Innovation Hub

When Carter Bryant invented Bratz dolls, Mattel (the makers of Barbie) took its former employee to court, claiming he had come up with his ideas on the company’s time. Bratz were the first dolls to successfully compete and - in some places - outsell Barbie. Orly Lobel, a law professor at the University of San Diego, has written about the lengthy and costly legal fight Mattel and Bryant engaged in over Bratz in her book: You Don’t Own Me: The Court Battles That Exposed Barbie’s Dark Side. That fight, Lobel explains, was emblematic of a serious issue that American workers now face: heavy restrictions on their talent and creative ideas.

It’s easy to see ourselves as separate from the animal kingdom, but Adam Rutherford, author of “Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature - A New Evolutionary History,” believes that we aren’t as different as we might think. Fashion design, interacting with fire, and making multi-step plans all seem like qualities that are unique to humans. But according to Rutherford, species across the animal kingdom - from crabs to birds of prey - exhibit many of these complex behaviors too.

We all know the legacy that Sputnik had on U.S. science education. Washington poured more than a billion dollars into overhauling the U.S. science curriculum. But television was transformed too. According to Ingrid Ockert, a Haas Fellow at the Science History Institute and a NASA History Fellow, the television show “Continental Classroom” was launched as a direct response to the Sputnik challenge. Five days a week, “Continental Classroom” was broadcast into American homes to encourage and inspire budding scientific minds.

From “Watch Mr. Wizard” to “Mythbusters,” lots of Americans have grown up watching various science television programs. Ockert walks us through how science has changed television, and how television has influenced science.

In a modern-day Mexican standoff, the U.S. and China are confronting each other over trade practices. The United States believes China has been luring away jobs and stealing American technology. But what if the issue isn’t that China is stealing innovations, but that it is out-innovating us? George Yip, a professor of marketing and strategy at Imperial College Business School in London thinks that the Chinese are no longer mere imitators but have become serious innovators in their own right.

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, believes that the U.S. government has some valid complaints, but that China is nonetheless becoming increasingly competitive in the innovation game.

Yip and Bremmer discuss China’s increasing dominance on the global stage, and consider what’s at stake for the U.S.

Spiders and grizzlies and snakes, oh my! Ask someone what they are afraid of, and the answer is likely to be something like a plane crash or shark attack. But the authors of the book “Worried?: Science Investigates Some of Life’s Common Concerns,” Eric Chudler and Lise Johnson explain why they believe we often waste our energy worrying about the wrong things. Chudler, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington and Johnson, an assistant professor of physician assistant studies at Rocky Vista University, say that we feel stressed out about things that are highly unlikely to happen. Instead, we should be more focused on seemingly mundane threats, they explain. Chudler and Johnson talk to us about the risk behind everything from aluminum to red wine, and share ways to take control of the things we fear.

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% 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 cutting government funding for education is the best solution.

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.

Think you might need a digital detox? You’re not alone. It’s becoming more and more of a trend to take time away from our online lives. Cal Newport author of “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World” shares his approach to avoiding digital distraction and reclaiming time. He discusses how to be more intentional about how you use technology, and more aware about how technology uses you. We’ll discuss everything from the neuroscience of the human brain to how to do your own 30-day digital detox.

Capitalism is a recurring theme among the ever-growing list of Democratic presidential candidates. But many Americans of all political stripes have concerns about our free market economy and whether it is working for them, according to Steven Pearlstein, a Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist for The Washington Post and author of “Can American Capitalism Survive: Why Greed Is Not Good, Opportunity Is Not Equal, and Fairness Won’t Make Us Poor.”

We talk with Pearlstein about the importance of fairness in economic growth, and consider some ways to reinvent capitalism.

Economist and journalist Allison Schrager visited a legal brothel, chased celebrities with the paparazzi, attended conferences with surfers, and interviewed high-ranking military generals, all to better understand the nature of risk. In her book, “An Economist Walks Into A Brothel,” Schrager explores how people manage risk outside the world of economics and finance and considers the most interesting lessons that can be learned from people in some of the riskiest professions.