Big Ideas

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[edit] General Information

Science Documentary hosted by James May, published by BBC in 2009 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

James May's Big Ideas 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:

[edit] Come Fly with Me

In the first of this series, James May travels the globe in search of his ultimate flying machine. He begins by heading into the frozen wastes of Russia to pilot one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War. He then heads to the US to fly the world's only surviving flying car. After watching a man struggle with his tiny chopper in Japan, he gets back to the suburban gardens of Sussex to turn himself into a human rocket - all in pursuit of finding a better way to get from A to B. Finally, in California, James encounters his ultimate dream - a flying car capable of vertical takeoff, and one so simple that anyone can pilot it, but is the world ready for a flying car?

[edit] Man Machine

James May sets off to discover if his childhood vision of a world populated by robots will ever become a reality. He begins in Japan, where he is charmed by a woman wearing an electro-mechanical jumpsuit that can double her strength, before having a close encounter of the weird kind with a robot that's almost human - it's designed to look and behave exactly like its creator. In the US, he meets the two million dollar bionic woman, and, in the unlikeliest of laboratories, he is astonished by the most sophisticated walking robot in the world, not because it can climb stairs and run, but because it walks straight into a door. But is James' vision of the future just a little old-fashioned? To find out, he takes his first nervous step into a world where he becomes a ghost within a machine.

[edit] Power to the People

In this, the last of his Big Ideas programmes, James May tries to find smarter, brighter and bolder ways of powering the planet for future generations. So James sets off on a global search to find people who share his dream. It takes him from Guildford, where he takes a solar powered car to its limit at night, to the US where he joins some aerospace engineers who are trying to build an 'elevator' into space. In Holland, he meets the first Dutchman in space who has put away his rockets and has swapped them for kites as he tries to harvest the power of the jet-stream. And finally, in the deserts of New Mexico, James seeks out some modern-day alchemists, who offer the promise of allowing him to drive his car on petrol conjured out of thin air.