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  • The Ordinary Stuff Behind Technological Breakthroughs

     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…


  • Carbon Capture at Rock-Bottom Prices

    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…


  • Ferrari Fandom, Supercharged by AI from Smart Talks with IBM

    Today we’re sharing an episode from another Pushkin podcast, Smart Talks with IBM. Scuderia Ferrari and IBM are redefining fan engagement with AI-driven insights, and cutting-edge digital tools. Learn how IBM is helping Scuderia Ferrari…


  • Why Amazon Built a Spatula-Wielding Robot

    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…


  • Drilling Smarter Wells to Unleash Geothermal Energy

    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…


  • Inventing a Better Pain Pill

     Dr. Stephen Waxman is a professor of neurology, neuroscience and pharmacology at Yale. His research on pain helped pave the way for a newly approved, non-addictive pain drug called suzetrigine. On today’s show, he explains…


  • Mapping the Unmappable

     Philipp Kandal is the chief product officer of Grab, an app that serves several countries across Southeast Asia. Two of Grab’s main businesses are delivery and mobility – like a combination between Instacart and Uber.…


  • Reinventing Blood

    Dr. Allan Doctor is the co-founder and chief scientific officer at Kalocyte, a company that is developing dried red blood cells that can be rehydrated and used in medical emergencies. On today’s show, Dr. Doctor…


  • The AI Pioneer Developing New Kinds of Medicine

    Jakob Uszkoreit is the CEO and co-founder of Inceptive, a biotech start-up. He’s also a co-author of “Attention is All You Need,” the paper that created transformer models. Today, transformers power chatbots like ChatGPT and…


  • A Billion-Dollar Bet on Carbon Removal

    Nan Ransohoff is the head of climate at Stripe. The company is known mainly for facilitating online payments, but it’s become a key driver of the nascent carbon-removal industry. On today’s show, Nan explains how…


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