Documentastic!

April 27, 2009 3:23 PM

Free, _downloadable_, science documentaries?

I'm looking for free, downloadable science documentaries, to watch when I'm not near an internet connection. Whereabouts would I find one?

posted by LSK to education (11 answers total)

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I like to call this NIH YouTube. It's basically videos of various scientific lectures that are given at conferences and whatnot.
posted by sickinthehead at 3:36 PM on April 27, 2009

I found The Machine That Changed The World to be really fascinating.

Dawkins' Growing Up In The Universe is also excellent, but they seem to have removed the ability to download it.

(Of course, nearly anything available on YouTube can be downloaded, often without any bother, especially if you're a Mac user. Open the Activity window (under the Window menu), find the reference to the YouTube video under the listing for the appropriate window, and then Option-doubleclick the entry. You will see the download begin in your Downloads window. How you use this with your video player of choice will be up to you to determine.)
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM on April 27, 2009

You can probably find some stuff you like at the Internet Archive.
posted by exogenous at 3:44 PM on April 27, 2009

I didn't mention, those instructions are for Safari users. Oops!
posted by hippybear at 3:44 PM on April 27, 2009

Oh, and another resource, although once again it may take patience and experimenting on your part to get it all to work with your player, is to download Miro and let it grab video podcasts on a regular basis for you. You can then migrate these to your player at your leisure.

If you're using your laptop or whatever as the player, since Miro is podcast player, the content is downloaded and played locally, not streamed, so that may solve a lot of your problems right there. I love my Miro feeds; I've never been so excited about NASA since I started watching their material regularly.
posted by hippybear at 3:52 PM on April 27, 2009

WGBH NOVA ScienceNOW has several.
posted by cmiller at 3:58 PM on April 27, 2009

If you're looking for more technical stuff (research talks, not documentaries), check out: Ibioseminars.
posted by pombe at 4:03 PM on April 27, 2009

Oh, and if you use iTunes, you might check out iTunes U. It has not only videos for purchase, but also actual (free) classroom lectures.
posted by hippybear at 4:33 PM on April 27, 2009

WNYC's Radiolab is good - but they're podcasts & not video...
posted by MesoFilter at 5:58 PM on April 28, 2009

NASA has a great series of video podcasts (lower right of page) which are really informative, if at moments a bit cheesy. Many of them are in HD as well.
posted by hippybear at 10:18 PM on April 28, 2009

Ted.com has a ton of great videos that are free and available for download. There is a ton of science and technology content there. Happy viewing!
posted by futureisunwritten at 3:40 PM on April 29, 2009