The Secret You

44:54

Amol Rajan joins Sir Richard Branson on one of his cruise ships in Miami to discuss his life, loves, passions and challenges. In a sometimes uncomfortable interview with rarely seen archive footage, Rajan delves into Branson's background to discover how he went from 60s hippy to global business icon, reshaping multiple industries and ending up in space.

2023 • People

51:41

The astonishing, little-known story of men, women, and children who were exhibited alongside animals in Europe, America and Japan from the second half of the 19th century until WWII: an international story from a pre-globalization era concerning the most diverse populations from every continent.

2018 • People

59:12

Alice Roberts explores the latest discoveries in the study of human origins, revealing the transformation that has been brought about in this field by genetics. Traditional paleo-anthropology, based on fossils, is being transformed by advanced genome sequencing techniques. We now know that there were at least four other distinct species of human on the planet at the same time as us - some of them identified from astonishingly well-preserved DNA extracted from 50,000-year-old bones, others hinted at by archaic sections of DNA hidden in our modern genome. What's more, we now know that our ancestors met and interacted with these other humans, in ways that still have ramifications today. Alice uses these revelations to update our picture of the human family tree.

Horizon • 2016 • People

83:53

Killer, drug smuggler, folk hero, Houdini of jailhouse escapes--the legend of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is well known. But now this two-hour documentary special reveals an unprecedented look at the man behind the myth and how his international drug cartel impacts us right here at home.

2016 • People

47:01

How did the mafia evolve from gangs into a multi-national organisation run as efficiently as a legitimate business? In 1931, legendary mobster "Lucky" Luciano formed a mafia board to establish policy among the families.

S1E1 • The Mafia • 2005 • People

53:07

Drug trafficking was not invented by a mafia but by the European colonial powers in the 19th century. Opium use spread throughout Asia, promoted by colonial powers. Meanwhile, the western pharmaceutical industry was developing some miraculous products, such as morphine, cocaine, and heroin. Addiction became a global scourge, and prohibition gradually became the norm. But outlawing these substances at the beginning of the 20th century gave rise to the first drug-trafficking networks, which often sought to operate under state protection, in Mexico, France and China… These networks underwent unprecedented growth during the Cold War, when secret services used the drug trade as a geopolitical instrument. The United States paid the price for this: In 1970, one third of their troops in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. A year later, in an historic speech, President Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs.

S1E1 • The Story of Drug Trafficking • 2020 • People