Femme Fatale • 2021 • episode "S1E5" • Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami

52:29

More than five centuries ago, Michelangelo Buonarroti was the darling of the Catholic Church. Throughout his masterful career, the Papacy commissioned him to create many of its most important pieces, including the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. He spent his life glorifying the Church, etching Catholic ideals into masterpieces that defined religion for the masses. Yet when he died, his body was secretly shepherded off to Florence, and the Church was denied the opportunity to honor him with a grand funeral in Rome. Historians have long wondered about the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, but now, five hundred years after his death, new finds are revealing a darker side to the master artisan. While restoring Michelangelo's sculptures in the tomb of Julius II, art historian Antonio Forcellino noticed some strange inconsistencies in the famous statue: "The Moses." Forcellino believes he has pieced together evidence of a deep rift between the Church and the esteemed artist. The cause: Michelangelo's belief in Protestant ideals. The imperfections in the statue started him on a careful scientific and historical investigation that exposed remarkable evidence of Michelangelo's involvement with a clandestine fellowship trying to put an end to the decadence and corruption of the Clergy and reform the Church from within. The group's radical ideas and accusations of corruption were considered heretical and punishable by death. Michelangelo's involvement put him at dangerous odds with powerful officials who held his livelihood - and life - in their hands. "Michelangelo Revealed" takes us back over 500 years to the dangerous political climate of papal Rome, vividly portrayed through dramatic reconstruction. We are thrown into the heart of a fierce battle for religious control between the cardinals, and the resulting injustices of the Inquisition, shedding new light on the angst surrounding Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" in the Sistine Chapel and his previously shrouded connections to a subversive religious group and persecuted religious beliefs. "Secrets of the Dead: Michelangelo Revealed" deconstructs the puzzling discrepancies between the sculptures Michelangelo created and the way he described them, revealing an intricate effort to carve his own beliefs into stone, while protecting himself from the wrath of a powerful Cardinal who viewed him as a heretic. MICHELANGELO REVEALED paints a stunning new picture of brave religious expression, personal vendettas, careful cover-ups and a most gifted artist desperately trying to reconcile his loyalty to the church with his own personal belief about the road to salvation.

Secrets of the Dead • 2008 • People

16:09

Each year, over 2000 people apply for jobs in Antarctica, but few are successful. What are the physical and psychological attributes required to work in the most remote location on Earth? Could you snag a job in sub-zero temperatures at an Antarctic station?

1/10 • Catalyst: Season 1 • 2015 • People

47:05

Why does an atheist bother to get up in the morning? That's the question Richard Dawkins seeks to answer as he continues his exploration of the big questions of life in a world shaking off religious faith. In a journey that takes him from the casinos of Las Vegas to Buddhist monasteries in the foothills of the Himalayas, Dawkins examines how both religious and non-religious people struggle to find meaning in their lives. He looks at how our existence is ruled by chance, meeting people whose fate was to be born into extreme poverty in India's slums and the survivors of a natural disaster in Joplin, Missouri, which was ripped apart in 2011 by a tornado on a random course.

Part 3 • Dawkins: Sex Death and the Meaning of Life • 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

49:59

The Sixth Episode features some major players from war and peace, from east and west. From inventors who have changed the way we live and fight to artists who have given us reasons to do both, we count through 35 to 24 and cover some of the most influential and infamous people who made the twentieth century – a long reigning monarch, a murderous dictator and the “father of the Atom Bomb”. Quite a mixture!

S1E6 • The 101 People who Made the 20th Century • 2016 • People

47:08

Unpacking the unique Kim father-son relationship further, “Son of God” tracks the decline of Kim Il Sung and the rise of his son, Kim Jong Il.

S1E2 • Inside North Korea's Dynasty • 2018 • People