The Launchers • 2021 • episode "S1E2" • Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration

58:33

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 1: Metal) Professor Mark Miodownik travels to Israel to trace the history of our love affair with gleaming, lustrous metal. He learns how we first extracted glinting copper from dull rock and used it to shape our world and reveals how our eternal quest for lighter, stronger metals led us to forge hard, sharp steel from malleable iron and to create complex alloys in order to conquer the skies. He investigates metals at the atomic level to reveal mysterious properties such as why they get stronger when they are hit, and he discovers how metal crystals can be grown to survive inside one of our most extreme environments - the jet engine.

S1E1 • How It Works • 2012 • Technology

51:51

This episode will reveal how new technologies will transform music by 2050 new robotic and intelligent instruments, intuitive composition software, virtual artists, collaborative composition and more. Tomorrow, music will be capable of adapting to our moods and offer us more than just entertainment.

S2E4 • Dream the Future • 2018 • Technology

58:59

The car has shrunk the world, increased personal freedom and in so many ways expanded our horizons, but there is a flipside. Fumes from car exhausts have helped to destroy our environment, poisoned the air we breathe and killed us in far more straightforward ways. But all that is going to change. Horizon enters a world where cars can drive themselves, a world where we are simply passengers, ferried about by wholesome green compassionate technology which will never ever go wrong. And it is almost here. Horizon explores the artificial intelligence required to replace human drivers for cars themselves, peers into the future driverless world and discovers that, despite the glossy driverless PR (and assuming that they really can be made to work reliably), the reality is that it might not be all good news. From the ethics of driverless car crashes to the impact on jobs, it might be that cars are about to rise up against us in ways that none of us are expecting.

Horizon • 2017 • 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

52:18

Preserving truth in an era of misinformation is challenging. Bill traces the life cycle and impact of conspiracy theories, with insights from Lady Gaga.

S1E3 • What's Next: The Future with Bill Gates • 2024 • Technology

46:29

Documentary exploring the latest developments in artificial intelligence. Gemma Chan, who plays android Mia in sci-fi drama Humans, meets experts in robotics and computer programming from around the world, and visits a project attempting to create a computer more powerful than the human brain. Gemma participates in an experiment to create a robotic version of herself, which is then tested for its ability to produce convincing human responses.

2016 • Technology