Luminous tells the story of the first astronomer in history to publicly predict the near-future explosion of a star--will he be right? Others in the astronomical community are skeptical, and professional reputations hang in the balance. In production for five years, Luminous follows Larry Molnar's journey to test an unprecedented prediction, knowing that its success or failure will unfold squarely in the international spotlight.
2022 • Astronomy
When Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan stepped on the Moon in December 1972 he left his footprints and his daughter's initials in the lunar dust. Only now, over forty years later, is he ready to share his epic but deeply personal story of fulfillment, love and loss. Cernan's burning ambition carried him from a quiet Chicago suburb to the spectacular and hazardous environment of space, and ultimately, to the Moon. Five years in the making, The Last Man on the Moon unveils a wealth of rare archive material, and takes Cernan back to the launch pads of Cape Kennedy, to Arlington National Cemetery and to his Texas ranch, where he finds respite from a past that refuses to let him go.
2014 • Astronomy
The shocking story of Aum Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult that unleashed a deadly nerve gas in Tokyo's subway system in 1995. Founded by disillusioned yoga teacher Shoko Asahara, Aum transformed into a terrorist organization while Japan's police and media turned a blind eye. Featuring rare archival footage and an interview with one of Asahara's former high-ranking disciples.
2023 • People
The inside story of the tech entrepreneurs who created the social media app Twitter. At first the site grew on the back of celebrities who realised it offered them a direct way to communicate with fans. After going global, it seemed to be fulfilling the founders' dream of a digital utopia where all voices would be heard. But as hate speech and misinformation flooded the platform, the founders faced growing problems to control it - and the sale to Elon Musk in 2022 represented the end of their dream.
2025 • Technology
Explore Tulum, the final inhabited city of the Maya empire, where innovative archaeology and cutting-edge technology reveal the mysteries behind the collapse of one of Mesoamerica's greatest civilisations.
2023 • History
From battlefields and ancient swords to mighty castles and Durham cathedral, the rich, brutal story of William the Conqueror's journey from invader to ruler of England. Alice Roberts discovers who the Normans really were, tests a nearly thousand-year-old sword from William the Conqueror's time and wonders why there are so few women depicted in art from the time. Plus, Danielle George gets a brutal lesson in medieval 11th-century battlefield combat techniques, and Onyeka learns how William's coronation turned into a PR disaster.
S1E4 • Fortress Britain • 2022 • History
Tales of Cold War Britain, from nuclear threat to upper-class spies, eerie ghost bunkers and our very own Chernobyl. In Cold War military buildup Britain constructed bunkers for the civilian population and created its own nuclear missile defense. Professor Alice Roberts explores the UK's response to the threat of nuclear attack during the early years of the Cold War in the 1950s, when a network of upper-class spies began merrily sharing British military secrets with the Soviet Union. We also visit a nuclear-bomb-proof command center and inspect the legendary Avro Vulcan jet bomber.
S1E3 • Fortress Britain • 2022 • History
How Britain planned for a Nazi invasion - from tank traps and sticky bombs, to the Home Guard and tragic story of heroism. Alice Roberts looks for visible traces of Britain's rearmament in preparation for a German invasion. How did the Home Guard come about and what was the role of women in the offensive defense? We meet Indian-American Noor Inayat Khan, a special agent who worked with sabotage activities in German-occupied France, and hear her tragic story as one of the war's forgotten heroines. Alice learns about the deployment of the Home Guard, and Danielle travels to the Channel Islands, the only part of the British Isles under German control, to visit the only concentration camp built on British soil in Alderney. She explores life under occupation and visits the underground hospital Festung Guernsey.
S1E2 • Fortress Britain • 2022 • History
The story of Henry VIII's fear of Catholic Europe, told via his castles, cannons and spies. The first episode examines the surviving traces of Henry VIII's fear of invasion from Catholic Europe through physical reminders, including mighty castles and cannons, that survive to this day. At her headquarter in Walmer Castle, built in 1540 in Kent to defend the town against a French invasion, Alice gets her hands on a vast hoard of Tudor coins and a 500-year-old jousting scorecard, as she learns how Henry's greed and ambition led him to bankrupt the nation and lay the foundations for the modern secret service. Danielle visits Henry's mighty castle at Deal and witnesses the awesome power of the cannons built to defend England, while Onyeka gets within touching distance of the iconic Mary Rose.
S1E1 • Fortress Britain • 2022 • History
In 1966, drought and an exploding population confronted India with the imminent threat of a severe famine that many scientists and intellectuals feared was a harbinger of global catastrophes to come, as the world's population outstripped its ability to produce food. India turned to Norman Borlaug, an unassuming plant breeder from Iowa whose combination of scientific knowledge and raw determination had made him a legend among a small handful of fellow specialists. The Man Who Tried to Feed the World recounts the story of the man who would not only solve India's famine problem, but would go on to lead a "Green Revolution" of worldwide agriculture programs, saving countless lives. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work but spent the rest of his life watching his methods and achievements come under increasing fire.
2020 • People
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
James May charts the journeys of explorers through experiments and messing about in boats. Chapter 1: Christopher Columbus The host profiles famous explorers, beginning with Christopher Columbus. He may be celebrated as a national hero for 'discovering' the USA - but he never set foot there. James starts by travelling to south-west Spain, from where these world-changing voyages began. May takes the helm of his own sailboat to test the cutting-edge sail technology that allowed ships to travel further than ever - and the rudimentary navigation techniques that Columbus had to rely on. Chapter 2: Sir Walter Raleigh James follows Walter Raleigh's rise from rural Devon to London high-society. He meets top barrister Benet Brandreth KC at The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple to learn the techniques of persuasion that allowed Raleigh to talk his way to the top. James also explores the darker and more complex corners of Raleigh's legacy. Chapter 3: Captain Cook Captain James Cook was the last explorer in the age of sail - and one of the busiest, charting one third of the globe. His voyages brought huge advancements in navigation, biology, and geography, and in Britain he is generally thought of as a hero - but in other parts of the world, that's not the story. James May examines how this studious and serious son of a farmer broke through the class ceiling to become the greatest naval captain of his age.
2025 • Travel
Humans are the only Earthlings with complex language. But at what cost was that ability acquired? In this episode, I visit Tetsuro Matsuzawa to learn about his influential cognitive tradeoff hypothesis.
S3E1 • Mind Field • 2019 • Brain
A tour of India includes an airy fortress, a fluid home with origami-like roofs, a new take on a tea plantation house and a lovely "patchwork" property.
S2E6 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2019 • Design
Rome brings its enemies inside its borders as the age of Empire begins; Spartacus leads a slave uprising that threatens Rome on its own turf; Arminius, Germania's native son raised as a Roman, must choose a side in the fight for freedom.
Part 2 • Barbarians Rising • 2016 • History
Space technologies are continuing to be refined and access to space is becoming cheaper. This episode looks at the development of new human-rated spacecraft, reusable boosters, laser communications, the Ion Drive, and new techniques to refuel satellites in space.
S1E13 • Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration • 2021 • Technology
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.
S1E4 • The History of Food • 2018 • History
Human Planet tells remarkable stories of people who make their homes in the Arctic.
S1E3 • Human Planet • Environment
A look at tabloid journalism in the late 1980s; sensational TV shows focus on sex, scandal and celebrities, instead of politics; TV show hosts Larry King, Connie Chung and Maury Povich reveal how this new format blurred the lines.
S1E2 • 1989: The Year that Made the Modern World • 2019 • People
Writer Will Millard visits the treehouse-dwelling Korowai tribe in Papua, Indonesia
S1E1 • My Year With the Tribe • 2018 • People
Feminism has ushered in sweeping changes to society, securing rights for women around the world. How much further do we have to go?
S1E7 • History 101 • 2020 • People
Unable to bring mob boss Al Capone to justice for many of the crimes ascribed to him, the US Federal government took a new tack to end the rule of gangsters in the Depression.
S2E1 • Butterfly Effect • 2017 • People
Driven by an all-consuming desire for power, Jamaica's Christopher Coke considers himself a modern-day Robin Hood -- until authorities take him down.
S2E3 • Drug Lords • 2018 • People
Granted exclusive access to hundreds of drawings and paintings by Orson Welles, film-maker Mark Cousins dives deep into the visual world of this legendary director and actor, to reveal a portrait of the artist as he’s never been seen before – through his own eyes, sketched by his own hand, painted with his own brush. Executive produced by Michael Moore, The Eyes of Orson Welles brings vividly to life the passions, politics and power of this 20th-century showman and explores how the genius of Welles still resonates today, more than 30 years after his death.
2018 • People
Never in the history of humanity have so many of us been mobile, never has our demand for fast, efficient and safe transportation been so high, and never have we relied so heavily on technology to deliver. New innovations propel us into the world of self-driving cars and high-speed trains.
In the non-coding 98% of our DNA, we have countless switches to promote or suppress the physiological reactions of our bodies. Interestingly, we can change the states of these switches through our own efforts and even can affect the DNA conditions of our offspring before their birth.
S1E2 • Dynamic Genomes • 2019 • Science
The film explains the details of the research scheme instituted by the Government of India for the benefit of young talented scientists. Under the Scheme, Government encourages students with a scientific bent of mind by awarding scholarships from the B.Sc. to Ph.D. degrees.
1967 • Science
Jeff learns mind-bending tricks from Las Vegas icons Penn & Teller and has his perception of reality destroyed by viral superstar Zach King. But magic isn't all about big names and crazy illusions — for some; magic can be a celebration of nature, a connection to our cultural heritage and a means to explore our deepest selves.
S2E3 • The World According to Jeff Goldblum • 2021 • Science
Anatomist Alice Roberts embarks on an audacious scientific stunt - to rebuild her own body from scratch, editing out errors left behind by evolution; to create the perfect body. With the help of one of the world's best virtual sculptors, Scott Eaton, and top SFX model maker Sangeet Prabhaker, Alice creates a life-size model of the perfect human body, to be revealed in front of 150 people at London's Science Museum. Through natural selection, animals have evolved incredible biological designs, from supersharp senses to superpowered limbs. Alice is on a hunt to find the very best designs the natural world has to offer and use them to fix the flaws in our own human anatomy. By meeting leading medical and animal experts, Alice finds out what the body's biggest problems are, and how amazing adaptations in the rest of the animal kingdom could provide inspiration for her perfect body. Using incredible CGI to morph her existing body into new forms, she demonstrates how rethinking our bodies could overcome millennia of natural selection. Finally, in an epic reveal, Alice unveils the life-sized model of her perfect self in the Science Museum. There, in front of an audience, Alice meets the 'perfect human' version of herself for the first time. Ambitious, audacious and packed with cutting-edge science, Can Science Make Me Perfect? With Alice Roberts challenges everything you thought you knew about the perfect body.
2018 • Science
By the early 1950s, a holy trinity of oil, plastics and fertilisers had transformed the planet. But as Professor Iain Stewart reveals, when the oil producing countries demanded a greater share in profits from the Western energy companies, the oil and gas fields of the Middle East became a focus for coup d'états and military conflict.
S1E2 • Planet Oil • Economics
Hannah is going the other way by asking whether everything could, in fact, be smaller. But going smaller turns out not to be much safer... First, we shrink the Earth to half its size - it starts well with lower gravity enabling us to do incredible acrobatics, but things gradually turn nasty as everyone gets altitude sickness - even at sea level. Then we visit Professor Daniel Lathrop's incredible laboratory, where he has built a model Earth that allows us to investigate the other effects of shrinking the planet to half size. The results aren't good - with a weaker magnetic field we would lose our atmosphere and eventually become a barren, lifeless rock like Mars. In our next thought experiment, we shrink people to find out what life is like if you are just 5mm tall. We find out why small creatures have superpowers that seem to defy the laws of physics, meet Jyoti Amge, the world's smallest woman, and with the help of Dr Diana Van Heemst and thousands of baseball players reveal why short people have longer lives. Lastly, the Sun gets as small as a sun can be. We visit the fusion reactor at the Joint European Torus to find out why stars have to be a minimum size or fusion won't happen. And if our Sun were that small? Plants would turn from green to black, and Earth would probably resemble a giant, frozen eyeball. Which all goes to show that size really does matter.
S1E2 • Size Matters with Hannah Fry • 2018 • Physics
Go on a journey with parents who are preparing for babies to see how our bodies create and sustain new life. Through their stories, we learn about what is fundamentally shared and absolutely unique about the experience of birth.
S1E1 • Human: The World Within • 2021 • Health
To celebrate the webs big 50th birthday, Nat Geo takes a fun, nostalgic throwback romp down the cyber highway, from the early days through today. I LOVE THE INTERNET is one part glorious memory lane, one part "how the web changed everything" - our friendships, our habits, even our brains. It's nostalgia entertainment with enough gravitas to make it must-have content on Nat Geo.
2019 • Technology