Engineers today are using their creativity to build a variety of superhero-like technologies that enhance our human capabilities, including exosuits, invisibility cloaks, and wall-scaling gloves.

What drives these researchers? Were they all comic-book reading dreamers? Or is a need to imagine bigger and better human capabilities just a natural part of who we are?

In this episode of Here's an Idea, we talk with researchers whose technologies are giving people the capabilities of their favorite superheroes, from Spider-Man to Iron-Man. With some help from comic book writer Vita Ayala, we examine the motivations behind their projects, and what these impulses might say about our own desire to be super.