What's Your Problem?

How Quantum Computers Could Change the World

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Ben Bloom is the co-founder and CEO of Atom Computing, a company building quantum computers out of individual atoms. Ben’s problem is this: How do you build a quantum computer that is actually useful for everything from discovering new medicines to building better batteries?

In this episode, Ben explains:

The practical applications of quantum computers
Atom Computing’s approach using individual neutral atoms as qubits
The key engineering challenge of scaling while maintaining accuracy
The playbook for commercializing quantum computing

Connect with us:

Follow Jacob Goldstein on LinkedIn, X and Instagram
Email us at problem@pushkin.fm
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Listen to Jacob’s other show, (00:21:23) Business History
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Fighting Wildfires from Space

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Jonny Dyer is the founder and CEO of a satellite company called Muon Space. The company’s first big project is a satellite constellation called FireSat.

Jonny’s problem is this: How do you capture data from space to help manage wildfires around the world in near-real time?

In this episode, Jonny explains:

How smartphone tech inspired smaller, cheaper satellites.
Why fighting wildfires is still shockingly primitive.
Why China does not distinguish between commercial and military satellites.
Why data centers in space might arrive by 2035.

Connect with us:

Follow Jacob Goldstein on LinkedIn, X and Instagram
Email us at problem@pushkin.fm
Follow Pushkin on Instagram, LinkedIn or X
Listen to Jacob’s other show, Business History
To listen to the show early and ad free, sign up for Pushkin+

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The Killer We Refused to See

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 05:30:00 +0000

After bacteria were discovered, it took scientists 200 years to figure out that they cause disease. If scientists had made the link sooner, hundreds of millions of lives could have been saved.

In his recent book So Very Small, Tom Levenson, a professor of science writing at MIT, tells the amazing story of germ theory, and argues that our worldview can prevent us from seeing what is right in front of us – even when lives are at stake.

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The Startup Run by AI Agents

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Evan Ratliff co-founded a publishing startup in 2011. Now he hosts a podcast called Shell Game. In the latest season of the show, Evan creates a company run by AI agents. The project is absurdly funny – Evan calls it an office satire – but it also illuminates the power and limits of AI agents.

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Can AI Help Solve Alzheimer’s?

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Patrick Hsu is the co-founder of Arc Institute, which is integrating AI models and biological research. Patrick’s problem is this: How can you use AI to make biological research more efficient – and ultimately to find cures for Alzheimer’s and other complex diseases?

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The New Science of Preventing Heart Attacks

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 05:30:00 +0000

In recent decades, medical research has fundamentally changed how we think about heart disease. This fresh understanding has opened up new ways to prevent heart attacks. Eric Topol is a cardiologist and the founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. Eric’s problem is this: How can doctors use recent technological developments to do a better job at preventing heart attacks?

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From Solar Pumps to Everything: Building a Market from Scratch

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Samir Ibrahim is the co-founder and CEO of SunCulture. When he started the company, he thought he was solving a simple problem: How do you sell solar-powered pumps to help poor farmers irrigate their land? It turned out, he was working on something much bigger: How do you help poor farmers get richer, and create a giant new market from scratch?

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Mass-Producing Stem Cells to Cure Disease

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 05:45:00 +0000

Nabiha Saklayen is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino. Nabiha’s problem is this: How can you make personalized stem cell therapies quickly and cheaply?

Induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPSCs, have shown tremendous promise as treatments for illnesses like Parkinson’s, leukemia, and heart disease.

On today’s show, Nabiha explains why IPSC manufacturing is still mostly done by hand, how her background in physics and lasers led her into biology, and what it takes to try and build tiny, automated cell factories.

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Building a Self-Driving Tractor to Change the Future of Food

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:30:00 +0000

Please take our survey https://tinyurl.com/wyplistenersurvey about the show! Tell us what you want to hear, and what would make it better.

Tim Bucher is a farmer, and the founder and CEO of Agtonomy. Tim's problem is this: How do you build an autonomous tractor that can work for specialty crops like grapes, olives, apples, and almonds?

On today’s show, Tim explains what makes certain farming processes so difficult to automate, and how autonomy may soon change how we eat.

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We’re Going to Need a Better Boat

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 05:30:00 +0000

Mitch Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Arc Boats. Mitch's problem is this: How do you build competitively priced electric boats?

On today’s show, Mitch explains why water makes electrification so hard, the techno-economic puzzle of building giant battery packs, and how Arc’s high-end wake sport boat opened the door for a new generation of hybrid-electric tugboats.

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The App Where Strangers Lend Each Other Money

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 05:30:00 +0000

Nina Mohanty is the founder and CEO of Bloom Money. Nina’s problem is this: How do you build an app to help immigrants manage their money?

On today’s show, Nina talks about bringing a saving and lending practice into the 21st century, navigating regulators who’ve never seen anything like it, and what global traditions can teach us about the future of money.

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Introducing Business History: The Edison Invention People Don't Talk About

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 05:01:00 +0000

What's Your Problem? host Jacob Goldstein has a new show: Business History.

How did Hitler’s favorite car become synonymous with hippies? What got Thomas Edison tangled up with the electric chair? Did someone murder the guy who invented the movies? On Business History, Jacob and fellow former Planet Money host Robert Smith examine the surprising stories of businesses big and small and find out what you can learn from those who founded them.

In this episode: The inventor that transformed America and the world. Thomas Alva Edison registered over one thousand patents before he died in 1931—and we can thank him for advances in electric power, communications technology, music recording and even the movies. But his biggest breakthrough doesn't get nearly enough attention. In many ways, Edison invented modern inventing. Jacob and Robert they trace the life story of a scrappy young boy with bad hearing who almost singlehandedly invented R&D. This is the first of a three part series on Edison—if you want to hear the full series, ad-free, right now, join Pushkin+ on the Business History show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

Find Business History (00:10) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get podcasts.

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Using Sound Waves to Destroy Tumors

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 05:30:00 +0000

Mike Blue is the CEO of HistoSonics. The company recently developed a device that uses ultrasound to destroy tumors.

On today’s show, Mike talks about how a garage-built prototype became an FDA-approved machine; changing the company’s story after a failed clinical trial; and why he loves being a salesman but hates most sales pitches.

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From Desert Robots to Driverless Trucks

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 05:30:00 +0000

Chris Urmson is the co-founder and CEO of Aurora, a company trying to bring autonomous driving to commercial trucking.

Chris led a team at the 2004 DARPA challenge that launched the autonomous vehicle industry. Then he held a senior role at Google’s self-driving car project, which later became Waymo.

On the show today, he talks about the long arc of autonomous driving, why he left Google, and the future of autonomous trucking.

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Is the Future of Fresh Water Under the Sea?

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Michael Porter is the Chief Technology Officer of OceanWell.

Michael's problem is this: How can you desalinate water at the bottom of the ocean – and deliver it to land at a cost that’s competitive with other sources of fresh water?

On today’s show, Michael explains how he built OceanWell’s prototype in his kitchen, what it takes to make a system that’s less disruptive to marine life, and why innovations from the oil and gas industry are making his work possible.

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Could Home Batteries Save the Grid?

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Justin Lopas is the COO and co-founder of Base Power, a battery and power company based in Texas.

Justin’s problem is this: How can you deliver more energy to more people without having to build so much more grid?

On today’s show, Justin explains why the grid needs a major upgrade, and how putting batteries next to homes could help. Also: what Texas’ embrace of renewable energy could mean for the future of power in the U.S.

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Building a Better Public Bathroom

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Fletcher Wilson is the CEO and co-founder of Throne Labs.

Fletcher’s problem is this: How can you create public toilets that people actually want to use?

On today’s show, Fletcher explains how his company is trying to make public bathrooms cleaner, safer and more accessible. The conversation also points to a bigger idea: why it’s so hard for cities to build and maintain pretty much anything.

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Could Autonomous Diggers Unleash a Building Boom?

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Boris Sofman is the co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Robotics.

Boris' problem is this: How do you teach machines not just to drive, but also to work: to grade roads, move heavy objects and dig big holes at construction sites.

On today’s show, Boris talks about how his work at Waymo led him to found Bedrock, and he explains how autonomous construction equipment could help unleash an American building boom.

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Growing Meat from Cells

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Justin Kolbeck is the co-founder and CEO of Wildtype, a company making seafood without killing fish.

Their first product is cultivated salmon, which is made from real salmon cells that are grown in a stainless steel vat.

Justin's problem is this: How to sell no-kill, vat-grown salmon for the same price, or better, as wild-caught salmon? On today’s show, Justin explains how Wildtype will scale, what’s going on across the cultivated and plant-based meat industries, and how new state bans on cultivated foods are shaping the future of his business.

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The Ordinary Stuff Behind Technological Breakthroughs

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Ed Conway is an economics journalist and author of the book “Material World: The Six Raw Materials that Shape Modern Civilization.”

On today’s show, Ed reveals how three of those often-overlooked materials—iron, copper, and sand—shaped human advancement from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution to the digital age. And he talks about what they mean for our future.

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Carbon Capture at Rock-Bottom Prices

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Shashank Samala is the CEO and co-founder of Heirloom, a carbon capture start-up.

His problem is this: Can you use crushed up rocks to permanently suck carbon out of the atmosphere? And can you do it cheaply enough to have a global impact?

On today’s show, Shashank explains why he believes rocks could be the backbone of carbon capture, how his childhood in India shaped his outlook on climate change, and how government policy is shaping today’s direct air capture industry.

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Why Amazon Built a Spatula-Wielding Robot

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Aaron Parness is a director of applied science at Amazon Robotics.

His problem is this: How do you build a robot that can put stuff on shelves.

Today on the show, Aaron explains why this is a surprisingly hard problem – and why the solution Aaron’s team came up with may ultimately have uses beyond the warehouse.

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Drilling Smarter Wells to Unleash Geothermal Energy

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 04:30:00 +0000

In many places on Earth, there’s steam just below the surface. We don’t know where those places are — but if we could figure it out, we could unlock a lot of clean energy.

Carl Hoiland is the co-founder and CEO of Zanskar, a geothermal energy company.

On today’s show, Carl makes the case for geothermal in the energy transition and explains how the company is developing new ways to identify exactly where to dig a geothermal well.

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Inventing a Better Pain Pill

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Dr. Stephen Waxman is a professor of neurology, neuroscience and pharmacology at Yale. His research on pain helped pave the way for a newly approved, non-addictive pain drug called suzetrigine.

On today’s show, he explains why he thinks suzetrigine is a promising step, but why much more work is needed to develop better pain drugs. He also gets into his work on ion channels—critical to unlocking the pain puzzle— and a rare condition known as Man on Fire syndrome.

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Mapping the Unmappable

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Philipp Kandal is the chief product officer of Grab, an app that serves several countries across Southeast Asia. Two of Grab’s main businesses are delivery and mobility – like a combination between Instacart and Uber. And maps are at the core of its business.

On today’s show, Philipp talks about improving online maps for places like Southeast Asia, where streets are often winding, narrow, and harder to access than those in the US and other developed countries.

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Reinventing Blood

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Dr. Allan Doctor is the co-founder and chief scientific officer at Kalocyte, a company that is developing dried red blood cells that can be rehydrated and used in medical emergencies.

On today’s show, Dr. Doctor explains the complex science behind artificial blood, and how this innovation could help save millions of lives.

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The AI Pioneer Developing New Kinds of Medicine

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Jakob Uszkoreit is the CEO and co-founder of Inceptive, a biotech start-up. He’s also a co-author of “Attention is All You Need,” the paper that created transformer models. Today, transformers power chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude. They’ve also led to breakthroughs in everything from generating images to predicting the structure of proteins.

On today’s show, Jakob talks about the invention of transformer models. And he discusses how he’s using those models to try to invent new kinds of medicine, with a particular focus on RNA.

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A Billion-Dollar Bet on Carbon Removal

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Nan Ransohoff is the head of climate at Stripe. The company is known mainly for facilitating online payments, but it’s become a key driver of the nascent carbon-removal industry.

On today’s show, Nan explains how she used a clever economic idea to get companies to spend $1 billion on carbon removal. And she talks about the different approaches startups are pursuing to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

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Giving Old Batteries New Life

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 we need for new batteries and recycle metal from old batteries?

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Engineering the Future of Fusion

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 of dollars have flowed into fusion startups in recent years, but reliable, economic fusion power may still be decades away.

Greg Piefer is the founder of a fusion company called Shine, where he’s pursuing a different path. Rather than go straight to fusion as a source of energy, he’s using fusion to pursue more profitable markets right now – with the hope that what he learns today will eventually help lead to cheap, abundant fusion energy.

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Can Robots Fix Recycling?

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 will buy. That’s why Rebecca Hu Thrams calls recycling “the most demented form of manufacturing on the planet.” Rebecca is the co-founder of Glacier, and her problem is this: Can you use AI and robots to make recycling a somewhat less demented business?

Get early, ad-free access to episodes of What's Your Problem? by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.

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Inside the Mind of an AI Model

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 04:30:00 +0000

AI might be the most consequential advancement in the world right now. But – astonishingly – no one fully understands what’s going on inside AI models. Josh Batson is a research scientist at Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, one of the world’s leading language models. Josh’s problem is this: How do we learn how AI works?

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Teaching Robots How to Do Everything

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 robots. Chelsea Finn is a professor at Stanford and the co-founder of Physical Intelligence. Chelsea's problem is this: Can you build an AI model that can teach any robot to do any task, anywhere?

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Making a Universal Flu Vaccine

Thu, 29 May 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 flu – even strains that haven’t evolved yet?

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Teaching Computers to Smell

Thu, 22 May 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 job at Google with his childhood obsession: Osmo is using AI to teach computers to smell.

The company is getting into the perfume business, and it plans eventually to use scent to diagnose disease and detect security risks.

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Can a Chatbot Treat Depression?

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 04:15:00 +0000

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. After a few false starts, they seem to be on to something.

Note: This episode contains references to self harm.

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Will AI Radically Change the World by 2027?... from Risky Business

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 04:01:00 +0000

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. They talk about how likely humans are to be misled by rogue AI, and whether current conflicts between the US and China will affect the way this all unfolds. Plus, Nate talks about the feedback he gave the AI 2027 writers after reading an early draft of their forecast, and reveals what he sees as the report’s central flaw.

Enjoy this episode from Risky Business, another Pushkin podcast.

The AI Futures Project’s AI 2027 scenario: https://ai-2027.com/

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Is the Future of Flight Supersonic?

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 04:15:00 +0000

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 – and that makes economic sense?

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The Secrets of Silk

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 material people have been using for thousands of years into useful, cutting edge tools that improve everything from vaccine delivery to food waste?

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Infiltrating an International Ransomware Gang

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 04:01:00 +0000

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 named Jon DiMaggio wanted to understand how the organization worked. So he used the techniques of World War II-era spycraft to make contact with the hackers.

On today’s show, Jon tells the story of LockBit – from the way it borrowed techniques from mainstream companies to market itself and attract talent, to the response from international governments that used the gang’s own tactics against it. And he talks about how he got the hackers to talk to him.

Jon described the rise and fall of the company in a series of posts he called the Ransomware Diaries. You can read those here: https://analyst1.com/ransomware-diaries-volume-1/

Note: This bonus episode of What’s Your Problem? is sponsored by Microsoft.

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Preparing for the Future of War

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 04:30:00 +0000

Christopher Kirchhoff helped launch a Defense Department office that aimed to bring Silicon Valley technology to the US military. Christopher’s problem is this: How can the giant bureaucracy that is the US military keep up with technological change?

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Stopping HIV Without a Vaccine

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 04:30:00 +0000

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 people will actually take to help prevent HIV?

There’s already a daily pill that reduces the risk of getting HIV, but a majority of people who are at high risk are unwilling or unable to take it.

So Jared and his colleagues are developing a new drug, lenacapivir, designed to be given as a shot once every six months.

Note: The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.

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Harnessing the Heat Deep Beneath Our Feet

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 profitable as drilling for oil or gas? The answer involves digging deeper into the Earth than anyone has ever dug before.

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The Brain Implant That Could Change Medicine

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 computer with only their thoughts – without damaging their brain?

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Building a Mass Market Robot

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 the short term, Apptronik’s robots will work in factories. But Jeff’s long-term goal – based on the experience of his own grandparents – is to build robots that can help care for the elderly.

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Solving Solar’s Biggest Problem

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 underground caverns when energy is abundant, then blowing it back out to create energy when you need it. It’s an old idea, but it has some fundamental problems.

Curtis VanWalleghem, the co-founder and CEO of Hydrostor, thinks his company has solved those problems with a new approach. If he’s right, his firm will help fix the biggest bottleneck slowing down the adoption of solar and wind power.

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How Bubbles Power Breakthroughs

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 recently, generative AI. But what do these moments have in common? Is there some set of conditions that lead to massive technological leaps?

Byrne Hobart is the author of a finance newsletter called The Diff, and the co-author of Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation. In the book, Bryne makes the case for one thing that is really helpful if you want to make a wild technological leap: a bubble.

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Teaching AI to Build Stuff in the Physical World

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 for the physical world – and as a result, AI doesn’t work as well there… yet.

Edward Mehr is the co-founder and CEO of Machina Labs. Edward's problem is this: How can you use AI to turn robots from dumb, inflexible machines into skilled, versatile craftsmen?

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NVIDIA: At the Heart of the AI Boom

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 where did the company come from, and why are NVIDIA chips the ones that dominate AI?

Tae Kim is the author of a new book called The Nvidia Way. In his book, he tells the story of how NVIDIA’s founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, set NVIDIA on the path to becoming what it is today.

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What Claude Shannon Figured Out

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 05:30:00 +0000

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 exactly did Claude Shannon figure out, and why is it so important?

To answer that question, Jacob talked with David Tse, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford who studied under one of Shannon’s students, and who teaches Shannon to his own students today. David used Shannon's work to make a breakthrough in wireless communication that underpins every phone call we make today.

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Measles: The Cancer Killer?... from Incubation

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 creates effects far more dramatic than a rash and fever. For this episode we’re joined by Michael Mina, a former Harvard epidemiologist now at eMed, who helped discover how measles was causing “immune amnesia.” Our second guest is Stephen Russell, a former Mayo Clinic researcher who co-founded a company called Vyriad. Russell is trying to use the measles virus to treat cancer. Enjoy this episode from Incubation, another Pushkin podcast.

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RoboPod and the Perpetual Money Machine – Cautionary Questions 2… from Cautionary Tales

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 more of your questions. Enjoy this episode from Cautionary Tales, another Pushkin Podcast.

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Turning Solar Energy Into Fuel (The Solar Era, Part 3)

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 solve those problems: Use solar power to create hydrogen, and turn that hydrogen into fuel.

Today’s guest is Raffi Garabedian, the co-founder and CEO of Electric Hydrogen. Raffi’s problem is this: How do you turn solar and wind energy into clean hydrogen that’s cheap enough to compete with fossil fuel?

This is the last of three episodes we’re doing about the solar-power revolution. Listen to the previous episodes on your podcast player or at our website: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem

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Can Hot Bricks Save the World? (The Solar Era, Part 2)

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 someone who is building giant plants around the world to take advantage of all that cheap, intermittent energy.

John O'Donnell is the co-founder of Rondo Energy. John’s problem is this: How do you turn intermittent energy into the cheap, reliable, intense heat that companies around the world need to make everything from steel beams to t-shirts?

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How the Sun Won (The Solar Era, Part 1)

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 transforming the way energy is produced and consumed.

For the next few episodes, we’ll be talking to people who are in the middle of this solar power revolution to find out how it happened, and what it will mean for the world.

Today, Jenny Chase, the author of Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon, tells the story of how solar power got so cheap and where it’s exploding today, and she explains what problems we still need to solve to pull off a worldwide energy transition.

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Drugs in Space

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 experiments in space to learn how to make better drugs on Earth?

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The World Is Getting Better (Really)

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Hannah’s problem is this: How do you use data to get past the doomsday headlines and solve big problems to achieve sustainability?

Check out Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/

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Rabies: When Monsters are Real…from Incubation

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 04:30:00 +0000

Why has rabies invaded our nightmares for centuries? Author and veterinarian Monica Murphy tells us about the cultural history of rabies (which involves vampires and werewolves!) and how our long nightmare with the disease came to an end. Then, wildlife biologist Kathy Nelson tells us about a surprising program that works to control raccoon rabies… from the sky. Enjoy this episode from Incubation, another Pushkin podcast.

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Using Gene Therapy to Help the Blind See

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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. She is also the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Atsena Therapeutics. Shannon’s problem is this: How do you use gene therapy to cure certain forms of blindness?

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Bringing Back Mammoths and Dodos*

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 04:30:00 +0000

*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 Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction. Beth's problem is this: How do you use the tools of modern biology – and hundreds of millions of dollars – to bring back species that have been extinct for centuries? And on another level, Beth’s problem is explaining to the world what it really means (and doesn’t mean) to bring back an extinct species.

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What Elevators Teach Us About Technology, Design, and Human Behavior

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 faster than ever. On today’s show, we talk about those innovations with Lee Gray, who is possibly the world’s leading elevator historian and definitely a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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Can the Plant Microbiome Revolutionize Farming?

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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. It’s also super energy intensive. Karsten Temme is the co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Pivot Bio. Karsten's problem is this: How can you use the tools of gene editing to get microbes in soil to provide more nitrogen for crops?

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Turning Pollution into Jet Fuel

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 produce ethanol, which can become everything from polyester to jet fuel?

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Reinventing Mining to Power the World

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 Metals. The company recently made a huge copper discovery in Zambia, and is looking for other metals in other places. Kurt's problem is this: How do you use AI – machine learning, data science – to find the metals we'll need for the energy transition?

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Inventing a Vaccine for Bees

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 problem is this: How do you turn a discovery about insect immune systems into a vaccine that can protect the bees we need to grow everything from almonds to blueberries?

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A Better Way to Make the Chemicals in Everything

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 make the chemicals that go into everything around us -- our food, our clothes, our cars -- without using fossil fuels?

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How Refrigeration Changed the World

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 04:30:00 +0000

Refrigeration is an underrated technology. It completely transformed what billions of people eat every day.

Today’s guest, Nicola Twilley, tells the story of refrigeration in her new book, Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. Topics under discussion include: Why brewers were key drivers of refrigeration technology; the extraordinary technology inside a bag of lettuce; and why the technological frontier in food preservation may mean that we don't need to keep so much stuff so cold.

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Detecting Deepfakes With AI

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 to someone on the front lines of this battle. Ali Shahriyari is the co-founder and CTO of Reality Defender. Ali's problem is this: How do you build a set of models to distinguish between reality and AI-generated deepfakes?

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Turning Old Cans Into Clean Energy

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 Found Energy. Peter's problem is this: How can you use aluminum as a source of clean, renewable energy?

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Moneyball, Soccer, and the Gap Between Analytics and the Real World

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 a sport as fluid and complex as soccer and translate the analytical insights from the model into meaningful changes on the pitch?

This is the third and final episode of our series about people who are working at the frontiers of technology to help elite athletes perform better.

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Using Computer Vision to See What Coaches Can’t

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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: How do you turn data about how professional athletes move into knowledge that helps them perform better?

This is the second episode of our series about people who are working at the frontiers of technology to help elite athletes perform better.

Music: Let's Have Some Fruit (The Fruit Song) by J Buffi

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Scanning Every Muscle to Help Olympians Get Stronger

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 better.

Today’s guest is Silvia Blemker, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia and the co-founder of Springbok Analytics.

Silvia's problem is this: How do you combine MRI scans and artificial intelligence to generate new insights that can help both elite athletes and people suffering from diseases that affect the muscles.

Springbok's sports clients include medical researchers, Olympic athletes, Major League Baseball and several professional basketball and soccer teams.

This summer, a bunch of Pushkin podcasts are coming out with Olympics-inspired shows. Revisionist History has a series about America's decision to participate in Hitler's Berlin Olympics in 1936. The Happiness Lab has an interview with a coach who coaches coaches. And Cautionary Tales tells the story of the family feud that gave us both Puma and Adidas.

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Making Blood Vessels in a Factory

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 of a bag and implant into patients? Although still awaiting FDA approval in the U.S., Humacyte's vessels have already been used to treat wounded soldiers in Ukraine.

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Creating the Second Atomic Age

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 fit into the power grid – and our lives – in new ways. Yasir Arafat is the Chief Technology Officer at Aalo Atomics. Yasir’s problem is this: How do you mass produce nuclear reactors that are safe, scalable, and cheap?

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Lifetime Terms, Lifetime Bans, and the Return of Roaring Kitty from Risky Business

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 04:30:00 +0000

This week on Risky Business, Nate and Maria discuss whether Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor should retire, the perils of sports betting among professional athletes, and what the return of Roaring Kitty means for traditional market analysis.

When the Robots Take Over… from Cautionary Tales

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 correlation imply causation? And what will Tim and Jacob do when the robot overlords come for their jobs? Enjoy this episode from Cautionary Tales, another Pushkin podcast.

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Making Palm Oil Without Palm Trees

Thu, 30 May 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 much palm oil is really bad for the planet. Shara Ticku is the co-founder and CEO of C16 Biosciences. Shara's problem is this: Can you get yeast to make an oil that is just as useful as palm oil – without clearing land to grow palm trees?

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Fighting Cancer with CRISPR

Thu, 23 May 2024 04:30:00 +0000

Last year, the FDA approved a treatment for sickle cell disease using a revolutionary new gene editing technology called CRISPR. Rachel Haurwitz conducted pioneering research on CRISPR as a graduate student. Now she’s the co-founder and CEO of Caribou Biosciences. Rachel's problem is this: How can you improve CRISPR and use it to engineer human immune cells to fight cancer?

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How to Start 40 Companies (and Counting)

Thu, 16 May 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 solved a lot of problems, and is working on many more with his lab at MIT. But there is one big problem that has stuck with Robert his whole career: How do you get discoveries out of the lab and into the world?

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The Cutting Edge of Energy Storage: Rust

Thu, 09 May 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 grid for days at a time? As it turns out, the basic technology was developed – and then mostly ignored – over 50 years ago.

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The First Pig to Human Kidney Transplant

Thu, 02 May 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 raised the pig whose kidney was used for the procedure. Mike's problem is this: How do you genetically engineer pigs to provide organs – kidneys, hearts, livers – for people?

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Designing a Drone That Delivers

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 zips away. Adam Woodworth wants this to be so boring you don't even notice. He’s the CEO of Wing, a drone delivery company. His problem is this: How do you turn a flashy idea like a delivery drone into something as ubiquitous as a shopping cart?

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How Do Psychedelics Work?

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 04:30:00 +0000

Psychedelics are going mainstream. The FDA has approved ketamine for certain patients with depression, and may soon approve MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But a fundamental question remains unclear: How do psychedelics work?

Gul Dolen is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley. In a series of experiments, Gul has found evidence of a common mechanism that a wide range of psychedelics use to affect the brain. If Gul is correct, these drugs may be useful not only for people suffering from mental illness, but also for people dealing with neurological problems like strokes.

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Building Boundary-Breaking Balloons

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 air for months at a time, and pair the data gathered by the balloons with AI to make weather forecasts that are way better than anything we have today?

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Building a Robot That Can Walk the Walk

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 design a robot that can walk and do useful tasks that companies will pay for? The solution begins with trying to understand how birds walk.

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Can Your Phone Tell When You're Getting Sick?

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 04:30:00 +0000

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 – or AI – can detect. Dr. Yael Bensoussan is a professor of otolaryngology and the director of the Health Voice Center at the University of South Florida. Her problem is this: How do you build a giant, public database of thousands of voice recordings, and use it to train AI tools that can hear when people are getting sick?

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The High-Stakes Quest to Reinvent Cement

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 extremely carbon intensive to produce. Leah Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Sublime Systems. Her problem is this: How can you make cement, at scale, without emitting carbon dioxide?

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How a Battery-Powered Stove Could Electrify America

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 electric cooktop that works just as well as gas, and can be installed without having to rewire the house? The solution that Sam found could eventually help transform not only kitchens, but the way homes draw power from the electrical grid.

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3D Printing a Better Rocket

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 printing to make rockets more efficiently? Eventually, Tim wants to send a rocket – and printer – to Mars to build the first Martian industrial base.

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Using AI to Help Doctors Save Lives

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 doctors to miss. Suchi Saria is the founder and CEO of Bayesian Health, and a professor at Johns Hopkins where she runs a lab focused on machine learning and healthcare. Suchi’s problem is this: How can you use AI to detect when hospital patients are at risk of potentially deadly complications – and how can you get doctors to listen?

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Making Dam Good Hydropower

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 you draw hydropower from rivers without damaging the ecosystem? As it turns out, we have a lot to learn from nature’s furriest engineers – beavers.

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Using AI to Build Better Robots

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 in robots? Peter was one of the first employees at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. On the show, he talks about how AI has evolved, and why it's so difficult to teach a robot to fold a towel.

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Teaching Computers to See

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 field of AI in the 2000s, researchers were making slow progress, optimizing algorithms to incrementally improve outcomes. Li saw that the problem wasn’t the algorithm, but the size of the datasets being used. So she built a massive database of images called ImageNet. It was a huge breakthrough, and helped lead the emergence of modern AI.

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Using Oil-Industry Tech to Create Clean Energy

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 05:30:00 +0000

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 drawing on innovations from the oil and gas industry to expand geothermal energy production to new places like the Utah desert, and maybe one day, to Mars.

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Understanding Obesity and Alzheimer’s via Epigenomics

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 05:30:00 +0000

Manolis Kellis is a professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He works in computational biology, taking giant datasets relating to genetics and health outcomes and tries to understand what’s going on.

Manolis’ research focuses on genomics, and a related field called epigenomics. Manolis’ problem is this: What are the cellular mechanisms of a disease? And how can we intervene to keep people healthy?

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Reinventing the Restaurant

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 05:30:00 +0000

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 businesses. So he set out to open a new kind of restaurant, with a new business model. In this episode, he tells us about how he accomplished that with his latest venture, Pasta Supply Co. in San Francisco.

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The Giant Torch That May Help Save the World

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 05:30:00 +0000

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 Monolith is trying to create hydrogen without emissions -- and to do it at scale, at a competitive price. A key tool he’s using: The biggest plasma torch ever built.

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Fixing Uber’s Broken Culture

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 05:30:00 +0000

Frances Frei and Anne Morriss are the co-founders of a training and consulting company called The Leadership Consortium. Together they specialize in helping leaders build trust within their companies. They also co-host a podcast called Fixable, which is a TED show produced by Pushkin Industries. Also, Frances is a professor at Harvard Business School.

In today’s show, Frances and Anne share the story of their work with Uber. It started back in 2017, when a Harvard Business School alum who was working at Uber came to Frances and said the company needed her help.

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Murder Brokers from Hot Money: The New Narcos

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:30:00 +0000

When a Dutch crime reporter makes an unbelievable discovery, a small-town murder case begins to look like an international assassination plot. Enjoy this episode from Hot Money: The New Narcos, a podcast from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times.

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Using AI for Creative Work

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:30:00 +0000

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 part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, aimed to answer a big question: will AI kill creativity?

The writer, Stephen Marche, is the author of several nonfiction books and novels. Earlier this year he tried something new: he used AI to help him write a novel called Death of an Author. (That book was published in audio form by Pushkin Industries.)

The composer, Lucas Cantor, has won two Emmys for his work scoring the Olympics for NBC and co-produced a Lorde song that was in one of the Hunger Games movies. And he used AI to help him write an end to Schubert’s unfinished symphony.

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The Little-Known Office With $400 Billion to Fight Climate Change

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 05:30:00 +0000

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 hundreds of billions of dollars for Jigar’s office to lend out.

The loans are supposed to go to companies that are helping the U.S. economy move away from fossil fuels. That can mean everything from building new nuclear plants to creating a giant hydrogen battery in an underground salt cavern.

Jigar’s problem is this: What’s the best way to lend out all that money – and do it fast enough for the U.S. to meet its climate goals.

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How AI Solved a Biological Mystery

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 05:30:00 +0000

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 protein’s shape is key to understanding how proteins work to keep us healthy, and what goes wrong when we get sick. But, for decades, figuring out the shape of a protein was a hard problem that could take years of work.

Then Pushmeet and his colleagues built an AI model called AlphaFold that could accurately predict the shape of hundreds of millions of proteins. It’s one of the most impressive real-world AI success stories that we’ve seen so far. And it turns out that the lessons of AlphaFold also hold broader lessons for solving problems with AI.

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Making Oxygen on Mars

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 05:30:00 +0000

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 according to plan, the moon. The company is betting that the private space boom of the past decade will soon go beyond Earth’s orbit to the moon and beyond.

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The sold-out chips at the heart of AI

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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. It turns out, the same hardware -- chips known as GPUs -- is essential for running state-of-the-art AI models. Today, Brannin and his friends have turned their hobby into a company that’s competing against some of the biggest companies in the world to provide the hardware and computing power to run AI.

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Special Episode: The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000

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 show, about a dramatic day in court. Caroline Ellison, former co-CEO of Alameda Research and Sam Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, took the stand. She recently pleaded guilty to fraud, and is cooperating with the prosecution.

Hear Against the Rules with Michael Lewis: The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried wherever you get your podcasts.

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Getting Yeast to Make Medicine

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 04:05:00 +0000

Christina Smolke is the co-founder and CEO of Antheia. Antheia is a synthetic biology company -- they’re in the business of genetically engineering microorganisms to produce commercial products.

Christina’s problem is this: How do you turn yeast cells into tiny factories to create the active ingredients in generic drugs. If Christina and her team solve this problem, they won’t solve the drug shortage problem entirely. But they might help make it better.

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Could a Robot Make Your Salad?

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 food from fresh ingredients... cheaper?

Chipotle invested in Hyphen, whose automated system could soon be preparing online orders at thousands of Chipotle outlets.

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What the Industrial Revolution Teaches Us About the AI Revolution

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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”.

Simon’s problem is this: How do you create the conditions for technological change to benefit many people, rather than just a powerful few?

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Can AI Tutors Help Kids Learn? Khan Academy Thinks So

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 working with a human tutor?

Earlier this year, Khan Academy launched Khanmigo, an AI tutor built on top of GPT4. The idea is to use AI to give more kids access to one-on-one tutoring, and help human teachers with their work as well.

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Smallpox: Gone but Not Forgotten from Incubation

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

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? First we meet Edward Jenner, a doctor in 18th century Britain who learned about the folk practice of “variolation” and found a safer way to inoculate people against smallpox. Then, Donald Hopkins of the Carter Center takes us back to the 1960s in Sierra Leone, where he discovered that successfully eradicating smallpox could be a feasible goal worldwide. Enjoy this episode from Incubation, another Pushkin podcast.

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Going to the Doctor Sucks. Can AI Make it Better?

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 patients a month are treated through K Health. The company has an AI-based patient interface and it employs about 150 doctors. And K Health has plans to expand beyond primary care -- and they just raised another 50 million dollars to help them get there.

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Spotting Wildfires with AI

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 change?

Pano mounts cameras on remote mountaintop towers, then sends images from the cameras to an AI model trained to spot wildfire smoke. The goal is to alert fire crews early, before the fire spreads.

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Is the Era of Free Returns Over?

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 shopping — tracking, alerts and returns. Around 10 percent of online purchases are returned and every return cuts into retailers’ profits.

Amit’s problem is this: consumers have learned to love free returns, but can retailers afford them?

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Creative Technology at Pixar

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 more time being creative?

Danielle Feinberg has worked at Pixar for 26 years. Earlier in her career, she was the director of photography on movies like Coco and Wall-E. She talks about how new software shapes creative work.

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How To Make AI Safer & More Reliable

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 computer science professor at Harvard and worked at Google before starting Robust Intelligence. The company’s software tests AI models and datasets for problems with performance and security.

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Quantum Computers Could Change Everything

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 computing has the potential to transform fields from drug development to clean energy to cybersecurity, but so far no one has been able to build a quantum computer that can reliably outperform existing computers.

Monroe is also a physics professor at Duke University, and he talks Jacob through the principles that make quantum computing possible.

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The 2023 Unhedged Stock Draft

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 hosts as Rob ‘Value This’ Armstrong takes on Elaine ‘The Lex Flex’ Moore. In three rounds they pick their winners for the second half of 2023, and tell us why they chose them. If you enjoyed this preview of the new podcast Unhedged, subscribe to the show now: https://apple.co/478A3VS

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Predicting Human Health with AI

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 colleagues have built a predictive model of health that is already being used in clinical trials, and might one day be deployed to predict individuals’ health outcomes.

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Breastfeeding, Black Market Baby Formula, and Bobbie

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 startup in a highly regulated industry that has pretty much been a duopoly for decades?

Part of Laura’s answer is marketing, which raises another question: how do you get people to consider formula despite so much messaging that breastfeeding is better?

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Making Immigration Cheaper & Easier

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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. immigration system?

Xiao moved to the U.S. from China when he was three years-old. For many years, he took for granted that immigration was slow, complicated, and expensive to navigate. With Boundless, he’s built a platform to help people who try to figure out that system every year.

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The Wind Power Pioneer Still Pushing the Frontier

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 electricity for their farm. He went on to help create the modern wind industry. Five decades later, he’s still pushing the frontier.

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The Mystery at the Heart of ChatGPT

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 today’s show, we talk with Sam Bowman about some of the mysteries at the heart of so-called large language models. Sam is on the faculty at NYU, he runs a research group at the AI company Anthropic and he is the author of the illuminating paper Eight Things to Know About Large Language Models.

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Scrubbing Carbon from the Air

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 Texas that will pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

Dan’s problem is this: how do you bring the price of direct air capture way down? And how do you convince companies and governments to pay for scrubbing carbon out of the air?

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Building a Plane to Help Save the World

Thu, 25 May 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 hydrogen fuel, which produces zero carbon emissions. It had a successful test flight earlier this year and Miftakhov hopes it will be ready for commercial use by 2025.

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The AI that Might Take My Job (And Yours)

Thu, 18 May 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 investment from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. It's a sign that Descript is moving toward using generative AI to generate words and pictures. What will that mean for the people who currently do that work?

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The Hottest Thing In Energy Storage

Thu, 11 May 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 cheap enough and reliable enough for industrial use? He thinks the solution may be storing that energy as heat, in big blocks of graphite.

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Using Bacteria to Dye Jeans

Thu, 04 May 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 reliably enough to replace the toxic petrochemical process that's currently used to dye billions of pairs of jeans a year?

They're working with denim brands to commercialize their bacteria-produced dye.

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The Quest for the Factory-Built House

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 looks like a UFO, a giant mobile home boom, and a visit to a 21st-century construction site where workers are putting up a factory-built house. This episode's a co-production with our friends at Planet Money, and a follow-up to last week's interview with the founder of Cover.

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Building Houses Like Tesla Builds Cars

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 cheaper and better than a traditionally built house?

Cover is following the Tesla model: starting with a high-end product but aiming for the mass market. "Nail it and scale it," he says.

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Human Bones, Made In the Lab

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 cells, at a price that makes sense?

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Tiny Chips, Giant Stakes

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 04:00:00 +0000

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, most cutting-edge chips are made in Taiwan, a country that China claims as part of its territory. The U.S. government is fighting to keep semiconductor technology out of China, and spending tens of billions of dollars to get companies to build more chip factories in the US.

Chris Miller is a professor at Tufts University and the author of a book called Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. In this episode, he talks with Jacob about the extraordinary technology and complex geopolitics of microchips.

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Problems Solved: Drones, Bananas and Real Estate*

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 04:05:00 +0000

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 big problem holding back commercial drone delivery in America. Fruit-ripening maven Katherine Sizov is figuring out bananas. And Glenn Kelman of Redfin has some deep insights from a tough year in the real estate business.
*The problems in real estate weren't so much solved as left behind.

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Faster, Cheaper Drugs with AI

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 new drugs?

The company is using AI to find new disease mechanisms to target, and to speed up drug development. If using AI can help experimental drugs succeed even a little more often than they do now, it'll be a big win.

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Creating the Uncrashable Car

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 youngest self-made billionaires, and Luminar may be on the verge of solving Austin's problem: How do you make Lidar cheap enough and good enough to use in millions of cars?

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The Electric Truck that Went Viral on TikTok

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 people who follow you on TikTok?
Chace started his career driving logging trucks. He loved the idea of Tesla's electric semi, but when it never arrived, he decided to build his own.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Introducing Other People’s Pockets: Mistress Marley, Financial Dominatrix

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 colleague of yours makes everyone meticulously split the tab down to the last Diet Coke? Other People's Pockets is a show about other people’s money. Host Maya Lau asks people from all walks of life to get radically transparent about their personal finances in order to learn more about who we are and level the playing field a little bit along the way.

In this episode, Maya sits down with Mistress Marley, a financial dominatrix who makes money from people whose kink is simply giving her lots of cash, without being physically touched in return. Hear more from Other People's Pockets at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/opp?sid=wyp.

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Running in Recycled Shoes

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 -- and then take them all back, to turn them into new shoes?

The company's latest bid to attract new customers? A shoe subscription service.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Turning Garbage Into Food

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 company. Now, he wants to take on the garbage in our kitchens with a high tech garbage can that can transform food waste.

This is the fourth and last episode of What's Your Problem's four-part series on the future of food.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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The Fake-Meat Frontier

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

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 hockey pucks, to meatier Impossible burgers. And they get a report from the fake-meat frontier, where scientists are trying to make lab-grown chicken breasts.

This is the third episode of What's Your Problem's four-part series on the future of food.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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From Impossible Burgers to Fake Steak

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 vegetarians; he wants to sell to meat eaters. To succeed, he'll have to figure out how to make fake meat that is at least as good -- and as cheap -- as the real thing.

This is the second episode of What's Your Problem's four-part series on the future of food.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Small Pizza Shops Want a Bigger Slice

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 local pizza shops haven't adapted well to consumers' appetites for online ordering. Ilir's mission is to make sure that the technology powering Big Pizza can also benefit smaller businesses.

This is the first episode of What's Your Problem's four-part series on the future of food.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Turning Waves Into Electricity

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 05:05:00 +0000

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 in every wave, but the complex churm and swirl of the surf has made it difficult to translate that movement into something useful. Tim Mundon and his colleagues have been working on the problem for more than a decade, and are about to test a new electric generator in the big waves off the coast of Oahu.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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From Some of My Best Friends Are: Everything Dope Comes from Chicago

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 05:05:00 +0000

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 Austen, two best friends from the South Side of Chicago, invite listeners into unfiltered conversations about growing up together in a deeply-divided country, and navigating that divide today.

On this episode, Khalil and Ben find out how Sherman “Dilla” Thomas has become the face of Chicago history on TikTok, TV and in tours. We hear how Thomas was influenced by stories told by his father, a Chicago police officer, and hometown Black politicians making history right in front of him.

You can hear more episodes at https://link.chtbl.com/Wypbestfriends

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Flying on Battery Power

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 05:05:00 +0000

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 -- and win the approval of regulators around the world?

As other sectors are decarbonizing, emissions from aviation are projected to triple by 2050. This is partly because figuring out how to build a commercial plane that doesn't burn jet fuel is a very, very hard problem that Anders has been trying to solve for years.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Bringing Back the American Hoodie

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 05:05:00 +0000

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?

Today's show is about the future of American manufacturing. But it is also about something very simple: A sweatshirt made in America. It costs $138, and it is wildly popular.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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How to Save the Most Lives

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 05:05:00 +0000

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 get sick?

People have been struggling to solve this problem for decades. But for a bunch of reasons you'll hear about on the show, Farzad and his colleagues may be the ones to finally solve it.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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From Story of the Week with Joel Stein: Billionaires Prepping for the Apocalypse

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 05:05:00 +0000

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 fascinates him, convinces the writer to tell him about it, and then interrupts a good conversation by talking about himself.

This episode is about the Medium story “Survival of the Richest” by Douglas Rushkoff. In it, Rushkoff discovers a whole industry catering to billionaires looking to buy things to prepare for the apocalypse.

You can read the full story here: https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

And you can subscribe to Story of the Week here: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/story-of-the-week

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The Investors Everybody Ignored

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 05:05:00 +0000

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 finance, Sallie was often one of the only women in the room. But even she had to be convinced that women would benefit from an investment firm created just for them.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Sam Bankman-Fried Revisited

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 21:46:26 +0000

In May of this year, we interviewed Sam Bankman-Fried, the young billionaire philanthropist who started the crypto exchange FTX.

Last week, in a matter of a few days, FTX collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, and Sam resigned. It's unclear if customers or investors will ever get their money back.

In light of the news, we are replaying the episode -- and trying to figure out what to make of everything Sam told us earlier this year.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Machiavelli's Tips for Getting Ahead at Work

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 05:05:00 +0000

Stacey Vanek Smith is the author of "Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace." Her problem is this: How do women get ahead in a workplace that is stacked against them?

Stacey is my old co-host from Planet Money. Today, she brings us strategies from the 16th-century writer for how to thrive in an unjust world. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Google's Journey to the Edge of Search

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Cathy Edwards is vice president and GM of Search at Google. Cathy's problem is this: how do you teach computers to tell people what they want to know, even if they don't know how to ask?

Google's last leap: Moving from search results based on keywords to search results based on concepts. The next step: Figuring out how to let people search using not just words, but combinations of words and images.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Paying People to Turn Off the Fridge

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Matt Duesterberg is co-founder and president of OhmConnect.

Matt's problem: How do you build a business around getting people to save energy? Not all that much. And not all the time. But just enough, at just the right time. OhmConnect is paying customers to reduce their household's energy usage at times of high demand. The company is a window into the bizarre world of energy markets -- and human behavior.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Turning Writers into Publishers

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Chris Best is co-founder and CEO of Substack.

Chris's problem: How do you help writers make a living from a thousand true fans?

Substack is a company that helps writers send subscription-based email newsletters. Which, as Chris says, is a very simple idea, built on top of some very grandiose beliefs about culture and ideas and commerce.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Shopify: The Business That Helps Build Businesses

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Harley Finkelstein is the president of Shopify. He may love entrepreneurship more than anyone we've ever met.

Harley’s problem: How do you aggregate the power of millions of small businesses to help them compete against giants?

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Putting Carbon Back Into the Ground

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Shaun Kinetic is co-founder and chief scientist of Charm Industrial. Shaun’s problem: How do you put billions of tons of carbon back into the ground?

Charm Industrial is fighting climate change in a giant but kind of overlooked corner of the economy: Agriculture. Fields of corn and wheat and soybeans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year. But then, once the crops are harvested, the leaves and the stalks decompose -- and send a lot of that carbon back into the air.

Shaun's company is trying to grab that carbon and get it back into the ground.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Patching Together a Quilting Empire

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Al Doan is the executive chairman of the Missouri Star Quilt company.

Al's problem is this: How do you combine low tech and high tech to turn a niche hobby into a wildly successful company?

In 2008, Al and his siblings helped their mom open a quilt shop in Hamilton, Missouri. Now, the business has grown to over 100 million a year in revenue and Jenny Doan, Al's mom, has become the YouTube quilting star.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Revealing How Much Health Care Really Costs

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Chris Severn is the co-founder and CEO of Turquoise Health.

Chris's problem is this: How do you figure out the real price trip of a trip to the hospital -- before it happens?

People have been trying to solve this problem for decades, but there's a good reason to think that this time is different. In 2019, the federal government issued a new rule that said insurers and hospitals have to publish their prices. Not just the fake list prices that nobody pays. But the actual, real, negotiated prices. This rule is just starting to take effect. Its impact could be huge.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Saving the World with Poop

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Mariana Matus is co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics. Her problem: How do you turn sewage into useful public health data?

When she and her co-founder launched the company, wastewater epidemiology was a niche field nobody paid much attention to. The Covid pandemic changed that. Studying wastewater has become one of the most important tools for tracking the pandemic. And Mariana's company, Biobot Analytics, has become a global leader in the field, with tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Building an Empire on Free Code

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Matt Mullenweg co-created WordPress, the open-source software that powers more than 40% of all the websites in the world.

He's also the founder of a for-profit company called Automattic.

Matt's problem is this: How do you build a multibillion-dollar company on top of software that your competitors can use for free?

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Selling Billions of Crickets a Year

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Mohammed Ashour is the co-founder and CEO of Aspire Food Group. The company just built the biggest cricket factory in the history of the world.

His problem: How do you sell billions of bugs a year?

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From Patented: Inventing the Wheeled Suitcase

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 04:05:00 +0000

We put man on the moon before we invented the wheeled suitcase. Why did it take so long? Find out in this episode of Patented: History of Inventions, where host Dallas Campbell is joined by expert Katrine Marçal, whose research has revealed an intriguing hidden chapter in the invention story of rolling luggage.

If you're interested in the stories behind the world's greatest inventions — from the mighty steam train to the humble condom - subscribe to Patented: History of Inventions, created by our friends over at History Hit.

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How the Nerds Conquered the NBA

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Rajiv Maheswaran is the co-founder and president of Second Spectrum. Rajiv and his company figured out how to turn raw sports data into useful information for coaches. Today, the company works with basketball and soccer teams in the NBA, the Premier League and Major League Soccer.

Rajiv's problem: How do you teach a computer to understand sports?

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The Trick to Flying Cheap

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 04:05:00 +0000

David Neeleman has founded five airlines, including JetBlue. He recently launched a new airline, called Breeze.

His problem: How do you use technology to bring down the cost of airfares?

He's been working on that problem for decades -- from inventing ticketless travel in the 1980s, to building a 21st century airline where customers never need to call customer service to ask for help.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Beer Without the Buzz

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Bill Shufelt is the founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company.

His problem: How do you turn non-alcoholic beer from a punchline into something people drink all the time?

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John Green Tests the Limits of YouTube

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 04:05:00 +0000

John Green is the author of The Fault in Our Stars and six other novels. He also co-founded a company that makes educational videos that have been viewed billions of times.

John's problem: How do you make videos that actually help people make it through college?

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Taking Bets on the Future

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Luana Lopes Lara is the co-founder of Kalshi, an exchange that lets ordinary people bet on everything from the path of inflation to what bills Congress will pass by the end of the year.

Her problem: How to you build a market like the New York Stock Exchange that lets people bet on real-world events?

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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From Unsung Science with David Pogue: The Man Who Stopped the Spammers

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 04:05:00 +0000

A special preview of the podcast, Unsung Science with David Pogue from CBS News. Journalist and author David Pogue finds the untold creation stories behind the most mind-blowing advances in science and tech—and hears from the characters involved—from their first inspiration to the times they almost gave up. This episode looks at the bad guys who used software bots to sign up for millions of fake email accounts—for sending out spam. Then, PhD student Luis Von Ahn stopped them. He invented the CAPTCHA, that website login test where you have to decipher the distorted image of a word. Or you have to find the traffic lights or fire hydrants in a grid of nine blurry photos. Those tests help to keep down the volume of spam, spyware, and misinformation; they advance the clarity of digitized books and the intelligence of self-driving cars; and, by the way, they made a handsome profit. The only problem: We HATE those tests! Guest: Luis Von Ahn, co-inventor of CAPTCHA, co-inventor and CEO of Duolingo. Hear more episodes of Unsung Science at https://unsungscience.com/.

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Building Bespoke Weather Forecasts

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Shimon Elkabetz is the founder and CEO of Tomorrow.io.

His problem: How do you build a weather forecasting company from scratch? The company already sells weather intelligence to companies like JetBlue, Uber and the NFL.

Their next move: Send the first private constellation of weather satellites to space (without running out of money).

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Squeezing the Entire Internet Into a Shoebox

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Emily Leproust is the co-founder and CEO of Twist Bioscience. Her problem: How do you store data in DNA -- and make it cheap enough to work in the real world.

The cells in our bodies contain an incredible data storage system: DNA. Now, scientists have figured out how to use DNA as a digital storage device that is stable and incredibly compact. If you stored all the data on the Internet in DNA, it would fit in a shoebox.

But there's a problem: It's still too expensive to work in the real world. On today's show, Emily Leproust explains how DNA storage works, and what it will take to bring it to market.

If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

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Facing Fear in the Housing Market

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Glenn Kelman is the CEO of the real estate company Redfin. His problem: With the housing market teetering, how do you sell houses online?

Redfin has a website where you can look at houses for sale, just like Zillow. But Redfin also employs real estate agents all over the country to help people buy and sell houses. Recently, Redfin has started to buy houses and flip them for a profit and that new business is risky.

"I'm worried about the economy," Glenn says. "I'm worried about the war in Ukraine, worried about the stock market, worried about consumer confidence and mortgage interest rates. So lions and tigers and bears, it might be a scary summer."

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From Hot Money: Playboy vs. Rusty and Edie

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 04:05:00 +0000

This bonus episode is from Hot Money, a new podcast from Pushkin and the Financial Times.

When Financial Times reporter Patricia Nilsson started digging into the porn industry, she made a shocking discovery: Nobody knew who controlled the biggest porn company in the world. Now, Nilsson and her editor, Alex Barker, have figured out who the guy was, and much more.

In this episode, the fourth in the series, Patricia and Alex wonder how it's legal for porn sites to host millions of videos uploaded by users. The answer is in the story of an Ohio family in the early 1990s.

It involves a family IT business, an FBI raid and a court case that set the precedent for porn – and for tech giants like Facebook and Twitter.

You can hear more Hot Money episodes at https://link.chtbl.com/dbhotmoney.

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Going to Venus on the Cheap

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Peter Beck is the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. His problem: How do you turn sending stuff into outer space into something that seems as boring and predictable as mailing a package?

Later this month, one of the company's rockets will launch the NASA-funded Capstone mission to the moon. A mission to Venus is also in the works. And the company has already sent over 100 satellites into orbit.

It's a conversation about space, but also about how technological change drives down prices -- and creates new possibilities.

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Putting a Car on the Moon

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 04:05:00 +0000

On this bonus episode of What’s Your Problem? Jacob Goldstein talks with Eddie Alterman, former editor of Car and Driver and host of the new podcast Car Show!

In this episode, Eddie investigates the Lunar Rover. Why did we send a car to the moon? How did we design something for an environment we knew nothing about? Also: A look at the new lunar rover engineers are working on now.

You can find more episodes of Car Show! with Eddie Alterman at https://link.chtbl.com/wypcarshow

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Sam Bankman-Fried Wants to Save the World

Tue, 24 May 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder and CEO of the crypto exchange FTX. His problem: How to spend billions of dollars to save humanity.

Sam is one of the most interesting people in crypto -- in large part because he doesn't think crypto is the most interesting thing in the world. He got into the business because he wanted to make as much money as possible in order to give almost all of it away.

He's now worth over $20 billion, and he's already donated hundreds of millions. In the next few years, he could give away billions more.

On today's show, he lists a few of the causes he's supporting -- and explains why he's likely to make massive political donations in 2024.

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The Quest for the Perfect Avocado

Thu, 19 May 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Katherine Sizov is the founder and CEO of Strella Biotech.

Her problem: Tons of food is wasted before it ever gets to the consumer.

Katherine started working on this problem in 2018, when she was a junior in college. Her idea: imitate the natural world and build a device that detects when fruit is ripening. It worked. Now some of the biggest apple and pear packers in America use her device.

Next up: Avocados.

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Making Electronics Better

Thu, 12 May 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Anna Katrina Shedletsky is co-founder and CEO of Instrumental. Her problem: How do you make electronics manufacturing more efficient and less wasteful?

Anna started her career as a design engineer at Apple. It was her job to visit the factory when a new device was about to go into production and try to figure out all of the potential manufacturing problems that might arise.

She realized this was an almost impossible task that relied on hope and luck -- and that it led to an incredibly inefficient and wasteful manufacturing process.

So she started a new company, Instrumental, to try to come up with a better way to figure out what's likely to go wrong, and how to fix it.

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From Slate Money: 37.8% Scammier

Tue, 10 May 2022 17:03:15 +0000

Today we're sharing a preview from another podcast we love, Slate Money. Every week, Felix Salmon of Axios is joined by Emily Peck, also of Axios, and Slate Pay Dirt columnist Elizabeth Spiers to chat about the latest in business and finance news.

In this episode, Felix and Emily sit down with Alexandra Roberts, professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Peirce School of Law. They talk about everything trademarks, from social media to counterfeits and parodies. They also talk about trying to fix racist logos and what happened when Mastercard tried to low key change its logo.

Hear more episodes of Slate Money wherever you get your podcasts.

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Turning Cells into Tiny Factories

Thu, 05 May 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Reshma Shetty is co-founder and chief operations officer of Ginkgo Bioworks. Her problem: How do you turn cutting-edge science into a sustainable business?

Ginkgo is a synthetic biology company. The idea is to make industrial products -- fragrances, or food, or whatever -- by genetically engineering DNA, sticking it into a yeast or bacteria, and getting the yeast or bacteria to produce the thing you want.

Creating a profitable synthetic biology business is a really hard problem. But if it does work, it could be massive -- like an industrial revolution with cells instead of machines.

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Seeing Data From Space

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Will Marshall is the co-founder and CEO of Planet, a private company with a fleet of tiny satellites that takes photos of the entire Earth every day. Will’s problem: How do you turn all those images into useful data?

In today’s episode we talk about shooting smartphones into space, turning a million-dollar antenna into a thousand-dollar paperclip, and how to count every tree in the Amazon.

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Growing a Weed Business

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 04:03:00 +0000

Joy and Raft Hollingsworth run The Hollingsworth Cannabis Company. Their problem: How do you help more Black people get into the legal weed industry?

They faced this problem from the very beginning as they tried to start a marijuana farm from scratch in rural Washington. The Hollingsworths lived their entire lives in downtown Seattle and didn’t know anything about farming.

It's a story that includes a paper bag full of cash, dinner with Anthony Bourdain, and hundreds of millions of dollars in weed taxes.

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Building a Company that Builds Companies

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 04:03:00 +0000

Noubar Afeyan is the co-founder of Moderna and the founder of Flagship Pioneering. His problem: How do you turn the chaotic hero's journey of entrepreneurship into a repeatable, systematic process?

Noubar created Flagship Pioneering to solve the problems he saw with entrepreneurship. Flagship's mission: To create new companies in a systematic, repeatable way. On today's show, Noubar explains how that system led to the creation of Moderna, a company that developed a COVID vaccine and saved millions of lives.

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Delivering Everything Right Now

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 04:03:00 +0000

Rafael Ilishayev is the co-founder of the instant delivery company Gopuff. His problem: How do you deliver everything from bananas to hot coffee in around 30 minutes -- and still make a profit?

On today's show, Jacob Goldstein surprises Rafael with a live Gopuff order. And they discuss the problems the company is working on in real time as they wait to see if the order will arrive on time and in good shape.

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Chatting with the Machine

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Luis von Ahn is the founder and CEO of the language app DuoLingo. His problem: How do you teach people to speak a language -- really speak it -- using only an iPhone app?

On the surface, DuoLingo looks warm and fuzzy. Underneath the hood, it's a serious tech company built on artificial intelligence. But the best machine learning in the world still isn't good enough to really teach people how to fluently speak in a new language. Luis is trying to change that.

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Teaching Cars to Think Like People

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Aicha Evans is the CEO of Zoox. Her problem: Designing a car that knows what to do when it pulls up to a 4-way stop.

AI is transforming the way cars work. But AI still struggles with predicting the behavior of human drivers. To build a car that can truly drive itself, Aicha and the rest of the industry will have to solve this problem. How do you teach self-driving cars to understand people?

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Launching Drone Delivery

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 04:05:00 +0000

Keenan Wyrobek is the co-founder of Zipline. His problem: How do you fill the skies with delivery drones and keep them from crashing into each other?

Zipline’s drones already make hundreds of deliveries a day in Ghana and Rwanda. But to expand to the U.S. he has to solve a fundamental problem. Americans’ love of freedom and the open skies makes it hard to build a drone business here.

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Becoming a Dog Ramp Mogul

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 04:02:00 +0000

Ramon van Meer is the CEO of Alpha Paw. His problem: How do you grow a niche business (ramps for weiner dogs!) when a pandemic blows up your supply chain and Apple ruins your targeted ads?

Ramon has sold over $30 million worth of dog ramps. That’s a lot of dog ramps. But in order to do so he has to deal with some of the biggest companies on earth. On today’s show, we talk about how he has built his company on top of the tech giants – and how they threaten his very existence.

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Introducing What's Your Problem

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 15:11:00 +0000

Former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein talks to entrepreneurs and engineers about how they'll change the world -- once they solve a few problems. Coming March 17th.

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