What's Your Problem?

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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/WypbestfriendsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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? 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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? 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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? 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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? 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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? 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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/.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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." 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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/wypcarshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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?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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.