Bones and joints
The topic of bones and joints is explored in this program with Dr. Lyle Micheli at Boston Children's Hospital. Dr. Micheli runs the world's leading orthopedic clinic for young athletes, where the most common types of sports injuries, such as acute i...
Blood
Blood and circulation are explained in this program through the story of a sickle cell sufferer. By looking at the ways in which sickle cell affects the body, the program explains how the blood circulatory system operates and also how technology is ...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 4: Medicine
Niall Ferguson looks at how late 19th-century advances in modern medicine made it possible to export Western civilization to the 'Dark Continent': Africa.
The French Empire consciously set out to civilize West Africa by improving public health as w...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 1: Competition
The first program in the series begins in 1420 when Ming China had a credible claim to be the most advanced civilization in the world: 'All Under Heaven'. England on the eve of the Wars of the Roses would have seemed quite primitive by contrast. Yet...
Space invaders: strategies for life in a crowd
In this program, the need for personal space is explored through the avoidance behaviors people employ to maintain a perceived distance from others, such as falling into a "middle-distance stare" in a crowded subway; the use of a proxy, like a jacke...
Hidden Faces
Originally intended as a film about internationally renowned feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi, Hidden Faces develops into a fascinating portrayal of Egyptian women’s lives in Muslim society. In this collaborative documentary, Safaa Fathay, a young...
Warrior Marks
Warrior Marks is a poetic and political film about female genital mutilation. Female genital mutilation affects one hundred million of the world’s women and this remarkable film unlocks some of the cultural and political complexities surrounding t...
The language of film
When Tim Supple directed the filming of Twelfth Night, he was a stickler for sticking to the words as the Bard penned them. Everything else, though, was up for grabs as he and screenwriter Andrew Bannerman shifted and intercut scenes and in general ...
Wittgenstein
A humorous portrait of one of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers. This self-tortured eccentric, who preferred detective fiction and the musicals of Carmen Miranda to Aristotle, is a fitting subject for Jarman’s irreverent imaginati...
Too close to heaven: the history of gospel music. Pt. 1 of 3
Deeply rooted in African rhythms, the first gospel music, as sung on southern plantations, expressed the collective sorrow of American slaves, and the history of their diaspora. Using narration and thrilling performance footage, these programs trace...