COLDPROVENANCE
Animated stories · Evidence in the open
Strange stories. Hidden systems. Unexpected connections. Come see the world a little differently.
Every story has a paper trail. Explore our sources ↗
The film archive
FILM 13 · The natural world
They take on great white sharks, seals on ice and whale calves beside their mothers. How do orcas hunt as a team, and how much of it is really a plan?
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FILM 12 · Hidden systems
Same seat, same legroom, same view of the wing. So why can the person next to you pay half your fare, and who decides which price you get?
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FILM 11 · Hidden systems
No single clock tells the world what time it is. So who decides, and why does four millionths of a second matter?
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FILM 10 · The natural world
A small storm on the Sun brought down 38 brand-new satellites. How can the Sun pull a satellite out of the sky without touching it?
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FILM 09 · Hidden systems
In 27 seconds, Spain and Portugal lost almost all their power. The cause was not too little electricity, but too much voltage.
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FILM 08 · Hidden systems
From a photograph in orbit to the blue dot on your street. How does a whole planet fit in your pocket?
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FILM 07 · Hidden systems
Locked rooms. Sealed cards. A carefully watched ceremony. What does it take to keep the internet’s trust?
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FILM 06 · Our connected world
Most of our planet is ocean. So why can’t the ships just go around? Follow the geography behind a global bottleneck.
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FILM 05 · The natural world
In 1820, a whale sank the Essex. We still don’t know why. But the animal behind the wreck is far stranger than the story.
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FILM 04 · From the documentary archive
Three men set out across the ice. Two did not return. Mawson’s diary preserves the record of what happened to the last one.
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FILM 03 · From the documentary archive
A research station inside an ice sheet concealed an ambitious military plan. Decades later, it is an unexpected scientific record.
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FILM 02 · From the documentary archive
For a century, stones left tracks across a dry lakebed and no one saw them move. Then the evidence caught up.
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FILM 01 · From the documentary archive
A B-29 rests a thousand feet down. The aircraft is there; the crew identification remains a lead, not a confirmed match.
Thumbnail: ColdProvenance · Full credits in SourcesFrom our first documentaries to our animated explainers.
Different stories. The same curiosity.
How a question becomes a story
Animation lets us take things apart, see the invisible, and put the pieces back together. Here’s how we get there.
Start with something strange, surprising, or hiding in plain sight. The kind of thing that makes you say, “Wait. Why?”
Trace the sources. Check the explanation. Make the moving parts visible, and be clear about what we still don’t know.
Connect the answer to the world around us. Leave with an idea you can understand, remember, and explain to someone else.
Evidence in the open
Curiosity gets us started. Evidence keeps us honest. Follow the sources behind each film, and see what changes when we get something wrong.
Open sources. Public corrections.