Tales from the Industry XXXV -Tinkering with the Universe

One very good piece of good news from last month was the announcement that one of the TV series I have done a lot of work for over the last five or so years (gosh, has it been that long?) has been renewed for another season. I’m being deliberately vague here and not naming it since I do not know if it has been officially announced yet. (On the other hand, nobody has told me that it is a secret…) (You can see many of my posts on this sort of thing here.)

It’s great that the parent channel has again continued to invest in science programming, and people seem to like the show a great deal. As I’ve said here in the past, I am very encouraged by the very wide range of types of people who stop me on the street (or bus, subway, bar, cafe, plane – yes, I’ve had show-related encounters in all of these places… people who like science shows are everywhere!) to tell me they like the show, ask questions, or just say thanks for my on-screen explanations and demonstrations. It’s a diverse range of people in terms of careers, race, gender, age, and so forth, which I am very pleased to note, and I do very much hope that TV executives take note of this when making decisions about future programming for their outlets.

It is great to get the chance to contribute a little bit again, even though it takes a bit of time away from other projects (particularly right now, The Project). As far as I know, so far I’ll be in two or three episodes, although there may be more (that’s all that has been scheduled in terms of shooting dates to date). I’ve spoken to several of the filmmakers, discussing elements of the ideas they are trying to explore, suggesting people they might talk to, possible analogies, demonstrations, and so forth. As I do each year. Overall, I think they’ve chosen some interesting and fun topics to explore again, and I wish all the filmmakers well in their endeavours to bring in strong episodes, as they have done so well in the past.

Tomorrow begins the first shooting for my contributions to one of the episodes, involving multiple locations with something like an 8:30am call time, so it is going to be a long, long day. I hope it’ll be fun and valuable for the viewers!

-cvj