America’s economy is going to be saved by innovation and creativity, right? This is the first in a series of shorts exploring the cultural conflicts that stand between us and our innovation dream.

Moving forward, the plan for this column is that you will see a new short film each week. They’ll explore themes that will usually last a month. Between these month-long stories, the written articles will be dropped in because they help What Weekly visitors understand how an otherwise reasonable person might come to the eccentric perspective that you can explain the difference between what we know and what we do by looking hard at our culture.

Generally, the films will adhere to a structure we’ve devised. We’ll pick an artifact we might see around us everyday—it could be anything from a tiny consumer product to an entire system of institutions, and “unpack” it to see what it reveals about us—the culture that made it, and our ideas. Then, we’ll shine a light on the difference between those ideas, and what relevant research, or even common sense, might suggest instead. Think of how often you ask yourself why the hell people do THAT when if they were just informed or even thought about it, they’d do THIS instead. We’ll delve into the stories that make our culture(s) what it is, looking for the ones that block our ability to act in our own best interest. In the last film we’ll have to make some kind of art as a way to celebrate any insight that came out of all this.