Original subtitles

[ Narrator] You hold the entire history of the universe...

in the palm of your hand.

- [ Beeping ] - Every time you make a cell phone call...

you're connecting to the big bang...

the first humans, and even the sinking of the Titanic.

- [ Klaxon Blaring ] - Events that span billions of years...

linked... by big history.

We think of history as a timeline...

a series of events stretching a few thousand years into the past.

It's time to think bigger.

Instead of a line, imagine a web of infinite connections...

interacting over billions of years...

linked together to create everything we've ever known-

our universe, our planet... and us.

History as we know it is about to get big.

By the year 2014, there will be more cell phones on Earth than people.

Today, six billion phones link us together...

into a single, pulsing network of humanity.

Traditional history tells us...

that centuries of innovation lead to the cell phone...

an iconic technology of the digital age.

But to big history, the phone is a tool...

that amplifies the things that make us human.

Language, communication...

memory.

It's a time machine...

that decodes the secrets of how the mind works.

The first phone numbers are easy to remember...

ranging from a few digits to six or seven digits long.

But as the number of phones grows, so does the phone number...

to as many as ten digits.

And that poses a surprising challenge to the human mind.

[ Man ] Human beings definitely have a limit on their short-term memory.

Beyond about five or seven things, we just can't remember it that well.

Things really fall apart.

[ Narrator] Why does our memory have this limit?

Big history connects us...

to a time when our brains are figuring out what and how to remember.

We are now in prehistoric Africa...

where the brain of these early humans is now full-size...

with memory power equal to our own.

They don't need to remember phone numbers.

But they do need to memorize directions to the best hunting grounds.

A list of information, recalled in a specific sequence.

Two hundred millennia later, our working memory hasn't changed much...

because the brain still works in the same way.

L! encodes each item on a list, or each digit in a phone number...

in a different cluster of brain cells.

As we recall each digit, our brain fires up that cluster...

but it also has to suppress all the others...

or the number will be scrambled in our minds.

So when we want to remember a three-digit number in the right order...

we call up one cluster of cells for each digit...

and suppress the other two.

For a number with ten digits...

we need to suppress nine memory clusters at a time.

[ Kean ] When you have to remember things in order...

each thing you add to the list really taxes your brain a lot.

It gets exponentially harder to remember things at every step.

[ Narrator] It takes 50 times more brainpower to remember 10 items in order...

than it does to remember three.

Take a look at this sequence of 10 numbers.

Can you remember them in order...

when we take them away?

Most people won't remember more than five or six digits.

[Woman ] if we look at this from a big history point of view-

Our hunting and gathering ancestors...

could probably keep track of so many issues...

say, the locations of so many different resources.

In today's world, we've simply replaced that same suite of knowledge...

with, say, basic phone number information.

[ Narrator] So if our brain evolves to memorize five or six things...

how do we get it to remember 10?

Turn 10 bits of information into three.

It's called chunking...

and it's the reason your phone number looks the way it does today.

[ Man ] it's three, then three, then four.

That's a very simple selection of instructions...

just put out in numerical order.

It's the same way as having a hunter-gatherer mind-set...

of cross river, climb up hill, overlook hunting path.

It's very simple.

[ Narrator] So the way we remember phone numbers...

links us to our prehistoric past.

[ Beeping ]

- The way we dial them- - [ Ringing ]

Reveals another unique aspect of our evolution.

[ Beeping ]

Big history connects back to a new age of technology.

It's the late 1950s in America...

and the country's top technology facility...

AT& T's Bell Laboratories...

is looking to update the dial of this, the rotary telephone...

with buttons you can press.

But what's the best layout for the dial pad?

Engineers look to a new field of science...

called human factors engineering.

It's based on a simple idea...

that evolution refines how the different parts of our bodies work-

our memory, our heads, our eyes.

So our most efficient tools are designed with that in mind.

Human evolution takes millions of years. I mean, just why fight it?

Why don't we just have a machine that conforms to it?

The engineers test dozens of different options...

looking for a layout that lets humans dial with the most speed and accuracy.

There's horseshoes. There's circles. There's crosses.

The numbers are arranged from bottom to top, top to bottom.

They're arranged left to right, right to left.

They're trying out every different layout they can.

[Chattering ]

[ Narrator] One pattern proves to be very intuitive to human hands and minds.

It becomes the standard dial pad on phones around the world.

[ Beeping ]

Keys that dial more than 200 billion phone calls every day-

a vast web of worldwide connections...

that are made possible...

because of a titanic disaster.

Big history connects events across billions of years...

to give us a new perspective.

It reveals that the tools we build reflect how our brains decode the world around us...

and that an everyday gadget like the cell phone...

puts the power of the big bang...

in our pockets.

Big history connects back to a disaster unfolding off the coast of Italy.

The massive, almost' 7, 000 fool long cruise ship, Costa Concordia...

has struck a rock...

and is threatening to topple into the sea.

[ Man On P.A. ] Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

The situation is under control. Please remain calm.

[ Narrator] The passengers head for the lifeboats.

Passengers like Lynn Kaelin.

[ Chattering In Italian ]

[ Narrator] Fearing for her life...

Lynn wants to reach out to her husband, 5000 miles a way in Seattle...

to say good-bye-

[ Phone Beeps]

To do this, her voice will have to ride a wave...

that links her back to the birth of the universe...

and to another shipwreck 100 years earlier.

Human vocal cords produce sound...

by disturbing the molecules in the air around them.

Iceberg straight ahead!

The molecules begin to vibrate in a distinct pattern known as a sound wave.

- Engine, full stop. - [ Bell Rings ]

[ Narrator] The farthest a human voice can travel is about 600 feet...

before the sound wave runs out of energy.

If we want to communicate over longer distances...

our voices have to hitch a ride...

on another type of wave...

that relies on a force almost as old the universe.

Big history brings in astrophysics to connect us back to the beginning of time.

[ Explosion ]

The big bang-

The birth of all the matter and energy that will ever exist in the universe...

and the forces that govern how it all works.

[ Man ] The forces of nature, we know now...

began to distinguish themselves and separate out.

One of the forces that resulted from that process-

is electromagnetism.

Electromagnetism gives sound a way to travel...

that's more powerful than air molecules bumping into each other.

Radio waves.

These waves are transmitted...

by the vibration of electric and magnetic fields.

And unlike the simple sound wave...

radio waves can travel vast distances.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft can send radio transmissions to Earth...

from the very edge of the solar system...

12 billion miles away.

[ No Audible Dialogue ]

So a cell phone extends the reach of the sound waves our voices make...

by convening them into radio waves and transmitting them through the atmosphere.

But there's a problem with radio waves.

If too many people want to use them at the same time, messages get crossed.

Onboard the sinking Costa Concordia...

although thousands of calls are being made at the same time...

just about everyone's call gets through.

How is this possible?

Big history reveals...

it's because of another disaster that happens 100 years earlier.

[Creaking ]

- [Alarm Ringing ] - [Woman ] Help, somebody!

[ Narrator] The Titanic is sinking.

Luckily, there's a wireless radio on board.

- [ Beeping, Tapping ] - The operator taps out urgent 8.0.8. messages...

that travel on radio waves to the east coast of North America.

Amateur radio operators pick up the messages...

and quickly crowd the airwaves to spread the shocking news.

But because radio waves are unregulated...

there are no rules to govern who can use which frequency.

It becomes a free-for-all.

[ Markley] Everybody's jamming everybody else.

The wireless signals are flying everywhere.

You can't make head nor tail of any of the messages.

[ Narrator] The radio communications are so chaotic...

that some newspapers report everyone is rescued.

One of the things that the Titanic disaster brought to the forefront...

was that wireless, as a technology, was growing too big.

There was anarchy out there.

In direct response to the Theme disaster...

congress divides the wireless communication spectrum into organized lanes.

[Stevenson ] This allowed for lanes of communication in the air...

that we use today.

The rest of the world follows suit...

clearing the way for radio waves...

to soon dominate the way we communicate.

Big history has shown how an ancient force...

coupled with a shipwreck in 1912...

makes modern cell phone calls possible...

and allows the survivor of a shipwreck in 2012...

to talk to her husband on the other side of the globe.

[ Rings 1

[ No Audible Dialogue ]

[ Man ] She said she was dangling off the side of the ship there in the lifeboat.

She says, uh, “I'm gonna die.”

And I says, “No, you're not. No.”

Today there are so many cell phones on Earth...

that we take them for granted.

Bu! cell phones only work because of a rare, ancient secret...

buried deep beneath the earth.

Big history is a new way of looking at the world.

It reveals how the cell phone is a time machine...

that reflects how our brains evolve...

and connects us to events billions of years in the past.

You hold the history of the universe...

and the power of the planet... in your pocket.

Each cell phone is like a geological world tour.

The silicon in the central processor comes from China.

The plastic circuit board is made from crude oil...

from places like Saudi Arabia.

The cobalt in the rechargeable battery is mined in the Congo.

The copper used for circuitry is found in Chile.

Raw materials that require billions of years of processing...

by the Earth... and seas.

[Valle] That phone you are holding...

is a product of not just human technological evolution.

You are holding the building blocks of this planet in your hand.

[ Narrator] One of these building blocks...

means the difference between phones that look like this...

and ones that look like this.

A powerful metal called tantalum.

[Johnson] Tantalum is this remarkable material.

It's rare, but it's crucial...

in so much of the technology that we're using today.

It allows us to make extremely small components...

that can handle large amounts of energy.

[ Kean ] Tantalum is really a key component of modern cell phones...

because it has some very attractive properties.

It's a very light metal.

Uh, it's also non-corrosive, and it's heat-resistant.

But most importantly, tantalum holds a charge very, very well.

[ Narrator] All cell phones need an energy reserve...

a way to store power from the battery...

and release it quickly when its needed.

To do this, the phone builds up positive charges here...

and negative charges here...

in two separate pieces of metal.

Combine the charges...

and it releases a jolt of energy that powers the phone.

So the charged metals have to stay separate...

but close enough that they can combine their charges...

and create a power surge.

Tantalum has a unique property-

a tendency to form its own microscopic skin...

an invisible built-in barrier that keeps the charges apart...

without adding size or weight to the phone.

[ Markley ] You could make those capacitors out of aluminum.

But they would have to be 20 times as big.

So good luck fitting that in your pocket.

[ Narrator] That's why tantalum is now more valuable than silver...

and why each of us carries just a little bit of it in our pockets.

[ No Audible Dialogue ]

Each time you make a call...

you're pressing the buttons on a time machine...

that links us back across the ages...

to the birth of the universe...

the development of our minds...

and the building blocks of our planet.

A single human voice...

hitching a ride on the waves of big history.

But the story of cell phones is just the beginning.

There's a much bigger puzzle hidden in big history.

Each episode unlocks a clue.

- Everyday things like beef .. - [ Moos ]

Silver...

and codes hold the key.

Watch them all, and you'll see this grand mystery revealed.

The big history of time, of space.

The big history of us.