Professor Hannah Fry returns to find (and dismantle) the tales behind on a regular basis expertise.
2022’s hands-on BBC Two documentary sequence The Secret Genius of Trendy Life is returning for a second run.
The present, offered by Professor Hannah Fry, struck a successful components because it dug into the historical past behind, and the expertise beneath, merchandise and methods which have now grow to be built-in into our on a regular basis lives.
Collection One lifted the hood on electrical automobiles, probed the software program behind meals supply apps and digital assistants, and (actually) dissolved the mysteries of the common-or-garden financial institution card.
Whereas a few of the ideas are mind-blowing, they’re offered in a sensible and down-to-earth method by the likable Hannah Fry, who’s a Professor of Arithmetic.
Right here’s the synopsis for Collection Two:
Taking aside a special piece of expertise in every episode, with unique entry to main expertise corporations like Samsung and Dyson and talking to a few of the world’s main innovators, the second sequence of The Secret Genius of Trendy Life sees Hannah uncover:
How catching a French nineteenth century serial killer helped form the modern-day passport management
The important thing part in vacuum cleaners developed for a secret atomic bomb lab
How a Mormon preacher’s sermon was essential to the event of at this time’s headphones
How South Korean sausages shed new mild on the interior workings of our smartphones
Professor Hannah Fry mentioned:
“We live by means of a golden age of expertise and but we’ve forgotten to recollect how intelligent the objects we encompass ourselves with are. Behind all the pieces that you simply contact and all the pieces that you simply see somebody needed to provide you with that concept and it is a present about these folks and their unimaginable improvements that make fashionable life attainable”.
Government Producer Paul Overton added:
“It’s staggering what expertise can now do and but most of us don’t know how any of it really works or the place it got here from. We’re delighted to be demystifying the superb science behind extra on a regular basis objects and uncovering their unimaginable origin tales. And Hannah Fry is the proper information to assist make sense of the trendy world in each a thought-provoking and enjoyable method.”
The Secret Genius of Trendy Life Collection Two comes from the BBC Studios Science Unit in partnership with The Open College. The six-part sequence airs on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer within the autumn.
Within the meantime, you’ll be able to nonetheless catch the primary run on BBC iPlayer.