Our Declaration • 2015 • episode "2/9" • Curiosity Retreats: 2015 Lectures

90:29

The extraordinary and dramatic story of Gertrude Bell, the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day. She shaped the modern Middle East after World War I in ways that still reverberate today. More influential than her friend and colleague Lawrence of Arabia, Bell helped draw the borders of Iraq and established the Iraq Museum. Using never-seen-before footage of the region, the film chronicles Bell's extraordinary journey into both the uncharted Arabian desert and the inner sanctum of British male colonial power. With unique access to documents from the Iraq National Library and Archive and Gertrude Bell's own 1,600 letters, the story is told entirely in the words of the players of the day, excerpted verbatim from intimate letters, private diaries and secret communiques. It is a unique look at both a remarkable woman and the tangled history of Iraq.

2017 • People

45:36

A mother and her sadistic boys rule the Australian underworld until the eldest son's addiction hastens the family's downfall.

S1E4 • Drug Lords • 2017 • People

70:30

From Brazilian favelas to dusty Congolese villages, from neolithic Scottish isles to modern soccer pitches, explore the little-known origins of our favorite sports. Cross time, languages and continents to discover how the ball has staked its claim on our lives and fueled our passion to compete.

2015 • People

46:48

Bin Laden's on the run and plotting an audacious plan to strike at the US. Bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan, where he is hailed as a war hero after the Soviets left because he believes he made a significant contribution to the military victory. 18 months later, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, prompting worried Saudi authorities to turn to the US for protection. Horrified by what he perceives as an invasion of the holy places by the American army, bin Laden publicly opposes the Saudi royal family declaring Jihad against the US and is eventually forced to flee to Sudan. There he reinvents himself as a major agricultural producer of sunflowers and watermelons, while expanding al-Qaeda's work and setting up training camps that attract recruits from across the region. Under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United States, bin Laden finally has to give up his refuge in Sudan. Stateless and without much prospect of alternative quarters, he returns to Afghanistan in 1996. Just a few months later, he issued a 30-page fatwa declaring holy war against the Americans who occupied the Arabian Peninsula. He surrounded himself with increasingly radical extremists, and in the summer of 1996 finally suggested piloting planes to American targets. The plan to attack the Twin Towers is born. This compelling history documentary looks at the factors that transformed Bin Laden from a renowned freedom fighter to a devoted enemy of America and the West. What drove him to plot his most audacious attack?

S1E2 • Bin Laden: The Road to 9.11 • 2021 • People

59:14

Using state-of-the-art 3D graphics and the timing of a stand-up comedian, world-famous statistician Professor Hans Rosling presents a spectacular portrait of our rapidly changing world.

People

9:35

Motherboard meets John Romero, one of the creators behind Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, and Quake, breakthrough games that all but created the first-person shooter genre.

2015 • People