What’s Your Problem?
We’re sharing another podcast we think you’ll enjoy, The Big Short Companion from Against the Rules, hosted by fellow Pushkin podcast host Michael Lewis. The Big Short is now 15 years old and to mark the occasion, Lewis narrated a new audiobook version of The Big Short and is looking back on how the 2008 financial crisis still affects the world today. To make sense of Wall Street’s hangover from the crash described in The Big Short, Lewis calls up Matt Levine, author of the Money Stuff newsletter for Bloomberg Opinion. He’s also a former investment banker who was working at Goldman Sachs during the market crisis of 2008. He and Lewis talk about Bitcoin, bank regulation, and new forms of risk-taking—all ways Wall Street has changed since the crisis.
Find The Big Short Companion from Against the Rules (00:45) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your Podcasts.
Find The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (00:10) on Apple Books or wherever you get your audiobooks.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Giving Old Batteries New Life
Megan O’Connor is the co-founder and CEO of Nth Cycle. Megan’s problem is this: How do you create a new system that can both refine the raw metals we need for new batteries and recycle…
Engineering the Future of Fusion
Getting energy from nuclear fusion has been a dream for decades; it would be cheap, abundant, and safer than today’s nuclear fission reactors. Billions of dollars have flowed into fusion startups in recent years, but…
Can Robots Fix Recycling?
Recycling plants take in a huge amount of random (and occasionally hazardous) stuff, which they then have to turn into reliable outputs that their customers will buy. That’s why Rebecca Hu Thrams calls recycling “the…
Warlords, Espionage, and Disinformation | Introducing Hot Money: Agent of Chaos
In 2020, the Financial Times exposed a 2 billion euro fraud at Wirecard, a high-flying German fintech. Many thought that was the end of the story. But for reporter Sam Jones, it was just the…
Inside the Mind of an AI Model
AI might be the most consequential advancement in the world right now. But – astonishingly – no one fully understands what’s going on inside AI models. Josh Batson is a research scientist at Anthropic, the…
Teaching Robots How to Do Everything
AI is better than humans at a lot of things, but physical tasks – even seemingly simple ones like folding a shirt – routinely stump AI-powered robots. Chelsea Finn is a professor at Stanford and…
Making a Universal Flu Vaccine
Jacob Glanville is the founder and CEO of Centivax. Jacob’s problem is this: Can you create a vaccine that protects people against almost all strains of flu – even strains that haven’t evolved yet? Get…
Teaching Computers to Smell
Alex Wiltschko got obsessed with perfume when he was 12 years old. He grew up to be an AI researcher at Google. Then he started Osmo, a company that fused his job at Google with…
China’s Race to Dominate: Listen to Global Tech Wars
For decades, China’s economic rise has been symbolized by its unstoppable force of low-cost manufacturing. Now, it’s the leading country in cutting-edge industries like artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, surveillance technology, and more. In Global Tech…
Can a Chatbot Treat Depression?
Nick Jacobson and his team at Dartmouth medical school spent over 100,000 hours trying to build an AI chatbot that can serve as a safe, effective therapist. After a few false starts, they seem to…