In this "entertaining medical series" (The Sunday Times, U.K.), Dr. Michael Mosley shows how drugs have revolutionized medicine and changed the course of human history. Unfolding over a period of 200 years, it's an extraordinary tale of daring, self-experimentation, revelation, genius, and outright luck.
Professor Robert Winston meets Lucy, the first upright ape, and follows her ancestors on the three-million-year journey to civilisation.
Traveling to the far corners of the world, we discover the extraordinary ways animals are adapting to our rapidly changing planet. We witness nature’s remarkable resilience, as our perception of evolution and its potential is forever transformed.
Andrew Marr explores how Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has taken on a life of its own far beyond the world of science.
Sir David shines the spotlight on some of nature’s evolutionary anomalies and reveals how these curious animals continue to baffle and fascinate.
Sir David discovers a microscopic world that’s invisible to the naked eye, where insects feed and breed, where flowers fluoresce and where plants communicate with each other and with animals using scent and sound.
Carl Sagan covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.
Which of the great primates of 25 million years ago is our common ancestor? Is it pierolapithecus? Follow the journey of primates developing into Homo erectus and then to Homo sapiens through the millions of years of evolution and the thousands of miles of migrations.
Nowhere else in the world is so regularly ravaged by infernos of the intensity, scale and destructive force of the Australian bushfire. As our population grows and spreads and as the effects of climate change are felt, the danger to loss of life and property escalates. What do we know about bushfires and how can we prevent their devastating consequences? Not surprisingly, Australia is a world leader in fire research and the complex and technologically sophisticated job of fire fighting and prevention. Inside The Inferno takes us into the terrifying heart of major fire events, unfolding the research that explains how fires start, grow and change; and how we predict them, prevent them, fight them and hopefully survive these violent natural disasters. Inside The Inferno explores not only the devastating mega fires such as Black Saturday in Victoria 2009 and the Canberra fires of 2003, but also major fire-fronts that received little attention.
Taste: The Flavor of Life
The Body in Question is a landmark British medical documentary series of 13 shows made for the BBC. It was a groundbreaking show, being the first to ever televise an autopsy (in the final show on 29 Jan 1979). Dr Jonathan Miller considers the functioning of the body as a subject of private experience. He explores our attitudes towards our bodies, our ignorance of them, and our inability to read our body's signals. The first episode starts with vox populi asking where various organs in the body are located. By the final episode we are left in no doubt. Taking as his starting point the experience of pain, Dr Miller analyses the elaborate social process of "falling ill", considers the physical foundations of "disease" and looks at the types of individuals humankind has historically attributed with the power of healing. The series was nominated for two 1979 BAFTAs: Best Factual Television Series and Most Original Programme/Series.
A five-part series that features the latest research exploring how early humans evolved. See how the mixing of prehistoric human genes led the way for our species to survive and thrive around the globe. Archaeology, genetics and anthropology cast new light on 200,000 years of history, detailing how early humans became dominant.
The series investigates Paolo Macchiarini’s claims to have invented a ground-breaking method to create new organs. His method using plastic tracheas sown with stemcells has been operated on patients in the US, Russia, Sweden and the UK. So far, unfortunately, the track record of his plastic organs is not very good. Almost all patients are dead. And several of his former surgeon colleagues in Sweden claim that not only does the method not work, but that his scientific claim to fame is based on falsified and misrepresented data. Some even claim that his patients have been used as human guinea-pigs.
Michael Mosley embarks on three journeys to understand science's last great frontier - the human mind - as he traces the history of the attempts to understand and manipulate the brain.
This three-part series follows comedian Jon Richardson and his friend Matt Forde as they face up to the adult realities of mortgages, marriage and parenthood.
Life is a fragile thing. It changes and adapts so specifically to survive in the environment it's placed in. This ability to adapt is called evolution, and it's the reason that life has endured for the past few billion years. But evolution takes a long time, so when environments change too quickly for the inhabitants to keep up, the result is a drop in population or at the worst… extinction. And sometimes these changes can be so big that they affect the entire globe. Leading to some of the most catastrophic events in our planet’s history… mass extinctions. Content creator Angel of Death explores the five mass extinctions and the effects they had on life on earth in this five part miniseries.
A long journey in 8 episodes to discover the human body, with Piero Angela who closely observes our organism, focusing each time on a theme: the eye, the ear, taste and smell, the stomach and the intestine, liver, bones, lungs and heart. How does our "wonder machine" work? To make each explanation direct and clear, the program uses films, animations and photographs developed with the scanning electron microscope.
Body Invaders
Bill meets wildlife in Borneo and Indonesia to tell the story of Darwin's rival Wallace.
Mankind Decoded is the intriguing story of how 12 timeless forces have shaped human history in extraordinary ways. Find out how the implacable forces of nature have compelled us to adapt or die; how new technologies have transformed our existence; how our need for food brought forth civilization; and the desire for luxuries changed our world.