INTIMATE UNIVERSE: THE HUMAN BODY: EPISODE ONE: LIFE STORY (TV)
Summary
Part one in this eight-part documentary series which examines the physical and psychological processes of the "unique dwelling place" of the human body via Dr. Robert Winston's two-year exploration. The program begins just a few hours after "Charlotte" is born, with Winston discussing how simple yet complex a human baby is. He then offers some extraordinary statistics about human beings from birth to death (including such facts as the number of times and amount a typical human being urinates; watches television; talks on the phone; has sex; blinks; falls in love, etc.) Winston then demonstrates a "tricky" form of driving to show how the brain works. He then depicts how busy the brain is by "looking at the world differently," showing how much heat is burned by various body parts. Then, Winston shows how food goes from one's mouth down the esophagus and into the stomach, before entering the small intestine, where the process of elimination begins. Winston then examines the "twitching" heart cells which create a heart beat. Next, he looks at magnified skin in demonstrating how the brain helps the body maintain a temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit via sweating (to stay cool) and goose pimples (to stay warm). Then, Winston demonstrates brain activity during rest and sleep. Next, at London's Piccadilly Circus Tube station, Winston details how the seeming monotony of daily lives is the result of immeasurable activity within one's body. Then, Winston goes to Yellowstone National Park to showcase the surprising way that the future of human life was determined more than a billion years ago. The park's thermal vents stand in for what the surface of the earth may have looked like three billion years ago as the "story of life" was unfolding. Winston discusses how bacteria was the most complex form of life on earth, before cells combined to create more advanced creatures through evolution. Next, Winston travels inside his own head (via a Magnetic Resonance Imager), to study one of evolution's transformations -- the three minuscule bones that help facilitate hearing in humans, which also serve as the bones that help support a fish's gills. Then, Winston discusses how evolution actually means that humans are "recycled from the past." Winston examines and discusses some 30,000-year-old human-hand stencils deep inside a cave in the Pyrenees mountains on the border of France and Spain. Winston then details how human beings have changed very little over tens of thousands of years, even though every person changes dramatically over a lifetime (even more than a caterpillar's metamorphosis into a butterfly). Next, Winston offers a unique visual of the amount of tears a human cries in a lifetime, demonstrating why humans are more than just biological machines. Finally, Winston briefly discusses the people who will be further examined in this series: baby "Zach," a "master of crawling" ready to take his first steps; teenager "Beatrice," growing into a woman; "Jeff" and "Phillippa" who are sharing the body's "greatest miracle" -- childbirth; astronaut "Marcia" climbing the heights of human achievement; aging farmers "Bud" and his wife "Viola"; and the cancer-stricken "Herbie" embarking on his life's final journey. The program ends by showing a line of naked people, each one a year older than the previous. Commercials deleted.
(This program originally aired on the BBC in 1998.)
This selection from the Alan Gerry Cable Collection has been made available by the Gerry Foundation, Inc.
Details
- NETWORK: TLC The Learning Channel
- DATE: April 18, 1999 Sunday 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:47:02
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:57984
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: She Made It Collection (Judith McHale)
- SERIES RUN: TLC - TV series, 1999
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Alan Bookbinder … Executive Producer
- Lorraine Heggessey … Executive Producer
- Sandra Gregory … Executive Producer
- Susan Winslow … Executive Producer
- Suzanne Daggar … Associate Producer
- Richard Dale … Series Producer
- Christopher Spencer … Director
- Elizabeth Parker … Music by
- Robert Winston … Host, Narrator
- Bud Mather
- Viola Mather
- Jeff Watson
- Phillippa Watson