Origins of Us

An insider's look at the engineering and scientific miracles behind the things that form the modern world.

Explore the surprising things we know (and don’t know) about why people are the way they are through expert interviews, rare footage from historical experiments, and brand-new, ground-breaking demonstrations of human nature at work.

Biography is a documentary television series. It was originally a half-hour filmed series produced for CBS by David Wolper from 1961 to 1964 and hosted by Mike Wallace. The A&E Network later re-ran it and has produced new episodes since 1987. The older version featured historical figures such as Helen Keller and Mark Twain, or long-dead entertainment figures such as Will Rogers or John Barrymore. The A&E series has placed the emphasis on such people as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Plácido Domingo, Freddie Mercury, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Eric Clapton, Pope John Paul II, Gene Tierney, Selena, Diego Rivera, Mao Zedong and Queen Elizabeth II, and fictional characters like The Phantom, Superman, Hamlet, Betty Boop, and Santa Claus. The program ended up profiling enough figures that in 1999, A&E spun it off into an entire network, The Biography Channel.

Explores WWII from Germany's invasion of Poland through the atomic age, examining pivotal battles, wartime leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt, and the human cost of total war.

Infographics and archival footage deliver bite-size history lessons on scientific breakthroughs, social movements and world-changing discoveries.

Motoring programme featuring reviews of and reports about cars of all types.

Before he was Hulk Hogan, he was Terry Bollea. Uncover the man behind the legend in this unfiltered documentary featuring his very last interview.

A look at the life of Australian pop star Kylie Minogue, who opens her personal archives and reflects on a career in which she has sold 80 million records and reinvented herself, and by extension pop, several times. Home movies, personal photographs and new interviews reveal the picture, as Kylie addresses how she’s faced public scrutiny, personal loss and illness.

In this true-crime documentary, a cult expert and filmmaker infiltrate a polygamist sect to expose a self-proclaimed prophet and bring him to justice.

This compelling series investigates the motives and m.o. of female murderers. While males are often driven by anger, impulse and destruction, women usually have more complex, long-term reasons to kill.

PBS' premier science series helps viewers of all ages explore the science behind the headlines. Along the way, NOVA demystifies science and technology, and highlights the people involved in scientific pursuits.

Filmed across six continents, this docuseries uses cutting-edge camera technology to capture animals' nocturnal lives, revealing new behaviours filmed in full color like never before.

This six part documentary draws attention to the most extraordinary — almost supernatural — accounts of animals that have adapted to the cruelest evolutionary curveballs.

An in-depth look at the history and pop cultural significance of horror films.

Will Smith whose curiosity and wonder is positively infectious—is guided by National Geographic Explorers traveling to different corners of the world to get up close and personal with the weirdest, most unusual, dangerous and thrilling spectacles of the planet.

Come one, come all to The Circus. This real-time documentary series pulls back the curtain on the current political stories, revealing the intense, inspiring and infuriating stories behind the headlines. Key characters and events are presented in real time, as they are happening.

Travel around the world with author Dan Buettner to discover five unique communities where people live extraordinarily long and vibrant lives.

Morgan Freeman presents his quest in order to find how most religions perceive life after death, what different civilizations thought about the act of creation and other big questions that mankind has continuously asked.

Consistently stunning documentaries transport viewers to far-flung locations ranging from the torrid African plains to the chilly splendours of icy Antarctica. The show's primary focus is on animals and ecosystems around the world. A comic book based on the show, meant to be used an as educational tool for kids, was briefly distributed to museums and schools at no cost in the mid-2000s.

Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees. Professor Gates utilizes a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world’s leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears.