Catalyst backdrop
Catalyst poster
Documentary
News

All Episodes of Catalyst

Browse all episodes of Catalyst

All Episodes of Catalyst

Catalyst is Australia's premier science investigation series. Each week the team brings you stories from Australia and around the world, meeting scientists at...
Select Season:

Season 1

  • Jane Goodall
    N/A/100 votes

    Jane Goodall

    Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 1/1/2014

    Meet Dr. Jane Goodall DBE, world-renowned primatologist, humanitarian, conservationist and UN Messenger of Peace.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Shark Behavior
    N/A/100 votes

    Shark Behavior

    Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 1/1/2015

    Do sharks have friends? Watch and see if there is actually anything to study when we look at the "social behavior" of sharks off the coast of New South Wales, Australia!

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Virtual Universe
    N/A/100 votes

    Virtual Universe

    Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 1/1/2014

    Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just sit and watch a movie about the universe and see how everything unfolded? Thanks to a new scientifically accurate computer simulation called the Illustris, which models a part of the universe, a cube 350 million light years across, you can!

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Polar People
    N/A/100 votes

    Polar People

    Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 1/1/2015

    Each year, over 2000 people apply for jobs in Antarctica, but few are successful. What are the physical and psychological attributes required to work in the most remote location on Earth? Could you snag a job in sub-zero temperatures at an Antarctic station?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Voyager
    N/A/100 votes

    Voyager

    Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 1/1/2013

    Take a look at the Voyager unmanned space probes launched in the 1970's -- and where they are now after 36 years of travel! Voyager I is the furthest travelled man made object in space. What are the missions finding in the distant universe?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Wings Of Wonder
    N/A/100 votes

    Wings Of Wonder

    Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 1/1/2013

    Titanium implants are a favorite among surgeons. They're light, durable and strong and readily accepted by the human body. But with each surgery comes a small but potentially deadly risk - infection through the introduction of bacteria. How can they design implants to resist bacterial infection?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Sun's Lost Siblings
    N/A/100 votes

    Sun's Lost Siblings

    Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 1/1/2015

    In a family reunion like no other, astronomers reunite our sun with her long lost sibling. Dr Graham Phillips meets the new relative and explores its similarities with our sun. Could it even have planets, like our solar system, and be another home for life?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Super Solar Cells
    N/A/100 votes

    Super Solar Cells

    Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 1/1/2015

    Dr Graham Phillips investigates new technology that is able to convert more than 40 per cent of the sun's light into electricity. This is more than double the efficiency of today's domestic rooftop solar panels, and could eventually lead to cheaper sources of renewable energy.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Our Chemical Lives
    N/A/100 votes

    Our Chemical Lives

    Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 1/1/2015

    Thousands of chemicals are used in everyday products – in our water, our food and in the air we breathe. It’s the chemical soup of modern life and it’s virtually impossible to escape them. Is there adequate regulation and testing, or are we in the midst of an uncontrolled, human experiment?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Antivenom
    N/A/100 votes

    Antivenom

    Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 1/1/2015

    Good to know as you travel to the Antipodes - Australia has the most venomous snakes and spiders in the world. But, if you’re bitten, can you rely on anti-venom? Dr Graham Phillips investigates the effectiveness of anti-venom.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Powering The Mind
    N/A/100 votes

    Powering The Mind

    Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 1/1/2015

    What is memory? How do our memories change from childhood to adulthood? How we can build up greater brain reserves to power our mind into old age? Brain epigenetics, how the expression of our DNA can be changed by our experiences, is an intriguing new area of science with huge health implications.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Alien Technology
    N/A/100 votes

    Alien Technology

    Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 1/1/2015

    Is there anyone out there? Does the popular movie quote 'ET phone home' have any substance? Astronomers have been pointing their radio telescopes at the skies for decades trying to pick up alien signals. Hitch a ride as we join astronomers trawling through the galaxy looking for signs of life.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • 3D Virus
    N/A/100 votes

    3D Virus

    Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 1/1/2013

    How can a supercomputer can help researchers to a better understanding of the poliovirus at an atomic level? This has implications for understanding and eradicating deadly diseases worldwide.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Future Cities
    N/A/100 votes

    Future Cities

    Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 1/1/2014

    It's amazing to think that in the 1900s a mere tenth of the world's population lived and worked in cities. Now it is over half. With soaring populations, how will we keep our cities live-able? And what will the city of tomorrow look like?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Quantum Computing
    N/A/100 votes

    Quantum Computing

    Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 1/1/2013

    The promise of quantum computers is that what would otherwise take a billion years to calculate, could be done in a few seconds. First-generation quantum computers have started to appear. Indeed, earlier this year, Google bought one, The D-Wave 2. How will this advance change our future lives?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Peacock Spider
    N/A/100 votes

    Peacock Spider

    Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 1/1/2013

    Think spiders aren't beautiful? Then think again! The colorful and beautiful jumping Peacock Spider, native to Australia, will change your mind.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Allergy Pill
    N/A/100 votes

    Allergy Pill

    Season 1 Episode 17 - Aired 1/1/2014

    In the western world there’s an epidemic of allergies. Could it be that our lifestyles are too clean? And that we’re not exposing ourselves to bugs that help build our immune systems? Is there bacteria that is good for us?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Cardiac Implants
    N/A/100 votes

    Cardiac Implants

    Season 1 Episode 18 - Aired 1/1/2013

    There’s no doubt that cardiac implants or stents save lives. They unblock arteries to prevent heart attacks. But because the body treats stents as foreign, the risk of blood clots is ever present. How can we coat the stents in order to stop the rejections?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Honey Bees
    N/A/100 votes

    Honey Bees

    Season 1 Episode 19 - Aired 1/1/2014

    It seems that the bee population crisis is intricately tied to the way we have changed our planet. Catalyst investigates how modern agriculture methods, increasing diseases and the impending threat of the deadly varroa mite could destroy the last safe-haven for bees on the planet, Australia.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Extreme Weather
    N/A/100 votes

    Extreme Weather

    Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 1/1/2013

    This special report looks at the domino effect of environmental and atmospheric factors that drive the globe to wetter, hotter, drier and colder extremes.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Fast Food For Hummingbirds
    N/A/100 votes

    Fast Food For Hummingbirds

    Season 1 Episode 21 - Aired 1/1/2011

    By building see-through flowers, researchers at the University of Connecticut have captured high-speed, high-magnification images of the remarkable tongue of the Hummingbird. And they've revealed that previously held theories about the diminutive birds are wrong!

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Ancient Writing
    N/A/100 votes

    Ancient Writing

    Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 1/1/2013

    Cuneiform documents in clay cover everything from political affairs to economic practices, from 3400BC right up to the time of Christ. But can modern technology unwrap clay envelopes so that archaeologists can preserve the artifact but see the letter inside? Watch and see!

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Tokyo Flood Prevention
    N/A/100 votes

    Tokyo Flood Prevention

    Season 1 Episode 23 - Aired 1/1/2014

    Fifty meters beneath the teeming mega-city of Tokyo is an underworld river system - 6.4km of tunnels, colossal water tanks, massive pillars, giant pumps that remove 200 tons of floodwater every second. It’s an engineering marvel built to protect Tokyo against the increasing threat of flooding.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Life Enhancing Drugs
    N/A/100 votes

    Life Enhancing Drugs

    Season 1 Episode 24 - Aired 1/1/2013

    Performance-enhancing drugs aren't limited to just sport and increasing your physical prowess. There are substances that could improve your mind power as well - things like help you learn faster or improve your memory. Do we face a future where we'll be increasingly brain doping?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Bioluminescence
    N/A/100 votes

    Bioluminescence

    Season 1 Episode 25 - Aired 1/1/2011

    A short video on this phenomenon of nature, particularly evident in deep ocean animals.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Mega-tsunamis
    N/A/100 votes

    Mega-tsunamis

    Season 1 Episode 26 - Aired 1/1/2014

    By investigating the tell-tale signs of earthquakes and tsunamis written into the landscape over the last thousand years, Japanese scientists are rewriting the rule books for disaster prevention in the Pacific.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown