Whales in a Changing Ocean

Two friends, both Indigenous fishermen, are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.

It's death on an unimaginable scale, when a majority of Earth's species quickly die out. It's called "mass extinction," and it's happened at least five times before. Cataclysms, such as supervolcanoes or asteroids, are thought to cause these events, but some experts believe a manmade mass extinction could be next. Is our planet in trouble? And if so, is there anything we can do to stop the next catastrophic annihilation? Experts are traveling the world, performing groundbreaking scientific detective work to answer these very questions.

What caused Building 7 to collapse on 9/11? Dr. Leroy Hulsey from the University of Alaska Fairbanks may have the answer, following an exhausting four year engineering study.

Advanced technology, groundbreaking scientific discoveries about the beginnings of life, and computer animation all combine to detail how multiple siblings develop in the womb as the filmmakers at National Geographic explore the fetal growth of twins, triplets, and quadruplets. Detailed pictures of these different groupings in various stages of fetal development bring the earliest stages of life to the screen as never before.

Professional snowboarder and mountaineer Jeremy Jones has an intimate relationship with the outdoors. It’s his escape, his identity, and his legacy. But over the course of his 45 years in the mountains, he’s seen many things change: more extreme weather, fewer snow days, and economic strain on mountain towns. Motivated by an urge to protect the places he loves, Jeremy sets out on a physical and philosophical journey to find common ground with fellow outdoor people across diverse political backgrounds. He learns their hopes and fears while walking a mile in their shoes on the mountain and in the snow. With intimacy and emotion set against breathtaking backdrops, Purple Mountains navigates America’s divide with a refreshing perspective: even though we may disagree about climate policy, our shared values can unite us

Conservation biologist Tim Shields sees urgency in the field and finds that traditional conservation practices are lacking when it comes to saving desert tortoise populations from ravens. He goes rogue, employing an arsenal of lasers, exploding model turtles, drones and desert rovers as a means of protecting the tortoise's dwindling numbers.

At the bottom of the world is a place of wild isolation. Antarctica. Its vastness and extremes defy description. From volcanoes to glaciers... and peaks that scrape the sky, its geography is like nothing else in the world. Its wildlife embraces harsh, alien landscapes. And the people that make their home there for part of the year survive amidst unbelievable conditions, thanks to some of the most creative problem-solving on the planet. Filmed principally in the Sub-Antarctic and Ross Sea region as a series of vignettes - each based around one astonishing location after another - viewers will explore one of the most remote, and least-visited parts of the continent; less than 500 tourists make the journey to this region each year. Few places on earth capture the imagination like the great white continent. Now see it as it’s never been viewed before.

Filmmaker Jennifer Abbott explores the emotional and psychological dimensions of the climate crisis and the relationship between grief and hope in times of personal and planetary change.

Curiosity and Control examines our complex relationship to nature itself. A multi layered look at the world of Museums of Natural History and Zoological gardens, with voices from historians, authors, architects and zoo managers. It raises questions about how we perceive nature and our contradictory behavior of caging what we fear may be lost.

In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster research station in the Antarctic. During their expedition the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Cut off from the images that go around the world, the men can only experience the historical events passively. When they returned in the spring of 1991, their homeland was a foreign country. The documentary reconstructs the thoughts and feelings of the East German researchers on the basis of eyewitness accounts, diary excerpts, letters, film material, grandiose landscape shots from the location of the action and unique photos to make the consequences of the events tens of thousands of kilometers away on the small GDR expedition in the middle of the eternal ice tangible.

Après le déluge

When National Geographic photographer James Balog asked, “How can one take a picture of climate change?” his attention was immediately drawn to ice. Soon he was asked to do a cover story on glaciers that became the most popular and well-read piece in the magazine during the last five years. But for Balog, that story marked the beginning of a much larger and longer-term project that would reach epic proportions.

The few thousand kilometers that separate Patagonia from the South Pole are a fascinating and hypnotic journey for explorers. Some even speak of an addiction, 'the Antarctic bite'. March of the Penguins (2005) director Luc Jacquet has been experiencing it for 30 years. His new film is a visually-striking adventure, offering us images beyond words, an ultimate tribute to a vanishing continent.

Askania-Nova is the largest steppe wildlife sanctuary in Europe. It is located in south part of Ukraine, not far from Crimea peninsula. In order to underline this unique beauty we created a documentary musical film about life of animals and people in wildlife sanctuary of Askania-Nova. The movie reveals stories of a three protagonists, whose destinies were entangled because of wildlife sanctuary.

When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day – that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.

what is everything, and what is nothing? Professor Jim Al-Khalili explores the true size and shape of the universe and delves into the amazing science behind apparent nothingness. EVERYTHING: what the universe might actually look like and the remarkable stories of the men and women who discovered the truth about the cosmos. NOTHING: science at the very limits of human perception, where we now understand the deepest mysteries of the universe lie. The quantum world of the super-small shaped the vast universe we inhabit today, and Jim Al-Khalili can prove it.

A short black and white film which documents the discovery of X-Rays and how they can be used for medical purposes.

Cap D'Agde is a popular summer resort town in France. A large section of the town is clothing-optional, and thousands of tourists flock there every year for the opportunity to spend their days naked - not only on the beach or in the pool, but in the shopping area also. Our tour guides, Alison Brown and Wendy Cooper, show off the town's attractions and interview a number of visitors and locals to find out what they most enjoy about vacationing in the nude.

The female breast has been a motif for as long as there has been art. For centuries, people have been creating works that showcase this intimate and emotionally charged part of the body. Today, female artists are questioning traditional ideals of beauty and countering the male-dominated perspective of the breast with their own.

How did your body become the complicated, quirky, amazing machine it is today? Anatomist Neil Shubin uncovers the answers in this 3-part science series that looks at human evolution. Using fossils, embryos and genes, he reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates — the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree.