Imagine if the food you eat could 'clean' your body and make you feel well. Dr Giles Yeo investigates the latest diet craze and social media sensation - clean eating. In a television first, Giles cooks with Ella Mills, the Instagram entrepreneur behind Deliciously Ella, one of the most popular brands associated with clean eating, and examines how far her plant-based cooking is based on science. She tells him clean has lost its way: "Clean now implies dirty and that's negative. I haven't used it, but as far as I understood it when I first read the term, it meant natural, kind of unprocessed, and now it doesn't mean that at all. It means diet, it means fad". Giles sifts through the claims of the Hemsley sisters, who advocate not just gluten-free but grain-free cooking, and Natasha Corrett, who popularises alkaline eating through her Honestly Healthy brand. In America, Giles reveals the key alternative health figures whose food philosophies are influencing the new gurus of clean. He discovers that when it comes to their promises about food and our health, all is not always what it appears to be. Inside a Californian ranch where cancer patients have been treated with alkaline food, Giles sees for himself what can happen when pseudoscience is taken to a shocking extreme.
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 (also known as Ritalin) for the first time - just before walking on stage.
As they contain no active ingredient, placebo medicines and pills should not really work, but they are now being shown to be effective in helping treat pain and depression and even alleviating some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. This programme explores why they work and how everyone could benefit from them.
The gripping story of how one Russian internet millionaire is turning to cutting-edge science to try to unlock the secret of living forever. Dmitry Itskov recently brought together some of the world's leading neuroscientists, robot builders and consciousness researchers to try to devise a system that would allow him to escape his biological destiny. Entering Dmitry's seemingly sci-fi world, Horizon investigates the real science inspiring his bold plan to upload the human mind to a computer. There are doubters - like the major neuroscientist who tells us 'it's too stupid, it simply cannot be done'. But as we also meet the Japanese maker of Erica, one of the world's most human-like robots, who tells us the destiny of humans is to become robots to overcome the constraints of time, see how a quadriplegic Californian man is already controlling a robot arm with his thoughts, and explore the groundbreaking work of the scientist behind the world's largest neuroscience project - the $6 billion US Brain Initiative - who tells us the effort to map all the activity of the brain could be a crucial step towards mind uploading, Horizon asks is it really so crazy to think Dmitry Itskov could succeed in his goal of bringing about immortality for all of us within 30 years?
This is the story of an extraordinary scientific adventure - the attempt to control gravity. For centuries, the precise workings of gravity have confounded the greatest scientific minds - from Newton to Faraday and Einstein - and the idea of controlling gravity has been seen as little more than a fanciful dream. Yet in the mid 1990s, UK defence manufacturer BAE Systems began a ground-breaking project code-named Greenglow, which set about turning science fiction into reality. On the other side of the Atlantic, Nasa was simultaneously running its own Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. It was concerned with potential space applications of new physics, including concepts like 'faster-than-light travel' and 'warp drives'. Looking into the past and projecting into the future, Horizon explores science's long-standing obsession with the idea of gravity control. It looks at recent breakthroughs in the search for loopholes in conventional physics and examines how the groundwork carried out by Project Greenglow has helped change our understanding of the universe. Gravity control may sound like science fiction, but the research that began with Project Greenglow is very much ongoing, and the dream of flying cars and journeys to the stars no longer seems quite so distant.
Horizon looks at dark energy - the mysterious force that is unexpectedly causing the universe's expansion to speed up. The effects of dark energy were discovered in 1998 but physicists still don't know what it is. Worse, 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. Experiments on earth and in space generate data that might provide a clue, but there are also hopes that another Einstein might emerge - someone who can write a new theory explaining the mystery of the dark energy.
The oceans define the earth. They are crucial to life and we used to think that they were unique to our blue planet. But we were wrong. It has recently been discovered that there are oceans all over our solar system and they are very similar to our own. And now scientists are going on an epic journey in search of new life in places that never seemed possible. Nasa is even planning to dive to the depths of a strange, distant ocean in a remarkable submarine. Horizon discovers that the hunt for oceans in space is marking the dawn of a new era in the search for alien life.
This is the story of how our solar system will be transformed by the aging sun before coming to a spectacular end in about eight billion years. Astronomers can peer into the far future to predict how it will happen by analysing distant galaxies, stars and even planets in their final moments. In this film, Horizon brings these predictions to life in a peaceful midwestern town that has a giant scale model of the solar system spread out all over the city. As it ages, the sun will bloat into a red giant star, swallowing planets... as well as half the town. The fate of the Earth itself hangs in the balance. How will the solar system end?
Liz Bonnin presents a controversial and provocative episode of Horizon, investigating how new scientific research is raising hard questions about zoos - the film explores how and why zoos keep animals, and whether they need to change to keep up with modern science or ultimately be consigned to history. Should zoos cull their animals to manage populations? Liz travels to Copenhagen Zoo, who killed a giraffe and fed it to the lions, to witness their culling process first hand. They think it is a natural part of zoo keeping that is often swept under the carpet. Should some animals never be kept in captivity? In a world exclusive, Liz visits SeaWorld in Florida and asks if captivity drove one of their orcas to kill his trainer. But could zoos be the answer to conserving endangered species? Liz examines their record, from helping breed pandas for the wild to efforts to save the rhinos. She meets one of the last surviving northern white rhinos and discovers the future of this species now lies in a multimillion-dollar programme to engineer them from stem cells. Veteran conservation scientist Dr Sarah Bexell tells Liz the science of captive breeding is giving humanity false hope.
Dr Xand Van Tulleken is single and looking for love. Mathematician Dr Hannah Fry wants to use him as her guinea pig to test whether the algorithms that dating sites use to match people actually work. While Hannah builds a dating site, Xand meets the scientists investigating online dating - and learns what pictures to use and what to write in his profile. He tries out a 'bot' that has automated a swiping app and has an MRI scan to find out whether his brain is equipped for love. 50 members of the public take part in some mini experiments at a date night - and Xand goes on various dates to test whether the algorithm is better than him choosing randomly.
Michael Mosley investigates the dramatic rise in e-cigarettes. They're everywhere these days, but what does the latest scientific research on them reveal? Michael reveals what e-cigarettes are really doing to your health. Are they really better for you than cigarettes? What is actually in them? Is passive vapour harmful? And can they really stop you from smoking? Michael meets some of the scientists around the world studying them, asks a group of volunteers to try to give up smoking regular cigarettes using them, and even takes up 'vaping' himself, smoking an e-cigarette every day for a month to see the effects on his own health - no easy task for such a committed non-smoker.
Over 62% of adults in the UK are currently overweight or obese and this figure is set to rise. A common attitude is that obese people should be ashamed - it is their fault, they have no will power and if they could just 'eat less and exercise more', the problem would soon be solved. Yet, despite millions of pounds being spent on this simple message, the UK is getting fatter every year. Cambridge geneticist Dr Giles Yeo believes that for many obese people, simply eating less is a lot harder than you might think - and he is taking a road trip around the UK and America to uncover why. He meets the real people behind some of the more shocking newspaper headlines and, through their stories, reveals surprising truths which dispel commonly held myths about obesity. He gains access to scientists and doctors trialling cutting-edge techniques to tackle the crisis - from a 'miracle' hormone injection to a transfusion of faecal matter, and even learns a thing or two about his own size and relationship with food.
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? Xand's investigation reveals the extraordinary gamble dopers take with their health. Long-term effects include kidney failure, cognitive impairment and testicular shrinkage, and Xand witnesses how users are self-experimenting with drugs that have not yet been approved for human use. Horizon uncovers the new frontier of doping, from new molecules to gene therapy - where the genes that control muscle growth are altered. These new methods could be completely undetectable by the doping authorities. Finally, with the help of his twin brother Chris, Xand discovers the legal ways some athletes try to gain the edge.
With exclusive behind-the-scenes access, Horizon follows 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. A new particle could hint at extra dimensions and help us understand the very beginning of the universe - but first the team has to find it. Horizon follows the scientists as they hunt for the elusive signals that would prove if there is a new particle or if it is just noise from their machine.
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 has none. Neil has short-term memory loss, whereas Adam is razor sharp. How can the same genetic disease affect identical twins so differently? Adam is on the cusp of a successful film and television career, but the disease has left tumours on his face that are growing out of control and he could lose his sight. For years, everyone thought Adam's brother Neil had escaped symptoms, but today his life is governed by epilepsy and a mysterious memory loss that suddenly came on during his teens. Determined to save their future, Adam tries to find out why the disease affects the twins so differently and see if there is anything he can do to stop it from tearing their lives apart.
Horizon follows the story of Richard Gray and his remarkable recovery from a life-changing catastrophic stroke. The film shows the rarely seen journey back to recovery. Recorded by his documentary film-maker wife Fiona over four years, this film shows the hard work of recovery. Initially bed bound and unable to do anything, including speak, the initial outlook was bleak, yet occasionally small glimmers of hope emerged. Armed always with her camera, Fiona captures the moment Richard moves his fingers for the first time, and then over months she documents his struggle to relearn how to walk again. The story also features poignant footage delivered in a series of flashbacks, in which we see and hear Richard at his professional best. He was a peacekeeper with the United Nations, immersed in the brutal war in Sarajevo, Bosnia. We also hear from the surgeons and clinicians who were integral to Richard's remarkable recovery, from describing life-saving, high-risk reconstructive surgery to intensive rehabilitation programmes that push the former soldier to his limits. As the film starts, Fiona asks 'will Richard, my Richard still be there?' By the end the answer is clear.
What is it like to be young and find out you have got cancer? What you will find out in this film may surprise you. This film, narrated by actor and comedian Jack Whitehall, tells 11 inspirational stories, revealing how a range of young people have dealt with their cancer diagnosis and the treatment process. We hear, primarily in their own words, about their fears, their hopes and their experiences - affirming the view that 'the best therapist for a teenager with cancer... is another teenager with cancer.'
Time travel is not forbidden by the laws of nature, but to build a time machine, we would need to understand more about those laws and how to subvert them than we do now. And every day, science does learn more. In this film Horizon meets the scientists working on the cutting edge of discovery - men and women who may discover how to build wormholes, manipulate entangled photons or build fully functioning time crystals. In short, these scientists may enable an engineer of the future to do what we have so far been only able to imagine - to build a machine that allows us travel back and forward in time at the touch of a button. It could be you! Science fiction? Watch this space.
One in every 1,000 pregnancies in Britain has a spine or brain defect like spina bifida. 30 years ago, actress Ruth Madeley was one of them. Despite having spina bifida herself, it is a condition she doesn't fully understand. In this programme, Ruth sets out to discover why she has it, whether it could have been prevented and what it means for her future. Ruth meets the lord campaigning for a change in the law that he says could prevent thousands of birth defects. And she discovers that a pioneering surgery could offer a different future for babies diagnosed with spina bifida, by operating on them before they are even born. She discovers how this surgery was invented, meets the families whose lives it has changed and follows the team of British surgeons preparing to perform this extraordinary foetal surgery in the UK for the very first time. But Ruth also examines attitudes in Britain today and asks whether we should change the way we see disability.
'To send a spacecraft there is a little bit insane,' says Scott Bolton when talking about Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. But that is exactly what he has done, because Scott is head of Juno, the Nasa mission designed to peer through Jupiter's swirling clouds and reveal the wonders within. But this is no ordinary world. This documentary, narrated by Toby Jones, journeys with the scientists into the heart of a giant. Professor Kaitlin Kratter shows us how extreme Jupiter is. She has come to a quarry to measure out each planet's mass with rocks, starting with the smallest. Mercury is a single kilogram, and the Earth is 17. But Jupiter is on another scale entirely. It is seven tonnes - that is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets combined. On Kaitlin's scale it is not a pile of rocks, it is the truck delivering them. With extreme size comes extreme radiation. Juno is in the most extreme environment Nasa has visited. By projecting a 70-foot-wide, life-size Juno on a Houston rooftop, Scott shows us how its fragile electronics are encased in 200kg of titanium. As Scott puts it, 'we had to build an armoured tank to go there.' The team's efforts have been worthwhile. Professor Andrew Ingersoll, Juno's space weatherman, reveals they have seen lightning inside Jupiter, perhaps a thousand times more powerful than Earth's lightning. This might be evidence for huge quantities of water inside Jupiter. Prof Ingersoll also tells us that the Great Red Spot, a vast hurricane-like storm that could swallow the Earth whole, goes down as far as they can see - 'it could go down 1,000s of kilometres'. Deeper into the planet and things get stranger still. At the National Ignition facility in northern California, Dr Marius Millot is using powerful lasers normally used for nuclear fusion for an astonishing experiment. He uses '500 times the power that is used for the entire United States at a given moment' to crush hydrogen to the pressures inside Jupiter.
Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK - causing more deaths in this group than car accidents, and even more than cancer. This means that the most likely thing to kill Dr Xand Van Tulleken is himself. And he wants to know why. In this sensitive film, Xand finds out what we know about why people develop suicidal thoughts, and whether there is anything that we can do about it.
Deception is an integral part of human nature and it's estimated we all lie up to nine times a day. But what if we created a world in which we couldn't lie? In a radical experiment pioneering scientists from across Europe have come together to make this happen.
Dr. Michael Mosley cures real pain with fake pills in Britain's largest ever placebo trial.
A former commando spends ten days locked in an abandoned nuclear bunker, with no way of telling the time, to find out how best to manage his body clock and improve his health.
Can we predict avalanches? How can we save more lives? A team of scientists led by Prof Danielle George create a massive avalanche to find out.
Nearly half of us take a vitamin or mineral supplement every day, but what are these pills sold on every high street actually doing? Digging deeper than the eye-catching words on the packaging, Dr Giles Yeo investigates who really needs a supplement by putting our diets to the test.
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. This film chronicles the inside story of the AI health revolution, as one company, Babylon Health, prepare for a man vs machine showdown. Can Babylon succeed in their quest to prove their AI can outperform human doctors at safe triage and accurate diagnosis? Artificial intelligence is starting to transform healthcare beyond recognition - and tech companies large and small see almost limitless commercial opportunity. The ultimate vision is for accessible, affordable, better healthcare for almost everyone with a phone. In Britain this is already radically changing how some of us see our GPs. And in a world with a chronic shortage of doctors, but where even the very poor own mobile phones, it could be truly revolutionary. To witness this revolution from the inside, this film has privileged, behind-the-scenes access to ambitious British tech start-up Babylon Health, whose CEO Dr Ali Parsa declares with complete conviction 'we're going to do with healthcare what Google did with information.' Babylon launched its GP at Hand app in London in late 2017 and has already persuaded 30,000 Londoners to quit their old GPs to register instead for this NHS 'digital first' service, where patients discuss symptoms with an AI chatbot and see a doctor in minutes 24/7 via their phone. But GP at Hand's arrival has proved controversial - with many traditional GPs worried about the disruptive consequences for them and their patients, and others seeking to thwart its expansion nationwide. As this film reveals, there is a fundamental culture clash at play - between the 'move fast and break things' world of tech, and the cautious, diligent, often slow-moving world of medical science. So how will both camps respond when Babylon's AI attempts to pass the diagnostic sections of the Royal College of GPs exam? Amazingly, the NHS is today
In recent years a groundbreaking new study has been released into the effects of the contraceptive pill. Research from Denmark claimed women on the pill and other forms of hormonal contraception were 70% more likely to be diagnosed with depression than those who were not. And another study has found hormonal contraception was linked to a seemingly dramatic risk of breast cancer. Negative headlines are nothing new for the contraceptive pill - first introduced in 1961, it has had a chequered history with early versions linked to cancer risk and life-threatening blood clots. Yet hormonal contraception remains Britain's most popular form of birth control, and today over three million women take regular doses of synthetic hormones. So should they be worried about its safety? GP Dr Zoe Williams gets behind the headlines in this Horizon investigation. A specially commissioned, nationwide survey reveals the areas of most concern to British women - from mental health to the risk of cancer and drop in libido. With the help of world leading scientists, Zoe finds out if these concerns are justified and by delving deep into the science around the pills side effects Horizon uncovers some striking revelations - from protecting women against cancer to increasing their risk of suicide.
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. They examine the impact of social, biological and environmental influences on conditions traditionally associated with insanity, such as schizophrenia and psychosis, and within the film they look at how new ways of understanding the brain are leading to a dramatic change in treatments and approaches and examine whether targeting the root causes of psychosis can lead to recovery. Above all, they try to uncover why it happened to them - and whether it could happen to you.
Horizon investigates claims of signals from extra terrestrials. In 2006, Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin discovered a enigmatic signal from space, known as a fast radio burst. It was a pulse of radiation so bright, it didn't appear to be caused by any known object in the universe. Explanations ranged from colliding neutron stars to communication signals from an alien civilisation. Scientists have been searching the cosmos for strange signals like the 'Lorimer Burst' for more than 50 years, ever since astronomer Frank Drake convened a secretive meeting of a group of scientists calling themselves the 'Order of the Dolphin'. The film ends with scientists latest search for extra-terrestial intelligence - Horizon obtained exclusive access to film researchers at the Green Bank Telescope searching for radio signals from 'Tabby's Star' - a star so mysterious some scientists believe might be surrounded by a Dyson Sphere - a vast energy collector built by advanced aliens.
Volcanoes have long helped shape the Earth. But what is less well known is that there are volcanoes on other planets and moons that are even more extraordinary than those on our own home planet. Horizon follows an international team of volcanologists in Iceland as they draw fascinating parallels between the volcanoes on Earth and those elsewhere in the solar system. Through the team's research, we discover that the largest volcano in the solar system - Olympus Mons on Mars - has been formed in a similar way to those of Iceland, how a small moon of Jupiter - Io - has the most violent eruptions anywhere, and that a moon of Saturn called Enceladus erupts icy geysers from a hidden ocean. Computer graphics combined with original Nasa material reveal the spectacular sights of these amazing volcanoes.
Filmmaker Natalie Hewit follows the everyday people battling in the most extreme environment on Earth to move Halley VI, a vital polar research station. 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 a ginormous crevasse, which threatens to separate Halley from the rest of the continent, setting the £28 million base adrift on a massive iceberg. So Halley needs to move. But this is probably the toughest moving job on Earth, and the team of 90 who have been tasked with the mission aren't just architectural or engineering experts. They are plumbers, mechanics and farmers from across the UK and beyond - ordinary men and women on an extraordinary adventure. Their practical skills will be what makes or breaks this move.
A few weeks ago, the National Health Service was hit by a widespread and devastating cyber attack - Horizon tells the inside story of one of the most challenging days in the history of the NHS. On the morning of 12 May the attack started. Appointment systems, pathology labs, x-rays and even CT scanners were infected - putting not just data but patients lives at risk, and on every screen a simple - some may even say polite - message appeared. 'Ooops, your files have been encrypted!' But what followed was far from civilised. It was very clear that all the data on an infected machine was now scrambled and only the hackers could unscramble it. For a price - and with an extra twist - after a few days the ransom money doubled, and if nothing was paid within a week, the hackers threatened to destroy all the data - forever
This episode of Horizon looks at the issues that will change the way we live our lives in the future. Rather than relying on the minds of science fiction writers, mathematician Hannah Fry delves into the data we have today to provide an evidence-based vision of tomorrow. With the help of the BBC's science experts - and a few surprise guests - Hannah investigates the questions the British public want answered about the future.
