Last Watched

Science Britannica: Frankenstein Monsters

   2013    Culture
Professor Brian Cox grapples with science's darker side, asking why, when science has done so much for us, it often gets such a bad press. Starting with the original Frankenstein - the grisly 19th century tale of George Foster's hanging and subsequent 'electrocution', Brian confronts the idea that science can go 'too far'. From the nuclear bomb to genetic modification, British science has always been at the cutting edge of discovery, but are British scientists feckless meddlers, or misunderstood visionaries whose gifts to humanity are corrupted by the unscrupulous?

Do You Know What Time It Is

   2008    Science
Particle physicist Prof. Brian Cox asks, 'What time is it?' It's a simple question and it sounds like it has a simple answer. But do we really know what it is that we're asking? Brian visits the ancient Mayan pyramids in Mexico where the Maya built temples to time. He finds out that a day is never 24 hours and meets Earth's very own Director of Time. He journeys to the beginning of time, and goes beyond within the realms of string theory, and explores the very limit of time. He discovers that we not only travel through time at the speed of light, but the experience we feel as the passing of time could be an illusion.

Carlsbad Caverns

   2013    Nature
Carlsbad Caverns are located in the Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico, within the Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There are more than 100 caves. The Natural Entrance is a path into the namesake Carlsbad Cavern. Stalactites cling to the roof of the Big Room, a huge underground chamber in the cavern.

Words on a Page

   2020    History
Writing itself is 5,000 years old, and for most of that time words were written by hand using a variety of tools. The Romans were able to run an empire thanks to documents written on papyrus. Scroll books could be made quite cheaply and, as a result, ancient Rome had a thriving written culture. With the fall of the Roman Empire, papyrus became more difficult to obtain. Europeans were forced to turn to a much more expensive surface on which to write: Parchment. Medieval handwritten books could cost as much as a house, they also represent a limitation on literacy and scholarship.
No such limitations were felt in China, where paper had been invented in the second century. Paper was the foundation of Chinese culture and power, and for centuries how to make it was kept secret. When the secret was out, paper mills soon sprang up across central Asia. The result was an intellectual flourishing known as the Islamic Golden Age. Muslim scholars made discoveries in biology, geology, astronomy and mathematics. By contrast, Europe was an intellectual backwater.
That changed with Gutenberg’s development of movable type printing. The letters of the Latin alphabet have very simple block-like shapes, which made it relatively simple to turn them into type pieces. When printers tried to use movable type to print Arabic texts, they found themselves hampered by the cursive nature of Arabic writing. The success of movable type printing in Europe led to a thousand-fold increase in the availability of information, which produced an explosion of ideas that led directly to the European Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution that followed.
Series: The Secret History of Writing

Basketball Diplomacy

   2013    Culture
VICE makes history on a trip to North Korea to play hoops and meet with supreme leader Kim Jong-un. With NBA great Dennis Rodman and a trio of Harlem Globetrotters in tow, we traveled to the capital of Pyongyang for a tour of the city, a basketball clinic, an exhibition game, and a first-ever meeting between the leader and an American delegation.
Series: Vice
The Life of Birds

The Life of Birds

1998  Nature
The Sky at Night

The Sky at Night

2024  Science
Wonders Of The Universe

Wonders Of The Universe

2011  Science
Ancient Apocalypse

Ancient Apocalypse

2024  History
Our Universe

Our Universe

2022  Nature
Dark Net

Dark Net

2016  Technology