I CONTAIN MULTITUDES offers a new lens on life. With an eye on microbes—microscopic single-celled organisms—larger creatures such as ourselves suddenly look very different. Each of us is more of a society than an individual. Only about half the cells on our bodies are human. The rest make up a menagerie of microbes. Microbes produce chemicals and vitamins that we can’t produce on our own, they help digest food, shape development, and influence behavior.
Launched in the summer of 1977, Voyager was the audacious first mission that would visit all the outermost planets. An adventure with heart and humor, THE FARTHEST is the story of Voyager as told firsthand by the indelible characters who made the mission happen.
When the Voyager spacecraft left Earth in 1977, few besides Carl Sagan believed that the search for extraterrestrial life was anything more than fantasy. But in the decades that followed, new discoveries—volcanoes on lo, a liquid ocean on Europa, and nitrogen geysers on Triton, to name just a few—have turned that fantastical pursuit of life beyond Earth into a bona fide scientific endeavor.
In 2011, 27-year-old Sonia Vallabh learned the results of a genetic test. She carries a mutation for a rare brain disease. Barring a medical breakthrough, she is destined to develop dementia and die in her 50s. Her fate hinges on a single change among three billion DNA bases in her genome. It seemed incredible, Sonia says, “that this one change could be so dangerous.”
AMAZON ADVENTURE tells the science adventure story of Henry Bates and his extraordinary 11-year journey through the Amazon as a young man in the 1850s who risked his life in his quest to understand and document nature. Despite being entirely self-taught, he made crucial contributions to evolutionary biology.
It’s one of the greatest mysteries in medical science: What causes Alzheimer’s disease? What can we do to stop it, or at least slow it down?
CAN ALZHEIMER’S BE STOPPED? transports viewers to the front lines of this fast-paced, life-and-death detective story. And the stakes couldn’t be higher: worldwide, 40 million people have Alzheimer’s, each being stripped of their memories and often their dignity on a poignant march that can lead to death.
From the producers of the widely-acclaimed movie “Inside Story” comes a new feature-length film, THE LUCKY SPECIALS, a highly entertaining musical drama about a band’s journey to create a new musical sound and catapult their small-time group to the big stage.
Recently re-broadcast by PBS, “Spillover” explains the science behind how viruses like Corona, Zika, SARS and Ebola are transmitted from animals to humans – often with devastating results. In the last half-century the number of spillover viruses has quadrupled, costing countless lives. Typically, people learn about outbreaks as sudden disconnected flare ups. But these viruses have much in common: where they come from, how they maim and kill, and how they can be controlled.
Here’s something you won’t find on ancestry.com: Your inner ear comes from the jawbone of a prehistoric fish. Your skin and hair can be traced to a shrew-like mammal that lived around165 million years ago. As for your trick knee — well, you can thank your primate ancestors for that.
It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. How did it become the complicated, quirky and amazing machine it is today?
Diseases that were largely eradicated in the United States a generation ago – whooping cough, measles, mumps – are returning, in part because nervous parents are skipping their children’s shots. VACCINES – CALLING THE SHOTS takes viewers around the world to track epidemics, explore the science behind vaccinations, and shed light on the risks of opting out.
