Cities in the Sky • 2019 • episode "S1E5" • Skyscrapers Engineering the Future

21:25

We share the planet with an estimated 9 million robots, from self-driving cars to surgical arms. Could they one day completely replace humans?

S1E6 • History 101 • 2020 • Technology

58:35

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 3: Ceramic) Professor Mark Miodownik traces the story of ceramics. He looks at how we started with simple clay, sand and rock and changed them into pottery, glass and concrete - materials that would allow us to build cities, transform the way we view our world and communicate at the speed of light. Deep within their inner structure Mark discovers some of ceramics' most intriguing secrets. He reveals why glass can be utterly transparent, why concrete continues to harden for hundreds of years and how cooling ceramics could transform the way we power cities of the future.

S1E3 • How It Works • 2012 • Technology

59:00

Mike Wooldridge examines real-life neurons in action and explains how artificial neural networks are inspired by neural structures in the brain. To demonstrate how AI learns, we watch drones as they are trained to recognise and fly through structures in the lecture theatre autonomously. AI exploded into the public consciousness in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT and boasts around 100 million monthly users. Mike unravels the mystery of how large language models like ChatGPT work, and he finds out if one day this technology - along with a whole suite of different AI tools - will allow us to understand the animals we share this planet with. The Christmas Lectures are the most prestigious event in the Royal Institution calendar, dating from 1825, when Michael Faraday founded the series. They are the world's longest running science television series and always promise to inspire and amaze each year through explosive demonstrations and interactive experiments with the live theatre audience.

S1E1 • BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: The Truth about AI • 2023 • Technology

54:51

Take to the sky with the dreamers whose work gave humans the ability to fly. From Leonardo da Vinci’s “flying machines” to the modern commercial plane, without these inventions, we may have never left the ground. Narrated by Patrick Stewart.

Breakthrough the Ideas that Changed the World • 2019 • Technology

59:06

Hannah Fry visits eBay’s authentication centre, where they are waging war against fake high-value trainers. She discovers how American breakfast waffles transformed our trainer soles and how an 18th-century tea set led to the use of celebrity endorsement.

S1E6 • The Secret Genius of Modern Life • 2022 • Technology

52:18

In the final episode of the series, learn about "white hat" hackers, the U.S. Secret Service's cyber crime division working to protect us from the risks associated with persistent connectivity.

S1E3 • Digits • 2017 • Technology