Shows / What's Your Problem?
What's Your Problem?
Every week on What's Your Problem?, former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein talks with entrepreneurs and engineers tackling the biggest challenges at the forefront of technology. How do you make a trip to space as routine as a plane flight? How do you turn solar energy into clean fuel? How do you use AI to stop deadly infections before they spread? We hear a lot these days about how the world is getting worse. What's Your Problem? learns from the thinkers and doers trying to make our future…
Episodes
What's Your Problem?Giving Old Batteries New Life
Megan O’Connor is the co-founder and CEO of Nth Cycle. Megan’s problem is this: How do you create a new system that can both refine the raw metals…
What's Your Problem?Engineering the Future of Fusion
Getting energy from nuclear fusion has been a dream for decades; it would be cheap, abundant, and safer than today’s nuclear fission reactors. Billions…
What's Your Problem?Can Robots Fix Recycling?
Recycling plants take in a huge amount of random (and occasionally hazardous) stuff, which they then have to turn into reliable outputs that their customers…
What's Your Problem?Inside the Mind of an AI Model
AI might be the most consequential advancement in the world right now. But – astonishingly – no one fully understands what’s going on inside…
What's Your Problem?Teaching Robots How to Do Everything
AI is better than humans at a lot of things, but physical tasks – even seemingly simple ones like folding a shirt – routinely stump AI-powered…
What's Your Problem?Making a Universal Flu Vaccine
Jacob Glanville is the founder and CEO of Centivax. Jacob’s problem is this: Can you create a vaccine that protects people against almost all strains of…
What's Your Problem?Teaching Computers to Smell
Alex Wiltschko got obsessed with perfume when he was 12 years old. He grew up to be an AI researcher at Google. Then he started Osmo, a company that fused his…
What's Your Problem?Can a Chatbot Treat Depression?
Nick Jacobson and his team at Dartmouth medical school spent over 100,000 hours trying to build an AI chatbot that can serve as a safe, effective therapist…
What's Your Problem?Will AI Radically Change the World by 2027?... from Risky Business
This week, Nate and Maria discuss AI 2027, a new report from the AI Futures Project that lays out some pretty doom-y scenarios for our near-term AI future…
What's Your Problem?Is the Future of Flight Supersonic?
Blake Scholl is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic. Blake's problem is this: Can you build a commercial airplane that flies faster than the speed of sound…
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The Secrets of Silk
Fiorenzo Omenetto is a professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University and the director of Silklab. Fiorenzo's problem is this: How do you turn a…
What's Your Problem?Infiltrating an International Ransomware Gang
A few years ago, a ransomware gang called LockBit rose from obscurity to extort over $100 million from organizations around the world. A security strategist…
What's Your Problem?Preparing for the Future of War
Christopher Kirchhoff helped launch a Defense Department office that aimed to bring Silicon Valley technology to the US military. Christopher’s problem…
What's Your Problem?Stopping HIV Without a Vaccine
Jared Baeten is senior vice president in virology at Gilead Sciences. Jared's problem is this: In a world without a vaccine, how do you make a medicine that…
What's Your Problem?Harnessing the Heat Deep Beneath Our Feet
Carlos Araque is the co-founder and CEO of Quaise Energy. Carlos' problem is this: How do you make drilling for geothermal energy as routine, widespread, and…
What's Your Problem?The Brain Implant That Could Change Medicine
Ben Rapoport is the co-founder and CSO of Precision Neuroscience. Ben's problem is this: Can you build a device that allows a paralyzed person to use a…
What's Your Problem?Building a Mass Market Robot
Jeff Cardenas is the co-founder and CEO of Apptronik. Jeff's problem is this: Can you make a safe, reliable humanoid robot – for less than $50,000? In…
What's Your Problem?Solving Solar’s Biggest Problem
We need better, cheaper ways to store solar and wind energy when it’s dark out and the wind isn’t blowing. One option: Compressing air in…
- What's Your Problem?
How Bubbles Power Breakthroughs
There are moments in history when people make huge technological advances all of a sudden. Think of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo missions, or, more…
What's Your Problem?Teaching AI to Build Stuff in the Physical World
AI works well in the virtual world. That’s partly because the internet provides so much data to train AI models. But there’s no analogous data set…
What's Your Problem?NVIDIA: At the Heart of the AI Boom
In the past few years, NVIDIA has become one of the most valuable and important companies in the world by making GPUs, the chips powering the AI boom. But…
What's Your Problem?What Claude Shannon Figured Out
Claude Shannon is a major figure in the history of technology. Known as the father of information theory, Shannon spent decades at Bell Labs and MIT. But what…
What's Your Problem?Measles: The Cancer Killer?... from Incubation
We thought we knew everything there was to know about measles. But in recent years, new research has revealed that the virus attacks the immune system and…
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RoboPod and the Perpetual Money Machine – Cautionary Questions 2… from Cautionary Tales
What really drove the 2008 financial crash? What’s a shadow bank? And what’s the connection between NIMBYs and BANANAs? Tim Harford and Jacob Goldstein answer…
What's Your Problem?Turning Solar Energy Into Fuel (The Solar Era, Part 3)
Solar power and batteries are becoming cheap and ubiquitous. Great. But there are problems batteries can’t solve – like fueling ships and planes. One way to…
What's Your Problem?Can Hot Bricks Save the World? (The Solar Era, Part 2)
This is the second of three episodes about the solar-power revolution. Last week, we talked about how solar power got so cheap. This week, we’re talking with…
What's Your Problem?How the Sun Won (The Solar Era, Part 1)
In the past 20 years, the price of solar panels has fallen by more than 97 percent. This extraordinary decline is good news for the world – and it’s…
What's Your Problem?Drugs in Space
Paul Reichert is a research scientist at Merck, working on improvements to how we administer drugs to patients. Paul's problem is this: How can you run…
What's Your Problem?The World Is Getting Better (Really)
Hannah Ritchie is a data scientist and the deputy editor of Our World in Data. She is also the author of Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First…
What's Your Problem?Rabies: When Monsters are Real…from Incubation
Why has rabies invaded our nightmares for centuries? Author and veterinarian Monica Murphy tells us about the cultural history of rabies (which involves…
What's Your Problem?Using Gene Therapy to Help the Blind See
After decades of research, gene therapy is starting to work. Shannon Boye is a professor of cellular and molecular therapeutics at the University of Florida…
What's Your Problem?Bringing Back Mammoths and Dodos*
*Or at least, sort of bringing back mammoths and dodos. Beth Shapiro is the chief scientific officer at Colossal Biosciences and the author of How to Clone a…
What's Your Problem?What Elevators Teach Us About Technology, Design, and Human Behavior
The elevator made the modern city possible: No elevators, no skyscrapers. Today, people are working on entirely new kinds of elevators that can go higher and…
What's Your Problem?Can the Plant Microbiome Revolutionize Farming?
The invention of synthetic fertilizer was one of the key breakthroughs of the 20th century. It’s the reason we can grow enough food to feed billions of people…
What's Your Problem?Turning Pollution into Jet Fuel
Jennifer Holmgren is the CEO of LanzaTech. Her problem is this: How do you capture pollution from factories, feed it to bacteria, and get the bacteria to…
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Reinventing Mining to Power the World
Moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy will require huge amounts of copper, lithium, and other metals. Kurt House is the co-founder and CEO of KoBold…
What's Your Problem?Inventing a Vaccine for Bees
Dalial Freitak and Annette Kleiser are the co-founders of Dalan Animal Health, a company that has brought to market the first vaccine for insects. Their…
What's Your Problem?A Better Way to Make the Chemicals in Everything
Sean Hunt is the co-founder and CTO of Solugen, a company that sells around $100 million a year of industrial chemicals. Sean's problem is this: How do you…
What's Your Problem?How Refrigeration Changed the World
Refrigeration is an underrated technology. It completely transformed what billions of people eat every day. Today’s guest, Nicola Twilley, tells the story of…
What's Your Problem?Detecting Deepfakes With AI
As generative AI tools improve, it is becoming easier to digitally manipulate content and harder to tell when it has been tampered with. Today we are talking…
What's Your Problem?Turning Old Cans Into Clean Energy
Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust. It’s cheap, ubiquitous, and surprisingly energy dense. Peter Godart is the co-founder and CEO of…
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Moneyball, Soccer, and the Gap Between Analytics and the Real World
Sarah Rudd is the co-founder and CEO of the soccer analytics company src | ftbl (It’s pronounced “Source Football.”) Sarah’s problem is this: How do you model…
What's Your Problem?Using Computer Vision to See What Coaches Can’t
Jimmy Buffi is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot Motion, which uses biomechanics to help athletes in Major League Baseball and the NBA. Jimmy's problem is this…
What's Your Problem?Scanning Every Muscle to Help Olympians Get Stronger
On the next few episodes of What's Your Problem, Jacob Goldstein is talking with people working at the frontiers of technology to help elite athletes perform…
What's Your Problem?Making Blood Vessels in a Factory
Laura Niklason is the co-founder and CEO of Humacyte. Laura's problem is this: How can you use human cells to create blood vessels that surgeons can pull out…
What's Your Problem?Creating the Second Atomic Age
As demand for clean energy grows, engineers around the U.S. are working on a new generation of nuclear reactors. These designs reflect how nuclear energy could…
What's Your Problem?Lifetime Terms, Lifetime Bans, and the Return of Roaring Kitty from Risky Business
This week on Risky Business, Nate and Maria discuss whether Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor should retire, the perils of sports betting among…
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When the Robots Take Over… from Cautionary Tales
Tim Harford is joined by Jacob Goldstein to answer your questions. Does winning the lottery make you unhappy? Is Bitcoin bad for the economy? When does…
What's Your Problem?Making Palm Oil Without Palm Trees
Palm oil is a cheap and remarkably versatile vegetable oil. It’s in a ton of products, from food to cosmetics, detergent, and chewing gum. But producing so…
What's Your Problem?Fighting Cancer with CRISPR
Last year, the FDA approved a treatment for sickle cell disease using a revolutionary new gene editing technology called CRISPR. Rachel Haurwitz conducted…
What's Your Problem?How to Start 40 Companies (and Counting)
Robert Langer has co-founded dozens of companies, holds over a thousand patents, and is a pioneering figure in drug delivery and tissue engineering. Robert has…
What's Your Problem?The Cutting Edge of Energy Storage: Rust
Mateo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy. Mateo’s problem is this: How do you build batteries that can provide affordable backup power to the…
What's Your Problem?The First Pig to Human Kidney Transplant
This March, doctors successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a person for the first time in history. Mike Curtis is the CEO of eGenesis, the company that…
What's Your Problem?Designing a Drone That Delivers
Imagine picking up your phone and ordering something from Walmart. Fifteen minutes later, a drone hovers over your yard, lowers your order down to you, and…
What's Your Problem?How Do Psychedelics Work?
Psychedelics are going mainstream. The FDA has approved ketamine for certain patients with depression, and may soon approve MDMA for post-traumatic stress…
What's Your Problem?Building Boundary-Breaking Balloons
Kai Marshland is the co-founder and chief product officer at WindBorne Systems. Kai's problem is this: How do you build weather balloons that can stay in the…
What's Your Problem?Building a Robot That Can Walk the Walk
Jonathan Hurst is a professor at Oregon State University, and co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. Jonathan's problem is this: How do you…
What's Your Problem?Can Your Phone Tell When You're Getting Sick?
What does sickness sound like? Sometimes it’s obvious, like a cough, sniffle, or stuffy nose. But some conditions cause subtle changes that only a trained ear…
What's Your Problem?The High-Stakes Quest to Reinvent Cement
Cement is, almost literally, everywhere. It is extraordinarily useful, which is why humanity makes 4 billion metric tons of it every year. But cement is also…
What's Your Problem?How a Battery-Powered Stove Could Electrify America
Sam D'Amico is the founder and CEO of Impulse Labs, a company that makes induction stoves, with a clever twist. Sam’s problem is this: How do you build an…