What do you get when you cross a clown teacher, a comedian and neuroscientist? Surprising new insights about what it takes to be funny.
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What do you get when you combine a passion for tiny-house living with cutting-edge green technology? Designer Graham Hill converts a small shed in Hawaii into the ultimate eco-friendly tiny house and a blueprint for sustainable home design.
2019 • Design
What do you get when you cross a clown teacher, a comedian and neuroscientist? Surprising new insights about what it takes to be funny.
2020 • Brain
On the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 13, Commander Jim Lovell and Apollo engineers recall the ingenuity and superhuman efforts that turned a space flight disaster into an extraordinary fight for survival.
2020 • Technology
An alarming decline in insect populations could devastate all life on earth. What's causing it, and can anything be done to stop it?
2021 • Nature
Feeling anxious? You're not alone. Stand-up comedian Maria Bamford shares her personal experience with OCD in this examination of anxiety disorders.
S1E3 • The Mind, Explained • 2019 • Brain
Could the power of fake pills be used to treat some of our most common medical complaints? To find out, Dr Michael Mosley embarks on Britain's largest ever trial to investigate the placebo effect. He is heading to Blackpool to gather 117 people suffering from backache - one of the leading types of chronic pain - before trying to treat them with nothing but fake pills and the power of the mind. Working with experts from the University of Oxford, Michael discovers that the placebo effect is more than just a medical curiosity. The brain is actually capable of producing its own drugs, and these can be more powerful than prescription painkillers. Michael's volunteers come from all walks of life, but they have all suffered with bad backs for years and feel their conventional medication isn't up to the job. They include Stacey, who is struggling to keep up with her two energetic daughters, wheelchair user Jim, who longs to be able to get back on a boat, and poker player Moyra, who is looking for a painkiller which doesn't affect her performance. They think they are taking part in the trial of a powerful new painkiller, but their blue and white capsules actually contain nothing but ground-up rice. Can this fake treatment make a real difference? And how will the volunteers react when Michael reveals the truth? Michael also finds out about some remarkable placebo experiments from around the world, including a woman in Oxfordshire who experienced a near-miraculous recovery after undergoing fake surgery to fix her chronic shoulder pain. Plus a team in Lancashire who want to see if the placebo effect can cure a broken heart. And Michael discovers a team in Germany working on a placebo that works even if you know you are taking it, which might improve the lives of transplant patients. Michael also tests this out on himself - attempting to train his own body to respond to a fake treatment - a foul-tasting green drink - as if he were taking actual drugs.
Understanding what consciousness is, and why and how it evolved, is perhaps the greatest mystery known to science.
The Economist • 2015 • Brain
Professor Shapiro reaches back into history to show that artists, architects and mathematicians have also employed visual “tricks” to baffle and entertain us by manipulating perspective and challenging our ideas of what is real and what is fake.
There are 100 billion individual neurons in the human brain. Working together, they allow us to make sense of, and move through, the world around us. Scientists have built replicas of the human brain with computers, but no one has ever successfully made a brain out of humans. On this episode, I’ll travel back to my hometown of Stilwell, Kansas, and turn it into a working brain!
S3E3 • Mind Field • 2018 • Brain
The first programme in the series uncovers what happens in our minds when we learn, remember and have original ideas. It explores what we can do to improve our ability to learn and manipulate knowledge, and shows how eating fish oils can boost our brain power.
S1E1 • The Human Mind • 2007 • Brain