Best Documentary
Forging the Future: AI, Immortality and Genetic Engineering
Welcome to the near future. A time when man and machine become one and imagination becomes the only limit to science.
00:00 Cyborg Revolution
We’ve all seen Cyborgs in Hollywood blockbusters. But it turns out these fictional beings aren’t so far-fetched. In fact, this episode features a true-to-life cyborg, who at four months of age, was the youngest American to be outfitted with a myoelectric hand. And at one ground-breaking engineering facility, engineers are developing biotechnologies that can even further enhance high-tech like this by giving mechanical prosthetics something incredible: the physical sensation of touch!
46:54 Hyper Intelligence
Everyone has heard about Artificial Intelligence (or AI), but very few people know what it is or how it actually works. This episode brings this otherwise abstract topic to life by visiting the most cutting-edge engineering firms where innovative technologists are using AI to transform machines into thinking robots.
01:35:54 Human Immortality
If you thought Human Immortality was just a concept in science fiction, this episode reveals how it will become science fact. For some scientists featured in this program, achieving Immortality is not a question of ‘If’. The real question is ‘When?’.
02:19:25 Life Off Earth
If you thought The Space Race peaked with the Apollo missions, wait until permanent research bases on the Moon and Mars start cropping up.
The New Space Race to get humans to Mars is heating up, and this episode presents the visionaries who are making this future possible. Once exclusively financed by governments, private companies are now developing the means of living in outer space.
On the cutting edge of this Copernican Revolution is the Dream Chaser—a new, high-flying space shuttle that will ferry researchers to inflatable research habitats in outer space. But creating permanent habitats in the toxic environments on the Moon and Mars is a serious undertaking. Scientists and engineers take these threats to human life very seriously. One engineer is creating advanced, reusable spacesuits that makes mobility and dexterity less bulky, and more feasible in gravity-free environments.
03:06:15 Disease-Free World: The Microbiome
To create a disease-free world, scientists are pushing the envelope in every conceivable corner. This episode features the most cutting-edge scientists out there—including Nobel-prize winners—who are harnessing the power of what’s called “The Microbiome.”
The Microbiome is the full array of the trillions of microorganisms that live in or on the human body, which help it function. By understanding the Microbiome as a kind of ecosystem, scientists are using innovative techniques to discern the microbes’ various functions in the body as a whole.
03:52:32 The Rise of Genetic Engineering
Genetic Engineering extends far beyond the controversial news headlines that obsess over ‘designer babies’. In the science community, gene-editing tools like CRISPR and PRIME editing will do nothing less than save the planet.
Methods like this allow scientists to alter and ‘re-program’ the genetics of living organisms.
This episode shows scientists at large using gene-editing technologies to revolutionize the food supply chain, bolstering food crops to prevent famines, and even speed up reforestation efforts that will reverse global warming. Genetic Engineering in farm animals is helping scientists to ‘select’ desirable traits, like physical features and gender. Incredibly, one scientist is using gene-editing technologies to resurrect the DNA of extinct species, like the Wooly Mammoth!
Director: Christopher Webb Young
Published Feb 23, 2024
