Every season of The Nature of Things ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best seasons of The Nature of Things!

Why Is It So?

Study of brain cells, how research has helped the understanding of learning and memory. Filmed at the Montreal Neurological Institute, with Dr. Wilder Penfield and Dr. Herbert Jasper

The Roar of the Crowd

Professor Donald Ivey probes the attitudes and working habits of scientists

The Future of Science

Schizophrenia

Engineering

Man as an Environment

Science Fiction

A special Christmas edition

The Aurora-Borealis

Man as an Environment – Human Body

Kept Alive

Physics and Games – Laws of Probability

The Face of the Moon

Hibernation

Man and His Environment

Eclipse

Animal Communication

The Speed of Light

Dr. John Zubec of the University of Manitoba explains his experiments and studies on boredom and its effects on the human mind

Monotony

The Chemical Senses

The Mohole: Earth's Crust

Laws of Conservation

Photosynthesis

Physics of Clouds

The Sources of Science

Looking Ahead

Photography in Science

To Educate a Scientist

The Situation Is Fluid

Gallstones

The Upper Mantle Project

The Physics of Music

An appraisal of the probable effects of a large-scale nuclear blast over a North American city. Dr. Tom Stonier of the Rockefeller Institute of Government discusses what can be expected to happen to people and property as a result of such a blast.

Survival

Man and the Moon

Hosts Dr. Donald Ivey and Dr. Patterson Hume talk about conditions at extremely cold temperatures, when matter 'hibernates' and molecular action slows almost to a complete stop, and how this allows physicists to study the basic structure of matter.

Hibernating Molecules

Monkey Curiosity

Lord Rothschild of the University of Cambridge describes the results of his research in the field of spermatozoa

Spermatozoa

Dr. William Swinton, head of the Royal Ontario Museum's Life Sciences Department, and John Livingston, executive director of the National Audubon Society, trace the history of birds

Animals With Feathers

Getting the Upper Hand

Host Lister Sinclair discusses the thinking that goes into the science of mathematics. Using animated film and studio demonstrations, he explains Mathematical logic

Thinking about Math

The Plague

Co-hosted by Drs. Patterson Hume and Donald Ivey, of the University of Toronto. They show how electricity can be produced directly from heat, and vice versa, and discuss the difficulties of transforming thermal energy into electrical energy.

Instant Heat

A Science Newsreel

Learning

A Bang-Up Job

Out of Africa

Computers are given the once-over by Drs. Donald Ivey and Patterson Hume.

Count on Me

Blood in the Balance

Examines work of Dr. William Sheldon, who has spent 30 years gathering statistics about the human physique, classifying body types, and correlating this information to medical and psychiatric studies

Episode 24

Series consultant Lister Sinclair is host on season's opener on which he explains how scientists approach their work and how The Nature of Things will present scientific items.

Episode 1

British psychaitrist Dr William Sargeant discusses and illustrates various brainwashing techniques such as weakening of mind.

Brainwashing

Hosts Dr Patterson Hume and Dr Donald Ivey of University of Toronto talk about electronics age brought about by vacuum tube and transistor.

Tubes To Transistors

Palaeontologist Dr Alfred S. Romer of Harvard University explains evolution of lungs, legs, and a new kind of egg in aquatic creatures.

From Water To Land

Dr Fred H. Knelman of Montreal, talks about sources and chemistry of salt and industrial applications of salt and its components.

Chemistry Of Salt

Film of an ear operation from BBC series YOUR LIFE IN THEIR HANDS, with commentary by Dr Hugh Barber, Toronto ear specialist.

Ear Operation

Professors Donald Ivey and Patterson Hume demonstrate principles behind bounce in a rubber ball.

The Way The Ball Bounces

This program examines autonomic nervous system, how it works, and what it can reveal.

Lie Detectors

In cooperation with National Cancer Institute and Canadian Cancer Society, today's show explores results of years of lung-cancer research in Britain and North America.

Smoking And Lung Cancer

To commemorate the Canadian Centennial in 1967 it has been proposed that Canada build a national museum of science. The program includes filmed demonstrations of how science and technology can be made meaningful to the general public.

Science Museum

Tornadoes

Recent fossil discoveries in Africa have shed new light on the ancestry and evolution of man. Guest Dr. L.S.B. Leakey, renowned British anthropologist and paleontologist, unearthed fossil remains in the Olduvai Gorge that have extended the time scale of human evolution from 500,000 to two million years or more. A deductive story in anthropology and paleontology is told as Dr. Leakey describes his finds and interprets their significance

The Descent of Man

Series consultant Lister Sinclair pays tribute to Sir Isaac Newton. The program attempts to capture the spirit of the time through the words of Newton himself and those of his contemporaries

Isaac Newton

New Atoms For Old

What happens in a car crash - to car and to its occupants? What causes a crash?

Car Crashes

Bird Migration

Hosts Dr Donald Ivey and Dr Patterson Hume of University of Toronto, contrast observation to synthesis.

Fact & Fiction

Dr Louis Siminovitch, Professor of Medical Biophysics at University of Toronto, discusses what is currently known about heredity.

Code of Life

Baking bread may be a familiar process, but it is by no means a simple one. A very great number of fundamental chemical actions are demonstrated in baking of one loaf of bread

The Chemistry Of Bread

Detection of heatwaves by Special infra-red receptors has many industrial, military and other uses.

The Infra-Red

In aftermath of industrial revolution, with scientific advances offsetting human control, human species has experienced an increase so explosive that grave doubts are now held about future food supply.

Human Overpopulation

Mars

Spiders

Hypnosis

An examination of personality and achievement of Albert Einstein. Dr Jacob Bronowski of Salk Institute for Advanced Biological Studies at La Jolla, California.

Einstein, Man & Mathematician

Scientist and broadcaster William Whitehead and Dr WE Swinton, Director of Royal Ontario Museum discuss how size differences in animal kingdom are result of their environment and their habits.

About The Size Of It

Universal standards of measurements are explained in laymen's terms by Dr Patterson Hume and Dr Donald Ivey of University of Toronto.

Standards For Comparison

Centuries ago, people in warmer parts of earth believed a dread disease was contracted from unhealthy air generated in swamps.

Excursion Into Hell

This program shows surgical techniques used in a new treatment for Parkinson's Disease.

Surgery For Parkinson'S Disease

Host Lister Sinclair and guest Lloyd Percival, sports authority, discuss and demonstrate how various sporting activities can now be precisely measured and how they can thus be improved.

Science In Sports

Dr Patterson Hume and Dr Donald Ivey explain recent developments of laser beam since 1960, how it works, and its potential uses in medicine, war and communications.

Lasers

Man still carries around in him an isolated pool of early Palaeozoic ocean that fed his plankton ancestors.

Blood, Sea And Tears

Host and writer Lister Sinclair talks about map projection, and problems of taking a spherical object, earth.

Cartography

In this program Donald Crowdis, Director of Nova Scotia Museum of Science, talks about water.

The World Of Water

In this program Donald Crowdis, Director of Nova Scotia Museum of Science, talks about transplants and new study of immunology.

Immunology

"Good and Evil"

"Viruses"

The problem of survival in extreme climatic conditions is examined by Dr. William Whitehead.

"Survival"

Discussion and demonstration of "accidental" scientific discoveries.[37]

Eureka

Lister Sinclair looks at the artificial flight techniques of man and some of the principles of flying used by other species.

Flight

"The Quaking Earth"

Pain

Professors Patterson Hume and Donald Ivey dispute Mark Twain's claim that: "There are lies, damn lies and statistics"; or in other words, "you can prove anything with statistics."

"Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics"

Dr. Walter Clark of the Eastman-Kodak Research Laboratory, and host Lester Sinclair explain what happens after you push the button of your camera.

Photography

At one time, collisions between aircraft and birds usually hurt only the birds. Now, with aircraft flying at supersonic speeds, the impact of collisions is greater. And birds ingested into the engines have caused a number of crashes. The Nature of Things looks at what is being done to eliminate bird strikes on aircraft.

"Bird Strikes on Aircraft"

For the first time ever on television, part of the remarkable "pacemaker" heart operation is shown being performed at the Toronto General Hospital.

"The Pacemakers"

A series studying animal kingdom, and man's place in it, through comparisons of anatomy, function, and behavior.

Animals And Man

How animals get from place to place, including burrowing, crawling, climbing trees, running,.

Animals On Land

"Animals In The Water" studies fish, crocodiles, seals and whales.

Animals In The Water

A look at how animals have developed special means of coping with environments - long neck of giraffe, coat of polar bear.

Animal Adaptation

A look at process of natural selection by which animals have developed special means of coping with their environments: long neck of giraffe, coat of polar bear.

The Nature of Things is a Canadian television series of documentary programs. It debuted on CBC Television on November 6, 1960. Many of the programs document nature and the effect that humans have on it. The program was one of the first to explore environmental issues, such as clear-cut logging.

The series is named after an epic poem by Roman philosopher Lucretius: "Dē Rērum Nātūrā" — On the Nature of Things.

The Best Seasons of The Nature of Things

The Best Seasons of The Nature of Things

Season 59

Season 49

Season 57

Season 55

Season 58

Season 54

Season 63

Season 60

Season 62

Season 47

Season 52

Season 53

Season 51

Season 61

Season 50

Season 46

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 6

Season 7

Season 8

Season 9

Season 10

Season 39

Season 40

Season 41

Season 42

Season 43

Season 44

Season 45

Season 48

Season 56

Season 64