Marc-André Leclerc climbs alone, far from the limelight. The free-spirited 23-year-old makes some of the boldest solo ascents in history. With no cameras and no margin for error, Leclerc's approach is the essence of solo adventure.
2021 • People
We turn the camera on the extraordinary people who are dedicating their lives to helping the animals cope with today's extreme weather.
S1E6 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
New extremes of heat and drought are pushing the extraordinary behavioural and physical adaptations of wombats, leopards and kangaroo rats to their very limits.
S1E5 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
Andrew Lincoln narrates a look at how animals adapted to the cold are struggling in a warming world. A snow leopard in the peaks of the Indian Himalayas is forced from his home by a rival male, while an Arctic ground squirrel in Alaska undertakes the coldest migration of any mammal, and a young Arctic fox in Svalbard must face her first winter alone.
S1E4 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
The world's coastal regions have always been an extreme environment to raise a family, but warming seas are exacerbating the challenges of parenthood. A hurricane hits a flamingo colony while chicks are still on the nest, a sea otter faces a huge winter storm in California, a clownfish on the Great Barrier Reef sees its anemone home bleached, and a little anole lizard clings on during a hurricane.
S1E3 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
As the planet's shifting rain patterns rewrite the rules, survival is no longer about strength alone. From the desert to the jungle, three mothers face the ultimate test of survival as monsoon floodwaters tear through pygmy elephant territory in Borneo, a female platypus in Australia watches a flash flood destroy her home river, and a flood in Africa brings prey to a lone lioness. Andrew Lincoln narrates.
S1E2 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
An owl protects its chicks underground, cheetahs struggle through record floods in Kenya, and a polar bear searches for disappearing Arctic sea ice as extreme weather intensifies across the planet.
S1E1 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
As internal crises, economic strain, and repeated barbarian invasions intensify, the Western Empire fractures and collapses in 476, while the Eastern Empire survives and evolves into the Byzantine state centered on Constantinople.
S1E2 • The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire • 2026 • History
From a small Italian city-state to Mediterranean superpower, this episode traces Rome’s expansion, the transition from Republic to Empire under Augustus, and the stability and prosperity of the Pax Romana that cemented imperial dominance.
S1E1 • The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire • 2026 • History
In the Bahamas, Chris dives into one of the biggest questions in nature - how intelligence itself evolved, and how it arose in the dolphin's mind. Inside each is the result of a three-billion-year journey.
Sweet deal or bitter pill? High fructose corn syrup rose up to dominate supermarket shelves, but what is it doing to our health?
S2E10 • History 101 • 2022 • Health
"It is beyond our powers to predict the future"
4/10 • The Sagan Series • 1989 • Astronomy
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
How does remembering work? Delve into the way the brain stores, processes and retrieves memories -- and why certain ones sometimes prove unreliable.
S1E1 • The Mind, Explained • 2019 • Brain
A breakthrough called CRISPR opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. A provocative exploration of its far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it.
2019 • Science
On the front lines of the hunt for killer viruses, a shocking discovery is made: viruses, once thought to be a menace to humankind, may in fact be the ultimate creators. Since the beginning of time, they have played a critical role in evolution, shaping us and perhaps even creating us. How could that be? How can an entity seemingly programmed for destruction lead to genetic diversity and new species? To many people, viruses are simply agents for disease, but to Dr. Luis Villarreal, Director of the Center for Virus Research at the University of California Irvine, they may possess far greater power than originally thought. He guides us through evidence that viruses gave rise to the first complex cells, played a role in the diversification of life, changed how our young are born, drove evolution, and perhaps gave us emotions. One expert even suggests that an ancient virus could have entered our genes and rewired us for monogamy. National Geographic investigates a provocative new theory that suggests that all life - including humans - is descended from viruses. Taking us through African jungles in search for new strains, this episode of Explorer presents a startling new view of viruses - toward what may be a remarkable evolutionary moment: the rise of a new human species.
2008 • Health
Why do we sleep? We spend a third of our lives in slumber, but science has yet to determine exactly why we have do it. Here’s a look at how sleep works, why we’re not getting enough sleep, what happens if you DON’T sleep, and an idea about where sleep came from in the first place.
It's Okay To Be Smart • 2015 • Health
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
It’s 4am, and the big test is in 8 hours. You’ve been studying for days, but you still don’t feel ready. Should you drink another cup of coffee and spend the next few hours cramming? Or should you go to sleep? Shai Marcu defends the latter option, showing how sleep restructures your brain in a way that’s crucial for how our memory works.
The epic story of how people around the world lived through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic
1 • The Virus That Shocked the World PBS FRONTLINE • 2021 • Health
Of all the diseases that plague humankind, malaria has put up one of the longest, toughest fights. More than 200 million people fall ill and 600,000 die of it every year, making it among the world's deadliest diseases. The vast majority of those fatalities are young children - an average of one child every minute. But medical science may now be at an exciting turning point. Filmed with intimate access to key scientists on four continents, this documentary tells the inside story of the development of a new malaria vaccine that could change the very nature of the fight. It's hoped that the vaccine, dubbed R21/Matrix-M and developed by many of the same team behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, will be the first to meet the World Health Organization's target of 75 per cent efficacy.
2024 • Health
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.
S1E6 • Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness • 2009 • Travel
The trip begins on the frozen Japanese sea of Okhotsk, and goes across China and Mongolia before arriving at Lake Baikal in Siberia, where Joanna meets some amazing seals.
S1E1 • Joanna Lumley’s Unseen Adventures • 2020 • Travel
Joanna ends her 5,000 mile journey in the place where she was born, Srinagar in Kashmir. She starts off in the Ranthambhore National Park, where she hopes to spot a tiger in the wild. Meeting tiger conservationist Belinda Wright, Joanna witnesses the work of local NGO Tiger Watch, who are attempting to break a cycle of poaching and poverty through education. Home to over 18 million people, Delhi is a city of stark contrasts. The extreme differences are obvious when Joanna visits a homeless community - where 10,000 men live under a flyover - and visits the modern part of the city where she has a go at working in a hi-tech call centre. The final leg of her journey takes her north from Delhi to Dharamsala, where she is granted a private audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Joanna concludes her trip with a stay on a houseboat in Srinagar, as her parents did on honeymoon in 1941.
S1E3 • Joanna Lumley's India • 2017 • Travel
On the last leg of his journey across the South American country, Michael explores the Brazilian south, where he is surprised by the rich diversity of European and Asian influences. Along the way he meets Dom Joao de Orleans e Braganca, second in line of succession to Brazil's defunct throne, goes flying with a man who has made a fortune out of rubbish and meets rap star Criolo, who believes social equality is a distant dream for most of his countrymen. Travelling farther south to Blumenau, the former Python's views on what makes a typical Brazilian are challenged when he finds German speakers and Bavarian dancers, before he catches piranha for sushi and helps cowboys treat a calf attacked by a jaguar
S1E4 • Brazil with Michael Palin • 2012 • Travel
Martin Clunes visits the lush, tropical island of Hawaii to investigate the state's status as a tourist paradise, and the islands of Alaska.
S1E1 • Martin Clunes: Islands of America • 2019 • Travel
Charlie wraps up his explorations in western Transylvania, where he descends into an ancient Roman gold mine and drinks a locally made palinca.
S2E10 • Flavours of Romania • 2023 • Travel
We examine what lies beneath Mars’s surface and uncover answers to some of the mysteries that have stumped scientists for decades
S1E4 • Mars: The Secret Science Series 1 • 2014 • Astronomy
In the second and final part of NATURE's miniseries "The Alps," experience the hostile and bitter cold ecosystems of the Alps, shaped by snow blizzards and avalanches. (PBS Nature Season 39 Episode 8)
The Comb-crested Jacanas are unique birds that use their long toes to walk delicately across lotus leaves and catch underwater prey. This episode, filmed between the rainy season and dry season in Kakadu, follows a father bird raising his chicks through their dramatic and difficult first year.
The Instagram face. A shapely posterior. Cosmetic surgery can make the latest beauty trends a reality. Explore its origins and effects, inside and out.
In South Africa, Chris finds out how reproduction has shaped life on Earth and the surprising evolutionary origins of sex, eggs and birds. This is a journey of innovation, adaptation and astonishing creativity.
One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The corporation is unlikely to be the first institution to defy history. Based on Joel Bakan's book, "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power," this documentary is a timely, critical inquiry that examines the very nature of the corporation--its inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. We begin by learning that under the law, corporations have all the rights and yet few of the responsibilities of people. By viewing the behavior of the corporation through the prism of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (or DSM III, the gold standard of psychiatric evaluation) the filmmakers discover that if the corporation were indeed a person, the person would be considered a psychopath. Featuring candid interviews with CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits, the chronicle charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this seemingly invincible force. Once you see it, you may find yourself thinking twice about what you eat, what you wear, what you watch and what you read.
2003 • Economics