Marketplace Tech

Host Molly Wood speaks with Russell T. Davies about his BBC-HBO show “Years and Years.” Davies says that the family featured in the saga are forwarded 15 years into time and they experience every technological and humanistic evolution possible, like a character coming out as trans — not transgender, but transhuman (some robot parts in her). They also talk about the technology featured in the series.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Connie Guglielmo, editor-in-chief at CNET, about how a plurality of tech conferences have been canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, and what that might mean for the tech industry. Guglielmo says that this will only allow tech companies to get creative by making the conferences more video-friendly and therefore accessible to anyone who wants to be part of them in a cheaper way. Wood also speaks with Karen Allen, a consultant to artists who livestreams on Twitch, about how artists are monetizing the platform by performing more personal concerts — only without the live audience.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Louise Matsakis, a reporter at Wired, about price gouging on e-commerce giants like Amazon and eBay. She says that these platforms need to respond to gouging just as social media platforms have to respond to misinformation about the public health crises. Amazon, she adds, has been making an effort to regulate the dramatic price increases that some sellers are applying to hand sanitizers and face masks that protect against COVID-19.

Host Molly Wood speaks to Adi Robertson, a senior reporter at The Verge, about how virtual reality initially promised us the future, and now that we need it to work remotely during the coronavirus outbreak, it still has very little to offer. Robertson says the equipment is just too heavy to successfully work from home. And then there’s the “goofiness factor.”

Host Molly Wood speaks with John Watson, founder of the Evergreen Education Group, which conducts research on K-12 digital learning, about schools closing due to the spread of COVID-19. He says that while there are plenty of schools and school districts equipped with the tools to make online learning possible, there are still other schools and districts that do not have that sort of bandwidth.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Jack Stewart, Marketplace’s transportation reporter, about the recent California DMV “disengagement” report, which tells the public how many times a human has had to manually take over the wheel of an autonomous vehicle. But there aren’t any federal standards for collecting that kind of data.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Nathaniel Popper, a technology reporter for The New York Times, about Robinhood’s recent outage and what that might tell us about the fintech industry. He says the tech glitches are giving traditional banks a chance to catch up.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Claire Schmidt, CEO and founder of AllVoices, an online program that lets employees file an HR complaint anonymously. Research shows, she says, that about 75% of employees don’t report any sort of harassment because they think their HR department is asking for too much information, which makes them feel vulnerable.

Correction (Mar. 4, 2020): A previous version of this episode description incorrectly characterized the companies AllVoices works with. The text has been corrected.

Host Molly Wood spoke with Robert Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, about telemedicine and if it is effective enough to make a difference during the coronavirus outbreak. 

As China works to contain COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, residents there are being asked to supply a lot more personal information to both companies and the government. But once the virus is under control, could the government still use the data to continue to surveil people? Molly Wood talks with Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak.