The BEST episodes of The Nature of Things season 55

#1 - Pets, Vets and Debts

Season 55 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/31/2016

#2 - Moose: A Year in the Life of a Twig Eater

Season 55 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/15/2015

High up in Canada’s Rockies, by a crystal-clear lake rimmed with old-growth forest, a moose is born. At the best of times, the odds are stacked against this leggy 35-pounder surviving its first year, as normally less than 50 percent do, but now that number is sinking even lower. Moose populations across many parts of North America are in steep decline and scientists believe one big reason is that fewer moose calves are surviving their first year. If the population continues on this trajectory, scientists believe that moose could be gone from many parts of North America within the next 50 years. It has never been more important to understand what happens in the first year of a moose’s life.

#3 - Wasted

Season 55 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/21/2016

Filmmaker Maureen Palmer set out to make a documentary following her partner Mike Pond — a psychotherapist and an alcoholic five years sober — as he searched for the best new evidence-based addiction treatments. The intent was to help others battling substance use disorders.

#4 - Wolverine: Ghost of the Northern Forest

Season 55 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/25/2016

Filmmaker Andrew Manske goes in search of the elusive wolverine.

#5 - It Takes Guts

Season 55 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/29/2015

Eat less, move more. That’s been the mantra of the weight loss movement for decades. But as those who have fought the battle of the bulge will tell you, there’s a lot more to obesity than just too much junk food or too little willpower. Even when genes are taken into account, scientists have struggled to explain why one person can eat cake and stay skinny, while another munches on carrots and can’t shed a pound.

#6 - Sonic Magic: The Wonder and Science of Sound

Season 55 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/12/2015

Sound surrounds us. Whether it's sound we choose to hear, like the music we play in our headphones, or sound we'd rather do without, like the noise of the city, we live in a sonic world that we seldom think twice about.

#7 - The Equalizer

Season 55 - Episode 15 - Aired 3/3/2016

Every year, athletes keep going higher, farther and faster, shattering previous world records and setting new ones. But are today’s record holders really better than those of the past? Or do modern athletes get their edge from their high tech gear? Top sports scientist Steve Haake sets off on a journey to investigate.

#8 - My Brain Made Me Do It

Season 55 - Episode 17 - Aired 3/17/2016

le say, ‘It was beyond my control’ or ‘I couldn’t stop myself’. We like to think that we’re all ultimately in control of our actions. But how true is this really?

#9 - The Curious Case of Vitamins and Me

Season 55 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/22/2015

We all think we know vitamins – and we’re told they’re essential – but why do really need them and why can’t we produce them on our own? These are a few questions on the mind of intrepid filmmaker and health-freak Bryce Sage who travels from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco to get to the bottom of the vitamin mystery.

#10 - Puffin Patrol

Season 55 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/19/2015

It’s spring on the North Atlantic and millions of Atlantic Puffins are making their way home to breed. These glorious little clown-like birds are full of contradictions. They spend eight months of the year living alone at sea, but they are extremely social when they return to land, living in jam-packed colonies. On Gull Island, just south of St John’s, Newfoundland, it’s breeding season for over 300,000 pairs of North Atlantic puffins. The birds get right down to business, using their shovel-like beaks and their big feet to dig new burrows to protect their single precious egg.

#11 - While You Were Sleeping

Season 55 - Episode 16 - Aired 3/10/2016

For thousands of years, we’ve regarded sleep as nothing more than an annihilation of consciousness. But there is one compelling fact that has always stood in the way of that view.

#12 - Giraffes: The Forgotten Giants

Season 55 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/5/2015

Everyone on the planet knows what a giraffe is. “G” is for Giraffe in the alphabet and “Sophie” the Giraffe teething toys can be found in the hands of practically every newborn baby. But, most people don’t know much about giraffes, or that these iconic creatures of wild Africa, with their long necks, cinnamon spotted coats, flirty lashes and loping gait are disappearing at an alarming rate. Two hundred years ago there were a million giraffes, in 2000 there were 140,000 roaming Africa’s plains and forests. Now, fifteen years later, their numbers have plummeted to less than 80,000.

#13 - Manufacturing the Wild

Season 55 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/26/2015

With the natural world disappearing, new wild spaces for the creatures that vanished long ago are more important than ever.

#14 - Ocean Magic at Night

Season 55 - Episode 8 - Aired 1/7/2016

Cameraman and marine biologist Rick Rosenthal captures for the first time on camera Earth's biggest migration — the nightly movement of billions of animals from the ocean's depths to its surface and back. Ocean Magic at Night reveals for us the habitat of the dark open ocean. It is a world without solid objects, like deep space, whose bizarre inhabitants live out their lives suspended in darkness between the surface and the abyss. Each evening they travel up towards the surface to feed, and at dawn back down again to the safety of deep, dark water. Locating this migration in the vast emptiness of the open ocean, and at night, is not easy. When he ultimately succeeds, Rick's camera exposes a world inhabited by alien species of exceptional beauty.

#15 - Myth or Science 4: In the Eye of the Storm

Season 55 - Episode 9 - Aired 1/14/2016

Dr. Jennifer Gardy is back. The intrepid scientist and detective who put her body on the line in Myth or Science 1, 2 and 3 returns to continue her mission to put science claims to the test and discover – once and for all -- whether they’re myth or science.

#16 - Call of the Baby Beluga

Season 55 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/28/2016

One day in Quebec, a baby beluga whale washes up on a gravel beach along the St. Lawrence River. Unexpectedly, she is vigorously alive. A scientific team decides to take unusual steps to try to save her.

#17 - Eagles Next Door

Season 55 - Episode 12 - Aired 2/4/2016

In possibly the world’s single greatest conservation success story, Bald Eagles have gone from the brink of extinction to numbers never before seen in just fifty years. The eagle has landed...in our backyards. Nesting on hydro towers, construction beams, in suburban parks, and urban neighbourhoods, bald eagles are an exotic reminder of the wilderness that surrounded many of our cities’ landscapes. These majestic predators epitomize survival. Their story is one of opportunism and adaptation in the face of a rapidly changing ecological landscape. We follow the unfolding story of a single breeding pair in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada, over the course of a year. Via the social media phenomena known as ‘nestcams’ we are able to witness their amazing lifecycle, and understand the adaptations they’ve made to be successful in the city. Wildlife biologists, conservationists, rescuers, and online nestcam fans illuminate the lives of our newly arrived wild neighbours. Stunning landscape shots and intimate close-ups leave the viewer in awe of this special bird. Exclusive nestcam footage of this year’s dramatic breeding, hatching, and fledging season brings unparalleled understanding and access.

#18 - Trapped in a Human Zoo

Season 55 - Episode 13 - Aired 2/11/2016

This is the story of the incredible journey of eight Inuit who came from Labrador in 1880, to Europe lured by promises of adventures and wealth, only to realize they had been trapped in a world that time has today forgotten; the world of human zoos. Thirty-five thousand indigenous people from around the world were recruited for these zoos.

#19 - Suzuki@80

Season 55 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/24/2016

David Suzuki is celebrating his 80th birthday in March, and we’re planning a very special program. After more than 50 years in the public eye, you may think you’ve seen Suzuki in just about every way possible: almost naked, confronting industry, skateboarding down the street, and even buried up to his neck in a bog. No wonder we all think we know who he is, but in this deeply personal show you’ll meet a David you haven’t seen before.