18:00 – Intro music.
18:03 – The Story of Maths: 4. To Infinity and Beyond – Radio Times: “Marcus du Sautoy concludes his investigation into the history of mathematics with a look at some of the great unsolved problems that confronted mathematicians in the 20th century.
After exploring Georg Cantor’s work on infinity and Henri Poincare’s work on chaos theory, he looks at how mathematics was itself thrown into chaos by the discoveries of Kurt Godel, who showed that the unknowable is an integral part of maths, and Paul Cohen, who established that there were several different sorts of mathematics in which conflicting answers to the same question were possible.
He concludes his journey by considering the great unsolved problems of mathematics today, including the Riemann Hypothesis, a conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers. A million-dollar prize and a place in the history books await anyone who can prove Riemann’s theorem.” First broadcast Mon 27th Oct 2008, 21:00 on BBC4.
19:01 – Paperplay – The only other one of these I could find on YouTube. Hopefully the other 180(!) episodes are out there somewhere, but who knows?
19:12 – The Day the Universe Changed – 1. The Way We Are – Radio Times: “A personal view by James Burke. Five hundred years ago, people looked at the dawn and thought that they saw the Sun going round the Earth. If that seems stupid, ask what it would look like if it did go round the Earth. Exactly the same. It’s your knowledge that tells you what you’re seeing. You are what you know. When your knowledge changes, you change, and so does the universe.
From the US Air Defence Centre in Colorado to Mount Everest and the Greek Islands, the first of ten programmes illustrates this basic theme of the series. It shows how to read the present for clues about what the universe used to be. And each time the universe changed, it gave us a part of modern life – helping to make us the way we are.” First broadcast Tue 19th March 1985 at 8pm on BBC1. This is what James Burke did after Connections (although there was other, smaller stuff in-between, I think). It’s necessarily a lot more linear than Connections, so not as much fun, but still a good watch, as I recall.
20:02 – FILM: Devil Girl From Mars (1954) – Wikipedia: “A 1954 UK black-and-white science fiction film, produced by the Danziger Brothers, directed by David MacDonald and starring Patricia Laffan, Hugh McDermott, Hazel Court, Peter Reynolds, and Adrienne Corri. The film was released by British Lion. The film’s storyline concerns a female alien commander sent from Mars to acquire human males to replace their declining male population, thereby saving Martian civilisation from extinction. When negotiation, then intimidation fails, she must use force to obtain co-operation from a remote Scottish village where she has landed her crippled flying saucer.” Have half-seen bits of this on Talking Pictures, it looks quite fun.
21:17 – Dara O’Briain – This Is The Show – Dara’s stand-up set from 2010. Apologies if any of you hate him, or have seen this before, but this was a last-minute emergency replacement for a one-hour documentary that was supposed to go BEFORE James Burke and the film, but I couldn’t get it sourced correctly. So had to place this, much longer programme, after the film otherwise the film would have ended too late.
23:01 – The Cars That Made Us – 1. Flashy Motors – First in a 2013 TV series, although exactly where it was shown seems to be a mystery. “Exploring a diverse heritage spanning more than a century while celebrating the sheer joy of motoring, this tremendously popular series sees an array of celebrities sharing their memories of classic British cars and revealing their driving passions, enthusing and swooning over a range of cars – from affordable bestsellers such as the Mini, the Hillman Imp and the Ford Cortina to unattainable objects of desire such as the Austin Healey 3000 and the Lotus Esprit.” This week: “We are shopping at the exclusive end of the market as we go in search of the quintessential flashy car. What qualifies as a flashy motor is a complicated question – it should look good enough to make people stop and stare; it will often be luxurious and usually expensive. But a flashy car can mean very different things to different people. So we’ll be looking at a whole variety of swish motors to cater for all tastes.”
23:46 – Closedown Music.
23:51 – Closedown.