Gods and Monsters
We uncover the story of our relationship with the skies from our earliest ancestors, through to the birth of the science of astronomy. Our story begins with one of the earliest known creation myths - the Babylonian Enuma Elish. With spectacular CGI animation, we see the clash of the gods Marduk and Tiamat that the Babylonians believed gave birth to the earth and the sky. In this episode we visit the caves of El Castillo in Northern Spain. Deep inside the caves we see some of the earliest cave paintings in the world. Astronomer Phil Plait shows us how the skies could be used to navigate and tell the time, either by observing the phases of the moon, or by tracking the movements of the sun across the horizon. We look at Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza and see that, as our earliest civilisations developed, we built monuments that enabled us to observe the skies and worship them. We visit Ancient Greece, where the great storytellers Hesiod and Homer were populating the world with gods and monsters. That is until the first philosophers started to look at the world not in terms of individual events that showed the actions of living gods in the sky, but as phenomena that were all part of the patterns of the natural world. As philosophy and early science start to reshape the world from mythological to rational, we are on the cusp of a revolution that gave birth to modern science.
Trailer
Recently Updated Shows
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Emmy Award and Grammy Award winner Jimmy Fallon brought NBC's "The Tonight Show" back to its New York origins when he launched The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon from Rockefeller Center. Fallon puts his own stamp on the storied NBC late-night franchise with his unique comedic wit, on-point pop culture awareness, welcoming style and impeccable taste in music with the award-winning house band, The Roots.
Happy's Place
Happy's Place follows Bobbie who inherits her father's restaurant and is less than thrilled to discover that she has a new business partner in the half-sister she never knew she had.
Found
In any given year, more than 600,000 people are reported missing in the U.S. More than half that number are people of color that the country seems to forget about. Public relations specialist Gabi Mosely - who was once herself one of those forgotten ones - and her crisis management team now make sure there is always someone looking out for the forgotten missing people. But unbeknownst to anyone, this everyday hero is hiding a chilling secret of her own.
