I enjoy watching documentaries on a wide variety of topics. This visual medium is more concise than reading books but imparts a lot of information through two senses simultaneously – sight and hearing. Books, at best, can provide only static images whereas documentaries provide sweeping vistas, views from a distance as well as close-up, words in people’s own voices and a sense of being in there that books can’t deliver.

While talking heads give you a better sense of who a person is and where they’re coming from because you hear the inflections in their voices and can see their body language, documentaries additionally include a music track. And music, as we all know, seems to connect directly with the emotional centres of our brains. And, in skillful hands, can evoke a mood in the audience that elevates the experience when watching a documentary.

While there’s no doubt that there’s an agenda in many directors’ minds when their shooting their documentary, the best try to remain impartial and are only concerned with imparting knowledge simply to educate the audience. In this light, here are several science documentaries that are all worth watching. All are free to watch online and if you have a way of streaming them to a TV, sit down, relax and enjoy.

Planet Earth

Home – Yann Arthus-Bertrand, famous for The Earth From Above, a photographic portrait of aerial shots of our planet, takes you on a sensational journey above 50 countries as seen from the sky and provides you with an unusual portrait of our Home. Planet Earth is critically ill but another future is possible if we all decide to write it together.

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? – In a Horizon special, naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether the world is heading for a population crisis. In his lengthy career, he’s seen the world’s population rise from about 2.5 billion in 1950 to over 7 billion today. He examines whether it is the duty of individuals to commit not only to smaller families, but to change the way they live for the sake of humanity and Planet Earth.

Biographies

Isaac Newton: The Last Magician – Newton – brilliant rational mathematician or master of the occult? This innovative biography reveals Newton as both a hermit and a tyrant, a heretic and an alchemist. Magical images mix with actors and experts to bring alive Britain’s greatest scientific genius in his own words.


Isaac Newton – The Last Magician by costello74

Richard Feynman: No Ordinary Genius – In 1993, five years after Feynman’s death, the BBC set out to capture Feynman’s spirit and his scientific legacy in this fantastic documentary. The film was subsequently adapted into the book No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman, and the documentary is now available on YouTube in its entirety — enjoy.

Albert Einstein – probably the best documentary about the world-famous scientist.

Ray Kurzweil: Transcendant Man – chronicles the life and controversial ideas of luminary Ray Kurzweil. For more than three decades, inventor, futures, and New York Times best-selling author Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. The film follows Kurzweil around his world as he discusses his thoughts on the technological singularity, a proposed advancement that will occur sometime in the 21st century when progress in artificial intelligence, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics will result in the creation of a human-machine civilization.

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz – The story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz’s help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz’s groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare (he helped defeat the SOPA bill). It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron’s story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.

Astronomy

Finding The Next Earth

The Largest Black Holes in the Universe – Our Milky Way may harbor millions of black holes… the ultra dense remnants of dead stars. But now, in the universe far beyond our galaxy, there’s evidence of something far more ominous. A breed of black holes that has reached incomprehensible size and destructive power. Just how large, and violent, and strange can they get?

The Mystery of The Milky Way

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos – the original series of Cosmos created and presented by astronomer Carl Sagan.

Cosmos Panel QA Featuring Seth MacFarlane, Neil Degrasse Tyson & Ann Druyan – on stage in front of a live crowd for the Cosmos premiere (Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new version) and live panel QA session.

Filed under: Gotta-See Videos