What’s Your Problem?
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 Giant Torch That May Help Save the World
Selling hydrogen to make fertilizer is a huge business. It also drives tons of carbon emissions. Rob Hanson, the co-founder and CEO of a company called Monolith is trying to create hydrogen without emissions —…
Fixing Uber’s Broken Culture
Frances Frei and Anne Morriss are the co-founders of a training and consulting company called The Leadership Consortium. Together they specialize in helping leaders build trust within their companies. They also co-host a podcast called…
Murder Brokers from Hot Money: The New Narcos
When a Dutch crime reporter makes an unbelievable discovery, a small-town murder case begins to look like an international assassination plot. Enjoy this episode from Hot Money: The New Narcos, a podcast from Pushkin Industries…
Using AI for Creative Work
A few weeks ago, Jacob Goldstein sat down with a writer and a composer on a stage in Chicago to talk about artificial intelligence. The conversation, which was part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, aimed to…
The Little-Known Office With $400 Billion to Fight Climate Change
Jigar Shah is the director of the Loan Programs Office at the U.S. Department of Energy. Last year, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress allocated hundreds of billions of dollars for Jigar’s office…
How AI Solved a Biological Mystery
Pushmeet Kohli is vice president of research at DeepMind, an AI research group that is part of Google. Every protein has a unique shape. And understanding a protein’s shape is key to understanding how proteins…
Making Oxygen on Mars
Forrest Meyen is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Lunar Outpost, a company that builds machines that go to places like Mars and, if everything goes according to plan, the moon. The company is…
The sold-out chips at the heart of AI
Brannin McBee is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at CoreWeave. A few years ago, he and a few friends started buying hardware to mine cryptocurrency. It turns out, the same hardware — chips known…
Special Episode: The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former crypto mogul, is on trial for fraud. On today’s show, we talk to Lidia Jean Kott, who is covering the trial for another Pushkin show, about a dramatic day in court.…
Getting Yeast to Make Medicine
Christina Smolke is the co-founder and CEO of Antheia. Antheia is a synthetic biology company — they’re in the business of genetically engineering microorganisms to produce commercial products. Christina’s problem is this: How do you…
