Tectonic

The Most Innovative Square Mile on Earth

Massachusetts and Switzerland both often rank near the top of state and country innovation rankings. Key to this success are innovation zones, and none is more influential than Kendall Square – a small strip of former swampland in Cambridge, just across the river from Boston. These days it’s home to MIT and some of the most important biotech research on the planet, as well as pharmaceutical giants like Novartis and Moderna. Little wonder it’s been called ‘the most innovative square mile on earth.’ Our guest on this episode, Bob Buderi, has just written a book on Kendall Square, Where Futures Converge. We talk with Bob about Kendall’s progression from marsh to factory zone to biotech hub, and how constant change was necessary to maintain a vibrant urban innovation ecosystem. We explore the Swiss connections in Kendall Square, and what makes the small, unofficial innovation zone tick. We also delve into the shortcomings of Kendall Square’s imbalanced growth. While it’s an amazing place to invent and innovate, it’s not a great community to live in. Bob explores how plans for affordable housing and artist space can transform Kendall Square into a more livable urban landscape in the future.

The Foundations of Sustainable Construction

Switzerland famously lacks natural resources, especially wood. To build its modern economy, the mountainous country came to rely heavily on concrete – and today has become a world leader in the concrete industry. But the building material has come under heavy scrutiny for its carbon footprint. Concrete production emits at least five percent of all human greenhouse gas emissions. As we face the urgent need for more sustainable built environments, does concrete have a future? In this episode, we hear from Marc Angélil, the Swiss architect responsible for such buildings as Zurich Airport Terminal E. Marc has dedicated his career to sustainable construction, and he sees building materials as just one component in the full life cycle of a building – from construction, to use, and even disassembly. Concrete, he says, can be used to achieve energy savings that no other affordable material can match. He explores how efficient and hybrid buildings can work with nature to create low-tech, passive solutions for sustainability. Ultimately, Marc is designing for a world where even our lifestyles, such as how we cook and commute, are affected by the quality of our architecture.

Democratizing Innovation in Cities

The problems of the globe are also the problems of our major cities, especially post-industrial ones: environmental damage, economic inequality, public health crises. Can we solve these problems one city at a time, through renewal and innovation? We talk with Katie Stebbins, who has spent her career working to revive some of Massachusetts' most economically challenged towns. Her mission? To democratize innovation. Katie explores how a community garden, or a small business growing coral in a garage, can and should count as innovation. "I think in any community you go into, you'll be surprised when you start knocking on doors, going in buildings, meeting people, the kind of assets you have on your roof that you never thought you had," says Katie. She says we have to work with the new populations that have migrated to our cities rather than attempt to re-create the factory town of old - a model she says is out-of-touch with our 21st-century workforces. Katie also discusses public-private partnerships, her work in food innovation, and the 'circular economy' of best practices that allow ideas to migrate between cities and big national or supranational organizations. In her many roles, she emphasizes the need to 'get proximate' to people in order to democratize engagement.

Is the Future of Meat in the Lab?

As our global population continues to expand, and developing societies grow wealthier, our food supply is being stretched thin. In particular, global demand for meat continues to rise – and with it the stress on our land and freshwater ecosystems. One new technology being touted as a future solution is animal protein grown in a bioreactor. Is laboratory meat our future? Historian and writer Ben Wurgaft [https://benwurgaft.org/writings/] spent over a half-decade researching and writing about the lab-grown meat industry, still in its infancy. In his book Meat Planet, he emerged a skeptic about lab meat’s  potential to transform our future food systems. In this episode, Ben discusses the technological challenges to scaling up production, and the way that the profit-driven hype machine around laboratory meat lauds techno-utopian solutions over hard social choices. “There is plenty of protein already,” Ben says. “Why not redistribute it better? Why not treat food scarcity as a problem of distribution and justice rather than as a problem of production?” For Ben, hoping for a lab meat revolution only lets us avoid these deeper challenges. “The broader question here is about the human imagination, and what's available to us and what isn't, in order to imagine a better collective future.” Tectonic is a production of Swissnex in Boston and New York, whose aim is to bring the leading ideas from our hub of academic inquiry to Switzerland and the world, in order to inspire new thinking across disciplinary and national boundaries. This episode was written and hosted by Brendan Karch, with production, sound design, and editing by Anour Esa. Credits for clips used in episode: On Demand News, “Taste test: World's first test-tube burger revealed in London” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJrSdKk3YVY   ABC Action News, “The Paleo Diet helped one Tampa Bay family lose weight and live healthier” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRJsuQiGuEs CBSDFW, '"Impossible Burger': Veggie Burger That Claims To Taste Like Real Beef Now Served In Denver" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q8wUpHxq5M Basque Culinary Center, "Gastroarmony" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC7EC6FJJiQ&t=1s United Nations News, “Stop the waste: UN food agencies call for action to reduce global hunger” https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1049181

Renewing our Governance Systems

What’s ailing American politics, and can the underlying ideals of US democracy be renewed? How should the US change its role in the world, and are there alternatives to solving global challenges that exploit resources beyond our current UN system of nation-states?  To answer such big-picture and wide-ranging questions, we spoke with a prodigious thinker. Anne-Marie Slaughter has worn many hats: lawyer, Ivy League academic, foreign policy leader, and now CEO of the think tank New America. Throughout her career, she’s asked big questions about our global political order, and America’s place in it. More recently, she’s turned to domestic issues, which are the topic of her new book Renewal. “So there's a profound paradox, at least to most people the first time they encounter it, that if we want people to take more risks, we have to provide them with more security,” says Slaughter. “And if we're going to be the entrepreneurial society, we pride ourselves on, we need to provide more security.” In this episode, Anne-Marie argues that making key political reforms and devoting attention to people’s welfare can renew the tattered promises of American democracy. And to tackle our biggest global challenges like the pandemic, she suggests we create new impact hubs that draw together resources from governments, the private sector, and non-profit activists. Tectonic is a production of Swissnex in Boston and New York, whose aim is to bring the leading ideas from our hub of academic inquiry to Switzerland and the world, in order to inspire new thinking across disciplinary and national boundaries. This episode was written and hosted by Brendan Karch, with production, sound design, and editing by Anour Esa. Credits for audio clips used in this episode:  CBS News, “America's growing student loan debt crisis”, Montague Community Television, “Black Lives Matter Protest, Greenfield MA 6/6/20”