Why Some Countries Are Poor and Others Rich • 2014 • The School of Life

118:03

Information Tensions in the world's largest democracy. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been dogged by accusations over his attitude to the nation's Muslim minority. What's the truth? Chapter 1: Focuses on Indian PM Narendra Modi and the persistent allegations about his attitude towards India's Muslim population that have plagued his premiership. Investigates the truth behind these allegations and explores Modi's backstory and also examines claims about his role in 2002 riots that left over a thousand dead. Chapter 2: Focuses on his government's track record following his re-election in 2019. A series of controversial policies has been accompanied by reports of violent attacks on Muslims by Hindus. Modi and his government reject any suggestion that their policies reflect any prejudice towards Muslims - but these policies have been repeatedly criticised by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International.

2023 • Economics

59:16

Explores the growing tension between China and the west over allegations that the Chinese state has engaged for years in large-scale industrial espionage and hacking to steal the west's business secrets and technological know-how. One former US official has described it as the 'largest transfer of wealth in human history'. China denies the charges – but growing anger in the US is fuelling the trade war with China.

S1E3 • China: A New World Order • 2019 • Economics

59:09

Jamie Bartlett reveals how Silicon Valley's mission to connect the world is disrupting democracy, helping plunge us into an age of political turbulence. Many of the Tech Gods were dismayed when Donald Trump - who holds a very different worldview - won the American presidency, but did they actually help him to win? With the help of a key insider from the Trump campaign's digital operation, Jamie unravels for the first time the role played by social media and Facebook's vital role in getting Trump into the White House. But how did Facebook become such a powerful player? Jamie learns how Facebook's vast power to persuade was first built for advertisers, combining data about our internet use and psychological insights into how we think. A leading psychologist then shows Jamie how Facebook's hoard of data about us can be used to predict our personalities and other psychological traits. He interrogates the head of the big data analytics firm that targeted millions of voters on Facebook for Trump - he tells Jamie this revolution is unstoppable. But is this great persuasion machine now out of control? Exploring the emotional mechanisms that supercharge the spread of fake news on social media, Jamie reveals how Silicon Valley's persuasion machine is now being exploited by political forces of all kinds, in ways no one - including the Tech Gods who created it - may be able to stop.

2/2 • Secrets of Silicon Valley • 2017 • Economics

72:05

This documentary travels through a world of joblessness, debt, and economic uncertainty to the sovereign nation of the plutocrats, where each crisis seems to offer a new business opportunity. In America, where the 2008 financial meltdown cost $4 trillion in economic output, fortunes were made by the very people who precipitated the disaster while millions lost their homes and their savings. Austerity in Europe, economic stagnation in Asia, a lost generation of the young and unemployed - signs we are living through a fundamental global reorganization, the result of which no-one can predict. The world of the 1% has arrived, and the wealth gap is now greater in many countries than during the Gilded Age, the era of the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Vanderbilts. Can our stressed democracies deal with the fallout? Or have governments simply become instruments of the new elite?

2017 • Economics

60:52

How has Capitalism affected the world? Raj Sisodia, economic analyst, takes us back to pre-Industrial Revolution to show how our standard of living has improved. But now , he feels, it is time for another kind of capitalism - conscious capitalism - based on a value system deeper than profits.

5/9 • Curiosity Retreats: 2015 Lectures • 2015 • Economics

58:37

Jamie Bartlett uncovers the dark reality behind Silicon Valley's glittering promise to build a better world. The tech gods believe progress is powered by technology tearing up the world as it is - a process they call disruption. He visits Uber's lavish offices in San Francisco and hears how the company believes it is improving our cities. But in Hyderabad in India, Jamie sees for himself the human consequences of Uber's utopian vision - drivers driven to suicide over falling earnings. Riding shotgun in a truck as it drives itself for more than a hundred miles on a highway, Jamie asks what the next wave of Silicon Valley's global disruption - the automation of millions of jobs - will mean for all of us. In search of answers, he gets a warning from an artificial intelligence pioneer who is replacing doctors with software - an economic shock is coming, faster than any of us have realized. Jamie's journey ends in the remote island hideout of a former Facebook executive who has armed himself with a gun because he fears this new industrial revolution could lead to social breakdown and the collapse of capitalism.

1/2 • Secrets of Silicon Valley • 2017 • Economics