Problem? Solved!
Podcaster Alex Goldman ’05 answers people’s strangest—and most fascinating—questions
Ever wonder why public restrooms are designed so poorly, or why there are so many Red Delicious apples in hotels and conference rooms (even though the consensus seems to be, well, almost no one’s favorite? Or, has there ever been a movie you’ve heard about, and you really want to watch it, but it can no longer be found?
Podcaster, producer, and UMass alum Alex Goldman ’05 wants to help you “get to the bottom of” whatever problem you have.
“Each week on our show, listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them—or at least I try. And if I don’t, I at least give a good reason why I can’t,” Goldman begins every episode of his newest podcast, Hyperfixed, which he launched in September 2024 and already has some 85,000 listeners per show.
“Pretty much as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve constantly been worried about what it means to die, and what the meaning of life is, and what I should do with the short time I have here,” Goldman shares. “That’s stuff that I’ve been worrying about since I was a kid—which has made me pretty anxious, but also, it’s made me pretty curious.”
Since first listening to This American Life on his way to take the SATs, Goldman knew there was something special about audio storytelling. “When you listen to radio … you’re painting pictures for people. You’re not just giving people words, you’re giving people the texture of sound, of traveling, of movement, of music,” says Goldman. “There are all these ways to evoke a bunch of different emotions, and I feel like the radio stories that I’ve really connected with in my life, I can see as vividly as I can my favorite movie.”
In the late 1990s, Goldman wanted to be a famous record reviewer, so he became the music director at WMUA 91.1 FM. But with an insatiable curiosity, warm voice, and infectious laugh, it seems he was destined to be an audio storyteller. After a stint working in IT as a network administrator, Goldman landed a job as a producer at WNYC’s On the Media podcast, where he “learned, basically, how to be a better journalist.” His time there led to him cohosting and producing the megahit Reply All, nominated for “Best Podcast” at the 2016 Webby Awards.
It was Reply All’s “Super Tech Support” segment—in which Goldman offered solutions to things like phantom calls from unknown numbers and a hacked Snapchat account—that inspired Hyperfixed.
“After [Reply All] ended, I was like, ‘Why do I have to keep the problem-solving to just tech? I could do any kind of problem-solving, in theory. I wonder what kind of problems people will come to me with if I start doing a show where I just solve problems?’” says Goldman.
With Hyperfixed, Goldman seeks out questions that introduce the listener to a world that they might not know otherwise—some of which point to hidden, complex systems, others deeper truths about humanity or our own place in the world.
“We did an episode not too long ago about a medical condition called aphantasia, where people cannot visualize images in their mind’s eye,” says Goldman. “So, if I say, ‘Imagine an apple,’ they don’t see anything in their heads. And the idea that there’s an entire group of people in the world who can’t do that is mind-blowing, and learning about why that happens, and if there’s any way to fix it, and if you maybe even want to fix it? That was very interesting to me.”
Other questions with a seemingly simple solution take Goldman in a completely unexpected direction. In a recent episode, the listener was trying to find a video game she remembered from her youth. While Goldman says the actual process of finding the game wasn’t so hard, the question turned to the nature of nostalgia and what makes people hang on to stuff like that. “We shifted from a story about ‘what’s the video game’ to ‘what makes us want to find the video game?’” Goldman says.
With Hyperfixed a little over a year old, Goldman hopes to “get more ambitious and try newer and weirder stuff.”
“The most success I’ve found with making the show is when I do stuff that makes me laugh, that generally makes other people happy,” he says. “So, I’m just gonna keep trying to do things I find funny, and I hope other people can stick around while I do that.”
You can find the full list of episodes—and submit your own problem for Goldman to look into—at hyperfixedpod.com. Episodes are also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
