Gold Fever • 2013 • episode "03/17" • Big History

Category: Nature

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This episode asks why mankind is gold crazy, and discovers there's a hard-wired reason we lust after it, and a microscopic explanation for why it shines. We reveal how the science behind our favorite metal drives men across oceans and continents.

Big History • 0 • 16 episodes •

Rise of the Carnivores

Rise of the Carnivores

Eating meat made us human...by giving us bigger brains, better tools, and spoken language. The human need for beef has driven history across the hemispheres, but how did we turn an ancient mega-beast into the cow we have today?

2013 • Nature

Pocket Time Machine

Pocket Time Machine

How does the cellphone in your pocket link to the Big Bang, the evolution of human memory, and even the Titanic disaster? Big History reveals how cosmic forces conspired to give us the tool that has revolutionized the planet.

2013 • Nature

H2O

Following 161 37 views About Export Add to Water is the miracle molecule, and mankind has used its perfect properties to revolutionize our lives. It was our first superhighway, the lifeblood of civilization, and gives us 90% of all the power we use today.

2013 • Environment

Deadly Meteors

Impacts from space have created our planet and just about everything in it. Like celestial supply ships, they brought in water, metal, and maybe even life. They made our moon and sculpted the geography of our planet.

2013 • Astronomy

Decoded

Secret codes run the world. The code of life, DNA, is the operating system for all organisms, which spawned intelligent life like us who eventually created codes of our own--language that allows us to talk and the alphabet that lets us write.

2013 • Math

The Sun

The Sun is our master and creator. It gives us our perception of time, controls our reality, and powers our lives. Big History sheds new light on our nearest star, revealing that ancient sun worship intersects with science.

2013 • Astronomy

Mountain Machines

Mountain Machines

They form natural boundaries, dictate how we spread around the planet, create natural defenses, and control our weather. From the World War that began with a gunshot in the Balkans to the feuds of the Appalachians, mountains have also been flashpoints.

2013 • Environment

Brain Boost

Behind that cup of coffee or tea is a global story that goes back to the collision that created the Moon and the evolution of plant and animal life. The key is the molecule that gives your morning cup its kick: caffeine, the most popular drug in history.

2013 • Health

World of Weapons

World of Weapons

Humans have small teeth and no claws or armor, so how do we project our power? Warfare has defined traditional history, but Big History digs deeper to reveal how it all began.

2013 • History

Defeating Gravity

Defeating Gravity

Flight takes more than wings. We need the right kind of air, the perfect materials cooked up over billions of years, and cosmic forces that are just right for us to leave the ground without tumbling off into space.

2013 • Science

Megastructures

Following 161 84 views About Export Add to From the Great Pyramid at Giza to the towering skyscrapers of today, humans have engineered massive constructions for at least 5,000 years. But why? How do biology and human emotions affect our desire to build gigantic structures?

2013 • Nature

Below Zero

This episode reveals how cold has the power to turn men into Barbarians, spark history's longest running war, and create the concept of race. After the heat of the Big Bang, cold creates the Universe and the planet as we know it.

2013 • Environment

Gold Fever

This episode asks why mankind is gold crazy, and discovers there's a hard-wired reason we lust after it, and a microscopic explanation for why it shines. We reveal how the science behind our favorite metal drives men across oceans and continents.

2013 • Nature

The Superpower of Salt

The Superpower of Salt

We all know that mankind can't live without air, food and water...the same is true of salt. The salt on your table is a key to unlocking the story of our planet and the cosmos. Big History reveals how this simple molecule underpins our civilization

2013 • Health

Horse Power Evolution

Horse Power Evolution

The horse has been a revolutionary animal in unexpected ways. It has changed how we speak, what we wear, and sets the hidden limit for the size of our most massive empires. It's a story that spans the cosmos.

2013 • History

Silver Supernova

Silver Supernova

At critical moments in history, our second place metal was the most important metal on Earth. Big History reveals how silver's place in our minds was determined by the heat of exploding stars, and how this one metal saved democracy.

2013 • Nature

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Megastructures

Following 161 84 views About Export Add to From the Great Pyramid at Giza to the towering skyscrapers of today, humans have engineered massive constructions for at least 5,000 years. But why? How do biology and human emotions affect our desire to build gigantic structures?

2013 • Big History • Nature

Urals - Primordial Valley

Urals - Primordial Valley

Take a journey through majestic primeval forests of the Urals. These protected sites are known for their extremes, where the fine side by side, and giant deer, and giant leviathan, weighing half a ton, and tiny animals. This also, in search of food, make their seasonal raiding Eurasian elk. Unlike other types of elk Eurasian elk live alone, so for the pregnant female elk stress of meeting with other animals usually leads to a fight. As soon as the snow begins to melt in the woods, baring the ground, a lone wolf set out in search of food, not disdaining the frozen remains of animals

2009 • Wild Russia • Nature

Our Fragile Planet

Our Fragile Planet

In the final film, he reflects on the dramatic impact that humankind has had on the natural world within his own lifetime. He tells the surprising and deeply personal story of the changes he has seen, of the pioneering conservationists with who he has worked - and of the global revolution in attitudes towards nature that has taken place within the last six decades. In a journey that takes him from the London Zoo to the jungles of Borneo, Attenborough reveals what inspired him to become a conservationist. He remembers classic encounters with mountain gorillas, blue whales and the giant tortoise, Lonesome George. These are all characters that have helped to change public attitudes to the natural world.

2012 • Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild • Nature

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Decades ago, Monterey Bay National Sanctuary was on the brink of ecological disaster. Today, it is a lush world of sandy sea floors and twisting seaweed jungles. Explore the home of 525 species of fish and 34 species of marine mammal, including the only species of sea lion with a growing population.

2015 • Ocean Parks • Nature

Wild Extremes

The most extreme and wild parts of New Zealand are in the South Island, which lie towards Antarctica, in the path of the tempestuous 'roaring forties'. This is home to some of the most rapidly rising mountains in the world, the Southern Alps. From hyper-intelligent parrots to sinister snails with teeth and magical constellations of glow-worms, this is the story of New Zealand's wildest places and its most resilient pioneers, all of whom must embrace radical solutions to survive.

2016 • New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands • Nature

Rise of the Mammals

Rise of the Mammals

This instalment is the first of several to concentrate on mammals. The platypus and the echidna are the only mammals that lay eggs (in much the same manner of reptiles), and it is from such animals that others in the group evolved. Since mammals have warm blood and most have dense fur, they can hunt at night when temperatures drop. It is for this reason that they became more successful than their reptile ancestors, who needed to heat themselves externally. Much of the programme is devoted to marsupials (whose young are partially formed at birth) of which fossils have been found in the Americas dating back 60 million years.

1979 • Life on Earth • Nature