Innovation Hub

The heroism of D-Day is immortalized in history books, but far less attention is given to the individuals who worked undercover to prevent Germany from developing an atomic bomb during WWII. In his new book, The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb, science writer Sam Kean tells the stories of the men and women who made up the Alsos Mission, or the “Bastard Brigade.” They worked tirelessly to make sure Germany’s (impressive) scientific discoveries wouldn’t change the course of the war.

After Russia sent a man into space, the United States didn’t want to be left behind. But getting a man on the moon wasn’t as easy as just saying we would. David Meerman Scott, a marketing strategist and co-author of the book Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program talks about just what it took — from PR strategies to partnering with Walt Disney — to get enough support for the mission. Without the marketing and media attention, Scott thinks, we couldn’t have landed on the moon.

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.

In 1956, a book was published. It was called The Organization Man, and it was hugely influential. It described a world that was something like a “corporate welfare state.” A world in which, if you were able to land a job at a big industrial company like Ford or GE, you essentially had a stable job for life, with a decent salary, benefits, vacation days, and health care. If you’re under 40, this may seem like science-fiction, but it described the economy as the author saw it. So what drove the change? Nicholas Lemman, dean emeritus at Columbia Journalism School and author of the book Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream, says that workers’ lives shifted because of a new approach to economics.

“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.

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.

The U.S. does not fare well in math when compared with other industrialized nations, as demonstrated by international tests like the PISA. So, for parents who want to help their students get ahead in math and can afford it, after-school programs that focus deeply on the subject have become attractive.

There are plenty of extracurricular math programs around, but one run by the Russian School of Mathematics (RSM) for students from kindergarten through 12th grade, is particularly popular, serving over 30,000 students around the country. (Innovation Hub senior producer, Elizabeth Ross, visited the program’s headquarters in Newton, Massachusetts and found a lot of enthusiastic students and parents, as you’ll hear in our report.)

Masha Gershman, the director of outreach at the Russian School of Mathematics and the daughter of one of its co-founders, says that the former Soviet Union’s method of math instruction has a lot to teach American kids, particularly when it comes to higher-level and conceptual learning.

But Jon Star, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, argues that many American parents - especially those in affluent suburbs where such extracurricular programs are popular - should ask themselves why they’re enrolling their kids in after-school math. It probably shouldn’t just be to get ahead in school - or to keep up with the neighbors. It should have to do with an intrinsic love of the subject.

From the moment that Judith Grisel started drinking alcohol at age 13, she was hooked. For the next ten years, Grisel suffered from addiction, as she used drugs from marijuana to opiates to psychedelics.

As a recovering addict and neuroscientist, Grisel learned that she was especially vulnerable because she was genetically predisposed to addiction. (She is one of many who are susceptible to the disease.) Grisel, a professor of psychology at Bucknell University and the author of “Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction,” explains the effect of illicit drugs on the brain and what makes them so addictive.