Innovation Hub

In 1983, U.S. News & World Report began to rank America’s colleges. More than 30 years later, they continue to release yearly lists of the “best” schools in the U.S. We talk with Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik and U.S. News’ Robert Morse about how these rankings have shaped how students select colleges in America.

First: Scurvy. Website design. Store promotions. Turns out, randomized trials affect many parts of our daily lives.

Then: “The Origin of Species”… actually has a pretty interesting - and unexpected - origin.

Finally: In news that shouldn’t shock anyone who has ever been to a meeting, they can make you less productive. But how about the toll they take even before they start?

Think of the last impulse buy you made at the grocery store. Maybe the item was placed at eye level. Or perhaps it was a Snickers bar you saw in the checkout line. Either way, that product was put there by design, not dumb luck, and most of these placements were decided through randomized trials. We talk to with Andrew Leigh, author of “Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World,” about how these tests affect everyday life and impact the decisions we make.

This summer, 160 years ago, it dawned on Charles Darwin that he might have to go public with the theory of evolution. He had been working on his theory slowly, gradually building it out for decades. And Darwin probably would have kept working on it, if not for a letter he received from English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, which outlined Wallace’s own ideas about natural selection; ideas that, unfortunately for Darwin, were very similar to his own. Iain McCalman, author of “Darwin’s Armada: Four Voyages and the Battle for the Theory of Evolution, walks us through the complicated origins (no pun intended) of the theory of evolution, and how that theory changed everything from biology to religion to politics.

Imagine you have a meeting in 30 minutes. Are you more likely to spend that half hour A) catching up on email and the news or B) getting a start on that report you’ve been putting off? If you answered A, you’re not alone. It turns out that people aren’t very productive in the time before a scheduled activity. We talked with Rutgers Business School professor Gabriela Tonietto about why free time feels diminished when we have an upcoming task.

Today, the Food Network is a touchstone of the entertainment industry. But it took a decade for the channel to make money. Chef Sara Moulton and author Allen Salkin tell us about the rise and influence of the cooking channel.

Plus: If you use Uber Eats more than you use your stove, you're in good company — 90 percent of Americans either don't like to cook or are on the fence about it. With cooking becoming more hobby than necessity, we look at how the food industry is trying to keep up.

Finally: You can thank Howard Johnson's for those roadside plazas you see on interstates. Yale historian Paul Freedman talks with us about the restaurants that changed the way America eats.

If you knew what was going on behind the scenes at the Food Network during the ‘90s, you might have placed a hefty wager that it would fail. Chefs were cooking in incomplete kitchens, and couldn't stop filming —  even if they got hurt. It was a mess. Even Sara Moulton, one of the Food Network’s earliest stars, didn’t think the channel would survive.

But not only did it survive —  it thrived. We talk to Moulton about her early days at the Food Network, and with author Allen Salkin about his book, “From Scratch: The Uncensored History of the Food Network.”

When we sit down to binge watch a season of Chopped, we rarely do it to learn a new cooking technique. In fact, the Food Network might actually discourage us from trying our hand in the kitchen. We speak with industry analyst Eddie Yoon about the future of grocery stores and food companies, in a world where cooking is no longer considered an indispensable skill.

2015 was the first year that Americans spent more money on bars and restaurants than on groceries. And with attention-grabbing chefs and buzzy new places to eat, it feels like restaurants have never been more central to American life. But how did we get there? Paul Freedman, Yale historian and author of the book “Ten Restaurants That Changed America,” charts the course from Delmonico’s to Howard Johnson’s.

First: Americans love small businesses, but economist Robert D. Atkinson says that big business is better for workers, consumers, and the world.

Then: From standard measurements to interchangeable parts, precision engineering created the modern world. Author Simon Winchester explains how the precision revolution got started in the first place.

Finally: We tend to become friends with people who share our interests and passions. But the connections don’t stop there—new research now shows that the brain activity of close friends is similar.