A ground-breaking new trial at Imperial College London sees, for the first time ever under controlled conditions, a psychedelic drug tested head-to-head against a standard antidepressant as a treatment for depression. The film follows a pioneering team of scientists and psychotherapists as they compare the effects of psilocybin (the active ingredient of magic mushrooms) with an antidepressant on a small group of participants with clinical depression. This is scientific research at its most cutting edge. With over seven million people being prescribed antidepressants each year in England alone, this drug trial is an important milestone in understanding a completely different treatment for depression. How do psychedelic drugs measure up against the industry-standard antidepressants that have been popular since the 1990s? The empirical results of the trial are explored alongside the participants’ powerful lived experience.
The Taiga forest, on the edge of the Arctic, is a silent world of stunted conifers. The trees may be small but filming from the air reveals its true scale. A third of all trees on Earth grow here and during the short summer they produce enough oxygen to change the atmosphere. In California General Sherman, a giant sequoia, is the largest living thing on the planet, ten times the size of a blue whale. The oldest organisms alive are bristlecone pines. At more than 4,000 years old they pre-date the pyramids. But the baobab forests of Madagascar are perhaps the strangest of all.
In an invisible territory at the margins of society lives a wounded community who face the threat of being forgotten by political institutions and having their rights as citizens trampled. Disarmed veterans, taciturn adolescents, drug addicts trying to escape addiction through love; ex-special forces soldiers still at war with the world; floundering young women and future mothers; and old people who have not lost their desire to live. Through this hidden pocket of humanity, renowned documentarian Roberto Minervini opens a window to the abyss of today's America.
Located in an almost inaccessible chamber deep in a South African cave, the site required recruiting a special team of experts slender enough to wriggle down a vertical, pitch-dark, seven-inch-wide passage. Most fossil discoveries of human relatives consist of just a handful of bones. But down in this hidden chamber, the team uncovered an unprecedented trove—so far, over 1,500 bones—with the potential to rewrite the story of our origins". They may help fill in a crucial gap in the fossil record and tell us how Homo, the first member of the human family, emerged from ape-like ancestors like the famous Lucy. But how did hundreds of bones end up in the remote chamber? The experts are considering every mind-boggling possibility. Join us on the treacherous descent into this cave of spectacular and enigmatic finds, and discover their startling implications for the saga of what made us human.
David Attenborough embarks on an extraordinary journey to unravel one of nature s most gripping stories the evolution of flying animals. The power of flight is one of the greatest miracles of nature. Over one hundred billion creatures soar through the air today - from nectar-drinking hummingbirds, to armoured airborne beetles; from bats hunting in the black of night, to bizarre winged lizards. The film travels back in time to unravel the astonishing 300-million-year story of how these animals first appeared, and then evolved into the huge variety of aeronauts that fill our skies today. Only now, using the latest scientific analysis, can he reveal the hidden mechanics behind their gravity-defying skills. Ground-breaking 3D cameras, high speed filming and stunning CGI bring the viewer closer than ever to this astounding aerial world.
Right now, you're hurtling around the Sun at 64,000 miles an hour. In the next year, you'll travel 584 million miles, to end up back where you started. In this spectacular series, presenters Kate Humble and Dr Helen Czerski follow the Earth's voyage around the Sun for one complete orbit, to witness the astonishing consequences this journey has for us all. From seasonal extremes to destructive weather, they travel the world to experience the great events that are shaped by our journey around the Sun." They venture back in time to show how the Earths orbit has changed, and the astounding effect this has had on the planet. For the first time ever, this astonishing series charts the progress of the Earth as it undertakes its incredible annual orbit around the Sun. From stunning space imagery to in-your-face storm chasing, this series showcases the incredible power of our planets epic journey around the Sun. In this first episode they travel from July to the December solstice, experiencing spectacular weather and the largest tides on Earth. To show how the Earth's orbit affects our lives, Helen jumps out of an aeroplane and Kate briefly becomes the fastest driver on Earth.
This is scientific research at its most cutting edge. With over seven million people being prescribed antidepressants each year in England alone, this drug trial is an important milestone in understanding a completely different treatment for depression. How do psychedelic drugs measure up against the industry-standard antidepressants that have been popular since the 1990s? The empirical results of the trial are explored alongside the participants’ powerful lived experience.