Andile catches up with Stephen Ozoigbo at the inaugural Enterprise Africa Summit that was recently hosted by the British Council in Accra, Ghana.
Ozoigbo is the CEO of The African Technology Foundation. He has dedicated his energies to addressing the obvious gaps in Africa’s tech startup pipeline by championing some of the most high profile ecosystem growth initiatives on the continent— not least, by serving as Managing Partner of Lions@frica, being an key executive supporter of DEMO Africa and helping to organise the Geeks on a Plane Africa Tour which ended in April 2017.
Forgotten Superheroes of Science: Patricia Bath; News Items: Deep Life, Short and Long Term Memory, Flat Earth, Cassini's Grand Finale; Who's That Noisy; What's the Word: Convergent; Name That Logical Fallacy; Science or Fiction
In 1853 Elisha Otis climbed onto a platform which was then hoisted high above a large crowd of onlookers, nervy with anticipation. A man with an axe cut the cable, the crowd gasped, and Otis’s platform shuddered – but it did not plunge. “All safe, gentlemen, all safe!” he boomed. The city landscape was about to be turned on its head by the man who had invented not the elevator, but the elevator brake. As Tim Harford explains, the safety elevator is an astonishingly successful mass transit system which has changed the very shape of our cities.
Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Image: Modern Elevator, Credit: iurii/Shutterstock)
Newly sworn-in Justice Neil Gorsuch gets his first chance to make his mark on the Court at this week’s oral arguments for Trinity Lutheran v. Comer. The important case asks whether the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause compels the state of Missouri to provide public grant money directly to a church. Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, joins us to discuss BJC’s amicus brief in the case, which argues that religious institutions are actually freer if they are barred from accepting government funds.
We also sit down with Jeffrey Toobin, whose piece in this week’s The New Yorker examines the enormous influence that the Federalist Society – and especially its executive vice president Leonard Leo – have on the American judiciary. Toobin argues that with the ascension of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Leo can now be credited with the selection of one-third of the nation’s most powerful judges.
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Podcast production by Tony Field. Our intern is Camille Mott.
Maria Konnikova has been a special correspondent on The Gist since it began, debunking common myths and pseudoscience. Now, she’s starting her own show, a narrative podcast about cons called the Grift. The first two episodes are available for download on your podcatcher of choice. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.
Mining asteroids, moons or even other planets has remained firmly within the realm of science fiction. But as certain elements become increasingly scarce on Earth, private companies and even nation states are looking to make extra-terrestrial mining a reality. Presenter Marnie Chesterton heads to an Earth-based mine in Scotland to see just how tricky space mining could be, and what possibilities it holds. On the way she discovers what laws govern this new far frontier, and hears from a space prospector who already has designs on key sites for exploration. Could our solar system's asteroids really become self-fuelling gas stations for spaceships?
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton
Producer: Jen Whyntie
(Image: Double the Rubble Artist Concept. Credit: NASA)
“Sometimes you want to make the dictionary sexy but it’s just not a sexy thing,” says Kory Stamper, lexicographer for the Merriam-Webster dictionaries. Sorry if this is disillusioning news for you. The dictionary is not a sexy thing, but as Kory explains, it is a fascinating, complicated, exacting thing.
