Cerro Torre: A Snowball's Chance in Hell • 2013

65:58

Hugh Dennis discovers what Sir Winston Churchill means to people today and explore the legacy he left behind across the globe. Hugh's journey starts with his own recollections of Churchill's funeral, as a young boy watching the flypast from the garden of his father's vicarage, and goes on to describe growing awareness of the influence and personal style of an Englishman who dominated the 20th Century political and cultural landscape like no other. Hugh meets people and visits places upon which Churchill left his indelible mark - from historians, to family members, and employees including former Personal Secretary Lady Jane Williams. There will also be famous faces such as Robert Hardy CBE who won a BAFTA for his portrayal as Churchill in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years. Each gives their personal insight into the incredible man behind the public image.

2015 • People

16:49

Explained looks at the popular English sport of cricket. First developed in the mid-1800s, cricket has grown into one of the most popular sports in the world. It looks at the complicated and confusing rules behind the game and examines how the British Empire exported the game to its colonies including the West Indies and India. It also looks at different forms of the game including test cricket and Twenty20 cricket.

S1E11 • Explained • 2018 • People

59:03

Dawkins discusses his book, the Selfish Gene, which divided the scientific community and made him the most influential evolutionary biologist of his time. Professor Richard Dawkins is one of the most well-known and controversial scientists in Britain. A passionate atheist he believes science rather than religion offers us the best way to appreciate the wonders of the Universe we live in. In the last 10 years he has become notorious for his outspoken views on religion, but at the heart of his success is his explosive first book -- The Selfish Gene -- which put forward a radical rewriting of evolutionary theory and divided the scientific community. Much of the controversy comes from its provocative title.

S2E3 • Beautiful Minds • 2012 • People

59:30

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most brilliant and dangerous minds of the 19th century. His uncompromising and often brutal ideas smashed the comfortable presuppositions and assumptions of religion, morality and science. His was a world not just bereft of God but almost of humanity, breathtaking in both its post-religious starkness and its originality. Bettany Hughes goes in search of the beliefs of a man whose work is amongst the most devastatingly manipulated and misinterpreted in philosophical history. Nietzsche's dislike of systems and of seeking truths left his ideas ambiguous and sometimes incoherent. It was this that made him vulnerable to interpretation, and as a result his thoughts - which warned against the very notion of a political system like totalitarianism - were manipulated to strengthen its ideals. Vocally opposed to anti-Semitism, his anti-Semitic sister made sure he became the poster boy for Hitler's drive for an Aryan ideal.

Part 2 • Genius of the Modern World • 2016 • People

46:07

The early years of Bin Laden, from timid Saudi schoolboy to revered freedom fighter. The first episode begins with Osama Bin Laden's schooldays in Saudi Arabia. He grew up in a wealthy family, loved westerns and soccer, and avoided fights in the schoolyard. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, like many Arab men, he joined the resistance to liberate the country from the occupying forces. In Peshawar, Pakistan, just across the Afghan border, he sets up a "service bureau" and uses his connections to organize money for the fight. He keeps promising his mother not to go into battle himself, but then joins the mujahideen commander Sayed Wahidyar, who is only called "Fearless". According to Wahidyar, bin Laden is initially a burden because he has no idea about fighting. The wealth he inherited and the family's connections to the construction industry come in handy when he begins to build much-needed infrastructure such as roads, warehouses and clinics on his own. In the Battle of Jaji, the Soviet troops were finally repulsed with the help of the experienced Afghan mujahideen - a decisive victory for bin Laden, which resulted in the superpower's final withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. It is the beginning of a myth fueled in part by Bin Laden himself. His supposed military success gives him enormous prestige. In the same year, Bin Laden founded Al-Qaeda. The die is cast.

S1E1 • Bin Laden: The Road to 9.11 • 2021 • People

7:22

Many technologies have promised to revolutionize education, but so far none has. With that in mind, what could revolutionize education?

People