Ben Johnson

Former Host, Marketplace Tech and Codebreaker

SHORT BIO

Ben Johnson is the former host of Marketplace Tech and the podcast Codebreaker. He joined Marketplace in 2012 and became the host of Marketplace Tech in early 2014.

Ben started his career in journalism in 2003, working as a features and general assignment reporter for the Day newspaper in New London, Connecticut. While there, he won a regional award for feature writing and was recruited to write a weekly entertainment column for the Tribune Media Service. In 2006, Ben relocated to New York City to be an entertainment and music reporter at the Staten Island Advance newspaper, where he soon moved into hard news, working the cops beat and as a weekend city desk editor.

In 2010, he began to work as a freelance web producer at the Takeaway, a national radio show produced out of New York’s WNYC Radio in partnership with WGBH, The New York Times and the BBC. Ben went on to be a freelance radio producer at WNYC, serving as the digital editor for the Takeaway while also doing live and features reporting for the station on everything from Occupy Wall Street to New York's last functioning ship graveyard. While working at WNYC, Ben started blogging for Slate Magazine's breaking news blog, the Slatest.

In 2012, Ben left WNYC to manage a partnership between Slate and YouTube, producing daily breaking news videos and other content for SlateV, the magazine's video department. He also wrote regularly for Slate's Future Tense blog and drew the extreme ire of his fellow Radiohead fans by asking the band to stop touring.

Ben doesn't like to brag about it, but over the years, he has interviewed Jay Z, Hillary Clinton, Luciano Pavarotti, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Josh Homme, Biz Stone, Guy Kawasaki, Col. Chris Hadfield, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neil Young and more. He enjoys and engages in ’80s movie references, plus pie baking and high-fives. His Twitter feed has never been polluted by a subtweet. His interest in swimming knows no bounds, especially if there is a high dive and a high-five involved.

 

Latest Stories (245)

The next big tech hub might surprise us all

Apr 18, 2017
Don't count out New Orleans, or Omaha, Nebraska.
Thomas Edison works on the electric light bulb in his laboratory. 
Rischgitz/Getty Images

What it means to be a diplomat in a digital age

Mar 20, 2017
Anne-Marie Slaughter says that diplomacy isn't just taking place in oak-paneled rooms anymore.
Visual Hunt

Y Combinator's Sam Altman on connecting with Trump supporters

Mar 13, 2017
Sam Altman, a darling of the tech startup world, talks to us about reaching across the political divide.
Sam Altman of Y Combinator speaks onstage. Altman visited and heard from 100 Donald Trump supporters around the country to get their perspective on the new president.
Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch

Should you be worried about a data bug named Cloudbleed?

Feb 24, 2017
A glitch in code resulted in data leaking from 150 websites.

A new 3-D pen lets kids create their own toys

Feb 22, 2017
Children can use the 3Doodler Start Pen to make sculptures.
Sea creatures made using a 3Doodler pen.
ChizComm

How an old shipyard became a home for hardware startups

Feb 20, 2017
How a real estate developer transformed a former ship building facility to a new space for hardware companies.
An Ultimaker 3-D printer works at at the New Lab manufacturing hub. 
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

What Amazon’s former chief scientist says about personal data rights

Feb 2, 2017
Amazon's former chief scientist Andreas Weigend says that data can be empowering in a post-privacy economy.
A lot of companies, big and unknown alike, often take information collected from you and sell it to other companies.
DANI POZO/AFP/Getty Images

'Indefinite' uses virtual reality to show detained immigrants' despair

Jan 27, 2017
The 360-degree film follows several asylum-seekers being held in Britain.
A still from Darren Emerson's film "Indefinite." 
Darren Emerson

Allison Schroeder on writing the movie 'Hidden Figures'

Jan 6, 2017
Hidden Figures tells the story of three African-American women who worked as mathematicians at NASA in the 1960s. Screenwriter Allison Schroeder tells us about writing the film and her family history with NASA.
NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) meets astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell), in the film Hidden Figures.
Hopper Stone / Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation