PASADENA, Calif. — Documentarian Morgan Spurlock has focused his cameras on everything from the fast food industry to education. The new season of his CNN series, “Morgan Spurlock Inside Man,” will deal with such broad topics as celebrity, futurism, pets in America, income inequality and college athletes.

Long before the public gets to see his work — told through a serious investigative look accented with his dry sense of humor — the process starts with an idea.

“When the show got greenlit for a second season, we already had a list of things that we wanted to talk about. It’s stuff we pull out of the headlines, newspapers, news reports, magazines. You name it,” Spurlock says.

The network selects ideas they like. Then Spurlock and his team pick the ones they want to do. Once there’s a general agreement, research starts to flesh out the ideas. The eight topics that show the most potential go into production.

He knows his stories will be seen around the world through the global news channel, but the one key element he keeps in mind when selecting topics is finding stories that primarily impact an American audience. Many people told him that a story on immigration in the first season of the CNN series didn’t affect most Americans, but he showed how it touches the country by looking at the food a person buys.

“What I wanted to do with this series is to get people to connect the dots to see how they are affected by these stories,” Spurlock says.