'How We Got To Now' finale to air on Discovery Channel

Steven Johnson's innovative take on world events gives history a new twist in this acclaimed TV series

The series How We Got To Now, premiered on Discovery Channel on April 20 with includes topics like why and how ideas happen, and their sometimes unintended results, including how the search for clean water opened the way to invention of the iPhone, and how the nagging problem of overheating in a New York printing business led to the invention of air conditioning, which inspired mass migration and a political transformation.

Author of nine books, including the best-selling books Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, turns host for this series which aims to offer a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World, came out simultaneously as a book and a TV series, which Johnson claims was quite the challenge.

He explains how the answers to the questions he poses in each episode — such as “how do we make something cold?” or “how do we create light?”— have driven other discoveries through the web of ideas and innovations that made each finding possible. Tracking each pursuit through history both ancient and contemporary, Johnson unlocks tales of unsung heroes and radical revolutions that changed the world and the way we live in it.

For instance, Johnson tells the world about one John Leal, and how he deliberately poisoned the water supply of 200,000 people in New Jersey but transformed the way we live. Without proper authorisation, Leal added chlorine into the city’s water and made it safe to drink. It’s hard to imagine what would’ve happened if that experiment had misfired.

But how does Johnson chance upon these nuggets of history, and their myriad connections? “It is an exciting way to look at history, sort of like detective work -- it starts with a hunch about a connection, then involves finding evidence, and so son," explains Johnson about his creative process. With six different episodes, titled 'Clean', 'Time', 'Glass', 'Light', 'Cold' and 'Sound', Johnson and his team went all over the world shooting the series that has been put together as a documentary with a twist. "It’s not been shot in the conventional 'historical' way, like with old photographs and interviews of professors -- that’s the way of making historical documentaries, but that’s not what we wanted to do," he says.

For the refrigeration story, part of the 'Cold' episode, Steven went skiing in the middle of the desert in Dubai. "Even though we have recreated scenes, I haven't pretended to act, I may be dressed up but I'm still the host!," says Johnson with a laugh. This episode's story invokes India as well. Considered the world’s greatest ice entrepreneur, Frederic Tudor made his fortune by devoting his life to making ice delivery the second biggest export business in the U.S. He simply starts hacking huge chunks of ice from America’s great lakes and shipping them south, including the Caribbean and Bombay in the eighteenth century.

Steven Johnson in the episode 'Clean'

Another interesting idea explored by Johnson is the power of beer to save lives! "Until the early 1800s in Europe, people drank beer  the whole day and ironically it was the healthy choice!" The event that led to the proved that cholera is caused by water happened because of  famous investigation in Britain. "Because cholera struck one whole town and only the local brewery located in the middle escaped its wrath," explains Johnson. This reminds one of an urban legend about Humphrey Bogart, and how he was the only one who didn't fall sick on the sets of Congo, because he chose to drink pure whiskey the entire time!

These are the unknown stories of the men and women who have made the modern world. In a series unbound by genre or chronology, Steven's retelling of ancient and contemporary history helps us make connections we haven’t thought of before.

Tune into How We Got To Now on Discovery Channel at 9 pm ( IST) tonight