Are You Good or Evil?
This program seeks to determine if there is a physical source behind people’s moral impulses and whether notorious psychopaths, clearly deficient in morality, are in actuality “born bad.” Are You Good or Evil? uses brain scans to compare and c...
How long is a piece of string?
In the spirit of a famous rhetorical question, this program explores the world of scientific measurement at the molecular and atomic level. Host Alan Davies tries to establish the length of a piece of household string—but what appears to be a simp...
Men of the World: Albert Kahn's Archive of the Planet
In 1908, Albert Kahn and his chauffeur embarked on a global trek to observe and absorb other cultures—an early “prototype” of the many photography missions Kahn would fund over the years. This program illustrates that formative round-the-world...
Into the Mind: Mind Control
In this program, host Michael Mosley provides an illustrated history of some of the most notorious psychology experiments ever conducted in science’s attempt to explore behavior, brainwashing, and free will. The survey includes Ivan Pavlov, his fa...
How Did We Get Here?: A History of Evolutionary Science
The question of human origins, and of the beginning of life itself, is one of the most controversial science has ever wrestled with—and the debates are as divisive today as they were in the 19th century. This program tells the story of how scienti...
Mexico's Drug Wars
Violence is raging in Mexico as rival drug cartels battle for control of smuggling routes to the U.S. And although President Calderón has vowed to end trafficking, the only result appears to be an escalation of the carnage—more than 16,000 killin...
Tribal Wives: A Look into Tribal Family Life and Female Independence
Twenty-three-year-old Charlie Brades has agreed to spend a month among the Yoruk—nomadic shepherds who live in the mountains of southern Turkey. This program follows the spirited Londoner as she adapts to life in a polygamous family and a remote, ...
Bacon's arena: an art of pain and beauty
Despite the carnage and horror in his paintings, Francis Bacon insisted that beauty was his inspiration. This program explores Bacon's life and work, from his troubled Edwardian childhood to his death in Madrid in 1992. Using rarely seen archival fi...
Tribal Wives: Western Taboos versus Tribal Traditions
In England, Anna de Vere won’t leave the house without putting on nail polish. In Ethiopia’s drought-stricken Omo Valley, where she has come to live with the struggling Hamar tribe, her only cosmetic is the red ocher rubbed into her hair—a tra...
Tribal Wives: Challenging Western Views of Polygamy and Female Circumcision
Single and in her early thirties, educator Dionne Braham has become disenchanted with the romantic ideal of the perfect mate—actually, with the idea of finding any mate in her familiar London milieu. But she experiences an even greater paradigm-sh...