Innovation Hub

Talk 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 out, we talk with NYU sociology professor Patrick Sharkey about his book “Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence.”

Unless 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 of it is shaping the world.

When 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, along with the cities we build, drive a lot of it.

What 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.

Doctor 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 people doesn’t understand the power of these chemicals. We talk to Epstein, author of, “Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything,” about how we came to understand the endocrine system.

What 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 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 presents both challenges and opportunities, according to Joseph Coughlin, author of, “The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market.”

Are 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.

For 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 generation.

In 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 European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies.”

Termites 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 lot we can learn from termites.

Work 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 Kasparov says: we shouldn’t hate robots; we should work with them.

When 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 decades. He’s the author of “Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance — and What We Can Do About It.”

During 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. Liza Mundy is the author of “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II,” and she tells us about this little-known part of American history.

For 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.”

Willpower 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.

We 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.

Nearly 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.”

Back 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 Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. He recently wrote a companion essay to Abraham Flexner’s 1939 piece, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” explaining why Flexner’s ideas are even more relevant today. We talk with Dijkgraaf about why governments should fund more basic research that doesn’t necessarily have immediate results, like the project at Stanford – and how it can actually reap huge rewards in the long run.

First, 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 committing a crime if their brain isn’t fully developed? There’s no easy answer to that one. But the emerging field of neurolaw is trying to figure out those types of questions.

Humans 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.”

He 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.

Francis 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 — especially adolescents — and how we sentence people. We talk with Shen about the influence neurolaw has on society and how the field has developed over time.

Taking 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 ranging from LGBT rights to federal land management. Nordstrom even took a stand on Ivanka Trump. And according to Duke University associate professor Aaron Chatterji, there are a lot of complicated reasons for that. Next, a split-second after a test of the atomic bomb, James Conant thought the world was going to end. It didn’t, of course, but the creation of the bomb was a transformational event. One that James Conant, a scientist and former President of Harvard, played a large role in. His grandaughter, author Jennet Conant, talks about his legacy, his leadership in The Manhattan Project, and what Conant, Robert Oppenheimer and others can teach us about using cutting-edge science to create weapons of war. And finally, the business of sustainable energy isn’t always that, well… sustainable. Jay Whitacre, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, would know. His clean energy startup, Aquion Energy, filed for bankruptcy last year, despite raising $200 million from investors. We talk with him about the challenges facing companies — and researchers — focused on sustainable energy. And he tells us why the future still looks bright, at least outside the U.S.

In April, a Starbucks employee in Philadelphia called the police on two black men standing in a store. It was a PR nightmare. So a month later, Starbucks employees underwent a mandatory racial bias training that closed thousands of stores across the country and cost the company millions of dollars. It goes to show that today, people want more from companies. They don’t just expect good products, and quality service — they want company leadership to take stances on major social issues. We talk with Duke University associate professor Aaron Chatterji about what's motivating big business to get more political.

Growing up, Thanksgivings in Jennet Conant’s house were contentious. The Vietnam War was raging, and in Cambridge, MA, student protests were ubiquitous. But Conant’s family was especially combative. Her grandfather, James B. Conant, a former president of Harvard University, had both supervised the production of poison gas during World War I, and oversaw the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. And Conant’s father argued her grandfather wasn’t a scientist who had served his country, but a mass murderer. Jennet Conant is the author of a new biography of her grandfather, “Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist,” as well other books about war, science, and the intersection of the two. She explains what happens when people use science to create weapons - and the fallout for the scientists themselves.

Hybrid cars. Solar energy. Hydropower. In recent years, the federal government and private companies have both paid a lot of attention to clean energy. But, the future of the industry is uncertain — especially in the U.S. We talk with Carnegie Mellon University professor and Aquion Energy founder, Jay Whitacre, about the advancement of new energy technology.

First, U.S. News releases its college rankings each year to much fanfare. But are they actually hurting higher ed? We ask journalist Scott Jaschik and U.S. News’ Robert Morse. Then, there will be 10 billion people on the planet by 2050. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. Can we do it without destroying Earth’s resources? We talk with science writer Charles Mann about the different approaches to tackling this problem. Finally, you’ve heard the name Martin Shkreli, but there are many other executives responsible for hiking drug prices. We peek into the complex world of Big Pharma.

In 1983, U.S. News & World Report began to rank America’s colleges. More than 30 years later, they continue to release yearly lists of the “best” schools in the U.S. We talk with Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik and U.S. News’ Robert Morse about how these rankings have shaped how students select colleges in America.

The global population is steadily climbing, and by 2050, scientists expect that 10 billion people will call Earth home. This got science writer Charles Mann wondering: How are we going to feed all of those mouths without completely destroying the planet? Mann explores this question in his new book, “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World.” We talk with him about whether innovation, conservation, or some mixture of the two, that will save humanity.

In 1983, U.S. News & World Report began to rank America’s colleges. More than 30 years later, they continue to release yearly lists of the “best” schools in the U.S. We talk with Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik and U.S. News’ Robert Morse about how these rankings have shaped how students select colleges in America.

First: Scurvy. Website design. Store promotions. Turns out, randomized trials affect many parts of our daily lives. Then: “The Origin of Species”… actually has a pretty interesting - and unexpected - origin. Finally: In news that shouldn’t shock anyone who has ever been to a meeting, they can make you less productive. But how about the toll they take even before they start?

Think of the last impulse buy you made at the grocery store. Maybe the item was placed at eye level. Or perhaps it was a Snickers bar you saw in the checkout line. Either way, that product was put there by design, not dumb luck, and most of these placements were decided through randomized trials. We talk to with Andrew Leigh, author of “Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World,” about how these tests affect everyday life and impact the decisions we make.

This summer, 160 years ago, it dawned on Charles Darwin that he might have to go public with the theory of evolution. He had been working on his theory slowly, gradually building it out for decades. And Darwin probably would have kept working on it, if not for a letter he received from English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, which outlined Wallace’s own ideas about natural selection; ideas that, unfortunately for Darwin, were very similar to his own. Iain McCalman, author of “Darwin’s Armada: Four Voyages and the Battle for the Theory of Evolution, walks us through the complicated origins (no pun intended) of the theory of evolution, and how that theory changed everything from biology to religion to politics.

Imagine you have a meeting in 30 minutes. Are you more likely to spend that half hour A) catching up on email and the news or B) getting a start on that report you’ve been putting off? If you answered A, you’re not alone. It turns out that people aren’t very productive in the time before a scheduled activity. We talked with Rutgers Business School professor Gabriela Tonietto about why free time feels diminished when we have an upcoming task.

Today, the Food Network is a touchstone of the entertainment industry. But it took a decade for the channel to make money. Chef Sara Moulton and author Allen Salkin tell us about the rise and influence of the cooking channel. Plus: If you use Uber Eats more than you use your stove, you're in good company — 90 percent of Americans either don't like to cook or are on the fence about it. With cooking becoming more hobby than necessity, we look at how the food industry is trying to keep up. Finally: You can thank Howard Johnson's for those roadside plazas you see on interstates. Yale historian Paul Freedman talks with us about the restaurants that changed the way America eats.

If you knew what was going on behind the scenes at the Food Network during the ‘90s, you might have placed a hefty wager that it would fail. Chefs were cooking in incomplete kitchens, and couldn't stop filming — even if they got hurt. It was a mess. Even Sara Moulton, one of the Food Network’s earliest stars, didn’t think the channel would survive. But not only did it survive — it thrived. We talk to Moulton about her early days at the Food Network, and with author Allen Salkin about his book, “From Scratch: The Uncensored History of the Food Network.”

When we sit down to binge watch a season of Chopped, we rarely do it to learn a new cooking technique. In fact, the Food Network might actually discourage us from trying our hand in the kitchen. We speak with industry analyst Eddie Yoon about the future of grocery stores and food companies, in a world where cooking is no longer considered an indispensable skill.

2015 was the first year that Americans spent more money on bars and restaurants than on groceries. And with attention-grabbing chefs and buzzy new places to eat, it feels like restaurants have never been more central to American life. But how did we get there? Paul Freedman, Yale historian and author of the book “Ten Restaurants That Changed America,” charts the course from Delmonico’s to Howard Johnson’s.

First: Americans love small businesses, but economist Robert D. Atkinson says that big business is better for workers, consumers, and the world. Then: From standard measurements to interchangeable parts, precision engineering created the modern world. Author Simon Winchester explains how the precision revolution got started in the first place. Finally: We tend to become friends with people who share our interests and passions. But the connections don’t stop there—new research now shows that the brain activity of close friends is similar.

Ever since Thomas Jefferson championed the “yeoman farmer,” Americans across the political spectrum have romanticized small businesses. Politicians tout Mom-and-Pop companies as the backbone of the economy. But, if you run the numbers, small businesses don’t live up to the hype, according to economist Robert D. Atkinson, co-author of the book “Big is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business.” Atkinson says that we should take a size-neutral approach to regulating businesses.

We rely on precision in every part of our lives. We take for granted the fact that if our car breaks down, we can buy a replacement part, instead of a whole new car. But there was a time before standardized car parts, standardized batteries, and standardized shoe sizes. In his new book “The Perfectionists,” author and journalist Simon Winchester set out to learn how the concept of precision came to be, and how it changed the world.

Choosing Friday night plans. Deciding what to wear to work. Selecting a new Netflix show to binge-watch. People are influenced by the tastes and opinions of their friends, and vice versa. But that doesn’t mean you’re a carbon copy of your social network— or does it? We talk with Carolyn Parkinson, an assistant professor of social psychology at UCLA, about why our brains might be more similar that we think.

We’re always so concerned about how to do something, but we don't always consider when we should do it. When should we start a new project? When should we take a nap? We talk to author Daniel Pink about why timing is everything. Even though beards are currently in style, there was a time when being clean shaven was the way to go. We take a look at the man who revolutionized the shaving industry. Plus, if it seems like food allergies are on the rise, they are. One in every 13 children in America has some sort of food allergy, which marks a huge spike over the last few decades. We look at what could be causing the allergy increase and what’s being done to combat it. Finally, killing rats may seem like the best way to deal with them. But, in fact, it’s probably not our best option when it comes to pest control. We find out what is.

Does it matter when you go in for an operation? When a jury hears your case? What year you're born in? The answer in all three of these cases: yes. Dan Pink took a deep dive into the science behind how timing affects our lives. He's author of the new book, "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing."

If you're the type of person who shaves, you've probably used a disposable razor at least once. But where did this seemingly ubiquitous part of American life come from? It all goes back to the late 19th century, and a man with the absolutely incredible name of King Camp Gillette.

Did you ever trade lunches at school when you were a kid? Maybe you gave away your peanut butter sandwich in exchange for some chocolate pudding. With rampant food allergies, a trade like that probably wouldn't happen today. And while schools and other organizations are very aware of the increased number of people who have allergies, we know little about what causes them. We talk to Dr. Wayne Shreffler, the director of the Food Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Katie Allen, the Group Leader of Gastro and Food Allergy at Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, about the rise of food allergies, how to prevent them, and treatments that are in the pipeline.

Rats: The bane of any city-dweller’s existence. We spend millions of dollars each year trying to kill these pests, putting out poison and traps. But new research poses the question: Should we be killing rats at all? Innovation Hub producer Marc Filippino reports on what could be a surprising new solution to rat control.

First, we talk with Kurt Beyer about the Queen of Software, Grace Hopper, and how her new ideas changed the tech world forever. Next, we give you Kisses. And Reese’s. And Kit Kats. We take a look at how Milton Hershey built one of the biggest chocolate empires the world has ever seen. Then, we’re all wondering when we can hop into our self-driving cars and watch Netflix on our way to work. But Rodney Brooks says: don’t expect it to happen tomorrow.

She’s been called “the first lady of software.” A conference named after her attracted over 18,000 attendees last year. She had her own Google doodle. She was even on Letterman. It’s fair to say that Grace Hopper is one of the most celebrated coders ever. But, behind all the accolades, who was she? And how exactly did she change technology? We talk with Kurt Beyer, author of “Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age.”