Big History Season 1

The Big History series asks questions guaranteed to change the way you look at the past. Did Napoleon’s invasion of Russia come undone because of…tin buttons? Did New York become America’s biggest city because of…salt? How does the sinking of the Titanic power your cell phone? What’s the connection between ancient Egyptian mummies and a modern ham and cheese sandwich?

By weaving science into the core of the human story, Big History takes familiar subjects and gives them a twist that will have you rethinking everything from the Big Bang to today’s headlines. The series creates an interconnected panorama of patterns and themes that links history to dozens of fields including astronomy, biology, chemistry, and geology.

Episode List
01. The Superpower of Salt
02. Gold Fever
03. Horse Power Revolution
04. Below Zero
05. Megastructures
06. World of Weapons
07. Rise of the Carnivores
08. Mountain Machines
09. Brain Boost
10. Defeating Gravity
11. Pocket Time Machine
12. Deadly Meteors
13. Decoded
14. Silver Supernova
15. The Sun
16. H2O
17. The Big History of Everything