What's Your Problem?
by iHeartPodcasts and Pushkin Industries · 215 episodes
TechnologyBusinessEntrepreneurship
Every week on What's Your Problem?, former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein talks with entrepreneurs and engineers tackling the biggest challenges at the forefront of technology. How do you make a trip to space as routine as a plane flight? How do you turn solar energy into clean fuel? How do you use AI to stop deadly infections before they spread? We hear a lot these days about how the world is getting worse. What's Your Problem? learns from the thinkers and doers trying to make our future better. iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.
Latest episodes
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48 min
How a Bad Boss Kickstarted Silicon Valley... from Business History
Throughout the next few weeks, every Monday we'll be sharing some of our favorite episodes from Jacob's other show Business History. We hope you enjoy them and if you want to hear…
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40 min
Solving the Trust Problem in AI Shopping
Note: Today’s show is sponsored by PayPal. Kartik Hosanagar is a professor at the Wharton School. The problems he studies include: What will it take for people to trust AI agents t…
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51 min
Can a Robot Build Better, Cheaper Houses?
Jason Ballard is the co-founder and CEO of ICON. Jason's problem is this: Can you use 3-D printing to build houses that are cheaper, better and more interesting than the houses we…
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39 min
Did AI Write This?
Celebrated novelists, countless students and at least one billionaire have recently been accused of using AI in their writing. The most commonly cited AI detector in these cases is…
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50 min
Blockers | A Preview of Michael Lewis's New Audiobook
I'm here with a preview of Blockers, a new audiobook from Michael Lewis, the author of Liars Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short and more. In Blockers, Lewis tells the story of a handf…
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39 min
Can We Defeat Deepfakes?
We’ve all heard that nothing ever gets deleted from the internet. Luke Arrigoni says that just isn’t true. His company deletes thousands of deepfakes every day. Luke is the founder…
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47 min
The Printing Press: The Invention Built on Debt and Sin… from Business History
Before 1450, books were written out by hand. It was slow and expensive. But Johannes Gutenberg borrowed a ton of money to create a printing press that could crank out Bibles and pa…
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44 min
Should We Pause AI?
Everybody’s worried about the risks of AI. So we called up one of the most insightful writers we know on the subject: Zvi Mowshowitz. Zvi writes about AI and AI risks at his substa…
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10 min
Bonus: Planning for Your Financial Future
On this bonus episode of What’s Your Problem, Jacob talks to Christine Chase, a Vice President, Financial Consultant at Fidelity Investments. Christine’s problem is this: How do yo…
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38 min
Can a Robot Kill Fish Humanely?
The fish we eat usually die slowly, suffocating after they’re pulled out of the water. Saif Khawaja is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Shinkei. Saif's problem is this: C…
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37 min
Using Satellites to Prevent Famines
Catherine Nakalembe is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland and the head of the Africa program at NASA Harvest, which uses satellite images to track agriculture aro…
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44 min
The Quantum Shift in Biomedical Discovery from Smart Talks with IBM
When Dr. Lara Jehi began treating epilepsy patients in the 2000s, critical surgical decisions were driven more by clinician intuition and expertise than data. Today, she is a leade…
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37 min
Can We Slow Down Aging?
Nir Barzilai is a physician and a researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where he runs the Institute for Geroscience. Nir’s problem is this: How can we…
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42 min
Why Doctors Use Evidence but Managers (Mostly) Don’t
Helen Pearson is the author of the book “Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works.” Helen's problem is this: How do you get people to make important decisions based on h…
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40 min
The Job AI Was Supposed to Kill
In 2016, Geoffrey Hinton, one of the inventors of modern AI, predicted that AI would replace radiologists within years. Ten years later, we have a shortage of radiologists. AI has…
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54 min
How China Won the Car Industry
After spending decades as marginal players in the global auto industry, Chinese carmakers have become the world’s biggest exporters of cars. Chinese cars are some of the best cars…
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32 min
Using Viruses to Fight Disease
Phages are viruses that attack bacteria. People have been using phages to treat infections for over a hundred years, but in most cases they just don't work as well as antibiotics.…
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44 min
How AI Could Reduce Inequality
David Autor is a labor economist at MIT. He has written about how the arrival of personal computers increased inequality among American workers. But when it comes to AI, David thin…
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52 min
Racing Wildfires to Warn the Public
John Mills is the CEO and co-founder of a nonprofit called Watch Duty. His problem is this: How do you build an app to warn people when they are in immediate danger from a natural…
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44 min
How AI Could Actually Make the World Better
Josh Tyrangiel is the author of “AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter.” On today’s show, Josh talks about some of these real peo…