AllMovie

The Connections films are part history, part science, and all highly entertaining, as author and host James Burke explores the mysteries of tea in Connections 2: Echoes of the Past. The tea in India leads Burke to the ritual of the Japanese tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism, and porcelain takes him to the architecture in Florence and Freemasons. Moving back in time and across continents, Burke finds the links to secret coding, and from there to radio-telephones and the science of radio astronomy, which allows scientists to listen to sounds from the rest of the universe.