The Big Picture with Kal Penn

2015 • National Geographic Channel
4.2
16 reviews
TV-14
Rating
Eligible
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Season 1 episodes (12)

1 Crime, Inc.
3/30/15
Dive into the big business that is “Crime Incorporated” to see what makes crime the richest enterprise in the world . From rural drug capitals to the big business of prisons, Kal goes into the boardroom of Crime, Inc.
2 Treasure Hunt
3/30/15
Hunt for real treasure, that can be found anywhere from your own home to buried deep underground if you just follow the data.
3 Sex Drive
4/6/15
All sex is not created equal, and some places are blessed with more of it than others. As we deconstruct the data of our everyday lives, sometimes that includes surprising, intimate details from our private lives. Host Kal Penn takes a look at what’s going on in bedrooms all across the world.
4 Going Viral
4/6/15
Kal Penn goes "viral" to uncover what causes and drives pandemics around the world, and what can make them even more dangerous than you think. Go to a Chinese animal market where one of the most infamous pandemics of our age started. Visit scientists on the front lines fighting the most dangerous creatures in the world, the mosquito. See how a top-secret lab is preparing us for the scariest “what if” situations of bioterrorism in the U.S.
5 Fantasy Sports
4/13/15
The Big Picture with Kal Penn takes to the field to seek out the ultimate fantasy sports franchise; assembling the best fans, stadiums, players, sport, and even mascot.
6 Surviving Nature's Fury
4/13/15
Delve into the realm of natural disaster to see how some of the hardest hit places on the planet are faring against nature’s worst elements.
7 Born to be Wired
4/20/15
Don’t be fooled–the internet isn’t invisible and wireless. Our data is not stored “on a cloud." Today’s cyber-world is made up of real places, and those locations matter more than you might expect.
8 Eat This!
4/20/15
The question "What's for dinner?" has very different answers around the world. The Big Picture leaves no plate unturned: grasshopper salsas, all-pizza diets and suburban moonshine are just a few things host Kal Penn breaks down to find out if we really are what we eat.
9 Cash for Trash
4/27/15
Waste? Garbage? Yucky stuff that smells bad? Whether we’re trashing it, reusing it or flushing it, the whole idea with junk is getting as far away from it as possible. Look at the numbers, though, and you’ll quickly see that you’re wasting some golden opportunities. All around the world there are clever people making the most of our trash and getting filthy, stinking rich.
10 Space Invasion
5/4/15
Kal Penn explores the everyday ways we've made ourselves at home in outer space. From GPS to TV broadcasts, a remarkable number of our everyday activities rely on outer space. Visit the Utah desert where people with aspirations to colonize Mars simulate living on the planet to research its viability. In Kansas, hunt for 40,000-year-old meteorites. Finally, a homemade satellite is built and launched with college-age enthusiasts.
11 Body City
5/11/15
Kal Penn maps out the busiest, most populated and mind-boggling place on earth. Welcome to Humanopolis: the city inside you.
12 Off the Map
5/18/15
You’d think after thousands of years of exploring and mapping the earth that we’d know where everything is by now. Well, we don’t. Not even close. We reveal the mislabeled, the mysterious and the just plain missing places off the map. We travel to Washington, D.C., to discover that the U.S. government has its own maps, and they reveal a very different country where top secret installations are connected by unmarked roads and underground tunnels.

About this show

National Geographic and host Kal Penn take data and mapping to make powerful connections and visualize our world in amazing new ways. Uncovering surprising facts on an array of topics and generating maps and other visuals to help us understand the broader view of the world, The Big Picture with Kal Penn reveals how our world works, how we got here, and where we’re headed.

Ratings and reviews

4.2
16 reviews

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