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

Reactions

Just about every solid, liquid, or gas in the world as we know it begins with reactions between individual atoms and molecules. Host David Pogue dives into the transformative world of chemical reactions, from the complex formula that produces cement to the single reaction that’s allowed farmers to feed a global population by the billions.

S1E2Beyond the Elements • 2020 • Science

Deserts

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.

S1E4Planet Earth II • 2016 • Nature

Fat & Bone: Keys to Overcoming Modern Day Diseases

New research sheds light on the functions of fat and bone. In fact, fat and bone are not static tissue but release signaling molecules to dynamically interact with the other organs and support our health. Fat was found to control our appetite and the bone to work to keep us young.

S1E2The Body • 2018 • Science

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell describes how she discovered pulsars, the by-products of supernova explosions which make life in the universe possible. She describes the moments of despair and jubilation as the discovery unfolded and her excitement as pulsars took the scientific world by storm. Reflecting on the nature of scientific discovery, she talks about the connections between religion and science and how she sees science as a search for understanding rather than as a quest for truth.

S1E1Beautiful Minds • 2010 • Physics

Venus: The Hell Planet

Astronaut Mike Massimino explores Venus, a hellish planet covered in active volcanoes and dense clouds. Using cutting edge technology, he decodes the secrets beneath this volatile planet and investigates if Earth could be heading towards the same fate.

S1E3The Planets (US) • 2017 • Astronomy

Space Telescopes

Space telescopes orbiting above the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere, such as the Hubble, have made incredible contributions to our knowledge of the universe.

S1E9Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration • 2021 • Technology

Health Documentaries

Wonders of the Human Body

Michael Mosley takes a journey around the human body, putting his own to the test to help viewers understand their own. Chapter 1: Michael meets tremors-sufferer Thomas who is about to undergo pioneering brain surgery, and Allen, who finds out if his experimental cancer treatment has been a success. Chapter 2: Michael heads to Snowdonia, on a mission to demonstrate what stress does inside all our bodies, and in Durham, cameras reveal that we all possess an incredible hidden ability. Plus, a woman explains how she learned to see again by using echolocation. Chapter 3: Michael meets a community group in Glasgow, and reveals the best way to keep our brains young as we age. At Royal Papworth Hospital, cameras follow a life-saving procedure to treat Clifford, who has developed dangerous blood clots in his lungs. And a woman shares the secret of how she is long-distance running well into her seventies.

2024 • Health

Is Organic Really Better? Healthy Food or Trendy Scam?

Organic food is a huge trend: it promises a healthier and better life. But can Organic food really live up to the expectations or is it just baloney?

In a Nutshell • 2019 • Health

Chris Packham: Asperger's and Me

Chris Packham invites us inside his autistic world to try to show what it is really like being him. For most of his life, broadcaster and naturalist Chris didn't tell anyone about the one thing that in many ways has defined his entire existence. Chris is autistic - he has Asperger's Syndrome, which means he struggles in social situations, has difficulty with human relationships and is, by his own admission, 'a little bit weird'. But what if there was a way of taking away these autistic traits? Would Chris ever choose to be 'normal'? Chris's long-term partner Charlotte discusses the problems Asperger's creates in their relationship, and Chris travels to America to witness radical therapies that appear to offer the possibility of entirely eradicating problematic autistic traits.

2017 • Health

How Much Water Should I Drink a Day?

People ask Google everything under the sun. One of the most commonly searched questions in the world is “How much water should I drink a day?” SciShow has the answer!

Health

Heart Transplant: A Chance to Live

This brings viewers the most complete picture of the process of organ donation and transplantation ever put on screen. Based at The Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, one of Europe's leading multi-organ transplant centres, the film follows a group of seven patients ranging in age from eight months to 56 years old, all in desperate need of a new heart.

2018 • Health

War in the Blood

Follows two patients through groundbreaking 'first in-human' trials for CAR T-cell therapy, a treatment described as the beginning of the end of cancer. Not allowed to meet and separated by two floors of a hospital, 53-year-old Graham and 18-year old-Mahmoud are nevertheless bound together by their commitment to the treatment and their faith in the science. Terminally ill, the trial represents their only option. How do their ages and life experiences affect their physical and emotional response? For Martin Pule, the scientist who has developed the treatment, the responsibility of curing patients is both exciting and daunting. He knows he stands on the cusp of a breakthrough that could radically change the way we treat cancer. At the heart of this film is the complex relationship between the patients and the clinical team. How much hope can the patients be given when they are effectively going into these trials as human guinea pigs? The patients and clinical team must weigh up hope with realism and their response is a profound and revealing reflection of the human condition.

2019 • Health

Creativity Documentaries

Do Schools Kill Creativity (Ken Robinson)

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

TED • 2006 • Creativity

Roy Lichtenstein: Behind the Mirror

Approaching 40 years of age, Roy Lichtenstein finally finds his artistic inspiration for his unique works in his son's comic books and begins the Pop Art movement. With interviews and footage from the mid-twentieth century, see the evolution of this influential modern artist.

6Behind the Artist • 2016 • 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

Escher's Infinite Perspective

M.C. Escher is among the most intriguing of artists. In 1956 he challenged the laws of perspective with his graphic Print Gallery and his uncompleted master-piece quickly became the most puzzling enigma of modern art. Fifty years later, can mathematician Hendrik Lenstra complete it? Should he?

2007 • Creativity

David Hockney from the Royal Academy

Widely considered Britain's most popular artist, David Hockney is a global sensation with exhibitions in London, New York, Paris and beyond, attracting millions of visitors worldwide. Now entering his ninth decade, Hockney shows absolutely no evidence of slowing down or losing his trademark boldness. Featuring intimate and in-depth interviews with Hockney himself, this revealing documentary captures the voice of the artist over five years and focuses on two of his blockbuster exhibitions.

S2E1Great Art • 2018 • Creativity

Dali

Salvador Dali was art's greatest clown, but was he also one of its great geniuses? Journalist Alastair Sooke traces the life and work of the popular surrealist artist travelling throughout Europe and America. From his origins in turn of the century Spain, to his high jinx in New York in the 1970s, Sook reveals this artist's fascinating life story and explains the thinking behind and impact of his most famous works. Talking to Dali fans from Mighty Boosh comedian Noel Fielding to contemporary artist Jeff Koons, Sooke reveals the pervading influence of Dali and his brand of surrealism. Featuring testimonies from film giant Alfred Hitchcock and excerpts from the film Dali made with Walt Disney, Destino, as well as looking at contemporary advertising, this programme shows how the hand of Dali has touched almost every aspect of popular culture.

S1E4Modern Masters • 2010 • Creativity

Random! Documentaries

Becoming Cousteau

BECOMING COUSTEAU examines the epic life of Jacques Yves Cousteau, the ocean explorer who spanned the globe with a misfit crew of divers and filmmakers, under the lifelong creed, "Il faut aller voir" -- "We must go and see for ourselves". Adventurer, filmmaker, inventor, author, unlikely celebrity and conservationist: For over four decades, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his explorations under the ocean became synonymous with a love of science and the natural world. As he learned to protect the environment, he brought the whole world with him, sounding alarms more than 50 years ago about the warming seas and our planet's vulnerability.

2021 • People

The Missing Tile Syndrome

Have you ever thought to yourself, "I wish I were ____"? Adjectives may have included: thinner, taller, smarter, etc. If so, you're like virtually everyone else, and afflicted by "The Missing Tile Syndrome." As Dennis Prager explains, we often focus on the missing tile(s) in our lives, which robs us of happiness. In five minutes, learn how to fix your focus.

PragerU • 2014 • Lifehack

Legends of the Deep: Deep Sea Sharks

Groundbreaking documentary which follows a Japanese-led team of scientists as they attempt to shed light on the mysterious world of deep sea sharks. Only 50 specimens of the newly discovered 'megamouth' have ever been sighted. Over four years, scientists and film crews voyaged in midget submarines into the depths of Suruga Bay and Sagami Bay to film them. Prehistoric 'living fossil' sharks such as bluntnose sixgill sharks, goblin sharks and frilled sharks also lurk in the bay. As part of the investigation, a sperm whale carcass was placed at the bottom of the bay to attract these sharks, which were then studied and observed from the submersible vessels. Revealing in detail the previously unknown behaviour of deep sea sharks, the film unravels another of the intriguing mysteries of our planet's biodiversity. Narrated by David Attenborough.

2015 • Nature

Journey's End

Until David Thompson found a route through the Rockies, the west coast was effectively cut off from the rest of Canada. Combined with the unique terrain of the Pacific coast, the result was a different land. The unique cultures, skills and landscape of Canada's far west make it a rich and diverse place - a land of cedar boxes, steam-bent fish hooks and dugout canoes, and a place where totem poles once dominated the landscape and people relied on the sea. Ray Mears explores the area's bushcraft, nature and traditions as he completes his journey across Canada.

S1E6Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness • 2009 • Travel

Pompeii: With Michael Buerk

Documentary `resurrecting' the city buried under volcanic ash almost 2,000 years ago with the aid of CGI. Michael Buerk takes viewers through 24 hours in the area, from the commute to work in the morning, to brutal sports at noon and a plenitude of vices by night.

2016 • History

Can YOU Fix Climate Change?

Never before in human history have we been richer, more advanced or powerful. And yet we feel overwhelmed in the face of rapid climate change. It seems simple on the surface. Greenhouse gases trap energy from the Sun and transfer it to our atmosphere. This leads to warmer winters, harsher summers. Dry places become drier and wet places wetter. Countless ecosystems will die while the rising oceans swallow coasts and the cities we build on them.

In a Nutshell • 2021 • Environment