World Changing Ideas

Latest Episodes:

THE NEW WAY WE WORK: How to plan for the future in an uncertain world - long term career thinking in times of crisis Nov 30, 2022

Show notes

Kate Davis talks with Dorie Clark about how to future proof your career (as much as possible). Dorie has been a guest on the show before, she’s also a contributor to Fast Company, Harvard Business Review and others and has been named the #1 Communication Coach and one of the Top 50 Business Thinkers in the World. She teaches at both Duke and Columbia Business Schools, and she is the author of several books, including The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World.

Completely animal-free meat, eggs, and ice cream! Nov 23, 2022

Show notes

It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow and what better way to spend it than examining how our food is produced?

While we can’t live without food, we also can’t afford to have the current agricultural industries, which grow and produce our food, continue contributing to climate change at such a rapid pace. The global population is larger than ever before, but in order for industrial agriculture to provide for everyone while not destroying the planet in the process, a lot has to change.

Could bioengineered food be the next world-changing idea? We looked at three companies working on revolutionizing the food landscape:

Meatable is headed by Daan Luining, who was part of the team that created the first cultivated burger. Cultivated meat requires only three months to develop versus the three years it takes for a cow to mature before it’s slaughtered for food. But how will the end product’s taste and texture measure up to traditional animal meat?

Neggst is creating a completely vegan egg made from fava beans, sweet potatoes, and peas. It may fry like a chicken egg, but will it help decrease environmental degradation?

Perfect Day has made an animal-free ice cream that contains the same protein found in milk but it doesn't come from cows. Its taste might be indistinguishable from our beloved cow-derived ice cream, but the verdict is still out on whether this cellular-fermentation process will make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Check out our Instagram and TikTok at Fast Company for more creative world changing ideas!

How can data help capture carbon and fight climate change? Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, we're taking a look at how one company and a nonprofit are working together to capture carbon. Their partnership also addresses the question of how we can make climate innovation a successful business strategy.

CLIMATE VAULT

Climate Vault has come up with a new way of addressing how companies can be held accountable for their carbon emissions. The nonprofit uses compliance markets to set up a verifiable and transparent way of measuring carbon offsets. And secondly, it helps invest in strategies and new technologies that remove even more carbon from entering the atmosphere.

GENPACT

Genpact is in the business of digital transformation and this means it’s ripe for helping companies and organizations innovate. To that end, it recently partnered with Climate Vault to build software for the nonprofit to track carbon emissions. As part of its stated mission to create a world that works better for people, Genpact has created a system to help organizations reach their carbon reduction goals.

Conversation highlights:

at its core, climate change is a data challenge
holding companies accountable comes down to trust
it’s critical to keep the carbon removal process as transparent as possible.

A solar farm in the sky, solar power stored in soil and solar-powered cities! Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

From Queens, New York over to West Africa down to Southwest Florida and up to Europe, we're jumping from soil to sky in our exploration of how solar energy could power our world.

Contributing WCI reporter Blake Odom investigates how you can set up solar power for your home. He looks into the installation costs, the time needed, and the potential savings.

Energicity is hooking up West African countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia with solar power minigrids.

Babcock Ranch is one of the few places in Florida that did not lose power when Hurricane Ian hit in September. And that's because it runs on solar power. It's a living laboratory for how we could power our towns with solar energy.

Dr. Michael Harbottle is developing a way for soil to store solar energy. Bacteria in the soil will help this process by performing electrosynthesis. Wild! Especially considering how current solar batteries require lithium, which is a finite resource.

The Solaris initiative is working on creating a space-based solar power to decrease energy decarbonization on Earth. Over the next decades, it could build a 2 km-long satellite over Europe that harnesses solar power directly from the sun and beams it back down to Earth!

Check out our Instagram and TikTok at Fast Company for more creative world changing ideas!

Is Beyond Meat steaking too much on plant-based meat? Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

We’ve talked a lot about sustainable and plant-based foods before—and on today’s show, you may get a little deja-vu. You’ll remember last year we did a live taste-test of the Beyond Burger 3.0 with Beyond Meat’s CEO, Ethan Brown. We welcomed Ethan back to chat about the latest iteration—the 4.0 Burger.

Interview Highlights:

Brown discusses the reiteration process and the company's ethos of relentless progress
How the new plant-based steak at Taco Bell made from faba bean protein tastes
Is the company disrupting and revolutionizing anymore? Or is it a legacy player now?

Dealing with our poop: how do we turn human waste into “Midnight Gold”? Oct 26, 2022

Show notes

Most societies have a complex relationship with human poop. It brings up all kinds of emotions: disgust, fascination, shame, happiness, relief, and even pride. It’s something we can all relate to though. Everyone poops!

Visit Mr. Toilet House in Suwon, South Korea where visitors from all over the world come to learn about the history of human waste.

Dr. Shannon Yee is taking on Thomas Crapper for a place in the Toilets Hall of Fame. He has designed a toilet that takes the water almost completely out of the equation.

Lina Zeldovich is no stranger to talking about poop-back in Russian her grandfather used their waste as compost and now she has literally written the book on poop, it's called The Other Dark Matter.

Lindsay Stradley saw firsthand how combining water with human waste can lead to serious problems. She resolved to improve urban sanitation and started Sanergy, a company that provides container-based facilities and now serves over 150,000 Nairobi residents.

FROM AWS AND FAST CO WORKS: At the Edge of Innovation: A Conversation with AWS’s Jan Hofmeyr Oct 21, 2022

Show notes

In this special podcast episode, hear the latest on what’s taking place in edge computing and hybrid cloud from a top industry executive at AWS. Also learn how these innovations can ultimately help you transform your business.

WCI Pitch Fest - What can we do to cool down? Oct 19, 2022

Show notes

Climate change isn’t going away, so we have to find ways to adapt. Last week, we took a look at some of the ways that cities, businesses and NGOs are trying to combat extreme heat and rising temperatures - a growing threat to people and communities all over the world. It’s all very well looking at macro solutions, but what can we as individuals do? This week we rounded up our World Changing Ideas reporters to pitch their favorite heat-reducing ideas. So, which one is your favorite? And can any of them have a real world impact? Take a listen!

How are we going to deal with extreme heat? Oct 12, 2022

Show notes

Welcome back for Season 2! Here we are in October 2022. The seasons are changing. We’re all getting used to a new kind of normal. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, this past summer was uncomfortably hot…and as the scientists keep telling us: this is just the beginning.

To find out how we can tackle future extreme heat events, we spoke with Global Chief Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili. Then we learned about a new type of eco-friendly AC unit and how solar-reflective paint can help reduce the heat in urban communities.

We're back with a brand new season! Oct 05, 2022

Show notes

This season we’ll be traveling around the globe to find the best, the boldest and the strangest ideas that could transform life as we know it. From the US, Europe, the Middle East and the global South, we’re going to hear from the dreamers, the experts and the activists who all have one thing in common: a desire to change the world for the better.

Join Amelia Hemphill, a solutions journalist and documentary filmmaker, as she goes on a mission to track down the people who are taking big risks and getting things done.

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