Farnsworth vs Sarnoff • 2015 • episode "S1E3" • American Genius

12:10

Is there anyone out there? Does the popular movie quote 'ET phone home' have any substance? Astronomers have been pointing their radio telescopes at the skies for decades trying to pick up alien signals. Hitch a ride as we join astronomers trawling through the galaxy looking for signs of life.

10/10 • Catalyst: Season 1 • 2015 • Technology

55:38

Los Angeles becomes America's "arsenal for democracy" during World War II while critics see an unhealthy alliance develop between the federal government and aircraft manufacturers.

S1E1 • Blue Sky Metropolis • 2020 • Technology

55:40

Dirty water has killed more humans than all the wars of history combined, but in the last 150 years, a series of radical ideas, extraordinary innovations and unsung heroes have changed our world. Steven Johnson plunges into a sewer to understand what made a maverick engineer decide to lift the city of Chicago with jackscrews in order to build America’s first sewer system. He talks about John Leal, who deliberately “poisoned” the water supply of 200,000 people when, without authorization, he added chlorine, considered lethal in 1908, into Jersey City’s water and made it safe to drink. This isn’t only about the world becoming a cleaner place — the iPhone, the subway, flat screen TVs and even the two piece swimsuit are the result of the valiant efforts of the unsung heroes of clean.

S1E1 • How We Got to Now • 2014 • Technology

43:41

Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat give rise to head-to-head fighting genre, but the increasing graphic violence in games brings controversy.

S1E5 • High Score • 2020 • Technology

59:00

Documentary which follows the construction of a trailblazing 36,000-tonne steel structure to entomb the ruins of the nuclear power plant destroyed in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It films close up with the team of international engineers as they race to build the new structure before Chernobyl's original concrete sarcophagus - the hastily built structure that covers the reactor - collapses. Built to last just thirty years, the temporary sarcophagus is now crumbling, putting the world at risk of another release of radioactive dust. Radiation levels make it impossible for workers to build the new shelter directly over the old reactor, so engineers are erecting the new megastructure - taller than the tower of Big Ben and three times heavier than the Eiffel Tower - to one side and will then face the challenge of sliding the largest object ever moved on land into place over the old reactor.

2016 • Technology

59:12

This episode reveals the fascinating chain of events that made quick and safe travel possible even across the greatest distances a possibility. From the Rolls Royce aero-engine factory in Derby, Michael Mosley, Prof Mark Miodownik and Dr Cassie Newland tell the amazing story of three more of the greatest and most transformative inventions of all time, the steam locomotive, the internal combustion engine and the jet engine. Our experts explain how these inventions came about by sparks of inventive genius and steady incremental improvements hammered out in workshops. They separate myth from reality in the lives of the great inventors and celebrate some of the most remarkable stories in British history.

Part 2 • The Genius of Invention • 2013 • Technology