Journey into the realms of science fiction Following the success of James May’s 20th Century, journalist, presenter and all-round forward-thinker James May returns with a brand new three part series, James May’s Big Ideas.
Not content with merely pondering the questions that keep him up at night, James travels the world and into the realms of cutting edge science with a surfeit of his trademark wit and imagination. The series is shot in the UK, US, Spain, Germany, Holland, Japan, Russia, Eire and over three episodes looks at the issues that trouble him:
Come Fly with Me
James deals with the difficulty in getting from A-B and he laments the fact that we’re still reliant on ideas developed in 19th and early 20th century. He hopes to find a better, bolder way of getting about. Along the way he travels to Russia to take the controls of a means of transport kept secret from the west until the 1990’s, to the US where he gets to fly an original and only surviving flying car, and ponders why we don’t have them and the air traffic nightmare that would ensue if we did.
Man-Machine
James confronts the impending convergence between man and machine and explores the world of cyborgs, robots, and artificial intelligence. In Japan James meets a man who has made an android double of himself, he gets to play baseball with a robot and attempts to move himself using the power of his mind.
Power to the People
Wondering why, in the shiny bright 21st century, virtually all of it is powered by burning dead plants and animals, James looks for brighter, more powerful and technologically forward thinking sources of energy. He travels to New Mexico to see how he might run his car on thin air and to Holland where scientists are looking to harness a Japanese discovery 20 km above the earth. This causes him to wonder if we really want to be considered advanced, might the solution be out of this world?
