What's Your Problem?

David Neeleman has founded five airlines, including JetBlue. He recently launched a new airline, called Breeze. His problem: How do you use technology to bring down the cost of airfares? He's been working on that problem for decades -- from inventing ticketless travel in the 1980s, to building a 21st century airline where customers never need to call customer service to ask for help. If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bill Shufelt is the founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company. His problem: How do you turn non-alcoholic beer from a punchline into something people drink all the time? If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Green is the author of The Fault in Our Stars and six other novels. He also co-founded a company that makes educational videos that have been viewed billions of times. John's problem: How do you make videos that actually help people make it through college? If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Luana Lopes Lara is the co-founder of Kalshi, an exchange that lets ordinary people bet on everything from the path of inflation to what bills Congress will pass by the end of the year. Her problem: How to you build a market like the New York Stock Exchange that lets people bet on real-world events?  If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A special preview of the podcast, Unsung Science with David Pogue from CBS News. Journalist and author David Pogue finds the untold creation stories behind the most mind-blowing advances in science and tech—and hears from the characters involved—from their first inspiration to the times they almost gave up. This episode looks at the bad guys who used software bots to sign up for millions of fake email accounts—for sending out spam. Then, PhD student Luis Von Ahn stopped them. He invented the CAPTCHA, that website login test where you have to decipher the distorted image of a word. Or you have to find the traffic lights or fire hydrants in a grid of nine blurry photos. Those tests help to keep down the volume of spam, spyware, and misinformation; they advance the clarity of digitized books and the intelligence of self-driving cars; and, by the way, they made a handsome profit. The only problem: We HATE those tests! Guest: Luis Von Ahn, co-inventor of CAPTCHA, co-inventor and CEO of Duolingo. Hear more episodes of Unsung Science at https://unsungscience.com/.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shimon Elkabetz is the founder and CEO of Tomorrow.io. His problem: How do you build a weather forecasting company from scratch? The company already sells weather intelligence to companies like JetBlue, Uber and the NFL.  Their next move: Send the first private constellation of weather satellites to space (without running out of money). If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Emily Leproust is the co-founder and CEO of Twist Bioscience. Her problem: How do you store data in DNA -- and make it cheap enough to work in the real world. The cells in our bodies contain an incredible data storage system: DNA. Now, scientists have figured out how to use DNA as a digital storage device that is stable and incredibly compact. If you stored all the data on the Internet in DNA, it would fit in a shoebox.  But there's a problem: It's still too expensive to work in the real world. On today's show, Emily Leproust explains how DNA storage works, and what it will take to bring it to market. If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Glenn Kelman is the CEO of the real estate company Redfin. His problem: With the housing market teetering, how do you sell houses online? Redfin has a website where you can look at houses for sale, just like Zillow. But Redfin also employs real estate agents all over the country to help people buy and sell houses. Recently, Redfin has started to buy houses and flip them for a profit and that new business is risky. "I'm worried about the economy," Glenn says. "I'm worried about the war in Ukraine, worried about the stock market, worried about consumer confidence and mortgage interest rates. So lions and tigers and bears, it might be a scary summer." If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This bonus episode is from Hot Money, a new podcast from Pushkin and the Financial Times. When Financial Times reporter Patricia Nilsson started digging into the porn industry, she made a shocking discovery: Nobody knew who controlled the biggest porn company in the world. Now, Nilsson and her editor, Alex Barker, have figured out who the guy was, and much more. In this episode, the fourth in the series, Patricia and Alex wonder how it's legal for porn sites to host millions of videos uploaded by users. The answer is in the story of an Ohio family in the early 1990s. It involves a family IT business, an FBI raid and a court case that set the precedent for porn – and for tech giants like Facebook and Twitter. You can hear more Hot Money episodes at https://link.chtbl.com/dbhotmoney.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Peter Beck is the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. His problem: How do you turn sending stuff into outer space into something that seems as boring and predictable as mailing a package? Later this month, one of the company's rockets will launch the NASA-funded Capstone mission to the moon. A mission to Venus is also in the works. And the company has already sent over 100 satellites into orbit. It's a conversation about space, but also about how technological change drives down prices -- and creates new possibilities. If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.