Video documentaries about science and technology
The Incredible Human Journey episode 3 – Europe: In Europe, Dr Alice Roberts investigates how our species coped with the rival Neanderthals and the Ice Age. There are seven billion humans on Earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 […]
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The Incredible Human Journey episode 2 – Asia: There are seven billion humans on earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient
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The Incredible Human Journey episode 1 – Out of Africa: Dr Alice Roberts travels the globe to discover the incredible story of how humans left Africa to colonise the world – overcoming hostile terrain, extreme weather and other species of human. She pieces together precious fragments of bone, stone and new DNA evidence and discovers how this journey changed these
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The Secret Genius of Modern Life episode 6: 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. Hannah Fry is a British mathematician, author, and radio and television
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The Secret Genius of Modern Life episode 5: Hannah Fry finds out how 1970s car crashes helped us to count our steps, why WWII dog-fights led to a crucial health monitor and how fitness trackers are even being used to catch killers. With around a third of the population now owning fitness trackers, Britain has become a nation obsessed with
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The Secret Genius of Modern Life episode 4: Hannah Fry discovers why innovations in meat packing almost derailed the electric car revolution and how a breakthrough in camcorder batteries led to Elon Musk’s electric empire, as well as demonstrating how not to drive a multimillion dollar prototype car of the future. Hannah Fry is a British mathematician,
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The Lost Tribes of Humanity: Alice Roberts explores recent discoveries in the study of human origins, revealing the transformation that has been brought about in this field by genetics. Traditional paleo-anthropology, based on fossils, is being transformed by advanced genome sequencing techniques. We now know that there were at least four other distinct species of human on the planet at
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A Brief History of Time: Errol Morris turns his camera on one of the most fascinating men in the world: the pioneering astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, afflicted by a debilitating motor neuron disease that has left him without a voice or the use of his limbs. An adroitly crafted tale of personal adversity, professional triumph, and cosmological inquiry, Morris’s documentary examines
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The Secret Genius of Modern Life episode 3: Hannah Fry delves into the inner workings of virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, which are now found in almost half of all UK homes. Hannah goes behind the scenes with Alexa’s chief scientist, reveals how secret technology invented to hunt U-boats led to their targeted hearing and discovers
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The Secret Genius of Modern Life episode 2: Hannah Fry tucks into the tech behind food delivery apps like Deliveroo and Just Eat, which are now used by 24 million people in the UK. Hannah meets the R&D team behind food delivery titan Deliveroo, finds out how pensioners ordering Greggs revolutionised food delivery, and discovers how pizza made us fall
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The Secret Genius of Modern Life episode 1: Hannah Fry takes a look at the bank card. This humble piece of plastic is often taken for granted, but it’s the digital key to accessing cash and is packed full of extraordinary technological innovations – including some with surprising and sinister origins. Hannah is granted the first ever
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The Sky at Night – The Multiverse of Mystery is a magical journey into the far-flung ideas at the very edge of scientific knowledge, exploring the concepts that today seem like science fiction but may one day become science fact. Delving into the archive at the Royal Society, we look at the dreamers who first considered the possibility of travelling
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