a retrospective this morning. some of 2013's most interesting and influential guests this week on "press here." good morning, everybody, i'm scott mcgrew. each week on this program we talk with hardworking entrepreneurs, tireless ceos and never-give-up inventors. that said, we also believe in taking a break. and seeing as we are smack in the middle of the holiday season, we've given the crew and our team of reporters the week off. it's just me. and some clips from some of our best guests. we've had more than 150 over the past year. you have to be pretty spectacular to be on the show at all. but let's start with josh tetric. he is trying to reinvent the egg

in his san francisco laboratory. >> reporter: science has been working on egg replacements for years and for good reason. eggs have too much cholesterol. they're hard to transport. they spoil. and the quarter billion chickens they come from are damaging to the environment. the problem is, eggs are used in so many ways. it's proved impossible for scientists to find one solution. those san francisco hampton creek foods may be close. the start-up located in the heart of high-tech south of market is working on plant-based replacements. funded in part by microsoft's bill gates. josh is ceo, a former football star, scholar, teacher in kenya and blogger who's now reinventing one of nature's most basic foods. joined by anthony hobb and quentin hardy of "the new york

times." in my list of things you're good at, i don't see biochemistry, molecular anything. what qualifies you to be trying to replicate the egg? >> i think i'm pretty good at finding people that are a whole lot smarter than i am. >> so am i which is why we're having this show. people like what? what do you need to replicate an egg? a biologist? nutritionist? >> yeah, you need a whole lot of different types of folks. one of the things we realized early on, this problem is not a food science problem. it's not a culinary problem. and it's not a biochemistry problem. it requires all of these disciplines. so we have biochemists, molecular biologists, a chef that was on "top chef" season 9. and all of them put together make it happen. >> what i'm getting here is like the egg is spoken of as the perfect food. setting aside the cholesterol problem, it's a very complete kind of food. so chickens do a nice job laying them. why do you want to replace the chicken? why do you need to change the system?

works well -- how many eggs are laid every year in america or around the world? do you have any number like that? >> yeah, it's the system, not the egg that really is the issue. 1.8 trillion eggs are laid every single year-around the world. >> sounds like chickens are doing a fine job. >> but they're doing a dirty job and they're doing a hard-to-transport job. >> it's massive. of the 1.8 trillion eggs that are laid globally, 99% of all of those eggs, whether where i was raised in birmingham, alabama, or beijing, china, are laid in exactly the same place, these industrial warehouses known as battery cage facilities. so imagine a warehouse rows of cages, 9 to 10 female bird in each cage. they're crammed in. they can't flap their wings. they're left there for two years. besides the obvious animal welfare issue, it's really unsafe. as we speak now, there's an avian flu outbreak in mexico. somebody's going to get sick.

prices are rising. and it's also pretty devastating to the environment because these hens are fed massive amounts of soy and corn requires all of this land and water and fertilizer. >> okay. so i'm a little scared by all that. and shouldn't i be also scared by guys in labs -- >> genetically modified? are we talking about genetically modified? >> we're not. we're talking 92% of the world's plants have not been explored for their applicability in food. plants you've heard of and haven't heard of. and all we do is search the world's plant species. and we screen them, asking ourselves, does it emulsify? does it bind? does it scramble up? a property called coagulation? so we're not doing anything fancy, no synthetic engineering. we don't have any of those tools in our lab. we just have really smart people who can identify the functionalities of these plants and say, well, this can work better than the egg. our next guest is the inventor or co-inventor of

google street view, google self-driving row bobotic cars a google glass. sebastian has been called the fifth most creative person alive. >> i had the fortune to learn from the best, and i would say larry is part of my inspiration. and what they do really well is look at something and say what is the fundamental game shifting? not building a better cell phone, but we understand how to be closer to people. and their idea was to say, look, this wouldn't be in your pocket. of course, brain implants hurt and they're expensive. >> had you experimented with them or you just speculate? >> we're speculating. >> you may have actually tried it. >> i wouldn't be able to tell you. but getting a camera, it's sheer magic. credit sergey and larry with this invention because they're really behind it. >> where do you see google glass in three years? where is that product going? >> i've been wearing it a lot. i've been wearing it for many,

many months now. >> it's not distracting? >> it is sometimes distracting. there's moments where we move to display above the eye so it's not in the way. and we move the speaker out of the ear so it's not in your ear. and the aspiration is that you live a normal life and still have access to the ability. >> people look at you like you're crazy, though, when you're walking down the street wearing them? >> i don't know yet. >> have you not walked down the street wearing them? >> oh, yeah. >> okay. i would imagine in silicon valley, most people say hey, you're wearing google glass. >> i've gotten a lot of positive response because it's very new. >> by the way, it's google glass, not glasses. >> singular. >> i think you're going to lose that branding just like people calling it the itouch instead of the ipod touch. people will call it what they want to call it. >> a couple of years you'll be walking down the street and they'll say why don't you have your google glass on? >> isn't google partnering with a sunglass company designer? >> i wouldn't be able to comment on it. >> you don't have a hand in the actual design, frames?

>> what you see right now is designed by google. there's an amazing designer named isabel olson. >> we have about two minutes left. i think the next one we've got to ask about is the autonomous car. >> the cars. >> we were just floored when google said oh, by the way, we've been driving robot cars around. and you had a heavy hand in that as well. along with the team that works with you. >> it's just an amazing thing to do because it's so logical. just as much as -- >> why? >> is it going to be a reality? >> they're driving down 85 now. >> it's happening a little bit. >> talk about the advantages. it's cool and all. it's amazing. >> safetywise, there's more than 1 million people in the world in traffic accidents every year. conveniencewise. about an hour a day commuting. because i have a sports car and i hate commuting. and think about the style

changes. what if you can sleep in your car? >> oh, yeah, i would love that. >> you sat behind the wheel -- i mean, there's always at this point a driver behind the wheel, and i assume you've salt behind it. >> oh, my god, i've sat behind it a lot. >> hours and hours. that first time you got into traffic, were you thinking, i have coded this thing so well, it's going to be great? or did you think -- >> well, if no one's listening -- >> no one's listening, sebastian. >> the first time i got into traffic is certainly a moment of hope. i would have called it faith-based driving. we made sure we had tested this thing like crazy on closed-circuit confidence. we also built it so we can take over any second like a cruise control so if there's any mistake. and i can tell you there are moments we took over. otherwise we would have had a crash. so we had a few accidents only caused by humans bumping into us.

none caused by us. more of our look back on 2013 when "press here" continues.

welcome back to "press here." if you're just joining us, we're taking a look back at some of the guests of 2013. back at the start of the year, a young man named aaron schwarz, a computer programmer and absolute whiz kid took his own life. he was facing what many thought to be an overzealous prosecution for copying data at m.i.t. he was to be represented in court by attorney elliott peters. >> reporter: elliott peters was in the midst of wading through discovery documents when he first heard his client had hanged himself with a belt. thank you for being with us this morning. with john schwarz of "usa today," lauren sidle of npr. how did you get this case? why did you become his lawyer? >> i got a phone call from mark

lemley, law professor at stanford. and he was familiar with aaron and the case. and then aaron -- i got a call from aaron a couple of days later. aaron had other lawyers before me, but i went to new york a few days later. i was actually visiting my mom in new york. and i went to see aaron, and we got together and sat down and talked for several hours. and he's a fascinating guy. then i met his dad a few weeks later. and they had a very good lawyer in boston named marty weinberg. but they decided to make a change and go with me and my firm. >> and there you are, as i said, wading through discovery documents. you feel you got a little late on top of it. you get i think an e-mail from his dad saying aaron had passed away. >> i spent the afternoon reading discovery material, getting very excited about the significance of it in the case and about how we could use it in an upcoming suppression hearing. i'm driving home, having printed out a lot of this stuff and planning to review it over the weekend. i get an e-mail from aaron's dad which simply said aaron committed suicide, and i pulled over and called his dad.

>> were you shocked to hear this? >> yeah, i was shocked and sad and, i mean, i'm not sure i have words to describe how i felt. >> you know, the case a lot of people have talked about prosecutorial overreach, that they were -- that they were actually asking for seven years in prison for essentially hacking into a school system and doing something that really was kind of a victimless crime. the question i've had the whole time is why has the government -- why did the government go after him so vehemently? i heard some people say that in some ways they associated him with wikileaks and the type of hackers who were involved there and they wanted to set a precedent. what is your take on why they went after him? >> i don't know the answer to that, but i fear that the truth is somewhat more mundane and that you had a prosecutor in boston, head of the computer crimes unit in boston, and being head of the computer crimes unit isn't worth much unless you have a computer prime to prosecute.

and he found this case and turned it into something that it wasn't, which was -- it didn't involve hacking, really. he was an authorized user of the m.i.t. computer system. he could get on to j-store and do what he did. but they blew it way out of proportion and made it into a much bigger deal than it was. >> have you had an opportunity to speak with him since then? >> the prosecutor. >> the prosecutor, i'm sorry, the prosecutor in this instance. >> i have chosen not to. i got a phone call from him on the morning after aaron committed suicide and a voice mail saying please call me. but i felt like either he's going to say, oh, my deepest apologies to the family and my sympathies and i was going to feel gross about that. or he was going to -- or i was going to say something to him that i was later going to regret. so i haven't spoken to him. >> i'm wondering, you know, about the wider implications of this case. you say you think it was just this one prosecutor. but is there some lesson to be learned around hacking crimes and how they should be handled by the government? >> well, i think -- i think personally the lesson to be

learned is that prosecutors really can overreach. they can inflate cases. there's very little constituency for criminal defendants out there or for people who are in prison. everybody wants to be tough on crime. and there's plenty of situations where you've got to say, let's be reasonable here. >> there has been a precedent, though. you look at gambling online. there was a crackdown on that. there was a crackdown on some hackers a couple of years ago. it goes through these phases. one thing i want to ask you about was if i'm a nontechnical person and our audience tends to be, i think, what do you want them to know? what was the significance of what aaron did and what's his legacy? >> well, you know, i think there's two pieces of aaron's legacy. one is what he stood for in the tech community, in the internet community, which was free access to information, that knowledge and the access to information and the revolutionary power of the internet should be made as widely and freely as possible.

that's really what he stood for. the other part of his legacy is that he was a good person who would engage in a political act and prosecutors dramatically overreached. and there's been a significant backlash. venture capitalist chris was one of our guests this year talking about a program he and his wife created called the last mile. it brings business and entrepreneurial classes into san quentin prison. convicts learn how to create internet start-ups, even apps, all without touching computers or iphones. now, we have an interview on our website, but i wanted to focus on horacio harts, one of the graduates of the last mile who had just been released from san quentin days before appearing on the show. >> i think you're going to ask the question i think we all want to ask. >> yeah. what is -- it's a question about a question -- what's the number one question people ask you when they find out that you've been to san quentin? >> people want to know, what is the biggest change from being

inside and outside, and that is the engagement i see with people with technology. before i went to prison, you know, no one was looking at their phones on b.a.r.t., you know. and now on b.a.r.t., everyone's just disengaged with the riders, and they're in their own world. it's crazy. >> it's that big -- because for us it's been this gradual change, right? as we've all gotten smartphones. >> you stand in line. >> yeah, yeah. >> do you have an iphone or smartphone now? >> i do have a smartphone. still learning -- >> he sent me something on gmail the other day. or gdrive. hold on. i kind of know how to do this. walk me through it. if you ran san quentin, understanding that people go to prison to be punished and to be hopefully rehabilitated as well, with those understandings, what would you do at san quentin if

you ran the place? >> i would make sure that everyone -- well, san quentin is unique. san quentin is a very unique prison. everything that they should be doing, they're doing. now, if you look at other prisons, higher levels, they don't have access to the self-help programs that inmates at san quentin have such as the last mile. they don't have access to the prison university project patton university where i graduated and received an associate of arts degree. i would implement these educational opportunities to every prisoner. >> isn't that funny. that's not the expectation i got of san quentin, such a famous prison. actually, san quentin -- there's a baseball -- two baseball teams. >> yes. >> the only prison newspaper in the united states. there's a lot of stuff going on there. >> right. >> well, give me some change. i mean, you've got the floor. the world is watching you. the guys are watching.

what would you change? >> i would change -- i would say -- i would have more job skills, training. there's, i think, two vocs. i would make sure there's at least four or five vocs. >> vocational, training skills. we're looking back at the year 2013. more guests when "press here" continues.

welcome back to "press here." we've been looking at some of our memorable guests over the past year. now, they're all memorable. we had the head of both the giants and the golden state warriors, the ceo of runaway success work day, neil bushery, reddit founder. one of the most enthusiastic guests was scott maxwell who is in charge of driving the mars rover.

the planetary society once described maxwell as, quote, exuberant, always smiling and a great galloping puppy of a mars geek. thank you for being with us. i hope you take that in the complement of the no doubt intended. >> there are much worse things they could say about me. i'm happy to have that be my description. >> i think the question that everyone probably asks you first is were you nervous? you don't want to say oh, scott maxwell that drove into the rock. >> well, that's bad. for the landing i was actually very confident that the landing was going to work. the guys who did that were just really brilliant. >> even though it was ludicrous. there was a crane and an airbag and a parachute and a rocket. >> it was absolutely insane. but the thing is, it's like the least insane thing you could possibly do. we've been landing things on mars in insane ways for quite a while now, and we've gotten pretty good at it. and we did it in just the right way. they went and sequestered themselves and just focused on the engineering. i was actually very confident that would work. >> what about the driving, though? you're in charge of driving a

billion-dollar product that is millions of miles away. and it's all up to you. and if you crash into a rock, then everybody's fired. >> yeah. nfl has led $2.5 billion. >> fair enough. curiosity is $2.5 billion. >> sticker price. it's the parts. >> right, exactly. >> it's getting a repairman. >> right. but i, at the time that i started driving, i had been driving the mer rovers for 8 1/2 years. fortunately the team of other rover drivers is just a great team. there's fantastic guys, brilliant, not afraid to say what they think, guys and girls. brilliant, not afraid to say what they think. and if you have an idea that's a dumb idea, they will be the first ones to tell you it's a dumb idea. and not in a mean way but just in a twha, like, everybody's more focused on let's do the right thing, the best possible

thing for the rover. and everybody is determined to go to that end. and i just knew these people, and they were really smart, really great people. i knew that if i had something dumb to do, they were going to keep me from doing it. fortunately, the rover is also pretty smart. and you can tell the rover, hey, here are dumb things that i would like you to not do. for example, along this drive, you're going to experience -- we believe you're going to experience about ten degrees. if you see anything more than 12 degrees, you're probably off course. you should stop and wait for help. we can use the rover's own systems, use the rover's own systems to help keep it safe. >> what's the lag between driving, sending a signal up, getting there and finding out whether or not it executed? >> well, the planets it -- that's a great question. the planets are so far apart, the best-case scenario, it's three minutes. you push forward on the joystick. and three minutes later it starts to move. and then you see the cliff coming. but by then it's too late. >> that's not how it goes. so everyone understands, that is

not how it works. >> exactly. we couldn't possibly drive it that way. and three minutes is the best-case scenario. the worst is 22 minutes. imagine trying to drive your car with that kind of lag. >> program something in and wait to see what happens. >> while the rover is sleeping during the night, we are planning out its entire next day. and coming up with a list of what we want the rover to do for the day. and then we take that list and e-mail it to the rover essentially at the beginning of its day. we go home and go to sleep and the rover spends its entire day clocking out its commands. at the end of the day, it stops, takes pictures and e-mails us back a package saying here's what i did. here's what the world around me looks like. there's some pictures i took. and then the rover goes to sleep and we spend the night building up command for the rover's next day. >> how thrilling is that, to get a package of the stuff you executed on? >> oh, my god, it's so great! we're so lucky to be alive at a time and a place when for the very first time in all of human history, we can turn this red light in the sky that used to be a god into a place. and we can go exploring there.

and we can see things on there that have never been seen by anybody ever before. and so when you're getting the data down from the rover and you're seeing these new pictures -- >> every place is new. >> you are the first person who has ever seen that. >> it must be thrilling. >> it's tremendous. for somebody like me who grew up hooked on science fiction, "star trek," as we were talking about before, that kind of thing, and had those kind of dreams to actually live that dream is tremendous. >> were there any unforeseen circumstances or factors that you did not account for? >> it happens all the time. that's why we call it exploration. if we always knew what we were going to find, we wouldn't have to bother to go. so great example of this is with the rover opportunity was kind of landed in a very flat place on mars. it was like a big parking lot with just these speed bumps in it. and we were trying to drive south. and we kind of were driving over the speed bumps and driving over the speed bumps. and one day we came in and instead of going over the speed bumps had gone into one of the speed bumps. the sand was softer than we thought. and the rover was buried up to

its hubcaps. we had to spend several weeks to get the rover back out. >> wow. >> explain that sort of -- again, i'm going to go back to my first question -- is the whole world is counting on you. and to get the data back to say that you got the rover stuck. the feeling that would go down my spine would just be -- i'd just be sick to my stomach. >> yeah. i didn't have that particular one. >> you didn't do it? >> that wasn't me. i swear to god, i'm not kidding you about this. it was some other poor guy's first day. >> okay. there we go. >> that sounds terrible. >> he did put it off. >> i had those moments myself. i've come in and seen a big rover killing rock that's, you no he, a few centimeters off the wing. and oh, my god, your heart stops. it's terrible because, you know, all these people -- and it's not -- it's not -- in part, it's that, you know, all these people have put all this time and effort into making this mission happen. and you don't want to let your team down. in addition to the people who are kind of watching over your shoulder and being as it were

back seat rover drivers. >> how early were you in the process? did you see rover loaded and -- >> i -- i actually saw the rovers, watched the rovers being built. i was part of the team that did the mars exploration rovers from before there was a rover. >> this great line when they went to the moon, he said if there was never life there before, there is now. >> that's exactly right. >> when you looked at the pictures, got the data, were communicating with this thing you sent up there, did you feel like you were there? >> oh, very much so. that's part of the really interesting thing about the job. humans have this ability to kind of put themselves in the mind of other people and of machines. if you ever had a first car, for example, and you gave that car a name, you kind of invested it with a little bit of personality, that's kind of what we do with the rovers. they're people to us. and you kind of, like, put yourself in the mind of that rover. and you're seeing through its eyes and you're moving with its body. and you know, i used to teach people to drive rovers. and you could see this moment that they would kind of like go

over this hump where as they were talking about what we want to do with the rover's arm, they would start moving their arm and body in ways that they were talking about the rover. more of our look back on 2013 when "press here" continues.

that does it for our retrospective. we're back january 5th with all new shows. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us a part of your sunday morning.

hello and welcome to "comunidad del valle." today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of san jose. one half hour of dance on your "comunidad del valle." ♪ they're celebrating 40 years of dance. all across the bay area. we're going to begin actually with my little girls. it's the pee-wee version of it. they are in this first segment. they are dancing from the region. ♪