Innovation Hub

Over the last several decades, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. have withered. Meanwhile, health care has become the fastest growing job sector in the country, and it’s been on top for years. According to Gabriel Winant, a historian at the University of Chicago, and author of “The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America,” not only are those two opposing trends related, but there are also some serious consequences to the connection.

From Mathew Brady’s Civil War photographs, to some of the first images of Earth in space, photography has shaped the way we see ourselves. Which means that when photographic technology changes and progresses, it can really shift our self-image. Ainissa Ramirez is a scientist and the author of The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, and she was previously on Innovation Hub to talk about how materials science altered the way we think about time. Now, she tells the fascinating story of how people shaped photographs and how those photographs then shaped us. And that story begins with an incredibly rich man betting on horses.

It might be difficult to remember now, but there was a time when the news wasn’t 24/7. There were morning and evening editions of the paper; the nightly news was, well, nightly; radio offered updates from time to time. But there’s a whole lot of difference between that world and today’s never-stop cavalcade of heartbreak, tragedy, excitement, and despair. And one of the biggest dividing lines between those two realities was the creation of CNN. Journalist Lisa Napoli is the author of “Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News,” and she argues that CNN didn’t just change television, or cable, or even news… it changed our entire world.

It might be hard to believe, but there was a time when time wasn’t as exact as it is now. When people would come over on “Tuesday” rather than “Tuesday at exactly 2:30.” Ainissa Ramirez is a scientist and author of The Alchemy of Us How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, and she tells the story of how Materials Science made time so important. Strangely enough, it involves a woman who sold time, using a watch named Arnold.

Cities and states have lost billions of dollars in combined tax revenues during the economic downturn, caused by the coronavirus pandemic. A change that the Trump administration made to the tax code a few years ago, has also diminished some local coffers, because it has caused a slice of super-wealthy residents in high-tax states such as California and New York to move to places with lower taxes, like Florida and Texas. With rising economic inequality, the exodus of even a fraction of the 1% (and their taxes) can impact everyone who is left behind - especially the most vulnerable, according to Richard Florida. A professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and co-founder of CityLab, Florida explains the long-lasting consequences of wealth flight.

The way we understand the eras we live through — from world wars, to the rise of the internet in the 2000s, to the pandemic of today — also directly impacts the economy. That’s according to Robert Shiller, a winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics, a professor of economics at Yale, and the author of “Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events.” He argues that the big events we experience and our perception of them shape the stock market in serious ways, often priming it for a boom or a bust.

He’s on our money, our capital is named after him and he’s even in our extremely weird car ads. But how much do you really know about statesman, general, farmer, slave master, husband, stepfather, and first President of the United States George Washington? According to Alexis Coe, author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, probably not as much as you might think. Coe walks us through the surprising life of the man on the one dollar bill.

In the 1930s, America experienced the Great Depression, the New Deal, and leadership from both Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. California, meanwhile, witnessed a serious shift in the Republican Party - a shift that would impact the entire country for decades to come. Kathryn Olmsted, professor of history at the University of California Davis and author of Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism, says that all sorts of factors came together to make conservatives see the government “as a force for evil instead of a force for protecting the markets.” From crops to communism, she explains how California paved the way for modern conservatism.

In the spring, more than 50 million K-12 students were hurriedly sent home as the nation’s public schools shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some of those students have returned to their classrooms now, for full or partial in-person instruction, while others have continued with distance learning or quit public school systems altogether. Paul Reville, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Pedro Noguera, dean of the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education discuss the changes afoot in American education and the consequences for students across the country. Remote learning has placed a heavy burden on many parents, including Courtney Wittenstein, Maria Makarenkova and Jenna Ruiz, who share their experiences and the decisions they have made about their children’s education during the pandemic. And Joseph Connor, the co-founder and chief operating officer of the company, SchoolHouse explains why COVID-19 has led to an increasing interest in microschools and learning pods.

There was a moment in early 2020 when life narrowed and the grocery store became a lifeline — in more ways than one. It was the source of breakfast, lunch and dinner, of course. But those lines emerging from sliding glass doors and wrapping around the block? For a while, they were as close to a social life as we could get, one of our last connections to the outside world. And, when certain items were in short supply in the early days of the pandemic, we were forced to think a lot more about where our food comes from. The importance of the supermarket is no mystery to Benjamin Lorr, author of “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket,” and John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods and author of "Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business." From their general store origins in the 19th century to the vast supply chains we see today, grocery stores have played a hugely influential role in our society — becoming “as American as jazz or the t-shirt,” Lorr says. But, as he explains, there is also a dark side to our brightly-lit food aisles and a cost to our endless options and two-for-one deals.

If you have a cough or a fever nowadays, you know exactly what to do: go to the doctor, get a COVID test, and quarantine so you can stop the spread. But we also know that plenty of people contract COVID-19 and transmit it before they know they have it — and some people never even realize that they are contagious at all. So, when it comes to asymptomatic carriers, how do you shut down the line of transmission? According to Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the answer is wide-scale and frequent rapid testing. The tests are cheap, effective enough to find the superspreaders, and currently exist in large numbers in some countries. However, in the U.S. there is no easy access to at-home, instant-result rapid tests yet.

When we last spoke with Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, about COVID-19 and obesity back in June, the pandemic was still relatively new. We didn’t know how long it would take to get a vaccine, how many would be affected or who would struggle the most. Mozaffarian was just beginning to sift through some of the early hospitalization data, and he noticed one risk factor that seemed to be particularly risky: obesity. Now, with far more data at our fingertips, it’s clear that America’s slow-moving obesity problem has intensified the coronavirus pandemic. Plus, Mozaffarian says greater attention to our diets could have a huge positive impact on future disease prevention as well as on economic security, racial equity and climate change.

The pandemic has been a catastrophe for tourism and travel, upending an almost $9 trillion industry that once accounted for approximately 330 million jobs around the world. And there continues to be great uncertainty about what the future holds. When will everyone feel safe to fly again? When we do, where will we want to go, and will we be able to afford it? The road to recovery for American leisure and business travel will be long and complicated, according to Henry Harteveldt, an industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group. Elizabeth Becker, the author of “Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism,” believes the pandemic has a silver lining though. She says it has created an opportunity for U.S. policy makers to tackle tourism’s impact on the environment and its contribution to climate change. The industry can build back in a more sustainable way, she argues.

You might not think that a simulation meant for kids could change how something plays out in real life, but in the 1990s, the arcade game NBA Jam did exactly that. One feature of the game allowed players to be “on fire.” The more a player scored, the higher chance he or she had of scoring again. Fast forward to today and you can’t escape the concept of a hot streak, or a “hot hand”' as it’s called in basketball. Athletes swear by it, even refusing to touch another player’s “hot” hand. But is a hot streak as real as some people believe it to be? Ben Cohen, a sports writer for The Wall Street Journal and author of “The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks,” argues that the idea of a hot hand is very real — and it isn’t exclusive to basketball either.

From our smartphones to our bicycles, the user experience provided by manufactured products has an enormous impact on our lives. Down to the smallest details, designers often puzzle over how to best align a product with the demands of the customer. But that wasn’t always the approach, and Cliff Kuang, author of User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play, explains how this revolution of design has taken hold and dramatically changed our patterns of consumption and use.

In offices around the country, mail has piled up. Plants have died. Coffee cups sit unwashed, with a ring of old espresso cemented to the bottom. In some buildings, the lights have been left on since March — and who knows when someone will be back to turn them off. According to Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, we’re in the middle of “a structural, seismic shift” in the workplace. The majority of employees booted out of the office earlier this year don’t want to come back, says Liz Fosslein, head of content at human resources company Humu. So have we seen the end of the “out of office” email, water cooler talk and cubicle-sharing? When people finally return to the office, what will it look like? And where will it be?

In the past few months, a pandemic of mental health has shadowed COVID-19. Across the country, cases of depression, anxiety, alcoholism and domestic violence have been on the rise — intensifying an existing shortage of mental health care providers. With shutdowns and social distancing guidelines, access to therapy has also changed dramatically, with a forced transition to online sessions. This switch to telepsychiatry is a big move but, according to Dr. Peter Yellowlees, a psychiatry professor at the University of California Davis, there might be a silver lining. Yellowlees, the former president of the American Telemedicine Association, began practicing teletherapy nearly 30 years ago to help meet rural psychiatry needs in the Australian outback. Technology advances steadily opened new avenues to online psychiatry, but conventional attitudes and inflexible licensing processes have held the field back for years, Yellowlees says. COVID-19, though, has thrust therapy into a new, virtual world, and Yellowlees believes we are now getting a glimpse of the future.

About 1500 years ago, the world was a very different place; Pope Gregory was spreading Catholicism far and wide, a plague was running rampant, and some dominoes were about to start falling. The end of that cascade would end up in a world where a certain group of people started to think quite differently from those who had come before them. Their brains began to change, the societies they built thrived and they grew so influential and culturally dominant that their way of thinking permeated our entire psychology. In other words, it created W.E.I.R.D. people — a Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and Democratic population that grew into a global powerhouse. That’s according to Joseph Henrich, chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and author of “The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.” He writes that people who learn to read, who are educated in a Western way – no matter where they live in the world – have brains that look and think unlike more traditional human brains.

In the spring, more than 50 million K-12 students were hurriedly sent home as the nation’s public schools shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some of those students have returned to their classrooms now, for full or partial in-person instruction, while others have continued with distance learning or quit public school systems altogether. Paul Reville, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Pedro Noguera, dean of the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education discuss the changes afoot in American education and the consequences for students across the country. Remote learning has placed a heavy burden on many parents, including Courtney Wittenstein, Maria Makarenkova and Jenna Ruiz, who share their experiences and the decisions they have made about their children’s education during the pandemic. And Joseph Connor, the co-founder and chief operating officer of the company, SchoolHouse explains why COVID-19 has led to an increasing interest in microschools and learning pods.

The pandemic has made life as an artist hard — real hard. Museums and studios have closed, live shows have been canceled and concerts have been pushed online. But according to William Deresiewicz, this is just the most recent act in a long, profound shift in the arts. Deresiewicz, a former English professor at Yale University and author of “The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech,” says the digital age has devastated and demonetized the arts — whether that’s music, videos, visual art or the written word. We’re facing the loss of the moderately successful artist and “you can’t have even the stars without an ecosystem that supports them,” he says. So where does that leave us?

Years of good marketing may have convinced us that life isn’t complete without a junk drawer, overflowing closet or unusable garage. Now, according to historian Wendy Woloson, Americans are suffering from the outright “crapification” of their lives. So where do we go from here? And how do we clear out that closet? Woloson, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University Camden and author of “Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America,” says our relationship with junk goes way back. We’re naturally drawn to possessions for “our comfort, for our safety, for our sense of identity,” she explains. But Americans’ modern courtship with cheap goods began in the late 19th century as manufacturing geared up and trade networks went global. Enter plastic toys, collectible spoons, old erasers and gift store knickknacks. They’re all souvenirs from a long journey of capitalism and consumption.

Some scientists and environmentalists believe that the novel coronavirus is nature’s warning to us about the unsustainable ways we have been living. The rate of human development and the encroachment into the natural habitats of wild animals have left us dangerously susceptible to the spread of deadly infectious diseases, they say. CNN host and Washington Post columnist, Fareed Zakaria, also fears the current crisis could be a “dress rehearsal” for an even more deadly threat, because disruptive human behaviors have made future pandemics even more likely. Zakaria, the author of the new book: “Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World,” argues this is a moment when global cooperation and positive change are not just necessary, but achievable.

Over the past month, the Senate has rushed to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court. Both Republicans and Democrats have claimed that the other is inappropriately reshaping, or considering reshaping, the Court. But how did the Supreme Court get so caught up in politics? And is there a way out? David Orentlicher, professor of law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and author of “Two Presidents Are Better Than One: The Case for a Bipartisan Executive Branch,” studies high courts around the world. He says part of the problem is that the U.S. Constitution sets few rules in stone — and that paves the way for partisanship and controversy. But could we do things differently? Absolutely. Indeed, he says there are lots of ideas we could borrow from abroad.

While some of us may be tempted to put our hopes in the development of a miracle vaccine or magical cure for the new coronavirus, holding out for a perfect solution could be unwise. The rapid and extensive use of a number of imperfect prevention and treatment methods, is the key to turning the tide, according to Dr. Joshua Schiffer. Schiffer, an associate professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses the benefits of some effective, although far from flawless, tools in the battle against COVID-19. It’s an approach that reminds him of swiss cheese, he says, because “each of these strategies has holes but, if you apply all of them, fewer infections break through.”

Last April, states began to sporadically reopen after weeks of being shut down. South Carolina was among the first to begin the process and some others would soon follow, while some states wouldn’t start until June. The uncoordinated reopening caused chaos, according to Sinan Aral, director of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. As people watched their social feeds fill with images of people heading back outside, they stepped out too — even if their state wasn’t at the same phase. Aral, author of “The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health — and How We Must Adapt,” has used social media as a tool to gain insight into everything from COVID-19 reopenings to protests and politics.

In the past six months, tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs and the federal government has provided more than $400 billion in unemployment benefits. With states pressed to pay for the epic costs of coronavirus, what if there was a more efficient way to get support to those out of work? What if we could save money while guaranteeing jobs? According to Pavlina Tcherneva, associate professor of economics at Bard College and author of “The Case for a Job Guarantee,” there’s a way to do exactly that. It would be cheaper — and better all-around for job seekers — to ensure across-the-board access to employment rather than unemployment checks, she says. But does the math really add up?

The pandemic has caused a steep economic decline in the U.S. But many experts worried we were already in trouble before the coronavirus because of the rise of economic powerhouses with huge populations, such as China and India. That has also been a concern of Matthew Yglesias who has a radical solution for our economic woes: take the current U.S. population and triple it in the decades to come. Yglesias, the co-founder of Vox and the author of “One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger,” walks us through his progressive proposals, which he argues are far from fantastical.

On Oct. 4, 1957, Russia shocked the U.S. by launching the world’s first artificial satellite into orbit. Sputnik’s launch ignited a 20-year Space Race that would put men on the moon and push science and technology forward leaps and bounds. Now, as COVID-19 shocks the world again, Regina Dugan says we could be entering a new era marked by big breakthroughs in medical science. Dugan, former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and CEO of Wellcome Leap, says this Health Age could lower research costs, speed up clinical trials and improve mental health treatments — and bring us a coronavirus vaccine along the way. The first step in all of this? Capturing the nation’s imagination to go beyond what we think possible.

As COVID-19 began to sweep through the U.S. in early March, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, among others, declared it the “great equalizer” — an experience uniquely universal. But six months and 200,000 deaths later, it’s clear that the pandemic has made an unequal society, well, more unequal. According to political scientist and international risk consultant Ian Bremmer, economic disparity and political polarization are on the rise globally too. When we finally reach a long-sought post-pandemic world, steady access to education, testing and travel will give the wealthy a headstart to recovery, says Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. Plus, according to Megan Scudellari, a health and science journalist, that recovery is still a long way off.

During this pandemic, we may be acutely aware that our love lives and family lives are entwined with the technology that’s all around us. But in fact, machines have been re-inventing our relationships since the days of the ancient plow, which likely led to the birth of marriage itself. That’s according to Debora Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School and former president of Barnard College. Spar, the author of “Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny,” takes us on a journey through the technologies - from the steam engine to the refrigerator - that have affected when, how, and with whom we partner up. And we get a glimpse into a future with no masterplan for how the technologies we have built will further evolve and change us.

People have been reporting all kinds of strange sleep habits during the pandemic, and, according to sleep experts, it makes sense. Dr. Rebecca Spencer, a professor of brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Dr. Amita Sehgal, a molecular biologist at the University of Pennsylvania, know that the sleep we get can be a reflection of the lives we lead. We dive into how the stresses and strains of these unpredictable times - not to mention greatly increased screen use - have disrupted our natural biological rhythms, and find out what it takes to get a good night’s rest.

Election season is upon us and everywhere you look someone is trying to coax you to vote for their candidate or issue. As we all know, old habits die hard and getting a person to shift their deeply-held opinions, political or otherwise, isn’t easy. Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of, “The Catalyst - How To Change Anyone’s Mind,” explains why reaching a tipping point isn’t about pushing for more but asking for less -- at least initially.

Colleges and universities nationwide were already facing a challenging landscape before the pandemic, but the fall of 2020 is testing them in ways they never could have anticipated. Some are doing remote-only learning, some are hybrid, and some are fully in-person. And this academic year could be the tipping point that potentially upends the entire higher education sector. According to Jeff Selingo, the former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education and author of “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions,” institutions may need to rethink the way they serve their students, if they want to survive.

Young adults have often been criticized during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, as some colleges and universities open up their campuses for in-person and online classes, complaints and warnings to students are ratcheting up. But Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, doesn’t believe that a punitive approach is the best way to reopen schools. She discusses a holistic public health strategy that she says will support students, instead of shaming them, and enlist their help in the fight against the spread of COVID-19.

It’s no secret that men and women are different — it’s the punchline of a hundred jokes. But does our sex really show in our brains, or is there something else at play? Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at Aston University in the U.K. and author of “Gender and Our Brains,” argues that sex doesn’t play nearly as big a role in influencing our brains as we might think. Rather, she says, social cues likely start to influence children at very, very young ages - and it is those cues that account for many of the differences we see.

When you hear the name “Stanford,” chances are a certain university in Palo Alto, CA will come to mind. But you may be less familiar with the story of Leland Stanford, the university’s founder. As a railway entrepreneur and key player in West Coast politics, Stanford lived a controversial life that changed the history of California, strengthened a divided nation, and planted the seeds for the rise of Silicon Valley.

Humans 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.

Americans 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.

As the 2020 presidential election approaches, fears about the security of our democracy are heightening, particularly as COVID-19 forces us to adapt our voting practices. Many states are expanding access to mail-in voting, prompting cries of fraud from the Trump administration. But maybe it’s traditional voting machines that we should really be worried about, instead of mailed-in paper ballots, says J. Alex Halderman. Halderman is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan whose research focuses on computer security and privacy, and throughout his career, he’s examined the intersection of politics and technology. That’s included extensive work on the security of voting technology used in the United States, and its susceptibility to cyberattacks.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the world has seemed a little quieter. But that doesn’t mean you’re not being inundated with noise. Whether the sound is something you chose, like music or our podcast, or something outside of your control, like traffic outside or planes overhead, it’s likely that you rarely experience true silence. According to David Owen, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World,” all that noise is permanently changing humanity’s ability to hear.

With 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 “Superior: The Return of Race Science”, looks at how racial prejudice in the past was justified through science, and why she fears this ‘rationality’ is making a comeback with the current, global nationalist rhetoric.

Those 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.

These days, it feels like everyone is thinking about risk. Is it a good idea to travel by airplane? Is it OK to visit parents? Is it safe to go to a park? But if you want to truly understand risk, it might be a good idea to turn to an unlikely source… poker. That’s according to Maria Konnikova, a journalist and author of the book The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned To Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. In writing the book, Konnikova set out to discover what poker can teach us about psychology, probability, and, yes, risk. She certainly didn’t set out to win over $300,000 playing professional poker... but sometimes a bet really pays off.

It was once a virtue to have some excess weight, kids weren’t considered picky eaters, and the term “overweight” didn’t even exist. What changed? Helen Zoe Veit, an associate professor of history at Michigan State University, and author of “Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century,” joined us to talk about how America began to moralize the food that we eat — or don’t eat.

COVID-19 has dramatically changed the lives of millions of families, with some parents losing their jobs while others struggle to keep them. For working parents, careers are competing now, more than ever, with another pressing responsibility—caring for their children. Betsey Stevenson, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, explains how the burden of childcare during COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on women and why the pandemic could have a lasting effect on gender equality in the workplace for years to come.

“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” The urgency behind this sentiment is stronger than ever at a time when misinformation is everywhere. So how has Wikipedia, famous for allowing anyone to edit, become a paragon for truth? Andrew Lih, author of “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia” and the Wikimedia Strategist for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, breaks down where Wikipedia came from, how it works, and where it could be headed.

The U.S. loosened its lockdown measures far too early, even as cases of COVID-19 were on the rise, and now we are paying the price. That’s the verdict of Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who back in May called the rush to reopen a “hodgepodge” because several states ignored important health and safety guidelines. As the pandemic rages on, Osterholm discusses the steps that are needed to control the spread of the virus, advances in testing and treatment, and what the future could hold.

The United States’ disjointed and detrimental response to the COVID-19 pandemic stands in stark contrast to the actions we’ve seen in other countries. While some people elsewhere seem more than willing to wear masks and avoid close contact with others, many Americans have balked at measures that they see as encroaching on personal freedoms, even as COVID-19 cases begin to spiral out of control once more. There are several factors at play, including what some have described as a failure of leadership at the national level. But, according to Michele Gelfand, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland and author of “Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World,” we can also look to cultural and social norms.

Science in the 1600s wasn’t an especially safe endeavor. People were burned at the stake for saying that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Galileo Galilei narrowly avoided that particular fate, but was placed under house arrest. That’s… pretty different from our modern world, where we’re all relying on scientists to understand the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, and, hopefully, come up with a vaccine. How did we get to this point? Well, part of the reason is that, in 1660, a group of natural philosophers and thinkers came together to found what would become known as The Royal Society. That’s according to Adrian Tinniswood, author of The Royal Society: And the Invention of Modern Science. He walks us through the important legacy of the oldest scientific institution in the world, and how it helped shape evidence-based science.

There 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 understand why people often feel compelled to connect to - and help - each other. The answer he arrived at was that, although humans are capable of a lot of bad things, it turns out being good has long been coded into our biology