Dr Adam Rutherford shows how decoding the genome has led us to begin to understand the very process by which our DNA makes us different; how it makes each one of us on earth unique and influences who we are and the traits we have. He reveals how, as we try and understand the relationship between who we are and our genes, we stand at the beginning of the most exciting scientific journey of all time.
Eternal life is humanity’s oldest dream. It may be finally coming true. Today, at least in the West, the quest for immortality has shifted from the metaphysical to the technical and the scientific. In this film we will investigate the advancement of this research in laboratories around the world. With cryonics technology improving, human cloning now possible, mind uploading and digital brain simulation thriving, reversing the aging of cells and organs feasible, immortality may seem right around the corner.
In some countries, such as the US, Russia and Europe, private companies are financing and promoting the promise of immortality or at least a longer life expectancy. Are they selling a reality or utopia? We will meet scientists, neurophysiologists, computer specialists, geneticists, and biologists, and also hopefuls of immortal life, futurists, sociologists and businessmen. We will film different research laboratories and cities built for the aging; we will interview the experts as well as the anonymous men and women who speak about their relationship with life and death and those who simply embody it.
It is time to see if personalised dieting will work in normal life. The volunteers have been given one of three diets to follow - based on their genes, their hormones and their psychology. But now they are back at home, trying to stick to their personalised diets with all the stresses and temptations of real life. Dr Chris van Tulleken and Professor Tanya Byron discover how our genetic makeup can make temptation difficult to resist, how understanding the brain reveals what makes us comfort eat and what science can tell us about why we make disastrous food choices.
The story of how the secret of life has been examined through the prism of the most complex organism known - the human body. It begins with attempts to save the lives of gladiators in Ancient Rome, unfolds with the macabre work and near-perfect drawings of Leonardo in the Renaissance, through the idea of the 'life force' of electricity, to the microscopic world of the cell. It reveals how a moral crisis unleashed by work on the nuclear bomb helped trigger a great breakthrough in biology - understanding the structure and workings of DNA.
'What Makes Me?', explores the question of how the brain gives rise to our thoughts, emotions, our memories and personality. Philosophers and great thinkers have for millennia pondered the question of how physical stuff can give rise to mental processes. Last century, the new field of neuroscience joined the discussion, and Dr David Eagleman explains that to a neuroscientist, the answers to such questions lie in a deep understanding of the brain.
