1 00:00:07,120 --> 00:00:10,160 Last time, we saw how the Renaissance turned Europe 2 00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:15,040 from a load of mud and parsnips into a posh resort full of paintings, 3 00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:19,560 and how this awakening led to a string of people-power uprisings 4 00:00:19,640 --> 00:00:22,040 that put the establishment on its arse. 5 00:00:22,760 --> 00:00:24,840 But the revolutions were just beginning. 6 00:00:24,920 --> 00:00:30,320 Humankind was about to leap forward again by taming metal and electricity. 7 00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:34,400 Progress would usher in a new era of convenience and entertainment, 8 00:00:34,480 --> 00:00:37,560 but also threaten the existence of all life on Earth. 9 00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:39,360 So, swings and roundabouts, really. 10 00:00:39,440 --> 00:00:43,800 This week it's the rise of the machines here, on Earth. 11 00:00:43,880 --> 00:00:47,040 And also here on Cunk on Earth. 12 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:49,240 [epic music playing] 13 00:01:01,920 --> 00:01:06,240 For centuries, everything in nature, from people to cows, 14 00:01:06,320 --> 00:01:07,640 ran on this… 15 00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:10,239 fresh air. 16 00:01:10,319 --> 00:01:12,080 If you haven't heard of air, 17 00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:15,360 it's an invisible blend of gases so addictive, 18 00:01:15,440 --> 00:01:17,560 we suffer fatal withdrawal symptoms 19 00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:20,040 within minutes of our supply being cut off. 20 00:01:21,560 --> 00:01:25,600 This dependency made air's rival, water, jealous. 21 00:01:26,160 --> 00:01:27,920 Water needed to up its game. 22 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:32,400 It needed to become more indispensable to us, its natural masters. 23 00:01:32,480 --> 00:01:34,040 It was feeling the heat. 24 00:01:34,120 --> 00:01:36,840 Heat that turned it into something useful. 25 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:37,880 Steam. 26 00:01:38,720 --> 00:01:42,240 Steam could be harnessed to power all kinds of machines. 27 00:01:42,320 --> 00:01:45,840 And nowhere went steam bonkers quite like America, 28 00:01:45,920 --> 00:01:49,440 where it would change the shape of the country's face forever. 29 00:01:49,520 --> 00:01:52,520 To understand why, I'm afraid we have to look at a map. 30 00:01:52,600 --> 00:01:55,640 At first, settlers had stuck to the edges of America, 31 00:01:55,720 --> 00:01:59,360 leaving the middle untouched, like a frozen pie in a microwave. 32 00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,480 But Americans back then weren't the humble, unassuming people 33 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:04,000 they still aren't today. 34 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:07,160 They believed in something called Manifest Destiny, 35 00:02:07,240 --> 00:02:10,000 the belief that all the land belonged to them 36 00:02:10,080 --> 00:02:12,400 and that God wanted them to go west 37 00:02:12,480 --> 00:02:14,320 and claim it back from the Native Americans 38 00:02:14,400 --> 00:02:16,320 he'd put there first by mistake. 39 00:02:16,920 --> 00:02:19,680 What is Manifest Destiny? 40 00:02:19,760 --> 00:02:23,120 Manifest Destiny is a ideology 41 00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:26,280 that was in the 1840s and '50s in the United States, 42 00:02:26,360 --> 00:02:29,720 that America had a God-given right to take over the rest of the continent 43 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:33,680 and sort of spread its values and its virtues from sea to shining sea. 44 00:02:33,760 --> 00:02:36,320 -So it was God's plan? -That was the idea, yes. 45 00:02:36,400 --> 00:02:39,120 Doesn't this make you God's slaves? 46 00:02:39,200 --> 00:02:41,880 Well, I think what the people of the time would say 47 00:02:41,960 --> 00:02:44,320 is that they were God's missionaries on Earth. 48 00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:48,440 And so they felt that they were willingly enacting his policies 49 00:02:48,520 --> 00:02:50,040 rather than being forced to do so. 50 00:02:50,120 --> 00:02:53,040 But at the very least, you're God's bitches. 51 00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:56,000 But manifesting your destiny was dangerous. 52 00:02:56,080 --> 00:02:59,360 You had to trundle across a perilous landscape in a rickety wagon 53 00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:02,880 on the brink of starvation or shitting yourself to death with dysentery, 54 00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:05,560 getting bitten by snakes or butchered by Apaches. 55 00:03:05,640 --> 00:03:08,520 Almost as if God didn't want them to do this after all. 56 00:03:09,200 --> 00:03:12,400 But the invention of the steam train changed all that. 57 00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:15,200 The steam train laughed in the wagon's face. 58 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:17,400 Not literally. This isn't a children's book. 59 00:03:18,080 --> 00:03:20,960 The Americans released steam engines into the wild, 60 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:25,520 carving routes across the land and changing the balance of power. 61 00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:30,640 Now, fighting with Native Americans could be conducted at high speed 62 00:03:30,720 --> 00:03:33,160 and with an accompanying buffet car service. 63 00:03:33,680 --> 00:03:37,720 Thanks to the railroads, small towns formed all across the west. 64 00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:40,520 They were tough, lawless places 65 00:03:40,600 --> 00:03:43,640 where summary justice was dispensed down the barrel of a gun, 66 00:03:43,720 --> 00:03:48,440 as cowboys did whatever it took to protect their cows, and their boys. 67 00:03:48,520 --> 00:03:51,160 So can you talk us through what this is here? 68 00:03:51,240 --> 00:03:55,960 [man] This is the Colt single action army revolver, the Colt 45. 69 00:03:56,040 --> 00:03:58,920 And you load it through here, 70 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:01,560 and you'd have to cock the hammer back for each shot. 71 00:04:02,320 --> 00:04:05,400 Would this only kill people during the olden days? 72 00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:07,680 Or could it kill modern people too? 73 00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:10,320 I'm afraid it definitely could kill modern people. 74 00:04:10,400 --> 00:04:13,400 [Philomena] It's so old. It sort of looks clockwork, doesn't it? 75 00:04:13,480 --> 00:04:17,560 Do the bullets come out slowly? Could you sort of outrun the bullet? 76 00:04:17,640 --> 00:04:21,600 You definitely couldn't outrun the bullet. You're right to say it looks clockwork. 77 00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:25,120 It's very like a clock mechanism, with a ratchet inside. 78 00:04:25,200 --> 00:04:27,120 -Rat shit? -A ratchet. 79 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:30,400 Where do the bullets come out? Do they come out of that pipe bit? 80 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:32,360 They do. Yeah, that's the barrel. 81 00:04:32,440 --> 00:04:36,920 Can I hold that up and look down the end of it? 82 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,120 Or will that shoot me in the eye? 83 00:04:39,200 --> 00:04:40,520 It's generally frowned upon. 84 00:04:40,600 --> 00:04:43,840 So would getting shot in the eye actually hurt? 85 00:04:43,920 --> 00:04:47,200 Because it's just a sort of water bag, isn't it, your eye? 86 00:04:47,280 --> 00:04:49,280 I bet it'd just pop and sting a bit, 87 00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:51,760 but you'd basically be able to go about your business. 88 00:04:51,840 --> 00:04:54,360 I don't know, I don't think there's any good place to get shot. 89 00:04:54,440 --> 00:04:59,200 Why does humankind feel the need to invent killing machines like this? 90 00:04:59,720 --> 00:05:03,640 And could you keep your answer to a sort of soundbite length? 91 00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:06,280 Because we're human I suppose? 92 00:05:06,360 --> 00:05:11,240 It seems to be built into us to fight for resources, 93 00:05:12,400 --> 00:05:13,760 other humans. 94 00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:15,880 -Yeah. -Can't seem to get away from it. 95 00:05:15,960 --> 00:05:18,200 I know. I just think we're mental. 96 00:05:18,800 --> 00:05:23,160 Guns played a huge role in shaping America and also in killing people. 97 00:05:23,800 --> 00:05:25,400 Even now, the use of firearms 98 00:05:25,480 --> 00:05:27,960 is an integral part of their national identity. 99 00:05:28,680 --> 00:05:31,960 How come Americans have the right to kill anyone they want with a gun? 100 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:33,720 Well, they don't. 101 00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:38,120 Murder is illegal in the United States, but they do have the right to own weapons. 102 00:05:38,200 --> 00:05:40,640 -They have the right to bear arms. -Correct. 103 00:05:40,720 --> 00:05:43,120 -But bears don't have arms. -They do, actually. 104 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:45,240 Do they? I thought they were legs. 105 00:05:45,320 --> 00:05:46,880 Well, I'm not a biologist, 106 00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:49,960 but I suppose that when they stand up, they're probably arms. 107 00:05:50,040 --> 00:05:52,280 [bird screeches] 108 00:05:52,360 --> 00:05:55,200 With its cowboys and guns and steam train rides, 109 00:05:55,280 --> 00:05:57,680 America became known as the land of the free, 110 00:05:58,200 --> 00:06:00,760 which must have come as a surprise to all the slaves. 111 00:06:00,840 --> 00:06:04,720 The barbaric practice of slavery was still prevalent in America, 112 00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:07,320 particularly in the southern states. 113 00:06:07,400 --> 00:06:10,160 But by finally thinking hard about the subject, 114 00:06:10,240 --> 00:06:13,560 the people of the northern states made a horrifying discovery: 115 00:06:14,120 --> 00:06:17,360 that inside each slave was an actual human person. 116 00:06:18,080 --> 00:06:21,600 The North asked the South what kind of America it wanted to live in: 117 00:06:21,680 --> 00:06:24,160 one where white people leeched off other races 118 00:06:24,240 --> 00:06:26,200 while treating them as inferior 119 00:06:26,280 --> 00:06:28,640 or one where they pretended they didn't? 120 00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:32,200 The argument escalated into a civil war, 121 00:06:32,280 --> 00:06:35,440 a time when America was almost as polarized as it is today. 122 00:06:36,160 --> 00:06:38,920 The Civil War tore America apart, didn't it? 123 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:40,200 Brother turned on brother. 124 00:06:40,280 --> 00:06:44,120 Did anyone get so conflicted they turned on themselves? 125 00:06:44,200 --> 00:06:45,720 I don't think so. 126 00:06:45,800 --> 00:06:50,520 Uh… There may have been some very strong debates within individuals 127 00:06:50,600 --> 00:06:54,280 of which side to join, and I think that could be what you're perhaps referencing. 128 00:06:54,360 --> 00:06:57,600 How come people say it was the first modern war 129 00:06:57,680 --> 00:07:01,000 when you can see from the photos it was ages ago? 130 00:07:01,080 --> 00:07:02,800 It's interesting you reference the photos 131 00:07:02,880 --> 00:07:06,040 because it's the first war that photography really played a part. 132 00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:08,400 Um, it was something where photographs 133 00:07:08,480 --> 00:07:11,520 were part of the conflict and documenting the violence. 134 00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:14,800 Must have been quite exciting, going to Snappy Snaps afterwards 135 00:07:14,880 --> 00:07:17,840 and seeing which ones had turned out and which ones hadn't. 136 00:07:19,040 --> 00:07:21,760 After four long years of war-related violence, 137 00:07:21,840 --> 00:07:25,480 the North came out on top, which north is anyway. 138 00:07:25,560 --> 00:07:30,800 It was a victory for the undisputed king of the North, Abraham Lincoln. 139 00:07:31,520 --> 00:07:33,240 Who was Abraham Lincoln? 140 00:07:33,320 --> 00:07:37,200 And why did he have all those weird tattoos on his tummy? 141 00:07:37,280 --> 00:07:39,960 I have no idea what you're referring to with the tattoos, 142 00:07:40,040 --> 00:07:45,120 but he is a US president, revered as probably the best US president. 143 00:07:45,200 --> 00:07:49,680 Apparently he had, like, a snowman and a robin tattooed on his tummy 144 00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:52,680 and the robin had a moustache. 145 00:07:53,960 --> 00:07:56,680 I genuinely have no idea what you're referring to. 146 00:07:57,560 --> 00:08:01,480 Now Lincoln was president, at long last slavery was abolished 147 00:08:01,560 --> 00:08:04,200 and replaced with simple racial prejudice. 148 00:08:04,760 --> 00:08:08,120 But Abraham Lincoln's story didn't have a happy ending. 149 00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:12,080 Five days after the North won, a terrible fate befell him. 150 00:08:12,160 --> 00:08:15,160 He was forced to go to the theater to watch a play. 151 00:08:15,840 --> 00:08:18,640 He was put out of his misery by a kindly gunman. 152 00:08:18,720 --> 00:08:21,600 But cruelly, not until the third act. 153 00:08:21,680 --> 00:08:24,360 Abraham Lincoln was shot in the theater box, wasn't he? 154 00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:26,800 Where is that on the body? 155 00:08:26,880 --> 00:08:30,360 I think you're referring to the physical location he was in when he was shot, 156 00:08:30,440 --> 00:08:34,160 which was in the presidential box at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. 157 00:08:34,240 --> 00:08:35,560 And why was he shot? 158 00:08:35,640 --> 00:08:37,720 Was it because he wouldn't take his hat off? 159 00:08:37,799 --> 00:08:41,559 Because that's annoying in the theater, when someone's in front of you with a hat. 160 00:08:41,640 --> 00:08:43,159 He was in the presidential box, 161 00:08:43,240 --> 00:08:45,480 so there wasn't anyone behind him, as far as I know. 162 00:08:45,559 --> 00:08:47,960 But he was shot by a man named John Wilkes Booth, 163 00:08:48,039 --> 00:08:50,520 who was a believer in the Confederacy. 164 00:08:50,600 --> 00:08:55,080 How did being shot in the head affect Lincoln's ability to lead? 165 00:08:56,000 --> 00:08:59,640 Well, it ended it, because he died about 12 hours after he was shot. 166 00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:04,000 -So he couldn't carry on. -No, not as a corpse, unfortunately. 167 00:09:04,080 --> 00:09:06,680 Lincoln's light may have been snuffed out, 168 00:09:06,760 --> 00:09:09,120 but America's was about to do the opposite. 169 00:09:09,200 --> 00:09:11,680 Americans had been toying with electricity 170 00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:14,520 ever since Benjamin Franklin put a key on a kite string 171 00:09:14,600 --> 00:09:16,920 to unlock lightning from the sky. 172 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:22,360 Then, in 1878, Thomas Edison worked out how to use that power 173 00:09:22,440 --> 00:09:24,480 to make something extraordinary. 174 00:09:25,280 --> 00:09:28,680 It's hard to imagine a world where Edison didn't invent the light bulb. 175 00:09:28,760 --> 00:09:30,240 And even if you did imagine it, 176 00:09:30,320 --> 00:09:32,360 it would be too dark to see what was in it. 177 00:09:32,440 --> 00:09:37,360 How did people see during the day before Edison invented light? 178 00:09:37,440 --> 00:09:42,680 Light comes from the sun so people could see during the day because of the sun. 179 00:09:42,760 --> 00:09:47,000 What they needed the light bulb for was during the night when there isn't any sun 180 00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:48,960 and when you can't see. 181 00:09:49,040 --> 00:09:52,400 So what did people use before light bulbs? 182 00:09:52,480 --> 00:09:55,200 Well, they used candles or they used oil. 183 00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:59,680 So we had daylight during the day and we had candles at night. 184 00:09:59,760 --> 00:10:01,200 Yes. 185 00:10:01,280 --> 00:10:04,920 So we didn't need light bulbs. His life's work was meaningless. 186 00:10:05,920 --> 00:10:08,200 Another of Edison's incredible inventions 187 00:10:08,280 --> 00:10:09,680 was the phonograph. 188 00:10:10,240 --> 00:10:14,280 [woman, over scratchy background] ♪ I want to spoon ♪ 189 00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:15,560 ♪ To my honey ♪ 190 00:10:15,640 --> 00:10:19,640 ♪ I'll croon love's tune ♪ 191 00:10:19,720 --> 00:10:22,840 ♪ Honeymoon ♪ 192 00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:27,200 ♪ Keep a-shining in June ♪ 193 00:10:27,280 --> 00:10:29,280 ♪ Your silvery beams… ♪ 194 00:10:29,360 --> 00:10:32,080 -Can you make it stop? -Yes, of course. 195 00:10:33,840 --> 00:10:36,920 It's incredible, isn't it, that we're here now, 196 00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:40,120 but that voice came from years ago. 197 00:10:40,200 --> 00:10:43,200 If I speak into this trumpet bit, 198 00:10:43,280 --> 00:10:48,080 can I ask the person a question about what it's like where they are? 199 00:10:48,160 --> 00:10:52,280 No, you can't, because the recording was made over a hundred years ago. 200 00:10:52,360 --> 00:10:55,280 But it's a phonograph. Doesn't it work like a phone? 201 00:10:55,360 --> 00:11:02,200 Phonograph means "sound writing" in Greek. 202 00:11:02,280 --> 00:11:04,520 So it doesn't mean "telephone." 203 00:11:04,600 --> 00:11:07,080 So they can hear us but they can't reply. 204 00:11:07,160 --> 00:11:09,480 Uh… I wouldn't say… 205 00:11:09,560 --> 00:11:12,560 They can't hear us. We hear them, we hear their recording. 206 00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:15,280 They can't hear us and they can't reply to us. 207 00:11:15,360 --> 00:11:18,640 -Uh, I would say they can't, no. -So what's the point of it? 208 00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:23,160 Well, it's so we can hear music and voice and sounds. 209 00:11:23,240 --> 00:11:27,240 So can it record sounds that haven't happened yet? 210 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:28,240 Um… 211 00:11:29,360 --> 00:11:30,760 No. 212 00:11:30,840 --> 00:11:33,160 What about sounds that happened earlier? 213 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:37,840 If those sounds were recorded at the time. 214 00:11:37,920 --> 00:11:40,640 It can't capture something that's been in the past. 215 00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:43,520 It seems quite limited, to be honest. 216 00:11:43,600 --> 00:11:46,280 Thanks to Edison's pornograph, 217 00:11:46,360 --> 00:11:50,360 classical music could now bore an audience of millions. 218 00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:53,480 You have to play classical music on an orchestra. 219 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:55,920 How do you play an orchestra? 220 00:11:56,000 --> 00:11:57,240 Do you blow into it 221 00:11:57,320 --> 00:12:01,040 or is it one of those ones where you rub a stick on the strings? 222 00:12:01,120 --> 00:12:04,560 Yeah, so, the orchestra is not one particular instrument. 223 00:12:04,640 --> 00:12:06,040 Yeah. 224 00:12:06,120 --> 00:12:10,200 So an orchestra is the coming together of lots of different types of instruments. 225 00:12:10,280 --> 00:12:13,200 -Right. More than one instrument. -More than one instrument. 226 00:12:13,280 --> 00:12:17,360 So you need both hands and your mouth to play an orchestra. 227 00:12:18,440 --> 00:12:22,920 Well, the conductor would need all of those things, 228 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:26,080 but the orchestra itself is an entity 229 00:12:26,160 --> 00:12:29,000 that is made up of lots of different instruments. 230 00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:31,640 So you couldn't blow a whole orchestra? 231 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:38,880 Thanks to Edison, the worlds of light and sound had been beaten into submission, 232 00:12:38,960 --> 00:12:41,840 but another frontier remained stubbornly unconquered: 233 00:12:41,920 --> 00:12:43,960 the world of sky. 234 00:12:44,040 --> 00:12:47,440 People tried for years to build flying machines, 235 00:12:47,520 --> 00:12:50,280 but most early pioneers found it hard to progress 236 00:12:50,360 --> 00:12:53,120 beyond their first experimental death plunge. 237 00:12:53,880 --> 00:12:56,760 But all that changed when Orville and Wilbur Wright brothers 238 00:12:56,840 --> 00:12:59,600 mounted the first successful legal challenge 239 00:12:59,680 --> 00:13:01,160 against the law of gravity. 240 00:13:01,920 --> 00:13:04,600 So how far was the first flight? 241 00:13:04,680 --> 00:13:09,240 Well, on that day when the Wright brothers carried out several flights, 242 00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:12,680 they were typically of the order of just a few hundred feet. 243 00:13:12,760 --> 00:13:15,000 They could have walked that. 244 00:13:15,800 --> 00:13:18,720 Well, they could, but that wasn't the point. 245 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:22,320 When was the first flight that was long enough to need a toilet? 246 00:13:22,400 --> 00:13:27,360 Once commercial flights developed, those flights became longer distance 247 00:13:27,440 --> 00:13:30,960 and the passengers would have then needed some comforts, 248 00:13:31,040 --> 00:13:32,720 like having a toilet on board. 249 00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:34,560 That must've been a real moment, 250 00:13:34,640 --> 00:13:37,720 the first time someone realized a plane needed a toilet. 251 00:13:38,360 --> 00:13:40,600 That's more impressive than the Wright brothers. 252 00:13:42,400 --> 00:13:44,280 I've never thought of that 253 00:13:44,360 --> 00:13:49,320 as a particularly dramatic or exciting development, I'm afraid. 254 00:13:49,400 --> 00:13:51,720 Why don't bicycles have toilets? 255 00:13:53,160 --> 00:13:55,440 It would save you having to get off. 256 00:13:56,280 --> 00:13:58,440 I might write that down and copyright it. 257 00:13:58,520 --> 00:14:02,040 Even without a toilet, the Wright Brothers' historic flight 258 00:14:02,120 --> 00:14:04,280 changed transportation forever, 259 00:14:04,360 --> 00:14:06,760 in ways that still aren't fully understood. 260 00:14:06,840 --> 00:14:11,080 The Wright Brothers did the first proper flight over a hundred years ago. 261 00:14:11,160 --> 00:14:15,640 How come we're still not any closer to working out how aeroplanes actually work? 262 00:14:16,680 --> 00:14:19,520 But we are. We know how they work today. 263 00:14:19,600 --> 00:14:21,960 But in reality, how do they work? 264 00:14:22,040 --> 00:14:25,920 Well, it's… we have mathematical equations 265 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:29,800 that describe the way the air flows over the wings of the aircraft. 266 00:14:29,880 --> 00:14:33,880 Can you explain how they work without resorting to science? 267 00:14:36,560 --> 00:14:39,600 It's difficult not to explain the science behind it, 268 00:14:39,680 --> 00:14:43,840 but because of the shape of its wings, 269 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:46,480 the force upwards is bigger than the force downwards. 270 00:14:46,560 --> 00:14:49,000 So that pushes the plane up into the air. 271 00:14:49,080 --> 00:14:52,200 That's your theory. Do you want to hear my theory? 272 00:14:52,880 --> 00:14:54,720 -Okay. -I think they run on belief. 273 00:14:55,840 --> 00:14:58,760 It's just because we believe planes can fly that they do. 274 00:14:58,840 --> 00:15:01,360 So the media has to keep up the pretense 275 00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:03,920 or they're gonna start dropping out of the sky. 276 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:06,840 Same with Wi-Fi. There's no way that's real. 277 00:15:06,920 --> 00:15:09,120 We just have to go along with this pantomime 278 00:15:09,200 --> 00:15:11,160 or everything grinds to a halt. 279 00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:16,280 The sky had been tamed. Next it was the road's turn. 280 00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:20,520 It's hard to say who invented the first automobile. 281 00:15:20,600 --> 00:15:22,200 Because so many people had a go, 282 00:15:22,280 --> 00:15:25,320 the Wikipedia page is too long to bother reading. 283 00:15:25,400 --> 00:15:27,040 But luckily it doesn't matter 284 00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:30,760 because in the end, only one man became synonymous with cars, 285 00:15:31,640 --> 00:15:34,800 the man who made the first blockbuster automobile. 286 00:15:34,880 --> 00:15:37,760 He was named Henry Model-T Ford. 287 00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:40,520 And in a stunning coincidence, so was his car. 288 00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:41,880 [rock music playing] 289 00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:46,680 With its four-cylinder, 2.9-liter engine pumping out 20 horsepower 290 00:15:46,760 --> 00:15:49,280 and a top speed of 45 miles per hour, 291 00:15:49,360 --> 00:15:52,440 the Model-T Ford was a truly terrible car, 292 00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:55,440 even worse than whatever it is your mum drives. 293 00:15:56,960 --> 00:16:01,160 There's nowhere to plug in your phone, no satnav or music system. 294 00:16:01,840 --> 00:16:04,120 It doesn't even have a cup holder. 295 00:16:05,480 --> 00:16:08,440 Nonetheless, it was marginally better than a horse 296 00:16:08,520 --> 00:16:11,280 because it didn't kick you in the head if you went behind it. 297 00:16:11,360 --> 00:16:12,720 And unlike on a train, 298 00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:16,120 you weren't likely to find yourself seated next to a psychopath. 299 00:16:16,200 --> 00:16:19,920 Unless you stopped to pick up a hitchhiker with a screwdriver in their pocket. 300 00:16:23,800 --> 00:16:27,960 But Henry Model-T Ford's biggest masterstroke wasn't his car itself, 301 00:16:28,040 --> 00:16:29,720 but the way it was made. 302 00:16:30,640 --> 00:16:34,840 Instead of employing one person to slowly make a whole car on their own, 303 00:16:34,920 --> 00:16:39,200 Ford employed lots of people to do just one tiny bit of the car each 304 00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:40,640 over and over again. 305 00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:44,520 It was a revolution in workplace tedium and human meaninglessness. 306 00:16:45,080 --> 00:16:48,520 Mass production needed a mass human workforce. 307 00:16:48,600 --> 00:16:52,280 Millions flocked to the USA for a go on the American dream. 308 00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:56,480 The need for bigger vessels led to the invention of the Titan 1C, 309 00:16:56,560 --> 00:16:58,920 the world's first single-use submarine. 310 00:17:00,200 --> 00:17:04,440 For years, man had stared at the ocean, longing to sink like a stone, 311 00:17:04,520 --> 00:17:07,600 and the Titan 1C would make that dream come true. 312 00:17:08,880 --> 00:17:11,000 It was a huge success. 313 00:17:11,079 --> 00:17:13,800 On her maiden voyage, the Titan 1C 314 00:17:13,880 --> 00:17:17,040 sailed straight from Southampton to the bottom of the sea, 315 00:17:17,119 --> 00:17:19,920 where the brave explorers could live in the lap of luxury 316 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:22,079 for the few moments it took for them to discover 317 00:17:22,160 --> 00:17:25,440 that the atmosphere on the ocean floor was non-breathable. 318 00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:31,800 Having conquered light, sound, the sky, the road and the bottom of the ocean, 319 00:17:31,880 --> 00:17:36,120 humankind was about to discover something it hadn't even heard of before, 320 00:17:36,200 --> 00:17:39,840 courtesy of female scientist and woman "Mary Curry," 321 00:17:39,920 --> 00:17:42,080 lady father of radiation. 322 00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:45,440 How did Marie Curie realize 323 00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:50,160 that she'd discovered radioactivity if it's invisible? 324 00:17:50,240 --> 00:17:53,920 Marie Curie invented the word "radioactivity." 325 00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:59,600 And radioactivity is when a substance, like radium, polonium, plutonium, 326 00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:02,520 gives off lots of energy and disintegrate naturally. 327 00:18:02,600 --> 00:18:05,400 So it's a real thing, even though it's invisible. 328 00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:09,360 Lots of real things are invisible, yes. 329 00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:13,680 So it's like chakras and energy fields, 330 00:18:13,760 --> 00:18:15,960 you know, like the ones you get on the inside of your face 331 00:18:16,040 --> 00:18:18,200 that connect to your star signs 332 00:18:18,280 --> 00:18:20,880 and affect the way you digest gluten. 333 00:18:20,960 --> 00:18:22,000 They're real, aren't they? 334 00:18:22,080 --> 00:18:25,120 -Well, I don't think that they are real. -I think they are real. 335 00:18:25,200 --> 00:18:26,280 Well, lots of people-- 336 00:18:26,360 --> 00:18:31,040 My Aunt Carol realigns people's chakras. She charges 80 quid an hour. 337 00:18:31,120 --> 00:18:33,360 I think if she was earning that kind of money, 338 00:18:34,440 --> 00:18:36,320 it's not nonsense, is it? 339 00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:39,960 Tragically, Curie's curiosity was fatal. 340 00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:44,960 Long-term exposure to radiation is thought to have contributed to her death. 341 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:46,880 It's not fair, is it? 342 00:18:46,960 --> 00:18:52,080 When a male scientist like Bruce Banner gets exposed to gamma radiation, 343 00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:55,200 he gets to be, like, a superhero, doesn't he? 344 00:18:55,280 --> 00:18:59,120 He gets his own comic book and movie franchise. 345 00:18:59,200 --> 00:19:01,120 Marie Curie just gets killed. 346 00:19:01,200 --> 00:19:03,160 You know, he got to be the Hulk. 347 00:19:03,800 --> 00:19:07,560 That's not fair, is it? Is it the fault of the patriarchy? 348 00:19:07,640 --> 00:19:11,200 Also, what is a patriarchy? 349 00:19:11,280 --> 00:19:16,920 Meanwhile, other less female scientists were working on theories of their own. 350 00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:20,040 Physicist and professional tongue model Albert Einstein 351 00:19:20,120 --> 00:19:23,400 came up with his theory of relativity, E equals McTwo, 352 00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:25,440 which to this day nobody understands. 353 00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:28,720 I'm only mentioning it because it turns out to be important later. 354 00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:33,480 Einstein reckoned nothing is faster than the speed of light, 355 00:19:33,560 --> 00:19:35,520 but shadows go faster than light. 356 00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:39,120 Like, if I shine a light from a torch against that wall 357 00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:41,600 but I hold the torch behind my head, 358 00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:44,320 my shadow gets there before the light does. 359 00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:46,640 How would Einstein explain that? 360 00:19:46,720 --> 00:19:52,320 I think he'd say that it's all happening so quickly that you can't see it properly. 361 00:19:52,400 --> 00:19:54,640 He's always got an answer, hasn't he? 362 00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:57,880 The 20th century got off to a cracking start, 363 00:19:57,960 --> 00:20:00,880 with science shitting out innovation after innovation, 364 00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:03,720 so quickly we can barely edit them together. 365 00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:06,400 But some of these new inventions had a dark side. 366 00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:09,920 They could be used to kill people, and not in a good way. 367 00:20:10,480 --> 00:20:14,120 The First World War was known as "the war to end all wars," 368 00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:16,840 although some historians now argue it didn't. 369 00:20:17,840 --> 00:20:19,800 But it was the first high-tech war, 370 00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:23,640 with aeroplanes, machine guns and tanks 371 00:20:23,720 --> 00:20:27,040 all rising up to fight the human beings that made them. 372 00:20:27,120 --> 00:20:30,840 Despite having no beliefs or ideology or hearts or souls, 373 00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:33,160 the killing machines were victorious. 374 00:20:33,240 --> 00:20:37,920 The final score was weaponry 20 million, mankind nil. 375 00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:41,840 When humans go to war, it always looks quite chaotic. 376 00:20:41,920 --> 00:20:44,080 Is there a lot of shouting involved? 377 00:20:44,720 --> 00:20:46,560 There tends to be an awful lot of shouting. 378 00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:48,680 It can either be commands being shouted. 379 00:20:48,760 --> 00:20:52,080 It could also be, you know, the screams of people dying. 380 00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:55,880 So probably a risk of tinnitus for anyone standing nearby. 381 00:20:55,960 --> 00:20:58,720 It's a real pity we keep doing it. 382 00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:01,720 I'm not trying to be controversial, 383 00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:06,240 but generally speaking, war does seem a bit of a shame. 384 00:21:07,040 --> 00:21:11,160 Well, it does seem to be a particularly popular human activity. 385 00:21:11,240 --> 00:21:13,040 Maybe it's just in our nature. 386 00:21:13,120 --> 00:21:16,080 What makes us as creatures turn on each other like that? 387 00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:19,800 And could you keep the answer to one short sentence? 388 00:21:19,880 --> 00:21:22,880 Because otherwise they get really pissed off in the edit. 389 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:25,800 Fear, honor and interest. 390 00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:27,960 Really? Those are the three? 391 00:21:28,040 --> 00:21:29,840 That's it in a nutshell. 392 00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:36,680 I don't know who edits this, but that's going to have to do. 393 00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:40,200 The barbarism of World War I 394 00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:44,960 inspired a wide range of harrowing war poems and pacifist literature, 395 00:21:45,040 --> 00:21:48,960 published decades before the release of unrelated Belgian techno anthem 396 00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:50,360 "Pump Up the Jam." 397 00:21:50,440 --> 00:21:52,440 [techno music playing] 398 00:22:05,600 --> 00:22:08,040 ♪ Pump up the jam, pump it up ♪ 399 00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:10,000 ♪ While your feet are stomping ♪ 400 00:22:10,080 --> 00:22:11,520 ♪ And the jam is pumping ♪ 401 00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:13,800 ♪ Look ahead, the crowd is jumping ♪ 402 00:22:13,880 --> 00:22:15,440 ♪ Pump it up a little more ♪ 403 00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:17,280 ♪ Get the party going On the dance floor ♪ 404 00:22:17,360 --> 00:22:19,200 ♪ See, 'cause that's Where the party's at ♪ 405 00:22:19,280 --> 00:22:21,960 ♪ And you'll find out if you do that ♪ 406 00:22:22,040 --> 00:22:25,240 ♪ I want a place to stay ♪ 407 00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:27,880 ♪ Get your booty On the floor tonight ♪ 408 00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:29,600 ♪ Make my day ♪ 409 00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:32,840 ♪ I want a place to stay ♪ 410 00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,560 ♪ Get your booty On the floor tonight ♪ 411 00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:36,680 ♪ Make my day ♪ 412 00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:38,960 Millions of young men died during the war, 413 00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:42,520 but fortunately, humankind had discovered a new kind of man: 414 00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:43,800 the woman. 415 00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:46,960 Women had always existed in the background of history, 416 00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:49,840 largely being used as human pets for men, 417 00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:53,360 tolerated for their magical ability to excrete fresh humans 418 00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:54,880 through their front holes. 419 00:22:55,520 --> 00:22:57,480 But in the early 20th century, 420 00:22:57,560 --> 00:23:00,440 social scientists discovered something incredible: 421 00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:03,080 that a woman could do anything a man could do, 422 00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:05,040 without the need to talk about it. 423 00:23:06,080 --> 00:23:07,720 They also got the vote. 424 00:23:07,800 --> 00:23:11,760 Finally, women could choose which man would tell them what to do. 425 00:23:11,840 --> 00:23:14,920 Women began to escape their traditional uniforms, 426 00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:19,240 dressing less like haunted furniture and more like camp young boys. 427 00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:22,680 They drank, smoked and danced at high speed, 428 00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:24,400 at an appalling frame rate. 429 00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:26,520 Meanwhile, in Hollywood, 430 00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:30,880 a whole new kind of entertainment was being invented: movies. 431 00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:32,840 Unlike with a book, 432 00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:37,120 you didn't have to concentrate or use your imagination to enjoy a movie. 433 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,360 Anyone, even very lazy or stupid people, could enjoy themselves 434 00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:46,080 by simply sitting down and staring at a screen, like you're doing now. 435 00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:49,800 Nonetheless, early movies were completely shit, as you can see. 436 00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:52,440 But it's thanks to early films like this 437 00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:55,320 that we can see what life was really like in the olden days. 438 00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:58,240 Everyone moved very quickly and fell over a lot. 439 00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:01,560 Why do people in old films move so fast? 440 00:24:01,640 --> 00:24:04,840 Is it because it was their first time on camera so they were nervous, 441 00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:06,840 or because it was a silent film 442 00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:09,960 so they couldn't hear the director yelling at them to slow down? 443 00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:13,080 It's to do with the frame rate of the cameras 444 00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:15,200 was different then to what it is now. 445 00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:16,560 So it's our fault. 446 00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:19,600 We're playing it back too fast and the actors are having to speed up 447 00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:23,080 to make sure they can get all the story in before the end credits. 448 00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:26,520 They must be panicking. What happens if they can't keep up? 449 00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:29,520 Would the film cut to a room the actors aren't in yet? 450 00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:31,640 Just footage of an empty room? 451 00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,440 The actors are going at a regular speed. 452 00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:37,200 It's just the speed of the playback 453 00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:39,720 that makes them look like they're moving very quickly. 454 00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,080 Could we communicate with the actors in the film 455 00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:45,480 and tell them that it's all right, that they can calm down? 456 00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:47,920 No. They'd all be dead by now. 457 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:49,200 Oh. 458 00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:51,160 Early films had subtitles 459 00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:54,440 so people could still watch them on their phones with the sound off. 460 00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:58,040 But before too long, they figured out how to do sounds too. 461 00:24:58,120 --> 00:25:01,520 What was more satisfactory to you? 462 00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:04,240 Reading was redundant at last. 463 00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:08,400 The written word's centuries-long era of tyranny was finally at an end. 464 00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:13,400 But any sense humankind was embarking on a hopeful new era 465 00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:15,800 was about to be shat through a bin bag. 466 00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,440 Dark clouds were gathering over Europe 467 00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:22,440 with a reboot of the World War franchise about to be unleashed. 468 00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:26,520 Soon, the world was plunged into another global war, 469 00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:31,200 and since this war run on even more terrible machinery than the previous one, 470 00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:33,680 it seemed there would be no end to the carnage. 471 00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:37,560 Then the Americans had an idea. 472 00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:40,360 Instead of dropping thousands of little bombs on Japan 473 00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:41,960 like they did to Germany, 474 00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:44,240 what if they dropped just one big one? 475 00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:48,520 Using Einstein's theories, which I cleverly mentioned earlier, 476 00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:51,960 they began the Manhattan Project, run by men with hats on, 477 00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:54,000 who came up with something fearsome: 478 00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:56,720 an atomic bomb called Little Boy, 479 00:25:56,800 --> 00:26:00,960 the most powerful and inaccurately named weapon ever used. 480 00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:03,160 How powerful was Little Boy? 481 00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:04,640 Put it this way: 482 00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:05,960 if that bomb had been dropped 483 00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:08,760 on my ex-boyfriend Sean's house in Westhoughton, 484 00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:12,200 everything, from the Chequerbent roundabout on the A58 485 00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:14,920 to the florist next to the Hart Common Golf Club, 486 00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:16,600 would have been totally destroyed. 487 00:26:17,120 --> 00:26:19,800 The initial blast would have vaporized Sean, 488 00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:21,960 while the vintage Pac-Man arcade cabinet 489 00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:25,000 he once spent my entire birthday weekend restoring 490 00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:27,520 would have almost certainly been rendered unplayable 491 00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:29,720 by the raging firestorm that followed. 492 00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:33,440 Everything from Wigan to Bolton would be burnt to a crisp. 493 00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:36,880 I'm talking Middlebrook, gone. Bickershaw, gone. 494 00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:39,440 Hindley Green, forget it. 495 00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:41,200 The unspeakable horror 496 00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:43,640 of the atomic bomb ended World War II. 497 00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:45,120 Everyone had had enough 498 00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:49,080 and the world agreed for the second time in this episode to never have a war again, 499 00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:55,120 a promise it wouldn't break for a full 52 seconds into episode five. 500 00:26:55,200 --> 00:27:00,400 It's comforting, isn't it, to realize we don't have nuclear weapons these days? 501 00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:03,200 Well, it depends who you mean by "we." 502 00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:05,120 The British have got nuclear weapons 503 00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:08,760 and have recently indeed decided to increase 504 00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:11,480 the number of warheads that they possess. 505 00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:15,080 Yeah, but they're blanks, aren't they? They're full of blanks. 506 00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:16,400 No, not at all. 507 00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:20,640 No, no, these are fully capable missile systems with nuclear warheads. 508 00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:22,520 Many other states have them. 509 00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:26,160 I'm afraid that nuclear war and the threat of nuclear destruction 510 00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:28,040 remains very much with us. 511 00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:40,240 Right, can we talk about something a bit more cheerful? 512 00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:41,880 Anything you like. 513 00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:47,920 -Do you like ABBA? -I love ABBA. 514 00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:49,720 -Yeah? -Yeah. 515 00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:52,760 -What's your favorite ABBA song? -"Dancing Queen." 516 00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:55,120 "Dancing Queen," yeah. 517 00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:56,960 Yeah, it's great, isn't it? 518 00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:01,680 Next time we see how a cold war between East and West 519 00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:03,880 paved the way for rock and roll, 520 00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:05,800 which paved the way for countercultural hippies, 521 00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:09,760 who paved the way for Steve Jobs to pave the way for computers and smartphones, 522 00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:11,880 which paved the way for social media, 523 00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:13,600 which would pave the way for undoing 524 00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,280 all the progress humankind had made so far. 525 00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:20,880 Social media has been polarizing people, hasn't it? 526 00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:23,040 Like what's already happened to the bears. 527 00:28:23,120 --> 00:28:25,800 -What bears? -Polar bears.