National Geographic Channel

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Do you know someone who snores so loud you want to banish them from the bedroom? Perhaps your noisy bedfellow should start playing an instrument called the Australian didgeridoo. Trying to catch a mate? You should know that body odour plays an important part in choosing a romantic partner. Meet a scientist who loves his pet chicken so much he’s figured out how to send him hugs over the internet. See how music and dancing may curb Australian cane toads that are the number one threat to Australian wildlife. Find out why drinking your pee won’t kill you, and how in the not so-distant future, appliances could be powered by light. Mad Labs uses eccentric experiments to solve complex conundrums.

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The BIG STORY is photography. Richard and Jonny go back to basics to show how a simple pinhole camera works - only theirs is the world’s first camera shed! It’s totally blacked out and through a tiny hole an image of Jonny outside can be seen by Richard inside. The boys explain how pinhole cameras are used on spacecraft and for spy photography - Richard wears a tie containing a tiny camera. Jonny checks out a spy plane, the Blackbird, which was used to take photos from 25 kilometres above the earth and could photograph 259,000 square metres an hour. He also gets his hands on a state-of-the-art micro quad copter created for the military. The remote controlled device is just a metre across and can silently hover above targets and shoot video or capture still photos – including Richard asleep! The boys show how easy it is to take aerial photos at home by strapping a cheap digital camera to a kite. Then Jonny shows how his pale and wiry body can be turned into Adonis by photo software. Finally, the boys discover how movie folk create the kind of moment when the hero leaps in the air, freezes, and the camera travels around him. Our boys stage a fight and Richard ends up flying from a powerful Jonny punch. The images from multiple cameras are sewn together electronically to create the effect. On TESTING TESTING, how Bungee Ropes are tested. They’re made of military shock cord – the same stuff that’s used in missile launch tests. The Bungee crew check each rope manually every day and they’re de-commissioned after just 1,000 bounces. The first bounce test is conducted with 135kg of gym weights in a bag. Then a professional bungee expert freefalls 55 metres from the crane platform at over 70 kilometres per hour as the rope stretches up to 3.3 times its original length. In CUTAWAY Jonny angle grinds open a pool table. Once through the solid slate playing surface, the insides of the table are revealed. So how does the white ball manage to take a separate path to the coloured b

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This is the Fight Science that is most likely to affect a real life, perhaps even save a life. It is the science of self-defense. The self-defense and fight-training industry is a multi-billion dollar behemoth, with everything from Tae Bo to real-world "Fight Clubs"…and everything in-between. It is an industry fueled by speculation and our animal instinct for survival. But one thing it is not, and has never been: scientific…until now. It is time for science to step into the fray and to answer questions that have lingered for ages. The most fundamental question: if you were in a fight for your life, what would you do? Real experts like bouncers, cops, and bodyguards will join leading scientists to find real answers and not just to fun questions like "Are Beer Muscles for real?” or "Could Fight Clubbers match fists with the Pros?". There are important scientific questions such as “What is the most effective way for a smaller victim to ward her larger attacker?”, “What does it really mean to use someone’s size or strength against them?”, “Is an eye gouge effective? What about a strike to the nose?” or perhaps most of important of all, “Is a kick in the groin really the ultimate self-defense tactic and if so, why?” And the questions go way beyond fingers and fists like “How can a car key be used to fend off an attacker?”, “Is a ball point pen a lethal weapon? If so, where is the most vulnerable "puncture point" on the human body?” and “How can a cell phone save your life…even if the battery is dead?”. This could be the most important programme you will ever watch. It will deepen your understanding of the human body’s capabilities. It will explain the human fascination and need for fighting even in modern society and it will cut away the fiction from decades of dangerous myths and erroneous advice.

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All religions make demands on practitioners for the blessings they impart. But some people go to extreme lengths to prove their faith. In the Philippines, Easter is a celebration of suffering, not redemption, and every year some believers crucify themselves to expiate their sins. In New Guinea, to ensure a good yam harvest, the spirits insist that young men tie vines to their legs and jump off a cliff-a leap of faith that can turn deadly. And in Greece, a pagan ritual adopted by some Greek Orthodox believers requires the faithful to dance across burning coals and dip their fingers in boiling oil. These taboo practices all display a common human belief: the stronger your faith, the more you can ask of your God.

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