The reason why some countries are rich and others poor depends on many things, including the quality of their institutions, the culture they have, the natural resources they find and what latitude they're on.
If you were setting out to make a country rich, what kind of mindsets and ideas would be most likely to achieve your goals? We invent a country, Richland, and try to imagine the psychology of its inhabitants.
2015 • Economics
The reason why some countries are rich and others poor depends on many things, including the quality of their institutions, the culture they have, the natural resources they find and what latitude they're on.
2014 • Economics
The rules for how to doom a relationship are relatively easy to follow. Here are a selection that are guaranteed to blow up love.
2015 • Lifehack
Nowadays, many atheists declare not just that god is dead but that anyone who believes in him must be stupid. This seems a little harsh – we prefer to think about where religious beliefs come from: the pained parts of ourselves.
2015 • Lifehack
Plato was one of the world's earliest and possibly greatest philosophers. He matters because of his devotion to making humanity more fulfilled.
2014 • People
Karl Marx remains deeply important today not as the man who told us what to replace capitalism with, but as someone who brilliantly pointed out what was inhuman and alienating about it.
2014 • People
This is a thought experiment about what the perfect country might be like. It's not an idle daydream, it's a way of highlighting some of the problems with our own nations and a way of signalling what the true opportunities might be.
2016 • Lifehack
The key to finding fulfilling work is to think a lot, analyse one's fears, understand the market, reflect on capitalism.
2015 • Lifehack
It’s an odd quirk of relationships that, after a time, we tend to develop the sincere conviction that it is all always our partner’s fault.
2016 • Lifehack
We’re still only at the dawn of learning how to use drugs properly – knowing what drugs we need and when we should take them. We look forward to a brighter future for drug use.
2016 • Health
Why are we so captivated and fascinated by news stories about disasters? Is it ghoulish and voyeuristic? Not at all...
2015 • Lifehack
Adapting one of the most groundbreaking and powerful books of our time, Capital in the 21st Century is an eye-opening journey through wealth and power, that breaks the popular assumption that the accumulation of capital runs hand in hand with social progress, shining a new light on the world around us and its growing inequalities. Traveling through time from the French Revolution and other huge global shifts, to world wars and through to the rise of new technologies today, the film assembles accessible pop-culture references coupled with interviews of some of the world's most influential experts delivering an insightful and empowering journey through the past and into our future.
2019 • Economics
Dominion uses drones, hidden and handheld cameras to expose the dark underbelly of modern animal agriculture, questioning the morality and validity of humankind's dominion over the animal kingdom. While mainly focusing on animals used for food, it also explores other ways animals are exploited and abused by humans, including clothing, entertainment and research.
2018 • Economics
Planned Obsolescence is the deliberate shortening of product life spans to guarantee consumer demand. As a magazine for advertisers succinctly puts it: “The article that refuses to wear out is a tragedy of business “ - and a tragedy for the modern growth society which relies on an ever-accelerating cycle of production, consumption and throwing away. THE LIGHT BULB CONSPIRACY combines investigative research and rare archive footage to trace the untold story of Planned Obsolescence, from its beginnings in the 1920s with a secret cartel, set up expressly to limit the life span of light bulbs, to present-day stories involving cutting edge electronics (such as the iPod) and the growing spirit of resistance amongst ordinary consumers. This film travels to France, Germany, Spain and the US to find witnesses of a business practice which has become the basis of the modern economy, and brings back disquieting pictures from Africa where discarded electronics are piling up in huge cemeteries for electronic waste. Economists and environmentalists believe that the growth society as we know it is unsustainable in the long run and that Planned Obsolescence needs to become a thing of the past, as it is impossible to combine the limitless consumption of resources with a finite planet. But what are the alternatives? The film offers thought-provoking analysis by thinkers working on ways of saving both the economy and the environment, and presents hands-on stories showing entrepreneurs putting new business models into practice.
2010 • 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
The convenience of credit cards comes at a price. From the methods banks use to maximize profits to a debt myth debunked, take a look inside the system.
S1E2 • Money Explained • 2011 • Economics
SAVING CAPITALISM is a documentary film that follows former Secretary of Labor and Professor, Robert Reich, as he takes his book and his views to the heart of conservative America to speak about our economic system and present big ideas for how to fix it.
2017 • Economics