The Art of Discovery • 2015 • episode "S1E3" • Curiosity Retreats: 2015 Lectures

15:17

70,000 years ago humans were insignificant animals. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were unimportant. Their impact on the world was very small, less than that of jellyfish, woodpeckers or bumblebees.

TED • 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

62:32

Have you ever wondered why people believe things like religion, spirituality, conspiracy theories and political ideology without evidence? Why it's so hard to change their minds, even after presenting the facts? Reasons To Believe is a thought-provoking documentary by filmmaker Ben Fama Jr., that explores the psychology and science of belief and why we believe, sometimes falsely, in things that may not match up with reality. Facilitated by leaders in the fields of science, philosophy, neuroscience, moral reasoning, psychology, perception, memory formation, and indoctrination, these experts answer a variety of thought provoking questions and provide tangible structure to the definition and creation of belief in the human brain. Fama asks the question: Why do we believe?

2017 • People

47:58

The second episode delves into the moral framework that religions are often cited as providing and argues against the indoctrination of children. Dawkins compares religious faith to a virus, being passed from parents to offspring and teachers to pupils. He visits a London Hasidic Jewish school, where students are largely isolated from outside ideas, and Phoenix Academy, a semi-independent city academy following the American Accelerated Christian Learning curriculum. Dawkins interviews the headteacher about the integration of biblical stories into various academic subjects and explores the differences between secular ethics and morality based on religious law. He also discusses concepts from evolutionary biology, such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection, as explanations for morality.

S1E2 • The Root of All Evil • 2006 • People

22:15

Filmmaker Kevin Smith and a host of tech insiders examine the dawn of the digital age in 1989, the year the first modern GPS satellites roamed above the earth, the Game Boy appeared, and the World Wide Web debuted.

S1E5 • 1989: The Year that Made the Modern World • 2019 • People

22:15

From the protests of Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989 transformed global politics in profound ways that still resonate today; former Secretary of State James Baker and journalists provide eyewitness accounts.

S1E6 • 1989: The Year that Made the Modern World • 2019 • People