Marketplace Tech

Jack Dorsey has stepped down as the CEO of Twitter, a company he co-founded 15 years ago. Companies are often associated with their founders, and in Silicon Valley, having a smart, charismatic founder can be the difference between getting off the ground at all, or not. But in his note announcing his departure, Dorsey said it’s critical for companies to stand on their own, free of their founder’s influence. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Sarah Kunst, general partner at the venture firm Cleo Capital, about what challenges lie ahead for Dorsey’s replacement as CEO, Parag Agrawal.

Giving Tuesday challenge: Give now to help us reach $100k in donations and unlock another $100k from the Investors Challenge Fund.

“Marketplace Tech’s” Molly Wood is leaving journalism after two decades, including the past four years as the host of this show. More recently, Molly has been co-host of the Marketplace podcast “Make Me Smart” and host of the new show about climate change solutions, “How We Survive.” And since Molly’s a reporter who has asked some pretty hard questions of her guests over the years, Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams asks her questions submitted by listeners.

This episode was originally published May 17, 2021.

Picture this: You’re not feeling so hot and you say to your smart speaker, “Robot, I’m hungry,” and you cough. And the device says, “Would you like a recipe for chicken soup?” And then, “By the way, would you like to order cough drops with one-hour delivery?” This is the scenario laid out in one of Amazon’s patents. And it shows how voice recognition technology could be used to learn things about us, beyond the words we say to our devices. Like whether we’re sick or depressed. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Joe Turow, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who writes about all of this in his new book “The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet.”

This episode originally aired Sept. 9, 2021.

Water infrastructure — it’s boring. Invisible. We only care about it when things go wrong, and things have been going wrong. Punishing storms have caused catastrophic flooding in New York, Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere. But water systems are expensive, time consuming and hard to fix. Technology may provide some relief. Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks to Paul Robinson, the executive director of RISE, a nonprofit accelerator in Norfolk, Virginia, that helps develop climate tech. Robinson says one of the companies they fund is StormSensor, which puts sensors in storm and sewer pipes.

Many Americans hand over volumes of personal data to Amazon. The company knows what we buy, what we consider buying, even whom we might be buying things for. And according to a new investigation by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Wired, many Amazon employees have exploited access to that customer data. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Will Evans, a senior reporter at Reveal, who has been covering this.

For Ruben Trujillo, coffee is not just a beverage, it’s his passion. He spent several years working as an English teacher in South Korea, getting deep into the coffee culture there. When he returned to the U.S., he decided to start his own business, Cafe Emporos, selling selling pre-filled personalized coffee filters. Trujillo shares his story and tells how TikTok marketing really launched his business.

The holidays often mean traveling, which frequently means flying. For many who are hyper-aware of their carbon footprints, flying can bring on a guilt trip. Commercial flights account for about 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. Now, though, there are a variety of sustainable aviation fuels designed to lower the emissions that are generated by air travel. Marketplace’s Jed Kim speaks with Evan Sherwin, a postdoctoral researcher in energy and resources engineering at Stanford University, about the kinds of sustainable jet fuels out there.

Many of us were online in the last two years in ways we wouldn’t have imagined pre-pandemic. Like for doctor’s appointments. The pandemic accelerated the widespread use of telemedicine platforms for both mental and physical care, in the U.S. especially. With public health states of emergencies in place, doctors could practice across state borders, increasing access for millions of patients. But now some states are letting their public health emergencies expire. So what does that mean for telehealth care providers across the country? Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Brian Gormley, who covers this for The Wall Street Journal.

The pandemic has many of us relying on technology in new ways. And it prompted some innovation, including in the health care sector. For example, patients who need dialysis on a regular basis mostly go to clinics or hospitals, but during the pandemic, more kidney patients wanted to have their treatments at home. And as “Marketplace Tech’s” Jesús Alvarado explains, some new technology may make that a bit easier.

As you may have heard, Marketplace’s Molly Wood has been working on a new podcast called “How We Survive,” about solutions to the climate crisis. The latest episode is called “The Better Battery,” which we need to store renewable energy in our attempts to mitigate global warming. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Molly about how the batteries we have are good and getting better. But a better battery might let us use our cellphones all day without charging or drive an electric vehicle from San Francisco to Los Angeles without stopping.