Bay Area Innovators

What is homeopathy, does homeopathy work, and why is it still so controversial 200 years later? Is it an overlooked healing tradition, a misunderstood complement to modern medicine, or simply a placebo effect at work?

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Joette Calabrese, founder of The Academy of Practical Homeopathy, to explain how homeopathy works, why scientists and skeptics dismiss it, and wh...

What happens when a former prosecutor writes a book so sensitive that the government bans it outright for six years?
In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Mike Lebowitz, combat veteran, former Guantanamo Bay war crimes prosecutor, and author of “Second Wave,” the story of Al Qaeda's plot to smuggle nuclear materials into the United States through the port of New York.
Lebowitz wal...

Are UFOs evidence of extraterrestrial life—or something far more unsettling?
In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Derrick Warfel, author of UFOs and God and filmmaker behind the upcoming documentary of the same name. With backgrounds in psychology, theology, and film, Warfel argues that the modern UFO phenomenon is not a scientific mystery but a spiritual one—and that it represents ...

In 2019, a team at Google led by physicist John Martinis achieved something once thought impossible—a quantum processor completed in three minutes a calculation that would have taken the world’s most powerful classical supercomputer 10,000 years.
In this second episode with Martinis, 2025 Nobel Prize winner in physics, host Steve Ispas goes beyond the science to explore what quantum computing actually means for the w...

What does it take to prove that quantum mechanics applies not just to atoms and electrons—but to objects you can actually see and build?

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Dr. John Martinis, 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Physics and professor at UC Santa Barbara, whose graduate school experiment in the mid-1980s became one of the foundational discoveries behind today's quantum computer.

Marti...

What does the Constitution actually say about the issues dominating today's headlines?

In this second episode with Ilan Wurman, constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota and author of The Constitution of 1789, host Steve Ispas runs through some of America's most contested debates and asks Wurman to apply the framers' original intent to each one.

The conversation covers free speech on college campuses and the limit...

What happens when the world's biggest sporting event collides with one of the fastest growing sectors in private transportation?

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Barry Shevlin, CEO of Fly USA, America's fastest growing private aviation company for two years running. Barry shares how the FIFA World Cup has driven record demand for private aviation, with international clients from England, Spain...

What makes the U.S. Constitution different from every other governing document in history—and is it still working the way the founders intended?

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Ilan Wurman, constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota and author of the upcoming book "The Constitution of 1789." Raised in Palo Alto and educated at Stanford, Wurman is one of the leading voic...

What would drive someone to get detained during a military coup in Nigeria, stranded in a Mozambique civil war zone with lions nearby, and still get back on a plane to do it all over again?

In this episode of "Bay Area Innovators," host Steve Ispas sits down with Terry Conway, former CFO of Purdue Farms turned CEO of Handy Seafood, who spent decades traveling to 17 countries in search of the perfect crab—and built a global em...

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Jeremy Levin, a South African-born physician and one of the most influential leaders in global biopharmaceuticals. Levin shares an extraordinary personal journey—from fleeing apartheid as a child to watching his journalist father escape arrest twice for speaking the truth to being admitted to Oxford on the strength of a single conversation despite near-fa...

What does it take to turn personal loss into global impact—before you can even drive?In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Olivia Zhang, founder and CEO of Cancer Kids First, a nonprofit she launched at just 14 years old following the loss of two of the most important people in her life to cancer. The organization seeks to normalize the hospital experience for child cancer patients.Now a Harv...

The Iran conflict isn't just a Middle East story — it's a financial war with consequences for every American's wallet.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, Steve Ispas sits down with Christian Briggs, CEO of Hard Asset Management, a 40-year veteran of global precious metals markets with deep expertise in geopolitics and economics. 

Briggs explains how the conflict involving Iran could have far-reaching implications fo...

What really went wrong at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting — and why it could have been far worse.
In this episode, Steve Ispas sits down with Dean Golemis, a 20-year law enforcement veteran, former NYPD officer and Rockland County Detective, and founder of Global Security and Investigative Services — now operating across five states. With a career spanning major crime scene investigations, high-...

What does it mean to return to land your ancestors called home for 14,000 years — after being exiled, nearly wiped out, and forgotten?

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Ken Sandusky and Brian Herbert of the Modoc Nation in the field — deep in Northeastern Siskiyou County at the edge of Lower Klamath Lake, against the backdrop of Mount Shasta — to tell one of the most remarkabl...

What is it really like to work undercover in narcotics enforcement?

In this unfiltered episode of Bay Area Innovators, 27-year SFPD veteran Britt Elmore takes us deep inside the shadows of San Francisco’s narcotics trade. 

Elmore shares firsthand experiences from his time working undercover in San Francisco, offering insight into the risks, the strategies, and the realities of narcotics investigations. From navigating da...

“We had to be ready to drop a tremendous amount of ordnance to save this guy and protect the personnel that were extracting this pilot.”

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, Bronze Star recipient and retired Air Force Combat Controller Eric Lionheart breaks down the staggering logistics of the mission to rescue an F-15 weapons system operator shot down over Iran. With the Iranian government placing a bounty on the ai...

“My father said there are only two types of people: not black and white, but good and bad. Period.”
In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, our guest Vince Everett Ellison shares a journey that began on a cotton plantation in the heart of Tennessee’s “Klan country.” From witnessing his father’s fearless defiance against the Grand Wizard to building a life rooted in discipline and faith, Elliso...

"Happiness depends on happenings, and when the happenings dissolve, where are you?"
In this profound episode of Bay Area Innovators, guest Ann Lesley Smith challenges the modern obsession with "chasing happiness".
From her early days as a dental hygienist to the glamorous world of professional modeling and radio host, Ann discovered that even when life looks "perfect" behind closed doors, external success is a fragile found...

Ben Narasin, a veteran venture capitalist and former entrepreneur, shares the lessons behind decades of building and funding companies. From flipping comic books as a kid to leading one of the early dot-com IPOs, his journey reveals what it really takes to succeed in business.

In this conversation, Narasin breaks down what separates successful founders from the rest—after reviewing more than 10,000 startup pitches and investi...