How We Got to Now with Steven Johnson

2014 • PBS
4.9
39 reviews
TV-PG
Rating
Eligible
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Season 1 episodes (6)

1 Clean
9/26/14
From PBS - Dirty water has killed more humans than all the wars of history combined, but in the last 150 years, a series of radical ideas, extraordinary innovations and unsung heroes have changed our world. Johnson plunges into a sewer to understand what made a maverick engineer decide to lift the city of Chicago with screw jacks in order to build America’s first sewer system. He talks about John Leal, who deliberately "poisoned" the water supply of 200,000 people when, without authorization, he added chlorine, considered lethal in 1908, into Jersey City's water and made it safe to drink. This isn't only about the world becoming a cleaner place — the iPhone, the subway, flat screen TVs and even the bikini are the result of the valiant efforts of the unsung heroes of clean.
2 Time
9/26/14
From PBS - The world today is obsessed by time. Johnson boards a submarine to discover what a lack of natural light means for a sailor's working day and visits Heathrow, the world's busiest airport, to try to get timings right at air traffic control. The story of getting a grip on time is full of curious garage tinkerers. One of them, railway clerk William F. Allen, was so exasperated by the chaos caused by the 8,000 local times zones in the U.S. that he fought tirelessly to standardize time into four zones. Learn how advancements in navigation, the way we work, technology and travel would have been impossible without the unsung heroes of time.
3 Glass
10/3/14
From PBS - Johnson considers how the invention of the mirror gave rise to the Renaissance, how glass lenses allow us to reveal worlds within worlds and how, deep beneath the ocean, glass is essential to communication. He learns about the daring exploits of glassmakers who were forced to work under threat of the death penalty, a physics teacher who liked to fire molten glass from a crossbow and a scientist whose tinkering with a glass lens allowed 600 million people to see a man set foot on the moon. The link between the worlds of art, science, astronomy, disease prevention and global communication starts with the little-known maverick innovators of glass.
4 Light
10/10/14
From PBS - Johnson relates the story of people who take us out of the dark and into the light. Hear about Edison's light bulb, which he didn't actually invent, and learn how an 18th-century ship's skipper discovered a source of illumination by putting a kid inside a whale’s head. See how a French scientist accidentally discovered how to create neon light, leading to a revolution in advertising. Dispelling the myth of the individual "eureka" moment, Johnson reveals that teamwork and collaboration led the way to the most transformative ideas. Whether changing our genetic make-up, altering the world's sleeping patterns, transforming architecture, taking us into space or triggering one of the great social reforms in American history, the pioneers of light have made themselves indispensable throughout human history.
5 Cold
10/17/14
From PBS - Only in the last 200 years have humans learned how to make things cold. Johnson explains how ice entrepreneur Frederic Tudor made ice delivery the second biggest export business in the U.S. and visits the place where Clarence Birdseye, the father of the frozen food industry, experienced his eureka moment. He also travels to Dubai to see how mastery of cold has led to penguins in the desert. From IVF to food, politics and Hollywood to human migration, the unsung heroes of cold have led the way.
6 Sound
10/24/14
From PBS - Imagine a world without the power to capture or transmit sound. Journey with Johnson to the Arcy sur Cure caves in northern France, where he finds the first traces of the desire to record sound — 10,000 years ago. He also learns about the difference that radio made in the civil rights movement and discovers that telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell thought that the best use for his invention was long-distance jam sessions. During an ultrasound on a pregnant dolphin, he realizes just how big a role sound has played in medicine. The unsung heroes of sound have had an impact on our working lives, race relations, saving lives and the radical alteration of cities.

About this show

From PBS - Join best-selling author Steven Johnson to discover extraordinary stories behind six remarkable ideas that made modern life possible, the unsung heroes who brought them about and the unexpected and bizarre consequences each of these innovations triggered. Explore the history and power of these great ideas.

Ratings and reviews

4.9
39 reviews
Susan Kay
September 9, 2016
Who imagined these 6 concepts would play such a mighty role in our human growth and progress into, and within, our modern world! Clean, Time, Glass, Light, Cold, and Sound; All taken separately would arguably not be THE most important factors in the progress for humanity! But only to think of our lives without any one of them - and 'How We Got To Now' - would be impossible to imagine! It does trigger the imagination, though - with questions of what our next century's life-effecting concepts will be?
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David Foster
August 12, 2017
I often hear about the good old days and see things on facebook and other social media about how wonderful life was back in the days before we had all of the modern day problems. I must disagree with that point of view and I'm happy to be living in a time when we have such great technology to allow us to have clean water, go swimming in a public pool, and the list goes on. This episode of the remarkable PBS series about how finding ways to make our lives clean sheds some light on how lucky we are to be alive in a time when we don't have those issues associated with dirty water, air and so on. Can you imagine turning on the water in your home to find dead fish in it or worrying about the possibility of getting some horrible disease like cholera? All these problems caused by unclean water and air were misunderstood by people, I think it's time to spread the word about the wonders of modern day living and where it all began. This TV show is a must see for everyone and especially those who think that the good old days would be a better time than now to be alive.
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Jeff McCarthy
February 5, 2017
I loved this series because they finally explained history as a web, instead of the straight line of dates students are forced to memorize.
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