(bright music) (upbeat music) -(upbeat music) -(tape whirring) (upbeat music) - Welcome to a special episode of "What If...?"

We've been creating this series about innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship in Nebraska since 2018.

Stories about interesting people with interesting ideas in a wide range of areas, and from every corner of the state.

So we thought it would be fun to rewind a few of our earlier stories and tell you what these folks are up to now, plus highlight the education and music aspects of "What If...?"

that have been an important part of this award-winning project from the very beginning.

So let's start with something we shot in 2019.

For "What If....?," we've told a lot of stories about persistence, that was definitely Sarah Spitsen.

-I am a person that likes to make up my own title and my own job and go after things that are crazy and fun.

(upbeat music) So during that time, I ran the retail storefront, quickly learned that I was not meant for the retail world and closed the store down after three years.

I was divorced, I had nowhere to live, I had no money, and luckily a lot of friends' couches were offered to me.

It's a more wholesale-friendly candle line and every single thing we do gives back.

So in order to grow Feya, since I had very little, I sold all my belongings, I hopped in my car, and I toured the country living out of my car.

I would sell candles along the way, and then give those meals back to the local homeless shelters before I'd leave town.

(upbeat music) We're six years into Feya, and we've been able to give tens of thousands of meals, and we're working on providing an entire well system in Sub-Saharan Africa for an all-girls school later this year.

(upbeat music) I started Feya out of inspiration from my Granny Fey and my Aunt Pamela that I lost.

They taught me how to cook and to care for people and to always rebound from hardships.

I'm Sarah, I'm the chief candle lady and food giver of Feya Candle Company.

-[Sarah] Spaces like innovation and entrepreneurship.

Yours truly and some other local entrepreneurs are gonna be sitting on that panel.

-[Mike] Here's what Sarah's up to now.

After selling Feya, she launched Nebraska Wesleyan University's new Innovation and Entrepreneurship program, building something from scratch, kinda like her early entrepreneurial days.

-[Sarah] My entire career so far has been in entrepreneurship and I've become very used to the quick pivot, the quick movements, the quick decisions.

And so when I saw this position here at Nebraska Wesleyan, I wasn't really sure how I might fit into the mold of a more traditional system, but Wesleyan has been incredibly welcoming and they're very excited for me to come in and build a program the way we're teaching it, with innovation, with entrepreneurial mindset, and with a lot of quick movement.

(gentle music) I want them to develop resilience.

I want them to develop a love of stumbling and learning from it and trying again, because that's what it takes to make big change happen.

It takes the ability to fail forward, it takes the ability to believe in yourself enough to try just one more time.

(gentle music) -[Mike] Sarah and I thought it would be interesting to present a challenge to her Intro to Innovation class, with just a few minutes for each group to brainstorm an idea.

What problem would you solve with the help of a robot?

-Yeah, so I think we combine that with like, that.

-Go to the home.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, it's just a mild suggestion.

(robot whirring) -[Kelby] We have one that does scraping off the bacteria or the burnt sides of the dishes and the pans.

And then the last part would be something that sorts out the dishes to make it so it's easier to find and easy to grab.

(robot whirling) -[Ryan] Just dishes in the sink, just grab it, scrub it, you know?

Set it to the side, dry, eventually maybe, and then go off and dust while the dishes are drying.

(robot whirling) -[Jaywon] They'll make sure that the tools that they use are properly cleaned and that the person of surgery is being put on is like, breathing properly, or might, in some cases, like, help with the actual surgical process.

(robot whirling) -[Alex] So if they need a companion to talk to late at night or food or water or just anything that the robot could go around and help out with.

(robot whirling) -[Daniela] When you go and you place items like maybe eggs, butter, brown sugar, sugar and flour, and it can pull out the recipes of like, you wanna like, maybe suggest like, you could make chocolate chip cookies, you can make churros, you can make hotcakes.

(robots whirring) -How about a few more robot ideas?

Nebraska Public Media's Education Team, as part of a Makerspace activity at Fremont's Keene Memorial Library, asked middle and high school kids that same question.

What problem would you solve with the help of a robot?

We got some great answers.

Here's a sample.

(robots whirring) -[Miela] I would build a robot that you could quickly tell it what you did at school, and so it would remind you if you had any homework or it could remind you if you like, what you learned at school that day.

(robot whirling) -[Claire] I would like to build a robot that could go down into the sea and discover new animals.

(robots whirring) -[Liberty] I want to build a robot that can help us understand animals, and not just by the ways they feel, so that we can understand how they talk, so that we can know how to treat them better.

(robot whirling) -[Bella] I would make a robot that if you don't get up within five minutes of your alarm going off, it pushes you off the bed onto the floor, so you make sure you're not late (gentle music) for work or school or whatever.

(robot whirring) -Some great ideas.

Now here's a "What If...?"

story from 2021, about three entrepreneurs who also found a way for a robot to solve a problem.

(energetic rock music) -[Announcer] Sunday!

Sunday!

Sunday!

Watch grain get annihilated!

By Grain Weevil!

Quatro and friends toss, thrash, trash the enemy into submission!

Grain Weevil!

Coming soon to a grain bin near you.

(gentle soothing music) -[Mike] Monster truck show jokes aside, there's a serious reason three guys who had never seen a grain bin before are building this robot.

Farmers often store grain in these bins after harvest, before it's sold.

Sometimes a farmer goes inside to make grain flow easier and break up clumps.

-Right now there's not really any solutions other than a farmer with a shovel.

If there are problems inside of a bin.

-[Narrator] That can be deadly.

If grain collapses or a crust breaks or an auger is turned on accidentally while someone is inside.

Suffocation happens in seconds.

These accidents kill about 20 US farm workers yearly.

-This is a safety mission.

Keeping farmers out of the bin will keep them safe.

-Yeah.

-No.

-No.

-[Mike] Chad with his son Ben and Ben's best friend Zane turned an interest in robotics into a tech startup, prompted by a farmer friend's suggestion.

-[Mike] When he told you about the problem you're trying to solve, did the idea of using a robot to solve it, just click right away?

-Well, I always knew we were going to use a robot, but we had no idea what it would look like.

(upbeat music begins) So we actually built what we call a scurry bot.

It's a little 18 by 20 inch robot with augers and it scurries across the surface of the grain.

That's where the name Grain Weevil came from.

-So why do you call it a weevil?

-So inside of these grain bins, you know, sometimes if let grain out to spoil or if you don't take good care of it, there's these little, little bugs called grain weevils that crawl on it.

-[Narrator] The Grain Weevil team thinks farmers will like the robot more than the bug.

-[Ben] It does.

It scurries across the top of the surface and the engagement of our augers, not only moves the robot, but it manipulates the grain.

We're using gravity to manipulate the grain and do different tasks inside of the grain bin.

-[Chad] So we're increasing what, the scientific word is, the sediment gravity flow, introduce a little more air to the process and it flows down into a level state, which is an important process of managing a grain bin.

-Imagine creating an avalanche.

-Yeah, yeah.

Controlled.

Right?

(hammer banging) -[Narrator] The guys were spending long days testing and working out the bugs (guys laughing) when we caught up with them.

(engine whirring) -Nice.

-[Narrator] Trying different prototypes -There we go.

-[Narrator] And monitoring the results.

-[Mike] So tell me what you're seeing there.

-So this is all of our positional data from the robots.

So I get acceleration, angular velocity, orientation, all of our temperature data, voltage, current, everything that we need to make sure that the robot's running correctly.

-[Narrator] Because it's not easy to get a robot to run on piles of grain.

-It took us over a year to even get a robot to drive on the grain.

-Quatro your favorite, then?

-Absolutely.

-Quatro going to win?

(energetic rock music) -Be the one on the market?

-Oh yeah.

I mean he's winning so far, so if he just keeps on his trajectory he's going to be, going to be the best robot out of them.

-[Announcer] Quatro!

Quatro!

Quatro!

-[Mike] What happened to Quatro?

-Well he got a little cross signal or mixed signal or something.

Flew all the way backwards and shredded up his augers, so.

-[Mike] This has got to hurt to see the death of Quatro.

(nervous laughing) -It's devastating.

-He'll be back -Really.

-Yeah.

-He'll be back.

-Zane, kind of latched onto this, but you know, all of our robots are doing everything that we wanted to do and Quatro was our favorite, but not anymore.

-No (inspirational fanfare music) -[Chad] We always like to break things cause then we know how to fix it, to make it better.

-[Narrator] What started as an idea for an educator and still in school Nebraska engineering students is close to reality.

Armed with funding, including a prestigious MIT student prize, they're now running on-farm trials in Nebraska, Iowa and Tennessee.

The hope is it'll eventually be something farmers can just keep in a bin, operating on its own.

-[Mike] What do you hope eventually happens with this, this product and this company?

-Truly I hope that one day farmers don't ever get into a grain bin again.

(boisterous music) - [Mike] A lot's changed since we visited the grain weevil guys.

They now have two places in Omaha.

One with a 12ft grain bin where they test robots.

Another with room for Chad, Ben, Zane and now eight other employees.

The robot has gone through a lot of changes new mechanics, batteries, and electronics.

(upbeat music) They created a multi-state network called Binassist.

Partner businesses that already provide other Ag services to farmers to offer use of the grain weevil.

And they've built about 75 robots so far.

And hope to soon market directly to farmers.

(upbeat music) Earlier this year, Ben told me demand is high with interest from businesses who are thinking about using it for piles of different materials like sand, salt, peanuts.

(upbeat music) Ben said they're super busy but still passionate about what they do, including the primary goal of keeping farmers out of dangerous grain bins.

(upbeat music) -Another part of our "What If...?"

project is called Innovator Insights, short web videos with advice for young innovators created with the help of Nebraska Public Media's Education Team.

Here's a sample.

(upbeat music) -Hi, my name is Delaney.

What advice do you have for kids who wanna discover ways to change how we live?

(upbeat music) -Stay curious and ask questions.

Sometimes it's asking how or why that will lead you to solving the problem that you're trying to work towards.

(upbeat music) -Hi, name is Emma.

Talk about pursuing your passion.

-Pursuing my passion for me means helping other women learn how to create with their hands.

Whether it's painting, quilting, beading, working with leather.

My passion is to encourage our women to work with their hands like our ancestors have in the past.

(upbeat music) -Hi, my name's Rodrigo, and how do you learn from failure?

-Failure is actually probably the best way to learn anything, because I can't think of a single thing I did perfectly that I learned something from.

So failure gives you a direction to move and something to work toward.

So I actually like it when I fail so I can make a really big improvement the next time.

-Hi, my name is Mya.

How do you still develop as an innovator?

-By understanding that new technology, new talent, and new companies are coming up and they need someone to help communicate their messages.

On the flip side of that though, if I don't start adapting with those things, then it's very easy for me to get left behind, too.

So I'm adapting by making sure that I'm on top of the new technology and trends and people entering the industry.

(upbeat music) -Hi, my name is Macy.

What's your best advice for young innovators?

(upbeat music) -Do things, and when we talk about doing things, I'm talking about building and tearing apart and making circuits and testing things.

It's the skills that you actually build while you're tinkering that become extremely important when you want to become an innovator.

(gentle music) -We're proud to say the grain weevil story you saw a bit ago, and the one you're about to see were both Heartland Regional Emmy winners.

We love it when others recognize the hard work, the "What If...?"

team puts into this project.

So let's talk about music.

From the beginning of "What If...?," all of our stories have showcased original music by Nebraska composers and creators, because, well, that's what a series celebrating creativity should do.

Rock, pop, classical, country, hip hop, electronic.

We've used more than 200 pieces of music from 40 different creators, like the piece you're hearing now created by Winston Schneider.

We first learned about Winston when we started seeking submissions of music for "What If..." and quickly realized we should tell the story of this young creator in one of our first episodes.

(gentle music)) ("Scherzo of the Feather Stars" by Winston Schneider) ("Scherzo of the Feather Stars" by Winston Schneider) -[Mike] A lot of creative stuff comes from the small room and big mind of 11-year-old Winston Schneider.

-I want to write a fantasy novel series, because I really enjoy reading fantasy novels.

-[Mike] And stuff like the music you're hearing.

It's called Scherzo of the Feather Stars.

Winston wrote it.

It won a National Association for Music Education competition last year.

Winston worked with professional musicians during a rehearsal for a performance of the piece at the group's conference in Texas.

-If you have a crescendo do you want us to just like go right into the new tempo without slowing down?

(Winston sings notes) -I started piano lessons when I was five.

-Soon after that he would play his pieces that he was learning, but he'd start to play them on all different keys, and he was my first child, so I just thought wow, that's neat.

(plays piano) -While I was practicing piano, like this is over a period of time, the ideas, they just started coming to me in my head.

I'm like, hm-mm, it would be sad if these ideas went to waste.

-[Mike] A composer was born.

His first piece was Snowman, Snowman Don't You Melt.

Six years later, it's String Quartet in E Flat Major ("Arousing of the Arrow-Jawed Ants" by Winston Schneider) and Arousing of the Arrow-Jawed Ants, a piece mixing other things the home-schooled fifth grader enjoys.

Stuff like fantasy novels and especially insects.

-It's called the arrow-jawed ant because it has two arrow-like shapes with points for the mandibles.

("Arousing of the Arrow-Jawed Ants" by Winston Schneider) I write music based on what I think the insects would do.

So imagine if I was gonna write a piece about, let's say, a cicada.

I would maybe have, maybe a little loud and obnoxious theme, since cicadas are loud and obnoxious.

("Arousing of the Arrow-Jawed Ants" by Winston Schneider) -[Ken] Within that, see if you can find something that would be a little more dissonant.

(plays piano chord) -Oh I know, maybe those diminished two and half-diminished seventh chords, -maybe.

-Perhaps.

(plays piano notes) -[Mike] This afternoon Winston is working on something new, adapting a German poem for a British choral competition.

-And then maybe this could be for quiet.

(plays chord) -Go ahead with that.

That's awesome.

I've worked with some talented kids in the past and my own kids, I consider talented, but Winston's really in another class.

-[Mike] Want more proof?

Winston says his mom sometimes gives him four notes and says compose a melody.

So, we gave that a shot.

(plays four notes) (plays four notes) -I know.

(plays song) -Voila.

-Okay, that's crazy.

-So from me just doing this (plays four notes) you came up with that out of the blue.

-Sure.

-How does that happen?

-Um, I don't really know.

I guess it just triggers my gears of creativity to create that, and I just make it up as I go.

-[Ken] It just comes to him so naturally and he just has a curious mind.

So everything just opens up for him.

-I would sing to him songs at night as I do with both my kids.

And then pretty soon he would start to say, "You know, Mom, sometimes you sing that in E "and sometimes you sing that in F. "Sometimes you sing it in F sharp "but I really prefer the key of F. "Start on this note."

(laughs) (plays gentle piano music) -[Mike] For Winston, there are no limits, no boundaries.

He wrote another piece called Insect Suite that incorporates special effects for the audience like the smell of a stink bug.

Just mix cilantro, coriander and cedar wood oil.

-And there's your stinky envelope.

-Okay, so this is supposed to smell like what?

-A stink bug.

-That's nasty.

(both laugh) -Good.

-[Mike] So what's next?

-Some projects I want to do are compose a piece for every element of the periodic table, because I like studying chemistry and the Periodic Table of Elements, too.

I also collect the elements of the periodic table.

It's been fun.

I also want to write an insect opera, an opera about insects.

I'm not done with the idea about insects yet.

("Arrow-Jawed Ants" by Winston Schneider) I guess really anything can trigger an idea, no matter where I am.

("Arrow-Jawed Ants" by Winston Schneider) -And Winston Schneider joins us now, still doing amazing things since we last talked to 11-year-old you quite a while ago.

You've won more awards for composing and performing than we could possibly even list in this show.

But talk about maybe a couple of your most memorable experiences since we last talked to you.

-Yeah, well, I think one of the most memorable things that's happened since then is in 2022 when my piece, "Anniversary Overture," a full orchestra piece, it was commissioned by KVNO to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

It was premiered by the Omaha Symphony at their season opening Masterworks concert.

And that was just an incredible experience that I'm really grateful for.

And funny enough, it was actually performed a year later exactly by the Steamboat Symphony Orchestra in Colorado.

-Wow, cool stuff.

-Yeah.

-I was also fascinated to learn that what you did during the COVID lockdown, you basically just went morning through night composing, you ended up creating what?

Three symphonies and a bunch of other stuff.

Talk about what sort of drove you during that period.

What drives you as a creator?

-Yeah, well, there are many things that drive me.

I would say, first of all, the pursuit for excellence in my craft is something I value really highly.

I always want to make sure that whatever I do, I give my best effort for it, and I do it to the best of my extent, but also just the amount of possibilities you have as a creator.

And when you're just faced with a blank page of staff paper, the possibilities that you have at your disposal, it's very encapturing and very enthralling.

And I really enjoy that as a composer, having that creative freedom.

-I'm guessing that's kind of what led you to something we're gonna hear a little bit called "Swap," which is a pretty unique piece of music that you wrote for you and a rival of yours to perform.

Talk a little bit about creating "Swap" and what that's all about.

-Yeah, so "Swap" is a piano duet piece, and it's named "Swap" because the performers, they swap places on the bench and they swap parts three different times throughout the piece.

First, I was asked to write it by Dr. Paul Barnes, the piano professor, or one of the piano professors at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for his piano camp, the Lead Summer Piano Academy, which I attend annually, and in addition to that, 'cause we premiered it at the piano camp last year, I also wrote it because me and my duet partner, Matthew Moisseyev, we entered the MTNA Piano Duet Performance Competition last year for the 2024 - 2025 season.

And we basically assembled a program of 30, about 30 minutes of duet music, and "Swap" was one of those pieces.

We won first place in the state competition and the regional round of the competition.

-[Mike] Yeah, crazy success with that.

-Yeah.

-And it's just, it's outside-the-box thinking, right?

To compose something like that.

-[Winston] Yeah, I mean, I'm not the first one who's thought of it, but I certainly thought the idea was really fun.

-[Mike] Yeah.

So finally, what's your best advice for other creators and innovators?

-I would say always stay true to what you love and what you want to express, because if you don't love what you're creating, then chances are no one else will.

-And you love what you're creating?

-I sure do.

-Right.

Well, thanks Winston.

We're gonna wrap up this show with your performance of "Swap."

Wanna binge the 10 hours of "What If...?"

stories, episodes, and educational content we've created since 2018?

It's all on the "What If...?"

website and Nebraska Public Media's YouTube channel.

And follow us on social media at #WhatIfNebraska.

Thanks for watching and enjoy this performance of "Swap."

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