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
Fixing A Broken Heart
November 16, 2018 10:00 - 23 minutes - 27.4 MBThe Grinch’s is two sizes too small. All Green wants to know how you can mend a broken one. You can destroy them, steal them, break them. They can pine or ache or wander. Suffice it to say, hearts are a big part of our culture. After all, though our kidneys are vital, there aren’t many pop songs about them. Still, as important as they are to our culture, our hearts are even more important to our health. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and chances ar...
Full Show: Cultural Shifts
November 09, 2018 11:00 - 49 minutes - 56.8 MBFirst: in the early 1970s, the average age of first-time moms was 21. Now, the average is 26. We talk with economist Caitlin Knowles Myers and New York Times correspondent Claire Cain Miller about why so many couples are putting off having kids and we also consider how education, politics and geography intersect with that decision. Next, dear listeners, you had some thoughts about our show regarding the future of work. We’ve highlighted some of your workplace experiences with techn...
The American Family - Older And Smaller / Listener Comments
November 09, 2018 10:30 - 24 minutes - 27.6 MBThe American family is changing in many different ways. But one of the most important 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 talked to...
Testing Who You Are
November 09, 2018 10:00 - 23 minutes - 27.4 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), a...
Full Show: Cutting It Down To Size (Rebroadcast)
November 02, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.8 MBFirst, small businesses are the backbone of America. Or are they? Economist Robert Atkinson wants you to hold your horses and think again. He says we often favor small businesses and villainize large corporations, despite the fact that being big may enable companies to potentially contribute more to diversity, fair wages, and more generous employee benefits. Next, many of us may have a bit of a precision fetish, according to author Simon Winchester. Consider car commercials or watc...
Full Show: Votes, Jobs, and Tech
October 26, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.8 MBFirst, swing states have a ton of power in determining control of Congress and many of the people living in those states have experienced the effects of automation in the workplace. Author Brian Alexander explains how technological progress has created fear, uncertainty, and shattered communities in swing states including Ohio. But it isn’t entirely fair to blame technology for *all *of our problems, including the challenges created by the gig economy. Historian Louis Hyman says te...
Robotizing Swing States
October 26, 2018 09:30 - 13 minutes - 14.9 MBWith the midterms looming, both Democrats and Republicans are sweating out the home stretch in Congressional races across the country. And as in any election, there’s a lot of focus on swing states such as Ohio. In his 2017 book “Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the of the All-American Town,” Brian Alexander returned home to Lancaster, Ohio to write about how the region has changed both politically and economically over the past few decades. He saw many in the indus...
The Long History Of The Gig Economy
October 26, 2018 09:00 - 17 minutes - 20.6 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 Brains Behind Automation
October 26, 2018 08:30 - 16 minutes - 19.2 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. W...
Full Show: Private Lives, Public Spaces
October 19, 2018 10:00 - 48 minutes - 55.9 MBThe story of privacy in America is long and fascinating. But suffice it to say, there was an uproar over postcards. Yes, postcards. What separates a successful movement, like the campaign for same-sex marriage, from a struggling movement, like the push for gun control? Too little water in some places. Too much in others. What Texas tells us about the future of water in America.
The Evolution of American Privacy
October 19, 2018 09:30 - 19 minutes - 21.9 MBEvery day, it seems like there’s a new story about privacy: A Facebook hack that puts the private data of millions at risk. A years-long surveillance program of personal communications by the government. Endless concerns about how much of our lives we share on social media. With all this in the air, it can certainly feel like we have a lot less privacy nowadays. But is that really the case? Well, according to Vanderbilt professor Sarah Igo, author of “The Known Citizen: A History o...
The Blueprint For Social Movements
October 19, 2018 09:00 - 15 minutes - 17.2 MBAfter Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, activists may have thought that gun control at the federal level was a sure bet. But as the old saying goes, “there’s strength in numbers,” and the size of National Rifle Association’s membership has long outnumbered that of America’s gun reform groups. Leslie Crutchfield, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Global Social Enterprise Initiativ...
Putting A Price On Water
October 19, 2018 08:30 - 13 minutes - 15.1 MBIf you try to imagine what a dystopian future would look like, you might conjure up aliens invading Earth, or robots overpowering humans. But according to author Seamus McGraw, the problems of the future are more down-to-earth than some may imagine. In his book, “A Thirsty Land: The Making Of An American Water Crisis,” McGraw writes about how water scarcity in Texas could turn into a crisis that affects all Americans. And it could happen sooner rather than later.
Full Show: A Sense Of Self
October 12, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.9 MBTake credit for that killer PowerPoint presentation, or for running a 4-minute mile if you want. But at the end of the day, Robert Sapolsky says we don’t have a shred of free will. Next, corporations have fought tooth-and-nail to gain their civil rights and having the United States Supreme Court as an ally hasn’t hurt. Then, the Spanish flu of 1918 killed between 50 and 100 million people and, in the process, reshaped the world. Author Laura Spinney says it’s inevitable that we’l...
The Hidden Biology Behind Everything We Do
October 12, 2018 09:30 - 24 minutes - 28 MBHumanity is simultaneously incredibly kind and incredibly violent. We commit indescribable atrocities, but also acts of incomprehensible compassion. There is both horror and beauty in our history. Which leads to the question… how do we reconcile this inherent contradiction? It all goes back to our biology, according to Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford and author of the book “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.” In fact, all questions about human behavio...
Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Corporate Happiness
October 12, 2018 09:00 - 12 minutes - 14.1 MBFormer presidential candidate Mitt Romney famously declared that “corporations are people” while on the campaign trail in 2011. The Iowa State Fair crowd jeered him and Romney launched into a stammering defense. But, if you look at Supreme Court cases from the past 200 years, Romney’s assessment wasn’t too far off. Corporations may not be people, but they enjoy many of the same basic rights we do. We talk with UCLA law professor Adam Winkler about his book, “We The Corporations: How...
The History Of A Forgotten Plague
October 12, 2018 08:30 - 11 minutes - 13.1 MBThe Spanish Flu of 1918 killed between 50 and 100 million people. It infected a third of the world’s population. But it’s likely that, if you’re thinking of the most important events of the 20th century, the Spanish Flu probably doesn’t immediately spring to mind. Why is that? To find out, and to explore exactly how it reshaped society, we talked with Laura Spinney, author of the book “Pale Rader: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World.”
Full Show: The Devil Is In The Details
October 05, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 57.2 MBThere actually IS a solution to traffic. UCLA’s Michael Manville tells us what it is. Blue collar workers are getting the short of the stick. Here’s how we can change that. Turns out, there’s some science behind sin.
The One Way To Reduce Traffic
October 05, 2018 09:30 - 19 minutes - 22.4 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.
Blue-Collar Jobs, Redefined
October 05, 2018 09:00 - 12 minutes - 13.8 MBBlue-collar jobs are changing. In the mid 20th century, many of these jobs were protected by unions and offered financial security. Today, both companies and employees are struggling to adjust to a turbulent economy; wages for lots of workers have barely kept pace with inflation. Economist Dennis Campbell thinks he’s found a solution. We talk to Campbell about a new economic model that could benefit everyone - and that focuses on sharing.
Science And Sin
October 05, 2018 08:30 - 15 minutes - 18.1 MBReligions have been studying human behavior for thousands of years - long before science got into the game. And for Christians, the seven deadly sins have offered a moral and social framework to get folks on the straight and narrow. Neuroscientist Jack Lewis says: we can use that framework to inform our future decisions. We talk to Lewis, author of the new book “The Science of Sin: Why We Do The Things We Know We Shouldn’t” about the biological side of this religious list.
Full Show: Bridging The Chasm
September 28, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 57.1 MBThere are a lot of chasms in the world, dividing lines between one thing and another. This week on Innovation Hub, we’ll take a look at those chasms, whether they’re in our digital life, our understanding of our own health, or in the complex systems that govern the world. First up, the gap between failure and success can be razor-thin. And the tiniest issues can snowball into huge catastrophes. It happened in the nuclear plant Three Mile Island, with the 2008 financial crisis… even...
How Small Problems Snowball Into Big Disasters
September 28, 2018 09:30 - 15 minutes - 17.9 MBThe Three Mile Island disaster forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. It absolutely dominated the news cycle. It led to a complete rethinking of nuclear energy. And it all stemmed from a plumbing problem, a valve that didn’t shut. But the Three Mile Island accident isn’t the only meltdown caused by a seemingly small issue that snowballed into a gigantic disaster. To find out exactly how this happens, we talked with Chris Clearfield, co-author of “Meltdown:...
The Difference Between Pleasure And Happiness
September 28, 2018 09:00 - 17 minutes - 19.9 MBIn the last few decades, Americans have become fat, sick, stupid, broke, depressed, addicted, and most decidedly unhappy. At least, that’s according to physician Robert Lustig, author of the book, “The Hacking of the American Mind. The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. He says that we’re facing four big crises in our country: a health care crisis, a social security crisis, an opioid crisis, and a depression crisis. And he argues that while these crises ...
Dissecting America’s Digital Divide
September 28, 2018 08:30 - 15 minutes - 17.8 MBIf you’re reading this, you almost certainly have access to the internet, which means you can check email anytime, do online banking, or investigate whether your kid’s rash is worthy of a trip to the doctor. But, across the country, about one in five people don’t have access to those tools. According to Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, there are three main reasons why people don’t have internet connections: it’s unaffordable, it’s p...
Full Show: Out Of The Concrete
September 21, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.5 MBViolent crime rates in cities have declined significantly since the mid-1990s. We examine the reasons behind this drop, and the influence it has had on city life. Then, concrete buildings are the foundation of the modern world. But they eat up a resource that’s becoming increasingly difficult to come by: sand. Finally, for centuries, species have mutated to adapt to urban habitats. We investigate the wily ways that they continue to evolve in cities.
Crime In America Is On The Decline. So Why Don’t We Feel Safer?
September 21, 2018 09:30 - 19 minutes - 22 MBTalk to anyone who lived in New York City in the 1970s, and they will probably highlight the city’s widespread crime. Times Square wasn’t yet Disney-fied and Brooklyn hadn’t been taken over by hipsters. Most people agreed that New York was a dangerous place. But then something happened: murders, and violent crime in general, began to drop. And that trend wasn’t unique to New York: It happened in many places across America. So who do we have to thank for the crime decline? To find ou...
Sand. It’s Slipping Through Our Fingers
September 21, 2018 09:00 - 15 minutes - 17.4 MBUnless we’re relaxing on it at the beach, or kicking it out of our shoes, we probably don’t think too much about sand. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Sand is a vital ingredient in concrete. And glass. And asphalt. It makes our modern, urban life possible. And our hunger for it is causing more and more trouble. Vince Beiser, author of “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization,” explains why sand matters, and how the quest to extract more...
Evolution In The City
September 21, 2018 08:30 - 13 minutes - 15.6 MBWhen you think of evolution, you probably imagine a slow process, one that happens in some verdant jungle or plain. For example: Homo Sapiens gradually evolving over millions of years on the savannah. Or the finches of the Galapagos adapting to their unique environment. But Menno Schilthuizen, a biologist and author of “Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution,” says that evolution can hapen a lot faster, and a lot closer to us, than we might think. And humans, al...
Full Show: Life Hacks
September 14, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.6 MBWhat were pregnancy tests like in the 1940s? Well, they involved cutting up rabbits. How the science of hormones changed pregnancy, diabetes, and so much more. If you want to track down the first telecommunications hack, you have to go back in time. All the way to the 1830s. America is aging. And so are the people who control our money. How that’s going to upend our economy.
How Your Hormones Control Everything
September 14, 2018 09:30 - 22 minutes - 25.6 MBDoctor Randi Hutter Epstein likes to compare human hormones to the internet. And if you think about it, it makes sense. The brain sends messages to the testes in the same way that someone in Paris can send an email to someone in Tokyo. There’s no apparent infrastructure that connects the senders and receivers. Just a message floating out there, knowing what its target is. But it took a very long time before we had this kind of basic understanding of hormones. And, even today, most p...
A 19th Century Hack
September 14, 2018 09:00 - 11 minutes - 13.3 MBWhat was the world’s first telecommunications hack? Some sort of electronic banking theft in the 80s? Perhaps it was the “phone breaks” of the 1960s, who used tricks to make calls for free? Or the scientific hooligans who hacked Marconi’s wireless? Well, according to Tom Standage, Deputy Editor of The Economist, you have to go back even further than that. To 19th-century France, and a new technology called the mechanical telegraph.
The Opportunities In An Aging Economy
September 14, 2018 08:30 - 14 minutes - 16.3 MBThe United States is about to face a “silver tsunami;” a retirement crisis; a health care dilemma. At least, that’s what it seems like, if you read articles about America’s aging population of baby boomers. And the increased number of older Americans *is *going to transform the country. The US Census bureau says that “older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history” in just a few decades. And they will transform the economy to fit their needs and wants. This...
Full Show: Changing Landscapes
September 07, 2018 09:30 - 49 minutes - 28.2 MBAre college kids becoming more fragile? Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says yes. And he explains why. How a Coney Island sideshow helped save infants lives. Termites! They may be super gross… but we can also learn a lot from them.
A Coddled Generation?
September 07, 2018 09:00 - 19 minutes - 11.3 MBFor the last few years, free speech has been hotly debated on college campuses around the country. There have been protests over controversial speakers. And confrontations around the cultural sensitivity of halloween costumes. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, sees deeper issues at play. Issues that he thinks are going to impact an entire generati...
The Fake Doctor Who Saved Thousands Of Babies
September 07, 2018 08:30 - 18 minutes - 10.3 MBIn the early 20th century, a premature baby was considered as good as dead. But Dr. Martin Couney — who wasn’t actually a doctor — made it his mission to save these babies by putting them neonatal incubators. And Couney had a flair for the dramatic. He would put incubated babies on display at Coney Island, and at World’s Fairs, where people could see them — IF they paid a quarter. We talk to Dawn Raffel about her new biography, “The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious Eu...
What We Can Learn From Termites. Yes, Termites.
September 07, 2018 08:00 - 10 minutes - 5.77 MBTermites get a bad rap. Ask pretty much anyone on the street, and they’ll likely say that termites are gross, and you definitely don’t want them in your house. And while it may be true that you don’t want them in your house, termites are also so much more than structure-destroyers. At least according to Lisa Margonelli, whose new book Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology explores the surprisingly wild world of the much-maligned bug. Because it turns out, there’s a ...
Full Show: What A Way To Make A Living
August 31, 2018 10:00 - 50 minutes - 57.2 MBWork defines all of our lives, but in a myriad of different ways. On this week’s Innovation Hub we take a step back and think about work’s payoffs, its pitfalls, and its future. First, Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer argues that our jobs are literally hurting us - and that work environments have to be rethought. Then, Liza Mundy tells the incredible story of female WWII vets whose work was absolutely vital… but who never got the credit they deserved. And finally, chess champ Garry K...
The Health Risks Of A Terrible Workplace
August 31, 2018 09:30 - 18 minutes - 21.6 MBWhen you think of dangerous work, you probably conjure up images of crab fishermen braving the frigid Atlantic, lumberjacks operating chainsaws, or truckers navigating icy roads. You probably don’t think of late nights at the office, or working overtime at the cash register. But maybe you should. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, argues that seemingly-innocuous workplaces have become increasingly bad for our health over the past few deca...
The Women Who Broke World War II Codes
August 31, 2018 09:00 - 17 minutes - 19.7 MBDuring World War II, a flurry of coded messages were sent by the Axis powers. Data on troop movements, supplies, ship locations... all transmitted via code. But these messages didn't necessarily stay coded for long. The Allies were able to intercept, decode, and learn the vital wartime secrets contained within many of these transmissions. These codebreaking efforts were vital in ending the war. And the people who actually did a lot of this work were women - over ten thousand of them...
Garry Kasparov And The Game Of Artificial Intelligence
August 31, 2018 08:30 - 12 minutes - 14.5 MBFor more than a 30-year span, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov was nearly unbeatable. But, in 1997, he faced an unlikely competitor: the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. Kasparov lost the final match, which ended up being a turning point both for him and for our understanding of artificial intelligence. We talk with Kasparov about his new book, “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.”
Full Show: Fooling Ourselves (Rebroadcast)
August 24, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.3 MBWillpower isn’t the only thing dictating what you eat. Neuroscientist Rachel Herz says the color, shape, and presentation of food has a major impact on our diet. Then, there’s not as much evidence-based decision-making in medicine as you might expect. We take a look at why. Finally, we talk with physics professor Robbert Dijigraaf about why funding basic scientific research can yield powerful results down the road.
How Your Brain Interacts With Food
August 24, 2018 09:30 - 17 minutes - 20.5 MBWe know that our brain plays tricks on us, but did you know the size of your plate can dictate how much you eat? Or that a bowl filled with jelly beans in a variety of colors will induce you to eat more than a series of bowls with the jelly beans separated out by color? Rachel Herz, a neuroscientist at Brown University and the author of “Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship With Food,” describes the psychology that influences our eating habits.
Are You Getting Evidence-Based Healthcare?
August 24, 2018 09:00 - 14 minutes - 16.7 MBNearly half of medical procedures may not be based on sound science. That’s according to Eric Patashnik, director of Brown University’s public policy program. And he says it’s not necessarily your doctor’s fault. How did we get to this point? We put that question to Patashnik, who is co-author of the new book, “Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine.”
When 'Useless' Research Has Long-Term Benefits
August 24, 2018 08:30 - 15 minutes - 17.9 MBBack in the 1990s, the Digital Libraries Initiative from the National Science Project supported a small project out of Stanford University. It sounded obscure, and a lot of people thought it wasn’t exciting, and would have little real-world application. But on that team were two graduate students – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – the founders of Google. The modest grant ended up paying off very well, according to Robbert Dijkgraaf, a physics professor and the director of the Institut...
Full Show: Body Talk
August 17, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.2 MBFirst, if you think about the design of the human body, it’s not actually all that intelligent. We have tailbones, but no tails. We swallow food through the same tube we use to breathe. And don’t get us started on tonsils. Biologist Nathan Lents explains these human errors. Then, P.T. Barnum is probably best known for his outrageous exhibits and larger-than-life personality. But he also shaped our idea of what it means to be an American. Finally, can someone really be guilty of ...
What’s Wrong With Our Bodies?
August 17, 2018 09:30 - 17 minutes - 20.1 MBHumans have a tailbone for a tail we don’t have, wisdom teeth that don’t fit in our mouths, and tonsils that only seem to cause problems. Each of these “mistakes” can tell us a little bit about how we evolved and why we were so successful in spite of these flaws. We talk about our body’s quirks with biologist Nathan Lents, author of “Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes.”
The Life of P.T. Barnum
August 17, 2018 09:00 - 15 minutes - 17.4 MBHe was a huckster, a showman, and a consummate businessman. P.T. Barnum and his exhibitions presented “freaks” and oddities from abroad, while also shaping the definition of what it means to be an American. We speak with Stephen Mihm, editor of the book, “The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself," about Barnum’s lasting contribution to American culture.
How Neuroscience Is Changing The Law
August 17, 2018 08:30 - 15 minutes - 17.2 MBFrancis Shen says that he often calls neurolaw a “new” and “emerging” field, but even he doesn’t completely believe that. Shen is an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota and executive director of education for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law. He says we’ve been using neuroscience in law for decades, but there have been some major developments over the last few years. For example, brain science is increasingly informing how we view criminals — espe...
Full Show: Taking Care of Business
August 10, 2018 10:00 - 49 minutes - 56.5 MBTaking care of business can mean a lot of different things. From activist CEOs to the science of war to clean energy companies, we’re diving into how business actually gets done. First up, CEOs used to keep their mouths shut. They’d donate to campaigns and spend money lobbying, sure, but for the most part, they wouldn’t comment on politics. That’s *definitely *no longer the case. Patagonia, Starbucks, Apple… corporations and the people in charge of them are commenting on issues ran...