Part 3 • 2019 • episode "S1E3" • Looking for Rembrandt

46:40

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar leads a horrific war against his own country until a team of politicians and police end his reign of terror.

S1E1 • Drug Lords • 2017 • People

59:03

Professor Andre Geim is a condensed matter physicist at the University of Manchester. His life's work has been to gain a better understanding of the materials that make up the world around us. While just one subject can be a scientist's life's work, Andre has made switching fields a feature of his career. But while straying from the conventional path can be risky for a scientist, Andre has repeatedly turned it to his advantage. His "let's try it and see" approach means he's the only individual winner of the both the Nobel and the more light hearted Ig Nobel Prizes. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for uncovering the extraordinary properties of a material called graphene, but Geim can also lay claim to seeding two other new areas of physics research--levitation and gecko tape.

S2E2 • Beautiful Minds • 2012 • People

22:15

James Brooks and Peter Guber peel back the curtain on the world of entertainment, revealing how the overnight success of Bart Simpson, Batman and the Little Mermaid turned the old show business model into the multifaceted modern industry it is today.

S1E3 • 1989: The Year that Made the Modern World • 2019 • People

5:27

What is the most important thing in life? Money? Happiness? Love? Those things are certainly important, but what matters most is...

People

88:41

Tells the remarkable story of a charlatan art dealer who swindled over $50 million from the art establishment before going on the run. Michel Cohen, a popular and charming New York art dealer was originally from France. A high school drop-out from a poor background, Cohen was a self-invented man who went on to become a rich and successful art dealer, with homes in Malibu and New York. Throughout the 1990s, he sold paintings by artists such as Picasso, Monet and Chagall to America’s wealthiest elite. Cohen was living the high life until he began trading recklessly in the stock market and ran up considerable debts. In an attempt to recoup his losses, he swindled private collectors, auction houses and other art dealers out of more than $50 million. When his swindles were discovered, he fled the USA with his wife and two small children and went on the run. In 2003, he was found by Interpol in Brazil and was imprisoned in Rio de Janeiro, but seven months later, whilst awaiting extradition to the USA, he escaped from prison and vanished off the face of the earth. Sixteen years later, filmmaker Vanessa Engle has managed to track him down and persuade him to tell his extraordinary story - a highly entertaining crime caper that is also a rich exploration of greed, motive and morality.

2019 • People

76:42

Marco Polo: World's Greatest Overland Explorer? Or World's Biggest Liar? Perhaps no land journey in human history is more famous than Marco Polo's legendary 24 year trek across Asia. But was it all just a big lie? As described in his 1299 book, the peripatetic Venetian merchant encountered such wonders as the "singing sand dunes" of Dunhuang, China, "mountains of salt" in present-day Afghanistan, and the glories of the Mongol court of Kublai Khan. Generations of Europeans were spellbound by Polo's account, yet in recent years some scholars have questioned its authenticity. National Geographic Photographer Mike Yamashita sets out to visually document one of the greatest overland journeys ever made: the 24-year odyssey of Marco Polo. 700 years ago a young Venetian set out on what was to become one of the most influential journeys ever made. His adventures took him well beyond the boundaries of the known world of Persia to a land that was almost completely unexplored - the mysterious Middle Kingdom. But ever since he returned there were those who doubted Marco Polo. Did he really see what he described in his legendary book, 'Description of the World' or did he merely describe what others told him. In this film, Mike Yamashita follows Marco's book from the lofty heights of the Pamir Mountains to the fabled city of Xanadu in Mongolia. In so doing he attempts to unravel some of the age old mystery: Did Marco Polo really go to China? In the course of this incredible journey Mike stumbles onto a nomadic Kazak wedding in Aksai and investigates the controversy of the Great Wall - why did Polo never mention this in his famous travelogue "The Description of the World"? And why did he never mention tea or chopsticks? Yamashita talks to noted Chinese historian Professor Liu Yingsheng about these and many other Polo conundrums. In Yunnan province, he visits the bound feet women, and travels to inner Mongolia to film the famous herds of the Mongolian horsemen. As Yamashita reaches Xanadu he ponders on how Polo became a trusted confidant to the Khan and spent 17 years in his service. What sights he must have seen. But did he? The mystery slowly but surely reveals itself.

2022 • People