I'm dreaming that someone will remake Connections some day. The quality of the recordings are quite bad, and while I think retelling the stories with a new production would be great in itself, I'm sure there's many new stories that could be told with additional research.
I think Robert Murray-Smith would be a great host. He has some of the same energy as Burke and he has some history-related videos on YouTube that has some of the same style of storytelling.
Kathy Joseph would be great for the research side. Her book "The Lightning Tamers" is pretty good at describing some of these weird connections and interesting stories throughout the history of electricity.
I used to have the VHS tapes of Connections 2 and Connections 3. They got more gaudy as the series progressed. They were less about the progression of technology and more about being shiny and spectacular.
> Television is entirely different. I remember walking around the world with a film crew, sometimes 15 people, and pointing at a bush and saying, "What am I doing here?" That's very time-consuming and expensive, and we no longer need that kind of thing. This time, there's no money. [...] Nobody went anywhere, so we didn't get up and catch planes all the time. And nothing got in the way of the story except me. All I did was stand and talk. Because of the structure, the nature of the production style, the story can move more densely and more quickly than ever before.
I don't know if I agree with him that it's a good thing. One of the things I loved about the original Connections was the experiential aspect of it. James Burke in front of a green screen is just James Burke in front of a green screen.
After watching his videos every day for months now I am still not sure where on the "technical genius" to "free energy advocate" spectrum I should place him.
I mean most of his builds are technically correct (e.g. most of his generators produce a voltage), but he often glosses over details that in practice make the idea unfeasible (e.g. a voltage does not help you if the generator can not provide enough current).
Other times he is just wrong ... just because whales and "tree-spinning-things" have similar "wings" does not mean that you can blow up the same shape to a wind turbine size.
(The reason behind that is that the smaller you get the more viscous air becomes (relatively) ... flies and other small insects literally swim through the air because of that. Imo that could be an explanation why the tree-spinny-things have a similar shape, they are just small enough that they "swim", too.)
I have similar thoughts on Robery Murray-Smith, however I remain subscribed because "Rule Thinkers In, Not Out"[1]: he says enough things that are new to me that I find him worthwhile to listen to, even if I have to subsequently think hard about it and verify it before I trust it.
Can you help me understand why air is (relatively) more viscous the smaller you are? Does it have something to do with the volume (mass) of an object growing faster than the surface area available to support it in the air? Or is it something else?
> I'm dreaming that someone will remake Connections some day. The quality of the recordings are quite bad, and while I think retelling the stories with a new production would be great in itself
I think that "quality of the recordings" thing is just something you have to learn to get over. They're not actually bad.
If you look on YouTube, you can find up-res versions of Mitchell and Webb that look amazing compare to other sources. Maybe the same technique can be used on Connections
I think Robert Murray-Smith would be a great host. He has some of the same energy as Burke and he has some history-related videos on YouTube that has some of the same style of storytelling.
Kathy Joseph would be great for the research side. Her book "The Lightning Tamers" is pretty good at describing some of these weird connections and interesting stories throughout the history of electricity.