Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place, a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid atmosphere. Then, in a process that has puzzled scientists for decades, life emerged. But how? Join mineralogist Robert Hazen as he journeys around the globe. From an ancient Moroccan market to the Australian Outback, he advances a startling and counterintuitive idea—that the rocks beneath our feet were not only essential to jump-starting life, but that microbial life helped give birth to hundreds of minerals we know and depend on today. It's a theory of the co-evolution of Earth and life that is reshaping the grand-narrative of our planet’s story.

As he tries his hand at baking, brewing and braising, acclaimed food writer Michael Pollan explores how cooking transforms food and shapes our world. In the first espisode, with help from Aboriginal hunters and a barbecue pit master, Pollan shows how fire shaped human gastronomy, and weighs our duty to the animals we eat.

Tony Accardo have taken the reins of the criminal empire built by their mentor Al Capone. Thanks to Sam Giancana's takeover of the policy racket, the gangsters are now making millions. With so much money coming in, Accardo knows they need a place to hide it. They find their answer in a growing city where gambling is now legal: Las Vegas. However, the New York mafia is already there, led by criminal mastermind Meyer Lansky.

Could we get all our energy needs from sea water and the salt it contains? Are we to witness a time when salt will power our engines and factories, and light up our cities? Could this be the final curtain not only for shale gas and oil, but also the burning of fossil fuels and the beginning of a gentler form of energy that is definitely renewable? This documentary explores the latest research on sea water and the way scientists all over the world are working on 'Blue Energy'. This research could bring about a major change in our time.

Jungles provide the richest habitats on the planet - mysterious worlds of high drama where extraordinary animals attempt to survive in the most competitive place on earth. Flooded forests are home to caiman-hunting jaguars and strange dolphins that swim amongst the tree tops, while in the dense underworld, ninja frogs fight off wasps and flying dragons soar between trees. Acrobatic indri leap through the forests of Madagascar, while the jungle night conceals strange fungi and glow-in-the-dark creatures never filmed before.

The world's deserts are lands of extremes that force animals to come up with ingenious ways of coping with hostile conditions, giving rise to the most incredible survival stories on earth. A pride of desert lions are so hungry they risk hunting a giraffe several times their size, while male sandgrouse fly 120 miles each day to the nearest waterhole and dice with death to collect water for their chicks. Filmed for the first time, a tiny bat does battle with one of the world's deadliest scorpions, and in Madagascar, a locust swarm of biblical proportions is seen as never before.