Connections with James Burke

Documentary series about the effect of advances in science and technology on western society in its philosophical aspects.

Asking how you tell what's real and what isn't sounds like an obvious question. But in this series of six programmes, James Burke shows that the more you think about it the harder it is to answer. After all, what have you got, apart from your five senses, to prove those senses are giving you the real thing?

Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention, Connections explores an "Alternative View of Change" that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. To demonstrate this view, Burke begins each episode with a particular event or innovation in the past (usually ancient or medieval) and traces a path from that event through a series of connections to a fundamental and essential aspect of the modern world.

Historian James Burke walks the viewer through the tenuous threads of history that link seemingly obscure scientific breakthroughs and the events and products that exist today.

Tomorrow's World was a long-running BBC television series on new developments in science and technology. First transmitted on 7 July 1965 on BBC1, it ran for 38 years until it was cancelled at the beginning of 2003.

Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC 1 between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist, responsible for investigating and combating various ecological and technological dangers. The series was followed by a film adaptation produced by Tigon British Film Productions and released in 1972, and a revival TV film was broadcast on Channel 5 in 1999.

A documentary on the history on mankind's attempts to reach high speeds. Starting with the invention of the bicycle, going on to sports cars, cars with jet engines, rocket-powered cars, attempts to break the sound barrier, and rocket-engine airplanes. Each achievement is documented by title card indicating the speed reached in miles per hour.

A documentary presented by Robin Ince on how the science of the early 1970s influenced Doctor Who. Featured as an extra on The Collection Season 7 BluRay boxset.

James Burke roams the Hotel del Coronado, using its services as a metaphor for the neuro-chemical activity of the human brain.

In the third edition of his groundbreaking series, James Burke continues to make incredible connections to history's most important discoveries and inventions.