Public Broadcasting Service (U.S.)

When Homo sapiens arrived in Australia, they were, for the first time, truly alone, surrounded by wildly different flora and fauna. How did they survive and populate a continent? There is a close cultural and genetic link between the First Australians and modern-day Aborigines. The ancient and modern story intersect here as nowhere else in the world. The secret to this continuity is diversity. Intuitively, they found the right balance between being...

This film spotlights the quest of scientific truth in the early 20th Century. Isaac Newton, inspired by Albert Einstein, creates the law of gravity. Einstein, using the law of gravity, improves upon his special theory of relativity creating the general theory of relativity. This is proven by Arthur Eddington who photographed bent starlight shining through a full eclipse of the sun. Throughout this film, concepts of theoretical physics are animated...

Frail and failing but determined to see the war through to victory, FDR wins re-election and begins planning for a peaceful postwar world, but a cerebral hemorrhage kills him at 63. After her husband's death, Eleanor Roosevelt proves herself a shrewd politician and a skilled negotiator in her own right, as well as a champion of civil rights, civil liberties and the United Nations. When she dies in 1962, she is mourned everywhere as the First Lady...

Journey into the six decade reign of one of the world's most influential women. Follow Queen Elizabeth II's remarkable life, from her youth-when few expected she'd ever wear the crown-to her uncle Edward VIII's stunning abdication, and her father's subsequent coronation as King George VI. Witness her experiences during World War II, her own sudden ascension to the throne, and her eventful reign of more than 60 years. She defines the role of a modern...

David Harewood, the first black actor to play the lead role at the National theatre in London, explores the complexities and contradictions of Othello. He discovers how trade and diplomatic envoys were making the city more cosmopolitan in the early seventeenth century and explores the power of the language that makes Othello arguably the tightest piece of thriller writing in Shakespeare's body of work.

By the time he died in 1931, Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most famous men in the world. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in history, Edison had achieved glory as the genius behind such revolutionary inventions as sound recording, motion pictures, and electric light. Edison explores the complex alchemy that accounts for the celebrity of America's most famous inventor, offering new perspectives on the man and his milieu, and illuminating...

As early humans spread out across the world, their toughest challenge was colonizing the Americas - because a huge ice sheet blocked the route. It has long been thought that the pioneers, known as Clovis people, arrived about 13,000 years ago, but an underwater discovery in Mexico suggests people arrived earlier than previously thought - and by boat, not on foot. How closely related were these First Americans to today's Native Americans? It's a controversial...

Ever since Morgan Freeman watched Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in a filmed version, he has loved The Taming of the Shrew. In this episode, Morgan investigates the role of Petruchio - a part he played in 1990 - and explores the origins, and the legacy, of Shakespeare's most notorious comedy.

World-famous scientist Stephen Hawking sets three ordinary people a series of mind-blowing challenges. Can they think like a genius? Can they work out if time travel is possible?

This film presents the limits physicists have reached through scientific research and what the future might hold in physics.