Marketplace Tech®

Voice-enabled smart speakers kind of came out of nowhere to become a huge deal in consumer electronics over just the last two years. Amazon launched the category with its Alexa devices, and the digital assistant is now showing up in cars, home entertainment systems — even a microwave. But as its popularity increases, so do questions about privacy, security and what might be coming in the future. Toni Reid, vice president of Alexa skills and Echo devices at Amazon, spoke to Molly Wood at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Next Gen conference last week in Laguna Niguel, California.

Today's show is sponsored by Orvis  and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Teenagers have been over Facebook for years. They've migrated to Snapchat and Instagram, and about 20 million of them have headed over to Houseparty. It's a live video app where people drop in on each other to chat or leave video messages and hang out, with up to eight people at a time. The name Houseparty sounds like kids maybe doing we-don't-even-want-to-know-what on live video, but co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Sima Sistani tells Molly Wood she wants Houseparty to be used for real personal connections and empathy.

Today's show is sponsored by Mozilla  and Wizard Pins.

At the beginning of 2018, who'd have thought that by mid-December, Tesla stock would be on the rise, the company would be churning out Model 3 cars to great reviews and Wall Street analysts would be predicting sustained profits for the company? That's all true, but not because everything at Tesla has turned tranquil. Molly Wood talks with Charles Duhigg, who just took a deep look at the firings, the outbursts and the last six months of drama at Tesla for Wired magazine. Today's show is sponsored by Amazon Web Services and Logi Analytics. 

This week, Encyclopedia Britannica celebrates its 250th birthday. That's remarkable, but what may be more surprising is the simple fact that it's still around. The company went fully digital six years ago. No more tomes on shelves. That pivot is part of the company's history of being pretty revolutionary. When it began, Encyclopedia Britannica's founders published in English instead of Latin, making it a resource for the masses. Today, given that pretty much everyone gets most of their information on the internet, Encyclopedia Britannica is literally inserting itself online, wherever possible, to provide context and stay relevant. Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks with Karthik Krishnan, CEO of Encyclopedia Britannica.

Today's show is sponsored by Colgate University and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization is committed to cutting shipping emissions in half by 2050. That matters because shipping moves 90 percent of global trade. Right now, if shipping were a country, its emissions would rank sixth in the world. Part of the solution will be tech. Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks with James Corbett, a professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware, about high-tech sails. And, no, these aren't the flapping sheets you're thinking of. Corbett mentioned one solution being developed in Japan — a rigid surface covered with solar panels.

Today's show is sponsored by Colgate University and Logi Analytics.