On the banks of the Pearl River in Guangzhou city, an impressive new silhouette is placing China’s third largest city firmly in the limelight. The Guangzhou Sightseeing and TV Tower is a shrine to modern technology and design–and testimony to the vision of a small architectural team who dared to dream big.
Inside Xtreme Zero Waste's collaborative success in Raglan.
Discover why ‘The Devil’s Sea’ off the south coast of Japan is so extraordinarily deadly and decide for yourself if this stretch of water could be the Bermuda Triangle of the Pacific.
A permaculture haven in a farm desert.
Episode Three: Revolutions tells the stories of the objects and events generated by the Silk Road that helped to inspire revolutions. Paper-making spread from China throughout Asia and beyond. After the invention of the first printing press in 1440, millions of Europeans were reading printed content in multiple languages. Paper and the printing press democratised knowledge. Another world-changing implication of east-west trade was triggered by the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, which blocked European access to the Silk Road. Christopher Columbus searched for another route to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic and instead landed in the Americas. Jesuit missionaries in China forged close bonds with Chinese intellectuals and introduced Chinese civilization to Europe. Gunpowder transformed mining and helped to make New York a great city.
A clumsy albatross.
An insight on the scorpion.
Light From Darkness explores how deathly disease and new life alike travelled along the Silk Road to change the world. Journey through time, from the decimation of the Black Death to a grain that helped to overhaul agriculture. When the Black Death reached Europe, it spread about 5 miles per day. In a surprising twist, the plague triggered positive change for some Europeans. When the lethal disease wiped out much of Europe’s work force, the nobility were forced to compete for surviving workers by offering higher compensation. A middle class was born. Explore the important highs and lows of bio-migration during the history of the Silk Road. This episode investigates the way living things, ranging from millet to pathogenic liver fluke, reached Europe – with dramatic consequences.
The Kermadec Islands are a haven for seabirds, but it wasn't always this way. At the end of the 20th century, Raoul Island was practically devoid of birdlife. Seabird scientist Chris Gaskin reveals a remarkable story of recovery.
Promiscuous, incestuous and homosexual, our native swamp hen is a rather remarkable bird. At Western Springs Wetlands, deep in Auckland’s western suburbs, two families of pukeko carry on their very communal lifestyle in an entirely natural way – despite pressures from other birds, and hand-outs of stale bread and buns.
War explores how the Silk Road influenced conflict, from cavalry warfare to gunpowder. The series opens 2000 years ago, when the Roman Empire seemed unstoppable. However, the Battle of Carrhae saw one of Rome’s worst military defeats when the Parthians used cavalry tactics to their advantage. The style of cavalry warfare developed by Central Asian horse archers would later dominate warfare, made possible by several innovations; the recurved composite bow, socketed bronze arrowheads and a psychological shift towards cohesive groups of soldiers under military command. It was also around this time that the Roman Empire began to covet Chinese silk. Long distance trade between the peoples of Eurasia was nothing new; for thousands of years, similar relations had been impacting societies.
Can you spot a kākā in your backyard?
Humans are constantly under attack from relentless waves of microbes, fighting to set up home in every living environment the body has to offer– and there’s no escape.
Sue Neureuter grew up visiting the Noises Islands which have been in her family since the 1930s. Having witnessed the decline in marine life and seabirds in the Hauraki Gulf first-hand she recalls her parents' stories. “When Mum first got to the Noises which was the late fifties, Dad used to make her row out and he’d put his rugby jersey on and plop over the side and pick crayfish up and dump them around her feet.” This personal account is the first of a New Zealand Geographic-produced web-series—made in association with Live Ocean and Pew Charitable Trusts—that examines the former abundance of the Hauraki Gulf through the memories of those who can still remember these Songs of the Sea.
Ecologist Robert Richmond has been studying reef systems for a lifetime. What has he discovered?
Can you spot a tūī in your backyard?
Parininihi consists of 2,000 hectares of coastal and inland forest in Taranaki and Conrad O’Carroll has committed his life’s work to caring for it and its resident kōkako population by managing introduced predators and teaching the next generation of kaitiaki / guardians. Ngāti Tama are tangata whenua and kaitiaki of Parininihi and these lands hold great cultural, historic and spiritual significance to Ngāti Tama, who strive to maintain the health of Parininihi. Kōkako (Callaeas wilsoni) are of the genus Callaeidae, Wattle Birds, and very distant relatives of the crow. They were previously widespread in Aotearoa. However, populations have been decimated by the predations of mammals such as possums, stoats, cats and rats, and their range has contracted significantly. With their extraordinary haunting song, and obscure evolutionary relationships to other birds, they evoke the forests of ancient Aotearoa. And Conrad - and people like him - are trying to rescue taonga species, including kōkako, from the precipice of extinction. @betterancestorsnz
What was once a mess of mud after being chomped and stomped by cattle is now teeming with tūī after flax and cabbage trees were planted on the land more than ten years ago and pest control was undertaken. "The wetland has returned to its original function of being the kidneys of the land," says Dean Baigent-Mercer. "It slows down water during floods and cleans the water as it goes through." www.betterancestors.org
An insight on the Hercules Beetle.
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