Bay Area Innovators

Alan Dershowitz campaigned for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Sixty-five years later, he says the Democratic Party he supported no longer exists.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus and author of 63 books, to discuss his newest release and why he left the Democratic Party. Dershowitz explains why he believes the party of JFK, Bill Clinton, and Lyndon John...

He sat down in Tiananmen Square, took off his shoes, and meditated for 30 seconds. It cost him a beaten face, a dislocated jaw, and a lifetime ban from China.In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Leeshai Lemish, the longtime emcee of Shen Yun Performing Arts, who has introduced audiences to classical Chinese dance and music at nearly 2,000 performances worldwide. Leeshai shares what led a former Is...

Every day, people type sensitive information into free artificial intelligence (AI) tools without thinking twice about where that data actually goes.

In this episode of “Bay Area Innovators,” host Steve Ispas sits down with Dustin Stout, founder and CEO of Magai, to unpack what really happens behind the scenes when you use an AI chatbot. Stout explains that most AI tools reserve the right by default to use your prompts,...

Why would the Chinese Communist Party bother trying to bribe an IRS agent over a dance company's nonprofit status?

In this episode of “Bay Area Innovators,” host Steve Ispas sits down with Steve Lance, NTD's Washington bureau chief and executive producer of the documentary “Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun.” What began as a look into the New York Times' unusual amount of coverage of Shen Yun became an ...

They met as dancers sharing the same stage. Years later, they are still telling stories together—just from different sides of the curtain.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Andrew Fung and Alison Chen, two classical Chinese dancers who came to the art form from opposite directions. Alison grew up in San Jose and left California as a teenager to train at Feitian Academy. Andrew was studyin...

Escaping North Korea is not necessarily the hardest part. Many refugees must then escape China.In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with Dan Chung, cofounder of Crossing Borders and author of “Hard Freedom,” who has worked with North Korean refugees in China and South Korea for over 20 years.China does not recognize North Korean refugees, grant them rights, or publish numbers on them. Chung...

How much water does AI actually use, and what happens to it afterward? Data centers, water scarcity, and wastewater pollution are becoming one of the most urgent stories behind the AI boom.

In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with David Gory, founder and CEO of Airbuild and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, whose startup uses microalgae to treat wastewater and recover nutrients at the same time. David exp...

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the atomic bomb decision that ended World War II remain among the most debated choices in modern history. Was dropping the atomic bombs in August 1945 necessary, or a moral line the world should never have crossed?
In this episode of Bay Area Innovators, host Steve Ispas sits down with James Scott, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling historian of the Pacific War, author of Empire of Ashes, to examine...

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...