Physicist Jim Al-Khalili embarks on an extraordinary quest through 600 million years of evolution to reveal how the human brain — the most complex structure known in the universe — came to exist. With more than 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections, it surpasses even the stars of the Milky Way. Through breathtaking science and striking visuals, this documentary uncovers how nature transformed simple nerve cells into the ultimate thinking machine.
From the first survival instincts of primates to the dawn of social intelligence, Jim explores how cooperation, relationships and empathy reshaped the brain and made us who we are. Working alongside his wife and leading researchers, he dives into fossil evidence, brain scans and the rise of artificial intelligence to answer one profound question: what makes the biological brain so unique — and can anything ever match it?

How do you react to the world around you? Through the lens of a boxer, a first responder, a cell tower climber and a man with a bionic limb, we'll go deep into the universe of the most powerful machine on earth: the human brain and the vast nervous system it controls.
The human body is full of systems, but there's one system that controls all the others, and it might be the one that truly makes you you: The nervous system.

Modern headlines are claiming mindfulness may cure anxiety, depression, and a whole host of other health problems. How can this simple practice of watching your own breath change the way your brain works? And can that change your life? The fourth episode of the series looks at the power of mindfulness and meditation. It examines different kinds on meditation (transcendental, dynamic, and religious) and notes that they are different from mindfulness meditation (Satipatthana). Also it talks to neuroscientists who discuss what happens in the brain during meditation.

Why do we sleep? And what does sleep have to do with memory, trauma, and our emotions? From fruit flies to whales, virtually every animal sleeps. But why? Why do we need to spend nearly a third of our lives in such a defenseless state? Scientists are peering more deeply into the sleeping brain than ever before, discovering just how powerful sleep can be, playing a role in everything from memory retention and emotional regulation to removing waste from our brains. So why are we getting so little of it?

Your brain is like a hungry sponge. It's constantly absorbing information. It thrives when stimulated. Between smartphones and books, and movies, and friends and family, thousands of sensations are constantly going into our heads. But what if it all got cut off?. Imagine being confined to a 10-by-10-foot room in complete isolation. No timekeeping devices, no phones, no books, nothing to write on, no windows. Psychologists say that fewer than three days in a room like this can lead to brain damage. I will be staying in this room for three days.
Michael explores the effects of isolation on the human mind by subjecting himself to a very interesting experiment.

Mind reading might sound like pseudoscientific, but its scientific counterpart, thought identification, is very much a real thing. It's based in neuroimaging and machine learning, and what's really cool is that experiments in mind reading aren't just about spying on what someone is thinking. They're about figuring out what thoughts are even made of.
When you think of something, what does that mental picture actually look like? What resolution is it in? How high fidelity is a memory, and how do they change over time? In this episode, we are going to look at how reading people's minds can help us answer these questions.