Solutions with Henry Blodget

The media industry is under assault. This week, we turn to one of the world’s most experienced and trusted media observers for a solution: Ken Auletta, who has covered the industry for almost 50 years for the New Yorker. Auletta has studied the rise of cable TV, the Internet, and today’s tech giants, and profiled figures such as Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, and Barry Diller. We discuss how trust in...

President Trump surprised many people a few weeks ago when he signed an executive order accelerating research into psychedelics. Compounds like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, ketamine, and others have developed large and enthusiastic followings in the past decade, and some seem quite promising in the treatment of depression, PTSD, addiction and other conditions. Unusually, they are also one of the very fe...

Anil Seth is concerned about the “mythology of conscious AI” – the growing argument that LLMs and other AI systems might one day achieve consciousness. Seth is a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and a leading expert on consciousness. He’s skeptical that AI will ever achieve true consciousness, and argues there’s danger in perceiving these technical...

In the summer of 2024, a baby named KJ was born with a rare disease with a 50% mortality rate. Six months later, he became the first patient to receive personalized gene editing therapy. He is now healthy and thriving. Dr. Jeff Coller, who directs the RNA Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University, says KJ’s treatment could be the most important medical story of the decade. Today, Dr. Coller ex...

Dr. Kira Hoffman once fought fires as a firefighter. Now she works on starting them - for the sake of wildfire prevention. Dr. Hoffman is a fire ecologist at the University of British Columbia and an expert in why wildfires are getting worse and the solutions that can mitigate their damage. We discuss why she forecasts a “dire” wildfire season this year, how fire policy has transformed over the pa...

Recent high-profile tragedies, FAA understaffing and underinvestment, and ballooning TSA lines during the government shutdown have many questioning whether U.S. air travel is as safe as we've been told — but what's the reality? And how do we make it safer, cheaper, and more comfortable? Darryl Campbell is the aviation-safety correspondent for The Verge. We discuss potentially privatizing the TSA,...

One of the biggest issues in the last few elections has been… immigration. And yet: most Americans support legal immigration and a path to citizenship, and aren't worried about immigrants taking their jobs. So why can't the U.S. enact clear policy? Alexander Kustov, professor of migration at the University of Notre Dame, recently wrote a book entirely dedicated to this question and practical solut...

Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor and author of the Substack One Useful Thing, describes today’s AI systems as a “jagged frontier," where AI outperforms humans in some tasks but falls short in others. This unevenness means the technology won’t replace all jobs, but it will reshape how we work and which skills matter most. In this episode, we discuss why management and delegation are becoming more...

What’s it like to talk to a “digital twin” of a relative who died before you were born? How will the increasingly lifelike digital representations of people change how we grieve? Amy Kurzweil deeply considers these questions in her graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story. It's about her experience helping to create a chatbot based on her grandfather. Amy’s father, Ray Kurzweil — a technology inve...

More than three years into the AI era, the predictions of an AI job apocalypse are still coming fast and furious. Here are reasons to be more optimistic. Harvard economist and researcher David Deming studies technology and the future of work. He’s dug into technological shifts of the past for clues about what might happen to the U.S. labor market now, and he’s even quantified the rapid rate of ado...

Elon Musk says humanoid robots represent the biggest business opportunity in the history of the world. But what problems do these robots actually solve? And why do they have to look like humans? We pose those questions and more to Dr. Jonathan Hurst this week, one of the pioneers of modern robotics. He’s the co-founder and Chief Robot Officer at Agility, which makes a humanoid called “Digit," whic...

Dr. Robert Wachter has been a physician for decades, and he thinks that in the future, you might prefer an AI doctor over him (at least sometimes).  Dr. Wachter is the Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a best-selling author. To report his most recent book, A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, he spo...

The U.S. is falling behind in its economic competition with China. One potential solution? An expansion of executive power. That’s according to investor and contributing New York Times columnist Steven Rattner. Rattner served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration; he was known as President Obama’s “car czar,” for leading the team that saved the auto industry in the wak...

When Elon Musk started Neuralink in 2016, he tapped leading neurosurgeon Ben Rapoport to join as a co-founder. But two years later, citing safety and scalability concerns, Rapoport left to co-found a rival company: Precision Neuroscience. Today, we speak with his co-founder, Michael Mager, about what sets Precision apart, the future of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), and what Precision has alrea...

Jeff Selingo is not impressed with how colleges are responding to AI. Selingo has spent decades covering higher education and work, and recently spoke with dozens of professors, administrators, and students about what he calls “the campus AI crisis.” While some faculty are still trying to ban the new technology entirely, others struggle to build smart programs to teach students how to use AI. So w...

Bill Gurley is a legendary venture capitalist known for backing Uber, Zillow, GrubHub, and many others. But when he started his career, he thought he was going to be a computer engineer. How did he make the pivot? That is just one story Gurley tells in his upcoming book, Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love. In this episode, Gurley shares his words of wisdom, and, of c...

Venture capitalist, writer, and researcher Paul Kedrosky thinks it's likely that in the near future, an AI crash will cause widespread damage to the economy—but he's still optimistic about the technology anyway. Today, he tells us why, and shares his boldest predictions about AI, including why OpenAI won't last, and why he'd bet against any of the Mag 7, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

Economist Eswar Prasad believes the world’s economic order is stuck in a doom loop. While globalization has increased global prosperity, it’s also left many people behind. That has set off a global “politics of resentment,” enabling the rise of populist leaders who promise a return to economic independence and nationalism. So what do we do about it? Despite the title of Professor Prasad’s new book...

Your devices could soon be decoding your most intimate thoughts. It’s just a matter of time, according to neurotechnology expert Nita Farahany. There are already devices on the market that track our brain waves, from rings to smartwatches to new products like Meta’s neural band. How do we safeguard our cognitive liberty? Nita Farahany is a Professor of Law and Philosophy at Duke University and the...

If we're truly in an AI bubble close to bursting, how do we avoid economic catastrophe? That's a question we bring to Andrew Ross Sorkin this week, whose new book, 1929: The Inside Story of The Greatest Crash in Wall Street History, has as much to say about the present as it does the past. We ask Andrew what warning signs he sees in the market, how the government should respond to a crash, and wha...

The data is in: remote work is better for everyone. At least when it’s done right. Stanford Economics Professor Nicholas Bloom has been studying hybrid work since before the pandemic, and he says that companies that have embraced remote work have seen gains in productivity and retention while lowering costs. So why are executives at JP Morgan and Amazon ordering employees back? Today: Professor Bl...

Best-selling author, podcaster, and professor Scott Galloway is worried about men. He sees them falling behind and he thinks the left, especially, is overlooking their crises. So he’s provided his own guidance in a new book, “Notes on Being a Man.” Part memoir and part advice, Galloway argues that a man’s job is to “protect, provide, and procreate.” Today we ask: where does that leave women? What...

Electricity prices in the US are skyrocketing. What’s going on? We asked Vox correspondent Umair Irfan, who covers energy policy, to explain. Plus, why Irfan says clean energy could be a winning issue for Democrats. And not because it’s better for the planet, but because it’s cheap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Business Insider recently told its reporters they could use AI to write first drafts of their stories. It was a notable decision by editor-in-chief Jamie Heller, and made BI one of the first mainstream media outlets to embrace AI. We ask Heller what exactly AI is being used for in the BI newsroom. Plus: what skillsets still feel way out of ChatGPT’s reach, and why this is still a good time to get...

John Harris, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Politico, is a short-term pessimist and long-term optimist. In this episode, we appeal to his optimism and ask how the US can recover from its current politics of contempt. Harris shares his analysis of President Trump as the most successful third-party candidate in American history, casts doubt on the fantasy of the “rational center” candidate, a...