108 episodes

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?‬ Pushkin

    • Business
    • 4.5 • 214 Ratings

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

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.

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

    How Do Psychedelics Work?

    How Do Psychedelics Work?

    Psychedelics are going mainstream. The FDA has approved ketamine for certain patients with depression, and may soon approve MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But a fundamental question remains unclear: How do psychedelics work?

    Gul Dolen is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley. In a series of experiments, Gul has found evidence of a common mechanism that a wide range of psychedelics use to affect the brain. If Gul is correct, these drugs may be useful not only for people suffering from mental illness, but also for people dealing with neurological problems like strokes.
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 32 min
    Pushkin+ Early Listen: Designing a Drone That Delivers

    Pushkin+ Early Listen: Designing a Drone That Delivers

    You can hear this episode for free starting Thursday, April 25th. To learn more about Pushkin+ offerings, like ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and early access, visit pushkin.fm or the show page on Apple.

    Imagine picking up your phone and ordering something from Walmart. Fifteen minutes later, a drone hovers over your yard, lowers your order down to you, and zips away. Adam Woodworth wants this to be so boring you don't even notice. He’s the CEO of Wing, a drone delivery company. His problem is this: How do you turn a flashy idea like a delivery drone into something as ubiquitous as a shopping cart?

    Building Boundary-Breaking Balloons

    Building Boundary-Breaking Balloons

    Kai Marshland is the co-founder and chief product officer at WindBorne Systems. Kai's problem is this: How do you build weather balloons that can stay in the air for months at a time, and pair the data gathered by the balloons with AI to make weather forecasts that are way better than anything we have today?
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 34 min
    Building a Robot That Can Walk the Walk

    Building a Robot That Can Walk the Walk

    Jonathan Hurst is a professor at Oregon State University, and co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. Jonathan's problem is this: How do you design a robot that can walk and do useful tasks that companies will pay for? The solution begins with trying to understand how birds walk.
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 38 min
    Building from the Ground Up: NNG Capital Fund

    Building from the Ground Up: NNG Capital Fund

    The 2008 Global Financial Crisis was hard for almost everyone. Fuquan Bilal remembers it like it was yesterday. A real estate investor, among other things, he came home to the news of the crash and the sharp realization that he lost $2 million overnight. That could have been the end with advisors telling him to file for bankruptcy. 

     

    Join Ben and Tanya as they chat with Fuquan about how he fought to keep his companies afloat. Discover how he brought his business back from the dead, ignoring common sense, for his own gut instincts, his investments to diversify his income, and back into better communities for all. These are The Unshakeables.   

     

    The Unshakeables is brought to you by Chase for Business and Ruby Studio by iHeartMedia
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 26 min
    Can Your Phone Tell When You're Getting Sick?

    Can Your Phone Tell When You're Getting Sick?

    What does sickness sound like? Sometimes it’s obvious, like a cough, sniffle, or stuffy nose. But some conditions cause subtle changes that only a trained ear – or AI – can detect. Dr. Yael Bensoussan is a professor of otolaryngology and the director of the Health Voice Center at the University of South Florida. Her problem is this: How do you build a giant, public database of thousands of voice recordings, and use it to train AI tools that can hear when people are getting sick?
    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • 35 min

Customer Reviews

4.5 out of 5
214 Ratings

214 Ratings

Bruce JM ,

Very fun podcast

this podcast started slowly, but it has turned into one of my faves!

etherdog ,

Spurious associations don’t make a logical chain

Get a lot of data, like Skynet . That worked out well, didn’t it?

Jacob gets so many things wrong (SBF, for instance, but to his credit he admitted it and did a good self-analysis). Unhedged is just awful, and anyone promoting it probably doesn’t have a good grasp on reality. Unfortunately, the whole Pushkin brand is dissonant and tarnishes the reputation of Alexander Pushkin. The question is whether Pushkin should survive or die. It should and must die. I cannot believe how simplistic Jacob’s questions are and how racist his characterization of the employment rate is.

ashra043 ,

Stop interrupting guests so often

It’s one thing to pause the guest and re-explain a concept to the audience… but Jacob overdoes it and it comes of as rude. This is one of my favorite shows, but the last episodes nearly turned me off because he does it so often.

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