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iHeartPodcasts and Pushkin Industries

Every week on What’s Your Problem, entrepreneurs and engineers talk about the future they’re trying to build – and the problems they have to solve to get there.

How do you take a drone delivery service you’ve built in Rwanda and make it work in North Carolina? How do you convince people to buy a house on the Internet? How do you sell thousands of dog ramps to weiner dogs all across America when a pandemic breaks the global supply chain? 

Hosted by former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein, What’s Your Problem helps listeners understand the problems really smart people are trying to solve right now.

iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.

What's Your Problem?

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Measles: The Cancer Killer?... from Incubation

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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What Claude Shannon Figured Out

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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NVIDIA: At the Heart of the AI Boom

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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Teaching AI to Build Stuff in the Physical World

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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How Bubbles Power Breakthroughs

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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Solving Solar’s Biggest Problem

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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Building a Mass Market Robot

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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Introducing What's Your Problem

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.

 
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Becoming a Dog Ramp Mogul

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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Drugs in Space

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