Next Episode of The Secret Genius of Modern Life is
Season 3 / Episode 3 and airs on Apr 16, 2025 19:00
Hannah Fry uncovers the secrets behind the miraculous technologies of the modern world, revealing the mind-blowing stories behind their invention.
Headphones: these marvels of miniaturisation are worn by over 30 million people in the UK. Hannah Fry visits legendary headphone honchos Bose to find out how today's teeny earbud tech works and meets the human testers with ‘golden ears'.
She discovers how helicopters in the Korean War helped put the ‘shhh' into noise-cancelling, why it took a muted Mormon church service to get headphones onto people's heads, and how an opera singer's electric shock therapy led to the invention of the speaker.
Hannah goes behind the scenes to look at the technology behind the lift, entering a 246m high lift shaft to test everything from the brakes to her own fear of heights.
Along the way, she finds out how rickety 19th-century coal mines made lifts safer, gets to grips with a piece of medieval siege technology still used in lifts today, and discovers how an 1850s PR stunt changed the modern skyline forever.
Hannah takes a look at the air fryer – a device that is rapidly taking over people's kitchens, cooking up everything from bread rolls to baked Alaska and almost making ovens obsolete.
Hannah hits the production line with appliance giants Bosch to find the lifeblood at the heart of every fridge and gets a lesson in carrot droop.
The rollercoaster has been sending our hearts racing and stomachs dropping for over a century, and today millions of us get our kicks on these topsy-turvy, dare-devil joyriders. Hannah gets the inside story on the UK's newest, tallest and fastest rollercoaster – Thorpe Park's Hyperia. She uncovers the wild origins of the modern day coaster and finds out how some dodgy French physics in the 19th century, NASA rocket scientists and an ambitious cartoonist called Walt delivered the ultimate thrill machine.
The rise of the smart doorbell is one of the great tech success stories of the 21st century, and these security gadgets are now taking over people's doorsteps.
Hannah heads to Los Angeles to talk to market leaders Ring and take a deep dive into doorbell history, discovering how a garage tinkerer who played with sharks, some Soviet spy tech and a student desperate for a drink all led to this technological phenomenon.
Britain's 2,300 miles of motorway are the backbone of the country, and without them, it'd probably all grind to a halt.
Hannah takes a drive to the National Highways control centre for the UK's busiest motorway to meet the team that keep these super-roads running 24/7. And she discovers how a mathematician with a passion for wild swimming, a Formula 1 legend and a 1960s road-sign revolution created the modern motorway.
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