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iHeartPodcasts and Pushkin Industries

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.

What's Your Problem?

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From Desert Robots to Driverless Trucks

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is the Future of Fresh Water Under the Sea?

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Could Home Batteries Save the Grid?

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Building a Better Public Bathroom

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Could Autonomous Diggers Unleash a Building Boom?

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Growing Meat from Cells

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Ordinary Stuff Behind Technological Breakthroughs

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Carbon Capture at Rock-Bottom Prices

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why Amazon Built a Spatula-Wielding Robot

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Drilling Smarter Wells to Unleash Geothermal Energy

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.

The Quest for the Perfect Avocado

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