+Katapult Podcast Katapult Future Fest

Meet Stine Jersie Olsen, Chief Consultant – Growth & Impact at Danske Bank. She's an expert on impact investing and emerging markets, and shares her insights into new opportunities and how to invest outside your comfort zone. She’s blown away by the entrepreneurial spirit she finds in Sub-Saharan Africa, and also by how emerging societies leapfrog (skip over) old technologies and go straight into the new, like solar energy and mobile payment.

In our last episode of series one, Aurore talks to Swedish entrepreneur Ingmar Rentzhog. His organization We Don’t Have Time aims to create the world’s biggest social media network to put pressure on world leaders to do the right thing. Not long ago, our leaders didn’t want to talk about a problem they didn’t have a solution for. People buried their heads in the sand. Meanwhile, most industries did everything they could to delay change. Now we all know better. The question is: Can we mobilize enough people worldwide for prevent further damage and build resilience against climate change? Thank you for listening!

Azeem Azhar is an acclaimed journalist, thinker, entrepreneur, investor and founder of The Exponential View. He shares his insight into what needs to happen for new technologies to actually have an impact –for everyone. The modern world was built on the back of a political belief of the rational man, but history has taught us that we’re anything but. Can we even agree on what needs to change in our world today?

What’s the easiest way to take down a country? And how’s artificial intelligence entering modern warfare? Professor Fredrik Blix is an expert on cybersecurity and he says we must pay attention. He also warns that ‘no sane person on earth have Facebook’. Facial recognition, for example, can be used for good and bad. Chinese police walk around with AI glasses using facial recognition to spot wanted people. The same tool is used to find and bring home missing children. Meanwhile, we let big American companies build databases for facial recognition by giving our faces away online. The question is – what happens when hackers get access to your face and the rest of your data?

There’s no question about it: Shifting our diets will have a huge positive impact. Alessandro Demaio is a medical doctor who grew up in Australia in a big Italian, food-loving family. He’s an expert on poverty, diseases, and nutrition, and he works closely with Gunhild Stordalen as EAT’s chief executive officer. His message is clear: «Meat produced in a way that is disrespectful to animals and bad for the planet has no place in the future of food». He talks about how the Planetary Health Diet can help feed everyone and save the planet. Almost one billion people wake up hungry every day and our ecosystem is in serious trouble. Do you take the challenge?

Please, can I order some DNA? It may sound like science fiction, but Dr. Tiffany Vora is looking at a future where anyone can go online, pick the DNA sequence they want and have it delivered. She talks about how we can use the various DNA to create cells that eat plastic or petroleum or convert sunlight into energy. We already have bacteria that are programmed to eat oil, it’s really a matter of creating something even more efficient. As a research scientist, Faculty director and Vice Chair of Medicine and Digital Biology at Singularity University, Tiffany Vora deals with the future of life science and technology. She gives us a glimpse into her fascinating world.