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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?3D Printing a Better Rocket
Tim Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Relativity Space, a company with a unique approach to manufacturing rockets. Tim’s problem is this: How can you use 3D…
What's Your Problem?Using AI to Help Doctors Save Lives
Every year in the U.S., tens of thousands of hospital patients die of preventable causes. For many of these patients, warning signs are subtle and easy for…
What's Your Problem?Making Dam Good Hydropower
Gia Schneider is the co-founder and CEO of Natel Energy, a company that is trying to transform the way hydroelectric power works. Gia’s problem is this: how do…
- What's Your Problem?
Using AI to Build Better Robots
Peter Chen is the co-founder and CEO of Covariant. Peter’s problem is this: How do you take the AI breakthroughs of the past decade or so, and make them work…
What's Your Problem?Teaching Computers to See
Fei-Fei Li is a Stanford computer scientist and the former chief scientist of artificial intelligence/machine learning at Google Cloud. When Li entered the…
What's Your Problem?Using Oil-Industry Tech to Create Clean Energy
Tim Latimer is the CEO and co-founder of Fervo Energy, a company that is using a new approach to produce carbon-free geothermal energy. Tim and his company are…
What's Your Problem?Understanding Obesity and Alzheimer’s via Epigenomics
Manolis Kellis is a professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He works in computational biology, taking giant datasets…
What's Your Problem?Reinventing the Restaurant
After working as a chef for decades, Anthony Strong’s dream came true: He opened his own restaurant. His problem was a classic one: Restaurants are bad…
What's Your Problem?The Giant Torch That May Help Save the World
Selling hydrogen to make fertilizer is a huge business. It also drives tons of carbon emissions. Rob Hanson, the co-founder and CEO of a company called…
- What's Your Problem?
Fixing Uber’s Broken Culture
Frances Frei and Anne Morriss are the co-founders of a training and consulting company called The Leadership Consortium. Together they specialize in helping…
What's Your Problem?Murder Brokers from Hot Money: The New Narcos
When a Dutch crime reporter makes an unbelievable discovery, a small-town murder case begins to look like an international assassination plot. Enjoy this…
What's Your Problem?Using AI for Creative Work
A few weeks ago, Jacob Goldstein sat down with a writer and a composer on a stage in Chicago to talk about artificial intelligence. The conversation, which was…
What's Your Problem?The Little-Known Office With $400 Billion to Fight Climate Change
Jigar Shah is the director of the Loan Programs Office at the U.S. Department of Energy. Last year, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress allocated…
What's Your Problem?How AI Solved a Biological Mystery
Pushmeet Kohli is vice president of research at DeepMind, an AI research group that is part of Google. Every protein has a unique shape. And understanding a…
What's Your Problem?Making Oxygen on Mars
Forrest Meyen is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Lunar Outpost, a company that builds machines that go to places like Mars and, if everything goes…
What's Your Problem?The sold-out chips at the heart of AI
Brannin McBee is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at CoreWeave. A few years ago, he and a few friends started buying hardware to mine cryptocurrency…
What's Your Problem?Special Episode: The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former crypto mogul, is on trial for fraud. On today’s show, we talk to Lidia Jean Kott, who is covering the trial for another Pushkin…
What's Your Problem?Getting Yeast to Make Medicine
Christina Smolke is the co-founder and CEO of Antheia. Antheia is a synthetic biology company -- they’re in the business of genetically engineering…
What's Your Problem?Could a Robot Make Your Salad?
Stephen Klein is the co-founder and CEO of Hyphen, a company that is developing an automated make line. Stephen's problem is this: How do you make restaurant…
What's Your Problem?What the Industrial Revolution Teaches Us About the AI Revolution
Simon Johnson is an MIT economist and the co-author of a new book called “Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity”…
What's Your Problem?Can AI Tutors Help Kids Learn? Khan Academy Thinks So
Sal Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy. Sal’s problem is this: How do you design an AI that can give students the kind of benefits they’d get from…
What's Your Problem?Smallpox: Gone but Not Forgotten from Incubation
What can we learn from the centuries-long quest to eradicate smallpox, once the scourge of humanity? And how did it set the stage for all vaccines to come?…
What's Your Problem?Going to the Doctor Sucks. Can AI Make it Better?
Allon Bloch is the co-founder and CEO of K Health. Allon’s problem is this: Can you use AI to make seeing a doctor easier and more helpful? Today, thousands of…
What's Your Problem?Spotting Wildfires with AI
Sonia Kastner is the founder and CEO of Pano. Sonia’s problem is this: How do you use data and machine learning to mitigate the damage caused by climate…
What's Your Problem?Is the Era of Free Returns Over?
Amit Sharma is the founder and CEO of Narvar. Narvar works with companies such as Sephora, Lululemon and Home Depot to manage the post-purchase phase of online…
What's Your Problem?Creative Technology at Pixar
Danielle Feinberg is a Visual Effects Supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios. Danielle’s problem is this: How do you optimize technology so that you can spend…
What's Your Problem?How To Make AI Safer & More Reliable
Yaron Singer is the founder and CEO of Robust Intelligence. Yaron’s problem is this: How do you reduce AI’s security and reliability risks? Yaron was a…
What's Your Problem?Quantum Computers Could Change Everything
Chris Monroe is the co-founder and chief scientist of IonQ. Chris’s problem is this: How do you build a quantum computer that will actually work? Quantum…
- What's Your Problem?
The 2023 Unhedged Stock Draft
Seven stocks are powering the market: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. How will they do in the second half of this year? Ethan Wu…
- What's Your Problem?
Predicting Human Health with AI
Charles Fisher is the co-founder and CEO of Unlearn AI. Charles’ problem is this: How do you build an AI model that can predict human health? Charles and his…
- What's Your Problem?
Breastfeeding, Black Market Baby Formula, and Bobbie
Laura Modi is the founder and CEO of Bobbie, a company that makes baby formula and sells it directly to parents. Laura’s problem is this: how do you launch a…
- What's Your Problem?
Making Immigration Cheaper & Easier
Xiao Wang is the founder of a company called Boundless. Xiao’s problem is this: How do you make it cheaper and easier for people to navigate the U.S…
- What's Your Problem?
The Wind Power Pioneer Still Pushing the Frontier
Henrik Stiesdal got his start in wind power back in the 70s. The price of oil had gone way up, and he wanted to help his parents figure out a cheaper source of…
- What's Your Problem?
The Mystery at the Heart of ChatGPT
One of the most amazing things about ChatGPT and other, similar AI models: Nobody really understands what they can do. Not even the people who build them. On…
- What's Your Problem?
Scrubbing Carbon from the Air
Dan Friedmann is the CEO of Carbon Engineering. The company is at the frontier of a new industry, direct air capture. They just broke ground on a big plant in…
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Building a Plane to Help Save the World
Does flying have to be bad for the environment? Val Miftakhov, the founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, doesn’t think so. His company built a plane that’s powered by…
- What's Your Problem?
The AI that Might Take My Job (And Yours)
Andrew Mason is the founder and CEO of Descript. Descript's software has made editing audio and video much simpler. The company recently received a large…
- What's Your Problem?
The Hottest Thing In Energy Storage
Andrew Ponec is co-founder and CEO of the energy storage company Antora Energy. Andrew's problem is this: How can you store renewable energy in a way that is…
- What's Your Problem?
Using Bacteria to Dye Jeans
Tammy Hsu and Michelle Zhu are the cofounders of Huue. Their problem is this: how do you get bacteria to produce indigo dye? And how do you do it cheaply and…
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The Quest for the Factory-Built House
Today's show is about a problem people have been trying to solve for a hundred years: how can we mass produce houses, like we do cars? Listen for a house that…
- What's Your Problem?
Building Houses Like Tesla Builds Cars
Alexis Rivas is the co-founder and CEO of Cover. His problem is: How do you build houses in a factory, the way you build cars? And how do you do it so they're…
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Human Bones, Made In the Lab
Nina Tandon is the co-founder and CEO of a tissue engineering company called EpiBone. Her problem is this: How do you grow custom bone from patients' stem…
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Tiny Chips, Giant Stakes
Microchips are the most important driver of technological progress in the modern world, and governments are fighting over who gets to make them. Right now…
- What's Your Problem?
Problems Solved: Drones, Bananas and Real Estate*
It's our first anniversary and—almost 50 episodes in—Jacob Goldstein checks in with three past guests. Drone delivery guy Keenan Wyrobek thinks he has solved a…
- What's Your Problem?
Faster, Cheaper Drugs with AI
Alice Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Verge Genomics. Alice's problem is this: How do you use artificial intelligence to drive down the price of developing…
- What's Your Problem?
Creating the Uncrashable Car
When Austin Russell was 17 years old, he founded Luminar Technologies to work on a remote sensing technology called Lidar. Today, Austin is one of the world's…
- What's Your Problem?
The Electric Truck that Went Viral on TikTok
Chace Barber is the co-founder of Edison Motors. Chace's problem is this: How do you build electric logging trucks in rural Canada, with money you raised from…
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Introducing Other People’s Pockets: Mistress Marley, Financial Dominatrix
Here's a bonus episode of a new show from Pushkin, Other People's Pockets. Have you ever wondered how your friend bought that vacation home or why that…
- What's Your Problem?
Running in Recycled Shoes
Caspar Coppetti is the co-founder of On, a company that makes athletic shoes. Caspar's problem is this: How can you sell tens of millions of shoes a year --…
- What's Your Problem?
Turning Garbage Into Food
Matt Rogers is the co-founder of Mill. Matt's problem is this: How do you turn garbage into food? Before Mill, Matt co-founded Nest, a smart thermostat…
- What's Your Problem?
The Fake-Meat Frontier
Jacob Goldstein co-hosts today's show with Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful. Jacob and Dan eat their way through the history of fake meat -- from Gardenburger…
- What's Your Problem?
From Impossible Burgers to Fake Steak
Pat Brown is the founder of Impossible Foods. Pat's problem is this: How can you make meat without animals? Pat's goal isn't to make better burgers for…
- What's Your Problem?
Small Pizza Shops Want a Bigger Slice
Ilir Sela is the co-founder and CEO of Slice. His problem: How do you bring the technological revolution to thousands of tiny mom and pop pizza shops? Most…
- What's Your Problem?
Turning Waves Into Electricity
Tim Mundon is chief technology officer at Oscilla Power. Tim's problem is this: How do you turn waves into electrical power? You can see the power of the ocean…
- What's Your Problem?
From Some of My Best Friends Are: Everything Dope Comes from Chicago
While we’re off celebrating the new year, here’s an episode from another Pushkin show: Some of My Best Friends Are… Hosts Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Ben…
- What's Your Problem?
Flying on Battery Power
Anders Forslund is the co-founder and CEO of Heart Aerospace. Anders' problem is this: How do you build a commercial airplane that can fly on battery power --…
- What's Your Problem?
Bringing Back the American Hoodie
Bayard Winthrop is the founder and CEO of American Giant. Bayard's problem is this: How do you make clothes in America -- and compete in a global economy?…
- What's Your Problem?
How to Save the Most Lives
Farzad Mostashari is the co-founder and CEO of Aledade. Farzad's problem is this: How can we pay doctors to keep us healthy, rather than treating us after we…
- What's Your Problem?
From Story of the Week with Joel Stein: Billionaires Prepping for the Apocalypse
This bonus episode is from Story of the Week with Joel Stein, a new Pushkin podcast. On Story of the Week, journalist Joel Stein chooses an article that…
- What's Your Problem?
The Investors Everybody Ignored
Sallie Krawcheck is the founder and CEO of Ellevest, an investment firm for women that has over $1 billion in assets under management. In her career in…