Latest Documentaries
Account of the ill-fated Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913 when a group of scientists were sent to the Arctic to look for a new continent on the eve of WWI, an astonishing story of disaster and perseverance. On board were 10 scientists, 13 crewmembers, four Inuit hunters, one seamstress, her two children, and one passenger. Of these, 11 never returned and most were not heard from again until September 1914.
2007 • Environment
Tells the story of the Queen frontman's life and career, from the early days of the band to their show-stopping performance at Live Aid and their dominance of music charts around the world. From Killer Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody, through to The Show Must Go On, the film uncover the stories behind the songs through archive interviews with Freddie himself.
2020 • Music
We’ve heard for years about the dangers of eating too much fat or salt. But there have never been recommended limits for sugar on Canadian food labels, despite emerging research that suggests the sweet stuff may be making more of us fat and sick. In the fifth estate’s season premiere, Gillian Findlay digs into the surprising science — and the reaction from the food industry — to reveal The Secrets of Sugar. Has the sugar industry been hiding an unsavoury truth from consumers?
The Fifth Estate CBC • 2013 • Health
In 1945, Stuart and Budd Schulberg were sent to Europe to gather film evidence of Nazi crimes. The two brothers were part of a special OSS unit. The material they gathered was eventually put to use prosecuting top Nazi officials at Nuremberg.
2021 • History
With 2021 set to be the hottest year on record, millions of people around the world will have their health, livelihoods, and lives endangered by high temperatures. This documentary explores the devastating impact extreme heat has across the globe, and tells the human stories behind climate change, from water shortages in impoverished areas, to people being forced from their homes to escape life-threatening temperatures.
This World • 2021 • Environment
Whacky colour changes, magic disappearing water, blowing up dustbins, clouds of steam, thunder air explosions. Are you ready to fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ‘explosive’ journey?
It’s the ultimate question: why are we here? Cutting-edge space missions take us back 13.8 billion years to the very beginning – the origin of the Universe.
S1E5 • Universe BBC • 2021 • Astronomy
Professor Brian Cox journeys into a supermassive black hole - a monster that can destroy worlds and stop time, and which is forcing us to reassess our understanding of reality.
S1E4 • Universe BBC • 2021 • Astronomy
A space mission discovers the dramatic history of the Milky Way. Professor Brian Cox reveals how our galaxy endured multiple collisions as rival galaxies fought for survival.
S1E3 • Universe BBC • 2021 • Astronomy
Professor Brian Cox questions whether we are alone in the universe. There might be more planets than stars in our galaxy - but will we find a second Earth?
S1E2 • Universe BBC • 2021 • Astronomy
Since the first star lit up the universe, they have been engines of creation. Professor Brian Cox reveals how, ultimately, stars brought life and meaning to the universe.
S1E1 • Universe BBC • 2021 • Astronomy
All life is driven by the need to breed. Yet for a few, the odds of success are overwhelmingly against them, so these have adopted the most extraordinary mating strategies of all.
S1E5 • The Mating Game • 2021 • Nature
Recommended Documentaries
On May 16, 2011, Professor of Physics Emeritus Walter Lewin returned to MIT lecture hall 26-100 for a physics talk and book signing, complete with some of his most famous physics demonstrations to celebrate the publication of his new book For The Love Of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics, written with Warren Goldstein.
2014 • Physics
Our solar system is home to many wanderers, the asteroids and comets. This is a journey into deep space to visit objects that have endured unimaginable periods of time, waiting to reveal the origins of the solar system and therefore, us.
7/8 • Secrets of the Solar System • 2020 • Astronomy
The story of the groundbreaking scientific discovery that everything is made from atoms.
Neil Oliver reveals the truth behind the legend of the Vikings. (Part 1.) Neil begins by discovering the mysterious world of the Vikings' prehistoric ancestors. The remains of weapon-filled war boats, long-haired Bronze Age farmers, and the Swedish site of a royal palace and gruesome pagan ritual conjure up an ancient past from which the Viking Age was to suddenly erupt.
Making of David Attenborough’s Galapagos, which is aired first, offers an unrivalled and actually far more interesting view of the dramas that went into capturing all that footage. The way all the shots have been so calmly edited together makes the process look so effortless, but nothing could be further from the truth. There are broken helicopters and broken camera cables that threaten the whole enterprise and the grunting of mating tortoises that threaten to drown out Attenborough’s pieces to camera. This making of programme also includes the discovery of a previously unknown species of pink iguana, as well as the final television appearance of the last-remaining member of another species – the iconic long-necked tortoise known as Lonesome George. “He’s about 80 years old and he’s getting a bit creaky in his joints,” whispers Attenborough. “As indeed am I.”
4/4 • Galapagos with David Attenborough • 2010 • Nature
Travel Documentaries
Joanna meets the Maharaja of Dungarpur, who shows her around his lakeside palace. In stark contrast, Joanna visits a Dalit community - considered to be India's lowest caste - in Gujarat, and hears of the everyday discrimination these people experience under India's still deeply entrenched 3,000-year-old caste system. She later joins in a Hindu house warming ceremony, where a cow and calf are brought into the new house for luck. Braving the roads of Mumbai, Joanna takes a ride in the city's only all-female taxi company and visits the Times of India, where her uncle was editor of the paper in the 1930s and 40s. She then overcomes her vertigo to explore the World One Tower, soon to be Mumbai's tallest luxury residential building.
2/3 • Joanna Lumley's India • 2017 • Travel
The actress heads to the island of Shikoku hoping to gain a better understanding of Japanese Buddhism. She then takes a bullet train to another island - Kyushu - where she finds the Henn Na Hotel, the world's first robot hotel. At Nagasaki, she visits Shiroyama Elementary school, one of the only buildings to survive the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945. Joanna then travels to Sakurajima, one of the country's most active volcanoes, before heading to the islands of Okinawa where one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War was fought.
Part 3 • Joanna Lumley's Japan • 2016 • Travel
Where is the population in the world the smallest? What countries have the least people? It’s not the size that matters, and with countries, that is often the case. Some of the least populated countries in the world are also the wealthiest in terms of personal wealth and gross national product. And some of the larger nations have problems equally as huge to address. Some of these smaller countries are thinly populated because they are super-difficult to get to or sit in some of the world’s harshest regions. Some simply get by on one or two key industries and foreign aid. Some were used as strategic bases during war time. Some are playgrounds for the rich and famous. And one is reserved for holy activities. Today we take a closer look at the smallest of these nations, in this episode of the Infographics Show, The Ten Least Populated Countries in the World.
The Infographics Show • 2018 • Travel
World traveler and Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan invites you on a one-of-a-kind tour of his homeland, New Zealand. On this cross-country tour at the edge of the world, Keoghan visits eccentric and fascinating places and people who epitomize the spirit of Kiwi innovation. From "The Lord of the Rings" film director Peter Jackson to a revolutionary farmer who uses drones to herd sheep, Keoghan brings you captivating and humorous stories you just won't find in a travel guide.
2017 • Travel
Simon's adventure starts in the magnificent 'red centre' of the continent and onwards through South Australia, via the extraordinary Indian Pacific Railway until he reaches the west coast city of Perth. On the way, he joins an Aussie rancher in the parched outback and takes part in a spectacular camel round-up. This mad adventure, involving specially adapted off-road vehicles and a chopper, is part of an ongoing effort to stop the damaging spread of up to a million feral camels across the country. Finally in Perth, Simon discovers a full scale British invasion. Working in a mine or driving a lorry can bring a salary of a hundred thousand pounds a year, as evidenced when Simon meets a former bin man from hull who is now living the dream, with a beautiful house in the sun, private pool and his very own boat.
1/3 • Australia with Simon Reeve • 2013 • Travel
Joanna travels the length of India, including footage of her encounters with the flower-sellers of Madurai, before taking?us back to Uzbekistan, where she reveals some gory tales of the country's history and discovers the secrets of gem-making.
S1E2 • Joanna Lumley’s Unseen Adventures • 2020 • Travel
Astronomy Documentaries
Description of the two Voyager probes sent for interstellar travel. Tyson ends the series by emphasizing Sagan's message on the human condition in the vastness of the cosmos & to encourage viewers to continue to explore and discover the undiscovered.
S1E13 • Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • Astronomy
The dramatic, moving and powerful story of humanity’s conquest of Mars, told by the people who risked entire careers to explore the red planet. Did we find evidence for life back in the ’70s? Some believe we did.
4/8 • Secrets of the Solar System • 2020 • Astronomy
Sagan discusses the story of the Heike crab and artificial selection of crabs resembling samurai warriors, as an opening into a larger discussion of evolution through natural selection (and the pitfalls of intelligent design). Among the topics are the development of life on the Cosmic Calendar and the Cambrian explosion; the function of DNA in growth; genetic replication, repairs, and mutation; the common biochemistry of terrestrial organisms; the creation of the molecules of life in the Miller-Urey experiment; and speculation on alien life (such as life in Jupiter's clouds). In the Cosmos Update ten years later, Sagan remarks on RNA also controlling chemical reactions and reproducing itself and the different roles of comets (potentially carrying organic molecules or causing the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event).
2/13 • Cosmos: A Personal Voyage • 1980 • Astronomy
Since its formation in the early 60’s, NASA has continued to be the leading power in space exploration. Working with other space agencies, it has contributed substantially to the ongoing exploration of our universe, achieving incredible firsts that span the decades.
2/2 • NASA's Ten Greatest Achievements • 2016 • Astronomy
Neutrinos are the most mysterious particles in the universe, and they power some of the most explosive events in the cosmos; new discoveries reveal how these ghosts pass through objects undetected and why they could be the reason we exist.
S9E8 • How the Universe Works • 2021 • Astronomy
The Ship of the Imagination embarks on a journey through space and time to grasp how the autobiography of the Earth is written in its atoms, its oceans, its continents and all living things. Later, American geologist Marie Tharp creates the first true map of Earth's ocean floor, and discovers microscopic life that exists deep beneath the ocean.
S1E9 • Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • Astronomy
Randoms! Documentaries
Stewart Copeland explores the drums as the founding instrument of popular modern music. Beats that travelled from Africa via New Orleans and across the world are the consistent force behind musical evolution. Stewart plays with some of the most inspiring drummers of the last 50 years, including John Densmore of The Doors, Chad Smith of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Prince’s musical director Sheila E, New Order’s Stephen Morris and Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins. He goes dancing in New Orleans, builds his own bass drum pedal and checks out hot new bands on Santa Monica beach.
1/3 • Guitar, Drum and Bass • 2019 • Music
For as long as we’ve had eyes to see and minds to wonder we’ve marveled at the stars. Since the discovery of the first so-called exoplanet in 1994, the Planet Hunters have transformed the way we see the universe. It is the year 2157, and spacecraft Artemis enters the final phase of construction.
1/4 • Living Universe • 2018 • Astronomy
Lyme disease, a mysterious tick-borne illness, is the fastest spreading vector-borne disease in the United States, and over the past decade, the tick that carries Lyme has been spreading across Canada with alarming speed. Ticked Off: The Mystery of Lyme Disease, is a fascinating and eye-opening documentary that explores a disease that has devastating effects, is often misdiagnosed and mistreated, and continues to be mired in a medical controversy. More than 30,000 cases are reported in the USA every year, but the real number could be as high as 300,000. And despite hard evidence that the Lyme-carrying, deer tick has already established populations across Canada, some people claim that patients here are still being told that they cannot contract Lyme in this country. Doctors agree that if it’s caught early Lyme disease can usually be cured with two to four weeks of antibiotics. There are others who believe that if it’s not caught early, the infection can develop into a debilitating condition they call Chronic Lyme. Yet unlike West Nile, Encephalitis or SARS, where the medical profession and scientists joined forces to find better treatments or a cure, many patients, who claim to have chronic Lyme, say that they are being denied treatment and left to suffer. So why is this happening?
S53E02 • The Nature of Things • 2013 • Health
The episode, devoted to the planet Mars, begins with scientific and fictional speculation about the Red Planet during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction books, and Percival Lowell's false vision of canals on Mars). It then moves to Robert Goddard's early experiments in rocket-building, inspired by reading science fiction, and the work by Mars probes, including the Viking, searching for life on Mars. The episode ends with the possibility of the terraforming and colonization of Mars and a Cosmos Update on the relevance of Mars' environment to Earth's and the possibility of a manned mission to Mars.
5/13 • Cosmos: A Personal Voyage • 1980 • Astronomy
From stunning heights, witness the mountains, rivers, and people that make up China's great interior. Visit celebrations at the center of the Buddhist world and on the edges of river cities, soar over the world's most famous peak 29,000 feet in the air, and dive into an ancient city submerged under a lake. China's heartland is a place where urban and rural communities embrace the challenges of a changing 21st century world.
4/4 • China from Above • 2018 • Travel
Professor Brian Cox continues his tour of the solar system revealing that it was once home to not one, but two blue planets.
2/5 • The Planets 2019 • 2019 • Astronomy