Self-driving cars will probably save a lot of lives in the future. But right now the tech is new, and most of it requires human intervention. Experts refer to several levels, one through five, of automation in cars. A fifth-level car would have no steering wheel or gas pedal. Several cars on the market now fit into the middle category, requiring human intervention with some autonomous features. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University, about the risks of having humans only partly in control. (This interview originally aired May 2.)

It used to be that stories of tech companies breaking all the rules and fighting city hall were considered sexy. But right now we’re having conversations with more suspicion about things like unproven driverless technology, online advertising, unstoppable data collection and automation. Yet, here with a defense of tech’s disruptive mentality is Bradley Tusk. He’s a political operative turned tech consultant who has a new book called “The Fixer.” It’s full of pirate stories of him helping heroic startups like Uber work around innovation-killing politicians and their rules. Molly Wood talks with Tusk about the politics of tech. (This interview originally aired Sept. 24.)

Time is pretty much up for you to do your last-minute Christmas shopping if you’re buying through Amazon. You could still go to a store, but who does that anymore? It is not a stretch to say that Amazon is trying to take over all things holiday. It tends to offer something new this time of year. In 2018, it’s fresh Christmas trees, delivered to your doorstep. How does Amazon hope to compete in the Christmas tree market? And why? Joshua McNichols is a reporter at public radio station KUOW in Seattle and co-host of the podcast “Prime(d).” He explains  how Christmas trees fit into Amazon’s big-picture strategy. Today’s show is sponsored by Orvis  and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Teachers have a tough job, and usually, social media is more of a classroom distraction than a help. But recently Molly took a field trip to Madison Park Academy, a public high school in East Oakland, CA, where she visited  Jacob Levy, a social studies teacher who’s using Instagram to make his job teaching government a whole lot easier. 

There’s only one digital-first news organization on Twitter’s top 10 most-tweeted-about news outlets. It’s NowThis News, a media company delivering news mostly to millennials, mostly via video on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. NowThis launched in 2012 with no print or broadcast baggage. NowThis reports 2.6 billion video views a month, reaching 70 percent of millennials at any given time. But lots of digital media companies, especially the ones aimed at millennials, laid off employees or closed in 2018. Publishers found that relying on Facebook or even Google for views could be risky. Molly Wood spoke with Tina Exarhos, chief content officer at NowThis, at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Next Gen conference last week. Today’s show is sponsored by Orvis  and Navy Federal Credit Union.

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.