List of Horizon episodes
Horizon is a current and long-running BBC popular science and philosophy documentary programme. Series one was broadcast in 1964 and as of July 2020 is in its 56th series. Over 1,250 episodes have been broadcast (including specials) with an average of 23 episodes per series during the 56-year run.
- 1964–1969 – 135 episodes
- 1970–1979 – 299 episodes
- 1980–1989 – 234 episodes
- 1990–1999 – 220 episodes
- 2000–2009 – 191 episodes
- 2010–2019 – 167 episodes
- Since 2020 – 10 episodes
Series 1: 1964–1965
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The World of Buckminster Fuller" | 2 May 1964 | 1 |
| The famous domes of Buckminster Fuller have covered more square feet of the earth's surface than any other structure. I'm not a dome salesman, I'm an explorer in structures. I'm interested in the main fundamental principles of how nature holds her shapes together.[1] | ||
| "Pesticides and Posterity" | 30 May 1964 | 2 |
| Is the widespread use of highly persistent pesticides raising a new kind of ecological problem for our own and future generations to solve? Do we yet know enough to assess the risks we are taking? The scientific and moral aspects as seen by Dr. Frank Fraser Darling Vice-President of the Conservation Foundation, Dr. Eric Edson Research director of a leading pesticide company. The ethics of environmental contamination discussed by Lord Rothschild, F.R.S. Director of research of a large chemical company, Robert Boote of the Nature Conservancy, John Maynard Smith a zoologist of University College, London, Editorial adviser, Gerald Leach.[2] | ||
| "A Candle to Nature" | 27 June 1964 | 3 |
| The changing attitudes of science through two lectures, given more than a hundred years apart, on-the candle. The first lecture was given by Michael Faraday 1791-1867 Fullerian Professor of Chemistry, Royal Institution, London. The second lecture is given by George Porter born 1920 Professor of Chemistry, Sheffield University | ||
| "Strangeness Minus Three" | 25 July 1964 | 4 |
| Horizon interviews physicists on their theories of the structure of matter. Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Yuval Ne'eman and Nicholas Samios explain their current understanding of the Omega-minus particle (Omega baryon). | ||
| "The Air of Science" | 22 August 1964 | 5 |
| "Facts are the air of science," declared the famous Russian physiologist Pavlov. Laboratories are where most of the facts are gathered. What goes on inside a big science laboratory? What do scientists worry about? Horizon went to the biggest laboratory of its kind in the Commonwealth, the National Institute for Medical Research, to meet the Director of the laboratory, Dr. P.B. Medawar, and some of the 550 men and women who breathe the air of science. | ||
| "The Knowledge Explosion" | 21 September 1964 | 6 |
| The output of scientific knowledge doubles every thirty years. Can this incredible rate of growth continue indefinitely? If it slows down, which countries will suffer most? Arthur Clarke discusses some of the problems most likely to demand scientific attention, and. Professor Derek De S. Price analyses the process of scientific growth. | ||
| "The Amateur Scientist" | 19 October 1964 | 7 |
| Has science become so expensive and complex today that the amateur can no longer participate? Tonight we meet a few of the amateurs who are participating; they include a radio astronomer, a microscopist, a palaeoanthropologist, and a Scottish Minister of the Church who is a world expert on computing the position of comets. The programme is introduced by C. L. Stong the writer of the monthly column on amateur science in the Scientific American | ||
| "Tots and Quots and Woodgerie" | 16 November 1964 | 8 |
| Today we accept the idea that science must play an important role in society. Thirty years ago, such a conception was extremely novel. And it was then that some young scientists formed themselves into groups with strange names-to consider the future of science in all its aspects. In the course of time many of their plans and predictions were to be realised. | ||
| "Professor J.B.S. Haldane, Obituary" | 1 December 1964 | 9 |
| "Science, Toys and Magic" | 14 December 1964 | 10 |
| Horizon takes a look at science in the spirit of Christmas. | ||
| "Learning from Machines" | 6 January 1965 | 11 |
| At a time when the use of teaching machines is fast expanding, Horizon looks at the principles behind them and enquires into their success. Those appearing include Professor B. F. Skinner a learning psychologist of Harvard and Gordon Pask, a pioneer of the teaching machine who explains how putting man and machine together to learn from each other is a valuable way to find out how we learn. | ||
| "The Technique of Change" | 20 January 1965 | 12 |
| A profile of one of the world's most important research and development centres. Twenty-five miles from New York City in acres of parkland stand the squat main laboratory buildings of the Bell Telephone System. Four thousand scientists work there with an annual budget of £100 million. Is this the sort of place we should set up in Britain?[3] | ||
| "Star Gazers" | 3 February 1965 | 13 |
| An observatory hundreds of miles above the earth. Astronomy has come a long way since Isaac Newton saw an apple fall 298 years ago and formulated the law of universal gravitation. This year America plans to launch an observatory into space to map the universe and try to discover clues to the creation of stars. There are other plans for a new giant telescope to be financed by Britain and Australia. | ||
| "Science and Art" | 17 February 1965 | 14 |
| "I find it a fantastic arrogance for artists to say that they can sit back in their studios and paint. Unfortunately the artist is not only tolerated but encouraged to do this - there is no science course for artists and I would have thought it indispensable." Frank Avray Wilson. Discussion involving Wilson, Filipino artist and writer David Medalla, Dr. Alex Comfort author, poet, and zoologist and Professor Abdus Salam nuclear physicist, who today publishes a new theory which some scientists believe may be 'the final key to unlocking the door that conceals the properties of space and time'. | ||
| "The Great Computer Scandal / H-Bomb Detectors" | 3 March 1965 | 15 |
| "The Great Computer Scandal: A report on the state of big research computers. H-Bomb Detectors: Sir Edward Bullard, tells how British scientists have developed a nuclear explosion detector which has changed the political and international outlook for nuclear test controls.[4] | ||
| "Forbidden Events / I am a Madman" | 17 March 1965 | 16 |
| Forbidden Events: Is there a fifth force in the Universe, or must we revise our ideas about time? Horizon visits the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory where an experiment is running to settle this, and talks to Dr. Lipman. I am a Madman: Psychiatrists from all over the world met in London recently to compare notes. Such comparisons are giving new insight into the causes of mental illness. | ||
| "Restless Genius / Faster, Farther, Higher" | 31 March 1965 | 17 |
| A tribute to Robert Hooke and a wry look at acceleration.[5] | ||
| "Other Side of the Pill" | 14 April 1965 | 18 |
| Every day, on average, another 431 British women start taking the contraceptive pill. The manufacturers insist that it is the most carefully tested drug on the market today. But some scientists and doctors are concerned about the potential long-term effects of taking it. | ||
| "The Big Smoke / The Model Makers" | 12 May 1965 | 19 |
|
Introduced by Colin Riach The Big Smoke: Nine years after the passing of the Clean Air Act, where do we stand? Scientists are gradually finding out why dirty air is so harmful to ill persons with Dr. P. J. Lawther of Air Pollution Research Centre at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; The Model Makers: Whenever the things they study are too big, too far off, or too hot to handle, scientists can make a model of these-but can they be sure their models truly represent reality? with Rum Harre, Dr. Harry Rosenberg of the Clarendon Laboratory, Jack Hanson of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Professor Roger Blin-Stoyle of Sussex University and Nike Arrighi. Introduced by John Napier, Studio director Peter Smith, Producers Richard Mason and Norman James. Presented by Michael Latham. Series editor G. Rattray Taylor.[6] | ||
| "The Long Slide / Men with Gills" | 26 May 1965 | 20 |
| "Men and Sharks / Sir Henry Dale, OM, FRS" | 9 June 1965 | 21 |
| "The Brain Gain / The Sudden Night / Learning to Speak" | 23 June 1965 | 22 |
| "Dr. Joseph Needham / Mariner 4" | 14 July 1965 | 23 |
| "Science Fiction : Science Fact / Alone and Unarmed" | 28 July 1965 | 24 |
| "Certain of Uncertainty / State of Nature" | 11 August 1965 | 25 |
| "Time Stood Still / Weighty Matters" | 25 August 1965 | 26 |
| "Fuel for the Future / Collector's Piece" | 8 September 1965 | 27 |
| The world's first commercial nuclear reactor to produce electric power more cheaply than is possible from coal or oil was recently commissioned by Britain's Central Electricity Generating Board. Horizon visits the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Winfrith Heath where John Charap talks to Dr. Peter Mummery, Deputy Director. In the studio David Prowitt and David Wilson discuss this important development | ||
| "Let Newton Be" | 22 September 1965 | 28 |
| On the 300th anniversary of Isaac Newton's greatest year of discovery one of his most ardent disciples, Professor Julius Sumner-Miller, comes from California to celebrate the occasion and to illustrate the excitement of seeing Newton's principles in action. | ||
Series 2: 1965–1966
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Special Senses" | 10 October 1965 | 1 |
| What sort of person can invent a 3-D microscope, a new way of photographing the moon, publish fifty papers on perception, and spend three weeks hunting for a minute sea creature to see how its eyes work? Cambridge psychologist Richard Gregory is a man of many facets. Tonight's film examines his inventiveness, its sources and its products.[7] | ||
| "An Affair of the Heart" | 24 October 1965 | 2 |
| Mystery still surrounds the killer disease of coronary thrombosis. It strikes without warning and claims increasing numbers of victims each year. What progress is being made towards the conquest of coronary thrombosis, which, with other similar diseases, is responsible for one in every two deaths in this country?[8] | ||
| "10,000 Tombs" | 7 November 1965 | 3 |
| Carlo Lerici, scientist and archaeologist, has brought past and future together. Using geophysical methods intended for mineral surveying, he has detected 10,000 unknown Etruscan tombs in ten years.[9] | ||
| "Toil, Sweat & Tears" | 21 November 1965 | 4 |
| Enzymes are the key to life processes-how do they work? An M.R.C. team at the Royal Institution, headed by Dr. D.C.Phillips, has taken the first step towards answering this vital question.[10] | ||
| "The Big Dishes / The Living Stream" | 5 December 1965 | 5 |
| The Big Dishes: A look at some of the huge new radio telescopes which have recently started work in Britain, France, Russia, America, and elsewhere. Sir Bernard Lovell, Professor Martin Ryle and M. Emiljacques Blum explain the scientific motive for this vast expenditure. The Living Stream: Sir Alister Hardy, F.R.S., formerly Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford. discusses his controversial book on evolution.[11] | ||
| "Boys on Bubbles / Problems and Puzzles" | 19 December 1965 | 6 |
| Boys on Bubbles: Horizon re-stages highlights from Professor C.V. Boys' famous Christmas lectures on bubbles and surface tension which drew crowds to the London Institution sixty-six years ago. Problems and Puzzles: T.H. O'Beirne, a mathematician, challenges you to solve some of the puzzles he has invented. | ||
| "Windows of the Soul / Elixir of Youth" | 2 January 1966 | 7 |
| Windows of the soul: Psychological experiments at the University of Chicago which suggest our eyes can tell scientists things we might prefer to keep secret with, Dr. Eckhard H. Hess, Chairman of the Psychology Department, University of Chicago. Elixir of youth: In Rumania, more than forty thousand people have been given gerovital H3, in the belief that it will make them younger, by Dr. Ana Aslan, Dr. Alex Comfort comments on a film about this mass experiment.[12] | ||
| "The Troubled Mind / Triple-A. S." | 16 January 1966 | 8 |
| "A Man of Two Visions / The Scientist Applied" | 30 January 1966 | 9 |
| "The Dolphins that Joined The Navy / A Theory of The Earth" | 13 February 1966 | 10 |
| The Dolphins that Joined the Navy Under the United States Navy Marine Mammal Program, the US Navy studies dolphins' abilities and aims to train and communicate with dolphins in order for these creatures to help man. | ||
| "Route 128 / A Theory of The Earth" | 27 February 1966 | 11 |
| "The Beginning of Life / Science Friction" | 13 March 1966 | 12 |
| "So you want to be an Inventor? / The Severed Hand" | 27 March 1966 | 13 |
| "Chance and Decay / Meteorite Mystery" | 10 April 1966 | 14 |
| "Towers of Ilium / The Exploding City" | 24 April 1966 | 15 |
| "Man in Space" | 8 May 1966 | 16 |
| Colonel Frank Borman Is one of the twenty-three men who have orbited the Earth, and in the most detailed television interview ever filmed with an astronaut he tells of the experience. How does a man live in space? How does he eat, excrete, and sleep? And how does he survive the stresses of launch and re-entry? David Lutyens reports from the Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston, Texas. | ||
| "Destination Mars / Editors in Conference" | 22 May 1966 | 17 |
| "Man meets Duck / The Picture Machines" | 5 June 1966 | 18 |
| "Where must the Money Go? / Phantoms Incorporated" | 19 June 1966 | 19 |
| "Genes in Action / Scientists and War" | 3 July 1966 | 20 |
| "The Lonely Children" | 17 July 1966 | 21 |
| They're called aloof, self-absorbed. They don't meet your eyes, won't be cuddled, can't play with other children. They are autistic children. This programme looks at this heart-rending condition and examines the way in which medicine is studying these children. | ||
| "Man of Science / 'Nature' Tomorrow" | 31 July 1966 | 22 |
| "Science Fiction, Science Fact / The Dolphins that Joined The Navy" | 11 September 1966 | 23 |
| The Dolphins that Joined the Navy Under the United States Navy Marine Mammal Program, the US Navy studies dolphins' abilities and aims to train and communicate with dolphins in order for these creatures to help man. First aired in February 13, 1966. | ||
| "M.I.T.'s ABC / The Disturbed Child" | 25 September 1966 | 24 |
Series 3: 1966–1967
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Ten Years in the Antarctic" | 10 October 1966 | 1 |
| Sir Vivian Fuchs and many other Antarctica experts describe how they have probed the secrets of a world covered with a one-mile-thick blanket of ice.[13] | ||
| "The Athlete" | 24 October 1966 | 2 |
| Is there any limit to improvements In human athletic performance? If so, what? Roger Bannister, the first four-minute miler, discusses his performances In tonight's programme with physiologists and psychiatrists who make their predictions.[14] | ||
| "From Peenemunde to the Moon" | 7 November 1966 | 3 |
| If U.S. hopes are fulfilled, the tremendous power of the Saturn IB rocket motor should, within a few weeks, lift a three-man spacecraft to orbit the earth. Wernher von Braun, the German V2 rocket engineer who played a critical part in the development of U.S. rocketry, appears in a report on 700 years of rocket science and its attempt to realise a space travel dream.[15] | ||
| "Sex-Change?" | 21 November 1966 | 4 |
| Sex-change frequently makes press headlines along with confusing reports of the physiology involved. The withdrawal of five gold-medal-winning women athletes from this year's European Championships, supposedly to avoid the recently introduced 'sex checks' has raised the question again. What does 'sex-change' mean? Does it, in fact, happen? In one of tonight's items Horizon looks at this complex psychological and physiological subject.[16] | ||
| "The Structure of Life" | 5 December 1966 | 5 |
| For their work on penicillin, the drug which saved so many lives in World War II, three men were awarded the Nobel Prize. Tonight's film looks at one of these men, Professor Ernst Chain. It also looks at the remarkable growth during this century of biochemistry and at some of the unusual research in progress in Professor Chain's new £1,500,000 Biochemistry Department at Imperial College.[17] | ||
| "Hand Me My Sword, Humphrey" | 25 December 1966 | 6 |
| "Sons of Cain" | 17 January 1967 | 7 |
| A study of aggression. Cain, the son of Adam, was the first violent murderer after the Garden of Eden. Have we inevitably inherited his worst characteristics? Is aggression our birthright? Can a society exist without violence? None too soon our aggressive instinct is being given a thorough scientific analysis. Konrad Lorenz and scientists from many other disciplines look at aggression and violence in our time.[18] | ||
| "How Best to Make a Man, How Best to Make a Scientist" | 14 February 1967 | 8 |
| How best to make a man: Learning begins at birth. A Harvard scientist has begun a series of experiments to try to understand some of the complex processes involved. This film shows the first intriguing steps he has taken with a three-month-old baby: possibly the earliest stages in discovering. How best to make a scientist: Most people in this country are scientifically illiterate, yet most of us were taught some science at school. Is it so difficult-or were we taught in the wrong way? Horizon takes a critical look at some new approaches to science teaching.[19] | ||
| "Dynamo, The Life of Michael Faraday" | 28 February 1967 | 9 |
| Dynamo is the life story of a supreme experimentalist: it relives some of the turning points in Faraday's remarkable career in science, and reconstructs the crucial work he carried out in the laboratory at the Royal Institution, which remains as it was when he worked there a hundred years ago.[20] | ||
| "Migraine" | 14 March 1967 | 10 |
| A form of torture that leaves no mark... It's ruined my life... perhaps it's an escape from something I don't want to face. Horizon looks at some of the recent research work which is attempting to understand and provide a treatment for this serious illness.[21] | ||
| "How Safe Is Surgery?" | 28 March 1967 | 11 |
| Of the one-and-a-half million operations carried out in Britain every year it is estimated that from two to twenty per cent result in wound infection, which can lead to sepsis and in some cases death. Surgeons today perform operations which would have seemed miraculous only a few years ago: but even now, a century after Joseph Lister published the first accounts of his revolutionary technique of antiseptic surgery, infection after operations is a menace, probably costing the Health Service £6 million every year. Tonight's programme investigates both the techniques used to prevent infection during an actual operation and research into the causes of infection which still trouble British hospitals.[22] | ||
| "The Shape of War to Come" | 25 April 1967 | 12 |
| Will the next major war be fought with biological and chemical weapons? What are the available weapons? What is the horror they can cause? Is there any moral justification for their use?.[23] | ||
| "Memory" | 9 May 1967 | 13 |
| A man playing chess blindfold against eight opponents, an American worm eating its relatives, an octopus reacting to a scientist's signals in Naples... These arc some of the elements in tonight's investigation of memory. Research on the brain and its workings has recently expanded enormously, producing a record crop of scientific theories. But how near are we yet to any real knowledge of the mysterious processes by which we record, store, and recall our memories?[24] | ||
| "Masters of the Desert" | 23 May 1967 | 14 |
| Today the desert of southern Israel is a barren and arid wilderness, but 2,000 years ago innumerable farms and great cities flourished there. One man, a botanist and amateur archaeologist, Professor Michael Evenari, unearthed the simple yet highly sophisticated methods of water-engineering and cultivation used by these ancient people and applied them himself. | ||
| "Cancer, The Smoker's Gamble" | 20 June 1967 | 15 |
| A consultant physician: "In people who smoke twenty cigarettes a day, one death in eight is due to lung cancer". The Financial Times: "Smoking and cancer link still not proved". On the same day as this headline was written one tobacco company's shares rose by 1s 6d. Why is there doubt in so many people's minds about the relationship between lung cancer and smoking? Is it a reasonable doubt? Or is it escapism? Tonight's programme examines the latest scientific evidence in detail.[25] | ||
| "Science and the Supernatural" | 4 July 1967 | 16 |
| Did Sir William Crookes, later President of the Royal Society, really witness the materialisation of the buxom spirit of Katie King, long-dead daughter of a Caribbean pirate? Do famous experiments performed by parapsychologists prove beyond doubt that telepathy and precognition are scientific fact? Horizon sifts the evidence for and against the existence of such occult phenomena, and invites viewers to participate in an experiment. | ||
| "Hypnosis" | 18 July 1967 | 17 |
| In the minds of many people the word hypnosis conjures up visions of the supernatural, of loss of will-power and self-control. Is this true, and what are the potential dangers, if any? Horizon attempts to clarify the misconceptions and confusions surrounding this emotive subject and investigates some of its present-day uses in medicine. Tonight's programme includes film of a Caesarean operation in which the mother was helped by hypnosis used in conjunction with a general anesthetic - probably for the first time in Britain. | ||
Series 4: 1967–1968
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The War of the Boffins" | 12 September 1967 | 1 |
| During the human struggles between the British and German air forces there was a secret war whose battles were lost or won unknown to the public. From 1939 to 1945 Allied and Axis scientists threw their weight into the war knowing that their influence would have enormous consequences for mankind. The secret battles for air supremacy, the inventions, the measures and the countermeasures are part of a story which scientists tell in tonight's programme.[26] | ||
| "Aspects of Alcohol" | 26 September 1967 | 2 |
| A wee dram of C14: A Scottish chemist has recently thought up an unusual application for Scotch whisky: as a measure of radioactive carbon 14 in the atmosphere-including that produced by thermonuclear bomb-testing. One over the eighty: In two weeks' time it will be a criminal offence to have more than eighty milligrams of alcohol per hundred millilitres of blood while in charge of a motor car. What does this level mean? How will the scientific analyses be carried out?[27] | ||
| "Lords of the Sea" | 10 October 1967 | 3 |
| Only in recent years have we had the techniques to investigate the depths of the oceans. But we are ill-adapted for this new conquest; to us it is a hostile environment. Under water we are inefficient and inadequate compared with the giant fish and the sea mammals whose world it is. Horizon looks at how scientists are helping men enter this new world.[28] | ||
| "Will Art Last?" | 24 October 1967 | 4 |
| Titian's painting Bacchus and Ariadne is said to be worth between 12 million and 110 million and is urgently in need of repair. How does a modern restorer set about preserving for a few more centuries a 450-year-old masterpiece?[29] | ||
| "Air Safety, The Unknown Factor" | 7 November 1967 | 5 |
| The worst crash in aviation history killed 136 people. In the next decade, jet airliners will carry up to five hundred passengers and fly faster than sound. Their airframes and engines will be tested to the most extreme safety limits. But what of the pilot who will fly these planes? Will we be able to test his ability in this critical job in a comparable fashion?[30] | ||
| "The Life and Death of the Pine Processionary" | 21 November 1967 | 6 |
| An extraordinary film shows the hazardous existence of a caterpillar Thaumetopoea pityocampa, but the wake of destruction it leaves behind in its struggle for survival has forced French biologists to declare war on the species.[31] | ||
| "Koestler on Creativity" | 5 December 1967 | 7 |
| What were the processes of creativity taking place in the mind of an Einstein formulating relativity? Or of a Shakespeare composing a sonnet? Can experiments on rats or monkeys tell us anything about human behaviour in science and art? Arthur Koestler takes a critical look at some theories of human creativity and puts his own views.[32] | ||
| "The World of Ted Serios" | 12 December 1967 | 8 |
| An American ex-bell boy, Ted Serios claims to be able to project his thoughts on to film and TV cameras. For five years he has worked with a reputable psychiatrist, and academic staff of Denver University, who believe the phenomenon is genuine; undoubtedly pictures are produced. For two days in the U.S., Horizon filmed Serios trying to convert his thoughts to pictures. Is this a case for science to take seriously? Or is he a trickster? | ||
| "Professor in Toyland" | 24 December 1967 | 9 |
| Some enchanting questions for enquiring minds asked by Professor Julius Sumner Miller on walking toys, singing toys, swimming toys, flying toys. Do you own a toy? Did you ever own a toy? Then Julius ("Walt Disney called me a genius") Sumner Miller can provide a few scientific questions to worry you with.[33] | ||
| "An Ingenious Man, Sir H. John Baker" | 2 January 1968 | 10 |
| Portrait of Professor Sir John Baker one of this country's most distinguished engineers. It traces his career from his early work on airships in the 1920s, on air-raid shelter design during the war, to his present-day influence on young engineers in his department at Cambridge.[34] | ||
| "Man's Best Friend" | 30 January 1968 | 11 |
| Each year In Britain thousands of strays are destroyed-yet medical research is desperately short of experimental animals. Some American doctors argue that our research is held back by a lack of suitable animals. Is this true? How necessary is vivisection? Is it cruel? Could research still be done without the laboratory animal? Horizon reports from America and Britain on the antivivisection lobby and the medical research that many argue would be impossible without the use of "man's best friends".[35] | ||
| "Once a Junkie" | 13 February 1968 | 12 |
| In England addicts get their heroin, and often cocaine, on the National Health Service: our system has prevented the growth of a drug-based criminal world, but Americans say that our system only worked when we did not have a serious addiction problem. Now we do. Does our present system make It too easy for the casual drug experimenter to become a hard-core addict? Is there anything we can learn from the American situation? Horizon, with the guidance of a British psychiatrist, looks at some of the lessons which treatment centres in the U.S. can teach us.[36] | ||
| "Town Traffic and Tomorrow" | 27 February 1968 | 13 |
| The family car is the proudest possession of twentieth-century, town-dwelling man, but we cannot fit it smoothly into our expanding cities. Professor Colin Buchanan shows the overwhelming importance of this gap In town-planning and points to a future that could be liberated by the motor vehicle, or strangled by it.[37] | ||
| "The Man Makers" | 12 March 1968 | 14 |
| The Washkansky heart transplant triggered enormous public concern for the ethics of "interference" with the human body. But we are at the beginning of a biological revolution where events are bypassing or out-dating today's moral problems. Just how much can we hope to add usefully to the human body? Could a limb or even a brain be transplanted? Can organs be stored so that the life of one man is not dependent on the death of another?.[38] | ||
| "Man in Search of Himself" | 26 March 1968 | 15 |
| We grow up with the attitude that happiness should be ours by right and when we don't get it we feel personally singled out for ill-treatment. Our cry of anguish is "Why does this happen to me and why are all the others getting this bliss?" But are they? A personal view by an eminent social psychiatrist of the pleasures and problems of life in Britain in 1968 in comparison with a very different culture he knows intimately-Hindu village life in Northern India. He looks at some of our deeply rooted beliefs and how they affect our behaviour towards among other things, bereavement, sex, happiness and old-age; and at some of our growing social problems such as the rapidly increasing phenomenon of attempted suicide.[39] | ||
| "Investigating Murder" | 9 April 1968 | 16 |
| In Britain the crime of murder, the most serious of crimes, leads to the most serious punishment. The investigation of murder and the presentation of evidence always demands the utmost care in proving a man's guilt "beyond all reasonable doubt" for his liberty will depend on it. The certainty and ingenuity of science is helping more and more to establish the outcome of a case. The scientifically trained detective at the scene of the crime, the pathologist in the mortuary, and the biochemist in the laboratory can each supply the piece of the jigsaw that solves the crime, and often a routine scientific test can establish guilt more decisively than half a dozen eye-witnesses.[40] | ||
| "The Equation of Murder" | 7 May 1968 | 17 |
| The detective tries to find the motive for murder. The psychiatrist looks for the cause. Hidden somewhere beneath layers of emotion certain patterns of behaviour and personality can combine with circumstance to produce an explosive mixture resulting in violent death. In a few cases the pattern may be recognised and the killing prevented. How much does science yet understand about a man who kills, and how can that man come to terms with himself after a conviction for murder?[41] | ||
Series 5: 1968–1969
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Lindemann Enigma" | 12 September 1968 | 1 |
| Narrated by Christopher Chataway, the episode covered the achievements and failures of Churchill's war-time science advisor Professor Frederick Lindemann.[42] | ||
| "From Field to Factory" | 19 September 1968 | 2 |
| Many farmers think the future lies in the factory farm. This means keeping animals permanently indoors where they can be made to turn food into flesh far more quickly than out in the fields. It has worked with chickens and now it looks like the turn of other animals. Do these methods really work? Do the animals suffer? Horizon looks at some changes that are taking place on the farm. | ||
| "Comfort on Ageing" | 26 September 1968 | 3 |
| Dr. Alex Comfort one of looks into the age-old quest to prolong human life and investigates the latest scientific theories. What is the process taking place in our body that makes us age? Is ageing a kind of clock-mechanism that could be slowed down and how? Can the social scientist do something to change this attitude which leads to our frightening negligence towards old people? Can the biologist-and the British biologist in particular, do something to make our lives longer? | ||
| "Experiments in War" | 3 October 1968 | 4 |
| Rocketry, electronics, and nuclear bombs have radically changed the outward face of war. Robot missiles automatically seek and destroy their targets while 1,000mph strike planes hedge-hop on radar guidance. But behind the battlefield is a huge sub-structure of research, where a computer can solve tactical problems in seconds, or a new weapon destroy military principles overnight, how far are Britain's defence policies governed by the work of her secret army of scientists on the weapons and techniques of tomorrow? | ||
| "African Medicine" | 17 October 1968 | 5 |
| In many parts of Africa babies still die young. They have no proper funeral - just burial. Why do so many die? This summer Horizon went to Nigeria, and the remote islands of Lake Chad; there the team lived with the missionaries and doctors who are bringing modern medicine to the villages and leprosy settlements. A poor diet, lack of sanitation, and most of all ignorance-these are near impossible conditions for successful treatment. African Medicine looks at the methods being used to cure and educate - and at the dedicated people who are taking medicine to Africa. | ||
| "The Broken Bridge" | 24 October 1968 | 6 |
| Narrated by Christopher Chataway, the episode covered the methods of psychiatric therapist, Irene Kassorla[43] | ||
| "Children Without Words" | 31 October 1968 | 7 |
| A surprising number of children, bright, perceptive, and apparently normal, seem unable to comprehend language. To some, writing is meaningless and they can never decipher words or numbers. To others, speech has no significance and they react to the spoken word as if they were listening to some incomprehensible tongue. Horizon looks at this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon and attempts to throw some light on the problems facing these children. It shows the work being done to help them, and how they learn to participate in our highly literate society.[44] | ||
| "Computer Revolution" | 7 November 1968 | 8 |
| An American view of how the computer will affect our lives in the twenty-first century. Will every schoolboy one day learn computer programming as part of his curriculum? Will the doctor ask a computer to diagnose our illnesses and get answers which a top specialist might have given? Will the computer's ability to memorise minute details of our lives in the end endanger our freedom?[45] | ||
| "Doctor's Dilemma" | 14 November 1968 | 9 |
| How are we trying to avoid another tragedy like thalidomide? Have we the technical ability to avoid or to assess what harm, if any, the contraceptive pill is doing? Is it possible that we are using one of our most valuable drugs, antibiotics, indiscriminately? In future decades will we regress into the pre-antibiotic era? Horizon sets out to answer these questions and also looks at the interaction of commercial and medical pressures lying behind the complexities of dispensing drugs.[46] | ||
| "In the Matter of Dr Alfred Nobel" | 21 November 1968 | 10 |
| Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was simultaneously an arms manufacturer with ninety-three factories around the world and an ardent pacifist who founded the Nobel Prizes. He was a man who professed to hate violence, arguments, and emotional conflicts of any kind, but who made the discovery of the detonation principle, which laid the technical foundation for two World Wars. In his favour it might be said that he was a 'man of his time' subject to the pressures and perspectives of his age, but his life leads us to look at the motivation of the other Alfred Nobels who are today happily improving methods of destruction in defence laboratories around the world. Will we survive the 'men of our time'? A fictional Commission examines Alfred Nobel's life and work: the Commissioners and Nobel are played by actors; the facts are authentic.[47] | ||
| "Wheels Within Wheels" | 28 November 1968 | 11 |
| "Black Man – White Science" | 5 December 1968 | 12 |
| "Hidden World" | 12 December 1968 | 13 |
| "The Talgai Skull" | 19 December 1968 | 14 |
| The Talgai Skull is the name given to an ancient fossilised skull which was uncovered in a paddock in Southern Queensland in 1886. The skull caused a sensation in scientific circles in 1914, but it is only recently that serious attempts have been made to establish its age. Professor N. W. G. Macintosh, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Sydney, believes the skull could throw light on the origin of the aborigines-to link them with remains of other ancient men found in Java. The first task facing Macintosh was to discover exactly where the skull was found, and the bulk of the film traces the fascinating detective work that went on in the small rural communities of the Darling Downs in Queensland, and the frustrations involved in getting accurate information so long after the event.[48] | ||
| "Phantasmagoria, The Magic Lantern" | 24 December 1968 | 15 |
| "Inside Every Fat Man..." | 2 January 1969 | 16 |
| "If Only They Could Speak" | 9 January 1969 | 17 |
| "The Miraculous Wonder, The Human Eye" | 16 January 1969 | 18 |
| "The Year of the Locusts" | 23 January 1969 | 19 |
| A plague of locusts: few natural disasters provoke more distaste, more horror, more fear, than this great biblical threat. But now, once again, locusts are on the move. From India to West Africa and from the Mediterranean to Tanzania there is a real threat of plague. The desert locust has been in recession for several years, but for some two years now it has been breeding quietly, unseen, in the vastness of the Empty Quarter in Southern Arabia, in the southern Sahara, and along the shores of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Huge swarms appeared last spring and summer and by the autumn the experts were prophesying the worst plague for many years-a plague that could threaten one-fifth of the land surface of the world and threaten the food supplies of millions of people. A Horizon unit spent several weeks filming at the 'storm-centre' of the plague in Ethiopia. | ||
| "The Gifted Child" | 30 January 1969 | 20 |
| "The Last of the Polymaths" | 6 February 1969 | 21 |
| "Music and the Mind" | 13 February 1969 | 22 |
| "Report on V.D." | 20 February 1969 | 23 |
| "The Drift from Science" | 6 March 1969 | 24 |
| "Powers of Persuasion" | 13 March 1969 | 25 |
| "The View from Space" | 20 March 1969 | 26 |
| "The Unborn Patient" | 27 March 1969 | 27 |
| "King Solomon's Garden" | 10 April 1969 | 28 |
| "Muck Today – Poison Tomorrow" | 24 April 1969 | 29 |
| "Shark" | 1 May 1969 | 30 |
| For divers, seamen, and most often bathers, the word shark in many parts of the world spells danger, sometimes death. Not all species are dangerous, but some are killers. Why is this? At laboratories in the United States and Australia scientists are trying to find the answers. Especially, how are sharks able to detect a swimmer from great distances, and why do they attack some and not others? Tonight Horizon presents an Australian film which examines our attempts to understand one of the oldest inhabitants of the sea, and perhaps learn from the shark how we may live in the ocean environment. | ||
| "Technology and Self Determination" | 15 May 1969 | 31 |
| "After Apollo" | 22 May 1969 | 32 |
| "Discovery" | 29 May 1969 | 33 |
| "Machines and People, Rt. Hon. A. Wedgwood-Benn" | 5 June 1969 | 34 |
Series 6: 1969–1970
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Science on Safari" | 15 September 1969 | 1 |
| "A True Madness" | 22 September 1969 | 2 |
| "The Problem of Pain" | 29 September 1969 | 3 |
| "Four Fast Legs and a Nose" | 6 October 1969 | 4 |
| "Father of the Man" | 13 October 1969 | 5 |
| "Master of the Microscope" | 20 October 1969 | 6 |
| "CERN" | 27 October 1969 | 7 |
| "Cancer" | 10 November 1969 | 8 |
| "There's a Rhino in My Sugar" | 17 November 1969 | 9 |
| "Fit to Live" | 24 November 1969 | 10 |
| "Don't Cackle, Lay Eggs" | 1 December 1969 | 11 |
| "How Much Do You Drink?" | 8 December 1969 | 12 |
| "A Game of War" | 15 December 1969 | 13 |
| "Bread" | 22 December 1969 | 14 |
| "For the Safety of Mankind" | 29 December 1969 | 15 |
| "Just Another World" | 5 January 1970 | 16 |
| "Henry Royce, Mechanic" | 12 January 1970 | 17 |
| "A Disease of Our Time, Stress" | 19 January 1970 | 18 |
| "A Disease of Our Time, Heart Attacks" | 26 January 1970 | 19 |
| "Sex and Sexuality" | 2 February 1970 | 20 |
| "Whose Coast?" | 16 February 1970 | 21 |
| "A Much Wanted Child" | 23 February 1970 | 22 |
| "The Expert Witness" | 2 March 1970 | 23 |
| "After the Iron Age" | 9 March 1970 | 24 |
| "Let the Therapy Fit the Crime" | 16 March 1970 | 25 |
| "The World Outside" | 23 March 1970 | 26 |
| "In the Beginning Was the Word" | 30 March 1970 | 27 |
| "Drifting of the Continents" | 13 April 1970 | 28 |
| "A Case of Priority" | 20 April 1970 | 29 |
| "The Fretful Elements" | 27 April 1970 | 30 |
| Covering the physics behind weather patterns and cloud-doctoring experiments.[49] | ||
| "One Man's Meat" | 11 May 1970 | 31 |
| "Only Skin Deep" | 6 July 1970 | 32 |
| "Wolves and Wolfmen" | 13 July 1970 | 33 |
| "A Measure of Uncertainty" | 10 August 1970 | 34 |
| "The Manhunters" | 17 August 1970 | 35 |
| The family of man began to evolve from the primate order about 15 million years ago but how have we changed since then? Where did we come from; what did our ancestors look like and how did they live? The great detective story has traced our origins back to the extinct ape-man of Africa-probably mankind's earliest pre-human ancestor; from the Transvaal comes the skull of an ape-man child, bearing the marks of a fatal leopard attack made about two million years ago. In a pre-Neanderthal cave in the centre of modern Nice detailed analysis of the patterns of shells, rocks, and bones found on the floor has revealed an exact picture of how man once built his camp there 130,000 years ago. Horizon looks at the work of archaeologists and scientists who are digging for similar evidence of man's earlier. existence on sites in Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia. | ||
| "Don't Get Sick in America" | 24 August 1970 | 36 |
| Until now Americans have chosen to receive, and pay for, their medical treatment privately. But in the face of a national shortage of doctors and rapidly rising prices, the private enterprise system seems to be in danger of breaking down. Horizon examines some of the nightmarish situations that have developed in this system, and shows that more and more Americans, fearing illness more for what it might do to their bank balances than to their bodies, are looking enviously at the free universal treatment - for all its shortcomings - enjoyed under national health services like our own. | ||
| "Crown of Thorns" | 31 August 1970 | 37 |
Series 7: 1970–1971
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Noah's Ark in Kensington" | 7 September 1970 | 1 |
| The Natural History Museum is a place of enthusiasts: the hundreds of children who swarm through the public galleries each day and the 350 naturalists employed by the museum. Their job is to look after and do research on one of the largest collections of living organisms in the world. Tonight's programme is a chance to look behind the scenes of a well-known institution. It is also about the public who visit it and the people who work there. | ||
| "Virus" | 14 September 1970 | 2 |
| The present measles epidemic highlights many of the problems of viral disease which face us all. Do you risk the possibility of infection with the danger of permanent disability, even death, or do you use vaccines, the only established preventive, but which in the past have themselves been the cause of severe disablement? This programme weighs the risks and asks: how.safe are the new vaccines and how effective? What are the prospects for chemical cures for viral diseases? And above all, what has happened to the most remarkable drug of all: interferon, discovered in Britain 13 years ago. Horizon reports on a remarkable new series of experiments that may be the turning point in this battle against the viruses that afflict man. | ||
| "Water, Water..." | 21 September 1970 | 3 |
| It's almost inconceivable, with our climate, that we should be in danger of a water shortage. Yet some areas already suffer a semi-drought every summer, industrial development is threatened, and the situation is certainly going to get worse. There is, of course, no shortage of rain here, but most of it runs to waste down our rivers, and with land at such a premium the construction of new reservoirs can no longer be expected to match the increasing demand. There are alternatives, numbers of them, but each provides the engineers and scientists with a complexity of problems. Controlling the flow of a river may radically change, even destroy, its wildlife. Placing barrages across our biggest estuaries like the Wash and Morecambe Bay may do the same and more. At Morecambe they are investigating the very real possibility that the ports of Heysham and Barrow-in-Furness may be silted up completely. Horizon looks at the work of our scientists as they try to unravel the problems of providing us with more water. | ||
| "All Creatures Great and Small" | 28 September 1970 | 4 |
| Do we really know what goes on where 'vivisection' is practised and why these experiments are supposed to be necessary? Do the benefits obtained justify man's using the other animals for his own health and well-being? Horizon shows people on both sides of a very wide gulf - the anti-vivisectionists whose opposition is outspoken, and the scientists who carry out this work but rarely speak out for fear of stirring up even more opposition. | ||
| "Child for a Lifetime" | 5 October 1970 | 5 |
| Thirty thousand children in this country today are mentally subnormal. They will never grow up. Their intelligence has been permanently and profoundly damaged, often without warning and with no known cause. What sort of future can these children expect? This programme examines new techniques which enable such children to overcome low intelligence and master ordinary skills of living. It looks at how psychologists try to solve their learning difficulties in the hope of breaking down the barriers of incomprehension. Horizon reports on the changing outlook for children who are, as one doctor calls them, strangers in their own country. | ||
| "Something for Our Children" | 12 October 1970 | 6 |
| Last month the Nature Conservancy had its 21st birthday. As the crisis in the environment increases - with threats from pollution and pesticides, or just too many people-their work as guardians of our countryside becomes more and more significant. Tonight's film is about their work, ranging from the dramatic way in which they saved the birds of prey from extinction to their painstaking research into the value of hedgerows, fast disappearing under pressure of modern agriculture. Most of the Conservancy's work is complicated and intricate, and it is still a small institution. Yet their work is vital if we want to preserve anything of our countryside for the future. | ||
| "Million Ton Tanker" | 2 November 1970 | 7 |
| "The Insect War" | 9 November 1970 | 8 |
| Insecticides are fast becoming redundant, not just because of their severe side effects, but simply because they are fast losing their effectiveness. More and more pests are becoming resistant. So alternatives must be found, and Horizon looks at the efforts both here and abroad to discover and apply them. It's work in which the scientists themselves may seem to display a fiendish cunning as they experiment with techniques that range from subtly interfering with the pest's sex life to a bizarre use of tin foil to fool the ubiquitous aphid. But one fact stands out. The pest problem is nowhere more complicated than in an ordinary British field. | ||
| "The Savage Mind" | 16 November 1970 | 9 |
| Among the Yakut Indians the woodpecker is a prized animal. Its blood is used against scrofula; a powder prepared from a mummified woodpecker is used against high fever; contact with the beak is used as a toothache cure. These practices may seem typical of bizarre primitive superstition, but to Professor Claude Levi -Strauss, the French anthropologist, they suggest a process of thinking just as valid as any in civilised medicine. For more than 30 years now, Professor Levi-Strauss has been studying and analysing the mind and behaviour of so-called primitive man. What he has found has turned out to be so subtle and complex that his theories should revolutionise the way that civilised man thinks of himself. In this film portrait Horizon sets out not only to explore some of Lévi-Strauss's theories but also to capture the spirit of the man and his work. | ||
| "Tanks" | 23 November 1970 | 10 |
| Ever since the first landships arrived at the front line in 1916, disguised as water cisterns or 'tanks' they have played a dominant part in land warfare. In their 50-year history from tin-pot adolescence to computerised old age, tanks have demonstrated how military thinking often lags a whole generation behind technology. It took 20 years for the Army to become convinced that tanks had outmoded the cavalry and another 20 to get its design priorities straight. With film never before seen on television, Horizon follows this 50-year history up to the present-a present in which the British Army may have an obsolete weapon on its hands without realising it. | ||
| "Mind the Machine" | 30 November 1970 | 11 |
| Once, machines copied only man's physical activities - now they can mimic many of his mental processes. How long before they can design their own ' intelligent' programmes, how long before they become man's intellectual superior? | ||
| "Square Pegs" | 7 December 1970 | 12 |
| What chance do you have of getting a better job? Today, applying for one often means submitting to innumerable tests not only of ability and intelligence but also of personality. But just how valid are these tests? Horizon examines some of the techniques used by the boom industry of Management Selection and follows two candidates through their ordeal. | ||
| "Earthquakes, The City That Waits to Die" | 14 December 1970 | 13 |
| San Francisco is, literally, a city that waits to die. It faces destruction from an earthquake which, scientists warn, could kill 100,000 people. The earthquake is inevitable and imminent, and yet it's claimed that there has been a scandalous neglect in applying already existing knowledge to reduce hazards. Five thousand children, for example, go to schools sited directly on the actual earthquake faults and in the earthquake predicted those children will be killed. Horizon tells the story of the small group of scientists who, in a struggle against apathy, are trying to save their city. They are also involved in crucial experiments which are already enabling them to predict some earthquakes and which in the near future will enable them to realise the hitherto science-fiction dream of preventing earthquakes. | ||
| "The Man Who Talks to Frogs" | 21 December 1970 | 14 |
| "The Gargantuan Triumph of Science" | 28 December 1970 | 15 |
| "Wildlife, The Last Great Battle" | 4 January 1971 | 16 |
| "Great Ormond Street" | 18 January 1971 | 17 |
| "A Bulldozer Through Heaven" | 25 January 1971 | 18 |
| "Rumours of Wars" | 1 February 1971 | 19 |
| "I'm Dependent, You're Addicted" | 15 February 1971 | 20 |
| "Kuru, To Tremble with Fear" | 22 February 1971 | 21 |
| "Due to Lack of Interest Tomorrow Has Been Cancelled" | 8 March 1971 | 22 |
| "What Kind of Doctor?" | 15 March 1971 | 23 |
| "A Nice Sort of Accident to Have" | 22 March 1971 | 24 |
| "The Wood" | 5 April 1971 | 25 |
| "The Measure of Man" | 12 April 1971 | 26 |
| "Three Score Years and Then?" | 26 April 1971 | 27 |
| "Darwin's Bulldog" | 3 May 1971 | 28 |
| "The Secret" | 10 May 1971 | 29 |
| "What Every Girl Should Know" | 17 May 1971 | 30 |
| "Taste of Foods to Come" | 24 May 1971 | 31 |
| "Looking for a Happy Landing" | 31 May 1971 | 32 |
| "A Case of Depression" | 7 June 1971 | 33 |
| "The Total War Machine" | 14 June 1971 | 34 |
| "The Dinosaur Hunters" | 21 June 1971 | 35 |
Series 8: 1971–1972
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Your Country Needs You" | 27 September 1971 | 1 |
| This week's programme in the series on Man and Science today examines whether our Civil Defence plans - many of them secret - are adequate if Britain ever has to fight a nuclear war. The film contains sequences of secret government and military establishments never before seen on television. Restricted Home Office films to advise the public in the event of war are shown for the first time.[50] | ||
| "Rheumatism" | 4 October 1971 | 2 |
| "If at First You Don't Succeed... You Don't Succeed" | 11 October 1971 | 3 |
| "One Liverpool or Two?" | 18 October 1971 | 4 |
| A shining new shopping centre is being built in the centre of Liverpool in an attempt to 'revitalise' it in the best tradition of city planning. Yet some shops on recently built estates in the city centre are closing because of vandalism. This is a ghetto situation - people in a community turning on themselves. What do town planners have to do with this? They claim with their expertise in the social sciences to be able to arbitrate between the vital forces of a city. Filmed entirely in Liverpool, Horizon asks: what power has the planner got and what criteria does he employ in using it?[51] | ||
| "Rutherford, The Cavendish Today" | 25 October 1971 | 5 |
| Ernest Rutherford, Nobel Laureate in Physics, was probably the greatest experimental scientist ever. A simple, practical man, he made his apparatus out of petrol pumps and tea chests. He hummed 'Onward Christian Soldiers' as he performed and inspired work which led to the atomic bomb. Why, in spite of his practical approach to all things, did Rutherford not foresee the application of nuclear energy? Why did he, as late as three years before the Second World War, describe speculations on atomic power as moonshine? The Cavendish Today - Since Rutherford, many things have changed in the laboratory which he led. The tea chests have made way for equipment 60,000 times more powerful. But have basic attitudes changed? Or do scientists still prefer to remain unaware of the implications of their work? | ||
| "The Fierce People" | 1 November 1971 | 6 |
| "The Men Who Painted Caves" | 15 November 1971 | 7 |
| "Crab Nebula" | 22 November 1971 | 8 |
| In 1054 AD, the Chinese recorded the explosion of a star so bright that it lit the sky for three weeks, even during the day. It was the explosion of a dying star that was bigger than our sun. Horizon explores this mysterious explosion that led to the discovery of the Crab Nebula. Aired in Nova on April 14, 1974. | ||
| "Can Venice Survive?" | 29 November 1971 | 9 |
| "Willingly to School?" | 6 December 1971 | 10 |
| "The Periscope War" | 20 December 1971 | 11 |
| "Patently Absurd" | 27 December 1971 | 12 |
| "The Missing Link" | 3 January 1972 | 13 |
| According to present plans, you may be able to cross to France by Channel Tunnel in 1978 - official. But after 170 years of hopes and fears in which all plans have been killed by a mixture of claustrophobia and xenophobia, the last major obstacle is a credibility gap. Is it now at last possible that a tunnel will be built? | ||
| "Navajo, The Last Red Indians" | 10 January 1972 | 14 |
| "How Much Do You Smell?" | 17 January 1972 | 15 |
| "Parasite of Paradise" | 31 January 1972 | 16 |
| "The Day It Rained Periwinkles" | 7 February 1972 | 17 |
| "Are You Doing This for Me Doctor?" | 14 February 1972 | 18 |
| "How They Sold Doomsday" | 21 February 1972 | 19 |
| "For Love or Money" | 28 February 1972 | 20 |
| "Whales, Dolphins and Men" | 6 March 1972 | 21 |
| "What Is Race?" | 13 March 1972 | 22 |
| "Man Made Lakes of Africa" | 20 March 1972 | 23 |
| "Survival in the Sahara" | 27 March 1972 | 24 |
| "Mind over Body" | 10 April 1972 | 25 |
| "Out of Volcanoes" | 17 April 1972 | 26 |
| "The Wizard Who Spat on the Floor" | 1 May 1972 | 27 |
| "Rail Crash" | 8 May 1972 | 28 |
| A look at how British Railways has dealt with accidents, accident investigation and safety measures. For every crash, a newer and safer system is put into place to prevent it from happening again. | ||
| "Do You Dig National Parks?" | 22 May 1972 | 29 |
| "The Rat Man, Sigmund Freud" | 5 June 1972 | 30 |
| "Sorry I Opened My Mouth" | 12 June 1972 | 31 |
| "The Ways We Move" | 3 July 1972 | 32 |
| "The Life That Lives on Man" | 10 July 1972 | 33 |
| "Sex Can Be a Problem" | 24 July 1972 | 34 |
| "The Surgery of Violence" | 31 July 1972 | 35 |
Series 9: 1972–1973
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Hospital, Episode 1922" | 12 October 1972 | 1 |
| "When Polar Bears Swam in the Thames" | 19 October 1972 | 2 |
| The earliest known fossil remains of a polar bear come from Kew. So, when polar bears swam in the Thames, did Britain really look like present-day Greenland? What was the Ice Age? Was it so long ago? Will it happen again?[52] | ||
| "Making of an English Landscape" | 26 October 1972 | 3 |
| "Shadows of Bliss" | 2 November 1972 | 4 |
| "Billion Marsh" | 9 November 1972 | 5 |
| "Do You Sincerely Want a Long Life?" | 16 November 1972 | 6 |
| "The Making of a Natural History Film" | 23 November 1972 | 7 |
| Aired as the first episode of PBS' Nova on 3rd of March, 1974. | ||
| "Fire" | 30 November 1972 | 8 |
| "Alaskan Pipe Dream" | 7 December 1972 | 9 |
| "Their Life in Your Hands" | 21 December 1972 | 10 |
| "Navigating Europe" | 28 December 1972 | 11 |
| "Epidemic" | 4 January 1973 | 12 |
| "Worlds in Collision" | 11 January 1973 | 13 |
| "The Military Necessity" | 18 January 1973 | 14 |
| "The Curtain of Silence" | 25 January 1973 | 15 |
| Horizon reports on deafness in Britain today, including the provision of aids for the deaf and the dangers of noise induced deafness. | ||
| "When the Breeding Has to Stop" | 8 February 1973 | 16 |
| "Science Is Dead, Long Live Science" | 15 February 1973 | 17 |
| "And Where Will the Children Play?" | 1 March 1973 | 18 |
| "Acupuncture" | 8 March 1973 | 19 |
| "What Time Is Your Body?" | 22 March 1973 | 20 |
| "Survival of the Weakest" | 5 April 1973 | 21 |
| "Red Sea Coral and the Crown of Thorns" | 12 April 1973 | 22 |
| "Lumbered... With Back-Ache!" | 26 April 1973 | 23 |
| "Airport" | 3 May 1973 | 24 |
| Despite the sophistication of aviation technology, airport safety still depends on a surprisingly small group of people. For this action film Horizon spent a month at London Heathrow - the world's largest, and probably safest, international airport - recording that side of airport activity the passengers never seethe work of those who guard the critical margin between safety and what could prove a national disaster. | ||
| "Do You Remember the Memory Man?" | 17 May 1973 | 25 |
| "What a Waste!" | 24 May 1973 | 26 |
| "The Laws of the Land" | 7 June 1973 | 27 |
| "Do We Really Need the Railways?" | 14 June 1973 | 28 |
| Should we concrete them over, and use them as reserved tracks for high speed buses? Or replace them with 200 mph vehicles, guided, driven and supported by electro-magnets? Britain's railways were the engineering triumph of the industrial revolution but, say some economists, they are outmoded in the 20th century. Other kinds of public transport could be much better value. Horizon takes a realistic look at the new ideas and technologies that threaten our existing railway system - and at the research British Rail is doing to meet the challenge. | ||
| "The Telly of Tomorrow" | 21 June 1973 | 29 |
| "How Does It Hurt?" | 5 July 1973 | 30 |
| "A Scientist Looks at Religion" | 9 August 1973 | 31 |
Series 10: 1973–1974
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "In Search of Konrad Lorenz" | 24 September 1973 | 1 |
| "Stretch Up Tall" | 1 October 1973 | 2 |
| "Gilding the Lily" | 8 October 1973 | 3 |
| "Black Holes of Gravity" | 15 October 1973 | 4 |
| "What's so Big About Us?" | 22 October 1973 | 5 |
| "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" | 29 October 1973 | 6 |
| "Carry On Smoking" | 5 November 1973 | 7 |
| "Air Crash Detective" | 26 November 1973 | 8 |
| "An Element of Mystery" | 3 December 1973 | 9 |
| "Digging Up the Future" | 17 December 1973 | 10 |
| "Kula, A Reason for Giving" | 24 December 1973 | 11 |
| "Crime Lab" | 31 December 1973 | 12 |
| "A Matter of Self Defence" | 7 January 1974 | 13 |
| "Bird Brain, The Mystery of Bird Navigation" | 14 January 1974 | 14 |
| "Never Too Late to Learn" | 21 January 1974 | 15 |
| "The Great Fish Hunt" | 28 January 1974 | 16 |
| "Pedal Power" | 4 February 1974 | 17 |
| "The Writing on the Wall" | 11 February 1974 | 18 |
| "Where Did the Colorado Go?" | 25 February 1974 | 19 |
| Produced by WGBH-TV in Boston. Aired as a Nova episode, aired on 10 March 1974 on PBS. | ||
| "The Future Goes Boom" | 4 March 1974 | 20 |
| "Fusion, The Energy Promise[53]" | 11 March 1974 | 21 |
| Controlled nuclear fusion means taming the hydrogen bomb. It could solve the world's energy shortage but it's an enormous engineering challenge. HORIZON looks at the latest fusion machines in the UK and USA. | ||
| "The First Ten Years" | 22 April 1974 | 22 |
| "This Yankee Dodge Beats Mesmerism Hollow" | 29 April 1974 | 23 |
| "The Hunting of the Quark" | 6 May 1974 | 24 |
| "A Noah's Ark for Europe" | 13 May 1974 | 25 |
| "Bridges, When It Comes to the Crunch" | 3 June 1974 | 26 |
| "Search for Life" | 10 June 1974 | 27 |
| "The Secrets of Sleep" | 17 June 1974 | 28 |
| "Who Needs Skill?" | 24 June 1974 | 29 |
| Documentary examining the role manual skills play in modern industry. Industries featured are Nuclear engineering, Shipbuilding, Steel production. Skilled machinists and welders talk frankly about how they feel their skills are valued. | ||
| "Hills of Promise" | 1 July 1974 | 30 |
| "The Race for the Double Helix" | 8 July 1974 | 31 |
| "The Immigrant Doctors" | 15 July 1974 | 32 |
| "Mines Minerals and Men" | 22 July 1974 | 33 |
| "What Price Steak?" | 29 July 1974 | 34 |
| "Listen and Be Loyal" | 5 August 1974 | 35 |
| "Adam or Eve?" | 19 August 1974 | 36 |
Series 11: 1974–1975
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "An Unholy Scramble" | 2 September 1974 | 1 |
| "You Do as You Are Told" | 28 October 1974 | 2 |
| "The First Signs of Washoe" | 4 November 1974 | 3 |
| Re-narrated Nova episode, first aired on PBS in May 1974. | ||
| "The Other Way" | 11 November 1974 | 4 |
| As the prices of fuel continues to rise, Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher promotes intermediate technology to help small-scale business and less industrialized countries increase productivity and labor opportunities. HORIZON asks Schumacher to explain his solution to increase productivity, while requiring less energy consumption. | ||
| "The Greatest Advance Since the Wheel" | 25 November 1974 | 5 |
| "Joey" | 9 December 1974 | 6 |
| Dramatization of the life of Joey Deacon, spastic and author, based on his novel Tongue Tied. | ||
| "The Neglected Harvest" | 16 December 1974 | 7 |
| "How on Earth Did They Do That?" | 23 December 1974 | 8 |
| "The Lysenko Affair" | 30 December 1974 | 9 |
| "The Cleanest Place in the World" | 6 January 1975 | 10 |
| "The Killer Dust" | 20 January 1975 | 11 |
| "A Time to Be Born" | 27 January 1975 | 12 |
| Horizon investigates the growing tendency in hospitals to induce childbirth by injecting hormones into mothers. | ||
| "The Unsafe Sea" | 10 February 1975 | 13 |
| "The Change of Life" | 17 February 1975 | 14 |
| "Project Fido" | 24 February 1975 | 15 |
| "The Planets" | 10 March 1975 | 16 |
| Beginning in the 1960s, NASA launches numerous robotic probes to take photographs of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter to determine how the planets of the solar system are formed. Narrated by Paul Vaughan. | ||
| "The Long Long Walkabout" | 7 April 1975 | 17 |
| "The Overworked Miracle" | 14 April 1975 | 18 |
| "Not the Cheapest but the Best" | 21 April 1975 | 19 |
| "A Spoonful of Roughage" | 28 April 1975 | 20 |
| "Brain Poison" | 5 May 1975 | 21 |
| "The Bulldog's Last Bark?" | 12 May 1975 | 22 |
| "Benjamin" | 19 May 1975 | 23 |
| "The Mcmaster Experiment" | 2 June 1975 | 24 |
| "The Glazed Outlook" | 9 June 1975 | 25 |
| "The Three Chord Trick" | 16 June 1975 | 26 |
| "Strange Sleep" | 30 June 1975 | 27 |
| "How Do You Read?" | 14 July 1975 | 28 |
| "The Sickly Sea" | 21 July 1975 | 29 |
| "Happy Catastrophe" | 28 July 1975 | 30 |
| "To Die – To Live, The Survivors of Hiroshima" | 6 August 1975 | 31 |
| "Cannabis" | 11 August 1975 | 32 |
| "Meditation and the Mind" | 18 August 1975 | 33 |
Series 12: 1975–1976
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Trobriand Experiment" | 29 December 1975 | 1 |
| "The Transplant Experience" | 5 January 1976 | 2 |
| "Intimate Strangers" | 12 January 1976 | 3 |
| "A Fair Share of What Little We Have" | 19 January 1976 | 4 |
| "The Incredible Machine" | 26 January 1976 | 5 |
| "King Coal Revived" | 2 February 1976 | 6 |
| "A Question of Trust" | 9 February 1976 | 7 |
| "The Case of the Bermuda Triangle" | 16 February 1976 | 8 |
| Numerous best-selling books tell stories of the mysterious disappearances of air and sea vessels in the Bermuda Triangle, but have these books reported the facts of the cases or have they embellished on the actual occurrences? HORIZON takes a look at the most celebrated cases. Narrated by Paul Vaughan. | ||
| "The Lords of the Labyrinth" | 23 February 1976 | 9 |
| "Inside the Shark" | 1 March 1976 | 10 |
| "The Chemical Dream" | 8 March 1976 | 11 |
| "The Edelin Affair" | 15 March 1976 | 12 |
| "The World of Margaret Mead" | 22 March 1976 | 13 |
| "The Pathway from Madness" | 29 March 1976 | 14 |
| "Geronimo's Children" | 5 April 1976 | 15 |
| "The Vision of the Blind" | 12 April 1976 | 16 |
| "A Lesson for Teacher" | 26 April 1976 | 17 |
| "Why Did Stuart Die?" | 3 May 1976 | 18 |
| "The Children of Peru" | 17 May 1976 | 19 |
| "Dying" | 24 May 1976 | 20 |
| "The Great British Drought" | 26 May 1976 | — |
| "A Home Like Ours..., A Story of Four Children" | 7 June 1976 | 21 |
| "What's Wrong with the Sun?" | 14 June 1976 | 22 |
Series 13: 1976–1977
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Bull's-Eye War" | 25 October 1976 | 1 |
| "The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs" | 1 November 1976 | 2 |
| "Billion Dollar Bubble" | 8 November 1976 | 3 |
| "The Selfish Gene" | 15 November 1976 | 4 |
| "A Child of Our Own" | 22 November 1976 | 5 |
| "Secrets of a Coral Island" | 29 November 1976 | 6 |
| "The Long Valley" | 6 December 1976 | 7 |
| "Half-Way to 1984" | 13 December 1976 | 8 |
| "The Mystery of King Arthur and His Round Table" | 20 December 1976 | 9 |
| "A Smile for the Crocodile" | 7 January 1977 | 10 |
| "The Pill for the People" | 14 January 1977 | 11 |
| "The Ape That Stood Up" | 21 January 1977 | 12 |
| "The Human Animal" | 4 February 1977 | 13 |
| "The Guinea Pig and the Law" | 18 February 1977 | 14 |
| How are animal experiments carried out in Britain and what would be at risk if they were controlled more strictly? | ||
| "Hunters of the Seal" | 25 February 1977 | 15 |
| "The Red Planet" | 4 March 1977 | 16 |
| "One of Nature's Hotels" | 11 March 1977 | 17 |
| "Dawn of the Solar Age" | 18 March 1977 | 18 |
| "Genetic Roulette" | 1 April 1977 | 19 |
| "The Amazing Doctor Newton" | 15 July 1977 | 20 |
| "The Trouble with Medicine" | 22 July 1977 | 21 |
| "Silent Speech" | 29 July 1977 | 22 |
| "The Green Machine" | 5 August 1977 | 23 |
| "Horizon 2002" | 26 August 1977 | 24 |
Series 14: 1977–1978
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The River That Came Clean" | 2 September 1977 | 1 |
| "Blueprints in the Bloodstream" | 9 September 1977 | 2 |
| "40 Years of Murder" | 16 September 1977 | 3 |
| "Darwin's Dream" | 23 September 1977 | — |
| "The Cry for Help" | 30 September 1977 | 4 |
| "The Sunspot Mystery" | 7 October 1977 | 5 |
| "The Rhine's Revenge" | 21 October 1977 | 6 |
| "The Case of the Ancient Astronauts" | 25 November 1977 | — |
| Horizon investigates whether first contact with aliens has already occurred. The publication of 'Chariots of the Gods?' by Erich von Daniken is central to this documentary and some of von Daniken's claims of evidence of extra-terrestrial visitations, such as the Palenque slab, the Nazca lines, Easter Island Moai and the Great Pyramid of Giza are investigated and debunked by archeologists including Thor Heyerdahl. It concludes that von Daniken's thesis relies on unrelated facts, false similarities and phoney evidence. Available as a PBS' NOVA episode, released in 1978. U.S. narration by Don Wescott. | ||
| "Icarus' Children" | 2 December 1977 | 7 |
| "The Healing Nightmare" | 9 December 1977 | 8 |
| "The Great Wine Revolution" | 23 December 1977 | 9 |
| "Living Machines" | 6 January 1978 | 10 |
| "A Land for All Reasons" | 20 January 1978 | 11 |
| "I Don't Want to Be a Burden" | 27 January 1978 | 12 |
| "Zero G" | 3 February 1978 | 13 |
| Documentary about the physiological and psychological effects of living in a zero-g space station, built around NASA library film from Project Skylab. Skylab astronauts and other experts discuss the ultimate limitation on spaceflight duration, as well as the exhilaration of being free of gravity. | ||
| "The Message in the Rocks" | 17 February 1978 | 14 |
| "The Eddystone Lights" | 24 February 1978 | 15 |
| "Light of the 21st Century" | 10 March 1978 | 16 |
| "The New Breadline" | 24 March 1978 | 17 |
| "Now the Chips are Down" | 31 March 1978 | 18 |
| Horizon examines the rise of the microprocessor and asks if automation presents a problem for the future of British industry. | ||
| "Explosions in the Mind" | 14 July 1978 | 19 |
| "One Small Step" | 21 July 1978 | 20 |
| "The Tsetse Trap" | 28 July 1978 | 21 |
| "A Whisper from Space" | 4 August 1978 | 22 |
| "Prisoners of Hope" | 11 August 1978 | 23 |
| "On a Different Track" | 18 August 1978 | 24 |
| "Careering into Science" | 25 August 1978 | 25 |
Series 15: 1978–1979
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Cashing In on the Ocean" | 1 September 1978 | 1 |
| Manganese nodules carpet parts of the deep ocean floor. They're potentially a highly valuable source of minerals. Horizon looks at the engineering challenge of harvesting them, and the knotty problems such a venture would pose for international law. | ||
| "Bags of Life" | 8 September 1978 | 2 |
| "Innocent Slaughter?" | 15 September 1978 | 3 |
| "Beersheva Experiment" | 3 November 1978 | 4 |
| "Divers Do It Deeper" | 10 November 1978 | 5 |
| "The Big Sleep" | 17 November 1978 | 6 |
| A look at the world's leading hibernation research projects shows that the apparently simple business of dozing off for the winter is, in fact, an extremely difficult trick to learn. The only hope is that the whole process is triggered by a special 'hibernation hormone'. It hasn't been found yet, but more than one laboratory is hot on the trail. | ||
| "The Vital Spark" | 24 November 1978 | 7 |
| "The Red Deer of Rhum" | 29 December 1978 | 8 |
| "The Forever Fuel" | 26 February 1979 | 9 |
| "In Search of Pegasus" | 5 March 1979 | 10 |
| "The Keys of Paradise" | 12 March 1979 | 11 |
| "Sweet Solutions" | 19 March 1979 | 12 |
| "Bronze Age Blast-Off" | 26 March 1979 | 13 |
| "The Real Bionic Man" | 2 April 1979 | 14 |
| The opening title of the TV series Six million dollar Man is an actual crash, of the M2-F2 lifting body. HORIZON interviews the pilot, Bruce Peterson, and looks at progress in creating artificial limbs and organs. | ||
| "A Mediterranean Prospect" | 9 April 1979 | 15 |
| "Elements of Risk" | 23 April 1979 | 16 |
| "Mr Ludwig's Tropical Dreamland" | 30 April 1979 | 17 |
| "Where Nothing Happens Twice" | 7 May 1979 | 18 |
| "Journey Through the Human Body" | 14 May 1979 | 19 |
| Imagine yourself shrunk to less than a millimetre, travelling down a blood vessel. It's a popular science-fiction idea but. tonight, Horizon takes you on such a journey. We travel inside the main arteries of the body and past the narrow capillaries of the skin where red blood cells must flow in single file. We go along the carotid artery into the delicate tracery of the brain and down into the massive cavity of the heart itself. We see the biological processes at work within the body and explore the changes within the arteries that can lead to the heart failures and strokes which take the lives of 100,000 Britons every year. The voyage is made possible by the unique camera techniques developed by Swedish photographer Dr Lennart Nilsson. Ten years ago his images of the developing foetus in the womb brought him international recognition. In this film he documents another hidden world - the surprisingly beautiful one within our body's arterial system. | ||
| "The Fight to Be Male" | 21 May 1979 | 20 |
| "The Robots Are Coming" | 28 May 1979 | 21 |
| The present generations of robots are still pretty stupid; but university research is investigating the possibilities of giving robots sight, touch and hearing. How many of our jobs will they then be able to do?[54] | ||
Series 16: 1979–1980
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Mexican Oil Dance" | 24 September 1979 | 1 |
| Mexico, the lazy land of the sombrero and siesta, is fast becoming a country of hard-hats and hard work. The recent discovery of huge oil fields in the southern states of Mexico has stirred the government and people to unprecedented efforts. Could Mexico turn out to be another Kuwait? As exploration for new oil expands, could the country eventually match the giant reserves of the world's top producer, Saudi Arabia? Horizon investigates what effect Mexico might have on an oil hungry world-and the effect of oil on Mexico and the Mexicans themselves. Mexico is already exporting oil - some of it by accident. The world's worst-ever oil spill, from a rig in the Gulf of Campeche. is a major threat to the Texas coast-line and to the already delicate nature of US/Mexican relations. | ||
| "Tracks on the Oregon Trail" | 1 October 1979 | 2 |
| "The Race to Re-Shape Cars" | 8 October 1979 | 3 |
| "Dragnet for Diabetes" | 15 October 1979 | 4 |
| "Lost Waters of the Nile" | 22 October 1979 | 5 |
| "Survival of the Fastest" | 29 October 1979 | 6 |
| "A Touch of Sensitivity" | 5 November 1979 | 7 |
| "A Treasury of Trees" | 12 November 1979 | 8 |
| "Darkness Visible" | 19 November 1979 | 9 |
| "Uranium Goes Critical" | 3 December 1979 | 10 |
| "The Fat in the Fire" | 10 December 1979 | 11 |
| "Decade" | 17 December 1979 | 12 |
| As we move into the 80s, Horizon takes a final look over its shoulder at the last ten years. Our guide is Gordon Rattray Taylor, the original Editor of Horizon. It's been a decade of contrasts; Concorde and man-powered flight, test-tube babies and abortion, nuclear reactors and solar roofs, micro-processors and meditation. The 70s opened with men walking on the moon. It ends with an energy crisis, inflation and unemployment. | ||
| "Ghost of the Amoco Cadiz" | 14 January 1980 | 13 |
| "You Are Old, Father William" | 21 January 1980 | 14 |
| "The Mind's Eye" | 28 January 1980 | — |
| "Cleared for Take Off" | 4 February 1980 | 15 |
| "A Sporting Chance" | 11 February 1980 | 16 |
| "The Cancer Detectives of Lin Xian" | 18 February 1980 | 17 |
| "The Big If" | 25 February 1980 | 18 |
| "Cash from Trash" | 3 March 1980 | 19 |
| Roundup of efforts to recycle more of our waste, narrated by Tony Britton. | ||
| "Encounter with Jupiter" | 10 March 1980 | 20 |
| "Portrait of a Poison" | 17 March 1980 | 21 |
| "Magnet Earth" | 24 March 1980 | 22 |
Series 17: 1980–1981
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Goodbye Gutenberg" | 1 September 1980 | 1 |
| In Japan the development of a voice-controlled word processor will revolutionise their offices. In Sweden 'text inspectors' have to check on any illegal entries on computer files. In the USA the way information is filtered to the President in the White House is radically changing. In Britain Prestel can supply all kinds of information into homes and offices. Horizon examines some of the more far-reaching and subtle effects of the new information age. We ask: Can we foresee any of the cultural changes that lie ahead?[55] | ||
| "Invasion of the Virions" | 8 September 1980 | 2 |
| "Beyond the Milky Way" | 15 September 1980 | 3 |
| "Little Boxes" | 22 September 1980 | 4 |
| "The Other Kenya" | 29 September 1980 | 5 |
| "Moving Still" | 6 October 1980 | 6 |
| "The Way Out" | 13 October 1980 | 7 |
| "The Dead Sea Lives" | 20 October 1980 | 8 |
| "Once in a Million Years" | 27 October 1980 | 9 |
| "Smokers' Luck" | 3 November 1980 | 10 |
| "Behind the Horoscope" | 10 November 1980 | 11 |
| "The Mondragon Experiment" | 17 November 1980 | 12 |
| "The Spike" | 24 November 1980 | 13 |
| "The Slatemakers" | 1 December 1980 | 14 |
| "Anatomy of a Volcano" | 15 December 1980 | 15 |
| When Mount St. Helens erupted last May, it did much more damage than geologists had expected. Horizon looks at the aftermath of the devastating explosion, and at the beginnings of environmental recovery. | ||
| "Spend and Prosper" | 5 January 1981 | 16 |
| Horizon presents a portrait of renowned economist John Maynard Keynes. It follows his life story, his ideas on economics and his contributions to the arts. | ||
| "A Whole New Medicine" | 12 January 1981 | 17 |
| "The Qualyub Project" | 19 January 1981 | 18 |
| "No One Will Take Me Seriously" | 26 January 1981 | 19 |
| "Living with Dying" | 2 February 1981 | 20 |
| "A Is for Atom, B Is for Bomb" | 9 February 1981 | 21 |
| "Who Will Deliver Your Baby?" | 16 February 1981 | 22 |
| "West of Bangalore" | 2 March 1981 | 23 |
| "Gentlemen, Lift Your Skirts" | 9 March 1981 | 24 |
| "Hello Universe!" | 16 March 1981 | 25 |
| "Voices from Silent Hands" | 23 March 1981 | 26 |
| "Did Darwin Get It Wrong?" | 30 March 1981 | 27 |
| "East of Bombay" | 6 April 1981 | 28 |
| "Resolution on Saturn, 1: The Rings" | 11 April 1981 | 29 |
| "Resolution on Saturn, 2: The Moons" | 13 April 1981 | 30 |
Series 18: 1981–1982
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" | 28 September 1981 | 1 |
| A hang-glider pilot, a miner and a lorry driver-they all happily accept risks every day, but now they are threatened with a nuclear power station on their doorsteps. Yet according to the experts, they have no need to worry, as the risk is minute compared with the hazards in their normal lives. How accurate are the experts' figures, and why is it that people nevertheless do not believe that a nuclear power station, or a petrochemical complex like Canvey Island is safe? No major technological undertaking is completely without risk. But how are governments to decide what is an 'acceptable' risk, one that is seen to be fair and justifiable by the majority of the population?[56] | ||
| "The Hunt for the Legion Killer" | 5 October 1981 | 2 |
| "Breaking in Children" | 12 October 1981 | 3 |
| "The Grid" | 19 October 1981 | 4 |
| "Butterflies or Barley?" | 26 October 1981 | 5 |
| "Science for the People" | 2 November 1981 | 6 |
| "The Race to Ruin" | 9 November 1981 | 7 |
| "Death of the Dinosaurs" | 16 November 1981 | 8 |
| "Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" | 23 November 1981 | 9 |
| Richard Feynman talks about his life. | ||
| "The Cornucopia" | 30 November 1981 | 10 |
| "A Race Against Time" | 7 December 1981 | 11 |
| "Painting by Numbers" | 21 December 1981 | 12 |
| Horizon investigates the current state of computer and analogue graphics by interviewing assists and scientists involved with scientific and technical modelling, 3D movie animation, and computer gaming. | ||
| "The Secret of the Snake" | 11 January 1982 | 13 |
| "Finding a Voice" | 18 January 1982 | 14 |
| "The Sea Behind the Dunes" | 25 January 1982 | 15 |
| "Whatever Happened to the Energy Crisis?" | 1 February 1982 | 16 |
| "Notes of a Biology Watcher" | 8 February 1982 | 17 |
| "The Cline Affair" | 15 February 1982 | 18 |
| "The Million Murdering Death" | 22 February 1982 | 19 |
| "Shots in the Dark" | 1 March 1982 | 20 |
| "The Victims" | 8 March 1982 | 21 |
| "The Future-Made in Japan?" | 15 March 1982 | 22 |
| "The Private Face of Medicine" | 22 March 1982 | 23 |
| "The Fatal Bargain" | 5 April 1982 | 24 |
Series 19: 1982–1983
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Miracle of Life" | 11 October 1982 | 1 |
| "The Case of the UFOs" | 18 October 1982 | 2 |
| Unidentified flying objects - UFOs - exist. The question is: what are they? In most cases those who see UFOs are not mad or drunk, but responsible adults who are sincerely convinced that they have witnessed something very strange. And the sightings are not just visual - UFOs have been photographed, filmed and tracked on radar. So are these sightings evidence of spacecraft from other worlds-or of something more down to Earth? Tonight's programme examines some of the more classic UFO cases and comes up with at least one rather startling possibility.[57] | ||
| "A Killing Rain" | 25 October 1982 | 3 |
| "Intimate Relations" | 1 November 1982 | 4 |
| "The Scientist and the Baby" | 8 November 1982 | 5 |
| "Brave New Babies?" | 15 November 1982 | 6 |
| "The Professor of Surgery" | 29 November 1982 | 7 |
| "The Chopper" | 6 December 1982 | 8 |
| "The State of the Planet" | 13 December 1982 | 9 |
| "The Mysterious Mr Tesla" | 20 December 1982 | 10 |
| "25 Years in Space" | 25 December 1982 | — |
| A history of space exploration starting from the dawn of the space age in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik to the Space Shuttle Columbia. Mainly using excerpts from newsreels and television programmes the story covers Laika, Jupiter-C, Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Alexei Leonov, Ed White, Apollo 1, Vladimir Komarov, Apollo 8, Apollo 10, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apollo 17, Skylab, Salyut, and Voyager 1. It includes interviews and broadcasts from Sir Bernard Lovell, James Burke, Frank Borman, Brian Aldiss, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Barbara Ward, Carl Sagan, and Patrick Moore. | ||
| "Sizewell Under Pressure" | 10 January 1983 | 11 |
| "Tropical Time Machine" | 17 January 1983 | 12 |
| "The Geneva Event" | 24 January 1983 | 13 |
| "How Much Can You Drink?" | 7 February 1983 | 14 |
| "Talking Turtle" | 14 February 1983 | 15 |
| "What Little Girls Are Made Of" | 21 February 1983 | 16 |
| "British Science – On the Wrong Track?" | 28 February 1983 | 17 |
| "The Great Plains Massacre" | 7 March 1983 | 18 |
| "Hard Rock" | 14 March 1983 | 19 |
| "Better Mind the Computer" | 21 March 1983 | 20 |
| "Madness on Trial" | 11 April 1983 | 21 |
| "Sixty Minutes to Meltdown" | 18 April 1983 | 22 |
| 4am, 28 March 1979: Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station, Pennsylvania. Alarms go off in the control room: within seconds, the world's most notorious nuclear power accident has begun. A leak develops in the cooling system: temperature and radiation levels begin to rise. For the next few hours operatives struggle frantically to understand what's happening and to prevent the nuclear cone from being uncovered. They fail, and it begins to melt. At the end of the day, they are left with a ruined nuclear power station, and a lot of unanswered questions. This film chronicles the minute-by-minute events of the TMI disaster in a dramatised hearing based on the various official inquiries and reports that followed it. It reveals a story of design faults, failures of communication and human error. Hearing the testimony one might conclude, as some did at the time. that Three Mile Island was an accident waiting to happen. [58] | ||
| "Killer in the Village" | 25 April 1983 | 23 |
| Horizon traces the spread of a newly identified disease, AIDS, across America. | ||
Series 20: 1983–1984
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Case of E.S.P." | 26 September 1983 | 1 |
| Is it possible to read someone's mind or foretell the future? Do some people have psychic powers or a sixth sense? Most scientists would emphatically say no, and that the many people who believe in such things are credulous, irrational and unscientific. We talk to the leading critics of the new research, who reflect the views of the scientific establishment that ESP really stands for Error Some Place - and we show some scientists' recent attempts to answer their critics by taking ESP out of the laboratory and putting it to the test in the world of commerce, crime, archaeology and warfare.[59] | ||
| "The Artificial Heart" | 3 October 1983 | 2 |
| Barney Clark died in March, having survived 112 days with the world's first permanent pneumatic total artificial heart. Horizon follows the case with the surgeon, William DeVries, and looks at the prospects for this technology to save lives. | ||
| "Dr Priestley and the Breath of Life" | 10 October 1983 | 3 |
| On 1 August 1774 Dr Joseph Priestley discovered an unknown gas-oxygen: a discovery that may lead today to a cure for rheumatoid arthritis and cheap fuel from sunlight. Professor Ian Fells shows how we are still trying to understand the links between oxygen and living things.[60] | ||
| "Professor Hawking's Universe" | 17 October 1983 | 4 |
| The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, he made his name by discovering that black holes are not necessarily black - some of them shine. Afflicted by a terrible illness, Professor Hawking relies on his young students to help him In his work - an ambitious programme to unify all the disparate theories of physics into one ultimate theory of everything. If he succeeds, then his discipline, theoretical physics, may have only 20 years or so to go before it comes to an end.[61] | ||
| "The Cruel Choice" | 24 October 1983 | 5 |
| Each year in Britain four million animals, including rats, mice, rabbits, dogs and monkeys are used for animal experiments; their bodies are the testing ground for new products as well as for the advance of scientific knowledge. Scientists maintain that without these animal experiments our future health and safety would be dangerously at risk. Yet to many of us the very idea of animals being used in this way is repugnant. Are all these animal experiments essential or useful? Could they be replaced by cell cultures, computer models and other sophisticated laboratory techniques which would relieve or remove that suffering and death? Does it have to be either our well-being or animal welfare? An investigation into the alternatives to that cruel choice.[62] | ||
| "A Child's Guide to Languages" | 31 October 1983 | 6 |
| "China's Child" | 7 November 1983 | 7 |
| "The Earthquake Connection" | 14 November 1983 | 8 |
| "Prisoner or Patient?" | 28 November 1983 | 9 |
| "Cancer, The Pattern in the Genes" | 5 December 1983 | 10 |
| "The Academy" | 12 December 1983 | 11 |
| "The Intelligence Man" | 9 January 1984 | 12 |
| "Microworld" | 16 January 1984 | 13 |
| "A New Green Revolution?" | 23 January 1984 | 14 |
| In 1970 Dr Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advances in agricultural technology which had produced new 'miracle' rice and wheat. The Green Revolution had arrived; it was hoped that world hunger would disappear. But in the years which followed the new technology only seemed to make the rich farmers richer and the poor farmers poorer. How have agricultural scientists responded to this? Through the eyes of an economist, Keith Griffin (President of Magdalen College, Oxford) Horizon looks critically at the new 'Green Revolution' as scientists work in Mexico, Bangladesh and the Philippines to help the poor grow more food. Their new approach may offer some hope - but unless there are equal changes in economic and political structures are other kinds of revolution inevitable?[63] | ||
| "Spies in the Wires" | 30 January 1984 | 15 |
| "Valley of the Inca" | 13 February 1984 | 16 |
| "Conquest of the Parasites" | 27 February 1984 | 17 |
| "Reflections on a River" | 5 March 1984 | 18 |
| "A Normal Face" | 12 March 1984 | 19 |
| "Prisoners of Incest" | 19 March 1984 | 20 |
| "Signs of the Apes, Songs of the Whales" | 26 March 1984 | 21 |
| "Professor Bonner and the Slime Moulds" | 9 April 1984 | 22 |
| "The Mind of a Murderer, 1: The Case of the Hillside Strangler" | 16 April 1984 | 23 |
| "The Mind of a Murderer, 2: The Mask of Madness" | 17 April 1984 | 24 |
| "A Cruel Inheritance" | 30 April 1984 | 25 |
| "The Malvern Link" | 7 May 1984 | 26 |
| "Biology at War: The Mystery of Yellow Rain" | 15 May 1984 | — |
| Report from Laos, Thailand and Kampuchea on the alleged use of biological warfare in these countries by the USSR. | ||
| "Beyond the Moon" | 21 July 1984 | — |
| Report, using material of the time, of the 1969 moon landing, and discussion on the USA's space programme. | ||
Series 21: 1984–1985
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Biology at War: A Plague in the Wind" | 29 October 1984 | — |
| Investigates the history of germ warfare and the threat of a new biological arms race. | ||
| "Contented Cows and Other Animals" | 5 November 1984 | 1 |
| Chickens packed in battery cages, pigs in metal crates so small they can't turn round - that's what modern farming means to many people, and they're against it. But what do the animals feel about it all? Scientists are now studying farm animals to find out more about their natural behaviour and about how farmers can change the way they treat them, in the hope of improving farm productivity and making life better for them. And they've come up with some surprising evidence from experiments that include lambs in balaclava helmets, hens laying multicoloured eggs, pigs building nests - and a group of chickens that roundly rejected an influential government report on welfare.[64] | ||
| "Picking Winners" | 12 November 1984 | 2 |
| "The Brain Puzzle" | 19 November 1984 | 3 |
| "Global Village" | 26 November 1984 | 4 |
| "Ivan" | 3 December 1984 | 5 |
| "A Mathematical Mystery Tour" | 10 December 1984 | 6 |
| "Supercharged, The Grand Prix Car (1924–1939)" | 17 December 1984 | 7 |
| "Colourful Notions" | 7 January 1985 | 8 |
| "A World of Their Own" | 14 January 1985 | 9 |
| "Decoding Danebury" | 21 January 1985 | 10 |
| "A Mission to Heal" | 28 January 1985 | 11 |
| "Mystery of the Left Hand" | 4 February 1985 | 12 |
| "The Theatre of War" | 11 February 1985 | 13 |
| "The Careful Predator" | 25 February 1985 | 14 |
| "What Einstein Never Knew" | 4 March 1985 | 15 |
| "Eurekaaargh!" | 11 March 1985 | 16 |
| "Careering On" | 18 March 1985 | 17 |
| "How to Film the Impossible" | 25 March 1985 | 18 |
| "The Food Allergy War" | 1 April 1985 | 19 |
| "The Goddess of the Earth" | 15 April 1985 | 20 |
| "Iras, The Supercooled Eye" | 22 April 1985 | 21 |
| "A Prize Discovery" | 29 April 1985 | 22 |
| "Twenty-First Birthday" | 20 May 1985 | 23 |
Series 22: 1985–1986
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Halley's Comet: The Apparition" | 25 November 1985 | — |
| Report on the passage of the European Giotto spacecraft as it passes through the tail of Halley's Comet. | ||
| "Are You a Racist?" | 6 January 1986 | 1 |
| "Genesis" | 13 January 1986 | 2 |
| "Bitter Cold" | 20 January 1986 | 3 |
| "The Mould, the Myth and the Microbe" | 27 January 1986 | 4 |
| "Outbreak, The Microbe Masters the Mould" | 3 February 1986 | 5 |
| "The Wrong Stuff" | 10 February 1986 | 6 |
| "Science... Fiction?" | 17 February 1986 | 7 |
| "The Children of Eve" | 24 February 1986 | 8 |
| "The New Face of Leprosy" | 3 March 1986 | 9 |
| "Hi-Tech a la Française" | 10 March 1986 | 10 |
| "In the Wake of HMS Sheffield" | 17 March 1986 | 11 |
| "AIDS, A Strange and Deadly Virus" | 24 March 1986 | 12 |
| The virus that causes AIDS has become one of the most intensively studied disease-causing organisms in the history of science. Its anatomy has been dissected, and the way it penetrates the body's defences understood. This year a vaccine has reached the crucial stage of testing in monkeys. And a powerful new drug may offer some hope to sufferers. But the more AIDS researchers learn, the more worried they become. The virus has now infected 20 million people across the globe; it is spreading sexually between males and females; and attacking not only the immune system, but also the brain. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of young people with AIDS may require specialised mental health care.[65] | ||
| "The Case of the Frozen Addict" | 7 April 1986 | 13 |
| Originally a Nova episode, first aired on PBS in February. | ||
| "Nice Guys Finish First" | 14 April 1986 | 14 |
| "The Men Who Bottled a Cow" | 21 April 1986 | 15 |
| "Twice Five plus the Wings of a Bird" | 28 April 1986 | 16 |
| "What Makes an Animal Smart?" | 12 May 1986 | 17 |
| "A Handful of Sugar with a Pinch of Salt" | 19 May 1986 | 18 |
| "Uranus Encounter" | 26 May 1986 | 19 |
| "Who Built Stonehenge?" | 9 June 1986 | 20 |
| "Battered Baby, 1: From Generation to Generation" | 16 June 1986 | 21 |
| "Battered Baby, 2: Breaking the Chain" | 23 June 1986 | 22 |
| "Doctors to Be" | 30 June 1986 | 23 |
Series 23: 1986–1987
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Twenty-Five Hour Clock" | 5 January 1987 | 1 |
| There are clocks in your body which, left to themselves, would have you live a 25-hour day. Tampering with them, just by working the wrong shift pattern, may lead to illness, or may affect your ability to have a child. Understanding body-clocks helps to cure winter depression, warns of death rhythms in unborn babies, leads to pills for reducing jet-lag, gives longer lives to some cancer patients - and may even provide cheaper meat. | ||
| "The Search for the Disappeared" | 12 January 1987 | 2 |
| How can science help in the investigation of political kidnappings and mass murder? Argentina's military juntas were responsible for torturing and killing over 10,000 people. Today their bones are their only witnesses. By exhuming unmarked graves, forensic scientists are identifying individual victims and finding important evidence to bring those responsible to justice. Many of the 'Children of the Disappeared' have survived because they were illegally taken by military families who may have been involved in their parents' murder. When grandparents eventually trace their grandchildren, the only way they can get them back is to prove their real identity by genetic testing. | ||
| "The Blind Watchmaker" | 19 January 1987 | 3 |
| "Riding the Stack" | 26 January 1987 | 4 |
| "Bruno Bettelheim, 1: The Man Who Cared for Children" | 2 February 1987 | 5 |
| "Bruno Bettelheim, 2: A Sense of Surviving" | 9 February 1987 | 6 |
| "Energy from Outer Space" | 16 February 1987 | 7 |
| "The Return of the Osprey" | 23 February 1987 | 8 |
| "Can AIDS Be Stopped?" | 2 March 1987 | 9 |
| It's thought that up to 30,000 people in Britain have been infected by the AIDS virus, but don't realise it. Can this epidemic be stopped? "Horizon" looks at how the virus works, and the way it builds itself into the genes of its victims. Can American anti-viral drugs really stem the progress of the disease once it takes root? What kind of treatments are available for sufferers in Britain? And what prospects are there for scientists in Glasgow and Oxford working on a vaccine? | ||
| "Police Stress, John Wayne Syndrome" | 9 March 1987 | 10 |
| "To Engineer Is Human" | 16 March 1987 | 11 |
| "The Magma Chamber" | 23 March 1987 | 12 |
| "Broken Images" | 30 March 1987 | 13 |
| "Trial Babies" | 6 April 1987 | 14 |
| "After Chernobyl, Closer to Home" | 13 April 1987 | 15 |
| "Life Story" | 27 April 1987 | — |
| "Making Sex Pay" | 11 May 1987 | 16 |
| "The Anthropic Principle" | 18 May 1987 | 17 |
| "Aircrash, The Burning Issue" | 1 June 1987 | 18 |
| "Riddle of the Joints" | 8 June 1987 | 19 |
| In Wells Cathedral there is a clue to the origin of rheumatoid arthritis. It is one tiny piece in the puzzle that has vexed doctors for 200 years: what causes this crippling joint disease? Is it an infection by bacteria or viruses? Is it stress or diet? Intense research this century has answered some of these questions, only to reveal more ... Is it inherited? Will it suddenly disappear as rapidly as it appeared? The ultimate cause, and a cure, remain to be found, but recent discoveries offer some hope for the million Britons who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. | ||
| "To Catch a Falling Star" | 15 June 1987 | 20 |
| "In the Light of New Information" | 22 June 1987 | 21 |
| The information-hungry world of the 21st century will be fed not by electrical signals, but by pulses of invisible laser light flying along fibres of glass. What is the revolution in communications that has ousted electricity in favour of light? With crashing motorbikes, stretching trains and a semiconductor laser the size of a department store, Horizon investigates the mysterious world of light technology and, at the frontiers, finds plans for computers that will process information with light. | ||
| "Janice's Choice" | 29 June 1987 | 22 |
| Janice Blenkharn faces the hardest choice of her life. Whether or not she wants to be told if she will develop an incurable genetic disease called Huntington's disease. Every child of an affected parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting it. Janice's mother died of Huntington's Chorea, so Janice is at risk. If she develops it, then her children will be at risk. Until now, there has been no way of knowing who will be affected and who spared. But thanks to painstaking research in a remote South American fishing village, a test now exists. It offers Janice, and others at risk from this fatal disease, the chance to see into the future. | ||
Series 24: 1987–1988
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Transplanted Brain" | 4 January 1988 | 1 |
| For sufferers of Parkinson's disease, hope lies in a new experimental operation - a brain transplant - and the first on a human being is just about to take place. This remarkable technique may one day also treat patients with Alzheimer's disease, strokes and paralysing spinal cord injuries, yet promises to be surrounded by controversy because of the source of the transplanted tissue. | ||
| "Death of a Star" | 11 January 1988 | 2 |
| Deep in a Japanese cave, a star's last moments are detected by signals from particles which have travelled through 170,000 light years of space, and then through the earth itself. It was the most important event in any living astronomer's lifetime, because dying stars are central to the life of our universe. So when the supernova appeared in the southern sky last February, the world's astronomers turned every available instrument on to it. This unique international collaboration has given fascinating insights into one of the universe's most violent events. The programme follows the supernova's story, from its first sighting in Chile to Australia, America and Japan. Originally a Nova episode aired on PBS in October 1987. | ||
| "Playing with Madness" | 18 January 1988 | 3 |
| Manic depression is a crippling emotional illness. It carries a high risk of suicide. It is now known that it has a strong genetic component. Those genes affect over one per cent of humanity: some 50 million people. Is manic depression simply another genetic cross that mankind has to bear, or do these genes also convey some sort of advantage that helps to explain their survival? Many manic depressives are creative - is it in spite of their illness - or because of it? And what has madness to do with poetry, art, music, literature and leadership? Could it be that mental illness is, in some sense, necessary? | ||
| "The Canal in the Jungle" | 25 January 1988 | 4 |
| The Panama Canal, now a billion-dollar commercial crossroads, was in 1881 a snake-infested forest and swamp, harbouring yellow fever and malaria, with sawgrass that shredded skin like a razor. When the jungle beat Old World canal diggers from France, engineers from the brash young United States took over, fired by the success of their new transcontinental railroad. Of the half million workers, who toiled for decades to create this new wonder of the world, 28,000 died. Today the canal carries 12,000 ships a year. But its future is threatened, because of damage to the rain forest on which Panama depends. | ||
| "Death of the Working Classes" | 1 February 1988 | 5 |
| If you are born into a working-class family, from your first breath you are at greater risk of dying than the baby of professional parents. At all ages, death has a class bias. The NHS has made no difference to the health gap between the social classes. Is the gap because of the way people behave - eating chips, smoking - or is it the result of poverty and deprivation? Does stress matter, and if so, what kind? Can unemployment kill? Horizon investigates the theories behind the shocking statistics and asks if the will is there to do anything about them. | ||
| "The Greenhouse Effect" | 8 February 1988 | 6 |
| The temperature is going up. Britain may become warmer, but even wetter. The grain belt of America may get too dry to produce grain. In India, the monsoons may fail. Humans around the globe would face greater challenges than ever. By burning coal, oil and gas, carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere. It keeps more of the sun's heat in, which is making the world warm up. And, in a chain reaction, sea level, crop growth and rainfall will all change. Can the Greenhouse Effect be avoided, caused as it is by one of the most basic human activities - the generation of power? As one scientist says: '... we're hooked, we can't stop'. | ||
| "Struggling for Control" | 15 February 1988 | 7 |
| This summer thousands of holiday-makers are spending their first day in the Costa del Gatwick, as foreign air traffic controllers struggle to find space for them. Here, a new flight is crammed into the airspace every ten seconds. Horizon gained unprecedented access to investigate how air traffic control really works. One dimly lit operations room handles everything that flies over England and Wales. Yet controllers say equipment is out of date and keeps breaking down. Plans for the new London City Airport went wrong a few weeks after opening day. Why? How much longer can controllers struggle with the tidal wave of aircraft? | ||
| "Thinking" | 22 February 1988 | 8 |
| Good news: computers won't take over after all. Thinking can't be produced just by running a computer programme. So argues John Searle, a philosopher at the University of California. His controversial views annoy those scientists who work to create 'artificial intelligence'. They believe thinking can be done by computer. Using a play in Cantonese, a machine that looks like an old mangle and the ideas and images of recent news, Horizon explores the limitations of digital computers. | ||
| "Patients on Trial" | 29 February 1988 | 9 |
| For the past ten years doctors in America have been experimenting with a new drug to treat incurable cancers. Interleukin 2 has been both acclaimed as a miracle and criticised as cruel and unethical. Some patients with advanced tumours are completely cured, but most show no improvement and suffer agonising physical and psychological side effects. A few die from the treatment. Horizon follows three patients who have been accepted on to the drug trial. Stakes are high for both sides. The researchers believe that this costly and controversial therapy could revolutionise cancer treatment. The patients are guinea pigs in a last-ditch experiment to save their lives. | ||
| "Purple Warrior, Rules of Engagement" | 7 March 1988 | 10 |
| The first of two programmes As HMS Ark Royal is harassed by an enemy submarine, Admiral White's response, as Joint Force Commander, is governed by the 'Rules of Engagement' filtering down from Whitehall. Exercise Purple Warrior involves 20,000 men and 39 ships. Their task is to evacuate UK nationals peacefully from 'Kaig' and, if possible, to avoid war. With cameras at the actual Command Centre used for the Falklands war, on HMS Ark Royal, on HMS Intrepid and on windswept 'Kaig', Horizon observes how London attempts to maintain control of a worsening situation. | ||
| "Purple Warrior, Limited War" | 14 March 1988 | 11 |
| Two days after Exercise Purple Warrior lands on 'Kaig', Orange attacks the Task Force with bombs and Exocets. Meanwhile, in London at the Command Centre used for the Falklands War, staff are still catching up on the overnight signals and getting ready to brief Admiral Dingemans. At sea, off 'Kaig', Admiral White is preparing to transfer command of the Joint Force of 17,000 men and 39 ships to General Vaux. First Vaux must establish his headquarters ashore, but the weather is beginning to close in, making all amphibious movements unpredictable.... | ||
| "The Heart of Another" | 28 March 1988 | 12 |
| Winner of the Royal Society Award for best science, medical or technology programme of 1987. Pierre Garand and Gilles Thibault lie critically ill in Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital. Their only hope of survival is a heart transplant. Horizon follows every stage of the fight to save each life: the doctors' discussions to decide whether the patient is too ill to have a transplant; the anxiety of the family as they wait; the frantic search for a donor and the surgeons' race across the border to the USA to get a heart. Finally, hours later, will the transplanted heart beat in its new body? | ||
| "Easter Island, The Secrets" | 11 April 1988 | 13 |
| Since its discovery on Easter morning in 1722, Easter Island has remained a fascinating puzzle. It is the most isolated inhabited land on earth, and yet it was also home to a glorious stone culture. Can the mystery of its giant statues ever be solved? Who built them, how and why - and what happened to the civilisation that once flourished there? From all over the world scientists are drawn to this lonely spot, in search of answers. In the first of a two-part investigation, Horizon pieces together the clues that can reveal the secrets of a vanished past. | ||
| "Easter Island, The Story" | 18 April 1988 | 14 |
| The most isolated inhabited island in the world is haunted by huge brooding statues and a mysterious past. Science has unravelled some of its secrets, but now, in the second of a two-part investigation, Horizon looks for alternative information to solve the remaining pieces of the puzzle. The islanders believe that the statues literally walked, by magic, from their quarry to the ceremonial platforms. They believe that an old woman's spell on greedy stone-carvers brought the quarrying to a halt, but hazy myth and scraps of legend can be used to re-interpret scientific finds, and finally tell the story of the extraordinary statue-builders. | ||
| "Doctors to Be, 1: Trial by Interview" | 23 April 1988 | — |
| Part of the Doctors to Be series following the careers of medical students. Two sixth formers face the interview panel for places at St Mary's Hospital Medical School. | ||
| "Doctors to Be, 2: The Knowledge" | 24 April 1988 | — |
| Part of the Doctors to Be series. October 1985. The medical students face their first exams. | ||
| "Doctors to Be, 3: Welcome to the Real World" | 25 April 1988 | — |
| Part of the Doctors to Be series. After two years of medical training, the medical students are put into the 'real world' of a surgical ward at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. | ||
| "Cancer at Bay" | 4 May 1988 | 15 |
| When Chinese and Japanese people move to California they change their lifestyles. So did the Greeks and Italians who migrated to Australia. The result is a change in the cancers they develop. This programme explores how changes in the way we live can reduce the risk of cancer. | ||
| "Traces of Murder" | 9 May 1988 | 16 |
| When there is a series of linked murders, particularly of children, the killer is likely to strike again. These are the most serious of crimes. After failures in the case of the Yorkshire Ripper, the Home Secretary promised the harnessing for such investigations of the best detective and forensic skills in the country, and the use of computer technology. Has this happened? New technology is now available on both sides of the Atlantic and may increase the chances of solving these disturbing crimes. | ||
| "The Hope of Progress" | 16 May 1988 | 17 |
| Sir Peter Medawar, who died last November, was a great scientist who, with the help of an exceptional woman, triumphed over adversity and justified his hope of progress. He was shocked by the appalling burns of a Second World War airman who crashed near his home, and he set to work to find a treatment using skin grafts. His fundamental discoveries about the immune system inspired the surgeons who pioneered transplantation. Sir Peter became a Nobel Laureate and figurehead of British science. After a severe stroke, his own courage and the support of his remarkable wife Jean, enabled him to return to writing, including his autobiography Memoir of a Thinking Radish. Alan Howard reads Sir Peter's own words in this tribute from his colleagues and Lady Medawar. | ||
| "A Newsday Revolution" | 23 May 1988 | 18 |
| There has been an electronic revolution in television news. It has affected the way news is gathered, presented and edited. Horizon follows BBC TV news teams at home and abroad for just one day, to see how the new technology works: in the studio with Sue Lawley; at the White House with Tim Sebastian in the newsroom with the editors. How is the new technology changing the news you see on your screen? When Tuesday 22 March started, it looked like being an ordinary newsday. It didn't turn out that way. | ||
| "A Good Test?" | 6 June 1988 | 19 |
| Paul Mercer, a student, wants to be a naval officer. John Josling, a manager, hopes to become a director of his company. Naval psychologists use psychometric tests (the modern IQ tests) which involve two days of rigorous assessment to help select their potential high-fliers. But the officer chairing the Admiralty Interview Board believes that it's not until you can look into the man's eyes that you get a feel for his true character. Are the tests valid - and is the result fair to Paul Mercer? John Josling agrees to submit himself to vigorous and potentially embarrassing personality testing. His company believes it will identify his strengths and weaknesses and assist his ambitions for promotion. But can you really change personality with paper tests? | ||
| "Superconductor, The Race for the Prize" | 13 June 1988 | 20 |
| The flow of electricity with absolutely no loss due to resistance could mean far cheaper power, levitated trains and ever-faster computers. But until 1986, the technology was so complicated and expensive that almost its only use was for the powerful magnets of medical scanners. This is the story of a scientific breakthrough and the hectic race that followed - for superconductors that work at higher temperatures, for applications and lucrative manufacturing patents, for an explanation of how the new materials work... and with luck, a share in a Nobel prize. | ||
| "Believe Me" | 27 June 1988 | 21 |
| To be told 'your illness is all in the mind' or 'pull yourself together' is no help to people like Mollie Champion - 14 years seeking a diagnosis and still not cured, or Michael Mayne. 'Post-viral syndrome' 'Yuppie flu', 'Royal Free disease', or 'myalgic encephalomyelitis', has divided medical opinion for over 30 years. Now, thousands of patients are struggling for recognition of this distressing condition, while fighting the fundamental attitudes of doctors to diagnosis and disease. But as some patients suffer, others try a fresh approach: independently of their doctors . | ||
| "The Quest for Tannu Tuva" | 4 July 1988 | — |
| Shortly before his death in February 1988, the scientist Richard Feynman talked about his ten year fascination with Tannu Tuva, a Shangri-La on the edge of Mongolia, which very few westerners have ever seen. Also released by PBS' NOVA months later. | ||
Series 25: 1988–1989
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Diary of Discovery" | 28 September 1988 | 1 |
| Horizon follows the preparation of the five astronauts of the space shuttle Discovery, the first shuttle flight since the Challenger disaster of 1986. | ||
| "The Book of Man" | 9 January 1989 | 2 |
| Horizon looks at the Human Genome Project, an attempt to map all the genes of human DNA. | ||
| "The Poison That Waits" | 16 January 1989 | 3 |
| Horizon reports on the abnormally high occurrence of senile dementia and Parkinson's disease on the Pacific island of Guam that scientists believe is linked to a poison in the native cycad fruit. | ||
| "Perils of the Deep" | 23 January 1989 | 4 |
| Horizon looks at evidence that seems to show that diving can cause long term damage to the brain and spinal cord, even in shallow waters. | ||
| "Smart Weapons" | 30 January 1989 | 5 |
| Weapons are being developed that are controlled by computers to destroy specific targets. | ||
| "Wasting the Alps" | 6 February 1989 | 6 |
| Horizon investigates the damage that pollution and tourism are inflicting on the Swiss Alps. | ||
| "In the Last Resort" | 13 February 1989 | 7 |
| Where can the elderly live who are unable to live at home, in a care home, or in sheltered accommodation? | ||
| "Gaze in Wonder" | 20 February 1989 | 8 |
| An interview with Professor Eric Laithwaite who believes that many modern inventions already exist in nature. | ||
| "In My Lifetime?" | 27 February 1989 | 9 |
| Two-and-a-half years ago, broadcaster Glyn Worsnip was told he had an incurable brain disease. Like many thousands with obscure diseases he wanted to know: what research is going on? Who is paying for it? Are patients getting the benefit? To get answers, he questions the Medical Research Council, a Nobel Prize winner, his own GP, a large drug company, small charity support groups and eminent doctors round the country. | ||
| "Concerto" | 6 March 1989 | 10 |
| In Paris, Xavier Rodet has taught a computer to sing Mozart; in Greenwich Village, Wendy Carlos synthesises a classical concerto from electronic tones. Professor Nagyvary has made a new violin with waterlogged wood and powdered gems. He claims it sounds like a Stradivarius. In Australia, Manfred Clynes reckons he has discovered a universal human language of emotion. To prove it he creates feelings on tape. What's left for human performers to contribute? | ||
| "Black Schizophrenia" | 13 March 1989 | 11 |
| British Afro-Caribbeans are ten times more likely to develop schizophrenia than the rest of the population, according to a psychiatric study in Nottingham. Black critics claim that white psychiatrists are misdiagnosing black people and that the report is a classic example of racism in medicine. They also warn that the report may do untold harm to our race relations. The Nottingham researchers believe that their findings could provide a clue to the causes of this mysterious and terrible form of madness. Are their conclusions valid and should the research have been done? | ||
| "Trial in the Jungle" | 20 March 1989 | 12 |
| The Tasaday, a remote Philippine tribe living 'in the Stone Age', are now seen as a famous scientific hoax. But when they were first discovered, in 1971, they were hailed as the anthropological find of the century. How did these people dupe every scientist who went to see them? Horizon has investigated the extraordinary story and arrived at a quite different conclusion. Weigh up the evidence from their stone tools, their language, their knowledge of plants and.... perhaps there wasn't a hoax at all. | ||
| "Who Will Make Me Better?" | 3 April 1989 | 13 |
| Millions of visits are made each year to acupuncturists, homeopaths, food allergists, or people who diagnose disease by looking in your eyes or waving a pendulum. Scientific evidence is still lacking that such therapies cure disease, but they often seem to make people 'better'. It turns out that whether you chose an NHS consultant or a fringe alternative practitioner, it may not make much difference to your chances of 'getting better'. | ||
| "A Wonderful Life" | 17 April 1989 | 14 |
| Genius, aeronautical engineer, soldier, schoolmaster, gardener, hospital porter, architect, recluse, and Cambridge Professor of Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most original thinkers of this century. Born 100 years ago into one of the richest families in the Austro-Hungarian empire, he gave away all his money, and lived on the edge of madness and suicide until his death in 1951. And yet his last words were: 'Tell them I've had a wonderful life!' . | ||
| "Why Buildings Make You Sick" | 24 April 1989 | 15 |
| Feeling ill at work? It could be your building that's to blame. When Sick Building Syndrome strikes, it brings a flurry of mild symptoms such as headache, tiredness, sore eyes and runny nose. Horizon follows the investigation of one sick building where 94 per cent of the occupants report symptoms. Investigators know it's not a serious infection like Legionnaire's disease, but until now have been stumped to find a cause. Could it be dust or moulds in the ventilation ducts, too few negative ions in the air, even a build-up of chemicals? By piecing together different strands of new research, they can now discover the culprit. | ||
| "Jubilee" | 8 May 1989 | 16 |
| An examination of whether Horizon has had an effect on the scientific community. | ||
| "Crash" | 15 May 1989 | 17 |
| Horizon investigates how many deaths on the road could be prevented with further technical and legislative changes. | ||
| "The New Sixth Sense" | 22 May 1989 | 18 |
| An investigation into recent biosensor technologies. | ||
| "Clive Sinclair, The Anatomy of an Inventor" | 12 June 1989 | 19 |
| A profile of the inventor Clive Sinclair. | ||
| "Newpin, A Lifeline" | 19 June 1989 | 20 |
| Horizon examines whether child abuse and depression can be prevented by working with the mothers of young children. | ||
| "Time of Darkness" | 26 June 1989 | 21 |
| An investigation on the effects of volcanic eruptions on the global climate. | ||
Series 26: 1989–1990
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Oil Spill" | 8 January 1990 | 1 |
| "Medicine 2000" | 15 January 1990 | 2 |
| "Food Irradiation: Would You Buy It?" | 22 January 1990 | 3 |
| "From Earth to Miranda" | 29 January 1990 | 4 |
| "Encounter with Neptune" | 5 February 1990 | 5 |
| "Guess What's Coming to Dinner" | 12 February 1990 | 6 |
| "The First 14 Days" | 19 February 1990 | 7 |
| "The 10,000 Year Test" | 5 March 1990 | 8 |
| "Hurricane!" | 12 March 1990 | 9 |
| "The Britannic Greenhouse" | 19 March 1990 | 10 |
| "Cold Fusion: Too Close to the Sun" | 26 March 1990 | 11 |
| "The Quake of 89: The Final Warning?" | 2 April 1990 | 12 |
| On the evening of 17 October 1989 there was an earthquake 60 miles south of San Francisco. Sixty-seven people died, 2,400 were injured and 10,000 left homeless. A massive earthquake, many times as damaging and this time centred directly on San Francisco, is expected within a few years. A city fire chief predicts they are so unprepared that they could lose 20,000 buildings and 8,000 lives. Will the city learn from the lessons of the quake of 89?[66] | ||
| "The Sharpest Show of the Universe" | 9 April 1990 | 13 |
| Nasa is about to launch the Hubble space telescope, which promises the greatest advances in astronomy since Galileo. It will show ten times more details than is possible from the ground and see objects 30 times fainter or five times farther away than ever before. It will search for planets outside our solar system, and will tell us much more about the Universe. With long delays and huge cost-overruns, it is now approaching its point of greatest risk. If anything goes wrong on the launch, there is no back-up.[67] | ||
| "The Company of Ants and Bees" | 23 April 1990 | 14 |
| "The Intelligent Island" | 30 April 1990 | 15 |
| "Legacy of a Volcano" | 14 May 1990 | 16 |
| "Do Cows Make You Mad?" | 21 May 1990 | 17 |
| "The Child Mothers" | 4 June 1990 | 18 |
| "Making an Honest Fiver" | 6 June 1990 | — |
| Looks at the manufacturing processes involved in the production of a new five pound note due to be launched in June 1990. Considers the design and production of currency, and the intricate techniques developed to prevent forgeries. | ||
| "Signs of Life" | 11 June 1990 | 19 |
| "AIDS: A Quest for a Cure" | 25 June 1990 | 20 |
Series 27: 1990–1991
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Red Star in Orbit, 1: The Invisible Spaceman" | 7 December 1990 | 1 |
| First in a three-part Horizon special series on the Soviet crewed space programme, looking at the story of the projects, cosmonauts and engineers involved. | ||
| "Red Star in Orbit, 2: The Dark Side of the Moon" | 14 December 1990 | 2 |
| Second in a three-part Horizon special series on the Soviet crewed space programme, looking at the story of the projects, cosmonauts and engineers involved. | ||
| "Red Star in Orbit, 3: The Mission" | 21 December 1990 | 2 |
| Third in a three-part Horizon special series on the Soviet human space programme, this one concentrating on the story of the two Soviet cosmonauts who risked their lives earlier this year in a space walk to try and repair their stricken craft, as well as anecdotes from veteran cosmonauts. | ||
| "Sudden Death" | 7 January 1991 | 3 |
| Every year, sudden death kills over 100,000 Britons. In the US, that figure is a quarter of a million. Many of the victims have some history of coronary heart disease, but it's not the classic heart attack that kills but a rapid onset of fatal electrical activity in the heart. Horizon follows a bizarre trail to pick up clues to the nature of sudden death. | ||
| "Keen as Mustard" | 14 January 1991 | 4 |
| Mustard gas demands 100 per cent protection because it affects all parts of the body. Iraq has thousands of tons of it poised for use against allied troops in the Gulf. Forty years ago Japan posed a similar threat in the Pacific. No one knew what effect such a weapon would have on troops fighting in the tropics, so between 1942 and 1945, British doctors masterminded top-secret experiments in northern Australia involving more than 1,000 human guinea pigs. Horizon tells the harrowing story of the trials with the help of archive film which was once as secret as the actual tests. | ||
| "Smokers Can Harm Your Health" | 21 January 1991 | 5 |
| Every year 100,000 British smokers die from the effects of tobacco - one every six minutes. But there is mounting evidence that they are damaging not only their own health but other people's, too. Eight out of every ten lung cancers are caused by tobacco smoke. Yet many non-smokers are dying of the disease. Why? Horizon investigates the case against passive smoking and reveals alarming new evidence: lung cancer, heart disease, asthma, childhood cancers ... | ||
| "Coming in from the Cold" | 28 January 1991 | 6 |
| The new arms control treaties use science to oversee the end of the Cold War and to check on cheating. It's the verification game: how do you give a tank a fingerprint so unique that it cannot be forged? And where does the line lie between checking and spying? From American soldiers, deep inside Russia, X-raying Soviet missiles in the snow, to private firms offering new technologies on the open market, Horizon investigates this new growth industry, and how it could bring peace to the world's trouble spots, or more accurate means of attack. | ||
| "Small Problem with the Mirror" | 4 February 1991 | 7 |
| Hubble trouble: the inside story of the biggest little error in the Galaxy and its impact on its principal 'victims' - all the astronomers who have worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and waited 13 years for dramatic new insights into the origins, evolution, age and ultimate fate of the universe. Now, with the telescope's mirror badly flawed, Horizon follows their efforts to retrieve the science from this observatory in space and to plan a rescue package to restore its original planned performance. Can Nasa's engineers be trusted with 'big science' any more? | ||
| "California Dreaming" | 11 February 1991 | 8 |
| "The Day the Earth Melted" | 18 February 1991 | 9 |
| "The Curse of Karash" | 25 February 1991 | 10 |
| "Playing at Noah" | 4 March 1991 | 11 |
| "Cashing in on Paradise" | 11 March 1991 | 12 |
| "The Terracotta Time Machine" | 18 March 1991 | 13 |
| "Measuring the Roof of the World" | 25 March 1991 | 14 |
| "The First Americans" | 15 April 1991 | 14 |
| "Inside Chernobyl Sarcophagus" | 22 April 1991 | 15 |
| Chernobyl Unit Four exploded six years ago this week. The intensely radioactive ruins of the reactor now lie buried in the 'sarcophagus'. Much of it will be radioactive for more than 100,000 years. Horizon were the first westerners to film inside the sarcophagus where an elite team of Soviet scientists are working in areas of radiation that would be considered lethal by the west. They are driven by the urgent need to hunt down the 135 tonnes of uranium and plutonium which melted in the explosion, and to discover whether a second accident could happen at Chernobyl. This film tells the story of the remarkable scientists dedicating their lives to working there.[68] | ||
| "Colonising Cyberspace" | 29 April 1991 | 16 |
| "Emerging Viruses" | 13 May 1991 | 17 |
| "Camelford, A Bitter Aftertaste" | 20 May 1991 | 18 |
| "Of Big Bangs, Stick Men, and Galactic Holes" | 3 June 1991 | 19 |
| "Food for Thought" | 10 June 1991 | 20 |
| This story by Horizon looks at the expanding and controversial area of "smart drugs". | ||
| "The Long Road to the West" | 17 June 1991 | 21 |
| "Half Hearted About Semi-Skimmed" | 24 June 1991 | 22 |
| "T-Rex Exposed" | 1 July 1991 | 23 |
Series 28: 1991–1992
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Shadow of Breast Cancer" | 6 January 1992 | 1 |
| "Pest Wars" | 13 January 1992 | 2 |
| "Molecules with Sunglasses" | 20 January 1992 | 3 |
| "In Search of the Noble Savage" | 27 January 1992 | 4 |
| "Malaria, Battle of the Merozoites" | 3 February 1992 | 5 |
| "The Black Sun" | 17 February 1992 | 6 |
| "Hitler's Bomb" | 24 February 1992 | 7 |
| "An Expensive Theology" | 2 March 1992 | 8 |
| "The Strange Life and Death of Dr. Turing" | 9 March 1992 | 9 |
| "Hot Jam in the Doughnut" | 16 March 1992 | 10 |
| "Diet for a Lifetime" | 30 March 1992 | 11 |
| "Before Babel" | 6 April 1992 | 12 |
| "The Man Who Moved the Mountains" | 13 April 1992 | 13 |
| "Iceman" | 27 April 1992 | 14 |
| "Taking the Credit" | 11 May 1992 | 15 |
| "Fast Life in the Food Chain" | 18 May 1992 | 16 |
| "Dodging Doomsday" | 1 June 1992 | 17 |
| "A Question of Sport..." | 8 June 1992 | 18 |
| "Genes R Us" | 15 June 1992 | 19 |
Series 29: 1992–1993
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "A Close Encounter of the Second Kind" | 10 July 1992 | — |
| "Hide and Seek in Iraq" | 23 August 1992 | — |
| "The Truth About Sex" | 3 December 1992 | 1 |
| "Awakening the Frozen Addicts" | 4 January 1993 | 2 |
| "Cheating Time" | 11 January 1993 | 3 |
| "TB, The Forgotten Plague" | 18 January 1993 | 4 |
| "No Ordinary Genius, Episode 1" | 25 January 1993 | 5 |
| "No Ordinary Genius, Episode 2" | 1 February 1993 | 6 |
| "Mars Alive" | 8 February 1993 | 7 |
| "Suggers, Fruggers and Data-Muggers" | 15 February 1993 | 8 |
| "The Pyramid Builders" | 22 February 1993 | 9 |
| "Here Be Monsters" | 1 March 1993 | 10 |
| "Iceman" | 8 March 1993 | 11 |
| "Whatever Happened to Star Wars?" | 15 March 1993 | 12 |
| "Resurrecting the Dead Sea Scrolls" | 22 March 1993 | 13 |
| "Dante Goes to Hell" | 29 March 1993 | 14 |
| "Ghosts in the Dinosaur Graveyard" | 5 April 1993 | 15 |
| "The New Alchemists" | 19 April 1993 | 16 |
| "Allergic to the Twentieth Century" | 10 May 1993 | 17 |
| "Wot U Lookin At?" | 24 May 1993 | 18 |
| "The Electronic Frontier" | 7 June 1993 | 19 |
| "A Vital Poison" | 14 June 1993 | 20 |
| "Chimp Talk" | 21 June 1993 | 21 |
| "Life Is Impossible" | 28 June 1993 | 22 |
Series 30: 1993–1994
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Assault on the Male" | 31 October 1993 | — |
| "Small Arms, Soft Targets" | 10 January 1994 | 1 |
| "The Last Mammoth" | 17 January 1994 | 2 |
| "Gerald Edelman, The Man Who Made Up His Mind" | 24 January 1994 | 3 |
| "Genie, Secret of the Wild Child" | 31 January 1994 | 4 |
| "Death Wish, The Untold Story" | 7 February 1994 | 5 |
| "Air Crash, The Deadly Puzzle" | 14 February 1994 | 6 |
| "Hunt for the Doomsday Asteroid" | 28 February 1994 | 7 |
| "Hubble Vision" | 7 March 1994 | 8 |
| "Some Liked It Hot" | 14 March 1994 | 9 |
| "Too Close to the Sun" | 21 March 1994 | 10 |
| "Sir Walter's Journey, A Genetic Map of Britain" | 28 March 1994 | 11 |
| "After the Flood" | 18 April 1994 | 12 |
| "Against the Clock" | 25 April 1994 | 13 |
| "Auschwitz, The Blueprints of Genocide" | 9 May 1994 | 14 |
| "Ulcer Wars" | 16 May 1994 | 15 |
| "30th Anniversary, The Far Side" | 23 May 1994 | 16 |
Series 31: 1994–1995
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Deaf Whale, Dead Whale" | 7 November 1994 | 1 |
| "Whispers of Creation" | 14 November 1994 | 2 |
| "The Predator" | 21 November 1994 | 3 |
| "Close Encounters" | 28 November 1994 | 4 |
| "Orange Sherbert Kisses" | 12 December 1994 | 5 |
| "Designer Wines" | 19 December 1994 | 6 |
| "Tibet, The Ice Mother" | 9 January 1995 | 7 |
| "Russia's Deep Secrets" | 16 January 1995 | 8 |
| "Bones of Contention" | 23 January 1995 | 9 |
| "Siamese Twins" | 30 January 1995 | 10 |
| "Twice Born" | 14 February 1995 | — |
| "Too Big Too Soon?" | 20 February 1995 | 11 |
| "Farewell Fantastic Venus" | 27 February 1995 | 12 |
| "Exodus" | 6 March 1995 | 13 |
| "The Betrayers" | 13 March 1995 | 14 |
| "Icon Earth" | 20 March 1995 | 15 |
| For 20 years, the image of the earth floating in space has been adopted by environmentalists to suggest the planet's wholeness and vulnerability, as a challenge to industrialism and consumerism. But the meaning of the icon is changing with the advent of global telecommunications and finance. As part of Science Week, Horizon explores the implications of these changes and asks what the future holds.[69] | ||
| "The I-Bomb" | 27 March 1995 | 16 |
| "Foetal Attraction" | 3 April 1995 | 17 |
| "Cracks in the Crust" | 10 April 1995 | 18 |
| "Hearing Voices" | 24 April 1995 | 19 |
Series 32: 1995–1996
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Liar" | 30 October 1995 | 1 |
| "The Human Laboratory" | 6 November 1995 | 2 |
| "Nanotopia" | 13 November 1995 | 3 |
| "Hunt for the Doomsday Asteroid" | 20 November 1995 | 4 |
| "A Code in the Nose" | 27 November 1995 | 5 |
| "AIDS, Behind Closed Doors" | 4 December 1995 | 6 |
| "The Runaway Mountain" | 11 December 1995 | 7 |
| "The Butchers of Boxgrove" | 8 January 1996 | 8 |
| An investigation into the discovery of Boxgrove Man. | ||
| "Fermat's Last Theorem" | 15 January 1996 | 9 |
| The story of Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem | ||
| "A Miracle for Cancer?" | 22 January 1996 | 10 |
| "Nature's Numbers" | 29 January 1996 | 11 |
| "The Gene Race" | 5 February 1996 | 12 |
| "Masters of the Ionosphere" | 12 February 1996 | 13 |
| "Assault on the Male" | 26 February 1996 | 14 |
| "Death by Design" | 4 March 1996 | 15 |
| "The Planet Hunters" | 11 March 1996 | 16 |
| "Einstein, The Miracle Year" | 17 March 1996 | 17 |
| "Einstein, Fame" | 18 March 1996 | 18 |
| "Inside Chernobyl Sarcophagus" | 25 March 1996 | 19 |
| "Fall-Out from Chernobyl" | 1 April 1996 | 20 |
Series 33: 1996–1997
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Science of Star Trek" | 26 August 1996 | — |
| "TV Is Dead, Long Live TV" | 2 November 1996 | 1 |
| "Aliens from Mars" | 11 November 1996 | 2 |
| "The Invisible Enemy (BSE Special episode)" | 17 November 1996 | — |
| "The Human Experiment (BSE Special episode)" | 18 November 1996 | — |
| "Living Death" | 25 November 1996 | 3 |
| "The Time Lords" | 2 December 1996 | 4 |
| "Molecules with Sunglasses" | 9 December 1996 | 5 |
| "Noah's Flood" | 16 December 1996 | 6 |
| "Ice Mummies 1: The Ice Maiden" | 30 January 1997 | — |
| "Ice Mummies 2: A Life in Ice" | 6 February 1997 | — |
| "Ice Mummies 3: Frozen in Heaven" | 13 February 1997 | — |
| "Siamese Twins" | 20 February 1997 | 7 |
| "Psychedelic Science" | 27 February 1997 | 8 |
| "Fat Cats, Thin Mice" | 6 March 1997 | 9 |
| "The Shipwreck" | 13 March 1997 | 10 |
| "Genius of the Jet" | 20 March 1997 | 11 |
| "Smallpox on Death Row" | 27 March 1997 | 12 |
| "Silent Children, New Language" | 3 April 1997 | 13 |
| "Turned on by Danger" | 17 April 1997 | 14 |
| "A Perfect Oil Spill" | 24 April 1997 | 15 |
| "The Great Balloon Race" | 1 May 1997 | 16 |
Series 34: 1997–1998
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Destination Mars" | 4 July 1997 | — |
| The second of two programmes about the Red Planet. Traces the course of the planned human mission to Mars, which could take place within the next twenty years. Focuses on the numerous complications involved in such a mission, from the potential physical damage caused to cosmonauts by their zero-gravity surroundings to the psychological pressures involved in the 30-month-long trip. | ||
| "Mars, Death or Glory?" | 5 July 1997 | — |
| "Crater of Death" | 11 September 1997 | 1 |
| "Mind over Body" | 18 September 1997 | 2 |
| "Out of Asia" | 25 September 1997 | 3 |
| "The Virus That Cures" | 9 October 1997 | 4 |
| "The Man Who Lost His Body" | 16 October 1997 | 5 |
| "Dawn of the Clone Age" | 23 October 1997 | 6 |
| The story of how and why Dolly the sheep, the first cloned copy of an adult mammal, came to be created. | ||
| "The Ice Forms (Antarctica Special Edition Part 1)" | 30 October 1997 | — |
| The first of Kate O'Sullivan's trilogy of films about Antarctica. Antarctica's polar ice sheet is the highest, coldest, windiest, driest and most unforgiving place on Earth. The average temperature near the South Pole is minus 49 degrees C, winds reach over 2000km an hour and water in liquid form is scarce. Yet this hostile environment has now become the last frontier on Earth and, each year, a population of 3,000 human colonists tries to settle here. This film focuses on the risks and rigours of living in this inhospitable continent. | ||
| "The Ice Lives (Antarctica Special Edition Part 2)" | 6 November 1997 | — |
| The second of Kate O'Sullivan's Antarctic trilogy. The mystery of what formed the vast continent of Antarctica has obsessed explorers since Shackleton and Scott. Piecing together evidence from the tiny amount of rock exposed above the ice, geologists have come up with a radical theory that may also predict how Antarctica will change in the future. | ||
| "The Ice Melts (Antarctica Special Edition Part 3)" | 13 November 1997 | — |
| Third of Kate O'Sullivan's Antarctica trilogy. This final film is a detective story unravelled by scientists scattered on the ice sheet, trying to understand the mechanisms that control it. | ||
| "Crash" | 12 January 1998 | 7 |
| "Saddam's Secrets" | 19 February 1998 | 8 |
| "Dr Miller and the Islanders" | 26 February 1998 | 9 |
| "The Rainmaker" | 5 March 1998 | 10 |
| "Hopeful Monsters" | 19 March 1998 | 11 |
| "Premature Babies, The Limits to Birth" | 26 March 1998 | 12 |
| "Darwin, The Legacy" | 29 March 1998 | — |
| "Overkill" | 2 April 1998 | 13 |
| "The Curse of Vesuvius" | 16 April 1998 | 14 |
| "Mir Mortals" | 23 April 1998 | 15 |
| Chronicled the events of Mir EO-23, a joint US-Russian mission to Russia's Mir Space station, and the series of near-disasters that occurred during the course of the mission. | ||
| "The Computer That Ate Hollywood" | 30 April 1998 | 16 |
| "Magic Bullet" | 7 May 1998 | 17 |
| "The Gulf War Jigsaw" | 14 May 1998 | 18 |
Series 35: 1998–1999
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Sexual Chemistry" | 10 September 1998 | 1 |
| "Chimps on Death Row" | 1 October 1998 | 2 |
| "Dinosaurs in Your Garden" | 8 October 1998 | 3 |
| "Mosquito!" | 15 October 1998 | 4 |
| "The Life and Times of Life and Time" | 22 October 1998 | 5 |
| "Thalidomide, A Necessary Evil" | 29 October 1998 | 6 |
| "Beyond a Joke" | 5 November 1998 | 7 |
| "Longitude" | 4 January 1999 | — |
| "Born to Be Fat (Fat Files Special Edition Part 1)" | 7 January 1999 | — |
| First of three documentaries taking a look at the issue of obesity. 1 of 3: This programme attempts to establish why some people are destined to be big. | ||
| "Fixing Fat (Fat Files Special Edition Part 2)" | 14 January 1999 | — |
| The second in a trilogy of programmes studying obesity. As the search for drugs to reduce appetite by resetting control mechanisms in the brain continues, new research uncovers the powerful food ingredients that could win the slimming war. The programme examines the lengths to which some overweight people are prepared to go in attempting to reduce their size, from stomach stapling to the ingestion of dangerous drugs. | ||
| "Living on Air (Fat Files Special Edition Part 3)" | 21 January 1999 | — |
| Last of a trilogy of programmes studying obesity. Examines some ground-breaking research into eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, trying to establish if they are inherited. The discovery of a group of anorexics in a most unlikely place seems to put paid to the theory that the disease is the product of western's society's increased levels of stress. | ||
| "From Here to Infinity" | 28 January 1999 | 8 |
| "Pandemic" | 4 February 1999 | 9 |
| "Elephants or Ivory" | 11 February 1999 | 10 |
| "Electric Heart" | 18 February 1999 | 11 |
| "Sudden Death" | 25 February 1999 | 12 |
| "New Star in Orbit" | 11 March 1999 | 13 |
| "New Asteroid Danger" | 18 March 1999 | 14 |
| "Skeleton Key" | 25 March 1999 | 15 |
| "Designer Babies" | 7 April 1999 | 16 |
| "Wings of Angels" | 1 August 1999 | 17 |
Series 36: 1999–2000
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Atlantis Uncovered (Atlantis Special Edition Part 1)" | 28 October 1999 | — |
| "Atlantis Reborn (Atlantis Special Edition Part 2)" | 4 November 1999 | — |
| "Mistaken Identity" | 11 November 1999 | 1 |
| "Volcanoes of the Deep" | 18 November 1999 | 2 |
| "Anatomy of an Avalanche" | 25 November 1999 | 3 |
| "The Midas Formula" | 2 December 1999 | 4 |
| "Breath of Life" | 13 January 2000 | 5 |
| "Lost City of Nasca" | 20 January 2000 | 6 |
| "The Diamond Makers" | 27 January 2000 | 7 |
| "Supervolcanos" | 3 February 2000 | 8 |
| "Miracle in Orbit" | 10 February 2000 | 9 |
| "Complete Obsession: Body Dysmorphia" | 17 February 2000 | 10 |
| "Living Forever (Life and Death in the 21st Century Special Edition Part 1)" | 4 January 2000 | — |
| "Future Plagues (Life and Death in the 21st Century Special Edition Part 2)" | 5 January 2000 | — |
| "Designer Babies (Life and Death in the 21st Century Special Edition Part 3)" | 6 January 2000 | — |
| This episode originally aired on 7 April 1999 under the title Designer Babies.[70] | ||
| "Is GM Safe?" | 9 March 2000 | 11 |
| "Planet Hunters" | 16 March 2000 | 12 |
| "Constant Craving: The Science of Addiction" | 30 March 2000 | 13 |
| "Moon Children" | 4 April 2000 | 14 |
Series 37: 2000–2001
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Mega-Tsunami, Wave of Destruction" | 12 October 2000 | 1 |
| Horizon investigates an extremely rare and destructive phenomenon that strikes every few thousand years: a mega-tsunami. | ||
| "Conjoined Twins" | 19 October 2000 | 2 |
| Separating conjoined twins is one of the most challenging operations a surgeon can face. Horizon examines the dilemmas which confront doctors and parents. | ||
| "The Lost World of Lake Vostok" | 26 October 2000 | 3 |
| Horizon investigates Lake Vostok, a vast and ancient lake deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. | ||
| "Vanished, The Plane That Disappeared" | 2 November 2000 | 4 |
| Horizon follows an expedition to the Andes where wreckage from missing 1947 passenger plane Star Dust mysteriously reappeared. | ||
| "The Secret Treasures of Zeugma" | 9 November 2000 | 5 |
| In the summer of 2000 the Roman city of Zeugma all but disappeared under the flood waters of the Birecik Dam. Horizon tells the story of a team of archaeologists' final visit, struggling to save what they could before the dam waters rose. | ||
| "The Valley of Life or Death" | 16 November 2000 | 6 |
| An investigation of why circumcised children from the Lozi and Luvale Tribes of Africa appear to have much reduced HIV infection rates. | ||
| "Extreme Dinosaurs" | 23 November 2000 | 7 |
| Huge plant- and meat-eaters have been unearthed in Argentina along with evidence that the mega-carnivores hunted together in packs. | ||
| "Supermassive Black Holes" | 30 November 2000 | 8 |
| Horizon investigates growing evidence that the ultimate force of cosmological destruction - a supermassive black hole - may in fact breathe life into every galaxy in the Universe. | ||
| "The Boy Who Was Turned into a Girl" | 7 December 2000 | 9 |
| The extraordinary story of Canadian Bruce Reimer who was surgically turned into a girl after birth, offering a fascinating insight into what makes us male and female. | ||
| "Atlantis Reborn Again" | 14 December 2000 | 10 |
| This episode is a re-edited version of Atlantis Reborn after Broadcasting Standards Commission ruled that the original special episode broadcast on 4 November 1999 was unfair to the author Graham Hancock.[71] | ||
| "Life on Mars (Mars Special Episode Part 1)" | 11 January 2001 | — |
| "Destination Mars (Mars Special Episode Part 2)" | 18 January 2001 | — |
| "The Mystery of the Miami Circle" | 25 January 2001 | 11 |
| After demolishing a building in Miami in 1998, workers discover a perfectly preserved circle of large holes, almost 13 metres across. Horizon follows the investigations to determine the origin of the mysterious circle, concluding that it is the remains of a forgotten tribe called the Tequesta. | ||
| "The Missing Link" | 1 February 2001 | 12 |
| Horizon investigates how a small jawbone could explain how, 360 million years ago, a slimy fish-like creature grew legs and walked onto the land to become our ancestor. | ||
| "Killer Algae" | 8 February 2001 | 13 |
| The story of caulerpa taxifolia, an algae that has caused devastating ecological changes in some marine habitats. | ||
| "Ecstasy and Agony" | 15 February 2001 | 14 |
| Horizon investigates whether the drug ecstasy could be used to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. | ||
| "Snowball Earth" | 22 February 2001 | 15 |
| Horizon investigates a theory that for millions of years the Earth was entirely smothered in ice, stretching from the poles to the tropics. | ||
| "Taming the Problem Child" | 8 March 2001 | 16 |
| Two disruptive children are followed through a controversial treatment regime. | ||
Series 38: 2001–2002
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "What Sank the Kursk?" | 8 August 2001 | — |
| "The Mystery of the Persian Mummy" | 20 September 2001 | 1 |
| "The Ape That Took Over the World" | 4 October 2001 | 2 |
| "Life Blood" | 11 October 2001 | 3 |
| "The Death Star" | 18 October 2001 | 4 |
| "Cloning the First Human" | 25 October 2001 | 5 |
| "Helike, The Real Atlantis" | 10 January 2002 | 6 |
| "Volcano Hell" | 17 January 2002 | 7 |
| "Fatbusters" | 24 January 2002 | 8 |
| "The Lost Pyramids of Caral" | 31 January 2002 | 9 |
| "Death of the Iceman" | 7 February 2002 | 10 |
| "Parallel Universes" | 14 February 2002 | 11 |
| "The Dinosaur That Fooled the World" | 21 February 2002 | 12 |
| "The Fall of the World Trade Center" | 7 March 2002 | 13 |
| "Archimedes' Secret" | 14 March 2002 | 14 |
| "The Mystery of the Jurassic" | 28 March 2002 | 15 |
| "Killer Lakes" | 4 April 2002 | 16 |
| "The A6 Murder" | 16 May 2002 | 17 |
| "The England Patient" | 23 May 2002 | 18 |
Series 39: 2002–2003
Horizon Revisited was broadcast on BBC Four and shown between 2002 and 2003. Each of the seven episodes takes information and clips from previous edition of Horizon and updates them with current thinking on each of the topics at hand. These are similar in format to the current 'Horizon Guide' special episodes.
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Horizon Revisited, A Tale of Two Feathers" | 18 October 2002 | — |
| "Horizon Revisited, Mega Tsunami: Coming to a Beach near You" | 25 October 2002 | — |
| "Freak Wave" | 14 November 2002 | 1 |
| Horizon examines how the mariners' mythical wall of water could indeed be a quantum physics reality. | ||
| "Stone Age Columbus" | 21 November 2002 | 2 |
| Flint tools found on both sides of the Atlantic ocean suggest a whole new version of North American prehistory. | ||
| "Homeopathy, The Test" | 26 November 2002 | 3 |
| Horizon conducts its own experiment to see if the alternative medicine has any scientific basis. | ||
| "Horizon Revisited, Back to the Dark Ages" | 29 November 2002 | — |
| "The Day The Earth Nearly Died" | 5 December 2002 | 4 |
| Long before the dinosaurs came and went, the Permian Extinction, 300 million years ago killed 95% of all life on Earth. | ||
| "Horizon Revisited, Dawn of the Dinosaurs" | 6 December 2002 | — |
| "The Secret of El Dorado – Discovery of Terra Preta" | 19 December 2002 | 5 |
| The Amazon soil offers a prehistoric clue to the truth behind the 'cities of gold' and a possible answer to rainforest destruction. | ||
| "The Mystery of Easter Island" | 9 January 2003 | 6 |
| Where did the inhabitants of Easter Island come from and how did they create its celebrated stone statues? | ||
| "Living Nightmare" | 16 January 2003 | 7 |
| People with narcolepsy fall asleep all the time. Could their condition offer us all a route to a future without tiredness? | ||
| "Averting Armageddon" | 23 January 2003 | 8 |
| Horizon examines the effects of a major asteroid collision with the earth. | ||
| "Dirty Bomb" | 30 January 2003 | 9 |
| An investigation of the effects that a Dirty bomb would have on London if it were exploded in Trafalgar Square. | ||
| "Sexual Chemistry" | 13 February 2003 | 10 |
| The search for a female equivalent of the drug Viagra. | ||
| "The Day We Learned to Think" | 20 February 2003 | 11 |
| A 77,000-year-old fragment of paint in Blombos Cave raises important questions about human evolution.[72] | ||
| "Trial and Error, The Rise and Fall of Gene Therapy" | 27 February 2003 | 12 |
| An investigation into gene therapy in which diseases caused by genetic anomalies could be eradicated. | ||
| "Horizon Revisited, You Do as You Are Told: Jonathan Miller and the Milgram Experiment" | 27 February 2003 | — |
| "Earthquake Storms" | 6 March 2003 | 13 |
| A new theory could help save thousands of lives by predicting impending earthquakes. | ||
| "Horizon Revisited, The Human Genome Project" | 6 March 2003 | — |
| "Horizon Revisited, Michael Adler on AIDS" | 13 March 2003 | — |
| "Life on Mars" | 27 March 2003 | 14 |
| Recent discoveries have shown that Mars has all the ingredients for life, including water, so could life be present there? | ||
| "The Secret Life of Caves" | 3 April 2003 | 15 |
| Horizon investigates the discovery of extreme rock-eating microbes - a testimony from primordial Earth and a glimpse of life elsewhere in the Solar System. | ||
| "God on the Brain" | 17 April 2003 | 16 |
| Investigations into temporal lobe epilepsy seem to suggest that our brains are naturally programmed to believe in religion. | ||
| "Flight 587" | 8 May 2003 | 17 |
| Why did American Airlines Flight 587 crash into a suburb of New York City in November 2001? | ||
| "SARS, The True Story" | 29 May 2003 | 18 |
| Was the response to the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak of 2003 appropriate? | ||
Series 40: 2003–2004
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Big Chill" | 13 November 2003 | 1 |
| Is Britain heading for a climate similar to that of Alaska? The theory of a growing number of experts is examined in the first of a new run of the science documentary strand. The Earth's past was littered with sudden, drastic drops in temperature. Some believe the Gulf Stream, the vast current of water that keeps us warm, could be cut off in the next century. Others say a climate catastrophe could be heading our way within 20 years.[73] | ||
| "The Bible Code" | 20 November 2003 | 2 |
| American journalist-turned-author Michael Drosnin claims he can predict the future using a 3,000-year-old code hidden within the Bible. With professed scientific backing from a theoretical mathematician, Drosnin believes that Armageddon could take place in 2006, while in he accurately predicted the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a year before it happened. Could he have stumbled upon one of the most important discoveries ever made? Horizon puts the Bible Code to the test.[74] | ||
| "Last Flight of the Columbia" | 27 November 2003 | 3 |
| What caused the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia, and could Nasa have done anything to save the lives of the seven crew? Footage taken inside Columbia during its last flight, forensic analysis, and an assessment of Nasa's decision-making process, reveals that the failure of a component built to be indestructible resulted in the catastrophe, and suggest that there were a number of options available to Nasa that could have brought the crew safely back to Earth.[75] | ||
| "The Hunt for the AIDS Vaccine" | 4 December 2003 | 4 |
| In 1984. when HIV was discovered to be the cause of Aids, there were confident predictions that a vaccine to combat the disease would be ready for testing in just two years. Almost two decades on, with 25 million dead, there is still no sign of a vaccine, with brilliant scientists finding themselves continually thwarted by the virus's ability to change its structure. This documentary follows the microbiological detective story that has seen some of the best brains struggling to defeat the most extraordinary bug the world has ever seen.[76] | ||
| "Percy Pilcher's Flying Machine" | 11 December 2003 | 5 |
| To mark the hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers inaugural flight, Horizon tells the story of Percy Pilcher, an Englishman who could have been the first person to fly a powered aircraft. In 1899, four years before the Wright brothers, he had constructed his own aeroplane. But on the day it was due to take off, technical problems led him to fly another aircraft - a decision that ended in a fatal crash. Now, with a team of historians, aviation experts, and its own test pilot, Horizon painstakingly rebuilds Pilcher's flying machine to it to the test.[77] | ||
| "Time Trip" | 18 December 2003 | 6 |
| Ever since Einstein showed it was theoretically possible, the quest to travel through time has appealed to both amateurs and brilliant scientists alike. The amateurs include Aage Nost , who demonstrates his time machine for the cameras, while Professor Frank Tipler has theoretically sound designs for a machine - but in practice it would weigh half the mass of the galaxy. There is, however, one way that time travel to the past could be possible - future scientists could use computers to create exact replicas of past times. But if that's true, who's to say we are not one of the replicas?[78] | ||
| "The Demonic Ape" | 8 January 2004 | 7 |
| Jane Goodall's studies of the chimps of Gombe, Tanzania, highlighted strong similarities between simian and human behaviour. The chimps used tools, could lay claim to a culture, and even had their own language. They were also capable of savage brutality against their own kind. But when one of Goodall's chimps killed a human baby, the debate was really brought into focus. Many scientists now believe aggressive human male behaviour shares its origins with that of chimpanzees. Horizon explores some of the questions this raises and examines the complex relationship that now exists between science, man and the chimpanzee.[79] | ||
| "The Moscow Theatre Siege" | 15 January 2004 | 8 |
| In October 2002, Chechen terrorists took 1,000 people hostage in a Moscow theatre. Three days later Russian special forces stormed the theatre using a secret gas that was blamed for 129 hostage deaths, though they insisted it was not lethal. Were they correct?[80] | ||
| "The Atkins Diet" | 22 January 2004 | 9 |
| "Secrets of the Star Disc" | 29 January 2004 | 10 |
| This is the extraordinary story of how a small metal disc is rewriting the epic saga of how civilisation first came to Europe, 3600 years ago. | ||
| "The Dark Secret of Hendrik Schön" | 5 February 2004 | 11 |
| "Thalidomide, A Second Chance?" | 12 February 2004 | 12 |
| "Diamond Labs" | 4 March 2004 | 13 |
| "T. Rex, Warrior or Wimp?" | 11 March 2004 | 14 |
| "Project Poltergeist" | 18 March 2004 | 15 |
| "The Truth of Troy" | 25 March 2004 | 16 |
| Since 1988 Professor Manfred Korfmann has been excavating the site of Troy. He has made various discoveries - how large the city was, how well it was defended and that there was once a great battle there at the time that experts believe the Trojan war occurred. But who had attacked the city and why? Horizon then follows the clues - the ancient tablets written by a lost civilisation, a sunken ship rich in treasure, and the golden masks and bronze swords of a warrior people. The film reaches its conclusion in a tunnel deep beneath Troy, where Korfmann has made a discovery that may reveal the truth behind the myth.[81] | ||
Series 41: 2004–2005
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "First Olympian" | 23 July 2004 | — |
| "The Truth About Vitamins" | 16 September 2004 | 1 |
| "King Solomon's Tablet of Stone" | 22 September 2004 | 2 |
| "Derek Tastes of Earwax" | 30 September 2004 | 3 |
| "What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?" | 7 October 2004 | 4 |
| "Making Millions the Easy Way" | 14 October 2004 | 5 |
| "Saturn, Lord of the Rings" | 21 October 2004 | 6 |
| "The Hunt for the Supertwister" | 28 October 2004 | 7 |
| "Dr. Money and the Boy with No Penis" | 4 November 2004 | 8 |
| "Global Dimming" | 13 January 2005 | 9 |
| "Einstein's Unfinished Symphony" | 20 January 2005 | 10 |
| "Einstein's Equation of Life and Death" | 27 January 2005 | 11 |
| "Living with ADHD" | 3 February 2005 | 12 |
| "Neanderthal" | 10 February 2005 | 13 |
| "An Experiment to Save the World" | 17 February 2005 | 14 |
| "Who's Afraid of Designer Babies?" | 24 February 2005 | 15 |
| Featured in the episode were French Anderson - USC School of Medicine, Philip Bereano - University of Washington and Keith Campbell - Roslin Institute 1991-97 who was a member of the team that team that cloned Dolly the sheep | ||
| "The Lost Civilisation of Peru" | 3 March 2005 | 16 |
| The Moche were one of the most fabulous and frightening of the ancient South American civilisations. But after 650 years of glory, they apparently disappeared; new research reveals why. | ||
| "The Next Megaquake" | 22 May 2005 | 17 |
| "Does the MMR Jab Cause Autism?" | 29 May 2005 | 18 |
| "Malaria, Defeating the Curse" | 5 June 2005 | 19 |
Series 42: 2005–2006
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Tsunami, Naming the Dead" | 8 September 2005 | 1 |
| Since January, the biggest international forensic operation in history has struggled to identify nearly 4,000 victims of the most devastating natural disaster of recent times: the tsunami in South East Asia on Boxing Day 2004. This film follows the scientific detective story unfolding at a mortuary in south-west Thailand - the heart of an immense operation, where over forensic scientists, doctors and police from more than 30 countries hope their cutting-edge methods will shed light on the identities of those killed. | ||
| "The Hawking Paradox" | 15 September 2005 | 2 |
| For 30 years, Stephen Hawking has staunchly defended an idea called the "information paradox", which centres on whether information can be destroyed. A year ago, however, he had to admit that he was wrong. With his legacy being called into question, this documentary follows Hawking as he struggles to finish what many think might be his last paper. Can he end his career on a high, especially in the light of his deteriorating health? | ||
| "The Mystery of the Human Hobbit" | 22 September 2005 | 3 |
| The unearthing of the skeleton of a tiny woman on an Indonesian island was hailed as the scientific sensation of the century - with archaeologists convinced they'd discovered a new member of our family tree. But new evidence suggests they made a spectacular mistake. Was she really a new species or just a modern human with a crippling deformity? | ||
| "The Doctor Who Makes People Walk Again?" | 29 September 2005 | 4 |
| The controversial work of the doctor who claims he can make people walk again is put under the microscope. Using a technique that would be banned in the West. Dr Huang Hongyun injects cells from aborted foetuses into the brains and spines of patients with spinal injuries and disease. His treatment is based on research pioneered in the UK but scientists and neurosurgeons point to a gap in his provision of evidence or data. Could his patients be at risk? | ||
| "Could Fish Make My Child Smart?" | 6 October 2005 | 5 |
| There seems to be no end to the claims made about the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, from treating depression, to preventing murder, to boosting the 10 of children. In an attempt to unravel the legitimacy of this last assertion, the results of an experiment that saw nearly 300 children given omega-3 supplements or a placebo are revealed. Plus the origins of our obsession with fish oil is traced to Oxford University and Professor Hugh Sinclair 's "Eskimo" diet, which he claimed could protect us against heart disease. | ||
| "Madagascar, A Treetop Odyssey" | 13 October 2005 | 6 |
| The virgin rainforests of Madagascar support some of the rarest species on Earth - 75 per cent are found nowhere else in the world. Much of this remarkable diversity is found in the forest canopy, which has been virtually inaccessible to scientists - until now. They're using ingenious methods - including a giant inflatable raft and a metal tree house - to explore a potential treasure trove of biochemical resources. Horizon follows their fascinating work - and an expedition that's not without its dangers. | ||
| "Titan, A Place Like Home?" | 20 October 2005 | 7 |
| Over a billion kilometres from our planet, Saturn's largest satellite Titan may hold tantalising clues to how life began here on Earth. Last January, after a seven-year trek across the solar system, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft landed a probe on the moon's hidden surface. But if Titan at first glance resembles Earth, it is soon revealed as rather less hospitable, with a surface of solid ice, river channels gouged by methane rain, and volcanos that belch subzero liquid H20. | ||
| "The 7/7 Bombers, A Psychological Investigation" | 27 October 2005 | 8 |
| The latest psychological research on international terror cells is used in this investigation into the London bombings of 7 July, revealing how it was possible for Britain to produce home-grown killers and how to spot potentially dangerous groups before it is too late. | ||
| "The Ghost in Your Genes" | 3 November 2005 | 9 |
| Could the dodgy pie your grandfather once ate be the root of your stomach problems? The answer's yes, according to scientists who have found a whole new layer to our genes beyond DNA, the very cornerstone on which modern biology sits. With it comes startling first evidence that this can cause heritable effects in humans. The controversial science of epigenetics represents a major shift in thinking from the view that DNA carries all our heritable information, and that nothing an individual does in their lifetime will be biologically passed to their children. | ||
| "The Life and Times of El Niño" | 3 January 2006 | 10 |
| It is one of the most fearsome natural phenomena, affecting seas and weather from Europe to Antarctica. It causes drought in Australia, freak storms in California, bitter winters in Europe and can even stop the Indian monsoon. But could global warming turn El Nino into something even worse? | ||
| "Space Tourists" | 12 January 2006 | 11 |
| Meeting the men attempting to sell return tickets to the stars. From eccentric entrepreneurs to billionaire businessmen, the race is on to turn space tourism into a reality. Virgin Galactic claims it will take customers into space in about two years. How does Richard Branson intend to do what Nasa never could - make space travel available to all? And in 1996, an entrepreneur established the XPrize; a $10 million prize for the first commercial crewed craft to reach sub orbit - 62 miles above Earth - twice in two weeks. | ||
| "Waiting for a Heartbeat" | 19 January 2006 | 12 |
| With six heartbreaking miscarriages behind her, aspiring mother Rachel needs help. Pregnant for the seventh time, she travels to the largest recurrent miscarriage clinic in Europe, where Professor Lesley Regan and her team offer the hope of a precious new life. The programme follows the scientists' painstaking search to unravel the mystery of Rachel's failed pregnancies. Can they finally help give her the baby she so desperately longs for? | ||
| "A War on Science" | 26 January 2006 | 13 |
| The theory of evolution is under attack from a controversial idea called intelligent design, an idea that claims to give an alternative explanation for the origin of life on Earth. This new movement claims to be scientific but to many it threatens to replace science with God. Now some of its most high-profile critics - Sir David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins among them - are speaking out in an attempt to halt the movement's rise and keep religion out of science. | ||
| "The Lost City of New Orleans" | 2 February 2006 | 14 |
| For many in the scientific community, the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in August last year was seen as an early 21st-century example of the consequences when humans believe that, by trying to control nature, they can live anywhere. Six months on, the documentary strand follows scientists as they piece together what went wrong and attempt to answer the controversial question of whether the city of New Orleans should be rebuilt at all. | ||
| "Most of Our Universe Is Missing" | 9 February 2006 | 15 |
| Cosmologists are at loggerheads. Some say we still don't know what 96 per cent of the universe is made from. Others argue scientific theories such as Newton's universal law of gravitation may be wrong. New ideas on dark matter, dark energy and variable gravity may explain mysteries of the universe as experts face the biggest problem in science today. | ||
| "Winning Gold in 2012" | 18 March 2006 | — |
| How the former East Germany and latterly Australia have used science to achieve sporting success. The London Olympics may seem a long way off, but this programme encounters the British children who are already in training for this event. Is science the key to producing the successful Olympians of the future? | ||
| "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow" | 8 June 2006 | 16 |
| The incredible story of Dr Temple Grandin who has a legendary ability to understand animal behaviour in a way that nobody else can. She is convinced she experiences the world much as an animal does and that it's all down to her autistic brain. Though Grandin didn't learn to speak until she was five, at nearly 60 she's an Associate Professor of Animal Science and the most famous autistic woman on the planet. Horizon follows her remarkable journey to global acclaim. | ||
| "The Genius Sperm Bank" | 15 June 2006 | 17 |
| To ensure the future of the human race, millionaire optometrist Robert Klark Graham planned to bring thousands of geniuses into the world - geniuses fathered by some of the most brilliant minds. In 1980, in an underground bunker on his family estate in San Diego, he established his Repository for Germinal Choice, a genius sperm bank which even had "donations" solicited from Nobel Laureates - including the controversial inventor and apologist for eugenics William Shockley. | ||
| "Bye Bye, Planet Pluto" | 22 June 2006 | 18 |
| In a tragic end to a short life, the smallest and youngest planet, Pluto, could soon be relegated to the status of a mere asteroid. Some have scorned it for years and the discovery of a potential tenth planet in our backyard could be the final nail in its coffin. Horizon asks just how many planets there are in our solar system - and discovers that nine is the wrong answer. | ||
| "We Love Cigarettes" | 29 June 2006 | 19 |
| Has our bizarre love affair with nicotine finally reached the end of its 500-year romance? Filmed across the globe on a single day, Horizon meets three of the people whose lives are defined by the cigarette: Allen Carr. who claims he may persuade smokers to quit by the end of the programme: Dr Jed Rose, the "Willy Wonka" of nicotine and inventor of the nicotine patch: and Dr Chris Proctor, the chief scientist at British American Tobacco, who has the tricky task of making a "safer" cigarette. From London to LA and Beijing to Bollywood, this film delivers a unique insight into the love/hate relationship that divides our planet. | ||
| "Nuclear Nightmares" | 13 July 2006 | 20 |
| At any moment, the armed forces of East and West are ready for war. Should our grudging peace ever falter, today's, warriors can stage a battle far worse than any. thing our world has ever seen. For more than 30 years now the world has lived with the unthinkable, namely that civilisation as we know it could be brought to a sudden and catastrophic end in a nuclear holocaust. Until the recent Salt II debate there has been little talk in public or private during the past decade of the possibility of nuclear war. As a topic it has been brushed under the carpet by politicians and people alike. In this programme Peter Ustinov breaks through the veil of secrecy and indifference to examine four possible routes to nuclear war and in turn gives substance to the particular nightmares they evoke. | ||
| "Tutankhamun's Fireball" | 20 July 2006 | 21 |
| Scattered in the sand of the Sahara are chunks of glass so old that they predate the ancient Egyptians - but the origin of this matter has been a scientific enigma, ever since a piece was found in Tutankhamun's tomb. Now a team of scientists has set out to finally solve the mystery. Their quest takes them on a perilous journey into the Great Sand Sea and the wastes of Siberia to gather evidence, and on to the test site of the world's first atomic bomb in New Mexico. What their search uncovers is a devastating new natural phenomenon - yet another cosmic threat to inspire the Hollywood scriptwriters. | ||
Series 43: 2006–2007
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Survivors Guide to Plane Crashes" | 3 October 2006 | 1 |
| Every day across the world, more than 3 million people catch a plane. Yet despite it being the safest form of travel, many of us are terrified of flying and what we fear most is crashing and dying. Most people believe that if they're in a plane crash their time is up, in fact the truth is surprisingly different. Over 90% of plane crashes have survivors and there are many things you can do to increase your chances of staying alive. We have spoken to aviation safety experts, crash investigators as well as plane crash survivors - and put together the 'ultimate survivors guide to plane crashes'. Visit the links below to find out more.[82] | ||
| "Chimps Are People Too" | 10 October 2006 | 2 |
| Danny Wallace is on a mission to convince the world that chimps are people too. He believes the time has come to make our hairy relatives part of the family. Our primate brethren share 99.4% of our crucial DNA and are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas. This being so, should they be afforded the same rights as people? The reason for this scientific showdown is simple. If chimps can communicate, cook and reason, then how different are they to humans? Armed with the latest scientific evidence, Danny travels the globe to quiz primatologists, philosophers and animal rights lawyers to investigate whether or not chimps should be classed as people.[83] | ||
| "The World's First Face Transplant" | 17 October 2006 | 3 |
| In November 2005, 37-year-old mother of two Isabelle Dinoire became the first person in the world to receive a new face. The decision made by French surgeons to perform the operation went against the findings of almost every other ethical committee in the world and has since sparked a fierce debate over the ethics of the operation. With the long-term effects still unknown, do the risks outweigh the benefits? Are face transplants really in the best interest of the patient?[84] | ||
| "Human Version 2.0" | 24 October 2006 | 4 |
| Meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human - a human v2.0. It's predicted that by 2029 computer intelligence will equal the power of the human brain. Some believe this will revolutionise humanity - we will be able to download our minds to computers extending our lives indefinitely. Others fear this will lead to oblivion by giving rise to destructive ultra intelligent machines. One thing they all agree on is that the coming of this moment - and whatever it brings - is inevitable.[85] | ||
| "The Great Robot Race" | 31 October 2006 | 5 |
| We follow 20 robot cars on a remarkable race across the Nevada desert. These cars drive themselves. There are no drivers and no remote controls, they must navigate entirely on their own. The first time the race was run, the most successful entrant only made it seven miles into the 130 mile course. Will this year's robots do any better? And will any cross the finishing line and claim the two-million-dollar prize? It's a story of set-backs and crashes, as a variety of teams compete to solve one of the hardest problems in robotics.[86] | ||
| "Pandemic" | 7 November 2006 | 6 |
| H5N1 Bird Flu jumps the species barrier and becomes a global pandemic. This drama documentary narrated by Sean Pertwee, based in Cambodia, USA and the UK, explores what is known so far about avian flu and looks at what might happen if a human pandemic occurs. | ||
| "We Are the Aliens" | 14 November 2006 | 7 |
| Clouds of alien life forms are sweeping through outer space and infecting planets with life – it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. The idea that life on Earth came from another planet has been around as a modern scientific theory since the 1960s when it was proposed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. At the time they were ridiculed for their idea – known as panspermia. But now, with growing evidence, it's back in vogue and even being studied by NASA. We meet the scientists on a mission to get to the bottom of the beginnings of life on Earth - from the team in Texas who are lovingly building a robotic submarine called DEPTHX to explore a moon of Jupiter, to Southern India where they are investigating a mysterious red rain which fell for two months in 2001. According to local scientist Godfrey Louis, the rain contains biological cells unlike any he had seen before – with no DNA and the ability to replicate at 300°C. Louis has come to the conclusion that the cells are extra-terrestrial in origin.[87] | ||
| "My Pet Dinosaur" | 13 March 2007 | 8 |
| It is a palaeontologist's dream: the chance to live in a world where dinosaurs are not something to be dug out of the ground but are living among us. It may sound far-fetched but dinosaurs were actually rather unlucky. The meteorite impact that doomed them to extinction was an event with a probability of millions to one. What if the meteorite had missed? Had dinosaurs survived, the world today would be very different. If humans managed to survive alongside them, we wouldn't have the company of most, if not all, of the mammals with which we are familiar today. Giraffes, elephants and other mammals would not have had space to evolve. Would we be hunting Hadrosaurs instead of elk? Or farming Protoceratops instead of pigs? Would dinosaurs be kept as pets? And could the brighter dinosaurs have evolved into something humanoid?[88] | ||
| "The Elephant's Guide to Sex" | 20 March 2007 | 9 |
| Thomas Hildebrandt possesses one of the world's most extraordinary jobs - getting the planet's endangered animals in the mood for love. The planet's creatures are facing the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out. Species are currently disappearing at up to 10,000 times the natural rate. Coming to the rescue are men like Dr Hildebrandt and his team. They are world leaders in the art of animal manipulation. The billions of pounds spent benefiting human reproduction are now being applied to save endangered species. Techniques such as artificial insemination and IVF have been crucial to the successes in breeding giant pandas, big cats and other mammals in zoos across the world. As Thomas Hildebrandt says "Man has created this annihilation of species. It's up to man to use his ingenuity to save them."[89] | ||
| "Prof Regan's Beauty Parlour" | 27 March 2007 | 10 |
| Professor Lesley Regan, one of the UK's most respected medical experts, takes a scientific look at the world of makeup. Having just turned 50, Lesley happily inspects the wrinkles, age spots and broken veins on her own face in order to explore what exactly it is that makes us look old, and whether or not the ageing process can really be slowed down.[90] | ||
| "Mad but Glad" | 3 April 2007 | 11 |
| Examining award-winning pianist Nick van Bloss's life with Tourette's, and how the symptoms of his illness disappeared when he channelled his energy into playing the instrument. But was his illness the real cause of his success? This programme speaks with scientists who believe that genius can be traced to a person's chemistry, and attempts to determine whether Nick's brain patterns dictate the unique way in which he views the world.[91] | ||
| "Moon for Sale" | 10 April 2007 | 12 |
| Across the globe, scientists and entrepreneurs are gearing up for the second Moon race - colonisation. This programme speaks to Nevada businessman Dennis Hope, who has sold lunar real estate to nearly four million people, including George Lucas, John Travolta, Tom Hanks and George W Bush. Plus an investigation into scientific claims that the helium-3 gas found in lunar soil could be used to create a new source of pollution-free energy on Earth.[92] | ||
| "Battle of the Brains" | 17 April 2007 | 13 |
| The most popular way in which human intelligence is measured is the 10 test, but is this the most effective? A growing number of psychologists argue that the assessment only tells half the story because no-one can quite agree on what intelligence is. After an examination of the most recent theories, this programme conducts an experiment on seven highly-qualified people from different occupations, including a fighter pilot, a Wall Street trader, a chess grandmaster and a quantum physicist. Each is put through a series of tests based on the latest research to determine who has the highest intelligence. But are the results conclusive?[93] | ||
| "Skyscraper Fire Fighters" | 24 April 2007 | 14 |
| A fire in a skyscraper is one of the greatest challenges known to firefighters, and the decision to send crews into these towering infernos can result in tragic consequences. However, after ten years of research, Edinburgh University's Professor Jose Torero claims to have invented a revolutionary new method of protecting firefighters that has the potential to save thousands of lives. This programme takes an in-depth look at Torero's system in an attempt to see whether it could, as he believes, give man the upper hand against nature.[94] | ||
| "The Six Billion Dollar Experiment" | 1 May 2007 | 15 |
| On 26 November 2007, the most complex scientific instrument ever built will be used in an extraordinarily ambitious experiment. Located within a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the French/Swiss border, the $6 billion(approximately £3 billion) Large Hadron Collider will be used to re-create the Big Bang. If successful, the experiment could open the door to a complete understanding of the universe's deepest secrets and even yield the ultimate goal of physics - a theory of everything. But if the worst happens, the collider could create a black hole powerful enough to devour the entire planet. | ||
| "How to Commit the Perfect Murder" | 8 May 2007 | 16 |
| With the help of forensic science most crimes can be solved. But most criminals have not approached their crimes scientifically. | ||
| "Professor Regan's Supermarket Secrets" | 31 May 2007 | 17 |
| Probiotic, superfood, organic: what do all these labels on food mean, apart from making a product more expensive? Professor Lesley Regan, who tested beauty products in a previous episode, tests a variety of supermarket products for their supposed health benefits. | ||
Series 44: 2007–2008
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Everest: Doctors in the Death Zone Part 1" | 23 September 2007 | — |
| Doctors embarking on a scientific expedition to Mount Everest. From tented laboratories pitched in minus 25-degree temperatures, the results of their experiments could lead to a greater understanding of the human body and revolutionise the treatment of patients in intensive care. | ||
| "Everest: Doctors in the Death Zone Part 2" | 30 September 2007 | — |
| This documentary in the Horizon strand follows Dr Mike Grocott and his team, whose greatest goal is to discover a genetic link that allows some to survive low oxygen while others die. But to do this they must push themselves to the extreme. Standing 8,850m in the sky, Everest is in the "death zone" and by climbing into this hostile environment they will be putting their own lives on the line.[95] | ||
| "How to Kill a Human Being" | 15 January 2008 | 1 |
| Former Conservative MP Michael Portillo pushes his body to the brink of death in an investigation into the science of execution. As the American Supreme Court examines whether the lethal injection is causing prisoners to die in unnecessary pain, Michael sets out to find a solution which is fundamentally humane. Armed with startling new evidence, Michael considers a completely new approach. Will it be the answer? There is only one way to find out – to experience it himself. | ||
| "Total Isolation" | 22 January 2008 | 2 |
| For the first time in 40 years Horizon re-creates a controversial sensory deprivation experiment. Six ordinary people are taken to a nuclear bunker and left alone for 48 hours. Three subjects are left alone in dark, sound-proofed rooms, while the other three are given goggles and foam cuffs, while white noise is piped into their ears. The original experiments carried out in the 1950s and 60s by leading psychologist Prof Donald Hebb, was thought by many in the North American political and scientific establishment to be too cruel and were discontinued. Prof Ian Robbins, head of trauma psychology at St George's Hospital, Tooting, has been treating some of the British Guantanamo detainees and the victims of torture who come to the UK from across the world. Now he evaluates the volunteers as their brains undergo strange alterations.[96] | ||
| "What on Earth Is Wrong with Gravity? " | 29 January 2008 | 3 |
| Particle physicist and ex D:Ream keyboard player Dr Brian Cox wants to know why the Universe is built the way it is. He believes the answers lie in the force of gravity. But Newton thought gravity was powered by God, and even Albert Einstein failed to completely solve it. Heading out with his film crew on a road trip across the USA, Brian fires lasers at the moon in Texas, goes mad in the desert in Arizona, encounters the bending of space and time at a maximum security military base, tries to detect ripples in our reality in the swamps of Louisiana and searches for hidden dimensions just outside Chicago.[97] | ||
| "Is Alcohol Worse than Ecstasy?" | 5 February 2008 | 4 |
| Recent research has analysed the link between the harmful effects of drugs relative to their current classification by law with some startling conclusions. Perhaps most startling of all is that alcohol, solvents and tobacco (all unclassified drugs) are rated more dangerous than ecstasy, 4-MTA and LSD (all class A drugs). If the current ABC system is retained, alcohol would be rated a class A drug and tobacco class B. The scientists involved, including members of the government's top advisory committee on drug classification, have produced a rigorous assessment of the social and individual harm caused by 20 of the UK's most dangerous drugs and believe this should form the basis of future ranking. They think the current ABC system is arbitrary and not based on any scientific evidence. The drug policies have remained unchanged over the last 40 years so should they be reformed in the light of new research?[98] | ||
| "How to Make Better Decisions" | 12 February 2008 | 5 |
| We are bad at making decisions. According to science, our decisions are based on oversimplification, laziness and prejudice. And that's assuming that we haven't already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious! Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple maths and a pencil![99] | ||
| "How to Live to Be 101" | 19 February 2008 | 6 |
| The quest to live longer has been one of humanities oldest dreams, but while scientists have been searching, a few isolated communities have stumbled across the answer. On the remote Japanese island of Okinawa, In the Californian town of Loma Linda and in the mountains of Sardinia people live longer than anywhere else on earth. In these unique communities a group of scientists have dedicated their lives to trying to uncover their secrets. Horizon takes a trip around the globe to meet the people who can show us all how to live longer, healthier lives.[100] | ||
| "Are We Alone in the Universe?" | 4 March 2008 | 7 |
| For fifty years, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence has been scanning the galaxy for a message from an alien civilisation. So far to no avail, but a recent breakthrough suggests they may one day succeed. Horizon joins the planet hunters who've discovered a new world called Gliese 581 c. It is the most Earth-like planet yet found around another star and may have habitats capable of supporting life. NASA too hopes to find fifty more Earth-like planets by the end of the decade, all of which dramatically increases the chance that alien life has begun elsewhere in the galaxy.[101] | ||
| "How Much Is Your Dead Body Worth?" | 18 March 2008 | 8 |
| When veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke died in 2004 few suspected that he was yet to uncover his greatest story. What happened to his body as it lay in a funeral home would reveal a story of modern day grave robbery and helped smash a body-snatching ring that had made millions of dollars by chopping up and selling-off over 1000 bodies. Dead bodies have become big business. Each year millions of people's lives are improved by the use of tissue from the dead. Bodies are used to supply spare parts, and for surgeons to practice on. Horizon investigates the medical revolution that has created an almost insatiable demand for body parts and uncovers the growing industry and grisly black market that supplies human bodies for a price.[102] | ||
| "How Does Your Memory Work?" | 25 March 2008 | 9 |
| You might think that your memory is there to help you remember facts, such as birthdays or shopping lists. If so, you would be very wrong. The ability to travel back in time in your mind is, perhaps, your most remarkable ability, and develops over your lifespan. Horizon takes viewers on an extraordinary journey into the human memory. From the woman who is having her most traumatic memories wiped by a pill, to the man with no memory, this film reveals how these remarkable human stories are transforming our understanding of this unique human ability. The findings reveal the startling truth that everyone is little more than their own memory.[103] | ||
Series 45: 2008–2009
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The President's Guide to Science" | 16 September 2008 | 1 |
| As the US prepares to elect its new president, some of the world's leading scientists, including Richard Dawkins, James Watson and Paul Nurse, share their understanding of problems such as climate change and nuclear proliferation, in the hope of informing the policy-making of the world's most powerful man. | ||
| "How Mad Are You? Part 1" | 11 November 2008 | 2 |
| A group of volunteers, five who are "normal" and five others who have officially been diagnosed as mentally ill, are tested to see if we can tell who belongs to which category. Where does the line between sanity and madness lie? | ||
| "How Mad Are You? Part 2" | 18 November 2008 | 3 |
| The concluding part to last week's programme in which ten volunteers, five of whom have been officially diagnosed as mentally ill, were put through a series of tests. This week the group turn their hand to orienteering and take part in a virtual-reality experiment at the London Institute of Psychiatry, further challenging preconceived notions of what is, or isn't, mental health. | ||
| "Jimmy's GM Food Fight" | 25 November 2008 | 4 |
| Jimmy Doherty, pig farmer, one-time scientist and poster-boy for sustainable food production is on a mission to find out if GM crops really can feed the world. We need to double the amount of food we produce in the next fifty years to feed the world's growing population. Are GM crops the answer? Or are they a dangerous Frankenstein technology that could start an environmental catastrophe? To find the answers Jimmy is on a journey that will take him from the vast soya plantations of Argentina to the traditional Amish farms of Pennsylvania; and from the cutting-edge technology of the GM laboratories to the banana plantations of Uganda. | ||
| "Do You Know What Time It Is?" | 2 December 2008 | 5 |
| Particle physicist Professor Brian Cox asks, 'What time is it?' It's a simple question and it sounds like it has a simple answer. But do we really know what it is that we're asking? Brian visits the ancient Mayan pyramids in Mexico where the Maya built temples to time. He finds out that a day is never 24 hours and meets Earth's very own Director of Time. He journeys to the beginning of time, and goes beyond within the realms of string theory, and explores the very limit of time. He discovers that we not only travel through time at the speed of light, but the experience we feel as the passing of time could be an illusion. | ||
| "Allergy Planet" | 9 December 2008 | 6 |
| We are in the grip of an allergy epidemic. 50 years ago one in 30 were affected, but in Britain today it is closer to one in three. Why this should be is one of modern medicine's greatest puzzles. In search of answers, Horizon travels round the globe, from the remotest inhabited island to the polluted centres of California and the UK. We meet sufferers and the scientists who have dedicated their lives trying to answer the mystery of why we are becoming allergic to our world. | ||
| "Where's My Robot?" | 16 December 2008 | 7 |
| Danny Wallace embarks on a quest to find his ideal android: one that will walk and talk just like him. During his journey to the more unlikely corners of the robotics world, Danny is introduced to a Japanese man who makes copies of himself and his daughter, and an Italian who believes he has found the key to human intelligence... in a video game. | ||
| "Why Are Thin People Not Fat?" | 26 January 2009 | 8 |
| The world is affected by an obesity epidemic, but why is it that not everyone is succumbing? Medical science has been obsessed with this subject and is coming up with some unexpected answers. As it turns out, it is not all about exercise and diet. At the center of this programme is a controversial overeating experiment that aims to identify exactly what it is about some people that makes it hard for them to bulk up. | ||
| "Cannabis: The Evil Weed?" | 3 February 2009 | 9 |
| Cannabis is the world's favourite drug, but also one of the least understood. Can cannabis cause schizophrenia? Is it addictive? Can it lead you on to harder drugs? Or is it simply a herb, an undervalued medicine? Addiction specialist Dr John Marsden (host of Body Hits) discovers that modern science is finally beginning to find answers to these questions. John traces the cannabis plants' birthplace in Kazakhstan; finds the origins of our sensitivity to cannabis in the simple sea squirt; and shows just what it does to our brains. He meets people who have been changed by this drug in drastically different ways – from those whose lives have been shattered to those who lives have been revived. | ||
| "Why Do We Dream?" | 10 February 2009 | 10 |
| Horizon uncovers the secret world of our dreams. In a series of cutting-edge experiments and personal stories, we go in search of the science behind this most enduring mystery and ask: where do dreams come from? Do they have meaning? And ultimately, why do we dream? What the film reveals is that much of what we thought we knew no longer stands true. Dreams are not simply wild imaginings but play a significant part in all our lives as they affect our memories, the ability to learn, and our mental health. Most surprisingly, we find nightmares, too, are beneficial and may even explain the survival of our species. | ||
| "Can We Make a Star on Earth?" | 17 February 2009 | 11 |
| Professor Brian Cox takes a global journey in search of the energy source of the future. Called nuclear fusion, it is the process that fuels the sun and every other star in the universe. Yet despite over five decades of effort, scientists have been unable to get even a single watt of fusion electricity onto the grid. Brian returns to Horizon to find out why. Granted extraordinary access to the biggest and most ambitious fusion experiments on the planet, Brian travels to the USA to see a high security fusion bomb testing facility in action and is given a tour of the world's most powerful laser. In South Korea, he clambers inside the reaction chamber of K-Star, the world's first super-cooled, super-conducting fusion reactor where the fate of future fusion research will be decided. | ||
| "The Secret Life of Your Bodyclock" | 24 February 2009 | 12 |
| Why are you more likely to have a heart attack at eight o'clock in the morning or crash your car on the motorway at two o'clock in the afternoon? Can taking your medication at the right time of day really save your life? And have you ever wondered why teenagers will not get out of bed in the morning? The answers to these questions lie in the secret world of the biological clock. | ||
| "What's the Problem with Nudity?" | 3 March 2009 | 13 |
| What is wrong with nudity? Why are people embarrassed about their bodies? How and why did they get the way they are? Horizon takes a group of volunteers and subjects them to a series of psychological and physical tests to challenge attitudes to the naked human form. The questions raised strike at the heart of human physical and social evolution. Human beings are the only creatures that can be 'naked' - but why, how and when did people lose their fur? That question takes Horizon around the world to meet scientists from Africa to Florida, and they are finding answers in unexpected places: the chest hair of Finnish students, the genetic history of lice, and the sweat of an unusual monkey. It turns out that something everyone takes for granted may hold the key to the success of the entire human species. | ||
| "How to Survive a Disaster" | 10 March 2009 | 14 |
| When disaster strikes who lives and who dies is not purely a matter of luck. In every disaster, from those people face once in a lifetime, to those they face every day, there are things that can be done to increase the chances of getting out alive. Horizon has gathered a team of leading experts to produce the ultimate guide to disaster survival. Through controversial experiments, computer simulations and analysis of hundreds of survivor testimonies from plane crashes to ferry disasters and even 9/11, they will reveal what happens in the mind in the moment of crisis and how the human brain can be programmed for survival. | ||
| "Who Do You Want Your Child to Be?" | 17 March 2009 | 15 |
| David Baddiel, father of two, sets out to answer one of the greatest questions a parent can ask: how best to educate your child. Taking in the latest scientific research, David uncovers some unconventional approaches: from the parent hot-housing his child to record-breaking feats of maths, to a school that pays hard cash for good grades. David witnesses a ground-breaking experiment that suggests a child's destiny can be predicted at four, and hears the three little words that can ruin a child's chance of success for good. He also uncovers the neurological basis for why teenagers can be stroppy and explosive and has his own brain tinkered with to experience what it is like to struggle at school. Through it all, David's quest remains true: to maximise his child's potential for success and happiness. | ||
| "Why Can't We Predict Earthquakes?" | 24 March 2009 | 16 |
| Last century, earthquakes killed over one million, and it is predicted that this century might see ten times as many deaths. Yet when an earthquake strikes, it always takes people by surprise. So why hasn't science worked out how to predict when and where the next big quake is going to happen? This is the story of the men and women who chase earthquakes and try to understand this mysterious force of nature. Journeying to China's Sichuan Province, which still lies devastated by the earthquake that struck in May 2008, as well as the notorious San Andreas Fault in California, Horizon asks why science has so far fallen short of answering this fundamental question. | ||
| "Alan and Marcus Go Forth and Multiply" | 31 March 2009 | 17 |
| Ever since he was at school, actor and comedian Alan Davies has hated maths. And like many people, he is not much good at it either. But Alan has always had a sneaking suspicion that he was missing out. So, with the help of top mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy, Alan is going to embark on a maths odyssey. Together they visit the fourth dimension, cross the universe and explore the concept of infinity. Along the way, Alan does battle with some of the toughest maths questions of our age. But did his abilities peak 25 years ago when he got his grade C O-Level? Or will Alan be able to master the most complex maths concept there is? | ||
| "How Violent Are You?" | 12 May 2009 | 18 |
| What makes ordinary people commit extreme acts of violence? In a thought-provoking and disturbing journey, Michael Portillo investigates one of the darker sides of human nature. He discovers what it is like to inflict pain and is driven to the edge of violence himself in an extreme sleep deprivation study. He meets men for whom violence has become an addiction and ultimately discovers that each of us could be inherently more violent than we think, and watches a replication of one of the most controversial studies in history, the Milgram study. Will study participants be willing to administer a seemingly lethal electric shock to someone they think is an innocent bystander? | ||
Series 46: 2009–2010
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "40 Years on the Moon" | 9 July 2009 | — |
| Professor Brian Cox takes a journey through the BBC science archive to explore the story of man's relationship with the moon, from James Burke testing Nasa equipment to Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface and the dramatic tale of Apollo 13. He also asks whether international competition could help reignite the public's enthusiasm for space travel and bring about the dawn of a new space age. | ||
| "Pandemic: A Horizon Guide" | 9 August 2009 | — |
| In the wake of the swine flu outbreak, virologist Dr Mike Leahy uses over 50 years of the BBC archive to explore the history of pandemics – infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites. Inspired by the Horizon back catalogue, he tells the extraordinary story of smallpox, one of the most violent killers in history, as well as the success of mass vaccination and the global politics of malaria. Through the lens of television the programme charts our scientific progress from the early steps in understanding AIDS to the code-cracking of SARS and deadly predictions of bird flu. Each pandemic episode tells us something about the world and our place within it. In his journey through the ages Dr Leahy charts science's ongoing battle with nature and questions which one is winning. | ||
| "Do I Drink Too Much?" | 13 October 2009 | 1 |
| Alcohol is by far the most widely used drug – and a dangerous one at that. So why are so many of us drinking over the recommended limits? Why does alcohol have such a powerful grip on us? How much of our relationship with this drug is written in our genes? What are the real dangers of our children drinking too young? Addiction expert John Marsden, who likes a drink, makes a professional and personal exploration of our relationship with alcohol. He undergoes physical and neurological examinations to determine its effect, and finds out why some people will find it much harder than others to resist alcohol. Even at the age of 14 there may be a way of determining which healthy children will turn into addicts. John experiments with a designer drug being developed that hopes to replicate all the benefits of alcohol without the dangers. Could this drug replace alcohol in the future? | ||
| "The Secret You" | 20 October 2009 | 2 |
| With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Jennifer Aniston and a general anaesthetic, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science's greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments. He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait. Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anaesthesia. Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self. And in Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain. Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is. | ||
| "Fix Me" | 27 October 2009 | 3 |
| Horizon follows the emotional journey of three young people with currently untreatable conditions to see if within their lifetime, they can be cured. Sophie is desperate to discover if there's a medical breakthrough which will get her walking again – a car crash after celebrating her A level results left her paralysed from the waist down. Anthony's leg was amputated after a rugby accident on the eve of his eighteenth birthday. Will he ever be able to regrow his leg? Father of four, Dean is desperate for a cure for his damaged heart to avoid an early death. They've all read the headlines about the astonishing potential of stem cells to heal the body. Now they've been given access to the pioneering scientists who could transform their lives. With so much at stake, each meeting is highly emotional as our three young people find out if science can fix them. | ||
| "Who's Afraid of a Big Black Hole?" | 3 November 2009 | 4 |
| Black holes are one of the most destructive forces in the universe, capable of tearing a planet apart and swallowing an entire star. Yet scientists now believe they could hold the key to answering the ultimate question – what was there before the Big Bang? The trouble is that researching them is next to impossible. Black holes are by definition invisible and there's no scientific theory able to explain them. Despite these obvious obstacles, Horizon meets the astronomers attempting to image a black hole for the very first time and the theoretical physicists getting ever closer to unlocking their mysteries. It's a story that takes us into the heart of a black hole and to the very edge of what we think we know about the universe. | ||
| "Why Do We Talk?" | 10 November 2009 | 5 |
| Talking is something that is unique to humans, yet it still remains a mystery. Horizon meets the scientists beginning to unlock the secrets of speech – including a father who is filming every second of his son's first three years in order to discover how we learn to talk, the autistic savant who can speak more than 20 languages, and the first scientist to identify a gene that makes speech possible. Horizon also hears from the godfather of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, the first to suggest that our ability to talk is innate. A unique experiment shows how a new alien language can emerge in just one afternoon, in a bid to understand where language comes from and why it is the way it is.[104] | ||
| "Mars: A Horizon Guide" | 15 November 2009 | — |
| Space expert Dr Kevin Fong draws on 45 years worth of footage from Horizon's archives, as he chronicles the efforts of scientists to reach the red planet, including the ill-fated British attempt, the Beagle. The intriguing possibility of life on Mars has prompted many of these missions, but, as yet, none of them has been successful. | ||
| "How Long Is a Piece of String?" | 17 November 2009 | 6 |
| Alan Davies attempts to answer the proverbial question: how long is a piece of string? But what appears to be a simple task soon turns into a mind-bending voyage of discovery where nothing is as it seems. An encounter with leading mathematician Marcus du Sautoy reveals that Alan's short length of string may in fact be infinitely long. When Alan attempts to measure his string at the atomic scale, events take an even stranger turn. Not only do objects appear in many places at once, but reality itself seems to be an illusion. Ultimately, Alan finds that measuring his piece of string could – in theory at least – create a black hole, bringing about the end of the world. | ||
| "How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?" | 9 December 2009 | 7 |
| In a Horizon special, naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether the world is heading for a population crisis. In his lengthy career, Sir David has watched the human population more than double from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly seven billion. He reflects on the profound effects of this rapid growth, both on humans and the environment. While much of the projected growth in human population is likely to come from the developing world, it is the lifestyle enjoyed by many in the West that has the most effect on the planet. Some experts claim that in the UK consumers use as much as two and a half times their fair share of Earth's resources. Sir David examines whether it is the duty of individuals to commit not only to smaller families, but to change the way they live for the sake of humanity and planet Earth. | ||
| "The Secret Life of the Dog" | 6 January 2010 | 8 |
| We have an extraordinary relationship with dogs – closer than with any other animal on the planet. But what makes the bond between us so special? Research into dogs is gaining momentum, and scientists are investigating them like never before. From the latest fossil evidence, to the sequencing of the canine genome, to cognitive experiments, dogs are fast turning into the new chimps as a window into understanding ourselves. Where does this relationship come from? In Siberia, a unique breeding experiment reveals the astonishing secret of how dogs evolved from wolves. Swedish scientists demonstrate how the human/dog bond is controlled by a powerful hormone also responsible for bonding mothers to their babies. Why are dogs so good at reading our emotions? Horizon meets Betsy, reputedly the world's most intelligent dog, and compares her incredible abilities to those of children. Man's best friend has recently gone one step further – helping us identify genes responsible for causing human diseases. | ||
| "Diet: A Horizon Guide" | 7 January 2010 | — |
| "Why Do Viruses Kill?" | 13 January 2010 | 9 |
| Just months ago, the world stood in fear of an emerging new disease that threatened to kill millions. A new flu variant H1N1 had arrived. In the UK alone, 65,000 deaths were predicted. Yet to date, these dire warnings have not materialised. If this latest pandemic has taught anything, it is just how little is understood about the invisible world of viruses. But that has not stopped scientists trying. Horizon follows the leading researchers from across the world, who are attempting to unravel the many secrets of viruses to understand when and why they kill. | ||
| "Pill Poppers" | 20 January 2010 | 10 |
| Over a person's lifetime they are likely to be prescribed more than 14,000 pills. Antibiotics, cholesterol lowering tablets, anti-depressants, painkillers, even tablets to extend youth and improve performance in bed. These drugs perform minor miracles day after day, but how much is really known about them? Drug discovery often owes as much to serendipity as to science, and that means much is learnt about how medicines work, or even what they do, when they're taken. By investigating some of the most popular pills people pop, Horizon asks, how much can they be trusted to do what they are supposed to? | ||
| "Don't Grow Old" | 3 February 2010 | 11 |
| For centuries scientists have been attempting to come up with an elixir of youth. Now remarkable discoveries are suggesting that ageing is something flexible that can ultimately be manipulated. 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 ageing 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 ageing disease or with a self-experimenting Harvard professor? Could one of these breakthroughs really see our lives extend past 120 years? | ||
| "To Infinity and Beyond..." | 10 February 2010 | 12 |
| By our third year, most of us will have learned to count. Once we know how, it seems as if there would be nothing to stop us counting forever. But, while infinity might seem like an perfectly innocent idea, keep counting and you enter a paradoxical world where nothing is as it seems. Mathematicians have discovered there are infinitely many infinities, each one infinitely bigger than the last. And if the universe goes on forever, the consequences are even more bizarre. In an infinite universe, there are infinitely many copies of the Earth and infinitely many copies of you. Older than time, bigger than the universe and stranger than fiction. This is the story of infinity. | ||
| "What Makes a Genius?" | 17 February 2010 | 13 |
| Could you have come up with Albert Einstein's theory of relativity? If not – why not? This is what Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics, wants to explore. 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. | ||
| "Did Cooking Make Us Human?" | 2 March 2010 | 14 |
| We are the only species on earth that cooks its food – and we are also the cleverest species on the planet. The question is: do we cook because we're clever and imaginative, or are we clever and imaginative because our ancestors discovered cooking? Horizon examines the evidence that our ancestors' changing diet and their mastery of fire prompted anatomical and neurological changes that resulted in taking us out of the trees and into the kitchen. | ||
| "Is Everything We Know About the Universe Wrong?" | 9 March 2010 | 15 |
| There's something very odd going on in space – something that shouldn't be possible. It is as though vast swathes of the universe are being hoovered up by a vast and unseen celestial vacuum cleaner. Sasha Kashlinsky, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon, is understandably nervous: 'It left us quite unsettled and jittery' he says, 'because this is not something we planned to find'. The accidental discovery of what is ominously being called 'dark flow' not only has implications for the destinies of large numbers of galaxies – it also means that large numbers of scientists might have to find a new way of understanding the universe. Dark flow is the latest in a long line of phenomena that have threatened to rewrite the textbooks. Does it herald a new era of understanding, or does it simply mean that everything we know about the universe is wrong? | ||
Series 47: 2010–2011
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The End of God?: A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion" | 21 September 2010 | — |
| Historian Dr Thomas Dixon explores BBC archive footage detailing the age-old conflict between religion and science. He highlights interviews with a diverse range of theorists, including American creationists and physicists in Geneva working with the Large Hadron Collider, and asks whether the expansion of knowledge has left no room for the concept of God in the modern world. | ||
| "Back from the Dead" | 27 September 2010 | 1 |
| Dr Kevin Fong investigates a pioneering technique of extreme cooling that is being used to bring people back from the dead. In the operating theatre, a patient's heart is stopped and their brain shows no activity. They are indistinguishable from someone who is dead. Yet patients can then be warmed up and brought back to life. Kevin Fong meets the doctors who have developed this procedure, finds out how it could revolutionise intensive care and trauma medicine, and meets some of the remarkable people who have been brought back from the dead. | ||
| "The Death of the Oceans?" | 4 October 2010 | 2 |
| Sir David Attenborough reveals the findings of one of the most ambitious scientific studies of our time – an investigation into what is happening to our oceans. He looks at whether it is too late to save their remarkable biodiversity. Horizon travels from the cold waters of the North Atlantic to the tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef to meet the scientists who are transforming our understanding of this unique habitat. Attenborough explores some of the ways in which we are affecting marine life – from over-fishing to the acidification of sea water. The film also uncovers the disturbing story of how shipping noise is deafening whales and dolphins, affecting their survival in the future. | ||
| "What Happened Before the Big Bang?" | 11 October 2010 | 3 |
| They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation. Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the Big Bang. | ||
| "Is Seeing Believing?" | 18 October 2010 | 4 |
| Horizon explores the strange and wonderful world of illusions – and reveals the tricks they play on our senses and why they fool us. We show how easy it is to trick your sense of taste by changing the colours of food and drink, explain how what you see can change what you hear, and see just how unreliable our sense of colour can be. But all this trickery has a serious purpose. It's helping scientists to create a new understanding of how our senses work – not as individual senses, but connected together. It holds the intriguing possibility that one sense could be mapped into another. This is what happened to Daniel Kish, who lost his sight as a child. He is now able to create a vision of the world by clicking his tongue which allows him to echolocate like a bat. And in a series of MRI scans, scientists are now looking to find out if Daniel's brain may have actually rewired itself enabling him to use sound to create a visual image of the world. | ||
| "Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome" | 25 October 2010 | 5 |
| A decade ago, scientists announced that they had produced the first draft of the human genome, the 3.6 billion letters of our genetic code. It was seen as one of the greatest scientific achievements of our age, a breakthrough that would usher in a new age of medicine. A decade later, Horizon finds out how close we are to developing the life-changing treatments that were hoped for. Horizon follows three people, each with a genetic disease, as they go behind the scenes at some of Britain's leading research labs to find out what the sequencing of the human genome has done for them – and the hope this remarkable project offers all of us. | ||
| "Asteroids – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" | 3 November 2010 | 6 |
| Famed for their ability to inflict Armageddon from outer space, asteroids are now revealing the secrets of how they are responsible for both life and death on our planet. Armed with an array of powerful telescopes, scientists are finding up to 3000 new asteroids every night. And some are heading our way. But astronomers have discovered that it's not the giant rocks that are the greatest danger – it's the small asteroids that pose a more immediate threat to Earth. Researchers have explained the photon propulsion that propels these rocks across space, and have discovered that some asteroids are carrying a mysterious cargo of frost and ice across the solar system that could have helped start life on earth. | ||
| "Deepwater Disaster – The Untold Story" | 16 November 2010 | 7 |
| Horizon reveals the untold story of the 87-day battle to kill the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout a mile beneath the waves – a crisis that became America's worst environmental disaster. Engineers and oil men at the heart of the operation talk for the first time about the colossal engineering challenges they faced and how they had to improvise under extreme pressure. They tell of how they used household junk, discarded steel boxes and giant underwater cutting shears to stop the oil. It's an operation that one insider likens to the rescue of Apollo 13. | ||
| "What Makes Us Clever? A Horizon Guide to Intelligence" | 6 January 2011 | — |
| Delving into the Horizon archives, Dallas Campbell discovers how our understanding of intelligence has transformed over the last century. | ||
| "What Is One Degree?" | 10 January 2011 | 8 |
| Comedian Ben Miller returns to his roots as a physicist to try to answer a deceptively simple question: what is one degree of temperature? His quest takes him to the frontiers of current science as he meets researchers working on the hottest and coldest temperatures in the universe, and to a lab where he experiences some of the strangest effects of quantum physics – a place where super-cooled liquids simply pass through solid glass. Plus, Ben installs his very own Met office weather station at home. | ||
| "What Is Reality?" | 17 January 2011 | 9 |
| There is a strange and mysterious world that surrounds us, a world largely hidden from our senses. The quest to explain the true nature of reality is one of the great scientific detective stories. Clues have been pieced together from deep within the atom, from the event horizon of black holes, and from the far reaches of the cosmos. It may be that we are part of a cosmic hologram, projected from the edge of the universe. Or that we exist in an infinity of parallel worlds. Your reality may never look quite the same again. | ||
| "Science Under Attack" | 24 January 2011 | 10 |
| Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse examines why science appears to be under attack, and why public trust in key scientific theories has been eroded – from the theory that human-caused climate change is warming our planet, to the safety of GM food, or that HIV causes AIDS. He interviews scientists and campaigners from both sides of the climate change debate, and travels to New York to meet Tony, who has HIV but doesn't believe that the virus is responsible for AIDS. | ||
| "The Secret World of Pain" | 31 January 2011 | 11 |
| Horizon reveals the latest research into one of the most mysterious and common human experiences: pain. Exploring the breakthroughs that have come from studying a remarkable woman in London who has felt no pain at all in her life, a man in the US who cut off his own arm to survive, and three generations of an Italian family who don't feel extremes of temperature. Featuring a new treatment that involves a pioneering computer game 'snow world' that contains the power to banish pain, and revealing how powerfully our moods and emotions shape how we feel pain. | ||
| "Surviving a Car Crash" | 7 February 2011 | 12 |
| Horizon meets the scientists working to make fatal car crashes a thing of the past. A remarkable fusion of mechanical engineering and biology promises to save countless lives across the world. The programme has exclusive access to the secretive world of the most advanced car crash tests. Horizon reveals how the latest advances in trauma medicine, psychology and even extreme sport are transforming your chances of surviving on the roads. And the programme shows how researchers are creating a new virtual crash test dummy that could change how our cars are designed forever. | ||
| "How to Mend a Broken Heart" | 14 February 2011 | 13 |
| Dr Kevin Fong finds out how close scientists are to being able to mend your heart if it stops working. He meets some of the people who have undergone pioneering heart operations and the scientists who are pushing the limits of cardiac treatment. We meet a man who has had his heart replaced with an artificial one powered by a mechanical pump he carries around in a rucksack, and witness a scientist bring a dead animal heart back to life on a workbench. Plus, the work of an American scientist who is using stem cells to turn what she calls a 'ghost heart' – the scaffold of a heart – into a replacement heart for humans. | ||
| "Are We Still Evolving?" | 1 March 2011 | 14 |
| Dr Alice Roberts asks one of the great questions about our species: are we still evolving? There's no doubt that we're a product of millions of years of evolution. But thanks to modern technology and medicine, did we escape Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest? Alice follows a trail of clues from ancient human bones, to studies of remarkable people living in the most inhospitable parts of the planet, to the frontiers of genetic research to discover if we are still evolving – and where we might be heading. | ||
| "Predators in Your Backyard" | 8 March 2011 | 15 |
| Looking at the radical scheme of reintroducing predator animals close to human dwellings around the world, and the benefits following the reintroduction of Wolves back to Yellowstone National Park. | ||
| "The End of the World? A Horizon Guide to Armageddon" | 17 March 2011 | — |
| Our understanding of the world around us is better now than ever before. But are we any closer to knowing how its all going to end? Dallas Campbell delves into the Horizon archive to discover how scientists have tried to predict an impending apocalypse – from natural disaster to killer disease to asteroid impact – and to ask: when Armageddon arrives, will science be able to save us? | ||
| "Japan Earthquake: A Horizon Special with Iain Stewart" | 27 March 2011 | — |
| A look at the powerful forces that created the devastating Japanese earthquake. | ||
| "The Space Shuttle: A Horizon Guide" | 10 April 2011 | — |
| Coverage from three decades of programmes to present a biography of the space shuttle programme, due to be decommissioned in 2011. | ||
Series 48: 2011–2012
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Do You See What I See" | 8 August 2011 | 1 |
| An exploration of the effect of colours on people's lives, and how perceptions of them can be influenced by age, gender and mood. The programme examines scientists' claims that different hues have hidden powers, from the winning properties of red to how blue seemingly makes time speed up. | ||
| "Carrot or Stick: A Horizon Guide to Raising Kids" | 11 August 2011 | — |
| Child psychologist Laverne Antrobus uses excerpts from the Horizon archive to demonstrate how science has shaped parenting and education methods over the past 50 years. She considers which approach is best for raising children, explores how extreme behaviour can be explained by neurological problems, and finds out the effects of a child-centred environment on learning. | ||
| "Seeing Stars" | 15 August 2011 | 2 |
| Across the world, a new generation of astronomers is out to make fresh discoveries about the universe, but the scientists need to look farther than ever before. For this, they have pushed the limits of science and engineering to create a new set of super-telescopes that they hope will help them rewrite the story of the stars. | ||
| "The Nine Months That Made You" | 22 August 2011 | 3 |
| An exploration of theories pioneered by British scientist Professor David Barker, who believes that the time people spend in the womb is so profoundly important that it could affect every area of their subsequent development, from health and personality to the lives of their children. | ||
| "The Core" | 31 August 2011 | 4 |
| For centuries we have dreamt of reaching the centre of the Earth. Now scientists are uncovering a bizarre and alien world that lies 4,000 miles beneath our feet, unlike anything we know on the surface. It is a planet buried within the planet we know, where storms rage within a sea of white-hot metal and a giant forest of crystals make up a metal core the size of the Moon. Horizon follows scientists who are conducting experiments to recreate this core within their own laboratories, with surprising results. | ||
| "Are You Good or Evil?" | 7 September 2011 | 5 |
| Horizon meets the researchers who have studied some of the most terrifying people behind bars – psychopathic killers. But there was a shock in store for one of these scientists, Professor Jim Fallon, when he discovered that he had the profile of a psychopath. And the reason he didn't turn out to be a killer holds important lessons for all of us. We meet the scientist who believes he has found the moral molecule[105] and the man who is using this new understanding to rewrite our ideas of crime and punishment.[106] | ||
| "Is Nuclear Power Safe?" | 14 September 2011 | 6 |
| Six months after the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the release of radiation there, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to discover whether nuclear power is safe. He begins in Japan, where he meets some of the tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated from the exclusion zone. He travels to an abandoned village just outside the zone to witness a nuclear clean-up operation. Jim draws on the latest scientific findings from Japan and from the previous explosion at Chernobyl to understand how dangerous the release of radiation is likely to be and what that means for our trust in nuclear power. | ||
| "Extinct: A Horizon Guide to Dinosaurs" | 21 September 2011 | — |
| Dallas Campbell explores how mankind's understanding of dinosaurs has developed since the 1970s. He reveals how technological advances led to scientists revising their theories about how the creatures might once have lived, as well as gaining new insights into the reasons for their extinction. The presenter also explores the genetic links between modern birds and the ancient lizards. | ||
| "The Hunt for the Higgs" | 9 January 2012 | — |
| Jim Al-Khalili follows the efforts of particle physicists at the CERN research laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, to find the Higgs particle, which is believed to give mass to everything in the universe. He explains why scientists believe discovering it could help answer fundamental questions about the nature of existence, and reveals why their theories are based on the idea of symmetry. | ||
| "Playing God" | 17 January 2012 | 7 |
| Adam Rutherford explores synthetic biology, a branch of science that researchers hope will enable them to break nature down into constituent parts so they can rebuild it as they please. He learns about the spider-goat, a creature bred by American scientists, whose milk can be used to artificially create the material for spiderwebs, and investigates how the science behind it could be applied to other areas of the natural world – including the human brain. | ||
| "The Truth About Exercise" | 28 February 2012 | 8 |
| Michael Mosley investigates recent scientific research that could change the way people exercise, including a study that suggests many could benefit from just three minutes of high-intensity activity a week. He also discovers the health benefits of seemingly innocuous actions, such as walking and fidgeting, and learns why some people do not respond to exercise at all. | ||
| "Woof! A Horizon Guide to Dogs" | 1 March 2012 | — |
| Dallas Campbell examines films from the Horizon archive to discover what science can teach people about dogs. He investigates the origins of domestic breeds and learns about the role humans played in shaping canine evolution, before asking why the bond between mankind and dogs is particularly strong – and whether it can be improved in the future. | ||
| "Solar Storms: The Threat to Planet Earth" | 6 March 2012 | 9 |
| Scientists predict this year will see a fit of violent activity on the sun which will propel billions of tonnes of superheated gas and pulses of energy towards Earth. In 1989 one of these solar storms, which has the power to close down modern technology, cut off the power to the Canadian province of Quebec. Horizon meets the weathermen as they try to predict what's coming and organisations like the National Grid as they prepare for the cosmic tempest. | ||
| "Out of Control?" | 13 March 2012 | 10 |
| People assume they are in control of their lives, deciding what they want and when they want it – but scientists now claim this is simply an illusion. Experiments reveal that what a person does and what they think can be very different, with the unconscious mind often influencing the decisions they make, from what they eat to who they fall in love with. Horizon reveals to what extent people really do control their own destiny. | ||
| "The Truth About Fat" | 20 March 2012 | 11 |
| Surgeon Gabriel Weston explores why so many people are piling on the pounds – and learns about new ways to fight the flab. She discovers the hidden hormones that control appetite and sees the latest surgery that fundamentally changes what a patient wants to eat – by altering how their brains work. | ||
| "Global Weirding" | 27 March 2012 | 12 |
| Something weird seems to be happening to our weather – it appears to be getting more extreme. In the past few years we have shivered through two record-breaking cold winters and parts of the country have experienced intense droughts and torrential floods. It is a pattern that appears to be playing out across the globe. Hurricane chasers are recording bigger storms and in Texas, record-breaking rain has been followed by record-breaking drought. Horizon follows the scientists who are trying to understand what's been happening to our weather and investigates if these extremes are a taste of what's to come. | ||
| "The Hunt for AI" | 3 April 2012 | 13 |
| Marcus Du Sautoy wants to find out how close we are to creating machines that can think like us: robots or computers that have artificial intelligence. His journey takes him to a strange and bizarre world where AI is now taking shape. Marcus meets two robots who are developing their own private language, and attempts to communicate to them. He discovers how a super computer beat humans at one of the toughest quiz shows on the planet, Jeopardy!, and finds out if machines can have creativity and intuition like us. Marcus is worried that if machines can think like us, then he will be out of business. But his conclusion is that AI machines may surprise us with their own distinct way of thinking. | ||
| "Defeating Cancer" | 10 April 2012 | 14 |
| Over the past year, Horizon has been behind the scenes at one of Britain's leading cancer hospitals, the Royal Marsden in London. The film follows Rosemary, Phil and Ray as they undergo remarkable new treatments – from a billion pound genetically targeted drug designed to fight a type of skin cancer, to advanced robotic surgery. We witness the breakthroughs in surgery and in scientific research that are offering new hope and helping to defeat a disease that more than one in three of us will develop at some stage of our lives. | ||
| "Stuff: A Horizon Guide to Materials" | 19 April 2012 | — |
| Engineer and broadcaster Jem Stansfield explores the Horizon archives to discover how the programme has covered developments in material science during the past five decades. He learns how scientists have created new materials and found fresh uses for old ones, and explores how advances including superconductors and silicon chips have changed mankind's understanding of the world. | ||
Series 49: 2012–2013
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Transit of Venus: A Horizon Special" | 5 June 2012 | — |
| Liz Bonnin explores the transit of Venus, an event which takes place just after 11pm tonight and offers a rare opportunity to see the planet passing across the face of the sun. She explains why the orbits of Venus and Earth mean they are only aligned twice every century, and investigates what studies of Venus have revealed about life on Earth. Solar physicist Lucie Green investigates James Cook's 1769 voyage to Tahiti to observe the transit, and oceanographer Helen Czerski explores how Earth and Venus came to be so different. | ||
| "Blink: A Horizon Guide to the Senses" | 11 July 2012 | — |
| Kevin Fong looks back through 40 years of Horizon archives to explore what science has revealed about methods of perception. He discovers why babies use touch more than any other sense, how vision can easily be tricked, and the ways technological advancements are getting closer to being able to replace human faculties if they fail. | ||
| "Immortal? A Horizon Guide to Ageing" | 17 July 2012 | — |
| Veteran presenter Johnny Ball looks back over the 45 years that both he and TV series Horizon have been appearing on air to find out what scientists have learnt about how and why people grow old. He charts developments from macabre early claims of rejuvenation to the latest breakthroughs, and asks if the dream of immortality is any closer to coming true. | ||
| "The Truth About Looking Young" | 23 July 2012 | 1 |
| Plastic surgeon Dr Rozina Ali leaves the operating theatre behind for the frontiers of skin science and asks if it is possible to make your skin look younger without surgery. She examines why some people appear to age better than others, and explores scientific innovations including a pill that manufacturers claim has rejuvenating properties. She also discovers how the contents of a squid's eye could change people's experiences of summer. | ||
| "Mission to Mars" | 30 July 2012 | 2 |
| Behind the scenes of Curiosity, NASA's latest mission to investigate the possibility of life on Mars. The agency aims to land a nuclear-powered rover vehicle, which cost $2.5billion to develop, on the surface of the planet by winching it down from a rocket-powered crane, then use it to explore the terrain. The programme also discovers the lessons experts have learned from previous expeditions, many of which ended in failure, and the project's chief scientist John Grotzinger discusses what he hopes the mission will reveal. | ||
| "Eat, Fast and Live Longer" | 6 August 2012 | 3 |
| Michael J. Mosley has set himself a truly ambitious goal: he wants to live longer, stay younger and lose weight in the bargain. And he wants to make as few changes to his life as possible along the way. He discovers the powerful new science behind the ancient idea of fasting, and he thinks he's found a way of doing it with the 5:2 diet that still allows him to enjoy his food. Michael tests out the science of fasting on himself – with life-changing results. | ||
| "How Big Is the Universe?" | 27 August 2012 | 4 |
| Cosmologists discuss their project to create a map of everything in existence, and reveal that their research has yielded some highly unexpected results, creating a picture stranger than anything they had imagined. Scientists also explain why the map suggests the universe may not be an all-encompassing entity – but merely the starting point for something much bigger. | ||
| "How Small Is the Universe?" | 3 September 2012 | 5 |
| Horizon plunges down the biggest rabbit-hole in history in search of the smallest thing in the Universe. It is a journey where things do not just become smaller but also a whole lot weirder. Scientists hope to catch a glimpse of miniature black holes, multiple dimensions and even parallel Universes. As they start to explore this wonderland, where nothing is quite what it seems, they may have to rewrite the fundamental laws of time and space. | ||
| "Defeating the Superbugs" | 10 September 2012 | 6 |
| Scientists and researchers discuss their efforts to thwart potentially lethal strains of bacteria that have grown resistant to conventional antibiotics. The programme follows projects designed to track the global spread of the organisms, and reveals new techniques that are being developed to protect and treat patients. | ||
| "The Final Frontier? A Horizon Guide to the Universe" | 17 October 2012 | — |
| Dallas Campbell charts scientific breakthroughs that have transformed how the universe is understood, using footage from the Horizon archives which stretch back almost 50 years. He explores subjects including Albert Einstein's concept of spacetime, alien planets and extra dimensions, and discovers each advance reveals new mysteries to be investigated. | ||
| "The Truth About Meteors: A Horizon Special" | 3 March 2013 | 7 |
| On 2013 February 15, a meteorite travelling at more than 30,000 miles an hour crashed into Russia's Ural mountains, injuring more than 1,000 people. Just a day later, an asteroid passed within 17,000 miles of Earth. These were reminders that the planet's journey through space is fraught with danger. Professor Iain Stewart explores what meteorites and asteroids are, where they come from, the risks they pose and the role they have played in Earth's history. | ||
| "The Creative Brain – How Insight Works" | 14 March 2013 | 8 |
| The work of scientists who are adopting unusual techniques to try to determine how flashes of inspiration come about, developing a series of puzzles and brainteasers to spark creative behaviour. The latest neuro-imaging technology means researchers can witness the birth of an idea as it happens and what they are learning has the power to make everyone more creative. | ||
| "How to Avoid Mistakes in Surgery" | 21 March 2013 | 9 |
| Dr Kevin Fong examines what can be done to reduce the number of mistakes being made by surgeons in the operating theatre. Speaking to professionals in high-pressure careers - including airline pilots, firemen and Formula One pit workers - he explores the coping mechanisms they each employ when faced with emergency situations, and looks at how these tactics could be transferred to the world of surgery. | ||
| "Mend Me: A Horizon Guide to Transplants" | 27 March 2013 | — |
| The extraordinary odds doctors and patients have had to overcome to achieve amazing breakthroughs in transplant surgery, including full face transplants and growing organs in the laboratory. Michael Mosley identifies some of the key turning points and explores how far science can go in a bid to prolong life. | ||
| "The Truth about Taste" | 28 March 2013 | 10 |
| In recent years, researchers have started to understand why people love the foods they do, and that there may be a way to make snacks taste sweeter without adding any extra sugar – and it's all down to a trick that happens in the brain. This film meets a scientist who has grown a tomato that is sweeter and juicier than anything likely to be found on a supermarket shelf, and follows those hoping to become elite, professional tasters. | ||
| "The Age of Big Data" | 4 April 2013 | 11 |
| An examination of the varying uses being made of the huge amount of information now available in databases ie predictive analytics. In Los Angeles, police officers are taking part in an experiment to predict crime before it even happens, one City of London trader believes he has found the secret of making billions with mathematics, and astronomers in South Africa are attempting to catalogue the entire universe. | ||
| "Tomorrow's World: A Horizon Special" | 11 April 2013 | — |
| Liz Bonnin delves into the world of inventors and innovations, revealing the people and technologies set to transform life in the 21st century. She meets some of the world's foremost visionaries, mavericks and dreamers, from the entrepreneurs who are the driving force behind a new space race to Andre Geim, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist leading a nanotech revolution. | ||
| "The Secret Life of the Cat" | 13 June 2013 | 12 |
| Horizon discovers what your cat really does get up to beyond the cat flap. In this groundbreaking experiment, fifty cats in a Surrey village are tagged with GPS collars and their every movement is recorded, day and night, as they hunt in our backyards and patrol the garden fences and hedgerows. Cats are also fitted with specially developed cat-cams, revealing their unique view of the world. | ||
| "Little Cat Diaries" | 14 June 2013 | 13 |
| In the previous episode "The Secret Life of the Cat", 50 domestic felines from a Surrey village were fitted with GPS collars and cameras to track their every movement and record their unique view of the world. The results reveal a tomcat that seems to have no owner, a hunter that prefers food it can catch and kill to anything it might be given by humans, and a cat that has abandoned its home in favour of another set of owners. | ||
| "Fracking: The New Energy Rush" | 19 June 2013 | 14 |
| Geologist Iain Stewart investigates a new and controversial method of extracting natural gas from deep underground that involves hydraulic fracturing - or Fracking, as it is known. He travels to America to find out what the process is and what can be learned from the US experience, meeting people who have become rich from it, as well as those bothered about any risks to their communities. | ||
| "Swallowed by a Black Hole" | 26 June 2013 | 15 |
| A gas cloud has strayed within the gravitational reach of a super-massive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way and is expected to be affected by it at some point this summer. Across the globe, telescopes are being trained on the heart of Earth's galaxy in the expectation of observing this cosmic spectacle for the first time in history. | ||
| "What Makes Us Human?" | 3 July 2013 | 16 |
| Humans share 99% of their DNA with chimpanzees and yet from the moment of birth, their lives are completely different. Anthropologist Alice Roberts investigates the factors that separate mankind from its closest living relatives, exploring differences in physiology, genetic make-up and in the brain. | ||
| "The Truth About Personality" | 10 July 2013 | 17 |
| Michael Mosley explores the latest research in genetics and neuroscience to find out what factors shape people's personalities and whether they can be changed. Michael tries two techniques in an attempt to make him worry less and become more of an optimist - with surprising results. The episode features Professor Elaine Fox of University of Essex.[107][108] | ||
Series 50: 2013–2014
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "What's Killing Our Bees? A Horizon Special" | 2 August 2013 | 1 |
| Bees are worth £430 million to Britain's agriculture sector and a third of UK food is reliant on pollination, but their numbers have been falling dramatically. In this film, journalist and beekeeper Bill Turnbull examines the array of conflicting evidence in a bid to determine what is responsible for the decline and meets scientists who are fitting radar transponders to the insects to establish why numbers are falling. | ||
| "Monitor Me" | 12 August 2013 | 2 |
| Dr Kevin Fong explores the boom in "apps" and gadgets designed to help people monitor their health around the clock. He meets some of the pioneers of this revolution and visits a man who self-diagnosed a life-threatening disease from his own data, without going to the doctor. | ||
| "Defeating the Hackers" | 19 August 2013 | 3 |
| The programme explores the murky and fast-paced world of people using computers to steal money and identities, as well as wreaking havoc with users online lives. The film reveals the methods scientists are using to help defeat the hackers, meets the two men who uncovered the world's first cyber weapon, and the computer expert who worked out how to hack into cash machines. | ||
| "Dinosaurs: The Hunt for Life" | 26 August 2013 | 4 |
| The research of Dr Mary Schweitzer, who found soft tissue and red blood cells in the fossilised bones of a 68-million-year-old T rex, a breakthrough that wouldn't have looked out of place in Jurassic Park. Her work is revolutionising scientific understanding of dinosaurs and the palaeontologist believes she may also have found traces of the creatures' DNA. | ||
| "Sex: A Horizon Guide" | 11 September 2013 | — |
| Professor Alice Roberts investigates how science came to understand sex - a simple word for a very complex set of desires, including individual passions, wants and emotions. She looks at how the world of science has striven to solve people's sexual problems, and searched for ways of improving performance. | ||
| "Impact! A Horizon Guide to Plane Crashes" | 14 October 2013 | — |
| It's a macabre paradox, but almost every advance in aviation safety has been driven by a crash. After every crash, investigators determine its cause and scientists make every effort to ensure the same mistakes never happen again. Dallas Campbell delves into the Horizon archives to chart the deadly disasters that have helped make air travel today the safest it has ever been. | ||
| "Impact! A Horizon Guide to Car Crashes" | 21 October 2013 | — |
| In the 1950s up to 8,000 people died every year on the roads in this country - a truly horrific figure. Thankfully it has now fallen to around 2,000 a year - still a terrible toll, but a vast improvement, particularly given the increase in cars on the road. | ||
| "Comet of the Century: A Horizon Special" | 23 November 2013 | — |
| Comet Ison is due to make its closest approach to the sun on 28 November and will be visible in both the evening and morning skies during December if it survives its brush with the star. The programme examines how Ison's tail of vaporised gas and water could give insights into some of the greatest mysteries of science, including the origin of the solar system and whether Earth's water came from similar celestial objects. | ||
| "Sugar v Fat" | 29 January 2014 | 5 |
| Doctors Chris and Xand van Tulleken, who are identical twins, go on month-long diets comprising high volumes of fat or sugar to find out which is worse for the human body. The effects on their health are both shocking and surprising, but they also discover their biggest enemy may have been hiding in plain sight. | ||
| "Swallowed by a Sink Hole" | 3 February 2014 | 6 |
| In February last year, Jeff Bush was asleep at his home in Florida when a sinkhole opened up beneath his bedroom. Despite the efforts of his brother to rescue him, Jeff was never seen alive again and his body could not be recovered. Professor Iain Stewart travels to the American state to discover what took Jeff's life and investigate why the geology of the area makes it the sinkhole capital of the world. | ||
| "Man on Mars: Mission to the Red Planet" | 10 February 2014 | 7 |
| Horizon goes behind the scenes at NASA to discover how it is preparing for its most ambitious and daring mission: to land humans on the surface of Mars. Horizon meets the scientists and engineers who are designing new rockets, new space suits and finding ways to help astronauts survive the perils of this long voyage. | ||
| "The Power of the Placebo" | 17 February 2014 | 8 |
| They are the miracle pills that shouldn't really work at all. Placebos come in all shapes and sizes, but they contain no active ingredient. Now they are being shown to help treat pain, depression and even alleviate some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Horizon explores why they work, and how we could all benefit from the hidden power of the placebo. | ||
| "How You Really Make Decisions" | 26 February 2014 | 9 |
| Every day you make thousands of decisions, big and small, and behind all them is a powerful battle in your mind, pitting Intuition against logic. This conflict affects every aspect of your life - from what you eat to what you believe, and especially to how you spend your money. And it turns out that the intuitive part of your mind is a lot more powerful than you may realise.[109] Contributors include Chris Chabris, Daniel Simons, Paul Dolan, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Donald R. Kretz, Laurie Santos, Hersh Shefrin and Dan Ariely.[110][111] | ||
| "Living with Autism" | 1 April 2014 | 10 |
| On the eve of National / World Autism Day, this programme reveals how a lifetime of study by developmental psychologist Uta Frith has transformed understanding of the condition. The professor discusses the ways people with autism perceive and interact with the world, reveals how another kind of reality exists for them and explains why they often fail to understand jokes. | ||
| "The £10 Million Challenge" | 22 May 2014 | — |
| To celebrate its 50th birthday, Horizon invites the public to play a role in tackling the greatest challenges facing science today. | ||
| "Where is Flight MH370?" | 17 June 2014 | 11 |
| Horizon tells the inside story of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. With access to the key players on the frontline in the southern Indian Ocean and the British satellite engineers who tracked the plane's final hours, Horizon breaks open the biggest mystery in aviation history. | ||
| "What's Wrong with Our Weather?" | 17 July 2014 | 12 |
| Physicist Helen Czerski and meteorologist John Hammond investigate why the British weather appears to have become more extreme and if it has anything to do with climate change. They examine the effect of the jet stream's strange behaviour, revealing what is causing it, and attempt to find out if severe winters are going to become more common. | ||
Series 51: 2014–2015
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Should I Eat Meat? The Big Health Dilemma" | 18 August 2014 | 1 |
| In the first of two programmes this week investigating the truth about meat, Michael Mosley asks if those summer barbecue favourites - burgers and sausages - are as bad as some people think. He puts the latest scientific findings to the test on a high-meat diet to discover whether eating beef and bacon every day will do him any harm. | ||
| "Should I Eat Meat? How to Feed the Planet" | 20 August 2014 | 2 |
| Part two of two. Every year roughly 65 billion animals are slaughtered globally for food - nine for every living person. In this documentary, Michael Mosley examines the effect this is having on the planet and finds out what meat we should be buying if we want to be eco-friendly carnivores. Is it better to purchase free-range organic or factory-farmed options? The answers are far from obvious. | ||
| "Allergies: Modern Life and Me" | 27 August 2014 | 3 |
| Changes to the bacteria that live inside all of us are responsible for increasing the number of people with allergies, suggests new research. In this episode of Horizon, the show investigates this claim by conducting a unique experiment with two allergic families in order to find out just what it is in the modern world that is to blame. With a raft of mini cameras, GPS units and the very latest gene sequencing technology, the show discovers how the western lifestyle is affecting their bacteria. Why are these changes making people allergic? And what can be done to put a stop to the allergy epidemic? | ||
| "Inside the Dark Web" | 3 September 2014 | 4 |
| Twenty-five years after the World Wide Web was created, the issue of computer surveillance has become the greatest shame upon its existence. With many concerned that governments and corporations monitor people's every move, this programme meets hackers and scientists who are using technology to fight back, and some law enforcement officers who believe it's leading to opportunities for risk-free crimes. With contributors including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. | ||
| "Ebola: The Search for a Cure" | 10 September 2014 | 6 |
| As the West Africa Ebola outbreak continues to claim lives, this special edition meets scientists and doctors from around the world who are looking for a cure to the deadly virus, and hears first-hand accounts of what it is like to catch - and survive - the disease. | ||
| "Is Your Brain Male or Female?" | 29 September 2014 | 7 |
| New research suggests the connections in men's and women's brains follow different patterns, which might explain typical forms of gender-specific behaviour. Dr Michael Mosley and Professor Alice Roberts investigate whether these are innate or are shaped by the outside world, using a team of human guinea pigs and a troop of Barbary monkeys to test the science and challenge old stereotypes. They ask whether this new scientific research will benefit both sexes or drive them even further apart. | ||
| "Cat Watch 2014: The New Horizon Experiment: A Cat's Eye View" | 7 October 2014 | — |
| Millions of people have cats in their homes, yet they know very little about them. Are they playful pets, fearsome fighters or deadly hunters? In this three-part programme, Liz Bonnin joins forces with some of the world's leading feline experts to conduct a groundbreaking scientific study using GPS trackers and mini-cameras to follow 100 cats in three very different environments to find out what they get up to when they leave the house. The first edition examines how cats see, hear and smell the world with the senses developed by their wild ancestors, and looks at why this could be making life difficult for them in the modern world. | ||
| "Cat Watch 2014: The New Horizon Experiment: The Lion in Your Lap" | 8 October 2014 | — |
| The second programme of the three-part scientific study reveals the wild side of domestic cats, with GPS trackers and mini-cameras showing how they transform from pet to predator as soon as they leave the house. Liz Bonnin and the team of experts put Ozzy and Smudge under surveillance to find out who's king of the street, and explain why cats' hunting instincts cannot be kept under control. | ||
| "Cat Watch 2014: The New Horizon Experiment: Cat Talk" | 9 October 2014 | — |
| In the final episode of this three-part scientific study, Liz Bonnin and the team examine the secret language of cats, revealing the surprising conversations they have when their owners are asleep, and investigating why they meow to humans but not one another. They rig a house with cameras and trackers to discover if four cats residing under one roof can all get on and find out why living alongside people is making things difficult for 21st-century felines. | ||
| "What's the Right Diet for You? A Horizon Special: Episode 1" | 12 January 2015 | — |
| The first of a three-part special in which Dr Chris van Tulleken, clinical psychologist Tanya Byron and nutrition and weight-loss scientists from Oxford and Cambridge universities put one of the latest theories on diets to the test. They have selected 75 overweight people from across the UK, who will be put on personalised regimens to explore overeating related to genes, gut hormones and emotions. The opening programme follows the volunteers as they undergo an intensive five-day analysis at a residential diet lab at Liverpool Hope University, before they are then put on the diets the experts believe are best-suited to them. | ||
| "What's the Right Diet for You? A Horizon Special: Episode 2" | 13 January 2015 | — |
| In the second of three programmes, the volunteers leave the lab and take their diets home, where they face the challenge of sticking to their weight-loss plans while dealing with all the stresses and temptations of their real lives. Geneticist Giles Yeo uses eye-tracking technology to investigate how the Constant Cravers are affected by their 'hungry genes', while Tanya Byron visits Cambridge University to discover what happens in the brains of Emotional Eaters to compel them to comfort eat. The Feasters are brought together for a test by Fiona Gribble, who wants to find out why soup is such a great dieting tool. | ||
| "What's the Right Diet for You? A Horizon Special: Episode 3" | 14 January 2015 | — |
| This programme looks into how physiological processes in the body and the brain can make the final weeks and months of a diet difficult. Fiona Gribble runs an experiment to show that the rate at which the Feasters eat their food affects how full they feel, Giles Yeo demonstrates how eating breakfast can help the Constant Cravers, and Paul Aveyard demonstrates ways that will help the Emotional Eaters learn how to deal with occasional indulgences and avoid further relapse. Lastly, the final results of the study are announced, revealing how successful the diet personalisation approach has been for the group and how many of the volunteers made their five per cent weight-loss target. | ||
| "Secrets of the Solar System" | 3 March 2015 | 8 |
| Planets are now being discovered outside Earth's solar system on a regular basis, and these strange new worlds are forcing scientists to rewrite the history of how the Sun and the planets, satellites, dwarf planets, asteroids and comets that orbit it came into being. This programme reveals that far from a simple story of stable objects orbiting a star, the development of the solar system was a potent combination of hellfire, chaos and planetary pinball that makes it somewhat of a miracle that Earth was created at all. | ||
| "Climate Change: A Horizon Guide" | 4 March 2015 | — |
| Dr Helen Czerski explores climate change, charting the transformation of a little-known theory into one of the greatest scientific undertakings in history. It has been a surprising journey of discovery that has revolutionised humankind's understanding of the global climate, and seen scientists face unprecedented controversy and criticism. | ||
| "The Mystery of Murder: A Horizon Guide" | 9 March 2015 | — |
| Michael Mosley uses footage from the BBC archives to chart scientists' progress as they looked at the mind of a murderer in an attempt to understand why people commit such crimes, asking whether they are driven to it by circumstances or are simply born to kill. | ||
| "Aftershock: The Hunt for Gravitational Waves" | 10 March 2015 | 9 |
| In March 2014, a team at a research station at the South Pole claimed to have found evidence of gravitational waves - or ripples in space-time - from the earliest moments of the universe. The discovery sent shockwaves through the world of theoretical physics, with those involved tipped to pick up Nobel Prizes, while for others it meant their ideas were in shreds. This programme tell the inside story of the scientific quest and what happened when things began to unravel. | ||
| "Dancing in the Dark: The End of Physics?" | 17 March 2015 | 10 |
| The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been upgraded. When it's switched on in March 2015, its collisions will have twice the energy they did before. The hope is that scientists will discover the identity of dark matter in the debris. The stakes are high - because if dark matter fails to show itself, it might mean that physics itself needs a rethink. | ||
| "70 Million Animal Mummies: Egypt's Dark Secret" | 11 May 2015 | 11 |
| Modern technology is used to scan Egyptian animal mummies from museums across the world. By creating 3D images of their content, experts are able to discover the truth about the strange role the creatures played in the ancient civilisation's beliefs, and why so many of them were buried. | ||
| "Is Binge Drinking Really That Bad?" | 20 May 2015 | 12 |
| Doctors and identical twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken investigate the effects that different drinking patterns have on health. Chris has his recommended 21 units of alcohol spread evenly across the week, while Xand uses up his allowance in single binges. How will their bodies differ after a month? | ||
| "The Trouble with Space Junk" | 5 August 2015 | 13 |
| Documentary revealing the scale of the problem of debris in space, with Earth surrounded by hundreds of millions of items moving at 17,000 miles per hour. The International Space Station had to move three times in 2014 to avoid potentially lethal chunks of junk and the Horizon team reveals how the US government is investing $1 billion to track space debris, while companies around the world are developing ways to clear up the mess, from nets and robot arms to harpoons. | ||
| "Are Health Tests Really a Good Idea?" | 12 August 2015 | 14 |
| Michael Mosley presents a Horizon special exploring the effectiveness of a series of health tests available to people who otherwise feel perfectly well. From an expensive heart scan to a new national screening procedure to detect the earliest signs of bowel cancer, the check-ups are designed to catch various serious conditions before they develop further, and Michael puts himself through a series of assessments to determine whether any of them are worth doing. | ||
| "First Britons" | 19 August 2015 | 15 |
| Documentary exploring how recent archaeological discoveries have shed new light on culture, origins and capabilities of the very first native Britons. For centuries, it has been assumed Britain's first peoples lived a brutal, hand-to-mouth existence as hunter-gatherers, but fresh evidence has emerged that has forced scientists and anthropologists to reassess their impressions of who these people were. The result is a very different portrait, illustrating a hardy and sophisticated culture that withstood centuries of extreme climate change, including a devastating tsunami. Narrator Adrian Lester describes how these early Britons endured the primal forces and became the first people to populate the island nation that would eventually become known as Britain. Includes contributions by a variety of experts, including Dr Hans Peeters, Dr Jim Innes, Professor Vince Gaffney, Dr David Jacques and Professor Martin Bell. | ||
| "OCD: A Monster in My Mind" | 26 August 2015 | 16 |
| Developmental psychologist Uta Frith, a professor of neuroscience at University College London, sets out to dispel misconceptions about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which some regard as simply being overly fussy about tidiness, but which is often a much more serious, and potentially crippling brain disorder. She introduces Sophie, who must constantly check she hasn't killed people wherever she goes, and Richard, who is terrified of coming into contact with bins. Also featured is the story of Nanda, who is undergoing pioneering brain surgery to stop her worrying about 'components' on her body. Having explored the effect OCD can have on people's lives, Uta investigates therapy available to those struggling with the condition, and outlines whether neuroscience can offer anything by way of a cure. | ||
| "Which Universe Are We In?" | 2 September 2015 | 17 |
| Documentary exploring the "multiverse", a theoretical approach to some of the fundamental questions of existence, which posits that an infinite number of universes exists. Each of these separate universes is defined by the way they differ from the others, in a concept seized upon by science-fiction writers to depict worlds where dinosaurs still live and the Germans won the Second World War, among other fantastical variations. The programme reveals that, until relatively recently, the "multi-verse" theory was dismissed as a fantasy, but now this unusual idea has found its way to the forefront of scientific thinking, and for a growing number of scientists, has become fundamental to understanding the nature of reality. | ||
| "Cosmic Dawn: The Real Moment of Creation" | 9 September 2015 | 18 |
| The scientific story behind the moment the first stars appeared in the universe, known as the Cosmic Dawn, which transformed the dark world originally created by the Big Bang. Astronomers now have the tools to explore this dramatic event that created the first ingredients of life as we know it, when the first stars were born to light up the universe. With contributions by Professor Tom Abel, Charmaine Green and Margaret Whitehurst. | ||
| "Are Video Games Really That Bad?" | 16 September 2015 | 19 |
|
The video game industry is a global phenomenon. There are over 1.2 billion gamers across the planet, with sales projected soon to pass $100 billion per year. But their very popularity fuels the controversy that surrounds them. They frequently stand accused of corrupting the young - of causing violence and addiction. But is this true? Horizon reveals a scientific community deeply divided. Some are convinced that video games incite aggression. Others insist they have no effect whatsoever on real-world violence. But away from the controversy, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests video games may help keep the brain sharp, and could soon revolutionise how we combat mental decline as we age. | ||
| "Tim Peake Special: How to Be an Astronaut" | 13 December 2015 | — |
| A video diary filmed over two years by Tim Peake, who on 15 December will become the first British astronaut to board the International Space Station. His personal footage details some of the risks and pressures he faces, as well as the rigorous training required to go into space, including replicating spacewalks and training to deal with the physical dangers of weightlessness, undergoing exercises in the Soyuz capsule and space station mockups, and preparing to spend time away from his wife and two sons. | ||
Series 52: 2016
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "The Immortalist" | 16 March 2016 | 1 |
| Investigating the story of how a Russian internet millionaire, Dmitry Itskov, is turning to cutting edge science to try to unlock the secret of living forever. The programme investigates the real science inspiring his bold plan to upload the human mind to a computer, and examines whether his goal of bringing about immortality for humans within thirty years is attainable. | ||
| "Project Greenglow: The Quest for Gravity Control" | 23 March 2016 | 2 |
| Documentary exploring attempts to control gravity, including investigation carried out by Project Greenglow in the mid-1990s by UK defence manufacturer BAE Systems (based on the work of Eugene Podkletnov[112]). | ||
| "The Mystery of Dark Energy" | 30 March 2016 | 3 |
| Examining Dark Energy, the mysterious force that is unexpectedly causing the universe's expansion to speed up. Its effects were discovered in 1998, but physicists still do not know what it is, and its very existence calls into question Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity; the cornerstone of modern physics. The hunt for the identity of Dark Energy is on, and although experiments conducted on Earth and in space generate data that might provide a clue, physics is hoping another Einstein might emerge and write a new theory that explains the mystery. | ||
| "Oceans of the Solar System" | 6 April 2016 | 4 |
| Although oceans define the Earth and are crucial to life, recent discoveries have revealed that they are not unique to Earth. Oceans have been located across the solar system, and scientists are now embarking on a journey in search of new life in places that never seemed possible. With NASA planning to dive to the depths of a strange, distant ocean in a remarkable submarine, the programme discovers that the hunt for oceans in space is marking the dawn of a new era in the search for alien life. | ||
| "The End of the Solar System" | 13 April 2016 | 5 |
| The story of how the solar system will be transformed by the ageing sun, before coming to an end in approximately eight billion years. Astronomers can predict how it will happen by analysing distant galaxies, stars and planets in their final moments, and the programme brings these predictions to life with a giant scale model of the solar system spread out all over a Midwestern town, Peoria, Illinois. One prediction is of the Andromeda–Milky Way collision and merger, expected in about 4 billion years. Derek Jacobi narrates.[113] | ||
| "Should We Close Our Zoos?" | 17 April 2016 | 6 |
| Liz Bonnin reports on issues concerning zoos, and questions whether they still have a place in the modern age. She visits the zoo in Copenhagen that created controversy by killing a giraffe and feeding it to lions, to investigate the practice of culling animals to manage population size. She also discovers how zoos are useful in preserving endangered species, including pandas and rhinos. | ||
| "How to Find Love Online" | 25 April 2016 | 7 |
| Mathematician Hannah Fry uses doctor and broadcaster Xand van Tulleken as a guinea pig to test whether the algorithms that dating sites use to match people actually work. Xand gets advice from scientists on what to write in his profile, has an MRI scan to find out whether his brain is equipped for love and goes on various dates to test whether the algorithm makes better matches than him choosing randomly. | ||
| "Ice Station Antarctica" | 4 May 2016 | 8 |
| BBC weatherman Peter Gibbs makes an emotional return to the British Antarctic Survey's Halley Research Station, where he lived and worked in the early 1980s. During that period, the station was key to the discovery of the ozone hole, and today it is making vital findings about how people's lives are vulnerable to the Sun's activities, as well as studying interplanetary travel and the threat of human-caused climate change. In addition to returning to the place he once called home, Peter is on a rescue mission, since the station is under threat of being cast adrift on a huge iceberg. | ||
| "Curing Alzheimer's" | 11 May 2016 | 9 |
|
Documentary investigating scientific breakthroughs in research on Alzheimer's disease, which are bringing hope to millions of sufferers across the world. New scanning and gene technology is allowing scientists to identify the disease at its earliest stages, often 15 years before symptoms appear and brain cells are destroyed, with drug trials in Colombia, USA and Europe showing startling success. The programme also reveals the changes in lifestyle that can prevent the development of the disease, as well as the effects of a UK-wide trial. | ||
| "E-Cigarettes: Miracle or Menace?" | 22 May 2016 | 10 |
|
Michael Mosley investigates the dramatic rise in e-cigarettes in recent years, and questions whether they are a health risk or a better alternative to smoking. He reports on the content of e-cigarettes, meets scientists who are studying their effects and takes up vaping himself to see how it affects his health. | ||
| "Why Are We Getting So Fat?" | 7 June 2016 | 11 |
| With over 62 per cent of adults overweight, Cambridge geneticist Dr Giles Yeo believes that for many obese people, simply eating less is a harder than some might think. He takes a road trip around the UK and America to uncover why, meets people behind some of the shocking newspaper headlines, and through their stories, reveals truths which dispel commonly held myths about obesity. | ||
| "Sports Doping: Winning at Any Cost?" | 19 July 2016 | 12 |
| Dr Xand van Tulleken investigates the world of performance enhancing drugs. From the athletes seeking the rewards of fame, glory and lucrative sponsorship deals to the hundreds of thousands of people in the UK now regularly taking anabolic steroids to look good and buff up. What are these drugs? What do they do to the body? And is it worth it? | ||
| "Inside CERN" | 10 August 2016 | 13 |
| With exclusive behind the scenes access - Horizon has been following the highs and lows of an extraordinary story in particle physics. In June 2015 teams at CERN started running the Large Hadron Collider at the highest energy ever. Rumours quickly emerged that they were on the brink of a huge discovery. A mysterious bump in some data suggested a first glimpse of a brand new particle that could change our understanding of how the universe works. | ||
| "My Amazing Twin" | 25 August 2016 | 14 |
| The acerbically witty and severely facially disfigured broadcaster Adam Pearson presents a personal film about genetics. He and his twin brother, Neil, are genetically identical, and both share the same genetic disease, Neurofibromatosis 1 (Nf1) - yet they are completely different. Adam's face is covered with growths, whereas Neil looks completely normal. Neil has short term memory loss, whereas Adam is razor sharp. | ||
| "Jimmy Carr and the Science of Laughter" | 11 September 2016 | 15 |
| Jimmy and his guests try to get to the bottom of what laughter is, why we enjoy it so much, and what, if anything, it has to do with comedy. Between them, and with the help of contributions from other scientists on film, Jimmy and guests discover that laughter is much older than our species, and may well have contributed to making us human. | ||
| "The Lost Tribes of Humanity" | 12 October 2016 | 16 |
| Alice Roberts explores the latest discoveries in the study of Human Origins, revealing the transformation that has been brought about in this field by genetics. | ||
| "The Wildest Weather in the Universe" | 23 October 2016 | 17 |
| Scientists have started looking to the heavens and wondering what the weather might be like on other planets. We are witnessing the birth of extra-terrestrial meteorology, as technology is allowing astronomers to study other planets like never before. | ||
Series 53: 2017
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Clean Eating: The Dirty Truth" | 19 January 2017 | 01 |
| Dr Giles Yeo investigates the latest diet craze and social media sensation, clean eating. Giles cooks with Ella Mills, the Instagram entrepreneur behind Deliciously Ella, and examines how far her plant based cooking is based on science. | ||
| "Hair Care Secrets" | 23 January 2017 | 02 |
| A team of scientists and doctors investigate the incredible, natural material that is growing out of our heads, our hair. With access to the laboratories of some of the world's leading hair care companies, the team explore the latest research. | ||
| "ADHD and Me with Rory Bremner" | 25 April 2017 | 03 |
| Comedian and impressionist Rory Bremner is on a personal mission to uncover the science of ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a condition which he has suspected he has. In this film, Rory learns about the science of ADHD, goes for a diagnosis, and tries the drug methylphenidate for the first time, just before walking on stage. | ||
| "Why Did I Go Mad?" | 2 May 2017 | 04 |
| "Horizon" follows three people living with voices, hallucinations and paranoia, to explore what causes this kind of phenomena. Providing a rare first-hand insight into these experiences, they reveal just what it is like to live with them day-to-day. | ||
| "Strange Signals from Outer Space!" | 16 May 2017 | 05 |
| For decades some have suspected there might be others out there, intelligent beings capable of communicating with us. It might sound like fiction, but scientists from across the globe are scouring the universe for signals from extra terrestrials. The signals and material covered include the Lorimer fast radio burst of 2006, colliding neutron stars, the search at the Green Bank Telescope for radio signals from Tabby's Star, and the possibility there is a Dyson Sphere there.[114] | ||
| "Space Volcanoes" | 23 May 2017 | 06 |
| Volcanoes have long helped shape the Earth. "Horizon" follows an international team of volcanologists in Iceland as they draw fascinating parallels with the volcanoes on Earth and those elsewhere in the solar system. | ||
| "Antarctica: Ice Station Rescue" | 7 June 2017 | 07 |
| Britain's state-of-the-art Antarctic research base Halley VI is in trouble. Built on the Brunt Ice Shelf, it sits atop a massive slab of ice that extends far beyond the Antarctic shoreline. But the ice is breaking apart and just 6km from the station is an enormous crevasse, which threatens to separate Halley from the rest of the continent, setting the £28 million base adrift on a massive iceberg. | ||
| "Cyber Attack: The Day the NHS Stopped" | 12 June 2017 | 08 |
| Telling the inside story of the widespread and devastating WannaCry ransomware attack that hit the National Health Service in May 2017. The incident started in the morning. Appointment systems, pathology labs, x-rays and even CT Scanners were infected. | ||
| "10 Things You Need To Know About The Future" | 19 June 2017 | 09 |
| Hannah Fry investigates the questions the British public want answered about the future. Hannah will try to discover whether we could ever live forever or if there will ever be a cure for cancer. | ||
| "Dawn of the Driverless Car" | 29 June 2017 | 10 |
| "Horizon" enters a world where cars will drive themselves, a world where we are simply passengers, ferried about by wholesome green compassionate technology which will never ever go wrong. And it's almost here. | ||
| "Dippy and the Whale" | 13 July 2017 | 11 |
| Over the last two years, "Horizon" has been behind-the-scenes at the Natural History Museum, following the dramatic replacement of the iconic "Dippy the Dinosaur" skeleton cast with the real skeleton of a blue whale, the world's biggest animal. | ||
| "What Makes a Psychopath?" | 29 August 2017 | 12 |
| Psychologist Uta Frith takes an in-depth look at the psychopathic mind, including one of the most notorious of all, Moors murderer Ian Brady. | ||
| "Mars: A Traveller's Guide" | 12 September 2017 | 13 |
| With the dream of sending humans to Mars closer than ever before, the world's leading experts on Mars are asked where they would visit, and what they would need to survive. Real images and data bring these Martian landmarks to life. | ||
| "Goodbye Cassini: Hello Saturn" | 18 September 2017 | 14 |
| Celebrating the achievements and discoveries of a mission that has changed the way we see the Solar System as, after 13 years traversing the Saturn system (moons and rings), spacecraft Cassini is to plunge to a fiery death, becoming part of the planet it has explored. | ||
| "Being Transgender" | 26 September 2017 | 15 |
| Exploring what it means to be transgender and what happens when a person transitions psychologically, physically and biologically. Following a number of transgender people going through their own transition. | ||
Series 54: 2018
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "My Amazing Brain: Richard's War" | 5 February 2018 | 01 |
| Observational film, made over four years documenting Richard Gary's remarkable recovery from a catastrophic brain haemorrhage. An insight into the physical, psychological and emotional process of relearning how to live after a severe brain injury. | ||
| "Teenagers vs Cancer: A User's Guide" | 26 June 2018 | 02 |
| How 11 teenagers and young adults deal with cancer diagnosis and treatment. (see also Teenage Cancer Trust)[115] | ||
| "How to Build a Time Machine" | 10 July 2018 | 03 |
| Examining time travel and meeting scientists working on the cutting edge of discovery. | ||
| "Spina Bifida & Me" | 26 July 2018 | 04 |
| How pioneering foetal surgery could transform the lives of babies with spina bifida. | ||
| "Jupiter Revealed" | 7 August 2018 | 05 |
| Scientists reveal the wonders of Jupiter, using information from NASA's Juno mission. | ||
| "Stopping Male Suicide" | 21 August 2018 | 06 |
| Investigating why suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. | ||
| "A Week Without Lying: The Honesty Experiment" | 29 August 2018 | 07 |
| Scientists use new technology to discover what our world would be like if we couldn't lie. | ||
| "The Horizon Guide to AI" | 4 September 2018 | — |
| Documentary looking at the perception of AI from 1964 to the present day. | ||
| "The Placebo Experiment: Can My Brain Cure My Body?" | 4 October 2018 | 08 |
| Could the power of fake pills be used to treat some of our most common medical complaints? | ||
| "Body Clock: What makes us tick?" | 11 October 2018 | 09 |
| We all have a biological clock ticking away inside us that governs our daily rhythms. This affects our health as much as our diet and whether we exercise. So what can we do to manage this internal clock better? | ||
| "Avalanche: Making a Deadly Snowstorm" | 21 October 2018 | 10 |
| Documentary following a team of international scientists who conduct an experiment in the Canadian Rockies to trigger an avalanche and investigate its effects. | ||
| "Vitamin Pills: Miracle or Myth?" | 25 October 2018 | 11 |
| The vitamin industry is worth more than £400million in the UK alone. This investigation into vitamin supplements looks at their possible effects and whether they are necessary as part of a normal diet. | ||
| "Diagnosis on Demand? The Computer Will See You Now" | 1 November 2018 | 12 |
| Could a machine replace your doctor? Dr Hannah Fry explores the incredible ways AI is revolutionising healthcare - and what this means for all of us. | ||
| "The Contraceptive Pill: How Safe Is It?" | 19 November 2018 | 13 |
| GP Dr Zoe Williams investigates the contraceptive pill - exploring the latest scientific research and investigating the future of birth control. | ||
Series 55: 2019
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "We Need to Talk About Death" | 23 January 2019 | 01 |
| Dr Kevin Fong makes a personal journey through the moral questions about death that face not just the medical profession, but each and every person. The question of how people die is a question that everyone must face, and yet people avoid talking about it. | ||
| "Britain’s Next Air Disaster? Drones" | 1 July 2019 | 02 |
| High risk specialist and former Royal Marine Aldo Kane sets out to investigate the scale of the threat drones pose to our airports and skies, from rogue hobbyists to determined terrorist attacks. He explores what technologies are out there that governments and the aviation industry can turn to, to keep skies safe. | ||
| "The Honest Supermarket: What's Really in Our Food?" | 8 July 2019 | 03 |
| Dr Hannah Fry and dietician Priya Tew present groundbreaking tests that reveal where food is really coming from, and at what cost. Using the latest scientific research an "Honest Supermarket" has been built where products are labelled with the real story of how they're produced, and their effect on both consumers and the environment. | ||
| "Inside the Social Network: Facebook's Difficult Year" | 16 July 2019 | 04 |
| Facebook is a company that has grown from nothing to be worth half a trillion dollars in just 15 years. Today nearly a third of all humans are using it, and yet we rarely get to see the people actually in charge of the biggest social network in the world. The company has suffered a series of deepening scandals and intense media scrutiny. | ||
| "The 250 Million Pound Cancer Cure" | 22 July 2019 | 05 |
| Proton Beam Therapy is the one of the most technologically advanced though expensive cancer treatments in the world, but it has the potential to save the lives of children with otherwise incurable cancers. | ||
| "Cannabis: Miracle Medicine or Dangerous Drug?" | 28 August 2019 | 06 |
| Medicinal cannabis became legal in the UK on 1 November 2018, but it is still shrouded in controversy. A&E doctor Javid Abdelmoneim wants to find out whether it will help or harm patients. Javid meets the young epilepsy patient responsible for changing the law around medicinal cannabis in the UK and sees the remarkable effects it has on his condition. | ||
Series 56: 2020
| Title | Original broadcast date | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| "Addicted to Painkillers? Britain’s Opioid Crisis" | 16 January 2020 | 01 |
| Dr Michael Mosley immerses himself on the frontline of our prescription painkiller habit. In America, it is an epidemic. Now, new evidence raises concern about the UK's use of prescription opioids. | ||
| "Chris Packham: 7.7 Billion People and Counting" | 21 January 2020 | 02 |
| Naturalist Chris Packham investigates the impact a growing human population is having on the planet, asking whether the earth can sustain predictions of ten billion people by 2050. | ||
| "Toxic Town: The Corby Poisonings" | 23 March 2020 | 03 |
| The unknown story of the worst child-poisoning case since thalidomide, featuring a landmark legal battle by a group of mothers determined to uncover the truth. | ||
| "Coronavirus Special - Part 1" | 9 April 2020 | 04 |
| In just over 100 days, a new coronavirus has taken an unprepared world by storm, infiltrating every corner of the globe, sending entire nations into lockdown, killing thousands and infecting countless more. Across the world, governments are scrambling to react, hospitals are struggling to cope and an increasingly anxious public are starting to panic. | ||
| "The Restaurant that Burns Off Calories" | 20 April 2020 | 05 |
| Fred Sirieix and Zoe Williams open a restaurant with a difference, where every calorie eaten must be burned off by a secret gym team. | ||
| "Hubble: The Wonders of Space Revealed" | 24 April 2020 | 06 |
| To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its launch, this film tells the remarkable story of how Hubble revealed the awe and wonder of our universe and how a team of daring astronauts risked their lives to keep it working. | ||
| "The Great British Intelligence Test" | 4 May 2020 | 07 |
| Dr Hannah Fry and Michael Mosley put the public to the test, pitting young and old, males and females and tech lovers and readers against each other in a battle of wits. | ||
| "Coronavirus Special - Part 2" | 19 May 2020 | 08 |
| Dr Chris van Tulleken, Dr Hannah Fry and Michael Mosley examine the latest research and explore some of the big questions about the new coronavirus and the pandemic it has created. | ||
| "What's the Matter with Tony Slattery?" | 21 May 2020 | 09 |
| Tony Slattery was one of the most gifted TV comedians of the late 80s and early 90s. Then in 1996, amidst rumours of a massive breakdown, he seemed to vanish from screens overnight. | ||
| "Pluto: Back From the Dead" | 6 July 2020 | 10 |
| The incredible story of how Pluto has been propelled from an unremarkable ball of ice on the edge of the solar system to a world of unimaginable complexity - where some form of alien life might exist. | ||
gollark: This is for testing my discord bot now.
gollark: ++eval 1 >> 3
gollark: ++eval 1 + 1
gollark: ++eval test
gollark: ++eval 1 >> 3
References
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- "Horizon episodes coming up". BBC Retrieved on 2009-12-08
- "Recent Horizons". BBC Retrieved on 2009-12-08
- "Episode Guide". BBC Retrieved 2013-02-01
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