Long ago, two species of human beings coexisted on Earth until competition drove one of them to extinction. This program, set in the southwest of France 35,000 years ago, reconstructs the life in the Neanderthal world at the time Cro-Magnons first entered the scene. All aspects of Neanderthal clan life are examined, including tool- and weapon-making, hunting and gathering, health and healing, childbirth, rituals, and making fire. Footage of skeletal remains and the scholarly research of eminent paleontologist Chris Stringer and Oxford University's Paul Pettitt support the documentary.

In 2014, the International Space Station had to move three times to avoid lethal chunks of space debris and there is an increasing problem of satellites mysteriously breaking down. With first-hand accounts from astronauts and experts, know the scale of the problem of space junk. Our planet is surrounded by hundreds of millions of pieces of junk moving at 17,000 miles per hour. Now the US government is investing a billion dollars to track them, and companies around the world are developing ways to clear up their mess - from robot arms to nets and harpoons. Learn the science behind the hit film Gravity and discovers the reality is far more worrying than the Hollywood fiction.

The meaning of events up to today. Obama and the destiny of the American Empire.

Al-Khalili travels to northern Syria to discover how, a thousand years ago, the great astronomer and mathematician Al-Biruni estimated the size of the earth to within a few hundred miles of the correct figure. He discovers how medieval Islamic scholars helped turn the magical and occult practice of alchemy into modern chemistry. In Cairo, he tells the story of the extraordinary physicist Ibn al-Haytham, who helped establish the modern science of optics and proved one of the most fundamental principles in physics - that light travels in straight lines. Prof Al-Khalili argues that these scholars are among the first people to insist that all scientific theories are backed up by careful experimental observation, bringing a rigour to science that didn't really exist before.

Lesotho's Maseru Central Correctional Institute in Southern Africa holds the country's most dangerous and disturbed criminals. Shockingly almost half the inmates are doing time for rape. The culture of sexual violence in Lesotho has deep roots in society. Women are taken as secondary citizens in their culture. And sexual aggression continues inside the prison.
In this episode, Raphael Rowe will spend a week locked up in this African prison surrounded by sex offenders.

When a mysterious cigar-shaped object is spotted tumbling through our solar system, experts race to uncover it's true nature. The object, nicknamed Oumuamua, meaning 'a messenger that reaches out from the distant past' in Hawaiian, was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. Since its discovery, scientists have been at odds to explain its unusual features and precise origins, with researchers first calling it a comet and then an asteroid before finally deeming it the first of its kind: a new class of 'interstellar objects.'
A recent paper by researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics raises the possibility that the elongated dark-red object, which is 10 times as long as it is wide and travelling at speeds of 196,000 mph, might have an 'artificial origin.' The theory is based on the object's 'excess acceleration,' or its unexpected boost in speed as it travelled through and ultimately out of our solar system.