James Burke : Connections, Episode 7, "The Long Chain", 5 of 5 (CC)

[phpwebber]

So happy these are online. Thanks

[TheZorch]

The ending of each episode makes the hairs on the back of your head stand up, because as James Burke goes through each chain in the link (ha ha) it dawns on you how absolutely right he is. And, how a serious of accidents and seemingly unrelated discoveries all came together to help make the world we have today. Its mind blowing! Plastic has changed our modern world more than almost anything else, except for silicon of course.

[Willldragon]

@TheZorch Plastic gave us a world where every product could be replacated as a "cheap artificial material copy" making it so that anyone who could afford cheap plastic could have all the random crap they wanted.

Now, in the digial age with silicon, many product exists as a digital application within a product. A camera can now exist as simple app on a phone (which at this point really shouldn't be called a phone!) rather than an actual physical camera.

What will happen next?

[TheZorch]

@Willldragon Graphene, a form of carbon, will eventually replace silicon in micro-electronics. This will exponentially increase the speed processors, which will be able to run at very high speeds with very little heat and require far less power. Small hand-held devices will be as powerful as desktop computers. PC likely won't ever go away, but they'll become more modular than they are now. Wen you want to upgrade a computer just replace one of the plugin modules.

[monobryn64]

I like how the episode titles often reveal the ending.

In this case "The Long Chain" is the polymer, of course.

[luridplanet]

Fritz Haber and Einstein were good friends until Haber started work on poison gas weapons

[largefry]

Absolutely fantastic! But I have one problem:

I can't quite figure out what the causal relationship between Macintosh's inability to get rubber and the search for a quinine substitute is. It seems to me that the Imperial Administration would have been interested in artificial quinine with or without Macintosh trying to get rubber from the Far East. This is the only episode so far where I have been unable to connect every dot along with Burke. Can someone help me out?

[LiqnLag]

@largefry The gist of the link is that to really scale up rubber production, Macintosh was trying to get The English colonies to grow Rubber Trees on their plantations' fringe. The problem was that when they pushed that angle, all the colonies were wanting to use that bit of open plantation space for was to grow a substitute for the costly quinine (in order to treat the wide spread malaria problem).

Endlessly amazing show.

[GatorVicki1]

I just found these because of a link a friend posted on FB. Thank you so much for making these programs available again. i loved this show when it was on the first time around and I am watching all of them again. Thank you!

[derin111]

These programmes are just fantastic! I stopped watching TV about 5 years ago having become completely fed-up with all the mindless, rubbish 'Reality TV' stuff.

They should scrub all the X-Factor/Strictly/Celebrity rubbish and in their place just keep re-running these programmes.

It would be cheap to do as all the programmes are already made and at least people would gain some knowledge and enlightenment from watching them!

Thanks so much for posting them.

[Indrius]

4:42 a Lithuanian was mentioned. It was so unexpected I had to rewind and listen again to make sure it wasn't my imagination.

[tellmeverything]

as always ,,brilliant,,and thankyou,,,

[TheSaturnalia]

Great series, of course the plastic that was made in the 1930s until today is still with us. These days a good portion of it is floating in the Pacific Ocean, Larger in volume than most nation states... Well, hopefully we can make something of it. If we can gather it that is.

[PennnSmith]

Have you ever listened to James Burke backward? There are subliminal messages that reveal the gist of NWO hints. I am a researcher from MIT and could be shot for this tipoff.

[AppleSouffle]

PennnSmith, no, you are a silly boy who has wasted too much time reading about conspiracy theories.

[aikigeorge3]

@PennnSmith nobody understands satire anymore pity

[TheLastBrainLeft]

I wonder why Burke never made mention of the man made polyester which comprises most of his wardrobe during this entire series in this section.

[Ramandi1]

@TheLastBrainLeft actually... he does, next episode. He comments on how many things in the 'modern' world are made of plastic, including his clothes. ;-)

[stupidjoinrequiremen]

thanks so much for posting these!

[JamesBurkeWeb]

None required. My pleasure.

[hdtwoodsman]

Thanks for posting. It's amazing how much history Burke packs in this hour.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

You're very welcome. I love this episode too. A real gem!