Finding Genius Podcast

Criminal cyber activity has increased dramatically over the past 10 years, leading to the existence of more malware than ever before. With so many hacker forums and cyber criminals offering their services on the dark web, committing cybercrimes no longer requires an extensive amount of knowledge or experience; you just need to know who to talk to. Having spent over 14 years working in the field of cybersecurity, Adam Kujawa has witnessed the evolution of cybercrime. While it might seem like he's seen it all, he's the first to admit that the landscape is constantly changing, requiring cybersecurity measures to remain a step ahead of the cyber criminals. He joins the podcast today to discuss the work he's doing as the director of malware intelligence at Malwarebytes, a security solution company developing layered defense software for individual consumers and enterprises with the ultimate goal of creating a malware-free existence for the world. Tune in for an informative and insightful conversation about the current types of malware, ransomware, and cyber-attacks, sandbox security mechanisms, security countermeasures carried out by criminals, and the recent increase in cyber-attacks in the business arena. Learn more and check out free trial services at malwarebytes.com.

Cavin Balaster, founder of Feed a Brain (feedabrain.com) and Adventures in Brain Injury (adventuresinbraininjury.com), author, and sought-after speaker, delivers an informative and important discussion on brain function and the nutritional protocol that can deliver dramatic results. Cavin Balaster made a miraculous recovery from an accident that could have easily taken his life instantly. In 2011, he survived a two-story fall and was comatose for twelve days. Balaster was diagnosed with a diffuse axonal injury (DAI) and his chances for recovery were not good, bleak actually, at less than 10%. Emergency medicine and the work of many skilled, truly outstanding healthcare professionals and specialists saved his life, without a doubt. Balaster acknowledges that he would absolutely be dead if it were not for their incredible work over a long period comprised of many crucial moments in his recovery. But after he began to wake from the severe brain fog, and recover somewhat from the memory loss, double vision, infections, etc. when he was able to begin doing some research on his own, he started on a mission, a goal to take back his life to the best of his ability. He states that once he was cognizant of his predicament and the gravity of it, he felt he was faced with a choice: to wallow in despair considering the impact of his injury or consider it to be an adventure. He chose the latter. Balaster recounts the early months of his life after the fall and subsequent severe brain injury. As he describes, the entire ordeal, as we can only imagine, was overwhelming to say the least. He talks about the extreme, and frightening, brain fog that he experienced early on and how he actually had no memory of what happened and no way to understand where he was or who the white lab coat people were. His brain fog was so intense that he imagined he might have even been kidnapped and the lab coat people were using his body to test and experiment on. Clearly, it was not a good time for Balaster. But slowly, his brain fog began to clear so he could begin to understand where he was, and what was happening to him. After defying death through the help of his incredibly wonderful team of intelligent and supportive healthcare providers, and waking from the coma, Balaster dug deep into functional nutrition, functional neurology, neuro optometry (developmental optometry), physical and occupational therapy, and other targeted therapies. And it is these methods and practices that he attributes to his incredible recovery, at such an accelerated pace. Balaster talks about his first discovery of the nutritional connection, and how his nutritional protocol was restoring his clarity. And he describes the technical aspects of how the intestinal process is coordinated with the brain. Balaster discusses his hunger for education on the various subjects that were affecting his life and recovery. He began taking online courses at multiple universities to further understand how the brain works, and how it is fueled—neurometabolism. He details some of the many and various nutritional supplements to his diet from bone broth, to licorice, to L-glutamine, as well as fruits and vegetables, etc., and how he began to see incredible improvements right away. Balaster discusses the details in his book, covering ketogenic metabolism, color charts for fruits and vegetables, and the carbohydrate ratings of foods. Balaster documented his process to neuro-rehabilitation in an attempt to more fully understand and heal his body and brain. He discusses his blog, Adventures in Brain Injury, and the international attention he received from his postings and research. Balaster talks about the work he has done with clients who have severe injuries, and the nutritional coaching he provides to the patients and their doctors that has led to many remarkable changes and improvements. As Balaster recounts, his work with patients is tremendously rewarding. As the author of How to Feed a Brain: Nutrition for Optimal Brain Function and Repair and as a successful podcast host on the related subjects, Balaster has now devoted his life to helping others who are struggling with health issues, sometimes very severe ones as his was. Through Balaster's journey he has gained incredible knowledge regarding the optimization of brain function and he seeks to share his experiences, information, training, and services with the community.

Scott Eaton, chief executive officer at Algomi (algomi.com), provides an overview of the complexity of financial markets and how traders and investors need aggregated complex financial data to capitalize on and secure their interests. Eaton is an experienced executive who has helmed many top-tier institutions. Some notable point on his extensive resume include: chief operating officer of MarketAxess Europe, managing director at Unicredit Bank AG, as well as executive managing director at BroadStreet Group. As Eaton states, Algomi is a software company that provides technology to financial markets. Algomi delivers information-matching solutions for the optimization of fixed-income liquidity. The company is backed by investments from prominent industry leaders such as Euronext, Lakestar, AllianceBernstein, and S&P Global. Algomi's team is international and maintains offices in New York, London, and Hong Kong. The Algomi platform can assist business leaders to improve their workflow and liquidity via data aggregation, pre-trade information analysis, and of course execution facilitation. Eaton expounds upon the ways that Algomi brings infrastructure to some of the world's largest fixed-income participants, helping them to turn complex data into actionable knowledge. Eaton discusses Algomi ALFA, their innovative fixed-income data aggregation and market surveillance tool that aggregates liquidity data from all the major electronic venues, messaging platforms, and dealer inventory feeds, and thus provides easier access, and an opportunity to see the big picture with more detail. Traders can apply filters and see the data that is important to them, making their time more efficient and potentially more successful. By finding the liquidity more easily, Eaton states that Algomi ALFA benefits both buyer and seller, assisting with the execution of trades. The financial markets expert delves into the many ways that buy side traders can utilize their platform. He details the processes involved with trading, specifically outlining the methods used when dealing with bonds, and he explains how bond market liquidity has been impacted, post-financial crisis. Further he talks about the issuance of corporate bonds and discusses schedules versus discreet needs, investor interest, borrower cost and more, in regard to timing and issuance. He discusses strategies investors and traders can utilize when making bond decisions, and how the aggregate data directly can impact the decisions they will make. Eaton discusses the innovations happening at Algomi in regard to data feeds, as well as their extensive work with custodians and custody data to help facilitate asset management. Through Algomi's understanding of financial markets and experience of workflow development, Eaton's team collaborates with clients and third party providers to birth new ideas and products that greatly facilitate market function, and bring infrastructure to some of thargest fixed-income participants in the world.

You might already be familiar with the process of taking pictures of your work schedule each week, checking it repeatedly to make sure you don't miss a shift, and tracking down all your coworkers' phone numbers when you need coverage at the last minute. This is not only a hassle for hourly employees, but it's an inefficient way of managing shifts in general and makes it more likely for a company to find itself unexpectedly understaffed. With nearly 60 percent of today's workforce comprised of hourly workers and having worked as one himself, Himanshu Misra recognized a need for change; as a senior data scientist for Branch, that's exactly what he's trying to implement. Branch is a mobile-first technology platform that allows hourly employees to easily and digitally access their schedules, be notified of changes to their schedules in real time, communicate with their coworkers, submit requests for time off at the tap of a button, and pick up shifts to expand their earning potential. At the same time, Branch is helping enterprise customers attract and retain the best hourly employees and providing them with a time-saving tool for efficient shift management. By developing demand prediction models based on historical and real-time data and machine learning algorithms, Branch customers can avoid all of the consequences of improper staffing and unsatisfied staff. Branch already has customers in a variety of industries, including banking, hospitality, healthcare, retail, and travel, and are currently holding a number of pilots with new companies. Tune in for all the details, including what's on the horizon for Branch. Visit branchmessenger.com to learn more.

Jeremy Born, founder, and CEO at CoinGenius (coingenius.ai), delivers an informative overview of the current state of cryptocurrency intelligence and the developing tools that allow for a deeper understanding of the changing digital financial markets. Born is a serious blockchain enthusiast and passionate digital strategist. He is an experienced professional in the technology space with a specific interest in leveraging AI and machine learning to solve complex business problems, as well as predicting outcomes of alternative assets such as bitcoin. Born's experience before founding CoinGenius was in the various blockchain, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence companies such as YINC, which focuses on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology service providers, and JABB Interactive where he served as their executive director. During his tenure as senior managing consultant at Brandify Labs, Born furthered his work in branding and customer services as they relate to cognitive, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and blockchain. He holds an MBA from Pepperdine's Graziadio Business School and received his BS in business administration and management from Chapman University. Born discusses his background in trading and how he had passed crypto by for a while, but as he began to dig deeper he became extremely interested. Once he took the leap and fully invested his time, and later money, he found that the tools and information available was seriously insufficient and woefully inept. He wanted to apply all of his knowledge in AI and machine learning to his new passion to fully understand what was contributing to the volatility of the market in this exciting, burgeoning digital area. As he recounts, the market changes so quickly in this space that insufficient data and the need to research could cause someone to miss a great opportunity—the need was apparent: information needed to be aggregated, and new tools were a necessity. The artificial intelligence and financial markets expert discusses the types of events that trigger volatility and market fluctuation, and he acknowledges that the market is still highly unregulated. Thus, access to the constantly incoming information is paramount. Born's way was a new way of looking at data that allowed for smarter, quicker decisions to be made and thus CoinGenius was born to fill the void. CoinGenius is an AI-powered cryptocurrency intelligence engine specifically built to empower traders with fast, real-time data needed to make intelligent investment decisions that can yield results. Born underscores that they do not make recommendations, but they do arm people with quality information. The platform allows for smarter trades and utilizes analysis, deep fraud detection, and real-time trade alerts. As Born's company acknowledges, investing in cryptocurrency can be challenging but with the proper tools, the trading options are better. At the core of the market, every digital asset and coin is greatly impacted by, and produces, a large amount of internal and external signals. Having the proper tools can help to order the volume of information so traders can home in on what's important. Born gives an overview of where his team is in the process toward release of their platform and the steps they have already completed to make the full launch in early 2019. Born discusses that first they plan to do a mobile release, but other options will be coming. As many apps are on the way in this market, it can be overwhelming, but Born stresses that none of them are truly bringing everything together under one platform, that also covers multiple asset classes as CoinGenius does.

The ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, whether or not you should skip that first meal of the day...you've probably heard a lot of arguments for and against each, so how do you know what's "right"? What will provide YOU with healthful longevity? Valter D. Longo is a biogerontologist, cell biologist, and author of several books, the latest of which is The Longevity Diet. He joins the podcast to discuss his views on these issues and shed light on some of the main arguments in his book, each of which is based on the scientific evidence that's available today. The Longevity Diet is divided into two sections: the first utilizes an approach that's based in part on findings of epidemiological and clinical studies to decide how best to eat on a daily basis, and the second discusses the benefits of the fasting mimicking diet. He's a proponent of diets rich in legumes and vegetables, 12-hour daily fasts, and making time for breakfast each morning. While he admits that the ketogenic diet may benefit some individuals with particular health issues or diseases, he references a Harvard study that followed 120 subjects over a 30-year span and drew conclusions about the long-term effects of high fat, high protein, low carb diets: significantly shorter lifespans, and higher rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease. He also discusses how daily fasts that exceed 12 hours lead to a mechanism by which the body essentially begins eating itself, and how the concept of "irrational exuberance" is largely at play in many people's devotion to diet fads.

Ageing: it's an inevitable part of life, it affects us all, and there's just no way around it. Or is there? "Ageing is a major societal problem that we're turning our attention to in the biotechnology industry as something that's treatable...and that we can modify biologically to improve the health span of people in our country and worldwide," says Dr. Joshua Hare, co-founder, and chief science officer at Longeveron. Founded four years ago after receiving a technology license from the University of Miami Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute, Longeveron is a biotech company bringing over 20 years of clinical research and 40 years of basic research to address the problem of ageing. The team at Longeveron proposes that allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells can be used to treat ageing frailty, a condition that affects 50 percent of people over the age of 65. Dr. Hare discusses the evidence in support of his hypothesis, the regenerative and reparative potential of these stem cells, how to determine the best method of delivery, why ageing frailty is a condition that's particularly likely to respond positively to these types of stem cells, roadblocks to the development of research in this field, and what he thinks will happen over the next few years. Tune in for the full conversation, and visit longeveron.com to learn more.

Dr. Stuart Williams, founder of Bioficial Organs (cvregen.com), delivers an interesting overview of the future of bioengineered organs and tissues, and the medical advances that we are seeing daily. Williams has extensive experience in the areas of biomedical engineering, surgery, physiology, as well as materials science and engineering. He is the former director of research for the Department of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College, former faculty at the University of Arizona, and founder of the University of Arizona Biomedical Engineering Program. In 2007, Williams was appointed as the scientific director of the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, a collaborative partnership between the University of Louisville and Jewish Hospital. Williams received a Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of Delaware and did his postdoctoral training in pathology at the Yale School of Medicine. His strong interest in medical devices and regenerative medicine paved the path toward his development and patent of one of the first methods to use fat-derived stem and regenerative cells for therapeutic use. Dr. Williams discusses the Bioficial Organs Program and their work to create human tissues and organs for clinical therapeutics and in vitro drug efficacy and toxicity testing by utilizing a patient's own cells. He gives a detailed overview of the fascinating process of creating organs and tissues from biological parts. As Williams explains the human body has at least eleven different types of organs and tissues, some that are extremely complex, but some that are simpler, that can be created via the Bioficial process. He explains how the complexity is often based in the number of specific cells that are used to perform functions. As he states, the liver and the kidney are perhaps more difficult to bioprint than other organs, but that parts of tissues, such as skin, are easier to tackle successfully in regard to regenerative medicine. He discusses work they are very excited about, including their active lab program to use 3D bioprinting to create an artificial pancreas, in order to produce insulin on demand in a patient. The biomedical engineering expert discusses specific organs that can regenerate, and those that cannot. Unfortunately, for example, the heart does not have cells within it that will repopulate a damaged area, but it may be possible to put organoids into a damaged part of the heart such that they may take up residence and begin to create a functional part. Williams discusses his extensive work focused on developing new and successful ways to remove patients' cells and build new blood vessels from those cells that can be reinserted into the body. He cites examples of some specific work with patients that helped to advance the regenerative medicine field. Dr. Williams discusses their exciting new plan to move bioprinting to the international space station, which will allow them to avoid the effects of gravity that can adversely impact some of their work. He relates how the fetus is formed in amniotic fluid, and thus is somewhat defying gravity as it can move about freely in its environment. And this study of those conditions, in fact, creates more questions as well as answers to how growth happens regarding organs, and the conditions and mechanisms that are involved in that complex process. Further, he discusses the shapes of organs, and how it may not be necessary to recreate organs in the same shape in which they naturally occur in the body. Additionally, he muses about regeneration, and why some organs will regenerate, but others will not, and he states that he is very interested in studying all of these issues in detail to find the answers. Dr. Williams has authored more than 300 scientific publications and his work has generated 22 issued US patents with nearly countless patents pending. He's the founder of six biotechnology companies and is a fellow of the American Heart Association as well as the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Most women who've been pregnant are familiar with the strong, sometimes strange food cravings that occur to them—cravings that might not always be for nutrient-dense, healthy, and unprocessed foods. As a mother herself, Erica Mock is all too familiar with the battle between satiating those cravings and eating healthy during pregnancy, but she has an interesting take on the matter, stating, "Our bodies have an incredible innate intelligence. I craved sushi every day, started supplementing high-quality omega-3 supplements, and the cravings went away…the body knows what it needs." And what does the body need before, during, and after pregnancy? High-quality, nutritious, individually-curtailed, and of course deliciously mouth-watering foods. This is exactly what Erica Mock set out to provide for women when she founded twenty-fiveEIGHT. Customers can simply visit the website to choose from several subsections and menu options, including foods that increase the volume and quality of breast milk, vegetarian foods, homemade black sesame almond milk, bone broths made from 100% pastured animals, a dairy-free chickpea noodle macaroni and "cheese" dish, and a flourless seed bread that's excellent for digestion. All foods on the menu are organic and local, and Mock has been mindful enough to opt for the most sustainable packaging materials so you can feel good about your purchases. The company is still in the beginning stages, with a launch party scheduled for just after the holidays this year. Tune in for all the details—including a sweet story that explains how she came up with the name of the company. Visit twenty-fiveeight.com to learn more.

McLean Wilson, co-founder, and manager of Spark Invest (sparkinvest.com) discusses the many new opportunities that exist in the marketplace for the average investor, and how his company is helping promising companies to take the next step to their success. Wilson is a seasoned alternative investment and asset-based lending expert. He has extensive experience in asset management and capital raises for alternative investments, as well as structured transactions, transactional operations, recourse and nonrecourse purchase agreements, negotiation, and management. Wilson's knowledge of the aforementioned, along with his keen understanding of the underwriting processes and the elements of secured and unsecured transactions makes him exceptionally qualified to lead his team at Spark Invest. Wilson's considerable past accomplishments in business include his tenure as vice president of SouthStar Capital, an asset-based lender strategically focused on factoring. While at SouthStar, Wilson structured and funded many equipment leases and purchase order financing transactions. Other notable points on Wilson's extensive resume include his work as an investment advisor with ING Financial Partners and Money Concepts Capital Corporation and Wilson's focus was on financial planning, investment planning, and portfolio management. He holds a bachelor of science and a master of science in civil engineering from Clemson University and is a registered investment advisor representative. Wilson explains that his company, Spark Invest, is an equity crowdfunding platform that provides an opportunity for average retail investors to invest in early-stage nonpublic companies that are poised for growth. He states that Spark Invest has higher expectations and qualifications for the start-ups and companies that are given an opportunity to exist on their platform. They typically need to have proof of concept, to have ideally already raised some capital, and have a good use for their capital. Simply having a 'good idea' is not enough for Spark Invest, as the Spark Invest team is comprised of many entrepreneurs who have extensive experience with starting companies, closings, and exit strategies, and understand what it takes for a company to launch and succeed. As Wilson acknowledges, they really don't want companies on their platform that they would not personally feel great about investing in themselves. Wilson explains their vetting process and gives detail on the specifics they look at, such as audited financials, etc., to ensure that the companies who are given the opportunity to exist on the Spark Invest platform are quality, vetted, legitimate, and promising companies worthy of an investor's time, and dollars. In the past, these types of alternative investments in promising private companies were only available to qualified institutional investors, but thanks to a major change in securities law, these companies can now be owned by the public without the usual standard initial public offering, or IPO. This opportunity works well for new companies who have a great concept or product that has already had some success and are now looking to take on investors, but want to avoid the typical VC investor who might mandate that the entrepreneur become an employee of the VC upon taking in their investment dollars. Additionally, the platform is a unique opportunity for smaller investors to make investments in promising new companies that they typically have not had access to in the past. Thus, the platform can be beneficial to all parties involved. Wilson discusses some of the types of companies and ideas that they like to bring to their platform, as well as some that they don't. He explains their marketing, and how they attract some of their most interesting companies. And he provides detailed information on the various investment platforms that exist and how Spark Invest takes a different view than some of their competitors, as they monitor the kinds of companies that come into the platform and prudently review their financials. While Spark Invest is interested in many types of companies, Wilson states that they are certainly drawn to practical companies that are solving problems via incredibly innovative ideas. Through Spark Invest, intelligent retail investors can invest in companies that may someday yield higher returns than traditional platforms are able to offer. And the platform allows investors to choose the level of risk that they are comfortable with.