Cory Booker and others discuss how slavery, housing discrimination and centuries of inequality have compounded to create a racial wealth gap.
2018 • Economics
Scientific feat or terrifying social experiment? Specialists in the field discuss the high stakes and ethical controversies of gene editing.
2018 • Technology
Cryptocurrency has made people billionaires, but is digital cash the next revolution? Learn about this anonymous currency and why it's so coveted.
2018 • Economics
Explained examines why diets are often unsuccessful. It looks at the science that suggests that low carb, low fat, and body type diets as well as supplements and detoxification regimes simple do not work in helping most people lose weight. While the diet industry pushes us to avoid calories the food industry encourage us to eat more of them.
2018 • Health
Does the stock market accurately reflect the status of the economy? Finance specialists discuss market history, valuations and CEO incentives.
2018 • Economics
The term eSports is short for "electronic sports". It is introduced to describe competitive video gaming. What's competitive video gaming? It's basically just people playing video games in some form of competition.
2018 • Technology
Explained examines the possibility of extraterrestrial life and looks at why we have not yet found evidence for its existence despite efforts to look for it. It considers the Fermi paradox which suggests that given the vastness of the universe that there should be a great deal of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy. It also consider conspiracy theories about U.F.O.
2018 • Astronomy
The story of the exclamation point. How it came to be and are we overusing it today?
2018 • Design
Explained looks at the popular English sport of cricket. First developed in the mid-1800s, cricket has grown into one of the most popular sports in the world. It looks at the complicated and confusing rules behind the game and examines how the British Empire exported the game to its colonies including the West Indies and India. It also looks at different forms of the game including test cricket and Twenty20 cricket.
2018 • People
Scientists are working to understand and even slow the aging process.
2018 • Health
The female orgasm is more elusive when a man is involved. Discover the reasons why -- and how women are embracing hands-on solutions.
2018 • Health
Political correctness can sometimes feel like a tug-of-war between inclusivity and free speech. Experts discuss the concepts behind the fraught term.
2018 • People
Hillary Clinton and Anne-Marie Slaughter discuss the cultural norms at the center of the worldwide gender pay gap, including the "motherhood penalty"
2018 • Economics
The global water crisis is at an inflection point. How do we price our most valuable resource, while also ensuring access to it as a human right?
2018 • Environment
This is the story of how the world's leading economy sinks into the Great Depression, with repercussions that allow Hitler to rise to power. Eventually, President Franklin D. Roosevelt brings hope and optimism back into the hearts of the US population.
Wayne Pacelle, President of the Humane Society of the United States, draws a practical roadmap for how we can use the marketplace to promote the welfare of all living creatures, and how industries, innovators and consumers are coming together in this powerful social movement.
6/8 • Curiosity Retreats: 2016 Lectures • 2016 • Economics
In the first of this three-part series investigating consumer spending, Jacques reveals how the concept of 'product lifespan' holds the key to our ever-churning consumerism. Exploring the historical origin of planned obsolescence, when some of the world biggest electrical manufacturers formed a light bulb cartel in the 1920s, Jacques reveals how products that are essential to our modern lifestyles are still made to break. During his investigation, Jacques uncovers the process by which a crucial transformation happened and attitudes towards spending were transformed. Instead of needing new goods because our old ones were broken, we learned to want them for reasons of fashion and aspiration - awaking a consumer appetite that could never be satisfied. In the US, he visits a recycling centre where brand-new high-tech goods are destroyed before they have even come out of the box. Jacques also meets some of the companies that encourage consumers to be dissatisfied with what they have and encourage purchases as part of an ever-faster cycle of 'upgrades'. He asks a senior IKEA executive why, despite the company's commitment to sustainability, it still encourages repeated discarding and purchasing. Jacques also talks to a former senior Apple employee who reveals how the company's new focus on fashion, with its colourful iPhones, keeps us buying even when technological innovation slows.
1/3 • The Men Who Made Us Spend • 2014 • Economics
Cory Booker and others discuss how slavery, housing discrimination and centuries of inequality have compounded to create a racial wealth gap.
Robert Peston travels to China to investigate how this mighty economic giant could actually be in serious trouble. China is now the second largest economy in the world and for the last 30 years China's economy has been growing at an astonishing rate. While Britain has been in the grip of the worst recession in a generation, China's economic miracle has wowed the world. Now, for BBC Two's award-winning strand This World, Peston reveals what has actually happened inside China since the economic collapse in the west in 2008. It is a story of spending and investment on a scale never seen before in human history - 30 new airports, 26,000 miles of motorways and a new skyscraper every five days have been built in China in the last five years. But, in a situation eerily reminiscent of what has happened in the west, the vast majority of it has been built on credit. This has now left the Chinese economy with huge debts and questions over whether much of the money can ever be paid back. Interviewing key players including the former American treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Lord Adair Turner, former chairman of the FSA, and Charlene Chu, a leading Chinese banking analyst, Robert Peston reveals how China's extraordinary spending has left the country with levels of debt that many believe can only end in an economic crash with untold consequences for us all.
This World • 2014 • Economics
Behind the scenes with the team who look after all 843 acres of Central Park, revealing the hidden systems and organisational miracles that keep the world's busiest urban park clean and green. Plus, Ant Anstead sees how an entirely new district is being built on top of a functioning rail depot in Manhattan and Dan Snow is in Coney Island, where he discovers that television, air conditioning and extreme weather almost killed off this historic amusement zone.
Part 3 • New York: America's Busiest City • 2016 • Economics