Connections by James Burke (1978)
I see a lot of similar stuff on Youtube these days.<p>A recent Economics Explained walked through wealth inequality in some Scandinavian countries (TL;DR: it's high). This is different from income inequality, which is quite low. It walked through the wealth of Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, who has a net worth of $13B, by virtue of having inherited Heineken. Her family bought (not founded) Heineken 200 years ago, and the family fortune dates back a half-millennium.<p>There are really neat documentary channels like that. I'm not downplaying Burke, who was brilliant, but two bits of progress:<p>- In 1978, he didn't have the Internet. Research is much easier today.<p>- In 2020, anyone can produce high-quality documentaries. In 1978, you needed a massive investment.<p>I'm not trying to imply it's easy, but we've gone from where you need a video editing studies, reels of film, and a research team, to where you just need to spend a few years as a super-nerd to pick up the requisite skills, and drop perhaps $2000 on cameras and microphones. Indeed, if you're scrappy, you can do pro-quality with just a better cell phone and computer, with a lot more work.<p>I'd guess a lot of channels were inspired by Connections.<p>I know Mechanical Universe inspired a lot of (now better) Youtube channels, like 3Blue1Brown. So these early documentaries were pivotal, but we've also come a long ways from there.