Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson

By Dell Technologies

Society & Culture Technology Business

What's Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson about?

We tell the unexpected stories of digital disruption. Listen in as Walter Isaacson, digital revolution expert, explores the unknown drama behind some of the world’s biggest digital disruptions, the daring trailblazers willing to think differently, and the lessons learned along the way. Brought to you by Dell Technologies.

4.8

428 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Encore - Education: Head of...

09.06.2023

This episode originally aired on March 6, 2018. From the blackboard to bots, technology has made inroads into classrooms all over the world. Where will the next innovation in education come from? We take you to the head of the ...

Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson episodes:

09.06.2023 Encore - Education: Head of the Class This episode originally aired on March 6, 2018. From the blackboard to bots, technology has made inroads into classrooms all over the world. Where will the next innovation in education come from? We take you to the head of the ...
08.16.2023 Encore - Ice Cream: Innovation on Ice This episode originally aired on November 16, 2022. Throughout the world and throughout history, you can find evidence of cultures enjoying cold desserts—precursors to the ice cream we love today. The desire to keep food cold led to the creation ...
07.19.2023 Encore - Meat: Break a 2.5 Million Year Old Habit This episode originally aired on January 29, 2020. The human obsession with meat has never wavered from prehistoric times until now. However, this food once reserved for the rich and powerful has led to global problems of an unprecedented scope ...
06.07.2023 Encore - Golf: Tee Time This episode originally aired on March 20, 2018. Whether you see golf as an intense, white-knuckle competition, or a leisurely stroll around a course, the game has endured and the magic of the sport keeps growing. In this episode, we’ll ...
05.10.2023 Encore - Parenting: It Takes a Village This episode originally aired on August 11, 2021. You’ve probably heard the proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” That's because for most of human history, when it came to child-care, people had the daily support of family, ...
04.05.2023 Visual Effects: Making Magic on the Silver Screen The 1902 film "A Trip to the Moon" is considered one of the earliest films to incorporate visual effects. Using double exposure stop motion animation, director George Méliès created the iconic image of a rocket skip flying directly into the ...
03.22.2023 Prediction: Seeing the Future In the early twentieth century, Evangeline Adams was the most famous fortune teller in America. Kings, actors and even bankers came to her for predictions. Though Adams was an astrologer, she wasn’t the only one predicting the future at the ...
03.08.2023 Board Games: A Winning Strategy Since its release in 1935, Monopoly has been translated into 37 languages and is played in more than 103 countries around the globe. It’s arguably the world’s most famous board game. But this iconic pastime we now associate with cutthroat ...
02.22.2023 Memory: The Science of How We Remember In 1933, a seven year old boy named Henry Molaison was knocked down by a passing bicycle. Shortly after, he started getting seizures. To fix the seizures, Henry underwent experimental brain surgery. Unfortunately, the procedure left him with amnesia from ...
12.14.2022 Birth: Giving Life to Innovation In the Middle Ages, women in labor could ask for a special birthing stone to help reduce the pain. While this was likely ineffective, pain reduction techniques and the midwives who practiced them were often suspected of witchcraft. We’ve come ...
11.30.2022 Social Media: Keeping Up with Communities Since the 1970s, people have been using digital tech to share information and connect with others. As times changed and more people gained access to computers and the internet, social networking technology changed too. Now, social networking has been replaced ...
11.16.2022 Ice Cream: Innovation on Ice Throughout the world and throughout history, you can find evidence of cultures enjoying cold desserts—precursors to the ice cream we love today. The desire to keep food cold led to the creation of European wine slushies in 1558 and to ...
11.02.2022 Nutrition: A Recipe for Good Health In 1753 a Scottish doctor named James Lind published Treatise of the Scurvy where he named oranges and lemons as cures for the disease. However, it wasn’t until 1912 when researcher Casimir Funk published The Etiology of Deficiency Diseases, introducing ...
08.17.2022 Dentistry: An Oral History of Disruption Ashes, burnt eggshells, stale toast and chalk. These are just some of the ingredients used to make toothpaste throughout the centuries. And though civilizations have always been concerned with oral hygiene, the methods they used to treat dental problems weren’t ...
08.03.2022 Tattoos: Innovation in Ink Though evidence of tattooing exists worldwide in the remains of many Indigenous cultures, it was only in about the 18th century when sailors brought tattoos to Europe. The practice spread as sailors who learned to tattoo on ships began to ...
07.20.2022 Sports Officiating: Changing The Game Video replay, tracking technology and new software in sports have the power to make calls quickly, eliminate arguments between players and officials and add speed and excitement back into centuries-old games. As officiating technology continues to evolve, professional leagues and ...
07.06.2022 Festivals: Amped Up Experiences Over four days in 1969, more than half a million people gathered on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York for what would become known as one of the most legendary music festivals of all time—Woodstock. Though festivals had been ...
05.04.2022 Retirement: A New Way of Living Until the middle of the 20th century, most American workers didn’t have the opportunity to plan for a long and fruitful retirement. But as life expectancy increased, government and employer policies changed and retirement communities developed, retirement at age 65 ...
04.20.2022 Emergency Response: The Science of How We Deal with Disasters Since ancient times, humans have balanced the risks of settling in hazardous places with the benefits of the resources and opportunities they provide. Though we’ve created thriving communities all over the world, we’re still threatened by floods, fires, earthquakes and ...
04.06.2022 Running: Making Strides Many believe humans were born to run. It’s our evolutionary advantage over other mammals. But were we really meant to run over 25 miles in a single race? Though the modern marathon got its start in 1896, almost a century ...
03.23.2022 Weddings: To Have and to Hold The first recorded evidence of weddings comes from ancient Mesopotamia around 2350 B.C. In those days, marriage was a strategic, political alliance that expanded a tribe’s circle of trust and resources. Later, marriages became so economically important that they needed ...
12.15.2021 City Planning: Design for Daily Life The world’s first cities sprung up around 6,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. Since then, many men and women have influenced their planning and design. William Penn believed a grid of wide streets with intersecting right angles would help prevent ...
12.01.2021 Coffee: Brewing Innovation For centuries, people have relied on coffee to fuel innovative ideas, revolutionary movements, and everyday morning routines. But how did we go from foraging coffee cherries in ancient Ethiopian forests to standing in line at a hipster café ordering a ...
11.17.2021 Subscriptions: Everything-as-a-Service If you spend your day listening to music on Spotify while you work and then go home and relax with a movie on Netflix while perusing what meal kit you'll order for dinner tomorrow, then, whether you know it or ...
11.03.2021 Pets: Our Closest Companions Humanity's connection with pets goes back thousands of years. In fact, evidence indicates we've been keeping dogs for at least 14,000 years. Today, more than two-thirds of American households own a pet. We love our fluffy companions and the technology ...
08.25.2021 The Electrical Grid: Keeping the Lights On The electrical grid is the most important innovation of the 20th century. What started out as a series of micro grids powering small areas eventually grew into what is now widely considered the world's biggest machine. But this machine needs ...
08.11.2021 Parenting: It Takes a Village You’ve probably heard the proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” That's because for most of human history, when it came to child-care, people had the daily support of family, friends and neighbours. Today, that's not the reality ...
07.28.2021 Snacks: Delight in Every Bite Take a look in your pantry. Chances are, there are at least a few different snacks in there right now. Sweet, savory, salty, we all love them all. From the invention of the potato chip bag to high-tech machine-learning algorithms ...
07.14.2021 Vaccines: An Injection of Hope Vaccines are headline news all over the world these days. The rapid development of several COVID-19 vaccines during the last year has save countless lives. From smallpox and polio to ebola and HPV, scientists have done amazing things to prevent ...
05.12.2021 Eyesight: Vision's Visionaries Vision problems have always affected humanity, but until the invention of eyeglasses, there wasn't much that could be done. Now, with lasers, retinal implants, AR, gene therapy and more, we may have the technology it takes to permenantly solve many ...
04.28.2021 Poverty: Economic Advancement in the Developing World Poverty is a challenge facing over one billion people across the globe so, as far as challenges go, this is a big one. So big, it will take a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional set of solutions involving banking, food production, internet access ...
04.14.2021 Reviews: Empowering the Consumer Before the internet, we largely depended on professional reviewers to tell us what movies to see and products to buy. But consumer review sites and social media changed that. Now we seek out the opinions of other customers. It's almost ...
03.31.2021 Sports Medicine: Pushing Ourselves to the Limit As long as there have been sports, there have been sports injuries. Sports medicine is relatively new, but the high stakes nature of athletics and the profitability of professional leagues are catalyzing technological innovation in the field. Meet the doctors, ...
03.17.2021 Dan Rather Talks CRISPR with Walter Isaacson CRISPR gene-editing technology has been all over the news lately, and not just because of its application in coronavirus detection and vaccine development. Walter Isaacson's new book, The Code Breaker, tells the story of CRISPR and Nobel Prize winning scientist ...
03.03.2021 Recycling: Turning Trash into Treasure Recycling used to just be called "scrap metal salvage" and it was thought of as an unsavory practice. That all changed as recently as the 1970s, when it became the curbside amenity it is today and part of a multi-billion-dollar ...
02.17.2021 Cryptography: The Key to Sending Secret Messages From highly sensitive material to an emoji-filled text messages, we expect all of our communications to be private in this day and age. That wouldn't be possible without codes, ciphers and cryptography. Over the years, cryptography has gone from simple ...
12.23.2020 Happy Holidays from Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson Happy Holidays from Walter Isaacson! We'll be back in 2021 with more great stories.
12.16.2020 Genomics: Rewriting Our Health Recombinant DNA. The double helix. Mapping the human genome. You know these are all related to our genes, but you might now know how, or what connects them. In this episode of Trailblazers, we answer those questions while exploring the ...
12.02.2020 Beauty: More Than Skin Deep Beauty might only be skin deep, but the rivalry that helped create the industry is much deeper. And today's cosmetics trailblazers are helping reach new depths when it comes to the techniques and technology they're developing, all in the name ...
11.18.2020 eSports: More Than Just a Game With legacy sports leagues drastically modified or on hiatus, something had to step up to take their place. For many, that is eSports. eSports might seem incredibly new but the industry is more storied than you might think and it's ...
11.04.2020 Ocean Exploration: Into the Deep For most of human history, what goes on under the surface of the ocean has been a complete mystery to us. A fascinating one, but a mystery nonetheless. In fact, only 20% of the ocean's depths have been explored. But ...
10.21.2020 Scams: The Oldest Tricks in the Book Scams and cons have been around since the dawn of currency. Wherever there is money, there is likely someone trying to get it through illicit means. Technology, with its corresponding oversharing of personal information, has only made this more prevalent ...
10.07.2020 Offices: The Evolving Workplace Office design was originally focused on getting the most productivity out of every worker, but as ideas like creativity and employee satisfaction began to gain prominence, changes needed to be made. And then the 2020 pandemic came along and changed ...
08.26.2020 Podcasts: A Storytelling Breakthrough Podcasts are everywhere right now and this new mode of storytelling is only getting more popular. In fact, 73 million Americans now listen to podcasts regularly. How did this happen over such a remarkably short amount of time? And, more ...
08.12.2020 Water: A Thirst for Innovation The planet is covered in water, but only three percent is drinkable. One of the biggest challenges facing all of us is finding an affordable way to move, treat and manage the world's water supply. It's not like a solution ...
07.29.2020 Archeology: Unearthing the Past Our history as human beings is buried far beneath the ground, and it's going to take more than picks and shovels to unearth it. That's why modern archaeologists have been enlisting the help of technology like satellites, deep learning and ...
07.15.2020 Beer: A Revolution is Brewing Beer is one of the world's oldest beverages. But for a long time, there was little that could be done to control the brewing process. With the advent of thermometry, however, brewing was standardized. Temperature control helped make beer taste ...
07.01.2020 Hearing Aids: Rediscovering Sound People have been using hearing aids since the dawn of humanity, but the desire for more fashionable, miniaturized devices and better performance has driven technological advancements in personal communications devices for the last century-and-a-half. Hearables continue to set the pace ...
06.17.2020 Wellness: Knowing Yourself What do we mean when we talk about wellness, and why do people want it so badly? In this episode, we dive deep into this sometimes-nebulous field, talking to practitioners who spend their time helping people become well.
04.08.2020 Fitness: Working Out While Staying In Exercise is essential to increasing our lifespan, health and mood. With recent technological advancements, there's no need to leave the comfort of your living room to feel the burn. On the latest episode of Trailblazers, we weigh all the different ...

Older episodes