Connections

November 12, 2023 8:25 AM

I just yesterday discovered that all three seasons of James Burke's history series Connections [Wikipedia] are available on the Internet Archive. That's 40 episodes for streaming or download. This comes along with news [ArsTechnica] that Curiosity Stream has a new short series Connections With James Burke [Trailer] now on their platform. Previously, from 2010.
posted by hippybear (39 comments total)

There was a clip on social media where Burke points to a rocket just as it ignites, which is how I learned this delightful news. Thanks for posting.
posted by theora55 at 8:26 AM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

AKA The Greatest Shot in Television. No second takes allowed!
posted by autopilot at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2023 [16 favorites]

Oh Internet Archive, how you flirt with danger. There's very little chance this is licensed so I advise anyone interested to (a) hop on the torrent and download while the gettings good and (b) don't blow up the spot, OK?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:41 AM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

It’s a great series, both timeless and very much of its time.
posted by rikschell at 9:00 AM on November 12, 2023

What a TREASURE.
posted by alex_skazat at 9:02 AM on November 12, 2023

I love this! In my first year of university we watched quite a number of these episodes as part of our lectures. Really great for understanding the context and development of certain ideas and concepts. So accessible, the way he laid out the information. Thanks for posting this!
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 9:09 AM on November 12, 2023

2014's Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and 2020's Cosmos: Possible Worlds (the National Geographic reboots of Carl Sagan's classic TV series) used a similar "connections" approach, and the science is right up to date.
posted by fairmettle at 9:10 AM on November 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Years ago I remember turning a friend on to this. The next time I saw them they explained, wild-eyed, that they were doomed because they didn't know how to use a plow.

(The earlier episodes in particular haven't aged well, but I still have a soft spot for the predecessor to this series, Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man". Episode 11 (pst, also on the archive) still hits like a hammer to the gut.)
posted by phooky at 9:11 AM on November 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Burke's Connections series are nice but I've come to favor his Day the Universe Changed from 1985 - less technical, more political. Also available at the Archive, here's episode 1.
posted by Rash at 9:18 AM on November 12, 2023 [13 favorites]

I do love these and I hope they get the HD transfer treatment at some point.

I was wondering about this recently though but does anyone have any idea how this view of history is considered by contemporary experts? I seem to remember the series having a lot of assertions that sound reasonable but might actually be something of a stretch or misconception.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:23 AM on November 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this. I always liked this show and I watched it a lot in the 70s and 80s. There was no way to save anything on TV then, so I always ended up watching the last 10 minutes or the first 15 before something happened (phone rang, mom says we have to do something, etc., etc.) and that would be it. You never knew when it would be broadcast again.

It will be great to see the entire episodes.

KInda sad to see the ground floor of the World Trade Center again in episode one.
posted by freakazoid at 10:42 AM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Oh Internet Archive, how you flirt with danger. Flirt with danger? The website allows rampant copyright violations with a tremendous amount of text, audio, video, and software uploaded by users with no regard for copyright law. Yes, much of it is arguably an ethical good - abandoned software for platforms that haven't been made for decades, audio and video recordings that have never been and likely never commercially released, documents that are used to repair and service equipment that is no longer supported by manufacturers, etc. But much of it is also indisputably copyright infringement that just shares commercially available material. And it makes me angry because the organization appears to tolerate this which places their incredibly important mission at risk.
posted by ElKevbo at 10:57 AM on November 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thanks for this, and I was glad to see a single download link for all 40 episodes as a single .zip.

I watched a lot of this in the 1970s and it had no small part in my becoming an archaeologist. it is, of course, an absolute cornucopia of "just so stories" within a unilineal narrative framework, but it's good fun nonetheless.
posted by Rumple at 11:35 AM on November 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Some random Burke-arcana YouTube served me -- The Real Thing [3h], a set of six half-hours from 1980 about how our senses work. How signals travel to our body, into our body, and how our brains build their individual world pictures out of the senses. And how none of this is probably the same as what anyone else perceives.
posted by hippybear at 11:39 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Leisure Suit of Wisdom!
posted by gimonca at 11:48 AM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

We watched the first episode of the new series on Curiosity a couple of nights ago. Despite the relative downishness (quantum computers will someday predict everything and take away free will) it was still very well done and fascinating to see him create the historical connections. Age hasn’t slowed him down much.
posted by lhauser at 12:18 PM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I remember watching these in the early 1990s on TLC when my family first got cable, and then the updated Connections^2. Sad to see all the drivel that is on Discovery/TLC today.

I love the Prelinger stuff on the internet archive that is truely abandoned material, but there certianly are some reasonable limits to “information wants to be free”
posted by CostcoCultist at 12:53 PM on November 12, 2023

TIL James Burke is still alive
posted by scruss at 3:15 PM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

My high school world / AP US history teacher showed us Connections on days when he wanted a break. Most people used the time to take a surreptitious nap (although he would come over and hit people with a stapler if they fell obviously asleep). I loved watching for the weird little moments and also learned a ton.
posted by zebra at 4:08 PM on November 12, 2023

good torrent
posted by glonous keming at 6:42 PM on November 12, 2023

Filioque!
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:08 PM on November 12, 2023

The Neuron Suite - A James Burke Special 1982 [1h]
posted by hippybear at 7:33 PM on November 12, 2023

After the Warming was something he did in 1989 the was eerily prescient.
posted by TedW at 6:50 AM on November 13, 2023

These used to be weirdly hard to find in good quality. This was one of the shows my dad and I really enjoyed watching together and talking about afterwards, and it's bone-deep comfort media for me now. Thank you!
posted by penduluum at 7:10 AM on November 13, 2023

Any advice about which file (s) I should download. I have a desktop Mac and am not sure which option would be the best. Much thanks in advance.
posted by DJZouke at 9:06 AM on November 13, 2023

Right side of the page, sidebar "Download Options", at the bottom, "Show All" and to the right "366 File" or "46 Original".

You want the "46 Original" which is a zip file with all the episodes. You want to click on this directly, I think, to get the download to start.
posted by hippybear at 9:23 AM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh, nope. Not to abuse the edit window, but you can just download the MPEG4 link and that zips up all the episodes without including the torrent files. Slightly smaller download there.
posted by hippybear at 9:24 AM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thanks hippybear!
posted by DJZouke at 12:14 PM on November 13, 2023

I bought all of these on DVD back in the day. The first series, along with Cosmos, made a massive impact on the young me.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 6:37 PM on November 13, 2023

Yeah, so for me it was Connections at age 11, with the book as a gift at Christmas that year, and then Cosmos at age 12, with THAT book as a gift at Christmas that year.

And let met tell you, back then, getting the book was how you preserved the series because buying the actual video series was well beyond a household budget. MAYBE you managed to tape Cosmos first-hand. I remember the librarian in my junior high had taped it first hand and was offering up the bootleg tapes for in-class viewing for a couple of years before she was told to stop.

So I saw Connections once and that was it for maybe 15 years. And that's how things were for a lot of things for me being a fascinated young person who got to see a thing once and then presumably never again. So getting the book for Christmas...

It's quite a book. A much more dense text than the television series, but entirely modeled after and shaped by it. Like maybe the television series was the grand outline and the book had all the fiddly bits filled in.

I still have the book but I'm not about to sit down with the book and start episode one of the series and see how they compare. I will leave that exercise for younger minds.

Those other Burke things I've linked which I haven't sought out but YouTube has decided suddenly to share with me... they're quite interesting. Burke is really good at presenting a through line to an audience. That's something that I think gets a bit lost with those longer series -- he's really just good as a presenter.
posted by hippybear at 7:56 PM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I saw it on first release in '78, and then I think maybe when it was repeated, and then not at all until 2004 when I found the DVDs. Before that I knew Burke as presenter on ace pop science program, Tomorrows World. The theme tune to which is playing in my head now.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 11:24 PM on November 13, 2023

Yeah, a combination of Connections and Tim Hunkin's "The Secret Life of Machines" is sort of my documentary hygge ideal and they just don't seem like they're produced that way any more. Even Nova is sort of punched up and energetic in non-comforting ways these days.
posted by Kyol at 9:05 AM on November 14, 2023

The fantastic YouTube channel Technology Connections is influenced by him, well worth a watch! There's something very relaxing about long form videos on how interesting things work.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:16 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I finally watched the first episode of the reboot, "Seeing the future", which eventually connects Napoleon's exile on St. Helena to quantum computers. Something about the "entirely green screen" format feels low-budget compared to the number of location shots in the original, and due to the compositing, Burke can't walk around which makes him look like a CG avatar with a big head. More over, I really wished that so many of the historical things being discussed would be shown for real, but are instead portrayed with stock footage or artistic impressions.

(I also don't remember the "connections" being quite so tenuous in the original, but haven't rewatched them in decades so that might be nostalgia clouding my recollection)
posted by autopilot at 12:10 PM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

This Connections summary link might be helpful to some.
posted by DJZouke at 6:35 AM on November 15, 2023

I got to interview him about the new series and his approach to teaching history - and our discussion touched on solar system colonization, nuclear weapons, the economics of documentary making, and more.
posted by sindark at 11:38 PM on November 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have fond memories of the point-and-click computer game as well. Mm, FMV goodness.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 9:18 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

it makes me angry because the organization appears to tolerate this which places their incredibly important mission at risk

Library of Alexandria and back-alley samizdat are two great flavours that don't belong together.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:28 AM on November 16, 2023

gosh i really really really want to love the new series but after watching 2 episodes i'm like not entirely sure. it def does not has the same feel as the earlier seasons -- i totally understand why this is so, and why he might not be as willing to travel all over the dang place to get some b-roll as he might have been 20 years ago ( -_-) but likeeeee. there have always been some huge leaps in the....connections....this show has made. i'm sort of hoping that it will address the extreme vaporware of "3d printing shit from atoms will save the entire world" stuff but idk. it's still quite enjoyable.

(- _-) as if you wouldn't like, go to the south of france to be on a show idk i would if anyone is listening
posted by capnsue at 9:54 PM on November 16, 2023