The sprawling, stinking marvels of a natural history museum’s specimens
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s so-called ‘whale warehouse’ is easy to miss: from the outside, it’s a nondescript industrial building down the street from a meatpacking plant. But the collection of large mammal bones within – including enormous whale skulls and skeletons too massive to fit on shelves – is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. Exploring the reasons we hoard things, the specifics of the museum’s collection, and the ways in which the collection is used for research, The Whale Warehouse draws fascinating links between the psychology of collecting and the pursuit of knowledge.
Producers: Mae Ryan, Grant Slater

videoHistory of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes

videoHistory of science
How we came to know the size of the Universe – and what mysteries remain
26 minutes

videoEcology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes

videoArt
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes

videoEnvironmental history
In Kazakhstan, ‘atomic lakes’ still scar the landscape decades after Soviet nuclear tests
13 minutes

videoHistory of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes

videoHistory of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes

videoMeaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes

videoEarth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes