The Dawn of Digital • 2019 • episode "5/6" • 1989: The Year that Made the Modern World

41:32

From Luke Skywalker's light sabre to Darth Vader's Death Star, the Star Wars franchise is one of the defining science fiction works of the later 20th century. George Lucas' prolific imagination has already inspired two generations of scientists and engineers to push the envelope of technology. By introducing computers into the filmmaking process, he changed the way movies are made, and the way we all see the future.

8/8 • Prophets of Science Fiction • 2011 • People

58:38

Jenny Clack recounts how she overcame setbacks before she found and described a fossil which offered new evidence of how fish made the transition onto land. For paleontologist Professor Jenny Clack, who solved one of the greatest mysteries in the history of life on Earth, success was far from inevitable. A chance discovery in 1986 in the earth sciences department of Cambridge University, of long-forgotten fossils collected from the Devonian rocks of East Greenland in 1970, was to shape the rest of her career. She recounts how she had to overcome a series of setbacks before she found and described the fossil Acanthostega, a 365 million-year-old creature that offered dramatic new evidence of how fish made the transition onto land. She authored or co-authored more than 120 research papers as well as numerous popular articles and book reviews. A measure of the significance of her work is that 15 of her research papers were published in the journal Nature. Her one book, "Gaining Ground, The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods" (2002), summarises the results of research on early tetrapods over the previous 25 years.

S2E1 • Beautiful Minds • 2012 • People

49:59

From the creators of the worlds first super hero to the most successful female pop artist of the 20th century, peacemakers’ warmongers and athletes all claim a place in this episode.

2/8 • The 101 People who Made the 20th Century • 2016 • 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

8:34

Before Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson, before Chuck Jones and Jackie Chan, there was Buster Keaton, one of the founding fathers of visual comedy. And nearly 100 years after he first appeared onscreen, we’re still learning from him.

2015 • People

58:53

Bettany Hughes investigates the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx. Born to an affluent Prussian family, Marx became an angry, idealistic radical, constantly on the run for his political agitating and incendiary writing. In Paris he first formulated his explosive analysis of capitalism and its corrosive effects on human nature. In Brussels he co-authored the Communist Manifesto with Frederick Engels. In London his obsessive theorizing dragged his family into poverty and tragedy. Marx's masterpiece Das Capital was largely overlooked in his lifetime, and only 11 people attended his funeral. Yet his ideas would generate one of the most influential, and divisive, ideologies in history. Drawing on expert opinion and new evidence, Bettany reveals the flesh-and-blood man and his groundbreaking ideas.

Part 1 • Genius of the Modern World • 2016 • People