The Whizz Report

Caves are intimately linked to the history of our rivers: as the rivers dig their beds and sink into the valleys, the underground galleries slowly plunge down into the bowels of the Earth, nibbling ever deeper into the rock. But in the Ardèche, nothing seems to have happened this way: the caves first appeared in the depths and then gained ground as they rose to the surface.

In France, life expectancy at birth is now 78 years for men and almost 85 years for women. This life expectancy has almost doubled in the last century, and the number of French centenarians is increasing all the time. In 1900, there were fewer than a hundred, compared with over 15,000 today. Why is life expectancy constantly increasing? Will we ever reach a limit?

In French Guiana, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, Europe has built one of the world's largest space centers, between Kourou and Sinnamary. This is where the famous Ariane 5 rocket takes off from. But new launchers have arrived in French Guiana. The Europeans have teamed up with the Russians to launch the Soyuz rocket. And they have inaugurated a new launcher, Vega.

What does our sense of balance depend on? Why are we afraid of heights? Are we all equal when it comes to vertigo? Sabine and Jamy investigate. At ground level or suspended over a hundred meters above the void, Sabine will put her balance to the test, supervised by a new breed of tightrope walkers: highliners.

More than 120 years after its construction, the Iron Lady still dominates the capital, and has undergone a facelift over the years. New work is underway to refurbish the entire second floor and offer visitors a whole new sensory experience. The two large pavilions will be rebuilt to house a new auditorium and a space dedicated to Gustave Eiffel.

France's coastal communities are increasingly threatened by marine erosion. On the Aquitaine coast, almost 400 buildings could be swallowed up by the sea by 2040. While sandy beaches are the most affected, the rocky coast is not spared. Jamy and Sabine travel to the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts to see how the coastline is retreating.

We spend almost a third of our lives asleep. Early sleepers, night owls or insomniacs, we all have our own sleep cycles. To understand how we sleep, Sabine, a night owl, spent the night in a sleep center in Lyon. Jamy spends a sleepless night in town to enlighten us on the secrets of the sandman.

While the sun and waves delight bathers every summer, the seaside is not without its dangers. During the summer of 2012, 176 people drowned on the French coastline. Sabine and Jamy will be following the daily lives of the rescue swimmers from SNSM, the French national lifeboat company, which guards almost a third of French beaches. Last year, they rescued over 1,500 people.

For mountaineers and snowboarders, the mountains are an immense playground and an area of limitless freedom. But it is also riddled with traps that can close in on the most imprudent. Avalanches, for example, kill around thirty people every year.

2.6 billion passengers traveled by air in 2010, and air traffic is constantly increasing. How do we keep up with this ever-increasing demand? Fred takes us behind the scenes at Roissy - Charles de Gaulle, the world's seventh-largest airport and Europe's second-largest, just behind London Heathrow. For his part, Jamy sets up his laboratory as close as possible to the planes.

Ile Longue, opposite Brest, is home to the French Navy's most secret and strategic base. It is from here that the 4 French submarines armed with nuclear missiles depart. Their mission: to deter potential enemies from attacking France. For a few days, Fred shared the lives of the 110-strong crew of the "Téméraire".

Do airplanes hide to die? They end their lives far from our eyes, in American deserts or in small French airports away from the big international terminals. It's at Châteauroux airport, on the occasion of the demise of one of these giants of the air, the famous 747, that we're going to take a look at how aircraft recycling works.

With Fred and Jamy, we're going to put our memory, or rather our memories, to the test and learn how to use them properly. In a neuroscience laboratory at Paris-Descartes University, Fred takes part in virtual reality tests to assess his short-term memory and memory consolidation. Jamy explains why and how certain events in our lives are quickly forgotten, while others remain engraved forever.

Hunted, poisoned or poached, the wolf had completely disappeared from French territory by the middle of the 20th century. Around twenty years ago, it reappeared in the heart of the Mercantour, in the southern Alps, from Italy. Sabine set out on the trail of this predator to measure the consequences of its return on wildlife and sheep herds.