I watched the episode on Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, inventor of the phonautograph. Fascinating topic.
I barely made it to the end. Between the host Steven Johnson's patronizing condescension as if his audience were three year olds, and the dreadfully slow pace at which information leaked out between all his cutesy stammers and stutters, not to mention the pauses to make room for yet another unneeded production gimmick, I found this program simply unbearable.
This was a wonderfully interesting subject. The first recordings of the human voice! Amazing.
But in some bizarre attempt to dumb it down to a 1st grade intellect, all the fascination was stripped away leaving a sickly sweet Leave it to Beaver meets Disney patina.
And most incredibly, the real gem of the show, the actual digitization of the original "phonoautographs" into renderable audio files, garnered a whopping 15 seconds of screen time.
One wonders if, perhaps, the producers were less enamored with personality and more on the actual subject matter, we may have been treated to a better treatment of it.
Even my 9 yr old found it slow and condescending. And when she realized that no further recording would be forthcoming, her exact words, unprovoked or influenced by me, were, "Aaaah. Bummer."