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The Great Salmon Run

   2009    Nature
Every year grizzly bear families in North America depend for their survival on a spectacular natural event: the return of hundreds of millions of salmon from the Pacific Ocean to the mountain streams where they were born. The salmon travel thousands of miles to spawn and then die. The great run not only provides food for bears, but for killer whales, wolves, bald eagles, and even the forest itself. The question is: will the salmon return in time to keep hungry bears alive?
A mother grizzly and her cubs emerge from their den high in snowy Alaskan mountains. Filming from the air the team capture a TV first, following the bears as they negotiate a near vertical slope on their journey to the coast where they await the return of the salmon. Meanwhile, the salmon are making their way to the to river mouths where they must swim upstream and against the current. The programme reveals how they tackle the torrents and leap over waterfalls, a feat equivalent to a human jumping over a house. Dozens of hungry bears eagerly await the salmon that make it up river. In another TV first, underwater cameras record the ingenuity and fancy footwork they use to collect dead salmon from the bottom of deep pools.
Series: Nature Great Events

The New Industrial Revolution

   2021    Technology
This there-part series explores monumental changes in the workplace and the long-term impact on workers, employers, educators and communities. Employment is part of the American Dream. Will the future provide opportunities for jobs that sustain families and the nation?
The first episode illuminates disruptions to the world of work--AI, robotics, globalization and labor practices. The COVID-19 pandemic was a new driver of change; at the pandemic's height, unemployment flipped from its lowest rate in 50 years to its highest level in a century.
Series: Future of Work

The Promise

   2019    Technology
More than 90% of all crashes have a human driver as the cause. So if you want to solve traffic fatalities, the best solution is driverless vehicles. It's an ambitious goal, but only possible because of the recent breakthroughs in deep learning. Artificial intelligence is one of those key pieces that has made it possible now to do driverless cars where it wasn't possible ten years ago. For computers, until very, very recently, to do even the most basic visual tasks, like seeing a picture of a person and knowing that it's a person was remarkably hard. That's obviously fundamental to being able to understand the world around you with the sensors that you have. And we've made also gigantic strides in being able to perform complex tasks.
Series: In the Age of AI

The Rivers

   2011    Culture
Rivers provide the essentials of life: fresh food and water. They often provide natural highways and enable us to live in just about every environment on Earth. But rivers can also flood, freeze or disappear altogether!Cities - Surviving the Urban Jungle Human Planet joins Sam Niang, a Laotian fisherman, as he walks a high wire strung above the raging Mekong River rapids on an extraordinary commute to work. There's also a look at the remarkable partnership between Samburu tribesmen and wild elephants in their search for water in the dried-out river beds of Northern Kenya. Plus, a father who must take his two children on a six-day trek down a frozen river - the most dangerous school run on Earth, and the ice dam busters of Ottowa with their dynamite solution to a city centre hold-up.

The Robot

   2019    Technology
For most of our history, we humans considered ourselves unique. But now, a new, artificial species might challenge our superiority. Mechanical beings have the potential to change everything. How we got them is a story of astonishing twists and amazing turns to achieve us the machine that may turn out to be the most revolutionary technology ever conceived--the robot.
Learn how robots were first conceptualized in ancient Rome and see how their use has evolved over the centuries, from the calculator to the Mars Lander. Then, take a sneak peek at what future robots will be able to do. Narrated by Patrick Stewart.
Series: Breakthrough: The Ideas That Changed the World

The Southern Ocean

   2009    Nature
The Southern Ocean, which circles the globe without being blocked by land, is home to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), the longest of the world's ocean currents. Also known as the "channel", it connects the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins and exerts a powerful influence over the Earth's climate. The ACC carries 150 times more water around Antarctica than the flow of all the world's rivers combined.
Series: Oceans
The Cell

The Cell

  Science
Life in the Undergrowth

Life in the Undergrowth

2005  Nature
Leaving Neverland

Leaving Neverland

2019  Culture
Reel Rock

Reel Rock

2014  Culture
Our Universe

Our Universe

2022  Nature
Ancient Apocalypse

Ancient Apocalypse

2024  History