Latest Documentaries

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Wild Wild Space

Focuses on the intense rivalry between two visionaries and founders of contesting rocket companies, Chris Kemp and Peter Beck.

2024 • Astronomy

Eternal You

Explores the digital afterlife business. What if a person's death did not mean the end of their life? What if their loved ones could still talk to them long after their body has been cremated or is lying lifeless in the ground? What sounds like the scenario of a science fiction movie is already offered by companies today. By using AI, these startups create avatars of deceased people to allow their loved ones to interact with them. Eternal You tells the story of a human experiment: what does it do to people to resurrect their deceased loved ones in order to talk to them? Who takes responsibility for the psychological and ethical consequences? And do we even want all this?

2024 • Technology

Who Wants to Be a Billionaire? (1981-Today)

The federal welfare state controlled American capitalism until the 1973 oil crisis and recession, which led to the election of the ultra-liberal Ronald Reagan. At the dawn of the computer revolution, a generation of entrepreneurs, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, emerged in Silicon Valley around Stanford University, which combined public and private research.

S1E3American Capitalism – The Cult of Wealth • 2023 • Economics

Making the Rich Pay (1921-1946)

The millionaires' paradise was destroyed by the crash of 1929, which plunged the country into the Great Depression and mass unemployment. Enraged by greed and tax evasion, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, reelected in 1936, advocated controlled capitalism.

S1E2American Capitalism – The Cult of Wealth • 2023 • Economics

A Paradise for Millionaires (1870-1920)

At the end of the 19th century, a club of millionaires — John D. Rockefeller and his oil monopoly, steel king and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and banker J. P. Morgan, who financed the Industrial Revolution from Wall Street — took over the United States, where immigrants provided a labor force that was ruthlessly exploited.

S1E1American Capitalism – The Cult of Wealth • 2023 • Economics

The Last Battle of the Vikings

The year is 1066 and the Vikings are no longer engaged in coastal raids and pillaging monasteries, but in a fight for the throne of England. The Norman Duke William is determined to take the island. In this final episode we will discover what novel tactics William used and how he managed to conquer England once and for all. This is a tumultuous and historic event, and it will also be the last battle of the Vikings.

S1E4The Last Journey of the Vikings • 2019 • History

The Good Land

At the end of the 9th century, the Vikings returned to France, but this time they traded raiding for something completely different: integration. Through diplomacy and political marriages, they were increasingly accepted into Frankish society, and even abandoned their old religion and converted to Christianity. A new duchy was soon established and the Vikings became Normans.

S1E3The Last Journey of the Vikings • 2019 • History

100 Days in Paris

When the Vikings attack the shores of the Frankish kingdom, they are met with resistance that is very different from what they are used to, as the Emperor Charlemagne has no intention of giving up his Christian territory to pagans and pirates. We follow the Vikings as they try to push deeper into Frankish lands to reach great cities like Paris. At first, the defense is staunch, but surprising and tumultuous events in both Denmark and France soon change everything.

S1E2The Last Journey of the Vikings • 2019 • History

The Emigrants

Most people describe the Vikings as a people who were dedicated exclusively to raiding the European coasts in search of gold and silver, but in this series we are going to delve deeper into what these Scandinavian sailors were really like. We will follow the Vikings on a journey through the centuries and see how they transformed populations, politics, trade, culture, religion and societies in general. In this first episode we will discover why they left Scandinavia to become pirates.

S1E1The Last Journey of the Vikings • 2019 • History

The Knights Hospitallers

The Knights of Lazarus were originally founded at a leper hospital around 1098 by the Crusaders of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was established to treat the disease, because the Knights were lepers themselves. Once called "The Hospitallers" The Knights of St John were founded to provide care for the poor, sick or injured pilgrims on their journey to the Holy Land. They evolved into a military order with it's own Papal Charter.

S1E3The Crusaders • 2019 • History

The Teutonic Knights

The Teutonic Knights were one of the great chivalric orders that emerged from the Crusades, alongside the Hospitallers and Templars. The Teutonic Knights evolved out of a "fraternity" of German crusaders who took part in the siege of Acre during the Third Crusade. 'Help, defend, Heal' was the motto of the 'Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem', the Teutonic Order. It was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals.

S1E2The Crusaders • 2019 • History

The Knights Templar

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon are known to history as the Knights Templar. They were among the most wealthy and powerful of all of the western military orders and for the 200 hundred years of their existence, were at the forefront of Christian finance. A look at the wealthiest of all the western military orders. Endorsed by the Catholic Church around 1129, these are Templar knights, and this is their story. If any single image epitomises the medieval era in the popular imagination, it is that of the heroic, chivalrous Knight. Clad in shining armour, his story was first told by authors in the 19th century before being carried on by Hollywood. But what are the truths behind the myths and legends? The Crusaders aims to find out.

S1E1The Crusaders • 2019 • History

Recommended Documentaries

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Deserts - Life in the Furnace

A look at how the eternal quest for water brings huge challenges and ingenious solutions.

S1E2Human PlanetEnvironment

The Industry of Food

Industrialization brought the second great food revolution. Over the brief span of the 20th century, agriculture underwent greater change than it had since it was first practiced some 12,000 years ago.

S1E4The History of Food • 2018 • History

Age of Stars

The sun is our life-giving source of light, heat, and energy, and new discoveries are unraveling its epic history. Join NOVA on a spectacular voyage to discover its place in a grand cycle of birth, death and renewal that makes this the age of stars.

S1E1Nova: Universe Revealed • 2021 • Astronomy

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

Prediction by the Numbers

Predictions underlie nearly every aspect of our lives, from sports, politics, and medical decisions to the morning commute. With the explosion of digital technology, the internet, and “big data,” the science of forecasting is flourishing. But why do some predictions succeed spectacularly while others fail abysmally? And how can we find meaningful patterns amidst chaos and uncertainty? From the glitz of casinos and TV game shows to the life-and-death stakes of storm forecasts and the flaws of opinion polls that can swing an election, “Prediction by the Numbers” explores stories of statistics in action. Yet advances in machine learning and big data models that increasingly rule our lives are also posing big, disturbing questions. How much should we trust predictions made by algorithms when we don’t understand how they arrive at them? And how far ahead can we really forecast?

NOVA PBS • 2018 • Math

What Did the Big Bang Sound Like?

A milestone in physics: In 2015, scientists proved the existence of gravitational waves. These waves travel billions of light-years through space, eventually reaching Earth and bringing us insights that were previously unattainable.

2021 • Astronomy

Creativity Documentaries

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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

Oscar Winners

As the red carpet season reaches its climax, Mark Kermode turns his keen eye and sharp wit on past winners of the most prestigious awards of all. What gave them the edge over their rivals? Mark shows that, despite their apparent differences, Oscar-winning films have more in common than you might think. Certain kinds of film recur, such as war, social justice and the all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza. But, as Mark explains, it’s not just about your choice of subject; it's how you treat it that counts. In a special show that ranges from the earliest awards winners to the most recent victors, Mark reveals the films that laid down the template for cinematic glory, celebrates the classics that have endured and savours some of the movies’ most acclaimed performances.

Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema • 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

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

You've Felt It Your Entire Life

Something you have felt for many years, but didn't quite know what it was...

2012 • Creativity

Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing

Vincent van Gogh's life has long captured the imagination, but who was he really? Tim Marlow delves into his fascinating and sometimes deeply troubled world.

S2E2Great Art • 2018 • Creativity

Travel Documentaries

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Out of Africa

The seasoned traveller explores the South American country, beginning in the north-east - where Europeans first landed and grew rich on the profits from sugar and tobacco plantations run with slave labour. In Sao Luis, Michael finds out about a ceremony based on a 200-year-old tale before heading to the coastal lagoons of the Lencois Maranhenses National Park. Journeying inland, he gets a glimpse of the fast-disappearing world of old-style cowboys known as vaqueiros, has his fortune read by a Candomble priest and learns to drum with the Olodum cultural collective.

S1E1Brazil with Michael Palin • 2012 • Travel

Jerusalem, Israel

Is peace possible? In a world of conflict, people can live in peace. Kari goes in search of communities across Israel that are living in peace, and discovers that it is the young people, with their curiosity of their common history, their sharing of food and cuisine, and their desire of intersectionality in sports and music, who are striving for peaceful coexistence, despite the ongoing conflict around them

S1E4Crash Test World • 2021 • Travel

Azerbaijan to Georgia

Levison meets nomadic shepherds and dangerous dogs in the Gobustan desert, climbs to a castle halfway up a cliff, visits Stalin's birthplace and meets a hermit monk who lives atop a 45-metre monolith.

S1E3From Russia to Iran: Crossing the Wild Frontier with Levison Wood • 2017 • Travel

Roraima: The Climb of a Lifetime

An Austrian documentary where rock climbers Kurt Albert, Holger Heuber, and Stefan Glowacz climb to the top of Mount Roraima from the Guyana side. Chapter 1: The Climb of a Lifetime (98min) Climbing partners Kurt Albert and Holger Heuber don't know what they're in for when they join competitive climbing superstar Stefan Glowacz for an expedition to Mount Roraima, a steep-walled South American peak shrouded in both rainforest and legend. Chapter 2: Behind the Scenes (29min) They may have set out to climb a mountain, but what awaited them was nothing short of an odyssey. This behind-the-scenes look at the journey to make the film shows how the filmmakers' experience bonded the team together as a family. Chapter 3: Remembering Kurt Albert (6min) Though he tragically died before the expedition was completed, Kurt Albert was a thinker and adventurer and one of the trio of climbers who saw the potential in the journey to Mt Roraima. His passing gave new meaning to the completion of the film. AKA Climbers of the Lost World

2013 • Travel

The Lakes with Simon Reeve

Simon Reeve travels through the glorious Lake District and breathtaking Cumbria, revealing the secrets of this iconic part of Britain.

2021 • Travel

Fogo Island Inn, Canada

Giles Coren and Monica Galetti experience the warm embrace of Fogo Island Inn on a rocky, sea-sprayed outpost of remote Fogo Island in Newfoundland. White, angular and perched atop zig-zagged stilts like the local fishermen's houses.

S1E5Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby • 2017 • Travel

Randoms! Documentaries

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Dancing in the Dark: The End of Physics?

Scientists genuinely don't know what most of our universe is made of. The atoms we're made from only make up four per cent. The rest is dark matter and dark energy (for 'dark', read 'don't know'). The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been upgraded. When it's switched on in March 2015, its collisions will have twice the energy they did before. The hope is that scientists will discover the identity of dark matter in the debris. The stakes are high - because if dark matter fails to show itself, it might mean that physics itself needs a rethink.

HorizonPhysics

Once There Was a Flood

Graham visits Gunung Padang, an Indonesian archeological site, to find proof of a lost civilization — and the potential cataclysm that wiped it out.

S1E1Ancient Apocalypse • 2022 • Environment

JFK: 24 Hours that Changed the World

Explores the last 24 hours in President Kennedy's life through original footage and oral history, from his arrival into Dallas to his body being taken by Air Force One to Washington DC. The programme also examines the chaos and grief that swept a nation, and the subsequent arrest and murder of apparent sole gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.

2023 • People

Fjord Watchers

Norway's World War II Radio Spies A group of Norwegians, separate from Milorg, the main Resistance movement, sent back intelligence of German activities in their country by radio direct to the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Among their coups was tracking down the German battleship Tirpitz. They were often infiltrated back into their country by the Shetland Bus, a group of Norwegian fishing smacks based in the Shetland Islands. When Hitler invaded Norway in 1940, some fled, most submitted...and a courageous few became Fjord Watchers-spies. Whether roaming a busy Oslo street or foraging in a remote mountain cabin, they radioed a constant stream of intelligence to Allied forces even as German soldiers relentlessly hunted them. Special agents such as Torstein Raaby, whose reports helped sink the infamous German battleship Tirpitz, and author Thor Heyerdahl would pose as merchants, fishermen an laborers while they scrutinized Hitler's every move. They were the eyes, ears and voice of the armies that liberated Norway.

8/20The True Action Adventures of the Twentieth Century • 1996 • History

The Visit: An Alien Encounter

"This film documents an event that has never taken place – man's first encounter with intelligent life from space". We've been fantasizing about an extraterrestrial visit for decades, but what would happen if it actually took place? How would we cope? Should we be afraid? These and many other questions are addressed in this philosophical film about a hypothetical initial contact with aliens. Scientists and space affairs specialists at the UN and NASA and in the British government cooperate in this cinematic simulation of the undoubtedly exciting meeting between extraterrestrial life and humanity. The interviewees speak directly to the unknown entities as if they've already arrived. From their own fields – politics, theology, sociology, biology or space science – they ask probing questions. What are you doing here? Do you have a sense of right and wrong? Do you carry bacteria that could make us sick? Are we hazardous to your immune system? Information specialists in the British government show how a first summit in this situation could go. How do you inform the public? Will countries work together? Is there a danger involved? Above all, the alien visit raises questions about the relation between our own history of exploration, colonization and warfare, and the expectations with which we approach the unknown. This is a journey beyond terrestrial perspective, revealing the fears, hopes, and rituals of a species forced not only to confront alien life forms, but also its own self image.

2015 • Astronomy

Strange Parents

"Strange Parents" asks how we usually recognise animals as either male or female and how each sex normally plays a particular role in their own life cycle. However both hyenas and seahorses completely break the gender rules.

S2E9Natural CuriositiesNature