WSJ’s The Future of Everything The Wall Street Journal

Our climate is changing. In the last 100 years, the planet has warmed about 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to NASA. But how can we learn more about our planet’s climate and what we can do to slow the changes? Gavin A. Schmidt, a top NASA climate scientist and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, spoke with WSJ reporter Emily Glazer at the Future of Everything Festival on May 22, 2024 about the future of climate science and the data NASA is collecting on the Earth by looking at it from space.



What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or email us: FOEPodcast@wsj.com 



Sign up for the WSJ's free The Future of Everything newsletter.



Further reading:

2023 Was the Hottest Year on Record 

Extreme Heat, Floods, Fire: Was Summer 2023 the New Normal? 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2023 was the world’s hottest year on record, and temperatures are expected to continue heating up. Cities, where more than half of the world lives, are contending with this extreme heat. But some places, such as Singapore, are looking for ways to modify aspects of their cities to make them more comfortable for people to live. The Cooling Singapore project is creating a hyper detailed digital twin of the city-state to be able to test the effectiveness of new methods the city would want to implement. WSJ’s Alex Ossola explains what they’ve learned, and how it can help us understand how more cities in the future might make changes to combat heat. 



What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify , or email us: FOEPodcast@wsj.com 



Sign up for the WSJ's free The Future of Everything newsletter.

Further reading:



The Cooling Singapore 2.0 project, funded by the Singapore Nat ional Research Foundation, is led by the Singapore ETH Centre in partnership with Cambridge CARES, the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore Management University (SMU), the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), and TUMCREATE (established by the Technical University of Munich).



2023 Was the Hottest Year on Record 

Earth Just Had Its Hottest Month Ever. How Six Cities Are Coping. 

How Reflective Paint Brings Down Scorching City Temperatures 

These Photos Show How Urban Growth Fuels Extreme Heat 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What good is a future without ketchup or pasta sauce? These are just two potential casualties of a changing climate, as tomato growers face shrinking harvests due to hotter and drier weather. WSJ reporter Patrick Thomas takes us behind the scenes of how seed breeders are trying to make a tomato that can thrive with less water, and how that highlights the efforts going into protecting crops against the effects of climate change.



Sign up for the WSJ's free The Future of Everything newsletter.



What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or email us: FOEPodcast@wsj.com 



Further reading:

The Race to Save Ketchup: Building a Tomato for a Hotter World 

How to Eat Your Way to a Greener Planet 

Sustainable Agriculture Gets a Push From Big Corporations 



Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 How did a sandal that originally entered the U.S. market as a health product become a fashion staple and the crowning shoe of a multibillion dollar company? Margot Fraser originally brought Birkenstocks to the U.S. thinking that the comfort of the German sandal would appeal to women. But she couldn’t get shoe stores to sell them. They finally made it into the U.S. market through health food stores. Now, the seductively ugly shoe is a cultural icon and was valued at about $8.6 billion when the company went public last year. WSJ’s Ben Cohen explores the history of Birkenstock and how it paved the way for the future of women’s feet.



What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or email us: FOEPodcast@wsj.com 



Further reading: 

Why Americans Are Obsessed With These Ugly Sandals 

A Key to Birkenstock’s Billion Dollar Success? Its Frumpiest Shoe 

A Visual History of Birkenstock’s Rise, From Insoles to IPO 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does your doctor know that a drug or procedure will work to treat a condition before they try it? Often, they don’t. Researchers are looking to create “digital twins,” digital versions of individual organs, to see how a patient will respond. Eventually there could be digital twins of entire bodies that are updated in real time with patient data. WSJ’s Alex Ossola speaks with WSJ senior special writer Stephanie Armour about how that might change the way we treat diseases in the future. 



What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify , or email us: FOEPodcast@wsj.com 



Sign up for the WSJ's free The Future of Everything newsletter. 



Further reading: A ‘Digital Twin’ of Your Heart Lets Doctors Test Treatments Before Surgery  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ultrasound is known for its use in imaging during pregnancy. But new advancements in the technology suggest that in the future, ultrasound could be used to disrupt the blood-brain barrier. This would allow doctors to more easily diagnose and directly treat illnesses like brain cancer without major surgery. WSJ’s Danny Lewis and Charlotte Gartenberg examine the new ways that ultrasound could be used more specifically and subtly to deliver accurate diagnoses and precise treatments.



What do you think about the show? Let us know on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or email us: FOEPodcast@wsj.com



Sign up for the WSJ's free The Future of Everything newsletter .



Further reading:



New Ultrasound Therapy Could Help Treat Alzheimer’s, Cancer 

Treatment Breakthrough for an Intractable Brain Cancer 

The ‘Mini Brains’ solving medical mysteries and raising concerns

We Can Now See the Brain Like Never Before 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices