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Big Blue

   2017    Nature
The big blue is the world's greatest wilderness, far from shore and many kilometres deep. It's a vast marine desert where there is little to eat and nowhere to hide. Yet it's home to some of the biggest and most spectacular creatures on earth. This episode reveals what it takes to survive in this savage and forbidding world. We witness feats of incredible endurance, moments of high drama and extraordinary acts of heart-wrenching self-sacrifice. Every animal in the big blue must find their own unique way to survive. Sperm whales have the largest brains in the world. They live for 80 years, and we are only now beginning to learn the extraordinary complexity of their language of clicks - thought to coordinate the whole family in everything from childcare to hunting. With special pressure-proof cameras, we witness record-breaking feats of endurance as they hunt for squid a kilometre down into the abyss. Only recently have we begun to solve the mystery of where baby turtles disappear to in their early years. They leave the crowded waters of the coast and head to the open ocean, where they use floating debris like logs as life rafts. Here they remain until adulthood, adrift on the high seas in relative safety away from coastal predators. Over half of all animals in the open ocean drift in currents. Jellyfish cross entire oceans feeding on whatever happens to tangle with their tentacles. The jelly-like Portuguese man-of-war can harness sail power to fish with its deadly tentacles. Sometimes there is a brief explosion of food in this marine desert, but ocean hunters must be fast to make the best of this bonanza. We witness super pods of up to 5,000 spinner dolphins racing to herd vast shoals of lanternfish, briefly caught at the surface where it is thought they spawn. New aerial footage reveals, for the first time, the truth to a centuries-old sailors' legend of the 'boiling seas' - the spectacular feeding frenzy of 90kg tuna and dolphins smashing through the lantern fish shoals turning the sea white with foam.
Series: Blue Planet II

Awakening

   2018    Medicine
What makes us human is the squishy triple-pounder inside our heads. It lets us build skyscrapers, and lift a special few of us into space. We are the only species on this planet that can construct realities in our mind and then go actually build it. The story of how our mind evolved on this one strange rock is one of chance, coincidence and impossible odds.
This episode is an investigation into the mystery of the human brain and the chain of events that produced the anomaly of human intelligence.
Series: One Strange Rock

Divergent Minds

   2018    Medicine
Autistic minds provide windows into how we all think, feel, and behave. A complete brain science should be able to account for all kinds of minds and brains. As long as some minds remain a mystery, so too will all minds.
Michael Stevens travels to London to meet a blind, autistic savant with astonishing musical abilities, and volunteers to have his brain's function temporarily disrupted at UCLA's Neuromodulation Lab.
Series: Mind Field Season 2

Mystery of Alien Worlds

   2021    Science
Exoplanets, strange worlds outside our solar system. We're discovering the cosmos is full of alien planets. Alien worlds that challenge our understanding of planetary systems. Hellishly hot worlds, violently colliding worlds, worlds getting eaten by their stars. There's much, much more out there than we had ever imagined.
Exoplanets are shaking up our understanding of the universe. The cosmos is a chaotic array of the odd, the weird, and the wonderful. The more we find, the less we know.
Series: How the Universe Works Series 9

The Cosmic Connectome

   2020    Medicine
In the fifth episode Neil deGrasse Tyson explores questions that have baffled scientists for centuries. Can we know the universe? Are our brains capable of comprehending the cosmos in all of its complexity and splendor?. We don't yet know the answers because our brain remains almost as much of a mystery to that questions as the universe itself. An abandoned orphan's dream opened the way to understanding the architecture of thought.
Series: Cosmos: Possible Worlds

Gauguin Vision After The Sermon

   2020    Art
The Vision After the Sermon, also known as Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, is a painting full of symbolism and mystery. But what does Gauguin’s famous work have to do with a 17-year-old girl called Madeleine, with Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and with sumo wrestlers?
Waldemar Januszczak reveals all as he investigates Gauguin’s epic religious painting about good and evil, temptation and desire.
Series: The Art Mysteries
Blood of the Vikings

Blood of the Vikings

2001  History
The Jinx

The Jinx

  History
The Universe

The Universe

2010  Science
The Crime of the Century

The Crime of the Century

2021  Medicine
Triumph of Life

Triumph of Life

2006  Nature