Innovation Hub

Older Americans have the AARP. Gun owners have the NRA. But one of the biggest swaths of our population has very little political power.

It can be difficult to know what people are thinking. So how can we unearth our real selves? Google, says Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Older Americans have the AARP. Gun owners have the NRA. And now, kids have Common Sense Media. What can a couple of inkblots say about you? Apparently, a lot. We talk with Damion Searls about the rise of the Rorschach test.

Whether you’ve encountered them in real life, or just in the video for Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” Rorschach tests are everywhere. Damion Searls tells us about their history and impact.

You may spend a third of your life asleep… but how much do you know about it, really? Benjamin Reiss walks us through the history of sleep.

Science gave us penicillin, space travel, and computers. But, it also gave us TNT, guns, and heroin. Paul Offit tells us about when science goes wrong.

Scientists experiment, test, hypothesize… and sometimes they discover something completely and utterly by accident.

Who pulls the levers of the global financial system? Superhubs. Sandra Navidi explains who they are and what they’re doing.

Science is great. Except when it gives us stuff like heroin and TNT. Paul Offit explains what we can all learn from science’s mistakes. A small, insular group controls the world’s financial system. No, they aren’t lizard-people. They’re superhubs. The way we sleep now was invented in the 18th century. Benjamin Reiss takes us on a tour of sleep’s history.

Unlike in music, science has few one-hit wonders. We talk with professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi about how age and skill figure into scientific discoveries.

What happens when people regularly start living past 100? Plus, if you haven’t made that big scientific discovery yet, don’t worry: there’s time. Finally, we work four more weeks a year now than we did in the 1970s. And that’s a problem.

Pretty soon, a lot more people are going to live to 100. We talk with Andrew Scott about how that’s going to reshape our society.

These days, people retire to sun, sand, and shuffleboard. But, it wasn’t always that way. We learn the story of one man who changed the way many people spend their golden years.

It feels great to carve out a few leisure hours each week. But, Professor Julie Rose says that free time should be a right, not a privilege.

No ratings, no stars, and no commercials. We talk with C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb about the secret to success, even when nobody's watching.

The Trump phenomenon was built, in large part, by television. Michael Schneider tells us how the former star of The Apprentice is shaking up Hollywood - and creating some unexpected winners.

Scrolling through your newsfeed and noticing something… eerie? Facebook can be an echo chamber. Professor Cass Sunstein tells us how social media has contributed to groupthink. Plus, which channel has no ratings, no stars, and no commercials, and wants to keep it that way? And finally, our president may have been ubiquitous on Twitter for the past few years. But his first love will always be TV. And it loves him right back. IndieWire executive editor Michael Schneider explains.

Our Facebook newsfeeds have become echo chambers. To break out, professor Cass Sunstein says we should embrace a diversity of information.

Our memories are terrible, mice can lead us astray, and Americans didn't always love chicken. This week, we've got a show packed with surprising facts about both human brains and animal realities.

What does social innovation look like? How about prisons in New Zealand that try to keep prisoners out, not in.

Brewster Kahle isn’t just a librarian, he’s the internet’s librarian. And it turns out, that’s a really important job.