Innovation Hub

This week, we’re gearing up for the holidays with some serious shopping, a little chocolate... and a trip home. And when we say home, we’re talking Levittown, New York, where the modern suburb was born. We’ll examine the genius of businessman Bill Levitt, as well as his dark side. Then, a look at how retail has changed America. And finally, we dive into chocolate, and the story behind Hershey’s. That’s all this week on Innovation Hub.  

When people get sick of urban living, there’s a clear alternative: the suburbs. But how did the suburbs become so popular in America? After World War II, Bill Levitt cleared a few potato fields on Long Island, New York, and created an orderly suburb, Levittown. We talk with the Executive Dean of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, Lawrence Levy, about how Levittown, and the advent of the modern suburbs, changed the nation.   

Middle-market stores, like Macy’s, are struggling to compete with large, low-priced retailers like Walmart and Amazon. And where we shop can have an enormous impact on jobs, communities, and how we spend our time. Darrell Rigby, a partner at Bain & Company, and journalist Charles Fishman, explore the battle of the retail giants, and the future of shopping.

Americans absolutely adore chocolate. The average American consumes 11 pounds of the stuff per year. But when did this love affair with chocolate start? Back in the 19th century, sugar was a luxury good, and chocolate was mostly for the rich. Milton Hershey, and his Hershey bar, changed all that. Historian Nancy Koehn, author of “Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times,” has written about Hershey’s life and company. She walks us through who he was, and how he gave America a taste for chocolate.

Thanksgiving involves getting stressed about the best way to cook a turkey, gathering around a table with the people you love, eating mountains of stuffing… and trying not to tell your family what you really think of them.

So, in celebration of Turkey Day, we’ve got stories that explore how and why we think the way we do: from what the Rorschach test actually tells us, to what exactly is going on inside teenagers’ brains.

Lice-infested beds, unwashed surgical tools, and cut-off fingers - healthcare in the 1800s was a bloody affair. We take a look at the man who changed all that. Then, how much power does a protest really have? Zeynep Tufekci explores whether they have the power to change politics. Finally, there’s a common thread in art, music, storytelling, and even business-creation: creativity.

For most of 1800s, surgery was disgusting, filthy, and unsafe. Hospitals were places people desperately tried to avoid, and operations didn’t always result in a clean bill of health. You might even get your testicles accidentally sawed off during a leg amputation. But this all changed with Joseph Lister, who transformed the way that doctors approach surgeries. We talked to Lindsey Fitzharris, author of “The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine” about how this shift happened.

Well over 5 million people around the world took part in the Women’s March. And hundreds of thousands attended the March for Science. With turnouts like that, you might expect such protests to reflect years of planning and organizational effort. In fact, though, they were organized online in the space of a couple months, using new tools like hashtags and Facebook events. Zeynep Tufekci studies what the rise of connectivity means for the efficacy of the protests. She’s an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, and the author of Twitter and Teargas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest.

Our creativity is influenced by how we think and interact every day. So what makes us so creative? We talk with composer Anthony Brandt and neuroscientist David Eagleman, co-authors of “The Runaway Species: How Creativity Remakes the World,” about the origins of our creative thinking.

Chinese students from cities like Shanghai are doing extremely well on worldwide standardized tests. What is the Chinese education system doing right? And what can we learn from it?