Innovation Hub

First, we revisit a classic debate: nature vs. nurture. One way to settle it? Through the lens of twin studies, which have opened up some curious revelations about how our genes affect us. Next, we turn to the 19th-century Midwest, and look at how Laura Ingalls Wilder reframed American history in the ‘Little House’ house series. Then, you sent us a whole lot of feedback about a recent segment on whether we spend too much money on education in the U.S. - and whether college educations are overvalued. Here’s some of it.

Seeing double? It’s not your imagination - birth rates of twins have been rising sharply, and twin studies are now, more than ever, influencing various disciplines. Everyone from economists, to religious scholars, to scientists see the value in studying twins. Nancy Segal, author of “Born Together-Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study,” talks to us about the far-reaching effects of twins. And if you’re not a twin yourself, don’t feel left out, because what we learn from twins can lead to breakthroughs that impact us all. Segal, a professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, explains how twins can teach us about nature vs. nurture, parenting styles, and preventative medicine.

For 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 a child, Wilder endured “an almost brutal lifestyle,” according to Caroline Fraser, a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, and author of the book “Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.” On this week’s show, Fraser talks to us about how Wilder reinvented American history, recast her own life, and what the books - and controversy over them - has to teach us.

Are college kids becoming more fragile? Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says yes. And he connects the change to parenting, polarization, and campus politics. How a Coney Island sideshow helped save infants’ lives. Termites! They may be super gross… but we can also learn a lot from them.

First, what does a well-rounded education mean to you? Does it make you smarter? Or are you simply jumping through hoops to try and impress future employers? George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan argues that the way the system is set up, it’s mostly become a hoop-jumping exercise. Then, it’s not that hard to imagine a place where ordinary people - not editors - determine the news. But when the website Reddit first launched in the mid-2000s, the idea was groundbreaking and few could imagine the enormous influence the company would have.

We 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 percent 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 topic. He says that “the world might be better off without college for everyone,” and believes it’s time to rethink our current approach to higher education. Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, and author of “The Case Against Education: Why The Education System Is A Waste of Time and Money” On this week’s show, he talks to us about why so many college graduates struggle to find a job, why employers increasingly require college degrees (or higher) from job applicants, and why he thinks that cutti

Reddit is the fifth most popular website in the U.S. and has become a focal point when discussing the  intersection of technology and free speech. Communities on Reddit host lighter topics, ranging from financial advice to gardening. But it also has a dark side. Reddit has been known as a breeding ground for racist, sexist, and obscene dialogue. On a site where members have free reign to vote on what content is most interesting, Reddit can be viewed as a canary in the coal mine for issues that have roiled the tech world. Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, author of new book “We Are The Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet’s Culture Laboratory” describes the origin of Reddit and what its successes and shortcomings can teach us.

Brexit is just one of many issues threatening to tear the European Union apart. But where did the idea of European integration come from and was the concept doomed from the start? We talk to Gillian Tett from the Financial Times and Brown University’s Mark Blyth about the past, present and future of the EU. Then, ever text your crush and stare anxiously at your phone until he or she responded? As society and technology evolves, our expectations for wait times are changing too. And the result is a whole lot of impatience.

The vision of a united Europe was born out of the ashes of the Second World War. Early supporters included former British prime minister Winston Churchill, who was one of the first to champion the idea of a “United States of Europe.” The 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 details of their country’s divorce from the European Union, two and a half years after the Brexit referendum, Gillian Tett, U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times, and Blyth discuss the forces uniting Europe and the many issues threatening to tear it apart.

If you’ve ever been in line at the DMV, had your flight delayed, desperately needed an email reply to come NOW, or had a YouTube video buffer for more than a couple seconds, you know that waiting is awful. But what can we learn from it? According to Jason Farman, author of “Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World,” the answer is quite a lot. And it touches on everything from aboriginal message sticks, to pneumatic tubes, to loading icons.

First, whether it’s FDR reassuring the nation through radio or Trump talking about hamburgers on Twitter, new technologies have always impacted American politics. Historian Jill Lepore walks us through the interactions between the machine of government and the tech we think can make that machine run better. Hint: it rarely works out as we anticipate. Then, if you really, absolutely, can’t wait to know who’s going to end up on the Iron Throne… well, there’s a scientific reason you care so much about fictional characters. Scholar William Flesch explains what makes us so involved in shows like The Wire, All In The Family, and yes, Game of Thrones. And finally, we hear from you. We got a lot of responses to our recent segment about the surge in extracurricular math programs for K-12 students. And we’ll hear why math is too often a stumbling block for students hoping to get college degrees.

There 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 newspapers, radio, TV and other technologies in check, often come too late.

Finding out that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father probably didn’t have any practical implications for your life. It didn’t translate into a raise at work or help you lose 15 pounds. So why do we care so much about the fates of fictional characters? William Flesch is the author of the book “Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction.” He argues that we root for good guys and gals because we love making bets on people. And, once we make those bets, it’s imperative that we are proven right.

First, it might be tough to keep up with your New Year’s resolutions - especially if they have to do with dieting. But here’s some good news: some fats may be a lot better for you than you think and calorie counting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We take a look at the latest developments in nutrition science, and explain what it all means for your waistline. Then, we take a trip on the high seas and ask the question: How did America become such a dominant figure in global trade? As author Steven Ujifusa explains, you can thank some daring fortune hunters - and 19th-century clipper ships. Next, if you open up your closet, you might notice your clothes aren’t much different from what your grandparents wore. Shirts? Check. Dresses? Check. Pants? Double check. But what if someone combined technology and clothing, like jackets that adapt to your body temperature? We meet the hackers who are doing just that.

When 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 think, and why he believes that government should play a much bigger role in influencing our food choices.

Back 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 like tea to the U.S., but also by smuggling opium to China. We talk with Steven Ujifusa, a historian and author of “Barons of the Sea: And their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship,” about these vessels - which once raced across the ocean - and the owners who used them to reshape America.

Right now, there’s a wearable device for pretty much everything. Fitbits track your footsteps. Virtual reality headsets can transport you anywhere in the world. There’s even jewelry that lets others know when you’re in danger. But there isn’t much tech in the things we’re already wearing: clothes. We visit the Ministry of Supply, a company that’s trying to mix high-tech and apparel, and talk with the company’s founders, Gihan Amarasiriwardena and Aman Advani.

The New Year is often seen as a blank slate. It’s a way to start fresh and maybe accomplish those goals you’ve been putting off for the last 365 days. But how you learn is just as important as what you learn. Our show this week will get you ready to tackle whatever is on your agenda. First, if you truly want to learn better, put down the highlighter. Author Ulrich Boser says strategies such as memorization and underlining passages in a book are outdated methods of studying. He proposes a six-step method to learning new skills, so that they truly stick. Next, we take you back to 10th-grade Spanish class. Kind of. A new study pinpoints when language-learning skills start to decline - and what that means for aspiring hyperpolyglots. Then, if you considered math to be a four-letter word when you were a kid... you’re not alone. But there’s now a program that might be able to engage kids in a new way. Innovation Hub Senior Producer Elizabeth Ross reports on the Russian School of Mathematics, an fast-spreading

You’ve probably experienced this: it’s high school, the night before an exam, and you’ve got a 500-page textbook in your left hand and highlighters in your right hand. You have highlighted all the important information in the book, and there isn’t a whole lot of white space left. Unfortunately, you’re not sure that you’ve absorbed any of the material in a meaningful way. Turns out, there is little evidence that highlighting and underlining material in books is a good strategy for successful learning, according to Ulrich Boser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and the author of the book “Learn Better.” Boser talks to us about the science of learning, and how we can absorb information more effectively.

Learning a second language is tough. You have to consider grammar, pronunciation, and, sometimes, words that don’t even exist in your native language. And the conventional wisdom had been: if you want a child to learn a second language, start them as young as possible. But a new study has found that there’s a little more leeway than we originally thought. We talk with Boston College assistant psychology professor Joshua Hartshorne about his and his colleagues’ research and what it means for aspiring hyperpolyglots.