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

"An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible--a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish. We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our...

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch--the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes...

The invention of "waves" - as in radio waves or electromagnetic fields - has led to many great inventions. This program examines how the ability to transmit music, conversations, pictures, or data invisibly through the air, over thousands of miles, has changed our lives. Whether we are talking about cell phones, microwave ovens, TVs, RADAR systems, or any one of the thousands of other wireless technologies, all of them use radio waves to communicate....

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

Robotic technology offers new capabilities and greater convenience, but at the same time, it threatens our jobs and perhaps even our identity as human beings.

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

"The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the "Event": the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics,...

The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines--on punishment of death--and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction....

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