Hannah takes a drive to the National Highways control centre for the UK’s busiest motorway to meet the team that keep the motorways running 24/7.
S3E5 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology
The rise of the smart doorbell is one of the great tech success stories of the 21st century. Hannah heads to Los Angeles to take a deep dive into doorbell history and talk to market leaders Ring.
S3E4 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology
Hannah uncovers the wild origins of the modern-day rollercoaster and gets the inside story on the UK’s newest, tallest and fastest coaster – Thorpe Park's Hyperia.
S3E3 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology
Hannah hits the production line with appliance giants Bosch to find the lifeblood at the heart of every fridge and gets a lesson in carrot droop.
S3E2 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology
Hannah takes a look at the air fryer – a device that is rapidly taking over people's kitchens, cooking up everything from bread rolls to baked Alaska and almost making ovens obsolete.
S3E1 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology
Hannah goes behind the scenes to look at the technology behind the lift, entering a 246m high lift shaft to test everything from the brakes to her own fear of heights.
S2E6 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology
Headphones: these marvels of miniaturisation are worn by 30 million people in the UK. Hannah Fry visits Bose to find out how the teeny earbud tech works and meets the human testers with ‘golden ears’.
S2E5 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology
Hannah Fry discovers the hidden WWII radar technology that heats up baked beans, learns the legend of the melted candy bar in an engineer’s pocket that kick-started a kitchen revolution and puts her life on the line to demonstrate why microwaves zap food but not people!
S2E4 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology
With rare access to electronics giant Samsung, Hannah uncovers the technological game changers that have made the smartphone a reality.
S2E3 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology
Hannah takes a look at the vacuum cleaner, going behind the scenes with Dyson and discovering how the motor in their latest vacuum spins nine times faster than that of a Formula One race car.
S2E2 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology
Hannah gains access to a top-secret site where anonymous staff and the latest tech work to make the British passport one of the most secure documents on the planet.
S2E1 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology
Hannah Fry visits eBay’s authentication centre, where they are waging war against fake high-value trainers. She discovers how American breakfast waffles transformed our trainer soles and how an 18th-century tea set led to the use of celebrity endorsement.
S1E6 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2022 • Technology
The documentary series reveals the extraordinary riches and wonders of the Polar Regions that have kept people visiting them for thousands of years. Today, their survival relies on a combination of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science. Most Arctic people live in Siberia, either in cities like Norilsk - the coldest city on earth - or out on the tundra, where tribes like the Dogan survive by herding reindeer, using them to drag their homes behind them. On the coast, traditional people still hunt walrus from open boats - it is dangerous work, but one big walrus will feed a family for weeks. Settlers are drawn to the Arctic by its abundant minerals; the Danish Armed Forces maintain their claim to Greenland's mineral wealth with an epic dog sled patrol, covering 2,000 miles through the winter. Above, the spectacular northern lights can disrupt power supplies so scientists monitor it constantly, firing rockets into it to release a cloud of glowing smoke 100 kilometres high. In contrast, Antarctica is so remote and cold that it was only a century ago that the first people explored the continent. Captain Scott's hut still stands as a memorial to these men. Science is now the only significant human activity allowed; robot submarines are sent deep beneath the ice in search of new life-forms, which may also be found in a labyrinth of ice caves high up on an active volcano. Above, colossal balloons are launched into the purest air on earth to detect cosmic rays. At the South Pole there is a research base designed to withstand the world's most extreme winters. Cut off from the outside world for six months, the base is totally self-sufficient, even boasting a greenhouse.
S1E6 • Frozen Planet • 2011 • Nature
Gates tackles the efficacy of fighting climate change, weighing the cost-benefit analysis that future generations will inevitably have to confront.
S1E3 • What's Next: The Future with Bill Gates • 2024 • Technology
Preserving truth in an era of misinformation is challenging. Bill traces the life cycle and impact of conspiracy theories, with insights from Lady Gaga.
S1E3 • What's Next: The Future with Bill Gates • 2024 • Technology
The world's cities are growing at a faster rate than any other habitat on the planet. And while most of us imagine them to be concrete jungles devoid of nature, for animals of all shapes and sizes they are just a new habitat filled with new and surprising opportunity. With similar needs to humans, these wild animals face similar challenges, and like us, if they play their cards right, they can find everything they need in the city. With the natural world shrinking, and our urban centres continuing to grow, adapting to life in the city has never been more important. This first episode examines what it takes for these wild residents to thrive in the newest and fastest changing habitat on the planet. From smooth-coated otters at home in Singapore and huge colonies of megabats in Adelaide to reticulated pythons living on the streets of Bangkok, experience our cities through fresh eyes - the eyes of the animals that live in them, and discover a wilder side to a world we think we know.
S1E1 • Cities: Nature's New Wild • 2018 • Nature
The world's deserts force animals to come up with ingenious ways of coping with hostile conditions, giving rise to the most incredible survival stories on earth.
S1E4 • Planet Earth II • 2016 • Nature
Dive into the long year of the Alaskan brown bear through the Earth's seasonal cycle amid the frigid winter months and into the warmth of summer.
S1E3 • Our Universe • 2022 • Nature
Thirty-five years of relentless propaganda and harsh brutal punishments left the Chinese people living in fear of their country's one-child policy. That rule, which was abandoned in 2015, has left the country with an ageing population and tens of millions more men than women. The documentary's directors, Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, unmask the tightly held, hidden secrets of how the Chinese government enforced its one-child policy and explores its devastating effect. Wang, a new mother now living in the US, travels back to the rural village she was born in and speaks to midwives, village leaders and journalists, revealing chilling stories of forced abortions, sterilisation, abandoned babies and state-sponsored kidnappings. Her own family share the grim choices they were forced to make in order to avoid harsh punishments from the state. With new information on tens of thousands of abandoned and kidnapped children (nearly all of them infant girls), One Child Nation breaks open decades of silence on a vast, unprecedented social experiment that shaped - and destroyed - countless lives.
Storyville • 2019 • Economics
In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas, which lead to the creation of a new political movement that sought to create new people, free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics.
S1E3 • The Century of the Self • Economics
What makes an entire country take self destructive decisions of eating unhealthy, smoking cigarettes & going to war? In 1916, Woodrow Wilson ran on a platform strongly opposing US entry into WWI. But just a few months after taking office, the United States declared war on Germany. Soon after, the American people, so firmly opposed to the war just a year earlier, were enthusiastic supporters. What happened? The short answer: Sustained consumption of propaganda! PROPAGANDA: THE MANUFACTURE OF CONSENT is a revealing documentary about how public relations grew out of wartime propaganda-and a portrait of one of the key architects of the field, Edward Bernays. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays refined the techniques used so successfully during the war to sell products to consumers, and ultimately to sell capitalism itself to workers. Public relations was also critical in building support for the New Deal, and in the pushback against it from the National Association of Manufacturers, which created materials including films aimed at children on the glories of manufacturing. Bacon and eggs as part of a hearty breakfast? The work of Bernays on behalf of a bacon company. Cigarettes as a sign of women's liberation? Bernays, again. Casting the democratically elected government of Guatemala as a Communist threat to justify US invasion on behalf of the United Fruit Company? Once more, Bernays. There was nothing shadowy about Bernays. He wrote a book detailing his techniques and discusses them in an archival interview with Bill Moyers from 1983, where we see his pride in hijacking the women's suffrage movement in order to sell more cigarettes—one of many illuminating moments in this film. Featuring Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Public Relations Museum co-founder Shelley Spector, historian Stuart Ewen, sociologist David Miller, and Bernays' daughter Anne, PROPAGANDA offers an insightful look into the development of public relations techniques, and how they continue to affect us today.
2017 • Economics
REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM is the definitive discourse with Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive, on the defining characteristic of our time – the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. Through interviews filmed over four years, Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality – tracing a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority – while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. Profoundly personal and thought provoking, Chomsky provides penetrating insight into what may well be the lasting legacy of our time – the death of the middle class, and swan song of functioning democracy. A potent reminder that power ultimately rests in the hands of the governed, REQUIEM is required viewing for all who maintain hope in a shared stake in the future. A Film by Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott
2015 • Economics
Jan Leeming narrates a look at controversies, scandals and surprises in TV, film, music and politics from 1990, when Mark Fowler rocked Walford with a dramatic return to EastEnders and a sitcom about Adolf Hitler was pulled off air after just one episode. The Poll Tax riots caused chaos on the streets of London and it was the end of the road for Britain's longest serving prime minister when Margaret Thatcher resigned. Heavy metal band Judas Priest were accused of hiding subliminal messages in their songs, and pop duo Milli Vanilli's career came to a dramatic end when it was revealed they were nothing more than a mime act.
S1E5 • Controversially: That Was the Year that Was • 2023 • Economics
'Invisible Hands' is the first feature documentary that exposes child labor and child trafficking within the supply chains of the world's biggest corporations.
2018 • Economics
A countdown show looking at the shocking truth behind what we eat and the often dangerous and misguided methods we adopt in order to lose weight. Scientists, industry experts and exponents discuss the pros and cons of fad diets, 'healthy' foods and extreme exercise regimes. We all know about the benefits of exercise, good diet, looking good and living a healthy lifestyle, but most of the things that are good for us can bring side-effects that are precisely the opposite. Incontinence, infertility, infected genitalia, energy drink madness, hip replacements and even death are commonplace among the beautiful people – as are botched surgeries, extremely dangerous self-harming diets and bizarre exercise programmes.
2013 • Health
How bad can our drinking pattern be for our health? Doctors and genetically identical twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken want to find out. With the current drinking guidelines under review, the twins embark on self-experimentation to see the effects of different drinking patterns on their health. With Chris drinking 21 units spread evenly across the week and Xand having his 21 in single weekly binges, how will their bodies differ after a month? Catching up with the latest research into alcohol drinking patterns, we ask if moderate drinking is genuinely good for us - and whether binge drinking is really that bad.
It's common knowledge that humans share 99% of their DNA with chimpanzees. But is it true?
Angela Rippon investigates the disease that took her mother's life and is now starting to affect her friends. She undergoes a series of tests to discover if she has any early signs of the disease and makes the difficult decision about whether to take a genetic test that could predict her future risk. Along the way, Angela finds out some of the surprising ways people can help to protect themselves. She discovers why getting a good night's sleep could help prevent Alzheimer's and how learning a new language might be more effective than any current drug treatment. Angela also visits a number of people who are living with the disease, including Bob, the husband of one of her oldest friends. She meets families that carry a gene for early-onset Alzheimer's and discovers how they could be the best hope of finding a cure for this devastating disease.
2016 • Health
(This episode is from before the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic) - In this episode from 2019, experts including Bill Gates discuss the history of pandemics, how they spread and what could be done to contain them.
There are more bicycles than people in the Netherlands. The Dutch don’t seem to care about what is special about their bike culture. The film invites regular cyclists and scientists from all walks of live to talk about Dutch cycling culture. When talking to people in the Netherlands they come up with many different aspects as to why cycling is as important as it is. The film shows many different angles why cycling has remained so popular in the Netherlands. In the end it leads to a general conclusion. Talking about why we cycle means we are dealing with a bigger questions; What kind of society we want to be?
2017 • Health
From artificial photosynthesis to vegan diets, changes in science and behavior are helping improve Earth's air quality.
S1E2 • Age of Humans • 2021 • Environment
The first leg of his journey begins in Istanbul, from which he travels along the Aegean coast to the hostile border with Syria. He meets refugees trying to start a new life and a billionaire taking advantage of a property boom. He moves on into the Taurus Mountains and the Black Sea Coast, and visits a community trying to keep an ancient language alive.
S1E1 • Turkey with Simon Reeve • 2017 • Travel
Watch as birds solve puzzles and challenge our basic notions of intelligence. Call somebody a “bird brain,” and you’re not delivering them a compliment. But as NOVA shows, birds turn out to have advanced problem-solving skills that we usually assume are unique to humans. Watch astonishing tests of avian aptitude: parrots that can plan for the future, jackdaws that can “read” human faces, and crows that can solve multi-step puzzles with tools like pebbles, sticks, and hooks. Could these just be clever tricks based on instinct or triggered by subtle cues from their human handlers? To rule out any doubts, NOVA puts feathered Einsteins through their paces and reveals skills that even three- or four-year-old children have a hard time mastering—such as putting off one reward now to get a bigger one later. From this revolution in thinking about our feathered friends, the conclusion seems irresistible that bird brains see the world in ways that aren’t so different from our own.
Mike Wooldridge examines real-life neurons in action and explains how artificial neural networks are inspired by neural structures in the brain. To demonstrate how AI learns, we watch drones as they are trained to recognise and fly through structures in the lecture theatre autonomously. AI exploded into the public consciousness in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT and boasts around 100 million monthly users. Mike unravels the mystery of how large language models like ChatGPT work, and he finds out if one day this technology - along with a whole suite of different AI tools - will allow us to understand the animals we share this planet with. The Christmas Lectures are the most prestigious event in the Royal Institution calendar, dating from 1825, when Michael Faraday founded the series. They are the world's longest running science television series and always promise to inspire and amaze each year through explosive demonstrations and interactive experiments with the live theatre audience.
S1E1 • BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: The Truth about AI • 2023 • Technology
Professor Chris Jackson charts the planet's changing climate. He shows how the oldest rocks and fossils provide evidence of radical climate changes throughout its history, revealing that what drives them is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
S1E1 • BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - Planet Earth: A User's Guide • 2020 • Environment
Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, posed this famous question: If you put a cat in a sealed box with a device that has a 50% chance of killing the cat in the next hour, what will be the state of the cat when that time is up?