BBC Storyville - iHuman • 2023

58:56

From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, materials have helped drive forward our civilisation. By manipulating materials we have been able to transform our world and our lives - and never more so than in the past century when we have discovered and designed more materials than at any other time in human history. (Part 2: Plastic) Professor Mark Miodownik tells the story of plastics - created in the lab, they have brought luxury to the masses and shaped the modern age. He recounts tales of the mavericks responsible for some of plastic's most outrageous failures and heady successes, from the explosive attempts to make a replacement for ivory billiard balls to the ultimately ubiquitous Bakelite. Investigating at atomic level, Mark discovers the properties that have allowed plastics to dominate our world and reveals how the next generation of plastics will take its inspiration from nature, creating man-made materials which behave as though they are alive and which could help rebuild the human body.

S1E2 • How It Works • 2012 • Technology

58:57

Twenty-five years after the world wide web was created, it is now caught in the greatest controversy of its existence: surveillance.

Technology

55:40

Dirty water has killed more humans than all the wars of history combined, but in the last 150 years, a series of radical ideas, extraordinary innovations and unsung heroes have changed our world. Steven Johnson plunges into a sewer to understand what made a maverick engineer decide to lift the city of Chicago with jackscrews in order to build America’s first sewer system. He talks about John Leal, who deliberately “poisoned” the water supply of 200,000 people when, without authorization, he added chlorine, considered lethal in 1908, into Jersey City’s water and made it safe to drink. This isn’t only about the world becoming a cleaner place — the iPhone, the subway, flat screen TVs and even the two piece swimsuit are the result of the valiant efforts of the unsung heroes of clean.

S1E1 • How We Got to Now • 2014 • Technology

53:20

After years of anticipation, autonomous vehicles are now being tested on public roads around the world. As ambitious innovators race to develop what they see as the next high-tech pot of gold, some experts warn there are still daunting challenges ahead, including how to train artificial intelligence to be better than humans at making life-and-death decisions. How do self-driving cars work? How close are we to large-scale deployment of them? And will we ever be able to trust AI with our lives?

NOVA PBS • 2019 • Technology

44:28

We take apart the GPO Amethyst, an ocean transporter capable of carrying some of the largest structures by deliberately sinking into the ocean.

S1E2 • Superstructures Engineering Marvels • 2019 • Technology

51:59

The buzzword in the space industry now is tourism. Private companies have moved into space research, with the philosophy that the best way to extend man's reach into space is to promote it as a tourist destination.

13/13 • The Amazing World Of Aviation • 2009 • Technology