Last Watched

"Air"  Sort by

Brian Cox: Seven Days on Mars

   2022    Technology
Professor Brian Cox fulfils a childhood dream by going behind the scenes at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), mission control for Mars 2020 – one of the most ambitious missions ever launched that may finally reveal if life ever existed on the red planet.
In 1980, a young Brian Cox wrote to JPL asking for photos from some of their missions to the planets. The pictures they sent him from Voyager and the Viking mission to Mars were a source of inspiration that set him on the path to becoming a physicist.
Now, over 40 years later, he has been granted privileged access to JPL, including key mission areas that are usually off-limits to film crews. Brian spends a week following the team who guide the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter - the first powered aircraft ever sent to another planet - across the surface of Mars during a critical stage of the mission.
Perseverance’s goal is to search for signs of long extinct life on the surface of Mars in an area called Jezero Crater, which, 3.8 billion years ago, was filled by a vast lake. If it finds evidence of that life, it could change everything we know about life in the universe - and even transform our understanding of our own origins.

The Whistleblower

   2022    Technology
In the third episode, during cleanup at the plant, insiders claim that cost-cutting measures and intimidation tactics create a danger war force than the accident itself.
Several state and federal government agencies mounted investigations into the crisis, the most prominent of which was the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, headed by chairman John G. Kemeny. The investigation strongly criticized Babcock & Wilcox, Met Ed, Graphics processing unit, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for lapses in quality assurance and maintenance, inadequate operator training, lack of communication of important safety information, poor management, and complacency.
Kemeny said that the procedures and that the control room were greatly inadequate for managing an accident.
Series: Meltdown: Three Mile Island

Doubt

   2022    Nature
Even as the science grew more certain, the oil industry continued to block action to tackle climate change in the new millennium. In a revelatory interview, Christine Todd Whitman, George W. Bush's former environment chief, tells the story of how the industry successfully lobbied President Bush to reverse course on his campaign promise to regulate carbon emissions.
Tensions grew between two of the world's biggest oil companies, ExxonMobil and BP, after the latter publicly called for action to tackle climate change. The election of Barack Obama provided hope for supporters of climate action, but the billionaire Koch brothers made an effort to block the new president's attempts to pass climate change legislation, and climate denialism became the mainstream position of the Republican Party. A lawyer who worked for Koch brothers through this period speaks on camera for the first time.
Series: Big Oil vs The World

Super Senses

   2022    Nature
Our super friends in the animal world possess so many hidden superpowers. In the third episode we meet heat-seeking dogs, GPS-outfitted cats, and a sporty goldfish with squad goals.
When we think we know them inside out, dogs surprise us with something new. what sensory superpower have dogs been hiding all this time? They have a thermal sensor in the tip of his nose. In the wild, a dog could use his thermal nose to spot the heat of a prey animal, allowing him to hunt even if his other senses were impaired. It also explains that uncanny knack for stealing a warm seat.
Series: The Hidden Lives of Pets

Girl in the Picture

   2022    Culture
A young mother's mysterious death and her son's subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman's true identity and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all.
It's late at night in Oklahoma City, in April of 1990. Two or three guys are in a truck driving along the road and they see some kind of debris. And then they see off to the side, there's a body. It appears to be a young woman, a blonde-haired woman and they call an ambulance. She's rushed to the hospital, and her husband, Clarence, eventually shows up. He says her name is Tonya Hughes, that she's a stripper in Tulsa, and that they have a young son named Michael. And he's much older and he's just kind of this weird guy. So, the doctors, as they continue to examine her, they see old bruises and old injuries. There's something wrong with this picture. Ultimately, she passes away. The girls Tonya danced with want to find her family. So they call this woman and they tell her that her daughter died. And she says, 'What are you talking about? My daughter died 20 years ago, she was only 18 months old.' They realize that who they just buried was not Tonya Hughes, so now they're asking, 'What happened?'.

Frozen Peaks

   2022    Nature
Mountains create frozen habitats on every continent on Earth, and each of these high-altitude worlds holds unique challenges for its surprising and remarkable life.
We begin our journey close to the equator - the furthest point from the poles - in East Africa. Here on the high slopes of Mount Kenya, during the day the tropical sun keeps the cold at bay, but at night the frost descends. During this cycle of freeze and thaw, a pregnant high-casqued chameleon must choose the right time to give birth if her newborns are to escape the deadly night freeze.
Away from the equator in the European Alps, long cold winters give way to short, bountiful summers. For a pair of golden eagles raising their chick, the demand to provide enough food for it drives them to tackle prey five times their size. To catch a goat-like chamois, they risk it all using one of the most daring and breathtaking hunting techniques ever witnessed.
The mountains of Japan are the snowiest place on Earth, providing hostile conditions for a lone male macaque cast away from his troop. His only chance of survival comes with finding another male whose embrace will provide him with life-saving warmth. But in the frozen peaks, the deadliest force is an avalanche whose full destructive power is captured for the first time using high-speed camera racer drones.
The roof of the world is home to an array of unexpected cold-loving creatures. In the remote Southern Alps of New Zealand, a species of parrot - the kea - uses its famed intelligence to feed on the dead. And in the Andes in South America, flamingos thrive in high-altitude volcanic lakes, but their chicks must race to escape the winter freeze or risk becoming trapped in the ice.
Today, due to climate change, our frozen peaks are undergoing rapid change. Using groundbreaking time-lapse photography, we reveal mountain glaciers vanishing before our very eyes and discover what a warming world may mean for our most famous mountain resident of all, the giant panda.
Series: Frozen Planet II
The Making of the Mob

The Making of the Mob

2016  History
The Universe

The Universe

2010  Science
The Story of the Jews

The Story of the Jews

2013  History
Invisible Worlds

Invisible Worlds

2010  Science
D-Day

D-Day

2013  History
The Sky at Night

The Sky at Night

2018  Science