Bank Card • 2022 • episode "S1E1" • The Secret Genius of Modern Life

Category: Technology | Subtitle:

Hannah Fry takes a look at the bank card, the digital key to accessing cash, and finds out how its extraordinary innovations have some surprising and sinister origins.

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The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2022 - 2025 • 17 episodes •

Bank Card

Hannah Fry takes a look at the bank card, the digital key to accessing cash, and finds out how its extraordinary innovations have some surprising and sinister origins.

2022 • Technology

Food Delivery App

Food Delivery App

Hannah Fry tucks into the tech behind food delivery apps, which are now used by 24 million people in the UK. Hannah finds out how pizza made us fall in love with the internet.

2022 • Technology

Virtual Assistant

Virtual Assistant

Hannah Fry delves into the inner workings of virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, which are now found in almost half of all UK homes.

2022 • Technology

Electric Car

Hannah Fry discovers why innovations in meat packing almost derailed the electric car revolution and how a breakthrough in camcorder batteries led to Elon Musk’s electric empire, as well as demonstrating how not to drive a multimillion dollar prototype car of the future.

2022 • Technology

Fitness Tracker

Fitness Tracker

Hannah Fry finds out how 1970s car crashes helped us to count our steps, why WWII dogfights led to a crucial health monitor and how fitness trackers are even being used to catch killers.

2022 • Technology

Trainer

Hannah Fry visits eBay’s authentication centre, where they are waging war against fake high-value trainers. She discovers how American breakfast waffles transformed our trainer soles and how an 18th-century tea set led to the use of celebrity endorsement.

2022 • Technology

Passport

Hannah gains access to a top-secret site where anonymous staff and the latest tech work to make the British passport one of the most secure documents on the planet.

2023 • Technology

Vacuum Cleaner

Hannah takes a look at the vacuum cleaner, going behind the scenes with Dyson and discovering how the motor in their latest vacuum spins nine times faster than that of a Formula One race car.

2023 • Technology

Smartphone

With rare access to electronics giant Samsung, Hannah uncovers the technological game changers that have made the smartphone a reality.

2023 • Technology

Microwave

Hannah Fry discovers the hidden WWII radar technology that heats up baked beans, learns the legend of the melted candy bar in an engineer’s pocket that kick-started a kitchen revolution and puts her life on the line to demonstrate why microwaves zap food but not people!

2023 • Technology

Headphones

Headphones: these marvels of miniaturisation are worn by 30 million people in the UK. Hannah Fry visits Bose to find out how the teeny earbud tech works and meets the human testers with ‘golden ears’.

2023 • Technology

Lift

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.

2023 • Technology

Aif Fryer

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.

2025 • Technology

Fridge

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.

2025 • Technology

Rollercoaster

Hannah uncovers the wild origins of the modern-day rollercoaster and gets the inside story on the UK’s newest, tallest and fastest coaster – Thorpe Park's Hyperia.

2025 • Technology

Doorbell

The rise of the smart doorbell is one of the great tech success stories of the 21st century. Hannah heads to Los Angeles to take a deep dive into doorbell history and talk to market leaders Ring.

2025 • Technology

Motorway

Hannah takes a drive to the National Highways control centre for the UK’s busiest motorway to meet the team that keep the motorways running 24/7.

2025 • Technology

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Clean

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Fridge

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Rolls Royce Super Engine

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Cyprus to Gaza

Setting off from a snowy mountain ski resort in Cyprus, Simon finds an island and a capital city still deeply divided between Turkish Cypriots in the north and Greek Cypriots in the south. Simon joins the UN troops who patrol the line that separates the two sides, one of the world's longest-running peacekeeping missions. From Cyprus, Simon heads to the Middle East, a region of the Mediterranean that's also no stranger to conflict and division. In Lebanon, Simon explores a country of breathtaking landscapes, with spectacular coastline, soaring mountains and a sacred valley known as the Qadisha, a holy site for Lebanese Christians. Staying overnight in an abandoned monastery carved into the rock face, Simon learns that in a Muslim-dominated Middle East, Christians are facing persecution and numbers are collapsing. Travelling south, Simon's next stop is Israel, a country that perhaps more than any other depends on the Mediterranean for its survival. With few friends in the region, Israel has to transport most of its goods by sea. Simon joins the Israeli Navy who patrol the coast and protect the country's offshore oil reserves using the latest military weaponry and technology, including unmanned, combat-ready drone boats. From Israel Simon crosses one of the world's most heavily fortified borders to reach the Gaza Strip. Palestinians and Israelis have endured a seemingly endless cycle of violence and in Gaza the result has been devastating destruction. Many building materials are restricted by an Israeli blockade on Gaza, but Simon meets an inspiring young woman who has helped reconstruction efforts by inventing an ingenious method of making bricks from ash. It's a rare ray of hope in one of the most troubled regions of the Mediterranean.

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Robots

We share the planet with an estimated 9 million robots, from self-driving cars to surgical arms. Could they one day completely replace humans?

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