Secrets of the Snake Altar • 2019 • episode "S1E1" • Lost Treasures of the Maya

26:00

July 31, 1784, Paris. Denis Diderot has just passed away and with him, the memory of the biggest editorial epic of the Age of Enlightenment: Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

S3E12 • Butterfly Effect • 2018 • History

59:00

By 1800 the East India Company had grown from a tiny band of merchants into a colossal trading empire. But scandal and corruption in the 18th century had led to a curtailment of its powers by the British government. The state now controlled the company's affairs in India and, throughout the 19th century, would chip away at its remaining powers and trading privileges. The company was transformed from a trading enterprise into the rulers of India, and governed vast swathes of the subcontinent on behalf of the British Crown. Its territory expanded enormously and an empire was born. As the company traded opium to a reluctant Chinese Empire, in India a dangerous chasm opened up between the British rulers and the Indian people. Alienated and disaffected, significant numbers of the company's massive army of Indian soldiers finally revolted and the Company's handling of the mutiny was its final undoing. In 1858 British India passed into Queen Victoria's hands and the Raj was born.

S1E2 • The Birth of Empire: The East India Company • 2014 • History

48:56

Fighting an implacable enemy in Germania, Marcus Aurelius trains his decadent son Commodus to succeed him, while rumor and intrigues brew back in Rome.

S1E1 • Roman Empire • 2016 • History

42:31

Caesar implements important reforms and grows more powerful and popular in Rome. He acts like a king and plans to become a dictator in perpetuity. To demonstrate his power, he plans to conquer Parthia. However, the Senate and Brutus in particular, are outraged.

S2E5 • Roman Empire • 2018 • History

43:00

The treasure map uncovers a mysterious pyramid complex that reveals clues of violent sacrifices; newly discovered cave systems reveal gruesome evidence of ancient Mayan rituals; Albert Lin dives deep beneath the surface of the Mayan spirit underworld.

S1E2 • Lost Treasures of the Maya • 2019 • History

51:45

Between 1931 and 1933, 4 million Ukrainians were to die of hunger. This famine was not preceded by any cataclysmic weather event, nor by a war. This was an ideological crime: decided by Stalin and approved by the Politburo, with the aim of punishing Ukrainian peasants who refused the collectivization of the countryside, cultivated a strong form of nationalism and showed resistance to communist ideology. The purpose of this famine, unprecedented in Soviet history, was to break all forms of opposition. How was it implemented? What was known at the time? What was said? What was seen? The most important event in pre-war Soviet history is taboo: all traces of it were immediately erased, and the evidence drowned in a flood of lies. And yet, within just two years, this famine killed twice as many Ukrainians as the gulag did Soviets in half a century. This state secret was particularly well-kept for more than fifty years and only revealed in its full magnitude after the disintegration of the USSR, when the archives were revealed. Drawing on previously unpublished material, on many Soviet films and on a number of particular points of view, including that of Welsh journalist and whistleblower Gareth Jones, this film retraces the story of that famine.

2022 • History