What’s Kraken? is Empty Hell’s interview series — host Jo Szewczyk (bestselling author of Surviving Gen X) in raw, unscripted 20-minute conversations with the people shaping culture, politics, and entertainment. Filmmakers, musicians, writers, activists, comedians, the occasional elected official — no PR gloss, just the stories and process behind the work. New episodes on YouTube and everywhere you get podcasts. Subscribe and pull up a chair.
From filmmakers to musicians, writers to activists, comedians to elected officials—What’s Kraken? brings you the stories, struggles, and process behind the people changing the world around us. No scripts. No pretense. Just real talk with real people.
Dr. Rob Yonover is a volcanologist who rode a submersible two miles down, and an inventor whose See/Rescue Streamer has been saving lives for over 40 years. It’s 40 feet of orange plastic with no batteries, no chemicals, and nothing to break — you deploy it in the water and it makes you visible from the air. He pitched it on Shark Tank and walked away without a deal. Jo and Rob get into where the invention actually came from, what the simplest solution buys you when everything else has failed, and the 19 years he spent as his wife’s caregiver while running an invention company.
Key Moments
– Riding a submersible two miles down, and what a volcanologist actually does for a living
– No batteries, no chemicals, nothing to break — why the simplest design is the one that works
– The Shark Tank pitch that aired and went nowhere
– Nineteen years of caregiving while running an invention company
The Takeaway
He got the PhD so he could keep surfing. Everything after that — the patents, the streamer, the survival gear — came out of following the thing he actually wanted to do.
Guest Links
See/Rescue Streamer and Rob’s other work: http://seerescuestreamer.com/
Rob’s books on Amazon
Jo’s crime mystery Scarlet Shadows, book one of the Scarlet Mysteries: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc
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