Big History

The salt on your table is a key to unlocking the story of our planet.

The horse has been a revolutionary animal in unexpected ways. It has changed how we speak, what we wear, and sets the hidden limit for the size of our most massive empires.

This episode asks why mankind is gold crazy, and discovers there's a hard-wired reason we lust after it, and a microscopic explanation for why it shines.

Reveals how cold has the power to turn men into Barbarians, spark history's longest running war, and create the concept of race.

From the Great Pyramid at Giza to the towering skyscrapers of today, humans have engineered massive constructions for at least 5,000 years.

Flight takes more than wings. We need the right kind of air, the perfect materials cooked up over billions of years, and cosmic forces that are just right for us.

Humans have small teeth and no claws or armor, so how do we project our power? Warfare has defined traditional history, but Big History digs deeper to reveal how it all began.

Behind that cup of coffee or tea is a global story that goes back to the collision that created the Moon and the evolution of plant and animal life.

From the creators of "The Universe" and "Life After People", Big History puts a sci-fi spin on history, linking iconic events to our daily lives.

How does the cellphone in your pocket link to the Big Bang, the evolution of human memory, and even the Titanic disaster?

Secret codes run the world. The code of life, DNA, is the operating system for all organisms, which spawned intelligent life like us who eventually created codes of our own.

Impacts from space have created our planet and just about everything in it. Like celestial supply ships, they brought in water, metal, and maybe even life.

The Sun is our master and creator. It gives us our perception of time, controls our reality, and powers our lives.

Eating meat made us human...by giving us bigger brains, better tools, and spoken language. The human need for beef has driven history across the hemispheres.

Water is the miracle molecule, and mankind has used its perfect properties to revolutionize our lives. It was our first superhighway, the lifeblood of civilization, and gives us 90% of all the power we use today.

At critical moments in history, our second place metal was the most important metal on Earth.

This 2-hour special crisscrosses billions of years of time and space to show how everyone, and everything, is linked in one universal story. It weaves together science and history.