What’s Your Problem?

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.

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 … Read more

Cement is, almost literally, everywhere. It is extraordinarily useful, which is why humanity makes 4 billion metric tons of it every year. But cement is also extremely carbon intensive to produce. Leah Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Sublime Systems. Her problem is this: How can you make cement, at scale, without emitting carbon … Read more

Sam D’Amico is the founder and CEO of Impulse Labs, a company that makes induction stoves, with a clever twist. Sam’s problem is this: How do you build an electric cooktop that works just as well as gas, and can be installed without having to rewire the house? The solution that Sam found could eventually … Read more

Tim Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Relativity Space, a company with a unique approach to manufacturing rockets. Tim’s problem is this: How can you use 3D printing to make rockets more efficiently? Eventually, Tim wants to send a rocket – and printer – to Mars to build the first Martian industrial base.  See … Read more

Every year in the U.S., tens of thousands of hospital patients die of preventable causes. For many of these patients, warning signs are subtle and easy for doctors to miss. Suchi Saria is the founder and CEO of Bayesian Health, and a professor at Johns Hopkins where she runs a lab focused on machine learning … Read more

Gia Schneider is the co-founder and CEO of Natel Energy, a company that is trying to transform the way hydroelectric power works. Gia’s problem is this: how do you draw hydropower from rivers without damaging the ecosystem? As it turns out, we have a lot to learn from nature’s furriest engineers – beavers. See omnystudio.com/listener … Read more

Peter Chen is the co-founder and CEO of Covariant. Peter’s problem is this: How do you take the AI breakthroughs of the past decade or so, and make them work in robots? Peter was one of the first employees at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. On the show, he talks about how AI has evolved, … Read more

Fei-Fei Li is a Stanford computer scientist and the former chief scientist of artificial intelligence/machine learning at Google Cloud. When Li entered the field of AI in the 2000s, researchers were making slow progress, optimizing algorithms to incrementally improve outcomes. Li saw that the problem wasn’t the algorithm, but the size of the datasets being … Read more

Tim Latimer is the CEO and co-founder of Fervo Energy, a company that is using a new approach to produce carbon-free geothermal energy. Tim and his company are drawing on innovations from the oil and gas industry to expand geothermal energy production to new places like the Utah desert, and maybe one day, to Mars. … Read more