The Invention of Air

Host Michelle Shroeder Fletcher speaks with Steven Johnson, author of The Invention of Air, a book of world-changing ideas and a a story of genius and violence and friendship. It is the story of Joseph Priestley—scientist and theologian, protégé of Benjamin Franklin, friend of Thomas Jefferson—an eighteenth-century radical thinker who played pivotal roles in the invention of ecosystem science, the discovery of oxygen, the founding of the Unitarian Church, and the intellectual development of the United States.