WSJ’s The Future of Everything The Wall Street Journal

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 and stop hackers in their tracks. Janet Babin hosts.

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.

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 issues. Anyone can be impacted, but marginalized communities most often live closer to sources of unwanted noise. In this episode, we look at the impacts of urban noise, new efforts to understand and track it and consider design solutions that can help mitigate unwanted sound.

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 Award winner shares with host Janet Babin how the pandemic impacted his creative process, and how participatory music along with social media kept him connected to his audience.

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 record producer Oak Felder about what the pandemic year taught him and how it will continue to influence his creative process. He'll be leading a workshop at the up-coming Future of Everything Festival.

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 all kinds are benefiting from these blockchain-based certificates of authenticity. NFTs are making the market more accessible for artists, but in the future, they also could disrupt the entire economy of the art market.