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 of its power. Then, out of the blue, CEO Jeffrey Skilling resigned-just six months after he took the reins of a company he had helped turn into an innovation machine. Why? In this episode, we dive into the first cracks in the Enron facade. John Emshwiller is the host of this season of Bad Bets. John and his Journal colleague Rebecca Smith did the original reporting on which this season is based. Bad Bets is a production of The Wall Street Journal. This season was produced in collaboration with Neon Hum Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WSJ’s The Future of Everything

Introducing Bad Bets

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 for decarbonization. In this episode, we explore options that are already being used, and some new methods still in beta. WSJ Senior Energy Correspondent Sarah McFarlane joins host Janet Babin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zero Carbon Future 2: How to Store Renewable Energy For a Rainy Day

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. Rochelle Toplensky reports, Janet Babin hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Archipelago Leads the Way on Clean Energy

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 rates, but also higher tuitions and higher expectations from the college experience. In this episode of The Future of Everything: what structural changes could improve the lending program going forward - and how that could change what college looks like in the future. With WSJ reporters Melissa Korn and Josh Mitchell. Janet Babin hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paying for College and Curbing Student Debt

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

Outhacking the Hackers: The Future of Cybersecurity

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 your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No More Noise 2: Metamaterials Can Make the World a Quieter Place

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

No More Noise: Turning Down The Volume on Cities - Part 1

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

Grammy Award Winner Jacob Collier on Evolving in Place

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

Grammy-Award Nominated Music Producer Oak Felder Shares His Vision

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

How NFTs Could Disrupt the Art Market

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 the data trove from Long Covid survivors can not only help them understand their conditions, but also how to treat illnesses with similar symptoms. In a previous version of this podcast released on March 26, we said that Body Politic published survey results in December. The Patient-Led Research Collaborative for Covid-19 published the paper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What We Can Learn From 'Long Covid'

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

How Psychedelic Drugs Are Making a Comeback to Treat Depression

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 just gotten us a step closer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Metals That Work Like Magic

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

How the Pandemic Fueled Scientific Discovery and Collaboration

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 megaphone.fm/adchoices

E-Ternal: New Technology and the Quest to 'Live' Forever

Discover what comes next with this in-depth look at how science and technology are revolutionizing the way we live, work and play. Join host Jennifer Strong every Wednesday as she crisscrosses the country to interview the leaders and luminaries reshaping our world.

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WSJ’s The Future of Everything

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