Latest Documentaries
A historical account from 1985 of the long standing debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein regarding the validity of the quantum mechanical description of atomic phenomena and observation of quantum states with respect to the uncertainty principle and quantum entanglement. Starring some famous physicists, John Archibald Wheeler, John Stewart Bell, Alain Aspect, David Bohm and others. Interesting material about the famous concept of "Spooky action at a distance" as quoted by Albert Einstein, an example of his displeasure at the nature of non-locality as a consequence of quantum entanglement which is nevertheless how particles in the universe work.
1985 • Physics
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has upended life as we know it in a matter of months. But at the same time, an unprecedented global effort to understand and contain the virus—and find a treatment for the disease it causes—is underway. Join doctors on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19 as they strategize to stop the spread, and meet the researchers racing to develop treatments and vaccines.
On the morning of June 6, 1944, thousands of ships reached the French coast of Normandy as part of an Allied operation to take back France from the Germans. For the next 85 days, U.S., British, and Canadian soldiers engaged in conflicts of unimaginable violence, conquering and liberating the region's cities, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. From the D-Day invasion to the final Nazi surrender in Argentan, this is the definitive story of the three-month Battle of Normandy as it's never been seen before.
2018 • History
Dr Chris van Tulleken, Dr Hannah Fry and Michael Mosley examine the latest research and explore some of the big questions about Covid-19 and the pandemic it has created. Michael visits the UK government's high-security laboratory Porton Down, where vaccines are being tested. He also uncovers what the experience of the 2002 SARs epidemic reveals about this one. Both were caused by coronaviruses, but certain key changes to today's virus have allowed it to infect the world, where SARs was contained.
Is your smart phone making you stupid? Can you make yourself cleverer? The Great British Intelligence Test measures the brainpower of the nation in one of the largest intelligence experiments of its kind. Devised with leading scientists at Imperial College, London, over 250,000 people around the nation have taken part so far - revealing important new science about the nation’s changing intelligence. Dr Hannah Fry and Michael Mosley put the public to the test, pitting young and old, males and females and tech lovers and readers against each other in a battle of wits. The audience can also play along online at www.bbc.co.uk/intelligencetest The results reveal new science about how our intelligence changes through our life. Which mental abilities peak in our 80s? And when can adults be outsmarted by ten-year-olds? It explores how our gender can affect our intelligence and uncovers groundbreaking new science on how our lifestyle and love of technology is changing our brain. Which of our digital habits are improving our mental abilities and which are harming us?
'Terra' is curated by many wildlife filmmakers from around the world, all recognized for their talent in a specific field or region, behavior or living group and yet it is not a wildlife documentary or a militant investigative documentary. It is a thought-provoking documentary on the human species and its relationship with other living beings. A 90-minute documentary produced by Hope Production, Terra is a tribute to the human race, clearly showing that we are still capable of changing our future, just by looking differently at life.
2019 • Environment
Recommended Documentaries
"It is beyond our powers to predict the future"
4/10 • The Sagan Series • 1989 • Astronomy
Dame Sally Davies talks to Brian Cox about her interest in antibiotic resistance and admiration of Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey for their development of penicillin.
4/6 • People of Science with Brian Cox • 2018 • Science
10 Ways to be successful... that's bullshit :)
2016 • Lifehack
Minerva B is a small rocky planet just like earth, where spacecraft Artemis has found water, organic molecules, and complex creatures. Finally, Artemis has found life.
4/4 • Living Universe • 2018 • Astronomy
We are surrounded by clean, raw energy waiting to be tapped - energy that could eventually replace fossil fuels. Finding new ways to harness the energy around us takes a rare breed of scientist-engineers: men and women with a combination of technical skill, imagination, and unwavering focus. If we act now, developments in energy production could avert disaster and usher in a new era of clean, safe energy.
S1E5 • Breakthrough National Geographic • 2015 • Economics
How harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity transformed the world.
Astronomy Documentaries
The latest NASA missions to Mars might finally reveal if it is home to alien life, and using these brand-new discoveries, experts are rethinking everything they know about the Red Planet.
Space's Deepest Secrets • 2019 • Astronomy
In the aftermath of a 8 – 20 solar mass star’s demise we find a weird little object known as a neutron star. Neutrons stars are incredibly dense, spin rapidly, and have very strong magnetic fields. Some of them we see as pulsars, flashing in brightness as they spin. Neutrons stars with the strongest magnetic fields are called magnetars, and are capable of colossal bursts of energy that can be detected over vast distances.
32 • Crash Course Astronomy • 2015 • Astronomy
Active galaxies pour out lots of energy, due to their central supermassive black holes gobbling down matter. Galaxies tend not to be loners, but instead exist in smaller groups and larger clusters. Our Milky Way is part of the Local Group, and will one day collide with the Andromeda galaxy. Clusters of galaxies also clump together to form superclusters, the largest structures in the Universe. In total, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe.
39 • Crash Course Astronomy • 2015 • Astronomy
Professor Lawrence Krauss and Professor Michio Kaku explain the physics behind the events in the first second of The Big Bang, events which range from the first fractions of a second after creation: The Plank Era.
2012 • Astronomy
1969-1970, takes Americans to the moon and back. Dreams of space dramatically intersect with dreams of democracy on American soil, raising questions of national priorities and national identity. The final episode also considers what happens to scientific and engineering programs — and to a country — after ambitious national goals have been achieved.
3/3 • Chasing the Moon • 2019 • Astronomy
How does light escape from the sun? We take a journey from the centre of the sun, following the path of light. We witness its fiery birth from in the core, its 430,000 mile battle against gravity and magnetism, and its escape from the solar surface.
S3E1 • How the Universe Works • 2014 • Astronomy
Environment Documentaries
Venture into the danger zone of two volcanic craters posing widely divergent threats. Hawaii's Kilauea is a shield volcano that threatens communities with its slow-but-relentless lava flow, while the Sumatran Sinabung is a stratovolcano delivering carnage via a sudden and explosive surge of superheated gas and rock.
S2E5 • Volcanic Odysseys • 2016 • Environment
This episode focuses on the Asia-Pacific side of The Pacific Rim of Fire, which stands as a living testament to the beauty and danger that powerful geologic forces can deliver. The Pacific Rim is home to half of the world's active volcanoes and ninety percent of the world's earthquakes, yet nearly 800 million people continue to live within its violent edge. Our journey begins in New Zealand, a land of volcanoes and earthquakes, where we find a 500-kilometre long slip-strike fault deep under the Pacific Ocean. Geologist Hamish Campbell will take us to the crater of White Island, the country’s most active volcano. Then we'll visit the country's southern island with John Youngson, to find out how New Zealand’s longest fault-line contributes to the gold industry. Finally in Japan, viewers will hike up to Mount Fuji – the iconic peak where science and legend converge, getting up-close and personal with a fault-line witnessing firsthand what it’s like to discover new ways of monitoring, and hopefully one day predicting, seismic activity onboard the world’s most advanced drilling vessels.
S50E07 • The Nature of Things • 2010 • Environment
Venus and Mars show how inhospitable Earth could have been if things were just a little bit different.
S1E6 • Secrets of the Earth • 2013 • Environment
Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place—a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid atmosphere. Then, in a process that has puzzled scientists for decades, life emerged. But how? NOVA joins mineralogist Robert Hazen as he journeys around the globe. From an ancient Moroccan market to the Australian Outback, he advances a startling and counterintuitive idea—that the rocks beneath our feet were not only essential to jump-starting life, but that microbial life helped give birth to hundreds of minerals we know and depend on today. It's a theory of the co-evolution of Earth and life that is reshaping the grand-narrative of our planet’s story.
NOVA PBS • 2016 • Environment
Why do animals perfectly adapted to island life give up the ghost when new species arrive?
5/6 • South Pacific • Environment
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Anita Rani explore where this gigantic problem is coming from, and what we can all do to try and solve it. Hugh goes on the trail of the plastic that does get recycled Malaysia has become one of the biggest importers of British waste plastics. He travels to Malaysia to try and find out what is happening to it all, and what he sees shocks him to the core. Great piles of unsorted British plastics have been left to rot on illegal dumpsites with much of it sat near split UK council recycling bags.
2/3 • War on Plastic with Hugh and Anita • 2019 • Environment
Randoms! Documentaries
Many of the great rivers of southern Africa start high up in mountain ranges, power their way eastwards across wild forests and grasslands, and eventually empty out into the Indian Ocean. Ride the currents of these powerful bodies of water as they reshape the lives of the wild animals who rely on them.
7/8 • Waterworld Africa • 2017 • Nature
Dark matter and dark energy are locked in an epic battle for control of the cosmos, and the winner will determine the fate of the universe. New discoveries might reveal which force will emerge victorious.
S7E7 • How the Universe Works • 2019 • Astronomy
In April 1944, two Jewish prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. When they recounted what they had left behind, their harrowing testimony revealed the true horror of the Holocaust to the outside world for the first time. They described in forensic detail the gas chambers and the full extent of the extermination programme. The news they brought presented the Allies with one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century: Should we bomb Auschwitz? While the Allies deliberated in London and Washington, the killing machine ground on in southern Poland. One month after the men’s escape, almost 800,000 Hungarian Jews had been rounded up awaiting transport to Auschwitz. By early July 1944, the majority had been transported. Most of them were murdered on arrival. As the killing at Auschwitz reached its frenzied climax, the outcome of the Second World War hung in the balance. Millions of troops were fighting on both fronts and battling for supremacy in the air. Should the Allies use their resources to push on and win the war or to stop the industrial slaughter at Auschwitz? The request to bomb the camp, with 30,000 captive prisoners, was remarkable and came from a place of utter desperation. But it was a direct response to the destruction of an entire people. There were operational challenges - was it possible to reach the camp to bomb it? How many heavy bombers would it take? What would the Nazi propaganda machine say about such an attack? - as well as complex moral ones. How many prisoners would likely die in such a raid? Can you kill friendly civilians in order to save the lives of those being transported towards the death camp? These were the hard questions faced by Churchill, Allied Air Command and the Jewish Agency.
2019 • History
Explores science at the very limits of human perception, where we now understand the deepest mysteries of the universe lie. Jim Al-Khalili sets out to answer one very simple question - what is nothing? His journey ends with perhaps the most profound insight about reality that humanity has ever made. Everything came from nothing. The quantum world of the super-small shaped the vast universe we inhabit today, and Jim Al-Khalili can prove it.
2/2 • Everything & Nothing • Astronomy
Learn the explosive history of the rocket, from its origin in ancient China, to its use as a weapon of war, to how adding hydrogen allowed it to carry astronauts all the way to the moon. Narrated by Patrick Stewart. With guest Jim Al-Khalili
Breakthrough the Ideas that Changed the World • 2019 • Technology