National Geographic

National Geographic follows a polar bear family during a two-year Arctic odyssey filled with unforgettable moments. Witness as curious cubs emerge from their den for the first time after a three-month hibernation, go "ice-crashing" with the polar bear family as they hunt for seals, and feel the tension as the mother protects her cubs from a hostile male, one of many dangers lurking.

Twice each day, the rising tides of North America's Atlantic coast bring life to millions of exotic creatures. Journey through this incredible universe revealed by stunning aerial and underwater photography and discover how seemingly harmless sea stars, rays and sea horses attack their prey. Witness these and other remarkable marsh dwellers and their daily struggle for survival in Creatures of the Shallow Seas.

Once feared and hunted almost to extinction, the whale now commands worldwide attention. Join scientists and conservationists as they study and document the anatomy, communication, and migratory patterns of a variety of whale species, including killer, pilot, and humpbacked whales. The Great Whales also looks at the birth of a killer whale and how captive whales participate in scientific experiments.

Amid the clamor of technological and economic success, a reverence for age, custom, and tradition endures in Japanese culture. The honorable title, "Living National Treasure", is the highest award that can be achieved in the Japanese arts. Some seventy master craftsmen and performers are bestowed with this title and are charged with passing on the country's artistic heritage to future generations. Living Treasures of Japan takes you into the homes and workshops of the remarkable people who...

Follow the largest carnivore that walks the earth, the great Kodiak bear, down ancient feeding trails, up salmon-rich rivers - even into a den where a mother nurses her newborn cubs. You'll watch cubs learning to fish, bears gorging in berry-laden fields, and a remarkable scene of bears consuming a beached whale carcass. The setting is Alaska's Kodiak Island, where 4,000-foot mountains rise from hundreds of miles of jagged coastline. Today about 2,700 of these larger cousins of the well-known...

Would you hug a killer whale? Or feed a lion its lunch by hand? It's all in a day's work for these wildlife specialists and the creatures that count on them for their survival. You'll visit a rhinoceros sanctuary in Kenya and see how an orphaned baby rhino found a new, human family. Take a walk in the Toronto snow with a herd of elephants that was saved when their circus careers ended. And find out how a mistreated Hollywood orangutan was rescued when he was too old for the movies. You'll...

Ten years ago, anthropologist Johan Reinhard, accompanied by Argentine and Peruvian colleagues, uncovered a sacred site at 22,000-feet on Mt. Llullaillaco. Beneath rock and ice, they discovered three Inca children each perfectly preserved. A six-year-old girl, a seven-year-old boy and a 15-year-old teenager they named the Maiden. Now, after more than five centuries, through the revelations of science and technology, we can finally tell their story. Forensic pathologists investigate the...

Join Cara as she leaves her family's nest for a trip across the Atlantic! Cara must outwit a hungry shark, find just the right food, and get the perfect place to nap. Then one day, Cara's instincts tell her she must return home. Learn the secrets of Cara's mission in this thrilling adventure! For ages 3-6.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are widely considered to be one of the greatest archaeological finds in modern history. More than a half century after their discovery, scientists are still trying to solve the mystery of who wrote them. With special access to the scrolls, National Geographic goes beyond the enclosed glass case to examine the actual texts up close and explores the caves where they were found. Witness as a new clue to the identity of the scrolls' writers is deciphered--a 2,000-year-old cup...

Airplane Commercial airplanes are commonly used by travelers across the world, but how do these fantastically complicated machines work? Eric Stromer does the unthinkable, cutting into a Boeing 727 passenger jet for a never-before-seen look at airplanes, from the inside out. He dissects various parts of the plane to learn more about how the systems work together to make air travel safe and reliable. Stromer splits open everything including a tire, a cockpit door, a black box, a passenger...

You climb into bed, turn off the light, and close your eyes, but you can't fall asleep. For most of us, it's just one annoying night, but for people with fatal familial insomnia, or FFI, it's the beginning of the end. An extremely rare genetic disease passed down through generations, FFI's primary symptom is sleeplessness, but with a fatal twist: victims are dead within months. To understand FFI, National Geographic delves into the science of sleep the most elusive biological function we have...

Hurricane Katrina may well be the most exhaustively chronicled natural disaster in history. Over the course of 72 hours, a cataclysmic storm became a catastrophic flood, which in turn became an apocalyptic human tragedy. All the while, amateur videographers, news crews, government agencies, tourists, storm chasers, and countless others were recording the sights and sounds of the unfolding chaos. Weaving together more than a hundred of these sources, Witness: Katrina reconstructs Hurricane...