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9.16.15: How We Got to Now, Tracing the Ivory Trade, & Lucius

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Among the things we take for granted in today’s America is knowing the time …which makes transportation, business and national events possible. This, however, was not always the case. Today, from building sewers to standardizing time, we’ll talk about the invisible innovations that got us where we are today. Then, more than 30,000 African elephants are poached every year, mostly out of East Africa. In an effort to understand the illegal ivory trade, a journalist commissioned a tusk made of fake ivory with a GPS tracker inside. We speak with the man behind that tusk.

Listen to the full show. 

How We Got to Now

Steven Johnson is author of several best-selling books on innovation, most recently, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World, coming out in paperback later this month. He’s host of PBS series of the same name that is now available in its entirety online.

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How We Got to Now

Tracing the Path of Illegal Ivory

George Dante is founder of Wildlife Preservationsand one of the world’s premier taxidermists, whose clients have included the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo. He’s the man the journalist Bryan Christy turned to when he needed an artificial ivory tusk so convincing he could use it to infiltrate the illegal ivory trade flourishing in East Africa.    

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Tracing the Path of Illegal Ivory

You can read about Christy’s investigation in the September issue of National Geographic

The Bionic Hand

In 2007 Eric Jones had his right hand amputated due to a disorder that cut off blood flow to his hands and feet. He was among the first ten people in the United States to be fitted with a bionic prosthetic. Eric, his daughter Lanie, and son Alex went to StoryCorps to talk about his life changing operation.

You can listen to this story again at StoryCorps.org.   

Lucius Live at the Music Hall

Lucius is a five piece indie pop band from Brooklyn, playing tomorrow night at theMusic Hall in Portsmouth. Lucius flips the script on the traditional pop configuration. Instead, a pair of identically-dressed women front the band, and the three guys mostly stay out of the limelight…one of them is guitarist Peter Lalish, who was born and raised in NH. 

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Lucius Live at the Music Hall

You can find more about Lucius and our conversation with Peter Lalish here.

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