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Rivals

   2015    Science
David Attenborough continues his search for the origins of flying animals, as he charts the rise of new, larger creatures – extinct reptiles that flew on wings of skin, dinosaurs that sprouted feathers to become the ancestors of birds, and gliding mammals that emerged from a life in the trees to dominate the night as bats. His journey spans the globe – from the rainforests of Borneo to see bizarre gliding animals, to China and its new discoveries of dinosaur fossils. Stunning CGI brings to life creatures that disappeared over 200 million years ago, and new filming techniques bring us closer than ever to the secrets of flight itself.
Series: Conquest of the Skies

Asia and Australia

   2012    Nature
In this bird's-eye view of two continents, demoiselle cranes negotiate a dangerous Himalayan pass on their way to India while high-flying bar-headed geese take the fast track five miles above. In Rajasthan, vultures watch hunting tigers hoping for a meal and pigeons visit a temple dedicated solely to sacred rats. Pigeons are also our guide to the greatest gatherings of camels on Earth and learn to dodge buzzards around the battlements of Jodhpur Fort. 9,000 cranes overwinter in the most unlikely of spots - a barbed wire compound in the centre of a desert town. In Australia, rainbow lorikeets drop in on Sydney and patrol Australia's Gold Coast. In the outback, white cockatoos swirl in thousands and budgerigars pass Uluru (Ayers Rock) and gather in the biggest flocks ever recorded. In China, swallows and swifts visit the Great Wall and the Forbidden City of Beijing. In Japan, the country's most revered birds - Japanese cranes are fed fish by appreciative locals and are joined in strange, momentary harmony by hungry red foxes, white-tailed eagles and Steller's eagles. As peace descends, Japanese cranes dance beautifully in the snow.
Series: Earthflight

Garlic Breath

   2018    Nature
Cooking shows turned the humble garlic bulb into something that's essential to cuisines and into a multi-billion-dollar crop. Every year, humans consume nearly 50 billion pounds of garlic, and most of it comes from one country: China. But a lawsuit raises troubling questions about suppliers.
Series: Rotten

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

Changing the Script

   2020    History
The written word is so important in everyday life that there can be few more radical acts than forcing an entire nation to learn a new script. Yet that is what happened in Turkey in 1928 when Mustafa Kemal decreed that the Arabic script would be replaced by the letters of the Latin alphabet. Communication with computers using human language is usually made with Latin letters. This is how most Chinese people interact with their computers and smart phones, using a Latin-based phonetic script called Pinyin. As a result, even highly educated Chinese are losing the ability to write using Chinese characters. Could what is happening in China be the future of writing everywhere?
Series: The Secret History of Writing

Planet Earth III: Forests

   2023    Nature
Journey to secret worlds where lives are wrapped in unexpected of ways. The fifth episode of the series takes viewers into the fascinating world of forests, revealing their hidden complexities and the intricate relationships within. Initially perceived as tranquil, forests are in fact bustling with life and intricate ecological interactions. The episode showcases various species, each with its unique lifestyle and survival strategies. Highlights include the Oriental pied hornbills in Borneo, whose extraordinary nesting rituals and partner dynamics are captivating.
The Amazon rainforest is explored, introducing the peculiar treehoppers and their unique communication methods, vital for survival amidst numerous predators like ants and assassin bugs. The episode also delves into the intelligent and cooperative hunting techniques of dholes in the forests of India. The narrative takes a turn to China, focusing on the visually stunning courtship displays of Temminck's tragopans and golden pheasants. In the temperate rainforests of Western Canada, the rare spirit bear and its unique relationship with its habitat are examined.
The episode concludes with an insightful look at the impact of human activity on forests and their inhabitants, particularly focusing on chimpanzees in Uganda, whose survival is increasingly intertwined with human expansion.
Series: Planet Earth III
Ancient Apocalypse

Ancient Apocalypse

2024  History
Chemistry

Chemistry

2010  Science
Our Universe

Our Universe

2022  Nature
Love On The Spectrum

Love On The Spectrum

2019  Culture
Clarkson Farm

Clarkson Farm

2021  Nature
Dynamic Genomes Series

Dynamic Genomes Series

2019  Medicine
Empire of the Tsars

Empire of the Tsars

2017  History