What is it like to grow up with an inventor as a dad? Phoebe Cade Miles, co-founder of the Cade Museum and daughter of Gatorade lead inventor Robert Cade, talks with James Di Virgilio about her father, his creative spirit, and what his creative legacy has inspired. Phoebe also explains the neuroscience of creativity, and how everyone - but especially kids - can wire their brains to be more inventive in life.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01
Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

James Di Virgilio:
For Radio Cade, I'm James Di Virgilio, and today we have a very special guest. Joining us in studio is Phoebe Miles, the co-founder and board president of the Cade Museum. Phoebe, welcome to your own podcast.

Phoebe Miles: 0:50
Thank you, James. It's a pleasure to be here.

James Di Virgilio: 0:52
And it's gonna be great. We have so many interesting to talk about. Let's start with the beginning for you because this really shapes your story. You grew up obviously with what became a very famous father, but I want to hear what it was like to grow up during what a lot of was a struggle with his innovation story. It was not a rosy success story. What's it like to grow up with an inventor as a father? especially one that was so influential.

Phoebe Miles: 1:17
Growing up with an inventor of as a father for me was an incredible experience, but I didn't realize it at the time. I just always grew up, and my father had invented Gatorade at the University of Florida, or he led the team that invented a Gatorade at the University of Florida. I grew up thinking everybody had access to this creativity and this energy, and this excitement about problem-solving in my childhood memory was as if every day my dad came home and there was something exciting that happened. I'm sure it wasn't like that in reality, but he would come home excited and motivated by problems and his ideas of how he is going to solve them. And by the time I came along, I'm the youngest of six children and a large family he had already investigated, and he had established his reputation of the University of Florida, and he had more flexibility, I think, with his time. And at that point my mom was very happy if I went with my dad to the lab or to research he was conducting at the University of Florida, track field So I was constantly surrounded by ideas and Just an excitement in a passion for science, for history, for creativity. My dad was the most creative person I've ever met.

James Di Virgilio: 2:21
Now, at this time in your life as a child, was your dad a celebrity? Were you sort of known in places you wonder? Or did you have a little anonymity?

Phoebe Miles: 2:29
I can't really answer that question because I was three years old when my father invented Gatorade, and I don't really ever remember a life when he hadn't done that. So certainly at that point it was already a known quantity here in Gainesville. But it was many years before became a national product and then an international product that it is today.

James Di Virgilio: 2:48
So at that point in time, you're just growing up like any other child with a father who does something.

Phoebe Miles: 2:52