Innovation Hub
655 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 310 ratingsInnovation Hub looks at how to reinvent our world – from medicine to education, relationships to time management. Great thinkers and great ideas, designed to make your life better.
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Episodes
Inventing A United States Of Europe
December 27, 2019 09:00 - 52 minutes - 47.7 MBThe European Union is now a vast political and economic union of 28 member countries and, with more than 500 million people, its combined population is the third largest in the world after China and India. But the European Union did not begin as a large political project – rather as a series of small steps in an American effort to promote postwar security, according to Mark Blyth, professor of international economics at Brown University. As politicians in Britain struggle with the...
Loons that Shoot for the Moon
December 20, 2019 09:02 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MBLoonshot (n): a neglected project, widely dismissed, its champion written off as unhinged We all know of moonshots, a grand idea we can get behind. But we sat down with Safi Bahcall, a physicist and former biotech entrepreneur, to understand a counter term he came up with: loonshots. Bahcall claims many ideas and innovations, when they are first proposed, are seen as mere fantasies from the minds of slightly (or very) crazy people. From the telephone to the computer, several game-c...
Why Aren’t We Happier?
December 20, 2019 09:00 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBExperiences of mental illness are common in the United States and behind each individual case is a history. In his book, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry, Randolph Nesse, the director of the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University, looks at emotional and mental disorders from an evolutionary perspective, and considers why natural selection left us with fragile minds.
The Power of Conservative Talk Radio
December 13, 2019 09:00 - 49 minutes - 45 MBWhen Rush Limbaugh’s conservative talk show hit Sacramento in the 1980s, no one could have guessed the power that he - and other right-leaning radio hosts - would eventually wield. Limbaugh’s show was part of an attempt to reinvigorate AM radio, which had been rapidly losing audience to FM, and he quickly gained a die-hard audience. Over the ensuing decades, as conservative talk radio grew in power and popularity, it dramatically reshaped the Republican party. And it may well have p...
The Rise of the Comedian
December 06, 2019 09:02 - 30 minutes - 28.1 MBHumans have always enjoyed a good laugh, but the concept of stand-up comedy is relatively new. Wayne Federman, a comedian who teaches at the University of Southern California, and hosts the podcast The History of Stand Up, talks about the origin of the modern comedian. From the earliest vaudeville circuits, to the rise of the comedy record, to the role of late-night television in break-out comedy moments, we pay tribute to the power of the comedian.
Why Fast Fashion Might Need To Slow Down
December 06, 2019 09:00 - 18 minutes - 17.3 MBAmericans buy, on average, almost 70 items of clothing a year. And many of those garments are worn just seven to ten times before being thrown away. This breakneck consumption of clothes is only possible because of fast fashion, a system in which clothing is made quickly, sold cheaply, and seen as pretty disposable. Dana Thomas, author of “Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes,” walks us through the origins and effects of fast fashion.
The Secret Agency that Created Agent Orange, Self-Driving Cars, and the Internet
November 29, 2019 09:02 - 28 minutes - 39.3 MBDARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has been developing new military technologies for the United States since shortly after the launch of Sputnik in 1957. But Sharon Weinberger, the Washington Bureau Chief for Yahoo News and the author of The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency that Changed the World, says there’s more to the Agency than new weapons and military strategies. DARPA, Weinberger explains, not only incubated the internet, b...
Honey, Income Inequality Led Me to Overwork the Kids
November 29, 2019 09:00 - 20 minutes - 28.8 MBHow would you describe your childhood? Did your parents have a laissez faire attitude, letting you run wild and free, or did they have more rigid rules, which dictated your life choices? Perhaps you’re now a parent yourself — which parenting approach have you chosen? Matthias Doepke, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, argues that we often assume that parenting is all about culture, and that the reason that those from different countries or backgrounds parent diffe...
The Guitar Makers That Made Modern Music
November 22, 2019 09:02 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBIn 1957, Buddy Holly appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on CBS, strumming his tunes on a Fender Stratocaster, which was casually slung across his body. The instrument had - and would - fundamentally change American culture and music. And, to a lot of people, it was a shock. But behind the technological innovations inherent in the solid-body electric guitar is a story of two friends and rivals, people whose legacies have been inscribed on the guitars they created. Leo Fender and Les...
From Famous To Forgotten
November 22, 2019 09:00 - 21 minutes - 29.6 MBIf you have that gnawing feeling that you’re forgetting something, chances are you’re right. And it may not be your keys, but something a little bigger. César Hidalgo, director of MIT’s Collective Learning Group, explains how society experiences generational forgetting. Hidalgo says: even if you have a pristine memory, time greatly impacts the names, books, movies, and historical events that are common knowledge at any given moment. Researching how culture gets passed down (or does...
Our Compulsion to Be Good
November 15, 2019 09:02 - 26 minutes - 36.5 MBThere is a famous quote from French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hell is other people.” While some may agree with that sentiment and crave solitude, there’s a lot of evidence that people are drawn to each other. We form friendships, sports teams, knitting circles and complex societies, unlike any other species on Earth. Nicholas Christakis, a doctor, sociologist, and author of “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society,” has spent years trying to unders...
What’s Missing From Childhood Today?
November 15, 2019 09:00 - 21 minutes - 30.2 MBChildhood today is radically different than it was just a few generations ago. These days, kids’ busy schedules include school, homework, chores, sports, music lessons and other activities. But those packed schedules leave out one key element that turns out to be crucial to growth and learning — play. That’s according to Dorsa Amir, a postdoctoral researcher and evolutionary anthropologist at Boston College. Amir has studied the Shuar people of Ecuador, a non-industrialized society...
The Great Unraveling of American Health Care
November 08, 2019 09:00 - 49 minutes - 45.5 MBWe spend more on medical care than any other developed country in the world - almost twice the average - but the U.S. lags behind many other wealthy nations on outcomes such as infant mortality and life expectancy. How did we get here? Christy Ford Chapin, a historian at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and author of “Ensuring America's Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System,” explains how what she calls “the insurance company model” was inven...
Cleanliness, Health...and Microbes
October 25, 2019 08:02 - 22 minutes - 20.9 MBAre you a self-proclaimed germaphobe like President Trump? Well, if you think your home is sparkling clean, try walking around with a microscope. According to Rob Dunn, a professor of Applied Ecology at both North Carolina State University and the Natural History Museum of Denmark, we are surrounded by thousands of tiny species, living on every imaginable surface. And while some bacteria can be harmful, most just humbly co-exist with us... and some are more helpful than we know. In...
Lessons From The World’s Quirkiest Innovators
October 25, 2019 08:00 - 25 minutes - 23.6 MBObsessed with work, insensitive, socially detached, and neglectful of family and friends. Those may not be the most endearing qualities, but they are just a few of the common characteristics that longtime innovation researcher, Melissa Schilling found when studying some of the world’s most famous and prolific inventors in the fields of science and technology. Schilling, a professor of management and organizations at New York University’s Stern School of Business, explores the ingen...
Feeling Lonely? You’ve Got Company
October 18, 2019 08:02 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBWe’ve all got friends — hundreds of them, if you believe what Facebook’s telling you — but many of us are still worried about being lonely. So worried that it might be surprising to learn that hundreds of years ago, being alone was considered a virtue. But according to Susan Matt and Luke Fernandez, both professors at Weber State University, how we view emotions is changing all the time. Matt and Fernandez, authors of “Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technolog...
What's Our Tech Doing to Our Brains?
October 18, 2019 08:00 - 20 minutes - 18.7 MBMany adults and teens are spending longer and longer hours engaged with digital media, and researchers are only beginning to grasp the impact on mental health and well-being. Doreen Dodgen-Magee, a psychologist and the author of “Deviced! Balancing Life and Technology in a Digital World,” discusses how screens are profoundly altering who we are and how we behave. She points to concerns about increased feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and a reduced ability to tolerate boredom and to...
What’s So Bad About A Little Ego?
October 11, 2019 08:02 - 26 minutes - 36.5 MBWhether they’re athletes like LeBron James, entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, or entertainers like Kanye West, the richest and most famous among us are often known for having the largest egos. Why shouldn’t we follow their example? Ryan Holiday, author of “Ego is the Enemy,” tells us how ego can be a huge disadvantage - and even end careers. He also explains why he thinks our ego problem is getting worse, and what he believes we can do about it.
Approaching the Future: How We Think About Tomorrow
October 11, 2019 08:00 - 22 minutes - 20.3 MBWhen psychologist Walter Mischel published the findings of his famous marshmallow study, showing the impact of delayed gratification on a child’s future success, it changed how people raised their kids. But in the nearly 50 years since the study was published, questions have been asked about our ability to truly look ahead. Is teaching a child delayed gratification really all there is to making sure they succeed? How well can we predict the future? Bina Venkataraman, author of “The...
Is Race Science Making a Comeback?
October 04, 2019 08:02 - 27 minutes - 25.2 MBWith the European intellectual movement, there was a heightened interest to interpret the world around us. Scientists of the 18th century sought a way to categorize and objectively understand the multitude of species inhabiting earth. Unfortunately, humans were not spared in this scientific venture and the idea of superior and inferior human races were born, which went on to influence our social understanding of one another. Angela Saini, a science journalist and the author of “Sup...
Say Goodbye To Language As You Know It
October 04, 2019 08:00 - 22 minutes - 20.2 MBIt seems like every time a dictionary publishes a new update, people flock to social media to talk about it. Whether they’re responding to the addition of the word “fam” or the dad joke, They always return to the question of what consequences these additions will have. Do they really spell disaster for the English language? Turns out, the “updation” (new to the Oxford English Dictionary as of last year) of language isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And it’s been going on for as long ...
Fools for Fossil Fuels: A History of Climate Change Inaction
September 27, 2019 08:02 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBJust about 40 years ago, a secret group of elite scientists, known as the Jasons, sounded the death knell for climate change. They had consulted a computer model that predicted the destabilizing effects of a warming earth - from droughts, to rising sea levels, to geopolitical conflicts. Their warnings reached the ears of politicians, and, ultimately, during his 1988 presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush pledged to solve the problem. But then the story shifted, and climate change ...
What IS Evil, Really?
September 27, 2019 08:00 - 17 minutes - 16.1 MBIf you’ve ever had an evil thought - or even a murder fantasy- you’re not alone. Julia Shaw, the author of “Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side” explains that most people have devilish notions sometimes. Shaw, a psychologist and research associate at University College London, says we all have the capacity for cruel deeds. She suggests that acknowledging our darker desires may in fact help us deconstruct and better understand the whole concept of evil. This understanding, ...
How is Meritocracy Damaging Our Economy?
September 20, 2019 08:02 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBThose in the highest paying jobs are working longer hours than ever before. Meanwhile, the middle class is falling behind, as employers demand more qualifications from employees. America is supposed to be a meritocracy, but perhaps meritocracies - which aim for fairness - aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Humans: We May Not Be As Special As We Think
August 30, 2019 08:02 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBIt’s easy to see ourselves as separate from the animal kingdom, but Adam Rutherford, author of “Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature - A New Evolutionary History,” believes that we aren’t as different as we might think. Fashion design, interacting with fire, and making multi-step plans all seem like qualities that are unique to humans. But according to Rutherford, species across the animal kingdom - from crabs to birds of prey - exhibit many of these...
Television Created the Scientist Star
August 30, 2019 08:00 - 21 minutes - 19.7 MBWe all know the legacy that Sputnik had on U.S. science education. Washington poured more than a billion dollars into overhauling the U.S. science curriculum. But television was transformed too. According to Ingrid Ockert, a Haas Fellow at the Science History Institute and a NASA History Fellow, the television show “Continental Classroom” was launched as a direct response to the Sputnik challenge. Five days a week, “Continental Classroom” was broadcast into American homes to encoura...
China Deal, or No China Deal?
August 23, 2019 08:02 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBIn a modern-day Mexican standoff, the U.S. and China are confronting each other over trade practices. The United States believes China has been luring away jobs and stealing American technology. But what if the issue isn’t that China is stealing innovations, but that it is out-innovating us? George Yip, a professor of marketing and strategy at Imperial College Business School in London thinks that the Chinese are no longer mere imitators but have become serious innovators in their o...
What’s Worth Worrying About?
August 23, 2019 08:00 - 15 minutes - 13.9 MBSpiders and grizzlies and snakes, oh my! Ask someone what they are afraid of, and the answer is likely to be something like a plane crash or shark attack. But the authors of the book “Worried?: Science Investigates Some of Life’s Common Concerns,” Eric Chudler and Lise Johnson explain why they believe we often waste our energy worrying about the wrong things. Chudler, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington and Johnson, an assistant professor of physician assistant studies ...
Why The Value Of Education Is Overblown
August 16, 2019 08:02 - 28 minutes - 26.5 MBWe hear all the time about the gap between those with college degrees and those without. In 2015, the gap hit a record high: people who finished college earned 56% more than those who didn’t (other sources have the percentage even higher, including scholar Bryan Caplan). Over the past few years, then-President Barack Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders proposed bills to either increase college attainment or make public colleges tuition-free for all. But Caplan is a contrarian on this...
The Story Behind The ‘Little House’
August 16, 2019 08:00 - 20 minutes - 18.5 MBFor nearly 100 years, the “Little House” books (and the subsequent television series) have been cherished by kids and adults around the world. Millions of children have aspired to be like Laura Ingalls, a pioneer girl who courageously helped her family start new farms across the Midwest - planting, harvesting, hunting, and fighting blizzards. The story of Ingalls’ family was based on the real-life adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but Wilder’s real childhood was much harsher. As ...
Avoiding Digital Distraction
August 09, 2019 08:03 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MBThink you might need a digital detox? You’re not alone. It’s becoming more and more of a trend to take time away from our online lives. Cal Newport author of “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World” shares his approach to avoiding digital distraction and reclaiming time. He discusses how to be more intentional about how you use technology, and more aware about how technology uses you. We’ll discuss everything from the neuroscience of the human brain to how to d...
What's Wrong With American Capitalism?
August 09, 2019 08:00 - 18 minutes - 17.2 MBCapitalism is a recurring theme among the ever-growing list of Democratic presidential candidates. But many Americans of all political stripes have concerns about our free market economy and whether it is working for them, according to Steven Pearlstein, a Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist for The Washington Post and author of “Can American Capitalism Survive: Why Greed Is Not Good, Opportunity Is Not Equal, and Fairness Won’t Make Us Poor.” We talk with Pearlstein about the importa...
All or Nothing: Understanding Risk In Some Very Unusual Places
August 02, 2019 16:03 - 25 minutes - 23.7 MBEconomist and journalist Allison Schrager visited a legal brothel, chased celebrities with the paparazzi, attended conferences with surfers, and interviewed high-ranking military generals, all to better understand the nature of risk. In her book, “An Economist Walks Into A Brothel,” Schrager explores how people manage risk outside the world of economics and finance and considers the most interesting lessons that can be learned from people in some of the riskiest professions.
The Origins of Your Vacation
August 02, 2019 15:43 - 23 minutes - 21.6 MBTourism is an international industry worth trillions of dollars, which creates hundreds of millions of jobs worldwide — but that wasn’t always the case. In his book, “A History of Modern Tourism,” University of New England history professor Eric Zuelow walks us through the story of how we learned to love travel. From diplomacy, to new technologies like steam power, to a growing need for adventure and self-expression, tourism has become a global phenomenon with a huge impact on the p...
Eat Smarter, Eat Healthier
July 26, 2019 08:01 - 19 minutes - 18.2 MBWhen it comes to losing weight or maintaining a healthy diet, many of us have chosen to go either low-calorie or low-fat. But recent research has started to upend nutrition science, reframing our notions of “healthy” eating, according to Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Mozaffarian explains why the science is changing, when a calorie isn’t just a calorie, how fat could be a lot better than we th...
A Technological Fix For Broken Politics
July 26, 2019 08:00 - 29 minutes - 26.7 MBThere has been a continuous problem, dating back to founding of the United States, according to Jill Lepore, a professor of American history at Harvard University. Lepore, the author of “These Truths: A History of the United States,” says Americans have had tremendous faith in the notion that technological innovations could heal our divisions and fix political problems. But that faith has frequently been misplaced or misguided. And ethical conversations around how to keep newspaper...
Building An Inclusive Innovation Economy
July 12, 2019 08:01 - 20 minutes - 18.6 MBIn recent years, some American cities, like Pittsburgh, have been transformed by legions of tech jobs. But even as these one-time industrial cities reinvented themselves, many residents - including those who are part of communities of color - have been excluded from the prosperity and growth that have been ushered in along with the influx of jobs and investment. Andre Perry, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and Tawanna Black, founder and CEO...
Marinating In Plastics
July 05, 2019 08:04 - 19 minutes - 17.5 MBPlastics are colorful, shiny, and flexible. They can also be sturdy, monochrome, and opaque. They come in different shapes and sizes, too. In fact, we’ve become so good at creating and molding plastics into whatever we want them to be that author Susan Freinkel says: it’s hard to imagine a world without them. In her book, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, Freinkel chronicles the history of plastics and explores how, for better or worse, the material shapes our lives.
The Long History Of The Gig Economy
July 05, 2019 08:02 - 15 minutes - 14.6 MBWhen you hear the term “gig economy,” you probably think of Uber or Lyft or Postmates - companies that have used apps to disrupt industries and create an army of 1099 workers. But according to Louis Hyman, a Cornell University historian and author of Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary, the gig economy is a lot bigger than Silicon Valley. And it has a much longer history than you might think.
The Rise of the Sea Barons
July 05, 2019 08:00 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MBBack in the mid-19th century, some American entrepreneurs sailed halfway around the world - to China - to make their fortunes. These merchants would later build dynasties back home by investing money in promising American industries, including railroads and coal, as well as new technologies, like the telegraph. It was the invention of the clipper ship that made it all possible. These were ships that were built for speed and profit, a profit that came not just by importing goods lik...
The American Family - Older And Smaller
June 28, 2019 08:01 - 21 minutes - 19.8 MBThe American family is changing in many different ways. But perhaps one of the most significant is that, on average, American women are giving birth later. And birth rates have hit a 30-year low. In the early 1970s, the average age of first-time moms was 21… it’s now 26. The same trend is impacting fathers - their age has gone from 27 to 31 over the same time period. But why did this change happen? And what does it mean for our society, our economy, and our families? To find out, we...
The Brains Behind Automation
June 28, 2019 07:59 - 16 minutes - 14.7 MBWe constantly hear that technology is killing opportunities in the workplace. But reports by the World Economic Forum and Deloitte have shown that automation is creating — and will continue to create — millions of jobs in fields like sales, IT services, and big data. But to really know how tech is affecting our lives, experts like Daniel Theobald and Melissa Flagg say we need to focus less on the 30,000-foot view of the industry and more on what is going on at the ground level. We ...
China: Pharmacy To The World
June 28, 2019 07:58 - 10 minutes - 9.94 MBIn the 1990s, most of the world’s medicines were manufactured in the United States, Europe and Japan. Today, almost 80% of them come from China. In her book, “China Rx: Exposing The Risks Of America’s Dependence On China For Medicine,” Rosemary Gibson says that China is becoming the world’s pharmacy, but that development, she argues, comes with many risks.
How To Get Older, Better
June 21, 2019 07:59 - 24 minutes - 22.2 MBOlder, wiser and perhaps healthier? It may sound too good to be true, but Sue Armstrong, author of Borrowed Time: The Science of How and Why We Age, says that growing older doesn’t have to lead to infirmity. Science is finding ways to intervene in the aging process, and to improve the quality of our later years. After all, some organisms on Earth live for centuries, so there may be good models for rethinking and easing the process of getting older. Armstrong says that while there’s ...
The Many Hats of Dr. Seuss
June 07, 2019 08:00 - 26 minutes - 24.3 MBWhen it comes to children’s books I’m certain you’ll find There’s really one name that jumps first to mind That name as I’m sure you’ll deduce Could only belong to one Dr. Seuss And so we take a look At biographer Brian Jay Jones’ new book All about that good doctor’s work and creations, And it’s called “Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel And The Making of An American Imagination”.
The ONLY Way To Reduce Traffic
May 24, 2019 08:02 - 25 minutes - 22.9 MBTraffic is awful. It causes pollution, it makes people stressed, it costs cities and drivers billions of dollars… and if you’ve ever sat in a car, inching along a packed highway, you understand the toll it takes. So, how do we fix it? According to UCLA’s Michael Manville, there are a lot of proposed solutions, but only one - yes, one - really works.
Testing Who You Are
May 24, 2019 08:00 - 23 minutes - 21.4 MBIf you were asked to describe your personality, you might choose words such as “funny” and “outgoing,” or “shy” and “quiet.” But what if those were not quite the right words? The Myers-Briggs - which many of us have taken - promises to assess your personality, and assign you a specific “type.” In her book, The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the birth of Personality Testing, Merve Emre examines the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (which is its full name), an...
The Future of Genetics Is Here, But It’ll Cost You
May 03, 2019 08:01 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MBGenerally, patients have to show symptoms of a disease before they’re treated for it. But, increasingly, thanks to advances in precision medicine, some new treatments are focused on the prevention of diseases that people are most at risk for - and that risk is determined by their unique genetic data. While personalized medicine sounds great in principle, there are several challenges, including the cost. Antonio Regalado, senior editor of biomedicine for MIT Technology Review, and Ca...
The Company That Sparked Our Corporate World
May 03, 2019 08:00 - 17 minutes - 16.2 MBHow far would you go to make sure your food doesn’t taste bland? Would you cross the seven seas for cinnamon, like the British East India Company did? In the early 1600s, King James I of England needed cash. And he built on a charter that Queen Elizabeth I - his predecessor - had issued. What James did would, in modern times, be considered a breach of power. He allowed the East India Company to establish a virtual monopoly over trade with Asia and, in return, he asked for a share o...
Fools for Fossil Fuels: A History of Climate Change Inaction
April 26, 2019 08:02 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBJust about 40 years ago, a secret group of elite scientists, known as the Jasons, sounded the death knell for climate change. They had consulted a computer model that predicted the destabilizing effects of a warming earth - from droughts, to rising sea levels, to geopolitical conflicts. Their warnings reached the ears of politicians, and, ultimately, during his 1988 presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush pledged to solve the problem. But then the story shifted, and climate change ...