In The Go Jetters Visit London's Big Ben, the Go Jetters crew visits London’s House of Parliament, home to Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben. Learn how the huge bell is struck on the hour to keep time for the city of London. This video is excerpted from BBC's Go Jetters, a series that follows the adventures of four plucky international heroes as they travel the globe visiting the world’s most famous landmarks with their friend and mentor, Ubercorn, a disco-dancing unicorn.
Flying over London in a jet? What a view! Can you figure out what time Big Ben is showing? Pretend you’re in the Vroomster soaring above London. Act out what you can see.
In The Go Jetters' Tower Bridge Rescue, the Go Jetters crew is in London when the Tower Bridge breaks! Grandmaster Glitch is up to no good! The Go Jetters work together to get the bridge working again. Ubercorn shares funky facts about the Tower Bridge. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Go Jetters, a series that follows the adventures of four international heroes as they travel the globe visiting landmarks and solving environmental problems with Ubercorn, a disco-dancing unicorn.
What happens when a zoo animal gets sick? For most of the history of zoos, that question had an answer most visitors never saw. Now, one of the world's oldest zoological societies is building a facility designed to change that — and what they're planning goes well beyond routine checkups.
The Zoological Society of London is constructing a new wildlife health center that will allow visitors to observe animals receiving medical care firsthand. Some of what they'll see will be routine — weight checks, dental exams, the kind of maintenance that keeps zoo populations healthy. But onlookers may also get a window into surgical procedures, and in some cases, postmortems. It's an unusually transparent approach for an institution that has traditionally kept its medical operations behind closed doors.
Not everyone is convinced. Critics argue the center is more about capitalizing on public curiosity than genuinely benefiting the animals in its care — that making medicine into a spectator sport serves the zoo's revenue more than its residents.
ZSL pushes back on that framing. The center is designed to be more than an exhibit. It's intended to function as a global training resource for wildlife vets, a hub where expertise in animal medicine can be developed and shared across institutions worldwide. The argument is that visibility and conservation aren't in conflict — that showing people what it actually takes to keep wild animals healthy is exactly the kind of thing that builds the public understanding zoos increasingly depend on to justify their existence.
The deeper question the center raises isn't really about one zoo or one building. It's about what zoos are actually for — and whether letting people watch is a compromise of that mission or an extension of it.
In Can We Stop the Glacier Melt?, geologist Iain Stewart explains the crucial role ice plays in our planet’s climate and how it’s being affected by global warming. Scientists are studying Greenland's massive Jakobshavn Glacier to understand how the ice is melting and the impact that has on rising sea levels. Over just the last few decades, the glacier has retreated significantly, and if Greenland's ice melts completely, it could raise sea levels by 23 feet (7 meters), threatening places like London and Florida. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Earth: The Power of the Planet, a documentary series in which Dr. Iain Stewart discovers how Earth's forces can shape nature, species, and even the climate.
In Tanni Grey-Thompson, a Voice for Disability, sports journalist Clare Balding explores how Tanni Grey-Thompson not only fought for equality in sports for people with disabilities but also in everyday life. She talks to Grey-Thompson about her achievements and goals. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century, a documentary series celebrating the achievements of the most influential figures of the era.
In The Go Jetters Play at Wimbledon, the Go Jetters crew is in London at the Wimbledon tennis court. Ubercorn shares funky facts about Wimbledon including what makes the stadium unique and why it has a guard hawk. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Go Jetters, a series that follows the adventures of four international heroes as they travel the globe visiting landmarks and solving environmental problems with Ubercorn, a disco-dancing
In The History of Toilets, presenter Ruth Goodman is at Westminster in London to learn how the toilet was invented. Learn what the development of the toilet has to do with Queen Elizabeth, the Thames River, Thomas Crapper, and public health. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Inside the Factory, a series that takes viewers behind the scenes in the factories that make our favorite products.
It's not often you see people really excited about seaweed (unless it's wrapped around all-you-can-eat sushi), but a tiny seaweed growing off the coast of Cornwall — a rugged coastal region in southwest England — has got scientists buzzing.
Divers found a new type of seaweed growing on a larger, coral-like seaweed called maerl. Well, it's not really "new" in the sense of just appearing — Professor Christine Maggs had been using it to try to solve a scientific puzzle for about 40 years. Four decades! It took so long because the seaweed was so small that it was difficult to collect a large enough sample to gather molecular data and sequence its DNA, which was necessary to confirm exactly what it was.
Once the DNA work was finally complete, the seaweed was accepted into the collection at London's Natural History Museum — one of the world's leading scientific institutions, similar in scale to the Smithsonian in the U.S. — and officially recognized in scientific literature as an entirely new species. Professor Maggs probably took a long overdue celebratory nap.
But the discovery is about more than naming one tiny organism. Researchers say maerl beds support a lot of biodiversity, and seaweeds can provide nursery habitats for economically important fish. That means protecting these underwater ecosystems could also help protect the other species that depend on them. The best kind of two-for-one deal.
After almost 1,000 years, the historic Bayeux Tapestry is back where it began.
The 11th Century artwork is thought to have been made in Britain, and it's now on display at the British Museum — one of the UK's largest national museums, located in London — while on loan from France until summer 2027. Think of it as the original comic strip: instead of panels, it uses a continuous, nearly 70-meter-long strip of embroidered fabric (about the length of a football field) to tell the story frame by frame, image after image, all the way across.
The story it tells is the Norman Conquest of 1066: the year William the Conqueror, a duke from Normandy in modern-day France, invaded England and took the throne. Like a comic laid end to end, the tapestry shows the buildup, the battle, and the aftermath — soldiers, ships, horses, and even Halley's Comet all stitched into the sequence. That invasion permanently changed England's ruling family, language, and culture, and is often seen as the starting point of the modern British monarchy.
Moving the tapestry took hours of extremely careful work, since it's so old and delicate. Even people standing near it had to wear protective clothing so stray fibers wouldn't end up on the fabric. It's now displayed flat, inside a protective glass case. Safe to say, it may look like a large piece of fabric, but it's definitely not something you'd want to wipe your hands on if you're missing a napkin.
The loan is also part of a bigger cultural exchange between France and Britain — two neighboring countries separated by the narrow English Channel, with a long and sometimes tense shared history. In exchange for the tapestry, Britain is lending important historical objects of its own back to France.
Skateboarding made its Olympic debut as an optional sport in 2020, and it'll become a permanent fixture in 2028. But long before the Olympics caught on, skaters had already found their spot.
Back in the 1970s, London's South Bank was known for something other than tourists and river views: skateboarders, drawn to the smooth concrete and sloped walls of the Undercroft Skate Space. Decades later, an exhibit is celebrating that space — a hollowed-out concrete bowl with a cult following — through art, memorabilia, and film.
The Undercroft is where a generation of skaters learned the sport (safety gear very much included). But for years, this free public space faced a real threat: developers tried repeatedly to shut it down or move skaters elsewhere.
The skaters didn't budge. Their persistence paid off — the space was saved, renovated, and eventually celebrated as a landmark. Today, skaters and BMX riders of every age still roll through the Undercroft, part of a community it helped build.
Meet the Icons of the 20th Century. From brilliant scientists and inspiring activists to legendary athletes and artists, these remarkable individuals changed the world in powerful ways. In this video playlist of clips from BBC's Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century, meet Muhammad Ali, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Pablo Picasso, Jane Goodall, Pelé, Billie Holiday and others — each a trailblazer who shaped history through courage, creativity, and conviction. A perfect playlist to inspire young minds to think big and act boldly!
In The Go Jetters Visit London's Big Ben, the Go Jetters crew visits London’s House of Parliament, home to Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben. Learn how the huge bell is struck on the hour to keep time for the city of London. This video is excerpted from BBC's Go Jetters, a series that follows the adventures of four plucky international heroes as they travel the globe visiting the world’s most famous landmarks with their friend and mentor, Ubercorn, a disco-dancing unicorn.
Flying over London in a jet? What a view! Can you figure out what time Big Ben is showing? Pretend you’re in the Vroomster soaring above London. Act out what you can see.
In The Go Jetters' Tower Bridge Rescue, the Go Jetters crew is in London when the Tower Bridge breaks! Grandmaster Glitch is up to no good! The Go Jetters work together to get the bridge working again. Ubercorn shares funky facts about the Tower Bridge. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Go Jetters, a series that follows the adventures of four international heroes as they travel the globe visiting landmarks and solving environmental problems with Ubercorn, a disco-dancing unicorn.
What happens when a zoo animal gets sick? For most of the history of zoos, that question had an answer most visitors never saw. Now, one of the world's oldest zoological societies is building a facility designed to change that — and what they're planning goes well beyond routine checkups.
The Zoological Society of London is constructing a new wildlife health center that will allow visitors to observe animals receiving medical care firsthand. Some of what they'll see will be routine — weight checks, dental exams, the kind of maintenance that keeps zoo populations healthy. But onlookers may also get a window into surgical procedures, and in some cases, postmortems. It's an unusually transparent approach for an institution that has traditionally kept its medical operations behind closed doors.
Not everyone is convinced. Critics argue the center is more about capitalizing on public curiosity than genuinely benefiting the animals in its care — that making medicine into a spectator sport serves the zoo's revenue more than its residents.
ZSL pushes back on that framing. The center is designed to be more than an exhibit. It's intended to function as a global training resource for wildlife vets, a hub where expertise in animal medicine can be developed and shared across institutions worldwide. The argument is that visibility and conservation aren't in conflict — that showing people what it actually takes to keep wild animals healthy is exactly the kind of thing that builds the public understanding zoos increasingly depend on to justify their existence.
The deeper question the center raises isn't really about one zoo or one building. It's about what zoos are actually for — and whether letting people watch is a compromise of that mission or an extension of it.
In Can We Stop the Glacier Melt?, geologist Iain Stewart explains the crucial role ice plays in our planet’s climate and how it’s being affected by global warming. Scientists are studying Greenland's massive Jakobshavn Glacier to understand how the ice is melting and the impact that has on rising sea levels. Over just the last few decades, the glacier has retreated significantly, and if Greenland's ice melts completely, it could raise sea levels by 23 feet (7 meters), threatening places like London and Florida. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Earth: The Power of the Planet, a documentary series in which Dr. Iain Stewart discovers how Earth's forces can shape nature, species, and even the climate.
In Tanni Grey-Thompson, a Voice for Disability, sports journalist Clare Balding explores how Tanni Grey-Thompson not only fought for equality in sports for people with disabilities but also in everyday life. She talks to Grey-Thompson about her achievements and goals. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century, a documentary series celebrating the achievements of the most influential figures of the era.
In The Go Jetters Play at Wimbledon, the Go Jetters crew is in London at the Wimbledon tennis court. Ubercorn shares funky facts about Wimbledon including what makes the stadium unique and why it has a guard hawk. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Go Jetters, a series that follows the adventures of four international heroes as they travel the globe visiting landmarks and solving environmental problems with Ubercorn, a disco-dancing
In The History of Toilets, presenter Ruth Goodman is at Westminster in London to learn how the toilet was invented. Learn what the development of the toilet has to do with Queen Elizabeth, the Thames River, Thomas Crapper, and public health. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Inside the Factory, a series that takes viewers behind the scenes in the factories that make our favorite products.
It's not often you see people really excited about seaweed (unless it's wrapped around all-you-can-eat sushi), but a tiny seaweed growing off the coast of Cornwall — a rugged coastal region in southwest England — has got scientists buzzing.
Divers found a new type of seaweed growing on a larger, coral-like seaweed called maerl. Well, it's not really "new" in the sense of just appearing — Professor Christine Maggs had been using it to try to solve a scientific puzzle for about 40 years. Four decades! It took so long because the seaweed was so small that it was difficult to collect a large enough sample to gather molecular data and sequence its DNA, which was necessary to confirm exactly what it was.
Once the DNA work was finally complete, the seaweed was accepted into the collection at London's Natural History Museum — one of the world's leading scientific institutions, similar in scale to the Smithsonian in the U.S. — and officially recognized in scientific literature as an entirely new species. Professor Maggs probably took a long overdue celebratory nap.
But the discovery is about more than naming one tiny organism. Researchers say maerl beds support a lot of biodiversity, and seaweeds can provide nursery habitats for economically important fish. That means protecting these underwater ecosystems could also help protect the other species that depend on them. The best kind of two-for-one deal.
After almost 1,000 years, the historic Bayeux Tapestry is back where it began.
The 11th Century artwork is thought to have been made in Britain, and it's now on display at the British Museum — one of the UK's largest national museums, located in London — while on loan from France until summer 2027. Think of it as the original comic strip: instead of panels, it uses a continuous, nearly 70-meter-long strip of embroidered fabric (about the length of a football field) to tell the story frame by frame, image after image, all the way across.
The story it tells is the Norman Conquest of 1066: the year William the Conqueror, a duke from Normandy in modern-day France, invaded England and took the throne. Like a comic laid end to end, the tapestry shows the buildup, the battle, and the aftermath — soldiers, ships, horses, and even Halley's Comet all stitched into the sequence. That invasion permanently changed England's ruling family, language, and culture, and is often seen as the starting point of the modern British monarchy.
Moving the tapestry took hours of extremely careful work, since it's so old and delicate. Even people standing near it had to wear protective clothing so stray fibers wouldn't end up on the fabric. It's now displayed flat, inside a protective glass case. Safe to say, it may look like a large piece of fabric, but it's definitely not something you'd want to wipe your hands on if you're missing a napkin.
The loan is also part of a bigger cultural exchange between France and Britain — two neighboring countries separated by the narrow English Channel, with a long and sometimes tense shared history. In exchange for the tapestry, Britain is lending important historical objects of its own back to France.
Skateboarding made its Olympic debut as an optional sport in 2020, and it'll become a permanent fixture in 2028. But long before the Olympics caught on, skaters had already found their spot.
Back in the 1970s, London's South Bank was known for something other than tourists and river views: skateboarders, drawn to the smooth concrete and sloped walls of the Undercroft Skate Space. Decades later, an exhibit is celebrating that space — a hollowed-out concrete bowl with a cult following — through art, memorabilia, and film.
The Undercroft is where a generation of skaters learned the sport (safety gear very much included). But for years, this free public space faced a real threat: developers tried repeatedly to shut it down or move skaters elsewhere.
The skaters didn't budge. Their persistence paid off — the space was saved, renovated, and eventually celebrated as a landmark. Today, skaters and BMX riders of every age still roll through the Undercroft, part of a community it helped build.
Meet the Icons of the 20th Century. From brilliant scientists and inspiring activists to legendary athletes and artists, these remarkable individuals changed the world in powerful ways. In this video playlist of clips from BBC's Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century, meet Muhammad Ali, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Pablo Picasso, Jane Goodall, Pelé, Billie Holiday and others — each a trailblazer who shaped history through courage, creativity, and conviction. A perfect playlist to inspire young minds to think big and act boldly!