Innovation Hub

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 Dijkgraaf 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.

Behind movies like “Sunset Boulevard” and “Singin’ In The Rain,” there’s a real story about how Hollywood adapted to a groundbreaking innovation: sound.* *A smart watch might make sense… but a smart toilet? We talk with David Rose about the future of the connected home. Turns out, some members of the Amish community are using 3D printers. Find out how their community has thrived without - and with - technology.

IMAX, 3D glasses, VHS, technicolor… technology has continually reshaped Hollywood. But perhaps the biggest, most important change happened early in the industry’s history: the transition from silent films to talkies. Marc Wanamaker, a longtime Hollywood historian and consultant on films like “La La Land,” walks us through what happened, and how it forever transformed the silver screen.

David Rose has spent much of his career designing products that try to make the ordinary devices we use every day more magical: an umbrella that can tell you whether you actually need an umbrella that day, a pill bottle that alerts someone if you haven’t opened it in a while. We ask him how our products are learning more and more about us… and why that’s both good and bad.

How have the Amish thrived in a world without technology? They’ve hacked and innovated, says Elizabethtown College professor Donald Kraybill. Entrepreneurs can still succeed within the confines of their culture. It just takes a little imagination.

Turns out, the Russian Revolution can teach us a lot about the power of Twitter. Niall Ferguson walks us through the history of networks. Olympic athletes aren’t born with a tolerance for pain. They’ve just learned how to suffer. A tree a day keeps the doctor away. Florence Williams explains why going outside can make you feel better.

It’s easy to look at our social networks and think that they’re completely unprecedented. After all, it wasn’t like Abraham Lincoln could see how many likes he was getting on Facebook. But according to Niall Ferguson, that’s a narrow view of history. Ferguson, author of the new book, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook, explores how networks have altered the course of human events, and tells us what we can learn about our own social networks by examining the networks of the past.

As you watch Shaun White execute a trick on the halfpipe, or Ashley Wagner land a triple axel, or Lindsey Vonn race down the slope… you might ask yourself a question. What exactly separates me from these Olympic athletes? Obviously, there’s the years of training and the fact that they’re extraordinarily fit, but there’s also something else. Something mental. Something that lets them push their limits. To find out exactly what this is, we talked with Alex Hutchinson, author of Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance.

The sound of waves on a rocky beach. The smell of soil after the rain. The warmth of the sun on your skin. Nature just feels good. But a growing body of research suggests that it might be good for you, too. Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, explains why going outside can make you feel better.

Corporations and brands are weighing in on hot-button issues. Aaron Chatterji explains why that might be good for business. More than 10,000 women worked as codebreakers during World War II, but their contributions have largely been ignored. Liza Mundy tells their story. The jobs that went to China? Well, a lot of them are moving to Africa.

"The President Stole Your Land." These words stood front and center on the website of outdoor gear company Patagonia last year. The message followed President Trump's announcement that he would severely reduce the size of several national monuments in Utah. Patagonia is one of many companies that have started taking public stances on social and political issues. We speak with Duke University associate professor Aaron Chatterji about what's motivating big business to get more political.

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.

If you listen to politicians, it may seem like America is losing its manufacturing jobs to China. If you’ve listened to our show before, you know that’s not the whole picture. Automation has taken many jobs, China isn’t the only manufacturing powerhouse, and even when jobs do move to China... they don’t necessarily stay there. In fact, some Chinese manufacturing is moving to an area of the world you might not expect: Africa. Irene Yuan Sun, author of the forthcoming book The Next Factory of the World, has studied this shift, and she thinks that it’s a big deal.

What do Russian hackers want in the 2018 elections? P. W. Singer says they're not engaged in a charm offensive. Instead, they're trying to divide Americans and sow distrust of the media. Then, from your romantic partner to your boss, there's no way of escaping criticism. But Paul Green says that negative feedback is actually changing the way we create social circles. Finally, media outlets are catering their content to your clicks. But what does that do to the news? Franklin Foer talks about how the digital media landscape is evolving and what it takes to turn a profit.

At this point, it's obvious that Russia attempted to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. But on the brink of another season of primaries and elections, the question becomes: what happens now? Is Russia going to get involved in the 2018 elections? And what, if anything, can America do about it? To answer these questions, we talked to Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the New America think tank, and author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Whether it's at home or at the office, we're always facing criticism. And while feedback isn't always a bad thing, it can affect your relationships. We talk with Paul Green, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Business School, about his research on criticism and why it's important to build connections with people before doling out feedback.

For the last decade, newspaper circulation has seen a staggering drop. Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of today's adults get their news online. So how are journalism outlets adjusting to a digital world? We talk with Franklin Foer, author of the book, "World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech," about how social media and CEOs like Jeff Bezos have changed the journalism game.