Marcus readily admits that he is no genius, but wants to know if geniuses are just an extreme version of himself – or whether their brains are fundamentally different.

Marcus meets some remarkable individuals – Tommy, an obsessive artist who uses his whole house as his canvas; Derek: blind, autistic, and a pianist with apparently prodigious gifts; Claire who is also blind, but whose brain has learnt to see using sound.

Marcus is shown how babies have remarkable abilities which most of us lose as teenagers. He meets a neuroscientist who claims he has evidence of innate ability, a scientist who’s identified a gene for learning, and Dr. Paulus, who has discovered how to sharpen the brain… by electrically turbo-charging it.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 58 minutes)

They carry with them all they need over their two month voyage on their backs. Their route has been described as one of the hardest paved bicycle-touring routes in the world.

They will face arid desert, lush sub tropical environments, and mountain passes over 14,000 feet tall. The Dangers on the trip are not just limited to the harsh terrain, or their lack of supplies.

They spend countless hours of the day dealing with loosely regulated traffic, wild dogs, injuries and malnutrition, their Spanish vocabularies are rudimentary at best and they have been warned that even the locals could pose serious threats. Not to mention the risk they take riding skateboards down 200 km long decent while donning 30-40 pound packs.

Paul Kent is a world record holder, Adam Colton, world famous for his freestyle riding, and Aaron Enevoldsen a young extreme sports junky with an ukulele, document their travels in this series. Experience with them a trip of a lifetime through a magical, beautiful land seldom seen by Westerners.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 2 hours, 38 minutes)

Horizon meets the scientists who are attempting to piece together why we age and more vitally for all of us, what we can do to prevent it. But which theory will prevail?

Does the 95-year-old woman who smokes two packets of cigarettes a day hold the clue? Do blueberries really delay signs of aging or is it more a question of attitude?

Does the real key to controlling how we age lie with a five-year-old boy with an extraordinary aging disease or with a self-experimenting Harvard professor? Could one of these breakthroughs really see our lives extend past 120 years?

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Observing the convergence of such events, contemporary prophets have begun to emerge from obscurity to suggest that these conditions might be signs of the demise of the modern world.

These men are historians as well, using all manner of information and patterns from the past to provide context for where we are going.

Their predictions interpret the current state of affairs in our world as evidence that the America we know may come to an end.

The men proposing these ideas are not crackpots living on the streets of New York; they are intelligent, learned men who come armed with the evidence to back up their claims.

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Warrior Empire: The Mughals

From 1526 to 1858, this dynasty of nomadic warriors indulged their appetite for territorial expansion, spreading their rule throughout the Indian subcontinent.

Though they conquered their kingdom with crushing brutality, the Mughals were also brilliant technological innovators and masters of art and architecture.

This program offers lush, detailed images of Mughal accomplishments such as the glorious Taj Mahal, palaces, forts, water systems, elaborate gardens, and richly crafted artwork.

Step-by-step scientific recreations of advanced Mughal metallurgy and weaponry show the meticulous production of chain mail armor for a battalion of elephants, lethally flexible composite bows, rocketry, and sword-smith techniques passed down through the generations, and still alive today.

Join us for an enthralling history of the inventive warfare, material excess, architectural marvels, and cultural flowering that shaped modern India.

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Amazing video footage and computer graphics clearly explain everything. The scope of the video is worldwide. This is documentary film-making at its best.

It’s a shame it’s not more widely known because it is easily as good as (better than, IMHO) PBS/BBC documentaries on the same subject.

It covers the evolution of life on earth by explaining the gradual changes in anatomy (invertebrates to vertebrates, etc).

Fascinating information, first-class photography and graphics, and some of the weirdest-looking creatures you have ever seen!

After seeing this, you will probably have a renewed and more profound understanding of what the animal kingdom represents.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 7 hours)

The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, like a recipe or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules.

The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.

1. The Secret of Life – The discovery of the double helix structure of DNA is to science what the Mona Lisa is to painting. It’s been called the single biggest discovery of all time. But it wasn’t just stumbled upon – it was a race. Specifically, it was a race between two teams of young scientists working in Britain, as well as the esteemed chemist Linus Pauling, based in California.

2. Playing God – In 1973, two scientists undertook an experiment that rocked the world. By transferring the DNA from one species to another, Herb Boyer and Stan Cohen became the first Genetic Engineers. Their experiment triggered a wave of controversy about the dangers of genetic manipulation, but it also generated a multi billion dollar industry.

3. Human Race – In the 1990s, the race to work out the structure of DNA fifty years ago was eclipsed by another race: to catalogue all the genes in the human genome. The rivalry became so bitter that Presidents and Prime Ministers had to intervene in an epic endeavor that would take over a decade to complete and cost millions of dollars. The story begins in 1990, when the Human Genome Project was launched to decipher the complete instruction manual of the human being.

4. Curing Cancer – Bud Romaine was diagnosed with incurable cancer in 1994. He was given three years to live. In 1996, a newspaper article caught his eye. The article described the work of a local doctor, Brian Druker, who was testing a new kind of cancer drug. In 1997, months away from death, Bud Romine became the first patient ever to take Gleevec.

5. Pandora’s Box – We asked Jim Watson to give us a tour of the future. He believes DNA science should be used to change the human race. His views are both extraordinary and extremely controversial. Watson argues for a new kind of eugenics — where parents are allowed to choose the DNA of their children – to make them healthier, more intelligent, even better looking.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 4 hours)

The Dark Lords of Hattusha

From their capital, the Hittites ruled a mighty empire. But, 2,500 years ago, their civilization disappeared and their capital city, Hattusha, was lost to history. Only the marvels of 20th Century archaeology have led to its rediscovery.

The Hittites were an ancient Indo-European people, speaking a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. They were part of a larger movement of Indo-Europeans in the 30th century BCE and established a kingdom centered at Hattusha on the Central Anatolian plateau ca. the 18th century BCE.

Although belonging to the Bronze Age, the Hittites were forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 20th century BCE. Hittite weapons were made from bronze; iron was so rare and precious that it was employed only as prestige goods.

The Hittites were also famous for their skill in building and using chariots. These chariots gave them a military superiority as illustrated on a plate from Carchemish.

The Hittites used cuneiform letters. Archaeological expeditions have discovered entire sets of royal archives in cuneiform tablets, written either in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the time, or in the various dialects of the Hittite confederation.

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The professor discovered a skull – a Neanderthal skull. Strangely, it was covered with microscopic pollen from the flowers of thistle, groundsel, spiraea and hollyhock, among others.

The same pollen dust covered the rest of the weathered skeleton, suggesting that his family and friends had deliberately gathered the flowers and laid them in bunches on the dead body.

These mourners left behind the earliest known signs of man’s awareness of death. Based on Doctor Selecki’s findings, Neanderthals seemed to possess what we have come to call a mind.

Complex and deeply mysterious, the human brain is an odyssey unto itself. Take this journey into the inner workings of the mind with the guidance of scientist Dr. David Suzuki, the host of this riveting Discovery Channel documentary.

This series explores the way the brain evolves from birth to adulthood; how memory works; how humans recover from brain injury; and the origins of creativity and identity.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 3 hours, 23 minutes)

This species lived sometime between 7 and 6 million years ago in West-Central Africa (Chad). Walking upright may have helped this species survive in the diverse habitats – including forests and grasslands.

Though we only have cranial material from Sahelanthropus, studies so far indicates this early human had a combination of apelike and humanlike features.

Their apelike features included a small brain (even slightly smaller than a chimpanzee’s!) sloping face, very prominent brow ridges, and elongated skull.

Their humanlike features included small canine teeth, a short middle part of the face, and a spinal cord opening beneath the skull instead of towards the back, like in non-bipedal primates (or apes).

How do we know Sahelanthropus walked upright? Some of the oldest evidence for walking on two legs comes from Sahelanthropus.

The large opening (foramen magnum) in the base of the cranium where the spinal cord connects with the brain is positioned further forward (the underside of the cranium) than in apes or any other primate except humans. This feature indicates that the head of Sahelanthropus was held on an upright body.

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