documentaries

I watch a few documentaries a week, but it's rare for me to come across a series that I need to take notes on to keep up with. The first season of the BBC series "Connections" is one of those. It will blow your mind. James Burke walks us through the history of innovation from a touch stone (used to test the purity gold) right up to the atomic bomb, and explains how these two distant inventions are related. If you can see through the 1970s disco outfits and smoking on airplanes, you will be shocked that documentaries this good were being made 30 years ago.

Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist is the best film ever to depict what goes on inside a real science lab -- period.

Above is one of the first scenes in the movie. It introduces one of the protagonists, a graduate student named Robert Townley. Go ahead -- watch it.