Cunk on Earth

Last time, we saw how the Renaissance turned Europe

from a load of mud and parsnips into a posh resort full of paintings,

and how this awakening led to a string of people-power uprisings

that put the establishment on its arse.

But the revolutions were just beginning.

Humankind was about to leap forward again

by taming metal and electricity.

Progress would usher in a new era of convenience and entertainment,

but also threaten the existence of all life on Earth.

So, swings and roundabouts, really.

This week, it's the rise of the machines here on Earth,

and also here on Cunk On Earth.

For centuries, everything in nature, from people to cows, ran on this...

..fresh air.

If you haven't heard of air, it's an invisible blend of gases

so addictive we suffer fatal withdrawal symptoms

within minutes of our supply being cut off.

This dependency made air's rival, water, jealous.

Water needed to up its game.

It needed to become more indispensable to us,

its natural masters. It was feeling the heat,

heat that turned it into something useful.

Steam.

Steam could be harnessed to power all kinds of machines.

And nowhere went steam bonkers quite like America,

where it would change the shape of the country's face forever.

To understand why, I'm afraid we have to look at a map.

At first, settlers had stuck to the edges of America,

leaving the middle untouched, like a frozen pie in a microwave.

But Americans back then weren't the humble, unassuming people

they still aren't today.

They believed in something called Manifest Destiny -

the belief that all the land belonged to them

and that God wanted them to go west

and claim it back from the Native Americans

he put there first by mistake.

What is Manifest Destiny?

Manifest Destiny is an ideology that was, in the 1840s and '50s

in the United States, that America had a God-given right

to take over the rest of the continent

and sort of spread its values and its virtues from sea to shining sea.

Right. So, it's God's plan?

That was the idea, yes.

Doesn't this make you God's slaves?

Well, I think what the people at the time would say

is that they were God's missionaries on Earth,

and so they felt that they were willingly enacting his policies

rather than being forced to do so.

But at the very least, you're God's bitches.

But manifesting your destiny was dangerous.

You had to trundle across a perilous landscape in a rickety wagon

on the brink of starvation or shitting yourself to death

with dysentery, getting bitten by snakes or butchered by Apaches.

Almost as if God didn't want them to do this, after all.

But the invention of the steam train changed all that.

The steam train laughed in the wagon's face.

Not literally. This isn't a children's book.

The Americans released steam engines into the wild,

carving routes across the land and changing the balance of power.

Now, fighting with Native Americans could be conducted at high speed

and with an accompanying buffet car service.

Thanks to the railroads, small towns formed all across the West.

They were tough, lawless places where summary justice was dispensed

down the barrel of a gun

as cowboys did whatever it took to protect their cows and their boys.

So, can you talk us through what this is here?

So, this is the Colt Single Action Army revolver, the Colt .45.

And you load it through here.

And you'd have to cock the hammer back for each shot.

Would this only kill people during the olden days,

or could it kill modern people, too?

I'm afraid it definitely could kill modern people.

It's so old. It sort of looks clockwork, doesn't it?

It does. Do the bullets come out slowly?

Could you sort of outrun the bullet?

You definitely couldn't outrun the bullet.

You're right to say it looks clockwork.

It's very like a clock mechanism, with a ratchet inside.

Rat shit? A ratchet.

Where did the bullets come out? Do they come out of that pipe bit?

They do. Yeah, that's the barrel.

Can I... Can I hold that up and look down the end of it?

Or will that shoot me in the eye?

It's generally frowned upon.

So, would getting shot in the eye actually hurt?

Because it's just a sort of water bag, isn't it, your eye?

I bet it would just pop and sting a bit,

but you'd basically be able to go about your business.

I don't know. I don't think there's any good place to get shot.

Why does humankind feel the need to invent

killing machines like this?

And could you keep your answer to a sort of sound-bite length?

Because we're human, I suppose.

It seems to be built into us to fight for resources...

Yeah. ..other humans. Yeah.

We can't seem to get away from it.

I don't know. I just think we're mental.

Guns played a huge role in shaping America and also in killing people.

Even now, the use of firearms is an integral part

of their national identity.

How come Americans have the right to kill anyone they want with a gun?

Well, they don't. Murder is illegal in the United States,

but they do have the right to own weapons.

They have the right to bear arms.

Correct. But bears don't have arms.

They do, actually.

Oh, do they? Yes. I thought they were legs.

Well, I'm not a biologist, but I suppose that when they stand up,

they're probably arms.

With its cowboys and guns and steam-train rides,

America became known as the land of the free,

which must have come as a surprise to all the slaves.

The barbaric practice of slavery was still prevalent in America,

particularly in the Southern states.

But by finally thinking hard about the subject,

the people of the Northern states made a horrifying discovery -

that inside each slave was an actual human person.

The North asked the South what kind of America it wanted to live in -

one where white people leeched off other races

while treating them as inferior,

or one where they pretended they didn't.

The argument escalated into a civil war,

a time when America was almost as polarised as it is today.

The Civil War tore America apart, didn't it?

Brother turned on brother.

Did anyone get so conflicted they turned on themselves?

I don't think so.

There may have been some very strong debates within individuals

of which side to join,

and I think that could be what you're perhaps referencing.

How come people say it was the first modern war, when you can see

from the photos it was ages ago?

Well, it's interesting you reference the photos

because it's the first war that photography really played a part.

It was something where photographs were part of the conflict

and documenting the violence.

It must have been quite exciting going to Snappy Snaps afterwards

and seeing which ones had turned out and which ones hadn't.

After four long years of war-related violence, the North came out on top,

which North is anyway.

It was a victory for the undisputed King of the North -

Abraham Lincoln.

Who was Abraham Lincoln,

and why did he have all those weird tattoos on his tummy?

I have no idea what you're referring to with the tattoos,

but he is a US president, revered as probably the best US president.

Apparently he had, like, a snowman and a robin tattooed on his tummy,

and the robin had a moustache.

I genuinely have no idea what you're referring to.

Now Lincoln was president, at long last slavery was abolished

and replaced with simple racial prejudice.

But Abraham Lincoln's story didn't have a happy ending.

Five days after the North won, a terrible fate befell him.

He was forced to go to the theatre to watch a play.

He was put out of his misery by a kindly gunman

but, cruelly, not until the third act.

Abraham Lincoln was shot in the theatre box, wasn't he?

Where is that on the body?

Oh, I think you're referring to the physical location

he was in when he was shot,

which was in the presidential box at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC.

And why was he shot? Was it because he wouldn't take his hat off?

Because that's quite annoying in the theatre, isn't it,

when someone is in front of you with a hat on?

Well, he was in the presidential box, so there wasn't anyone

behind him, as far as I know.

But he was shot by a man named John Wilkes Booth,

who was a believer in the Confederacy.

How did being shot in the head affect Lincoln's ability to lead?

Well, it ended it, because he died about 12 hours after he was shot.

So, he couldn't carry on?

He couldn't, no. Not as a corpse, unfortunately.

Lincoln's light may have been snuffed out,

but America's was about to do the opposite.

Americans had been toying with electricity ever since

Benjamin Franklin put a key on a kite string

to unlock lightning from the sky.

Then in 1878, Thomas Edison worked out how to use that power

to make something extraordinary.

It's hard to imagine a world where Edison

didn't invent the light bulb, and even if you did imagine it,

it would be too dark to see what was in it.

How did people see during the day before Edison invented light?

Light comes from the sun,

so people could see during the day because of the sun.

What they needed the light bulb for

was during the night, when there isn't any sun

and when you can't see.

So, what did people use before light bulbs?

Well, they used candles or they used oil.

So, we had daylight during the day and we had candles at night.

Yes. So, we didn't need light bulbs.

His life's work was meaningless.

Another of Edison's incredible inventions was the phonograph.

SCRATCHY RECORDING PLAYS

# To my honey I'll croon love's tune

# Honeymoon

# Keep a-shining in June

# Your silv'ry beams... #

Can you make it stop?