For bigger-pictures examples of this, I think you’re looking for the TV series, Connections, hosted by James Burke. It’s old but still VERY good.

Each episode started with James Burke showing you something cool, and tracing how it got here/got that way, often in unusual circumstances.

“I’m standing next to a nuclear reactor. This single building generates power for the city below, 50,000 people. And today every one of them would be sitting in the dark, or at a pitiful small fireplace, if it weren’t for an Italian peasant whose mother forbade him to play the lute, in 1032.”