What Makes Us Clever: A Horizon Guide to Intelligence • 2011

59:04

At the age of 23, David Harewood had a psychotic breakdown and was sectioned. Two years ago he opened up on Twitter about the experience - and now he wants to tell the full story. Travelling back to his home town of Birmingham, the actor lets viewers into the realities of experiencing a psychotic breakdown, and how much he blocked out at the time, meeting up with his mother and old friends who were with him at the time. But this isn't just his story. He also spends time with other young people living with psychosis and the NHS professionals who treat them.

2023 • Brain

59:20

Imagine a world in which you can think but cannot speak. For many stroke survivors, like former football star Junior and landlord Barry, this nightmare is a reality. Inspired by the experience of his brother-in-law, filmmaker Richard Alwyn has made an intensely moving, personal film about language and its loss. Alwyn's brother-in-law, journalist Dennis Barker, had a stroke in 2011 which left him speaking a bizarre, fluent gibberish – just one manifestation of the condition ‘aphasia' in which people lose or have a severely impaired ability to use language. Speechless tells the powerful stories of two men who can no longer take language for granted. Much of the film is made on the Neuro Rehab Unit of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London's Queen Square. There, Alwyn meets 55 year old Barry who has been in hospital for 4 months since a stroke left him barely able to speak. Courageous and determined, Barry's personality constantly triumphs where his language fails. And two years after his stroke when just 35 years-old, former Premier League and international footballer Junior Agogo is still visiting the Unit as he battles to find his way in the world with depleted language. “I had thoughts but I'm saying, where was my voice? I was baffled, man.” Speechless raises questions that straddle philosophy and science. Can we understand the world if we don't have language to name and describe it? Can we think without language? How much is our identity wrapped up in language? These questions are at the heart of conversations that Alwyn has with clinicians and therapists working to get Barry and Junior back into the world. Speechless is fascinating and moving, upsetting and uplifting in its depiction of the isolating and estranging condition, aphasia.

2017 • Brain

31:05

If I could live forever, should I? How does being reminded of our own mortality affect us psychologically? In this episode I speak with mortician and death positivity activist Caitlin Doughty and visit a cryonics facility trying to extend human life indefinitely. Will I take them up on their offer, or will I choose to die?

S3E5 • Mind Field • 2018 • Brain

19:21

Why do we dream? When the lights go out, interesting things happen in the brain and body. What’s the significance of dreams, and what can they teach us?

S1E2 • The Mind, Explained • 2019 • Brain

12:06

In part 2, Prof. Arthur Shapiro takes us through visual illusions that show how our brain processes retinal impressions from light and dark. Watch as things "move" while they are standing still. It will be hard to believe your eyes after watching this program!

S1E2 • Illusions • 2017 • Brain

23:24

Jeff puts his brain to the test as he embarks on an adventure with some bona fide geniuses to discover our fascination with puzzles. From working with a team of escape room enthusiasts and landing planes to a wild jazz improvisation session with Shimon, a marimba-playing robot, Jeff discovers how puzzles are more than just a hobby; they are the means through which we solve some of life's greatest problems.

S2E6 • The World According to Jeff Goldblum • 2021 • Brain