WSJ’s The Future of Everything

By The Wall Street Journal

Technology

What's WSJ’s The Future of Everything about?

What will the future look like? The Future of Everything offers a kaleidoscope view of the nascent trends that will shape our world. In every episode, join our award-winning team on a new journey of discovery. We’ll take you beyond what’s already out there, and make you smarter about the scientific and technological breakthroughs on the horizon that could transform our lives for the better.

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Algorithms Are Everywhere. ...

01.20.2023

Computer algorithms and artificial intelligence increasingly affect more and more of our lives, from the content we’re shown online, to the music we enjoy, to how our household appliances work. But the results these algorithms produce may be changing our ...

WSJ’s The Future of Everything episodes:

01.20.2023 Algorithms Are Everywhere. How You Can Take Back Control Computer algorithms and artificial intelligence increasingly affect more and more of our lives, from the content we’re shown online, to the music we enjoy, to how our household appliances work. But the results these algorithms produce may be changing our ...
01.06.2023 From Laundry to the Ocean: Fixing the Microplastics Problem in Clothes Our clothes are in need of a refresh, but not in the way you might think. With each wash, everything from sweaters to socks are releasing tiny, microscopic fibers into our water. Almost 35% of the primary microplastics in oceans ...
12.23.2022 Navigating The Future of Maps From paper maps to smartphone apps, the way people navigate the world has changed tremendously due to the rise of the internet. Google Maps is the fourth most popular mobile app in the U.S. by unique visitors, according to Comscore. ...
12.09.2022 Making It Rain: How Cloud Seeding Could Help Combat Future Droughts This past summer, many parts of the world suffered from some of the worst drought conditions in decades. In an effort to create more rain, the government of China turned once again to cloud seeding, a controversial technique that aims ...
11.24.2022 Thanksgiving of the Future: What Climate Change Means for Your Plate Thanksgiving often centers around a meal: turkey, sides and a lot of desserts. This year, many Thanksgiving staples are more expensive due to inflation; in the future, many of those staples will cost even more due to the effects of ...
11.11.2022 The Problem With Plastics: Could New Recycling Tech Help the Planet? World leaders are still trying to figure out how to handle the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste generated every year. Back in the 1990s, it was tough to switch on the TV and not see ads or ...
10.28.2022 Siddhartha Mukherjee on the Future of Cellular Medicine Cells are the basic unit of life, but you could be forgiven if you stopped thinking about them after high school biology. In his newest book, “The Song of the Cell,” physician and author Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee explores the myriad ...
10.14.2022 Are Personal Pigs The Future of Human Medicine? In the future, you might leave your doctor’s office with a prescription for a pig whose DNA has been modified to match your own. Scientists are already working on genetically engineering pigs to help predict the progression of a disease, ...
09.30.2022 Beyond Silicon? The New Materials Charting the Future of Microchips Microchips are in pretty much all of our electronic devices—if it’s got a plug or a battery, it’s probably got a chip. For the past 60 years, most of these have been made of silicon. But new devices demand faster, ...
09.16.2022 The Conservation Conundrum: How Do We Decide Which Species to Save? From “save the whales” to “protect the bumblebee,” animal conservationists rally advocates and officials to put resources toward ensuring the survival of a threatened species. But can we really save them all? Or are we overlooking the trade-offs as we ...
09.02.2022 Why Sound Could be Key to the Future of Coral Reefs With climate change warming the oceans, coral reefs remain some of the most vulnerable ecosystems. Keeping an eye on them can be time-consuming and expensive, since it requires divers to do spot-checks to see if the reefs are bustling, lively ...
08.19.2022 AI, Art and the Future of Looking at a Painting Three controversial paintings by Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt were lost to a fire in WWII. All that remained were black and white photos - and art historians have discussed what the paintings’ motifs and colors actually looked like for ...
08.05.2022 How Gene-Edited Crops Could be the Future of Feeding the World In the decade since CRISPR gene-editing technology was first developed, it has been used to address a host of issues, such as developing new cancer treatments, designing faster rapid COVID-19 tests and to make biofuel-producing algae. Proponents say CRISPR could ...
07.22.2022 Making “Organic Architecture” Truly Organic Neri Oxman spends her time thinking about the future of materials science and how it should influence architecture and design. In this session from the Future of Everything Festival, the architect and former tenured professor at MIT’s Media Lab speaks ...
07.08.2022 Fertility and the Future of Health Welcoming a child into your family can be life changing, but for those struggling to get pregnant the process can be emotionally taxing and expensive. Reproductive science is quickly changing, as is society’s approach to the issues around fertility. In ...
07.01.2022 Stocks Rise to Open Second Half of 2022 Also: GM shares rise 1.4% after automaker says profits won’t be affected by computer-chip supply shortages. Kohl’s shares fall 19.6% after calling off its sale to Franchise Group. J.R. Whalen reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
06.24.2022 Building the Metaverse and the Future of the Internet For decades, a virtual reality version of the internet has been a staple of science fiction. The metaverse is the latest iteration and it has the potential to become something more than a new gaming platform. But years before Facebook ...
06.03.2022 Waste Not, Want Not: A Future Without Food Waste Every year, even as millions struggle with food insecurity, about a third of all the food produced for humans in the world is thrown away, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. That not only means wasting water and ...
05.13.2022 Designing the Office of the Future: Building Serendipity The pandemic has changed the way we work and where we work. Now, as companies try to coax their employees back to the office, they are encountering new demands and shifting expectations. In this episode, we bring you a conversation ...
04.15.2022 The Human Genome “Rosetta Stone” and The Future of Health One person’s junk is another person’s treasure. Sometimes it’s even true in science. Nearly 20 years ago, researchers said they had completed a groundbreaking project, sequencing the human genome. But they were missing about 8%. Some researchers at the time ...
04.01.2022 Introducing ‘As We Work’ “As We Work” is a new podcast from the Wall Street Journal about the changing workplace and what you need to know to navigate it. Every week, we’ll speak with experts, Journal reporters, and you about how our jobs intersect ...
03.18.2022 After Higgs Boson: Physics’ Next Move to Understand the Universe It’s been more than a decade since the European Organization for Nuclear Research (known as CERN) discovered the Higgs Boson, using their gigantic particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider. After three years of upgrades, they’re turning the world’s largest machine ...
02.25.2022 Dark Matter, Public Enemy and the Future of Physics Physicist Stephon Alexander was born in Trinidad and grew up in a working class household in the Bronx. Now he’s a professor at Brown University and president of the National Society of Black Physicists. Speaking with host Janet Babin, Alexander ...
02.04.2022 Migratory Birds Struggle and Adapt to a Challenging Future Long-time naturalist and writer Scott Weidensaul has spent decades tracking migratory birds and studying their habits. But there's still a lot science doesn't know. In this episode of The Future of Everything, we talk to Weidensaul about the findings of ...
01.21.2022 Historical Soundscapes Reveal Quieter Future For Natural World A group of researchers reconstructed historical soundscapes using bird data to hear the impact of dramatic declines in birds throughout the world. Host Janet Babin and former WSJ science writer Robert Lee Hotz explore how these declines in our natural ...
12.31.2021 Why Finding the Origins of Covid-19 Matters for the Next Pandemic It's been more than two years since the global pandemic started, and the search for the origin of the virus continues. Scientists, government agencies and the World Health Organization-as well as our own Wall Street Journal reporters-have tried to nail ...
12.17.2021 How Psychedelic Drugs Are Making A Comeback To Treat Depression The hallucinogenic compound psilocybin is undergoing a renaissance-not as a recreational drug but as a potential treatment for mental health conditions. We follow the journey of one participant of a scientific study into the psychedelic drug's effect on depression. Learn ...
11.26.2021 Superconductivity: One Step Closer Superconductivity means zero wasted electricity; perfectly conducted energy. Typically it's been made using either super high pressure or extremely low temperatures. This makes it inefficient and expensive for practical use. But in an incremental first, researchers have managed to create ...
11.12.2021 Zero Carbon Future 4: Adaptation and the Future of Climate Modeling While world leaders and businesses are making pledges to mitigate climate change by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, many parts of the world are already struggling to adapt to a warming planet. The Far North - places like Siberia and ...
10.29.2021 Zero Carbon Future 3: Suck it Up - Capturing Carbon from the Air Experts agree that removing carbon from the atmosphere will be necessary, regardless of increases in clean energy production and storage. The process can be done both naturally and mechanically. Climate scientists say all types of carbon capture will be needed ...
10.23.2021 Introducing Bad Bets Bad Bets is a new podcast series from The Wall Street Journal that unravels big-business dramas that have had a big impact on our world. This season, we're delving into Enron. In 2001, energy company Enron was at the height ...
10.15.2021 Zero Carbon Future 2: How to Store Renewable Energy For a Rainy Day One of the challenges of clean energy like wind or solar is that they fluctuate. And they're unreliable. So finding a better way to store this energy for dark seasons and doldrum days is the next hurdle to reaching goals ...
10.01.2021 An Archipelago Leads the Way on Clean Energy A small Scottish community is perfecting new technologies that could help to power the green energy industry. Advances in wind and tidal power have turned the Orkney Islands into an exporter of renewable energy, instead of a fossil fuel importer. ...
08.28.2021 Paying for College and Curbing Student Debt Student loan debt is now around $1.6 trillion. Some economists fear that debt is irreparably harming the U.S. economy. But over the past 50 years, the availability of federal student loans has changed higher education. It's led to higher attendance ...
07.30.2021 Outhacking the Hackers: The Future of Cybersecurity A recent surge in high-profile cyber attacks has companies playing defense. Some are turning to ethical hackers to find software bugs before the bad guys do. But as Ava Sasani reports, researchers are also developing new hardware - to try ...
07.02.2021 No More Noise 2: Metamaterials Can Make the World a Quieter Place Materials scientists are getting creative in the quest to quiet our increasingly noisy world. Using metamaterials - man made materials with special properties not found in nature - researchers could soon reduce or eliminate unwanted industrial sounds. Learn more about ...
06.11.2021 No More Noise: Turning Down The Volume on Cities - Part 1 The battle against noise has been waged, rather quietly, for decades. And yet, urban noise pollution is getting worse. A growing body of evidence indicates that it is more than a nuisance- persistent exposure to noise can cause chronic health ...
05.14.2021 Grammy Award Winner Jacob Collier on Evolving in Place Singer-songwriter and producer Jacob Collier grew up producing music in his bedroom. After years of touring the world, the pandemic allowed him to return to that space - to continue developing his genre-bending music. In this episode, the five-time Grammy ...
05.07.2021 Grammy-Award Nominated Music Producer Oak Felder Shares His Vision The pandemic forced artists and musicians to learn how to collaborate remotely. Some of these newfound methods were so successful, they'll likely influence the future of music creation and performance in the post-pandemic world. In this episode we talk with ...
04.16.2021 How NFTs Could Disrupt the Art Market After years of being a museum novelty, digital art is starting to sell like hotcakes--and in some cases for millions of dollars--because of a crypto asset called nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. And it isn't just art--sales of digital collectibles of ...
03.26.2021 What We Can Learn From 'Long Covid' Millions of people worldwide who survived an initial Covid-19 infection continue to struggle with debilitating symptoms months later. Physicians are unable to explain their illness. But there's now a name for it: Long Covid. The medical community is hoping that ...
03.05.2021 How Psychedelic Drugs Are Making a Comeback to Treat Depression The hallucinogenic compound psilocybin is undergoing a renaissance-not as a recreational drug but as a potential treatment for mental health conditions. We follow the journey of one participant of a scientific study into the psychedelic drug's effect on depression. Learn ...
02.12.2021 Metals That Work Like Magic Trains that run from New York to California in a few hours, laptops that never overheat, and rockets that fly to Jupiter: These are some of the possibilities of superconductivity. After decades of failed experiments, a new discovery may have ...
01.15.2021 How the Pandemic Fueled Scientific Discovery and Collaboration When Chinese researchers published the draft genome of the virus that causes Covid-19 early last January, it altered the course of the pandemic--and possibly changed science forever. Will this spirit of information-sharing and collaboration persist beyond the current crisis? Learn ...
12.18.2020 E-Ternal: New Technology and the Quest to 'Live' Forever In this episode, we feature a short documentary by Wall Street Journal senior personal technology columnist Joanna Stern that explores how we can use technology to tell our stories long after we die. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...
12.04.2020 Making a Home on the Moon For the vast majority of humans, earth is our home. But that could soon change. Global efforts are underway to build sustainable habitats on the moon within the next decade or two. But beyond covering the necessities in an otherwise ...
11.06.2020 Teacher's New Assistant: Artificial Intelligence Schools around the world are slowly adopting artificial intelligence to better tailor teaching to individual kids. One program maps a student's mastery of math; another assesses literacy and screens for dyslexia. Critics are skeptical that this technology is as effective ...
10.03.2020 Mobile Voting's Future As the U.S. gets ready for an election during a pandemic, we report on in-person voting options and review the security threats inherent in mobile or blockchain assisted voting. In a previous version of this podcast released on Oct. 2, ...
09.04.2020 The Blood of the Future Could be Made in a Lab The coronavirus pandemic led to blood-donation shortages across the world, outlining the fragility of the pipeline. That has brought fresh urgency to research that has been decades in the making but is only now starting to become a reality: The ...
08.28.2020 How to Talk to Animals (and Know What They're Saying Back) What if we could alert whales to stay away from oil spills? Or hear from dolphins directly when they want treats? Seamless conversation between animals and humans is still a far-off goal. But scientists think that machine-learning tools could open ...

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