Season 29

The transmission of life and the inhabitants of the sea. Piero Angela opens the new series of "Superquark" with the first episode of the BBC series, "The Game of Seduction." Alberto Angela, on the other hand, will travel back in time to Italy three hundred thousand years ago, just outside Rome, to one of the most important sites of our prehistory, La Polledrara di Cecanibbio, the cemetery of ancient elephants where an extraordinary specimen was unearthed, complete and with all the bones connected.

Piero Angela's journey through Superquark's "game" of seduction continues. First stop is the prairies: to win a partner, some use force, some cunning, and some even resort to deception, as demonstrated by a young Namibian ostrich grappling with his first experiences of love, a zebra stallion protecting his harem from incursions by lonely bachelors, and a spider offering worthless gifts, disguising them as precious treasures. Next, we focus on age-related macular degeneration, one of the most common vision problems in the West: Barbara Gallavotti and Paolina Montanari visited the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan to understand what it is and what the current treatment options are. Superquark reporters will also visit a Carolingian-era village in Tuscany, showcasing experimental archaeology, while Giovanni Carrada and Daniela Franco, from the ETH Zurich, will explain how new drones, which have learned to recognize what they see and pilot themselves, work.

The animal kingdom's tricks to attract a mate, medical advances in treating spinal injuries, and the beauty of the island of Procida. In the third episode of "Superquark," the BBC documentary on the game of seduction continues its journey through the rainforests. In the most densely populated environment on the planet, where standing out is not easy, winning requires standing out from the crowd. Some put on a show, others fight vigorously, but there are those who more cunningly use teamwork to win a mate. Adult chimpanzees fight with rivals to maintain their position as the dominant male, while younger and weaker chimpanzees play cunning, displaying an unusual kindness that proves to be a surefire way to win the favor of females.

The journey into the game of seduction continues with BBC documentaries in the fourth episode of "Superquark." The setting will be freshwater, which occupies only a small portion of the Earth's surface but is a vital habitat for millions of creatures that gather to find a mate. Success depends on perfect timing, which must be tied to the arrival of rains or the melting of ice. When you gaze at a river or a lake, you're often captivated by their beauty and the sense of peace they inspire, but this isn't the case for animals. They are among the most challenging arenas for courtship. We'll then explore a lesser-known aspect of transplants, one that nonetheless saves countless human lives. We'll discuss the Emilia-Romagna Region Skin Bank, connected to the Burns Center at the "M. Bufalini" Hospital in Cesena, one of five Italian skin tissue banks accredited by the National Transplant Center.

In the fifth episode of "Superquark," the journey into the game of seduction continues with BBC documentaries, revealing which animal species manage to survive despite having extremely slim chances of success in courtship: some must seek a partner where finding one is almost impossible, others must adapt to a world completely different from that of their parents, or to reproduce, they have developed some of nature's most extraordinary strategies. We then delve deeper into the thyroid, a small but vital gland whose properties are well understood, but its true self-regulation mechanisms are less so. An all-Italian project is now underway to discover how it works. Barbara Bernardini's report uncovers the thyroid's "black box." A new technique will reveal how hormones are actually produced.

Filming in nature isn't easy. And things get even more complicated when you want to capture a courtship. You have to lie in wait for hours, days, or weeks to catch the right moment. And the conditions are always challenging. The footage will show the documentary makers in torrential rains, at night, devoured by mosquitoes, or among salmon, having to watch out for bears. It's a fitting tribute to those who not only create unique films, but also provide insights into nature, helping to save it. Barbara Bernardini's report, meanwhile, tells the story of a girl cured of liver disease thanks to gene therapy. The focus is also on organic waste and agricultural residues, among the most difficult to dispose of. In Italy, some cutting-edge plants demonstrate how it's possible to manage disposal while respecting the environment and transform this waste into new materials for reintroduction into the market.

The new episode of "Superquark" opens with a BBC documentary from the series A Perfect Planet, titled "Man." We live, as we know, in a crucial era for the planet's climate. One of the main culprits is an invisible gas, carbon dioxide, or CO2. Nearly all modern activities produce it by burning fossil fuels. We release 100 times more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the volcanoes combined. This gas traps the sun's heat and raises global temperatures. And this destabilizes one of the planet's vital forces: the weather. Every additional degree generates extreme and uncontrolled phenomena, from droughts to devastating rainfall. And it affects the balance of life on Earth, causing the extinction not only of plants and animals, but also of our societies. Not to mention the impact we have on the seas and forests. What can be done? We must reverse these processes, globally.

Glaciers around the world are melting ever faster, and it's estimated that by the end of the century, those in the Alps will have disappeared completely. For this reason, they are also monitored from space by satellites, but it's also essential to study them from within, to discover what weakens their "heart." This mechanism appears to be the cause of recent and sudden catastrophes like those on the Marmolada. This is the story of the Doc Lab documentary, "Gli Ultimi Ghiacci," directed by Marco Visalberghi, which opens the final episode of "Superquark," Piero Angela's final legacy. The documentary "enters" the glaciers, tunnels, and so-called glacial mills, accompanied by speleologist Francesco Sauro and astronaut Luca Parmitano, to reveal the secrets and unusual faces of these ice giants.