TV series
HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime-schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition.
Streaming, rental and purchase options
Checked Sep 4, 2026
Modern Marvels is available to stream on DirecTV On Demand, Philo, Prime Video, Spectrum On Demand, Hoopla, The Roku Channel, and Tubi in United States. You can also buy it from Amazon, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. Use the direct links below to open the provider.
HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime-schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition.
Choose an episode, then use the watch options above for the show.
Episode 1
Examining the technology and evolution of balls used in sports. Included: a tour of the Wilson Football Factory Ohio; the Rawlings baseball factory Costa Rica and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. And also "juego de pelota" - the ancient Mesoamerican ball game.
Where to watch Modern Marvels
Episode 2
From the prairies of Saskatchewan to a Manhattan skyscraper we’ll see the 21st Century’s cutting-edge “green” technologies in action. New technologies such as carbon sequestration and bioremediation take on our most daunting environmental crises, from global warming and deforestation to nuclear waste.
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Episode 3
It's the unsung essential of modern life. Canning is the method of a preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply. It changed the way the world eats and revolutionized the food industry.
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Episode 4
The history of the pump is chronicled. Pumps used in water distribution in Southern California - The Colorado River Aqueduct, a robotic cow-milking pump and a pump used in heart surgery.
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Episode 5
The solid form of life's precious elixir has played a key role in fashioning our history and is making its mark as an unusual tool of technology. Explore how Earth's ice originated and recount how ice age glaciers sculpted North America. Take an inside look at Colorado's National Ice Core Repository to see how ice drilled from Antarctica and Greenland is an invaluable archive of past climate, and at a Canadian research lab experts demonstrate the dynamics and dangers of icebergs. See how Greenland's massive ice sheet may be sliding faster than ever toward the sea. Take a look at how scientists are using Antarctica's ice as a gigantic lens to probe the secrets of the universe.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 6
It traps a treasure of energy on the ocean floor, and confounds scientists still trying to solve why it’s so slippery. We’ll venture inside NASA’s Icing Research Tunnel in Ohio, and then it’s off to Salt Lake City’s Olympic Oval which boasts “the fastest ice on Earth.” Dive to the ocean floor to collect and analyze a unique form of ice called methane clathrates–cages of ice encasing pressurized natural gas. Scientists believe that if only one percent of the world’s ice-entrapped methane could be harvested, it would more than double our current supply of natural gas. Other highlights include the search for extraterrestrial ice and a trip inside the studio of a chainsaw-wielding artist as he sculpts a masterpiece.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 7
The destroyers made during World War II are examined. With interviews with veterans and archival film footage.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 8
In this episode we are presented with the technology and gadgets used while filming the Star Trek series. It also explores some of the real or possible technologies that were inspired by various Star Trek series.
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Episode 9
Nuclear and biological Weapons of mass destruction are examined. With a computer-generated depiction of a dirty-bomb attack in Seattle and how scientists identify biological agents.
Guest stars Abdul Qadeer Khan
Episode 10
It's clear from the bow that nearly brought down Rome, the suspension system that revolutionized the chariot, and the axe that named a country that barbarians and technology aren't such a contradiction after all.
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Episode 11
Dams - one of man's greatest accomplishments are explored. The history of dams from construction to demolition and their impact on the environment. Beavers and their dams and construction of embankment dams and larger Hydroelectric dams such as Three Gorges, Hoover, and Grand Coulee are explored.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 12
The technology used to keep your lawn green including the lawnmower, riding movers, sod, astro turf, and sprinklers. The state of the art grass used in the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona. Also: how a company moves big trees, and the science of different types of grasses.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 13
Soldiers, machines, and supplies are only effective if they arrive at the battlefield in time. Explore the history and the technology behind the machines that do the heavy moving in times of war.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 14
Driven by the need for deep sea rescue and salvage capabilities, the US Navy Diving and Salvage Programs have gathered together a highly skilled team of divers, scientists and engineers, who have been involved in some of the most exciting and dangerous salvage operations ever undertaken.
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Episode 15
It was a science first conjured amid the fiery ovens of ancient blacksmiths; today more than 50% of all U.S. products require some form of welding. Whether via electricity, flammable gases, sonic waves, or sometimes just raw explosive power, welding creates powerful bonds between metal unmatched by any other joining process. From high atop emerging 60-story towers on the Las Vegas strip to oil platforms hundreds of feet below the ocean, discover how welders forge the backbone of civilization. Learn about exciting new applications: how sound waves create bulletproof welds for contemporary body armor; the technologies behind robotic welding systems; and the knee-rattling impact of an explosion weld, the most powerful method of all.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 16
A look at the technology behind some of the 1960s greatest inventions. With color television, transistor radios, satellite broadcasting, touch-tone phones, lava lamps, the Ford Mustang, and toys like Etch-a-Sketch and the Super Ball.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 17
What do remote controlled robots, Tempur-Pedic mattresses, polarized glasses and metallized blankets have in common? They are all civilian inventions among the thousands derived from technologies used in space exploration.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 18
What does it take to become "the world's strongest"? You'll find out on this episode of Modern Marvels. With life-saving boron carbide body armor and MegaFly - a giant ram air parachute.
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Episode 19
To err is human, but when the error results in the loss of life, it's a disaster. Learn about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Buffalo Creek Dam disaster, and the explosion of a tanker in Los Angeles harbor.
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Episode 20
The 1970s were a decade of excess. Dust off your mirror ball, put on your leisure suit, and rediscover the gadgets of the era
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 21
Join Modern Marvels as we discover how truck stops, serving more than twenty million truckers nationwide, are bigger and better than ever. These mammoth pit-stops are essential cogs in the machinery that keeps goods flowing seamlessly around the country. In this episode we'll tour the world's largest truck stop, a grand service area complete with fuel, food, parking, private showers, a movie theater, a dentist office, and a barbershop. We'll see how 18-wheelers power elaborate living quarters without idling their engines by plugging into truck stop utilities.
Where to watch Modern Marvels
Episode 22
Without it one third of us would starve. Modern Marvels: Fertilizer tours the places that harness the vital nutrients that enrich the soil...that grow the crops...that feed us.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 23
From the giant cheese factories of Wisconsin to the goat farms of Northern California, this episode explores cheese.
Where to watch Modern Marvels
Episode 24
They brought down the forests and built up the pyramids. They're a cut above for construction, salvage, demolition - and they even make music and some have used them to torture.
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Episode 25
This useful metal was once considered more valuable than gold. Watch as aluminum is stretched, pounded, melted and turned into foam. Did you know that aluminum is made out of a powder? Visit the widest rolling mill in the world where skins for the largest jets are made, then it’s off to NASA to observe how aluminum is used to make reflective mirrors for telescopes. Discover the process of making aluminum foil and learn why aluminum baseball bats are better than wood.
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Episode 26
A look at everyday stuff that is sticky including VHB tape, velcro, stealth rubber, cling wrap, and asphalt.
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Episode 27
It's America's favorite flavor. We eat over three and a half billion pounds of it each year. It satiated the ancients and built modern-day empires. From the equatorial fields, to the factories of moguls, and the kitchens of artisans.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 28
We spend 1/3 of our lives in the bedroom, explore the technologies that help to ensure we wake up on the right side of the bed.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 29
On this episode of Modern Marvels we'll see giant-sized vacuums that clean up after disasters like Hurricane Katrina and 9-11. Beneath the sea we'll meet The Super Sucker, an underwater vacuum that saves coral reefs by suctioning up invasive alien algae.
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Episode 30
They're designed to capture and often kill, but they don't always harm their prey. Traps are devices as old as humanity itself. We'll trap 400 pounds Black Bears with West Virginia Division of Natural Resources biologists.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 31
Volcano technology is examined. Included: attempts to monitor and control activity.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 32
In this episode we are presented with the technology and gadgets used while filming Star Wars. It also explores some of the real or possible technologies that were inspired by various Star Wars movies and TV shows.
Where to watch Modern Marvels
Episode 33
Take a supersonic flight through a world of flying machines that are redefining our skies. Pull serious G’s in the U.S. military’s latest fighter jet: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Riding shotgun in the lethal B-1B Lancer, and look close or you’ll miss the swarm of MAV’s (Micro Air Vehicles)–so small they are launched out of a backpack. The “vertical takeoff and landing” capable PAV’s (Personal Aerial Vehicles) may be the answer to the commuting needs of tired travelers. Then, discover how a commercial jetliner has been retrofitted into the biggest flying fire truck the world has ever seen.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 34
Modern Marvels: Deep Freeze takes the technology of cold to the extreme: A 12-story ice box filled with 135 million pounds of ice cream, arctic vaults that store billions of seeds and learn how scientists have mastered temperatures of minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Episode 35
It is the most widely produced chemical in the world and possibly the most dangerous. Take a look at the many uses of acid. See how the military harnesses acid to make the explosive “Comp B-4.” Visit a sulfuric acid plant to see how acid can take the stain out of stainless steel and learn how it can be mixed to dissolve precious metal. At the Heinz vinegar plant discover why acid’s sour taste is sweet. Finally, learn how acid loving bacteria in Yellowstone National Park may hold the key to a biological industrial revolution and meet a mad scientist who will demonstrate how acid can hollow out a penny and turn a hot dog to sludge!
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Episode 36
The Katana blade of the Samurai is the world's sharpest sword. We'll craft one from scratch to reveal the secret of its legendary cutting ability. We'll also visit Cutco Cutlery, where the sharpest for chopping food in your kitchen are made.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 37
A steam pipe explosion rocks in Midtown Manhattan. In Boston's sections of a tunnel ceiling fall onto the roadway. And in Minnesota a bridge plunges into the Mississippi River.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 38
Take a look at the innovations designed to hold off a global warming meltdown.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 39
Corn has found its way into over 3,000 different items. Discover how tons of sweet corn make it from the field to a sealed can within mere hours at Lakeside Foods in Wisconsin and how corn is transformed into clear plastic packaging at NatureWorks in Nebraska.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode 40
A pig is as smart as a three-year-old human. The pancreas, heart valve and intestines of the pig have been transplanted into human bodies. But the primary use of the pig is for food. Watch the transformation into bacon, ham, ribs and sausage.
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Episode 41
From the Stone Age, to the Space Age, we've built our world from rocks. With moon rocks located at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
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Episode 42
The dangers associated with Electric Shock are real. It kills and injures thousands each year. In the last 100 years we've corralled its power to create marvelous devices. We'll explore the stunning ways that electric shocks occur - from lethal prison fences to the slippery shock of an Electric Eel.
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Episode 43
They're the meat in our sandwiches. We will take you behind the deli counter to reveal the secret ingredients in boloney. Watch a master sausage maker craft salami, and pile it on at Carnegie Deli with their famous mile-high pastrami sandwich.
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Episode 44
Carl's Jr., Jack in the Box, Wendy's, Burger King or McDonald's. Fast food joints dominate the American landscape to the tune of $150 billion dollars in annual sales.
Where to watch Modern MarvelsEpisode information updated Sep 12, 2026
Adam RichmanSelf - Host
Lloyd SherrSelf - Narrator
Abdul Qadeer KhanSelf (archive footage)
George C. KenneySelf (archive footage)
HistoryUnited States
A&EUnited States
H2United States
Jupiter EntertainmentUnited States
Six West MediaUnited StatesMore shows like Modern Marvels.
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