Marketplace All-in-One

Bill Cobb has a background in tech and spent years working for eBay. So it might be no surprise that as the CEO of H&R Block, he's partnered with IBM Watson this tax season. He talks about running a seasonal business, the kind of tax reform he'd like to see and who does his taxes. This interview was originally part of Marketplace's Make Me Smart, a new podcast hosted by Kai Ryssdal and senior tech correspondent Molly Wood.  Subscribe to the Corner Office podcast on iTunes. Subscribe to Make Me Smart on iTunes.

After visiting Pennsylvania and Ohio, Marketplace's David Brancaccio is now in Michigan as part of our "Robot-Proof Jobs" series. There, he'll explore how vulnerable teaching jobs are to automation. Afterwards, we'll look at President Trump's decision to end the freeze on federal hiring — with a caveat. The Trump administration wants federal agencies to create plans that minimize employment with "surgical" cuts to staff.

President Obama's FCC had introduced a proposal that would get rid of in-flight cellphone bans. Now the new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, is striking that plan down, stating that there are Americans who "value a moment of quiet at 30,000 feet." The Washington Post's Brian Fung joins us to talk about the controversy and the niche business of in-flight Wi-Fi service. Afterwards, we'll look at Projekt Red's attempt to trademark the name of its video game Cyberpunk 2077 — a move that has angered gamers who don't like the idea of companies trademarking a subgenre of science fiction. We'll chat with Stanford law professor Mark Lemley about the meaning of cyberpunk and how trademark law works. 

President Trump uses the language of a "strict father" to communicate. That's according to George Lakoff, a professor emeritus of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. It's a traditional conservative tactic that the president combines with his own "super salesman" language. For the past 40 years, Lakoff taught students how certain words activate parts of our unconscious world view and make it difficult for people to hear a new idea. We'll brief you about the past, present and future of political language. Plus, what to do Reese's and IBM Watson have in common? Our listeners' curiosity. We share their questions and comments. Subscribe to "Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly" on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. 

Both President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan have promised tax is next on their agendas, but the schedule is pretty flexible. We'll talk about what that could look like, plus the latest from United and Toshiba, and Rex Tillerson's rocky road from oil exec to top diplomat. Plus, we do the numbers on how family income changed as more women entered the workforce. 

One of the world's most-wanted hackers, a Russian man named Pyotr Levashov, was arrested by authorities in Barcelona, Spain. He's now been implicated in Russia's interference with the U.S. presidential election. Dustin Voltz of Reuters joins us to give more background about Levashov and how he got brought in. Afterwards, we'll look at the social contracts that exist between consumers and big tech companies, and then look at Minecraft's decision to launch its own marketplace: a place where users can buy and sell in-game creations.

The White House is putting trade front-and-center of its jobs policy, but when it comes to issues the American workforce faces, technology may be the bigger challenge. As part of our "Robot-Proof Jobs" series, Marketplace's David Brancaccio visits Oberlin, Ohio today to meet up with a composer — an occupation that the data suggest is immune to the forces of automation. Afterwards, we'll look at the future of Toshiba, which has reported a loss approaching $5 billion in the last nine months of 2016.   

... But we are going to talk about the PR nightmare hitting United today, after videos of a passenger being forcibly removed from an overbooked flight went viral, and get to the bottom of why airlines sell too many seats in the first place. Plus, we'll look at the slew of foreign carmakers reinvesting in American factories just as Washington contemplates tax reform. Then: Five years ago, our own David Brancaccio drove across the country without talking to a single human being. It was for a series all about how robots are taking jobs. This year, he hit the road again to figure out which jobs are "robot-proof," and they're not the ones you think.

We keep talking about the threat that globalization poses to American jobs. But much of the competition for jobs comes from inside our borders, with robots, artificial intelligence and algorithms increasingly entering the workforce. As part of a new series, we'll hear from Marketplace's David Brancaccio about his road trip across the Midwest in search of "robot-proof" jobs. Next, we'll look at the FDA's decision to allow the company 23andMe to sell home genetics tests for diseases, and then talk about some of the economic concessions China is planning to make to the U.S. following their meeting last week.

Amid Silicon Valley's rising rent prices, a company called Zapier is offering residents a $10,000 incentive to get out. CEO Wade Foster joined us to talk about how effective Zapier's experiment has been in recruiting new hires. Afterwards, we'll explore the English-speaking bias of voice-controlled software, like Siri, with Backchannel's Sonia Paul. 

The full global political reaction to last night's U.S. airstrikes on a Syrian air base remains to be seen, but the impact on Russia’s economic ties to Syria will only heighten tense relations. Russia, as President Bashar Assad’s staunchest ally, has boosted the Syrian government’s military might in its civil war and in turn profited from billions of dollars in arms and equipment sales. Let's face it, there's no easy transition to our next story, where we meet Mark Wagner, the New York-based collage artist who deconstructs dollar bills to make portraits of presidents and re-create famous paintings. And, as always, we'll wrap up the week in business and economic news.

What to expect from today's jobs report and how to read companies' upcoming earnings reports with Marketplace's Aaron Schrank. Plus, David Brancaccio kicks off his Midwest road trip exploring the relationship between humans and the robot workers that their jobs are increasingly in competition with.

Why Microsoft is discouraging the use of emulators, which allow their video game consoles and computers to behave like older versions of themselves and in a sense, preserve video and computer game history. And, on Silicon Tally, Ben tries to stump Brian X. Chen, lead consumer technology writer for the New York Times.

Yesterday we were talking about how bank ethicists measure success (by boredom), today we're looking at a way President Trump and Republicans could actually make banking a little more boring. Gary Cohn, one of Trump's economic advisers, told Bloomberg he'd be OK with the financial sector going back to the days when investment banks did trading and underwriting of securities, and commercial banks did banking as the rest of us know it. We'll talk about it, plus the unusual way Spotify could go public and injecting a little geographic diversity in the startup world.

This week, Lizzie goes to Corvallis, Oregon as part of the third installment of our mayor's series. Plus, Markeptlace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer and Vox's Jim Tankersley go long and short on the news and Marketplace's Molly Wood explains the latest on the FCC's internet privacy rules.