Hot and Cold - Living Between the Two Extremes

• Documentary

Episode overview

Alberto Angela takes us on a unique journey to discover the most extreme environments on Earth, to understand how we manage to live in the coldest and hottest places on our planet. We are accustomed to spending our lives at an average temperature, yet there are places on the planet where living beings, including humans, have had to adapt to truly extreme temperatures. The highest temperature ever recorded in the world is 70.7 degrees Celsius, in the gigantic desert basin in the southern part of the central Iranian plateau. The lowest—89.2 degrees—was reached at the Vostok Antarctic research station. It's astonishing how living beings can adapt to the most extreme conditions and the most inhospitable places on the planet, and still survive there: from the scorching deserts of Iran, Libya, and the United States, to the Danakil plateau.

117 minutes