"One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one--homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition."--

A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world—sand—and the crucial role it plays in our lives.
After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other—even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids...

"As robots are increasingly integrated into modern society--on the battlefield and the road, in business, education, and health--Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff searches for an answer to one of the most important questions of our age: will these machines help us, or will they replace us? In the past decade alone, Google introduced us to driverless cars, Apple debuted a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets,...

Friedman discusses how the key to understanding the 21st century is understanding that the planet's three largest forces -- Moore's law (technology), the market (globalization) and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loos) -- are accelerating all at once. And these accelerations are transforming the five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community. Friedman posits that we should purposely "be late" -- we should...

Science has entered its fourth paradigm: after being observational, empirical, and theoretical, scientific discovery is now data-intensive. Anastasia (Natassa) Ailamaki, professor of computer sciences at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and winner of the Eppendorf European Young Investigator Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship, is pushing the limits of the speed of research and our capacity to deal with massive amounts of information....

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben's groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization...

Few substances in history have had as profound an effect on mankind as gunpowder. And yet its discovery was probably an accident - a big bang, for one. This program examines the invention and history of gunpowder, as well as its surprising ingredients. As you can imagine, making gunpowder takes some effort. Gunpowder once needed saltpeter, and saltpeter needed poop. It turns out that secretions have such an explosive character due to microscopic bacteria,...

Throughout the history of mankind, the business of curing, understanding, and treating disease has taken a rather peculiar path. Some procedures have proven to be very efficient while other methods could only have made things worse for the patient. This program traces the history of bacteria and antibiotics. From Alexander Fleming to "super drugs" for superbugs, have these cures led to bacteria becoming more resistant and harder to kill? What else...

A mother wonders, will my children love their perfect machines more than they love me, their imperfect mother? A cinematic meditation on technology and parenthood.

Dispite popular belief, Edison did not invent the light bulb - many people contributed to the invention. Mind you, the first lamp was invented around 70,000 BC. This program examines Edison's actual contribution of improving the light bulb to become a practical, affordable, and safe product. Modern-day lighting innovations are quite startling, as many of them we can't even see with the naked eye. Consider lasers. Nobody knew what to make of this idea...