Innovation Uncovered

0:00

KRISTEN MEINZER

Whether it’s singing a duet, walking hand in hand, or playing football, some things are hard to do alone.

BHARGAV MAGANTI

It's exhilarating for a person who’s not a football player I think. But for our athletes, I think that what they would say is that it feels game-like. It feels comparable to a quarterback that they would have throw to them.

KRISTEN

Bhargav Maganti, who you just heard, is one of the founders of Monarc along with Igor Karlicic. Together, these two engineers are revolutionizing football.

KRISTEN

Through their company, Monarc, they’ve created the Seeker, the world’s first robotic quarterback that passes, punts, and kicks. Thanks to the Seeker, players that historically would need a practice partner are able to practice alone. They can get game-like reps on their own time.

KRISTEN

The technology is already impressing some of the biggest football programs in the country. And Monarc has quickly become part of the vanguard, leading the way to a tech-filled football future.

01:00

IGOR KARLICIC

There's so much cool stuff happening right now in, in the entire industry. The teams that are going to be on top of that are the teams that are going to be winning in the years to come.

BEAT

KRISTEN

I’m Kristen Meinzer, and this is Innovation Uncovered, from Invesco QQQ…

KRISTEN

Last season, we shone a light on groundbreaking innovation happening across a number of industries.

KRISTEN

And this season, we’ll go deep on more boundary-pushing innovations, with an even greater emphasis on the incredible people behind them.

KRISTEN

To kick off the season, I sat down with Bhargav Maganti and Igor Karlicic, co-founders of Monarc, the company behind the world’s first robotic quarterback.

[MUSIC OUT]

KRISTEN

Thank you so much for joining us today on Innovation Uncovered.

IGOR

Thanks for having us.

BHARGAV

Hi, Kristen.

KRIST

I am so pumped to be talking with you both. Now, I am curious. Are the two of you self-professed jocks? Do either of you play football?

02:00

IGOR

Both Bhargav and I played different sports in high school. Barghav played tennis. I swam and played water polo. So there’s definitely an appreciation for athletes and what they go through, but to say that we had an experience that is comparable would be false.

Kristen

Are you football fans though? Are you people who have your giant foam finger and wave it around every football season?

BHARGAV

We are now to some extent. We've had the opportunity to work with a number of athletes from really all levels. And now, yeah. Yeah. We're definitely fans.

KRISTEN

How did you two meet each other?

BHARGAV

Yeah. So Igor and I met in 2008. We were freshmen at Northwestern University and we became friends pretty early on. We both studied mechanical engineering and both of us spent a lot of time working in our engineering shop.

IGOR

The reason we were such good friends was that we had a common interest and that was design and creating things. And we had multiple professors, multiple classes that really pushed us to try and think outside the box and treated us as entrepreneurs in a sense.

03:00

KRISTEN

How did two engineering guys running in the same circles who were at the time not football people decide to start a company that is about football?

BHARGAV

So at some point along our journey of learning and developing, we actually made a pact where we decided that one day we should create a company -- we should build something very cool.

BHARGAV

So a new piece of tech started emerging and really it was for indoor positioning. And when we realized that we'd have access to a technology that enables us to track at upwards of 30 times per second, we got mesmerized by it.

BHARGAV

Previously what was being used in most sports for tracking people was GPS, but when you have athletes that are running 10 yards a second that's not something that's going to be fast enough to actually comprehend what's going on.

BHARGAV

So that idea really was what initially got Igor and I extremely interested in pursuing Monarch full-time and quitting our jobs.

04:00

KRISTEN

Now for those of us who have never seen the Seeker, who are trying to imagine what a robotic quarterback looks like, can you explain what it looks like and what it's actually made out of?

IGOR

Uh yeah. If you can imagine about, five’ six’’ tall robot with a magazine that holds six balls. It weighs about 300 plus pounds, and it's made out of a lot of steel and aluminum.

IGOR

There's a screen that's connected from the lower part of the body that you essentially interact with. So, it's pivoting, it's tilting back, it's moving around, however you need it. and then you have two large rotors again on top of that can throw, basically the full field.

BHARGAV

Right. One of our main points that we try to articulate to our customers and our users is that we provide game-like reps. And the way that we're able to do that is we have a tag pager-size device that players are able to put on their hips. And with that, we're actually able to track where they are on the field. Right now, it's just distance. So distance away from the front of the Seeker. But with that, you can imagine there are a number of different modes that our robot can engage with that athlete.

05:00

KRISTEN

Talk more about why reps are so important.

IGOR

Well, it's the one thing that they're supposed to do really well, and it becomes very difficult to do that really well when you aren't catching any passes during practice. To put this into perspective, we did some time studies when we were developing at the University of Iowa. We saw that a third string receiver caught as few as 20 passes in the entire week of practice. Live reps. And so you think about what this means for the individual, their scholarship, their opportunities to advance, not only within their own roster, but in their careers and it's crippling.

BHARGAV

So ultimately even for those athletes that want to improve and realize that the best way to hone your craft is to continue to do it as much as you possibly can. They're not able to actually do it. And that's really where we came in.

KRISTEN

How many times is the seeker going to be throwing a ball in a typical training session?

BHARGAV

It really depends, but we've seen- we have one athlete in particular, he's a high school athlete and he actually gets a thousand catches in every single morning.

06:00

KRISTEN

Oh my gosh. Yeah. See no training assistant's going to be able to,[laughter] they're going to throw out their shoulder and then they're going to collapse on the ground afterward.

IGOR

So the problem really goes both ways, right? So just as you mentioned, there's so many more receiving positions and so many more people that need to practice catching the ball than there are throwing positions. But at the same time, the quarterbacks, they have to have a limited amount of throws that they're actually throwing. Otherwise it limits their longevity. So their careers actually start with where they are late high school and early college and the volume that they're throwing. You see at the NFL level, so many quarterbacks that right now are having either shoulder or elbow, uh, issues. And they're all unlimited limited throws. So between a hundred and 150 throws for per practice and that's for them. Um, so it's, you know, it's a problem that really goes to both sides.

[MUSIC UP]

TRANSITION

07:00

KRISTEN

So the Seeker looks less like a humanoid robot from a sci-fi movie, and more like a polished cousin of the Curiosity Rover on Mars. The hulking 300 plus pound robot has an antenna that tracks a sensor athletes wear on their hip.

KRISTEN

When you flip the Seeker on, you hear the motors spinning.

[Tape of Seeker from Monarc]

A receiver steps out in front, and then you hear consistent thumps and clicks. Those are the sounds of several balls being passed to a receiver.

Like the guys said, one of the revelations of The Seeker is that it gives receivers and kick returners more reps… while – at the same time – preventing wear and tear on quarterbacks’ and kickers’ bodies.

Science on the long term effects of playing football has made safety and protection a top priority. The Seeker does its part in reducing unnecessary overuse and injury… by making the controllable environment of practice efficient and more productive.

But it has taken time for Bhargav and Igor to perfect the Seeker’s sophisticated technology.

08:00

They performed countless tests on the Seeker and built nine physical iterations before it went to market. The Seeker wasn’t always the elite machine it is today.

[MUSIC OUT]

KRISTEN

Can you tell us about some of maybe the earlier iterations of the Seeker when it wasn't quite as developed and quite as sophisticated?

BHARGAV

Those early days were definitely very interesting for us. We were essentially learning everything from scratch. So Igor and I are both engineers, but we had never- no one on the team had previously designed a robotic quarterback. So it was starting from the ground up.

BHARGAV

We actually had nine physical iterations prior to our actual launch product, and then innumerable software iterations, as you can imagine. A lot of complete resets we had gone down a couple of years using a certain tech or a certain methodology and realized that, you know what? There's a better way to do this.

BHARGAV

So let's tear this all apart and start again.

KRISTEN

Now in the beginning, how did you test this technology? Was it just the two of you and your robot seeker out there playing in a park, is that what you were doing?

09:00

BHARGAV

Yeah, so we actually did a lot of testing in our home and our office, a small townhouse in Iowa city where we were doing our development and we actually brought our Seeker to our balcony every once in a while. And then we threw balls off the balcony to test where it was going to land. How is the spiral looking? Mechanically, are we sound?

KRISTEN

And are there any moments you had though where things just weren't going right where you thought, oh my gosh, this is not going according to plan?

IGOR

So one of the things that we did is- so we would work during the day in our townhouse, our entire team. and then at night we would go and use the facility, oftentimes the, the practices and- the athletes train really late.

IGOR

So we would come in the after hours, usually around 8:00 PM, and test as long as we needed to in the solitude where nobody could see us. So we gave ourselves the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes we'd be there in the morning when the graduate assistants would come in and start setting up the cones for practice at 5:00 AM.

10:00

IGOR

We're not ashamed of our early development days because it was in that lowkey, relaxed environment that we were able to just get a lot of work done.

KRISTEN

So a lot of the changes in the product were because of the misery that you went through, but how many of the changes were because of feedback from actual users from actual athletes and teams?

BHARGAV

So I'd say that, you know, in the initial stages, a lot of the ergonomics and general functionality that was, you know, that was something that was influenced by our interactions with the Seeker, but really when it comes to, um, the, the modes, all of that comes from athletes, uh, telling us, you know, what the types of things that they would like to do.

KRISTEN

Can you give me some examples of what some of those modes are and some of those features, and so on that came directly from the players?

IGOR

Uh, yeah, so, I guess more, more recently we created an automated end over end kick, functionality. And that was, at the behest of a lot of special teams coaches asking for, “Hey, you know, like to be able to vary in a certain way, hits certain yardages.” And that's something that we just released last week.

11:00

KRISTEN

Very cool, but.. I’m curious, a real human quarterback, a non robotic quarterback, that is, is not a hundred percent precise. A human is going to not always hit you at exactly the same spot on the field as they did yesterday, or, even five minutes ago.

KRISTEN

So is something lost when the randomness of the human experience is taken out of the practice and replaced with a Seeker?

IGOR

We keep that randomness. So the ability to place a ball exactly where we want and when we want it means that we can also mess it up however we want, when we want. So, one thing that's actually counterintuitive is a lot of quarterbacks, especially at the higher levels, struggle throwing poor balls during practice. In a game-like situation, a ball might get tipped. A quarterback is under pressure. So they're going to under throw it, over throw it. In practice, they literally cannot throw a bad throw. They're just, they're trained to be doing the right thing at the right times, right?

IGOR

You're not going to be training to throw a bad throw. We actually have been able to really help out in that regard

12:00

because we can again, mess it up if you want it messed up or we can dial in exactly how you want it. So you have the ability to choose.

KRISTEN

Yeah, I- I didn't even think about that. The difference between how people play in a practice versus playing a game because when you're playing in a game, there's so much interference. Obviously there's this thing called the opposition.

[MUSIC UP]

TRANSITION

KRISTEN

Bhargav and Igor’s early development days paid off and their freshman year pact to “build something very cool” has come to fruition. The Seeker is already being used by some big-time football institutions to help players improve their game...

KRISTEN

...11 college teams, 13 pro players, and a training facility.

KRISTEN

To get the word out in a sporting world where tradition tends to reign supreme, they quickly realized that pounding the pavement would be their ticket to success..this meant getting in a van and driving cross country … but, with a robotic quarterback riding shotgun.

[MUSIC OUT]

13:00

KRISTEN

So tell me, at what point did you start to think, we’re really onto something here?

BHARGAV

Yeah, I think that actually takes the story back to when we started doing a lot of road shows. We put our Seeker into a van and we drove it across the country, trying to visit a number of college teams and NFL teams, and really anyone that would, that would see us.

BHARGAV

And I remember one instance, we walked on to a field to do a demo. The head coach came out in the middle of his lunch. He saw what the Seeker was doing. He walked away a few minutes later. Didn't really say too much, but a few hours later we got a call that they were interested, so…

IGOR

I will add to this though that our first paying customer, the very first team that ordered a unit that was a production version actually connected with us on Twitter. They'd never even seen it.

IGOR

Sometimes you have those occasions where it is just, somebody calls and they're like, great. I want it. And sometimes you really have to work for it. So, we've been on both sides of that, but fortunately the credibility from the teams that are using it right now makes it a little bit easier.

14:00

BHARGAV

Yeah. We actually have roughly 10 teams right now. some of the customers that are using a seeker right now are Oklahoma, Iowa, LSU, Virginia.

KRISTEN

Wow. So some big teams like household named teams are using the Seeker at this point.

IGOR

We had the luck of interacting with LSU, during their championship season, a few years ago in 2019.

IGOR

We definitely got a lot of publicity out of having one of our two prototypes at the time, over at the university and that season panned out super well.

KRISTEN

That doesn't just sound like luck to me. They actually improved their game because of you.

IGOR

What we see is winning organizations take an active interest in investing in their teams. And we have a very strong correlation right now with winning organizations. We can't take credit for that, but it really does come down to a staff mentality of investing in the right technologies.

IGOR

And there's so much cool stuff happening right now in the entire industry. The teams that are going to be on top of that are the teams that are going to be winning in the years to come.

15:00

KRISTEN

Very modest. Listen to that founder. Sounding all modest about his product. I'm curious about if the pandemic has influenced the rollout of the seeker or the people who are wanting to use the seeker at this point.

BHARGAV

Yeah, it definitely has actually. We started acting as the quarantine quarterback. We started connecting with individuals and we provided them an arm when they didn't have one, because they weren't able to go back to their camps or didn't have anyone around to throw them the ball. We built out several seekers for players and several of them came on board as investors as well.

KRISTEN

Oh, wow. That's a ringing endorsement right there, coming on board. How do you see the Seeker and Monarc more broadly evolving and scaling over time? What are you excited about for the future?

BHARGAV

Yeah, I think really coming back full circle, we were initially really encouraged by the idea

16:00

of being able to take that data from the new technology that we had identified as compatible with our system and, um, provide insights that were never able to be provided before. So I think it's really going back to our roots. At this point, we've created a product that teams are able to really put into use in practice. Athletes are able to put into use, out of practice. So, coming up with, whether it's some form of augmented coaching or insights into exactly how a particular route was run or going deeper into the metrics or analytics, I think that's the direction that we as a company would like to go into.

KRISTEN

Mm. Are there other innovations that you see in the world and you think, “oh, that could also change sports” or “that could change how we train people”?

BHARGAV

I think that right now we're seeing data is exploding in sports and with such a huge influx of data, I think now it's up to innovative companies to determine how you can use that data and actually provide something that's actionable and useful. One of the, the tricky things, um, kind of at the beginning of localization data was that it wasn't as insightful.

17:00

BHARGAV

It was very cool, but it didn't really tell you very much. And I think that having, uh, a lot of sports scientists on board, these companies has changed that and now teams are using localization for, uh, injury prevention for, uh, health metrics for all sorts of different things. But, I think that with this huge amount of data that we're starting to see, uh, we're going to see a lot of new, cool things come together from that.

KRISTEN

Mm. And then do you think that sports practice will fundamentally down the road in the future? Look different?

IGOR

Absolutely. These are modifications that will have to be made for teams to remain competitive. It's going to be a tumultuous period for all the new tech that's coming out. But, uh, ultimately what we're seeing, especially in football is fewer injuries, and higher performance with each passing year.

BHARGAV

I think that you'll just see that practice is a lot more smart and there's a lot more, uh, connectedness and there's a lot more tech that's involved in all sorts of different ways.

IGOR

We're really excited to see what's going to happen.

18:00

KRISTEN

Do you ever think of expanding the Seekers’ technology to other sports? Do you feel like that technology could even apply to other sports?

IGOR

So it's definitely something that there is a lot of energy around. You know, even being here where we're located in Dallas, we've had, you know, baseball teams reach out to us.

IGOR

For us, there has to be whatever we go into, whichever direction, there really has to be that energy, that same energy that we have around football, where the product that we have right now is really transformative. And that's something that energizes us. You know, when Bhargav and I made our pact a few years ago, we really wanted to do something that was cool. And we wanted to have a company that we would wake up every morning and just go at it because we loved it.

IGOR

And I-we found that energy in football, we found that energy with this product. So we'll have to see where that energy takes us.

[MUSIC UP]

KRISTEN

Bhargav, Igor. Thank you so much for joining us today on Innovation. Uncovered.

IGOR

Thanks for having us.

BHARGAV

Thanks for having us, Kristen.

OUTRO

KRISTEN

Thanks for listening to Innovation Uncovered, from Invesco QQQ.

19:00

KRISTEN

On the next episode, we’ll hear from Achin Bhowmik, the CTO of Starkey, a company that’s developing the next-generation of hearing aid technology...

ACHIN BHOWMIK

As an engineer, I'm always passionate about exploring and probing the border between possibility and impossibility and pushing that a little further. Always definitely excited about that, but it's the emotional aspect of it. What impact does it have on the millions of people that use our products?

Kristen

Subscribe to Innovation Uncovered now, so you don’t miss an episode.

KRISTEN

And if you like what you hear, leave us a review!

KRISTEN

Thanks for listening.

Post-Roll Ad

Season two of innovation uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. What do all the greatest innovations have in common? Agents. Ordinary people who shape the future by putting their money behind the right ideas. Invesco QQQ is a fund that allows you to access the innovators of the NASDAQ 100. So you don't have to be an inventor to help create what's next to come. Become an agent of innovation with Invesco QQQ. To learn more about what this fund can mean for your portfolio, visit invesco.com/qqq.

Brand Ad Disclaimer

There are risks involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. The NASDAQ 100 index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the NASDAQ. An investment cannot be made directly into an index. Before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and more at prospectus@invesco.com.

Episode Disclaimer

The opinions expressed are those of the speakers are based on current market conditions and are subject to change. Without notice these opinions may differ from those of other Invesco investment professionals. Invesco is not affiliated with T brand studio, Kristen Meinzer or any of the subjects or companies referenced in this episode. This content should not be construed as an endorsement for or a recommendation to invest in any of the companies referenced in this episode, Invesco distributors.

00:00

KRISTEN MEINZER
According to the World Health Organization, nearly half a billion people suffer from disabling hearing loss.  It’s likely that you or someone you know may deal with hearing loss now or in the future.

KRISTEN
Today’s guest is working at the forefront of hearing aid technology to combat the effects of hearing loss so that the hearing impaired can communicate, connect, and thrive.

ACHIN BHOWMICK
Hearing aids have a long history. Back in the days of Beethoven, he was using ear trumpets as hearing aids. Literally a funnel that he would put in his year. He was so hard of hearing that he had to turn back to his audience after finishing a performance, to see them clap because he could not hear them. So those days the technology, if you can call it that, was just a mechanical funnel, performing the function of a hearing aid.

KRISTEN: And as you can imagine, hearing aids have greatly advanced since the days of 19th century symphonies.

ACHIN
My gardener is a gentleman who speaks fluent Spanish, but not much English.

01:00

I can set my device such that when he speaks almost like a one-to-one translation as if there is somebody sitting in the middle, but it's near real time. He speaks Spanish, my hearing aid speaks English back to my ear.

BEAT

KRISTEN
This episode, I’m sitting down with Achin Bhowmick, a prolific inventor with dozens of patents to his name. He is the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Starkey, the largest hearing aid manufacturer in the United States.

KRISTEN
Achin and the team at Starkey have brought hearing aids into the digital age.

KRISTEN
They’re updating the previously clunky, dated devices with sophisticated design and high tech features, including live language translation.

KRISTEN
It’s their hope that these wearable medical devices can be transformed from something that people have to wear to something that people want to wear.

KRISTEN
I’m Kristen Meinzer, and this is Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ...

[MUSIC OUT]

KRISTEN
Hello and welcome to Innovation Uncovered.

02:00

ACHIN
Thank you very much, Kristen. It's a pleasure to talk to you.

KRISTEN
Now, I'm curious have you always had an interest in hearing aids? What was your journey leading to this role?

ACHIN
Good question. The origin of this goes back many years growing up with deep passion and interest in science and engineering. I would say it started with science, just the whole idea of diving deep into the basics of how things work. And over time, it got translated to utilizing that knowledge of science, to making things that matter that can help improve the world and over time, how can it help improve our lives?

KRISTEN
Any idea where that passion came from, even as a kid?

ACHIN
Well, my father is a teacher. I mean, he's now retired and my mom was the sweetest stay at home mom. So, I had a lot of books to read and I got inspired by reading the biographies of scientists who made big impacts, they went on to translating their work into life changing inventions.

03:00

ACHIN
So those were the early days inspirations for me.

ACHIN
So it's a continuous journey from passion in science to translating science into technology and how do we translate that into products that can help people live better lives.

ACHIN
Now at Starkey for the last four and a half years, I've dedicated my work to utilizing this advanced technologies-- sensors, machine learning, artificial intelligence to help humans sense and perceive the world better. That’s the passion that I’ve always had.

KRISTEN
I understand you have a lot of patents to your name, but in all the articles, I read all the videos I watched there seemed to be some, you know, conflicting numbers. Is it 34; is it 39? Is there an exact number or did you just lose track? Because you have so many at this point

ACHIN
No, I actually exactly know. So the patent is a long process in the U S. Once you have a good idea that you want to file for a patent, it can take many years for that, a patent to be issued by US  PTO.

04:00

ACHIN
And so today I have 39 patents approved and there are many that are in the review and will be issued in the coming years. So, but I have 39 issued patents, that you can just look up my name and you'll see 39 patents that have been already issued by the US patent office.

KRISTEN
Wow. That’s a lot of patents. Which patent are you the most proud of, and why?

ACHIN
I am most proud of my work now.  It's because I have to say the impact it makes to humanity. The way I look at the contribution from engineering perspective, it was really three domains that we dabble in.

KRISTEN
Got it. Explain those 3 domains to me.

ACHIN
Yes….Sensors, sensing essentially is the idea of getting information from the world. When you touch something, it's the sensation of mechano reception on your skin that then allows you to feel things, smell and taste. So all of those sensor technologies focused on how do we learn from how humans sense the environment and how can we build technologies that allow devices and machines to do that?

ACHIN
The next part is the brain.

05:00

ACHIN
Human brain is an amazing computer with 100 billion neurons. We engineers can build processors that mimic human brain that allows our devices and computers to be smart, such as a smart hearing aid versus a dumb hearing aid of 10 years ago.

ACHIN
Number three is what do you do after processing that information? After hearing. “Hello?” I reply back. “Hello.” Similarly, devices and machines need to take actions based on what they process.

ACHIN
So I've done a lot of work in all of these areas and then how they all come together to provide user experience. How can they help us in our daily lives, I'm always passionate about exploring and probing the border between possibility and impossibility and pushing that a little further. but it's the emotional aspect of it. It's about the hard work we do as engineers.

ACHIN
What impact does it have on the millions of people that use our products? And that I believe is the biggest contribution that I have made in my life. I'm most proud of.

06:00

KRISTEN
Now one thing that stood out to me, what you just said there, you said there were dumb hearing aids 10 years ago, and you're working to make smart hearing aids. What's the difference between a dumb hearing aid and a smart one.

ACHIN
Well, dumb devices would be the ones that are programmed or instructed to do certain things and it just does that.

ACHIN
A decade ago, hearing aids were dumb devices that would take action based on the instructions that were provided to it by the programmers. So it would bring in sound through its microphones and then it would amplify that sound based upon the programming that it had received that compensates for people's hearing loss.

ACHIN
That was the traditional hearing aids. We have been on a journey to incorporate advanced technologies that are inspired by machine learning, artificial intelligence, such that these devices are smart.

ACHIN
They can understand what sound they are getting? What part of the sound is conversation or human speech?

07:00

ACHIN
And the device needs to automatically decide what sounds should matter to me and amplify those and suppress those that should not matter to me, such as when I'm talking to you, I want your conversation to be amplified, but I want the background sound to be suppressed.

ACHIN
So that's the journey that hearing aids have been onto recently. We're turning them into smart devices.

ACHIN
So I have to say, the technologies I have at my hands are amazing, and they were not there in the hands of engineers that built these products 10 years ago. And I can tell you 10 years from now, the toolkits that I'll have, or my next generation, my son will have when he's working on devices would be a lot more advanced than now.

ACHIN
In fact, if you look up hearing aids have a long history.

ACHIN
Back in the days of Beethoven, he was using ear trumpets as hearing aids. It's literally a funnel that he'd put in his year. The legend has it, he was so hard of hearing that he had to turn back to his audience after finishing a performance, to see them clap because he could not hear them.

08:00

ACHIN
So those days the technology, if you can call it that, was just a mechanical funnel, performing the function of hearing aid.

KRISTEN
Mmhm. Indeed, we truly have come a long way since the days of ear trumpets. What type of reactions have you gotten from patients using these far more advanced hearing aids?

ACHIN
You know, someone getting fitted with hearing aids who could not hear and suddenly with the device in, she could hear. You see tears of joy in their face. And of course, dozens of patients that I got a chance to talk to- the impact that we can make in that, in their lives, in enabling them to hear when they were struggling to hear before. It literally changes their lives.

ACHIN
You know, Helen Keller, who was the American philosopher, who was both blind and deaf. She said, loss of vision disconnects you from objects, but loss of hearing takes you away from people because you can't communicate anymore.

TRANSITION

KRISTEN
I mentioned earlier that the World Health Organization cites that there are nearly half a billion people living with disabling hearing loss today.

09:00

ACHIN
Well, by 2050, they estimate that that number will be up to 700 million. To put that in perspective, that is one in 10 people.

ACHIN
The WHO says that people over the age of 60 are at increased risk of hearing loss, with 25% of folks over 60 suffering from disabling hearing loss.

ACHIN
But it’s today’s younger population that will experience a greater increase in hearing loss numbers in the decades ahead. Unsafe listening practices in young people... specifically linked to listening to personal devices at high volumes...puts over 1 billion young adults at risk of permanent hearing loss.

ACHIN
The work of Achin and his team is changing lives now and in the future, but amplifying sound only just begins to scratch the surface of Starkey’s hearing aid technology.

KRISTEN
So, you’ve already told us some of the ways that hearing technology has improved over the years…

10:00

KRISTEN
but it’s not just hearing that you’re trying to help people with. Tell us about some of your other innovations built into the devices you’re working on.

ACHIN
These are rechargeable devices which can last all day and you can use them for your audio streaming from smartphones, literally like a Bluetooth headset.

ACHIN
And one of the things I should mention, which is a new journey for us, is to embed sensors in those devices, such that they can also track and monitor my health, all the way from tracking physical activities, you know, sitting, standing, walking, running, jogging, how much exercise have I done? And then have I fallen? That's extremely important for particularly older people.

ACHIN
People with hearing loss are at an elevated risk of falling and hurting themselves. In fact, people with mild hearing loss are three times more prone to falling and hurting than people with normal hearing. This is an example of a device that has gone from a single function device whose sole purpose was to amplify sound to a multifunction device that offers health and benefits in many different ways.

11:00

KRISTEN
Wow. I love that it does all that, but I got to tell you the thing that really wowed me when I read about it was that you're currently working on a feature where I can speak to somebody who isn't speaking in English and the hearing aids translate what they're saying almost in real time.

ACHIN
We are happy that this feature is already available now through our products. So our devices, the state of the art Evolv AI hearing aids from Starkey, support near real-time language translation.

ACHIN
In the old days, you'd be limited to the processing power that can be built into the hearing aids. But today we have literally infinite amounts of compute power once we have connectivity to the cloud. So utilizing that we are able to bring these features that would literally be considered science fiction years ago, in ear language translation.

ACHIN
The way I use it, my gardener is a gentleman who speaks fluent Spanish, but not much English.

12:00

ACHIN
I can set my device such that when he speaks almost like a one-to-one translation as if there is somebody sitting in the middle, but it's near real time. He speaks Spanish, my hearing aid speaks English back to my ear.

ACHIN
But it's all happening within tens of milliseconds. Near real-time speed.

KRISTEN
Oh my gosh. I'm so fascinated with this part. I really am.

ACHIN
Hahaha, yes.

ACHIN
Besides translating languages, we have the hearing aid technology that's in there enables it to perform the role of a digital assistant. So I can simply double tap my hearing aid and ask a question. What's the weather outside? When is my next meeting?

ACHIN
Or I can even ask it to remind me of a medication I might, you know, I might be taking multiple medicines. I forget when I need to take what medicine. I could ask it to remind me. And it will remind me in my ear privately to me.

KRISTEN
One circumstance that is just hanging over all of us for the past year and a half is the pandemic. How has that affected how you work on your hearing aids and what kinds of things you're trying to address going forward?

13:00

ACHIN
I should mention a piece of technology that serendipitously became very, very helpful, during the pandemic. We were suddenly getting a lot of complaints about wearers of hearing aids, particularly struggling to understand conversation when people around them were wearing masks.

ACHIN
And so what we did as good engineers, we went to a lab and we evaluated the sound attenuation characteristics of the mask. Let's think about it.

ACHIN
If I'm wearing a mask in front of my mouth and I'm talking, the sound gets attenuated, as it goes through the mask.

ACHIN
We were able to develop a feature utilizing machine learning --which we call edge mode.

ACHIN
All you have to do is double-tap one side of the hearing aid and bring up personal assistant. Double tap on the other hearing aid and it instantly takes an acoustic snapshot of the environment around me.

ACHIN
It analyzes that data in a few milliseconds and makes necessary adjustments to the hearing aids, such that it overpowers the specific attenuations imparted by the masks.

14:00

ACHIN
We got very enthusiastic feedback from our patients who are saying, wow, I can now understand conversation, even when people around me are wearing masks when I was struggling.

KRISTEN
Oh, that's incredible. Now you've talked a lot with us today about the engineering design of your hearing aids.

KRISTEN
Can we talk just a little bit more about the physical design factors that you take into account when creating a wearable hearing device?

ACHIN
So that's, I have to say, all it comes down to because all of the functions that I mentioned, if I build all of that, and it becomes a big ugly device that just cannot be worn, it has no use.

ACHIN
Because we make different kinds of devices. We do have a particular type of hearing aid that is completely invisible today.  So we take an impression of your inner ear, the ear canal, geometry, and then we can shape our hearing aid to perfectly fit in the bend of your ear canal that goes deep inside. Nobody knows you're wearing this device.  

ACHIN
So the challenge is to incorporate all of these amazing functions that are small enough to be worn discreetly with a tiny battery that's built in, it needs to last all day.

15:00

ACHIN
And it needs to be comfortable such that I want to forget that I have the device on.

ACHIN
Hearing aids, as you think about them, they're in an extremely hostile environment.

ACHIN
The invisible hearing aids in the canal, guess what? You have ear wax and moisture and sweat. And in order to make them robust devices, we'd have to engineer protection.

So the design aspect, making them look cool, to the way they interact with smartphones and other devices. There's a mobile app that goes with it. There is a software that we provide for the hearing care professionals that they can use on their computer to program these devices.

ACHIN
So all of this is complex engineering work from concept to design, to development, to testing, to evaluation, and finally to the market.

TRANSITION

KRISTEN
The focus of Starkey’s technology is to support individuals with hearing loss…

16:00

KRISTEN
but  Achin imagines a future where this technology becomes mainstream. He sees a world where his hearing devices are used by an even broader population... that may not be hearing impaired at all.

KRISTEN
And from what I can tell, the possibilities at hand put my Bluetooth headphones to shame.

KRISTEN
Achin and the team at Starkey have successfully combined style with power in this life changing technology, but it has required their dedicated effort. Luckily, they don’t shy away from a challenge.

KRISTEN
You've done so much to create technology so people can communicate so that we can connect with others. But I can't imagine it's all been easy. I'm sure there've been a lot of obstacles your team has faced along the way. Can you tell us about some of those?

ACHIN
You know, one of my favorite quotes is if it's difficult, we're going to do it right away. If it's impossible, we'll work on it. And it's likely going to take a bit longer.

17:00

ACHIN
In the realm of AI and machine learning, what we're doing today, collectively as a society was deemed to be impossible just 10 years ago.

ACHIN
And the advances have been made possible by amazing progress in sensor technologies, data. You heard about big data and massive data.

ACHIN
All of this enabled artificial intelligence to be where it is today. So constantly exploring the boundary between possibility and impossibility.

KRISTEN
Is your dream that all consumers, not just those who are hearing impaired wear these hearing aids eventually?

ACHIN
We make these devices that are custom made. They are mechanically shaped to perfectly fit my ear canals.  And they're acoustically programmed according to my needs so I use these devices, even though I do not have hearing loss.

ACHIN
I benefit from using my hearing aids when I'm in a restaurant, having a meeting in a loud environment. And of course I'm using it to take phone calls, listen to audio books, check my steps. Hopefully I don't fall. But if I do, you know, my wife is going to get alerted.

18:00

KRISTEN
Oh, wow. Oh, that's incredible.

ACHIN
A device that not only tells me when it fell, but would predict if I'm going to fall because of the way I'm walking.

ACHIN
It tells me before even I know I have a problem and I need to pay attention to it because I might have an upcoming health issue and the devices with embedded sensors and machine learning AI would be able to predict when I might have a problem.

ACHIN
So we are literally on a journey to convert these hearing aids into our very own personal assistant that helps me hear better, helps me communicate with people and then helps me with information.

ACHIN
So when I look at, let's say very far into the future, these devices are going to provide such value and benefit. We want to convert them into, I want to wear rather than I use them because I need to. So there's the future where, because it helps me hear better, helps me communicate better. It doesn't matter if I speak the native language or not. It is a smart device that connects me to the world of information. It reminds me what I need to do when I need to do it.

ACHIN
And you see that in science fiction movies.

19:00

ACHIN
But, you know, what was science-fiction years ago now is reality. Similarly, what is science fiction today is going to become reality soon enough.

KRISTEN
And what's next for you? When we hang up the phone, you're going to go off and do something else. And five years from now, you're going to do something else. What's next on your horizon?

[MUSIC UP]

ACHIN
As soon as we’re done, you know, get back to work because we have just exciting developments in the pipe right now, you know, we talk about five years from now, 10 years from now, what you forget is that the bridge to that is today and tomorrow.

KRISTEN
Achin thank you so much for joining us today.

ACHIN
Thank you very much. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

OUTRO

KRISTEN
Thanks for listening to Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ.

KRISTEN
On the next episode, we’ll hear from Caren Kelleher, the founder and CEO of Gold Rush Vinyl, the company that’s giving vinyl a new spin.

20:00

CAREN KELLEHER
There really is an opportunity within vinyl. And it felt like a space where there hadn't been a lot of innovation where maybe I could bring lessons from Silicon valley into an industry that was having a resurgence and do some big things.

KRISTEN
Subscribe to Innovation Uncovered wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review.

KRISTEN
Thanks for listening.

Post-Roll Ad

Season two of innovation uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. What do all the greatest innovations have in common? Agents. Ordinary people who shape the future by putting their money behind the right ideas. Invesco QQQ is a fund that allows you to access the innovators of the NASDAQ 100. So you don't have to be an inventor to help create what's next to come. Become an agent of innovation with Invesco QQQ.

21:00

To learn more about what this fund can mean for your portfolio, visit invesco.com/qqq.

Brand Ad Disclaimer

There are risks involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. The NASDAQ 100 index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the NASDAQ. An investment cannot be made directly into an index. Before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and more at prospectus@invesco.com.

Episode Disclaimer

The opinions expressed are those of the speakers are based on current market conditions and are subject to change. Without notice these opinions may differ from those of other Invesco investment professionals. Invesco is not affiliated with T brand studio, Kristen Meinzer or any of the subjects or companies referenced in this episode. This content should not be construed as an endorsement for or a recommendation to invest in any of the companies referenced in this episode, Invesco Distributors.

0:00

KRISTEN MEINZER
As every coffeehouse poet, Central Park cartoonist, or parent with a kid who wants to major in theater will tell you ... it’s hard to make a living as an artist.

KRISTEN
In the world of music today, streaming dominates consumption habits. But in most cases, a single stream is only worth a fraction of a penny, which makes it hard to pay the bills if you're a musician...

CAREN KELLEHER: The average American musician in order to make minimum wage could either sell 100 vinyl records, have nearly half a million Spotify streams or have 2.3 million YouTube views.

KRISTEN
That’s Caren Kelleher, a music buff who – at a recent crossroads in her life – found herself in the unlikely position of having an MBA … while also managing indie bands on the side. She started noticing...

CAREN
that more and more kids were coming up to these merch tables at shows and asking for vinyl.

KRISTEN
Caren knew that vinyl was making a comeback – record players are a universal sign of hipness – but she soon discovered that the vinyl manufacturing process was as vintage as a dusty record collection.

01:00

CAREN
There really is an opportunity within vinyl. And it felt like a space where there hadn't been a lot of innovation where maybe I could bring lessons from Silicon valley into an industry that was having a resurgence and do some big things.

KRISTEN
Caren and her company, Gold Rush Vinyl, are doing big things – and helping sustain musicians along the way.

BEAT

KRISTEN
I’m Kristen Meinzer, and this is Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ…

KRISTEN
So far this season, we’ve heard from engineers who are revolutionizing football with the world’s first robotic quarterback and a chief technology officer who is developing the next generation of hearing aid technology.

KRISTEN
On this episode, we’re sitting down with Caren Kelleher, a woman who built a production plant in Austin, TX in an effort to support musicians and usher vinyl into the 21st century.

[MUSIC OUT]

02:00

KRISTEN
Hello Caren, how are you?

CAREN
I'm good. We're just making lots of records down here in Austin, Texas.

KRISTEN
Now, Caren, it seems you have a very deep appreciation for music. I'm curious, did you always grow up with music as part of your life?

CAREN
I grew up in a household with a lot of music. From an early age, my dad would sneak me into his car and we'd go on drives and listen to music from the seventies and eighties that he loves so much. And my mother was very into Broadway musicals.

CAREN
So I grew up with a real appreciation for music. I started taking lessons when I was younger and realized I didn't have much of a talent for it, but I was fascinated by the actual music business.

CAREN
How is it that some talented artists became household names and some were never heard from, and in high school, especially I took it upon myself to make mix tapes for people to try to shine light on those artists that weren't necessarily getting played on the radio, but were really talented and I wanted more people to know about.

03:00

KRISTEN
Oh, my gosh. You're making all my memory sparkles tingle right now. I'm thinking about all those mixed tapes I used to have as a kid and so on.

CAREN
I try to explain to our interns, you guys don't even know how good you have it. You get to make a playlist online with any music in the world. Whereas I wasted so many hours of my life waiting for that DJ to play the song and hopefully not talk over their intro, so I could use it for a mix tape.

KRISTEN
Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes, yes, yes. And I'm guessing that as a kid, you probably had vinyl records, too?

CAREN
You know, we didn't have as many in the house. I do remember going next door to my next door neighbor Allison's house. And her dad had a huge collection of vinyl.

CAREN
But my interest in vinyl really didn't come until about 10 years ago. I'd say. 

KRISTEN
So you’re a teenager. You’re making mixtapes… fast forward and you’re running Gold Rush Vinyl.

KRISTEN
What happened in the in-between years?

CAREN
Well, I thought I was going to go work in politics.

04:00

CAREN
You know, I grew up in the Washington DC area and was fascinated by business and by law. And, luckily after my freshman year of college realized I didn't want to do that job. And I think it's just as important to realize what you don't like to do as much as it is to discover a passion.

CAREN
And I didn't really see music as a viable career for myself until I was lucky to meet the founders of Paste Magazine in Decatur, Georgia, which is where I went to college. They were starting an indie music magazine and film magazine that shines a light on music, art, film, and culture that wasn't necessarily in the mainstream.

CAREN
So that was my first job out of college was working for that magazine as a marketing director. And it was a dream job. It showed me how much there is to do in the music industry.

CAREN
I later went on and got my MBA and thought I would get out of the music business and move into something more traditional like tech and came to realize that it was a real special thing to have a career path in something I was passionate about. I mean, music has existed since the beginning of time, right?

CAREN
And it's just the ways we consume it. The ways that we create it have changed.

05:00

CAREN
So it felt like, wow, if I'm going to build a career in something, music is something that will always be there. It's so much fun to work in. And it actually led me to the technology side of music. So before opening Gold Rush Vinyl, I actually was the head of music partnerships at Google.

CAREN
And was starting to see a slowing of innovation in the digital music space.

CAREN
And one thing in particular that really was hard for me was seeing how little royalty payments musicians were getting from digital music.

CAREN
At the same time, my sister and I were managing bands and we started to see how much vinyl was making a comeback, that more and more kids were coming up to these merch tables at shows and asking for vinyl.

CAREN
And I would even ask the kids, do you own a record player? And a lot would say, no, I just want the band to sign this. And I'm going to frame it on my wall.

CAREN
And more and more became fascinated with the economics of vinyl. How is it that musicians can make money in this new wild west of the digital music space and vinyl really made a lot of money for the artists I worked with and was not going to get any less popular it seemed.

06:00

CAREN
So it, in a winding way, led me to now, owning a factory. And it's definitely not a career path I would've thought it would've taken me on, but the common theme through all of that is just a real want to help musicians that have great talent, earn a living and continue to do what they do best, which is make music.

KRISTEN
Wow. What actually, though, made you take that risk because it's one thing to manage bands on the side, sell some merch and so on, and it's quite another to leave Silicon Valley, one of the most coveted companies in the world and relocate and start pressing records.

CAREN
I had great support from friends and family who saw that I'd always wanted to start a business. It's why I went and got my MBA so that I had more skills and was better prepared in case I ever had an idea like this.

CAREN
It took, I will say a couple of years for me to get the courage to leave Silicon Valley.

CAREN
But I was giving a presentation within the company about the state of music apps and to drive home the point of how musicians earned money-

07:00

CAREN
- I had made a slide that showed that the average American musician in order to make minimum wage could either sell 100 vinyl records, have nearly half a million Spotify streams or have 2.3 million YouTube views.

CAREN
And when I saw that slide, it's something I had lived through the artists that had trusted me to help them with their careers, but to see it just laid out like that was like, wow, there really is an opportunity within vinyl. And it felt like a space where there hadn't been a lot of innovation where maybe I could bring lessons from Silicon Valley into an industry that was having a resurgence and do some big things.

CAREN
And I'm very lucky. I had supportive friends and family who said, you can do it and encouraged me along the way.

TRANSITION

KRISTEN
After Caren identified her mission to traverse the terrain of the vinyl record industry, she got to work. But she didn’t rely on any existing roadmap – she precisely did not want to do things the way they’d always been done.

08:00

KRISTEN
Caren looked at vinyl production plants of the past and asked “how can I do this better?” With both production output and the environment in mind, she built one of the most innovative production plants in the country.

KRISTEN
Gold Rush Vinyl produces vinyl records three times faster than the industry standard with 10 times less waste than traditional pressing plants.

KRISTEN
For those people who have never been to a factory where records are made before, can you just walk us through, soup to nuts, what it actually is like when you walk into the room, what are you going to see, what are you going to hear?

CAREN
Ooh, it's really fun. People come in and say, oh, this is kind of like Willy Wonka's factory for music. Right now, our facility is full of materials. We've been preparing for potentially more supply chain issues.

CAREN
And so we've stocked up a lot more than we would necessarily have in the past, but you'd walk in and see lots of plastic and cardboard and artwork for the record jackets that we assemble here, which is really the fun part.

09:00

CAREN
When you start to see all of those things come in and you see the artwork for the record you're going to be working on it brings it to life in a really special way.

CAREN
There's a bunch of parts of the process that really haven't changed over the years, and that is the actual pressing of the vinyl. So we get raw materials in namely pellets of PVC, polyvinyl chloride, that get melted down in our machines and then pressed between metal plates called stampers and stampers are basically the negative of a record.

CAREN
Before we even get to the pressing part of making a record, a cutting engineer will make a master record called a lacquer, and the lacquer is what we base all of our metal plates on.

CAREN
It goes through a process called electroplating where the original lacquer, which has the music cut into it, gets put in a bath with liquid nickel. It's electrocuted.

CAREN
And the liquid nickel starts to attract to the lacquer disc to create a shell or a plate that, when we rip it off, gives us a master template to work off of to make these metal stampers that go in our pressing machines.

10:00

CAREN
Here in our Austin facility, once the plastic is melted, it gets passed through between those two stampers.

CAREN
We put tons and tons of pressure on the plates and physically press the vinyl into the tiny, tiny grooves of these stampers to make a record. That process will take about 30 seconds. We also run hot steam and cool water into our machines to manipulate the material then gets passed off to a trimming station where we trim off excess material.

CAREN
So what we do here is an automated process. A lot of pressing plants have manual machines. You'd see lots of people moving around and putting plastic into the machines, pulling levers down, putting their hands in machines, very dangerous.

CAREN
Here it's a lot more streamlined. You'll hear kind of an ocean like a rhythm to the machinery when records are getting pressed.

CAREN
And from there we then inspect, package, and ship them out to fans.

KRISTEN
I love what you said about being a Willy Wonka factory for music. It just sounds so magical, I can picture it all in my head.

11:00

KRISTEN
I’m curious how this plant was built out – how did you know where to start?

CAREN
Well, I think what makes us unique is kind of the benefit of naivete. None of us in my company had worked in vinyl before, we'd worked in other pieces of manufacturing or other pieces of music industry. But in building this company, I really got a chance to look at it with fresh eyes. I'd watched a lot of YouTube videos about the process.

CAREN
I'd read a lot in the library, just saw that – particularly areas of lean manufacturing hadn't been incorporated into this particular industry.

CAREN
And knowing where the music industry was going, one thing that especially I was interested in, and that has seeped into the innovation we have here is environmental sustainability. I mean, vinyl itself is a really wasteful industry. There's a lot of plastic waste, energy waste, water waste.

CAREN
So I called on a lot of experts from other industries to help me think about how to design this factory with waste reduction in mind.

CAREN
And it's something that even day to day our team are meticulous about tracking.

12:00

KRISTEN
Now, you just mentioned your approach to sustainability – let's talk more about the innovation in your company. What else are you doing differently that other vinyl companies aren't doing?

CAREN
You know, we built a infrastructure for this vinyl facility so that it would not go down. We put in place measures and machinery that would ensure uptime because one of the reasons that vinyl was so interesting to me was it was almost impossible to get made if you were a smaller band.

CAREN
There was so much demand and so little capacity for manufacturing that you really needed to have an in, at a plant, or you were forced to wait for months and months at a time. And artists today can't wait months and months at a time when suddenly you have a Tik Tok video that blows up and your song is hitting the charts and you have this very finite moment to take advantage of lightning when it strikes.

CAREN
So a lot of what we've done here and the innovation we've brought in has been with that in mind. How do we create a space where we can manufacture as quick as we can, so that musicians don't have to wait and potentially miss the opportunity to earn money.

13:00

CAREN
And then to also try to do it more sustainably, knowing that the next generation of consumers are gonna demand that kind of responsibility from companies.

KRISTEN
Now, when you say a fast turnaround, how fast are we talking?

CAREN
Well pre pandemic, we were averaging a six week turnaround time on all of our projects over two and a half years. And that's compared to an average turnaround time in our industry of three to six months. Now I say pre pandemic, because like so many companies we've just been hit by supply chain delays that despite all of the things we do internally here to try to speed up our production process have been delayed.

CAREN
But part of how we're able to do that so quickly is just my team have accepted the challenge I put in front of them to say, we're going to do it that much faster. We're going to turn records around three times faster than anyone else.

KRISTEN
That’s amazing. And tell me more about the efforts you’re making to use energy efficiently.

CAREN
So we made this facility from the ground up, essentially we rented a warehouse space, but did all of the construction and the building of the infrastructure.

14:00

CAREN
And there's a couple of key things that honestly, I didn't know I was going to have to invest in which have made all of the difference and that is really the infrastructure around our water supply and how we use our energy.

CAREN
So we have the pressing machines that actually are kind of the showpiece where the records get pressed. But a lot of what makes that process work is behind the scenes, in our equipment room, where we have steam generators and chillers and cooling towers, heat exchangers, pumps, all of these things that work behind the scene to deliver tremendous amounts of steam, cold water and energy to the pressing machines and putting all of that together in the way we had, had not been done before.

CAREN
We really didn't follow the blueprint of past plants. And that's, it's partly because of a philosophy that we really embrace here. And that is that we don't believe in the, quote, way it's always been done.

CAREN
I think in older industries, especially, it's very common for knowledge to get passed down in that way where someone says, well, “that's how it's always been done.

15:00

CAREN
So that's how it should be done” rather than coming in and saying, well, is it done that way just because that's how it was passed down or is that the correct way to do it?

CAREN
So we were able to convince some great contractors to work with us, to put together machinery that normally would not be used in the vinyl industry which allow us to use less water, less energy.

CAREN
And to be more thoughtful about production output, which is what we care most about.

KRISTEN
Yeah. And about that production output, you said that you can press a very small number of records or a very large number of records. Why were other companies not doing that?

CAREN
I can't speak for them. I can conjecture, but, I come from a family of folks who've worked in the hotel industry and that actually provided a lot of the perspective I used to build this factory. And that is because hotels have a real finite capacity. And every room has to make you money. It has to be sold thoughtfully.

CAREN
From growing up in that, around that industry, you can see how it's easy to sell off a whole week to a convention and say, yay, we sold that week off.

16:00

CAREN
But then it prevents you from selling to more routine customers who need to come every single Tuesday, whether if it's for business or what have you.

CAREN
All of that kind of taught me a lot about capacity planning and where the revenue needs to come from.

KRISTEN PU:  So, bigger artists who are less dependent on vinyl sales - let’s be real - for revenue are tying up resources pressing large numbers of records...and that means smaller artists are having to adjust their record release plans...sometimes for weeks, months, many many months. And that means you could be losing loyal, long-term customers...What is Gold Rush Doing to navigate this?

CAREN
So when I sat down and did our modeling, what I really saw was that the smaller jobs really gave us the most efficiency to move quickly.

CAREN
And so we, out the gate, we're a lot more disciplined about saying we want to have smaller run jobs so that we can fit in people who really do need rush orders, and to just focus on output.

CAREN
And there's a lot of plants that made it through, from the fifties onward that still are fantastic operations today here in the US that focus on those bigger runs.

17:00

CAREN
We're not going to be that pressing plant. We instead decided we would be this boutique plant and focus on quality and turnaround time. And so far so good. It's worked for us. Now, what's been changing is more people are buying vinyl. And so our small orders are actually just inherently getting bigger across the board, which is great. There's more people interested in purchasing records.

CAREN
So that'll be a challenge we'll have to face in the coming years.

TRANSITION

KRISTEN
Demand for vinyl records is continuing to grow, and Caren and her team are looking at a future where more bands will be able to make records.

KRISTEN
In fact, the vinyl record industry has seen consistent growth for more than a decade. In the first six months of 2021, 19.2 million vinyl albums were sold.

That’s up 108% from 2020.

KRISTEN
It’s something of a curious trend; one that seemed niche at first… mostly popular in the Brooklyns and Portland, Oregons of the world...

18:00

KRISTEN

but the vinyl resurgence has proved to be far more than a passing fad.

KRISTEN
It’s driven by quality … music just sounds different when it’s compressed through an app and delivered in an earbud. And vinyl taps into this amazing human urge to collect. You can hold it in your hands. Pouring over the liner notes of your freshly unwrapped record... produces the same little burst of euphoria today as it did in 1965.

KRISTEN
Why do you think more people are buying vinyl, as you say, is it because they want to have it hanging on the wall? Or is it because they actually want to listen to it and they feel like it sounds different than let's say an MP3.

CAREN
A BBC study came out, I think about five years ago, that found about 50% of all vinyl is never opened.

CAREN
And we actually did a survey and found that over 35% of the people that responded to our survey collect records and don't own a record player.

CAREN
So I think that speaks to the idea that vinyl isn't just a medium to listen on.

19:00

CAREN
It has some emotional sentimental value to people. And we hear that a lot from young people. One of our interns said to me so poetically that her whole life, her record collection had been hidden in her pocket where no one could see it because it was in apps.

CAREN
But when she has vinyl in her dorm room, when people come in, they know immediately what music she likes and that piece of it- what does music say about us? What is your choice of where you spend your dollars say, you know, about you and your taste is a really big piece of why vinyl has exploded.

CAREN
And the pandemic really was a game changer for our industry though, because so many more people were spending time at home, looking at their spaces and saying, what can I do to disconnect? And how do I make my home speak more about me?

CAREN
So I had a lot more people personally calling me and saying, what record players should I buy for my house? So I think that that has had a tremendous part of the vinyl revolution too, is just the swing back from digital.

CAREN
We're all so tied to digital that the ability to take a moment and put a record on a record player and listen for 20 uninterrupted minutes is a real luxury.

20:00

KRISTEN
And I got to say your records sometimes look like their own pieces of art because you have all sorts of ways to customize the records for your artists. Can you tell us about that?

CAREN
Yes, we do a lot of color vinyl. And I'll tell you that before 2020, about 75% of what we pressed was black vinyl. I would guess it's about 25% now. There has been a tremendous swing towards doing colored vinyl. And I, I don't know if it's partly because we advertise and show people the beautiful vinyl we make. So they come to us and say, I want something like that.

CAREN
But our team also really wants to help musicians to see their vision through end to end. So that'll mean if an artist comes to us and says, and this is a true thing that happened, can you make my vinyl look like a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto?

CAREN
And we can send it to the press operators and say, this is the vision, here's the artwork. And they get to put their heads together and say, okay, well, what if we do this combination of plastics?

CAREN
We're also seeing that fans want to collect these special variations.

21:00

CAREN
It's given artists a lot more opportunity to sell their merchandise in unique ways. And for other people, especially the ones that do want to display it on their walls, an opportunity to really treat it like an art piece.

CAREN
And that's what vinyl is. That's what vinyl gives us a digital doesn't is this physical connection and component to what the artist's intention was for a record.

KRISTEN
Yeah. And in a way it adds a different kind of value to the music. I mean, not just the value to the musicians who get to make a higher cut off of the record, but something that in this world, there are so many things that are not concrete that we can't hold or touch or feel, or hang on the wall.

KRISTEN
And now you have that for them.

KRISTEN
You helped create something with their imagination and your technical skills and your imagination into something that is concrete now.

CAREN
It's a really meaningful job and that is our mission is to work with musicians in this physical form, right? When we get to send off records, every single time I wave kind of half jokingly and say, bye records, enjoy your new homes.

22:00

CAREN
And to think about what fan is going to open that is really special.

KRISTEN
Caren Kelleher Kelleher this has been such a delight. Thank you so much for talking with us today.

CAREN
Oh, and thank you for shining light on the work that my team is doing.

OUTRO

KRISTEN
Thanks for listening to Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ.

KRISTEN
On the next episode, we’ll hear from Doll Avant, the founder of Aquagenuity, a company that is imagining a future where everyone has access to real-time water quality data.

DOLL AVANT
Most of our cellular health and all of that can be traced back to environmental factors. If there's any kind of toxin or contamination in the air or in the soil, it ultimately is going to end up in our water supply.

Subscribe to Innovation Uncovered, and if you’re diggin’ what you’re hearing, leave us a review.

MUSIC OUT

23:00

Post-Roll Ad

Season two of innovation uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. What do all the greatest innovations have in common? Agents. Ordinary people who shape the future by putting their money behind the right ideas. Invesco QQQ is a fund that allows you to access the innovators of the NASDAQ 100. So you don't have to be an inventor to help create what's next to come. Become an agent of innovation with Invesco QQQ. To learn more about what this fund can mean for your portfolio, visit invesco.com/qqq.

Brand Ad Disclaimer

There are risks involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. The NASDAQ 100 index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the NASDAQ. An investment cannot be made directly into an index. Before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and more at prospectus@invesco.com.

24:00

Episode Disclaimer

The opinions expressed are those of the speakers are based on current market conditions and are subject to change. Without notice these opinions may differ from those of other Invesco investment professionals. Invesco is not affiliated with T brand studio, Kristen Meinzer or any of the subjects or companies referenced in this episode. This content should not be construed as an endorsement for or a recommendation to invest in any of the companies referenced in this episode, Invesco Distributors.

00:00

KRISTEN MEINZER
It’s common knowledge that the molecular make-up of water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. H–2–O. These molecules surround us everywhere. The sky, the air, the earth… flowing from our faucets, filling our cups and … providing the basic building blocks of the human form. Simple science, right?

KRISTEN
In addition to those H20 molecules, there are other compounds that end up flowing out of our taps– and it’s not always stuff you want to have floating around your drinking glass.

DOLL AVANT
If there's any kind of toxin or contamination in the air or in the soil, it ultimately is going to end up in our water supply.

And over time…

DOLL
toxins in our water are building up in our systems. And a lot of times some of them are what they call forever chemicals because we don't know how to actually break them down and get them out of our system.

DOLL
That’s Doll Avant, CEO of Aquagenuity, a company she founded in 2017.

01:00

DOLL
She had linked the death of her father to problems with his local water supply, and couldn’t sit back and watch this problem continue.

DOLL
I came across an obscure report, linking high levels of arsenic and local water supplies to spikes in diabetes // so two weeks after his funeral, I started this company because I really was asking the question, you know, how many of us are being exposed to  significant health impacts?

Doll and her company are tackling some of the world’s biggest health issues with innovative – and community-building – solutions.

[BEAT]

KRISTEN
I’m Kristen Meinzer, and this is Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ…

KRISTEN
This episode, I’m chatting with Doll Avant... a data scientist whose reservoir of knowledge is perpetually filled to the brim.. about water health.  And how her work strives to provide the public with the information –

02:00

KRISTEN
and tools – they need to take action and avoid potential harm from the water supply.

[MUSIC OUT]

KRISTEN
Hello Doll. Welcome to Innovation Uncovered.

DOLL
Hello. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so excited.

KRISTEN
So to start things off...maybe you could tell us a bit about your background? What were you doing before you launched Aquagenuity?

DOLL
So I was born and raised in the SWAT: Southwest Atlanta for those who don't know Frederick Douglas High school, we’re the Astros - black and gold all day, very proud. A lot of luminaries came from my area of town and from my school from Martin Luther king to our former mayor to Killer Mike. After I left high school, I went to Harvard university for undergrad, and I loved everything about it, except for the snow. After that, I went into corporate finance for a few years and ended up becoming a serial entrepreneur. So, I went back to Harvard school of business to study data analytics and I was working with my mentor in water. He's now 82 years old.

KRISTEN
Would you mind- can I ask what was his name?

DOLL
His name is Percy Jones.

03:00

DOLL
He’s the first African-American to have his own bottled water plant in the United States.

DOLL
He actually invented a water filter, received an award from Congressional black caucus. And I was working with him in the water space when Flint happened. I was working on water filters specifically when that crisis hit national international headlines, that's why I was paying attention. And we would go in and have meetings with these big companies, huge companies. And they would say, oh my God, we love this technology, but we don't need it. Our water's fine.

DOLL
And I'm looking at the data. I'm like, no, no, your water's not fine. So I think when Flint happened, people kind of realized, wait a minute, this is not a third world issue. This is happening right here in the United States. So my background, it all just kind of led a perfect storm to being in the right place at the right time when Flint unfortunately happened and it's still happening to folks. And that's what led me to this work at Aquagenuity.

KRISTEN
You were a serial entrepreneur and a data scientist and your mentor worked in water. Were you interested in water before connecting with this mentor?

DOLL
I was interested in big problems.

04:00

DOLL
Being an entrepreneur, one of the things you learn really quickly is if you want to be successful, you find the biggest problem that you're uniquely qualified to solve.

KRISTEN
Doll, love that answer, but I also gotta say, you are qualified to do so many things. Why did you choose to work with water? What really led you in that direction versus something else?

DOLL
Oh, absolutely. So it was a very personal story for me. Because I was working with my mentor, you know, Flint happened. We're starting to get a lot of questions and interests about water quality. The things that are needed, which is real-time monitoring- is not possible. The technology doesn't exist. So I was leaning into building that and just really researching how water impacts health, how's this happening in the United States?

DOLL
You know, what are the disadvantages to, you know, black and brown communities or low income communities and seeing some of those patterns over time. And while I was doing all this research, my dad got sick. So my dad was a professor. 72 years at the time, of relative health.

05:00

DOLL
He actually used to work for NASA years ago in the Neil Armstrong days. He was a statistician.

DOLL
So fast forward - he was just kind of out of the blue, diagnosed with diabetes, right? So we all think, oh, people get old, they don't take care of themselves. Like it's whatever.

DOLL
But only because I was in the middle of all this research, I came across an obscure report, linking high levels of arsenic in local water supplies to spikes in diabetes, like this had been researched. And I was like, no one's heard of this. What do you mean? What's going on?

DOLL
So my dad actually passed away from kidney complications in June of 2017. And so two weeks after his funeral, I started this company because I really was asking the question, you know, how many of us are being exposed to significant health impacts because of environmental factors and we don't know it, we're not connecting the dots?

KRISTEN
Oh, that is quite a story- I’m so sorry. Uh...can you share any other examples of what dangerous water exposure does... or has done?

DOLL
One of the stories that I told in my Ted Talk was the story of Camp Lejeune.

06:00

DOLL
So this is a military base in North Carolina. And from 1955 to 1987, about 900,000 service men and their families were actually poisoned by the water on this base.

DOLL
And no one really knew. No one really connected the dots. Like, you know, kids are getting cancer. It's just horrible. ALS. Like all this- Hodgkin's disease, right? Finally 30 years later, they started to trace it back to the water. And then they did all this research.

DOLL
And so far, the government has spent almost $4 billion in damages to these families and things like that. So if that can happen on a government site, right, this is public record, you know. How much more could it possibly be impacting folks in their homes? And like I said, we just never know about it. Like even what happened with Flint, the only reason that it became kind of this big story is because there were some moms- you know, go women- who were just really persistent.

DOLL
And they were like, no, something's wrong with my kid. Like, our hair's falling out. There's a rash, like, something's wrong. And they kept being told that everything was fine. And they were like, “no, it's not fine.” And that's one of the reasons why the story broke because they started getting all these test results back.

07:00

DOLL
It's just like, we don't have information until people get sick, which is wrong. So how do we reverse that?

DOLL
Like, it's just a data gap. Like they- we just really don't know about one fifth of utilities. Don't actually know if they have lead lines in their service area or not.

DOLL
Somebody's got to focus on it. So that's why I decided, let's do that. For Aquagenuity that's our work. We focus on that specific area and try to bridge that gap using data. And hopefully we will save lives in the process.

TRANSITION

KRISTEN
Bridging that data gap may seem like a lofty goal. Especially with all the unknown issues in the country’s pipelines.

KRISTEN
With so many inevitable, undiscovered problems out there, Doll and her team have solutions to filter out some of those concerns.

KRISTEN
The foundation of Aquagenuity’s work is water testing. Because the more detail you have about bad water, questionable pipes, and damaged infrastructure… the more you can do to fix what’s going wrong.

08:00

KRISTEN
I mean, it seems pretty obvious that bad water would lead to bad health, but can you explain exactly how this happens?

DOLL
As humans in our bodies, we're 68 to 71 percent water. Right? So most of our cellular health and all of that can be traced back to environmental factors. If there's any kind of toxin or contamination in the air or in the soil, it ultimately is going to end up in our water supply.

DOLL
Because we live in the western world, we don't perish instantly when we drink water, but over time, any toxins, you know, water carries everything, dissolves everything. Toxins in our water are building up in our systems.

DOLL
And a lot of times some of them are, are what they call forever chemicals because we don't know how to actually break them down and get them out of our systems. Lead for example is a neurotoxin. It disrupts brain development, especially in children. Toxins that are very common in water have been linked to heart problems, diabetes, Alzheimer's, forms of cancer-

09:00

DOLL
-ALS like the list goes on and on.

DOLL
And so, because these things develop, you know, years down the road, sometimes we don't make the link back to our environment or to water, but t's very fundamental to our health.

KRISTEN 
So, really the main focus of Aquageneunity is mass water testing. Why is this so important to what you do - and can you tell me what can be gained from mass water testing?

DOLL
So, think of it this way, when you have a weather forecast, you can go on your phone or go on an app. And it'll tell you if it's going to rain close to where you are within the next 15 minutes so that, well, if I'm leaving the house, let me grab my umbrella.

DOLL
We should have that same level of information for water quality because water actually changes as often as the weather does.

DOLL
Anytime that water is displaced or anything is moving with the soil, if there's any kind of overflow, those things are going straight into our water supply and coming out of taps in many cases. So if we actually map water quality down to the local level, we could have a water quality forecast. The same way we have a weather forecast.

10:00

DOLL
I didn't know when I started this work that this had never been done before.

DOLL
This is such a really complex data problem to solve.

DOLL
I just did it anyway.

KRISTEN
It's hopeful work! The way you talk about it makes me feel... honestly, less full of existential dread than I normally feel because you're actually working on solutions. So it’s pretty clear, making all of these connections is super important. And, on that note, can you tell me more about your data collection system?

DOLL
Yeah. So we live in a world where humans are the sensors, alerting us to water quality problems. So I'm like, well, why can't we use technology? All of the advances in data analytics and all of that. Like, most people can't tell you- the EPA does not know what's coming out of your tap right now.

DOLL
And I just thought that was backwards.

DOLL
So, I started doing research and really trying to understand this problem because in my mind, it's like, why can't they put in their zip code or go to some website somewhere and understand what's in their water to know if it's safe?

11:00

DOLL
And quickly realized why it hadn't been done before, because it's just a really hard problem to solve. So for example, in the United States, there's about 151,000 individual water systems. So the way they report data, collect data, sample, test water is very fragmented. And so I set out to aggregate all of that data into a single interface. Took about a year and a half to do.

DOLL
The way that water is tested now- let's say in the Atlanta area, five, six million residents- they might sample a couple dozen homes for lead and they, based on those readings, that's how they determine the report for your area. Well, that's just not accurate. Okay?

DOLL
Because everyone has different pipes. So even if the water is perfect, when it leaves the water treatment plant, it still has to travel the last mile to your home. And in that last mile is where things like Flint happened. Because if your pipes are old, if there's any kind of corrosion, there's construction, if there's water main breaks, if you live near a factory or a military base or a Superfund site.

12:00

DOLL
Anything that's entering those pipes along that last mile, goes into the pipes and is many times odorless or colorless.

DOLL
There's a lot of exposure to what's in the water and very little real-time information about what's in the water.

DOLL
So our work at Aquagenuity is to bridge that gap.

KRISTEN
And how exactly is that done and what is the Aqua Score because that's central to what Aquagenuity is?

DOLL
Yes. So the future of the world is there are sensors and things are happening in an automated fashion, but a lot of those sensors don't exist right now. So what we do is we provide water test kits to folks to test in their homes, to test at local schools and folks that sign up for our the Guardians of H2O program, which we'll talk about later.

DOLL
You fill up a little vial with water, put it back in the box, you mail it back. It goes straight to a certified lab and you get a full analysis of what was found in that water.

DOLL
That allows us to take that information and create what we call an Aqua Score. So this is a proprietary algorithm that I wrote.

13:00

DOLL  
So the EPA tests for about 93 contaminants -ish. And there's over a hundred thousand toxins that we know are in our water supplies. And a lot of them are not illegal.

DOLL
So that's a big gap.

DOLL
So if you use the water DNA test kit at your sink, you send it off to the lab and it comes back in about a week. You get a full report of what was found in that water. What does this mean for my health? What type of filter do I need?

DOLL
So you have to have a filter that's certified by the NSF to remove the geo-specific contaminants where you live. It's not going to be the same at my house versus yours.

DOLL
So all of that is a bunch of raw data. It doesn't really mean a lot. But what if we turn it into a number?

DOLL
That was my thinking. What if I turned it into a score? So the same way we look at weather, if you open your weather app right now, there's a temperature at the top.

DOLL
So I wrote the Aqua score, the algorithm to do the same thing for water quality. It can be pushed through an API so that data can show up on other public facing sites that people already use every day, right?

14:00

DOLL  
So imagine searching for real estate. Now you'll be able to search a home by it's AquaScore. By water quality. And that wasn't possible before we built this database.

DOLL
So the AquaScore translates all this information and makes it meaningful to the average consumer.

KRISTEN
Wow. And I imagine this is more and more important in today's world than it ever has been before with climate change, with severe weather, with water becoming more and more precious than it's ever been in the past. I mean, water has always been precious, but at this point in history, clean water isn't as abundant.

DOLL
Yes. Absolutely. We're living in a very interesting time and hopefully we can all rally together to do something about it. Right? So, if you want to take the future facing view of all of this, according to the United Nations, by 2030, there'll be a 40% greater demand for clean water.

DOLL
We can actually start to predict bigger changes that we will later see in climate change and hopefully get ahead of it and predict and prevent some of these crises before they occur.

15:00

DOLL
And so to be able to monitor water quality to help people make better decisions and better understand how the environment is impacting their health.

DOLL
I think it’s really important work.

KRISTEN
What's some of the feedback you've gotten from folks who've been testing their water with Aquagenuity?

DOLL
It is amazing. So one of our hashtags is, is “data to the people.” Cause we're just really focused on giving people information so they know better, they can do better. Right?

DOLL
We're not really interested in kind of pointing the blame for who's responsible for doing you know, the pollution we're just providing data. So what that does is that actually allows for a corporation or for a municipality to use the data, to get ahead of and predict and prevent these problems. Right?

DOLL
So we're partnering with them so that they have insight.

DOLL
So something as simple as us providing that transparency, like a dashboard that a city official can look at and say, oh, this neighborhood is going orange just going red, right? So that they can be proactive. Those are the types of tools that we provide and we take the data and feed it to

16:00

DOLL  
those agencies and officials that can actually take action to help protect communities.

DOLL
So, they can, let's say put in remediation efforts, or let's say we put in new pipes, but now we can monitor that. So we know going forward that everything is still a-okay.

KRISTEN
Mm. And how many homes do you need to test the water to get the best data sample?

DOLL
So currently our database covers about 272 million Americans.

DOLL
Anybody that has a water system that serves 3000 people or more, that data is in our database. It's pretty great coverage right now, but what we want to lean into some of these rural areas. Some of the folks who don't have as consistent testing from the state agency, we want to help supplement that data.

DOLL
In order to really get an accurate, real time water quality forecast for a city, say a metropolitan area, we like to cover at least 35 to 45% of the area. And once we get that coverage-

DOLL
‘Cause we're still training our algorithms, we're still training the machine learning models so that they can do it themselves.

17:00

DOLL  
We get the data from the community and then we measure the two, right? And we see how accurate the computer is versus the sample testing.

DOLL
But this is a huge uptick from the standard testing. Right now is less than 1%. So we're increasing that significantly. So once we go past 20% range, we feel great about it, but we want to get it closer to the 40% range for this first round of real time water quality forecast that we'll be publishing.

TRANSITION

KRISTEN
Doll's goal of increasing the number of samples included is crucial for Aquagenuity to provide an accurate representation of every communities’ water health...

KRISTEN
She says that the Guardians of H2O program - in partnership with companies and local municipalities - will help increase sample numbers, as well as expand environmental literacy and prepare nearly one million new Guardians for future careers in science and tech.

KRISTEN
You may have concerns about your water supply. How can you acquire a testing kit?

18:00

KRISTEN 
I had some of those same questions, and Doll, of course, had answers.

KRISTEN
Let's say I am one of the people in, you know, one of the cities that have lead in the water. Let's say, I find that out. What do I do then? Do I write to you? Is there a recommendation of what to do if you find something?

DOLL
Yes, so the next version of the web app, and then the mobile app that'll be out next year for a United Nations World Water Day, which is March 22nd every year. It will recommend- here's a filter that's specifically certified by the NSF to deal with the toxins that have been found in your home. We're also starting to connect communities with resources. People can't afford say a filter, right, that they might need. And so we have those corporate partners who are stepping up.

DOLL
And to your point how many people need to monitor their water for us to have really accurate data models? This is something that we're far ahead of the field because the United Nations has the SDGs, sustainable development goals for 2030, and they're going to have to extend them out.

19:00

DOLL  
But there's 17 SDGs and number six is clean water, but most people don't know that target 6B specifically is a bullet point under there, it talks about the importance of hyper-local communities getting involved in monitoring water quality and wastewater management.

DOLL
How do you engage an individual to even think about, let alone take action on something like monitoring their own water?

DOLL
So we've, we found a way. Like people get really excited about becoming Guardians of H2O.

DOLL
You get a Cape, like it's really cool.

DOLL
Like you become really activated in this movement. So you test your own water in your home or your school, you know, adopts a program. That helps us to get the numbers up, to get enough data, to really build an accurate model for a city.

KRISTEN
Wow. So is the Guardians of H2O program, is that all over the country? Is that just in certain cities? Where is that?

DOLL
It's available for anyone, anywhere in the country. Guardian's of H2O is a virtual program that's designed to bring communities together around environmental literacy.

20:00

DOLL  
So we have a curriculum for K through 12, where students can learn about testing their own water, how water impacts their body. But also teaches them to be innovators around solutions for environmental justice and climate change and extending the life of the planet.

DOLL
So we've had a lot of great support from,

 DOLL
all these huge companies right here, the epicenter of Atlanta.

DOLL
And so what that allowed us to do is to adopt local schools in this area, had the corporate support. So a lot of times those corporations will underwrite the schools. So it's not an expense out of their budget.

DOLL
Kids get really excited. About the program and about engaging. And so we're just onboarding them as quickly as possible. 

DOLL
So our goal is to have a million Guardians by the end of 2022.

DOLL
So as you start to take steps that are beneficial to the environment, now you're actually getting incentivized to do that. So it becomes this kind of snowball effect. We found that corporations and cities really do respond when consumers just say, “Hey enough, don't pollute our environment.”

21:00

DOLL  
I feel like when we all do this, this is how we change the world.

[BEAT]

KRISTEN
Doll, this has just been such a joy, so inspiring. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.

DOLL
I thank you for having and hosting this conversation.

OUTRO

KRISTEN
Thanks for listening to Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ.

KRISTEN
On the next episode, we’ll hear from Jerek Theo Lovey, a founder of Take-Two Foods, a company that is determined to get the world on board with food upcycling. Which can save water in a different way…

JEREK LOVEY
upcycling saves hundreds of gallons of water, a tremendous amount of land, a tremendous amount of energy because we're using this grain twice.

Subscribe to Innovation Uncovered, and if you like what you hear, leave us a review.

Thanks for listening.

22:00

Post-Roll Ad

Season two of innovation uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. What do all the greatest innovations have in common? Agents. Ordinary people who shape the future by putting their money behind the right ideas. Invesco QQQ is a fund that allows you to access the innovators of the NASDAQ 100. So you don't have to be an inventor to help create what's next to come. Become an agent of innovation with Invesco QQQ. To learn more about what this fund can mean for your portfolio, visit invesco.com/qqq.

Brand Ad Disclaimer

There are risks involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. The NASDAQ 100 index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the NASDAQ. An investment cannot be made directly into an index.

23:00

Before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and more at prospectus@invesco.com.

Episode Disclaimer

The opinions expressed are those of the speakers are based on current market conditions and are subject to change. Without notice these opinions may differ from those of other Invesco investment professionals. Invesco is not affiliated with T brand studio, Kristen Meinzer or any of the subjects or companies referenced in this episode. This content should not be construed as an endorsement for or a recommendation to invest in any of the companies referenced in this episode, Invesco Distributors Inc.

0:00

KRISTEN MEINZER
Dairy milk alternatives have become extremely popular in the past handful of years. If you’ve been to a coffee shop lately, you’ll know what I mean when I say there is an abundance of tasty choices to add to your cup of joe.

KRISTEN
Almond milk, oat milk, soy milk… milk made from rice, coconut, cashew…  the list goes on and on. But these alternatives aren’t always a better option when it comes to the environment.

KRISTEN
Take almond milk. It can take up to 130 pints of water to produce just one glass of almond milk. That’s a lot of water.

KRISTEN
But there’s a newcomer to the world of dairy milk alternatives- a creamy plant-based milk that’s made using reused – or upcycled – materials.

ALT
But there’s a newcomer to the world of dairy milk alternatives- a creamy plant-based milk that’s made using upcycled – or reused – materials.

JEREK LOVEY
The premise of it is really that, letting nothing go to waste and really valuing all of the raw material inputs that go into making products.

KRISTEN
That’s Jerek Theo Lovey.

JEREK
I think if we all knew how much goes into every single thing that we eat or drink-

01:00

JEREK
-we would feel so much appreciation and gratitude on a whole, whole different level.

KRISTEN
Jerek is the co-founder and CEO of Take Two Foods.

KRISTEN
Take Two makes barley milk. To do so, they use what is essentially ‘the leftovers’ from the beer brewing process. And there are a lot of leftovers.

JEREK
...8 billion pounds of spent grain were going to waste every single year. I knew instantly that we had to do something about it.

KRISTEN
Spent grain… that’s the leftover malt that breweries use to make beer, and it’s usually just being thrown away.  But Jerek is taking it, and using it!

KRISTEN
He and the team at Take Two have big goals to reduce the excessive waste in the modern food and beverage industries. Their goal is to make upcycling the norm.

KRISTEN
And they’re doing so one cold glass of barley milk at a time.

BEAT

KRISTEN
I’m Kristen Meinzer, and this is Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ…

KRISTEN
This episode, we’re chatting with Jerek Theo Lovey, whose life’s mission is to

02:00

intercept food waste that’s headed to the landfill and give it new life – and, a new taste.

[MUSIC OUT]

KRISTEN
Hello, Jerek! Thank you so much for joining us today..

JEREK
Hi Kristen. Thanks so much. So happy to be here.

KRISTEN
For our listeners who may not know – what exactly is upcycling?

JEREK
Great question. So upcycling is transforming things that would typically go to waste such as byproducts of manufacturing processes, whether it's tech or fashion in this case it's food. And we transform what typically goes to waste into something of value. So, seeing trash as treasure in a way.

JEREK
The premise of it is really that, letting nothing go to waste and really valuing all of the raw material inputs that go into making products. So, that's it, in a nutshell.

KRISTEN
Well, I think some of us are familiar with upcycling in those other arenas you mentioned.

03:00

KRISTEN
But with food, food sounds like a whole different ballpark here. It's new to a lot of people.

KRISTEN
Why do you think this movement is catching on now?

JEREK
You know, like anything right now with the climate. The need is becoming so pressing that we have to take action. The reality is that 30% of our current food supply goes to waste. That number actually has been estimated to be even higher than that. Up to like 40%.

JEREK
So when you think about all of the food that we produce going to waste versus being able to feed people who are hungry or being able to conserve it and be really mindful of how we protect the resources that we're using.

JEREK
It's astonishing and the impact of food waste on our climate is also super eye-opening when you look at the statistics. It's one of the biggest contributors to global emissions.

04:00

JEREK
In fact, our food supply, and our food system is a bigger contributor to global emissions than the transportation system combined. So, cars and trucks and everything. So, it's inefficient, it's broken, it's not working well. And we can do something about that.

KRISTEN
And I’m curious, how did you personally become interested in upcycling food? What is your connection to this whole industry?

JEREK
So I'm a food entrepreneur and prior to launching Take Two, I created an organic snack food company.

JEREK
And the whole purpose of that was to make truly healthy foods accessible to the mainstream, accessible to the masses.

JEREK
But what that did was sort of open up Pandora's box, right? It was like, oh wow, this is like one step in the food system. And helping people live truly healthy lives and- wow, there's this whole other side of it, which was-

05:00

JEREK
-looking at the number of animals that we use to feed ourselves.

JEREK
Billions of a fish, hundreds of millions of livestock and cattle.

JEREK
And then similarly, it was like, okay. And then there's this big heap of food waste happening.

JEREK
When I learned that 8 billion pounds of spent grain were going to waste every single year. I knew instantly that we had to do something about it.

JEREK
So we've been working on this for five years now, working in partnership with food scientists, engineers, Anheuser-Busch and Bev, a major brewery, to figure out how we can tackle food waste. How we can tackle spent grain waste globally. And so it's been an amazing journey.

KRISTEN
Despite all of the great things that you're saying about upcycling food, what it does for the environment, how it keeps waste out of landfills, the fact that it can be incredibly delicious- technically it's still waste.

KRISTEN
Do people ever feel weird about that? Is there resistance to eating upcycled food?

06:00

JEREK 
I mean, absolutely people don't want to eat waste- for sure.

JEREK
And we've had to be careful sort of in navigating how we talk about it, because technically it is a food waste were essentially taking the by-product from the beer brewing process while it’s in the food safe mechanisms at the production plant, and then just transferring it into processing technology that then that turns it into a barley protein powder that we then use to craft our milks.

JEREK
But I think, the more that people become aware of upcycling, the more that they learn about food waste. There's awareness that this isn't pulling food out of a trash can, you know?

JEREK
It'll take time for it to really become a mainstream idea, but it's happening very quickly.

JEREK
Traditionally, in earlier times where resources were more scarce people were certainly very mindful of the amount of things that they were wasteful about.

07:00

JEREK
Food being one of them.

JEREK
You know, in modern times where we have sort of everything that we need at our fingertips where we kind of lose some of that resourcefulness. But I think the necessity of taking bold action to protect the climate and to protect the planet and protect the finite resources of the planet.

JEREK
A little bit has to do with maybe our consumption patterns in this era, and we have the opportunity to be a lot more mindful of that.

KRISTEN
For centuries, humans used and reused ingredients in resourceful ways that are lost in today’s standard cooking and consumption practices.

KRISTEN
Industrialization and mass production create a layer of abstraction between us and the food we eat, but when you get a chance to see the process up close, you witness firsthand how much waste goes into what stocks our pantries and refrigerators.

08:00

KRISTEN
Jerek and Take Two are working to revitalize a healthy food philosophy centered on knowledge and resourcefulness.

KRISTEN
Now I have to say that the first time I really became aware of barley as waste, which is what you work with, was a couple of years ago.

KRISTEN
I was on a tour of a small brewery in my husband's hometown, in New Zealand. And they were talking about the processes of making the beer and how many thousands of gallons of water they went through and how many thousands of pounds of barley just ended up being, you know, essentially something they would use briefly and then it would just go to the trash can essentially, and I asked Isn't this wasteful? Isn't there something you can do with this?

KRISTEN
And I never really got a good answer to that.

KRISTEN
Is that something that you encountered to where you just had this “a-ha” moment - this moment where you just woke up and you were like,

09:00

KRISTEN
Oh my gosh, you're seeing it firsthand?

JEREK
So first and foremost, the statistic that we point to the most is that we're upcycling a pound of spent grain in every single bottle that we make-

JEREK
- which is just tremendous just to be like, okay, well, we're diverting, you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds of barley at this time from going to landfill. So that's a key metric that's easy for us to measure our impact and then also easy for us to communicate to shoppers.

JEREK
The other thing that we've started to point to and really been focusing on is water usage. So one gallon of our barley milk conserves 300 gallons of water compared to-

KRISTEN
Excuse me, 300 gallons?

JEREK
yeah, 300 gallons. Exactly.

KRISTEN
Wow, 300 gallons is going into every one gallon of milk, but that's already pre-used 300 gallons in processing.

10:00

KRISTEN
Can you explain that?

JEREK
Yep, exactly. So, essentially, when you look at the amount of water that goes into growing a grain or growing barley, or growing grass to feed cows, or feeding cows water- when you look at how much goes into those processes, generally- and then also cleaning and all of the things that are involved in manufacturing other milks- by not having that initial process involved by just taking the secondary material, we don't have to utilize more water to create this.

JEREK
So if we were going to wait to just go out and use raw barley, then it would be water intensive or almonds or oats similarly. But in this case we don't, so..

KRISTEN
Wow.

JEREK
...it's pretty cool.

JEREK
I think if we all knew how much goes into every single thing that we eat or drink we would feel so much appreciation and gratitude on a whole, whole different level.

11:00

JEREK
The same thing happened for us. Just a small local craft brewery. We were doing a tour and there were crates worth of grain sitting out behind the brewery with, like, flies.

JEREK
But it's like this oatmeal- it's like these crates of oatmeal. Cooked oatmeal. And we were just like, oh my goodness.

JEREK
And there are efforts by brewers to essentially upcycle this by giving it to local farmers who’ll come by and they'll pick up the grain and they'll then feed it to their livestock.

JEREK
So there is an effort, to not let the grain go to waste, but there's so much of it that they're producing. And to be honest, I mean, they're brewing beer. What are they going to do with a bunch of fibrous, leftover fiber and protein? You know, they're not going to bake bread or-

JEREK
They haven't had the capacity, I think in many ways to like address it head on-

12:00

JEREK
-which is why it's so cool that there's so many companies now are like, Hey, actually, I'm going to take that and I'm going to turn it into flour, or I'm going to turn it into cookies or bread, or, like, Take Two, we're going to take it and we're going to turn into milk and other alternative dairy products.

JEREK
I think it's win-win for everyone.

KRISTEN
And how exactly did that happen? You go from visiting this microbrewery and making organic snacks to now you've launched this incredible company. Can you walk us through what happened?

JEREK
Interestingly enough Anheuser-Busch and Bev, one of their scientists had this idea, like he realized that the barley that they were using to brew beer contains a prebiotic fiber that is very unique to barley it contains a tremendous amount of something called arabinose islands.

JEREK
And these arabinose islands are essential for gut health.

13:00

JEREK
So like prebiotics, probiotics, the marriage of the two together creates a healthy microbiome. Probiotics are a really big thing with kombuchas and taking supplements, but without having a prebiotic, they have nothing to eat and fiber actually, interestingly enough, the daily recommendation is around 30 grams per day for us and most humans get around three grams.

KRISTEN
Oh my gosh. Whoa!

JEREK
Yeah. So, so this food scientist was like, we're sitting on Arabinose islands, we're sitting on this prebiotic fiber that could be feeding people well and plant protein, which is so sustainable and people are really turning towards plant-based foods to carry out this healthy lifestyle.

JEREK
Like we have to do something about this. So Anheuser-Busch, realizing the billions of pounds that they were creating every year said, Hey, we're going to develop the technology to do this at the major brewery level.

14:00

JEREK
And then my co-founder and I set about creating food applications out of the grain and really figuring out what is the grain taste like? What does it pair well with? What is it, what does it not pair well with? Like really testing all the ins and outs of it.

KRISTEN
Yeah. And what you're doing is, elevating what other people are already trying to do when they're purchasing plant-based milks. A lot of people say I'm going to get the plant-based milk because it's better for the planet. But that also is really questionable because some plant-based milks, let's say almond milk, for example, has incredible water waste and other waste involved in it.

KRISTEN
And you're cutting that out. You're pretty much cutting out the middleman and saying the waste already happened. Now we're turning it into gold, right?

JEREK
Almond milk, to produce it, it wastes so much water. It's so water intensive. And so, for us, we identified that same problem is like, okay, some of these plant-based products that are saying that they're more sustainable or that they're healthier or-

15:00

JEREK
that they taste better, but like, let's be really real about this, because this is also a challenge in our food system is like food companies market to us to appeal to our emotions so that will buy them and continue buying these products. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're good for the human body or that they're good for the planet.

JEREK
And we're like, okay, well, we have to do both of those things.

JEREK
Like, upcycling saves hundreds of gallons of water, a tremendous amount of land, a tremendous amount of energy because we're using this grain twice.

JEREK
It's not the raw ingredient. And we can do better.

KRISTEN
And as you were saying, you're doing better by the planet, but also by our bodies because of the nutritional components of what you're making. Where did that knowledge come from?

JEREK
I was an athlete all growing up. I played on the basketball team at UC Berkeley.

And I remember when I was at Cal, we were eating a lot of different protein powders and goos and gels and all of these things and-

16:00

KRISTEN 
All these non-food foods?

JEREK
All these non-food foods. And even for like training meal or like pregame meal, it was like pasta carbo-loading.

JEREK
But for me it didn't work like I never really achieved my like ideal playing weight.

JEREK
And so when I graduated, I was no longer playing, like in team sports. I was suddenly like training for marathons and triathlons. And I was on this solo journey and I started really realizing, okay, like, first step was whole foods, the second step was plant based. And then the third step for me was like sustainability but I've just been passionate about nutrition since then.

JEREK
Understanding the power of plant-based nutrition just changed everything for me.

17:00

Kristen
Creating a sustainable system to process all of this spent grain is no small feat.

KRISTEN
And Take Two is determined to bring human connection to food and the earth back to the 21st century…

KRISTEN
But they wouldn’t be able to gain any ground if their product didn’t taste great. Taste is what it all boils down to.

KRISTEN
With the collaboration of like-minded partners and an ingenious, dedicated staff, Take Two is opening minds to their new milk, and their approach to sustainability.

BEAT

KRISTEN
You're receiving all this barley waste, which the barley waste is created in making things like beer, where the barley is just there to ferment, I believe? And do certain things short term to make the beer and then it's just waste.

KRISTEN
And then it comes to you- and - in a powderized form. And then you add other ingredients to it, which are then mixed in.

18:00

KRISTEN
Through lots of experimentation you came up with a great taste for it, and then it's bottled and distributed. Did I get everything right?

JEREK
You nailed it. That's exactly it.

KRISTEN
And for anyone who's never tried barley milk before-

KRISTEN
you said you worked really hard to get the taste delicious. What does it feel like in your mouth? What does it taste like? What does it smell like?

JEREK
Take Two Barley Milk is really unique.

JEREK
So barley is a very mild, balanced sort of grain similar to oat. A lot of people are familiar with oat having grown up eating oatmeal or eating oatmeal-raisin cookies. It's got this really just like warm, delicious, toasty flavor.

JEREK
And barley’s is very similar.

JEREK
Even though it's not as well known in the US maybe people sometimes use it in making a barley soup or something like that.

JEREK
We love it because of its mild and balanced flavor.

19:00

JEREK 
It just lends itself so well to creating plant-based dairy products and in particular milk. Just overall mild balanced toasty, then it's just really creamy and smooth and delicious.

KRISTEN
And what has been the response from consumers to Take Two Barley Milk?

JEREK
The response has been excitement that there's something new. And then I think when people try it, they're just in awe that a plant-based milk could, again, taste creamy, delicious, smooth, and really satisfying like the traditional dairy milks that they're used to.

JEREK
And I think ultimately what really compels people is the sustainability piece. When they read on the bottle, the statistics and they understand the impact of using this milk. It's just sort of game changing.

JEREK
It changes your daily routine. Suddenly your morning latte becomes a vessel for impact, like suddenly you're diverting landfill diverting barley from going to landfill-

20:00

JEREK
by simply drinking barley milk in your coffee or putting it in your smoothie.

JEREK
And so I think that's what's most exciting for us is just seeing how equally passionate shoppers are about the same thing we're passionate about, which is creating a sustainable food system and really being great stewards of the planet.

BEAT

KRISTEN
Jerek, this has just been such a joy talking with you today. Thank you so much for the great work you're doing and thanks for talking with us today.

JEREK
Kristen, it's been such a pleasure. Looking forward to continuing the conversation and just continuing to grow awareness around this movement.

KRISTEN
Thank you so much for listening to Innovation Uncovered from Invesco QQQ.

KRISTEN
Next time, we’ll hear from Doug Donovan, the CEO of Interplay Learning, a company that’s helping to shape the future of training and education in the skilled trades-

21:00

KRISTEN
using virtual reality.

DOUG DONOVAN: The idea of using a simulated environment to practice these skills, it’s a really powerful application of virtual reality.

KRISTEN
Subscribe to Innovation Uncovered, and if you like what you hear, leave us a review.

KRISTEN
Thanks for listening.

Post-Roll Ad

Season two of innovation uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. What do all the greatest innovations have in common? Agents. Ordinary people who shape the future by putting their money behind the right ideas. Invesco QQQ is a fund that allows you to access the innovators of the NASDAQ 100. So you don't have to be an inventor to help create what's next to come. Become an agent of innovation with Invesco QQQ. To learn more about what this fund can mean for your portfolio, visit invesco.com/qqq.

Brand Ad Disclaimer

There are risks involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. The NASDAQ 100 index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the NASDAQ. An investment cannot be made directly into an index. Before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and more at prospectus@invesco.com.

Episode Disclaimer

The opinions expressed are those of the speakers are based on current market conditions and are subject to change. Without notice these opinions may differ from those of other Invesco investment professionals. Invesco is not affiliated with T brand studio, Kristen Meinzer or any of the subjects or companies referenced in this episode. This content should not be construed as an endorsement for or a recommendation to invest in any of the companies referenced in this episode, Invesco Distributors.

 

TIM BEATLEY 00:01

The vision of biophilic cities addresses just about every economic, social, and environmental concern. We know that planting trees, we know that just about anything that a city can do to make itself more natureful will make it more resilient. And more resilient in the face of things like natural disasters and social trauma.

COREY S. POWELL 00:20

Welcome to Innovation Uncovered, a podcast from Invesco QQQ and T Brand at the New York Times. It’s about the ideas and discoveries driving our culture forward — from how we play, to what we consume, to how we connect.

COREY 00:38

We started making Innovation Uncovered before the pandemic hit. And in the last few months, our thinking about what innovation is, and why it’s important -- especially now -- began to shift.

COREY 00:48

Some of the most extraordinary feats of progress are happening right here, close to home, where most of us have spent more time than we ever imagined. These innovations are changing things like how we make wine, watch films, and think about sports.

COREY 01:02

Today we’re going to start our series by exploring a design movement that’s reshaping the way we live indoors, and even how we plan our cities. They call it biophilia.

THEME MUSIC

COREY 01:16

I'm Corey S. Powell. I’m the former Editor-in-Chief of Discover Magazine, and as a science writer I’ve covered everything from dark matter to the origin of life. And I’m joined by my lovely, brilliant, and as-of-yet unintroduced co-host...

KRISTEN MEINZER 01:29

Hi Corey.

COREY 01:31

Hi Kristen.

KRISTEN 01:32

Yes, I'm Kristen Meinzer. I’m a culture critic and journalist. For the next six episodes, I’ll be out in the field -- well, the virtual field at least, thanks to social distancing.

COREY 01:43

Bringing a little science -

KRISTEN 01:43

And a little culture -

COREY 01:44

To conversations about the people and ideas that are reshaping so many aspects of our lives today.

MUSIC OUT

COREY 01:54

Kristen before we get into the story I just want to acknowledge to our listeners that we’re recording from two different places, and uh, we’re connecting via video chat. It’s unfortunately a kind of familiar scene for a lot of us at this point.

KRISTEN 02:07

Yeah, and I have to say, my home office as you can see, it’s uh, it’s pretty sad-looking. There are no windows, there’s very little light...but I gotta say, Corey, the view from your screen looks a little happier. Are those plants I see there?

COREY 02:21

Yeah you know, I should tell you-- I am in my basement. I am in a windowless office, just like you are. But I have a little garden right next to me. I have some house plants, I have a little herb garden. They’re all supported by a grow light. So I have some greenery, I have a little bit of nature here.

COREY 02:41

And I have to tell you, it makes a big difference. It gives a psychological boost, having my little syngonium, and my little schefflera flourishing over there. It makes me feel better. And it’s not just all in my mind. I came across this 2020 study out of the University of Hyogo in Japan that says that even having a small plant on your desk can reduce stress.

COREY 02:59

And part of what I love about this study: the title of the study is: Potential of a Small Indoor Plant on the Desk for Reducing Office Workers’ Stress

[laughs]

COREY 03:09

So you don’t even have to wonder, hey, what does that mean? It just means that academically, what I’m experiencing seems to be a real thing

KRISTEN 03:17
Yeah, it sounds like whether you knew it or not you’ve planned out your basement in a biophilic way.

COREY 03:24

I definitely didn’t know it. I was just going by intuition that I knew that these green plants make me feel good. But you know it’s nice to have some academic validation that what I’m doing really is scientifically verifiable.

MUSIC UP

KRISTEN 03:44

Reporting this story about biophilia, I talked to a few people who are constantly thinking about bringing plant life into indoor spaces...

BETHANY BOREL 3:48

My name is Bethany Borel, and I'm an architect and interior designer with a kind of interest and geek out a little bit about biophilic design.

KRISTEN 3:57

I connected with Bethany Borel to learn about a particular kind of interior design that is quietly revolutionizing how we live. She doesn’t just ‘kind of have an interest’ in this area — which is known as biophilic design — she’s one of the innovative architects leading the charge. She’s worked on projects such as biophilic high-rise buildings, a girls’ school, an affordable housing building, and plenty more. And Bethany kindly agreed to be our guide, so to speak.

BETHANY 4:26

The first thing that you see when you come off of our elevator bank is a long hallway that's a gallery, has large terrariums that are filled with plants that are thriving within these glass terrariums. We also have art on the walls photographs of Angkor Wat, you know, referencing how nature does take back our environment at some point. So really there's a moment of contemplation of quiet and calm.

KRISTEN 4:58

Doesn't that sound like a dream? What could this beautiful place be? Well, it's actually an office, Bethany's office. She's a senior associate at COOKFOX Architects in New York City. And she describes the space so well because... she designed it.

BETHANY 5:16

Once they get to the reception desk, that's where views of our east and west terraces become apparent. Having a direct view to a natural element outside is an orienting tool to help you understand where your body is in space. Our bodies are always trying to figure out what our boundaries are and where we are. And so those views of daylight and views of nature are pretty key for that.

KRISTEN 5:46

Are you feeling calmer already? It turns out the reason you're feeling so calm and centered right now, isn't just Bethany's soothing voice. It's because of biophilia.

BETHANY 5:57

It's the innate human affinity for natural systems and natural processes. So it's something that's ingrained in us, in our DNA.

KRISTEN 06:06

The term biophilic design was popularized in the 1980s by E.O. Wilson, the naturalist and writer.

KRISTEN 6:15

Over time, this theory of biophilia was organized into something called biophilic patterns. These are essentially design elements that architects can use to make indoor spaces more biophilic. Some of these elements are pretty straightforward...

BETHANY 6:29

Visual connection with nature. Thermal and airflow variability, presence of water, dynamic and diffuse light...

KRISTEN 6:38

While other elements are a little more abstract.

BETHANY 6:42

...complexity and order, prospect, refuge, mystery, risk and peril. And awe.

KRISTEN 6:52

I love that. Awe. But what does it mean to incorporate something like risk and peril into architecture for example.

BETHANY 6:59

For those who've been to the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, and you stand up close to the railing in the center of the museum. You'll notice it's just a little shorter than most railings, and I don't know about you, but when I get that close, I get I get that rush of risk, but it it heightens your senses. And so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

KRISTEN 7:20

Now, I've had that same experience at that museum. The building is like a large undulating spiral. As you reach the top of the spiral and peer over the edge down to the lower levels. You feel that exhilarating feeling, which really lights you up without making you worry about your safety, of course. Architects have a lot of nature inspired tools at their disposal to influence how we respond.

BETHANY 7:44

Light, the play of light, the availability of natural light, natural patterns. Our brains respond to natural patterns in the same way as they would seeing them out in a forest versus a panel of millwork. So it's the shape, it's the scalar shifts, it's the relationship of volumes in the space, acoustics within the space have a lot to do with it.

KRISTEN 8:09

As Bethany just hinted at, biophilic design goes beyond just the visual. Architects also have to consider how a space will sound.

BETHANY 8:18

If you think about an open office plan, you know, you get used to hearing your neighbor. And so that doesn't end up distracting you as much if you hear your neighbors speaking. But if somebody who sits all the way on the other side of the office comes over and says something loud enough that you can hear, it will more likely than not interrupt your concentration. And it'll take you a little while to get back on track. And it's about 20 minutes that it takes for that to happen. So it's a pretty serious, you know, acoustics are pretty serious concern.

KRISTEN 8:49

So maybe right now, you’re working from home. Office chatter isn’t really a problem. But something you might be noticing, if you live alone, for example, is that silence isn’t great for productivity either. The natural world isn't silent after all.

BETHANY 9:05

you know, if you go too far with sound dampening, it almost becomes really eerie. We as humans are organized so that we expect a certain amount of sound. And so if there's too much white noise, it can start to, you know, trigger confusion or anger. Or if there's not enough white noise, it can have kind of a similar effect of confusion or it'll, it'll feel eerie. I think we've all kind of been in one of those rooms where you walk in and you could hear a pin drop and it's very creepy.

[MUSIC]

KRISTEN 9:42

Given everything we've been through in the last few months, it's no surprise that so many of us are craving the outdoors and appreciating the basic aspects of nature--how the sun feels on your skin, the beauty of leaves rippling in the breeze.

KRISTEN 9:57

But even in non-isolation times, people spend about 90% of our lives inside.

KRISTEN 10:04

And as Bethany Borel's work shows, now people are waking up to something we've been feeling for a while about life indoors: Something's missing. And that something is nature.

BETHANY 10:15

There's been a significant amount of scientific research around the physiological and psychological benefits of biophilic design. There's been proven absenteeism reduction, presenteeism increase, cortisol level reduction. You know, for students, if you're designing a school information retention increases, they're able to learn better by some of these strategies.

KRISTEN 10:43

And just to go a little deeper on these benefits. People just really need that little bit of nature during the day. One study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied found that just adding plants to an otherwise sparse office could increase workers feelings of well being, boosting productivity by as much as 15%. Even more critical, from a business standpoint, all of these wellness effects can have economic advantages.

BETHANY 11:10

90% of what companies spend their money on are the employees, right, rent is a fraction of their yearly expenditure. It's really the people, the healthcare for those people, you know, all of that, that takes up the bulk of what companies are spending. If some of the design strategies that you can put into place that are not necessarily more expensive than you would do otherwise helps to mitigate some of the absenteeism or ability to focus or kind of general contentment or general happiness, which then leads to retention. That's, that's a huge financial benefit to that company.

MUSIC

COREY 11:53

You know Kristen, this is exactly what I find really fascinating about biophilia. It’s a very personal thing, it’s a psychological thing, but it’s also an economic thing with clear, tangible benefits.

KRISTEN 12:02

Exactly, it’s not just about warm-fuzzy feelings.

COREY 12:06

So here’s another interesting example I came across: The city of Sacramento did a study at one of their call centers. And they found that employees with views of nature managed their calls 6 to 7 percent faster than their coworkers without a view. So, here’s a hard number. They crunched the hard number, and they found that based on that improvement, they could save $2,990 per employee per year, if only people there had some nice greenery to look at.

KRISTEN 12:33

And how much does that nice greenery cost, Corey?

COREY 12:34

So here’s the cool thing: Just $1,000 per employee. So, dollar for dollar, you’re better off giving them a nice green view. And if those employees are at all like me, they’re probably much happier employees, too.

MUSIC TRANSITION

KRISTEN 12:51

Despite all of this proof that biophilia is good for us: both for wellness, and business... it hasn’t been a focal point of a lot of modern architecture -- especially in big spaces like offices and schools. But Bethany and COOKFOX are part of a new innovative cohort of thinkers who are elevating biophilia to the forefront of architectural design.

BETHANY 13:12

I'm really excited to say that there's been this resurgence over the past, you know, 10 years or so a little bit more. And now consumers are more aware of it. And so you have clients that come in and ask about it and have heard the term before. And so the more people learn about it, the more they experience it, and see and feel the benefits of it, the more it'll take off. So it is a pretty exciting time right now, to be digging in even deeper.

KRISTEN 13:42

It’s also a really interesting time to start thinking about how we can incorporate more biophilic principles into our own indoor spaces. Because, surprise, all of these design principles also work in your home, not just in office buildings. It’s something Bethany has been noticing a lot lately on video calls with colleagues and clients.

BETHANY 14:02

Which is really fascinating because it gives you a little glimpse into people's personal lives by the backdrop that's behind them, you know, their background changes over time as they try to find the right spot. And it's really amazing how many people end up right next to a window. You know, either they're looking out the window or they're set up beside it so they can turn their head and look out the window when they need a break from their screen.

KRISTEN 14:24

That desire to be near the window is more than just liking natural light. Bethany told me that it's also tied to one of the patterns of biophilia.

BETHANY 14:32

A couple of the patterns of biophilic design I tend to incorporate into most of my projects are that of prospect and that of refuge. Back before, we were able to build these types of structures that we build now. Humans would find caves that provided refuge so you knew that no predator was going to come and attack you while you were sitting there or sleeping, but also provided prospect so that you could look out and see the horizon and see what weather was coming, what predators were coming, where color was because that indicates where food is. So this, this concept of prospect and refuge is one that's really easy to apply and understand on the interior level. And it's the same reason that people are lugging their laptops and monitors and kitchen table over to the window is to give that opportunity of prospect because it helps to calm us down. It reduces our cortisol levels. It reduces our stress levels.

KRISTEN 15:36

In some ways, your home might be designed with comfort in mind -- more so than any office would be. But there is one thing Bethany mentioned that might be harder to adapt:

BETHANY 15:45

A lot of people have been changing the lighting in their homes because when you're sleeping, it's a very different type of light that you respond to than when you need to be awake and alert. And so a lot of people have been asking me for recommend on like color-temperature-changing task lights or how to layer lighting within a space, because that's another kind of key element that our homes aren't necessarily set up to help us perform in the way that our office would.

KRISTEN 16:16

Natural daylight is probably your best option, but if you don’t have a window nearby, think about where the light is coming from, how bright it is, and what color it is.

MUSIC

COREY 16:32

Kristen, all this talk about biophilia has me thinking, as much as I enjoy being in my basement with my green plants, I miss the outdoors. I miss the outdoors in New York City, and I feel like I need to reconnect a little bit more with urban nature.

KRISTEN 16:46

Yeah, and there’s way more of it than I think people outside of New York even realize. I mean our city is covered in trees, in front gardens, in little plants coming up and growing through the sidewalk.

COREY 17:00

Honestly, New York doesn’t even hold a candle to other cities, in terms of how they’re embracing biophilia. I’m thinking for instance of Singapore. Which is really not a place people normally associate with greenery, but what an astounding and unexpected example of green cityscape it’s become.

KRISTEN 17:14

Looking at images of Singapore, it just blows my mind. It looks like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon...like you know, when you go there, you’re being dropped into the middle of a leafy canopy of trees, of flora, of fauna, of all the beautiful things when think of when we think of nature in Southeast Asia.

COREY 17:33

And that beautiful green identity didn’t all happen by accident, of course. When Singapore gained independence in the 1960s, the new government intentionally tried to shape the colony into a garden city. In recent years, they’ve even shifted and expanded their view: Not just a garden city, but a “city in a garden.”

KRISTEN 17:50

What a way to conceive of a city....especially in a city so dense.

COREY 17:55

Not just dense, one of the densest in the world, and getting denser. Between 1986 and 2010, the population of Singapore almost doubled -- from 2.7 million to 5 million people. And amazingly in that same time, it’s gotten greener. Green space in the city actually increased from 36 percent to 47 percent.

KRISTEN 18:15

That’s phenomenal. I mean, Singapore is really a model to the world, but it turns out they’re not alone. Biophilia is being enlisted in cities around the globe.

COREY 18:24

Right, because it makes sense. Infusing this biophilia into the cityscape helps with all kinds of practical things like stormwater management, it makes it more attractive to foreign investors, it makes it into a place people want to visit, and honestly, it makes it into a nicer place to live.

KRISTEN 19:41

Yeah. biophilia isn’t just for our home offices or basement offices, it works on a city scale to make life better.

[MUSIC]

MIDROLL 18:52

Innovation. You hear the word every day, but what does it mean? Invesco QQQ believes that innovation stems from the desire to create a fundamental change that leads to greater possibilities for all. Invesco QQQ allows you to access the NASDAQ 100 all in one ETF. Supporting the innovators that are changing the world.

[MUSIC]

TIM 19:23

A biophilic city is a city that puts nature at the center of its design and planning. So we argue that, that to lead a happy, healthy, meaningful life really requires that you have contact with nature.

KRISTEN 19:35

That’s Tim Beatley. I turned to him to help me understand the larger scale version of biophilia.

TIM 19:42

My name is Tim Beatley, and I teach here at the University of Virginia in the Urban and Environmental Planning Department in the School of Architecture.

KRISTEN 19:49

In addition to his teaching title, Tim is the founder of the Biophilic Cities Network. Since it was founded in 2013, twenty-two cities have joined. They span the globe from Phoenix, Arizona, to Wellington, New Zealand, to Panama City, Panama, to Singapore. Tim and his Biophilic Cities Network have brought the efforts of these far flung places together to help radically change the way cities think about their design and development. And it really comes down to your access to nature.

TIM 20:20

It's not just something that you can get once or twice a year on a vacation or holiday. It has to be all around us. It has to be where we live and work and and we have to experience that every day, if not every hour.

KRISTEN 20:32

That's something I hadn't thought about before. It's great to know that nature is out there that we could, you know, always go to a park or hop on the train to go for a hike, for example. But it's something entirely different to feel immersed in it without having to try.

TIM 20:48

So yes, we love parks. We need parks. But The vision of biophilic cities is one of immersive nature and that's really the the notion that we should see the entire city as the park we should see the entire city as as the forest as the garden so that we're not having to go to visit nature in particular places we're living with nature, nature is all around us. We're immersed in nature, and that's ultimately the vision that we're after here.

KRISTEN 21:17

And that's one of the most important elements of a biophilic city. That immersion in nature. To explain this, Tim thinks of it, like we once thought of the food pyramid.

TIM 21:28

We sometimes talk about this idea of a nature pyramid, which is one way of kind of understanding what constitutes our nature diet, if you will. We do believe that we need that connection with the natural world. So the stuff at that, that base of that pyramid are the things that nature around us every day, every hour, the trees, the birds, and and it's multi sensory, by the way, it's not just the the things that we see. But then as you move up the pyramid, there national parks and things where you might go to visit that might require a bus ride. We do want a city where it's possible to reach nature and public transit. But we do have to sort of start with the neighborhood scale and the place where people are, living and working.

KRISTEN 22:12

One of the most innovative aspects of biophilic design--whether it's in your home, your office or your entire neighborhood--is the focus on wellbeing. We've touched on it before, but these architects and city planners really have the whole human in mind.

TIM 22:28

And we have so much compelling evidence that having nature around us affects just about every aspect of the human being that the physiology the the mental health, it changes our mood in a positive way, it enhances cognitive performance, greener, more natureful schools, you know, lead to better test scores for kids, happier kids and happier teachers. There's even evidence actually that with nature around us we’re more generous we’re more likely to be cooperative, evidence coming out of economics that we're more likely to think longer term if we have nature around us. So you can make a pretty strong argument that in the presence of nature, we are better, better human beings actually.

[MUSIC]

KRISTEN 23:12

You know, the pandemic has really opened our eyes to the benefits of biophilic cities. They prioritize nature all around us, meaning you don't have to go and crowd a city park or beach to immerse yourself in the flora and fauna. Instead, it's right outside, and perhaps also inside your door. Some cities are experimenting with biophilia in real time, they're opening roadways to give pedestrians more space to be outside. Oakland, for example, closed down 10% of the total street mileage in the city, that's 72 miles, so that pedestrians had more space to walk around and socially distance properly. Cities like Minneapolis, Berlin, Bogota, Paris, Montreal and Portland decided to turn car lanes over to pedestrians as well.

TIM 23:58

Where we have these sort of concerns about the inability to social distance. I think we can be much more clever and of course having, having more space. I think more cities are tilting in that direction.

KRISTEN 24:12

And Tim thinks that these temporary changes could spur something more permanent in the future.

TIM 24:17

I think cities, I think we're going to, we're going to be maybe readjusting, I hope, the priorities we give to certain things and maybe reducing the emphasis on on cars and automobility. I think often the the reason we haven't done this more often is that that it's a lack of imagination to some degree, and perhaps a lack of compelling models and seeing what other cities have done.

KRISTEN 24:42

Some folks now might even be rethinking their feelings on cities in general. I mean, if we need that strong connection to nature, what's the benefit of living in the concrete jungle at all? Well, I asked Tim about this, whether or not cities really are important to maintain. And here's what he told me.

TIM 25:00

Cities, cities do many things for us. Of course, they provide people with you know, remarkable economic opportunities. There are real reasons Why we want to be in cities. And we're not going to turn this global trend around anyway.

KRISTEN 25:15

I, for one, look forward to getting back out there and exploring the biophilic elements of my city once it's safe to do so. But for now, I know I'm going to try to incorporate biophilic design into my own indoor spaces in small ways. And perhaps more of my video calls will involve biophilia, like when Bethany's cat joined us for the interview.

BETHANY 25:39

Sorry, she got back into the room.

KRISTEN 25:42

That’s some nature right there next to you.

BETHANY 25:45

Yeah, a little biophilic element.

[MUSIC]

COREY 25:59

So this whole conversation about biophilia makes me feel inspired to do more of that in my own life. I don't think I can get away with bringing a cat in, as nice as that sounds. But you know, what I've been thinking about more is, you know, I have a backyard that's mostly concrete, I'd love to bring some water into there, try to find more ways to bring outdoor light into this apartment. Maybe even try to find ways to bring more sort of full spectrum light down here into the basement. You know it listening to these stories makes me realize that we don't have to be as cut off as we have been.

KRISTEN 26:31

Yeah, I mean I've been thinking, my little closet studio. Maybe I could bring some plants in here.

COREY 26:37

Yes, why not? You know, in my first job, I was in a windowless office and I put a giant painting of an outdoor window on the wall. And it made me feel good. I didn't know I was a pioneer in biophilic design, but apparently I was.

KRISTEN 26:50

[laughs] Well, at this point, I think maybe we all can be, we can all put a little bit more biophilic design into our worlds.

COREY 26:56

Well, and I like the idea that when you're less alienated from nature, that maybe you're a slightly kinder person, maybe you're a slightly more connected person. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind being like that.

KRISTEN 27:08

Yeah, I need to become nicer. I'm gonna get some plants.

[laughs]

[MUSIC]

COREY 27:24

Innovation Uncovered is a podcast from Invesco QQQ in partnership with T Brand at the New York Times.

KRISTEN 27:32

Over the rest of the season we’ll be discovering the innovations happening in all of your favorite things: film, music, staying connected, basketball, and for our next episode: wine.

TODD 27:44

I think what we’re seeing is a blurring of the categories--beer, cider, wine, spirits--are starting to communicate a lot more. Even in the wine world there was some kind of insularity where people would be hesitant to share ideas and breakthroughs but now it’s like, nope we’re all in this together.

COREY 28:02

Subscribe to Innovation Uncovered wherever you get your podcasts.

KRISTEN 28: 06

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Postroll 28:23

Innovation Uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. From tech innovators to lesser known biotech and media companies, Invesco QQQ is more than just a tech fund. It’s an ETF that allows you to access the NASDAQ 100 -- some of today’s more innovative companies that are changing the world. To learn more about what this ETF can mean for your portfolio, visit Invesco.com/QQQ. The NASDAQ 100 Index comprises the 100 largest non financial companies traded on the NASDAQ. You cannot invest directly in an index. Risks are involved with investing in ETFs including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in a particular sector such as technology are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing consider the fund’s investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors Incorporated.

Invesco is not affiliated with TBrand Studio, New York Times, Corey S. Powell, Kristen Meinzer, Tim Beatley of the University of Virginia and the Biophilic Cities Network, or Bethany Borel of COOKFOX Architects.

00:00

MUSIC

HOLLY: I think that music composition should be a kind of living, breathing art form that should be responding to the material conditions of life around us right now. I don't think it's interesting to try to just kind of recreate music that was created in an entirely different time.

MUSIC

COREY: Welcome to Innovation Uncovered, a podcast from Invesco QQQ and T Brand at the New York Times, about the ideas and discoveries that are driving our culture forward — from how we play, to what we consume, to how we connect. This episode, we’re looking at music. Technology has made its way into almost every part of our lives today and music is no exception. But, how far should it go? Could something like artificial intelligence ever make… art?

MUSIC

COREY: I'm Corey S. Powell. I’m the former Editor-in-

01:00

Chief of Discover Magazine, and as a science writer I’ve covered everything from dark matter to the origin of life. And I’m joined by my fabulous co-host...

KRISTEN: Hi Corey.

COREY: Hi Kristen.

KRISTEN: Yes. I am Kristen Meinzer. I’m a culture critic and journalist. In this series, I’m out in the field — well, the virtual field at least, thanks to social distancing — reporting on the people and ideas that are reshaping so many aspects of our daily life.

COREY: We bring a little science —

KRISTEN: And a little culture —

COREY: To conversations about innovations impacting our world today.

MUSIC

COREY: So Kristen, in this episode we’re talking about music, and we’re talking about technology. And they're not two different things. In many ways, music history really is a history of technology. It made recording music possible, for one thing. Without tech, there would have been no gramophones, no vinyl LPs, no cassettes, no cds.

02:00

KRISTEN: Well I love my gramophone.

COREY: Oh, who doesn't love a good gramophone?

KRISTEN: And it's also really revolutionized the way people are making music, too. Maybe you’ve been to concerts, I mean, prior to the pandemic, Corey, where instead of guitars, drums and keys, there were just a few laptops on stage. Everything you heard was all happening thanks to a computer.

COREY: You know, I came of age in the 1980's when synthesizer music was everywhere. It was all that dance pop, all that synth pop. And music and technology and sort of progress all seemed just totally wound together, that these bands were making it the sound of the future. I know there are a lot of people who are put off by it, but I love the idea that music is still evolving. That technology is still changing the way people are creative.

KRISTEN: Exactly, and artists are now able to make music with digital synthesizers, MIDI keyboards, and specialized software. They’re creating sounds that previous generations couldn’t have even imagined. And in this episode, we’ll be taking a look at two cutting-edge

03:00

technologies that are pushing music, and musicians, even further.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: When I set off to explore this intersection of music and technology, I knew exactly the person I wanted to talk to.

HOLLY: My name's Holly Herndon and I'm a composer and performer based in Berlin, Germany.

KRISTEN: As I see it, or as I hear it, Holly is one of the most influential voices in this world. Over the course of her musical career, Holly has made four highly-rated albums, and earned a PhD from a program that encompasses both computer research and music composition. Holly grew up in northeast Tennessee and started out the way a lot of musicians come to the art.

HOLLY: When I was younger, I started out performing in church choir and school choir. And then I was also taking guitar lessons and piano lessons like a lot of kids.

KRISTEN: As a teenager, Holly moved to Berlin

04:00

as an exchange student. And that’s where she first experienced electronic music and club culture.

HOLLY: So when I moved to Berlin, I deeply embedded myself in the club culture there. I was basically like a club kid for a couple years

KRISTEN: But it wasn’t until she moved to California and enrolled in an art school that she found her instrument.

HOLLY: When I started working with the laptop, that's when I really felt like I found my own voice as a composer, but also my own performative voice. I always say that one of my best attributes is that I have kind of a average voice. Because if it was, if I had like a fantastic voice, then I would never have maybe created all of the kind of digital layers that I've needed to make it sound special or more interesting.

KRISTEN: Holly is known for making what’s been called ‘laptop music.’

HOLLY: So you know, when a composer sits down to write, often they'll sit down to a piano, or maybe to a guitar or something, you know, people write in many different ways.

05:00

For me, my starting point is with the laptop. So I also make some of my own software. And, it almost seems passe to say that now, that I sit down and start at the laptop, 'cause so many people do that now. But when I started, I guess, 15 or so years ago, that was, especially in the academy, that was this kind of, like, contentious thing of like, "Is a laptop really a valid instrument?"

KRISTEN: When I first heard the term, "laptop music," I imagined DJs on club stages, staring into the blue glow of their screens. You know, lots of synths and electronic music. But that’s not really the kind of music Holly makes.

HOLLY: If I look at it from a wider time horizon, and I think about my kind of origins of coming from singing in choirs, and then moving on to the laptop and being obsessed with vocal processing, and essentially, I think I was always looking for a way to

06:00

transcend the limitations of my physical voice by augmenting it with my computer, and digitally.

KRISTEN: So yes, Holly uses a computer and lots of software and processing, but she also incorporates choral elements. You hear a lot of human vocals.

MUSIC

And, inhuman vocals.

MUSIC

For PROTO, her album that came out in 2019, Holly and her team built a very special collaborator.

MUSIC

HOLLY: So who is SPAWN? SPAWN is what we call our AI baby. And it's basically a metaphor for all of the experiments that we did using machine learning and music.

KRISTEN: I love this child metaphor they chose for SPAWN. And SPAWN, quite simply, is an artificial intelligence that makes music with Holly. The child metaphor really holds up.

HOLLY: You know how people say,

07:00

"It takes a village to raise a child." That, that really this is like such a nascent technology that we see this as something that it takes a community of people to raise. It is trained on a community of people's intellectual work. And we hope that we can influence, from an early start, the kind of direction that this technology goes.

KRISTEN: Now, Holly isn’t the first musician to turn to an AI to make music. In fact, all the way back in 1957, a mathematician and composer teamed up to produce the first piece written entirely by artificial intelligence. Since then, computers have gotten more sophisticated, and other researchers and musicians alike have turned to AI to make music or write lyrics. But it’s been done with varying success, and it’s still not common. Holly’s place in this goes even beyond the music: She’s thinking deeply about the technology she uses, and in a way, the method is part of her art.

So how does it all work? Well, to borrow Holly’s metaphor:

8:00

in a very basic sense, the way you teach a machine is similar to the way you teach a child. You give the machine information for it to analyze and understand and learn from. And, like with any child, Holly and her team had to make big decisions about what to teach SPAWN, and how. For an AI to learn, it needs a lot of information inputs. And so to build up that base of information, you could draw from anonymous databases of recordings, for example. You know, use hundreds of thousands of recordings of anonymous voices. But Holly and her team decided against that.

HOLLY: And that meant, you know, performing audio and recording audio with our ensemble to then train our AI. And so we wanted to really keep it contained so that we could name and compensate everyone who went into training our models.

KRISTEN: They also decided to just teach SPAWN using audio files. Often researchers train an AI using MIDI files. MIDI files don’t actually contain

09:00

any sound, though. They just tell a computer what sound to make. Instead, Holly and her team recorded thousands of sounds, including their own voices. And then, SPAWN takes those sound files and tries to understand the logic behind them, slicing up sounds sample by sample, to figure out what should come next. In the end, SPAWN responds with her own sounds that she’s created, based on what she’s learned.

HOLLY: And what was really exciting about that is some of the sound material that we were getting really early on sounded really similar to some of the earliest recorded sounds. Using my own imagination, I could really see how this could, you know, in several decades time be super high fidelity even though right now it still kind of has that scratchy early recording sound.

KRISTEN: What Holly is referring to there is the sound that SPAWN produced, based on her learnings. I would have assumed that it might sound digital or robotic, but really, it’s more like an old, scratchy analogue sound. So, SPAWN has a ways to go.

10:00

She’s still very much a baby AI, after all.

HOLLY: Usually I feel like I have more control over my tools in the studio. And this was a situation where I felt like I had to just be more relaxed, and kind of go with the flow.

KRISTEN: Holly explained that as time went on, she felt a connection to some of the challenges SPAWN had.

HOLLY: When you're dealing with something like spoken language, statistically speaking, when you pronounce a vowel, like "ooh," often when you're making an "ooh" sound, the sound sample-by-sample that comes next is also an "ooh." Whereas when you're saying like a "tee" or a "puh" sound, they're very short. So often the system would get stuck on vowels. And hearing things like that, even though it sounds, like, very nerdy and specific, those were like really beautiful moments in the studio because I felt like I was understanding why she was getting stuck. I felt like I understood her logic. It felt like there was more of a closeness there, or like an intimacy with that.

KRISTEN: Making a full length album with SPAWN was

11:00

an unusual experience. It’s not often you have to actually teach a collaborator what music and language are before sitting down to compose a piece together. But, Holly also found that in a way, it was pretty similar to working with human collaborators.

HOLLY: You provide material and then that's interpreted through the performer, whether human or inhuman, in a way that's surprising and exciting, and you learn as a composer through that performance. So I think about AI as basically also a kind of sophisticated human coordination technique. It's just a more recent one. But it's really, I see it along a trajectory from, you know, early vocal techniques, early kind of polyphonic singing. Yeah, I don't see the laptop as this separate thing. I see it as part of this human intellectual project that we share.

MUSIC BUMP / STINGER

12:00

COREY: Kristen, I've been interested in music and technology for a long time. Some years ago I covered a project at MIT's Media Lab where they were creating what they called "hyper instruments." These are enhanced instruments that make sounds that kind of go beyond what a normal acoustic instrument can do. And over the years I've gone to a lot of different music and technology festivals. They're fascinating but they do sometimes feel a bit like you're in the middle of giant laboratory experiment. You're hearing unusual sounds that are interesting because they're unfamiliar, but not necessarily beautiful. But what Holly's doing is very beautiful. It's very personal. It's very human. And it's, it's really, it's wonderful to hear technology being used that way.

KRISTEN: I agree with you, Corey. I've been to some of those music festivals. I've been exposed to some of that kind of music. And sometimes it feels more like you're trapped inside a computer rather than connecting with other humans. And that's not what Holly's doing.

COREY: Right. It really feels like Holly is taking a brave stance as an artist.

13:00

Not just creatively, but also, in a sense, economically.

KRISTEN: Yeah, Corey, and speaking of the industry, it is a big and powerful one. In 2019, recorded music alone generated more than $11 billion in revenue. And that’s an increase of 13 percent over the year before. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that a lot of that growth is coming from the way tech is creating new ways to consume and enjoy music.

MUSIC

MIDROLL

Invesco QQQ is an ETF built around a belief that everyone should be able to invest in the possibilities of innovation. By providing access to the NASDAQ 100, Invesco QQQ allows you to be part of hte progress created for all of our futures. To learn more, talk to your advisor, or visit invesco.com/QQQ

14:00

MUSIC

KRISTEN: Now, Iet’s go a little deeper into how technology and algorithms are changing the way we listen to music. For that, I want you to meet Lars.

LARS: Yes, my name is Lars Rasmussen, and I'm currently co-founder and CTO of a music tech startup called Weav Music.

KRISTEN: And just to be up front here, Lars is not a musician. He’s a technologist.

LARS: Well, I've been in tech for what, three decades now.

KRISTEN: His first success was mapping software that is now almost universally used. And so Lars is coming at music and tech a bit differently than Holly. In the most basic sense, Weav is a startup that uses proprietary software to alter the tempo of a song without changing its musicality. Lars calls this adaptive music. Recorded music has long been something that’s static.

LARS: The first recording machines

15:00

were invented in the 1870s, so like 150 years ago. And then there's been this tremendous progress in the record industry. It went from vinyl to CDs, then it was all digital downloads, and now it's all streaming, of course. But the concept of a record didn't change much throughout all that. A record today, no matter how you get it, it's just this one static audio file. And all you can change when you listen to it is the volume. And that we now believe is really a restriction that comes from back when record players were mechanical devices.

KRISTEN: So what Lars is saying is that unless you have the skills and technology to remix it or edit it yourself, your only choice is to listen to music as it was recorded, and turn the volume up or down. When you speed up a song, it starts sounding high pitched and squeaky, "LIKE THIS." When you slow it down, it gets low and bassy, "LIKE THIS."

16:00

That is, unless you’re listening with Weav.

LARS: What happens when you change the tempo of music, it stops sounding like music. And we didn't quite understand why at the time, as we're not from a music background, but we have some friends who are, and they explained, "Look, when an artist and their team makes a song, the arrangement, the instrumentation, the genre, the vibe of the song is very much tied to the tempo."

KRISTEN: And so, Lars figured out a way to speed up and slow down music to match the mood or speed you need, without sounding like chipmunks or someone trying to disguise their voice.

LARS: We're all familiar with this. If we hear an acoustic version, an acoustic cover of a song, that's typically slower than the original that you, might be a pop tune. But likewise if you go to dance club and you hear a radio hit you're familiar with, you'd typically be listening to a dance remix that is faster. And, and then we thought, okay, so it'd be fun to build a thing,

17:00

a new piece of software, where the listener can change the tempo of the song, and whatever tempo you picked, our software would remix it,

KRISTEN: To do that, he borrowed an idea from DJs who make remixes. DJs typically use something called stems. These are individual recordings of each instrument, the drums, the guitar, the piano, the vocals, the bass, the synthesizer and so on. All of these recordings usually are mixed together to create the full song. But, since they’re recorded separately, they can be altered separately, too.

LARS: The listener can change the tempo of the song, and then the song changes its arrangement, it becomes a remix of itself on demand so that no matter what tempo the listener wants, it still sounds like a delightful piece of music, following by the way, the instruction of our producer friend. Our software doesn't figure out what it should sound like, the artist tells our software what it should sound like, and then our software makes that happen in real time.

KRISTEN: Right now, you can test this out yourself with their app,

18:00

Weav Run. The app registers how fast or slow you’re running, or, in my case, walking, using the accelerometers on your phone. They translate that pace into a bpm, or beats per minute. And the song you’re listening to in the app will speed up or slow down accordingly. Go for a run, and the music adjusts to your pace.

LARS: It's the soundtrack that, that top notch professional artists have carefully done for the movies that now is, now can happen automatically in real time, in your life as you're out running.

KRISTEN: And for runners, it’s an extra motivator to keep your pace and keep running. Or you can set your whole playlist to the pace and try to keep up. Oh, and I also noticed a pattern here. Remember how I mentioned Lars isn’t a musician? Well, he also wasn’t a runner before all of this.

LARS: I was not a runner at all when I got started. And now, little by little, you know, there's

19:00

a lot of walking, and a lot of walking and running, in the beginning, but now I run a mile every day at least. So I think I'm at,

KRISTEN: Wow.

LARS: Today was, it's going to be my 457th run in a row.

KRISTEN: Oh my gosh.

LARS: Every day.

KRISTEN: Now, that is impressive. But, beyond inspiring people to get out and run more, Lars is also hoping to not just alter music after it’s been recorded. But also change the way musicians think about writing songs.

LARS: The shift in mindset that we're trying to accomplish here is that, the fact that a record today, every time you listen to it, it sounds exactly the same. That we think of that as an unnecessary restriction on the artist. That's not a feature to us. That's a bug. And we're, we're trying to fix that bug. That record should not sound the same every time you play it. It should sound different based on all of the aspects of the context that we listen to it in. And that's the way it should be.

KRISTEN: He sees this

20:00

as an asset for musicians and music lovers alike.

LARS: We're going to make adaptive record, and we're going to try and make it really like a whole new era in recorded music, which is a tall order. It's not going to happen overnight. But, we think it's, without a doubt, the future of the recording industry that the record itself becomes adaptive. And actually we believe in that so strongly that we think even if we fail, which we're not going to do, but even if we do, someone else will figure this out.

KRISTEN: Personally, I find all of this fascinating. Holly is creating music with an AI baby she’s training. Lars has built software that can seamlessly change the sound of a song, without stripping it of its artistic integrity. And so, we’ll rocket toward the future of music created by artificial intelligence that’s no longer static, thanks to adaptive software. But is that a good thing?

MUSIC TRANSITION

COREY: Kristen, all this technology in music,

21:00

it's exciting and it's a little bit unsettling that so much is changing and that the role of the, the artist as a creative force is changing. I'm just wondering, how does it make you feel? You've been immersed in it. You've been hearing a lot of it. Do you feel good about where music is going?

KRISTEN: Well, I have to say, Corey, after talking with Lars and Holly, they make me feel a little optimistic about it compared to how I kind of went in being, I'll admit it, somewhat suspicious. Because you know, I was afraid that the technology that was being enlisted would eventually take the heart out of the music. But, if anything, they're just finding new ways to bring the heart forward, for us to connect better with the music, and to build a bridge between technology and ourselves, and other people.

COREY: I was thinking, you know, one of the pieces of technology that I rely on the most in life, in my creativity, is one of the oldest pieces of technology around, which is eyeglasses. And people don't normally think of that as a technological enhancement, but, how much of my creative process, sitting down and writing,

22:00

I wouldn't really be much use doing those things without that, that basic piece of technology. In a sense, every art form is a form of technology, from drawing on a cave to making the first musical instruments, all these things were about pushing ourselves forward.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: So I also really wanted to pose the big question to the folks I was talking to. "Is AI taking over music, and is that a good thing?" And Holly has a similar perspective on this whole AI versus human debate.

HOLLY: AI is just us in aggregate. AI is a part of humanity. I don't see technology as a separate thing. I see it as something that comes out of, you know, human society. It's part of us. We made it. Technology should really free us up to be more human together.

KRISTEN: I thought that was such a beautiful idea. That technology is helping us be more human together, not taking away the humanity of music. But, Holly is still collaborating with SPAWN,

23:00

not just letting her run free and make music on her own, yet. She’s working with SPAWN to explore what’s interesting in her own creative process. But, could an AI ever do it alone? To Holly, it depends on what kind of music you’re talking about.

HOLLY: Yeah, I think we could. Whether or not that's what we really want is another question. I mean, already pop music kind of functions in this writing by committee way, anyways. You know, it's like, a lot of us don't know where a lot of these songs come from. You know, they'll have like, 60 different people writing credits on some of the biggest songs that we hear. And of course, that, that will be cheap and will, you know, you'll be able to kind of automate the process in a cost efficient kind of way. And so I see people being interested in that but yeah, whether or not that creates the most interesting or fulfilling music is another question.

KRISTEN: I posed the same question to Lars. And he had a more romantic vision of music as an art. He was skeptical it could ever really happen. He views what he’s doing as more of a

24:00

tool than a replacement for human interventions.

LARS: What we've invented is a richer canvas for the artist to make richer artistic experiences for their fans. And we've invented a bunch of paintbrushes, as well, to help the artist make those richer artistic experiences. I also think from maybe a philosophical point of view, I'm not sure it's a terribly good idea to have art made by computers and AI. That's just my, my personal opinion. I think we should use computers and AI to do the work for us, and so that we have more time to make art, but not the other way around.

KRISTEN: Before we said goodbye, Holly gave me another perspective on the AI/human divide, specific to how she’s been processing life lately.

HOLLY: The kind of day-to-day mood of living through a pandemic is something that I as a human am processing in ways that I might not even be fully aware of the entire time. And then that kind of seeps through and, and makes its way into my music.

25:00

Our daily lived experience does find its way into the kind of music that we make, whether that be the kind of tonal palette that we use, or the lyrics that we're writing. Of course, our, our kind of lived experience finds its way in there. And I think that that's really beautiful. I think it, it also can happen in ways that are really unexpected and in ways that I don't fully understand yet. I would say my biggest takeaway from this is that I really, really miss live performance and performing with my ensemble, and I will not take it for granted ever again. [laughs]

KRISTEN: From a strictly business standpoint, Lars has also noticed a difference in his work due to Covid-19.

LARS: Once lockdown started going into effect across the country, our daily run counts almost doubled just in the span of a week.

KRISTEN: Wow.

LARS: And even,

KRISTEN: Wow.

LARS: You know, we can see that on our own team, you know, because outdoor running is one of the, one of the few remaining encouraged way to exercise, as the gyms have closed,

26:00

as group exercising is just not safe right now with the, with the virus out there.

KRISTEN: And so, seeing that spike in interest, Lars and his team decided to make the app free for as long as the lockdown continues.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: Holly’s SPAWN AI and Lars’ adaptive app are both making music that’s helping them, and others, cope.

MUSIC

COREY: You're really making me think about how much music has meant to me during these past few weeks. We've all been in isolation. We've all been kind of cutting down our contacts. But being able to listen to music, being able to hear all different genres, all the different types of creative voices out there, it's, it's boosted me. It's boosted my family. I know that's true for a lot of other people as well. It would be very hard to get through this if we didn't have music, and if we didn't have technology that was helping us get that music.

27:00

KRISTEN: It’s hard to imagine when we’ll be able to actually safely go to a packed concert hall again, or when a band will be able to get together to even record again.

COREY: Yeah. It's a, it's a tough time for all kinds of creative people. It's a tough time for everyone but hopefully, artists and technologists will keep coming up with new innovations that allow them to make music to communicate with us in ways that let us have access to those feelings, to all that beauty, wherever we are, whatever we're doing.

KRISTEN: And I know once they do, you and I will be there listening.

MUSIC UP

COREY: Innovation Uncovered is a podcast from Invesco QQQ, in partnership with T Brand at the New York Times.

KRISTEN: Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review Innovation Uncovered wherever you get your podcasts. And tell your friends about the show. For the next episode, we’ll be looking at aging, and the technologies that are aiming to keep us connected as we get older.

LAURA CLIP: We've spent so much time looking at things like

28:00

smoking and obesity, and believe it or not, some of the recent research has demonstrated that loneliness or social isolation, in particular, may be just as damaging to our overall health and well-being as smoking. So it absolutely plays a very big role in how we age.

COREY: Thanks for listening. See you next time and, rock on!

MUSIC

Innovation Uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. From tech innovators to lesser known biotech and media companies, Invesco QQQ is more than just a tech fund. It’s an ETF that allows you to access the NASDAQ 100 -- some of today’s more innovative companies that are changing the world. To learn more about what this ETF can mean for your portfolio, visit Invesco.com/QQQ. The NASDAQ 100 Index comprises the 100 largest non financial companies traded on the NASDAQ. You cannot invest directly in an index. Risks are involved with investing in ETFs including possible loss of money. EFTs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing consider the fund’s investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors Incorporated.

29:31

Invesco is not affiliated with TBrand Studio, New York Times, Corey S.Powell, Kristen Meinzer, Holly Herndon or Lars Rasmussen of Weav Music or Weav Run. This should not be construed as an endorsement for any of the companies discussed in this podcast.

00:00

MUSIC

KYLE: We're all being put into a situation where for the first time we're experiencing the realities of older adults. We went from having the entire world at our fingertips to all of a sudden we are holed up in our homes with not a lot that we're really able to access, and not a lot of people that we're able to access. And the amazing silver lining is that it's going to allow people to really develop this empathy for what it means to age, and why it's so important that we create things like this technology for this demographic.

MUSIC

COREY: Welcome to Innovation Uncovered, a podcast from Invesco QQQ and T Brand at the New York Times. It’s about the ideas and discoveries driving our culture forward — from how we play, to what we consume, to how we connect.

KRISTEN: And being connected to those we love and care about has probably never felt as critical as it has these last few months. It’s been especially hard for older people.

01:00

COREY: It really has been. But there’s also good news: innovators are now adapting tech for folks who are over 65. Their goal is to bring people together in new ways, no matter where they are. And to do that, they’re taking familiar technologies, things like tablets and virtual reality, and they're reimagining them in ways that are far beyond their mainstream uses.

THEME MUSIC

COREY: I'm Corey S. Powell. I’m the former Editor-in-Chief of Discover Magazine, and as a science writer I’ve covered everything from dark matter to the origin of life.

KRISTEN: And I'm Kristen Meinzer. I’m a culture critic and journalist. I’m going to be your eyes and ears out in the field.

COREY: We bring a little science,

KRISTEN: And a little culture,

COREY: To conversations about innovations impacting our world today.

MUSIC OUT

KRISTEN: Corey, I know a lot of us have been feeling isolated over these past few months, and I can only imagine that it’s worse for older people who are far away from their families.

COREY: I mean, listen, it’s been tough enough for me!

KRISTEN: You know, this makes me think about my late Nanna, who was my role model

02:00

in life.

COREY: Oh.

KRISTEN: She had the most active social life of anyone I've ever known. She volunteered with who she called, "The Old People," even in her 80's. She was in two choirs. She was active in her church. She was in two bridge clubs. She always was doing something. She dated up until the end and she always said her active social life kept her sharp and happy. And unfortunately, not everybody is able to do what my Nanna did. Not everybody's able to get out there and do as much as she did. Some people have, you know, mobility issues, or other reasons why they can't be in two choirs and dating and so on, in their 80's.

COREY: Right! And studies show that more than a quarter of older Americans live alone. That adds up to at least 13.8 million people. And that’s a big deal, especially during a pandemic.

KRISTEN: And especially because being isolated isn’t just about feeling lonely. It can have real consequences.

COREY: Exactly. Right now, even the people who are physically able to go out still can’t do it. Which means we really need to lean on ways to connect virtually.

KRISTEN: Yes. Like we are right now, Corey.

03:00

COREY: Yes. This is nice. And, you know, my own parents, they're in their 80s, but they very quickly adapted to social media when it came along. And now they're doing video calls. I maybe spend a little more time doing tech support for them than I'd ideally like, but, you know, they're doing it.

KRISTEN: A lot of folks have trouble with video calls and social media, Corey. Some even more so than your parents and they're not lucky enough to have you for tech support.

COREY: Oh, those poor souls.

KRISTEN: And that’s exactly why technologists have been working to solve this problem for years. And they’ve come up with some pretty innovative solutions that we need now more than ever.

** MUX BUMP / STINGER ** // THEME MUSIC OUT

KRISTEN: To learn more about how technology is keeping folks connected as they age, I spoke with Isaac Lien. About seven years ago, Isaac and his dad Scott were trying to stay in touch with Isaac’s grandmother. She lived across the country, and when they

04:00

tried to talk on the phone, they noticed it just wasn’t working anymore.

ISAAC: You know, we'd want to do phone calls, but we had a challenge where, due to her hearing impairments, phone calls just didn't work well for her, and it was a problem that hearing aids and making the volume louder wouldn't fix. So that left us in a predicament where, you know, we'd call her but she couldn't understand us, so it created this barrier of communication.

KRISTEN: And so, they tried video calls. But eventually, she didn’t want to do those, either.

ISAAC: It was really sad for my dad and I, and we were kind of like, "Why doesn't she want to do video calls with us? What's wrong?"

KRISTEN: It turned out, the technology itself was wrong. The interface was frustrating, and it wasn't intuitive. Sometimes her wi-fi would cut out. Or the app would update, and then all the sudden, everything she’d learned to navigate looked totally different.

ISAAC: And the thing that really threw us over the edge in terms of looking for a solution was, it was in December of 2013 and we were visiting her back in Iowa for our family Christmas. So my dad and I spent the entire Christmas getting the viruses off her computer, resetting her wifi router,

05:00

upgrading her internet, all these things. And on our way home from Christmas, when we were driving back, we realized, "Oh my gosh, we just spent the entire family Christmas trying to fix the very technology that doesn't even keep us connected while we're apart." And it was at that moment we realized, "Wow, this, this is a problem. You know, we don't want this ever to happen again." And, "What would a solution look like?"

KRISTEN: And so Isaac did what any grandson would do, he started a company with his dad. It’s called GrandPad. Together, they developed a device that would help his grandma, and, eventually, more than 700,000 others, connect to their loved ones. First, they tested out their idea.

ISAAC: It has a big button that said, "Video Call Scott and Isaac." We put it on a preloaded tablet that was connected to the internet and sent it to her. She could press the button and it would connect with us in a video call on the other end. So by doing that, we proved if we make the technology seamless, where she's not worried about wi-fi passwords or logins, she can actually really enjoy it and get benefit from it.

KRISTEN: From there, they hit the ground running. They knew they couldn’t

06:00

just make an app. Instead, they had to make the entire experience more streamlined, and intuitive. They needed to build the software and the hardware. And while GrandPad might look just like a regular tablet, what makes it so innovative is that it’s been completely redesigned around older people’s needs.

ISAAC: It has dual front facing stereo speakers, so the speakers are facing the user. They're very loud, crisp and quality audio. So it's louder than your standard tablet. And most people, even with moderate hearing loss can still hear quite well on the GrandPad. But then beyond that, we've added in features like real-time text, which means when I'm calling my grandma, I can be typing from my computer, and as I type character for character, those actually show up on my grandma's GrandPad screen. So let's say I'm telling her that I'm coming by to visit at 7:30, I can say it, she can read my lips, but I can also type in the characters on the GrandPad, so that shows up for her as well.

KRISTEN: The GrandPad also has a wireless charger, so that you don’t have to fiddle with plugging it in, and it’s

07:00

designed to be ergonomic and comfortable to hold. Isaac also told me about another hardware challenge they had to tackle when building the tablet that I hadn’t even thought of before. Neither had Isaac or his team until they talked to one of his users.

ISAAC: Yeah. She was the seventh oldest person in the entire world, and her name was Anna. Amazing lady. We got to show her an early version of GrandPad. And one of the things we learned was, for her, when she would touch the screen, it wouldn't register her taps. It wouldn't register her finger on the screen of the GrandPad. And what had happened for her was because her hands were quite dry, just something that happen with, with old age, being 114, it wouldn't register her taps on the screen. So we had to look at, "Okay, how can we solve a problem like that?" We include a stylus. We adjust the sensitivity of the screen and do different things that make it so when Anna touches the device, it'll work just like our smartphones would when we try to use them.

KRISTEN: Beyond the tablet itself, the GrandPad team has taken care to build a user interface that is extremely easy to navigate,

08:00

because they consult the very people who will be using it.

ISAAC: We actually employ people who are in their 80s, 90s, and 100s. Our oldest employee is 106 years old. He advises us on our design, our product process, and we get his wonderful feedback on everything new that we're doing. So we're not designing it, you know, in a vacuum or just coming up with these ideas on a whiteboard of, you know, "What would, what does someone who's 106 want to do? What problems does he have?" We actually visit him in his home, get his feedback, get his wisdom, and get his input on what we ultimately build.

KRISTEN: And it seems to be working. Isaac sent us a few interviews with users that the company did a while back. One of those users was Joan.

JOAN: When you’re alone, you’re not alone. You just go push a few buttons and everybody’s there. And I see these great grandkids now, there’s 16 of them, I get pictures from them all the time and I see them grow up. And when they go on vacation, I follow right along.

09:00

KRISTEN: And staying up to date on all of those kids and grandkids keeps her busy.

JOAN: And I’m connected to all my grandkids and all my kids, and you’re only connected to who you want to be connected to. So, I got a big family, I get a lot of pictures.

MUSIC TRANSITION

KRISTEN: Ultimately, the GrandPad experience is not about flashy new apps or fancy features. It’s the lack of frustration and stress involved in learning how to use a new device.

ISAAC: We've had cases where people send a GrandPad to their parent and they assume that they would set it up when they go visit them this weekend. They assume their parent couldn't do it on their own because they've struggled with technology in the past. But then that same day when the GrandPad arrive, they look at their smartphone and they get a video call from their mom, who's in her 90s, and, you know, it's the first time that she's ever done a video call and she did it on her own.

KRISTEN: This isn’t just about making it easy to call family, though. There are real health issues

10:00

connected to isolation and loneliness that technology like GrandPad can help address.

LAURA: We've spent so much time looking at things like smoking and obesity, and believe it or not, some of the recent research to come out has demonstrated that loneliness, or social isolation in particular, may be just as damaging to our overall health and wellbeing as smoking. It absolutely plays a very big role in how we age.

KRISTEN: That’s Laura Zettel-Watson. She’s a professor in the psychology department, and is the chair of the Aging Studies Program at California State University, Fullerton.

LAURA: My particular focus is on the social relationships of older adults and more specifically, older adults who may be at risk for a lack of social support. So I look at different populations of older adults, those who have been widowed, maybe who were never married or aging without a

11:00

spouse or children.

KRISTEN: I turned to Laura to better understand how this problem of loneliness and isolation shows up as we age, because it's not just about feeling a little sad. For folks who are isolated because they live alone, and are stuck at home, for example, not having human contact actually has a big effect on your mental health.

LAURA: From a mental health perspective, people can feel like their freedom or independence has been lost. And for older adults, that can be just as damaging as losing their, you know, driver's license, or a spouse. Related to that, is the stress that we suffer from being on our own. For other people who are socially isolated, this can mean that they're unable to get to their routine appointments or to religious services. And for many older adults, that might be their primary means of social interaction.

KRISTEN: What many people don’t realize is that loneliness can also have severe physical effects.

LAURA: We know that there is

12:00

cognitive impairment among folks who are isolated. And then there's the obvious things like depression or anxiety. Being isolated can lead to a decline in our positive health behaviors. So that is our diet, our sleep, our exercise. This could be that as fresh foods become harder to access, our diet becomes less balanced. That can harm our nutritional health, that can increase our obesity risk. We're also worried about hypertension that is associated with social isolation. And in severe cases, can lead to stroke or heart attack.

KRISTEN: Remember, older adults living alone, this is a big population. About 13.8 million people. And this is likely to become an even bigger issue as time goes on. Especially as baby boomers are getting older. It’s not just Americans: Around the globe, populations aged 65 and older are the fastest growing group. By 2050, one in every six people will be over

13:00

65, according to the United Nations. And if there’s any upside from the last six months, I think we all are more concerned about the wellbeing of the older people in our lives.

MUSIC UP

COREY: As you just mentioned, Kristen, this really is a huge, global issue. Fortunately, some countries have been coming up with innovative ways to help their aging populations for a while now. I’m thinking about Japan in particular. More than a quarter of the population there is over 65. It's the country with the highest proportion of older adults in the world right now.

KRISTEN: And they’re really embracing that challenge with simple innovations to keep city life possible as folks age.

COREY: Right, some of them seem small but they're extremely important. In Tokyo, public buildings and train stations are widely equipped with ramps and elevators to help the elderly. And the ATMs and traffic lights there, they will talk to you.

KRISTEN: And, Japan is not alone. There are other technologists out there, there are other societies that are also embracing aging as we all

14:00

should, hopefully. I mean, my dream is that I do become an older adult some day. And, that's why I love what Isaac is doing with GrandPad. It's accepting that we're gonna get older and it's also being really helpful and really simple. He’s addressing the problem of connection, and making it easy to use.

COREY: Kristen, you know, you've inspired me to look back into the history of technology designed to assist people as they get older. And there have been, honestly, quite a few fascinating attempts to do that over the years. Some of them might seem a little eccentric at first. Here's an example: I don't know if you've seen the robotic seal? It's modeled after a baby harp seal and it debuted back in the early 2000s.

KRISTEN: Oh,

COREY: Yeah. I know. It really looks like a baby seal.

KRISTEN: Oh my gosh, I need a robotic baby harp seal, Corey. How do I get one of these robotic baby harp seals?

COREY: Kristen, it's not for you, at least, not just yet. Give it time. The robotic seal was actually designed to help older adults, especially those with dementia, you know, providing the comfort of a pet without all of the feeding and cleaning and all those difficult tasks that can get more and more difficult

15:00

as you age. And really, that’s just one example of how roboticists are trying to address this huge problem of social isolation. They're using robots to do things like check in on people at home, in hospitals, or in retirement communities, for instance.

KRISTEN: And Corey, you know, there are other folks out there who are also doing that. They're looking at futuristic technologies and how they can help foster connection as we age. One way they're doing that is through virtual reality, which I am so excited about. We'll have more on that after the break.

MUSIC

MIDROLL

Invesco QQQ is an ETF built around a belief that everyone should be able to invest in the possibilities of innovation. By providing access to the NASDAQ 100, Invesco QQQ allows you to be part of the progress created for all of our futures. To learn more, talk to your advisor, or visit

16:00

invesco.com/QQQ.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: I’ve often thought of virtual reality as something that’s showcased at video game and tech conventions. But, Kyle Rand is turning that idea on its head, and bringing virtual reality into retirement communities.

KYLE: My name's Kyle Rand. I'm one of the co founders and CEO of Rendever, a company that's using virtual reality to overcome social isolation through the power of shared experiences.

KRISTEN: And the whole idea for Rendever was also inspired by a grandma. Kyle’s grandma.

KYLE: We moved her into a community and she, at first, spent a lot of time wandering the halls trying to act as a nurse, because she was a nurse. She was a nursing professor. But tried to actually act as a nurse for other residents for a while, ultimately was redirected back to her room, and just spent a lot of time in her room, and it's there that she kind of just spent too much time watching TV, not really interacting, not really having the kind of life that she always had,

17:00

and her, her cognitive decline ended up happening pretty quickly.

KRISTEN: Kyle had also done a lot of work with older adults, and understood that his grandma’s loneliness and isolation was a part of a broader trend. And so one day, he had an idea that virtual reality might be able to help.

KYLE: We take what kind of typically happens in a senior living setting, which is people go and they play bingo, or they'll do arts and crafts, and play card games, and we give them the opportunity to really experience the world, and to remove this physical limitation of, you know, the four walls of their community. And so we'll have a group of residents all sitting around a table. They'll all put on a VR headset, and then they'll all go somewhere together. So they'll be transported to the top of the Eiffel Tower, or they'll go and they'll walk around. Because if you just put a headset on someone, then they're just experiencing something by themselves. They're actually kind of isolated. But if you're all doing it together, you're all looking at the same things together, then you're having this natural conversation form around the experience, and that's where the real magic comes in.

18:00

KRISTEN: And the magic is real. Kyle told me about one example of a resident at a senior community in Connecticut. Her name is Mickey, and she was the life of the community, outgoing. She knew everyone by name. Then, she was diagnosed with dementia, which made it so that she couldn’t really talk, or form sentences. And that really affected her socializing.

KYLE: So we put her in a room full of golden retriever puppies. And I kid you not, it was like the lights just turned back on. All of a sudden, this huge smile came across her face. She started, like, reaching out and calling out to the puppies and telling the how cute they were, just like these little micro sentences, and like, these micro moments of joy, from being surrounded by these cute animals, to the point that she actually took that headset off, and she had this look of amazement, and followed us out of the building telling us that, A, she loved it, but B, that she thought that we should be doing this with kids and we should be selling this into schools, and, like, how amazing

19:00

would it be if you could learn using this technology? And, you know, if you really pause, what that means is she went from, you know, being unable to speak in full sentences, to actually pitching us business ideas just after one VR session.

KRISTEN: And it’s this communal connection that I found so compelling about Kyle and Rendever. Because it’s not just for all the residents in a senior living facility. Family and friends can also participate. You’re seeing the same thing. You can talk about that experience together. So, even if you can’t actually visit France as a family, you can do it in VR.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: Of all the amazing VR experiences Kyle told me about, traveling the world, hanging out with puppies, even riding a roller coaster, I think my favorite one was a little more personal.

KYLE: We have an integration in, in which we're able to essentially type in any address in the world and bring somebody there in VR. So if you imagine that you can take someone back to their childhood home, or you can bring people back to, you know, the high school that they went to, or the college they went to,

20:00

or even where they got married, right? All these really meaningful places. And it's one thing to look at them on a computer screen or to look at old photos, but to be in VR and have, like, have that childhood house be life size in front of you, it makes you actually feel like you're there. And when you have that, right, it's this, like, really crazy visual stimuli, where all these stories and memories just kind of start to spill out because it's so powerful.

KRISTEN: Kyle tried this with his own grandfather.

KYLE: And we stayed up until 2:00 AM, just walking around his favorite hotspots in Long Island, and like, all the places he used to live. He would talk to me about the place he used to get hot dogs across the street from, like, one of his homes. It's, it's just there, there's something about the parts of your memory that, like, you actually lived and experienced, that were so significant.

KRISTEN: And in the future, Rendever is hoping to make it easier to make new memories, not just share the old ones.

KYLE: One of the other things families can do, which is just a little bit hard right now is, they, they can actually take a 360 camera, and they can film, you know, a personal event that their loved one can't make it to.

21:00

So you can imagine, you know, especially right now, a wedding, if, all of my friends' wedding are being canceled, so maybe this is a bad example at this moment. But, you know, even if it was a small scale wedding, you could take a 360 camera, film it, and then upload it to the platform. And then your loved one, who's stuck and unable to leave the senior living community, they can actually put on a VR headset and they can be there at the wedding, sitting front and center alongside, like, the rest of their family.

KRISTEN: Right now, Rendever is in about 150 senior living communities in the US and Canada, and they just released in Australia, as well. And they’re hoping to keep fostering these relationships, with old friends and family, and new connections, too.

KYLE: I think what we're doing, and what this tech is doing, is it's really kind of enabling these new connections to be formed, right? Through what, you know, we think of as a positive shared experience, because that, that's where, you know, our, our core hypothesis is that the foundation of human relationships are

22:00

shared positive experiences. So if you stay aging with the people who you've had a lifetime of experiences with, great. You have that connection. If you move into a setting where you don't have any of those connections, what we're enabling now and what's new and exciting about what VR can do is, it's giving people these shared experiences to kind of form new relationships on.

MUSIC TRANSITION

KRISTEN: So, Corey, have you ever tried out VR?

COREY: I'm gonna betray a little bit of my own age. I first tried out VR, ooh, 20 or 30 years ago, in the very early days of,

KRISTEN: Oh my gosh.

COREY: The technology.

KRISTEN: Wow. I didn't even know it existed back then.

COREY: Back then it was, the headset was like putting a bowling ball on your head. The displays were, like, looking at little squares moving around. You remember the very early days of video games, what they looked like?

KRISTEN: Oh, yes. Yes.

COREY: And I thought, "You know, this technology, it's an interesting idea. It's a lot of hype.

23:00

This thing is going nowhere." And then, just recently I tried out a virtual reality simulator at a science museum with my daughters and, whoa! It was like being inside a movie.

KRISTEN: I've only tried VR in the last couple of years and that was my experience, too. I really felt like I was being dropped into the middle of a different universe. And I was so immersed in it and began walking around in it. I didn't even realize I was about to fall down the stairs until somebody caught me and said, "Hey, hey, hey! Sit down while you're using those glasses!"

COREY: Right, well that immediacy, that power, it's what makes VR so interesting, but it's also what makes it so useful. It's being used successfully to help people deal with all kinds of problems, to quit smoking, to heal post-traumatic stress, or to deal with fears like, fear of heights, for instance. Getting people past that giddy feeling that you get when you look down. Does that ever happen to you?

KRISTEN: It does when there's not a guard rail. For crying out loud, put up guard rails people!

COREY: Listen, I, I get that feeling sometimes. Even in the movies, when there's a scene on the ledge, or the edge of a mountain,

24:00

my palms get all sweaty. So, I might need just a little dose of VR therapy.

KRISTEN: Well, VR therapy isn't just for heights, and for people who have phobias. It goes beyond that, some developers are now even using it in reminiscence therapy. If you’re not familiar with reminiscence therapy, it’s kind of like what Kyle was talking about just a few minutes ago. It’s a treatment to help folks who are experiencing cognitive decline, like dementia, and it involves all the senses to remember moments from their past and places from their past. And some senior facilities have done this by recreating entire towns from people's childhoods. It’s basically an elaborate movie set they've made to make it look like the 1950s, with storefronts, beauty shops, a diner and so on.

COREY: And, of course, with virtual reality, you don’t have to build an actual, physical movie set. And you could even personalize it for each individual.

KRISTEN: While there is not a cure for dementia, these immersive environments do seem to help some folks feel less distressed, more

25:00

engaged, and happier.

**MUSIC**

KRISTEN: Now, living through this pandemic, staying home, staying away from friends and family, I'd like to think it’s given everyone a bit more empathy. Kyle Rand has certainly noticed this.

KYLE: We're all being put into a situation where for the first time probably in a lot of our lives, we are, we're experiencing the realities of older adults' daily lives. We went from having the entire world at our fingertips, you know, the cities that we lived in, the towns that we lived in, the planes that we could quickly board, and the friends that we could visit, to all of a sudden, we are holed up in our homes with not a lot that we're really able to access, and not a lot of people that we're able to access. And I think everyone right now is feeling the real pains of what that sudden transition is. And the amazing silver lining is that it's going to allow people to really develop this empathy for what it means

26:00

to age, and why it's so important that we create things like this technology for this demographic.

KRISTEN: That’s something that showed up in Isaac Lien’s work, too. He’s seen a huge uptick in folks using GrandPad. And he’s hopeful that the stress of this present moment will lead to a change in the way technologists and caregivers think about their work in the future.

ISAAC: People are seeing now that it's so critical to have connected devices in the home that allow that communication and caregiving to take place virtually with their, with their caregivers, with their medical providers. And, you know, that need has just been so highlighted by COVID-19 and there definitely will be a fundamental shift in the world after this. After we recover from this pandemic, the world will never look the same. And I think it's going to enable a lot of great and innovative solutions, some that are in progress now and some that haven't even been conceived yet. But what we do know is, when another pandemic like this may happen, the world needs to be much more prepared for it and have solutions in place that allow us to care for those who are most at risk.

27:00

MUSIC

KRISTEN: I’m looking forward to the time when we can all safely get together again. And when that happens, Isaac hopes that GrandPad can actually inspire a deeper connection.

ISAAC: A technology is a means to an end where someone can do a video call with their grandmother, but really the important thing is the two human beings who are connecting on each end. That's what's important. Our goal ultimately is we would love for GrandPad to help families actually be inspired to spend more time together in person. So let's say that the grandson is off at college who wasn't really connected with his grandma, can start doing video calls because of GrandPads, and now he's actually inspired to go and visit her when he's back home because now he knows her a little better, and spend more time together in person. That's the ultimate goal that we have. Our goal is not to replace any in-person communication with technology. We'd love to actually increase the amount of human-to-human in-person communication.

KRISTEN: I guess what I take away from all of this is that whether you’re young or old, connection is important for health and well-being, and

28:00

just overall happiness. And in a way, what Kyle and Isaac are doing could help everyone feel a little less isolated, no matter what their age.

MUSIC UP

COREY: You know, Kristen, this whole conversation has me thinking, by the time we're old, are we gonna be doing hologram visits to each other? Are we gonna be sending our robots to check in on each other?

KRISTEN: Well, I have zero doubt that there will be all sorts of interesting technologies we’re not even dreaming of.

COREY: You know, one surprising effect of this pandemic is how much it makes me feel like we’re living in the future right now. When I was a kid, it seemed like every science fiction story I read, or TV show I watched, showed people communicating with some kind of futuristic high-tech video phones. Well, over the past few months I’ve had video phone meetings, or at least I've had video work meetings.

KRISTEN: Oh, and let's not forget, video recording sessions, Corey, like the one we're on right now.

COREY: Yes, some great video recording sessions with you.

29:00

Video game nights with a whole new group of friends who I've met online. Video Passover seder with a bunch of relatives who I hadn’t seen in years. It’s all helped to make this period of isolation feel a bit less lonely, and it's made me truly optimistic about where the technology of connection will take us next.

MUSIC

COREY: Innovation Uncovered is a podcast from Invesco QQQ, in partnership with T Brand at the New York Times.

KRISTEN: Throughout this series, we’re taking a look at all of the innovative work that goes into the things you love. Next week: How visual effects artists are on the quest to recreate reality in film.

CLIP: There's an argument to be made that by insisting that our special effects be so stubbornly realistic, we are depriving a new generation of their imaginative capacity.

COREY: Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review Innovation Uncovered wherever you get your podcasts. And tell your friends about the show.

KRISTEN: Thank you so much for

30:00

listening. We'll see you next time. Don’t be a stranger!

MUSIC

[AD]

Innovation Uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. From tech innovators to lesser known biotech and media companies, Invesco QQQ is more than just a tech fund. It's an ETF that allows you to access the NASDAQ 100. Some of today's most innovative companies that are changing the world. To learn more about what this ETF can mean for your portfolio, visit Invesco.com/QQQ. The NASDAQ 100 Index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the Nasdaq. You cannot invest directly in an index. Risks are involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors Incorporated.

31:12

Invesco is not affiliated with T Brand, New York Times, Corey S.Powell, Kristen Meinzer, Isaac Lien of GrandPad, Laura Zettel-Watson of the California State University, Fullerton and Kyle Rand of Rendever.

00:00

MUSIC

JOSH: Film itself is a technological process. It's creating a kind of reality all through this machine really, the camera and the sound recording and all the effects that go into a film. And there's an illusion of life. There's an illusion of reality, but that's all created by technology.

MUSIC

COREY: Welcome to Innovation Uncovered, a podcast from Invesco QQQ and T Brand at the New York Times. It’s about the ideas and discoveries that are driving our culture forward — from how we play, to what we consume, to how we connect.

In this episode, we are going to the movies. Innovators are constantly pushing the boundaries of what visual effects can create, or recreate, on-screen. Now, maybe you’re thinking of a scene you saw in some science fiction epic or a fantasy film. But it turns out, the hardest thing to achieve with digital effects

01:00

might be scenes that land a lot closer to reality.

MUSIC

COREY: I'm Corey S. Powell. I’m the former Editor-in-Chief of Discover Magazine, and as a science writer I’ve covered everything from dark matter to the origin of life. And I’m joined today by my fabulous co-host.

KRISTEN: I'm Kristen Meinzer. I’m a culture critic and journalist. And I’m going to be your eyes and ears out in the field or in this case, in the theater.

COREY: Bringing a little science,

KRISTEN: And a little culture,

COREY: To conversations about innovations impacting our world today.

MUSIC OUT

COREY: Now Kristen, I know I often think of visual effects as something digital, done with powerful computers and software. But, it’s actually something that filmmakers have been using since the very beginning. I mean, the way beginning, dating all the way back to the late 1800s. In those early days, effects were done in a physical way with colored lenses, miniatures, and projected images.

KRISTEN: Yeah, and as I understand it,

02:00

Corey, things were done mostly analogue for quite a long time after that, too.

COREY: Exactly. It wasn’t really until the early 1990s that computers were fast enough and powerful enough for visual effects to go digital.

KRISTEN: You know, when I’m watching older movies, Corey, the effects sometimes stand out, and not in a good way. They look dated and obvious. And that’s something visual effects artists are still grappling with: How do they make a scene look real or believable?

COREY: It’s a fascinating problem: Can you even make something that’s been constructed with software look like it’s a part of the real world?

KRISTEN: Well, new computer and camera technologies are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

COREY: Which could be especially useful now in the middle of a pandemic.

KRISTEN: Right. They’re using visual effects to help solve new problems when filmmakers can’t be on location.

COREY: Ooh, nice. Moviemaking by remote control.

KRISTEN: Maybe. But at the most extreme end of things this raises a question: Could these effects replace humans with virtual actors? And, is that what we want?

**MUSIC BUMP/STINGER**

03:00

KRISTEN: To start this journey into special effects, I thought it would be interesting to talk to someone who’s worked on some of the most groundbreaking film innovations.

PABLO: My name is Pablo Helman. I'm the Visual Effect Supervisor at ILM. Been there 24 years.

KRISTEN: ILM, also known as Industrial Light and Magic, is a visual effects company based in San Francisco. They’ve been around since the 1970s, and they’re known for pioneering a lot of production techniques used today. Plus, they’ve helped bring to life countless beloved films that have become cultural touchstones. In all of Pablo’s 24 years at ILM, he’s worked on a wide variety of movies. Some have been set in space, in galaxies far, far away, some have giant apocalyptic explosions. Some have killer robots, and aliens. But I was surprised to learn that he

04:00

actually likes working on realistic films more than those flashy sci-fi worlds.

PABLO: Like, in the case of the Irishman, it was not science fiction, it was reality, which I love reality more than science fiction, to be honest, because in reality I have all the reference I can possibly get because it's right in front of me.

KRISTEN: Pablo is referring to the famous 2019 mob film. For this movie, Pablo worked on the de-aging effects. The film follows its characters throughout many decades of their lives. And, it was important to the director that those characters were played by the same actors, rather than getting a younger actor to play the character at a younger age. So, Pablo had the task of digitally de-aging them. In the early days, filmmakers would have to use makeup and hair dye, and, you know, some sneaky camera tricks, like soft focus, to make someone look older or younger. As technology advanced, visual effects artists started to adopt different tools. Digital effects made aging or de-aging an actor

05:00

look more realistic than ever before. But in order to film scenes that would get these effects, actors had to look kind of ridiculous, with markers that look like ping pong balls stuck all over their faces.

PABLO: The reason why the markers are there is because you're basically having the computer take a look at a visual cue of what the camera is getting, right? And the computer takes a look at those markers, and it creates what's called a mesh, or a surface, based on those markers and has some depths. And that was basically the only way that you could measure and create geometry from a performance. But I think the challenge in Irishman was to say, "Well, if you don't have the markers, then how can you create geometry from that?"

KRISTEN: That was Pablo’s challenge: To find a way to capture this visual data, and build a meaningful image based on it. And beyond creating something that looked real to the audience, the director also wanted the actors to have an

06:00

authentic connection while they were playing out the scene. He wanted them to be looking right at each other, reacting to one another. Not trying to ignore the fact that they had ping pong balls all over their faces.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: And so, Pablo and his team had to invent a new method. The first step was to capture the actors doing a variety of boring things, like opening and closing their mouths, smiling, frowning, looking outraged. Those images were then fed into special software the team built to create a digital version of the actors, in a sense. But, the team didn’t just create a computer-generated version of these actors, and then make scenes of the movie that way. Remember, the director wanted that real, authentic scene with real actors, who look totally normal, no markers, nothing. To do that, they needed to build a new camera rig altogether, one that would give them three points of view.

PABLO: So the center camera is a director camera and the other two cameras are called witness cameras,

07:00

and are left and right of the director's camera. And once you have three points of view, then you can create 3D geometry because the computer takes a look at those, those three lenses and they are like three eyes. That's why we have two eyes, right? When we look forward, the left and the right eye are telling us depth. They're giving us depth information and position information.

KRISTEN: Pablo and his team worked on this innovation for four years. Because after they built the camera rig, and after all the scenes were shot, they still needed to go through a long post-production process, to digitally de-age the actors.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: Four years, for visual effects that, when you think about it, should be unnoticeable. They should look seamless and real. And yet, even with all that work, there’s still more to be done.

PABLO: One of the main things that the computer has a lot of problems with is ambiguity. So, it was really important for us to kind of dissect all, all the things that make a

08:00

performance ambiguous. And that is present in every one of these performances, because in the Irishman, it is about murders and it's about the uh, mobsters and a bunch of different things about lying. And when you lie, there's usually, you know, something in your face that is not lying, and that's ambiguity, right? If your eyes are saying one thing, but your mouth is saying another thing, and maybe your cheek is doing something else, and you're sweating, and your body posture is different. So you put it all together, and you get some kind of a performance that says something. And that's ambiguity. A computer cannot deal with that.

MUSIC

COREY: You know, Kristen, what Pablo was talking about there reminds me of an idea that I always found so interesting: The uncanny valley.

KRISTEN: Ah yes. The valley of uncanniness.

COREY: Exactly. It's an idea that originated in, all the way back in the 1970s, when was first discussed, not by a film critic actually but by Masahiro Mori,

09:00

a robotics expert at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

KRISTEN: Now, I gotta be honest, Corey. I have used the words, "uncanny valley," in my own life many times, but I have no idea where the “valley” comes from in "uncanny valley."

COREY: Well, then I'll be your History of Tech Guy, because, it’s a fun bit of tech history. Mori was talking about the quest for robots that look like real humans. He described it as "a hike up a mountain.” In his metaphor, the peak is achieving believable humanoids. But, on the way there, he realized, roboticists are bound to hit a valley. And that's what he called, "the uncanny valley." That’s where you’ve gotten close enough that the robot looks mostly human. But you’re not quite at the top yet, so it’s not yet believable.

KRISTEN: Ah, yes. Anyone who's been to the movies knows that feeling.

COREY: Yeah, and even though this idea has been around for decades, scientists still have not been able to truly understand the psychology of why it happens, why we get so creeped out by the uncanny valley, whether or not we could someday get past it.

KRISTEN: Well, on the journey to get past that valley, technology is helping filmmakers really stretch the boundaries of what's real

10:00

and what's fake.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: This idea of the uncanny valley is something that came up a lot when I was talking with film critic, Josh Rothkopf.

JOSH: Any critic has to definitely accommodate this idea of the technology that goes into making a film. Because, film itself is a technological process. It's creating a kind of reality all through this machine really, the camera and the sound recording and all the effects that go into a film. There's an illusion of life. There's an illusion of reality, but that's all created by technology. I feel like I am more prone to accepting and understanding the presence of special effects in genre films where it makes sense that they're creating an alternate reality that doesn't exist or, you know, a futuristic world or a scary horror supernatural villain or something, where a special effect would make sense.

KRISTEN: And when viewers can’t suspend their disbelief,

11:00

Josh says it turns into a pretty negative experience.

JOSH: And if for whatever reason we are thrown out of that engagement as viewers and we are no longer thinking about the story, and we're no longer scared or we're no longer thrilled, then that's a fail. It's always a question of pushing the technology to the point where we believe it, but not quite past that edge.

KRISTEN: I asked Pablo about the uncanny valley, too. And I found it interesting that he said his goal wasn’t to exactly replicate what an actor looked like 40 years ago. Instead,

PABLO: What was the most important thing to create a behavioral likeness, which is what makes you look the way you do. And what makes you look the way you do is the process by which you go from A to B, you know? Like if you're, if you're happy and then you become sad, you do it in a very specific way that is iconic to what you are. So that

12:00

for me, is the most important thing that is necessary for a performance to be believable. To have the performance, to have the behavioral likeness, to have the behavior that makes you who you are.

KRISTEN: Pablo and his team had this unique challenge: Audiences know and remember what these famous actors looked like when they were younger. So that could contribute to what makes something look uncanny. It doesn’t look quite like what you’d expect. But the film was still an innovative feat. In its first week of release, tens of millions of people watched it, and it bagged plenty of award nominations too.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: Now I also want to get to another idea that Josh brought up: Maybe trying to get past the uncanny valley comes at a cost.

JOSH: There's an argument to be made that by insisting that our special effects be so stubbornly realistic, we are depriving a new generation of their imaginative capacity.

13:00

Now we have such awesome technology and the tools to correct everything. What are we correcting it to? We're correcting it to a different aesthetic that in and of itself is a choice. And not only are we depriving a viewer of making that sort of imaginative leap that's necessary in the older special effects, but that realistic aesthetic, that digital artisans are so persistent in trying to achieve, that effect in and of itself is going to seem dated.

**MUSIC BUMP/STINGER**

COREY: Kristen, I think that’s a really interesting point that Josh makes, that reality also has its own aesthetic. That sometimes what we see as realistic in a film is still just a projection of what feels real.

KRISTEN: And another aspect of that came up when I was talking with Josh about black and white film, versus color.

COREY: Right. It's a, a surprisingly old creative choice that filmmakers have had to face. Most people don’t realize that simple color movie technology was available very early on, before 1910. But even when realistic color film became an option in

14:00

the 1930s, there were technological hurdles to adopting it. Color films required more lighting, for example, and actors overheated on set. But what I find really interesting, there were also ideological hurdles. Some people thought that watching a color film would be too distracting, or too tiring. Or it seemed like a gimmick. And then other people thought seeing a color film portrayed reality too brightly, that it looked weirdly too real.

KRISTEN: Yes. And, I mean, obviously, today filmmakers still have the option of filming in black and white, or color, even though most of them choose color. When they choose black and white it's often because it reflects their ideas of reality or history, or just their aesthetics. But, I also want to keep thinking about the future here. Something that kept coming up in my research was the possibility of creating a totally digital version of an actor.

COREY: Hmm, you know, I used to think that idea of a digital actor was silly.

KRISTEN: You used to?

COREY: I, yes, I, I did. But I changed my mind. And you know why?

KRISTEN: Why?

COREY: Looking at face swapping apps and deepfakes. On social media

15:00

it's so easy these days for kids to take their face and slap them on somebody else's face. And deepfakes, they've really developed over the years to become a simple, DIY way to make it look like an actor or a politician is saying something they never said. It’s like face swapping on steroids. If it's already so easy to make believable fakes on social media, then a beefed-up version of the same tech could probably work to make a believable virtual actor in a big-budget movie, right?

KRISTEN: More on that, after the break.

MUSIC TRANSITION

MIDROLL

Invesco QQQ is an ETF built around a belief that everyone should be able to invest in the possibilities of innovation. By providing access to the NASDAQ 100, Invesco QQQ allows you to be part of the progress created for all of our futures. To learn more, talk to your advisor, or visit Invesco.com/QQQ.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: I was really curious about this

16:00

idea of a virtual actor, too. So obviously, I had to ask the experts. Pablo told me that what works for deepfakes doesn’t necessarily work on the big screen, yet.

PABLO: The problem right now is that the, all the images that we have are very low-resolution. And so all the things that you're seeing online with what's called deepfake and things like that, I mean, they're really good for what they are, but they cannot be put in display, in a 4K display with a screen that is 40 feet by 50 feet or something like that in a theater, because the images don't, don't scale up.

KRISTEN: But that doesn’t stop people from trying.

JOSH: In fact, this is already happening to some extent where the estates of dead actors license out the usage to a technologically savvy crew that recreates them and recreates the actor's visage for a new performance that they never really did.

17:00

There are examples where Hollywood is talking about reviving some of its most beloved long dead icons and recasting them in new roles.

KRISTEN: Maybe you’ve seen the same headlines as Josh. And, to be honest, that does sound a little frightening. And so I had to pose that question to Pablo, too. Technologically-speaking, how close are we to that reality?

PABLO: I don't think, you know, I know where you're going, because I've been asked before, you know, do I think that we're going to be able to create a completely synthetic human that is available to do any kind of performance? And, the answer is no. We're not going to be able to do that.

MUSIC

PABLO: See, this is the thing. We are the result of a bunch of experiences and connections that we make throughout our lives, right? So we are born, we, you know, are raised, and whatever. And we, we collect all kinds of things, experiences that come in. And we make connections that are genetic, and so, those

18:00

connections are very complex, but they're also the thing that pushes the results, the choices that we make when we talk, or when we act in a specific way, or we make a choice about this or that. It's very difficult to me to think that programming a computer, even if you spend, you know, 90 years doing that, is going to make the same kind of connections, and it's going to learn from those connections the way we humans do. We are very complex.

MUSIC BUMP/STINGER

KRISTEN: There are plenty of ethical and philosophical questions to ask about the future of visual effects. But now, there are also some very practical questions to consider as well. COVID-19 has disrupted the film industry. Key aspects of making a film, like travel and having hundreds of people on set, those pose serious health risks. For some filmmakers, recreating reality onscreen is

19:00

less of a fancy add-on now, and more of a necessity.

JOHNNY: Usually a film set is literally where a disease could run rampant. So you have hundreds of people all interacting physically, very closely, stressed, working hard.

KRISTEN: Johnny Fisk is the vice president of production at the visual effects company FuseFX and he runs their Los Angeles facility.

JOHNNY: Crowds. A lot of people in a tight room. You know, really a lot of stuff that, you know, we were all doing a couple of months ago, that we probably can't be doing for quite a long time. We're going to have to be helping replicate with visual effects.

KRISTEN: Because film and tv sets have been drastically downsized, more world-building now needs to happen in post-production. Essentially, visual effects artists are tasked with doing more, with less. Fewer scenes taped in real-world locations. More green screens and shoots with no extras.

20:00

None of that real life texture. So the question is, how are visual effects artists going to keep creating believable worlds for movies and tv shows?

JOHNNY: In the future, I think the type of work is going to change. And the scope will grow a bit based on the type of things we'll need to be doing in visual effects. So, there's quite a bit of talk amongst a lot of studios now, about how we handle some of these scenarios. How we're able to bring visual effects to a different need, you know, whether that's not being able to go to a location, whether that's not being able to have the same people in the same places. You know, there could be things that we still haven't necessarily planned for. Virtual production is definitely a burgeoning aspect of visual effects. We've been doing green screen, blue screen for many, many, many, many, many, many years, right? But virtual production is basically taking an environment and being able to replicate that environment in your shooting environment.

KRISTEN: Virtual

21:00

production is an innovative approach that may be the key for unlocking the challenges of film production. In many cases, virtual production is powered by video game technology. It uses giant LED stages to create environments for actors to work and interact in.

JOHNNY: The large advantage of that is, you know, all of your lighting is real, all of the reflection and beautiful bounce and all of that, that you would get in a real world environment, you're going to get if you're in a projected environment.

KRISTEN: It’s complex technology, but at its core, it’s reminiscent of an age-old visual effects trick: rear projection. You’ve probably noticed it in old movies. Maybe the main character is driving their car, and you can see a very fake-looking background zipping by out the window.

JOHNNY: Now we have much more control about what's being projected in there. It's not just stock footage thrown up on a scene and then, you know, an actor running away from something that's not there. It's very different.

KRISTEN: An actor’s virtual environment isn’t just limited to a static backdrop anymore. Computer graphics could be recreating a number

22:00

of different elements of a scene.

JOHNNY: You could potentially be rendering a lot in real-time in a scene, in an environment. You could have elements in that background. So you could have full CG characters. You could have full CG vehicles, elements. You could have potentially, some effects, things like that going on.

KRISTEN: And the power of virtual production means that the director can see it all in the camera, while the actors are acting. All of the graphics that build the scene, the backdrop, the CGI creatures, the explosions, they’re all there on the camera monitor, being created in real time. Directors no longer have to wait to see everything in post-production.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: And so FuseFX’s clients are getting more and more interested in exploring what a future of virtual production, and other visual effects solutions could look like, to keep production on schedule, and perhaps even improve the film in the end. And so film shoots will likely look different in the near,

23:00

and far future.

JOHNNY: So, you know, we're going to shoot a couple actors on a green screen and we're going to do some work in compositing. I think there's going to be more of that. I think there's going to be fewer people, you know, shooting, and where they're shooting might change. You know, where they're shooting might be their living room. I think we're seeing it now. We're seeing a lot of the stuff that is currently making air on network television and online, people are working from their home. They've got a green screen up and, you know, we're replacing that environment that they're in. So, you know, I think it's going to be a culmination of techniques here to reduce the number of people and reduce the risk of anyone getting sick.

KRISTEN: With the complications of the pandemic, the challenges that visual effects artists face remain the same, and maybe have an even greater consequence. How do you create, or recreate, a reality on screen? Maybe it's a reality we've never seen before, an alien world, or fantasy environment. Maybe it’s one that mirrors our own experiences. Or maybe it’s a reality that

24:00

just doesn’t exist anymore. Johnny, however, is optimistic:

JOHNNY: I think the future's still bright. We live in a world where people will find a way. I think humanity in general tends to grow and thrive in scenarios where we're stretched, where we're challenged. And I think having that challenge and being challenged forces us to be greater and explore new options and invent new ways of doing things. I mean, that's progress. You know, that's innovation. That's, that's, that's how you move forward.

** MUSIC TRANSITION **

COREY: You know, Kristen, it’s great to hear that technology could make it possible to keep making movies during these difficult times. Because, I don’t know about you, but I could use a dose of good escapism right about now.

KRISTEN: Yes, but as much as I love some cinematic escapism, Pablo Helman from Industrial Light and Magic, also gave me a different way of looking at

25:00

things. Let me share this quote with you.

PABLO: I talk to younger people, and they say, you know, "What advice can you give me? How can I get into visual effects?" I say, "Well, just look at life. So, just looking at your life around you and realizing that there's a lot of beautiful stuff there, there's a lot of stuff that is not beautiful, and you're going to have to recreate it. And what is it that makes something real? That is the kind of the job that we have."

COREY: So maybe this is also a good time to appreciate the complexity of reality all around us.

KRISTEN: And there’s plenty of complexity, especially right now. Some Hollywood productions are actually moving forward, trying to capture the reality of this moment. They’re making masks, social distancing, and the pandemic part of their scripts and their aesthetic decisions.

COREY: That, plus all of the tech innovations they already have in their arsenal, it makes me very curious to see what kind of art and entertainment is coming next.

MUSIC

26:00

COREY: Innovation Uncovered is a podcast from Invesco QQQ, in partnership with T Brand at the New York Times.

KRISTEN: Throughout the series, we’re taking a look at all of the innovative work that goes into the things you love. Next time, we’re looking at an evolution happening behind the scenes to change the game of basketball.

ALEX WU CLIP: And then we were sitting there thinking to ourselves, "Wow, this is really awesome. It's only accessible once a year to like the 0.1% of basketball players out there. What if we could bring this type of experience into people's homes, their driveways?

COREY: Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review Innovation Uncovered wherever you get your podcasts. And tell your friends about the show.

KRISTEN: Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time, at the movies.

[AD]

27:00

Innovation Uncovered is brought to you by Invesco QQQ. From tech innovators to lesser known biotech and media companies, Invesco QQQ is more than just a tech fund. It's an ETF that allows you to access the NASDAQ 100. Some of today's most innovative companies that are changing the world. To learn more about what this ETF can mean for your portfolio, visit Invesco.com/QQQ. The NASDAQ 100 Index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the Nasdaq. You cannot invest directly in an index. Risks are involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors Incorporated.

27:57

Invesco is not affiliated with T Brand, New York Times, Corey S.Powell, Kristen Meinzer, Pablo Helman of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), Josh Rothkopf, Johnny Fisk of FuseFX or Alex Wu of HomeCourt.

00:00

GAL: For basketball, it's really endless, because you're talking about dribbles, you're talking about passes, you're talking about dunk, blocks, fouls, speed, the number of passes before shot, where you are on the field. The number of data points are so big and the combination between them are so, is so big, it's exponential.

MUSIC

COREY: Welcome to Innovation Uncovered, a podcast from Invesco QQQ and T Brand at the New York Times, about the ideas and discoveries that are driving our culture forward — from how we play, to what we consume, to how we connect. This episode, we’re exploring how data and analytics have quietly changed the game of basketball.

MUSIC

COREY: I'm Corey S. Powell. I’m the former Editor-in-Chief of Discover Magazine, and as a science writer, I’ve covered everything from dark matter to the

01:00

origin of life. And I’m joined by my fabulous co-host.

KRISTEN: I am Kristen Meinzer. I’m a culture critic and journalist. In this series, I’m out in the field, well, the virtual field at least, thanks to social distancing, reporting on the people and ideas that are reshaping so many aspects of our daily life.

COREY: We bring a little science,

KRISTEN: And a little culture,

COREY: To conversations about innovations impacting our world today.

MUSIC

COREY: Kristen, when was the last time you went to a basketball game?

KRISTEN: Sadly, it’s been a while, Corey. I usually try to see a game a couple times a year. And while I’m not what you would call a die-hard fan, I do miss all of the energy of the crowd. I miss the cheering. I’m always so blown away by the athleticism.

COREY: Oh, I miss those things too. I also really miss just seeing things that I can only dream of doing, like, I don't know, dunking a basketball.

KRISTEN: Oh, come on Corey, you can totally dunk a basketball.

COREY: Well, sure I could

02:00

dunk a basketball if you give me a ladder. I'm fine with that. In fact, it's one of the reasons I love watching other people do it. But you know, the game seems a bit different to me recently. And I don't mean because of the pandemic. I mean, way before that. Dunking doesn’t seem to happen as often as it used to.

Kristen: Yeah, there have been some big changes in basketball because of data.

COREY: Yeah, data ruins everything. Wait! What am I saying! I love data. My whole life is data! You know, on the whole, I’m a fairly casual basketball fan, but to me looking at the sport from a data perspective actually makes it extra fascinating to follow.

KRISTEN: Yeah, and I know you’re obviously kidding about data ruining everything, but you know some people do feel like “big data” is taking something away from the game.

COREY: Well, yeah, and basketball is obviously not the first sport to incorporate data. Baseball, famously, has been using statistics and data for years. And that’s paved the way for all kinds of other sports. Still, I do understand the fear that relying on numbers, or statistics, to help us make choices is unnatural,

03:00

somehow. But as I see it, it's really just an efficient way to improve something.

KRISTEN: I mean data is a great resource but it’s not very helpful without people to interpret it. Basketball organizations are developing entire departments for data analysis and the game is changing as these departments become more sophisticated.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: For decades, basketball teams and fans relied on box score and play-by-play data to get an overview of what happened during a game. You know, the kind of basic info you used to flip through in the Sports section of your newspaper.

IVANA: So the box score is just the shots, rebounds, assists and it's really just outcome basis. It doesn't give you any context on how these events happen in a game. And then, play-by-play is one step further. It includes the time when each of these events happen. So we have a little bit of

04:00

context in terms of which players were on the court when each shot happened, when each rebound happened. But it still doesn't give us the complete picture. It doesn't tell us where these players were in the court.

KRISTEN: That’s Ivana Seric. She’s a data scientist for a professional basketball team. And you’ll hear more from her in a bit. So, along with these two resources, the box score and the play-by-play, coaches would have to pore over hours of taped footage, trying to glean whatever insight they could. But, those numbers and tape only provided so much information. Coaches would make informed decisions, based on their experience. But, they’d also rely a lot on feeling or “intuition.” Especially when they didn’t have the facts to back it up. Maybe a bench player seemed like he was about to go on a hot streak, well, let’s give him more minutes. Maybe it felt like a night where the team should run the fast break hard in the first half. Or if I was the coach, I might start the player that brought me a breakfast

05:00

sandwich that morning. These are all decisions based on emotions.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: In 2005, that all began to change. There were two entrepreneurs in Israel, named Miky Tamir and Gal Oz.

GAL: My name is Gal Oz. I'm an entrepreneur in the sport tech industry.

KRISTEN: Gal finished his bachelor’s degree and then spent 10 years in the Israeli army.

GAL: In the intelligence unit I was doing many things regarding the pictures and satellites and all kinds of things that w-, that require an understanding of images and video. And after 10 years, I decided to go to the private market. After I finished my master's degree in biomedical engineering, and I was hoping to find the cure to the cancer, but I found myself in sports tech company.

KRISTEN: It’s a pretty big shift, to go from wanting to cure cancer to starting a sports tech company. But Gal's army experience

06:00

using video as an analytical tool turned out to be a game-changer, literally.

GAL: When I met with Miky, and he has this idea of SportVu, I was, fell in love with it and join him and together we, we build the company and, and its a best combination of fun, technology, sport, television. It's all combined and it's very appealing and, and very exciting environment.

KRISTEN: Miky and Gal co-founded SportVu in Israel, and at first, they focused on soccer. They put three cameras around a soccer field, and started collecting data, teaching their technology how to track players and balls on the field. After about three years, the company was acquired and Gal and the team got to work developing the technology to work in a basketball arena, instead.

GAL: We saw a huge difference between the usage of the stats in basketball and in soccer.

07:00

In the basketball it was much stronger than the soccer because you have much more data point that are interesting. In soccer, at the end, you have distance, you have acceleration, you have passes. For basketball, it's really endless, because you're talking about dribbles, you're talking about passes, you're talking about dunk, blocks, fouls, speed, the number of passes before shot, where you are on the field. The number of data points are so big and the combination between them are so, is so big, it's exponential. So, you reach to a point that you don't know what to ask. You go to the field of big data that you all you want to do is, "What should I do in order to win this game?" The computer give you the inputs and idea that, that you never thought about asking.

KRISTEN: To capture this more complex set of data, SportVu would deploy six cameras, instead of three, in the rafters of the basketball arena. Three on each end of the court. The cameras were trained to track the

08:00

players and the ball throughout the game and then, they would send that data back to the team’s analysts. People like Ivana Seric.

IVANA: The cameras in the rafters are collecting the video during the games, and from the video they're extracting players' locations on a court. So we have XY coordinates of each player in 25 frames per second. And for the ball, we have XY and the height also in 25 frames per second. And on top of this real data, we also have additional markings, which is all the passes, all the dribbles, all the pick and rolls, and other actions.

KRISTEN: 25 frames per second. That is a staggering amount of data on every player on the court. And it gave coaches insights they never had before. Gal told me that a big perk of SportVu’s tech was that it was passive. The teams didn’t have to

09:00

change the way they trained or traveled, because the cameras were just automatically in the rafters of the arenas. And players also didn’t need to wear any sort of tracking devices that could hamper their performance. That doesn’t mean everyone was on board. Gal told me there was some trepidation at first. I think this is a process a lot of people go through when new technology is introduced.

GAL: I think it took time until the coaches and the analytic team understood that this is helping them and not replacing them and not give them any risk of their job, but on the other side they have more data now, they even, they need more people. They contributed more to the game. So I think at the end it's helped them but they definitely took time.

** MUX BUMP / STINGER **

COREY: You know, Kristen, I find it remarkable how quickly people are getting past those doubts. It got me wondering where else data analytics is being used in basketball, and with a little poking around I realized that we’re now seeing it at the college level, too. It’s not

10:00

so evenly spread out there, in part because college budgets vary so widely, but over the past few years, more and more college coaches have turned to data to boost their teams.

KRISTEN: I guess that makes sense. I mean, if it works for the pros, why not college teams?

COREY: Exactly, and the rules of the game are changing along with the tech. For the first time ever this past season, that's the 2019-2020 college basketball season, ten of the 32 conferences were given permission to experiment with electronic devices during games. Meaning, for the first time ever, during a game, coaches could receive real-time analytics reports about their team’s performance.

KRISTEN: Sounds more NASDAQ than NCAA!

COREY: Doesn’t it though? It used to be that college teams were allowed to use this kind of tech only during practice. And now, these select teams can get live reports on a cell phone or a tablet as the game unfolds. And they can make adjustments in real time. It’s a pretty radical change, when you think about it. Now, of course, I mean, COVID cut the college season short this year, so we haven’t had a chance to really gauge the impact. But when the stadiums reopen, I’m

11:00

sure we’re going to notice a difference.

KRISTEN: I’m curious to see how that changes on the college side, but again, I think it’s so cool to think of how “coaching” a game kind of extends to these people crunching numbers behind the scenes now too. It’s not just the person courtside, pacing and getting red in the face. Data analysts are applying a level of scrutiny to any given game that a coach, or even a team of coaches, just can’t do on their own.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: As a data analyst, Ivana digs into reports about each game to break down even the smallest moments.

IVANA: We can look at all the different actions and see how players perform in different actions. So we can tell how good are their passing, how good are their shooting out of different situations on a court.

KRISTEN: And from that data, she can apply her own proprietary blend of analytics to determine what went wrong, and what went right.

IVANA: I think because we have all this data, it's a lot easier to see

12:00

players' weaknesses and players' strength. Because we can analyze the data, we don't have to watch as many clips as it's been done in the past. We'll still do that, but we also have the data to actually put like a measurable value on it.

KRISTEN: SportVu co-founder Gal Oz thinks of his innovation in terms of questions. Coaches are asking themselves questions constantly during, and after a game.

GAL: I think the big difference is that before SportVu, the number of question you can ask yourself was quite limited. So, for example, what is the potential of this player and this player and this player?

KRISTEN: Now, this access to more detailed data has made it so that coaches can ask much more specific questions.

GAL: So it can be how many dribble you did before you made the shot? How many seconds you hold the ball? Who is the person that guard you? When you take your rebound, how many people around you and what are the distance of the people from around you? So, at the

13:00

end for example, taking five rebounds is nice for a game. But the question is how hard was this rebound?

KRISTEN: And perhaps more importantly, Gal told me that thanks to big data, coaches can also ask much simpler questions, to greater effect.

GAL: Because you have a lot of data for many, many games, the idea is that the brain of the system, the AI of the system, can give you the question and the answers that you didn't really know what to ask.

KRISTEN: Ivana told me that overall, this is a good thing for the game. It’s breeding a generation of better, more efficient players.

IVANA: Using this we can help players improve much faster because they can really just put their time into things that they actually need to be improved. And we can also track their progress and see how are they improving and these things over time.

KRISTEN: And those better players are also able to make more informed decisions. One example: three-point shots.

14:00

Thanks to all this data, it became clear that even though a shot taken closer to the basket is more likely to go in, a three-pointer is worth the risk.

IVANA: Well, the emergence of the increased three point volume really boils down to as simple as three is greater than two. So for example, if somebody shoots 35% from the three point line, that's still better than shooting 45% for, um, inside the three point line.

MUSIC

KRISTEN: Teams have heeded this math. In 2012, the average basketball team took about 18 three-point shots per game. By 2019, that number was 33. And analytics is also changing who is making those shots. The power forward or small forward would have made a majority of the shots in the 1980s. Now, it’s the shooting guard and point guard that end up with nearly 50 percent of the team’s possessions in a game.

** MUX BUMP / STINGER **

15:00

COREY: It's no wonder that relying on all of this data in basketball has gained a number of vocal critics. It seems like even some former pro ball players are criticizing the data-driven approach. Some say that focusing on stats isn’t the right way to go, because it’s messing with the game, or making it predictable, or “programming” players. Others say that all the focus on data and crunching numbers just doesn’t really work to make a better team.

KRISTEN: Yeah, I mean, there are also player attributes that have a huge impact on a team or a game that maybe aren’t as quantifiable. Like, maybe a player is super hard working, which inspires their teammates, or their locker room antics boost morale on the team in a significant way. They have hustle or heart, but, how do you measure something like that?

COREY: I get that. On the other hand, those of us who love stats do see one benefit to all this quantifiable data. Fans will tell you that there are a lot of teams that deserve more credit than they get, and the statistics bear that out. I read that by one calculation, in pro basketball, underdogs win almost a third of the time.

16:00

32.1 percent of the time, to be data precise. Let’s use the numbers to recognize the underdogs!

KRISTEN: I love an underdog! I, I am cheering for all of you underdogs. I’m also really intrigued by what’s happening off the court, though, Corey, especially as data makes its way into things like scouting. That really could change the whole face of the sport. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about next.

MUSIC UP

MIDROLL

Invesco QQQ is an ETF built around a belief that everyone should be able to invest in the possibilities of innovation. By providing access to the NASDAQ 100, Invesco QQQ allows you to be part of the progress created for all of our futures. To learn more, talk to your advisor, or visit invesco.com/QQQ

MUSIC

17:00

KRISTEN: Now, I want to take this conversation to where pro basketball players get their start. You know, that kid who’s just learning the sport. Maybe they don’t have a trusted coach nearby, or they can’t afford to join a league. Maybe their school doesn’t offer basketball as a sport. Or maybe, they live Taiwan, and don’t have the access that a lot of kids in the U.S. do. Can technology help? That’s exactly where Alex Wu started.

ALEX: My name is Alex Wu. I am on the founding team here at HomeCourt.

KRISTEN: In 2018, Alex and his team released an app called HomeCourt. It’s basically a shrunken-down version of what the professional ball players have access to. But instead of six high-def cameras and teams of data analysts, HomeCourt’s power is all housed within a smartphone. The idea behind HomeCourt is that high-level basketball coaching and training should be available to

18:00

anyone who has a smartphone, regardless of where they are. They're essentially trying to democratize the sport.

ALEX: You know, when we practice basketball until recently, you get zero feedback, like, I guess you can see if the ball made missed or not, it feels very binary. But you know, you didn't know over time, if you were getting better. You would put up you know, a lot of our users say, "I used to put up thousands of shots. And maybe I was getting better, or maybe I wasn't." I think what we're able to do, and I think this is really key into actually helping someone learn something, is you got to be able to provide feedback in a very, very obviously informative way, but also very quickly, especially in something like basketball.

KRISTEN: Anyone who loves basketball can open up the app when they’re out shooting hoops. It activates the phone’s camera, and it harnesses artificial intelligence and computing power within the smartphone to track the player’s shots, or offer corrections to form and technique.

ALEX: So we give information and insights such as your release time. So how long does it take you to actually get a shot up?

19:00

Your release angle. So, one of the things we look at is, like, are you shooting at an optimum release angle, consistently. And the release time is also important because you know, if you're in a game, you don't have a ton of time to shoot. So actually practicing with all those things in mind and being able to hear somebody tell you, "Hey, I need you to get that shot a little bit faster. Your arc needs to be a little bit higher." All those things are really important.

KRISTEN: But Alex and his team realized that the app was providing much more than just data-based training tips. There’s one user, a twelve year old who's been using HomeCourt for a while now, and she’s tracked thousands and thousands of shots. And the company could see she’s racked up a lot of data.

ALEX: One of the things that her coaches and dad would tell us is that it's really improved, you know, noticeably, her confidence on the court. So she was being more of a hesitant shooter. And that's such a big part of the game that I don't think people think about enough, right? A lot of it's mental. Do you feel ready to take the shot? And you know what, you, you know, what makes you feel more ready? When you feel like you've made the right preparation.

KRISTEN: The big picture

20:00

potential of this technology could actually change the makeup of professional teams. In May 2019, the HomeCourt team attended an event in Chicago where the pro teams go to scout new players.

ALEX: And then we were sitting there thinking to ourselves, "Wow, this is really awesome. It's only accessible once a year to like the 0.1% of basketball players out there. What if we could bring this type of experience into people's homes, their driveways."

KRISTEN: And so that’s exactly what they did. In early 2020, Alex and his co-founders launched another app called GlobalScout. This app builds on what they’ve done with HomeCourt to help democratize who gets to play in the pros.

ALEX: So for example, you can measure your hand span, just using the front facing camera on your phone, using the HomeCourt app. We can measure your vertical. So you set up your phone and you jump and we can measure your vertical, your wingspan, your standing reach.

KRISTEN: It’s not so easy that if you measure up in GlobalScout, you’re automatically

21:00

drafted into the big leagues. But, it is a big step toward making the scouting process more democratic.

ALEX: That idea is to open up other opportunities that may have not been accessible to that player, because nobody really knew that they existed.

KRISTEN: And in some ways, it’s the data itself that allows teams and scouts to understand and work beyond their own biases.

ALEX: What I hope it does, and I think, you know, you look at somebody like one of our advisors, Jeremy Lin, and, you know, he was certainly famously under-looked in his basketball journey. You know, a lot of it can be due to you know, just not a lot of people seeing people that look like Jeremy playing at that level. And so there is a bias there. You know, not intentional, but it, you know, just happens to be there. I think what we try to do is like, "Hey, what is the truth?" Right? You know, now you can start to see things like, data capturing stuff like work ethic. If you see somebody in the app, and it's like, hey, this kid's workin. He's waking up 6am three times a week, putting up shots by himself. Like, that's up, that says something, right?

22:00

KRISTEN: These apps are both still pretty new. Take that 12 year old who started playing with more confidence after tracking her progress. She still has years to develop before she can even start thinking about playing in college, or for the pros. But when everyone was stuck at home without their teams or their coaches, HomeCourt was ready to bridge that gap for amateurs and professional players alike. Before the coronavirus pandemic, HomeCourt users would log about half a million dribbles a day. But since then, they told me that they’ve had days where users logged 10, or even 15 million dribbles. And they’ve even seen interest from other athletes. That includes people who play soccer, roller derby, and more.

**MUSIC BUMP**

KRISTEN: It’s been about 15 years since SportVu was first developed. And data and analytics in basketball are only just getting started. But lest you worry that all this technology is taking the human element out of the game, our experts don’t see it that way.

23:00

Alex Wu believes analytics and intuition actually go hand in hand with each other.

ALEX: Data in and of itself is not that useful. It's the insights that come with it. It's how you're looking at it over time. Data can help validate intuition.

KRISTEN: And, at the end of the day, according to Ivana, there’s one thing that facts and feelings have in common. What is your favorite part of the job?

IVANA: Winning. I'm not even joking.

** MUX BUMP / STINGER **

COREY: You know, Kristen, it’s remarkable to think about how data and numbers are changing the physical nature of the game. But whether people like the changes or hate them, it doesn’t seem like fans are losing any interest in the sport.

KRISTEN: And since fans can also get their hands on more stats, it’s only feeding the enthusiasm.

COREY: Oh yeah. Maybe it will even give data nerds more reasons

24:00

to enjoy the game. I know the next time I get to watch, I’ll be paying a lot more attention, trying to guess what strategies might be the result of analytics, and which ones are more inspired by gut feelings.

KRISTEN: Well, I cannot wait to get in the stands and cheer with our neighbors again. That means me and you, Corey, cheering for our home team.

COREY: Neighbor! Yeah! Let's go!

MUSIC UP

COREY: Innovation Uncovered is a podcast from Invesco QQQ, in partnership with T Brand at the New York Times.

KRISTEN: Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Innovation Uncovered wherever you get your podcasts. And tell your friends about the show.

COREY: This brings us to the end of the season, but thanks so much for coming on this journey with us, exploring the innovations that are driving the world around us.

MUSIC

AD: Innovation Uncovered is brought to you by

25:00

Invesco QQQ. From tech innovators to lesser known biotech and media companies, Invesco QQQ is more than just a tech fund. It's an ETF that allows you to access the NASDAQ 100. Some of today's most innovative companies that are changing the world. To learn more about what this ETF can mean for your portfolio, visit Invesco.com/QQQ. The NASDAQ 100 Index comprises the 100 largest non-financial companies traded on the Nasdaq. You cannot invest directly in an index. Risks are involved with investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs are subject to risks similar to those of stocks. Investments focused in the technology sector are subject to greater risk and are more greatly impacted by market volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors Incorporated.

25:56

Invesco is not affiliated with T Brand, New York Times, Corey S.Powell, Kristen Meinzer, Ivana Seric, Gal Oz and Miky Tamir of SportVu and Alex Wu of HomeCourt.