Hacker Cinema
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
1981 · Film · documentary · 50 min
Directed by Christopher Sykes
Richard Feynman was a scientific genius with - in his words - a "limited intelligence". This dichotomy is just one of the characteristics that made him a fascinating subject. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out exposes us to many more of these intriguing attributes by featuring an extensive conversation with the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. During the course of the interview, which was conducted in 1981, Feynman uses the undeniable power of the personal to convey otherwise challenging scientific theories. His colorful and lucid stories make abstract concepts tangible, and his warm presence is sure to inspire interest and awe from even the most reluctant student of science. His insights are profound, but his delivery is anything but dry and ostentatious.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
Feynman was a rare kind of speaker in that he spoke in fully formed sentences, with almost no fillers, backtracking, stuttering, or other things that disrupt verbal flow. If he needed to think, he would just pause for a second or two.
All the books published under his name are edited transcripts of conversations, speeches, and lectures. Aside from scientific papers, he wrote very little that got published.
If you want to watch Feynman speak, the BBC Horizon episode "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981) [1] is fantastic. It includes his famous answer about how magnets work [2].
(There is also a 1999 book with the same name, but I don't remember if it's edited from the same interviews. I wouldn't be surprised, though.)
[1] https://vimeo.com/340695809
[2] https://youtu.be/MO0r930Sn_8?si=ov6eU2pzrsut62Ff
Five documentaries with and about the great American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88), all made for the BBC TV 'Horizon' science series.
- Feynman: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1981)
- The Complete Fun to Imagine With Richard Feynman
- Feynman: The Quest for Tannu Tuva (1988) aka Last Journey of a Genius
- Feynman: No Ordinary Genius Part One - 50mins
- Feynman: No Ordinary Genius Part Two - 50mins
Thank you.
Yes, I must have yanked that from the documentary about Feynman called "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out", which I saw when it first aired as an episode of NOVA in the 80s. I just looked it up because I haven't seen it since, and it's one of the first thing he mentions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srSbAazoOr8
I totally agree that Roissy (and especially his followers) take the linear dominance hierarchy all wrong.
Documentaries for geeks or about geeks? The ones about geeks will probably be really boring. They'll leave out both the technical stuff and the potentially actionable war stories. "Revolution OS", for instance, was a well-crafted film, but pretty dull if you read Slashdot.
Branch out a bit. Off the top of my head:
"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out": Richard Feynman talks. (Danny Hillis pops up for a bit.)
"The Fog of War": a smart, reflective person discusses how he presided over a huge disaster.
"Lost in La Mancha": Terry Gilliam takes a bunch of risks to get a movie started and doesn't make it.
"Around Cape Horn": Captain Irving Johnson describes sailing around the Horn on one of the last windjammers.
"Walking with Dinosaurs": Woo! Dinosaurs!
"Apollo 13" is not an actual documentary, of course, but it's fun and reasonably faithful for a big-budget movie.