Latest Documentaries

Find your primal posture and sit without back pain

Discover how restoring your natural "primal posture" can help reduce back pain, neck pain, and other common musculoskeletal problems

TEDx • 2013 • Health

Motorway

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.

S3E5The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology

Doorbell

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.

S3E4The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology

Rollercoaster

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.

S3E3The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology

Fridge

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.

S3E2The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology

Aif Fryer

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.

S3E1The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2025 • Technology

Lift

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.

S2E6The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology

Headphones

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’.

S2E5The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology

Microwave

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!

S2E4The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology

Smartphone

With rare access to electronics giant Samsung, Hannah uncovers the technological game changers that have made the smartphone a reality.

S2E3The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology

Vacuum Cleaner

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.

S2E2The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology

Passport

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.

S2E1The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2023 • Technology

Recommended Documentaries

Infinite Variety

The episode begins in the South American rainforest whose rich variety of life forms is used to illustrate the sheer number of different species. Since many are dependent on others for food or means of reproduction, David Attenborough argues that they couldn't all have appeared at once. He sets out to discover which came first, and the reasons for such diversity. He starts by explaining the theories of Charles Darwin and the process of natural selection, using the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands (where Darwin voyaged on HMS Beagle) as an example. Fossils provide evidence of the earliest life, and Attenborough travels a vertical mile into the Grand Canyon in search of them.

1/13Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature

The Long Astronomical Perspective

Carl Sagan talks about our future and the exploration of space

7/10The Sagan Series • 1989 • Astronomy

Mountain

A cinematic journey of sound and nature that explores the beauty of the upper world. With advancements in technology, venturing to the peak of a mountain is an easier feat than it was three centuries ago.

2017 • Nature

Mindfulness

Take a deep, cleansing breath and slowly exhale while being enlightened on the impact meditation can have on your mind and body.

S1E4The Mind, Explained • 2019 • Brain

The Order of the Elements

In part two, Professor Al-Khalili looks at the 19th century chemists who struggled to impose an order on the apparently random world of the elements. From working out how many there were to discovering their unique relationships with each other, the early scientists' bid to decode the hidden order of the elements was driven by false starts and bitter disputes. But ultimately the quest would lead to one of chemistry's most beautiful intellectual creations - the periodic table.

S1E2Chemistry: A Volatile History • 2010 • Science

Bones

In the first episode, Dr Alice Roberts looks at how our skeleton reveals our incredible evolutionary journey.

S1E1Origins of UsNature

Creativity Documentaries

Who are we?

thehumanproject.us

2013 • Creativity

The transformative power of classical music

Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.

2008 • Creativity

Edvard Munch

In 2013, all of Norway celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch, one of the towering figures of modern art. It was hailed a 'once-in-a-lifetime show'. This film goes behind the scenes to show the process of putting the exhibition together, as well as providing an in-depth biography of a man who lived from the mid-19th century right through to the German occupation of Norway in the Second World War.

S3E3Great Art • 2019 • Creativity

Antony Gormley: How Art Began

Why do humans make art? When did we begin to make our mark on the world? And where? In this film, Britain's most celebrated sculptor Antony Gormley is setting out on a journey to see for himself the very beginnings of art. Once we believed that art began with the cave paintings of Ice Age Europe, tens of thousands of years ago. But now, extraordinary new discoveries around the world are overturning that idea. Antony is going to travel across the globe, and thousands of years back in time, to piece together a new story of how art began. He discovers beautiful, haunting and surprising works of art, deep inside caves across France, Spain and Indonesia, and in Australian rock shelters. He finds images created by hunter-gatherers that surprise him with their tenderness, and affinity with the natural world. He discovers the secrets behind the techniques used by our ancestors to create these paintings. And he meets experts making discoveries that are turning the clock back on when art first began.

2019 • Creativity

The Rom-Com

Mark begins with one of the most popular genres of all. They are sometimes sneered at by critics, but from the 1930s to the present day, many of our most beloved movies have been romantic comedies. From Bringing Up Baby and The Lady Eve by way of Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally and Pretty Woman to Love, Actually (a particular Kermode favourite) - as well as recent hits such as The Big Sick and La La Land - Mark examines the cinematic tricks and techniques involved in creating a classic romcom. Mark celebrates old favourites, reveals hidden treasures and springs plenty of surprises. Examining films from Hollywood to Bollywood via other gems of world cinema, he reminds us how, much like love itself, the art of the romantic comedy is international.

Part 1Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema • 2018 • Creativity

Young Picasso

Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest artists of all time. But where did this all begin? What made Picasso in the first place? Young Picasso visits Malaga, Barcelona and Paris, and explores their influence on Picasso, focusing on specific artworks from these early years - up to the ground-breaking and hugely significant Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. How did he rise to such great heights?

S3E1Great Art • 2019 • Creativity

Astronomy Documentaries

Moon Phases

In this episode of Crash Course Astronomy, Phil takes you through the cause and name of the Moon's phases.

#4Crash Course AstronomyAstronomy

Hunt for the Mars Aliens

NASA's brand-new Mars rover is on the hunt for alien life, and with the help of cutting-edge engineering, scientists embark on a search for fossilized remains, which might prove the Red Planet was once home to a vast ocean and extraterrestrial life.

Space's Deepest Secrets • 2020 • Astronomy

Hunting for Martian Life the Perseverance Rover

Meet Perseverance, NASA's latest rover, as it heads to Mars to answer one question: did life exist on the red planet? On the way, it will lay the foundation for human exploration of our closest neighbour.

Breakthrough • 2020 • Astronomy

Touching the Sun

For all of human history, the Sun, our home star, has measured our days and our seasons while fueling all life on Earth. Yet it remains an enigma. NASA's Parker Probe Plus is on a mission to change that -- flying through dangerous radiation to become the closest spaceship to orbit our Sun.

Breakthrough • 2019 • Astronomy

Hunt for the Missing Black Holes

New discoveries might finally reveal how supermassive black holes are made, and using the latest technology, experts are on the verge of understanding how these monsters grow and how they affect life on our planet.

Space's Deepest Secrets • 2019 • Astronomy

What is the universe made of?

The Earth, the sun, the stars, and everything we can see, only comprise five percent of the universe. But what about the other 95 percent? Scientists are puzzling over dark matter and dark energy, the mysterious components that make up the rest.

The Economist • 2015 • Astronomy

Random! Documentaries

Mind Reading

In this episode I visit a researcher who is studying memory by using machine learning and neuroimaging to detect and predict people's brain states. I also travel to Japan to meet with a team working on ways to record the content of peoples’ dreams.

S3E8Mind Field • 2019 • Brain

Could Humans Survive the Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid?

66 million years ago, the worst day in the history of life was dawning.

melodysheep • 2024 • Environment

Rivers - Friend and Foe

Human Planet meets people for whom rivers can be both a risk to life and a lifeline.

S1E7Human PlanetEnvironment

Intelligence

Undercover cameras help to explore the world of animal intelligence, ingenuity and creativity in their hunting, protection and health. Spy Orang-utan meets her real-life counterparts in Borneo to capture how, living close to local people, they have gained unexpected skills in sawing wood and washing with soap, while Spy Termite catches one of the world's cleverest animal tricksters, the drongo, as he tries to outwit a group of meerkats in the battle for food.

S1E2Spy in the Wild • 2017 • Nature

Vikings: Assault on the Frankish Empire

While the Viking raids have come one after another in the Occident for almost a century, in November 885, hundreds of Scandinavian boats sailing towards Burgundy present themselves before the walls of Paris and besiege the city.

S3E2Butterfly Effect • 2018 • History

The Birth of Art

Tracing the origins of Egypt's unique visual style, he treks across the Sahara and travels the Nile to find the rarely-seen art of its earliest peoples. Exploring how this civilisation's art reflected its religion, he looks anew at the Great Pyramid, and the statuary and painting of the Old Kingdom. Sooke is amazed by the technical prowess of ancient artists whose skills confound contemporary craftsmen.

S1E1Treasures of Ancient Egypt • 2014 • History