Your Brain: Perception and Control

Could one of the world’s deadliest diseases be headed for the history books? Malaria’s relentless yearly death toll has driven the World Health Organization to set bold  targets, and a new vaccine may signal a turning point in the long battle against this disease. Early trials demonstrated a remarkable efficacy rate, but the question remained: Could it earn an all-important recommendation from the WHO? Follow the international team of researchers that worked tirelessly to develop a vaccine that could save more lives and reshape the future of malaria prevention. You can watch the full film here.Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

What engineering secrets lie within the Great Pyramid, and who really built it? Innovations like rope‑sewn boats, laser‑precise alignments, and hidden internal chambers reveal a building team with knowledge far ahead of its time. Uncover clues buried around Giza that point to a surprising truth about the workforce responsible for one of history’s greatest construction projects.To watch the full film, visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/decoding-the-great-pyramid/Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

What if whales had legs? Once upon a time, they did. Sort of. An astonishing fossil trail shows that modern whales actually evolved from hooved land mammals. Whales still carry the fingerprints of this past, from their stomach anatomy to their swimming gait. Dive in to discover the wild story of how whales traded legs for fins, as we uncover clues about their ancestors, as well as their unlikely present-day relatives.To watch the full film, visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/when-whales-could-walk/Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

What happens when the Arctic’s ancient freezer starts to fail? Scientists have uncovered the truth behind giant sinkholes exploding from the frozen ground in Siberia, and a vast lake bubbling with methane in Alaska .They are pointing to a dramatic shift beneath our feet – one driven by thawing Arctic permafrost, the vast frozen layer that stores nearly twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. Learn why these geological curiosities reveal a dangerous climate wildcard – one powerful enough to accelerate global warming in ways current models don’t yet predict.To watch the full film, visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/arctic-sinkholes/Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Quantum particles are breaking the rules of reality – or so it seems. Can they truly communicate across time and space instantly? Einstein dismissed this “spooky action at a distance,” convinced it exposed flaws in quantum theory. But the deeper scientists looked, the stranger the universe became. From fierce debates to important discoveries, discover how a once‑controversial quantum oddity is now reshaping how we think, how we compute, and how the future gets built.To watch the full film, visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/einsteins-quantum-riddle/ Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

What if black holes are hiding the answers cosmologists have been chasing for a century? Born from the explosive deaths of massive stars, black holes are so dense even light cannot escape – making them challenging to observe. But after decades of chasing the unseeable and building ever more sophisticated observation tools, researchers are now discovering that they hold profound clues about the nature of spacetime, the formation of galaxies, and the energy that powers our universe.To watch the full film, visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/black-hole-apocalypse/ Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Are we really in control of our own minds? Research suggests our sense of control may be far more fragile – and far stranger – than we imagine. From moments when the body seems to act without us, to the eerie ways our brains can warp what we think we’ve heard, scientists are uncovering a picture of the mind that’s anything but straightforward. And beneath it all lies a surprising discovery: the brain is less an observer of reality than a prediction engine, forever guessing what comes next.To watch the full film, visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/your-brain/ Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Scientists have discovered the oldest DNA ever found: tiny fragments hidden in the dirt. The idea that soil could hold genetic traces from creatures that vanished millions of years ago seemed impossible – until one researcher had the wild idea to go and look. But how did he find DNA that most scientists thought could never survive? What forgotten worlds can this buried DNA reconstruct? And what might these revelations tell us about our own future on a rapidly changing planet?To watch the full film, visit here.Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Science's most astonishing breakthroughs, from whale evolution and thawing permafrost to black holes and quantum entanglement, to the hidden chambers of the Great Pyramid. NOVA Remix transforms decades of award-winning storytelling into immersive audio adventures. Discoveries that don't just change science, they change how you see the world. Whether you're a diehard nerd or just curious by nature, subscribe and hear it like never before.Learn more about NOVA and subscribe to our YouTube channel.