Burke starts out in a spice market in Istanbul where you can find hot pickle, recounts the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, follows the trail of pepper, tea, and opium and the exploitation of addicts, moves to the jungles of Java, then to zoos, the use of canaries as carbon monoxide detectors, how George Stephenson used his consolation prize to build a locomotive, which led to the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack. Next we visit a sea island off the coast of South Carolina, where children of slaves are schooled. By the way, they picked cotton, which leads us to gaslight and air conditioning. Georgia Cayvan's glass dress leads to the neodymium glass laser, (which was used in the Gulf War). And the armed switch for firing a missile is also called a "hot pickle".

A dream of utopia is followed from microchips to Singapore, from the transistor to its most important element, germanium, to Ming vases and cobalt fakes (which contribute to the blue in blue tiles used in special Islamic places), and mosaics in Byzantium, the donation of Constantine, Portuguese navigation by stars, the "discovery" of Brazil, Holland's tolerance, diamond merchants, optics, microscopes, beasts of science, Frankenstein's monster, and finally New Harmony.

James Burke provides evidence that history does repeat itself by examining the likes of black and white movies, conquistadors, Peruvian Incas, small pox, settlements that look like Spain's cities, the gold abundance ending up in Belgium, Antwerp, colony exploitation, the practice of burying treasure to avoid pirates, Port Royal's pirates, earthquakes, the College of William and Mary, military discipline, Alexander Humboldt's observation on the environment, Ratzel's superstate Lebensraum, and Haushofer's world domination.

The connection between polyethylene and Big Ben is a few degrees of separation, so let us recount them: polyethylene, radar, soap, artificial dyes, color perception, tapestries, Far East goods, fake lacquer furniture, search for shorter route to Japan, Hudson in Greenland, the discovery of plentiful whales, printing the Bible, Mercator map, Martin Luther's protest, star tables, Earth as a flattened sphere, and George Graham's clock which of course leads to Big Ben.

Burke shows how to get from sugar to atomic weapons by two totally independent paths. The first involves African slaves, Abolitionist societies, Sampson Lloyd II, wire, suspension bridges, galvanised wire, settlement of the Wild West, barbed wire, canned corn, and cadmium. The second path involves sweet tea, rum, a double boiler, the steam engine, Matthew Boulton, English currency, the pantograph, electroplating, and cathode ray tubes.

Another series of discoveries examined by Burke includes Eastman Kodak's Brownie, the disappearing elephant scare of 1867, billiard balls, celluloid as a substitute for ivory, false teeth that explode, gun cotton, double shot sound of a bullet, Mach's shock wave, aerodynamics, nuclear bombs, Einstein's relativity, Einstein's selenium, movie talkies, the vacuum tube amplifier, radio, railroad's use of wood, coal tar, gas lights, creosote, rubber, the Zeppelin, the automobile, and finally how Adeline vulcanises tires.

The past in this case starts with the tea in Dutch-ruled India, examines the Japanese tea ceremony, Zen Buddhism, porcelain, the architecture of Florence, Delftware, Wedgwood, Free Masons, secret codes, radio-telephones, cosmic background radiation and—finally – radio astronomy, which listens to "Echoes of the Past".

How do space shuttle landings start with the vacuum which was forbidden by the Church? Burke takes us on an adventure with barometers, weather forecasting, muddy and blacktop roads, rain runoff, sewage, a cholera epidemic, hygiene, plumbing, ceramics, vacuum pumps, compressed-air drills, tunnels in the Alps, train air brakes, hydroelectric power, the electric motor, Galvani's muscle-electricity connection, Volta's battery, and gyroscopes.

This episode starts with a billiard ball and ends with a billiard ball. Along the way, Burke examines Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica, how mining supported war, the role of money, the Spanish Armada, large ships, problems posed by a wood shortage, glass making, coal, plate glass, mirrors, the sextant, the discovery of granite, and seashells in the mountains, which enabled a new view of the age of the earth, and Darwin's theory of evolution, Francis Galton's Eugenics, and the forensic use of fingerprints.

James Burke explains the relationship between hot air balloons and laughing gas, and goes on to surgery, hydraulic-water gardens, hydraulic rams, tunnelling through the Alps, the Orient Express, nitroglycerin, heart attacks and headaches, aspirin, carbolic acid, disinfectants, Maybach-Gottlieb Daimler-Mercedes, carburetors, helicopters, typewriters, punch cards, and IBM.

What do these have in common – Freud, lifestyle crisis, electric shock therapy, hypnotherapy, magnetism, phrenology, penology, physiology, synthetic dyes, the Bunsen burner, absorption, Fraunhofer lines, astronomical telescopes, chromatic aberrations, and surveying? Follow James Burke on the trail of discovering the connections between these and others in "Sentimental Journeys".

What do all these things have in common—three grandfathers' lifetimes, two revolutions, 1750 Cornish steam engines for Cornwall's tin mines, water in mines, pumps, steam engines, Watt's copier, carbon paper, matches, phosphorus fertiliser, trains and gene-pool mixing, travelling salesmen, 24-hour production, educated women, the telephone, high-rise buildings, Damascus's swords, steel, diamond, carborundum, graphite, oscilloscope, television, Apollo space program, X-ray crystallography, DNA and gene therapy? You will learn these things in the first episode of Connections2, "Revolutions".