Tiny Chips, Giant Stakes
Microchips are the most important driver of technological progress in the modern world, and governments are fighting over who gets to make them. Right now, most cutting-edge chips are made…
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.
Questions, comments, suggestions? Email us: problem@pushkin.fm
Most Recent Episode
Tiny Chips, Giant Stakes
Microchips are the most important driver of technological progress in the modern world, and governments are fighting over who gets to make them. Right now, most cutting-edge chips are made…
Problems Solved: Drones, Bananas and Real Estate*
It's our first anniversary and—almost 50 episodes in—Jacob Goldstein checks in with three past guests. Drone delivery guy Keenan Wyrobek thinks he has solved a big problem holding back commercial…
Faster, Cheaper Drugs with AI
Alice Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Verge Genomics. Alice's problem is this: How do you use artificial intelligence to drive down the price of developing new drugs? The…
Creating the Uncrashable Car
When Austin Russell was 17 years old, he founded Luminar Technologies to work on a remote sensing technology called Lidar. Today, Austin is one of the world's youngest self-made billionaires,…
The Electric Truck that Went Viral on TikTok
Chace Barber is the co-founder of Edison Motors. Chace's problem is this: How do you build electric logging trucks in rural Canada, with money you raised from people who follow…
Running in Recycled Shoes
Caspar Coppetti is the co-founder of On, a company that makes athletic shoes. Caspar's problem is this: How can you sell tens of millions of shoes a year -- and…
Turning Garbage Into Food
Matt Rogers is the co-founder of Mill. Matt's problem is this: How do you turn garbage into food? Before Mill, Matt co-founded Nest, a smart thermostat company. Now, he wants…
The Fake-Meat Frontier
Jacob Goldstein co-hosts today's show with Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful. Jacob and Dan eat their way through the history of fake meat -- from Gardenburger hockey pucks, to…
From Impossible Burgers to Fake Steak
Pat Brown is the founder of Impossible Foods. Pat's problem is this: How can you make meat without animals? Pat's goal isn't to make better burgers for vegetarians; he wants…
Small Pizza Shops Want a Bigger Slice
Ilir Sela is the co-founder and CEO of Slice. His problem: How do you bring the technological revolution to thousands of tiny mom and pop pizza shops? Most local pizza…
Turning Waves Into Electricity
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…
Flying on Battery Power
Anders Forslund is the co-founder and CEO of Heart Aerospace. Anders' problem is this: How do you build a commercial airplane that can fly on battery power -- and win…
Bringing Back the American Hoodie
Bayard Winthrop is the founder and CEO of American Giant. Bayard's problem is this: How do you make clothes in America — and compete in a global economy? Today's show…
How to Save the Most Lives
Farzad Mostashari is the co-founder and CEO of Aledade. Farzad's problem is this: How can we pay doctors to keep us healthy, rather than treating us after we get sick?…
The Investors Everybody Ignored
Sallie Krawcheck is the founder and CEO of Ellevest, an investment firm for women that has over $1 billion in assets under management. In her career in finance, Sallie was…
Sam Bankman-Fried Revisited
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…
Machiavelli’s Tips for Getting Ahead at Work
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…
Google’s Journey to the Edge of Search
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…
Paying People to Turn Off the Fridge
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…
Turning Writers into Publishers
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…
Shopify: The Business That Helps Build Businesses
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…
Putting Carbon Back Into the Ground
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…
Patching Together a Quilting Empire
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…
Revealing How Much Health Care Really Costs
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 --…
Saving the World with Poop
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…
Building an Empire on Free Code
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…
Selling Billions of Crickets a Year
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…
How the Nerds Conquered the NBA
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…
The Trick to Flying Cheap
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?…
Beer Without the Buzz
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?
John Green Tests the Limits of YouTube
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…
Taking Bets on the Future
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…
Building Bespoke Weather Forecasts
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…
Squeezing the Entire Internet Into a Shoebox
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…
Facing Fear in the Housing Market
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…
Going to Venus on the Cheap
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…
Sam Bankman-Fried Wants to Save the World
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…
The Quest for the Perfect Avocado
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…
Making Electronics Better
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…
Turning Cells into Tiny Factories
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…
Seeing Data From Space
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…
Growing a Weed Business
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…
Building a Company that Builds Companies
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…
Delivering Everything Right Now
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…
Chatting with the Machine
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…
Teaching Cars to Think Like People
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…
Launching Drone Delivery
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…
Becoming a Dog Ramp Mogul
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…
Introducing What’s Your Problem
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.
The Host
Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein spent more than a decade as co-host of the Planet Money podcast. He's also the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, which the New…
