In 335 BC Alexander of Macedonia set off on an expedition to conqueror the world. The voyage of Alexander the Great covered more than 22,000 miles in ten years, from Greece to India and back, through some of the most difficult and unforgiving terrain. Michael Wood was hot on his trail, following, as closely as possible, in the footsteps of Alexander and the army that he drove to achieve the impossible. In this programme: the Lebanese city of Tyre, scene of Alexander's most desperate battle; the Palestinian legend of `Two-Horned Alexander'; and the Egyptian oasis of Siwa, where Alexander was proclaimed pharaoh and son of God.

How did the Chinese government turn pandemic cover ups in Wuhan into a triumph for the Communist party? Award-winning filmmaker Nanfu Wang recounts the experiences of people on the ground in the earliest days of the novel coronavirus and the way two countries dealt with its initial spread, from the first days of the outbreak in Wuhan to its rampage across the United States. The film explores the early confusion and parallel campaigns by authorities to try to contain the virus as well as shape the public narrative through misinformation, resulting in a devastating impact on citizens of both countries.
With emotional first-hand accounts from medical professionals, patients, and grieving family members, and startling, on-the-ground footage from both Wuhan and the U.S., In The Same Breath is a revelatory illustration of the devastating toll that resulted from official missteps at containment of the infection and the widespread phenomenon of social media misinformation, while also highlighting the strength and resilience of the people who risked everything to communicate the truth.

There is a tendency to deny German culture the equal reverence of Italy or Spain, and this enlightening new series provides a wonderful opportunity to explore a great, yet often neglected, artistic tradition whose influence has been just as profound. Andrew Graham-Dixon concludes his exploration of German art by investigating the dark and difficult times of the 20th century. Dominating the landscape is the figure of Adolf Hitler, failed artist, would-be architect and obsessed with the aesthetics of his 1,000-year Reich". In a series of extraordinary building projects and exhibitions, Hitler waged a propaganda war against every form of modern art as a prelude to unleashing total war on the whole of Europe. After the war the shadow of the Third Reich persisted, Germany remained divided and traumatised. How would artists deal with a past that everybody wanted to forget? Journeying through the work of Otto Dix and George Grosz and the age of the Bauhaus to the post-war painters Georg Baselitz, Hilla Becher and the conceptual artist Joseph Beuys is a long and strange journey, but the signs that art has a place at the heart of the new reunited Germany are clearly visible.

We're going to see if forcing your facial expression can change the way you feel. If you remove the ability to make facial expressions with botox, will it affect how the people perceive emotions in them?
How do facial expressions affect emotion, and how does emotion affect facial expressions? Michael Stevens finds out when he explores the face.

There is one vibratory field that connects all things. It has been called Akasha, Logos, the primordial OM, the music of the spheres, the Higgs field, dark energy, and a thousand other names throughout history. The vibratory field is at the root of all true spiritual experience and scientific investigation". It is the same field of energy that saints, Buddhas, yogis, mystics, priests, shamans and seers, have observed by looking within themselves. Many of history's monumental thinkers, such a Pythagoras, Kepler, Leonardo DaVinci, Tesla, and Einstein, have come to the threshold of this great mystery. It is the common link between all religions, all sciences, and the link between our inner worlds and our outer worlds. Inner Worlds was created by Canadian film maker, musician and meditation teacher Daniel Schmidt. The film could be described as the external reflection of his own adventures in meditation. As Daniel came to meditative insights, he realized that these same insights were discovered over and over in spiritual traditions around the world and that all traditions share a common mystical underpinning. He realized that it is this core experience that connects us not only to the mysterious source of all creation, but to eachother as well.

35 years after the Chernobyl disaster, Ben Fogle travels to the most radioactive place on Earth. He spends a week living alone inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, gaining privileged access to the doomed Control Room 4 where the disaster first began to unfold.
'The planet faces unprecedented challenges - many of them, like Chernobyl, of our own making. What I've discovered in Chernobyl is that nature's reclaiming it. This is the greatest, accidental rewilding project of the globe. For me, the really exciting part of the Chernobyl story is the accidental hope that came from it. '