jail this year. What we're looking at is opposing different kinds of reforms and different proposals that would actually legitimize other forms of punishment as a response. So like they'll say, OK, we're going to close this jail, let's put everyone on electronic monitoring and we're like, no, we don't want to expand surveillance. We don't want to expand the jail beyond its reach, which is essentially what electronic monitor shackles are. We don't want to move people to Alameda County, to Santa Rita jail. We want people to remain close to their families, close to their communities. And we don't want to reopen new jails or reopen old jails and refurbish them. So it really is about looking at what are the resources that we can build, what already exists, and then what do we need to build up around. Housing is a big one. I mean, you have nearly 30 percent of the jail population that was house less before they were arrested and booked. You have enormous racial disparities in the jail population in San Francisco,.Lisa Kiefer: [00:15:34] And in the nation.[00:15:36] Yeah, but I was going to say even more so than the rates that we see across the country where the city of San Francisco has about a 4 percent black population that is on the decline and black people make up 80 percent of the jail population. So you look at that enormous disparity and say what's really going on wrong? Right? What is, what's wrong? You have a significant number of people that face mental health issues and substance abuse. Just looking at these numbers, we can easily begin to say a new jail is not necessary. We do not need to be locking these people up. We can easily be thinking about other kinds of investments that would actually strengthen communities and make new jails obsolete.Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:16] Tell me how you're getting funding for these programs, because they sound like they might be pretty expensive.Mohamed Shehk: [00:16:22] We do fund raising. We are actually fortunate to be majority grassroots funded. So about 65 percent of our of our funding comes from people, you know, donating monthly, giving us onetime gifts. We hold events, you know, fundraising benefits. In terms of the funding for the programs, were advocating for those to be taken away from the police, sheriffs, other agencies that are about criminalization. And we want to divert funding away from them into the resources that we want and need.Lisa Kiefer: [00:16:57] Have you seen an upsurge in interest over the 20 years that you guys have been working hard at this? It seems like there's more of an opening now.Mohamed Shehk: [00:17:05] We definitely have seen a tremendous upsurge in the popularity and interest in just in the concept of abolition. Right. What we've done and other community members, other organizations have done is to really make this concept common sense. Because you mentioned earlier that, you know, this can be kind of a scary radical concept for people. One of the things that we really do is to show how practical it is. We show the the way that abolition can be worked on, can be practiced on a day to day level.Lisa Kiefer: [00:17:38] How did you personally get involved with Critical Resistance. How long have you been there?Mohamed Shehk: [00:17:44] I've been involved in Critical Resistance for just over five years now. The way that I came to Critical Resistance was really beginning to recognize the role of policing and imprisonment in this country. My background as a Palestinian, as someone who has long been involved in organizing and in different activism around Palestine, solidarity, began to really look at what are the intersections between what's happening there and what we're experiencing here. When you see that the state of Israel imprisons such a significant portion of the Palestinian population, the aid that they get from the U.S. government in order to do so, that helps them and and allows them to do so. And then the ways that Israel really practices its tools of repression on the Palestinian population. So for many that follow this issue closely, you might know that Gaza is essentially a laboratory experiment for the state of Israel to test different tools, tactics, technologies, and then they export those technologies to governments all around the world by billing them as battlefield tested.Lisa Kiefer: [00:19:03] And I assume we are one of the recipients?Mohamed Shehk: [00:19:05] Absolutely.Mohamed Shehk: [00:19:06] And that's kind of what we get back for our military aid that we provide. When you look at this, the interconnections between policing and imprisonment there and in other places with the systems here, you begin to see that they're playing a fundamental role in whatever issue that you work on, whether that be environmental justice, whether that be public education, climate change, women's rights, LGBTQ rights and liberation, the prison industrial complex is tied to all of those issues. The prison industrial complex is fundamentally patriarchal. It's fundamentally toxic to the environment. It's fundamentally why we have such a disinvestment from public education. Right. Because of how many how much resources are being squandered on this enormous system. That for me, became very central in the kind of activism and organizing that I wanted to do.Lisa Kiefer: [00:20:02] Are you also working inside prisons?Mohamed Shehk: [00:20:05] Yes. So our Oakland chapter has a inside, outside working group. Their primary drive is to communicate with people on the inside and to share resources on how to support organizing that's happening. We also do a lot of work in communicating with people on the inside to help inform the work that we're doing out here. We have a reading group that we do where we read articles from a newspaper that we published with people on the inside and then share and give reflections and circulate those. We publish a newspaper called the Abolitionists that goes to now over 7500 people in prisons, jails and detention centers across the country. Much of that content is actually composed and written by people that are currently or formerly imprisoned.Lisa Kiefer: [00:20:55] How about education programs inside?Mohamed Shehk: [00:20:58] We don't do education programs like formally, although we do share a lot of educational resources and organizing resources with folks on the inside. One of the main campaigns that we supported is the California Prisoner Hunger Strikes that happened. And so this was an effort that was organized by and led by people that were in prison in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison. They had a list of demands and they initiated a hunger strike effectively aimed at ending solitary confinement, improving conditions, getting rights, ending discriminatory and criminalization policies. That hunger strike in 2013 reached over 30000 people in California prisons that joined in solidarity.Lisa Kiefer: [00:21:45] And what was the outcome?Mohamed Shehk: [00:21:46] That had a huge impact. It gained national and international attention and drew widespread condemnation on the practice of solitary, of locking someone up in a windowless cell for 23 hours a day. Because of that attention, the United Nations rapporteur on torture said that solitary confinement is a form of torture. The California legislature held a number of hearings on the use of solitary confinement. Mow in the midst of this happening, there was also a lawsuit that was initially brought by the prisoners themselves and then was taken up against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, CDCR. That was then taken up by a number of lawyers and legal organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and that lawsuit in 2015 ended in a settlement by which the prisoners achieved a tremendous victory and effectively ended indefinite solitary sentences, which a lot of the prisoners were being held for five, 10, 15, 20 years in solitary confinement and were were put in indefinitely. It also greatly reduced and restricted the rationale by which someone could be placed in solitary confinement. Yeah, so we supported that as part of a coalition, the prisoner hunger strike solidarity coalition and Critical Resistance specifically kind of played the media house for the campaign.Lisa Kiefer: [00:23:25] I recently read about your new headquarters location in the Temescal, which used to be Baby World, and it's such an interesting story. Would you mind sharing that?Mohamed Shehk: [00:23:35] Yeah, we had already been talking about needing to find a new location because the place that we're currently at, which is in downtown Oakland, the rents have been rising exponentially. And so we said to ourselves, we really have to start looking. This is just unsustainable. During the same time, some of us, you know, just through kind of personal and political connections, were having conversations with with other folks and the family that owned the building, the Cabello family, we had conversations with their daughter, Danya Cabello, and realized that this building was for sale. When we found that out, we jumped onto the opportunity and reached out to a loyal donor, Rachel Gilman, who is part of an organization called Resource Generation, which is essentially an organization that seeks to bring in people with wealth in order to redistribute their wealth to social justice causes. In talking with Rachel, we kind of put that on the table and just had kind of a frank conversation. This is what we're thinking. What do you think? And she loved the idea.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:43] She's only twenty nine.Mohamed Shehk: [00:24:44] Yeah.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:45] She said herself that she thinks of giving as a "way to help up end the forces of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy that underlie her very own inheritance." And she said, "I believe ending this economic system that creates such drastic wealth inequality is necessary for all people's humanity and dignity, including my own and that of my family." I think this is revolutionary.Mohamed Shehk: [00:25:10] Yeah. Absolutely. And it's a beautiful space. We're in the process now of renovating the building to serve community organizations that are operating in the Bay Area. We want it to be a hub for social and racial justice organizing of all stripes. We want it to be a place where organizations and communities that are fighting to resist gentrification can have a place to hold their meetings, to have events, fundraisers. So we really want it to serve the community and to really pay homage to the legacy of organizing in Oakland.Lisa Kiefer: [00:25:46] And it's kind of interesting because the owners, the Cabello's, their family had suffered under Pinochet in Chile. So they there was just all this serendipity that happened between you and them.Mohamed Shehk: [00:25:57] Yeah. No, absolutely. They come from a very kind of rough political history and also are very much tied to resistance movements. Right? So they were part of the first suit against basically the horrors of the Pinochet regime, the School of the Americas, and the role that the U.S. played in supporting the horrors of Pinochet.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:21] I did want to ask you what your greatest challenge has been in the time that you've been in this organization.Mohamed Shehk: [00:26:28] One of the greatest challenges that we face today is the way that the prison industrial complex is shifting, how much technological innovation is going on, the ways that technological innovation is being integrated into the prison industrial complex to expand its reach. Now, this can be like the physical tools and technologies that are developed or something that isn't so tangible, but it's just as dangerous, such as predictive policing or risk assessment algorithms. These are, in a way kind of taking away the the human element, so to speak, and putting in place algorithms and technologies that are actually serving to criminalize people in an automated fashion. It's a very scary concept to think about. We really need to resist attempts to say that we're going to make the prison industrial complex better by removing the bias of humans, by introducing technology. The society that we live in is built on racial oppression, gender oppression, oppression against sex. And so technologies are not going to solve that. We have to actually begin to transform those dynamics, eradicate systems of oppression if we want to achieve liberation.Lisa Kiefer: [00:27:50] What's coming up for your organization?Mohamed Shehk: [00:27:52] As I mentioned, we are working on the NO NEW SF Jail effort to close 850 Bryant Street. Be on the lookout. Join our mailing list, visit our web site, sign up, because we'll be putting out information on how folks can can really plug into that fight and and close the jail. For folks in Los Angeles, we're gonna have an amazing event. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who's an amazing, inspiring, brilliant scholar, is going to be speaking. This comes after a huge victory where we, along with the Justice L.A. Coalition, stopped L.A. County from building a, quote unquote, mental health jail. That was an enormous victory. You've been fighting jails in Los Angeles for 10 years. And we wanted to celebrate and bring our communities together. We really just encourage folks to check us out.Lisa Kiefer: [00:28:40] What is your web site?Mohamed Shehk: [00:28:41] criticalresistance.orgLisa Kiefer: [00:28:43] And can people volunteer in your organization?Mohamed Shehk: [00:28:45] Absolutely. Our Oakland chapter holds volunteer nights every Tuesday from 6 to 9 p.m. And that's in our current office. Not the not the new building, 1904 Franklin Street, Suite 5 0 4. And so come through, volunteer. We find ourselves in a very trying political moment. You know, the current presidential administration is unrelentless and attacks that it's waging on our communities, blatant racism and sexism and xenophobia that has come from this administration. We also have seen the ways that communities are resilient and resistant.Mohamed Shehk: [00:29:24] You saw the massive energy into opposition to shut down airports in response to the Muslim ban. We see opposition from ICE raids. We also want to resist the tendency or maybe even the appeal to want to go back to how things were, because there were a lot of things wrong and violent and racist in the policies in former administrations. Rather than shy away in this political moment, actually to raise up radical ideas like abolition as the tools, as the strategies that are actually going to get us to where we want to be, to a society where we truly have equity, self-determination and freedom.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:10] That's a nice, positive way to end this. Thank you, Mohamed, for coming in.Mohamed Shehk: [00:30:15] Thank you.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:16] You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on K A L X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. We'll be back again in two weeks.

Method to the Madness host Lisa Kiefer speaks with CALSTAR Yoga program faculty Saraswathi Devi and Claire Lavery about their innovative adaptive yoga class on the UC Berkeley campus that teaches students how to help members of the public with disabilities.TranscriptLisa Kiefer: [00:00:27] You're listening to Method to the Madness. A bi weekly public affairs show on K A L X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer. And today, I'm speaking with faculty members of CalStar Yoga, a program that helps people with disabilities practice yoga.Claire Lavery: [00:00:51] I'm Claire Lavery.Saraswathi Devi: [00:00:53] And I'm Saraswathi Devi.Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:54] Welcome to the program. And you're both on the faculty of Cal Yoga.Saraswathi Devi: [00:00:58] I guess you could put it that way.Lisa Kiefer: [00:00:59] OK. Well, why don't you tell us about your program?Saraswathi Devi: [00:01:02] Well, we call it CalStar Yoga and at their recreational sports facility, the RSF, there is a little program called CalStar, which serves people who live with different kinds of disabilities and it's open to the public. So our part of that is an adaptive yoga class.Claire Lavery: [00:01:19] The class has been going on since 1996,.Lisa Kiefer: [00:01:22] Since 1996. Is it for just students or.Claire Lavery: [00:01:26] It's open to anyone with a disability in the community or in on campus, on staff, on faculty and any member of the gym or outside the community?, campus community can also join?Lisa Kiefer: [00:01:39] I thought it might be useful for our listeners to know how you define yoga and how you define disabilities.Saraswathi Devi: [00:01:47] Yoga is an ancient practice and it's a lot about body and mind health. It comes from an ancient root, yog, meaning to join. So it's all about balance of body and mind and the quiet aspects of the self and the more assertive aspects of the self. It has a lot to do with exercise, which is how most people in America know it. But it also has to do with mind training, with making your intellect more sharp and your emotions more clear and peaceful. And some people pursue it as a spiritual practice as well.Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:22] And could you define disabilities for this class?Claire Lavery: [00:02:25] We define it as someone who is living with some kind of an ongoing condition that limits their presence, their ability to move in the world. Most of our participants have physical disabilities. We don't work too often with people with intellectual disabilities.Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:44] Are you speaking of autism?Claire Lavery: [00:02:46] Right.Lisa Kiefer: [00:02:46] So you don't service.Claire Lavery: [00:02:48] We've had students with those kinds of disabilities in the class, but they've definitely been in the minority. And it's much more about the people who are living with more physical limitations, people with multiple sclerosis, people with cerebral palsy, people with post stroke syndrome, injury, trauma. So we've had quite a wide range of different kinds of disabilities represented in our class. And people with multiple disabilities are, have been long term members as well.Lisa Kiefer: [00:03:14] I didn't know that this existed, honestly, and I want to know how it got founded. What was the reason behind it? Were you there at the beginning? Well, Saraswathi is the one to tell you.Saraswathi Devi: [00:03:24] Well, I've been practicing and teaching since the mid 70s. And as the years went on in the beginning, in the early days, we just had everybody in class. We would have kids and seniors and people who were injured or disabled. Everybody would just be glommed together.Lisa Kiefer: [00:03:42] On campus?Saraswathi Devi: [00:03:42] No, in the community in Berkeley. I was trained by and served very closely a yoga master from India who lived here part of the year. But then as the years went on, we found ourselves specializing. So I began to teach pre and post-natal yoga and children of all ages and seniors and adults at different levels. And then I found myself partly because I have some of my own disabilities. I found myself very attracted to the whole subject, observing a person who was not typically abled and so found myself to the Multiple Sclerosis Society and other places and began to develop a practice that seemed to be really helping people. And that gradually led me to UC Berkeley, where I was hired. Well, at first at the Hearst Gym and then down at the RSF. Lisa Kiefer: [00:04:28] Did they hear about you and hire you or did you know approach them?Saraswathi Devi: [00:04:31] They did. It's a kind of long, convoluted story. But there was a really forward looking woman working in the RSF who hired me. And what I have tried to do is in serving a person who is living with a profound disability or multiple disabilities, we're trying to offer them a practice that they would never otherwise have access to. So we're taking yoga to a place that you wouldn't imagine it could go, so somebody might not be able to speak or move outside of a power wheelchair, whose body might be contorted or who might be having a lot of involuntary movement and and meeting the whole person. So sometimes a person on the street will see somebody living with a disability and they'll either discount them or not have proper regard and respect for the humanity of that person. They just see a bunch of equipment on a wheelchair. But anybody who comes over the threshold into our class is automatically recognized for their rich humanity and just loved and respected instantly. So what I tried to do is take other disciplines that I recognize as another form of yoga in a way and sort of a broad way of thinking. So I'd like to add massage and acupressure and range of motion and sometimes even using free weights.Lisa Kiefer: [00:05:50] Do you use water?Saraswathi Devi: [00:05:51] No, we're not. I would...Lisa Kiefer: [00:05:53] There are pools here and I thought maybe...Saraswathi Devi: [00:05:53] True. Well, I love aqua yoga and if we had a way of somehow having a pool, we would do it for sure. But we lift people out of their wheelchairs who are not ambulatory. They'll be four or five or six of us carrying a person. Proper word is transfer out of the wheelchair onto the floor and then people who are much more mobile who will arrive in class with mobility aids like a cane or a walker, or even walking on their own in a maybe halting way. They're also in the class, so it's a broad range.Lisa Kiefer: [00:06:28] I can imagine that you've encountered some really beautiful transformations for people who have never experienced this before.Saraswathi Devi: [00:06:36] It's a lot of hard work, but it's a joyful experience for all of us. For the students themselves. For Claire, for me, for our volunteers and for our young undergrads who help us every semester.Lisa Kiefer: [00:06:48] And how many undergrads help you?Claire Lavery: [00:06:50] Well, we have a range. We often have up to 60 or 70 students. They enroll in an undergraduate course that gives them two credits. It's a DeCal course. So they come and help us every week.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:03] And they learn how?Claire Lavery: [00:07:04] We train them. We supervise them. We keep an eye on them and they blossom. They do wonders. Many of them arrive without any experience. Many of them arrive thinking that they're going to be doing yoga. And we tell them right away that's not the case. But some of them decide that's not for them. Some of them despite their fears or trepidation, stay with us. And just are wonderful helpers.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:29] Are any of these students disabled that come to you?Claire Lavery: [00:07:31] Yes, some of them are. We've had many students who didn't tell us right away that they had a disability and some are significantly disabled, but would gradually feel safe enough to reveal that. And sometimes they found that they couldn't do the kind of heavy lifting or harder work that we asked them to do. And we are fine with having them help in whatever way they can.Lisa Kiefer: [00:07:54] It seems like they would have the most empathy and understanding of where that person might be.[00:07:59] Sometimes that's true.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:01] Not always, but.Claire Lavery: [00:08:02] Not always. And many of the students who come have a family member with a disability or an aging family member or have had an injury and and can apply that emotional information to the work that they're doing with the students.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:14] And how many of your students are Berkeley students and how many are community members generally?Saraswathi Devi: [00:08:21] At the moment, we don't even have one Berkeley student, but we've often had maybe four, three, four or five, maybe a professor or two. But actually the better part of the student population is from the surrounding area.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:35] Do you do this every semester?Saraswathi Devi: [00:08:36] We do it all year round and we have a summer session.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:39] OK. Claire, how did you get involved in this?Claire Lavery: [00:08:43] Well, I had started teaching yoga in the mainstream yoga classes here at Cal and had been doing that just for a couple of years. And the same wonderful woman who hired Saraswathi knew me and said, you know, there's this great class that you might like to help with. They're always looking for volunteers.Lisa Kiefer: [00:08:59] Is she still around?Saraswathi Devi: [00:09:00] NO,Suzanne McQuade, she retired. We miss her terribly. Claire Lavery: [00:09:06] Unfortunately, she's not there, but we're trying to keep it going. And she steered me to help out with this class. So I showed up as a volunteer. And I just kind of stayed. I learned a lot.Lisa Kiefer: [00:09:19] It seems so innovative. Do you know of any other programs, anywhere else that are like this or is this unique?Saraswathi Devi: [00:09:25] For a lot of years, we thought we were the only place in the country or maybe beyond. And we're starting to see others somewhat similar programs sprouting up, but we still haven't found anything that that goes as far as we go. And the reason why I say this, once we have the opening of class where we're sitting in concentric circles and doing a little bit of breathing or light meditation, then we will transfer people onto the floor. And then we essentially divide ourselves up into two groups where Claire works with the people who are more ambulatory during that part of the class. And I work with people who are less mobile and. So with the people who are more mobile, they'll be two usually two people serving each of the students and they'll be on the floor. They'll be sitting up. They'll be standing against a wall using chairs and yoga blocks and people's hands and arms and legs to help hold them with good alignment in yoga postures. And that actually draws up the strength and balance and alignment from within the person's body. It's not just an artificial hole. On my side of the room, we're moving people on the floor and forward and backward bending movements and yoga postures that look pretty conventional. But there might be two or even five or six people clustered around each of the students holding them at the shoulder at the low back and stretching their feet. And then we incorporate, as I said, a lot of massage and acupressure and other methods.Lisa Kiefer: [00:10:58] If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on K A L X Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today, I'm speaking with faculty members of CalStar Yoga, a program that helps people with disabilities practice yoga.Saraswathi Devi: [00:11:24] We had a woman who came in the other day and this is a few months ago, and she had been injured rather badly in her back and was able to after her initial rehabilitation, this was probably 20, 15 or 20 years ago, after her initial rehabilitation, she was able to walk at first with a walker and then with a cane. And then she was able to somewhat haltingly walk in a conventional manner. And then as she started to age, gradually, she found herself in a wheelchair. However, it's a manual chair, so she gets around quite nicely. But she came in very suspicious, trepidatious, and frankly, bitter, understandably highly educated, very productive, talented woman. And she was a little resentful, understandably, of of this new loss of full action in her body and and in some ways in her personality and affect and effect. And so came into the class and we tried to humor her and love her and respect her. And then she said to us, I feel transformed. At the end of the first class now, she's a very stalwart member.Lisa Kiefer: [00:12:30] Once you founded this, what were your major challenges in getting this up and running and accepted?Claire Lavery: [00:12:37] We've had challenges. Initially, the class was really only supported by volunteers from the community and Saraswathi would put out messages in the free papers. This was several years ago before there was a big Internet presence, posters and flyers and put out the word on the street asking for people to come and volunteer. And so we struggled along and it would only be maybe five volunteers and we still have about that time, 10, 15, 20 yoga students. So we couldn't have two people working with each yoga student. We didn't have the manpower of a woman person power. So we would revolve. And we'd do some poses as one person and then we'd set them up comfortably and we'd move on to the next. So that was a little difficult. We had a really innovative and wonderful undergraduate volunteer who had a brainstorm in about 2003 and said, we should make this into a DeCal class because then students would get credit and then.Lisa Kiefer: [00:13:30] ..Tell me what a DeCal class is because some people may not know.Claire Lavery: [00:13:33] A DeCal class is an undergraduate led class in the university and there are hundreds of them. They range from things like baking, hip hop music, to electronic engineering theory or more esoteric interests that students in in Cal hold and want to share.Lisa Kiefer: [00:13:52] And there's credit, course credit?[00:13:53] There's course credits. So our student who was interested in social work and in our class really wanted to make this accessible to more calendar grads. He thought they'd be interested. And so he went registered as a DeCal. And he was right. People came. When that happened, we had many more students and we did start to get the numbers of people we wanted to see to really fully support our yoga students. I know Saraswathi's dream is to have 75 students every semester so that we can have a really full bodied support group and we get pretty close sometimes now.Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:29] Do students have to pay to get into this class?Saraswathi Devi: [00:14:32] Yeah, it's a modest fee and they get a little bit of a discount for proving that they they might come in in a wheelchair and not able to speak, but they still are required to bring a doctor verification. That's understandable.Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:43] I wanted to ask you what you think your greatest impacts have been. You've been at this for several years now,.Saraswathi Devi: [00:14:49] Since 1996.Lisa Kiefer: [00:14:50] Yes. So what do you think has been the greatest impacts or accomplishments?Saraswathi Devi: [00:14:55] I think as far as the yoga students, probably the best benefit that they derive from the class is psychological. They feel seen, respected, loved. They are touched. And I don't mean that in any kind of negative way. They're touched in a nurturing and helpful way. And many of them also experienced good physical effects. They're more relaxed. They feel more cheerful. They have better sleep. Sometimes they have a considerable reduction in pain and stiffness. Many of them find that their circulation has improved, their digestion, a whole host of physical benefits. So I would say really in some ways, though, it's more, one of our students who had been coming for some years who is living the after effects of having been assaulted. So he was brain injured. So he asked what we would call TBI, traumatic brain injury. It affects his vision. So he's legally blind, almost completely blind, and his brain somehow recovered quite amazingly. So he has a very sharp mind, but very halting speech. So he has a speech aphasia. So he walks and speaks in a halting manner and uses a cane. So one day he said to us, when I come into this room, I am treated utterly differently from anywhere else that I go. People just see me as a disability and don't see me. So that's a huge part of it. For our yoga students, volunteers, the undergrads, we always at the end of every semester we ask them to write a reflection paper and we'll give them a certain theme, but essentially it's asking them in some way or other to tell us what their experience was and what they derived from it. And many of them, well, undergrads often will try to write to what they think the professor wants to hear. But nevertheless, you can hear a lot of sincerity in it, too. Most of them will say they were, they had never met a disabled person, with a small exception of some of them who do have as Claire said a disabled person in their family. Many of them have never met a disabled person, or if they have or seen people in the community, they've discounted them or really not given them much credence or attention. And then they also will say that they were terrified that they were gonna do something wrong. They didn't want to touch or hurt anybody. And then they started to get to know our students while we're practicing. There's a lot of really fun, gossip and conversation and everybody's giving each other mutual support and mutual interest in each other's lives. And so they discovered that these are full human beings. Some of them are UC grads. As I said, some are professors. They're all incredibly interesting. And so they find their lives utterly transformed. And we've had a small percentage of of them also change their majors. We've had some who decided to be an attorney giving pro bono services to people who were disabled and any number of really interesting trajectories to their story as they moved through the semester and have their their experience transformed. For me, it's impossible to describe. It's each of the people that we serve is an entire universe as it is for any human being. And I've gotten to know almost all of them, at least those who've stayed for many, many years. I've gotten to know them very well. Some of them have become very dear and close friends. So for me, it's it's like seeing the face of all of creation in the eyes of each person. So I feel like it's the huge super consciousness of the universe. Me and this other person in this lovely communication together across all conventional societal membranes, across any way that you might think that there's an encumbrance when you are communicating with someone who is not is typically abled.Lisa Kiefer: [00:18:33] Well, that kind of leads me to the next question, which is when you're doing these movements, do you also provide some sort of a lecture on the philosophy of what you were just talking about, which is, it's so beyond the physical, that we can, you know, reach each other beyond the flesh.Saraswathi Devi: [00:18:52] We do that in a variety of really subtle ways, and we do it increasingly quietly coming in the side door for our young undergrads as the semester goes on, through reading assignments, through the opening in class, where we give them some internal practices and in some other ways. So.Claire Lavery: [00:19:11] I agree. And Saraswathy said it so beautifully. We don't approach them head on. These are skeptical young people and really don't want to be told what to think or how to think. But they do come into class pretty much glazed over and heavy and distracted. And in our opening session, where we do some meditation and some breathing exercises, you can see them visibly relax. And we have had people, undergraduates right in the end of this semester that that meditation session was what transformed their experience and how they've got to understand what we were really doing. Many of them say that they are now going to start doing yoga. Of course, as we've noted, that might just be so that they look good in our eyes. And I do see some of them in my classes, in the mainstream classes. We do have some readings that we ask them to consider. And when we veer from the very technical or practical readings into a little more theory, they're sometimes a little bit at sea. We just had them reading the Bhagavad Gita which is a pretty familiar text to many Westerners, but it's dense and it talks about a lot of mythological people that are not familiar in the Western culture, and that's enough to really put up a wall for many of the students. So when we discuss it, we have to kind of break down and ask them what did they understand? And some of them are just unwilling to engage in that. They want to be, they're scientists, they're practical, they're 21st century kids. So some of them get it from the meditation. Some of them get it from the theory and the Bhagavad Gita. Some of them have their own understanding or practice of yoga that they bring with them. And some have other traditions that are congruent or complementary to the kinds of thoughts that we were just discussing.Saraswathi Devi: [00:21:03] And partly also when we're teaching a technique because they're learning hands on as we go over the semester, we're not training them for weeks. And then we have weekend workshops throughout the semester, several of them. But part of what we're doing, too, is we're helping them to see a link between this kind of beautiful ancient ritual form of exercise and the quietness and focus of mind and emotion that comes to the yoga student who's being served, but also comes to the volunteers who are doing the serving. Because here we are, we're holding a little bit challenging position and we have to breathe slowly. Yes, there is a lot of fun conversation in between. But there's also a lot of slow, deep breathing. And anyone who experiences that kind of breath on a regular basis will find that it has a very focusing effect on the mind and emotions and makes your brain more clear. So one of the things I like to say when we're doing an opening meditation with these undergrads is this will help your memory, your ability to focus and do well on finals. So sometimes that..Lisa Kiefer: [00:22:04] that's kind of a carrot... Saraswathi Devi: [00:22:05] that helps.Lisa Kiefer: [00:22:06] Well, this Igen generation after the millennials is the first to have grown up with so much technology in their lives. Have you been able to monitor the difference in the students you've had over the years since technology has become so prevalent in their lives?Claire Lavery: [00:22:22] We kind of saw a sea change about 10 years ago in the way the attention spans worked. Students are a little, a little antsy at the start of class. They generally settle in and they can focus. They're intelligent and they're used to working hard and intellectually hard. But they're not always used to working emotionally hard or are focusing in a more subtle way. We do have them take their phones out, turn them off and put them on the side of the room for class. And that's challenging for a lot of them.Saraswathi Devi: [00:22:52] we have a little bit of fun with that.Lisa Kiefer: [00:22:55] Probably helps them in school. What you're doing?Saraswathi Devi: [00:22:58] They've said that. Yeah. So we all benefit everybody. And they. One of the things that they will say to us often is this was a great ending of my school week. I've left class feeling really refreshed and ready for the weekend.Lisa Kiefer: [00:23:12] Do you have anything else going on that you want to tell us about coming up?Saraswathi Devi: [00:23:16] People have been asking Claire and me in all of the different universes that she and I both live in. Asked if we would please do a teacher training. So we're in the very, very first steps of organizing that. And we're going to do it collaboratively between the two of us and a third person who has been an on and off volunteer with us, who's very talented. So we're just in the beginning stages of formulating that. And then we have to do outreach and funding and all of that.Lisa Kiefer: [00:23:42] And where do you see this heading out to?Saraswathi Devi: [00:23:43] We'd like to serve other yoga teachers who are interested to make a foray into this universe. And many of them, most of them have not. They couldn't even imagine it. And we'd also like to find ways of influencing and giving some practical strategies to someone who's a family member or a caregiver who could help someone with a disability at home.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:06] It sounds like you've got a lot of data over the years that you maybe collected?Saraswathi Devi: [00:24:10] We do. It's it's very informal, but yeah.Lisa Kiefer: [00:24:13] Still, that's very valuable. I would think from a lot of different people it would be of value. Are you going to put together guidelines, like a book?Saraswathi Devi: [00:24:22] There will be our training manual. Yeah. Okay. And it may end up and we'll see. Claire, we're both so busy, but it may end up that we'll have satellite programs that will come from that where we'll we'll start with a basic teacher training and then we may find that we'll do some specialty as an extra specialty training over there. You might do some kind of weekend workshopy kinds of things. We haven't figured it all out. Yes. But it's something that we really we have a responsibility to do. We need to share it more widely than just here.Claire Lavery: [00:24:53] We would like to have medical professionals in our trainings that would learn a different way to communicate and work with the people they see on a very regular basis.Lisa Kiefer: [00:25:03] Are you talking about physical therapists?Claire Lavery: [00:25:05] Physical therapists, doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, the whole spectrum. We want them to be aware that this is an alternative to the very strict regime of drugs and hope.Saraswathi Devi: [00:25:17] You know, we have the father of one of our students who lives with cerebral palsy one time said to me, what you're doing here is much better than most of the doctoring my daughter is ever going to receive. He's a physician. I thought that was maybe a little dramatic, but actually in a lot of cases, I'm sure it's quite true.Lisa Kiefer: [00:25:34] If somebody is interested in the community, whether that's a student or a regular person out there, how would they get a hold of you? Do you have a Web site? And how can they help you or join up?Saraswathi Devi: [00:25:47] One way is to contact the RSF, the recreational sports facility, on the UC Berkeley campus on Bancroft at Dana. And it's right near the student union.Lisa Kiefer: [00:25:58] Is that reachable via the Web?Claire Lavery: [00:26:00] There is an online website presence under CalStar. So if you look under recreational sports and there's a drop down menu and you'll have to look, I think it's under group exercise or you can type in the search bar. CalStar, one word C-A-L-S-T-A-R and that's the program. And if you write CalStar yoga, it should bring you to the page that describes our class.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:24] And if people wanted to volunteer, it's the same. It is the same place you go to the same place, whether you want to volunteer or take the class.?Claire Lavery: [00:26:32] Right. And in either case, if you're interested in volunteering or in being a student, you could drop in to one of our Friday afternoon classes and just see the first class.Lisa Kiefer: [00:26:41] And where are those classes located? Where would they go?Claire Lavery: [00:26:44] They're in the RSF, the main gym on campus at Bancroft Way. They're in the combatives room, which is unfortunate for a yoga class. It's on the first floor. You'll have to tell the guard at the gate that you're going to CalStar Yoga and they'll let you in and you'll walk down the hall. It's the last door on your left.Lisa Kiefer: [00:27:00] And how long are your sessions, generally?Claire Lavery: [00:27:01] We meet from 1:30 to 3:30 Friday afternoons every week.Saraswathi Devi: [00:27:06] I like sometimes for someone who's inquiring, who might be interested. Who really wants a description of the class beforehand. Some people like to just jump in. Everybody has a different way. I would be happy to give my email address if somebody wanted to contact me. I would be very pleased to describe the program and just try to light a little psychological fire in the person. So it's info@yogalayam.org. I teach and live in a yoga and meditation center. So yogalayam is all one word spelled y o g a l a y a m.org.Claire Lavery: [00:27:42] And it is a good idea before joining the class, especially as a yoga student, to communicate with us so that we can both understand what you are going to experience.Lisa Kiefer: [00:27:52] Before we leave today, I wanted to ask you what advice you might give someone before they start this program.Saraswathi Devi: [00:27:59] And I believe you're talking about people who would come in as a volunteer and also people who would come in as a yoga student. I would say for the volunteers, please come with an open mind and realize that you will probably learn more than you thought you could and that you will enjoy what you're doing and feel a certain psychological upliftment that you might not ever have imagined you could. For the yoga students, again, I would ask the person to come to the class with an open mind and see if they feel like it's a good fit and give themselves a chance, coming even more than once to see how we can stretch the practice to accommodate anyone's needs.Claire Lavery: [00:28:42] I would also just advise everyone who comes to come with an open heart and to be open to the transformations that might not feel familiar.Lisa Kiefer: [00:28:54] It seems like this is such a valuable experience for anyone of any age to to take part.Saraswathi Devi: [00:29:01] I would say the human body, mind and heart have an amazing ability to survive. If you find yourselves, caught yourself, compromised in some way. If you're not able to garner all of the themes and abilities and structures and functions that you typically have or used to have, other people can come in and make up some of that difference. They can support you not only physically with their hands, but really, I would say psycho spiritually surrounding you and helping you to find and sustain what is profound and essential in yourself. Even if you can't do it all by yourself.Claire Lavery: [00:29:43] I can say from my experience, I am an able bodied yoga instructor. I have been fortunate to be fairly strong and healthy. I get so much out of this class. I get emotionally an uplift. I get a calming effect. I get love. And I'm a cynical New Yorker, so it works for me.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:07] Well, I want to thank you both.Claire Lavery: [00:30:08] Thank you so much for having me.Saraswathi Devi: [00:30:09] Thank you very, very much.Lisa Kiefer: [00:30:16] You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a bi weekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes University. We'll be back again in two weeks.

Rev Lebaredian, Vice President of Simulation Technology at Bay Area based company, NVIDIA speaks about innovations in artificial intelligence, gaming, and robotics as well as how technology is impacting our humanity.Transcript:Ojig Yeretsian: This is Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host, Ojig Yeretsian. Today I'm speaking with Rev Lebaredian, vice president of simulation and technology at NVIDIA, where he leads gaming technology and simulation efforts. Welcome to the show, Rev. What is VR?Rev Lebaredian: Well, VR stands for virtual reality, obviously. What most people imagine when we say VR are these clunky headsets that you put on your face or some little receptacle you place your phone into before putting it on your face. VR is actually something that we've been experiencing throughout mankind from the very beginning. All of our perception actually happens in our brains. You're not seeing with your eyes, you're seeing the world around you interpreted through what your brain is actually doing. When we sit around and we talk to each other like we are right now, [inaudible] elephant, and you just got an image of an elephant in your brain. There's not one around here. You conjure up this image and that's me incepting this image into your brain a virtual reality that we're constructing. Here we are talking, having this conversation, we're constructing a reality amongst ourselves.These new versions of virtual reality that we're starting to see are just a more direct way to create an immersive virtual reality experience. It's not actually the end yet. We're not totally at the end of this thing, it's just one of the steps along the way. Humanity has figured out ways of creating this virtual reality, this just communicating, telling stories to each other verbally. Eventually we had books, you can write them in there. You could do recordings like the one we're making right now, movies, video games, but the end game is going to be where we can start communicating even without words, potentially. I highly recommend you look up Ken Perlin from NYU. He's one of the greats of computer graphics, where he describes what virtual reality means to him. I completely agree with what he's saying. My piece in this is construction of virtual realities and virtual worlds through simulation, that's fundamentally what we do at NVIDIA. Our core as a computer graphics company, we power most of the computer graphics in the world, at least the serious stuff.Constructing these virtual worlds so we can inject them into these virtual realities is what our currency is.Ojig Yeretsian: What is AR?Rev Lebaredian: They're actually related. So, virtual reality is a new reality that you create that you're completely immersed in, but it's on its own. AR stands for augmented reality. Another term is mixed reality, MR. Some people use that term instead. Currently we're in a reality of our own right here. We're sitting in this room talking to each other and I'm perceiving you sitting there. Mixed realities or augmented realities are ones where I can blend in other realities into this world more directly. The current manifestations of this, the beginnings of AR, we're seeing through your phones. I mean, every iPhone and Android phone nowadays has something, that crude thing we call AR, where you can point your phone at something in your environment and it creates a digital representation of some reality mixed into it. The first one to make this popular, the first app, was the Pokemon Go. It was very cool but still extremely crude. A few years from now it's going to be far more compelling and far more immersive.Ojig Yeretsian: AI versus deep AI.Rev Lebaredian: These terms are very contentious. What is AI? What is intelligence? We still haven't really defined that. Generally speaking, when we colloquially speak about artificial intelligence today we're talking about algorithms. Computers doing things that we used to think only humans could do. We've been going through series of these things throughout computing history. One of the first challenges that we had for computers that we thought only humans would be able to do is playing chess. In the 90s, Garry Kasparov, the world champion at the time, was beat by Deep Blue. It reshaped what we thought computers could do and what is the domain of humans. Interestingly, it didn't kill chess which is what one of the things that people assumed would happen once a computer wins. Turns out, we don't really care what computers can do. We mostly care what humans do. So, I'm sure we'll make a robot one day that could play basketball better than any NBA player, but that won't kill basketball.Ojig Yeretsian: It won't replace it, no.Rev Lebaredian: We have people that run really fast and we really care about how fast they can run, and we go measure that at the Olympics, but just because cars exist or even horses that can run faster, it's just not particularly interesting. What we've assumed all of these years, that there are things that only humans can do. It's something special. So, we've defined artificial intelligence as the things that computers can't do and that humans do. We're inching along over here, occasionally make big steps. We have computers do things that we thought would be impossible. The big one in recent history, it was around 2011 in Geoff Hinton's group at the University of Toronto, there were a few grad students, they took some of our processors, our GPUs that were used for gaming and they were able to use a machine learning, a deep learning algorithm to train, to create a new algorithm to do computer vision. To do classification of images. There's a longstanding contest called ImageNet where all these computer vision experts in the world would have their algorithms compete with each other to see who could get the highest accuracy classification.Look at an image and you say, "This is a dog. This is a blue bicycle." Traditionally extremely hard problem. It's been there since the beginning of computer science. We wanted to solve this problem. At first we thought that it would actually be pretty simple and then we realized it's extremely hard. I mean, I've been coding since I was a little kid. I never believed I would see the day when a computer would be able to tell the difference between a cat and a dog properly. This magic moment happened when these grad students took their gaming processors and they applied an older algorithm, but modified, using the computing available to them. This extreme performance that they could get was a super computer inside their PC, afforded to them by the fact that there's a large market that wants to do computer games. They took that and they created a new kind of algorithm where instead of them writing an algorithm directly, they trained this algorithm. They fed data into it which was only available because the internet had existed long enough for us to have these images to begin with.They shattered all the previous records in terms of accuracy. A few years later these algorithms started to become superhuman, and by superhuman I mean humans when they look at these images are sometimes not accurate. They don't know exactly what kind of dog is in the image, or maybe sometimes they think it's a dog but it's really a hyena in the dark. Humans make mistakes but now the algorithms are superhuman. Before that moment we believed that only humans could do that kind of classification, but that changed. That changed over night. Now computers are actually better than us for doing that. What does that mean? Is that intelligence? It's hard to say but the trend, if you look at it, we keep figuring out new ways to make computers do things that we didn't think was possible. It's happening so fast. If you extrapolate, you imagine maybe at some point we will have machines that are superhuman in a lot of the things that we consider the domain of humans. Emotions, humor, things that we call human. Or, maybe not. Or, maybe they'll be some other thing that we don't quite understand.Ojig Yeretsian: What are you working on these days?Rev Lebaredian: I've been here for almost two decades. I really found my calling when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I saw this image in an [inaudible] magazine of two spheres, these balls, floating above a checkerboard floor. They looked so strange. I'd never seen anything quite like it. I couldn't make out whether it was drawn or whether it was some kind of weird photo of something. I read a little bit more and I realized that it was an algorithm that produced that image. That it wasn't actually drawn by someone, nor was it real, or a photograph of something. I was hooked. This image was created by Turner Whitted, who invented ray tracing back in 1980. He published [inaudible] on this. Luckily I got to work with Turner years later. He was with us until he retired recently at NVIDIA doing some amazing work. I got to tell him that, that the reason I was there at NVIDIA working with him was because of that image.What really excited me was that I could finally draw without having to know how to draw. I could use the tools that I'm good at, which was programming a computer to produce these images.Ojig Yeretsian: If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today's guest is Rev Lebaredian, vice president of simulation and technology at NVIDIA. He's speaking about gaming technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Rev Lebaredian: So, what is computer graphics, what is a digital image that's been constructed? Basically, computers aren't really drawing or drawing in the traditional sense. What we have that computers do is through simulation. We have some understanding of how light works and the physics of light, and the images that you see are the products of this simulation that's happening around us in the real world. We're trying to approximate that. Light travels through space. It interacts with matter that's present all around us. It reflects, it absorbs, transmits, it refracts, it diffracts. There's all of these things that happen, and so what we do with computer graphics is we try to get as close as possible to what reality is and simulate that. So, those images that we're producing for a video game, or for the Avengers movie many of the people probably just went and saw, it's fundamentally a simulation of the physics of light. When NVIDIA started before I joined, our CEO Jensen Huang who's probably the smartest person I've ever met, he realized how important the computer graphics is, the simulation of light, but also realized that it's important to find a large market that could support the development, the amount of R and D that goes into creating something like this. Previous to then, most of the companies doing really advanced graphics were in fairly niche areas like making movies, or professional CAD design and stuff like that. What we did was we took this to the masses through video games. Realized people love playing video games. What we're creating in a video game is a simulation of some world, and in this world you have to do the simulation of light. That's the graphics that we produce, and you have to do it really fast because it has to be interactive. We do it in a 60th of a second instead of the hours it takes to produce one of the frames in the Avengers movie. We have to simulate physics and the interaction of objects, how they collide with each other. We have to introduce some kinds of AIs to drive the opponents or the virtual cohorts and people you have on your team. You need to collaborate with other people or play against them and deal with the interaction of people in these virtual worlds and large distances between them. They may be on the other side of the globe. They have to interact with each other and make it all feel like they're present there at the moment. Video games are actually the hardest problem, if you think about it, for computer science because you have to do everything in order to make the best experience. One day when we have the ultimate video game experience, it'll feel no different than being in reality here. We're actually going to feel like we're inside it. That's the ultimate game. So what Jensen realized was that there's demand here, and the fundamental technology needed to create that is one that's important for mankind in general, but you need this large market in order to pay for the development of this thing. There's an entertainment purpose over here that's large enough where we can afford every generation GPUs we create. It's $3, $4 billion dollars that we invest in creating that. None of the other single markets can support the development of that, but through video games we get this core, and then we can have adjacence. Simulation for robotics, for autonomous vehicles, for design of products, for collaboration. Maybe one of these days we'll be doing an interview like this inside a virtual reality that's powered by that same gaming technology. So, my team is focused on building the tooling and the fundamental technologies at that layer to create these possibilities with these applications. Whether they be video games or simulation for some of the things I mentioned like robotics and autonomous vehicles. Ojig Yeretsian: What are some of the problems you're trying to solve?Rev Lebaredian: There's a whole lot of them. We still haven't solved rendering. Simulating light is really, really hard, and then doing it fast is even harder. We understand the principles of light, physics, well enough so that we can do approximations but what we have to do is simulate billions and billions of photons bouncing around in a scene, and figure out which ones hit your sensor whether it's your eyeball, or a camera that you're modeling. Doing that extremely fast, in a 60th of a second, it's hard. Even the best that we do for movies, which don't have that restriction, they can afford to have supercomputers. Thousands of computers they put in the data center to calculate those final pixels that you end up seeing in the movie theater. They can spend hours and hours, or even days rendering a single frame. We have to do that in a 60th of a second in real time. So, the first problem that's on my mind always is, how do I take the things that we are doing that take hours for a film and make it so that we can do it in a 60th of a second? Once we can do that, then we can really approach, get close to making a virtual reality that's believable. So that if I stick you in this virtual reality, you might not actually know that you're in it. Ojig Yeretsian: Sounds to me, from all that we're talking about, is that the future is coming faster and earlier, and it's forcing us to contend with our understanding. It's like a culture shift. It's like a paradigm shift for us. AI is already here. There's technology to do gene editing. There's facial recognition, there is amputees with robotic limbs, sensors on the steering wheels for cars that if they sense that you're getting sleepy or your mood is changing, the car will start talking to you to keep you awake and engage you. These are all these that were unimaginable.Rev Lebaredian: There's a lot of technology we're building inside the car, not just for self driving cars, but for assisting drivers. Technologies like that where we have cameras in there that can see if your eyelids are drooping or if you're agitated, and try to help you, it's remarkable.Ojig Yeretsian: To help reduce road rage perhaps. Sebastian Thrun developed machine learning algorithm to help diagnose cancer, and that radiologist's role is going to change as a result of this. That they're not going to be necessarily replaced, but they're going to have augmentation of what you mentioned, with classifying and reading of the CAT scans and the MRIs and the X-rays, and do better classifying, and the radiologist will be more of the cognitive end of thinking about disease. So, how do you see technology impacting our lives and humanity?Rev Lebaredian: Understandably, all of this technology happens so fast it's scary. It's even scary for me even though I'm in the middle of it. It's happening at a pace that mankind hasn't experienced before, so it's hard for us to just digest how fast it's happening, what the repercussions are to each of these things. So, we have to be very careful about how we integrate technology into our lives, and really be thoughtful about it and not just assume that they're by default good. Technology is neutral, but the application of it isn't necessarily, right?Ojig Yeretsian: Yeah.Rev Lebaredian: That being said, one of the biggest fears is that AIs are going to make people obsolete. I just don't see that. It doesn't make sense to me that we would feel that way. A lot of the things that we think about are manufacturing jobs, and stuff that robots can go replace. If you look at it traditionally, those jobs didn't exist to begin with. It's kind of weird to think that the pinnacle of mankind is a human standing in an assembly line, toiling away hour after hour doing mundane, monotonous tasks. We were mechanizing mankind, which is odd. Humans are creative, they're wonderful creatures that are interesting. We should try to do everything possible to make it so that they can reach their potential without having to do the mundane and monotonous things. We were just discussing virtual worlds and simulating them, but one of the bigger problems actually with virtual worlds is the creation part of it. Creating a virtual world is extremely expensive. It takes thousands and thousands of people to construct a really large virtual world experience. One of the most important ones in recent times is a game called Grand Theft Auto V. It was released in 2013, I believe. If I recall, they spent about seven years building this game and they had, at some points, probably 1,000 artists constructing this virtual world. It's still extremely popular. People play it all the time. If you go search on YouTube, you'll find millions of videos of people creating movies inside the Grand Theft Auto world. They take it and they modify it and they insert their own characters, they put Marvel superheroes in there. The reason why it's so popular is because it is the most accessible, the largest virtual world that you can go access that's of high quality, but it took 1,000 artists seven years to create this. It's a micro version of Los Angeles. They call it San Andreas in there, and it's great but it's nowhere near what we really want. Something that's as rich as the real world we live in, and even more, except we've reached the limit. There's only so many hundreds of millions of dollars you can put into creating these virtual worlds. So to construct them, how do we take these thousands of artists and augment them with AI tools, not so we can put them out of business, but so that they can create not just this little micro version of Los Angeles but they create the whole globe? So that you can go walk into any building, into any alley, into any basement and it's detailed, and rich, and filled with all of the objects that you would expect there to be in the real world. It'd be based on maybe the real world. We can take our Google Maps data that exists, satellite data, and use AI to go augment that and build these worlds out.When we introduce these AIs, I don't believe there's going to be a single artist that goes out of business. What we're going to do is we're going to take away the monotonous task of handcrafting every single piece of geometry, every single little thing in there, and I think that's what's going to happen in general. Now, the scary part is when it happens fast. There's this period where you have people who have been doing something for a long time. Sometimes they're not even capable of adjusting to the new thing, so there's pain there. We need to get better at that as a society. How do we make people not dependent on one specific task as their job or career their whole lives? People should be adaptable, and creative, and we should be progressing together and learning to do new things. Ojig Yeretsian: So, you believe that we're not prepared?Rev Lebaredian: I don't think so, and I particularly don't think we're prepared here in the US. We're actually notoriously bad at dealing with new technology. If you look at it in the political landscape, I don't think we have leaders in politics that truly, really understand what's happening as we speak, and there's no plan for this. Hopefully that'll change soon. There are of course smart people in government, in our various agencies and whatnot, but just in terms of leadership you could see it any time congress calls tech leaders to-Ojig Yeretsian: Fly them out there [crosstalk].Rev Lebaredian: Summon them out there to talk. There seems to be no understanding or even respect for what it is they're talking about.Ojig Yeretsian: The European Union has the General Data Protections Regulation. Article 22 that states Europeans have a right to know how an automated decision involving them was reached and a right to know how an automated process is using their personal information. Is this something that you welcome?Rev Lebaredian: Well, I welcome governments thinking about these things. I don't know if the particular way they've implemented is the best, but at least they're doing something. We comply with all those, and as far as I can tell so far there hasn't been any negative repercussions except we had to do extra work to go comply with them. All of those things are important, but I think something is necessary and society should be engaged. These are important questions.Ojig Yeretsian: There's a lot of concern that machines are making decisions instead of people, and that there's an inherent bias embedded within algorithms. Is this something you encounter in your work?Rev Lebaredian: The algorithms that we deal with usually are not probably the ones that you're thinking about there. We're not Facebook or Google where we're dealing with peoples' personal information and social media. So, bias to us means something else. It's this car thinks there's a lane to the left here versus to the right. Something like that. That being said, I'm actually less worried about machine bias than I am human bias. Human bias we definitely know exists and we know it's really bad. Machines might have bias right now, but we know how to fix that, and we know how to test it, and we know how to measure it. I don't think we know how to fix humans yet as far as their biases are concerned. I can imagine that sometime in the future, maybe not so far future, we'll have judges and arbitrators that are AIs that make decisions. I trust them to make a decision on a criminal case involving a minority holding up a liquor store or something like that over most of the judges that are currently in place, and probably do it in a far less biased way. Ojig Yeretsian: I've heard the example of in a hospital exam room, where a machine assisted healthcare is actually reducing the numbers of hospital acquired infections and sepsis. I had never heard it on the more moral and [inaudible] realm such as the judicial system.Rev Lebaredian: Yeah, we trust humans to be arbiters of things that they probably have no business doing. I'd rather have an algorithm or math to decide these things.Ojig Yeretsian: What could go wrong?Rev Lebaredian: The work that I'm doing is actually to help us solve these problems before they cause harm. Simulation is actually the key to do that. So, one of the most direct examples is a simulation we're doing for autonomous vehicles. Before we put these cars out in the road and really sell them to people, we need to make sure that they're going to work well in every possible environment and every possible situation. With other crazy humans around them, driving around doing crazy things. There's actually no good ethical way to do a lot of the tests we would really like to do. How are you going to be sure that the self driving car doesn't run over a parent pushing their baby in a baby carriage when they go out into the road without looking both ways? Can't test that in real life. We can try to mock it up with some cardboard cutouts of those humans or something like that, but it's not the same thing.Ojig Yeretsian: Yeah, it's scary.Rev Lebaredian: So, all this work that we're doing to construct these virtual worlds and do them in real time, that ends up helping us here. We need to put humans inside these worlds that we test our cars in, and have them drive millions of miles and fool these cars. We're building a brain for this car that perceives the world and decides to act upon it. Our simulators are virtual reality for those car brains. We produce these graphics and pipe those pixels directly into the sensor inputs on the computer that's running inside the car, and the car, if we do our job right, doesn't really know the difference between reality and the virtual reality we're giving it. So, if we can simulate it beforehand, the better we can do these simulations, the higher fidelity simulations, we have a better chance of averting some of the really tragic things that might happen. We can all imagines what happens if an autonomous vehicle goes awry, but I'd actually argue that we already know what happens when humans go awry. There's plenty of-Ojig Yeretsian: Examples.Rev Lebaredian: Plenty of bad drivers. I'm sure you've experienced some of them driving out here earlier.Ojig Yeretsian: Absolutely.Rev Lebaredian: So again, I think in a lot of these realms, best chance is to make algorithms that are less biased and not as flawed as humans.Ojig Yeretsian: How might this create a better world?Rev Lebaredian: That's a good question in general, and what does that mean even? A better world. I think there's some simple metrics of better worlds. They have less babies dying. That would be a good thing. People living longer, more people with enough food in their bellies so they don't have to worry about it. People getting educated so that they can keep their minds busy. Without technological progress, we wouldn't be where we are today. I know things seem pretty crazy, but it wasn't that long ago that a good portion of our babies used to just die at birth, and the mothers along with them. We take it for granted now. Babies are born early, like my sons, they were born weeks early. That would have been a death sentence for them before, but they're alive and kicking right now and thriving because of technology. Everything that we're doing, there's the dangerous aspect of it, but generally the world has always gotten better as a result of it.Ojig Yeretsian: What's exciting for you in terms of new technologies? What do we have to look forward to? Rev Lebaredian: Well, in the near term the things that we were just discussing, the things that I've been working on for the past few decades. In terms of virtual worlds and computer graphics, I feel like we haven't realized the full potential to them. We've been primarily using them for entertainment, which is great, but we're almost there where we're going to start weaving these virtual realities into our daily lives. 40, 50 years ago the average person didn't have a video camera. The average person barely had a camera, and if they did, it wasn't something that they could use all the time. To go get film developed, it was expensive and cumbersome. You look at our children now and they're all videographers, they're all photographers, and they're creating content and worlds themselves. Everybody is. I want to do the same thing for 3D worlds, for virtual worlds. I want to get to the point where my grandchildren hopefully, hopefully before but at least my grandchildren, are going to be able to construct virtual worlds that are more complex, richer, and more beautiful than what Grand Theft Auto has done or what we saw with Avengers: Endgame.By using whatever device is there or just by speaking, I want to see my grandchild step into a virtual world and say, "I want a forest here," and a forest appears. "I want a stream with a unicorn jumping over the stream." Just describe it and have this world unfold in front of them. Once we get to that point, I can't even imagine the things that people are going to do with it. So, that's the thing that gets me excited.Ojig Yeretsian: How can folks get more information about your innovative work?Rev Lebaredian: Well, you can definitely go to our webpage and all our social media feeds. NVIDIA.com or find us on Facebook and Twitter. If you're a developer or into the technology directly, we have Developer.NVIDIA.com where we provide most of the technology I've been speaking about directly for free for people to download and go incorporate into their tools. One of the most interesting things I've ever worked on, and my passion right now, is a new project that we just announced that we kind of hinted at about a month or two ago. We call it NVIDIA Omniverse. It's a platform that we're building that allows for a lot of the things that I've been talking about here. We want to connect various tools in different domains whether you're an architect, or a product designer, or a video game creator, or a director for a movie. All of these domains have different tools that they use to describe, things that are actually quite similar. They're constructing objects, and worlds, and scenes.So what we're building is a platform where all of these can come connected together, and we can allow people to create these worlds together using the tools that are specific to their domain. We showed an example of this. We called it the Google Docs of 3D. Just like how you can go and edit a spreadsheet with your colleagues or friends simultaneously, we want to provide these and we are starting to provide this for people creating 3D worlds. So, you and I can be in completely different parts of the globe using our own tools. You might be using a tool to paint textures on a model, and I could be using a tool to construct a building using something like Revit from Autodesk, which many architects use. We can be collaborating together, building these worlds together. So, you can go check that out if you search for NVIDIA Omniverse. We're doing some cool stuff.Ojig Yeretsian: Thank you so much, Rev.You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. You can find all our podcasts on iTunes University. We'll see you again in two weeks.

Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, founders and chefs of Cafe Ohlone by Mak-'amham in Berkeley speak about their vision and experience with sharing traditional Ohlone food. They are reclaiming and reviving native ways while serving only pre-colonial foods.Transcript:Ojig Yeretsian: This is Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host [inaudible 00:00:12], and today I'll be speaking with Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, founders and chefs of Cafe Ohlone by Makamham, a restaurant serving traditional Ohlone foods located right here in Berkeley at 2430 Bancroft way.Vincent Medina is a member of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe from the East Bay and Louis Trevino is a member of the Rumsen Ohlone tribe, which originated in the Monterey Bay area.Together they now run Cafe Ohlone by Makamham, where they serve traditional foods and a very welcoming and engaging environment. I got to experience their cafe for the first time recently and was impressed by the design of the space, the meaningful exchanges, and the delicious food.Welcome to the show, Louis and Vincent. Thank you for being here.Vincent Medina: Thank you. [foreign language 00:01:01]. In our Chochenyo language, that means hello.Ojig: Your cafe is receiving a lot of positive attention and great press. Tell us what inspired you to open Cafe Ohlone.Vincent: Both Louis and myself, we grew up very proud of our Ohlone identities that was instilled in us from our families. Our grandparents had a lot of influence in our lives and our great grandparents. We saw how valuable and how meaningful our culture is.Our identities were able to be carried on, and in my family, our connection to our land has also been able to be carried on. In my family here in the East Bay, no generation of our people have ever moved away from this space. There's a lot of power in that. We see how hard that our families have worked to keep our culture alive, but we also know that because colonization hit us really hard here in the Bay Area, especially here in the East Bay with the urbanity that surround us, it meant that not everything could be carried on naturally because of very forced oppression that came as a result of people coming here, invading our homes and trying to erase the original culture of this place.However, our ancestors and our elders, the people who are even alive in our families today, were able to carry on as much as they could and the amount of what they are able to carry on it's amazing, and it gives us a lot of pride to know that in spite of those hardships, these things have kept going.The ancestors of our community found ways to keep what wasn't able to be passed down because of how hard again, colonization affected us, they found ways to keep those things alive as well through old ethnographic recordings that they wrote and recorded in the 1920s and the 1930s that gave us the hope that one day we would be able to have those things again in our lives.Louis and myself, we decided to create this organization called Makamham, which means, our food in Chochenyo language, because we wanted to be able to recognize those sacrifices from the people before us that they made. That one day when things were better and safer, that all these things could come back out again and we could have them in our lives and they could be passed down again to Ohlone people, and our elders can see these things respected again as well.We want to acknowledge that this work, it's not just being done by us, but it's being done by many people in our community. Many people who are doing this work quietly. A lot of times people don't get that acknowledgement and we want to give that acknowledgement to our people and to acknowledge that it's not just us doing this work, but we're part of this work and we can only do this work because of those people before us who allow us to have these things.It's disrespectful to those people not to be able to carry on our culture. We also want to create spaces, physical spaces, where we can see our identity reflected outside of our homes. It can be isolating and lonely when you're Ohlone growing up and you don't see any reminders that you exist or that anybody cares about you or wants to know about you outside of your home, even though you're right in your homeland.We wanted to be able to create the space because growing up we didn't have these things, but now the Ohlone kids who are growing up, they get to see these things and they get to go to a restaurant where their culture is reflected and their food is served.While it might be a small space right now, it represents a lot of hopes and a lot of dreams that our people have had for a long time and it also represents a lot of vision and to where our future is going as well.Ojig: Would you like to add anything to that, Louis?Louis Trevino: It's just that for our families, those living elders, people who are around today who remember these foods being eaten in their childhoods, they're the same generation that remembers also hearing our language when they were young people, who remember seeing those cooking methods, whose mothers and grandmothers took them out to gather plants for food.They're also the generation of people who, for many reasons, we're not able to learn to speak our language, even though they heard it. Who were not taught the proper names of these plants always, and that knowledge was not passed down to them. In the case of my family, specifically because that older generation of people was trying very hard to also protect their children from the harm that the world around us was putting on us.By doing this work, by bringing these foods back, by simultaneously continuing to work on reviving our languages, by bringing our family into this work and feeding them, we're also repairing that part of our family's history, that loss.By feeding our elders, we're also feeding their parents and also feeding their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren, so that we can all have these things again, and so that harm that was done can be undone by us.Ojig: Before Makamham, where would one go to eat native food in the East Bay or the Bay Area?Vincent: Before we started our organization, there were a few foods that our people were still continuing to eat. Especially, for our elders, because they reminded them of foods that they ate when they were a young person.I started to talk to my grandmother about foods that my great grandmother would gather, and she would tell me all these stories, Louis too, she would tell stories to him about how she would gather these foods, where she would gather them.Because she's in the city, she would even have to gather them sometimes that when she was waiting for the bus at the Hayward bus station, her native plants that she loved, that she would find there, and you think about that, there's just something that's so cool about that thought of like resilience right there. Like, this strong, Ohlone lady, right there in her home, right where that's in the same area that where she's gathering this that our ancestors have always lived in, right along [inaudible 00:06:48], [inaudible] creek is right there in that area, in this urban setting, waiting for a bus in 20th century at that point and still gathering plants.Probably, putting them in her purse right there. There's just something that's so cool about that with shows like how people just never give up these things no matter what's around us, how stubborn we are and how proud we are. Those are the people that I always look up to.I know that in our family though, only a few of these foods really could have ... They were continued. Not many of them though were, just because of how hard things impacted us here. How accessible is it to go and gather our foods when we're in the middle of the city?All of the inner East Bay where our people are raised, which is right in our traditional homeland as well is urban. It's definitely hard to be able to have access to these foods. And so, we wanted to be able to change that and that's why we created this organization before we even started with Cafe Ohlone.We named it Makamham, because again, that means our food, and we named it this intentionally because we believe these are our collective foods. These are foods that belong to our people. This is also representative of the fact that Ohlone people, our tribe, we don't just want one thing back. We don't just want just simply language back or just simply our stories back or just one particular item, but all these things are interconnected with one another.The truth is, we want everything back, because everything that was taken from us, was taken from us against our wishes. Those things that couldn't be carried on, we want to see all those things come back, including our land. Yes, that's the truth as well.One thing that I try to work for and envision with Louis and with our people is what it looks to have a holistic revival and a reawakening, where through being in our homeland and gathering these foods, using our language alongside of the gathering methods of this food, speaking our language to one another, we reconnect with those old villages that our ancestors directly came from where we gather for an example, the Yerba Buena that we make tea. That's right in an area that where my great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother was born. All the way back.As we do these things together collectively, it inches us back into that traditional world, and we see how much our people have always loved these things and it also is a reminder that when we are given the chance to be able to nurture our traditional culture, ever since colonization has come here, our people have always chosen to go back to traditional culture whenever given the chance. Right now, we're seeing that happen again in a modern day form and it's really exciting.Ojig: If you're just tuning in, this is Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show at ALX Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today we're talking with Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino of Cafe Ohlone by Makamham, a restaurant serving traditional Oglone foods.Vincent: We want to be able to just be mindful that this food that we're serving, and we say our food is full of justice as well, because our food, it's connected to helping people better understand that Ohlone people are here, that our culture is strong, that our culture is rooted in this place that we're in right now, and that our people will never leave here.When people understand that we're here and they understand how rich what we have is and how much we care about these things, and after they're empowered with that truth, then they have no reason to not stand with our people. And so, this is the need to be able to have allies with us, to be able to work for a better future that includes Ohlone people central to the story here in our homeland, and this is why we're doing this work as well.The primary goal of this has always been to empower our community, not just to have these traditional foods back, but also for the wellness of our people. We know that when the government imposed foods on our people, they were often foods that cause great harm to our health. We believe that when we take out those things that aren't good for our bodies and eat the things that our bodies recognize that our bodies get stronger. When our bodies are stronger, we're more capable of fighting back against the injustices that we face.We also believe as well that culture is central to keeping our identity strong and that when we have a robust, full culture, with many different things and we are also able to adapt new things in our culture over time, that represents a living identity. That also is able to keep our culture strong and also able to be carried on within these modern times that we're in as well.Ojig: You touched on a number of aspects of language and culture and violence and healing and repairing. It's just such a rich space. Also, a different kind of space that embodies some of these elements that you value, your vision and the context in which you're innovating.It includes words and pronunciation of certain words in Chochenyo. You also use Chochenyo phrases and language with diners at the cafe. Why is language so important?Vincent: Our language first of all has been very, very revived, and we're extremely proud of that revival. It's something that collectively we're excited to see happen and we know our language will never go to sleep again. We never say that it died, but we say it was sleeping, and it was sleeping for about two generations.With the right effort, our people breathe life into it, and now it's awakened again. Now, it's spoken with fluency. I speak it. People in my community, young people are growing up speaking the language right now, and elders as well.Louis: Our language in my family was used until at least the mid 1930s, and that might be true also of the Rumsen language in general, but when we work with language documentation to look for information about our languages, those things were recorded in the 1920s and 30s.There's one woman today in my extended family who heard our language when she was a young girl. She is in her upper 80s now, Gloria Castro is her name. She is my great grandfather's first cousin, and this beautiful woman, she just loves what we are doing because it is exactly what she has wanted to see for a very long time.In the early 1990s, she visited the language archives here at UC Berkeley. During the first, what became breath of life, and she's always been hungry for that information, for things that she remembered seeing and hearing, but not understanding from her childhood.The people that she heard using our language were her grandparents and her mother, and her mother never used it after her grandparents passed away. She remembers hearing it at these family times when all of the family would get together for weeks at a time and all of the adults would go into the house and all the children were made to stay outside of the house, and there was a woman who kept watch and made sure the kids didn't get too close.She does know that they were using our language and that she heard things. She remembers them preparing food in our old style, earth ovens, at the creek side there, which is a very old method of cooking. She remembers being chased out of her grandfather's garden, and this is when she very clearly heard our language, when he yelled at her and her cousins to get out of the garden.She had this memory for years. She was six years old when he did that, and that's the phrase that she remembers, and she says that she remembers exactly that sequence of sounds because she and her cousins looked at each other and they laughed because they didn't understand what their grandpa was saying. She says that laughter imprinted that memory in her mind, and she's been looking for that expression ever since, and she's always wondered and she's had times when she doubted what she remembers hearing.But, during the last breath of life, last summer, in the language archive here on campus, we were reading through Alfred Kroeber's notebook from 1902 where he records a relative of ours, [inaudible 00:14:50], and Gloria wanted to read every single line out loud, and so that's what we did. We spent a couple of hours doing that with her. We came across [inaudible 00:14:59], and we just had to stop everything, because Gloria finally found the expression that her grandfather used, and she could hear his voice in her ear, she said.There it was. It was this confirmation of all of those experiences that she had as a young girl was confirmed and now she knows that he was telling her to get out of there.Ojig: It took 80 years. it's amazing.Louis: There were the sounds. These are why our language is so connected to our foods, because those same people who were using our language, were the same people preparing our foods, were the same people who we are sure prayed in our traditional way, who did all of these things and kept all of these things close to themselves, because these things all come together.When we work to revive our language, it's very organic that that work leads to the revival of all of these things.Vincent: That's right. One of the powerful things about language, it's able to convey a worldview that's there. Our world view, I feel, is embedded within our language. Helps people who are coming to Cafe Ohlone better understand that this place was never a new world. This place was never a blank slate, but this place has culture, it has language, identity, nations that are here already, has a great food, great diet, great people, all of these great things that are already here.One of the most harmful things about this narrative that exists that we're trying to change is, it almost seems that anything that's introduced here can just be called Californian. People talk about Californian cuisine, but it's made up of nothing that's California, nothing that's native to this space. Just because there's avocados or something that's seasonal or fresh doesn't mean it's native to California. That doesn't mean it's California and cuisine.We believe that when people can understand what the true identity of this place specifically is, and I also want to add that what's native to us here in the East Bay isn't native to [inaudible 00:16:51], down south in Los Angeles or other areas, and we're all different here in California. That's one of those beautiful things, but by focusing here on East Bay Ohlone culture, and I'm aware, in Louis' family's area, in [inaudible] Rumsen Ohlone culture, we believe that we can show people the specifics of these things that helps people better understand and respect our identities.Ojig: What is the website address?Vincent: The website address, it's makamham.com. We did that intentionally because we believe that people can learn how to say Makamham. It's not that hard. Makamham. It's three sounds, and those sounds, they mean our food. Ohlone people have had to learn a lot of really difficult words over time, and so you know we believe that people can put in a little effort to say [inaudible 00:17:37].But, then Cafe Ohlone is also there as well. Cafe Ohlone is like the public face of this work. That's also the cafe space that we run over in Berkeley, but the website is makamham.com.Ojig: On the website you can get information also about the price of brunch, [inaudible 00:00:17:54], lunch and dinner. These prices include much more than just Ohlone food.Can you walk us through what a diner's experience would be like?Vincent: We always prepare everything fresh the day that we are going to have our events. We are always cooking with only what's seasonal, what's available to us, and we try to gather as much as we can here in the East Bay. If we can't gather it, we source it. The same ingredients from just a little bit further out. Ideally. Here in California.We never want people to think that we're just a standard restaurant where people are just going to go and just be able to consume food and walk out without any thought. We're slow at Cafe Ohlone because we want people to understand the intention as well as the purpose of the work that we're doing there. We say we want to elevate people's consciousness to help people better understand what [inaudible] here in the East Bay is, what contemporary Ohlone identity looks like, but also how delicious our foods are.Like what I was saying previously, we believe that when people are empowered with knowledge about how robust the living Ohlone culture is, that they'll respect us in a different way.Because of that, every meal that we have, we bring people in, and before anybody pays or before the meal starts, we ask everybody to sit down.Everybody sits down and we have [inaudible] that are out. They wrap themselves in one. We have all of these beautiful native aesthetics that are out, our baskets, our gaming pieces, the raw ingredients of the plants that we use, the salt that our tribe gathers and native plants and flowers that are on the tables and abalone shells and huge basket pattern that's painted in goat milk on one of our back walls with abalone adornments hanging down.People just sit there and look at everything. And so, for so many people, it's unfamiliar and new. We understand that that's unfamiliar for a lot of people, but we want also to help people better understand these things without making them feel bad for not knowing these things.Instead of just pointing fingers and making people feel bad about not knowing these things, we want to be able to help people understand them in a way that's really caring and loving, because to us, those are the things that we grew up with, which is learning to talk about these things with a lot of love and care.We also believe that when we're preparing these foods and when we're serving them, we only want the best words and intentions to be around them, because in our belief as well, if you're making food and you're in a bad place or you're serving food in a bad place, that's going to come into that food as well.You leave the drama out at Cafe Ohlone, right? No drama, no problems, and it's just good intentions. When we come back there, it's just celebration about our identity, telling people about why these foods are being eaten, but talking honestly and candidly about the fact that these foods weren't in our family's lives for a couple of generations because of our history, because colonization. Not because our people didn't care about these things, but because of the abuses that our people had to endure. Needlessly endure.As people understand these things, then we introduce the ingredients. We talk about, we try to change the narrative of how people understand our culture, because we talk about our history honestly but then we talk after that about our survival and the fact that we can have these things again, that we can be able to keep these things going, which shows triumph, which shows victory.That's what we want people to understand, is to associate our culture less and less with tragedy, but more and more with victory. We want people to look at Ohlone people and to say, "Those people are strong. They survived all of that and they're still doing this, they're still in their place, they're still eating these foods. They're still speaking their language."When people understand that, they view us in a different way. After that, we say a prayer, and we always make a plate at every meal that we have for our ancestors. We do this intentionally, and this is something that when we make these foods we do at home as well, because these foods, we're only able to know them because of our ancestors. We're only able to have these things in our life because of the strength that those people before us.Before we eat anything, we all pray. I'll share a prayer, Louis shares a prayer in Rumsen, and me in Chochenyo, and we pray to what these foods represent, and that starts off, this meal, this experience, on a note that this is different.When you slow down, then you can really taste these first flavors of the East Bay. We always ask that elders come up first, because that's something that we value in our culture. After we eat and we have music, contemporary indigenous music that's there, we answer questions. Then, usually, we'll bring out some traditional games, and we'll play some games and then at the end of the events, we'll always have a call to action.Ojig: What are some of the ingredients in the Ohlone foods you're serving?Vincent: We're always making seasonal dishes, and so right now we're cooking a lot with mushrooms, because mushrooms are in heavy abundance as well as hazelnuts, which the season just recently ended as well at winter time.Right now, we're also with the earliest growths of the native greens that are coming up. We've been gathering those. And so, I'll just walk you through a few of our foods just based on seasons. Right now, for an example, we're having these delicious, delicious, delicious mushroom hazelnut muffins, where we get black trumpet mushrooms and candy cap mushrooms and [inaudible 00:23:16], and we saute those with bay laurel that we gather up in our village sites and in walnut oil and pickle weed from the East Bay shoreline. The salty succulent that we chop up, then our tribe gathers the salt from those old salt ponds that our ancestors, the same exact salt areas that our people have always gathered salt from.We still go out there with digging sticks and chisel away at that salt and we add that to that mushroom mixture. We grind down the California hazelnuts and make a hazelnut flour, and then we bake that hazelnut flour with some dried porcini, [inaudible] base salts. We add those mushrooms, cook one of those edible flowers that are coming up right now on top of it, bake that. Serve that with an all native green salad of watercress and Indian lettuce that's coming up right now after the heavy rains, with that base salt and gooseberries, blackberries. A dressing of walnut oil and bay laurel, popped [inaudible] seeds and pinon nuts, roasted hazelnuts that we roast every morning before we have our events.We'll have a vanilla chia seed porridge with blackberry sauce and hazelnuts that we crush a mortar right in front of the people who are dining, and we'll usually have like something like an acorn bread as well. A traditional bread that is one of our most traditional foods. A bread that's made out of the acorn soup that gets cooked down and has this crisp outside and this sweet jelly like pudding inside.We'll have smoked venison and mushroom skewers, there's a hunter who hunts up a just a little bit north of here in the Pomo area, and often will be gifted venison. We'll butcher that and smoke it for hours and hours until it's soft and just has all of those wonderful smoke taste from the Oakwood.We add the bay wood as we're smoking it, and we'll smoke the mushroom skewers as well, that's something that we've been doing recently and salmon that's smoked from Enterprise Rrancheria that's gifted to us.All of these foods are flavors our ancestors would recognize, and I quickly would like to say, just in our language what these foods are so you understand that we have words. We have [foreign language 00:25:20] in the Rumsen language, [foreign language 00:25:22], the deer meatballs, [foreign language 00:25:26], the blackberry sauce. [foreign language 00:25:28], the acorn flatbread. There's [foreign language 00:25:31], the mushrooms, [foreign language 00:25:34], the popped [foreign language 00:25:35] seeds. [foreign language 00:25:37], the berries and the nuts. [foreign language 00:25:43], that's mushroom soup cow. [foreign language 00:25:44], that's bitter greens with flowers, popped [foreign language 00:25:54] seeds and berries. [foreign language 00:25:57] quail eggs. [foreign language 00:25:59], sweet acorn. [foreign language 00:26:03], the sweet a seed cakes.These are foods our ancestors recognize, and when we eat these foods we commune with them.Ojig: Since the Ohlone are the original peoples of the land on which the cafe is located, I would hope that you're being embraced and supported by Berkeley and East Bay communities.How are folks responding?Vincent: Extraordinarily. Yes, we're ecstatic to see the response from the community and it also gives us a lot of hope to what's possible. 10 years ago, this wouldn't have been thinkable.Ojig: Moving forward, what would you like to inspire with Cafe Ohlone?Vincent: Well, we know it will keep going, but we would like to see it expand as well. Can you imagine having, we have all of these beautiful place names all around the Bay Area and all around the East Bay that are Oakland, it's [foreign language 00:26:48], and if you want to go over to to where we live at, it's hulking. If you can imagine [foreign language 00:26:53], [foreign language 00:26:53] and [foreign language 00:26:54], [foreign language 00:26:56] in San Jose that are run by our tribal people, it would be such an exciting thing.That's a big dream. One of the things I always imagine, and Louis and I talk about this a lot, is getting one of those old warehouses over in West Oakland or Emeryville, making that a cultural space for our people, but also having a large restaurant space there as well a few days a week for the public, but also making that like an urban rancher here as well for our people. Having a space where we can go and have language lessons, have basketry, have all these things that our people want to see in our world, but we always want to keep that small space that we have in the back because it represents a lot for us as well.Ojig: I want to ask also, food sovereignty seems to be a large part of your space. Can you elaborate on your role in this movement and what you'd like to see moving forward with the food sovereignty movement?Vincent: I'm a member of the [inaudible] Ohlone tribe and also a councilman representing my family's lineage and our tribal government as well, and this work that we're doing with Makamham and with Cafe Ohlone, it's very much connected on a larger scale. It's specific to us and we're doing this work for our people, but there's also a larger movement that's happening here, which is touching on many other indigenous communities, which is about decolonization, but also returning back to our traditional foods.Louis and I, we're a part of this organization called Slow Foods Turtle Island, which works on an international level with other indigenous people to protect our food sovereignty and also working with agencies at the United Nations and with Slow Foods international.It's really powerful, because there's challenges that we have to be able to gather these foods. We hope that we will be able to see our people though, our Ohlone people, specific here in the East Bay [inaudible] Ohlone people, be able to have more access to gathering, be able to have more access to going into those areas and gathering our foods without restrictions, because right now there are still numerous restrictions that exist against our people for gathering.Ojig: How can folks get more information about your important work on the cafe?Vincent: Our primary way of communicating our messages is through our Instagram, @makamham. Our Instagram, we specifically have chosen just because of we like to be able to share beautiful photos of our food and the work that we're doing. Instagram has just been a really clear platform for us. We're also on Twitter at @makamham, and our website address, once again, it's makamham.com. All of the information about our work and also our hours are listed there.Ojig: Thank you Louis and Vincent for talking with us today and for your work.Vincent: Thank you, [inaudible 00:29:32].Ojig: You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes University.Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back again in two weeks.

Nina Meijers discusses FoodBytes! (San Francisco event showcasing startups disrupting the food and agriculture space) and former FoodBytes! alumna Claire Schlemme, CEO & founder of Oakland-based Renewal Mill that is fighting food waste by upcycling okara.Transcripts:Lisa Kiefer: This is Method to the Madness, a public payer show on KALX Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer and today I'm speaking with Nina Meyers of Foodbytes and Claire Schlemme, CEO and founder of Oakland based and alumni startup of Foodbytes Renewal Mill. Welcome to the program.Nina Meyers: Thank you.Lisa Kiefer: I'm particularly interested in what's coming up next week with Foodbytes, but first of all, Nina Meyers, tell us what you do for Foodbytes, how it got started, what's the history and what's the problems that you're trying to solve.Nina Meyers: Sure, happy to and thanks for having us. Pleasure to be here. Foodbytes quite simply is a pitch competition and networking platform for sustainable food and AG innovators. So it started four plus years ago. We're actually about to do our 15th Foodbytes, which is in San Francisco, which is where it all began. So it's founded by Rabobank. Rabobank is one of the largest food and agriculture banks in the world and in North America, our clients are some of the largest and mid sized food and AG companies. We started to see that we're working with a lot of our corporates and they're facing a lot of challenges in innovation where we're all faced with this idea that we're going to have 10 billion people on the planet by 2050. We need to feed those people and we need to do so efficiently. There's lots of environmental challenges and there's a lot of startups that are starting to create nimble ways and test and experiment and are basically building technologies and products that are solving those challenges.So we, four and a half years ago said, we want to do something that's just for food and AG. There's lots of pitch opportunities out there for tech startups. There's lots of things that are cross-disciplinary, but we said, let's bring our knowledge to the table. Let's bring our corporates to the table and investors that are just looking at food and AG start to create an ecosystem where those startups can make the connections to help scale their technologies and on the converse side of that that the corporates can start to build relationships and really start to think about these ways that innovation is happening to bring it to their own businesses.Lisa Kiefer: Tell me how it operates. Is it a competition?Nina Meyers: Yeah, so it is a competition in its most essential form. We look through hundreds of applications. We score them and we come to 15 startups that we select to come and pitch from all around the world and we're looking at on the product side, on the tech side, on the agriculture tech sides. We're looking at like AG tech, food tech and food products and they basically have a two day experience jam packed, but we basically bring together our network of mentors in the room, experts in legal deal structuring, branding, PR and they have intimate mentor sessions with them. They get to build camaraderie and relationships with one another as the entrepreneurs. They get to practice their pitches for the judges that are going to judge them the next day and they really have this full day of just like, it's kind of like a mini business school. Learn as much as you can.Lisa Kiefer: Do you find that many of these startups don't have business skills?Nina Meyers: I wouldn't say that. I think it's like you're just trying to build your business day in and day out and you have to focus on that and this, we're doing this one day kind of takes them out of it a little bit and that they're like, "Oh I've been a tech company. I've been really focused on how do I build a relationships with corporates or how do I build the MVP of my technology, but I wasn't thinking about the brand. I wasn't thinking about how I should structure my series B round when I'm fundraising, when I'm just in this infancy of my seed stage." They start to just have a lot of information around them.Lisa Kiefer: It would seem like creativity doesn't have to go hand in hand with business skills. I mean getting the right people together.Nina Meyers: To an extent. It depends on which entrepreneur, which startup, but I would say that they kind of say, "I took a day out of my life, my building, my business life, but I got to get all these different intros and different insights and also of course the insights from the other entrepreneurs that are there who are facing similar challenges, building similar businesses." So they do that and then there's a pitch day, which is a traditional pitch competition. There's hundreds of people in the room. It's focused on investment, but it's also focused on Rabobank bringing our corporates into the room so that they can pitch for these potential partners.There's a lot of media there covering it to see what's kind of the cutting edge of food and AG innovation and then what we started with was this pitch competition. Now it's built into two days and we started to build a continuous community around that. We say, "Hey, do you want to meet with X, Y and Z?" They're really interested in thinking about partnering with you. We have a database of thousands of startups and we're always thinking about how can we continue to build relationships?Lisa Kiefer: Do you sometimes do that with those who maybe didn't make it, but they have a great idea? Maybe they don't have the right skills but you match them up with somebody else?Nina Meyers: Yep, absolutely. So we have a database of thousands of companies that have applied, but we also, we have 250 now alumni of the platform. We're looking at everyone who's ever sort of come across our radar who is an innovator in this space. So that's what happens over the two days, but we kind of say that it's a discovery platform, but it's also like the beginning of a relationship where Rabobank can kind of be this connector, be this matchmaker, be this champion for both sides of-Lisa Kiefer: Tell me about the judges. How many and who are these people?Nina Meyers: They change. Every food rates has had a different grouping of judges. I think we've had something like 75. It's probably closer to a hundred and mentors, but essentially they're some of our sponsors and partners. They're legal experts who work with startups to help them structure their deals and figure out how to engage with investors. They are actual investors in need of a CPG space or on the tech side. They are sometimes policy experts who are really focused on sustainable food policy and-Lisa Kiefer: So some academics?Nina Meyers: Yeah, academics. Exactly. So literally we've had judges sort of from all across the board. We've also started having an alumni come on as a judge to sort of speak from that first hand perspective of this is what happened when I was there. We have-Lisa Kiefer: That's a great idea.Nina Meyers: Yeah, we have Abby Ramadan from Impact Vision who is an alumni of our platform and she's been very involved. She's also based out here. We want the judging panel to be able to provide varying expertise.Lisa Kiefer: Does it always happen in the same city?Nina Meyers: It's global. We've been in San Francisco the most. We've been in Silicon Valley the most. This is our sixth San Francisco edition, but we've been in Australia. We've been in London. We've been in the Netherlands, New York. We're headed to Chicago in September. Oh, we were in Boulder. We were in Austin, but yeah, we're-Lisa Kiefer: So how many times a year are we talking?Nina Meyers: So we were doing three to four for awhile globally for 2020 and 2019 we're doing two so that we can really focus on doing more and providing more value for everyone in our ecosystem and the in between.Lisa Kiefer: So this year you have how many participants?Nina Meyers: We have 15 companies.Lisa Kiefer: And two are from the Bay Area?Nina Meyers: Yes.Lisa Kiefer: One of them I'm particularly interested in. That's SnapDNA.Nina Meyers: Yes. We talk a little bit about some of the challenges that the companies are solving and one of them is sort of this idea of transparency. It's this idea of we all know about recalls that are happening in food all the time and there's a lot of opacity around what happens from the fields to your plate or wherever it comes from. So there are companies, there are a lot of innovation in this space that's happening around food safety and pathogen detection. So that SnapDNA is one of those companies that's really creating a real time test for folks in the food supply chain to get that information on whether food is safe or whether it has certain pathogens and we've seen a number of different sort of innovators come through that are focused on this, but this is something as a point I just made that's very, very well event to the corporate focus in the room.Lisa Kiefer: That can save so much money.Nina Meyers: It's about efficiency. It's obviously about safety. It's about consumer trust, which we know consumers want safer food, more sustainable food, healthier, more nutritious, cleaner and they're willing to pay more for it as well. So this is something that's important to all those players.Lisa Kiefer: Okay, and the other one is Planetariums and they're out of Palo Alto. Do you know much about them?Nina Meyers: Yes I do and the Planetariums is an up cycling company, which what does that mean? So it's and Claire I'm sure will talk more about this, but it is a waste stream that's up cycled into a new food essentially. So they are taking defatted seeds, which are a byproduct of the vegetable oil process and they are basically making that into a very nutritious protein rich flour. So they just announced today that they got, that they just raised a $750000 seed round and one of their investors is Barilla, which is the largest pasta producer in the world. So for a company like Barilla, to just give you an example is looking at this up cycling space and saying, "Yeah, of course we make pasta out of wheat, but we know that consumers want different things. Consumers want chickpea pasta. They want gluten free pasta. They still want traditional pasta, but let's look at ways that we can really provide something that consumers are starting to relate to.Lisa Kiefer: That's interesting. I've had a couple of your alumni on this show and one of them was Andrew Brentano who does cricket protein.Nina Meyers: Yes.Lisa Kiefer: And the other people were in perfect produce and they also, we're trying to save money by getting rid of waste in the food marketplace.Nina Meyers: Yep.Lisa Kiefer: If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today I'm speaking with Nina Meyers of FoodBytes and Claire Schlemme, CEO and founder of Oakland based Renewal Mill. So I want to kind of shift over here to Claire Schlemme and Claire, you were an alumni of Foodbytes a couple of years ago.Claire Sclemme: Yes.Lisa Kiefer: We got up to the point where it's talking about judging. You made it to the finals.Claire Sclemme: Sure.Lisa Kiefer: What happened?Claire Sclemme: So as Nina mentioned, it's really it was a two day event for us. So the first day before the actual pitch competition, we had the opportunity to talk to a lot of different experts in different fields, which was, which was really great. So I think going back to that point, even with some business experience under our belt, it was a lot of really quick concentrated information that we were able to get from that day, which was excellent. So a lot of touching on all these legal issues, packaging issues, marketing issues, so really being able to touch all those different points and then also being able to have a pitch in front of the judges before the actual competition was also-Lisa Kiefer: So like a practice pitch.Claire Sclemme: It was a practice pitch. We got feedback on it, which was great. We could incorporate the feedback into our pitch for the next day, which was also very helpful and it really-Lisa Kiefer: Maybe you should tell us about your company.Claire Sclemme: Absolutely. So, so I'm the cp-founder and CEO of Renewal Mill and Renewal Mill up cycles byproducts from food manufacturing into high quality ingredients and products. So essentially we're building a portfolio of ingredients that are all being sourced from different byproducts. So the first-Lisa Kiefer: Like what?Claire Sclemme: So the first ingredient that we brought to market commercially is called Okara flour and it's made from the byproduct from soy milk production. So it's basically taking the soybean pulp that's generated when soy milk is made. We dry it, mill it and turn it into a high fiber, high protein, gluten free flour. So that's one example. There's a lot of other other places in the food system where this type of waste is happening. So particularly in food manufacturing waste is a really good place to be looking at food waste because it's kind of low hanging fruit in terms of being able to attack the food waste problem.Things coming out of a food manufacturing facility are food safe already because they're in this facility and they're often very concentrated in their scale because it's food production is pretty concentrated. So you have the ability to hit that economy of scale that you need to make a profitable business or make a business that can make sense. So we're focused primarily on these fibrous byproduct streams. So anything that's coming from really coming from that first step of bringing in anything from the field, the fruits, the vegetables, the beans, things like that and you get a lot of fiber rich byproducts because a lot of what we're processing out of our food system right now is fiber.Even though that's the one macronutrient that western diets are very deficient in. So we're starting with Okara. Okara production in the US is very concentrated actually. There's just a handful of major production facilities. So it's a strategic starting point for us from that point of view. From there we're looking at other byproducts of nondairy milk production. So within this big world of fibrous byproducts, we're looking specifically at these nondairy milk byproduct streams. So the byproducts coming out of almond milk production, oat milk production, that's where we're going to be headed at next.Lisa Kiefer: So anything with [holls 00:12:31].Claire Sclemme: Exactly, yeah.Lisa Kiefer: So you're up before the judges and you know your company well. What happened? What did they ask you? Give us the scenario.Claire Sclemme: That's it. That's a great question. So a lot of the feedback, the feedback always helps you kind of see things, obviously from outside eyes that haven't heard your story a million times. Basically a panel with different backgrounds be able to weigh in on things that are causing confusion for them or things that didn't quite come across.So really being able to make sure that we can really hone in on the right story that we want to be telling and making sure that it's coming across that way and being received that way by the judges and also making sure that we're presenting all the information that somebody would want to know. So making sure that we've addressed issues like competition in the field or kind of what our growth strategy is and making sure that we haven't left something kind of major out that a judge would want to see. So that was very helpful and I think it was also just helpful to get a sense of what the space is like and it's a pretty big event with quite a few attendees. So it's nice to feel comfortable on the stage and in front of the judges [crosstalk 00:13:35].Lisa Kiefer: How many minutes are you up there?Nina Meyers: It's three minutes now. So as far as-Lisa Kiefer: Wow, that's not much time.Nina Meyers: [inaudible] competitions, it's pretty tight, but the judges also ask questions after the companies go. So that it's like another layer of sort of engagement and that's-Lisa Kiefer: And do they get materials ahead of time?Nina Meyers: Yes. So they spend, obviously they're with each other the day before, but they also get materials many days in advance and they now they have meetings with some of the startups. So Claire participated two years ago and we've really continued to evolve what the programming looks like as people. We always get feedback. So the entrepreneurs say, "I actually want more time with investors that are, I know I'm going to meet the right investors." So we're doing actually an investor power hour for the first time this time around where we're strategically matching them with one or two investors and we're doing, it's not a speed dating because it's like 20 minutes, but basically meetings with those specific folks whose investment these align with what the startups are doing.Lisa Kiefer: Is the networking what they win or do you actually get funding?Nina Meyers: There isn't direct funding as a result of Foodbytes, but there are a number of prizes. One of the main ones is for all the three winners is that they, Rabobank hosts a huge summit in New York at the end of the year. So December and all of our corporate clients, so big food and AG companies are there and the winners across all the events from that year get to come and pitch and have targeted meetings with the corporates that are relevant for their businesses and they have a few days where they're just really targeted and meeting with folks that can potentially help them as partners. So that's one main prize and then a lot of our sponsors who are, like we said, experts in many different fields, there's also consultations with them so that they can get five hours of legal consultation on how to structure their deal. They can get PR consultation and branding consultation on how to build the best investor materials and DAX and present their brand in the best possible way.Lisa Kiefer: Claire, what was it you found to be the most useful out of winning this competition?Nina Meyers: So we weren't the winners from our cohort. We were in the finalists but actually kind of going back again to all the people that we meet during the two days, that was a very valuable thing for us that made the participation in the event very worthwhile for us. So we actually continued to have some conversations with some of the lawyers that we met there to talk about some of the legal structuring, some of the agreements that we were currently in the process of structuring and we also had continued conversation with folks that were very knowledgeable about packaging for food products because there's a lot that goes into making sure that the product fits all the legal regulations and the requirements. That was great to have both of those connections coming out of Foodbytes.Lisa Kiefer: Once you get involved with say a VC or some sort of funding source, do you ever worry about losing your company's mission? That it will begin to sort of move away from you?Claire Sclemme: Yeah, that's a great question. So actually one of the things that we did when we first founded the company thinking about that very point was that we incorporated as a public benefit corporation. So we wanted that to be really built into our mission and so we structured that into the type of business we actually were and one of the pieces of kind of feedback that we got at the very beginning was that maybe you don't want to do that because you might be closing yourself off to investors that aren't interested in investing in a benefit corporation and we said, "That's exactly why we want to do this, because it essentially is going to kind of self select the types of investors that we're looking for." So that was kind of the first layer and then the second of course is making sure that when we're talking to investors that we do have that mission alignment as we're taking on investment.Lisa Kiefer: Getting back to you, Nina, you've done this for several years now. What trends in agriculture are you seeing pop up from the startup companies? I mean, you talked about some of the problems in the AG industry. What are you seeing overall?Nina Meyers: Yeah, well a major trend. I'd say a cross food tech, AG tech and CPG as is this idea of waste mitigation. So up cycling is one avenue in which that's happening. Another one is of course packaging. We're seeing more and more edible packaging. We're seeing more compostable packaging, plant based packaging. We have a company that's pushing in Foodbytes called Coremat and that's exactly what they're doing. They're making compostable, plant-based packaging that's basically-Lisa Kiefer: That's awesome because all these cities are now saying it's too expensive to recycle.Nina Meyers: Exactly and from a regulatory perspective that this sort of clampdown is increasing. It's happened in Europe, forcing lots of innovation in the packaging world in Europe and it's starting to happen here. That's one massive trend and huge need that startups are really looking to solve and obviously an incredible opportunity for collaboration on the corporate side of things as they start to realize we really, really need to be focusing on it. It's happening [crosstalk 00:18:31-Lisa Kiefer: Why are you giving me a plastic bag?Nina Meyers: Why are you giving me a straw? Right, exactly. So that's one place where we're seeing a lot of innovation and then on the waste mitigation side as well, right? Stopping waste before it can happen. So more and more technology companies are saying, let's use data and technology to stop waste before it can happen. So a company like [Winnow] who's come through our platform, they basically have a scale for food service and back of house at restaurants that weighs waste as it's going out and then gives restaurants a better picture of their wastage so that they can decrease that. That's the-Lisa Kiefer: What's the incentive for someone to reduce their waste at the restaurant level?Nina Meyers: Money. They save restaurants globally $25 million a year and they're not that big yet. I mean they're just starting out. So it's money.Lisa Kiefer: It sounds like you've put together a lot of qualitative data.Nina Meyers: Yes, we, like I said, we started with a very, very small team and over the last year or so we've built up the team like I said. So we've just brought in a data analyst who is amazing and we're sort of at the tip of the iceberg for what data are we sitting on and what are we saying? But yes, we have a really good picture of trends that are happening. That's one major, major trend that we're seeing. The other one is sort of just the environmental impact of food-Lisa Kiefer: Climate change?Nina Meyers: ... Production, of climate change and also to hand in hand with that that consumers have more and more knowledge of that and are demanding better, cleaner products.Lisa Kiefer: Yeah, look at the Midwest right now.Nina Meyers: Yes.Lisa Kiefer: All the flooding and that used to be our bread basket.Nina Meyers: That's when it has to change and startups are really heeding that call on the plant based foods side of things as well. Just if we're talking about packaged foods in general, we're seeing so much innovation in that space. We're seeing at least 40% of the companies that apply that have a product that apply to Foodbytes are in some way related to the plant based space. To sort of talk about some of the companies that are pitching coming up in San Francisco we're seeing new and novel plant based proteins. So we have a company called [Tali] and they are making waterlily seed puffs. So we see the puffs as like a huge category in the food product world, but this is a new type of puff. It's basically bringing in an heirloom varietal.It's gotten more protein, more nutritious. They're doing some really interesting flavors. So we're seeing companies like that who are bringing this plant based protein view to snacking. We also have a company called Gem and they basically have the first FDA regulated supplement product, food supplement. It's for women by women. It's made from algae and a number of different plants. Real food. It's clean food. So we're seeing things in that type of space. I was just at Expo West, which is the largest natural foods show in the country and I think it's 1500 exhibitors, 90000 people.Lisa Kiefer: Where was it?Nina Meyers: It's in Anaheim. It's 90000 people. So it's very, very intense and there's a lot of companies that are doing very similar things. There's the plant-based trend just continues to grow year over year. So whether that's new algae products, that's lots of cauliflower products, you see the confluence of a lot of trends.Lisa Kiefer: Are any UC Berkeley professors or policy people judging this year?Nina Meyers: Not this year, but next year we're going to make it happen.Claire Sclemme: Oh excellent.Lisa Kiefer: Can anyone go to this?Nina Meyers: Yes. It's open to the public. We really want people there who care about these issues, who care about sustainable food and AG, who want to see what the innovators at the bleeding edge of sustainable innovation are doing. Next Thursday, the 28th of March, starting at 2:00 PM, it's really an opportunity to see these 15 startups pitch, to engage with them and see their products and technologies, have some delicious food and drinks and if you want to get into food or if you're a journalist or if you're a student and this is where the world you think you want to go into, we absolutely encourage you to come. If you're an investor or you're a food corporate and you're trying to figure out what's next, we 1000000% encourage you to come.Lisa Kiefer: And you have a website?Nina Meyers: Foodbytesworld.com. Instagram is Foodbytes by Rabobank. We've profiled all the companies who are going to be pitching. There's lots of content. Claire's on there somewhere. So check us out on Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, and then Foodbytesworld.com is where you can get tickets to come and see us next week.Lisa Kiefer: And Claire, your business is located where?Claire Sclemme: Oh, we're in Oakland.Lisa Kiefer: Okay, what have your challenges been since you participated in Foodbytes?Claire Sclemme: Oh, that's a good question. Our biggest challenge I would say is that, so working in the byproduct space, we're really a bridge builder between the production and then bringing that into the market. We have less control over being able to scale in a way that other companies might be able to have as they're creating products. So we're really bound to the amount of byproducts that are coming out of certain facilities. So being able to match that production with the sales is really, I would say one of our biggest challenges. So it kind of swings back and forth from having more demands than we have a production for to having more supply of the ingredient than we currently have sales force. So it's kind of bouncing back and forth as we try to strike that perfect balance as we bring these ingredients on board.Lisa Kiefer: And are most of your sources local?Claire Sclemme: So right now they are. So our first source is in Oakland, which is why we started out in Oakland and why we're based there. So our first partner facility is Hodo Foods and they're a tofu manufacturer. So the first step of making tofu is making the soy milk and so that's where we're basically harvesting the Okara from is from Hodo and our next two facilities that we will likely be using as our sources of production are also in northern California.Nina Meyers: When you sort of spoke about what do they get out of this, the alumni who come through our platforms have raised a combined 550 million. I believe it was something like 150 last year. So even though it's not directly a prize, this is what we've seen as the companies who've come out of who we've chosen, who we've selected, this is how they're moving forward and getting that investment to scale their companies.Lisa Kiefer: You must be checking the failure rate of these companies as they-Nina Meyers: Yes.Lisa Kiefer: ... they leave Foodbytes. What is the failure rate?Nina Meyers: It's under 10% because we're doing really like a lot of due diligence in the process of picking the ones that we think are really going to be successful. It's relatively low. It's lower than the average.Lisa Kiefer: Do you have a business background?Nina Meyers: I actually went to college in upstate New York at Skidmore college. I studied at a liberal arts school and I had was working in a sustainable restaurant, a farm to table restaurant the summer after college and my Mom is a chef and so I grew up around food. Food is my whole life and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next when I moved to New York during the recession in 2009. I started working for a restaurant company in New York in the creative department. I got sort of my foot in the door there and started working on marketing and design for the restaurants.So that was really a sort of honed my skills there on the marketing side of things. Started to realize through being in New York that what I really cared about was sustainability in food and agriculture and trying to figure out what to do next. I then went onto work for Food Tech Connect, which is a site of record for food innovation essentially. We did a lot of events in this space and meetups and consulting and hackathons, which is really all focused on sustainable food and agriculture. So I was there. I was working with startups directly. Spent about four years there and then we started working together with Rabobank to build Foodbytes out from its infancy.Lisa Kiefer: Claire how did you get into this pat of the world?Claire Sclemme: Yes. So my background is actually in environmental management. So I have in my masters in environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry. I had primarily actually been involved mostly in the space of sustainability and energy and so I'd worked at a renewable energy startup in India and worked with UN climate change, but I started to realize how important the food system is in the space of sustainability and I, kind of my first transition into into food was actually co-founding a juice company in Boston where I was living at the time. So we started as a food truck and we were connecting farmers to folks in the city through juices and smoothies and then in that process saw how much waste is created when you're juicing. It was really kind of like this moral issue.At the end of the day we'd sourced all this great produce from these farmers and it was all organic. It was mostly local. You'd spend a lot of money to buy all this produce and we're throwing out a huge amount of it at the end of the day, ll that pulp that's left over from juicing. On the the other side, of course we're selling the product that we are making, we're selling at a price point that's pretty high for the, it wasn't a super affordable food for much of the city and so those two pieces together kind of where you know really struck me as a challenge and that was a space that I really wanted to continue working in after I left that company.So when I had really just a fortuitous conversation with the owner of Hodo Foods in Oakland, the owner of the tofu factory and saw that he had this challenge with his byproduct that he was producing, which was very similar to what I had seen at the juice company, but at this much bigger scale and that it wasn't just a Okara, it was lots of different opportunities and lots of different sources of these types of byproducts. That was really the beginning of Renewal Mill was looking into how we can solve both food waste and also increase affordable nutrition in the food system.Nina Meyers: Claire really pioneered this space and now there's a company that's much younger than you, but it's called Pulp Pantry and they're doing, they're solving the problem that Claire just outlined. It's like entrepreneurial serendipity. They saw the same problem and they're making value added snacks out of juice pulp.Lisa Kiefer: Wow, you should all join forces and become the next Nabisco.Claire Sclemme: I know. Exactly, exactly.Nina Meyers: [crosstalk 00:28:19].Lisa Kiefer: [crosstalk] better.Nina Meyers: That's exactly what Foodbytes wants to have happen.Claire Sclemme: Yeah.Lisa Kiefer: Well, was there anything else that is coming up with Foodbytes besides this conference next week?Nina Meyers: Rabo has a whole other food and AG innovation platform called Tara. It is basically the next step in the cycle for startups to engage with Rabo after Foodbytes. That's what Tara is all about. We're going into our fourth cohort and applications are open now. Tara is like, how can we do the best possible matchmaking for startups and corporates? So applications are open now. That website is Taraaccelerator.com. They're open. They close on April 26th. So any startups, anyone you think is interested, you can learn about the corporates that are participating to see and so you can learn more there.Claire Sclemme: In addition to kind of all of the structured support that's coming out of Foodbytes, I think the other piece that was really valuable to us was actually meeting the other companies that we're pitching and there there's been some valuable connections that we've had in terms of the the business and actually finding uses for our flour with some of the other companies that have been on the platform, but also just really to talk to other entrepreneurs and be able to just talk about some of the other challenges that you're facing from a business perspective and also from a personal perspective as well. So it's a really, I think it's a really great community of entrepreneurs that are being brought together as well.Lisa Kiefer: Well thank you so much for being on the show.Claire Sclemme: Thank you.Nina Meyers: Thank you for having us.Lisa Kiefer: You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a biweekly public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes University. We'll be back again in two weeks. [music]